# Sticky  The roadside rest area



## Czas na Żywiec

I've seen shinier.


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## x-type

radi6404 said:


> it is shiny, here on this pic you can see it better, and now it s even shinier


you're right, it is more shiny on that photo, the first one is not good.

btw, how is your government doing with painting the balcony fences around Bulgaria? and how about EU funds about it, is EU giving you enough money for painting fences, or they are stupid imbecils?


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## KIWIKAAS

^^
whoresons


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## KIWIKAAS

Svartmetall said:


> Did you know that whoreson was actually an insult used by Shakespeare?
> 
> 
> The Comedy of Errors (4.4.24)


Thank you Svarty. Puts a cultured tone to Radi's ravings


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## Svartmetall

KIWIKAAS said:


> Thank you Svarty. Puts a cultured tone to Radi's ravings


It took some effort, but I managed it!


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## radi6404

x-type said:


> you're right, it is more shiny on that photo, the first one is not good.
> 
> btw, how is your government doing with painting the balcony fences around Bulgaria? and how about EU funds about it, is EU giving you enough money for painting fences, or they are stupid imbecils?


i paid it with my Radi6404 Struma M. crashbarriers fund but I don´t know if EU offers a special one for that. Anyway, it is way shinier now, tomorrow I am going to upload a pic of how it is now, it is almsot finished except the bottom part of the balcony, the color is also great, it isn´t as wet as when it was new and can be painted mroe easily so that the bottom part will hopefully be extremly shiny.


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## x-type

i really prefer old Radi not letting us know that he's fooling


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## radi6404

x-type said:


> i really prefer old Radi not letting us know that he's fooling


I am not that stupid man, but some parts are no fooling, see, I really painted my balcony and I am really gonna psot it here tomorrow.


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## x-type

no, you cannot get it back, sorry. try with some other nick.


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## Turnovec

Svartmetall said:


> Did you know that whoreson was actually an insult used by Shakespeare?
> 
> 
> The Comedy of Errors (4.4.24)


^^ I doubt radi has ever read Shakespeare  

Well done radi ! Can we see now some detailed set of at least 10+ photos of your balcony ? Can you shoot it from the window of the local bus too ?


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## Timon91

Is this topic about Radi's balcony and Shakespeare or about Bulgarian highways? :lol:


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## Verso

Timon Kruijk said:


> Is this topic about Radi's balcony and Shakespeare or about Bulgarian highways? :lol:


Join date: February 2008


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## x-type

Verso said:


> Join date: February 2008


newbie 

unfortunately, he will not meet real Radi anymore


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## Verso

A special thread? :lol:


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## ChrisZwolle

Yes, unfortunatly. I do not want to spoil the Bulgarian highway thread with this kind of stuff. Those who want to seek information on Bulgarian roads are probably not interested in some balcony.


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## Patrick

this is maybe more a skybar thread


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## AUchamps

Patrick said:


> this is maybe more a skybar thread


No. Then it'll get lost in the fray. That would be bad to have happen.


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## pmaciej7

It should be sticky...


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## Turnovec

Chriszwolle said:


> Yes, unfortunatly. I do not want to spoil the Bulgarian highway thread with this kind of stuff. Those who want to seek information on Bulgarian roads are probably not interested in some balcony.


^^ kay:


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## KHS

:hammer:


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## Samy70

radi6404 said:


> I am not that stupid man, but some parts are no fooling, see, I really painted my balcony and I am really gonna psot it here tomorrow.


Radi, I still would like to see the newly painted balcony cos I don't think you ever posted the new pic.


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## Timon91

Yes radi, c'mon. I can't wait to see it.


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## bgplayer19

Hey apart from Radi's balcony anyone here who plays Sim City?


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## Timon91

Why do you want to know that? But yes I did, years ago though, the first version of the game.


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## wyqtor

Yeah, I played some SimCity 4 with Rush Hour, with the Network Addon Mod of course. Also there's another mod, the RHW-mod, it allows you to build realistic 2x2,3x2 motorways. 

I gave up because I was tired of fixing dependencies :nuts:.


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## Patrick

I currently play Sim City 3000. And used to play a lot of SC2000 and Sim City for Super Nintendo.


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## RawLee

bgplayer19 said:


> Hey apart from Radi's balcony anyone here who plays Sim City?


I did,but I miss trams,and real public transport from it...so I get "frustrated" about it after 10-20 hours of playtime...and a lot of small things that prohibit me from creating the city I'd like...like not being able to introduce height-limit,etc.


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## ChrisZwolle

Interesting, i saw a truck from Malta today on the Dutch A28. What are the odds...


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## wyqtor

Hey guys, check this out: http://www.citiesxl.com/

This will probably be far more realistic than SimCity. It also has many goodies for us traffic fans!


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## Verso

Chriszwolle said:


> Interesting, i saw a truck from Malta today on the Dutch A28. What are the odds...





Verso said:


> a few days ago I saw (on Ljubljana ring) for the first time in my life a Maltese car plate!


The same truck?


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## Czas na Żywiec

Well if we get someone else who witnesses a truck with Maltese plates within the next few days, I think we can assume so.


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## ChrisZwolle

The Poles are taking over the Netherlands. I probably see more Polish cars in one day than all other foreign cars combined. About trucks i'm not so sure, but you see them a lot too. There used to be a lot of German trucks, but they are possibly replaced with Polish ones. 

I think the number of Ukrainian/Russian trucks are increasing too. Contrary to popular belief, they are usualy very new and clean, and not those old stinking wrecks.


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## Verso

^ I see very few cars with Ukrainian plates, not even so many trucks, which is odd for a 47-million nation. I even see more Russian plates.


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## ChrisZwolle

If i drive near the border on the E30 (Dutch A1), the road is full of flatbeds witk UA/RUS/BY plates, with new cars heading east.


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## RawLee

Beside the slovak and romanian trucks,the 3rd most I see is ukrainan(among foreign vehicles),especially on M3...


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## Schweden

RawLee said:


> I did,but I miss trams,and real public transport from it...so I get "frustrated" about it after 10-20 hours of playtime...and a lot of small things that prohibit me from creating the city I'd like...like not being able to introduce height-limit,etc.


I think trams is included in that plugin..? Am I wrong?


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## Timon91

A dutch tv-programme, called Wegmisbruikers (road misusers or wrong road users) spent some time on Poles some time ago. There was one guy driving 140 on a busy 2-lane road and dangerously overtaking. When he was stopped by the police he couldn't understand why his licence was taken from him: "This is very normal in Poland, I do it all the time". Quite funny :lol:
About emigrating Poles: where a lot of Poles leave Poland to work abroad, doens't the Euro 2012 tournament preparations get behind because there are no workers anymore? I heard on the dutch news a week ago that Ukraine had great difficulties with getting ready on time.


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## ChrisZwolle

Yeah, i heard the Poles are having a labourdeficit themselves, because half their workforce is in western Europe, and they have to hire Russians and Turkish workers.


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## Majestic

You heard it right. In Poland there's barely any structural unemployment nowadays. Unemployment is mainly caused by reluctance to work and low mobility of the workforce. And because of this low mobility there are shortages of labour in some regions, while there's abundance in other ones.
And because of our generous welfare state, many people won't look for a job even if they're unemployed. 
According to the estimates labour shortages only in constructing industry are as high as 200,000 workers hno:


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## Xusein

bgplayer19 said:


> Hey apart from Radi's balcony anyone here who plays Sim City?


Check out my region on my sig.


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## ChrisZwolle

Guess where this is:


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## x-type

NL?


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## ChrisZwolle

Nope, that would have been too easy


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## x-type

i don't know which country uses blue tables with city names. Norway?


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## ABRob

Chriszwolle said:


> Guess where this is:


I was there in 2005 - it's in Denmark on S513:
http://maps.google.de/maps?ll=56.514245,8.4909357&z=15&t=h

I also made some pictures:


















And some km away:








Rom (German for Rome)


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## Nexis

British Virgin Islands, is that right? (edit opps my source says different)


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## ChrisZwolle

Excellent ABRob  You also have been everywhere


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## ChrisZwolle

Another strange thing i observed on the motorway yesterday, i saw a truck with British plates, however it had the steering wheel on the left, like in all countries where they drive on the right.


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## ChrisZwolle

Fuel hits another record in the Netherlands: € 1,60 per liter. That's currently $ 9.45 per gallon!


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## Jeroen669

chriszwolle said:


> Another strange thing i observed on the motorway yesterday, i saw a truck with British plates, however it had the steering wheel on the left, like in all countries where they drive on the right.


Maybe he has imported the car?


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## Qwert

Jeroen669 said:


> Maybe he has imported the car?


Is it possible to register car with steering wheel on the left in Britain?


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## Haljackey

Hello everyone, I am not too sure if this is a good place to put this, but I create a lot of highways in Sim City 4. 

I am sure you all are interested in highways, so I thought it may be neat if I showed some from a fictional perspective.

You may think the highways suck in that game, but a lot of third party additions have been made to change the look and functionality of highways.

Take these two for example:








*Click for Full Resolution Here!
*
*








Click for Full Resolution Here!*

If you like what you see, I have posted a ton of highway images at simtropolis.com. You don't have to be a member to view them but you do have to be to post there.

Show Us Your Interchanges:
*http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=23&threadid=89089&enterthread=y*

The Greater Terran Region:
*http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=36&threadid=95625&enterthread=y*


Anyways, nice to meet you all. I'm Haljackey. I've been observing this site for about a year now but have not posted until recently.

The Highways and Autobahns is a very interesting part of the site. I have viewed a number of threads in this section. 



See you later!

Best,
-Haljackey


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## bgplayer19

^^ Talking about SC4 you're the man :lol::lol::lol:


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## wyqtor

Nice to have you here, Haljackey, I think your cities are among the best from Simtropolis!

I found something REALLY interesting today: 
http://www.citiesxl.com/index.php?/content/view/26/1/lang,en/

:drool:


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## ChrisZwolle

Did you guys notice this subforum is growing quite fast? It didn't exist until a year ago.


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## Verso

Every day when I check it, it's so full of new posts that I'm too lazy to check them all. Simply too many of them.


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## Timon91

I didn't really notice, but I'm only active over here since a few months


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## Verso

Chriszwolle said:


> Did you guys notice this subforum is growing quite fast? It didn't exist until a year ago.


Actually it was created more than a year ago; I think in January 2007.


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## ChrisZwolle

Yeah, but it really didn't become active until a few months.


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## Verso

^ I know, it was like the darkest corner of SSC for half a year.


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## Timon91

Verso said:


> ^ Yeah, two of them are in my name.  Intersection = križišče.  We only have these three distinct.  But I didn't know you had ï.


We have ä (but I'm not sure), ë, ï, ö and ü (not sure about ö), but they aren't used a lot so they're not different characters in the dutch alphabet 
we're having a nice discussion, don't you think?


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## Jeroen669

In which dutch word you use a "ö" or a "ü" ? (überhaupt is not a dutch word)

Those letters with dots are no official dutch letters, in contrast to some other languages. They're just for making pronouncement easier, but it doesn't make any difference further.


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## Verso

^^ Looks like Timon is illiterate.


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## Timon91

Well, you can find überhaupt in the dutch dictionary, so it is a dutch word, though its origin isn't dutch. About ö: I told in my post that I wasn't sure about it.
@Verso: jfaioneg iaeonz iha wgaeiongaoe gnae naobndka oenga ioewngz idng eee? 

Edit: dutch is the only school subject for which I don't have a sufficient mark (though I hope to fix this next week)


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## Verso

Timon Kruijk said:


> @Verso: jfaioneg iaeonz iha wgaeiongaoe gnae naobndka oenga ioewngz idng eee?


Kwa prawš? =)


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## Timon91

^^??????
btw, nice new avatar


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## ChrisZwolle

Summer vacation has started in parts of the Netherlands. Already lots of accidents and early traffic jams.


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## dia

^^ Great for those who go to vacations but for us it's....

:badnews:

This time of the year it's a horror to drive on Luxembourg's motorways. Half of Belgium and Netherlands are going down to the South through here.


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## x-type

first crowds in Croatia, too. at tunnel Sveti Rok at one side 6 km, at other 9 km. but last year i have been in 16 km jam at tunnel Mala Kapela even one week earlier


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## Mateusz

Verso said:


> ^ Yeah, two of them are in my name.  Intersection = križišče.  We only have these three distinct.  But I didn't know you had ï.


in Polish it is a little bit similar, it will be 'skrzyżowanie' ^^ But it will be bit more likely crossing ^^ Hmm... maybe 'węzeł' will be more equivalent for intersection... but 'węzeł' might be more likely for 'razcep' It's all confusing :nuts::lol:


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## Verso

Skrzyżowanie most probably equals križišče. I guess "crossing" is a better word. I think "crossing" and "intersection" can mean the same.  But meaning like crossing of two roads, not border crossing or pedestrian crossing; those would be "prehod".


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## Timon91

Skyscrapercity.com has over 200 000 members now! :cheers::banana::dance::applause:
That means that the site is getting slower and slower hno:


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## Verso

^^ Actually I see 199,998 members:


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## Verso

Ok, I see 200,013 members now. 

:rock:


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## ChrisZwolle

Actually, the member count has exceeded 200,000 a couple of months ago. 

It's frickin hot here, 33 degrees celcius. (91 F)


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## Verso

^ Hehe, we had 33°C last week. :tongue2:

It exceeded 200,000 members a couple of months ago, if you include the banned ones.  Btw, now I see only 200,004 members. :crazy:


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## Timon91

I'm almost melting in my room. Hopefully the expected thunderstorms will cool down things a bit.


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## Jeroen669

^^ Same thing here. Where can I book a one way ticket North Pole...


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## Timon91

www.northernalaska.com 
Some thunderstorm passed by here, but just missed Abcoude. So it's still very hot over here.


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## Ron2K

Chriszwolle said:


> It's frickin hot here, 33 degrees celcius. (91 F)


Try that with over 90% humidity and you have an indication of Durban's summer.

As for winters over here - tomorrow the temperature is predicted to go up to 23°C. That's at the coast though - I'm 25km inland and 500m above sea level, which does make things significantly cooler.


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## Timon91

^^Glad I'm not living in Durban then


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## Ron2K

I suppose you do get used to it (lived in Durban for nearly all of my life). Still, I'd prefer Cape Town's summers any day - pity that their winters are rather miserable.


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## Timon91

^^Yeah, but when it's like 27 Celsius or higher here, my room functions like a greenhouse and I melt away over here hno:


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## RipleyLV

In 23 june I was in Slovenia, man was it hot, like +34, I even took a pic  :


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## Timon91

Last wednesday it was also 34 degrees in the north of NL, while it was way cooler in some other parts of the county. 
Btw, we have a lot of differences in weather patterns and rain amounts in different parts of NL, quite strange, since it is a very small country.


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## Verso

^ Here too. And yes, the second half of June was hot here. The worst thing here is humidity.


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## RipleyLV

2 days ago was this years highest temperature in Latvia +28


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## Timon91

Verso said:


> ^ Here too. And yes, the second half of June was hot here. The worst thing here is humidity.


End of April-beginning of May was very good over here, but yes, too hot. Today it will be rainy with top temperatures of 21 Celsius


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## Mateusz

UK is quite ok, we have frequent rain and thundering so we are kept cooled down when it needs to be


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## Verso

RipleyLV said:


> 2 days ago was this years highest temperature in Latvia +28


Incredibly hot! :lol:


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## ChrisZwolle

Where are you guys spending your vacation this summer?

I'm going to Switzerland for two weeks in august/september


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## Verso

^ I'd go to Switzerland too, but my dad's coming back to live in Slovenia in less than a month, and until then he's in Spain, Morocco or somewhere there anyway.

I don't have big plans yet, but there's always some possibility in Croatia. Oh, and I mustn't miss some naughty home parties in Portorož. :colgate:


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## Mateusz

I'm going to Turkey for 2 weeks


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## FREKI

Chriszwolle said:


> Where are you guys spending your vacation this summer?


Went to Italy a few weeks back.. and are going to Sweden later this month...


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## x-type

Italy, Hungary and, of course, our coast


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## Timon91

I'm in the US currently


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## Verso

^ I hope it's not as hot as back in Europe... at least not in Alaska.


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## Timon91

Well, I'm in Boston right now, where it is 28 Celsius right now, but it is very humid, so it isn't nice.


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## ChrisZwolle

How's the Big Dig, Timon?


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## Timon91

Finished :cheers:
When my friends picked me up at the airport it was one of the first things I asked them. I've actually passed a few of these new tunnels, but I don't really know what is part of the Big Dig and what isn't part of it. I made a few pics though (one of some wide new bridge)
Is the I-93 part of the Big Dig?
btw, why is do they change this smiley  so often?


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## ChrisZwolle

The I-93 tunnels are the Big Dig, and the I-90 was extended to Logan Airport under the same project.


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## Verso

Timon Kruijk said:


> Is the I-93 part of the Big Dig?


Actually the Big Dig is part of the I-93.


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## ChrisZwolle

I bought a TomTom today


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## Timon91

^^Do you really need one


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## ChrisZwolle

^^ Generally, no. But it's convenient when searching for an alternative in case of traffic jams, and ofcourse inside cities that are unknown to me. There are few larger cities in the Netherlands I really know besides Zwolle.


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## Verso

^^ Zwolle a large city?


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## Timon91

In Slovenia, only Ljubjana is bigger


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## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> ^^ Zwolle a large city?


All jokes aside, a city of over 100.000 is considered a "large city" (like Großstadt in Germany). Zwolle has 117.000 inhabitants.


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## Verso

^^ To me, a city of over one million is a large city. :lol:



Timon Kruijk said:


> In Slovenia, only Ljubjana is bigger


Ljub- what?  Yeah, but our gravity also attracts Zagreb, Graz, Trieste and Rijeka.  (the new yellow smily is so retarded)


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## Timon91

^^Slovenia is a large city then


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## Verso

You're damn right we are; like Budapest. :lol:


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## Timon91

For everyone who can't stand this new smiley --> 
Use this link to get the old, nostalgious, smiley: [I MG]http://i38.tinypic.com/2w6rwg8.gif[/I MG]


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## Verso

^ I'll consider using it.


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## Timon91

^^Right


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## Timon91




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## Verso

Timon Kruijk said:


>


wtf :lol:


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## Timon91

Making this smiley in paint isn't that difficult, but getting it into the right size without spoiling the quality is difficult.


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## Verso

I just saw a Kuwaiti license plate in the downtown. I wonder, if he had the vignette.


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## Timon91

^^Otherwise it would cost him a lot of Kuwaiti Dinars


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## Verso

Dinars remind me of Yugoslavia. :lol:


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## x-type

no. those stickers are valuable in certain period (for instance, 10-days, month, 6 months, year...). problem with slovenian stickers is that the shortest possible period to buy them is 6 months. so if you wanna once travel on slovenian motorways, you must but sticker for 6 months.


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## OettingerCroat

x-type said:


> no. those stickers are valuable in certain period (for instance, 10-days, month, 6 months, year...). problem with slovenian stickers is that the shortest possible period to buy them is 6 months. so if you wanna once travel on slovenian motorways, you must but 6 sticker for 6 months.


wow that's dumb.

and i bet it looks ugly on your car.


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## Verso

^ Austria and its neighbors are particularly fond of them; Switzerland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and now Slovenia. Five stickers on the windshield (in Hungary you don't have sticker any more, just the bill).


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## x-type

OettingerCroat said:


> wow that's dumb.
> 
> and i bet it looks ugly on your car.


you understood wrongly because i made a mistake while typing - you don't need 6 stickers, but only one  of course, if you ravel through more "sticker" countries, youi need for each of them one sticker


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## Mateusz

Myabe I should not ask in this thread but how to change the username ?


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## Verso

^^ http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=653514


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## Mateusz

Thanks ^^:cheers:


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## ChrisZwolle

I bought a new car! A 2004 Renault Kangoo Express 1.5 DCi 70


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## Mateusz

Nice  Are you going to deliver something otr what


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## ChrisZwolle

No, I'm gonna make it a little camper with a sleeping place so I can do multi-day trips. Besides that, this car is much more fuel efficient.


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## Mateusz

Indeed, DCI engine must be ver economic, are you going for tripis in this summer ? Like around Europe ?


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## ChrisZwolle

^^ No only to Switzerland this summer. But who knows what I'm gonna do in the fall  However, I am also moving to an apartment, so I'm not sure if I go very far away this year.


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## Verso

Congrats, Chris, although buying a Kangoo sounds funny -> deliver-guy.  But you explained it, and it sounds interesting. :cheers:


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## x-type

whassup with Almera?


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## Mateusz

Probably sold lol


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## Timon91

Nice car, Chris! I'm looking forward to your pics of far roadtrips :cheers:


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## Verso

x-type said:


> whassup with Almera?


You mean Peugeot 306?


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## x-type

Verso said:


> You mean Peugeot 306?


khm, and who had Almera on forum?


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## ChrisZwolle

Well, I didn't have an Almera. Do you have a Jag X-type?


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## x-type

Chriszwolle said:


> Well, I didn't have an Almera. Do you have a Jag X-type?


of course i do 

(btw, i guess that somebody else than has Almera)


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## ChrisZwolle

I always thought Verso had a Toyota Corolla Verso


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## Verso

Chriszwolle said:


> Well, I didn't have an Almera. Do you have a Jag X-type?


After winning millions in the "Who wants to be a millionaire?" show, it wouldn't surprise me.


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## Verso

Chriszwolle said:


> I always thought Verso had a Toyota Corolla Verso


The power of misleading.


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## ChrisZwolle

I got the car today


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## Verso

^^ Hehe, pizza delivery.  J/k, it looks nice, not awkward like the previous Kangoo.  Nice houses too; which one is yours?


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## Timon91

I think Chris lives in the space between the houses


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## Verso

In a dustbin? Timon, you're a badass.


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## ChrisZwolle

No, I live in my car now. I'm a gypsy


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## Verso

When you hit the European roads, you won't be far from that.


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## x-type

Chriszwolle said:


> No, I live in my car now. I'm a gypsy


so no photos from italian motorways from you


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## Verso

Does anyone know what the widest tunnel in the world is?


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## ChrisZwolle

The widest tunnel... In the Netherlands we have the Drechttunnel, which has 4 tubes with 2 lanes each. I believe the Elbtunnel near Hamburg has the same. The Beneluxtunnel near Rotterdam has 5 tubes with 10 lanes in total. The Heinenoordtunnel near Rotterdam has 2 tubes with 7 lanes in total. The tunnel under Schiphol Airport has 12 lanes. Funnily enough, one of the busiest tunnels in the Netherlands, the Coentunnel has only 4 lanes without shoulders.


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## x-type

and what would be the widest single tube in the world?


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## ABRob

Verso said:


> Does anyone know what the widest tunnel in the world is?


Do you mean sth. like the tunnel diameter?
Well, the top 4 of the widest Tunnel boring machines (TBM): 
4. 14.65m: "TRUDE" for the 4th tube of the Elbtunnel in Hamburg
3. 15.43m: =detail&tx_dbnhkprojects_pi1[uid]=561&tx_dbnhkprojects_pi1[noSearch]=1]Shanghai Changjiang connection
2. approx. 19m: Bypass Sur on M30, Madrid
1. approx. 20m: Billionaire Abramovich
All designed by Herrenknecht AG

By the time the Engelbergtunnel on A81 near Stuttgart opened in 1999, it was the widest non-TBM tunnel.


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## Verso

Sorry, I meant just one tube.


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## ChrisZwolle

The Transmanhattan Expwy (I-95) in New York is belowd grade with apartments on top. That road has 6 lanes each way. However, I don't know if it counts as a tunnel. I believe the A-5 tunnel in Madrid has 5 lanes outbound.


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## x-type

it's so boring today. where is radi? will something interesting happen here??


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## Verso

^ I don't know about you, but in a few hours we can expect another tornado. :laugh:



Chriszwolle said:


> The Transmanhattan Expwy (I-95) in New York is belowd grade with apartments on top. That road has 6 lanes each way. However, I don't know if it counts as a tunnel. I believe the A-5 tunnel in Madrid has 5 lanes outbound.


Do you have any photo of the Madrid tunnel?


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## x-type

Verso said:


> ^ I don't know about you, but in a few hours we can expect another tornado. :laugh:


a? you mean "radi tornado" or you have storm il SLO?


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## Verso

^ You aren't much around DLM, are you?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yeah, that's what I get after reloading 3 times...


----------



## Verso

RipleyLV said:


> Hey Chris, have you *ever* had this following view?


:lol:


----------



## RipleyLV

I couldn't resist of posting this pic, *but it's so damn funny*, that I can't stop laughing!!! :lol:


----------



## Mateusz

School years start ! I'm starting at 8th September :cheers: How do you feel about comingt year ? For those who are at this stage :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My vacation ends september 8th


----------



## Mateusz

Yeah... well I was thinking about taking course in construction but I'm crap at physics and chemistry... My dream was to build roads as engineer but I stick with administration or criminology :cheers: I'm strarting college which I should end now :bash:


----------



## Timon91

I have to go to school tomorrow again :bash:.My final year of high school (6th year) and then I'll have to decide where/what I'm going to study. I might like civil engineering; it has got something to do with highways


----------



## Mateusz

Yeah... well I was thinking about taking course in construction but I'm crap at physics and chemistry... My dream was to build roads as engineer but I stick with administration or criminology :cheers: I'm strarting college which I should end now :bash:


----------



## Verso

Mateusz said:


> School years start ! I'm starting at 8th September :cheers: How do you feel about comingt year ? For those who are at this stage :nuts:


I'm glad to be old enough to have another month.  Ripley, that was funny, hehe.


----------



## Timon91

^^Still another month? How long is your holiday?


----------



## Verso

^ I'm a university student; we begin on 1st October.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

They also begin that late in Belgium.


----------



## Timon91

I believe in the US college started early this year, two weeks ago, but they people I know where off from the beginning of May. That's 3½ month! I only have 2 hno:, but I have a week off in October, two weeks near Christmas, and a week in February. Normally I have a week off in May, but this time I have to make exams during that holiday hno:


----------



## ABRob

Hey Chris - it's time for "German Autobahns - Deutsche Autobahnen # II"


----------



## ChrisZwolle

"only 2 months"

Those times are over when you got a job


----------



## Timon91

^^Well, relatively speaking it's way less than the Americans  and I'm looking forward to my job


----------



## Mateusz

At least I'm not in US :nuts: You have to pay there for college or something unlinke in UK


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Abracadabra:


----------



## Verso

^^ Do you see letters and numbers for the first time, or you're just surprised by their combinations?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That is actually this forum. I usually see some html code, Firefox apparantly can't handle, but now it's different. I still have to reload often to see a page properly.


----------



## Verso

Chris, are you on drugs?


----------



## TheCat

Happy birthday Chris :cheers: I guess I'm too late for the Netherlands, but it's still the 7th in Toronto  Oh yeah, I'm 4 months older than you :banana::lol:


----------



## DJZG

wow... me joining to congratulations for birthday :banana:

didn't knew you were so young  i imagined someone much older hehe... 

either way... welcome to the grown-up world full of freedom and opportunities for jail :lol:


----------



## Jeroen669

Timon91 said:


> Well, the US is very serious about alcohol. I was refused in a bar at Salt Lake City airport, so we had to look for another restaurant to have dinner hno:
> By the way: don't you like Grolsch, Chris? Or Euroshopper beer


Chris has a better taste. All the good beers come from Limburg or Belgium. :cheers:


----------



## Morsue

Here's if you like speed on a skateboard:

http://www.vimeo.com/1654340


----------



## Timon91

What the heck is wrong with the forum? Sometimes I can get to the site, sometimes it gives me the 500 Internal Server Error or sth. 
And why did they change this smiley again ?


----------



## x-type

forum has pms every month


----------



## Jeroen669

Saw this weird van a few days ago:


----------



## MonsieurAquilone

:lol:


----------



## MonsieurAquilone

But the website is from the United Kingdom...?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I like to play this song while driving:




(Robert Plant - Big Log, 1983)


----------



## X236K

It seems that I'll have to drive from Ostrava (CZ) to Stockholm next week. Google says the route is 1600 km long. What could be a real lenght of journey? Do you guys think that I can manage to do that in 16 hours within the speed limits?


----------



## lpioe

X236K said:


> It seems that I'll have to drive from Ostrava (CZ) to Stockholm next week. Google says the route is 1600 km long. What could be a real lenght of journey? Do you guys think that I can manage to do that in 16 hours within the speed limits?


No way you can do that in 16 hours.
You need to take the ferry for the 1600 km route, which surely takes quite a lot of time.
Without the ferry it's more than 1900 km.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't think so either.. A month ago, I drove 1250 km in 14 hours, and basically only stopped to go to the bathroom (read:tree) and to gas up. 100km/h is a very high average on a motorway drive. You'll only make that if you drive 180km/h all the time in Germany. I would make it a two day drive.


----------



## X236K

Sh**! I have to get there by Wednesday morning and cannot leave earlier than Monday evening. I think I'll try ferry from Rostock, this way it should be 1600 km.. I hope I can do it in 20 hours. I'd fly but have a lot of stuff to carry with me. Well, the longest nonstop trip I've ever managed was 1350 km.. Surprisingly, I was quite fine after that.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Well, I think you don't encounter much traffic jams. If you take a night ferry to Gedsder you pass Germany after rushhours, and Denmark and Sweden generally don't have much traffic jams.


----------



## DJZG

holding my thumbs that you succeed :nuts:
and come back safely


----------



## X236K

DJZG said:


> holding my thumbs that you succeed :nuts:
> and come back safely


Not my choice, I have to go 

Rostock - Gedser - 1h 45min by Scandlines. Therefore, if I arrive to Rostock in time, I could be able to get to Stockholm in 18 hours.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Check this PM I got out:



remarkable08 said:


> Dear ChrisZwolle,
> 
> I send you details of our products, wish it be useful for your business.
> 
> We produce road crash barrier, post, separator, connector for our costomer.
> 
> We manufacture road crash barrier mainly according to those standards below:
> 1, JT/T 281-2007 (Corrugated Sheet Steel Beams For Highway Guardrail-China)
> 2, AASHTO-M180 (Corrugated Sheet Steel Beams For Highway Guardrail - USA)
> 3. RAL RG620 (Germany)
> 4. Or produce according to customers’ requirements
> 
> Can you send us the your drawings or specifications, so we can give you the quotation according to your requirement.
> 
> We are waiting for your early reply.
> 
> Best Regards,
> Delia
> 
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Xuzhou Remarkable Metal Product Co.,Ltd
> Dahuangshan Xuzhou, Jiangsu,China
> Tel: 86-516-83158777
> Fax: 86-516-83152018
> HP: 8613645201789
> MSN: [email protected]
> www.sinoremarkable.com


Shall I forward it to Radi? :lol:


----------



## x-type

:rofl: :rofl: obviously they used google, but then Radi should get offer, too!


----------



## Timon91

I got it too, so radi will too I think. Maybe radi just opened another account and set up a crashbarrier business :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I just drove this baby for work:









It was not very nice to turn this thing on a narrow 2,5m road without sunlight or streetlights  I've never driven such a large van.


----------



## x-type

i often used to drive passenger Vivaro at previous work and it was really funny to me, i liked it


----------



## snowman159

Not sure if this is the right place to bring it up, but I'd like to make a suggestion:
Wouldn't it be possible to make a picture-only thread for each country and keep the lenghty discussions in a separate thread? 

I really enjoy looking at photos of far-away highways, but I find it very tedious to go through all the pages of dribble - so much I barely bother to look in here anymore. Here's an example. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but a photo thread that's linked to the discussion thread and vice versa would make everyone happy, I think.

What do you guys think?


----------



## DJZG

it's not a bad idea... but you can't do much in forum style page... it would be easier if there was some webpage with menus, and sidebars...
this forum is an enormous amount of data and information and our World is very very big... i think lots of topic would lose sense then... 

sometimes i like watching pictures, sometimes i like commenting them, and sometimes i like joining to discussion  there is something for everybody here


----------



## RawLee

I think its a very bad idea,just think of the bandwidth. Assuming there's 20 pics in every post,and 20 post a page,that 400s pics. If each is 100Kb,then its whopping 40 Mb/page...thats too much even with high-speed net...

On the other hand,its easy to notice if a page has pics or not...it simply loads longer if it has...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The problem is that separate photo / discussion threads don't really work. However, I have to agree that posting 20 pics per post slows up a thread real bad. I think it's better to have them in separate albums (like I do) or post only a few per post if that specific thread page already has a lot of pics. Also, I don't think it's necessary to post 50 pics of a construction when 10 can do the job too.


----------



## Timon91

Yeah, pictures often evoke discussions, so it would be no use to separate them


----------



## Timon91

ChrisZwolle said:


> Also, I don't think it's necessary to post 50 pics of a construction when 10 can do the job too.


Tell the Poles with their almost finished A4


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Those are not so bad, but to see 50 pics of a sandbed of 10km... I mean, it's very nice they take time to take them and post them here, but I usually make a selection of my most interesting pics.


----------



## Mateusz

Hmmm next time I will try to post a bit less of pics ^^


----------



## snowman159

Ok, those are all good points. Maybe I didn't quite think it through.

Btw, I didn't necessarily mean to keep all discussions out of the photo threads, but limit them to the photos posted in that thread, similar to the urban photo section or local photo subforums. General stuff unrelated to the photos, like future projects, road numbering systems, crash barriers, possible improvements, etc. could be discussed in a separate thread.


----------



## DJZG

snowman159 said:


> Ok, those are all good points. Maybe I didn't quite think it through.
> 
> Btw, I didn't necessarily mean to keep all discussions out of the photo threads, but limit them to the photos posted in that thread, similar to the urban photo section or local photo subforums. General stuff unrelated to the photos, like future projects, road numbering systems, crash barriers, possible improvements, etc. could be discussed *in a separate thread*.


hm... i think these are separate threads designed for viewing pictures and discussing them little more direct than photograph subforums...
personally i don't really care... as long as i can keep track on anything interesting happening in this world beside politics :cheers:

like Chris said... it is nice to select few interesting pics, not 10 similar ones so if i work it out i could make a movie out of them


----------



## DJZG

guys.... it's my birthday today  i'm 25 today... quarter of a century :banana:

here's a sample of beers so you can choose which one to drink  it's all on me


----------



## Mateusz

Is is good Croatian beer ?


----------



## Kvaka 22

It's the best Croatian beer.  Far better than Karlovačko.


----------



## Timon91

Congrats DJZG :clown:
Besides beer that you can buy in dutch supermarkets I don't know very much brands. I like the Polish Zywiec beer, and the Czech Straropramen (or sth like that).


----------



## RawLee

DJZG said:


> guys.... it's my birthday today  i'm 25 today... quarter of a century :banana:
> 
> here's a sample of beers so you can choose which one to drink  it's all on me


Do you happen to have,lets say,an ozujsko too?:cheers: Happy birthday!


----------



## DJZG

RawLee said:


> Do you happen to have,lets say,an ozujsko too?:cheers: Happy birthday!


this saturday... Zagreb north suburb... barbeque and lots of Ozujsko  everybody are invited :banana:


----------



## x-type

Kvaka 22 said:


> It's the best Croatian beer.  Far better than Karlovačko.


kay:

DJ - HB! me come to žuja!!!


----------



## DJZG

x-type you're correct... i haven't even thought about greece... absolutely none seen by me in croatia... like they aren't going north anywhere 

btw... there is a nice amount of brand new cars registered to Vanuatu... avoiding tax or something... 
but license plate is pretty awesome... black plate with four numbers and on left and right side are palm trees  
it's only strange to see a croatian man exiting a car that suppose to be thousands of kilometers away :nuts:


----------



## x-type

DJZG said:


> x-type you're correct... i haven't even thought about greece... absolutely none seen by me in croatia... like they aren't going north anywhere
> 
> btw... there is a nice amount of brand new cars registered to Vanuatu... avoiding tax or something...
> but license plate is pretty awesome... black plate with four numbers and on left and right side are palm trees
> it's only strange to see a croatian man exiting a car that suppose to be thousands of kilometers away :nuts:


i have seen them, but really rarely (what is weird when we cinsider about A3/E70 as one of main routes that connect Greece with rest of Europe).

about those really exotic - i don't pay attention on them anymore because most of them are not originally from those countries, but owned by local ppl avoiding high taxes


----------



## Verso

Guys, you don't pay attention to license plates. I see plenty of odd plates. From Moldova, Belarus or Georgia, to Greece, Montenegro or Albania, and even Malta and Iceland. 

PS: Hi!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Where have you been?


----------



## Verso

^^ Ask my PC.  Destroyed graphic card, charger and whatnot. :bash: Why can't I post with my mobile?


----------



## DJZG

hehe man, good to see you back  i knew something was missing in this subforum :lol:

coincidence... my graphic card also died a month ago, and now i'm temporary using a Riva TNT 16Mb lol  

but not for long... in five days i'll be going to the store and buy myself a beast GTX hehe...


----------



## RipleyLV

DJZG said:


> in five days i'll be going to the store and buy myself a beast GTX hehe...


Lucky you! For now I have ATI Radeon X1300, maybe I should start collecting cash for the GeForce GTX 280 and buy it till 18. November, because that should do it, if I want to run GTA IV on my PC!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I just drove the A1 motorway in the Netherlands from Apeldoorn to Almelo (about 50km). 

Trucks: mostly non-Dutch, like German, Polish, Lithuanian, Estonian, Finnish, Norwegian, Belgian and Czech trucks.
Cars: Mostly Dutch, but there were some Germans.

What I have noticed in the last few months I barely see cars from Poland anymore. I used to see them all the time with seasonal workers. Apparantly, they aren't here anymore, perhaps returned to Poland?


----------



## Timon91

Well, the difference in wage between the two countries definately decreased, so it doesn't make that much difference as it used to, I think.


----------



## DJZG

RipleyLV said:


> Lucky you! For now I have ATI Radeon X1300, maybe I should start collecting cash for the GeForce GTX 280 and buy it till 18. November, because that should do it, if I want to run GTA IV on my PC!


hehe  i wait for GTA too hehe... although i already played it on my friends PS3, but i can't get used to controllers... 

btw, some magazines say 200 series isn't that much better than older GTX cards and they suck power like vacuum... friends talked me into buying this GTX+ that came few days ago, much cheaper than GTX and performances are negligible... 

@Chris... maybe they bought dutch cars with your plates so you don't recognize them now  infiltration starts from buying a new car :lol:


----------



## Mateusz

I don't care, I stick with XBOX 360 and my HDTV  And I can play GTA without any worries about weak graphic cards or processors...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I saw a truck with strange license plates. Actually they were 2 trucks without a trailer, from the Scania factory in Zwolle, I'm searching where they were from, perhaps Austria, but the plates don't exactly match. I also saw a car from GBJ : the island of Jersey. You don't see those often. 

The license plate I can't recognize had about 2 characters on the left, a flag, and about 4 characters on the right. The plate was light blue and the characters where faded light yellow. The flag was a striped flag with white and red (looks Austrian but the colors don't match). It were probably temporary plates. It didn't had a country code on it.

A bit like this Austrian one.


----------



## DJZG

hm... you've describing a flag like austrian but colors don't match? 
could be Latvian maybe? their red is somewhat darker and middle white line is a little bit narrower than Austrian...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No, the flag was about the same (I don't remember the flag exactly) but the colors of the plates and letters don't match at all.


----------



## DJZG

hm... only flag that is somewhat similar to austrian could be Lebanon, but they have a green cedar in the middle... other than that i can't be helpful  not many information  maybe someone else will recongize symbol positions on plates...


----------



## RipleyLV

Maybe this pic of a latvian license plate will help.










Chris is this it?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No, definatly not. As I said, the plate's background was faded blue and the letters were faded light yellow. The letter combination seems about right though. It didn't have a country code (like LV or A) in it.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> The license plate I can't recognize had about 2 characters on the left, a flag, and about 4 characters on the right. The plate was light blue and the characters where faded light yellow. The flag was a striped flag with white and red (looks Austrian but the colors don't match). It were probably temporary plates. It didn't had a country code on it.


light blue should be Austrian (i guess temporary), but they have white, not yellow characters


----------



## Verso

Sth like the one in the upper-right corner?










Check this out:









Ormož? :crazy:

1. it's in Slovenia, not Croatia;
2. I've never seen such a plate here


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The color blue seems about right, but the flag was different, as well as the colors of the letters (light yellow). They were driving southbound on the A50 from the Scania factory, so that should rule out anything north of the Netherlands/Germany/Poland.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I saw a truck from Cyprus this morning! This is the first time I saw a Cypriotian license plate.


----------



## x-type

you have really nice collection of seen plates now!


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> I saw a truck from Cyprus this morning! This is the first time I saw a Cypriotian license plate.


Seriously? I've seen plenty of them here, although I really don't know why!


----------



## DJZG

wow :nuts: that's really crazy 

how did they get to mainland from there? and where is profit in transporting goods with truck when you can do it with ship...


----------



## Timon91

Truck on ship? :lol: It might be that they don't trust the companies that have to bring the goods from the harbour inlands (or it is just too expensive)


----------



## Verso

I've only seen Cypriot cars, btw, I don't remember seeing any truck from Cyprus.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

During the afternoon peak hour, the police conducted a speed check on the A28 freeway near Zwolle. Result: 18 kilometers of traffic jam :nuts:


----------



## Timon91

^^Well, at least no one was speeding


----------



## PLH

^^ So what is the average speed of most cars out there?


----------



## Timon91

In a jam? 10 km/h or sth. I believe the speed limit on the A28 is 100 km/h when it goes through Zwolle.


----------



## PLH

^^ And when it's not so bad?  'Cause I'm curious if everyone is doing 120, becouse whenever I come across a Dutch car on a motorway, even in Italy)), it's always at 120 km/h


----------



## ChrisZwolle

When there's no congestion, most people drive between 110 and 130 but often slow people trying to overtake a line of trucks with 3 km/h speed difference causing long queues behind it.


----------



## Timon91

@PLH: In Germany, lots of Dutch test the speed limit of their cars, when there is not so much traffic. In lots of urban areas the limit is 100 km/h. Because there is much traffic, you often don't get the change to drive 120 km/h continuously.


----------



## PLH

And is there a certain group going much faster? For example sales representatives - here in Poland it's always >150 km/h

Or maybe I will widen my question: is this common also in other countries?


----------



## Timon91

^^They don't really get the chance, that's the problem. At least not in the region I live in :lol: My mom always calls the Audi's in Bavaria that drive >150 km/h "glowing nails" (gloeiende spijkertjes) when their braking lights go on to brake for a overtaking lorry.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PLH said:


> And is there a certain group going much faster? For example sales representatives - here in Poland it's always >150 km/h
> 
> Or maybe I will widen my question: is this common also in other countries?


150 km/h is not really possible to drive in the Netherlands. Maybe at night, but not during the day, or only for short distances or near border regions where traffic is less dense.


----------



## PLH

What is the most hilarious nick you've come across on SSC?

For me the best so far is *semen14* :shifty: :colgate:


----------



## Timon91

What does PLH actually stand for? And I like Fidel Castro


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> What does PLH actually stand for?


*P*o*l*ish *h*ippy. :lol:


----------



## Timon91

^^:rofl: 
Verso is just a Toyota, right?


----------



## Verso

Verso is a high-quality brand.


----------



## PLH

Timon91 said:


> What does PLH actually stand for?


It's the first, second and fifth letter of my last name, but that's enough for you to know


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I was in the Jam - Again!


----------



## Mateusz

Dutch autosnelweg must be often really congested road...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yeah, we had again 2 monster peak hours this week. 580 kilometers of traffic jam on Tuesday and 400 kilometers yesterday.


----------



## Timon91

Today I went to Eindhoven by train, and I haven't seen a single traffic jam on the entire A2! Even for saturday the must be an oddity  (the railroad runs almost parallel to the A2 for some kms)


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yeah, we had again 2 monster peak hours this week. 580 kilometers of traffic jam on Tuesday and 400 kilometers yesterday.


what is actually considered under term "jam"? i doubt that you had 580 km of standing cars at roads, is there minimum speed to consider high traffic as a jam?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

everything below 50 km/h for at least 2 km is counted as a traffic jam. So yes, we had 580 kilometers of real traffic jam. These are motorways-only. TomTom also counts other roads and is often in the 1.000 kilometer traffic jam range.


----------



## ABRob

I saw a coach from Rusia yesterday - on a local road in my town.

And Chris - isn't it better, when you only post, when you were *not* in a jam?


----------



## DJZG

wow 500kms of jams on highways... that's a huge number...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Up to 350 kilometers are seen as "normal" (better: "usual") in the Netherlands. below 200 km is a quiet rushhour, above that regular to busy.


----------



## Timon91

It's worse than Germany, horrible. When I bike to school along the Amsterdam-Rhine channel, I can see the A2, which is mostly congested at some point when I pass there and have a look at it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yeah, the Netherlands, which has a 5 times smaller population than Germany, has usually over 2 times more traffic jams :nuts:


----------



## Timon91

We're just great :clown:


----------



## DJZG

why is there so much road traffic between cities... i expected of western countries to be more dependent on trains as convenient and cheap travel inside the country...


----------



## Timon91

^^We have a very extensive and good train system, for the majority operated by the Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS). However, many still prefer going by car, since the trains are often late, and these people start to think that every train is late. Furthermore, there are lots of jams since the highways don't have the capacity to hold the traffic. The A4 between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, for instance, isn't 2×3 all the way AFAIK. Not a surprise there are jams over there.
-edit- For a map of the Dutch railway system, look over here. I don't post it over here because it is very big and when I resize it, the names on the map aren't readible any more.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

DJZG said:


> why is there so much road traffic between cities... i expected of western countries to be more dependent on trains as convenient and cheap travel inside the country...


It's not convenient at all if you don't travel between city centers, which are most trips. The car is almost always faster unless you have to be somewhere around the historic city center. 

People look to much on the travel train between stations. You should calculate the travel time from door to door and the car is nearly always faster if you travel from door to door. I did a calculation of travel times a while ago (posted it here on SSC) about typical commuter trips to my city (which is a regional job center). Public Transportation was nearly 2 times slower on all trips. In other words, you can loose an half an hour in a traffic jam and still be faster. 

The disadvantage of public transport is additional transport you need to reach your destination. 

Policy-makers say: "hey check it out, the travel time is only x minutes between Eindhoven and Utrecht, I can't understand why people don't take the train!". What they don't realize or say is those are travel times between railway stations. Add up the extra time to get from and to the railway station and travel times doubles on Dutch distances (obviously not if you travel from LA to NY).


----------



## Jeroen669

Chriszwolle said:


> (obviously not if you travel from LA to NY).


For the average dutchman it's practicly the same as driving from Groningen to Maastricht. :cheers:
We're so small-minded here...


----------



## x-type

here in Croatia we are allways exposed to pressures and opinions that in western Europe everybody enjoy taking the trains and public transport for everything and that car is only secondary solution


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Nah, maybe some large cities like London or Paris. In the Netherlands: Public Transit 9% / 91% other.


----------



## Timon91

Jeroen669 said:


> For the average dutchman it's practicly the same as driving from Groningen to Maastricht. :cheers:
> We're so small-minded here...


AFAIK there is even a plane connection between Groningen and Maastricht (transavia)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Groningen is seen as far in my city (Zwolle, 100km away). Maastricht is seen as exotic here. (220km). Nah, I don't think it's very far, if I say I'm gonna drive a short trip of 400 kilometers people think I'm crazy because for a Dutchmen, those are distances they only drive on vacation.


----------



## x-type

what is the longest possible road trip in the Netherlands? (i mean on linear trip, so not unneccessary circulating or bypassing)

is it allready mentioned Maastricht - Groningen, or there exists something longer?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Sluis - Nieuweschans I guess. 440 kilometers (via Belgium, fastest route).


----------



## Timon91

Cadzand-Bad - Nieuweschans is 442 kms, Chris


----------



## ChrisZwolle

We even have major traffic jams due to soccer matches. Currently 23 kilometers of traffic jam on a sunday afternoon on the A2 fwy. Total: 104 kilometers of TJ.


----------



## PLH

^^ Counting traffic jams should in the Netherlands be officially confirmed as a hobby :tongue4: or maybe a regular profession?


----------



## Timon91

^^About 17 million people do it as their hobby. Whether they like it or not


----------



## PLH

A must see!


----------



## Timon91

^^This has also been a commercial on Dutch tv a few years ago.


----------



## Verso

= Dutchies are naughty.  :tongue2:


----------



## Timon91

We just don't like Germans (especially not in football)


----------



## PLH

Verso said:


> = Dutchies are naughty.  :tongue2:


That's the German version 

Dutch one - = Germs are... ekhm.. as you could have seen :colgate:


----------



## Verso

Chris, what does your User Title actually say?


----------



## Timon91

Congestion, we've discussed this before. Or are you fooling us, Verso?


----------



## Verso

Where did you discuss it?


----------



## Timon91

In some thread I think  :lol: 
Just copy paste it in Google translate and translate it (it's Japanese) :lol:


----------



## Verso

You're right, it's 'congestion'; I didn't think it would translate it (properly), cause I don't have the Japanese letters supported.


----------



## DJZG

lol... it looks like chinese to me...  and my firefox add-on translator won't recognize those letters :lol:
while we're at this topic... how do i change that... i'm such a dumbass sometimes :nuts:


----------



## PLH

^^ User CP -> Your profile -> Edit your details -> Custom User Title


----------



## Mateusz

Timon, are many Dutch people into baseball ?


----------



## Timon91

No, not really. Just me 
I've supported the Boston Red Sox all my life, the Reds are my National League favourites. I really hate the New ¥ork ¥ank€€$. I play it myself too, though I'm horrible at it


----------



## DJZG

we do look like a weird bunch of people  nice to see you all finally :grouphug:


----------



## Timon91

^^Yeah, some are wearing a weird Croatian hat, others look stoned and one even wears a Cincinnati Reds cap


----------



## Verso

^ Well, at least no one looks like that. 










:runaway:


----------



## Mateusz

Nice computer, is it yours Verso ?


----------



## Verso

Haha, I didn't even notice the "computer"; why would it be mine? 

edit: Mateusz, you're so evil, you can see it by the number of your post


----------



## Mateusz

What man ?  I had 666 posts quite long ago, how now my number of posts proofs about it


----------



## Verso

^ Not the number of your post*s*, but the number of your post (take a look on the right side ).


----------



## Timon91

Well, he will have 11*66* posts soon


----------



## Verso

Geesh man, your post is #670, right? Now look at the one of Mateusz. :colgate:


----------



## Timon91

I've seen that. You're actually very evil that you registered in the 6th month of 2006


----------



## Verso

^ Thank god I didn't wait one more day! :runaway:


----------



## Timon91

btw, you're 2*6* 
Ok, I'm 16, but I'll be 17 in a few days, so I'm not really evil anymore. And no, my birthday is not on the 6th of november


----------



## Verso

I'm seriously doomed. But what else is new?


----------



## Mateusz

Aaaaa I see now 666th post in this thread !


----------



## Timon91

And now you have the 676th one as well 
I can't wait for my 1666th post. Can't take long with all this useless OT :lol:


----------



## Verso

Mateusz said:


> Aaaaa I see now 666th post in this thread !


YEEESSS!!! So what can you say in your defense?


----------



## Timon91

By saying that you should'nt post anymore, otherwise you have your 7166th post and you're entirely doomed 
This is probably the type of discussion the rest area is meant for :lol:


----------



## Verso

At least it's not so easy to get banned here. :lol:


----------



## DJZG

lolol  3am x-type writing some bizarre text :lol: seems like saturday was interesting


----------



## Verso

X-type's Saturday night was strumatic.


----------



## Timon91

I think he just smoked lots of crack and started to hallucinate and that he thought that he was a Bulgaradian :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Timon oh Timon said:


> Bulgaradian


A what?


----------



## Timon91

Combination of a Bulgarian and Radi


----------



## x-type

what happened tonight? :nuts:


----------



## Timon91

^^Had too much beer yesterday? :lol:


----------



## DJZG

lol... who hasn't :banana:


----------



## Mateusz

Me !  I don't drink. I don't like it to be honest  I was watching movie about Dr Moscati... :nuts:

Strumatiser  A person who lures people into cult of E79 road between Dupnica and Dolna Dykania aka Struma Motorway :nuts:


----------



## Timon91

I only had a few, so I wasn't drunk 

We can start an entire radictionary over here :lol:


----------



## Mateusz

Bulgaradian form of english ? :nuts:


----------



## Timon91

This discussion is so E79ish


----------



## PLH

Why on my banner there is a game called Dark Orbit with the Alien in it? 
If I were him I'd sue them:horse:


----------



## PLH

I'm curious how it is with tornados in your(european) countries?

Poland, somewhere on A4, this summer:


----------



## Timon91

Last summer there have been a few small tornado's in the north, damaging some farms. In the last decades there have been a few F3's and one F4 (Borculo). That video is pretty shocking though.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Happy birthday Timon!!! 

:cheers:


----------



## PLH

Happy Birthday!
Wszystkiego najlepszego!

:cheers:


----------



## DJZG

lol am i stupid or i can't see where does it say it is his birthday today 


dammit  happy birthday Timon :tongue3:


----------



## Mateusz

Happy birthday Timon ! :cheers:


----------



## Timon91

Thanks everyone! :cheers:

@DJZG: Chris is a friend of mine on hyves, the Dutch facebook, so he knows :lol:


----------



## Majestic

Happy B-day big boy! :cheers2:


----------



## Verso

PLH said:


> Happy Birthday!
> Wszystkiego najlepszego!
> 
> :cheers:


Vse najboljše za 17. rojstni dan, Timon! 

(I think you got it )


----------



## DJZG

so it's your 17th b-day? wow... i thought i was the youngest :tongue3: but now i'm older 8 years


----------



## Timon91

Mateusz is 18, Chris is 21. But I'm still the youngest over here 

@Verso: Google Translate confirmed my thoughts


----------



## ABRob

Timon91 said:


> Mateusz is 18, Chris is 21.


And I'm in between.


----------



## Majestic

Who's the oldest then? :shifty:


----------



## Timon91

^^Verso is 26 AFAIK. I don't know any older forumers that often visit the H&A section :dunno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Majestic said:


> Who's the oldest then? :shifty:


McCain. But I'm not sure if he visits here. He should do so though.


----------



## Timon91

We don't have any H&A forumers from Arizona :lol:


----------



## Majestic

ChrisZwolle said:


> McCain. But I'm not sure if he visits here. He should do so though.


Don't know him....but the name has something to do with french fries, right?


----------



## x-type

Timon91 said:


> ^^Verso is 26 AFAIK. I don't know any older forumers that often visit the H&A section :dunno:


you know now :bowtie:


----------



## Timon91

:doh: Should have known that, sorry


----------



## Majestic

x-type said:


> you know now :bowtie:


:master:


----------



## Verso

Papa Schlumpf


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Grandpa Verso.


----------



## PLH

^^ Uncle Sam :tongue4:


----------



## Timon91

Benjamin Timon


----------



## Mateusz

Do you have any party Timon ?  Cake in shape of motorway  ?


----------



## Timon91

I'm haven't decided yet if I'll give a party. But of course, if you want a piece of motorway cake, be my guest


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Grandpa Verso.


What is that supposed to mean?


----------



## PLH

it's Thursday again...


----------



## PLH

no, again back in the future :banana:


----------



## Timon91

What is this forum doing? My post about my weekend that started today D) was after PLH's one with the two quotes in it. And now there are two other in between that were posted later. Now PLH has posted something that is supposed to be posted tomorrow. Maybe PLH started looking in future since he befriended Chris :lol:


----------



## Timon91

This is getting weird. Chris, do you know what is going on? :dunno:


----------



## Timon91

Who the heck changed the time settings of this forum?


----------



## Verso

PLH said:


> *This post is the first post in whole history of SSC to be trasferred from the future.*


Not at all, it was happening before, but it was just a matter of minutes, not days. 



Verso said:


> I wonder how Timon can have only 5.89 posts per day.


Aha, now you have *6*.89 posts per day.  I knew it!


----------



## Timon91

Creepy forum......


----------



## PLH

Majestic said:


> I think this is some kind of a punishment for all of us here for spamming and OT too much :lol:


Still waiting for the plague of frogs :nuts:


----------



## PLH

Ahhh, that way....:doh:

Yeah, I should be going out now 

*This post is the first post in whole history of SSC to be trasferred from the future. Has it sth to do with the new president of U, S and A? :?*


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've been everywhere (Johnny Cash)






First verse
Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota, Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow, Sarasota, Wichita, Tulsa, Ottawa, Oklahoma, Tampa, Panama, Mattawa, La Paloma, Bangor, Baltimore, Salvador, Amarillo, Tocopilla, Barranquilla and Padilla.

Second verse
Boston, Charleston (not specified whether it's Charleston, WV or Charleston, SC), Dayton, Louisiana, Washington (not specified whether it's Washington D.C. or Washington state), Houston, Kingston, Texarkana, Monterey, Ferriday, Santa Fe, Tallapoosa, Glen Rock, Black Rock, Little Rock, Oskaloosa, Tennessee, Hennessey, Chicopee, Spirit Lake, Grand Lake, Devils Lake and Crater Lake.

Third verse
Louisville, Nashville, Knoxville, Ombabika, Schefferville, Jacksonville, Waterville, Costa Rica, Richfield, Springfield, Bakersfield, Shreveport, Hackensack, Cadillac, Fond Du Lac, Davenport, Idaho, Jellico, Argentina, Diamantina, Pasadena and Catalina.

Fourth verse
Pittsburgh, Parkersburg, Gravelbourg, Colorado, Ellensburg, Rexburg, Vicksburg, El Dorado, Larimore, Atmore, Haverstraw, Chatanika, Chaska, Nebraska, Alaska, Opelika, Baraboo, Waterloo, Kalamazoo, Kansas City, Sioux City, Cedar City and Dodge City.


----------



## Timon91

Nice song, Chris! And I haven't been everywhere 
From the places mentioned in the song, I've been to Boston, Dayton, Idaho and Alaska :lol:


----------



## Verso

Haven't been to the States and proud of it.


----------



## PLH

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've been everywhere (Johnny Cash)


You'd better listen to AC/DC's Highway to hell 

------------

As to yesterday's(today's:nuts mess, found on polish subforum:



> 1. This forum requires that you wait 30 seconds between posts. Please try again in *2465* seconds.


No problem, sir!


----------



## Timon91

I had 2959 seconds. Please see post #807


----------



## Verso

2959 seconds isn't that bad (if you had nothing to say ).


----------



## Timon91

It's only 49 mins and 59 secs


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> It's only 49 mins and 59 secs


49 min and 19 s actually.


----------



## DJZG

lol... i don't get any of those weird things... hno: 

btw, i'll go back and remind of x-type's tv appearing on 'deal or no deal' and post a link which is totally wow...
a guy in the end has to choose between a case with 1$ and with 1 mil $

http://entertainment.todaysbigthing.com/2008/11/06

dammit, my n00b skillz aren't trained to post embedded movie


----------



## PLH

DJZG said:


> lol... i don't get any of those weird things... hno:


You should have been here yesterday afrernoon



DJZG said:


> dammit, my n00b skillz aren't trained to post embedded movie


Cause you can't insert non-youtube movies


----------



## Verso

Chris, I'm personally glad you closed the Albanian thread for a while, but I expected the same from you (not that harsh actually) in the Norwegian thread.  Until very recently there was a very personal discussion going on between ElviS77 and 54°26′S 3°24′E that no one (except them) cared about. It lasted as long as 5 pages and 5 months.


----------



## PLH

This should be banned :bash:






Yeah, he's Russian hno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I believe this is on the edge of getting fined in the Netherlands for such slow overtaking. This guy only wins like a minute of driving time on 300 kilometers of motorway. hno:


----------



## DJZG

wow what an a.ss... i can't believe, truck is overtaking another truck and both drive same speed lol... what was he thinking...


----------



## PLH

DJZG said:


> what was he thinking...


I doubt he was thinking at all...

Another one, notice the signs on both pics:no:


----------



## Verso

^^ Overtaking prohibited for trucks. 

It's increasing here, I think. Domestic (Slovenian) drivers probably think 'why would I have to drive behind foreigners?', and overtake all the time. It's not just annoying, but also dangerous.


----------



## Timon91

In the Netherlands control is sometimes quite strict on overtaking trucks. And necessary, regarding the video. This obviously doesn't only happen in Poland hno:


----------



## Jeroen669

Timon91 said:


> In the Netherlands control is sometimes quite strict on overtaking trucks. And necessary, regarding the video.


If you'd completely forbid it people would complain about the 'wall of trucks'... I have to say I also overtake by truck when reasonably possible (with at least 2-3km/h speed difference).



Verso said:


> It's increasing here, I think. Domestic (Slovenian) drivers probably think 'why would I have to drive behind foreigners?', and overtake all the time. It's not just annoying, but also dangerous.


I can understand the annoyment, but why whould it be dangerous?


----------



## Timon91

People get aggresive and start driving more aggresive when they're impatient.


----------



## PLH

Jeroen669 said:


> I can understand the annoyment, but why whould it be dangerous?


Most truck drivers move to the left line even if ther's car coming on it.


----------



## Jeroen669

Timon91 said:


> People get aggresive and start driving more aggresive when they're impatient.


You mean like the the bumpersticking at the video on top of this page? It won't help the truck driver faster than he does...


----------



## Timon91

Yeah, for instance. If something happens, the cars behind it can pile up hno:


----------



## Jeroen669

PLH said:


> Most truck drivers move to the left line even if ther's car coming on it.


That's very common here for cars as well (idiots going with 90-100km/h to the left lane..). With one difference: they actually _are_ able to drive faster, while trucks are limited.

I've rarely seen a truck going to the left lane, while oncoming cars have to brake very hard (of course they need to get off the gas, but still).


----------



## Verso

Jeroen669 said:


> That's very common here for cars as well


Yes, but if you hit a truck from behind, you'll be much more smashed. Trucks here just start overtaking, even when there's a car coming. A few days ago a truck started overtaking while I was overtaking at the same time, and I'd probably be squeezed, if I didn't hit full gas to run away.


----------



## Jeroen669

^^ There's no doubt someone should be able to anticipate normally when any kind of vehicle is going to switch lanes. But that's not truck specific.

I only wanted to make some nuances in overtaking trucks on relatively quiet motorways (or with at least 3 lanes in each direction). Since not every truck is limited the same way, you just can't get prevent the whole thing...


----------



## Timon91

With 3 lanes per direction it's still ok, because traffic is able to overtake on the third lane. With 2 lanes per direction the road gets 'blocked', so to say.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I just did a small tour of 320 kilometers in Northeastern Netherlands and Germany, driving some Autobahn. I've never seen a German Autobahn so deserted.


----------



## PLH

Didi it make you speed a little bit?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A little, about 140 km/h, the pavement of the A31 autobahn is not that good. Besides that, that's about the maximum speed my car still drives normal. It has a top speed of 160 km/h but it doesn't drive very well then (shaky).


----------



## Timon91

A Kangoo isn't a real racecar. I'd love to drive a Mustang on the BAB 20 once :lol:


----------



## PLH

^^ What?? Speeding in Us-car? Even the most powerful Mustangs hardly reach 250 km/h :lol: It's good for Yanks, not for us


----------



## Verso

I didn't know where else to put this:


nachalnik said:


> At 14:00 we left the hotel and drove to the Myohyang-mountains, about 120 km (as the crow flies) north of Pyongyang. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myohyang-san
> 
> Driving through Pyongyang:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Highway to Hyangsan:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tunnel:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> youtube-video of our car ride on the highway:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJRKisjboVE
> 
> There was of course no light inside the tunnel. As far as I know the North Korean highways were built in the 1990ies, but they are already in a relatively bad state. The bumpy asfalt doesn't allow speeds much over 100 km/h.
> Traffic is scarce, we only see some tourist busses, some military trucks and very few "private" cars (maybe owned by high party members). However, North Korea is the first country in the world, which has adapted the "shared-space" concept ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space ) also for highways: They are used by cars, bycicles and pedestrians!


:cheers:


----------



## PLH

almost ghost roads


----------



## Mateusz

Lack of cars... very limited access to rural areas or to city...


----------



## DJZG

example how to solve traffic congestions... it only needs a massive fuel shortage... 
i'm not sure how people survive there without transport... how goods travel inside country is a mystery... 
but that travelblog is one of most amazing i've read in near past... last one was that chris made on trip to spain :tongue3:


----------



## Timon91

People have to do most on foot, members of the government have cars.


----------



## Turnovec

Timon91 said:


> Shit, too late. Poll has closed hno:


^^ new one http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=745790


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Are you in love with Radi?


----------



## Turnovec

^^ Sure!








Who wouldn't fell in love with him after reading a couple of his posts ?


----------



## Timon91

Sure


----------



## PLH

Not willing to be so radi-tematic:

One of the best custom plates I've seen so far(many others are just names or stupid nicknames):


----------



## DJZG

wow... that is a nice plate 
which town is that?


----------



## PLH

^^ G indicates Pomorskie Voivodship, but it's either Gdańsk, Gdynia or Sopot(custom plates do not distinguish between cities in one region)


----------



## Verso

I can't see the pic, PLH.

EDIT: I can see it now, it's nice, although not as much as the car 

PS: you didn't post your photo, I think


----------



## Timon91

Yes, he did, it's just not visible anymore. It said: GO FOR IT


----------



## Verso

^^ I meant a photo of himself!


----------



## PLH

^^ :tongue3:



Timon91 said:


> Yes, he did, it's just not visible anymore. It said: GO FOR IT


try refreshing


----------



## Timon91

@PLH: visible now
@Verso: He ought to. More people should do that


----------



## DJZG

oh yea... he somehow slipped through without us noticing that :tongue3:


----------



## PLH

Timon91 said:


> @Verso: He ought to. More people should do that


No way! I thing we all have some image of other's here and, as forme, it would be not the same after we know each other's appearances.

Or maybe somewhere at the beginning of that thread there are some pics only I don't know of?


----------



## Timon91

We already posted ours a few pages back, PLH


----------



## PLH

^^ Huh? Where?


EDIT: I see now, but I'll remain unique and not post mine pics


----------



## Timon91

Ah, scared?


----------



## Verso

Pussy.  :jk:


----------



## PLH

hehe..


----------



## DJZG

what a lame excuse  i was so drunk and post it that way lol... 
but as you wish, remain mysterious :cheers:


----------



## PLH

DJZG said:


> i was so drunk and post it that way lol...


I'm not sure if I'd be able to find my comp:lol: Not to mention the start button


----------



## Verso

DJZG said:


> what a lame excuse


Ditto.  J/k, we mustn't push him, we're in a free society, dammit.


----------



## DJZG

lol... i was referring to my photo... taken at 1am on sudbahnhof in wien... not really in state of photographing myself  
i think i came out pretty well in those red-white squares all over me 
btw, now i remembered some scene from Wien metro... i meet some chicks from Poland and they had those huge hats with red-white squares, an obvious symbol of Croatia (that's why i came to them), but when they turn around they had polish coat on it... lol... since when Poland uses our symbols? later on it was a huge discussion about who invented red-white squares  dammit we were first :lol:


----------



## Timon91

It's PLH's own choice. Let's not push him.

Come on PLH, where the hell is your pic?  :lol: :jk:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

If PLH decides not to show himself, that's no problem, do not push people to show their picture.


----------



## Timon91

Don't worry. We're just joking :lol:


----------



## PLH

^^ Scared of getting brigged, huh? :colgate:


----------



## Timon91

Lol, no. Scared of being seen? :jk:


----------



## PLH

Lol, no.


----------



## Timon91

Well, what are you waiting for? :lol: :stoppushingPLH:


----------



## DJZG

lol  stop pushing plh :tongue3:

my afternoon shift has finished... see ya later haha


----------



## Timon91

^^You're only SSCing during work or what?


----------



## DJZG

lol most of the time  sometimes when i have nothing better to do at home too  
but i like afternoon shift where boss leaves at 4pm and from then i'm a free person


----------



## Timon91

Oh, I understand now. I think if I start SSCing at school that the headmaster will ban me. Just at home for me :lol:


----------



## Majestic

It's just my luck that PLH gave me his picture a few days ago!
So, here it is, exclusively for my mates on SSC: PLH uncovered :lol:


----------



## Verso

^^ It happened a few minutes ago.


----------



## Timon91

Didn't notice it. Probably it happened when I made my chemistry homework :devil:


----------



## PLH

^^ Error 500 is the inseparable element of SSC, we must live with that


----------



## radi6404

Now I know what the thread is about, I always thought the thread is about gas stations and hotels on the motorway, that´s why I´ve never posted here.


----------



## Verso

Now this thread will flourish. 

PS: Radi, you don't recognize your own thread :lol:


----------



## Majestic

radi6404 said:


> Now I know what the thread is about, I always thought the thread is about gas stations and hotels on the motorway, that´s why I´ve never posted here.


:lol: That qualifies to golden quotation 
No offense meant Radi, that just sounds so funny :lol:


----------



## Timon91

We can publish a #1 bestseller with Radi quotes :lol:


----------



## PLH

^^ He should try


----------



## Timon91

Yeah, the famous Radictionary will be a bestseller :lol:


----------



## radi6404

but it is easier for me to react emidiatelly right in the threads and post my thoughts, for example that yet again a Slovenian motorway has different asphalt on the emergency lanes, don´t they learn to make them beautiful?


----------



## Timon91

If you just keep posting in the other threads we can keep on laughing :lol:


----------



## radi6404

What is so funny about me? Is it really that funny when I post I like some road´s shiny crashbarriers, isn´t it normal that some people like clean looking roads with shiny crashbarriers?


----------



## Majestic

radi6404 said:


> What is so funny about me? Is it really that funny when I post I like some road´s shiny crashbarriers, isn´t it normal that some people like clean looking roads with shiny crashbarriers?


Not anymore when it becomes a fetish


----------



## Timon91

Radi is just a special case, though he might never understand that himself :lol:


----------



## Verso

PS: "crash barrier" are two words


----------



## Verso

Ljubljana on the first page of www.viamichelin.com, woohoo.


----------



## DJZG

lool  damn radi has came here  quick, shine those crashbarriers before he sees them :tongue3:

btw, i thought this was topic about gas stations or parking lots before... but then i thought... why the hell would they make it sticky... then i entered... and never came out :lol:


----------



## Verso

:rofl: You two are not the only ones. :lol: (although I can't remember who else thought it was a thread about rest areas, but not me :lol


----------



## radi6404

I find it great that Chris did it as a sticky, only the name was a bit confusing so I never visited it but yesterday I opened it, and what did I see, my balcony with the old (not so shiny paint) on it and thought, why havn´t I checked this out before.


----------



## DJZG

^^ i believe there are lots of people that aren't interested in rest area objects and don't checking this topic at all :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I saw a French license plate with the country code GRD. Where's that one from? I doubt if it is an official one, but some regionalists (like nationalists) also have regional license plate codes.


----------



## Verso

"Grd" is "ugly" in Slovenian.  Other than that, it's the 3-letter code for Grenada (oval "WG"), maybe it was that. You can also see from time to time (incorrect) ovals with SI in Slovenia, or even SVN, and some cars even have SL. :lol: Maybe (s)he doesn't like WG?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's apparantly the fictional country of Groland :nuts:


----------



## Verso

Oh, ok then.  But I must say I've already seen it.


----------



## Timon91

Anyone yet seen a Sealand plate?


----------



## Verso

Yes, SL, that's why we couldn't have it.  :jk: But we couldn't have SI, b/c it was reserved for Spratly Islands, which are uninhabited. :scouserd:


----------



## Timon91

Slovenia, oh poor little Slovenia 

The Netherlands also have NL instead of N, because Norway already has that :lol:


----------



## PLH

^^ But why isn't it depending on alphabetical oder? E is before o.

Same with Poland and Portugal


----------



## Verso

But at least Norway has population. :lol: And it doesn't go by alphabetical order, but which country got it first. I guess Norway was motorized before Netherlands?  And Sweden was independent before Slovenia.


----------



## radi6404

http://s50.photobucket.com/albums/f331/deko123/DSC_4120.jpg

Here is a road I love, such pics always make me smile, road with black asphalt and shiny crashbarriers AND beautiful rockwalls nearby, what can look better?


----------



## wyqtor

OMG, apparently we had R in Romania before 1981, but then they've changed it!!! Damn those stupid communists! :bash: We could have been among a select number of 25 countries in the world - even now no one has 'R'.

I'm a bit surprised that Russia didn't steal it in 1991.


----------



## PLH

*^^@radi* This sign's not perfect though


----------



## radi6404

^^

who cares?


----------



## PLH

when you care about barriers, you should also care about signs


----------



## Verso

wyqtor said:


> OMG, apparently we had R in Romania before 1981, but then they've changed it!!! Damn those stupid communists! :bash: We could have been among a select number of 25 countries in the world - even now no one has 'R'.
> 
> I'm a bit surprised that Russia didn't steal it in 1991.


Yes, that's interesting. Yugoslavia used to have Y, but then it changed it to YU. Thailand used to have T, but now it has TH. Once (some 50 years ago ) my grandpa was fined in Austria for driving without oval.


----------



## radi6404

PLH said:


> when you care about barriers, you should also care about signs


No, I should not, I don´t care about signs, because not they make a road look good but the crashbarriers, a shiny crashbarrier will always give a different impression to a raod than a muddy crashbarrier and I am really wondering why really noone cares about that? too bad the zink doesn´t last long so it´s good when the crashbarrier is protected by bushes or under a tree so that not so much rain and dirt can catch it. There´s the wow feeling when a new road has shiny crashbarriers, looking like high graded steel chimneys but the users don´t give a shit about it here.


----------



## Verso

What about the beautiful yellow sign at the end of Struma?


----------



## radi6404

Verso said:


> What about the beautiful yellow sign at the end of Struma?


Well, I´ve found out that the yellow sign indicates different routes for trucks to use, the exact nuance of the yellow looks very refreshing and gives even a more modern look to the Struma motorway. But please guys, comment my last post about the crashbarriers, I am wondering why you don´t care about them. I understand that you think about the cots so you think they shouldn´t use high grade steel, but apart from money noone has said, a road with shiny crashbarriers loks better or worse, I don´t like when people don´t have opinions.


----------



## Timon91

A crashbarrier has to be strong - not necessarily shiny


----------



## PLH

^^ Are you going on war with radi?


----------



## radi6404

We are talking about the appearance of them, not their stability, if you think two B Profil crashbarriers like on the Struma are not strong enough to stop a car you are a poor dude. It´s better when crashbarriers are out of metal so that they can bend and you will not be stopped emidiatelly and if you really think some A profil crashbarriers like in Germany or in Serbia are stronger than the better looking B profil (maybe I confuse them and it´s the other way round, I mea the round ones looking better) you are a poor guy aswell.


----------



## Timon91

^^I agree, but this is not about shinyness, like you were talking about before


----------



## radi6404

But it is important that crashbarriers are shiny, if you think it is not important than I guess your Netherland roads look ugly, most German roads look ugly, too, except some new ones and many roads in Bayern, I am sure they are very durable, but just look ugly. Roads are like buildings or trains or whatever, you want a building to look good and have a glassfacade, many people like the shiny and prestigious buildings in Brussels, so why the **** shouldn´t this apply for roads, so a house should look good and clean but it doesn´t matter at all how a fucking road looks, I don´t understand you. So it gives you a good impression when your house has a great interior, your car has a great color and is clean, the building you work in looks nice so that the chance is higher that people think you have a good job but you don´t give a shit how a road looks and doesn´t like when a road has great visual features like shiny crashbarriers and very reflective markings. what applies for the one thing, applies for the other thing, too.


----------



## RawLee

wyqtor said:


> We could have been among a select number of 25 countries in the world


:baeh3:


----------



## Verso

I like when crash barriers are shiny, but that's not necessary. However, if they are rusty, it doesn't look nice either. But I don't expect crash barriers to shine for long, so in the end I don't care much about them. Asphalt is also black in the beginning, but turns grey quite soon.


----------



## Timon91

Shiny is nice, but they don't stay shiny for long. Rusty is not very good. Mostly they don't get rusty, but just stay dull grey. Looks ok IMO.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Take a look at Dutch crashbarriers. A lot of them are rusty.


----------



## radi6404

you are right, that´s why it is very important that they install very shiny crashbarriers on new roads so they can last for example 1,5 years being shiny or add different zink which has a smoother surface and stays shiny for longer. Asphalt doesn´t neccesarily have to become grey, some 8 years old E-79 aspahlt is still dark grey and looks like new, I can show you pics.


----------



## Timon91

This is what I meant with grey crashbarriers that are not necessarily shiny:


----------



## radi6404

http://www.panoramio.com/photos/original/5641535.jpg

Here, you wouldn´t tell the asphalt is 8 years old, would you. Timon yes, the grey ones are standart but I prefer them shiny, it looks way different.


----------



## Timon91

Finally we agree on something :lol:
And your panoramio link isn't working.


----------



## Timon91

Verso: how come you post very often over here, but that your "online" button is always grey, and never green? :dunno:


----------



## Mateusz

He is just hiding


----------



## PLH

He's using Invisible mode(in user CP -> options)


----------



## radi6404




----------



## Timon91

PLH said:


> He's using Invisible mode(in user CP -> options)


Hiding from us.......


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PLH said:


> He's using Invisible mode(in user CP -> options)


I can see everyone  :cheers:


----------



## PLH

:lurker:
/\
|
|
Verso


----------



## Timon91

Stupid mods again 














Please Chris, don't brig me now :master:


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> I can see everyone  :cheers:


I know, I've been told before.


----------



## Verso

PLH said:


> :lurker:
> /\
> |
> |
> Verso


:lol::lol: I'd say Radi fits in better.


----------



## Timon91

Brilliant smiley :lol:
All guests that are not registered are lurking IMO, better then Radi :lol:


----------



## DJZG

good morning everyone  
anyone for a cup of coffee this morning? :tongue3:


----------



## Timon91

Good morning to you too 
I just had some coffee. I'm about to go to school now :evil:


----------



## DJZG

lucky you  i have to go to work till 10pm dammit... 
it's friday... and work tomorrow and on sunday too... and whooole next week...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ what kind of work do you do that requires such long shifts?


----------



## DJZG

lol... t-mobile... activating numbers... 
there are 12 of us in two shifts and we take care of 1.5 mil numbers  
overtime is necessary so our customers don't get angry  
there is a pile of papers one meter high that need to be solved and that's a lot of work


----------



## Mateusz

I have now 2 hours free period... only two lessons today  British college is relaxing comparing to polish schools :nuts:


----------



## Timon91

Today a long day at school, just home now for 10 mins. Had to bike all the way home in the drizzle. And tomorrow I have to get up early to catch an early train, b/c I'm visiting an open day at a university tomorrow. Luckily I can sleep long on Sunday.

-edit- Chris, are you going to open a second roadside rest area when this one get more then 1000 posts?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I went home about 4 hours early. How about that


----------



## Timon91

^^I wish I could do that :lol:


----------



## Verso

Timon posting 10 times in a row.


----------



## Timon91

edit double post


----------



## Timon91

Yeah, just updating. I've spent 5 hours in a train today (1st class) and I visited an open day in a university. I got up at 6:15 this morning. Way to early for a weekend, so I didn't check on SSC this morning :lol:
Tomorrow I will be sleeping looooooooooooooooooong 

And I'm getting mad of this "Internal server error - 500" :bash:


----------



## Verso

Yeah, it's really annoying. So what will you study?


----------



## Timon91

I haven't decided yet. I'm still doubting between a few techinical studies. I also haven't decided where I'm going to study. Today I visited Enschede, and I liked it, but it's a hell of a ride with the train (for Dutch standards :lol

So, what are you studying?


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> So, what are you studying?


Political Science.



Timon91 said:


> I haven't decided yet. I'm still doubting between a few techinical studies. I also haven't decided where I'm going to study. Today I visited Enschede, and I liked it, but it's a hell of a ride with the train (for Dutch standards :lol


Did you meet enschede-er? :lol:


----------



## Timon91

lol no :lol:
I thought you'd be studying civil engineering or sth, to do sth with motorways for your job. You proved me wrong again :lol:


----------



## Verso

:lol:


----------



## radi6404

I must say that a new road looks best when there´s snow out there. Back when the Struma motorway was new I went to Bulgaria February 2007 and it looked amazing, I think by now most of the users know how it looks beneath the motorway and especially near Dola Dykania. The landscape is very european there with slight hills and lots of meadows which where covered by a thick snow cover, 10 cm or so. The new road was clean and dry and the weather was cloudy. But the crashbarriers where like mirrors and reflected everything, the markings were shining like cold light tubes and the stones beneath the road where still very clean and with the snow it looked really really impressive. I don´t know why I didn´t take pics but the road in winter landscape looked unbelievable. the effect of a new road can be seen best when the landscape is covered in snow because the metall shines better and everything looks cleaner. The journey was an experience I will never forget and I hope I will one day see a brandnew road with the shiniest possible crashbarriers and the brightest markings in winterlandscape, it is astonishing. I really love snow.


----------



## Turnovec

Timon91 said:


> Who gave this thread it's title, Chris?


^^ Yeah !  I sense some *Hypocrisy* here ...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There's quite a difference between quoting a funny thing and saying someone should kill himself.


----------



## Turnovec

^^ Yeah, let's ridicule him at any given oportunity, than simply saying him honestly that he is totally out of space...


----------



## Timon91

ChrisZwolle said:


> There's quite a difference between quoting a funny thing and saying someone should kill himself.


Did I say that? Did anyone actually say that? :dunno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes, but that case is closed.

I was in the traffic jam again around 12.00 hrs in my city  Reconstruction on the eastern beltway of my city leads to traffic jams nearly all day long. 

Who has plans for vacations next year? I want to do several trips, a one-week trip to Switzerland sometime, an early summer trip to Slovenia and surroundings and probably some trip to Denmark, I like that country  And lots of roadtrips ofcourse!


----------



## Timon91

What about your roadtrip to Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia? I thought you had that planned as well. Anyway, my summer holiday will be in Slovenia  Probably a few days to Germany in december, and a train trip to Prague in february (not sure yet).


----------



## Verso

Oh, you guys are coming to see me?


----------



## Timon91

Yes, we can have a drink somewhere and talk about motorways, radi, crashbarriers, jams. So all H&A related stuff


----------



## RipleyLV

Next summer I'll be in Slovenia too.


----------



## Timon91

I guess that every centimetre of Slovenian road will be photographed after next summer


----------



## Verso

Invasion. :crazy: I hope for a cheaper vignette for you, thumbs up! :colgate:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You bet. I have planned to drive every motorway (which wouldn't be that much work  )


----------



## Timon91

^^:rofl: Now you got Verso angry


----------



## radi6404

Timon91 said:


> What about your roadtrip to Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia? I thought you had that planned as well. Anyway, my summer holiday will be in Slovenia  Probably a few days to Germany in december, and a train trip to Prague in february (not sure yet).


You can visit me and take me with you so that I can see Verso aswell, Slovenia is a great country I would like to know more about and I Verso could tell me more about it.


----------



## Timon91

Radi is also going to Slovenia?


----------



## x-type

omg, each of you will must have one arm and shoulder out of borders


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> omg, each of you will must have one arm and shoulder out of borders


That means punching you in your eyes.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Happy birthday ABRob! :cheers:


----------



## Timon91

Happy birthday Rob  :booze:

By the way, Chris, how do you know it's his birthday? Hyves or what?


----------



## Verso

Happy birthday!


Man, this is crazy! Tomorrow they start renovating canalization in my street, and it will be totally closed for traffic for half a year! It's gonna be winter now, and I can't even park in my own garage! Not to mention that streets are overcrowded with cars anyway.


----------



## Majestic

Happy birthday big boy! :cheers1:



Timon91 said:


> By the way, Chris, how do you know it's his birthday? Hyves or what?


Apparently Chris knows everything here


----------



## Timon91

^^That's why he's the mod over here


----------



## x-type

is that called "kissing the ass"?


----------



## ABRob

ChrisZwolle said:


> Happy birthday ABRob! :cheers:





Timon91 said:


> Happy birthday Rob  :booze:





Verso said:


> Happy birthday!





Majestic said:


> Happy birthday big boy! :cheers1:


Oh, thank you!



Timon91 said:


> By the way, Chris, how do you know it's his birthday? Hyves or what?


Well, the birthday is in my profile (I also got a Happy Birthday from the SSC-server), but these things are hidden...
So, I think mods can see that.

(Or he's following 'Autobahn-Online'-Forum - it was mentioned there 2 years ago...)


----------



## Majestic

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Struma_motorway&diff=252860775&oldid=252835039
:blahblah:
:blahblah:
:blahblah:

You can hardly get more errors and misspellings per article than that :nuts:


----------



## Turnovec

OMG :rofl: 

Chris are you still mad at me about that message for radi ? 

I guess i should expend it not only about the forum, but about wikipedia too ...


----------



## radi6404

Majestic said:


> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Struma_motorway&diff=252860775&oldid=252835039
> :blahblah:
> :blahblah:
> :blahblah:
> 
> You can hardly get more errors and misspellings per article than that :nuts:


I will take my time to reedit it. I will keep an eye on my spelling.


----------



## Timon91

Just don't trust wikipedia, and it'll be all right


----------



## BND

Actually you can see at the bottom of the main page who has birthday today


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I drove behind a Lada Samara today, the 1984 edition. Very rare in the Netherlands, but there's a Lada Dealer nearby my home. (I wonder how many cars they sell per year).


----------



## Turnovec

^^ Don't ....


----------



## PLH

^^ :lol:

I doubt it was a pleasure, was it?


----------



## Timon91

BND said:


> Actually you can see at the bottom of the main page who has birthday today


I know, but ABRob was not in that list on his birthday


----------



## Timon91

Today I saw a truck from Belarus (might sound strange, but I hardly see one) - in Loenersloot, getting some gas


----------



## PLH

^^ Today I overtook 3 Belarus trucks at one time when going to Warsaw. How about that?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I see BY trucks from time to time, but not very often. Polish and Scandinavian trucks are all around. By driving 20 kilometers on the A28 motorway I usually spot at least a few Finnish and Danish trucks.


----------



## Timon91

^^I once drove on the A67 Venlo-Leenderheide and I saw trucks of 14 different nations :lol:

@PLH: Today I passed several hundred Dutch cars. How about THAT?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Timon91 said:


> ^^I once drove on the A67 Venlo-Leenderheide and I saw trucks of 14 different nations :lol:
> 
> @PLH: Today I passed several hundred Dutch cars. How about THAT?


Consedering you ive in NL that is very strange! I never see any cars from Portugal.


----------



## PLH

Timon91 said:


> @PLH: Today I passed several hundred Dutch cars. How about THAT?


You win


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I see Portuguese trucks from time to time, but not very often. The closest country I don't see many cars/trucks from is Luxembourg, but that's a small country. Besides that, I see every country within 1000 kilometers quite often. Only Norwegian trucks are rare, strangely much rarer than Finnish trucks.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Slovenian and Croatian not that often. I saw a BIH plate a few days ago, but it was a long time before I saw one of those. GR and TR trucks are more likely in the Southern Netherlands. Hungarian trucks are also increasingly common, as well as RO and BG trucks. To be frank, there are few European countries which I almost never see. I think M, MK, MD, MNE, AND, RSM, MC, FL and CY plates are the rarest, but most of them are tiny countries.


croatian trucks are probably rare in middle and north NL, but in south you should be able to see them. in firm where i work we have lots of tours to GB and IRL via NL and B. they mostly enter from D at Venlo and take A67. second route is to get the flowers in Aalsmeer, but i think that they again enter at Venlo and take A73, A50 and A12, or rather A67 and A2. other routes are quite rare, 90% are those.


----------



## PLH

Radi, would you like to comment on this? 

S3 Szczecin - Gorzów Wlkp.


----------



## Timon91

:rofl: The perfect shinyness


----------



## Verso

The ugly B-type crash barrier.


----------



## PLH

Get lost


----------



## Verso

I'm just psychically preparing you for Radi.


----------



## x-type

i'm sure he'll find some dirt


----------



## Turnovec

Radi's strict pavement inspection test


----------



## Timon91

Oh oh oh..... 

Why hasn't Radi replied yet? Oh wait, he's on his way to Poland to give this crashbarrier a new layer of polish


----------



## radi6404

I don´t like that kind of crashbarrier, B type looks awful and the asphalt is not really dark for it´s age but with good markings it might look ok.


----------



## Timon91

^^Do you think it's shiny enough?


----------



## Verso

radi6404 said:


> I don´t like that kind of crashbarrier, B type looks awful


Told you, PLH. :lol:


----------



## radi6404

Timon91 said:


> ^^Do you think it's shiny enough?


Yes, it´s shiny enough, and do you know how great it would look with A-type profile, because the metal would mirror itself in the inside of the crashbarrier which is not possible with the angular B profile. And do you know how such shiny crashbarriers would look today with snow, because the snow adds even more shinyness and when there´s snow or ice on the barrier it would shine impressively.


----------



## PLH

radi6404 said:


> Yes, it´s shiny enough


Thanks for that



> And do you know how such shiny crashbarriers would look today with snow, because the snow adds even more shinyness and when there´s snow or ice on the barrier it would shine impressively


Actually it was snowing today where this pic has been takien


----------



## ABRob

@Chris (and all ):
You can now link and embed directly a higher quality version of a YouTube-video:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/11/youtube-tests-even-higher-quality.html

The link:
http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=TnYKOu4yz4Y&fmt=18

And embedded:


----------



## radi6404

I don´t understand why chris adds disturbing rockmusic to his videos and why he uses double speed.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Sorry I didn't add "psychedelic/goa and psychedelic/ambient and psychill" music to my video's :cheers:

ABRob: Thanks a lot, very useful


----------



## Timon91

Next time Chris will add the Bulgarian national anthem to his video and will play it at 0,5 speed :cheers:


----------



## Turnovec

^^ Heh , why the Bulgarian anthem? Greeting radi with it is a disgrace and insult for all of us - the other Bulgarians on SSC. Better put on the German one - I consider radi more as a german - not bulgarian... or more like a child of the mother Nature


----------



## Timon91

Mix them up, whatever. Just take the E79ish anthem for hells sake


----------



## x-type

he should add some of bulgarian turbo-folk stars, i'm sure that Radi enjoys listening them!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

He should make a good video of the Struma or other motorways himself instead of criticizing other people's efforts to make a decent video.


----------



## x-type

indeed he should :yes: but i'm affraid he doesn't have licence yet


----------



## radi6404

Chris, dont you remember my videos of the Struma motorway, what are you crapping on about, I recorded two videos of the Struma motorway but it seems you already forgot.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> he should add some of bulgarian turbo-folk stars, i'm sure that Radi enjoys listening them!


----------



## Timon91

Rozana Radi


----------



## x-type

Verso, Coneva is good stuff, she is not turbofolker. Timon, this is albanian 

but now i have changed my mind - i'm sure Radi is mad about Azis:


----------



## Timon91

^^x-type, she is called "Radi". Our Radi should marry here and take her last name. Mr. Radi Radi 

By the way, I'm sure that he'll marry her when new Albanian motorways all get a wide shoulder, black asphalt, thick markings and A-profile shiny crashbarriers.


----------



## Verso

:rofl:


----------



## radi6404

Verso, why did you pick up the video with the fat legged woman, do you think I listen such music. 

I listen to such music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxWjj-ancHs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1sPt90edNk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRu6Y2KFfkM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGCp0s5rHBw


----------



## x-type

Timon91 said:


> ^^x-type, she is called "Radi". Our Radi should marry here and take her last name. Mr. Radi Radi


omg, stupid me :doh: i didn't see it


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radi6404 said:


> I listen to such music
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxWjj-ancHs
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1sPt90edNk
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRu6Y2KFfkM


You meant "sound" or "noise" instead of "music" I guess. 

Nah just kidding. It's not my taste of music. I listen to contemporary music, but not the "hit" songs of these days (top 40 etc). The mainstream music I like is mostly from the early 90's, 80's and before. 

These are my most recent albums:

2007: Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet
2007: Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos
2006: Toto - Falling In Between
2006: David Gilmour - On an Island
2005: Coldplay - X & Y
2004: Marillion - Marbles
2004: Mark Knopfler - Shangri-la
2002: Coldplay - A Rush Of Blood To The Head
2001: Pendragon - Not of This World
2000: Mark Knopfler - Sailing To Philadelphia
2000: Coldplay - Parachutes


----------



## Timon91

^^I have to admit that I quite like Radi's taste of "sound" (but not too much of it :lol


----------



## Turnovec

You guys should try driving on this one 






I am more into Chris's taste of music ... 
You can hear that from the background music of one of my videos of Hemus from last winter


----------



## x-type

too much Coldplay for me in Chris's taste. and Radi's taste - i used to listen electronica when i was younger, up to 20


----------



## radi6404

Timon91 said:


> ^^I have to admit that I quite like Radi's taste of "sound" (but not too much of it :lol


the genre is Goa trance, all tracks I´ve showed are more than 10 years old and I mostly listen to oldschool psychedelic trance, that´s the most mindboggling music, really atmospheric and driving and really emotional and acidic, but not many people know that genre.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> too much Coldplay for me in Chris's taste. and Radi's taste - i used to listen electronica when i was younger, up to 20


I don't listen to Coldplay that much anymore.. I liked their first album the most, the rest was "more of the same". I don't like their latest album although it was a big hit. Viva la Vida becomes boring if you hear it all the time on the radio.


----------



## Timon91

My music taste is a bit of everything. When I'm home I listen to SlamFM, a Dutch radio station. On my bike I usually listen to hardstyle or jumpstyle music, not because I like it, but it makes you ride faster :lol:


----------



## Mateusz

I listen mainly to heaby metal, like Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and so on. But I also listen sometimes to pop songs or some electronic music


----------



## Verso

A "motorway" in Moldova:










Bigger version


----------



## Verso

Tomorrow is the D-Day for our vignette. I was hoping they would start selling annual vignette for 55 € and soon raise its price, but looks like they searched for holes in law, so I'll have to give more money.


----------



## radi6404

Timon91 said:


> ^^I mean that it's very dark, the sun rises at 8:00-8:30, and sets at 16:30-17:00 again, there's lots of wind, grey clouds and rain. Quite depressing. Last two/three weeks were like that. Not so much rain, but hardly any sun and lots of (SW/NW) wind, which can be quite strong. Mostly 4 Bft inlands and 6/7 Bft at the coast. There are of course also sunny periods, but they are rare and only last a few days. Autumn usually has a few snowy days, like last weekend, but the snow usually melts instantly or within two or three days. So this is what our autumn looks like.
> 
> Our spring is quite the same, but with more dry weather and less clouds. The summers can be hot (2005, 2006), but they can also be very cool and rainy (2007, 2008). In 2007 we had heat waves in April and May, but the summer was nothing but rain.
> 
> Winter has disappeared; autumn and spring are after each other nowadays.


Well, I am happy that there are a few real winterdays still, but the winter 2006/2007 was very bad, it was very warm and with very little snowfall all other europe, the winter 2006(2007 should be taken as a warning by people to finally change their attitude and companies to increase the pace with which they develop alternative ways of producing energy.


----------



## Morsue

Timon91 said:


> ^^I mean that it's very dark, the sun rises at 8:00-8:30, and sets at 16:30-17:00 again, there's lots of wind, grey clouds and rain. Quite depressing. Last two/three weeks were like that. Not so much rain, but hardly any sun and lots of (SW/NW) wind, which can be quite strong. Mostly 4 Bft inlands and 6/7 Bft at the coast. There are of course also sunny periods, but they are rare and only last a few days. Autumn usually has a few snowy days, like last weekend, but the snow usually melts instantly or within two or three days. So this is what our autumn looks like.
> 
> ...
> 
> Winter has disappeared; autumn and spring are after each other nowadays.


^^Did you take this from the brochure of the Dutch ANTI-tourism board?? :lol:

"The Netherlands, we need weed to be happy"


----------



## Timon91

It's just how it is. We really see the global warming over here, because our winters are autumns. And yes, it's probably the reason why we need weed


----------



## Verso

You sound worse than a Finn.  :nuts:


----------



## Verso

My beautiful street. 










At least we'll get new asphalt. :banana:


----------



## Mateusz

Crashbarrier is not much shiny there ^^


----------



## Verso

Oh well...


----------



## Mateusz

...shit happens 

But what kind of works are thy doing ? Something with water or gas pipes ?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Sewage renovation?


----------



## RipleyLV

My base-court 2 days ago...










And now...










Stupid global warming... :bash:


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Sewage renovation?


Exactly. I won't be able to use my garage, but luckily only for a week. (btw, there's a river (Ljubljanica) behind the crash barrier)


----------



## Timon91

Will the street get a new crash barrier?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ah, Timon is back from school


----------



## Verso

We've missed him.


----------



## Timon91

Luckily you did 

Actually there was a strong southern wind, so I was home in 30 minutes :cheers:


----------



## LtBk

Chris should name this topic "The European Roadside rest area II" since its all European forumers talking about Europeans road and now.


----------



## Timon91

Can we get OT please?


----------



## PLH

^^ Sure

Check out this funny little thingy I borrowed from a friend:










Sorry if the pic is too large, but now I dont really know what large is:nuts:


----------



## Timon91

^^A classmate of mine has one of these, from Acer


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Are pedestrian reflectors compulsory in your country? Are they widely used?


----------



## DJZG

lol good morning friends  long time no see 
so i see some psychedelic topic now :lol:

i was little bit away... but returned 

btw i bought a new hard disk  1500 Gb :banana:

check the printscreen :lol: pure psychedelic perversity :lol:


----------



## RipleyLV

^^ nice PC you got there IVAN.  Did you buy the GTX too?


----------



## DJZG

RipleyLV said:


> ^^ nice PC you got there IVAN.  Did you buy the GTX too?


yep  GeForce 9800 GTX+... everything works smooothly :lol:


----------



## Timon91

You've got quite some music on your computer


----------



## PLH

Rebasepoiss said:


> Are pedestrian reflectors compulsory in your country? Are they widely used?


Pedestrian what?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

PLH said:


> Pedestrian what?


Those things that you hang to your clothes and they reflect light so drivers can see you better...


----------



## Timon91

They're not obligatory. I actually never see pedestrians wear one. Sometimes (quite rare) bikers or pedestrians were things like this:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

DJZG said:


> lol good morning friends  long time no see
> so i see some psychedelic topic now :lol:
> 
> i was little bit away... but returned
> 
> btw i bought a new hard disk  1500 Gb :banana:
> 
> check the printscreen :lol: pure psychedelic perversity :lol:
> 
> http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/4408/driveku9.jpg


State of the art PC, but still a floppy drive? :crazy:


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> I defeated him.


me to, with Goran Ivanišević. but he guessed some impossible things. it's funny!


----------



## Timon91

I defeated him too, with Roy Makaay, quite a famous soccer player. He guessed Klaas-Jan Huntelaar and Queen Beatrix though


----------



## Mateusz

Timon91 said:


> They're not obligatory. I actually never see pedestrians wear one. Sometimes (quite rare) bikers or pedestrians were things like this:


UK worker's no.1 piece of equipment ^^


----------



## x-type

Timon91 said:


> He guessed Klaas-Jan Huntelaar and Queen Beatrix though


oh, he guessed Juan Carlos and, watch it now, one of those two russian girls from Tatu (i couldn't find anything more impossible, but he guessed it)


----------



## Timon91

I've never heard of them, so he's good. I tried Roy Makaay, but he came up with Andrey Arshavin 

By the way, I tried Brad Pitt, and he guessed it, so Verso must have done something wrong :dunno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You never heard of Juan Carlos?


----------



## Timon91

No. I looked him up now, but I'm generally not good in royalty issues.


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> By the way, I tried Brad Pitt, and he guessed it, so Verso must have done something wrong :dunno:


I expected he would correct me, if I did sth wrong. Does he do that at all, or you can say Brad Pitt is a woman and get away with it?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It snows a bit here again.


----------



## Verso

It rains here. :bash:


----------



## x-type

here too, and it's wind too much


----------



## Timon91

Verso said:


> Exactly what I was thinking! :nuts: I only have 120 or so...


I have 120 GB as well. Approximately 60 GB is used :cheers:


----------



## DJZG

PLH said:


> But do you need more? I have 500 GB out of which 200 is free....


well it was a time when i needed the hard drive cause my 200 Gb was pretty full... so i decided to wait for prices to go down as they do all the time...
and i went to the store wanting to buy 1Tb which was pretty cheap... 1000kn... then i saw 1.5Tb brand new Seagate and it costed 1200kn... so i get 500Gb for 200kn, thats less than 30€... 
a nice deal


----------



## PLH

DJZG said:


> 1200kn


You will never guess what does kuna in polish mean


kuna

edit: ech, it's the same in croatian


----------



## ABRob

Chris!
Why are you presenting all the pics we have already seen in your picasa-albums??

(Do you want to reach 10,000 posts tonight? )


----------



## Mateusz

Promotion... and such stuff, you know :nuts:


----------



## DJZG

PLH said:


> You will never guess what does kuna in polish mean
> 
> 
> kuna
> 
> edit: ech, it's the same in croatian


lol yes  that's why we call it kuna


----------



## ChrisZwolle

ABRob said:


> Chris!
> Why are you presenting all the pics we have already seen in your picasa-albums??
> 
> (Do you want to reach 10,000 posts tonight? )


I tought it'd be nice to see them again in better quality (I edited all the pictures) but not to slow down threads too much, 640 px is a better size


----------



## x-type

PLH said:


> You will never guess what does kuna in polish mean
> 
> 
> kuna
> 
> edit: ech, it's the same in croatian


yeah, and one kuna is 100 of these 

5 kn is called bear, 2 kn is fish, 1 kn is bird  that all due to characters drawn at background of coins


----------



## DJZG

x-type said:


> yeah, and one kuna is 100 of these
> 
> 5 kn is called bear, 2 kn is fish, 1 kn is bird  that all due to characters drawn at background of coins


lol... but they are still kunas... bear, fish and bird are on backside of coins...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Hmm my fuel tank meter has quite some deviation...

fuel tank capacity: 50 liters
3/4 empty gassing up for: 27.5 liters

27.5 liters is not 3/4th of 50. (that would be 37.5 liters!)

Still fuel economy gets 1:19,7 (5.07 liter / 100 km or 46 miles per gallon), even with this colder weather type and the fact I drove relatively short distances to my work.


----------



## PLH

How about the pipe leading to tank? 

But still it is't likely to have 10 l capacity...


----------



## Jeroen669

Got the same problem, I don't even watch it anymore. At already 350 kms it says it's empty, though i've still got about 200 km to go then...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

:hm:


----------



## PLH

Trying to improve your postcount?


----------



## DJZG

obviously photoshopped :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Actually it was not. I answered to a bunch of topics in the morning


----------



## DJZG

just kidding lol :lol: it is possible, lots of times nobody is posting... 

here's one maybe photoshopped, but kewl if it isn't :lol:

'but officer we wasn't speeding' 
- 'yes but i've got a problem with your opinion'










:lol:


----------



## Mateusz

Chris oh Chris...

Spam :nuts:


----------



## Morsue

It's spam I tell you!


----------



## Verso

Dutchmen are the biggest spammers around here.  In the brig with them. :colgate: :jk:


----------



## Verso

Haha, that's so cool.  I guess all were made artificially when all this land was taken away from the sea?


----------



## DJZG

Verso said:


> Really? Which ones? I see sth similar in Amersfoort, but it's not even nearly as cool as in Zwolle.  And what's so special about this part of Amsterdam that the resolution is so bad?


lol... very strange


----------



## PLH

^^ If it were in another location, I'd go for a military area...


----------



## Timon91

^^There are some military locations where you can only see a blur like that. In Belgium, however, some military airfields are clearly visible.


----------



## DJZG

Timon91 said:


> ^^There are some military locations where you can only see a blur like that. In Belgium, however, some military airfields are clearly visible.


usa and iraq are full of dark square-like areas...


----------



## PLH

^^ How about russian spy satellites? Do they also have these? :colgate:


----------



## RawLee

Verso said:


> I've already looked at Zwolle a few times to see what kind of a road infrastructure it has, but never noticed how cool the center looks like from the air! The star-shaped island(s) look incredibly cool!!! :uh:


Check Arad:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=...171034,21.33193&spn=0.01275,0.027637&t=h&z=15


----------



## Timon91

Is that a castle or sth?


----------



## Morsue

It's a ganja green house.


----------



## Jeroen669

Are there Dutch (or flemish) members here who celebrated Sinterklaas yesterday evening?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No,

I just bought 55 square meters of laminate


----------



## Qwert

Timon91 said:


> Is that a castle or sth?


It's fortress. Such "star" pattern is usual for fortresses in Habsburg Empire from era of Ottoman Wars. But, I guess it's common in whole Europe.

This is another one - fortress Leopoldov (since 1855 it's prison though): http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=48.444575,17.777681&spn=0.01022,0.019312&t=h&z=16


----------



## Timon91

Jeroen669 said:


> Are there Dutch (or flemish) members here who celebrated Sinterklaas yesterday evening?


Not really, on the 4th I did sth with my family (no presents), that's all.


----------



## X236K

Anyone planning to visit Motor Show in Geneva in March? Google says that I should go from my city to Prague => Nurnberg => Basel.. is that a good idea instead of going through Munchen?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think München is a bit off the usual route, since Germany lacks some east-westroutes in extreme southwestern Germany.


----------



## x-type

i'd prefer route via München, Bregenz and Zürich. i thought that maybe via Žilina, Bratislava and Wien it would be even shorter, but it is not.


----------



## keber

Regarding stars, here's Palmanova in Italy, even bigger star:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=...4747,13.308842&spn=0.011945,0.036049&t=k&z=16


----------



## Verso

Yeah, Palmanova also looks cool, gotta go there once, but I like the wide canal around the center of Zwolle, so it's an island; the canal around Palmanova is very narrow.


As for Ostrava - Geneva: it's 15 km more over Basel than Munich, but it might be better. There's a few kms of motorway missing between Munich and Bregenz, and also between Austria and Switzerland, not to mention you may drive faster in Germany than in CH. But it depends on when you'll be in Basel. You don't wanna find yourself there in rush hours, although you can also bypass it via Rheinfelden. I also suggest driving a bit further than Bregenz (if you'll choose that route), to Lustenau. And do NOT speed in Switzerland, cause radars are everywhere! Particularly famous is the one just south(west) of Härkingen, the western junction of A1×A2, on a straight motorway, with general speed limit of 120 km/h, but once it was just 80 km/h, just for them to get some money. Oh, there are also at least 7 (!) radars on the 50 km between Lausanne and Geneva.  I visited the motor show three years ago, you'll like it. :cheers:


----------



## x-type

keber said:


> Regarding stars, here's Palmanova in Italy, even bigger star:
> 
> http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=...4747,13.308842&spn=0.011945,0.036049&t=k&z=16


yeah, i wanted to mention it, it is perfect! and there are few more in northern Italy.
in Croatia the most known "star" city is Karlovac, althought that star is not so clear anymore, bu you can see it at google earth.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=45.492871,15.555546&spn=0.008258,0.016565&t=k&z=16


----------



## radi6404

What the **** is going on here, I almost can´t post, almost always I get the message the server is too busy at the moment. Is it only me or does the server not operate properly lately so that I can´t post in the forum for more than a week already.


----------



## PLH

A guy from polish section send him a banner and boasted about it here:
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=29080318#post29080318


----------



## Verso

I wonder how he found him. And what a banner.


----------



## PLH

Verso said:


> And what a banner.


...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> No, to Chris regarding it as fast (sick!:colgate.


No, I said it's reasonable.


----------



## Verso

You said you really had to speed to get a fine by 75-mph speed limit.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

speeding = going faster than the speed limit, in my opinion.


----------



## Verso

I'm starting with "unusual" remarks for pics.


----------



## PLH

Verso-typical show-off


----------



## Verso

Can't wait for next pics.


----------



## PLH

see Polish motorways


----------



## Verso

^^ Not so often. :nono: God knows how many adjectives I'll be able to produce.


----------



## PLH

what not so often? Pics in this section? Don't forget it's winter now


----------



## Verso

^ No, I can't make special remarks so often, there's a limited amount of them.


----------



## PLH

Limited Edition, huh?


----------



## Verso

Just relax and enjoy.


----------



## Timon91

Time for a Versionary, right?


----------



## Verso

Oh, I was looking forward to hearing Timon's comment.


----------



## Timon91

Here you go. I thought so already


----------



## PLH

Let's play a small game entiteled: 

*Do foreigners know more about our roads than polish journalists? *










completion of tender

tender announcement

put into operation

Let's see how many mistakes will you find(including one border city that is wrongly placed)


----------



## Timon91

Zgorzelec is wrongly placed. How the hell can that happen in a Polish newspaper?


----------



## Verso

Zgorzelec.  And isn't the whole motorway between Wrocław and Kraków already finished (also between Bełk and Sośnica)? Also there's a bit more motorway south of Gdańsk. And Szczecin bypass is a motorway (A6), not expressway. The dates in the east are way too optimistic as well. Quite many mistakes.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Zgorzelec is more to the south (A4) Kryzowa, wasn't that Krzywa? Belk - Sosnica was completed years ago I thought? Or isn't that the A4?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A8 Wroclaw is missing too, as are many planned expressways.


----------



## Timon91

Looks like the Polish "Telegraaf", right Chris?


----------



## PLH

Oh, well done 

And it was not in a gutter press, but in quite of a serios newspaper, Dziennik POLSKA (some people call it Der Dziennik)


----------



## PLH

Chris said:


> Belk - Sosnica was completed years ago I thought? Or isn't that the A4?


This section was completed like 11 years ago, but Bełk - Sośnica in on A1 and it's indeed U/C ;D


----------



## Timon91

Why did you change ChrisZwolle into Timon91? To fool us?


----------



## PLH

To fool you!  

But seriously, I didn't change anything. Maybe multi qoute has changed sth :dunno:


----------



## LtBk

ChrisZwolle said:


> They have a lot of them, but speed limits are generally 75 / 80 mph, so you really have to speed compared to US freeways. I've never recieved a speeding ticket on a motorway. (but a couple of them on other locations, but the most extreme was a staggering 7 km/h too fast )


Not only that, but Europeans drivers(based on many driving videos I watched)tend to stay right except to pass in both rural and urban, the latter which is rather rare in the US no matter how light traffic is.


----------



## Radish2

I can post again in the forum! The old accaunt seems to be fucked up, I always get a busy server message and can´t do anything but this profile works now! I am Radi6404.


----------



## x-type

:lol:


----------



## PLH

Radish2 said:


> I am Radi6404.


Don't know him. Do you, guys?


----------



## Verso

Radi?


----------



## PLH

Radi vol. 3 ?


----------



## Timon91

Who the hell is Radi?????


----------



## DJZG

chris remember that day when we were talking about how cool would it be driving on google earth? 
well, i found something like that 

http://geoquake.jp/en/webgame/DrivingSimulatorGM/

not exactly awesome, but it's a start


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ahhh way better than that milktruck sim


----------



## DJZG

that was my thinking too  seems that guy is improving it so maybe that could be a future of driving simulations :nuts:


----------



## Radish2

the big problem with google earth is that everything is flat, there aren´t any trees or buildings in 3d, jsut flat textures added on very rough geometry. It´s because google earth wants to be fammous and as most users don´t have good computers they make their programs eat little ressources. I think they should provide a high quality version of google earth with good atmosphere and sun shading like in Nasa worldwind and high resoluted 3d objects, I don´t care if a specific area will take longer to load, but it would look way more real and impressive if there were 3d objects. And I think a flashanimation can never be as detailed as a seperately downloadable advanced 3d simulator. Google Earth must increase the resolution and use 3d objects so that Game developers can use tracks with real scenery and geometry for racegamers and proper driving simulators.


----------



## DJZG

i agree with you Radi... but i do think that bigger resolution doesn't depend on Google as company, but depends on satellite companies that surely charge that kind of business a fine amount of $... then maybe even military has something here... 
every start is a hard one, and GE is a revolutionary here... so i believe it will improve during time... 
i can't even imagine it 50 years from now if all this came up in last five years...


----------



## Timon91

Now you do (two words)


----------



## Verso

So "walenie konia" also means "fu*king a horse"?


----------



## Timon91

We've got 's now for 10 consecutive posts


----------



## PLH

Verso said:


> Wtf man, I don't speek Polish.


So what? Just read it as if it were a English word.



Verso said:


> So "walenie konia" also means "fu*king a horse"?


Hitting

I don't want to know what Chris will say


----------



## Verso

I'm lost.


----------



## Timon91

Just like Radi


----------



## DJZG

oh my... lucky i have work to do


----------



## PLH

Verso said:


> I'm lost.


It's you problem then


----------



## Verso

How on earth is "walenie konia" pronounced in English? :lol:


----------



## DJZG

Verso said:


> How on earth is "walenie konia" pronounced in English? :lol:


hm... i assume same as our languages... something like...walenje konja... lol...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I doubt if you can find more than a handful Dutchmen who know how to pronounce "Łódź".


----------



## Verso

DJZG said:


> hm... i assume same as our languages... something like...walenje konja... lol...


Sounds very English. :lol:


----------



## PLH

Verso said:


> How on earth is "walenie konia" pronounced in English? :lol:


See post 466 



ChrisZwolle said:


> I doubt if you can find more than a handful Dutchmen who know how to pronounce "Łódź".


Do you?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wutsh


----------



## PLH

hmmm, more or less yes, but not exactly


----------



## DJZG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Wutsh


lol this sounds funny 

hey... i'm confused with those crossed L letters too... and that letter Z with only one upper bracket is so weird cause we only have Ž with two... Slavic tribes are so weird sometimes :lol:


----------



## PLH

^^ http://www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/Poland/PronunciationGuide.pdf

Ł is w like in wood
Ż is si like in vision
Ó is oo


----------



## Verso

wuđ


----------



## Timon91

What about Pszczyna? Is that psh-tjyna?


----------



## PLH

pshchyna


----------



## DJZG

wow... i never quite figure why all that writing of unnecessary letters... we Croats are simple... write what you say, say what you write... no double letters, no 'eating' letters, no letters that should be pronounced differently... i think that makes us really easy to learn, just need to put aside all rules that imply in other languages and all goes smoothly


----------



## Verso

Anyway, I've concluded:


PLH said:


>


Verso-confusing pic!


----------



## Timon91

So we've got:
- gobsmacking
- mouth-shutting
- ass-shaking (was it?)
- Verso-confusing

Oh my God


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I like Romanian placenames. Very beautiful, what do you think of Timisoara or Suceava?


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> So we've got:
> - gobsmacking
> - mouth-shutting
> - ass-shaking (was it?)
> - Verso-confusing
> 
> Oh my God


Wait for tomorrow.


----------



## PLH

Forgot about whoresonish


----------



## Verso

I'm not Radi, thank-you-very-much.


----------



## PLH

^^ 



ChrisZwolle said:


> Suceava?


Very nice, but only under some conditions :colgate:


----------



## Mateusz

Walenie konia :nuts: This joke is really good ha ha, it can be so confusing 

Timon let me know about this conversation :nuts:


----------



## Timon91

^^Hi Mateusz 



ChrisZwolle said:


> I like Romanian placenames. Very beautiful, what do you think of Timisoara or Suceava?


Beautiful 

What about Sighetu Marmaţiei? :lol:


----------



## DJZG

ah... few pages before i mentioned Afsluitdijk and still can't pronounce it... like it was made just to break your tongue...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Please pronounce Gasselternijveenschemond or Westerhaarvriezenveenschewijk for me


----------



## Turnovec

ChrisZwolle said:


> Please pronounce Gasselternijveenschemond or Westerhaarvriezenveenschewijk for me


^^ Holly c**p! :lol::lol::lol:


----------



## Timon91

Or just start with Tweede-Exloërmond to keep it simple


----------



## Mateusz

It's not that difficult


----------



## DJZG

omfg.... that is impossible to pronounce haha 

Gasselternijveenschemond 
Westerhaarvriezenveenschewijk 

why all those long names? oh why? :nuts:


----------



## Timon91

Try 's-Hertogenbosch or 's-Gravezande, that must be very easy 

Just a regular Dutch word: angstschreeuw (8 consonants in a row ). It means scream of fear, btw.

"slechtstschrijvend" has 9 in a row, by the way. Good luck with trying


----------



## Radish2

Could we talk some mroe about google earth and higher detail geometry and objects? We do the good topics started by users get rejected with some silly things?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

www.gearthblog.com

Updates multiple times a week


----------



## Turnovec

ChrisZwolle said:


> www.gearthblog.com
> 
> Updates multiple times a week


^^ :lol::lol::lol: kay: 

Btw, i still have no idea how do you exactly pronounce the name of the football player Dirk Kuyt ???


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> www.gearthblog.com
> 
> Updates multiple times a week


I thought Radi had his own blog. :naughty:


----------



## DJZG

Radish2 said:


> Could we talk some mroe about google earth and higher detail geometry and objects? We do the good topics started by users get rejected with some silly things?


i'm amazed by their Street view that is turning a massive project... as far as i know they covered a great part of USA and some other countries are beginning to take photos on ground level... 
i can't wait to see that happening in my poor country... 

and btw, that is truly a detailed view, disadvantage is cause there aren't many non-US street views on GE yet... 
i hope in forthcoming years there will be widening that sector of GE, so we will be able to see anything just like we are standing on road and seeing with our eyes...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

They've just added a bunch more places to Street View. The quality is poor though. European street view has better quality pics.


----------



## Radish2

DJZG said:


> i'm amazed by their Street view that is turning a massive project... as far as i know they covered a great part of USA and some other countries are beginning to take photos on ground level...
> i can't wait to see that happening in my poor country...
> 
> and btw, that is truly a detailed view, disadvantage is cause there aren't many non-US street views on GE yet...
> i hope in forthcoming years there will be widening that sector of GE, so we will be able to see anything just like we are standing on road and seeing with our eyes...


I will try streetview. But they should improve the google earth engine too, so that it can display way more detailed geometry, more polygons and so on and make some 3D objectives


----------



## DJZG

i'm pretty sure that military controls detail level... maybe they don't have permission to have more detailed maps... 
street view has poor quality pictures but still gives you feeling like you are actually there...


----------



## PLH

:gaah:


----------



## Verso

^^ What?


----------



## PLH

^^ They never heard of Dresden....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

One hour to go


----------



## ChrisZwolle

30 minutes


----------



## Verso

To what?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Weekend :banana:


----------



## Timon91

Spammer 

Too bad they put this freaking J*drz*ch*w*c* on the signs instead of Drezno hno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm gonna hit the road for a staggering 4.5 kilometers now


----------



## Timon91

^^See you in a few hours, and good luck with the jams


----------



## Mateusz

Dutch jams... 

Where is this link to free road signs fonts ?


----------



## DJZG

ah... me still working.... till 10pm...
and tomorrow too... and on sunday too... 
and then next week starts weee :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I have only two days left to work this year


----------



## Timon91

You have a long holiday? Lucky you, I have one more week in which I have to finish my "profielwerkstuk", so it's gonna get quite busy hno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Not quite a holiday all the way. I get my new apartment tuesday, and there's a lot fo work to do; new floor, painting, walls, ceilings etc.


----------



## PLH

Don't forget to post some pics


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't have very stylish balcony railings like Radi though


----------



## Timon91

You can get a shiny doorknob


----------



## PLH

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't have very stylish balcony railings like Radi though


I don't care


----------



## DJZG

wow... a new apartment... cool...
i can't even dream of buying a new apartment here... with no credit possibility as my contract is limited to 6 months and without any serious saving i can just sit and cry in this Balkan state...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I can't afford to buy an apartment either... I rent it. Rent control only applies until you're 23 so, right now I'm paying about € 450 per month, which will decrease to € 260 when I turn 23. :nuts: Strange, but true.


----------



## DJZG

whoa... so when you're younger you're paying higher... very strange...
hmm... 450€ is a lot of money especially here... apartments for rent can be that big but only in centre or some high-class neighborhoods... 
i'm kinda in exploring the possibilities and i'm thinking to go for a rent with a roommate but nothing over 150€ per person cause i wouldn't be able to live at all...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

€ 450 is also a lot for me, I only work 32 hrs a week and I didn't work for too long yet, so my monthly income is not very high yet. So maybe somewhat less roadtrips until I'm 23


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Not quite a holiday all the way. I get my new apartment tuesday, and there's a lot fo work to do; new floor, painting, walls, ceilings etc.


Moving is so annoying.


----------



## DJZG

so you work only part time, and live in a flat of 450€
damn you  
i have around 200 work hours monthly, that means lots of saturdays and sundays and at end it comes around 750€... i can live comfortably now, but if i paid rent it would be difficult... 

@Verso... i'd love to move anywhere where i can call it my home... i can't wait for that day :cheers:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

And where is the only traffic jam in The Netherlands at 23.30 hours? Right, near Timonville. 



> A2	Amsterdam - Utrecht
> tussen knp. Holendrecht en Abcoude
> 2 km stilstaand verkeer


----------



## Verso

Is Timon protesting on the road about sth?


----------



## DJZG

wow... 23.30 jam :nuts: i can't imagine where would that be in my town... no where lol... even if some accident occur no way it could pile up 2km...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's nearly 0:30 hours and there are currently 7 traffic jams totalling 21 kilometers. Two are 5 kilometers long.


----------



## DJZG

is that mostly cause its weekend or it happens every day... even the weather could affect the traffic flow...
but somehow i can't believe there are thousands of cars outside driving...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Actually, the typical night hour percentage on motorways is around 1%. So during a night, a 24 hour volume of 100.000 still gives 1.000 cars per hour during any hour of the night.


----------



## DJZG

lol i wasn't thinking exactly 1000  
if calculating like that it can be an ok number, but is that whole area or just one part of highway...


btw... good morning... me drinking coffee at work and doing nothing for the first hour


----------



## Timon91

I've been in a lot of jams during the night. These jams are caused by road works for which the e.g. close all 3 lanes so all traffic has to go over the shoulder. Of course can't do it during the day, that would cause much more problems. 

@Verso: No, I called Radi and complained about the rusty crash barriers, so he might have come over to polish them


----------



## x-type

60 mins


----------



## Timon91

^^Until you finished working?


----------



## x-type

yeah


----------



## DJZG

ahh.... i'm here till 3pm... 
god i wanna get drunk today... so tired from work...


----------



## x-type

32 and still counting


----------



## Timon91

You're bored, right?


----------



## DJZG

come here and give me a help  i have a meter high pile of paper to solve...


----------



## Mateusz

It's so good to have relaxing weekend :cheers: But is is raining so much...

Christmas soon !


----------



## Timon91

^^Shiny weather over here. It's 2 degrees Celsius, but the strong wind causes that it feels like -10 or something hno:


----------



## Timon91

ChrisZwolle said:


> And where is the only traffic jam in The Netherlands at 23.30 hours? Right, near Timonville.


Actually it was because the best football team in the Netherlands played against NAC Breda


----------



## DJZG

Timon91 said:


> Actually it was because the best football team in the Netherlands played against NAC Breda


haha  never thought of that but i still made a bet yesterday :tongue3:


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> ^^Shiny weather over here. It's 2 degrees Celsius, but the strong wind causes that it feels like -10 or something hno:


Be happy. This foggy Ljubljana Basin is so depressing...


----------



## DJZG

River Sava had an unusual water level in Zagreb... today condition was improving but still really high... around 680cm... not sure why is this happening...


----------



## x-type

don't worry, it is falling about 1 m per day. not it is about 180 what is still about 4 meter too much (normal level in Zagreb is -230)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Départements visited 

blank map (please resize before posting)


----------



## PLH

^^ Why not try Europe? http://www.world66.com/myworld66/visitedEurope


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Those are countries, and do not represent the true area's visted because 10km into a few big countries looks like you've conquered half of Europe


----------



## Verso

For me just see "Where have you driven?".


----------



## wyqtor

Wow Chris... that's really impressive, seeing most of France. I'm jealous of people living in the center of Europe - just the right distance for road trips to France, Spain, Italy, as well as Norway. 

For us it takes 3 days to reach just Barcelona or Oslo by car, so we have to forget about "exotic" destinations such as Nordkapp, Gibraltar and Morocco. Flying by plane and renting a car there is also not an option for current middle-class salaries.

I'm still happy I don't live in Finland, Estonia, Latvia or some parts of Russia, now that would really suck.


----------



## Timon91

For France I don't know which departements I've visited. For Germany I can tell you I have visited all except Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saarland (though the "where have you driven" map says I have been there)


----------



## Verso

Verso said:


> For me just see "Where have you driven?".


Except, I've also been to Dijon since.


----------



## Morsue

Timon91 said:


> For France I don't know which departements I've visited. For Germany I can tell you I have visited all except Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saarland (though the "where have you driven" map says I have been there)


That's not really equivalent to a French département. More like the Franch régions.


----------



## DJZG

pff... obviously wakes up and instead of having breakfast keeps on spamming here...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Watch again around 5 pm (CET)  You'll see the same


----------



## DJZG

yep...  obviously he has some eating disorder  and involving spamming addiction :tongue3:


----------



## Timon91

^^No, today it's at 1:45 

And I first have a shower, then have breakfast, and then go on spamming. And Chris had more consecutive last posts a few weeks ago 



Morsue said:


> Are you really old enough to drink?


Yes, me is 17 :booze:


----------



## wyqtor

BND said:


> Road marking paint poured on the street - thickest road marking ever.


Radi would just love this one!  BTW, where is he? Did he get banned on the new account also? 

The forum is eerily non-strumatic these days... hno:


----------



## PLH

No we're having another spammer - the speed limit-jpeter


----------



## Timon91

Probably the Dutch prime minister (Jan Peter Balkenende) is looking for an excuse to lower the Dutch speed limit 

Never call me a spammer again:


----------



## PLH

Anyone bothers to reply or should we wait for Chris?


----------



## Timon91

Can someone post a picture of the Speed Limit in the Roadside Rest area?

:jk:

@PLH:


----------



## PLH

Timon91 said:


> Can someone post a picture of the Speed Limit in the Roadside Rest area?












Unless you're Dutch:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

For the love of God.


----------



## Timon91

Thanks 

11 and 12 consecutive last posts mg:. When Svartmetall hadn't posted it would've been 23 

Spam, spam, spam hno:

-edit- It's 13 now. I don't think that I ever managed to do that, you have to admit that guys 

-edit2- Chris posted in the Japanese thread, were Svartmetall posted before. 25 consecutive last posts in this section. Who's the spammer now?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I send him a PM, hope it works.


----------



## Verso

OMG, I've never had to look at the 2nd page immediately the next day.

Anyway, here's the Slovenian speed-limit sign, if he's interested. :angel:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> OMG, I've never had to look at the 2nd page immediately the next day.


Say 30 minutes! :nuts:


----------



## Timon91

^^All posts on the first page are posted within the last 40 mins hno:


----------



## Verso

Oh, I didn't miss much then.


----------



## Verso

wyqtor said:


> ^^Weren't they allowed in Egypt and Jordan at least? I remember some photos of border crossings near Eilat.





DJZG said:


> hm... i doubt they can go to egypt due to their not-so-long-ago war... maybe conditions are improved, but there are still people that would love to see israeli truck flying in the air...


There are border crossings with Egypt and Jordan, and Israelis may cross them too, but only on foot. Vehicles with Israeli license plates aren't allowed to leave Israel on land. Israelis must leave their vehicles in Israel and cross the border on foot. They may enter a vehicle on the other side of the border again, but it surely won't have Israeli license plates. You may cross the border by vehicle with some other plates. However I'm not sure, if Israelis may go to all of Egypt and Jordan.


----------



## DJZG

w00t... lol... i was away like three hours maybe and here i come and find two pages filled... 
nice work guys :tongue3:

@verso...
yes that is understandable... borders are opened long time ago... but i've never wondered how transporting works between those two countries... they probably do the main part by rail or sea... hm, i'm not even sure if they have rail connection down there... :/


----------



## DJZG

oh yes now i remembered...
so yesterday i was standing in a crowded bus waiting for him to go, and when i was standing at the doors i looked at this picture and remembered Radi and his crashbarriers  and this is a fine example of busdoor shiny crashbarrier.. and sometimes for holding the door :lol:


----------



## PLH

It's not shiny at all... and a crahbarrier neither


----------



## DJZG

well i have a very high imaginative mind  i keep seeing all those barriers and how they are shiny  like i'm like i'm... Radioactive :banana:


----------



## x-type

DJZG said:


> well i have a very high imaginative mind  i keep seeing all those barriers and how they are shiny  like i'm like i'm... Radioactive :banana:


you talking bull shit man you must see bulgarian crashbarriers they are the shinest in the world they would be more shinier if whoresons from eu would give us the money


----------



## PLH

radi6404 said:


> OMG, x-type, why do you look offtopic threads, you are noone, do you think I care who you are, do you thik you can play the boss. It has nothing to do with your silly retarted bus barriers bullshit but with the situation of bulgaria, so I am not allowed to post about the situation in Bulgaria and presenting links as a source? How silly is that?


 ..


----------



## Verso

^^ Radi actually dared say that to 3tmk?  No wonder he can't post any more.


----------



## Timon91

you shuold just shut up because the whoresons from slovenia and the rest of eu does get mney from eu but we dont so we cant make our crashbarriers shinier


----------



## Verso

If you meant Slovakia, that's great.


----------



## Timon91

i don't care i just meant that those whoresons should give bulgaria money to make thes truma crash barries shinier

@x-type: how am I doing?


----------



## x-type

Timon91 said:


> i don't care i just meant that those whoresons should give bulgaria money to make thes truma crash barries shinier
> 
> @x-type: how am I doing?


-4


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Check it out, my toll vignettes I probably need if my current plan becomes final for the summer.

Austrian vignette € 7,70 * 2 = € 15,40
Slovenian vignette € 35
Hungarian vignette € 15,70
Slovakian vignette € 5
Czech vignette €8,40

Grand total: € 79,50


----------



## PLH

How about exploring local roads? 

BTW When servicing my car some dumbass dropped a spanner on the windshield. Result - a brand new €250 windshield for free:banana:


----------



## Qwert

ChrisZwolle said:


> Check it out, my toll vignettes I probably need if my current plan becomes final for the summer.
> 
> Austrian vignette € 7,70 * 2 = € 15,40
> Slovenian vignette € 35
> Hungarian vignette € 15,70
> Slovakian vignette € 5
> Czech vignette €8,40
> 
> Grand total: € 79,50


Cost of the Slovak one week vignette will be € 4.90 in 2009. This is probably for the first time in history cost of a vignette will decrease (now it costs € 4.98 ). (Link.)

BTW, just avoid Slovenia and you will save almost one half of the amount of money you are going to spend.


----------



## Verso

Qwert said:


> BTW, just avoid Slovenia and you will save almost one half of the amount of money you are going to spend.


Considering that Chris wants to drive on all Slovenian motorways and expressways, and that he'll have to drive more than once on them, so he can go back to other motorways, the vignette is underpriced. :lol:


----------



## x-type

you must drive round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round Slovenia to refund vignette. and come back in few months and again drive round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round...


----------



## BND

ChrisZwolle said:


> Check it out, my toll vignettes I probably need if my current plan becomes final for the summer.
> 
> Austrian vignette € 7,70 * 2 = € 15,40
> Slovenian vignette € 35
> Hungarian vignette € 15,70
> Slovakian vignette € 5
> Czech vignette €8,40
> 
> Grand total: € 79,50


So you want to buy the monthly vignette for Hungary? Our network is not that long  Or you just want to explore the whole country?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm not sure about that, a weekly one might be just not long enough, though I can buy an extra 4-day vignette, but that's almost as expensive (week+4day) as a monthly one.


----------



## BND

^^ Don't forget the weekly is valid for 10 days :cheers:


----------



## DJZG

35€ slovenian vignette... doesn't worth the trip... i would avoid it in a broad circle... 
in croatia you pay for every km  not more not less :lol:


----------



## PLH

Meet my two new friends, both of them called Will:

(knowing a bit of German would be nice)


----------



## DJZG

lol... will ficken  can't believe it's his real name


----------



## PLH

Maybe it's not?


----------



## Timon91

Maybe they're looking for a girlfriend


----------



## Morsue

Almost as crude as the Nissan Fitta 
(Knowing some Swedish helps)


----------



## DJZG

ajax gave me a few heart-attacks tonight... damn...


----------



## Timon91

Yeah, Dutch football is shit nowadays. Luckily Ajax was already qualified. 

Other results: 
Feyenoord - Lech Poznan 0-1
Portsmouth - Heerenveen 3-0

It's going the wrong way hno:


----------



## DJZG

at least you have three representatives in uefa cup... 
my dinamo zagreb went home due to a very very shitty play :lol:

and ajax should've won this evening... luckily i didn't bet on feyenoord or heerenveen and i was thinking to put on them too...


----------



## Timon91

Actually we have five in the UEFA cup 

Feyenoord and Heerenveen are out, after four losses.
Ajax and Fc Twente are qualified for the next round.
NEC has to win from Udinese tomorrow (they won't) in order to make a chance to qualify for the next round.

PSV played CL but they didn't have any chance.


----------



## Majestic

Timon91 said:


> Other results:
> Feyenoord - Lech Poznan 0-1
> 
> It's going the wrong way hno:


What a wonderful evening  :cheer::banana:epper::cucumber::drunk:


----------



## DJZG

oh yes i forgot about NEC and PSV 

Majestic... hope poznan is celebrating a lot tonight


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Majestic said:


> What a wonderful evening  :cheer::banana:epper::cucumber::drunk:


Well, Feyenoord is very low ranked at the moment. :lol:


----------



## Majestic

ChrisZwolle said:


> Well, Feyenoord is very low ranked at the moment. :lol:


True, true. Yet it's not defeating Feyenoord that delights me, but the fact that Lech advanced to the next round. Adding the fact they also top polish football league makes hopes sky-high for the supporters in the upcoming spring :cheers:


----------



## Timon91

I'm quite happy about that actually, and I didn't mind Poznan winning, because Feyenoord was out already. In fact, Poznan in the next round is better then Nancy IMO. Feyenoord is currently 12th in the Dutch league, btw.

Chris: do you support Fc Zwolle?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Timon91 said:


> Chris: do you support Fc Zwolle?


No, I'm not interested in soccer. I know that Feyenoord is ranked low by coincidence, since my former roommate was a Ajax fan.


----------



## PLH

> *Supermarket defends itself over Adolf Hitler cake*
> 
> A supermarket is defending itself for refusing to a write out 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell's name on his birthday cake. Deborah Campbell, 25, of nearby Hunterdon County, N.J., said she phoned in her order last week to the Greenwich ShopRite. When she told the bakery department she wanted her son's name spelled out, she was told to talk to a supervisor, who denied the request.
> 
> Karen Meleta, a ShopRite spokeswoman, said the store denied similar requests from the Campbells the last two years, including a request for a swastika.


How unbelivebly stupid should you be...hno:


----------



## Morsue

That's what happens when you cut school funding. By the way, isn't there any government institution that has a say when kids are named? In Sweden it's the tax authorities who keep the books on the population and they have the right to deny certain names that, according to law, "may cause offense or will likely lead to discomfort for the one who is to bear the name, or for some other reason is apparently not appropriate as a first name".


----------



## PLH

Morsue said:


> By the way, isn't there any government institution that has a say when kids are named?


I suppose every European country has that.


----------



## Morsue

But no one at the IRS seemed to think that Adolf Hitler is not a suitable first name? :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle




----------



## Radish2

ChrisZwolle said:


>


This looks incredible.


----------



## Timon91

I can't stay behind of course.

Another Christmas card from Jammistan 










From Timon91 :cheers:

source


----------



## Timon91

I'm glad I don't have a balcony, it seems like a lot of work 

And: 

De Graafschap - Ajax 0-6

:dance:


----------



## Radish2

And a happy christmas from me!


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Maybe he fried his computer again


More like drank too much cold water and almost ended up in hospital, hi everyone. :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ wtf, how did it happen? Some kind of contest to score a chick?


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ wtf, how did it happen?


Good question. :nuts:


----------



## Verso

Verso said:


> Good question. :nuts:


Oh, if I wasn't clear, I was just drinking and drinking and drinking, with no particular reason, my thoughts being heavily concentrated on sth else apparently, when I realized I had just drunk 1 liter of cold water; pains started immediately. :nuts:


----------



## PLH

Are you sure it wasn't pure vodka? :dunno: :colgate:


----------



## PLH

Verso?...


----------



## Verso

PLH said:


> Are you sure it wasn't pure vodka? :dunno: :colgate:


Can't be, I'm immune to it. :colgate:



PLH said:


> Verso?...


Sorry for the delay, I just lost my consciousness for a while. :colgate:


----------



## Radish2

comment my christmas pic, doesn´t it look good?


----------



## PLH

Oh man, Verso is dying and you're rabbiting on about your pic!


----------



## Verso

Good one, PLH, Radi is quite cold-blooded.


----------



## Mateusz

Verso, you shouldn't stress this much about progress of slovenian motorways


----------



## x-type

PLH said:


> Oh man, Verso is dying and you're rabbiting on about your pic!


:rofl: you are such a whoreson


----------



## PLH

Let's punish him, shall we? :

Radi, the aphalt ain't dark enough, and the crashbarriers ain't shiny eneugh either :tongue:


----------



## Verso

Mateusz said:


> Verso, you shouldn't stress this much about progress of slovenian motorways


Ahah, why? I'm fully covered here in Ljubljana.  There are still some motorways to be built, but I'm happy with the network (including good networks of neighboring countries), I started missing old roads, now I take them once in a while.


----------



## x-type

Mateusz said:


> Verso, you shouldn't stress this much about progress of slovenian motorways


you're right. i should


----------



## PLH

So, let's have a drink then  The Verso drink, better than sex on the beach :tongue4:


----------



## Mateusz

Verso said:


> Ahah, why? I'm fully covered here in Ljubljana.  There are still some motorways to be built, but I'm happy with the network (including good networks of neighboring countries), I started missing old roads, now I take them once in a while.


Well, but Slovenia has size of big country province. True you have still some avtocesta & hitra cesta to build 

The Verso shake ?? A 1 litre of ice-cold water ?


----------



## Verso

PLH said:


> Let's punish him, shall we? :
> 
> Radi, the aphalt ain't dark enough, and the crashbarriers ain't shiny eneugh either :tongue:


lolzy  But seriously, I have to go now, or I'll really fall in coma, I still feel like a zombie, so bye-bye.


----------



## Verso

^^ What a beautifully-nice post.


----------



## mapman:cz

Verso said:


> Did you establish your opinion after reading these suicide-committing posts?


Oh yeah, Versadjectives seem a bit more sophisticated, so one has to "train the brain" to get it )) But nice is a nice word, I see you guys have had the same nice opinion


----------



## Verso

mapman:cz said:


> Oh yeah, Versadjectives seem a bit more sophisticated, so one has to "train the brain" to get it ))


So Versadjectives are brain-training? That's also nice.


----------



## mapman:cz

Verso said:


> So Versadjectives are brain-training? That's also nice.


Once you forget to use hyphens (sometimes maybe intentionally) than yes, man :banana: :nuts: :lol: "Lots of laugh" in this thread, indeed...


----------



## Verso

Greetings from Snowenia. Now it's for real, 7 meters of snow in mountains!! :nuts:

A hut and ski lift drowned under snow:









A snow groomer on a roof. :lol:


----------



## PLH

Great, but 7 m is probably only because of strong wind.


----------



## PLH

Have yo seen the beta version of today's banner?










:colgate:


----------



## x-type

yes, Germans are allways creative with banners  this Seattle is boring


----------



## Timon91

I don't see Seattle now :dunno:

@PLH:


----------



## Verso

Childish Germans. 



PLH said:


> Great, but 7 m is probably only because of strong wind.


You mean snowdrifts? No. :nono: There's officially 7 m of snow on Mount Kanin/Monte Canin/Mont Cjanine on the Italian border, record in the last 35 years. Here's a link.


----------



## PLH

^^ It's even more interesting as Kanin is only 2300 m, which is 1 km less than famous Italian Marmolada.


----------



## x-type

Timon91 said:


> I don't see Seattle now :dunno:
> 
> @PLH:


yeah, it has dissapeared. fortunately


----------



## DJZG

lol... why this MSpaint banner? not getting their imagination quite... or maybe i'm unimaginative  would be better if there are some scrapers on it :tongue3:


----------



## Morsue

They should have used the beta version instead


----------



## PLH

It's jest sth new, unlike all these show-off banners


----------



## Turnovec

PLH said:


> Have yo seen the beta version of today's banner?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> :colgate:


^^ :rofl:


----------



## PLH

I would get pissed off as well if I had no banner:tongue4:


----------



## Verso

PLH said:


> ^^ It's even more interesting as Kanin is only 2300 m, which is 1 km less than famous Italian Marmolada.


What's Marmolada famous for, except that it sounds like marmalade?  In fact, Kanin is famous for lots of snow, 3-4 m is regular. If it's less than 2 m, you can't even ski, b/c it's full of sinkholes (karst). Many people have died skiing there and suddenly falling in a sinkhole, thinking the snow lies on a flat terrain.


----------



## PLH

Verso said:


> What's Marmolada famous for, except that it sounds like marmalade?


I was actually thinking about this


----------



## Timon91

It's better then the Dutch Vaalser*berg* (berg = mountain), which is the highest mountain in the Netherlands. Height = 321 m :lol:


----------



## Verso

Radish2 said:


> Good for you, but this is also an offtopic thread where you can talk about anything. I also use other sites to talk about offtopic things but that´s not what iit is about. I just don´t like when anything except car plates and roadnumbers gets ignored in the offtopic thread.


Yeah, that's b/c you never look in this thread, except when _you_ need sth, and spoilt as you are, you demand an answer in 5 min.  We've discussed a lot of different, non-road-related things in this thread, you just have to look at it more often.


----------



## Radish2

Verso said:


> Yeah, that's b/c you never look in this thread, except when _you_ need sth, and spoilt as you are, you demand an answer in 5 min.  We've discussed a lot of different, non-road-related things in this thread, you just have to look at it more often.


You are right I will, I don´t want to fight with you today, it´s christmas.


----------



## PLH

You'll never believe how full am I after alle this Christmas Eve dishes. My belly resembles a big ballon:nuts: I'm going to sleep


----------



## Mateusz

I'm quite fine, I don't eat much because I don't like these fishes and stuff...


----------



## Timon91

Is the 24th of december a national holiday in other European countries? Over here it's just a normal working day. The real Christmas dinner is on the 25th.


----------



## mapman:cz

Timon91 said:


> Is the 24th of december a national holiday in other European countries? Over here it's just a normal working day. The real Christmas dinner is on the 25th.


Yeah, here it is a holiday... Stores are usually opened till 2 PM and then everybody goes home for a dinner and then gifts )) I'm now enjoying my gifts already ))


----------



## Verso

Dedek Mraz is still my God; even though commies are atheists.


----------



## x-type

Timon91 said:


> Is the 24th of december a national holiday in other European countries? Over here it's just a normal working day. The real Christmas dinner is on the 25th.


no, here is working day (but most firms work shorter). btw do you guys drink Williams pear grappa? it is goooooooood :cheers::nuts::cheers::nuts:


----------



## Timon91

I don't have presents with Christmas. We've had St. Nicolas, which was on the 5th of december, to give each other presents. 

The shop where I work closed earlier yesterday: 7 pm instead of 8 pm :lol:


----------



## xlchris

I just had to show you this. My christmas presents 










_From the top to the bottom;_
- *Iowa* - 1963
- *New Mexico* - Recent?
- *New York (Commercial)* - 1980's
- *Texas* - Recent?
- *Curacao* - 1990
- *Iowa* - 1972
- *Minnesota* - 1968
- *New York* - Recent?

I also got (as you can see) an American flag wich now covers my Times Square poster  And I also got a line with flags with * America * on it


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Great  I've got the exact same American flag (does that surprise anyone? )


----------



## dubart

xlchrisij said:


> I just had to show you this. My christmas presents
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _From the top to the bottom;_
> - *Iowa* - 1963
> - *New Mexico* - Recent?
> - *New York (Commercial)* - 1980's
> - *Texas* - Recent?
> - *Curacao* - 1990
> - *Iowa* - 1972
> - *Minnesota* - 1968
> - *New York* - Recent?
> 
> I also got (as you can see) an American flag wich now covers my Times Square poster  And I also got a line with flags with * America * on it


Would you like a 1997 New Jersey plate? I think I still have it somewhere...


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> I don't have presents with Christmas. We've had St. Nicolas, which was on the 5th of december, to give each other presents.


:uh: I get presents on all three dates.  But just a small present or two on St. Nicholas and X-mas, the rest I get on 1st January, like commies.  Our logic is that as you enter the new year, it's a much bigger "dividing line" than any other of the two (we're not religious) and you feel one year older, and you don't even get presents.


----------



## Radish2

xlchrisij said:


> I just had to show you this. My christmas presents
> 
> _From the top to the bottom;_
> - *Iowa* - 1963
> - *New Mexico* - Recent?
> - *New York (Commercial)* - 1980's
> - *Texas* - Recent?
> - *Curacao* - 1990
> - *Iowa* - 1972
> - *Minnesota* - 1968
> - *New York* - Recent?
> 
> I also got (as you can see) an American flag wich now covers my Times Square poster  And I also got a line with flags with * America * on it


That´s just insame, some people like roads and cars quite a lot.


----------



## Mateusz

I got a new XBOX, previous one just broke down somewhen ago, money and shaver 

I'm pretty content  In current times I don't expect gifts


----------



## Radish2

Mateusz said:


> I got a new XBOX, previous one just broke down somewhen ago, money and shaver
> 
> I'm pretty content  In current times I don't expect gifts


I don´t know why but unfortunately they break quite often, I use PC to play games.


----------



## Mateusz

Because it's Microsoft... it's shit

I should buy PS3 instead, PlayStation never lets me down


----------



## Timon91

Verso said:


> :uh: I get presents on all three dates.  But just a small present or two on St. Nicholas and X-mas, the rest I get on 1st January, like commies.  Our logic is that as you enter the new year, it's a much bigger "dividing line" than any other of the two (we're not religious) and you feel one year older, and you don't even get presents.


I also didn't get presents on St. Nicolas this year 

Luckily I celebrated my birthday the day after (6th of december) with friends so I still got a nice present.


----------



## Verso

Saint Nic*h*olas is on 6th December.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ In the Netherlands it's December 5th


----------



## PLH

The city of Białystok has a new logo. Company designing it was evidently inspired by *a* New York community center:










:sly: :lol:


----------



## Verso

Eye-attracting logo.


----------



## DJZG

lol... i wonder how do you know about NY community center :lol:


----------



## PLH

^^ Why me? There is an article about that on the Internet.


----------



## Mateusz

Well,it might be just a random accident :nuts:


----------



## PLH

Yeah, sure...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This is the view from my apartment: 









I'm gonna make a timelapse video one morning rushhour of all the cyclists here, it's one of the busiest cyclist corridors in my city.


----------



## PLH

^^ Very nice. What's so ugly on the left you don't want us to see? 

And what is between the fence and houses in foreground? Railway?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nothing, the view is similar


----------



## Mateusz

Your balcony is cool.

More posh than Radi's


----------



## DJZG

and even a crashbarrier to the right  but isn't that shiny like Radi's


----------



## Radish2

Mateusz said:


> Your balcony is cool.
> 
> More posh than Radi's


Oh really?


----------



## DJZG

op op  construction update from Radi  
that neighboring apartment isn't finished yet? 
but hell yea... radi has the most shinniest barriers eva' 
i like them now in that 'christmas mixed with snow' style :cheers:


----------



## ea1969

Incredibly shiny barriers at Radi's balcony!


----------



## Radish2

ea1969 said:


> Incredibly shiny barriers at Radi's balcony!


Thanks man , atkaully it has faded out a bit, spring I might remove the current paint and add a new fresh shiny layer.


----------



## Radish2

I am wondering why noone wants to reply to my thread about smooth and even roads, how can´t you care about smooth and even roads, don´t you care if the raod is bumpy and bridges have big bumps or what? I think you just don´t know how a really even road feels, if you live in Austria and only drie on motorways for example I can understand you have no clue of even roads, and if you live in some parts of Germany the roads are anything but even and soft.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Stop being an attention *****, Radish. If people find it interesting, they will reply...


----------



## Dan

So what does everyone look like? Chris you're all over this forum, so I've always wondered what you for example look like in real life.


----------



## Radish2

ChrisZwolle said:


> Stop being an attention *****, Radish. If people find it interesting, they will reply...


I am not an attention ***** at all, Chris, stop annoying me with your insults, why do you not care how a road feels, are you so capitalistic that you only care if a road is durable and don´t give a shit how it feels? I really can´t believe people don´t mind how roads feel but only care if they don´t have potholes and are durable.


----------



## Verso

Yes, you're an attention *****, and Dan, our pics are a few pages back.


----------



## Qwert

Timon91 said:


> Are you really going to use the 1 and 2 cents? They are pretty much banned over here, but I still got a few when I was in Germany last week.


I think their usage will be similar to 50 halier coins with value € 0.017 (1 Sk = 100 hal). Since value of 1 cent is even lower than value of 50 halier and value of 2 cents is only little bit higher those coins won't be used very frequently. Everybody is trying to get rid of haliers and almost nobody uses them because there are no prices like Sk 99.50, there are only prices like Sk 99.90 which are rounded the same way as in the Netherlands. (We solved it that way when 10 and 20 hal coins were cancelled few years ago.) But, 1 and 2 cents will be officially accepted as 50 halier coins are. Maybe it will change sometimes.



Verso said:


> After two years I still calculate in tolars, 1 EUR = 239.64 SIT. :bash: Anyway, nice to see both Slov**ias in the Eurozone.


Yes, at least foreigners have on more excuse if they again confuse us with you.:lol:


----------



## Verso

^^ Great indeed. :hammer: :lol:



Timon91 said:


> tolar, tollar, dollar. Only 2 characters difference


Well, we call dollar "dolar" (just one "l"), and in English tolar could be called "tollar" (double "l"), so there's just one real difference.


----------



## Timon91

Shut up, it's Euro now, only the 'o' is the same 

I've never seen a Slovenian Euro over here. I read a report in the newspaper yesterday about the flow of Euros throughout Europe. In the Netherlands, 35% of the Euros is Dutch, 23% is German, 12% is Belgian, and 0,1% is Slovenian.


----------



## DJZG

ah... those were the times 
luckily we still have our Kuna to be proud of haha  stronger from yugoslavian Dinar and weaker from Deutsche Mark... but still here 

btw...i always wondered... why is Yen so weak... i mean, japanese economy is one of the strongest and Yen is such a weak currency... why is that?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't know, but the Japanese economy is much more volatile than the European ones were before the credit crisis. Big bounces back and down are common for a long time on Japanese exchanges. Besides that, Japan has a huge public debt, relatively much bigger than the United States or European countries. Maybe that has some influence.


----------



## x-type

DJZG said:


> btw...i always wondered... why is Yen so weak... i mean, japanese economy is one of the strongest and Yen is such a weak currency... why is that?


it is not weak, it is extremely stabile and solid currency. and about that what you're calling weakness - it's jut imaginary. italian lira was not weak, but is still was measured in thousands


----------



## DJZG

yep that was my thinking... measure for yens is in 100s... and 100kuna is pretty nice money here, but in yens thats really little...


----------



## x-type

DJZG said:


> yep that was my thinking... measure for yens is in 100s... and 100kuna is pretty nice money here, but in yens thats really little...


but also, when you look at amount of cca 7,3 kn for 1€, it is not that much. there was not need for denomination because after representing kuna there was not much inflation anymore. most ex-communist nations had introduced their new currency, had inflation, and then made denomination, that's why they are so "strong". we had dinar which was provisory currency, and when inflation fell, we have introduced kuna.


----------



## Morsue

The Swedish government is discussing banning the 50 öre coin i.e. 0,50 SEK because it's of no use to anyone. That would mean that if we join the eurozone we probably wouldn't use neither 1, 2 or 5 cent coins. And frankly, I don't see the point of having so small denominations in cash format. We also don't round off when paying by credit card which often leads the cashier to say "that'll be 452 and 50" but when you slide your card you pay 452,67 or such.


----------



## x-type

Morsue said:


> The Swedish government is discussing banning the 50 öre coin i.e. 0,50 SEK because it's of no use to anyone. That would mean that if we join the eurozone we probably wouldn't use neither 1, 2 or 5 cent coins. And frankly, I don't see the point of having so small denominations in cash format. We also don't round off when paying by credit card which often leads the cashier to say "that'll be 452 and 50" but when you slide your card you pay 452,67 or such.


but 50 öre is not that low amount. here will nobody damage you for that amount (except at gas staions). it is about 5 €cents. btw that is about the lowest value that i'd like to see in use. here in HR we have coins of 1 lipa (0,01 kn) but they are also now extremely rare, mostly you will see 5 lp as the lowest, but ppl hate them, also 10 lp. 20 lp is ok allready.
i remember that onc i got 1 spanish peseta back in store in Spain


----------



## Timon91

Talking about money, can someone lend me a few Zimbabwan Dollars? I don't have much money and I need some


----------



## DJZG

oh yes... zimbabweans are pretty much screwed with inflation... not sure how will they pull out from that...


----------



## x-type

DJZG said:


> oh yes... zimbabweans are pretty much screwed with inflation... not sure how will they pull out from that...


well, they don't have that much zeroes, they erased 10 of them in august 2008. but now allready it is weak, cca 1000 ZWR = ! €


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> Shut up, it's Euro now, only the 'o' is the same


As well as 'r'. You're drunk again; just like me. :lol:


----------



## PLH

^^ Hey, it's only 17:30 and you're already drunk :nuts:


----------



## Verso

No, I'm _still_ drunk. :lol:


----------



## Radish2

Verso said:


> No, I'm _still_ drunk. :lol:


Shame on you, I drink a lot, but not during midday.


----------



## Mateusz

To heal your stress about Bulgarian roads ? :nuts:


----------



## Verso

Radish2 said:


> Shame on you, I drink a lot, but not during midday.


You don't have to drink. If you guys know what I mean. :lol:


----------



## Radish2

Verso said:


> You don't have to drink. If you guys know what I mean. :lol:


Ofcourse i know, drugs etc, eh? Smoke joints and so on.


----------



## Majestic

According to weather forecasts there's going to be another ice age in Poland in the next few days. I've already had a glimpse of that when a freezing arctic wind hit me on my way back home. I thought I was gonna get my hands and face frozen every single bit hno:

What's the situation in your places folks?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's freezing for more than a week now in NL. Quite uncommon, since our winters are usually only a few days of freezing. People are ice-skating throughout the country now. 

I did a 20-minute walk this afternoon covering 2.5 kilometers but it was too cold to stay outside much longer without additional clothing. (I just had my regular clothes on, in case you think I was skinnydipping).


----------



## Turnovec

Radish2 said:


> Ofcourse i know, drugs etc, eh? Smoke joints and so on.


For you it has to be one of those; Stelazine, Flupenthixol, Loxapine, Perphenazine, Chlorpromazine, Haldol, Haloperidol, Prolixin ... and so on...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Heh, an eight unit double decker train just passed by my window. It had one passenger :lol:

edit: a second eight unit double decker passed 2 minutes later with a stunning three passengers.


----------



## Timon91

^^Don't you wake up at night because of the trains? The railway is almost a km from here, but I can hear the trains very well. I also hear interchange Holendrecht, but I sleep through it all. Only the ducks sometimes wake me up in the early morning :lol:

@Verso: I'm famous for my perfect English, I never make mistakes


----------



## Majestic

What a waste! You should give some of those train cars to Poland. There are days you can hardly find a standing place in a train hno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No, I don't hear the trains that much because I live close to the station and trains are at lower speeds here. I think they're doing not more than 60/70 here. I can also see a busline from here.

At night I can hear freight trains that have to stop here before the station, the braking is no problem, but the clutches are banging together then.


----------



## Timon91

Do you live close to the central station or to a smaller station? If you live close to a smaller station, Intercity's might pass at a high speed. At least that counts for Abcoude. Still the slow trains (especially the older 'hondekop') make a lot of noise when braking.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Dogs heads do not run in the Netherlands anymore since a long time. You mean Mat'54 while they run mat'64 these days. They look the same though. They have been decomissioned from 1989 to 1996.

But they are of the older types and make more noise. My job is also near another railway line, and trains make way more noise there because they run at higher speeds. Zwolle has only one railway station by the way.


----------



## Majestic

(NL) Hond - (DE) Hund
(NL) Kop - (DE) Kopf


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ That's correct. The name of that train was actually the "Hundekopf".  (dogs head)


----------



## Majestic

We had once in Poland a bus colloquially called "Ogórek" ("Cucumber"). Guess why...

http://www.kmst.mpk.lodz.pl/i/ogorek02.jpg


----------



## Verso

I live quite close to a railway (Ljubljana - Novo mesto), but it's not so close that it would bother me much. I cross it (by car, bus, on foot) almost every day, but I've only driven there (by train) once, and even that was just for the sake of it and just for 15 km or so. Its average speed is namely less than 50 km/h.


----------



## Timon91

ChrisZwolle said:


> Dogs heads do not run in the Netherlands anymore since a long time. You mean Mat'54 while they run mat'64 these days. They look the same though. They have been decomissioned from 1989 to 1996.
> 
> But they are of the older types and make more noise. My job is also near another railway line, and trains make way more noise there because they run at higher speeds. Zwolle has only one railway station by the way.


Sorry, I indeed meant the older Mat'64. They look like each other though. They make lots of noise when braking, which isn't very nice when you live close to a station. Luckily they switched to the dubbledeck trains with the new timetable, and they don't make that much noise.


----------



## x-type

@verso - it's not very crowded line and there are not large and noisy garnitures, right? except freight trains, but i'd say there are not many of them neither.
my freind used to live just next to rail line where heavy diesel trains were passing, that was really torture to me when i slept there


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Half of the trains passing by my window are these;









They're among the most quiet trains here. They're also quite comfortable to travel with.


----------



## Mateusz

End efficent, because they are double deckers


----------



## Billpa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Half of the trains passing by my window are these;
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> They're among the most quiet trains here. They're also quite comfortable to travel with.


What type of service is this? Commuter or national rail?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Mostly for the busier regional electrified tracks. They are also used for intercity connections on some lines, but most intercity routes have the socalled "koploper"









These are typical commuter trains, because they can accelerate faster, and thus are more appropriate for routes with more trainstations.


----------



## x-type

my friend had many of those under his window:








it was horrible!

under Verso's window most of passenger are these, right Verso?


----------



## Radish2

The winter has really arrived in Blagoevgrad, it wants to compensate for two years and there is incredibly much snow, unbelievable.


----------



## Mateusz

ChrisZwolle said:


> Mostly for the busier regional electrified tracks. They are also used for intercity connections on some lines, but most intercity routes have the socalled "koploper"
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> These are typical commuter trains, because they can accelerate faster, and thus are more appropriate for routes with more trainstations.


Same like here, we have some commute trains, operated by Northern Rail, some of them are really comfortable  North of England is quite dense urban area, so there are quite a lot of connections


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's quite some snow Radi! 25 cm?


----------



## x-type

the hell with everything, here is my fence at balcony


----------



## Radish2

It shows 31 cm on the balcony, outside it might be 35 cm, I don´t know when Blagoevgrad ever had so much snow, it should freeze tonight so that the snow gets frozen and then it will take a long time to melt.


----------



## Timon91

This is the train type that often stops in Abcoude:










Or these old shitty ones:










But these also pass, once every two hours in each direction 










@Radi: Nice balcony! When are you going to polish it again? 

@x-type: unfortunately I don't have a balcony. So I can't show it


----------



## Billpa

Mateusz said:


> Same like here, we have some commute trains, operated by Northern Rail, some of them are really comfortable  North of England is quite dense urban area, so there are quite a lot of connections


Their map does look quite dense, indeed. This is your area I believe


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It gets quite cold here:








(actually for Belgium, but what the heck).


----------



## Radish2

I will definatly polish it again spring when I am here again, because it needs a newer paint and the surface has to be smoothend because it´s quite rough now, then two or three layers of thin zincpaint and it will shine even more.


----------



## Timon91

@Chris: plus a few degrees and you'll have the Netherlands. It will be quite cold when I bike to school next wednesday morning (and leave at 7:30). I hope my gloves are warm enough. In case they're not, I won't be able to spam here anymore


----------



## Radish2

I am wondering if I should remove a bit snow from the balcony or if the snow is light and the balcony can´t fall down, but I tink the snow isn´t heavy so I don´t have to remove it.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> under Verso's window most of passenger are these, right Verso?


Yes. The freight ones mostly carry new Renaults from NM... well not so many any more.


----------



## DJZG

^^ it will melt soon so i think there won't be any worries about concrete  
but still, a two three moves with broom and everything is down


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't think your balcony would collapse with 30 cms of snow :lol:


----------



## Timon91

@Verso: Have they switched back to cheap Lada's?


----------



## x-type

Timon91 said:


> @Verso: Have they switched back to cheap Lada's?


amybe Renault 4, it was produced in Novo Mesto. i had 3 of them


----------



## Verso

Lol, only Renault has ever been produced in Slovenia.  Not even Zastava (Serbian car). Though there's also a factory producing buses in Maribor.


----------



## Verso

It was funny when I once drove by Grindelwald Bus to Grindelwald (Switzerland), and I didn't even know I was driving in a Slovenian bus.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Grindelwald is great, did you take the stairs to that glacier? I heard they had to extend the stairs very often due to the melting of the glacier. I believe it was one of the few glaciers that extended so deep into the valley (barely above 1400 m or so).


----------



## Timon91

Grindelwald, isn't that the famous wizard that Albus Dumbledore fought against?   

Seriously, glaciers are beautiful. And that they're withdrawing is not because of global warming, btw. It's a natural cyclus, but the melting just goes _quicker_ because of global warming. About glaciers that extend into a valley: in Alaska I saw a glacier that almost extended all the way to the lowest point in a valley. My dad and I were very surprised to see a glacier extended so long. I have made a picture of it, but it's on my computer, which unfortunately can't be used now hno:


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ Grindelwald is great, did you take the stairs to that glacier?


Yes, I did, a couple of times. Once I got lost for a while, everyone just disappeared.  That parking under the glacier is interesting, always some exotic license plates, once there was a plate of American forces in Germany. Of course I'm also exotic with my Slovenian plates.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Timon91 said:


> Seriously, glaciers are beautiful. And that they're withdrawing is not because of global warming, btw. It's a natural cyclus, but the melting just goes _quicker_ because of global warming.


Ofcourse they disappear because of global warning. The difference is that it's a debate whether humans cause it or not. Glaciers disappeared even before we started to stuff CO2 in the air. the Netherlands was even covered by glaciers, but retreated long before humans developed industries.


----------



## Timon91

Sorry, I should've been clearer, I of course meant the global warming that is caused by humans hno:


----------



## Radish2

Ok, I jsut used a cloth with warm water to clean the crashbarrier, luckily it got shinier and the cloth got black, so dirty the crashbarrier was, I am happy that the crashbarrier only is dirty, not faded out, but still, eastern there will be a renweing of the paint, hopefully a specia paint which is even more durable.


----------



## x-type

i assume that you're talking about that balcony thing. who is crashing there anyway?


----------



## Radish2

x-type said:


> i assume that you're talking about that balcony thing. who is crashing there anyway?


Ofcourse the balcony railing, who is crashing there, birds and insects, birds are landing on it sometimes. your railing is not shiny, but I think you don´t care how it looks.


----------



## Majestic

x-type said:


> who is crashing there anyway?


:rofl:


----------



## Verso

I wonder, if the balcony crash barrier is strong enough to back off insects. :lol:


----------



## Billpa

Here in America we use concrete "Jersey barrier railings" on our decks, for the bugs to crash against.


----------



## Verso

Balcony railing isn't meant for bugs anyway, but so you don't fall from the balcony, I think it's quite clear.


----------



## Timon91

The only who crashes in there is Radi, when he slips on his supersmooth balcony :lol:


----------



## DJZG

lol Radi  you sure know how to make us smile sometimes :lol:


----------



## x-type

Radish2 said:


> Ofcourse the balcony railing, who is crashing there, birds and insects, birds are landing on it sometimes. your railing is not shiny, but I think you don´t care how it looks.


of course i don't. actually, my fence is dancing rain dance ecah day hoping for some rain to wash it


----------



## Verso

Your fence is more skilled than Radi's.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What are you guys eating with dinner? I'm now cooking potatoes with spinach and a Slavink


----------



## Timon91

There are some dinner guests here tonight, I thought we have couscous or sth. When I'm home alone, I mostly go for an easy microwave meal (though we don't have a microwave ), and create the least dish as possible. I'm lazy


----------



## Majestic

I'm having a traditional Polish Bigos with a loaf of bread topped with butter. Delicious :cheers2:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I haven't used my microwave/oven yet for dinner. Only to defrost some bread. I don't like microwave meals, though they're easy. It's also expensive, I usually spend no more than 1 euro on a dinner when I'm cooking myself. It takes me no longer than 20 minutes to cook


----------



## Timon91

I still live at my parents' place, so I don't have to pay for it myself 

Still, I sometimes cook when I'm home alone. Potatoes are not too difficult to cook


----------



## Mateusz

I don't cook, well I still live with parents 

I don't have much talents for cooking I think, I should learn some


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Cooking simple meals is not that difficult. I'm not a top chef either, but I can cook everyday meals.


----------



## Timon91

Where did you learn it? Just from your mother? Or do you have some kind of cookbook?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I never use a cookbook. I just watched a few times by my parents, asked a few questions, and learned it myself. It's really not that difficult. Some people use a clock to see if dinner is ready, but I don't do that. 

Stick a fork in a potato which is cooking and if it's easy to point it in, it's ready. Do it a few times, and you'll be able to cook potatoes quite good. 

Vegetables differ by taste, I like it a bit crunchy, so I don't let it into the pan too long. Others like it more as a paste and soft, so they let cook somewhat longer.


----------



## x-type

i had some ćevapi and grilled steak left from lunch


----------



## DJZG

damn... i haven't eaten from morning and now all this talking has made me hungry... and i'm trying not to eat on evening  
and then chevapi comes in  dammit x-type


----------



## x-type

DJZG said:


> damn... i haven't eaten from morning and now all this talking has made me hungry... and i'm trying not to eat on evening
> and then chevapi comes in  dammit x-type


actually, i also had vratina which is much better than ćevapi(i think the english would be "blade shoulder"


----------



## Verso

Chris has more than 10 posts per day! (no wonder )


----------



## Majestic

Verso said:


> Chris has more than 10 posts per day! (no wonder )


LOL, with Timon right on his back 

Anyway, is there anyone worse than me when it comes to posts/day? :|


----------



## Timon91

Who would have the most posts per day? christos-greece or sth? He has over 21 a day


----------



## Majestic

Well, Timon, you could do that too, you just have to try better 

I wonder what's the all-SCC record of posting...


----------



## Timon91

C'mon, I don't spam that much. Only the H&A section 

About the posts: Arpels has 44618 posts


----------



## Timon91

*The Roadside rest area III - SSC's roadtrippers*

Time for a new thread. And to prevent that Chris is the starter of all threads over here


----------



## Timon91

1000th post. Time for a new thread. And to prevent that Chris is the starter of every H&A thread, of course 

:lock:


----------



## Majestic

Is there some kind of posts stat-ladder here? And what about posts/day category?

P.S. It's hard to believe but we're into 3rd RRR thread!! That's 1000 posts in less than 2 months :devil:


EDIT: Hahaha, you beat me to it, Timon


----------



## Timon91

Majestic said:


> Is there some kind of posts stat-ladder here? And what about posts/day category?
> 
> P.S. It's hard to believe but we're almost into 3rd RRR thread!! That's 1000 posts in less than 2 months :devil:


You can order the members to the amount of posts, but I don't know if that is possible for the amount of posts per day :dunno:


----------



## Majestic

Timon, how many posts in both RRR threads do you have? I've got "only" 40


----------



## Timon91

I have 177 in the last one, way too much actually 

Now I have already got 75% of all posts in the thrid one :lol:

Actually I didn't get that much posts by just spamming around. There were some useful posts. And I did a GTC competition, which helps


----------



## Majestic

At least the name of our spammer-paradise thread is nicely concealed, so someone from the outside won't realise he's dealing with a bunch of spammers


----------



## dubart

x-type said:


> here in HR we have coins of 1 lipa (0,01 kn) but they are also now extremely rare, mostly you will see 5 lp as the lowest


Not true. Buy anything in Lidl or in Mercator (those TikTak cash registers) and you'll get a handful of 1 lp coins. Every single time! :lol:


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> You can order the members to the amount of posts, but I don't know if that is possible for the amount of posts per day :dunno:


I've already seen 50 posts per day.


----------



## PLH

^^ No they were given second chance to think these names over (and please don't write again how should it be)


----------



## Mateusz

Now even Dutch people now how shitty Polish signage... shame really :nuts:


----------



## PLH

Some even suggest it was Chris. Dementi, please


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You gotta love this pic:









( I can name half of those peaks)


----------



## DJZG

^^ where is that? reminds me of some old picture of Mt. St. Helens but its not


----------



## mapman:cz

ChrisZwolle said:


> You gotta love this pic:
> http://www.tholiger.de/Fotos/alpenpano.jpg
> 
> ( I can name half of those peaks)


Stunning pic  

I love that panorama as well, esp. when travelling the A2 from Zurich to Bern and good wheater conditions, then you know that Alps are very very close 

Here's my favourite panorama with names: http://www.witthoh.de/Alpenpanorama-Witthoh-gesamtR1C1.JPG

You can even see Zugspitze which is in 172 kms distance...


----------



## DJZG

whoa thats a big panorama  15000x700px... nice


----------



## Verso

Nice mountains. Once I got on almost 4,000 meters by cable railway.


----------



## DJZG

ups... my highest peak i think is Bjelasnica, Bosnia... around 2000m only... 
but my village was on 1400m mountain and i consider it like i'm some tibetan guy 
now i'm just on 500m kinda low but still lots of little annoying hills if you walk or ride a bike...


----------



## snupix

Verso said:


> Nice mountains. Once I got on almost 4,000 meters by cable railway.


Klein Matterhorn?


----------



## Timon91

The highest altitude where I've been? Probably 10,000 metres, in a plane 

Seriously, I once reached 3000 metres near Zermatt, I'd love to go higher though


----------



## Verso

snupix said:


> Klein Matterhorn?


Yep.


----------



## DJZG

Timon91 said:


> The highest altitude where I've been? Probably 10,000 metres, in a plane
> 
> Seriously, I once reached 3000 metres near Zermatt, I'd love to go higher though


how high do you want to go :lol:


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> I once reached 3000 metres near Zermatt


By train?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Gornergrat?


----------



## Timon91

Verso said:


> By train?


Car to Tasch (don't have the umlaut on this computer), train to Zermatt, then take the telepherique (or what's it called) to 2600 meters, walk to 3000 meters, and then turn back


----------



## Radish2




----------



## DJZG

whoa Radi what's that... some killing machine from Chronicles of Narnia :lol:


----------



## snupix

Timon91 said:


> Car to Tasch (don't have the umlaut on this computer), train to Zermatt, then take the telepherique (or what's it called) to 2600 meters, walk to 3000 meters, and then turn back


You could have done 3883 

Btw umlaut: Alt Gr + ? (second left from Backspace) and then a. At least on Croatian keyboard.


----------



## Radish2

DJZG, it´s an icicle, I like big icicles.


----------



## Billpa

I was going to guess it was a new crash barrier design. The shiniest in all the world.


----------



## Timon91

^^Yeah, the shiniest of all 



snupix said:


> You could have done 3883
> 
> Btw umlaut: Alt Gr + ? (second left from Backspace) and then a. At least on Croatian keyboard.


Unfortunately we didn't have time (just one day to go from Sion to Zermatt and back). 

About the umlauts: the same counts for the Dutch keyboards, but this computer opens the favorites menu when I try that. It costs too much time to open Word, look the symbol up, and copy past it


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Shift -> ' -> A works here ä


----------



## Timon91

Also on my computer, but not on this one. When I do that, you get this: "a. So unfortunately that also doesn't help


----------



## Verso

Radi, what a lollipop. :lol:


----------



## Radish2

ChrisZwolle said:


> Shift -> ' -> A works here ä


German keyboard has all Umlaute, ä, ö, ü.


----------



## Verso

ö =


----------



## Ni3lS

Lol, this is a sort of skybar of the highway section? Nice  I cycled to school this morning, it was about -10 :nuts: 10 miles, and there was a layer of ice on my scarf :lol:


----------



## Majestic

You guys are crazy to cycle anywhere with those temperatures.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I did 2 kilometers with my regular clothes when it was -13 degrees. I was frozen when I arrived at my work. Only really people into sports and people who don't have another option cycle significant distances with these temperatures.


----------



## Timon91

I did today. 14,5 kms with -9. I didn't feel my fingers anymore when I got to school, though I wore gloves. I've still got them though. It was cold though. A few years ago, temperatures even reached -14 over here (-20 was lowest, in Markenesse). That was pretty cold as well. We'll see how cold it will be tomorrow morning. At the moment it is -10,1. Still better then Romania, where temperatures reached -31!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

-21,3 Leipzig-City at 18.00 hrs


----------



## PLH

^^









Here it was -16 at 9.30 am, at night probably -20 too


----------



## Mateusz

What the heck, it seems like my town Jelenia Góra has some hard times now :nuts:


----------



## RawLee

Radish2 said:


> German keyboard has all Umlaute, ä, ö, ü.


I have all kind of umlaute:

ö,ü,ó,ő,ú,é,á,ű,í,ä :nuts::lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ What's the difference in pronounciation between them? I always wondered...


----------



## Verso

I'm still waiting for the day the river I live next to (Ljubljanica) freezes. It's a karstic and quite muddy river, very hard to freeze, and not wide at all. We've already had -15°C and less for more than a week in Ljubljana in my 26 years, and it hasn't frozen yet. I've heard it freezes only every 100 years or so, so I might not live to see it, especially with global warming.  We'd probably need -30°C or sth. :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's -19 near Weert, the Netherlands now. It's been a while since we had these freezing temperatures on such a big scale (it briefly hit -20 near Marknesse in 2005).


----------



## Radish2

Do you have pics from it verso? Show me some pics of it, I like stony mountainrivers.


----------



## DJZG

seems like whole europe started freezing itself... 

anyone saw skiing today at Zagreb?  shame Ivica came 0.05 behind first...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

One hour to go and bored to death. I had nothing to do today, except for some email and a meeting of 1 hour. So I spend my day watching youtube movies from Freewayjim


----------



## DJZG

lucky you  i have work over my head hno:
and smart company has banned access to youtube and facebook :bash:


----------



## Timon91

Billpa said:


> I've heard baseball is somewhat popular in The Netherlands...is that the case?


That's right. It's not very popular, but the teams that are here, are among the best in Europe. I would compare it with double A (AA) in the US.


----------



## Billpa

Timon91 said:


> That's right. It's not very popular, but the teams that are here, are among the best in Europe. I would compare it with double A (AA) in the US.


That's cool. I've heard in the past that The Netherlands and Italy are the two European nations with the most baseball fans.
By the way, I'm a Red Sox fan as well! :cheers:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Check it out, I started a weblog about my driving adventures!

*Dutch Roadgeek blog*


----------



## Morsue

You're such a geek


----------



## Timon91

Billpa said:


> That's cool. I've heard in the past that The Netherlands and Italy are the two European nations with the most baseball fans.


At least they have the best teams. The European final is very often between a Dutch and an Italian team. The best visited team in the Netherlands is Neptunus, from Rotterdam. Their capacity of their stadium is 5,000. It's never full though 



Billpa said:


> By the way, I'm a Red Sox fan as well! :cheers:


Great :cheers:
All the other guys in my team support the Yankee$, so you might guess that I had a pretty good laugh last two seasons :lol:


----------



## Morsue

Baseball? You mean that sport that has a regular (MLB) season consisting of 144 games where each match takes some three hours? I used to like watching it when I was young(er) and had just learnt the rules. But man, I needed to get a bit productive with my life...


----------



## Timon91

It's 162 games, actually 
Some people like very long games, others don't. In my league, we just play two hours, then finish the inning and stop the game. If nine innings have passed before the two hours are over, the game is also over (never happened to me so far). In this case, it is possible to have a tie in a baseball match.


----------



## DJZG

lol... ok, i just checked on internet just to be sure...
before today i have no idea there was a baseball club in croatia :lol:
i knew only that there are some famous chicks playing softball and that they are kinda successful... but baseball... 
beats me if i know where is their stadium in zagreb :nuts:


----------



## Morsue

Two hours? What's the policy on time wasting then? 

A friend of mine was in the Swedish national cricket team. Now that's a sport I can't quite comprehend.


----------



## Timon91

Morsue said:


> Two hours? What's the policy on time wasting then?


Dunno, we never really had problems with that.



Morsue said:


> A friend of mine was in the Swedish national cricket team. Now that's a sport I can't quite comprehend.


:lol: cricket can take all day. That's really a good way of wasting a complete day


----------



## x-type

DJZG said:


> lol... ok, i just checked on internet just to be sure...
> before today i have no idea there was a baseball club in croatia :lol:
> i knew only that there are some famous chicks playing softball and that they are kinda successful... but baseball...
> beats me if i know where is their stadium in zagreb :nuts:


a meadow at the beginning of Horvaćanska  i saw people playing baseball there and there is something that looks like baseball playing field


----------



## Morsue

Timon91 said:


> :lol: cricket can take all day. That's really a good way of wasting a complete day


Three days actually. Crazy Brits.


----------



## DJZG

x-type said:


> a meadow at the beginning of Horvaćanska  i saw people playing baseball there and there is something that looks like baseball playing field


i know about that playfield... but as far as i know that is used by girls softball team... once i saw it on tv...
could be baseball team uses it as well but i'm not sure...
and that field is in such a poor shape hno:


----------



## Billpa

Usually when there's a ballgame on TV, which is about every evening here in the States in the spring and summer, you'll catch a few innings- go do what you have to do, and come back later. The sport is very forgiving that way. Of course in football it's pretty simple- you know to set aside two hours- with a fifteen minute break at the half.


----------



## Billpa

Timon91 said:


> All the other guys in my team support the Yankee$, so you might guess that I had a pretty good laugh last two seasons :lol:


Yeah, I'm not surprised, everywhere you go there's always Bankee$ fans- you can't avoid them. I was actually at a friend's house in Manhattan when they won the world series in 1996 against the Braves- there was a lot of noise that night and I was very unhappy because I hate that team...very, very much! :bash:


----------



## DJZG

what does it mean Bankees  
if i remember correctly they are building a stadium at the time... is it near finishing?


----------



## Timon91

I think so. I really hate those arrogant $*cker$. All that money and still they cannot qualify for the play-offs? Something went wrong there :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Damn it was cold on my bicycle. Cycling with -12 and a frozen goatee isn't that much fun  But hell, de-icing my car takes longer


----------



## Radish2

Mateusz said:


> Usually I carry on my iPod with me where I have all my music and quaility is quite good actually, comparing to ordinary MP3 players
> 
> I prefer my own player rather than radio


Ipod doesn´t have the best quality, I think Sony mp3 players have better quality. But it´s not about that, it´s about that the music being played on the radio channels shows to some degree how the people are in the country or part of country. If I can´t tune in some new popmusic not to talk about electronic music it shows that the country is dominated by conservative people, if I can tune in new pop, it shows that there are openminded people and youth, if I even can find electronical music I think people are very openminded. As a fact I know Serbian now likes electronic music, there are ven well known artists from Serbia and I think the scene is getting bigger. Hungary I don´t know but I am sure they are warm openminded people judging by the music all radiostations play, in Bayern anyone knows how conservative people are, no room for youth, it´s really a shame.


----------



## Verso

wyqtor said:


> Why? I always find the songs played on Italian radios very refreshing compared to most other radio stations in other countries.
> 
> I guess that, for me, even when songs is crappy, the sound of the language can save them. I just love the way the Italian language sounds.


That's exactly why I _don't_ turn on radio in Italy.  :blahblah:


----------



## Majestic

OK, so over the last week we've been listening to the babbling about how smooth and soft Hungarian M5 is and how crappy German Autobahns are with their hard and rough pavement. Guess now we're starting a week of conservative Bayern whoresons and electronic music radio stations :crazy2:


----------



## dubart

This is for Radi:


----------



## PLH

^^ Do they sing?


----------



## dubart

PLH said:


> ^^ Do they sing?


No. They scream.


----------



## PLH

Ahh, sorry guys


----------



## x-type

Radish2 said:


> Rammstein and Kraftwerk? well, yeah they are great, but if you think one German radio station between Stuttgart and Salzburg or Passau will play them while driving you are wrong, they will play shit Fredi Mercury and Nena, that´s all. When I enter Hungary I tune in Juventus and hear the best pop music out there, after passing Budapest I change the station and tune the technochannel in and hear electronical Technomusic on the M5 motorway, the impressive thing is, except Germany which seems underdeveloped in this area, all radiostation stay for the whole way through the country without ever touching the radio. OMFG, I don´t understand that when I enter Germany I can´t hear even one new Poptrack, I don´t like popmusic much, but it´s really a shame when I pass by Munich and everything I hear is old music and classic, when I pass through Vienna, I can get electronical music, when I pass by Budapest, I can get electronican music, when I pass by Belgrad, I can get electronical music, when I pass by Sofia I can get electronical music, only when I pass through Munich I can´t get even ordinary new pop music but only old shit.


oh come on, you can listen Sunshine Live accross whole Germany, and they play your type of music


----------



## Radish2

x-type said:


> oh come on, you can listen Sunshine Live accross whole Germany, and they play your type of music


Across whole Germany, I can only stream sunshine live in the area arround Stuttgart, I can´t tune it in anywhere else, in Bayern I only get Fredi Mercury stuff or Schlager or classic, nothing else.


----------



## Morsue

ChrisZwolle; said:


> Around the age of 13, I drew a 2 by 1 meter big map of Manhattan.


Crazy!


----------



## Billpa

I'm looking at my World Radio TV Handbook and they list the following statewide stations in Bayern:

- Antenne Bayern
- Rockantenne
- Klassik Radio
- Radio Melodie
- Radio Galaxy

They also list a bunch of local stations around the state but they generally are in the neighborhood of 100 watts or so- which means they wouldn't have a very big range, especially if you're zipping along the motorway; you'd generally lose those lower power stations pretty quickly.

As far as sunshine live goes, they're listed at 1000 watts in Stuttgart on 104.9. Sunshine live's most powerful transmitter is in Mudau: 25-thousand watts on 102.1.


----------



## Radish2

Billpa said:


> I'm looking at my World Radio TV Handbook and they list the following statewide stations in Bayern:
> 
> - Antenne Bayern
> - Rockantenne
> - Klassik Radio
> - Radio Melodie
> - Radio Galaxy
> 
> They also list a bunch of local stations around the state but they generally are in the neighborhood of 100 watts or so- which means they wouldn't have a very big range, especially if you're zipping along the motorway; you'd generally lose those lower power stations pretty quickly.
> 
> As far as sunshine live goes, they're listed at 1000 watts in Stuttgart on 104.9. Sunshine live's most powerful transmitter is in Mudau: 25-thousand watts on 102.1.


Great information you have there, there you see that the radiostations are oriented to satisfy older people. There is a very dumb radiostatio, radio Arabella, with German songs all the time, and ofcourse Bayern 3 which plays different styles but mostly tracks oriented to satisfy 40 year olds or so. The Antenne channels in Germany are all bad, they are exactly oriented on the 40 year olds. Do you know how powerful the transmitters of Juventus radio in Hungary are, I don´t know the name of the technochannel in Hungary because they don´t talk, only play.


----------



## Billpa

My book lists nine Juventus stations around Hungary.

Bekescsaba- 104.0
Budapest- 89.5 (10-thousand watts)
Debrecen- 95.0 (1-thousand watts)
Eger- 101.9
Gyor- 103.1 (3-thousand watts)
Miskolc- 96.3 (3-thousand watts)
Siofok- 92.6
Szeged- 100.2 (5-hundred watts)
Szentes- 95.7 (250 watts)


----------



## Timon91

I usually listen to SlamFM when I'm at home, but when I'm away I have a mp3-player with some music on it


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Morsue said:


> Crazy!


I still have it around somewhere, I can make a picture of it


----------



## dubart

Radish2 said:


> I don´t know the name of the technochannel in Hungary because they don´t talk, only play.


Your car stereo doesn't have RDS?


----------



## ChrisZwolle




----------



## Qwert

Billpa said:


> My book lists nine Juventus stations around Hungary.
> 
> Bekescsaba- 104.0
> Budapest- 89.5 (10-thousand watts)
> Debrecen- 95.0 (1-thousand watts)
> Eger- 101.9
> Gyor- 103.1 (3-thousand watts)
> Miskolc- 96.3 (3-thousand watts)
> Siofok- 92.6
> Szeged- 100.2 (5-hundred watts)
> Szentes- 95.7 (250 watts)


Strange, I've found out I can tune Juventus in Slovakia as well on its Budapest frequency 89.5.:nuts: They played some Hungarian schlager though.


----------



## Radish2

Billpa said:


> My book lists nine Juventus stations around Hungary.
> 
> Bekescsaba- 104.0
> Budapest- 89.5 (10-thousand watts)
> Debrecen- 95.0 (1-thousand watts)
> Eger- 101.9
> Gyor- 103.1 (3-thousand watts)
> Miskolc- 96.3 (3-thousand watts)
> Siofok- 92.6
> Szeged- 100.2 (5-hundred watts)
> Szentes- 95.7 (250 watts)


What book is that, that shows all radio channels?


----------



## DJZG

good morning all 
damn what a hangover... i made myself a huge cup of coffee and still don't see nothing hno: uff... rough night...
i see you were talking about radios 
wow Radi i didn't noticed that when i was in germany... we mostly listen to our cds inside so miss all those fun stations  

@Timon: what happened with pc... did you opened the box and see what power do you have? is it happening again? 
i was thinking and verso gave a good idea too... it could be the graphic card too... but then again, when graphic card dies there is no chance you would see a windows window at all... 
if they switched you a bad power into it they probably won't tell you... so you can ask them about it but don't expect some confessions  
at the end, you will probably have to buy some better power supply...


----------



## DJZG

Verso said:


> Wow, we have a musician here.  Balkan style.
> 
> Yeah, lately I was, cause you always had like 9.91 posts per day.


 something like that hehe :tongue3: 
i still need to buy a new accordion cause this one is over 20 years old and sounds are getting rusty...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What kind of music do you guys like?

Chriszwolle, my Last.fm page

Recently, I listened a lot to Dream Theater and Porcupine Tree


----------



## DJZG

ChrisZwolle said:


> What kind of music do you guys like?
> 
> Chriszwolle, my Last.fm page
> 
> Recently, I listened a lot to Dream Theater and Porcupine Tree


i'm pretty even with music... i can listen mostly everything... going out is mostly to some techno or trance, i prefer goa-trance but there isn't many places to hear such music... playing accordion always gets me to ex-yu folk songs... so on the other side i'm tied to that too... and when people get drunk i get a lot of cash


----------



## PLH

ChrisZwolle said:


> What kind of music do you guys like?


Rock, older one: AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath. Also Peter Gabriel, Frankie Goes to Hollywood


----------



## Ni3lS

I like all kinds of music actually. Not really classical or gothic rock. But I like rockbands like Linkin Park/Iron Maiden but also stuff of timbaland and TOP40 songs


----------



## Ni3lS

DJZG said:


> psst guys  check me on youtube playing accordion :tongue3:
> don't mind few mistakes i made i'm still learning :cheers:
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilSLClScZ5k


Wow you are playing damn fast :nuts: Nice!


----------



## DJZG

Nielsiej13 said:


> Wow you are playing damn fast :nuts: Nice!


keys are little bit worn out and hard to press... i would play it faster and smoother but as i said keys aren't flexible anymore... 
you should see me on some 3000€ Guerrini :tongue3:


----------



## Ni3lS

Hehe, well you need a great job to buy an instrument like that I guess 

Someone wants to help me with my english exam? Have to learn first world war poems and texts. :sleepy:


----------



## DJZG

something like... Deutschland uber alles 


i had one chance few years ago but my dad didn't quite believe that i'll be good in playing so he missed to buy one extra accordion for low money...
now i'm stuck with this and probably next major party when i'll play, maybe i can raise 2000€ from drunk people


----------



## Majestic

ChrisZwolle said:


> What kind of music do you guys like?
> 
> Chriszwolle, my Last.fm page
> 
> Recently, I listened a lot to Dream Theater and Porcupine Tree


Now that's some good music here, I like that :rock:
If you like Dream Theater, you should check out *Riverside*: http://www.lastfm.pl/music/Riverside

Here's my profile btw: http://www.lastfm.pl/user/MajesticMan


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Do you know the Polish band Abraxas? They have an amazing song called Pokuszenie


----------



## Ni3lS

I hate war poems :sleepy: Can't get through them. Didn't study this afternoon so I have to this evening..


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ I never had to learn that. What kind of education do you have?


----------



## Ni3lS

Don't know. it's terrible and ridiculous. Why do we have to learn those stupid poems. I don't like them. no one likes them and there is no sense in learning this stuff because after the exam everyone forgets it.


----------



## Majestic

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ Do you know the Polish band Abraxas? They have an amazing song called Pokuszenie


Yes, that's a good song indeed. And "pokuszenie" means temptation but you probably know it 

BTW, all Riverside songs are in English 



Nielsiej13 said:


> I hate war poems Can't get through them. Didn't study this afternoon so I have to this evening..


What poem do you struggle with?


----------



## Ni3lS

Lol. Poems like this one:

Rupert Brooke - The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be 
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

:sleepy: :nuts:


----------



## Majestic

I hope you don't have to learn it by heart, do you? :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

At least it's not in old English  like Thy and Thou


----------



## Ni3lS

^^ not in old english. Dude, they use words who are driving me insane. don't know the translation. And people of 16/17 years old in The Netherlands have to learn this shit? unbelieveable. I hate school :sleepy:


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> At least it's not in old English  like Thy and Thou


shall i compare thee to a sunny day


----------



## Ni3lS

DJZG said:


> my friend from college had a nice trip in USA... he found some job in Vermont national park, worked there for about one month, then went to NY, had some fun... found job at KFC in Ocean City, earned some money... then they rented a car and went on a trip across america to SF... they've been mostly everywhere... Memphis, Kansas City, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco... and at the end they went back with car to NY...
> six months of enjoying adventure :cheers:


Cool, Im a bit too young for that though


----------



## Timon91

^^What education stream are you in? VMBO, HAVO, VWO?


----------



## Mateusz

This topic has already over 330 replies :nuts:

I have today a test in computing today which covers basically everything of what we did since september... 

principles of computing,comutation and computability nuts, algorithms, problems sloving, Finite stae machine, state transitions, variables and loops, binary and ASCII also Hamming and Grey's coding, error checking, graphics, sound, system life cycle 

^^^^^^:nuts::nuts::lol: 

I kept revising all last week... 

and I have to do speech for my English, I choosed road infrastructure topic, I mention also type of crash barriers :cheers::banana::lol:


----------



## DJZG

^^ so Radi can be your tutor :lol::banana:


seems that crisis isn't over yet... they let the gas flow but ukraine blocked pipes again... 
among hungary and serbia, we could be facing shortage too... 
i'm not sure what happens when all gas goes out of pipes... and does gas in touch with air makes some explosion... what will happen when pressure falls down... uhh... 
we are still going to work shorthanded without 80% of workers cause we can't find available space to work... some of us will work night shifts too...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Uh oh:









30 minutes for 4 miles:









Pics taken between 10.30 and 11.00 am, rushhour, eh whattuh?


----------



## PLH

In other words - the worst heck of Volvo ever, and one of the best of Ford


----------



## Robosteve

Nexis said:


> *3.Is it like a Vacation just to drive around on mutiple Highways?*


I wish I could still do that, I think I've driven most of the main roads in and around Sydney at one point or another. I used to go driving at night all the time until my car got wrecked in an accident. hno: The reason I would drive at night is that Australian drivers are so terrible, I prefer driving among as few other cars as possible. Also, at night I figure there's probably less chance of getting caught driving 140 km/h on highways with a speed limit of 110, just because I don't see why they would bother policing a road with almost nobody driving on it. :cheers:


----------



## Billpa

ChrisZwolle said:


>


^^ Do all motorways in The Netherlands have that rumble striping on the edge? I hadn't noticed it before.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ They often do. It's actually for drainage so that water won't stay on the driving lanes but can flow into the side.


----------



## Billpa

No kidding?!? I always tought those were just rumble strips to get the attention of distracted drivers ... you learn something new everyday.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ They do that too, but I believe they're mainly designed for drainage. 

I also saw some roads with rumble pavement on the edges of the road.


----------



## Timon91

^^Really, in the Netherlands? I've never seen that over here.

You mean something like this:


----------



## Ni3lS

Timon91 said:


> ^^What education stream are you in? VMBO, HAVO, VWO?



Havo  I have to pass my exams this year :cheers:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Timon91 said:


> ^^Really, in the Netherlands? I've never seen that over here.
> 
> You mean something like this:


Yes, exactly like that.

Location: N307 Dronten - Kampen (Flevoland part)


----------



## Radish2

OMFG, good motorways don´t have that, I don´t want my car to start jumping and break my suspension when i accidently get on the relief with one tire. The Struma motorway is smooth everywhere exactly as the M5.


----------



## Timon91

It doesn't ruin your car, Radi.


----------



## Verso

Radish2 said:


> OMFG, good motorways don´t have that, I don´t want my car to start jumping and break my suspension when i accidently get on the relief with one tire. The Struma motorway is smooth everywhere exactly as the M5.


:lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Another sucker who followed his TomTom GPS too closely









It was reported he drove 200 meters across the ice before sunk into the water.


----------



## Timon91

Another failed "Ice road driver"


----------



## Ni3lS

Wish me luck again guys.  History and Biology :sleepy:. History is easy, but biology? Good night


----------



## Robosteve

H123Laci said:


> check this: *NANO PAD*


That's a pretty neat idea, thanks.  I've bookmarked the site in case I decide to get one.


----------



## Verso

Robosteve said:


> I used to sleep during the day if I didn't have anything else to do, just so I could be awake enough to drive at night.


:hilarious


----------



## Ni3lS

Zzz. Im learning german now :sleepy:. It's an easy subject though.


----------



## Timon91

Though I've had German for four years, it is way better then my French, which I had five years at high school :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Same counts for me. I was actually pretty good in French getting mostly 8's and 9's (on a scale from 1 to 10), however, it faded away pretty quick. So now my German is way better than my French. I can mostly read French, and speak a few words, but not more than that.


----------



## Timon91

Yeah, in the beginning I had higher marks for French. Last summer, during a layover on Paris Charles de Gaulle I tried my French by asking something. It didn't really work out though. My German, however, is way better. I had a party in Germany in June and I spent the whole evening talking with some German guy, without too much difficulty :lol:


----------



## Verso

My French also sucks, I've forgotten most of it. However, my German has greatly improved after just reading Austrian teletext every day.  I'm much more self-confident speaking it than I used to be.


----------



## Ni3lS

Im a disaster on french. Don't have french. Only have german and english. German is quite an easy language for most dutch people I think.. quite similiar


----------



## Timon91

Yeah, lots of Dutch (including myself) use the Dutch word as German when they've forgotten the German word. Just don't use "Bellen" in Germany (bellen = dutch for calling/using the telephone), or else people will stare at you :lol:


----------



## Morsue

Languages! One of my favourite subjects. I'm born and raised in Sweden with Moroccan parents so I've got four languages almost for free. I speak Swedish, English, Moroccan Arabic and French fluently (even though I had to study French in school). In high school I studied German at an advanced level and through my knowledge of French and my love for Spanish football I've managed to learn Spanish too. When abroad I always try to speak with the natives in the local language, so I've picked up some Portuguese too from my visits there even though my glossary sometimes becomes blurred with the Spanish.


----------



## Verso

^^ Damn polyglots! 



Timon91 said:


> Yeah, lots of Dutch (including myself) use the Dutch word as German when they've forgotten the German word. Just don't use "Bellen" in Germany (bellen = dutch for calling/using the telephone), or else people will stare at you :lol:


Bellen = to bark. :lol:


----------



## Ni3lS

still learning :sleepy: :nuts: 100 german sentences ( redemittel ) and 150 german words.. Started at 9 pm.. :lol: Good night


----------



## DJZG

wow... morning in zagreb has started with 20cms of snow and it keeps on falling... 
still no gas coming to us so reductions are pretty much everywhere except in households, schools and hospitals...


----------



## H123Laci

why to learn so many languages? :nuts:

english is quite a good common language, everybody should learn that...
for an ordinary people its quite enough...

(of course if you want to be an interpreter, translator or want to work abroad you have to learn that specific language...)

here in hungary students have to learn two languages in secondary school...
IMO they should have to concentrate their energy only onto english...

only students on language branch should have to learn more than one language...


----------



## H123Laci

Dont you think that the location(city) data should be an obligatory data?

its quite useful to see on the user info box...


----------



## Verso

^^ Are you some kind of a mini dictator? :lol: I agree with you about English though.



DJZG said:


> wow... morning in zagreb has started with 20cms of snow and it keeps on falling...


Exactly what I wanted to write; 20 cm of snow here too, yippie. :banana:


----------



## RipleyLV

H123Laci said:


> here in hungary students have to learn two languages in secondary school...


Interesting... which two languages must students learn in Hungary?

Here in Latvia, students in school have to learn two languages - English and students choice between Russian and German.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yeah, it's a shame that in developed countries like Germany, France and Spain so few people speak more than a few words English... They should look at countries like Netherlands or Denmark where most people speak English that's beyond beginners grade.


----------



## Timon91

Some English people have once said about the Netherlands: "Oh yeah, the Netherlands, that's where people live that speak better English than we do" :lol:

In some cases they're right. What we learn is British English, and not a weird English accent :lol:


----------



## PLH

Is it true that 90% of people in NL speak English? And is it in most cases BrE, or AmE?


----------



## Timon91

I doubt that 90% speaks English. 60% sounds more reasonable. Mostly BrE AFAIK


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Most adults speak English, although not so much with the elderly. 

In my opinion, people speak American English. They say "kaent" and not the British style "Kánt" for the word can't for instance. I think most people use American spelling too (Kilometer, liter, license instead of kilometre, litre, licence etc).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This is what I did today:


----------



## RipleyLV

^ Your all day work?  What it's for?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's a mobile traffic counter. I had to install 10 of them.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yeah, it's a shame that in developed countries like Germany, France and Spain so few people speak more than a few words English... They should look at countries like Netherlands or Denmark where most people speak English that's beyond beginners grade.


Germany and Spain is not that bad actually, but France... they are forcing french as world language, but nobody takes it for real. something like radi syndrom. and when you get French speaking few words of english, and when he sees that you know 3 words of french, he instantly forgets his english and speaks french hno:


----------



## Ni3lS

Timon91 said:


> Some English people have once said about the Netherlands: "Oh yeah, the Netherlands, that's where people live that speak better English than we do" :lol:
> 
> In some cases they're right. What we learn is British English, and not a weird English accent :lol:


I've been tested yesterday by a guy from the highschool company who sends me out to the USA this summer. He gave me about a 9 for my english ( almost fluent ). He said that a lot of dutch people have a dutch accent in their english, ( I didn't had any accent ). I have a bit of an Irish accent in my english, probably because I have some family overthere. But the most important thing is that my english is good enough, so I can go to the USA this summer  Still a lot of paperwork needs to be done, but the start is there .


----------



## Ni3lS

Morsue said:


> Languages! One of my favourite subjects. I'm born and raised in Sweden with Moroccan parents so I've got four languages almost for free. I speak Swedish, English, Moroccan Arabic and French fluently (even though I had to study French in school). In high school I studied German at an advanced level and through my knowledge of French and my love for Spanish football I've managed to learn Spanish too. When abroad I always try to speak with the natives in the local language, so I've picked up some Portuguese too from my visits there even though my glossary sometimes becomes blurred with the Spanish.


Languages are my favourite subjects 2. I hate French though. Im quite good at German, it's easy like I said before. English is also easy for me.. Actually this forum trains my english all the time  ( Im 16 ). I also speak frisian, ( dutch -> doh), and a little Italian


----------



## PLH

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's a mobile traffic counter. I had to install 10 of them.


How are these wires attached to the brick?


----------



## DJZG

good evening all 
i've been in a little shopping spree :lol:

a brand new Thermaltake cooler for processor :banana:














































cost around 65€... quiet as hell and freakin good blue light :lol:


----------



## BND

RipleyLV said:


> Interesting... which two languages must students learn in Hungary?
> 
> Here in Latvia, students in school have to learn two languages - English and students choice between Russian and German.


It depends on the school, there is no rule. The high school where I used to go provided a pretty wide range of languages. The first foreign language came at the age of 11, you (actually your parents) could choose between English and French. At the age of 14 came the 2nd language when you could choose German, French, Russian and Latin. I was on English and German  In another school nearby Italian was among the possible choices, atother places Spanish, and I know a guy whose first foreign language at school was German...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PLH said:


> How are these wires attached to the brick?


^^ The hoses are attached to a small plate that has been secured to the pavement with steel nails of 0,5 cm thick. I use nails when there are curbs, because the hoses need to be at the road, and not hang above them. When there's grass next to the road I use giant steel pins.


----------



## RipleyLV

BND said:


> It depends on the school, there is no rule. The high school where I used to go provided a pretty wide range of languages. The first foreign language came at the age of 11, you (actually your parents) could choose between English and French. At the age of 14 came the 2nd language when you could choose German, French, Russian and Latin. I was on English and German  In another school nearby Italian was among the possible choices, atother places Spanish, and I know a guy whose first foreign language at school was German...


Thanks for the answer!  And DJZG your new cooler for the processor looks huge! The old one didn't handle the heat so you had to change it?


----------



## Timon91

Chris has reached 10,000 posts :banana:

Congrats :cheers:


----------



## Verso

In Ljubljana we first get English at the age of 9 and German (usually) at 15. By the Austrian border German comes first, I think. In the bilingual areas, Hungarian and Italian respectively are obligatory for everyone since the age of 6 or 7, I think. But German will now be obligatory already in primary school.


----------



## Timon91

For me:

English - 9
French - 11
German - 12

I'd like to learn another language though.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'd like to learn Spanish


----------



## Verso

^ Start watching telenovelas. :lol: Congratz for 10,000 posts, btw. :cheers:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^  I didn't even notice


----------



## Majestic

From my experience learning Spanish is so much easier when you're already familiar with English! 
And learning German is so horrible for me. I had to learn it for 3 years at school and I know as much as after 1 year of Spanish :lol:


----------



## Timon91

^^Are you also watching ice-skating?


----------



## (HUN)RoGeR

Is there any study of the road capacity how depends on speed limit?


----------



## Mateusz

I have to do today German homework as well. I am waiting for Friday because my mum will bring my vintage keyboard from home  My rig can be exapnded then


----------



## ChrisZwolle

(HUN)RoGeR said:


> Is there any study of the road capacity how depends on speed limit?


It has been posted. I thought the optimum speed limit for most capacity is between 80 and 100 km/h


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This is how I make my videos:

Velcro on the dash and the cam;









And taping! It almost never falls off, unless you're breaking very hard, it could tip forwards, but I never had the entire camera falling off.


----------



## PLH

^^ I wouldn't place that in front of my face...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Dutchmen are tall


----------



## PLH

^^ Hehe, I meant during an accident.


----------



## Timon91

No airbag?


----------



## Radish2

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ Dutchmen are tall


Oh yes they are, I must be ashamed for only being 1:75, I guess most Dutch women are tall aswell, aren´t they?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Timon91 said:


> No airbag?


Ofcourse I have an airbag


----------



## Timon91

I understand, but I referred to PLH's answer :lol:


----------



## Robosteve

ChrisZwolle said:


> This is how I make my videos:
> 
> Velcro on the dash and the cam;
> 
> And taping! It almost never falls off, unless you're breaking very hard, it could tip forwards, but I never had the entire camera falling off.


That looks like a pretty good solution. I'm not sure if my dad would let me put velcro on the dashboard of his car, but I suppose it can't hurt to ask him. I've thought about making driving videos before, but never seriously considered it until I came here and discovered that there are people in the world who don't act like I'm from another planet for liking roads so much. :cheers:

Also, when referring to the process of slowing down, the word is "brake", not "break".  Breaking is what happens when you drop a china mug onto a tiled floor.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You're right, such a mistake :bash:


----------



## Ni3lS

Radish2 said:


> Oh yes they are, I must be ashamed for only being 1:75, I guess most Dutch women are tall aswell, aren´t they?


Not really actually. French women are little and scandinavian tall? I think Dutch women are between that


----------



## Timon91

^^Most Dutch are quite tall, also women. A friend from the USA came over in June and he was stunned by how tall everyone was :lol:


----------



## Verso

Robosteve said:


> "If I'd use" is also correct, I think.


:sly: :nono:



Nexis said:


> *The only way to tell if Chriszwolle is a geek , is for him to so his picture !*


http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=27441754#post27441754


----------



## Ni3lS

Timon91 said:


> ^^Most Dutch are quite tall, also women. A friend from the USA came over in June and he was stunned by how tall everyone was :lol:


Ok :tongue3: well, most women I know are just normal or little  Have to learn maths again. :sleepy:


----------



## Verso

Oh, shut up with school, people.


----------



## Timon91

Do you anything about chemistry, Verso? I have an exam tomorrow and I don't really understand it


----------



## x-type

hehe wearing Lennon glasses


----------



## ChrisZwolle

He doesn't look really happy though


----------



## Morsue

Where's Maria?


----------



## Verso

Today a comentator on the Slovenian TV accidentally said: "We're watching inauguration of O*s*ama." :hilarious


----------



## Majestic

Verso said:


> Today a comentator on the Slovenian TV accidentally said: "We're watching inauguration of O*s*ama." :hilarious


:rofl:

It reminds me of that radio audition where the presenter prank-called people asking "Does Barack Obama pose a possible threat to the US of A"? Many accidentally took him for Osama when a word like "threat" was mentioned :lol:


----------



## Morsue

Watch out World! B *Hussein* Obama is now the President! With a name like that can he be anything else than a threat?


----------



## keber

H123Laci said:


> hungarian also uses double negative: e.g. "I dont know nothing"
> 
> Its strange for us to say "I know nothing" or "I dont know anything" :lol:


In one of Slovenian dialects there is even triple negative.


----------



## Verso

Example?


----------



## Morsue

keber said:


> In one of Slovenian dialects there is even triple negative.


:shocked: Yes, an example please. "I don't didn't know nothing"?


----------



## H123Laci

Morsue said:


> Watch out World! B *Hussein* Obama is now the President! With a name like that can he be anything else than a threat?


in hungarian "Barack" means "peach" (fruit) :lol:


----------



## Timon91

Majestic said:


> With special dedication to Timon :lol:


Thanks, now I know that I'm not the only one that really hates them :lol:


----------



## Mateusz

Polish uses double negitave as well 'Nic nie wiedzialem' I didn't knew nothing


----------



## Morsue

Stop being so negative! 

I notice Timon has changed his avatar, all in the spirit of hate :devil: kay:


----------



## Ni3lS

Timon, why do you hate the NY yankees so much :lol:


----------



## Timon91

^^Lots of money, no results. Just a bunch of arrogant s***ers. Look at the Red Sox. They might not have won so much between 1918 and 2004, but they at least kept their identity and stayed relatively normal. They didn't become a showbizz company, like the Yank€€$


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> Example?


Heavy translatable, it is in dialect.

A "To ni zanič." / "This isn't useless".
B "A-a" / "Nay-nay" (shaking heads)

Both speakers agree, that this thing is rubbish.:lol:


----------



## Verso

I had to read a few times to get it. :lol:


----------



## Morsue

Timon91 said:


> ^^Lots of money, no results. Just a bunch of arrogant s***ers. Look at the Red Sox. They might not have won so much between 1918 and 2004, but they at least kept their identity and stayed relatively normal. They didn't become a showbizz company, like the Yank€€$


Aren't in earnest all American sports teams just showbiz?


----------



## Timon91

Yes, but the Yank€€$ are quite extreme in this.


----------



## Morsue

We'll see your eyes open when the Boston Red Sox become the The Jacksonville Fives


----------



## Morsue




----------



## Majestic

^^ OMG, porn on youtube


----------



## Mateusz

I watched yesterday movie called 'Jizda' which was quite good though... 

Who likes Czech movies ???


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Russian truck:









Belarussian truck:









Kazakhstan fan:









all pictured today


----------



## Timon91

I hardly see Belarussian or Russian trucks. I do remember a Belarussian truck that I saw on the 18, in Slovakia. It looked like a moving smoke bomb.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

These were very modern trucks (their trailers look older though). In fact, I haven't seen any old Russian/Ukrainian truck lately. All modern vehicles. I guess they only use modern trucks for long distance travel, maybe some old crap for shorter distances into Central Europe?


----------



## RipleyLV

^^ I quite often see Belarussians driving old Russian MAZ trucks in Poland. Yes, they are sending these old trucks to some rather short distances like Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia...


----------



## Majestic

Methinks it's somewhat risky for those truckers to go oldstyle into west Europe as they're much more likely to get their ass busted by a police control or something. :lol:


----------



## BND

Most Belarussian trucks are not different from others, most of them is modern, however I've also seen some older Mercedes trucks (mostly on M3).
Btw I've seen a car from Kazachstan a few days ago here in Budapest


----------



## RawLee

Only Kazah? I've already seen several american vehicles on M3...They really can feed those monsters with the local wages and fuel costs?


----------



## Verso

Robosteve said:


> Also, how do you pronounce "Ljubljana"?


[lyoo-BLYAH-nah] or Liubliana (how Ljubljana is written in Spanish and Portuguese). I'd give you link to the wiki pronunciation, but the guy sounds like he's dying. :lol:


----------



## BND

RawLee said:


> Only Kazah? I've already seen several american vehicles on M3...They really can feed those monsters with the local wages and fuel costs?


American is not that exotic... If you want to show off, or your dick is too short, you can drive a huge monster with American plates without any problem. There are some companies in Europe who work as a "car rental", where you can "rent" an American car with US or Canada plates so you don't have to buy it and register in Hungary. There are plenty of them on the streets of Budapest.

The strangest are those black guys in their 15+ years old Japanese cars, with Nigerian and Ghana plates. You can see them parking around universities.

Btw. once I've seen a truck from Iran on the M1


----------



## Timon91

It has been raining here since 2:30 am in one go. I'm glad I have a day off today


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ I took my car to work the first time this year


----------



## Mateusz

Otherwise a bicycle in harsh weather conditions ?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Traffic information is sometimes a bit humorous in the Netherlands:

A2 Amsterdam -> Utrecht
Near interchange Amstel
Three closed lanes because of a closure


----------



## Timon91

Traffic is actually diverted over the shoulder. But it is still humurous, yes


----------



## Majestic

:lol: Road jammed because of jams


----------



## Morsue

This is a drill. Do not read this message.


----------



## Ni3lS

Didn't had much time for ssc this week.. Busy times are over now  Got a great note for my maths by the way!!  a 5,6 :cheers::crazy:

The only subject I still don't have a note from is english.. I think it's between a 4 and 5, I hate poems :bash:

How ya doin guys?


----------



## Mateusz

I got B- for my speech about roads ! None higher than me :cheers:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nielsiej13 said:


> how ya doin guys?


I guess it's not a surprise if you get a 4 or 5 if you write English like that in class  :lol:


----------



## Timon91

Chemistry: 9,1 :carrot: I'm very happy with that. Last time I had a 6 

Still waiting for the rest.


----------



## Ni3lS

ChrisZwolle said:


> I guess it's not a surprise if you get a 4 or 5 if you write English like that in class  :lol:


Hahah. no, Im not writing english like that in my class.. don't worry  My english teacher just filled in the paperworks for my highschool year.. She gave me a 9 for my english!


----------



## x-type

Chris, have you been here somewhen?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Actually, I have never been there. Hope to visit Zwolle, Louisiana too someday.


----------



## Timon91

There's also a Zwolle in Texas, right? 

Unfortunately this Abcoude is the only Abcoude in the world. The only town that starts with ABC and ends with DE


----------



## Ni3lS

^^ Wow, they really thought about the name of your town didn't they. :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No, there's a Nederland in Texas. It's my avatar on the new Aaroads forum. 

How about Overisel, Michigan


----------



## Verso

In northeastern Slovenia we have two villages one by another, called... Ljubljana and Maribor. :crazy:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I once cycled this road on my regular city bike 









When I got down, I saw this sign:









In the Gorges du Tarn, France, not far from Millau.


----------



## Timon91

Imagine doing that for your everyday commute


----------



## Ni3lS

Any people with facebook overhere? Just had a conversation about it with Timon..


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nah, I have a profile on the Dutch hyves social network, but in my opinion, they're just a stupid hype, showing off who has the most friends. I barely do anything on my hyves profile.


----------



## Ni3lS

haha okay ^^ well, I just created a facebook account specially for my international contacts.. quite useful I think


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Which city are you moving to this summer?


----------



## Ni3lS

Don't know yet, don't really have a choice.. Can only choose a region ( costs 320 - 390 euro's ) 1 region is about 12 states. 6 regions total.. I'll probably choose region 5. From Washington to new mexico.. The mountain states ( Rockies ).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Cool. Are you going to highschool? I almost went there in 2003. 

But I heard most high school scholarships are usually in smaller towns, to get to know the people better or something.


----------



## Ni3lS

Yea Im going to do highschool.. Im probably being placed in a city not larger then 40.000 inhabitants.. or in a suburb of a huge city, but that chance is about 1% I think.. That's why I don't choose for New York or florida/california.. Because you won't be placed in a big city. So I rather choose for a change of landscape ( rocky mountains ) And snowboarding in the winter


----------



## ChrisZwolle

:hm:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I just changed all the country threads. Its now easier to browse the country threads between the other threads.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

deranged said:


> I recall a suggestion a while ago (long-time lurker) of splitting the forum into subsections because of the number of active threads, but I would be against the idea - I think discussion would become too fragmented, and there really aren't that many active threads - those past page 2 aren't really active anyway.


Actually, most stuff from page 4 - 13 are mostly things that originally should've been posted into a country thread. But I don't do that now, otherwise existing threads would get messed up and posts won't be in good order anymore.

I think we have about 4 - 5 pages of real stuff of different topics. I noticed a few old duplicate threads back in page 9 - 13 so I closed those. Most of that stuff was already there before I was assigned mod in 2007.


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Most of that stuff was already there before I was assigned mod in 2007.


2008


----------



## Timon91

Jealous?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> 2008


Possibly, I don't really remember.. In my remembrance it was shorter than two years before I was a member and was assigned a moderator.

I like to have this subforum organized as in putting the stuff about the same subject in one thread as much as possible. That's why we have a much higher post per thread ratio than other Infrastructure & Mobility subforums


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> Jealous?


:sly: I just corrected him, and I even know that fact better than Chris himself.


----------



## Verso

It was in 2008, but before Timon was born.


----------



## Majestic

Verso said:


> It was in 2008, but before Timon was born.


:rofl:


----------



## Verso

7th January 2008, to be precise.


----------



## Timon91

Verso said:


> It was in 2008, but before Timon was born.


You win 

You were only 1½ years back then


----------



## Majestic

Verso said:


> 7th January 2008, to be precise.


Do you keep a diary or something?


----------



## deranged

Yes, this is one of the best organised subforums.

I remember the antics that occured just before Chris became the moderator - Chris wanted a mod for the subforum, and people suggested Chris and Verso. But someone started bagging them for no reason. Then some guy with no interest in highways announced that he was the new mod, but a higher-ranked mod said that that guy wasn't the new mod. :crazy: :nuts:

I think that's how it went anyway. I can't believe I actually remembered that...


----------



## Timon91

*Verso* as a mod?? :hilarious 







Your own fault Verso, you deserved it


----------



## ChrisZwolle

deranged said:


> Yes, this is one of the best organised subforums.
> 
> I remember the antics that occured just before Chris became the moderator - Chris wanted a mod for the subforum, and people suggested Chris and Verso. But someone started bagging them for no reason. Then some guy with no interest in highways announced that he was the new mod, but a higher-ranked mod said that that guy wasn't the new mod. :crazy: :nuts:
> 
> I think that's how it went anyway. I can't believe I actually remembered that...


I know, it was Fusionist, a moderator from Sri Lanka who was just playing jokes with us. Everybody got upset because an "unknown" mod was assigned for highways and autobahns


----------



## Timon91

When Chris became a mod it must have felt like Obama in the White House: finally someone who knows something about it gets to lead, but he first has to clean up the mess made by his predecessor


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*Robert Plant - Big Log*






My love is in league with the freeway
Its passion will ride, as the cities fly by
And the tail-lights dissolve, in the coming of night
And the questions in thousands take flight
My love is a-miles in the waiting
The eyes that just stare, and the glance at the clock
And the secret that burns, and the pain that grows dark
And it's you once again
Leading me on - leading me down the road
Driving beyond - driving me down the road

My love is exceedingly vivid
Red-eyed and fevered with the hum of the miles
Distance and longing, my thoughts do provide
Should I rest for a while at the side
Your love is cradled in knowing
Eyes in the mirror, still expecting they'll come
Sensing too well when the journey is done
There is no turning back - no
There is no turning back - on the run

My love is in league with the freeway
Oh the freeway, and the coming of night-time
My love is in league with the freeway


----------



## Verso

Majestic said:


> Do you keep a diary or something?


I keep all my PMs, and it wasn't hard to find my PM to Chris, cause I remember it was in January 2008. 



Timon91 said:


> *Verso* as a mod?? :hilarious
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Your own fault Verso, you deserved it


Shut up, I was more serious before. 



deranged said:


> Yes, this is one of the best organised subforums.
> 
> I remember the antics that occured just before Chris became the moderator - Chris wanted a mod for the subforum, and people suggested Chris and Verso. But someone started bagging them for no reason. Then some guy with no interest in highways announced that he was the new mod, but a higher-ranked mod said that that guy wasn't the new mod. :crazy: :nuts:
> 
> I think that's how it went anyway. I can't believe I actually remembered that...


Who are you then actually? I mean, your current account was made two days ago.


----------



## deranged

ChrisZwolle said:


> I know, it was Fusionist, a moderator from Sri Lanka who was just playing jokes with us. Everybody got upset because an "unknown" mod was assigned for highways and autobahns


Yeah, I remember now... 



Timon91 said:


> When Chris became a mod it must have felt like Obama in the White House: finally someone who knows something about it gets to lead, but he first has to clean up the mess made by his predecessor


I didn't think Chris had a predecessor, at least not one that was active...

Verso, you'll just have to guess. Maybe I'm Alex Von Konigsberg... or Radi... or Fusionist? 
Of course not. In all seriousness, I'd been reading this section for a long time, but never bothered to create an account.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

deranged said:


> I didn't think Chris had a predecessor, at least not one that was active...


Moderator Asohn is also a mod here:


Last Activity: March 20th, 2007 04:37 AM

:lol:


----------



## Verso

Still the same date.  Well, I hope (s)he didn't die...


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Hmmm?


OMG, delete that.


----------



## Majestic

*[VERSO] Pakistan Motorways & Highways*

:hilarious


----------



## Verso

^^ Not funny. 


Anyway, if you guys remember when Radi somehow couldn't post any more, even though he wasn't banned, I said there were also some "strange" accounts around. I just stumbled upon one such account. Why is SimLim's account like that?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Posts in Skybars don't count, so if someone only posts in skybars his total postcount can be 0.


----------



## Timon91

^^Yeah, there is a forumer in the Dutch section called "ikbenniemand" (I'm nobody ) who only posts in the Dutch Skybar, so he still has 0 posts.


----------



## Timon91

Isn't it that it used to be possible to post as a guest? AFAIK that is not possible anymore.


-edit- Oh shit, not this again. I was just reacting to Verso's post, but he posted earlier.


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ Posts in Skybars don't count, so if someone only posts in skybars his total postcount can be 0.


I'm talking about SimLim's account. Why isn't it possible even to click on it? He's shown as "Guest", not "Registered User", and his posts are actually "n/a" (not available). Unusual account.


----------



## Robosteve

Verso said:


> I'm talking about SimLim's account. Why isn't it possible even to click on it? He's shown as "Guest", not "Registered User", and his posts are actually "n/a" (not available). Unusual account.


On other forums I've been to, that happens when someone's account gets deleted but not their posts.


----------



## x-type

what are skybars?


----------



## Ni3lS

Timon91 said:


> I'm still in the old system, so I had French 1 and German 1. Both last until the fifth year. In the new system there are no more 'divided' subjects, so you have to choose either French or German, depending on your 'profile'. In case of N&T you are forced to have German AFAIK. I'd have liked to have German (the whole subject) and quit French, but unfortunately I couldn't do that
> 
> 
> Sorry everyone for this Dutch highschool jargon, but I guess that Niels will understand it


Ok, Im not that familiar with the old system..


----------



## Ni3lS

x-type said:


> what are skybars?



Are you serious? :lol:


----------



## Verso

Indeed. :lol:


----------



## Mateusz

Offtopic threads on other forums...


----------



## Timon91

Like the Roadside rest area for the entire forum :lol:


----------



## Radish2

I don´t think the roadside restarea thread is a real offtopic thread, because we never have real offtopic discussions, we have discussions about number plates and so on, or sometimes about some forumers who are strange etc, discussions about the forum or so but not real offtopic discussions. Let´s have an offtopic discussion. So are you feeling the January? Are you feeling how the sunrays now are differently to December and altough it´s pretty cold the sun shines friendler and fluffier, more springlike but the cold temps stay. Because the sunrays are differently now in europe and northamerica than in December, people feel happier and warmer now, it´s amazing what atmosphere and the angle of the sun do with peoples feelings. We feel sad November and December but we feel happier February and March because of that.


----------



## mapman:cz

Hehe, how cool would it be having this kind of cake on your table? :lol:

Even lights are on inside ))


----------



## Majestic

^^ Mmmm, yummy :cheers:

New tunnel opening ceremony? Imagine a similar cake model of a bridge.


----------



## Verso

^^ Guys, don't be so on-topic. hno:



Radish2 said:


> So are you feeling the January? Are you feeling how the sunrays now are differently to December and altough it´s pretty cold the sun shines friendler and fluffier, more springlike but the cold temps stay. Because the sunrays are differently now in europe and northamerica than in December, people feel happier and warmer now, it´s amazing what atmosphere and the angle of the sun do with peoples feelings. We feel sad November and December but we feel happier February and March because of that.


:sly: There's no sun shining here anyway...


----------



## mapman:cz

Majestic said:


> ^^ Mmmm, yummy :cheers:
> 
> New tunnel opening ceremony? Imagine a similar cake model of a bridge.


Klimkovice tunnel opening, D1 (CZ). 

I once got my own cake with a motorway and a bridge over it  I'll post it ASA I'l find somewhere in the mess of my comp 



Verso said:


> ^^ Guys, don't be so on-topic. hno:
> 
> :sly: There's no sun shining here anyway...


Here neither, it is pretty foggy and greyish, 1°C  I am looking forward to spring, taking photos and enjoying sunrays ...


----------



## Radish2

Southwestern Germany has good weather most of the times. If the sun would shine it would be like spring for you. End of January it feels pretty fluffy and like everything wakes up allready, in February this feeling is even stronger, even when it´s 0°c. sunrais in spring are great, not so strong like in summer.


----------



## Timon91

Ahhhh, motorway cake. Lovely :eat:


----------



## x-type

Nielsiej13 said:


> Are you serious? :lol:





Verso said:


> Indeed. :lol:


:dunno: absolutely :dunno: i don't pay attention onto names of sub-forums so i don't know why is it so funny :dunno: wherever i write, i write in the same way, doesn't matter whether it is world section or those national subforums (however you call them). frankly, till few months ago i haven't noticed that division at all


----------



## Ni3lS

^^ okay, well. We just thought it was funny because actually almost everyone knows what a skybar is.. and you are member since 2005..


----------



## Timon91

Why change the thread title, Chris? SSC's roadtrippers would have been perfect for the next Roadside rest area


----------



## Verso

For our questionably-educated x-type D): this is Skybar! Chit-chat in other words, like Croatian Caffè, European DLM or Slovenian Gostilna pod lipo. Or this very thread.  I hope it's clearer now.


----------



## Radish2

See? We continue the same discussion again?


----------



## Robosteve

Radish2 said:


> See? We continue the same discussion again?


Trying to start an off-topic conversation just for the sake of having an off-topic conversation isn't going to work. People are going to talk about what they want to talk about, and it seems people here would rather talk about motorways than the weather. Quite frankly, I can't blame them.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Strazdje, Dasvidanja!


----------



## RipleyLV

Chris, your Russian is horrible! 

EDIT: It's Zdraste, BTW.


----------



## Radish2

Robosteve said:


> Trying to start an off-topic conversation just for the sake of having an off-topic conversation isn't going to work. People are going to talk about what they want to talk about, and it seems people here would rather talk about motorways than the weather. Quite frankly, I can't blame them.


We don´t ever talk about roads here, if you can show me one psst were we talk about roads here I would be glad. We talk about Chris´s lizense plate fetishysm and that´s it. Tell me where we talk about aspahlt, thermoplast markings or not, different asphalt types and so on, we don´t, because in the Netherlands there just aren´t good roads, in Slovenia there are but Verso doesn´t seem to be interested about roads aswell.


----------



## Robosteve

Radish2 said:


> We don´t ever talk about roads here, if you can show me one psst were we talk about roads here I would be glad. We talk about Chris´s lizense plate fetishysm and that´s it. Tell me where we talk about aspahlt, thermoplast markings or not, different asphalt types and so on, we don´t, because in the Netherlands there just aren´t good roads, in Slovenia there are but Verso doesn´t seem to be interested about roads aswell.


http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=31276562&postcount=762


----------



## Majestic

Verso said:


> Slovenian Gostilna pod lipo


That sounds nice but funny to me. 

In Polish that would be "Gościna pod lipą".


----------



## x-type

Chris has new hobby - stalking eastern lorries around NL  

Verso, tnx


----------



## Radish2

Ok, could someone tell me why the idiots of google earth don´t refresh their maps frequently anymore. They advertise the shit program that it is very good and let TV channels and so on pay for their shit but don´t refresh to high resolution maps. I am really upset that in Bulgaria they havn´t refreshed anything for about 6 months from now, and even then they refreshed in medium resolution which is to be honest quite low, probably 4 m = pixel. If anyone knows more about google earth could he say why it takes so long to refresh uncovered areas with high resolutional maps?


----------



## Timon91

Tonight at 1 o'clock a dog thought it was funny to start barking. It kept me awake until 2, when the police finally came to pick the dog up and take it away hno:


----------



## Robosteve

I finally borrowed my dad's car and made a driving video, but thanks to Sydney's erratic summer weather, what was supposed to be Sydney Harbour Bridge at night turned into Sydney Harbour Bridge at night in the rain. Some of it is a bit obscured by the water on the windscreen, but I'm going to upload it anyway.


----------



## Radish2

Excuse me, could anyone bother answering my question? Too bad the police caught the dog, he should have barked the whole night like in everywhere else in the world where people have insolation windows and hear almost nothing of the dog.

Ok, could someone tell me why the idiots of google earth don´t refresh their maps frequently anymore. They advertise the shit program that it is very good and let TV channels and so on pay for their shit but don´t refresh to high resolution maps. I am really upset that in Bulgaria they havn´t refreshed anything for about 6 months from now, and even then they refreshed in medium resolution which is to be honest quite low, probably 4 m = pixel. If anyone knows more about google earth could he say why it takes so long to refresh uncovered areas with high resolutional maps?


----------



## Robosteve

Radish2 said:


> Excuse me, could anyone bother answering my question? Too bad the police caught the dog, he should have barked the whole night like in everywhere else in the world where people have insolation windows and hear almost nothing of the dog.
> 
> Ok, could someone tell me why the idiots of google earth don´t refresh their maps frequently anymore. They advertise the shit program that it is very good and let TV channels and so on pay for their shit but don´t refresh to high resolution maps. I am really upset that in Bulgaria they havn´t refreshed anything for about 6 months from now, and even then they refreshed in medium resolution which is to be honest quite low, probably 4 m = pixel. If anyone knows more about google earth could he say why it takes so long to refresh uncovered areas with high resolutional maps?


If someone had an answer for you, they would have posted it. Repeating your question won't help matters, it will only serve to irritate people.


----------



## Verso

Construction update from my street. 

That's quite deep, I hope my house doesn't fall in, lol.









They've already finished here, just asphalt is waiting.









The machine is damn loud!









That's all for now, stay tuned. =)


----------



## deranged

How many months until it's finished?

And when will you be able to drive on your street again?


----------



## Robosteve

Unfortunately, I couldn't borrow the car tonight. hno: Oh well, hopefully tomorrow night I can finally get a video of one or two of Sydney's highways in conditions that don't make it impossible to see anything. I love the Western Distributor in particular; in my opinion, it is Sydney's most impressive highway, a maze of viaducts interconnecting the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the CBD and the recently completed Cross City Tunnel with Ultimo, Pyrmont and the Anzac Bridge. It's just a pity that it is only a stub of what it was once intended to be; a freeway running all the way from Sydney to Newcastle.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The country code discussion has been resolved so far.

UN 2007 list of country codes

If you find any errors with wrong country codes (the wikipedia list is apparantly not completely correct), let me know.


----------



## Timon91

Why did you give this thread a new title, Chris? What's wrong with 'roadgeeks'?


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> Why did you give this thread a new title, Chris? What's wrong with 'roadgeeks'?


You're proud of being a geek, Timon?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

How about " road scholars" ? :')


----------



## Timon91

Are you proud of being a tripper (look at second option), Verso?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ahh Radish fell in love with Slovenia... how cute


----------



## Timon91

Again I react to someone but my posts ends up above the one I'm reacting too. Really, this forum is tripping :lol:

\/:rofl:


----------



## Radish2

Roadtrippers is better, because here are a few real roadtrippers, if I am on the Slovenian new motorways, I aktually get hallucinogenic trips.


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> Are you proud of being a tripper (look at second option), Verso?


Haha, someone must be joking here.


----------



## Timon91

^Or hallucinating :lol:


----------



## Verso

A2 SE of Ljubljana:








promet.si

It started snowing here again, and quite heavily. I have to go to a village in SE Slovenia on Thursday, and I haven't actually driven on snow yet. I'm already "looking forward to"...


----------



## Radish2

Verso said:


> A2 SE of Ljubljana:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> promet.si
> 
> It started snowing here again, and quite heavily. I have to go to a village in SE Slovenia on Thursday, and I haven't actually driven on snow yet. I'm already "looking forward to"...


Lucky you, here it´s cold and cloudy, but it just doesn´t snow, I hope the snow will return soon.


----------



## Timon91

Here it is cold (1-2 Celsius), but it is sunny and cloudless


----------



## Morsue

1-2 degrees, grey skies and a hint of snow on the ground here in Stockholm. Suicide forecasts for Sweden are high.


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> Here it is cold (1-2 Celsius), but it is sunny and cloudless


Of course, when you sent us all this.  Driving in snow isn't exactly my hobby. I already almost broke my car a few days ago, when I overlooked a curb on a parking and ran with a nice speed into it; can you imagine that shocking moment? :nuts:


----------



## Timon91

We've had cloudy and rainy weather for the past two weeks, so please give us some good weather here as well


----------



## Verso

Morsue said:


> 1-2 degrees, grey skies and a hint of snow on the ground here in Stockholm. Suicide forecasts for Sweden are high.


Lol. They somehow "calculated" that the 19th January 2009 (a few days ago) was the most depressive day in the history of mankind (?). Indeed, (before I read that), I dreamt sth very depressive. :lol:


----------



## Timon91

They were quite right about that. I mean, it was cloudy, rainy and windy over here. I had a chemistry exam, and my computer started having trouble again hno:


----------



## Radish2

why don´t you just say what your computer problems are, I may be able to help out.


----------



## Verso

I just watched Taxi!


----------



## Verso

The river is frozen, so he walked? (damn forum)

VVV


----------



## Radish2

And the pic is fake. The hellicopter is so small and the bridge so big, that is photshopped or so.


----------



## Billpa

A Pennsylvania state police helicopter had to be used today to rescue a man who had walked out on the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg. They say he has mental health issues....luckily everything worked out ok.


----------



## Billpa

No, this is not photoshopped- it comes from the local newspaper. The Susquehanna River is a mile wide it's a very wide river.


----------



## Timon91

In the arctic, near Inuvik, they drive over the frozen MacKenzie river and the Arctic Ocean with trucks in winter (Ice Road Truckers, season #2)


----------



## Billpa

Radish2 said:


> And the pic is fake. The hellicopter is so small and the bridge so big, that is photshopped or so.


here's some video if you need more proof 

http://www.wgal.com/video/18576058/index.html


----------



## Robosteve

I'm pretty pissed off; I went out to make a driving video tonight, conditions were perfect for it and I cleaned the windscreen on my dad's car to improve visibility for the camera, only for the camera's battery to die on me while I was out there. :bash:

For anyone out there who's anxious to see some of Sydney's roads, I have to catch the bus to the city tomorrow anyway, and while I'm there I'm going to take a few pictures of some freeways.


----------



## Verso

^ Don't make Radi-like pics. :lol:


----------



## Robosteve

Verso said:


> ^ Don't make Radi-like pics. :lol:


What are Radi-like pics? Close-up shots of soft asphalt?


----------



## Verso

And from the side of a bus, so you only see a (shiny) crash barrier.


----------



## Robosteve

Verso said:


> And from the side of a bus, so you only see a (shiny) crash barrier.


Don't worry, I won't be taking the pictures from the bus - well, I might on the Warringah Freeway as it's quite a long walk from the city itself just to take pictures, but apart from that I plan to walk around the city a bit and find the best vantage points I can.


----------



## Timon91

For the time being my computer works again. It got a new videocard, the old one was broken


----------



## deranged

(double post)


----------



## Nexis

*<Breaking News> * 
*Youtube just frozen one of my videos due copyright violation. I'm trierd oh some people getting in trouble , but alot people getting away , youtube needs to pull all videos , or none. I watch at least a 40 different ones everyday , like mine. I give credit to original owners , which under USA law unless , ur profiting from the video , its not a violation of copyright laws. i read youtube copyright. what the say is 50 % different then the Law. I'm going to take a 4 week break from uploading!*
*
<This has been a special News Bulletin from King Nexis, now we return to Midnight Police>*

*~Corey*


----------



## deranged

Robosteve said:


> What are Radi-like pics? Close-up shots of soft asphalt?





Verso said:


> And from the side of a bus, so you only see a (shiny) crash barrier.


Radi-like pictures are ones like these... 




























Don't worry Radi, I'm just having fun.  After all, you posted some good pics later on.

I'm not particularly interested in photography myself but I've taken a few road pics over the years so I'll see if I can find them...

Look forward to seeing your pics, Robosteve...


----------



## Ni3lS

Nexis said:


> *<Breaking News> *
> *Youtube just frozen one of my videos due copyright violation. I'm trierd oh some people getting in trouble , but alot people getting away , youtube needs to pull all videos , or none. I watch at least a 40 different ones everyday , like mine. I give credit to original owners , which under USA law unless , ur profiting from the video , its not a violation of copyright laws. i read youtube copyright. what the say is 50 % different then the Law. I'm going to take a 4 week break from uploading!*
> *
> <This has been a special News Bulletin from King Nexis, now we return to Midnight Police>*
> 
> *~Corey*


Lol, I never read the rules of youtube.. But why are you going to take a break from uploading, it seems that you didn't do anything wrong?


----------



## Nexis

Nielsiej13 said:


> Lol, I never read the rules of youtube.. But why are you going to take a break from uploading, it seems that you didn't do anything wrong?


*I didn't from , my prospective , in school ur taught as long as u don't say its your Music , or try to profit off it ur not violating the rules , now it seems they catch when u upload as well. its ridiculous, but on the good news i do know a god electronic musical producer , with alot of good tune, so well see might not be 4 weeks , might be a few days. But some of there rules are confusing , or added without notifying Users. From what i read from US & Canada law , as long as you don't say its and yours & give credit , your fine. I think that youtube is starting over step its borders , & start violated freedom of speech , making false copyright laws, rules that don't make sense , or are put in another format that is more or same content. You might see law suits soon towards youtube, Maybe like in less then a year from an angry person or NA government who finds out their sneaking ways to be against some law. As the world becomes more attached to youtube ,things will come out that will raise the Cyber freedom of speech safety, as even youtube has cracked down on the 1st amendment, with the remove of certain videos! *

*~Corey *


----------



## Radish2

Good joke Verso, pic the worst pics and say that are my pics, that´s pretty dumb, should I pick your worst pics and say taht your average photos are like that?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Show us that Verso's wrong


----------



## Mateusz

Pizza delivery


----------



## Verso

^ No, I had some serious business to do colgate, and everything was in the city's outskirts (mofo suburbia :colgate, so I was driving like mad on the ring. On top of that, I had to go to some snow-packed village 70 km away.


----------



## Mateusz

Ridin' 140 km/h down the Ljubljana Ring Road


----------



## Verso

^ Or more. 



Mateusz said:


> Pizza delivery


:lol:


----------



## Timon91

-edit-


----------



## Timon91

Driving the Ljubljana ringroad 10 times....... How many kms did you drive? 37?


----------



## Verso




----------



## Timon91

:rofl:

:jk:

:lol:


----------



## Verso

I calculated - 61 km.


----------



## x-type

Timon91 said:


> Driving the Ljubljana ringroad 10 times....... How many kms did you drive? 37?


do you have croatian genes?  would you like to be my best freind?


----------



## Timon91

Timonic 

I have to befriend some Slovenians, since I will spend 1½ week in that country this summer


----------



## Verso

What a bunch of spammers we are. :lol:


----------



## x-type

Timon91 said:


> Timonic
> 
> I have to befriend some Slovenians, since I will spend 1½ week in that country this summer


yeah, when i think better - real Croat would say 6 or 7 instead of 37


----------



## Verso

:spam1:


----------



## Timon91




----------



## Mateusz

So according to this data Ljubljana Ring has about 0,7 km length ? 

Wow, I didn't know capital of Slovenia is a village


----------



## Verso

Mateusz said:


> So according to this data


Wrong data. Doh.


----------



## Timon91

[reactingasacroatandmakingversomad]Slovenia *is* a village[/reactingasacroatandmakingversomad]


----------



## Verso

Slovenia is a country, just for the sake of correctness.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Slovenia is a country, just for the sake of correctness.


yeah, and Liechenstein is, too


----------



## Majestic

^^ I've checked the manual and it clearly states a session is limited to 2GB, as you said. I'll be taking numerous sessions if neccessary. Do you know what's the best software to compress .MOV files to a more friendly format? (.AVI?)


----------



## keber

I've used Quicktime Pro edition, to convert MOV to standard AVI (not free, but maybe "free") and then MS Windows Media Encoder (free) to compress it into WMV.

To place it onto youtube, I think you don't need any converting.


----------



## x-type

http://www.media-convert.com/

this works fine to me


----------



## Majestic

Thanks for the support guys!


----------



## Ni3lS

Lol, Look my new username.. I actually prefered another name so I will ask again about that..


----------



## Timon91

First you didn't like "Nielsiej13", now you don't like your now one? :clown:

Today I have to hand in my "profile workpiece", by the way. A final project for high school? :gaah:


----------



## Majestic

^^ Let's hope it will turn out to be a masterpiece 

But seriously, what exactly is that "profile workpiece"?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ It's a very direct translation of "profielwerkstuk". It's a paper related to the education profile you're following. It's the most important paper in high school.


----------



## Majestic

^^ So that's some kind of a project? Is it somehow related to the final high school exams, like _Abitur_ in Germany?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

When I was in High School, about 5 years ago, it was a rule when you didn't get a 6+ (scale 0 - 10) on your profile paper, you cannot proceed to the final exams.


----------



## Majestic

Seems harsh. Here you don't need any projects or papers to pass, you simply attend final exams in subjects you chose straight away and you only need 30% score to pass and graduate from high school, which is pretty lame IMO. However, passing these exams is one thing and getting into a good uni is a completely different story.


----------



## Mateusz

You mean 'Matura' exam ?  

Here when you have A Level examination, you do it from 3 subjects, most of decent universities require As and Bs (As preffered likely)... in scale A*- F. So I have to do well in this year in order to have easier with getting good grades in next year.


----------



## Verso

30% is very low, everyone can do that. It's 50% here, or 60% for languages. We also had to do a seminar work (some 30 pages), I had psychology and did a seminar work on suicides. :lol:


----------



## Mateusz

Well, if you ask me, I think it's interesting topic

Those who are going to universities ? Where you want to study. I'm definetely not coming back to Poland, so I will do it here... I can't decide where I want to, I will try to choose relatively close, North of England is reasonably dense urban area so here are quite a lot of Higher Education institutions. I would like to study something like criminal justice... or politics with criminology ? I


----------



## Timon91

ChrisZwolle said:


> When I was in High School, about 5 years ago, it was a rule when you didn't get a 6+ (scale 0 - 10) on your profile paper, you cannot proceed to the final exams.


I can get an "o", a "v" or a "g", standing for "onvoldoende" (insufficient), "voldoende" (sufficient), and "goed" (good). You need a v or a g to proceed to the final exams. However, when you have an o they will probably give you another chance to enhance it, because it's quite a harsh rule. In the new system you get a real mark (1-10) and the average mark of this project and social and political studies must be higher than a 5.5 in order to proceed to the final exams.


----------



## Ni3lS

Timon91 said:


> First you didn't like "Nielsiej13", now you don't like your now one? :clown:
> 
> Today I have to hand in my "profile workpiece", by the way. A final project for high school? :gaah:



Well, I've already send a pm to Jan about a week ago, that if he changes my username, I want another one then I mentioned in the annual change the username thread.. Good luck with your profile workpiece  I got a 8,5 for that! Subject: Stadsontwikkeling in Heerenveen


----------



## Timon91

Thanks  

I think that mine will be sufficient, because the teacher was happy with what we had handed in in December (first draft). Since then, we added several high-quality pages, so I'm quite happy with it. We have 65 pages in total :lol:


----------



## Ni3lS

Wow.. I think we had about 8 pages of paperwork. And a map we drawed. And some sketchup renders ( about 60 ) on my USB stick..


----------



## Timon91

An 8,5 for 8 pages - must have been some high quality work 

Of those 65 pages, only 54 are for the real core piece. 8 pages are added appendices, and we have a preface, a table of contents, and a front page :nuts:


----------



## keber

Something offtopic ...

What this licence plate represents (from Poland - there are some Polish forumers around)?








(yes, car is parked wrong, around my apartment block this is normal, sadly)


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

I have a Nokia E51 with a wifi connection, so I often lurk SSC during some extraordinary boring lectures at the Uni. Regrardless of the tiny display it's surprisingly convinient.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> Guess what: asohn isn't our mod any more.


Yeah, I asked Jan about it. There were a couple of other mods which haven't been active for more than a year.


----------



## Ni3lS

Hmm. They really need some new mods. I think baqthier or something also isn't active anymore..

Edit: Baqthier and Rainier Meadows are actually active, but don't do anything useful for the infrastructure section..


----------



## Timon91

Of all mods in the H&A section, Chris is the only active one.


----------



## keber

on topic: Women behind driving wheel:






Most probably you've seen it, but it's funny anyway.:lol:


----------



## Ni3lS

Can some of you guys help me out? I want to buy my mom a navigation system for her birthday. ( which is tomorrow ). Any suggestions? Thanks


----------



## Morsue

My mom *needs *one too! But I'm not buying one yet.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ni3lS said:


> Can some of you guys help me out? I want to buy my mom a navigation system for her birthday. ( which is tomorrow ). Any suggestions? Thanks


TomTom One Europe


----------



## Ni3lS

Thanks, just googled before I read your reply, and it's indeed the best option I think


----------



## Mateusz

Ha ha, college is closed because of snow ! :lol:

So I have day off today, if it will be closed tommorow then I will have nice 4 days long weekend :lol:

England, oh England... some snow and you stop to live...:nuts:


----------



## Timon91

Netherlands, oh Netherlands....what a rain day hno:. I just came home, completely soaked.


----------



## Nexis

Timon91 said:


> Netherlands, oh Netherlands....what a rain day hno:. I just came home, completely soaked.



Well at least you have a world class Flood protection system :lol:

Chriszwolle's is losing his grip on the forums .... slowy...but...steadly ... hes not starting new threads, before us quick forumers do! Hes becoming an :ancient: SSC person :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Weekend


----------



## Timon91

Lucky you 

I still have a long day at school tomorrow hno:

Luckily I'm off on monday, but there is a small chance that I have to get up at 4:45 monday morning hno: That will be hard to do


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Weekend


bitch


----------



## Morsue

Don't insult the mod, he might ban you :lol:


----------



## Mateusz

Radi never got banned so no worries


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I want to take this route in June; a Trans-France route, mostly Voie Expresses, so toll free.


----------



## Mateusz

In your Kangoo ?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You bet... the Chrismobile


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think they go from Travemünde.


khm, i didn't have that in my mind. so they actually dont' touch Sweden nor Denmark


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Probably not. I've been to Denmark twice recently, and I never noticed any Finnish trucks, also not around København.


----------



## x-type

i am copying Chris with using original toponims, not the english ones


----------



## Morsue

Today I saw a Romanian car in central Stockholm. Seems to be bought in Sweden only having Romanian plates though.


----------



## Mateusz

Romanians now will spread over in Sweden ^^

Like... we... Po**** in UK and Ireland :lol: :banana:


----------



## Verso

We're getting another Transport & infrastructure subforum? Look at the SSC home page.

EDIT: it's already gone.


----------



## Morsue

Well it's back, and if it disappears again here's proof:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think they tried to add a new subforum in the UAE forums.


----------



## Ni3lS

^^ We already asked Jan about it, It's supposed to be a subforum for the UAE section.



Timon91 said:


> In the last two years I've seen just one Finnish car: in Stary Smokovec, Slovakia


Me 2, but I saw it in Italy last summer


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Tornado warning along I-40 and I-44 near Oklahoma City. Hail has the size of BASEBALLS.


----------



## Nexis

*DO they ever have medium to large Tornado's in Europe?*

*I saw a New Brunswick license plate as well as a British Colombia Plate, which is rare here. Usually you see Quebec or Ontario plates, i see one of those a day.*


----------



## Timon91

^^I saw a car with a Florida license plate in Alaska, no joke.

There are some tornado's in the Netherlands, but they are small and rare. Usually 6 or 7 a year. Last year in July there were three tornado's in the eastern part of the Groningen province.......destroying two farms.


----------



## Ni3lS

I saw some incidents of Tornado's on the news a few days ago. I think the most of them happen in France/Spain or UK


----------



## Timon91

I really love this climate. I came home soaked again :gaah:


----------



## Ni3lS

^^ Haha, It rained a bit overhere. It stopped when I was cycling though :tongue2: Yesterday evening I had to repare my bicycle ( repare the tire ) because I cycled through glass or something. It was like freezing outside, and way to cold to repare my flat tire, but I finished it!


----------



## Timon91

When I left school it was still dry, but two minutes later it started raining. It hasn't stopped yet


----------



## Majestic

I just got back home, 25 mins walk with wind and snow blowing right in my face :rant:

I didn't even take the car because I suspected heavy traffic which turned out to be quite moderate to my surprise today (just 10 min ride approx.). Normally that kind of rush hour drive takes 20 mins, so walking 25 is quite a good solution actually. :lol:


----------



## Jeroen669

Got smashed down on my bike this morning (no big injuries). Damn, it was extreme slippery. :nuts:

Currently it's raining, and I'm soaked. I think I'll take the car tomorrow.


----------



## Verso

Guys, you're funny. :lol:


----------



## PLH

And awkward :tongue4:


----------



## Timon91

And Dutch


----------



## PLH

And what I've just written, huh?


----------



## Timon91

Of course :clown: :nuts: 

We're all a bunch of spammers, aren't we? Luckily we're not as bad as that weirdo from Greece


----------



## PLH

Oh, _very interesting_ what you're saying..


----------



## Majestic

Awesome discussion (and pictures)... :cheers:


----------



## wyqtor

Indeed.


----------



## PLH

Check this out:
http://www.norc.pl/

Street view of Warsaw, Crackow, Poznan and Wroclaw

Only blue dots work


----------



## Majestic

^^ Wow, that's uber-cool! Quality is 10x better than Google's Street View. :cheers:

I can see my block. :banana:


----------



## Mateusz

Wow I should live in some uber cool city in Poland, otherwise there is no such view for my town in Lower Silesia


----------



## Majestic

One thing goes beyond my recognition though: they covered some minor, god-forsaken residential streets but skipped most city-centre streets and avenues. :dunno:


----------



## Mateusz

It's similar in Microsoft Virtual Earth Bird's View

You get pretty pictures for residental areas but none for town centres


----------



## Radish2

OMG, that´s all big bullshit, they should make a 3d application that can use 3d hardware so that you can fly smoothly over the cities and have full control, but except some gamedevelopers I don´t expect anyone o ralize such a program, if I only look how bad the graphics in googleearth still are, the atmosphere scattering and sunshading are really crappy, you don´t get at all how it looks in each month. Only Nasa worldwind with the higher resoluted layers has good 3d features. The surface geometry is very good and the sunshading and atmosphere colors are just amazing, you type in November 7th, 12:30 and have a clear idea how it looks in your area or anywhere else in the world at that date, ofcourse if you activate the high resoluted layers only.


----------



## Mateusz

Google Earth has option of a flight...


----------



## Radish2

Mateusz said:


> Google Earth has option of a flight...


Oh, the flightsimulator, it´s so poorly designed. There is no atmosphere in googleearth, in the distant the surface isn´t blue, etc, I think for a 3d program they should have designed it way more complex.


----------



## Robosteve

I'm so drunk right now, my first time, and it makes dealing with heartbreak much better, mods delete this post if you think it's bad,I don't care.


----------



## Robosteve

I'm drunk even moare, sory, my frist time beign drunk,andi'm posting here, yo guys are the best, you're the only poeple who'e ever understood my fascination with roads, i loe you guys and i'll never let you down.


----------



## Radish2

Robosteve said:


> I'm drunk even moare, sory, my frist time beign drunk,andi'm posting here, yo guys are the best, you're the only poeple who'e ever understood my fascination with roads, i loe you guys and i'll never let you down.


I like to see how sentimental people are when they are drunk, would they only be a bit mroe sentimental when dry.


----------



## Verso

Haha, this is hilarious. :lol: PS: I was first drunk much earlier than at 19.


----------



## Radish2

Verso said:


> Haha, this is hilarious. :lol: PS: I was first drunk much earlier than at 19.


You sound as if you want to have a competition, I was first drunk with 15.


----------



## Timon91

I've never been really drunk, but I have "experienced the effects" a few times


----------



## PLH

What?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Convalescence is the user name of somebody here.


----------



## deranged

At least it's a better name than Llanfairpwllgwy-ngyllgogerychwy-rndrobwllllanty-siliogogogoch...

Every time s/he clears his/her cookies, s/he'll have to copy and paste his/her name back in... unless s/he's got _that _memorised...

(And yes, I see the irony in myself commenting on others' strange usernames! )


----------



## Ni3lS

^^ hahaha, that was actually a joke, but Jan did where he asked for.. Before that name his name was Doveling, and he thought it was fun to mention a name like that in the annual change the username thread, but he got where he asked for :lol:


----------



## deranged

Yeah, I just found it:



Llanfairpwllgwy-ngyllgogerychwy-rndrobwllllanty-siliogogogoch (then known as Doveling) said:


> is the name Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch still available ?





Jan said:


> Page 3
> ...
> Doveling > Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch: Amazingly it was still up for grabs. Congrats!


----------



## H123Laci

deranged said:


> Every time s/he clears his/her cookies, s/he'll have to copy and paste his/her name back in...


I never clear my cookies...
is it necessery?


----------



## PLH

Depends what sites do you visit


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Is there a SSC IRC channel? Maybe we should create an Highways & Autobahns one


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Dammit, I had a day off planned friday, but I just recieved a letter from the electricity network authority that they shut down my electricity between 9.00 and 14.00 for maintenance.


----------



## Radish2

ChrisZwolle said:


> Dammit, I had a day off planned friday, but I just recieved a letter from the electricity network authority that they shut down my electricity between 9.00 and 14.00 for maintenance.


In Germany and Bulgaria such things don´t happen.


----------



## Majestic

^^ Is that because you don't have electricity yet?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Radish2 said:


> In Germany and Bulgaria such things don´t happen.


They don't do maintenance, and wait for the energy network to collapse sometime?


----------



## Radish2

Majestic said:


> ^^ Is that because you don't have electricity yet?


OH, you want to make out a fool of me, well be smarter next time, if I wouldn´t have electricity I wouldn´t be able to psot, especially not at nights, I can´t be in a internet cafe 24/7


----------



## Majestic

I love the way you turn catty trash-talking into some serious shit :lol:


----------



## deranged

Radish, no-one's trying to make a fool out of you; it's just light-hearted banter!


----------



## Morsue

Majestic said:


> ^^ Is that because you don't have electricity yet?


Hahaha, best comment today! :lol:


----------



## PLH

Massive pile-up on A4 near Wrocław plus rescue helicopter crash due to fog and snow:

http://www.traxelektronik.pl/pogoda/gddkia/dat/kamery_zb11.htm



Rafis said:


> z onetu


----------



## Robosteve

Hey guys, sorry I haven't been contributing much lately, I've had things on my mind. I'm now uploading the second half of that video I posted a while ago, which is of the Warringah Freeway and Lane Cove Tunnel.


----------



## Verso

This looks bad, PLH. How many vehicles were involved? Any injuries?


----------



## Majestic

Around 20 cars involved, only some minor injuries among the drivers but 2 emergency chopper crew members dead after the heli crashed, probably due to extremely poor visibility. hno:


----------



## Timon91

:toilet:


----------



## Verso

Nothing interesting. First time I added another "" smilie, second time I erased it, as well as "^^". :lol:


----------



## Timon91

I see. Perfectionist


----------



## Verso

Yeah, sometimes I edit my posts endless times. Thank god it doesn't say how many times you edited them. :lol:


----------



## Timon91

Normally when I edit posts I do it right after I posted them, so it doesn't say that I edited it :lol:


----------



## Verso

^^ Sometimes (lately) it even doesn't say, if you edited it shortly after writing it, but someone's already seen it.

PS: I'm thinking, whether to delete "^^". :hilarious


----------



## Radish2

Verso, why am I a special case? usually the friends get dissed more than the enemies. I am nice to you and praise Slovenia.


----------



## Verso

You were different in 2007 though.  Some people think you haven't changed though.


----------



## Morsue

Any Ajax fans in here (Timon, I'm looking at you!)? I just saw the match on tv, and I must say it was an extremely well-deserved win. *NOT!* 

I don't really care, I'm not a Viola fan either. I just like to provoke.


----------



## Timon91

Yeah, they were a bunch of lucky bastards, but hey, they won. Same for Fc Twente. At least they deserved to win from Marseille


----------



## Robosteve

Rain is predicted for tomorrow, but if the weather surprises us with something a bit better I may finally be able to make a video of Sydney's M4 motorway (during the day this time :tongue3.

Edit: I'm also going to try out Cinelerra for video editing with this one, and I'll see if I can't add some music to it.


----------



## Ni3lS

Timon91 said:


> Yeah, they were a bunch of lucky bastards, but hey, they won. Same for Fc Twente. At least they deserved to win from Marseille


Ajax was indeed very lucky. But I don't care, the fact is: this evening was excellent for the Dutch soccercompetition. Otherwise we lose another UEFA Cup place, that would be terrible, I want to see my club in the uefa cup again next year :cheers:


----------



## Morsue

Here's a complete OT question: How do you pronounce the Dutch name Jos? Is it Yosh, or Schosh, or Schos? Or none of the above?


----------



## Timon91

Yosh, but without the 'h' on the end, so sth like Yos


----------



## Nexis

*Takes on Chris >
Chris can u please stop trying to act like u know the Highways & Metropolitan areas in USA , u don't drive on them every day , u don't feel them everyday , u don't smell them everyday , so u don't know what US Americas know about are Highways , all u do is take trips , but u don't live here! *
*
Sorry if that came out mean but your starting to push it, *

*~Corey*
*
By the Way is your Neighbor still Water his plants from the Second Story , does he De Ice them in the winter?*:lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nexis said:


> *Takes on Chris *


*

We have a PM system you know...

And I don't know what your problem is, if you may only discuss the places where you live this forum would've been dead for long.*


----------



## Nexis

Edit
Forget it , i was just having a bad day!


----------



## Verso

Holy moly, where did I get additional 500 posts in the last few days?  I think the new economic part of the DLM (Economia) counts your posts, but what's new today? A few minutes ago I had some 250 posts less.


----------



## Ni3lS

Lol.. You are counting your posts?


----------



## Timon91

Must be an SSC-record. Only christos-greece could have achieved more posts a day


----------



## Timon91

Ni3lS said:


> Lol, Carnaval sucks :tongue2: ^^ Maybe are they going to the south by bike?


Yeah, I don't really like it as well. Going to Oeteldonk all the way from Zwolle is quite a ride indeed


----------



## ABRob

ChrisZwolle said:


> Sometimes they have these in Google Earth, why is that?
> http://i39.tinypic.com/2mpdjia.jpg
> 
> A very small, but extremely detailed photo.
> 
> edit: to show how detailed it is:
> http://i39.tinypic.com/24d080l.jpg


It belongs to the "Africa Megaflyover"-Layer:
http://i42.tinypic.com/1j5m4w.jpg

More:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/megaflyover/


----------



## ChrisZwolle

just emerged from years of warfare...

The war in Mozambique ended 17 years ago...


----------



## keber

Radish2 said:


> Chris, can you answer my question about googleearth?


It costs much money and time to cover every corner of the Earth with high detail satelite imagery.
If you're not satisfied with Google Earth, then try something different. Maybe you have high detail aerial imagery of Bulgaria available freely online on some government or other site.

At least for Slovenia we have aerial imagery from July 2006 for whole country and it is freely available for viewing on number of sites. Next aerial photo shooting of whole Slovenia will probably take place this summer.


----------



## Radish2

keber said:


> It costs much money and time to cover every corner of the Earth with high detail satelite imagery.
> If you're not satisfied with Google Earth, then try something different. Maybe you have high detail aerial imagery of Bulgaria available freely online on some government or other site.
> 
> At least for Slovenia we have aerial imagery from July 2006 for whole country and it is freely available for viewing on number of sites. Next aerial photo shooting of whole Slovenia will probably take place this summer.


Unfortunately I don´t know something different that could have very high resolutions. But I find it rediculous that they advertise and sell extraordinarily priced Pro versions altough even important big cities in Bulgaria, Romania etc aren´t covered at all. It´s unbelievable. and lately they began to use some medium resoluted pictures that are probably 20 squaremeters = 1 pixel or so which is really fucking dumb. I find people should not use google at all and Tv channels should all emidiatelly quit using the peace of shit until they finally covered at least important places with high resoluted pictures.


----------



## Billpa

I imagine if Google had high-res images of these places they'd put them online, don't you? Why would they not display these areas if they had them? And if they DON'T have them it's likely because they're not available. Perhaps you should speak with someone in your national capitol about what high-res shots they have on file and why they've not released them to Google.


----------



## Radish2

Billpa said:


> I imagine if Google had high-res images of these places they'd put them online, don't you? Why would they not display these areas if they had them? And if they DON'T have them it's likely because they're not available. Perhaps you should speak with someone in your national capitol about what high-res shots they have on file and why they've not released them to Google.


Oh, someone has to give them google, to relase them? I think google has to download the satelite pictures, to get them from Nasa etc, I am sure they have enough sources to get what they want. Do you think that Nasa and other companies havn´t scanned the whole planet yet? I am sure there is very high resolution imaginary but google hasn´t ordered it.


----------



## Billpa

I can tell you here in the northeastern US the areas that have the best resolution are often a result of some state agency having these things on file. When you're on Google Earth and you go in close it will often tell you at the bottom of the screen who holds the copyrights to the pictures, etc. New Jersey, for example is all hi-rez compared with Pennsylvania where there are still some areas (State College) that are low-rez. I just have a hard time believing Google wouldn't want to put Romania in hi-rez if they had the photos on hand- it wouldn't be logical.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think these satellite pictures are quite expensive. Put in a lot of bandwidth, and we may be blessed Google makes this available to us - for free. 

Although I also hope more imagery will be added soon, especially from central/eastern Europe. But the Netherlands is also not very clear, while I know all of the country has been photographed from the air.


----------



## x-type

Austria is one of the poorest covered european countries


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A lot of the Swiss imagery is from 1997!


----------



## RipleyLV

I wish they could take new pictures of Jelgava, because they are far to old from 2002! :lol:


----------



## Timon91

Yeah, Abcoude as well. On GE they are still in the beginning stages of building the new 4-track railway between Amsterdam and Utrecht, while they finished it almost two years ago :lol:


----------



## Radish2

Yeah and in Slovenia there are finished stretches of motorway displayed, but the pics show that the motorway is in construction or there are plains there.


----------



## Ni3lS

Wow, no posts in this thread for 24 hours! That's legendaric isn't it


----------



## deranged

^^ Well, it was actually part of an effort to go 48 hours without a post... but thanks for ruining it...

:jk:


----------



## Verso

Ni3lS hno:


----------



## Timon91

Just OT: I wonder what percentage of posts in the Malaysian thread comes from nazrey. Must be 90 or more


----------



## Verso

Only 76%.


----------



## Timon91

Did you all count it? :weirdo:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I watched Die Hard 1,2,3 and 4 this weekend 

The movies are a bit over the top and far-fetched sometimes, but still fun to watch :cheers:


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> Did you all count it? :weirdo:


http://www.skyscrapercity.com/misc.php?do=whoposted&t=428956 

PS: I watched Dennis the Menace yesterday.


----------



## Timon91

How do you get to that? It's interesting to see who posted most....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Dammit my car insurance still doesn't know Montenegro exists...

Check how it's defined under SRB;

"Green cards, where Serbia is not crossed, give insurance coverage in the Republic of Montenegro and geographic parts of Serbia which are governed by the government of Serbia".

So it's not valid in Kosovo, but I've read they don't buy this at the Montenegrin border because Montenegro isn't listed as a separate country.


----------



## x-type

i know that lorries must buy special insurance licence at Kosovo border. for cars i don't know. ask Snupix, he was there last summer.
btw, i had spa and welness again this sunday  in Hungary this time


----------



## Ni3lS

Verso said:


> Ni3lS hno:


? I didn't know that you guys made an appointment about that. Lol


----------



## Verso

^^ Relax, it was a joke. 



Timon91 said:


> How do you get to that? It's interesting to see who posted most....


When you're in the main H&A site (or any other general site, where you can see threads), click on numbers of replies.


----------



## Mateusz

I really like First Blood and Cobra. They are classy movies. Especially fi you watch them on DVD


----------



## Timon91

You guys did a lot last few days. Since wednesday morning I've basically done nothing. That means that I have to do a lot of schoolwork tomorrow before I get back to school on Tuesday


----------



## BND

x-type said:


> btw, i had spa and welness again this sunday  in Hungary this time


Great decision! Where?


----------



## x-type

BND said:


> Great decision! Where?


nothing far (from me), spa complex in Barcs  nice, clean and new


----------



## Radish2

x-type said:


> nothing far (from me), spa complex in Barcs  nice, clean and new


Did you drive over Slovenia?


----------



## x-type

Radish2 said:


> Did you drive over Slovenia?


no need to this time, thank god


----------



## BND

Radish2 said:


> Did you drive over Slovenia?


As Barcs is located on the H-HR border, it would have been pretty useless


----------



## Radish2

I know, I was just kidding.


----------



## Timon91

x-type is probably regretting the fact that he didn't take a huge detour to see that beautiful tiny country  :lol:


----------



## Radish2

^^ Sure he is


----------



## Ni3lS

Thanks for the info Verso.

Now we can see who are the biggest spammers in this thread 

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/misc.php?do=whoposted&t=800410


----------



## Timon91

Chris is still no. 1, the question is for how long


----------



## deranged

^^

You want to keep your ... unbeaten ... streak alive... 

But you've still got a way to go before you beat these guys! Two members each have over 3,000 posts in a single thread... :nuts:

Also, a list of the most prolific posters.

Nearly half of the forum's 150,000+ members have never made a post.

.


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> Chris is still no. 1, the question is for how long


With useless posts like that, not for long. :lol:


----------



## Morsue

Chris is catching up with christos-greece


----------



## Verso

*Chris*tos


----------



## Mateusz

Now truth cam out... so Chris from Zwolle/Greece has together about 20k posts...


----------



## Ni3lS

Wow. Massive spammers together :eek2:.

@ deranged, Those guys are from Brazil? In the Dutch skybar, your posts don't count..


----------



## deranged

^^

Yeah, posts in virtually all skybars don't count, which is why their actual post counts are lower than the number of posts they've made in that thread.

But here's the scary thing... that thread (Guess the City II) was created on 2 February 2009, and already has over 15,000 posts!
Those two forumers (RJ_Travel and Rekarte) are each averaging about 150 posts per day in just one thread 

.


----------



## keber

I think, that all Burj Dubai threads toghether are absolute winners. Current one has over 16.000 posts, but it started only in October 2007. 28 parts with 51 pages and two parts with 8k + 16k posts = more than 50 thousand posts just in one subforum.


----------



## deranged

^^^

You're right, I don't think anything would beat the Burj Dubai threads overall.

But Brazil's Guess the City I has over 36,000 posts, which might be the record for a single thread.
Parts one and two combined are not far behind Burj Dubai...


----------



## Ni3lS

deranged said:


> ^^
> 
> Yeah, posts in virtually all skybars don't count, which is why their actual post counts are lower than the number of posts they've made in that thread.
> 
> But here's the scary thing... that thread (Guess the City II) was created on 2 February 2009, and already has over 15,000 posts!
> Those two forumers (RJ_Travel and Rekarte) are each averaging about 150 posts per day in just one thread
> 
> .


:eek2: I think we are dealing with.. People who don't have a life at all.. :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

this guy on the popular Dutch fok! forums has about 339,000 posts in 8 years.


----------



## Majestic

^^That's 116 posts/day. :nuts:

How could you possibly accomplish that? I mean, even if you commented on every available picture....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Those are people with no life at all 

I mean, I count myself pretty SSC-addicted, yet I have only like 10 posts per day on average. I spend a lot of the time reading threads though.


----------



## deranged

ChrisZwolle said:


> this guy on the popular Dutch fok! forums has about 339,000 posts in 8 years.


Oh dear... :nuts:
That's just ridiculous... especially that he's kept going at over 100 posts/day for 8 years!

Though I'll bet these two have something to say... 

(Yes, I know that it was just a glitch... or else, they'd need 1 post per second for 136 years...)

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=405485


----------



## Billpa

Here's a snow update from my parents in Maine....They've got a bunch. 

Current depth as of Tuesday morning at noon GMT:


----------



## Verso

deranged said:


> But Brazil's Guess the City I has over 36,000 posts, which might be the record for a single thread.


So... why do we change threads every 1000 posts? :lol:

Btw, Portuguese-speaking forumers (Portuguese, Brazilians) are the worst spammers.


----------



## Majestic

^^ Agreed. That's the reason why Polish subforum is only second to Latinos :tongue:


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> this guy on the popular Dutch fok! forums has about 339,000 posts in 8 years.


uf, this is really serious. at forum.hr (the most famous HR forum) the largest addicts have about 10000 posts per year


----------



## Timon91

I thought that I was addicted......


----------



## Robosteve

deranged said:


> Oh dear... :nuts:
> That's just ridiculous... especially that he's kept going at over 100 posts/day for 8 years!
> 
> Though I'll bet these two have something to say...
> 
> (Yes, I know that it was just a glitch... or else, they'd need 1 post per second for 136 years...)
> 
> http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=405485


That number is the largest value that may be represented by an unsigned 32-bit integer. Seems like somehow the server has set their post count to the highest possible value. :nuts:


----------



## Ni3lS

Insane.. I also read a lot of threads. But the best example for not reading threads and post in every thread you are visiting = defenitely christos-greece. 

Btw : Terrible airplane crash of Turkish Airlines in The Netherlands this morning. Just north of the Amsterdam Airport. 9 deaths and more than 50 wounded casualties. 135 passengers in total. More information: Look at the thread in the airports and aviation section.


----------



## Verso

Is Timon still here? :shifty:


----------



## Timon91

Unfortunately I am 

It's quite serious. I heard it when I was at school. It's only 15 kms from here. Quite close actually


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> Unfortunately I am


:rofl:

Where exactly did it fall? In Amsterdam? Was it an urban area?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Check the Dutch topic


----------



## Timon91

I don't know where exactly, but I think it was over here.


----------



## Ni3lS

It was in a meadow near to the airport.. Also next to the A9 highway, which was closed for a big part of the morning.


----------



## Timon91

Luckily there wasn't any fire - that would have made matters a lot worse.


----------



## Mateusz

But maybe new airport should be build... it would take some air traffic away from Schilpol and therefore traffic from A4 ! 

No, no it can't be that simple...


----------



## Timon91

Yeah, lets make Flevoland one big airport and force everybody to move out of there. We won't miss Almere or Lelystad


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Weekend! 

(it helps if you have a friday off and start at 6.45 on thursday  )


----------



## Timon91

Tonight I have the presentation of my "profile workpiece". Tomorrow I still have a long day at school.You're a lucky bastard, Chris


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Timon91 said:


> Tonight I have the presentation of my "profile workpiece".


Are you nervous yet? I made one with my friend about the Battle of Stalingrad. That was 6 years ago, but I still have it


----------



## Timon91

The presentation doesn't count for the mark, so I'm not nervous. I'm quite unhappy with the way everything is arranged though. I had to do this project in English, because I'm in the bilingual stream. Still it is very unclear whether I have to do the presentation in Dutch or in English. All teachers say something different. Since there will be lots of parents and non-bilingual students I will just do it in Dutch. If the teachers say that I should have done it in English, they just have to shut up, it's their own fault, they should've told me what to do :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What is the presentation about?

Nice in English:

Hi, y'all, welcome all tonight, my presentation is about Gasselterboerveenschemond. Gasselterboerveenschemond is a rural hamlet near Gasselternijveenschemond, and has some interesting history. I'll start with...


----------



## Timon91

No, in a group of four we designed a bridge. Tonight we will present the way how we did it, and we will give a brief insight in the information we found.

And no, this bridge isn't going to be in Gasselterboerveenschemond, Tweede Exloeërmond or Westerhaar-Vriezenveensewijk


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I went through a couple of license plate sites, and I can now confirm I saw a French truck with a Mauritanian trailer this morning. That must be the most distant truck/trailer I've ever seen on the road. It had a blue-white license plate with a RIM abbreviation and some Arabic on it. The plate itself had numericals.


----------



## Verso

Show off.  Wow, Mauritania. :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

http://www.carloslabs.com/projects/200712B/GroundZero.html

I just nuked Blagoevgrad & The Struma Expressway:









:cheers:


----------



## Radish2

you did shit, the Struma *Motorway* is 70 km of Rilci away, and if you think the solid asphalt will break only because of that you have no clue how solid the Struma motorway asphalt is. and could you please not use Atombomps like the ugly fat man, because some opele might be offended or find it wrong what happened then in Japan, where it is clear that America til now played the boss of the world and was a member in pretty much every war the last 100 years, maybe obama will change it, I just hope so.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

So, you're saying the Struma can withstand a 21 kiloton A-bomb? Cool


----------



## Radish2

ChrisZwolle said:


> So, you're saying the Struma can withstand a 21 kiloton A-bomb? Cool


If you would through the fat man directly on it it would be destroed, but if you would throw the fat man to Dupnica the Struma motorway would not get damaged.


----------



## Robosteve

Looks like this weekend is going to be better conditions for making a driving video than last weekend was:

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=...ial&hs=6en&q=weather+sydney&btnG=Search&meta=


----------



## Ni3lS

Timon, how was your presentation??

Btw. I chose for Idaho, Utah and Colorado  ( Region choice for highschoolyear )


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Colorado. So far for the snowboard ideas


----------



## Timon91

It went quite well, but it didn't really count anymore. Still our project will be sent to a national competition for "profielwerkstukken" (profile workpieces), so that was nice.

Why Utah? You'll probably be put in a Mormon family that live in a house without any electricity and luxury. I'd be pissed off 

However, it is beautiful. I've been on SLC airport three times so far (2003 and twice in 2008) and the salt plains are beautiful.

This is a pic I took from the plane last August (coming from Spokane). Unfortunately Delta Airlines prefers to have dirty plane windows, so it's not a very good pic:










Salt Lake City Airport in the evening sun:


----------



## Ni3lS

Hmm. I'm thinking of changing Utah for New Mexico. But not sure yet..

@ Chriszwolle: I can't see the page u posted.. It says: Google error :tongue2:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Maybe you can learn some Spanish in New Mexico


----------



## Verso

How boring here in H&A today. Almost no new comments since yesterday. Where's Timon?


----------



## RipleyLV

Yeah, I noticed that the activity decreases here.


----------



## Verso

Haha, this is hilarious. We've had a humpback whale in our small disputed Piran Bay between Slovenia and Croatia for two weeks already (it can't find its way back to open sea and Atlantic Ocean), so that the Slovenian Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning released directions on how to behave in the bay. Thank god it's not summer and people swimming. :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

RipleyLV said:


> Yeah, I noticed that the activity decreases here.


I've read that activity has decreased in more sections of skyscrapercity.


----------



## Timon91

^^Can you think of an explanation for that?



Verso said:


> How boring here in H&A today. Almost no new comments since yesterday. Where's Timon?


At school, it's quite busy at the moment


----------



## Verso

Gee, can it get any worse than saying I posted an hour after I really did? I can't even notice, if anyone posted anything in this one hour to come, as it appears real time by others.


----------



## Billpa

Ni3lS said:


> Hmm. I'm thinking of changing Utah for New Mexico. But not sure yet..:



I used to live in New Mexico. Very interesting place- especially for someone like me from the northeastern USA.


----------



## Robosteve

Good news: today has absolutely brilliant weather. I'm just waiting for my dad to get back to me on whether or not he needs to use the car today, and if not then I'll definitely be going out to make another driving video, this time in daylight.


----------



## Robosteve

Ugh, Australian drivers really piss me off. I went to make a video of the M4 today (which, by the way, went very well; I'll be uploading it sometime very soon), and while driving 120 km/h on the M7, I came up behind someone else going 110. Instead of moving over to the left lane (which was empty at that point), they continued to drive in the overtaking lane. A few kilometres later we reached their exit, and despite the fact that there was no safe gap in traffic in the left lane, they just swerved across the motorway to reach the exit. :bleep:


----------



## Timon91

AFAIK that's the no.1 irritation of drivers in the Netherlands. You can get fined for left-lane hogging


----------



## Robosteve

Isn't this just fantastic? After finally getting hold of a video editing application (Cinelerra) that adds audio to videos properly and uploading the finished first portion of the M4 video I made today to YouTube, I get this message:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I have got that so many times that I don't put music on my videos anymore hno:


----------



## Robosteve

ChrisZwolle said:


> I have got that so many times that I don't put music on my videos anymore hno:


How do they figure out what music is there? Do they just look at the video description? I'm trying to upload it again without putting the song in the description.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No I never put the name of the song in my description. I guess they have scan programs that can detect sound patterns or something.


----------



## Robosteve

ChrisZwolle said:


> No I never put the name of the song in my description. I guess they have scan programs that can detect sound patterns or something.


Well, this is an LP rip of the song, which is a different mix to the CD. I wonder if it's too much to hope for that it won't recognise it on that basis.


----------



## Timon91

Just make your own cover :lol:


----------



## Verso

A newly-discovered psychedelic fish for Radi!  Don't forget to check the video of her jumping!


----------



## x-type

tonight i have met for the first time in my life car in wrong direction at motorway. fortunately for me, we were going in the same, not opposite direction


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> tonight i have met for the first time in my life car in wrong direction at motorway. fortunately for me, we were going in the same, not opposite direction


So you saw it on the other carriageway?


----------



## Timon91

Or x-type had too many rakia's and was also ghost-riding


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> So you saw it on the other carriageway?


yes, i was driving parallely with him. i did about 110, he about 70 so it had not lasted for a long time. i think that i saw him doing U turn in my mirrors, but i'm not sure. all i could do was to call 112 and say where he was. fortunately, the traffic was not large, it was after midnight.


----------



## Ni3lS

Lol, heard that sometimes on the radio in the car. But never saw it myself..


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I also never saw something like that. You have to be extremely blind in the Netherlands to get on the freeway in the wrong direction, road layout doesn't encourage it, there are very noticeable traffic signs and the signage is usually clear enough.


----------



## Timon91

I've never seen it as well. I've seen a video on Youtube of a ghost-rider on the Dutch A58 though.


----------



## Mateusz

There was such situation on Tricity Bypass in Poland... Driver was a woman


----------



## Timon91

Have a look. :applause: for the truck driver






-edit- Another video, from the Dutch tv programme "wegmisbruikers" (road abusers). Someone else did the music though :lol:


----------



## Majestic

That guy in the old white compact must have been really high on drugs :nuts:


----------



## RipleyLV

:crazy:


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> Or x-type had too many rakia's and was also ghost-riding


:rofl:



Mateusz said:


> There was such situation on Tricity Bypass in Poland...


Once? It happens every month here. :lol:


----------



## Timon91

Majestic said:


> That guy in the old white compact must have been really high on drugs :nuts:


He was, in fact :lol:

He also didn't have a license


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I also never saw something like that. You have to be extremely blind in the Netherlands to get on the freeway in the wrong direction, road layout doesn't encourage it, there are very noticeable traffic signs and the signage is usually clear enough.


usually ghost riders say they have mistakenly entered wrong direction. i cannot believe it. if you would enter motorway into wrong direction somehow, the latest after entering ramps you would notice what you've done. driving after that is made on purpose and it is pure idiotism.a lthough allready enetring wrong direction is idiotism because signs for forbidden direction are clear, large and visible. we don't have many "ga terug" signs (we use those fluoroscent with high-five like austrian) but anyway to pass at least 2 large forbidden direction signs at clear road is insanity.


----------



## Verso

Suicides or "fun".


----------



## Billpa

Good job by that trucker, he may've saved a life or many lives.


----------



## Ni3lS

Indeed, real brave


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've got this roadtrip planned with a friend for early September


----------



## Timon91

You better start saving some money considering all the tolls that you have to pay :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

We can split it  Saves me already 50%.


----------



## RipleyLV

Good luck with that Chris! :cheers: Where's point A?


----------



## Timon91

It seems like Chris moved to Utrecht 

@Chris: So it will only cost you a few hundred euros. Right


----------



## ChrisZwolle

RipleyLV said:


> Good luck with that Chris! :cheers: Where's point A?


Under point G  They're the same.


----------



## x-type

Timon91 said:


> You better start saving some money considering all the tolls that you have to pay :lol:


it's not bad, tolls will cost them less than 70€ (half of that amount, of course, only for Slovenia)


----------



## Qwert

x-type said:


> it's not bad, tolls will cost them less than 70€ (half of that amount, of course, only for Slovenia)


Some lowcost flight from Zagreb to Salzburg would be probably cheaper then travelling by car between those cities.


----------



## Timon91

It's all Slovenia's fault, isn't it?


----------



## x-type

actually, they are planning to rise vignette prices nowadays.


----------



## Timon91

If Slovenia rises the price of their freaking vignettes they will be kicked off the planet immediately, so we can go on holiday to Villach am Meer  :lol:


----------



## PLH

Now it's even worse for those not having Euro...


----------



## keber

My summer plan involves about 120 € of tolls, all of that in Italy. Slovenia->Sicily and back. I hope, that gasoline prices won't rise too much.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's cool. Sicily seems interesting. It's not very well known in the Netherlands as a tourist destination, probably bad image because of the maffia and the distance from the Netherlands. (Amsterdam - Palermo is 2200 kilometers). Few people drive that far.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Those trips sound great, don't forget to show us the pictures.


----------



## x-type

^^i was affraid of italian tolls last summer, but it costed me less than i expected (i was lazy to calculate them precisely before trip).
my summer plan - i don't know much about tolls. i even don't know exactly motorway infrastructure of final country, but abou 100€


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's cool. Sicily seems interesting. It's not very well known in the Netherlands as a tourist destination, probably bad image because of the maffia and the distance from the Netherlands. (Amsterdam - Palermo is 2200 kilometers). Few people drive that far.


When I was in Calarbria, Netherlanders were one of the most numerous foreign tourists. Sicily is not much farther.


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> RipleyLV said:
> 
> 
> 
> Where's point A?
> 
> 
> 
> Under point G
Click to expand...

The sexy point?  Anyway, what about Vienna and Berlin?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

keber said:


> When I was in Calarbria, Netherlanders were one of the most numerous foreign tourists. Sicily is not much farther.


Really? I didn't expect that, I don't know anybody who goes there. It's also not really advertised. I always thought most Dutchmen think 1250 km is the limit (to reach the northern shores of the Mediterranean).


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Really? I didn't expect that, I don't know anybody who goes there. It's also not really advertised. I always thought most Dutchmen think 1250 km is the limit (to reach the northern shores of the Mediterranean).


but you know that NL cars appear everywhere! remember my trip and NL car at ferry from HR to I?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yeah that's true. We own Europe


----------



## Timon91

:rock: Yes, we're everywhere 

A friend of mine often went on holiday to Sicily, but he always went by plane.


----------



## wyqtor

Timon91 said:


> If Slovenia rises the price of their freaking vignettes they will be kicked off the planet immediately, so we can go on holiday to Villach am Meer  :lol:


Mediterranean and Alps... I guess that would prevent many family debates about whether to spend the summer vacation on the seaside or in the mountains  .


----------



## DanielFigFoz

If you go around Europe all you see are Dutch caravans.


----------



## Timon91

wyqtor said:


> Mediterranean and Alps... I guess that would prevent many family debates about whether to spend the summer vacation on the seaside or in the mountains  .


Yeah, the perfect combination. It would be quite a steep cliff though :lol:


----------



## RipleyLV

I saw one car with a NL license plate today near a supermarket (Rimi) in Jelgava center.


----------



## Timon91

Chris on a secret roadtrip?


----------



## Ni3lS

x-type said:


> but you know that NL cars appear everywhere! remember my trip and NL car at ferry from HR to I?


True. Especially in the summerholidays. Drive through France, Italy or Germany. There are Dutch cars everywhere.. And we are such a small nation....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yeah, I was once driving on the A31 northbound in France, and over half of the traffic was Dutch...

I don't mind not to encounter Dutch people on vacation. So, I really don't understand why many people go to certain parts of Italy, France or Spain which look more like Dutch exclaves.


----------



## Verso

B/c they look differently than NL? Some people like domestic folks also abroad.


----------



## Timon91

When I was on holiday in Slovakia I met one Dutch family in the High Tatras. I didn't mind not to meet more fellow Dutchmen. For instance, when I was in Italy, the whole camping was either Dutch or Flemish :lol:


----------



## x-type

Dutch ppl like camping, here the camps are full of them


----------



## Ni3lS

Also true^^. My parents don't like it to see Dutch people on their vacation. Most of the times their behavior is bad, and the local population might get a bad image of Dutch people.. For example Benidorm or other places in Spain. They are total overwhelmed by Dutch peope, who are behaving drunk, asocial and stuff. They even build their own snackbars with Dutch specialities overthere!! It's crazy..


----------



## Timon91

As soon as a camping appears in the Dutch ANWB Camping Guide you can be sure that next summer the whole camping is either Dutch or Flemish :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's why I don't go on vacation during July. 

Campings are a nice way to get around Europe with a low budget. Motels are easy like € 40 per night, while I haven't found much more expensive campsites than € 20, but also as low as € 8 for one person.


----------



## Timon91

You have the choice; families with children have to go in July or August, because they have to go in the school holidays.


----------



## Radish2

Dutch people are bigheaded and ignorant, except the older Dutch people and it is so typical for Dutch people to do camping, altough they have the money to go in good hotels. I can´t understand that, why go camp instead of having a real holiday. German people learn and get modern now, more and more european, but it seems Dutch people still like the oldfashioned camping, that´s just typical.


----------



## keber

Hotels are tourist factories. I don't like them. Camping is for me more relaxing.


----------



## dubart

Here the camps are usually filled with the Germans. Why do you think camping is oldfashioned?


----------



## Morsue

You wanna save up for the fine of running a red light?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No, for the camera that records the view from your car  

Great for making highway videos.


----------



## Robosteve

ChrisZwolle said:


> Oh, I wanna save up for this:
> http://www.driverseye.nl/


Google's feeble attempt at turning that page into English made me laugh.

http://translate.google.com/transla...ww.driverseye.nl/&sl=nl&tl=en&history_state0=

Anyway, I wonder if they sell something like that locally here? It's a little out of my price range at the moment, but I'd say it's something that's worth saving up for when I can.


Also, my laptop's charger no longer works, so until I can get a new one I won't be able to post any driving videos as this computer doesn't have an SD card reader. I also dislike Fedora, but it's the only Linux distribution that seems to work on this old computer. At least I have this desktop as an interim measure, though.


----------



## RawLee

Verso said:


> Hm, I'm confused about the STOP sign. Which category of traffic signs does it actually belong to? On this Slovenian website it's listed among prohibitory or restrictive signs, in English Wiki it's listed among information signs, in German Wiki it's listed among mandatory signs, while in French Wikipedia among priority signs. I don't even wanna explore further languages. :nuts: What do you think is correct?


I'd say its its a double. Its priority sign(because it is basically a yield),and a mandatory(as you have to do something - stop). Usually one can find this sign at dangerous intersections,because it ensures (in theory) that you pay more attention to the crossing trtaffic.


----------



## Verso

RawLee said:


> I'd say its its a double. Its priority sign(because it is basically a yield),and a mandatory(as you have to do something - stop). Usually one can find this sign at dangerous intersections,because it ensures (in theory) that you pay more attention to the crossing trtaffic.


I agree with you. I can't understand how it could be a prohibitory or restrictive sign, let alone an information sign. :nuts:


----------



## Mateusz

So I finally I am getting today a proper internet connection, 10MB fibre optic from Virgin.

Mobile internet from 3 just kept driving me mad. It was meant to have 3,6MB but in best moment it never go higher than 900 kb/s:bash:


----------



## keber

Mateusz said:


> So I finally I am getting today a proper internet connection, 10MB fibre optic from Virgin.


How much does it cost? Here in Slovenia it's 14 € for 10/10 optics (happy user already for 8 months)


----------



## Morsue

Watch the guy to the left


----------



## Timon91

:hilarious Had too much beer


----------



## PLH

Euskal Telebista copyright - video blocked


----------



## Timon91

That is quick, five minutes ago it was still available


----------



## Morsue

Maybe they don't like drunk football fans dryhumping their reporters


----------



## x-type

PLH said:


> Euskal Telebista copyright - video blocked


you have it here on thes croatian news portal 

http://www.net.hr/sport/page/2009/03/05/0528006.html


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ lol 

Crazy football fans


----------



## Mateusz

keber said:


> How much does it cost? Here in Slovenia it's 14 € for 10/10 optics (happy user already for 8 months)


£15 for the first 6 months, then 20. 

It's really good though, and Netgear router is nice too, I already connected toher computers including Wii


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I have a 10 mbit cable connection (1250 kb/sec) which costs me € 30 per month. Total package is € 50 because I also have digital TV + telephone.


----------



## Mateusz

There was also 50MB for 50 pounds per month :nuts: thats for some hardcore maniacs


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I know a Dutch provider has 120 mbit for € 80,50 per month.


----------



## keber

My provider has a price of 1 Mbps for 1 € from 50/50 onwards. 

If I want I can have 1 Gbps per 1000 € a month. Full DVD in 4 seconds.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ I don't your Harddisk can handle a full DVD in 4 seconds...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The signs look like Belgium ones, (number integrated in the arrows, blue signs, wide markings), and I can't think of another European country having similar signage to that of Belgium.


----------



## Jeroen669

Hey, trucking on a empty motorway doing 80km/h can be quite boring sometimes, you know. Let the guy have some fun.  Ok, I definately wouldn't get out of my chair while driving, but a bit of joy doesn't hurt.


----------



## Radish2

keber said:


> Crazy Romanian truck driver::nuts:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Which country is this video shot?


Apsolute patriotysm


----------



## Robosteve

Today I went out to make a video of the F6 Southern Freeway. While I failed in that endeavour thanks to rain, I did manage to get a video of the eastern part of Sydney's orbital, as well as some nice photographs which I will be posting a bit later in the appropriate thread. Stay tuned!


----------



## Ni3lS

Cool, im looking forward to see them Robosteve


----------



## ChrisZwolle

keber said:


> Crazy Romanian truck driver::nuts:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Which country is this video shot?





ChrisZwolle said:


> That's almost definatly in Belgium


It is apparantly in Belgium, the video has been all over the Belgian media, and government officials are outraged because of this behaviour. They want him arrested and take his drivers license for life. They say it might have been the E19.

Ofcourse, Belgian opinion about eastern European truckers was already bad (they're often in accidents because there are so many of them) and becomes even worse now.


----------



## RawLee

So when will the WEan officials arrest the participants of Gumball? Or that doesnt enrage them if their citizens behave even more dangerously abroad?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Let's put it this way; ANY traffic idiot, whether eastern European, western European or a cross-dresser should be taken off the road.


----------



## Radish2

The driver of the truck is a total idiot, patriotysm smells.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That X-driven on-board camera:


----------



## Timon91

Chris is still saving for his new gadget?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's € 219 .... money I don't have right now. (kinda broke by furnishing my house)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I gotta play taxi in about 15 minutes... pick up someone in Ommen, and deliver him to Deventer. That might get in the way of my doing-nothing time today


----------



## Jeroen669

Chriszwolle said:


> the video has been all over the Belgian media, and government officials are outraged because of this behaviour. They want him arrested and take his drivers license for life.


Omg, you're serious? hno: Ok, it's far from save to get out of your chair while driving (I can imagine a fine), but this...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My boss ordered this monster, so I can drill some holes in the pavement


----------



## x-type

chris , you have infected me with this camera


----------



## PLH

Will you sell your kidney for medical experiments to buy it? :|


----------



## x-type

well, for i still think that for kidney i could get something better. for this a piece of skin from my butt for somebody's plastic surgery would be enough


----------



## Timon91

Did anyone follow the World Baseball Classic? The Dutch team, with 2 major league players, defeated the Dominican Republic twice, though they have 26 major league players. CBS Sportsline wrote a nice article about it


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> Did anyone follow the World Baseball Classic?


No, we didn't.  


Btw, where's everyone lately? Hit by the global recession? :shifty:


----------



## Robosteve

Verso said:


> Btw, where's everyone lately? Hit by the global recession? :shifty:


I've been busy with school the past few days, just getting settled into the new school year and such. Hopefully later tonight I'll be able to post the remainder of those pictures I took on Sunday; if not, I'll definitely have time tomorrow.


----------



## x-type

elektropegla. home made electric powered fiat 126p

http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t267/Rockatansky78/12032009437.jpg

notice led lights 
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t267/Rockatansky78/12032009436.jpg

http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t267/Rockatansky78/12032009434.jpg

http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t267/Rockatansky78/12032009431.jpg

and a video of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2trgIm3xcKM&feature=related

some other guys have also made trabant elektro 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X0yANA0p-g&NR=1

http://www.autoportal.hr/images/sto...ina/rujan_2008/20080929/TRABANT_ELEKTRO_1.jpg
http://www.autoportal.hr/images/sto...ina/rujan_2008/20080929/TRABANT_ELEKTRO_2.jpg


----------



## keber

It hears like a tram.:lol:
Interesting modification. What are specs?

(last two links don't work correctly)


----------



## x-type

keber said:


> It hears like a tram.:lol:
> Interesting modification. What are specs?
> 
> (last two links don't work correctly)


Trabant has 45V 7,5 kW 197A engine from Indos forklift. vmax 60 km/h. it has 8 batteries Power Safe 6V 160 A.

Fiat has Rade Končar 5,5 kw 72 V engine. i cannot find info about batteries. 
pegla's acceleration 0-60 km/h: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUgXOcaqiyw

i think they've said it can reach 70 km/h. i'm sure it could do more if they wouldn't make transmission on gearbox.


----------



## Mateusz

So, at Monday I am going to Germany  It's a college trip and will last four days. We are going to areas of Frankfurt and Rheinland 

What people were saying about previous years ? Loads of alcohol and bangining with other people...

I am only interested about this first bit


----------



## PLH

*Bangin*in*g* with *other people*? :|


----------



## Verso

Yeah, what's that?


----------



## Timon91

Oh oh oh, PLH 

@Mateusz: just go to SSC when you're drunk. Just like Robosteve did


----------



## Verso

But not at 6 pm already. :lol:


----------



## PLH

^^ That's the point



Verso said:


> Yeah, what's that?


Google doesn't know :dunno: It must be the Newspeak. Gotta look up in some Freemasonry dictionary.



Timon91 said:


> Oh oh oh, PLH


What? That's life 



Timon91 said:


> @Mateusz: just go to SSC when you're drunk. Just like Robosteve did


'I really like you guys...' :yes:


----------



## Mateusz

I won't have internet there 

Duh, it will be Sodome there, let's face it... I will try to stay away from it


----------



## PLH

^^ And what I've just said, Timon?  

Remember - we play safe in the EU


----------



## Verso

PLH said:


> ^^ That's the point


Hah, indeed!


----------



## Timon91

Yes, you were right 

Poles, weirdos


----------



## PLH

Yeah, we're weird. Said Timon who's cycling every day to Loenersloot to check up gas prices. 

We still don't know what bangining is. Freemansonry does not know either...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PLH said:


> Freemansonry does not know either...


Morgan Freemansonry? :lol:


----------



## Verso

PLH said:


> Yeah, we're weird. Said Timon who's cycling every day to Leonersloot to check up gas prices.


Timon pwned. :hilarious


----------



## Majestic

PLH said:


> We still don't know what bangining is. Freemansonry does not know either...


We will learn as soon as Mateusz comes back, first-handed


----------



## PLH

^^ He's still here, but my first guess was right.

Mateusz 

Current Activity: Viewing Forum Urban Ukraine 



ChrisZwolle said:


> Morgan Freemansonry? :lol:


Honorary member :lol:

Why it is not Mansonry, like in other langluages?


----------



## Timon91

bangining = got to do sth with binge drinking? 

@PLH: I cycle past Loenersloot, on my way to school, I'm not that crazy to cycle there just to check up the gas prices. In fact, I don't even make a small detour to check up the gas price in Abcoude's local gas station


----------



## Majestic

PLH said:


> Intoxicate? You really should learn some apropriate words like: shit-faced, pissed to the gills, hammered :tongue4:


Oh yeah, now we're talking, I was trying to be gentle, but oh well, screw that


----------



## Mateusz

Timon91 said:


> Baseball, gorgeous sport


I prefer ski jumping to be honest :cheers:


----------



## Verso

PLH said:


> Ah, guess what: I was driving today with a friend and when we were before a crossing, a car drove from some minor road and hit another one driving in the opposite direction we did. Big bang, both cars spinned on the road. One of them stopped just 0.5 m from our car. That's what you call a luck!


You're still here. :hug:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I just watched the 1962 film Dr. No, Quite funny 

After that, I decided to watch the ZDF Heute.


----------



## Timon91

I just watched the ice-skating tournament in Richmond on TV


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ I only know Richmond,CA and Richmond, VA, but I guess it ain't there.


----------



## Mateusz

Classic James Bond movies are ace 

I like to watch Polish movies from commie period so much, there are some valuable titles


----------



## Nexis

*I just finishing typing two 16 page cities for my fictional Country , Jersey.  :dance:Unfortunately My Windows live still won't log in for the 3rd straight day hno:*


----------



## Timon91

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ I only know Richmond,CA and Richmond, VA, but I guess it ain't there.


Richmond, BC. Near Vancouver. It's the ice-skating stadium for the Olympics next year


----------



## PLH

Mateusz said:


> I like to watch Polish movies from commie period so much, there are some valuable titles


Have you seen _Miś_, anybody? This one rocks


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Is this the famous Loenersloot gas station?


----------



## x-type

wooow! this photo is more valuable than struma


----------



## Mateusz

PLH said:


> Have you seen _Miś_, anybody? This one rocks


Ha ha it's a great movie, as all ridiculous comedies from those times have specific sense of humour :cheers:


----------



## Verso

Yesterday I drove a 28-year-old guy from Ljubljana (among others), who'd been to Egypt and whatnot, but had never in his life been to.................... Italy!! :nuts::nuts::nuts: As we were going to the Slovenian coast, I made a little detour over Italy (Trieste bypass) just for the sake of it. :lol:


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Yesterday I drove a 28-year-old guy from Ljubljana (among others), who'd been to Egypt and whatnot, but had never in his life been to.................... Italy!! :nuts::nuts::nuts: As we were going to the Slovenian coast, I made a little detour over Italy (Trieste bypass) just for the sake of it. :lol:


i was more cruel. i drove my friend from Spain on the road that follows croatian-hungarian border, but we didn't enter Hungary  poor she, she took about 20 photos of hungarian bushes and meadows. and still hasn't been in Hungary


----------



## BND

^^ I have already "seen" Serbia but I have never been there  
I was so close to the border that my phone switched to some Serbian network, and I received a "Welcome to Serbia!" SMS  (Actually it was SCG back then)


----------



## Timon91

I once drove on this road, but unfortunately I had already been in the Czech Republic (ok, only for 35 minutes, but still)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The first time I've been in Poland was on the road from Zittau to Liberec (CZ). The road passes for like a mile through Poland, and then enters the Czech Republic. This was before Poland's acession to Schengen or even EU, so there were border controls. It was kind of funny to been in Poland that way. 

Later, I travelled the whole A4 which was completed in 2003. (including the Olszyna - Wroclaw section in it's original RAB condition, and the motorway ended between Opole and Gliwice back then).


----------



## Verso

BND said:


> ^^ I have already "seen" Serbia but I have never been there


When I was 4, I saw Albania from Montenegro, but still haven't been there.  In 1986 it was quite impossible actually.


----------



## Nexis

*Ive been going to Mr. Cupcakes Bakery in Clifton , New Jersey for the past 3 Sunday's but today i can't go because the person who takes me is at his cousins mansion outside Danbury, CT . so i can't get my cupcake fix .hno:
Heres a pic from Last weeks Cupcake order.










The 2 Green one's are Mint Chocolate Volcano's 
The Strawberry Swirl is below
The Apple Crisp is the one in the top right corner
The Carrot Cake is the one in the bottom left corner 
The Raspberry Swirly is the right center one
hno: i guess i'll wait till next Sunday when i can go down there. its only 15 miles but traffic is a mess , except on Sunday's *


----------



## PLH

I came across this pic in Slavic langluages thread (DLM)

Do you really don't have any other insults, Verso? 










(for those who don't understand, fotostory must be enough, it's pretty telling though )


----------



## Mateusz

Slovenski peder...

WTF


----------



## x-type

this is the best caricature ever :rofl:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Jägermeister


----------



## ChrisZwolle

> Guessing Contest: Guess the Official Height of the Burj Dubai!


I guess 1000.00 meters


----------



## Majestic

PLH said:


> I came across this pic in Slavic langluages thread (DLM)
> 
> Do you really don't have any other insults, Verso?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (for those who don't understand, fotostory must be enough, it's pretty telling though )


:hahaha:

It's funny that most of the Slavic swear-words are so common


----------



## x-type

Majestic said:


> :hahaha:
> 
> It's funny that most of the Slavic swear-words are so common


even that dog fucks mother? i guess you understand it, but i think that one is unique croatian and serbian


----------



## Majestic

^^Yeah, this one is unique but other than that:

usta - usta
dupe - dupe
jebo - jebal
boga - boga
govno - gowno
pizda - pizda
peder - pedal

:lol:


----------



## Verso

PLH said:


> Do you really don't have any other insults, Verso?


No, we have to borrow them from Serbs, they are experts in that. :lol:

Another "very insulting curse" is "300 kosmatih medvedov!" (300 hairy bears! :hilarious).


----------



## Majestic

:lol:

Why 300? We usually use 100 here


----------



## Verso

We also have "100 hudičev!", but 300 is more insulting, I guess.


----------



## PLH

^^










Do you have this film in Slovenia?


----------



## Mateusz

ChrisZwolle said:


> Jägermeister


My mates love it...

I don't like it hno:

It's like herbal toothpaste with vodka :nuts:


----------



## Verso

^^ Same here. :lol:



PLH said:


> Do you have this film in Slovenia?


:dunno:



Verso said:


> I couldn't connect to Internet for more than an hour now, something to do with DNS. What's that all about? It's so annoying!


No one knows?  I think DNS is unable to resolve IP address. Anyone knows how to prevent it?


----------



## Verso

Oh people, you're useless. :bash: :lol:


----------



## Timon91

I know


----------



## keber

How to easily overtake a truck on a motorway :guns1:


----------



## Verso

OMG! :lol:


----------



## Ni3lS

Timon91 said:


> @Ni3ls: good luck! My exam week starts next week. Tomorrow some radio DJ's are coming to my school lol


Thanks a lot. Same to you. 

Got my first note back  > a 8 on my German. :banana:


----------



## PLH

keber said:


> How to easily overtake a truck on a motorway :guns1:


At least they didn't overtake each other for 10 kms :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I just watched Quantum of Solace... It's pretty much what I expected; a disappointment, but anyway a must-see for James Bond fans. 

The action scenes are ridiculously fast, unrealistic that nobody gets hurt and hard to follow, and the story is not really interesting. Acting was okay, but I still think I would rank it near Diamonds Are Forever as the worst Bond movie. Frankly, change the name of the main character (Bond), and it isn't a Bond movie anymore. 

The title song is absolutely the WORST I've ever heard, really a shame on the James Bond franchise. 

I hope upcoming Bond movies will be better.


----------



## X236K

I'll try the Polish overtake method here in Czech


----------



## Radish2

keber said:


> How to easily overtake a truck on a motorway :guns1:


Yes, this option works great.


----------



## Verso

You sound experienced. :lol:


----------



## Timon91

FBI will arrest you now


----------



## H123Laci

Timon91 said:


> @Ni3ls: good luck!


here in hungary we dont wish good luck, cause it causes bad luck.

so we wish hand&leg breaking... :lol:


----------



## Morsue

A Pole was going to get his driver's licence so he went to the optician to check his vision.
The optician showed him a card with the following letters:

C Z W I X N O S T A C Z

Can you read this? asked the optician.

If I can read it? the Pole replied

I fucking know the guy!!


----------



## Timon91

@Niels: hope you break your leg. Fine now, H123Laci? 

I just came home from school, completely soaked. Next week the weather is supposed to be better. I hope so.


----------



## PLH

*@Morsue* I know him too :yes:


----------



## Verso

Yeah, Polish is unreadable, even for other Slavs with Latin characters. :lol:


----------



## Ni3lS

Thanks a lot. Maybe I'll break it  Tomorrow Maths and History. History is easy, but a lot of work. ( about 300 pages ). Maths sucks. 11 chapters. Im just not gonna learn for that and I'll see what's coming. I probably have to do that subject over again so it doesnt matter anyway.


----------



## Timon91

Tomorrow I have to hand in my so called "leesdossier", so there is still a lot of work left to do. Chris and Niels will know what I mean


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Isn't that for Literature? I think I had that back in 2003. Read some ultimately boring novels right?


----------



## Timon91

Yes, and write reports about them. 12 in total, every year in the 2nd phase you have to read 4. Which means that most people still have to write 4 reports for this year


----------



## Verso

If you don't shut up with school, I'll ban you.


----------



## Timon91

Just try to 

You're in university right? Also some kind of school


----------



## BND

^^ It is high time for you to finish high school and go to some normal place like a university... You will discover how useless it was to worry about history for example (in case you wont study history at univ.), nobody cares whether you know it or not...


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> You're in university right? Also some kind of school


Which doesn't mean I wanna talk about it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> If you don't shut up with school, I'll ban you.


Lets talk about something else then...

I had to relocate 11 traffic counters (ATR's) today. But the weather sucked, it rained all the livelong day, so I wasn't really happy. After that, I had to to some travel-time measure by driving to a town 30 kms away and back, that's the kind of work Chris likes to do at a revenue of € 0,35 per km.  This weeks mileage of my own car gives me a € 120 extra in my paycheck next month :cheers:


----------



## Timon91

Weather sucked indeed. I came home soaked, but luckily there was a strong wind which worked in my favor. Unfortunately I had some problems with my bike, which wasn't that pleasant


----------



## Mateusz

I have my oral exam at 12 th of May, written one 15h May

This sucks


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Mateusz said:


> oral exam


Is that really the name for it in English? Because it sounds kinda funny. :nuts:


----------



## Morsue

It is in fact called an oral exam, that's when you talk. But considering some of the crazy shit this thread has shown Polish people doing I'm not sure 

Oh yeah, and Mateusz said that it suck. What exactly is it that sucks?


----------



## Verso

Mateusz has a lot to explain. :yes:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm listening to some Rammstein currently :dance2:


----------



## Robosteve

Apparently that video I made of the F6 wasn't as ruined by rain as I thought it was. The first part of it (the northern half of the F6 and Mount Ousley Road) is too blurry to see anything, but I'll be uploading the southern half of the F6 to YouTube shortly.


----------



## Mateusz

Rammstein is good 

Yes, it is an oral exam for my German AS  Why it sucks ? Because it is new syllabus, compicated, you have to talk all together for 20 minutes, you have to choose some cards, shit like that

I have chose the following topic 'Alkohol, Drogen und Tabak'


----------



## Radish2

It´s really a shame, googleearth still hasn´t uncovered new parts with high resolution in Bulgaria, I think they should quit their big addvertisments and really sit down on their fat asses and add new high resluted layers to the areas, that still have the very low resolution where you can´t recognise anything.


----------



## Mateusz

Loads of Eastern Europe parts are not covered by GE...

I hope it will change soon


----------



## Verso

Slovenia almost couldn't be clearer, especially in NW.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Slovenia almost couldn't be clearer, especially in NW.


well, it's not some work. how many photos did they have to take? one?


----------



## PLH

:hilarious Yeah, 800 x 600


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> well, it's not some work. how many photos did they have to take? one?


You aren't funny, if you think so. At least Ljubljana isn't 10 km from the border, unlike Zagreb.


----------



## Ni3lS

Guys ( last time talking about school ). I finished my examweek. well, I only have an english oral exam tuesday, but that shouldn't be a problem at all. I totally screwed up maths. So I have to do that one over again.


----------



## PLH

Verso said:


> You aren't funny, if you think so. At least Ljubljana isn't 10 km from the border, unlike Zagreb.


Relax, being a small country may be very profitable, I wish we were half our area.


----------



## Verso

I'm totally fine with living in a small country, it's just laughable to see Croatians ridiculing it, even though they live in a small country themselves, with the capital 10 km from the border, always close to neighboring countries or sea and with no space for a motorway by Dubrovnik. I don't mind, if they add a funny smilie, but sometimes they are actually serious about it. It's like someone from Monaco ridiculing someone from the Vatican. Hilarious.


----------



## Mateusz

PLH said:


> Relax, being a small country may be very profitable, I wish we were half our area.


Nah, don't worry PLH, now we Polish Empire can be built :lol::nuts:


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> You aren't funny, if you think so. At least Ljubljana isn't 10 km from the border, unlike Zagreb.


----------



## Timon91

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm listening to some Rammstein currently :dance2:


I thought that you preferred calmer music (regarding the music in your roadmovies). But yeah, Rammstein is gut. I fell asleep in the CityNightLine a couple of weeks ago while listening to Rammstein


----------



## Radish2

Rammstein is fucking awesome, would you have used it for your videos Chris, they would have been way mor pleasant to watch, but the strange music you add to your videos forces me, to mute them.


----------



## PLH

No, but just try to say you don't like skinny and blond girls and you'll die in holly fire of Radi 

Go on, have a try


----------



## Ni3lS

I do like blond girls, and I do like skinny girls. :lol: Brunettes with brown eyes are also pretty :happy:


----------



## Radish2

Ni3lS said:


> I do like blond girls, and I do like skinny girls. :lol: Brunettes with brown eyes are also pretty :happy:


sometimes Brunettes are also beautiful.


----------



## Mateusz

I like ginger hair


----------



## x-type

Mateusz said:


> I like ginger hair


what the hell is that??

edit: i have checked. we call it "red hair". and i like them too because they are rare


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Everybody loves redheads, mostly because they are in low supply  It's hard to spot true one here, with freckles and everything...


----------



## Mateusz

I have a kinda sentiment... my first love was ginger and since this time I adore giner hair girls  Well, not all obviously !


----------



## Morsue

Swedish women of all sorts tend to be very sexy.


----------



## Mateusz

Are they mostly blonde ?


----------



## Radish2

But they are too tall.


----------



## Ni3lS

^^ Not always. Mostly they are blond I guess. I also love Estonian girls :happy:


----------



## Ni3lS

x-type said:


> what the hell is that??
> 
> edit: i have checked. we call it "red hair". and i like them too because they are rare



You like that hair cuz it's rare?! Lol. Actually, every person is rare. But I wouldn't choose for someone with red hair because it's rare. Visit the UK and there are enough people with red hair. It isn't rare overthere I think :lol:


----------



## Morsue

Nah, I'm 186 cms and most girls are 165-175. I like them not being too short so I don't have to bend over when giving a hug or kiss


----------



## Ni3lS

I actually like short girls. Don't know why but almost all the GF's I had were not so tall.


----------



## Radish2

Morsue said:


> Nah, I'm 186 cms and most girls are 165-175. I like them not being too short so I don't have to bend over when giving a hug or kiss


that´s the optimal size for girls. I am 1:73 tall and a girl with 1,65 - 1,70 is great. but most importantly is that they are thin and have narrow hips for me, German golden blond looks awesome on these.


----------



## Ni3lS

Haha ye. The hips and ass play defenitely a big role in my choice :yes:


----------



## Morsue

I actually heard somewhere that men unconciously are more attracted to women with wide hips. That's because we perceive them to be more fertile.


----------



## Radish2

For some men that might be true, but not for me, I like women with straight hips.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

I just have been admitted on LLP-Erasmus programme and this autumn I'm going to DTU (Denmark, in Copenhagen agglomeration)! 

This really came out of nowhere, cause I thought that with my grades I can't compete for any university with courses in English. And yet I was lucky 

Unfortunately, for average Polish student like me Denmark is *ÜBER-EXPENSIVE*. I hope that i'd find some weekend job, which without any Danish can be tricky... Nevertheless, it turns out that individual transport (in the combined bike-car form (bike for short distances, car for tourism and rains)) is significantly cheaper that the public one (shame on you, Danes!), so I'm taking my car with me. Which means that in half year time The Forum can expect some new shiny motorvej pictures


----------



## ChrisZwolle

> Unfortunately, for average Polish student like me Denmark is ÜBER-EXPENSIVE.


Not only for a Polish guy :lol: I spend almost twice as much money on groceries in DK than in NL...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Perhaps I'm gonna drive this route next weekend:









Too bad I have to buy a € 9 vignette for like 25 km of D8.


----------



## Mateusz

Again not in Poland


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm going to Poland when the A4 is completed


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Too bad I have to buy a € 9 vignette for like 25 km of D8.


Don't use D8 then.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

But I want to...


----------



## Timon91

Don't visit Usti nad Labem, Chris. It's as ugly as Almere


----------



## PLH

Go to Wrocław instead  It's beuatiful.


----------



## x-type

yestrerday in Knin we had 27°C :nuts: actually, it is the warmest city in Croatia (and not Dubrovnik or Hvar, how most people often think). but it's not too big deal, i remember 1st April 2000 when we had in Bjelovar 30°C


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I know I've been to Wroclaw, climbed the church there  (in 2004)


----------



## Jeroen669

ChrisZwolle said:


> Perhaps I'm gonna drive this route next weekend:


In one weekend? Do you even get *out* of the car with that amount of kms?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nah next weekend is eastern, so I have 4 days off  These 1600 kms will be very doable in 3 days. Only like 540 km per day, which equals like 6 - 7 hours of driving per day.


----------



## Majestic

You'd better get yourself a good battery or two for your camera


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's not sure that I go next weekend though, weather must be okay, and it should not be too cold at night (I'm going to sleep in a tent). I have slept in -5 and snow though.


----------



## PLH

The weather seems to be OK, but who knows?


----------



## Timon91

You haven't got a bed in your Kangoo yet, Chris?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nah, I decided to put a matress in the back and use my 3-seconds-fly tent. I got too many problems with ventilation while sleeping in my car. So I don't have to pump up stupid air matresses, but I put my small matress into the tent


----------



## Nexis

:lol: How much farting do you do @ night that requires major ventilation? Maybe you should Steal a tunnel fan from one of your extensive trips :lol: or don't eat that many Germany Sausages for diner. :lol:


----------



## Radish2

That was a good one. Maybe that´s his problem or that he has a hard time breathing. I also have hard time breathing and get in panic when I have to sleep in a car with all windows closed, when it´s standing. So I understand him.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I slept one night near Paris, and I woke up around 2 am, and noticed there was barely any air left in the car. So I had to open the window quite far. But open windows aren't as safe, and more important, a problem when it rains or when there are a lot of mosquitos.


----------



## Ni3lS

^^ Weird. How can the air just disappear? You should build some sort of fence against mosquitos in your windows  

I'm going to Italy again this summer. Near to Florence/Pisa/Perugia. We are also going to visit Rome


----------



## H123Laci

ChrisZwolle said:


> I got too many problems with ventilation while sleeping in my car.


what problem?
pull down a window and you'll get enough oxygene supply... 


EDIT: oops, I havent seen your next post...

1. security is also problem in a tent...
2. against rain: a PVC sheet...
3. against mosquitos: mosquito net...


----------



## Timon91

Since Chris seems to be a normal human being, he breathes. So when the car is closed, the oxygen slowly disappears. And as Chris said, if he opens the window it's quite unsafe and mosquitos can come in.

I'm also going to Italy this summer......to Trieste........for one day


----------



## ChrisZwolle

H123Laci said:


> what problem?
> pull down a window and you'll get enough oxygene supply...
> 
> 
> EDIT: oops, I havent seen your next post...
> 
> 1. security is also problem in a tent...
> 2. against rain: a PVC sheet...
> 3. against mosquitos: mosquito net...


4. deploy my tent in 3 seconds


----------



## Ni3lS

Can't wait until this summer  See my signature why


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You lucky man with 5555 posts


----------



## Ni3lS

Haha interesting ^^ :lol:

I don't really care what my post count looks like actually 

Edit: How did I do that >< I pushed by accident on a button of the keyboard with one of my fingers and it posted my reply. Normally I don't know another way then click on post reply. :nuts:


----------



## Nexis

*I went to the Great Falls in Paterson ,NJ and i took some stunning photos. It might be a national Historic Park soon , if Obama signs the bill. 
*































































Hope you liked! 

*~Corey*


----------



## Timon91

Ni3lS said:


> Edit: How did I do that >< I pushed by accident on a button of the keyboard with one of my fingers and it posted my reply. Normally I don't know another way then click on post reply. :nuts:


Alt+S 

This summer won't as spectacular as my last one, unfortunately. No USA this time. Just some country of the size of Rhode Island or sth


----------



## Verso

Kosovo?


----------



## Timon91

Close


----------



## PLH

Crisis  Go to some non-euro country.


----------



## Timon91

I already went to the Czech Republic this year. They don't have the Euro


----------



## H123Laci

Timon91 said:


> Since Chris seems to be a normal human being...


are you sure? :lol:


----------



## H123Laci

PLH said:


> Crisis  Go to some non-euro country.


come to Hungary... :lol:

(I live here, so I go CzechRep... )


----------



## Timon91

H123Laci said:


> are you sure? :lol:


Any active aliens on this forum?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This van was driving so slow that a truck was passing it...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Hmmm, maybe I have to do that Erzgebirge roadtrip another time, the provisional weather forecasts for next weekend are not very good  It's a waste driving 1600 kilometers mostly in rain. 

Maybe I'll do the Ruhr area instead.


----------



## Verso

When I was in Brussels, I saw that EUR license plate; looks interesting. Anyway, some people drive incredibly slowly. There were two German cars driving 70 km/h on a motorway the other day. :nuts:


----------



## Timon91

ChrisZwolle said:


> Hmmm, maybe I have to do that Erzgebirge roadtrip another time, the provisional weather forecasts for next weekend are not very good  It's a waste driving 1600 kilometers mostly in rain.
> 
> Maybe I'll do the Ruhr area instead.


Yeah, the Erzgebirge is worth a trip, but only in good weather. I went to see the Fc Erzgebirge Aue stadium two years ago, but unfortunately a thunder storm came and blew me back to the A4


----------



## snowman159

ChrisZwolle said:


>


What does the warning sign on the left mean? Ruts?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Track formation. Known as Spurillen or Spurinnen in German.

Breaking 30,000 kilometers on the clock of the car I was driving in;


----------



## PLH

Where's the helmet? :nono:










(A8 inspection)


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Check out my new Übercool desktop wallpaper. It's an effect of reading SSC instead of learning  

The image (presenting Bergen, just found in the Polish thread about the city) is, in my very humble opinion, absolutely stunning. The unique composition of city, lights, water and mountains... Just beautiful.



So guys - what about "show your desktop" evening? I bet that most of you have some shiny crashbarriers on them...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This is my background;


----------



## keber

PLH said:


> Where's the helmet? :nono:


politicians don't need to wear helmet. It's against their dresscode.


----------



## PLH

But this guys form Bureau for the Protection of the Government still need one.


----------



## Timon91

My current background is this picture:


----------



## Majestic

I got my wallpapers from National Geographic subscription, so I have the pretty ones every single day 
Here's my current one:


----------



## keber

PLH said:


> But this guys form Bureau for the Protection of the Government still need one.


He's not so high flying.:lol:

@wallpapers: I picture them myself, from various trips.


----------



## H123Laci

I wallpaper these ones:



ÉM0 bridge of Budapest... :cheers:



unknown chinese serpentine road... :cheers:


----------



## H123Laci

ChrisZwolle said:


> This is my background;


Chris has been caught: 

he is from the deep space, with a command to infiltrate and spy on our infrastructure... :lol:


----------



## Mateusz

My is a plain black background colour with nice warning about piracy :/

Yeah, yeah Windows was too expensive at the times for me...

But I am getting a new PC with original system, so I won't have such problems


----------



## Majestic

I've tried squash for the first time today and I must say it's pretty entertaining and physical sport and it's much more dynamic than tennis. Any of you guys ever played it?


----------



## Timon91

A few times with PE. I did like it, though I still prefer baseball 

AFAIK x-type is an expert in squash.


----------



## Verso

I played it once. The bad side is that you're inside.


----------



## PLH

I've seen people playing squash and I must admit it's way more energetic than tennis(which I've been playing for several years now)


----------



## Majestic

Timon91 said:


> A few times with PE. I did like it, though I still prefer baseball


You played squash on your PE classes? Cool!  I wish we had opportunities like that here.


----------



## Mateusz

Yeah... our PE lessons are rather narrow... most of the time football or some stuff inside.

Maybe good schools in big cities have something different.

I was bowling yesterday first time in my life and it was so much fun


----------



## Timon91

^^My school is in a big city with a population of 17,000 

I had PE until two months ago. My PE lessons weren't special as well. Just football, softball, volleyball or basketball. In the last two years I had four 'special' PE lessons, and you had to subscribe for sth - stuff that you normally don't do in class, like climbing, fitness, squash, breakdance, etc. Still you had to do sth different every time, but somehow I managed to do squash four times


----------



## x-type

Timon91 said:


> A few times with PE. I did like it, though I still prefer baseball
> 
> AFAIK x-type is an expert in squash.


not an expert, but i used to play it regularly. but i haven't played it for whole year allready  and yes, it is really exhausting. you are moving much more than in tennis and moves are different, not so technicly smooth, but you more play with strenght, not with technique


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yeah, he needed to be on another street on the industrial park where I work. It's quite large and doesn't have a logical street layout.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm gonna take off for a roadtrip towards Germany  First destination: Bingen, via B9. Figure out my route. Cheers.


----------



## Mateusz

Ha, sounds like where I was !  A ferry across the Rine ? 

Are you going near Rudesheim ?


----------



## Radish2

Crashbarriers update:

I am in Bulgaria for vacation these days and I repainted my balcony crashbarriers. I removed old paint, so it looks like removed abrassive asphalt on all parts of the balcony railings and then added the new layer of extremly shiny paint. I used the special spray and when the sun shines on my balcony I really have to close my eyes because the ralings are blinding me, that´s shiny.









Here, the first railing is repainted, and as you can see, the railings next to it don´t have paint, the paint got removed and they look like removed asphalt.









Here you can see it again, the paint is removed, but on one panel there already is new paint applied.









Left panel with removed paint









Left panel with new paint.









The rest of the balcony with new blindingly shiny paint! 









this pic shows even better how shiny the crashbarriers aktually are, really shiny.


----------



## Mateusz

I see your newest neighbours have decent balconies too


----------



## Verso

Mateusz said:


> I see your newest neighbours have decent balconies too


Who has shinier "crash barriers"? :colgate:


----------



## Mateusz

Radi's are more shiny but those other ones are more style and have taste


----------



## x-type

santa maria prega per noi


----------



## PLH

e per la nostra barriera


----------



## Timon91

e che essi possono brillare per sempre


----------



## x-type

Timon91 said:


> e che essi possono brillare per sempre


i servizi traduttori possono essere cattivi qualche volte


----------



## Timon91

probabilmente, non parlano italiano


----------



## x-type

Timon91 said:


> probabilmente, non parlano italiano


vedo


----------



## Timon91

Wiseacre, I only know a very little bit Italian


----------



## Ni3lS

Lol. Merged threads.. I already thought: WTF. :lol:


----------



## Qwert

Isn't it nice view:lol::


----------



## Mateusz

Bugatti in Pressburg  Nice !


----------



## RipleyLV




----------



## Timon91

:rofl:


----------



## Morsue

x-type said:


> vedo


----------



## Mateusz

True man !!

Nothing works better on mood than couple of Stella pints


----------



## Verso

Mateusz said:


> Lol is does SSC have like own HQ or something ? :nuts:


There's a famous photo somewhere with my post on Jan's PC.


----------



## Mateusz

SSC celebrities 

Starring:

Jan The Admin and many others


----------



## keber

Yesterday a mini tornado occurred in our garden:
A dust devil (only without dust) came out of nowhere on windless sunny day and crashed into a pile of wooden planks and columns for gardening. Pieces of wood flew up to 20 meters on every side, threw garden dome 15 meters into the air and destroyed children swing chair, which turned around holding bar two times (like in some cartoons). Everything happened in 30 seconds. Luckily no one was hurt.

On a photo you can see parts of destroyed garden dome and a 1,5 long, 8 cm wide and 15 kg heavy wooden pillar, which hit the ground and dug 15 cm deep hole. A location of pile is in upper left corner.








Picture was taken later, when more or less everything was already cleared. No video was taken, but believe me, that it was be spectacular. Imagine being hit with that wooden pillar, which zipped through the air. :nuts:


----------



## Verso

Any journalist payed a visit?


----------



## keber

They don't bother you without at least live video or at least two houses demolished.:lol:


----------



## tjiklan

keber said:


> They don't bother you without at least live video or at least two houses demolished.:lol:


that's true.. :bash:


----------



## Nexis

We'll send someone out right now from the Video Bloggers Ch.......:lol::cheers:


----------



## Qwert

Quite bad looking accident:


















And jam:









Source: http://natankuj.sme.sk/c/4392436/neobiehali-uz-len-vrchom-a-spodkom.html

IMO jersey barriers should be always used in the median.


----------



## PLH

Jerseys won't stop the truck either. It's D2, innit?


----------



## Qwert

PLH said:


> Jerseys won't stop the truck either. It's D2, innit?


Well, at least there is higher chance to stop the truck. Of course, they don't offer 100% safety too.

(No, it's D1.)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nice colors along the roads these days


----------



## Timon91

"The green explosion" over here was about a week ago. It looks beautiful around here now


----------



## Verso

Hehe, a bear made it to Ljubljana today, but luckily I was in Austria. 

Owned.


----------



## Gil

This was an interesting story that was newsticker-worthy here in Canada:



The Associated Press said:


> *English village may use potholes for speed control*
> April 16, 2009
> 
> LONDON (AP) — A British country village is considering a novel way to frustrate speeders by leaving its potholes in place.
> 
> The proposal by the Navestock Parish Council 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of London calls for potholes to serve as a traffic calming device.
> 
> Councilor Mike Parrish believes this would save the considerable time and money authorities spend on fixing potholes.
> 
> He said Thursday that potholes on key routes would be repaired but others on minor roads would be kept in place to slow drivers down.
> 
> The proposal is receiving mixed reactions from residents with some branding the idea dangerous and counterproductive.
> 
> Former policeman Roy Tyzack says the idea makes no sense and would put people at risk.
> 
> Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.


So instead of speed bumps/humps what do you call these? Speed holes? Speed pits?


----------



## PLH

Stupid idea. 

What do they know about speeding and potholes anyway?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I would sue the road authority when I got damage to my car. Good chance you win that, because the road authority reasonably has to leave the road in good shape.


----------



## PLH

Here if you have a pic of the hole and damaged tire/rim, they pay without blinking an eye.


----------



## deranged

Gil said:


> This was an interesting story that was newsticker-worthy here in Canada:
> 
> *English village may use potholes for speed control*
> [...article...]


What an idea... hno:
It deserves this banana:









This is akin to not replacing broken keys on a keyboard, to discourage people from sending personal emails at work...


----------



## Radish2

I returned from Bulgaria to Germany. I went through Slovenia and I think the country is way too much patriotic. Sorry, but if all radio channels only play slovenian music that´s just incredible, that´s almost rasysm, yes, you got me right. I never went through a country with only homemusic playing, even in the patriotic Bayern there are only few channels who play homemusic only and Bayern is way more north then Slovenia. the stations either played some shite slovenian rap or some fake Alps music. Sorry, but the Alps music is invented by the German speaking countries, slovenia shoulnd´t pretend to be an Alps country because it isn´t! Because a few Alps peaks are here and there doesn´t mean Slovenia is an Alps state! For a country that is so much south I at least expected *most* stations to play Pop, Nelly Fortado, Madonna, Timberland... but what I got was incredibly shitty Slovenian fake music. When I enter Austria I find several stations with Techno music, several with Pop music, Krone Hit for example, but slovenians prefer to be as patriotic as possible. If a country can be jugged by the radiostations that are playing (and to some degree it can) slovenia is the most closeminded country I´ve seen, even Croatia and Serbia play better music, Serbia even has housechannels which is very nice.

In the last few years Serbia progressed so much, now few stations play Serbian home music and lots of stations play Pop and some even Techno, but Sloenia doesn´t progress at all. Extreme patriotysm is something that is bad nowadays.

The quality of the motorways is incredible though.


----------



## dubart

x-type said:


> if Slovenians and Croats are nationalists according to music on air, what are Italians?! ultranazis?!


Has he ever been there?  Oh, Radi - it's langua*g*e.


----------



## SpicyMcHaggis

edit


----------



## ivan_ri

radi you managed to make me laugh 

btw there are radio stations in croatia which play strictly croatian music and other which play strictly foreign music. I assume you didn't bother to look for more than one station in both countries :cheers:
perhaps you should buy some sort of ultra modern shiny cd/radio player for you vehicle, which will constntly search for non slavic music


----------



## Alle

bojc said:


> Germanic, but not German. And left the region unpopulated and without place name substratum. So it is a bit different case.


You are correct, I changed it. However in the same way I as i should have made sure to write Germanic, i wrote Slavic speaking, in the linguistic sense, because it most certainly would have incorporated people who did not originally speak a Slavic language. I think it is good to be aware and care for such heritage, but also have a sense of practicality  .


----------



## Radish2

Alle said:


> I have a suggestion then, get their music and play them yourself. It is not illegal neither in Croatia nor Slovenia to express such things  .
> 
> Anyhow, about the other points, so the Adriatic Alps are not alps? Well call them what you want but they have played an important role for a very long time.
> *
> Bojc:*
> 
> In places you can see the other way around as well. After the collapse of the Roman Empire the German populations moved and many Slavic speaking settlements were founded in those places in that time.


The adriatic Alps are Alps but I think Slovenia should stick to the warmer mentallity and don´t try to look like Austria and Germany which are more north and without the great feelings you have in the south. After the Karavanke tunnel in Jesenice the Alps don´t look that harsh because everything feels warmer, the slovenian alps look more like some Bulgarian mountains then like the real Alps because Slovenia is more south then Austria and Germany and Swizerland, but it seems they want it to be Austria with all the alps music etc, can´t they appreciate their mountains without using the Austrian and Swizz traditions?


----------



## SpicyMcHaggis

edit


----------



## Alle

Radish2 said:


> The adriatic Alps are Alps but I think Slovenia should stick to the warmer mentallity and don´t try to look like Austria and Germany which are more north and without the great feelings you have in the south. After the Karavanke tunnel in Jesenice the Alps don´t look that harsh because everything feels warmer, the slovenian alps look more like some Bulgarian mountains then like the real Alps because Slovenia is more south then Austria and Germany and Swizerland, but it seems they want it to be Austria with all the alps music etc, can´t they appreciate their mountains without using the Austrian and Swizz traditions?


Still, they are Alps, but yet not real Alps. Well, obviously they are not the Austrian or Swiss Alps. Anyhow, as far as the music there, maybe there are simply reasons that it is eminent in Slovenia as well. In that it is not only confined to Austria and Switzerland.

I am not a Polka expert and where and how it has developed, but I do not see why it would not have been used in Slovenia as well. Further with Slovenes arriving there, as well as other Slavic speaking tribes, indigenous peoples were absorbed into those nations.


----------



## SpicyMcHaggis

edit


----------



## bojc

Alle said:


> You are correct, I changed it. However in the same way I as i should have made sure to write Germanic, i wrote Slavic speaking, in the linguistic sense, because it most certainly would have incorporated people who did not originally speak a Slavic language. I think it is good to be aware and care for such heritage, but also have a sense of practicality  .


Yes, you are right, it is never just black and white.



Radish2 said:


> The adriatic Alps are Alps but I think Slovenia should stick to the warmer mentallity and don´t try to look like Austria and Germany which are more north and without the great feelings you have in the south. After the Karavanke tunnel in Jesenice the Alps don´t look that harsh because everything feels warmer, the slovenian alps look more like some Bulgarian mountains then like the real Alps because Slovenia is more south then Austria and Germany and Swizerland, but it seems they want it to be Austria with all the alps music etc, can´t they appreciate their mountains without using the Austrian and Swizz traditions?


"Austrian" and "Slovenian" traditions are connected since thousand years. Besides Alpine music has a "warm feeling" in my opinion.


----------



## Ban.BL

Radish2 said:


> First of all unlike such tiny Balkan ""Adria Alpe"" laungaces English is an international languace and second of all it´s not about languace but about music. Because all countries in europe have several channels that play the Pop charts up and down, the music that is playing on Krone Hit for example, altough I listen mostly to Goa Trance and Ambient Pop music is very nice for travelling, in Slovenia I didn´t find even one channel that plays such music, nor did I in Croatia. International music doesn´t have to be in English exclusively, for example Arash is good Pop music, but his songs aren´t often in English.


Austria has almost none radio station which play Austrian music. So Krone Hit is not exception it is the rule. 
Are people from England close-minded if they listen only English music?


----------



## Radish2

What bullshit are you trying to tell me Ban.BL, The UK or the USa can´t do a thing that English is an international languace, are you trying to say they shouldn´t play the Pop charts like Nelly fortade, Timberland, Madonna, Beyonce, etc etc just because it´s English. The music is made to be heart from all parts of the world, *it´s not some oh how beautiful our Slovenian/Croatian girls are, oh how clean and fresh our sacred waters are, etc.*


----------



## Alle

Radish2 said:


> What bullshit are you trying to tell me Ban.BL, The UK or the USa can´t do a thing that English is an international languace, are you trying to say they shouldn´t play the Pop charts like Nelly fortade, Timberland, Madonna, Beyonce, etc etc just because it´s English. The music is made to be heart from all parts of the world, *it´s not some oh how beautiful our Slovenian/Croatian girls are, oh how clean and fresh our sacred waters are, etc.*


You are correct, they are not. As I said, why play foreign music just for the sake of it being foreign? If you listen to much of "mainstream" music, it in fact, as you said, doesnt sing about clean and fresh water or beautiful human ideals. Rather much of it is filled with nonsensical trash, so no wonder it is not played. (no, that does not mean you have to sing about the aforementioned or be like it to be good music, but some music is just outright trash)

Still, the bigger issue is, that there are like in any nation a wide variety of people who listen to different music from different nations. But the market for a single type of foreign music may not be large enough to sustain as many radio stations as the domestic music  . There is so much music out there, with much of it not being widely listened to and much being so spread out so it is not always possible to base a radio station mainly on playing that. At the same time domestic music will be largelly most popular in the nation of its origin.

You are talking as if this is not the case in the US, UK etc. But this is not true. There is in a way several americas, in plural. Being in different parts of the US you will hear their local music as well. Even if in the US it is not only as strictly geographically linked (then there are national broadcasters and media as well, but so are there large international media in Europe which may be less locally focused).

Maybe you can find more specialized stations of a broader range of musical types in other nations, but that may have to do more with their size and population, meaning that the market overall is larger.


----------



## Verso

Radi, you should listen to what our national hero Kekec says - Good mood is the best. 

Go, Kekec! :rock:


----------



## pijanec

ivan_ri said:


> I assume you didn't bother to look for more than one station in both countries :cheers:


This is hard in Slovenia because of our small size. By the time you change radio station you are in another country. :lol:


----------



## SpicyMcHaggis

edit


----------



## Radish2

Alle said:


> You are correct, they are not. As I said, why play foreign music just for the sake of it being foreign? If you listen to much of "mainstream" music, it in fact, as you said, doesnt sing about clean and fresh water or beautiful human ideals. Rather much of it is filled with nonsensical trash, so no wonder it is not played.
> 
> Still, the bigger issue is, that there are like in any nation a wide variety of people who listen to different music from different nations. But the market for a single type of foreign music may not be large enough to sustain as many radio stations as the domestic music  . There is so much music out there, with much of it not being widely listened to and much being so spread out so it is not always possible to base a radio station mainly on playing that. At the same time domestic music will be largelly most popular in the nation of its origin.
> 
> You are talking as if this is not the case in the US, UK etc. But this is not true. There is in a way several americas, in plural. Being in different parts of the US you will hear their local music as well. Even if in the US it is not only as strictly geographically linked (then there are national broadcasters and media as well, but so are there large international media in Europe which may be less locally focused).
> 
> *Maybe you can find more specialized stations of a broader range of musical types in other nations, but that may have to do more with their size and population, meaning that the market overall is larger.*


OMG, bullshit. It has nothing to do with size man, why do Macedonian radio stations play electronic music and Pop music, do you know why? Because they want to be cool, they want to be european, openminded, and macedonia is a small country. But it seems slovenian radio stations try to force Slovenians to think they and their music is the best and to not be openminded and cool, but to be extremly conservative.

SpicyMcHaggis, I would just turn off the sound and watch the great girls.


----------



## SpicyMcHaggis

edit


----------



## pijanec

^^ :applause::applause:


----------



## banjabuja

Radish2 said:


> OMG, bullshit. It has nothing to do with size man, why do Macedonian radio stations play electronic music and Pop music, do you know why? Because they want to be cool, they want to be european, openminded, and macedonia is a small country. But it seems slovenian radio stations try to force Slovenians to think they and their music is the best and to not be openminded and cool, but to be extremly conservative.


Radi, radio stations around europe play music that their audience would enjoy.
For example in ukraine they play more russian music towards the East, and more English music towards the West because that is what the PEOPLE like. 
Macedonians prefer techno and pop music.
I have driven through Slovenia many numerous times and if you switch radio stations you get English Music, and what is wrong with "Alpine" music if Slovenes like it?
Yes Italians must be uber musicnazis playing only Italian Music :lol:


----------



## Radish2

You get English music yes, but it´s like 1 English song, followed by 4 Slovenian tracks.


----------



## Nexis

Radi is easy to chat with after , you need to get know him better , he may be implusive sometimes , but hes very friendly if you get to know him!  


~Corey


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I almost saw a nasty accident two hours ago on the Autobahn A30 just across the border.

A Russian truck was overtaking a Belarussian truck, and another Russian truck HAD to merge from the rest area because the shoulder ends there, but the BY truck couldn't move sideways because of the overtaking RUS truck. 

sketch:


----------



## PLH

Heh, I can see that not giving way is sth unthinkable


----------



## x-type

that's actually crapy situation. if there was no sign for forbidden overtaking for lorries, left RUS and BY were not wrong because right RUS 100% had sign "give way".he woiuld enter motorway with minor speed what is dangerous, buthe should have done it


----------



## Timon91

Today the first HST arrived in the Netherlands. It will be used on the new HSL from Amsterdam to Belgium. What do you guys think of this train? IMO it is really ugly, the Multipla of the trains hno:



Cermivelli said:


>


----------



## Majestic

Timon91 said:


> the Multipla of the trains hno:


:lol: That sums it up just fine.


----------



## Buddy Holly

The colors are ugly, but those can be changed..


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't like it either, are these from that Italian builder? Which would make sense, since the Multipla is also Italian...


----------



## Timon91

@Buddy Holly: indeed, but unfortunately those are the colours of NsHispeed, the company that will operate those trains hno:

@Chris: Yes, from AnsaldoBreda. The company already had a bad reputation when they got the deal. They're practically bankrupt now, and only one or two trains have been finished now. This one has been tested in the Czech Republic recently and was finally brought to the Netherlands today.


----------



## Mateusz

Is it Ansaldo Breda something ?

It looks really ugly

I hope our Polish Stare Railways won't choose them for our future HSR


----------



## Timon91

AnsaldoBreda is an Italian company that produces trains. Denmark also has a deal with them, which also turns out to be a disaster hno:

Oh, by the way, don't worry. Polish State Railways won't even be able to choose them for your future HSR: AnsaldoBreda will probably go bankrupt in the near future.


----------



## Mateusz

To be honest I think the best looking are new Siemens high speed trains...

Sauber und praktisch


----------



## Verso

What an ugly train.


----------



## x-type

it is really extremely ugly. the only uglier that is in my mind is also from the Netherlands - series 4000 and 4200 Koploper. 
btw, that shape with beak can be really attractive (Talgo 350), but this is not that case


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Really? I kinda like the Koploper.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I just got myself 4 DVD's for € 10;

Smokey and the Bandit 1,2,3
Convoy

I only know SatB 1, so I wonder what the rest is  Some classic 70's roadmovies.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ Really? I kinda like the Koploper.


yes, i really hate them  unusual, but german trains are the best designed trains in my opinion.


----------



## Verso

I don't like "Koploper" either. Any nice trains in NL?


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> I don't like "Koploper" either. Any nice trains in NL?


NS's ICE3?


----------



## Verso

I wonder if Radi was there.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

And I have a 2€ (slovak) and a 20c (irish) in my wallet. Will add them to my gas money like you, guys 

Moreover, I have an obsolete 20 groszy (0.20 PLN) coin from 1971. I've found it at the post office on sunday - I believe that some grandpa/granny tried to pay for the post stamp with it... 

EDIT: And I have a winning crown cork which entitles me to one free Harnaś beer. Almost as good as gasoline, eh? 
(and by the way I've learned a new English word. SSC educates and entertains  )


----------



## PLH

OK, and I have 1 Kopiejka with huge CCCP on it. How about that? :tongue4:


----------



## x-type

i have 100 indonesian rupias and half egyptian pound


----------



## Verso

That's cool. I have 1,000,000 old Turkish lira and 5 Damanhur 'crediti'. :wink2:


----------



## PLH

The last non - show-off thread in this section is dead hno:


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Damanhur 'crediti'. :wink2:


just don't tell me that you've been there


----------



## Verso

Of course, why not? It's not so terribly far away.


----------



## Timon91

[show-off]I have a complete set of old Polish Zloty's (1,2,5,10,20,50 Groszy and 1,2,5,10,20 Zloty) - all issued between 1949 and 1976[/show-off]


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Of course, why not? It's not so terribly far away.


actually, i didn't know it is opened for public. i find it as a scary place


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Well, since now we are showing off and telling what we have in general and not in the wallet right now - i have a huge jar of various coins. Those are not numismatic, I collect only those currently being used (or being pulled off recently). I have the fair share of european currencies - euros, lats, litas'es, pouns, swiss francs, levs, turkish liras, estonian and czech koronas, kunas, konvertibilni markas (I absolutely adore the design of pfennings) and forints, some pre-euro currencies - gouldens, schillings, slovak koronas, tolars, german marks, french franks, italian liras and I think I have one belgian franc somewhere in this mess. Apart from european coins I have american and canadian dollars, yens, korean wons...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Lots of stupid WoW's today on the road...








Women on Wheels


----------



## SpicyMcHaggis

edit


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yeah, that's real bad:


----------



## Jeroen669

^^ It's terrible what happened there, but that reaction of the woman: "Oeh... en daar gaat een auto"


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think that woman only saw the last part of the car crashing into the monument, not the part where he was rampaging through the crowd.


----------



## Mateusz

13 people killed in Baku 

Some psychopath with rifle killed them


----------



## Timon91

Lots of weird people today hno: Someone at work told me about it and at first I thought he was lying, since he usually does, but unfortunately this time


----------



## Verso

That's crazy! I'm glad the Queen is fine though.


----------



## Timon91

Someone else died 15 minutes ago. Five people have died so far because of this. The murderer is almost dead himself. I hope he survives so that he can be locked away for the rest of his life and think about what he did hno:


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> That's crazy! I'm glad the Queen is fine though.


i'm usually not fan of royal families, but Beatrix is so cool person, i'd dare to say my favourite queen in the world  of course, after queen Rania of Jordan


----------



## BND

ChrisZwolle said:


> So, my car got it's maintenance today, and all the brakes have been replaced now, so I'm safe to go into Switzerland in three weeks


Did this also include the inspection by the transportation authorities or it was just the regular maintenance ordered by the car's manufacturer after running a certain thousands of km?

In Hungary the technological inspection and the environmental inspection are two different things. I find this system lame... My car is 17 years old, and the technological inspection is valid for 2 years while the environmental is only for 1 year... So that the brakes or the steering are functioning is checked every 2 years but the smoke produced is checked every year :nuts:
There should be only one inspection when they check everything IMO. What about the system in other countries?


----------



## keber

BND said:


> There should be only one inspection when they check everything IMO. What about the system in other countries?


We have both on technical inspection and you must pass all.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's called an "APK", "algemene periodieke keuring", or "regular periodical check". Diesel cars must run a soot/particle test too. Getting through the APK doesn't mean your car is in top condition though. It has to be done every year when a car turns 3.


----------



## BND

ChrisZwolle said:


> Getting through the APK doesn't mean your car is in top condition though.


Yeah, it only means that the car is allowed to take part in the traffic.


----------



## Morsue

Timon91 said:


> If I pass my exams, I had my last regular highschool schoolday *ever* today :banana:


If you're going to university, you only have a few years of studies left. If not, welcome to unemployment!


----------



## Verso

Morsue said:


> If you're going to university, you only have a few years of studies left. If not, welcome to unemployment!


Another victim of the economic crisis. hno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The economic crisis doesn't affect me at all, on the opposite, I got a bonus last month.


----------



## Verso

You should share it with poor Timon.


----------



## Morsue

Before he starts drinking. Oops, too late!


----------



## Mateusz

Just had an hour computing exam. Some questions were quite simple..

What kind of device is a mouse and laser printer ? Input, output or I/O 

Or what is a protocol...

Some where more tricky, like explain the fetch execute cycle... :banana:


----------



## Timon91

@Morsue: I said my last schoolday at *highschool*, I didn't mention university 

Yesterday there was an exam party, so I started drinking indeed


----------



## Morsue

Yes, but you seemed so overjoyed. Just wanted to tell you that this bitch ain't over. 
But hey, it's an excuse to party


----------



## Timon91

That's right  My exams start next monday at 9:00 am though


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Timon91 said:


> If I pass my exams, I had my last regular highschool schoolday *ever* today :banana:


I wouldn't be so happy about it. For me the highschool was like living a dream, the free time, the easy-to-learn things, the friends, the hopes about future... At the university you will learn that life's a bitch, everything cost money and you'll have to start learning for real


----------



## Majestic

Interesting. What does it say?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's hard to read, but it looks like "Wij hebben wel een kaartje". (we do have a ticket). Where is this?


----------



## Majestic

^^ It's in Leipzig.


----------



## Timon91

World Cup Football 2006, just before the match between the Netherlands-Serbia and Montenegro 

It was quite hard to get tickets for World Cup games, so those fans obviously manage to obtain some


----------



## geronimo_rs

Timon91 said:


> World Cup Football 2006, just before the match between the Netherlands-Serbia and Montenegro


Don't mention that match, please.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Do you guys read XKCD?


----------



## Timon91

Pavle4488 said:


> Don't mention that match, please.


Still frustrated about it?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Dog trailer. I can hardly believe this tiny trailer is really stable...


----------



## Verso

^^ I first see this; poor dog, why can't they just have it in the car?


----------



## deranged

^^ Whatever's in there may not be a dog...


----------



## PLH

Piggy?


----------



## Verso

A baby?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Mother-in-law.


----------



## Verso

Small mother-in-law... or just brutally squeezed.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

check this Hungarian woman trying to make a U-turn on a two-lane road. It takes her 5 minutes to get her car in the other direction


----------



## PLH

Was there a traffic jam ahead or the guy in Toyota Corolla seeing a woman gave up immediately and drove away?


----------



## Verso

She deserves a big slap.  If she can't turn around, I don't know how she can drive at all. That road has really few traffic, btw.


----------



## deranged

Wow, that's appalling. hno: I hate to think what would happen if she was trying to parallel-park an SUV.

I reckon we have a new candidate as to who should be inside that trailer.


----------



## Majestic

She was just taking her time, no rush 

It's hard to believe it's an actual footage, looks more like a prank or something, I mean how dumb can you be? Notice that the lady is also positive that the lane divider is to drive on it. :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Apparantly, she has no idea how long her vehicle is. Many women have that problem, I heard. For instance, I know a couple of women who cannot park in reverse without having to look over their shoulder. I drive a van, and back in totally relying on my side mirrors.


----------



## Ni3lS

I hate those little 'skelter cars'. See them often bouncing on the highway during my holiday. Most of them also have an extra tire on top of it. It looks embarassing actually :lol:


----------



## Timon91

Verso said:


> A baby?


Nah, drugs transportation


----------



## Verso

^ Hidden in a baby?


----------



## Majestic

^^ Your sense of humour is disgusting lads. :lol:


----------



## Verso

Yeah, it's quite brutal.


----------



## Timon91

Verso said:


> ^ Hidden in a baby?


You don't wanna know how they transport drugs


----------



## Polonus

Does anybody have the same problem as me with finding your posts? I can see only my latest post and can’t see the earlier posts in “Statistics” in my profile. The same when using “Search”-“Advanced search”. Is there anything I can do about it?


----------



## PLH

Posts from this section aren't displayed in the list.

Happy Birthday, x-type! :cheers:


----------



## zezi

Happy birthay x-type
:cheers1: :drunk:


----------



## Total

Happy birthday X-type!

Sve najbolje!
:cheers:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

New wall map:


----------



## Verso

^ Weird map.  Is anywhere else as hot as here these last days? It hasn't been so hot here in May for 87 years, it's 31°C daily. In Croatia it was 34°C today, tomorrow it will be 35°C. :nuts: There's just been a heavy hail in Ljubljana, I haven't seen so big hailstones here, for half an egg, I even saw one as big as a whole egg.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yeah, Chur already broke last years record temperature at 34 C. We had 28 - 30 C in NL too...they expect bad weather now.


----------



## PLH

Bling bling 




























hno:


----------



## Verso

Just noticed the hail destroyed my chair.


----------



## PLH

WTF? Where do you usually keep your chair? In the garden?


----------



## Verso

^ Yes, one of my garden chairs. For some reason I put it out of a pavillion, where it would've been safe.


----------



## Majestic

If the hailstorm destroys chairs, what with the cars?


----------



## Verso

^ In a garage.  Here (not my pic):


----------



## Mateusz

What are you smoking Verso ?


----------



## Timon91

It has been pretty warm here last days. Unfortunately my room is on the top floor and the roof is not isolated. In winter it usually gets very cold and in summer very warm. At the moment it is 27 degrees inside and 23 outside :nuts: When I came home after my Sauerland trip in december it was 6.1 degrees inside. By the way, Chris is right 

My computer has given up loading the Polish thread. Too many pics


----------



## PLH

Time for some moderation, Chris you lazyass


----------



## Verso

Timon, 27 degrees? :nuts:



Mateusz said:


> What are you smoking Verso ?


NOT my picture.


----------



## Timon91

^^It's getting colder: 26.6 at the moment. I'm sweating my ass off in here :nuts:

@PLH: I've already solved the problem


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Who's active on the Autobahn-online.de forum? I have an account there (created it in 2005 or so), but the forum software they have is soooo outdated... I really hope they'll switch to a better forum someday, like a phpBB one, or even Vbulletin. Ofcourse it's hard to just abandon a well-established forum database of thousands and thousands of messages, but the longer you wait, the harder a switch is gonna be... The current forum is very light for the server I guess, but it's also extremely basic...


----------



## Verso

^ That forum is totally primitive.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> ^ Weird map.  Is anywhere else as hot as here these last days? It hasn't been so hot here in May for 87 years, it's 31°C daily. In Croatia it was 34°C today, tomorrow it will be 35°C. :nuts: There's just been a heavy hail in Ljubljana, I haven't seen so big hailstones here, for half an egg, I even saw one as big as a whole egg.


actually, Split Airport had 35°C today at 5 pm. 
in Bjelovar we had 29, but air pressure was quite high (1018,1 hPa) and air speed is 0 km/h. but at friday we should be freezing at 20°C


----------



## x-type

Dutch are all around us :shifty:
these were caught here


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> actually, Split Airport had 35°C today at 5 pm.
> in Bjelovar we had 29, but air pressure was quite high (1018,1 hPa) and air speed is 0 km/h. but at friday we should be freezing at 20°C


Yeah, I just realized it was 35 also here, well 33 in Lj.



x-type said:


> Dutch are all around us :shifty:
> these were caught here


Who? :shifty:


----------



## Verso

Did you know that Radi had been with us for more than 2 years already?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I was awake at 5.30 am, we had some pretty violent thunder storms here tonight, probably the most violent in a couple of years, the street lights went out, but the power grid stayed online.


----------



## Timon91

I fell asleep at 3:45 or sth, and got up at 8. From 11:30 yesterday to 3:30 in the morning it hardly stopped raining and there was lightning all over the place. Since I couldn't fall asleep I just watched the storm. It was beautiful


----------



## Mateusz

First time I saw SSC was in September 2003, damn I could register then, I would be veteran these days


----------



## Verso

^ Epic fail.  I saw it first time in the beginning of 2005. But I wasn't into talking about highways, just watching them and reading; actually I thought there was way too much spam on SSC.


----------



## Mateusz

I could register but I had no internet at home, so if I would post then it would quite irregular  And my knowledge about roads qas quite sketchy those days. 

Seriously I tried to register here in Summer 2006 but never got any activation email till February 2007 hno:


----------



## RawLee

Watch and laugh!


----------



## Verso

RawLee said:


> Watch and laugh!


http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=36922648&postcount=4273


----------



## x-type

x-type said:


> Dutch are all around us :shifty:
> these were caught here





Verso said:


> Who? :shifty:


----------



## PLH

Smuggling some coke?


----------



## Verso

I'm more interested in what x-type was doing there.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> I'm more interested in what x-type was doing there.


well, i wouldn't make 65 km just for that. ok, i would  but it was not that occasion


----------



## RawLee

Verso said:


> http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=36922648&postcount=4273


Ooops,then sorry for the re-post...but to your question,why does the road have so low traffic,the answer is that it was closed,and many drivers drive as habits,and dont see,only look. They,for some reasons,cant tell the difference between this:









(obudai.blog.hu)

and the traffic seen in the video. They think they're awesome,because they found an empty road in the city(which normally is like a motorway)?

It is closed because of the construction of the new central water treatment plant at Csepel,to where all the currently untreated water from Buda will be transported in a huge tube,below this road.

by Qtya:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yay, I just found out all McDonalds in Switzerland have free Wlan internet! It would be nice to check back here when I'm on vacation next month. (I plan to begin driving on saturday afternoon, so I'm not stuck in traffic heading for Pfingsten).


----------



## Timon91

How long will you be in Switzerland?


----------



## BND

^^ I've seen free wlan signs in the McDs here too, though I haven't tried yet.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Timon91 said:


> How long will you be in Switzerland?


Depends on the weather. I have to work again after June 17th.


----------



## Ni3lS

^^ Can I go with you? :lol: Too bad that I have to make 2 exams next week. After that I'm finally graduated. No school anymore  Be sure that you drive on the highway near to Lugano/Gotthard and the Highway from St. Gallen to Zurich is very nice 2


----------



## Timon91

I can go with Chris, but "unfortunately" I will be in Barcelona in two weeks


----------



## Ni3lS

^ Yea that sounds really bad to me :shifty:


----------



## Mateusz

Chris & Timon Eurotrip

Powered by SSC


----------



## Verso

Chris & Timon Eurotrip staying in Hostel  Timon, have you already been to LtBk's town Lutherville-*Timon*ium?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Might be nice to add a picture of Timon:


----------



## Mateusz

Looks comparable to Timon's picture at the Stadium


----------



## Timon91

Actually it does. Well spotted, Mateusz 

@Verso: nah, I've never been to Maryland


----------



## Ni3lS

Mateusz said:


> Looks comparable to Timon's picture at the Stadium


Haha so true.

I used to look at these programs when I was a little kid :lol:


----------



## Verso

Finally cooler weather. From 33°C to 18.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

In Warsaw it's 15°C right now and it rains :/ I want the beautiful weather back again!


----------



## Timon91

Over here it's quite windy today. I hope it will improve soon


----------



## Mateusz

Here windy too, I don't know how cold it's outside though


----------



## x-type

Mateusz said:


> Looks comparable to Timon's picture at the Stadium


:rofl:

i guess that Pumbaa doesn't look like Chris


----------



## PLH

Well, if you look closer....


----------



## Timon91

I suspect that Chris has something to explain to us


----------



## Verso

Oink?


----------



## mapman:cz

I just realized that Chris lives in Зволле, НЛ  Nice! 

Dorogi voditel' ))


How was the Timon's chemistry??? I think I passed out a little bit in last few hours and missed the result, Timon  I just made my final university exams and been celebrating a bit :cheers:


----------



## Timon91

Chemistry was difficult, but doable. The exam is over here. You might need a dictionary to understand it


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

So it's "Show your exam" time now? 

Ok, so here comes the test similar (=taken from previous year) to the one i'm learning for right now. I hope that the questions won't differ much...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm in Lauterbrunnen right now.


----------



## Mateusz

Is it business trip or private ride ?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

vacation. But my time's gonna run out on this overpriced Wlan (5 CHF per 30 minutes)


----------



## Mateusz

Break into someone's WLAN


----------



## Verso

Cool!  What are you planning to see around there? There's a lot of things, like those waterfalls beside, Wengen, Kleine Scheidegg, Jungfraujoch, Schilthorn (Piz Gloria), Grindelwald, that glacier beside, Interlaken ...............


----------



## Ni3lS

Awesome Chris. Have fun and enjoy the mountains! I'll be up there around the 3th of july!


----------



## Timon91

Have fun, Chris! I just had my last exam and I'm done now! Party time has started 

Unfortunately no parties for me this weekend, since someone started a fire in the supermarket I work for, and everything is covered in soot, so I'll have to help to refill the store again hno:


----------



## Buddy Holly

Ni3lS said:


> I'd like to have it for photobucket though, because I upload all my pictures to photobucket and not to flickr because there is almost no space for all my pics.


What do you mean? If you have a Flickr Pro account, there is no limitation on space or bandwidth. I personally use Photobucket (the regular version) for my photos because of its super-easy linking options, but Flickr does offer some nice things.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I didn't expect it, but my car is more fuel efficient in the mountains. I have fueled up three times now with a consumption of 1 liter on 21 kilometers.


----------



## Timon91

Are you still paying too much for the WLAN? Or are you at a McDonald's now?


----------



## H123Laci

ChrisZwolle said:


> I didn't expect it, but my car is more fuel efficient in the mountains. I have fueled up three times now with a consumption of 1 liter on 21 kilometers.


maybe you are not speeding on the autobahns but sightseeing in a pensioner-tempo... :lol:


----------



## Mateusz

Everyone horning behind him


----------



## Ni3lS

Buddy Holly said:


> What do you mean? If you have a Flickr Pro account, there is no limitation on space or bandwidth. I personally use Photobucket (the regular version) for my photos because of its super-easy linking options, but Flickr does offer some nice things.


That's just the thing. I have a flickr account and a photobucket account but I don't want to pay for a flickr pro account. Photobucket offers as regular account more space than flickr does.


----------



## Timon91

Flickr only limits you to 200 pics, which really sucks. I haven't used Picasa for a while now, because it didn't seem like it was possible to hotlink from it. However, now it seems to be possible, so I might use Picasa again.


----------



## PLH

Maybe not a very skybar topic, but I am just curious which nation is said in your country to have contributed to fall of the communism in the greatest extend ?


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Well, I'm curious about that either.

Of course in Poland everyone say that it was us - Poles


----------



## Verso

The Vatican.  I don't know, I guess Poland, but also Gorbachev. But I don't think this affected Yugoslavia much, we'd probably proclaim capitalism regardless of happenings in Eastern Block.


----------



## Qwert

^^Americans? (I mean citizens of the USA, of course)


----------



## Verso

Why is Mateusz in the brig?


----------



## Morsue

Hold it, hold it! Stop getting so extremely serious on my ass... :nuts:

Btw, I think it was the aliens...


----------



## Buddy Holly

PLH said:


> Maybe not a very skybar topic, but I am just curious which nation is said in your country to have contributed to fall of the communism in the greatest extend ?


Communism fell because it was a flawed concept and a flawed experiment, not because some nation fought a glorious struggle over it and overcame. It fell because it wasn't sustainable. It wasn't sustainable because of various reasons, but one of the main ones was economics: if there hadn't been an arms race between the US and the Soviet Union, the SU would have lasted for a couple of decades longer but ultimately failed. If there's one reason the SU and thus communism fell, it's the bankrupt nature of the SU after it was clear the Americans won the Cold War. 

So, it's a complex question that deserved a book or 15 to answer.


----------



## Morsue

Buddy Holly said:


> So, it's a complex question that deserved a book or 15 to answer.


And maybe not even then. The idea of Communism is a utopia, and it's not what mankind is about. Communism promotes equality for all, but the human being is competitive by nature, and if you strip that away then you will have minds that implode. When saying this, I also recognize that there has never been such a thing as pure communism anywhere in the world. There has always been a ruling class. But I also acknowledge the fact that there has never been an entirely free market economy, free from regulation, anywhere at any time. But the capitalistic system is also flawed, as we have seen numerous times through history.

Those are just my :2cents:...

(This was my 666th post on SSC, so regard it as the teachings of the Devil...)


----------



## Timon91

Verso said:


> Why is Mateusz in the brig?


He told me on MSN that he posted some 'wrong' pictures


----------



## PLH

^^ DLM?


----------



## Timon91

Polish section AFAIK. The thread was in Polish.


----------



## Morsue

Hey, does anyone know if there's an application to download the ViaMichelin maps to be viewed in offline mode? Would be much appreciated...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm back! Drove 700 kilometers today and 700 kilometers yesterday. Guess my route 

Interlaken - Brünigpass - Bellinzona - St. Margrethen - Bregenz - München - Nürnberg - Bamberg - Kassel - Bielefeld - Osnabrück - Zwolle.


----------



## Timon91

That's quick! I thought you would stay away for about two weeks


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yeah, well, I wanted to stay for 1.5 weeks, but I cut it short to 1 week because they forecasted bad weather in the Swiss Alps... "dauerregen", "gewittrig" and "unbeständiges Wetter".


----------



## Verso

We want pics.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I did make A LOT of pics.  I'll show them later.


----------



## x-type

Timon91 said:


> He told me on MSN that he posted some 'wrong' pictures


yeah, me too. i will better not comment it not to come into brig too  i mean, who the hell can be offended with boobs?!?!?!


----------



## PLH

^^


----------



## x-type

PLH said:


> ^^


is that one holding a banner one of our mods?


----------



## keber

^^ Is that the offensive picture for being "brigged"?


----------



## PLH

He didn't post that picture.

Reason:



talkinghead said:


> nuda papillae.
> 
> (nudae? nudas?)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I took this picture from Beatenberg, above Interlaken 

The Jungfrau. 4158 meters tall.


----------



## Verso

^^ Did you take the roller coaster (Rodelbahn)?


----------



## Timon91

Wow, great picture! Unfortunately we don't have any mountains over here, no snow, and the sun left a few days ago. And I have to work tomorrow, from 8 to 6 hno:


----------



## pause

Timon91 said:


> Wow, great picture! Unfortunately we don't have any mountains over here, no snow, and the sun left a few days ago. And I have to work tomorrow, from 8 to 6 hno:


Thats why you all travel to Bayern for every holiday


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Oh man, there were so many Dutchmen on every campsite, it's just ridiculous, you see them everywhere, regardless of peak summer season or not...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This accident happened just a couple of hundred meters in front of me, two vehicles with similar damage were involved. No injuries it seems. It gave a vollsperre of about 20 minutes.


----------



## H123Laci

Verso said:


> ^^ Did you take the roller coaster (Rodelbahn)?


I want to take this one: www.nockyflitzer.at :lol: :cheers:

do any of you know it?


----------



## zezi

ChrisZwolle said:


> This accident happened just a couple of hundred meters in front of me, two vehicles with similar damage were involved. No injuries it seems. It gave a vollsperre of about 20 minutes.


How did this happend?
How did Mazda2 lost all wheels. :nuts:


----------



## x-type

zezi said:


> How did this happend?
> How did Mazda2 lost all wheels. :nuts:


that's what i am wondering too!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There was another car in the left barrier with similar damage. Seems to have happened at high speed, since the other car was about 150 m further ahead.


----------



## Verso

H123Laci said:


> I want to take this one: www.nockyflitzer.at :lol: :cheers:
> 
> do any of you know it?


Some 15 years ago I was on Turracher Höhe by Yugo. We barely made it over the 23-% ascent with 10 km/h. Everyone was overtaking us, how embarrassing.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Speaking of Yugo, I saw a car from (Serbia?) that still had a YU oval sticker


----------



## Verso

6 years since end of Yugoslavia.


----------



## PLH

Actually many cars from Serbia still have YU stickers.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Are they in violation?


----------



## Energy2003

o, chris takes care of the "datenschutz" end hiddes the car signs


----------



## Energy2003

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yay, I just found out all McDonalds in Switzerland have free Wlan internet! It would be nice to check back here when I'm on vacation next month. (I plan to begin driving on saturday afternoon, so I'm not stuck in traffic heading for Pfingsten).



btw: same in Germany and Austria


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I found out the German McDonalds only offer free Wlan if you have a German cell phone ("Handy").


----------



## PLH

ChrisZwolle said:


> Are they in violation?


Well, SRB if the current version, but I don't know if you can't have YU, as it doesn't stand for anything now.


----------



## Energy2003

to be ontopic


Inntalautobahn, Tyrol 




anyone knows how old this station is ? looks new


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Roadgeeking in 1855


----------



## Timon91

The A2 didn't exist yet in those days


----------



## H123Laci

Verso said:


> Some 15 years ago I was on Turracher Höhe by Yugo. We barely made it over the 23-% ascent with 10 km/h. Everyone was overtaking us, how embarrassing.


I made it with a one litre opel corsa... :lol:

I know the yugo from the diehard3:

- how can you duble the value of a yugo?
- by filling it up...


----------



## Ni3lS

^^ My mom is driving an Opel Corsa swing :lol: It's hard to get in such cars, it hurts my head


----------



## ChrisZwolle

H123Laci said:


> I know the yugo from the diehard3:


Zeus: It's a Yugo! They're build for economy, not speed!

I don't think the Yugo is known by the general public in the Netherlands, I don't think they sold them here, Lada is better known because they used to be sold here. Maybe they still are, but you almost never see them on the road.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

There are some Yugos in Poland, I've noticed several of them in Warsaw. They are beautifully ugly 
And they are cheap as dirt, you can buy one built in 90' for less than 200€. And I believe that it would still work!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I tried to find some Yugo's on the Dutch automotive site "autotrack". Result: 1 motorbike. 0 cars.

I could find only 15 Lada's. 

I always wanted to buy some tiny cheap car just for fun.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Everyone in Poland import cars from West, so why don't you go the other way?

http://allegro.pl/item650674563_yugo_koral60.html

(New sub-thread: "Post Yugos for sale of your country"? )


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I tried to find some Yugo's on the Dutch automotive site "autotrack". Result: 1 motorbike. 0 cars.
> 
> I could find only 15 Lada's.
> 
> I always wanted to buy some tiny cheap car just for fun.


oooh, i had Yugo 5 years ago! sold for €250  he consumpted 14 litres :nuts:

intersting, we have never found Yugos ugly here in ex-yu. generally, the ugliest socialistic cars were Dacia, Škoda and Polonez. Polonez was not often seen and it wasn't actually considered as ugly, but Polonez drivers were considered as weirdos


----------



## PLH

Why? Now they are, but back then?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Dacia has some decent cars nowadays, with 1.5 dCi engines from Renault, those are good. I have such an engine, never let me down, and very fuel efficient (5l / 100km).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yay, I have just been informed that my ISP will increase the internet speed from 10 mbit to 20 mbit without an increase of monthly fees! That's nice


----------



## Timon91

My internet connection really sucks. Only 1 mbit, maybe even less.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Internet is not really expensive anymore in NL. I pay € 50 per month for digital TV, 20 Mbit internet + telephone (not cell phone)


----------



## x-type

PLH said:


> Why? Now they are, but back then?


dunno, probably because they were not often and kinda exotic



ChrisZwolle said:


> Dacia has some decent cars nowadays, with 1.5 dCi engines from Renault, those are good. I have such an engine, never let me down, and very fuel efficient (5l / 100km).


i was talking about old dacias  have in common with new ones as yugo have with new fiat 500


----------



## Sarajlija

ChrisZwolle said:


> Dacia has some decent cars nowadays, with 1.5 dCi engines from Renault, those are good. I have such an engine, never let me down, and very fuel efficient (5l / 100km).


Clio or Megane?

I've got Laguna 1.9 dCi (2005), and I'm very pleased with it. It spends 7 l / 100 km, but I'm driving it in the city for 90% of the time, and I'm not saving it at all.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

x-type said:


> the ugliest socialistic cars were Dacia, Škoda and Polonez.


What? How you can consider this ugly?:

















It was designed by Giugiaro, you know 

And about Dacia, my parents drove Dacia 1300 in the 80'. I have some memories of this car, especially of breaking up in the least expected moments and of gear leaver made of wood because the original one broke in half 
In the 1990 our family abandoned the socialistic car market by buying The Western Capitalistic Car, Hyundai Pony


----------



## x-type

Fuzzy, i am talking about general opinion before 20 years.
btw, in 1991 Hyundai Pony becameextremely popular here, too. but anyway we bought Mitsubishi Lancer and we had it till 2007


----------



## Mateusz

Ahhh, it's so good to post


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Sarajlija said:


> Clio or Megane?


Kangoo commercial van.

The 1.5 dCi is good, but it lacks some power, it's not really a race car. The 1.6 HDi of Peugeot/Citroën is much faster.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> btw, in 1991 Hyundai Pony becameextremely popular here, too.


Oh, I remember that one 










Funny hatchback. I sometimes think those straight and boxy lines are even better than all that rounded stuff from now.


----------



## Mateusz

This Polonez is really good, especially comparing to all those cars like Trabant, Wartburg, Maluch or this Hungarian Velorex. It's really shame they didn't managed to install more Fiat engines there, 2.0 131 BHP... oh yes 

I really like Polonez MR 87 like on second picture


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Oh, I remember that one
> 
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...cht_.jpg/800px-Hyundai_Pony_1984_Utrecht_.jpg
> 
> Funny hatchback. I sometimes think those straight and boxy lines are even better than all that rounded stuff from now.


actually, this model was popular and it was more popular in sedan version.
it was real invasion of eastern cars in 1990es here. i will never forget when my father came to pick me in school with our Mitsubishi in the sea of Yugos. also, this mazda 323 and 323f were very popular.

Hyundai was reall cool to own because very few people heard of it before


----------



## BND

Mateusz said:


> This Polonez is really good, especially comparing to all those cars like Trabant, Wartburg, Maluch or this Hungarian Velorex. It's really shame they didn't managed to install more Fiat engines there, 2.0 131 BHP... oh yes


Velorex is Czechslovakian. And it is not really a car :crazy:

My family always had Ladas back then. I remember when we had a Lada 1200, and sold it when I was 5 . My mother drove a Polski Fiat 126p (Maluch) till 1994. I remember going to Graz, Austria with the Polski Fiat in 1991, when the Lada was already sold, and we had no bigger car. We were overtaken even by trucks 

Our first Western car was an Opel Vectra 1.8i till 2002, and the Maluch was replaced by a Lancia Y10 (stolen 2 years later) then a Renault 5. Now we have a Renault Laguna II 1.8 Grandtour, my mother doesn't drive any more because of her eyes, and I drive a VW Golf II 1.3 made in 1991


----------



## wyqtor

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's Latin for Zwolle


At first I thought it was Italian. They tend to give strange names in Italian to many cities: Salzburg > Salisburgo; München > Monaco; Postojna > Postumia; etc.


----------



## Mateusz

I like to look up different names of cities in different languages 

Like Polish cities in German 

Warszawa-Warschau
Bydgoszcz-Bromberg
Torun-Thorn
Wroclaw-Breslau
Gdansk-Danzig
Katowice-Kattowitz
Szczecin-Stettin
Gorzów Wielkopolski-Landsberg
Poznan-Posen 
Zielona Góra-Grunberg
Rzeszów-Reichshof

or Polish names for different cities in the world...

Paris-Paryz
London-Londyn
New York-Nowy Jork
Washington-Waszyngton
Regensburg-Ratyzbona
Madrid-Madryt
Milano-Mediolan
Torino-Turyn
Roma-Rzym
Moscow-Moskwa
Gent-Gandawa
Brussels-Bruksela
Ljubljana-Lublana
Zagreb-Zagrzeb
Prague-Praga
Marsille-Marsylia
Munich-Monachium
Athens-Ateny 
Kiev-Kijów
Hradec Kralove-Grodziec Królowej 
Mainz-Moguncja
Cologne-Kolonia
Rostock-Roztoka
etc. etc.


----------



## H123Laci

btw: Poland

last month we were on a CzechRep vacation, and we crossed Poland in 2 minutes... :lol:

I was not sure that we can cross the borders here because maps.google indicates this route as a local route...

but in reality it is a main route so it should be thick yellow on the map...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've been there. It's indeed a through route from Zittau to Liberec.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

By the way, is this a new route? It wasn't there when I was there in 2001 or 2002.


----------



## PLH

Unfortunately not yet It's planned to start this year.

The old road looks like this: (my pics)









Now the whole crossing is dismantled(PL/CZ)












H123Laci said:


> I was not sure that we can cross the borders here because maps.google indicates this route as a local route..


So what? You can cross the border anywhere.


----------



## Verso

Mateusz said:


> Cologne-Kolonia


Like former capital of Micronesia, and its biggest town.



Mateusz said:


> Ljubljana-Lublana


Like it's called in Ljubljana slang, though I don't call it like that.


----------



## H123Laci

PLH said:


> So what? You can cross the border anywhere.


I mean: with car...

there are some border crossing which can be crossed only by foot or bike...


----------



## PLH

But I suppose that when it is a road, not a path, only trucks can be banned from such crossings.


----------



## Ni3lS

Mateusz said:


> I like to look up different names of cities in different languages
> 
> Like Polish cities in German
> 
> Warszawa-Warschau
> Bydgoszcz-Bromberg
> Torun-Thorn
> Wroclaw-Breslau
> Gdansk-Danzig
> Katowice-Kattowitz
> Szczecin-Stettin
> Gorzów Wielkopolski-Landsberg
> Poznan-Posen
> Zielona Góra-Grunberg
> Rzeszów-Reichshof
> 
> or Polish names for different cities in the world...
> 
> Paris-Paryz
> London-Londyn
> New York-Nowy Jork
> Washington-Waszyngton
> Regensburg-Ratyzbona
> Madrid-Madryt
> Milano-Mediolan
> Torino-Turyn
> Roma-Rzym
> Moscow-Moskwa
> Gent-Gandawa
> Brussels-Bruksela
> Ljubljana-Lublana
> Zagreb-Zagrzeb
> Prague-Praga
> Marsille-Marsylia
> Munich-Monachium
> Athens-Ateny
> Kiev-Kijów
> Hradec Kralove-Grodziec Królowej
> Mainz-Moguncja
> Cologne-Kolonia
> Rostock-Roztoka
> etc. etc.


Funny. What is Amsterdam in Polish? Just curious


----------



## x-type

we have some our names in croatian, but also in some cases weude original names and i don't like it at all (it is ok when it is in spirit of our language, bu München or Bruxelles are just annoying)


----------



## Verso

Brussels is in Slovenian 'Bruselj'.



Ni3lS said:


> Funny. What is Amsterdam in Polish? Just curious


It's the same.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Brussels is in Slovenian 'Bruselj'.


i know and that's fantastic. i don't know why wouldn't we have Brisel.


----------



## RipleyLV

Polish names for Latvian biggest cities:

Riga - Ryga
Daugavpis - Dyneburg 
Liepaja - Lipawa
Jelgava - Jełgawa 
Jurmala - Jurmała
Rezekne - Rzeżyca
Ventspils - Windawa

Quite interesting.


----------



## Mateusz

Ni3lS said:


> Funny. What is Amsterdam in Polish? Just curious


Just Amsterdam  But...

Den Haag-Haga 

Holland is so cool


----------



## ChrisZwolle

> DROGI TO MOJA PASJA


I like that  subtitle of a Polish moderator.


----------



## PLH

You can have the same. Patryjota won't be angry  (a moderator cannot brig another one )


----------



## Ni3lS

Stealing subtitles from others is against the law! :nono:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm trying to get some more knowledge of Polish... It's not an easy language, but it's not as hard as it looks at first, Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish seems harder to me.

Reading it is one thing, pronouncing it, is another. 

Numerals seems to be not that hard to learn. Once you know the basic 1 - 10, the rest will follow. For instance, 3 = trzy. Thirteen = trzynascie. add "nascie" after 1 - 9, and you basically have 11 - 19. 2 = dwa. 20 = dwadziescia. Add 1 - 9 after it, and you have 21 - 29, like dwadziescia jeden. (21). 

Grammar on the other hand, seems more complex.


----------



## Mateusz

Keep going Chris


----------



## Verso

^ You're right, "my toilet", now I remember.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Women and cardoors. That can't go right...








(I know, my windshield is dirty, it was spotless 200 km before).


----------



## Mateusz

What's that ?


----------



## Ni3lS

She is trying to smoke a cigaret


----------



## Mateusz

It's so sad view especially when people smoke in brand new cars


----------



## H123Laci

Polonus said:


> Hungarian pronunciation is hard and different than it looks at first glance. For example Imre Nagy – in Polish “nagi” means “naked” :lol: but I know that Hungarians pronounce it like “nodge”


yeah, it sounds like "nodge", but it sounds very strange...

"gy" is a softer version of "g"
g: like *g*o
gy: like *d*uration




> We have an old proverb about Polish-Hungarian friendship in Poland:
> ”Polak, Węgier - dwa bratanki i do szabli i do szklanki” which literally means ”A Pole and a Hungarian – two nephews (personally I think that the word “cousins” would be better but maybe the Old Polish words had different meaning) to a sword and to a glass (drink). Do Hungarians have it too?


yeah: http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lengyel,_magyar_két_jóbarát

hungarian version:
"Lengyel, magyar – két jó barát, együtt harcol, s issza borát.” 

"A Pole and a Hungarian - two good friends, fight together, drink together" :lol:

bratanki : this sounds like "barát" = "friend"
szabli : this sounds like "szablya" = "sword" 

hey, arent we language-relatives? :lol:


----------



## H123Laci

ChrisZwolle said:


> Women and cardoors. That can't go right...


what has happened to her door? 
it seems to be a little bit distorted... :lol:



> (I know, my windshield is dirty, it was spotless 200 km before).


I can see it CLEARLY! 
everything is blurred but the dirt is razor sharp... :lol:


----------



## Timon91

Dirt can be interesting


----------



## Mateusz

OMG It's thundering so much now hno: I don't like it !


----------



## Ni3lS

oh poor little baby  The sun is shiningg !


----------



## Timon91

Yeah, almost a clear sky now


----------



## Mateusz

Actually I am quite worried about forum virus, I am using Norton 360 and it picked up couple of things


----------



## PLH

I had two haker attack attemps yesterday, now it calmed down luckily.


----------



## Timon91

I haven't had any sign of this virus yet :dunno:


----------



## Mateusz

I have subscription for my Norton so I am fairly confident about my computer and it updates itself every couple of hours


----------



## x-type

my anti virus was mad 2 days ago, now it is calm


----------



## RipleyLV

These last 3 days were a nightmare, I was getting these messages all the time:









But know everything seems to be okey.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I had none of those.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

lol, someone being creative with Polish caracters in the tag ąćęłńóżź


----------



## PLH

It was me :|


----------



## dubart

^^ Moldova?


----------



## x-type

dubart said:


> ^^ Moldova?


no, it's in EU  i'm not telling you that, wait till august


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Struma


----------



## PLH

^^


x-type said:


> really rarely photographed motorways. real exclusive!!


:sly: It can't be Struma. No way


----------



## dubart

Yaaay, it's Struma! :lol: :banana:


----------



## Verso

Struma isn't "really rarely photographed" (unless it was sarcastic). Besides, it's an expressway.


----------



## keber

I expect an HD-movie at least. :naughty: Probably with Struma length it would fit onto 10-minute limit of Youtube.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Struma isn't "really rarely photographed" (unless it was sarcastic). Besides, it's an expressway.


well, this one which i will take photos of is actually also expressway. 
but now i must dissapoint you - it is not struma  first plan was to make a trip which included struma, but i don't have money for that right now (that plan was to make about 3800 km).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Okay, so we have to search a "rarely pictured motorway" within a reasonable distance of Croatia within EU. I guess it's Italy. FIPILI perhaps? Or SS3bis (E78) from Ravenna via Perugia to Terni.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Or SS3bis (E78) from Ravenna via Perugia to Terni.


i took photos of part of it last year, don't you remember my Giro?

to make things harder to guess - i am flying and have rented a car on destination 
but i can tell you if you want. or you can continue guessing. FIPILI was quite hot.


----------



## dubart

Direct flight from some Croatian airport or not?  This would really help... :lol:


----------



## Timon91

Some dirt motorway in northern Finland perhaps?


----------



## Verso

Sardinia?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Timon91 said:


> Some dirt motorway in northern Finland perhaps?


Yeah, I've heard northern Finland is quite close to Firenze, Pisa and Livorno :cheers:


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Sardinia?


bingo!:banana:


----------



## dubart

Açores, Sardinia, Corsica, Cyprus, northern Sweden... It can even be out of Europe but still in EU - French Guiana perhaps? EDIT: damn, now I see it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> bingo!:banana:


Oh that's cool, unknown territory indeed


----------



## Verso

That's great, we've only had a few pics from Sardinia in the Italian thread.


----------



## PLH

My first trip, 1200 km, starting 3.07:










Poland - by car, Ukraine - by bus.


----------



## Verso

^^ Don't forget to take pics!


----------



## PLH

Oh really? 

Too bad I wanted to take pics in Ukraine, but I don't know if I'll find a place at the front of the bus.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Nice trip!^^
Just now I cliked on the Deutch Autobahn thread and I see that the last post is by "Radish2". I mena how many usernames has that erm person had over the years? I can remembe radi with a set of numbers and radish, now radish2? Anyway, I read his post and he is complaning about not liking Baden-Wuttemberg.


----------



## Timon91

Why can't you drive to Ukraine?


----------



## PLH

Firstly, I'm going on a organized trip from Przemyśl(20 km from the border) to Lviv. 
Secondly, I don't feel like going by car to Ukraine anyway. 
For you (in general) Ukraine and Poland might seem to be very much the same thing, but it's not.


----------



## Timon91

I understand now. You might have to get a little closer for Euro 2012 though


----------



## Verso

A lot of new mods lately.  Congrats to RawLee and Qwert. :cheers:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Congratulaitons to the new mods!


----------



## Qwert

Verso said:


> A lot of new mods lately.  Congrats to RawLee and Qwert. :cheers:





DanielFigFoz said:


> Congratulaitons to the new mods!


Thank you. Me and RawLee are mods because previous common mod of Czech, Hungarian and Slovak sections carbonkid doesn't have enough time to moderate the forums. It was quite advantageous to have one mod for three sections, but...


----------



## Mateusz

I had job interview today and... I started like hour after interview  

Was really good, better than I have expected. Busy all the time, almost because new orders finfished like 30 minutes before end of this shift.

So I am content. First payment in two weeks  Entering the adult's life


----------



## x-type

i will never forget my first payment  i felt as i won a lottery! but although i had much smaller payment then, i was distributing money much wiser and better :s


----------



## x-type

http://www.24sata.hr/news/clanak/op...322/?context=naslovnica&web_page_id=main_page

bees on motorway! car was transporting bees on A1 and beehives droped off the trailer all over the motorway. owner tried to collect dropped beehives, but bees have bitten him too much so he is now in the hospital. and beehives are still beside motorway


----------



## Verso

^^ Haha, close your windows, people!


----------



## PLH

You gotta need quite a lot of these


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It um.. rains here.


----------



## PLH

Here too:


----------



## Mateusz

Kłodzko or something ?


----------



## PLH

I don't know, but somewhere near Tarnów more likely. Generally whole southern Poland. And I'm going there on Friday :crazy:


----------



## Verso

NL could be wiped out by global warming some day. Better move to Vaalserberg.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nah, we spent billions on water protection each year. The biggest concern of global warning might be how to dump the water of the major rivers into the North sea. The water will flow to the north sea level much further inland if the sea level rise. 

the Netherlands is no Miami. Miami will be flooded completely if sea level rises over a meter. They do not have any significant dunes or dikes along the coast. Dutch dunes are 40+ m high in many places, and have dikes where there are no dunes.


----------



## Mateusz

What's the attitude in your countries towards nuclear power plants ?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Leftist parties are usually against it, including CAVE-people and NIMBY's. Right-wing parties see it as a good solution to reduce coal power plants.


----------



## x-type

here rained too


----------



## Qwert

Mateusz said:


> What's the attitude in your countries towards nuclear power plants ?


In Slovakia the attitude is generally positive (of course not counting Greenpeace stuff and so on) among both people and politicians. Actually, people were quite angry when EU forced us to close power plant V1 in Jaslovské Bohunice. Now there are U/C two reactors in power plant Mochovce and there is in preparation new power plant in Jaslovské Bohunice.


----------



## keber

Mateusz said:


> What's the attitude in your countries towards nuclear power plants ?


Mainly positive, new planned reactor will almost certainly get an approval on referendum, except if some nuclear catastrophe happens in the world.

Of course neighbouring countries, especially antinuclear Austria, are not so happy with Slovenian nuclear powerplant and its planned upgrade.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Positive by the goverment, but the public does'nt want them and there aren't any nuclear reactors in the country.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> here rained too


Hah, I wanted to post the exact same pic.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Slovenes should learn how to make their vignettes properly, because Poles have already learned how to transfer them between cars without damage...

The commerce is blooming hno:

For better example I've not seen any undamaged Swiss or Slovak vignette for sale on this site.


----------



## Verso

They say it self-destructs after use.


----------



## Energy2003

Fuzzy Llama said:


> For better example I've not seen any undamaged Swiss or Slovak vignette for sale on this site.


The Swiss is so cheap, so it´s surely no big business.


btw: didn´t get controlled for the Vignette in Swiss for 10 years !


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Radish


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Energy2003 said:


> The Swiss is so cheap, so it´s surely no big business.


The swiss vignette is very annoying. It costs 40CHF and it is valid to end of January. And it doesn't matter if you buy it in February, or in November, it always costs 40CHF and it's always valid to the end of January. The vignettes for the next year are coming in December (f.e. '09 vignette is valid from 12.2008 to 01.2010), so if you have to buy one in November... Annoying 

And apart from that 40CHF is no small money if you only need it for the transit through the country.


----------



## Energy2003

^^ from that point you´re right.

but like i said, i drove 1000s of km in Swiss and i never got controled

(the only may dangerous thing is next to austria, when you leave the highway and get directly to the boarder; i don´t know who controls the vignette, but the customs officer may can ask you what you´re doiing)


----------



## PLH

Verso said:


> They say it self-destructs after use.


Mine did, but the one Fuzzy Lama posted was attached with a Scotch tape. 

To be frank I don't have a problem with that, as an average turist covers only like 200 - 300 km on this vignette.


----------



## Energy2003

^^ or use labello (lipstick) or butter


but if they catch you, you may have a problem


----------



## Verso

When were you here, PLH?


----------



## Energy2003

^^ it´s about vignettes in general.

(but in my past i´ve been to Slovenia sometimes; my grandparents are from Opatja)


----------



## Verso

^^ Sorry, I was asking PLH.


----------



## PLH

Verso said:


> When were you here, PLH?


Last summer in Portorož and Piran. I stayed at hotel Slovenija , which is half the price when you book via internet. I don't know why it is so, but I liked it


----------



## Verso

Oh, you didn't mention it. So not every Pole goes to Croatian sea.


----------



## PLH

Sorry, I was there too


----------



## Verso

Chris, you drive like a grandpa.


----------



## PLH

Yeah, what will come next? :lol:


----------



## PLH

ChrisZwolle said:


> Ferrari on A28 near Hoogeveen, Netherlands


Going there? 

Poznań, Gran Turismo Polonia


----------



## Mateusz

I really like Poznań and Wrocław 

Is it quite often to occur in your country/forum war city vs city ?

On FPW we have it sometimes...


----------



## PLH

^^ You should visit DLM more often. There is WW III in progress over there now :lol:


----------



## Mateusz

But as a some kind of 'game' or just massive, infinite flamewars ?


----------



## PLH

Flamewars, all the way. Germany/Poland, Russia/Poland(yeah, kick them in the ass!), Russia/Europe(as well), USA/the others and many many other.


----------



## PLH

Mateusz said:


> I really like Poznań


This little bastard as well?


----------



## Mateusz

Well I meant city centre and so on  

USA vs rest of the world ha ha 

Are flamewars allowed on DLM ?


----------



## PLH

^^

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=598131

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=852306


----------



## Mateusz

It's just running away from the problems of this world... but oh well


----------



## PLH

S8 Warsaw, emmgie/SSC


----------



## RipleyLV

^ The best construction pic ever.


----------



## ABRob

Got this today:








The current "Guidelines for motorway-construction"

So this are the current road-profiles in Germany:


On bridges:


In tunnels:


----------



## lpioe

^^ Interesting.
What's EKA 1-3?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Accident at my intersection  considering the damage, it looks like a rollover.


----------



## ABRob

lpioe said:


> ^^ Interesting.
> What's EKA 1-3?


*E*ntwurfs*K*lasse für *A*utobahnen - design-class for motorways:
EKA 1: normal motorways
EKA 2: non-motorway 2x2-roads ('Gelbe Autobahn')
EKA 3: inner-city motorway ('Stadtautobahn')


----------



## ChrisZwolle

We now have 500 threads in H&A. Which comes down to an average 145 posts per thread, which is significantly higher than other forums in Infrastructure & Mobility


----------



## PLH

500? It's only 88 less than in Infrastruktura drogowa, but our average is 468,75 posts per thread


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This small ferry couldn't handle this agricultural tractor weight


----------



## Verso

Oh, now that's a long journey.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

950 kilometers from Abcoude to Chiemsee via Kassel - Nürnberg.


----------



## pijanec

keber said:


> 6,5 hours to go ...
> See you at end of July.:baeh3:


Enjoy! :banana:


----------



## Verso

Any news from Timon?


----------



## Mateusz

Well, as we see, his recent pictures proved that he is enjoying his time in mountains and also waiting hours to get to toll booth and pay heavily


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> Any news from Timon?


I told him Mateusz made a photoshop, and he was afraid he posted it.. Oh my.

And he went to Bled today, no traffic jams. 

/end update Timon


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> I told him Mateusz made a photoshop, and he was afraid he posted it.. Oh my.


What do you mean, that he's embarrassed because of it? :lol:


----------



## pijanec

Woman with crutch freaks out in a traffic jam
http://www.totallycrap.com/videos/videos_woman_with_crutch_freaks_out_in_a_traffic_jam/


Can anyone identify the country?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I cannot recognize the language, but considering the license plates, it could be in Sweden, Hungary, Estonia or Lithuania. 

But why are they driving on the shoulder?


----------



## snowman159

ChrisZwolle said:


> I cannot recognize the language, but considering the license plates, it could be in Sweden, Hungary, Estonia or Lithuania.
> 
> But why are they driving on the shoulder?


Looks like Hungarian or Lithuanian plates to me. Βut the language doesn't really sound like Hungarian, so it's probably Lithuania. Pretty sure it's not Sweden or Estonia.

The (control freak) driver who the woman is beating was intentionally blocking the shoulder so the cars behind can't illegally pass. 
Passing on the shoulder is an *sshole move, but blocking the shoulder is even worse, imho. That guy got what he deserved. :lol:


----------



## pijanec

I guess they just wanted to get to the nearest exit.

But man who is blocking the shoulder is also breaking the law. Hypocrite...


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I cannot recognize the language, but considering the license plates, it could be in Sweden, Hungary, Estonia or Lithuania.


those are not hungarian, they have different font. language sounds pretty russian to me. probably Lithuania or Latvia
.

edit: at 0:06 at audi you can clearly see LT, so probably Lithuania


----------



## ChrisZwolle

But is Lithuanian or Latvian similar to Russian? As far as I know, LT and LV languages are not very similar to Russian (unlike Czech or other slavic languages, LT and LV are Baltic languages which are not as close to Russian as slavic languages)


----------



## x-type

they aren't, but lots of ppl speaks russian there. and it allways can be (belo)russian bus


----------



## PLH

Speaking of Belorussian bus, I saw one in Lwów:

Dvazhdy ordena Lenina
Minskaya oblast'










hno:


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

> probably Lithuania or Latvia


It's Lithuania.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Timon said he's now in Ljubljana, hunting for Verso


----------



## Verso

Wow, he's quick. I hope he doesn't contact me, I'm a terrible tourist guide.  It isn't warm outside ATM, and some nasty clouds are gathering.


----------



## Verso

Btw, some Croatian guy tried to commit a terrorist attack on the Slovenian parliament today and assassinate the Slovenian PM. :nuts::nuts::nuts: What would Timon think?


----------



## PLH

No shit. Any press release?


----------



## PLH

I don't think it is the same in English. But maybe.. :naughty:


----------



## PLH

UA thread should be changed into *[UA] Ukrainian highways & motorways - Українські автодороги*, because Автодороги Україна means Avtodorogi Ukraina and it should be Українські - Ukrainian


----------



## Mateusz

Or Dorogi & Avtomagistrale, somehow to distinguish difference between normal road and motorway


----------



## Qwert

I can't believe my eyes:nuts:!

At this video you can see 80 years old pensioner driving his Daewoo Matis for almost 10 kilometres on motorway D2 in Bratislava in *wrong direction*. Irony is he entered motorway at interchange near Bratislava crematory.






Check in rather here in HD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7YhVeI7oiY

It's miracle no accident happened.

















Photos from: http://tvnoviny.sk/spravy/regiony/video-dochodca-80-presiel-v-protismere-krizom-bratislavu.html


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch go on holiday.













































The freeway was loaded with them tourists...


----------



## Verso

Qwert said:


> I can't believe my eyes:nuts:!


Lately that happens every second day in Croatia.


----------



## PLH

The Dutch on holidays?


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Lately that happens every second day in Croatia.


yes, they went crazy down there at A1 south of Split with driving in wrong direction. 
also, we have new toll booths Demerje at end of A1 near Zagreb which are only for card and e-payment, Lučko is only for cash. so some people go to Demerje not having ENC or card, so the return few hunderd meters in wrong direction. i knew it was gonna happen when they open Demerje


----------



## pijanec

^^But why did they build new toll booths 3 kilometers away? Sure there are gonna be problems with that. And don't they accept all major credit cards at Demerje?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I set up a wireless network here, and connected my laptop to the internet for the first time since early June... 56 updates totalling 500 MB


----------



## pijanec

Qwert said:


> At this video you can see 80 years old pensioner driving his Daewoo Matis for almost 10 kilometres on motorway D2 in Bratislava in *wrong direction*. Irony is he entered motorway at interchange near Bratislava crematory.


In Slovenian's tunnels everything would start to blink and tunnel will automatically be closed for traffic.


----------



## Qwert

pijanec said:


> In Slovenian's tunnels everything would start to blink and tunnel will automatically be closed for traffic.


It was discussed why the traffic wasn't stopped immediately. Police catch him after 10 km drive during which he passed many cameras. IMO it was possible to stop all traffic before the tunnel and catch him there.:dunno:


----------



## wyqtor

A present for Radi, from the Greek thread: a bridge over the river named after the shiniest piece of road in the world D) :


----------



## Mateusz

Wow is it E79 ?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Buzek

Our new president


----------



## Nexis

My favorite picture i took from my Sunday Mega New Jersey Drive 
The Northbound Driscoll Bridge looking East towards the New Jersey Highlands and the Atlantic Ocean I'm on the Garden State Parkway Bridge, next to me is the US 9 Bridge and then NJ 35 Victory Bridge, on the Raritan River.


----------



## Mateusz

ChrisZwolle said:


> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Buzek
> 
> Our new president


Hell yeah man, now we are making some lobby for good positions in European Commission


----------



## pijanec

Is he a conservative or on a more liberal side?


----------



## Mateusz

I would say liberal, since he is close with environment of current Polish government


----------



## PLH

He's liberal, but not a leftist.

Good his surname is easy to pronunce


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My MSN going crazy:









(by the way, Mateusz, don't you have MSN anymore?)


----------



## Mateusz

Since my computer died after thunder I am using laptop from time to time, laptop belongs to my parents, they told me unistall Windows Live Messenger


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Greetings from Zuerich. This city is just amazing 

On my way here I thought I was driving through the Netherlands. Dutch people everywhere, half of them hauling their homes with them. And on the Czech camping there was no Czech people whatsoever. Only Dutch, Belgians, Danes and me, one Pole in a small tent staying for one night. I can't understand why anyone would pay a bigass sum of money to rent a camper and then camp with it in some shitty hole in the middle of ex-commie Europe where only attaction is a not-so-clean river and tons of mosquitoes. But that's just me


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nice song to play while driving a lonely road... It's from the 1986 film Top Gun.


----------



## Verso

Top Gun is so old?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Hot pursuit on my motorway yesterday


----------



## RipleyLV

Heavy rain and wind caused flooding in Riga today.


----------



## Verso

Looks like a lot of fun!  I was only once in a flooded house (on vacation) when I was small... I felt kind of claustrophobic.


----------



## RipleyLV

Edit: Strange, why is my picture not showing?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ You have exceeded your monthly bandwidth.


----------



## RipleyLV

That means I can't post pics untill August?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Not necessarily, it depends on which date you've registered your account. If it was, for instance on the 15th, your monthly bandwidth is used until the 15th of the next month.


----------



## RipleyLV

Well, thanks for clearing that up. Next time I'll now.


----------



## ufonut

Highway lovers on Polish forum in charge of updating road statistics can hardly keep up there is so much going on


----------



## ChrisZwolle

1 am and still 1 hour waiting at the Gotthardtunnel 

It was 2,5 hours this afternoon, it will be even worse tomorrow. There is currently also a 30 kilometer traffic jam on the German A3 near Würzburg.. remember 1 am.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

currently 4 hours 15 minutes waiting [email protected] Gotthardtunnel :runaway:


----------



## x-type

forecast for end of the week says for surrounding of my city - 41°C


----------



## dubart

x-type said:


> forecast for end of the week says for surrounding of my city - 41°C


Asphalt will melt :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Just got the water bill from first half year of 2009... hno:

from the total bill of € 104, I spend only € 12,50 on water (12 m3). The rest are taxes + other taxation...


----------



## Verso

dubart said:


> x-type said:
> 
> 
> 
> forecast for end of the week says for surrounding of my city - 41°C
> 
> 
> 
> Asphalt will melt :lol:
Click to expand...

_I_ would melt! And maybe I will, I'm not so far from Bjelovar. :runaway:


----------



## Mateusz

Photoshop or real ?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Real... "Fucker" or "fucking" is a rather common name in German.


----------



## Timon91

oh my


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Lol @ the google ads for that map


----------



## Verso

Mateusz said:


> Well, we saw your other pics too





Timon91 said:


> What do you mean?





Mateusz said:


> deleted on request





ChrisZwolle said:


> deleted on request


:hammer:



http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=39480120&postcount=4880 :colgate:


----------



## Ni3lS

Timon91 said:


> oh my


Old. 

Everyone knows that all the tourists are going there to make a picture of themselves with the namesign 

Im going to the USA tomorrow


----------



## Timon91

^^Have fun :cheers:

I wanted to make a picture of me with a sign saying "Triest" (triest means "sad" in Dutch). Unfortunately the city is named "Trieste" in Italian so I couldn't find any 



Verso said:


> :hammer:
> 
> http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=39480120&postcount=4880 :colgate:


Was the photoshop in that post as well? Anyway, I just don't like the idea that someone else has photoshopped a picture of me and posted it over here, as you might understand. 

-edit- I know about the other one now as well. Mateusz was quite unclear, since he said: "we saw your other pictures too". Since I posted a picture that I made in Ljubljana this meant that he said that he had seen other pictures made by me. That is impossible - so far I haven't posted any but that one  However, it's all clear now 

I've just organized the roadpics that I made on holiday. Unfortunately many of them are not good because of a dirty windshield. Only a few series are fine hno:


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> I wanted to make a picture of me with a sign saying "Triest" (triest means "sad" in Dutch). Unfortunately the city is named "Trieste" in Italian so I couldn't find any


You could've vandalized it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Triest is a stupid exonym. I hate exonyms


----------



## Verso

We've noticed. :lol: It's not stupid at all, it's also the German expression, and we all know how long Triest(e) was in Austria(-Hungary).


----------



## Timon91

In German it is Triest, in Dutch it is Triëst, but we usually forget about the dots


----------



## Mateusz

That's neglecting own grammar, not acceptable in school

@ Timon, there was no bad ideas behind this modification, just to make a sarcasm about great Slovenian tolls


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> We've noticed. :lol: It's not stupid at all, it's also the German expression, and we all know how long Triest(e) was in Austria(-Hungary).


Should we change Jakarta to Batavia too then?


----------



## Mateusz

Yeah... Bombai Mumbai


----------



## Verso

'Triest' is still the German expression. I'll always call it 'Trst', cause 'Trieste' sounds weird in Slovenian.


----------



## Verso

Something for Timon: robbery in Adria camping in Ankaran.


----------



## Timon91

That's quite bad. The camping wasn't that save anyway. Beforehand, we were advised to leave our valuables locked up in the car. Sobec was much safer.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> Something for Timon: robbery in Adria camping in Ankaran.


So? this happens in Spain on a large scale, even from rental apartments. Where tourists are, there are thieves too.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There's a new problem in Amsterdam; drunk youths throwing Smarts in the canals


----------



## Mateusz

Spoiled bastards


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> So? this happens in Spain on a large scale, even from rental apartments. Where tourists are, there are thieves too.


The victim was injured though. hno:


----------



## Nexis

LOL, there throwing Cars into Canals , well i know they throw Bikes in there, Do they have Special Machines to collect the junk off the Canal Floor :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Approximatly 20,000 bicycles are thrown in the Amsterdam canals every year. That's 55 per day or 2.2 per hour.


----------



## Timon91

I've seen an Amsterdam canal once when they pumped out all the water for renovation. Unbelieveble how many bikes there were in there.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What kind of stupid "alternative" suggestions are these? :nuts:


----------



## Verso

Does it say "swim"?


----------



## Timon91

You might consider buying one of these, Chris:


----------



## H123Laci

Good morning guys, Iam back again...

I was on a one month fruit harvesting summer job...

This was my vehicle* on the site... it was a real fun to drive it... :cheers:
(*a hardcore russian machine)










(you can see my assistant in the cockpit... :lol

here is a panophoto of the fruit tree garden (field?) made from the top of the tractor:



when we was bored of harvesting fruits (cherries and apricots) we built towers:


----------



## x-type

ufthat can be exhausting, especially if it is warm. but nice to see you had fun there


----------



## Verso

H123Laci said:


> ...


So... which one is you? :cheers:


----------



## Mateusz

What's is the name of this tractor...

Zetor, Ursus... or Belarus ?


----------



## x-type

it is definitely not Zetor nor Ursus


----------



## Verso

Btw, Timon, will you make any thread about Slovenia (if you have pics)?


----------



## Timon91

I've just posted the first set of pictures (A7 Kassel-Arnsberg). I will post my pics in the appropriate threads, so the Slovene pics will be there in due time


----------



## Verso

Will you also create any non-road thread?


----------



## Timon91

Maybe, but if I do that it will be in the Dutch photo section (Holland Hoogbouw Forums --> Fotoforum). Just watch my sig, I will put a link in there when I've posted a new series


----------



## Verso

Okay.


----------



## BND

Mateusz said:


> What's is the name of this tractor...
> 
> Zetor, Ursus... or Belarus ?


I think it is MTZ...


----------



## Timon91

For Verso, I've posted some pics from Ljubljana, see my sig for the link. The descriptions are in Dutch, unfortunately.


----------



## Verso

:banana:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My main objection to SUV's is that they're gas guzzlers, especially American ones who don't use diesel. 

Even a Chrysler Voyager (2000 kg) 2.5 Diesel gets 35 mpg. A 2008 Chevrolet Suburban gets a freaking 16 mpg combined only... that's as much as a small truck. 

Another issue is traffic safety. Those SUV's are very safe for those inside, but what happens if you hit a pedestrian, cyclist or even a compact car?


----------



## Timon91

Just wondering....who of the non-Dutch speakers here can pronounce the "chtstschr" sound in "slechtstschrijvend"?


----------



## pijanec

keber said:


> I got everywhere until now without GPS. It is a great help, that's for sure, but now people don't look out of the car window anymore, just into 8 inch monitor. And if the road which should go right ahead closed for whatever reason, some people don't know anymore what to do.


I strongly agree with you. Watching modern, supposedly intelligent, people on new Slovenian A4 is really funny. They are totally lost. But not because of missing signage but because the road isn't in their GPS! So they are stopping at hard shoulders and clicking their GPSes, searching for paper maps and don't know what to do although all road signs tell them to continue straight forward.


----------



## pijanec

ChrisZwolle said:


> My main objection to SUV's is that they're gas guzzlers, especially American ones who don't use diesel.
> 
> Even a Chrysler Voyager (2000 kg) 2.5 Diesel gets 35 mpg. A 2008 Chevrolet Suburban gets a freaking 16 mpg combined only... that's as much as a small truck.


I don't worry about that as money going for its gas isn't from my pocket.


----------



## dubart

Shmack said:


> Somehow i think Renault is getting worse and worse. Why so many sharp angles and rude lines...?


This is not a new Renault model. Avantime was available in 2001-2003.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

pijanec said:


> I strongly agree with you. Watching modern, supposedly intelligent, people on new Slovenian A4 is really funny. They are totally lost. But not because of missing signage but because the road isn't in their GPS! So they are stopping at hard shoulders and clicking their GPSes, searching for paper maps and don't know what to do although all road signs tell them to continue straight forward.


People don't pay attention to the signs anymore... Their GPS is always right. They have followed signs like München or Graz or Maribor, but they have no idea if they should follow Ljubljana or Zagreb, because their GPS knows the road, right? 

That's why you hear these stupid stories about people getting 600 kilometers away from their destination... If you're heading for Napoli, and you'll see signs that say "Venezia", you and I know you're far from Napoli, and probably on the wrong road, but they have no idea where they are, or which destinations should make sense, and which don't.

Simply: GPS makes people stupid.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I just did a little trip. Not really far, about 375 kilometers.  Video and photomaterial will be uploaded


----------



## x-type

Chris, is there some motorway in NL where you haven't driven or at least traveled as passenger?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes, I haven't clinched A208 and A256. 

The rest from A-Z.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes, I haven't clinched A208 and A256.
> 
> The rest from A-Z.


i thought that could be an answer with some minor motorways. and at others - you have passed all sections, or there are some sections which you've missed?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I have driven all of the rest... although I think I didn't drive a small portion of A4 north of Bergen op Zoom... that one opened like 1.5 years ago. The rest from begin to end.


----------



## Timon91

Ah, there is still a piece of Dutch motorway that I have seen and Chris hasn't (A208)


----------



## Morsue

ChrisZwolle said:


> I have driven all of the rest... although I think I didn't drive a small portion of A4 north of Bergen op Zoom... that one opened like 1.5 years ago. The rest from begin to end.


In both directions?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What's the next question, all lanes?


----------



## Pansori

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes, I haven't clinched A208 and A256.


Now that's an embarrassment! :lol:


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> What's the next question, all lanes?


:rofl:


----------



## Verso

Isn't Chris usually a bit too slow for the overtaking lane?


----------



## Timon91

Yeah, Kangoo 

I know that I have to shut up with the Prius, but ok


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Don't mess with my 70 HP!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Everybody goes to the beach 
It will get worse, yesterday gave 90 kilometers of traffic congestion because of beachbound traffic.


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> Still, 63.000 tickets would be ambitious for such a small country I guess...


Kelly Family had no problem selling twice more than 30.000 tickets in very small time.

Actually she is not very popular here. Most comments about her concert are pretty much the same: 
"I wouldn't go to see this jumping old worn witch even if you pay me.":lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I guess so. 

Only rockers can still perform reasonably at a higher age... Madonna indeed, had her best time in the 80's and 90's, not now.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Still, 63.000 tickets would be ambitious for such a small country I guess...


i love you


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yikes!


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> Only rockers can still perform reasonably at a higher age... Madonna indeed, had her best time in the 80's and 90's, not now.


Metallica easily and quickly sold over 30.000 tickets in Ljubljana (it was 10 years ago, though). They would sell much more, but stadium wasn't big enough.

Rumours say that only 7000 ticket were sold. Even more drastic was the story with Michael Jackson concert: they sold only 3500 tickets.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

> GOLDEN CIRCLE: 110,00 EUR
> I. kategorija 90,00 EUR
> II. kategorija 75,00 EUR
> III. kategorija 60,00 EUR


Concerts of these "top" artists are way too expensive anyway.


----------



## keber

I was at Metallica concert in Vienna this May. Ticket were from 40-80 - seated. They still know how to play excellent live music - without all the fancy stage things (almost all).

I think Madonna is only overpriced hype and people here realised this.


----------



## pijanec

Not to mention Madonna sang on the playback in Vienna.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Man, how disappointing is that? Paying 100-or so bucks to listen to a damn tape. 

Good artists don't need to playback, or know when to stop. I went to Roger Waters in 2007, that was just amazing, and that guy is like 60 years old.


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> Kelly Family had no problem selling twice more than 30.000 tickets in very small time.


Kelly Family! :lol::lol::lol:


----------



## BND

There are problems with Madonna's concert in Budapest as well. First they wanted to held it in Kincsem Park, a horse racing track. Then horse owners began protesting that the concert would disturb the horses... Then it was moved to Puskás Ferenc Stadium, but there the Football Association protested that the fans at the concert would ruin the grass, making it unable for football matches... As it seems now, the concert will be held at the horse track after all :lol:


----------



## Mateusz

Eastern Europe doesn't like Madonna ha ha


----------



## RipleyLV

Madonna's concert in Tallinn happened with no problems. Both Valdis were happy. :lol:


----------



## Mateusz

Do you have any idea how to convert tape from 10-years old video camera to some kind... format on computer ? 

I have some valuable footage there from Italian motorways A.D 2001


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

^^ You need a tv tuner card for the PC. You hook it to the camera (the camera should have some kind of S-Video or Scart interface) and then you can capture the footage.

Of course the more convenient way is to pay someone to do it for you  I guess that some local camera-man who usually deals with weddings and that kind of stuff would digitalise the tape for little money.


----------



## Mateusz

I use Google Maps edition for map of european motorways, 300 times easier than looking for .bmp hi res map or something. That's just a start. These little dots are interchanges and junction, don't worry about errors, I have only started and will continue


----------



## MAG

Mateusz said:


> Eastern Europe doesn't like Madonna ha ha


Ahem ... you mean Central Europe, Mateusz. 

Please let us continue educating our West European (and other) colleagues that we actually live in Central Europe. 

Eastern Europe is ... in the east of Europe and the political dinosaur called Eastern Bloc became extinct about 20 years ago.



.


----------



## Verso

MAG said:


> .


:lol:


----------



## Mateusz

Continuingly moving towards West, I bet in future, we will be called 'West'


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MAG said:


> Ahem ... you mean Central Europe, Mateusz.
> 
> Please let us continue educating our West European (and other) colleagues that we actually live in Central Europe.
> 
> Eastern Europe is ... in the east of Europe and the political dinosaur called Eastern Bloc became extinct about 20 years ago.


Yeah true. I refer to Eastern Europe when I'm talking about anything east of Poland. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia etc. are Central Europe to me.

The center of Europe is actually somewhere in Lithuania or Latvia.


----------



## x-type

:rofl:


----------



## Mateusz

Well these were new things which I learned about myself in the West......


----------



## Timon91

Lots of Dutch people go on holiday to Slovenia and Croatia, so the "warzone" attitude is diminishing rapidly and seems to be almost gone by now


----------



## Qwert

x-type said:


> i do it  i call our police "milicija" as we did it in yugoslav times, i call Podgorica "Titograd", i often say "Lenjingrad" for St. Peterburg, even "Soviet Union (Sovjetski Savez)" for Russia
> and i have friend who still says "Yugoslavia" for Serbia
> of course, we do it on purpose


In Slovakia everybody called Soviet Union (when it existed) simply Russia. Yugoslavia is disappearing from people's minds. But, mainly older people can tell you: "I was on vacation in Yugoslavia," while they were in Croatia.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Nah, except for Yugoslavia, I don't think many will refer to the SU or CS.
> 
> What is an increasing problem here, are criminal people from Romania (gypsies), I was just browsing the regional newspaper here online, and I saw at least 3 stories about criminal activities from yesterday. Those people really ruin the public opinion about Romania, which is a wonderful country. hno:


People tend to generalize. Somebody from Romania robbed my friend thus all Romanians are bunch of criminals.hno: But, that's as wrong as saying all Dutch are drug addicts.


----------



## Mateusz

There are some gypsies where my parents work, they say that they get discriminated in CZ etc. 

Many people still mistakes Baltic states with Russia though


----------



## Timon91

The problem with the Baltic states is that people mix them up. They know where the Baltic states are, but they think e.g. that Estonia is Latvia and so on.


----------



## Nexis

I'm on vacation in Delaware and Maryland for 2 days, its kinda weird down here, the Traffic Lights and Highways themselves are odd, like for example they have Flashing Red Arrows at left turns. Its just like in Britain, then flash before it turns Green. and they allow Tractors on the Highways hno: i got stuck in a 2mi back up becuz of a Tractor using the right lane.i went from crusing at 65 mph to a lazy 10 mph.hno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Timon91 said:


> The problem with the Baltic states is that people mix them up. They know where the Baltic states are, but they think e.g. that Estonia is Latvia and so on.


Especially Latvia and Lithuania.

I'm not sure if Slovakia and Slovenia gets mixed up often over here. I doubt if many Dutchmen even know that Montenegro is a country.


----------



## Mateusz

Most of my mates use words like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia...


----------



## RipleyLV

I always use word "Leningrad" or just "Peterburg" for St. Petersburg, easier and faster to pronounce.


----------



## Timon91

^^The same happens with "Holland" instead of "the Netherlands".



ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm not sure if Slovakia and Slovenia gets mixed up often over here.


Quite funny, when we were in Bled we bought ice creams at a small stand down at the lake. The guy who sold the ice creams was a Bosnian and hardly spoke any German or English. He understood our order, but when we said "vďaka" ("thanks" in Slovak) he thought that we thought that we were in Slovakia. It was our first day in Slovenia and we didn't know "hvala" yet :lol:


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm not sure if Slovakia and Slovenia gets mixed up often over here. I doubt if many Dutchmen even know that Montenegro is a country.


yesterday in daily newspaper there was an article about French who discovered croatian province Slavonia, and they were fascinated with its existance beside Slovenia and Slovakia


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slovenia
Slavonia
Slovakia

any more?


----------



## x-type

actually, in some slavic languages it could be the largest confusion. for instance, Slovensko in slovakian means Slovakia, but the same word in croatian/slovenian/serbian means slovenian (neutrum adjective) :nuts:


----------



## Zanovijetalo

Actually in Serbian slovensko means Slavic while in Croatian slovensko means theydontbuildroadstocroatia... err Slovene...


----------



## RipleyLV

I very often mix up when I speak in Russian, Switzerland - "Швейцария" with Sweden - "Швеция", both these words write and pronounce very similiar.


----------



## Verso

Qwert said:


> In Slovakia everybody called Soviet Union (when it existed) simply Russia. Yugoslavia is disappearing from people's minds. But, mainly older people can tell you: "I was on vacation in Yugoslavia," while they were in Croatia.


When I was in Germany ten days ago, I heard some Germans talking to each other "we were stuck in a queue before the Tauern Tunnel in direction Yugoslavia". :nuts:



Nexis said:


> I'm on vacation in Delaware and Maryland for 2 days, its kinda weird down here, the Traffic Lights and Highways themselves are odd, like for example they have Flashing Red Arrows at left turns. Its just like in Britain, then flash before it turns Green. and they allow Tractors on the Highways hno: i got stuck in a 2mi back up becuz of a Tractor using the right lane.i went from crusing at 65 mph to a lazy 10 mph.hno:


Flashing red arrows? That's new to me.



RipleyLV said:


> I always use word "Leningrad" or just "Peterburg" for St. Petersburg, easier and faster to pronounce.


That's different though. At least you know how they're called nowadays. My dad also calls Podgorica 'Titograd', but he knows it's Podgorica. But he doesn't say 'Soviet Union' any more; now he has to say "when I was in Tajikistan..." 



Timon91 said:


> Quite funny, when we were in Bled we bought ice creams at a small stand down at the lake. The guy who sold the ice creams was a Bosnian and hardly spoke any German or English. He understood our order, but when we said "vďaka" ("thanks" in Slovak) he thought that we thought that we were in Slovakia. It was our first day in Slovenia and we didn't know "hvala" yet :lol:


Why did you speak Slovak? I'm sure no one here knows what "vd'aka" means. And how do you know he was a Bosnian? The ones selling ice cream are usually Albanians. 



ChrisZwolle said:


> Slovenia
> Slavonia
> Slovakia
> 
> any more?


Yes! Slovincians.


----------



## x-type

goddammit :gaah:


----------



## Timon91

^^You bought a vignette? 



Verso said:


> Why did you speak Slovak? I'm sure no one here knows what "vd'aka" means.


We still knew some words from our holiday there. Slovak is also Slavic, so we though that he might understand us, but we didn't know that the words for "thanks" differ so much 



Verso said:


> And how do you know he was a Bosnian? The ones selling ice cream are usually Albanians.


He told us


----------



## Qwert

Verso said:


> Why did you speak Slovak? I'm sure no one here knows what "vd'aka" means. And how do you know he was a Bosnian? The ones selling ice cream are usually Albanians.


It seems I have to improve 



Verso said:


> Yes! Slovincians.


So:
Slavonia
Slovenia
Slovakia
Slovincia?


BTW, in Slovak they are called "Pomeranian Slovenians" (Pomoranskí Slovinci) and their language "Northern Slovenian" (severná slovinčina).



Timon91 said:


> We still knew some words from our holiday there. Slovak is also Slavic, so we though that he might understand us, but we didn't know that the words for "thanks" differ so much


Sometimes it could be dangerous to speak in other Slavic language. For example if you visit some restaurant or pub in Slovakia don't try to use Croatian. If you ask a waitress for "pića" she may get angry. In Croatian it means drink, in Slovak it's vulgar name for ******.


----------



## Mateusz

x-type said:


> goddammit :gaah:


Zastava 10 ? :banana:


----------



## RawLee

^^Both has something to do with a mouth.:lol:


----------



## x-type

Qwert said:


> Sometimes it could be dangerous to speak in other Slavic language. For example if you visit some restaurant or pub in Slovakia don't try to use Croatian. If you ask a waitress for "pića" she may get angry. In Croatian it means drink, in Slovak it's vulgar name for ******.


or slovakian word for "drink" is "nápoj", and in croatian "napoj" is slops (food for pigs, usually rests from restaurants) 


Mateusz said:


> Zastava 10 ? :banana:


it is not  it is my x-type! 
timon got the point - vignette


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> goddammit :gaah:


:rofl:



x-type said:


> or slovakian word for "drink" is "nápoj", and in croatian "napoj" is slops (food for pigs, usually rests from restaurants)


Interesting, 'napoj' means potion in Slovenian.



Qwert said:


> BTW, in Slovak they are called "Pomeranian Slovenians" (Pomoranskí Slovinci) and their language "Northern Slovenian" (severná slovinčina).


Wow, our long-lost brothers. :lol: I know that in the Old Church Slavonic Slovaks are called 'Carpathian Slavs', while Slovenians are called 'Illyrian Slavs', and Slovenia is called 'Illyrian Slovenia/Slavia'. I know a guy who actually speaks this extinct language.



Qwert said:


> Sometimes it could be dangerous to speak in other Slavic language. For example if you visit some restaurant or pub in Slovakia don't try to use Croatian. If you ask a waitress for "pića" she may get angry. In Croatian it means drink, in Slovak it's vulgar name for ******.


Tell me about it. Once I was in a restaurant with an Estonian MP (Rainis). He didn't have matches or a lighter, and as he was totally drunk, he thought it would be a good idea to communicate in Russian, so he yelled all over the restaurant 'spički' (matches), which in Slovenian means '**** off'. I was totally embarrassed. :lol:

Nice banner, btw.


----------



## Timon91

Well, Slavic languages differ more than I thought. Even Slovene and Croatian have some big differences. Zahod


----------



## Verso

Slovenian is closer to Sanskrit than to German or Italian.


----------



## RipleyLV

Verso said:


> Tell me about it. Once I was in a restaurant with an Estonian MP (Rainis). He didn't have matches or a lighter, and as he was totally drunk, he thought it would be a good idea to communicate in Russian, so he yelled all over the restaurant 'spički' (matches), which in Slovenian means '**** off'. I was totally embarrassed. :lol:


This is a good one! :laugh: I never would imagine, that in Slovenian "spički" meant that. :laugh:


----------



## x-type

in croatian "s pički" would mean "from *****"


----------



## H123Laci

Qwert said:


> Sometimes it could be dangerous to speak in other Slavic language. For example if you visit some restaurant or pub in Slovakia don't try to use Croatian. If you ask a waitress for "pića" she may get angry. In Croatian it means drink, in Slovak it's vulgar name for ******.


so our "picsa" word originates from slovak language...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

lol, the most popular given name in the 4 largest cities in the Netherlands is... Mohamed.


----------



## RawLee

H123Laci said:


> so our "picsa" word originates from slovak language...


Half of our swearing words are from slavic. The rest are the transformed versions of those word.


----------



## Qwert

ChrisZwolle said:


> lol, the most popular given name in the 4 largest cities in the Netherlands is... Mohamed.


So we may expect a forumer with nick MohamedZwolle soon.



RawLee said:


> Half of our swearing words are from slavic. The rest are the transformed versions of those word.


I see Slavic languages had very good influence on Hungarian language. Without them you even wouldn't be able to swear.:lol:



Verso said:


> Wow, our long-lost brothers. :lol: I know that in the Old Church Slavonic Slovaks are called 'Carpathian Slavs', while Slovenians are called 'Illyrian Slavs', and Slovenia is called 'Illyrian Slovenia/Slavia'. I know a guy who actually speaks this extinct language.


Old Church Slavonic is still in use by Orthodox and Greek-Catholic church, but I don't know anybody who can speak it.


----------



## pijanec

ChrisZwolle said:


> lol, the most popular given name in the 4 largest cities in the Netherlands is... Mohamed.


Don't those parents have any other ideas to name their sons? :lol::lol::lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Mohammed (with double m) was also in the top 5


----------



## Timon91

**** this, someone set fire to our local supermarket for the second time in two months!


----------



## Verso

^^ Sucks; now you'll have to walk for food longer. 



RipleyLV said:


> This is a good one! :laugh: I never would imagine, that in Slovenian "spički" meant that. :laugh:


Well, at least I hope the waitress heard it like that; if she heard 'pička', that means the same as 'piča' in Slovak. 



Qwert said:


> So we may expect a forumer with nick MohamedZwolle soon.


:hilarious


----------



## Mateusz

Timon91 said:


> **** this, someone set fire to our local supermarket for the second time in two months!


Terrorists :nuts:


----------



## x-type

greetz from sardinia! number of dutch plates seen till now: 0. in words - zero! can you believe it?!


----------



## Timon91

mg: That must feel so good, x-type! For Dutchies it's not a well-known destination, so I guess that you won't see many. Have fun on Sardinia!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think you'll see more Dutch plates on Corsica. Sardinia is too far even for Dutch I guess.


----------



## ABRob

Is 17 the average age in NL to start studying?
In Germany the average age is 20! :uh:

So I'll likely move to Aachen (Aken, Aix-la-Chapelle) on 24th to start studying civil engineering in October.


----------



## kanterberg

*New to the forum*

Fantastic forum, I just found it! How do I upload a picture to my profile?


----------



## H123Laci

^^ go to your profile (by clicking your name)
click "user CP"
click "edit avatar"


----------



## Timon91

ABRob said:


> Is 17 the average age in NL to start studying?
> In Germany the average age is 20! :uh:
> 
> So I'll likely move to Aachen (Aken, Aix-la-Chapelle) on 24th to start studying civil engineering in October.


18 is normal, but I turn 18 in a couple of months. 

I heard that they want to make Aachen sort of Europe's science center, is that right?


----------



## Mateusz

18 is normal in UK but because of some 'complications' my age will be 20


----------



## ABRob

Timon91 said:


> I heard that they want to make Aachen sort of Europe's science center, is that right?


Never heard of that.
They are part of the German Universities Excellence Initiative and in particular the mechanical engineering has international reputation.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Howdy guys, from Bled, Versoland!

I just drove 2 days 700 km, so 1400 kilometers in total. The only traffic jam was in Slovenia! Bled was jammed up 

I took the Austrian A9 to Graz and then A2 to Klagenfurt, then south, the Loiblpass into Slovenia.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

ABRob said:


> Is 17 the average age in NL to start studying?
> In Germany the average age is 20! :uh:


I was just 16. I didn't like it, all my classmates were in their 20's and at that age, that's a significant age difference.


----------



## Timon91

That's not university though. A (now former) classmate of mine is 16 and is going to univeristy mg:


----------



## Mateusz

Is he like uber clever or something


----------



## ChrisZwolle

lolz


----------



## Timon91

Be careful Chris, before anyone steals them


----------



## Verso

You're in Bled/Slovenia? I didn't see this one coming! :crazy: Yeah, Bled is jammed, there's also no bypass for Bohinj.  Where else are you going?


----------



## snowman159

Interesting. On your way back, make sure you go through Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. :lol: 

Would be fun to find out who holds the record on the number of vignettes on a windshield. 

(iirc, in Austria it's technically illegal to have more than 2 or 3, because any more might impare the driver's visibility - never heard of it being enforced though)


----------



## Verso

I think in Austria it's illegal to have more than 2 _Austrian_ vignettes.


----------



## ABRob

It's not illegal to have more than 2 vignettes, it's only recommended to have not more than 2 vignettes:


Mautordnung said:


> Im Interesse der Verkehrssicherheit und um eine wirksame und benutzerfreundliche Kontrolle der Entrichtung der zeitabhängigen Maut zu gewährleisten, sollte tunlichst neben der jeweils gültigen Vignette höchstens eine zweite Vignette am Kraftfahrzeug angebracht sein.


----------



## BND

A van driver wanted to shortcut the road through a car wash, but the van got struck while demolishing the car washing appliance 
The driver couldn't even get out of the van until firemen removed the damaged appliance :lol:


----------



## x-type

this could be expensive


----------



## Nexis

*Breaking News from the Nexis News Network, we have just received word of a Google Streetview Update, 2 new Countries has been added and more Coverage in Various Places in Europe* :banana:

Update:









Stayed tune for more Outrageous & Interesting Stories from the Nexis New Network.

*~Corey or Anchorman Nexis*


----------



## H123Laci

^^ google should update maps in first priority not fucking streetview...

the eastern M0 of Budapest isnt updated yet however it has been opened almost a year ago... :bash:


----------



## x-type

i drove slovenian A4 today too! i went to Bruck an der Mur and back  i saw a lot of NL cars and i tried to catch white Kangoo, but i didn't see it (i had feeling that you could hang around there). when were you between Zagreb and Maribor?


----------



## Verso

That would be a good one, all three of us on A4. The only better situation would be, if we crashed with each other.


----------



## shpirtkosova

Anyone have any pics of the Durres Morine highway rest areas in Albania?


----------



## Buddy Holly

Verso said:


> He should really go to DLM


Versologic at work... :lol:


----------



## Verso

Buddy Holly said:


> Versologic at work... :lol:


:chill:



Where's Chris?


----------



## Mateusz

At work ?


----------



## Verso

At work in Slovenia?


----------



## Mateusz

I am collexting my results tommorow, I am very stressed


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wow, I'm back in Zwollywood 

I expected to use two days back, but it went very smoothly, zilch waiting times at the Karawanken, Katschberg and Tauerntunnels. Only a few short traffic jams in Germany, on the A8 near Siegsdorf, on A7 near Niederaula and on A44 before Dortmund. I may have lost 20 minutes there in total.

I was around noon already past Nürnberg, so I decided to drive the whole way home.


----------



## Verso

That's a bloody long way.  Did you drive anywhere else in Slovenia yesterday or today? Probably not, if you're already at home.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Gotta love it, this pic was taken almost from the campsite.


----------



## Verso

^^ Nice, they should just renovate the church's façade, but I think there're problems with ownership (denationalization).


----------



## Timon91

You're back already, Chris? That's quick.


----------



## Verso

^^ The Chris-style.


----------



## Verso

Hey, where's PLH? I haven't seen him in a while!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Last Activity: August 18th, 2009 06:04 PM


----------



## H123Laci

ChrisZwolle said:


> Wow, I'm back in Zwollywood


Damn Chris, you left hungary unvisited again! :bash: 

I am very unhappy now... hno:


----------



## Timon91

Verso said:


> Hey, where's PLH? I haven't seen him in a while!


I wonder where Robosteve went.


----------



## H123Laci

I wonder whats google's problem with BIH, Serbia, (Crna Gora, Albania, Macedonia), Turkey, Romania, Moldova(?), Ukraine, Belarus, Russia,...

why does not google's route planner work there?

(if I rememeber correctly RP used to work in Romania, Serbia, but didnt work in Slovenia, Croatia... 
now the situation is the opposite...)


----------



## x-type

it didn't work till few months ago neither for H, SLO and HR. i guess they are just taking the time for it.


----------



## Timon91

Eco mode: go cycling


----------



## Mateusz

From Netherlands to Croatia and back


----------



## pijanec

Timon91 said:


> Eco mode: go cycling


You will still need a vignette for Slovenia. :lol::lol:


----------



## Morsue

pijanec said:


> You will still need a vignette for Slovenia. :lol::lol:


Seriously?! What is this?


----------



## Mateusz

'pockt' ? 

What does 'srajce' means ?


----------



## Timon91

:rofl:


----------



## Zanovijetalo

shiny>shinier>cro.crashbarrier :cheer:












*Photoshopped by grofBombelles*


----------



## Timon91

Might be shiny, but no A-profile crash barrier, so it's bad


----------



## ChrisZwolle




----------



## Mateusz

That looks quite cool


----------



## Morsue

A lot of questions from my side, but is that thing on Chris's picture real? And do you really need to have a vignette to ride a bike in Slovenia??


----------



## pijanec

Mateusz said:


> 'pockt' ?
> 
> What does 'srajce' means ?


Looks like typo. Should be pocket.

srajca = shirt


----------



## pijanec

Morsue said:


> And do you really need to have a vignette to ride a bike in Slovenia??


Slovenian motorway company (DARS) released this leaflet: :lol::lol:









It was a joke from our motorway company. :lol:


----------



## H123Laci

ChrisZwolle said:


> http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0908/morninggloryclouds_petroff_big.jpg


wtf is that?

its like a huge contrail of a supersized airplane... :lol:

EDIT: glory clouds :cheers:


----------



## Morsue

Thanks for enlightening me


----------



## wyqtor

pijanec said:


> Slovenian motorway company (DARS) released this leaflet: :lol::lol:
> It was a joke from our motorway company. :lol:


They do enjoy mocking foreign tourists, don't they? :lol:


----------



## pijanec

^^That's Slovenian specialty. :lol:


----------



## lpioe

Well in Switzerland there really is a bike vignette.
It works as a liability insurance and is mandatory for every bike.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's stupid. I know of this system, but in my opinion, every citizen should have a liability insurance. <18 with their parents >18 by themselves. I think my liability insurance is like € 3 per month.


----------



## H123Laci

lpioe said:


> Well in Switzerland there really is a bike vignette.
> It works as a liability insurance and is mandatory for every bike.


and what about pedestrians?

dont they need a LI?
and where do they put their vignette? :lol:


----------



## Timon91

@Chris: Indeed. That system wouldn't work in the Netherlands - people would steal those plates all the time :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I need some winter:


----------



## keber

It will come, don't worry.:lol:

For now let's enjoy that sun.:cheers:


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

ChrisZwolle said:


> I need some winter:


Here you go:


----------



## Mateusz

We had also some crash on A4 and helicopter with medical staff fell down


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

^^ Oops. This pileup luckily ended in no fatalities.


----------



## Mateusz

They have shown that guy who survived, Minisstry of Internal Affairs funded him fake leg and he works still now in Air Emergency


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm a music junky.

And the 70,000th song I played was my subtitle


----------



## Mateusz

I have only couple of thousand


----------



## Timon91

I have......none


----------



## Mateusz

Because you don't use lastfm ?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There's a lot of stuff going on in the Netherlands about a 13 year old girl that wants to sail around the world - solo. They say she has salt running in her veins, but most people think she's way too young to accomplish something like that on her own. The judge has now prohibited such a travel, argueing she's too young to get into dangerous circumstances.


----------



## Zanovijetalo

The story is covered in Croatia as well. 

Shes way too young for that. Be cool, stay in school, kid


----------



## Timon91

Yeah, but she wants to do it now because she wants to be the youngest person ever to sail around the world on his/her own. I also think that she's too young to do this.


----------



## pijanec

But she is still a free person. It's her decision and her life so I would let her do it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

pijanec said:


> But she is still a free person. It's her decision and her life so I would let her do it.


Not it's not like that. She's obligated to attend school.


----------



## Timon91

She can get education using the internet, I thought that this problem had been solved already.


----------



## Mateusz

How 13 year old kid can go for something like that. It's madness. Not only in physical weakness but mental aspect...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A snake got into the motor compartment of a Dutch car in Italy, and near Innsbruck, suddenly showed himself while they were driving on the Autobahn. They alarmed the police in Innsbruck, but they were unable to get the snake out, and advised them to just continue their trip with the snake in the engine. 700 kilometers further, the snake got out in a traffic jam and disappeared...


----------



## Mateusz

What about animal service or something ?


----------



## dubart

x-type said:


> my favourite SLO beer is Union Pils in funny 0,66l bottle which i call "infusion" (because it looks like it)


Totally agree :cheers:


----------



## Mateusz

Are slovenian beers popular in Croatia ?


----------



## x-type

Mateusz said:


> Are slovenian beers popular in Croatia ?


yes. Laško is quite liked and cheap. Union you can find in supermarkets and bars, but it is not that popular (although i know some bars where Union was main brand, so ppl drank mostly it there).
but i think that popularity of SLO beers fell in last year or 2


----------



## Mateusz

What are good Croatian beers ? I assume it's Karlovacko for sure


----------



## pijanec

keber said:


> I think this is not a venomous snake at all. It is not very similar to vipers.


It is not venomous as European venomous snakes don't have round eyes.

Venomous snake's eye:


----------



## x-type

Mateusz said:


> What are good Croatian beers ? I assume it's Karlovacko for sure


there are 2 main streams: Ožujsko and Karlovačko. there is nevernding war about which one is better or more popular.
but most people will tell you that the best is Velebitsko. and it is really good, different. especially ppl like dark Velebitsko.

third most popular and spread is probably Pan. it is quite young brand and when it appeared it was horrible (to me), but nowadays it is quite ok. they also can thank popularity cause they were first domestic brand which introduced 0,25 l bottles (which were extremely popular and cool here for one time). interesting, Ožujsko or Karlovačko is popular only in 0,5 l bottles (or q-packs 1,5 l or how large it is). when a waiter got you Ožujsko/Karlovačko in 0,33, you got desire to kill him. but Pan in 0,25 is acceptable 

btw i belong to Ožujsko stream


----------



## pijanec

Pan is crap. I drank it once and will never again. 

But I like Ožujsko very much.


----------



## x-type

pijanec said:


> Pan is crap. I drank it once and will never again.


it got better in last, lets say, few months. i hated it sooner, it was awful, but now it is acceptable for a lager. i mean, nothing special, but acceptable.

btw, is some HR beer imported to SLO?


----------



## Mateusz

My favourite beers are German ones  Bitburger, Warsteiner, Becks...and if you are in german pub then it makes altogether very special atmosphere


----------



## x-type

Mateusz said:


> My favourite beers are German ones  Bitburger, Warsteiner, Becks...and if you are in german pub then it makes altogether very special atmosphere


ppl here hate Becks  i like it, it is kinda hard beer (not hard as alcocholicly hard, but is real beer for men, girls would find it bad). Bittburger appeard this year - to me it is totaly ok, but it doesn't approve those few % being more expensive than others.

my favourite are definitely czech, belgian and austrian beers.


----------



## pijanec

x-type said:


> btw, is some HR beer imported to SLO?


No. But I have been importing them for myself because I prefer Croatian beers over Slovenian ones. :lol:


----------



## x-type

pijanec said:


> No. But I have been importing them for myself because I prefer Croatian beers over Slovenian ones. :lol:


:lol: i prefer SLO


----------



## Timon91

I prefer German, Slovene and Belgian beer. Even though I don't like Dutch beer in general, Grolsch is my favourite :booze:


----------



## Mateusz

Grolsch is ok

Jupiler is like water

True Becks is bitter, real lager which not everyone approves


----------



## x-type

Mateusz said:


> True Becks is bitter, real lager which not everyone approves


that's what i was talking about


----------



## Mateusz

Most people here don't like German lagers because they are quite pure and this real taste doest go well enough to down one pint after another. So 'piss' is rather prefferable


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't drink enough beer to taste a real quality difference. I usually buy the second cheapest brand. The cheapest is Euroshopper beer, but that's for alcoholic tramps. The second cheapest is the home brand of the Albert Heijn supermarket chain.


----------



## Mateusz

That's where Timon works right ? 

I usually buy branded beer since it's quite cheap in special booze shops, like 6 0.5l cans for 5 pounds


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Mateusz said:


> That's where Timon works right ?


Until recently. I used to work there too for 5 years. I was the head of the fresh department for 2 years until I realized there are better jobs with a better financial perspective than a supermarket employee


----------



## Mateusz

I worked in a factory for 5 days and now I am only after office job. It's always so quiet in the office...


----------



## Mateusz

How was it ? Different to school ?


----------



## H123Laci

Pansori said:


> talking about drinks and "piss"
> from minute 1:00 to 1:55


my first thought after the first ten seconds was: "isnt this a tarantino movie?" :lol:

(of course I havent seen this film...)


----------



## Verso

Mateusz said:


> How was it ? Different to school ?


Yeah, you don't get beaten up at faculty.


----------



## Timon91

LOL. Yeah it's different, but I'll have to get used to it


----------



## Mateusz

I never got beatean up at school and not even in college lol 

I am srrounded by 16 yr old kids while I'm 19


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There goes half a beachhouse:


----------



## Mateusz

People are hiring something like that for holidays ?


----------



## PLH

No, the costs of transport are very huge. A relative of mine has bought a house like that and he had to pay more than 1000 euros for transport for only 50 km.


----------



## Mateusz

That's rather expensive

Also if your car get damaged on motorway while you don't have a cover cost to get you off the motorway is what like 100 Euros ?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yeah! I payed about € 120 in France to get my car hauled off the Autoroute. Luckily, the ANWB covered that cost, I was insured for that.


----------



## Mateusz

In UK it's 100 pounds 

No idea about Poland though what Polish Motor Association (PZM) offer in these terms


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My god, look at that video... motorcycle officer overrun by a car (probably some guy who was not paying attention/on his cell/texting/etc.)
http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/4731186/__Motoragent_gewond_na_aanrijding__.html


----------



## Mateusz

Oh shit that was dramatic..

Also accident with Wasilewski made me creeps


----------



## Timon91

Rather strange that they put a police officer over there to guide the traffic to the other lane, since there are overhead signs on this spot (as can be seen in the video).


----------



## Mateusz

So this guy will go now to prison for not intended attempt of murder or something ?


----------



## Morsue

He'll probably be charged with the equivalent of what in Sweden is called "wrecklessness in traffic". He should have payed attention, that makes him a criminal.


----------



## pijanec

It was stupid that policeman stopped on the driving lane without a warning put up by motorway operator. This is illegal in Slovenia.

Maybe the driver was paying attention but was checking signage for example ... it's really hard to blame him.


----------



## Mateusz

Yeah but if you see something of you ahead then you react... you don't go straight into thing


----------



## Timon91

That's right. He was obviously not paying attention to the road for 5-6 seconds, he must have been using his TomTom or mobile phone. However, pijanec is right, it's almost impossible to prove that.


----------



## keber

My internet provider starts with new prices for optical internet access:
100/10 MBit/s for 20 €, 
50/50 MBit/s for 30 €, 
100/100 MBit/s for 40 €. 
Now I have 10/10 MBit/s for 14 €.

What to choose? :naughty:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That first one is 10/10 I think?

I pay € 50 per month for a set of; 20 Mbit cable internet, digital TV and a phone connection. Calling to people who are using the same provider is 100% free (for instance, my parents).


----------



## keber

No mistake, it is 100 MBit download and 10 upload, for just 20 € per month.
100 MBit download is 50 GB of data in about one hour.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's nice. I wonder why I have to pay that much for 20 mbit. But hey, it has just been raised from 10 to 20mbit without an increase in the monthly fee. 

I hope the faster internet especially accelerates Google Earth.


----------



## Mateusz

I pay 25 pounds for 10MB fibre optic, it's a bit expensive but we don't have a landline, si it was the only option for decent internet, Virgin


----------



## pijanec

keber said:


> My internet provider starts with new prices for optical internet access:
> 100/10 MBit/s for 20 €,
> 50/50 MBit/s for 30 €,
> 100/100 MBit/s for 40 €.
> Now I have 10/10 MBit/s for 14 €.
> 
> What to choose? :naughty:


Lucky you... :bash:


----------



## Pansori

Mateusz said:


> I pay 25 pounds for 10MB fibre optic, it's a bit expensive but we don't have a landline, si it was the only option for decent internet, Virgin


Same here. Although I'm not sure how much it is because I'm not the one who's paying for it 
I think it was quite recent as Virgin broadband (former Telewest) upgraded speeds from something like 2Mb to 10Mb. Feels so much better now (all that por... ehm, I mean movies download so much faster now).


----------



## Mateusz

For 25 pounds they should offer at least 15 MB, hopefully they will in the future


----------



## keber

So today I've upgraded to 100/10 MBit/s for 20 €/month (they needed 15 minutes after fax was sent - in the pretty early morning). All those pictures in long roadtrip reports now load instantly (one second or two at most). My oh my, how it flies. SSC server is now the slowest part. :lol:


----------



## Morsue

keber said:


> So today I've upgraded to 100/10 MBit/s for 20 €/month (they needed 15 minutes after fax was sent - in the pretty early morning). All those pictures in long roadtrip reports now load instantly (one second or two at most). My oh my, how it flies. SSC server is now the slowest part. :lol:


You need to fax such a thing? In Sweden it's enough to just call them and ask for the upgrade. An oral agreement carries just as much validity as a written one, so they simply tape the conversation.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

faxing is soooo 1980's 

We have a fax at work. I know only one government employee who still prefer the fax above email. So the fax is idle for 99,9% of the time 

Anyway, I just got a raise from 10 to 20 mbit. Downloading files @ 2.5 MB is great, but the upload is still only 2.5 Mbit.


----------



## pijanec

Fax is still widely used in Slovenia.


----------



## Verso

^^ Hmm, I don't think so. I haven't used mine for a decade. :lol:


----------



## pijanec

I guess depends on where you work.


----------



## keber

Morsue said:


> You need to fax such a thing?


It's the fastest thing to do. You need to underwrite everything to confirm, so sending fax of underwritten confirmation is the fastest thing. This is not a problem, because faxes are a common thing on work.


----------



## Mateusz

I find recording conversation more funny :nuts:


----------



## Zanovijetalo

*Zagreb, Ilica St*

HR SLO 1 0










:devil:


----------



## pijanec

Who else than Slovenian.


----------



## Timon91

Slovenes hno:


----------



## Mateusz

Enrolled onto other subjects

so now just waiting for a start of academic year at 8th September :0


----------



## Verso

Zanovijetalo said:


> HR SLO 1 0
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> :devil:


Old.  But funny. :lol:


----------



## x-type

it happens often. once i have even saw it happened (and it was quite bad for car, girl (of course) in Fiat Uno was driving on tram tracks where works were going on and crashed into opened hole between the tracks.
problem is because tram traffic can go on, so there cannot be put physical barriers for cars, only signs beside the road


----------



## H123Laci

what do you think: why are there so many PT and railway fan on forums?

and wether are they a representative sample of the society or are they overrepresented?

from ideology viewpoint I think they are leftist/socialist/communist people, who wants the government to solve everything and manage peoples everyday life, and economy and efficiency is not their business...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Well, I think the age group of students (16 - 25) are overrepresented on this forum, and that's especially a group who use public transport a lot more than say, a family with kids and parents in their 30s/40s. So that's not really a surprise. Plus, public transport is an interesting subject. I also find trains and buses interesting _as objects_.


----------



## x-type

i am kinda railway fan. sometimes i am still crawling in forrests and meadows following abbandoned railroads  and seeing a train excites me, and it is present since i was a kid.
but railroad section at ssc is not interesting to me (i only read it, rarely i write something). i am active on croatian railroadfan forum (although not very much as sooner, but still i follow everything there).

actually, i am traffic fan. i adore roads and motorways, railroads, when i flought for the first time i started to like airplanes, and the last thing, which absolutely surpriced me - when i traveled by large ship for the first time, i started to like water traffic, too


----------



## H123Laci

^^ and what about nuclear submarines? 

an other issue is the (lack of) information...

if you want to know the revenues and costs of different trasportation sectors, you have to search hard in huge heaps of desinformation and information bits...

why do want goverments hide the real situation?

Ive heard not long ago that in hugary the rail cost so much that the government could buy a new car for every rail user in every year!

this is totally insane...


----------



## pijanec

People never think of themselves as users of PT but they always are hoping that government will force others to use it. It's in some peoples nature ... they are obsessed how others should live.

If I check PT in my village, there are on average 2 people on bus which pass by every hour. If government would pay a taxi for those people it would be cheaper... but the funny paradox is that we have more and more bus stations every year, even on main roads. I never see anyone waiting there.


----------



## H123Laci

pijanec said:


> People never think of themselves as users of PT but they always are hoping that government will force others to use it. It's in some peoples nature ... they are obsessed how others should live.


yeah, typical leftist/communist thinking... and most of the people think this way...



> If I check PT in my village, there are on average 2 people on bus which pass by every hour. If government would pay a taxi for those people it would be cheaper... but the funny paradox is that we have more and more bus stations every year, even on main roads. I never see anyone waiting there.


buses are OK because they are much cheaper than trains at low volumes...

we are planning a 2000km rail network reduction.
they will be substituted with buses which will be not only cheaper but more cosy because it can stop in the midle of the villages and can stop anywhere...

I hope they will do it quickly...


----------



## H123Laci

ChrisZwolle said:


> Well, I think the age group of students (16 - 25) are overrepresented on this forum, and that's especially a group who use public transport a lot more than say, a family with kids and parents in their 30s/40s. So that's not really a surprise.


yeah, this sounds logically...

but are they stupid?
cant they realize that this way of transport is expensive (for the tax payers)and unefficient?

or are they only egoistic?
(they can travel cheap (with student tickets), and they dont care about the real price which have to be paid by the tax payers)


----------



## keber

H123Laci said:


> Ive heard not long ago that in hugary the rail cost so much that the government could buy a new car for every rail user in every year!


Yep, that's bullshit.


----------



## Verso

Guess whose birthday it is today - that of Chris!  Happy birthday; what do you want for present; model of Struma?


----------



## wyqtor

Happy birthday, Chris! :cheers1:


----------



## Timon91

Happy birtday, chris! :booze:

:dance:


----------



## H123Laci

keber said:


> Yep, that's bullshit.


I dont think so...
Hungarian railway costs 1billion euro/year for the budget...
there are about 100.000 passanger/day...

make the division...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Thanks you guys


----------



## RawLee

H123Laci said:


> I dont think so...
> Hungarian railway costs 1billion euro/year for the budget...
> there are about 100.000 passanger/day...
> 
> make the division...


You really want 98 year old people to drive? And what about 10 year olds?

The US model of full-car society doesnt work. They barely pay taxes,gasoline is cheap,yet,it is drowning them. Draw the conclusions. Look deeper into the topic. 

As a sidenot:the cost of tracktion:
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=37511786&postcount=1184

It costs 53 HUF with an old Bz commuter train a km. Have an average 7l/100km for a car. That means 0,07l/km,or 20HUF/km ( I used 286 HUF,the cheapest in Budapest).

Good so far,now look at it from an other perspective. It costs 20 HUF to move 3,5 tonnes on road,while 50 HUF to move 30 tonnes on rail,or 5 people versus 200. Efficiency my ass. The car is as wasteful as the worst locomotive of MÁV. Go figure...

What costs a lot is the corrupt administration.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

RawLee said:


> The US model of full-car society doesnt work. They barely pay taxes,gasoline is cheap,yet,it is drowning them. Draw the conclusions. Look deeper into the topic.


There is no full-car society in the U.S. The amount of people using public transport in the U.S. is about the same as in much of Europe, around 10%. The difference is that city transport is mostly done by buses. Houston's bus service has a daily ridership of 600,000. Los Angeles buses and (small) metro have a ridership of 1,700,000. 

The major difference is that there barely is intercity public transport in the U.S. Distances are too great and rural areas of the U.S. are mostly less densely populated than in Europe. In Europe, many rural areas have bus services with a occupancy rate of less than 1%. In that case, rural bus and other transport services are just absent in the U.S.


----------



## H123Laci

RawLee said:


> You really want 98 year old people to drive? And what about 10 year olds?


have you ever heard of buses? :lol:



> It costs 53 HUF with an old Bz commuter train a km.


cool!
and how much is the salary cost (pro km) of the masinist, conductor, ticket solder, vehicle cleaner, switch switcher, and their uncountable bosses and secretaries of these bosses?

cause I drive for free... (and pay enormous tax) :lol:



> What costs a lot is the corrupt administration.


it doesnt matter. the only question is the total cost.
and corruption is part of this cost. so MAV is extremely expensive.

corruption can be extinguished ONLY by extinguishing MÁV (HunRail Co.).


----------



## RawLee

H123Laci said:


> cause I drive for free... (and pay enormous tax) :lol:


Not nearly enough,I say it as a fellow driver.


----------



## wyqtor

H123Laci said:


> it doesnt matter. the only question is the total cost.
> and corruption is part of this cost. so MAV is extremely expensive.
> 
> corruption can be extinguished ONLY by extinguishing MÁV (HunRail Co.).


We have similar problems with our own national railway company. To make matters worse, the tracks support (at their very best) only the same speed as cars.

So, why would anyone bother to go to the train station, buy a ticket, wait for the train... when they can simply take their car or hitchhike if they don't have one.

And there is absolutely no interest from to replace the decrepit personal trains with some modern ones, like Desiro. The average speed of one of those personal trains is 50 km/h. In Switzerland it's 120 km/h, roughly the same as the fastest express trains in Romania. :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In my experience, the speed of the trains isn't necessarily the problem. The major problem is you need additional transport (buses, bicycle, etc) that adds up significantly to your travel time.

I used to travel to my ex-girlfriend a lot, she lived 120 kilometers away. Getting from station to station wasn't the problem, just over an hour. However, the total travel time from A to B was more than two hours. Once I got my drivers license, I slashed the travel time to 1 hour and 15 minutes by using my car.


----------



## Buddy Holly

You also increased your total cost to get from point A to point B.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Depends on how you measure it. By fuel cost, no, by total cost: perhaps. But I need my car anyway, so I better use it. Why spend money on train tickets if you have a car anyway? It's just double.


----------



## Pansori

ChrisZwolle said:


> Depends on how you measure it. By fuel cost, no, by total cost: perhaps. But I need my car anyway, so I better use it. Why spend money on train tickets if you have a car anyway? It's just double.


Try to do that in London


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yeah, but as usual, London is the exception, rather than the rule.


----------



## LtBk

If using PT or being forced to use PT is communist/socialist whatever, than what about being forced to drive a car to do just about anything like in the US? Isn't that fascist or communist too?




> have you ever heard of buses?


Buses are worthless in suburban areas of US.



> There is no full-car society in the U.S. The amount of people using public transport in the U.S. is about the same as in much of Europe, around 10%. The difference is that city transport is mostly done by buses. Houston's bus service has a daily ridership of 600,000. Los Angeles buses and (small) metro have a ridership of 1,700,000.


Are you talking about urban areas? If so, the amount of people using mass transit is far less than those in the core cities.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

LtBk said:


> Buses are worthless in suburban areas of US.


On the contrary, buses can be a very good feeder system to a lightrail system, because suburban areas are not dense enough to support a large lightrail system. Buses are much cheaper to operate.


----------



## H123Laci

ChrisZwolle said:


> I used to travel to my ex-girlfriend a lot, she lived 120 kilometers away. Getting from station to station wasn't the problem, just over an hour. However, the total travel time from A to B was more than two hours. Once I got my drivers license, I slashed the travel time to 1 hour and 15 minutes by using my car.


I used to commute to Budapest from an agglomeration village by PT (bus-train-tram-bus).
the 45km route costed me 2:45.
Once I changed to car I slashed the travel time to 1:00 :lol:


----------



## H123Laci

LtBk said:


> If using PT or being forced to use PT is communist/socialist whatever, than what about being forced to drive a car to do just about anything like in the US? Isn't that fascist or communist too?


What do you mean "forced to drive"?

you mean it like "forced to work instead of doing nothing and getting aid"? :lol:



> Buses are worthless in suburban areas of US.


and what kind of PT is not "worthless" in suburban areas of US?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Check out my new DFW wall map! It replaced an Atlanta wall map.


----------



## Timon91

That's a nice beer bottle on the left


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's GROLSCH. You would love it  It's empty though.


----------



## LtBk

> What do you mean "forced to drive"?
> 
> you mean it like "forced to work instead of doing nothing and getting aid"?


Rather arrogant answer IMO. Anyways, when I mean being forced to use car, I mean being so dependent on cars to do just about anything.


----------



## RawLee

H123Laci said:


> I used to commute to Budapest from an agglomeration village by PT (bus-train-tram-bus).
> the 45km route costed me 2:45.
> Once I changed to car I slashed the travel time to 1:00 :lol:


Well,thank it to 90% of the people living around you,as they take the train,so you dont have to sit in traffic jam in front of your house:

red-car
blue-train
yellow-bus
pink-other









BTW,share of public transport in interurban transport barely decreased in the last 8 years:
http://portal.ksh.hu/pls/ksh/docs/hun/xstadat/xstadat_eves/tabl4_06_08i.html


----------



## H123Laci

LtBk said:


> Rather arrogant answer IMO. Anyways, when I mean being forced to use car, I mean being so dependent on cars to do just about anything.


you are not FORCED to drive.
you can ride a horse, or bike, or even walk... 

when I sad "forced to use PT" I meant: 

heavily taxating cars and fuel, but spending this taxes on PT and other government expenditures instead of spending all of it (or at least most of it)on roads, therefore leaving the heavily taxated drivers on heavily congested roads thus making the PT more attractive... (or in other words: the lesser evil)

(Iam talking about europe not USA...)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Guys, take it from me, a person who had this PT vs car discussion 50 times before in three languages, discussing it over and over again doesn't really get you any further. I must admit I sometimes also contribute in these discussions though


----------



## H123Laci

RawLee said:


> Well,thank it to 90% of the people living around you,as they take the train,so you dont have to sit in traffic jam in front of your house:


thank you! thank you! thank you! thank you! :lol:

but wait a minute: where do you see 90% on trains?

in reality number of commuters (in agglomeration of budapest) going by
car: 400.000 (66%)
train, lightrail, bus : 200.000 (33%)

(train: 70.000 (11%))


----------



## RawLee

^^Provide source,please...my source is the statistical office(in fact,the graph was made by Főmterv,who cited KSH as a source). Until you find a source at least this credible,its useless to make up imaginary numbers.

EDIT:BTW,I've already prooved it to Gramercy that what car owners pay is barely enough for the currently built and maintained roads. You barely pay 500 billion HUF tax.


----------



## H123Laci

^^ http://www.levego.hu/letoltes/kapcsolodo_anyagok/atterheles.pdf (page 6)


"You barely pay 500 billion HUF tax."

yeah, the figure is correct...

why do you think it is not enough?
its enough for 2-300km motorway or 5-700km main road per year...

(and maintenance is nothing, its a few 10 billions...)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This girl averages about 5,000 text messages on her cell per month.. while driving.


----------



## LtBk

Dumb bitch should get her license plate revoked IMO.


----------



## RawLee

H123Laci said:


> oh, sorry, I havent realized Iam arguing with an idiot. :lol:


Chris,insulting a mod after a lost debate is worth an infraction,or a ban? :lol:





Dont worry,I dont mean it :lol:


----------



## Mateusz

H123Laci said:


> I thought its a hungarian speciality... :lol:


I thinks that's a problem of many countries from this part of Europe


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Who thought Bruce Willis was just an actor?


----------



## PLH

A good actor usually can sing well. Still I'm not 100% sure if him singing is very well or just fine.


----------



## MAG

Spotted on the A15 in Netherlands. 
What's this all about?











.


----------



## Verso

I don't see Chris on the banner.


----------



## Timon91

^^I do, I wonder where Qwert and RawLee are 



MAG said:


> Spotted on the A15 in Netherlands.
> What's this all about?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> .


People don't want that new windmills will be placed in the Green Hart (a "green" area between the big cities)


----------



## RawLee

I'm in the 2nd row,but no more help!


----------



## Verso

RawLee said:


> I'm in the 2nd row,but no more help!


The 6th one from right to left.



Timon91 said:


> ^^I do


The 8th one from right to left in the first row?


PS: news of the year - we deblocked Croatia.


----------



## Qwert

Timon91 said:


> ^^I do, I wonder where Qwert and RawLee are


I'm second one from right to left in the second row.

Well, somehow I missed the roll call for this banner. Maybe next year.:cheers:


----------



## Timon91

^^:lol:

@Verso: yes


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> PS: news of the year - we deblocked Croatia.


i just wonder what did SLO get with fucking HR in brain for 8 months


----------



## Verso

Some salty water probably.


----------



## x-type

i think that only Pahor got 56 years old ****, nothing else


----------



## ChrisZwolle

So Slovenians and Croats are good friends again? :cheers:

tell us more. Can Croatia join EU tomorrow?


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Can Croatia join EU tomorrow?


Most certainly. :lol: More like in a good year.


----------



## Verso

No wonder we unblocked them when Croatian PM is giving free kisses to our PM.


----------



## PLH

^^ :yes:


----------



## Verso

^ I know. :lol:


----------



## H123Laci

are you thirsty? get a beer! :lol:


----------



## Buddy Holly

I think you should also start charging 1,000 euros for crappy hairdos.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Popular politician Geert Wilders (I'm sure you've heard of him) has a innovative solution to cut the Dutch public debt;
> 
> charge 1000 euros per year for wearing a hijab
> 
> Just when you thought things couldn't get any crazier in this country :nuts:


hehe our president also had a fight with church today. some bishop or something provoked him for being atheist, and he answered them with proposal of chirch tax for religious people :lol: i am sure that number of atheists would in that case increase from some 5% to 75% :lol: his fights with church is so funny. unfortunately, his proposals exist only to irritate the curch and clergy


----------



## kossia

ChrisZwolle said:


> Popular politician Geert Wilders (I'm sure you've heard of him) has a innovative solution to cut the Dutch public debt;
> 
> charge 1000 euros per year for wearing a hijab
> 
> Just when you thought things couldn't get any crazier in this country :nuts:


he is a jerk... an the biggest danger for the Netherlands!


----------



## kossia

pijanec said:


> If we are honest, people are visiting Netherlands just because of its tolerance. Otherwise Netherlands isn't turistically attractive. If government will scare all those tourists away this will just result in higher taxes for Dutch people.


I live in the south of the Netherlands, by the border with Belgium and we have 6.000 drugstourists in a week! They come from Belgium and France, but the coffe shops will be closed in my town by the end of the year...


----------



## pijanec

^^Illegal sellers are already happy. hno:


----------



## Timon91

Politicians don't really dare to make a decision about the drugs, they just do whatever they want to do. Closing coffeeshops in Western Brabant and Zeeland doesn't help - people will drive some 50 km more to a town with a coffeeshop.


----------



## Mateusz

God I just cam for nothing in college. There is a strike going on


----------



## Verso

^^ Join it.  What's it about?


----------



## Mateusz

Money, money... tutors get less paid according to the new contracts, college is in millions-range debt because after on of the building was demolished, funding for new one was stopped. Classes are overpopulated etc these days etc. Our current building is too small anyway, it's a nightmare just before lesson.


----------



## Verso

christos-greece has over 20,000 posts now. I doubt more than 100 of them are useful.


----------



## wyqtor

Verso said:


> christos-greece has over 20,000 posts now. I doubt more than 100 of them are useful.


nice comment


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> christos-greece has over 20,000 posts now. I doubt more than 100 of them are useful.


and there are probably more than 19800 of them which contain words "great, beatifull, excellent"


----------



## RipleyLV

^^ Don't forget "nice".


----------



## Timon91

And "awesome"


----------



## Verso

Guys, you're being even worse spammers than him.


----------



## PLH

Interesting and very nice thread, go on guys kay:


----------



## keber

Please post more pictures, beautiful thread


----------



## Timon91

Liverpool banner today is really nice and awesome!!!


----------



## Verso

If he's reading this, it will probably be the first time he'll say "NOT nice".


----------



## kossia

pijanec said:


> ^^Illegal sellers are already happy. hno:


yeh somewhere like four/five months ago two coffeshops had to close for a while and there came a lot of illegal sellers on places where children play etc.
Then the police began a real war against them and now it is much better in my neighbourhood!


----------



## RawLee

Is this Liverpool banner some kind of joke about us?


----------



## Morsue

I haven't seen it, but I think it's really nice, great, and AWESOME!!


----------



## Timon91

^^:rofl: 

Yeah, Santiago banner is really very nice indeed!!!!


----------



## Mateusz

Wunderbar ! Some thieves broke in to my house at night and stole stuff and house key...:/


----------



## ChrisZwolle

About 8 months ago, Belgian publisher Plantyn asked me to use one of my pictures in their earth science book "Geo". You might remember that. 

Well, today, I recieved a copy of the book. It's the center right picture.









This picture was also the winner in the autosnelwegen.nl september 2007 photo contest.


----------



## keber

Awesome book!! Please post more pictures, I like this thread:wave:


----------



## Verso

What's the book about?



Mateusz said:


> Wunderbar ! Some thieves broke in to my house at night and stole stuff and house key...:/


Nice.  Seriously though, that sucks. What valuable did they take except the key?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> What's the book about?


Earth Science / Geography.


----------



## Mateusz

Verso said:


> What's the book about?
> 
> Nice.  Seriously though, that sucks. What valuable did they take except the key?


That they might be able just to get in sometime in future ? No way, lockmitsh is coming in the morning though


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I did a little roadtrip this morning, into the Randstad metropolis. I haven't been there much in the past year.

stats:

distance: 420 km / 260 mi
Fuel consumption: 20.8 liters (4.8 l / 100km, 1:20,2 or 48 mpg)
Time: 10.15 - 14.45 (4.5 hours)
Vmax = ~130 km/h / 80 mph
Vavg = 93 km/h / 58 mph

route:


----------



## PLH

Back to school, anyone?


----------



## Mateusz

Driving school for rich ?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Audi TT, it's like a go-kart


----------



## x-type

i saw in Zagreb BMW 3er coupe in driving school and that school has sport and luxury cars, i also saw Mercedes, Audi (also TT, but old version)...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ From that driving school site:

Ehh, is this the fuel tank?


----------



## x-type

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WPQ6b0OQ8c

i never realized is this fake or from some show or real thing?!


----------



## Mateusz

Real thing, from Poland


----------



## x-type

i know it's PL. are they always recording them? this seems very dangerous, she should do at least 10 hours at polygon first.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That video is quite old, I remember it seeing 1 or 2 years ago.

I'm finally getting somewhat better in Polish.  I understand more words every day, and can even understand some words that driving instructor said in the video. 

jak się masz?


----------



## PLH

x-type said:


> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WPQ6b0OQ8c
> 
> i never realized is this fake or from some show or real thing?!


This is from a TV programme, but I don't know if it was fake. Probably not.

BTW When the guy is speaking you can hear some Silesian influence, but very soft one.


----------



## RawLee

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ From that driving school site:
> 
> Ehh, is this the fuel tank?



She has dressed for the exam. I've seen many girls with neck-high shirts driving,but on the exams,they were ,like, in bikinis...


----------



## Mateusz

Maybe to get some kind of sympathy from instructor


----------



## Timon91

Of course, but if every woman drives as bad as the one in the video, they don't have a chance at all


----------



## Verso

Morsue said:


> Well, actually I'm flying down, but I'm driving back on Thursday morning. Something like 4200 kms from door to door.


How many days is that? :runaway:



ChrisZwolle said:


> Yeah, so true. I told our new intern here that I went to Slovenia. He couldn't imagine that, he said "with such country names, you immediately think about the eastern bloc, and poor people".


Why would Slovenia make you think of that? I think it's a nice name. If anything, the Stans (Tajikistan etc.) make me think of that. Some people are so ignorant. They don't even know where a country is, yet they think they know everything about it. If I don't know anything about a country, I just don't say anything about it, as simple as that; I rather ask what it's like there. For example, I know that South America is generally rather poor for our standards, but I know that Chile is different, it's richer (and French Guiana, of course). I remember polls among EU citizens before we entered EU. Even though we've always been the richest candidate (except Cyprus), no one wanted us in EU, we were only more popular than Turkey, for like 1% more popular. :nuts: Romania and Bulgaria were more popular than Slovenia. Europeans should know whole Europe, not just Western Europe.


----------



## Timon91

Slovenia almost has a higher GDP than Italy and Portugal, right?


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> Slovenia almost has a higher GDP than Italy and Portugal, right?


Slovenia's had a higher GDP/capita than Portugal for almost a decade. We've almost caught Italy too, yes. I think at one moment we also surpassed Greece, but it's been successful at being slightly before us ever since they got the lesson.  We surpassed the Czech Republic already in mid-'90s.


----------



## Mateusz

Yeah but Slovenia is just quite small


----------



## keber

That's why I can ski in the mountains, swim in the sea and get home all in one day.:lol:


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yeah, so true. I told our new intern here that I went to Slovenia. He couldn't imagine that, he said "with such country names, you immediately think about the eastern bloc, and poor people".


Your colleague should hear news from today: "poor and backward" Slovenia is to allow gay marriage and adoption of children. :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I absolutely adored Slovenia, especially the small size is very convenient, you have several landscapes within an hour of driving from the center of the country. And it is very modern, even rural areas were well maintained. I also liked those small shopping malls, very convenient, lots of parking space and shops, we lack that in the Netherlands.


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> even rural areas were well maintained.


I said that somewhere not long ago, but my impression is (although numbers probably don't support it) that Slovenian countryside actually looks more developed than Maribor.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I saw this in Nijkerk, NL


----------



## Verso

^^ It happened to me once. I lost the entire exhaust pipe while driving on a crappy "road" in a swamp south of Ljubljana.


----------



## x-type

i also admit (khm) that SLO countryside looks really pleasant and great.i haven't seen ugly and dirty village there (at least not in parts where i was at countryside, and that's south of Maribor). in HR similar tidy villages you can find only at edge north (around Čakovec).
but this sea in SLO is really, as we would say in HR, dick of a sheep :lol:


----------



## Timon91

That's right. Almost the complete Slovene seaside is made out of concrete, Croatia has beaches


----------



## keber

Beaches are horror in Slovenia, that's true, just an idiot would have a vacation on our beaches. But for that we have our friendly neighbours, right?:lol:


----------



## x-type

keber said:


> Beaches are horror in Slovenia, that's true, just an idiot would have a vacation on our beaches. But for that we have our friendly neighbours, right?:lol:


oh, indeed! Italians have few really nice beaches :crazy:


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> Beaches are horror in Slovenia, that's true, just an idiot would have a vacation on our beaches.


Timon. :lol: I think the most normal beach is by the Italian border (Debeli rtič), nothing special though..


----------



## keber

x-type said:


> oh, indeed! Italians have few really nice beaches :crazy:


Sure, most of them are pretty far away. Austria has some really nice lakes too.


----------



## Timon91

Verso said:


> Timon. :lol: I think the most normal beach is by the Italian border (Debeli rtič), nothing special though..


I didn't go there because I wanted to go to the beach, I went there to visit Koper, Trieste, and Rovinj :lol:


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Exactly, like yours č and ć or Dž and Đ.
And Ż=Ž 

In Polish we have digraphs also, like Cz, Sz, Rz, Dż, Dź or Ch, and even one trigraph: Dzi


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> Hungarians do it too  it is not SZeged, but Szeged


Of course, thank god, but I think it would also be better "SZ" in alphabet, not "Sz". Btw: SzEGED, LjUBLjANA. :lol:



Fuzzy Llama said:


> and even one trigraph: Dzi


:nuts:


----------



## SeanT

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Exactly, like yours č and ć or Dž and Đ.
> And Ż=Ž
> 
> In Polish we have digraphs also, like Cz, Sz, Rz, Dż, Dź or Ch, and even one trigraph: Dzi


 We do have a lot of them too (Hungary).
...and ny-ty-and ly but ly=j


----------



## x-type

SeanT said:


> We do have a lot of them too (Hungary).
> ...and ny-ty-and ly but ly=j


isn't actually hungarian "ly" more like italian "gl" (in front of "i", "e"; e.g. tagliare)? i guess it actually depends about dialect


----------



## wyqtor

^^ Sounds more like Spanish "ll" to me (as in "me llamo")


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yay FDP won in Germany! 

Exit SPD -10%. :nuts:

A big defeat for the socialists in Germany.


----------



## LtBk

The CDU is still in power however.


----------



## RawLee

x-type said:


> isn't actually hungarian "ly" more like italian "gl" (in front of "i", "e"; e.g. tagliare)? i guess it actually depends about dialect





wyqtor said:


> ^^ Sounds more like Spanish "ll" to me (as in "me llamo")


There's no difference in pronounciation, "ly" is the archaic form of "j",and only very few words have "ly" actually.


----------



## BND

No Slavic alphabet can beat the Hungarian, with 44 letters 

A Á B C Cs D Dz Dzs E É F G Gy H I Í J K L Ly M N Ny O Ó Ö Ő P Q R S Sz T Ty U Ú Ü Ű V W X Y Z Zs


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

^^
Well, Czech is pretty close with 42 letters (a, á, b, c, č, d, ď, e, é, ě, f, g, h, ch, i, í, j, k, l, m, n, ň, o, ó, p, q, r, ř, s, š, t, ť, u, ú, ů, v, w, x, y, ý, z, ž).
And Slovak has 46 (a, á, ä, b, c, č, d, ď, dz, dž, e, é, f, g, h, ch, i, í, j, k, l, ĺ, ľ, m, n, ň, o, ó, ô, p, q, r, ŕ, s, š, t, ť, u, ú, v, w, x, y, ý, z, ž).


----------



## Capt.Vimes

Wow, how do you find place for all that on the keyboard!


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

It's simple - the most used letters are along with numbers and for the others there's a diacritics key (left of the backspace); sorry for the crappy quality - mobile phone doesn't like my silver/grey keyboard:


----------



## keber

Capt.Vimes said:


> Wow, how do you find place for all that on the keyboard!


Wondering how Chinese find their signs?:lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*European Roads*

My new site to find all my pics and videos!


----------



## Verso

^^ Cool website!


----------



## Timon91

Good idea. In future we could combine all our roadpics on one website like this one


----------



## x-type

we had a try of similar page earlier, but it didn't live long.


----------



## Robosteve

Hello. I haven't been around in a while, and most of you probably don't remember me anyway, but I thought I'd post to say hi anyway.


----------



## Timon91

Welcome back, Robosteve! Where have you been? We thought you crashed


----------



## Robosteve

Timon91 said:


> Welcome back, Robosteve! Where have you been? We thought you crashed


I've been around, I just lost interest in roads for a while. My interests come and go like that, but I'm getting back into them now so I decided to come back here.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Depends on which part of the country you "r". Some areas of the Randstad metropolis speak the "r" quite different than the rest of the Netherlands. "snooty r".


----------



## SeanT

ChrisZwolle said:


> Dutch is an ugly language. But hey, I can't help it I was born here
> 
> The worst part of Dutch are those language purists who want to write every foreign city name phonetically.
> 
> Shanghai = Sjanghai, Chongqing = Tsjoentsjing etc. :nuts:
> 
> Translating nations/subnational entities/city names is very random. For instance, why do we write "Californië" (California), but not "Georgië" (Georgia), while we do say "Georgië", when we're talking about the country? Or why do we translate Berlin into Berlijn, but not Nieuw York or Noord Dakota?


 We have that shit in Hungary.
Bruxelles----Brüsszel
Den Haag----Hága
Specially the russian and chinese names tranform into a "hungarian-fonetics" name...but strange not from the western world. Erwin Koeman is Erwin Koeman (hope I´ve written it well).:lol:


----------



## Timon91

How do they pronounce "Erwin Koeman" in Hungary?


----------



## x-type

SeanT said:


> We have that shit in Hungary.
> Bruxelles----Brüsszel
> Den Haag----Hága


i find it good. if there is something i hate in croatian, then it is the fact that we don't have our forms of Bruxelles, Zürich and München.


----------



## RawLee

SeanT said:


> We have that shit in Hungary.
> Bruxelles----Brüsszel
> Den Haag----Hága
> Specially the russian and chinese names tranform into a "hungarian-fonetics" name...but strange not from the western world. Erwin Koeman is Erwin Koeman (hope I´ve written it well).:lol:


Actually,just think it over. Both versions we have are the phonetic scripts of the names. "Ksz" instead of "x" is hard to pronounce in that word,so "k" was left out,and the "es" is silent I think in the native form. BTW,listen to it in Wiki in the english article,its pronounced how we write it.

Den Haag is about the same, I think "Den" is actually an article,hence left out (you dont say "a Budapest",do you?).

The chinese names are the same,phonetic versions,though probably in a lot of cases,the english names' versions.


----------



## Timon91

"Den Haag" is a prefix, in French it is "La Haye", and in English "The Hague", to give you an idea. In fact the official name for Den Haag used to be 's-Gravenhage but the official name for Den Bosch is 's-Hertogenbosch. Just to make it more simple


----------



## ChrisZwolle

"Trzciel"

rz = like "j" in French journal.

Tzjtsjel?


----------



## wyqtor

What's the deal with the *'s-* prefix? 

I really like Dutch names starting with 's- or IJ.


----------



## snowman159

Timon91 said:


> "Den Haag" is a prefix, in French it is "La Haye", and in English "The Hague", to give you an idea. In fact the official name for Den Haag used to be 's-Gravenhage but the official name for Den Bosch is 's-Hertogenbosch. Just to make it more simple


The official name the Bronx borough in NYC is "The Bronx", just like "The Hague". Maybe because of its Dutch history?

Don't the French also have proper names where the article is part of the name? e.g. La Rochelle.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

wyqtor said:


> What's the deal with the *'s-* prefix?
> 
> I really like Dutch names starting with 's- or IJ.


's means "des" which is old Dutch for "the".

We still use " 's morgens" (in the morning), " 's avonds" (in the evening) etc. Note that with 's at the beginning of a sentence, the next letter will be the capital letter, like " 's Middags". The old sentence would be "des middags".


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

ChrisZwolle said:


> "Trzciel"
> 
> rz = like "j" in French journal.
> 
> Tzjtsjel?


You have chosen the worst example 

There are some rules about pronounciation of clusters of vioced and unvioced consonants which are completely unmarked in writing. The 'unvoiced-voiced' cluster will be simplified into the 'unvoiced-unvoiced' one, so t-rz will be pronounced as (t-sz) (other examples: prz -> (psz), krz -> (ksz) and so on). The same rule applies for the 'voiced-unvoiced' clusters: wsz -> (fsz) and even for the clusters created by neighbourng words: mów szeptem -> (móf szeptem). The clusters are simplified because it's much easier to pronounce them that way and it is made almost subconciously.

Also, the 'ci' is one short sound, softened 'ts' (consider german ch in ich, ...chen with ordinary h sound).


----------



## Ni3lS

Timon91 said:


> We're waiting for some Interstate pics, Ni3ls



Im working on it


----------



## Timon91

snowman159 said:


> The official name the Bronx borough in NYC is "The Bronx", just like "The Hague". Maybe because of its Dutch history?


There is some Dutch/English history there, yes. The name "Brooklyn" also has some Dutch roots. It was named after a Dutch town called "Breukelen". I went to high school there :lol:


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> "Trzciel"
> 
> rz = like "j" in French journal.
> 
> Tzjtsjel?





Fuzzy Llama said:


> You have chosen the worst example
> 
> There are some rules about pronounciation of clusters of vioced and unvioced consonants which are completely unmarked in writing. The 'unvoiced-voiced' cluster will be simplified into the 'unvoiced-unvoiced' one, so t-rz will be pronounced as (t-sz) (other examples: prz -> (psz), krz -> (ksz) and so on). The same rule applies for the 'voiced-unvoiced' clusters: wsz -> (fsz) and even for the clusters created by neighbourng words: mów szeptem -> (móf szeptem). The clusters are simplified because it's much easier to pronounce them that way and it is made almost subconciously.


isn't polish rź like szech ř? in czech it is "r" and french "j" in the same time (for Dutch probably impossible to pronounce  but for many Slavs too )


----------



## Mateusz

rź ? more likely spelled like rzee


----------



## Jeroen669

Timon91 said:


> Just get used to it, I think. Dutch really sounds ugly IMO. English and French is more like singing, while Dutch is just some coughing


Hey, where has the proud for your mother tongue been? 

Imo dutch isn't that ugly. Our culture is just so overwhelmed by english influences that we've lost a bit the worth of our language. German isn't considered to be a beautiful language either, though I think it's easier understandable for non-natives. They usually don't talk too fast and have a very good articulation, which makes it easier to recognize words.


----------



## Timon91

I do like my country, but not every aspect of it. I'm not American


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I did a small roadtrip to Bad Oeynhausen (ABRob city) to check out the A30. 

distance: 460 km
fuel consumption: 1 l/19.3 km or 5.18 l /100km or 45 mpg.
time: 10.30 - 16.30
Vavg = 77 km/h
Vmax = 140 km/h
Fuel cost: € 22


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My TomTom thought the speed limit in Germany was 250 km/h for a second!


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

I'm going to the Netherlands 
Using the Danish october break (wonderful thing) and some happy coincidences next week I will have free accomodation in Katwijk. It's not so far from Amsterdam or The Hague. 

Any travel tips? Particulary concerning free parking in Amsterdam outskirts?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The most viewed topics at H&A:


----------



## Verso

^^ The bottom one is ancient. But it was the main highway thread before the H&A subforum was created in 2006/2007. Oh, and this thread has more views than the Italian one.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yeah, when were we created again? Somewhere early 2007? And I became a mod early 2008? (I don't even remember  )


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yeah, when were we created again? Somewhere early 2007? And I became a mod early 2008? (I don't even remember  )


1. Nice new avatar. 

2. You became a mod on 7th January 2008.  I keep all PMs, and I sent you one then. It's possible you became a mod already on 6th January in the evening, cause I sent you a PM at 01:13 am. Never mind... I think H&A was created in early 2007. It probably took me some time to notice it in the first place, cause I wasn't checking Infrastructure & Mobility that often any more. I went to Switzerland for 2 months in the end of October 2006, and I'm pretty sure H&A didn't exist yet. I got back to Slovenia for Christmas, so H&A most probably wasn't yet created in 2006 (cause I had better things to do in Switzerland than browse SSC :lol. Something tells me I noticed it in April 2007, or that's the latest date it was created. If I remember correctly (but I could be wrong), one of the first new threads in H&A was Blue vs. Green motorway signs, but it was created already on 9th January 2007, so I'm not sure. I didn't even know you yet (http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=11261684#post11261684 :hilarious). Now that I think of it, I also remember the Turkish thread was one of the first ones too, and it was also created in the beginning of January 2007. LOL, I myself created the Slovenian thread in March, so April is definitely eliminated. It must've been the beginning of January 2007, and you became a mod in the beginning of January 2008. :cheers:


----------



## PLH

Snow appeared out of the blue over here, followed by some nice comments:



Dziki REX said:


> Jaki śnieg? My tu w Gdańsku mamy widoki jak z Katriny w Nowym Orleanie. Zerwane trakcje tramwajowe i kolejowe a do miasta wtłacza wodę z Bałtyku. Przeciętna żywotność parasola zbliżyła się do czasu upadku anty protona na jądro helu. Liście z drzew masowo emigrują z kraju a jak uchyliłem okno, żeby odkleić gołębia od szyby to drzwi od kibla wyssało prze komin. Nawet Dog in the fog dostał by pier#&%a.





Dziki REX said:


> Snow? What snow? We here in Gdańsk have views like from Katrina in New Orleans. Tram and train traction cut off and water from the Baltic Sea is pouring into the city. The average life expectancy of an umbrella got close to the time of the fall of anti proton on helium nucleus. Leaves from trees are mass-emigrating from the country and when I opened the window a crack to unstick a pigeon from the glass, bog door was sucked out through the chimney. Even Dog in the fog would get [email protected]#$%d up.


:lol:


----------



## Verso

Funny. :lol:


----------



## Timon91

:rofl:


----------



## Timon91

There is only a small part of the Netherlands where it's freezing right now, and guess who lives there


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The closest measuring point near my city has a staggering -0.1 C


----------



## Verso

^^ That's quite cold for this part of the year, especially for the Netherlands. It's some 5°C here atm.


Our reality shows are weiiiiird. :nuts:


----------



## x-type

omg that Farm thing is something horrible! here in HR really a bunch of idiots take part in it allways


----------



## Nexis

its really Cold here in the NE recently , an average of upper 40s , low 50s with a light breeze from the ocean hno:


----------



## wyqtor

There were 5 C yesterday in western Romania. 5 days ago there were 27 :nuts: . Now that's what I call a short autumn! :lol:


----------



## Verso

^ There was almost 30°C in Austria a few days ago; now it snows. :lol:


----------



## Nexis

For the Next 5 Days starting in a few hrs Northeastern US is getting 2 rain Storms , 1-3 inches of wet snow will fall in the Mountains 50 miles West of NJ & PA. it will be chilly a maximum High of 47F. High Winds along the Coastal NJ and Coastal Flooding is expecting. On Sunday i might go to Hungarian-American Museum in New Brunswick,NJ


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

Czech Republic - slightly above 0°C, snow above 400m, up to 40cms of fresh snow in the mountains 








(Yup, VW van and Suzuki Swift keep going, wile offroad-wannabe SUV ends up in a ditch :lol


----------



## Timon91

30 degrees in Austria? Where?


----------



## snowman159

Timon91 said:


> 30 degrees in Austria? Where?


Last week it was still very hot and humid, around 28-29 C in Vienna, and this week it's bitter cold. It almost happened overnight. When I looked out of my window this morning I could actually see a few snowflakes, which is pretty rare for Vienna this time of year. Here it's not yet cold enough for the snow to stay on the ground, but in other parts of Austria they have lots and lots of snow, road closures, accidents, unprepared drivers, etc...


----------



## SeanT

Last week there was about 28 C in Hungary, and now 5 days later they talk about snowy weather.
:nuts:


----------



## Verso

I remember this. :lol:


----------



## Timon91

He used to come around for a few days, and than disappear again for a week or two, but he hasn't been around for a while now.


----------



## Verso

He only posts in my thread. :bowtie:


----------



## Nexis

Who here hates Ikea ? I love it , its one of the greatest Euro Stores every thought of, mmmmmm Swedish Meatballs:nuts:


----------



## Verso

^ You go to IKEA to eat? :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A lot of people do that.


----------



## snowman159

I've done that. Those meatballs are tasty. 

Is that a bad sign? :lol:


----------



## Nexis

once in a while i do , Swedish Food is tasty , and a comfort food in the winter for me:cheers: , i also love the Store itself all the Modern Furniture in it


----------



## BND

Ikea has a grocery store inside, where you can buy very good vodka at a good price. Some people at a party were surprised when I told them that I've bought the booze in Ikea


----------



## Nexis

They do, i never knew that , although they do have a small Food section


----------



## Timon91

I had dinner in IKEA last tuesday :eat:


----------



## Falusi

My father and me transported deer stew to IKEA on last saturday. You can eat it in Budapest, in Praha, in Brno, in Ostrava and in Bratislava.


----------



## Robosteve

I've been getting some interesting comments on my YouTube videos of highways around here from a user called MotAdvNSW. I find them quite amusing, mostly because I agree with a lot of what he says:



MotAdvNSW on "F6 Freeway" said:


> a) LEFT emergency stopping lane needs widening, at some points.
> 
> b) U-Turn bays, dedicated to 'emergency services only', need GATELOCK barrier to stop Mr & Mrs Australia doing illegal and stupid U-Turns. (Trialling on F3).
> 
> c) Needs continuous length median barrier to stop traffic looming out from scrub/grass from opposite carriageway.
> 
> TRAFFIC, on long lengths of three-lane section; the practice of "Keep middle unless passing" needs long term attention.
> 
> Indicators - optional only.





MotAdvNSW on "M2 Motorway" said:


> NOT the smartest motorway design, 'dumb' in fact. Lane layouts are appalling, acceptable in second world AUS though.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I didnt know that they had restaurauns in IKEA's. I'll have to try that sometime...


----------



## Qwert

Timon91 said:


> I had dinner in IKEA last tuesday :eat:


You should also buy some furniture in McDonald's.


----------



## Nexis

:lol: The Plastic Chairs and wall photos will do nicely, ask if it can be added to the Happy Meal:lol:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

:lol:
IKEA should do an offer: If you spend more than €500 in the shop you get 50 free meatballs.


----------



## LtBk

Has anybody noticed that Google didn't update Greece to include the new completed Egnatia Odos motorway?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Google Earth is slow with a lot of roads in south/eastern Europe... It depends on their mapping service: Teleatlas

some things I recently noticed;

A1 Maribor, Slovenia
A4 Slovenia
A5 Slovenia
A2 Radovljica, Slovenia
A1 + A2 Romania
E75 in Serbia as a motorway north of Novi Sad (it is a single carriageway)
Beograd bypass as a motorway (it is a single carriageway)
A4 Poland 
A5 Osijek, Croatia
A27 Greece


----------



## Qwert

^^Google recently added new images of Bratislava too. Now you can see all Bratislava motorways in operation. At previous photos some of them were still U/C. You can see also upgrade works on D1 before Bratislava and U/C sections under High Tatras and west of Prešov, but only at certain zoom levels: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&hq=...5902,20.210037&spn=0.324861,0.617294&t=k&z=11


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Google Earth is slow with a lot of roads in south/eastern Europe... It depends on their mapping service: Teleatlas
> 
> some things I recently noticed;
> 
> A1 Maribor, Slovenia
> A4 Slovenia
> A5 Slovenia
> A2 Radovljica, Slovenia
> A1 + A2 Romania
> E75 in Serbia as a motorway north of Novi Sad (it is a single carriageway)
> Beograd bypass as a motorway (it is a single carriageway)
> A4 Poland
> A5 Osijek, Croatia
> A27 Greece


A1 in HR from Šestanovac to Ravča is not signed.
A6 in HR is signed as expressway. 
M5 in H south of Kiskunfélegyháza is signed as toll-free motorway.
in SLO some sections are signed as toll-free (because they made that map before vignette)
A4 Mestre bypass in I is signed as toll-free.
AL is absolutely uncovered.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No, I don't. It must be your computer.


----------



## Timon91

Me neither, there's also nothing wrong with the first picture.

By the way:
- first picture: A8 München-Salzburg?
- second picture: A8/A1 D/AT border crossing near Salzburg?


----------



## Verso

Ok, now I don't see it either. The first pic is between Kranj and Jesenice, btw.


----------



## Timon91

Ok, that was the other option I considered 

This is what made me doubt:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I just had a meet with Timon this afternoon


----------



## LtBk

What do you guys think of Google Maps new looks on the maps?


----------



## Verso

^^ It doesn't show tolled sections any more, which sucks.



ChrisZwolle said:


> I just had a meet with Timon this afternoon


For the first time? Micro H&A meeting.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

^^ It does show tolled sections, but it does not gray out urban areas, which sucks more.

Or maybe they are just meddling with it right out. However the changes aren't big, I like 'thinned' motorways though.


----------



## Qwert

IMO older look was better. I don't like those thin roads.

I don't know about other countries, but in case of Slovakia it shows tolled sections of motorway (although it's not 100% correct) as well as grey urban areas:dunno:.


----------



## Verso

Ah, I was looking at sattelite image with map.


----------



## Timon91

I'm home again after the mini H&A meet. The train was late again


----------



## wyqtor

^^At the very least they added some MapMaker data from Romania. We finally have road and street names in GE, though unfortunately there are also many additions by people who don't pay as much attention to detail as we do here  .


----------



## Verso

How was it?  Did you meet in Zwolle?


----------



## Timon91

Yes, we met up in Zwolle. Easy for me since I can travel with PT for free during weekends  It was fun


----------



## Verso

Did you get drunk?  :rofl:


----------



## Timon91

Of course, we got completely wasted  :jk:


----------



## Timon91

^^Does Google Maps even show expressways? :rofl:

Damn SSC again, I reacted on x-type's post hno:


----------



## x-type

still no Struma in Google Maps hno:


----------



## Verso

Struma is shown, but in yellow (you can see two lines).


----------



## x-type

oh, i haven't zoomed enough


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Winter time starts this night. That means an hour extra sleep!:sleepy:


----------



## snowman159

For all you google streetview addicts: 

http://vimeo.com/7106181


----------



## Verso

^^ Haha, lol, I wouldn't have patience to make this.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Winter time starts this night. That means an hour extra sleep!:sleepy:


Great, sunset already at 5 pm here. :sleepy:


----------



## keber

snowman159 said:


> For all you google streetview addicts:
> 
> http://vimeo.com/7106181


It would be very interesting, if Google maps had a function to make a series of pics (or even make a movie) over a predefined route, made in Google Maps. Or if someone would develop such solution.


----------



## Timon91

^^Good idea, but you probably need a very fast computer to load it quickly. My computer already has difficulty with loading the next picture :lol:

Nice video. That costs a lot of time to make :lol:


----------



## x-type

do you people more often use Google Maps or Google Earth? i allwayshave Google Earth opened and i use it much more than Google Maps (i use Maps only when i want to calculate a route lenght with more stopovers because Google Earth doesn't support that, but GE is much easier to handle with)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Me too, I use maps sparsely. Google Earth is opened all the time. I almost never use street view though.


----------



## Nexis

OMG who doesn't use Streetview , They need to update in the Northeast , alot of new Interchanges and bridges have opened up and ,Google Needs to update its maps as wellhno:


----------



## Verso

Google Earth is easier to handle with, but Google Maps is better for Street View, and it has options Terrain and just Map, which GE doesn't.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I saw a car slashing a 15cm diameter tree in half. No pics unfortunately, it was raining cats and dogs.


----------



## Ni3lS

Woehoe! There is going to be a snowstorm tonight and tomorrow. That means that I have at least a delayed start at school and there might be a chance that we get a snow day. Can't wait!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ I read they expect up to two feet upslope! Time to get your snowboard out


----------



## Timon91

Today a Dutch website where you can order food (pizza's, shoarma, etc.) was launched exactly nine years ago. To celebrate this, you could order pizza's for free, up to 15 euro's and you had to order between 19:00 and 19:09. And guess what? Their servers couldn't handle it


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Found this pic from 2006 in a Polish thread:



lkmiec said:


> swietne jest na tej stronce to:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> :lol: :lol: :lol:
> 
> Pozdrawiam


Nice photoshop. The signs are obvious Dutch, but the arrows aren't, as is the number. I think this used to be a sign of the A13 near Overschie.


----------



## Nexis

*Today is my 19th Birthday , time to Party *:banana::dance::dance:


----------



## H123Laci

Timon91 said:


> Today a Dutch website where you can order food (pizza's, shoarma, etc.) was launched exactly nine years ago. To celebrate this, you could order pizza's for free, up to 15 euro's and you had to order between 19:00 and 19:09. And guess what? Their servers couldn't handle it


I like pizza... :cheers: :lol:


----------



## Verso

Happy birthday, Nexis! :cheers:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This guy was inspecting the street lights. I found he kinda looked like Steve Zahn.


----------



## x-type

have you people somewhen seen a vehicle in sand trap lane? today i've been looking street view at google maps and found this one at french A8 near Nice, this is the first time i see it!


----------



## Timon91

Happy birthday, Nexis!


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> have you people somewhen seen a vehicle in sand trap lane? today i've been looking street view at google maps and found this one at french A8 near Nice, this is the first time i see it!


That's nothing, I've seen nude people in GE. :lol:


----------



## Ni3lS

Dang. It's snowing but the worst part of the storm is coming late in the afternoon. Can't wait! I'm so stoked to go snowboarding in a few weeks!


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> That's nothing, I've seen nude people in GE. :lol:


i knoe, there was interesting article about street view in our newspapers, too 
but this is interesting to me because i have never earlier seen sand trap in use!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Guys, I need your help.

I have a traffic survey tomorrow and friday evening at the Dutch-German border rest area. It concentrates on the trucks.

However, I got a feeling some truckers may not be very happy when I'm there in the dark writing down their license plates. So I came up with this list of foreign languages.

Are there any mistakes? I used Google translate. Let me know:










I need to write down the license plates, so we can determine what kind of problems there are on this rest area (long term parking, customs, overnight parking, short term parking etc.)


----------



## PLH

I assume you will measure traffic intensity?

In this way it will be better, more natural to write: *Badanie natężenia ruchu *, but it's up to you, I can see other versions don't include that.

I'm not sure about the Ukrainian version. To me it sounds like *observing* the traffic, looking at it, not measuring. But I can be wrong, try on Ukrainian forum.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No, I'm gonna write down the license plates of the truck. I do that every two hours so we can see how long a truck has stopped, and what the usage vs capacity is. 

I want to keep the sentences as general as possible, like "traffic survey".


----------



## PLH

So it's OK then.


----------



## PLH

Українськi not Українськa, cause Українськa refers to a feminine noun. funny, huh?

But again, try asking on UA forum, cause there is also sth like Українськa мова(ukrainian language), but I don't know if they have a single Українськa, probably not.

also:
Slovenský for SK
Slovanski for SLO (Verso, correct?)

What you've written is a very formal name for a language.


----------



## snowman159

About Google Streetview: When Google started taking pictures in Vienna, there were articles in the media regarding privacy issues.
What's funny is that this website has been around for a while now and nobody seems to care, not even privacy activists: 
www.norc.at


----------



## snowman159

Are you only targeting foreign trucks, Chris? How come you didn't write it in Dutch?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are no Dutch trucks there. I was there yesterday, there were only eastern/central European trucks. Mostly RUS, UA, BY, LT, PL.


----------



## Verso

PLH said:


> also:
> Slovenský for SK
> Slovanski for SLO (Verso, correct?)


'Slovanski' means Slavic.  Both ('slovenčina' for Slovak and 'slovenščina' for Slovenian) are correct, you can see them in Wikipedia. You can say 'slovenščina', 'slovensko' or 'slovenski jezik' for Slovenian. The translation itself isn't correct though, it should be the other way around (raziskava prometa). It's also wrong in Serbian; I'd say 'istraga saobraćaja' (истрага саобраћаја) or sth like that.


----------



## PLH

Well, OK, but to me it sounds very stiff and offcial, those slovenčina and slovenščina.


----------



## Verso

'Slovenščina' is a noun, 'slovensko' is an adverb, while 'slovenski jezik' means 'Slovenian language'. Yes, 'slovenščina' sounds more official.


----------



## H123Laci

ChrisZwolle said:


> No, I'm gonna write down the license plates of the truck. I do that every two hours so we can see how long a truck has stopped, and what the usage vs capacity is.


put a camera on the entry lane and another one on the exit lane of the rest area...


----------



## PLH

Maybe try this?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

:ancient:

and fake. Made by some ICT students.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A repost on this page. Any more corrections?



ChrisZwolle said:


> Guys, I need your help.
> 
> I have a traffic survey tomorrow and friday evening at the Dutch-German border rest area. It concentrates on the trucks.
> 
> However, I got a feeling some truckers may not be very happy when I'm there in the dark writing down their license plates. So I came up with this list of foreign languages.
> 
> Are there any mistakes? I used Google translate. Let me know:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I need to write down the license plates, so we can determine what kind of problems there are on this rest area (long term parking, customs, overnight parking, short term parking etc.)


----------



## x-type

you have missed a letter in Serbian, correct would be "саобраћај*н*а анкета".
i'd say the same for Slovenian - "promet*n*a raziskava"


----------



## Fron

Chris, I think *Forgalom felmérés* would be better instead of forgalmi felmérés.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> The translation itself isn't correct though, it should be the other way around (raziskava prometa).





> Chris, I think Forgalom felmérés would be better instead of forgalmi felmérés.


OK. Thanks


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> you have missed a letter in Serbian, correct would be "саобраћај*н*а анкета".
> i'd say the same for Slovenian - "promet*n*a raziskava"


That sounds kind of weird IMO, also it's not "anketa/анкета" (poll), cause he won't be asking them questions.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> That sounds kind of weird IMO, also it's not "anketa/анкета" (poll), cause he won't be asking them questions.


that's right. i'd say "испитивање саобраћаја"


----------



## RipleyLV

Also Chris, "исследование движения" is more appropriate than "обследование движения".


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> that's right. i'd say "испитивање саобраћаја"


'Ispitivanje'... isn't that similar to 'anketa' (pitati)?  Why not 'istraga'?


----------



## Nexis

Thankyou guys , but wheres my foreign traffic signs Present?:nuts::bleep:

~Corey


----------



## x-type

"istraga" or (better) "istraživanje" would also be suitable, both "istraživanje" and "ispitivanje" are correct and correspodentive to the meaning


----------



## Pansori

In Lithuanian "apklausa" means "questionnaire" i.e. when you actually ask something so the current option is misleading.

it should be "Eismo suvestinė" (which means something like "traffic data collection") or "Eismo tyrimas" (traffic survey in a sense of data collection).

So..

[LT] Eismo Tyrimas (I think this one is the best, actually)

or

[LT] Eismo suvestinė


----------



## Xpressway

I feel like sharing this with my fellow highway fans here. It's about a small accident i was involved in 2 months ago, could've been much worse.

2 months ago, during one of Chile's national holidays me and 2 friends were going through Ruta 5 Norte (2x2 lanes, private owned, complies fully with european standards, 120km/h), i was on the front passenger seat. traffic was going slow until it we couldn't move anymore because of an accident some kilometers head. Suddenly a big pick-up truck hits the back of our car, this makes us hit the car infront of us in the traffic jam, causing a triple colision. I instantly got out of the car because i thought more cars would keep crashing as i've seen in several videos but that didn't happen. 

It was SO unexpected, we were all relaxed talking and listening to music and suddenly BAM!.

We all suffered minor injuries and our neck hurt for over a day, but we are all safe.


----------



## Robosteve

The only one of those languages I know is English, and I don't see anything wrong with that translation. :lol:



Xpressway said:


> I feel like sharing this with my fellow highway fans here. It's about a small accident i was involved in 2 months ago, could've been much worse.
> 
> 2 months ago, during one of Chile's national holidays me and 2 friends were going through Ruta 5 Norte (2x2 lanes, private owned, complies fully with european standards, 120km/h), i was on the front passenger seat. traffic was going slow until it we couldn't move anymore because of an accident some kilometers head. Suddenly a big pick-up truck hits the back of our car, this makes us hit the car infront of us in the traffic jam, causing a triple colision. I instantly got out of the car because i thought more cars would keep crashing as i've seen in several videos but that didn't happen.
> 
> It was SO unexpected, we were all relaxed talking and listening to music and suddenly BAM!.
> 
> We all suffered minor injuries and our neck hurt for over a day, but we are all safe.


The only accident I've ever been involved in was similar, but fortunately it was a car and not a truck that hit me, and it wasn't a motorway (70 km/h speed limit).


----------



## Verso

I've had a similar collision, but in Ljubljana (50 km/h, but the speed I was hit with was much lower). It was a BMW Z3 that hit me, the driver was talking on the cell phone, of course.


----------



## H123Laci

^^ me 2. 2 times. :lol:


----------



## snowman159

Google Streetview cars taking pictures of each other in Milan:


----------



## Timon91

Chris is in De Poppe now, doing his research. He sent me an SMS in which he said that he saw a truck from Kazakhstan and that it's quite boring work to do


----------



## Verso

We forgot to translate 'traffic survey' into Kazakh. :lol:


----------



## Qwert

PLH said:


> Well, OK, but to me it sounds very stiff and offcial, those slovenčina and slovenščina.


Calling our language "slovenský" sounds pretty weird in Slovak. Although in English Slovak (adjective) and Slovak (language - substantive) are the same it's not like that in Slovak. These "slovenský" translations are unfortunately quite common in case of people influenced by English. You can either use "slovenčina" or formal "slovenský jazyk" (Slovak language), but just "slovenský" is incorrect.


----------



## PLH

OK, I suppose I'm more influenced by Polish, where saying polski is way more natural than polszczyzna.


----------



## Verso

PLH said:


> OK, I suppose I'm more influenced by Polish, where saying polski is way more natural than polszczyzna.


Is 'polski' an adverb or sth else (noun, adjective etc.)? You can say 'slovenščina' or 'slovensko' (not 'slovenski', that would be an adjective) for Slovenian, but 'slovenščina' is a noun, so you ask yourself _what_ you speak, while 'slovensko' is an adverb, so you ask yourself _how_ you speak. I know it's 'hrvatski', 'srpski' etc., but 'slovensko', not 'slovenski'.


----------



## Qwert

Verso said:


> Is 'polski' an adverb or sth else (noun, adjective etc.)? You can say 'slovenščina' or 'slovensko' (not 'slovenski', that would be an adjective) for Slovenian, but 'slovenščina' is a noun, so you ask yourself _what_ you speak, while 'slovensko' is an adverb, so you ask yourself _how_ you speak. I know it's 'hrvatski', 'srpski' etc., but 'slovensko', not 'slovenski'.


In Slovak you can also use an adverb "slovensky". It may not be apparent, but there's a big difference between "slovensky" which is an adverb and "slovenský" which is an adjective. It's better to say I speak Slovak: "hovorím slovensky" (adverb) than "hovorím slovenčinou" (noun). Second option is grammatically correct, but almost noone actually says that.


----------



## Verso

^^ Same in Slovenian; no one will say "govorim slovenščino" (even though it's grammatically correct too), everyone says "govorim slovensko". Which brings me to the question, if instead of "slovenčina" you can say "slovensky" (not "slovenský" ). I think that's what PLH had in mind, but he used the adjective instead of the adverb.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I know! I'm sorry to use the expression, but these law and policy makers are really beggining to take the piss because they are scared of law suits or however you spell it.


----------



## x-type

Mateusz said:


> That's ridiculus, soon you will need biometrical documentation in order to buy alcohol :/


:lol:


----------



## Verso

Great, I parked my car just a little bit wrong (wasn't hindering anyone!), and they towed it. Someone with nothing to do called them and made me go home on foot without umbrella and pick up the car in rain, not to mention paying 87 euros.


----------



## Ni3lS

keber said:


> Do you mean that you can't be drunk in someone's house (or even your own)? What is the penalty on those drinking tickets?


Not in the USA when you're under 21.. Every drinking ticket you get will appear on your sheet and looks bad when you're applying to a college or job for example.


----------



## Xpressway

Ni3lS said:


> Not in the USA when you're under 21.. Every drinking ticket you get will appear on your sheet and looks bad when you're applying to a college or job for example.


Awful, i can't believe colleges bother to consider if you drank bellow the age of 21 in a private property.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Happy birthday Timon!

He turned 18 today :cheers: Skål
Time to get that driver's license!

:dance:


----------



## Verso

Timon is finally an adult! 

Happy birthday! :dj:


----------



## Verso

How 'bout this!










Did you know there was a 1,450-km road in Antarctica? Well, I had no idea. It isn't paved, of course, and you can't drive just by any car, but it's a road. Very nice surprise.


----------



## Nexis

Happy Birthday Timon welcome to the Adult Club:banana::cheers:

as for drinking in the US its 21 at Bars and to buy , but 18 at home alone or with Family thats what i know.


----------



## Ni3lS

Nexis said:


> Happy Birthday Timon welcome to the Adult Club:banana::cheers:
> 
> as for drinking in the US its 21 at Bars and to buy , *but 18 at home alone or with Family thats what i know*.


It's different in every state


----------



## Nexis

yes state to state , here in the Northeast its legal on a small scale , but illegal on a party scale which i can understand , but the cops rarely care about a few Kids , there more concerned about Drugs hno:


----------



## Mateusz

Verso said:


> How 'bout this!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Did you know there was a 1,450-km road in Antarctica? Well, I had no idea. It isn't paved, of course, and you can't drive just by any car, but it's a road. Very nice surprise.


It doesn't even look like road :lol:


----------



## Timon91

Thanks to all! :cheers:

Unfortunately a bunch of assholes delayed my internet connection so I haven't been around in a while. I guess that it will take a while before I'm really back hno:


----------



## Mateusz

Still on dial up ?


----------



## Verso

Mateusz said:


> It doesn't even look like road :lol:


Well, it's a compacted snow road. They leveled snow and filled in crevasses, and flags mark its route. Without doing all this, it would be rather impossible to drive there. It may not look like a road, but there's still a big difference with trying to drive accross Antarctica just like that, falling in a crevasse sooner or later.


----------



## PLH

Happy birthday Timon! :cheers:

I was searching for sime road + fireworks set, but couldn't find one  This pic is still nice though, it shows your future bright adult life :lol:









Guess where it is


----------



## Robosteve

Verso said:


> How 'bout this!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Did you know there was a 1,450-km road in Antarctica? Well, I had no idea. It isn't paved, of course, and you can't drive just by any car, but it's a road. Very nice surprise.


Interesting. I wonder if we'll ever see a motorway built in Antarctica.


----------



## Verso

^ Let me answer you straight away: no! :lol:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Only if Antartica becomes populated (which may or may not happen in the future)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Anyone ever read the book "Traffic" by Tom Vanderbilt?



> After three years of research, in 2008 he released Traffic which, according to the publisher Knopf’s promotional material, had a first run printing of 150,000 copies and was a feature of Book of the Month Club. The Wall Street Journal called Traffic, “a fascinating survey of the oddities and etiquette of driving”. The Boston Globe wrote, "He found no serious general books about [driving] but did find a mountain of research. So for three years he immersed himself in the subject, traveled around the world, interviewing drivers, researchers, and traffic engineers. With almost 90 pages of footnotes, the book is a bottomless compendium of research."


I've read it. It's quite interesting, why we drive the way we drive. It does miss some statistical context here and there though, but it's a whole lot of info and stats.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

LOL, Police pulls over a streetview car in Venray:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Deventer, NL:


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Why an Audi?


Cause you sound gangsta. 

LOL @ street view. :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

grandma vs fire truck!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Another angle at that Deventer location:


----------



## Timon91

Deventer hno:


----------



## Pansori

Deventer looks like a nice location. Is it expensive? 

P.S. poor grandma.


----------



## PLH

Pansori said:


> Is it expensive?


Wrong. That way:


----------



## Verso

Lol, I dreamt we were still in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and I had a pic of Franz Joseph in my room. :crazy:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^ That's actually quite funny, wether you're joking ot not.


----------



## Verso

Why would I be joking? All hail our Emperor!


----------



## DanielFigFoz

:lol: Was everyting


----------



## DanielFigFoz

:lol: WAS


----------



## DanielFigFoz

:lol: Was everyting else normal like new technology?


----------



## Verso

No, it was quite retro (= boring ).


----------



## piotr71

My great granddad was an Austrian soldier. 

:cheers: to the emperor!


----------



## Verso

My mum and her parents were born in Croatia, their parents in Hungary, while my dad was born in Germany, his father in Austria and his mother (my grandma) in Italy. My name is Serbian. I'm a great Slovenian, eh?


----------



## piotr71

Verso said:


> I'm a great Slovenian, eh?


Oh yeah! You are!:rofl:


----------



## piotr71

Verso said:


> My name is Serbian. I'm a great Slovenian, eh?


Is there huge difference in Serbian names comparing to Slovenian?
I know that Slovenian is not as that similar to both Serbian and Croatian as they are to each others but is still included in the same south Slavonic language group? I know that Serbian - _jekavshtina_, Croatian -_ekavshtina_, Macesdonian - sort of link connecting Bulgarian to Serb - Croatian, but do not know how to recognize what is Slovenian names differing to the rest? Have a while to explain?


----------



## Verso

piotr71 said:


> Serbian - _jekavshtina_, Croatian -_ekavshtina_


It's the other way around (and it's _*i*jekavica_). I don't know about Serbian names in general, but I think there're actually more people with my name in Slovenia than in Serbia. I just wrote that to add diversity.


----------



## Verso

Fuzzy Llama said:


> I hate guys owning Priuses


How can you hate Timon?


----------



## Timon91

My mom had a Mazda, but it broke down recently and it cannot be repaired. She bought a second hand Daihatsu today 

-edit: f***ing forum clock hno:

\/ do you hate my parents?


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Verso, You should cite whole sentences. 

...and it's his parents' car anyway


----------



## Verso

:llama:


:rofl:


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Damned forum clock 



> do you hate my parents?


Do they have a big bumpersticker saying ""I'm greener than you, you baby-seal killer!!!11!! "?


----------



## piotr71

I am a simple East European ( love it :guns1: ) chap and simply do not consider anything like Prius to be suitable for a proper male human. Oh no!

Some time ago Gentlemen of Top Gear made a funny comparison. They put _bloody_ Prius together with BMW M3 on their track and let Prius run as fast as it can. BMW was to follow it. After all they measured mpg ( miles to the gallon ) Guess what burnt less?


----------



## snowman159

piotr71 said:


> I am a simple East European ( love it :guns1: ) chap and simply do not consider anything like Prius to be suitable for a proper male human. Oh no!


It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it. :lol:


----------



## 122347

Bus driver pissing










http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=...d=9mt3yPL-7nr0lYjZktEYtQ&cbp=13,49.97,,0,7.63


----------



## piotr71

snowman159 said:


> It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it. :lol:


:badnews:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What the fucking hell is this?


----------



## MAG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Errr ... 'Oh dear, what is this?'


Too much tequila, I would say!




piotr71 said:


> I am a simple East European ... chap ...


Piotr, you may be simple and very likely a chap but you are not from Eastern Europe. 
Beskidy are bang in the middle of Europe and that makes you Central European. 
As I said before, Eastern Europe is in the east of Europe. 


.


----------



## H123Laci

ChrisZwolle said:


> Rockslide in Tennessee. They had just removed the boulders from an earlier rockslide and cleared the site out, and then another part of the mountain came down:



why dont they put a roof on that road? :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Dutch army preparing for war:


----------



## x-type

i remember those military trains from Yugoslavia, i saw them few times in Bjelovar, they even had armored locomotive for them. one of those locomotives is today rotting in Split


----------



## piotr71

MAG said:


> Piotr, you may be simple and very likely a chap bt you are not from Eastern Europe.
> Beskidy are bang in the middle of Europe and that makes you Central European.
> As I said before, Eastern Europe is in the east of Europe.
> 
> 
> .


Not only likely but certainly likeable chap



> you are not from Eastern Europe.


I do not mind....I do not pay any particular attention to this sort of things...

Btw.: really nice _Drogowskaz Classic_


----------



## ChrisZwolle

boom


----------



## Timon91

Oh yeah, my internet works again 

:dance:


----------



## Verso

Let the spamfest continue!

:dance:


----------



## Morsue

I just want to give you all a heads up. If you get a notification from your local health department's swine-flu director warning you about pork in tins, you can ignore it. It's just spam.


----------



## keber

Morsue said:


> It's just spam.


Of course is spam, what else could it be?


----------



## Nexis

Happy Birthday ABrob :cheers::dance:

I can live without Internet for 2 weeks 
I can live without Electricity for only 2 days
I can live without Transportation for 5 days

LOL

~Corey


----------



## ChrisZwolle

How about a drive-thru vaccination?


----------



## nerdly_dood

Did someone say TFT?

I think that abbreviation should be abolished since nobody can agree on what it really means.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tft


----------



## x-type

PLH said:


> zlotys


pleonasm


----------



## Verso

Lol, we've had more Russian comments in our sports thread today than in the whole Slovenian subforum in years. :laugh:


----------



## Timon91

Are they angry?


----------



## Verso

Timon91 said:


> Are they angry?


No, they are ok.  Russian media seem to be quite angry though. :runaway:


----------



## Timon91

:lol: You shouldn't go to Russia in the near future, Verso


----------



## Verso

But it's hard to avoid such a big country, Timon.


----------



## Timon91

Once you have to wait at a border for a long time, you will realize that you're almost there


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Quick car wash:


----------



## Nexis

LOL , Talk about washed , i was compacted :lol:


----------



## Timon91

Clean your car now........and turn it into a convertible at the same time


----------



## Nexis

In The " Low " Countries i hear you drive them into the ponders and Canals for a quick rinse :lol::nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The "Low Countries" is actually only one country: The Netherlands. Belgium has much more areas over 10 meters in altitude, including significant portions of Flanders and all of Wallonia. Not to mention Luxembourg. Personally I think "Benelux" is a better term.


----------



## Verso

He probably meant that because the Netherland*s* is in fact plural. Funny vid, btw. :lol:


----------



## Nexis

LOL , well The Netherlands , "Nether" means down doesn't it , they use here to sometimes describe the private region of the body:lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nether (Neder) means "low" Nederland = Lowland. The Netherlands = De Nederlanden = Lowlands.


----------



## Ni3lS

People ask me that question so much over here. What's the difference between Holland and The Netherlands? Why is their language Dutch? That doesn't sound logical to them either because it really looks like 'Deutsch' which is German. So a lot of people also ask me what language do they speak in your country.. Pretty poor knowledge of the world.


----------



## Timon91

Why should high school students in Colorado know about the Netherlands? From the US perspective, the Netherlands is only a tiny country in Europe which doesn't really differ from the other countries, just like a US state is for us here. Nothing to really care about.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yeah, I don't think many Dutch students know much about say, Massachusetts or Connecticut.


----------



## Qwert

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yeah, I don't think many Dutch students know much about say, Massachusetts or Connecticut.


*
Connect*i*cut*, what a weird name for a state:nuts:.


----------



## Nexis

Well the Northeast and Much of Europe are are alike , if you take size and Transit into consideration. Connecticut isn't a weird name its unique , its a state of Poor People in the Urban Areas and Super Rich People everywhere else , I say the The Netherlands , if i'm typing really fast i say Holland. In the Northeast we are very influenced by The Europeans , alot live here , My 5,6th Grade Teacher was British , i had a German 8th Grade Teacher , and a 11th Grade World History Teacher. Outside the Northeast its different on Everything , form Education to Transit , its less ands less the farther you go West , till its average. Here most people are smart or very intelligent. Walking down the Streets here i would run into Spaniards and British People , as well as lots of Asians. New Jersey has had the Highest Graduation Rate since 2000 , are Education System is one of the best in the Country. As well as our Transit and Clean Energy. Colorado is alot different , The people there aren't as diverse or Educated by massive Global Diversity.

~Corey


----------



## Ni3lS

Went to the Denver Nuggets game today. Good game against Chicago Bulls and nice experience for someone out of Holland.


----------



## Timon91

You're not from Holland, Ni3ls


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Nether (Neder) means "low" Nederland = Lowland. The Netherlands = De Nederlanden = Lowlands.


talking about that, does somebody know is there more languages which use translated form (low country) or some form of original name (Nederland) for the Netherlands?


----------



## Timon91

Pays-Bas in French, or Países Bajos in Spanish.


----------



## x-type

Timon91 said:


> Pays-Bas in French, or Países Bajos in Spanish.


i know, and Paesi Bassi in italian and Nizozemska in south slavic languages, but i would like to know ratio of languages which translate the name with meaning "low country" and those which don't


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

^^ It's easy - use Wikipedia. You have the country's name in nearly hundred languages there


----------



## Nexis

You have to Double Check on what you read on Wikipedia , some can be wrong or altered . Anyway , what do the people of the "Nether" Lands think about Global Warming? Now Everytime , i'm Mating or having sex , i shout lets do it the "Nether" way :lol::nuts:


----------



## Aan

x-type said:


> talking about that, does somebody know is there more languages which use translated form (low country) or some form of original name (Nederland) for the Netherlands?


In Czech language is Netherlands translated as Nizozemi or Nizozemsko which means in czech low land, in Slovak language it's Holandsko which has no meaning in our language, it's interesting because our languages (CZ/SK) are very similar and we share many words and understand each other.

Many people (in our numbers, probably the biggest part of immigrants after vietnamese/chinese) from Netherland are immigrating to Slovakia from what I heard they are buying houses in villages, which I suppose has something to do with lower living costs here and also can have with global warming.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I doubt many people are actually afraid of global warming, and thus leave the country for that very reason. 

However, if the Randstad floods (below sealevel), New Orleans will look like an insignificant problem compared to that. Over 7 million people live below sea level.


----------



## Verso

Everyone on Vaalserberg!


----------



## SeanT

x-type said:


> i know, and Paesi Bassi in italian and Nizozemska in south slavic languages, but i would like to know ratio of languages which translate the name with meaning "low country" and those which don't


 The hungarian language doesn´t translate the name-----Hollandia.
The danish neither------Hollandthen again------Nederlandene, but you never use this in everydays language.


----------



## x-type

SeanT said:


> The hungarian language doesn´t translate the name-----Hollandia.
> The danish neither------Hollandthen again------Nederlandene, but you never use this in everydays language.


well of course that dannish and hungarian don't translate it cause they use that other form - Holland - which is untranslatable


----------



## Mateusz

Nah we the Poles, call it Holandia 

Ok, let's not cause fury...more and more people start to use Niderlandy


----------



## ABRob

ChrisZwolle said:


> Congratulations to ABRob, our German reporter! He turned 21 today





Verso said:


> Happy birthday! :cheers:





Timon91 said:


> Happy birthday, ABRob!
> 
> :dance:





Nexis said:


> Happy Birthday ABrob :cheers::dance:
> 
> ~Corey


Well...thanks!

I was away this weekend, driving the A4 around Eisenach for the last time - because it will be replaced in a month.


----------



## Timon91

^^Ah, finally. Will the existing bit be turned into an expressway?


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

A clever kitty device:


----------



## Ni3lS

^ Lol that makes sense. No complaining neighbors?


----------



## Timon91

It doesn't block any windows, but when the window is open, the cat can easily get in


----------



## Nexis

ah the Great Thanksgiving Rush Begins Today , Roads & Rail Except an increase , but airliners will see a decrease. Amtrak is adding extra Cars on its Northeast & Keystone Lines , As an Extra 2 million ppl ride the NEC & Keystone. Roads are beginning to fill and already theres massive Slowdowns around here Route 17 is closed in Rutherford due to a building fire, One of the Lincoln Tunnel Tubes is closed till Monday,Every road i look at is Red , which means traffic is moving about 10mph. Normal by now its just the Hwys that are still clogged , but its the almost everything. And i have yet to check the Railways , for Delays hno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

But thanksgiving is not until thursday, right? Are people taking the tuesday and wednesday off?


----------



## Billpa

Wednesday will likely be the busiest travel day in America all year. I once took the train from Harrisburg to New Haven on the day before Thanksgiving. It was fine until I got to NYC. By then it was also rush hour. Penn station, where I needed to change trains, was absolutely packed. The train to New Haven was as well. I don't think I was able to sit down until my next to last stop. Coming back on Sunday was only slightly better. Still had a nice long weekend, though.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I like the Thanksgiving holiday. We don't have that in Europe (afaik), but we have Sinterklaas at december 5th where we exchange gifts. Exchanging gifts during Christmas is less common in the Netherlands though.


----------



## Timon91

Yeah, but we don't really have a holiday around Sinterklaas. It's just one day.


----------



## Nexis

Billpa said:


> Wednesday will likely be the busiest travel day in America all year. I once took the train from Harrisburg to New Haven on the day before Thanksgiving. It was fine until I got to NYC. By then it was also rush hour. Penn station, where I needed to change trains, was absolutely packed. The train to New Haven was as well. I don't think I was able to sit down until my next to last stop. Coming back on Sunday was only slightly better. Still had a nice long weekend, though.


I'm assuming you took the High Speed Keystone Train to Northeast Regional ?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I like those American train names. Like the Texas Eagle, Sunset Limited, California Zephyr etc. Much more imaginative than the "intercity to Amsterdam". Other railway names do exist, but are not in actual use.


----------



## Billpa

Nexis said:


> I'm assuming you took the High Speed Keystone Train to Northeast Regional ?


That's correct.
Most people got off the Keystone at 30th street- but then many more jumped on board to finish the trip to New York. That part was actually quite enjoyable. But once I got on the Northeast Regional we were stuffed in like sardines with seemingly dozens of conversations going on at once, many via cell phone, which is always enjoyable :bash:.
Still it was better than driving.


----------



## Nexis

You should have taken the Acela , goes about 150-60 in NJ , and is less crowded, in NYC goes 90-110 and same CT , shaves an Hr off , + if you belong to the Acela Club you get to wait in a separate Waiting area. Also has a Snack / Cafe Car.


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> I like those American train names. Like the Texas Eagle, Sunset Limited, California Zephyr etc. Much more imaginative than the "intercity to Amsterdam". Other railway names do exist, but are not in actual use.


You don't have train names in the Netherlands? Here are running Venice Express, Citadella, Emona, Croatia and more. Pendolino that used to drive between Ljubljana and Venice was called Casanova.


----------



## Timon91

No, only international night trains, like the Copernicus (to Prague) and Jan Kiepura (to Warsaw)


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> You don't have train names in the Netherlands? Here are running Venice Express, Citadella, Emona, Croatia and more. Pendolino that used to drive between Ljubljana and Venice was called Casanova.


Casanova even used to operate between Venezia and Maribor for 1 or 2 seasons 

i adore those train names, especially those named after famous persons. we had lots of names for domestic trains (usually intercities), but they've quit that common  but i still call many trains after that names. for instance fast train 702 from Osijek to Rijeka which leave Osijek around noon will always be Rivijera for me


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> Casanova even used to operate between Venezia and Maribor for 1 or 2 seasons


Oh? I didn't know that.


----------



## Billpa

Nexis said:


> You should have taken the Acela , goes about 150-60 in NJ , and is less crowded, in NYC goes 90-110 and same CT , shaves an Hr off , + if you belong to the Acela Club you get to wait in a separate Waiting area. Also has a Snack / Cafe Car.


Not sure why I didn't get on the Acela- might've been sold out considering it was Thanksgiving travel.


----------



## Nexis

Inside a Typical Acela Car
Its Quite roomey and Nice , most Amtrak Trains have a Cafe Car , Except the Keystone Express

Heres a Typical Acela Car 










Cafe Car for Bussiness Class aka Regular Class, First Class gets waited on , and more items , to chose form like Steak or Sushi which i heard is very good.










First Class









Those aren't mine , when i ride the Acela Next month or January to Boston form Newark i'll give you a full report and cool shots. Right now , i hear all Acela Trains are Booked Solid till Thursday evening ,with very few spots open.

~Corey


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nexis said:


> Those aren't mine , when i ride the Acela Next month or January to Boston form Newark i'll give you a full report and cool shots. Right now , i hear all Acela Trains are Booked Solid till Thursday evening ,with very few spots open.


That doesn't surprise me, only 0.05% of the northeastern corridor needs to decide to take the Acela when they otherwise don't, to have it booked solid.

I wonder if they will ever realign the Acela's track to make it more suitable for higher speeds. It would probably be prohibitively expensive to get a ROW for that in New Jersey, Delaware and Connecticut, and impossible in New York due to the high housing density + housing prices. If you have a median house price of $ 600,000, which I don't think is that weird for CT or NJ, and you have to expropriate 1,000 homes, you're already out 600 million dollars.


----------



## Verso

Nexis said:


>


Wow, that's extremely high.


----------



## Nexis

*Actually the Acela Goes pretty fast , except in NY-CT where its restricted to 80-110mph due to Old Rails that can't be upgraded , without causing a massive delay and congestion. RI-Mass its 120-160 , and in NJ , MD , DC its 120-150 , PA is getting upgraded along with Delaware and New Jersey so it can faster , i think someone said to me 190. Also more capacity in NJ on the NEC. 2+ more tracks are being built so the total will be 6. And the Centenary are getting a re tensioning to handle higher speeds.

Bowie,Maryland

Amtrak & Marc (metro Baltimore)*






*Mansfield,Mass, only the MBTA stops here(metro Boston)*






*Canton JCT ,Mass*






*Its South to North along the NEC, i didn't know how to post the Youtube thingy onto the forums.
As You can see our NEC is quite Busy , most of the time , maybe not to Euro Standards , but good enough.
~Corey*


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> Wow, that's extremely high.


This train seems to be high luxury comparing to European high speed trains, especially considering leg space.


----------



## Nexis

Acela Trip : New York Penn To Boston Via First Class

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmNV5K86DuM

As you can see its Quite , Luxury for for only 90$ , although this week its 120$ , if you booked ahead its 90$ Amtrak added 70 Extra Trains this week , 34+ Acela's , after the 30th the NEC & Keystone line should return to normal , meaning that you can go to the Stations on that same day and purchase a ticket , although that is a little pricey, if you order 48hrs before. Amtrak Extended its sweet 45$ Deal intill 1/5/2010

~Corey


----------



## Ni3lS

I know that my oldest hostbrother, who lives in NYC always goes to DC every weekend by train and it will only cost him about $20. His girlfriend lives in DC so that's why he is going there every weekend.


----------



## PLH

:colgate:


----------



## Timon91

:rofl: busted


----------



## Xpressway

^^:lol:


----------



## Nexis

:lol: I hate to be him ,when his wife finds out. 

Check out all the Rail Traffic Recorded at Kingston,RI , the day of 24th of November , jeez Extra Volume 






ya, i finally got Youtube work on here,

~Corey


----------



## Aan

ChrisZwolle said:


> I like those American train names. Like the Texas Eagle, Sunset Limited, California Zephyr etc. Much more imaginative than the "intercity to Amsterdam". Other railway names do exist, but are not in actual use.


I think all EC/IC trains have names, you can check names and actual location/delay in Czech and Slovak train network here
http://poloha.vlaku.info/en/


----------



## Morsue

Has this become the railroadside rest area??:nuts:


----------



## Xpressway

Morsue said:


> Has this become the railroadside rest area??:nuts:


I guess it's either the railroad lobby or the public transport lobby the ones behind this, they've always hated highways but they've taken it to a whole new level by attacking our HQ.

We shall not tolerate this insolence. :guns1:


----------



## Timon91

War in the RRA? :rofl:


----------



## Nexis

Morsue said:


> Has this become the railroadside rest area??:nuts:


Intill Monday when the second Rush home begins, and normalcy returns to the US


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ni3ls is now also a mod 

Not here, but in WDN. Congratulations


----------



## PLH

Jan's dealing with applications. Can't wait


----------



## Timon91

^^Have you also applied for mod?

Congrats Ni3ls! :cheers:


----------



## RawLee

ChrisZwolle said:


> I like those American train names. Like the Texas Eagle, Sunset Limited, California Zephyr etc. Much more imaginative than the "intercity to Amsterdam". Other railway names do exist, but are not in actual use.


All of our IC trains have names,and of course,all international trains.


----------



## PLH

@ Timon

Maybe yes, maybe no...


----------



## Ni3lS

Hello  And thanks Timon


----------



## PLH

^^ How long did it take in your case?


----------



## Nexis

Congrats , .........-hides- the evidence :rofl::master:


----------



## Ni3lS

PLH said:


> ^^ How long did it take in your case?


2/3 days. 



Nexis said:


> Congrats , .........-hides- the evidence :rofl::master:


I don't really understand what you mean.


----------



## wyqtor

Will Timon and Verso ever become mods?


----------



## Timon91

Yeah, we should both be mods of the RRA


----------



## Ni3lS

wyqtor said:


> Will Timon and Verso ever become mods?


Skybar/spam section maybe


----------



## Verso

wyqtor said:


> Will Timon and Verso ever become mods?


Not as long as I bitch in DLM. :rofl: But I'm always serious in the Slovenian section.


----------



## Qwert

Verso and Kampflamm would be great mods.


----------



## Nexis

I wanted to become i Mod once , now i'm too busy in Life except some days hno: Burns more Documents , shreds a ton:lol:


----------



## Verso

Qwert said:


> Verso and Kampflamm would be great mods.


Spot on. :lol:


----------



## AUchamps

Whatever happened to the most Strumatic poster in SSC history?


----------



## x-type

AUchamps said:


> Whatever happened to the most Strumatic poster in SSC history?


he is present, he's left his print few days ago


----------



## Nexis

What do you guys think of my Latest City Showcase, i think it came out pretty good,* note to some people it is blocked in some countries due to the Music Contenthno:

*Fall City Showcase*







*~Corey*


----------



## Verso

I'd have a question. There's an intersection in Ljubljana (Kavčičeva ulica × Pokopališka ulica, if someone's interested) that confuses me. It looks like this:










My question is: who has priority? The one coming from the south turning left or the one coming from the north continuing straight forward? If we look at signs, the one coming from the south has priority. I know traffic lights have priority over signs, but the problem is they both have green light.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Usually turning traffic has to wait for traffic that goes straight ahead. This also works that way if you want to turn right or left onto a side street, you have to yield to pedestrians going straight ahead. 

I wouldn't know why this intersection is signposted as a south-west through route. It doesn't have such a layout.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

For me it's the one coming from the north. Signs doesn't matter when the lights are active, and turning traffic must yield to those going straight.


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wouldn't know why this intersection is signposted as a south-west through route. It doesn't have such a layout.


What do you mean? The south-west route is more important than the north-east one (I can confirm that personally), but ironically, obviously not when traffic lights are working. My logic is that the one turning left has priority because of the sign, given that they both have green light anyway. However, such intersections are very rare (at least here I don't know of any other such), which confuses drivers and that can be very dangerous, and the other thing is that it would be very hard to look at the traffic light and then you'd still have to look at the sign.

I guess working traffic lights means that other signs aren't important at all, regardless if they both have green light. Which is ironic, because that residential street has priority over a transit route when traffic lights are working.


----------



## x-type

when traffic lights are on, signs are just a decoration.


----------



## x-type

here it is: look at 4th question in 2nd segment (crossroads - raskrižja)
http://www.rubikon.hr/ispit/rjesenja.htm


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> when traffic lights are on, signs are just a decoration.


Ok. My main problem was that they both have green light anyway.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> here it is: look at 4th question in 2nd segment (crossroads - raskrižja)
> http://www.rubikon.hr/ispit/rjesenja.htm


Hey, where's that?


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Hey, where's that?


somewhere in Zagreb. this is actually how look exams in HR in driving school, this is real example. if you wanna try to solve it (in croatian), here is the link: http://www.rubikon.hr/ispit/izbornik.htm


----------



## Qwert

Verso, Verso, how did you get driving license?hno:


----------



## ABRob

PLH said:


> You'd prefer a bunch of Brits to post here? Or Germans?


Someone called me?


----------



## Timon91

I'm almost German now. The border is only 5 km away from here


----------



## Mateusz

But still you won't get their Reisepass, forget about it


----------



## ABRob

Timon91 said:


> I'm almost German now. The border is only 5 km away from here


So I'm almost Dutch (and Belgian) now. The border is only 4 (or 7) km away from here.  

(I'm living now in Aachen for studying)


----------



## Nexis

Verso, Come here i'll teach how to drive in New Jersey / New York City, we have a mix of Global Drivers, Crazy Italians always cutting people off , Slick Quick Dangerous Eastern Euros, Cursing Asains , The Black (like me) Tease other drivers hehe, i give them the finger at the next light. Also Taxis can be like Animals around here:lol: They race to pick up the next person and are always talking on there Mobiles. we also have Motorcycles who cut through traffic lanes without looking , so i can really teach you how to Drive, and i don't even have my license yet :lol:


----------



## Verso

Thanks, but I've had driving license for 9 years without a crash.


----------



## Nexis

Your not a true Driver intill u have driven in New York City


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nexis said:


> You're not a true driver until you have driven in New York City


Paris


----------



## keber

You should rather try Palermo or Naples, Paris is for pussies.:lol:


----------



## Nexis

Well New York City got a Slice , of everybody , don't Jay walk in Little Italy or you'll become a Hood Ornament. In Chinatown , you end on the menu if you cut someone off, in some parts of Brooklyn they put you in a Canal if you cut them off.:lol: Paris is nothing , oh please , what are they going to do , throw Cheese and Wine at you :lol:


----------



## Timon91

Try driving a bus through Abcoude during rush hour, that's some real horror


----------



## x-type

keber said:


> You should rather try Palermo or Naples, Paris is for pussies.:lol:


hehe i just wanted to say that. Napoli is great stuff, although i was little bit dissapointed there (or maybe i just adapted well  ). of course, Cairo, Teheran, Mumbai and similar cities are special category


----------



## gramercy

*Countdown*


----------



## keber

That looks very cool.:cheers: Actually LED lights in all traffic areas will probably do a small revolution in coming years.

Regarding chaotic traffic ... rather try Saigon or Hanoi, although Phnom Penh has the most chaotic traffic I've experienced. Palermo is less than nothing to them.:lol:


----------



## Qwert

Verso must be a good driver. Check out the traffic in Ljubljana:




Ignore those comments about Egypt. Egypt square is name of important junction in Ljubljana:yes:.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My Flickr stats:









It goes up and down, I can't really explain it. There's no consistent viewing.


----------



## keber

Qwert said:


> Check out the traffic in Ljubljana:


Actually today was pretty ok. In Friday will probably look exactly like on that video.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^ Same with youtube...


----------



## snowman159

Maybe whenever you post something from your flickr acct on ssc or other forums, the numbers go up, then after a short while it goes down again.
Same thing with my photobucket account.


----------



## Verso

^^ Exactly.



Qwert said:


> Ignore those comments about Egypt. Egypt square is name of important junction in Ljubljana:yes:.


The most important crossroads in Ljubljana is actually called 'Bavarian Court'. :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> Chris has 15,000 posts.


Somebody's stalking me...:shifty:

Actually I'm # 52 in posts on this forum.


----------



## Verso

I'm #83, but #1 among Slovenes.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Damn, the new Windows Live Movie Maker for Windows 7 sucks bigtime. They removed almost all features to edit the video. For instance, I can't even speed my videos up anymore. What is that about?


----------



## PLH

Well, might it be some light version or so? Or maybe that's some sort of beta one?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No, apparently, this is the final version. I read on wikipedia that it has drawn much criticism. It's like a big step back.


----------



## Nexis

Thats ridicous , i hope they have a patch in the near future , to bring back all the old great stuff, and they wonder why people go to Mac's :lol:

*Anyway....

Google Streetview Update

Singapore : Downtown Core area

Canada : Edmonton, Victoria, London, Greater Sudbury, Sherbrooke, Saskatoon, St. John's, Winnipeg

Japan : Niigata, Sado, Hiroshima, Okayama, Fukuoka, Kumamoto

France : Tours, Le Mans, Nancy, Metz, Corsica, Belle-Île-en-Mer, Orléans and other locations

Italy : Siena, Urbino, San Gimignano, Sestri Levante, Asti, Vercelli, central Benevento

USA : SeaWorld Orlando, Boston University, Hershey Park

Czech : Landmarks in Olomouc, Ostrava and Český Krumlov

* i'm dissapointed in the Czech update , i think they should added the cities aswell*hno:

~Corey


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Snow in Houston and Louisiana. Not really common. The average high in january is usually 17 C / 63 F.


----------



## Verso

H123Laci said:


> we are impressed, we are impressed... :banana: :banana:
> 
> we have a double whitestripe with a red one in the middle takeover-forbidder too... hno: :bash: hno:
> 
> http://www.origo.hu/motor/babettablog/20091126-m2-vorosre-festettek-az-eletveszelyes-utat.html


New Trabant!


----------



## DanielFigFoz

ChrisZwolle said:


> No, apparently, this is the final version. I read on wikipedia that it has drawn much criticism. It's like a big step back.


You'll have to download another programme...
I still have vista, thus I still have the good programme:banana:.


----------



## PLH

Hello everyone


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yay! PLH is mod


----------



## DanielFigFoz

PLH said:


> Hello everyone


Congratulations Are you mod for here or the Polish forum?
Chris, how do you know what number of posts you are?


----------



## PLH

DanielFigFoz said:


> Are you mod for here or the Polish forum.?


Depends on what Chris will say to that


----------



## Verso

Congratulations, PLH. :cheers2:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Can you press the "modding buttons" anywhere in the forum or just in certain sectons?


----------



## PLH

Thank you all 



DanielFigFoz said:


> Can you press the "modding buttons" anywhere in the forum or just in certain sectons?


Only on the Polish forum, but I can ban/brig everyone, so watch out


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I'm sure you'll be a good fair mod.


----------



## Qwert

Congratulation PLH!



PLH said:


> Only on the Polish forum, but I can ban/brig everyone, so watch out


Can you ban/brig also me?


----------



## PLH

Shit! No, I can't.


----------



## Mateusz

Only if you will become administrator


----------



## Morsue




----------



## Fuzzy Llama

^^


----------



## Morsue

The guy on the picture was Ban-ned by his parents.

On another topic: How many countries have you visited during one day? On the 10th of June this year, I managed to squeeze six into my itinerary. Could have been seven but I skipped the Dutch detour. The countries were Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Luxemburg and France. Anyone else who has been to more in one day?


----------



## Timon91

Nope, I've only visited a maximum of 4 countries in one day, but I did it a few times: 
- the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France
- Slovenia, Italy, Austria, Germany
- Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands
- the Netherlands, Belgium, France, UK

Not that much, really.


----------



## snowman159

I also did six in one day: UK, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria


----------



## RipleyLV

Only 4 countries in one day, once: Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, France

Several times:
Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy
Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland


----------



## x-type

only 4, but it was not visiting, i was traveling through. it was about Slovenia, Italy, France and Monaco, or in the second case Croatia, Slovenia, Austria and Czech Rep.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That would be; Germany > France > Luxembourg > Belgium > Netherlands. I started in the Saarbrücken area, drove to Metz, then to Luxembourg, took an alternate route to Liège and then to Zwolle.


----------



## snowman159

That would be a fun theme for a rally. Who visits the most countries within 24h wins. :cheers:


----------



## keber

In times with no Schengen, in 24 hours in bus: Slovenia, Italy, Monaco, France and Spain.


----------



## snowman159

Chris, next time you visit Slovenia, you could try this route:

NL->D->B->L->F->CH->FL->A->I->SLO

(though to do it in less than 24h you may need something faster than a Berlingo.) :lol:


----------



## Timon91

I remember sth about a report of a Polish guy who did 16 countries in 24 hours. Does anyone remember that as well?


----------



## PLH

No, I don't remember anything like that. Is it possible?


----------



## snowman159

Timon91 said:


> I remember sth about a report of a Polish guy who did 16 countries in 24 hours. Does anyone remember that as well?


Are you sure he was using a car? Not perhaps a private jet?


----------



## Timon91

He was driving, I'm sure about that 

He started just after midnight near the PL/CZ border, and continued to SK, A, H, HR, SLO, I, CH, D, F, L, B, NL, but that only makes 14. I don't know what the other two were.


----------



## keber

Liechentstein?:lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

And San Marino probably.


----------



## Timon91

Probably, and maybe also San Marino. AFAIK he drove about 2300 km to achieve this.


----------



## RipleyLV

Timon91 said:


> I remember sth about a report of a Polish guy who did 16 countries in 24 hours. Does anyone remember that as well?


Here's his post:
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=39285994&postcount=1664


----------



## Timon91

This is the start of his journey: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58q5czsQd7U&feature=related

And it is indeed San Marino.

-edit- Thanks Ripley, that's indeed him


----------



## PLH

What does it mean than?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I did'nt get anything?


----------



## x-type

DanielFigFoz said:


> I did'nt get anything?


that's right


----------



## BND

^^ we use it with horse...

anyway in Hungary you usually get chocolates and sweets from Mikulás on the 6th December. Or a virgács:








if you were bad this year


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> kmon, you know it is just an expression in croatian which i adore to translate into english. btw, sheep don't have dicks


You're right, that's ram.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> You're right, that's ram.




btw, we also have virgács (dunno how to translate it into english, golden switch?)


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

> x-type said:
> 
> 
> 
> i got dick of a sheep
> 
> 
> 
> I did'nt get anything?
Click to expand...

Brilliant!
From now on, (pardon me) _owczy chuj_ as in _dostałem owczego chuja_ are in my personal dictionary


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> btw, we also have virgács (dunno how to translate it into english, golden switch?)


Wth is 'virgács'? Are you a Hungarian? I think you mean a castrated ram, which is called 'wether'. (weather, whether, wether hno


----------



## x-type

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Brilliant!
> From now on, (pardon me) _owczy chuj_ as in _dostałem owczego chuja_ are in my personal dictionary


actually, we don't use adjective, but genitive (chuj od owcy)


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Wth is 'virgács'? Are you a Hungarian? I think you mean a castrated ram, which is called 'wether'. (weather, whether, wether hno


šiba. BND wrote that they call it virgács, and i don't know how to say it in english. we just call it golden switch


----------



## Verso

Shit, I didn't notice the word 'virgács' in BND's post! Wether. :rofl:


----------



## x-type

btw, those weather things allways confuse me. i allways use wrong one, and now you've discovered another one!!


----------



## Verso

I just discovered a point where 4 (quadripoint) or more independent countries come together. Anyone knows where?


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> I just discovered a point where 4 (quadripoint) or more independent countries come together. Anyone knows where?


somewhere on Zambezi. but there are few hunderds meters of difference, so it is not quadripoint


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^ I wish they could change that :lol:.


----------



## Verso

No, not there.


----------



## Timon91

Russia, Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan are also close, but don't form a quadripoint unfortunately.


----------



## x-type

ok, he gave us a logical question, lets warm our brains!

is it a sea border?


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> is it a sea border?


No, and no more such questions. 

EDIT: wow, I just discovered another one!


----------



## Morsue

Verso, you need to cut back on the alcohol. There are no such things as international quadripoints. There is a point on the border between Germany and Austria which is in essence a quadripoint, but it's just between two countries so it's not a "real" quadripoint. You also have the same case at Baarle-Hertog/Nassau between B/NL.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Majestic said:


> Cool! Did you order it directly from USA?


Yes I did, some DOT's ship free maps overseas.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

snowman159 said:


> Yep. I'm sure it'll be included, especially if you rent from one of the major chains.
> 
> Interestingly, even in Munich did the rental car have Swiss and Austrian toll stickers.





Fargo Wolf said:


> Seconded.
> 
> 
> They are supposed to, as it's assumed the cars will be driven on the motorway.


Thank you!


----------



## Nexis

I think Chris is obessed with the US , :lol: But , i found alot of Euros who are , some want to move here


----------



## snowman159

^^

I remember a TV documentary a couple of years ago, about the news media and the war in iraq. They interviewed an arabic editor whose paper is full of anti-american propaganda. He told the american interviewers, in private, that he would love to move to the US or at least send his children to college there. Go figure!


----------



## Nexis

I'm helping 3 Euros & 1 Iranian , & 5 Asians come here and become citizens , This one of the reasons i love this country , you hate it & love it at the same time


----------



## pijanec

ChrisZwolle said:


> I got a new map from PennDOT.


What are these DVDs in brown cases?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

pijanec said:


> What are these DVDs in brown cases?


All 22 James Bond films. :cheers:


----------



## pijanec

:nuts:


----------



## Danielk2

So the PennDOT just shipped a map from the US to NL, and you didn't have to pay nothing???


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Danielk2 said:


> So the PennDOT just shipped a map from the US to NL, and you didn't have to pay nothing???


That's right. It came as "First Class Mail". :cheers:


----------



## x-type

a 22 year old guy stole an ambulance. he had first accident 10 km from the place where he stole it, he escaped and finally after 1 h he crashed into row at toll station :nuts: i see one NL car was in that row. unfortunately, a man from one of the cars (not the NL one) died.
http://www.net.hr/crnakronika/page/2009/12/13/0010006.html?pos=n0


----------



## Danielk2

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's right. It came as "First Class Mail". :cheers:


Cool... i've gotta try that some day.


----------



## KHS

x-type said:


> a 22 year old guy stole an ambulance. he had first accident 10 km from the place where he stole it, he escaped and finally after 1 h he crashed into row at toll station :nuts: i see one NL car was in that row. unfortunately, a man from one of the cars (not the NL one) died.
> http://www.net.hr/crnakronika/page/2009/12/13/0010006.html?pos=n0


hno:

One man from HR car died, two from D were injured, and everybody in NL car are ok.

http://www.24sata.hr/news/bjezao-120-kilometara-a-policija-ga-nije-zaustavila/149297/


----------



## RawLee

x-type said:


> a 22 year old guy stole an ambulance. he had first accident 10 km from the place where he stole it, he escaped and finally after 1 h he crashed into row at toll station :nuts: i see one NL car was in that row. unfortunately, a man from one of the cars (not the NL one) died.
> http://www.net.hr/crnakronika/page/2009/12/13/0010006.html?pos=n0


Thats nothing...guy saw an officer exiting his van(shaded glass) while leaving it open&the keys inside. He jumped in...just to find 2 other officers in the backseat.


----------



## Nexis

OMG , Google Maps Downgraded the section of Interstate 40 that is closed in NC , to "Street Status":sly: There actually trying to improve the accuracy of Maps now:lol:

~Corey


----------



## x-type

my street 15 minutes ago


----------



## Danielk2

You lucky bastard, no Danes (except those Swedes from Bornhom) has gotten any snow this year.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I wish it snowed more in London or on the Portuguese coast.


----------



## Nexis

Apparently my highway photos have given some ppl on this site , who are not open minded , a way to make fun of New Jersey. I Don't find this right and want all you to stop New Jersey is a mixed state , and it makes me mad that you would pick on it. yes a small portion of North , Central and South are very industrial Somewhat. every state does. But i personally think its immature and inappropriate to attack a State or Country based on small areas , if you stayed in a Dirty part of the State , that doesn't mean the whole state is dirty. Theres a few of you on here , it needs to stop. You hurt people's Feelings and make fact less remarks hno: 

~Corey


----------



## Timon91

Over here it's just cold (-6,6, very cold for Dutchies), but no snow yet


----------



## keber

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Until now
> Snowing in Copenhagen area. Not very much though, but still.
> 
> EDIT: Ok, I stand corrected. Now it's proper snow


Don't you have a global warming crisis?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Copenhagen snow is gonna piss off the summit people so much; imagine if someone was giving a speech over temperature rise and it started to snow :lol:


----------



## MAG

Global warming ain't happening in Denmark. 
Looks like it has moved to Poland:




Tomek 2008 said:


>


----------



## DanielFigFoz

32ºC in Lodz but -46ºC in Warsaw? :lol:


----------



## keber

You see, time to act is NOW.:lol:


----------



## Danielk2

The snow has finally arrived in Northern Jutland :banana::banana:
This pic from the Gåsepigen parking lot in Aalborg.
It's been raining all day, but finally we got a whole lot of snow.! :banana:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

:banana:


----------



## Mateusz

MAG said:


> Global warming ain't happening in Denmark.
> Looks like it has moved to Poland:


Rzeszow instead of Reichshof for political reasons ?


----------



## panda80

H123Laci said:


> 250 for reparation of an overturned car in a 2m deep pit?
> 
> isnt it too cheap?
> 
> what car do you have?
> 
> btw: breaking on ice...
> our second car has very quick brakes (but no abs), it can be very dangerous on slippery roads... :bash:


I have a small Daewoo Tico and I contacted a neighbourhood auto service to repair it, not an official. If I had contacted official Daewoo service, I would have better bought a new car.


----------



## Ayceman

Traffic in Romania froze at the first sign of snow, yesterday. :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It will happen tomorrow in the Netherlands. RTL Z news (business channel) just said we got 10 - 15 centimeters of the white stuff, probably impacting the morning rush hour.


----------



## metasmurf

Speaking of snow...

Stormy winterday on Saltfjellet, E6 Norway

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0uyHAS6eqQ


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Pretty cool. There are several names for this phenomenon, including "ground blizzard", "blowing snow" and "drifting snow". It's pretty weird that you have (near) whiteout conditions while you can see the blues skies above you.


----------



## Timon91

Enschede reports a very thin layer of snow


----------



## RawLee

Ayceman said:


> Traffic in Romania froze at the first sign of snow, yesterday. :lol:


Damn biased news...that wasnt the result of snow,but as a radio commentator put it:

"There was an accident on Elizabeth bridge,the jam will last until Bucharest!".

:lol:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

That's all we got in London, it only started at noon... It was -3ºC in the moring but it wasn't raning/snowing...


----------



## Danielk2

It just started snowing here in Dronninglund half an hour ago.
I was doing the first (but NOT last, the last is on december 23!!) christmas shopping, and when i got out it suddenly started snowing! :banana::banana:
And those COP15 fools are talking about global warming (bla bla bla...)


----------



## DanielFigFoz

It was strange here. It started to snow, did not settle, rained then snowed and settled then rained and took away the snow which was repeated. So there is very litle snow left.


----------



## SeanT

Yes and on Fyn like 40-45 cm snow:lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

25 cm have been recorded in Friesland. We had the traffic jam from hell: 3.400 kilometers of congestion.


----------



## keber

Where do you get all that snow? Alps are almost empty.:bash:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Some 60 centimeters fell in Ureterp, NL


----------



## DanielFigFoz

It's currently snowing in London, but only for a couple of hours, and it's gonna snow all night and all day tommorow.

My street:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

From my apartment:


----------



## Danielk2

Noooo.... the snow is melting. They'd better figure out something at COP15


----------



## Nexis

Philly-NYC-Boston is preparing for a Major Blizzard / Snow Storm for Tommorrow 6-10 inches depending on Location , Long Island & other Coastal areas will get the Blizzard, the rest of the Region will get the Snow Storm. :banana::cheers:

Take that Euro Snow ,....boooooooo........US Snow is better :lol:

~Corey


----------



## Danielk2

Euro snow rules! :banana:
Euro snow rules! :banana:
Euro snow rules! :banana:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

It did not snow half as much as forecasted, and 90% of it has melted. Here's my street this moring:










Danielk, this is the sign I told you about, but you can't see what it says 










As I said, it says "Give Way 50m"


----------



## Ayceman

Snow in Bucharest (today):


----------



## Danielk2

That sign is only a small step on the way to complete world metrication. But it's better than not doing anything.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^ It is indeed. It's not that the metric system is better (it is simpler though) but it would be good if all countries used the same system.

Edit: It's meant to snow more later but the sky's 100% blue now, so I'm not sure of that.


----------



## Timon91

They were talking about severe problems in Romania due to snow. Now I see why :lol:


----------



## RipleyLV

Kolka, LV.


----------



## x-type

it's not snowing here anymore, b ut i'm drunk as ui don't know what


----------



## Timon91

Drunk at 5:45 already? Oh my :booze:


----------



## x-type

have no will to exsplain now


----------



## DanielFigFoz

:lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> it's not snowing here anymore, b ut i'm drunk as ui don't know what





Timon91 said:


> Drunk at 5:45 already? Oh my :booze:





x-type said:


> have no will to exsplain now


Just don't do things you'll regret later


----------



## keber

Timon91 said:


> Drunk at 5:45 already? Oh my :booze:


There are company new year parties everywhere here south of Alps towards Balkan. I suspect x-type has been a victim of such a thing.


----------



## x-type

keber said:


> There are company new year parties everywhere here south of Alps towards Balkan. I suspect x-type has been a victim of such a thing.


bingo. i have a little blackout. now i am better  actually, it was so informal, we have collective holidays from next week on, so we had a little internal celebration (started at 8 am  ), real party is at tuesday. this is gonna be :nuts:


----------



## x-type

driving in Bjelovar, this morning


----------



## Nexis

Danielk2 said:


> when you're too busy to spell "because"??


You must have nothing to do , then poke fun at the way i type my English, go outside & make me a Snowman


----------



## Danielk2

i can't make a snowman, the snow is melting. All becuz they didn't make a legally binding deal in Copenhagen


----------



## keber

Danielk2 said:


> Yeah.. and no earth in 2050


What? Will it explode?


----------



## Nexis

Well that was bound to happen , I don't think we see anything blinding for another 10 years


----------



## x-type

HR has been accused in Koebenhavn as one of the largest antiecological countries :? but this year it seems that we finally have normal winter after few years of spring in December and January. we probably destroy climate in other countries :lol:


----------



## Nexis

Is it true that most of Denmark's Rail network except a few lines is Diesel?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This sub forum is about highways, but:



> The total length of operational track is 2,667 km, 640 km electrified


----------



## Danielk2

That's true. So little of Denmarks railways are electrified. North of Fredericia, no railways are electrified at all. DSB call trains "good for the environment". They also say that you use 7 times more CO2 per person travelling by car than by train. In Denmark, nobody are guranteed a seat. To make sure you get a seat, you must pay 25DKK in advance.
When DSB says that with less CO2, they just could compare 1 guy sitting in 1 car with 700 people sitting in a train with a 100 seats.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Actually trains are not more efficient than cars. Yes, they _could be_ if all seats were occupied during the operational day. However, even in the Netherlands, the average occupancy is only 29%. This is equal to the average of 1.2 persons per car (1.2/4*100 = 30%). 
That is why the railroad network requires twice as much space as the motorways on a per traveled km basis.


----------



## Danielk2

In Denmark, the government says that we should stop using cars. To make us stop using cars, they put 100% tax on cars and. 80% tax on gas (more than 90% on LPG).
Meanwhile, the cost on public transportation is getting a million times higher for evey 2 freaking seconds. What kind of government is that, when it thinks that both cars and train should be expensive??


----------



## x-type

electrified are main route from D to S (Padborg - Koebenhavn) with branches Tinglev - Soenderborg and Koebenhavn - Helsingoer (and some railroads in Koebenhavn area are electrified but on 1,5kV - those lead to Koege, Fredriksund, Farum and Hilleroed)


----------



## Danielk2

1.5 kV. I didn't know it could get so low. The rest of the electrified railways are 25kV 50Hz AC


----------



## x-type

Danielk2 said:


> 1.5 kV. I didn't know it could get so low. The rest of the electrified railways are 25kV 50Hz AC


oh yes, it can! you have lots of 1,5kV railroads in France, even on TGV lines. however, new TGV lines are 25kV. for instance Toulouse or Bordeaux have only 1,5kV net.
the Netherlands use also 1,5kV network.


----------



## Nexis

Sounds like the US , but Electrifaction of Class 1 Freight Railways will start happening next year, in certain regions ,Mountainous or Congested. 

*Drools over this game

German Truck Sim , its basically an Upgrade of the Euro Truck Sim , but i heard its going to be more detailed and more like the American Version in the management dept and Shipping.






~Corey


----------



## x-type

Nexis said:


> German Truck Sim , its basically an Upgrade of the Euro Truck Sim , but i heard its going to be more detailed and more like the American Version in the management dept and Shipping.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ~Corey


that game has great future, but they are not developing it as they should. first of all, they should do surrounding teraffic much "wiser" and natural. roads themselves also have plenty of space for improvments. and they should buy rights from manufacturers for lorries' names for god's sake! that game is not freeware!!


----------



## Danielk2

Cool... is it download only, or can it be bought in any stores??


----------



## Nexis

In the US , you can buy it Best Buy , thats where the company allows it to be sold, idk about Europe , yes there is a 60min Full game demo that comes out before the Game. Its best you have alot of space on your PC , becuz u can get Lag ,also its easier playing with a Steering Wheel and Pedals vs. Keyboard or Mouse.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Danielk2 said:


> Meanwhile, the cost on public transportation is getting a million times higher for evey 2 freaking seconds.


Public transport needs more government funding than roads. In the Netherlands, the ratio is about 20 to 1, when calculated to a per km basis. For every km traveled, the investment in roads is 1, while it is 20 for public transport. PT gets about double the funding of roads, yet manage to get only 10% of the modal share. 

The more people use PT, the more government money (or fare raises) are needed. More users doesn't mean PT is more cost-efficient, more like the contrary. Frequent users usually travel with significant discounts, meaning the budgetary gap between income and spending gets bigger with every added traveler because the costs rise faster than farebox income. Don't get yourself blinded by optimistic operating income statistics. They are only a part of the total spending/income.


----------



## Danielk2

In Denmark, the government can throw millions after public transportation. The only thing that happens, is that the transportation companies get more money. Public transport in NL, is that public or private??


----------



## Ayceman

The snow on an undisturbed batch of land here is 30cm. Some buses with air conditioning and snow/ice on their roofs have started to melt the lower layer of ice and at every turn, a few large chunks fall off the side on some unsuspecting by passers. :lol:


----------



## Danielk2

where??


----------



## Nexis

Europeans need these Muscular Snow clearing Machines for your Railway Network


----------



## x-type

Nexis said:


> Europeans need these Muscular Snow clearing Machines for your Railway Network


we are more sofisticated 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po9A8_6YD4A


----------



## Danielk2




----------



## Nexis

Well ,Dam you euros -ugh-


----------



## Ayceman

Danielk2 said:


> where??


Sig: Bucharest, Romania.


----------



## Danielk2

duplicate


----------



## Danielk2

Yeah, we got Euro snow again!


----------



## keber

Where? Here, today -20, tomorrow above zero, even to +10.:bash:


----------



## Danielk2

In Northern Europe. Denmark more precisely. It's taken an hour ago out of my window


----------



## SeanT

In Hungary, the coldest temperature was -25.5 last night.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^ :banana: More Euro Snow!

Here (London) some snow from Thursday is still on the ground, but it's started to rain, and iI was thinking that it won't last long now, but I jut saw a weather forecast on the news and snow is coming later today and throughout the night.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I just parked my car in 30 cm of snow this morning. More snow fell through the night. Another front is moving in as we speak.


----------



## RipleyLV

Here it's snowing all day.


----------



## Danielk2

Go Euro Snow :banana:
Go Euro Snow :banana:


----------



## x-type

we don't have new snow, but everything is frozen. for evening they predict ice-rain


----------



## DanielFigFoz

It's snowing :banana:


----------



## Timon91

We're getting more snow tonight. More Euro Snow!


----------



## Danielk2

What do you love the most, Euro Snow or US Snow??
Euro Snow might have an advantage due to the large number of Euro SSC'ers


----------



## Nexis

We always get large amounts of Snow every winter , you guys don't with the except of this year


----------



## Morsue

Until global warming gets us all, there will be both Euro snow and US snow all year round. Ever heard of glaciers?


----------



## Danielk2

When they melt, there'll only be Euro/US snow in the winter


----------



## Nexis

Why is this thread always turning into a Euro vs. USA debate , its retarded and immature and i'm sick of ithno:


----------



## Morsue

Not to mention when it turns into the railroad skybar hno:


----------



## Nexis

LOL , well we need a sub Railway thread , "Trackside Area"


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nexis said:


> Why is this thread always turning into a Euro vs. USA debate , its retarded and immature and i'm sick of ithno:


Well, you started it... You always talk about the "euro" things and "US" things. hno:


----------



## Danielk2

Trackside?? what is that??


----------



## Nexis

I guess i do sometimes sorry about that , but still hmmmm......hno: 

The Railway Forum = of the roadside rest area


----------



## Danielk2

Just use the regular railway forum, then nobody would complain that much


----------



## Nexis

But i think its time we have a "Trackside or Stationside Area" The Railway forum is the second most popular after the H & A forum.


----------



## Danielk2

They can just use the H&A rest area. That would give more posts.


----------



## Nexis

ah ok.......i will anyway i have a Question for the European people on this thread.

Do any of your Countries use 3M Traffic Lights?


----------



## Timon91

There is a Railway section, Nexis


----------



## Danielk2

Didn't they stop making those in '07??


----------



## Nexis

They still have those, they seem to be putting them up at whacky tricky intersections :lol: like 5 points or 6 points

Also what do you think of my 2 Videos , 
Should i fix anything , because a few said my labelling is in the wrong spot , but i wanted the minds of SSC to decide.


----------



## Danielk2

According to This article on Wikipedia, they don't


----------



## Nexis

They recently put alot around Jersey City & a few other cities here , there brand new


----------



## Danielk2

I don't think no European countries would have 3M traffic lights. In Denmark, all new traffic lights are LED. They are trying to phase out the use of regular light bulbs, as they recently became illegal to produce in Europe.


----------



## Nexis

The new LED Lights have Serious Flaws , they don't burn as hot and lead to Snow Build up










http://www.annarbor.com/news/led-traffic-lights-blamed-for-dozens-of-accidents-and-at-least-one-death/

~Corey


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I just looked up 3M traffic lights, and I've seen a few of those in Portugal, pedestrians crossings especially, but none in the UK.


----------



## Danielk2

Then i think they should put up some heating thing on or next to traffic lights. When there's no snow, light bulbs are a complete waste of energy, money and CO2


----------



## ChrisZwolle




----------



## Danielk2

What country/state/city is that from??


----------



## ChrisZwolle

United States since 1993:


----------



## RipleyLV

Do you also see this forum "squeezed"?


----------



## Danielk2

Are people in the US stupid or is it just the people at the DOT's that are??
Wearing seatbelts is the law in all countries that has roads. I haven't seen a such sign anywhere in Europe (except at border crossings), so why do the americans need one??


----------



## ChrisZwolle

To encourage more people to use seatbelts. They're just motto signs, we have them all over the Netherlands as well.


----------



## Timon91

RipleyLV said:


> Do you also see this forum "squeezed"?


Yes, luckily I'm not the only one :lol:

-edit- The Dutch forum shows normally on my laptop, so far only the I&M shows up squeezed.


----------



## x-type

Danielk2 said:


> Are people in the US stupid or is it just the people at the DOT's that are??
> Wearing seatbelts is the law in all countries that has roads. I haven't seen a such sign anywhere in Europe (except at border crossings), so why do the americans need one??


Hungary, Spain, i even think i saw it in France.


----------



## Danielk2

My point is: if you don't know that you're should use seatbelts, then i don't think you're supposed to have no drivers license.


----------



## x-type

Danielk2 said:


> My point is: if you don't know that you're should use seatbelts, then i don't think you're supposed to have no drivers license.


do you know some people who don't use seat belts? i do. that's obviously for them.


----------



## RipleyLV

Timon91 said:


> Yes, luckily I'm not the only one :lol:
> 
> -edit- The Dutch forum shows normally on my laptop, so far only the I&M shows up squeezed.


The Dutch forum runs normally for me aswell, but the rest is squeezed. Wtf?


----------



## Pansori

What's the big deal with the seatbelts? I was told once by my mother and once by my driving instructor that I must wear a seatbelt. Ever since it was like a natural reflex for me to fasten the seatbelt any time I get into the car. Why is it a problem to some?


----------



## Danielk2

Everytime i enter a car the first thing i do is buckle up. My parents told be that i should always buckle up, and i've done it ever since.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

It is squezzed.


----------



## Nexis

Its annoying , I know SSC needs a Diet but this is Ridiculous:lol:


----------



## RipleyLV

Lol, previous page shows normally, but this one squeezed. :lol:


----------



## Timon91

For me it's the other way around, the previous page is squeezed and this one is normal :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle




----------



## Mateusz

god this layout of forum is wank, I hope it will change soon


----------



## Timon91




----------



## RipleyLV




----------



## Nexis

In a few minutes me & johnflint will go to Jersey City


----------



## Seppl

Danielk2 said:


> Are people in the US stupid or is it just the people at the DOT's that are??
> Wearing seatbelts is the law in all countries that has roads. I haven't seen a such sign anywhere in Europe (except at border crossings), so why do the americans need one??


The use of a seat belt for adults is not mandatory in every state of the US. For example, New Hampshire does not have a seat belt law at all while some other states only have law for seat belts in the front seat and not in the rear. 

Article about New Hampshire

Very interesting article about that


----------



## Danielk2

That's f*********** insane!! Do they want every single citizen in their state to be killed?? Which insane people make such a law??


----------



## Seppl

The people of New Hamphire do not want to get told what to do. That's the whole point. Another interesting thing is the difference between the primary seat belt law and the secondary seat belt law which is mentioned at the end of that article. So even if you do not wear a seat belt which is against the law in some cases the police is not authorized to stop you.


----------



## Danielk2

So, people in New Hampshire kan drive a 120mph on a freeway, rob a store or kill someone, because the don't want to be told what to do??


----------



## keber

A puzzle I had to solve on Saturday:

Find the road and drive on it


----------



## Danielk2

Cool... Can you locate some kind of driveable surface on the pic??


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Now it's visible


----------



## Danielk2

Yeah! It's visible again!


----------



## snowman159

Timon91 said:


>


That picture is an odd choice for a Christmas card. :lol:

A lot of words spring to mind when I see this particular view, but 'merry' isn't one of them.


----------



## Timon91

Yeah, but I hardly have any roadpics with snow, so I chose this one. It has got something to do with congestion, so I chose this one


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> Now it's visible


Oh, magic glasses ... where they were on Saturday? :lol:

Luckily, I drove over this rural road about a million times before, so I didn't choose ditch on left or right side.


----------



## Morsue

Once, about three years ago, I couldn't see the left edge of the road because it had been snowing, and I almost drove into the ditch. My back two wheels were actually gone from the road, but I managed to get back up without any visible damage to the car. Which wasn't mine...


----------



## Nexis

*Me & Johnflint aka Alex today in Newport : Jersey City*
Me on the Right & Alex on the Left









~Corey


----------



## panda80

Where are you going to spend New Years Eve?I'm going to Konitsa, Greece. I will also visit Ohrid in Macedonia and Corfu island.


----------



## Aan

Danielk2 said:


> So, people in New Hampshire kan drive a 120mph on a freeway, rob a store or kill someone, because the don't want to be told what to do??


I think it's thing of personal choice, it's my responsibility, I should not be told what I have to do, if I don't want to wear seatbelt it's my responsibility if I will hurt somebody in accident or when I crash into some three alone and will have to pay all hospital expenses, but it should be really thing of personal choice, same with ilegal drugs, if I want risk my health it's my choice and I don't want state what to do if I'm not interfering other one's freedom. Rob a store is interfering other's rights, kill someone is interfering other's rights, but that I want smoke joint can hurt only me and mostly it's same with wearing seatbelts (of course not in case when my body fly outside of car and hurt somebody else at accident). I'm wearing seatbelt always and am pissed of when somebody on back seats is not wearing, because if he wan't to die it's his choice, but not when his body kill me when flying to front part of interior. But it's not surprise people in socialist Europe don't understand meaning of personal freedom and own responsibility instead of state hugging and caring everyone even if he doesn't want to be.


----------



## Timon91

panda80 said:


> Where are you going to spend New Years Eve?I'm going to Konitsa, Greece. I will also visit Ohrid in Macedonia and Corfu island.


*jealousy*

I have no plans yet, but most likely I will spend it with my parents at their place.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Aan said:


> But it's not surprise people in socialist Europe don't understand meaning of personal freedom and own responsibility instead of state hugging and caring everyone even if he doesn't want to be.


So true... People want to be carried from the cradle to the grave by the government.


----------



## Danielk2

If you crash in a car accident caused by you, and you're not wearing a seatbelt, i think that YOU should pay for the police, towing, ambulance, hospital and funeral. If your body flies through the air hurting someone, then i think you should pay their hospital bill (and eventual funeral) as well. People have different opinions on that case, end of story!


----------



## pijanec

ChrisZwolle said:


> So true... People want to be carried from the cradle to the grave by the government.


^^I agree. Like being in the kindergarten for whole life. And the problem is nanny states are being more popular than ever.


----------



## pijanec

Danielk2 said:


> If you crash in a car accident caused by you, and you're not wearing a seatbelt, i think that YOU should pay for the police, towing, ambulance, hospital and funeral. If your body flies through the air hurting someone, then i think you should pay their hospital bill (and eventual funeral) as well. People have different opinions on that case, end of story!


Wearing or not wearing a seatbelt didn't cause an accident so your first argument is meaningless. Every accident is caused by some reason so why would you punish seatbelt, when you don't punish use of mobile phones, bad tyres, being tired behind the wheel, accident because GPS told them to drive wrongly etc.

Your second argument is rational and everyone supporting personal freedoms support it. If you take risks, you pay for it if something happen.


----------



## pijanec

keber said:


> Luckily, I drove over this rural road about a million times before, so I didn't choose ditch on left or right side.


Near my place we have a straight road that goes directly throu fields. But when there is a snow, road isn't invisible so it's always funny to see where people were driving. Two years ago some drivers drove like 200 meters parallel away from it. :lol:


----------



## Danielk2

If the accident is caused by you, you should pay all that stuff. Not wearing a seatbelt could kill you.


----------



## Danielk2

I like the banner.
Traffic delays: German invention
Traffic Jams: German one is better


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I don't get it :crazy:
Edit: I looked at the adds and I get it now.


----------



## Danielk2

I actually think the traffic delay is a dutch invention


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Not really, the first recorded traffic jam dates from 1955. 

New York City had traffic jams starting in the 1930's, mostly people who went to Jones Beach.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Those dates seem a bit late for me, especially the first recorded Dutch traffic jam.


----------



## Danielk2

Before that, no traffic jams have ever been recorded??


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Not on motorways. 

The Dutch traffic information isn't that good. They only record motorways with detection loops, and occasionally other roads. Especially before the 1970's, they were dependent on police information about the roads. That is also why the "official" traffic jam was only 670 km last Thursday, and 3.400 km by TomTom HD Traffic. They measure every main road, not just motorways with induction loops. And the snow from Thursday especially resulted in traffic jams on motorways without induction loops.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Oh it's just for motorways, that makes more sense.
Edit: Look at the name of the latest forumer, "Doris Clitoris"


----------



## LtBk

Why some people think Europe is socialist?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Because it more or less is. The politics are not necessary socialistic, but the foundation of most countries has grown increasingly socialistic over the decades, which shows in significant government presence, a large public sector, significant government regulations, bureaucracy and high taxes.


----------



## Danielk2

But what some americans don't see is that there's a huge difference between socialism and communism. Socialism and communism isn't necessarily the same.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

It is socialist compared to America. Also from what I see a common American misconception is that Socialism is the same as Communism, which is quite obviously not the case; the Portuguese Constiution (1976) has official references to socialism, but Portugal is certainly not communist.

Also Social Security at the level existent in Europe and almost certainly everywhere in Europe is a Welfare State shows that Europe is socialist really, just not communist. All Communists are Socialists, but saying the statement vice versa is incorrect

Edit:I just realized Daniel wrote what I said while I was typing.


----------



## Danielk2

It's Christmas :banana::carrot:epper::cucumber:.

How and when do you guys celebrate it??

In Denmark, everything is done at dec 24.
Some people goes to church first.
Then we start eating
We dance around the christmas tree :weird:
And then unpack our presents. :banana:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Tonight it's Christmas eve. Today is just a workday, in fact, I am at work right now.


----------



## Nexis

*Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas form New Jersey*

*~Corey*


----------



## panda80

Merry Christmas, my dear roadgeeks!


----------



## Danielk2

Merry christmas from Denmark! (even though we celebrate it on dec 24 in Denmark)


----------



## x-type

Mateusz said:


> Isn't carp in Croatian called krap ?


no, we call it šaran 

btw, merry christmas every1!


----------



## Danielk2

Something great we have in Denmark (i don't know if it's used in other countries), is the chocolate christmas calender. It's a big sqaure with 24 squares of chocolate (1 for each day). Mine has SpongeBob Squarepants on it :banana:


----------



## Morsue

Danielk2 said:


> Something great we have in Denmark (i don't know if it's used in other countries), is the chocolate christmas calender. It's a big sqaure with 24 squares of chocolate (1 for each day). Mine has SpongeBob Squarepants on it :banana:


You have that in Sweden too, although it's not a lot of chocolate for your currency.


----------



## Danielk2

if you buy it in Aldi or Lidl in Denmark, you get it for like 10DKK 13-14SEK


----------



## Aan

x-type said:


> no, we call it šaran
> 
> btw, merry christmas every1!


for instance in czech lang. it's called kapr, in slovak kapor



Danielk2 said:


> Something great we have in Denmark (i don't know if it's used in other countries), is the chocolate christmas calender. It's a big sqaure with 24 squares of chocolate (1 for each day). Mine has SpongeBob Squarepants on it :banana:


I guess it's in whole Europe in every hypermarket, nothing local


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I htink all supermarkets have those things.


----------



## Timon91

I always used to have one in my youth, but I could never wait and it was always finished halfway december


----------



## Ni3lS

Merry Christmas to you roadgeeks too


----------



## Morsue

Ni3lS said:


>


Now that's just wrong... :lol:


----------



## keber

Heh, Christmas ...:lol:

What a weather here ... just 5 days ago we had 20 cm of snow and more at -20°C. Yesterday, today +15, somewhere almost +20, no snow anywhere, just rain, rain, rain. Just half an hour ago I drove through very intense rain with thunder and lightning. In the afternoon it was like an August thunderstorms. Some parts in Slovenia in mountain area received over 500 mm of rain last night and rain continued today, totalling almost *2 feet of rain in 24 hrs*. Many rivers have all time record heights, many roads are closed because of flooding. Tomorrow shiny sun is forecasted. :cheer:


----------



## Ni3lS

Morsue said:


> Now that's just wrong... :lol:


et: HAHAH. Tigger's outfit was $5 at Target. Good deal :yes:


----------



## Nexis

Ni3lS said:


> et: HAHAH. Tigger's outfit was $5 at Target. Good deal :yes:


Did you buy him any Cat Nip?


----------



## Timon91

I see some big ass TV over there, cool!


----------



## Nexis

Timon91 said:


> I see some big ass TV over there, cool!


Thats a Typical American TV , we as you know like things big and badass


----------



## ChrisZwolle

We have an official white Christmas, the first time since 1981. 

A white Christmas is only official if there is a complete snow cover in De Bilt (KNMI measuring station) for both days (25+26 december). That happened. In Zwolle only the first day of Christmas could be called white, now it's just some snow here and there, not really white. 

Regional white Christmases have happened more often, but an official white Christmas is pretty rare.


----------



## Danielk2

This is the 1st white christmas in Denmark in my whole life! Yeah!


----------



## Danielk2

I have a great question. Who do you think is the youngest and oldest user here on the H&A section?


----------



## x-type

youngest is Timon 
oldest? dunno, keber maybe?


----------



## Timon91

Yeah, I'm probably the youngest now 

enschede-er was younger, but I haven't seen him in a while. Verso also seems to have disappeared, maybe he ate all snow in Ljubljana, H2O is not good for him hno:


----------



## keber

x-type said:


> oldest? dunno, keber maybe?


What?!?:gunz:


----------



## Danielk2

how old are you, Timon??


----------



## Danielk2

Haha! i'm 5yrs younger than Timon!! (i'm 13!!)


----------



## da_scotty

1991, that will come close with me 

I'm from the 24 march 1991

the oldest? I haven't the foggiest


----------



## Danielk2

You're an old granny!


----------



## Timon91

Haha, I'm no longer the youngest :colgate:


----------



## Danielk2

Now you're the grandpa!!


----------



## Mateusz

Well when I was 12 or 13 I saw SSC first time ever and it was red as I can remember it !


----------



## Danielk2

I actually think i'm one of the youngest roadgeeks in Denmark. I don't know


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Danielk2 said:


> Haha! i'm 5yrs younger than Timon!! (i'm 13!!)


Really? I thought you were like 18.

I am 22.


----------



## Danielk2

Even roadgeeks can get smarter :colgate:


----------



## x-type

keber said:


> What?!?:gunz:


----------



## keber

Although true, I'm over thirty. Anyone else?:drunk:


----------



## x-type

i'm an evil Croat who has dossiers of Slovenians


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Mateusz said:


> Well when I was 12 or 13 I saw SSC first time ever and it was red as I can remember it !


I was 12 or something when I joined too.
Edit: 13 I think


----------



## Timon91

I was 16


----------



## Danielk2

I was 12 when i joined.


----------



## Morsue

I was 24. Seems not to old in this company :nuts:


----------



## PLH

Mateusz said:


> running for some alcohol at 4 am eh


I can imagine how many people will be there tomorrow at the same time 

BP is one of my favourite petrol stations. ARAL was also nice, but it is no more over here.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What happened to Verso? He never post any messages here lately. Maybe Santa Claus took him back to Rovaniemi.


----------



## PLH

Maybe he again drank too much of cold water :dunno:


----------



## snowman159

Mateusz said:


> Not only picking up prostitutes is what you can see on Street View :lol::lol::lol:


I just found this: A traffic cam operator having a little fun :lol:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/18/tfl_camera/


----------



## x-type

he is just preparing attack on me because yesterday in tunnel Mala Kapela there was an accident when piece of concrete fell from the tunnel's ceiling onto car, just as it happend to tunnel Šentvid when i teased him


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

I've bought (well, ordered - now all's in the hands of the post office) a bike today  

It's a hybrid bike (700c wheels, good for asphalt, gravel and some paths), all the important parts are from Shimano Deore line, it's an 2008 model and i've got a very good deal for it. Winter is the best time to buy your two wheels 


\/\/
Just... don't  In the news today they announced that Poczta Polska loses 47.000 items (letters, packages etc.) a year.


----------



## Mateusz

Be sure Poczta Polska will 'suddenly' organise 'industrial action' aka strike


----------



## Nexis

Yesterday i sat in a 30 min line @ the Elizabeth Ikea Restaurant hno: but it was worth it


----------



## x-type

Fuzzy Llama said:


> It's a hybrid bike (700c wheels, good for asphalt, gravel and some paths), all the important parts are from Shimano Deore line, it's an 2008 model and i've got a very good deal for it. Winter is the best time to buy your two wheels


definitely it is. i also bought my bike in february and got a discount. btw did you buy it on e-bay if it should come by mail?


----------



## keber

Mateusz said:


> running for some alcohol at 4 am eh


Can't do that here. Selling alcohol in shops is prohibited during night (21:00-7:00).
Still, there will be more than enough alcohol during this night.:cheers:


----------



## ChrisZwolle




----------



## Danielk2

keber said:


> Can't do that here. Selling alcohol in shops is prohibited during night (21:00-7:00).
> Still, there will be more than enough alcohol during this night.:cheers:


cra-Z rules. sounds like the US alcohol laws. 
in Denmark, a it can be bought 24 / 7


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

x-type said:


> btw did you buy it on e-bay if it should come by mail?


Well, yes, but but partially. I bought it through a Polish eBay-analogue (called Allegro), but the seller is actually a bike shop from Biała Podlaska (i.e. from the middle of nowhere  ). I've called them before the 'buy it now' click and managed to negotiate the free shipping and a bike stand.

A lot of brick-and-mortar shops here use the auctioning platform to expand their market and as you can see - it works.


----------



## Morsue

ChrisZwolle said:


>


Sounded like he was the one who said yes.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Given who made this thread, i'm surprised that the name of the "very long b*tch" isn't there

edit: in the tags I mean


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Uche


----------



## ChrisZwolle

These are the most-viewed threads so far:


----------



## Ayceman

Poland, USA, and Albania are on the podium :lol:


----------



## Mateusz

Poland strong !


----------



## ChrisZwolle

And a happy new year to all road enthusiasts! The clock ticked midnight just over 45 minutes ago. I have a great view on the fireworks from my apartment. As usual, Dutchies are lighting fireworks like there is no tomorrow.


----------



## Timon91

Happy New Year everybody!


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Happy New Year!


----------



## Nexis

*Happy New Years Everybody , it snowed here 3 inches. *:banana::cheers:

*Anyway i forgot to post my Pictures i took form the IKEA Restaurant at the Elizabeth IKEA.*

Looking West
*A view of New Jersey Turnpike ,Newark International Airport & The Budweiser Factory , when you fly in & if your 21+ you can cross the Highway , take a Tour and Get Drunk* :lol:










Looking South 
*A view of the New Jersey Turnpike , Airport Economy Parking , and the City of Elizabeth CBD*










*~Corey*


----------



## x-type

at one croatian forum one member has put interesting question: why are cars with LPG prohibited to cross the Channel via Eurotunnel? this is especially interesting when we know that trucks with ADR are not prohibited on Eurotunnel trains (interesting, they are prohibited on ferries!)


----------



## Mateusz

LOL I always have a feeling they will randomly blow up or something


----------



## Danielk2

Nexis said:


> if your 21+ you can cross the Highway , take a Tour and Get Drunk[/B] :lol:


In Denmark, you can legally get drunk at age 16. (however, you must be 18 to buy it in a bar or restaurant.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is no minimum age to get drunk I guess, you're only not allowed to buy alcohol under the age of 16. 
I doubt if the law says anything about parents giving a beer to a 12 year old.


----------



## Danielk2

Yeah i know. But what i'm talking about is buying alcohol. I do know that there's no laws against adults giving alcohol to kids.


----------



## Ni3lS

They do over here. I was in a restaurant downtown a few days ago. And one of my hostbrothers, who is 19 had a few sips from the beer of my older hostbrother who is 24. One of the waitresses saw that and came up to our table. Asked for his ID. He is underage ofcourse and the waitress went to the manager right away. He came up to our table and luckily it was only a warning. He said if he was an asshole he could've called the police. Those restaurants can lose their liquor license for this stuff. Never saw this happen before :lol:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

In Central Figueira da Foz(only on Friday nights), Portugal, anyone can go and buy a drink, there are drunken 13 yr olds in the street.


----------



## x-type

our kids also find out the way to buy a drink. in bars you can make barmens not to ask you id if you are 16, 17 (especially if there is crowded), and in shops there is prohibition of saling alcohol to them, but i think they can easily buy it anyway


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Snø:


----------



## Danielk2

I've gotta visit Figueira de Foz some time. Sounds like a great place to live


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I was once out at night in a group and half of the group (not me) went off to get drunk, for example.


----------



## Danielk2

Then where did you go??


----------



## Timon91

Chris, did a double decker train pass your house?


----------



## Danielk2

Why are you calling it "Snø"??? That's norwegian!!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My car goes incognito.


----------



## Danielk2

Yeah!! Timon just made post #7.000 on the rest area!! :banana::carrot:epper:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Does it normally snow every year in the Netherlands?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I want a lot of snow to fall right now and all throughout tomorrow, so that the school closes.


----------



## Danielk2

There'd better be a whole lot of snow. I don't wanna get up at 6:30am to go to school on Jan 4


----------



## Timon91

School is over for me since 6 months. It's university now, so I have to get up at 7:15 instead of 6:15


----------



## Danielk2

Damn you :rant:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Danielk2 said:


> There'd better be a whole lot of snow. I don't wanna get up at 6:30am to go to school on Jan 4


Exactly. I also do not want to get up at 6.30, catch 2 buses (God know show long i'll have to wait) and get start school at 8.30


----------



## Danielk2

I always get up at 6:30-6:45, take a shower, watch an episode of SpongeBob Squarepants while eating breakfast and take ONE bus at 7:55


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I don't have time for TV. 
6:00-6:30 get up
shower
breakfast
out f the house
buses
school


----------



## Danielk2

et: Poor you, not having the time to watch tv!! :lol:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Doesn't really matter, I don't watch much TV anyway


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

Wish I had your troubles...
7:00 wake up (5:30 on Mondays)
running through bathroom _very_ quickly
driving to work (sleepy)
7:30 @ work
Breakfast? TV? 
edit: And what's that 'school' thing?


----------



## Danielk2

School is something you go to 7-9yrs of your life to learn things.


----------



## Timon91

Danielk2 said:


> Damn you :rant:


:gunz: Thanks 

I used to get up at 6:15-6:30, take a shower, have breakfast, prepare my lunch and leave at 7:15 (yes, I'm slow in the morning ) and cycle 14 km to school 

Now, I get up at 7:15, take a loooong shower, have breakfast while watching tv, do some ssc, leave at 8:25 and cycle 4 km to university 

By the way, this only counts when I have to start at 8:45. Sometimes I start at 10:45 or 13:45


----------



## Danielk2

You're really freakin' annoying :rant::rant:. The only time i started school later than 8:15 was last year every tuesday, where i started at 10:10. god i miss that


----------



## DanielFigFoz

In Portugal, school hours are like uni hours, You can start at 8.30 and finish at 6,45 and the next day finish at 10:00, or start at 12:45 and all sort of crazy stuff.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

It's snowing!


----------



## Nexis

I thought you guys would find this funny
:lol:

*The Onion News Network​*





& 






hahahahah, i love the Onion , i'm subscribed to Radio News clips on iTunes and sometimes pick up there newspaper at the Train Stations.

*~Corey*


----------



## Danielk2

WTF is Koy4Goff??? Those guys are brain-damaged


----------



## ChrisZwolle

:cripes::colbert::smug:

new smilies.


----------



## Danielk2

yeah!! more smilies :banana::carrot:epper: :cucumber:


----------



## Timon91

I still miss the old, green  smiley


----------



## DanielFigFoz

New smilies? 
"Post Reply"
ahh yes
:deadthrea
:tongue4:
:laugh:
:fart:
:angel1:
:goodbye:
:lurker: «me
:skull:
:eat:
:dj:
:moods:


----------



## Danielk2

Timon91 said:


> I still miss the old, green  smiley


It probably went to some other, less great forum :lol:


----------



## Timon91

It's back! Well, sort of...


----------



## Danielk2

Timon91 said:


> It's back! Well, sort of...


Yeah!! the green smiley is sort of back!!


----------



## DanielFigFoz

This thread is turning into msn!
:lol:


----------



## Danielk2

Excatly. If you have something better to discuss than green smilies, please say.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I may remind you that SSC is not your personal chat service, Daniel I & II...


----------



## Danielk2

i never said it was. if anyone has anything more relevant, please post it.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

He's right Daniel


----------



## Nexis

Danielk2 said:


> WTF is Koy4Goff??? Those guys are brain-damaged


The Onion News Network is Fake , it mocks the real news or makes up stories , did you actually beleave that story?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

It was started by students of the University of Wisconsin-Madison


----------



## Ni3lS

Oh noes. I don't want to get deported. I love it over here!

And everyone goes to party's no matter what age :gossip:

:crazy2:


----------



## Nexis

Isn't this kind dangerous , This Dutch Railway crossing has snow covering the gates and parts of the lights






~Corey


----------



## Pansori

Here is an interesting piece of news about driving safety in Germany

*German road deaths at record low*
http://www.motoring.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5298963&fSectionId=928&fSetId=381

It says that in *2009* the number of deaths on German roads was *4080.*

In *1970* the toll was at *19193* (And that didn't include the DDR).

"There were nine million cars on German roads in 1970, compared to 40-million in 2009."

Quite an impressive progress I have to say!


----------



## Danielk2

it's amazing how the germans keep getting lower and lower traffic deaths. What causes that'???


----------



## pijanec

Because you can focus on traffic and road instead of on speed limiter.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

That is impressive!
For Portugal it is very vague, but it's what I found
1980's-2 600 per year
1990's-1 500 per year
2008-776
Not as impressive


----------



## Danielk2

Denmark had 148 traffic deaths last year according to RFSF, most of these are between 16 and 35 yrs old.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ About 300 actually, according to Jyllands-Posten.



> Antallet af dræbte i trafikken er faldet kraftigt i år. I løbet af 2009 har omkring 300 mennesker mistet livet i trafikken, viser en foreløbig optælling fra Rådet for Sikker Trafik.


----------



## Danielk2

these data are also from Sep 8 in '09. The number apparently doubled in 4 months. The number from RFSF only counts deaths where the people killed were in a car.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

It's too cold to do PE outdoors in shorts, I tell you that much


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

Road deaths in CZ:
1989: 1078
1994: 1637 (highest ever)
2008: 992
2009: 827

Sadly it's still quite a lot. But number of passenger cars increased by 83% and traffic by 107% between 1990 and 2008.


----------



## keber

Nexis said:


> Isn't this kind dangerous , This Dutch Railway crossing has snow covering the gates and parts of the lights


Why would that be dangerous? Both are still very good seen.


----------



## Danielk2

1637?? Did a bomb explode on a motorway or something??


----------



## Timon91

It's probably because since the fall of communism, the Czechs finally got some good cars to drive in, which obviously resulted in more reckless driving. Now the police is much stricter in traffic violations, so the number of deaths dropped again.


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

I think that several factors combined were to blame:
1. unprecedented growth of traffic - as I've already mentioned
2. new sense of freedom after 1989
3. traditional Czech disrespect towards authorities (since we've experienced ~40 years of self-governance since 17th century)
4. wider availability of cars that could actually go fast 

here's a (lousy) graph: red = deaths, blue = passenger cars (the 1989 figure is wrong according to different source, I was using higher number from that statistic when I wrote about the growth)


----------



## x-type

in HR we also have too many deaths in accidents. the number is constant (i have datum from 1998, it was between 614 and 701 deaths between 1998 and 2008.

Jan-Nov 2009: 506


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Yesterday driving across Denmark from German border to Copenhagen i've counted at least 8 cars abandoned at the hard shoulder of the motorway. Without any lightning nor reflectors. In the middle of the night. It is a great experience when you're driving tired after already doing 1100km and suddenly an unlit parked car appears 10m in front of you. 

I mean, what the ****? Is this a common practice that if you had an accident in Denmark you just leave your car and walk (hitchhike?) home? Or is this some government programme for increasing the adrenaline level among the drivers?


----------



## Nexis

keber said:


> Why would that be dangerous? Both are still very good seen.


The gate is covered with snow, sometimes people get confused and drift onto the tracks.


----------



## tsov

The red leds they use for railway barriers are quite bright (and I guess you could call it common sense to approach a railway crossing with caution, let alone in snowy conditions).

Anyway, this was the huge metropolis of Holysloot at 15:15 today. Luckily, it wasn't freezing, so road didn't become slippery.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Yesterday driving across Denmark from German border to Copenhagen i've counted at least 8 cars abandoned at the hard shoulder of the motorway. Without any lightning nor reflectors. In the middle of the night. It is a great experience when you're driving tired after already doing 1100km and suddenly an unlit parked car appears 10m in front of you.
> 
> I mean, what the ****? Is this a common practice that if you had an accident in Denmark you just leave your car and walk (hitchhike?) home? Or is this some government programme for increasing the adrenaline level among the drivers?


They've done that to the west of London too, the BBC was showing loads of abandoned cars in Basingstoke,


----------



## keber

Nexis said:


> The gate is covered with snow, sometimes people get confused and drift onto the tracks.


Never heard about such a case. Railroad crossings at least on normal roads and crossing relatively normal railway are very well signed and if you don't see such gate covered with snow, then I think you shouldn't drive because of near blindness.


----------



## Morsue

355 road deaths in Sweden in 2009. Lowest number since WW2.

http://www.alltommotor.se/artiklar/nyheter/antalet-doda-i-trafiken-minskar-1.19260


----------



## 3naranze

Hi everybody!
Italy had 2521 deaths (-15%), 110476 accidents (-9,4%) and 80095 the injuried (-9%).
Deaths on motorways with "Safety Tutor" (2200 km): -51%!
Source: Italian State Police.


----------



## Danielk2

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Yesterday driving across Denmark from German border to Copenhagen i've counted at least 8 cars abandoned at the hard shoulder of the motorway. Without any lightning nor reflectors. In the middle of the night. It is a great experience when you're driving tired after already doing 1100km and suddenly an unlit parked car appears 10m in front of you.
> 
> I mean, what the ****? Is this a common practice that if you had an accident in Denmark you just leave your car and walk (hitchhike?) home? Or is this some government programme for increasing the adrenaline level among the drivers?


If you want Falck or Dansk Autohjælp to tow you, it can cost you over 100€ just to get towed + repairing expenses.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Danielk2 said:


> If you want Falck or Dansk Autohjælp to tow you, it can cost you over 100€ just to get towed + repairing expenses.


... which is what, like 10h of work on minimum wage? Considering Danish purchasing power it's dirt cheap and only very stupid and careless people would save money on such a thing.

And how much for a ticket for leaving your car on the motorway?


----------



## Danielk2

As there's very rarely police controls on motorways, most people doing this won't get no ticket.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

It is snowing here, quite heavily, and its going to continue all day.


----------



## Aan

Road deaths in Slovakia:
2010 - should be under 305 to compete EU plans
2009 (until 20th Dec) - 335
2008 - 558
2007 - 627
2006 - 579

but it's really no problem to manipulate these statistics, you will just say victim of road accident is when he dies until 24 hours after accident and you can anytime lower this time, you can change it to 12 hours, to 3 hours and stastistics will be better

rather won't be posting accidents numbers, because these numbers are highly manipulated by police, only insurance companies have real numbers, by police number of accidents is lowering (because they are every year raising limit of financial claim when you must call police, actually it's 4000EUR and higher (year ago it was about 3000EUR) or when is anybody hurt (but even after this I was yesterday talking with client who had accident and somebody in his car (not wearing seat belt) crashed into front shield and he didn't call police/ambulance at all) or when both sides of accidents can't decide who is guilty side), by insurance companies is raising


----------



## keber

Aan said:


> but it's really no problem to manipulate these statistics, you will just say victim of road accident is when he dies until 24 hours after accident and you can anytime lower this time, you can change it to 12 hours, to 3 hours and stastistics will be better


At least here death because of road accidents have usually quite a long time limit. That's why official statistics for 2009 will be given in February or March.

1970 - 620 deaths
1973 - 701
1979 - 735 (record year)
1983 - 527
1990 - 517
1995 - 415
2000 - 314
2003 - 242
2005 - 257
2006 - 262
2007 - 294
2008 - 214
2009 - 173 (preliminary number)

For this year plan is to have just 139 death and for year after even 15 less.


----------



## Ni3lS

Over here you go to school when there is over 70cm's of snow. Fourwheeldrives


----------



## DanielFigFoz

The thing is is that here 0cm is the normal, and also if some idiot broke their arm in the school in a snowball fight, their parents would probably sue the school :crazy:


----------



## Nexis

We still have a tonn of Salt here NJ , but you ain't getting any :lol:


----------



## Danielk2

Ni3lS said:


> Over here you go to school when there is over 70cm's of snow. Fourwheeldrives


Have you ever heard of CO2??


----------



## Nexis

Its different in the Rockie Mountain & Midwestern States since they get so much snow , there used to it , so schools rarely close unless theres a Major Blizzard


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Danielk2 said:


> Did you watch TV2 News lately??


Not really. I'm just an exchange student at DTU, I don't understand spoken Danish at all (although I can make something out of text) and I don't have a TV.

But I wish for the snow to come a little more to the east, it would be fun to have a snow cataclysm here. Maybe the university would release me of my project and I would have the rest of January free


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^ Do you have Danish lessons?


----------



## Danielk2

Fuzzy Llama said:


> I don't understand spoken Danish at all


Then have a look at this link in english
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Andre_sprog/English/2010/01/06/152918.htm


----------



## Danielk2

and this, in Arabic
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Andre_sprog/Arabic/2010/01/06/152943.htm


----------



## pijanec

In Slovenia schools actually never close because of the snow. And every winter some students broke his/her leg or arm while going to school but I don't think anybody care. It's part of the winter.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

DanielFigFoz said:


> ^^ Do you have Danish lessons?


Nope. I considered taking them, but they didn't fit in my schedule. And you can't really learn a language in half a year...

But still, since you are practically surrounded by language, some words just get to you by themselves. Now with a little help from my German skills I can figure out some newspaper articles. I can't read them aloud though - it's a pity that the Danish orography is somewhat loosely connected with the pronunciation.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I went to school in Portugal and after a few months of living in Portugal I learnt Portuguese. It was a bit strange. One day I didn't really speak, then suddenly what built up kinda came together and I just started speaking Portuguese overnight


----------



## keber

Danielk2 said:


> Have you ever heard of CO2??


Seems not to have any noticeable effect, if they close schools because of few cm's of snow.

Here after a few years again ice plates are appearing on city roads. Driving finally got a bit more interesting. :cheer:


----------



## Morsue

40,8 degrees Celsius below freezing in Sweden tonight.

http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/nytt-koldrekord-i-natt-1.1023002


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch road authorities have salt the roads with 100.000 tonnes of salt during the past month. In a regular winter from November to April, they salt 70.000 tonnes. Almost all of the Netherlands will run out of salt during the coming weekend. Nobody can guarantee what happens next, especially with this winter storm coming up on Saturday.


----------



## Danielk2

Denmark is running out of salt as well. The only manufacturer of road salt in Denmark is currently producing more then 80 tonnnes of salt every single day


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

Time to bring out tire chains up there...

We should get some noticeable snowfall as well during the weekend. Finally.


----------



## Ni3lS

Danielk2 said:


> Have you ever heard of CO2??


et:


----------



## Ni3lS

http://www.norscand.net/

:master:


----------



## Nexis

Ni3lS said:


> http://www.norscand.net/
> 
> :master:


I see you like his work , me & Andrew will be working on another project like that soon.


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

Well, it's not that bad on a motorway, but on a two laned road with quite heavy traffic it's a pain in the places where man's back starts to lose a decent name.


----------



## Danielk2

it's a pain in the lower back, Bobek


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I gave my old PC to my younger brother, and in return, he bought me a present. A three-piece poster of Hong Kong. That ought to bring some difference in my New York-laden apartment.










I gotta get it somewhat more straight though. That money is 220 PLN in case you were wondering, I don't feel like carry it in my wallet all day if I don't go to Poland. The license plate is a Texas one. (the California license plate slid behind the drawer)


----------



## keber

Here in Ljubljana it's still snowing heavily, for now about 30-35 cm of snow altoghether, about 20 cm just today. Again some real winter conditions.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Is 220 Polish Zloty (that's what it's called, I think) worth a lot or is it a bit like 0.2 euros?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

keber said:


> Here in Ljubljana it's still snowing heavily, for now about 30-35 cm of snow altoghether, about 20 cm just today. Again some real winter conditions.


We still have the same 3cm on the ground.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

DanielFigFoz said:


> Is 220 Polish Zloty (that's what it's called, I think) worth a lot or is it a bit like 0.2 euros?


Actually, it's 55 euros.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Fair enough :cheers:


----------



## Mateusz

you won't buy a lot for it tbh


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I really want to exchange £5 for Zimbabwean Dollars.


----------



## Timon91

You'll be a billionaire


----------



## keber

Officially you would get just about 1500 dollars.


----------



## x-type

keber said:


> Officially you would get just about 1500 dollars.


yeah. 1 year ago they cleared 12 zeroes :nuts:
so today the currency with largest numbers is vietnamese dong, for £5 you would get about 29700 VND. not too big deal actually.


----------



## Mateusz

Definetely the worst inflation was in Weimar Republic where people used to burn loads banknotes because you couldn't buy anything for it... Unless, you would take a cart whole of money for some modest grocery shopping


----------



## keber

Weimar republic had by far not the biggest inflation. Hungarian inflation was bigger, in final they changed 4×1029 of old currency into new forint. In Yugoslavia they changed into 1 new dinar = 1,3×1027 of old dinars. Also Zimbabwean hyperinflation almost surpasesed Hungarian record (but it didn't), with 7×10^108 % yearly rate in some moment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation

In other news: this morning in Ljubljana altogether 44 cm of snow. Some more is forecasted.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder how many people tried to de-ice their windshields by pooring hot water on it. There are always a bunch of people who think that'll work.


I've never heard anyone even try that in Estonia. We all have ice scrapers and snow brushes in our car.


----------



## Nexis

I was amazed today , on my way to cemetery to bury my neighbor. That everyone at all the intersections stopped even on a red light and left us through It just shows that ppl are still warm hearted these days.

*~Corey*


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Nexis said:


> I was amazed today , on my way to cemetery to bury my neighbor. That everyone at all the intersections stopped even on a red light and left us through It just shows that ppl are still warm hearted these days.
> 
> *~Corey*



That is very nice indeed, and I'm sorry for your loss.


----------



## Ni3lS

Naiz poster Chris


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I almost got a little accident today. Of course, I filmed it


----------



## Danielk2

what is that horrible music you're hearing?? And what's that strange sound in the background??


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Danielk2 said:


> And what's that strange sound in the background??


I have no idea, I don't hear it in the car, but the camera picks it up.


----------



## Pansori

Nice drive. I love driving in the snow. A great way of testing ABS or just playing around


----------



## Danielk2

The only think i understood was something with snowstorm.
I think it's so much easier to read dutch than hearing it. It's a funny mix of English, German, French and Danish


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Danielk2 said:


> I think it's so much easier to read dutch than hearing it.


It's the same the other way round, I can understand written Danish, but I don't understand it when people speak it.


----------



## 3naranze

have you driven without snow tires o snow chains?


----------



## Nexis

DanielFigFoz said:


> That is very nice indeed, and I'm sorry for your loss.


Thankyou, 3 Naval Personnel came out and did the typical military ceremony.


----------



## Timon91

^^I'm sorry to hear that. Was he killed in Afghanistan or Iraq?


----------



## Nexis

Timon91 said:


> ^^I'm sorry to hear that. Was he killed in Afghanistan or Iraq?


No , i think he served in WW2 or after it , he was in his mid 80s


----------



## Morsue

ChrisZwolle said:


> I almost got a little accident today. Of course, I filmed it


Going a bit too fast now are we?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nah, I drove about 30 km/h on the straight sections, and 10 - 15 km/h in that turn, because it's almost a 90 degrees turn.


----------



## Morsue

You can always argue that if you can't make a turn, you've been doing it too fast. In Sweden, even in dry conditions, if a person drives off the road in a turn he will be fined for speeding (not going at a speed adapted to the situation) if there are no extraordinary circumstances, say unexpected slipperiness. But the ground was covered with snow here and you know that your driving with summer tyres, so there would be no extraordinary circumstances. Luckily, you and your car are ok.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Streets in the United States that bear my name.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I almost got a little accident today. Of course, I filmed it


did you have winter tyres? since i use them in winter, i don't even think to drive on this conditions without winter tyres


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No, I don't have winter tires. Last year had 3 days with conditions we have for a month now. Plus, I don't need to drive much in the winter for work, plus I can walk to work if it's not too cold or rainy (I usually walk to work, it's about 2 km).


----------



## Morsue

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's the same the other way round, I can understand written Danish, but I don't understand it when people speak it.


No one except the Danes themselves understand spoken Danish, not even Swedes...


----------



## piotr71

I caught this relaxed shopper some time ago on M27 motorway nearby Southampton.


----------



## Capt.Vimes

I'm not sure where to post this question. 
Who is changing the names of the topics here?
The bulgarian topic is [BG] Bulgarian highways/motorways - Автомагистрала and there is a mistake, instead of АвтомагистралА (singular) it should be АвтомагистралИ (plural).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Changed.

I want to prevent long thread names. I consider changing the Polish name in the thread title as well, just "Polish roads" in Polish, so Polskie drogi, or something more correct.


----------



## Capt.Vimes

ChrisZwolle said:


> Changed.
> 
> I want to prevent long thread names. I consider changing the Polish name in the thread title as well, just "Polish roads" in Polish, so Polskie drogi, or something more correct.



Thanks Chris. I'm not sure about Polskie drogi. There are already pictures and info about normal roads (not highways or motorways) in the thread and it's not the point of it. with that name people may start writing more and more about DK roads.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's no problem, I don't see why we should limit it to motorways and expressways specifically.


----------



## Danielk2

but danes understand swedish... I don't see why danish is so hard for swedish-talking people to learn.


----------



## Maxx☢Power

It's because it sounds like they're choking, so your first thought is to call for an ambulance instead of trying to interpret the sounds coming out.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

You won't have to change the names of my threads then :lol:

But seriously, I don't know why... (I forgot what I was going to say)
Edit: I remember now. This is for American people; when you say "soda" do you mean any fizzy drink or is it a specific drink?


----------



## Timon91

IMO the names are fine now. Sometimes pics of secondary main roads are posted, but those are of course also highways. This section isn't called Highways & Autobahns for nothing


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Any main road is a highway, it's a much much older word than motorways are.


----------



## HAWC1506

^^Oh how I wish I lived in the midst of European humor. The only thing we Americans get to make fun of is Canadians saying "aboot" instead of "about".


----------



## city_thing

Maxx☢Power;49946543 said:


> It's because it sounds like they're choking, so your first thought is to call for an ambulance instead of trying to interpret the sounds coming out.


When I lived in Denmark, apparently I spoke Danish with a strong Swedish accent. I have no idea how or why.

Danish is like talking 'whilst having a potato in your mouth'.


----------



## piotr71

I think Norwegians can easily understand speaking Danes. Do not they?


----------



## Cosmin

I think Norwegians have very bad hearing.:lol::jk: I was speaking Romanian with someone (also Romanian, obviously) in the hotel's restaurant in Oslo and because it was packed, we ended up sharing a table with a Norwegian fellow. He was a very nice guy, but I think not that good with languages, cause the first thing he said as we sat down was "I think I heard you speak Danish, right?"

How does one confuse Danish with Romanian, especially since we were very close to him?:?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I moved these posts about Danish/Norwegian/Swedish from the German Autobahn topic.


----------



## CptSchmidt

HAWC1506 said:


> ^^Oh how I wish I lived in the midst of European humor. The only thing we Americans get to make fun of is Canadians saying "aboot" instead of "about".


Which no Canadian has ever heard. Nobody says aboot.


----------



## Nexis

*Canadians are the root of alot jokes here:lol:. I even join in , but i leave Europe except Britain , France , Italy :lol:, which seems to bring on themselves. Otherwise i have high respect for Europe*.

*~Corey*


----------



## piotr71

As far as I know, there is plenty of good jokes *aboot* Poles in the States, is not it? Particularly, the best can be heard around Chicago.


----------



## Morsue

Maxx☢Power;49946543 said:


> It's because it sounds like they're choking, so your first thought is to call for an ambulance instead of trying to interpret the sounds coming out.


Word! We call them porridge throats because that's what they sound like they have stuck down there :lol:


----------



## Aan

Cosmin said:


> I think Norwegians have very bad hearing.:lol::jk: I was speaking Romanian with someone (also Romanian, obviously) in the hotel's restaurant in Oslo and because it was packed, we ended up sharing a table with a Norwegian fellow. He was a very nice guy, but I think not that good with languages, cause the first thing he said as we sat down was "I think I heard you speak Danish, right?"
> 
> How does one confuse Danish with Romanian, especially since we were very close to him?:?


Maybe they are not travelling so much, from my experience in Asia I met many Swedish people, but none from Finland or Norway, so they don't know other languages.


----------



## piotr71

I am pretty sure most people from Finland can speak both, Swedish as well as English. They are taught these languages in primary schools.


----------



## Danielk2

According to myself, i'm very good at norwegian :yes:. My mom lived in Norway a looooong time ago , and insists that we should go to Norway on almost every single vacation. I think i've been there like 6 or 7 times the last 13yrs


----------



## tsov

I'm going to Norway in march, for the fourth time  I don't speak Norwegian though (well, I can say hi and thank you...), but reading is fairly easy, as with all Scandinavian languages. For a Dutchman they all look like a strange mixup of Dutch, German and English:lol:


----------



## Danielk2

actually, dutch is mixed of english, german, french and DANISH


----------



## Ni3lS

I just don't really feel like learning those Scandinavian languages. The countries are awesome and beautiful but it's not worth it IMO. I speak 4 languages fluently atm. I'm still learning French and Italian. Not bad for a 17 year old huh


----------



## Danielk2

Actually, you can speak english to people from denmark, norway or sweden. In some countries, people do speak english, but don't want to because they think their national pride is being hurt.


----------



## Ni3lS

I know that Scandinavian people speak English quite well. You have to know that I'm not an American though


----------



## Danielk2

then what country are you from??


----------



## Ni3lS

I'm Dutch like Chris and Timon


----------



## Danielk2

Soooo many dutchies on the H&A section


----------



## Ni3lS

Yup. I'm a foreign Exchange Student in the USA if you're wondering why I'm living here. I'll be going back in may and I'm probably going to study in Germany


----------



## Danielk2

you could write the US + NL as your location. Then people would know you're from the NL


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I speak Dutch, English and German, and I can read French and Spanish, and a bit of Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Portuguese and Italian. I know a few words in Polish and Romanian, but that's about it. Romanian is actually not that hard if you know some other Roman languages like French. I can also read the Greek and Cyrillic alphabet (from the age of 12, had nothing to do at school, so I decided to decipher Russian maps, that how I learned it).


----------



## Ni3lS

Danielk2 said:


> you could write the US + NL as your location. Then people would know you're from the NL


:colbert:

No, my location is the location where I actually am. If people are interested in what nationality I have they should take a look at my profile


----------



## Danielk2

ChrisZwolle said:


> I speak Dutch, English and German, and I can read French and Spanish, and a bit of Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Portuguese and Italian. I know a few words in Polish and Romanian, but that's about it. Romanian is actually not that hard if you know some other Roman languages like French. I can also read the Greek and Cyrillic alphabet (from the age of 12, had nothing to do at school, so I decided to decipher Russian maps, that how I learned it).


i speak danish, english, norwegian, swedish and know some german and dutch road-related words.
I can read and write the cyrillic alphabet (russian and ukranian), and read some of the greek alphabet.


----------



## RipleyLV

As for me, I speak in Latvian, Russian, German and English of course, and I know a few words in Polish. I can understand Slovak, Czech and Slovenian text.


----------



## SeanT

I envy you guys when you just happened to understand other languages f.ex neighbouring countries etc...
Like scandinavians.:bash:
When you come from a country as Hungary, you have to study other languages otherwise you are on your own.hno:


----------



## Morsue

I speak Swedish, Maghreb Arabic, English and French fluently, I speak Spanish and German with quite well, although not fluently. I can understand some Italian, Portuguese, Catalan and Romanian (Romance languages) in both writing and speech. I can communicate with Danes and Norwegians in writing, but I can only speak with Norwegians because I really don't get what Danes are saying.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I can speak English and Portuguese fluently, understand and speak a bit of Spanish and French, and I can understand a bit of written German and Dutch. I can read the Greek alphabet, providing that it's not in Greek


----------



## TheCat

Well, to join in the conversation, I know English, Hebrew, and Russian fluently and am currently studying Chinese at university. I also know some French because I learned it for about 2 years when I came to Canada.

When reading, I can understand Slavonic languages to varying degrees. I also learned the Arabic script in my final year in Israel, but I moved to Canada before we finished and I don't remember much at this point.


----------



## x-type

i thought that more people here speak italian. so i can be proud of it  (beside english, some german and french)


----------



## Danielk2

don't you speak any slavic languages??


----------



## x-type

Danielk2 said:


> don't you speak any slavic languages??


do you really want me to mention that i speak croatian, serbian, bosnian, montenegrian, some slovenian and some macedonian?  i feel like polyglot 
btw, i know few words of czech, too


----------



## Nexis

*I passed a reservoir today that supplies water to New York City & Jersey City, its 118 miles Northwest of Midtown NYC.*




























*Looking on the other side of the Dam*



















*~Corey*


----------



## Ni3lS

Pfuh. Small reservoir.

My little town in back in Holland has one twice as big. :smug:


----------



## Timon91

I can speak Dutch, English, German and some French, and I can read (with some difficulty of course) other related languages like Italian, Romanian and Danish.


----------



## Danielk2

which language is danish related to?? German or Dutch??


----------



## ChrisZwolle

lol, you can't make this stuff up.

A Dutch politician of the labour party thought the Haiti earthquake was caused by global warming :nuts:


----------



## Danielk2

That's politicians for you :blahblah:


----------



## Nexis

It just shows , how stupid most politicians are.....hno:


----------



## x-type

are you all sure that you can read romanian? that language is very hard to pronounce. for instance, difference between front and back schwa (â and ă)


----------



## Ayceman

^^

1. They're not schwa's

2. a. The î/â is a close central unrounded vowel [ɨ]

b. The ă is a mid central unrounded vowel [ə]

c. So the only difference between them is the amount of openness of the mouth. There is no difference in forward-backward location of the sound.


----------



## x-type

Ayceman said:


> [ə]


this is schwa, even if they are not called schwa in romanian 
and by opening mouth you actually control whether it sounds like front of back (frankly, i don't know how they are called in romanian, i just know the difference and i describe them as i percept them)


----------



## Ayceman

Well, we just call them by their sound, ă and î.

Now let's go wiki:



> In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (sometimes spelled shwa)[1][2] can mean the following:
> 
> * An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. Such vowels are often transcribed with the symbol <ə>, regardless of their actual phonetic value.
> * The mid-central vowel sound (rounded or unrounded) in the middle of the vowel chart, stressed or unstressed. In IPA phonetic transcription, it is written as [ə]. In this case the term mid-central vowel may be used instead of schwa to avoid ambiguity.





> The mid central vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages (...) The mid central unrounded vowel is frequently written with the symbol [ə].
> 
> * Its vowel height is mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a close vowel and an open vowel.
> * Its *vowel backness is central*, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel.
> * Its vowel roundedness is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.





> The close central unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is [ɨ].
> 
> * Its vowel height is close, which means the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
> * Its *vowel backness is central*, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel.
> * Its vowel roundedness is unrounded, which means that the lips are spread.


As for me, I can speak Romanian, English, some French, and I can read and pronounce correctly most European and Altaic languages that use the Latin/Cyrillic/Greek alphabets. I can also understand spoken Italian and various written Latin languages.


----------



## x-type

ok, i was wrong, i often mix front with closed and back with open (or mid) sounds. but it still remains schwa


----------



## piotr71

I know German and Russian on basic level.
Until today, I had been pretty certain my English was ( apart of writing ) amazingly good. No understanding or speaking problems, at all. Unfortunately I, focking, watched " trainspotting " with no subtitles, for the first time. :badnews:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What happened to Verso? He didn't leave a message here for over a month.


----------



## Qwert

ChrisZwolle said:


> What happened to Verso? He didn't leave a message here for over a month.


He's active only in DLM: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=50220371


----------



## Ni3lS

And another weekend of snowboarding in Breckenridge :smug:


----------



## Nexis

*What do you guys think of this shot of Manhattan i took form Jersey City Heights , down below is Hoboken.*










*& This one i took form Weehawken*










*Tell me what you think , i tried removing the Date sticker but it won't work.*hno:

*~Corey*


----------



## Nexis

*What do you guys think of this shot of Manhattan i took form Jersey City Heights , down below is Hoboken.*










*& This one i took form Weehawken*










*Tell me what you think , i tried removing the Date sticker but it won't work.*hno:

*~Corey*


----------



## Danielk2

:eek2:


----------



## Nexis

I guess thats good , LOL i double posted opps:lol:


----------



## Danielk2

Yeah, that means good


----------



## piotr71

Basically engines do not love it 

But older style diesel being tougher and more durable could cope better with such experiments.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

I think it may be dangerous for the whole car. It may find another owner pretty fast


----------



## piotr71

:rofl:

Do people steel cars in the Netherlands? No, I do not belive.


----------



## panda80

Fuzzy Llama said:


> ^^ For a petrol engine it should be around 1 -2 l/h.


My Skoda Octavia eats around 1.2 l/h.


----------



## Nexis

piotr71 said:


> :rofl:
> 
> Do people steel cars in the Netherlands? No, I do not belive.


They steal bikes and sell the parts :lol:


----------



## Capt.Vimes

ChrisZwolle said:


> Does anybody has an idea what a regular car engine (diesel or petrol) consumes idling? Can you make it a whole night with the engine idling, providing warmth in the car?


0.5-0.6 VW 1.9 TDI 131 bhp. 

Petrol cars consume more when idle.


----------



## Nexis

A Early morning landing on the NJTPK :lol:






& 

I forgot to post this NJTPK video.

Ledger Live HD: The New Jersey Turnpike Turkey






They captured her a week after this shot and shes now at a zoo in South Jersey. But hours after this aired , mobs of residents gathered to take pictures and feed the bird. Which slowed traffic.

~Corey


----------



## CptSchmidt

ChrisZwolle said:


> Does anybody has an idea what a regular car engine (diesel or petrol) consumes idling? Can you make it a whole night with the engine idling, providing warmth in the car?


It's dangerous do that, though. People have been known to die from carbon minoxide poisoning. Especially when people pull over in blizzards and their tail pipe is covered in snow.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

CptSchmidt said:


> It's dangerous do that, though. People have been known to die from carbon minoxide poisoning. Especially when people pull over in blizzards and their tail pipe is covered in snow.


Yeah, every time I read about it in the NWS survival tips, they always say;_ run the engine 10 minutes every hour and make sure the exhaust pipe is free of snow. 
_


----------



## Nexis

The Pilot who landed on the New Jersey Turnpike yesterday speaks






Ironically he was giving Traffic reports for some Local Radio stations when he encounter the problem.

~Corey


----------



## Danielk2

only in New Jersey :colgate:


----------



## Nexis

Danielk2 said:


> only in New Jersey :colgate:


That and the 2 NJT deaths made it an interesting Commuting day during the Morning and Evening Rush Hours :lol:


----------



## bleetz

Does anybody know where I could find motorway standards for individual countries? I need stuff like slip road length, numbers of junctions per kilometre, etc.


----------



## Nexis

I took this yesterday in Paulus Hook : Jersey City 

Liberty state Park / Morris Canal : Jersey City 
You can Lady Liberty & Ellis Island , i would have stayed longer but my fingers were falling off.










What do you guys think?

~Corey


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Are those water towers still used?

BTW, You should turn off those date stamps.


----------



## Nexis

Im not sure , i think there just for show and number 2 it won't let mehno:


----------



## keber

Which camera do you use?


----------



## Ni3lS

Just got my flight confirmation back to the Netherlands.

It's going to suck, I'll be awake for 2 days. I'll be leaving Colorado around 11.00 am. And I'll arrive in Amsterdam the next day around 9.25 am.


----------



## Nexis

keber said:


> Which camera do you use?


A Kodak Digital , a user on here tried to take it off and he couldn't , My new Camera is a Sony Digital Webbie, but the time & data stamp doesn't appear on those. But those photos aren't as sharp as my Kodak.


----------



## Timon91

Ni3lS said:


> It's going to suck, I'll be awake for 2 days. I'll be leaving Colorado around 11.00 am. And I'll arrive in Amsterdam the next day around 9.25 am.


The way back to the Netherlands from Alaska was quite bad as well. We left Valdez, AK at 9 am, arrived in Anchorage, AK at 7 pm where our flight left at 1:30 am. We arrived in Seattle, WA at 6 am and left again at 8 am. At 3 pm we arrived in Atlanta GE, where our next flight left at 5 pm. The next morning we arrived in Amsterdam. That was pretty bad, especially since I hardly slept. I was quite tired that day


----------



## Ni3lS

Yea, I can't sleep in the plane. Little legroom and 9 hours. It almost killed me last summer.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Then drive back to Boston and fly the rest


----------



## Nexis

ChrisZwolle said:


> Then drive back to Boston and fly the rest


9hr Flight vs. 2 days cross country with a Blizzard about to Swamp the Mid Atlantic and Northeast :lol: thats not such a good idea.


----------



## keber

Nexis said:


> A Kodak Digital , a user on here tried to take it off and he couldn't ,


What model?



Ni3lS said:


> Yea, I can't sleep in the plane.


I can't sleep in a car, on a train very rarely, a bus is also very difficult. On a plane however there is no problem for me to fall asleep almost instantly. Once I even remembered plain accelerating on a runaway, but don't remember actual take-off.:lol:


----------



## Timon91

ChrisZwolle said:


> Then drive back to Boston and fly the rest


That's still 6,5 hour night flight


----------



## Ni3lS

Yea it doesn't matter how I do it, it's going to be sleepless and awful when I'm home. I'll be sleeping all day and awake all night.


----------



## Morsue

You're one unlucky bastard. I've been flying a lot the last few years and I have developed a nice ability to sleep on planes. My best tip is to always bring ear plugs. The thing that'll keep you awake is the constant noise from the engines. Still, it's not very comfortable and you won't arrive feeling relaxed, but it beats sitting awake looking out the window into the dark night.


----------



## Aan

Killed on roads statistics for Central Europe and plan of EU for 2010, Hungary is closest to reach -50% decrease against 2002, also Slovakia and Czechia have good chance, no way for Austria and Poland


----------



## Timon91

Ni3lS said:


> Yea it doesn't matter how I do it, it's going to be sleepless and awful when I'm home. I'll be sleeping all day and awake all night.


A tip: avoid sleeping once you get back to the Netherlands. I know that it's very tempting to go to bed once you get home, but for me it has often resulted in a lot of jetlag. The last two times I went to bed at a normal time (10:30 pm or so) and the next day I was fine and didn't have jetlag anymore.


----------



## Nexis

keber said:


> What model?
> 
> 
> I can't sleep in a car, on a train very rarely, a bus is also very difficult. On a plane however there is no problem for me to fall asleep almost instantly. Once I even remembered plain accelerating on a runaway, but don't remember actual take-off.:lol:


Its a Kodak EasyShare M863


----------



## Danielk2

This one??


----------



## keber

Did you try with this?
http://selfservice.kodak.com/servic...cusTopic=&solutionId=bdl_dcam_0108&isSrch=Yes


----------



## Nexis

keber said:


> Did you try with this?
> http://selfservice.kodak.com/servic...cusTopic=&solutionId=bdl_dcam_0108&isSrch=Yes


Well after Johnflint couldn't do it , i figured it couldn't be removed.


----------



## Danielk2

If JohnFlint can't, nobody can


----------



## Nexis

Danielk2 said:


> If JohnFlint can't, nobody can


I just tried , doesn't workhno:


----------



## snowman159

Nexis said:


> I just tried , doesn't workhno:


What do you mean by doesn't work? You switched the date stamp setting to OFF and the date is still showing on the pics? Or you didn't find the right menu item?

You press the Menu button, choose the Capture tab, and go down the list to the Date Stamp item. That's where you can turn it off.
(read for yourself: http://www.kodak.com/global/plugins...uals/urg00810/M763_M863_MD863_exUG_GLB_en.pdf)


----------



## H123Laci

Aan said:


> Killed on roads statistics for Central Europe and plan of EU for 2010, Hungary is closest to reach -50% decrease against 2002, also Slovakia and Czechia have good chance, no way for Austria and Poland



About 40% out of that 47% was achieved in the last 2 years in hungary... :nuts:


----------



## Nexis

snowman159 said:


> What do you mean by doesn't work? You switched the date stamp setting to OFF and the date is still showing on the pics? Or you didn't find the right menu item?
> 
> You press the Menu button, choose the Capture tab, and go down the list to the Date Stamp item. That's where you can turn it off.
> (read for yourself: http://www.kodak.com/global/plugins...uals/urg00810/M763_M863_MD863_exUG_GLB_en.pdf)


Haven't found the menu item yet hno:


----------



## keber

Strange, it should be in main Setup menu. If not, then consult your Kodak service man, that's why they exist.


----------



## Billpa

Lots of snow hitting America's Mid-Atlantic region today


----------



## Nexis

:lol:Those dam lying weather men , said we would get 1-5 inches now we won't , although next week we will get a Bigger Storm and it looks like a direct strike on NYC.

~Corey


----------



## Czas na Żywiec

Timon91 said:


> A tip: avoid sleeping once you get back to the Netherlands. I know that it's very tempting to go to bed once you get home, but for me it has often resulted in a lot of jetlag. The last two times I went to bed at a normal time (10:30 pm or so) and the next day I was fine and didn't have jetlag anymore.


I do the same thing. When I fly to Europe, I go about my day and go to bed at my normal time and no jet lag.  I feel fine the next day. Whereas when I fly to the North America, I'm always uncomfortable for at least a week.


----------



## Timon91

I also have that. Usually I stay awake all evening and go to bed around midnight when going to the US. That should make you get up later next morning. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't.


----------



## Czas na Żywiec

I think it has to do with the fact that it's light the whole flight when you fly west, whereas flying east you still get the day/night/day cycle, although rushed. For example last summer. I flew out of Krakow at noon and arrived in Chicago at 3 in the afternoon, although for me physically it was already 10. Of course I didn't go to bed at 3 but by the time it was about 8 or 9, I could not function anymore and passed out. Then I woke up at some ridiculous hour like 3am and couldn't fall back asleep. Everyday I would wake up a half hour or so later until I finally got readjusted to my normal 7am wake up time. :lol:


----------



## piotr71

I have never experienced such a long lasting flight in my life. Though I spent some time up north in Sweden. During summertime there is no night over there. Spending time not far from polar circle I had had real trouble to get asleep.
I was going bed about 1 am to be awaken at 5 again. 4 hours sleep does not sound too much but it was enough. I had been functioning in that way for over a month. I felt relaxed and ready to do my things. 
Then, September came up. Day after day sunlight was getting shorter and shorter, eventually, on the end of the month shrunk to just 6-7 hrs a day. In October day lasted no more than 5 hours. Since then I could not wake up any more. I was ready to fall asleep anytime and anywhere. I had no strength to move out of my bed not even saying about having a meal or so. I was pretty certain I reached the limit of my life.


----------



## Nexis

OMG

'Snowmageddon' Buries Mid-Atlantic
All NEC trains south of Philly are cancelled due to drifts as high as a 1-story house and fallen trees. All Transit is shut down , except the DC metro and Baltimore Subway , and SEPTA FSL.





















Just to give you a taste of what happen South of NYC and not to me hno:

~Corey


----------



## Timon91

piotr71 said:


> I have never experienced such a long lasting flight in my life. Though I spent some time up north in Sweden. During summertime there is no night over there. Spending time not far from polar circle I had had real trouble to get asleep.
> I was going bed about 1 am to be awaken at 5 again. 4 hours sleep does not sound too much but it was enough. I had been functioning in that way for over a month. I felt relaxed and ready to do my things.
> Then, September came up. Day after day sunlight was getting shorter and shorter, eventually, on the end of the month shrunk to just 6-7 hrs a day. In October day lasted no more than 5 hours. Since then I could not wake up any more. I was ready to fall asleep anytime and anywhere. I had no strength to move out of my bed not even saying about having a meal or so. I was pretty certain I reached the limit of my life.


When I was in Alaska in 2008, I've stayed in a hotel in Fairbanks, quite close to the Arctic Circle. Even though it was in the beginning of August, the sun wouldn't set until 11 pm. After that, it would still be light for a few hours (dim). At 5:30 the sun would rise again. Luckily the hotel had very good curtains :lol:

By the way, in Poland the sun seems to rise quite early compared to the Netherlands. Logical of course, since Poland is several hundred km east of here, but it's in the same time zone. I encountered this when I stayed overnight in Poland for the first time in my life, in 2007. I stayed in some cheap hotel in Zagan, where I got a room with these lovely curtains:










Of course the view out of my window was eastwards and it was in the beginning of August -> I woke up at 5:15 next morning :lol:


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Timon91 said:


> Of course the view out of my window was eastwards and it was in the beginning of August -> I woke up at 5:15 next morning :lol:


I've spent last semester at the student exchange in Denmark. It started in August, so we've experenced some summer sunrises at normal times (=5.30 AM ). I was astonished to find out that all my "western" flatmates (French, Italian and Spanish) had problems with early sunrises and couldn't sleep properly for nearly a month. I don't know anyone in Poland who has any problems with that, usually there are some curtains in houses but they don't block the sun completely.



> I stayed in some cheap hotel in Zagan, where I got a room with these lovely curtains:


Ah yes, typical Commie curtains  I hate them, their only purpose is to accumulate dust.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

As a comic relief: A picture I've taken in the summer. Alternative geography at Bangkok's airport.


----------



## Pansori

Fuzzy Llama said:


> As a comic relief: A picture I've taken in the summer. Alternative geography at Bangkok's airport.


lol, this one makes some sense :lol:


----------



## Czas na Żywiec

Timon91 said:


> By the way, in Poland the sun seems to rise quite early compared to the Netherlands. Logical of course, since Poland is several hundred km east of here, but it's in the same time zone. I encountered this when I stayed overnight in Poland for the first time in my life, in 2007.


On the other hand, I'm used to the early sunrises in Poland. So when I was in Paris this summer, I was shocked at the fact that it just starting to get dark at 11PM...(granted I was in the city June 20 - 22, so this was right at the summer solstice) I knew I was hundreds of km west so I should have expected it but I guess it doesn't really throw you for a loop until you experience it personally. I had walked and toured all day long so I decided to go back to my hostel and rest a little before going out for the night. So I lay in bed and kept waiting for it to getting dark and I remember just waiting and wondering if the sun was ever going to go down. :lol:


----------



## 3naranze

Italians are always wondering how others are able to sleep without shutters... and "in winter the bedroom isn't colder?"


----------



## Timon91

Possibly, but was there in summer. I hardly slept that night because the bed was 1,80 m long. And back then I was....1,82 m tall


----------



## Nexis

Wow look at this picture of the recent Blizzard that hit the Mid - Atlantic ,notice it doesn't reach the NYC that was becuz of dry air , but tonights storm is different moist air. 10-20 inches expected for my town by tomorrow night.










~Corey


----------



## x-type

just as forecasted - quite a snow became to fall here this evening!


----------



## H123Laci

Nexis said:


>



what are they doing?

Do not they know how to switch on the differential lock?


----------



## ChrisZwolle




----------



## x-type

isn't it ironic...


----------



## piotr71

Where in USA is that picture taken from? 
It is not even ironic, it seems to be sort of pathetic all this climate warming stuff. There is one of the strongest winter for years in Poland as well as in England. Hmm, unless extremely strong winter which happened this year, works as a warning, before next stage which will be warming.


----------



## CptSchmidt

ChrisZwolle said:


>


I love this :lol:.


----------



## x-type

piotr71 said:


> There is one of the strongest winter for years in Poland as well as in England.


are you sure for that? i think we have just forgotten how normal winter looks like. in Croatia we have quite a lot of snow, too, but this winter is so normal that didn't happen in last 10 years for sure! people here are making drama of this snow, but when i was a kid, winters like this were just average.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think the winters on the northern hemisphere are in particular snowy, but I don't of if it is really cold. I know January 2010 was almost 3 C colder than average in NL, but the north pole was warmer than usual. 

The U.S. East Coast sees record snowfall, and so are many areas of Europe where snow is less common (UK, Netherlands, Denmark) than in the Alps or Scandinavia.


----------



## x-type

dammit, i don't know how to put this video clip


----------



## Ayceman

Total whiteout in southern Romania at this moment. An important regional road was blocked, some drivers are still waiting rescue. It's a massive blizzard, wind speeds varying between 64-144 km/h (40-90 mph). A train got stuck because there's a snow drift more than 1m tall on the tracks. The motorways aren't doing much better, being mostly in open plains where the snow is drifting all over the place, visibility no more than 10-15m even with the best xenon lights. Lucky it's midnight and traffic is pretty low.


----------



## Czas na Żywiec

Chicago got dumped on yesterday as well. The snowstorm finally moved on (towards the east coast) but not without leaving its mark. When I walked out to my car this morning to go to work, I was almost knee deep in snow. :lol: So much fun digging out of that.


----------



## Timon91

We had a little bit of snow here today (2 cm )


----------



## Nexis

My town Got 10 inches and another 7 is expected by midnight. I will upload my pictures tomorrow.


----------



## Capt.Vimes

Well, it's called Global Watming, not local warming, so it can be colder in one place and warmer in another. Like Vancouver.


----------



## CptSchmidt

Capt.Vimes said:


> Well, it's called Global Watming, not local warming, so it can be colder in one place and warmer in another. Like Vancouver.


Vancouver rarely gets a lot of snow anyway. It's northern BC that gets the snow.


----------



## Capt.Vimes

I don't know about snow, but I read that it's warmer than usual for this time of the year.


----------



## Nexis

Capt.Vimes said:


> I don't know about snow, but I read that it's warmer than usual for this time of the year.


Our latest storm stalled and feed over the warm Atlantic which made us get more snow and it took a full day to leave , in fact it just ended a few hrs ago. Now the winds form the back side of this storm will come.


----------



## keber

All write about 1,5 meter of snow blanket (about 55 inch) in Washington D.C., but all pictures that I see them on the internet don't show more than about 50 cm of snow (about the same as here in Slovenia). Where is all that snow?


----------



## Ayceman

The warm front that caused the last snow storm in Romania means that the snow has partially melted, so I had to do a lot of puddle dodging.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

It has snowed in London in the past few days very very little, no accumulation.


----------



## Nexis

Heres what i got it was really 8inches, instead what i originally measured.

Yesterday during the height of the snow.



















Today , thanx to the Great plow drivers in my town , my street was clean when i woke up this morning.










Another storm is coming next week

~Corey


----------



## DanielFigFoz

We don't even have snow ploughs here :lol:


----------



## Nexis

DanielFigFoz said:


> We don't even have snow ploughs here :lol:


Alot of Voluntaries did it all night long , on the Emergency route streets in my town and my disrect had school today :lol:


----------



## CptSchmidt

Don't forget to shovel off your roofs if you've got another storm coming. Sometimes too much snow can cause a cave in, and then you're royally screwed.


----------



## keber

It doesn't look much snow (about 20-25 cm). I think shovelling on the roof is unimportant here. Here some roofs already gathered around 3/4 m of snow and no one even considers doing such dangerous work.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The ultra-fast internet at work (uche)...


----------



## Danielk2

Mine's a little faster


----------



## Timon91

At home:



At university:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Interesting statistics;

one way:

In the United States, the average commute distance is 26 km, and takes 26 minutes.
In the Netherlands, the average commute distance is 18 km, and takes 28 minutes.

Trying to find some explanation; 

due to the suburban nature of the U.S., commuting distances are longer. The quest for affordable housing increases this distance in some areas of the U.S. (specifically west coast). 

It is remarkable though, that the Dutch average commute distance is significantly shorter, while the commuting time is slightly longer. This is partially because of cycling, which has a low average speed, and a higher usage of trains. The average one-way train journey in 2002 was 67 minutes and 45 minutes for a bus.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

ChrisZwolle said:


> The ultra-fast internet at work (uche)...


My home internet connection:


----------



## x-type

is it allways like that at work?


----------



## keber

At home:


At work I have 80/20 Mbps.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Apart from a few local fiber-optic networks, I don't think anything over 80 mpbs is even offered in the Netherlands from the regular providers. Between 10 and 20 mpbs is most common.


----------



## piotr71

Look at this!
T-mobile, mobile internet, slowest connection ever!
Only good thing about this is an opportunity to use it far from home, for instance in a vehicle.










Some short period of time later.


----------



## Czas na Żywiec

This is from work. I'm honestly surprised it's as low as it is because it seems like the internet is pretty damn fast whenever I use it. :dunno:


----------



## 3naranze

At home
[/url]


----------



## Nexis

CptSchmidt said:


> Don't forget to shovel off your roofs if you've got another storm coming. Sometimes too much snow can cause a cave in, and then you're royally screwed.


The Majority of the snow usually melts , if you give a few days of sun with the combination of the heat rising out through your roof.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Half melted snow is much heavier, thus a much bigger threat to your roof than dry snow.

I was in Bayern, Germany in 2005 where as much as 4 meters of snow was accumulated, and the army was called in to clear roofs because several houses had collapsed roofs.


----------



## Pansori

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apart from a few local fiber-optic networks, I don't think anything over 80 mpbs is even offered in the Netherlands from the regular providers. Between 10 and 20 mpbs is most common.


In Lithuania at least a few companies are already offering 200Mb/s (some say they could do 1Gb/s but there is no demand for that atm) covering most of the larger cities' population. Most would offer 50-100Mb/s in a standard package.

In UK a standard package would be 10Mb/s... or 20Mb/s if you're ready to go for an "advanced" package and are among the lucky ones where fiber cables cover your area. BT recently anounced introduction of 40Mb/s fiber-optic broadband though.


----------



## Pansori

And here is my result (Virgin Broadband, UK)

I have a 10Mb/s "fiber optic" service (which is only fiber to the hub station, not to my house as it normally should be).

It does actually work at 10Mb/s ... but only for the downlink. Uplink is limited to 512Kb/s... welcome to the 90's (and forget about uploading your road videos to Youtube)


----------



## Czas na Żywiec

And home:










Not much of a difference I'm afraid


----------



## Nexis

ChrisZwolle said:


> Interesting statistics;
> 
> one way:
> 
> In the United States, the average commute distance is 26 km, and takes 26 minutes.
> In the Netherlands, the average commute distance is 18 km, and takes 28 minutes.
> 
> Trying to find some explanation;
> 
> due to the suburban nature of the U.S., commuting distances are longer. The quest for affordable housing increases this distance in some areas of the U.S. (specifically west coast).
> 
> It is remarkable though, that the Dutch average commute distance is significantly shorter, while the commuting time is slightly longer. This is partially because of cycling, which has a low average speed, and a higher usage of trains. The average one-way train journey in 2002 was 67 minutes and 45 minutes for a bus.


Us Northeaster's are starting to turn European , cities are building bike lanes , and more Rail and more Euroish styles of Housing LOL


----------



## CptSchmidt




----------



## TheCat

We in Canada tend to pay more to get less when it comes to telecom (especially for cellular services). However, rather than getting insanely fast download speeds, I'd like a higher upload speed


----------



## nenea_hartia

At home:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

crazy people in my street (Carnaval):


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> Half melted snow is much heavier, thus a much bigger threat to your roof than dry snow.


Oh really? Not in Nexis case.


----------



## Nexis

keber said:


> Oh really? Not in Nexis case.


It was only 9 inches , usually the combination of the Chimney , Sun and Heat rising up will melt in 4-7 days.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A little chemical plant near Marl, Germany.










area: 6.5 km²


----------



## Timon91

The Škoda plant in Mlada Boleslav, CZ, is also huge: see it on Google Maps. I've been there in 2007.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

ChrisZwolle said:


> A little chemical plant near Marl, Germany.
> 
> 
> area: 6.5 km²


The City of London is 2 square kilometres!


----------



## seem

ChrisZwolle said:


> crazy people in my street (Carnaval):


Chris, you have realy nice car. In fact, I love Golf! But where are stars of EU and motorway picture in the middle? 

By the way, yesterday I had lock-on in snow with Golt for 2 hours. :lol:



Timon91 said:


> The Škoda plant in Mlada Boleslav, CZ, is also huge: see it on Google Maps. I've been there in 2007.


It looks like one of the Baťa`s cities. I have never been there, but many times in Prague. :nuts:


----------



## Morsue

seem said:


> Chris, you have realy nice car. In fact, I love Golf! But where are stars of EU and motorway picture in the middle?
> 
> By the way, yesterday I had lock-on in snow with Golt for 2 hours. :lol:


That's not his car, from following this forum I've learnt that Chris likes it French


----------



## Aan




----------



## Czas na Żywiec

Morsue said:


> That's not his car, from following this forum I've learnt that Chris likes it French


I seem to recall a thread where he showed us a picture of his car but I can't for the life of me remember where it was. Or the make of the car. All I remember was that it's white and it's a small van type thing because that way he avoided paying the astronomically high tax rate for a regular sedan/small car. Unless I'm confusing him with someone else. :lol:


----------



## Pansori

I have always been saying that there should be separate driver-training schemes for women. Or better, that women should be banned from driving motor vehicles whatsoever. :bash::banana:


----------



## Czas na Żywiec

^^






You don't need to know Polish to understand this guy's frustration.


----------



## Pansori

^^
4:27 "kurrrrrrrwa"


----------



## CptSchmidt

Speaking of which... what kind of car do you people drive? 

I've got an old one, but I look after it well. I've got a '94 Volvo 940 Wagon. <3

http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/2324/dscf1797.jpg










This is the photo of the driver's console. I love the way older cars made consoles; I hate the new cylinder style that surrounds metres and gauges. It seems like VW and Volvo are both sticking to the flat-panel display, though, which I like. Note the gas gauge on the left as saying empty; I never bothered to fix it after buying it because it's a needless cost. I can get about 650km to a tank, I never let it go more than 500 before filling it. I use my mileage counter as my gas gauge :lol:. It works just as well.



















Being a wagon fan, though, if I could have any car in the world right now it would probably be the VW 2010 Golf wagon. Although I really do like the regular 2010 Golf or 4 door GTI. Alas, I can't afford any of them right now...


----------



## Czas na Żywiec

my ride 










and in backup situations


----------



## Timon91

^^We once had a rental with Illinois plate. It was a tiny Chevrolet Aveo which we rented in Spokane, WA 



Czas na Żywiec;51862641 said:


> I seem to recall a thread where he showed us a picture of his car but I can't for the life of me remember where it was. Or the make of the car. All I remember was that it's white and it's a small van type thing because that way he avoided paying the astronomically high tax rate for a regular sedan/small car. Unless I'm confusing him with someone else. :lol:


Renault Kangoo


----------



## Aan

Pansori said:


> I have always been saying that there should be separate driver-training schemes for women. Or better, that women should be banned from driving motor vehicles whatsoever. :bash::banana:


well about ten-fifteen years ago has one of members of parliament serious proposal to forbid women using left lane / overtaking and same member had few years back small crash after drinking wine (2 promile), but nothing happened (imunity), here is video with that idiot but in slovak language


----------



## keber

Timon91 said:


> The Škoda plant in Mlada Boleslav, CZ, is also huge: see it on Google Maps. I've been there in 2007.


Smaller (about 2,0-2,5 km2), but very impressive sight (especially at night with 1000's of lights) is also Schwechat refinery close to Vienna, motorway A4 runs about 2,5 km directly beside.
http://maps.google.nl/maps?f=q&sour...8.141807,16.506529&spn=0.041294,0.109863&z=14


----------



## RipleyLV

Oil refinery in Bratislava has an impressive size and a lot of chimneys.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=lv&geocode=&q=bratislava,+slov%C4%81kija&sll=48.148376,17.10731&sspn=0.425145,0.877533&g=bratislava,+slovakija&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Bratislava,+Slov%C4%81kija&ll=48.118262,17.178583&spn=0.026587,0.054846&t=h&z=14


----------



## x-type

also Constanţa, Romania has giant refinery, about 2,5 km2


----------



## keber

Which are interesting "industrial" motorways - means they run through or right beside large industries? I would guess going through Rotterdam port must be pretty interesting?


----------



## piotr71

Unbelievable! It is massive! There must be an internal communication system there. Are there buses going in? 

I remember buses going around one of the Polish bigger chemical factory in Oswiecim. Though, it was no more than 5kms to complete the route.


----------



## x-type

look at Google Earth that plant, hunderds of wagons for liquids (tanks) at railway terminals! impressive!


----------



## Czas na Żywiec

I didn't think this would fit in the International Border Crossings thread since there's no motorway or crossing here but I thought it was interesting nonetheless and wanted to share.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST-_1ICOrpo (Sorry, youtube won't let me embed it here so you have to watch it at the site)

Village divided by the "new" iron curtain between Belarus and Lithuania. Why couldn't they just compromise and just keep the whole village intact on one side? :dunno: Instead they stupidly divided it like this causing the residents to suffer. They could have just done a land swap, well give you so and so square meters in this village for the same exact amount over there.


----------



## Czas na Żywiec

After some searching around on Google Earth, I found it. It's located about 6km southeast of Salcininkai.


----------



## keber

Czas na Żywiec;52243683 said:


> They could have just done a land swap, well give you so and so square meters in this village for the same exact amount over there.


Politics doesn't work that way.


----------



## RawLee

We have a lot of such settlements.


----------



## BND

^^ Like the village of Szelmenc, now Veľké Slemence in Slovakia and Mali Selmenci in Ukraine. The village, still mostly inhabited by Hungarians belonged to Hungary until 1920, then to Czechslovakia until 1938, then to Hungary again. In 1946 the new Czechslovakian-Soviet Union border cut the village in two halves (actually 2/3-1/3). The house which lied on the border was demolished, and a 6m high wall was built, separating families and friends. Even shouting through the border was forbidden... A pedestrian border crossing was opened in 2005, however the border crossing procedure is still long and difficult. 










Some pics from 2003, before the border crossing was established:

Looking at Ukraine:



























House on the border of Ukraine:









Guard tower:









Looking back to Slovakia:









(from http://medvegyu.organic.hu)

A Székely gate was built on the border, cut in two, one half located on the Slovakian and the other half on the Ukrainian side. Pics of the crossing:














































There is a poem on the gate:

"From one Szelmenc became two, should be unified by the Creator
God bless with peace and keep us together,
our hope remains, and will join together what torn apart,
gate wings of the two Szelmenc closes our villages together"​
(from wikipedia)


----------



## Czas na Żywiec

^^ I love the whole idea of the gate being split in two and having them place the two halves in each country. 

I realize now that the video I found is nothing unusual and there are dozens of examples across Europe. But I guess seeing a video about it just sparked my interest.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

We're linked on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadgeek


----------



## Qwert

ChrisZwolle said:


> We're linked on Wikipedia:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadgeek


Even Radi is mentioned:


> Road enthusiasts may also have a comprehensive interest in a single road...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There was a weird accident in my city yesterday.

A regular full-size truck had a breakdown, and another truck pulling a large excavator was trying to bypass it, but had to go on the curb, causing the excavator to slide off the flatbed, against the truck with the breakdown, blocking all traffic.

An investigation found out the truck-excavator combination exceeded the maximum weight by no less than 82%.


----------



## Nexis

I took these photos a few minutes ago , were expecting 12-16 inches by tomorrow evening :banana:



















~Corey


----------



## Ayceman

Winter's over in Romania, but we've been experiencing heavy flooding the past 1-2 weeks. ^^


----------



## Ni3lS

ChrisZwolle said:


> We're linked on Wikipedia:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadgeek


The 'Roadgeek behavior' part is the best part haha. Hilarious.


----------



## uwhuskies

BND said:


> ^^ Like the village of Szelmenc, now Veľké Slemence in Slovakia and Mali Selmenci in Ukraine. The village, still mostly inhabited by Hungarians belonged to Hungary until 1920, then to Czechslovakia until 1938, then to Hungary again. In 1946 the new Czechslovakian-Soviet Union border cut the village in two halves (actually 2/3-1/3). The house which lied on the border was demolished, and a 6m high wall was built, separating families and friends. Even shouting through the border was forbidden... A pedestrian border crossing was opened in 2005, however the border crossing procedure is still long and difficult.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Some pics from 2003, before the border crossing was established:
> 
> Looking at Ukraine:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> House on the border of Ukraine:
> 
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> Guard tower:
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> Looking back to Slovakia:
> 
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> 
> (from http://medvegyu.organic.hu)
> 
> A Székely gate was built on the border, cut in two, one half located on the Slovakian and the other half on the Ukrainian side. Pics of the crossing:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> 
> There is a poem on the gate:
> 
> "From one Szelmenc became two, should be unified by the Creator
> God bless with peace and keep us together,
> our hope remains, and will join together what torn apart,
> gate wings of the two Szelmenc closes our villages together"​
> (from wikipedia)


ok, with the risk of being labelled a hypocrit...I am so freaking tired of people straying of the thread's subject. This thread indicates that it supposed to be Roadside rest areas.

Aside from this batch of photos and a few others, there tends to be a lot of fluff and crap about internet speeds and weather. What the hell does internet speeds have to do with rest stops! More pictures and less bu**sh*t postings. 

Sorry, but i needed to get this off my chest because it really ticks me off. I dont have 3 hours to look at hundreds of pages of garbage commentary. if you don't have a picture to add or at the very least talk about rest stops then dont post! Yeah, I am sort of a hypocrite here but someone had to say this now because the last 5 pages have been total garbage!


----------



## panda80

The name of this thread, roadside rest area, is a metaphoric one, meaning here we can talk about almost everything.


----------



## x-type

at least he could know that quoting post with 12 images is very rude and unacceptable


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This winter was particularly snowy in the Netherlands. Normally there are 13 days with snow cover, this winter totaled up to 55 days with snow cover.  It was the snowiest winter in at least 3 decades and the coldest in 13 years.


----------



## Cicerón

I didn't know where to post this. Old Spanish signage, used before the 70's.


----------



## Nexis

Now we hit 14 inches on my lawn.



















The Storm is stalled , becuz of a Blocking High near Nova Scotia , so the storm will dump another 12 inches before its Done on Sunday. Also Driving Bans and restrictions across the Eastern PA , Northwestern Jersey , New York State & parts of Long Island. If you get caught you get a fine a points on your license. Unless its for a medical emergency or a family emergency. Alot of Interstates in Eastern PA & New York are closed and Railways are running on 10-20 delays.


----------



## keber

People look very calm. Here there were some hefty fights with security personnel at some Lidl or Hofer (Aldi) openings.


----------



## siamu maharaj

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yeah, this has been known since the 1990's when hands-free devices became common. The main problem is really not holding a cell phone (I always drive with one hand on the wheel), but having that conversation. Of course texting is even more distracting.
> 
> There's a whole bunch of things on a list that is distracting while driving. Eating, nose-picking, drinking, changing CD's, listen to a radio show, singing, taking pics, shaving, reading the paper, smoking, or any of these combined.


It is something that I've always had a big disagreement with - is it the talking or holding the phone that's distracting. It's definitely talking. I mean, people talk with the other pasengers all the time. It doesn't seem to slow anyone (or drive erratically) down or anything. I usually am on my bluetooth all the way to home from work. Never ever has it distracted me in the slightest. But if I hold my phone, it slows me down EVEN IF I'M NOT SPEAKING OR LISTENING. And this is coming from someone who always uses one hand on the steering wheel. Interestingly, if I'm busy doing something else with my hands (sometimes taking off both the hands off of the steering wheel and using my legs to steer), it doesn't at all affect my driving.


----------



## siamu maharaj

BTW, what I really mean by slowing down (in my case) is that I can't do my usual driving. Like in here, you change lanes to overtake on average around 15 times a minute, maybe even more. If I'm holding a phone, that goes down to maybe 4-5 times. But if I'm on my bluetooth handsfree, I do my usual driving.


----------



## Nexis

Are the Sporting Mom's of Europe, just as aggressive as the Sporting Mom's of the US?:lol:


----------



## kato2k8

x-type said:


> so i thought that BASF could have the largest complex of chemical industry in the world


There's supposedly one in Texas that's bigger in area, but that one's mostly oil storage.



piotr71 said:


> Unbelievable! It is massive! There must be an internal communication system there. Are there buses going in?


The main method to get around the plant is by bicycle. The company has some 13,500 bicycles placed throughout around the plant, which the employees can use to get around. This is effectively also safer, since you can drive into areas with those where you don't want to bring a combustion engine for safety reasons.

The plant forms a large cone reaching into the city from the north. The eastern border of this section is the Rhine river, the western border is a large street with two tram lines (not mixed with road traffic). These tram lines service stops at 7 entries into the plant, from south to north: Hemshofstraße (located next to plant HQ), "BASF Gate 1+2", AWETA (company located on plant), "BASF Gate 3", "BASF Gate 5", "BASF Gate 11", "BASF Q920".

In addition there are two public bus lines that service "BASF Gate 12", "BASF Gate 7" and "BASF South" (railway station, see below). Another bus line also stops outside Gate 1+2 and Gate 3.
There are supposedly some other (internal) bus connections, but BASF doesn't publicize those.

During the peak hours (shift changes), there are railway lines with DMUs servicing _inside_ the plant. The plant has three passenger railway stations (BASF South, BASF Central, BASF North), which are connected to Ludwigshafen Central Station by a 600m tunnel under the city. The passenger railway stations are located in the eastern part of the plant, the western part can be reached more quickly through the above tram lines.


----------



## piotr71

It's worth to be patient to get such exact and full answer.


----------



## Aan

Slovakia is not yet 1st in Europe (world?) in number of manufactured cars per 1000 citizens










I'm suprised about Belgium, dunno what are they manufacturing.


----------



## tsov

Belgium has a Ford/Volvo plant in Genk and (still) an Opel plant in Antwerp (which is closing down due to the GM-problems). I don't know wheter there are more plants in Belgium, actually. I know that some ten years ago there was a Renault plant in Vilvoorde, but that's closed now.


----------



## nenea_hartia

Excepting the Renault plant in Piteşti, Romania has a Ford plant in Craiova, but it is still under modernization. It is set to start producing cars this year (if the financial crisis will allow it), so Romania will probably increase its number of units produced every year.


----------



## Mateusz

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apparantly, it was a new shop, and they had some real discount of electronics. The whole area was gridlocked, angry soccer moms who couldn't bring their kids to school.


Somrthing like discount quality DVD player for 20 euros and so on ?


----------



## da_scotty

yep,, and if there is something the dutch cant resist,, its bargains,, If you want to profit from these bargains, you have to be there at opening time after the first day the new discount folder was issued.. and thats why you get pictures like Chris's


----------



## kato2k8

piotr71 said:


> It's worth to be patient to get such exact and full answer.


Btw, one can see the BASF plant quite nicely when driving on the A6 and looking south when crossing the Rhine just north of the plant. Everything till the horizon on the western bank of the River is BASF pretty much.

The major downside of BASF is that they've already managed to blow up the entire plant *twice* - and the two residential areas next to it along with the plant. Well, and the fact that it sometimes "snows" in June in Ludwigshafen :lol:


----------



## piotr71

I had to get blind for a short period of time driving there. How could I miss this plant. Last year I was driving on A6 from the west end to the east one. hno:

Anyway, I really appreciate your explanation. :cheers:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I went on a little roadtrip with Timon. We drove N35 towards Almelo, then A35/A1 towards the German border, toured the truck parkings which were significantly overloaded, then German A30 and A31 to Ochtrup. We checked out the B54 construction near Steinfurt, then took the back road into Enschede, toured the Roombeek neighborhood (which was blasted away in 2000. We searched for a statue of Lenin, but couldn't find it. I dropped him off at the Enschede railway station and then drove back to Zwolle.

Which brings this trip to 270 kilometers, the weekend total to 450 kilometers and the 8-day total to 1020 km.


----------



## Nexis

My state and the Region are a mess after a strong Noreaster blew through last night. With winds up to 70mph , power is out to millions and they are telling us it won't be back to Tuesday. The Roar of generators can be heard through out the neighborhood. Traffic Lights are out all over the place , but the trains still work. Bound Brook is under 6inches -4 feet of water and is completly evacuated. The Turnpike was shut down yesterday due to flooding and debris falling form an overpass UC. A crane collapsed in AC. Also one of the Regions largest malls lost power and had to be cleared out. I took so cool shots i'll upload them when i get my wifi signal back. The whole storm will be gone by tommorrow evening. Then a week of near summer temps. Utility company's form as far away as Ohio and Kentucky are coming.

Raritan Valley line @ Bound Brook and Flooding shots


----------



## Majestic

That's bad. Northeast is down on its luck lately when it comes to weather anomalies.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Sign mixup in Hattem, the Netherlands.










The left one was most likely turned around by someone.


----------



## x-type

what does that horizontal signalization mean? i've seen it only in NL


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You mean this?









It's a "woonerf", where the speed walking is advised (15 km/h). This was implemented a lot in the 1980's and early 1990's, but seems to have fallen in favor of the general 30 km/h speed limit zones now.


----------



## x-type

noo, i know that one. i mean this what looks like pedestrian crossing (on the road)


----------



## piotr71

Fuzzy Llama said:


> ^^
> Polish: Leżący policjant


Hmm? I thougt we called it "spiacy policjant" - "sleeping policeman", didn't we.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

^^ I've heard both names. I don't like them though, either is too long to be a useful colloquialism.


----------



## kato2k8

kato2k8 said:


> In addition there are two public bus lines that service "BASF Gate 12", "BASF Gate 7" and "BASF South" (railway station, see below). Another bus line also stops outside Gate 1+2 and Gate 3.
> There are supposedly some other (internal) bus connections, but BASF doesn't publicize those.


Since i gave such a comprehensive answer, i need to complete it too :lol:

Basically, we have one bus line coming in from the south (line 78); stops at "BASF South" and "BASF Gate 7". This bus line then continues on inside the plant with a stop in the center of the plant to terminate at "BASF Gate 12". Another bus line (line 88) comes from the north, enters the plant at "BASF Gate 12", and takes the reverse course to "BASF Gate 7".

Therefore, there's an internal bus connection through the plant between "BASF Gate 7" and "BASF Gate 12" with one middle stop running at something like 10- or 15-minute intervals.

The middle stop, "BASF Westendstraße", is located close to the "BASF North" railway station inside the plant. "BASF Gate 12" is the location of the main employee parking lot, bus line 88 from there connects on to the nearby tram line terminus. Bus line 78 exiting south only continues past gate 7 during the shift changes, and connects to the central railway station and downtown Ludwigshafen.

All connections inside the plant - bus and rail - are not public services. Plant security service generally checks all passengers for Employee IDs at the gates (or at "BASF South").


----------



## seem

x-type said:


> hehe we call them exactly the same (ležeći policajci)





RipleyLV said:


> I think they are called everywhere like that.


In Slovak language this is - "retardér" or in law - "spomaľovací prah".

orgin is word "retard", is latin word and means - 
_- cause to move or proceed slowly;delay or impede.
- A slowing down or hindering of progress; a delay_


----------



## Qwert

seem said:


> In Slovak language this is - "retardér" or in law - "spomaľovací prah".
> 
> orgin is word "retard", is latin word and means -
> _- cause to move or proceed slowly;delay or impede.
> - A slowing down or hindering of progress; a delay_


I call it "spomaľovač":dunno:. (Well, obviously I pronounce ľ as l.) I think it could be translated to English as a "retarder."


----------



## Aan

yeah, _spomalovac_ (decelerator), this is how I call it also and _retarder_ are the most common in Slovakia, but some people also use _leziaci policajt_ (lying policeman)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

How about this? Once you're off the asphalted road, to the sand road, the speed limit increases from 60 to 80 km/h.


----------



## seem

^^ :wtf:



Aan said:


> yeah, _spomalovac_ (decelerator), this is how I call it also and _retarder_ are the most common in Slovakia, but some people also use _leziaci policajt_ (lying policeman)


I`ve never heard it like _ležiaci policajt_ (lying policeman) in Slovakia. 



Qwert said:


> I call it "spomaľovač":dunno:. (Well, obviously I pronounce ľ as l.) I think it could be translated to English as a "retarder."


English for that is _in British English a speed hump, road hump or sleeping policeman; in New Zealand English a judder bar_. I didn`t know that.

Btw, I also don`t pronounce ľ as ľ.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Qwert said:


> (Well, obviously I pronounce ľ as l.)





seem said:


> Btw, I also don`t pronounce ľ as ľ.


Why not? Does the pronunciation of _ľ_ depend on region? Or maybe "spomaľovač" with [ľ] sound funny?


----------



## seem

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Why not? Does the pronunciation of _ľ_ depend on region? Or maybe "spomaľovač" with [ľ] sound funny?


Yes, it depend on region or if we want to be exact, it depends on accent. But in general, for people who don`t pronounce ľ as ľ, sometimes every single word sound funny.  

ľ is pronounce mainly in Central Slovakia (Stredné Slovensko). 

btw, we are slightly off topic. So I find some picture to be "on topic". 

_Topo*ľ*čany_ - bad junction

there is just one sign which indicate exit to Topoľčany and it is 2 km before exit :nuts:


----------



## Qwert

seem said:


> I`ve never heard it like _ležiaci policajt_ (lying policeman) in Slovakia.


I've never heard it too.



seem said:


> English for that is _in British English a speed hump, road hump or sleeping policeman; in New Zealand English a judder bar_. I didn`t know that.


I was looking for possibly as close translation as possible. "Spomaľovač" basically means "something what is slowing down" but, that's quite weird.



Fuzzy Llama said:


> Why not? Does the pronunciation of _ľ_ depend on region? Or maybe "spomaľovač" with [ľ] sound funny?


At least for me it doesn't sound funny, it just depends on the region. Ľ is common in Central and Eastern Slovakia, but you wouldn't hear it in the West. It's caused by the dialects. Western dialects don't have ľ. EDIT: seem was quicker.


----------



## Qwert

seem said:


> _Topo*ľ*čany_ - bad junction
> 
> there is just one sign which indicate exit to Topoľčany and it is 2 km before exit :nuts:
> http://www.sme.sk/cdata/3216522/28_KRIZOVATKA_TABULA_big.jpg
> 
> http://www.sme.sk/cdata/3216522/graf_krizovatka1_big.jpg


I don't get it. What's wrong with it? I've been there many times and I've never got lost:dunno:. BTW, in Topoľčany noone pronounce ľ.

Anyway if you want to get from this point (Nováky) to Topoľčany or Nitra it's better to ignore the signage continue on I/50 (towards Trenčín) and leave it Hradište, then take II/579 to Partizánske and then I/64 to Topoľčany or II/593 to Nitra. It's much better.


----------



## Marek.kvackaj

Sleeping policeman- spiaci policajt = that's way how we call here retarder in Slovakia


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## ChrisZwolle

ChrisZwolle said:


> I just recorded a Maybach 62 on video. These cars sell in excess of € 600,000!


I just found out there are only 13 Maybachs in all of the Netherlands.

From about 1:30 on video:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I got an 12V to 230V transformer, so I am not dependent on batteries anymore. It works with chargers, photo cameras, video cameras and my laptop.


----------



## bogdymol

What Renault do you drive? The interior is similar with my Clio.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's a Kangoo, commercial van.


----------



## TheCat

^^ Nice setup :cheers: I wish I had 2 power outputs though, so I could use one for the GPS (I guess I could get a splitter, but it may be too cumbersome). I'm probably gonna buy a Civic soon, but as far as I know it also only has 1 power output.

Speaking of equipment, can someone tell me which of these two cameras I should buy? 

1. Sony HDR-CX110 ($550)
2. Sanyo VPC-FH1 ($500)

The Sony has that new Exmor-R sensor, which supposedly works well at night. On the other hand, the Sanyo films at 60p, which is amazing, whereas the Sony only does 60i, and doesn't do progressive at all. However, I heard that the Sanyo produces pauses in the video whenever it finishes a 4GB file and creates another one (apparently it loses up to 20 seconds of video).

There are also some sample videos available on Youtube. The Sanyo does have pretty impressive quality.

Any suggestions?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

TheCat said:


> ^^ Nice setup :cheers: I wish I had 2 power outputs though, so I could use one for the GPS (I guess I could get a splitter, but it may be too cumbersome). I'm probably gonna buy a Civic soon, but as far as I know it also only has 1 power output.


You could buy a splitter, the car battery is usually strong enough to generate power for two small appliances, I mean, people put refrigerators in a caravan on a car battery every day, so I guess a GPS and a video camera would work as well. My video camera consumes only 1.8 watts.


----------



## seem

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's a Kangoo, commercial van.


I saw you a month ago near A8 autobahn in Bayern. 

_took from car_50 km from München and close to Rosenheim_ 

Btw, this car is probably Volkswagen Caddy  

_and this long queue of cars is waiting in the traffic jam, almost every single cas is going to Alps - direction A93 to Innsbruck _


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

kato2k8 said:


> In Germany it depends on the state whether it is illegal. Some states allow pitching a tent for a single overnight stay as long as it's not in a nature protection habitat or on private property without permission.


Do you have any source specifying which lands permit overnight stays?

I was looking for a comprehensive guide listing countries where you can sleep in forests (with intent to do so during my biking trips) and I've found squat. And the most annoying thing is that information found on the internet sometimes say completely opposite things, and for obvious reason it's impossible for me to look in the (for example) Latvian law code


----------



## snowman159

I think in most of Scandinavia it is allowed, but I think you have to keep a certain distance from houses.

And in the Alps above the tree line and out of sight no one is going to bother you either.


----------



## keber

snowman159 said:


> And in the Alps above the tree line and out of sight no one is going to bother you either.


Not true, if you are inside a national park.


----------



## snowman159

keber said:


> Not true, if you are inside a national park.


I didn't say it was legal, but it is tolerated as long as you don't start fires, litter, or play loud music, etc. - even in national parks. You have to stay above the treeline, though. In the forest or near farms it's a different story.


----------



## Danielk2

snowman159 said:


> I think in most of Scandinavia it is allowed, but I think you have to keep a certain distance from houses.


In Norway and Finland it is allowed, as long as you keep a certain distance from houses, and that nobody feels annoyed or offended that you do so.


----------



## Aan

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Do you have any source specifying which lands permit overnight stays?
> 
> I was looking for a comprehensive guide listing countries where you can sleep in forests (with intent to do so during my biking trips) and I've found squat. And the most annoying thing is that information found on the internet sometimes say completely opposite things, and for obvious reason it's impossible for me to look in the (for example) Latvian law code


it should be allowed in Slovakia (just be careful about bears, mates who were with me were afraid of sound of bear so we moved to camp, grr) and Czechia

the best forum for this question would be probably Lonely Planet's Thorntree

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/thread.jspa?threadID=1307933


----------



## piotr71

Danielk2 said:


> In Norway and Finland it is allowed, as long as you keep a certain distance from houses, and that nobody feels annoyed or offended that you do so.


Similar rules apply to Sweden. Very friendly country for travelers with tend.

I am not sure how it works in Spain now, but when I visited this sunny land about 15 years ago I had no problems at all to put my tend anywhere I wished to. So did many tourist practiced.


----------



## keber

snowman159 said:


> I didn't say it was legal, but it is tolerated as long as you don't start fires, litter, or play loud music, etc. - even in national parks.


Not in Slovenia. Camping in the wild in national park is not allowed and as I know it is also not tolerated (different story is, if they get you).


----------



## seem

^^ I mean camping in the national parks is forbidden in every single European state.


----------



## keber

I have that kind of tripod for my photo camera, so I can fold legs however I want.










But I don't know, how to fix it onto car dashboard to take road videos. How do you fix your camera to take road videos?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I use velcro. Tripods fall off the minute you hit a sharp turn, or you need to tape it to the dashboard.


----------



## Pansori

Guys, what about the basic "sucker" camera mounts? 

Like this one. They don't cost too much either. I'm planning to get one for my next trip to Lithuania where I'm thinking to do some serious road-filming


----------



## keber

Hmm, thinking about hanging my camera with folding tripod onto middle back-view mirror. Do you think that police could argue against that?


----------



## Danielk2

As long as it's not on the mirror itself, then i don't think there's any problem.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A picture for Verso (if he ever reads this forum)


----------



## panda80

Has anybody talked with Verso since his sudden dissapearence from H&A?


----------



## keber

Yes. :yes::hi:


----------



## x-type

he is active, i saw him few days ago at HR forum, but i still don't know why is he absent from this section


----------



## 3naranze

temperatures rising....








SS51 near Taibon agordino (BL)


----------



## nenea_hartia

^ Same stuff here:










National Road 57, near Danube/Serbian border.


----------



## snowman159

ChrisZwolle said:


> Funnily enough, I had dinner at the exact same McDonalds I used exactly a year ago (Sankt Ingbert, not far from Saarbrücken).


I just looked up St Ingbert. That's really funny, because I've been there too, twice.  

Actually, it's quite sad, when la cuisine francaise is only a few km away.


----------



## Danielk2

ChrisZwolle said:


> Funnily enough, I had dinner at the exact same McDonalds I used exactly a year ago (Sankt Ingbert, not far from Saarbrücken).


I think i can beat that. I had dinner on the same McD's somewhere between Berlin and Poland 3 times in a week (twice the same day)

1st day
On the way to Poland (lunch)
On the way home from Poland (dinner)

around a week later
On the way home from Poland (lunch)


----------



## seem

ChrisZwolle said:


> I originally wanted to take a route further south, but traffic congestion and a mis-estimate of mine caused me to take another east-west route.
> 
> I wanted to use A5 from Troyes to Langres, but as I lost over an hour in Maastricht and Liège due to severe backups, I decided to cut the trip somewhat shorter. I also mis-calculated the time it would take to cross the Ardennes from Liège to Reims. I thought it could be done in two hours (the entire route is 2x2) but it took somewhat more time, it was already around 2.30 pm when I arrived in Reims. So I arrived around 7 pm in the Pfälzerwald, where I found a nice campsite and I spent the night there.
> 
> It was cold, I had to scrape my car-windows this morning. Funnily enough, I had dinner at the exact same McDonalds I used exactly a year ago (Sankt Ingbert, not far from Saarbrücken).


nice 

and how many kilometers it was?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ about 1,500 kilometers.

Nice "advertising" of the Lorraine coal region


----------



## seem

^^ :lol:

In Slovakia are common just these brown and white signs. 

_like austrian one_










PS: that is not like a normal sign on a road. Normal signs are darker.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My car & tent. It turned out it was freezing the next morning, I had to scrape the windows :nuts:


----------



## seem

^^ Chris, nice license plate. 

It have to be very cold weather to freezing. Maybe not so nice to sleeping in the tent. Does it? :lol:


----------



## Ayceman

Air traffic:


----------



## x-type

^^
this thing (flightradar24.com) has became probably the most popular web page in last 2 days. is there soebody who never took a look of it?!
(btw there is the same thing for ships, but i won't tell you an address because i don't want it down as flightradar24 yesterday  )


----------



## Carldiff

www.shipais.com http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/


----------



## seem

^^ Works better than flightradar24.com. 

not falling down


----------



## x-type

Carldiff said:


> www.shipais.com http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/


:baeh3:

if it become overcrowded, i'll blaim you


----------



## PLH

kay:


----------



## x-type

wtf?


----------



## ufonut

:cheers:


----------



## RipleyLV

x-type said:


> wtf?


Poles...


----------



## Danielk2

Damn poles and their split-up speed signs :rant:

But seriously, is there a great story behind those signs??


----------



## Capt.Vimes

Hm, I wonder if the speed limit is 100 km/h where are they going to place the middle 0. But generally I like the idea.


----------



## piotr71

There would be several ways to put middle '0' somewhere, but I find them all funny.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

We're nearing 100,000 posts...


----------



## Timon91

TheCat said:


> I just wanted to make sure regarding the train, because I know how it applies to road traffic. I know about the UK too, I already got special declaration cards to fill out, and will have my passport ready.


I've been checked in trains crossing Schengen borders only a few times. Once they only wanted to see my ID, but when they saw that I was Dutch they checked the whole compartment and all my luggage, to make sure that I didn't have any drugs with me.


----------



## seem

^^ You are Dutch? 



> that I *was* Dutch


or you are not already


----------



## Pansori

I'm spending a couple of weeks in Lithuania and I have noticed an excessive amount of ****** on the road.

There is an ongoing scandal of paedophiles involved into one high-profile criminal case in Lithuania... it's not surprising, though, because, it seems, they don't even try to hide their identities and simply identify as "***" on their numberplates mg:

All pictures taken by me in Vilnius during the last few days

Turbo ***









Only a *** could drive such an old and rusty car hno:









What a *** one must be to drive such a crappy Fiat?









No doubt it's a ***









You might think it's an ordinary Toyota Corolla but beware because it may be a ***!









Now this must be a really high profile ***... this car costs over 100 000 Euros!












THE END


----------



## Timon91

@seem: This happened in the past, so I used past tense


----------



## Morsue

keber said:


> Although Norway, Iceland and Switzerland are not in Schengen, there is no passport control between them and Schengen countries. For an ordinary traveller, they are in Schengen too. So the correct map of Schengen Area is:


Wrong! Iceland and Norway are indeed part of Schengen, but not the EU. This is because the Nordic countries had a passport-free zone before Sweden, Denmark and Finland joined the Schengen zone so to keep this in place the other two Nordics decided to join as well.


----------



## keber

Morsue said:


> Wrong! Iceland and Norway are indeed part of Schengen, but not the EU.


And I said ... what? :?


----------



## nenea_hartia

You said that they are _not_ in the Schengen Agreement, but they are. Norway and Iceland are _de facto_ members of the Agreement since 2001, and Switzerland since 2008.


----------



## Pansori

What about Liechtenstein? I was facing _very_ tough border control on the Swiss-Liechtenstein and Liechtenstein-Austrian borders. They even built some ancient gates (without guards though) at one "checkpoint". :runaway:


----------



## nenea_hartia

Pansori said:


> What about Liechtenstein? I was facing _very_ tough border control on the Swiss-Liechtenstein and Liechtenstein-Austrian borders. They even built some ancient gates (without guards though) at one "checkpoint". :runaway:


Are you sure? Cause Switzerland and Liechtenstein form a customs union and two years ago, when I was traveling from Austria to Liechtenstein/Switzerland, it was a single checkpoint in Feldkirch, at the Austria-Liechtenstein border (with Swiss border officers controling cars), and no border control between Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
Anyway, there is no border control now. Technically, Switzerland being in Schengen it means Liechtenstein is in Schengen too.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are no physical borders between CH and FL... Only with A.


----------



## Nexis

I have a Question for Niels..
Since your still in Colorado are you going Storm Chase? Its Tornado season out there.


----------



## Czas na Żywiec

I was driving home today and took a detour because a train was passing by and I didn't feel like waiting. Well I always forget that I hate this detour and this is the reason.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...393,-87.725473&spn=0.000592,0.001717&t=h&z=20

SO annoying. What is the point of installing those if the stop signs are still up?! I thought the point of a roundabout was to eliminate stop signs. I thought at first that it was just temporary and they would eventually take the stop signs down, but they have been up for at least a year. And more and more of these mini roundabouts are popping up. I love roundabouts and like that they are actually doing this but by not removing the stop signs they are defeating the purpose!


----------



## metasmurf

Had a nice little drive today


----------



## snowman159

^^

E12 ?


----------



## metasmurf

snowman159 said:


> ^^
> 
> E12 ?


It is. How did you figure that out?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Location: Umeå

E4 is a better road, so E12 is the next best guess


----------



## JeremyCastle

The site Flightradar24.com is a great site. Any idea if anything similar exists for trains?  Also, I wonder why the planes for central/southern France and most of Spain aren't coming up?


----------



## Nexis

JeremyCastle said:


> The site Flightradar24.com is a great site. Any idea if anything similar exists for trains?  Also, I wonder why the planes for central/southern France and most of Spain aren't coming up?


Trains ? I think that might be asking to much , you can buy a Train Radio and listen in on the Conversations as long as your near the lines.


----------



## JeremyCastle

Yeah, I thought it might be a long shot. Just thought I'd ask anyway.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

You can find some TrainRadar-esque sites for some local networks.
For example here  you can track Copenhagen's S-Tog commuter trains.
(Yes, it is boring. But since you asked...  )


----------



## x-type

there is such a page for trains in Czech Republic, but i forgot an address


----------



## seem

^^

Here is Slovak page showing every train. There is also small map with trains in Cezch Republic, but just with Intercity, Eurocity, Euronight and Express trains. 

*slovak and cezch trains -* http://www.vlaky.net/servis/poloha.asp

_blank map_


----------



## JeremyCastle

Thanks everyone.


----------



## Ni3lS

Nexis said:


> I have a Question for Niels..
> Since your still in Colorado are you going Storm Chase? Its Tornado season out there.


Ya it's been quite stormy lately. It looks really awesome if you look down on the plains. The air is dark blue and black while it's only 3 pm in the afternoon. Tornado's won't be bugging me cuz Im quite far up the hill but down there in Kansas... Find some shelter ppl.


----------



## Nexis

Ni3lS said:


> Ya it's been quite stormy lately. It looks really awesome if you look down on the plains. The air is dark blue and black while it's only 3 pm in the afternoon. Tornado's won't be bugging me cuz Im quite far up the hill but down there in Kansas... Find some shelter ppl.


Tornadoes happen anywhere , even in the hills, there was a huge one last year in Colorado....


----------



## Timon91

This is the 100,000th post for the H&A subforum :cheers:


----------



## Nexis

Timon91 said:


> This is the 100,000th post for the H&A subforum :cheers:


102,000 post:cheers:


----------



## mapman:cz

Guys, one question, does anyone of you remember the photo that shows 4 generations of roads on one picture? (local road, major road, expressway, motorway) 
I guess it was from Spain or Portugal but after an hour of searching, I'm still not able to find it. Do you have any idea where it might be?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I think it was from Lisbon, try the Portuguese thread, i'll try and find it.


----------



## Czas na Żywiec

Nexis said:


> Tornadoes happen anywhere , even in the hills, there was a huge one last year in Colorado....


They're very rare in cities on the front range though (where the majority of the population lives). I lived in Boulder for 5 years and the closest tornados ever got to us were East Aurora/DIA.


----------



## mapman:cz

Bingo!









BTW, Daniel, thanks for helping me searching... I just realized there are only three roads, not 4 :-o


----------



## TheCat

I have another question regarding my trip - what is the best way to independently explore Rotterdam and The Hague (in one day) while staying in Amsterdam? I'd like to take that boat around the Rotterdam harbour (Spido) and then look a bit at the "experimental" architecture there (that's what I read), before going to The Hague to check out the government and UN buildings.

Is it best to take the train from Amsterdam, or a bus?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Definitely use the train. It'll get you to any larger city, as the train network is very dense. especially in western and central Netherlands.


----------



## Timon91

Yes, the train is the best option to go there. There are several trains per hour from Amsterdam to Rotterdam (via The Hague). It takes about 1h10 to get there. There is also a fast train directly from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, which takes about 40 mins, but it's also very expensive. A normal return ticket from Amsterdam to Rotterdam costs 25 euro's, but you can get on and get off at any station in between (like The Hague) as long as you stay on your main route. You can also check out the website of the Dutch Railways. 

By the way, are you also going to Enschede?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Why would anybody go to that god-forsaken town?


----------



## Timon91

It's larger than Zwolle, Chris


----------



## nenea_hartia

An interesting link: Paris panorama in 26 gigapixels


----------



## Cicerón

mapman:cz said:


> Bingo!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> BTW, Daniel, thanks for helping me searching... I just realized there are only three roads, not 4 :-o


:lol:

Approximate location: link


----------



## Nexis

I finally got the date stamp of my Camera , it was a unique button that didn't look like a stamp.....it took my friend 7 mins before she could figure it out.:lol:


----------



## seem

Timon91 said:


> Yes, the train is the best option to go there. There are several trains per hour from Amsterdam to Rotterdam (via The Hague). It takes about 1h10 to get there. There is also a fast train directly from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, which takes about 40 mins, but it's also very expensive. A normal return ticket from Amsterdam to Rotterdam costs 25 euro's, but you can get on and get off at any station in between (like The Hague) as long as you stay on your main route. You can also check out the website of the Dutch Railways.
> 
> By the way, are you also going to Enschede?


Are there also some cheaper tickets for students?

I am probably going to The Hague in June. I am thinking about some trips to Amsterdam or Rotterdam.


----------



## Ni3lS

450 euro's is pretty cheap...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm surprised by the long theory lessons though. In the Netherlands theory lessons are optional, just as long as you'll pass the theory exam.


----------



## seem

Rebasepoiss said:


> During that time *you cannot drive faster than 90km/h* and you also have to attend a slippery-surface driving course(6 x 45min of theory, 8 x 25 min of practice).



How it is possible to drive a car on a motorway at 90 km/h?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

seem said:


> How it is possible to drive a car on a motorway at 90 km/h?


We have no motorways and only around 90km of dual carriageways in Estonia so ...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm surprised by the long theory lessons though. In the Netherlands theory lessons are optional, just as long as you'll pass the theory exam.


I didn't have to take so many theory lessons, though. But that was because my course was partly internet-based. I had to do tests at eSchool regularly to be allowed to make the final test. We have 4 exams all together: a theory exam and a driving exam both at the driving school and at the 
Estonian Motor Vehicle Registration Centre(ARK).


----------



## seem

Rebasepoiss said:


> We have no motorways and only around 90km of dual carriageways in Estonia so ...


You are always typing about motorways in your thread. Anyway, that Estonian thread is called *[EST] Highways & Motorways in Estonia | Eesti teed*. I thought you have many kilometres of motorways. 

If in Estonia you cannot drive faster than 90km/h what`s the speed limit? I am wondering cos you don`t have a motorways. In Slovakia there is a speed limit 130 km/h on a motorways and 90 km/h on the other roads out of a city. 

_btw, are there junction like on a motorways on your dual carriageways?_


----------



## Jeroen669

Back from a weekendtrip to Sauerland (Germany) and Luxemburg.  This was my first camping experience since I was a little child, but I loved it. It was also the first time I drove in luxemburg, gotta love driving there.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm surprised by the long theory lessons though. In the Netherlands theory lessons are optional, just as long as you'll pass the theory exam.


we have 30x45min theory, 9x45min first aid lessons and 35x60min driving (of which 5 hours at training lot)


----------



## Rebasepoiss

seem said:


> You are always typing about motorways in your thread. Anyway, that Estonian thread is called *[EST] Highways & Motorways in Estonia | Eesti teed*. I thought you have many kilometres of motorways.
> 
> If in Estonia you cannot drive faster than 90km/h what`s the speed limit? I am wondering cos you don`t have a motorways. In Slovakia there is a speed limit 130 km/h on a motorways and 90 km/h on the other roads out of a city.
> 
> _btw, are there junction like on a motorways on your dual carriageways?_


I didn't create the thread and thus didn't write the title for the thread either. .

Older dual carriageways sometimes have U-turns and at-grade junctions but newly built ones are with limited-access and grade-separated junctions. The speed limit on dual carriageways is 110km/h during the summer but only 90km/h during the rest of the year. Other roads generally have a speed limit of 90km/h which on better roads is increased to 100km/h for the summertime.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Another cow crossing (plus the farmer's wife who - from the looks of it - just ate an entire cow  )


----------



## TheCat

Just came back from Europe a few hours ago!


----------



## seem

How are you feeling about Europe now? 

pleas name the places where you was..


----------



## TheCat

^^ I've been to:
Amsterdam
-Rotterdam
-The Hague
Berlin
Munich
London
-Windsor and Stonehenge
Paris
-Brussels

(The indented locations were visited in a single day without overnight stay)

The trip was very nice - we saw most of the "famous" places and landmarks and got a taste of Europe. It is certainly a very interesting place to visit, but I still prefer to live in Canada, for various reasons .

Out of all the places, I really liked NL. It seemed to me like a better place to live (as opposed to just being a tourist) compared to the other countries I visited. I was also very impressed by the fluency of what seemed to be the entire population in the English language. Also, people were very helpful and often asked us whether we needed directions. The only negative was that we were there during the garbage strike in Amsterdam, so garbage cans everywhere were overflowing. Also, I almost got killed by bicycles on at least several occasions .

Germany was pretty nice. Berlin felt more like a large modern city with huge historic monuments, whereas Munich had more of the ancient-looking streets and traditional neighbourhoods. Due to my Russian Jewish heritage, the history was very interesting to me.

I liked London a lot too. It was more reminiscent of home (except for the driving on the wrong side - which confused me sometimes when crossing the street ), and I really enjoyed walking along the Thames river and getting nice views from the bridges. The Tube was pretty nice as well - a very clean and efficient system (although the trains are much smaller than what I am used to).

Paris is of course, Paris . Lots of history, really impressive architecture, and there is definitely a special atmosphere. However, it was not my favourite. I found the city overall to be somewhat dirty, and especially the subway, while being very efficient, is quite rundown. Also, communicating using English was definitely the hardest in Paris.

But of course, it's hard to say from just a few days in each city. Overall I had an enjoyable stay, and will come again (and probably visit the other European countries I didn't get a chance to visit).


----------



## Jeroen669

TheCat said:


> Out of all the places, I really liked NL. It seemed to me like a better place to live (as opposed to just being a tourist) compared to the other countries I visited.


You might think different if you'd live here.  Amsterdam isn't that representative for our country as a whole, imo. 

About the knowledge of English: children here are getting English classes already at the age of +- 10 years old. Also, loads of English words are integrated in our language (sometimes a bit too much, I think) and we seem to be one of the rare countries that always use subtitles instead of synchronization on foreign movies/news/documantaries etc.


----------



## seem

Jeroen669 said:


> You might think different if you'd live here.  Amsterdam isn't that representative for our country as a whole, imo.
> 
> About the knowledge of English: children here are getting English classes already at the age of +- 10 years old. Also, loads of English words are integrated (sometimes a bit too much, I think) and we seem to be one of the rare countries that always use subtitles instead of synchronization on foreign movies/news/documantaries etc.


also in Norway 

I like Polish films with one speaking voice all the time.


----------



## MAG

ChrisZwolle said:


> ... plus the farmer's wife who - from the looks of it - just ate an entire cow


Phew, what an amazing derrière! 
It's mesmerising and gives me narcolepsy!

But what is that darker patch in the middle?




seem said:


> ... I like Polish films with one speaking voice all the time.


Nah, original version with subtitles is always best, followed by proper professional dubbing. 
Having a lector doing real-time translation is frustrating at times.


.


----------



## Pansori

Guys a quick question. A few days back I had a situation in London. It all happened in the city during the busy lunchtime.

I was walking on a pedestrian sidewalk and crossed some small street on my way. At the same time there was a car turning to that little street from the main street. 

Who has the right of way? Of course I could have just stopped and let the car go but I was really on a hurry and just made my way without waiting for the car to pass or stop and let me go first. What the driver did, he signalled with a horn angrily without even intending to slow down and then did it again a few times after I was on the other side of the little street making my way further on the sidewalk away from the scene. I turned around and angrily shouted "**** you ****" clearly showing my midle finger to him (it was a Toyota prius, so this made me loose even more respect to him ). Who was right in this kind of situation according to the British traffic rules?

A quick painting of the situation


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ The pedestrian has right-of-way. It continues in the same direction while the car does not. At least, that's the rule in the Netherlands.


----------



## nenea_hartia

I can't find the link, but one user from Britain once said that the law in England don't give pedestrians the right-of way, not even on road crossings. :nuts:
I am still searching for that link but I remember I was amazed.


----------



## Spikespiegel

In most European countries, the pedestrian would have the right of way.


----------



## Carldiff

ChrisZwolle said:


> I had the driving exam in the exact same vehicle as I learned driving in. It's better for people to use the same car they're used to, but on the other hand, it's important to know how to drive in different cars.
> 
> The first time I drove in a gasoline-powered car it looked like I was driving a car for the first time. I had driving lessons in a diesel-powered all the time, and gasoline is quite different with the clutch and all if you're not used to it.


Same here, I learned and did my test in a diesel Mégane, but my first car was a petrol Suzuki and I used to over-rev all the time. I still drive a petrol car (I now have a Tigra) and sometimes drive a diesel Freelander in work and always have to adjust have much throttle I use when I change cars. It is better to do your test in the car you learned in and that is standard practice here in the UK. And I passed first time!


----------



## x-type

i learned driving (and had exam) in brand new VW Golf IV


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What's up with these kiddy-sized learning cars? I had a 307 SW, a full-size station wagon.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

^^
Money, money, money, money.
Polish driving schools' owners would go and kill anyone who'd decide that examination centres will use Avensises instead of Yarises. Centres may buy the cars at very low prices, but schools are forced to buy cars on normal market. And a school which use different cars than a local examination centre has little chances of surviving.

And, of course, there's a well established tradition of using small cars in driving schools. Remember that up to mid-90ties most exams were performed on these fellas:


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> What's up with these kiddy-sized learning cars? I had a 307 SW, a full-size station wagon.
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...7_SW_front.jpg/800px-Peugeot_307_SW_front.jpg


Many driving schools have Daewoo Matiz for practice in Romania:










I think that this tiny car is for laydies only :lol:










But you can also find this:









...or this:


----------



## RipleyLV

I learned and passed my exam with this BMW 118:


----------



## seem

Fuzzy Llama said:


> And, of course, there's a well established tradition of using small cars in driving schools. Remember that up to mid-90ties most exams were performed on these fellas:


Poľský Fiat.

That`s how we usually call this car in Slovakia. Polish Fiat. 

_it`s nice but not more than this new one_


----------



## keber

Seems that I'm really old here.:lol:

In 1996 I passed driving exam (and all previous learning hours) with Renault 19:


----------



## nenea_hartia

^ Lucky you . As far I can remember I passed my exam 10 years ago on an old Dacia looking like this one:










And no power steering involved. :nuts:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> *I had the driving exam in the exact same vehicle as I learned driving in.* It's better for people to use the same car they're used to, but on the other hand, it's important to know how to drive in different cars.


It used to be like that in Estonia too but since bribing was a big problem, they wanted to introduce cameras on the exam so special exam-vehicles where leased. 
I personally learned to drive in a diesel-powered Opel Omega Caravan . It was quite a difference going from that to a Corolla with a rather small petrol engine.

I see that a lot of countries use very small learning cars. In Estonia it varies a lot. Practically everything from the size of a Toyota Yaris to a Toyota Avensis can be seen.


----------



## KHS

I was driving Renault Clio in driving school. I passed my driving exam in 2002., 3 months before I turned 18. It was the longest 3 months in my life. Ofcourse, I made my licence on my 18th birthday.


----------



## Capt.Vimes

keber said:


> Seems that I'm really old here.:lol:
> 
> In 1996 I passed driving exam (and all previous learning hours) with Renault 19:



That's the first car I drove after I received my driving license (I learned on Peugeot 206). I have really good memories of it. My driving was waaay better than on the training and exams, more relaxed and the trip was really nice in that Renault 19 (which was green as on the pic  )


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My car had maintenance. I wasn't sure the timing belt was replaced before I bought the car (at 130.000 km), but I raised questions when I couldn't figure it out, nor could Renault Netherlands. 

The timing belt is a vital section of an engine, it controls the valves, so I'm told. They usually have to be replaced every 100.000 - 120.000 kilometers. My car now has 170.000 kms on it and I just found out it was the first time the timing belt was replaced. Phew, if it snaps, your engine is totaled (so is your car usually (economically)). So it was replaced about 50.000 kilometers overdue. (2,5 years worth of driving).

Anyhow, I also did a regular 20.000 km service check, totaling € 650. Not too shabby, the Renault dealer was gonna charge me over € 1000...


----------



## x-type

650?!  i make general repair on my Punto with that money!


----------



## bogdymol

And my father tought that 600 RON for a 20.000 km service check for a 1.5 dCi Renault Clio was too much... 

1 € = 4,2 RON 
600 RON = 143 €


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You should not forget they charge like € 50 per working hour in the Netherlands. The timing belt itself is not very expensive, but it takes like 5 - 6 hours to replace it (varies by vehicle). They also replaced the water pump (that is a very common thing to replace together with the timing belt).

edit: The € 650 figure includes both the timing belt and service check.


----------



## Aan

toyota rav4 (2007) - service check after 80000km = 350EUR in slovakia (and it's expensive)


----------



## piotr71

I passed my test about...hmmm, a hundred years ago. Anyway, I was very lucky having an opportunity to learn driving with this beautiful rocket:


>


After some time I decided to buy my own lorry so had to learn driving bigger stuff. A driving school chosen by me had this on its stock:


>


It was very nice old machine with no power steering- my muscles got twice as much bigger and harder after driving that. It had unsynchronized manual transmission -changing gears required double declutching. Had no servo neither seat absorbers. Actually nothing worked properly in it, so I really had good fun using that "lorrrry".


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> You should not forget they charge like € 50 per working hour in the Netherlands. The timing belt itself is not very expensive, but it takes like 5 - 6 hours to replace it (varies by vehicle). They also replaced the water pump (that is a very common thing to replace together with the timing belt).
> 
> edit: The € 650 figure includes both the timing belt and service check.


In Romania they charge about 50-60 RON per working hour. I have to mention that for the price I said earlier I had a full service check and recplacement of oil, oil filter, air filter etc. (what you usually change at 20.000 check).

piotr71: how many (hundreds of) years ago did you pass your driving test?


----------



## piotr71

@ *Bogdymol*: Actually a bit less than hundred  Cars 1990, trucks 1993.


----------



## diablo234

Qwert said:


>


http://http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=el&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.fox.gr%2Fdurex-peraste-to-tounel-me-asfalia.htm

According to this website it is in Monaco.

I dont know how they were able to get approval for this though. :lol:

Monaco: Home of the worlds first drive thru ******!! :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

Qwert said:


> I don't know. I've found it somewhere on Facebook. Maybe I should post it to Guess the Highway thread.


What are you waiting for?


----------



## keber

diablo234 said:


> http://http://translate.google.com/...fox.gr/durex-peraste-to-tounel-me-asfalia.htm
> 
> According to this website it is in Monaco.


Actually it is photo-montage. And certainly not from Monaco.


----------



## Qwert

Ah, normal people would ask, who is the model at the advertisement. Roadgeeks ask where is the tunnel. :lol:


----------



## KHS

^^

:lol::lol::lol:


----------



## seem

Qwert said:


> Ah, normal people would ask, who is the model at the advertisement. Roadgeeks ask where is the tunnel. :lol:




_Maybe "Where is the tunnel" means for roadgeeks - "Where si the person with that tunnel."_.


----------



## PLH

^^ redtube.com? :dunno:


----------



## seem

^^ ok, back on skyscrapercity.com


----------



## PLH

Took you quite a while over there :lol:


----------



## Ni3lS

Ouch lol


----------



## Nexis

Has anyone in de Netherlands or Europe heard of a band called " AlascA"


----------



## Danielk2

never heard of it


----------



## Danielk2

Today is FIFA World Cup kickoff day. Anybody gonna watch it?


----------



## Pansori

Danielk2 said:


> Today is FIFA World Cup kickoff day. Anybody gonna watch it?


You bet.


----------



## Danielk2

same here. Only 15min til kickoff
:banana:


----------



## Pansori

Car crash on Tuesday in Kaunas, Lithuania





































No serious injuries reported.


----------



## Aan

*parking in Slovakia*, at 1st photo you can see at background Bratislava castle and on 2nd Aupark shopping mall with D1 highway



















src


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Does Lithuania have the highest number of Audi's per capita in the world?


----------



## Nexis

What do you guys think of these next few photos.....Since i finally got the date stamp off , ive been going back and retaking a ton of pictures and i have a new HD Camera...be honest about my pictures 

Newark Bay Bridge










Katyn Statue










The Ironbound


----------



## Pansori

ChrisZwolle said:


> Does Lithuania have the highest number of Audi's per capita in the world?


I think this is probably not very far from truth.


----------



## BND

Number of *new* cars registered in Hungary, Q1 2010:

1. Ford 1389

2. Škoda 981

3. Opel 972

4. Volkswagen 966

5. Renault 655

6. Toyota 641

7. Suzuki 587

8. FIAT 409

9. Honda 382

10. Nissan 344

*Total* number of cars from each brand registered in Hungary, 2009:

1. OPEL 431325
2. SUZUKI 405109
3. VOLKSWAGEN 262227
4. FORD 226386
5. RENAULT 189578
6. SKODA 164663
7. FIAT 134560
8. LADA 131151
9. TOYOTA 120815
10. PEUGEOT 120777
11. CITROEN 80639
12. DAEWOO 71422
13. SEAT 63957
14. MERCEDES 53359
15. AUDI 53092
16. NISSAN 49247
17. HONDA 47619
18. TRABANT 47544
19. BMW 45718
20. MAZDA 36116
21. CHEVROLET 35436
22. WARTBURG 31794
23. MITSUBISHI 26926
24. VOLVO 26549
25. POLSKI FIAT	19568
26. HYUNDAI 17956
27. KIA 16000
28. DACIA 12297
29. ALFA ROMEO	12053
30. MARUTI 10193


----------



## seem

*Slovakia:* Best selling cars of 2009 - January - July












> Since 2007, Slovakia has been the world's largest producer of cars per capita,[56] with a total of 571,071 cars manufactured in the country in 2007 alone.[56] There are currently three automobile assembly plants: Volkswagen's in Bratislava, PSA Peugeot Citroen's in Trnava and Kia Motors' Žilina Plant.


*Kia factory in SlovaKIA, near Žilina*





































*Volkswagen Bratislava - Devínska Nová Ves*














































*PSA Peugeot-Citroen - Trnava*


----------



## bogdymol

BND said:


> [...]
> *Total* number of cars from each brand registered in Hungary, 2009:
> 
> 1. OPEL 431325
> 2. SUZUKI  405109
> 3. VOLKSWAGEN 262227
> 4. FORD 226386
> 5. RENAULT 189578
> 6. SKODA 164663
> 7. FIAT 134560
> *8. LADA 131151*
> 9. TOYOTA 120815
> 10. PEUGEOT 120777
> 11. CITROEN 80639
> 12. DAEWOO 71422
> 13. SEAT 63957
> 14. MERCEDES 53359
> 15. AUDI 53092
> 16. NISSAN 49247
> 17. HONDA 47619
> *18. TRABANT 47544*
> 19. BMW 45718
> 20. MAZDA 36116
> 21. CHEVROLET 35436
> *22. WARTBURG 31794*
> 23. MITSUBISHI 26926
> 24. VOLVO 26549
> *25. POLSKI FIAT	19568*
> 26. HYUNDAI 17956
> 27. KIA 16000
> 28. DACIA 12297
> 29. ALFA ROMEO	12053
> *30. MARUTI 10193*


I see you have many interesting cars in HU :lol:


----------



## BND

^^ Trabants, Wartburgs and Polski Fiats have mostly disappeared from the streets, especially in Budapest. There are much more BMWs, Volvos and Mazdas to see on the streets than these. You can spot some in villages however. Most of these cars are owned by old people who won't buy a new car, and will go to the junkyard after their owners aren't able to use them any more, because these cars have no value. You can get a good Trabant for a crate of beer if you like  

Ladas are different, many are still in everyday use because they are durable and the parts are cheap, and the Niva is one of the best off-road cars ever made 

The Maruti is simply cool :cheers:










The engine is smaller than the battery :lol:









(from totalcar.hu)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Lada used to be a common car in the Netherlands until halfway through the 1990's. That is why many people have a negative association with Lada, because the only Lada's they know are now generally 15 - 20 year old models. 

New Lada's aren't that bad, for example the Lada Kalina offers a lot of options (power steering, power windows, airconditioning, etc) for around € 8.000 new. 

This Volga is funny, it's a bit of a mix between American sedans and small European cars.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Holland hup!


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Romanian (sorry, I mean French - Renault) Dacia Logan has those for € 8000. And you can add ABS, up to 4 airbags etc. I would say it has better engines and looks way better than a russian Lada.

PS: Click here for a special version of skyscrapercity.com :lol:


----------



## RipleyLV

bogdymol said:


> PS: Click here for a special version of skyscrapercity.com :lol:


kay:

A-team has arrived to Riga!


----------



## Nexis

I took this form the Train yesterday , the line i took runs parallel to NJTPK Eastern Spur and I-280 towards the end. 

@ :06 you can see the NJ Turnpike Eastern Spur , Hackensack River Bridge 
@ 1:01 I cross NJ 7
@ 2:36 both spurs of the NJ Turnpike come into view
@ 2:39 I go under both spurs of the NJ Turnpike
@ 3:45 I-280 comes into view
@ 5:29 I cross the Passaic River and Enter NJ's Largest City , which is undergoing a Urban Renewal spree...






~Corey


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Small correction; it's Secaucus, not seacacus.


----------



## Nexis

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ Small correction; it's Secaucus, not seacacus.


LOL , ekkk i seem to always make that mistake , but i know i'm not the only one. On some Transit maps its spelled that way too.


----------



## Timon91

What the hell happened to the English squad on the world cup? They don't seem to be motivated at all...


----------



## keber

Wait until Wednesday to see them waving goodbye: :horse::nocrook: :drunk:










BTW, I'm on that photo too.:cheers:


----------



## Jeroen669

I had to get something in a electronic shop today, just before Holland got onto 1 - 0 against Japan. The employee wasn't too happy about me asking something, while he missed the goal.


----------



## Jeroen669

BND said:


> The Maruti is simply cool :cheers:


That's just the same as a Suzuki Alto from the early 90's.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Maruti = Suzuki (Indian brand)


----------



## Polonus

Guys, I have a question to those of you who live in Eurozone:

I still have quite a lot of old West European currencies (mainly German Marks, Pfenigs and French Francs, centimes). But coins, not banknotes. Is there anything I can do with that? I mean is it possible to change those pre-Euro currencies into Euro in banks or in post offices in Germany or France?


----------



## Nexis

Polonus said:


> Guys, I have a question to those of you who live in Eurozone:
> 
> I still have quite a lot of old West European currencies (mainly German Marks, Pfenigs and French Francs, centimes). But coins, not banknotes. Is there anything I can do with that? I mean is it possible to change those pre-Euro currencies into Euro in banks or in post offices in Germany or France?


I'm no expert , but they might be worth something since there not made anymore. Depending on the age of the Bill ,you could sell it to a collector for alot of money.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Good answer.

You could also try to change them into Euro at the National Banks of the countries that used those money. I know that some of them will change them anytime.


----------



## bogdymol

Don't sound your horn to dogs. This might happen:






:lol:


----------



## snowman159

Polonus said:


> I still have quite a lot of old West European currencies (mainly German Marks, Pfenigs and French Francs, centimes). But coins, not banknotes. Is there anything I can do with that? I mean is it possible to change those pre-Euro currencies into Euro in banks or in post offices in Germany or France?


You can only exchange them at the individual country's national banks and they also accept coins. Ordinary banks or post offices don't exchange them anymore.

As far as collecting them, I think it'll be a very long time before they're worth anything.


----------



## keber

For collectors they are not worth anything, except if they're some special and very rare series (highly unlikely). Collectors collect new (I mean, they look as directly from the bank), carefully packed and unused coins and bills.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch, French and Belgian national banks do not accept coins anymore, only banknotes.


----------



## snowman159

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch, French and Belgian national banks do not accept coins anymore, only banknotes.


Oh, you're right. Germany and Austria still exchange coins, though.


----------



## TohrAlkimista

I guys, I have a question for you.
I'm planning a small trip to go for a visit of some friends living in Copenhagen.

We are thinking to do the whole trip by car...that's why I'd like to ask you some tips to study the most interesting tour.

I'm leaving from Pavia (Italy) and I have the Swiss Vignette, so I prefer to pass through Switzerland (and I guess that nightmarish Gotthard tunnel, which pisses me of everytime I pass it uke.

What do you suggest? I'm hoping for a good trade-off between a nice trip, but not that long, since my real objective is to go to Copenhagen and not to do a real roadtrip. 

Thank you!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You can also use the San Bernardino Tunnel, Swiss A13 and then the corridor through Austria near Bregenz to Germany (Korridorvignette: € 2). Then follow A7 all the way to Denmark. I don't think you can drive it in one day though. This route saves you 40 kilometers as opposed to the Gotthard Tunnel, Basel and Frankfurt. Plus you'll avoid the roadworks on A5 south of Karlsruhe.


----------



## TohrAlkimista

I have no problem about doing a stop for a night. 
If I find something to visit on the road. 

Maybe Hamburg, if it doesn't get me too far away the road!


----------



## TohrAlkimista

I think this itinerary provided by ViaMichelin is quite fine, isn't it? http://www.viamichelin.it/web/Itine...2&autoConso=5.1&villeConso=4.5&routeConso=4.2


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Do you want to use the ferry or the bridges? Both are about equal in time and expenses.


----------



## TohrAlkimista

They are both fine to me. 
Maybe I could try both, one going there and the other coming back. 

What do you suggest?


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

The Great Belt Bridge is awesome and it'd be a pity not to use it at least once. On the other hand, the ferry saves you about 1h of driving (although the arrival time will be roughly the same), but since you plan to split the trip in two days it shouldn't matter that much.

If you'd decide to use the ferry and if you'd have 2-2.5 hours to spare, you should visit the cliffs of Møn (2x40km detour). They are a spectacular sight. Note for the telecommunication geeks: you can receive 11 cellular networks from the top of the cliff


----------



## snowman159

You could take Chris' route and Storebelt Bridge one way, and on the way back take the ferry between Gedser and Rostock (takes only about 2h), A9 to Munich, A95 to Garmisch, and on to Innsbruck Süd on national roads. That way you can avoid buying the Austrian vignette and you don't have to take the same highways twice.


----------



## bogdymol

(Premium) Gas price in Europe:

Country Average gasoline price premium
Russia 0.81
Belarus 0.82
Cyprus 0.90
Bosnia and Herzegovina 1.04
Romania 1.07
Latvia 1.09
Serbia 1.10
Bulgaria 1.12
Liechtenstein 1.12
Malta 1.12
Estonia 1.13
Luxembourg 1.14
Macedonia 1.14
Spain 1.15
Croatia 1.17
Poland 1.18
Latvia 1.19
Montenegro 1.19
Austria 1.21
Hungary 1.21
Switzerland 1.22
Slovenia 1.22
Average EUROPE 1.25
Slovakia 1.26
Czech Republic 1.26
Ireland 1.34
Italy 1.36
Belgium 1.37
France 1.37
Portugal 1.40
Germany 1.43
Finland 1.43
Sweden 1.43
Greece 1.45
Great Britain 1.48
Denmark 1.55
Netherlands 1.56
Norway 1.71
Turkey 1.88

original article here


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^ Huge difference between Russia and Turkey


----------



## bogdymol

^^Yes it is, but I don't see why is gas so expensive in a rather-poor country which is close to the Arabic zone. 

PS: Chris, come in Eastern Europe with a gas truck and park it in your yard after that if you want to be rich.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't understand why Turkey has such high gas prices. It significantly limits the (social) mobility of the lower- and even middle class.


----------



## RipleyLV

bogdymol said:


> (Premium) Gas price in Europe:
> 
> Country Average gasoline price premium
> Russia 0.81
> Belarus 0.82
> Cyprus 0.90
> Bosnia and Herzegovina 1.04
> Romania 1.07
> *Latvia 1.09*
> Serbia 1.10
> Bulgaria 1.12
> Liechtenstein 1.12
> Malta 1.12
> Estonia	 1.13
> Luxembourg 1.14
> Macedonia 1.14
> Spain 1.15
> Croatia 1.17
> Poland 1.18
> *Latvia 1.19*
> Montenegro 1.19
> Austria 1.21
> Hungary 1.21
> Switzerland 1.22
> Slovenia 1.22
> Average EUROPE 1.25
> Slovakia 1.26
> Czech Republic 1.26
> Ireland 1.34
> Italy 1.36
> Belgium 1.37
> France 1.37
> Portugal 1.40
> Germany 1.43
> Finland 1.43
> Sweden 1.43
> Greece 1.45
> Great Britain 1.48
> Denmark 1.55
> Netherlands 1.56
> Norway 1.71
> Turkey 1.88
> 
> original article here


Why is Latvia mentioned two times?


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

The official results of the I round of presidential election in Poland were published. Earlier polls showed that actually only two candidates mattered - one was catholic-conservative Jarosław Kaczyński, the other was liberal-but-still-pretty-conservative Bronisław Komorowski. The results were 41.54% for Komorowski and 36.46% for Kaczyński, which mean that we'll have a second round in two weeks. 

What is interesting is that geographical arrangement of the results. It shows that the political views of the East and the West of country differ significantly.
What is even MORE interesting is that the visible boundinary roughly corresponds (excluding big cities) with the Russian-Prussian and Prussian-Austrian borders from the 19. centrury (when Poland was under the joint Russian-Prussian-Austrian occupation). Astonishing.

Votes for Komorowski:









Votes for Kaczyński:


----------



## bogdymol

Fuzzy Llama said:


> The official results of the I round of presidential election in Poland were published. Earlier polls showed that actually only two candidates mattered - one was catholic-conservative *Lech Kaczyński*, the other was liberal-but-still-pretty-conservative Bronisław Komorowski. The results were 41.54% for Komorowski and 36.46% for Kaczyński, which mean that we'll have a second round in two weeks.
> 
> What is interesting is that geographical arrangement of the results. It shows that the political views of the East and the West of country differ significantly.
> What is even MORE interesting is that the visible boundinary roughly corresponds (excluding big cities) with the Russian-Prussian and Prussian-Austrian borders from the 19. centrury (when Poland was under the joint Russian-Prussian-Austrian occupation). Astonishing.


I don't think that Lech Kaczyński was in the race for presidency in Poland, because of this. I think you wanted to say Jarosław Kaczyński.

@RipleyLV: I don't know why there are 2 Latvias. I just copy-paste the original article.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

bogdymol said:


> I don't think that Lech Kaczyński was in the race for presidency in Poland. I think you wanted to say Jarosław Kaczyński.


Shit, sorry. For 4 years I've written "President Lech Kaczyński", it had become an automatic habit...


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I know it beacame an habbit, especially that his twin brother is one of the candidates for becoming president.

I am writing Traian Băsescu during the last 6 years and I hope the next 4 will pas quickly so we can change him :lol:

No offence: there was a joke in Romania after the plane crashed: "After the faith hit Poland so strong, Romania, an ally of Poland, is going to help: we will donate what we don't need anymore: the president and the government".


----------



## DanielFigFoz

His twin is going for president know?


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Yep. No surprises there - no other politician from their party stood a chance in competition. He stalled the decision for some time after his brother's death, but it was pretty much obvious from the very beginning.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Yep. No surprises there - no other politician from their party stood a chance in competition. He stalled the decision for some time after his brother's death, but it was pretty much obvious from the very beginning.


Great, I suppose someone would have to be the right-wing candidate.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't understand why Turkey has such high gas prices. It significantly limits the (social) mobility of the lower- and even middle class.


they probably have something cheap to make balance. credits maybe?


----------



## TohrAlkimista

Fuzzy Llama said:


> The Great Belt Bridge is awesome and it'd be a pity not to use it at least once. On the other hand, the ferry saves you about 1h of driving (although the arrival time will be roughly the same), but since you plan to split the trip in two days it shouldn't matter that much.
> 
> If you'd decide to use the ferry and if you'd have 2-2.5 hours to spare, you should visit the cliffs of Møn (2x40km detour). They are a spectacular sight. Note for the telecommunication geeks: you can receive 11 cellular networks from the top of the cliff





snowman159 said:


> You could take Chris' route and Storebelt Bridge one way, and on the way back take the ferry between Gedser and Rostock (takes only about 2h), A9 to Munich, A95 to Garmisch, and on to Innsbruck Süd on national roads. That way you can avoid buying the Austrian vignette and you don't have to take the same highways twice.


Thank you for all the suggestions.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

10:44 and a traffic jam on A28 near Amersfoort. The morning rush on this motorway lasts very long... It was still a 9 km queue at that time (solely caused by traffic volumes, no roadworks or accidents).


----------



## Danielk2

Is it like that every single day on the A28?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes, I travel down A28 a few times per week after rush hour, and interchange Hoevelaken (near Amersfoort) is always backed up until around 11 am.


----------



## bogdymol

Are they going to make it 2x3? Or at least build one new lane near the exits.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nah, the problem is the cloverleaf. They need to rebuild it to a stack interchange, as there is a lot of traffic changing directions here. It's planned to be implemented between 2015 and 2020. Right now they aren't very clear about the exact design, but apparently, it requires a lot of ROW acquisition, so assume it will be a big interchange.


----------



## JuanPaulo

^^ what is wrong with cloverleaf interchanges? :dunno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

They're not suitable for high traffic volumes, especially when there is a lot of traffic changing motorways.


----------



## JuanPaulo

Why is that Chris? and why are stack interchanges better?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^ Less sharp corners, thus faster traffic flow, maybe


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Plus it allows for 2 - 3 lane connectors, instead of a tight curve with one lane. So the traffic flow is MUCH better with direct fly-overs. Cloverleafs are nice for low-trafficked roads.

Flyover:










vs cloverleaf:


----------



## bogdymol

^^
cloverleaf interchange









stack interchange


----------



## JuanPaulo

Thank you chris, those are good reference graphics.


----------



## Pansori

Can anyone explain why there are no any of those massive miltilevel stack interchanges in Germany as ones that can be found in cities in USA, China or some other Asian cities? Is it due to some aesthetical, noise or other requirements? Personaly I prefer the "badass" concrete interchanges which look so damn cool.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Traffic volumes in Germany are not particularly high, and the busiest interchanges did get some direct fly-overs, but stacks are rare. The only stack I know of is a minor exit  (A45/A480).


----------



## bogdymol

I already posted this here, but I see my post was deleted (maybe because of the problems SSC had today). 
@hofburg: you can try this


----------



## hofburg

that's not a bad idea. thanks.


----------



## Tin_Can

I know that I don't post very often in Highways & Autobahns section,but I think this should be interesting for you all:



Tin_Can said:


> ... Something what I noticed on Pirita road - When camper van is not enough and you also want to take all your friends on a road trip... Yeah,it's German *hotel on wheels*..rolling hotel..rotel!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ... I checked company's website and looks like they operate all over the globe. What you see behind the bus,is a sleeping compartment (patented design)


Have you noticed anything similar driving through your country?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

I have seen a bus(without a trailer, though), that had similar windows and sleeping spaces for passengers.


----------



## keber

hofburg said:


> guys, how and where do you fix your cameras while recording a driving video?


I use Gorillapod:








I wrap legs around rear mirror holder, so that camera firmly hangs upsidedown. Then I turn around and compress video with a nice program called FormatFactory.


----------



## Danielk2

Why does it have to be upside-down?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Interesting, what type do you exactly use? The legs must be long enough to get around the mirro.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I just bought the gorilla pod for € 24,99 at Mediamarkt. I hate how those pods are quite expensive if you consider how little material they use. I also want to use it to make time-lapse videos from bridge railings.


----------



## TheCat

I use the same method as Chris, utilizing velcro strips. However, it is now a bit more difficult on the dash of my Acura CSX (a Canadian luxury version of the Civic). The dashboard on the 2006+ Civic is very large, but it's not flat.

However, overall it's still not too bad. In the first two videos I made the camera was pointed a little too high, but still not too bad. In the latest video I made, I used an eraser to adjust the height 

I still have to upload all 3 videos to Youtube, though. Can't seem to find the time to edit.


----------



## hofburg

keber said:


> I use Gorillapod:
> 
> I wrap legs around rear mirror holder, so that camera firmly hangs upsidedown. Then I turn around and compress video with a nice program called FormatFactory.




looks funny, but effective


----------



## Vallex

guys, just go into something for road mapping:

http://world.waze.com/livemap/

those black lines are roads that has been passed by drivers who has waze account


----------



## seem

More pics from new series called "How to park a car in Slovakia"..


----------



## Nexis

Speaking of Slovakia , i had a Lithuanian Waitress and Slovakian Waterboy at the Tick Tock Diner the other day. It was quite the interesting ethic mix.


----------



## Danielk2

They can't all be irish or hispanic.


----------



## Aan

ChrisZwolle said:


> I just bought the gorilla pod for € 24,99 at Mediamarkt. I hate how those pods are quite expensive if you consider how little material they use. I also want to use it to make time-lapse videos from bridge railings.


ehm, then why you don't buy fake one? it's for 6-10EUR with free shipping, I've just today ordered 2 Nokia batteries for my trip and few weeks ago not original panasonic FZ38 battery for 1/3 price of original with same specifications
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.2331
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.13610



Nexis said:


> Speaking of Slovakia , i had a Lithuanian Waitress and Slovakian Waterboy at the Tick Tock Diner the other day. It was quite the interesting ethic mix.


ethic or ethnic? because I don't see any ethnic difference between Lithuania and Slovakia and also in world terms we are pretty close nations


----------



## hofburg

^^ thats chinese stuff is crap. on amazon.fr is one for 19 € though. some cameras/camcorders even come with it out of the box.

lithuanians aren't slaves, right? so why are you pretty close?  (correct me if I am wrong)

a question: I am going to buy a pocket 1080p camcorder (something like that. ) does it have to have a optical zoom for shooting driving videos? or it's possible to record a video without zoom without dashboard on it.


----------



## Nexis

Danielk2 said:


> They can't all be irish or hispanic.


Hehe , the diner has a wide range of cultures working for it. Mostly European & American the day shift and the overnight shift is American & Latino. Its a 24/7 Diner on a popular highway that feeds into NYC. The area where the diner is located is Indian , Polish , and Italian. They own stores and businesses. I go there to buy my real Italian pastas and Polish Deserts. Its nice living in a melting pot Region. The other day i met a Dutch - German Couple on the train.



Aan said:


> ehm, then why you don't buy fake one? it's for 6-10EUR with free shipping, I've just today ordered 2 Nokia batteries for my trip and few weeks ago not original panasonic FZ38 battery for 1/3 price of original with same specifications
> http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.2331
> http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.13610
> 
> 
> 
> ethic or ethnic? because I don't see any ethnic difference between Lithuania and Slovakia and also in world terms we are pretty close nations


I mean't to say cultures......


----------



## seem

hofburg said:


> lithuanians aren't slaves, right? so why are you pretty close?  (correct me if I am wrong)


I was also thinking about that..

anyway, Slavic people really can`t understand that, it`s totaly different from any Slavic language..



> Lithuanian still retains many of the original features of the nominal morphology found in the common ancestors of the Indo-European languages like Sanskrit and Latin, and has therefore been the focus of much study in the area of Indo-European linguistics. Studies in the field of comparative linguistics have shown it to be the most conservative living Indo-European language.
> 
> Lithuanian and other Baltic languages passed through Proto-Balto-Slavic stage, during which Baltic languages developed numerous exclusive and non-exclusive lexical, morphological, phonological and accentual isoglosses with Slavic languages, which represent their closest living Indo-European relative. Moreover, with Lithuanian being so archaic in phonology, Slavic words can often be deduced from Lithuanian by regular sound laws.


----------



## PLH

Do you also have a problem with GoogleEarth? For a few day now I cannot browse it fluently.


----------



## RipleyLV

Same here, I cannot browse fluently for some weeks now, maps work fine, but satelite images are loading slow with lag. I think their server is overheating.


----------



## TheCat

I think Russian speakers are the worst in understanding other Slavic languages, though I can still understand quite a lot of Ukrainian and Belorussian. It probably has to do with Russia's historic dominance in the region. I can understand some Polish if I read it, though almost nothing if spoken. But then again, I haven't actually spent much time of my life in a Slavic-speaking nation, though I am still fluent.


----------



## seem

^^ So, did you learn these languages in Canada?

for me as a Slav (or how to write it) it is better to listen Polish then read (pronunciation is totally different). And you are right with Russian. I have friend from Ukraine. Now she (after 2 years in Slovakia) is pretty good in Slovak, but 2 yrs ago we was speaking just in English, sometimes in Slovak to teach her something.


----------



## hofburg

seem said:


> But, as you said, in basic conversation that wouldn`t be a problem. In my experience it is realy easy for Slovaks to have a conversation with Poles, Croats, Serbs (mostly same language as in Croatia), Czechs - grammar is very similar + we were in same republic for many years, I am watching Czech TV daily. Slovenian language was (is) influenced by Italian, so it is little bit harder to talk with they. But, when I am in this countries, I am always talking with people (in restaurants, streets etc.) in Slovak.


and vice versa. To me, all slavic languages sound like a very bad slovenian dialect.  the closer is of cours croatian/serbian language.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

seem said:


> ^^ So, did you learn these languages in Canada?


His subtitle says "IsraCanadian", and a lot of people in Israel have a Russian background (the so-called "Aliyah"). Maybe that's how he learned it.


----------



## TheCat

TheCat said:


> I think Russian speakers are the worst in understanding other Slavic languages, though I can still understand quite a lot of Ukrainian and Belorussian. It probably has to do with Russia's historic dominance in the region. I can understand some Polish if I read it, though almost nothing if spoken. But then again, I haven't actually spent much time of my life in a Slavic-speaking nation, though I am still fluent.


Basically what Chris said - I was born in Russia (though my family is from Belarus, but it was all part of the Soviet Union at the time), and therefore Russian is my first language. I still speak Russian almost exclusively to my parents.

However, shortly after being born my family moved to Israel, where I lived for 10 years, before moving to Canada, where incidentally I've also lived for 10 years . Therefore, I am also fluent in Hebrew and English. I can read/write Russian, but my parents had to teach me since I never went to school there. My parents also learned Belorussian at school, so they can understand it along with Ukrainian and some Polish, much better than I can.

Speaking of languages, I am currently working on Chinese  (1 year in university and some self-study), though currently it is hard to find time with work and all.


----------



## seem

^^ Thank you. I didn`t know that.. 

So, you can aslo speak Hebrew. 

PS: I had a dream (it`s just 8:25 in CE) that I was in Jewish museum in Budapest.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A car spun off the A28 motorway near Nijkerk, Netherlands:


----------



## RipleyLV

One of windmill's wings fell off yesterday in Rigas restaurant "Lido", luckily nobody got hurt:


----------



## x-type

^^
interesting.
look at this - at friday in Zagreb, warm, sunny day without wind. while suddenly came wind wortex and blew a tend for shopping carts. and went away as nothing happened :lol: (you have video down)
http://www.24sata.hr/news/iznenadna-pijavica-odnijela-je-krov-i-iscupala-ogradu/181479/


----------



## PLH

Don't worry Chris, you have better highways anyway


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I didn't watch much of it, I'm not really interested in football, excuse me, soccer.

But I did got on the road!


----------



## Pansori

Well done, Chris. You didn't miss much anyway. It must have been the least exciting football game I have ever watched. 

Your video, on the other hand, is very nice. kay:


----------



## SeanT

I was hoping that the Netherlands would take the winner trophy but, it was just not the day.
Spain! Congratulations, the better team took everything.:banana:


----------



## Danielk2

Pansori said:


> You didn't miss much anyway. It must have been the least exciting football game I have ever watched.


Most boring World Cup final ever. NL played horribly violent. You can barely call that soccer (or football). They had absolutely no business being in that final.

9 yellows for the Netherlands.

Unbelievable: Van Persie, van Bommel, de Jong, van Bronkhorst, Heitinga (2x), Robben, van der Wiel and Mathijsen were all booked in 1 single game

1 of the bookings were for a kick in the stomach.


----------



## RipleyLV

Paul was right again.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

If some of you have some $ 400,000 to spare, it might be an interesting thought to buy the Dagger GT.

This car has a 9.4 liter V8 engine, that produces 2,000 BHP. It accelerates from 0 -100 km/h in a whopping 1.5 seconds, and reaches a top speed of 505 km/h. It consumes 1 liter every mile, and the 90 liter gas tank is empty within 6 minutes at top speed. However, the regular tires will melt before the tank is empty. At additional cost, you can purchase another set of tires which will last until the tank is empty.


----------



## Nexis

The Spanish , Portuguese Section of Newark yesterday was shut down after world cup as the streets turned into one giant Party.





































http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/07/thousands_pack_newark_ironboun.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Some serious storms in the Netherlands in the past couple of days.


----------



## seem

Btw, Chris


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That Bugatti is chicken shit compared to the Dagger GT


----------



## seem

^^ That doesn`t matter now. Look at wheel..


----------



## RipleyLV

seem said:


> Btw, Chris


Old. opcorn:


----------



## seem

^^ Ouuu, very old! Sorry


----------



## Ni3lS

ChrisZwolle said:


> If some of you have some $ 400,000 to spare, it might be an interesting thought to buy the Dagger GT.
> 
> This car has a 9.4 liter V8 engine, that produces 2,000 BHP. It accelerates from 0 -100 km/h in a whopping 1.5 seconds, and reaches a top speed of 505 km/h. It consumes 1 liter every mile, and the 90 liter gas tank is empty within 6 minutes at top speed. However, the regular tires will melt before the tank is empty. At additional cost, you can purchase another set of tires which will last until the tank is empty.


LOL


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Heatwave in Poland:





:lol:

(reposted from the Polish subsection)


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

Front half of the Ikarus used as the tow truck makes it even better.


----------



## PLH

And now everyone thinks we have fluid asphalt and cut-in-half-buses :lol:


----------



## x-type

have they put some pebbles in that asphalt? or it is pure tar :nuts:


----------



## PLH

It's pure communism


----------



## Carldiff

^^^hahaha poland...


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Bobek_Azbest said:


> Front half of the Ikarus used as the tow truck makes it even better.


It is used exclusively as a tow truck and I actually like it. It is a front half of a decommissioned Ikarus bendy-bus which is mechanically OK but it would have been scraped otherwise. As long as the bus works properly (and remember that compared to Western countries maintenance costs in Poland are next to nothing) I see no reason why not to convert it to a tow truck (well, apart from the 'it looks silly' point). It simply saves money which is important in continuously under-invested public transport sector.



PLH said:


> And now everyone thinks we have fluid asphalt and cut-in-half-buses :lol:


But we do!  Such tow-truck-buses are used by most of the mass transit authorities and it's a well known fact that lots of commie-layed patches of roads were made of horse crap and old newspapers. Fortunately most of them were repaved properly during the last 20 years.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I bought a new camera, a Toshiba Camileo S20 full HD camera.

Try this video with 1080p on full screen:


----------



## Danielk2

I can't watch it in HD. There's no such function on that You-Tube player


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You need to use the "Watch on Youtube" function:


----------



## Falusi

Great camera!

But I think 720p is enough on youtube, it compresses too much, so you can see difference between 720p and 1080p only at fullscreen. But youtube's quality on 1080p isn't so good 

I think you should try it on vimeo, if I know good vimeo has better quality.

btw how do you fix it?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Falusi said:


> btw how do you fix it?


I bought a PDA holder, that can be adjusted manually to the width of the PDA (in this case the camera) with a suction mount to the windshield.


----------



## nerdly_dood

ChrisZwolle said:


> If some of you have some $ 400,000 to spare, it might be an interesting thought to buy the Dagger GT.
> 
> This car has a 9.4 liter V8 engine, that produces 2,000 BHP. It accelerates from 0 -100 km/h in a whopping 1.5 seconds, and reaches a top speed of 505 km/h. It consumes 1 liter every mile, and the 90 liter gas tank is empty within 6 minutes at top speed. However, the regular tires will melt before the tank is empty. At additional cost, you can purchase another set of tires which will last until the tank is empty.


400,000 isn't really THAT bad for a car like that, I'd expect it to be more like 1,000,000. That leaves extra money left over for gas and tires. 

Now about those tires melting... I hope that isn't just in normal driving, or would that be around the 300MPH mark?

LOL, the wikipedia article reads like an advertisement... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TranStar_Racing_Dagger_GT


----------



## hofburg

ChrisZwolle said:


> I bought a new camera, a Toshiba Camileo S20 full HD camera.
> 
> Try this video with 1080p on full screen:


I am looking at that one exaclty myself! video looks nice. did you use a digital zoom a bit?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I haven't really tried digital zoom, but there is no digital zoom at 1080p, but there is 4x digital zoom at 720p. As it is a pocket camera, it has no optical zoom. It cost me € 120.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Oops:


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ouch. Was this damage cause by yesterday's storm?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No, Monday's storm. It's in Hengelo, Overijssel.


----------



## Timon91

I'm glad that my student house (in Enschede, less than 10 km from Hengelo) is still standing. The garden is a mess, I heard from a house mate (I'm at my parents place now), but knowing how the garden looked like before it can only be an improvement


----------



## Suburbanist

*Three unrelated questions*

1. Why are the Dutch so overrepresented in this subforum (not a complain, I live here after all). There are usually not so many Dutch (proportionally) in other international forums like airlines, bridges, city issues and so. :

2. Why is my municipality (Gemeente) spending money to repave streets or curbside that were in good conditions before? I have the impression that instead of repainting horizontal signaling, they resurface the whole thing. They went into a resurfacing spree here, it seems that money is gushing like the Gulf oil spill :banana: They are also replacing bus shelters that seemed fine to me (no scratches, no graffiti, no blight.

(ok, this #2 was a little rant, sorry).

3. Does any of you also found funny how some people associate a lifeless object like a car with every evil on the Globe? I mean, two weeks ago I friend of mine who is also a Ph.D student in Tilburg was trying to convince me not to travel by car to Italy, but to take a train instead. She was trying to appeal to my feelings like "do you want do feed Iranian oppression" and so. Funny thing is that she loves recreational flying and sometimes fly small planes around :nuts: Still, I'm amused how some friends of mine, most on post-graduate studies (in fields unrelated to transportation or energy), sincerely think that if cars didn't exist, the Middle East would be an oasis of peace, and most of our urban problems like violence, lack of immigrant integration and so on would be gone in a blink. I got amused on this name-the-scapegoat attitude, to the point that it become funny haha


----------



## H123Laci

^^ the greenies have made a succesful brainwash on the population... :lol:

education makes it even worse: they lost their common sence during the process...


----------



## H123Laci

ChrisZwolle said:


> Oops:
> http://media.nu.nl/m/m1azwkcadcy5.jpg


The Tree Strikes Back! :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> 1. Why are the Dutch so overrepresented in this subforum (not a complain, I live here after all). There are usually not so many Dutch (proportionally) in other international forums like airlines, bridges, city issues and so. :


Apparently, a lot of Dutchmen are interested in roads, and it is a hot topic in the news often. There are a lot of road projects going on, much more than say Belgium or even the United Kingdom. Another thing that influences the number of Dutchmen is (I think) the willingness of Dutch people to discuss in English, even if all participants are Dutch. I think they're proud of their knowledge of English (and why shouldn't we). You can notice a similar thing with Norwegians. For example we have really few contributors from "old Europe" like Germany, France or Spain. 

Naturally, eastern / central Europe is well represented because of the number of road construction projects going on in those countries, comparable to the Interstate Highway construction in the 1960's in the United States and the Western Europe motorway construction craze of the 1970's. (actually, I wouldn't call it a craze per se, as they were all badly needed).


----------



## Nexis

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apparently, a lot of Dutchmen are interested in roads, and it is a hot topic in the news often. There are a lot of road projects going on, much more than say Belgium or even the United Kingdom. Another thing that influences the number of Dutchmen is (I think) the willingness of Dutch people to discuss in English, even if all participants are Dutch. I think they're proud of their knowledge of English (and why shouldn't we). You can notice a similar thing with Norwegians. For example we have really few contributors from "old Europe" like Germany, France or Spain.
> 
> Naturally, eastern / central Europe is well represented because of the number of road construction projects going on in those countries, comparable to the Interstate Highway construction in the 1960's in the United States and the Western Europe motorway construction craze of the 1970's. (actually, I wouldn't call it a craze per se, as they were all badly needed).


The Same is said for ur Railways and strangely Bridges LOL. Along with Tractors and Bikes....:nuts: Dutch ppl are certainly the most interesting Europeans.


----------



## seem




----------



## ChrisZwolle

Something's wrong with the internet here at work..


----------



## CNGL

Again I win you 


And also I win you on Clinched Italian autostrade: 993.6 km vs your spectacular 2.3 km. Also in Portuguese Auto-Estradas: 4.5 vs nothing. I haven't been on the rest of countries.

Edit: A bit further...


----------



## Nexis

I took a Video the other day , with more detail of the NJTPK ,and a few County Roads form the Northeast Corridor in HD

*Northeast Corridor Train ride form Kearny JCT to Secaucus JCT w/ an Acela passing at the end*

*Roads / Misc Seen

0:43 - Western Spur of the NJ Turnpike
0:46 - Eastern Spur of the NJ Turnpike
1:20 - Newark Turnpike
1:41 - Belleview Turnpike or NJ 7
2:05 - Entering the Portal Bridge 
2:13 - NJ Turnpike Hackensack River Main Span
2:20 Entering City of Secaucus
3:10 NJ Turnpike Exit 15X
3:26 a Rare 7 Car Acela Express bound for Washington DC*







*Secaucus Interlocks to the Hudson River Tunnels
*
*Roads / Misc Seen

0:02 NJ TPK Secaucus Maintenance yard
0:29 Secaucus Road or County Road 678
0:42 NJTPK Eastern Spur Toll Gate and NJ 495 Interchange can be vaguely seen
1:00 the Ramps to NJ 495 can be seen
1:06 CSX Riverline & Future NJT West Shore line
1:08 US 1/9
1:13 Passing a Northeast Corridor train bound for Trenton
1:14 entering the Hudson River Tunnels*






*I hope you liked , one day i film form the PATH. Which gives a Great view of the Pulaski Skyway and NJ 7 through the Port area.*

*~Corey*


----------



## ChrisZwolle

CNGL said:


> And also I win you on Clinched Italian autostrade: 993.6 km vs your spectacular 2.3 km.


I've only been in the Lago di Como region. We entered the Autostrada at Como towards the Swiss border.


----------



## bogdymol

@ChrisZwolle, CNGL: take a look at my speed :lol:


----------



## Timon91

At university I still beat you guys 










At home it's fairly okay:


----------



## CNGL

^^ :wtf: I only have (theorically) 3Mb... (And once I had 3.1 Mb of download )


----------



## keber

Last weekend in Europe for me for next 5 weeks.
New target: East Africa.:cheers:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wow  Which countries are you visiting? I assume Kenya and maybe Tanzania? A little roadgeeking in Somalia?


----------



## seem

Timon91 said:


> At university I still beat you guys


What are you doing at university?


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> Wow  Which countries are you visiting? I assume Kenya and maybe Tanzania? A little roadgeeking in Somalia?


Kenya (just transiting), Tanzania, Zambia, also including highest point of Africa (no road there, though:lol


----------



## hofburg

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Chris can I ask you if in the Netherlands you experienced the same raise in prices shortly after the introduction of the euro? In Italy we certainly did: even if the official change was 1 € =(circa) 2000 lire, most of the times it feels like 1€=1000 lire...


I think Italy experienced the highest growth in europe.
pizza for 2 euros :lol:, where are those times...


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I used to go to the barber shop: € 27 for just a haircut. But there are also hairdressers who will come to your house, it's significantly cheaper (I pay around € 14).


my hairdresser comes to my house to cut my hair. i pay her 2,7€ for that (in salon it would cost 5€). of course, it is illegal. but she is very hot, and i get that gratis


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> You're right about that, but I meant to ask if you perceived a raise in prices shortly after the introduction of euro. For instance, a pizza margherita used to cost 4000-5000 lire (2-2.5 euro) in 2000, but 5 euro already in 2003. We felt this, like... overnight.


That was part of a more general trend of inflation of service costs in Italy. Some prices were way under their appropriate levels, crushing income for small entrepreneurs. Problem is that after that period housing costs soared (though not to any level like those seen in Spain, UK or Austria), but that is another discussion.


----------



## hofburg

x-type said:


> my hairdresser comes to my house to cut my hair. i pay her 2,7€ for that (in salon it would cost 5€). of course, it is illegal. but she is very hot, and i get that gratis


hehe, you're lucky. but I don't understand how is that cheaper, normaly you pay more if you request a service at home.


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> That was part of a more general trend of inflation of service costs in Italy.


Well, a 100% raise in prices in 2 years is hardly due to inflation.


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> Well, a 100% raise in prices in 2 years is hardly due to inflation.


In any case, your reference is sort of anecdotal. ISAT data reveals that there was nothing like a widespread, n-fold increase in prices as some of us, Italians, complain, by the occasion of the Euro introduction.


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> In any case, your reference is sort of anecdotal.


Quite true. In fact I was speaking about the "perceived" raise in prices.



> ISAT data reveals that there was nothing like a widespread, n-fold increase in prices as some of us, Italians, complain, by the occasion of the Euro introduction.


Nobody cares about ISTAT in Italy. We know that they cannot be trusted, because they depend on the Council of Ministers. If ISTAT said "wait, the prices are going crazy" it would have been a self-declaration of incompetence by the Ministers.
Besides, their calculations are made on a consumer basket which is really ridiculous...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

hofburg said:


> hehe, you're lucky. but I don't understand how is that cheaper, normaly you pay more if you request a service at home.


They don't have the cost of a building and equipment. They are mostly so-called "entrepreneurs without personnel", often connected with a larger company providing their appointments and administration. All they need is a car and a professional set of hairdressing stuff.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Euro is coming to Estonia in bit more than 5 months and even though I like that we're getting Euro, I dislike all the coin-business. At the moment, the largest coin in Estonia is 1 EEK which is € 0.06. The smallest bank note is 2 EEK (€ 0.12) and the smallest bank note you can get from an ATM is 25 EEK (€ 1.60). As you can understand, things are going to change quite a lot. At the moment there's a sign in buses "Please don't give coins to the bus driver"(coins are just so much more time consuming to count, bank notes are in different colour and are easier to handle). That will have to go. Also, I can't really imagine people buying intercity train/bus tickets with coins which will probably be a pretty common thing from 2011. Coins in today's Estonia are considered pretty worthless stuff. If 50 cents falls to the mud, we let it be. If € 0.50 falls to the mud, you are very likely to pick it up.

About rising prices, I think prices will rise, especially in places where people often pay with cash. If something costs 150 EEK (€ 9.59), it's probably going to cost € 10 (156.47 EEK) in 2011. And that's already a price rise of 4.3%.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ This is maybe the only thing I hate at Euro. Coins are to large (in value). 2 Euro (and even 1 Euro) should have been bank notes.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

They round everything off to the nearest 5 cent in the Netherlands. We don't have 1 and 2 cent coins anymore in actual use, although they remain legal tender. You can still pay the exact amount if you want. Electronic transactions do not get rounded off.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ I think 1 and 2 cent Euro coins will have more usage in Estonia, though:
(Estonia's own Euro cent, BTW. . )








More photos here: http://www.epl.ee/artikkel/580238


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> 2 Euro (and even 1 Euro) should have been bank notes.


Italy addressed this issue several times with the European Commision... but they've been deaf and blind


----------



## ABRob

Who needs 2 and 1 EUR bank notes - sometimes I think that a 5 EUR coin would be usefull (like the old 5 DM coin). 


So you see, that all depens only on your experience with your pre-Euro currency. If you had (or have) prices with high numbers, you are more familiar with using bank notes also for cheap things like bus tickets. If you had prices with small numers before (like in Germany - exchange rate 1 EUR = 1,95583 DM) you pay small things naturally with coins.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^
But you have to admit that:
1) It's easier to store bank notes in your wallet than coins.
2) It's easier to count bank notes than coins.
3) Bank notes are lighter to carry. It's quite important if you're a conductor in a train(who sells tickets), for example.


----------



## hofburg

also, for train and bus tickets is more useful, as it's easier to put coins in automates then bank notes. however I pay all (if possble) with a credit card, so I don't mind even coins for 500 €.


----------



## g.spinoza

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^
> But you have to admit that:
> 1) It's easier to store bank notes in your wallet than coins.
> 2) It's easier to count bank notes than coins.
> 3) Bank notes are lighter to carry. It's quite important if you're a conductor in a train(who sells tickets), for example.


4) Banknotes are way cheaper to produce.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ But then again, Euro coins are estimated to last for 30 years. The average age of a bank note is 1 year.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Probably it's just a prudent estimate, like when they say "this satellite will be in use for 6 months", then when it works for 3 years or more they say "it has been a huge success". The vast majority of the notes I saw has much more than 1 year.


----------



## Suburbanist

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^
> 
> 3) Bank notes are lighter to carry. It's quite important if you're a conductor in a train(who sells tickets), for example.


Train conductors should not be selling tickets in first place. It's 2010, way too late to have conductors selling tickets instead of electronic ticketing or RFID cards everywhere.

They should concentrate only on giving information and fining people without tickets.



ChrisZwolle said:


> They round everything off to the nearest 5 cent in the Netherlands. We don't have 1 and 2 cent coins anymore in actual use, although they remain legal tender. You can still pay the exact amount if you want. Electronic transactions do not get rounded off.


At least here in Tilburg some places like the Albert Heijn handle out € 0,02 coins. I usually store them until I have, say € 0,20, then I get other coins and buy a sandwich with a pack of them. The cashier never bothers to count, only when it is an old-and-not-so-friendly lady doing her shift there. She counts patiently every coin.



g.spinoza said:


> Nobody cares about ISTAT in Italy. We know that they cannot be trusted, because they depend on the Council of Ministers. If ISTAT said "wait, the prices are going crazy" it would have been a self-declaration of incompetence by the Ministers.
> Besides, their calculations are made on a consumer basket which is really ridiculous...


As an economist with deep knowledge of statistics, I take pity on that declaration. The raw data (freely accessible) produced by the ISTAT is trustworthy and they have extremely competent (and underpaid) professionals there.

But people usually look at one, and one figure only, and start whining about (like general unemployment). I agree, though, they badly need a revamp in their PR strategy.


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> As an economist with deep knowledge of statistics, I take pity on that declaration. The raw data (freely accessible) produced by the ISTAT is trustworthy and they have extremely competent (and underpaid) professionals there.


Since you are an economist, you cannot say otherwise. It's like asking to a bartender if the wine is good 

I have some skills myself on statistics (not on economics, sadly), but just thinking at the fact that the house rent is just 2% of the basket makes me laugh out loud... or cry, if you prefer.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm more worried about the perpetual rise of excise duties on consumer goods (like fuel). They say they want to keep it up with inflation, but it is creating inflation itself too. Commodities are often for a large proportion responsible for inflation.


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ Then you have different inflation measures. Indeed, any decent European countries will have at least 4 or 5 different measures for inflation. Sometimes things get tricky because the "main" inflation index followed by the "specialized" press is measuring a slightly different thing related to the index in other country. For instance, the CPI (Consumer Price Index), one of the 13 inflation measures officially calculated in US, excludes food and energy from its calculations. Most European countries do not (they have "core" inflation indexes too, but they are usually not the ones followed by the press).

There is booming field on economics studying this kinds of perception effects. Almost everyone notices and ranted when fuel prices skyrocketed from mid-2007 until August-2008. Then, even though as prices (retail, inclusive of everything) receded in almost all countries save for those who kept increasing gas taxes, there was no equivalent perception of price falls. Thus, even though prices are not near their 2008 peak now, many people keep complaining about the "restless increase of gas for 3 years".

It would be negligible, but compounded to the whole population of a country, this misguided perceptions can affect consumer choice, demand aggregates etc. etc.


----------



## x-type

hofburg said:


> hehe, you're lucky. but I don't understand how is that cheaper, normaly you pay more if you request a service at home.


note that i wrote illegaly  she doesn't have registred firm for that - that's why it's cheaper.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Suburbanist said:


> Train conductors should not be selling tickets in first place. It's 2010, way too late to have conductors selling tickets instead of electronic ticketing or RFID cards everywhere.
> 
> They should concentrate only on giving information and fining people without tickets.


RFID cards will be introduced next year on commuter trains but even then the activation process of a single ticket will be left for the ticket encounter. That has a simple phsycological reason: people are more likely to buy a ticket when the ticket salesman/women is in the train. Elektriraudtee, that runs our commuter trains, experimented with pre-bought tickets that could be validated on the train but it just didn't work...ticket sales went down because you can't check every train.
Furthermore, we have lots of very small train stops that don't have the needed facilities for ticket sales and it's cheaper to have a ticket salesman/woman in the train than a ticket machine in every small stop.
Labour costs are still relatively low in Estonia so this system pays off and works rather well for us. You can be someone who drives every day and hasn't used PT for 10 years but if you need to use a train that one day, it's all relatively easy if you have a bit of cash.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Trucks! Very loud trucks! (this went on for at least 2 hours, after I left, and there seems to be some congestion even now after 4 hours)


----------



## bogdymol

^^ What the hell is wrong there?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

bogdymol said:


> ^^ What the hell is wrong there?


Did you read the title of the video?


----------



## bogdymol

Rebasepoiss said:


> Did you read the title of the video?


Yes, I saw it. But I still don't get the idea. Why are all those trucks sounding their horns and flashing their lights? I know they are comming from a festival and maybe they are drunk, but come on, you don't do that on the motorway for 4 hours.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

bogdymol said:


> Yes, I saw it. But I still don't get the idea. Why are all those trucks sounding their horns and flashing their lights? I know they are comming from a festival and maybe they are drunk, but come on, you don't do that on the motorway for 4 hours.


It seems to me that there is a bunch of spectators at the rest area right next to the motorway watching the trucks.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Most overpasses and roadsides were packed with people, sometimes 200 people on a single overpass. 2,000 trucks (often special ones!) leave the Truckstar Festival in Assen, and most use A28 to return south.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Most overpasses and roadsides were packed with people, sometimes 200 people on a single overpass. 2,000 trucks (often special ones!) leave the Truckstar Festival in Assen, and most use A28 to return south.


They should have taken a highway that wasn't undergoing roadworks!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Whoops


----------



## seem

^^ Wow! That was in the Netherlands? Did someone die? 

_Btw, Do you remember floods in Miskolc? I just find some pics on a Slovak site from some store..

horrible_



















Auchan


----------



## H123Laci

^^ only half meter.

they should have raised the terrain only by half meter... :bash:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Interesting centreline, 1940


----------



## piotr71

http://denverpost.slideshowpro.com/albums/001/496/album-125171/cache/color005.sJPG_950_2000_0_75_0_50_50.sJPG?1280320653

Very interesting picture. Where has it been taken, by the way?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Caribou, Maine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribou,_Maine


----------



## Carldiff

I need to ask - is SSC XL not working? I'm surfing in work because I have no internet at home at the moment and the rate the banner and other pages won't load at all. It could just be my shoddy work network though.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Caribou, Maine
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribou,_Maine


You beat me to it....


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Dutch is almost impossible to pronounce correctly for a non-native speaker, especially "sch", "r" and "g".


I wast told the "ch" is pronounced exactly like the "g", like "ij" an "ei" sound the same :S


----------



## Nexis

Attus said:


> People in Hungary say Dutch language was created by drunk German sailors that tried to speak English ;-)


Sounds like it :lol: You rarely hear dutch around here , German ,Euro Spanish , Polish , Portuguese , British English , Italian , Russian and Czech are widely spoken though. 

They tend to cluster up in certain cities / towns in my state. Italians , and Spanish integrate into most towns the rest do not. The East Ward of Newark is dominated by the Portuguese , followed by Italians , Russians , and a small Czech community i found a few weeks ago. 

Polish ppl are grouped together in a few towns in the southern part of my county and they have a gathering place in Jersey City Katyn Square. Russians tend to be in Middle class towns , usually Collage towns like Montclair or New Brunswick. 

Germans live in cities like Hoboken or Jersey City..........theres also a new but weird growing population , Australians are moving Essex County for some reason. They live along the Morristown line , majority of them are families and work in the cities like Newark , Jersey City and Manhattan. And look at me i have started a new topic :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Of course the caravan was Dutch.


----------



## nenea_hartia

OMG ! :shocked:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This actually happens quite often. Usually the brake gets overheated because it doesn't release completely, setting the caravan on fire. Have no illusion, a caravan is nothing more than plywood and polystyrene and once it caught fire the entire thing is gone in a few minutes. It's also often loaded with propane tanks to provide fuel for cooking.


----------



## nenea_hartia

I just made an 8.000 km trip this summer from Romania to Scotland and back, using a caravan. That picture will make me MUCH more careful on how the caravan is hooked of the car and I will check more often if everything is still OK and in its place.


----------



## SeanT

ChrisZwolle said:


> This actually happens quite often. Usually the brake gets overheated because it doesn't release completely, setting the caravan on fire. Have no illusion, a caravan is nothing more than plywood and polystyrene and once it caught fire the entire thing is gone in a few minutes. It's also often loaded with propane tanks to provide fuel for cooking.


 but still costs like €15.000+ :lol:so quite expansive firework:lol:


----------



## Ni3lS

Fatfield said:


> This is a clip from a TV programme called Mongrel Nation. A tongue-in-cheek look at our history by comedian Eddie Izzard.


Did you join SSC to show us this? :lol:

LOL @ the Dutch caravan. Tourists in France and other mountaineous countries (especially Dutch tourists) do not know how to drive a car in the mountains. Especially with a caravan hooked up to it. Let go of the brakes ppl :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Crabzilla:


----------



## Ni3lS

Oh saw that on the news. World's biggest crab is coming to the Netherlands. I think it was caught somewhere around Japan


----------



## Fatfield

Ni3lS said:


> Did you join SSC to show us this? :lol:


That old English is similar to the language spoken in Friesland. Or any other language that has Germanic roots too. Good god, no!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Here's your daily "WTF" moment:









2 hot air balloons needed to make an emergency landing on the A28 motorway near Nunspeet, the Netherlands.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> 2 hot air balloons needed to make an emergency landing on the A28 motorway near Nunspeet, the Netherlands.


Why?


----------



## Maxx☢Power

Ni3lS said:


> Oh saw that on the news. World's biggest crab is coming to the Netherlands. I think it was caught somewhere around Japan


They're native to the North Pacific, but were introduced by the Russians in the Barents Sea and have spread south from there, where they have few natural enemies and are becoming a pest.


----------



## Fatfield

Maxx☢Power;61480629 said:


> They're native to the North Pacific, but were introduced by the Russians in the Barents Sea and have spread south from there, where they have few natural enemies and are becoming a pest.


Time to give these lads a call.


----------



## Aan

it's called japanese spider crab, I've seen it in Singapore Seaworld on Sentosa island and it looks scary like alien from other planet, it's really huge, I would be scared sh*tless if the glass on aquarium broke

some of my photos from there
http://img19.imagevenue.com/img.php...e_obrovske_pavucie_kraby_cca_1m_123_508lo.jpg
http://img106.imagevenue.com/img.ph..._obr_pav_krab_moze_mat_skoro_2m_123_335lo.jpg


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The extreme smog in Moscow due to all the forest fires.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

ROFL









My guess it's Bangkok photoshopped?


----------



## SeanT

ChrisZwolle said:


> The extreme smog in Moscow due to all the forest fires.


Yes, and now in Ukraine too.hno:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I just saw the police come down a road, stop next to a car stopped at a traffic light, a policeman got out, put his hand in a car and turned it off, and asked the man to get out of the car :crazy:


----------



## seem

^^ bogdymol, so 170 km on a motorway. And how long is a way (in hrs)? 

btw, I am living 34 km from Slovak motorway D1.


----------



## piotr71

There are some things which differ Great Britain from Continental Europe. We all, more or less, know most of them. However, I am wondering if calling motorways' lanes in the way British do, is turned the other way round, or we Poles...let's better say I, always called lanes' order wrongly? What I mean is that:

*PL*









*GB*









How does it work in your country?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In the Netherlands, lanes are officially counted from the median to the edge of the road. (so the #1 lane is the leftmost lane). However, the general public usually counts the other way 'round. 

Dutch people (and media) always mistake the word "roadway" when they mean "lane". They say "rijbaan", but they mean "rijstrook".


----------



## DanielFigFoz

As you said, in the UK thats the way it is, but most people just refer to the "fast lane", the "slow lane" and the "middle lane". Although some people so say the "outside lane" when talking about the one on the actual outside.


----------



## seem

^^ As in UK, we are also using terms the "fast lane", the "slow lane" and the "middle lane" or "left" and "right" lane.


----------



## piotr71

DanielFigFoz said:


> . Although some people so say the "outside lane" when talking about the one on the actual outside.


I'd say they must be foreigners  

In the UK lanes are counted as in the Netherlands, as well. Lane one is the lane nearest the hard shoulder:









There is similarly confusing issue when trying to source a part for a car. You know, this off-side/near-side lamps, indicators or so. There in England, the near-side of the car is the passenger's side and the off-side is the driver's side.
So, nearest to the driver seat isn't nearside but off-side. I know why now, but it sounded very weirdly for me when I first heard it.


----------



## piotr71

seem said:


> ^^ As in UK, we are also using terms the "fast lane", the "slow lane" and the "middle lane" or "left" and "right" lane.


Don't you ever say outside or inside lane? I mean, if you had to describe lanes' location in terms of sides, how would you say about slow lane? Out-or in -side?


----------



## seem

piotr71 said:


> Don't you ever say outside or inside lane? I mean, if you had to describe lanes' location in terms of sides, how would you say about slow lane? Out-or in -side?


Inside lane. 

Imo more used is left/right, slow/fast than out/inside


----------



## piotr71

seem said:


> Inside lane.


Oohmoo 



> Imo more used is left/right, slow/fast than out/inside


That's true. Left, middle and right. Actually, using terms fast or slow is very inappropriate in my opinion, because nothing of this sort exists. One speed limit is applied for all lanes.


----------



## H123Laci

piotr71 said:


> Don't you ever say outside or inside lane?


I always drive in the insane lane... :lol:


----------



## Fatfield

piotr71 said:


> Oohmoo
> 
> 
> That's true. Left, middle and right. Actually, using terms fast or slow is very inappropriate in my opinion, because nothing of this sort exists. One speed limit is applied for all lanes.


That and the fact the middle & outside lanes are 'overtaking' lanes. Hate the term 'fast lane'.


----------



## seem

piotr71 said:


> Oohmoo


Slavic brotherhood 



> That's true. Left, middle and right. Actually, using terms fast or slow is very inappropriate in my opinion, because nothing of this sort exists. One speed limit is applied for all lanes.


You are tlaking about Poland or UK? 

Yes, one speed limit is for all lanes but in fact, you know how does it work..


----------



## Attus

In Hungary we use the terms outside lane (for the rightmost one), inside lane (for the leftmost one) or middle lane in a 3 lane way. As we have very few roads with 4 lanes per direction and not any with 5 lanes (disregarding city junction points) this terms fit almost everywhere.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

In Estonian there is no outside or inside lane. But when it comes to counting lanes, the first lane is the rightmost one.


----------



## nenea_hartia

Rebasepoiss said:


> In Estonian there is no outside or inside lane. But when it comes to counting lanes, the first lane is the rightmost one.


The same in Romania.


----------



## Nexis

some interesting pics i took yesterday in Jersey City


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> In the Netherlands, lanes are officially counted from the median to the edge of the road. (so the #1 lane is the leftmost lane).


So that's the reason why my TomTom counts lanes from the left...


----------



## snowman159

Don't know if it's been mentioned here already, but Google Maps now includes directions between Europe and some Asian countries.

one example: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&sou...93.647461&sspn=9.831717,14.128418&ie=UTF8&z=3


----------



## x-type

^^
but Bosnia and Herzegovina is still out of calculating routes


----------



## Haljackey

Oh no! Now they're invading our streets!


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^ That's one wide road without a central reservation!


----------



## Haljackey




----------



## Morsue

DanielFigFoz said:


> ^^ That's one wide road without a central reservation!


You didn't notice the giant Snorlax? :lol:


----------



## mediar

radi6404 said:


>


I'm not sure why Radi has missed to point that in this threat, but he posted a new photo of his balcony:










Just look at his shiny crashbarrier and how shiny it is! :lol:


----------



## Angelos

hmm thats a nice aparment other there  damn lucky radi you might be lucky so a chick might relocate at the opposite apartment so you can spy her bedroom


----------



## Wilhem275

Haljackey said:


>


:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

*Companion on road trips*

Hi there. This post is semi-ranting and semi-whining because I'm in a bad mood today hno:

I know many people here in this forum like to do road trips just for the sake of the roads, for the driving/sightseeing/vehicle maneuvering/journey much more than for any destination. This is my case too.

Of course, as I have a special relation with such trips, it is not always easy to find people willing to travel with me. Since I've got my license and while in University I had always been the "designated driver" on normal holiday trips with my family or friends. They were always happy to let somebody else navigate the highways while they relaxed. The fact I don't speed and drive on a cautious approach help it.

Still, sometimes I want to make detours through highways I haven't driven in a while, or, in Italy, take mountain passes 2-lane roads instead of regular tunnel-viaduct-cut highways. My parents even started to love some of my detours through scenic routes or so, but their limits are 50 hairpins per day.

My friends always want the fastest route. So when we were in the University, I could lure them to compromise on longer journeys because I had the patience to drive through alternative routes during holidays, which didn't take more then congested highways :cheers:

Now, I use to say that my next girlfriend have to, at least, tolerate road trips enough to stop suggesting "let's take a train instead", and even short flights, time allowing.

After 7 years with my license, I learned that it is better to take a road trip alone than with companions not really enjoying the road. So I've driven, at most, 14.500km in 21 days alone, like waking up, having breakfast, shaving, getting behind the wheels, stopping for photos and scenic vantage points/roadside landmarks or no more than 45 min. walking, coming back and repeating it, driving until dawn then crashing into a cheap roadside hotel. 

So it is a paradox: travelling without any worries about bothering my companion(s) is great, but sometimes I feel like I've been not speaking enough and getting too introspective hahaha. After that 21-days trip, I felt like I was a little unused to hear people talking all the time, and it took me 1 day to adjust back to life out of the road - but the trip was the most amazing ever, a pity I've lost ALL the photos hehe.


----------



## bogdymol

Suburbanist said:


> Hi there. This post is semi-ranting and semi-whining because I'm in a bad mood today hno:
> 
> I know many people here in this forum like to do road trips just for the sake of the roads, for the driving/sightseeing/vehicle maneuvering/journey much more than for any destination. This is my case too.
> 
> Of course, as I have a special relation with such trips, it is not always easy to find people willing to travel with me. Since I've got my license and while in University I had always been the "designated driver" on normal holiday trips with my family or friends. They were always happy to let somebody else navigate the highways while they relaxed. The fact I don't speed and drive on a cautious approach help it.
> 
> Still, sometimes I want to make detours through highways I haven't driven in a while, or, in Italy, take mountain passes 2-lane roads instead of regular tunnel-viaduct-cut highways. My parents even started to love some of my detours through scenic routes or so, but their limits are 50 hairpins per day.
> 
> My friends always want the fastest route. So when we were in the University, I could lure them to compromise on longer journeys because I had the patience to drive through alternative routes during holidays, which didn't take more then congested highways :cheers:
> 
> Now, I use to say that my next girlfriend have to, at least, tolerate road trips enough to stop suggesting "let's take a train instead", and even short flights, time allowing.
> 
> After 7 years with my license, I learned that it is better to take a road trip alone than with companions not really enjoying the road. So I've driven, at most, 14.500km in 21 days alone, like waking up, having breakfast, shaving, getting behind the wheels, stopping for photos and scenic vantage points/roadside landmarks or no more than 45 min. walking, coming back and repeating it, driving until dawn then crashing into a cheap roadside hotel.
> 
> So it is a paradox: travelling without any worries about bothering my companion(s) is great, but sometimes I feel like I've been not speaking enough and getting too introspective hahaha. After that 21-days trip, I felt like I was a little unused to hear people talking all the time, and it took me 1 day to adjust back to life out of the road - but the trip was the most amazing ever, a pity I've lost ALL the photos hehe.


How in the world have you lost ALL the photos??? hno:

Where have you driven 14.000 km in 21 days?


----------



## Wilhem275

Suburbanist said:


> Hi there. This post is semi-ranting and semi-whining because I'm in a bad mood today hno:
> 
> _...cut..._
> 
> After 7 years with my license, I learned that it is better to take a road trip alone than with companions not really enjoying the road.


+1 :cheers:

Gmaps "grab and reroute" is a great tool, isn't it?


----------



## Suburbanist

bogdymol said:


> How in the world have you lost ALL the photos??? hno:
> 
> Where have you driven 14.000 km in 21 days?


The trip was in Western Europe, covering mostly remote and rarely visited places, combined with some long stretches of highway driving (the longest one from Catania, Italy to Zaragoza, Spain).

My pen(flash)-drive (backup) was damaged due to overheat. I was in the road and didn't mind trying to buy some (they were not as ubiquitous as now) in a German speaking country's most remote rural villages. So Murphy came and the HD was damaged too, on the 18th day of my trip. I was so upset I didn't dare to take any further pictures from that trip.


----------



## bogdymol

Suburbanist said:


> The trip was in Western Europe, covering mostly remote and rarely visited places, combined with some long stretches of highway driving (the longest one from Catania, Italy to Zaragoza, Spain).
> 
> My pen(flash)-drive (backup) was damaged due to overheat. I was in the road and didn't mind trying to buy some (they were not as ubiquitous as now) in a German speaking country's most remote rural villages. So Murphy came and the HD was damaged too, on the 18th day of my trip. I was so upset I didn't dare to take any further pictures from that trip.


Sorry for your photos.

Can you google-map your 14k km trip?


----------



## Suburbanist

bogdymol said:


> Sorry for your photos.
> 
> Can you google-map your 14k km trip?


I'm planning to do so. And I'll post it here as soon as I'm done with it.


----------



## Fatfield

*Going Nowhere: Traffic Jam Enters Ninth Day *
 
10:17am UK, Monday August 23, 2010

Kat Higgins, Sky News Online  



A 100km long traffic jam in China has entered its ninth day and drivers are being warned the bottleneck could continue for a month.










The road network into Beijing is struggling to cope with the volume of vehicles

Hundreds of trucks heading for Beijing on the Beijing-Tibet Expressway have been at a standstill because of roadworks in the capital.
Small traffic accidents or broken-down cars are aggravating the congestion which started on August 14.
But those affected have been taking the disruption in their stride.
Drivers have been playing chess or cards, with some joking "concerts should be held at each congested area every weekend, to alleviate drivers' homesickness".
And local residents have been benefiting from the queue too by setting up temporary stalls selling food and drink to the car owners.
There has been anger that some vendors have been making a small fortune by overcharging drivers for items including noodles and hot water.

Around 400 police officers are at the scene 24 hours a day to make sure the situation stays calm.

It is hoped the roadworks will be completed by the end of September but congestion and road safety are a huge concern for Chinese motorists.
Traffic jams have been frequent since May due to the rapid increase of trucks to a daily peak of about 17,000.
Niu Fengrui, director of the Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told the *Global Times* poor road planning was part of the problem: "If there's no traffic jam in the city, that would be news.
"Our government should pick up the pace of urban infrastructure construction and spend some of its budget."

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Wo..._Its_Ninth_Day_And_Could_Continue_For_A_Month


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I wonder how these roadworks are carried out. I mean, you don't get a 100 km queue unless you narrow the road from 5 to 1 lane or something like that.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder how these roadworks are carried out. I mean, you don't get a 100 km queue unless you narrow the road from 5 to 1 lane or something like that.


Or block all the exits preventing drivers to take alternative routes...


----------



## x-type

oh, so all media has transmitted that news  i read that there was a huge jam, then appeared lots of minor accidents and finally lots of cars got broken in that jam because of heat.


----------



## seem

^^ Slovak media are also full of this jam..


----------



## RipleyLV

"Google StreetView" is coming to Latvia. They will start making pictures this week.


----------



## seem

They are also making pictures in 8 Slovak towns. 

"StreetView car" in Bratislava










on some German autobahn - http://pocitace.sme.sk/c/4969167/ak...svet-pre-google-zazreli-sme-ho-v-nemecku.html


----------



## Wilhem275

I want Berlin in Street View! How long will I have to wait?


----------



## seem

^^ Try to find street view on some different page. Bratislava had aslo street view for 2yrs before google on norc.sk

and also some other Slovak towns, so I bet Germany is so big and developed country that it has to be somewhere on the internet


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I guess this is the first time a traffic jam got it's own wikipedia article? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_China_National_Highway_110_traffic_jam


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Here's your daily "wtf" moment.


----------



## Wilhem275

:wtf:

He's alive! mg:


----------



## RipleyLV

That was awesome.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Was that his body that stopped near the silver car that stopped on the hard shoulder?


----------



## bogdymol

*Lucky driver:*





via


----------



## seem

Slovak truck hits 24 wild boars on a Slovak R1 between Trnava and Nitra. Slovak motorway fancing.. :bash:


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I can only imagine how tasty those wild boars are after a collision with a truck...


----------



## TheCat




----------



## DanielFigFoz

I wonder if the driver was sacked.


----------



## seem

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ I can only imagine how tasty those wild boars are after a collision with a truck...


Like hot out of the oven . 

btw, all of these died  guy in a truck was OK

_some pics from http://www.trnava-live.sk/2010/08/24/stado-24-kusov-diviakov-vbehlo-pod-kamion-vsetky-zahynuli/_


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Couple of month ago, I happen to run over two foxes with my car... I managed to avoid one, but not the other. It died, the driver (me) was ok 
But the forward license plate was a little deformed by the accident... :nuts:


----------



## seem

2 months ago I crashed one plastic part near a wheel when I was going to school, nothing happend. But than we were doing 150 km/h on a Slovak D1 and it just fall off the car.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

A couple of years ago a friend of mine was ran into by a deer in a small forest area within the boundaries of Tallinn. She managed to brake a little, otherwise the deer would've ran into the passenger side door. But still, the right wing was damaged and also the front passenger-side headlight. Police was just near by but since the deer ran away, there was nothing to do for them any more.

To continue the animal-topic: In April, 2008, a bear was ran over by the car of our defence minister Jaak Aaviksoo. It happened on the E263 highway. The car got damaged but unfortunately the bear was killed. Later, however, the bear was stuffed and the money coming from the sale went to charity(the selling price was more than € 10,000). 

The car after the accident:


----------



## webeagle12

ChrisZwolle said:


> Here's your daily "wtf" moment.


f*ck that shit, I'm going to space


----------



## Morsue

Hey everyone, I have a question that maybe someone here is able to answer. I'm thinking of buying a new car abroad and then importing it. I've understood that in countries that levy a lot of taxes on new cars retailers need to keep prices down in order to keep the end prices not to excessive. So my question is which EU-15 country (except the UK and Ireland, for obvious reasons) has the lowest price of a new car, cleared of taxes and fees that I only need to pay in the country of import? Denmark?

I think this has been discussed earlier in this thread, but I'm not sure on which page.


----------



## Carldiff

I remember people in the UK used to go to Holland to take advantage of the weak Euro to buy cars. The EC at the time ruled that car dealers could not refuse to provide a RHD vehicle. However given the state of the Euro against the pound even if you could get a LHD car in the UK I doubt it would be the cheapest place to go.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm in Brig, Switzerland right now. Unfortunately, it will snow tonight at elevations over 1500 meters. I don't have chains or winter tires so I will postpone my plan to clinch some high Alpine passes. My campsite is at 700 meters, so I expect a cold night.


----------



## nenea_hartia

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm in Brig, Switzerland right now. Unfortunately, it will snow tonight at elevations over 1500 meters. I don't have chains or winter tires so I will postpone my plan to clinch some high Alpine passes. My campsite is at 700 meters, so I expect a cold night.


I've crossed through Brig two years ago on my way to Locarno. It's a beautiful landscape there but I imagine it can be a cold place when snowing, so I wish you the warmer possible staying in the campsite, Chris, and also a great vacation.


----------



## Spookvlieger

bogdymol said:


> Something is wrong with google :lol:


On the Belgian one there is nothing wrong, neither on the French or .com one, guess only the UK one crashed ???:lol:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I made a map last night :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

Look how someone found his car this morning:


----------



## Danielk2

joshsam said:


> On the Belgian one there is nothing wrong, neither on the French or .com one, guess only the UK one crashed ???:lol:


Click the link


----------



## Spookvlieger

Danielk2 said:


> Click the link


I did...it's the UK google so what? I just don't get it...


----------



## Wilhem275

Be sure to activate all Java tricks on that page  I had NoScript blocking the trick, so it was not so funny


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've driven 500 kilometers through Italia today  My first driving experience in Italy. I've been to Italy before, but I wasn't driving myself back then.

I took A26 all the way to Alessandria, then A21 to Tortona and then A7 to Milano. Then I used the Tangenziale Ovest and A8 back to Gravellona Toce, and the A26/SS33 across the Sempione (Simplon) back to Brig.

The A26 was a pleasant surprise at low traffic and 2x3 lanes, but A7 was loaded with trucks. There was an accident near Pavia with a car completely totaled. There was some kind of rack lying between the right and center lane on the Tangenziale Ovest, people could barely avoid it.


----------



## Wilhem275

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've driven 500 kilometers through Italia today  My first driving experience in Italy. I've been to Italy before, but I wasn't driving myself back then.
> 
> I took A26 all the way to Alessandria, then A21 to Tortona and then A7 to Milano. Then I used the Tangenziale Ovest and A8 back to Gravellona Toce, and the A26/SS33 across the Sempione (Simplon) back to Brig.
> 
> The A26 was a pleasant surprise at low traffic and 2x3 lanes, but A7 was loaded with trucks. There was an accident near Pavia with a car completely totaled. There was some kind of rack lying between the right and center lane on the Tangenziale Ovest, people could barely avoid it.


Why didn't you descend to Genova on the A26 to then take A7 back north? You wouldn't pay any extra toll and those tunnels near Genova... not to miss :lol:

I've also told you before: spare € 52 and take a round-trip near the Alpine tunnels. A5 and A32 are roads NOT to miss either


----------



## Wilhem275

Way much better the A7 SOUTHwards! Crazy windy road! Speed limit 80, and you won't feel it as a restriction :lol:

For the same price, he could have made this 8-loop: http://goo.gl/maps/Ym3m
A7 down, A26 up


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've driven 500 kilometers through Italia


At last! Now you can cancel that shameful 2.3km clinched :banana::lol:


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've driven 500 kilometers through Italia today  My first driving experience in Italy. I've been to Italy before, but I wasn't driving myself back then.
> 
> I took A26 all the way to Alessandria, then A21 to Tortona and then A7 to Milano. Then I used the Tangenziale Ovest and A8 back to Gravellona Toce, and the A26/SS33 across the Sempione (Simplon) back to Brig.
> 
> The A26 was a pleasant surprise at low traffic and 2x3 lanes, but A7 was loaded with trucks. There was an accident near Pavia with a car completely totaled. There was some kind of rack lying between the right and center lane on the Tangenziale Ovest, people could barely avoid it.


You now have clinched ~400 km of Italian Autostrade. I have clinched 993.6 km, and Spinoza nearly 4000. But, if you had driven all the way down to Genoa, we would had a bit of autostrade clinched together.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've driven 500 kilometers through Italia today  *My first driving experience in Italy. I've been to Italy before, but I wasn't driving myself back then.*
> 
> I took A26 all the way to Alessandria, then A21 to Tortona and then A7 to Milano. Then I used the Tangenziale Ovest and A8 back to Gravellona Toce, and the A26/SS33 across the Sempione (Simplon) back to Brig.
> 
> The A26 was a pleasant surprise at low traffic and 2x3 lanes, but A7 was loaded with trucks. There was an accident near Pavia with a car completely totaled. There was some kind of rack lying between the right and center lane on the Tangenziale Ovest, people could barely avoid it.


I tought you already drove on Italian motorways before, although just 1.4 mi.

PS: next week I will go (and drive) for the first time in CZ, so wish me luck :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

CNGL said:


> But, if you had driven all the way down to Genoa, we would had a bit of autostrade clinched together.


I'm going to Genoa in a couple weeks for my pal's wedding. Bologna-Florence-Lucca-Genoa with A1-A11-A12, then coming back thru A7 till Tortona and then A21 to Brescia (picking up my gal), then A4 till Verona, A22 to Modena and A1 to Bologna. Almost 300km of never-clinched-before highways


----------



## Wilhem275

I am making my own clinched hws map in Gmaps.
I have some doubts: should I count both directions or just one? And how should I count when the two directions have sensibly different lenghts?

I mean, the A7 Serravalle Scrivia - Genova Ovest is 49,1 km long, while Genova Ovest - Serravalle Scrivia is 44,7.
Other case: I clinched the A1 between Piacenza and Parma going south, but never going north.

I'm confused...


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Well, the website consider an highway clinched even if you drove it just in a direction. 

But if you're doing it on your own, you can do whatever you please...


----------



## Wilhem275

Ok, here I am 

I: 2030 km
A: 109 km
D: 96 km

http://goo.gl/maps/Esyy

What a shame, they're on two pages. Stupid Gmaps 

Farthest points.

North: [D] A 99/A 94 Kreuz München-Ost
South: _ A1 Firenze Sud
West:  A10 Savona
East:  A4 Latisana

_


----------



## CNGL

There's a thread where you can show your clinched highways and roads, but I don't know where. I have clinched around 4000 kilometers of Spanish autopistas.


----------



## g.spinoza

Wilhelm, why don't you join the website http://cmap.m-plex.com ?


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> Wilhelm, why don't you join the website http://cmap.m-plex.com ?


I sent them my clinched highways about two weeks ago, but it hasn't appeared on the website yet


----------



## Ni3lS

Purchased online? Or purchased on the International flowermarket 'Albert Cuyp/Kuijp' in Amsterdam?


----------



## Fatfield

Jonesy55 said:


> Belgian beers are very well known here in the UK, hoegaarden and leffe are to be found in most places and most supermarkets while many bars also sell beers like Chimay, duvel, grimbergen, la gauloise, belle-vue, gulden draak etc as well as the omnipresent Stella artois of course.
> 
> Apart from that Belgium is probably most known here for smurfs, eurocrats, moules-frites and political infighting between flemings and walloons


Ha'way man. You've missed out the most famous Belgian of all time - Tin Tin.


----------



## Fatfield

DanielFigFoz said:


> ^^ You have to go to a police station within a few days, unless you do have all your documents on you, then you obviously don't.


That's basically it. You get a 'Producer', officially called HO/RT1 (Home Office Road Traffic Form 1). You then have 7 days to 'produce' your documents (driving licence, MOT & insurance) at a police station nominated by yourself.


----------



## g.spinoza

Fatfield said:


> You then have 7 days to 'produce' your documents (driving licence, MOT & insurance) at a police station nominated by yourself.


I don't get it. What happens if you do not? They don't have your name, your street address, they can't do anything to track you.


----------



## Fatfield

g.spinoza said:


> I don't get it. What happens if you do not? They don't have your name, your street address, they can't do anything to track you.


They have your car registration though which the police can trace you with. If you don't have the relevant documents you will be prosecuted.

PS The police run a check on your car registration prior to issuing a producer so they'll know if you're lieing about your personal details.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Some men kiss women. Some men kiss men. But Radi kisses asphalt!



Radish2 said:


> You can look and touch the quality Struma Motorway, it's crashbarriers and kiss it's beautiful asphalt.


----------



## g.spinoza

Fatfield said:


> They have your car registration though which the police can trace you with. If you don't have the relevant documents you will be prosecuted.
> 
> PS The police run a check on your car registration prior to issuing a producer so they'll know if you're lieing about your personal details.


But the car could be registered to my grandma, or lended by a friend... 

I don't know, it seems a method too complex and prone to errors...


----------



## BND

ChrisZwolle said:


> Some men kiss women. Some men kiss men. But Radi kisses asphalt!


John Paul 2 used to do that, too


----------



## seem

^^ Yeah, but he done this in Israel, birth place of Jesus. But that was just some normal EU motorway..


----------



## g.spinoza

seem said:


> ^^ Yeah, but he done this in Israel, birth place of Jesus. But that was just some normal EU motorway..


Actually he did that every time he got out of an airplane...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

So conclusion: Radi is the next pope? Apparently, he practices a lot.


----------



## seem

g.spinoza said:


> Actually he did that every time he got out of an airplane...


No offence, sorry I am not catholic so I am not interested in pope. 

Chris, Radi the second 

btw, thank you, yes did, not done! : -)


----------



## g.spinoza

seem said:


> No offence, sorry I am not catholic so I am not interested in pope.


None taken, I am not catholic as well but I'm Italian... here the Pope is everywhere hno:


----------



## seem

^^ Sure, I forgotten how caltholic your country is.. :nuts:


----------



## eddeux

When I first saw this thread I thought it was about rest areas alongside highways. :lol:

Speaking of that, the many here in the US can get sort of creepy at night (depending on your area). I remember when driving through Arkansas some time ago there were police and paramedics at one going inside the female bathroom. W/ the yellow tape over the door. Looked like a murder had happened. :uh:


----------



## x-type

tonight i've been on small trip and i could choose taking A2 or A4. i have chosen A4. exactly in that time at A2 there was accident because of drunk driver who drove in wrong direction.  that's what i call wise choice.


----------



## seem

èđđeůx;63164385 said:


> When I first saw this thread I thought it was about rest areas alongside highways. :lol:


 The same with me!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> tonight i've been on small trip and i could choose taking A2 or A4. i have chosen A4. exactly in that time at A2 there was accident because of drunk driver who drove in wrong direction.  that's what i call wise choice.


I remember such a story from 1967; the James Bond producers were shooting their newest film in Japan, and had booked an airline back to the United Kingdom, but decided to stay a little longer to watch a ninja performance they needed for the film. That aircraft crashed 20 minutes after takeoff, killing all aboard. Man, that's luck.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I remember something like that with Italia footballer Christian Panucci, coming back to Italy after Atlanta Olympic Games in '96... he injured himself and decided to come back home... he booked a seat on TWA 800 but changed idea later because he didn't want to stop in Paris and booked a seat on another plane... and the TWA 800 exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, killing 250...


----------



## seem

^^ 6 years ago my mother found really cheap last minute to Maldives and nearly booked it but she had decided to stay for a Christmas at home.

_Thanks God.._


----------



## piotr71

PLH said:


> ^^ Oh, this ine is great
> 
> Mix is with cheap champagne and you'll obtain a mindblowing (seriously, I mean it) drink  But no sipping, only at one gulp.


 There is no way I would drink such a mix. With age, my hangover is getting worse and worse, so I am afraid I would not get up for 2 days after that. 



seem said:


> _koning _ is not English, I know it well, just wait for Chris


Sorry, it must have been sort of misunderstanding. I spelled 'coming' incorrectly, so I thought you pointed out it writing this strangely looking word.

By the way, 'koning' means 'king', isn't it? How does it refer to.... anything, then?  Was it _ja som kral s slivovicu_?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Happy birthday, Chris! 
And to keep you out of trouble after consuming all that alcohol, I give you this :


----------



## seem

piotr71 said:


> There is no way I would drink such a mix. With age my hangover is getting worse and worse, so I am worried I would not get up for 2 days after that.
> 
> 
> 
> Sorry, it was sort of misunderstanding. I spelled 'coming' incorrectly, so I thought you pointed out it writing this strangely looking word.
> 
> By the way, 'koning' means 'king', isn't it? How does it refer to.... anything, then?  Was it _ja som kral s slivovicu_?


Nie! Nie som kral s slivovicu! 

Thank you  I thought "koning" means "coming".


----------



## CNGL

Happy birthday Chris!
I want to clinch higways with you! Have you ever passed this exit? (C-32 exit 108, or as in my map A-2 exit 654 )

PS: In the link to your clinched highways, change the _du=mi_ to _du=km_.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

waddler said:


> ^^ I bet Chris can still drive perfectly even after all these drinks! :lol:


I don't drink and drive  



CNGL said:


> Happy birthday Chris!
> I want to clinch higways with you! Have you ever passed this exit? (C-32 exit 108, or as in my map A-2 exit 654 )


Nope, I've only clinched the southern part of C-32 (El Vendrell - Barcelona).


----------



## CNGL

And I clinched Vendrell-Calafell; Vilanova i la Geltru-Casteldefells (Although i don't remember that as I was only 2 years) and Montgat-Mataró. I want to clinch that 9 km and get to Sant Vicenç de Montalt any day!

PS: I can't open your travels file Chris. How do you made that?


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ I guess I need to sign up for highway clinching too. But I find the site too difficult to operate.


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ I guess I need to sign up for highway clinching too. But I find the site too difficult to operate.


It seems more difficult than it is.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes, it's easy once you got the hang of it.


----------



## seem

Guys! You have to see this ad!

http://www.youtube.com/user/tippexperience 

really great


----------



## CNGL

Finally they updated my list with French motorways. Now I have 1504.6 kilometers of highways marked.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I got 5.366 km in France  (actually somewhat more because A28 Le Mans - Tours is missing).


----------



## CNGL

^^ And A8 Milan-A8/A26, and Belgian A601, and part of Slovenian A2.

And how do you made your list? I see that my computer wants to download that because it's an unknown file type.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A 1979 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow II. You don't see too many of these.


Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow II by Chriszwolle, on Flickr


----------



## Jeroen669

Respect to this old man:


----------



## seem

I`d like to have a skills like he!


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

That's what I call "Camping with style"!









(Camp in Košice, Slovakia)


----------



## seem

^^ When you see some Dutch plate in Slovakia, this car si going to the camp.


----------



## piotr71

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4084/4993144612_128ed57ee3_b.jpg
Nice one. Circa 10 Mpg 

Btw. If there is a particular classic car's model you can't find anywhere in the world, go to the Netherlands and you'll spot it.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

The camp in Košice was very international indeed. I was there with some friends at the end of August and we were the only Slavs there, apart from the staff. Not a single Slovak camper there


----------



## Verso

It's both at the same time. :lol:


----------



## Radish2

It's not funny at all, I have never seen so damaged roads, that must have been a very big flood and long rainfalls so that the ground get's so soft and roads and railways get destroied. I thought Slovenia has rocky ground because of the big ammount of mountains, the Alps and so on, but maybe even that could not withstand such floods.


----------



## Verso

The swamp south of Ljubljana (Barje) is still under water, btw, and new rain is expected on Friday. They should go back to their roots:









_http://www.kam.si/images/stories/blogi/420/ljubljana 050.jpg_


----------



## Zanovijetalo

Wow, awful damages in Slovenia, hope that forecasted weekend’s rainfall won’t be that serious.

We had the highest level of Sava river in decades in Zagreb too, no floods thanks to city’s good defense system, but surrounding villages were badly affected.

Domovinski bridge, east Zagreb










Western parts (Jarun, Lanište))


----------



## CNGL

From Trucking in your country, for prevent falling in off-topic:.
When I saw this truck...









I couldn't see it as I see that as Frigo. So how is called the Unilever ice creams in your country?
In Spain is Frigo.
In Portugal Olá.
In France Miko.
In Italy and Poland Algida. (In the other Poland, aka Catalonia , is Frigo like on the rest of Spain ). In Romania too!
And in Brazil you see, Kibon.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ In Romania is Algida.


----------



## Schweden

Sweden  http://www.gb.se/


----------



## seem

CNGL said:


> In Italy and Poland Algida. (In the other Poland, aka Catalonia , is Frigo like on the rest of Spain ). In Romania too!


It`s called Aligda also in Slovak, Cezch and Hungarian Republic. 

http://www.loveicecream.com/sk_sk/home/default.aspx
http://www.loveicecream.com/cs_cz/home/default.aspx
http://www.loveicecream.com/hu_hu/home/default.aspx


----------



## ChrisZwolle




----------



## SeanT

ChrisZwolle said:


>


 In Denmark it´s called "Frisko"


----------



## seem

In UK - Wall's


----------



## BND

^^ it used to be Eskimo in Hungary but later it was changed to Algida


----------



## Ni3lS

Verso said:


> ^ What's funny? The rail "bridge"?


Haha ya



Radish2 said:


> It's not funny at all, I have never seen so damaged roads, that must have been a very big flood and long rainfalls so that the ground get's so soft and roads and railways get destroied. I thought Slovenia has rocky ground because of the big ammount of mountains, the Alps and so on, but maybe even that could not withstand such floods.


Dude I hear you. I think it's terrible too but at the same time some of the images just look hilarious. Makes me think of that one summer in 2007 I spent in Normandy. Water up to the headlights of the car and someone got stuck. The retard opened his door and his car was filled up with water ahahah :lol:


----------



## AUchamps

ChrisZwolle said:


>


In America, it's Good Humor.


----------



## keber

Ni3lS said:


> Water up to the headlights of the car and someone got stuck. The retard opened his door and his car was filled up with water ahahah :lol:


Sooner or later water would enter car that or the other way, doesn't matter if it is a rusty Renault 4 or super duper brand new Mercedes S.


----------



## keber

Radish2 said:


> It's not funny at all, I have never seen so damaged roads, that must have been a very big flood and long rainfalls


Some parts got over 500 l/m2 of rain in only 3 days. That is approximately amount of precipitation in London, UK, which falls over whole year.


----------



## Nexis

Did anything tragic happen in Poland or Eastern European recently? The Katyn Statue had flowers and reefs on it and that only happens when there is a tragedy in Poland or Eastern Europe.


----------



## PLH

^^ 17.09.1939 - Soviet Union attacks Poland


----------------------------------


Yesterday I came back from a small trip to Munich where I accidentaly() attended Oktoberfest. Pics coming soon.


----------



## Nexis

PLH said:


> ^^ 17.09.1939 - Soviet Union attacks Poland
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------
> 
> 
> Yesterday I came back from a small trip to Munich where I accidentaly() attended Oktoberfest. Pics coming soon.


I'm aware of that , but the statue is only covered with Flowers when Something bad happens over there. Or when they had a Polish day as i call it.


----------



## seem

^^ I have not noticed anything in my town. I going to the town and I will see if there is anything near Polish shop!


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Only when half the Polish government was killed there a few months ago.


----------



## Pansori

Did we forget anything? :|


----------



## seem

DanielFigFoz said:


> Only when half the Polish government was killed there a few months ago.


Yeah, there is absolutely nothing near this shop and also in city. Anyway, it was 8 days ago. :nuts:


----------



## mapman:cz

Nexis said:


> I'm aware of that , but the statue is only covered with Flowers when Something bad happens over there. Or when they had a Polish day as i call it.


Hm, there is another reason now, at least 11 polish citizens died at Schonefelder Kreuz near Berlin in a bus accident... Poor Poles hno:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I heard that on the Portuguese radio this morning .

I know that the plane crash was months ago, but when that bridge collapsed in Minneapolis (I-30WSNS?) weren't the flags there at half-mast for a very long time?


----------



## seem




----------



## Nexis

Oh , over the weekend they had a nice European Culture Festival there. The Polish can't seem to catch a break this year hno: Polish , Dutch , Danish , Italian , Irish , Czech , Hungarian Jerseyites are my Favorite European Americans i like how they take over entire towns in my state. Although every race does that.....


----------



## Surel

What are the possible prices for cycle paths around the world? I would like to know if anywhere else have these "golden" paths like in Prague, where 3 km of cycle path cost 6 mil euro. Thus 2 million euro per km of cycling path... :O.









Blue is the path, yellow and azure are the bridges, yellow build, azure rebuild.


----------



## seem

^^ Yeah, I saw this path and how expensive it was in TV Show "Černé ovce". I always thought that Cezch are much more better in this case. hno:


----------



## Jeroen669

How many languages do you speak?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Surel said:


> What are the possible prices for cycle paths around the world? I would like to know if anywhere else have these "golden" paths like in Prague, where 3 km of cycle path cost 6 mil euro. Thus 2 million euro per km of cycling path... :O.


I think this highly depends on variables. For example, if the cycling path can be constructed within an existing right-of-way, or if expropriations are needed. Another issue is the number of bridges and tunnels. In the Netherlands it is known that cycle tunnels under existing roads can cost as much as € 5 - 10 million.


----------



## keber

Jeroen669 said:


> How many languages do you speak?


I speak 3 and a half (beside my mother language), but this guy above is amazing. If I would have just 10% of his learning capabilities ...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I can read nearly all Germanic and Romanic languages (i.e. French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and English) to an extent that I can get the gist out of an article. I can speak Dutch, English, German and some French. I can also read the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets.


----------



## CNGL

I can speak 4 languages (Spanish, English, French and, surprise, Catalan), and I can read Galician, Portuguese and Italian. Even I can read Greek characters!


----------



## seem

I can speak just English and Slovak but understand little bit of German what I`d like to improve and I am learing Spanish. But anyway, Slovak language is enough to speak with some Slavic nations absolutely clearly - Cezchs, Polish and with some problems with Serb/Croatian people (sorry for this word) and Slovenian. When I am in these countries I am always speaking just Slovak and right now I have got Polish mate who can`t speak English so I am sometimes translating and I have realised that Polish language is really easier (after Cezch) for me as a Slovak than Croatian. And to imagine, in Cezch language we have also films in Slovakia.


----------



## Falusi

For us, hungarians have a little handicap against you, because the Hugarian langueage is so different from indo-european languages.
I can speak Hungarian, English, Spanish, and a bit of German. Altough I'm currently in the learning phase.  (I'm only 17)


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think this highly depends on variables. For example, if the cycling path can be constructed within an existing right-of-way, or if expropriations are needed. Another issue is the number of bridges and tunnels. In the Netherlands it is known that cycle tunnels under existing roads can cost as much as € 5 - 10 million.


I agree, but I think they did not had to go under the Ring of Utrecht or its station with their cycle path in this case. But I guess in this case if they could they woul... so high was the desire to spend the money.

Price/utility rationing should should be used. Prague first needs normal cycling grid allowing normal cycling around its current roads without being forced to acquire a high life insurence first.


----------



## seem

Falusi said:


> For us, hungarians have a little handicap against you, because the Hugarian langueage is so different from indo-european languages.
> I can speak Hungarian, English, Spanish, and a bit of German. Altough I'm currently in the learning phase.  (I'm only 17)


Yeah, I heard you have kind of self-conscious because of it (no offence). Is it true that many Hungarian people can`t like deal with it?


----------



## SeanT

seem said:


> Yeah, I heard you have kind of self-conscious because of it (no offence). Is it true that many Hungarian people can`t like deal with it?


 Yes, it would be easier just listen and understand 4-5 other countries languages, just because it´s familiar.:lol:


----------



## seem

^^ Yeah, but on other hand there is a big advantage for people living in Slavic/Hungarian families/areas because they know one Slavic language so they can understand many nations but also know totaly different and hard language.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Besides Estonian, I can speak only English fluently. I've also learned Finnish and I'm currently learning German and Russian but I haven't had much practice so I lack in vocabulary in all three of those languages. It's still good to know the basic grammatic rules and language structures, for example, because that enables you to learn words more quickly than it would otherwise take.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

How hard is it for an Estonian to learn Finnish? To me the languages seems to be pretty much alike, like Czech and Slovak.


----------



## caco




----------



## Verso

Just saw a sign for Paris in Slovenia (1,314 km).


----------



## Nexis

Look whats riding up the Eastern Seaboard ..... tomorrow will be hell here in the NYC Metro....the usually when we get alot of rain in such little time. Flooded Railways , Underpasses , Subway lines , Train Stations , Cities etc.....although we kinda need the rain.


----------



## seem

Verso said:


> Just saw a sign for Paris in Slovenia (1,314 km).


Was it proper sign?!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> Just saw a sign for Paris in Slovenia (1,314 km).


I'm sure Hofburg has something do to with it.


----------



## ssh

ChrisZwolle said:


> How hard is it for an Estonian to learn Finnish? To me the languages seems to be pretty much alike, like Czech and Slovak.


It's easy to pick up a decent speaking level from television or living there alone. The Finnish vocabulary shares some basic words with Estonian. There are also many similar or logically derivable words as well as words that are considered archaic in Estonian. It's harder for Finns to learn Estonian than it is vice versa.

If one has a strong knowledge in Estonian grammar, learning Finnish in depth is also a breeze, once you get past the fundamental differences, since word formation and conjugation is similar. Unlike Estonian their everyday language differs a lot more from formal language and understanding that can be harder, though.

From what I've looked into, Czech and Slovak are considerably more similar, as well as written Norwegian and Danish and spoken Norwegian and Swedish.


----------



## Verso

seem said:


> Was it proper sign?!


It wasn't a yellow sign (it was made of wood), but it was an official sign installed by municipality, not just someone, I'm sure about that. And there weren't dozens of world destinations as usually on such signs (like New York, Tokyo, Sydney etc.), just Trebnje, Ljubljana and Paris.  And it said just "Paris 1314", not "Pariz/Paris (F) 1314". If you wish, I can take a photo of it tomorrow... if I don't get lost again.


----------



## seem

^^ Yes please!  

and where is it? And how can an official sign installed by municipality made of wood look like? : D


----------



## Verso

seem said:


> and where is it?


No idea.  Somewhere east of Trebnje (or northwest of Novo mesto).



seem said:


> And how can an official sign installed by municipality made of wood look like? : D


Like those wooden signs.


----------



## nenea_hartia

Just two hours ago, very close to my home: a shithead (blue arrow) caused the crash, trying to overpass while the truck was turning left (red arrow):


----------



## seem

nenea_hartia said:


> *a shithead* (blue arrow) caused the crash


Is it some new Romanian car?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wow, that guy must've driven very fast, considering you don't just tip a light truck over like that.


----------



## nenea_hartia

ChrisZwolle said:


> Wow, that guy must've driven very fast, considering you don't just tip a light truck over like that.


Probably, but his car wasn't so damaged. Luckily no one was hurt.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

ChrisZwolle said:


> Wow, that guy must've driven very fast, considering you don't just tip a light truck over like that.


Either that or a shithead drove into a shitlorry:lol:


----------



## seem

*Snow in Tatras* :nuts:


----------



## Timon91

^^Over here, in Enschede, we had some freezing temperatures close to the ground a few nights ago. We didn't get snow yet, unfortunately


----------



## seem

^^ The same with the rest of Slovakia, but that is 2150 m above sea level and your higest hill (point) has about 300m while soom Slovak cities are in 400, 600 m.


----------



## Timon91

Enschede is located between a stunning 30 and 60 meters above sea level


----------



## hofburg

seem, did you move to UK?


----------



## seem

Timon91 said:


> Enschede is located between a stunning 30 and 60 meters above sea level


Well, our lowest point is 94,3 meters above the sea level

For example the 9th city of Slovakia Poprad is 672 m and Bratislava 126 m, Košice 208, Banská Bystrica 362, Martin 394 m.. Oooh, citizens of Slovakia are mainly living higher than the highest point of the Netherlands!  

but i love your really flat country, is so nice when you don`t see any mts around you



hofburg said:


> seem, did you move to UK?


Yes, just for a while.


----------



## Verso

seem said:


> ^^ Yes please!


On request.  First Vienna:









And Paris. Looks quite serious.


----------



## seem

^^ For hofburg to find a way to home 

btw, "Dunaj" is so funny for me


----------



## wyqtor

Looks like Trebnje is a very important city  .


----------



## seem

Well something from Slovakia 










and Wien


----------



## hofburg

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm sure Hofburg has something do to with it.





seem said:


> ^^ For hofburg to find a way to home




way to far for me.  a turn via Trebje would add 100 km + to my way to Paris. 
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&sou...5.767523,12.667236&spn=3.548103,10.777588&z=7

but yes, Trebje is closer to Paris via Germany then Nova Gorica sadly. 

^^ pivo.  no slovakian names for Wien and 'new' Bratislava suburbs?


----------



## Verso

seem said:


> ^^ For hofburg to find a way to home


After this sign everything is clear, but finding it is tricky; I got lost again. :lol:



seem said:


> btw, "Dunaj" is so funny for me


Danube is in Slovenian called "Donava".



wyqtor said:


> Looks like Trebnje is a very important city  .


Trebnje is the closest town, but of course it looks more important in company of Paris and Vienna.  I think Trebnje is becoming a bit more famous now, because all of it can be seen from the new motorway, and it looks like a big city. Anyway, the signs are placed in Rihpovec.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

seem said:


> Well something from Slovakia


Excuse me, *Kittsse*?


----------



## seem

hofburg said:


> way to far for me.  a turn via Trebje would add 100 km + to my way to Paris.
> http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&sou...5.767523,12.667236&spn=3.548103,10.777588&z=7
> 
> but yes, Trebje is closer to Paris via Germany then Nova Gorica sadly.
> 
> ^^ pivo.  no slovakian names for Wien and 'new' Bratislava suburbs?


So you are from Nova Gorica (Is this hill really new?). I would never think it can be closer to go from Slovenia (south) to Paris via Germany than via Italy.

No, we don`t use our names on a signs. Btw, Wien is Viedeň and Kittsee - Kopčany, but "Kittsee" is used. 

btw, if you are intrested - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwPTh8t7NNw

and wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kittsee, http://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kittsee


and btw, I have to be careful when I will be in Slovenia to not say something funny about Dunaj


----------



## bogdymol

seem said:


> Well something from Slovakia


PIVO :lol: :cheers:


----------



## seem

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Excuse me, *Kittsse*?


I have seen this picture so many times but never noticed!  

Ah, funny Slovak signs. 

_for example 
_









_But it is - Shell - 21 km on D1 and OMV 15,4 km :nuts: _



bodygmol said:


> PIVO :lol::cheers:


Pivo/Beer - 5 seconds


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Excuse me, *Kittsse*?


The road number D4 is also missing. But the picture is from 2005, which is 5 years or 1.825 days, or 1.250 working days or 500 government workers days ago, so maybe they changed it.


----------



## Escher

Google Street View opened for Brazil today, Sâo Paulo, Rio and Belo Horizonte metros.


----------



## AlexisMD

^^ + Ireland
:banana:


----------



## Qwert

ChrisZwolle said:


> The road number D4 is also missing. But the picture is from 2005, which is 5 years or 1.825 days, or 1.250 working days or 500 government workers days ago, so maybe they changed it.


It was already replaced and it's going to be replaced again. Now the place looks like this:









Ripped from video by bogdymol: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=63652567&postcount=1731


----------



## Verso

Today it's the first time they sentenced a Slovenian MP to prison (5 years and 2 months). The MP is a Slovenian nationalist of Albanian descent. :lol:

Slovenian nationalist MPs (SNS - Slovenian National Party):

- Srečko Prijatelj (as Slovenian as it can get, literally Felix Friend, born as Ismail Mainardi) - Albanian descent
- Zmago Jelinčič Plemeniti (literally Zmago Jelinčič the Noble :nuts - Croatian surname (Jelinčić)
- Bogdan Barovič - Serbian surname (Barović)
- Miran Györek - Hungarian surname

All Slovenian nationalists. :lol:


----------



## CNGL

Curiosity in Google Street View: http://maps.google.es/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=-62.595278,-59.896732&spn=0,1.229095&z=10&layer=c&cbll=-62.595278,-59.896732&panoid=pCJ2rGR6Qzadk6RaumiOUg&cbp=12,236.52,,0,6.21

It's Livingstone island in Antarctica.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Google Street View in Brazil :banana:


----------



## Verso

CNGL said:


> Curiosity in Google Street View: http://maps.google.es/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=-62.595278,-59.896732&spn=0,1.229095&z=10&layer=c&cbll=-62.595278,-59.896732&panoid=pCJ2rGR6Qzadk6RaumiOUg&cbp=12,236.52,,0,6.21
> 
> It's Livingstone island in Antarctica.


Cool! Where's the road though? ^_^


----------



## seem

^^ How I was expecting. 

So, it`s not so easy like between Slavic nations. 

btw, I heard that Spanish and Italian are quite easy for each other. Is it true?


----------



## bogdymol

^^ If for a Romanian isn't very hard to speak Italian or Spanish, I believe that between them it's even easier.

How do you, slavs, handle with latin languages?


----------



## seem

^^ Basicaly, we can`t understand anything. Just a few words..


----------



## bogdymol

^^ So it's just like I can't understand anything in Slovak. Niceeeeeee.
Final conclusion:

latin - latin kay:
slavic - slavic kay:
latin - slavic :down:

One last question: what's the difference between Czech and Slovak languages?

PS: this is my #1000 post


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Speaking Portuguese I can:

-Understand most Spanish and read it fluently.
-Not understand Italian, but I can read it.
-Not understand Romanian, but I can read a bit of it

My knowledge of french is seperate, so I can't really say.


Portuguese and Spanish are mutually intelegible when written, but not entierly when written.


----------



## nenea_hartia

bogdymol said:


> PS: this is my #1000 post


Congrats!



DanielFigFoz said:


> Speaking Portuguese I can:
> 
> -Understand most Spanish and read it fluently.
> -Not understand Italian, but I can read it.
> -Not understand Romanian, but I can read a bit of it
> 
> My knowledge of french is seperate, so I can't really say.
> 
> 
> Portuguese and Spanish are mutually intelegible when written, but not entierly when written.


Me, speaking Romanian I can:

-Understand most words in Italian when spoken and deduct the sense of the phrase; however, it's easier to understand it when written;
-Understand some Spanish but usually I have difficulties to catch the sense of the phrase.
-Not understand Portuguese, except for some disparate words;
-Not understand Romansh, except for some disparate words;
-Understand most words in the Romanian dialects spoken in the Balkans (Aromanian, Istro-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian); unfortunately these dialects are dying while countries like Greece don't even recognize they are spoken there.

With French, the same situation here, I made some classes of French in school.


@ seem: given Romania's location on the map, it is considered by linguists that almost 10% of Romanian words are of Slavic origin.


----------



## seem

bogdymol said:


> ^^ So it's just like I can't understand anything in Slovak. Niceeeeeee.
> Final conclusion:
> 
> latin - latin kay:
> slavic - slavic kay:
> latin - slavic :down:
> 
> One last question: what's the difference between Czech and Slovak languages?
> 
> PS: this is my #1000 post


Hard to say. These languages are very similar. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differences_between_the_Slovak_and_Czech_languages

We were living in one state for 68 years so we understand really everything, because for example when we are talking with Polish people we have to ask sometimes what does some word mean. Anyway, Cezch is much more closer (also declension). We also have films on TV in Cezch language.


----------



## CNGL

DanielFigFoz said:


> Speaking Portuguese I can:
> 
> -Understand most Spanish and read it fluently.
> -Not understand Italian, but I can read it.
> -Not understand Romanian, but I can read a bit of it
> 
> My knowledge of french is seperate, so I can't really say.
> 
> 
> Portuguese and Spanish are mutually intelegible when written, but not entierly when written.


And me, speaking Spanish I can:

-Understand most Portuguese, Galician and Catalan (although I have learned the latter language by myself)
-Read Italian and Romanian (Although I haven't read Romanian never).


----------



## Suburbanist

*Speaker of Italian and Portuguese*

- French: can understand _a little_ spoken French, some (40-60%) written French
- Spanish: understand most of it
- Galician: understand it a lot
- Romanian: can read some, understand a little is speaker spokes slowly
- Romansh: just get a grip on written
- Catalan: sounds like Portuguese spoken by a person who don't know the language sometimes. Written is ok, lilke Spanish, though I used the ability to read more when I went to Andorra.


----------



## Ayceman

Speaker of Romanian, I can:

- Understand almost all written Aromanian, most spoken Aromanian
- Understand most written Istroromanian, most spoken Istroromanian (Serbocroat loans)
- Understand most written Italian, some spoken Italian
- Understand some written Spanish, next to none spoken Spanish (probably the same with Sardinian)
- Understand some written Portuguese, spoken it sounds alien
- Understand almost all written French, most spoken French (I have studied it, though - otherwise, it would be like Portuguese)

nenea_hartia: Aromanian and Istroromanian are languages, not dialects. Aromanian for Romanian is like Dalmatian for Italian.


----------



## hofburg

wyqtor said:


> We Romanians should have also asked for a Latin corridor, so that we are finally reunited with our Latin brethren in Italy after being separated by those pesky Slavs  ! This corridor could pass through Istria and the Istroromanian villages there  .


 I have a friend from Romania, and he told me, that Romanian language is close to latins only because of latinisation of Romania in first centuries after JC by Roman empire, but origins of Romanians are much before that. 



seem said:


> Yes, of course I understand  but to replace? What went wrong?


20th century Europe fighting, this is what it went wrong.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There used to be a Cyrillic alphabet for Romanian too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Cyrillic_alphabet

They included characters like: Ѻ, Ѹ, Ѹ Ȣ, Ѡ, Ѣ, Ꙗ, Ѥ, Ѧ, Ѫ, Ѯ, Ѱ, Ѳ, Ѵ, Џ (these may not show if you don't have the correct characterset installed)


----------



## nenea_hartia

^ Indeed, because first books ever written in Romanian were Bibles and religious books, and the old Slavonic was the writing of religion in the Orthodox East. In time, the Slavonic writing expanded from religion to the entire society.


----------



## wyqtor

hofburg said:


> I have a friend from Romania, and he told me, that Romanian language is close to latins only because of latinisation of Romania in first centuries after JC by Roman empire, but origins of Romanians are much before that.


It's true to a degree, but if you look at it this way even French people can be considered Germans  .


----------



## x-type

it is interesting how almost all Romanians claim they understand italian well. few weeks ago we had a delivery from Romania in my firm. of course, romanian truck came. at first i talked to him in italian because i expected him to understand me. but no way. english nor german also didn't work. i got back to italian (with few romanian words which i knew), but there was no way that he could understand _indietro_ (i was telling him how to park the truck). there was no other way but to tell him that i want that part of truck here, and that part of truck there.


----------



## wyqtor

If you told him "îndărăt" instead of "indietro", he would have got it  . There's quite a difference in pronunciation, though.

I think it's easier for us to understand Italian than the other way around, although people do have to familiarize themselves with the language a bit first. 

I think Slavic languages (maybe except Russian) are closer to each other that Latin ones. Slovak/Czech seem to be very similar to Slovenian and Serbian/Croatian.


----------



## x-type

wyqtor said:


> If you told him "îndărăt" instead of "indietro", he would have got it  .


no shit!!! 


btw, each Croat will tell you that czech or polish is more similar to russian than to croatian


----------



## Ni3lS

Surel said:


> In what NS trains did you find wi fi for free? I never ever encountered any free network in NS stations let alone trains which did not seem to be equiped with one. In the stations there were however T mobile hotspots... paid ones of course.
> 
> I traveled twice a week the line from Leeuwarden to Utrecht and back. Sometimes some other lines.












The intercity train from Rotterdam central to Leeuwarden.

Probably the train you took twice a week from Leeuwarden to Utrecht.


----------



## seem

x-type said:


> btw, each Croat will tell you that czech or polish is more similar to russian than to croatian


Yeah, I think it`s just because of accent. It sound more strange for you. But anyway it`s really hard to talk with Russians than with you. When I am in Croatia I am always using just Slovak and it is really no problem to talk with you even if you know some Croatian words after these many summers in Croatia so no misunderstandings than. I knew some people in Croatian (I have not met these people after one camp was changed little bit so many people have gone to another) and it was really no problem to talk about anything during nice evening in Croatian seaside. 

You know, of course there are problems sometimes to understand but it`s not hard when you want to talk so you ask for word what does it mean and learn from it. 

Btw, probably for us (Slovaks) it`s the easiest to undestand Slavic languages, many linguistic people think so.


----------



## Surel

Ni3lS said:


> The intercity train from Rotterdam central to Leeuwarden.
> 
> Probably the train you took twice a week from Leeuwarden to Utrecht.


I guess so too, therefore it is even bigger mystery for me, because mostly I worked on my laptop in the train, never detected anything besides the networks outside the train. I will see next week on wednesday. Was it the new refurbished unit? Probably also they dont put it in every train yet... I will see.


----------



## Pansori

That train looks freaky hno:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I like the train mechanic position.


----------



## Timon91

Surel said:


> I guess so too, therefore it is even bigger mystery for me, because mostly I worked on my laptop in the train, never detected anything besides the networks outside the train. I will see next week on wednesday. Was it the new refurbished unit? Probably also they dont put it in every train yet... I will see.


Only refurbished units which such a logo above the doors have wifi.


----------



## Surel

Ok, that explains it well.

On the train note. I must say, that I really appreciate the train system in the Netherlands. The strange looking trains are designed perfectly for the purposes that the Nederlandse spoorwegen (NS) use them. It perfectly suits the small country, quick connection, possibility of joining the units into longer trains, automatic traffic control, etc.

I was allways fan of trains, and one big train model panel commemoretes this already. This is not a train forum, however I must say that I find the Dutch train system really excellent. I used to say, that I would send the whole management of Ceske drahy (Czech railways) to the NL for few weeks and if they were not able to at least partially copy the system and approach in next two years, I would lock them into prison made of two or three carriages .

Of course not everything is applicable to other countries condition, however the Dutch train system has THE concept.


----------



## piotr71

A sink in lavatory on a very busy BP station near Stansted Airport:










I have taken some more pics there, but I am not brave enough to post them hno:


----------



## seem

^^ Well, you should try lavatory in Noodle Oodle take away on a 25 Oxford St, it`s near Tottenham Court Road tube station - http://maps.google.sk/maps?f=q&sour...1.516287,-0.130911&spn=0.000941,0.002411&z=19 

_Btw, I haven`t been there one year so maybe it`s better now. _


----------



## Pansori

piotr71 said:


> A sink in lavatory on a very busy BP station near Stansted Airport:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I have taken some more pics there, but I am not brave enough to post them hno:


How is that different from 99.99% of public lavatories in UK?


----------



## Suburbanist

Surel said:


> On the train note. I must say, that I really appreciate the train system in the Netherlands. The strange looking trains are designed perfectly for the purposes that the Nederlandse spoorwegen (NS) use them. It perfectly suits the small country, quick connection, possibility of joining the units into longer trains, automatic traffic control, etc.
> 
> [...]
> 
> Of course not everything is applicable to other countries condition, however the Dutch train system has THE concept.


On the flop side, the government overspend money in trains and underspend money in roads. According to off-SSC info from Timon91 :lol:, all but 1 small line near Germany have a least 2 services per hours during weekday daytime. Still, even with high coverage, the PT system accounts for less than 22% (13% train, 9% buses/trams/subways) of all motorized trips in NL. Still, the roads used for the other 78% of trips are underfunded. And the Dutch concentrate traffic on motorways as a matter of policy, avoiding the use of rural roads as relief routes or alternative shourtcuts in case of congestion.

Train tickets are not cheap in NL, but many people have discounts. Students of higher education, for instance, ride PT for free in the whole country (the government reimburses NS for that). There are many travel cards and discount cards available too.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's interesting to break the public transport down to usage.

For example, 3% of the people with a drivers license and a car available, use public transport. 10.7% of the people with a drivers license and sometimes the ability of a car, use public transport. Another 17.9% of the people without a car uses public transport. 7.7% of the people with a full time job use public transport.


----------



## Timon91

Suburbanist said:


> According to off-SSC info from Timon91 :lol:, all but 1 small line near Germany have a least 2 services per hours during weekday daytime.


Well, 3 actually, but only one border crossing only used by slow trains has this frequency: Bad Nieuweschans-Leer. Hengelo-Bad Bentheim has one intercity per two hours (Schiphol-Berlin-(Szczecin)), but an hourly slow train service will be added in December. Arnhem-Emmerich has only one ICE every two hours (Amsterdam-Franfurt am Main-(Basel)) and two daily night trains (Amsterdam-München/Zürich and Amsterdam-København/Warszawa/Praha/Minsk/Moskva).


----------



## hofburg

streets of paris are full of garbage today. 



















the guys came, but it's not helping for now.


----------



## seem

^^ What happend?


----------



## hofburg

nothing, just ordinary Sunday.


----------



## seem

Well, after garbage in Paris  another snow update from Slovakia - Liptov region :nuts:


----------



## keber

^^ It's October, you know that?


----------



## hofburg

well, we had 24° in paris today, so a bit of snow feels good.


----------



## seem

keber said:


> ^^ It's October, you know that?


Well, for example in Bratislava it's 12 degrees but in a "Chopok" (just 2000 m high) - 2 

Slovak weather - http://www.shmu.sk/sk/?page=1


----------



## piotr71

Could it be view from L.Mikulas? _Zapadne Tatry_? Maybe Baranec which I climbed on some longer time ago?


----------



## keber

seem said:


> Well, for example in Bratislava it's 12 degrees but in a "Chopok" (just 2000 m high) - 2


Again, it's October, you know that?

2 years ago in September I was hiking in the mountains at 2500 m between -6°C and -10°C, and in the valley +20. Last October (in the middle) I was hiking whole day over 10-15 cm of fresh snow and moderate north wind at -5° on 2000 m.

So yes, it's October, you know that?


----------



## seem

piotr71 said:


> Could it be view from L.Mikulas? _Zapadne Tatry_? Maybe Baranec which I climbed on some longer time ago?


Yes, it`s from L. Mikuláš, but "Vysoké Tatry". I do not know which peak is it.

_and *keber..*

calm down, relax and I am sorry for spam than, I wouldn`t do that again _


----------



## keber

Looks like Baranec. 

No problem for "spamming", but it is very usual for snow to reach not-very-high peaks in October, even earlier. Actually I'm waiting for some early winter hikings in mountains, they are the easiest in whole winter if there is not much snow (up to 20-25 cm).


----------



## seem

keber said:


> Looks like Baranec.
> 
> No problem for "spamming", but it is very usual for snow to reach not-very-high peaks in October, even earlier. Actually I'm waiting for some early winter hikings in mountains, they are the easiest in whole winter if there is not much snow (up to 20-25 cm).


Well, it`s true. I just haven`t realised it cos I am not so much in mountains. 

_So, guys you know Tatras (Tatry) better than me.: )

(cos I know just the most famous places )_


----------



## keber

seem said:


> _So, guys you know Tatras (Tatry) better than me.: )
> _


Google Earth is my friend :naughty:

Although I already was skiing there some years ago (I was living very close to Liptovsky Mikulaš).


----------



## Majestic

OMG, unbelievable:

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Red-s...blicid_ap_org3b7739631b6c4167b1033fd01f9b9927


----------



## BND

^^ yes, terrible, the sludge washed away everything:


----------



## Verso

^^ Wow, what a disaster. Imagine a flood... but not of water, but of poison! :nuts:


----------



## Coccodrillo

^^ sad news... 



Suburbanist said:


> Still, even with high coverage, the PT system accounts for less than 22% (13% train, 9% buses/trams/subways) of all motorized trips in NL. Still, the roads used for the other 78% of trips are underfunded. And the Dutch concentrate traffic on motorways as a matter of policy, avoiding the use of rural roads as relief routes or alternative shourtcuts in case of congestion.


This is quite a myth, or at least need explanation.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_share or http://www.unil.ch/webdav/site/ouvd...ommunications/Mobilite/Theorie/U. Haefeli.pdf

However I may agree with building or widening roads were it is really the best option.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ You're seriously comparing the Dutch modal share with the modal share of a city, trips to work only? Apples and oranges.

There are two flaws in that comparison;

1) You're comparing a nationwide statistic provided by suburbanist with that of a few large cities.
2) You're comparing all types of trips with trips to work only.


----------



## Coccodrillo

^^ It's not a good comparison, I know, but Suburbanist's replies on the rail forum are not that different regarding precision (actually he's proposing to destroy rail transport reducing its modal share but increasing money proportionally spent on it).

..........

A more logic discussion would be about the reason of the predominance of the road (bad planification? bat public/rail transport? real advantages using roads?), about the madness of the ever-growing useless transports (like Evian water sold to Italy and San Pellegrino transported to France), about...

I'm not against motorways themselves, but against the idea that they are the only option and that the recent enormous growth of transport is sustainable (this may also be valid for other means of transport as well).

That is, I agree with you when you write that Romania needs more motorways...but not when someone write that Netherlands' transport problems can be solved only by widening motorways to 16 lanes.


----------



## Surel

First I just want to say, that the internet really works in the "trein" hooray. Just went through Zwolle now.... It must be something new in last months, I did not experience it here before... so great.

About the road versus rail question.

There are several things. The haul traffic and passanger traffic difference. The difference in density of road versus rail connection. The comfort of transport/travelling. The real costs per km... etc.


Historically is train older way of transport than a personal car, however I wouldnt send the train transport away. In fact I would say, that in the future we will see some sort of hybrid between train and personal car... that means between public and personal transport as well. This will be conditioned by the simple fact that the fossil fuels used for now a days personal transport will be inevitably gone in some 50 - 90 years.

A future car (as well as economy) will be fully depending on the electric form of energy... be it made and stored in any way.

Electric car will offer completaly new design and form of personal transport. We will be able to create small personal car units, which can use normal roads. On the longer distance these units will joint on some sort of rail platform. These platforms will be in the same time able to cross long distances in high speeds and to charge these small personal transport units. Once in given destination the unit will disconnect from the train and reach the final destination on its own. This system would combine the the advantages and exclude disadvantages of both transport mechanisms (electric car and train). The infrastructure costs will be horrendous. However, the infrastructure costs of leaving fossile fuels will be horrendous anyway...


About the dutch issue.. It is not possible to force people to use the train. They have to find it more comfortable and usefull than to use a car. Train has many disadvantages compared to car (no baggage, no business transportation possibility, no way to reach remote areas, hard schedulle - no flexibility, etc), it has some advantages (heavy hauling on long distance, not being occupied with the transport itself thus reading, studying, computer work, ergonomic comfortability, speed on long distance). I would say that in the NL the trains rather well uses the advantages, since they are used mainly by students and city work commuters) someome who has to visit school or office doesnt have to go with a car, if his destination is in proximity to the station. However suburbia prefers the car as well as short distance commuting or small business. Family trips, shopping etc. is done in car from understandable reasons (have you ever seen someone buying furniture in Ikea and taking it home in train???? ). In NL is rather extensive water connection network, thus the heavy hauling is done through the waterways = no need for the trains here, and it is rather small country thus a truck is much much faster then a train.


It would be for me rather interesting to learn about the history of train construction in NL, since the network is not very dense... I would guess that there was not so high historical need for trains because of the existing waterways. Or am I wrong and many tracks were dismantled?

Compared with the Czech Republic where is one of the most densed railway networks due to the historical reasons of need of fast and realiable connection in 19 century, the dutch network makes much more sense and serves much better in hte means of personal transport. The heavy hauling is in CZ naturally much higher on the rails.


Personally I love the trains much more than cars, however that doesnt mean, that I dont prefer a car in my daily wherebouts.


----------



## Jeroen669

Nice way to park your moped...


----------



## seem

*Poor Hungarians* hno:

_more pics - _ http://www.sme.sk/c/5582068/cervene-bahno-v-devecsere.html


----------



## Verso

Chernobyl II.


----------



## Spookvlieger

^^ Yes, the villages will not be rebuild. The ground is toxic for decades to come....
Today it has reached the Dunabe river :sad: Hundreds of dead fish are reported on rivers that feed the Dunabe!


----------



## CNGL

Never again (Nunca mais, as they say in Galician).
BTW, the sad face is


----------



## AlexisMD

joshsam said:


> ^^ Yes, the villages will not be rebuild.


any official information on that ?


----------



## Ni3lS

This is very sad indeed. And no offense, but Hungary wants to join the EU? Or is already in it, you never know these days :dunno:


----------



## hofburg

http://europa.eu/


----------



## seem

^^ That`s it what is life all about in Western Europe. Just reminding people how great life they are living and no information about other countries than France, Germany and sometimes Italy. i have realised that till I am in UK. Most of news are mainly about these countries and mostly about ex-countries of UK empire.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ni3lS said:


> This is very sad indeed. And no offense, but Hungary wants to join the EU? Or is already in it, you never know these days :dunno:


Are you serious? :lol: Hungary has been an EU member for the last 6 years.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Romanian traffic police have some vans like that.


----------



## seem

Verso said:


> My next (road) trip: Cairns to Melbourne - almost 4,000 km, or like from Ljubljana to Baghdad.


Nice  

I am now prepairing for cycle trip from Gloucester to Aberystwyth so across Wales, but I am still not sure. Maybe I will go to the south but anyway I will take pictures also for SSC. : )


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Most of you probably know the ship called Lisco Gloria that burned pretty much to ashes this weekend near Denmark. The funny thing is that this ferry was carrying, among other things, 3 speed cameras from Estonia that had been calibrated in Germany and were on their way back to Estonia. So for now only 13 speed cameras remain on Tallinn-Tartu highway.  Unfortunately this also caused the Estonian Road Administration around € 100,000 of property damage.


----------



## BND

ChrisZwolle said:


> I saw a Dutch LDV Maxus today... Never heard of that brand. At first I thought it was a Mercedes Sprinter or VW Crafter.


LDV is a British company, you can see loads of LDV vans in the UK. Some years ago the company was acquired by Russian GAZ, and started producing left hand drive vans too, which entered the European market.


----------



## wyqtor

Ni3lS said:


> The real euro countries are countries that actually use the EURO valuta.


It depends. I think the non-euro Czech Republic (and maybe even Hungary) is much better organized as a country compared to euro Greece.


----------



## Nexis

Wow , the poles keep coming back and placing things on there memorial.......Polish , Russians , The Dutch , Spaniards , Portuguese , Greeks , Irish and Italian are the only Europeans in this region who celebrate and hold firmly to there home countries everyone else forgets theres. Alot of the British and Aussie towns around here , are becoming if not Americanized.


----------



## Zanovijetalo

Sorry if this has been already posted. Really wolves or stray dogs?


----------



## keber

They look like wolves, because they don't seem to be quite aggressive.


----------



## Nexis

Zanovijetalo said:


> Sorry if this has been already posted. Really wolves or stray dogs?


Those are Mr. Burns hounds.....:lol: "Release the hounds"


----------



## Zanovijetalo

LOL 

OK could be these are not Mr Burns hounds, but strange to see wolves so relaxed around humans


----------



## bogdymol

First watch the video:






And the video description: 


> Or, how to spend $1 million in just over 12 minutes (actually, about 3 1/2 days).
> 
> [CORRECTION: I previously had said $3 million, which is what I had heard on the streets. I've since been contacted by a representative of the SFMTA who assures me that the cost was in fact $1 million.]
> 
> This is a time-lapse video showing the replacement of the MUNI tracks in front of my house. Demolition began on the evening of Friday, October 8, and work continued around the clock until early in the morning of Tuesday, October 12. The MUNI folks were nice enough to distribute earplugs to those of us in the immediate vicinity.


Now that's impressive!

PS: The original video is on vimeo, but I searched for it also on youtube because I don't know how to add a vimeo video here


----------



## Nexis

bogdymol said:


> First watch the video:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And the video description:
> 
> Now that's impressive!
> 
> PS: The original video is on vimeo, but I searched for it also on youtube because I don't know how to add a vimeo video here


wow , thats pretty complex and impressive. Philly plans on doing that to there network when the Upgrade the existing lines , Restore some previous lines and expand the network.


----------



## CNGL

bogdymol said:


> First watch the video:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And the video description:
> 
> Now that's impressive!
> 
> PS: The original video is on vimeo, but I searched for it also on youtube because I don't know how to add a vimeo video here


You can add a vimeo video using (vimeo)Here the number of the video(/vimeo), but with [] instead of (). Look:

15780202


----------



## DanielFigFoz

My internet connection still isn't working :crazy:


----------



## seem

I was just watching some videos from 11.9.2001 - "w Nowym Jorku"

and I found polish version of New York (Nowy Jork) really funny 

Do you have more funny names like this one?


----------



## piotr71

Yes, we do, but not as funny as this is: *Drážďany*


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Dresden?

I don't like exonyms on signage. Sooner or later you have to switch to the endonym anyway, and otherwise it's just clutter on the signs.


----------



## seem

ChrisZwolle said:


> Dresden?
> 
> I don't like exonyms on signage. Sooner or later you have to switch to the endonym anyway, and otherwise it's just clutter on the signs.


Yes, Dresden.

We don`t have exonyms on signage but I bet you know that. : )

btw piotr71 - názov - http://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drážďany#N.C3.A1zov

and there also some more funny names -

Győr=Ráb
Pécs= Päťkostolie
Székesfehérvár=Stoličný Belehrad
Graz=Štajerský Hradec
Kärnten=Korutánsko

but we use just "Korutánsko"  

but I bet you have even more : )


----------



## piotr71

Yes, Dresden. However, Czechs (in Czech language, Dresden is called in the same way) don't use their names for international destinations on signs:
http://foto.ceskedalnice.cz/nase-foto/provoz/d8/usek_2/index.html

The picture below comes from D8, as well, and makes me wanting to start ski season now:
http://foto.ceskedalnice.cz/nase-foto/provoz/d8/usek_2/index.html


----------



## seem

piotr71 said:


> Yes, Dresden. However, Czechs (in Czech language, Dresden is called in the same way) don't use their names for international destinations on signs:
> http://foto.ceskedalnice.cz/nase-foto/provoz/d8/usek_2/index.html
> 
> The picture below comes from D8, as well, and makes me wanting to start ski season now:
> http://foto.ceskedalnice.cz/nase-foto/provoz/d8/usek_2/index.html


Well I see many pictures. 

I said, we don`t use our names.

- http://www.dialnice.info/gallery/image.php?mode=medium&album_id=127&image_id=1608
- http://www.dialnice.info/gallery/image.php?mode=medium&album_id=128&image_id=1602


----------



## seem

snowman159 said:


> Slovakia, isn't it? I don't remember the name of the place. They offer off-roading and desert driving courses.


Yeah, it's in Slovakia. There are not so many places like this nowadays but about 300 years ago it was like desert but Maria Theresa decided to plant there trees because sand is not suitable for farming and there was dust in the air. What a shame. Now, a few of these "deserts" are protected by government.




























Nowadays there are forests like this one -










On a motorway D2 I always fell like in Croatia


----------



## Rebasepoiss

seem said:


> Guys, I just didn't want to post this to Guess the highway so *try guess* there *where might* be this place..


This could easily be in Estonia :cheers:


----------



## Verso

Didn't know Slovakia and Estonia were deserts these days.


----------



## RipleyLV

We have such place near Ādaži town aswell.


----------



## Verso

Like the Curonian Spit?


----------



## piotr71

There is a proper desert in Poland. It's not as huge as Sahara is, but...



















http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C5%82%C4%99d%C3%B3w_Desert
http://www.foto.brat.pl/royalty_free/rezerwaty_parki/pustynia_bledowska/


----------



## RipleyLV

Verso said:


> Like the Curonian Spit?


No, it looks the same as in the pics above. Here's a peek:








Location: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=57.106046,24.409733&spn=0.047732,0.175095&t=h&z=13


----------



## seem

Verso said:


> Looks like we're one of rare nations that prefer the word 'Netherlands' (Nizozemska) to 'Holland' (Holandija).  Only old people use 'Holandija' here.


And I know another 2 nations - Croats + Serbs, Montenegrins and Bosnians (Nizozemska) and Cezchs (Nizozemsko). 

In Slovak we have also Nizozemsko but it means - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Countries



> The Low Countries, in Dutch De Lage Landen, are the historical lands around the low-lying delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers, including the modern countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and parts of northern France and western Germany.


Some nations started to use Nizozemsko and so on to don`t mix historic region Holland and the Netherlands.


----------



## Ayceman

The main problem when using Țările de Jos (the Low Countries- official name) is that you can confuse it with the whole of Benelux. Since Olanda (Holland) as a region of the Netherlands isn't as invoked as Benelux, people mostly use Olanda. That would not a problem with the adjective neerlandez, but people use olandez to match the noun.

Having two different regions, one included in the other, being named the same way isn't unusual for Romania. Muntenia is the coloquial name for Wallachia, but also the name for the part of Wallachia west of the Olt river (that is actually the original, like in the case of the Holland), or Moldova is the name of the territory of the former Principality of Moldavia, or the region that is now in Romania except for Suceava county (Moldova minus Bessarabia and Bucovina). Transilvania, or Ardeal is both the name of the territory of the ex principality within the Hungarian kingdom, and the name of all the territories within the Carpathian arc (Transilvania, Banat, Maramureș, Crișana).


----------



## x-type

seem said:


> And I know another 2 nations - Croats + Serbs, Montenegrins and Bosnians (Nizozemska) and Cezchs (Nizozemsko).


khm, not really. in Croatia we say Nizozemska (although there is word _Holandija_, but it is weird and really rarely used). Serbia, BIH and Montenegro use _Holandija_.

btw, we also have desert in norhern Croatia


----------



## seem

Verso said:


> Didn't know Slovakia and Estonia were deserts these days.


Well, this region was really like a desert many years ago. 

You can easily see these planted forests on a map - http://maps.google.sk/maps?ll=48.492464,17.03413&spn=0.008333,0.01929&t=h&z=16&lci=com.panoramio.all

and some bigger parts of "desert" are there - http://maps.google.sk/maps?ll=48.52...33236,0.308647&t=h&z=12&lci=com.panoramio.all


----------



## CNGL

In Spain we have REAL deserts.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> btw, we also have desert in norhern Croatia


Lol, where is that?


----------



## snowman159

I found this article (in German) btw:
http://www.motor-talk.de/news/off-road-abenteuer-im-groessten-sandgebiet-europas-t114999.html


----------



## g.spinoza

The only desert we have in Italy is located in Sardinia and it is called Deserto di Piscinas; it is almost 5 km^2 wide.


----------



## BND

This is in Hungary 








(by wfalcon on panormaio.com)


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Lol, where is that?


near Đuđrevac. google "đurđevečki peski" for that. it is not large, some 0,5 km2, but in past it used to be larger. i went there this summer, here are some photos


----------



## seem

^^ This is more reminding me a desert.  

_I really love this section._





































_Volim Hrvatsku! Lubim Chorvatsko! : )_


----------



## x-type

seem said:


> ^^ This is more reminding me a desert.


that's the moon surface there, not a desert


----------



## seem

x-type said:


> that's the moon surface there, not a desert


Yeah, we call this "Mesačná krajina" - "Moon surface (land)".


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

Haljackey said:


>


We need this everywhere in America and at every five hundred feet. Americans have no concept of a "fast" lane or "passing" lane or even the simple respect of getting out of the way so someone can pass. 

If you flash or honk you get either ignored or they slam the brakes in front of you, but they never ever ever ever actually get out of the way. You end up having no choice but passing on the right (if space is available) which usually it isn't since people also have a habit of driving side by side in little cluster-fukks. I hate driving on American highways. :bash:

I usually avoid them unless I have no other option, and this is the odd irony of America. We may have the most highways in the world, but for short distances, if you want to get somewhere peacefully and on time you are better off avoiding the freeways. Surface streets... with stop lights and everything, are many times quicker.hno:


----------



## seem

AnOldBlackMarble said:


> Check norc.ro out. http://www.norc.ro/street-view/
> 
> In my opinion it is better than Google (images are of higher quality) but so far it only covers parts of eastern and central Europe.


I know this page, it's also in Slovakia.


----------



## seem

Today in Bratislava.


----------



## Nexis

seem said:


> Today in Bratislava.


Was the Driver on his cell phone? We had a similar accident the other day , car ran the red light and hit the tram. For Cameras at the Intersection it turns out she was texting. The Tram had no Damage , but the car was pretty smashed up.


----------



## seem

^^ I can't find anything. What I found was that just driver wasn't paying attention.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Wow, that opel's really f***ed up!


----------



## hofburg

location:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&sou...=48.145472,17.130775&spn=0.105376,0.3368&z=12


----------



## seem

^^ Do you know BA a bit?


----------



## Fatfield

Verso said:


> Didn't you have to wear them when you were small?


When I was a bairn in the late 60's we had to wear reflective armbands during winter when going to/from school. They looked something like the following but with a lighter reflective strip in the middle.


----------



## hofburg

seem said:


> ^^ Do you know BA a bit?


I know old town. but that I found by searching for Mcdonalds and OMVs and then looking for places where they match.


----------



## seem

^^ lol. I was expecting this. 

well, I really have to stop next summer for a while in Ljubljana. I can't pass this nice city each year.


----------



## Verso

seem said:


> well, I really have to stop next summer for a while in *Ljubljana*. I can't pass this nice city each year.


Hofburg is from Nova Gorica. :gossip: It's not so bad, you can gamble yourself out till you're bankrupt.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I never had to wear any sort of reflective anything anytime.


----------



## seem

^^ The same with me. I just had a jumper with reflective stripes on it when I was little.
.


Verso said:


> Hofburg is from Nova Gorica. :gossip: It's not so bad, you can gamble yourself out till you're bankrupt.


I know he is from New Mountain (Nova Gorica ) but Ljubljana is your capital and really nice city. Anyway, I have never heard about Nova Gorica. :nuts:


----------



## hofburg

it's really not much to hear about.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

On Sunday, a Bentley from Belarussia was stopped on the double carriageway section of Tallinn-Pärnu highway(E67) while doing 241 km/h in a 90km/h zone :lol:. The ironic thing is that the fine he will probably get doesn't exceed € 800.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

seem said:


> ^^ The same with me. I just had a jumper with reflective stripes on it when I was little.
> .
> 
> 
> I know he is from New Mountain (Nova Gorica ) but Ljubljana is your capital and really nice city. Anyway, I have never heard about Nova Gorica. :nuts:


Well that means that you did wear a reflective something :lol:


----------



## seem

DanielFigFoz said:


> Well that means that you did wear a reflective something :lol:


Yeah, I used to wear it but it was a proper jumper for little kids which you can buy in a shop not a reflective something.


----------



## Tin_Can

Rebasepoiss said:


> On Sunday, a Bentley from Belarussia was stopped on the double carriageway section of Tallinn-Pärnu highway(E67) while doing 241 km/h in a 90km/h zone :lol:. The ironic thing is that the fine he will probably get doesn't exceed € 800.


'Problem officer? I'm just late to my business meeting in another country'









Yeah,driver really claimed that! :lol: Btw,there's an option that his car will be impounded for one year. And one thing that made me wonder - Latvia is between Estonia & Belarus...did he raced through there with same speed? How did he manage to avoid police patrols in Latvia while keeping a steady 200km/h speed?


----------



## TheCat

I'm going to drive to New York City in less than two weeks, again.

Any suggestions/requests for stuff I can film with my new camera? I won't be able to fit the entire 10-hour drive on my memory card, unfortunately (neither will my power last, though recharging is an option, but not a convenient one).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Trans-Manhattan Expressway would be cool. (I-95). Something else I haven't seen recently is the Bronx River Parkway. That is one of the oldest parkways in the NYC area.


----------



## Nexis

2 Interesting Videos i thought i show you Europeans of the DC region. Which is becoming a model for this nation in TOD , and is slowly switching for Road Based living to Transit Based Living. In 20 years i really wonder what that regional will look like , my guess is a Euro-American Hybrid. There is a Streetcar network UC in DC and in planning in Arlington. Smart Highways are in planning , and Bike lanes on most DC and Arlington streets. More Light Rail in Maryland and Restored Regional rail lines in Maryland / Virgina. Underground Highways in parts of Crystal City and DC , ontop will be High Rises and Parks.....New Metro lines , i think theres 3 in Planning. So what do you Euros think , impressed with our developments?


----------



## Nexis

ChrisZwolle said:


> Trans-Manhattan Expressway would be cool. (I-95). Something else I haven't seen recently is the Bronx River Parkway. That is one of the oldest parkways in the NYC area.


Trans - Manhattan? You mean the Death trap Expressway and Shitty Cross Bronx , surface streets are faster then that thing. The Parkways are ok , but if it rains hard they always flood. Trees often come down aswell and there narrow and dangerous at night. Watch out for the Deer and Drunks that operate at night along the Parkways of Westchester and LI.


----------



## TheCat

I'm actually going to Long Island, so probably will take the I-495. Not totally sure yet how best to get to it, since I'd prefer not to drive on surface streets in the heart of NYC in an unfamiliar area (which would be the case if we take Lincoln Tunnel).


----------



## Verso

Qantas grounds A380s after Singapore emergency landing

Can't wait to fly with them to Australia...


----------



## Nexis

TheCat said:


> I'm actually going to Long Island, so probably will take the I-495. Not totally sure yet how best to get to it, since I'd prefer not to drive on surface streets in the heart of NYC in an unfamiliar area (which would be the case if we take Lincoln Tunnel).


LOL , the LIE eh , one of the regions worst Expressway aka Drunk Expressway...... Crosstown isn't that bad , up and down can be bad. However between the hours of 9am-3pm the Manhattan should be fine for driving in any direction.


----------



## Surel

I found an interesting application at http://kontaminace.cenia.cz/.

The page is devoted to mapping contaminated areas in the Czech Republic. What makes it interesting for me? It features aerial map of CZ made from aerial photos between late 40s and 50s. The scale is 1:1800. You can switch to current aerial map and compare the differences very quickly. Interesting.


----------



## seem

^^ Try to compare town called Most. Big difference.


----------



## Surel

^^ yeah it is unbelievable that it happened.


----------



## Verso

Gotta love Lady Gaga and her/his concert in Zagreb. Croats are pissed. 









_http://24ur.com/ekskluziv/glasba/foto-lady-gaga-brez-playbacka-in-s-slovensko-zastavo.html_


----------



## KHS

Oh I'm so pissed right now!!!















NOT!

Who cares?


----------



## Nexis

It happened again during the height of Rush Hour.......The Car ran the red light and got pushed into the pole.


----------



## Verso

KHS said:


> Oh I'm so pissed right now!!!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> NOT!


Calm down, you sound pissed.


----------



## CNGL

Spanish A.C. motorways are now avalaible for mapping at Clinched Highway Mapping Project. This goes especially for Chris, with 0 km in my country despite having clinched the C-32 part which was signed A-16 .


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Gotta love Lady Gaga and her/his concert in Zagreb. Croats are pissed.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _http://24ur.com/ekskluziv/glasba/foto-lady-gaga-brez-playbacka-in-s-slovensko-zastavo.html_


:lol:

btw i rather think that she didn't intend to make provocation, but that standard all-slavic-countries-are-equal thing occured (aka Slovenia-Slovakia)


----------



## Verso

I don't know, (s)he's famous for provocations.


----------



## seem

still better than -


----------



## Verso

Croats would rather have seen a Slovak than Slovenian flag. :lol:


----------



## LMB

Nexis said:


> So what do you Euros think , impressed with our developments?


I am, mostly by the total change of mentality. Earlier mass transit was perceived in North America as something low, occupied by poor folks who can't afford "better life", often dangerous. 

Now the tone is different, and what is actually interesting is that the difference can be heard in both the specialist in video 1, as well as the journalist in video 2. Earlier it was often "ohmygod, they are taking the beloved highway from us!". So I do see a huge difference. I hope that folks in the street can be convinced too that mass transit may be an option. But I often hear that safety is an issue. Can this be addressed in a proper way? 


Now _quelques questions à_ you: 1) Is there actually a place in North America where one can live without a car, save for New York proper? San Francisco downtown, for example? 2) The model of medium-to-high density multiple-flat houses ("blocks"), placed not far from downtown, which are all fenced off, have their own "yards" where children can play, underground car parks for the inhabitants, and other amenities - can this be implemented in North America? (or has it been already?) This is not for everybody, but for young professionals, often without children, is a perfect thing. This provides population density good enough to make mass transit sensible/profitable, yet is not the typical Bronx/commie block area, with crime and anonymity.


----------



## Suburbanist

What America has as its best is the facilities (logistical, operational and financial) to keep a car-centered lifestyle. Driving in Manhattan was, for me, a WAY easier experience than driving on Downtown Paris.

I truly hope most subsidized train projects there fail and that they keep their good job with nice highways, while looking at transit as something only the poor need. 

In regard of house typology, the Americans are much more fond on either large multi-story buildings or stand-alone houses. We, in Europe, should learn from them. It usually pays off if you don't have a neighbor sharing your walls, you need to interact less with them in day-to-day routines of house maintenance.


----------



## Nexis

LMB said:


> I am, mostly by the total change of mentality. Earlier mass transit was perceived in North America as something low, occupied by poor folks who can't afford "better life", often dangerous.
> 
> Now the tone is different, and what is actually interesting is that the difference can be heard in both the specialist in video 1, as well as the journalist in video 2. Earlier it was often "ohmygod, they are taking the beloved highway from us!". So I do see a huge difference. I hope that folks in the street can be convinced too that mass transit may be an option. But I often hear that safety is an issue. Can this be addressed in a proper way?
> 
> 
> Now _quelques questions à_ you: 1) Is there actually a place in North America where one can live without a car, save for New York proper? San Francisco downtown, for example? 2) The model of medium-to-high density multiple-flat houses ("blocks"), placed not far from downtown, which are all fenced off, have their own "yards" where children can play, underground car parks for the inhabitants, and other amenities - can this be implemented in North America? (or has it been already?) This is not for everybody, but for young professionals, often without children, is a perfect thing. This provides population density good enough to make mass transit sensible/profitable, yet is not the typical Bronx/commie block area, with crime and anonymity.


The Economy changed the way many ppl look at Mass Transit , along with ppl getting fatter and fatter. The Northeast has slowly rebuilding our once huge system , DC has fast tracked that. There rebuilding a TRAM system and building a New Metro line which opens in 2013 and 2016. The Sprawly suburbs seem to be stopping in that region. Now the New Trend is to build inward in the Urban Cores. The population has also shifted into the Urban Cities most cities in my state grew by 3-14% this decade after losing 10-20% since the 70s. Also Congestion has gotten bad and people are tired of the endless huge freeways that many are starting to see as downing nothing. Theres also an Eco movement in the Northeast , Northwest and Midwest against Highways and they have killed alot over the years. 

Ridership on many lines is pretty high here in the Northeast and Chicagoland its an Average of 20,000 daily users per line. Chicagoland and the Northeast with the exception of MARC and VRE have peak service on many lines of 10-20 mins and hourly service on weekends and offpeak. Reverse commuting has picked up in recent years as companies have shifted out of NYC to Urban Jersey and Western Jersey or CT to escape the higher taxes and commuting costs to there employees. That has caused peak services to be added to outbound trains. 

There are some aging problems with the DC Metro ,but i think working up a plan for that , same with Boston and Urban Jersey. NYC has alot of issues with there system....too many too count that system has bad management. The Suburbs of the Bos-Wash Corridor are compacted so its easy for me to live without a car. There are 4 bus lines and a Railway in my town , so its really easy to get around. My town is also a walkable suburb like many in this region. Most College students do not own or use there car that much due to cost factors or restriction on campus. Some Colleges and University's ban cars for incoming Freshmans. Majority of Colleges across North America offer a bus service to make up for that.  

Many states are redoing zoning laws and declared areas around stations , Transit zones. That causes Transit Orientated Development which is a form of dense Housing or Dense Housing / Retail space. Like for example a typical suburban block like mine can hold 8 houses , Re-zone that into TOD and you can hold an Apartment complex with up to 100 apartments and up to 10 shops on the lower level. At least 26 towns and 12 cities in my state are taking full advantage of that. Alot of the older stations and lines have the original TOD meaning the towns themselves are Dense like you find in Europe. 

Many cities across the US are in the process of redoing there Urban Freeways , some like Providence and Boston are moving them to the outskirts or Underground. LA , Seattle and Portland are also doing some type of Freeway coverings , Parks are being built ontop or Buildings.... Providence is using there old I-195 ROW and Turning it into Dense Housing and Parks. About 3 billion $$ worth.

Many states across the Country have long terms highway / Transit plans. I will say only the Northeast has the best and most extensive plan. This decade alone this region will add at least 500 miles of restored and expanded Tram , Intercity , Subway , Bus Rapid Transit and Regional Rail. My state is planning at 300 miles of Subway / Tram lines by 2040 mostly connecting cities and bridging the gaps in the Railway. Its not your Tram systems or lines , its a bit different. My state i think is the only one who builds Trams in that fashion. The Tram with connect one Regional rail line , then go to high employment areas / Retail areas , a small city , college campus , a connecting to another rail line and then a main city through the core. Trams are built slowly here they cost 2-4x the cost of Regional or even intercity rail.

If your young with No children you have more cities to choose form. If you have Children your cities are limited due to lower quality in the Education dept. As i have been fusing together the Northeast 2040 Master Rail / Transit plan i have been researching towns and cities that are building up there cores and regions that have been slowly stopping sprawl. I'll just list the plans for each state i took form there DOT's and Transit agencies.

*Virginia*

Current system size : 90 mi
added Miles of Electrified Rail : 116
added Miles of Diesel Rail / Intercity Rail : 517

*New Hampshire
*
Current system size : 20
added Miles of Diesel Rail : 150
added miles of Intercity Rail : 74

*New Jersey 
*
Current system size : 570 mi 
added Miles of DMU Rail : 160
added Miles of Electrified Rail : 78
added Miles of Diesel Rail : 567
added Miles of Intercity Rail : 133

*Lower Hudson Valley 
*
Current system size : 156 mi
added Miles of Diesel Rail : 185
added Miles of Electrified Rail : 78 

*Northeastern PA
*
Current system size : 0 
added Miles of Diesel / Intercity Rail : 193

*Southern Tier New York
*
Current system size : 0
added miles of Diesel : 59
added miles of Intercity Rail : 129

*Upstate New York 
*
Current system size : 460 
added miles of Intercity Rail : 90

*Long Island
*
Current system size : 700
added miles of Electrified Rail : 135

*Southeastern PA
*
Current system size : 450
added Miles of Electrified Rail : 335
added Miles of DMU : 92
added Miles of Intercity Rail : 108

*Amish Country
*
Current system size : 50
added Miles of Electrified Rail : 36
added Miles of Intercity Rail : 108
added Miles of Diesel Rail : 47

*Connecticut*

Current system size : 132
added Miles of Diesel Rail : 248 
added Miles of Electrified Rail : 74
added Miles of Intercity Rail : 58

*Massachusetts*

Current system size : 368
added Miles of Intercity Rail : 270
added Miles of Electrified Rail : 102
added Miles of Diesel Rail : 342

*Maine *

Current system size : 40
added Miles of Intercity Rail : 200


*Delaware *

Current system size : 20 mi
added Miles of Diesel Rail : 249
added miles of Electrified Rail : 37

*Maryland*

Current system size : 187 mi
added Miles of Diesel Rail : 111
added miles of Electrified Rail : 32

*Rhode Island
*
Current system size : 30
added Miles of Electrified Rail : 76
added miles of Diesel Rail : 49


*Current JCT cities - Cities with 2 or more Regional Rail lines or 1 Regional Rail line and a connecting Rail Transit service*


Newark 
Philly
Rahway
Trenton
NYC
Boston
Springfield
Norristown
Lansdale
Baltimore
DC
Secaucus

*Future JCT Cities
*
*By 2020
*
Providence 
Harrisburg
Allentown
Philpsburg 
Beacon,NY
Richmond
Fredrick
Trenton
Wilmington
Camden
New Brunswick,NJ
Danbury
Worcester
Springfield
Paterson
Hackensack
Elizabeth,NJ
Norristown
King of Prussia
Bound Brook
Manville,NJ
Wayne
Lawrence,MA
Salem,MA
Attleboro,MA
Taunton,MA
Monmouth JCT
Norfolk
Hampton Roads

*By 2030 - 2040
*
Dover
New London
Portland,ME
Manchester,NH
Reading
West Chester
White Plains
Tarrytown
Port Chester
Binghamton
Hartford
Waterbury
Newark,DE
Lynchburg
Roanoke
Albany
Rochester
Syracuse
Scranton
York
South Amboy
Perth Amboy
Staten Island
Hudson,NY
Suffern,NY
Lancaster
Fall River
New Bedford
Greenfield,MA
Concord,NH

Hehe that was a very long post , normally i reverse that for City Data , i rarely do that on this site though...


----------



## Nexis

Suburbanist said:


> What America has as its best is the facilities (logistical, operational and financial) to keep a car-centered lifestyle. Driving in Manhattan was, for me, a WAY easier experience than driving on Downtown Paris.
> 
> I truly hope most subsidized train projects there fail and that they keep their good job with nice highways, while looking at transit as something only the poor need.
> 
> In regard of house typology, the Americans are much more fond on either large multi-story buildings or stand-alone houses. We, in Europe, should learn from them. It usually pays off if you don't have a neighbor sharing your walls, you need to interact less with them in day-to-day routines of house maintenance.


LOL , yea right. Driving in Manhattan is huge and expensive pain. The Car culture is dying here , people are not getting licenses or aren't getting cars. Most cities are or have Car Sharing programs and there very popular. Although people have cars , there more like storage cars only used 1-2x a week. Biking is becoming popular in this region ,NYC and other cities like DC are creating huge Bike lane systems and bike trails. Since your not an American i don't think you know much about our culture , its a really confusing culture varies region form region. Transit is not for just the Poor , the Middle Class and some rich ppl use it in this region. Along with Politicians , Athletes and Celebrities. That kind of thinking is really dangerous and backwards in this country. I don't think you'll find alot people who share that same thinking , maybe in some Western parts of the US. But this recession has really changed people's uses and views on Mass Transit. I like European housing developments they look wayyyy nicer then what we build. How about you stop criticizing the way we do things in this country.....worry about your own country. When people start worrying and telling people how there country should look like or ran it causes issues. Here it causes Race wars or fights , there are alot in this region mainly between the Europeans.....


----------



## Suburbanist

Nexis said:


> LOL , yea right. Driving in Manhattan is huge and expensive pain. The Car culture is dying here , people are not getting licenses or aren't getting cars. Most cities are or have Car Sharing programs and there very popular. Although people have cars , there more like storage cars only used 1-2x a week. Biking is becoming popular in this region ,NYC and other cities like DC are creating huge Bike lane systems and bike trails. Since your not an American i don't think you know much about our culture , its a really confusing culture varies region form region. Transit is not for just the Poor , the Middle Class and some rich ppl use it in this region. Along with Politicians , Athletes and Celebrities. That kind of thinking is really dangerous and backwards in this country. I don't think you'll find alot people who share that same thinking , maybe in some Western parts of the US. But this recession has really changed people's uses and views on Mass Transit. I like European housing developments they look wayyyy nicer then what we build. How about you stop criticizing the way we do things in this country.....worry about your own country. When people start worrying and telling people how there country should look like or ran it causes issues. Here it causes Race wars or fights , there are alot in this region mainly between the Europeans.....


I just manifested a preference or an opinion. Americans elected the most fiscal conservative House of Representative since Reagan and that (not my humble, powerless and unwarranted opinion) will take care of killing mass transit projects all over US.

As for your other statements, apparently US Census Bureau, US Bureau of Economic Statistics and DOT/FHWA disagree with you.


----------



## Nexis

Suburbanist said:


> I just manifested a preference or an opinion. Americans elected the most fiscal conservative House of Representative since Reagan and that (not my humble, powerless and unwarranted opinion) will take care of killing mass transit projects all over US.
> 
> As for your other statements, apparently US Census Bureau, US Bureau of Economic Statistics and DOT/FHWA disagree with you.


Oh really , I do know alot of Conservatives. Most people don't like the Pork , thats why your seeing smaller Rail and Road projects going through while bigger ones get killed. I hate Pork projects , but those aren't really Transportation projects. Most Conservatives are for Rail and Transit that will serve higher density Regions , hench the Northeast. They can't kill all projects some are funded privately or by Tolls or the Gas tax. They usually kill things outside the Northeast , more then in. As for my other statements , Cities and Mass Transit are growing. The DC Metro Just broke the million daily ridership mark. Some cities grew by 20% this past decade and there not the sprawly cities. Most of the people moving back are Young , single or in College mostly middle Class. Most do not own cars , or rarely use them (Storage Cars) You keep forgetting my country subsidies Roads sometimes to the point that some states can't afford theres anymore. Unlike Railways ,roads never bring profits unless Tolled. Thats not to say Transit does either , although we a few clean outs of the Management Dept's im sure that would change and fast. Most of the Railway projects that were killed in Ohio and Wisconsin were very popular , some ppl say thats why Brown was elected in California and O'Malley and Patrick re-elected because there opponents thought there states should be run with your type of thinking and that turned off Middle Class and Urban Voters. The Gas Tax is so low in my state we are always asking the Feds to build our Railways and upgrade our highways , its pathetic.

Also why do you always attack rail ,and non suburb life? What is your problem with it?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Why do you always come spamming these irrelevant transit projects here?


----------



## seem

There is quite interesting group on a Facebook - You know you're Slovak when ...

- When you are a fan of „Hokej“
- you have a cement mixer (Miesacka) incl. a bunch of chips (Kopa strku) in front of you house
- you Grandma gives you a „ Slivovic “ to cure you hungover
- you own a original Halusky-Pan with holes
- there is at least one „Alpa“ in your hosehold
- a part of you family still owns some sheep, rabbits or a cow
- you have to decline 5 times before you are allowed to take a pice of the cake
- you are girl your big dream is to become „Topmodelka“
- you are driving a "Skoda" 
- you cure your sore throat with a wet pack of Slivovic/Vodka
- you coulnd´t go asleep without "Vecernicek" (as small child)
- you are addicted to „Fidorka“, "Horalka" and "Tatranka"
- your Grandpa drinks beer like other people drink water
- on every family celebration the old folksongs were chanted
- your uncle plays the violin
- half of your cousinhood emigrated 
- havn´t heard somebody talking about Politics beneficial
- your Dad is telephoning so loudly, that it seems that he doesn´t the phone 
- your favourite ice is a „Nanuk“
- you hate Easter, as a girl
- you love Easter as a boy
- you correct teachers when they say Slovakia is located in Eastern Europe 
- you need to repeat your name at least twice when introducing yourself 
- you know that the tallest player in NHL has the same passport as you do 
- you speak at least two languages that you never needed to learn (god bless the czech) 
- you know that Hostel and Eurotrip do not reflect wtf Slovakia is about 
- In your homeland, you do not run away from the cops...You chase them...Oh yeah and Absinth is not illegal over there
- drinking with Americans, you're always the one to finish the keg...cuz everybody around is already passed out
- you have at least once in your life drank the "Chucho" wine 
- you take Kofola over Coke, Zlaty Bazant over Budlight, Slivovica over Captain Morgan, movie by Jakubisko over movie by Tarantino and Spisske Halusky over McDonald's 
- You know that Janosik could kick Superman's ass even if he was on a damn wheelchair
- when you prefer “zalievanu kavu“ instead of filter coffee
- when you can sing this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRxOcefjD54 by heart
- when you prefere „ciganske pecenky” insteady of a BicMac
- when everybody is asking you Czechoslovakia?
- when you black shoes your shoes with „Indulona“
- when you know that “bavorak” must not be necessarily a car
- you can say „Strč prst skrz krk” 

- die slowakische Bescheidenheit bei dir aus allen Ecken quilt:
"Len trosku", "taka malickost", "to je len take", "len okostujem", "ale netreba", "to je moc", ....
- du deinen Gästen beim Abschied eine Tasche mit Geschenken und eine Tasche mit Proviant für den Weg nach Hause in die Hand drückst
- ihr dann eine halbe Stunde hin und her streitet ob sie diese Taschen nun mitnehmen oder nicht
- du (als Mann) eine abgetragene Jogginghose mit Knöpfen auf der Seite und ein karriertes Hemd trägst
- deine Oma immer als erstes feststellt ob du (als Mädchen) auch ja NICHT zugenommen hast
- deine Oma immer als erstes feststellt ob du (als Junge) auch ja zugenommen hast
- jeder über den anderen lästert
- Käse der nicht geflochten ist, für dich suspekt erscheint ;-)
- du überall mit dem Fahrrad hinfährst
- deine Oma diese braune, lederne Einkaufstasche aus sozialistischen Zeiten besitzt
- deine Mutter immer der Meinung ist, dass du nicht genug gegessen hast


----------



## Nexis

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ Why do you always come spamming these irrelevant transit projects here?


Thats not really spam , i was just asking what you think Europeans think of the Video and then i was answering the question. I gave a detailed response , which in my opinion isn't spam. If it was then you would have to consider other posts spam , since they really have nothing to do with roads or the Majority don't. Now i'll admit that post in the Canadian forum was out of line , but this wasn't. I also rarely come and post about Transit on the Highway forums.


----------



## RipleyLV

seem said:


> There is quite interesting group on a Facebook - You know you're Slovak when ...


Not only if you know you're Slovak  :
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1251459


----------



## hofburg

> you can say „Strč prst skrz krk”


what a challenge.


----------



## seem

^^ Is it hard to pronouce hofburg? What's Slovenian for this? 



RipleyLV said:


> Not only if you know you're Slovak  :
> http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1251459


6/40! 

Btw, when I was little I thought that Estonia is Slavic. :nuts:


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> what a challenge.





seem said:


> ^^ Is it hard to pronouce hofburg?


Not at all. I don't know why hofburg can't pronounce it, I guess he's turning into a Frenchman. 



seem said:


> What's Slovenian for this?


What does it mean in the first place?


----------



## mapman:cz

Verso said:


> What does it mean in the first place?


Put finger through throat - silly and hard to pronounce even in english


----------



## hofburg

seem said:


> ^^ Is it hard to pronouce hofburg?





Verso said:


> Not at all. I don't know why hofburg can't pronounce it, I guess he's turning into a Frenchman.












all that words or parts of them you can find in slovenian language as well.


----------



## Verso

Then it's in Slovenian "porini *prst* skozi grlo".


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Then it's in Slovenian "porini *prst* skozi grlo".


i have vulgar insinuations


----------



## Verso

Yeah. :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is even a wikipedia page about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strč_prst_skrz_krk


----------



## SeanT

every language has these funny tongue-breaking words/sentences:lol:
one of the longest hungarian word: megszentségtelenithetetlenségeskedéseitekért:lol:


----------



## bogdymol

SeanT said:


> one of the longest hungarian word: *megszentségtelenithetetlenségeskedéseitekért*:lol:


:badnews:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

How about "slechtstschrijvend"? (worst writer, not that uncommon word).

- chtstsch -


----------



## hofburg

ChrisZwolle said:


> How about "slechtstschrijvend"? (worst writer, not that uncommon word).


actually not that strange, I recognized both german words - "schlecht" and "schreiben".


----------



## seem

ChrisZwolle said:


> There is even a wikipedia page about it:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strč_prst_skrz_krk


Lol, I found this on a Cezch version - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Prst_a_krk.ogg

But the worst one is_"Tři sta třicet tři stříbrných stříkaček stříkalo přes tři sta třicet tři stříbrných střech"_- in Cezch language, it's especialy hard for people who are not from Cezch rep. because they use ř (we also don't have it and people can't pronouce it properly). 



> megszentségtelenithetetlenségeskedéseitekért


it takes ages to say it! It is even worse than when I travel sometimes in Hungary and I am trying to read these names of towns on signs. And what about - 

ZNAJNEPREKRYŠTALIZOVÁVATEĽNEJŠIEVAJÚCIMI  

I really never heard this word :nuts: but this one is quite normal I think - najneskorumpovateľnejší



> How about "slechtstschrijvend"? (worst writer, not that uncommon word).


Well, I know pronunciation in Hungarian and Southern Slavic languages (+Polish) but not really in Dutch. I just know that you pronouce "g" as "ch" in Slovak.


----------



## x-type

we actually don't have some extremes as that. the longest word in Croatian is probably _sedamdesetsedmerogodišnjakinja_ what is not that hard to pronounce. 
also, they say when you inhalate volcanic dust, that you get disease called _pneumoultramikroskopikosilikovulkanokonioza_ 

about tongue training sentences:

Puran pikče prekopikče. (you easy turn some letters and get vulgar word  they like to learn kids how to pronounce that)
Pop kopa prokop, kroz prokop kopa pop.


----------



## seem

x-type said:


> we actually don't have some extremes as that. the longest word in Croatian is probably _sedamdesetsedmerogodišnjakinja_ what is not that hard to pronounce.
> also, they say when you inhalate volcanic dust, that you get disease called _pneumoultramikroskopikosilikovulkanokonioza_
> 
> about tongue training sentences:
> 
> Puran pikče prekopikče. (you easy turn some letters and get vulgar word  they like to learn kids how to pronounce that)
> Pop kopa prokop, kroz prokop kopa pop.


I don't understand why you spell "sedamdesetsedmerogodišnjakinja" (English: 77 years /old/) as one word and not as sedamdesetsedmero godišnjakinja.. :nuts:

And this is so rude! I can't deal with it. I still say pi*e.  (rude word in some slavic languages)


----------



## x-type

seem said:


> I don't understand why you spell "sedamdesetsedmerogodišnjakinja" (English: 77 years /old/) as one word and not as sedamdesetsedmero godišnjakinja.. :nuts:
> 
> And this is so rude! I can't deal with it. I still say pi*e.  (rude word in some slavic languages)


well, it's one word 

about turkey - i actually don't know what means "pikče", i think it's the sound what turkey (puran) makes.


----------



## x-type

i have just found interesting one in Croatian:

Gore gore gore gore.

translation: Up there the mountains burn worse. :lol:


----------



## Verso

Gore gore gore gore. :lol:


----------



## seem

Verso said:


> Gore gore gore gore. :lol:


Croatian language is so easy! I`d like to live there! 

but really, I like your language (right now I am listening to radio Pula) and country, the same with Slovenia


----------



## x-type

this "gore gore gore gore" thing is more like chinese. make wrong breath and you change the whole meaning :lol:


----------



## Verso

seem said:


> but really, I like your language (right now I am listening to radio Pula) and country, the same with Slovenia


You're so cheesy.


----------



## Spookvlieger

There are some more Dutch words btw:

*zandzeepsodemineraalwatersteenstralen*
wapenstilstandsonderhandelingen
Halfautomatischeautobandenventieldopjes
Rioolwaterzuiveringsinstallatie
elektriciteitsproductiemaatschappij
potentiaalvereffeningswandcontactdoosafdekplaatje
Kindercarnavalsoptochtvoorbereidingswerkzaamheden
Radiofrequentiezendmastoperator

It's just that in Dutch language you can combine words when you go in detailing 
zandzeepsodemineraalwatersteenstralen is according to the Dutch dictionary the longest offical word...
Like: elektriciteitsproductiemaatschappij, wich means electricity producing factory but if I want a person to control an electricity producing factory I just make this word of it: elektriciteitsproductiemaatschappijcontroleur.

But no one would even try to use such a word, instead we would make a sentence of that: Een persoon die de maatschappij van elektriciteitsproductie controleert.


----------



## mapman:cz

AFAIK the longest czech word is probably an adjective "the least manageable" in negative, plural and in instrumental case (sedmý pád): nejneobhospodařovávatelnějšími

Luckily, we can not combine words as in dutch


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

The nature of Germanic languages is more in favour of making it possible to form ridiculously long words. I particularly like this one, which is supposedly possible in German: Donaudampfschiffahrtskapitänswitwenversicherungsgesellschaftshauptgebäudeseiteneingangstür, meaning "side entrance door to the main building of the Donau steamship company captains' widows insurance company". Now clearly, you don't come across this too often in daily conversation.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

> Donaudampfschiffahrtskapitänswitwenversicherungsgesellschaftshauptgebäudeseiteneingangstür


Schifffahrt is with 3 f's. (Schiff + fahrt)


----------



## Verso

^^


> Since the German spelling reform of 1996, _Schiffahrt_ is written with three _f_s, so the correct modern spelling in affected countries would use 80 letters, _Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft_, but as the word is a name, the spelling with 79 letters is kept.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donaud...nhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft


----------



## Danielk2

Well that is a word that you certainly encounter very often. You can't go anywhere without hearing it :lol:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

René Kedus said:


> ...äia õe uue ööõieoaaia õueuiuau
> ^^
> a grammatically correct descriptive part of an Estonian sentence without any consonants


----------



## CNGL

Bobek_Azbest said:


> The nature of Germanic languages is more in favour of making it possible to form ridiculously long words. I particularly like this one, which is supposedly possible in German: Donaudampfschiffahrtskapitänswitwenversicherungsgesellschaftshauptgebäudeseiteneingangstür, meaning "side entrance door to the main building of the Donau steamship company captains' widows insurance company". Now clearly, you don't come across this too often in daily conversation.


Wow, that it's a kilometric word! The longest one I know in Spanish is Supercalifragilisticoespialidoso. But it's from a song of Mary Popping, so I don't think it counts...
I can remember looooooong words (Like the Welsh town of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch), but at first I messed up the word Adrenoleukodystrophy (A genetic disease, but it has ended naming a fictional country ), but in Spanish, obviously...

BTW, Falusi is lucky. He has clinched the C-32 through Sant Vicenç de Montalt. I want to go to that town one day...


----------



## Falusi

I really liked that region of Spain, althaugh it was hard to untesrtand the catalan language.

Btw, the longest word I've ever heard is this welsh station name: Gorsafawddacha’idraigodanheddogleddollônpenrhynareurdraethceredigion, which was created exactly to beat the Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You haven't heard the full name of Bangkok:

Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit

กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุทธยา มหาดิลกภพ นพรัตนราชธานีบุรีรมย์ อุดมราชนิเวศน์มหาสถาน อมรพิมานอวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยะวิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์


----------



## DanielFigFoz

http://www.youtube.com/user/arkarnareal

Videos of car crashes on the Av. Padre Júlio Fragata in Braga, Portugal.

Some of them a pretty bad, out of the ones i've seen so far, the worse is the September 11th one.

The cars come to fast around a corner and crash in front of the camera


----------



## Wilhem275

Here, right?

I visited Porto and Lisboa a couple ofyears ago, I was surprised by the number of bad drivers around there.
If Italy may have a problem of aggressive drivers, Portugal has a problem of drivers unaware of what they're doing, imho.

Is that just my impression?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^ Yeah. 

I agree with you


----------



## Surel

An small airplane landed on R43 on the lanes from Brno in the Czech Republic. French pilote traveling from Germany to Hungary had some problem with fuel and landed on the expresway's shoulder. No causalities.


























full story (c) http://zpravy.idnes.cz/letadlo-hlas...5-/krimi.asp?c=A101114_190843_brno-zpravy_abr


----------



## seem

Surel said:


> An small airplane landed on R43 on the lanes from Brno in the Czech Republic. French pilote traveling *from Germany to Hungary* had some problem with fuel and landed on the expresway's shoulder. No causalities.


I didn't get why he landed in Cezch rep. Maybe he doesn't like Slovakia. :nuts:


----------



## keber

Maybe he didn't have problems over Slovakia?


----------



## seem

keber said:


> Maybe he didn't have problems over Slovakia?


If you go from Germany to Hungary Slovakia is usually not first.


----------



## keber

So then, I wasn't wrong, right?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Sales of new cars in Estonia in October were up 121% compared to 2009. We are talking about small numbers here (993 vs. 449) but it still is quite remarkable if you take into consideration that in EU overall, sales were down 17%.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Streetview came to a number of German urban areas:


----------



## Wilhem275

:banana: Berlin in StreetView! :banana: Berlin in StreetView! :banana: Berlin in StreetView! :banana:

All I can say is...






:cheers:


Now begins a new game: spotting as much BR481 as I can...

1) http://goo.gl/maps/jAQX


----------



## Coccodrillo

Dedicated to Suburbanist


----------



## snowman159

:cripes: hno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The blurring of buildings looks absolutely ridiculous. As a counter-reaction, you can make a detailed 3D-model of it with photo-like facades and put it online


----------



## Spookvlieger

^^ And why would an appartment building be blurred anyway?


----------



## snowman159

Google should make some sort of contest and send out armies of private photographers taking pictures of everything and anything on public property. The one who takes the most pictures within a year wins 1 million dollars.


----------



## snowman159

btw, it doesn't get more ridiculous than this:

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&i...XpmXS5XcvpickShEHeC2zA&cbp=12,106.22,,0,-8.93

and on panoramio:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/29109344


----------



## ABRob

ChrisZwolle said:


> Streetview came to a number of German urban areas:


The funny thing is, that the pictures of the other carriageway is a year older (April - May 2008) so the autobahn is still under construction:
http://maps.google.de/?ie=UTF8&ll=5...d=VLI500-722XwApkv2iugSw&cbp=12,168.29,,0,5.9




joshsam said:


> ^^ And why would an appartment building be blurred anyway?


A sort of 'German Angst' 
I'd call it Paranoia.



ChrisZwolle said:


> The blurring of buildings looks absolutely ridiculous. As a counter-reaction, you can make a detailed 3D-model of it with photo-like facades and put it online





snowman159 said:


> Google should make some sort of contest and send out armies of private photographers taking pictures of everything and anything on public property. The one who takes the most pictures within a year wins 1 million dollars.


There's still such a project, but a private one:
http://streetview.mixxt.de/


----------



## Nexis

An interesting thing i saw while playing the New NFS game , this isn't my video...

The Hope Canyon Freeway is modelled after I-70 in Glenwood Canyon , Colorado
4:12 - 5:09


----------



## seem

Chris, I know what might help you - press alt gr and o, i, e = ó, í, é (on English keyboard) and on your keyboard you will maybe get even more latters with ´


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I managed to run the 1996 game Red Alert on my Windows 7 PC. Who remembers that game?  It was fun, building huge armies and crush the enemy.


----------



## seem

Fuzzy Llama said:


> I'd like to get the Mafia II, but my laptop is to crappy for that. Guess i'll have to wait till the next hardware update


Do you have it in English or Cezch in Poland?

EDIT: That happened in Bratislava on a mototrway D1 today.. :nuts:




Qwert said:


> Interesting accident on D1 in Bratislava. Source: http://natankuj.sme.sk/c/5648573/vozidlo-nds-sa-na-moste-zavesilo-na-znacky.html


----------



## Nexis

hofburg said:


> I think I'm gonna buy this one for xbox360. seems nice, good graphics. test drive unlimited 2 is also comming shortly.


That comes out in Janurary and Driver San Fransisco....they both look great 



RipleyLV said:


> Criterion said they made the map twice the size of Paradise city in Burnout, that's the largest map ever made for NFS.


I don't know if theres any real way of telling that , they said that for Need for speed Undercover....


----------



## Rebasepoiss

At my father's previous workplace, one guy drove a truck into a bridge...that was carrying a € 200,000 harvester...not that's bad 

BTW, this is a test message from my new samsung galaxy 580


----------



## ChrisZwolle

CB radio - it was a big deal in the 1970's, but nowadays only truckers use it for communications. However, I have noticed many Polish cars with huge antennae, I assume for CB radio. CB revival?


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

seem said:


> Do you have it in English or Cezch in Poland?


The version sold here has dialogues in English with Polish subtitles, and ofc. Polish interface.



ChrisZwolle said:


> CB radio - it was a big deal in the 1970's, but nowadays only truckers use it for communications. However, I have noticed many Polish cars with huge antennae, I assume for CB radio. CB revival?


Well, CB radios are quite widespread here among _certain_ kind of drivers. They say that they use it to exchange road and traffic info, but I think you can guess what it's really used for


----------



## hofburg

Rebasepoiss said:


> BTW, this is a test message from my new samsung galaxy 580


congrats on the new android.


----------



## Suburbanist

Why aren't there any girls on this sub-forum?


----------



## Ayceman

keber said:


> Finally NFS with some quite realistic roads. Although with (again) too wide lanes. NFS 1 (1994) had for me the most realistic road appearance.


Well, EA is an US company. US roads generally have much wider lanes than Euro roads.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No they don't. European motorway lanes are generally 3.75 m wide, U.S. Interstate lanes are 12 feet or 3.66 m. The difference is a relatively small margin, but European lanes are wider.


----------



## Nexis

Ayceman said:


> Well, EA is an US company. US roads generally have much wider lanes than Euro roads.


The Burnout makers are british , do you remember burnout 3 the European lanes were wider ....so i doesn't matter which company makes the game.


----------



## seem

ChrisZwolle said:


> No they don't. European motorway lanes are generally 3.75 m wide, U.S. Interstate lanes are 12 feet or 3.66 m. The difference is a relatively small margin, but European lanes are wider.


We have also one motorway (D1,BA-TT) with 3.33 m wide lanes but it will be rebuild in 3 years. Ussualy we have 3.75 but there are some sections with 3.50 for example new sections of expressway R1. So yeah, mostly we build 3.75 wide lanes. 

Btw, in Hungary they have 4 m long wide shoulders! :nuts:


----------



## AUchamps

Ayceman said:


> Well, EA is an US company. US roads generally have much wider lanes than Euro roads.


But EA Canada made NFS(even the original).


----------



## Nexis

AUchamps said:


> But EA Canada made NFS(even the original).


I think thats EA Montreal and theres a standard lane size in Video games..


----------



## Surel

Not so long enough this video or other was posted here.





The driver has been sentenced 5 years in prison at the fist instance court.


----------



## bogdymol

seem said:


> We have also one motorway (D1,BA-TT) with 3.33 m wide lanes but it will be rebuild in 3 years. Ussualy we have 3.75 but there are some sections with 3.50 for example new sections of expressway R1. So yeah, mostly we build 3.75 wide lanes.
> 
> *Btw, in Hungary they have 4 m long wide shoulders!* :nuts:


In Romania the motorway standard is the same. 2 x 3.75 m (2 lanes) + 4 m (shoulder)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A wide shoulder is necessary to facilitate a 4-0 setup during road works. Any busy 2x2 motorway should have wide shoulders, so you can efficiently carry out road works with a full carriageway closure, while not significantly decreasing capacity. Who hasn't been in a 1 hour traffic jam because the motorway narrowed from 2 to 1 lane during roadworks? You can avoid that by investing in a slightly wider shoulder.


----------



## seem

ChrisZwolle said:


> A wide shoulder is necessary to facilitate a 4-0 setup during road works. Any busy 2x2 motorway should have wide shoulders, so you can efficiently carry out road works with a full carriageway closure, while not significantly decreasing capacity. Who hasn't been in a 1 hour traffic jam because the motorway narrowed from 2 to 1 lane during roadworks? You can avoid that by investing in a slightly wider shoulder.


Yeah, of course it is better. In Hungary they can even have a 5 m wide hard shoulders cos there are no moutains so it really does not matter. You should do the same in the NL.


----------



## BND

^^ we won't pave the whole country just because it is flat


----------



## piotr71

Slovak point of view-flat countries just don't matter


----------



## seem

piotr71 said:


> Slovak point of view-flat countries just don't matter


Yeah exactly! That's it!  you should build motorways to every single pub cos you have flat countries!




BND said:


> ^^ we won't pave the whole country just because it is flat


I like Hungarians motorway but I would like them even more with 5 m wide shoulder! : D


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Flat does not always mean "inexpensive". For example the Netherlands has expensive motorway construction, even in flat land, due to all the drainage systems. Nearly all non-urban roads run on small embankments and have small (or large) drainage canals next to them. An issue in the Netherlands is subsidence, because the soil is not very strong. Some motorways even needed piling (N11) or were constructed on major embankments (A12). Not to mention below-grade construction in bog areas is astronomically expensive (did I mention the 7 km of greenfield construction on a free corridor will cost € 800 million?).


----------



## TheCat

Heh yeah NL has the exception of being "too flat" in that a lot of the country is essentially built on water. Dutch engineers have done a lot of incredible work in that area (I once watched a very interesting documentary about that).


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> Flat does not always mean "inexpensive". [...]


The same problem in Estonia also. 1/4 of Estonia is essentially a swamp so we have to take this into consideration when building highways. At Kose-Mäo project on the E263, up to 2 m of bog peat will have to be removed before the construction of the road dam can begin.


----------



## Nexis

I chriszwolled up my Railway video , i shot this running next to I280 in Harrison and Newark,NJ....I marked all the intersections and exits correctly....:lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

8 cm of hail disrupts traffic in central western Netherlands, where traffic queued for over 30 kilometers on the A12 motorway between Utrecht and Gouda. As of 7.30 pm, there is still an 18 kilometer traffic jam westbound and a 16 kilometer traffic jam eastbound.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

How about this very credible speed limit?


----------



## hofburg

ChrisZwolle said:


> 8 cm of hail disrupts traffic in central western Netherlands, where traffic queued for over 30 kilometers on the A12 motorway between Utrecht and Gouda. As of 7.30 pm, there is still an 18 kilometer traffic jam westbound and a 16 kilometer traffic jam eastbound.


tomorrow snow? in Paris apparently yes.


----------



## BND

^^ in Budapest possible, too


----------



## CNGL

In Huesca maybe next week .


----------



## SeanT

Here is snowing already(15cm).


----------



## seem

Everyone keeps talking that it will snow on monday but I don't believe it. They were expecting snow on thursday but it was snowing just in Scotland. What a shame, I don't like cold winter without snow here in South England. 

EDIT after 20 sec: Unbelievable! I am sitting in the library and just a 10 second ago one girl said to one guy - "It's snowing!" :banana:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^ Where abouts in Southern England are you?


----------



## RipleyLV

Here it hasn't stopped snowing since yesterdays morning.


----------



## seem

DanielFigFoz said:


> ^^ Where abouts in Southern England are you?


Gloucestershire, but it is not snowing now


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^ No snow in London


----------



## seem

DanielFigFoz said:


> ^^ No snow in London


I wanted to go to London tomorrow but I am not going so hope I will enjoy snowy weekend here in South West. There will be some snow maybe on Sunday/Monday.


----------



## nenea_hartia

We had some snow in RO last night:


----------



## seem

seem said:


> I wanted to go to London tomorrow but I am not going so hope I will enjoy snowy weekend here in South West. There will be some snow maybe on Sunday/Monday.


Well, a bit of snow this morning in South West England.










_really funny to watch car sliding down the street.. no winter tyres 
_


















_but it is enough for kids
_


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ That's exactly how it looks here in Zwolle, the Netherlands right now. Just a thin layer of snow enough to make it look white.


----------



## waddler

nenea_hartia said:


> We had some snow in RO last night:


Is this all you got about snow in RO? 

Some pictures in Piatra Neamt, Romania, taken this morning.


alios24 said:


> cateva poze facute azi *27.11.2010*


There's no snow at all in my area tho-


----------



## nenea_hartia

waddler said:


> Is this all you got about snow in RO?
> 
> Some pictures in Piatra Neamt, Romania, taken this morning.


Wow!
:eek2:


----------



## Fatfield

Not much to report about in Sunderland. I took this pic this morning outside work. Its nearly all melted!










Actually its about 15cm deep.


----------



## Wilhem275

Peugeot overhang FAIL! :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Peugeot 407 is actually one of my favorite regular cars. But since I can't afford a new diesel passenger car, I will save some money to buy a 2008 Peugeot Partner commercial van (diesel) in 2011 or 2012.


----------



## Fatfield

Wilhem275 said:


> Peugeot overhang FAIL! :lol:


Its quality man. Just look at those gills. Le Shark. Would dance all over a great white.

No sunbathing on the balcony today.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

seem said:


> Well, a bit of snow this morning in South West England.


Still nothing tin South East England :lol:


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Not much to report about central Poland either - there is some snow on roofs and grassy areas, but it looks pathetic 

I want real SNOW! Snowpocalypse now!


----------



## SeanT

/]







[/URL]
We have snow as well here in Denmark.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Peugeot 407 is actually one of my favorite regular cars. But since I can't afford a new diesel passenger car, I will save some money to buy a 2008 Peugeot Partner commercial van (diesel) in 2011 or 2012.


Are the taxes that high for regular passanger cars in NL? I see that you are thinking to buy another commercial van.

PS: no snow in western Romania (yet!)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

> Are the taxes that high for regular passanger cars in NL? I see that you are thinking to buy another commercial van.


Diesel is inexpensive in the Netherlands (around € 1.15 per liter), but diesel cars are quite expensive. For example, a 3 year old diesel passenger car (that is not a cookie can) will cost you € 15.000 easily. A 3 year old diesel commercial van is usually around € 7.000 - 8.000. Other than that, they are (much) cheaper for insurance and usually somewhat cheaper in road tax. The annual fee for a 1400 kg diesel car is easily around € 1.300 per year in the Netherlands. A diesel van of that weight is closer to € 700 - 800 per year. 

All in all I calculated my cost per km (including write-off, maintenance, fuel, insurance, etc.) is around € 0.25 per km. Passenger cars are closer to € 0.70 - € 1 per kilometer if you include all costs. Fuel is only some € 0.06 per km for me.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Yeah, it's snowing 
3cm of snow right now.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Yeah, it's snowing
> 3cm of snow right now.


22cm of snow in Tallinn this morning and it's still snowing, 44cm in North-East Estonia.


----------



## jann85

10cm of snow in Leszno, PL and still snowing! :banana:


----------



## AUchamps

ChrisZwolle said:


> Peugeot 407 is actually one of my favorite regular cars. But since I can't afford a new diesel passenger car, I will save some money to buy a 2008 Peugeot Partner commercial van (diesel) in 2011 or 2012.


Peugeot's are good cars? In America, Renault and Peugeot's are forever stained as being crappy cars due to the cars they imported or build for the US market in the 1970s and 1980s. Le Car, anyone?


----------



## bogdymol

^^ You can't compare a 1970s or 1980s Renault or Peugeot with the new ones.

Just look at this two:
Peugeot 505 - 1980s









Peugeot 508 - brand new model:


----------



## Suburbanist

Animation of construction methods and process for a major hydroelectric power plant in Northwestern Brazil (a big one, 3800 MW).


----------



## keber

Mounting snowchains onto my car on SOS-niche, old part of A2 motorway at Višnja Gora, Slovenia - Friday afternoon. I couldn't drive anymore with summer tires, so snowchains had to be mounted right that moment. Behind this spot trucks with inadequate winter equipment began to partially close motorway, which resulted very long delays.

Then yesterday on opposite site:
Mass crash, with 38 vehicles, 3 dead and 20 injured, cars encountered dense fog with instantly dropping from clear weather to almost zero visibility (aka hitting "white wall").

















Now it is again snowing heavily, we expect up to 40 cm of new snow until morning. And another 20 cm on Tuesday.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I still have nothing


----------



## kosimodo

I bet there is some snow in this area....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Zwolle, first snow of the season.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

5 cm of snow and Northwestern Europe is gridlocked:


----------



## seem

ChrisZwolle said:


> 5 cm of snow and Northwestern Europe is gridlocked:


Be happy for 5 cm - http://korzar.sme.sk/c/5660924/poprad-po-snehovej-nadielke.html :nuts:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

According to the radar precipitation from the Netherlands is coming towards London


----------



## RipleyLV

Came back home with a frozen face. Haven't measured with a ruler snow thickness here, but now it's -12C and forecast for this week show it's going to slide down to -26C! :banana:


----------



## Fatfield

^^^^

The forecast for North East England is that the temperature is expected reach -18C in some places tonight although I expect that to be in the high, open areas of Co. Durham & Northumberland.

We've had approx 25-30cm of snow here in the last 3 days and there's more expected. In fact, the Met Office have issued severe weather warnings for the whole of the east coast of England & Scotland.

What's worse is this is adverse weather for us so our councils have been caught unaware. I haven't seen one gritter or snowplough since it started on Friday. The local buses (GoAhead)are finishing at 19:00 tonight and the trains on the East Coast Main Line have been affected.

We really aren't prepared for this weather in Blighty. :bash:


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Warsaw was gridlocked today. There was several centimeters of snow and it was snowing constantly during the day. If you wanted to go somewhere you'd better use rails (or hope that you can get to your destination by tram/underground/train, because all the roads were converted to a big, white parking lot.

It was SO peaceful to walk through the snowy city. I LOVE SNOW


----------



## hofburg

Paris -6° :nuts: it wasn't that cold since 5 years I'm here..


----------



## keber

Fuzzy Llama said:


> It was SO peaceful to walk through the snowy city. I LOVE SNOW


Do you like to clean pavements?


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

^^
This little bit of additional physical activity doesn't bum me out. And today the city looks even prettier


----------



## bogdymol

Great message on the truck:








:lol:


----------



## CNGL

^^ :lol:. Again, Frigo in my country. But Algida wasn't Italian?


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

^^


Wikipedia said:


> Partial list of national brands variants of the Heartbrand
> 
> Algida - Czech Republic, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Republic Of Macedonia, Malta, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey
> Bresler - Chile
> Cargills - Sri Lanka
> Eskimo - Austria
> Frigo - Spain
> Frisko - Denmark
> GB Glace - Sweden, Finland
> Glidat Strauss - Israel, USA
> Good Humor - USA, Canada, China
> HB - Ireland
> Helados La Fuente - Colombia
> 和路雪 - China
> Holanda - Mexico, Central America	Kibon - Brazil
> Kwality Wall's - India
> Langnese - Germany
> Lusso - Switzerland
> Miko - France
> Ola - Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, South Africa
> Olá - Portugal
> Pingüino - Ecuador
> Selecta - Philippines
> Streets - Australia, New Zealand (slogan 'Nothing Beats Streets')[6]
> Tio Rico - Venezuela
> Wall's - United Kingdom (Great Britain), Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Thailand and other parts of Asia
> Wall's HB - United Kingdom (Northern Ireland)


----------



## CNGL

^^ Funny enough, here in Spain there was a ice cream group called Miko, like the heartbrand in France. Now it's Nestlé ice creams...
And I like the name the heartbrand takes in N Ireland, both British and Irish. Perhaps the ice creams sold at ferry Leghorn-Barcelona should change their name to Algida Frigo :lol:. (Now it's only Algida)
And the link to Wikipedia?


----------



## Suburbanist

I woke up early to realize there is a very weird weather outside. Wind gusts 10 min, followed by calm. Then more wind gusts. Snow from Monday didn't melt, just a little (sun heating), so the grass here in the University is looking ugly (you know, that brownish look partially melted snow + frozen mud get).


----------



## Tin_Can

Lol @ 5cm snow creating chaos...  I bet life would probably die out in Central & Western Europe if you ppl had as much snow as we do - 46cm in Tallinn metro area! 



Tin_Can said:


> They say that Eskimos have more than 20 different word for snow. I wonder what they would use to say 'that pile of snow has buried my car'  Btw,I believe there's a Citroen C3 underneath that snow,photo itself is few hours old and taken in Downtown to illustrate recent days extreme weather here.


----------



## Ayceman

^^ Doesn't seem that bad, and we're 1000 miles to the south


----------



## keber

Tin_Can said:


> Lol @ 5cm snow creating chaos...  I bet life would probably die out in Central & Western Europe if you ppl had as much snow as we do - 46cm in Tallinn metro area!


Central? At least here around Alps 40+ cm of snow is pretty normal for winter. Some chaos on the day of snowing (some more, if it is in the beginning of winter), but normal next day.


----------



## CNGL

There are news from the Clinched Motorway Mapping: Now you can map your clinched NJ state highways and Austrian and Danish Euroroutes! Chris, I believe you should update your list, you traveled through Denmark and the southern part of Catalan C-32...


----------



## seem

keber said:


> Central? At least here around Alps 40+ cm of snow is pretty normal for winter. Some chaos on the day of snowing (some more, if it is in the beginning of winter), but normal next day.


Well you know how diverse Central Europe is. In town located in Northern Slovakian moutains it is also not odd but in Southern Slovakia on a lowland you might not use winter tyres. 

btw, grrr! Where are the maintenance cars here in England?! Surface on a roads and pavements it's just like ice and it is even harder to walk on it. 

_just one mobile pic to see how bad it is_



EDIT: 






quama said:


> :lol:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

There's an extra 0.5 cm now


----------



## Pansori

What's happening in Britain:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...rkers-arrive-late-work.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

It may look like an ordinary winter weather in relevant parts of continental Europe but here it's totally unusual and most people and enterprises are unprepared for that starting with railways and ending with ordinary streets in the suburbs. Even more scary is that now I see snow falling outside the window like there's no tomorrow... and it's 0 -1C which means it won't just melt instantly. In fact, even now everything is covered in white. I bet tomorrow is going to be a hard day for London.


----------



## keber

Maybe winter tires should be obligatory in UK? Then sentences like "There's an extra 0.5 cm now" wouldn't have much importance.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't think winter tires would really improve congestion. Yesterday there was extreme congestion in Switzerland and southeastern Germany, places where you'd expect a high winter-tire usage. It has to do with the saturation of the road network. People drive more careful, traffic lights handle only a fraction of what they normally handle, hence extra congestion.


----------



## CNGL

It started to snow a few minutes ago here in Huesca... But it has stopped.


----------



## Suburbanist

CNGL said:


> It started to snow a few minutes ago here in Huesca... But it has stopped.


Do you know about the conditions of A-136 to France? Is it open or does it close in case of snowstorms?


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't think winter tires would really improve congestion.


Imagine: just one truck with summer tires blocking one half of motorway with stopping all the traffic for hour or more or just slow traffic.

It is quite a difference, if whole country is in halt just because of 5 cm of snow or it is moving slowly in rush hour because of 20 cm of snow.


----------



## CNGL

Suburbanist said:


> Do you know about the conditions of A-136 to France? Is it open or does it close in case of snowstorms?


The A-136 right now is open. When there's some snow is closed, not the A-136 (You can reach the summit of Portalet since there's a ski station or whatever is called), but French RD934.


----------



## seem

keber said:


> Maybe winter tires should be obligatory in UK? Then sentences like "There's an extra 0.5 cm now" wouldn't have much importance.


I know one girl here who is going to buy winter tyres.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ Actually, the winter tyres sold in Central and Western Europe are different from Nordic(and Baltic) winter tyres. Nordic tyres have a different mixture which is suitable for temperatures as low as -30C whereas Central European winter tyres are not suitable for temperatures below -5C.


----------



## seem

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ Actually, the winter tyres sold in Central and Western Europe are different from Nordic(and Baltic) winter tyres. Nordic tyres have a different mixture which is suitable for temperatures as low as -30C whereas* Central European winter tyres* are not suitable for temperatures* below -5C*.


So what about people living in the valleys and moutains? :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

keber said:


> Imagine: just one truck with summer tires blocking one half of motorway with stopping all the traffic for hour or more or just slow traffic.
> 
> It is quite a difference, if whole country is in halt just because of 5 cm of snow or it is moving slowly in rush hour because of 20 cm of snow.


True, but we don't have any significant hills in the Netherlands. The impact of precipitation that cannot be mitigated by porous asphalt (like snow) on the already saturated motorway network is much larger. Winter tires won't change that.


----------



## BND

in Budapest it has started snowing like crazy a few minutes ago, a snowflake is about as big as a 2€ coin...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> Winter tires won't change that.


True. We have traffic jams because of snow in Tallinn as well, even though winter tyres are obligatory over here.


----------



## x-type

winter tyres are more the safety issue. sooner i was one of those who were saying "there is no huge difference", but after i bought first set of winter tyres in my life few years ago, i would never again dare to drive on snowy road on summer tyres. no way!


----------



## Spookvlieger

There is 8 cm of snow in Flanders today... The whole moring rushhour was like hell. We had over 600km of traffic jams on highways only. Our counrty is only like 250km across from longest ends :nuts:


----------



## keber

Rebasepoiss said:


> Central European winter tyres are not suitable for temperatures below -5C.


Not true even a bit. Where do you pick such misinformation?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

keber said:


> Not true even a bit. Where do you pick such misinformation?


I'm not saying that they stop working completely. Just the rubber mixture loses a lot of its efficiency below that temperature. This information comes from the Estonian Tyre Association, more exactly from this article: http://www.ap3.ee/?PublicationId=31503ED6-39D4-4163-9D98-74AA1E3959CE&code=4827/uud_uudidx_482701 (in Estonian)

By the way, what makes you think this is misinformation? It's quite logical that Central European winter tyres are meant to work in temperatures around freezing point since it very rarely gets below that in Central/Western Europe(excluding the mountains but chains can be used there so it's not a problem).

Nordic winter tyres are rather bad on dry and wet asphalt, for example. The priorities are different.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Don't you just hate when you make a huge effort to clean a parking space from snow in front of your apartment building and when you come home in the evening, some a**hole has taken your place? I guess you don't because most of you guys are from places where it rarely snows. But anyways, some clever people in Tallinn have found a solution:


----------



## Tin_Can

Heh,like few sticks would stop some bastard from stealing your parking space.

Meanwhile in Russia:


----------



## seem

I am :weirdo: or I can't see anything

EDIT: 

That's better


----------



## Rebasepoiss

The same cyclon that hit Western Europe yesterday has now gathered strength above Baltic sea and hit Estonia and Latvia really badly. Southern and Eastern Estonia are expected to receive 20+cm of snow in 24h. Even main arterial roads are covered with snow and train traffic is severely affected. So lets see how long it will take me tomorrow morning to get to school . I expect a 45+min bus ride instead of the usual 20 min one.


----------



## Danielk2

seem said:


> I am :weirdo: or I can't see anything
> 
> EDIT:
> 
> That's better


WTF is that??


----------



## seem

Rebasepoiss said:


> The same cyclon that hit Western Europe yesterday has now gathered strength above Baltic sea and hit Estonia and Latvia really badly. Southern and Eastern Estonia are expected to receive 20+cm of snow in 24h. Even main arterial roads are covered with snow and train traffic is severely affected. So lets see how long it will take me tomorrow morning to get to school . I expect a 45+min bus ride instead of the usual 20 min one.


Great, I am hoping for such a snow (20 cm) here because I will stay in safe home.


----------



## Suburbanist

When you are tired of land, get to the sea... what about an Antarctic cruise like this:


----------



## seem

Danielk2 said:


> WTF is that??


Schwarzenegger celebrating Hanukkah. :nuts:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Weather conditions in North-East Estonia are really bad. E20 is closed near Padaorg and 600 people are trapped in snow. Tallinn bypass is also closed in some sections.









A mobile phone photo from one of the people trapped in Padaorg

















Military forces have been sent to rescue them because the area is inaccessible by regular maintenance equiptment:


----------



## Verso

Looks like Antarctica.


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> Looks like Antarctica.


North Pole is closer :lol:


----------



## Verso

Guys, does anyone of you have Arabic relatives besides me?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Your nephew is called Versahmed?


----------



## Verso

I don't have a nephew/niece (yet).


----------



## seem

Rebasepoiss said:


> Weather conditions in North-East Estonia are really bad. E20 is closed near Padaorg and 600 people are trapped in snow. Tallinn bypass is also closed in some sections.



That might be 60 000 km of trafic jams in the Netherlands. 



Verso said:


> Guys, does anyone of you have Arabic relatives besides me?


Everything else but Arabic not at all.  

EDIT: I made a mistake I thought that ancesters.. 

and what matters?

well, guys I think you don't have to understand that because it is so hilarious!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My Christmas tree


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ Do you also have small traffic signs that you can hang in the tree?


----------



## seem

ChrisZwolle said:


> My Christmas tree


Hey mate! What map is it? I was expecting that you have motorway network of Nederlanden (or EU) on your wall. I hope you have it in bedroom.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You can't recognize that map from its shape?


----------



## seem

ChrisZwolle said:


> You can't recognize that map from its shape?


Great! What region /country / state / county / province / subdivision is it then? :cheers:


----------



## Magnus Brage

ChrisZwolle said:


> My Christmas tree


wow A Map-Nerd, I thought I was the only one 

I also collect roadmaps and I have put some of them on the wall of my storage. On the top of my requestlist for santa claus this year is a giant roadmap and of course a new GPS. My last one was stolen, because I was stupid enough to put it in the glove-compartment over night and leave the holder on the windscreen.


----------



## nenea_hartia

ChrisZwolle said:


> You can't recognize that map from its shape?


I believe it's Amsterdam on the left and maybe Osnabrück on the right. Am I wrong?


----------



## bogdymol

I don't know if the mass-media from your countries said anything about this, but today we had an unexpected situation in the Romanian parliment. 

Exactly when the Prime-Minister of our country was beginning his speech in the parliment an electrician from the National Television tried to kill himself by jumping from the halls balcony. Our media says that he did this because of the salary cuts and because he has a son that needs medical care of about 800 euro/month and now the state dosen't provide him free health care.

You can see some pictures on mediafax.ro:










You can also see how a cameraman got this on tape here:
*Warning: shocking images !!!*




The original video is on stirileprotv.ro

He is now stable in the hospital with some broken bones and injuries at his head and face.


----------



## keber

PLH said:


> Having winter equipment is not enough as it seems:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> :cripes:


Brains are needed too. Seems that owner of the car forgot them somewhere ...


----------



## Surel

Merry Christmas everyone!!


----------



## seem

^^










Merry Christmas guys. I hope everybody has it nice and that you can spend your time with people who you like and where you want to be. On Wednesday I was really not sure if I will spend Christmas in Slovakia or at the airport so right now I am really happy I am here. 

_Slovakian Christmas dishes - http://www.52insk.com/2010/christmas-market/_

_and Slovakian cake "Medovník" (honey cake) on our Christmas tree_


----------



## hofburg

seem said:


> ^^
> 
> _and Slovakian cake "Medovník" (honey cake) on our Christmas tree_


medenjak!!  merry christmas to you too.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Feliz Natal!


----------



## bogdymol

Crăciun Fericit !


----------



## seem

hofburg said:


> medenjak!!  merry christmas to you too.


So "med" (honey) is "med", isn't it? 

Veselé Vianoce 

(a šťastný nový rok (soon))


----------



## nenea_hartia

Crăciun Fericit!


----------



## Timon91

Vrolijk Kerstfeest!


----------



## mapman:cz

Veselé Vánoce!


----------



## g.spinoza

Buon Natale!


----------



## metasmurf

God Jul!


----------



## DanielFigFoz

It snowed here (very lightly though)


----------



## Rebasepoiss

DanielFigFoz said:


> It snowed here (very lightly though)


It snowed and is still snowing in Estonia, some roads are undrivable...again....


----------



## vallacopito-tranolid

Here in Spain is not snowing at all, but this night was f****** cold
http://www.aemet.es/es/eltiempo/observacion/ultimosdatos?k=cle&w=0&datos=img&x=h24&f=temperatura


----------



## keber

^^ Hmm, looks pretty ok.


----------



## seem

Andalucía looks a bit better place to be now. 

Some pictures from (from today) Slovak mountains -


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Jasna?


----------



## seem

Yes, Jasná. How do you know that? 

It was so empty today and really lovely.


----------



## bogdymol

seem said:


> Yes, Jasná. How do you know that?
> 
> It was so empty today and really lovely.


I've been there in 3 winters (2007, 2009 and 2010) for skiing, so it's imposible not to recognize it


----------



## seem

bogdymol said:


> I've been there in 3 winters (2007, 2009 and 2010) for skiing, so it's imposible not to recognize it


Nice. So you know then how many people are always there. Today the longest queue was like 5 m long. 

impossible 

But it was quite cold, abote -12°C or even less and it was snowing all the time. I was so shocked of prices  it is like in Alps. hno:

_and journey home with petrol in diesel engine was quite "funny" btw, poor you, that accident looks horrible_


----------



## Rebasepoiss

seem said:


> _and journey home with petrol in diesel engine was quite "funny" _


That's an expensive repairs bill waiting for you...


----------



## Verso

Once I drove with diesel in a petrol engine and I didn't have to repair anything, although I barely made it to a gas station.


----------



## seem

^^ I heard if you have half of diesel and half of petrol it is ok. But we had 54 l of petrol and 24 (? basically the rest of it) l of diesel. Car was ok, but then after 50 km engine just stoped. It happened once like this a few years ago and they just changed fuel in car and it was ok.


----------



## keber

I see, that Jasna has the same skipass prices like in Slovenia. 8 years ago, when I was there, there were only half that price. How much is now beer beside ski slope? It was about 0,5 € 8 years ago.


----------



## seem

keber said:


> I see, that Jasna has the same skipass prices like in Slovenia. 8 years ago, when I was there, there were only half that price. How much is now beer beside ski slope? It was about 0,5 € 8 years ago.


It is just weird now. Prices are like in Alps but quality is worse. Beer is 1,80 € and 2 € there. Normally  you can buy beer in Slovakia for 1 € (it was Zlatý Bažant.. exactly). Sausage with chips is 7 €, Parená buchta (germknedel?) is for 4€ in Italy it is for 3€, soups for 2,50/3 €, coke, sprite, vinea, kofola for 2,50 € (just 0,5 l normal price is 1€) !!

awful prices..

one day skipass is for 31 € and half of skicentre was closed, well it wasn't closed but lifts to Chopok North were closed 

Chopok North (whichis basically another side of the hill and ski centre) -


----------



## Nexis

Breaking News 

Northeastern US is paralyzed Transportation wise.....

A Travel ban is infect for some cities , meaning no driving is allowed or else a fine. The Railways North of NYC are shut down due to downed wires and winds up to 60mph. Other Railways are operating Diesel trains only and on a reduced timetable. A Few Subway lines are shut down in NYC. Very few people are on the streets in NYC , which is very rare. Sidewalks are completely blocked meaning the few souls that are out are in the streets. A Few Highways are shut down due to icy conditions. All Airports are closed .....About 18 inches of snow has fallen outside my house and its the powdery kind....so the wind is blowing it into drifts.......The Street has lasted less then 24hrs and is in the top 5 strongest in Northeastern history. I will post my before and after pictures later ....


----------



## Surel

Strange that they can isse a ban on all travel in the area...


----------



## bogdymol

seem said:


> poor you, that accident looks horrible[/I]


It wasn't a nice accident. Shoulder bones broken and medical treatment for few weeks.



seem said:


> one day skipass is for 31 € and half of skicentre was closed, well it wasn't closed but lifts to Chopok North were closed
> 
> Chopok North (whichis basically another side of the hill and ski centre) -


In 3 winters of skiing at Jasna I managed to get on Chopok peek just once, and not because I didn't want to go there, but the skilift that went that high was always closed.

Pictures taken by myself and my father the only time we reached Chopok:

Arriving on Chopok by skilift:









Some buildings on the top (meteorological center?):



















Jasna seen from 2000 m:


----------



## seem

_EDIT: 

Rebasepoiss, Verso - car looks ok_



bogdymol said:


> In 3 winters of skiing at Jasna I managed to get on Chopok peek just once, and not because I didn't want to go there, but the skilift that went that high was always closed.


There are always some problems with that lift. They want to build there a new cableway next year - 










I hope it will be done in a next year. There is something new also this year - 










New "reštaurácia"  - http://www.jasna.sk/stredisko/fotog...ystavba-novej-diskoteky-v-stredisku/sk/zima/#

And another new cableway in Tatranská Lomnica -


----------



## piotr71

Slovakia is great 

*ChrisZwolle*- I remember you have posted a picture showing camera's holder you use in your van. I have recently bought a dslr and unfortunately it is too heavy for a holder I have. Would you be so kind and repost that picture and make some description regarding your holding device.


----------



## kosimodo

Some snowchaos from Bornholm Denmark...


----------



## Nexis

*My Blizzard photos
*
*Sunday Afternoon
*









*Monday Early Morning
*









*Monday Morning
*


















*Monday Afternoon
*


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^ Wasn't there a stop sign there last year?


----------



## gramercy

Mr. Plow


----------



## Nexis

gramercy said:


> Mr. Plow


Honestly this storm has made a joke at of the local govts.....i'm so mad at the MTA , DOT , Santition...for not being prepared and the Mayor of NYC is being mister idk what is going on here....other cities are the same....ppl are very angry.


----------



## Nexis

DanielFigFoz said:


> ^^ Wasn't there a stop sign there last year?


Nope , never has been....my neighbors have pushed for one but the town has made excuses not to change it. Ppl treat the yield and corner like its a NFS track.....:lol:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Snow map of Estonia:

More snow is expected in the coming days, also at the beginning of new year. And we have 2 more months of winter to go hno:


----------



## bogdymol

OMG! Look at this road from Japan:





















> The section of the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route linking the Tateyama station and Ogizawa only open from mid April to November, the reason for this hiatus is wintry snow, snow on this section reaches a thickness of 20 meters the most amazed of all is that in mid-April, much of the snow still lingers, so you have to make real corridors of ice to get through that stretch.


original article


----------



## g.spinoza

CNGL said:


> For Spanish peseta it was 166.386 to 1 € . I remember Italian lire was even bigger...


1936.27:1, but we never renormalized our lira, cutting off some zeros, in its own entire history...


----------



## seem

keber said:


> 15,65 estonian kron to 1 € is crazy for you? There are way more crazy exchange rates.


It is not. I just didn't see that dot there so I thought it is 132996:85. :nuts:

..but I see it might be still ok cos Italians had even higher rate : ) 

Our rate was 30,126 SKK (Slovenská Koruna) : 1 €. 



>


Btw, that's for bodygmol


----------



## bogdymol

seem said:


> Btw, that's for bodygmol


HA HA - funny :hahaha: 

Epic pic:


----------



## Danielk2

You've never been to Berlin before?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's Leipzig Airport.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Danielk2 said:


> You've never been to Berlin before?





ChrisZwolle said:


> That's Leipzig Airport.


:lol:


----------



## bogdymol

Danielk2 said:


> You've never been to Berlin before?


No, I haven't been to Berlin or Leipzig before. In fact, I've never been in Germany (yet!). 

But still, that's a cool pic.


----------



## Danielk2

Sorry. My bad. When i drove past some airport on the way to Berlin, i wasn't really awake. assumed it was there. Comment retreated


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I made a video of that stretch. Gotta love the six lane autobahns.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Nice video, shame about the lack of planes :lol:


----------



## piotr71

One must be lucky to see one. I drove there several times and have never seen even a small piece of wing.


----------



## nenea_hartia

^ I've been there last summer and no wings for me also... >(


----------



## Capt.Vimes

nenea_hartia said:


> ^ I've been there last summer and no wings for me also... >(


I didn' see a plane as weel. Next time we should check the flight schedule.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Partial solar eclipse. It's much darker than usual around this time (9.30m am)


----------



## Wilhem275

Yep, but too many clouds to see anything clearly. I used a welding mask.

BTW... _There's someone in my head, but it's not me_ 








Can anyone explain me this road markings?
http://goo.gl/maps/fH7c

Is there any general atlas of GB road signs and markings? Never been there, I'd probably get confused...


----------



## Spookvlieger

ChrisZwolle said:


> Partial solar eclipse. It's much darker than usual around this time (9.30m am)


I made a picture of it with my digital camera after a dark piece of glass. It's very blurry but you can see it anyway...


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Partial solar eclipse. It's much darker than usual around this time (9.30m am)


It was a little bit darker in my town to, but I coudn't see it because it's cloudy.


----------



## seem

Pics from Slovakia by SME - http://www.sme.sk/c/5706925/zatmenie-slnka.html

_I was sleeping but it was snowing here anyway._


----------



## Triple C

ChrisZwolle said:


> Partial solar eclipse. It's much darker than usual around this time (9.30m am)


In Antalya, just a second of darkness happened.


----------



## x-type

Triple C said:


> In Antalya, just a second of darkness happened.


lol you could not see any darkness! it was partial eclipse and actually very weak, in southern Turkey about 60%, covered only with penumbra. eclipse with magnitude less than 75% you could expirience only during the very warm and clear sunny weather, and it is actually nothing special, feeling is like the weather is a bit unclear. i remember 11th August 1999, we had 98% eclipse in the middle of the day. the feeling was like late afternoon, far from darkness. also, total eclipse at one place lasts only for a minute or two. 60% eclipse you could hardly notice even in the middle of the summer (if you wouldn't know it is happening)


----------



## bogdymol

Try Hungarian language: guess (without google-ing) which cityes are Bécs and Pozsony (they are even signed on motorway signs :bash.


----------



## bogdymol

Speaking of landslides, take a look at Brazil last week:



























more pictures on boston.com/bigpicture


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I prefer domestic names of cities. I.e. Antwerpen, Roma, Wien, Warszawa, København, etc.


or perhaps Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nah, I'll just stick to Bangkok or Krung Thep. I don't think locals pronounce the whole train of words every time they mention the city


----------



## CNGL

bogdymol said:


> Try Hungarian language: guess (without google-ing) which cityes are Bécs and Pozsony (they are even signed on motorway signs :bash.


Bécs=Vienna.
Pozsony=Bratislava?


----------



## x-type

CNGL said:


> Bécs=Vienna.
> Pozsony=Bratislava?


yes. they also have some hungarized names in Romania and Croatia. for Croatia i know Eszék, Veröce, Kapronca, Varasd (and Zágráb, which is understandable). but i have never understood why they use italian form for Rijeka (Fiume), nor why they've never introduced Lyublyána


----------



## seem

x-type said:


> yes. they also have some hungarized names in Romania and Croatia. for Croatia i know Eszék, Veröce, Kapronca, Varasd (and Zágráb, which is understandable). but i have never understood why they use italian form for Rijeka (Fiume), nor why they've never introduced Lyublyána


We have "Záhreb", but just a few people use it. H and G always goes like this in Croatian/Slovakian - 

Circle/Kruh (SK)/Krug (HR)

I use also Zagreb.


----------



## Falusi

x-type said:


> they also have some hungarized names in Romania and Croatia.


These are not hungarized names but old hungarian names of the cities. There are lot of them in Slovakia, Romania, Serbia and a few in Slovenia. Croatia is a bit special, because the hungarian population was lower there, so only a few cities have hungarian name where there were a bit more hungarians like Eszék(Osijek), Varasd(Varaždin), etc. The Fiume name for Rijeka could come from Latin language, when it was part of Hungary.


----------



## Nexis

I took these form the train this morning as we rocketting through Queens enroute to Beantown aka Bostin...Big Dig / Zakim Bridge photos will go up late Sunday / Early Monday.


DSC02974 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


DSC02978 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


DSC02980 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


DSC02986 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ Hey, Nexis, I don't like your ideas about transit, but you take great pictures. Congrats.


----------



## Suburbanist

*Brazilian biofuels program: a huge success*

In what is likely one of the most underrated successes of renewable fuel programs, Brazil had a another great year in 2009.

Some data to entertain you:

*Transportation fuel sales 2009, 1.000m³**
Ethanol (E100) - 16.470 - includes 2% water, used directly on cars, 67% of Brazilian car fleet runs solely or also on ethanol
Gasoline - 19.560
Dehydrated ethanol - 5.840 (added to gasoline, addition (21-25%) is mandatory since late 80's)
Diesel - 43.404
Biodiesel - 885
Aviation fuel - 5.490

*Transportation fuel sales 2000, 1.000m³**
Ethanol (E100) - 4.603
Gasoline - 18.104
Dehydrated ethanol - 4.526
Diesel - 35.151
Aviation fuel - 4.410

======
Car + motorcycle fleet as of 2009 was 48.350.000, 72% increase over 2.000. On a rough average, each light vehicle used 72 liters of automotive fuel per month in 2009. 

=======
99%+ of Brazilian ethanol is made from sugar cane, with a energy net yield (units of energy delivered on fuel per (units of energy used in the cultivation/processing - units of other forms of energy - electricity - generated as byproduct)) of 8:1 to 11:1. As comparison North American corn ethanol yield 1.4:1 to 1.9:1, reason by which ethanol plants in US run on coal/oil electricity, not in energy produced by ethanol itself.

Brazil uses 76.000km² for sugar cane cultivation. Of the harvested sugar cane, more than 56% is used to produce sugar (of which Brazilian is the larger exporter) and ethanol for export. Brazil has more than 5.000.000km² of land suitable for agricultural practices (more if you consider modern crop cultivation techniques for rainforest-cleared areas), of which the biggest use is 2.140.000km² for pastures (there are 216 million livestock out there, confined/caged operations are minimal, almost all livestock is free range hence the use area usage).

So, in practice, little less than 40.000km² is used for ethanol used for internal market, and that amounts to 51% of all fuels used by cars (diesel cars are forbidden in Brazil since early 70's) and 26% of all land transportation fuel consumption (freight trains included, all of them running on diesel).

Sugar cane cultivation also yield a lot of biomass as byproduct, though little is commercially explored for electricity production for the general grid still (just 2.800MWh/year out of estimated 24.000MWh/year). Those figures do not include electricity ethanol plants generate for their own use (they do not draw electricity from general grid unless for low usage outside the harvest season, when machines are pretty much shut down).

I really consider that a great achievement.
==========
* fuel density data: 1m³ = 1000 liters = 796kg ethanol, 719kg gasoline or 834kg diesel


----------



## ChrisZwolle

So all diesel is consumed by trains and trucks, not by cars?


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> Try Hungarian language: guess (without google-ing) which cityes are Bécs and Pozsony *(they are even signed on motorway signs :bash*.


Like 'Budapesta' in Romania.


----------



## nenea_hartia

Verso said:


> Like 'Budapesta' in Romania.


You're right. Still, I think it's understandable for foreign drivers.


----------



## Nexis

Here's a preview to my Big Dig Madness , i hope to get some Tunnel shots tomorrow and more Zakim Bridge.


DSC03170 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


----------



## gramercy

why would anyone begrudge us naming the towns that were TAKEN AWAY from us in our own country in our own language?


----------



## x-type

nenea_hartia said:


> You're right. Still, I think it's understandable for foreign drivers.


Debrețin and Seghedin, even Varșovia or Londra are kinda harder to recognize to some people (especially written). i tried to catch you at München because i expeced that you in Romanian also have some nonsense name as Italians, but you don't


----------



## ChrisZwolle

gramercy said:


> why would anyone begrudge us naming the towns that were TAKEN AWAY from us in our own country in our own language?


You can name it anything you want to name it. Signage, however, is not meant for political purposes, but to guide travelers to their destination.


----------



## nenea_hartia

x-type said:


> Debrețin and Seghedin, even Varșovia or Londra are kinda harder to recognize to some people (especially written). i tried to catch you at München because i expeced that you in Romanian also have some nonsense name as Italians, but you don't




Well, we have Florenţa for Firenze (where _ţ_ is pronounced like _c_ in Croat), Salonic for Thessaloniki and Moscova for Moskva/Moskow. 



gramercy said:


> why would anyone begrudge us naming the towns that were TAKEN AWAY from us in our own country in our own language?


Relax, of course you can name it in your own language. This is not a political debate, bogdymol was just saying that Bécs or Pozsony might sound strange for some, as Romanian _Florenţa_ might sound strange for Italians.


----------



## seem

nenea_hartia said:


> Salonic for Thessaloniki


I know what you mean - Solún?


----------



## nenea_hartia

seem said:


> I know what you mean - Solún?


Well, I must say Solún is even more interesting than Salonic. :lol:


----------



## seem

nenea_hartia said:


> Well, I must say Solún is even more interesting than Salonic. :lol:


Hah, "interesting". Slovak is weird language.  

http://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solún


----------



## bogdymol

x-type said:


> Debrețin and *Seghedin*, even Varșovia or Londra are kinda harder to recognize to some people (especially written). i tried to catch you at München because i expeced that you in Romanian also have some nonsense name as Italians, but you don't


I haven't heard anyone use Seghedin in my area (and I live 100 km from Szeged). Everybody just says Szeged. Even on road signs it's posted Szeged, not Seghedin. But still, it's quite close to the original name, compared with Pozsony or Becs.

Another example: Romanian town of Oradea = Nagyvárad (Hungarian), Großwardein (Deutsch) Vel'ký Varadín (Slovak), Varat (Turkish), Gran Varadino (Italian), Magnovaradinum (Latin) and אורדאה (Hebrew).


----------



## Wilhem275

nenea_hartia said:


> as Romanian _Florenţa_ might sound strange for Italians.


Not that much: ancient name "Florentia" is uncommon but not unknown


----------



## Nexis

gramercy said:


> why would anyone begrudge us naming the towns that were TAKEN AWAY from us in our own country in our own language?


Taken away form you , in what sense? Boston is a big city , very diverse ....


----------



## Morsue

Nexis said:


> Taken away form you , in what sense? Boston is a big city , very diverse ....


I don't think he was referring to you.


----------



## Nexis

Morsue said:


> I don't think he was referring to you.


oh hehe , i bumped into alot of Eastern Euros in Boston....


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Chris, a question for you if you don't mind 

A friend of mine is applying for the Erasmus student exchange programme and she considers choosing the Hogeschool Windesheim in Zwolle as her first-choice university. Can you say anything about the school, the student life in Zwolle, the pros and cons of spending half a year in this city? Any good advices?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I studied traffic engineering at Windesheim 7 years ago.  The school has changed a lot since then, a lot of modernizations, so I'm not sure how it is today. Considering the large growth in students there (over 15,000 now), I'm sure it's a good school. The student life in Zwolle is quite good, the historic city center is loaded with bars and pubs and they are usually full of people (sometimes crowded). Another upside of Zwolle is that student housing is generally much cheaper than in the western cities.


----------



## CNGL

Spanish national motorways are now avalaible to map at the Clinched Highways Mapping! I'm winning by far, 3715 kilometers vs 2.3 of Chris. What I don't understand why they aren't included the A-1 in the Basque Country :bash: (Which is still signed as N-I)


----------



## Suburbanist

I don't like the way Clinched Highways work. Too cumbersome to fill in the data.


----------



## bogdymol

Suburbanist said:


> I don't like the way Clinched Highways work. Too cumbersome to fill in the data.


It's not that hard after you get used to it. The only thing I don't like is their cliched highways map.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Suburbanist is right, I asked them if there is a chance they modify the data handling method, but they said that an interactive form or something like that involves more number crunching than they are allowed by their provider.

About the map, yes it is terrible, but I think they are working on it.


----------



## Suburbanist

*Car football :*

This is quite fun...


----------



## Nexis

I love the fact that ppl just stand next to the door and don't seem to mind...


----------



## panda80

bogdymol said:


> It's not that hard after you get used to it. The only thing I don't like is their cliched highways map.


^^I also don't like the fact that they introduced a section for European Roads, which overlap in most cases some motorways. Do you know if they count it twice or just once?


----------



## g.spinoza

panda80 said:


> ^^I also don't like the fact that they introduced a section for European Roads, which overlap in most cases some motorways. Do you know if they count it twice or just once?


I don't like that either. However they count them only once when E roads and motorways overlap.


----------



## BND

Here is mine:

http://cmap.m-plex.com/stat/travsummary.php?u=bnd&du=mi&sort=ra


----------



## seem

^^ Total for Slovakia there is about 350. :nuts:


----------



## panda80

^^It's in miles, not kilometers. I'm really impressed by the stats of bova61, he has reached almost all countries in the list and covered lots of km of motorway in Europe. The first users are from US, they are taking advantage that you can introduce also county roads there. I also uploaded my file tonight, I'm waiting to see the results


----------



## CNGL

^^ Kilometers are also avalaible. Click on the "mi" and then it will show stats in kilometers.
BTW, I'm winning in Spain: I have clinched almost 3200 kilometers (2000 miles) more than the person that comes second. (Obviously, it's my country).
But I like Oscar Voss' stats. He knows almost every inch of Interstates... and he had all Interstates clinched back in 2009!


----------



## CNGL

I'm seeking panda80's, and... It's C32Mat, all in one. But you have passed through Sant Vicenç de Montalt... Finally I went there on the first Friday of current year, but no new clinched sections of C-32 because I reached that town... by commuter train.


----------



## panda80

^^Chris, as expected, is impressive in The Netherlands, almost 100%:cheers: However there is a motorway there where I've been and he wasn't (A256, near Goes):banana:


----------



## Haljackey

Oh the joys of winter driving.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSLoIY3bCv8

Hope you enjoyed it!


----------



## x-type

^^
watching that viedo makes me wondering what does american automotive industry live from :lol:


----------



## seem

Nice protest around the Oxford circus right now. I am here in Apple shop. I will post some pictures and video soon.


----------



## PhirgataZFs1694

How many examples of motorways and railways running parallel(rails are side by side or in the middle) to each other you can you give? I know there are in Belguim. Which is the most "hilly/mountainous" example you can give where this solution was chosen?


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Guys, just wondering: Is there any car rental company in the US that doesn't apply the 'being too young to be a responsible driver fee' to people aged 24?


----------



## bogdymol

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Guys, just wondering: Is there any car rental company in the US that doesn't apply the 'being too young to be a responsible driver fee' to people aged 24?


When I was in the US (1,5 years ago) I remember that I studied a little bit the car rentals offers and as far as I can remember almost all of them don't rent cars to drivers under 21, drivers with licence for less than a year, and for those ones under 24 they charge an extra fee. Good luck in finding one that dosen't have this restrictions


----------



## x-type

PhirgataZFs1694 said:


> How many examples of motorways and railways running parallel(rails are side by side or in the middle) to each other you can you give? I know there are in Belguim. Which is the most "hilly/mountainous" example you can give where this solution was chosen?


how far and how close? railway usually requires much larger diameters of curves and much smaller ascents (for instance 2,5 or 2,8% are montainious extremes for railway, when motorway goes up to 5-6%). 

in Italy near Roma fast railway is always somewhere near A1, you can see it almost all the time.


----------



## bogdymol

PhirgataZFs1694 said:


> How many examples of motorways and railways running parallel(rails are side by side or in the middle) to each other you can you give? I know there are in Belguim. Which is the most "hilly/mountainous" example you can give where this solution was chosen?


In Romania we have Bucharest - Constanta railway that goes parallel to the A2 motorway for most of length, although they are separated by few hundred meters. The point where they go side-by-side is between Fetesti and Cernavoda. At the Danube bridge in Cernavoda the railway goes in the middle of the motorway. Here you have 2 pictures of Cernavoda Danube bridge:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In the Netherlands, the Betuwe Freight Route runs parallel (within visible range) to the A15 motorway for 140 kilometers.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Europe's pride:


----------



## seem

Yesterday I joined the protest.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ah, the generation that votes left when they are studying but shift to right-wing parties once they get a reasonable income


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ It's not always like that. I was very left-wing when I was a student, and now that I get a reasonable income I can't find a sufficiently left-wing party to vote.


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> In Romania we have Bucharest - Constanta railway that goes parallel to the A2 motorway for most of length, although they are separated by few hundred meters. The point where they go side-by-side is between Fetesti and Cernavoda. At the Danube bridge in Cernavoda the railway goes in the middle of the motorway. Here you have 2 pictures of Cernavoda Danube bridge:


what is with old railway bridges? are they abandoned or still in use? as far as i see, this one near Feteşti is in use, but in Çernavoda i'm not sure. what is its future?


----------



## bogdymol

x-type said:


> what is with old railway bridges? are they abandoned or still in use? as far as i see, this one near Feteşti is in use, but in Çernavoda i'm not sure. what is its future?


The new Danube bridges were opened in 1987 and are still in use. The old ones (from 1895) were 'retired' after the opening of the new ones.


----------



## x-type

so at Feteşti the railway also passes in the middle of motorway?


----------



## bogdymol

x-type said:


> so at Feteşti the railway also passes in the middle of motorway?


Yes. I think I made a little mistake in my original post


----------



## ChrisZwolle

These steel cantilever bridges are highly uncommon in Europe. You can see them a lot in the United States across major rivers.


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> The new Danube bridges were opened in 1987 and are still in use. The old ones (from 1895) were 'retired' after the opening of the new ones.


have both of them been opened in motorway profile in 1987? on Google Earth at Çernavoda bridge it seems that one half is under construction (and photo is from 2005). could you give us chronological view of development of those bridges (when and what was built)


----------



## Wilhem275

seem said:


>


LOL, I read "Green Farty" :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

x-type said:


> have both of them been opened in motorway profile in 1987? on Google Earth at Çernavoda bridge it seems that one half is under construction (and photo is from 2005). could you give us chronological view of development of those bridges (when and what was built)


1895 - Old railway bridges at Fetesti & Cernavoda were opened
1987 - New motorway + railway bridges were opened
2012 - Cernavoda - Constanta motorway will be opened (right now the A2 motorway goes from Bucharest to Cernavoda - as shown on google maps)


----------



## seem

Wilhem275 said:


> LOL, I read "Green Farty" :lol:


Yeah, I also read it as "Farty".


----------



## CNGL

I'm seeking the Chris' clinched highways and I saw that I have clinched all Spanish national motorways he clinched (And a lot more). Chris, you forgot to add "Lle" after A2 . And you should have go on the A-2 all the way from Lerida to Barcelona, it's more straight than AP-2, and it's free! It was completed by 2005, when you went to Spain (And into my province )

PS: Damn it! I haven't clinched the B-20 and the northernmost part of B-10 and he has!


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> 1895 - Old railway bridges at Fetesti & Cernavoda were opened
> 1987 - New motorway + railway bridges were opened
> 2012 - Cernavoda - Constanta motorway will be opened (right now the A2 motorway goes from Bucharest to Cernavoda - as shown on google maps)


so it must be some renovation works on northern Cernavodă bridge (eastern access on it) on Google Earth, it is obvious that traffis is flowing there only on southern bridge.


----------



## bogdymol

x-type said:


> so it must be some renovation works on northern Cernavodă bridge (eastern access on it) on Google Earth, it is obvious that traffis is flowing there only on southern bridge.


I am not sure that I understand what are you trying to say. Which bridge do you think is on renovation works?

PS: I will only be able to reply tomorrow evening.


----------



## Falusi

I think I found your answer:

from wikipedia: _In October 1987, the 17,2 km segment Feteşti - Cernavodă was opened for traffic. The segment was closed for traffic again in September 2006 for complete rebuilding and reopened in 2007._

The satellite image could be from that time.

Anyway formerly I also taught that the norther carriageway was opened lately


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> I am not sure that I understand what are you trying to say. Which bridge do you think is on renovation works?
> 
> PS: I will only be able to reply tomorrow evening.



here

you can see obvious road works, Falusi probably gave correct answer.


----------



## ABRob

PhirgataZFs1694 said:


> How many examples of motorways and railways running parallel(rails are side by side or in the middle) to each other you can you give? I know there are in Belguim.


This is common in Germany for new (high-speed) railways:
- A3 Cologne – Frankfurt: Cologne–Frankfurt high-speed rail line
- A9 Nuremberg – Ingolstadt: Nuremberg–Munich high-speed railway
- A14 Leipzig: part of Erfurt–Leipzig/Halle high-speed railway

under construction:
- A71 south of Erfurt and A73 near Coburg: parts of Nuremberg–Erfurt high-speed railway

in planning:
- A5 / A67 Frankfurt – Mannheim: Frankfurt–Mannheim high-speed railway
- A8 Stuttgart - Ulm: Stuttgart 21 + Wendlingen–Ulm high-speed railway



PhirgataZFs1694 said:


> Which is the most "hilly/mountainous" example you can give where this solution was chosen?


Definately the Cologne–Frankfurt high-speed rail line along the A3. Maximum speed is 300 km/h (186 mph) and the maximum grade is 4.0%, so this line is the second steepest main railway in Germany and the steepest high-speed rail line in the world.









That's why this is sometimes called "Westerwaldachterbahn" (Westerwald roller coaster) or "the fastest roller coaster in the world".


----------



## BND

I remember the train running in the middle of the motorway when travelling from Schiphol Airport to Amsterdam Centraal Station, it must had been here:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=52.329596,4.799631&spn=0.010622,0.027874&t=h&z=16

The train was faster than the cars on the motorway


----------



## Wilhem275

Do you know any other example of railway running in the middle of a main road (at least a 2x2)?

Maybe there are some examples in Chicago area?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago has a subway line running through the median (I-90/I-94). Another example is the Interstate 105 in Los Angeles. In Germany, an S-bahn runs through the median of A40 in Essen.


----------



## Wilhem275

I think it is a very smart setup, in order to limit the usage of space, in those cases you're sure you'll never have to add new tracks.

I can see many pros: what are the cons I'm not considering?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are a few downsides, freeways almost never directly punch the central core of a city, so a railway station in the median will be outside the main central business district. Another issue is that connecting infrastructure (bus terminals, P+R connecting stations) cannot be constructed very close to the rail station. Another disadvantage is that it may restrict freeway and/or rail expansion, unless there is a large ROW available on the side, which is often not the case. Accessibility for emergency services or repair crews may also be a problem.


----------



## waddler

ChrisZwolle said:


> These steel cantilever bridges are highly uncommon in Europe. You can see them a lot in the United States across major rivers.


+1 
I always liked those bridges cause they gave a U.S. like feeling when you drove past them.


----------



## Wilhem275

*@Chris: *Sorry, I didn't gave enough details: I was thinking about a freight line, with no stops at all. Something like the Betuweroute.

What is ROW?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

ROW = Right of way, basically the land that is under the administration of the highway or transportation agency. If you plan ahead, you have a ROW that is wider than the freeway itself, then you don't need to acquire new land if you want to widen the freeway. This can be done using wider than necessary medians, or large unpaved shoulders. This will save a considerable amount of money later.


----------



## Nexis

ABRob said:


> This is common in Germany for new (high-speed) railways:
> - A3 Cologne – Frankfurt: Cologne–Frankfurt high-speed rail line
> - A9 Nuremberg – Ingolstadt: Nuremberg–Munich high-speed railway
> - A14 Leipzig: part of Erfurt–Leipzig/Halle high-speed railway
> 
> under construction:
> - A71 south of Erfurt and A73 near Coburg: parts of Nuremberg–Erfurt high-speed railway
> 
> in planning:
> - A5 / A67 Frankfurt – Mannheim: Frankfurt–Mannheim high-speed railway
> - A8 Stuttgart - Ulm: Stuttgart 21 + Wendlingen–Ulm high-speed railway
> 
> Definately the Cologne–Frankfurt high-speed rail line along the A3. Maximum speed is 300 km/h (186 mph) and the maximum grade is 4.0%, so this line is the second steepest main railway in Germany and the steepest high-speed rail line in the world.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That's why this is sometimes called "Westerwaldachterbahn" (Westerwald roller coaster) or "the fastest roller coaster in the world".


That looks dangerous , i wouldn't want to be on that train....



Wilhem275 said:


> Do you know any other example of railway running in the middle of a main road (at least a 2x2)?
> 
> Maybe there are some examples in Chicago area?


Its rare and not really liked.... Chicago , LA , Dallas , Seattle , Portland , Bus Rapid Transit is preferred for Highway ROW. Here in the Northeast only 2 lines run in Highway ROW , they are the JFK Airtrain , and Dulles Metrorail. Out of the 19,000 proposed / planned Northeastern Rail / Transit restoration and expansion project only 50 miles more with be in Highway ROW. Mostly for Intercity / HSR approaches... We are also ripping up a few highways and replacing them with narrowed boulevards / BRT or Light Rail. In some Cities like Boston or DC outside of the core the Rapid Transit lines sometimes share Regional Rail ROW , its a cheaper way of expanding the system to the denser areas of the city without spending alot. Here in the NYC-Philly metros we use abandoned Freight lines for new Regional / Rapid Rail lines.....it saves us a ton and serves the denser areas.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Ohhh... I see this things also in Romania. For example, a products price is 10. When they have discounts they say old price: 14, new price: 9,95. :bash:

Another thing that I saw: we have a 200 g and 220 g chocolate bars. On the 220 g one the chocolate company wrote +20% free. The price is X for the 200 g one, and X+20% for the 220 g. :bash:


----------



## CNGL

The best offer EVER :lol::









(Taken from here. In Spanish)


----------



## Verso

^^ LOL!

@AtD: wow, those are really complicated, but looks like they're all on the same road (Lytton Road (24) in Brisbane). Ironically, I drove on it 2.5 months ago just because... I got lost. :banana2: Actually I just came from the toll bridge over the Brisbane River, turned around and drove back over the bridge, because I was looking for an industrial zone on the northern/left bank of the river.


----------



## seem

ChrisZwolle said:


> poor sign blown over by wind...


Is there such a strong wind also in NL? It started on Thursday here.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/latest/2011/02/05/britain-battered-by-wind-and-rain-115875-22901995/



> The parts of the UK south of Manchester saw gales of 40-50mph at their peak, he added.
> 
> The recent weather conditions have been caused by several areas of low pressure from the Atlantic.


----------



## Mateusz

Some shops in the UK do stuff like that but sportswear shops mostly... things like an ordinary jumper by Umbro or Diadora 'discounted' from 39 pounds to 15 pounds for example :lol:


----------



## seem

Mateusz said:


> sportswear shops mostly... things like an ordinary jumper by Umbro or Diadora 'discounted' from 39 pounds to 15 pounds for example :lol:


Sports Direct. :yes:


----------



## Verso

I've got an interesting question: which threads do you always (or very often) check? I used to check (almost) all threads, but it's got too busy in this subforum, so now (of active threads) I (almost) always check: this thread , Slovenia, all neighbors, ex-Yugoslavia, Albania, Switzerland, Russia, Ukraine, border crossings, both license plates threads, roundabouts, trucking, weird and wonderful road signs, roadtrips, where have you driven?, ... What about you?


----------



## Pansori

I always check Lithuania, China, Thailand and Vietnam (although no much activity in the last one) threads. Occasionally-often check Germany, UK, Estonia, Malaysia and, of course, this thread. Occasionally-less often Latvia and Russia... and that's pretty much it. Of course I do check some random threads which can be absolutely anything.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Virtually all threads.


----------



## g.spinoza

I check Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Switzerland, Slovenia, Croatia and most of the non-national threads.


----------



## phiberoptik

I don't want to open new thread just to ask one question.

Can someone tell me reason for borders to be like on this pictures? Is it real or Google made something wrong there?










and


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The border near Emden (Netherlands - Germany) is still disputed.


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> I've got an interesting question: which threads do you always (or very often) check? I used to check (almost) all threads, but it's got too busy in this subforum, so now (of active threads) I (almost) always check: this thread , Slovenia, all neighbors, ex-Yugoslavia, Albania, Switzerland, Russia, Ukraine, border crossings, both license plates threads, roundabouts, trucking, weird and wonderful road signs, roadtrips, where have you driven?, ... What about you?


Threads where I have posted, plus some others.


----------



## gramercy

*roadside + rest (in peace)*

hungary, today, or should i say eu, 2011? hno:


----------



## x-type

:lol:
in the street
:lol:


----------



## RipleyLV

Police drove to buy some meat?


----------



## Wilhem275

Find a room, pigs!


----------



## Magnus Brage

gramercy said:


> hungary, today, or should i say eu, 2011? hno:


wow is that a roadkill ?

Do they also slaugher stray dogs at the roadside? do they have a permit ?

Is this also common in Albania ?



Verso said:


> I've got an interesting question: which threads do you always (or very often) check? I used to check (almost) all threads, but it's got too busy in this subforum, so now (of active threads) I (almost) always check: this thread , Slovenia, all neighbors, ex-Yugoslavia, Albania, Switzerland, Russia, Ukraine, border crossings, both license plates threads, roundabouts, trucking, weird and wonderful road signs, roadtrips, where have you driven?, ... What about you?


I sometimes check nordic baltic forums also the german and russian forums.


----------



## gramercy

Magnus Brage said:


> wow is that a roadkill ?


no, but looking at the size of the pig (probably not even half the 'cutting' weight) its most likely stolen



> Do they also slaugher stray dogs at the roadside?


i even heard stories of gypsies stealing dead animals from wherever they get dumped



> do they have a permit ?


no, and thats a racist question


----------



## gramercy

RipleyLV said:


> Police drove to buy some meat?


they couldnt drive past them, thats how it became news


----------



## seem

Verso said:


> I've got an interesting question: which threads do you always (or very often) check? I used to check (almost) all threads, but it's got too busy in this subforum, so now (of active threads) I (almost) always check: this thread , Slovenia, all neighbors, ex-Yugoslavia, Albania, Switzerland, Russia, Ukraine, border crossings, both license plates threads, roundabouts, trucking, weird and wonderful road signs, roadtrips, where have you driven?, ... What about you?


I usally check: roadsite, Slovakia, Czech republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, Netherlands

and rarely: UK, Germany, Austria, ex-Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Romania..

non-national: both license plates threads, roundabouts, weird and wonderful road signs, border crossings, funny accidents


----------



## nenea_hartia

@ gramercy: don't worry, those pics could have been easily made in Romania. Romania of today, EU, 2011. hno:
In fact, I first thought they _were_ made in Romania, then I saw the .hu domain.


----------



## seem

gramercy said:


> hungary, today, or should i say eu, 2011? hno:


EU 2011. Hungary is not the single one.


----------



## nenea_hartia

^ It's exactly the same in Romania, DIGI dishes on every so-called "house". I always wondered how people so poor can afford to monthly pay for satellite TV.


----------



## seem

nenea_hartia said:


> @ gramercy: don't worry, those pics could have been easily made in Romania. Romania of today, EU, 2011. hno:
> In fact, I first thought they _were_ made in Romania, then I saw the .hu domain.





nenea_hartia said:


> ^ It's exactly the same in Romania, DIGI dishes on every so-called "house". I always wondered how people so poor can afford to monthly pay for satellite TV.


So is it something what you can see if you travel across Romania?

I heard a lot of Romania I just want to know how does it really look like. I have never been there.

EDIT: Or.. 

Can you send a picture of average Romanian village? 



Maxx☢Power;72189277 said:


> You think they're paying? :|


First 5 months are for free if I am sure. Digi is Romanian, damn it.


----------



## bogdymol

seem said:


> Can you send a picture of average Romanian village?


I have uploaded on Panoramio few pictures of the two villages where my parents lived as kids: (Ieud, Maramureș county and Revetiș, Arad county). Just browse my uploaded pics and you will find them.


----------



## nenea_hartia

seem said:


> So is it something what you can see if you travel across Romania?


Well, sometimes. But you won't see such villages when you travel on main roads. Romania doesn't usually looks like that. But almost every main region of the country have from place to place its isolated small villages inhabited by poor Rroma, looking as in your picture.



seem said:


> I heard a lot of Romania I just want to know how does it really look like. I have never been there.
> 
> EDIT: Or..
> 
> Can you send a picture of average Romanian village?


Well, I don't think an average type of Romanian village really exists. The villages are different from one main region of the country to another.
But you can try these threads:

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1191883
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1217701
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1196793



seem said:


> First 5 months are for free if I am sure. Digi is Romanian, damn it.


:lol:


----------



## Kulla

Magnus Brage said:


> wow is that a roadkill ?
> 
> Do they also slaugher stray dogs at the roadside? do they have a permit ?
> 
> Is this also common in Albania ?
> 
> 
> 
> I sometimes check nordic baltic forums also the german and russian forums.


No its only common in Slavic countries to eat roadkills. If we want meat we will go buy it in the store or to the butchers. Why do you allways bring up Albania do you have some sort of fetish or are you that dumb and filled with hate you will do anything to link Albania with anything negative out there?? If so you need help.


----------



## g.spinoza

I personally know Italian people who ate a wildboar they accidentally killed with their car (and the car was wrecked, lol).


----------



## Magnus Brage

Kulla said:


> No its only common in Slavic countries to eat roadkills. If we want meat we will go buy it in the store or to the butchers. Why do you allways bring up Albania do you have some sort of fetish or are you that dumb and filled with hate you will do anything to link Albania with anything negative out there?? If so you need help.


People from Romania or Hungary can show the not very pleasant sides of their countries and discuss that, that is people living of roadkills and gypsies selling stolen pigs. But Albanians have a way of denying every non favorable side of their country. 

*Albania:* average income for a worker 150€/month
Majority of people with low income pay no taxes.
Due to weak authority, corruption (close to failed state) Albania is a major hub for organized crime, human trafficing, trade of weapons, narcotics and stolen cars.

Also in western countries albanian immigrants cause problems preserving their distinct clan-mentality, blood feuds/vendettas are deeply associated within their culture. In the USA the albanian mafia is now taking controll of the prosperous black market, which before was governed by the italian camorra.

Due to bad harvest, In the late 19th century 1.5 million swedes immigrated to the USA, did any of them found a mafiasyndicate engaging in organized crime ?? the answer is no, they were all decent hard working people.


Albanian immigrants, I don't want to meet these albanian boys in town a late evening.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BdYRKho8s0&feature=related


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> I personally know Italian people who ate a wildboar they accidentally killed with their car (and the car was wrecked, lol).


i don't see anything wrong with that. except that is some kind of breaking the law, but hell with the law, it is way better than somebody other eat it or destroy it.


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> I personally know Italian people who ate a wildboar they accidentally killed with their car (and the car was wrecked, lol).


I personally know someone who accidentally killed a quite large rabbit while returning home from Hungary and he put it in the cars trunk after that. The border patrol officers didn't notice it so he had a rabbit stew for dinner :lol:


----------



## Spookvlieger

^^ No albanian youth in Belgium yet, but they do run a big part of the sex industrie...

Buth Uhm you really don't have to look in eastern Europe to find such poverty. Gipsy villages around Paris and other big French cities are common. Last year an illigal Gipsy setlement was buldozed in here in Belgium hno:


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> I personally know someone who accidentally killed a quite large rabbit while returning home from Hungary and he put it in the cars trunk after that. The border patrol officers didn't notice it so he had a rabbit stew for dinner :lol:


well the hell, i will admit, i did it with pheasant  i made an excellent ragout of it


----------



## Spookvlieger

joshsam said:


> Buth Uhm you really don't have to look in eastern Europe to find such poverty. Gipsy villages around Paris and other big French cities are common. Last year an illigal Gipsy setlement was buldozed in here in Belgium hno:


So these are the type of settlements I'm talking about:









http://isabelpousset.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/ipousset_romazigeuners_gent_04.jpg?w=460&h=305









http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_UvfoNkXjqhw/TK2Ob_cNDpI/AAAAAAAAABY/PUpVhV6sIIA/s1600/12844862180549_5.jpg









http://www.innsalzach24.de/bilder/2010/08/12/876385/179312075-roma-paris-lager.9.jpg









http://static.theatlanticwire.com/wire/images/opinions/4759_France Roma Getty.jpg



*Picture taken near a French railway line:*










http://www.jeanmiaille.fr/2009/images/mars_2009/090312095157.jpg


*Milan,Italy:*










http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_b0yA8AUKJ9c/SC1Q--vJOqI/AAAAAAAABak/1i1sAjf0em4/s1600/kossovo6+copia.jpg









http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_b0yA8AUKJ9c/SC1Se-vJOrI/AAAAAAAABas/u4nfwjwHLo8/s1600/kossovo26+copia.jpg


----------



## Verso

phiberoptik said:


>


This border isn't correct. From Wiki:


> There is no legally binding agreement as to where the boundaries lie between Switzerland, Germany and Austria where these three countries meet in Lake Constance. While Switzerland holds the view that the border runs through the middle of the lake, Austria is of the opinion that the lake stands in condominium of all the states on its banks. Germany holds no unambiguous opinion. Legal questions pertaining to ship transport and fishing are regulated in separate treaties.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Constance#International_borders


No one else will answer my question?


----------



## Kulla

Magnus Brage said:


> People from Romania or Hungary can show the not very pleasant sides of their countries and discuss that, that is people living of roadkills and gypsies selling stolen pigs. But Albanians have a way of denying every non favorable side of their country.
> 
> *Albania:* average income for a worker *150€/mo*nth
> Majority of people with low income pay no taxes.
> Due to weak authority, corruption (close to failed state) Albania is a major hub for organized crime, human trafficing, trade of weapons, narcotics and stolen cars.
> 
> Also in western countries albanian immigrants cause problems preserving their distinct clan-mentality, blood feuds/vendettas are deeply associated within their culture. In the USA the albanian mafia is now taking controll of the prosperous black market, which before was governed by the italian camorra.
> 
> Due to bad harvest, In the late 19th century 1.5 million swedes immigrated to the USA, did any of them found a mafiasyndicate engaging in organized crime ?? the answer is no, they were all decent hard working people.
> 
> 
> Albanian immigrants, I don't want to meet these albanian boys in town a late evening.
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BdYRKho8s0&feature=related



Shouldnt you be busy drinking parfume because your to poor to buy descent alcohol?? Like all you fellow ruskis?? I am done replying to you in a mature manner because as soon as i come with (facts) you dont reply anymore. If your (country) was so good you wouldnt of ran to Sweden to live and work there, yet you talk about others. Now what does that say about you?? You take pride into living and working in Sweden when you arent even from there :lol: shows how much you actual country must suck.


Even in 2003 that number was higher. So i dont know where you get all this kind of information from, but it wouldnt hurt you to post a link from time to time now would it?? 

How do i know the picture provided by you that there are actual Albanians in it?? Because they wear (red):lol: (even Bloods(gang) in USA wears red but that doesnt make them Albanians now does it? Or doesnt your tiny brain allow you to understand that?


----------



## Kulla

joshsam said:


> ^^ No albanian youth in Belgium yet, *but they do run a big part of the sex industrie.*..
> 
> Buth Uhm you really don't have to look in eastern Europe to find such poverty. Gipsy villages around Paris and other big French cities are common. *Last year an illigal Gipsy setlement was buldozed in here in Belgium *hno:


So do the Russians,Italians,Slavs etc...

So thats an good thing. I cant believe how things were in Holland with the all the morrocans and turkish street thugs there and the government doesnt take any steps whatsoever to put them in jail or even send them back to their own country. I am actually very pro that be it Albanians or whatever nationality if they cant behave in the country they are living in the government should just send them back.


----------



## seem

Thanks Romanians. 

Here you can fund many pictures of villages and nature in Slovak middle income region Turiec - http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=740576



Kulla said:


> Even in 2003 that number was higher. So i dont know where you get all this kind of information from, but it wouldnt hurt you to post a link from time to time now would it??


According to data from 2009 it was 243 € a month. 

Btw, I also sometimes think that whatever "wrong" is said about Albania makes flame and lots of angry posts from Albanians.


----------



## Kulla

seem said:


> According to data from 2009 it was 243 € a month.
> 
> Btw, I also sometimes think that whatever "wrong" is said about Albania makes flame and lots of angry posts from Albanians.


It has nothing to do with whatever "wrong" is said about Albania at all. It has to do with his flame-posts and his anti Albanian behavior. He did the same thing in 4-5 threads allready. 

This was about Hungary yet he posts something about Albania and then continues with the off-topic about 10-12 kids on a picture. Seriously like i care even if its true the goverment of that country they are in should deal with that. It has nothing to do with Albania or this topic now does it?? If i am wrong you can tell me dont be shy now.


----------



## seem

Kulla said:


> It has nothing to do with whatever "wrong" is said about Albania at all. It has to do with his flame-posts and his anti Albanian behavior. He did the same thing in 4-5 threads allready.
> 
> This was about Hungary yet he posts something about Albania and then continues with the off-topic about 10-12 kids on a picture. Seriously like i care even if its true the goverment of that country they are in should deal with that. *It has nothing to do with Albania or this topic now does it??* If i am wrong you can tell me dont be shy now.


It was "a bit" random. I didn't want to talk about what he wrote, I have just spotted the same thing.


----------



## Kulla

seem said:


> It was "a bit" random. I didn't want to talk about what he wrote, I have just spotted the same thing.


http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=443391&page=7

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=366667&page=14


Just two of the god knows how many of his "a bit" random writing about Albania he did. As you can see the guy is a troll and nothing else.


----------



## Wilhem275

So, if he's a troll (and I think he is), simply don't give him attention, and report his posts to the Staff.

Don't answer his posts, even if he's talking directly to you.
He will then disappear for lack of audience, or get more aggressive, and lately be banned.

This is my experience of 7 year as a Moderator


----------



## bogdymol

You an also set ignore to him and you won't see his posts anymore. After few days I bet that he will be bored of talking alone


----------



## RolexAL

Magnus Brage said:


> People from Romania or Hungary can show the not very pleasant sides of their countries and discuss that, that is people living of roadkills and gypsies selling stolen pigs. But Albanians have a way of denying every non favorable side of their country.
> 
> *Albania:* average income for a worker 150€/month
> Majority of people with low income pay no taxes.
> Due to weak authority, corruption (close to failed state) Albania is a major hub for organized crime, human trafficing, trade of weapons, narcotics and stolen cars.
> 
> Also in western countries albanian immigrants cause problems preserving their distinct clan-mentality, blood feuds/vendettas are deeply associated within their culture. In the USA the albanian mafia is now taking controll of the prosperous black market, which before was governed by the italian camorra.
> 
> Due to bad harvest, In the late 19th century 1.5 million swedes immigrated to the USA, did any of them found a mafiasyndicate engaging in organized crime ?? the answer is no, they were all decent hard working people.
> 
> 
> Albanian immigrants, I don't want to meet these albanian boys in town a late evening.
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BdYRKho8s0&feature=related


What your problem you dirty russian idiot?.We had enough with russian scums in Tirana..now you have started also here in SSC.Ti qifsha ato robt ku ti kesh.


----------



## Fatfield

I've hit a Pheasant in my car and then stopped to pick it up. Twas nice an'arl. Mind you where I live part of your 'rites' was to go poaching on the local Lords estate so stuff like this is fairly normal around here as long as you know the right people.

There's also a bloke in Blighty who's noted for travelling round his local area looking for roadkill. Mind you, he is from Cornwall and they're a bit weird! 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/4660060.stm


----------



## gramercy

so far ive hit 2 dogs, but both ran away

otherwise id have gone korean on their ass


----------



## g.spinoza

I've hit a fox last year... there were two of 'em, in the middle of the road, I manage to avoid one but...


----------



## Surel

What is the difference between a deer that is hunted down or a deer that is killed in a roadkill. None (of course we dont talk about minced meat road kill).

While the first comes on plates in the best restaurants for high prices, the other one is looked at as something dirty? I smell something wrong about this double thinking.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

We have lots of car accidents with wild animals every year in Estonia but I've never heard anyone eat an animal that has just been hit.


----------



## Fatfield

Rebasepoiss said:


> We have lots of car accidents with wild animals every year in Estonia but I've never heard anyone eat an animal that has just been hit.


Quite correct too. They need to 'hang' for a few days so they taste better.


----------



## seem

Rebasepoiss said:


> We have lots of car accidents with wild animals every year in Estonia but I've never heard anyone eat an animal that has just been hit.


It is because butchers take and sell them.


----------



## gramercy

seem said:


> It is because butchers take and sell them.


same here, the animal is technically the property of the land owner, in most cases the state

once we hit a deer with a bus and had to wait for the licenced hunters to euthanize it, and they sure as hell didnt leave it by the side of the road :lol:


----------



## Verso

christos-greece said:


> I had a little research this morning about those recent India highways; i must say that many of those roads/highways are very nice


Still spamming after 3 years.


----------



## Mateusz

Indeed... doesn't he get bored or something ?


----------



## Verso

Talking about Gypsies, there was a murder and a suicide in Slovenia a few hours ago. An ethnic Slovene shot a Gypsy politician's wife and wounded their son, because they were bullying him, and after that he killed himself as well.


----------



## bogdymol

Guys, please stay on topic! :lol:

Rest area entrance on M5 motorway, Hungary:









^^ The sign warns about possible thieves


----------



## Suburbanist

Netherlands has plenty of those signs in open parking lots.


----------



## nenea_hartia

Wrong thread. Please delete.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Guys, a question: Is there a website where I can see Austrian and Bavarian traffic conditions from last Sunday? On our own, Polish site (Targeo.pl) you can do this for Poland, but all the European ones I know gives me only current information...

I have a skiing trip to plan, the problem is that in the past years we've only traveled on Saturday. This year we're going on Sunday and I want to know if the traffic near the Alps allows to make an excursion to Italy in one day... On Saturdays it's almost impossible, but it's the Saturday when most people travel, so it might be better.


----------



## Suburbanist

Wilhem275 said:


> Me too. Road noise in Rome is a serious issue.


Lack of insulation in many Roma's houses is a problem. It brings heating/cooling bills up and noise in.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

barbecue in Amsterdam


----------



## nenea_hartia

^ What was going on?


----------



## SeanT

Probably "well done" now.:lol:


----------



## Fargo Wolf

Whatever was being cooked, it's been cremated now. :lol:

Seriously though, it looks like a fire in an industrial area.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ You are wrong. Chris had a barbecue party in Amsterdam with his friends and he wanted to show off


----------



## SeanT

.....oh, there was the catch:lol:


----------



## BND

Google Traffic is now avaiable in Hungary:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=47.49772,19.15535&spn=0.341439,0.891953&z=11&layer=t


----------



## seem

^^ Congratulations :cheers:

But why are all your motorways yellow at this time? :nuts:


----------



## SeanT

M6 after Dunaújváros is missing, same with M60 too. So, this is Google map:lol:. M6/60 have been open for a year.


----------



## seem

I hate these. :bash:

by phill, in Bratislava - 










What plate is it btw?


----------



## TrueBulgarian

Luxembourg.


----------



## piotr71

del pls


----------



## Nexis

Finally Smart AI....seems like other games have jumped onbroad recently...


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Suburbanist said:


> Lack of insulation in many Roma's houses is a problem. It brings heating/cooling bills up and noise in.


Do most houses in Rome have cooling?


----------



## Мартин

Nexis said:


> Finally Smart AI....seems like other games have jumped onbroad recently...


Is it out yet?


----------



## Nexis

Мартин;73636245 said:


> Is it out yet?


Not till later this year...


----------



## CNGL

Yesterday I had a good time relocating all Italian provinces: The most populated one goes into the biggest one and so on. So Rome went into Bolzano autonomus province, while Ogliastra (The least populated province: Only a bit of people more than my hometown) has ended in Trieste province. Some provinces move South or North: Udine is now in Reggio Calabria, Lecce in Belluno and Krotone  in Massa Carrara, for example. Turin, Asti and Vibo Valentia provinces remain in their current places. And Spinoza would have to drive 621 km more, to Salerno, where is Bologna relocated. Be aware of mafia Spinoza!


----------



## bogdymol

^^ With all the respect, but I don't understand anything you are trying to say


----------



## CNGL

Well, I will put a map later today.


----------



## bogdymol

CNGL said:


> Well, I will put a map later today.


Thank you.

PS: 










^^Take a look at the editing date


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Estonia will give 10 million AAUs(CO2) to Mitsubishi Corp. In return, Mitsubishi will provide the state with 507 Mitsubishi Miev electric cars which will mostly be used by social workers. The cars are expected to arrive by the end of the year. In addition, a network of 250 fast-charging stations will be built in Estonia. That project is expected to be finsihed by the end of 2012. Furthermore, there will be subsidies for the first 500 electric cars to be bought by private owners(whatever car brand). 









To put things into perspective, the most popular car sold in Estonia in 2010 was Škoda Octavia - 489 cars.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> ^^Take a look at the editing date


It's just his signature...


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> It's just his signature...


I know that now  But he tricked me... :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

CNGL said:


> Yesterday I had a good time relocating all Italian provinces: The most populated one goes into the biggest one and so on. So Rome went into Bolzano autonomus province, while Ogliastra (The least populated province: Only a bit of people more than my hometown) has ended in Trieste province. Some provinces move South or North: Udine is now in Reggio Calabria, Lecce in Belluno and Krotone  in Massa Carrara, for example. Turin, Asti and Vibo Valentia provinces remain in their current places. And Spinoza would have to drive 621 km more, to Salerno, where is Bologna relocated. Be aware of mafia Spinoza!


With all due respect but... don't you have something more interesting and/or productive to do?!?   

Like studying for your driving license, maybe


----------



## CNGL

^^ Now I have more spare time. I already have taken my term tests.
Here's the Italian map. It's a bit large:


----------



## bogdymol

Funny Google maps bug...

1. Go on Google maps
2. Click get directions (by car)
3. Type in Japan (as A) and China (as B)
4. You'll get a nice route that crosses the sea
5. If you look well at the directions given, you'll see Jet Ski across the East China Sea on number 42... :lol:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^From Wikipedia about Google's so-called easter eggs:


> In addition, the search engine calculator provides the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.[195] Furthermore, when searching the word "recursion", the spell-checker's result for the properly spelled word is exactly the same word, creating a recursive link.[196] Likewise, when searching for the word "anagram," meaning a rearrangement of letters from one word to form other valid words, Google's suggestion feature displays "Did you mean: nag a ram?" [197] *In Google Maps, searching for directions between places separated by large bodies of water, such as Los Angeles and Tokyo, results in instructions to "kayak across the Pacific Ocean." *During FIFA World Cup 2010, search queries like "World Cup", "FIFA", etc. will cause the "Goooo...gle" page indicator at the bottom of every result page to read "Goooo...al!" instead.


So it's not really a bug, it's an inside joke


----------



## DanielFigFoz

CNGL said:


> Yesterday I had a good time relocating all Italian provinces: The most populated one goes into the biggest one and so on. So Rome went into Bolzano autonomus province, while Ogliastra (The least populated province: Only a bit of people more than my hometown) has ended in Trieste province. Some provinces move South or North: Udine is now in Reggio Calabria, Lecce in Belluno and Krotone  in Massa Carrara, for example. Turin, Asti and Vibo Valentia provinces remain in their current places. And Spinoza would have to drive 621 km more, to Salerno, where is Bologna relocated. Be aware of mafia Spinoza!


Wow, congratulations! How long did that take you?


----------



## CNGL

It took some time . Really, I don't know. I made that map after seeing one with all Spanish provinces relocated, only Navarre remained in its site. But once I spent 3 hours updating my Spanish towns list, which includes all towns with 20000+ people. They are almost 400!


----------



## bogdymol

This might sound as a dumb question, but I'm still asking because of couriosity...

Are there any Interstate routes in the US that don't respect the minimal conditions for a motorway (I mean, they don't have 2x2 lanes, grade separated interchanges etc.)? Any half-profile motorways or similar roads?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I-180 in Cheyenne, Wyoming is a simple city boulevard with traffic lights. I-70 in Breezewood, Pennsylvania comes to mind, much like I-78 in Jersey City


----------



## bogdymol

^^Thank you for your answers.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

CNGL said:


> It took some time


I hope you just did it in 3 minutes (+ time for labeling the map) using Excel or some other spreadsheet and the tables from Wikipedia?


----------



## CNGL

Only scrolling two tables. Was the same Wikipedia page, but the table was sorted by population and the other by surface.


----------



## hofburg

traffic in paris at 19.45, saturday :nuts:










I hate paris public transport. I took a bus, and the driver change his mind in the middle of the itinerary, due to the fact that traffic wasn't going anywhere and we were staying in the front of the same interchange for 30 minutes, and took peripherique to get to the bus final station, ignoring all the other stops, including mine. what a dumbass


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That doesn't seem to be normal saturday Paris traffic. Is there an event going on in the city? (carnival?)


----------



## hofburg

didn't see one. maybe due to roadworks. they are building a new tramway along the east inner ring. whatever, in some years paris traffic system will simply crash. they're doing nothing to improve road network, just opening new tramways, which are 100% busy a day after opening.


----------



## Falusi

Have you seen that traffic option is now avalibe in Hungary? But it must be a beta version, because every motorways are always showed as yellow while nothing special is going on. But in Budapest it's quite accurate during the daytime. I used it for a few times and it helped me to avoid the jams. But somehow during the night on some places it isn't refreshed. Now everything should be green but there are a lot of other colours.


----------



## hofburg

I checked it out, yeah, its kinda like italy where all motorways are always partially yellow, but traffic is fluid. google should hurry up a bit, it takes ages already.


----------



## Nexis

DanielFigFoz said:


> Do people actually eat all that?! Even if you take it home! Jeezuus, look at that giant éclair thing...


I eat 10 bites and take the rest home....alot ppl do....leftovers can last a week...


----------



## RipleyLV

Parking style of the 50's.


----------



## Verso

Didn't know we also had bicycle roundabouts.









http://www.najblog.com/markobajec/


----------



## bogdymol




----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^

Have you seen Mission Impossible III?

Tom Cruise's character has a cover being a traffic engineer at the DOT. He states something like: "if you tap the brake, you can literally follow its track along a 200-mile stretch of freeway".


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I didn't know that. But it's true.

Today I was involved in a quite large traffic jam and the problem was simple: two lanes, right one goes right, left one goes left; right lane full of vehicles in a long queue, left one almost empty, but many people went on the left lane and exactly before the lanes separated they were merging in the right one.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ This is something I see every day in Germany, this gets me mad all the time. I never saw anything like that in Italy (but that's probably the only thing wer're better than German people when it comes to driving)


----------



## keber

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ This is something I see every day in Germany, this gets me mad all the time.


Zipper merge. I always stay on the lane, which closes.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

The road which comes from Tallinn centre towards where I live also has 2x2 lanes which then becomes 1x1(left lane goes straight, right lane turns right). What really annoys me is that everybody takes the left lane already several km-s before the merge. So if it's rush hour and I stick to the right lane and merge later, everybody thinks I'm an arse by doing so. But what people don't understand is that by sticking to the left lane they actually might cause a traffic jam since it takes longer for 1 lane of traffic to clear the traffic lights situated before the merge than it takes for 2 lanes of traffic.


----------



## bogdymol

If this is true, then it's the biggest WIN + FAIL at the same time ever:


----------



## Verso

^^ It was quite a boring job though. I think they will find him.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've read that story before. I'm not sure if it is a hoax.


----------



## Ayceman

Not if he's in a country with no extradition policy with the UK.


----------



## Verso

That was some crazy-ass earthquake in Japan. They say that even the Ljubljana Basin moved a little because of it. :crazy:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ The earthquake was felt even in Beijing, 2500 km away from Tokyo.


----------



## AtD

bogdymol said:


> http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2011/02/science-of-traffic-jams-opt.png


I lol'd when I read their solution was bus lanes to get buses _out of the way_ rather than bus lanes to encourage more people to use buses! The bus lane on the Sydney Harbour Bridge carries more people than the other 7 lanes combined: 14,100 people per hour for the one bus lane, 1,800 people per hour per lane for regular traffic lanes, in morning peak.

src


----------



## bogdymol

AtD said:


> I lol'd when I read their solution was bus lanes to get buses _out of the way_ rather than bus lanes to encourage more people to use buses! The bus lane on the Sydney Harbour Bridge carries more people than the other 7 lanes combined: 14,100 people per hour for the one bus lane, 1,800 people per hour per lane for regular traffic lanes, in morning peak.
> 
> src


I really doubt that a 7-lane motorway can carry only 1800 people/hour. If you multiply 1800 with 24 hours you get 43200 people/day, which is the AADT of a normal 2x2 motorway. And also consider that in every car might be more than one single person.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

AtD said:


> The bus lane on the Sydney Harbour Bridge carries more people than the other 7 lanes combined: 14,100 people per hour for the one bus lane, 1,800 people per hour per lane for regular traffic lanes, in morning peak.


Uhm, no. The average occupancy rate of a motor vehicle in an urban area is 1.3 people. This would mean that on Sydney's harbour bridge, the amount of vehicles per lane is around 1370 vehicles per hour per lane. This is in reality approximately 65% higher; closer to 2200 vehicles per hour per lane. Not completely free-flow, but it's possible. 2200 vehicles per hour = 2860 people per hour * 7 lanes = 20,000. That means these figures are almost 50% off. 

Many people compare the amount of people carried in public transport directly with the amount of motor vehicles on a roadway. This is simply apples and oranges.


----------



## Coccodrillo

He said 1800 people per lane. But even considering more cars per lane and more passenger per car, public transport remains more efficient.

2000 cars/hour * an average of 1,3 people per car * 7 lanes = 18200 people per hour on seven lanes versus 14100 on one lane

Around the same capacity on one seventh of the space (and railways are even better).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The increased efficiency is only interesting if you know the relation between public transport and road usage. For example, it is likely that most of those 14,000 bus travelers would not have otherwise used their cars to commute into the CBD. Hence, traffic is not reduced as much to justify the loss of one lane and congestion may actually be worse despite the higher capacity of public transport.

It's also a common misconception to think that 1 public transport traveler = 1 less car on the road, or worse, 1% more public transport usage is 1% less traffic.


----------



## Coccodrillo

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's also a common misconception to think that 1 public transport traveler = 1 less car on the road, or worse, 1% more public transport usage is 1% less traffic.


Sometimes it's true, but still, road widenings should be made only when there is (or can't be) really no cheaper and more efficient public alternative.

14100 pphpd on buses absoutely deserve their own lane.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Coccodrillo said:


> 14100 pphpd on buses absoutely deserve their own lane.


I agree with that, but I wanted to point out the implications for road traffic.


----------



## Coccodrillo

If this lane was opened to cars, buses would be slower, and some people using them might choose to travel by car instead, thus increasing congestion. Public transport services also profit car drivers.


----------



## AtD

The numbers I quoted were _persons per lane_ between 8am and 9am as measured by the Road Traffic Authority of New South Wales in 2004. These are not theoretical limits but observed realities. I'll admit this time of day is most advantageous to public transport.

Just to be clear, they are bi-directional counts, with the bus lane being city-bound (south bound). There is no north bound bus lane. The bridge is a toll road for south bound traffic (only), it uses reversible tidal lanes and the bus lane is _not _active 24 hours. It doesn't operate at full highway speed (just 80km/h) and one of the lanes is detached from the rest due to the structure of the bridge.

It also operates non-cash tolls only with time-of-day rates (between $2 and $4) but I don't believe either of these were in effect at the time of the study.

I wouldn't go far as to say that PT and car use can be substituted on a 1:1 basis, it's far more complicated than that, but morning peak would surely be the closest to this. IMO there are feedback loops in play: a car orientated city generates car orientated suburbs. A PT orientated city generated PT orientated suburbs. The effect of a bus lane in Sydney and a bus lane in LA would be entirely different.

Chris, despite all this, with your suggested figure of 2,200 vehicles per hour at 1.3 persons per vehicle, the bus lane is performing the work of just under five traffic lanes.

I would love to know how many people the two rail tracks over the bridge carry in the same period. These occupy two potential traffic lanes.


----------



## Coccodrillo

A single track used by suburban trains packed with people also standing can carry 40.000 people per hour, considering a train carrying only or mainly seated passengers this fall to 15.000-20.000.

20 trains per hour (one every 3 minutes) * 1.500 people per train = 30.000, but the number of trains can sometimes be higher at 24 tph and capacity of each train be around 2.000, but that's near the limit.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

One thing to keep in mind: urban motorways operate near capacity nearly the entire day. Usually the off-peak hourly volumes are only 20% lower than the busiest peak hour. This is different, most railways do not operate at peak capacity for 3 or 4 hours in a row twice a day. The peak is high, but shorter than on the road. 

I once did a bus passenger count for work at the Zwolle railway station. Approximately 90% of all passengers between 6.00 and 10.00 were in the 7.30 - 9.00 timeframe. The buses after 9 am were almost completely empty.

Here's a visualization of the hourly volumes on a fixed link in the Netherlands (A16 in Rotterdam)


----------



## Verso

Jaguar XJ parked in front of my house, mmm.


----------



## RipleyLV

^^ View from your window?


----------



## Verso

^^ Ok, here it is:

delete


----------



## x-type

that's the most perfect car imo right now at the market. i have it at all desktop backgrounds at all pc's which i use. unfortunately, i will probably nvere buy one


----------



## seem

^^ Nice new car, Verso. Enjoy it and drive carefully!


----------



## Verso

Thanks, I'll just change the license plates.  (although it wouldn't be necessary)


----------



## bogdymol

Few days ago I saw on the street the brand new CLS:



















It looked much better in reality than in the pictures. I was like this: :eek2:


----------



## x-type

neah, don't troll with Mercedes. in few months it will not be that rare. 
but XJ, khm, that's the car to stare at while you see it.


----------



## hofburg

nice car, verso. did you ordered it with built-in hd camera in the front for taking road photos?


----------



## seem

x-type said:


> neah, don't troll with Mercedes. in few months it will not be that rare.
> but XJ, khm, that's the car to stare at while you see it.


Don't troll with XJ, London will be full of them tommorow.


----------



## Verso

^^ Jaguar XJ (X351) has been produced since 2009. If London isn't full of it yet, I doubt it ever will.



x-type said:


> neah, don't troll with Mercedes. in few months it will not be that rare.
> but XJ, khm, that's the car to stare at while you see it.


So when can we expect your nick to be changed to 'XJ-Type'?



hofburg said:


> nice car, verso. did you ordered it with built-in hd camera in the front for taking road photos?


Yeah, that's why I bought the car. Just don't expect photos of dirt roads.


----------



## seem

Verso said:


> ^^ Jaguar XJ (X351) has been produced since 2009. If London isn't full of it yet, I doubt it ever will.


Actually now I have realised that London is full of them, I just thought it is some new one because you posted a picture of it.



Verso said:


> So when can we expect your nick to be changed to 'XJ-Type'?


Why is your nick x-type btw?


----------



## bogdymol

seem said:


> Why is your nick x-type btw?


Maybe he owns one...


----------



## x-type

don't take too seriously my postr about Mercedes, I was just joking  of course CLS is also impressive car, but i find XJ one level higher at the scale of impressivness 

my nick? no, i don't own Jag. if i'd take a nick after my car, i'd be Punto  i am neither too impressed with Jaguar X-type. it has excellent exterior, some ok engines, great suspension with 4WD, but nothing made me too impressed with that car. except its name which i find perfect. generally that idea with Jag's names something-type is great imo. too bad they've left it.


----------



## bogdymol

It seems that SSC has a user from Sendai, Japan. He opened a thread about the earthquake:

*What a seismic weekend!!! The epicenter report from 2co2co, from Aoba Ward, Sendai: Kanto-Tohoku Pacific Coast Quake 2011.03.11*

Also, I've seen on the Japanese section that another user had to walk home for 12 hours because the public transport was not working.


----------



## seem

x-type said:


> generally that idea with Jag's names something-type is great imo. too bad they've left it.


Is it "ks-tajp" in Croatia?


----------



## phiberoptik

seem said:


> Is it "ks-tajp" in Croatia?


it's pronounced "iks-tajp"


----------



## hofburg

this thing is flying by my window for some time now, and I'm like WTF! 










www.airshipvision.eu


----------



## Jeroen669

There's a american police car driving here (small town in the NL) with the original sirenes on. Never seen before here...


----------



## Verso

The XJ just parked in our garage; nice addition to my neighbour's Porsche. Crap, I have the worst car.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Where do you live Verso? At the Royal Palace Hotel?


----------



## Verso

There's actually just one 5-star hotel in Ljubljana and I don't happen to live there.  No, my house is nothing special really, and my neighbourhood is nice, but not luxurious.


----------



## Ghincks

*Correction*



bogdymol said:


> The new Danube bridges were opened in 1987 and are still in use. The old ones (from 1895) were 'retired' after the opening of the new ones.


Small correction: The old bridges were used until sometime in the mid-naughties.

As a kid fascinated by trains I used to swim in the Danube and watch freight-trains hurtle over them in 1993-1995 moreover on the return leg of my weekend trip to Constanta in 2002 the train used the old bridge at Cernavoda.


----------



## x-type

Verso, I remembered you today - I had Maserati Quatroporte parked beside my car


----------



## PLH

They say a good photographer should never reveal himself on his photos... 








...at least not to such an extent:















By they way, I'm picking up my new Peugeot 308 1,6 HDi pearl black this week:banana:


Exactly like this one:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PLH said:


> By they way, I'm collecting my new Peugeot 308 1,6 HDi pearl black this week:banana:


Is it a contest? Like in "collect all five"?


----------



## PLH

Oh oh oh  

Ok then, I'm picking it up.


----------



## seem

x-type said:


> Verso, I remembered you today - I had Maserati Quatroporte parked beside my car


Are you trying to beat each other today? 

Ok, today there was a double-decker on my service!


----------



## hofburg

PLH said:


> Exactly like this one:
> http://www.forum-peugeot.com/Forum/mesimages/30965/peugeot 308 6.jpg2..jpg


with french license plates?


----------



## PLH

You're a real pain in the ass :tongue:


----------



## x-type

seem said:


> Are you trying to beat each other today?
> 
> Ok, today there was a double-decker on my service!


well - yes  you might be able to see XJ in London every day, but Quatroporte you don't see every day neither in Rome


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ It's Quattroporte, with 2 "t"s... now who's the pain in the ass?


----------



## seem

x-type said:


> well - yes  you might be able to see XJ in London every day, but Quatroporte you don't see every day neither in Rome


I don't want to play your 'what car is infront of my house' and I also don't want to seem like idiot but I think I saw it today. 

And it wasn't even in London.


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ It's Quattroporte, with 2 "t"s... now who's the pain in the ass?


lo so. ma queste lettere doppie non saranno mai conprensibili per noi slavi


----------



## hofburg

Sunday, Paris, traffic jam as usual.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Rebasepoiss said:


> You don't have that problem?


I do - I meant, what's the explanation and can it be fixed?


----------



## seem

ChrisZwolle said:


> Flickr appears to have blocked SSC once again. Pictures don't show, only the ones still in your cache memory will still show.


Yeah I have also spotted. Why is that?


----------



## TheCat

^^ Probably exceeded the bandwidth limitations. I'm not sure how Flickr does it specifically. I'd think it's per photo, but it's possible that it doesn't like so much bandwidth being used by one domain.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

TheCat said:


> ^^ Probably exceeded the bandwidth limitations. I'm not sure how Flickr does it specifically. I'd think it's per photo, but it's possible that it doesn't like so much bandwidth being used by one domain.


And that's really dumb because people pay to use their service...so they should be more clear about the conditions on which they decide to ban one site or the other.


----------



## seem

Rebasepoiss said:


> And that's really dumb because people pay to use their service...so they should be more clear about the conditions on which they decide to ban one site or the other.


Not all of them. I don't pay for their services and I don't think that many people here do. It just provides some statistics and no limitation.


----------



## Verso

Lol, a guy was picking mushrooms in Slovenia and accidentally stepped on a bear. :nuts: He's in hospital now. Seriously, you're searching for little mushrooms, but you don't see a giant bear in front of you.


----------



## TommyLopez

Verso said:


> Lol, a guy was picking mushrooms in Slovenia and accidentally stepped on a bear. :nuts: He's in hospital now. Seriously, you're searching for little mushrooms, but you don't see a giant bear in front of you.


He had maybe some "bad mushrooms" before for the lunch... :nuts::lol:


----------



## seem

Can you help me guys? We are going to Essen in Westfalen tomorrow but we can't decide which way is better to take. We are going via Brno and Prague and then I am wondering what might be better - go via Ustí nad Labem, Dresden, Leipzig or via Plzeň, Nürnberg, Frankfurt. I think it is definitely better to go via Dresden but it is worth of it to ask before actually going somewhere.


----------



## mapman:cz

It might be interesting to use route via Chemnitz and Chomutov as well (because of R1 between D1 and R7 being completed)... But recommended route is really via Dresden...


----------



## seem

^^ I have never driven even on D5 or D8.


----------



## nenea_hartia

The winter seems to be back in the mountain areas of Romania. In the rest of the country the weather is very cold and rainy .


----------



## TommyLopez

seem said:


> ^^ I have never driven even on D5 or D8.


Both D5 and D8 are perfect motorways in beautiful landscape :cheers: Btw, I recommend you D5. Between D1 and D5 you can use R1-Prague Ring Road (you avoid looong route through city centre) and you won't be nervous on missing part of D8 which is really sticky... :nuts: The time using both variants D5 or D8 is +- the same


----------



## Surel

Test of motorway gas stations around Europe done by austrian autoclub ÖAMTC found out the Czech motorway gas stations to be the best and the Dutch ones to be the worst ones. Generally, the gas stations in the eastern part of Europa are found to be of better quality than in the western part.

link: http://www.oeamtc.at/?id=2500,1360738,,&hppos=1


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Well, that doesn't surprise me for two reasons;

1) Eastern European gas stations tend to be several decades younger
2) Dutch gas stations are not built for long-distance traffic as it takes generally no more than 1 - 2 hours to exit the country.


----------



## Verso

Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Croatia are hardly representative for "Eastern Europe". I don't wanna know how most other "EE" gas stations look like. And those good Slovenian stations are all old, two of them almost 40 years. The worst one is actually new.


----------



## BND

^^ I think rest areas are much better on toll-motorways than on free ones. Like the ones in Austria or even Hungary are better than in Germany.


----------



## bogdymol

Finally we are somehow ontopic (rest areas) :lol:

From my personal experience, I've been in very bad quality rest areas (gas stations) in Romania, Hungary or Bulgaria, but I've also been in very nice and shiny gas station in Romania, Hungary and Czech Republic. 

PS: In Czech Republic, on D1 motorway between Prague and Brno there are A LOT of gas stations. On some stretches I saw gas stations every 5 km or something...


----------



## Surel

There is a difference between a "rest area" and a "gas station". Many rest areas in the Czech republic are indeed in a very bad shape, especially the old ones, and there are not so many of them. The gas stations are however most of the times rather nice. The whole issue is bit confusing also due to the fact, that RSD contracted many newly build gas station under the condition to serve as a rest areas and they therefore have to be up to certain standard, internationally they are however not perceived as rest areas but as gas stations. Overall the policy is aimed at gas station rest areas, then just to the sole rest areas. There was a ADAC test of rest areas some time ago, and the Czech ones were one of the worst if I remember right.

The best pure rest areas to my knowledge are in Austria and Germany. Rest areas on the private tolled motorways are also rather allright.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I always found German rest areas (those without gas stations) rather low-standard. Lack of sufficient parking (especially for trucks), rundown toilet block and generally old.


----------



## Surel

It might be. I meant it more in the sence of where did I experience the best rest areas in my knowledge. It certainly may be a issue of new versus old motorway, thus old versus new rest area.

What I mind about german gas station is their lack on the motorway, and their distance. Many times it is necessarly to leave the motorway for few hundered meters or even kms, and that costs time and comfort.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Autohof tends to be cheaper though. I usually fill up at an Autohof, not immediately along the motorway.


----------



## g.spinoza

In Italy rest areas without gas stations are rather infrequent. To my knowledge there are 4 or 5 of them on A14, but only from Abruzzo southwards, and one on A24 just before Gran Sasso tunnel on the west side, built purposely to admire the wonderful view of the mighty mountain:








picasaweb, pic taken by me on August 2010.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Surel said:


> Test of motorway gas stations around Europe done by austrian autoclub ÖAMTC found out the Czech motorway gas stations to be the best and *the Dutch ones to be the worst ones*. Generally, the gas stations in the eastern part of Europa are found to be of better quality than in the western part.
> 
> link: http://www.oeamtc.at/?id=2500,1360738,,&hppos=1


I can hardly believe that Dutch are worse than the Belgian ones...
You almost cry when you need to go to a reststop with our without gas station in Belgium hno:

The one without gas stations are the worst...They are never ever cleaned!


----------



## DanielFigFoz

The ones in Portugal, perhaps surprisngly, are acctually quite good, except for one or two old ones.


----------



## bogdymol

Yesterday, Romania:

22431646

^^ It seems embedding dosen't work. Click here to view this video.


----------



## Verso

Funny, it was 30°C in Slovenia a few days ago.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

^^ Oh yes, that's what I need... I'll be visiting Slovenia in a week, 30°C temperatures would be most appreciated


----------



## hofburg

C'est passé.  now only 8°C, Littoral. hno:


----------



## bogdymol

High speed chase on UK roads:






The guy was driving a stolen car and he was caught shortly after.


----------



## hofburg

:nuts: he was playing gta IV maybe.


----------



## x-type

omg this with railroad crossing 
2 nights ago in Zagreb suburbia there was also police chase, 3 kids (16, 17 and 19 years) have stolen car and raunning away from the police for 35 km. unfortunately, there is no video of that chase (i'm not sure if our police cars must have camera or not)


----------



## Morsue

Verso said:


> Lol, a guy was picking mushrooms in Slovenia and accidentally stepped on a bear. :nuts: He's in hospital now. Seriously, you're searching for little mushrooms, but you don't see a giant bear in front of you.


Not long ago a 12-year-old boy and his friends were skiing off-piste here in Sweden and accidentally ran into a hibernating bear. He was attacked and hospitalized, but not seriously hurt. The bear ran away from her cubs which were "mercifully" put to sleep days later because the mother bear didn't return, so they were going to starve.


----------



## bogdymol

How to carry a tree with a small car:


----------



## x-type

^^
i don't understand them. 3 weeks ago i was carrying 2 birches (each about 3,5 mt long) in my Punto, and i could place them (ok, i had opened trunk). this tree is almost half of that lenght, i don't understand why didn't they place it into car.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Maybe they don't know how to fold the seats down


----------



## CNGL

bogdymol said:


> How to carry a tree with a small car:


Hey, clean the plate!!! I can't see it and here in Spain it's a 400 € fine and 4 points!
BTW, when I saw the AR oval I thought it was from Argentina, but then remembered that they use RA. I like to see some unnoficial codes. There are lots of those here. From those of the list I saw CAT and GZ, but other ovals and eurobands that aren't listed there and I saw includes ARA, PIR and SVM.


----------



## bogdymol

CNGL said:


> Hey, clean the plate!!! I can't see it and here in Spain it's a 400 € fine and 4 points!
> BTW, when I saw the AR oval I thought it was from Argentina, but then remembered that they use RA. I like to see some unnoficial codes. There are lots of those here. From those of the list I saw CAT and GZ, but other ovals and eurobands that aren't listed there and I saw includes ARA, PIR and SVM.


Last winter a policemen stopped me and my father because the car plate was dirty. But he didn't understand that because it was snowing a little and they were trowing sand & stuff on the road the car is so dirty after 5 km that you don't recognize it. Clean the roads first! :bash: But I have to admit that he should clean his plates because now there isn't so much dirt on the roads like in the winter si he can have clean plates.

*AR* usually stands for Arad county, Romania. *AR* code is used on all the licence plates issued in my county. That oval was slightly different, because bellow it it's written _Ardeal_ (a historic region in western part of Romania), but it also had the Hungarian flag (this region used to belong to Hungary before 1918, and there are still many hungarians that live here).


----------



## Verso

Speaking of ovals, which code would you like more for Slovenia: SLO (existing) or SI (post code, Internet)?


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> Speaking of ovals, which code would you like more for Slovenia: SLO (existing) or SI (post code, Internet)?


Definately SLO. When I heard for the first time about SI I was :nuts:


----------



## snowman159

Penn's Woods said:


> What costs 80 euros, the bridge?
> That *is* insane. :nuts:


Wait until you see what they charge at the Euro Tunnel.


----------



## seem

This crash happened about 10 days ago. Quite rare for Slovakia. 

And btw I have some random pics of German autobahns for you. ; )


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> What costs 80 euros, the bridge?
> That *is* insane. :nuts:


and you pay similar amount for Storebaelt bridge, so just to reach Koebenhavn island


----------



## nenea_hartia

x-type said:


> and you pay similar amount for Storebaelt bridge, so just to reach Koebenhavn island


Yup. But let's face it, both bridges are spectacular.

Two years ago I made a long ride up to Nordkapp and back to Romania, crossing on both Danish bridges. But the strangest thing for me was in Norway, at the Nordkapptunnelen, a 6,8 km subsea tunnel linking Magerøya island and continental Norway, where I had to pay not only for the car & caravan, but also for each person inside my car. :nuts:


----------



## x-type

nenea_hartia said:


> Two years ago I made a long ride up to Nordkapp and back to Romania, crossing on both Danish bridges. But the strangest thing for me was in Norway, at the Nordkapptunnelen, a 6,8 km subsea tunnel linking Magerøya island and continental Norway, where I had to pay not only for the car & caravan, but also *for each person inside my car*. :nuts:


:lol:

btw, what were approximative costs of your trip and how many days did it take?


----------



## SeanT

Yes, and the new connection to Germany will be even more expensive:lol:


----------



## nenea_hartia

x-type said:


> :lol:
> 
> btw, what were approximative costs of your trip and how many days did it take?


Two guys and two girls in a car & caravan, sleeping only in campsites, about 1200 euros for each guy and 800 euros for each girl. Including tolls for Danish bridges, Norwegian bridges & tunnels, ferry between Finland and Estonia.
The entire trip took three weeks (which is fast for about 10.000 kms made). The route was RO --> H --> SK --> CZ --> D --> DK --> S --> N (Nordkapp) --> FIN --> EST --> LV --> LT --> PL --> SK --> HU --> RO.


----------



## Verso

10,000 km in 3 weeks? Did you see anything at all? :nuts:


----------



## Nexis

DanielFigFoz said:


> *Note that most council houses have been sold off*
> Nexis, this is typical British urban housing, although the styling of the houses can vary quite a bit within their groups, this is general:
> 
> *Edwardian Terrace:*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *1930's Semi (proper suburban sprawl):*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Council estate (AmE-projects)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *1950's Council Estate*- After inner-city slums were destroyed by the blitez and post-war reconstruction:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *Modern:*
> 
> I wonder where all the cars went
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *Modern Flats*


I like the bottom flats the most , not to fond of the Tower blocks...


----------



## Penn's Woods

snowman159 said:


> toll rates at the Oresund Bridge: http://uk.oresundsbron.com/page/2556


And it's four km long? The Chesapeake Bay Bridge is longer and costs about three bucks, eastbound only. (It's free westbound.)


----------



## Attus

AFAIK the top of the pillars of Störe Belt bridge is the absolute heighest point of Denmark. You shall pay a lot for such famed places of interest ;-)
I was there four years ago but unfortunately I can't remember for the toll.


----------



## Nexis

Penn's Woods said:


> And it's four km long? The Chesapeake Bay Bridge is longer and costs about three bucks, eastbound only. (It's free westbound.)


Yea , but the Chesapeake is not as nice or built with nice views. Around here Tolls range form 4-12$ , but our bridges are worth it because the view and detail put into them.


----------



## Botev1912

Penn's Woods said:


> And it's four km long? The Chesapeake Bay Bridge is longer and costs about three bucks, eastbound only. (It's free westbound.)


American tolls are much cheaper than European


----------



## nenea_hartia

Verso said:


> 10,000 km in 3 weeks? Did you see anything at all? :nuts:


Unfortunately three weeks was my entire leave in 2009.  That's why I was forced to make the trip so fast. But the amazing landscape of Norway made it worth it. I will never forget it; you can't see such beauties in other parts of Europe, not even in Switzerland, Austria or Scotland.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Penn's Woods said:


> And it's four km long? The Chesapeake Bay Bridge is longer and costs about three bucks, eastbound only. (It's free westbound.)


The link is 15.9 km long (the bridge itself is 7.8km long, there is also a 4km tunnel and the rest of the road is placed on a artificial island where the bridge connects with tunnel).

EDIT:
Snowman159, there is actually a competition - you can take a ferry between Helsingør and Helsinborg - I remember it was about 250 - 300 DKK one way (there are 3 companies on this route, so the competition is fierce  )


----------



## snowman159

Penn's Woods said:


> And it's four km long? The Chesapeake Bay Bridge is longer and costs about three bucks, eastbound only. (It's free westbound.)


Actually, the bridge is 7.8km + a 4km underwater tunnel. Just saying. (edit: the llama beat me to it)

Maybe they simply charge that much because they can and there's no competition other than the much less convenient ferry (which probably costs about the same). :dunno: Remember, the commuters and locals get much better deals, so they won't be complaining.


----------



## snowman159

nenea_hartia said:


> I will never forget it; you can't see such beauties in other parts of Europe, not even in Switzerland, Austria or Scotland.


I agree, Norway is really amazing. The Alps otoh are completely overdeveloped.


----------



## snowman159

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Snowman159, there is actually a competition - you can take a ferry between Helsingør and Helsinborg - I remember it was about 250 - 300 DKK one way (there are 3 companies on this route, so the competition is fierce  )


That's what I meant. 300DKK is about the same as the bridge. So the owners of the bridge have nothing to gain by significantly undercutting their only competition, the ferries - especially since driving over the bridge is much more convenient. 
With the ferries everything takes a lot longer, there's always some waiting involved, and on busy days you most likely have to book in advance and make sure you show up in time. On the bridge you can cross whenever you feel like it. So the bridge people could probably get away with more than 40EUR if they wanted to.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

snowman159 said:


> toll rates at the Oresund Bridge: http://uk.oresundsbron.com/page/2556


Oh my God! :nuts:

This is for the 17,3km long Ponte Vasco da Gama in Lisbon

http://www.lusoponte.pt/pvg_tarifas.asp

A car is €2.50


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Fuzzy Llama said:


> But to be frank I think that only tourists pay the full amount. I may be a little bit fuzzy on the details, but I remember that with an electronic payment you can buy a subscription which reduces the cost of a crossing to 99 or 129 DKK (13 - 18€, depending on the day of the week), and the cost of subscription pays off after second or third crossing in the year. And if you daily commute over either of the bridges (Øresund- or Storebælt bridge), the tolls are tax-deductible.


Yep, and I think with BroBizz single crossings are every cheaper if you make more than 30 per month. Something like 2 - 3 EUR.


----------



## Coccodrillo

It was 25 € in 2010, and as far I remember (but I'm not sure) around 13 € before...

It was built as a service tunnel for the construction of a dam and opened to the public later, thus it has only one lane and it is tolled (because owned by a "private" company).

edit: 35 € for return trips in summer (there is no ticket for a single passage), 12 € in winter for a single passage


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the only way to get to Livigno in wintertime when Foscagno and Forcola passes are closed? Or is Foscagno open all year round?


----------



## Coccodrillo

Foscagno Pass is open year round, the other (Forcola) only in summer.


----------



## seem

keber said:


> Actually my first plan was to travel by train (one way only) despite longer journey time. But when I learned the price, I changed my mind.


You going because of that hockey match? Don't worry we gonna destroy your team.


----------



## g.spinoza

Passo del Rombo/Timmelsjoch (ITA-AUT) 14€.


----------



## keber

seem said:


> You going because of that hockey match? Don't worry we gonna destroy your team.


One? I'll see two other matches and not one with you.:lol:

But it is not just hockey. Haven't been there for more than 6 years, let's see, how expensive you've become.


----------



## seem

keber said:


> One? I'll see two other matches and not one with you.:lol:


Alright, good for you then.  

It would be lovely if Slovenia won silver. :hug:	



keber said:


> But it is not just hockey. Haven't been there for more than 6 years, let's see, how expensive you've become.


Are you going to travel around the country or you are going to stay just in Bratislava? 

Well, also Slovenia is a bit more expensive than it was 6 years ago  and hopefully more things have changed in Slovakia within 6 years than just prices. 

Btw, yesterday train which I took went on fire (siemens brakes are actually crap ; ) ).


----------



## keber

seem said:


> Are you going to travel around the country or you are going to stay just in Bratislava?


Just Bratislava and surroundings, because I must leave earlier than planned (and reserved) because of work to be done, so I must go with my own car.


----------



## Nexis

A few Interesting photos i took in New Brunswick,NJ , i didn't go to the Hungarian or Irish part of the city. Or the small Japanese / Chinese area....just the Downtown / Waterfront if your wondering.


DSCN1317 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


DSCN1362 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


DSCN1382 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


DSCN1399 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Klaipeda, Lithuania, signed in Kiel, Germany.

(video screenshot)


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Nexis said:


> A few Interesting photos i took in New Brunswick,NJ , i didn't go to the Hungarian or Irish part of the city. Or the small Japanese / Chinese area....just the Downtown / Waterfront if your wondering.
> 
> 
> DSCN1317 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


It's County Limerick! That looks so strange written like that as its an Irish county, it goes the other say around than American ones


----------



## Nexis

DanielFigFoz said:


> It's County Limerick! That looks so strange written like that as its an Irish county, it goes the other say around than American ones


Its supposed to be just Limerick....i guess someone forgot to check it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*Rest area* Twaalfmaat along A9 south of Alkmaar, Netherlands. Large wildfires broke out in the coastal region of North Holland, and this rest area was used as a gathering place for fire departments from outside the regular region. Quite interesting.


----------



## Wilhem275

The main road was not closed, was it?

I can't clearly figure out how to drive on a fast road, while a convoy of emercengy vehicles is running pretty slower than the legal limit.

I mean, those new Volvo and old Mercedes trucks are great machines, but I'm not sure they can go faster than 100 km/h, even in an emergency.

Should people stay behind them?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^ People overtake them. I've seen it happen on motorways plenty of times, they're lots of forest fires in Portugal, and people overtake the fire engines. Also, ambulances use motorways a lot on Portugal, as hospitals are quite far between and people overtake them.


----------



## Ingenioren

Just as long the fire-trucks have a clear way in it's lane i would be fine with overtaking it....


----------



## DanielFigFoz




----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Why hasn't this bridge got protections on its sides?


----------



## Mateusz

DanielFigFoz said:


> It's County Limerick! That looks so strange written like that as its an Irish county, it goes the other say around than American ones


And I though that Ireland doesn't have an Italian flag hno:hno::lol:


----------



## seem

keber said:


> Just Bratislava and surroundings, because I must leave earlier than planned (and reserved) because of work to be done, so I must go with my own car.


Alright, but imo if you will have some time you should go for a little roadtrip to the surroudings. I think Bratislava county has very beautifle places outside of the city. 

For any help ask here - http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=885608&page=5


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I found a nice old stamp thing (I think that this is a postcard, but I'm not sure :lol on the internet:










Edit: It is a psot card, 



> Um raro exemplo de correio enviado de Lourenço Marques para Mashonaland via ZAR: A mensagem tem data de 2 de Agosto de 1894, e o *postal *foi colocado no correio no mesmo dia. Os selos no verso registam um itinerário via Komatipoort, na fronteira Moçambique-ZAR (4 Agosto de 1894), Pretória (8 Agosto), Pietersburg (10 Agosto), Tuli na fronteira ZAR-Mashonaland (12 Agosto) e Salisbury (25 Agosto de 1894).


----------



## keber

seem said:


> Alright, but imo if you will have some time you should go for a little roadtrip to the surroudings. I think Bratislava county has very beautifle places outside of the city.
> 
> For any help ask here - http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=885608&page=5


I'm already back, there was no time to go outside Bratislava. I saw and walked through most of the important points of the city (I don't like museums) and was in Bratislava already twice before, but with the bus.

You (your major) should definitely do something about roads. You made all those communist blocks nicer but roads looks like stayed the same. 

And hey, that's expensive gasoline you have, beer was much cheaper.:cheers:


----------



## seem

keber said:


> You (your major) should definitely do something about roads. You made all those communist blocks nicer but roads looks like stayed the same.


Well some of the major ones got new layout last year (Šancová ulica, Trnavská cesta) but yea that's true. Well I think that city has changed much much more than just ugly commie blocks (which stays ugly anyway). Some of the major historic building were renovated including castle, river bank is changing too (Eurovea, River Park) and much more. And there is still long way to go for our lovely EU capital with probably the lowest budged. 



keber said:


> And hey, that's expensive gasoline you have, beer was much cheaper.:cheers:


All you like is beer and that's it?

So do I.


----------



## hofburg

almost entire old town is renovated. more then Ljubljana.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Why hasn't this bridge got protections on its sides?


It did, but something happened to it


----------



## bogdymol

Something is not as it should be here. What?


----------



## RipleyLV

Airplane?


----------



## bogdymol

RipleyLV said:


> Airplane?


bingo!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Typical. The toll-free substandard Autovía is full of traffic while the tolled Autopista is empty. I think the only reason these tolled motorways in Spain can exist is that the construction costs there are incredibly low compared to other European countries. Many Autovías average € 2 - 6 million per kilometer unless they're crossing mountain ridges.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Typical. The toll-free substandard Autovía is full of traffic while the tolled Autopista is empty. I think the only reason these tolled motorways in Spain can exist is that the construction costs there are incredibly low compared to other European countries. Many Autovías average € 2 - *6 million* per kilometer unless they're crossing mountain ridges.


That's about the minimum price/km for a new motorway in my country (on flat terrain)...


----------



## seem

hofburg said:


> almost entire old town is renovated. more then Ljubljana.


Almost every single building has been renovated in the area of old town which is/used to be surrounded by city walls, this area is called Korzo (pedestrian zone basically). Old town is larger than this area but I think that comparing to other CE towns and cities it is quite good how many buildings have been renovated within the last couple of years.

Nice thread - http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=555753&page=70


----------



## Verso

I've never been as nervous in my life as until 10 minutes ago when I was informed that I do _not_ have freaking multiple sclerosis. I'm having plenty of symptoms though (most notably paresthesia ("pins and needles")). Looks like it's because of poor posture. What a relief.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I understand that you do *not* have multiple sclerosis. You should be happy about that


----------



## Verso

I am. I'm making a party tomorrow.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ I'm happy for you!  MS would've been really rough.

My mother is a product manager for an MS medicine so I'm quite well informed about it.


----------



## Verso

^ Thanks. I know a girl who got it some five years ago, which is why I was so freaked out when 'pins and needles' just wouldn't end. It's been a month since I got them, and everyone was on vacation last week because of holidays, so I was going nuts (I didn't go to hospital, I rather paid €270 for magnetic resonance of the brain).


----------



## nenea_hartia

I'm glad you're OK, Verso. 
And have a nice party tomorrow!


----------



## seem

I am glad too. :cheers:

Btw, are we invited?


----------



## Verso

Yeah, if you bring booze.


----------



## bogdymol

I always wanted to see Ljubljana


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Shit, I've just returned from Slovenia two days ago. If you'd just announced it earlier...

Btw, Ljubljana is beautiful. And so is the rest of the country.


----------



## Verso

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Shit, I've just returned from Slovenia two days ago. If you'd just announced it earlier...


I could've had magnetic resonance two days ago, but in Maribor, and you never know what those results would be like.  Where else were you?


----------



## seem

Verso said:


> Yeah, if you bring booze.


I am on a way with some nice bottles of proper English Cider. 

Wait for us mate!


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Verso said:


> I could've had magnetic resonance two days ago, but in Maribor, and you never know what those results would be like.  Where else were you?


Apart from Ljubljana we've seen Bled, stayed in Bohinj area and did some trekking there and been to Vrata valley. I was hoping to do some proper mountaineering trip, but it turned out that one girl from our group wasn't really prepared for such thing (despite her statements that she was). And the weather wasn't exactly great, so we stayed in valleys. But it was fun nevertheless. And we've been to Croatia (Krk island) for 1½ day.

And because this is SSC and roadtrips also counts, we've covered A1 from Maribor to Postojna and then road no. 6 to Rupa, A2 from Jesenice to Ljubljana and some mountain roads, including a great gravel road from Krnica to Mojstrana  

Slovenian road network impressed me greatly, but you seriously need a motorway connection from Postojna to Croatian border. And get rid of those toll booths in the middle of a motorway, there is like one every 50 km!


----------



## bogdymol

Fuzzy Llama said:


> And get rid of those toll booth in the middle of a motorway, there is like one every 50 km!


Are there toll booths on Slovenian motorways? I tought that you only have to pay for the vignette and that's all.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The vignette system only exists since a few years, before that there was an open toll system with toll booths. They have not been removed yet, though newer motorways do not have toll booths for regular traffic (like A4). Trucks still have to pay the old-fashion way.

Tolling on A4: no obstacles for cars, but a separate tolling facility for trucks.


----------



## nenea_hartia

^ Also on A1 at Kozina, for example. I remember there were toll booths at the exits too.


----------



## keber

Existing toll booths will be removed when electronic toll system for truck will be introduced. Although in my opinion they could at least adapt existing booths for safer passage of cars.


----------



## hofburg

will you post some photos, fuzzy llama?


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> The vignette system only exists since a few years, before that there was an open toll system with toll booths.


there was mostly opened system, except southern part A1 with branch to A3 - there was closed system (Ljubljana - Kozina)


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> The vignette system only exists since a few years, before that there was an open toll system with toll booths. They have not been removed yet, though newer motorways do not have toll booths for regular traffic (like A4). Trucks still have to pay the old-fashion way.
> 
> Tolling on A4: no obstacles for cars, but a separate tolling facility for trucks.


It's worse on A5:


muravidék said:


>


----------



## ufonut

A side benefit of highway construction - fully unearthed Polish WWII bunker near Bobrowniki (A1 highway).


----------



## ufonut

Tulip fields near western bypass of Poznan (S11).

Photo by Rusonaldo 










Photo by Carte


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Mały Holandia


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Mały Holandia


Mała Holandia


----------



## SeanT

Hollandia:lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wielki Holandia:


----------



## hofburg

anybody knows where to buy a good up-to-date wall roadmap of europe (online)?


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Wielki Holandia:


ja nie movie po polsku!


----------



## Morsue

ufonut said:


> A side benefit of highway construction - fully unearthed Polish WWII bunker near Bobrowniki (A1 highway).


Are they going to leave that in the open air or demolish it?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That doesn't surprise me at all with the video. They should put trucks back up using inflatable cushions.


----------



## seem

Verso said:


> Google Maps finally updated! Ljubljana-Zagreb, Trieste bypass, Hungarian M6-M60, Mura bridge HR-H, Istria, Croatian A11 ... :cheers:


Wow, I didn't know about such a progress on M6, Hungarian motorway network looks great now :cheers:. Do you know if they want two these missing sections between Mohács and Osijek? Btw, I don't really like how are Istrian motorways marked. It is hard to recognise if is it half profile or full profile.

Well, sadly they motorway network probably won't change so much in a next few years because of the country's current financial situation. hno:

Btw, also Slovak R1 and D1 have been updated. Not such a big change (30km), it the summer it will be better (+50km).


----------



## bogdymol

They didn't add M43 Szeged - Mako


----------



## RipleyLV

Verso said:


> Google Maps finally updated! Ljubljana-Zagreb, Trieste bypass, Hungarian M6-M60, Mura bridge HR-H, Istria, Croatian A11 ... :cheers:


Southern bridge in Riga is finally (poorly) visible, I still prefer Bing maps though. GM works awful on IE9.


----------



## BND

bogdymol said:


> They didn't add M43 Szeged - Mako


Maybe next year... It took more than a year to update M6-M60. For some reason the older section of M6 (M0-Dunaújváros) got the number M61 :bash:
And M31 is also on GM now, as a main road hno:


----------



## CNGL

They have put Spanish A-22 all the way from Lérida to Peraltilla. It's open all the way to Siétamo! (Except two sections that are expected to open later this year)
Also, some E07 around Jaca and the first section of A-21 in Aragon... Those two sections only God knows when will open.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Google is increasingly inaccurate. They've been playing around with road settings, sometimes certain roads popped up as a motorway(like) road before, now they're normal roads. They have been far ahead of the current situation in Spain for quite a while now, some roads were already indicated which were 1 or 2 years from opening. Hungary is also poorly covered, with some single-carriageway roads indicated as motorways (M15, M70) and motorways indicated as regular roads (M2, M31, M43) and a wrong motorway number (M61 should've been M6).


----------



## Verso

^^ M15 and M70 are drawn with the correct number of carriageways, but wrong color (like in Istria).



BND said:


> It took more than a year to update M6-M60.


It took more than 2.5 years to update Trieste bypass. And it still doesn't work in "Get Directions". I also hate it that the branch to Fernetti (RA14) is colored yellow.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Map makers are still living in the old pre-internet age where you could get away with updating maps 1 - 2 years after motorways were completed. However, times have changed, I think it's reasonable to expect a new motorway to pop up in online mapping services within 2 months of completion.


----------



## x-type

why i cannot see the new sattelite photos yet?


----------



## Verso

Not satellite, I'm talking about drawn roads.


----------



## x-type

oh, so. croatian A9 is drawn already quite some time. there is also one news - D28 expressway is also signed as A12, althought that is not officially yet


----------



## Verso

^ Heh, it's both. It should be colored as an expressway.


----------



## ABRob

Guys, use http://www.openstreetmap.org/ instead.
It's much more up to date - and if not, you can correct it immediately. You can use the imagery from Bing or Yahoo! for this.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Open Street Map is indeed more up to date, but I don't like the mapping, navigation and not to mention the lack of directions you can get from Google Maps. When it comes to getting directions, no service is better than Google Maps. There are still a lot of online mapping services where it's impossible to do a decent "via" route. 

I remember my dad was looking for alternate routes to Italy, and I said: drive via Kassel and Würzburg instead of Arnhem - Frankfurt - Würzburg. But he got a much longer detour than I did, because every "via" destination goes via downtown areas. Imagine, driving from Dortmund to Würzburg via downtown Kassel instead of simply A44 and A7. Do that a few times and your alternate route is suddenly 50 kilometers longer than intended. With Google you can at least change the routes very easily.


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> Google Maps finally updated! Ljubljana-Zagreb, Trieste bypass, Hungarian M6-M60, Mura bridge HR-H, Istria, Croatian A11 ... :cheers:


But you can't choose route over those new roads.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Open Street Map is indeed more up to date, but I don't like the mapping, navigation and not to mention the lack of directions you can get from Google Maps.


I personally recommend www.viamichelin.com . For directions it's way better than Google maps.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ Viamichelin is good but I don't like the user interface. Besides, if I want to get directions from Tallinn to Berlin, it tells me to go through Kaliningrad Oblast which is just stupid.


----------



## bogdymol

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ Viamichelin is good but I don't like the user interface. Besides, if I want to get directions from Tallinn to Berlin, it tells me to go through Kaliningrad Oblast which is just stupid.


Do you think google maps is better? :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ Viamichelin is good but I don't like the user interface. Besides, if I want to get directions from Tallinn to Berlin, it tells me to go through Kaliningrad Oblast which is just stupid.


Google maps for the same route tells you to through Sweden and Denmark... I don't think this is much more clever.

EDIT: I didn't saw bogdymol's post till now


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ I actually know a few people who have taken that route, especially a few years back when the roads in Poland were less tolerable. Besides, GMaps offers you an alternative route just below the first one.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

What, where do you think?


----------



## Spookvlieger

Elvas?,Portugal?,suicide?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

No, No, No


----------



## Spookvlieger

to bad 
I'm going for Spain.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Yes, Portuguese ambulances from the interior go to Spain a lot if theres a nearer hospital there, especially hospitals with maternities


----------



## seem

DanielFigFoz said:


> Yes, Portuguese ambulances from the interior go to Spain a lot if theres a nearer hospital there, especially hospitals with maternities


I think this is pretty much normal nowadays in the EU. 

Btw, we say "ambulancia" too.


----------



## CNGL

DanielFigFoz said:


> What, where do you think?


Badajoz! Once I saw an ambulance from my autonomic comunity in Catalonia.



seem said:


> I think this is pretty much normal nowaday in the EU.
> 
> Btw, we say "ambulancia" too.


Never imagined how Spanish and Slovakian can have the same word for the same thing. I believe "sun" is written "sol" both in Spanish and Scandinavian languages.


----------



## g.spinoza

I saw plenty of Austrian ambulances here in Bavaria...


----------



## seem

CNGL said:


> Never imagined how Spanish and Slovakian can have the same word for the same thing. I believe "sun" is written "sol" both in Spanish and Scandinavian languages.


"Sol" means "salt" in Slovakian.


----------



## RipleyLV

Police from Romania visits Rēzekne town in Latvia.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Border police, maybe for a FRONTEX excercise.


----------



## seem

DanielFigFoz said:


> Yes, Portuguese ambulances from the interior go to Spain a lot *if theres a nearer hospital there*, especially hospitals with maternities





RipleyLV said:


> Police from Romania visits Rēzekne town in Latvia.


Is the closest police station in Romania?


----------



## RipleyLV

Guys are normally cruising in the neighborhood. They were spotted also in Tartu, Estonia.


----------



## CNGL

We should start a thread about spottings of foreign ambulances, police cars, etc. :lol:.


----------



## bogdymol

RipleyLV said:


> Police from Romania visits Rēzekne town in Latvia.





RipleyLV said:


> Guys are normally cruising in the neighborhood. They were spotted also in Tartu, Estonia.


Maybe they just got lost... :lol:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

CNGL said:


> Badajoz!


:banana:

Portuguese ambulances cross the border a lot, and last year an ambulance in Leon crashed, killing the driver, although in this case they had been to Barcelona, not to go to the hospital.


----------



## x-type

do they have interventions across the border or what? here in HR they often fight about county (not country!) borders. so when somebody from some village calls an ambulance in nearest town, they often reconnect him to other ambulance service which keeps his area, and is farer and takes much more time to reach him hno:


----------



## seem

^^ Nearest ambulance goes there and that's it, borders doesn't matter.


----------



## bogdymol

There is some kind of project between Romania and Hungary, or at least my county and the Hungarian county on the other side of the border: if a major disaster would happen on either side, intervention vehicles (ambulances + firefighters) would go there from both sides.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> The interior of Portugal is also quite poor for western European standards.


This must be one of the worst colourings on a map ever. I'm not daltonic but I'm still having difficulties distinguishing between the 11 different tones of green....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I took this picture for Radi Radish.


----------



## CNGL

Manamer said:


> Hehe, I took this photo, and as CNGL said it was in Badajoz. The ambulances where there because it was the end of a half-marathon from Elvas to Badajoz, and everyear portugueses "Bombeiros Voluntarios" ambulances come.
> 
> P.D.: yes, my english is very poor.


So the runners have to add one hour to their time because of the time zone change :lol:. And luckily we are on Schengen.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Maybe :lol:.


----------



## Nexis

ChrisZwolle said:


> I took this picture for Radi Radish.


Does he even still use this site?


----------



## Surel

Rebasepoiss said:


> This must be one of the worst colourings on a map ever. I'm not daltonic but I'm still having difficulties distinguishing between the 11 different tones of green....


There is another map... (GDP PP PPS)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Shoulder ends ahead:


----------



## MoroccoFever

ChrisZwolle said:


> The interior of Portugal is also quite poor for western European standards.


This picture isn't saying much. Because south ireland isn't that rich at all(look at the crisis there) and look at north of Netherlands(Groningen etc.). North of Netherland isn't particular the richest region of the Netherlands but they have natural gas resources. The money of these resources are going to whole of the Netherlands and not only to them. So you need to look further then the figures alone.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I think the south of Ireland is like that because of large farms and farmers making crap loads of money out of the European Union


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Interstate 86 in Idaho, USA


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^ :lol:

I'm really begining to look forward to going to Ireland in July now, I haven't been there since 2004, I used to go every couple of years.


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Interstate 86 in Idaho, USA


Have you just watched _Bonneville_?


----------



## Surel

I guess one of the oldest driving schools in Prague was founded in 1912 according to this poster.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Balconies collapsed in Leeuwarden:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ Domino effect?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Happy birthday to x-type :cheers:


----------



## seem

Sretan rođendan eks-tajp. :cheers:


----------



## x-type

thx guys


----------



## nenea_hartia

Happy birthday, x-type! :cheers:


----------



## bogdymol

_La Mulţi Ani_ x-type !!!


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Happy b-day x-type! :cheers:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Happy birthday annoying orange


----------



## hofburg

from me too


----------



## g.spinoza

Did you Dutchmen saw this?

http://www.repubblica.it/esteri/201...mo_pubblicit_minaccia-16719298/1/?ref=HRESS-6

It's just a sequence of pictures, no Italian language skills required


----------



## DanielFigFoz

g.spinoza said:


> Did you Dutchmen saw this?
> 
> http://www.repubblica.it/esteri/201...mo_pubblicit_minaccia-16719298/1/?ref=HRESS-6
> 
> It's just a sequence of pictures, no Italian language skills required


:lol:


----------



## bogdymol

I was looking on a photo album on the net called Missouri city walloped by deadly tornado (click the link for pictures with a destroyed town ) and I spotted an interesting picture for a road-geek:










Apart from the disaster I spotted an interesting thing: how do you use a road like that? I mean, in the middle there is an entire lane marked with yellow countinous line and dashed lines on the inside. Is it for the use of those that go on the main road and want to take a left-turn without disturbing the traffic on their lane while they wait for the traffic from the other direction to clear, or is it for those that are exiting from a minor street for yielding only one direction at a time?


----------



## Spookvlieger

^^Suicide lanes?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's a left-turn lane. You can use it in either direction for driveway access. I've seen it in Belgium as well.


----------



## Spookvlieger

^^But mostly it is better indicated with paint markings, because the paint on that road above looks very strange.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Yeah, thats a left turn lane. In Canada the broken markings are on the outside of the solid line

In the UK they look like this:










That bit past the bollard can be used for either direction as can the bit before the arrow, and people would most likely also use the bit with the arrow for the other direction too.


----------



## ufonut

A6 highway in Poland - maximum speed 140km/h :cheers:


----------



## x-type

so PL is officially a country with the highest speed limit in the world (excluding D)


----------



## gramercy

didnt austria have/has a 160 section?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

gramercy said:


> didnt austria have/has a 160 section?


Yep, for 2 months in 2006.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

x-type said:


> so PL is officially a country with the highest speed limit in the world (excluding D)


Isle of Man also doesn't have general speed limit (which makes their highways the fastest, public, non-motorway roads on earth)


----------



## Coccodrillo

Modern (road) art?


----------



## AtD

Those centre turn lanes are not that uncommon in Australia. You must not enter the lane if there's oncoming traffic in the lane.


----------



## Spookvlieger

^^In Belgium you can do that, we have them at 2x2 road crossings. It's quite strange when drving and a truck comes in your direction and stops right in front of you....


----------



## bogdymol

Everybody was waiting in line for the train to pass, but one guy was smarter :bash:









picture taken here


----------



## Surel

Some drugged Swiss driver drove today around 80 km in the wrong direction on the R10 from Turnov to Prague. There were several accidents (under 10) but no fatalities. The driver is currenctly on detox in Prague's hospital. He was just stopped when he wanted to try out the being completed Vysocanska radiala... I just wonder how did he survive... 80 km, his top speed was around 180 km/h.


----------



## gramercy

maybe things like this should be installed at onramps everywhere:
http://www.a1way.co.uk/


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Las Vegas by night:

the brightest spot on earth by gsgeorge, on Flickr


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Wow, at the drugged Swiss guy and at the Las Vegas picutre


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Bizarre weather in the Netherlands;

Yesterday: 17 C
Today: 30 C
Tomorrow: 14 C


----------



## CNGL

Wow. Some days ago I saw on the weather thread at Skybar that Chicago was going from 9ºC to 33ºC in five days, but that is :crazy:


----------



## Spookvlieger

^^Almost the same here Chriss and T-storms for tonight


----------



## mapman:cz

Yeah, crazy weather here in Prague as well, today up to 26°C, on Tue 27°C, on Wed 14°C, Thu 20°C, Fri 24°C - Wednesday seems like a statistical error :nuts:


----------



## Suburbanist

Bad results for local elections in Italy. A populist mayor is likely to be elected as Milano mayor, which can put in jeopardize many urban (road) tunnels and underground parking schemes. One of the most friendly roadworks party has suffered several defeats in many cities.


----------



## g.spinoza

What you call bad results, I call "triumph".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That depends on your political point of view of course  

I don't think traffic issues are the #1 reason to vote for a certain party for most people.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle is right, even if when it comes to elect the mayor of a major (no pun intended) city one of the biggest issues on the table is traffic.


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ Leticia Moratti did a good job at least. They repaved many of Milano's avenues and streets that were in bad shape, and they stopped short of expanding the insidious Ecopass as some wanted.

For me, I good Milano mayor (I moved out there in 2009) would reopen night traffic on the Renato Serra elevated expressway, and also build at least 10.000 underground parking spaces on the central area. Moreover, they should go back to the 39.000 parking space requirements for the Milano City Life project.

Other good measures would be get rid of some barely used bus lanes that makes traffic difficult around the medieval city belt.

Ok, I will stop, I'm getting too local.


----------



## g.spinoza

Of course this is a road forum, and for what concerns roads Suburbanist may be right (even if it's not so black and white).


----------



## ufonut

Noise barrier illumination on A8 near Wroclaw in Poland.


----------



## TheCat

bogdymol said:


> I was looking on a photo album on the net called Missouri city walloped by deadly tornado (click the link for pictures with a destroyed town ) and I spotted an interesting picture for a road-geek:
> 
> ...
> 
> Apart from the disaster I spotted an interesting thing: how do you use a road like that? I mean, in the middle there is an entire lane marked with yellow countinous line and dashed lines on the inside. *Is it for the use of those that go on the main road and want to take a left-turn without disturbing the traffic on their lane while they wait for the traffic from the other direction to clear, or is it for those that are exiting from a minor street for yielding only one direction at a time?*


Actually, it is generally for both. I'm not sure if all jurisdictions in North America officially allow the 2nd maneuver (turning left from a driveway and yielding to just one direction at a time), but many do, and it is often used like this. In fact, in my case, it is often impossible to make a left turn from where I live to the street without doing this (essentially a private road intersecting with a 7-lane main street). You still have to be really careful to make sure that no one coming from the right is entering that lane at the same time, so you still have to look both ways .

An example of me doing it during a fairly busy time (beginning of the video):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv0kxyjrmc4 

This type of lane is pretty much the norm in both the US and Canada - it exists almost everywhere. One must be very careful when using those, however, as sometimes they are found on relatively high-speed streets (60-70 km/h) and a head-on collision is a possibility if one is not careful. A few years ago my parents witnessed a head-on collision in a lane like this right near my house (we live on a street that has such a lane).


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Today an electric race Tallinn - Monte-Carlo began with the 1st stage held in Tallinn. Prince Albert II opened the race and also took part in the 1st stage of the race in an electric Volga.  Also check: www.electricrace.eu .

A few of my photos:


Prince Albert II


One of 2 Teslas





The electric Volga was built in Estonia.


This one was also made in Estonia.


----------



## bogdymol

RipleyLV said:


> Police from Romania visits Rēzekne town in Latvia.


Take a look at this ones taken last week in Hungary:

Romanian and Hungarian police cars:










Old Hungarian police car:










Romanian, Hungarian and Slovak police cars:










Bosnian (unmarked), Slovak and Hungarian police cars:


----------



## RipleyLV

Are they also coming to Rēzekne?


----------



## bogdymol

RipleyLV said:


> Are they also coming to Rēzekne?


I guess not...


----------



## RipleyLV

bogdymol said:


> I guess not...


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> GTA-style.


i didn't know that you play pc games


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't (anymore)  In the early 2000's I used to play GTA Vice City.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't (anymore)  In the early 2000's I used to play GTA Vice City.


the game in whose era my gaming addiction started to rise. it cluminated with San Andreas. now i am playing Liberty City just because i adore that serial (yes, 1,5 years after release date), but i am tottaly clear now, not an addict anymore.


----------



## bogdymol

I was also addicted to GTA. I started playing GTA 2 (that 2D verison), and later on GTA 3 Vice City.


----------



## g.spinoza

Another (past) addict here! GTA3 totally blew my mind. I couldn't drive for a while, because I felt the urge to run over pedestrians... 
Now I'm playing GTA4, but it's on hold at the moment... not much time...


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> I couldn't drive for a while, because I felt the urge to run over pedestrians...


yeah, that happened to me too. i think if i would have hit somebody, i wouldn't mind too much then. horrible. i was cured when my pc broke down, i only had access to internet, nothing more for 3 months. after that i quit playing games.


----------



## hofburg

I finished gta IV on xbox360.  for driving experience is forza 3 better though.


----------



## xzmattzx

NordikNerd said:


> why is San Francisco - New York a nonsense route ? Must be the ultimate bustrip for tourists going coast to coast exploring the country instead of watching clouds.


It's nonsense because taking a bus across the country is maybe the worst way to go. It's a 5-hour flight between the two, so I would imagine that a bus ride would be 5 days long. Who in their right mind would sit on a cramped bus for 5 days?

When going across the country, there's only two ways to do it. One is to fly, which is quick and pretty cheap when you think about it. The other is do drive, and then detour to all of the places that you want to see in one mega road trip.


----------



## seem

ChrisZwolle said:


> GTA-style.
> 
> Somebody actually placed a ramp in front of this house and drove into the house at full speed. There were actually people in this room when it happened, but they were not hurt.


How come that you get all these crazy crashes and accidents in the NL? :nuts:


----------



## RipleyLV

Speaking of video games - Fear the future Moscow!









http://metro.thq.com/


----------



## Rebasepoiss

I'm not a gamer but I'm seriously looking forward to this game - Battlefield 3.


----------



## NordikNerd

xzmattzx said:


> It's nonsense because taking a bus across the country is maybe the worst way to go. It's a 5-hour flight between the two, so I would imagine that a bus ride would be 5 days long. Who in their right mind would sit on a cramped bus for 5 days?
> 
> When going across the country, there's only two ways to do it. One is to fly, which is quick and pretty cheap when you think about it. The other is do drive, and then detour to all of the places that you want to see in one mega road trip.


is there are service New York-Chicago?, what's the longest greyhound route?


----------



## bogdymol

Funny thing happened to me this evening:

I went with my mother at the local train station because she had to catch a train, I helped her with her bag, and after that the train leaved the station. 10 minutes after that I realised that the home keys were accidentaly at her, so that ment that either in the 2 following nights I would sleep in my car, or I will go after the keys hno: So I had to think to which train station on her route I can drive quickly so I get my keys back. 32 km by car / 35 km by train later... I got my keys back  

Luckly I wasn't caught speeding because a police car with a speed trap was set only at my return trip, when I was relaxed and driving within the speed limit :banana:

PS: I shouldn't complain anymore that trains in Romania are slow, because today it was a good thing.


----------



## x-type

^^
happened to me similar few times (forgot my keys while traveling to college and my father has been catching the train)


----------



## hofburg

transporter 3  

(from 1:42)


----------



## ABRob

To all the GTA addicts:
What about a GTA IV-StreetView?
http://www.gta4.net/map/


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^That is cool!


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> Funny thing happened to me this evening:


It pairs with what happened to me yesterday. I was on my way from Munich to Brescia and then Bologna because I had to go voting there (today and tomorrow big popular ballot questions in Italy, you probably heard of that). At Innsbruck (160 km from Munich) I realize I left my voter registration card in Munich, and without it I could not vote. After a moment of panic, I went back to Munich, got my damn card, and headed immediately back towards Italy. 

Result: 970 km instead of 650... but every vote counts!!


----------



## nenea_hartia

g.spinoza said:


> It pairs with what happened to me yesterday. I was on my way from Munich to Brescia and then Bologna because I had to go voting there (today and tomorrow big popular ballot questions in Italy, you probably heard of that). At Innsbruck (160 km from Munich) I realize I left my voter registration card in Munich, and without it I could not vote. After a moment of panic, I went back to Munich, got my damn card, and headed immediately back towards Italy.
> 
> Result: 970 km instead of 650... but every vote counts!!


Wow! You are indeed a model citizen!


----------



## Wilhem275

Spinoza, you could have asked for a new one! :crazy:
_
"Chi avesse smarrito la propria tessera elettorale personale, potrà chiederne un duplicato agli uffici comunali nei cinque giorni antecedenti quello di inizio della votazione (cioè da martedì 7 giugno sino a sabato 11 giugno) dalle ore 9 alle ore 19 nonché nei giorni della votazione (domenica 12 giugno e lunedì 13 giugno) per tutta la durata delle operazioni di voto."_

http://www.torinoogginotizie.it/cro...rendum-via-al-voto-oggi-urne-aperte-fino.html


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A driving Christmas tree. There are already large front lights, side lights and back lights. The only thing I miss on a truck is a high-positioned braking light on the back of a trailer, now only the vehicle immediately behind the truck can see him braking, other people can't. But it's hard to implement as there are many different sizes of trailers.


----------



## Wilhem275

Btw, I agree on Chris' point, but I like the introduction of reflective tape, as well as I appreciated the new system of upper tail lights.


----------



## hofburg

great video. too bad it doesn't slow down when getting on the train. that part is funny how it suddenly enters the train.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> A driving Christmas tree. There are already large front lights, side lights and back lights. The only thing I miss on a truck is a high-positioned braking light on the back of a trailer, now only the vehicle immediately behind the truck can see him braking, other people can't. But it's hard to implement as there are many different sizes of trailers.


Most of the times, to my opinion, truck's lights are underdimensioned. Today a truck in front of me couldn't turn left because of the stream of cars overtaking it and not noticing the (ridiculously) small blinker...


----------



## bogdymol

Now this is a proper final lap:


----------



## Suburbanist

DanielFigFoz said:


> Thatcher can count herself a fucking failure!


Nah, she restored the British finances and modernized the country, eliminating decrepit and faltering, jurassic State enterprises like British Telecom, British Rail and British Coal. I can barely imagine the outrageous idea of having a State company be responsible to provide us Internet access. 

She also put an definitive end to de-colonization, which had gone wary by late 1970s with independence of Belize, repelling an Argentinian invasion on the Falklands (though the context there was not de-colonization at all as islanders didn't want by any means to become Argentinians). Even if it was a not very big conflict, it restored the confidence of British forces, which would prove crucial in later developments in Balkans (Bosnia + Kosovo), Afghanistan and Iraq.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Be all that as it may, there are lots of perfectly good reasons why a man (or woman) above age 30 might find himself on a bus. (Such as the fact that most of my five-block route to work is covered by a single bus line, so if I'm a little late or it's raining....) While some people may want to see everyone live in the suburbs and drive everywhere, I'm sure Mrs. Thatcher would be of the right-wing school of thought that encourages people to make their own choices, even the choice to live in cities. Therefore, she can still kiss my ass.
:cheers:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

She didn't restore the finances of the British people


----------



## Suburbanist

*USA car theft figures*

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) --


> Auto theft in the United States dropped to its lowest levels since 1967 last year, according to a new report from the National Insurance Crime Bureau.
> 
> Vehicle theft rates dropped an estimated 7.2% between 2009 and 2010, the NICB said, based on FBI crime data. A total of about 795,000 vehicles were stolen in 2009.
> 
> Auto thefts weren't down everywhere, however. Thefts rose in the five metro areas that had the highest rate of thefts. Those metro areas, all on the West Coast, are Fresno, Modesto and Bakersfield-Delano in California, followed by Spokane, Wash., and Vallejo-Fairfield, Calif.
> 
> Regional theft rates are calculated based on the number of vehicles stolen compared to the population.
> 
> All of the top 10 metro areas for auto theft are on the West Coast. That fact that can probably be attributed to the high rate of car ownership and easy access to ports and international border crossings, said NICB spokesman Frank Scafidi. Professional auto theft rings often try to move cars out of the country.
> 
> Reasons for the overall decline in auto thefts include improved built-in anti-theft technology in cars, Scafidi said, and better enforcement, including "bait car" programs.
> 
> Police in many cities have been using specially equipped cars that are left parked with the keys in them to attract opportunistic auto thieves. The cars can then be shut off using remote control as thieves try to drive away with them.
> 
> Since a relatively small number of auto thieves account for a large number of thefts, "bait car" programs have proven especially effective at fighting the problem.
> 
> "There were a lot of very prolific thieve that were taken off the streets in the last few years," Scafidi said.
> 
> The NICB recommends a combination of common sense, warning devices, car immobilizing technology and tracking devices to protect against auto theft.
> Immobilizing devices include things like smart keys that prevent the engine from being started with copied keys and devices that prevent fuel from flowing unless a hidden button is pressed.
> 
> Tracking devices emit signals that allow the vehicle to be located quickly from a remote location.


From the same source


> *America's most stolen cars - per thousand vehicles*
> 1. Cadillac Escalade (10.8)
> 2. Chevrolet Silverado (8.0)
> 3. Dodge Charger (7.4)
> 4. Chevrolet Avalanche (7.4)
> 5. Infiniti G37 Coupe (7.1)
> 6. GMC Sierra Crew Cab (6.7)
> 7. Nissan Maxima (6.5)
> 8. Hummer H2 (6.2)
> 9. GMC Yukon XL 4WD (6.0)
> 10. Chevrolet Tahoe (5.8)


Apparently, American thieved to have a taste for GM made cars.



> *Top 10 places for auto theft*
> 1. Fresno, Calif.
> 2. Modesto, Calif.
> 3. Bakersfield-Delano, Calif.
> 4. Spokane, Wash.
> 5. Vallejo-Fairfield, Calif.
> 6. Sacramento/Arden-Arcade/Roseville, Calif.
> 7. Stockton, Calif.
> 8. Visalia-Porterville, Calif.
> 9. San Francisco/Oakland/Fremont, Calif.
> 10. Yakima, Wash.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Your contempt for huge segments of the population is breathtaking. No wonder you're an admirer of Thatcher and Robert Moses. And your passive-aggressive way of responding to those of us who have the effrontery to disagree with you and your worldview (Shall we call it "totalitarian suburbanism"? - it's new to me) is actually a bit pathetic.

You're on "ignore," if I can find it. (I know it exists, but have only used it once.) Someone else can explain what a BRT is.


----------



## Ni3lS

Top ten is all in the West. You'd think that places like Michigan would be on there right?


----------



## Road_UK

Hello there, I'm new here - but Ive been following this forum for quite some time. I live partly in Austria and the UK, am Dutch born and I'm a European delivery driver in a van, and there aren't many highways and byways I havent been on in Europe. Will upload pictures later. I think I will enjoy it here, I've always had a great interest in infrastructure, road layouts and road signages in different countries. 

See ya'll around.....


----------



## Attus

*Sat-nav strands hapless Hungarian trucker and his 40-ton lorry in a VERY narrow country lane*

Ther're very interesting comments at the bottom (click View all).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Amazing how xenophobic people are. I mean, some even argue that people who do not speak English should not be driving a truck in the United Kingdom. I say, turn that around and ban English truckers from driving on the European mainland. :nuts:


----------



## bogdymol

Road_UK said:


> Hello there, I'm new here - but Ive been following this forum for quite some time. I live partly in Austria and the UK, am Dutch born and I'm a European delivery driver in a van, and there aren't many highways and byways I havent been on in Europe. Will upload pictures later. I think I will enjoy it here, I've always had a great interest in infrastructure, road layouts and road signages in different countries.
> 
> See ya'll around.....


Welcome to SSC. If you say that you drove on many roads in Europe, you should check this website: http://cmap.m-plex.com/index.php 



ChrisZwolle said:


> Amazing how xenophobic people are. I mean, some even argue that people who do not speak English should not be driving a truck in the United Kingdom. *I say, turn that around and ban English truckers from driving on the European mainland.* :nuts:


Cool idea :lol:


----------



## phiberoptik

ChrisZwolle said:


> Amazing how xenophobic people are. I mean, some even argue that people who do not speak English should not be driving a truck in the United Kingdom. I say, turn that around and ban English truckers from driving on the European mainland. :nuts:


Brilliant idea


----------



## x-type

x-type said:


> if you want rare Croatian plates, then you should search for IM (Imotski) and DE (Delnice). for DE i know that they have reached combination DE-999-Z just few years ago :lol: IM is similar.


i was in DE area today. i say plates DE-645-AD, so they are doing well


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

I've seen a Google StreetView car today in Warsaw. It was a white-green Opel Astra on German (Hamburger) plates.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^ I would like to see one of those one day, they must look strange



ChrisZwolle said:


> Amazing how xenophobic people are. I mean, some even argue that people who do not speak English should not be driving a truck in the United Kingdom. I say, turn that around and ban English truckers from driving on the European mainland. :nuts:


If such a ban comes into place, all British lorry drivers going onto the continent should be required to speak the languages of all countries they go through.


----------



## x-type

ppl you don't understand. we are all supposed to know English naturally, since the day of our birth :nuts:


edit: one month ago in my firm i had delivery by Turkish driver. i knew maybe 10 words of Turkish, in that moment totaly unusefull. he didn't speak anything else. and we understood each other without problem, especially when i came with 10-15 crucial words caught from google translate. similar as with Romanian driver few months ago. i really don't see some large problems here.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Fuzzy Llama said:


> I've seen a Google StreetView car today in Warsaw. It was a white-green Opel Astra on German (Hamburger) plates.


Google is actively photographing Estonia at the moment. They started last year already but then came winter... :lol: You may be surprised to see that the cars are wearing the logo of an Estonian company called Regio. That's because Regio is actually using Google cars to create 3D models of the 2 largest towns in Estonia while the cars are shooting Street View too.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

^^
Cars which are used in Poland looks like that:








_Source: Gazeta.pl_

Gossip say that the imagery should be available in December 2011. Can't wait


----------



## bogdymol

I've seen google street view car in Arad, Romania some time ago... and now I can see myself on the sidewalk 

It was a black Opel Astra, but the previous model, not this new one.


----------



## seem

bogdymol said:


> I've seen google street view car in Arad, Romania some time ago... and now I can see myself on the sidewalk


Where abouts? 

btw, Bratislava -


----------



## bogdymol

^^ The one I saw was exactly like those in your picture (#2,3) and it also had German plates.


----------



## bogdymol

:rofl:


----------



## Ingenioren

Me and some friends doing traffic counting captured by Streetview
http://maps.google.no/maps?q=oslo&h...NmCrwq_YQ13tchpvK9nQMg&cbp=12,332.77,,0,12.34


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A visual traffic count  I've organized that a few times myself as well.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What's up with Canadians loving swimming pools? This one is near Montréal, I'm surprised to see so many houses with pools this far north.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

They have proper summers in Canada though


----------



## Triple C

While discovering some driving videos by Turks;


----------



## hofburg

interesting pics in that video, 3 border crossings in slovenia included.


----------



## x-type

yeah, interestong photos. number of photos from Croatia: 1


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What the...

Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!

It's a real town :crazy:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Yes it is


----------



## hofburg

maybe the citizens are laughing all the time.


----------



## ufonut

Elblag, Poland 

Construction of 2 bridges at the same time near the new "Old Town".


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> What the...
> 
> Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!
> 
> It's a real town :crazy:


I like it! Saint-Louis-du-:lol:, the most appropiate town for laugh after.


----------



## ssh

ChrisZwolle said:


> What's up with Canadians loving swimming pools? This one is near Montréal


It's 45°N though, I wouldn't call it too far north. It's on the same latitude as Venice. Sure, the Gulf stream plays a huge roll in overall differences in the climate but at noon the sun is still shining from the same angle and that might be enough to justify a pool.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Danger in Zwolle


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ Dutch polder crocodile  ?


----------



## Road_UK

ssh said:


> It's 45°N though, I wouldn't call it too far north. It's on the same latitude as Venice. Sure, the Gulf stream plays a huge roll in overall differences in the climate but at noon the sun is still shining from the same angle and that might be enough to justify a pool.


And still most Canadians don't live further north from the U.S. border than 300 miles..? From Venice, you'd end up roughly in let's say Munich but not further then Frankfurt. 

The Dutch, Belgians and British in the shit..? Never mind the Scandinavians, for the price of a beer they charge who cares...:lol:

(no offense I really like Sweden and Finland)


----------



## SeanT

My wifes parrents have swimmingpool (75m3) and the temperature is between 20-23 celsius in the summertime. It is Denmark.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

@ Road UK: Well that's why I wondered. Nearly all population of Québec lives within 200 kilometers of the U.S. border. There are many swimming pools in an area that is apparently regarded as the northern end of significant human habitat. If you drive north from Montréal, civilization stops after just one hour of driving.


----------



## khawa

ChrisZwolle said:


> @ Road UK: Well that's why I wondered. Nearly all population of Québec lives within 200 kilometers of the U.S. border. There are many swimming pools in an area that is apparently regarded as the northern end of significant human habitat. If you drive north from Montréal, civilization stops after just one hour of driving.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal#Climate
Montreal's summers are warm, at times *hot and humid* with average high temperatures of 26 °C (79 °F) and low of 16 °C (61 °F), temperatures frequently exceed 30 °C (86 °F).


----------



## CNGL

Coming from Austrian motorways thread:


g.spinoza said:


> They were Italian
> 
> http://www.ilmessaggero.it/articolo.php?id=109879


And a British couple too. Maybe they weren't the only people to get at the wrong side.

And I know more: I know someone who has to go to a town near Huesca, but instead he got to a town which is close to the border with Catalonia! He probably heard Binaced instead of Vicién (Where he was supossed to go).


----------



## Road_UK

CNGL said:


> Coming from Austrian motorways thread:
> 
> 
> And a British couple too. Maybe they weren't the only people to get at the wrong side.
> 
> And I know more: I know someone who has to go to a town near Huesca, but instead he got to a town which is close to the border with Catalonia! He probably heard Binaced instead of Vicién (Where he was supossed to go).


As long as people don't mistake Birmingham, West-Midlands, UK for Birmingham, Alabama and Amsterdam, NL for Amsterdam, NY or even London UK for London, ON we can take it with a laugh. I'm still waiting for the first African delegates, wanting to see the Queen at Windsor Castle to turn up at the border check-point between Detroit, MI and Windsor, ON.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Try to find the good Saint-Maurice in your GPS...


----------



## CNGL

Or Sant Vicenç, there are four towns called Sant Vicenç in Catalonia, and the four are in the same province! (Sant Vicenç de Castellet; de Torelló; dels Horts and, why not, Sant Vicenç de Montalt, probably one of the most known towns of SSC Spain). And I have passed through two of them on the same day!


----------



## bogdymol

On Friday when I will go home I hope I will not find myself in Arad, Israel instead of Arad, Romania


----------



## g.spinoza

What about Andorra  and Andorra, Spain ?


----------



## CNGL

Last year I passed through Andorra, Spain going to a orienteeing race :lol:

But how about Madrid, Madrid NY and Madrid IA?


----------



## Verso

Hi, I'm back.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ah, Verso resurfaced. Vacation?


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Ah, Verso resurfaced. Vacation?


I wish. No, it was more depressive than that. I was diagnosed with a progressive brain cancer. But... they mixed me with someone else! :nuts::nuts::nuts::nuts::nuts: So I don't have brain cancer. But after 3 months they still don't know what I got. I hope it's nothing serious. I hope it's just a transient polyneuropathy.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Geez that is a serious mistake. I hope you will be OK.


----------



## CNGL

What a mistake.

BTW, Street View has been updated!


> Release 37 / June 29, 2011; 0 days ago
> Isle of Man, Jersey, more locations in the United States, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Taiwan, South Africa


----------



## g.spinoza

Glad to see you back, Verso... a :cheers: for you


----------



## Verso

Thanks, guys.


----------



## g.spinoza

Russian President Medvedev forgets the hand brake and his car runs away:

http://tv.repubblica.it/mondo/medve...ussia-ride/71685/69969?pagefrom=1&ref=HRESS-1

There's a video embedded in the page...


----------



## x-type

whoa, that was brutal mistake! in USA you could sue them for emotional injuries 
welcome back and don't go away anymore!


----------



## Verso

^ Don't worry; even if I got lupus erythematosus, I still have a few years left.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

At least they didn't start treatment, right?


----------



## hofburg

welcome back  what a bunch of dumbasses.

anybody knows why flickr photos don't work?


----------



## Verso

DanielFigFoz said:


> At least they didn't start treatment, right?


Opening my head? Luckily not. :nuts:



hofburg said:


> welcome back  what a bunch of dumbasses.
> 
> anybody knows why flickr photos don't work?


Thanks.  I don't think Flickr blocked photos since some people can see them (I can't though).


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> ^ Don't worry; even if I got lupus erythematosus, I still have a few years left.


the glass is always half full, and not half empty, right? 


Verso said:


> Opening my head? Luckily not. :nuts:


i think he thinks about chemotherapies or radiation


----------



## Verso

^ I think surgery comes first.


----------



## Road_UK

Does anyone know if we have a thread about matrix signs lying around somewhere?


----------



## Road_UK

Maxx☢Power;80613384 said:


> There's one called Electronic Signs/Traffic Management Systems, do you mean those?


Yep. Do you know which page? My computer is ancient, and I do my web browsing on a 5-year plan.



Never mind, found it - thanks buddy...


----------



## Blackraven

Google really loves the Opel Astra as their favorite Street View car


















































It makes sense. Majority of all Street View cars are Opel Astra (used in entire Europe continent, Singapore plus Australia under the Holden brand).....then followed by the Toyota Prius (I say at 20% and used in Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, South Africa)......then the remainder are other vehicles.

I guess Google secured a really great deal with Opel as the majority vehicle fleet provider for the Street View project


----------



## x-type

yes, they have deal with Opel/Vauxhall/Saturn for street view.


----------



## Suburbanist

*Don't mess with Texas*

Anti-loitering campaign
















===========

or else you risk this:


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

I am making a trip (an 'urban' one) to Madrid. I have a flight, a plan etc. - right now I'm hostel-hunting.
I've came across something that's clalled "Fabrizzo Guesthouse". It's dirt cheap, great location the photos looks very nice, it has free rooms and all - in short it's a great deal. But one thing threw me off.

The guesthouse has no webpage. A phone number is nowhere to be found. Only places in the web that mentions it are (numerous) hostel search engines. There is only one review of this venue, very enthusiastic one, made in June. It's supposed to be located at no. 6 Calle Felipe III. I thought that I'll check this location with Goovle Street View, but no luck there - it is a very small, pedestrianized street and there is no imagery. But I've found an image on Panoramio, here it is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/madridlaciudad/5610327936/sizes/o/in/photostream/ . As you can see, it is a clear shot of no. 6... And there is no sight of any guesthouse there 

Guys, what do you think of it? The photo is from April 2011, the only, enthusiastic review of the hostel comes from June. Could it be that this guesthouse is so new, that they didn't manage to put a webpage of it yet, and dight now I'm writing nonsense?
Or maybe it's some sort of scam?
Does anybody know if there is some Spanish yellow-pages-esque thingy where I can search if any entrepreneur is registered under fore aforementioned address?


----------



## Nexis

Some scenes from White Plains i took yesterday...

I really like there Welcome sign on Eastbound NY 119


Downtown White Plains by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr

The Bronx River Parkway , snaking its way through the city....


Downtown White Plains by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr

*The view of the CBD from East White Plains...*


East White Plains by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr

The Newly Completed I-287 Project , it will be covered later this decade or in the 2020s through White Plains...


East White Plains by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr

The Bridge now has parking on it , which was badly needed in this part of WP.


East White Plains by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr

The View of the CBD from the Train station , sadly this view will blocked by a Massive Redevelopment project and New Train station. It will be "Grand Central" sized Station and the surrounding Developments will eat up all the open parkings lots left in WP. Replaced with 3 garages...


Downtown White Plains by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


----------



## lpioe

Fuzzy Llama said:


> I am making a trip (an 'urban' one) to Madrid. I have a flight, a plan etc. - right now I'm hostel-hunting.
> I've came across something that's clalled "Fabrizzo Guesthouse". It's dirt cheap, great location the photos looks very nice, it has free rooms and all - in short it's a great deal. But one thing threw me off.
> 
> The guesthouse has no webpage. A phone number is nowhere to be found. Only places in the web that mentions it are (numerous) hostel search engines. There is only one review of this venue, very enthusiastic one, made in June. It's supposed to be located at no. 6 Calle Felipe III. I thought that I'll check this location with Goovle Street View, but no luck there - it is a very small, pedestrianized street and there is no imagery. But I've found an image on Panoramio, here it is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/madridlaciudad/5610327936/sizes/o/in/photostream/ . As you can see, it is a clear shot of no. 6... And there is no sight of any guesthouse there
> 
> Guys, what do you think of it? The photo is from April 2011, the only, enthusiastic review of the hostel comes from June. Could it be that this guesthouse is so new, that they didn't manage to put a webpage of it yet, and dight now I'm writing nonsense?
> Or maybe it's some sort of scam?
> Does anybody know if there is some Spanish yellow-pages-esque thingy where I can search if any entrepreneur is registered under fore aforementioned address?


I can only tell you that I was in a hostel in Barcelona in May and from the street you couldn't tell there was a hostel in this building. There was just a normal door, but no sign or anything indicating a hostel. We also had to call someone before checking in because you couldn't enter the door without a key.

To be sure I would ask in the spanish forum though if someone knows this place.


----------



## Verso

Our gift to Romania:









http://www.rtvslo.si/okolje/srecko-na-poti-v-program-za-mlade-medvede-v-romunijo/260955

We're so ridiculous. Bear is autochthonous in Slovenia, and we don't know what to do with a bear cub that its mother abandoned. It was even supposed to go to the Netherlands, which doesn't have autochthonous bears at all, but has an appropriate place for them anyway. No wonder the little bear was kidnapped. :lol:


----------



## nenea_hartia

^ Oh, the cub is so cute! Thank you, thank you!
Can you tell me more about its story? What do you mean about "a gift"?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

nenea_hartia said:


> ^ Oh, the cub is so cute! Thank you, thank you!


Wait until he's mature and roams in your living room at night. :lol:


----------



## x-type

@Verso: is this a story about little one?
http://www.24sata.hr/news/vlast-ga-zeli-dati-u-utocistu-a-obitelj-moli-ne-uzimajte-medu-222992
http://www.24sata.hr/news/hrvati-spasite-medu-i-uzmite-ga-k-sebi-da-zivi-na-velebitu-223218

i was really hoping that he would come to our shelter for bears, they really care about them there. anyway, i hop he will be happy in Romania having company with other bears


----------



## nenea_hartia

ChrisZwolle said:


> Wait until he's mature and roams in your living room at night. :lol:


You mean like this one in the city center of Braşov? :lol:






Searching for food, a bear female and its cub got into a building until the second floor (!) and then tried to break a window to get out. :lol: Rangers were forced to use tranquilizers to remove the bear from the city and return it into a bear sanctuary.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> Wait until he's mature and roams in your living room at night. :lol:


The dutch and your lack of wildlife...:lol:

There are around 700 bears, 1,000 Eurasian lynxes, 10,000 moose and 150,000 roe deers in Estonia. Nobody dies because of that except the animals themselves when they're hunted


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> @Verso: is this a story about little one?
> http://www.24sata.hr/news/vlast-ga-zeli-dati-u-utocistu-a-obitelj-moli-ne-uzimajte-medu-222992
> http://www.24sata.hr/news/hrvati-spasite-medu-i-uzmite-ga-k-sebi-da-zivi-na-velebitu-223218
> 
> i was really hoping that he would come to our shelter for bears, they really care about them there. anyway, i hop he will be happy in Romania having company with other bears


Yeah, that's him.  I was hoping he'd stay in Slovenia, but we're too ridiculous to have an appropriate place for him, so I was also hoping for Croatia, which is much closer than Romania (nothing against Romania, of course). The guy that found the bear punched an inspector that came for him. :laugh: Attack:


----------



## nenea_hartia

^ Well, now I see the Romanian press wrote about Medo (Medo means bear in Slovenian, isn't it?). The cub even have a Facebook page. :lol:


----------



## Verso

^^ Yeah, he's quite popular here.  He could be like Knut, but I guess we're too incompetent for that. 'Medo' (or 'medvedek') is a diminutive for a bear in Slovenian (little bear), bear is 'medved'. His name is actually Srečko (Felix/Lucky).


----------



## seem

I just came back to Slovakia from Croatia. It was just about 11 max 16C today in Austria and Slovakia and we also got some snow in the moutains. Probably the coldest July I have ever experienced. :nuts:

Btw, I saw today some very last bits of snow on the peaks near Ljubljana.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I went to Passau, Germany today, 11°C there too and raining. I share your sentiment about coldest day in July, except for that time (but it was late June) at Jaufenpass/Passo Giovo: 2°C and snowing :nuts:


----------



## bogdymol

Very cold weather in Romania also. Yesterday and today I coudn't go out just in a T-shirt like I should do in July, but I had to dress something warmer. There were 14°C or something like this...

later edit: my mom just returned today from northern Italy (Veneto) and the weather was nice there. She even went for a day at the Adriatic Sea.


----------



## seem

^^ It was about 16C today in Bratislava and very rainy, it was very strange to see people wearing coats in the "summer".. well and I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. :nuts:


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

About 14° in Poland as well together with an awful drizzle. I've read on the news that there was snow in high Tatras 

Fortunately, I can not care about the weather right now. In two days I'll be strolling through beautiful Madrid (and dying from a heat stroke probably :>)


----------



## Falusi

3 years ago in Austria around mid July it was snowing on the Grossglöckner hochalpenstraße and there was around 10-20 cm snow  Only a thin pullover was on me, but it didn't stand in my way for trying out a summer snowfight


----------



## Road_UK

Falusi said:


> 3 years ago in Austria around mid July it was snowing on the Grossglöckner hochalpenstraße and there was around 10-20 cm snow  Only a thin pullover was on me, but it didn't stand in my way for trying out a summer snowfight


A little bot of new snow has fallen in the mountains here around Mayrhofen a few days ago. But that will be gone soon, and temperatures are expecting to rise to the 30's again, like last week.


----------



## Verso

seem said:


> Btw, I saw today some very last bits of snow on the peaks near Ljubljana.


You're kidding. Where? (unless you mean Kamnik-Savinja Alps, but we don't consider them _near Ljubljana_, because that would mean that Ljubljana is almost on the Austrian border :lol


----------



## seem

Fuzzy Llama said:


> About 14° in Poland as well together with an awful drizzle. I've read on the news that there was snow in high Tatras


I am wondering if there will be some snow tomorrow. 



Verso said:


> (unless you mean Kamnik-Savinja Alps, but we don't consider them _near Ljubljana_, because that would mean that Ljubljana is almost on the Austrian border :lol


Exactly.


----------



## hofburg

Verso said:


> because that would mean that Ljubljana is almost on the Austrian border :lol


well, it is. 

Berlin, 13°C yesterday.


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> well, it is.


Heh, I know, but I don't feel like living just 35 km away from Austria because of mountains, and there's no road to the closest part of Austria. The farthest you can get is Kamniška Bistrica. Likewise I don't feel like living just 45 km away from Croatia.


----------



## hofburg

try living 1 km from border, like me.


----------



## Verso

Well, depends on which border you mean. You're not so close to Hungary.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slovenia is a cute little country


----------



## seem

ChrisZwolle said:


> Slovenia is a cute little country


:yes: even if it wasn't so nice I would just love because of its size..


----------



## Road_UK

ChrisZwolle said:


> Slovenia is a cute little country


I love Slovenia. And the people are very friendly, and they all speak English. From all the eastern block states I've been in, Slovenia made the best impression on me!


----------



## DanielFigFoz

As the crow flies Figueira is 125km from the nearest point of Spain, and 179km to the easiest to get to border crossing. To that border crossing its 254km by road, about 2 hours or so


----------



## Ni3lS

My clinched highways are now in the system. Though there is a lot I forgot about..


----------



## g.spinoza

Congrats! But beware, some of your entries have not been recognized:
http://cmap.m-plex.com/trav/niels.log.txt


----------



## CNGL

Thanks for visit my country, but your 58.6 km is nothing compared to the 4,645.5 km I have clinched .
And you have been to the US, but the guy that has clinched more lenght on I-states knows EVERY meter of they!


----------



## Rebasepoiss

To investigate Rober Kubica's serious crash better they...repeated it:

Note how the guardrail goes in through the front of the car and out from the driver's side glass.





Maybe someone can translate the most important bits?


----------



## Verso

Who drove this time?  Was Kubica hurt?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ The real crash happened a while back and yes, he was seriously injured: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/feb/06/robert-kubica-rally-accident


----------



## lukaszek89

^^not much to translate, only that it would be probably fatal accident

+ bad montage of the crash barrier


anyway it's miracle he's still alive...


----------



## hofburg

flickr is back :banana:


----------



## Road_UK

I'd like to start a poll. How do I do that?


----------



## bogdymol

Road_UK said:


> I'd like to start a poll. How do I do that?


You have to open a new thread for that. On *Highways & Autobahns* forum you have this button









If you want to make a new thread with a poll attached I sugest you to make some tests in the *Testing* section.


----------



## Road_UK

Ok, thank you. ^^


----------



## keber

lukaszek89 said:


> + bad montage of the crash barrier


So this happened to new guard rail, not the old one (which are usually less strong)?


----------



## seem

It is 24°C here in Northern Slovakia (coldest part of the country) but I saw a guy in a ski coat. :nuts: 

Finally we will get some warmer weather in the CE.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Greetings from Madrid, the Crazy City! I'm sitting on Pueta de Moros enjoying someone's open WiFi and beautiful weather, much different to the one that was soaking Poland wge I was leaving


----------



## g.spinoza

Going to Berlin for a short vacation, my planned journey there:
http://maps.google.de/maps?saddr=Mo...oRzFwO15bRiAhBA&mra=dpe&mrsp=1&sz=7&via=1&z=7

and back:
http://maps.google.de/maps?saddr=Mo...oRzFwO15bRiAhBA&mra=dpe&mrsp=1&sz=7&via=1&z=7

Just to clinch most possible roads without making the trip too long...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Nice trip 

"Monaco di Baviera" 

A93 is a nice drive, not a lot of traffic (a lot of exits though) and nice scenery every now and then. I'm curious about A72, I've never driven it (except for the short section near Hof). A9 north of Leipzig seems pretty boring though.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ Nice trip
> 
> "Monaco di Baviera"


Yes, in Italian it would get confused with "Monaco" the French-speaking Principality, so we always add "di Baviera" 



> A93 is a nice drive, not a lot of traffic (a lot of exits though) and nice scenery every now and then. I'm curious about A72, I've never driven it (except for the short section near Hof). A9 north of Leipzig seems pretty boring though.


I just bought a new camera, maybe I could take some pictures... but I fear my girlfriend would not understand if I ask her to take pictures of the road :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> I just bought a new camera, maybe I could take some pictures... but I fear my girlfriend would not understand if I ask her to take pictures of the road :lol:


I succesfully made my girlfriend understand my weird passion and now she takes road pictures for me when I drive and she is in the right seat


----------



## g.spinoza

I don't know about your girlfriend but mine is a tough nut to crack... but I can try


----------



## bogdymol

Romania:



Arctic Monkey said:


>


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> "Monaco di Baviera"


that's what i saw first, too :lol: despite living in München for years, he is still pure Italian


----------



## hofburg

interesting route. take photos from regensburg to hof, the rest of the route is already documented.  you could go via Prague as well.


----------



## g.spinoza

hofburg said:


> interesting route. take photos from regensburg to hof, the rest of the route is already documented.  you could go via Prague as well.


Arrived safe and sound in Berlin!

Apparently I convinced my girlfriend to take some random pics, and I think the most covered part is indeed the Regensburg-Hof stretch... then she got tired and slept 

Coming up in the next days  now I'm going to enjoy the city 



x-type said:


> that's what i saw first, too :lol: despite living in München for years, he is still pure Italian


I'm there only since 8 months


----------



## DanielFigFoz

bogdymol said:


> Romania:


In Portuguese, the word is "centro" but its pronounced "centru".

Atenção Zona Perigosa!


----------



## BND

bogdymol said:


> Romania:


I took a picture of that sign too 


BND said:


> My favourite road sign from Romania (DN 1, entering Cluj Napoca from direction Turda):
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I think this is the most curvy arrow put on a road sign ever
> :cheers:


----------



## Verso

Anyone wanna open a thread about South Sudan highways?


----------



## nenea_hartia

Verso said:


> Anyone wanna open a thread about South Sudan highways?


I already found a South Sudan roads map .


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are no paved roads in South Sudan between cities. There are like a dozen paved streets in Juba, and 1 paved road in Wau, the second largest city. There are no paved roads outside these two cities, and there is only one bridge across the White Nile in the entire country.


----------



## Verso

^^









http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sudan_Juba_bridge.jpg


----------



## bogdymol

*Does anyone of you know this guy?*


----------



## seem

^^ Hmm, who is that?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ Looks like the guy I see in the mirror. Why do you ask?


----------



## mapman:cz

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ Looks like the guy I see in the mirror. Why do you ask?


I have the same feeling  Same question, why...

Hint: http://www.facebook.com/pages/httpfacebookcomprofilephp73322363/121974427839701


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Nice one


----------



## bogdymol

:naughty: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?=73322363


----------



## DanielFigFoz

bogdymol said:


> *Does anyone of you know this guy?*


Ach! Who is it?


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> *Does anyone of you know this guy?*


Guys, that's a little weird. I feel like stalked   how did you find this?


----------



## hofburg

^ thats just a link that autogenerates a link to your facebook profile am I right?  otherwise I don't know why g.spinoza feels stalked with a link to my profile :nuts:


----------



## SeanT

Hot summer, a new heat-record has just been made in Pécs, Hungary.
37,9c:cheers:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ My car thermometer yesterday:









^^ Actually it was only around 37-38 C, but it felt like 43...



hofburg said:


> ^ thats just a link that autogenerates a link to your facebook profile am I right?  otherwise I don't know why g.spinoza feels stalked with a link to my profile :nuts:


You are right  That link redirects everyone on his own FB profile. I saw that several users (including 2 mods!) were pranked


----------



## hofburg

also, if you log out you cant see the page, normaly you should see public version


----------



## CNGL

bogdymol said:


> ^^ My car thermometer yesterday:
> ^^ Actually it was only around 37-38 C, but it felt like 43...


Do you have the Europa FM radio in your country??? Interesting, I though it was only in Spain...


----------



## bogdymol

CNGL said:


> Do you have the Europa FM radio in your country??? Interesting, I though it was only in Spain...


It's the romanian EuropaFM.


----------



## CNGL

Incredible, in Spain we have a radio which has the same name.


----------



## Ondro

SeanT said:


> 37,9c:cheers:


How the sheep did you achieve such speed?:eek2:


----------



## bogdymol

Deadeye Reloaded said:


> *Does anybody of you map nerds know which is currently the longest ring road in ze world??? :dunno:
> Could it be the A10 Berliner Ring (Length: 196km)???* :?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ^^
> *NOTE: HOUSTON´S PLANNED RING ROAD (BLACK) :uh:*
> 
> SOURCE


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Tokyo's Ken-O Expressway will be longer than the Houston 3rd Beltway.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Do you have a map of that one?


----------



## x-type

Houston? that must me something else except Sam Houston Tollway, right? because it is cca only 140 km long.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yeah it's the State Highway 99, or Grand Parkway. There is currently only a small section near Katy and Baytown in use. A tender started this week for the next section from I-10 to US 290 on the west side of Houston.


----------



## g.spinoza

hofburg said:


> ^ thats just a link that autogenerates a link to your facebook profile am I right?  otherwise I don't know why g.spinoza feels stalked with a link to my profile :nuts:


got fooled like a fool... :bash:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Someone around here sent me this PM:



> For the **** sake!
> 
> You Romanian joker  that nearly killed me


----------



## hofburg

what about some posts right after bogdymol's, they were asking 'who are themselfs'  but I guess they don't have a fb account.


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> Got back from the trip to Berlin, apparently the only picture my girlfriend was able to take, and that was not regarding wind power plants and hop fields is this one:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A93 northbound at the junction with A6.


girlfriend picture contest :lol:

My girlfriend took many pictures for me some while ago  All *this pictures* are made by her.


----------



## hofburg

I vote for bogdymol's girlfriend (no offense g.spinoza, but your girlfriend seems to be only interested in drinking coffe at the reststop ). btw; is that a peugeot?


----------



## bogdymol

hofburg said:


> *I vote for bogdymol's girlfriend* (no offense g.spinoza, but your girlfriend seems to be only interested in drinking coffe at the reststop )


:tyty: Thank you!:tyty:



hofburg said:


> btw; is that a peugeot?


I remember he wrote somewhere that he drives a Peugeot 207.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

He posted a photo of his Pergeot and I notcied that it had an Italian registration, I think


----------



## g.spinoza

hofburg said:


> I vote for bogdymol's girlfriend (no offense g.spinoza, but your girlfriend seems to be only interested in drinking coffe at the reststop ). btw; is that a peugeot?


 Let's say she was more interested in the new camera I just bought and in the scenery than in the road... she must have taken at least 50 pictures of Bayern hof fields 



bogdymol said:


> I remember he wrote somewhere that he drives a Peugeot 207.


Yes, it is a 207.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

A children's traffic set from Estonian Road Museum:









Photo taken from http://www.taevapiltnik.ee/blog . It's a cool blog. Check it out!
And the museum itself: http://muuseum.mnt.ee/introduction/


----------



## hofburg

flickr is down again.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

BEWARE! Another cow may cross.


----------



## Verso

I see three unconnected consecutive posts.  That sign looks funny, but not so stupid. And that traffic set looks pretty cool, makes me wanna become a child again. (hofburg, I wanted to check out your German photos)


----------



## hofburg

talking about being a child, anyone used to make roads from the sand near rivers or the sea? 

you can see them on flickr.


----------



## bogdymol

hofburg said:


> talking about being a child, anyone used to make roads from the sand near rivers or the sea?


:yes:


----------



## seem

hofburg said:


> talking about being a child, anyone used to make roads from the sand near rivers or the sea?
> 
> you can see them on flickr.


I think once I was trying to build a motorway with a short bridge.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I dammed a small stream in Ireland once, and I made a 100m long road on a beach in Portugal


----------



## nenea_hartia

Hello, guys!

If you want to congratulate *bogdymol*, please see the reason here ! :cheers:


----------



## CNGL

hofburg said:


> talking about being a child, anyone used to make roads from the sand near rivers or the sea?
> 
> you can see them on flickr.


Not that, but once I built with my cousins the Pyramids of Giza in the beach. I once tried to make the Pokemon world, when it was only the Kanto region. And of course many castles and trenches leading to the sea were built by me.


----------



## Verso

Good work, bogdymol.

Once they took my photo without my permission:
http://www.radioaktual.si/?mod=aktualno&action=viewOne&ID=13521


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Do you think that they asked for my permission? :crazy: I found out about this today from SSC-Romanian section. About a week ago they also published a road-video made by me.

@DanielFozFig: you spelled my nickname wrong on RO thread


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Sorry


----------



## x-type

hofburg said:


> talking about being a child, anyone used to make roads from the sand near rivers or the sea?
> 
> you can see them on flickr.


i didn't like sand because i couldn't drive my cars (toys) there. we had a large terrace at home where i used to draw the roads and intersections with chalk, and i used to draw them on large sheets of paper. sand was good for building infrastructure (tunnels), but not for playing itself. however, i only enjoyed making and drawing those roads. after finishing it i played maybe half an hour with it


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I drew on the floor of a flat we rented fora while


----------



## Verso

Hmm, I only became interested in roads when I was 13 or so.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

When I was young, I went along with my parents on family visits. We always turned off at this motorway interchange, and I always wanted to know what there was to see if you continued down the road. I guess that's where it started for me. I also was into maps and geography, being the topographic geek of the school getting straight A's without learning. Google Earth completed it for me. It's among my personal top 3 internet inventions.


----------



## Verso

When I was small, I was so interested in roads that I always slept or threw up when we were driving.  I remember when we went to Salzburg by car in 1992. When I saw a sign by Villach saying ~180 km to Salzburg, I thought it would never end, because I had never seen such a long distance in Slovenia. :lol: When we went to Rome by bus in 1993, I was shocked that we had to drive all night.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> When I was young, I went along with my parents on family visits. We always turned off at this motorway interchange, and I always wanted to know what there was to see if you continued down the road. I guess that's where it started for me. I also was into maps and geography, being the topographic geek of the school getting straight A's without learning. Google Earth completed it for me. It's among my personal top 3 internet inventions.


omg the same thing happened to me!
1. each time when we traveled to Zagreb we passed by a sign which indicated motorway at left turn for 20 km. i was dying to know where it lead, and we never went there. i told myself that i will drive there as soon as i get licence. irony: i was alerady attending driving school, we went to Zagreb and there was road closed due to accident, so we took the bypass on that road which indicated motorway :lol:
2. similar thing, but in opposite direction: we allways took of the Zagreb bypass at the same exit, and i wanted so much to see where the motorways continued :lol:

geography and topography? i knew all European and major world's countries' capitals in the age of 4  my favourite toys were atlas of the world and road map of Yugoslavia


----------



## Verso

^^ Same here, it was pissing me off that we never drove on the southern Ljubljana bypass.


----------



## Falusi

I got interested in roads in 1996 when I was only 3 years old, we went to Italy, and I loved the lots of tunnel we travelled trough.  And since then I'm interested in maps (my father always made me an itinerary when we travelled) and motorways, because the high speed and the design.


----------



## Verso

In 1996 I was in Prague, Budapest, Bratislava and Vienna. First time I was in Zagreb was in 1998 when I was almost 16.


----------



## hofburg

ChrisZwolle said:


> Google Earth completed it for me. It's among my personal top 3 internet inventions.


and street view is the other one? 
anyway,nice to hear all this.


----------



## mapman:cz

Chris, x-type - as I read your posts, I see myself at that age as well  We travelled with my parents a lot between Prague (where we live) and western Slovakia (where my parents come from). So I experienced D1 motorway in person since I was born and I noticed every road construction on our way. 

As for those maps, I learned to read by simply matching country flags with the text and remembering them at the age of 5. I was able to name all capital cities at that time as well and my favourite book was world atlas. At that time I started to collect road maps of Czechoslovakia. As I see, there are significant similarities among us, roadgeeks 

P.S. at the age of 11 I was so pissed by a design of one grade-separated junction, that I wanted to write a letter to the road administration with my own proposal  It took me several years to discover, that this proposal had really sense because of further plans


----------



## seem

mapman:cz said:


> Chris, x-type - as I read your posts, I see myself at that age as well  We travelled with my parents a lot between Prague (where we live) and western Slovakia (where my parents come from). So I experienced D1 motorway in person since I was born and I noticed every road construction on our way.


From I was probably about 4 years old we used to travel to Prague beacuse of the family and sightseeing. I always loved motorways cos we could go fast and journey was comfi but I wasn't geek (well I am not a roadgeek even now). As I can remebre what I loved the most was the "metro". My uncle once said that we are gonna go under Vltava and I will see the fish and I really believed that I will see some.  

Anyway I always loved traveling and my favourite subject has always been goegraphy (and history).


----------



## Verso

mapman:cz said:


> As I see, there are significant similarities among us, roadgeeks


Yeah, apparently we all know geography and country capitals, although it doesn't have any direct connection with roads. (Burkina Faso - Ouagadougou )


----------



## g.spinoza

I don't know if I can call myself road geek, but I do like maps a lot. Every kind of them: road maps, topographic maps, political maps...


----------



## CNGL

I always liked maps, and drawing roads everywhere on those. Right now I have an American road atlas. And I remember my trips to the beach, going on E90 (Then the AP-2 was numbered A-2), and also the ones to Zaragoza, part of the E07 was still a road and around 1998 that road became a motorway (Then numbered N-330, now A-23).


----------



## mapman:cz

Verso said:


> Yeah, apparently we all know geography and country capitals, although it doesn't have any direct connection with roads. (Burkina Faso - Ouagadougou )


American Samoa - Pago Pago :cheer:


----------



## CNGL

Try Niue-Alofi.
Or Pitcairn Islands-Adamstown


----------



## Verso

I never put much stress on dependent territories, sorry.  I don't think I've ever been to any (unless Hong Kong counts, but I doubt).


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> I never put much stress on dependent territories, sorry.  I don't think I've ever been to any (unless Hong Kong counts, but I doubt).


we, road geeks, definitely have much in common  who cares about dependent territories?


----------



## Verso

My grandma gave me these biscuits today. 












Oh, and my car showed 43°C.


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> Oh, and my car showed 43°C.


My car, Sunday:


----------



## Verso

Western Balkans and surrounding areas are boiling these days. It will be somewhat better tomorrow.


----------



## nenea_hartia

Verso said:


> Western Balkans and surrounding areas are boiling these days. It will be somewhat better tomorrow.


It is hot as in hell here also. And very difficult to breath, the air is humid like in a jungle.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Well, it has been raining non-stop in the Netherlands for the past 24 hours  

It was only a freaking 13 C today.


----------



## Verso

^ Like on Triglav.


----------



## RipleyLV

Current view from my window. 









Right now it's 21°C.


----------



## Verso

What annoys me even more are high night temperatures. Obviously much lower than day temps, but you can't sleep, if it's too hot (or you have to turn on A/C, if you have it). I remember last year when the minimum night temp was 22° for a few days (or nights). That's just too hot for sleeping.


----------



## nenea_hartia

Verso said:


> What annoys me even more are high night temperatures. Obviously much lower than day temps, but you can't sleep, if it's too hot (or you have to turn on A/C, if you have it). I remember last year when the minimum night temp was 22° for a few days (or nights). That's just too hot for sleeping.


It's 26°C in my house this evening and it is 22.00 o'clock here. :nuts:


----------



## Nexis

Caught this yesterday after a freak Thunderstorm....


DSC05678 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Aren't transistor radios portable ones? People still use those


----------



## g.spinoza

The ones sold now have no transistors but microchips.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

The chips aren't made of fairies and glittery magic, there are transistors inside them as well


----------



## g.spinoza

Fuzzy Llama said:


> The chips aren't made of fairies and glittery magic, there are transistors inside them as well


Technically you're right. But "transistor radio", for me, is not this one:










but this one:


----------



## Fatfield

^^^^

Where I live in England a small (pocket) radio is still called a transistor radio. A larger radio would be just called a radio.


----------



## Verso

DanielFigFoz said:


> Not many English people drive around Europe


French even less. And not just English people understand English.



Ah, Fribourg... that's where I learnt my basic French.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The upper 200 meters of an important transmission tower collapsed near Smilde, Netherlands.










before:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ What happened?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A fire broke out.










A video is available too:

Watch full screen for full effect


----------



## bogdymol

Guy winning $1M. Please listen to the phone call he too with his father during the show:


----------



## Verso

That part of the tower that falls to the left looks like having fallen from the sky.


----------



## x-type

i always had horrible fear from those high and thin structures like antenas.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Fatfield said:


> ^^^^
> 
> Where I live in England a small (pocket) radio is still called a transistor radio. A larger radio would be just called a radio.


Yes


----------



## Verso

Happy 32nd birthday to christos-greece. He had less than 50,000 posts two days ago, now he has 50,107 posts. :nuts:


----------



## Tin_Can

Verso said:


> Happy 32nd birthday to christos-greece. He had less than 50,000 posts two days ago, now he has 50,107 posts. :nuts:


"Nice!" :lol:


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> The upper 200 meters of an important transmission tower collapsed near Smilde, Netherlands.


Is it possible that this was the reason I could not tune into any fm station in the car today (in Friesland)? 

BTW would you guys on the island also say transistor radio about that thing hidding between the panels in front of your automobiles? Wrong question, one cannot carry this one around... but seriously, do you bother with using that word transistor? But anyway, no one uses that thing anymore around.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Happy 32nd birthday to christos-greece. He had less than 50,000 posts two days ago, now he has 50,107 posts. :nuts:


Excellent!


----------



## Verso

50,142 posts. :lol:


----------



## RipleyLV

:lol:------:lol::lol::lol:-----:lol: 
:lol:------:lol:---:lol:----:lol: 
:lol:------:lol:---:lol:----:lol: 
:lol::lol::lol:--:lol::lol::lol:----:lol::lol::lol:


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> [urč]http://jpg.artige.no/store/7211.jpg[/url]



i will never ever drive anymore!


----------



## Tin_Can

bogdymol said:


> http://jpg.artige.no/store/7211.jpg


If it's not Photoshopped and happened for real,then driver is one lucky bastard.


----------



## Verso

10 days ago we were cooking at 35°C, today it's the coldest summer day in Slovenia in the last 50 years - Ljubljana 13°C, Postojna 11°C. It's been cold whole week and will remain cold in the coming week. Sucks.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands is equally bad. It was 13 C today and it rained the whole livelong day. It wasn't much better past week and won't be much better the coming week.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> 10 days ago we were cooking at 35°C, today it's the coldest summer day in Slovenia in the last 50 years - Ljubljana 13°C, Postojna 11°C. It's been cold whole week and will remain cold in the coming week. Sucks.


same here  at friday i was listening comment of weather guy - he said that after all we will have average july, although we had abnormally hot first 2 weeks, and we have abnormally cold second half. we call it "principle of meat and cabbage" (poor man has cabbage for lunch, rich one has meat, and statisticly they eat _sarma_  )


----------



## seem

Verso said:


> 10 days ago we were cooking at 35°C, today it's the coldest summer day in Slovenia in the last 50 years - Ljubljana 13°C, Postojna 11°C. It's been cold whole week and will remain cold in the coming week. Sucks.


Last Sunday it was about 28-33°C over here, today it was just about 16/18°C. From last Thursday it has been really rainy, many storms and showers, temperatures about 20°C, coldest was 15°C. Luckly this week we will get some better weather, higher temperatures (24-29°C) but many storms.

Basically, July sucks.


----------



## CNGL

Here we had only 22ºC to 25ºC on past days. We should have some 30ºC on these days. What a bizarre weather.


----------



## seem

CNGL said:


> Here we had only 22ºC to 25ºC on past days. We should have some 30ºC on these days. What a bizarre weather.


This is probably the coldest summer ever :nuts:. About 1st of July it was even just about 11°C on a motorway between Graz and Wien.


----------



## TrueBulgarian

seem said:


> This is probably the coldest summer ever :nuts:. About 1st of July it was even just about 11°C on a motorway between Graz and Wien.


It was pretty warm down here: 30°C every day, we even had 35-36°C for a week or so...


----------



## g.spinoza

I have almost 300 pictures of my roadtrip Munich - Garmisch - Innsbruck - Trento. I'm selecting the best ones but I'm unsure where to post them: German, Austria, Italian threads? roadtrips thread?


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I had the same dilemma some time ago


----------



## hofburg

g.spinoza said:


> I have almost 300 pictures of my roadtrip Munich - Garmisch - Innsbruck - Trento. I'm selecting the best ones but I'm unsure where to post them: German, Austria, Italian threads? roadtrips thread?


Can't wait


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> ^^ I had the same dilemma some time ago


How did you solve it?


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> How did you solve it?


1. *Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia - September 2010* (if pics are not loading - _Refresh_)
2. My roadtrip to Stubai skiing area near Innsbruck: I posted pictures in H, A and D threads.


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> I have almost 300 pictures of my roadtrip Munich - Garmisch - Innsbruck - Trento. I'm selecting the best ones but I'm unsure where to post them: German, Austria, Italian threads? roadtrips thread?


post it in all 3 threads (of course, you won't post Austrian photos into German thread). or open new thread. i don't like idea about one thread for all roadtrips.


----------



## Coccodrillo

The Tofana and other mountain around Cortina d'Ampezzo in the Dolomites, after this night's snowfall. No snow lasted on lower roads (no more than around 2200 m asl/6600 ft high), but there was on top stations of some ropeways.






















g.spinoza said:


> I have almost 300 pictures of my roadtrip Munich - Garmisch - Innsbruck - Trento. I'm selecting the best ones but I'm unsure where to post them: German, Austria, Italian threads? roadtrips thread?


What about the Alpine Roads thread?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Did you see James Bond there?


----------



## Verso

I've been to Piz Gloria on Schilthorn (CH) where the James Bond movie _On Her Majesty's Secret Service_ was set.


----------



## Coccodrillo

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ Did you see James Bond there?


It was shot on the other side of the valley, near Monte Cristallo. I usually go skiing there.


----------



## Verso

Wtf-photo of the day:









http://www.panoramio.com/photo/50843078 by alen_koprivnjak


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> Guys... my body is completely malfunctioning... so I'm 99% sure that I got multiple sclerosis after all. If I don't come back, I probably went shoot myself.


Verso... hno:


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> In Germany it is normal to do that, and when I first came here I wasn't comfortable with the idea. I have to say I still don't like it: one should change lane when there is the possibility, not at the last time.
> 
> In Italy is considered rude and should not be done, even if rules are broken all the time.


Sometimes in the UK they have two lorries (sorry trucks) sitting next to each other blocking all the traffic. I don't like the German way, where they do a forced merge. Best way is still in the Netherlands: do use both lanes, and merge in turn at the end (ritsen or zipping). The Dutch advertise as well to do it this way. An empty lane like you see in the UK doesn't make any sense. Even the authorities see that, more and more you see signs telling people to use both lanes when queuing. 

I don't think anyone in Europe cares what is considered rude in Italy, as many European drivers - especially in my company - find the Italian style quite rude on its own. (no distance, aggressive overtaking, overtaking in dead corners, flashing etc etc.)

I actually like driving in Italy, and I adapt when I'm there. You have to, otherwise you're not going anywhere.


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> Guys... my body is completely malfunctioning... so I'm 99% sure that I got multiple sclerosis after all. If I don't come back, I probably went shoot myself.


And i'm 99% sure you will fail .

BTW, I would put extra distance signs on the VMSs when there is nothing to show.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> Guys... my body is completely malfunctioning... so I'm 99% sure that I got multiple sclerosis after all. If I don't come back, I probably went shoot myself.


Noooooooo... :gaah:


----------



## RipleyLV

Verso said:


> Guys... my body is completely malfunctioning... so I'm 99% sure that I got multiple sclerosis after all. If I don't come back, I probably went shoot myself.


GOD
ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)
Y U NO HELP VERSO?


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Guys... my body is completely malfunctioning... so I'm 99% sure that I got multiple sclerosis after all. If I don't come back, I probably went shoot myself.


Forza, Verso! :grouphug:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Oh god, that's bad! I'm really sorry!


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Verso said:


> Guys... my body is completely malfunctioning... so I'm 99% sure that I got multiple sclerosis after all. If I don't come back, I probably went shoot myself.


 I hope that you're just sick.

Please don't shoot yourself


----------



## hofburg

g.spinoza said:


> Forza, Verso! :grouphug:


+1


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Flooding in Bremen:


















the Netherlands also had its share, up to 75 mm fell in a few hours in the east.


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> the Netherlands also had its share, up to 75 mm fell in a few hours in the east.


I just drove in that heavy rain over the afsluitdijk, it was beautifull sunny day on Texel, however.


----------



## Road_UK

At least it's unlikely that the Afsluitdijk will flood, or they will have to rename the IJsselmeer back to the Zuiderzee again...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Actually there is an urgent need for the Afsluitdijk reinforcement.


----------



## Road_UK

Really? How come?


----------



## Road_UK

Actor Rowan Atkinson is in hospital after reportedly being injured in a car crash in Cambridgeshire.

The Blackadder star is believed to have suffered a minor shoulder injury when the car he was driving hit a tree and lamppost and caught fire.

It is understood the crash happened on the A605 at Haddon near Peterborough at 19:30 BST on Thursday.

Media reports said he walked from the McLaren F1 super car and waited with a motorist until an ambulance arrived.

Firefighters arrived on the scene to put out the fire.

A spokeswoman for Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service said: "Crews brought the fire under control by 8.13pm. They made the vehicle safe and used one hose reel to put out the fire.

"There was one casualty but he was not trapped."

East of England Ambulance Service said a man was taken to Peterborough City Hospital with "a minor shoulder injury" following the crash.

Atkinson achieved fame through BBC shows Not The Nine O'Clock News and Blackadder, before gaining international recognition in Mr Bean, in which his hapless character drives an old Mini.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Road_UK said:


> Really? How come?


Because, unlike the Americans* we like to prevent apocalyptic flooding  Surveys have shown the Afsluitdijk cannot withstand a 1000-year flood.

* see the Hurricane Katrina disaster


----------



## alserrod

I have read about a TV spot at Lithuania (Vilnius to be exact) where they talk about problems with traffic and illegal parking.

The spots shows the major breaking with a tank to a Mercedes car parked over a bike-lane.



Has anyone watched it?. Is it possible to upload here?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=82469737&postcount=10673


----------



## Road_UK

ChrisZwolle said:


> Because, unlike the Americans* we like to prevent apocalyptic flooding  Surveys have shown the Afsluitdijk cannot withstand a 1000-year flood.
> 
> * see the Hurricane Katrina disaster


:lol: So they start with the Afsluitdijk first. Someone in the Dutch Parliament in Maastricht may ask a few questions about this to the Dutch Prime-Minister after he returns from his holidays in Amersfoort-On-Sea.


----------



## Surel

Road_UK said:


> At least it's unlikely that the Afsluitdijk will flood, or they will have to rename the IJsselmeer back to the Zuiderzee again...


It wouldn´t flood over , but in a moments, I did not know if the sea is under us on right side or under the car, or in the air... just this makes me appriciate the porous asphalt.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Actually there is an urgent need for the Afsluitdijk reinforcement.


Are they thinking about setting there a railway line as well? It should not pose so big additional costs once they would have to rebuild it anyway.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Surel said:


> Are they thinking about setting there a railway line as well? It should not pose so big additional costs once they would have to rebuild it anyway.


A railway was already proven uneconomical in the 1930's. There's currently a fast bus from Alkmaar to Leeuwarden, once an hour.


----------



## bogdymol

Look what I cought on camera yesterday near future A1 Arad bypass motorway construction site in Romania (exact location):


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I have seen so many photos of people driving down unfinished roads in Eastern Europe, are you allowed to do that?


----------



## bogdymol

^^ The road Google-car and I were on is actually completed with asphalt, but Arad bypass construction site is very close and all the trucks pass on that road so the asphalt is covered with mud from the construction site.


----------



## CNGL

Wow, Mr. Google on a "dirt" road. I know Mr. Google is around here these days...


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I said before: it's not a dirt road, but a road with asphalt covered with dirt because of the construction site nearby


----------



## CNGL

I know, That's why I put "dirt" between brackets, because you said that it was asphalt.

I have never seen the Google car, but my brother saw it a couple of years ago.


----------



## alserrod

I saw it some days ago besides me... I will check next update to see if my car appears.

It was also an Opel Astra but black colour this time.


----------



## bogdymol

This week-end there is *Arad Rally*, part of the *Romanian and Hungarian Rally Championship*. I took some pictures today 





































More pictures *here*.


----------



## bogdymol

Romanian and Hungarian police cars in front of Arad (RO) city hall:


----------



## CNGL

I have something worst than Verso's disease...

Today I eaten Spanish cucumber! :gaah:

But at least it was grown by... me :cucumber:.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

CNGL said:


> I have something worst than Verso's disease...
> 
> Today I eaten Spanish cucumber! :gaah:
> 
> But at least it was grown by... me :cucumber:.


Yeah, I don't think so


----------



## alserrod

After some messages, I get off-line again... 

I have some "new" bussiness these days (and they are not related with trips or holidays...)

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=82595133&postcount=887


----------



## bogdymol

alserrod said:


> After some messages, I get off-line again...
> 
> I have some "new" bussiness these days (and they are not related with trips or holidays...)
> 
> http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=82595133&postcount=887


Very nice. The Romanian greeting is "_să-ți trăiască_"!


----------



## keber

DanielFigFoz said:


> I have seen so many photos of people driving down unfinished roads in Eastern Europe, are you allowed to do that?


Of course it is not. But then many people don't obey that.

Myself I've driven quite few times on those unfinished roads but at least I'm civil engineer, have a knowledge about safety in construction areas and I also know quite some people who work on those project.


----------



## Suburbanist

Weird/silly Nissan ad targeted for the Brazilian market (the second half is also official but only present on Internet versions).

Subtitles aren't good at all, but I guess you'll understand it. It plays with the *horse*power word in Portuguese and compare it to *ponies*.

The truck first shown stuck in the mud is a Subaru.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Crazy Germans:


----------



## Road_UK

Heard a couple of Paddys broke into Ladbrokes during the rioting last night and lost £50


----------



## Morsue

^^


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Houston-style freeway parking.


----------



## alserrod

bogdymol said:


> I recommend you to use Google Maps while doing your clinched highways file. I use it to look for the road number.



I reccomend to use it also for new roads or motorways... but not the google maps (I have found a lot of mistakes and I suppose that you too...). I recommend to use the google street view!!!!!

In fact I remember one tunnel still not opened (maybe will be opened next winter after 11 years on works... maybe later) but in most navigators appeared as opened.

I knew it wasn't opened since one point and I avoided it... but I read news about drivers who followed navigator indications and... suddenly the road was closed!!.

I had a friend who tried a different trick!. He tried to have a look at google about the pics of the new road. And of course it was fantastic until the point where... it was closed.

He recommended (and so do I) to have a look there. Should it does not appear any photo at google street view (and full of photos in the surrounds...) better to choose a different way.

Actually, at least at Google it is correctly updated 



CNGL: Just guess which tunnel I am talking about... : Lol:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

The M74 extension into Glasgow City Centre still hasn't appeared on Google Maps.

A new bypass in Figueira which is right next to the old road and sometimes on top, which is in turn next to the older road which was used by the EN109 until the 1980's appeared on Google Maps a couple of years before work began :lol:


----------



## Road_UK

alserrod said:


> Going through Madrid is all toll-free motorway except those 90km in the N-II.
> 
> They are about 100 km more point to point. Should you want to avoid toll, I recommend it.
> Should you are going to travel in "high season", I recommend it too.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Porto-Bragança-Zamora-Valladolid-Aranda-Soria-Zaragoza-Barcelona.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Which one?. Maybe someone can tell when it was opened.
> In the other hand, I know one motorway that can be useful for avoiding traffic congestions but it appeared in tom-tom and other navigator two years after opening.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Coffee at this time.... : Cheers:


AP-1 going through Vitoria. A paid alternative to the N-1. I think it opened three years ago. A little bit before according to my Tomtom at the time. I always downloaded the latest maps, and sometimes they were a little bit ahead. Before that I either used N-1 or A8 to Bilbao. I don't pay tolls, my boss does - so I just don't care. Same goes for the parallel toll roads going in and out of Madrid leading to all corners of the country, merging at a later stage with the normal motorways.


----------



## alserrod

As far as I know, it wasn't all opened at the same time. Maybe you show the part it wasn't opened still!!.

Anyways (a bit longer but free), A-1 goes from Irun to Vitoria and near Miranda. Later there is no alternative but it is possible to cross Miranda by the motorway paying half and continuing by N-I.


----------



## Road_UK

I've moved this conversation to the Spanish thread. I feel I'm getting angry looks from people resting ;-)


----------



## CNGL

DanielFigFoz said:


> The M74 extension into Glasgow City Centre still hasn't appeared on Google Maps.
> 
> A new bypass in Figueira which is right next to the old road and sometimes on top, which is in turn next to the older road which was used by the EN109 until the 1980's appeared on Google Maps a couple of years before work began :lol:


There is a section on E07, which is already on Google Maps and works haven't begun yet!


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Please don't spam the entire H&A forum.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A driving pig pen turned over at the A12 offramp at Driebergen (near Utrecht, NL)


----------



## nenea_hartia

^ Well, this is epic. :lol:


----------



## Road_UK

Perfect location for a new McDonald's. Some pigs have all the luck in the world...


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

bogdymol said:


> Romanian and Hungarian police cars in front of Arad (RO) city hall:



Is that policewoman wearing high heel shoes? :nuts: How is she going to chase down the bad guys?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

She'll take them off I guess, and they might only be for "ceremonial" purposes, i.e she wouldn't normally wear them


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> A driving pig pen turned over at the A12 offramp at Driebergen (near Utrecht, NL)


that happened once near my street, but with cows. they were all over the road.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> A driving pig pen turned over at the A12 offramp at Driebergen (near Utrecht, NL)


I can't forget A2 motorway from Romania:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Sheep in the road is normal in Ireland


----------



## bogdymol

DanielFigFoz said:


> Sheep in the road is normal in Ireland


But not on a motorway I guess...


----------



## DanielFigFoz

No, but even on national roads sometimes :lol:


----------



## alserrod

At Spain too.. but only in some roads.

In fact, they are old rights of farmers. Weather is very different from north to south and since after Middle age there was a lot of tradition of animal migrations. Six months in the south while winter, six months in the north while summer. And most (or maybe all) of them are for sheeps.

They are old lanes where they have rights to use for sheeps migrations... and they are rights since several years old and never abolished.

As I said, there are not too many migrations lanes (called "cañadas") but should a road has been built over one of these lanes... the rights keep on, and in some important cities the lane crosses by city centre. The rigths are for some streets or avenues only (those coincident with the old lane).

Farmers try not to use these lanes if they cross cities or main roads. Mainly because it is much slower as well as they know they have most of times some paralel lanes. They have no special rights on those lanes (they are just country lanes) but they can use them as any other one.

But... you will see sometimes animals on cities or roads. Why?. The old law was very clear...
To keep the migration lanes rights they have to cross them at least once per year.
They try to cross them sometimes with a few animals only, sometimes in the night or weekend with less traffic... but if they want to keep the rights... animals once per year.

Sometimes they are required to ask a permission in advance in order to prepare police to organize traffic, but after having permissions... they will cross.

Here is one picture about sheeps in the Calle de Alcala at Madrid. It is the natural way from city centre to Zaragoza and Barcelona.














P.S. Pope Benedict XVI will be on this street this week!!


----------



## Road_UK

..


----------



## bogdymol

I know that many of you appreciated* Transfăgărăşan* road from Romania, where one TopGear episode was recorded.

8010978
(from 6:15)

Now it's available on Google Street View


----------



## seem

We got some really warm weather, I am not sure how hot it was but I reckon it was probably about 35/6 last 2 days, yesterday on a journey back to SK it was 34C near Šibenik at 9:00 AM :nuts: then a few km further in the moutains it was just 25C, 2 hrs later in Zagreb it was 31C and finally 30C at 6:00 PM in Bratislava. Today at 4:00 PM it was also about 30C in BA and 2hrs later in Strečno Pass and Martin it was just 22C! :nuts: 

Weird how weather can be so different in such a small countries if you travel to the coastal/lowland/mountainious areas.


----------



## bogdymol

:crazy:


AT30 said:


> :uh:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

:lol: I could see them doing that in Portugal


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> still 30°C at 21:22 o'clock in Nova Gorica :nuts:


Yesterday 36°C near Udine


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Yesterday 36°C near Udine


pay attention on the time when they had 30 in Gorica


----------



## seem

bogdymol said:


> :crazy:


Sereď,Slovakia :crazy2: -


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Tell me that I'm wrong and that wire dosen't go *THROUGH* the building :bash: :crazy:


----------



## seem

Yeah and you still haven't heard about bottles filled with piss which Romanian builders put into walls in some of the best apartments in Bratislava. :crazy2:


----------



## italystf

seem said:


> Yeah and you still haven't heard about bottles filled with piss which Romanian builders put into walls in some of the best apartments in Bratislava. :crazy2:


It's amazing:lol::lol::lol:. Any source? Why they do that? How it was discovered?


----------



## bogdymol

I'm will be doing a little roadtrip next week and I have some questions for you:

Can tolls in Croatia be payed with € and/or credit card? Do petrol stations accept € and/or credit card for refueling in HR?
I will go on Zagreb - Ljubljana motorway. Where should I stop and buy the Slovenian vignette?
Is there a toll for parking in the city-centers of Zagreb and Ljubljana? How is the payment done?

Thank you


----------



## DanielFigFoz




----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> I'm will be doing a little roadtrip next week and I have some questions for you:
> 
> Can tolls in Croatia be payed with € and/or credit card? yes (American, Master, Diners, Visa - all accepted everywhere)
> Do petrol stations accept € and/or credit card for refueling in HR? € - officially not, but somewhere they will accept it. cards - yes.
> 
> I will go on Zagreb - Ljubljana motorway. Where should I stop and buy the Slovenian vignette? booth at the border crossing - you cannot miss it. or first petrol station in Slovenia - nobody's gonna fine you for those 800 metres. you can buy it at all Petrol gas stations in Croatia
> 
> Is there a toll for parking in the city-centers of Zagreb and Ljubljana? How is the payment done? Zagreb - yes, in almost whole city. you have those payment machines at each parking lot where you insert coins and get a ticket which you put on visible place in your car. in garages you take entrance card and pay at booth at exit to cashier boy, or you pay it on machine before getting into car, and just insert anulled ticket at machine while exiting[/qoute]
> 
> you're welcome


----------



## bogdymol

Thank you for your fast answer _x-type._

One more thing: I noticed on this website that the motorways I will be traveling in Croatia, Slovenia and Austria have some tunnels (some even 100 m short). This tunnels have different speed limits (110, 100 or even ridiculously 80 km/h). My question is: which is the speed buffer in this countries? For example, in my country you can get fined only if you drive [speed limit]+10 km/h. 

I won't drive very fast and I will try to obey the speed limits, but it might happen to not notice one (for example at that 100 m long (or short ) tunnel).


----------



## seem

italystf said:


> It's amazing:lol::lol::lol:. Any source? Why they do that? How it was discovered?


Friend of mine worked there as a manager. Btw bogdymol I didn't want to be offensive, just take it as another funny story from Northern Balkan. 



bogdymol said:


> Can tolls in Croatia be payed with € and/or credit card?


It is possible, if you can use make payment just by credit card so you ll aviod of these massive traffic jams with people who want to pay by "gotovina". On Saturday we nearly end up in one of these but then I have realised that I heard it is quicker if you pay by credit card. It took us probably about 5 mins, if we paid by cash I reckon it would be like 1/2 hrs.


----------



## bogdymol

seem said:


> Btw bogdymol I didn't want to be offensive, just take it as another funny story from Northern Balkan. .


It's ok. Even though they are Romanian it dosen't mean that the entire population of the country is like that 

Thank you for the answer about HR tolls.


----------



## seem

bogdymol said:


> It's ok. Even though they are Romanian it dosen't mean that the entire population of the country is like that


Yeah of course, but you know there are people who just like to mention every bad thing and want to make you a nation of gypsies and criminals. Actually people (even) in Slovakia think that Romanians=Gypsies. hno:

That's alright.


----------



## bogdymol

seem said:


> Yeah of course, but you know there are people who just like to mention every bad thing and want to make you a nation of gypsies and criminals. Actually people (even) in Slovakia think that Romanians=Gypsies. hno:


I guess you also have enough local gypsyes 

#1 #2 #3 *#4* *#5*

But this dosen't mean that Slovakians = Gypsies.


----------



## seem

That's why some villages are still romantic after communists ruined Slovak countryside  - 

They even get Romanian TV!


----------



## g.spinoza

seem said:


> Yeah of course, but you know there are people who just like to mention every bad thing and want to make you a nation of gypsies and criminals. Actually people (even) in Slovakia think that Romanians=Gypsies. hno:
> 
> That's alright.


I'm sure more than 80% of Italians think that "Rom" is just an abbreviation for "Romanian". :bash:


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> I'm sure more than 80% of Italians think that "Rom" "Rrom" is just an abbreviation for "Romanian". :bash:


Fixed it for you


----------



## Fatfield

seem said:


> We had these cars in Slovakia 2 years ago but still there is no street view. hno:


Thats because the gypos pinched the film!


----------



## seem

Fatfield said:


> Thats because the gypos pinched the film!


No, now they probably have these cars in the back garden so they can use batteries for their TVs and petrol for heating in winter and how luxury are gonna be these seats in their living rooms!


----------



## Penn's Woods

TV alert for American roadgeeks: the next season - no. 17 I believe - of (British) Top Gear starts tonight (9 eastern) on BBC America.


----------



## alserrod

x-type said:


> btw Street View finally comes to Croatia




It is the same Opel Astra it was at Spain some months ago.


----------



## g.spinoza

seem said:


> But is so funny and ridicoulous in a country like Slovakia, where people get angry when Austrians think of us as criminals but they do same to Romanians and Ukrainians. Well, Slovaks think of UA and Romania like about shit holes, same as Austrians and Germans think of Slovakia. Fair enough lol.


Stereotypes CAN change. In the '90s in Italy the Albanians were the most hated, feared, and were depicted as thieves and rapists (watch the beautiful movie 'Lamerica' and you can see what Italians thought of Albanians). Now almost nobody in Italy share that idea. Albanians are seen as workers and decent people, and they are well integrated into our society.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ What about Romanians?


----------



## g.spinoza

Unfortunately it's vice versa. Before the 90s Italians, frankly, didn't care for Romanians. As I said Italians think that Roms=Romanians so now possibly they are the most feared.


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> Unfortunately it's vice versa. Before the 90s Italians, frankly, didn't care for Romanians. As I said Italians think that Roms* Rr*oms=Romanians so now possibly they are the most feared.


Fixed it for you... again


----------



## Attus

bogdymol said:


> ^^ What about Romanians?


Italians have a very bad experience about them. If an Italian meets a Romanian, 90% that s/he is a gipsy, living in Italy, not working, etc. (we all know the situation). Almost no chance to learn that there are another kind of people in Romania as well.


----------



## bogdymol

Attus said:


> Italians have a very bad experience about them. If an Italian meets a Romanian, 90% that s/he is a gipsy, living in Italy, not working, etc. (we all know the situation). Almost no chance to learn that there are another kind of people in Romania as well.


In fact, most of the Romanians are nice people, but unfortunatelly only the ones doing bad things stand out. The usual Romanian guy, even if he works in Italy he does this without disturbing other citizens so most of the Italians see only our _"best"_ citizens in the news.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> Fixed it for you... again


I'm just using the Italian word 



Attus said:


> Italians have a very bad experience about them. If an Italian meets a Romanian, 90% that s/he is a gipsy, living in Italy, not working, etc. (we all know the situation). Almost no chance to learn that there are another kind of people in Romania as well.


Unfortunately, even if we finally understand that Rroms.not.equal.to.Romanians, there are still Romanians proper who are seen as violent and thieves. And Italian newspapers never fail to mention the nationality of those who commit a crime:

http://milano.corriere.it/milano/notizie/cronaca/11_agosto_22/crema-ladri-veloci-1901338579356.shtml

for instance.


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> I'm just using the Italian word


Untill few years ago they were called țigani (gypsy), but they protested and say that they are Rroms, not gypsies. I don't like this change because Rrom can easly be confused with Romanian.



g.spinoza said:


> Unfortunately, even if we finally understand that Rroms.not.equal.to.Romanians, there are still Romanians proper who are seen as violent and thieves. And Italian newspapers never fail to mention the nationality of those who commit a crime:
> 
> http://milano.corriere.it/milano/notizie/cronaca/11_agosto_22/crema-ladri-veloci-1901338579356.shtml
> 
> for instance.


I'm not saying that proper Romanians are angels. We all have our bad guys (even you have proper Italians doing bad things; I've even seen on TV Italians doing bad things here, in Romania). I'm just saying that from the Romanian population of my country, just a small percent of the population does nasty things, but a considerably higher percent from the Gypsy population is doing bad things...


----------



## CNGL

Hi guys. I'm back. I managed to get banned for vacation :lol:. That surpasses the fact that last year ChrisZwolle passed his vacation "in the brig" (In Brig, Switzerland)



ChrisZwolle said:


>


In SSC Spain is even worse. A forumer passed away a week ago.


----------



## bogdymol

CNGL said:


> Hi guys. I'm back. I managed to get banned for vacation :lol:. That surpasses the fact that last year ChrisZwolle passed his vacation "in the brig" (In Brig, Switzerland)


Were you really temporarly banned from SSC or you were just joking?



CNGL said:


> In SSC Spain is even worse. A forumer passed away a week ago.


RIP


----------



## Road_UK

bogdymol said:


> In fact, most of the Romanians are nice people, but unfortunatelly only the ones doing bad things stand out. The usual Romanian guy, even if he works in Italy he does this without disturbing other citizens so most of the Italians see only our _"best"_ citizens in the news.


I agree that Romanians are - in fact - nice people. When I crossed the Hungarian-Romanian border, I showed my passport to cheerfull police officers (different then Austrians, who are as miserable as hell!!!) and in Romania itself the people were very friendly. And you can say what you want about the gypsy's, but among them are the most beautiful women in the world! 

But the Romanian gangsters in Italy, Austria and Spain are a bit of a problem. They don't represent their country though.


----------



## bogdymol

Road_UK said:


> ]And you can say what you want about the gypsy's, but among them are the most beautiful women in the world! ]


Allow me to disagree on this one. I find most of the gypsy women ugly and completely unattractive. Romanian girls are much more nicer. Check this thread on the Romanian SSC section: *Hot Romanian Girls*


----------



## Road_UK

bogdymol said:


> Allow me to disagree on this one. I find most of the gypsy women ugly and completely unattractive. Romanian girls are much more nicer. Check this thread on the Romanian SSC section: *Hot Romanian Girls*


I'll never forget this particular girl I saw when I was there. She had a long dress, flowers in her beautiful long black hair, and the most beautiful smile ever. Bare feet. She smiled at me as I was overtaking. She was sitting on the back of a carriage, pulled by a donkey.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I must agree with bogdymol. 100% of Romanì girls and women I saw are ugly, obese and dirty.


----------



## nenea_hartia

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ I must agree with bogdymol. 100% of Romanì girls and women I saw are ugly, obese and dirty.


+1
I don't know where the legend about their beauty comes from. It might be possible to see some beautiful girls among them, but so far I couldn't find one.


----------



## CNGL

bogdymol said:


> Were you really temporarly banned from SSC or you were just joking?


Yes, I was temporally banned from SSC, because I said the forumer that passed away died at the same age as some famous musicians, like Jimi Hendrix or Amy Winehouse. And in middle of that I went away for vacation.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

seem said:


> The warmest day I have ever experienced in england it was about 27C in June, the hottest day of the year it was about 30C max and they stopped the trains. [/url]


What's this with the English and their trains? They stop them when there is any amount of snow and when there is finally a bit of sun... What about spring and autumn, what's the railways' excuse for not working on these seasons?


----------



## Penn's Woods

As if the earthquake wasn't bad enough, we're now expecting a major hurricane along the East Coast. At the moment it's aiming right at New York....


----------



## Penn's Woods

seem said:


> The warmest day I have ever experienced in england it was about 27C in June, the hottest day of the year it was about 30C max and they stopped the trains.
> 
> "Temperatures will hit 31C (88F) in some parts of the country, beating the highs of 28C (82F) that made yesterday which was the hottest day of the year."
> 
> "And in Newhaven, East Sussex, a Co-op funeral store almost burned down when the sun reflected off a window."
> 
> "The sizzling light acted like a prism and set fire to flowers in the 28C heat. Firefighters took an hour putting out the fire after a member of the public spotted smoke in the shop window and raised the alarm."
> 
> "In Brighton, steps leading to the beach even started to melt. Brighton and Hove council said that recently laid asphalt had could not withstand the heat combined with heavy usage."
> 
> "A heat warning issued by the Met Office on Friday remained in place, alerting people to the possibility the weather could have a significant effect on health."
> 
> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...lled-heat-hottest-day-FIVE-YEARS-hits-UK.html


28c ignites things in England? Shit, that's a below-normal summer day here. How on Earth did the British ever manage to conquer the world?!


----------



## alserrod

Can I write about last weekend in the inner-Spain temperatures????????


----------



## Penn's Woods

alserrod said:


> Can I write about last weekend in the inner-Spain temperatures????????


¿Porqué nó?

I keep meaning to watch the Vuelta.


----------



## bogdymol

35 C is the prognosis for today in my town


----------



## SeanT

Road_UK said:


> 30c is the hottest day in Denmark?


 ..as I said in this summer, yes.


----------



## Attus

The early morning minimal temperature was 28C (82F) here today. 
Once again: the minimum, in dawn. Crazy.


----------



## Road_UK

Fuzzy Llama said:


> What's this with the English and their trains? They stop them when there is any amount of snow and when there is finally a bit of sun... What about spring and autumn, what's the railways' excuse for not working on these seasons?


They will stop the trains in autumn due to the wrong type of leaves on the tracks. It's true, I'm not kidding you, they do stop trains when there are a few leaves on the tracks! Britain has become such a sad country with their Health and Safety shit. At times I wish Churchill was still alive.


----------



## seem




----------



## CNGL

Wow. Here, they don't activate the yellow warning until we hit 35ºC. Of course, we have a hotter climate.


----------



## seem

^^ I reckon we get about 2 weeks a year when it is hotter than 35, I love warm weather but actually I don't really miss temperatures higher than 35C, I would be happy if it was about 30 C from June to September all the time, that's ideal temperature for me. 

Well yellow warning means that the weather conditions are common for time of the year but it can affect more sensitive people and also there is a higher risk of forest fires. 

Orange code means that the weather is not so usuall and above the average. They have about 37C in the South.


----------



## Road_UK

Testing my first upload through my phone. Please meet my lovely dog Wanda...


----------



## AtD

35'C isn't hot. It's pleasant!

28 is jumper weather.

10 is freezing cold.

Sincerely,

Australia.


----------



## Attus

seem said:


> They have about 37C in the South.


37-39 in Hungary as well. Never ever (at least never since the recording of temperatures) did we have such a heat in this period of the year.


----------



## Attus

AtD said:


> 35'C isn't hot. It's pleasant!


Whuuhh, 35 is f**g hot  By "pleasant" I mean 23-25°C


----------



## seem

AtD said:


> 35'C isn't hot. It's pleasant!
> 
> 28 is jumper weather.
> 
> 10 is freezing cold.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Australia.


This is how a greenery looks like here, if you haven't had a chance to see it yet - 










http://www.flickr.com/photos/granatco/5816300566/


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> They will stop the trains in autumn due to the wrong type of leaves on the tracks. It's true, I'm not kidding you, they do stop trains when there are a few leaves on the tracks! Britain has become such a sad country with their Health and Safety shit. At times I wish Churchill was still alive.


Rakes and leaf-blowers are as rare in England as snowplows, I take it?


----------



## Road_UK

Yep, as well as common sense. Heathrow has gone beyond a joke when a few snow flakes fall.


----------



## Penn's Woods

seem said:


> ^^ I reckon we get about 2 weeks a year when it is hotter than 35, I love warm weather but actually I don't really miss temperatures higher than 35C, I would be happy if it was about 30 C from June to September all the time, that's ideal temperature for me.
> 
> Well yellow warning means that the weather conditions are common for time of the year but it can affect more sensitive people and also there is a higher risk of forest fires.
> 
> Orange code means that the weather is not so usuall and above the average. They have about 37C in the South.


I'm with you. I love warm weather and, even more so, daylight in the evening. (My least favorite time of year is November and early December, rather than February: I'd choose cold over dark if I had to.) But when it gets to the point where you're sweating every time you step outside, it's too much.



Road_UK said:


> Testing my first upload through my phone. Please meet my lovely dog Wanda...


Awww. Does she ride shotgun? (Except to the UK, I suppose.)



AtD said:


> 35'C isn't hot. It's pleasant!
> 
> 28 is jumper weather.
> 
> 10 is freezing cold.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Australia.


35c is not pleasant when it's humid. Heck, 25c is not pleasant when it's humid. (And 35F is cold, but do even the British know that any more?)


----------



## Road_UK

In Zillertal. Right at the end of it where it splits into four side valleys. Peaks up to 3500 mtrs.


----------



## seem

Road_UK said:


> In Zillertal. Right at the end of it where it splits into four side valleys. Peaks up to 3500 mtrs.


Around here we have peaks up to 1700  but first snow on them might be in late Ocober. These moutains around here are not so high but the climate is so different. I am wondering how different it is if you compare Zillertal to Vienna but I reckon the difference is huge, isn't it?


----------



## Road_UK

It's safe to say that. We're on the south side of the Alps, close to the Italian border and temperatures between 30 and 40c are quite normal in summer. In April we've hit 36c and the ski season wasn't even finished yet.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Interesting statistics... 30 % of the severely injured motorists were under influence of alcohol. 25 % of the severely injured motorists had more than 0.5‰ in their blood in the Netherlands. This is 30 % in Belgium, according to a survey by the European Commission. It's still unbelievable that they don't take blood tests of deceased motorists. The full extent of the influence of alcohol in traffic cannot be fully understood. It's only guessing how many killed motorists were under the influence of alcohol, but considering 30 % of the severely injured ones had too much alcohol, it would be something around those lines.


----------



## alserrod

In Spain there was a very strong campaing against alcohol some years ago and people is more made aware with the problem on road.

In fact, the campaing for this summer was "now you are used to do not going fast, now you are used to do not drink alcohol... remember to respect safety distance".

This is... they know that people is aware about speed and alcohol.


----------



## g.spinoza

I decided to let spinoza_passenger account in clinched highways die. There are simply too many roads I don't remember, when I was a kid and my father took my family to vacation. And I hate not being precise.


----------



## g.spinoza

Can someone comment on this crazy plan by the Dutch to _build_ a 2000m-high mountain on their soil?
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90777/7567786.html


----------



## ChrisZwolle

that idea pops up from time to time. It would be sort of cool if they actually did it.


----------



## Suburbanist

They should build a new moutain in the yet-to-be-reclaimed area of the Markermeer, ex-Zuiderzee. They could then create some trails from Merken to Lelystad. But to actually have snow enough for skiing, given the atmospheric conditions of the area, a mountain would have to be at least 1.400m high. To have a decent ski course, 2.300m high.


----------



## Road_UK

We have several decent ski slopes from 630 mtrs up to 3200 mtrs. Where the snow won't fall will be compensated with snow makers. In Mayrhofen the downhill run from 2000 mtrs to the village at 630 mtrs is nearly always snow machine controlled as we hardly had any snow in the valley last winter apart from December. The Abfahrt remained open anyway.


----------



## Road_UK




----------



## ChrisZwolle

I love those maps  I used to have many of them when I still lived at my parents house.


----------



## seem

Road_UK said:


> as we hardly had any snow in the valley last winter apart from December.


How come? I thought you get a lot of snow there, it is high enough and all around are high moutains. Btw many years ago we went skiing there, I should find out where exactly was our hotel.


----------



## Road_UK

Plenty of snow in the mountains, just not in the valley. We had some pretty high temperatures last winter. Find out which hotel, I will know it for sure.


----------



## Road_UK

ChrisZwolle said:


> I love those maps  I used to have many of them when I still lived at my parents house.


Have you been in Mayrhofen?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Road_UK said:


> Have you been in Mayrhofen?


No. I've been to Kitzbühel, Kirchberg, Imst, Kuhtai, Pitztal, Oetztal, Kaunertal and Silvretta, though not recently. I've also been in many areas of Switzerland, though we never went skiing in the Alps, because it was too expensive for a family of 5, so we went skiing in Germany (Harz, Sauerland, Bayerischer Wald).


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Can someone comment on this crazy plan by the Dutch to _build_ a 2000m-high mountain on their soil?
> http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90777/7567786.html


There's a saying: God made the Earth, but man made Holland....

2000 meters seemes excessive. Are we sure the Dutch can cope with that sort of altitude?


----------



## Road_UK

Ok so a mountain in the Netherlands. You do know
that apart from building the damn thing, the Dutch will need to upgrade the entire road network. Roads in and around Tirol are chucka-blocka on saturdays in the winter. A mountain would result in a major tourism boost from Germany, Belgium, northern France and possibly the UK. Can Holland and its road network handle this kind of attention?


----------



## Surel

Road_UK said:


> Ok so a mountain in the Netherlands. You do know
> that apart from building the damn thing, the Dutch will need to upgrade the entire road network. Roads in and around Tirol are chucka-blocka on saturdays in the winter. A mountain would result in a major tourism boost from Germany, Belgium, northern France and possibly the UK. Can Holland and its road network handle this kind of attention?



I dont really think that a mountain would provide with such major winter sport opportunity. I dont know much about climatology, but I guess that the Gulf stream would make it impossible also in 2000 meters. It doesnt really matter if you can provide with artificial snow for the whole winter, if it rains from time to time (meaning every day...).


----------



## Road_UK

If it rains at sea level in the winter in Holland it will snow at 2000 meters. Even the Pennines in northern England gets white summits in the winter from time to time, and they're not that high.


----------



## Montrealer

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Québec issue is interesting, because they don't use ARRÊT in France.


There are tons of countries / places where STOP isn't used. Quebec, Chile, Mexico, etc basically almost every country except the English speaking ones... and France.


----------



## Montrealer

Road_UK said:


> Canadian French it totally different then French French anyway. Canadian-French films are subtitled in France because the French don't understand a word otherwise...


These two varities of French are not "totally different". The differences between Quebec French and France French are comparable to the ones between British and American English.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Montrealer said:


> There are tons of countries / places where STOP isn't used. Quebec, Chile, Mexico, etc basically almost every country except the English speaking ones... and France.


Nearly all non-English speaking European countries use STOP nonetheless. I've never seen ALTO in Spain.


----------



## il brutto

Penn's Woods said:


> Things visible through a window, well, if it's visible to the Streetview car, it's still visible to anyone who should happen to be passing, so those people should be more careful about putting their blinds down. But I see their point of view....


The theory behind this is the so-called expected privacy. Maybe if you live on the ground floor in a busy street and leaving the blinds up it's kind of your problem, but Google also comes to more remote places where two cars pass by every day, or maybe you live in the last house in a dead-end street etc and having a photo online for all the world to see isn't the same as the chance of a random person coming there and taking a photo (and unlike Google cars they might still decide not to take a photo in certain direction).


----------



## Road_UK

ChrisZwolle said:


> Nearly all non-English speaking European countries use STOP nonetheless. I've never seen ALTO in Spain.


All European countries use STOP.


----------



## Road_UK

Montrealer said:


> These two varities of French are not "totally different". The differences between Quebec French and France French are comparable to the ones between British and American English.


But the French can't understand you...


----------



## x-type

Road_UK said:


> All European countries use STOP.


i think you can still find DUR in Turkey


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Québec issue is interesting, because they don't use ARRÊT in France.


Which surprised me on my first trip to France. But Quebec (a) is more paranoid, at least at times, about protecting French, because they're really in a sea of English-speakers* and (b) isn't a signatory to whatever European treaty says that "stop" signs shall always say "STOP," and nothing else. I think there are tri-lingual (English/French/Inuit) stop signs in northern Canada.

*which I'm not criticizing, am generally supportive of, and it's none of my business anyway.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Montrealer said:


> These two varities of French are not "totally different". The differences between Quebec French and France French are comparable to the ones between British and American English.


I studied French from seventh grade on, majored in it in college, try to keep up (news sites and forums, and lots of reading) and consider myself near fluent. I've been to Quebec many times and try to function in French when I'm there. But - as far as I can tell - there are multiple varieties of French in Quebec ranging from standard-French-with-a-bit-of-an-accent all the way to "joual." I've encountered plenty of people in Montreal I found incomprehensible, and the last time I was there I found some non-news shows on TV incomprehensible, whereas I have no trouble at all with a Radio-Canada news broadcast.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Nearly all non-English speaking European countries use STOP nonetheless. I've never seen ALTO in Spain.


I thought - as I suggested two posts ago - that saying STOP in English on stop signs was a treaty obligation in Europe?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Spain, Portugal and of course the UK and probably a few other places didn't ratify that treaty, so they can put up whatever they feel like.


I think that the differences between Quebecois French and French French are a bit like Portuguese Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, the French can't understand Quebeckers and Brazilians can't understand the Portuguese, but vice-versa isn't the case.


----------



## Road_UK

I speak both English and Dutch, which are my native languages, fluent German as I live in Austria, and I'm working on my French, as France is my favourite country in Europe.


----------



## Road_UK

DanielFigFoz said:


> Spain, Portugal and of course the UK and probably a few other places didn't ratify that treaty, so they can put up whatever they feel like.
> 
> 
> I think that the differences between Quebecois French and French French are a bit like Portuguese Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, the French can't understand Quebeckers and Brazilians can't understand the Portuguese, but vice-versa isn't the case.


All Brits can understand American English but Americans cannot always understand British English. Not only some of the often horrible dialects (I hate Brummy, Geordy and Scouse the most) but also that Del Boy English you hear in the South East.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I can't speak French all that well, but I can understand it. I could get along with quite basic things, and with complex vocabulary; with long words you can normally say something in English with a French accent, as the English word came from French. I hope to become fluent within a couple of years



Road_UK said:


> All Brits can understand American English but American cannot always understand British English. Not only some of the often horrible dialects (I hate Brummy, Geordy and Scouse the most) but also that Del Boy English you hear in the South East.


Yeah mate, I totally ear ya der innit. sumtimes we ave to ear carefully da illbilleys from West Vaginia and Tennasea innit, cas sumtimes its like waahh daa fucck ya noe wut i means? GOOO EENGGLAANDD, push daaa bludy fruggs outta Calaii and luut the sheep booze


----------



## bigmishu

In Brasov, RO:naughty::naughty:


Picture 018 by OMC_RO, on Flickr


----------



## Road_UK

DanielFigFoz said:


> Yeah mate, I totally ear ya der innit. sumtimes we ave to ear carefully da illbilleys from West Vaginia and Tennasea innit, cas sumtimes its like waahh daa fucck ya noe wut i means? GOOO EENGGLAANDD, push daaa bludy fruggs outta Calaii and luut the sheep booze


wo u on abt u silly sod urop is da best fing dat apend 2 england its true tho innit lol if we keep dis up we may lern ow 2 spel proply coz its fukin shit da crap we cum out wiv on facbuk n stuf so i say fugit im goin 2 calai wiv my england tshirt coz its abrod innit fukin tossas french cant cuk anyway, im omesik alredy miss my chiken nuggets lol luv u loads xxx


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Road_UK said:


> wo u on abt u silly sod urop is da best fing dat apend 2 england its true tho innit lol if we keep dis up we may lern ow 2 spel proply coz its fukin shit da crap we cum out wiv on facbuk n stuf so i say fugit im goin 2 calai wiv my england tshirt coz its abrod innit fukin tossas french cant cuk anyway, im omesik alredy miss my chiken nuggets lol luv u loads xxx


aa uu basstartd, ur chav spel iz bettr dan min innit, jaa we musy gu ta calai wivv ur england shirts dat we wunt evn wear to su uff ur tatuus und ur fatzz. dose frugs suld se wut were made uff innit. 

ingland ingland inglad. gud sav da qeen! :banana:


----------



## nenea_hartia

Ooooh, that Trabant is splendid!!!


----------



## Road_UK

fukin el


----------



## Penn's Woods

DanielFigFoz said:


> aa uu basstartd, ur chav spel iz bettr dan min innit, jaa we musy gu ta calai wivv ur england shirts dat we wunt evn wear to su uff ur tatuus und ur fatzz. dose frugs suld se wut were made uff innit.
> 
> ingland ingland inglad. gud sav da qeen! :banana:


Oy.

Three [EDIT: Four] things I'd like definitions of, please:

Chav, prat, pillock and pikey.
It would help me understand Top Gear.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> I have been in Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Andorra and Spain and in the process drove through Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium as well. 10.140km total.


You missed France. How did you go from Italy to Spain\Andorra?


----------



## bogdymol

^^ He took the ferry from Italy :troll:


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Besides thinking about my problems every minute of every day I was in the Radenci spa to cool off my mind a bit. Perhaps you've heard of Radenska mineral water.


one of the coolest commercials ever:


----------



## Verso

^^ Even better: Radenska links together Yugoslav nations. 






(Slovenia - Croatia - BIH - Vojvodina - Central Serbia - Kosovo - Montenegro - Macedonia)


----------



## hofburg

:nuts:


----------



## x-type

yeah, that one is a classic


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Verso said:


> Thanks. So, where were you guys on vacation this summer? I was only in a spa (Radenci), I really needed it.


Budapest and Vienna...to see the ex-capitals of the Austro-Hungarian empire


----------



## italystf

Radenska is the only foreign mineral water brand I can find in Italy.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Radenska is the only foreign mineral water brand I can find in Italy.


and one of really rare at HR market. we are really closed market for foreign waters. so far i saw only Radenska (only with gas), Sanpelegrino and recently i saw Evian with such horrible price that i don't know what crazy mushrooms has an importer eaten - selling imported water on strong and closed water market with double price - no way.


----------



## CNGL

^^ Same in Spain. So far I only saw Evian once.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Thinking about it you can't get any in Portugal

In the UK you get a few French ones


----------



## seem

Rebasepoiss said:


> Budapest and Vienna...to see the ex-capitals of the Austro-Hungarian empire


and what about Bratislava?!  jk

I also went to Vienna one night, straight after I came from the UK we went there for a tea, we had delicious Figelmuller Schnitzel, what a great welcome to my A-H motherland  . I wanted to go to W also last weekend but finally I didn't go there, I might go in Ocober tho. 

btw, seriously, after I came back from the UK, if I travel to ex-Habsburg countries I just found it kind of as I am still at home. Of course the difference is massive especially between Austria and Slovakia, but still these two countries are so much closer related snd have so much in common than with UK .


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Radenska is the only foreign mineral water brand I can find in Italy.


You can't buy Evian in Italy?


----------



## Escher

Huge pileup in Imigrantes highway (SP-160) near São Paulo, due heavy mist. Approximately 300 cars and trucks!!!


----------



## Wilhem275

Sh*t. Being crushed between two trucks is one of my worst nightmares.


----------



## g.spinoza

CNGL said:


> ^^ Same in Spain. So far I only saw Evian once.


That's true also for beers. In the whole Andalucia they only served me Cruzcampo beer - freshwater for someone accustomed to German beers


----------



## BND

Even though Hungary has loads of mineral waters, you can find foreign brands too, like Jana from Croatia, San Benedetto from Italy, Borsec from Romania or Römerquelle from Austria. Of course Evian is also available at some posh places


----------



## panda80

^^Same in Romania. Even if we have some of the best mineral springs in Europe, you can also find in supermarkets Evian, Perrier and Devin (a bulgarian brand). We also have Jana, but with some fruits aroma. For me Borsec is the best mineral water.


----------



## Fatfield

Evian = naive. Bottled water is also more expensive than unleaded petrol.

Tap water is the best you can get.


----------



## x-type

Fatfield said:


> Evian = naive. Bottled water is also more expensive than unleaded petrol.


that's what i actually like to say, too  excellent example of back to front reading  but what can we do when they've made such a fame of water.


----------



## Verso

Ok, now I took my mum's car... and the clutch breaks. :nuts::nuts::nuts: Looks like conspiracy on the World Car Free Day. I better not ask my sister to lend me her car, it will probably explode.


----------



## hofburg

how can a clutch break?  I was in Paris centre today with my car. no sign of World car free day.


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> how can a clutch break?


Something happens inside (which you don't see) and the clutch stays at the bottom (where you pushed it). It's already happened to me, during driving (on my sister's car, so I won't use it just in case).


----------



## x-type

ohm so today is that day. it is ok, but i hate it from one reason: previous years they used to close whole centre of my city for traffic the whole week, what caused horrible crowds around the city centre. they really haven't got anything with that. and we don't have public transportation, so that's additional fact what makes that action more stupid.
i don't know have they done it also this year, i wasn't in centre.

in Zagreb there were some activists fighting against driving on public transportation lanes with Chuch Norris :lol: that's ok because there are still too many drivers obeying ban of driving on lanes for public transportation making it too slow.


----------



## BND

Verso said:


> Something happens inside (which you don't see) and the clutch stays at the bottom (where you pushed it). It's already happened to me, during driving (on my sister's car, so I won't use it just in case).


If you're lucky, only the clutch bowden is broken. It is easy to replace (few minutes for a mechanic), and the bowden itself is not expensive. If the whole clutch-set is broken, then it won't be cheap...


----------



## Verso

^^ I know, they changed it 4 times when it happened on my sister's car (but they were so embarrassed that I only paid once). I actually got a phobia from driving those few months, because it happened every now and then (once in the middle of an intersection). But at least I could've set it provisionally and it lasted for a few minutes (or it broke instantly), but now I couldn't have done even that.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A 77-year old woman from Apolda, Germany, got to the car dealer for a test drive. And what a test drive it was! When she drove out of the premises, she hit a parked car, then panicked, lost control of the car, turned around, entered the showroom through the glass wall, ravaged the entire area, got out the window on the other side and finally stopped against a parked car. € 100 000 in damages. I wonder if she approved the car for a purchase.

http://www.thueringer-allgemeine.de...wuestung-nach-Probefahrt-in-Apolda-1383488623


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A 44-year old Italian man was on the run from the police at night on Italian A3 between Salerno and Reggio Calabria, and decided to climb over the railing of the road, and jumped on the side of the road - at least that's what he thought, until he discovered he was on a 185-meter tall viaduct. Miraculously, he survived...

http://www.ansa.it/web/notizie/rubriche/cronaca/2011/09/23/visualizza_new.html_700063091.html


----------



## CNGL

I remember they nominated for the Darwin Awards a similar case, but it was in a viaduct of only 20 meters tall, and the guy died.


----------



## bigmishu

:lol::lol:


kocaine_10658 by bigmishu, on Flickr


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> A 44-year old Italian man was on the run from the police at night on Italian A3 between Salerno and Reggio Calabria, and decided to climb over the railing of the road, and jumped on the side of the road - at least that's what he thought, until he discovered he was on a 185-meter tall viaduct. Miraculously, he survived...
> 
> http://www.ansa.it/web/notizie/rubriche/cronaca/2011/09/23/visualizza_new.html_700063091.html


The accident happened near Bagnara. That bridge is probably the "viadotto Sfalassà" (maximum height 247m), that is the sixth tallest road bridge in the world.
The article in Italian said that the man had 175 doses of heroine in his car, so probably it wouldn't be a big loss for our society if he would't survive.hno:


----------



## Pansori

bigmishu said:


> :lol::lol:
> 
> 
> kocaine_10658 by bigmishu, on Flickr


Is that Romanian drug mafia? :lol:


----------



## Coccodrillo

DanielFigFoz said:


> Yeah, bottled water is ridiculous expensive, the other day I was at the station and I needed some water, so I bought some, a small bottle. For one pound twenty :nuts:.


In most Swiss newsstands a 1.5 litres bottle of water can easily cost 5 CHF (4 EUR, 3.6 GBP, 5.5 USD). In some restaurants, with smaller bottles, for the same quantity this price can triple :bash: In supermarkets prices are normal, from 0.25 to 1 CHF for 1.5 litres. I usually buy a pair of bottles a week, and I reuse them for some days, if I need.



x-type said:


> is here at SSC somebody content with his government? :lol:





ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm content with the current government as far as road plans go. The Netherlands is finally catching up on the 25-year backlog we had in road investments.


I was happy with the two past transport ministers, lasted for around 20 years in total. They were more favorable to public transport, but without forgetting roads. In any case, approving projects is not their affair.


----------



## bogdymol

Coccodrillo said:


> *I was happy with the two past transport ministers, lasted for around 20 years in total. *They were more favorable to public transport, but without forgetting roads. In any case, approving projects is not their affair.


So your country had 2 transport ministers in 20 years? Mine had about 20 in the last 20 years :crazy:

PS: 


vinterriket said:


>


wtf?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I wonder if that is real. The train appears to have only one set of wheels, which means it would tilt over, rendering it undriveable.


----------



## mapman:cz

Notice the man, coming to the crossing from the other side. You can clearly see a "cut" and sudden move forward to the crossing. So it's clearly fake (videomontage)...


----------



## bigmishu

Pansori said:


> Is that Romanian drug mafia? :lol:


))))))))))) maybe


----------



## Penn's Woods

About the bottled water thing: I remember when bottled water was first becoming trendy in the U.S. - this is in the 1970s - Consumer Reports, a respected non-profit product-testing organization, tested several brands (for cleanliness and so on). And also New York City public water. The New York City water won....


----------



## Pansori

I never buy bottled water (except sparkling water which I'm used to since I was a child). If you need water there is a tap and it's much cheaper than anything you can buy in a supermarket.


----------



## Attus

What you write about water is strange for me. In Hungary a 1.5 liter bottle costs, according to the brand, 70-150 forint, the favorite brands 100-120 forint (35-40 eurocents).


----------



## seem

^^ 0,5 l bottle of some mineral water costs about 50-70 cents in Slovakia, well in a foodshop, in cafe it might be more for even less lol.


----------



## Coccodrillo

bogdymol said:


> So your country had 2 transport ministers in 20 years? Mine had about 20 in the last 20 years :crazy:


Yes, because there is no head of state nor a prime minister, ministers can be re-elected endlessly and as there is not the concept of "majority" and "opposition" parties. Switzerland is the only country in the world with this kind of government (there were others in the past), and even Wikipedia has articles only in Italian and Polish.


----------



## x-type

here in HR some brands have even 0,25 PET bottles :lol: i mean, wtf is that?! when i dring a water and have real thirst, i never drink less than 0,5 l (and i don't find myself a cow of an elephant)! when i don't feel that much thirst, i can resist some more time, i don't need immidiately get my glass of water. that's what i call tax on idiotism! and it costs about 0,4€.
1,5 l bottle costs about 0,7€, half a litre costs cca 0,5€. 
i like that aromatized waters when i am thirsty, but they are quite expensive imo, cca 1€ 1,5 l. that's too much for water with E-313.


the most expensive water that i bought was in Barcelona at Diagonal. i was incredibly thirsty, so i bought a bottle of water. it was 0,25 or 0,3, i don't remember well anymore, it costed 2,3€  and it was not cooled in the fridge.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

A Russian truck driver ditched a truck full of brand new Mercedes S-classes in Estonia. The cars were on their way to Russia. 3 cars out of 6 got minor body damages. I wonder if the new owner will ever know...


----------



## bogdymol

:lol:


----------



## bigmishu

I think this car needs a new paint after this hno:hno:


Untitled by bigmishu, on Flickr


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Hey! This is right next to Cişmigiu Park in Bucharest! I've also took a picture of this car last week but it was parked on the other side of the street:


----------



## bigmishu

^^^^^^


:lol::lol::lol::lol: yes it`s next to Cismigiu Park 

Looks like this car is in this condition for a very long time hno:


----------



## bogdymol

I took that picture last week on Wednesday. It seems that someone actually moved the car accross the street. Did he see through the windshield?


----------



## bigmishu

Looks like he did...for a few meters :bash:

Is on the other side from last week


----------



## seem

Lol I have never seen something like that over here. I guess it is probably because there are 1000x more birds in Bucharst than in whole Slovakia. :lol:

Btw, these autumn mornings annoys me, when I leave home in the morning it is just 5 - 10 C dark and foggy, but when I leave school it is mid 20` and sunny.


----------



## italystf

In my village there is a small truck abandoned in the same place (an urban street) for about a year. That truck has the advertisement of an Italian (from Alto Adige, 200-300 km from here) food company but the plate is Slovak (pre 2004). Since I don't think an Italian company can own a truck with foreign plate and would't abandon it (it looks quite new) I guess it was stolen, applied a fake plate, used for an illegal purpose and abandoned. What your guys think? D'u know any similar situation?


----------



## hofburg

maybe birds now think that car is a toillet.


----------



## keber

italystf said:


> What your guys think?


I would call municipality police in your case. I do that because on parking lot of my apartment block sometimes there are abandoned vehicles.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Quite a central reservation:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Tebay,+Penrith,+United+Kingdom&hl=en&ll=54.474851,-2.629015&spn=0.006371,0.021136&sll=53.511735,-2.046204&sspn=0.41322,1.352692&vpsrc=6&t=h&z=16

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Tebay,+Penrith,+United+Kingdom&hl=en&ll=54.475482,-2.630994&spn=0.006371,0.021136&sll=53.511735,-2.046204&sspn=0.41322,1.352692&vpsrc=6&t=m&z=16&layer=c&cbll=54.475482,-2.630994&panoid=4nyke8KCGWiLpe2ybqFWKA&cbp=12,188.05,,0,6.94

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Tebay,+Penrith,+United+Kingdom&hl=en&ll=54.453075,-2.613244&spn=0.012749,0.042272&sll=53.511735,-2.046204&sspn=0.41322,1.352692&vpsrc=6&t=m&z=15&layer=c&cbll=54.453298,-2.611371&panoid=d4pRwsf7dKSqJMORWlIttQ&cbp=12,327.02,,0,5.3

Maybe not so impressive in some countries, but for the UK, especially in the last link, its pretty wide


----------



## il brutto

At least here it may be explained with the slope, but a bit further north there's another one, where the reason isn't so obvious:

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=54.5...=KTU0Xs_1PhcAiNNaviZD-w&cbp=12,197.34,,0,3.06


----------



## keber

Is it possible that southbound part was built before northbound of course as single carriageway in the beginning? Because that would explain it.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

At last Youtube and Google Maps are available in Estonian... which is irrelevant, really, since I'm one of the few Estonians who selects Estonian language at web pages (where possible).


----------



## DanielFigFoz

keber said:


> Is it possible that southbound part was built before northbound of course as single carriageway in the beginning? Because that would explain it.


I think they did it mainly for the lulz at that point.

And it kind off adds up with the section with a slope, although the flat bit is the serction with the widest central reservation.

Its 27C in London at the moment


----------



## seem

DanielFigFoz said:


> Its 27C in London at the moment


Yeah, finally some summer in the UK.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

It was warmer than this in April and it was bad in-between :lol:


----------



## bigmishu

Minor accident in Bucharest hno: photo made by a friend of mine.

Lucky, everybody is ok after this 


30072009 by bigmishu, on Flickr


----------



## italystf

I can't remember a so hot weather in late september like this year. And not sometimes, but every day.


----------



## seem

This weather is really pleasant for September. Last time we got 30` was 2 weeks ago. This week the highest temperature was 28C I think, it is usually between 22-26C here, no rain or overcast skies at all (well not a lot, I can't really remember when was the last time it rained) this September. What is it like in Italy?


----------



## keber

DanielFigFoz said:


> I think they did it mainly for the lulz at that point.


Err, what?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

That wasn't serious


----------



## keber

No shit ?!?
I'm not that old, but internet "English" is really too strange for me.

You mean that "for the lulz" means actually "because of snakes"?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lulz


----------



## DanielFigFoz

It means "for the fun of it" or "for the shits and the giggles"


----------



## keber

Or "because of snakes" - we say that.


----------



## Verso

"Because of snakes"? Never heard of that.


----------



## mapman:cz

Because of snakes, that reminds me of our idiom. We say "pro srandu králíkům", which can be translated as "for the fun of rabbits"


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ This reminds me of an occasion in which he had some Australian guys, two British and one American on a big house party last year, and they were discussing the differences between bogans, ******** and chavs  The conclusion is that England lacked a rural-ish version of the chavs and should look for some in Scotland


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> "Because of snakes"? Never heard of that.


By "we" actually I didn't mean "Slovenians".


----------



## seem

DanielFigFoz said:


> It was warmer than this in April and it was bad in-between :lol:


My English friends are really enjoying this weather :yes:, one of the statuses on FB - "It's too hot. **** life." I love u Britons.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

September had more warm days (25+ C) than July


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Its not too hot, I have felt 39 C in London, now that was too hot.

All the shirtless drunks are out :/


----------



## DanielFigFoz

keber said:


> Or "because of snakes" - we say that.


We don't

Sorry about that DP, I knew that I had copied the quote for a reason, but it turns out that I had already posted :lol:


----------



## Nexis

*Look at this underpass in White Plains,NY*


DSCN3687 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


DSCN3688 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


DSCN3689 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr

DSCN3690 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


DSCN3693 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


----------



## il brutto

This is probably more special in US and it even has place for a sidewalk. There are plenty of such passes around here


----------



## Nexis

il brutto said:


> This is probably more special in US and it even has place for a sidewalk. There are plenty of such passes around here


Not really , this common in the Northeast. But they tend to be Arch tunnels or underpasses and not small beam underpasses.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I assume that's MetroNorth overhead?


----------



## Nexis

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^I assume that's MetroNorth overhead?


Harlem line , @ North White Plains


----------



## Penn's Woods

Now, about the weather: at the same time Europe is complaining about the heat, we're getting our first cool weather of the fall after several weeks of mugginess (I had my air conditioner on every evening and night for about two weeks, until about Thursday). Highs in the 40s Fahrenheit (5 to 10 celsius) in places like Pittsburgh today, and I see that they're forecasting 52 (11 celsius) in Washington, but 62 and 63 (17 celsius) farther north in New York and Boston tomorrow. I guess the cold front's reaching Washington first.


----------



## Verso

It's pleasant 25°C here, not heat.


----------



## Penn's Woods

I have the Weather Channel on, muted, while I listen to Car Talk. They're showing...gasp...some form of frozen precipitation (ice, sleet, freezing rain, rather than snow) in the western tip of Maryland and over the line in West Virginia now.

I am not ready for that.hno:


----------



## seem

Penn's Woods said:


> Now, about the weather: at the same time Europe is complaining about the heat


There is no heat and all people who complain are British and they aren't Europeans..


----------



## Penn's Woods

seem said:


> There is no heat and all people who complain are British and they aren't Europeans..


Without getting into the question of whether Britain is Europe, I'll just say personally I'd be happy if it was 27 to 30 celsius (80 to 86 Fahrenheit), with low humidity, year-round.

EDIT: And reasonable amounts of daylight. I hate the dark of November and December even more than the cold.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Move to Hawaii 

October 1st was warmer than all but 3 or 4 days in July in the Netherlands.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

New october record for the UK, 29.9 in Gravesend, a suburb of London

EDIT:

Apparently it got to 30 in Yorkshire


----------



## SeanT

New record in Denmark too. 26.5 celsius in southern jylland. The warmest october day ever by almost 2 celcius difference. Probably the warmest day this year too!!!(October)hno::lol:


----------



## il brutto

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ Move to Hawaii
> 
> October 1st was warmer than all but 3 or 4 days in July in the Netherlands.


or Uganda


----------



## italystf

This year we had the hottest September in the last 150 years. But we need it, after a lot of rain in July. Today the temperature ranged from 27°C in early afternoon to 16°C now (however 10°C daily variations are common in autumn and spring). But until 2-3 days ago you felt comfortable with t-shirt even at night.


----------



## bogdymol

Romanian railways: :bash:










Picture taken by myself on Friday on a train that goes between Timisoara and Oradea (western part of Romania).


----------



## Nexis

bogdymol said:


> Romanian railways: :bash:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Picture taken by myself on Friday on a train that goes between Timisoara and Oradea (western part of Romania).


Thats not a tour?


----------



## bogdymol

Nexis said:


> Thats not a tour?


What do you mean?


----------



## da_scotty

Travel on any mainline railway in the netherlands at peak hour and you'll get the samen thing train after train..


----------



## bogdymol

da_scotty said:


> Travel on any mainline railway in the netherlands at peak hour and you'll get the samen thing train after train..


I bet there isn't the same situation in NL: this train is always crowded (at least in the last 3 years since I use it) and they are doing nothing to improve the situation (for example adding an extra carriage).


----------



## Spookvlieger

^^Like when going direction Brussels in Belgium  Doesn't matter on wich hour, the carrages will be full anyway. NMBS does shit to improve things.


----------



## Nexis

bogdymol said:


> What do you mean?


Well our current and historic Railroads have tours of the old and current rolling stock and the cars tend to be that jammed.


----------



## bogdymol

Nexis said:


> Well our current and historic Railroads have tours of the old and current rolling stock and the cars tend to be that jammed.


No, this is not a touristical tour with the old rolling stock (although I saw written on the carriage that the first mantainance was done in 1966!). This is a normal train that runs in the western part of the country and it's like this everytime I go with it. :bash:


----------



## Nexis

bogdymol said:


> No, this is not a touristical tour with the old rolling stock (although I saw written on the carriage that the first mantainance was done in 1966!). This is a normal train that runs in the western part of the country and it's like this everytime I go with it. :bash:


Is it an overnight train?


----------



## bogdymol

Nexis said:


> Is it an overnight train?


No, it's a day train (leaves Timisoara at 1:04 pm).

Here is another stupid thing on this subject: 3 years ago there were 2 trains at 5 minutes difference between each other running on the same railway. The total capacity of the carriages was around 450 passengers. Both of the trains were almost full all of the time. Now there is just a single train with a total capacity of around 200 passengers...


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Its the same in the UK, and in Portugal


----------



## bogdymol

DanielFigFoz said:


> Its the same in the UK, and in Portugal


So you say that in UK or Portugal you don't sit down during a 1h30m railway trip and that the train is 200% full?


----------



## hofburg

that's public transport - it's bullshit.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

bogdymol said:


> So you say that in UK or Portugal you don't sit down during a 1h30m railway trip and that the train is 200% full?


Yeah, especailly in the UK where the railways are used a lot around London, people have commutes into the city from 1h30 out of the city and stand up everyday


----------



## Rebasepoiss

hofburg said:


> that's public transport - it's bullshit.


Let me correct you:

That's badly run public transport. Anything that's badly run is bullshit. The problem with this Romanian train is that it has sleeper cars. Why would you use these on a 1h30min trip? A 2+2 seating arrangement and a few extra carriages would probably enable everybody to sit down.


----------



## hofburg

Sometimes public transport is ok. but normaly, it sucs. If it's not overloaded, it's slow, it stinks, there are delays, infrastructure is from the last millennium...

There are few exceptions though, I like TGV and some normal-size planes.


----------



## Nexis

bogdymol said:


> So you say that in UK or Portugal you don't sit down during a 1h30m railway trip and that the train is 200% full?


Its the same on some lines here , even with 10 departures per hour. Everyone wants to leave on that train and they can't wait for the next one. The New Haven line trains are the worst standing room only for the first 15 stations then you can a seat but by that time at least 1 and 30 mins has passed. The car can be tense with people cranky , but that tends to be mellow if theres a bar or cafe car.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Old woman tried to drive into a parking garage in Warszawa, but parked a bit too early.


----------



## Wilhem275

That's a hell of a drift


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

italystf said:


> D'u like this German bus company?





CNGL said:


> The guy who gave that name to the bus company might have no idea of English.


I'm thinking the exact opposite. He knew it would attract attention like this company below. 









souce Pussy natural energy. 

I would love to be the ad man for this company. So many slogans possibilities. :banana:

....Have you had a pussy today?
....Liquid gold, straight from the source.
....A pussy a day will take your blues away.
....The taste that will leave you satisfied.
Please stop me...:bash:


----------



## italystf

AnOldBlackMarble said:


> I'm thinking the exact opposite. He knew it would attract attention like this company below.


Or like the chewing gums Air Action Vigorsol that sound as 'erection' if you pronunce fast:lol:
And in Italy we have a drink called Figa, that means pussy.:lol:


----------



## CNGL

They have beaten my mark in the clinched highways mapping... If it is foreign, I will try to beat again that mark. I still have to see half of Spain.


----------



## italystf

just found another


----------



## seem

Croatian word "pića" (drink) means pussy in Slovak so we usually have great fun when we go to there. :nuts:


----------



## x-type

but it is plural (singular is piće), and you will really rarely hear it because i don't know the context where it would be used in plural. 
ok, you can more often find it in singular genitive (which is also pića  ). but **** is piča 
on the other hand, your word for drink (nápoj) in Croatian means slops (the food for pigs  )


----------



## seem

^^ Whatsoever, piće means pussies in Slovak. 

Btw, in Slovenia they say "jed" (food) which means poison in Slovak (food=jedlo, in Croatian it is jelo if i am sure). Slovenian for child is otrok which means slave in Slovak (child=dieťa,decko(slang)). :nuts:


----------



## hofburg

oh, not this debate again.


----------



## da_scotty

Pfff it's autumn in the Netherlands again, first day of heavy wind and rainfall and the traffic (car and public transport) seems unable to cope with it.

Today the total traffic jam lenght was 420km, with a normal peak hour jam length of 300km.. Rail traffic was also disrupted due to slippery rails and power outtages, while in Rotterdam several tramlines ran irregular due to the winds..

Worst of all, I can't go rowing this afternoon due to the heavy winds


----------



## CNGL

seem said:


> ^^ Whatsoever, piće means pussies in Slovak.
> 
> Btw, in Slovenia they say "jed" (food) which means poison in Slovak (food=jedlo, in Croatian it is jelo if i am sure). Slovenian for child is otrok which means slave in Slovak (child=dieťa,decko(slang)). :nuts:


I like that Polish say "droga" (road), which means drug in Spanish (road=carretera) :lol:.


----------



## bogdymol

Meanwhile, in Romania: [it's also in English so you can understand it]



maisonK said:


>


:rofl:


----------



## 122347

:rofl:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Have we lost Road_UK?
Or is he perhaps lost....


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I think that we always have to have one forumer missing. At the beginning it was Verso, now Road_UK...

Who will be next after Road_UK comes back?


----------



## seem

hofburg said:


> oh, not this debate again.


..just admit that you feed your slaves with poison in their food. :lol:



CNGL said:


> I like that Polish say "droga" (road), which means drug in Spanish (road=carretera) :lol:.


Same here, there is a Polish book called Papież na drogach which means in Slovak "Pop on drugs" (Pápež na drogách).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Road_UK is probably on some epic road trip to Kirkenes or Moscow or Athens or Tangiers or all of these combined.


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> I like that Polish say "droga" (road), which means *drug in Spanish* (road=carretera) :lol:.


And also in Italian.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Road_UK is probably on some epic road trip to Kirkenes or Moscow or Athens or Tangiers or all of these combined.


He might have to carry something from Portugal to Russia... Sagres to Vladivostok probably


----------



## Nexis

Only in America , would somebody think to make a Pancake cupcake with bacon....mmmmm 


Red Bank, New Jersey by flickr4jazz, on Flickr


----------



## bogdymol

^^ uke:


----------



## seem

Show this to English, they will love it!


----------



## Fatfield

seem said:


> Show this to English, they will love it!


Not really. Yank bacon is disgusting. It also looks like something you'd only eat under the influence of some very strong beer.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yuck. Is that actually sold for consumers?


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yuck. Is that actually sold for consumers?


I've never seen anything like it. Hopefully this one bakery's trying it as a novelty. Although Nexis seems to like it.


----------



## x-type

only in America something like muffin could be called a pancake.
what the hack this has in common with pancakes?!?!


----------



## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> only in America something like muffin could be called a pancake.
> what the hack this has in common with pancakes?!?!


That's not a pancake. It's a cupcake. A pancake-flavored cupcake.
:nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This is a pancake to me (not necessarily with the stuffing). I don't like them.


----------



## il brutto

Where's pancake? In the dough?


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> That's not a pancake. It's a cupcake. A pancake-flavored cupcake.
> :nuts:


there's written pancake. btw, pancake flavoured... bullshit. cupcake is cupcake, why should it be flavoured?! if they wanted the pancakes, they would make them, i don't see the purpose of pancake flavour. :dunno:


----------



## Verso

I haven't even heard of the word 'cupcake'.


----------



## Nexis

Penn's Woods said:


> I've never seen anything like it. Hopefully this one bakery's trying it as a novelty. Although Nexis seems to like it.


I haven't tried it yet , but i have tried the Mint Volcano cupcake , with buttermilk batter and mint icing...very good.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> I haven't even heard of the word 'cupcake'.


fruitcake :lol:


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> I haven't even heard of the word 'cupcake'.


it's not popular in Europe. you know these stereotypical cylinder shaped cakes with cream and cherry on the top.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> I haven't even heard of the word 'cupcake'.


You learn something every day:

http://www.google.com/search?tbm=is...s_sm=s&gs_upl=0l0l0l1719l0l0l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0



x-type said:


> there's written pancake. btw, pancake flavoured... bullshit. cupcake is cupcake, why should it be flavoured?! if they wanted the pancakes, they would make them, i don't see the purpose of pancake flavour. :dunno:


"Bullshit" indeed. He wrote "Pancake cupcake." Which I would interpret as a pancake-flavored cupcake, however bizarre that seems. I suppose it's made with pancake batter. Which does make the combination a bit less bizarre, since pancakes with bacon is a common breakfast, although I'd still want to know what flavor the frosting on the cupcakes is - perhaps whipped cream. Pancakes and cupcakes are not interchangeable: one's a breakfast item, the other's for dessert.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> This is a pancake to me (not necessarily with the stuffing). I don't like them.


That looks like a crêpe. Which I like to annoy people by pronouncing the French way. Most people here would think of crêpes as French, and some might call them "French pancakes."

An American pancake is thicker.



ChrisZwolle said:


> fruitcake :lol:


Um, not touching that one.


----------



## Nexis

x-type said:


> only in America something like muffin could be called a pancake.
> what the hack this has in common with pancakes?!?!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupcake

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muffins

Cupcakes and Muffins are different.....and now we have Gourmet Cupcakes.....most major towns and cities have at least one Cupcake shop or Bakery with a large cupcake section.


Cute hamburger cupcakes! by smileys sweets, on Flickr


Mr-Cupcakes-4 by Cupcake Quest, on Flickr


Mr.Cupcakes by yunicorner, on Flickr


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Dammit, now I'm having a sugar craving!


----------



## il brutto

I think most of non-US world considers crêpe just a type of pancake. As Wikipedia has it: _Depending on the region, pancakes may be served at any time, with a variety of toppings or fillings including jam, chocolate chips, fruit, syrup or meat._ In Russia you can fill it with anything imaginable and there's even a fast food chain specializing in crêpes (and a few other chains where they represent a large part of the menu)


----------



## SeanT

Pandekage/ Palacsinta call them whatever you like, although I ´ve never tried it with bacon. :lol: Fahéjas cukor, azt szeretem!:lol:


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> This is a pancake to me (not necessarily with the stuffing). I don't like them.


Sure. We call it "palacsinta". But in Hungary it is usually served and eaten rolled:








Or at least wrapped (it is more noble this way but common people usually role it):








Of course it is filled by chocolate, marmelade, etc, even is you can't see it in these pictures  I like it soooo much


----------



## BND

^^ it can also be a main course, when pancakes are filled with stew, and put paprika sauce on them: pancakes Hortobágy art:










:eat:


----------



## seem

^^ This looks lush. 

I really love pancakes but have you ever tried Slovak lokše? I love it! :cheers:


----------



## Nexis

American pancakes are tasty....and come in many different flavors from wheat to Blueberry and Chocolate chip....but i like my Buttermilk..


Buttermilk Pancakes by Julie Cupcake, on Flickr


Buttermilk Pancakes by fakeginger, on Flickr


----------



## bogdymol

Ever tasted a pancake cake?









^^ My girlfriend surprised me one day with this 

In Romania we call them clătite and thez are similar with the French crêpe. They are usually served rolled and filled with marmelade or chocolate (+fruits sometimes).


----------



## keber

Nexis said:


> Only in America , would somebody think to make a Pancake cupcake with bacon....mmmmm
> 
> 
> Red Bank, New Jersey by flickr4jazz, on Flickr


I would try that. I'm a meat-man so it surely doesn't taste that bad.

About pancakes:
This one I like, stuffed with forest fruits and a lot of cream


----------



## Penn's Woods

bogdymol said:


> Ever tasted a pancake cake?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ^^ My girlfriend surprised me one day with this
> 
> In Romania we call them clătite and thez are similar with the French crêpe. They are usually served rolled and filled with marmelade or chocolate (+fruits sometimes).


Play with the breakfast menu from this place in Montreal:

http://www.chezcora.com/our-menu/breakfast/french-toast/seventh-of-july

The hotel I've stayed at most times I've been there is right across the street....


----------



## hofburg

SNCF is on strike again. :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Vive la France ! (rolleyes)

And talking of pancakes/crêpes and Chez Cora, if memory serves, they (in French) use the word "crêpe" for North American, thick pancakes. What I'd call a "crêpe," they call a "crêpe française."


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The fastest way to get off a parking garage:


----------



## keokiracer

^^ Where in The Netherlands did that happen? Zwolle?


----------



## keber

Currently in Ljubljana 3°C (yesterday 25), mixed rain/snow. 
As it is Friday afternoon, there are some accidents on main arteries and therefore enormous traffic jams, at least for Slovenia. I don't remember snowing so early in October.


----------



## keokiracer

^^ Is there a way to see it online?
Like www.tomtom.com/livetraffic shows traffic in other countries in Europe?


----------



## hofburg

no. only this way: http://promet.si/portal/sl/razmere.aspx


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Austrian A2 between Graz and Klagenfurt is already experiencing snow. This motorway is at only 1000 m altitude.


----------



## Penn's Woods

We're expecting sunny days with highs of about 23 to 28 celsius over the next few days. 

Also, *Go Phils, Go*!
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/inde...011_10_05_phimlb_slnmlb_1&mode=recap&c_id=phi


----------



## keokiracer

hofburg said:


> no. only this way: http://promet.si/portal/sl/razmere.aspx


Thanks for the link :cheers:


----------



## hofburg

ChrisZwolle said:


> Austrian A2 between Graz and Klagenfurt is already experiencing snow. This motorway is at only 1000 m altitude.
> http://i.imgur.com/tsYoO.jpg


1000m is "only"?


----------



## keokiracer

keokiracer said:


> ^^ Where in The Netherlands did that happen? Zwolle?


Never mind, I saw it on the news, it's in Leiden


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Austrian A2 between Graz and Klagenfurt is already experiencing snow. This motorway is at only 1000 m altitude.


check this out


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Its snowed in Scotland too


----------



## seem

Weather is totaly mad, yesterday it was 22-27C in Slovakia, in the morning it was 14 and this afternoon it was just 6 degrees! Actually it was the first rainy day after very long time, probably a month or so. 

So.. next morning I am going to see all these peaks around here covered by snow? 

I really loved this warm September but it is just so cool when it is still warm (which I hope it will be again soon) and peaks covered by snow..

EDIT:

I hope that there will be snow just on the peaks and not in the valleys!


----------



## Suburbanist

Yesterday I drove to Aalkmar and the North Sea **** nearby. Though not technologically fancy as the Maeslantkering or the other Delta Works projects in the South, it's rather impressive.

But the wind was terrible, lots of rain, strong winds. I didn't bring a camera (was going to a friend's house).

On my way back, I stopped at Amsterdam just to eat at an specific small eatery I love and to drive on some areas of the city. I crossed the whole old canal belt area via minor roads. Quite interesting how tourists on rental bikes (easy to stop by their colors/logo) don't have a clue about road traffic regulations, and think they can bike disregarding traffic laws applicable for every vehicle, bikes included.


----------



## seem

Yesterday  










http://flog.pravda.sk/vlahatatrysro.flog?foto=429360


----------



## bogdymol

^^ That's beautiful kay:

Last night we had the first snow of the season in the Romanian Carpathians. I saw on TV that one week ago, exactly in the same place, people were sunbathing.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It was 27 °C a week ago in the Netherlands, but this night we had the first frost.


----------



## seem

Well a week ago it was 30C on south, on thursday it was 26C (22C in the moutains) and on friday we had 6/8C and it was snowing in the moutains. :nuts:


----------



## Nexis

Was there another tragedy or anniversary event in Poland? The Polish people in this region usually put Flowers at the bottom of the Katyn Memorial when theres a Tragedy or anniversary.


DSC07250 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


DSC07249 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are elections in Poland. For some it will be a tragedy


----------



## Attus

gramercy said:


> do you guys - especially from the postcommieblok - think that 10 m eur / km is too much for a standard highway w/o bridges or tunnels on the *puszta*?


I think it's alright. 3 of 10 goes back to the politicians. Another 3 to the main work organizers. Actual road building costs 5, but sine 6 of 10 was used another way, the building companies (most of them small Hungarian enterprenuers) will never get the money they work for. 
That's how things go in Hungary.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

gramercy said:


> do you guys - especially from the postcommieblok - think that 10 m eur / km is too much for a standard highway w/o bridges or tunnels on the *puszta*?


Does that include expropriation cost? Because you cannot always compare costs between countries, some of them don't include expropriation cost but only pure construction cost.


----------



## Surel

There was a great joke about this in the ninetees in cz. There is a tender for a motorway. Czech, Ukrainian and German company sign in. First comes the Ukrainian company with offer of 5 m euro for the construction. There are however some concerns about the quality. Then comes the German company with offer of 10 m euro for the construction of superb quality. It seems clear, but then the Czech company comes with offer of 15 m euro. The board is bit shocked and asks why such a high price. The answer is simple says the representative. We get the contract and there goes 5 m for the ukrainian company to build the road. We get the other 5 m euro and you get the rest. Thus 5 m euro. Contract is made with guess who? .


----------



## keber

gramercy said:


> do you guys - especially from the postcommieblok - think that 10 m eur / km is too much for a standard highway w/o bridges or tunnels on the *puszta*?


A km of Slovenian A5 (without hard shoulder though, add here some 10-15%) through plains cost in average 7 mil. €, including overpasses and some cut-and-covers.
10 m €/km is a lot even if it includes expropriation costs for which I'm sure they cannot be over 30€/sqr meter in remote area (what you probably think of).


----------



## Keepon

Meanwhile in Romania


----------



## gramercy

ChrisZwolle said:


> Does that include expropriation cost? Because you cannot always compare costs between countries, some of them don't include expropriation cost but only pure construction cost.


only constructiob afaik,
planning and expropriation are tendered separately

archeological is included, but just now the pusztaputin ruled to essentially cut the throat of archeology by cutting time to 90 days


----------



## seem

Keepon said:


> Meanwhile in Romania


Lol Romania, good old funny place. :lol:

and I hoe that guy was alright..


----------



## Keepon

seem said:


> Lol Romania, good old funny place. :lol:


kay: 

Have you seen this one? Happened on a rest area so it's OT :lol:


----------



## bigmishu

^^^^



Found something there? :lol::lol::lol:


----------



## Keepon

bigmishu said:


> ^^^^
> 
> 
> 
> Found something there? :lol::lol::lol:


Yes, he did :shifty:


----------



## italystf

:lol:


----------



## italystf

Sorry, but I cannot understand this joke. Could someone explain it?


----------



## keokiracer

^^ PMS all day long
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premenstrual_syndrome


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Sorry, but I cannot understand this joke. Could someone explain it?


PMS= pre-menstrual syndrome. When women, supposedly, get cranky before their "time of the month." It's common, if sexist, to make jokes about PMS. At least, it's sexist when a man does it.

24-7= 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I.e., all the time.


----------



## x-type

i also don't find it as a joke. it is a tragedy.


----------



## seem

Keepon said:


> kay:
> 
> Have you seen this one? Happened on a rest area so it's OT :lol:


lol what was he doing anyway?

Meanwhile in Slovakia..


----------



## Keepon

seem said:


> lol what was he doing anyway?


I don't have a clue. :?


----------



## seem

Meanwhile in Slovakia :nuts: -



Strummer said:


> nejaka oprava fasady domu na schodoch smerom na hrad, ale to neni podstatne, podstatne je toto:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> mg:


----------



## keokiracer

^^ I would NOT stand on that mg:

Because of my fear of hights I wouldn't stand on it even it was placed better then now, but still


----------



## keokiracer

Keepon said:


> Have you seen this one? Happened on a rest area so it's OT :lol:


:rofl: I laughed really loud at that one :lol:


----------



## Qwert

gramercy said:


> do you guys - especially from the postcommieblok - think that 10 m eur / km is too much for a standard highway w/o bridges or tunnels on the *puszta*?


Average prices per km for new sections of D1 in Slovakia are currently 9.46 million. This doesn't include the most expensive sections, but they still include one tunnel and kilometres of bridges. So I agree, this price for motorway in puszta is basically a theft.


----------



## bogdymol

Cadîr said:


> Când autopilotul dă rateuri


This one is from Romania:



nebunul said:


>


:rofl:


----------



## Keepon

bogdymol said:


> This one is from Romania:


I dunno... but that doesn't sound like Romanian to me :nuts:

Sounds more like Serbian or something.


----------



## bogdymol

I remember that I saw that one some time ago (1-2 years) and they were saying that it's in Romania. Anyway, it's funny :lol:


----------



## Verso

Keepon said:


> I dunno... but that doesn't sound like Romanian to me :nuts:
> 
> Sounds more like Serbian or something.


Bogdymol has forgotten Romanian.  It's Serbian indeed.


----------



## Surel

Meanwhile in China


----------



## italystf

meanwhile in Italy...


----------



## 122347

meanwhile in portugal...


----------



## CNGL

Meanwhile in Spain...


----------



## keokiracer

Meanwhile in The Netherlands...


----------



## Suburbanist

*Google MAps English exonyms*

Have you realized now Google has an English (and probably other languages soon to follow) option you can choose to have foreign names written on? In my case, it comes as default and I had to disable it.

Usually, it is mostly harmless if a bit annoying stuff, like Firenze, Venice and Naples for Italian cities.

However, I figured out some German English names that are quire rare lol:

Regensburg => Ratisbon
Braunschweig => Brunswick
Mainz => Mayence

But they kept Aachen, which I realized was known in England formerly by its French exonym, Aix-la-Chapelle


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Ratisbon and Mayence are news to me in English; they do exist, more or less, in French. ("More or less" because I think they say "Ratisbonne" for Regensburg. If I were at home, I could check my handy "Petit Robert encyclopédique des noms propres.")


----------



## CNGL

Zaragoza appears as Saragossa :crazy:. I used Saragossa once and ChrisZwolle got surprised as he had seen only Zaragoza, and he generated an off-topic on Spanish roads thread.

BTW, in Spanish Regensburg is Ratisbona . On http://maps.google.es exonyms don't appear, though...


----------



## 122347

^
We say Saragoça


----------



## DanielFigFoz

It says Koblenz though, instead of Coblence, and as been said it says Aachen instead of Aix-la-Chapelle


I thought that it was always like that though :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

Meanwhile in Romania:


Bogdy said:


> În Bucureşti totul este posibil...:lol:


----------



## [email protected]

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Ratisbon and Mayence are news to me in English; they do exist, more or less, in French. ("More or less" because I think they say "Ratisbonne" for Regensburg. If I were at home, I could check my handy "Petit Robert encyclopédique des noms propres.")


Yes it's Ratisbonne in French. 
Zaragoza we say "Saragosse".


----------



## Penn's Woods

DanielFigFoz said:


> It says Koblenz though, instead of Coblence, and as been said it says Aachen instead of Aix-la-Chapelle
> 
> 
> I thought that it was always like that though :lol:


The thing is, unless a place is well-known to English-speakers (or speakers of whatever language), the exonym's going to fall out of use: If English-speakers don't have occasion to refer to Aachen very often, they're not going to know its English name is (supposedly) Aix-la-Chapelle. And if enough English-speaking people call it Aachen because they don't know to call it Aix, guess what: Aachen becomes the, or at least a, correct English name for the place.

Frankly, I do know that Koblenz is Coblence in French and Aachen is Aix-la-Chapelle, again in French, but I don't think it would occur to me to use those names in English, unless (for Aachen) it was in a historical context. I'm guessing history books in English still say Charlemagne lived in Aix-la-Chapelle. But that doesn't mean that most readers would know that that's the place called Aachen today.

During the 2006 winter Olympics, American media kept talking about Torino. While I suppose it could have been a matter of (misplaced) respect for the endonym, I'm guessing it was because they didn't know to call it Turin. But Turin's still widely known enough in English - or at least I thought it was - that I found it incorrect and annoying.

Sorry for babbling, been a long day....


----------



## keokiracer

:lol:
Where exactly is this?


----------



## [email protected]

Here
http://maps.google.fr/maps?q=glenwood+springs&hl=de&ll=39.561633,-107.296944&spn=0.000066,0.055575&hnear=Glenwood+Springs,+Garfield+County,+Colorado,+Vereinigte+Staaten&t=h&z=15&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=39.561595,-107.296721&panoid=EedItrPB0PHggsBVMugVxg&cbp=12,113.49,,0,0.28


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ I challenge you to build a bridge there


----------



## bogdymol

:eek2: *http://g.co/maps/j984d* :eek2:


----------



## Falusi

Bridge for sale!


----------



## keokiracer

^^ That might be an idea to get money for Greece :troll:


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

bogdymol said:


> :eek2: *http://g.co/maps/j984d* :eek2:


That is one thing America is good at is making complex interchanges. Even after driving on them for years I still get turned around sometimes. It is so easy to get onto the wrong ramp and then forget about it. Sometimes it can take half an hour to get back on track. 

And check out the 105x405 interchange in LA. The dotted lines are tunnels and the highest overpass is ten stories tall.


----------



## il brutto

But if you get lost then they aren't made that well?


----------



## ssusa

bogdymol said:


> :eek2: *http://g.co/maps/j984d* :eek2:


I drive through these interchanges every day going to and from work. They are not as complex as they look on the map.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Airport interchanges are usually the most complex ones.


----------



## Penn's Woods

bogdymol said:


> :eek2: *http://g.co/maps/j984d* :eek2:


Been through there many times....

Make sure you click on "hide the panel," so you see the whole thing.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Airport interchanges are usually the most complex ones.


Part of what's going on there is that it was build in stages: US 1/9, US 22 and NJ 21 - and the airport itself - before World War II; the New Jersey Turnpike in the early 50s; I-78 later. Not to mention major improvements to the airport itself. If memory serves, until about 1970 the terminal was those buildings along the northern edge; then they built the current terminals and loop road.

I've noticed the same phenomenon in rail transit systems. The first one I used extensively was Washington's (when I was in college). At the stations where different lines meet, the transfer is normally a short walk up- or downstairs. Which I figured was normal until I got to Paris and London, where you can walk through long mazes of tunnels. I figure it's because the Washington system (even if it was built in stages) was all designed at once so the transfer stations were planned as such, while in other cities, when they build a new line they have to thread it through the existing infrastructure.


----------



## Penn's Woods

EEP!










Um, why doesn't this work, at least on this computer?

Anyhow, it's a snowfall, yes, snowfall forecast for the next 48 hours. 3 to 5 inches here. :bash:

Unless they update this article, it's the second map here: http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/weekend-storm-wet-snow_2011-10-26


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Amarillo, Texas:

Last Tuesday: 30 C / 86 F
Yesterday: 8 cm / 3 inch snow


----------



## Penn's Woods

I just checked two of our local TV stations' sites and they're being less alarmist than the Weather Channel (which is what weather.com is): you'd have to go a little bit inland from here to get any accumulation.


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> :eek2: *http://g.co/maps/j984d* :eek2:


I think this is more rational than http://maps.google.it/maps?hl=it&su...sb&biw=1366&bih=594&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl
Motorway and national road cross the border at the same point. In direction I -> SLO is quite straight but in the opposite you have to make a 360° turn! Very absurd! It should be rebuilt.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Airport interchanges are usually the most complex ones.


The one at Venice airport is very simple: A57dir motorway ends in SS14 with a traffic light! http://maps.google.it/maps?hl=it&su...sb&biw=1366&bih=594&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> I think this is more rational than http://maps.google.it/maps?hl=it&su...sb&biw=1366&bih=594&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl
> Motorway and national road cross the border at the same point. In direction I -> SLO is quite straight but in the opposite you have to make a 360° turn! Very absurd! It should be rebuilt.


I wonder, if they will ever change that. How expensive can it be to make it like on the Slovenian side? The motorway should be more important than the old road.


----------



## italystf

Truck lost money on a motorway:


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> I wonder, if they will ever change that. How expensive can it be to make it like on the Slovenian side? The motorway should be more important than the old road.


I never heard about a plan to change it, nor by Anas, neither by Autovie Venete or region Friuli-Venezia Giulia. What about Dars?
IMHO is a very important road work to do, and probably not so expensive.


----------



## keber

The problem is, that on neither side motorway was planned in such way that it would be seamlessly connected after borders would be gone. So merging both motorways as they should be will involve heavy reconstruction on Italian side and also a lot of works on Slovenian side (including new overpass for regional road). It involves doing also new exit for logistical and transportation plateaus.

As there is no need to do that (traffic numbers don't justify that yet) this reconstruction will be probably postponed in far future.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> The problem is, that on neither side motorway was planned in such way that it would be seamlessly connected after borders would be gone. So merging both motorways as they should be will involve heavy reconstruction on Italian side and also a lot of works on Slovenian side (including new overpass for regional road). It involves doing also new exit for logistical and transportation plateaus.
> 
> As there is no need to do that (traffic numbers don't justify that yet) this reconstruction will be probably postponed in far future.


I think there's no point to leave the old border facilities still in place in Schengen era, expecially if they're an obstacle to traffic.


----------



## alserrod

I didn't want to write an off topic in the Vatican thread... but as well as it is really that some motorways crosses are bigger than that State... in Spain there is one municipality very near Valencia which extension is smaller than the Camp Nou stadium.

In one thread one forumer posted two photos to compare the dimensions of that small municipality and the stadium.


----------



## BND

from appleblog.blog.hu


----------



## Verso

^^ I suppose Epöl and Apple are pronounced the same. :lol:



x-type said:


> i have just checked on street view - it is clearly visible from the road where i was passing  i was some 200 metres far from it


You either need new glasses or new eyes.


----------



## seem

Verso said:


> ^^ I suppose Epöl and Apple are pronounced the same. :lol:


It should be Apöl. :baeh3:


----------



## BND

^^ pronunciation of "a" in "apple" is much closer to Hungarian "e" than "a" :yes:


----------



## seem

^^ Hungarian pronouciation is so complicated, I think then you also pronouce "a" as somethin like "e" don't you?


----------



## x-type

seem said:


> ^^ Hungarian pronouciation is so complicated, I think then you also pronouce "a" as somethin like "e" don't you?


actually Hungarian laguage has very clear rules for reading. i have heard that they almost don't have dialects (except people in Szeged have some dialect, so they read e more like ö, so, Szögöd if i am right).


"a" is in Hungarian read like "o", and "á" is "a"


----------



## il brutto

x-type said:


> actually Hungarian laguage has very clear rules for reading. i have heard that they almost don't have dialects (except people in Szeged have some dialect, so they read e more like ö, so, Szögöd if i am right).
> 
> 
> "a" is in Hungarian read like "o", and "á" is "a"


A = "o" as in "a lot", while Ó as in "four". Otherwise I agree, Hungarian pronunciation is very straightforward, just some letters are pronounced differently than what we're used to (S [sh], SZ  etc). I find Irish or Welsh spelling the strangest.


----------



## il brutto

How about living in a pregnancy test? :lol:



Verso said:


> There's a giant chair in Geneva as well (*oh, and a bicycle roundabout in Slovenia*).


Pics here, there's also a pedestrian roundabout in the same city :nuts:











italystf said:


> The biggest chair of the world: in Manzano (UD), Italy, where many furniture factories are located.


I drove through this roundabout last weekend on the way to AC/DC cover band concert in Manzano :cheers:


----------



## seem

il brutto said:


> Pics here, there's also a pedestrian roundabout in the same city :nuts:


There is one roundabout like this in Trnava lol - 

But I also know one roundabout with a church in the middle of it in liptovský Mikuláš but I can't fidn a picture of it! :nuts:


----------



## Attus

Hungarian pronounciation is easy, the same letter or letter combination has always the same pronounciation (except for some historic words, mainly names). 
But you may have problems right at the very first letter which is A. As far as I know there is no such vowel in any European language. If you speak German, Italian or some Slavic language I can say it is somehow between your A and O but is always pronounced shortly and there is no long version for it. If you say A or O as in your language everyone in Hungary will understand it but everyone will know at once you're a foreigner 
Hungarian Á is the same as A in the languages mentioned above but is always pronounced long and has no short version.


----------



## bogdymol

RIP Marco






Watch the last seconds...


----------



## italystf

Today I got a 50 cents coin from Vatican. It have 2011 on it and looks very new. Better not spend it since it's very rare and may worth a lot more than a half Euro. I've never seen them before.


----------



## CNGL

I prefer to track €uronotes. Check on the right link in my signature.


----------



## italystf

According to Wikipedia in 2011 were produced 2,184,704 Vatican 50 cents coins for commemorative purpose. So, my piece is ot that rarehno: Considering Vatican's population, I though only few thousands of them exist.


----------



## keber

And if you want any worthiness of those Euro coins, they should be packed in original package.


----------



## Satyricon84

Today in Genoa


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A sinkhole. Due to the massive rains in Genova recently no doubt.


----------



## bogdymol

I think it was searching for the underground parking lot to deliver the products there :yes:


----------



## Satyricon84

ChrisZwolle said:


> A sinkhole. Due to the massive rains in Genova recently no doubt.


Yes I think so. Fortunately, the driver is ok


----------



## Verso

Wow.


----------



## il brutto

Yeah Trieste is awful for parking, the only city around here where I always go straight to parking garage and don't bother looking for some alternative, saves a lot of time and nerves


----------



## Penn's Woods

In other news, Belgium's finally got a government....

:cheers:


----------



## Spookvlieger

^^uh? First I hear of it. There has been an agreement...nothing more.


----------



## bogdymol

Penn's Woods said:


> In other news, Belgium's finally got a government....
> 
> :cheers:


After how many days? 5XX?


----------



## Penn's Woods

To Joshsam:

A Belgian on Le Monde's forum (in a discussion that started a couple of days ago about how Belgium was the next place to be hit by the debt crisis, if that's how to describe it - I'm no economist) posted a couple of hours ago: "It's done. An agreement for a government. So we'll have a full-fledged government within a few days."

Enormous headline on De Standaard's home page "Er is een akkoord," with a big picture of a smiling DiRupo.

La Libre Belgique: Le Palais confirme samedi que les négociateurs sont arrivés à un accord sur le volet budgétaire. Le Roi a chargé le formateur Elio Di Rupo de former un gouvernement le plus vite possible, indique le Palais dans un communiqué. (The Palace confirmed Saturday that the negotiators had reached an agreement on the budget chapter. The King has charged "formateur" Elio Di Rupo with forming a government as fast as possible, the Palace said in a statement.)

Leterme in either De Standaard or De Morgen quoting as saying "the last 530 days have left their mark."

So the impression I get, from this distance, is that it's just a matter of formalities. And naming ministers and the like, but the substance is there.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

530 days of formation, 150 days of governing and then the circus begins again.


----------



## x-type

so the Netherlands won't grow  yet


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> 530 days of formation, 150 days of governing and then the circus begins again.


What's 150 days from now? Next elections don't need to happen until June 2014.


----------



## bogdymol

After a discusion on the Romanian section about the Hungarian country code used on road signs / licence plates:



Cosmin said:


> Speaking of which, why aren't ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 standard codes used on road signs, car registration plates etc.?
> 
> What ISO standard or int'l treaty governs these? Is it the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic or some other treaty? I was never able to find a specific ISO standard for these.
> 
> Bit of a nerdy question, I know, but I figured I'm in good company.


I guess you guys can help


----------



## mapman:cz

It's called "Distinguishing Signs of Vehicles in International Traffic" (sometimes abbreviated to DSIT), more at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_license_plate_codes


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> What's 150 days from now? Next elections don't need to happen until June 2014.


Governments can collapse before elections. 

This future Belgian government is a huge mix of parties with opposite points of view. Socialists with liberals* and conservatives. Not to mention the number of parties involved. Such coalitions are often unstable and prone to early collapses. 

* note that liberal parties in Europe are very different from liberals in the United States.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I know that; I didn't know if you knew something the rest of us didn't. Like maybe Queen Beatrix is planning an invasion on April 30. 

Part of the "state reform," I believe, is that the federal and regional parliaments will now be elected at the same time; I don't know if that means that one of them falling means they all do, or if they're all there for four years, like it or not (which is the case with the regions - well, actually it's five years) now.


----------



## italystf

What do you put in your windshield? Insurance sticker, vignettes, park disc or...


----------



## Satyricon84

^^ This is the insurance for another type of "accident" :rofl:


----------



## Cosmin

mapman:cz said:


> It's called "Distinguishing Signs of Vehicles in International Traffic" (sometimes abbreviated to DSIT), more at:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_license_plate_codes


I see, thanks.:cheers:


----------



## bogdymol

:lol:


----------



## x-type

:lol:
there is even visible longer stopping lenght with ABS turned on :lol:


----------



## seem

italystf said:


> Meanwhile in Trieste:


Meanwhile in Slovakia:


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

^^ Quite a lot of cars with Czech number plates in Slovakia. :lol:


----------



## seem

^^ On the first picture you can see what are the consequences of drinking Czech beer. :lol:


----------



## Falusi

Meanwhile in Hungary:rock::


----------



## seem

:lol:

and meanwhile in Slovakia: 










Meanwhile in der Böhmen:

Best Czech engineers testing a new Škoda -


----------



## Wilhem275

_ Aaaand yep! Knew that was comin'!   _


----------



## makaveli6

Meanwhile in Latvia


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile in Milan...


----------



## seem

U mad? :rofl:


Btw where do you actually live?


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile in Croatia (my pics)


----------



## italystf

seem said:


> U mad? :rofl:
> 
> 
> Btw where do you actually live?


I live in Friuli - Venezia Giulia. The pic from Milan is googled, those from Trieste are mine.


----------



## seem

^^ For some reason I thought that you are from Slovenia.


----------



## 122347

meanwhile in portugal


----------



## italystf

seem said:


> ^^ For some reason I thought that you are from Slovenia.


Because of funny pics about Croatia?


----------



## seem

Lol at first pic!

but still better than this - meanwhile in Slovakia: 

:rofl:










Anyway, best pic ever, I can't believe that this happened in Slovakistan -


----------



## italystf

There is a website that collects funny pics from Latvia. There should be a such site from every country in the world!
http://miljons.com/en/


----------



## seem

italystf said:


> There is a website that collects funny pics from Latvia. There should be a such site from every country in the world!
> http://miljons.com/en/


There is this cool Slovak page - "Parkujem ako debil" I park like an idiot - http://parkujemakodebil.blogspot.com/


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile in Israel









Meanwhile in the USA









Meanwhile in Czec Repubblic


----------



## seem

italystf said:


> Because of funny pics about Croatia?


Didn't you have Ljubljana as your location?


----------



## italystf

seem said:


> Didn't you have Ljubljana as your location?


No. You are probably make confusion with someone else. Yes, I posted sometimes on the SLO thread just because Slovenia isn't far away from me and I've been several time.


----------



## Verso

seem said:


> ^^ For some reason I thought that you are from Slovenia.


He's _italystf_, not _sloveniastf_.  Unless you've been reading it as "Italy, shut the f* (up)". :lol:


----------



## hofburg

I think he mentioned he's from Udine.


----------



## Coccodrillo

italystf said:


> Meanwhile in Milan...


This might be to allow cleaning of the road by some special vehicles.


----------



## kosimodo

Storm in Denmark.... Always scary when knocked over by the wind.. Especially when its on the Vejlefjord Bridge... 40 meter above sea


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I saw it on jp.dk. Probably an empty truck, they are prone to high winds. It wasn't so bad in the Netherlands, we missed most of the action.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Meanwhile in Milan...


there is the similar photo from Croatia when they introduced payment of parking in one street  here it is:


----------



## italystf

Coccodrillo said:


> This might be to allow cleaning of the road by some special vehicles.


Or blue lines were just painted.


----------



## Chilio

Meanwhile in Bulgaria:


----------



## bogdymol

Chilio said:


>


I saw many things like this one in Slovakia (in Ruzomberok if my memory dosen't cheat on me).


----------



## seem

bogdymol said:


> I saw many things like this one in Slovakia (in Ruzomberok if my memory dosen't cheat on me).


Yea I think they have some of these in Ružomberok (Rosenberg ) but now it is more a thing of the past. You rarely see them in Slovak towns however Ružomberok isn't really the best place so that's probably why. :dunno:

2 of these are now at the main square in Žilina infront of the Považská Gallery as a part of the exhibition, I think there is some exhibition about communism  -


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> I saw many things like this one in Slovakia (in Ruzomberok if my memory dosen't cheat on me).


What's the origin and the purpose of these?


----------



## Chilio

^^ Illegal "garage" for cars...


----------



## seem

Back in the communism it wasn't really illegal, it was quite normal however as I said nowadays its quite hard to find these sci-fi looking garages in Slovakia, in most town they have prohibited them I guess or they have just simply disappeared.


----------



## Chilio

Building something without permission/concession on state or municipality owned land and therefore one seizing common parking place has always been illegal, it just wasn't prosecuted back then...


----------



## CNGL

I want those ing* Spanish moderators banned :bleep::bleep:

Now time for the good news. Back on November 23rd, I passed my driving test and I got my driving license! So now you have one more forumer on the road! I splitted my list on clinched highways mapping in two. The link will remain as it was up to November 15th, and here is my new list. Only 7.5 kilometers, all on E07 while in practices.

*: Here goes the name of a well known town in Austria.


----------



## keokiracer

CNGL said:


> I want those ing* Spanish moderators banned :bleep::bleep:
> *: Here goes the name of a well known town in Austria.


What did I miss? :dunno: :dunno:


----------



## Satyricon84

welcome back CNGL :cheers:


----------



## CNGL

keokiracer said:


> What did I miss? :dunno: :dunno:


Some things on Spanish forums. I don't like that I can't post any message here when I was banned in other forum. I wanted to ask ChrisZwolle to lift me the ban if possible, but I didn't wanted to break the ninth rule of SSC.


----------



## keokiracer

Being 100% honest here, what's the 9th rule? I haven't seen any rules here (Of course I know there are rules, but I've never actually seen them written). I probably missed something I guess...


----------



## bogdymol

CNGL said:


> I want those
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Spanish moderators banned :bleep::bleep:
> 
> *: Here goes the name of a well known town in Austria.


^^ I fixed it for you 

Why were you brigged for?


----------



## CNGL

No, I wasn't brigged (BTW, I have been brigged thrice now), but banned. Because I said something that broke the SSC rules...


----------



## bogdymol

^^ You're a bad boy :lol:


----------



## keokiracer

What is brigged?

Really feeling like a newbee now...


----------



## RipleyLV

Wilhem275 said:


> Meanwhile, in...


Poland!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> Isn't "kurva" Finnish?


Wiktionary is your friend 

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kurva

kurwa was the first Polish word I learned during a high-school exchange in Brzeg.


----------



## keber

^^ Poland.


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

Astra... sure. :crazy:


----------



## keokiracer

RipleyLV said:


> Poland!


I knew it. They aren't saying Kurva, but they're saying Kurwa: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kurwa That's what you learn from watching a lot of Polish & Russian car crash videos


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Apparently the meaning in Finnish is the same


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Apparently the meaning in Finnish is the same


Same in Romanian (_curva_)


----------



## CNGL

And in Spanish (Same word as in Romanian).

Apparently most European languages have variations of curve for the same thing.


----------



## Satyricon84

CNGL said:


> Apparently most European languages have variations of curve for the same thing.


Ehm... curva in italian means curve, but in slavic languages means prostitute (just vulgar). Is in spanish curva=prostititue too?


----------



## keokiracer

Curva or Kurwa doesn't mean anything in Dutch, curve means corner, and with that word you can also describe the shape of a woman's body. For cursing we have 'kut' and 'klote', which literally means 'p*ssy' and 'balls' :lol:


----------



## CNGL

Satyricon84 said:


> Ehm... curva in italian means curve, but in slavic languages means prostitute (just vulgar). Is in spanish curva=prostititue too?


No, it's not that. In Spanish curva is also curve.


----------



## Surel

There are two meanings to this word (kurwa, kurva, curva, curve etc) around Europe. In the slavic languages, or languages with slavic influence the word would mean a "prostitute, bitch, slut, *****" etc. in most other languages the word has meaning of a "bend, turn, curve" etc and it originates from latin.

I would guess in most languages where the meaning is pejorative this word can be used also in the sence of **** in sentecnes like, what the ****, I dont give a **** etc.. However, it is certainly not so versatile as ****.

e.g.:





As far as I know in Finnish this word has no connotation with swearing. I dont think there was that much slavic influence on the finish language. However, in Hungarian, that belongs to the same group of languages, it bears the pejorative meaning, obviously due to the huge slavic influence.


A very funny combination of polish and english. I just cant help it but this is so funny to me.





Perhaps in a few years the kurwa/kurva word will be also in the english slang.


----------



## g.spinoza

Meanwhile in NYC:










more than 300 taxis gather every day in Riverside Drive, where a mosque is located: their muslim drivers park there in the middle of the road, in second or even third row, go to pray, blocking all traffic.


----------



## seem

Surel said:


> As far as I know in Finnish this word has no connotation with swearing. I dont think there was that much slavic influence on the finish language. However, in Hungarian, that belongs to the same group of languages, it bears the pejorative meaning, obviously due to the huge slavic influence.


In Finnish it means something like good or alright.


----------



## Attus

In Hungarian 'kurva' means a prostitute but it is a word used often for swearing as well. And this word is often used for 'very very very' so that e.g. 'kurva nagy' does not mean 'prostitute big' (as it is literally) but 'very very very big'.


----------



## Chilio

Verso said:


> You can see them in their respective threads. I was thinking about allowing photos, but I think it would be a mess, if some people posted too many photos of the same motorway. Rules can always be changed though. What do others think?


I would say the rule should be 1,2 or max 3 photos per opening motorway.


----------



## keber

One (1) and only one. And a link to other pictures.


----------



## keokiracer

Maximum 3 pics, you can link the other pics. Too bad you can't place pics in a spoiler like on the Dutch road forum. For example like this


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Surel said:


> Perhaps in a few years the kurwa/kurva word will be also in the english slang.


I have been noticing it a bit recently in the UK:lol:

Indeed in Portugal 'curva' means curve


----------



## Satyricon84

meanwhile in California...


----------



## seem

Meanwhile in Eastern Slovakia:


----------



## Satyricon84

italystf said:


> It's a Southafrican plate?


Yes, CA = Cape Town


----------



## Ron2K

italystf said:


> It's a Southafrican plate?


Yeah.

Each province has its own numbering system:


The Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal still use the ancient system of two or three letters indicating the place of registration, then up to six digits (up to five if the place of registration is three letters). Western Cape starts with C, KZN starts with N. Thus, you get CA for Cape Town, ND for Durban, etc.
The other seven provinces use the system of three letters (excluding vowels), three digits, then a one or two letter identifier indicating the province: FS for Free State, GP for Gauteng, EC for Eastern Cape, NC for Northern Cape, MP for Mpumalanga, NW for North West and L for Limpopo. Plates are issued sequentially (same as, say, New Zealand). Gauteng switched over to two letters, two digits, two more letters followed by the GP provincial identifier around a year ago as they ran out of combinations with the old system (existing plates still valid though).

You can check out the (rather poorly written) Wikipedia article for more info.


----------



## Satyricon84

Meanwhile in Sicily...confiscated for forgery this car. Actually it seems a Ferrari but in reality is a Pontiac Fiero


----------



## bogdymol




----------



## Coccodrillo

How to transform a van in a train and to turn it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq3SNxn0UWE


----------



## hofburg

I'm doing Paris-Berlin tomorrow. :cheers:
Would this route be ok?

http://nka.fi/Fhq5b


----------



## Verso

Nokia Maps?  Paris - Berlin, great trip. Yes, I think the route is ok.


----------



## hofburg

^ If I use google now, I might be surprised tomorrow, with nokia on the go.  I will try to take some photos.


----------



## il brutto

Meanwhile in Ukraine - pedestrian ghost:


----------



## bogdymol

:lol:


----------



## Verso

That was funny.


----------



## keokiracer

This is how to cross the road in Russia


----------



## RipleyLV

^^ :рофл:


----------



## Spookvlieger

Wat als het file was voor iedereen?
Translation: What if a traffic jam was for everybody?

at the end she says: 't is file voor iedereen he! Translation: This traffic jam is for everyone! with an undertone of: asshole!


----------



## RipleyLV

Sacha Baron Cohen is back with a new film called "The Dictator" hitting theaters in 2012!


----------



## x-type

:rofl:

cannot wait it!!


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile in Tajikistan:


----------



## Verso

^^ Wow, I hope that's from Soviet times. There's even a desk.


----------



## italystf

^^This is a real "meanwhile in Soviet Russia" pic.


----------



## void0

Would look stylish if it is grey, but those awful colours... Still something comparing to neighbouring Afganistan


----------



## Suburbanist

It is really bad the Asian ex-USSR republics, for most of it, didn't clean up and didn't eradicate symbols of communism like the Baltic states, Georgia, Ukraine etc.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Thats pretty cool :lol:.


----------



## seem

I can see that we still haven't reached the level of high developed Russia, they even have tables at bus stops!


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> It is really bad the Asian ex-USSR republics, for most of it, didn't clean up and didn't eradicate symbols of communism like the Baltic states, Georgia, Ukraine etc.


Maybe they kept them as historical memorials. There are still fascist symbols in Italy, kept for that purpose even if fascism is outlawed in Italy.
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=990555
And hammer and sickle is still legally adopted by left wing extremists in western countries:








The pic above is merely informative and doesn't have any propaganda aim. I personally dislikes both far right and far left extremists.


seem said:


> I can see that we still haven't reached the level of high developed Russia, they even have tables at bus stops!


Even in western world we usually don't have tables at bus stops, sometimes even benches are missing.


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ Whenever I see anything the PCI symbol, I remind me of how they pushed a death and terror campaign in Italy, including many "stragi" and the horrendous death of a PM in 1978! And I'm sick to think I have some friends who honestly think Marx had/has answers for anything now that the country is in a deep financial crisis.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ Whenever I see anything the PCI symbol, I remind me of how they pushed a death and terror campaign in Italy, including many "stragi" and the horrendous death of a PM in 1978! And I'm sick to think I have some friends who honestly think Marx had/has answers for anything now that the country is in a deep financial crisis.


You should have the same horror feeling when you see swastikas or fasci littori. Although ideologically opposited, they brought the same things in Europe during the 20th century: wars, death, repression and povertry. And "stragi" in Italy between 1969 and the 80s were made both by red and black terrorists.


----------



## Ingenioren

italystf said:


> Even in western world we usually don't have tables at bus stops, sometimes even benches are missing.


Not even time-table...


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> It is really bad the Asian ex-USSR republics, for most of it, didn't clean up and didn't eradicate symbols of communism like the Baltic states, Georgia, Ukraine etc.


Those countries are still underdeveloped and ruled by antidemocratic or half-democratic governments. I think they have most serious problems than this bus stop that is no more than a curious thing that who go to Dushanbe see and photograph.


----------



## il brutto

italystf said:


> There are still fascist symbols in Italy, kept for that purpose even if fascism is outlawed in Italy.


I remember seeing "viva il duce" in Padova a few years ago, my memory says it was in the courtyard of university, on this wall maybe, but I'll have to check my photos.
---
Like in many other places everywhere around the word, there are also fasces in Ljubljana, thanks to Austrians (presidential and government HQ) and, indirectly, French, here's a website with pictures, fighting against these "fascist symbols of state authority".


----------



## Suburbanist

italystf said:


> You should have the same horror feeling when you see swastikas or fasci littori. Although ideologically opposited, they brought the same things in Europe during the 20th century: wars, death, repression and povertry. And "stragi" in Italy between 1969 and the 80s were made both by red and black terrorists.


Sure!

But I don't think any political party uses swastikas, and the use of fascist allusions is heavily frowned upon, whereas communists symbols kept seen as "cool" or "alternative".


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Sure!
> 
> But I don't think any political party uses swastikas, and the use of fascist allusions is heavily frowned upon, whereas communists symbols kept seen as "cool" or "alternative".


Hammer and sickle is illegal in some eastern countries such Hungary, Poland and the Baltics. That's because they suffered for the real comunism.


----------



## Attus

Soo, handball world championships are over (congratulations for Norway, world champions). I'll have time again for SSC


----------



## g.spinoza

Meanwhile in Russia... someone needs a new pair of pants:
http://video.repubblica.it/mondo/il-sorpasso-del-camion-sul-ghiaccio-sfiorata-la-strage/84037/82427


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Hammer and sickle is illegal in some eastern countries such Hungary, Poland and the Baltics. That's because they suffered for the real comunism.


so Austrian coat of arms is also illegal there?


----------



## keokiracer

Slippery roads in The Netherlands cause a car crash and multiple near misses:


----------



## SeanT

x-type said:


> so Austrian coat of arms is also illegal there?


Of course!!! The idiot was austrian.:lol:


----------



## SeanT

Before you kill me guys, just kidding.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> NIMBYs are no new species. In 1839 (that is right), they were already campaigning against new railroads in Pennsylvania


I've been away for a couple of weeks, so sorry if this is late, but may I point out that the issue here wasn't just "a railroad in Pennsylvania" but a railroad running down a main street in a major city? (I've seen that poster in local-history books, by the way...)


----------



## seem

Meanwhile in Northern Slovakia:



Ali18 said:


> Kuriózna situácia 19.12.11 na Kragujevskej ulici (E50/E75/18). Našťastie sa to drevo zosypalo na mieste, ktoré sa dalo obísť:


----------



## x-type

Road_UK is back on forum!!!!!


----------



## hofburg

yeah, I noticed that too.  where was he all the time?

anyway, nice motorway-christmas thematic wishes. :cheers:


----------



## Chilio

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmass to all motorway&highway maniacs!

We've got some 5-15 cm of snow in Sofia, it fell two days ago, and the temperatures are low enough for it not to melt. But it is also too foggy and with all the white snow it still looks too gray outside.

P.S. Here are view from my windows:


----------



## g.spinoza

Happy holidays! Central Italy (Adriatic side) not a single snowflake but tons and tons of rain...


----------



## CNGL

Merry Christmas to all! Finally some winter has come to Huesca. Is now colder than before.



x-type said:


> Road_UK is back on forum!!!!!


Yeah. I think he has taken me off the first on clinched Spanish motorways.


----------



## ea1969

There is some snow in Greece (at least on the high mountains) after a generally dry and warm autumn. Most ski centres opened just in time for the holidays.

_Season Greetings_ to everybody!

PS. They had to close the A2 and NR20 west of Kozani for most of Thursday due to snowfall and (mainly) strong winds that were bringing snow drifts from the nearby slopes to the road surface.


----------



## seem

There is still some snow but it was 3C today so it has melted down in the valleys, I/18 today -


----------



## keber

Snow? That is much better::cheers:








(taken today, from the second highest mountain between Slovenia and Austria)
Happy holidays from me too.


----------



## seem

^^ Wow that's amazing, I guess you are very skilled as you hiked to the top in such a harsh conditions.


----------



## Alex_ZR

seem said:


> Meanwhile in Northern Slovakia:


Is Kragujevska street in Žilina named after city of Kragujevac in Serbia? 

P.S. Merry Christmas to all, although Serbs celebrate it on January 7th. :ancient:


----------



## seem

Alex_ZR said:


> Is Kragujevska street in Žilina named after city of Kragujevac in Serbia?


Yea and it's named after Kragujevac because 44 Slovaks died there in 1918, I didn't know that, I just googled it and got this page where it's says why it is named Kragujevská and there are some pictures of this street (it is a feeder really) - http://zilina-gallery.sk/index.php?/category/773/


----------



## keokiracer

Merry Christmas and a happy new year everyone 

(just i time, it's 23:42 here )


----------



## Nordic20T

Merry christmas to everyone from me too! (I'm also in time, 2350 here! )


----------



## il brutto

On Saturday there was light rain in Ljubljana and snow already on the castle hill. Christmas day was the most beautiful I remember, clear sunny weather with perfect views (I could probably see keber if I had good binoculars ), just the marsh was covered with fog.


----------



## keokiracer

Meanwhile in Russia (January this year)...


----------



## Pansori

^^
Why does that car have the steering wheel on the right side?


----------



## bogdymol

Pansori said:


> ^^
> Why does that car have the steering wheel on the right side?


Many cars in far east Russia have the steering wheel on the right side because they are imported second-hand from Japan.


----------



## Pansori

But that must be unsafe. Is it legal at all?


----------



## bogdymol

Pansori said:


> But that must be unsafe. Is it legal at all?


Anything is legal in Russia :nuts:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Pansori said:


> But that must be unsafe. Is it legal at all?


Thats legal everywhere but India and Poland I think

There are a good few LHD cars in the UK bought cheaper in France


----------



## bogdymol

*Happy New Year !!!*


----------



## Alex_ZR

^^ Romania has one of the fastest Internet connections in Europe.


----------



## nenea_hartia

^ Yup.

Happy New Year to all of you !


----------



## seem

essendon bombers said:


> The hailstorm lasted ten minutes, then after that heavy rain came for a bit and melted the hailstones, We were then left with a whole lot of water in the back yard which we then had to prevent flooding. We got a little water seepage into couple of rooms in the house but fortunately nothing major, and the damage around the house was minimal too. It did however wreck a lot of the plants in the garden.


Oh that's not so good then hno: at least you have 30s. 

Weather is quite strange today, -1 and its raining.


----------



## essendon bombers

seem said:


> Oh that's not so good then hno: at least you have 30s.
> 
> Weather is quite strange today, -1 and its raining.


In Melbourne today (2/1/12) we will go for 40C, our first stinker for the summer. My computer tells me current temp (10am) is 30C. :cheers:


----------



## seem

^^ Sounds great I were you I would go down to the beach asap, but I would probably miss a snowy white Christmas.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Meanwhile in Poland the snowless winter continues. It's +4°C right now and it drizzles. Drizzle in January! 
I love winter and I love snow, so the weather like the one we are currently having is like nightmare - everything is wet, gray and depressing.


----------



## keokiracer

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Meanwhile in Poland the snowless winter continues. It's +4°C right now and it drizzles. Drizzle in January!


In The Netherlands we had the hottest New Yearsday sonce they started measuring: 12,7 degrees in De Bilt (near Utrecht, which is the official measuring station for the Netherlands). In Zeeuws-Vlaanderen it was 14 degrees 


Fuzzy Llama said:


> I love winter and I love snow, so the weather like the one we are currently having is like nightmare - everything is wet, gray and depressing.


I like snow too, so I don't like this rain: it has literally been raining all year!


----------



## Attus

I don't like snow 'cause it is my job to clean it away which is really a hard work in heavy snow and needs 2-3 hours daily. 
But these rains, freezing just as falling, creating a thick ice on everything... it is even worse. And we have had such a weather since late November.


----------



## Chilio

We had 2-3 cm new snow on 31st noon-time, just to renew the white cover on everything for new year's day.


----------



## Pepov

I was celebrating New Years Eve in Gorzyczki  Yeah i am a motorway freak ^^
I am sure at least Chris know where it is


----------



## SeanT

probably in Poland?:lol:


----------



## SeanT

:lol:


SeanT said:


> probably in Poland?:lol:


 Guys, nobody question the knowlidge of "Chris" about motor/expressways,....but guys come on it´s only geografy!


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Still, it takes a certain amount of time and effort to memorize all that stuff - or a gift for looking at a map once and retaining it all because it makes sense. I've always been fascinated with maps and geography, and have a brain full of useless information like counties and county seats for about a third of the U.S.'s states, departements and prefectures in France, and so on; the road systems of certain places (Interstates, French and Belgian autoroutes, some of the British motorways....) but if I don't use the information for a while because I lose interest in the place, I'll lose it; and memorizing, say, the Autobahns would be a lot of effort that I don't have time for.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that I find Chris' encyclopedic knowledge of this stuff rather impressive, and if people make fun of it it may be because we're a bit jealous.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

famous Gorzyczki... southern terminus of Polish A1.

If it wasn't an official border crossing of a major road I probably would have never heard of it though. I only remember it because it's relevant to Polish road construction, even though it should probably not be very relevant in this day and age, but that's another discussion .


----------



## hofburg

nenea hartia 's internet connection is insane. does Brasov have optics already?


----------



## bogdymol

hofburg said:


> nenea hartia 's internet connection is insane. does Brasov have optics already?


Romanian internet connection is among the best in the world. According to some rankings we are second, after South Korea (or NK? ). I have optics at home, but I think that my wireless router limits my connection speed. Anyway, the connection is very fast and I don't have problems downloading & uploading stuff. For example I upload my driving videos to youtube in maybe 10 minutes, and they are up to 1.5 - 2 GB in size.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_the_United_States#Internet_use_and_speed



> In measurements made between January and June 2011, the United States ranked 26th globally in terms of the speed of its broadband Internet connections with an average measured speed of 4.93 Mbps. South Korea led the list with an average of 17.62 Mbps, followed by Romania (15.27 Mbps) and Bulgaria (12.89 Mbps)


ouch...


----------



## bogdymol

So the newest EU members, Romania and Bulgaria, are not quite 3rd world


----------



## TheCat

Wow, 64 mbps uplink. Not bad .


----------



## hofburg

and what's the monthly cost for that in Romania?


----------



## Verso

^^ 100 chewing gums.  (joke from DLM)


----------



## seem

^^ So it's a bit cheaper there than in Slovakia, we pay by one cow.

I am quite intrested how much you pay in the Western Europe guys.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I pay € 30 per month for 40 mbit internet.


----------



## Chilio

I pay €15/month for stationary home telephone (with 3600 minutes included) and ADSL. I pay additionally €2,5 for mobile internet which is rather slower.

P.S. Here it is:


It's quite strange why when using the mobile net it shows server in Samokov (some 70 km from here), while I am at my home in Sofia 

Compared to my ADSL, same computer, same location:


----------



## Attus

Here are the current prices of my provider (1€ ~ 300 Ft). 
I've been their client for almost 10 years so my prices is a bit cheaper, I pay 4.500 forint (~15€) for 10mbps.


----------



## nenea_hartia

hofburg said:


> and what's the monthly cost for that in Romania?


I pay around 12 € for that speed, and this payment also includes the TV.


----------



## g.spinoza

seem said:


> ^^ So it's a bit cheaper there than in Slovakia, we pay by one cow.
> 
> I am quite intrested how much you pay in the Western Europe guys.


I pay 20€ for 8 mbit, but in Bologna I payed the same for a 20 mbit connection.


----------



## SeanT

I have a 50/5 Mbit connection, it costs € 53 (DKK 399) a month.


----------



## bogdymol

I don't know why, but today my internet connection was extremely slow. This usually dosen't happen. I took the test again and I had a big surprise:


----------



## hofburg

you guys are lucky.  even in Netherlands 30€ for 40Mbit is quite a deal, compared to what they offer here in France. I pay 35€ for 5Mbit (the highest speed possible), and no optics available here (Paris intra muros !!).

In Slovenia there's 33€ for 20Mbit internet with tv and telephone.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

I pay € 24 for 100/20 Mbps (download/upload)

The maximum speed I could have in my current home is 150Mbps but that is offered by a different company and would cost € 28.


----------



## TrueBulgarian

In Sofia I pay 10€ for 50 Mbps, which goes up to 100 Mbps at night  I often have the problem that my hard disk can't cope with the download speed  In the UK I pay 30 pounds for a connection, advertised as 13 Mbps, although 99% of the time it's between 2-3 Mbps... Romania and Bulgaria strong, when it comes to Internet connection quality...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

I think the price and speed of internet connection might have something to do with the percentage of people living in multi-storey apartment buildings. In Estonia, a 100 Mbps connection is available in pretty much all apartment buildings in larger towns but many private house suburbs are still uncovered (so people living there have to stick to just 12 Mbps). 

It's way cheaper and more profitable to invest in high-speed internet in apartment block areas than it is for private house subrubs. I think that may be one reason for the low results of the US, UK and Netherlands.


----------



## TheCat

I believe Canada has the most expensive telecom services in the Western world hno:.

I currently pay about $50/month for a 12mbps connection (with a ridiculous 512kbps upload speed). It also has a usage limit of 60GB/month.

I pay $32/month for my cellular data plan (for a usage limit of 1.5GB/month), and that doesn't include the rest of my cellular plan (i.e. the phone plan).


----------



## jann85

Hey everyone,
I would like to ask you for some suggestions.
I'm an IB (International Baccalaureate) student and one part of my 2-year course is Extended Essay.
I have to do some research and a study and culminate it in a 4000-words paper. 
I decided to choose a topic connected with highways/motorways but I still haven't decided. 
It is more or less like a thesis that you write when completing a Bachelor. 
Would you have any topic suggestions? 

Thanks in advance


----------



## TrueBulgarian

jann85 said:


> ...


You could write about the fact that motorways decrease the number of fatalities and traffic accidents as a whole. This may serve as an argument for further development of the highway infrastructure of Poland.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

This is madness, we had weeks in summer where it was colder at nights as it is right now.
I WANT MORE WINTERY WINTER NOW.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It helps if you turn the heat down. 25.5 C, do you like to live in a sauna?


----------



## keber

Probably he doesn't pay high heat bills. For me, 21°C is more than enough.

Also I forgot to mention, that internet connection in my appartment is faster than internet connection of a company where I work (with 30 co-workers).


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

ChrisZwolle said:


> It helps if you turn the heat down. 25.5 C, do you like to live in a sauna?


I think that this reading is a bit off, because the thermometer is (temporally, until I find a better place) placed too close to the radiator. But I think that it's around 23°C in my apartment and I like it. And the heating is included in the rent - one of the few bright sides of renting a place in a commieblock from late 60'


----------



## Penn's Woods

TheCat said:


> ^^ We do pay quite a lot compared to the area (I live in a townhouse with a private gas heater per suite, and payment is usage-based), but we would rather save on other expenses and live in comfort. Also, because we don't like the cold in general, we usually pay less in electricity costs in the summer because we set the AC to also around 24 C, compared to many Canadians, who like it at 20-21.
> 
> PS: I don't remember the exact costs, since I don't currently handle the payments, but even in high-usage months it is considerably less than 250 €. Energy costs in Europe are very high compared to North America.


I pay 30 to 35 dollars a month for electricity - a bit more in the summer when I'm using the air-conditioning more - and nothing for water, steam, etc.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

keber said:


> How much do you pay then?
> 
> I live in a older apartment of about 90m2 in uninsulated block and we pay from zero up to 250 € per month (depending on cold in that month). Until now we were paying only by apartment surface after new year we will start to pay by actual consumption (right word?), measured by special dividing devices.


How the hell do you pay that much? My mother's apartment is 95m2 and the biggest central heating bill was a bit above € 200 and that's from last winter when the average temperature was -10C and often even below -20C.


----------



## TheCat

Yeah, electricity prices are quite low in North America. I believe Canada had/still has the lowest electricity prices in the world, although they are up to twice higher now compared to a few years ago, with the introduction of the so-called "smart meters".

Heating is somewhat expensive, however (for people who have their own heaters), since it is mainly based on burning natural gas. Rental apartments usually have the same "old fashioned" central water heating systems with radiators (although unlike in some countries, there is a separate system per building, as opposed to a neighbourhood-wide distribution), and that is normally included with rent. Apartments for purchase (condominiums, as they are known around here) may or may not include heating with the maintenance fees, but even if they do, the maintenance fees often reflect rising costs over the years.


----------



## keber

Rebasepoiss said:


> How the hell do you pay that much? My mother's apartment is 95m2 and the biggest central heating bill was a bit above € 200 and that's from last winter when the average temperature was -10C and often even below -20C.


1 - it's (still) insulated block 
2 - I pay for people who have 26°C or more in their apartment with partly opened windows when there is -10°C outside (new divider counters will help a lot), could say that this is "flat rate"
3 - in average winter the monthly heating bill is about 120-150 €.
4 - home heating energy in Slovenia is pretty expensive


----------



## Attus

I live in a family house, heated area is 180m2 (8 persons living here). Our heating bill is 60,000 forint (€200 last week, €190 today, €175 next week) monthly but all through the year even in August when we don't use heating at all. So it's measured once a year and we pay the bill in 12 equal parts. 
If we had to pay on month's price in one month, in December or January the bill for heating could be 200-250,000 forint (~€800). So we set the temperature to 20C (68F), no more. We have no money for 25C (77F).


----------



## Fatfield

Blimey! I thought I payed a lot for 2 bed flat @ £63 a month for gas & electric. Either its a lot colder where you lot live or you pay a lot more per unit than we do.


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> How much do you pay then?


Less than us. :lol:



Attus said:


> Our heating bill is 60,000 forint *(€200 last week, €190 today, €175 next week)*


:lol: :nuts:



Fatfield said:


> Blimey! I thought I payed a lot for 2 bed flat @ £63 a month for gas & electric. Either its a lot colder where you *lot* live or you pay a lot more per unit than we do.


Just a question: is the word "lot" usually offensive or not? (I haven't figured it out yet)


----------



## Fatfield

Verso said:


> Less than us. :lol:
> 
> :lol: :nuts:
> 
> Just a question: is the word "lot" usually offensive or not? (I haven't figured it out yet)


No, its not offensive. 'You lot' just means 'all of you'.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^One problem English has is that we're missing a plural of "you." Personally, I sometimes find myself saying "you all" or "you people." Depends how far south I am at the time. I've even been known to say "y'all."  So I guessed that's all "you lot" was, but since it's a British (or at least, not-American) expression, I waited for a Brit to say so.


----------



## Verso

Fatfield said:


> No, its not offensive. 'You lot' just means 'all of you'.


Okay, thanks. The reason I'm asking is because for some reason 'you lot' sounds offensive to me (like 'you herd'), but I guess it's not.


----------



## ABRob

ChrisZwolle said:


> Little accident in Vaals, the Netherlands. A German bus without passengers had to avoid a stray dog and hit a few parked cars.


Well done.
I'm realy wondering that accidents like this don't happen more often. The bus drivers in Aachen drive like crazy - and they still can't hold their timetables...


----------



## Surel

That gives nice lesson. Never avoid animals on a road if they are not too heavy.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Belgium yesterday
E25 near Sprimont.

Yep that truck was driving on the highway above. It was a Dutch truck too.









http://1.standaardcdn.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2012/01/04/02571341.jpg.h380.jpg.568.jpg


----------



## seem

Meanwhile in Central Slovakia:


----------



## Wilhem275

Yesterday I made my personal fuel consumption best record 

On this trip, at 4 in the morning, with a VW Passat 2.0 TDI 140 HP.

From A to B: average f.c. 29,7 km/l
From A to C: average f.c. 28,5 km/l

I don'l lìke that car too much, mainly because of its extremely long gear ratios (all of them, what a shame), but at least it runs efficiently, if well driven.

In the first part of the trip I never had to stop, all 50 or 70 straight roads. After that I got in the city and found many roundabouts.
I had to stop only once, at a stupid traffic light


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

^^ That must have been awfully boring.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Guys, a stupid question for dweller of the South out there: Is there any chance that it will snow in Madrid during next two weeks?


----------



## Spookvlieger

^^ not a chance with these temperatures I guess. Very rare to find snow in Madrid anyway unless maybe in the mountains around Madrid.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Guys, a stupid question for dweller of the South out there: Is there any chance that it will snow in Madrid during next two weeks?


The Weather Channel (a cable TV channel in the US that does, um, weather) has forecasts for around the world for up to ten days:

http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/SPXX0050

I don't know what their source is. See if you can find a site for the government weather agency (like meteo.fr for France, although I haven't looked at that in years). I'm also seeing the display in Fahrenheit: to switch to metric, click on the little C° way up at the top right corner of the page, next to "sign in."

They've got it warm for January (13 and 14 celsius during the day, lows around freezing) and dry.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I also use weather.com for the forecast and it's quite accurate (at least for the forecast during the next 3-4-5 days).


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Right. I wouldn't bet money on the accuracy of their longer-range forecasts, but I don't think I'd bet money on the accuracy of anyone's longer-range forecasts.

Now THIS is a winter I can live with!

http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/19102:4:US

We had two cold days (highs of freezing or below) this week (and a freak snowstorm in October), but otherwise it's been quite tolerable.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

joshsam said:


> ^^ not a chance with these temperatures I guess. Very rare to find snow in Madrid anyway unless maybe in the mountains around Madrid.


Its not that rare, its quite high and in the middle of quite a large landmass


----------



## Pavlemadrid

It's relatively common, we can have until 15 snowy days in a winter, although the most common is only one or two days the snow has some importance.


----------



## Spookvlieger

^^Well that's less than overhere in a normal year. We have on average 30 snow days a year and I don't consider snow common overhere in winter....But I guess it's what you are used to..


----------



## Pavlemadrid

Well, if you think in a place where there are 30 snow days per winter (your town) is "very rare" to find snow, I don't agree.


----------



## Suburbanist

Pavlemadrid said:


> Well, if you think in a place where there are 30 snow days per winter (your town) is "very rare" to find snow, I don't agree.


^^ In some places, the dynamics that produce snow are mostly related to we currents from the ocean clashing with dry cold fronts from the Arctic. When this happens, a low of snow is produced, by temps reach daily highs that usually melt quickly the snow.


----------



## Nexis




----------



## bogdymol

First snow in Arad, Romania this winter


----------



## Chilio

Strange enough, as Arad is quite more to the north than central Bulgaria, and here it was kinda snowy hell - blocked motorways for hours, hundreds of villages without electricity, some for more than 24 hours etc.
http://www.btv.bg/videos/novini/video/1425969782-Obstanovkata_v_stranata.html


----------



## Orionol

Good for you guys.  I love snow, thats why I live in Sweden, though this year has been a snowless winter hno:


----------



## italystf

They just said on a TV talk show about economics: "Many Italian companies are now moving their production to Eastern countries such Slovakia, *Czeckoslovakia* and Romania." And he repeated Czeckoslovakia several times. :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Maybe they are building the plant exactly at the border... half in SK and the other half in CZ. So it's true :troll:


----------



## Satyricon84

italystf said:


> They just said on a TV talk show about economics: "Many Italian companies are now moving their production to Eastern countries such Slovakia, *Czeckoslovakia* and Romania." And he repeated Czeckoslovakia several times. :lol:


He could wrong the name, but what he said it's true and it's really bad for our economy hno:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Czechoslovakia is still quite common in informal speech here. Saying Slovakia and Czechoslovakia is a bit strange though


----------



## seem

^^ Lol quite stupid to talk about SK and CS in the same sentece. 

Some people use it even here eg. except of saying "largest city in Slovakia and Czech rep." some people would say "in Czechoslovakia".


----------



## Chilio

^^ Most probably Czechoslovakia wasn't the only mistake, but he also meant Slovenia by saying Slovakia


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The German Wetterzentrale site still uses 1980's maps for their weather maps...


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ A friend of mine works at Deutsche Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt and once told me they were using maps with West and East Germany until last year hno:


----------



## italystf

Chilio said:


> ^^ Most probably Czechoslovakia wasn't the only mistake, but he also meant Slovenia by saying Slovakia


It happened at an official ceremony that they mistook SK with SLO and played the wrong anthemn.
And I remember a school professor putting Oslo in Finland, and someone else Barcelona in Portugal. And though that Messi was Italian and Beckam German.


----------



## Verso

I prefer Australian English.


----------



## panda80

bogdymol said:


> ^^ I don't think that the romanian signs exist for real. They don't show the directions quite right...
> 
> Anyway, I would sugest Chris to move this to _the roadside rest area_...


Sure the romanian signs don't exist (Zagor said these are fantasy signs), however the first one shows the right directions, while driving on E85 in Urziceni. As for the second romanian one, location of it may be Sebes, however there is no intersection where it would fit.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> A while back there was an "uproar" about the fact English is the first language at Schiphol Airport, and not Dutch.


English should be the first language on all airports in the world... especially on tranzit airports such as Schiphol.

I remember that I've seen bilingual signs (English/Spanish) in New York-JFK and Miami airports, but not in Chicago-O'Hare.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

If you need snow, Arlberg, Austria is the place to go. Almost 6 meters!


----------



## DanielFigFoz

There's a service station somewhere near to Bordeaux with a ridiculously long slip road to get in there (which I found fun :banana , but its really nice, does anyone know where it is? I went there in 2004 so I'm not sure


----------



## x-type

DanielFigFoz said:


> There's a service station somewhere near to Bordeaux with a ridiculously long slip road to get in there (which I found fun :banana , but its really nice, does anyone know where it is? I went there in 2004 so I'm not sure


longer than Guntramsdorf? (of course, direction Vienna, about 1 km)


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> If you need snow, Arlberg, Austria is the place to go. Almost 6 meters!


I think next week I'll be more than satisfied with 1,5-3 meters in France.


----------



## Falusi

Today I saw a Google Streetview car in Budapest, it crossed the road behind me... I hope it captured me


----------



## keokiracer

keber said:


> I think next week I'll be more than satisfied with 1,5-3 meters in France.


Can you send some here?


----------



## bogdymol

Falusi said:


> Today I saw a Google Streetview car in Budapest, it crossed the road behind me... I hope it captured me


I can see myself on Google StreetView in Arad, Romania


----------



## keokiracer

^^ we want a link


----------



## bogdymol

keokiracer said:


> ^^ we want a link


I am there. Trust me  Chris can confirm...


----------



## keokiracer

^^ Why? Has he already found you on StreetView?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yep, I searched 250 streets in Arad.


----------



## keokiracer

^^ In that case: do you personally know eachother? How else would you know how to find him? Or did he just give you a printscreen and said "Try to find me on Google SV"?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Oh he lives next door to me.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Oh he lives next door to me.


me too 

i tried to search him. but i don't have enough nerves for that


----------



## keokiracer

^^ & Chris huh?


----------



## Alex_ZR

Talking about Arad and Google street view...this is one of my favourites:

http://maps.google.com/?ll=46.162705,21.325536&spn=0.003998,0.010504&t=h&z=17&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=46.163495,21.325462&panoid=aJOpQBqPmqUzKDpFPlQcJA&cbp=12,358.69,,2,9.29


----------



## seem

^^ On Wikipedia its says that Zrenjanin is twinned with Arad. 

I knew that Romanian roads aren't the best in EU but I wouldn't think that there would be so many unpaved streets even in town like Arad.


----------



## g.spinoza

Not exactly road-based, but it involves means of transport:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16561904

Costa Concordia, a 100.000+ tons, 4000 passenger cruise ship hit a submerged rock while cruising near Giglio Island, off the coast of Tuscany. 3 are dead and 70 missing, as the ship rolled on its side and lied in the shallow seabed.
It is the biggest ship ever sunk (Titanic was half its size, the Lusitania a third, the Andrea Doria only a fourth).


----------



## seem

^^ I just watched on BBC news, I hope that 70 missing people are alright too. hno:

Meanwhile in Slovakia:


----------



## Verso

Can't believe that huge ship hit a rock and sank. Didn't they know about those rocks there?


----------



## bogdymol

*University Square, Bucharest, Romania, last evening:*















































Reuters

Washington Post

CNN

AFP

gândul.ro (Romanian only)

pictures from: stirileprotv.ro


----------



## Chilio

New Year's night skyline over Sofia (shot and "commented" by some foreign tourists):


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Can't believe that huge ship hit a rock and sank. Didn't they know about those rocks there?


Of course they knew. The captain was just careless, and wanted to do a parade in front of Giglio Island. I just talked to a friend of mine who is a skilled scuba diver, he told me everybody knew about those rocks.


----------



## g.spinoza

seem said:


> ^^ I just watched on BBC news, I hope that 70 missing people are alright too. hno:


Unfortunately death toll is rising. 6 are confirmed dead and there is little hope for 15 still missing.


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile an Italian newspaper made a sad faux pas:


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ For the happiest day in your life, win a cruise!


----------



## Tin_Can

Meanwhile in Estonia...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ For clarification: it's a snow plough that accidentally backed off a bridge.

Anyway: The Estonian police is testing a small modification to their police car livery that adds a 20cm wide reflective checkerboard strip to the doors. This is to make police cars more visible and make exiting the car on the side of the road safer for policemen (although I don't really see how, unless the police stops on the opposite side of the road).









The regular design:









What do you think of it? 
I personally think that the strip makes the cars look like taxis :lol:


----------



## Tin_Can

^^
Still better than the one used on ambulance field coordinators cars...










Some police car redesign would be nice though.


----------



## seem

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ For clarification: it's a snow plough that accidentally backed off a bridge.
> 
> Anyway: The Estonian police is testing a small modification to their police car livery that adds a 20cm wide reflective checkerboard strip to the doors. This is to make police cars more visible and make exiting the car on the side of the road safer for policemen (although I don't really see how, unless the police stops on the opposite side of the road).


Here they have yellow or orange reflective strip, I think it helps a bit.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Here they are very reflective:










Most police forces in the UK are much more reflective though:


----------



## italystf




----------



## Suburbanist

*Snake causes freak accident in Brazil*

Very strange/odd/creepy/weird accident in West Brazil. Video is 1 year old, but whatever...

Here is how it happened as the reporter speaks out:

- car (Honda Civic) is driving at 100 km/h, spots an anaconda across the roadway at 3 a.m. in clear skies conditions

- tries to deviate, loses control, crashes into an oncoming beverage truck

- the car breaks in two, the front part is thrown into the roadside ditch, the rest is dragged for 150 by the truck

- the truck driver and assistant escape uninjured, the 2 occupants of the car are trapped. 

- car catches fire, spreads to the truck, closing the highway for several hours until 7 a.m.

- anaconda, which was carrying "baby snakes", is dead together with her couple dozens evil offspring

DISCLAIMER: video shows the beast evil snake torn in pieces, and scenes of the accident with pixelized human bodies.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Erghh merda das cobras

Where were the all the snakes though? Snakes don't carry babies do they?


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Some of them are ovoviviparous, they produce eggs which open inside the snake's body and they carry their offspring inside for some time.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ I thought all snakes lay eggs...until I googled it and found that it depends on the species whether they lay eggs or give birth.

Edit: g.spinoza was quicker


----------



## Verso

Edit: g.spinoza and Rebasepoiss were quicker


----------



## Chilio

DanielFigFoz said:


> Portuguese for 'go' is '*vai*' (2nd person and in the present)


^^ I know this... from this:





:banana:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

What the **** is that?? :lol:


----------



## Chilio

vaaaaaiii.... vaaaaiiii.... vai, vai, vai, vai...


----------



## keber

A snow picture:
Today morning in Alpe d'Huez (France) after about 1 m of snow fall in 24 hours:








(partly cleaned car is mine)


----------



## g.spinoza

Congratulation to Croatia, set to join EU next year.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16670298
Given the present crisis, I don't know if it is a smart move, though.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The crisis is a eurozone debt crisis, not necessarily an EU one. Croatia should've joined in 2007 or even 2004 anyway.


----------



## Verso

Is it true that this was the first referendum in Croatia since 1991? We've had 12 of them since then.


----------



## il brutto

True. In Croatia 10% of voters are needed to demand a referendum, in Slovenia only about 2.34% (40,000). Also a third of MPs (i.e. opposition in the parliament) or the upper house can demand it.


----------



## Chilio

And there where no referendums at all in Bulgaria since 1946, when on a set-up by Soviet occupators referendum communists abolished monarchy and sent the king in exile... And there was something like a referendum in 1971, when in the constitution was added the so called Article 1, saying that the Bulgarian Communist Party is the leading force in the country and no other party can rule.


----------



## italystf

Chilio said:


> And there where no referendums at all in Bulgaria since 1946, when on a set-up by Soviet occupators referendum communists abolished monarchy and sent the king in exile... And there was something like a referendum in 1971, when in the constitution was added the so called Article 1, saying that the Bulgarian Communist Party is the leading force in the country and no other party can rule.


I can imagine how honest this referendum was and how your people were freely allowed to express their opinion.


----------



## Chilio

Ironically, the same persons, by the time students of sociology, politology etc. in 1971, who created Article 1 and the discussions in the party, that led to the so called "referendum" on the new constitution, were the politicians in 1985-1989 that made the movements in the communist party that led to the changes in 1989 and the abolition of Article 1...

As for 1946, supporters of the monarchy were repressed, all officials from before the occupation were sent to jail or worse - killed without being even judged... A cousin of my gradfather for example was chief police inspector of the town Kazanlak and when the Soviets and the new communist rule came, they took him from his home in front of wife and children and shot him dead otside the town.


----------



## italystf

In Italy we say "Bulgarian majority" when the great majority votes in the same way because of the lack of democratic debate or intimidations towards who votes against the government.


----------



## Chilio

But of course, this was the situation until 10.10.1989... It was typical on elections during the communist regime that the Communist Party won 99% of the votes and the remaining 1% was for the "Fatherland Front" which was something like a derrivate of the same...
Since the changes no political party has won more than 40-45% at elections.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> The crisis is a eurozone debt crisis, not necessarily an EU one. Croatia should've joined in 2007 or even 2004 anyway.


I don't think that Croatia has the power to negotiate an opt-out like UK and Denmark did... for the times coming EU pretty much equals euro.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> I don't think that Croatia has the power to negotiate an opt-out like UK and Denmark did... for the times coming EU pretty much equals euro.


But I don't think it will adopt euro soon, but few years later, the same for Schengen membership.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes, when Croatia will have to adopt the euro the eurozone is either broken up or the problems are behind us by that time. 

Personally I hope the eurozone remains because it's freaking convenient for frequent international travelers.


----------



## radi6404

Chilio said:


> Ironically, the same persons, by the time students of sociology, politology etc. in 1971, who created Article 1 and the discussions in the party, that led to the so called "referendum" on the new constitution, were the politicians in 1985-1989 that made the movements in the communist party that led to the changes in 1989 and the abolition of Article 1...
> 
> As for 1946, supporters of the monarchy were repressed, all officials from before the occupation were sent to jail or worse - killed without being even judged... A cousin of my gradfather for example was chief police inspector of the town Kazanlak and when the Soviets and the new communist rule came, they took him from his home in front of wife and children and shot him dead otside the town.


Bulgaria really started to improve the last two years, I see law movements which really make me happy. All shops have to connect their counters directly to the tax office for example, very good move. Also some other things that happening are very good, the government does not leave much room for criminalism anymore and will connect much mroe taxes that way.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes, when Croatia will have to adopt the euro the eurozone is either broken up or the problems are behind us by that time.


If eurozone breaks up, so does the EU, and Croatia would have put its efforts into joining for nothing. I think Croatia should have requested a delay, see how the debt crisis is going to solve itself (one way or the other) and then decide whether to access EU or not.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Even so, aligning laws en economic / environmental standards with the rest of the EU is still useful. Plus Croatia can now apply for structural EU funds, though I don't think they'll gain as much as Poland or Romania did.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I got a little repair this weekend, the left front brake didn't release properly, so the wheel couldn't turn around freely if lifted from the ground, so while driving it sometimes gives a high squeaky sound, causing people to turn their heads. So I went to the garage (kwik-fit) and they worked on it for 45 minutes and it was FREE. I couldn't believe my ears  Didn't have to pay a dime. Glad I didn't go to the official Renault dealer who would've charged me € 40 easily.


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> If eurozone breaks up, so does the EU, and Croatia would have put its efforts into joining for nothing. I think Croatia should have requested a delay, see how the debt crisis is going to solve itself (one way or the other) and then decide whether to access EU or not.


I don't think a breakup of the Eurozone would be followed by a breakup of the EU. While some countries abandoning the Euro would be a dire effort in itself, going out of the EU would have much further implications, including the access to free markets in Europe, somethin the countries more "in danger" of abandoning the Euro desperately need.


----------



## radi6404

I wanted to ask if all Slovenian Alps consist of lime or if there are also other rock formations on the peaks. I know most of Austrian Alps are lime, but somehow I do not like lime that much since it is not really a solid rock and looks less impressive then solid rock. Which areas are lime and which are with other rocks? What material has the Strzic peak and the area arround it, the eastern mountains and what do the west Slovenian mountains have?


----------



## seem

^^ Btw, I read quite interisting blog about Daniel Speer and his hikes in the High Tatra moutains. 400 years ago they thought that High Tatras are higher than Swiss or Austrian Alps.


----------



## keber

radi6404 said:


> I wanted to ask if all Slovenian Alps consist of lime or if there are also other rock formations on the peaks.


All Slovenian Alps are from limestone and dolomites. Pohorje hills are from granites and tonalites. Forealps are from older limestones, dolomites, flyshes, slates and marls. Dinarides (southern and southwestern parts) are from younger limestones and flyshes.


----------



## radi6404

So the Triglav area and the eastern Alps area are all limestone? Is it solid at all or are stones falling down?


----------



## keber

Depends of local conditions. Some cliffs have very solid walls, some less, some are very brittle. However in general Triglav area is more solid than for example mountains of Hohe Tauern which are from granite.


----------



## radi6404

And the stones that you can see on the bottom of the mountain, are they also milestone, are they stable when you touch them or are they like sand with a solid core so when you touch them your hand is white, since for sure there are some stones at the bottom of the peaks that are small.


----------



## il brutto

There's also supposed to be a tiny bit of andesitic tuff and andesite.


----------



## jann85

keber said:


> A snow picture:
> Today morning in Alpe d'Huez (France) after about 1 m of snow fall in 24 hours:


Did you ski? If yes, how were the conditions?
I'm also going there for a week


----------



## keber

radi6404 said:


> And the stones that you can see on the bottom of the mountain, are they also milestone, are they stable when you touch them or are they like sand with a solid core so when you touch them your hand is white, since for sure there are some stones at the bottom of the peaks that are small.


Stone as a stone. Limestone stone doesn't crumble in the hands.


----------



## Radish2

thanks for the information you Slovenian expert. Roads, mountains, whatelse?


----------



## keber

jann85 said:


> Did you ski? If yes, how were the conditions?
> I'm also going there for a week


Skiing conditions are more than excellent with loads of snow in and outside pistes, totally different from last year. West and north Alps really got (and still get) a lot of snow, opposite from spring conditions in southern and eastern Alps. If you'll get nice weather then this will be excellent skiing.

Check also Les 2 Alpes for a day and their carving pistes under glacier when you're already there.


----------



## keber

Radish2 said:


> thanks for the information you Slovenian expert. Roads, mountains, whatelse?


Railroads in detail.


----------



## Escher

*Accident in São Paulo countryside videotaped*

Crash happens at 2:30. Apparently the white pickup driver is diabetic and wasn't feeling well. Instead of stopping, the bastard kept driving...


----------



## Verso

^^ Which road was that? What happened to the guy in the red car?


----------



## Escher

I'm not sure but researching I think it's on SP-225 near Piratininga, about 340km from São Paulo capital.


----------



## x-type

i am so affraid of such things while driving. never had in mind ill people actually, but mostly bastards who enter the curves too fast, but similar things happen.


----------



## Verso

I had weird dreams tonight. Some Italians stopped and asked me how to get to the stadium (by car), but it was so complicated that I had to think so hard... that it woke me up. :lol:


----------



## Coccodrillo

Another convertible car: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrUe_7NY0g4


----------



## bogdymol

x-type said:


> i am so affraid of such things while driving. never had in mind ill people actually, but mostly bastards who enter the curves too fast, but similar things happen.


I'm also afraid of people driving straight to my car...

Few years ago I was entering Szeged (H) and suddently there was a crash in front of me with a truck that hitted another car. I couldn't avoid it on the right or the left sides of the road, so I just had to break hard (I've never pressed the break pedal so hard in my entire life) and after that I reversed the car with the acceleration to the floor (+wheels screeching)... all of this with my mom in the car next to me :nuts: Fortunately I avoided the crash and nobody was injured in the truck and the other car involved.


----------



## bogdymol

The city looks nice and many areas and streets are new. Cool


----------



## alserrod

In the right, the high speed station (and bus station).
Later, the congress palace, a luxuious hotel and the "brigdge pavilion", designed by Zaha Hadid.

In the centre down, the "rest" of the international exhibitions. Builiding in the bottom have already several entreprises and other ones are pending of a refurbishment (there we have 105 countries in 2008). 
We can see some of the most important buildings in the old area and all the Ebro river.

You can see the highest towers and there is only one building that can be that one. The Pilar bassilica. Besides, the Cathedral.

Later, in the left, a bussiness centre, as a medium skyscraper.


It takes the old city, the new city, the river, the area of the 2008 exhibition.... and only one point cannot take. The building where the photo was taken!!!!!


----------



## italystf

^^


----------



## Wilhem275

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4128/4984586585_779b843f92_b.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Caminhaocegonha.jpg

What is the device attached to the center of the front wheel?

EDIT: rear wheel as well.


----------



## keber

For cooling brakes, I presume.


----------



## Ron2K

Thought I'd share this with you guys.


----------



## bogdymol

Nice roads on 9gag:


----------



## il brutto

nice road in Slovenia


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> Nice roads on 9gag:


It would be nice knowing where they are.


----------



## il brutto

round bridge is in Japan: http://armchairtravelogue.blogspot.com/2010/05/fake-round-bridge-which-is-not-fake.html
curved bridge is in Norway: http://amazingdata.com/10-breathtaking-bridges-around-the-world/


----------



## keokiracer

The 2 pics with the road through the rocks is China's death road.


----------



## seem

Meanwhile in Central Slovakia -


----------



## Spookvlieger

Meanwhile in Belgium


----------



## bogdymol

^^ It looks that the driver was a blonde woman


----------



## il brutto

blonde policewoman


----------



## Spookvlieger

^^Yea but the pîc is old I just discovered...my bad


----------



## Verso

il brutto said:


> blonde policewoman


----------



## Chilio

Nice idea:


----------



## SeanT

...Just like in Hungary.

URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/689/c1735jpg.jpg/]







[/URL]


----------



## keokiracer

^^ in The Netherlands they avoid eachother and drive into normal cars and trams 
3 random pics from google search:


























I can't seem to find anything from The Netherlands involving 2 police cars.


----------



## bogdymol

keokiracer said:


>


Cool  You have convertible police cars in NL


----------



## Chilio

^^ Actually, there are some convertible police cars in Bulgaria:














































Rumours say these are confiscated from criminals


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Please show me the last ones *converted*.


----------



## Chilio

^^ Look at the last picture, the policeman is just going to take off the police lights from and to hide them in his pocket 

In fact they seem to take off the lights and maybe to convert the cars in some occasions. The car in the third and the last picture is the same, but the lights on the roof are different (look at the metal part that holds them and also the shape of the blue parts)...


----------



## bogdymol

Chilio said:


> ^^ Look at the last picture, the policeman is just going to take off the police lights from and to hide them in his pocket


I heard that Bulgarian policeman have large pockets 

When I traveled by bus through Bulgaria I remember that a policeman stopped us and told the driver to fill up his pockets... if you know what I mean


----------



## Chilio

Actually, the exact password is "Ами сега какво ще правим?" translated like "What shall we do now?". After hearing this sentence you are supposed to offer the bribe, with the password-answer "Не може ли да измислим нещо?" which should be something like "can't we find another solution?" ... 
Usually the corrupted policeman's question is following some "good cop - bad cop" theater. The bad cop tells you how wrong things you have done and what shall this cost you if they fine you, how bad will be the consequences, take your driving licence etc. The good cop tells you "you look like a good guy, why shall we cause you such trouble, you probably did it quite unwillingly, we should do a compromise..."
But it's good thing these cases are quite fewer and fewer, some cops got fired from the police when they were caught in set-ups etc. There are special phone lines for signals for corrupted police officers, recently they announced all police cars will be equipped with supervision cameras etc.


----------



## bogdymol

Traffic jam :rofl:


----------



## Chilio

Around car...? It's a Lada


----------



## bogdymol

He should have written around a _moving object_ :lol:


----------



## Verso

Okay, that was funny.


----------



## italystf




----------



## keber

Yesterday police officers stopped the car, driven by main head of Slovenian police. The company (of the police) car had no valid permission because it passed some days ago.

He got a warning not to do that again.


----------



## g.spinoza

A couple of days ago I was on the bus, on my way downtown Brescia, and I casually read the "Terms of service" in a panel on the wall. An odd article caught my attention.:



> *Trasporto di cose*
> Il passeggero può trasportare gratuitamente una sola valigia, pacco o collo a mano, purché di dimensioni non superiori, anche in un solo lato ai 50 cm. E’ consentito il trasporto al massimo di due colli a mano per passeggero.
> Non sono, in ogni caso, ammessi al trasporto gli oggetti ingombranti, sudici, o pericolosi.
> Eccezioni:
> - passeggini per bambini: sono ammessi in vettura e trasportati gratuitamente purché vengano piegati in modo da ridurre al massimo l’ingombro;
> - strumenti musicali: è concesso il trasporto gratuito di un solo strumento musicale portatile, anche se in un lato supera i 50 cm;
> - sci: è concesso il trasporto di un solo paio di sci per passeggero, previo pagamento del biglietto;
> - fucili da caccia: è concesso il trasporto di un fucile da caccia, purché scarico e contenuto nell’apposito fodero.


http://www.bresciamobilita.it/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Condizioni-Generali-di-Trasporto.pdf


> *Carrying things*
> The passenger can carry only one bag, parcel or package for free by hand, provided that it is no larger than 50 cm. It is possible to transport up to two hand luggage per passenger.
> They are not, however, allowed to transport bulky, dirty, or dangerous items.
> Exceptions:
> - Strollers for children are allowed in the car and transported free of charge provided they are folded so as to minimize the footprint;
> - Musical instruments: it is granted free transport for one portable musical instrument, even if one side exceeding 50 cm;
> - skis: it is granted the transport of a single pair of skis per passenger, upon payment of the ticket;
> - *Shotguns: it is allowed the transport of a shotgun, only if unloaded and carried into the sheath.*


I was like :uh: :runaway:


----------



## italystf

Many if not all public transit companies have such weird regulations but they never enforce it. They only check if you have bought the ticket.


----------



## Chilio

"I supposed it was not our car, but could not convince my wife":


----------



## Falusi




----------



## Satyricon84

Why to cry twice? Complete funerals from 99€ monthly








:runaway:


----------



## keokiracer

Meanwhile in Russia...


----------



## bogdymol

^^ jungle!


----------



## italystf

conctat lenses commercial:lol:


----------



## keokiracer

Awesome roads/paths on 9GAG:


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

ChrisZwolle said:


> Temperatures can drop to -20 this night in the Netherlands, which is quite rare for a maritime climate like ours.


Damn, almost like here in Poland - for a week or so we have a cruel winter attach with temperatures under -15°C during day. This is not that common in our climate and I curse the weather with every fiber of my shaking being every morning when I go to work. Winter - ok, but -18°C (what I'm reading right now from my thermometre) is way too low.


----------



## Ron2K

keokiracer said:


> Awesome roads/paths on 9GAG:


The steam train pic (second from last) was taken from the Kaaiman's River view point, located here.

In fact, here's a pic of me and some friends at the same place around a year ago (but facing towards the coast, not towards the estuary). I'm the one on the far left:


----------



## italystf

- edit


----------



## Satyricon84

^^ to stay on topic...a place in Florida which is worth to visit


----------



## AUchamps

Actually, Butts County is in Georgia just to the south of Atlanta.


----------



## bogdymol

keokiracer said:


> *@Bogdymol*
> 
> Don't freeze to death, it's going to get really cold in Timisoara!





cinxxx said:


> :bash:


Luckly I am in Arad, so just -11 C for me. I've escaped the freezing hell in Timisoara :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It was the coldest night in 27 years in the Netherlands.


----------



## Satyricon84

AUchamps said:


> Actually, Butts County is in Georgia just to the south of Atlanta.


Yes, you're right..i even don't why i wrote Florida... I shouldn't write late in the night :lol:


----------



## Jeroen669

italystf said:


> Meanwhile in Bologna (-7°C)


What is this woman trying to say? That you can survive a harsh winter by being nude, worn in a plastic sac? :nuts: :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

My car this morning:



















edit:
Join Date
February 4th, 2010

2 years of SSC for me :cheers:


----------



## x-type

don't you have 207? :sly:


----------



## bogdymol

No, but I think spinoza has one.


----------



## italystf

Jeroen669 said:


> What is this woman trying to say? That you can survive a harsh winter by being nude, worn in a plastic sac? :nuts: :lol:


It was an art performance. The man who carried her is a locally known artist.


----------



## keokiracer

bogdymol said:


> edit:
> Join Date
> February 4th, 2010
> 
> 2 years of SSC for me :cheers:


Congragulations kay::cheer::banana2:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

x-type said:


> don't you have 207? :sly:


I thought so too


----------



## keokiracer

bogdymol said:


> My car this morning:


How was the game?








:troll:


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> No, but I think spinoza has one.


i know for him, but from some reason I was sure that you have one, too. i was obviously wrong.


----------



## nenea_hartia

bogdymol said:


> Join Date
> February 4th, 2010
> 
> 2 years of SSC for me :cheers:


Congrats, my friend! :cheers:


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> No, but I think spinoza has one.


207 1.4 HDi. Its engine is somewhat underdimensioned, and its electrical system has some issues, but no major problems so far. 3 years and 70,000 km


----------



## bogdymol

Well... it's not the first time I post a picture with my car on SSC:



bogdymol said:


>


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Snowing, not much though, but first real snow of the winter


----------



## bogdymol

Here is a video recorded today in my town, Arad, with dedication to _*seem*_. It snowed a little bit here...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

We cracked -20 degrees once again. Very rare for the Netherlands.


----------



## keokiracer

In Lelystad (where it's the coldest on the map above with -20,3) it feels like -26 degrees :O


----------



## makaveli6

I was wondering if there is any site or whatever that could do something like this: I add points on map (for example A, B, C and D) and it calculates the fastest way for me to pass all of the four points. Thanks


----------



## keokiracer

^^ Google maps. Just click on the route planner: just below where you can fill in the locations of points A and B there is a button 'add destination', these will become C & D


----------



## keokiracer

Here's an example, the button you need to add a destination is the one with the red line underneath it


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's not what he asked for. 



> and it calculates the fastest way for me to pass all of the four points.


----------



## keokiracer

^^ Are you talking about the fact that I used more than 4 points? Because I'm not following this..?


----------



## seem

keokiracer said:


> I think I'm gonna move to Norway or something :lol:


Actually why everybody likes Norway? I know, they have beautifle nature etc but I just can't imagine to live in such a cold country. Slovakia is cold enough for me. :nuts:

I would probably move to Croatia or Austria.

Btw meanwhile in Czech Republic.. what a stupid thing to do :nuts:


----------



## makaveli6

keokiracer said:


> ^^ Google maps. Just click on the route planner: just below where you can fill in the locations of points A and B there is a button 'add destination', these will become C & D


That's not really what i was thinking about! 
Im talking about adding some points on map, and then the software calculates which point should i visit for first, which the next one etc., so that i can use the shortest route as possible.


----------



## Ingenioren

seem said:


> Actually why everybody likes Norway? I know, they have beautifle nature etc but I just can't imagine to live in such a cold country. Slovakia is cold enough for me.


Meanwhile Bratislava the following days -7, -9, -7
Oslo for comparison -8, -2, -2

The arctic settlement of Longyearbyen actually had +5 last monday and was the warmest in Norway


----------



## seem

*Oslo* - Average high °C (°F)	

−1.8
−0.9
3.5
9.1
15.8
20.4
21.5
20.1
15.1
9.3
3.2
−0.5

Average annual hours of sunshine: 1660

*Bratislava *- Average high °C (°F)

2.4
5.0
10.6
16.0
21.6
24.5
26.9
26.7
21.7
15.4
7.6
3.6

Average annual hours of sunshine: 2170


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

makaveli6 said:


> That's not really what i was thinking about!
> Im talking about adding some points on map, and then the software calculates which point should i visit for first, which the next one etc., so that i can use the shortest route as possible.


That's actually quite a difficult thing to do (not for four places, obviously, but in general). I don't want to get into the details, more e.g. here.


----------



## makaveli6

Bobek_Azbest said:


> That's actually quite a difficult thing to do (not for four places, obviously, but in general). I don't want to get into the details, more e.g. here.


Ah, thanks, i just wanted to visit four points in Riga by walking and i was wondering what route would be the shortest possible.


----------



## cinxxx

*Snow brings Britain to a standstill*










http://uk.news.yahoo.com/snow-brings-britain-standstill-023127533.html


----------



## Satyricon84




----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ Too big to tow with a Cayenne? :lol:


----------



## italystf

Refill your driving licence! 5 points for just 50€! :lol::lol::lol:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Verso said:


> Can you drive across the Gulf of Bothnia when it's frozen?


Not that I know, no. As ChrisZwolle menitoned, shipping lanes are always kept open so it's impossible to create ice roads that cross shipping lanes.

The whole Baltic Sea freezes in very very rare occasions, virtually never.


----------



## Verso

Ok, thanks. I thought you could cut it from Helsinki to Stockholm.


----------



## AtD

How anyone can get caught by these obvious speed cameras is beyond me. But apparently people do!



marki said:


> Some images from October 2011..
> 
> Wardell (normal camera):


----------



## seem

Verso said:


> Btw, what I'd really like to see one day is frozen Ljubljanica river. I don't know when it froze last time, but not in my lifetime.


It never get frozen? That's weird as it is quite small river tho. The Danube/Dunaj was frozen for the last time in 1963  -


----------



## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> Not that I know, no. As ChrisZwolle menitoned, shipping lanes are always kept open so it's impossible to create ice roads that cross shipping lanes.


That is one of the reasons. Another one is that the ice on the open sea is far from being an even surface. Due to the winds and the changes in the sea level, the ice moves constantly, and there may be cracks between the slabs. The winds can cause a formation of huge heaps of ice slabs several meters in height. That is why the ice roads usually exist only in the archipelago where the ice is more predictable.










The longest official ice road in Finland is on the road 816, connecting the island of Hailuoto to the mainland. The length of the ice leg is about 9 kilometres and it is under a constant surveillance. The ice road is for passenger cars only. The heavy loads are carried by the ferry, which actually is an ice breaker.


----------



## BND

x-type said:


> in Estonia they have ice roads.


Some guys thought Hungary has them too:


















More pics here.

Yes, two Hummers fell into Lake Balaton as the ice broke under them (such a Hummer weighs around 3 t)...


----------



## Satyricon84

^^ these pics are good for the ice roads thread!


----------



## bogdymol

Is it possible to cross Lake Balaton by car/foot during hard winters when the water freezes? I see those 2 hummers that fell into water but I keep my question.


----------



## Attus

bogdymol said:


> Is it possible to cross Lake Balaton by car/foot during hard winters when the water freezes? I see those 2 hummers that fell into water but I keep my question.


By foot, yes, it's very often possible. By car: dangerous, the ice is seldom thick enough to hold a car.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Lake Balaton is quite warm, it takes a while to cool and freeze I suppose.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Can you drive across the Gulf of Bothnia when it's frozen?
> 
> Btw, what I'd really like to see one day is frozen Ljubljanica river. I don't know when it froze last time, but not in my lifetime.


haven't you said that Ljubljanica got frozen last winter, or 2 winters ago? i am sure that you wrote it at forum, so i remembered it as miracle.


----------



## il brutto

I guess part of the problem is that Ljubljanica (like most other streams on Ljubljana marshes) is heavily regulated and it doesn't meander any more. But it's still quite slow and small, so my lay knowledge is not enough to explain this. Internet says it froze in winter 1829/30, partly also in Feb 1876 and in Feb 1858 (at the same time it was possible to cross Sava on foot near Čatež at Slo-Croatian border).


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> haven't you said that Ljubljanica got frozen last winter, or 2 winters ago? i am sure that you wrote it at forum, so i remembered it as miracle.


No, definitely not, I don't know what you remember. Looks like the last time it froze was in 1940, but only partly and only because they dumped a lot of snow in it there. Otherwise it froze in 1929 (page 3) when it was -20.6°C. It was under -20°C also in 1985, but it didn't freeze. :nuts:


----------



## MattiG

BND said:


> Some guys thought Hungary has them too:


This sort of accidents are not uncommon in Finland.










Tractor










Excavator










Truck










Fire truck










Bucket loader










Deer

None of these cases happened on those few official ice roads.


----------



## Chilio

ChrisZwolle said:


> Lake Balaton is quite warm, it takes a while to cool and freeze I suppose.


AFAIK you are wrong. The reason you think it is warm is in fact that it is too shallow - that's why in summer it warms quite faster by the sun light and the temperature of the air above it. And the water feels nicely warm (for swimming etc.). But for the same reason the water in it should also get colder easily.
The above pictures with the Hummers also show how shallow the lake is, because most probably they have reached the bottom of the lake and that's why they sink no more and remain partly over the surface.


----------



## hofburg

you don't wanna drive in that:


07.02.2012 015 par d.hofburg, sur Flickr


----------



## BND

^^ yeah, the Balaton is 3-4 m deep in average, the deepest point is 11 m. This "accident" happened about 30 m from the shore, where the water was about 1 m deep.


----------



## seem

hofburg said:


> you don't wanna drive in that:


Karavanke?


----------



## hofburg

tauern tunnel, -12°C.


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> tauern tunnel, -12°C.


At least isn't anymore single tube.


----------



## hofburg

hehe. before it was pleasantly warm inside. (and foggy and smelly)


----------



## g.spinoza

hofburg said:


> tauern tunnel, -12°C.


In December 2010 I drove there and it was -11°C... there was snow on the ground but not nearly as much as in that picture...


----------



## SeanT

seem said:


> It never get frozen? That's weird as it is quite small river tho. The Danube/Dunaj was frozen for the last time in 1963  -


 Last time Danube was frozen, it was in 1987 (Budapest) and there is a pretty good chance that it will do it again this year.
The other big river(Tisza) is already frozen.


----------



## gramercy

can anybody tell me which is the longest _footbridge span_ in the world?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

hofburg said:


> you don't wanna drive in that:
> 
> 
> 07.02.2012 015 par d.hofburg, sur Flickr


^^ Doesn't look that bad but hey, we see these kind of road conditions quite often  so you kind of adapt. But I do agree that with summer tyres it's probably not a very safe nor a very pleasant ride.


----------



## g.spinoza

Rebasepoiss said:


> But I do agree that with summer tyres it's probably not a very safe nor a very pleasant ride.


Not to mention probably illegal 




gramercy said:


> can anybody tell me which is the longest _footbridge span_ in the world?


Could be this one:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_sospeso_di_San_Marcello_Pistoiese

but I'm not sure.


----------



## Suburbanist

So after knowing an acquaintance paid €9600 for 12 tickets and a Mansion Lodge in a music festival in July, now I got other unrelated colleague asking if I want to go there with ticket (€190) and road expenses paid.

I explain: they know I don't mind not drinking so I can drive (and I refuse to get a ride in any car whose driver drank even below the limit). So because we are all in the 26 average age group, they don't want to go camping or fork €500 for crappy hotels so they offered me to buy my ticket and paid all other expenses if I drive her and 4 of her friends which I know 2 to the festival right over the border and back.

Problem is: I'm really not into all-day music festivals anymore. It was fun when I was 18-19 and I went to a couple. I still like electronic music but not in a festival with dozen thousand people and not much comfort. So I guess I'll pass that, though my friend is going to be disappointed. Also, while I don't mind driving a zafira around, I'm also past the age of being the one looking out for friends in parties and being responsible to take them back to Tilburg 3 consecutive days. I had already my fair share of being the cool guy taking fellow pals I parties.

In any case this is my 3rd year in Tilburg and the fuss about this festival in Boom grows every day!


----------



## gramercy

g.spinoza said:


> Could be this one:
> http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_sospeso_di_San_Marcello_Pistoiese
> 
> but I'm not sure.


thx


----------



## SeanT

By SeanT at 2012-02-08

River Danube in february ´12 

hirado.hu


----------



## SeanT

By SeanT at 2012-02-08

and river Tisza too near Szolnok (H).
hirado.hu


----------



## bogdymol

*Focșani, Romania:*


















pictures stolen from criserb.com


----------



## bogdymol

Main road 24 near Tecuci, Romania:










I can't embed a clip from a news station here, but I'll leave the link. It's incredbile how much snow was in some places... :eek2:

*http://www.criserb.com/blog/incredibile-imagini.html* - click play and look at the images...


----------



## g.spinoza

Impressive.

In some places in my home-region, Marche, there are up to 4 metres of snow...


----------



## davyl

I'ts really huge...

I have the impression that we did not experienced such a winter lately in Romania...

I don't remember to see such a winter in Romania (and I'm born in 1970) .

Thank you bogdymol for the pics.


----------



## cinxxx

My parents also told me they don't remember such a winter lately...


----------



## hofburg

I thought that's some mountain pass, now I see it's only 100m above the sea level. :nuts:


----------



## piotr71

Rebasepoiss said:


> Not that I know, no. As ChrisZwolle menitoned, shipping lanes are always kept open so it's impossible to create ice roads that cross shipping lanes.
> 
> The whole Baltic Sea freezes in very very rare occasions, virtually never.


I am pretty certain I read somewhere that in olden days there was an inn open during winter in the middle of Baltic sea. 

What about this one 

_A harsh winter had forced the Dano-Norwegian fleet in port, and frozen the Great Belt and Little Belt. After entering Jutland from the south, a Swedish army of 7,000 battle-hardened veterans marched across the* icy Little Belt on January 30, 1658*._


----------



## il brutto

"We ask Slovenians not to throw snow into neighbouring countries" 








source: FB

Unfortunately this joke doesn't work this year :|


----------



## keokiracer

The temperatures right now....


----------



## bogdymol

It's incredible how much snow there is in south-eastern part of Romania in some little villages. There were places where you could see just the chimneys, the rest of the house beeing burried completely in 4-5 m of snow. Watch this video:

*http://stirileprotv.ro/stiri/actualitate/ce-se-ascunde-in-spatele-unei-usi-in-romania-lui-2012-lumea-in-care-socul-are-culoarea-alba.html*

:eek2: :eek2: :eek2:


----------



## Attus

It's horrible righ now but it may be even worse in spring.


----------



## x-type

Attus said:


> It's horrible righ now but it may be even worse in spring.


yep, i am really worried what will happen with those areas when snow melts


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

Dear Chuck Norris,
please close your fridge.

Sincerely, Europe.

(snow report: roughly 3-5cms here, approx. 250 meters above sea level )


----------



## italystf

il brutto said:


> "We ask Slovenians not to throw snow into neighbouring countries"
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> source: FB
> 
> Unfortunately this joke doesn't work this year :|


Is a border bridge between Slovenia and another country?


----------



## Verso

The report from Romania is unbelievable. That poor house is just burried under snow.


----------



## keber

Snow? What snow? :shifty:

Oh, those 2,4 millimeters outside.


----------



## Attus

We have here not so much snow (15cm), but the weather is very cold. This morning we had -20C (-4F), which is quite unusual in this region.


----------



## nenea_hartia

Bobek_Azbest said:


> Dear Chuck Norris,
> please close your fridge.
> 
> Sincerely, Europe.


:lol:

========

Back to Romania:


















































Other pics from Buzău county, eastern Romania, here.

An emergency situation has been declared in Vrancea county, eastern Romania. According to Health Ministry, 57 people died because of terrible weather conditions (link).


----------



## Suburbanist

I just wish temperatures don't rise all of a sudden, which would melt all that snow and create extreme floods.


----------



## keber

But just that will happen because this is pretty normal procedure of how nature works, regardless of global warming


----------



## x-type

Slovenians often speak about their "bora" , but these Slovenian guys came to the birthplace of it in Croatia to experience it. they have measured 205 km/h. we often say that Senj is considered as a city where bura never stops.


----------



## bogdymol

^^


----------



## keber

You can be easily knocked down even by 80+ km gusts, if you're not prepared - happened to me few times at skiing and in the mountains.


----------



## x-type

cool phenomena on river Kupa in Karlovac


----------



## nenea_hartia

x-type said:


> cool phenomena on river Kupa in Karlovac


Is that a water roundabout?


----------



## Chilio

They say the combination of snow and low temperatures make this winter the harshest in Bulgaria since 1953 (it was last back then such longer periods with so low temperatures and so much snow)...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Classic Netherlands.


----------



## Blackraven

Hehe it's funny. Personally, being in a tropical country, I would actually want to be there on the end with the ice and snow.

Seriously, hot and humid Philippine weather is killing me (and it is not even the summer months)

P.S.


Suburbanist said:


> what he said


@Suburbanist
Hehe, but hey at least your country (Netherlands) is a haven for trance music legends (i.e. Armin, Tiesto, Ferry Corsten/System F, Marco V and Vincent De Moor just to name a few)

Actually, at one point, I dreamt of wishing that I could attend Sensation White in Amsterdam someday.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I just came home from the skating ring


----------



## italystf

:lol: Crazy Italians? No, skilled photoshop users! Notice the same guy exactly in the same position first in Rome and later in Milan (from 2 different FB groups) :lol:


----------



## Broccolli

...


----------



## hofburg

lol, those jokes are so funny, but I never really heard of 'em.


----------



## keber

Yesterday I played with my new Sony camera with nice snowy weather - finally! (this is probably not an opinion of an "off road" driver in first part). Sadly Youtube doesn't support progressive 50 fps videos so quality isn't nearly as good as on my computer. Still excellent high sensitivity makes night videos finally useful (watch in full screen).






Anyone knows video sharing site, which supports videos with more than 30 full frames per second?


----------



## cinxxx

Yesterday, in Vrancea, Romania 








picture by Cosmin R Roman


----------



## Verso

http://sorisomail.com/email/34321/a-flexibilidade-das-irmas-ross.html :nuts:


----------



## keokiracer

keber said:


> Anyone knows video sharing site, which supports videos with more than 30 full frames per second?


Vimeo maybe? I'm not sure though


----------



## hofburg

keber said:


> Yesterday I played with my new Sony camera with nice snowy weather - finally! (this is probably not an opinion of an "off road" driver in first part). Sadly Youtube doesn't support progressive 50 fps videos so quality isn't nearly as good as on my computer. Still excellent high sensitivity makes night videos finally useful (watch in full screen).


great quality night capture! now you need to get a holder


----------



## keber

Thank you - yes, I would like to have good holder (and cheap), but it must firmly hold about 600 grams. I doubt Gorillapod on the rear mirror would be as good as it was with my previous camera until I lost it. 

When I considered file size and bit rate involved in 1080p50 quality I realized that there's no video sharing site, that would support that. Above file from Windows Live Maker is almost 600 MB big - for only 4 minutes.

For those who are interested how a night driving video looks like in *full HD resolution at 50 fps* I've put one original MTS file from night driving (part six from above) onto my Dropbox account for few weeks - beware, it has 270 MB (1:24 min):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3708699/00017.MTS


----------



## keokiracer

keber said:


> Thank you - yes, I would like to have good holder (and cheap), but it must firmly hold about 600 grams. I doubt Gorillapod on the rear mirror would be as good as it was with my previous camera until I lost it.


How about this one:








I have the same one, but this isn't my pic, it's from Daviedoff (who is also on SCC btw). You don't have to attach it to the dashboard, it works perfectly just stuck to the window. It can hold up to 1,8 kilo (my cam is 200 grams btw, so I don't need that much weight, but still) *Awesome thing*. It's a Delkin Fat Gecko Mini. It says here you can get it for $29,99, which is €34,99, but I got it for €27,99, so be sure to check if you can get a cheaper one! You can switf your camera in practically every position.

I quickly made a few pics:
*NOTE: I have a filming camera, not a picture camera, the quality in the dark is just poor*
















(Yes the KitKat was nice )


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Don't you get problems with reflection of the suction mount into the window? My camera films besides the mount, so I don't get any reflection of it on screen.


----------



## keokiracer

^^ Mine is slightly turned so it films just past the reflection of the suction mount and the top part of the suction mount itself  But it just fell on the floor (luckily it's my old camera on that) so it's now straightened. Next time I put it in the car I'll be busy for 2 mins trying to find the right position again :lol:

HINT: When you have the right position for your camera, keep the tripod in that exact position, even when it's laying inside your house!


----------



## Falusi

Isn't that an acer 5750g? Because I have one as well


----------



## keokiracer

Falusi said:


> Isn't that an acer 5750g? Because I have one as well


Yep 
Do you by any chance have the same camera too? Everio GZ-HD520 (old: Everio GZ-HM330). That'd be a real coïncidence


----------



## Falusi

Nope, I have a flip ultra hd


----------



## italystf

Those Americans are really weird: they drive on a parkway but park on a driveway.


----------



## g.spinoza

keokiracer said:


> It says here you can get it for $29,99, which is €34,99, but I got it for €27,99,


$29,99 is not €34,99 but € 22,79.


I just recorded my first driving video with my (photo)camera, a Canon EOS 1100D, and a Gorillapod attached to the rear screen. Since I'm not planning to do many driving videos I think it is sufficient, but there are indeed a lot of vibrations I had to smooth in post-production: a heavy driving video user is not recommended to do that.


----------



## gramercy

truckers w8ing 2 enter RO


----------



## bogdymol

Romania strikes again :lol: :rofl:





* watch it from 0:16


----------



## DanielFigFoz

So Romanians can open doors now :lol:, they should make them police officers


edit: In case you don't know, my comments a reference to a video of the Romanian police attempting to open a door


----------



## seem

Wtf! How lucky is that?


----------



## bogdymol

DanielFigFoz said:


> So Romanians can open doors now :lol:, they should make them police officers
> 
> 
> edit: In case you don't know, my comments a reference to a video of the Romanian police attempting to open a door


Remember this? :lol:








seem said:


> Wtf! How lucky is that?


That's science, not luck :troll:


----------



## seem

^^ I guess these guys were also lucky


----------



## cinxxx

Meanwhile in Macedonia 
http://www.idividi.com.mk/kolumna/745693/index.html


----------



## keokiracer

cinxxx said:


> Meanwhile in Macedonia
> http://www.idividi.com.mk/kolumna/745693/index.html


:rofl:


----------



## il brutto

italystf said:


> Why don't the ski jumpers in Planica do more than 250 meters?
> Because they would fly to Italy?!?


That's why the ski jumping hills are turned east, it's a bit further to the other border 











Slovenian vignette problems and solutions









"I've bought Slovenian vignette. Stick it on, please!" - "Oh, I can't peel it off!" - "There you go! I've managed..." - "Where shall I stick it?"












But it's not all a joke. I watched a short documentary from EBU series about life on borders - it was about Slovene fishermen and when they drag a large net behind the boat (sorry, I've no clue about fishing terminology) they can't turn the boat within Slovene territorial waters, so they cross Italian border illegaly and if they're lucky they don't meet any Italian inspectors. At least it was a problem before entering EU. Also if you're flying from southeast to Ljubljana, it's somewhere above Bosnia that you're told to fasten your seatbelt ... And Slovene Army goes often abroad for practice because in Slovenia the artillery can shoot only up to 5 km far.


----------



## bogdymol

Slovenia is the only country I've driven in from one part to another without stopping my car for even a second 

But I must say... it's a beautiful country. One of the best I've ever been.


----------



## italystf




----------



## g.spinoza

New classic of cycling, Tour Slovenije: it's not a stage race but a 1-day one.


----------



## kreden

^^ http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/18th-tour-de-slovenie-2-1

Sorry


----------



## g.spinoza

Three stages? Really? They must have made a circuit


----------



## kreden

3x more then one day


----------



## Surel

Surel said:


> Well the carbon emmissions and greenhouse gas panic is in my eyes following completaly different intentions then playing the god, trying to engineer the nature.
> 
> If you know that the fossile fules are going to be depleted sooner or later, however they are getting rapidly scarce, and the remaining stocks are not in your possession, you play agenda of alternative resources. You keep the real motive behind this change quiet and come with substitute theme - greenhouse effect.
> 
> No sensible person would recomend alternative fuels instead of the fossile fuesl, if the only intention was reducing the greenhouse gases emissions... all the alternative (carbon based) fuels are more greenhouse gas intensive then their petrol alternatives. Thus this cant be the real motive.
> 
> The real motive is that our petrol based (carbon) economy has to switch into other source based economy (e.g. hydrogen based). The transition may be really drastic if you dont have alternatives ready to support this transition. Changing the economy from petrol based into another is not just question of switching the engines in the cars... First of all, when oil is scarce, you need the energy to be able to build another sources of energy.



Some interesting links to the topic

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oi...-Production-Bonanza-Approaching-Twilight.html

http://ior.senergyltd.com/issue13/talking-point/

Its coming quite fast


----------



## Verso

il brutto said:


> *But it's not all a joke.* I watched a short documentary from EBU series about life on borders - it was about Slovene fishermen and when they drag a large net behind the boat (sorry, I've no clue about fishing terminology) they can't turn the boat within Slovene territorial waters, so they cross Italian border illegaly and if they're lucky they don't meet any Italian inspectors. At least it was a problem before entering EU. Also if you're flying from southeast to Ljubljana, it's somewhere above Bosnia that you're told to fasten your seatbelt ... And Slovene Army goes often abroad for practice because in Slovenia the artillery can shoot only up to 5 km far.


These all sound like jokes to me... except the one about fastening your seatbelt over Bosnia... which speaks more about size of Croatia than Slovenia.


----------



## Suburbanist

bogdymol said:


> Slovenia is the only country I've driven in from one part to another without stopping my car for even a second
> .


I've done that crossing Belgium couple times. And once I crossed France non-stop as well (From CH to L)


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> I've done that crossing Belgium couple times. And once I crossed France non-stop as well (From CH to L)


I did the same in France, but from Spanish Mediterranean border until Frejus tunnel...


----------



## Chilio

I almost did this in Romania few years ago - from buying a vignette at the hungarian border on the road to Calafat, but stopped for 15 minutes near Iron Gates before Drobeta Turnu Severin... Still it was some hundreds kms and several hours of driving non-stop... And also very tiring too, as roads back then were in very bad condition, some under reconstruction and with removed all pavement and no new applied yet...


----------



## Attus

I drove through Austria several times without stop, although usually I stop once (I like Mondsee rest area). And of course Slovakia from Rajka to Kúty, it is a quite short drive


----------



## Chilio

Wow... right... I did it once - Austria without stopping in one direction, stopping once at Mondsee in the other.
As a matter of fact, from Hungarian border to Iron Gates it may be looked like the crossing the whole country, as Iron Gates used to be a border-crossing before


----------



## hofburg

Verso said:


> These all sound like jokes to me... except the one about fastening your seatbelt over Bosnia... which speaks more about size of Croatia than Slovenia.


taking off from Brnik airport to Paris is quite spectacular in nice weather. In 1st minute after take off you can follow A2 motorway, in 2nd minute you can observe Bohinj and Bled lake, in 3rd minute you are on Triglav and cross the border.


----------



## Fatfield

hofburg said:


> taking off from Brnik airport to Paris is quite spectacular in nice weather. In 1st minute after take off you can follow A2 motorway, in 2nd minute you can observe Bohinj and Bled lake, in 3rd minute you are on Triglav and cross the border.


And in the 4th minute you land.


----------



## Verso

Triglav-to-Paris in a minute?


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> I did the same in France, but from Spanish Mediterranean border until Frejus tunnel...


:O

That is a lot.

The fastest I crossed France ITaly-Spain was like crossing the Fréjus tunnel 7.30 and arriving at Irún 17.00 or so with 2 stops near Clemont-Ferrand and Perigueaux worth 20 min. each!


----------



## cinxxx

> *UK music site RnBXclusive.com shutdown by SOCA*
> 
> As part of the Serious Organised Crime Agency’s (SOCA) ongoing plans to crackdown on piracy, popular UK music download website RnBXclusive.com has been shutdown and users have been warned that they could face up to 10 years in prison for downloading illegal files.


http://hexus.net/ce/news/general/35345-uk-music-site-rnbxclusivecom-shutdown-soca/


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> :O
> 
> That is a lot.
> 
> The fastest I crossed France ITaly-Spain was like crossing the Fréjus tunnel 7.30 and arriving at Irún 17.00 or so with 2 stops near Clemont-Ferrand and Perigueaux worth 20 min. each!


If I have to be honest I didn't do all the way but stopped 10 minutes near Grenoble to refill my car...


----------



## bogdymol

Where I live there are no payed parking spaces, so everybody is free to park where he/she wants. Usually I park my car near my flat, but last evening I couldn't find any spot free so I parked at 2 flats distance. This morning this is what I found...










Both windscreen wipers broken + a big piece of ice:










For the one that did this:


----------



## panda80

Chilio said:


> as Iron Gates used to be a border-crossing before


Iron Gates is still a border crossing and probably will be for many years from now on. As for countries transited without stopping I've done this in Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Belgium, Slovakia, Hungary and Czech Republic.


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> Where I live there are no payed parking spaces, so everybody is free to park where he/she wants. Usually I park my car near my flat, but last evening I couldn't find any spot free so I parked at 2 flats distance. This morning this is what I found...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Both windscreen wipers broken + a big piece of ice:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> For the one that did this:


Bastard vandals! Have you a clue of who might have done that? You should call the police.


----------



## bogdymol

panda80 said:


> Iron Gates is still a border crossing and probably will be for many years from now on. As for countries transited without stopping I've done this in Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Belgium, Slovakia, Hungary and Czech Republic.


When I said that I crossed Slovenia without stopping it means that I didn't stop for anything (no refueling, no STOP signs, no traffic lights, nothing!). I just slowed down to 40 km/h while crossing through 2 former toll booths and the rest of the journey I did aprox. 120 km/h.

_edit: If I'm not mistaken I should say *Happy Birthday!* to you today_ :cheers:



italystf said:


> Have you a clue of who might have done that?


I think I know who usually parks on that spot. I'll keep an eye from now on on that parking spot to see who stays there.



italystf said:


> You should call the police.


I already did this.


----------



## Satyricon84

^^ They broke the windshild or just the wipers? It happened to me too in Germany, just my car had a foreigner license plate and they used a wheel wrench... -.-'


----------



## g.spinoza

^^They broke your windshield?


----------



## Satyricon84

g.spinoza said:


> ^^They broke your windshield?


Me? Yes... I parked in the parkplace, i broght at home things i bought in the supermarket, but i saw I forgot beer in car....so I went down to take it and I found my windshield broken and a wheel wrench next to my car. All in 10 minutes, 300 € of damage hno:


----------



## g.spinoza

Satyricon84 said:


> Me? Yes... I parked in the parkplace, i broght at home things i bought in the supermarket, but i saw I forgot beer in car....so I went down to take it and I found my windshield broken and a wheel wrench next to my car. All in 10 minutes, 300 € of damage hno:


I know Germans are very fond of beer, but this seems a bit too much.

When I lived there, I left for one entire day my car parked with side window wide open, and nothing happened... and there were electronic things inside like gps and a digital altimeter...

Guess it depends on pure luck.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

One time I found out the car lock for the passenger side wasn't working. You could open it even after I closed it with the remote. I never knew how long it wasn't working, it could've been for months, I never use the passenger side of course. Nothing got ever stolen though. New car lock: € 130.


----------



## Satyricon84

g.spinoza said:


> I know Germans are very fond of beer, but this seems a bit too much.
> 
> When I lived there, I left for one entire day my car parked with side window wide open, and nothing happened... and there were electronic things inside like gps and a digital altimeter...
> 
> Guess it depends on pure luck.


No the beer was in the trunk they couldn't see, it was just vandalism. In the next days other cars had broken the side mirrors. just me the windshild :bash:


----------



## cinxxx

My parents and I came to Germany by car from Romania (Dacia Logan with RO TM plates). We parked the car in one of the streets in the area, where free parking was. Only 3 days after arrival, we found the right side mirror (the one on the pedestrian side) bashed and hanging. 
In 6 six years, since we have the car, nothing like this happened in Romania to us.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ It's an ugly thing, racism. My home in Brescia is placed on a dead-end narrow street, so sometimes two cars going in opposite directions meet and one has to reverse. Some days ago an Italian-plated van met a Bulgarian-plated car, and the Italian driver of the van insulted loudly the Bulgarian one: "Go home, go away from Italy".

This is very sad, especially in a city like Brescia were 20% of the inhabitants are not Italian.


Meanwhile, in Britain:





Bus driver was sentenced for 17 months in prison, the cyclist got several broken bones.


----------



## cinxxx

I don't even know if it was racism, idiots and drunks are everywhere.
Who knows... anyway it's sad to be like that.

Anyway, regarding the story with the Bulgarian, I would like to see the Western EU's handle themselves without the immigrants.
Who would treat them in hospitals, who would take care of the old people, who would do a lot of things they can't or don't like to do...


----------



## italystf

Once a my friend had a confrontation with a neighboor (that was a drunkard and ganja addict) and the following day he found all his 4 tires cut with a knife and several scratches on the paint. He called the police but they couldn't do nothing because there were no ways to proof who was the vandal.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Your friend should have spared himself to call the cops and should have cut his neighbour's car's tires. An eye for an eye.


----------



## keber

Once I forgot my car keys inside for a night. Pure luck that nobody just drove away with my car.

However it seems that not only in Slovenia some people think that public parkings in front of apartment houses are their property. I have sometimes raised wipers (usually from bored old people) for warning that I'm not welcomed even if I live there already for years.:weird:

The most awkward thing in winter conditions is when people on public parking clean parking place (which is public) and then put a box onto it to prevent someone taking "their" cleaned parking space. I remove those boxes and park there with most satisfaction.


----------



## italystf

Rebasepoiss said:


> In Estonia, the owner of the car has to have a record of who uses his/her car for 30 days. Speed cameras also take photos so if the person driving the car isn't the owner, it's the owner's responsibility to know who was driving and report it to police. If you don't, you will have to pay the fine yourself. But that's just a warning fine, pretty much, so it doesn't show up in your records.


This is the best solution, we should adopt it.


----------



## Verso

I've just seen a guy in shorts outside. :nuts: (14°C, but middle of winter)


----------



## g.spinoza

^^Temperature rose up to 20°C in Brescia. I know of people going to the seaside in Romagna, so possibly it's even higher there.

January 2012 has been the coldest winter month ever, and February is going to become the hottest winter month.


----------



## seem

15C max today but I saw a guy wearing shorts when it was 0C last week. :nuts:


----------



## RipleyLV

Verso said:


> I've just seen a guy in shorts outside. :nuts: (14°C, but middle of winter)


Reminds me of this (45F=7,2C):


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Totaly true !


----------



## Ron2K

Went for a little excursion today...


----------



## Verso

^^ Nice one.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

bogdymol said:


> ^^ Totaly true !


Yepp


----------



## seem

Meanwhile in Kysuce, Slovakia.


----------



## Chilio

ChrisZwolle said:


> So you are not sure you punish the one who made the offense. That sounds like a major undermining of the judicial system to me. If something like that would occur in high-profile court cases...


Still, they hope you don't have unlimited nomber of elderly relatives with unused driving licences, moreover such that will cover you up, and sooner or later they will punish you too, or at least you will change your driving attitude being afraid this will happen.


----------



## x-type

seem said:


> Meanwhile in Kysuce, Slovakia.


what was happening there? they have opened some dam or? and what is that construction that came with river?


----------



## bogdymol

You think it's strange to spot a car registered in a country 10000 km away from yours? I guess it's even stranger to spot your license plates on another car almost identical to yours 










Happened in Romania :nuts: :crazy:


----------



## Satyricon84

Cloned plates hno: In Italy happens too, it's not a rare phenomenon...but it is to have two cars with same plates next to each other!


----------



## g.spinoza

Was that on purpose or by accident?


----------



## bogdymol

It looks like it's on purpose. Some people might try to make some illegal actions using cloned plates so that the police will go after the actual owner of the plates and not the criminals.


----------



## hofburg

I was in Salzburg today, and on service area Udine-sud, filling up the fuel is included in the price (1.8€/L!!). I had to make a fill up (for 10€) because my tank was empty before reaching Slo.


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> I was in Salzburg today, and on service area Udine-sud, filling up the fuel is included in the price (1.8€/L!!).


It's included in the price of what? (happy 29th February, btw )


----------



## hofburg

of fuel.  I assume of course. happy 29th to you haha.


----------



## Verso

You mean someone else fills fuel for you? You don't see that here.


----------



## Spookvlieger

italystf said:


> A new road with traffic lights?
> 
> 
> 
> Hoaxes in Italian?


No, It means cunnilingus in Dutch.


----------



## italystf

There are many town names that sound funny in foreign languages.
Cona (Italy) means **** in Portoguese.
Pula (Croatia, but there is also a Pula in Sardinia) means dick in Rumanian.
Senj (Croatia) means breast in Italian (with i instead of j but the pronunciation is the same).
And everybody know what they have in Austria near Salzburg.


----------



## keokiracer

italystf said:


> A new road with traffic lights?


There are 2 raffic lights for traffic going straight ahead, one is green, the other one is red :nuts: 
/captain obvious


----------



## Verso

Isn't the upper/left traffic light actually green?


----------



## keokiracer

^^ In that case they mounted the traffic light upside down. It can't get more Belgium than that


----------



## italystf

keokiracer said:


> There are 2 raffic lights for traffic going straight ahead, one is green, the other one is red :nuts:
> /captain obvious


The point was another. In new roads they usually build roundabouts or grade-separated interchanges, not at-grade junctions with traffic lights.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> There are many town names that sound funny in foreign languages.
> Cona (Italy) means **** in Portoguese.
> Pula (Croatia, but there is also a Pula in Sardinia) means dick in Rumanian.
> Senj (Croatia) means breast in Italian (with i instead of j but the pronunciation is the same).
> And everybody know what they have in Austria near Salzburg.


I think the funniest one in Slovenia is Ritoznoj, which means Arsesweat.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Senj (Croatia) means breast in Italian (with i instead of j but the pronunciation is the same).


no, in this case J isn't read as I. Senj is read as Segn in italian (if gn can stand at the end of a word, but you know what i mean).

Ritoznoj is marvelous


----------



## Verso

^ Guzoznoj in Croatian. :lol:


----------



## x-type

croatian troll asked me which was an exact nick of radi  this could be interesting


----------



## Jeroen669

Thermo said:


> How about this place in the Ardennes


Reminds me of this (sorry, in dutch only): 






:rofl:

Belgium has more 'dirty' villages though, like Reet and Kontich, just south of Antwerp.


----------



## keokiracer

Jeroen669 said:


> Belgium has more 'dirty' villages though, like Reet and Kontich, just south of Antwerp.


Ah, yes. _de anale driehoek_ (translated: the anal triangle): Reet, Kontich and Aartselaar  GMaps

In The Netherlands we have Sexbierum (Sex, beer, rum )


----------



## Alex_ZR

Village in Serbia:










Donje Brijanje means "lower shaving"! :lol:


----------



## Spookvlieger

keokiracer said:


> Ah, yes. _de anale driehoek_ (translated: the anal triangle): Reet, Kontich and Aartselaar  GMaps
> 
> In The Netherlands we have Sexbierum (Sex, beer, rum )


Don't forget Kuttekoven in Belgian Limburg


----------



## seem

Alex_ZR said:


> Village in Serbia:
> 
> Donje Brijanje means "lower shaving"! :lol:


What about Krvavé šenky - bloody pubs :nuts:


----------



## italystf

keokiracer said:


> Ah, yes. _de anale driehoek_ (translated: the anal triangle): Reet, Kontich and Aartselaar


Sorry, but Google doesn't translate those terms: are 3 ways to say ass in Dutch?



keokiracer said:


> In The Netherlands we have Sexbierum (Sex, beer, rum )


It must be a very nice place to have a party:lol:.



joshsam said:


> Don't forget Kuttekoven in Belgian Limburg


Again, Google doesn't translate.

Meanwhile in France:


----------



## keokiracer

italystf said:


> Sorry, but Google doesn't translate those terms: are 3 ways to say ass in Dutch?


Reet, Kont and Aars. That should work 
There is also Aarschot (aars)

Perfect in this discussion is a term you must know too 
Rectum, Overijssel, Netherlands











italystf said:


> Again, Google doesn't translate


 Kut = p*ssy. There also is Kuttingen, Limburg, Netherlands









Those places in France, are they close together? :smug:


----------



## italystf

keokiracer said:


> Those places in France, are they close together? :smug:


No: http://maps.google.it/maps?hl=it&tab=wl
But Condom is located near Baise river, who means f*ck in French. :lol:


----------



## italystf

Some from Italy:

P*ssy









broom but also f*ck









beautiful *ss









I come (with sexual reference)









Sex









saw but also h*ndjob









merda = sh*t









three balls (note: is the highest settlement in Italy and the 2nd in Europe)









dead woman









devil's house









orgy









Again in France (Corsica): p*ssy in Italian


----------



## Verso

Now I know a few places in Italy to go to next time. :lol:


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> "ă" is pronounced like the the "e" in the German "Rasen", or the "e" in English "shorter".


So it's like "ə".


----------



## cinxxx

Verso said:


> So it's like "ə".


Yes.
And â and î are both pronounced /ɨ/. 
Can't find any examples for them though, only that you make that sound on the toilet sometimes :lol:


----------



## Verso

Fucking-Nazi alphabet


----------



## seem

Bobek_Azbest said:


> Not mentioning probably our best - Pičín, translating beautifully as C*ntville.


Why there are so many funny surnames and village names in Czech republic? Just call it by its German name.


----------



## hofburg

Verso said:


> Fucking-Nazi alphabet


 joke aside, I happen to personally know this guy, Gianni Nazzi.  he's Friulian writer.


----------



## Verso

^^ What a coincidence. I've never heard of him before.


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

seem said:


> Why there are so many funny surnames and village names in Czech republic? Just call it by its German name.


It never hurts to have something to laugh about, does it?  (German name probably wouldn't be much of a help in this case - Pitschin.)


----------



## italystf

Wow, I'm Friulan and I didn't know it before... I'm surprised it has a page on en.wiki but not on it.wiki.


----------



## bogdymol

I guess you won't be very happy when you will see this while driving:










Other funny road pics:


----------



## hofburg

italystf said:


> Wow, I'm Friulan and I didn't know it before... I'm surprised it has a page on en.wiki but not on it.wiki.


it has fur.wiki though.


----------



## ufonut

7500 year old figurine of a woman found near Krakow in Poland during archeological digs for northern bypass of Krakow.


----------



## Verso

Are they sure it's _that_ old?


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

Well, we've got this for a national relic, so why not?


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

Romania's got a few of these. I don't know which one is the oldest but the most famous is "the thinker" and his "girlfriend" found around the Danube Delta belonging to the Hamangia culture around 5200BC so a little over 7000 years old. 









source

And then there is the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture from Moldova and Ukraine which left behind a ton of its rubbish including remnants of cities some of which had as many as 15000 inhabitants and lived in huts with an internal fireplace and even a second floor, all around 5000BC to 3000BC. These cites are some of the oldest in the world almost as old as Jerico and Catal Huyuk. Wiki

Archeologists have found hundreds of these Venus figurines. 









Some assume this is a toy but at 7000 years old is one of the oldest representations of the wheel.









And there is a lot more pictures at the source website of more amazing art and figurines including clay models of their homes, animal motifs on pottery, and even the styles of clothes they wore. The site is in Spanish but you can google translate it. http://terraeantiqvae.com/profiles/blogs/cultura-de


----------



## Verso

Bobek_Azbest said:


> Well, we've got this for a national relic, so why not?


It's _that_ old? Uh..

We also have very old findings south of Ljubljana. Paradise for archaeologists.


----------



## g.spinoza

ufonut said:


> 7500 year old figurine of a woman found near Krakow in Poland during archeological digs for northern bypass of Krakow.


That's beautiful!

I read somewhere that recently they had to modify the project for a tunnel bypass in Valcamonica, near Brescia, because they found prehistoric graffiti on the rocks they had to dig... but they could have seen that coming: Valcamonica is full of those ancient (11.000 - 3.000 years ago) rock drawings:
















http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Drawings_in_Valcamonica


----------



## KingGenti

il brutto said:


> Kastrati is a common Albanian surname, from Latin castrum or other Romance form. Like


It cames from 'kastër' which mean 'high' and most of the noble or rich Albanian families had that surname.Other version is 'Kastrioti'.


----------



## Verso

Has anyone noticed that there're almost no people from China and Japan here? And such big nations.


----------



## Chilio

^^ there's some relation between castration and "high" - the voices of castrated people become in higher tonality


----------



## bogdymol

We have NihonKitty


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> Has anyone noticed that there're almost no people from China and Japan here? And such big nations.


Yep, too bad...  Not many from Korea, India and Indonesia either.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Has anyone noticed that there're almost no people from China and Japan here? And such big nations.


Well, is not easy for them learning English, since they don't use our alphabet. And Chineses may have legal limitations to access international websites.


----------



## NordikNerd

Verso said:


> Has anyone noticed that there're almost no people from China and Japan here? And such big nations.


I would say most people who write here are those who master the english language.

Few japanese and chinese do that.

Those who have the best knowledge in english (besides the native speakers) 
are the scandinavians and the dutch.

Try to ask someone for directions in english when visiting Moscow, Warsaw, Budapest or even Paris, Milan, Berlin.

Few know even a couple of words (or they don't bother)

I speak german, russian and scandinavian fluently. I also can get by a little in french and spanish. So I usually try those languages instead of english because I know the locals of most non english speaking countries feel hesitant
when someone ask.

I remember an episode on an italian train when an elderly lady sat on my seat.
So I tried to explain to her that I had a reservation for that seat.

It resulted in a rather confused mix of french and spanish (which italian is)
I actually knew the word "ordinato" so eventually she understood. That word was also very useful in other situations like at the beach. The two words I picked up from my italian trips are mainly "ordinato" & "vietato"


----------



## g.spinoza

NordikNerd said:


> I remember an episode on an italian train when an elderly lady sat on my seat.
> So I tried to explain to her that I had a reservation for that seat.
> 
> It resulted in a rather confused mix of french and spanish (which italian is)
> I actually knew the word "ordinato" so eventually she understood. That word was also very useful in other situations like at the beach. The two words I picked up from my italian trips are mainly "ordinato" & "vietato"


You were lucky that the elderly person spoke Italian. Many of them went to school only for two or three years and speak only dialect, which sometimes are as far from Italian as are Spanish or French. The dialect my girlfriend speaks is closer to French than to Italian (and she's not from Aosta, but from Central Italy).


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> And Chineses may have legal limitations to access international websites.


No, they can access SSC, I've seen Chinese flag in one of those numerous flag counters in the Brazilian thread. I've also posted a flag counter in the Slovenian thread and I haven't had a single Chinese or Japanese visitor in 1.5 months. Today I got a visitor from Jersey though! :cheers:


----------



## x-type

NordikNerd said:


> It resulted in a rather confused mix of french and spanish (which italian is)
> I actually knew the word "ordinato" so eventually she understood. That word was also very useful in other situations like at the beach. The two words I picked up from my italian trips are mainly "ordinato" & "vietato"


k'mon, in almost all european languages there is word with root "reserv-". it's really not a big deal


----------



## NordikNerd

Verso said:


> No, they can access SSC, I've seen Chinese flag in one of those numerous flag counters in the Brazilian thread. I've also posted a flag counter in the Slovenian thread and I haven't had a single Chinese or Japanese visitor in 1.5 months. Today I got a visitor from Jersey though! :cheers:


One thing I learned on this forum is that:

Usually the forumers from _developing_ countries live in _developed_ countries from where they promote their developing countries.


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> k'mon, in almost all european languages there is word with root "reserv-". it's really not a big deal


"Reserv" in Italy means something a little different. It means more "secluded" than "reserved"


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> k'mon, in almost all european languages there is word with root "reserv-". it's really not a big deal


In Hungarian we have no such word. As usual, our language is very different from any other


----------



## Attus

I regularly visit some public transport forums here in SSC as well. There are several Chinese forum members in threads 'Chinese Railways', 'Shanghai Metro', etc. But I haven't seen any in threads which are not about China.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

NordikNerd said:


> One thing I learned on this forum is that:
> 
> Usually the forumers from _developing_ countries live in _developed_ countries from where they promote their developing countries.


Yep, I once read they did a poll in the Albanian sub forum and 90% of the participants did not actually live in Albania. That was a couple of years ago, so the situation may have improved somewhat (time doesn't stand still in Albania). 

Still, Skyscrapercity is probably the best place on the internet to learn about projects in other countries, if you ignore the country-promotion spam (which used to be a lot worse on Highways & Autobahns than today).


----------



## Ron2K

^^ Oh don't worry, it was FAR worse when we had radi around!


----------



## bogdymol

^^ And you're saying this on a thread started by radi himself... what a coincidence


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> "Reserv" in Italy means something a little different. It means more "secluded" than "reserved"


you have riservato, almost the same 


Attus said:


> In Hungarian we have no such word. As usual, our language is very different from any other


that's why i said "almost each" having in mind ugro-finnish languages


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> you have riservato, almost the same


Not exactly. I know that Italian-speaking Swiss use "riservato" meaning "reserved" (adapted from French "reservée), but in Italy we use almost exclusively "prenotato". "Riservato" means "apart from others": if your table at a restaurant is "riservato", it may mean that it is far from the others, in a separate part of the restaurant. A guy is "riservato" if he is shy, and doesn't want to share feelings and words with other people.


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yep, I once read they did a poll in the Albanian sub forum and 90% of the participants did not actually live in Albania. That was a couple of years ago, so the situation may have improved somewhat (time doesn't stand still in Albania).


Very true, although I also have already 5 visitors from Albania itself.



Attus said:


> I regularly visit some public transport forums here in SSC as well. There are several Chinese forum members in threads 'Chinese Railways', 'Shanghai Metro', etc.


But do they actually live in China or somewhere else (US, Europe...)? I know China isn't rich, but it still has more Internet users than the US or any other country in the world.


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> Not exactly. I know that Italian-speaking Swiss use "riservato" meaning "reserved" (adapted from French "reservée), but in Italy we use almost exclusively "prenotato". "Riservato" means "apart from others": if your table at a restaurant is "riservato", it may mean that it is far from the others, in a separate part of the restaurant. A guy is "riservato" if he is shy, and doesn't want to share feelings and words with other people.


ok, had no idea about this  i always use "prenotare", but didn't know that "riservato" means more like "private"


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> ok, had no idea about this  i always use "prenotare", but didn't know that "riservato" means more like "private"


In Italian we say "Ho prenotato un tavolo." and not "Ho riservato un tavolo." to say "I booked a table." However I sometimes saw a piece of paper with "riservato" over booked restaurant tables.


----------



## Satyricon84

Only the owner of the table can say "ho riservato un tavolo" cause it belongs to him, and he can reserve for who books it. So you that you want a table you say "ho prenotato un tavolo al ristorante" whereas the owner of the restaurant (or the waiter too, cause he works for the restaurant) says "ho riservato un tavolo per il signor X". You can't say "ho riservato" for something that doesn't belong to you (well you can, but it's not properly correct...)


----------



## g.spinoza

And if you say "Ho prenotato un tavolo riservato" means that you reserved a table in a quiet spot


----------



## Chilio

ChrisZwolle said:


> ... if you ignore the country-promotion spam (which used to be a lot worse on Highways & Autobahns than today).


Do you have in mind shiny crash-barriers and black black asphalt? :lol::nuts:


----------



## Verso

^^ Radi didn't promote Bulgaria at all. He praised Struma, but bashed other Bulgarian motorways.


----------



## keokiracer

When this talking about speaking Italian started I immediately thought of this


----------



## g.spinoza

I was afraid you could mention this:





I was very disappointed by this.

But there is also this one, in German dubbed Simpsons:




The cook says a very obscene profanity in Italian


----------



## bogdymol

Cool Romanian commercial (banned from TV):








> You stupid... I told you he's a priest, but nooo... you said: batman, batman :lol:


----------



## x-type

^^ :lol: we usualy say for nuns that are batmen 

@Spinoza: what is that accent that waiter with glasses has? sounds kinda northern, right?


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> I was afraid you could mention this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I was very disappointed by this.


I already know it and when that Dutch forumer posted a Youtube link about Italian language I also expected this.
Well, jokes about countries stereothypes may be acceptable in some informal contests if they aren't racist but IMHO this is just offensive and not funny at all. A country that promote itself to be open and tolerant shouldn't allow such xenofobic spots on public television.
Maybe they heard some nasty stuff about our former premier and saw crowds of Italians wandering drunk and high between coffe-shops and brothels in A'dam and they think that all our folk is like them.
I remember a spot mocking Italians on German TV too, during 2006 football world championship if I remember well (the Italian tried to cheat some Germans selling stuff at higher prices).



g.spinoza said:


> But there is also this one, in German dubbed Simpsons:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The cook says a very obscene profanity in Italian


Cannot believe that it was really shown on German TV, it's likely to be a internet-made parody. This profanity (that compares God with an animal) is almost a taboo here. People had been fired from TV programmes to have said such things while they were angry. OK, Germans don't understand it but there are many Italian expats in Germany or Germans who spent some time in Italy and understand at least a bit of our language.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> Cannot believe that it was really shown on German TV, it's likely to be a internet-made parody.


I can assure you, it's not a parody. It was actually broadcast.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Cannot believe that it was really shown on German TV, it's likely to be a internet-made parody. This profanity (that compares God with an animal) is almost a taboo here. People had been fired from TV programmes to have said such things while they were angry. OK, Germans don't understand it but there are many Italian expats in Germany or Germans who spent some time in Italy and understand at least a bit of our language.


really? i though it was just everyday swearing phrase. actually, doesn't sound that hard to me. 
frankly, i am a little bit dissapointed when i've discovered world of italian swears and curses. i've been expecting juicy and awful things, but i've found actually quite moderate things there :dunno:
ok, religious people are sensitive on mentioning the gods in swears, that's normal. but p.d. thing doesn't sound that harsh. for instance, one of very often (and very rude definitely) swears here in HR involves Him and the mother of an object/person to whom it is said :shifty: so pig actually sounds very mild comparing to that


----------



## Suburbanist

Stereotypical jokes and ads are harmless. At most, they are trolling-on-steroids. People shouldn't be so sensitive about political correctness.

Believe me, here in the university some students were angry because a student society, needing a catchy theme for its weekly Thursday party, chose "Korean party" but used Japanese random ideograms on the flyer :nuts:


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Stereotypical jokes and ads are harmless. At most, they are trolling-on-steroids. People shouldn't be so sensitive about political correctness.
> 
> Believe me, here in the university some students were angry because a student society, needing a catchy theme for its weekly Thursday party, chose "Korean party" but used Japanese random ideograms on the flyer :nuts:


One thing is use stereothypes like Italians - pizza and pasta, French - baguette, German beer and wurstel, ecc...
Another thing is say that all people from a certain country are rude, ignorant or dishonest expecially if done on a public broadcast channel and not on an amatorial jokes website or FB page. In Italy a FB page called "Io romania talio gola bastardo" ("I'm Rumanian, I'll cut your throath, bastard") was obscured by police because it was regarded as racist.


----------



## Jeroen669

Stereotypes can't be avoided, unfortunately. When I'm in Italy, most people tend to think I'm a (boring) german at first. When I say I'm dutch, they often get enthousiastic and start asking directly about drugs and prostitutes... It gets a bit irritating hearing that everywhere.


----------



## Wilhem275

I think the best way to reduce the importance of stereotypes (as well as any other kind of offence) is to avoid paying them attention, or -if one is involved directly- have a mild self ironical reaction.

This will simply kill any fun stupid people may get from that crap.


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> frankly, i am a little bit dissapointed when i've discovered world of italian swears and curses. i've been expecting juicy and awful things, but i've found actually quite moderate things there :dunno:
> ok, religious people are sensitive on mentioning the gods in swears, that's normal. but p.d. thing doesn't sound that harsh. for instance, one of very often (and very rude definitely) swears here in HR involves Him and the mother of an object/person to whom it is said :shifty: so pig actually sounds very mild comparing to that


Don't get me wrong, I'm an atheist so it has no effect on me. But I was raised as catholic (like 99.999% of people my age) so it still catches my attention, and it surely is something that in Italian TV cannot be broadcast.

Italian swearing are among the most imaginative in the world, and it is often a regional thing. In Rome very popular is "li mortacci tua/vostra" (something like "may your dearest departed be damned), which in Naples it becomes "i muort' e chi t'è mmuort'" (may the dearest departed of your dearest departed be damned). In my hometown you would say "la fregna de mammeta" (your mother's c*nt). Or if you are really pissed off you can invoke "la madonna puttana impestata" (wh*re Madonna plague-stricken).


----------



## Wilhem275

Please, stop, I can't keep myself from laughing :lol: :lol: :lol:

Next on SSC: all the best Italian swearing, in one post :lol:


----------



## hofburg

purely slovenian swearing almost doesnt exist.


----------



## x-type

hofburg said:


> purely slovenian swearing almost doesnt exist.


----------



## italystf

The effects of speed bumps::lol:


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> In fact for the average Italian, the Netherlands are just drugs, prostitutes, windmills, tulips and wooden clogs...


How about Romanians? Thiefs, criminals, burglars, gypsyes...



g.spinoza said:


> ^^A former Italian co-worker of mine, who is working in the USA, told me once that an American girl asked him if "France is part of Italy". My friend answered: "It's not even wrong... it's more than wrong".


:facepalm:

-------------------------------

What would happen if you mount your license plate this way? Can you be fined?












Corvinus said:


> Hungarian plate, mounted upside down  - spotted by someone in traffic, posted here.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> But who cares about windmills, tulips and wooden clogs? So the first two are more effective.


This is just to say that to Italians (apart from more recent things like drug and hookers), Netherlands is a rather dull country...


----------



## Chilio

italystf said:


> Yes. I sent a PM to a mod and he said that discussions about politics and religion aren't allowed expecially if long and controversial (there were some xenofobic posts too).
> Good to know for the future.


At least in the Highways&Autobahns world subforum. There's plenty of such discussions in Euroscrapers DLM section.


----------



## italystf

Chilio said:


> At least in the Highways&Autobahns world subforum. There's plenty of such discussions in Euroscrapers DLM section.


Every mod decides for his subforum. However some things such racism or insults should be banned everywhere. Politics and religion aren't taboo topics off course if discussed politely, but since is difficult discuss politely when people have different opinions, avoiding starting such discussions may be a wise choice. Sometimes is better use PM instead of flood threads with garbage.


----------



## Suburbanist

Chilio said:


> At least in the Highways&Autobahns world subforum. There's plenty of such discussions in Euroscrapers DLM section.


Fair enough, but how are highway church pictures a "contentious issue" here?


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Fair enough, but how are highway church pictures a "contentious issue" here?


No, they were interesting, you should repost on the Italian thread.


----------



## Surel

italystf said:


> No, they were interesting, you should repost on the Italian thread.


How do you want to repost when the post was deleted? Thats what puzzles me. I would understand when some posts would be blocked or moved away, but in this way the posts are just erased. Isnt there a trash bin?


----------



## Verso

Do you know when the universe is supposed to "die"? In







years. :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

So around the year I can retire.


----------



## Chilio

I also think Highway chapels shouldn't had been erased, somehow by inertia together with the offtopic... I find any such places with direct access from motorways very interesting, every different from restaurant/shop or WC building in rest-areas... Not only places for any worship, but also playgrounds, sightseeing, monuments etc. which are somehow included in the highway/motorway


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> So around the year I can retire.


 I can somehow imagine 10^76 years (1 and 76 zeros behind it), but that number is just too much.


----------



## SeanT

I think it was Carl Sagan (Cosmos), who once said.

If every second is 500 years, than we have 2 months to come up with something and leave the Earth before it dies. Buisy??:lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

I think he was referring to the death of the Sun, but I think he underestimated it. I think we'd have more than 3 months, in that analogy.



Verso said:


> I can somehow imagine 10^76 years (1 and 76 zeros behind it), but that number is just too much.


But you said 10^10^76, that is 1 followed by 10^76 zeros.


----------



## cinxxx

Ingolstadt today morning. Picture lacks some quality, taken with mobile phone.
Seems it happens pretty often in Spring/Autumn morning because of the Danube.
But enough drivers still drive without any lights.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I had many problems while I lived in Germany with lights. Italians probably tend to turn on too many, but Germans tend to turn on too few.


----------



## cinxxx

^^I turn them on anytime, even in city daylight.
But are the lights obligatory in Germany on highways/motorways?
In Romania for example they are, in the city not.
In Serbia/Macedonia for example they are everywhere and everytime.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ In Germany it is only recommended since 2005. In Italy is mandatory


----------



## Ron2K

cinxxx said:


> Ingolstadt today morning. Picture lacks some quality, taken with mobile phone.
> Seems it happens pretty often in Spring/Autumn morning because of the Danube.
> But enough drivers still drive without any lights.


You'd get a few mornings like that in Durban (at least, the far western suburbs where I used to stay) -- and whenever it happened, you'd know you'll be dealing with a really hot and sticky day later. (Temperature in the mid 30s and 90%+ humidity.)


----------



## bogdymol

Interesting new feature on google maps. Open google maps (I've already selected a route on Brenner Autobahn) and then click the " *3D>* " button from the left (it's right next to "Driving directions to A13").

edit:


----------



## Wilhem275

ChrisZwolle said:


> So around the year I can retire.


ChrisZwolle in one year:










  


BTW, does this happen in your country as well? I mean, in Italy any given roadwork has its audience of one or more retired old men "supervising" it :lol:


----------



## hofburg

bogdymol said:


> Interesting new feature on google maps.


I don't have that button..


----------



## gramercy

i guess you need the google earth plugin, im testing that theory right now - yup


----------



## keokiracer

Why the hell did it take 10 mins to load that frikken pic?


----------



## x-type

keokiracer said:


> Why the hell did it take 10 mins to load that frikken pic?


me too


----------



## gramercy

i guess they limit foreign bandwidth


----------



## Chilio

Don't worry, there's a red light ahead, they will stop


----------



## hofburg

lol, I guess his girlfriend dumped him after putting this on youtube


----------



## italystf

:rofl:


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Best way to have one's house robbed...


----------



## keokiracer

The Japanese tsunami last year was captured on dashcam twice!


----------



## Verso

^^ I think I've seen that before.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

test

it works


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> test
> 
> it works


* ? *
.


----------



## keokiracer

^^ I thought I was the only one...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There was an issue with malware, I couldn't access the main page, only some sub forums.


----------



## bogdymol

Just Google Street Water View. Enjoy!


----------



## hofburg

it's probably easier to capture street view on water than on roads there


----------



## keokiracer

They also show some jungle paths


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> Just Google Street Water View. Enjoy!


Have you discovered any crocodile yet?


----------



## cinxxx

San Marino Eurovision Song


----------



## bogdymol

*Poland* is available since today on *Google Street View* 

edit: here is a Google hand :lol:


----------



## hofburg

Google map maker


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've read about a multi-hundred thousand euro project in Flevoland provinces that provides flowered sides of agricultural land.


Very nice, expecially considering that your government privatized the health system like in the USA, to cut off public costs. It seems that the mismanagement and waste of public money isn't a "privilege" of the Mediterranean Europe.


----------



## keber

Meanwhile in Laos:





_... still 45 km to do with 15 km/h average speed._
Now I'm back already. And no, this is by far not the worst road I've driven there.
Taken around here:
http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=1...6512&t=h&doflg=ptk&mra=mift&mrsp=0&sz=17&z=17

Wondering, anyone knows good online maps of SE Asia even in nonlatin characters?
Google maps is not much use for Laos.


----------



## Surel

italystf said:


> Very nice, expecially considering that your government privatized the health system like in the USA, to cut off public costs. It seems that the mismanagement and waste of public money isn't a "privilege" of the Mediterranean Europe.


some OT on this

Some polititians like to argue when asked about wastefull public spending, that the answer should be minimalizing the government and public spending in general, because you cannot take big bites from a small cake.

The funny thing is that they allways start to cut on the social side of spending, which could be hardly considered as wastefull, because there is not much room for inefficiences and direct stealing of public money (although there may be some motivational disruptions caused by this spending). They almost never mention that the investment spending, contracting to private sector, etc... should be reduced. Well the investment spending and contracting of course gives the most opportunity to privately leech on public money and inefficient investments. 

By this I dont mean that I am against gov. investments etc. On the contrary, I think in many areas it is the only sensible thing to do. I just want to show that the argument used because of ideological reasons is completaly flawed. In general politics built on ideology is flawed, but thats for longer discussion. 

Just a note on that. It is really interesting to watch how since the fall of communism in the eastern europe the western governmental policies turned to the right ideological spectrum and the welfare state is not supported anymore by the western european governments on the same scale as earlier. Could this be due to the fact that the fear of the rioting poor demanding communism is gone???


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The main problem is the welfare states become too expensive. The cost of healthcare, pensions, old-age benefits, etc has skyrocketed in the past 10 - 20 years. 

Countries like Norway can mitigate that by their large revenues from natural resources, or high taxation, but the high taxation, high wages and high public spending model results in disadvantaged competition and doesn't work in all countries, especially when you get further south in Europe (and by that I mean south of Denmark).


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> The main problem is the welfare states become too expensive. The cost of healthcare, pensions, old-age benefits, etc has skyrocketed in the past 10 - 20 years.


Sure, there are some demographic changes but the productivity skyrockteted as well. The point is that the transfers in the society on average declined since 1990 in the western countries with the fall of communism.

and btw. Not regulated healthcare system will allways result in huge prices and costs. Health is one of the few goods where the demand is allways absolutly non elastic and supply side is quite limited, production marginal costs are huge. Make it private without regulation and prices will skyrocket.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The per capita healthcare expenses in the Netherlands doubled between 1998 and 2010 from € 2590 to € 5243. Unfortunately the Dutch statistical agency CBS doesn't have statistics before 1998.


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> The per capita healthcare expenses in the Netherlands doubled between 1998 and 2010 from € 2590 to € 5243. Unfortunately the Dutch statistical agency CBS doesn't have statistics before 1998.


Well the per capita GDP also almost doubled. Thust that should not pose the big problem right? Well it is a problem for most of the people because of own risks charges etc... This only illustrates how the transfers declined. 

But luckily I dont have much experience with the dutch health care system though having dutch insurance . My only personal experience was in the time when I had czech insurance and had been to a dutch huisartz. The czech insurence covered the cash paid costs and I got the refund from the czech insurance company. When I had to visit a czech doctor recently with dutch insurance I am afraid that there wont be a refund to my cash payment.

Oh yeah another experience was when my dutch gf had sprained her ankle I took her to the hospital emergency as I would do in the cz, it was night already. Well they refused to even look and sent us to a huisartz. And the huisartz didnt even make a x ray... I must say I had nerves going on then... . I guess it has to do with mentality, because my gf didnt even want to go see a doctor and said that we (czechs) are crazy with the doctors...


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> Meanwhile in Laos:


:lol:


----------



## x-type

a 15-years old boy met a girl chatting on Skype and they agreed the meeting at her place (Dubrovnik). but he lived in Zagreb suburbia. so he took (stole is too hard word  ) his neighbours car and drove to Dubrovnik. actually, he has reached Šibenik where he didn't have fuel anymore. he filled in, but had no money to pay. so he escaped. that was mistake because the police was alarmed and they've caught him near southern terminus of A1 motorway. he almost did it :lol:

who understands croatian: http://www.24sata.hr/crna-kronika-n...-auto-da-bi-stigao-na-spoj-u-dubrovnik-259502


----------



## Verso

^^ So he didn't make it. hno:


----------



## g.spinoza

Love is a serious matter. Better, libido is


----------



## Radish2

so I have a very important concerm, can someone recommend me good Greek music, I am searching something like 

Antique - Mera Me Ti Mera 

Antique - Opa Opa

And other not too hars and not too Bulgarian and folk sounding stuff. I am looking for good Greek music, also with the folk elements but more modern sounding, but not too mainstream. Recommend me some good Greek music and not only one or two tracks, I am interested a lot by it and would like to get many tracks.


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> a 15-years old boy met a girl chatting on Skype and they agreed the meeting at her place (Dubrovnik). but he lived in Zagreb suburbia. so he took (stole is too hard word  ) his neighbours car and drove to Dubrovnik. actually, he has reached Šibenik where he didn't have fuel anymore. he filled in, but had no money to pay. so he escaped. that was mistake because the police was alarmed and they've caught him near southern terminus of A1 motorway. he almost did it :lol:
> 
> who understands croatian: http://www.24sata.hr/crna-kronika-n...-auto-da-bi-stigao-na-spoj-u-dubrovnik-259502


How did he expect to pass Neum borders without be discovered?


----------



## Verso

Radish2 said:


> so I have a very important concerm, can someone recommend me good Greek music, I am searching something like
> 
> Antique - Mera Me Ti Mera
> 
> *Antique - Opa Opa*


Lol, I accidentally listened to that yesterday after more than a decade. Here is the Serbian version.  But I wouldn't call it good music.


----------



## Radish2

Opa Opa is not that good indeet, but the other song y antique I mentioned is aktually very good I think.


----------



## keber

italystf said:


> How did he expect to pass Neum borders without be discovered?


Because this border is more like a joke than a serious matter.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> Because this border is more like a joke than a serious matter.


Really? You can reach the entire Bosnia from here.


----------



## Suburbanist

Hi everyone! 

I'm starting a short (on time) but far (on distance) road trip to Parque Nacional Monte Perdido


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Really? You can reach the entire Bosnia from here.


i have once passed it without stopping. i didn't know that i had to stopthere (it was my first time at that border crossing) so i just passed 
other time i was waiting in 5 km long queue


----------



## cinxxx

italystf said:


> Really? You can reach the entire Bosnia from here.


I read that the roads towards regions of Bosnia (other than the one towards Croatia), are mountainous and dangerous, so very few take them.


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> Hi everyone!
> 
> I'm starting a short (on time) but far (on distance) road trip to Parque Nacional Monte Perdido


Have a nice trip! You can go visit cngl, he's from around there. Btw, have some of you heard of him recently?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

He was probably banned again.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I realized that the moment I pressed "post reply"...


----------



## italystf

What does he do to get banned so often?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't know exactly, apparently he pisses off Spanish moderators.


----------



## keber

x-type said:


> i have once passed it without stopping.


I was there few times in summer time. I passed this border on both sides without even slowing down so I mean this border at least in summer time is really a joke (ok, it's already 10 years from my last pass, but still ...)


----------



## x-type

keber said:


> I was there few times in summer time. I passed this border on both sides without even slowing down so I mean this border at least in summer time is really a joke (ok, it's already 10 years from my last pass, but still ...)


actually, it's not joke. once i wanted to take photo of my girlfriend in front of "Welcome to BIH" table there. two officers wer running after us because they saw 2 people running and doing something weird. they took us documents and started with qquestions, but as soon as they've realized that we were totally undangerous, they started to f*** us up.


----------



## italystf

According to wiki is faster driving from Neum to the rest of BiH via Croatia because of better roads but is possible also within Bosnia.

Border along Jadranska Magistrala:









Road from Neum to the rest of BiH without entering Croatia:









Off course if some smuggler wants to cross the HR-BiH border without been checked, this is a possibility.


----------



## CNGL

g.spinoza said:


> Have a nice trip! You can go visit cngl, he's from around there. Btw, have some of you heard of him recently?


When you wrote this message, I was allowed to post again after two months. I think there is a moderator that should be named adoptive son of Puta (Azeri town that means "*****" in Spanish). Hey, you are an EBTer too. We will have a hit together?

@ Suburbanist: Have a nice trip! I suggest you to go to Pineta. Very beautiful valley! There was going to be an ski orienteeing competition in January but they cancelled it due to lack of snow.


----------



## Sr.Horn

CNGL said:


> When you wrote this message, I was allowed to post again after two months. I think there is a moderator that should be named adoptive son of Puta (Azeri town that means "*****" in Spanish). Hey, you are an EBTer too. We will have a hit together?
> 
> @ Suburbanist: Have a nice trip! I suggest you to go to Pineta. Very beautiful valley! There was going to be an ski orienteeing competition in January but they cancelled it due to lack of snow.


Welcome back right on the day of national strike. :lol:


----------



## CNGL

That is true! :lol:. And that explains why I didn't went to Zaragoza today, due to the strike. Actually I was thinking of entering yesterday night.


----------



## Ron2K

Meanwhile, in District 9:


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Road from Neum to the rest of BiH without entering Croatia:


It doesn't look that bad, but I wonder why they don't widen it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Traffic volume on M17.3 is only 700 vehicles per day.


----------



## bogdymol

A *human leg* was found short time ago in the luggage of a passenger in main Bucharest Airport :crazy:


----------



## Verso

^^ Meanwhile in Romania?



ChrisZwolle said:


> Traffic volume on M17.3 is only 700 vehicles per day.


Wow, that's very low. But perhaps it would be higher, if the road were wider.


----------



## cinxxx

Spotted this on my way home from work

Old Golf by cinxxx, on Flickr


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ What about it?


----------



## cinxxx

I'm not sure what Golf model it is.
It looks old, I don't think I saw this model before.


----------



## keokiracer

cinxxx said:


> It looks old, I don't think I saw this model before.


I have. My old neigbor used to have a car just like that: automatic, pretty fast for an old car* and best: it was completely bright orange. You could see the cars miles away 
That car was from 1976 I think. There were no seatbelts in the back because they weren't required back than. I don't know when seatbelts became a must in NL.

* you could race a new BMW, Mercedes etc and win. :yes: In fact, when my mom was driving it once, we almost won from a Porsche, but he sped up to 130 @ 80 to overtake us, that was a bit too high for us


----------



## italystf

cinxxx said:


> Spotted this on my way home from work
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/6881149328/
> Old Golf by cinxxx, on Flickr


Is the first time I seen a hidden plate on SSC.


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> I'm not sure what Golf model it is.
> It looks old, I don't think I saw this model before.


You must be younger than I am 
I think this is one of the most popular golfs ever: the Series 1 Cabriolet, late 70s-early 80s.

There are still many of them here in Italy circulating



keokiracer said:


> That car was from 1976 I think.


I think Cabrio versions were made from 1979.


----------



## cinxxx

italystf said:


> Is the first time I seen a hidden plate on SSC.


The plate was German, nothing special about that .



g.spinoza said:


> You must be younger than I am
> I think this is one of the most popular golfs ever: the Series 1 Cabriolet, late 70s-early 80s.
> 
> There are still many of them here in Italy circulating
> 
> 
> 
> I think Cabrio versions were made from 1979.


I am almost 28. 
In Romania you didn't see many foreign cars, other then Russian I guess. And the ones you see now, are not so old, maybe except some Merc Cobras, Trabant, Mini or VW Beetle.

I saw a lot of YUGOs in Serbia, old and really small cars .


----------



## Attus

VW Golf I was very popular here, in Hungary, too, lots of them came in the country in the 90's as second hand cares. However you can hardly see any now, perhaps in the countryside.
They were very good cars some 30 years ago.


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> I'm not sure what Golf model it is.


n00b


----------



## Chilio

And production of Golf 1 Cabrio continued long after Golf 2 (1983-1992) was introduced and all other versions of Golf 1 was stopped from production (1974-1983). Actually the Golf 1 Cabrio was introduced in 1980.


> There was no Mk2-based Cabriolet model; instead, the Mk1 Cabriolet was continued over the Mk2's entire production run.


----------



## Satyricon84

One of my collection. The rarity in Italy is to spot the sedan version with black square plate. Hard challange but few still exist


----------



## Attus

Satyricon84 said:


> the sedan version


In Germany and Hungary the sedan was called Jetta (Vento for Golf III, Bora for Golf IV, and Jetta again for the recent generations).


----------



## Satyricon84

Attus said:


> In Germany and Hungary the sedan was called Jetta (Vento for Golf III, Bora for Golf IV, and Jetta again for the recent generations).


In Italy too, but I meant like this in the pic below. Maybe I wrong the word "sedan"... in Italy we call both "berlina"; for to distinguish we say "berlina 2 volumi" for the Golf and "berlina 3 volumi" for the Jetta


----------



## Surel

meanwhile on CZ D1

39413507


----------



## g.spinoza

Shoot the tires! Shoot the tires!


----------



## keber

Good fake.


----------



## NordikNerd

Another VW Golf Cab where I live.


----------



## CNGL

bogdymol said:


> Just Google Street Water View. Enjoy!


That is the Google River View they promised some time ago?  Anyway, I prefer Google Factory View.


----------



## Wilhem275

Satyricon84 said:


> In Italy too, but I meant like this in the pic below. Maybe I wrong the word "sedan"... in Italy we call both "berlina"; for to distinguish we say "berlina 2 volumi" for the Golf and "berlina 3 volumi" for the Jetta


We might distinguish them into "hatchback" for a 2 v. car (also a "berlina compatta" in italian) and "sedan" for 3 v. cars, which usually -in C segment- are hatchbacks with a boot 
But I'm not 100% sure if the term "hatchback" is correct to define a car without a boot (Golf, Giulietta, C30) or if it includes any car with 3/5 doors, where the third/fifth one is the baggage compartment door, including the rear glass and usually its wiper, thus excluding 2/4 doors cars.

Small sedans are pretty rare in Italy, in fact. In the Italian market carmakers don't import anymore any seg.B (Fiat Linea) or C (VW Jetta) sedans, as well as no one is selling any seg. D hatchback (I mean 5 doors Mondeo/Insignia), and I think it's a pity: those are the best way to still have the style of a sedan and the functionality of a well accessible boot.

But, let me say, the Italian car market does not follow a rational use of the car...

While I see many B or C sedans are sold in Eastern Europe (many Romanian Renault Symbol/Thalia) or Spain (Focus sedan), as well as seg.D 5 doors still have their market share in Northern Europe.

I'd be interested to know the situation of your countries, which kind of design is successful and which has disappeared


----------



## Attus

I Central and Eastern Europe many people need a car for the family, with a boot, but have no money for a large car. That's why sedan and even combi versions of small cars (that you call seg. B, Renault Thalia, Peugeot 206, etc.) are so popular here.


----------



## NordikNerd

Attus said:


> I Central and Eastern Europe many people need a car for the family, with a boot, but have no money for a large car. That's why sedan and even combi versions of small cars (that you call seg. B, Renault Thalia, Peugeot 206, etc.) are so popular here.


Nordic countries: Medium or large combi models are the most popular. VW Passat, Volvo V70, Audi A6.

Denmark has smaller cars and less combis. 

Toplist for DK August 2011

01	Kia Picanto 
02	Volkswagen Golf	
03	Hyundai i10 
04	Chevrolet Spark	
05	Volkswagen Polo	
06	Toyota Aygo	
07	Citroën C1	
08	Peugeot 107	
09	Opel Corsa 
10	Citroën C3


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Besides people who own just one small car, there are also increasingly many households with a second car, which is often a small car too, so it's not very surprising small cars dominate the lists in Europe.


----------



## MajKeR_

Attus said:


> I Central and Eastern Europe many people need a car for the family, with a boot, but have no money for a large car. That's why sedan and even combi versions of small cars (that you call seg. B, Renault Thalia, Peugeot 206, etc.) are so popular here.


Is market of used cars big in Hungary? Do you bring them from Western Europe?

I'm asking, because in Poland we may bring from western countries even one million cars per year.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Besides people who own just one small car, there are also increasingly many households with a second car, which is often a small car too, so it's not very surprising small cars dominate the lists in Europe.


Sure but second cars are usually simple hatch backs.


----------



## bogdymol

I'm moving the discussion from Guess the highway thread because I don't want to spam there:



noncek said:


> Just out of curiosity
> What's the biggest in Europe feature 3km away from this interchange?





ChrisZwolle said:


> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maschen_Marshalling_Yard
> 
> It's also the second largest in the world, per Wikipedia.





Attus said:


> I've learnt a new thing: Rangierbahnhof is Marshalling Yard in English  I could've never guessed it





mgk920 said:


> In North America, it is called a 'classification yard'.
> 
> Mike





x-type said:


> that's exactly what i'm thinking right now :lol:





keokiracer said:


> ^^ When I saw _Marshalling_ in Chris' link I thought of something army-related :lol:





x-type said:


> actually, a month or two ago i've been chatting with Bogdymol and we have been talking about, khm, marshalling yard. of course, i didn't know that word, but we have understood each other without any problems


I can confirm that 

We were actually talking about various stuff and I recommended this place to x-type:

12683579
^^ For the license plates geeks: check the limo license plate

7763781


----------



## Attus

MajKeR_ said:


> Is market of used cars big in Hungary? Do you bring them from Western Europe?
> I'm asking, because in Poland we may bring from western countries even one million cars per year.


40% of cars that get the first Hungarian registration are used cars from abroad. However, using absolute data, it is not so much, not more than 30,000 cars a year. 
Hungarian car market was always very small, the highest year was 2007 with slightly over 200,000 new registrations, and then the market collapsed due to the financial crisis. 
Note that almost all new cars were bought by a loan, basically based on Swiss franc which has now an exchange rate 50% higher than in 2007 so many car owners are unable to pay monthly redemption. 
As an effect of that, and facing the very high 'bank tax', banks in Hungary don't want to provide loans for cars so that simply no one is able to buy new cars nowadays. In 2011 there was no more than 45,000 new cars sold in Hungary, a vast majority of them was bought by companies and state agencies.


----------



## cinxxx

There is an Arsenal Park in Romania too
http://www.arsenalpark.ro/


----------



## bogdymol

cinxxx said:


> There is an Arsenal Park in Romania too
> http://www.arsenalpark.ro/


Click the English flag in the upper right corner of your link and compare the results


----------



## il brutto

keber said:


> I was there few times in summer time. I passed this border on both sides without even slowing down so I mean this border at least in summer time is really a joke (ok, it's already 10 years from my last pass, but still ...)


At least before Schengen Slovene borders in summertime weren't much different - all policemen just waving everybody through (if they weren't asleep)


----------



## Alex_ZR

In the meantime in Serbia (actually Vojvodina):





































Dissatisfied farmers from Vojvodina blocked roads in Vojvodina because police didn't let them to come to Belgrade...


----------



## bogdymol

Have you ever wondered how was google maps several hundred years ago? Here it is: http://g.co/maps/m4nup


----------



## keokiracer

^^ isn't working here. I get a normal map view

Try this:

Amsterdam


----------



## bogdymol

I get the "special" view at both links...


----------



## keokiracer

^^ Top link is working for me too now... 2 mins ago it wasn't. Weird.


----------



## x-type

reminds mi of civilization I 










geez, i've spend months playing it!


----------



## g.spinoza

8 bit rulezzz


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> Have you ever wondered how was google maps several hundred years ago? Here it is: http://g.co/maps/m4nup


What are you supposed to do with this?


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> What are you supposed to do with this?


If you lived in the year 1500 and you would want to carry your goods from Venice to Vienna you looked on your iStone at google maps and select your route through mountains and forests


----------



## Verso

On motorways?


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> On motorways?


On motorways of that time 

_The Roman empire in the time of Hadrian (ruled 117–38 AD), showing the network of main Roman roads:_










More info here.


----------



## keber

bogdymol said:


> On motorways of that time


Zoom better, you'll get all the 2011 motorways (and all those before) :naughty:


----------



## bogdymol

:|


----------



## CNGL

I like it! :lol::lol:. I believe it's for the April fools day. BTW, check Street View too, with 8-bit images.


----------



## keokiracer

CNGL said:


> BTW, check Street View too, with 8-bit images.


This is our car   :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

I'm back from Spain. 

Yesterday I broke my record of most driving distance in one day: 1.618km (Valencia - Arras via Barcelona (Ronda del littoral), Millau, Orleans and a86 in Paris


----------



## keokiracer

Suburbanist said:


> I'm back from Spain.


And I'm going to Berlin (with school) in 1,5 hours


----------



## hofburg

Suburbanist said:


> I'm back from Spain.
> 
> Yesterday I broke my record of most driving distance in one day: 1.618km (Valencia - Arras via Barcelona (Ronda del littoral), Millau, Orleans and a86 in Paris


that's a lot. multiple drivers? How was A86? on Friday I did Salzburg-Paris ~980km, it's quite ok for one driver. when I arrived in Paris, there was a jam, and I stayed 1 hour on the 50m distance. stupid Mairie de Paris and its tramway crazy ideas.


----------



## Suburbanist

hofburg said:


> that's a lot. multiple drivers? How was A86? on Friday I did Salzburg-Paris ~980km, it's quite ok for one driver. when I arrived in Paris, there was a jam, and I stayed 1 hour on the 50m distance. stupid Mairie de Paris and its tramway crazy ideas.


I drove all by myself. We left Valencia 5.30 NAND arrived in Arras 22.35

No jams for me, I took a detour via Orsay and the A86 tunnels. God bless tomtom traffic hq


----------



## Suburbanist

A86 was rather empty...


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> I'm back from Spain.
> 
> Yesterday I broke my record of most driving distance in one day: 1.618km (Valencia - Arras via Barcelona (Ronda del littoral), Millau, Orleans and a86 in Paris


Congratulation. I would have split that trip in two days and it would still be long (800km a per day isn't nothing).


----------



## Surel

italystf said:


> Congratulation. I would have split that trip in two days and it would still be long (800km a per day isn't nothing).


Depends a lot on what car are you driving. In some cars it would be hell in others it is "only" very annoying.


----------



## bogdymol

My all-time record is 800 km as sole-driver and 1000 km with a co-driver. I wouldn't go more than that because it's too tyring. Both were made in a Renault Clio. Maybe with a better car it could be 10% more...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I prefer 1.000 kilometers maximum on one day, 1.200 - 1.300 for a drive home (I ain't gonna stop 300 km from home). 

Besides the car, it also depends on traffic. If you have smooth and light traffic it's much easier to drive long distances than on heavy trafficked motorways. For long distances France or Spain are much more relaxing to drive than say the Netherlands, Belgium or Germany.


----------



## Attus

My all time record is Budapest - Berlin - Budapest via Linz - Nürnberg, approx. 2×1,150 km, two days, without sleeping. I suggest to no one to do it. I was 24 years old then (1998), but it was only luck and God's providence that I did not cause any accidents. 

Actually I had nothing to do in Berlin (and as a matter of fact, I did not anything there). I was very angry and crazy about several things happening about my life and simply sat into my car and started. Fourteen hours later my mind got clearer, but I was in Berlin, having almost no money, not even a change underwear, in the middle of the night. 
So I turned back. I used my credit card for fuel and some food and a great amount of Coca-Cola. Strange, I was never near to falling asleep, my eyes were open all through the journey, but in the last 150 kilometers I was so tired, I saw almost nothing. 
And al of that by a Suzuki Swift 1.0 GA. 

With clear mind and a proper destination my longest trip was Düsseldorf - Budapest, in 2009.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> I prefer 1.000 kilometers maximum on one day, 1.200 - 1.300 for a drive home (I ain't gonna stop 300 km from home).
> 
> Besides the car, it also depends on traffic. If you have smooth and light traffic it's much easier to drive long distances than on heavy trafficked motorways. For long distances France or Spain are much more relaxing to drive than say the Netherlands, Belgium or Germany.


It depends, of course, on the road type, too.

Here in the Ultima Thule, most of the road network is non-motorways, and driving 1000+ km a day may be an exhausting exercise, at least in the winter time. 

I think, my quickest return from Lapland to home in the Helsinki region was to drive 1100 km in 12.5 hours, including two coffee breaks and a refueling break. This is possible even on the 1+1 roads, because of low traffic density in most of the country, and most main roads bypassing towns and villages.

My favourite winter holiday resort is Ylläs about 1000 km from Helsinki. In the winter conditions (including the speed limit of 80 km/h on most roads), my travel time estimate is 14 hours including the breaks. Usually, the outward trip begins at the Friday afternoon, gets interrupted for a sleepover somewhere in the halfway, and reaches the destination in the Saturday late afternoon. The return trip usually takes place without the sleepover, if the weather is reasonable. In adverse road conditions, it is safer to have an overnight break in a hotel.


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> My all time record is Budapest - Berlin - Budapest via Linz - Nürnberg, approx. 2×1,150 km, two days, without sleeping. I suggest to no one to do it. I was 24 years old then (1998), but it was only luck and God's providence that I did not cause any accidents.
> 
> Actually I had nothing to do in Berlin (and as a matter of fact, I did not anything there). I was very angry and crazy about several things happening about my life and simply sat into my car and started. Fourteen hours later my mind got clearer, but I was in Berlin, having almost no money, not even a change underwear, in the middle of the night.
> So I turned back. I used my credit card for fuel and some food and a great amount of Coca-Cola. Strange, I was never near to falling asleep, my eyes were open all through the journey, but in the last 150 kilometers I was so tired, I saw almost nothing.
> And al of that by a Suzuki Swift 1.0 GA.
> 
> With clear mind and a proper destination my longest trip was Düsseldorf - Budapest, in 2009.


Nice waste of fuel:lol:. But what did you expected to do in Berlin?


----------



## Suburbanist

Here is my route for those who might be interested 

It _was_ tiring, more on the mind than to the body... It didn't help my travel companions had spent the night before awake, in the Internet, and slept all their way to Girona and Bizares, respectively  Plus other naps...


----------



## cinxxx

My longest one day trips: Timisoara-Erlangen (in Summer 2011, me and my father driving, we did around 13 hours, 1 hour traffic jam on M0, and heavy rain before German border, we couldn't drive more than 80kmh) and Timisoara-Ingolstadt (me and my father, in December 2011, winter conditions, with a little snowing, again around 13 hours), distance is almost the same 1050km.

Driving only me, Vienna-Timisoara, on rainy dark conditions, it was my first longish motorway drive, and it was terrible, my eyes were huge when I got home.


----------



## Attus

italystf said:


> Nice waste of fuel:lol:. But what did you expected to do in Berlin?


Nothing. Indeed, absolutely nothing.


----------



## Chilio

My record is Sofia-Karlsruhe in two days every direction (one stop at motels for few hours nap in a small Hungarian town near the Austrian border), so it generally was about so:
Day 1: Sofia - Mosonmagyarovar - 913 km
Day 2: Mosonmagyarovar - Karlsruhe - 783 km
Day 9: Karlsruhe - Mosonmagyarovar - 783 km
Day 10:Mosonmagyarovar - Sofia - 913 km

In Bulgaria I have done in one day Sofia-Ahtopol-Sofia (some 980 km) in high season traffic and when parts of the nowadays A1 Trakya were not opened yet, which was quite more tiring.


----------



## CNGL

The other day I drove to Castillazuelo and back, and I broke my record. 120 kilometers, but that is nothing compared to yours. I'm a beginner driver, so no long distances yet. But one day... By the way, I believe there is a thread for this, right?

Oh, and I drove onto a motorway for the first time since I got my driver licence. I got to 120 km/h on A-22 with a van!


----------



## hofburg

I just wish travelling by car was quicker. I mean, when you look at the map everything seems so close, but when on the road, 100 km are 100 km and nothing less..


----------



## g.spinoza

hofburg said:


> I just wish travelling by car was quicker. I mean, when you look at the map everything seems so close, but when on the road, 100 km are 100 km and nothing less..


You need to buy maps with larger scales 

My record of uninterrupted driving is 1500 km, Valencia-Brescia via Grenoble and Frejus tunnel.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Guess the euro emission standard of this truck:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Fatfield said:


> Stay away from my arse. I'm not that way inclined! ;-)


hno: I hadn't even thought of that, I wouldn't have realised it sounded like that unless you posted that :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Barcelona is the only coastal city in Europe with a full ring road. Others are further inland (such as Porto, Nantes, or Roma). Most European coastal cities do not have full ring roads (Den Haag, Dublin, København, Helsinki, Marseille, etc.)


Naples is coastal and has a full ring (A56+A1+A3).


----------



## Fatfield

DanielFigFoz said:


> hno: I hadn't even thought of that, I wouldn't have realised it sounded like that unless you posted that :lol:


Lol enjoy the freedom that you've just gained. Gan fer it!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> Naples is coastal and has a full ring (A56+A1+A3).


That's a tangenziale, not a real ring road (i.e. a full loop that functions as such).


----------



## MajKeR_

DanielFigFoz said:


> I passed my driving test :banana:


And how expensive was this fun?


----------



## Verso

DanielFigFoz said:


> I passed my driving test :banana:


Welcome to the club. :cheers:

Chris, what about St. Petersburg?


----------



## x-type

Suburbanist said:


> For the lulz.


actually i'd do the same probably  Ronda Litoral is fun to drive


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> If you will ever come and drive in Romania please tell me...
> 
> 
> ... so I can hide myself in a bunker :runaway:
> 
> Good job :applause:


he's on his way 
caught this one in Zagreb, haven't seen Portuguese plates for years in HR!


----------



## Suburbanist

I'd never want to live in Barcelona, though. Extremely claustrophobic city, almost no urban empty space, it feels cramped and vastly overpopulated for its area.


----------



## bogdymol

x-type said:


> he's on his way
> caught this one in Zagreb, haven't seen Portuguese plates for years in HR!
> 
> http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a203/ixic/IMG_0831JPG2.jpg


I'm going to hide myself... :runaway:

Good bye SSC :wave:


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's a tangenziale, not a real ring road (i.e. a full loop that functions as such).


What's the difference?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's quite obvious to me, but in Italian they're both called a "tangenziale". In English, you could specify a bypass, or a ring road/loop/beltway.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I didn't know Barcelona had a full ring road, I thought you were referring to the AP7 encircling the western edge of the city.

To me the only difference is in denomination. In Spain they use to call "motorway" roads that in Italy would be simply called "road" 
Brescia tangenziale is 2x3 + emergency, wider and safer than most motorways around Europe I drove on, but it is not contemplated as such, it is not even a SS road.

However I see your point now.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ I didn't know Barcelona had a full ring road, I though you were referring to the AP7 encircling the western edge of the city.
> 
> To me the only difference is in denomination. In Spain they use to call "motorway" roads that in Italy would be simply called "road"
> Brescia tangenziale is 2x3 + emergency, wider and safer than most motorways around Europe I drove on, but it is not contemplated as such, it is not even a SS road.
> 
> However I see your point now.


Yes, the B10 along the coast is in fact "buried" under street level. When you walk on the seaside you'll never realize there is a motorway below.
Interesting, the B22 from the airport to the centre is signed on GM as normal road, while in reality is a 2x3 autovia (toll-free motorway).


----------



## bogdymol

:eek2: 



 :eek2:


----------



## Chilio

smart tow-truck driver, saved his ass just in time...


----------



## Satyricon84

Amazing view


----------



## Attus

^^Amazing? God, I was sick just by watching it. Frightening.


----------



## Satyricon84

Attus said:


> ^^Amazing? God, I was sick just by watching it. Frightening.


Frightening and amazing at the same time. Even if I would never do a crazy thing like that, I can't stop watching it :cheers:


----------



## bogdymol

Cool commercial involving old traditional Romanian comunity and a shaolin monk:


----------



## keber

Why closed? It looks good enough at least for normal cars (with some necessary refurbishment of course). Can at least pedestrians and cyclist use it?


----------



## Verso

I found this at home today! :hammer:









http://www.podruznica.si/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=285:dinar&catid=38:jugoslavija&Itemid=109


----------



## g.spinoza

I collect coins and I have quite a lot of Yugoslavian coins... but no bills.


----------



## Verso

Sorry, it's the only one I have.


----------



## Alex_ZR

I have both 5000 (Tito) and 20000 (miner) from the same series.


----------



## RipleyLV

Verso said:


> I found this at home today! :hammer:


How much is that in €?


----------



## Attus

RipleyLV said:


> How much is that in €?


When? Which day? Yugoslavia had horrible inflations in the 80s and 90s.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Sorry, it's the only one I have.


Don't worry, I don't collect bills, only coins. I have around 5000 coins and 10 bills


----------



## CNGL

I'm also collecting bills, but only €uronotes, up to







, and with rare combinations printer-country. Right now I have a Slovenian







, printed in Netherlands, but that is not rare compared to the French one printed in François Charles Oberthur (Instead of Banque de France). If you want to learn more about this just check EuroBillTracker and its forums.

And yes, Yugoslavia had hyperinflation during the war of Bosnia. But there were even worse ones. Who wants a 1.0e+14 Zimbabwean dollars bill? Or a 1.0e+20 Hungarian pengo one?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm also collecting euro bills, so if you got any € 50 or € 100 bills lying around, please send them to me.


----------



## Chilio

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm also collecting euro bills, so if you got any € 50 or € 100 bills lying around, please send them to me.


:lol::lol:
I collect all kinds of valid bills  Send them over! :cheers:


----------



## g.spinoza

That's exactly the reason why I do not collect bills


----------



## Chilio

Ok, that's great - you don't collect them, so you don't need them - send them to me or to Chris


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I don't collect them, therefore I don't have them, therefore I cannot send them to you and Chris... simple Aristotelic logic


----------



## Qwert

This guy has some sense of humour. Kríza is Slovak for the (economic) Crisis. :lol:


----------



## Chilio

He had not enough money for a roof for his car because of the crisis?


----------



## Verso

RipleyLV said:


> How much is that in €?


You can sell it for a few euros, I guess.  It was worth something when it was issued (I don't know how much, but it was the smallest bill of that series), but right before devaluation in 1990, 1 DEM (German mark) was worth 70,000 YUD, so 5,000 YUD was worth 0.071 DEM. 1 EUR = 1.95583 DEM, so 5,000 YUD was 0.037 EUR right before devaluation. 

EDIT: here it says 1 USD was worth 270.2 YUD in 1985 when the 5,000 dinar bill was issued.


----------



## italystf

I've got 50k and 100k Yugoslavian dinars and some Croatian dinars (1991-94), old Hungarian forint, Slovenian tolars and old Turkish lira bills.
And off course some old Italian lire bills, the oldest are from 1930s.


----------



## Chilio

italystf said:


> ... and old Turkish lira bills.


Millions!:nuts:


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> You can sell it for a few euros, I guess.  It was worth something when it was issued (I don't know how much, but it was the smallest bill of that series), but right before devaluation in 1990, 1 DEM (German mark) was worth 70,000 YUD, so 5,000 YUD was worth 0.071 DEM. 1 EUR = 1.95583 DEM, so 5,000 YUD was 0.037 EUR right before devaluation.


And if we count all five denominations after that (27 zeroes altogether) - then it is worth nothing.


----------



## keber

Chilio said:


> Millions!:nuts:


Millions, eh ...










or this one is even better:


----------



## italystf

Chilio said:


> Millions!:nuts:


No, just 100 because they're very old (I think early 1970s), before the hyperinflation.


----------



## Chilio

When I was in Turkey, it was the year just before the denomination, so I had millions in my pocket


----------



## Fatfield

I've hot some Euros. They're pretty worthless too. ;-)


----------



## italystf

Chilio said:


> When I was in Turkey, it was the year just before the denomination, so I had millions in my pocket


For us Italians having millions in our pocket wasn't so weird. Until 2001 a million ITL was a little more than 500EUR. Not a sum you had everyday in our pocket but neither a sum that you'll never see like a million of EUR, USD, CHF, etc...


----------



## Chilio

In Turkey back then you needed about 2 millions to buy an ice-cream or a sandwich  A million was about 0,60 Euros


----------



## keber

A navigational question:
You are 70 km away from your destination in the middle of jungle, which means (in this case) still about 6 hours of driving on dirt roads. You came across this junction on dirt roads. A sign does not help you because you don't know the script and you have written only romanized version of your destination.








You have only an old map photocopy which doesn't show this road. You don't have GPS (which wouldn't help you anyway), there is none around to ask (and you could wait hour or two for someone to pass by). It is hot. Left road looks better, but goes left, right one is much worse, but on sign it looks like to be right direction (but knowing how this country signage works, nothing is sure). 

What do you do? Which path do you take? And why do you choose it?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Flip a coin and hope for the best.


----------



## bogdymol

That doesn't always work


----------



## keber

Sorry, I forgot to tell:
there are no coins in Laos.


----------



## x-type

whoa, that was a huge photo of shekel few moments ago!


----------



## bogdymol

x-type said:


> whoa, that was a huge photo of shekel few moments ago!


You mean this one? 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/10-shekel_coin_standing_on_edge.jpg

I've edited my post really fast with a _normal-resolution_ pic... but if you ask for it


----------



## x-type

i just have a nose for huge photos' appereance on forum


----------



## bogdymol

x-type said:


> i just have a nose for huge photos' appereance on forum


*Very good then!* 

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/381297main_Largest-Poster-HI.jpg


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> And if we count all five denominations after that (27 zeroes altogether) - then it is worth nothing.


Of course it's worth nothing (unless you sell it) when you can't pay with it since 1990.

As for your jungle question, I would've gone left, because it's a better road and I don't expect a worse road for 70 km.


----------



## Suburbanist

keber said:


> What do you do? Which path do you take? And why do you choose it?


Would ride a bit and try to figure out which road is more traveled, or goes down an inhabited area. With such weather, other traffic is probably lifting some dirt up in the air.


----------



## Verso

From a Slovenian newspaper. Map of Italy. :facepalm:









http://www.delo.si/novice/svet/leto-2012-ko-po-evropi-strasi-duh-varcevanja.html


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Easter in Tallinn - snow and -2C :bash:








_Taken from www.postimees.ee_


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> From a Slovenian newspaper. Map of Italy. :facepalm:
> 
> http://www.delo.si/novice/svet/leto-2012-ko-po-evropi-strasi-duh-varcevanja.html


You almost don't note that very little difference


----------



## x-type

Rebasepoiss said:


> Easter in Tallinn - snow and -2C :bash:[/I]


holy crap! :nuts:


----------



## keber

Suburbanist said:


> Would ride a bit and try to figure out which road is more traveled, or goes down an inhabited area. With such weather, other traffic is probably lifting some dirt up in the air.


Actually we counted number of tracks. On better road there were two pick-ups and on worse road about ten motorcycles. So we chose worse road and it was correct decision despite it got much worse later on, because rivers crossings were without bridges and some trees blocked the dirt road which was more walking route in some places. First village appeared two hours later.


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> From a Slovenian newspaper. Map of Italy. :facepalm:
> 
> http://www.delo.si/novice/svet/leto-2012-ko-po-evropi-strasi-duh-varcevanja.html


Wow, the guys from your country want to be part of Italy. And I like how Slovenians name the UK: "Old Britain".



Rebasepoiss said:


> Easter in Tallinn - snow and -2C :bash:


Well, yesterday it snowed in Valladolid too. And it is located at 41ºN!


----------



## hofburg

what do you guys think about the thread, where we would tell what kind of jobs or professions do we have. or this is too 'DLM' like...?


----------



## italystf

Today I found my first Cypriot euro coin (10c). I never saw in real life coins from San Marino, Monaco and Estonia.


----------



## x-type

CNGL said:


> And I like how Slovenians name the UK: "Old Britain".


Old Britain?


----------



## Wilhem275

Verso said:


> From a Slovenian newspaper. Map of Italy. :facepalm:http://www.delo.si/novice/svet/leto-2012-ko-po-evropi-strasi-duh-varcevanja.html


Welcome, brothers! :cheers: :lol:


----------



## italystf

Wilhem275 said:


> Welcome, brothers! :cheers: :lol:


Lubiana e' nostra! :lol:


----------



## Attus

italystf said:


> Today I found my first Cypriot euro coin (10c). I never saw in real life coins from San Marino, Monaco and Estonia.


I have somewhere an 500 lira (lire?) coin of San Marino.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> You almost don't note that very little difference


I think it sticks out quite a bit. Maybe I wouldn't notice if it was put between Sicily and Calabria. :lol:



CNGL said:


> I like how Slovenians name the UK: "Old Britain".


No, "Velika Britanija" is Great Britain ("Old Britain" would be called "Stara Britanija"). UK is called "Združeno kraljestvo", but we use (Velika) Britanija much more often.


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> I have somewhere an 500 lira (lire?) coin of San Marino.


Lire from San Marino were quite common in Italy until 2002. On the countrary, euros from that country are very rare in circulation even in San Marino itself. BTW, I found 2 50c coins from Vatican. You cannot find Vatican coins other than 50c.


----------



## hofburg

in France there are mainly spanish and german coins. beside french ones of course.


----------



## keokiracer

I spotted this car in Prague 2 days ago :lol: :lol:








(pic is not mine)

That looked very ugly, certainly in a city like Prague.


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> in France there are mainly spanish and german coins. beside french ones of course.


In northern Italy the most common foreign coins are Austrian, followed by German, French, Spanish and Slovenian.


----------



## MajKeR_

When I've been to northern Italy several times during last years, I wondered about origin of so big amount of Spanish coins there - because I've met maybe a few Spaniards...

italystf - wait for rush of Polish coins, when Poland finally join to euroland 

I've seen just one Cypriot coin - 1€ in my uncle's collection.


----------



## CNGL

Haha, I have also one. And I keep a €0.10 coin from Slovenia too, got soon after Verso's country got into the eurozone in 2007.


----------



## italystf

MajKeR_ said:


> italystf - wait for rush of Polish coins, when Poland finally join to euroland


Around 2015?


----------



## MajKeR_

Hard to say. They're bigger priorities here now. We should reform more important things, like retiring system, organise Euro 2012 as well as it's possible and finally explain the reasons of Smoleńsk's disaster... I guess Poland and Czech Republic will be the last members of euroland from countries of new EU.


----------



## italystf

MajKeR_ said:


> Hard to say. They're bigger priorities here now. We should reform more important things, like retiring system, organise Euro 2012 as well as it's possible and finally explain the reasons of Smoleńsk's disaster... I guess Poland and Czech Republic will be the last members of euroland from countries of new EU.


After Romania and Bulgaria? I though CZ was more developed than most of former communist countries.


----------



## MajKeR_

Maybe after - Czech and Poland aren't even in ERM II group now. Entering euroland is not caused by some level of development - all new members should only execute some requirements which take sure of their stabilisation. About Czech development - they have bigger GDP per capita than Portugal, but I can't see its advantage over Poland, Slovakia or Hungary - these countries are at comparable step, I think. In my opinion the only visibly richer post-communistic country of new EU is Slovenia.


----------



## Attus

Following the current euro-crisis, all non-euro nations stepped back, some nations even two or three steps. Many people now think that introducing euro currency = providing several millon euros for Greece just for nothing, and of course people don't think it is desirable for us. 
So I don't think any non-euro nations in Europe are in a great hurry to change currency.


----------



## Attus

Penalty throw. Check the thrower's hand


----------



## g.spinoza

What about her hand?


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> What about her hand?


Actually I ment the way she throws the ball.


----------



## seem

Verso said:


> The highest banknote was for 10,000 SIT (€42).


In much poorer Slovakia we even had 5000 sk (166€), I guess it was a great help for mafia when they were counting money back in 90s.


----------



## Suburbanist

seem said:


> In much poorer Slovakia we even had 5000 sk (166€), I guess it was a great help for mafia when they were counting money back in 90s.


Was Czechoslovakia poorer than Yugoslavia?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slovenia has always been the most developed part of Yugoslavia, while Slovakia was always lagging behind the Czech part, so it wouldn't surprise me.


----------



## Attus

I will have a trip to Denmark (I don't know the exact destination right now) in May 12/13. I checked several travelling methods, but I think for 4 people everything is much more expensive than a car journey.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ For four people almost any destination in the continent is cheaper by car than by any other means.


----------



## seem

Suburbanist said:


> Was Czechoslovakia poorer than Yugoslavia?





ChrisZwolle said:


> Slovenia has always been the most developed part of Yugoslavia, while Slovakia was always lagging behind the Czech part, so it wouldn't surprise me.


Slovenia was surely richer than Czech republic or Slovakia also before 1989, I guess that also Croatia was richer as they could run small private bussineses there. 

Well afterall Czech Republic and Slovenia were much more developed back in monarchy times (thanks to nobles in Hungarian part we were lagging behind, just Budapest was developed). After 1918 Czech Republic was the the wealthiest country of ex Austrian empire but it had to support poor Slovakia. I guess if there wasn't communism, Böhmen would be one of the richest countries in Europe, until 1950 it was still richer than Austria and until 70s richer than Spain, Portugal, Greece etc.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Serbian smallest coin is 1 dinar (0.009 EUR), smallest banknote is 10 dinars (0.09 EUR), there's also a 10 dinars coin in circulation. Biggest banknote is 5000 dinars (44.72 EUR).


----------



## italystf

seem said:


> In much poorer Slovakia we even had 5000 sk (166&#128, I guess it was a great help for mafia when they were counting money back in 90s.


For this reason we talk about phasing out 500€ notes, in fact they are used mostly by criminals and evasors. In Italy most of them are withdrawn from banks near Swiss and Sammarinese borders. I saw them in real life not more than 3 times in 10 years. In the USA, one of the richest countries in the world, the biggest note worths only 76€.


----------



## italystf

Alex_ZR said:


> Serbian smallest coin is 1 dinar (0.009 EUR), smallest banknote is 10 dinars (0.09 EUR), there's also a 10 dinars coin in circulation. Biggest banknote is 5000 dinars (44.72 EUR).


In Trieste they tried giving me 1 Serbian dinar instead of 10 eurocents. :lol: they look almost the same.


----------



## hofburg

you guys are confusing something. Slovenia had a 'tolar' from 1991-2007, not when in Yugoslavia (-1990).

@italystf lire-tolar was very practical 10:1. now is even more, 1:1 



seem said:


> After 1918 Czech Republic was the the wealthiest country of ex Austrian empire


:yes:


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> you guys are confusing something. Slovenia had a 'tolar' from 1991-2007, not when in Yugoslavia (-1990).


Off course, you had dinar before, but it doesn't seem that someone made confusion.


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> @italystf lire-tolar was very practical 10:1. now is even more, 1:1


Also lire - marks was practical: 1000:1


----------



## hofburg

I don't know, look at Verso's, seems's and Suburbanist and later posts. (#13168...)


----------



## Alex_ZR

italystf said:


> In Trieste they tried giving me 1 Serbian dinar instead of 10 eurocents. :lol: they look almost the same.


Oh, yes, because diameter of 1 dinar coin is 20 mm and 10 eurocents is 19.75 mm!  10 Croatian lipa coin is also 20 mm in diameter and also yellow! :lol:


----------



## Attus

italystf said:


> Also lire - marks was practical: 1000:1


Yes, at the end. But at my first visit to Italy (1990) it was rather 1:700.


----------



## cinxxx

Thanks bogdymol for the tip :cheers2:


----------



## hofburg

^what tip?


----------



## bogdymol

I told him that he can get a Liechtenstein stamp on his passport from the Touristic office in Vaduz


----------



## cinxxx

This was my entire route during the mini 4 day vacation, I don't know when I will find the time to post photos, I made a lot, of roads and locations. 

http://g.co/maps/k7t8e
I also made a short brake in Landsberg am Lech, beautiful town, to bad it was already dark, and the city center is poorly illuminated, and without a tripod and nowhere to rest the camera, I couldn't make any pictures.


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> @italystf lire-tolar was very practical 10:1. now is even more, 1:1


Tolar and the Hungarian forint (HUF) were also almost equal (tolar being worth slightly more :troll. And I think the Austrian schilling (ATS) was worth about 10 tolars in 1990s.


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> Our smallest banknote was 10 SIT (Slovenian tolars) = 0.04 EUR. Coins were just a nuisance for our wallets.


:nuts:.

For the record, here the biggest note we had was the 10,000 ESP one=€60.10. I've heard that some countries had very large notes, and this explains the existence of the €500 one.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands had a 1000 NLG bill, which is about € 450.


----------



## italystf

Italy: 500,000 ITL, around 260EUR


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Tolar and the Hungarian forint (HUF) were also almost equal (tolar being worth slightly more :troll. And I think the Austrian schilling (ATS) was worth about 10 tolars in 1990s.


most time we calculated exchange ratio HRK:ATS 1:2. but just before € appeared it might have changed.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Good news, Street View of Estonia will become available this summer. Exact dates are still unknown.


----------



## Attus

CNGL said:


> :nuts:.
> 
> For the record, here the biggest note we had was the 10,000 ESP one=€60.10. I've heard that some countries had very large notes, and this explains the existence of the €500 one.


Germany had 1,000DM = € 511. However it was very rare.


----------



## g.spinoza

Nothing explains the existence of the 500€ bill. It's the best way to export illegally large amounts of money.

I heard they are sometimes called the "bin ladens": everybody's looking for them, nobody finds them. This of course was before they actually found him 

EDIT: To date, I have only seen 2 of them. And I've never seen the 200€ bill.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've seen my share of € 200 / 500 bills because I used to be a cashier at a supermarket many years ago (just after the introduction of the euro). A local car salesman always came shopping, I had to tell him every time we didn't accept large denominations. 

I myself never carry much cash, I usually get € 20 from the ATM every month where I pay some cash things with. Only on vacation I carry up to € 100 or a similar amount of local currency to make cash payments.


----------



## Attus

*About euro*

Flash Eurobarometer 306 public opinion survey is 1.5 years old but I suppose there were no great changes since than. 
30% of the respondents said there were too many types of euro coins and a vast majority of them said the 1 and 2 cent coins should have been removed. Note that the Finnish were 87% confident with euro coins - as far as I know 1 and 2 cent coins are not in public circulation in Finnland.

Strange that an absolute majority of Belgians (52%) still calculates in Franc for non-everyday purchases while 69% of Slovenians calculates in Euro although Slovenia introduced Euro significantly later then Belgium. 
However for everyday purchases everyone calculates in Euro except for Slovakia - Slovaks have had Euro only for 10 months when the survey was made so I think their attitude has changed since then. 

There was a special question for Cyprus, Malta and Slovakia about price changings connected to Euro introduction. A vast majority (70-80%) of the respondents thought that prices have increased by the euro-introduction!

These and many other data can be read in this document:
http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_306_en.pdf


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Calculating the old currency with the exchange rate of 13 years ago makes very little sense.


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> Nothing explains the existence of the 500€ bill. It's the best way to export illegally large amounts of money.
> 
> I heard they are sometimes called the "bin ladens": everybody's looking for them, nobody finds them. This of course was before they actually found him
> 
> EDIT: To date, I have only seen 2 of them. And I've never seen the 200€ bill.


I have seen both 200 and 500 € bills about 2 times in my life. I noticed that the 50 € bills are very popular in Romania... although I don't know exactly why (the Romanian 200 lei bill ~= 50€ is quite rare).


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> I have seen both 200 and 500 &#128; bills about 2 times in my life. I noticed that the 50 &#128; bills are very popular in Romania... although I don't know exactly why (the Romanian 200 lei bill ~= 50&#128; is quite rare).


For which reason you use euros in Romania?


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> A local car salesman always came shopping, I had to tell him every time we didn't accept large denominations.


I never understood this. As they are legal tender, no shop can refuse to cash them. I've never been in such a situation but, should I be, I think i would call the police and file a complaint for being refused a service.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> I never understood this. As they are legal tender, no shop can refuse to cash them. I've never been in such a situation but, should I be, I think i would call the police and file a complaint for being refused a service.


Yes, they are obliged to accept them. However I heard that smaller shop with no devices to detect counterfeit bills often use the excuse "I've no enough change". I never paid anything with 200 or 500 and I think that 100 would be a good sum for the biggest euronote.


----------



## Attus

Four years ago a had a short term job which paid 1,000 euro, and I was paid by two 500 euro notes. I used them to pay for hotel rooms but in both cases the hotel receptionist could not change it at once but had to wait until other guests pay their rooms.


----------



## CNGL

g.spinoza said:


> Nothing explains the existence of the 500€ bill. It's the best way to export illegally large amounts of money.
> 
> I heard they are sometimes called the "bin ladens": everybody's looking for them, nobody finds them. This of course was before they actually found him
> 
> EDIT: To date, I have only seen 2 of them. And I've never seen the 200€ bill.


And then why you have a €200 note and 10 €500 bills registered in EuroBillTracker? I've seen 8 €200ers and 20 €500ers since I'm there .


----------



## cinxxx

I only saw the 100€ bill when I cashed out money from the bank office to buy my car.
The bankomat only gives me 50€ the highest bill.


----------



## g.spinoza

CNGL said:


> And then why you have a €200 note and 10 €500 bills registered in EuroBillTracker?


My mum or my girlfriend must've found them and wrote the serials in a piece of paper...


----------



## italystf

I joined EBT few months ago but I got tired after just 60 notes (and off course 0 hits).


----------



## bogdymol

italystf said:


> For which reason you use euros in Romania?


Euro is used in Romania, but not in the shops. If you buy a second-hand car for example you will most probably pay for it in €. All cars or house prices in Romania are in €. First cash-machines that are giving € (and not Romanian lei) were installed in Bucharest.

And yes, in Romania at all the small shop they have the "excuse" not to pay by a large bill because they don't have change.


----------



## keokiracer

Meanwhile in Belgium :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ It is obviously fake (staged), but funny nonetheless. I refer to the allegedly unsuspecting bystanders.


----------



## Suburbanist

This thread has some strange tags:

*drogi to moja pasja,*
expressways, 
freeways, 
highways, 
*i love target, *
motorways, 
*nexis ♥ colors, *
*radi's shack, *
skybar, 
*struma ftw*


----------



## CNGL

And now it has another strange tag .


----------



## Agurv

I didnt really know where on this forum to post this...but.

I am from the USA. I want to go somewhere by myself next year and I want it to be outside the US for a week. I am basically willing to go anywhere as long as its not too cold. Any suggestions? This would happen next year though


----------



## g.spinoza

Agurv said:


> I didnt really know where on this forum to post this...but.
> 
> I am from the USA. I want to go somewhere by myself next year and I want it to be outside the US for a week. I am basically willing to go anywhere *as long as its not too cold*. Any suggestions? This would happen next year though


Anything below the 40th parallel 

Sicily? Greece? Turkey? Mexico? Portugal? Spain?


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> I never understood this. As they are legal tender, no shop can refuse to cash them. I've never been in such a situation but, should I be, I think i would call the police and file a complaint for being refused a service.


Depends on the country legislation.

At least in Finland, the basic principle is that the receiver of the payment decides which payment method it accepts. Refusing to receive 200 and 500 euro banknotes, for example, is legal. Many small shops do that to reduce risks from frauds. 

At the buses and trams in the Helsinki public transport, the maximum is 20 euro, and 50 euro in the trains, for obvious reasons.


----------



## italystf

MattiG said:


> Depends on the country legislation.
> 
> At least in Finland, the basic principle is that the receiver of the payment decides which payment method it accepts. Refusing to receive 200 and 500 euro banknotes, for example, is legal. Many small shops do that to reduce risks from frauds.
> 
> At the buses and trams in the Helsinki public transport, the maximum is 20 euro, and 50 euro in the trains, for obvious reasons.


Strange. I though that any kind of euronote and eurocoin must be accepted by law as a valid mean of payment throghout the Eurozone with the only limitation of max 50 metallic coins at once.

BTW, what's the current status of 1c and 2c in Finland? Are accepted?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

1 and 2 cents are also not used in the Netherlands. They are legal tender and shops should accept them, but they are hardly in circulation.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ In Italy some shops round payments to the nearest 5 cents, others do not. There is no general rule


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ In Italy some shops round payments to the nearest 5 cents, others do not. There is no general rule


At least there, they never round payments, expecially at supermarkets. Once they gave me 5c instead of 4c but just because she had not 4c. And those small coins are always in my wallet.


----------



## keber

cinxxx said:


> I only saw the 100€ bill when I cashed out money from the bank office to buy my car.
> The bankomat only gives me 50€ the highest bill.


I held 500€ bill in my hands right yesterday. It's interesting how relief features (meant for people with impaired sight) really stand out on this bill (and it was not very new).

Also in France ATM gave me banknotes of 100, 50, 20, 10 and 5.


----------



## cinxxx

If we are on money topic, I was amazed by the looks of the Swiss bills and coins, very strange...


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Swiss coins, from a collector point of view, are really uninteresting. Design barely changed in 100 years...


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Swiss coins, from a collector point of view, are really uninteresting. Design barely changed in 100 years...


But they have the oldest circulating coins in the world.


----------



## cinxxx

I liked that the bills were plasticized, kinda like the Romanian ones, but the color and design is _original_.
The 1/2 FR coin is also interesting.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> But they have the oldest circulating coins in the world.


Yes and I like them, but again, collector-wise, they're not worth much.


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> BTW, what's the current status of 1c and 2c in Finland? Are accepted?


All cash payments are rounded to nearest 5c. The 1c and 2c coins are seldom seen, and they generally are not accepted. In principle, they should be accepted unless the shop shows a sign they are not, but the principle and reality do not match.

Even if the 1c and 2c coins are not in general use, the Bank of Finland has put about 96 million of those in circulation in order to prevent their numismatic value from exceeding the nominal value.


----------



## italystf

MattiG said:


> All cash payments are rounded to nearest 5c. The 1c and 2c coins are seldom seen, and they generally are not accepted. In principle, they should be accepted unless the shop shows a sign they are not, but the principle and reality do not match.
> 
> Even if the 1c and 2c coins are not in general use, the Bank of Finland has put about 96 million of those in circulation in order to prevent their numismatic value from exceeding the nominal value.


Are they exported to other countries?


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> Are they exported to other countries?


In my understanding, no. Instead, they are sold to the banks, and people can buy them as chunks of 50 or 100 coins. During the last few years, the numbers of minted coins has been low: http://www.suomenpankki.fi/en/setel...ges/suomalaisten_kolikoiden_lyontimaarat.aspx

Just checked my wallet: Six 1c coins and six 2c ones. One 1c coin from Italy and all remaining ones from Germany.


----------



## italystf

MattiG said:


> In my understanding, no. Instead, they are sold to the banks, and people can buy them as chunks of 50 or 100 coins. During the last few years, the numbers of minted coins has been low: http://www.suomenpankki.fi/en/setelit_ja_kolikot/eurokolikot/Pages/suomalaisten_kolikoiden_lyontimaarat.aspx
> 
> Just checked my wallet: Six 1c coins and six 2c ones. One 1c coin from Italy and all remaining ones from Germany.


If a price is EUR1,53 you can pay the exact amount if you have small coins or you must pay EUR1,55 anyway because the legal price is rounded to the nearest 5 cent?
Off course if the amount is 1,51 or 1,52 I guess nobody say 'I have small coins'


----------



## Suburbanist

Maybe they should have reset the Euro back when it was introduced with a factor of 0.2 (meaning 1 Euro on this alternative scenario woudl equal 5 actual current euro)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Electronic payments are not rounded in the Netherlands. If the price is € 14,99 you'll pay € 15 cash and € 14,99 with a bank card.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Electronic payments are not rounded in the Netherlands. If the price is € 14,99 you'll pay € 15 cash and € 14,99 with a bank card.


Same thing is in Romania at almost all the stores, but there are some supermakets where the cashiers are told to give the change to the last penny, so you end up having some 1 ban (0.01 lei = 0.0022 €) in your pocket...


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Electronic payments are not rounded in the Netherlands. If the price is EUR 14,99 you'll pay EUR 15 cash and EUR 14,99 with a bank card.


So you pay with card prices ending in 3, 4, 8 and 9 but with cash prices ending in 1, 2, 6 and 7?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No it's rounded to 5 cents cash. If the price is € 1,52 you'll pay € 1,50 cash and € 1,52 with a card.


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> If a price is EUR1,53 you can pay the exact amount if you have small coins or you must pay EUR1,55 anyway because the legal price is rounded to the nearest 5 cent?


If paying cash, yes.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> No it's rounded to 5 cents cash. If the price is € 1,52 you'll pay € 1,50 cash and € 1,52 with a card.


I mean that you could use cash or card to save 1 or 2 cents


----------



## keber

cinxxx said:


> I liked that the bills were plasticized, kinda like the Romanian ones, but the color and design is _original_.


Wait for next series, coming (probably) next year:











































http://www.snb.ch/en/iabout/cash/newcash/id/cash_new_result/3

It will be somehow different than shown above because of security issues, but it is still very interesting. Makes Euros really boring - new euro series is (again, probably) coming next year.

Also 1000 swiss franc is probably the highest regular banknote value in the world.


----------



## seem

Wtf 1200 € banknote. :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

seem said:


> Wtf 1200 € banknote. :nuts:


wrong way conversion  It's € 830


----------



## bogdymol

Am I the only one that thinks that the Swiss banknotes are looking kind of high-tech? Never seen a real one in my life though...


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

^^ No, I also absolutely adore their design. The 'pixelated' Le Corbusier on 10Fr note is enough to fall in love with them.

And please do notice how the coins performs well in a country with 4 official languages without actually saying a word


----------



## x-type

they are cool, but French francs were also cool, especially 50 FRF banknote with its weird dimensions.

the coolest coins are GBP:


----------



## cougar1989

ChrisZwolle said:


> Electronic payments are not rounded in the Netherlands. If the price is € 14,99 you'll pay € 15 cash and € 14,99 with a bank card.


At Switzerland they round electronic payments.

At Czech Republic they do not round electronic payments only paying per cash.
The smallest coin is 1CZK (~ 0,04€) 








0,10; 0,20 and 0,50CZK are not more valid at Czech Republic.


----------



## seem

^^ I like the design of 50 Kč coin (2€), 50 Kč banknotes are no longer used - 










We also had bilingual banknotes back in the first republic - 










4 language like in Schweiz  but there is actually missing the 5th one - Czech - "Padesát Korun Československých "


----------



## Alex_ZR

^^ Ukrainian because of Sub-Carpathian region, which was later taken by Soviet Union.


Hungarian pengő from 1926 - six languages (Hungarian, German, Slovakian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Romanian):


----------



## Verso

seem said:


> 4 language like in Schweiz  but there is actually missing the 5th one - Czech - "Padesát Korun Československých "


Czech was probably on the other side.


----------



## seem

Alex_ZR said:


> ^^ Ukrainian because of Sub-Carpathian region, which was later taken by Soviet Union.


There are still many people in the East who speak Ukrainian/Ruthenian.

9 languages on Austrian krone, 6 from them are Slavic :nuts:


----------



## Suburbanist

I'm starting a mega road trip with 3 other companions. In couple hours I'll drive to the Amsterdam area, pick the friends, and then go to La Línea (Spain).

Our outward trip will follow the AMiens/Rouen/Nantes/Bordeaux/Irún/Valladolid/Salamanca/Badajoz route (with 2 overnight stops).

Then, we stay 7 days in La Línea.

After that, we'll be back via Malaga/Loja/Granada/Lorca/Alcoy/Barcelona/Nimes/Lyon/Dijon/Metz/Luxembourg/Maastricht

So I'll be mostly out of SSC for like 12 days


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Lots of voyages in this period 

Have a nice trip!


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> I'm starting a mega road trip with 3 other companions. In couple hours I'll drive to the Amsterdam area, pick the friends, and then go to La Línea (Spain).
> 
> Our outward trip will follow the AMiens/Rouen/Nantes/Bordeaux/Irún/Valladolid/Salamanca/Badajoz route (with 2 overnight stops).
> 
> Then, we stay 7 days in La Línea.
> 
> After that, we'll be back via Malaga/Loja/Granada/Lorca/Alcoy/Barcelona/Nimes/Lyon/Dijon/Metz/Luxembourg/Maastricht
> 
> So I'll be mostly out of SSC for like 12 days


Will you also go to Gibraltar?


----------



## Suburbanist

italystf said:


> Will you also go to Gibraltar?


Likely. I heard sometimes there are major jams crossing into Gibraltar though.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Likely. I heard sometimes there are major jams crossing into Gibraltar though.


Off course, there are border controls and the road crosses the runway of the airport, so closes everytime a plane lands or takes off.


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> Likely. I heard sometimes there are major jams crossing into Gibraltar though.


I suggest you to cross the border on foot and visit Gibraltar by cable car, buses (some lines are free of charge, like the one towards Europa Point and back), and of course on foot.


----------



## keokiracer

italystf said:


> Off course, there are border controls and the road crosses the runway of the airport, so closes everytime a plane lands or takes off.


That looks so awesome!


----------



## CNGL

And Gibraltar should be Spanish, as stated in the Utrecht treaty.



Alex_ZR said:


> ^^ Ukrainian because of Sub-Carpathian region, which was later taken by Soviet Union.
> 
> 
> Hungarian pengő from 1926 - six languages (Hungarian, German, Slovakian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Romanian):


A note of only ten pengő? That is absolutely nothing (Really NOTHING!) compared with the 1.0E+20 pengő note :


----------



## x-type

speaking about banknotes - currently i have one 1000 HRK in my wallet (sold some old broken gold on blackmarket, it has really good price  ). last time i had it 3 years ago when i won some money on quiz and i took all the money in cash (had a bunch of 1000 HRK's  )
it is not that large value anyway, about 133€, but it is not often. 


















i like the most 200 HRK, and ATM's give them the most often










and this is 0,01 HRK. it is about 0,0013€  very rare and you will get it back in shop once in a year.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> last time i had it 3 years ago when i won some money on quiz


I remember that. :lol:


----------



## Chilio

Hmmm... didn't you all go too far into this currency-topic?


----------



## Suburbanist

I'm using some high-tech gimmicks to post this 

Wi-Fi access + personal VPN on my computer left on in Tilburg.

Greetings from a stop near Bruxelles :cheers:


----------



## x-type

famous banknote with motive of our ex-prime minister


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> speaking about banknotes - currently i have one 1000 HRK in my wallet (sold some old broken gold on blackmarket, it has really good price  ). last time i had it 3 years ago when i won some money on quiz and i took all the money in cash (had a bunch of 1000 HRK's  )
> it is not that large value anyway, about 133€, but it is not often.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> i like the most 200 HRK, and ATM's give them the most often
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> and this is 0,01 HRK. it is about 0,0013€  very rare and you will get it back in shop once in a year.



@ X-type: was it a quiz on national tv? How much did you win, if is not an impolite question?

When I was in Croatia I never saw the 5kn bill but only 5kn coins. Are they still in circulation?
The lowest coins I got as charge were 5 lipa, but in different places I found on the ground two 2 lipa coins and an 1 lipa coin (probably people get ride of them) and they were accepted as 5 lipa. Are they like 1 and 2 eurocents in Finland and the Netherlands?
Is the 25kn coin really used (I never saw any)?


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> @ X-type: was it a quiz on national tv? How much did you win, if is not an impolite question?
> 
> When I was in Croatia I never saw the 5kn bill but only 5kn coins. Are they still in circulation?
> The lowest coins I got as charge were 5 lipa, but in different places I found on the ground two 2 lipa coins and an 1 lipa coin (probably people get ride of them) and they were accepted as 5 lipa. Are they like 1 and 2 eurocents in Finland and the Netherlands?
> Is the 25kn coin really used (I never saw any)?


yep, Affari tuoi. about 3500€. 

5 HRK bills are very rare. i haven't seen any in past year. in the 1990es there was inversion - rare 5 kn coins, and often 5 kn bills. but coins have changed them. there was even modernized re-issue of 5 kn bills, but they didn't last long. they will accept it everywhere, but it is very rare.
1 and 2 lp - the same as 0,01€ in NL and FI. accepted everywhere (except gas stations - they hate coins  ), but not in the use actually anymore.

25 kn coin is used and accepted eveywhere, but it is numismatic coin. there are 9 types of it, you can see them here. . 6 of them were issued in 300.000 pieces, one in 200.000, two in 30.000 and one last in 20.000.


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> yep, Affari tuoi. about 3500€.


Lol, "Affari Tuoi" was the name of a popular Italian TV show where people won money:lol:.


----------



## hofburg

interesting fact: a person in charge for a transport of Mairie de Paris is a woman. And a socialist. 

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annick_Lepetit


----------



## bogdymol

Quoting from the Netherlands thread:



Corvinus said:


> Interesting graffiti on the surface of a motorway-like stretch of N57:





Groningen NL said:


> What does it say? "..... Rabo rules'' is all I can read.


There, I fixed it


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Lol, "Affari Tuoi" was the name of a popular Italian TV show where people won money:lol:.


Well I wrote its Italian name with purpose because you wouldn't understand if I wrote you Croatian name of it


----------



## Coccodrillo

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Swiss coins, from a collector point of view, are really uninteresting. Design barely changed in 100 years...





italystf said:


> But they have the oldest circulating coins in the world.


I have two 5 CHF coins from 1968 and one 2 CHF coin from 1969 in my wallet.

Beside the year of issue written on them, they are absolutely identical to the recent ones.


----------



## g.spinoza

Coccodrillo said:


> I have two 5 CHF coins from 1968 and one 2 CHF coin from 1969 in my wallet.
> 
> Beside the year of issue written on them, they are absolutely identical to the recent ones.


I can't remember for sure, but I think I have one 1908 and one 1912 5 rappen coins, and they are almost identical to the most recent ones. As a matter of fact, recent ones are considered variants of the older ones (the older ones are classified as KM26 in Krause catalog, while recent ones are KM26c). The most important difference is that the older ones are made by copper-nickel, while recent ones are aluminium-brass.


----------



## Suburbanist

Greetings from San Sebastian. Weather is not good though.


----------



## Suburbanist

Greetings from La Linea de la Concepcion


----------



## Verso

They don't let you into Gibraltar?


----------



## Suburbanist

Verso said:


> They don't let you into Gibraltar?


No, we're at a condo where there is a small Dutch enclave lol. I'm relaxing while my friends, who slept for the 2 entire days the trip last, are just walking somewhere.

Our inward route (not sure link will work) http://g.co/maps/3zhgt

It took one late afternoon evening and two entire days, with 2 overnight stops


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Happy birthday to Bogdymol!


----------



## Chilio

Happy happy birthday, Bogdy! And many pleasant kms on great roads and motorways!


----------



## NordikNerd

What's happening with the clinched highway mapping site?

I have sent some stats, but I have not received an answer yet. I recently drove 1500km in Sweden, Denmark and Germany and want to put those roads on a personal map.


----------



## g.spinoza

Probably your mail wasn't received. The last user files' update was made yesterday...


----------



## Chilio

Unpleasant rainy weather... moreover the sewage pit on my street got clogged with rubbish and now I can go fishing there:


----------



## NordikNerd

g.spinoza said:


> Probably your mail wasn't received. The last user files' update was made yesterday...


OK, I have sent my file one more time.


----------



## g.spinoza

Apparently the world-known town of Fucking, Austria is determined to change its name:
http://www.corriere.it/esteri/12_ap...me_1f1b7114-893d-11e1-a8e9-f84c50c7f614.shtml

Most probable new name: "Fugging" or "Fuging".

EDIT: The Italian article includes this keen line, said by a local tourist guide: "Germans want to see Mozart's house in Salzburg; Americans are interested in locations from 'The sound of music', Robert Wise's movie; Japanese want to see Hitler's birthplace in Braunau; the English are only interested in Fucking."


----------



## CNGL

Happy birthday bogdymol!



g.spinoza said:


> Apparently the world-known town of Fucking, Austria is determined to change its name:
> http://www.corriere.it/esteri/12_ap...me_1f1b7114-893d-11e1-a8e9-f84c50c7f614.shtml
> 
> Most probable new name: "Fugging" or "Fuging".


F. I like that... . But there are other towns that won't change their name and makes me grinning, for example in Southern Italy the town of Polla, which is Spanish for dick; or Puta near Baku in Azerbaijan, which is slut.


----------



## keokiracer

CNGL said:


> Happy birthday bogdymol!


Are you sure? He isn't on the bottom of the main page at the birthdays. But if it is indeed his birthday: Congragulations Bogdymol! 


Meanwhile in Serbia


----------



## italystf

keokiracer said:


> But if it is indeed his birthday: Congragulations Bodgymol


Is 'congratulation' currently used in English referring to bdays? Happy birthday is more used.
I imagine a foreign trying to speak italian and saying "congratulazioni" in occasion of a birthday party. It would be very funny because it sounds like "congratulation for being still alive" :lol: The right italian word is auguri and congratulazioni is used in very different contests.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch line would say "_gefeliciteerd met je verjaardag_" literally translated "congratulations with your birthday" though "_verjaardag_" could be translated as "aging day" rather than birthday ("_geboortedag_").


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Apparently the world-known town of Fucking, Austria is determined to change its name:
> http://www.corriere.it/esteri/12_aprile_18/austria-paese-cambia-nome_1f1b7114-893d-11e1-a8e9-f84c50c7f614.shtml
> 
> Most probable new name: "Fugging" or "Fuging".
> 
> EDIT: The Italian article includes this keen line, said by a local tourist guide: "Germans want to see Mozart's house in Salzburg; Americans are interested in locations from 'The sound of music', Robert Wise's movie; Japanese want to see Hitler's birthplace in Braunau; the English are only interested in Fucking."


Don't think it's a smart move. It means lose a lot of tourism-related income (that ends up in replacement signs :lol. It's not even a municipality so their residents don't even have this embarassing name in their papers. As CNLG said, there's plenty of places with porn names but Fucking, being English, it's funny for every nationalities.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

italystf said:


> Is 'congratulation' currently used in English referring to bdays? Happy birthday is more used.
> I imagine a foreign trying to speak italian and saying "congratulazioni" in occasion of a birthday party. It would be very funny because it sounds like "congratulation for being still alive" :lol: The right italian word is auguri and congratulazioni is used in very different contests.


You can say 'congratulations'. It's not wrong, but as you say 'Happy Birthday' is more common.

You also wouldn't say 'currently used' unless it was considered merely a sort of phase which wouldn't last long


----------



## bogdymol

Thank you guys :cheers:



keokiracer said:


> Are you sure? He isn't on the bottom of the main page at the birthdays.


If I haven't marked my birthday on SSC does that mean that I don't have a birthday?


----------



## keokiracer

bogdymol said:


> If I haven't marked my birthday on SSC does that mean that I don't have a birthday?


Indeed :troll:


But serious, I forgot it was an option not to mark your Birthday


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> Thank you guys :cheers:
> 
> 
> 
> If I haven't marked my birthday on SSC does that mean that I don't have a birthday?


if you're not on Facebook, does that mean that you exist? :troll:

la multi ani


----------



## cinxxx

La mulţi ani, Bogdy! :cheers2:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Woops I forgot to say Happy Birthday when I was talking about the expression happy birthday


----------



## italystf

DanielFigFoz said:


> Woops I forgot to say Happy Birthday when I was talking about the expression happy birthday


Me too. Happy birthday, Bodgymol


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Who remembers this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Struma_motorway&oldid=308784652


----------



## bogdymol

^^ We all do 

PS: check who opened this thread and why


----------



## g.spinoza

Buon compleanno, bogdymol or, as they say in Germany "alles gute zum Geburtstag" (all good things on your birthday, or something like that)


----------



## DanielFigFoz

ChrisZwolle said:


> Who remembers this?
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Struma_motorway&oldid=308784652


:lol: What a surprise

We shall never forget that


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## italystf

Sorry, but I'm not on SSC for long. Can someone explain (to me and other newcomers) why Struma motorway in Bulgaria is so famous here (it's often mentioned with sarcasm)? And why there is the 'no Struma' rule on Guess the Highway?


----------



## bogdymol

italystf said:


> Sorry, but I'm not on SSC for long. Can someone explain (to me and other newcomers) why Struma motorway in Bulgaria is so famous here (it's often mentioned with sarcasm)? And why there is the 'no Struma' rule on Guess the Highway?


Send a PM to user *Radi*. He will explain everything about Struma


----------



## bogdymol

http://g.co/maps/6dtsb :bash::madwife::gaah:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

italystf said:


> Sorry, but I'm not on SSC for long. Can someone explain (to me and other newcomers) why Struma motorway in Bulgaria is so famous here (it's often mentioned with sarcasm)? And why there is the 'no Struma' rule on Guess the Highway?


Basically, a few years ago, there was this Bulgarian-German bloke on here that kept saying how amazing the Struma motorway was, that it was the best road ever and such and that it had shiny crash barriers (most famous thing in the H&A section, the lovely shiny crash barriers that looked exactly the same as any other new crash barriers), and he made maps and put them on wikipedia. I remember that at the time it was only 29km or something like that. This must have been 4-5 years ago or so. The forumer (Radi) occasionally comes by, says hello and posts a photo of the barrier-fence thing on his balcony which he plans paint to make it look shiny as some sort of tribute to the Struma motorway.

Summarised version, it went on for a long time :lol:


----------



## Chilio

Few Urban legends I can see above... In fact Struma motorway is less than 19 km till today, although more 34 new are under construction lately. And the already opened section even is not a real motorway, because they made it on the trace of the old national road illegally without the permits and proper project documents, with too sharp curves and too steep climbs or descents... So it remained with speed limit 90 km/h.

Bogdymol, are these beautiful and incredible yellow ornaments on the building gas pipes or cables?


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> Send a PM to user *Radi*. He will explain everything about Struma


Everything and more. Happy birthday, btw. How young are you?


----------



## bogdymol

Chilio said:


> Few Urban legends I can see above... In fact Struma motorway is less than 19 km till today, although more 34 new are under construction lately. And the already opened section even is not a real motorway, because they made it on the trace of the old national road illegally without the permits and proper project documents, with too sharp curves and too steep climbs or descents... So it remained with speed limit 90 km/h.


So the famous Struma motorway has a speed limit of just 90 km/h? hno: I'm dissapointed. The asphalt is so smooth, the markings are thermoplastic, the crash barriers are so shiny so that you can go with ∞ speed...



Chilio said:


> Bogdymol, are these beautiful and incredible yellow ornaments on the building gas pipes or cables?


There is a rule that says that all gas counters have to be installed outside the building. This is what happened :bash:



Verso said:


> Everything and more. Happy birthday, btw. How young are you?


Thank you all for the greetings  I'm still young, don't worry (although I found my first white hair ).

PS: page 666? :runaway:


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> PS: page 666? :runaway:


And celebrating you. There must be some connection. :cheers:


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> And celebrating you. There must be some connection. :cheers:


Nope, there is no connection. I was celebrated yesterday and this page appeard today


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I know all of this, but the very fact that a person like Gorbachëv was elected is something to consider. Why would Politburo, a totalitarian entity, elect a anti-authoritarian president?

Had Soviet Union been ruled by, say, a new Brezhnev, people would have though twice before going in the squares and meet Jan Palach's end.

And I have the impression that church's role in this has been grossly exaggerated by catholics and papists, but I not well informed about this.


----------



## Attus

I was 15 in 1989. I, as a Hungarian, of course observed Romanian happenings, for it is a neighbor nation and has an important Hungarian minority (close to 2.5 million people in the '80s). 
I must say things in Romania were far not so bad as in North Korea, but trends were similar. The main difference is that Ceausescu had no real military plans, Romanian army was far not so big as the North Korean one now.
Private property was not so strongly forbidden as in DPRK, many people had an own car (alright, it was a Dacia or that Citroen licensed car that I forgot the name of, but they had one) and famine was unknown - while in DPRK millions of people died in famines. 

Romania under Ceausescu was not the land of dreams but neither was such a hell as North Korea.


----------



## bogdymol

Attus said:


> or that Citroen licensed car that I forgot the name of, but they had one


My parents had 2 Oltcit cars, but only after '89. Before they were car-less.


















^^ Check the signal buttons


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> And I have the impression that church's role in this has been grossly exaggerated by catholics and papists, but I not well informed about this.


In Poland the role of church was really important, but only there. 
There were two reasons for that: 
First the Polish are faithful catholics, even now more than 40% of the population visits a church at leas once a week, in the late 70s it was over 50%. 
Second, afther having only Italian popes through 500 years, a Polish bishop named Karol Wojtyla was elected in 1978. It turned many Polish people to the church, at least partially (I mean they didn't go to Holy Mass every Sunday but were influenced by the church). 
The muder of the Polish priest Jerzy Popieluszko in 1984 was an important incident which started a movement in Poland which turned to the collapse of communism over there.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Again, I know all of this - except the Popieluszko murder, I have to find some more info - but I'm not sure that the mere election of a Polish Pope and the assassination of one priest could have started something. I mean, Tiananmen facts were far more important, but they didn't change much in China; the same self sacrifice of Palach in Czechoslovakia, made much impression in the West - and no doubt in the East as well - but didn't have a real effect on things per se.

I really don't have of the puzzle pieces to put together and that's a very big limitation on my side. Next book I'm gonna buy is something about the end of Communism.


----------



## Alex_ZR

North Koreans are masters of moving images at the stadium. It looks like you're watching LED screens.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Again, I know all of this - except the Popieluszko murder, I have to find some more info - but I'm not sure that the mere election of a Polish Pope and the assassination of one priest could have started something. I mean, Tiananmen facts were far more important, but they didn't change much in China; the same self sacrifice of Palach in Czechoslovakia, made much impression in the West - and no doubt in the East as well - but didn't have a real effect on things per se.


I grew up in Hungary but I tell you the name of Palach was unknow buth for me and my parents. First time I heard his name was after 1989. 
I suppose you've heard about Solidarnosc and Walesa. The Polish regime had to have martial law from late '81 to mid '83. People were afraid in the mid '80s. The church had an important role for motivate people for starting a new resistance. The pope himself visited Poland several times (Jaruzelski did not dare to deny him visiting his home): 1979, 1983, 1987 and spoke agains communism. And, once again: half of the population listened to a priests' speech in a church every Sunday. You cannot avoid such a great influnce, not any other organization had so many followers, not even near to that!


----------



## italystf

Poland was the only communist country to have an influent internal resistance since the early 80s. The Solidarnost movement operated with strikes and paceful demonstrations involving thousands of people. Surely the church had an influence but it wasn't all.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Yes I know about Walesa and Solidarnosc.

This is all very interesting and it pushes me even more to widen my knowledge in this matter. But I think we should end this massive OT, even in a OT thread!

Thanks everybody for your insights.


----------



## cinxxx

If we are still talking about Romania, here a funny article:

http://kingofromania.com/2012/04/20/worth-it-2/



> *I was wondering, after staying this long in RO, does it still seems that great? I feel like leaving this country…*
> 
> Well hell, if you read yesterday’s post, you know sometimes I get the urge to pack my bags and go as well. But hey, I’ve said that about a million times before and I’m still here, a source of shock not only to my friends and family in America but to me as well
> 
> The short answer is, yes, despite everything going on all the time, yes it does seem “that great”. Romania, to me, is a little like my cats. Sometimes those furry devils drive me absolutely nuts and make me want to beat them until I break my hand when they’re running around making noise and destroying my stuff. But then a moment later they are the cutest little monkeys you ever did see and they do something silly and it makes me laugh until my stomach hurts. And even though sometimes they’re under the wrong impression that I am their servile dupe, other times they curl up with me and purr and there just aren’t many things in life sweeter than that.
> 
> So yeah, I’m staying a while longer yet.
> [...]
> Meanwhile everywhere else, from America to England to Germany and Sweden, is heading full speed into a world where confidence is extremely low, where everything is monitored, labeled, posted, warned of and regulated. There are a thousand rules and laws about what needs to be done in this situation and that situation and meanwhile back here in Romania people are swigging homemade wine and patting homeless dogs on the head and it seems to work out fine. New Zealand regulates the number of drinks a bartender can serve an adult per hour while here in Romania you can get drunk at the public pool and go swimming to your heart’s content.
> [...]


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Solidarnos*t*


Do you speak Slovenian?


----------



## CNGL

seem said:


> ^^







From a regional TV show . Same music, different lyrics.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Poland was the only communist country to have an influent internal resistance since the early 80s. The Solidarnost movement operated with strikes and paceful demonstrations involving thousands of people. Surely the church had an influence but it wasn't all.


it was definitely not the only one.
my father took part in Croatian spring.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Do you speak Slovenian?


No, Wtf? 
Well, Polish isn't easy to spell, so I wrong the last letter. Does it mean something in Slovenian?


----------



## Ron2K

Bobek_Azbest said:


> Pyongyang - Nampo highway only has a single carriageway, although a really wide one.  (It's "only" 10 lanes, though).


Correct me if I'm wrong, but far as I know, the real purpose North Korean "highways" is to facilitate military movements in the event of war with the South. That's why they're built that wide, even though they carry minuscule traffic volumes.


----------



## bogdymol

Some people deserve to be shot to be hit by a car and then shot hno:






In case you didn't notice, there is a woman that was just hit by a car. 2 gypsyes (a man and a woman) instead of helping her and giving her first aid, they search her pockets and purse to steel what they find there.


----------



## g.spinoza

Correct Prof. Farnsworth line should be: "I don't want them to live on this planet anymore".


----------



## cinxxx

^^
I would shoot those bastards

Dacia Limo


----------



## italystf

cinxxx said:


> ^^
> I would shoot those bastards
> 
> Dacia Limo


Cannot get it. What's wrong in that pic?


----------



## cinxxx

italystf said:


> Cannot get it. What's wrong in that pic?


Have you ever seen such a Dacia Combi limousine?


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ The major improvement of a system formed of self-driven cars only is not on the fact they can be moved elsewhere while idling (this is important) but that cars could be made much lighter if accident prevention could rely not on collision mitigation but collision avoidance.


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

Turkish super car!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Only $750000 and it's yours.










http://carscoop.blogspot.com/2012/04/would-you-believe-that-someone-is.html


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

del.


----------



## Verso

Parking at Zagreb airport is such a rip-off. You pay 15 HRK (2 EUR) whether you park for 3 hours or 1 minute. It even says 15 HRK for 1-3 hours, so I thought it was free up to 1 hour, but it wasn't.

In other news: I got a Japanese neighbour.


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> Parking at Zagreb airport is such a rip-off. You pay 15 HRK (2 EUR) whether you park for 3 hours or 1 minute. It even says 15 HRK for 1-3 hours, so I thought it was free up to 1 hour, but it wasn't.


Most airports I've been have a 15-minutes drop-off free of charge. So you can go in front of the terminal with your car for free to drop off/take somebody to/from the airport. If you stay longer you pay...


----------



## cinxxx

bogdymol said:


> Most airports I've been have a 15-minutes drop-off free of charge. So you can go in front of the terminal with your car for free to drop off/take somebody to/from the airport. If you stay longer you pay...


The ones I saw, have only 5 minutes at terminal.


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> Most airports I've been have a 15-minutes drop-off free of charge. So you can go in front of the terminal with your car for free to drop off/take somebody to/from the airport. If you stay longer you pay...


of course you can do it at Zagreb airport. but entering parking lots will cost you 2€. i have seen it at lots of airports.


----------



## Verso

At Ljubljana airport it's free for 15 min in parking lots (used to be 30 min). I don't know about the lowest price, but €2 seems quite a lot to me (who needs parking for 3 hours anyway?). I don't get why you have to pay in the first place. You're already doing them a favour by flying from their airport (shopping centres also have parking free of charge).


----------



## hofburg

Verso said:


> In other news: I got a Japanese neighbour.


did he miss his flight destination?


----------



## italystf

I know a family who ended up in Karlovac instead of Karlobag because of their GPS.


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> I know a family who ended up in Karlovac instead of Karlobag because of their GPS.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8173308.stm


----------



## ChrisZwolle

If that happens to you, you probably deserve it


----------



## italystf

MattiG said:


> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8173308.stm


^^ I already know it.

And what about tourists wondering why the city of Ausfahrt is signposted at every interchange?


----------



## KHS

A Swedish couple ended up in Rijeka instead of Reykjavik 

_Rijeka - A couple from Sweden is, quite unexpectedly, enjoying Njivice on the island of Krk these days, although they went on - Iceland. But reserving tickets on the internet they selected Rijeka, thinking that this is the abbreviation for the Icelandic capital Reykjavik.

"We were at the airport where they told us that there is no flight line to Reykjavik ten minutes before the flight. But we have embarked on an adventure in Croatia, about which we knew nothing," they say. They came and realized that they were at sea, with suitcases full of warm clothes for the Island.

In Njivice they have fallen in love with nature and the sea. Next summer will come again to Croatia, they say_

http://www.radiodalmacija.hr/Vijesti/tabid/3497/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/26897/Umjesto-u-Reykjavik-dosli-u-Rijeku.aspx

:nuts:


----------



## g.spinoza

Greetings from Terracina (province of Latina)


----------



## Surel

This could be a good business model... Customer would order a trip, but wouldnt know where to. Everything he would have to do is to come to the airport. The clothes would be a risk, but I guess in these adrenalin times, this could be quite succesfull business model. .


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> Greetings from Terracina (province of Latina)


Greetings from a spa in Oroshaza, Hungary


----------



## cinxxx

Greeting from sunny Bavaria 
Oh, and I just became jobless...


----------



## nenea_hartia

cinxxx said:


> Greeting from sunny Bavaria
> Oh, and I just became jobless...


Well, as a pale consolation, sometimes jobless in Bavaria might be better than employed in Romania... 

@bogdymol: how's the weather in Orosháza? Do we get a road film when you come back?


----------



## cinxxx

nenea_hartia said:


> Well, as a pale consolation, sometimes jobless in Bavaria might be better than employed in Romania...


Hopefully not for long.
Anyway I didn't like the place, so it may have been for the best


----------



## seem

Meanwhile in Slovakia


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> At Ljubljana airport it's free for 15 min in parking lots (used to be 30 min). I don't know about the lowest price, but €2 seems quite a lot to me (who needs parking for 3 hours anyway?). I don't get why you have to pay in the first place. You're already doing them a favour by flying from their airport (shopping centres also have parking free of charge).


airport shuttles cost from 5€ on per direction (in more famous cities that amount is multiplied). in Madrid they will charge you extra fee for using metro and taking exit at Barajas. each kg of extra baggage costs you as hell. some companies (even regular, not lcc) have started to charge each piece of bagagge. food, coffee, water, anything that you could eat or drink makes you instantly not hungry nor thirsty at the airport. if you have to park your car for a week, you could take a loan.
and after all you are complaining for 2€ parking fee, which is regular fee at most of parking lots in the Europe.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Meanwhile in the Netherlands.


N7 Sneek truck accidente by Chriszwolle, on Flickr

This joke cost me 10 minutes. One lane was closed.


----------



## Verso

I just checked, and at Ljubljana airport it's free up to 30 min.


Today I took my father to Ljubljana outskirts, he went by bus to Brussels, London and Amsterdam. It turns out 2 passengers were still missing, so the bus waited for 5 minutes. The funny thing is they arrived at the hour of departure, but instead of jumping out of their car and informing them they're finally there, they were phlegmatically unpacking their baggage behind the bus, so no one even knew they had arrived (I noticed them, but I thought they were going somewhere else). Then they phlegmatically knocked on the bus's door when it already started moving 5 minutes after the scheduled departure. Just unbelievable. 5 seconds later, and they would stay at home.


----------



## bogdymol

nenea_hartia said:


> @bogdymol: how's the weather in Orosháza?


I will let the pics to speak:



















As you can see the weather was nice.










It was extremely crowded here...












nenea_hartia said:


> Do we get a road film when you come back?


Nope, no road films this time. The route was this one. The Romanian part is all in good condition, but the Hungarian part of the road was good (first half) and very bad and full of potholes (second half). Also, the border crossing check is a joke. At the return trip I wasn't checked at the border... they just waved all the cars to cross.

PS: I might to a road film in about one week in Belgrade


----------



## Chilio

There are few lots outside the parking at Sofia Airport where you can stop to drop someone or take someone from the airport, but you cannot leave the car (I mean driver must be there). But on busy days all these lots are busy... 
Entering the parking underneath has no free minutes - you pay for every hour 3 leva which is approx €1.50. Which means compared with Zagrebs €2 for 3 hours, at Sofia Airport for 3 hours you have to pay €4.50.

Chris, at your pic there is very nice retro car on the side of the crash, what is it?


----------



## Verso

The weather here is messed up again. A few days ago it snowed, today it was 28°C. :nuts:


----------



## hofburg

heh, bogdymol has always nice holidays.


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> The weather here is messed up again. A few days ago it snowed, today it was 28°C. :nuts:


Here weather is crazy, too. Some days ago there was 27ºC in Zaragoza, now it's raining, and now (12:53 UTC+2) it's sunny with some clouds. Something is wrong...


----------



## cinxxx

Yesterday record temperature in Bavaria for April, over 30 degrees


----------



## g.spinoza

Just got back from my crazy trip. Feels like I travelled an entire continent, instead of just one nation. 2680 km in 1 week, 11 towns (Castelplanio, Scerni, Fossacesia, San Vito Chietino, Sava, Otranto, Terracina, Sperlonga, Sabaudia, Castiglione del Lago, Signa) 3 seas (Adriatic, Jonian, Thyrrenian), 2 lakes (Lago di Sabaudia and Lago Trasimeno) and a variety of climates (from rainy 14°C in Sava to sunny 34°C in Signa).

Got lots of pics but still have to download and sort them out.


----------



## seem

Nice trips guys, I made some just in Slovakia :nuts:, hopefully I will go to Prague and Budapest soon, then I am going to Croatia in about 2 months, hopefuly also Milan and London this summer as the flight ticket prices are so low. Milan from 20€ and London from 50€. :cheers:

Btw, meanwhile in Bratislava... Green street (Zelená ulica) is green  -


----------



## x-type

i will probably spend the main part of my vacation at turisticly unexposed island Lastovo  and i am planning to visit Romania if i will have enough means in budget for it.


----------



## cinxxx

x-type said:


> i will probably spend the main part of my vacation at turisticly unexposed island Lastovo * and i am planning to visit Romania if i will have enough means in budget for it*.


:cheers:


----------



## x-type

cinxxx said:


> :cheers:


yep, but i repeat - if the budget would let me to do it. i shoud spare some money for a new car.
btw, don't be dissapointed if I visit Romania - No1 locations to visit there for me are Transfăgărăşan (finally learnt how to spell it!) and Danube delta. so not really urban areas


----------



## cinxxx

x-type said:


> yep, but i repeat - if the budget would let me to do it. i shoud spare some money for a new car.
> btw, don't be dissapointed if I visit Romania - No1 locations to visit there for me are Transfăgărăşan (finally learnt how to spell it!) and Danube delta. so not really urban areas


Ah, and I hoped to advertise my hometown, Timisoara .
Anyway, those destinations are really great, but since the lack of many motorways, you will pass through lots of urban areas, and some could be worth a short stop.
And if you already plan Transfăgărăşan, you could also check out the Transalpina.

You can fin lots of pictures of all those in my Flickr account:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/collections/72157629557079667/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/collections/72157629535220815/


----------



## g.spinoza

Here's a gem for you. An (almost) 360° picture I took myself on the belvedere in San Vito Chietino (province of Chieti):

Left part of the image you can see a couple viaducts of A14 motorway, with mighty Majella mountains covered in snow in the background; in the center-left, you can see the new part of Adriatic Railway, built in 2005 to replace the old part which was too close to the seaside; in the center part, the town of Marina di San Vito with SS16 road, along the coast; also in the center, just left of those 5 buildings near the seaside, you can see a bridge of the old railway, which I think will be converted into bike path; the pier with 2 _trabocchi_, old wooden structures used to fish; on the right part of the coast, another lonely _trabocco_; if you look at the bottom part of the image, far left and far right, you can also see a section of Sangritana Railway, which leads to Lanciano and the center of Abruzzo.


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> Here's a gem for you. An (almost) 360° picture I took myself on the belvedere in San Vito Chietino (province of Chieti):
> 
> Left part of the image you can see a couple viaducts of A14 motorway, with mighty Majella mountains covered in snow in the background; in the center-left, you can see the new part of Adriatic Railway, built in 2005 to replace the old part which was too close to the seaside; in the center part, the town of Marina di San Vito with SS16 road, along the coast; also in the center, just left of those 5 buildings near the seaside, you can see a bridge of the old railway, which I think will be converted into bike path; the pier with 2 _trabocchi_, old wooden structures used to fish; on the right part of the coast, another lonely _trabocco_; if you look at the bottom part of the image, far left and far right, you can also see a section of Sangritana Railway, which leads to Lanciano and the center of Abruzzo.












Error (403)
It seems you don't belong here! You should probably sign in. Check out our Help Center and forums for help, or head back to home.


----------



## g.spinoza

dammit. Gimme a minute to fix.

EDIT: What about now?


----------



## bogdymol

Yeah, it works now. Nice! What software did you use?


----------



## MattiG

Jeroen669 said:


> What do they have to do to fail for their exams?


Forget to connect the honk to the brake pedal?


----------



## Puležan

piotr71 said:


> As far as I know, Croats spoke a language intelligible with Slovenian in the past, which differed to Serb-Croatian spoken in Croatia recently. So, maybe some Croats still use different word to name Pula.





g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Especially if he's very young, he may not know how elderly call his own town. I can speak the dialect of my hometown, but sometimes I can't understand the elderly because they say some words I've never heard, because they're obsolete even for a dialect.





piotr71 said:


> I did  before I posted. I share g.spinoza's opinion.


Of course I'm not as old to experience and remember such things, because that's something that was developing for hundreds of years, but I know the etymology of that word and I know what are the stories of my grandparents 



Verso said:


> Thanks for your answer, but where does Wikipedia get its info from then? The Croatian Wikipedia says the same (although without source):http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pula


Don't trust wikipedia, you know that everyone can write anything 

Here's the short story about different versions of the name (it's in croatian language, but you'll understand):
http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg19/scaled.php?server=19&filename=polapulapulj.png&res=landing

So, "Pulj" is old slavic croatian version, which was abandoned in use, so today only some adjectives or nouns have that _pulj-_ root (e.g. puljski-from Pula, Puljština-area around Pula, Puljani-people from Pula, although in Istria we are called _Puležani_)


----------



## seem

Meanwhile in Žilina, Slovakia. :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's why you need class H4b crash barriers on viaducts.


----------



## Verso

Puležan;91065435 said:


> Don't trust wikipedia, you know that everyone can write anything
> 
> Here's the short story about different versions of the name (it's in croatian language, but you'll understand):
> http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg19/scaled.php?server=19&filename=polapulapulj.png&res=landing
> 
> So, "Pulj" is old slavic croatian version, which was abandoned in use, so today only some adjectives or nouns have that _pulj-_ root (e.g. puljski-from Pula, Puljština-area around Pula, Puljani-people from Pula, although in Istria we are called _Puležani_)


Thanks. So the Slovenian name is more Croatian than the Croatian name.  But I have to admit that "Pula" sounds more Slovenian than "Pulj" to me (although we also have words like "mulj, žulj, dragulj, kragulj, metulj").


----------



## Chilio

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's a very common phenomenon, sometimes you'll drive and suddenly realize you can't recall what the road looked like or what the traffic situation was in the past 15 minutes. You almost drive on auto-pilot.


It has though happened to me only once in my 14 years of active driving... it was the time when my wife called me to tell me she was pregnant :cheers::banana:


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> "mulj, žulj, dragulj, kragulj, metulj").


čmrlj


----------



## Verso

Well, _čmrlj_ is missing a "u". _Pasulj_ is better.


----------



## Radish2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struma_motorway


----------



## Radish2

Damn, what happened, the article got edited.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You mean this psychobabble edition?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Struma_motorway&oldid=490774785


----------



## seem

Why these extremly shiny crash barriers aren't mentiond in that article?


----------



## Radish2

ChrisZwolle said:


> You mean this psychobabble edition?
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Struma_motorway&oldid=490774785


yes, that is what I mean


----------



## Verso

Why do you have two accounts, Radi(sh)?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

He has at least three, there's a Radish as well I think


----------



## Radish2

Chilio said:


> It has though happened to me only once in my 14 years of active driving... it was the time when my wife called me to tell me she was pregnant :cheers::banana:


"Леле майкоо, сега трябва да издържа и дете " could have been your words.


----------



## Road_UK

Jeroen669 said:


> ^^ The french tend to drive quite lazy imo. They drive slow, but also often very inattentive. You can see that for instance when an emergency vehicle is trying to drive through between two lanes. The italians are more or less the opposite of that: they're more alert, but they just do things their own way and don't care too much about the rules.
> 
> 
> 
> It's a pity, since the autostrada's are well equipped with good markings and clear warnings. The only thing that adds to the mess there is the inconsistent signage..
> 
> I actually wonder: what do the Italians learn when they are trying to get their driving licence? What do they have to do to fail for their exams?


The only thing that gets me about the French is that they leave their indicators on when on an overtaking lane. It´s not the crime of the century, but it gets annoying when they leave them on when moving back to the inside lane.


----------



## Chilio

Radish2 said:


> "Леле майкоо, сега трябва да издържа и дете " could have been your words.


Not exactly... I was quite happy... maybe because I just had traveled on the magnificent Struma motorway and was driving on the supa-dupa E79, just after Dolna Dikanya in direction to Dupnitsa... And all the shiny crash-barriers and the great news made my incredibly happy


----------



## x-type

Road_UK said:


> The only thing that gets me about the French is that they leave their indicators on when on an overtaking lane. It´s not the crime of the century, but it gets annoying when they leave them on when moving back to the inside lane.


really? lol :lol:
but i have noticed that Germans often shortly turn on the left indicator while they are overtaking in left lane more than 1 vehicle


----------



## hofburg

what I noticed is that they keep driving on the middle lane (on 2x3 motorway) even if on the right lane there are no vehicles at all.


----------



## keokiracer

It's indeed something you need to build up. I also always take pictures of the new A4. That also helps, because when you take pics you also take breaks


----------



## x-type

tired? :sly: i have over 100 kg, find myself totaly out of condition, and when i do cycling, i usually do over 50 km (often combined off road and on road)


----------



## keokiracer

^^ How fast do you cycle?


----------



## x-type

keokiracer said:


> ^^ How fast do you cycle?


cyclometer says about 20-25 km/h in average


----------



## keokiracer

I think I've found the difference 

Unless the wind is being annoying I like to keep it around 40 km/h . I like to take sprints :yes:
But when there's wind my speed totally collapses, I do have to admit that. Last time: 6 Bft: max speed: around 8 km/h...

I don't have a speedometer though, that was stolen at my school about 3 years ago. I haven't had a new one since. I estimate my speed by comparing it to other cars and cyclists.


----------



## x-type

neither i don't have it anymomre, the cables have meshed into the wheel-wires 
about the wind - i don't cycle when it's windy  i think i have Cw around 0,90 

oh yes, and i have mountain hardtail bike, so not for speeding actually. rarely i reach 40 (only on descents). my maximum is 62, but it was short road, steep as hell, and my friends kept guard for eventually oncoming vehicles.


----------



## Verso

Once I broke speed limit by bike.


----------



## seem

I usually do about 50 km but it is quite hilly around here which makes it much harder tho. I wanted to cycle to Croatia this summer but I am still not sure if there will be anybod who would go with lol, but at least I want to do well-known Passau-Vienna-Bratislava route.


----------



## x-type

seem said:


> I usually do about 50 km but it is quite hilly around here which makes it much harder tho. I wanted to cycle to Croatia this summer but I am still not sure if there will be anybod who would go with lol, but at least I want to do well-known Passau-Vienna-Bratislava route.


i have in plan going to seaside carrying my bike this summer (but i'll use train to get to the seaside, and then the show begins)


----------



## keokiracer

Verso said:


> Once I broke speed limit by bike.


I once overtook one of those 45 km/h cars in The Netherlands 








And I always break the 30 km/h speed limit in our street. 30 km/h speed limit but there's still asphalt, only a few speed bumps :nuts:


----------



## cinxxx

x-type said:


> tired? :sly: i have over 100 kg, find myself totaly out of condition, and when i do cycling, i usually do over 50 km (often combined off road and on road)


Well, I have 65kg, but I am a Computer geek, so physical condition, not my strong side 
I can do a lot of walking, the case also when I visit a place for hours.
Cycling, so and so, but long strech running terrible .


----------



## seem

x-type said:


> i have in plan going to seaside carrying my bike this summer (but i'll use train to get to the seaside, and then the show begins)


This can be great too! But I just want to actually get to the coast from Slovakia just for that great feeling.  It is about 500 km to Koper or Rijeka so it would take me about 5 days I think, well and if I was too tired in hilly Slovenija I would just probably take train from Ljubljana.


----------



## hofburg

25km is indeed a lot, congrats cinxxx


----------



## bogdymol

I did 10 km on foot yesterday in Belgrade (I've measured my distance after that on google maps).


----------



## cinxxx

hofburg said:


> 25km is indeed a lot, congrats cinxxx


Thanks :cheers:

Here a picture with my bike 
I got it as a gift so no complains :lol:


image host


----------



## keokiracer

This is my bike, nothing special. So not-special that I've only got 2 bad pics of it :lol:

(It was like -20 that day :nuts::nuts

















Maybe I'll post some better pics of my bike this week


----------



## Road_UK

One bike in the snow and one bike in the green green grass of Holland. That´s a very special bike indeed....


----------



## Chilio

cycling? who needs all those physical efforts and sweating...









j/k! I also have a bike and like doing some 15-20 km a day or more sometimes. But I usually don't have the time, so I use more often the scooter


----------



## keber

bogdymol said:


> I did 10 km on foot yesterday in Belgrade (I've measured my distance after that on google maps).


I did once 16 km (with longer pauses though) in Hanoi - with a broken ankle!

Now I often do (around twice a month) 10-20 km long trek in the mountains with 1000-1700 m of height difference (sometimes even more) - even after work.

Also at skiing my official (www.skiline.cc) one-day record is over 11000 height meters in 75 km distance. I hope that ski resorts in France will introduce that kind of statistics too.

Sporting is fun!:cheers:


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> Once I broke speed limit by bike.


Me too, I did 30 km/h on a 20 km/h street :lol:. My personal record is 63.3 km/h (almost 40 mph), but that was going down this grade. And this road is blocked by E07 motorway and I have to go up or down to get through it, so I can say I have clinched some kilometers of E07/A-23 by bike! :lol:.


----------



## cinxxx

*Toronto Broken Red light -Traffic handled by young man* 
Artur 21 years old
Friday April 27 during rush hour - around 4:00 pm
Dufferin and Steels


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> Also, I heard about people booking a flight to Konstanz, Germany and arriving in Constanta, Romania instead...


It was one of my former co-workers. :bash::bash:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Did he enjoy the Romanian seaside? :lol:


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> ^^ Did he enjoy the Romanian seaside? :lol:


My father did a road trip to Romania in the late 70s and he went also to the seaside (Constanta and Mamaia). He said that, although people living there were very poor and travelled mostly by donkey karts, seaside resorts looked very modern already back then. That's because the regime wanted to show its strenght to foreigners. In those years wasn't difficult for Westeners get a visa to Romania but was almost impossible to Rumanians going to Western Europe.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ 1000 posts :applause:

Yeah, the seaside looked quite good back then, but now the quality of the services offered there is going down, so many romanians choose to go to the seaside in other countries (Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro).

I don't know how hard was to obtain the Romanian visa back then, but I know that for the Romanians it was almost impossible to get out of the country.


----------



## Wilhem275

hofburg said:


> pasante di Mestre rocks. Greetings from Padova.


You've been at 2 km from my house :lol:


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> for the Romanians it was almost impossible to get out of the country.


Even in other Warsaw pact countries?


----------



## bogdymol

Even there. The regime didn't issue passports for ordinary citizens.


----------



## italystf

My father and his friends entered and left Romania from Yugoslavia (now Serbia). The border crossing on the Belgrade - Timisoara road took quite long and everything inside the car was inspected. But once inside the country they could wander anywhere for the whole time before their visa expired. There were paved roads connecting all towns but almost no motor vehicles. They meet many tourists from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and DDR that were allowed to travel between Eastern countries and also few tourists from Western Europe. Poverty was very widespread but the country was safe for tourists because people lived in a state of police. In those years we (Western Europeans) we knew that they had no democracy and freedom but we weren't aware of all atrocities committed by regimes because many things were kept secret until 1989.


----------



## bogdymol

While visiting Belgrade I remembered a problem that I hate while driving. When you enter a motorway/other road at a grade separated interchange you always get the _yield sign_:









sorry for the crappy pic... it's a screen shot from one of my videos

But after that sign you don't always know if you will have a merging lane...










or not...









both pics are from *ChrisZwolle*

If you have a merging lane you have to go faster, but if you don't maybe you even have to stop... but the problem is that you might expect to have a merging lane so you are not prepared for stopping. In Belgrade I had this problem in this interchange.


----------



## hofburg

oh, inconsistency on German highways is a thing we can talk about for ages.


----------



## bogdymol

It's not about German highways, but highways in general. I just used those pics as an example.

I would like to see a clear way of pre-signalizing this 2 distinct situations. I think that if you have a merging lane you don't need the yield sign, but if they really want to keep the yield sign they should at least mount a STOP sign where there is no merging lane.


----------



## bogdymol

Here is an example:










What do you have to do here? Approach at low speed because you might have to stop to give way to other traffic or you can accelerate your car because you have a merging lane and you have to keep up ~ the same speed with the comming traffic?


----------



## x-type

but the Murphy's law says that you will allways have somebody merging with 50 km/h in front of you despite the long merging lanes.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> Here is an example:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What do you have to do here? Approach at low speed because you might have to stop to give way to other traffic or you can accelerate your car because you have a merging lane and you have to keep up ~ the same speed with the comming traffic?


I agree with you, but there are already signs capable of telling the two situations apart: a yield sign for merging lanes and a stop sign for a direct connection. I've seen some, especially on shorter-than-usual ramps due to roadworks.


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

The easy and clear solution are variants of this:








(e.g. here in "action")


----------



## keber

Sadly in most countries this is considered too "unsafe".

I would like to see that to be allowed here on older motorway interchanges, but I must do that illegally although it would decrease some congestion on side road entering main one.


----------



## seem

New football pitch (opened today) right under D1 in Bratidslava :nuts: -


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I suppose it won't take long before balls are ending up on the motorway.


----------



## Wilhem275

New rules: if you send the ball in the opponents' net by overpassing the motorway, you score 3 points


----------



## RipleyLV

keokiracer said:


> How did you find that :lol:


Friend of mine sent me.


----------



## cinxxx

I leave in the morning for Timisoara from Ingolstadt.
http://g.co/maps/dmkn8

We make a stop at Gyor for the night, then continue on Friday.
http://g.co/maps/bqphn


----------



## Nordic20T

^^ Why do you bypass Vienna on the north? For fun? Last time I returned from Hungary I went there too, but took the direct way over A22. 

Gute Fahrt!


----------



## Verso

RipleyLV said:


> Whoops! http://g.co/maps/5g63c


Why do you have a jacket?


----------



## bogdymol

cinxxx said:


> I leave in the morning for Timisoara from Ingolstadt.
> http://g.co/maps/dmkn8
> 
> We make a stop at Gyor for the night, then continue on Friday.
> http://g.co/maps/bqphn


So you decided to try the new A1 Arad bypass and Arad-Timisoara motorway. Cool


----------



## RipleyLV

Verso said:


> Why do you have a jacket?


:lol: That's not me. :lol: Btw, I haven't been in that area for years, there's a prison right next to this street.


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Gyor, Hungary :cheers2:
@Nordic20T: Yes, for fun


----------



## Verso

RipleyLV said:


> :lol: That's not me. :lol:


Yeah I know. Ripley sarcasm fail.


----------



## Attus

cinxxx said:


> Greetings from Gyor, Hungary :cheers2:
> @Nordic20T: Yes, for fun


Győr is a nice town. However I don't like it 'cause its handball team won our championship by beating my favorite team...


----------



## RipleyLV

Verso said:


> Yeah I know. Ripley sarcasm fail.


Spički, Verso.


----------



## cinxxx

Attus said:


> Győr is a nice town. However I don't like it 'cause its handball team won our championship by beating my favorite team...


Hehe, it was a celebration in the city yesterday evening, and people with Győr scarfs .


----------



## bogdymol

Remember this?



bogdymol said:


> :crazy:
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NfWo44Q5ng


Romanians have found a solution! It only takes one worker (one driver) and NO paint at all 





^^ That truck was carying some concrete


----------



## Verso

^^ :lol:



RipleyLV said:


> Spički, Verso.


Just for you from Australia.


----------



## RipleyLV

Did you visit it?


----------



## Verso

No, I didn't have time, although it would've probably been really interesting. Too bad I didn't take a photo of the entrance. Btw:


RipleyLV said:


> Btw, I haven't been in that area for years, there's a prison right next to this street.


There's a prison in my previous street. :naughty:


----------



## RipleyLV

Several years ago we were stealing gas masks from this military hospital which is located right in front that prison entrance. Once we got out of the building onto street, prison guard spotted us with backpacks full of masks, one guy even had a tube hanging out of his backapck, lol. The guard was streaming fast in our way when we started to run! Eventually we lost him, and that day was my last visit in that area.


----------



## Verso

Geez, _you_ should be in prison.


----------



## RipleyLV

Still own the mask though.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ May I ask you *why* did you steal them? Just for fun?


----------



## RipleyLV

Catch adrenaline while lurking through an abandoned building possibly full with drug addicts or hobos and to show-off to others of course.


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> Bamboo?


Bamboo.


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> this could be interesting debate: what special locations do you have in your streets? i have orthodox cemetery in my


I have a Catholic one... not really in my street but I can see it from my windows. 

Lots of things in my street, it's a rather long one. One of the strangest is a Seventh-day Adventist church. There aren't a lot of those in Italy...


----------



## bogdymol

VW Sweden 

http://g.co/maps/h4pm7

Oups...


----------



## Road_UK

*C H E L S E A ! ! !*


----------



## keokiracer

Yeah, I didn't want that to happen at all...


----------



## bogdymol

I didn't want Chelsea to win. They don't play a nice and spectacular football, but they just care about the result (Italian teams are similar). In the semifinal with Barcelona they had this tactic:










Now they were almost the same. Bayern was attacking the entire game. Chelsea also had incredible luck! They got a goal in '83 minute, but managed to equal in '88 minute. They had a penatly against, but Cech managed to defend it. At the penalty shootout they missed the first one, but they eventually managed to win the game. They are incredibly lucky!

At least Abramovic is happy :lol:


----------



## Road_UK




----------



## bogdymol

Bad Luck Brian Bayern


----------



## keber

An earthquake woke me this night, with an epicenter 300 km away:








http://www.corriere.it/gallery/cron...ia_47f070d8-a23f-11e1-bfa6-752e370d244b.shtml


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ It woke me up too, I was a little closer. Sadly 4-5 deaths are reported, and several medieval towers and churches collapsed.


----------



## Chilio

On the other side of my street, just in front of my livingroom window is an abandoned many years ago speedway, which back then was outside the city... There are disputes and trials over land ownership between several instutions, companies and restitutes, so it stays like this for many years, in ruins... Here's a view from my window:








And here's the location on the map


----------



## MajKeR_

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ It woke me up too, I was a little closer. Sadly 4-5 deaths are reported, and several medieval towers and churches collapsed.


Some Pole living close to Padova called to one Polish news TV station (TVN 24) and said that fourth identified person died from fear... Terrible.


----------



## g.spinoza

MajKeR_ said:


> Some Pole living close to Padova called to one Polish news TV station (TVN 24) and said that fourth identified person died from fear... Terrible.


Two people died from fear, a German woman and an Italian one who was more than 100.


----------



## bogdymol

I've never felt an earthquake...


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> An earthquake woke me this night, with an epicenter 300 km away:
> 
> http://www.corriere.it/gallery/cronache/05-2012/Sisma/2/crolli-finale-emilia_47f070d8-a23f-11e1-bfa6-752e370d244b.shtml


Weird that the earthquake was fell stronger in Slovenia than here in southern Friuli, that is closer. Probably it depends by geological reasons (kind of soil, etc).


----------



## g.spinoza

Torre dei Modenesi, a tower built in 1213, landmark of the city of Finale Emilia, due to earthquakes, is no more. Last quake of 15.18 made even the last pieces standing collapse.


----------



## keokiracer

Is it just me or is SSC trolling me? It doesn't show new posts anymore here... And after I checked a thread, it's still in my subscribed threads folder with the sign that I haven't watched it yet


----------



## Verso

^^ It happens sometimes.



italystf said:


> Weird that the earthquake was fell stronger in Slovenia than here in southern Friuli, that is closer. Probably it depends by geological reasons (kind of soil, etc).


And look at Parma - weaker than in Ljubljana. I didn't feel it, although I was awake.


----------



## Wilhem275

I was woken up at 4:05 by the quake... everyone in the house was, except from my dogs :lol:
I live between Venice and Padua.

The shake lasted at least 10 seconds. Worst part was getting awake, but then I was not scared, I immediately knew what was going on.
The difference between this and the usual vibrations we're acquainted with (roadworks, heavy machineries) is that the vibration is much wider but with a lower frequency, a sort of slow and wide alternative movement. Like when you're sitting in a car and someone shakes it from the outside.

And the noise, that's unique. A very low tone vibration, it's weird because you hear it but it has no defined origin in space.


----------



## bogdymol

Wilhem275 said:


> I was woken up at 4:05 by the quake... everyone in the house was, except from my dogs :lol:


Aren't animals usually more aware of an earthquake than humans? AFAIK your dogs should have woke up before everyone else...


----------



## Road_UK

That is quite normal, even in England and Holland. I love my nan, she lives in Friesland, Netherlands, and visits me in Austria at least 4 times a year, and I visit her and stay for weekends whenever I´m passing...


----------



## seem

Yeah I know as I said by this example I don't think it is same in all families, of course it is not, but I have also many friends who hardly ever visit their grandparents. 

And you might be right that it is probably a catholic thing, Czechs always say that family is more important for Slovaks than for Czechs.

Btw, I was basically raised not just by my parents but also by grandparents, I used to spend with them so much time when I was little, usually after school, then everyday my parents would come to pick me up and we had lunch together.


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> @Verso watching streetview?


Yeah, I saw a funny cemetery in the woods in Latvia or Estonia, but I can't find it any more.

Btw, why doesn't Estonia indicate that it's in the EU? This is all they put.


----------



## cinxxx

Filmed by me on Sunday at a Gas station in Resita, Romania


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

^^ Enviro lawn mowers. They do this in Los Angeles. I've seen it several times. It's pretty funny.


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> You understand what I am saying!


Yeahhh, but fortunately young people here are becaming less and less conservative than their parents. Hopefully that stereothype about Italian will go away in the next decades.


----------



## hofburg

well not everyone can afford a nanny. when parents work there's a kindergarden for kids, and for some occasions out of work time grandparents watch them. that's how it works in SLO.

btw I like how names of countries are displayed in the country official language now on GM.


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> that's how it works in SLO.


And in the whole civilized world.

Plus, some parents feel more safe let theit children with their grandparents rather with a nanny.


----------



## Verso

I think most grandparents are happy they can take care of their grandchildren.


----------



## Chilio

About 5.8 by Richter scale earthquake just shook Sofia (about 20 minutes ago, about 03:00). It felt quite terrible and many people are now outside on the streets and larger open spaces...

P.S. and several lighter aftershocks, the last one just seconds ago...

P.S.2 strongest aftershock now at about 04:30 local time, about 4.7, but quite shorter...

I heard it was strongly felt all around the Balkans and abroad - reports from Bucharest say it woke people there too. Also in northern Greece, Macedonia, eastern Serbia...

P.S.3 No more sleep this night... another serious aftershock about 05:15, 3.9


----------



## Radish2

I heart about this earthquake. Bad news for Bulgaria. I alos heart there is no damage to houses and so on. Seems bulgarias houses are stable and can endure such an earthquake. But what I really really hope is that the Struma motorway has not got any damage. it would be just too bad if the motorway after so many years without damage would now have gooten cracks. I wish a report as soon as possible, chillo.


----------



## Chilio

I don't know about the motorway, but there are aparently two houses that completely colapsed in Pernik area, many others with minor damages. In Sofia one commie block's foundations in Nadezhda quarter has suffered damages and it is twisted and declared dangerous for living, many roofing elements and chimneys are damaged too. Hopefully nobody died or was seriously hurt. About 60 people went to hospital because of small traumas caused by panic evacuation on stairhouses and also of heart problems cause by the horror.


----------



## Radish2

If the motorway withstood this without damage, it is the best motorway in europe.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ :facepalm:

@Chilio: I'm glad that you are ok and that the first reports say that there aren't victims. You had quite a night  I heard from the Romanian TV that the earthquake was also felt in Bucharest. All I can say is that I didn't feel anything in Timisoara.


----------



## Radish2

And something else, you will delete the threads in the Bulgarian section, so i will ask here. Is the econimical situation in Bulgaria still so bad. Any time I call to bulgaria people say it is very bad and they barely live, there is no work and nothing? Doesn't the situation finally improv? I get such reports from Blagoevgrad area.


----------



## Chilio

Unemployment levels are highest for many many years. But I would not say the situation is so bad, it's for sure not worse than the 90ies. Maybe it is worse for business, not for the common worker.
And I would not delete threads in the Bulgarian section unless they are in the inappropriate place/subsection (in which case I move them, not delete them), doubling other threads or complete offtopic. But that's what you usually do


----------



## Radish2

Why is it so bad, what are the reasons? I thought Gerb is a good government, they are doing a lot in the Infrastructure section, but why are the other areas suffering so much?


----------



## Radish2

so where can I open a thread about the current situation in Buglaria?


----------



## g.spinoza

Chilio said:


> About 5.8 by Richter scale earthquake just shook Sofia (about 20 minutes ago, about 03:00). It felt quite terrible and many people are now outside on the streets and larger open spaces...


That's too bad, first Italy than Bulgaria.
A popular Italian radio host already blamed Mayans and the end of the world...


----------



## Radish2

The Struma motorway wont have damage.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm pretty sure the whole Struma Motorway has been swallowed by the earthquake.


----------



## Radish2

^^ 

I am sure the Ljulin motorway has got many cracks and the Struma motorway has got no crack at all, while all other roads in Pernik area are broken and bridges have come down.


----------



## bogdymol

Radish2 said:


> so where can I open a thread about the current situation in Buglaria?


You can try on the DLM.



ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm pretty sure the whole Struma Motorway has been swallowed by the earthquake.


I've also heard that in the news. Shocking!


----------



## Radish2

I am sure it has no big damage.


----------



## bogdymol

@Chilio: I've talked with my dad (who is in Bucharest now) and he said that he didn't feel anything last night (he was sleeping at the earthquake time). A Romanian blogger also said that he didn't feel anything, although he was awake at that time, but some people on facebook said that they felt it in Bucharest... :dunno:


----------



## Chilio

one of the three water cooling tower of Pernik's Coal Power Plant has colapsed:


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> @Chilio: I've talked with my dad (who is in Bucharest now) and he said that he didn't feel anything last night (he was sleeping at the earthquake time). A Romanian blogger also said that he didn't feel anything, although he was awake at that time, but some people on facebook said that they felt it in Bucharest... :dunno:


It depends on many factors: soil, height of building where you are, wooden or concrete floors...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

@ Chilio: this one?
http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/ТЕЦ_Република


----------



## Chilio

^^ the same one


----------



## Surel

Road_UK said:


> What is so nice about it? It´s nice to see each other once in a while, but to be in somebody´s throat all the time. Parents are there to raise you, until you are old enough to stand on your own two feet. And then you start your own family, and you will see each other at birthday´s and Christmas etc etc. Because remember: they will always be your parents, and they will tell you to brush your teeth even when you´re old.
> 
> It´s very Italian and Eastern-European to never let go, this is true. I believe it´s a catholic thing.


It's not really catholic thing. Sure, on the side of parents it is about letting go. But it doesnt really work like that for the children.

Its more a cultural thing. It has to do more with lifestyle, character of people, socio economic decissions etc. Its contrast between different levels of individualism in those societies and different values. And it is also quite a contrast between sort of traditional society and postmodern society.

Its not really black and white. There are advantages as well as disadvantages of having closer family relations.

Above that. At certain point most of the elderly need care of other people. Not everyone is dying happy in the middle of his active 85. Most people decay slowly. The alternative is euthanasie. The institutionalized care is nowhere really something you would long for.


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> It depends on many factors: soil, height of building where you are, wooden or concrete floors...


Yep, I was thinking at the same thing.


----------



## keber

Chilio said:


> one of the three water cooling tower of Pernik's Coal Power Plant has colapsed:


That should not happen at such not-so-powerful quake, even if cooling towers are 50 years old.


----------



## Radish2

Chilio said:


> ^^ the same one


haha, syshtiat.

have you managed entering one of the motorways to see their condition?


----------



## MajKeR_

House abandoned because of building the A1 motorway in Poland (Bytom):





















Source


----------



## keber

And yet they are building very high antinoise barrier ...


----------



## Chilio

Is this the house of an owner of a Greek restaurant? In Greek restaurants they usually break emty dishes on the floor and tables while dancing and playing traditional Greek music and dances... So owners of Greek restaurants will have plenty of such pieces of dishes, whit which to decorate the house


----------



## bogdymol

Happy Birthday to *cinxxx* :cheers:


----------



## cinxxx

bogdymol said:


> Happy Birthday to *cinxxx* :cheers:


Thanks very much bogdy! :cheers2:


----------



## Radish2

Chilio said:


> Is this the house of an owner of a Greek restaurant? In Greek restaurants they usually break emty dishes on the floor and tables while dancing and playing traditional Greek music and dances... So owners of Greek restaurants will have plenty of such pieces of dishes, whit which to decorate the house


so do the motorways have any damage or not?


----------



## italystf

*Capaci (Sicily, Italy), 20 years ago.*hno:
The judge Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards were murdered with 500kg of plastic explosive placed under a tunnel digged on purpose under the A29 motorway near the junction of Capaci between Palermo city and its airport.
He was very active in the struggle against Sicilian mafia. His colleague Paolo Borsellino was also murdered together five bodiguards with a car bomb two month later.
In 1993 the infamous boss Salvatore Riina, that was the mind of those bomb attacks, was finally arrested after a car chase in Palermo centre. Other mafiosi reacted against the state with deadly bomb attacks in Milan, Rome and Florence killing random people.hno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

While people are sunbathing in much of the Netherlands, people in western Zeeland province have to fire up their heating...


----------



## Radish2

Big temperature differences Chris, for such a small distance. 

Hey guys, does anyone know when there will be proper electric cars or water cars? It is important that they finally develop cars that entirely function with alternative energy and it is a shame it is still not here. Car companies promised such cars to be here after 2000 and still there are no such cars. The biggest dissapointment is, that actually the Asian car manufractures are doing something on it, but not the big european companies, especially the German companies. I read that Toyota will release a battery that can go 800 km with one charge. Does anyone have good news on this subject?


----------



## g.spinoza

^^What do you mean by "proper electric cars"?

(And forget about water cars, they're a thermodynamic nonsense)


----------



## Radish2

I mean hydrogen cars. And with electric cars I mean cars that can drive long and require a short time to chrage. I am affraid there must be a solution within the next ten years, otherwise the oil will decrease to a crtical level.


----------



## Radish2

Ok, I see noone shows real interest here, it is really a shame you don#t show interest. So I guess Chris, you rich duch like to pollute the environment and would not drive a hybrid or electric car. you wnat a real car, a car you can speed real fast and hear the sound of a big engine, that eats 50 liters per 100 km. At least you look like that.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ F*** off!

Something funny for a change:





And trust me, I live in a largely Russian neighbourhood, I know


----------



## g.spinoza

Come on, radish, you cannot expect a reply in one hour, or infer lack of interest or worse, accusing an entire people. Chill out, man.


----------



## Suburbanist

Water requires an immense amount of energy to be heated and converted into kinetic energy. It can't generate excess energy by being boiled or something. I just don't see the point of a "water car".


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Hydrogen cars are a joke. All in all (considering the amount of energy needed to produce hydrogen) they use more energy than LNG cars or even battery-powered electric cars.


----------



## Radish2

But do you agree there must be alternative energy? You should, what is your option for that? Electric cars, if they manage to make batteries that charge fast it would be fine.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ the topic is very complex and it cannot be dismissed just by saying "we need electric cars". For instance, batteries in electric cars use huge amounts of lithium and other elements called "rare earths", which are very expensive and, as the name suggest, rare and not renewable. So basically cars can use renewable energies but through non-renewable elements.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ Of course alternative energy sources should be used for automobiles but at the moment I can't really see anything that would provide the same kind of mobility as current fossile fuel powered vehicles do. Mind you, Estonia now has around 500 electric car in use by different municipalities and social establishements - the range drops down to around 60km in winter which is clearly not enough.

About lithium, it's not really the biggest issue. We're good with lithium for another 100 years or so, as far as I know.


----------



## keokiracer

cinxxx said:


> Thanks very much bogdy! :cheers2:


didn't know it was your birthday. Congrats! :cheers::banana:


----------



## Radish2

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ Of course alternative energy sources should be used for automobiles but at the moment I can't really see anything that would provide the same kind of mobility as current fossile fuel powered vehicles do. Mind you, Estonia now has around 500 electric car in use by different municipalities and social establishements - the range drops down to around 60km in winter which is clearly not enough.
> 
> About lithium, it's not really the biggest issue. We're good with lithium for another 100 years or so, as far as I know.


I heart today electric cars have a capacity of 150 km, at least japanese electric cars such as toyota or mitsubishi.


----------



## bogdymol

Radish2 said:


> I heart today electric cars have a capacity of 150 km, at least japanese electric cars such as toyota or mitsubishi.


Imagine driving from Struma motorway to Germany with a car like that. You would have to stop every 150 km for an 8-hour battery refill. :nuts:

Electric cars *are* the future! Just that the future isn't here *yet*...


----------



## Radish2

True, they are not developed properly yet. But hybrids are very good and more people should buy hybrids. so when the battery is full you would use the energy and when it is empty you would use normal fuel. Does it charge when driving?


----------



## bogdymol

Radish2 said:


> True, they are not developed properly yet. But hybrids are very good and more people should buy hybrids. so when the battery is full you would use the energy and when it is empty you would use normal fuel. Does it charge when driving?


Why would I buy a 25k € hybrid Prius when I can get the same mpg (L/100 km) with my diesel 10k € Clio?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Radish2 said:


> I heart today electric cars have a capacity of 150 km, at least japanese electric cars such as toyota or mitsubishi.


Yes, they have a range of 150km in ideal conditions but in winter it drops down to 60km.... All the municipal electric cars in Estonia are Mitsubishi MiEV's or its equivalents.


----------



## Radish2

because it saves ressources and keeps the environment more clean. When you don#t have the money you should not buy it, but when you do you should or otherwise use public transport. That is my opnion. Public transport functions on fuel aswell, when you look at buses, but you would leave your car at home and save ressources and protect the environment. I think protecting the environment is underrated and it is very important.


----------



## cinxxx

keokiracer said:


> didn't know it was your birthday. Congrats! :cheers::banana:


Thanks :cheers:


----------



## keokiracer

hofburg said:


> you don't see a bycicle in Paris when it rains






Near Utrecht Central Station.

More videos


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Germans go by bicycle even with snow falling and -7°C.


----------



## keokiracer

^^ http://www.youtube.com/user/markenlei/videos?query=snow


----------



## g.spinoza

Utter madness


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> It is useless (and a bit hypocritical) to buy an electric car to prevent pollution, while 80% of that electricity is still produced by fossil fuels. It is just moving the problem from one spot to another.


As far as I know, the efficiency of electrical engines is far higher than internal combustion ones. Something like 92% vs. 34%.

Moreover, there is an interesting possibility: fitting a car not with one, but with 4 engines, one on each wheel, eliminating the complex (and ultra heavy) system of clutch, gearbox, transmission, differential axis...


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> As far as I know, the efficiency of electrical engines is far higher than internal combustion ones. Something like 92% vs. 34%.
> 
> Moreover, there is an interesting possibility: fitting a car not with one, but with 4 engines, one on each wheel, eliminating the complex (and ultra heavy) system of clutch, gearbox, transmission, differential axis...


That may be true, but I was talking about the generation of electricity in plants, which is still largely produced by fossil fuels. Even the so called "clean energy" isn't clean at all: hydroelectric power is generated by destroying entire valleys and ecosystems; solar energy depends on excavating rare earths and materials to be used in panels, ecc ecc.
Moreover, all these plants have a rather low efficiency in converting potential or thermal energy into electricity.


----------



## Suburbanist

I don't have the exact numbers, but I'm pretty much sure a large powerplant has inevitable scale efficiency compared to generating power from a local 1300mm3 engine...


----------



## radi6404

g.spinoza said:


> That may be true, but I was talking about the generation of electricity in plants, which is still largely produced by fossil fuels. Even the so called "clean energy" isn't clean at all: hydroelectric power is generated by destroying entire valleys and ecosystems; solar energy depends on excavating rare earths and materials to be used in panels, ecc ecc.
> Moreover, all these plants have a rather low efficiency in converting potential or thermal energy into electricity.


so that means that the technology should not be continued to be developed and fuel should be used until it finishes? sorry, but such comments deserve an insult.


----------



## g.spinoza

radi6404 said:


> so that means that the technology should not be continued to be developed and fuel should be used until it finishes? sorry, but such comments deserve an insult.


I never said that, so please chill out and go insult someone else.
I just said that all that glitters ain't gold.


----------



## radi6404

But they are something to go on. And they must be followed. i think you don't have really a lot of knowledge, otherwise you would not talk such stuff. One wind fan can produce energy for several houses. A few wind fans can produce energy for a whole village, so it is not to underestimate, even photovoltaic energy produces some energy, which is not to be underestimated.


----------



## g.spinoza

radi6404 said:


> But they are something to go on. And they must be followed. i think you don't have really a lot of knowledge, otherwise you would not talk such stuff. One wind fan can produce energy for several houses. A few wind fans can produce energy for a whole village, so it is not to underestimate, even photovoltaic energy produces some energy, which is not to be underestimated.


You don't know me and you don't know how much knowledge I have. On the contrary, you just keep saying sentences like "photovoltaic energy produces some energy" which means nothing and completely ignores the issues with photovoltaic that I (and others) stressed.

As someone said, clean energy is the future, but sadly, we're still in the present. Research on this subject is badly needed, and I'm completely in favour of it, but we still have much road in front of us.


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> That is so standard  You can see that everywhere in the Netherlands.


yeah, I even had drunken unknown people that I passed on the street jumping on my bike... . 

But to be honest, it wasnt so easy to perform when I needed it.



g.spinoza said:


> As someone said, clean energy is the future, but sadly, we're still in the present. Research on this subject is badly needed, and I'm completely in favour of it, but we still have much road in front of us.


There is nothing like a clean energy...

Ultimately, we just try to transform energy from one form into another, we transform it into the usable form for our purposes. Using it, we transform it into unusable form for our purposes. Since we want to use energy in a way when we decrease entropy of some system, inevitably entropy of another system increases. Theoretically we could find a ballance in that. If half of our needs were fullfiled by incrasing entropy and the other half by decreasing entropy. If there is no balance we will allways need some sort of "landfill".

The problem arises, because transforming energy into usable form costs energy... thus the balance can hardly be achieved.

And this is also interesting reading...

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/


----------



## italystf

keokiracer said:


> ^^ http://www.youtube.com/user/markenlei/videos?query=snow


In Italy nobody would ever think of using the bicycle during a rainfall or snowfall. Even when there is no rain or snow but it's too cold (less than 10°C for Mediterranean standards:lol many people avoid cycling. It feel strange that in other countries cycling in those extreme conditions seems the most normal thing in the earth.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Reminds me of this (A30 Bad Oeynhausen, Germany)


Are they going to build a tunnel?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No, they had problems with expropriation there.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> In Italy nobody would ever think of using the bicycle during a rainfall or snowfall. Even when there is no rain or snow but it's too cold (less than 10°C for Mediterranean standards:lol many people avoid cycling. It feel strange that in other countries cycling in those extreme conditions seems the most normal thing in the earth.


neither here. and two persons on 1 bike - sometimes here i find it rare to see 2 persons in one car :lol:
(i confess, i hate sharing a car while going to work in the morning - i hate the whole world early in the morning and those 10 minutes while commuting are mine and god's; i used to share my car with my neighbour who really kindly asked me for that, and i hated it :evil: )


----------



## Surel

^^ How is it going in Bad Oeynhausen anyway? Will it be finished by this summer or the next one?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Don't count on it. Some sections are nearly finished, others must still commence. I'd say it will be completed in 2016.


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

g.spinoza said:


> Dutch side bike saddle hop:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> :lol::lol:



You know what. All this bicycle riding has caused another problem. Bicycle pollution. All those bikes strewn all around is making the city look tacky. There is just no good solution is there.


----------



## keokiracer

How do many bikes make a city look tacky??


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

keokiracer said:


> How do many bikes make a city look tacky??


Good question. Even better than why did the chicken cross the road?


----------



## keokiracer

^^ What does that have to do with my question?


----------



## Ron2K

arriaca said:


> The spanish forumers need help to identify the country (or the pace) where this photo was taken.
> 
> Thanks !!


Road markings, vegetation, diamond road sign and left-side drive suggests either New South Wales/Victoria in Australia, or New Zealand... and I have a sneaky suspicion that it's the latter.

Just don't ask me exactly where.


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> neither here. and two persons on 1 bike - sometimes here i find it rare to see 2 persons in one car :lol:
> (i confess, i hate sharing a car while going to work in the morning - i hate the whole world early in the morning and those 10 minutes while commuting are mine and god's; i used to share my car with my neighbour who really kindly asked me for that, and i hated it :evil: )


In Italy is illegal carrying a passenger (except small children on the appropriate seat, off course) on a bycicle and I know two people that were admonished by a cop for that. However it's rarely enforced and you sometimes see people doing that (99% of them are between 12 and 16 years old :lol.









It's photoshopped. I don't think they would paint markings and instal signs, reflective poles and crashbarriers before digging.


----------



## g.spinoza

Well, just by increasing the entropy of the the "system Earth" it doesn't mean that the energy is "dirty". Energy is "dirty" when the subproducts of its generation are greenhouse-gases or something harmful to life. 
An hypotetical source of energy whose subproducts was only, say, N2, would increase entropy of the universe but was uneffective to life and energetic balance of planet Earth, since N2 is not a greenhouse gas.



Surel said:


> yeah, I even had drunken unknown people that I passed on the street jumping on my bike... .
> 
> But to be honest, it wasnt so easy to perform when I needed it.
> 
> 
> 
> There is nothing like a clean energy...
> 
> Ultimately, we just try to transform energy from one form into another, we transform it into the usable form for our purposes. Using it, we transform it into unusable form for our purposes. Since we want to use energy in a way when we decrease entropy of some system, inevitably entropy of another system increases. Theoretically we could find a ballance in that. If half of our needs were fullfiled by incrasing entropy and the other half by decreasing entropy. If there is no balance we will allways need some sort of "landfill".
> 
> The problem arises, because transforming energy into usable form costs energy... thus the balance can hardly be achieved.
> 
> And this is also interesting reading...
> 
> http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> Well, just by increasing the entropy of the the "system Earth" it doesn't mean that the energy is "dirty". Energy is "dirty" when the subproducts of its generation are greenhouse-gases or something harmful to life.
> An hypotetical source of energy whose subproducts was only, say, N2, would increase entropy of the universe but was uneffective to life and energetic balance of planet Earth, since N2 is not a greenhouse gas.


The first organisms on the planet as a byproduct of their living populated the atmosphere with oxygen... as a result they were extinct.

I dont really know if increasing the amount of Nitrogen in the atmosphere by say 10 % would have no effect on the earth system as it works like now. I dont think so, the thing is too complex. I infer that the universe, as well as Earth, is a dynamic system. There is no static balance. The whole purpose of life is to change the system in ways that would not be possible without life, life is able to change entropy more effectively. In fact, life is organizing itself as a decreased entropy. Well, but inevitably, the entropy has to increase somewhere else then. The problem comes (at least for us) when the system changes too rapidly and life is not able to respond to it.

It would be like putting a refridgerator running on a battery into an isolated room. For some time it would work perfectly fine. The battery would make the refridgerator running, it would create cold inside and slowly making the room warm up. At certain point the heat in the room would be so high that the battery would boil from the heat. Then after some time the system would come back to the first stage. Well lets say that life is bit different and it can craete some technology better than the battery, even so, after some time it will face the same problem.

Unless the life will come with some ingenious solution that would baffle the laws of thermodynamics it will anyway allways face the last result of this energy game, and that very high entropy outside of itself (which could be for example very high heat, or radiation etc, quite dangerous to the human life).

The problem with life on the other side is, that it needs action in order to exists as a life. Life without action is not a life, its dead. But in order to create action, it has to create entropy, because for action it needs to transform energy from one state into another.



I agree that certainly we should seek such energy sources that seem to be the least harmfull given some criteria. The pollution is in my eyes inevitable, but it can be managable and the life can adapt in the process. There are lots of toxic compounds in our bodies and in our enviroment, if their amount is kept small the body is able to take care of them. Eventually, we might be able to adapt to them, and in far future we might change them into resources instead of toxic compounds.

But the problem persists. Needing more and more energy will cause us to create more and more entropy somewhere. We can create a oasis from the whole planet, making landfill of the universe... but that is just the same problem we face now, we were just not aware of it in the past (that polluting river does matter even if our village is not polluted).

What is the solution? I dont really know. But I guess there are more complex things than the thermodynamic laws that we have to find out... thats the purpose of life of course .


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

keokiracer said:


> ^^ What does that have to do with my question?


Because your question has no specific answer, other than... a lot. I was being sarcastic by the way. No matter what anyone does in this world there will always be someone finding fault with it. That's all.


----------



## g.spinoza

:O :O


----------



## Ron2K

^^ Reminds me of this racing clip:


----------



## bogdymol

What a goal :lol:


----------



## keber

italystf said:


> It's photoshopped. I don't think they would paint markings and instal signs, reflective poles and crashbarriers before digging.


Well, road looks abandoned, water ducts clogged (bad mainteance), tracks on the pavement lead only to the field in front on the left. Probably the road was meant to be build in full, but apparently some land expropriation problems halted construction. Often in such case it is requested from contractor to build road to complete finish.

We had such problem in Slovenia about 12 years ago, where a farmer wouldn't sell his house, which was in the middle of planned motorway right after A1-H3 interchange so they build completely everything until farmers parcel boundary. Motorway was even partially opened, because it remained enough space for traffic running southbound on one lane using future hardshoulder (no pictures, sadly)


----------



## Verso

Does anyone else experience some weird coincidences as often as me? For example: I was just looking at the Wikipedia article about the Croatian city of Karlovac (in Croatian). Then all of a sudden I remember Michael Jackson's Earth Song (I haven't heard it for years). A minute later I read this:


> U Karlovcu je sniman dio spota za pjesmu Earth Song američkog pjevača Michaela Jacksona 1995. godine.
> (translation: A part of the video for the Earth Song of the American singer Michael Jackson was shot in Karlovac in 1995.)


http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlovac#Povijest

It happens to me all the time. :nuts:


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

^^ Yup, it's called a synchronicity and it happens to me all the time too and sometimes it is extremely creepy. In fact it just happened a few minutes ago with something I just saw on TV coinciding with something that I did at work earlier today.


----------



## bogdymol

Budapest *Bucharest, Romania*, yesterday:


----------



## Attus

What was the reason for that flood? Some broken pipe?


----------



## bogdymol

Heavy rain


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Does anyone else experience some weird coincidences as often as me? For example: I was just looking at the Wikipedia article about the Croatian city of Karlovac (in Croatian). Then all of a sudden I remember Michael Jackson's Earth Song (I haven't heard it for years). A minute later I read this:http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlovac#Povijest
> 
> It happens to me all the time. :nuts:


it has just happened. namely, yesterday i was thinking about starting similar discussion on this thread 

i have another weird thing: number 939 follows me in my life. there is huge possibility that when i randomly look at the watch the time is 9:39 o'clock. or that randomly passed car has 939 on licence plates exactly when i decide to see which number that car has. or the price of some interesting thing in store is 9,39 or 93,90 or 939,00... sometimes it is interesting, and sometimes it freaks me out.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ This also happened to me some time ago with 911. Everywhere I was seeing 911, but it stopped recently.

PS: I liked the 911 joke of The Dictator trailer (@2:08) :lol:


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> Does anyone else experience some weird coincidences as often as me? For example: I was just looking at the Wikipedia article about the Croatian city of Karlovac (in Croatian). Then all of a sudden I remember Michael Jackson's Earth Song (I haven't heard it for years). A minute later I read this:http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlovac#Povijest
> 
> It happens to me all the time. :nuts:


Me too! Recently I discovered a book shop in my hometown that shares its name with a furniture shop of Zaragoza!


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> it has just happened. namely, yesterday i was thinking about starting similar discussion on this thread


:lol: That coincidence yesterday quite freaked me out. Firstly, I haven't heard or thought of the Earth Song for years, and secondly, I had no idea a part of the video was shot in Karlovac.


----------



## cinxxx

^^
Has any of you seen the TV Show "Touch"?
It's exactly about such things


----------



## Satyricon84

Verso said:


> Would you believe me that it woke me up? And I sleep in the first floor. I didn't feel any shaking, but glass of my wardrobe started shaking and producing sound. They even evacuated a faculty here in Ljubljana. RIP to new victims.


I live more or less 100 km from where it happened...at 9am i was sleeping and I felt nothing (I sleep at first floor too)... the second shake at 1pm I was at the pc and still nothing, but my mother was in the next room and she said she felt... plus she was speaking at the phone with my grandmother that lives in Reggio Emilia at 5th floor and she felt it in live by phone. It's weird cause at my wall i have all license plates that vibrate and do noise even when children neighbours jump in their room...I didnt have notice of anything


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> Yeah, faculty of philosophy which is not some old building. Cowards.


Agree. :lol:


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

x-type said:


> i think that there is myth in each country about destructive earthquake that will come. of course, here that myth exists in Zagreb and the scenario is like from that 80es tv series about earthquake in Los Angeles.
> 
> btw, how did A.L. score on that roof?


It's no myth. It happened in Bucharest in 1977 and even worse in 1940. Thousands of people died and tens of thousands of buildings were damaged or destroyed. With about a forty year interval the next one is imminent.


----------



## Road_UK

I could feel it here in Mayrhofen, and it was really strange. I was still in bed, and outside there is some construction going on, but I could feel the place moving, and there was some rattling going on in the hallway. Never experienced an earthquake before.


----------



## bogdymol

Dutch Police :naughty:



Cicerón said:


>


----------



## Chilio

Aftershocks are continuing in Bulgaria too, actually some 500+ of them since the earthquake more than a week ago... Hopefully not with such magnitude, that they cause more destruction and casualties. But still every day at least one is felt by the people in Pernik and Sofia... Yesterday there was a 3.8 one, this morning people woke with a 3.3. It's not really dangerous but keeps the psychological pressure and terror in people, especially ones whose houses were damaged last week. Again this night some of them slept in their cars because of fear, especially after the bad news from Italy... Rumours say that if there aftershocks is with more casualties than the first earthquake, than it can be the same over here...

Nice policewoman, Bogdy... But actually, she doesn't look much like under cover, even not wearing uniform


----------



## Satyricon84

bogdymol said:


> Dutch Police :naughty:
> 
> 
> Cicerón said:
Click to expand...

:master: :master: :master: :master: :master:


----------



## Satyricon84

:cripes:


----------



## keber

^^ Looks like some Lidl / Hofer / Aldi opening ...


----------



## Penn's Woods

So, did someone erase all the license-plate threads? I can't find any scrolling back a few months, and the search function can't find any either.

I had a major sighting recently....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

They are moved to the parent sub forum Infrastructure & Mobility because license plates have little to do with infrastructure.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I'm not sure that follows... 

In so far as the highways forum has expanded to cover other sort of road-travel-related topics, I don't see the problem. But that's not my decision. (And I'd checked out for a few months, so if there was an argument or something leading up to the move, I'm unaware of it and certainly not reviving it.)


----------



## Verso

How did that chick manage to hit so many cars? :nuts:


----------



## Satyricon84

Verso said:


> How did that chick manage to hit so many cars? :nuts:


She's blonde


----------



## Surel

Someone talked about this technology here not so long ago. It looks interesting.











I guess any modern motorway should be build with having in mind that it should be usable without much rebuilding with similar technologies (lets see which one wins) even after 30 years. Anyway its clear that electricity is the future in transportation.

Its just pretty ironic, that the Germans had stopped all their nuclear power plants plans.


----------



## keber

Interesting, but very unpractical and probably very expensive too.


----------



## Surel

keber said:


> Interesting, but very unpractical and probably very expensive too.


I dont know if it is so unpractical. Trolleybusses work fine in 13 Czech cities.

The winter and in general weather condition would pose a serious problems to a motorway network though.

It may be expensive, but railway is even more expensive. And with the oil being scarcer and scarcer there is not much of alternatives left. In fact, this seems to me like quite efficient way how to adjust current infrustructure into the electric powerd one.


----------



## Wilhem275

Trolleybuses are efficient because they always follow the same routes and have a high frequency schedule.
What is more, the electric engines give them a better acceleration than diesel powered buses.

The general efficiency of eletric long-distance power lines is not so high, due to dispersions... even some railways would not be electrified today due to this.
I don't see any advantage in loading more weight on trucks (electrical equipment), making the infrastructure way more complicated, and ignoring the advantage of diesel engines at constant speed.

If straight freight traffic is so dense... you need a railway, not a motorway.


----------



## Surel

^^ Well I can see its advantage on the main freight routes.

Railways are great, but there is lots of time and resources lost becuase of the modal change. With a trolleytruck you just click off the pantograph and go on to the final destination.

Railways are ok for bulk cargo or very long distance haulage.


----------



## Attus

A very long wire of a low voltage (0,5-3kV, DC) is very(!) uneconomical. Having a high voltage (10-50kV, AC) power wire right above the motorway would not really be comfortable and could cause accidents.


----------



## Surel

Attus said:


> A very long wire of a low voltage (0,5-3kV, DC) is very(!) uneconomical. Having a high voltage (10-50kV, AC) power wire right above the motorway would not really be comfortable and could cause accidents.


I agree that DC would be problematic. Personally I dont see that much difference as on the safety side between AC/DC and the voltage. Both are around the same dangerous I would say, once something happens. But what accidents? I guess guys at Siemens thought about the economical side of things quite a long time before they started to work on it.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Wilhem275 said:


> I don't see any advantage in loading more weight on trucks (electrical equipment), making the infrastructure way more complicated, and ignoring the advantage of diesel engines at constant speed.


I wonder if the weight gain would actually be that big since you would get rid of the gearbox which isn't exactly small on a big truck.


----------



## keber

Surel said:


> I dont know if it is so unpractical. Trolleybusses work fine in 13 Czech cities.


This is not comparable. You compare few trolleybuses with massive amounts of heavy freight trucks.
As I'm working in railway designing, I'm pretty much aware of many problems that are possible here. I don't know details of this Siemens technology shown in above video but if you had a busy motorway (it is obvious that this technology is not to be used on rural empty streets) with just 5 trucks going every minute and using average 200 kW of power it is comparable to total 5 MW of power every 8 km - this is one heavy freight train going uphill every 5 minutes. You would need quite dense network of electric substations with all the adjoining infrastructure (additional 110 kV network).

As there are two pantographs visible on experimental trucks and there is quite massive catenary beside road already now, I assume that there would be massive demands on energy. This means massive investments into energy structure, at least so expensive per km as for railways and probably more.


----------



## Surel

^^

No one says that it wont require massive investments. Changing our society from fossile dependent will be extermely costly. Same goes for changing the transportation from fossile fuel powered into electricity powered one.

This technology seems really good solution, because it is applicable to the current infrastructure as it stands, without that many changes. It is thus keeping most of the value of the current infrastructure.

I can imagine further possibilities that this technology would provide. It allows for smooth transition. So far, I did not see better technology that would allow not fossile powered road haulage possible.

I am not a proponent that would shout this is it!! I would like to see some deep analysis of this project. Well, the Siemens already thinks about constructing some pilot in California.



> Pilot ehighway projects are in the planning stages from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach traveling inland along I-710.
> ...
> The only downside is cost - Siemens estimates the system will cost $5 million to $7 million per mile to build.


That is $ 3.3 mil to $ 4.37 mil per km. That is € 2.6 mil to € 3.5 mil per km.
Lets say € 4 mil euro per km. This seems to me quite reasonable price. The only concern I would have is very long distance coverage, but I guess its doable.

We cannot of course forget the cost on the side of the car manufacturers. In order to get profitable, massive fleet of trucks would be needed. In order to get massive fleet of trucks, you need huge network...

Just for the fun. Converting the whole German network would be € 52 billion. Seems to me like a bargain compared to what we pour into banks funds etc.. which in return are quite reluctant to fund any real investments.


----------



## keber

Surel said:


> ^^
> This technology seems really good solution, because it is applicable to the current infrastructure as it stands, without that many changes. It is thus keeping most of the value of the current infrastructure.


Wrong. Most overpasses have too low clearance for adding catenary and the same is true for most of the tunnels, if not all. Rebuilding them would demand enormous cost. And changing lanes is probably impossible to be as simple as now.

And while are we at the banks - banks pour billions of fictious money for saving our economies, this construction demands billions of real money.

it is interesting project, but its complexity is similar to converting conventional railway into maglev one (albeit cost is probably lower per km).


----------



## Surel

The thing is, that the technology allows the wires to end before the overpass. Changing of the lanes is also possible. You just switch off from the wires and later switch on.

Banks don't pour anything... but thats for longer discussion on another forum .


----------



## keber

Surel said:


> The thing is, that the technology allows the wires to end before the overpass.


True, although not the best solution. At railways this is normally not used because it can cause many maintenance and operational problems. What about something much more expensive, like tunnels?



> Changing of the lanes is also possible. You just switch off from the wires and later switch on.


True. But practical? No, because you loose speed in the middle of lane changing and then you have no energy.

And what about cars, which form majority of traffic - and pollution too? You probably agree, that it is not practical to have two (!) 4 m high pantographs on the roof.


----------



## Satyricon84

Meanwhile in Miller County (AR)...


----------



## Chilio

As today in many countries is celebrated the international day of the children, I remembered a song and a video thematically connected to this day and this subforum. When I was young I very much liked it, because I loved to travel and watch from the car/bus/train like that... Now I see it from a different perspective, as my daughter starts to watch through the car windows like that when we travel


----------



## Radish2

There must be another soluten than this. This wont ever happen, since it even is dangerous when the track needs to change lane or have a hard brake. So there must be some different solution than this ofcourse.


----------



## seem

2,9 earthquake in Slovakia.. end is near. :fiddle:


----------



## bogdymol

Did you feel it?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

2.9? That's like a heavy truck passing by.


----------



## x-type

Chilio said:


> As today in many countries is celebrated the international day of the children, I remembered a song and a video thematically connected to this day and this subforum. When I was young I very much liked it, because I loved to travel and watch from the car/bus/train like that... Now I see it from a different perspective, as my daughter starts to watch through the car windows like that when we travel


i was wondering why there are so many scenes from Switzerland in this video, and now i have found out that Robert Miles is Swiss :lol:


----------



## seem

ChrisZwolle said:


> 2.9? That's like a heavy truck passing by.


Maybe even less  but sounds good in newspapers, now they just take an advantage of situation. There were some more earthquakes like this from January, even one with 4,3 in March but I can't really remember if it was in news. http://earthquake-report.com/2012/01/31/slovakia-earthquake-list/


----------



## ChrisZwolle




----------



## italystf

Since when Canada drives on the left :lol:?








Anyway, it's Japan.


----------



## bogdymol

This picture is the same age as the internet...


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> This picture is the same age as the internet...


And was taken in at least a dozen of different countries :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

A video showing a road bridge shifted by 30 cm in Italian quake last week:
http://video.corriere.it/ponte-si-sposta-30-cm/a1471da6-abe7-11e1-b908-fbecd0c99c6b


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Vienna!
:cheers:


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> A video showing a road bridge shifted by 30 cm in Italian quake last week:
> http://video.corriere.it/ponte-si-sposta-30-cm/a1471da6-abe7-11e1-b908-fbecd0c99c6b


Can't believe that they left it open.


----------



## keber

I don't see any safety issue about that. It still looks ok and bridge is wide enough. Expansion joint did its work.


----------



## bigmishu

cinxxx said:


> Greetings from Vienna!
> :cheers:


How is the weather? :cheers:


----------



## bogdymol

*Romania.*

Some politicians heard about self-cleaning streets, so they tought... _why not?_ They saw this picture from Seoul, South Korea with a self-cleaning street...










... and when they built it in Timisoara, Romania, it ended up like this:










:bash:


----------



## Verso

:lol:


----------



## Wilhem275

g.spinoza said:


> A video showing a road bridge shifted by 30 cm in Italian quake last week:
> http://video.corriere.it/ponte-si-sposta-30-cm/a1471da6-abe7-11e1-b908-fbecd0c99c6b


Here it is:
https://maps.google.ch/?hl=en&ll=44...=1Lbj72S4frID_vANOMsqJg&cbp=12,74.13,,0,-5.76


----------



## hofburg

lol free shower.


----------



## seem

Romania.. what a funny place! :lol:

Do they know what is Photoshop in Timisoara?


----------



## cinxxx

bigmishu said:


> How is the weather? :cheers:


The weather was OK in the end.
Not perfect, a little rain, cloudy, also sunny, but fine for visiting


----------



## Suburbanist

Not exactly very recent (Mar 2012) but frightening nonetheless.


----------



## bogdymol

hofburg said:


> lol free shower.


Yeah... imagine passing by on that street by bike when they decide that it's time to clean it :nuts:



seem said:


> Romania.. what a funny place! :lol:
> 
> Do they know what is Photoshop in Timisoara?


I don't think that they have real-life Photoshop


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> Not exactly very recent (Mar 2012) but frightening nonetheless.


Do you know anything about casualties?


----------



## Road_UK

Just a test. With a ridiculous road sign.


----------



## Fatfield

Road_UK said:


> Just a test. With a ridiculous road sign.


What's wrong with it?


----------



## keokiracer

^^ You have got to be f*cking kidding me... It's like a freaking bingo card with 7 road numbers and on top of that also 7 names. I'd have to park on the shoulder so I'd have enough time to understand the sign...


----------



## Surel

Just had to think about the debate that went on in the Euro 2012 thread not so long ago...

A BBC show Euro 2012: Stadiums of Hate... but the map is hilarious.









and for the fun anyway.


----------



## Road_UK

Like the bottom map. Upper map is either wrong, or I live in the Czech Republic now, but nobody told me.


----------



## Fatfield

keokiracer said:


> ^^ You have got to be f*cking kidding me... It's like a freaking bingo card with 7 road numbers and on top of that also 7 names. I'd have to park on the shoulder so I'd have enough time to understand the sign...


With all due respect, you shouldn't be driving if you can't understand that sign.


----------



## keokiracer

^^ I'm 16, I'm not allowed to drive yet, and I don't live in the UK


----------



## hofburg

you got me! :lol:


----------



## Verso

Hah! And you aren't in Salzburg either...


----------



## bogdymol

^^ The counter counts just the visits on the first page... but many users usually view just the last page(s) so they are not counted there.


----------



## CNGL

I like it! I remember I threw Spain through the roof on the Norscand website. Almost all visits from Spain are from me :lol:.


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> ^^ The counter counts just the visits on the first page... but many users usually view just the last page(s) so they are not counted there.


I think most new users first look at the first page, because it's the most representative. If I put it on the last page, I'd have many visits first few days and then virtually nothing. Also, you're counted only once (unless you have a dynamic IP, which would explain many Pakistanis ).

edit: lol, 200% more Estonians since today (Rebasepoiss, Tin_Can )


----------



## seem

Congratulations Bogdan!  

Btw, meanwhile in Bratislava -


----------



## Falusi

Congrats bogdymol!kay:

Was it BSc or MSc already?
And about what did you wrote your thesis if it's not secret?


----------



## Nexis




----------



## keokiracer

I always play this one 





Yes, it's my video (on a 2nd/3rd channel)


----------



## bogdymol

Falusi said:


> Was it BSc or MSc already?
> And about what did you wrote your thesis if it's not secret?


It's a BSc. My thesis had a rather common theme for Road Engineers. Most of the thesis have been made for the modernisation of a secondary road, so mine was also like that. I had to make the project for the village street that goes north-east in Hășmaș village, Arad county, Romania (map).

Actually this road was recently modernised, but I had to come up with my own version of it. Here are 2 pictures taken there:

In point A from the map posted above. My road starts here and goes to the left.










And some works for the road protection from the nearby river:












keokiracer said:


> I always play this one
> 
> Yes, it's my video (on a 2nd/3rd channel)


If you will drive like this in real life... please tell me before visiting Romania to hide myself (and my car)


----------



## Falusi

Nice. At least your task was something what you might have to do in your future job. Do you plan to do the MSc as well?


----------



## Road_UK

keokiracer said:


> I always play this one
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, it's my video (on a 2nd/3rd channel)


Once you're going to take your driving lessons in real life, I may have to warn you that your driving instructor will insist that you stay in road. This is due to protection of yourself, your passengers, the vehicle, other road users and any infrastructure.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Probably you never played GTA. You can do a lot worse.


----------



## keokiracer

Road_UK said:


> Once you're going to take your driving lessons in real life, I may have to warn you that your driving instructor will insist that you stay in road.


yeah, I know, but it's the only way to go fast in this game... You'll be stopped by police if you go that fast with all yout tires on the asphalt. That's why I'm always mowing the grass with my right tires 



bogdymol said:


> If you will drive like this in real life... please tell me before visiting Romania to hide myself (and my car)


I'm not even that bad. All beware _Nanobrakes_!


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Probably you never played GTA. You can do a lot worse.


You mean driving over people, shooting at them and stick knifes in their asses, steal any car, boat, chopper and drive to the nearest Burger King, and wack everybody in there with a variety of machine guns, pick up a hooker and kill her? I did play the game, but I never did that. I always stayed in lane, never hurt a fly, indicated at cross roads, stopped at the stop sign etc etc.

And now you know what a lying piece of shit I really am. And on that note I wish you all goodnight...

:banana::banana::banana:


----------



## hofburg

what game is this?


----------



## Road_UK

hofburg said:


> what game is this?


Grand Theft Auto


----------



## keokiracer

^^ lame joke 

@hofburg
The one I was playing: http://www.verkeerstalent-online.nl/?action=game. It's free 

The game from nanobrakes is called 3D 2.2.8 Instructor. It's not the full name, but if you google it you'll probably get the full name. This one is not free.


----------



## bogdymol

Falusi said:


> Nice. At least your task was something what you might have to do in your future job. Do you plan to do the MSc as well?


Yep, I will also go for a MSc... if I will pass the big exam at the end of this month 



keokiracer said:


> I'm not even that bad. All beware _Nanobrakes_!


I'm worse :lol: I was stopped by the Police after playing 10 seconds :lol:


----------



## keokiracer

bogdymol said:


> I'm worse :lol: I was stopped by the Police after playing 10 seconds :lol:


Outside 'Westerdam' you can't go faster than 100, inside Westerdam you can't go faster than 70. And in the 30-zones it's max 50 :yes:


----------



## bogdymol

keokiracer said:


> Outside 'Westerdam' you can't go faster than 100, inside Westerdam you can't go faster than 70. And in the 30-zones it's max 50 :yes:


They stopped me for running on red light, for passing on the continous line, for overtaking on the pedestrian paths, for crashing into other cars etc.  I would like the game if it would have allowed me to escape the police...

In real life I drive diferently though... :angel:


----------



## keokiracer

"for passing on the continous line"
Where did you do that? I've been playing for a while, but that never happened to me


----------



## bogdymol

The entire game it's in Dutch so I don't understand 100% of it, but once I overtook another car where I wasn't allowed to do that and the police stopped me, so I tought that's the reason...


----------



## keokiracer

You only get stopped if you're driving too fast or when you're not driving on the asphalt 

What's your top speed so far?


----------



## bogdymol

About 90 in an 80 zone... and I got flashed by the speed trap  And I managed to make a mission with only 440 € in fines 

I also found a Dacia Logan pick-up in the game


----------



## keokiracer

Bogdy: yeah, those Dacia's are the most annoying drivers in the game (no joke), they like to make turns right in front of you  Just like those dark blue cars that look like Opel's.

Oh, if I were you I'd click on 'volledig scherm' on the bottom right: that's full-screen: drives waay better 

I see that you haven't unlocked the Merc yet. Try a second mission (fog or alcohol). If you complete a second mission you'll get a faster Merc. BTW: alcohol mission is really difficult :nuts:

I've got a video coming up with my top speed (in 80-zone, 50-zone and 30-zone)


----------



## keokiracer

Here is the video





133 @ 80
120 @ 50
97 @ 30
And.... A crash...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No Euro 2012 in this thread please, there are numerous topics for that in all languages in local SSC and DLM.


----------



## cinxxx

My copilot took this picture last week on Austrian A1.
This guy drove his Dacia 1300 from Maramures county to Austria?
If yes, that car rocks 


AUT - A1 by cinxxx, on Flickr


----------



## Road_UK

He may have put it in his rucksack, and used the train...


----------



## bogdymol

cinxxx said:


> My copilot took this picture last week on Austrian A1.
> This guy drove his Dacia 1300 from Maramures county to Austria?
> If yes, that car rocks


That's a cool sight!

But you should check out this website: http://www.freemiorita.ro/ 3 romanians want to go to Mongolia with their Dacia. They are leaving in 29 days


----------



## italystf

Those guys drove from Turin to Beijng with their old Fiat 500:
http://www.omniauto.it/magazine/913/torino-pechino-in-fiat-500


----------



## Nordic20T

Some time ago I already posted this one...


----------



## Attus

^^I myself were in Switzerland with a Dacia 1310 (the version with double circle-shaped front lights). It was in 1986, I was 12, and my father drove the car


----------



## Mateusz

About two years I tried to find a huge map of Europe online... Well I did in the end but I had to connect separate pieces and GIMP was dying every 5 minutes  Yesterday I found a cool, little programme which saves maps from Google in loads of different sizes. It crashed all the time when I tried using less memory consuming format... Now this .bmp file has 287 megabytes... and 10000x10000 pixels... But at least it works well in GIMP. I have marked most of core motorway networks in most countries... but all other expressways are quite a pain... especially in France and Germany.


----------



## Satyricon84

Spotted in Florence by my friend


----------



## Mateusz

A little preview:


----------



## Nexis

This game keeps getting better and better...So far Euro Truck Sim 2 will have...

-Railway Crossings with trains every 10 mins
-Realistic pitch black darkness 
-Draw Bridges that open in the Netherlands
-Toll Gates in Poland , France and Italy
-Real Truck Brands
-4x the orignally ETS with 2x the amount of back roads
-Speed Cameras 
-Realistic AI
-Roundabouts


----------



## Road_UK

Yes, looks far more realistic indeed. I am still using Eurotruck 1...


----------



## bogdymol

Mateusz said:


> A little preview:


You forgot A1 Arad bypass + Arad-Timisoara motorway and A1 Sibiu bypass 



Road_UK said:


> Yes, looks far more realistic indeed. I am still using Eurotruck 1...


I think you use Eurotruck-real


----------



## Road_UK

More like Euro-van...
I don't even know why the hell I am playing this game... It's not like I am getting paid for it, unlike me doing my job in real, and believe me...that is really realistic.


----------



## bogdymol

Road_UK said:


> unlike me doing my job in real, and believe me...that is really realistic.


I would have never tought that it can be more realistic than Eurotruck simulator... :tongue3:


----------



## Road_UK

I am better playing that game then doing Euro truck. No accidents, and I actually get to stay on the road, instead of driving on grass and verges...


----------



## piotr71

Check this one!









Dacia is cool! There were many of them on Polish roads a certain time ago. Even one of Polish prime minister had one:











bogdymol said:


> That's a cool sight!
> 
> But you should check out this website: http://www.freemiorita.ro/ 3 romanians want to go to Mongolia with their Dacia. They are leaving in 29 days





italystf said:


> Those guys drove from Turin to Beijng with their old Fiat 500:
> http://www.omniauto.it/magazine/913/torino-pechino-in-fiat-500


I am going to do a similar but a little shorter trip soon (about 20.000 km round trip). The car I will use:








One of these smart looking machines was my first ride.


----------



## Verso

^^ Maluch? Once we drove that car in 1980s and it started jumping.


----------



## piotr71

It jumps and bounces all the time  That is its charm.


----------



## bogdymol

I can't see your pics *piotr71*  Where are you doing that roadtrip?


----------



## piotr71

Strange, those pics aren't mine, I sourced them out of the internet. 

Around Europe, so not too exotic, however it's going to be an important introduction to something much bigger with Volvo 240 as a first plan actor. Preparations are really advanced


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> ^^ Maluch? Once we drove that car in 1980s and it started jumping.


Maluch is a legend! at least 3 of my friends had them. we would escape from the school and go chilling around the city in one (we = 4 guys 1,90 m x 90 kg  ). once 6 of us have been traveling in one from the city, but girls were included and owner wasn't over-dimensioned.

btw how do you call it in Slovenia?


----------



## Verso

^ Bolha (flea).


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> ^ Bolha (flea).


:lol:

i remember that my grandparents used to call Isetta "buha" (flea). Maluch is, you probably know, _Peglica_ (little iron)


----------



## Verso

Yeah, I know about Peglica. Btw, Bolha is pronounced [bowha].


----------



## piotr71

We sometimes called it "kaszlak" - a thing/person which coughs.


----------



## piotr71

Fica


----------



## italystf

piotr71 said:


> Fica


WTF? You said c*nt in Italian!


----------



## seem

Fico means c ..? It has the same meaning in Slovak tho :yes:


----------



## x-type

seem said:


> Fico means c ..? It has the same meaning in Slovak tho :yes:



fica. it means actually fig and i cannot believe that Italians were so uncreative for juicy name of ******.


----------



## piotr71

Hmm? I just called this iconic car as it was called in former Yugoslavia.


----------



## italystf

seem said:


> Fico means c ..? It has the same meaning in Slovak tho :yes:


Fica, not fico means that :lol:
Fico means just fig.


----------



## piotr71

Sorry for misspelling. It's obviously *fico* not fica


----------



## Wilhem275

Road_UK said:


> We do hurl loads from one van into the other at times... [cut]


The whole thing is very interesting.

What's your usual travel speed?


----------



## Road_UK

Depends where I am, and if I am on a rush job or not. In Germany and Italy I take it up to 170 at times, in France I will not go faster then 140, which for me and my van is the most comfortable speed to travel on. In Belgium, Holland and UK I intend to keep it below 130. I will never exceed the speed limit with more then 40, as in most countries it means that license will be lost.


----------



## Wilhem275

Well, that's pretty much for a loaded van, isn't it? Braking distance gets way longer...

Apart from safety concerns, I understand that in this activity time is more important than fuel and mechanical consumption, right?


----------



## Road_UK

Well, of course it also depends on the load. I won't load anymore then 1500 kg anyway. My boss pays for the fuel, and he tells me to go like hell at times. And on these Mercedes Sprinters...They go forever.


----------



## g.spinoza

Ok, now lemme watch Italy destroy those poor Croats...


----------



## Road_UK

Unloading (tipping in our company terms) in Mo-i-Rana, northern Norway:


----------



## Verso

Attus said:


> And often crashing the car and killing several people in Hungary or any other part of Europe...


That's why I don't like the M70. Once a Romanian guy overtook me when a heavy truck was coming from the opposite direction and was already very close. :bash:


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> That's why I don't like the M70. Once a Romanian guy overtook me when a heavy truck was coming from the opposite direction and was already very close. :bash:


You can see this type of things everytime you drive a long way in Romania on our main roads... :bash:


----------



## seem

g.spinoza said:


> Ok, now lemme watch Italy destroy those poor Croats...


Oh come on Hrvatska will destroy you! :banana:


----------



## Road_UK

We are not allowed to talk EM in this thread...


----------



## bogdymol

You will all get banned :banned:


----------



## hofburg

hehe Barney. that show was good couple of seasons ago, now it is just lame.


----------



## bogdymol

*@**g.spinoza*, *seem*: I won't let you alone on the banned list


----------



## hofburg

^good one. 

but A29 doesn't go to Netherlands.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ It does now! :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

I'm taking a small road trip from tomorrow 

Outward journey (Google Maps)

Day off @ the Monte Bianco

Joyride (Google Maps)

Inward journey (Google Maps)


----------



## g.spinoza

edit


----------



## Verso

We're taking over Zagreb:









Photo: Cropix


----------



## seem




----------



## seem

New petrol station in Galanta, Slovakia. Now it is also famous on ArchDaily.

http://shiz.sk/articles/view/1461


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> The Italian A1 alone is longer than all avtoceste and hitraceste combined :lol:


hitre ceste 



MajKeR_ said:


> And much more expensive


Of course, who would pay for driving on a 'motorway' with pavement from 1930s?


----------



## bogdymol

I found this one funny :lol:

Final solution for the Netherlands:


----------



## bogdymol




----------



## Wilhem275

keokiracer said:


> We Dutch are crazy :nuts: :lol:


I totally agree with that


----------



## italystf

Crazy accident in Portogruaro, Italy, few days ago:


----------



## Wilhem275

Not far from there, a couple of months ago, happened almost the same: a Volvo's driver was late for friday night clubbing :lol: so he tried to overtake in the middle of an incomplete roundabout (was being rebuilt).

The car took off and landed exactly against a pillar meant to keep up the upper floor's deck.
No pillar = no deck :lol: part of the building collapsed, luckily it was abandoned...

They all got out of the rubble; even before the Police arrived, the two passenger girls jumped into a friend's car, not to flee the scene, but... because they had to make it to the club anyway


----------



## seem

italystf said:


> No, fico means only fig or cool. The curse word ends in -a.


Btw there is a village called Figa in Southern Slovakia  -


----------



## bogdymol

Accident in *Arad, Romania* (exact location) this morning at 5 a.m. It looks like the driver was speeding and he lost control of his car. 3 people inside the car were injured, but not critical.


















aradon.ro


----------



## italystf

Wilhem275 said:


> Not far from there, a couple of months ago, happened almost the same: a Volvo's driver was late for friday night clubbing :lol: so he tried to overtake in the middle of an incomplete roundabout (was being rebuilt).
> 
> The car took off and landed exactly against a pillar meant to keep up the upper floor's deck.
> No pillar = no deck :lol: part of the building collapsed, luckily it was abandoned...
> 
> They all got out of the rubble; even before the Police arrived, the two passenger girls jumped into a friend's car, not to flee the scene, but... because they had to make it to the club anyway


In the case I posted the pics, the 3 girls in the car were returning from a party that was only 100 meters before that column. They were all very drunk and now are in the local hospital in bad conditions.
If there were pedestrians around, it could be a massacre.


----------



## Peines

I was looking for locations at gmaps arround San Juan de Alicante and I found this...










...I never know that the San Juan Tunnel was 3+2... :nuts:

P.S.: Yep, it's a render error...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's a really weird render error, almost seems like some kind of easter egg.


----------



## CNGL

If you don't want to search it's here.



italystf said:


> The Italian A1 alone is longer than all avtoceste and hitraceste combined :lol:


The same with Spanish AP-7. And I know the A-23 is already longer than the A-3 :lol:.


----------



## MajKeR_

Verso said:


> Of course, who would pay for driving on a 'motorway' with pavement from 1930s?


And who, outside Slovenia, said that it was motorway?


----------



## bogdymol

I think it might be an Easter Egg. Look at the lightning pole between the two carriageways... that pole wasn't copied, but it looks very natural there. Also, the shadows from the poles look ok, and the white-red barrier wasn't copied.


----------



## keokiracer

The left lane marker does look a bit weird. Is a lot vaguer than the rest

Laziness in The Netherlands: the green ribbon is for bats, so they know how to fly. There used to be a lot of trees here. But the works on the A4 progress and the slope for the bicycle bridge becme higher and higher. So what did they do with the ribbon?




They buried it :lol: :nuts:


----------



## Verso

MajKeR_ said:


> And who, outside Slovenia, said that it was motorway?


It wasn't? That means we had way more motorways.


----------



## Wilhem275

Some weird kind of intersections I found googling around, some are interesting.

They all come from this parent site:
http://www.alternativeintersections.org/


1) The Diverging Diamond
http://www.divergingdiamondintercha.../251/4e4ad50e_4b6c_42a3_a31c_709d4293f4eb.jpg


















Well, it keeps the compact shape of the Diamond but improves it by reducing the conflict points.
I'm not sure that introducing a double crossing helps traffic flow, but probably this design shows its advantage in those diamonds where most of the traffic has to turn left.

2) The Continuous Flow Intersection
http://www.continuousflowintersections.org/



















Yep, it makes sense, but I think it eats up a lot of land.

3) The ThrU-Turn
http://thruturnintersections.org/









Nothing particularly innovative in Europe, since many roundabouts are used as loops to avoid building complete free-flow interchanges.
And that, I have to say, is something I consider an extremely poor design solution, mainly because roundabouts need space and almost no one knows how to properly turn inside them.

So, opinions?


----------



## Peines

Wilhem275 said:


> http://www.divergingdiamondintercha.../251/4e4ad50e_4b6c_42a3_a31c_709d4293f4eb.jpg


:master:

USA is doing well in make better road intersections: better diamonds and better roundabouts. Well done. :cheers:
.
.
.

I said intersections but nothing about freeways and roads.


----------



## Verso

Wilhem275 said:


> Some weird kind of intersections I found googling around, some are interesting.


You missed this one.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The DDI was invented in Europe, this one in Paris has been around since at least 2002. It was not widely implemented though.


----------



## geor

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Why did the image change? It was different seconds ago...


I made mistake. It was from last year(2011).

If you want, here they are:


Uploaded with ImageShack.us


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Funny thing is that in 2011 they tested only rest areas in Northern Italy, while in 2012 only those in Central Italy...


----------



## bogdymol

You know what's weird? I would have expected to have excelent service areas on motorways from Spain, Italy or France (where you pay directly for driving there), but I see that the service areas from Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia or even Germany are much better graded despite the fact that driving there is for free (or with a vignette which is not dependant of the number of km you are driving).


----------



## geor

According to these tests Croatia has very nice rest area service, in front of many EU members.................


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> You know what's weird? I would have expected to have excelent service areas on motorways from Spain, Italy or France (where you pay directly for driving there), but I see that the service areas from Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia or even Germany are much better graded despite the fact that driving there is for free (or with a vignette which is not dependant of the number of km you are driving).


I don't think paying for motorways has something to do with rest areas. Areas are managed independently from motorways, and they don't get tolls.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Italian rest areas are apparently well-equipped, but lack decent parking. I think most truckers can confirm that. Rest areas are loaded at night. I have no complaints about French rest areas, apart from them being on expensive toll roads. The Dutch rest areas are generally too expensive and sanitary facilities are usually mediocre at best.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Really? I got the impression that service areas on toll roads in France are run by the toll-road operator.

But I'd think how long a service area has been open (or when it was last renovated) would be at least as important as who runs it, unless the operator of an older one is putting a lot of money into upkeep.

EDIT: That's a response to G.Spinoza, not Chris.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I also knew that on tolled road the company that administrates the road also has to make sure that the rest areas are allright (maybe except rest areas where a major gas station is located). 

Anyway, I consider rest areas in Austria a little bit inferior. I've seen much better in Hungary for example.


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Italian rest areas are apparently well-equipped, but lack decent parking.


My main complaint about them is that they are concrete jungles.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Really? I got the impression that service areas on toll roads in France are run by the toll-road operator.
> 
> But I'd think how long a service area has been open (or when it was last renovated) would be at least as important as who runs it, unless the operator of an older one is putting a lot of money into upkeep.
> 
> EDIT: That's a response to G.Spinoza, not Chris.


I really don't know whether rest areas are managed by motorways, restaurant/shop companies (Autogrill), fuel companies (Tamoil, Esso ecc), or a combination of the three. It would be nice if someone here knows how it works.


----------



## Road_UK

In France the site itself is maintained by the toll operators, but petrol stations and restaurants have their own responsibilities.


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> My main complaint about them is that they are concrete jungles.


And that they have gas station AFTER rest area. Maybe acceptable for Italians, but not for others. I want to have rest after I fill up tank and not before.


----------



## Road_UK

keber said:


> And that they have gas station AFTER rest area. Maybe acceptable for Italians, but not for others. I want to have rest after I fill up tank and not before.


Yes, they have that in England as well. Very annoying


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> And that they have gas station AFTER rest area. Maybe acceptable for Italians, but not for others. I want to have rest after I fill up tank and not before.


What if you want to rest before filling up, say, because you have urgently to go to the bathroom, and later want to fill up? Are you going to drive in reverse? :lol:

No, no, gas station must be after rest area, there's no sense in putting them before.


----------



## geor

g.spinoza said:


> I really don't know whether rest areas are managed by motorways, restaurant/shop companies (Autogrill), fuel companies (Tamoil, Esso ecc), or a combination of the three. It would be nice if someone here knows how it works.


 
MW companies usually give to petrol companies the right to build the rest area facilities. The relevant petrol company can manage all the services or give the right to the other specialists like Marche chain to manage restaurants, cafe bar and shops…….


----------



## Road_UK

There are toilets inside petrol stations normally. And I want to hit the road after eating, not fill up.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> What if you want to rest before filling up, say, because you have urgently to go to the bathroom, and later want to fill up? Are you going to drive in reverse? :lol:
> 
> No, no, gas station must be after rest area, there's no sense in putting them before.


They can be put together, surely....

https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=40.059249,-78.081159&spn=0.002344,0.004136&t=h&z=18

Darker building at the bottom's a food court, shop(s?) and such; lighter group of buildings is a gas station (with its own large convenience store). You can pull in to the main lot, go into the main building and do what you need to do, then hit the gas station on the way out. But I don't think there's anything to stop you going to the gas station and then over to the main lot. (And you can certainly park in the gas station's own parking spots and walk over.)


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> And that they have gas station AFTER rest area. Maybe acceptable for Italians, but not for others. I want to have rest after I fill up tank and not before.





Road_UK said:


> There are toilets inside petrol stations normally. And I want to hit the road after eating, not fill up.


Please state a valid reason why gas stations should be before the rest area, other than "I prefer this way".


----------



## geor

g.spinoza said:


> Please state a valid reason why gas stations should be before the rest area, other than "I prefer this way".


This video can explain..........
http://www.slobodnovrijeme.com/news.php?readmore=337


----------



## g.spinoza

You can rest as much as you want, but stupidity remains.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Yes, but on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (or most American toll roads) you can buy gas before *or* after resting. Stupidity, I can't help you with.

(Sam: Hey, hey, you're drunk!
(Diane: Hey, hey, you're stupid. I'll be sober in the morning.)


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Yes, but on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (or most American toll roads) you can buy gas before *or* after resting. Stupidity, I can't help you with.
> 
> (Sam: Hey, hey, you're drunk!
> (Diane: Hey, hey, you're stupid. I'll be sober in the morning.)




I really never thought the relative positions of gas stations and rest areas could be so important. Is that really so annoying to fill the car after you rest? Why?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Don't ask me! I'm just observing, slightly bemusedly, this before-vs.-after debate and pointing out that it doesn't need to be an issue.

:cheers:


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I wasn't asking you


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^


----------



## Verso

geor said:


> This video can explain..........
> http://www.slobodnovrijeme.com/news.php?readmore=337


To be honest, I can't decide which one is more stupid: the girl that doesn't know how to fill gas, the girl that's totally overreacting, the guy behind that blows horn all the time, or someone who brakes too hard.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Yes, I'm sure it's staged.


----------



## Suburbanist

Most rest areas with stores/restaurants/gas satations of Netherlands are rather mediocre, even the newer ones. Usually they have nothing much more than a regular oversized city gas station....

Italy has, on average, nice restaurants, though some un-modernized areas are really in bad state/shape.

Now in regard of bathrooms: I find an enormous difference in cleaning standards depending on whether the bathroom is reached from within the restaurant or from outside.

Spanish bathrooms are terrible for most of it. Somehow they are usually trashed and we often see people washing their heads or else on the sinks. Disgusting.

Now, the worst thing can happen is to go to a rest stop when you see couple Eurolines or similar long-distance buses parked there. Their passengers will usually trash the bathrooms, shave or what else in the sinks, and also clog the lines at the cashier.

Finally, something in Italy that annoys me big time: there, you usually have to pay for snacks or other prepared items before having them give you. And often there isn't a line, but a sort of "shout your ticket" situation...


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Now, the worst thing can happen is to go to a rest stop when you see couple Eurolines or similar long-distance buses parked there. Their passengers will usually trash the bathrooms, shave or what else in the sinks, and also clog the lines at the cashier.


Usually the rudest users of rest areas are truckers. They stop in their reserved parking lots located in an out of sight place behind the restaurant\shop (cars usually park in front of it) and often spend the night there. Many of them think that space is their and do everything around instead to use the toilet and leave trash around even if there is a trashcan every two meters.
Usually tourists (by car or bus) are more polite and use toilettes.



Suburbanist said:


> Finally, something in Italy that annoys me big time: there, you usually have to pay for snacks or other prepared items before having them give you. And often there isn't a line, but a sort of "shout your ticket" situation...


It's the same in many bars and most of fast foods. Do you know another method to prevent dine and dash? I don't see very annoying paying before, you must do the queue at the drawer anyway, first or later...

About the "problem" of gas station after the restaurant (IMHO it's better to place toilettes at the beginning) they could create an additional lane that allow you to return back from the gas station to the restaurant.


----------



## Suburbanist

italystf said:


> Usually the rudest users of rest areas are truckers. They stop in their reserved parking lots located in an out of sight place behind the restaurant\shop (cars usually park in front of it) and often spend the night there. Many of them think that space is their and do everything around instead to use the toilet and leave trash around even if there is a trashcan every two meters.


Agreed.

Truckers somethings go to rest stop bathrooms and do nasty things like showering their feet or arms in the sink. Disgusting.




> It's the same in many bars and most of fast foods. Do you know another method to prevent dine and dash? I don't see very annoying paying before, you must do the queue at the drawer anyway, first or later...


I prefer the system commonly used in France where you take a tray, order/grab whatever you want, then move on to the cashier where you pay before eating.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Agreed.
> 
> Truckers somethings go to rest stop bathrooms and do nasty things like showering their feet or arms in the sink. Disgusting.


In many autogrills there are 24-7 showers, so I don't see the point in using the sink.

Anyway, those bad habit aren't thypical Italian only. A friend of mine who lives in California said that many truckers fill plastic bottles with that yellow liquid (or plastic bags with something solid) and throw them out of the window. 

In Italy it's bad on weekends when there is the truck block and trucker have to spend two nights parked, sometimes inside the motorway, something outside.


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ Why can't truckers upgrade their behavior to 21st Century standards, like sleeping in cheap hotels where they can get proper facilities?


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ Why can't truckers upgrade their behavior to 21st Century standards, like sleeping in cheap hotels where they can get proper facilities?


Because cheap hotels in Italy do not exist, and employers often won't pay.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In case you didn't know, trucks usually have one and often two beds to sleep in. Why pay € 50 per night when you can spend none? Besides, virtually no hotels have (secure) parking for trucks.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ Why can't truckers upgrade their behavior to 21st Century standards, like sleeping in cheap hotels where they can get proper facilities?


IMHO there is nothing bad if they sleep in their trucks, but using toilets properly and not messing around.

A question: has anyone entered a motorway rest area by foot from the back street, where only those who work there are supposed to enter?


----------



## geor

To sleep or not to sleep, that is the question?

At least seven Czech tourists were killed and 44 injured in a bus crash on a major motorway in Croatia early Saturday, police said.

The accident happened at around 4 a.m. some 212 kilometers south of Zagreb, on the motorway connecting the Croatian capital with the central Adriatic coastal city of Split.

Croatia's state TV said the bus crashed through the metal barriers in the middle of the motorway and overturned in the opposite lane near a tunnel.

The TV quoted eyewitnesses saying that the bus started "swaying" on the motorway moments before it crashed through the barriers.

The cause of the accident was drowsy driving.

http://www.index.hr/vijesti/clanak/...zrtvama-je-i-sedmogodisnje-dijete/622056.aspx

http://www.vecernji.hr/vijesti/u-pr...inulo-osam-turista-vozac-zaspao-clanak-423455


----------



## RipleyLV




----------



## geor

This must be in Russia or Ukraine. Regular situation. Nothing strange......


----------



## Road_UK

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ Why can't truckers upgrade their behavior to 21st Century standards, like sleeping in cheap hotels where they can get proper facilities?


Why should they? They drive in complete sitting rooms, equipped with tv, fridge, bed...
The only thing that is missing is a toilet and shower, but you can get these inside the services...


----------



## keokiracer

geor said:


> This must be in Russia or Ukraine. Regular situation. Nothing strange......


Yeah, 3 casualties, nothing special :|
Someone translated that the truck driver that slammed into everyone said over the radio that his brakes failed and that the other truckers had to get out of the way asap.


----------



## Suburbanist

Road_UK said:


> Why should they? They drive in complete sitting rooms, equipped with tv, fridge, bed...
> The only thing that is missing is a toilet and shower, but you can get these inside the services...


Maybe that can be a solution.

But hence the question: freight is so expensive already, would extra €50/night be so much of a difference if every truck company was obliged to pay its truckers for it?


----------



## Road_UK

It is not really how international transportation works. There wouldn't be enough room anyway. Parking alone would be a problem... And when the time on the tacho runs out, they have to find a place to park and stop. You can't expect drivers to find a room first as well, they need to rest!
I am on the road full time for a living, and I rely on services. And most truck drivers don't bother me, because I think they are necessary. And people who go on holiday maybe once a year, and they fly off the handle because of trucks and truckers need to get a life. Because once their holidays in the south of France are over, they drive back, they hide in their suburbs, and at the most see a truck delivering in their neighbourhood.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Maybe that can be a solution.
> 
> But hence the question: freight is so expensive already, would extra &#128;50/night be so much of a difference if every truck company was obliged to pay its truckers for it?


What's the point of that? Some families go to holiday by caravan or camper and sleep in 6 in a so small place. Is a big deal for a trucker sleeping alone in his truck?
I only said that usually truckers are ruder than tourists, maybe because they are all adult males and are used to live on the road with few commodities.
Paying hotel rooms for truckers would made everything they carry more expensive to customers.
Rest areas should be more surveilled and people who mess around fined, it would help also agaist thefts in parked vehicles.


----------



## Road_UK

italystf said:


> What's the point of that? Some families go to holiday by caravan or camper and sleep in 6 in a so small place. Is a big deal for a trucker sleeping alone in his truck?
> I only said that usually truckers are ruder than tourists, maybe because they are all adult males and are used to live on the road with few commodities.
> Paying hotel rooms for truckers would made everything they carry more expensive to customers.
> Rest areas should be more surveilled and people who mess around fined, it would help also agaist thefts in parked vehicles.


I agree with you.


----------



## Road_UK

Apart from truckers being ruder then tourists. Have you ever met the Dutch abroad?


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> Apart from truckers being ruder then tourists. Have you ever met the Dutch abroad?


No, I never meet personally any Dutch, apart a girl but she lives in Italy for many years.
What are the stereothypes about their behavior?


----------



## Road_UK

They are loud, and like to show off that they are Dutch. They spit on their own country when they are at home, but when they cross the border, they suddenly get very patriotic. I am partly Dutch, but am very ashamed of the people that come here in Mayrhofen. Standing on the ski-slopes you can always pick out the Dutch. "Joop. Joooooooop. Joooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooop...!!!!!!!!!!"
Also they bring their own food, so the resorts are not making much money on them. Keine gute gäste, diese Holländer is a well known phrase here. Also they have a screw lose when they start driving abroad. They are like from a different planet.

Not a very nice crowd when they're abroad...


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> They are loud, and like to show off that they are Dutch. They spit on their own country when they are at home, but when they cross the border, they suddenly get very patriotic. I am partly Dutch, but am very ashamed of the people that come here in Mayrhofen. Standing on the ski-slopes you can always pick out the Dutch. "Joop. Joooooooop. Joooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooop...!!!!!!!!!!"
> 
> Not a very nice crowd when they're abroad...


In Italian seaside towns it's not unusual to see crowds of Germans and Austrian (and probably other nationalities, maybe also Dutch) behaving like wild beasts after too much beer and vodka. And they are probably the same people that in their countries say that Italians cannot obey rules.


----------



## Road_UK

That's right. Tourist intend to have a screw lose in general. A lot of them appear to be leaving their brains at home. Others will simply not adjust. 
But the Dutch are amongst the loudest in Europe. I love seeing my family in Holland, but I don't really need them here (apart from my 86 year old grandma). My uncle and aunt come here sometimes, and we go in the mountains, and they will never enjoy a nice cold beer in a mountain hut, or try a local Tiroler specialty. They will, however, use their facilities to sit down, and drink their by the sun boiled apple juices, and eat what used to be bread and cheese, and will talk to you as if you`re deaf! They love the mountains, but are afraid of heights, and when the path goes a little steep, then every local has learned a few new Dutch words. When they DO order a coffee (hmm coffee at home tastes much better) then they will never tip the waiter, because that is ridiculous.


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> (hmm coffee at home tastes much better)


For your pocket sure tastes better :lol:

I though that Italian, Spaniards and Eastern Europeans were the noisiest, especially when they are in a group of young together.


----------



## Road_UK

You know, when people are young and drunk, no matter what nationality, they will always be noisy. (Brits and Dutch a bit more then others) But I am talking about normal Dutch families with kids...


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> You know, when people are young and drunk, no matter what nationality, they will always be noisy. (Brits and Dutch a bit more then others) But I am talking about normal Dutch families with kids...


In case of families with children, Italians usually give a good impression. Maybe because we think that appareances are important and we like to do a "bella figura". D


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I agree, when I'm walking in public on the street and I'm with someone I always think "dammit I'm not deaf". The Dutch have a tendency to talk very loud indeed.


----------



## g.spinoza

As for Italians it depends also on the region they're from. Tuscans, Neapolitans and Romans tend to be louder than people from other regions.


----------



## MajKeR_

italystf said:


> I though that Italian, Spaniards and Eastern Europeans were the noisiest, especially when they are in a group of young together.


I don't know what do you mean about "Eastern Europeans" (such naming in relation to Central Europe makes me pissed off), but I see that Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and Hungarians are much more quiet than Russians and Ukrainians. Some difference between us...

Of course, if someone's mind depends on poor and cheap workers from village, situation changes.


----------



## Satyricon84

MajKeR_ said:


> I don't know what do you mean about "Eastern Europeans" .


Pre-1989 division, we used to say Eastern Europe for the Warsaw Pact's countries. Such expression is still largely used today.


----------



## Angelos

according to my experience, Greeks, Italians and Spanish are the loudest. Mediterenean spirit all the way


----------



## Road_UK

Sorry but polish lorry drivers are loud and a lot of them are pigs. And my polish friend confirmed this. You seem to get very upset when someone mentions eastern Europeans or if someone criticises your country, but the fact of the matter is that you are eastern European, and they are still lacking behind on the west when it comes to value and wealth. It's not a bad thing, but we were inaccessible from each other for a long time.


----------



## piotr71

Road_UK said:


> Sorry *but polish lorry drivers are loud and a lot of them are pigs*. And my polish friend confirmed this. You seem to get very upset when someone mentions eastern Europeans or if someone criticises your country, but the fact of the matter is that you are eastern European, and they are still lacking behind on the west when it comes to value and wealth. It's not a bad thing, but we were inaccessible from each other for a long time.


Unfortunately, much has changed in Poland in the last 2 decades. Until nineties an international lorry was really respectful and quite prestigious profession to be. Only those who passed 5 year vocational college and were able to speak 2 foreign languages could become a TIR driver. Since then, every moron could get the licence and drive heavy stuff around the world.

If it comes to loudness and piggy-ness I'd rather not distinguish loud and pig-like drivers depending on their nationality, not because I am Eastern European, but because I live long enough to know that one swine does not make all nation pig-shed.


----------



## Road_UK

You've got a good point there. It's just that whenever I'm trying to get some sleep on the ferry, its nearly always Polish lorry drivers that keep me awake. They also take more food from the buffet then they should. God bless you for saying you're eastern European...


----------



## cinxxx

Poland is central European.
Heck, even the western half of Romania is geographically in Central Europe.


----------



## Wilhem275

I can't say who is the noisiest, I'd say pretty much anyone on holiday :|

But there is one specific thing I hate in Mediterranean peoples (Italy and Spain at their best): the absolute lack of knowledge of this people's own position in the world. Not in a geographical reference meaning, but as the people move around without caring of what's around.
People walking in a crowded street and suddenly stopping in the middle of it to take a look at the phone. People gathering for a chat blocking an aisle or a tight passage. People walking on bike lanes even if the proper space is one meter away. Groups who tend to occupy all available space, whatever the place or why they're standing there.
Not to mention the inability to form a decent queue.

They don't do that by purpouse, they're made by nature to spread disorder through any civilized space :bash:
This is one thing I can't stand.

I think that Italians and Spanish tend to speak loud too often in public, but probably it's because I can recognize a latin language more naturally, so I'm more concentrated on those episodes.
What really ashames me is WHAT this people say. I'm ashamed of how _stupid_ an Italian can be when abroad. It always seems 95% of the country never travelled before...

Well, it's pretty clear that I don't like the average behaviour of my countrymates...
I learned a lot of time ago that every country has its pigs and its polite guys, but still I prefer living amongst northeners and acting in such a way I'm mistaken for a local


----------



## Satyricon84

For the United Nations Statistic Division is Eastern Europe








BLUE = Northern Europe
RED = Eastern Europe
AZURE = Western Europe
GREEN = Southern Europe


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are about a gazillion definitions of Europe, let's not waste time on this.


----------



## Verso

Poland: Central Europe for Poles, Eastern Europe for Western Europeans. Happy?


----------



## Wilhem275

And CCCP for Russians :lol:


----------



## Satyricon84

Verso said:


> Poland: Central Europe for Poles, Eastern Europe for Western Europeans. Happy?


My ex hungarian GF used to say the same concerning Hungary, that's not Eastern Europe but Central and she didn't lose occasion to "correct" me everytime I said the contrary. Seems that to say it's Eastern Europe is an insult or something similar :dunno: I remember also I saw stickers in Budapest with written Mitteleuropa and the hungarian coat of arms


----------



## Verso

Is that why you broke up?


----------



## Satyricon84

Verso said:


> Is that why you broke up?


:rofl:


----------



## Verso

I think the best recipe is that Western Europeans stop nagging that we _are_ Eastern Europeans, and "Eastern Europeans" stop nagging that we _aren't_. Everyone call us whatever they/we want and that's it.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Wilhem275 said:


> ....People walking in a crowded street and suddenly stopping in the middle of it to take a look at the phone....


That's a pet peeve of mine (and I haven't been in Italy in years). Or people strolling along slowly chatting on the phone when I'm trying to get some place. (Philadelphia's sidewalks are rather narrow, so passing isn't always easy, or possible.)
I've pondered getting a T-shirt made: "If you can't walk and talk at the same time, either SIT DOWN or SHUT UP!"


----------



## Road_UK

That's not just southern Europe but universal I'd say. In supermarkets all over the world large committee's seem to conglegate in the middle of an isle...


----------



## Penn's Woods

All right, I have a belated contribution to the good-reasons-to-fill-up-before-using-the-bathroom debate*: Clean hands. I like to wash my hands after pumping gas. If I'm going to, at the same rest stop, use the bathroom, buy gas and buy something to eat, I'll probably buy gas first, then use the bathroom (might even wash my hands both before and after), then buy food. That's if I'm going to eat while driving**, and if I'm not desperate to use the bathroom. Even if I am desperate to use the bathroom, gas - followed by washing my hands - will still come before food.

If I'm going to *eat* before I leave the rest area, then I'll put buying gas last.

*By the way, was all that talk about "resting" actually referring to taking a nap, or at least taking a break? "Resting" doesn't really work for, well, using the bathroom or buying something to eat.

**Is eating while driving - something like a burger or a sandwich that you can keep on the passenger seat and manage with one hand - something a European would never dream of doing?


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> If I'm going to *eat* before I leave the rest area, then I'll put buying gas last.


Why is that?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Why is that?


'cause then I'm eating before I've used my hands to pump gas.


----------



## Verso

You can wash them after pumping gas. :dunno:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I find there's sometimes still a gasoline odor after I've washed them.

Perhaps I'm being unreasonably fussy here....


----------



## Verso

To be honest, I can't remember the last time I filled gas and made a break at the same time. Must've been years. It just doesn't happen to me for some reason.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Okay, this has nothing to do with rest areas or cell phones or rude truckers, just a stray question:

A reporter on the BBC a few days ago mentioned "parliamentary elections in Germany" on June 29.

What's Germany voting for next Friday? Are there really national elections I've somehow heard about nowhere else, or...?


----------



## Chilio

Road_UK said:


> Why should they? They drive in complete sitting rooms, equipped with tv, fridge, bed...
> The only thing that is missing is a toilet and shower, but you can get these inside the services...


Which makes me think about this - campers/motorhomes and caravans have since ages these compact facilities in them with chemical WC and shower... why truck manufacturers don't use this technology too. Maybe truck cabins would have to be built some 0,5-1 meters longer to have the space, but this is not such a difficulty.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> **Is eating while driving - something like a burger or a sandwich that you can keep on the passenger seat and manage with one hand - something a European would never dream of doing?


I do that all the time.



Chilio said:


> Which makes me think about this - campers/motorhomes and caravans have since ages these compact facilities in them with chemical WC and shower... why truck manufacturers don't use this technology too. Maybe truck cabins would have to be built some 0,5-1 meters longer to have the space, but this is not such a difficulty.


Unlike the United States, the truck length limits apply to the entire combination, not just the trailer. More cab = less trailer. That's why American trucks are much more luxury than European trucks.


----------



## hofburg

I was told by French police one should not eat while driving


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> To be honest, I can't remember the last time I filled gas and made a break at the same time.


I do that everytime on whole day motorway trip - like going to skiing vacation. Usually this happens in Italy (in my case) and I often break rules because I fill tank first and then I go into restaurant to pick some food or drink. In this case I drive backwards, because there usually isn't any parking space after gas station in Italy. Others in my company do a toilet or go to coffee/cigarette/whatever when I'm filling up.

I already got used that, but it still annoys me from time to time, because some rest area layouts in Italy are really strange.


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> **Is eating while driving - something like a burger or a sandwich that you can keep on the passenger seat and manage with one hand - something a European would never dream of doing?


No, it happens and whilst the act isn't illegal, the police in the UK could pull you for careless driving if they think you're not in full control of the vehicle.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring...-driving-more-dangerous-than-using-phone.html


----------



## bogdymol

I always eat or drink while driving on longtrips. Usually, the right seat passengers unwraps the sandwich for me and opens the bottle of water/juice for me to drink.


----------



## hofburg

when has your girlfriend time for doing that while taking all those photos.


----------



## Attus

hofburg said:


> when has your girlfriend time for doing that while taking all those photos.


:lol:


----------



## Verso

Being bogdymol's girlfriend must be a pain in the ass.


----------



## g.spinoza

Wilhem275 said:


> But there is one specific thing I hate in Mediterranean peoples (Italy and Spain at their best): the absolute lack of knowledge of this people's own position in the world. Not in a geographical reference meaning, but as the people move around without caring of what's around.
> People walking in a crowded street and suddenly stopping in the middle of it to take a look at the phone. People gathering for a chat blocking an aisle or a tight passage. People walking on bike lanes even if the proper space is one meter away. Groups who tend to occupy all available space, whatever the place or why they're standing there.


+1
Amen to that.


----------



## MajKeR_

Road_UK - have you ever known some Pole who wasn't a lorry/truck driver?

Wilhem, nice set  I've been to Italy several times during last years and I may prove what you've written. Anyway, no shame for Italians, because your country got me by many different things.

I'm glad that in Poland staying in the middle of sidewalk just for talking, when somebody can't go isn't very popular - maybe because he/she may be suddenly instructed that it wasn't a good idea by someone's motion. Quite rude, by efficiently.

Pole in general makes me angry abroad, from time to time also on the street.

Its keeping left lane, when right is empty. Fortunately, becoming less popular.

Its hick talking on the street - when quite much people can understand Polish. Its hurting English, like it wasn't possible to learn it decently.

Hick look. Putting socks, when he wears sandals.

Very rare, but existing: feeling as "lord of the world", because he earned for BMW X5 and have enough money for gasoline to France and staying at hotel there.

But every Pole have inside himself some amount of shame, so no one may be nude on the beach - which is very popular between Germans. And everybody has a discipline, but sometimes it's shown quite late.

Maybe I'm supersensitive about my nation abroad, but once somebody filled my head with those complexes. Maybe that old guy at petrol station in Austria, who showed me how to use the tap with sensor of hands.


----------



## Road_UK

MajKeR_ said:


> Road_UK - have you ever known some Pole who wasn't a lorry/truck driver?


Sure, why?


----------



## MajKeR_

Because usually you mean exactly them, I see.


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> *By the way, was all that talk about "resting" actually referring to taking a nap, or at least taking a break? "Resting" doesn't really work for, well, using the bathroom or buying something to eat.


Don't you take a break in order to rest? . I guess you have a rest from driving while eating or visiting a bathroom at the rest area??



Road_UK said:


> Sorry but polish lorry drivers are loud and a lot of them are pigs. And my polish friend confirmed this. You seem to get very upset when someone mentions eastern Europeans or if someone criticises your country, but the fact of the matter is that you are eastern European, and they are still lacking behind on the west when it comes to value and wealth. It's not a bad thing, but we were inaccessible from each other for a long time.





cinxxx said:


> Poland is central European.
> Heck, even the western half of Romania is geographically in Central Europe.



When I was a small boy I did not like the Eastern Europe locating and preferred the Central Europe. Now I just think it is all one big bullshit that is not really important for anything. Its pointless to have a argument about this (Eastern - Central - Western E. and similar things) as it doesnt really matter. The only thing that matter are real life facts, facts concernig relations between nations, quality of life, satisfaction with life and personal experiences. It is not improving your well being to argue with someone about meaningless names. Furthermore, if someone tries to put himself above you, prove him wrong, kick him in the ass or dont pay attantion to him and work on your well being and well being of your community or even a nation if that is important to you.


----------



## Wilhem275

Chilio said:


> campers/motorhomes and caravans have since ages these compact facilities in them with chemical WC and shower... why truck manufacturers don't use this technology too.


The WC itself does not take too much space; but hygiene would not be great, think about the smell in a place where you have to live in and drive :lol:

Also, those chemical WCs need to be emptied from time to time; you may have a box with wheels to bring it with you at the restroom (a system used on caravans) or a tank integrated with the vehicle, which requires you to find a proper disposal facility (used on motorhomes).

I have a motorhome, and even if I have a properly working WC and shower inside (150 l of clean hot water), experience tells me that they must be used only if really no other options are available. Bringing around 150/200 kg of useless weight should be avoided if possible, and loading/unloading is a time-consuming activity.
Usually I stop at campsites at least once every two nights, mainly because you need a real shower from time to time 

These kind of facilities are fitted into RVs only to extend their range of use to those isolated and very indipendent parking situations. Trucks usually follow civilized routes 



Penn's Woods said:


> **Is eating while driving - something like a burger or a sandwich that you can keep on the passenger seat and manage with one hand - something a European would never dream of doing?


I tried it once, when I had an automatic gearbox. I was driving on my beloved motorway and I was eating a lot of my beloved Genoa's focaccia and drinking a cold soda.
After 5 kilometers of it I was about either to crash or barf :lol: and I actually was enjoing neither of the two activities...

Nah, I consider it a form of distracted driving... the wheel must be held with two hands at all times.



My best experience with eat and drive involved that focaccia, my Alfa Giulietta, and a bunch of narrow mountain roads in Genoa's outskirts, in autumn.
After the random and pleasant driving took me to a place in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, I stopped and enjoyed nature colors and sounds while sitting in the Giulietta's boot and eating my focaccia.

I miss that car, I had so much fun...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wilhem275 said:


> Nah, I consider it a form of distracted driving... the wheel must be held with two hands at all times.


Mmmm, I actually barely drive with two hands on the wheel, especially not at cruising speed.


----------



## Verso

Wilhem275 said:


> I was driving on my beloved motorway


Try eating-while-driving on a straighter motorway next time. :lol:


----------



## hofburg

what happened to Alfa Giulietta?


----------



## Wilhem275

The Passat my father ordered months before arrived at last, and the Giulietta lease came to an end, taking the joy of driving with her...

The Passat is not a bad car, it's just like the standard VW: an average product. Nothing really wrong and nothing really great. Totally neutral.
Probably interesting for anyone who chooses and uses the car as a dishwasher. Pretty boring for a petrolhead, not a single drop of driving pleasure.

I don't blame German cars in general, but I really don't like VAG cars. I had Audis for years and now I know why they're considered the queens of understeering... 250 HP and feeling as I'm driving my sofa, c'mon!
Totally missing the link between the driver and the road. And many people think that missing this link means they're good to drive :bash:

The Giulietta have some details which may be better designed, but the average quality is decent, way better than old Alfas. It has a good reliability, and this may surprise some people.
I miss it because it was an overall comfortable car with the ability to make the driver feel every detail of its movements, even at very low speeds and quite paces. Not really stiff or crumpled but still a sports car.

May not have the fine -useless- details and LEDs of the Audis, but what the hell, I had way more fun with its FWD 105 HP diesel engine than with the AWD 250 V6 I had before, and I'm not exaggerating.


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile in Italy









Meanwhile in Belgium


----------



## Road_UK

Wilhem275 said:


> Nah, I consider it a form of distracted driving... the wheel must be held with two hands at all times.
> 
> .


I never drive with two hands. How the hell can I drive with two hands, when I got my phone in one hand, a hamburger in the other, a newspaper on my lap and a bottle of coke between my legs...


----------



## Road_UK

Actually, Austrian Tyrolians love anything Italian south of Sudtirol...


----------



## italystf

:rofl:


----------



## italystf

Yesterday in Trieste
Main avenue in front of Piazza dell'Unità
































































Video here
http://www.triesteallnews.it/index....tifosiq-danneggiano-un-bus&catid=2&Itemid=104

Too bad that at the end some assholes destroyed that bus hno:


----------



## Halfpipesaur

MajKeR_ said:


> Quite interesting that Dutchman, Romanian, Hungarian and Pole prefer Italy, when Germany is nearer (or at the same distance)


No one wants a copy-paste final from 4 years ago. And also I would be happy if Italians won the Euro. I can't stand dull Spanish tiki-taka.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Soccer, schmoccer.

And deciding a game on penalties is ridiculous.:bash:


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Soccer, schmoccer.
> 
> And deciding a game on penalties is ridiculous.:bash:


Always better than seeing a bunch of fatties running in circle with a wooden rod.










And they call them "athletes" hno:


----------



## bogdymol

Penn's Woods said:


> And deciding a game on penalties is ridiculous.:bash:


And how do you want to decide which team wins? Flip the coin as they did 50 years ago?


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> Always better than seeing a bunch of fatties running in circle with a wooden rod.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And they call them "athletes" hno:


:lol::lol::lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Overtime!

Edit: That's for Bogdy.


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> And how do you want to decide which team wins? Flip the coin as they did 50 years ago?


Or play forever until someone scores (or everybody collapse for fadigue) ?


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Always better than seeing a bunch of fatties running in circle with a wooden rod.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And they call them "athletes" hno:





Road_UK said:


> :lol::lol::lol:


Please. They're rarely that fat. Completely atypical.
Baseball is an art. Europeans just can't understand it.
What's ridiculous is cricket.

:cheers:


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Or play forever until someone scores (or everybody collapse for fadigue) ?


That's why they make the big bucks.
It works in other sports.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Please. They're rarely that fat. Completely atypical.
> Baseball is an art. Europeans just can't understand it.


I like American football, although I still have to understand why they call it "football" when just one player uses his feet. I don't like basketball but I can understand people who likes it.

Baseball, and its fans, are a mystery to me.



> What's ridiculous is cricket.
> 
> :cheers:


Like there's any difference


----------



## g.spinoza

http://www.complex.com/sports/2011/08/the-25-greatest-fat-baseball-players-of-all-time

The 25 greatest fat baseball players of all time.

You see, in soccer, pages like this don't exist. Only Maradona was fat, but he was a god.


----------



## Road_UK

I agree with you on that one...

Still...



























Just a joke, Penns, just a joke...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I like baseball. Not enough that I have a favorite team though. It's a more family-friendly game, you won't find hooligans in baseball like you find them with football. What I don't like about football (soccer) is that you have to sit through 90 minutes to see maybe 1 - 3 goals, or worse, none at all. I like to watch football from time to time but I almost never watch an entire match because it's often boring.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ In my opinion, having too many points in a game "dumbs" it down a little bit. In soccer you come to appreciate the technical aspects of the game, the tactics, the middle-field game, not only the highlights.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> I agree with you on that one...
> 
> Still...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Just a joke, Penns, just a joke...



:cheers:


----------



## MajKeR_

italystf said:


> :rofl:


We have these 



















translation: How will be in German "nothing happened"? [Poles sing "nic się nie stało" when our team loses, so quite often]





































firstly: I will win the Euro
secondly: such d*ck


----------



## Road_UK

- edit


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Only see a red X....


----------



## Suburbanist

The team-with-ball sport I like most to watch is volleyball: it is always dynamic, individual starts are worthless without strong support team, and it is very strategic.


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Only see a red X....


http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/europe_764d5e_183101.jpg


----------



## keokiracer

^^ You can't link from Funnyjunk...


----------



## Road_UK

It comes up on my screen ok...


----------



## keokiracer

Not here... I get redirected to the funnyjunk main page


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Same for me. I had to type in the whole link.


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> The team-with-ball sport I like most to watch is volleyball: it is always dynamic, individual starts are worthless without strong support team, and it is very strategic.


Volleyball is nice, but it lacks contact.


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> Volleyball is nice, but it lacks contact.


What about sex?


----------



## bogdymol

I'm not sure that's a sport...


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> What about sex?


It's not a ball game. I mean, actually it is 



bogdymol said:


> I'm not sure that's a sport...


No, but it should be.


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> It's not a ball game. I mean, actually it is


We call them eggs, and it makes even more sense.


----------



## Penn's Woods

In case I forget, or don't get on line Sunday:

HAPPY CANADA DAY to those of you who are, you know, Canadian.


----------



## g.spinoza




----------



## Satyricon84




----------



## cinxxx

I live in Germany and prefer Italy :lol:


----------



## Satyricon84

I live in Italy and I prefere when I lived in Germany


----------



## CNGL

g.spinoza said:


> Volleyball is nice, but it lacks contact.


Volleyball? The sport that in Spain has a league with the same acronym as a well known town in Spanish forums? :lol:. But I prefer a renting company, which name is the acronym of a degenerative disease! :nuts:.

Anyway I love another team sport: Handball. Here there is contact .


----------



## keber

CNGL said:


> Anyway I love another team sport: Handball. Here there is contact .


True, for me more interesting to watch than football. In my hometown there is good team, which is competing even through Europe.

However now I'm into rugby (playing too), contact at its fullest.:cheers:


----------



## cinxxx

Arranged match in Romania, watch the video from the link, I don't it can be embedded


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> Volleyball? The sport that in Spain has a league with the same acronym as a well known town in Spanish forums? :lol:. But I prefer a renting company, which name is the acronym of a degenerative disease! :nuts:.
> 
> Anyway I love another team sport: Handball. Here there is contact .


Is an Italian town between Naples and Reggio Calabria that has something in common with Pula, HR? :lol:


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> Arranged match in Romania, watch the video from the link, I don't it can be embedded


They were punished, IIRC.


----------



## cinxxx

Verso said:


> They were punished, IIRC.


Yes, they were. Thanks for TV footage.
But this was exactly the way things were done during communism.


----------



## Attus

For two days, any time I open this forum in my PC, the computer freezes. Now I use the Android application.


----------



## Attus

keber said:


> True, for me more interesting to watch than football. In my hometown there is good team, which is competing even through Europe.
> 
> However now I'm into rugby (playing too), contact at its fullest.:cheers:


Should it be Krim, or some male team from Koper or Celje?


----------



## Road_UK

Attus said:


> For two days, any time I open this forum in my PC, the computer freezes. Now I use the Android application.


I use Android whenever I'm out and about, like right now I'm writing this from Innsbruck airport...


----------



## g.spinoza

CNGL said:


> Anyway I love another team sport: Handball. Here there is contact .


I don't like handball at all. Too many goals, no midfield play. Players just run from a goal zone to the other. Same problem with water polo, basketball, and a number of other sports. They could cut the field in half and just play on only one goal.


----------



## bogdymol

cinxxx said:


> Arranged match in Romania, watch the video from the link, I don't it can be embedded


I like the goal from 2:29 :lol:


----------



## Road_UK

Satyricon84 said:


> I live in Italy and I prefere when I lived in Germany


What is better for you in Germany?


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> What is better for you in Germany?


Italy and Germany are not even remotely comparable in terms of quality of living. I prefer when I lived in Germany, too.


----------



## Road_UK

But surely Italy is a lot more fun, its prettier and the people are friendlier? That's my experience in Italy anyway, far more laid back then these grumpy Germans...


----------



## cinxxx

Road_UK said:


> But surely Italy is a lot more fun, its prettier and the people are friendlier? That's my experience in Italy anyway, far more laid back then these grumpy Germans...


You can almost say this for Romania too.
But only as a tourist, or passing by, you won't have the same opinion after you encounter all the bad things of everyday life as a person who lives there


----------



## Suburbanist

I think the Euro(pean) (Football Cup) should have a 3rd place match like the World Cup.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> But surely Italy is a lot more fun,


If you are the adventurous type, sure.



> its prettier


I think it just has more variety of environments. Cities and towns in Germany are prettier, setting aside exceptions like Rome, Florence, Venice and some smaller towns. German towns are orderly and relaxing, Italian ones are stressful 



> and the people are friendlier? That's my experience in Italy anyway, far more laid back then these grumpy Germans...


Bavarians are far frendlier than, say, Abruzzese or Sardinians


----------



## Satyricon84

Road_UK said:


> What is better for you in Germany?


G.Spinoza answered you for me too. I can add, I prefere the german climate since I hate pretty much hot and sticky summer here... I liked the free autobahns so that I could travel all week-ends somewhere just spending fuel, while here I can't. About to have fun, in Germany even in small villages there were things to do, for example in the rural area of Main-Tauber-Kreis were my ex came from, there were always a lot of concerts for whom loved metal music or parties in club for whom loved house and electro music. A bus shuttle went through all villages of the area for dont let guy drive after drink (drinks in Germany are super comparating here, and much cheaper). In Italy this doesn't exist, and I hardly find something funny to do in my town (20.000 inhabitants) cause here there are just smalls bars that close at 01.00am so you have to go by force to Milan. But even there, locals that do for example music I like are just 2 or 3 so after some times starts to be boring (and expansive since you pay minimun 10 € just for to enter, and 4 € for a low quality beer). And for last but not less important... for me german girls (northern/central/eastern to be precise) are the most beautiful cause Mediterranean girls with dark eyes, small and tanned skin I dont like at all. And here where I live, since it isn't neither a touristic town, I don't see any girl looking like my favourite kind! Then there are many other things but these are enough....

EDIT: about work in Italy: to break my back for 900/1000€ monthly, don't have any gratification for your good work but see you have to take orders from recommended people for then arriving at home tired and watch in television your Prime Minister and his entourage that nobody elected to tell "people have to do sacrifice cause to work is not a right, or that people should work one week more in a year - and who said this, works just 2 or 3 hours by day 2 or 3 days for week-" rising taxes on everything to pay the disaster the politicians did wasting public money...honestly I don't like at all to be part of this system


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I quote the climate thing (I'm just sweating my *ss off here), and the girls (my girlfriend is Italian but she has blue eyes and pale skin  )


----------



## Satyricon84

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ I quote the climate thing (I'm just sweating my *ss off here), and the girls (my girlfriend is Italian but she has blue eyes and pale skin  )


My actual girlfriend is brazilian with german and italian grandparents (pale skin too but with green eyes )


----------



## Road_UK

So why have you both left Germany?


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> So why have you both left Germany?


My contract expired and I wanted to reunite with my girl. But I'm seriously thinking of going back...


----------



## Road_UK

Financially and jobs wise it probably gives you better options. I will tell you what I think of Germans, Italians, the French etc etc tonight when I'm on my computer...


----------



## x-type

i actually hate when people think that pizza is the main thing in Italian cuisine. hell no. for me it is only kinda snack. first thing that falls on my mind when somebody mentions italian cuisine is bistecca. of course, on rucola and leaves of grana.


----------



## g.spinoza

There is no such thing as "Italian cuisine". There are many "Italian cuisines", each very different from the other.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Austrian cuisine is similar to Italian? The only connection I can think of is because Trieste used to be in Austria-Hungary.


I wouldn't say similar but it's better to us comparing to the German one. Also France and Spain aren't bad.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Freeway cooking 101.


----------



## cinxxx

I also ate in Füssen at an Italian, at a place called Peperoncino.
Very good pizza. Also there was the game Germany-Denmark, all Italians were watching, and they cheered for the Danish goal :lol:

Also today we just bought a new bike for my girlfriend, this is the model


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Here in Mayrhofen it is anyway. Very Italian orientated here, Italy is only two hours on foot from here. But the local dishes are really nice as well...


Only two hours on foot? Mountains south of Mayrhofen are quite rugged, the only doable access I think is the Pfitscherjoch/Passo di Vizze, and I think the time to get there is longer...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Road_UK has a jetpack.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Road_UK has a jetpack.


I bet he climbs the dirt road up to the pass in his van


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> Only two hours on foot? Mountains south of Mayrhofen are quite rugged, the only doable access I think is the Pfitscherjoch/Passo di Vizze, and I think the time to get there is longer...


Yes, from Mayrhofen you drive or take a bus for 20 minutes to a big lake, and from there its a 2 hour walk to the Pfitscherjoch Hut, which is on Italian soil, but it belongs to the tourist office of Mayrhofen. From the Italian side its accessible by car, from Mayrhofen you have to go round via Brenner. And a lot of locals do that when a mess is being held there, some are too old to walk.


----------



## Attus

Satyricon84 said:


> a kind of pasta with Turo that I don't remember the name (it sounded like Turo Csucsa or something like that)


It's called "túrós csusza", pronounced like "turosh chusa". I like it very much


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Yes, from Mayrhofen you drive or take a bus for 20 minutes to a big lake, and from there its a 2 hour walk to the Pfitscherjoch Hut, which is on Italian soil, but it belongs to the tourist office of Mayrhofen. *From the Italian side its accessible by car*, from Mayrhofen you have to go round via Brenner. And a lot of locals do that when a mess is being held there, some are too old to walk.


Not anymore, the road has been closed at 3rd or 4th hairpin turn, more or less at 1720 m (the pass itself is at 2276 m)


----------



## Satyricon84

Attus said:


> It's called "túrós csusza", pronounced like "turosh chusa". I like it very much


köszönöm!


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> Not anymore, the road has been closed at 3rd or 4th hairpin turn, more or less at 1720 m (the pass itself is at 2276 m)


On the Italian side?


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> On the Italian side?


Yep. They closed it not many years ago.


----------



## italystf

cinxxx said:


> I also ate in Füssen at an Italian, at a place called Peperoncino.
> Very good pizza. Also there was the game Germany-Denmark, all Italians were watching, and they cheered for the Danish goal :lol:


Yes, it was the same restaurant


----------



## Verso

Idrija mercury mine has just become our third UNESCO site. :cheers: (we only had one until last year)


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Idrija mercury mine has just become our third UNESCO site. :cheers: (we only had one until last year)


I have the feeling that UNESCO is giving the award too easily. I'm not referring to Idrija mine, which I don't know, I'm sure it's worth. I'm referring to other things I know better, like the entire historical centre of Brescia that, quite frankly, doesn't deserve it.

Congrats, however! The other two being..?


----------



## Chilio

Actually the tasteless and worse pizza I ever ate in my life was in... Italy. I had a night stop between two flights in Bergamo and went to a small pizzeria on the street where my hostel was. It was a mistake, all pizza's I've eaten in other countries all around Europe were better than this.


----------



## makaveli6

Worst pizza I ever ate was in Pizza Hut.


----------



## cinxxx

italystf said:


> Yes, it was the same restaurant


----------



## g.spinoza

Chilio said:


> Actually the tasteless and worse pizza I ever ate in my life was in... Italy. I had a night stop between two flights in Bergamo and went to a small pizzeria on the street where my hostel was. It was a mistake, all pizza's I've eaten in other countries all around Europe were better than this.


It happens, unfortunately. 
A lot of pizzerias, especially in northern italy, are managed by egyptians and moroccans, who don't know zip about pizza. Overall quality of pizzerias is going down.
But then you go to Naples, and it's a different story 



makaveli6 said:


> Worst pizza I ever ate was in Pizza Hut.


Call it whatever you want, but not pizza, cause it isn't.


----------



## Orionol

The worst pizza I have ever eaten is all kinds of pizzerias in Blekinge, Sweden. I dont know why but every single pizzeria in Blekinge taste the same and I think they have the same supplier. It is very disgusting, though restaurant/pizzerias in Skåne are way better. Probably every restaurant or pizzeria in Sweden are owned by foreigner (mostly Arabs, Greeks, Turks or Balkan people). It is really hard to find a Swedish guy making you a pizza. I like pizza with hot-tomato sauce, but Blekinges dosen't have them unfortunately and their bread is sooo thick. But one sort of pizza that every fellow need to taste when visiting Sweden is Kebab Pizza (dont think that there are any in other countries :dunno.


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> I have the feeling that UNESCO is giving the award too easily.


I agree, many sites aren't that special IMO. But if it's about their protection, then it's good, I guess.



g.spinoza said:


> Congrats, however! The other two being..?


Idrija mercury mine
Škocjan Caves close to Italy (since 1986)
Prehistoric pile dwellings south of Ljubljana (since last year)


----------



## hofburg

In Paris they don't know what pizza is. Except few italian restaurants maybe. (but they are expensive).
In Nova Gorica they make pretty good pizzas, taste quite similar to italian ones. Gorizia has some good pizzerias, and best pizza I ate was in Venice.


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> In Paris they don't know what pizza is. Except few italian restaurants maybe. (but they are expensive).
> In Nova Gorica they make pretty good pizzas, taste quite similar to italian ones. Gorizia has some good pizzerias, and best pizza I ate was in Venice.


Have you ever eat a whole "ljubljanska" at "Da Gianni" in Gorizia?


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> I agree, many sites aren't that special IMO. But if it's about their protection, then it's good, I guess.
> 
> Idrija mercury mine
> Škocjan Caves close to Italy (since 1986)
> Prehistoric pile dwellings south of Ljubljana (since last year)


Are Postojna caves less important than them?


----------



## hofburg

italystf said:


> Have you ever eat a whole "ljubljanska" at "Da Gianni" in Gorizia?


no, where is that?


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> no, where is that?


Via Morelli 10 Gorizia
open between Wednesday and Sunday

That place is well-known across Friuli - Venezia Giulia because of the huge (around 1kg, 20euros) ljubljansksa that only brave guys can eat as whole. :lol:


----------



## hofburg

will check it out


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> In Paris they don't know what pizza is.


I had a great pizza in Paris. 



italystf said:


> That place is well-known across Friuli - Venezia Giulia because of the huge (around 1kg, 20euros) ljubljansksa that only brave guys can eat as whole. :lol:


No wonder it's called after us, I like huge pizzas.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Are Postojna caves less important than them?


The Postojna Cave is bigger, more popular, more interesting (train) and even more beautiful IMO, but the Škocjan Caves have some other phenomena that are explained here.


----------



## bogdymol

Sunrise in Arad, Romania


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> Sunrise in Arad, Romania


Good night.


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> Good night.


It was good morning :lol:

Yesterday I was awake from 8 a.m. to 7 a.m. this morning... so that means 23h without sleeping


----------



## x-type

Orionol said:


> But one sort of pizza that every fellow need to taste when visiting Sweden is Kebab Pizza (dont think that there are any in other countries :dunno.


there are. but that has really nothing in common with pizza. i mean, when will somebody get the idea to put a roast pig on pizza? Turks and Arabs should stick on their food which is good enough and should leave pizza to Italians.
the same goes for that thing called Chicago-style pizza, which has appeared also here in HR in last few years. that "all-you-have-found-in-the-fridge" thing is not pizza. especially when it is 4 kg heavy. of course, covered with the thing that they call "grated mozzarella". if that's mozzarella, i am Chinese.


----------



## hofburg

bogdymol said:


> Yesterday I was awake from 8 a.m. to 7 a.m. this morning... so that means 23h without sleeping


If I wake up at 8 a.m it feels like the middle of the night to me.


----------



## Road_UK

Is it me, or has the site been down for a while?


----------



## bogdymol

Road_UK said:


> Is it me, or has the site been down for a while?


Try refreshing. It has some errors and many users stated that they see this: "No input file specified."


----------



## keokiracer

Just rape F5 and the site will appear


----------



## bogdymol

^^ You owe me a new keyboard...


----------



## Fatfield

Balotelli chucking his toys out of the pram at the end was hilarious.

:lol::lol::lol::lol:


----------



## cinxxx

I won't say football is boring. 
Some matches are, some are really interesting.

But yes, it transformed from being a sport and steering passion, to a money driven business show. Fans are no more fans, but people who go to see a show, like going to the theater and people who search for a place to burn their frustrations.

Teams without money almost don't have a chance anymore to win a competition.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Road_UK has a jetpack.


That wouldn't be "on foot" then!


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Yes, from Mayrhofen you drive or take a bus for 20 minutes to a big lake, and from there its a 2 hour walk to the Pfitscherjoch Hut, which is on Italian soil, but it belongs to the tourist office of Mayrhofen. From the Italian side its accessible by car, from Mayrhofen you have to go round via Brenner. And a lot of locals do that *when a mess is being held there*, some are too old to walk.


Huh?


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Huh?


Maybe a "mass"?


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> I won't say football is boring.
> Some matches are, some are really interesting.
> 
> But yes, it transformed from being a sport and steering passion, to a money driven business show. Fans are no more fans, but people who go to see a show, like going to the theater and people who search for a place to burn their frustrations.
> 
> Teams without money almost don't have a chance anymore to win a competition.


A sport is just a sport. People are the problem.
Proof is, now that rugby is gaining popularity in Italy some of the problems previously connected only with football fans are arising.


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> Maybe a "mass"?


Sorry yes, mass... Catholic from head to toe down here...


----------



## Fatfield

g.spinoza said:


> A sport is just a sport. People are the problem.
> Proof is, now that rugby is gaining popularity in Italy some of the problems previously connected only with football fans are arising.


Really? I'm surprised as we don't have any problems with hooligans in both forms of the game over here. In fact, rugby is the envy of many football fans as you can stand and watch the game with a beer. Much the same as the Bundesliga.

Come to think of it, we don't have many problems with hooligans at football either. Certainly not in the Premier or Championship.


----------



## cinxxx

g.spinoza said:


> A sport is just a sport. People are the problem.
> Proof is, now that rugby is gaining popularity in Italy some of the problems previously connected only with football fans are arising.


Not only people, as in spectators, but also the ones running the federations, leagues, UEFA, FIFA, and not to forget the betting industry. There is so much money involved nowadays that it's not a sport anymore. It's a money making machine sportish show.
And if someone says football in Italy is corrupt and bad, you haven't seen the Romanian, that shit can be called in many ways, but football or sport it's not.


----------



## g.spinoza

Fatfield said:


> Come to think of it, we don't have many problems with hooligans at football either. Certainly not in the Premier or Championship.


Maybe they just give vent to their worst instincts abroad... The only football game I watched live, in a stadium, was some Italy-Wales in Bologna, maybe ten years ago... a friendly match... but Welsh fans devastated the city... :bash:

EDIT: It was not a friendly match but a Euro 2000 qualification one...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Sorry yes, mass... Catholic from head to toe down here...


I thought you might be mixing languages and talking about a convention (Messe)! Or a mess on the roads.


----------



## Suburbanist

I need to upload pictures from Spain, Switzerland, France, Italy and Netherlands! 4 road trips of pics are on my unorganized pics' folder still...


----------



## cinxxx

I also have to post pictures (DE, AUT, HU, RO) from my Ingolstadt-Timisoara trip...


----------



## cinxxx

Are we to busy to enjoy Life?



> If you live in America in the 21st century you’ve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “So busy.” “Crazy busy.” It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: “That’s a good problem to have,” or “Better than the opposite.”
> 
> It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this; it’s something we collectively force one another to do.
> Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.
> 
> Almost everyone I know is busy. They feel anxious and guilty when they aren’t either working or doing something to promote their work. They schedule in time with friends the way students with 4.0 G.P.A.’s make sure to sign up for community service because it looks good on their college applications. I recently wrote a friend to ask if he wanted to do something this week, and he answered that he didn’t have a lot of time but if something was going on to let him know and maybe he could ditch work for a few hours. I wanted to clarify that my question had not been a preliminary heads-up to some future invitation; this was the invitation. But his busyness was like some vast churning noise through which he was shouting out at me, and I gave up trying to shout back over it.
> 
> [...]


----------



## keber

^^ As writer was talking about me ...


----------



## Verso

Today I was for the first time in my life in general anaesthesia. It's funny how you pass out in a minute. :dance2:


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> Today I was for the first in my life in general anaesthesia. It's funny how you pass out in a minute. :dance2:


I also was in general anasthesia about 1.5 years ago for a surgery. I felt like druged during the next 3 days. I barely could walk while my head was like this -> :nuts:


----------



## Verso

Yeah, it's a bit weird. I was poking jokes when I woke up:

Me: Wanna know what I was dreaming?
Others: Sure, tell us!
Me: I don't know.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Today I was for the first in my life in general anaesthesia. It's funny how you pass out in a minute. :dance2:


Everything all right?

I did a joke to my girlfriend some years ago. Se falls asleep very quickly, so one night I said: "Let's do like in the movies, when the doctor says 'count from 10 to 1' and then applies the anaesthetic, and the patient goes '10, 9, 8...' and then falls asleep. But I give you more time, so let's start from 50".

She fell asleep while saying "47".


My grandmother, many years ago, after waking up from anaesthesia was terrified by the hospital cooking, because she believed that German soldiers from WWII were in the kitchen...


----------



## g.spinoza

They found Higgs boson, at 5 sigma level of confidence.

This is history of science, I'm very excited. Higgs himself was on the verge of tears at conference in Geneva.

Amazing.


----------



## cinxxx

Meanwhile in Romania 2009


----------



## mapman:cz

g.spinoza said:


> They found Higgs boson, at 5 sigma level of confidence.
> 
> This is history of science, I'm very excited. Higgs himself was on the verge of tears at conference in Geneva.
> 
> Amazing.


True, amazing ...

And to add some fun-factor, I'd like to see Sheldon Cooper at the moment he learned the news


----------



## g.spinoza




----------



## hofburg

mapman:cz said:


> True, amazing ...
> 
> And to add some fun-factor, I'd like to see Sheldon Cooper at the moment he learned the news


hope they make some kind of reference in the next season


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> Everything all right?


Yeah, I think so.



g.spinoza said:


> I did a joke to my girlfriend some years ago. Se falls asleep very quickly, so one night I said: "Let's do like in the movies, when the doctor says 'count from 10 to 1' and then applies the anaesthetic, and the patient goes '10, 9, 8...' and then falls asleep. But I give you more time, so let's start from 50".
> 
> She fell asleep while saying "47".
> 
> 
> My grandmother, many years ago, after waking up from anaesthesia was terrified by the hospital cooking, because she believed that German soldiers from WWII were in the kitchen...


That was funny. :lol: I don't know why, but you're kind of euphoric when you wake up.


Higgs boson... amazing stuff.


----------



## x-type

i have never experienced general anaesthesia. and never actually understood why many people avoid it or talk that much about it. i feel like it is just a normal sleeping. (but i know i am wrong  )


----------



## Verso

^^ Try to be operated while you're asleep and you'll wake up in no time. :lol:


----------



## Orionol

Excuse me but what the hell is Higgs boson or bison?!?!?
Is it some random Polish dude named Higgs that have a Bison in his yard or what? :dunno: What I know is that Bison is a only existing animal in Poland and maybe also Belarus, that had a ruff past and will probably have a ruff future too (like buffalo).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Here you go;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson


----------



## g.spinoza

One of the scientists at the press conference explained it brilliantly:

"Imagine having a room full of journalists equally distributed across the room: that's the Higgs field. Now imagine an unimportant person traveling across the room: journalists will mind their own businesses so the uninmportant person will travel undisturbed (at the speed of light) across the room. Now imagine a very important person entering the room. Journalists will cluster around him and make him move slowly (less than the speed of light), and therefore he will acquire mass.
You saw that before, when professor Higgs entered this very room full of journalists, how heavy he became!"


----------



## Orionol

Okay, but will this help our everyday life or something? What does this Higgs contribute to?


----------



## g.spinoza

Orionol said:


> Okay, but will this help our everyday life or something?


Science does not work this way. This is science, not technology.
Besides, 100 years ago you could also ask the same thing about another particle, the electron, without which now you cannot have electricity or electronic devices.


----------



## makaveli6

Tomorrow i will drive on my first motorway ever.


----------



## keokiracer

^^ I drove today for the first time


----------



## keber

Today I didn't drove on motorway.


----------



## CNGL

When I got my driver licence I had already driven on a motorway . Since then my longest drive on a motorway was some weeks ago when I went to Zaragoza with my car. When I was going back home I made a detour to see the Northern section of Zaragoza's 4th beltway (the one that is a motorway, where E90 and Z-40 are multiplexed). They have widened it in some sections to 2+3+3+2, and it is almost finished (Only one lane remains to open).


----------



## MattN

On Saturday night or Sunday Morning (no pun intended) I will drive both abroad and on the right hand side of the road for the first time.


----------



## MajKeR_

Two weeks ago I drove my 50 cc scooter on motorway.


----------



## Road_UK

MattN said:


> On Saturday night or Sunday Morning (no pun intended) I will drive both abroad and on the right hand side of the road for the first time.


Where are you going?


----------



## bogdymol

Does anyone around here have a car running on LPG? How is it? Does it worth it? etc...

I'm thinking about converting my dad's car on LPG...


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> Does anyone around here have a car running on LPG? How is it? Does it worth it? etc...
> 
> I'm thinking about converting my dad's car on LPG...


One of my friends owns a LPG-powered Ford Fiesta. Until last year he spent half of what I spend on my diesel Peugeot 207 to fill up. But its range was half of mine, so it was not worth (although I must say my car has a 70 hp engine while his has a 90 hp engine)...

Now that diesel is going up (and LPG less so) it could be more worth.


----------



## bogdymol

It isn't such a big problem with the range. I'll just have to stop more often for refueling... but I still think that I could get a 500 km range just on LPG + about the same on petrol.

My car has a 1.4 L engine with 94 hp.


----------



## Suburbanist

A downside of LPG cars is that they are not allowed in many underground or even overground multi-story parking garages.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> It isn't such a big problem with the range. I'll just have to stop more often for refueling... but I still think that I could get a 500 km range just on LPG + *about the same on petrol.*


You want to convert yours? I think the petrol tank on a LPG converted car is very tiny, to be used only as emergency backup


----------



## ChrisZwolle

LPG generally has a higher consumption. My dad drives an early 2000's BMW 5-series on LPG, he gets about 6 km/l or 16.7 L / 100 km. Previously LPG often resulted in less power, however this is not really an issue anymore nowadays.

As are many things in a motorist life, driving LPG in the Netherlands is mainly because of taxes. While LPG is about € 1 cheaper than gasoline, the monthly road tax is higher (often more than € 100 per month) than gasoline, but with the gas price being as high as it is, LPG is an option. LPG was less profitable when the difference with gasoline was less, because of the higher road tax (often at least twice the gasoline car tax).

If you want to drive LPG, you must accept that you have to frequent the gas stations more often. My former boss drove LPG but had to refuel every second day, as his range was just over 300 km. 

Also, LPG is not as common in all countries. For instance it's uncommon in countries like Austria, Switzerland, Denmark or Norway. However, LPG cars are able to drive both on gasoline and LPG, in fact they always start the engine with gasoline.

Note that you can't convert diesel cars into LPG.


----------



## bogdymol

Suburbanist said:


> A downside of LPG cars is that they are not allowed in many underground or even overground multi-story parking garages.


It can also run on petrol, so it's ok.



g.spinoza said:


> You want to convert yours? I think the petrol tank on a LPG converted car is very tiny, to be used only as emergency backup


I've seen an offer here in Arad and they don't make any changes to the petrol tank, but they add another tank for LPG in the space where the spare wheel is under the trunks carpet.

@Chris: thank you for your ellaborate answer.

I made some calculations and it turns out that in 12 months I would get my money back if I turn the car on LPG.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Also, LPG is not as common in all countries. For instance it's uncommon in countries like Austria, Switzerland, Denmark or Norway.


Driving LPG in Finland is pretty expensive. The penalty for a passenger car is 330 EUR per day in minimum.


----------



## g.spinoza

MattiG said:


> Driving LPG in Finland is pretty expensive. The penalty for a passenger car is 330 EUR per day in minimum.


Penalty? For driving LPG in Finland? Is it forbidden?


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> Penalty? For driving LPG in Finland? Is it forbidden?


Yes, except for trucks and buses.


----------



## g.spinoza

MattiG said:


> Yes, except for trucks and buses.


Safety issues?


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> Safety issues?


No, taxation.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What about foreign LPG cars? Are they exempt?


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> What about foreign LPG cars? Are they exempt?


I hope so, I think that vehicles must be autorized to circulate freely from a country to another because of EU laws.

What about hybrid cars in Finland?
Are there other countries with such crazy laws?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

What are the benefits of LPG?


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> What about foreign LPG cars? Are they exempt?


No they are not. The cash flow protection tax (officially called "fuel payment") is applicable to foreign cars, too. Better to pay at the border customs office in order to avoid surcharges.

The legislation was originally created to prevent people from using heating oil instead of diesel oil by making the penalties absurd. Currently, it is the instrument to introduce a price tag for using other fuels than benzin, diesel oil and CNG.

(This law applies to vehicles having a combustion engine. 100% electric cars etc are subject to other legislation.)


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> What about hybrid cars in Finland?


Subject to the normal vehicles taxes.


----------



## piotr71

ChrisZwolle said:


> Note that you can't convert diesel cars into LPG.


You can. Polish 'Elpigaz' is known for such conversions. 

I have had or used several LPG converted cars. Apart from mentioned downsides and upsides there is one disadvantage of used cars converted to LPG. They are more prone to failures if not serviced properly, I mean, the LPG system needs additional servicing. LPG powered engine would also benefit with specially tailored oil and spark plugs.

There is one interesting benefit of using LPG car, in particular for those living in London, it is an opportunity to drive within congestion charge zone not paying a penny.


----------



## italystf

MattiG said:


> Subject to the normal vehicles taxes.


So are there LPG stations in Finland to serve hybrid cars?

How can they enforce the ban of foreign LPG-only cars since there aren't anymore border checks with Sweden and Norway?

Is acceptable within EU laws a restriction towards the circulation of a class of vehicles from other EU members?
I know there is a sort of agreement (Geneva or Vienna convention, I'm not sure) that states that international road traffic must be allowed regardless local laws.


----------



## Road_UK

Can Finland do this? There must an EU directive, protecting EU citizens against Finnish harshness....


----------



## hofburg

my next car will be a hybrid, and I will only drive on national roads and vignette-motorways.


----------



## Suburbanist

italystf said:


> 2nd highest road in Europe after Col de la Bonette, right?
> BTW, what kind of plate is it?


I don't know which plate is it...


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> I don't know which plate is it...


Surely Satyricon and Recycle do.


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> That's criminal.


At the conceptual level, I do not see any difference to the Italian fines of up to 10000 euros for buying a fake Rolex.

Any country is entitled to create their own tax system. At the EU level, there is some harmonization, like the EU-wide ban from using heating oil instead of diesel oil. The preventive measures are up to each country to decide. The current system has been in place since 1992 and the EU has not criticized it. Thus calling it criminal is nonsense.

That sort of a threat is rather a powerful way to prevent the tax system from leaking. The value of non-leakage is well visible especially nowadays when there is a trend to save the counties in the south European corruption zone by using the money collected from taxpayers of the central and north Europe.


----------



## italystf

MattiG said:


> At the conceptual level, I do not see any difference to the Italian fines of up to 10000 euros for buying a fake Rolex.
> 
> Any country is entitled to create their own tax system. At the EU level, there is some harmonization, like the EU-wide ban from using heating oil instead of diesel oil. The preventive measures are up to each country to decide. The current system has been in place since 1992 and the EU has not criticized it. Thus calling it criminal is nonsense.
> 
> That sort of a threat is rather a powerful way to prevent the tax system from leaking. The value of non-leakage is well visible especially nowadays when there is a trend to save the counties in the south European corruption zone by using the money collected from taxpayers of the central and north Europe.


Allowing foreign tourists driving their LPG vehicles for nothing or for a small fee (let's say 5 EUR/day) wouldn't made Finnish tax system leaking since most of a country's tax income come from residents and not tourists. It would be more respectful towards EU integration and would increase LPG car ownership in other nordic countries (I would never buy a car that couldn't be driven for example in Austria).
Fines should be proportioned to the economical or social damage that the violator made to the society and shouldn't just an unhetical mean for making easy money.
About heating oil, apart the fact that it damages engines because it isn't pure, do we really need an EU ban for it? Why not letting single members to legiferate about this small things?


----------



## keokiracer

Meanwhile in Russia :rofl:


----------



## void0

That is not Russia (see number plates).
Might be Caucasis or Cental Asia though. This kind of behavior is not typical for Russians either.


----------



## MajKeR_

italystf said:


> In Italy motorcycles below 150cc aren't allowed on motorways and blue-signs expressways.


It suprises me. V-max and acceleration of 125 and 150 cc motos is almost the same though. Isn't it for banish from motorways people under 18 (because you can drive a 125 cc with A1 driving license, possible to get from 16 years old)?



x-type said:


> here you are
> btw i rather think it is between tunnel San Rocco (intersection A24/A25) and L'Aquila


It may be a Vespa PX150 or PX200 of some (old) sort.


----------



## Suburbanist

One of the major complaints about downsides of automatic gearbox cars were that they had just 3 or 4 gears and made driving uncomfortable. 

However, more and more we see automatic cars with 6 or even 7 (Volkswagen is jumping into it) gears and also more easy-to-operate semi-automatic gear mode (when you just pull the stick up or down to change shifts instead of going through the 1-2-3-4-(N)-D sequence.

This should take care of the former concerns. I think cars in Europe should have more automatic options for similar prices, as it is much easier on the body coordination to drive them. Maybe they could even conceive some stick embedded in the wheel so that you click one arrow to change up, other arrow to change down (like some cars already have a 3rd wheel-base stick for radio, navigation control, cruise control or what else.

What do you think of it?


----------



## italystf

MajKeR_ said:


> It suprises me. V-max and acceleration of 125 and 150 cc motos is almost the same though. Isn't it for banish from motorways people under 18 (because you can drive a 125 cc with A1 driving license, possible to get from 16 years old)?


Probably. There are too much 125cc motos around that would flow the motorways and slow traffic.


----------



## bogdymol

MajKeR_ said:


> (because you can drive a 125 cc with A1 driving license, possible to get from 16 years old)


I've took my A1 driving license when I was 16 :yes:


----------



## seem

Guys I need your help now  I was planning to cycle to Istria. I am thinking to take train from Vienna to Ljubljana (costs 30€, very cheap for Austrian standarts) and then cycle to Croatia on road 10 through Logatec, Postojna, Divača, Loka - 208, Croatian border - Buzet. How high is AADT on these roads?

Is this safe or I should rather use some other roads (the problem is they run through quite hilly part of Slovenia)? I mean it is the main 1st class road between the coast and Ljubljana, but there is A1 right next to it so I was hoping this road is wide and empty.


----------



## Road_UK

How about you cycle in Holland instead? Nationwide cycle path network with traffic lights, proper lane markings and safety interests registered in the Highway Code, makes Holland the best country to cycle in, with the exception of Amsterdam where cycle-anarchy rules...

And of course Holland is as flat as a tat.


----------



## seem

You forgot to mention great weather all year round and beautifle landscape. :yes:

Well firstly I wanted to cycle from Slovakia all the way down to Istria but as half of the route is pretty much just flat puszta I think I d be better to get there by train and then explore Istria and spend more days by the sea.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Forget the Netherlands then. We haven't had a single ADS day so far (Above Average, Dry & Sunny) while some summers score over 50 ADS days. It's currently 17 C and rainy and it will stay that way for the next 2 weeks or so.


----------



## seem

In countries with ocenic climate you sometimes get better weather in Spring than in the Summer. :nuts:


----------



## hofburg

I think he's not looking for urban cycling but for some nature.
where did you pick those road numbers? road Ljubljana - Divaca is 409. from Ljubljana to Vrhnika aadt is about 20.000 - to 10.000, then towards Postojna it is lower than 10.000.

Ljubljana, Vrhnika is 300m above sea
Logatec 500m
Postojna 600m
then you go generally down


----------



## bogdymol

Today I went to a mechanic and decided to convert my car to LPG. I have an appointment for Wednesday and the total cost is 2400 lei (=530 € ... btw: how much does it cost in your country?). Hopefully everything will be fine. The mechanic is authorised (official) and has installed about LPG on about 8000 cars in the last years.


----------



## Angelos

In Greece it costs about 1000-1500 euro depends on the car cc displacement


----------



## Road_UK

hofburg said:


> I think he's not looking for urban cycling but for some nature.
> where did you pick those road numbers? road Ljubljana - Divaca is 409. from Ljubljana to Vrhnika aadt is about 20.000 - to 10.000, then towards Postojna it is lower than 10.000.
> 
> Ljubljana, Vrhnika is 300m above sea
> Logatec 500m
> Postojna 600m
> then you go generally down


Holland is not urban, and there are some wonderful countrysides all over the nation. I miss some of my summers on the Frisian lakes, but I generally don't miss the weather in Holland. Here in Mayrhofen we have been huffin and puffin for weeks now, temperature never went below 20, and has reached levels of 40. We usually have good weather here, with 25+ temperatures as early as March sometimes.


----------



## hofburg

I tried putting google streetview little man randomly in Netherlands (btw why do you say Holland?), and 4 times of 5 I got urban area. And I tried putting it in the 'empty' areas between cities.


----------



## Road_UK

Just don't put the streetview guy in cities, but somewhere where its green. Take a look around a town called Workum, and admire the sightings there. That is where my roots are from. Very rural, and it attracts shitloads of Germans every summer. Lots of lakes, canals and green grass to swim, sail and have sex with cows if you're into that. Although Holland technically only resembles two Dutch provinces, internationally its widely used when you mention the entire nation.


----------



## seem

Road UK arent you a bit exaggerating? I cant believe that Mayrhofen is warmer than Pannonian plain, I check temperature maps quite offten and I know that Alpine valleys arent really the hottest place. You probably check the temperatures on your thermometer placed in the sun. :nuts:

Hofburg thx, I might use some other roads to get to Vrhnika, then It should be alright. I hope that I will cycle there in a month or so. :cheers:


----------



## Road_UK

It's the truth. Hot sun and warm mountain winds heat up the place real good. Innsbruck is usually a lot cooler then Mayrhofen, and because of how the mountains are situated, we get the warmest weather patterns. Lots of lakes here too, to swim in.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Usually only children or ignorants use "Holland" when the mean the Netherlands (specifically outside the two Holland provinces). I always have to laugh when I'm on a campsite and overhear some guy with a southern accent telling he's from "Holland".


----------



## seem

^^ Check this map - http://terkep.idokep.hu/kep.php?kep=hoterkep2&regio=ceu

The only hot place in the Alps would be Bolzano and it is always like that. :yes:


----------



## Road_UK

Thank you for calling me and all my friends and family all over Europe ignorant. Please don't tell me you always use the official name of Fryslan, when you are talking about Friesland.


----------



## Road_UK

seem said:


> ^^ Check this map - http://terkep.idokep.hu/kep.php?kep=hoterkep2&regio=ceu
> 
> The only hot place in the Alps would be Bolzano and it is always like that. :yes:


I know for myself where I live, and what the temperatures are like, thank you. And Bozen is not far from here.


----------



## seem

I just can't really understand why some alpine valley gets much higher temperatures than rest of Austria? :dunno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Road_UK said:


> Thank you for calling me and all my friends and family all over Europe ignorant. Please don't tell me you always use the official name of Fryslan, when you are talking about Friesland.


Fryslân and Friesland means the same, while Holland and the Netherlands do not. It's a historically grown "synonym", even though the majority of the Dutch population does not live in the two Holland provinces. Back in the middle ages "Holland" was by far the most important part of what is current-day Netherlands. 

On the other hand the Netherlands is plural, which is also not entirely correct because in Dutch it's singular; Nederland, not Nederlanden. Maybe we should just change the name to Dutchland.


----------



## Road_UK

Its the same when people say England, when they mean the entire UK. For me Holland is quicker to type then the Netherlands, as I am not on my computer, but using the Android app right now on my phone.


----------



## Road_UK

seem said:


> I just can't really understand why some alpine valley gets much higher temperatures than rest of Austria? :dunno:


It's a combination of height and the wind flow. Warm southern winds, called fohn, means it will never rain, even if they forecast it. And Mayrhofen often has hot sunshine weather, when it could be pissing down in the village just over the road. And even right now clouds are circulating around the area, but we are still sunbaking. Nights are often subjected to heavy thunderstorms. Check www.mayrhofen.at for weather and live webcams, and note its cooler up in the mountains then in the village.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Usually only children or ignorants use "Holland" when the mean the Netherlands (specifically outside the two Holland provinces). I always have to laugh when I'm on a campsite and overhear some guy with a southern accent telling he's from "Holland".


In English, it's fairly widely used, although I for one realize it's incorrect....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Its the same when people say England, when they mean the entire UK....


That, on the other hand, is just wrong!
:bash:


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> In English, it's fairly widely used, although I for one realize it's incorrect....


In German as well. The French use Pays Bas more frequently then Hollande.


----------



## cinxxx

In Romanian the country name is "Olanda" and not "Ţările de Jos".
Also the people are referred to as "olandezi".
And the language is called "limba olandeză".


----------



## x-type

discussion went wrong.

seem, i also have plan to cycle to Adria in August. first plan was going to island Lastovo, but that plan is off because my friends cannot get free days in the same time as I can.

now i have a plan to cycle direction Zagreb - D1 - Karlovac - Duga Resa - D23 - Josipdol - Žuta Lokva - Senj - D8 - Prizna - D106 - Novalja - Pag - Posedarje - D8 - Zadar - Biograd.
D23 is simply amazing, but there are 2 heavy ascents: first Mala Kapela - 11 km for some 450 metres of elevation, second climbing on Vratnik, 7 km for 250 metres.

i will test my skills this weekend, if i succeed to climb on Sljeme mountain over Zagreb (14 km for 800 metres), i am ready for that.


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> Fryslân and Friesland means the same, while Holland and the Netherlands do not. It's a historically grown "synonym", even though the majority of the Dutch population does not live in the two Holland provinces. Back in the middle ages "Holland" was by far the most important part of what is current-day Netherlands.
> 
> On the other hand the Netherlands is plural, which is also not entirely correct because in Dutch it's singular; Nederland, not Nederlanden. Maybe we should just change the name to Dutchland.


There is also the point that the word Fryslân is in different language (Frysk) and not in Dutch as Friesland whereas Holland and Nederland are both from the Dutch language.

Anyway, I would think that most people from outside of the Netherlands are not aware of the difference between Holland and Netherlands. Its just two names for the same country.

E.g. in czech language you can use both names for The Netherlands: Nizozemí and Holandsko (meaning Nederland (lowlands) and Holland). Only few people are aware of the provinces with name Holland and the fact that the name is in fact used only for part of the country.

In Russian you can also use Голандия and Нидерланды as synonyms. The same goes about english and many other languages. I think the only ones that perhaps would use the "proper" names would be Germans and Belgians.


----------



## Suburbanist

Road_UK said:


> In German as well. The French use Pays Bas more frequently then Hollande.


Pays Bas = Low Countries = literal translation of Neder-lands.

There are similar denominations like in Italian (Paesi Bassi) or Portuguese (Países Baixos).


----------



## Road_UK

Surel said:


> There is also the point that the word Fryslân is in different language (Frysk) and not in Dutch as Friesland whereas Holland and Nederland are both from the Dutch language.
> 
> Anyway, I would think that most people from outside of the Netherlands are not aware of the difference between Holland and Netherlands. Its just two names for the same country.
> 
> E.g. in czech language you can use both names for The Netherlands: Nizozemí and Holandsko (meaning Nederland (lowlands) and Holland). Only few people are aware of the provinces with name Holland and the fact that the name is in fact used only for part of the country.
> 
> In Russian you can also use Голандия and Нидерланды as synonyms. The same goes about english and many other languages. I think the only ones that perhaps would use the "proper" names would be Germans and Belgians.


They have abolished "Friesland" from the Dutch language now. Officially it's Fryslan in both languages. Holland is more commonly used in German then "die Niederlande".


----------



## Road_UK

x-type said:


> discussion went wrong.
> 
> seem, i also have plan to cycle to Adria in August. first plan was going to island Lastovo, but that plan is off because my friends cannot get free days in the same time as I can.
> 
> now i have a plan to cycle direction Zagreb - D1 - Karlovac - Duga Resa - D23 - Josipdol - Žuta Lokva - Senj - D8 - Prizna - D106 - Novalja - Pag - Posedarje - D8 - Zadar - Biograd.
> D23 is simply amazing, but there are 2 heavy ascents: first Mala Kapela - 11 km for some 450 metres of elevation, second climbing on Vratnik, 7 km for 250 metres.
> 
> i will test my skills this weekend, if i succeed to climb on Sljeme mountain over Zagreb (14 km for 800 metres), i am ready for that.


How about you cycle in Holland instead? Nationwide cycle path network with traffic lights, proper lane markings and safety interests registered in the Highway Code, makes Holland the best country to cycle in, with the exception of Amsterdam where cycle-anarchy rules...

And of course Holland is as flat as a tat.


----------



## CNGL

And next month I will be in Munich! Too bad you have moved away Spinoza, on August 17-19 a EBT meeting will be hosted in Munich.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Next week I will be in Canazei :banana:


Very beautiful place, I went there last year. You should drive to Pordoi pass and take the cable car to Sass Pordoi (2950m).


----------



## seem

^^ We used to go there in March, last 3 years we go to Egypt rather than cold Alps. Snow, cold winter and moutains are also around here, I have enough of it . However i t would be nice to go o he Dolomites in the summer/autumn.


----------



## g.spinoza

CNGL said:


> And next month I will be in Munich! Too bad you have moved away Spinoza, on August 17-19 a EBT meeting will be hosted in Munich.


I wouldn't have gone to EBT meeting in any case. I really have nothing to say to some guy I shared a banknote with hno:



italystf said:


> Very beautiful place, I went there last year. You should drive to Pordoi pass and take the cable car to Sass Pordoi (2950m).


I know Canazei well, been there several times. Cable car? Nonsense! I'm there to hike


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> Next week I will be in Canazei :banana:
> 
> I heard from a friend of mine who worked in Groningen several years something like that, and I still don't understand. If there is shortage of houses, then build some.
> 
> When I moved to Germany I found a house - and began living in it - within a week.


It's not as easy as that in Holland. It is a small country, with a lot of people all cramped together. There is simply not enough room.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> It's not as easy as that in Holland. It is a small country, with a lot of people all cramped together. There is simply not enough room.


Dutchmen created their own land out of the sea, don't tell me they cannot create some houses, too


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> Dutchmen created their own land out of the sea, don't tell me they cannot create some houses, too


Sure. But there is nowhere to put them....


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Sure. But there is nowhere to put them....


Come on. Population density in Lombardy is higher than in Netherlands, but there is still a lot of space to build.


----------



## Road_UK

Not enough to meet everyone's needs. Also have to protect farmland and wildlife, and some rural areas attracts tourists, that needs to stay in tact. Holland is not a city state just yet, and it has to stay that way


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ah, the "Netherlands is full" mantra.


----------



## keber

What wildlife?

Then they should build more and higher apartment blocks on deserted spaces, they surely exist.


----------



## Road_UK

ChrisZwolle said:


> Ah, the "Netherlands is full" mantra.


Isn't Holland a country with the highest population per square metre in Europe? Doesn't this explain the housing shortage?


----------



## Road_UK

keber said:


> What wildlife?
> 
> Then they should build more and higher apartment blocks on deserted spaces, they surely exist.


Not really. Every inch has a purpose.


----------



## keber

Then you demolish old houses and build new apartment blocks. Is this that hard?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Road_UK said:


> Isn't Holland a country with the highest population per square metre in Europe? Doesn't this explain the housing shortage?


That's not the same as "the Netherlands is full". Agrarian areas still account for 68% and natural areas for another 14% of the Dutch land area.


----------



## Road_UK

keber said:


> Then you demolish old houses and build new apartment blocks. Is this that hard?


Yes. For obvious reasons.


----------



## Surel

Road_UK said:


> It's not as easy as that in Holland. It is a small country, with a lot of people all cramped together. There is simply not enough room.


I dont know, it is also question of money. If you are able to pay market prices then moving is not that hard.


----------



## keber

Obvious reason could mean Netherlanders don't want highrises? I just looked to Utrecht for example and I couldn't find them.


----------



## Road_UK

Google on Bijlmermeer. Also Rotterdam is called the Manhattan of Holland. And I don't think there is any interest in making the entire country look like Poland, with these depressing grey communist buildings...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

keber said:


> Obvious reason could mean Netherlanders don't want highrises? I just looked to Utrecht for example and I couldn't find them.


Exactly. Surveys found that over 70% of the Dutch want to live in detached housing in quiet areas. However, the government wants to construct the bulk of the new housing in existing urban areas, mainly mid- to upper class apartments. So very few people can afford to live in a detached house. Even a rowhouse in a suburban area is quite expensive, € 300.000 - 350.000 or more like the norm than an exception for a single family house. 

The main issue currently is the lack of movement on the housing market, it's completely stuck. People can't sell their houses so they don't move to another house. At the same time, the social housing market is also stuck due to the very long waiting lists. Rental apartments which do not fall under the social housing market are usually at least twice as expensive, and approach the cost of a mortgage for a single family house. Rentals in Zwolle on the free market usually are € 800 - 1000 per month or more.


----------



## cinxxx

keber said:


> Then you demolish old houses and build new apartment blocks. Is this that hard?


Create commie blocks :troll:


----------



## Road_UK

Surel said:


> I dont know, it is also question of money. If you are able to pay market prices then moving is not that hard.


There doesn't appear to be much call for a private letting market. Why is that?


----------



## seem

cinxxx said:


> Create commie blocks :troll:


:yes:


----------



## keokiracer

Rotterdam-Nesselande (location)


----------



## Road_UK

Looks horrible. I'm so glad I live in the mountains...


----------



## keber

^^ Something like that, yep. Although it could look still more modern, it looks pretty dated.

About commie blocks - maybe not the prettiest ones (although UK, Sweden, France etc apartment blocks from 60-ies and 70-ies don't look much better) but at least here building quality of blocks from 70-ies is much better than from 2000-ies.


----------



## keokiracer

cinxxx said:


> Create commie blocks :troll:


Bijlmermeer, Amsterdam. Not commie, but still blocks


----------



## cinxxx

^^ That's the spirit


----------



## Road_UK

Used to be on of the most deprived areas in the Netherlands, filled with crime and drugs. But since they have done a New York style springclean, it is now fairly safe. What I like about this area, is the diversity of people that live there, mostly from Suriname and the Dutch Caribbean. These annual Caribbean festivals does help to hide a bit of the greyness away, and the area around these tower blocks is fairly green.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Not enough to meet everyone's needs. Also have to protect farmland and wildlife, and some rural areas attracts tourists, that needs to stay in tact. Holland is not a city state just yet, and it has to stay that way


I put people over "farmland and wildlife". If people have to suffer because of some herons and frogs, it's not worth it.


----------



## Wilhem275

Road_UK said:


> For me Holland is quicker to type then the Netherlands, as I am not on my computer, but *using the Android app right now on my phone*.


While driving, I hope 



keokiracer said:


> Bijlmermeer, Amsterdam. Not commie, but still blocks


The present day Sat View is pretty different (left side of the picture). Were some of those apartments demolished?


----------



## Road_UK

Of course.


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> I put people over "farmland and wildlife". If people have to suffer because of some herons and frogs, it's not worth it.


Nobody has to suffer in Holland, and nobody has to be homeless. People are well looked after, better then in Italy.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Nobody has to suffer in Holland, and nobody has to be homeless. People are well looked after, better then in Italy.


Waiting 4 years for a house for rent limits people freedom of movement (i.e. suffer), and is plain stupid, fullstop.


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> Waiting 4 years for a house for rent limits people freedom of movement (i.e. suffer), and is plain stupid, fullstop.


On the other hand, long-distance commute in Netherlands is far easier than in Lombardia... (I'm not talking about wealthy extreme commuters taking high-speed trains every train between Bologna and Milano as I recently read on a nice news article).


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> On the other hand, long-distance commute in Netherlands is far easier than in Lombardia...


And wages are higher in the Netherlands... I calculated that if I commute every day BS-TO, I'll spend 1.5x my salary...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> It's not as easy as that in Holland. It is a small country, with a lot of people all cramped together. There is simply not enough room.


Weren't you just telling us yesterday about its wide open spaces?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Google on Bijlmermeer. Also Rotterdam is called the Manhattan of Holland. And I don't think there is any interest in making the entire country look like Poland, with these depressing grey communist buildings...


Ironically, it occurred to me yesterday that a four-year waiting list for an apartment was rather...Soviet. (At least don't tell me that these waiting lists are maintained by some government agency.)


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> Weren't you just telling us yesterday about its wide open spaces?


Yes. I would like to keep it this way.


----------



## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> Ironically, it occurred to me yesterday that a four-year waiting list for an apartment was rather...Soviet. (At least don't tell me that these waiting lists are maintained by some government agency.)


It is not like that exactly.

There are two rental markets in Netherlands: one is the "free market", other is the "rent-controlled market".

Free market rents are those above € 682 (roughly)/month. They operate like any normal lease, usually a 2-month deposit is required and they can be raised or the renter evicted under certain rules.

Rents below that threshold, on the contrary, are regulated. They can only increase in par with an official index of inflation or more if the owner makes objective improvements.

2/3 of all rental units in Netherlands are rental-controlled. Among those, a substantial part are also units owned by housing corporations, which are not-for-profit corporations that got in the past large sums of money - and land - from the government to build social housing, in exchange for limiting the rents they charge and providing some equitable access to housing. Among these rules, renters cannot be evicted easily and when demand for housing outstrips supply, some sort of waiting list must be used in a non-discriminatory basis (the housing corporation can't pick renters that it likes or not, though it can assess ability to pay).

Rent controlled units are also eligible for a partial subsidy up to € 270/month depending on your income. It is seen as a "fair compensation" for renters (since people on mortgages get to deduct the interest paid from their taxable income).


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Check out Google maps. There are place-names (I'd hesitate to call them towns, but what do I know) called Dogana in both San Marino and Italy, about 1 km apart.
> 
> [Edit: arrows for Road_UK - again with the simultaneous posting!]


Yes, I saw this as well...


----------



## italystf

San Marino is an important hub for money laundering. Most 500€ notes in Italy are withdrawn from the bank in the provinces of Rimini, Forlì Cesena, Como and Varese.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> San Marino is an important hub for money laundering.


and which micro-country isn't?


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> and which micro-country isn't?


Nauru


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> and which micro-country isn't?


Even Vatican is.


----------



## keber

Road_UK said:


> I hear they are building a town in Arizona, called Immigration-and-Bordercontrol. I think it`s on the border somewhere.


It is interesting that the term immigration is not used in Europe.


----------



## AUchamps

g.spinoza said:


> I wouldn't have gone to EBT meeting in any case. I really have nothing to say to some guy I shared a banknote with hno:
> 
> 
> 
> I know Canazei well, been there several times. Cable car? Nonsense! I'm there to hike


In the USA, EBT means Food Stamps which poor people on Welfare/the Dole are on. We also have SNAP cards for poor ppl, they look like regular Debit cards.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^?
First thing I think of is "electronic bank transfer"....
Food-stamp programs may have different names in different states, though.


----------



## Verso

EBT = EuroBillTracker (€). Didn't know there was an EBT meeting in Ljubljana in 2008. :lol:


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Even Vatican is.


Even? They have invented it.


----------



## CNGL

AUchamps said:


> In the USA, EBT means Food Stamps which poor people on Welfare/the Dole are on.


Really? Now we have the same initials for both poor and "rich" people.



Verso said:


> EBT = EuroBillTracker (€). Didn't know there was an EBT meeting in Ljubljana in 2008. :lol:


Yup. I joined just after another one in... Barcelona!


----------



## CNGL

Today on literal theatre*: LOL @ Valencia coat of arms:









* I took this from America's Funniest home Videos (AFV), which, believe me, is aired in Spain too!


----------



## Suburbanist

x-type said:


> and which micro-country isn't?


Andorra is not a money laundering center and dirty money flowing through Campione d'Italia is probably more plentiful.


----------



## Peines

CNGL said:


> Today on literal theatre*: LOL @ Valencia coat of arms:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> * I took this from America's Funniest home Videos (AFV), which, believe me, is aired in Spain too!


LOL

:lol:

Plus, the Mayor of Valencia City, Rita Barvera, is also known as *Godzilla*…










(the person on the right) :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No lack of parking in this area of Dallas, Texas.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ So you park your car and then ask a friend to take you by car to the other side of the parking lot, where you have things to do...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's part of Manheim auto auctions, the largest in the world.

Here's another site in Manheim, Pennsylvania. The parking lot is well over a mile wide.


----------



## bogdymol

So... my car was converted 2 days ago to run on LPG fuel. I did 200 km since then in the city, outside the city and on the motorway and I can say that it goes exactly as before... just on fewer money 

On the exterior you can't see anything different on the car. Inside I have just a very small switch between LPG and petrol which also shows how much LPG you've got left:










The LPG filling is done on that tiny hole below the petrol one:










The LPG tank is mounted where the spare wheel was before, below the trunk's carpet:










I mounted the spare wheel at the end of the trunk, so the space used by it is minimal:


----------



## x-type

are these switches the same in the whole world? my parents have exactly the same switch 

btw, don't you drive Thalia?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are three types of fillers used in Europe. So if you travel abroad, you need an adapter in some countries.


----------



## hofburg

our ex-prime minister still has it as his primary car 

:tongue:
\/ \/ \/


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> our ex-prime minister still has it as *its* primary car


Its? Is Pahor a hermaphrodite?


----------



## Alex_ZR

seem said:


> ^^ Wasn't it Renault 4 ? You can still find many of these on Croatian coastline, I guess they were very popular in YU.


Actually, it was a Yugo 55!


----------



## bogdymol

Exactly one day before I got my drivers license I had the chance of driving a car older than my parents... a romanian (soviet) ARO IMS, like this one, built in the '50s:


----------



## AUchamps

bogdymol said:


> Exactly one day before I got my drivers license I had the chance of driving a car older than my parents... a romanian (soviet) ARO IMS, like this one, built in the '50s:


Thank god for Free Market economics to give you guys better cars then that!


----------



## x-type

AUchamps said:


> Thank god for Free Market economics to give you guys better cars then that!


yep. without free market they would never be able to buy FSM Niki in Australia il early 90es.


----------



## keber

Meanwhile in Slovenia:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

:ancient:


----------



## keber

Ummm, true ... :hammer:

Still, these days hail is here almost everyday occurrence and people cover their cars with all sort of things not mentioning very dangerous stopping cars in the middle of motorways under overpasses.


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> Meanwhile in Slovenia:


Croatian license plate. :lol:



keber said:


> Ummm, true ... :hammer:
> 
> Still, these days hail is here almost everyday occurrence and people cover their cars with all sort of things not mentioning very dangerous stopping cars in the middle of motorways under overpasses.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=FNWJqOcIpcw (does anyone know how to embed this particular video?)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=FNWJqOcIpcw (does anyone know how to embed this particular video?)


You need to grab the video identification code.

FNWJqOcIpcw

makes:


----------



## Verso

^^ I use the code between "=" and "&", but there's no "&" after that code, so I didn't know. It indeed looks similar to other videos' codes though.


----------



## Peines

Verso said:


> ^^ I use the code between "=" and "&", but there's no "&" after that code, so I didn't know. It indeed looks similar to other videos' codes though.




DO THIS:









1) Click to *Share *button.
2) Click to *Long link* option.
3) *Copy *the long link.
4) Get the value of the variable *watch?v* 
For example, if the url is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrivBjlv6Mw then the value of watch?v *is *XrivBjlv6Mw

5) put the value into youtube tag's:


Code:


[YOUTUBE]


----------



## Verso

^^ That's a bit too long.  How do you embed that same video, if you wanna set it at 8:20?


----------



## Peines

Verso said:


> ^^ That's a bit too long.  How do you embed that same video, if you wanna set it at 8:20?


You can't do that...


----------



## Verso

You can, I've seen it.


----------



## Peines

^^ :dunno:


----------



## keokiracer

I thought you could only link that way :dunno:


----------



## Verso

Took me more than an hour to figure it out.


----------



## hofburg

car-boat.  what is "svina" anyway?


----------



## Verso

Svinja (pig). Hail like pig, hot like pig, cold like pig... "Like pig" = "very" in spoken Slovenian, I don't know why.


----------



## hofburg

never heard spoken slovenian like that.


----------



## Verso

Oh c'mon, where do you live?!  Pada k svina, vroče k svina (svinjsko vroče / piggily hot), mrzlo k svina (svinjsko mrzlo / piggily cold), zebe me k svina, mrzlo k prasica, težko k svina, boli k svina....... Looks like Slovenian pigs can be everything - hot, cold, hard, heavy, fast.....  Or maybe just in Ljubljana.


----------



## hofburg

apparently littoral pigs are different  I heard it only as an adjective.


----------



## Broccolli

O man what a topic :lol: Pigs

hofburg what the hell you never heard about those phrases?
What about *Porka parkl*...you have also similar expresion in Primorska region.. you say: *Porco dio *


----------



## MattN

Road_UK said:


> Where are you going?


Just got back, went to Duesseldorf from Calais via Poperinge/Ieper, Kortrijk, Antwerpen, Venlo, Moenchengladbach. Back to Dunkerque through Doel and Brugge. We also did rather a lot of driving around Duesseldorf, Tagebau Garzweiler, Duisburg, Essen and Wuppertal.


----------



## Road_UK

So you got to see the ugly side of Germany. Why Antwerp via Kortrijk? I always use A16, E40, E17.


----------



## MattN

We slept in Dunkerque and then spent an hour or so each in Poperinge and Ieper. Also went to buy some beer from In de Vrede at Westvleteren and a shop near Abele which had quite a large selection.

I can sort of see what you mean about ugly but we did enjoy it and there were some almost conventionally attractive places . The worst part was the driving style in Duesseldorf, we never quite got used to that. Go out of your way to prevent people from pulling out around obstacles, and when in doubt, pap your horn. You could drive for miles to find an appropriate left turn or do a full circle instead as well.


----------



## Attus

I did three times Budapest - Ostrava - Budapest the last week ans spent some days in and around Ostrava. Nature is beautiful, it was rehabilitated in the recent two decades; the town itself is just like any rapidly grown industrial town. 
In Cieszyn/Cesky Tesin, apart from the open border which is really great, I had the "back to the 80's" feeling, especially the Eastern European version of that. 

I will upload some photos - not about the motorways 'cause I can't drive and make photos together  
Btw., since there is no really usable road through the Carpatheans, I chose the detour Budapest - Bratislava - Brno - Olomouc - Ostrava. It is annoying that you start from Ostrava to home and drive in 90° different angle :-/


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## X236K

Anyone could tell me how much is the toll on the French part of this route? link


----------



## ChrisZwolle

€ 52.60 according to Viamichelin.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^:nuts:


----------



## italystf

Broccolli said:


> O man what a topic :lol: Pigs
> 
> hofburg what the hell you never heard about those phrases?
> What about *Porka parkl*...you have also similar expresion in Primorska region.. you say: *Porco dio *


That's a thypical Italian cursing expression. Saying that in public is regarded as extremely rude.
Especially people from Veneto and Friuli are known to use such expressions quite often.


----------



## X236K

ChrisZwolle said:


> € 52.60 according to Viamichelin.


Thanks


----------



## Peines

X236K said:


> Anyone could tell me how much is the toll on the French part of this route? link





ChrisZwolle said:


> € 52.60 according to Viamichelin.





Penn's Woods said:


> ^^:nuts:


Still cheaper than Spain... :bleep:


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> That's a thypical Italian cursing expression. Saying that in public is regarded as extremely rude.


What about _porca miseria_?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^:nuts:


That's my biggest pet peeve about France. I don't mind paying tolls, but the French tolls are just too high. You spend more than the minimum wage at the speed limit every hour.


----------



## hofburg

everything is too high in France. and afterall salaries are not that high. for example for 60€/night you will get one nice 3 star hotel in Italy, and one smelly 2 star hotel in France.


----------



## Road_UK

hofburg said:


> everything is too high in France. and afterall salaries are not that high. for example for 60€/night you will get one nice 3 star hotel in Italy, and one smelly 2 star hotel in France.


Formula1 25, Holiday Inn Express 50-70 and comfortable with free internet.


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> what the prices look like? i remember this winter awfully high prices at Oldtimer at Guntramsdorf rest area before Wien. really awfully high. and horrible coffee.
> Autogrill rules. the prices are not low, but anything they offer to eat or dring is superb.


Agree, the food is usually good and you can find everything you need and more on our Autogrill (even books, CDs, DVDs, souvenir, thypical foodstuff and wine of the region,...) the only problem are prices, usually higher than in normal shops.


----------



## cinxxx

Anyone here have an idea which maps are better: Navteq, TopMap or TeleAtlas?


----------



## Road_UK

Woman trying to park her car, celebrated by German football fans... Love it!


----------



## piotr71

Attus said:


> (..)
> In Cieszyn/Cesky Tesin, apart from the open border which is really great, I had the "back to the 80's" feeling, especially the Eastern European version of that.
> (..)


Have you seen Cieszyn's medieval market?


----------



## piotr71

hofburg said:


> everything is too high in France. and afterall salaries are not that high. for example for 60€/night you will get one nice 3 star hotel in Italy, and one smelly 2 star hotel in France.


I usually use Accor hotels' network. They offer pretty wide range of accommodation from budget to very high standard hotels around the Europe. In France you can easily sleep in 3 star for less than 60 euros. 

I have already booked several nights using their network in France (Etap, Formule1), Germany (Ibis, Etap) and Hungary (Mercure). I did not spent more than 45 euros per night, per room for 3 people.


----------



## Attus

cinxxx said:


> Anyone here have an idea which maps are better: Navteq, TopMap or TeleAtlas?


It's depending on the region where you want to use it. For Hungary and Romania TopMap has high quality, Navteq worse then TopMap but quite good as well but TeleAtlas is poor. For Germany TeleAtlas and Navteq have both high quality with no real difference.


----------



## Attus

piotr71 said:


> Have you seen Cieszyn's medieval market?


Yes, however that's only a part of the town, the rest seemed quite different to me.


----------



## Broccolli

italystf said:


> That's a thypical Italian cursing expression. Saying that in public is regarded as *extremely rude*.
> Especially people from Veneto and Friuli are known to use such expressions quite often.


Ups 

here is another...Very common milder swear word in Slovenia is also porkamadona this is also probably from italian language, i would say from word Porca madonna?

Very high percentage of slovenian swearing words have their roots in serbo-croatian language. And then we have some swearing words which have their roots in italian language (you already saw some of the examples) and also from german language (švajneraj/schweinerei, kakec /kacken:lol:....). And then we have our own swearing word Tristo kosmatih medvedov /Three hundred hairy bears:lol:.....but lately, thanks god there is growing nuber of new, how can i say autochthonous slovenian swearing words )


----------



## Road_UK

How many other countries other then Czech use the word pica?


----------



## Broccolli

...


----------



## Road_UK

Oh believe me, pica is not pizza in the C.R.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Road_UK said:


> Oh believe me, pica is not pizza in the C.R.


In Serbian it could be alternative for "pussy"... :naughty:


----------



## cinxxx

How great is the difference between Serbian/Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian and Bulgarian?
I heard a guy talking at a Biergarten near me, and I was not sure which one it was. Certainly it was no Russian, Ukrainian or West Slavic language.
He spoke to a woman, kinda loud and used his hands too, seemed that something was bothering him a lot .


----------



## x-type

cinxxx said:


> How great is the difference between Serbian/Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian and Bulgarian?
> I heard a guy talking at a Biergarten near me, and I was not sure which one it was. Certainly it was no Russian, Ukrainian or West Slavic language.
> He spoke to a woman, kinda loud and used his hands too, seemed that something was bothering him a lot .


northwestern Croats understand Slovenians more or less and vice versa. 
Croats understand Serbs with almost no exceptions and vice versa.
Croats don't understand Bulgarians and Macedonians the best.
Serbs don't understand Slovenians.
Older Slovenians understand Serbs and Croats.
Macedonians understand Serbs.
Serbs can mostly understand Macedonians more or less.
Macedonians understand Bulgarians and vice versa.
Serbs and Bulgarians? dunno. similar as they undesrtand Macedonians.
nobody of mentioned understands Croats from the seaside


----------



## cinxxx

^^one of the best posts I've read 
At first I thought the guy was speaking Serbian, but the Serbs I observed they have a special 'o' vowel pronunciation and the guy didn't seem to have it...


----------



## x-type

i'd say it is like this


----------



## Broccolli

...


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> northwestern Croats understand Slovenians more or less and vice versa.


And where is northwestern Croatia? In Ljubljana?


----------



## hofburg

so nobody understand Croats from Dalmatia? WTF


----------



## seem

Road_UK said:


> How many other countries other then Czech use the word pica?


Also in Slovakia and in the Balkans.



Road_UK said:


> Oh believe me, pica is not pizza in the C.R.


Pica really is Pizza, however "piča" (picha) means pussy. In Croatia and Serbia they say " jebem ti pičku materinu" (I **** your mums pussy) or "idi u pičku materinu" (go to your mums pussy).

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Picka ti materina


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Thank you!

July 10. He'd had Parkinson's for several years and towards the end... The roughest part was actually my last visits to the hospital, July 5 and 6, and then waiting for it to happen.


----------



## Verso

88 (or 87) years is a nice age; one of my grandfathers was also 88. I'll probably die at 60 or so.


----------



## keokiracer

Sorry to hear man


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> I'll probably die at 60 or so.


Why are you so pessimist? I hope you will live a long a happy life :cheers:


----------



## Verso

Thanks, but people with Crohn's disease don't live that long.


----------



## g.spinoza

Just got back from a 10-days vacation, 5 in Abruzzo and 5 in Trentino. Drove the most beautiful roads: Majelletta, Sella, Pordoi, Costalunga, Valles, San Pellegrino, Rolle passes. Hiked _a lot_. Me happy.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keokiracer said:


> Sorry to hear man


Thanks.


----------



## AUchamps

Penn's Woods said:


> Thanks.


You'll see him again at the Crossroads, that much I am sure of.


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> 88 (or 87) years is a nice age; one of my grandfathers was also 88. I'll probably die at 60 or so.


One of my grandfathers died at 85. I still have my two grandmothers alive.



Verso said:


> Thanks, but people with Crohn's disease don't live that long.


Well, my dad has it too. But I still remember your (Verso's) disease .


----------



## cinxxx

I don't have grandparents since 1988, I was only 4 back then.
My girlfriend still has 2 grandmothers.


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Thank you!
> 
> July 10. He'd had Parkinson's for several years and towards the end... The roughest part was actually my last visits to the hospital, July 5 and 6, and then waiting for it to happen.


My condolences with your loss, and I wish you strength to deal with this. I know what its like, I have lost 3 people really close to me in the last 2 years.


----------



## Verso

CNGL said:


> Well, my dad has it too. But I still remember your (Verso's) disease .


Don't call the devil. How's your dad doing?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> My condolences with your loss, and I wish you strength to deal with this. I know what its like, I have lost 3 people really close to me in the last 2 years.


Thank you very much.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Just got back from shopping. You have to respect a liquor store in the U.S. ( http://www.totalwine.com/eng/storeL...r/storeDetails.cfm&storeid=1&locationId=17729 ) that has beer specials to honor "Belgian Independence Day."

Which reminds me: belated happy July 21, Belgians!

:cheers:


----------



## cinxxx

My condolences too.


----------



## MajKeR_

Orionol said:


> The thing is, could you guys recommend me some awesome sights or destination to visit and to have fun? BTW; we are young, so we like to party
> 
> :dance:


Kołobrzeg maybe, in Poland though?  I've been there in 2004 last time, but apparently many changed for better there, so it should be worth recommend 

BTW. - I've seen a few Swedish cars in southern part of Silesian voivodeship yesterday (near and in Beskidy mountains) - wasn't one yours?


----------



## Fatfield

Meanwhile, somewhere in America

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=432_1342825967


----------



## Penn's Woods

cinxxx said:


> My condolences too.


Thanks.


----------



## x-type

Fatfield said:


> Meanwhile, somewhere in America
> 
> http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=432_1342825967


omg this is one of the most original pranks i have ever seen :lol:

makes one laughing in hard moments, right Penn's? we're all with you.


----------



## Orionol

MajKeR_ said:


> Kołobrzeg maybe, in Poland though?  I've been there in 2004 last time, but apparently many changed for better there, so it should be worth recommend
> 
> BTW. - I've seen a few Swedish cars in southern part of Silesian voivodeship yesterday (near and in Beskidy mountains) - wasn't one yours?



Well, to Poland I will return in Autuum (really recommend Czestochowa and Southern Silesia). But for now I was more planning for a trip to the Western side of Sweden. (BTW, I was in Swinoujscie. A lot of people on the beach there too, I saw from the boat). 

 Hah, no it couldnt be my car, yesterday I was on my way back to Sweden, driving on the DK3 or S3 (from Kudowa-Zdroj to Ystad), although I was in Czestochowa, but it was 15/7.


----------



## Road_UK

I love McDonald's. But I like variety. At some Autogrills they have a fastfood counter where they serve slices of pizza and fruit or fries with a softdrink. And in the evenings when I'm in Italy I usually have a 3 course meal and wine anyway if I am stopping the night in my van. Or I am in a town somewhere, arriving at my destination the evening before unloading the next morning, and I will call into a restaurant. I had a lovely evening in Florence one evening. Factory was in walking distance from the centre, so I found a lovely restaurant in a narrow street, with tables on the sidewalk, and got talking to a bunch of locals. Deep in the night I stumbled back to my van...


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> Is it possible today, in Europe, to get a sandwich with more than one filling? Like ham and cheese?
> 
> (I'm not saying it is at McDonalds. But European sandwiches can be pretty, um, limited. Although if you've got Subway now, that's better than nothing.)


The UK is the country for that. But also Germany has a large variety of multifilled sandwiches. Downside that in Germany everything has to be healthy these days, so they throw in lots of different types of nuts in their bread. Dentists in Germany must be making shitloads of money. That wouldn't happen in the UK, where teethless is the fashion...
Holland has the broodjes gezond (healthy sandwiches). But the healthy is compensated with loads of mayonaise.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Is it possible today, in Europe, to get a sandwich with more than one filling? Like ham and cheese?


Off course you can, in many bars and rest areas. And I think it's much better than Mc.
It's like comparing genuine Italian coffee and Starbuck coffee, genuine Neapolitan pizza and pizza from an American fast food.


----------



## NordikNerd

One reason I quitted beeing a taxidriver was the perpetual dining out at McDonalds, Burger King and other McJunk-food establishments. Home-cooked meals at fixed times is the best option for staying healthy. 

Look at truckdrivers, most of them are tubbies, they don't look healthy because they can not eat properly.


----------



## g.spinoza

NordikNerd said:


> One reason I quitted beeing a taxidriver was the perpetual dining out at McDonalds, Burger King and other McJunk-food establishments. Home-cooked meals at fixed times is the best option for staying healthy.


Couldn't you prepare your own food at home and bring it with you?


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Off course you can, in many bars and rest areas. And I think it's much better than Mc.
> It's like comparing genuine Italian coffee and Starbuck coffee, genuine Neapolitan pizza and pizza from an American fast food.


I *like* American pizza - made to order, with the toppings of your choice. From the sort of places in the neighborhood that does it right, not a fast food place. (The one I go to most often, just because it's a two-minute walk from my apartment, is this: http://gusto.thekalon.com/ )

Can't remember the last time I went to McDonald's, actually. If I'm on the road and in the mood for a burger, which is very unusual, I'll look for Burger King. If I had to name a favorite fast-food place, I'd say Arby's. In my part of the country, the Wawa and Sheetz convenience-store chains make decent sandwiches, made to order.


----------



## MajKeR_

Road_UK said:


> McDonald's in Sweden is the best. Poland and the UK are the worst.


In Poland quality of offer depends on the age of "restaurant". When in my town 13-years old McDonald's is quite poor and crowded, and in neighboring city - Bytom - older one at old center is really shitty (more crowded and even dirty), ~20 km from my home, in Lubliniec (24k hab. town) there's very decent one, spacy and - what's most important - with McCafe, which serves really good hot drinks. I realized that the same happens wherever in this country.

But McDonald's prices reject me from that "restaurant" - they grew up and are too high as for generally cheap Poland. 3,50 PLN (almost 1 EUR) is too much for hamburger here, when in Austria or Italy it's ok. I prefer to go to a kebab bar in town center, when for 8 PLN I have big one, with huge amount of meat and made by Turk.



Penn's Woods said:


> I *like*If I'm on the road and in the mood for a burger, which is very unusual, I'll look for Burger King.


Burger Kings are almost the worst fast-food restaurants in Poland for me. They are cheaper than McDonald's, but food there is filled by fat.

In relationship price - quality KFC wins here, especially for special offers (sandwitch and chips for 5 PLN - in McDonald's without offer it's 8 PLN) and drinking without limit.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Couldn't you prepare your own food at home and bring it with you?


It's admirable if you can do that. I went through a phase a couple of years ago where I was preparing every meal myself, including going home at lunchtime and making a sandwich. But it can get to be too much work and then it ceases (for me at any rate) to be enjoyable.

It's approaching noon here and this discussion is making me hungry....


----------



## Road_UK

That is a very dutch thing to do. In any case, nothing wrong with an occasional McDonald's. And truck drivers don't go in there, they get huge discounts at roadside restaurants in most of Europe. And the fat truckdriver is a bit of a stereotype remark these days...

Edit: that was a reply to G. Spinoza. Rushhour traffic on here right now.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> ...And the fat truckdriver is a bit of a stereotype remark these days...


Can't have that around here! ;-)

:cheers:


----------



## italystf

NordikNerd said:


> One reason I quitted beeing a taxidriver was the perpetual dining out at McDonalds, Burger King and other McJunk-food establishments. Home-cooked meals at fixed times is the best option for staying healthy.
> 
> Look at truckdrivers, most of them are tubbies, they don't look healthy because they can not eat properly.


They don't eat eat properly because they don't want to spend. In countries with no healty food tradition, like the USA, UK and Germany is difficult eat healty food without going to fancy and expensive restaurants.
A better choise is buy food and drinks at supermarket. You can chose your favourite brand of everything while bars and fast food would probably choose the cheapest (and so less healty) kind of meat, cheese, etc... Not to mention that you'll save 70-80% on beverages.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> It's admirable if you can do that. I went through a phase a couple of years ago where I was preparing every meal myself, including going home at lunchtime and making a sandwich. But it can get to be too much work and then it ceases (for me at any rate) to be enjoyable.


When I worked in Germany I always prepared my own food at home, the night before, and then brought it at work and heated it in the mw oven. Food from the Kantine (cafeteria) didn't look good and was too expensive.


----------



## NordikNerd

g.spinoza said:


> Couldn't you prepare your own food at home and bring it with you?


Well, you don't do that. You need to have refrigirator to keep your food cold and a microwave oven to warm it up.

Some taxi-depots have a lunch-room, with such equipment, but you don't know where you are at lunch-time.

It's not like in the 70's tv-show _Taxi_, where the cabbies sit in the taxi-garage all time, chatting and playing cards.



italystf said:


> They don't eat eat properly because they don't want to spend. In countries with no healty food tradition, like the USA, UK and Germany is difficult eat healty food without going to fancy and expensive restaurants.
> .


Germany is the home of the sausage, nowadays they also have embraced the kebab. Add to that french fries. Close to the central railway station in any german city you see Kebab-parlors that offer tasty but unhealthy fat food.


----------



## x-type

Road_UK said:


> McDonald's is healthier then a lot of people think.


i agree. eating at McD at least i am sure that i am eating the food prepared under very high hygienic standards and the food that has been controlled strictly.


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> i agree. eating at McD at least i am sure that i am eating the food prepared under very high hygienic standards and the food that has been controlled strictly.


Yes, like the guy who found a chicken head inside a McNugget :lol:


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> Yes, like the guy who found a chicken head inside a McNugget :lol:


well everybody knows that chicken nuggets are made of minced chicken bones, skin and, obviously, heads 
of course it happens, but i don't remember some excess with them here in HR. not to mention some things like salmonella or similar, which are almost initiation procedure for fast foods 

(i hardly eat any chicken, and minced chicken - no thanks, i avoid it as much as possible)


----------



## Verso

Does anyone know the closest KFC to Ljubljana/Slovenia (we don't have it here)?


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Does anyone know the closest KFC to Ljubljana/Slovenia (we don't have it here)?


Zagreb.
i am sure there was in Graz too, but cannot find it anymore.


----------



## Verso

Ok, that's close.


----------



## Verso

The Holy See expelled a Slovenian prelate from his own country (Slovenia). :nuts: He'll move to Trieste so he can be even closer to the Vatican City. :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

Fatfield said:


> Whatever you do, don't watch our (GB) team. Rank!


I'm not TutanCameron


----------



## Fatfield

g.spinoza said:


> I'm not TutanCameron


He's class. The women on the other hand, make Quasimodo look like a model.


----------



## g.spinoza

Fatfield said:


> He's class. The women on the other hand, make Quasimodo look like a model.


Dampney is quite pretty. Mullin is not


----------



## Falusi

LOL my father just have called me (what woke me up ) that I will have this trip today


----------



## Verso

_Good morning, son; we're going to Mannheim today. After that, you can go back to sleep._

My today trip is a bit shorter.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

An employee of the New Jersey Turnpike commited suicide after his paycheck was significantly lowered from $ 65,000 to $ 49,000, a compromise to prevent outsourcing.

While such a salary cut is huge for the people who have to deal with it, I really don't understand why such a low-tech job paid an astounding $ 65,000. This is a student's job that should pay like $ 8 - 10 an hour.


----------



## Lum Lumi

Have you considered the cost of living in the area when coming up with the $8-10/hr?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The minimum wage in New Jersey is $ 7.25


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> An employee of the New Jersey Turnpike commited suicide after his paycheck was significantly lowered from $ 65,000 to $ 49,000, a compromise to prevent outsourcing.
> 
> While such a salary cut is huge for the people who have to deal with it, I really don't understand why such a low-tech job paid an astounding $ 65,000. This is a student's job that should pay like $ 8 - 10 an hour.


It is not uncommon among the public organizations to lose their cost control. Their income may be closer to the taxation rather than to the revenue.

It was only a few years ago when the Norwegian road toll booth companies faced a heavy criticism for their inefficiency. The North Cape tunnel was presented as a showcase: Only about half of the money collected was used to cover the building cost, and the remaining half was needed to run the company. (The North Cape tunnel is not any more payable since June 29th.)

BTW, running a toll road in the U.S. seems to require a number of rules and regulations in place: http://www.state.nj.us/turnpike/documents/regulationsunofficialversionforWebsite.pdf. Nice to know what a bicycle is.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I like this policy of collecting tolls for just a certain amount of years. In Italy it would be science fiction.
Tangenziale di Napoli (A56) collected tolls for 7 years after its contract expired. Nobody knows where did the money go :dunno:


----------



## Surel

I heard that Serpico is doing nice job in Italy. Perhaps it comes to the better now .


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ you mean Serpico like the policeman or Serpico like the Italian IRS software system?


----------



## RipleyLV

Only in Russia :lol:


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ you mean Serpico like the policeman or Serpico like the Italian IRS software system?


I mean the supercomputer.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

ChrisZwolle said:


> An employee of the New Jersey Turnpike commited suicide after his paycheck was significantly lowered from $ 65,000 to $ 49,000, a compromise to prevent outsourcing.
> 
> While such a salary cut is huge for the people who have to deal with it, I really don't understand why such a low-tech job paid an astounding $ 65,000. This is a student's job that should pay like $ 8 - 10 an hour.


I guess older people with families need jobs more than most students who don't have a family to support.


----------



## g.spinoza

Surel said:


> I mean the supercomputer.


My girlfriend works at Italian IRS and with Serpico, and it's NOT a supercomputer. It's just a database application program.


----------



## Falusi

Verso said:


> _Good morning, son; we're going to Mannheim today. After that, you can go back to sleep._


That's nearly what happened yesterday, but I was alone, I had to go to my father to the Unfallklinik, and than to their flat. The problem is that he will be released on Monday, but his brother travels back to home than to Croatia today, so he can't get home without me 

This was my exact route. I refuelled at Loosdorf, and according to my calculations I've done the trip with 5,2 l average fuel consumption, while going 110-120km/h and sometimes 140 on downhills.

Was it good at Rogla? What did you do there? I don't think you were skiing


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Why didn't you drive on A25 in Austria?


----------



## Lum Lumi

ChrisZwolle said:


> The minimum wage in New Jersey is $ 7.25


That doesn't answer my question.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

$ 65,000 per year is at 40 hours per week a salary of $ 31.25 per hour, for a job where you don't need any skills or education. 

At the same time a similarly skilled job in a fast-food restaurant, gas station or supermarket pays $ 7.25 - 10 per hour, and they wonder why people view the government / governmental agencies as enriching themselves.

The toll collectors of the New Jersey Turnpike were basically grossly overpaid.


----------



## bogdymol

*Here* you can see my first aerial motorway video, recorded yesterday


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> No more driving in Croatia for me. :runaway:


well it indeed made me wondering too. i am affraid to imagine what would have happened if it hit a car.


----------



## keokiracer

bogdymol said:


> *Here* you can see my first aerial motorway video, recorded yesterday


Awesome video Bogdy! kay:


----------



## Peines




----------



## Lum Lumi

OMG it SURGES! 

What a douche.


----------



## bogdymol

Greetings from extremely hot Bucharest (35 C right now at 10 p.m. & 42 C announced for tommorrow).


----------



## seem

How many days it took you to get there? I believe Romanian hourses are lazy when it gets above 35C :troll: 

Cold way is coming here tomorrow, you will get it soon...


----------



## Verso

seem said:


> How many days it took you to get there? I believe Romanian hourses are lazy when it gets above 35C :troll:


Bogdymol is technologically advanced.


----------



## bogdymol

seem said:


> How many days it took you to get there? I believe Romanian hourses are lazy when it gets above 35C :troll:


My 94 horses got me to my destination in 11 h (including stops). Just passing through Sebeş took me 1.5 hours because of congestion.


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> My 94 horses got me to my destination in 11 h (including stops). Just passing through Sebeş took me 1.5 hours because of congestion.


95


----------



## seem

187 



bogdymol said:


> My 94 horses got me to my destination in 11 h (including stops). Just passing through Sebeş took me 1.5 hours because of congestion.


I was joking cos on DLM somebody posted a map of Romania with distances and time needed to get to Bucharest and it was pretty crazy.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> 95


----------



## RipleyLV




----------



## Verso

Is bogdymol from Glod?


----------



## seem

Oh come on, bogdymol has new Dacia  -


----------



## RipleyLV

Latvian flag on Empire State Building in New York City :rock:


----------



## Verso

Why Latvian flag?


----------



## RipleyLV

Verso said:


> Why Latvian flag?


Yesterday our beach volleyball team played against the US team in the quarter finals at London Olympics (we won  ). They honor other countries for participation in London. Slovenian flag has also appeared btw.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Serbian flag at Empire State building:


----------



## Verso

Meh, our flag could as well be Russian without the coat of arms.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Well, it's still funny.  As for high number of car thefts in Italy, I remember when I was in Turin by car. I was looking for a parking spot in the city-centre. It was full of some nothing-to-do Africans, who were looking at me and my car in the way "we'll steal your car". I parked in a garage then.


They usually don't steal cars. They ask for some coins otherwise they vandalize and scratch your car.


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> Well, it's still funny.  As for high number of car thefts in Italy, I remember when I was in Turin by car. I was looking for a parking spot in the city-centre. It was full of some nothing-to-do Africans, who were looking at me and my car in the way "we'll steal your car". I parked in a garage then.


Usually in Turin at traffic lights I get bother by old women with a coke cup in their hands.


----------



## Penn's Woods

I just spent a few minutes looking at US statistics, out of curiosity.

Motor-vehicle-theft rate for the country as a whole was 238-point-something per 100,000 people in 2010 (Detailed 2011 numbers aren't out yet). Average value per car was about $6,000, so we're not talking luxury vehicles: I've heard they go more for vehicles that they'll be able to break up for sellable parts.

If anyone wants to play any more with that, start here: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/uc...e-in-the-u.s.-2010/property-crime/mvtheftmain


----------



## Satyricon84

Road_UK said:


> Usually in Turin at traffic lights I get bother by old women with a coke cup in their hands.


They are gipsies. Same scene in almost every city here. But much more bothering are window washers, even if you say no they start to "clean" the windshield...everytime is a fight


----------



## g.spinoza

A Chinese woman who just got her driving licence in Italy was stopped by police in Romano, near Bergamo, while driving a city-car in a roundabout, in the wrong direction. Policemen were astounded when 9 people - 7 adults and 2 children - came out of the small car. Driving in the wrong side of the road, this incredible overload and - of course - nobody using seatbelts costed the young Chinese lady 64 licence points and 1800 euro.

http://bergamo.corriere.it/bergamo/...contromano-bergamo-romano-2111357279068.shtml


----------



## italystf

Some years ago, during a my reletives' wedding ceremony, some thieves broke the windshields of two cars parked outside the church and stole all money that would have been gifted to the newlyweds.


----------



## italystf

Satyricon84 said:


> They are gipsies. Same scene in almost every city here. But much more bothering are window washers, even if you say no they start to "clean" the windshield...everytime is a fight


I often see girls (aparently gypsy or however eastern europeans) asking for money on trains "because they have no money for food". They usually are dressed normally (not with old dirty clothers like would dress a desperate person) sometimes with their boobs well in evidence to get more tips by male passengers :lol:. And if they're on the train they have at least money for the ticket (controls are frequent on that line). Maybe they need those money for their booze or fix. I understand poor elderly or disabled people, but if you're young and healty look for a job!


----------



## Road_UK

Satyricon84 said:


> They are gipsies. Same scene in almost every city here. But much more bothering are window washers, even if you say no they start to "clean" the windshield...everytime is a fight


Keep the doors locked, window's shut and spray the windscreen yourself. They should get the message... And get wet.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> I just spent a few minutes looking at US statistics, out of curiosity.
> 
> Motor-vehicle-theft rate for the country as a whole was 238-point-something per 100,000 people in 2010 (Detailed 2011 numbers aren't out yet). Average value per car was about $6,000, so we're not talking luxury vehicles: I've heard they go more for vehicles that they'll be able to break up for sellable parts.
> 
> If anyone wants to play any more with that, start here: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/uc...e-in-the-u.s.-2010/property-crime/mvtheftmain


Expensive cars are often LoJacked, while cheaper cars are also stolen because they can be used for joyriding and for criminal activities where they dump the car after the job. Expensive cars attract more attention.


----------



## Satyricon84

Road_UK said:


> Keep the doors locked, window's shut and spray the windscreen yourself. They should get the message... And get wet.


I usually keep a bit distance from the ahead car, and when they come close I push the gas move forward. Spray myself the windscreen driving often in Milan means to refill the water bowl almost every week. hno: . Previous major was against gypsy at traffic lights, but the actual major of milan is gypsy-friendly


----------



## bogdymol

I haven't checked this thread for 1 hour and now it looks like an internet chat room :lol:



g.spinoza said:


> They usually don't steal cars. They ask for some coins otherwise they vandalize and scratch your car.


Yeah... this also happens in Bucharest. You find an empty parking spot, you park there, and suddenly there's a guy that looks like you couldn't trust and he asks you for money to "guard" your car... so nobody damages it. If you give him money it's ok, if not... he will do some damage to your car after you leave. Here's one "parcangiu" (RO) captured by me on camera in Bucharest last year:


----------



## Satyricon84

italystf said:


> I often see girls (aparently gypsy or however eastern europeans) asking for money on trains "because they have no money for food". They usually are dressed normally (not with old dirty clothers like would dress a desperate person) sometimes with their boobs well in evidence to get more tips by male passengers :lol:. And if they're on the train they have at least money for the ticket (controls are frequent on that line). Maybe they need those money for their booze or fix. I understand poor elderly or disabled people, but if you're young and healty look for a job!


In Milan you can find such cases on the metro. Often with husband and children, the man play the violin and girl and children go to ask money. A wagon after other every stop


----------



## italystf

Satyricon84 said:


> I usually keep a bit distance from the ahead car, and when they come close I push the gas move forward. Spray myself the windscreen driving often in Milan means to refill the water bowl almost every week. hno: . Previous major was against gypsy at traffic lights, but the actual major of milan is gypsy-friendly


I've heard that some glass cleaner throw dirty water or mud on your windshield so you're forced to have it cleaned (and thus pay them).


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> I've heard that some glass cleaner throw dirty water or mud on your windshield so you're forced to have it cleaned (and thus pay them).


Or exit the car and punch him in the face.


----------



## keokiracer

bogdymol said:


> I haven't checked this thread for 1 hour and now it looks like an internet chat room :lol:


^^ This


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> Average value per car was about $6,000, so we're not talking luxury vehicles: I've heard they go more for vehicles that they'll be able to break up for sellable parts.


Yes, same here.


----------



## italystf

Satyricon84 said:


> In Milan you can find such cases on the metro. Often with husband and children, the man play the violin and girl and children go to ask money. A wagon after other every stop


I'd rather give 100€ to a serious and reliable charity organization that take care of poor and homeless instead of giving 1€ to those beggars. Most of the times either they don't get all the money they get because they're exploited by crime syndacates or they aren't really so desperate but they beg using their non-caucasian appearances or their non-Italian accent as a "pass" to look like poor and thus deserve money.
Especially in this period there're many Italian suffering from poverty but they almost never beg except few clochard and drug addicts.


----------



## Satyricon84

italystf said:


> I've heard that some glass cleaner throw dirty water or mud on your windshield so you're forced to have it cleaned (and thus pay them).


Possible, but these are the worse cases cause they want you to stop or going out of the car... and this cause is possible there's partner in crime hidden somewhere ready to rob you.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Or exit the car and punch him in the face.


If one is alone, or even worse a woman, (s)he wouldn't probably dare to do it.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Expensive cars are often LoJacked, while cheaper cars are also stolen because they can be used for joyriding and for criminal activities where they dump the car after the job. Expensive cars attract more attention.


I've never had any trouble (knock on wood) in four years using a 2002 Mitsubishi Lancer with 140,000 miles on it, most of the time parked in central Philadelphia.

If I have to park out of sight of my apartment I check on it every 24 hours, but that's less for making sure it hasn't been stolen or vandalized than because the city occasionally establishes temporary no-parking zones (because someone's working on water lines or whatever) so a spot that was legal when you parked can become illegal. I've gotten a couple of tickets for those situations, but they're supposed to put up the signs 24 hours before the restriction goes into effect....


----------



## Satyricon84

italystf said:


> I'd rather give 100€ to a serious and reliable charity organization that take care of poor and homeless instead of giving 1€ to those beggars. Most of the times either they don't get all the money they get because they're exploited by crime syndacates or they aren't really so desperate but they beg using their non-caucasian appearances or their non-Italian accent as a "pass" to look like poor and thus deserve money.
> Especially in this period there're many Italian suffering from poverty but they almost never beg except few clochard and drug addicts.


Is well-known where finish all money those gypsy get


----------



## bogdymol

Penn's Woods said:


> If I have to park out of sight of my apartment I check on it every 24 hours, but that's less for making sure it hasn't been stolen or vandalized than because the city occasionally establishes temporary no-parking zones (because someone's working on water lines or whatever) so a spot that was legal when you parked can become illegal. I've gotten a couple of tickets for those situations, but they're supposed to put up the signs 24 hours before the restriction goes into effect....


What if you go on vacantion several days without your car?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Good question. I haven't done that, but I might put it in a commercial garage to be safe. (Or if I was feeling cheap, leave it at my mother's.)


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Fiat Panda in Italy...


Common cheap cars are easier to steal (because they have less security technology) and to conceal (there're many of them in circulation).
In the 80s and 90s there was an unfamous criminal gang in Bologna called Uno Bianca gang. They did many robberies and homicidies and they used mostly stolen Fiat Uno, very common cars in Italy in those years.
Cheap small cars can be illegally modified in order to reach higher speed and be efficient against police chasings.


----------



## bogdymol

Satyricon84 said:


> Is well-known where finish all money those gypsy get





Architecture wall of shame by bogdymol, on Flickr


Architecture wall of shame by bogdymol, on Flickr" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Ceausescu's mountain house? 

EDIT: is that two British plates in the first pic?


----------



## italystf

I'm ideologically against racism and in favour of multiculturalism.
But however I think that gypsies, or at least a big part of them, have a lifestyle that is absolutely unaccaptable for a civilized country and are unable to adapt to a normal life. Sad fact but unfortunately true.hno:

I found this emblematic article that probably doesn't need any comment. And there is plenty of such cases across Europe.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...y-113k-benefits-stolen-British-taxpayers.html



Penn's Woods said:


> Ceausescu's mountain house?
> 
> EDIT: is that two British plates in the first pic?


Yes, plates are British but probably owners aren't.


----------



## Satyricon84

WTF, seems a temple of any strange sect that wants your money in change of your soul salvation.


----------



## bogdymol

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Ceausescu's mountain house?


Nope... just gypsy houses. They like to build their houses as big as possible and with many bling-bling things to attract atention. For me they look like uke: and if I would be the mayor I wouldn't allow them to do this...



Penn's Woods said:


> EDIT: is that two British plates in the first pic?


Yes, but 90% of the British & Irish licensed cars that are in Romania are driven by gypsyes (often without insurance).


----------



## keokiracer

bogdymol said:


> Yes, but 90% of the British & Irish licensed cars that are in Romania are driven by gypsyes (often without insurance).


I told you, they come to Western-Europe to steal stuff an then head back home


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> Nope... just gypsy houses. They like to build their houses as big as possible and with many bling-bling things to attract atention. For me they look like uke: and if I would be the mayor I wouldn't allow them to do this...


If they respect building zoning and safety laws and are legal residents in that territory, nobody can forbid them to build such houses.
But, under the point of taxation, how they justify a such high income to afford such expensive homes? If they're proper gypsies they probably don't have a full-time regular job.
Probably those buildings accomodate other people than their official legal residents.


----------



## Satyricon84

italystf said:


> I'm ideologically against racism and in favour of multiculturalism.
> But however I think that gypsies, or at least a big part of them, have a lifestyle that is absolutely unaccaptable for a civilized country and are unable to adapt to a normal life. Sad fact but unfortunately true.hno:
> 
> I found this emblematic article that probably doesn't need any comment. And there is plenty of such cases across Europe.
> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...y-113k-benefits-stolen-British-taxpayers.html


and in Italy judges give back the confiscated Ferraris, house and bank accounts to a destitute gypsy without fix work...
http://www.gazzettino.it/articolo.php?id=144834&sez=NORDEST


----------



## italystf

Satyricon84 said:


> and in Italy judges give back the confiscated Ferraris, house and bank accounts to a destitute gypsy without fix work...
> http://www.gazzettino.it/articolo.php?id=144834&sez=NORDEST


The problem of our justice is that investigation activities are too weak when homicides or serious violences aren't involved and criminals are often let free because of lack of proofs.
I think that nobody should be allowed to own very expensive things or propertries if he cannot tell how he legally got the money for them and pays adequate taxes.
And we Italians are champions in looking poor only to the tax office, we shouldn't just blame immigrants for that.


----------



## bogdymol

italystf said:


> If they respect building zoning and safety laws and are legal residents in that territory, nobody can forbid them to build such houses.


Look at the houses in the Alps. They all look really nice and almost identical. I'm not saying that we should build identical houses, but they should look somehow similar... and this gypsy castles aren't fitting well in the area at all.



italystf said:


> But, under the point of taxation, how they justify a such high income to afford such expensive homes? If they're proper gypsies they probably don't have a full-time regular job.


Usually nobody checks how can they afford luxury houses and expensive care even though they don't work.



italystf said:


> Probably those buildings accomodate other people than their official legal residents.


Gypsy people usually like to live together with their entire family, so there might be 3 generations living under the same roof.


----------



## g.spinoza

Satyricon84 said:


> and in Italy judges give back the confiscated Ferraris, house and bank accounts to a destitute gypsy without *fix work.*..
> http://www.gazzettino.it/articolo.php?id=144834&sez=NORDEST


You mean "permanent job"...


----------



## Road_UK

But still... when I was driving in Romania, and passing through one of these gypsy villages, I saw the most beautiful gypsy girl on the back of a horse and carriage, with a long dress, and long black hair. I still see her in front of me.


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> Look at the houses in the Alps. They all look really nice and almost identical. I'm not saying that we should build identical houses, but they should look somehow similar... and this gypsy castles aren't fitting well in the area at all.


They fit well in the gypsy area. :troll:


----------



## MajKeR_

I don't know what in Romania, but in Poland those "residences" are usually very shitty, built from trashy materials.

I have a pleasure to live outside their "zone of influence" :|, there's just small amount of them in the most criminal and poor district of my neighboring city - Bytom - Bobrek. Here they just beg on streets, using their children.

Really, everybody, but not them...

Edit: have a nice puking: click


----------



## Marcao

bogdymol said:


> I haven't checked this thread for 1 hour and now it looks like an internet chat room :lol:
> 
> Yeah... this also happens in Bucharest. You find an empty parking spot, you park there, and suddenly there's a guy that looks like you couldn't trust and he asks you for money to "guard" your car... so nobody damages it. If you give him money it's ok, if not... he will do some damage to your car after you leave. Here's one "parcangiu" (RO) captured by me on camera in Bucharest last year:


lol, exactly the same thing in Brazil..


----------



## italystf

Marcao said:


> lol, exactly the same thing in Brazil..


And in Neaples and Palermo too.hno:


----------



## AUchamps

This wouldn't happen in places with open carry gun laws, like Texas.


----------



## keokiracer

^^ It doesn't happen here in NL either and weapons are forbidden here (unless w/ permit)


----------



## AUchamps

keokiracer said:


> ^^ It doesn't happen here in NL either and weapons are forbidden here (unless w/ permit)


I bet it really doesn't happen in Switzerland. They did well keeping riff raff out.


----------



## Penn's Woods

AUchamps said:


> This wouldn't happen in places with open carry gun laws, like Texas.


Oh, sure. What are a few dozen dead people a month in movie theaters or houses of worship or meet-and-greets with their Congresswoman so long as everyone has the right to shoot people for hassling their cars or being in a neighborhood where they don't look like everyone else? hno:


----------



## xrtn2

Marcao said:


> lol, exactly the same thing in Brazil..


All big brazilian cities have this problem

By the brazlian law they are criminals.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> And in Neaples and Palermo too.hno:


It happens everywhere in Italy, not only in Naples and Palermo.


----------



## Fatfield

The scallies were doing this in Liverpool about 20 years ago.

Scally - If you want to park your car here it'll cost you a quid mister
Driver - Why, what will happen if I don't give you a quid?
Scally - The car'll disappear.
Driver - See that dog in the back seat? Its a Rottweiler. It'll rip you apart if you try to steal the car.
Scally - Aye, but is it any good at putting out fires?


----------



## Penn's Woods

The harassing-you-to-let-you-pay-them-to-wash-your-windows bit was big in New York in the late 80s to early 90s.

As far as I know, it's a phenomenon of the past.


----------



## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> The harassing-you-to-let-you-pay-them-to-wash-your-windows bit was big in New York in the late 80s to early 90s.
> 
> As far as I know, it's a phenomenon of the past.


Many European cities would do well with Rudolph Giuliani's style zero-tolerance police intervention. They could start at Bruxelles, Roma and Berlin.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^At the risk of opening a can of worms, there seem to be...phrasing this carefully...differences in law enforcement priorities and in ideas of what "justice" is. I was stunned to read last week that Marc Dutroux' wife is being released ("conditionally" released - a convent agreed to house her - but still....) But I'm not sure giving the public the right to shoot people who are bothering their cars makes for safer streets either.

I'm not of Giuliani's party and wouldn't vote for him for President, but he does seem to have gotten the right balance in New York.


----------



## NordikNerd

Driving in the summertime equals bugs on the bumper.


----------



## Zagor666

What a 800m race in London,a new World and a new Junior World Record - the 8th,so the last runned a 1:43:77 what was enough to win gold in Sydney,Athens or Bejing - probably the greatest Athletics 800m race of all time :cheers:


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ And I missed it to go to the movies and see "Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter" hno:


----------



## Surel

Just received nice snapshot from the police in Branderburg...


----------



## Road_UK

What reg nationality have you got?


----------



## Surel

I am CZ national, living in NL currently. NL registered car.


----------



## Road_UK

You'll probably be ok then.


----------



## bogdymol

I've heard about Romanians, driving Romanian registered car in Austria, and getting the fine at home (in Romania)...


----------



## Surel

Road_UK said:


> You'll probably be ok then.


What do you mean by being ok? . I just received it in the post at home in NL lol. Nvm its already paid, wasnt much, just doing 135 on 120 variable sign. Anyway now I was fined alredy by police in CZ, GE and NL, although in NL was it only when riding a bicycle, so far the highest fine anyway on the bike.

Actually two times on s bike in NL and once for speeding in a car, but dont know if that was me or my gf in the car then. No photo by the Dutch police . The Germans at least make you a photo, lol.


----------



## Zagor666

Who needs the tunnel when you just can jump over the channel :cheers:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Alert Health and Safety:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...strians-cause-one-million-crashes-a-year.html

EDIT: Since the whole link doesn't show, it's about a British study supposedly revealing that a million accidents a year in the U.K. are caused by drivers' being distracted by attractive pedestrians (or models on billboards).


----------



## Verso

^ Yeah, it's a problem.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^


> A study of 2,142 drivers found 60 per cent of men admitted being distracted by attractive women while 12 per cent of women said they took their eyes off the road to leer at good looking men.


This also shows that men's standards are way lower than women's.


----------



## Verso

I think it shows that women are less horny than men (which is true anyway). But even 60% is low. I mean, 40% of men are never distracted by attractive women?


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> I think it shows that women are less horny than men (which is true anyway). But even 60% is low. I mean, 40% of men are never distracted by attractive women?


Roughly 10% of males are homosexual. The other 30% I don't know: some have hot partners, some are too focused on driving, some are a-sexual like Sheldon and reproduce by mitosis


----------



## bogdymol

Little Russia :nuts: :crazy:






This is like in that joke: the wife calls her husband and says: "Honey, be careful, they showed on TV that there is an idiot driving the wrong way on the motorway". The husband's answer is: "One idiot? There are thousands!".


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Roughly 10% of males are homosexual.


So they'll be distracted by attractive men.


----------



## Verso

Eastern Europe is truly crazy. :nuts:


----------



## Angelos

That's why it is the best Europe :smug:


----------



## keokiracer

bogdymol said:


> Little Russia :nuts: :crazy:


It's in Ukraine. I thought I'd already posted that here? Or did I only post it on the Dutch road forum?
Oh, and please link the original video, I hate it when people copy videos from others


----------



## bogdymol

^^
1. I said "little Russia" (that's = Ucraine)
2. I got the youtube link from a local car website... I haven't searched for original or fake ones


----------



## nenea_hartia

^ I wonder how many of those cars were yours before, rich Westerners...


----------



## keokiracer

bogdymol said:


> ^^
> 1. I said "little Russia" (that's = Ucraine)


I thought you meant Belarus (in Dutch: Wit-_Rusland_), my bad


----------



## x-type

where are all those people going?!


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> So they'll be distracted by attractive men.


Not if they behave like women.:nuts:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Who's "they"? The gay men being distracted or the men being distracting?


----------



## keokiracer

x-type said:


> where are all those people going?!


It was during Euro 2012. I guess they were heading towards a match.


----------



## hofburg

Penn's Woods said:


> Alert Health and Safety:
> 
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...strians-cause-one-million-crashes-a-year.html
> 
> EDIT: Since the whole link doesn't show, it's about a British study supposedly revealing that a million accidents a year in the U.K. are caused by drivers' being distracted by attractive pedestrians (or models on billboards).


I was told so already when I was doing first aid for driving licence.


----------



## italystf

Italian prescription glasses spot:

She: "Please, Nevio, drive carefully, it's almost dark, slow down!"
He: "I'm not retarded, I see very well!"
The radio: "Someone is driving wrong way on the A4."
He: "Only one? There are more!"






:lol:


----------



## hofburg

doesn't look like A4


----------



## Road_UK

Yes. We should demolish the pass and build a wider straight road, right Suburbanist?


----------



## Wilhem275

Gotthard's second tube will be enough to please me 

PS: by "Schengenizing" I mean I want free-flow borders like anywhere in EU  I know controls are still possible, a document check on international trains is not uncommon, but traffic queues at the border are -luckily- distant memories...


----------



## Road_UK

Mmm.... Tell that the Germans and the French. Saarbrücken A6 border is a favorite check-and delay point for both the French and Germans, and a while ago on the border heading towards Groningen, the Germans were getting everybody off the motorway, onto a large car park which is on Dutch soil, and it was causing long delays. Polizei and politie, Zoll and douane, marechaussee and BAG, everybody was there to join the party... A similar thing occurred on the Passau border with Austria once. Police State to say the least...


----------



## Wilhem275

Was there a real purpose, or just for the sake of "Hey, we control everything"?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Those are special stings to apprehend criminals, money-launderers and tax evaders.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Those are special stings to apprehend criminals, money-launderers and tax evaders.





Road_UK said:


> Yes. We should demolish the pass and build a wider straight road, right Suburbanist?


They could build a second road on a wider alignment AND keep the old route for cars only 

Example: the Gotthardpaß has a relatively modern wide road that can take even trucks, and an old and lightly trafficked one.


----------



## bogdymol

RipleyLV said:


> A small private plane had an emergency landing on A10 (Riga-Ventspils) road near Pūre.


Here are 2 snapshots that I took about 2 weeks ago   


A1 Arad-Nadlac lot 2 (Alpine) by bogdymol, on Flickr


----------



## keber

g.spinoza said:


> Looks like rubber, right? It isn't.
> You have no idea of the power of flutter and resonance wave.


This video of Tacoma bridge is shown in every civil engineering faculty (and not just once) and I'm very much aware of resonance effects on slim structures. However if this video is real (which I still doubt even with an obscure newspaper article), then those portals in Canada must be very slim too.
EDIT: Finally I found more believable video:


----------



## Verso

^^ It's the same video.



keber said:


> (which I still doubt even with an obscure newspaper article)


http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2012/08/14/calgary-weather-storm-lightning.html
http://www.globaltvcalgary.com/vide...+sweeps+through+calgary/6442697171/story.html
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/c...credited+sparing+city+from/7084924/story.html


----------



## Road_UK

ChrisZwolle said:


> Those are special stings to apprehend criminals, money-launderers and tax evaders.


Smugglers and illegal immigrants , drug runners and general identity checks...


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> This video of Tacoma bridge is shown in every civil engineering faculty (and not just once) and I'm very much aware of resonance effects on slim structures. However if this video is real (which I still doubt even with an obscure newspaper article), then those portals in Canada must be very slim too.
> EDIT: Finally I found more believable video:


Myself, I think that a gantry can collapse more easily than a bridge. And I must confess I don't know how the same video is "more believable". You're just another Saint Thomas 

EDIT: This video was shown also in "La repubblica" website, the second most important italian newspaper. But I know this is not enough for Saint Thomas.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Dutch-language baseball T-shirt of the day:

http://mlb.mlb.com/cutfour/index.jsp#contentId=37030494

Yes, I said "Dutch-language baseball T-shirt".

I don't know the story behind this, actually; was just checking for yesterday's scores when the Dutch caught my eye.


----------



## CNGL

All of ours around here like roads, but nobody except me would say he has actually built a road! Yesterday I myself built 5 meters of gravel road somewhere West of Huesca, under a temperature of 40ºC :nuts:.


----------



## Wilhem275

g.spinoza said:


> EDIT: This video was shown also in *"La repubblica" website*, the second most important italian newspaper.


I wouldn't take that as a proof of the seriousness of a fact :lol:
Italian journalism and videos on the internet don't mix well :shifty:

CNGL: we want pictures!


----------



## CNGL

Unfortunately I didn't took any pictures . 

For Chris: wacht out for tropical storm Isaac, it will cross Netherlands on the next hours . Well, not mainland Netherlands, but Saba and St. Eustace, which I read are now part of Netherlands.


----------



## seem

Why would you build anything if it is 40C? On monday I spent a day on a concrete carpark helping to build a new part of it and it was above 35. Never again


----------



## ChrisZwolle

CNGL said:


> Yesterday I myself built 5 meters of gravel road somewhere West of Huesca, under a temperature of 40ºC :nuts:.


You've built the roadbed for the A-22 extension from Huesca to Logroño?


----------



## CNGL

Nope, it was just at the gate of our orchard. But in the event of a Westwards extension of A-22, IMO it would end at Tudela.


----------



## bogdymol

CNGL said:


> All of ours around here like roads, but nobody except me would say he has actually built a road! Yesterday I myself built 5 meters of gravel road somewhere West of Huesca, under a temperature of 40ºC :nuts:.


I can say that I am currently in a team that builds a road... so you're not the only one


----------



## italystf

Wilhem275 said:


> I wouldn't take that as a proof of the seriousness of a fact :lol:
> Italian journalism and videos on the internet don't mix well :shifty:
> 
> CNGL: we want pictures!


Few years ago a storm destroyed the stage of the Heineken Festival near Venice. Later, journalists used that video for a service about an hurricane somewhere in the tropics.


----------



## italystf

seem said:


> Drunk couple? 0,2% thats like nothing they must be mental.


I mean 2% sorry.


----------



## MattiG

seem said:


> Drunk couple? 0,2% thats like nothing they must be mental.


Ehh..?

I would say 0.2% is close to dead drunk for many people.


----------



## g.spinoza

MattiG said:


> Ehh..?
> 
> I would say 0.2% is close to dead drunk for many people.


I guess he meant 2 g/l, which is more or less 0.2% in volume.


----------



## Suburbanist

This car sat idle in a free parking space near my residence for months before being removed


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> This car sat idle in a free parking space near my residence for months before being removed


Don't know if you already know it but there is a thread " Wrecks and abandoned cars". It's amazing how many cars lay for years in public spaces.


----------



## keber

Do anyone of you also have misplaced Panoramio photos in Google Earth?


----------



## cougar1989

Yes I have the same problem too


----------



## Alex_ZR

^^ Me too, Brazilian photos in Serbia! :lol:


----------



## CNGL

I've seen photos where they forgot to put the minus sign in one of the coordinates, causing photos made in Palencia to be off the Catalan coast, for example. They have already corrected that. But... Brazilian photos in Serbia? :crazy:. If they were somewhere in Saudi Arabia...


----------



## Road_UK

Just as weird as a Pakistani family driving off the ferry in Calais, in a vehicle with Polish plates on. I couldn't believe it...


----------



## keber

CNGL said:


> They have already corrected that. But... Brazilian photos in Serbia?


I see only Russian and Chinese photos in Slovenia, Italy, France, Germany etc.


----------



## g.spinoza

Meanwhile in China:









The 15-km-long Yangmingtan Bridge, in the city of Harbin, collapsed killing three.


----------



## italystf

Can you be more stupid than this?


----------



## Peines

^^ Woman Logic :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Not trying to be alarmist here, but since people seem to have some interest in weather, latest forecasts on Tropical Storm Isaac have it heading close to New Orleans. Should be a hurricane by then, but weaker than Katrina. But these things are notoriously difficult to predict; that's hundreds of miles away from where it is now, and two or three days.

24-hour coverage on the Weather Channel here (weather.com) (it's already affecting Florida).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm interested in hurricanes and have been watching NBC6 South Florida for the last two days. Those news anchors and meteorologists are really making overtime these days.


----------



## AUchamps

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm interested in hurricanes and have been watching NBC6 South Florida for the last two days. Those news anchors and meteorologists are really making overtime these days.


Why are the levees and pumps in your country so much better then in ours?

Waarom zijn de dijken en pompen in uw land zo veel beter dan in de onze?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It depends on what you defines as "ours", are you American? 

The main difference with the Netherlands and Florida is that the Netherlands is partially below sea level, so it would flood without levees and pumps even in normal circumstances. Florida doesn't flood unless there is a storm surge or 10 inch of rain. While the Netherlands does experience storm surges over 10 feet at times, extreme rain like 10 inches in a day virtually never occurs.


----------



## AUchamps

ChrisZwolle said:


> It depends on what you defines as "ours", are you American?
> 
> The main difference with the Netherlands and Florida is that the Netherlands is partially below sea level, so it would flood without levees and pumps even in normal circumstances. Florida doesn't flood unless there is a storm surge or 10 inch of rain. While the Netherlands does experience storm surges over 10 feet at times, extreme rain like 10 inches in a day virtually never occurs.


Ah, yes by "ours" I mean American and specifically Louisiana. We all remember Katrina.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Ouch! I'd been guessing AU was Auburn.

Hang in there and get out if you need to. Not that you need me to tell you that.


----------



## Zagor666

Surel said:


> ^^
> 
> Btw, would be interesting to know what is the highest speed a vehicle has ever been doing on the German motorway in normal traffic circumstances.
> 
> I found this one: 236 miles per hour (381 kilometers per hour): Porsche 9ff GTurbo850 at first google hit: http://auto.howstuffworks.com/5-fastest-speeds-on-autobahn.htm


I dont know that but the highest speed on the Elzer Berg on the A3 Köln-Frankfurt where the speed limit is 100km/h was 208km/h from a dude that drived a E30 bmw :nuts:


----------



## g.spinoza

Surel said:


> ^^
> 
> Btw, would be interesting to know what is the highest speed a vehicle has ever been doing on the German motorway in normal traffic circumstances.
> 
> I found this one: 236 miles per hour (381 kilometers per hour): Porsche 9ff GTurbo850 at first google hit: http://auto.howstuffworks.com/5-fastest-speeds-on-autobahn.htm


I doubt anyone can do better without driving one of those Slovak MIG-29s...


----------



## Zagor666

g.spinoza said:


> I doubt anyone can do better without driving one of those Slovak MIG-29s...


On the A555 Köln-Bonn on sunday morning,so 5a.m.,you can press the pedal to the metal.Its a good section to figure out how fast can your car go :cheers:


----------



## g.spinoza

Zagor666 said:


> On the A555 Köln-Bonn on sunday morning,so 5a.m.,you can press the pedal to the metal.Its a good section to figure out how fast can your car go :cheers:


I pressed mine as hard as I could and reached an astonishing 162 km/h on A95 towards Garmisch... and still creating queue behind me... :nuts:


----------



## cinxxx

Zagor666 said:


> On the A555 Köln-Bonn on sunday morning,so 5a.m.,you can press the pedal to the metal.Its a good section to figure out how fast can your car go :cheers:


I did it on the A9 near Ingolstadt, sadly I can do only 200 on GPS and ~212 on the dashboard .


----------



## Coccodrillo

Coccodrillo said:


> I'm using a new notebook with Swiss keyboard but Windows 7 continuously changes the layout to the Italian one - as it does on every newly installed system I used (even if I always choose the Swiss French layout when I install Windows, it automatically switch to the Italian layout). Apparently it's a bug, I wonder if Windows versions in French/German language sold in Switzerland randomly changes to the French/German layouts as well...the only way to solve this is to remove the Italian layout (which I didn't install) completely.
> 
> (I have correct the previous post, the tunnel's name is Eyholz, not Ezholy)





g.spinoza said:


> I created a custom layout - based on the Italian one - that allows me to enter easily characters like ü, È, î and so on. Windows seems to randomly switch between my custom layout and the Italian one all the time


I wonder why Italian and French layouts don't allow to type some characters like accented vowels, even if they are really common in that countries' languages (for instance, "È" means "it is" in Italian and despite being extremely frequent at the beginning of a phrase it cannot be written with an Italian layout).

Also the Swiss layout has a problem: it cannot write the upper-case "ç" (but allows the "È").


----------



## bogdymol

I did 160 km/h on a romanian _German_ D) motorway yesterday.


----------



## CNGL

Weirdly enough, Spanish layout allows to type far more letters that those necessary for our language: àäâãçèëêìïîòöôõùûýÿ.

PS: I can type the upper-case Ç .


----------



## bogdymol

Romanian truck :crazy:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Coccodrillo said:


> I wonder why Italian and French layouts don't allow to type some characters like accented vowels, even if they are really common in that countries' languages (for instance, "È" means "it is" in Italian and despite being extremely frequent at the beginning of a phrase it cannot be written with an Italian layout).
> 
> Also the Swiss layout has a problem: it cannot write the upper-case "ç" (but allows the "È").


I usually use the French-French (français de France) layout when typing in French, but the Canadian French layout (which is basically QWERTY with accented characters added) permits things like Ç, È and É.

In the French-French layout, Word will automatically capitalize ç if you put it at the beginning of a sentence, and can be set to capitalize è and so on (The setting is "enforce accented uppercase in French"), so you can do things in Word and copy-and-paste into here, I suppose.

I used three layouts - the default American, the Canadian French and the French-French - in producing this post; I don't use the Canadian French often so I end up hunting for things like quotation marks.


----------



## Penn's Woods

CNGL said:


> Weirdly enough, Spanish layout allows to type far more letters that those necessary for our language: àäâãçèëêìïîòöôõùûýÿ.
> 
> PS: I can type the upper-case Ç .


It seems to be meant to accommodate Catalan. As in "Paral·lel."


----------



## Peines

CNGL said:


> Weirdly enough, Spanish layout allows to type far more letters that those necessary for our language: àäâãçèëêìïîòöôõùûýÿ.
> 
> PS: I can type the upper-case Ç .


Try the Mac Spanish ISO Keyboard… :| 

More letters if you press the alt key ⌥ , and ⇧ shift key + ⌥ alt.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A 70 meter office tower was imploded today in Eindhoven, Netherlands. However it didn't go as planned, the elevator shaft didn't come down.


----------



## g.spinoza

Coccodrillo said:


> I wonder why Italian and French layouts don't allow to type some characters like accented vowels, even if they are really common in that countries' languages (for instance, "È" means "it is" in Italian and despite being extremely frequent at the beginning of a phrase it cannot be written with an Italian layout).


Precisely my complaint, and the reason why I felt the need to customize my keyboard. It is absurd that Italian keyboard doesn't have "È" but has "ç", non-existent in Italian language, or "§", which hardly anyone has ever used. 
By the way in Linux you can obtain a lot of accented letters by using some combinations, and I simply translated this feature into Windows.


----------



## Fane40

ChrisZwolle said:


> I have a Renault Kangoo van. I never had any non-regular wear-and-tear maintenance with it, apart from a lock that had to be replaced on the passenger's side. It's reliable (so far) and fuel efficient. On my last trip to France in July I managed to get 1 L / 22 km with it (or 4.54 L / 100 km)


What a courage !
I enough have driven a Kangoo between 1998 and 2000.
Very very bad souvenir.
"Skaï" seats (like a sauna when you have sun), without air conditioned of course, even no assisted direction (power steering), no electrical panes, excessive noise, very tiring on highways, inconfortable, diesel motor with only 55 CV (130 km/h maximum, and 100 km/h on top of hills on highways !!), very dangerous to overtake with on roads because of bad power, noisy seats, etc, etc....
True: I took aspirine very often after a journey in those f...g vehicles.
Before, I had driven with Renault Trafic and old Master.:down:
With that, I decided never to buy a Renault van. Finished !
Germans are the best (VW and MB)
Only interesting adavantages from french: confortable (cars) and economic.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Fane40 said:


> What a courage !
> I enough have driven a Kangoo between 1998 and 2000.
> Very very bad souvenir.
> "Skaï" seats (like a sauna when you have sun), without air conditioned of course, even no assisted direction (power steering), no electrical panes, excessive noise, very tiring on highways, inconfortable, diesel motor with only 55 CV (130 km/h maximum, and 100 km/h on top of hills on highways !!), very dangerous to overtake with on roads because of bad power, noisy seats, etc, etc....


The Kangoo has changed quite a bit since then. It's actually rather fast with its 1.5 turbodiesel. 140 km/h on motorways with long 7% grades is no problem at all. The top speed is about 170 km/h and even from 110 to 140 it accelerates quite nicely, even though it has only 65 HP. Mine also has airconditioning and of course power steering.


----------



## hofburg

my dad's audi does 5,5 l/100km and has 140HP


----------



## MajKeR_

ChrisZwolle said:


> On my last trip to France in July I managed to get 1 L / 22 km with it (or 4.54 L / 100 km)





ChrisZwolle said:


> It's actually rather fast with its 1.5 turbodiesel.


1.5 dCi is very good engine - especially if taking into account economic matters. I heavily wonder about Megane with it (but in 105 HP version) for next year, though some Alfa Romeo would be the best choice for me.

Another vote for Renault in Poland is amount of ones bought from Polish dealers in our streets. It takes you a lot of calm, if you want to buy an used car (domestic service book and possibility of checking it in brand service).


----------



## Peines

Bitch please…

*VW Polo, TDI 1.6 105HP… I do 4.2L/100km …* 

…*at 118km/h of average speed,* stating in madrid city centre (Gran Vía - Tudescos), with the AC compresor connected all the time.

:baeh3:

This what I get in a Madrid - Alicante via A-3 E-901 + A-31 (+/- 440km).

Sometimes in my every day i can get 3.7l/100km or less, but, without crossing the barrier "80~100" km/h, and without entering the city.

As usual, my average consumption in a normal week starts in 4.8L/100km to 5.5 L/100km.

:|


----------



## MajKeR_

^^ 1.6 TDI seems to be as good as old 1.9, so no suprise in that case.


----------



## Verso

I can't keep up with all these Golfs. I drove Golf IV at driving school.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> I can't keep up with all these Golfs. I drove Golf IV at driving school.


me too  it was painted awfully green


----------



## Lum Lumi

I drove a Golf 2, diesel, so there's always worse..


----------



## cinxxx

I drove Golf 5 at driving school


----------



## CNGL

I myself drove an Opel, I don't remember which one, at driving school. So I got a better car than yours :tongue:.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Both in the Netherlands, the 28 km N302 dam from Lelystad to Enkhuizen and the 29 km - and more famous - "afsluitdijk" or enclosure dam between Den Oever and Zurich.


I believe the Afsluitdyk* at E22 is more longer than 29 km, since it ends in Switzerland... :troll:.

_* Due to budget cuts I'm replacing "ij" with "y" on Dutch placenames: Nijmegen becomes Nymegen, IJmuiden becomes Ymuiden, and so on._


----------



## g.spinoza

During driving school I drove a methane-powered Fiat Uno. Worst of all.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I drove a Peugeot 307 SW during driving school. Fine car to drive, though it was known for its notorious unreliability, that's why I didn't buy one. I had an older Peugeot 306, which was a nice car, but it didn't have A/C and was a bit small. I don't like small cars, I travel mostly long-distance so I want a comfortable car with a higher seat. When I was driving an early 1990s Toyota Starlet, I had to "fold" myself into it, very uncomfortable car.


----------



## Penn's Woods

CNGL said:


> _* Due to budget cuts I'm replacing "ij" with "y" on Dutch placenames: Nijmegen becomes Nymegen, IJmuiden becomes Ymuiden, and so on._


:lol:


----------



## cougar1989

These are the "newest" driving school cars at my driving school, which I attended it 5 years ago.

















Golf V; 2008; 85kW/115 PS; Benzin









Golf VI; 2011; 69kW/94 PS; LPG-Gas / Benzin

I don't know which VW Golf was it 5 years ago and sometimes I drove a Honda Civic at driving school.
I had 2 cars


----------



## RipleyLV

I drove Toyota Corolla Universal at driving school and BMW 118d at exam.


----------



## Peines

I drove a ugly Renault Clio (2007), dci 75 PS. 

If you think it was bad the other options were even worse:
- *Cherlovet Aveo* (Petrol/GLP or Diesel)
or
- The "*drug dealers and Canis* car", also know as *Seat Ibiza (tdi 75)*.


----------



## Road_UK

CNGL said:


> I myself drove an Opel, I don't remember which one, at driving school. So I got a better car than yours :tongue:.
> 
> I believe the Afsluitdyk* at E22 is more longer than 29 km, since it ends in Switzerland... :troll:.
> 
> * Due to budget cuts I'm replacing "ij" with "y" on Dutch placenames: Nijmegen becomes Nymegen, IJmuiden becomes Ymuiden, and so on.


Whij? Short on moneij?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Maybe his donation to Italy to fix their E-numbering was, in retrospect, too generous. :troll:


----------



## italystf

Questions for Dutch speakers:
Why IJsselmeer is written with two capital letters? Is Ysselmeer also correct (like Muenchen for München)?
And what's the 's in 's Hertogenbosch or 's Gravenhage? It's an article like the Italian La Spezia or L'Aquila? How is pronunciated?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

IJ is a digraph in Dutch and is considered as one letter. Only IJ is correct in Dutch, however Flemish people write it as Ij, which is incorrect in the Netherlands. Ysselmeer is archaic and not used anymore.

The 's comes from archaic "des" which means "the". 's-Gravenhage is considerd archaic, the real name is Den Haag. 's-Hertogenbosch is still used officially but most people say Den Bosch apart from language puritans. Note that 's is never capitalized at the beginning of a sentence, instead the next letter is capitalized. 

Dutch still uses 's a lot, 's morgens 's middags 's avonds 's nachts (in the morning / afternoon / evening / night).

's is simply pronounced as "sss" (no "es"). sssgravenhage. Also note that "sch" in Den Bosch (or any other word ending in sch) is just pronounced like a short "s". It could've been Den Bos and nobody would notice the difference in speech. Some people will pronounce it as Den Boš though.

Dutch is a weird language.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^It's your language, of course, but as far as I can tell, capital IJ is written thus in Belgium as well. Example: http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=DMF20120823_002

I think "des" is an old genitive/possessive: 's Hertogenbosch meant "the Duke's wood." The German might be something like "Des Herzogenbusch."

All languages are weird; that's what makes them fascinating.

Sorry to butt in/het spijt mij.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Some people will pronounce it as Den Boš though.


Is š (used in slavic languages) pronunciated like the English sh or the German sch? So does Šibenik is pronunciated shibenik?


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^It's your language, of course, but as far as I can tell, capital IJ is written thus in Belgium as well. Example: http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=DMF20120823_002
> 
> I think "des" is an old genitive/possessive: 's Hertogenbosch meant "the Duke's wood." The German might be something like "Des Herzogenbusch."
> 
> All languages are weird; that's what makes them fascinating.
> 
> Sorry to butt in/het spijt mij.


Den is on its own an archaic article...

Der was possesive, it has to do with the gender I guess all coming from De => der or des


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^It's your language, of course, but as far as I can tell, capital IJ is written thus in Belgium as well. Example: http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=DMF20120823_002


Apparently it becomes more common to write capitalized IJ instead of Ij in Flemish Dutch, but I've seen many people from Flanders still using Ij which looks funny in Dutch.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Dutch Wikipedia says the "Den" names for both cities are actually older than the "'s" versions. The Hague adopted "'s-Gravenhage" only in the 17th century; it's not clear (to me*) why. *It probably would be clear if I knew the word "deftiger": the article says "...de naam 's-Gravenhage, die deftiger klinkt...."

EDIT: arrows are for Surel.


----------



## henry1394

http://carsroute.com/top-15-most-beautiful-roads-in-the-world/?utm_source=wahoha.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=wahoha


----------



## bogdymol

^^ #1


----------



## CNGL

Yeah! :lol:. The Top Gear guys drove the 2nd one (Stelvio pass) and they decided the road was the best one in Europe, but then they were sent to Romania and there they changed the title to the top road on the list (The Transfagasaran).


----------



## Peines

henry1394 said:


> http://carsroute.com/top-15-most-beautiful-roads-in-the-world/?utm_source=wahoha.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=wahoha


:troll:

*I through that the best road in the world would be a supreme motorway experience*, with "super-duper shiny crashbarriers, the asphalt is blacker than a black hole, and the lines are while like pearls and extremely thick and heavy duty..."

:rofl:


----------



## Verso

My synchronicity is freaking me out. I accidentally (doh) stumpled upon this article about the Battle of the Frigidus in modern Slovenia (never heard of it before) and guess what: it was fought in 394, on September 5th and 6th - today. :nuts:


----------



## g.spinoza

Meanwhile in Russia, female biker falls asleep while riding...


----------



## g.spinoza

By the way, I'm leaving for Amalfi coast to attend to a wedding. See you next week!


----------



## cinxxx

^^Have a nice time 

Damn... French Alps Shooting



> The father of a British family murdered in a shooting in the French Alps has been named as Saad al Hilli, according to reports.
> 
> A French police source told AFP news agency that the 50-year-old Iraqi-born father was originally from Baghdad, but lived in Claygate, Surrey.
> 
> He was found dead on Wednesday in his bullet-riddled BMW with the engine still running in eastern France, along with his wife and another woman - believed to be one of their parents.
> 
> A passing British cyclist on holiday discovered the bodies and alerted the emergency services at around 3.50pm (French time).
> 
> [...]


----------



## Penn's Woods

Roadgeekery can be relevant to work!

I was proofing an invitation just now and saw directions telling people to get off I-76 at "Exit 38: I-676 East/Central Philadelphia." The slghtly-embarrassing part was explaining why I know that's wrong. (It's not exit 38, and hasn't been since they renumbered them about 12 years ago: it's now exit 344. I didn't actually know the number; had to search StreetView.  )

Okay, back to work....


----------



## italystf

cinxxx said:


> ^^Have a nice time
> 
> Damn... French Alps Shooting


Two weeks ago a rich couple (around 60 y.o.) was murdered in their house in Lignano Sabbiadoro. Both were stabbed at their troath but everything was in order and nothing was stolen (they had around 100k € in cash, a lot of jewelry and even 60 millions of forgotten and now wortless lire). The hypotesys is a vendetta for economical reasons and not an attempt of robbery. Murders are still unknown although their DNA (probably two persons) had already been isolated. :-(


----------



## Verso

I almost ran over a chihuahua today. Thank god I was driving quite slowly, the crazy dog appeared from nowhere and jumped right in front of my car. Oh yeah, and I got stuck for an hour on A1 by Postojna due to an accident. :bash:


----------



## MattiG

Verso said:


> I almost ran over a chihuahua today. Thank god I was driving quite slowly, the crazy dog appeared from nowhere and jumped right in front of my car.


A chihuahua? A dog?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think he more likely ran over the dog than the Mexican state.


----------



## Verso

Yes, the world's smallest dog. :lol: It already crossed the road a few seconds before (so I slowed down, but not exactly to 20 km/h), but it disappeared. And then all of a sudden jumped in front of me from somewhere. :bash: Thank god for ABS, otherwise the chihuahua would be toast now. I don't even wanna imagine all that mess.


----------



## x-type

i have hit a Scottish Collie few years ago. stupid animal has just appeared from nowhere at open road. and no, i am not the evil guy who has killed Lassie. the car from the opposite direction did the messy part actually.


----------



## Verso

My dog died under wheels as well.


----------



## MattiG

Verso said:


> Yes, the world's smallest dog. :lol:


I classify it a rat.


----------



## CNGL

I have seen some dead cats, ran over by cars. The last one I saw was in one of many roundabouts my hometown has.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Road pizza.


----------



## keber

MattiG said:


> I classify it a rat.


Rats are bigger.


----------



## Road_UK

I've hit a dog once on the A26 between Reims and Calais. I stopped on the shoulder, and phoned the Gendarmes, and told them I hit something. A few minutes later the Gendarme came, together with SANEF security personnel. They informed me that I've hit a Labrador. "But the dog is dead, its not a problem" said one of the cops. As I lost my front numberplate, they made me fill out a form, and the insurance of toll operator SANEF paid for the damage.


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> I've hit a dog once on the A26 between Reims and Calais. I stopped on the shoulder, and phoned the Gendarmes, and told them I hit something. A few minutes later the Gendarme came, together with SANEF security personnel. They informed me that I've hit a Labrador. "But the dog is dead, its not a problem" said one of the cops. As I lost my front numberplate, they made me fill out a form, and the insurance of toll operator SANEF paid for the damage.


Stray dog on a motorway? WTF? I'm sure that it was abandoned by some dirty bastard asshole that went to holiday and didn't want take care of if.


----------



## Road_UK

Yes, or it belongs to someone local. Either way, seeing that the tollroad operator is responsible for keeping their motorways clear, makes it also their responsibility to pay for any damage occurred by animals on their roads.


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> Yes, or it belongs to someone local. Either way, seeing that the tollroad operator is responsible for keeping their motorways clear, makes it also their responsibility to pay for any damage occurred by animals on their roads.


It could be responsible if the fence that separates the motorway from the countryside is broken or missing in some parts and the dog entered from there. If it was deliberately abandoned by someone I don't think they're responsible.


----------



## Road_UK

Well, they have claimed liability, and paid for the damage. I never asked for anything.


----------



## Peines

Meanwhile in Rusia… eee… uhh… yes, *ISRAEL * :crazy:


----------



## cinxxx

This weekend we will do a roadtrip in Austria on the *Großglockner Hochalpenstraße (B107)* and *Felbertauern Straße (B108)*

Day 1: http://goo.gl/maps/tlRtc
But I made also a backup plan in case there will be the usual congestion mayhem on A9+A99+A8: 
http://goo.gl/maps/VNq3q + http://goo.gl/maps/jHF0a

Day 2: http://goo.gl/maps/iFXeU and towards Ingolstadt probably the motorway.

Any recommended cheap gas stations in Austria on the way?
I will check with ÖAMTC also.


----------



## bogdymol

*Happy Birthday to Mr. H&A moderator :cheers:*

:dance:​


----------



## Verso

Happy birthday. :cheers:


Woohoo, I got a 2-€ coin from Malta!


----------



## CNGL

^^ Yesterday I got a Irish €100 note .

And happy birthday to ChrisZwolle!!! Your name has been used for a hurricane this year


----------



## Attus

25? A young man  Happy birthday!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Thanks guys.

Someone once said: "may you live in interesting times". I think we certainly do.


----------



## Fatfield

ChrisZwolle said:


> Thanks guys.
> 
> Someone once said: "may you live in interesting times". I think we certainly do.


That saying is a curse.


----------



## Road_UK

ChrisZwolle said:


> Thanks guys.
> 
> Someone once said: "may you live in interesting times". I think we certainly do.


Happy birthday from me...


----------



## piotr71

Time is passing so quickly...Happy Birthday Chris!

I see You were born just about in the same day of month as I was (only almost 2 decades later :lol: )


----------



## italystf

Happy birthday Chris! 



Verso said:


> Happy birthday. :cheers:
> 
> Woohoo, I got a 2-€ coin from Malta!


I never saw any Maltese coin yet but last week they gave me a 2 euro commemorative of Slovenia (2012 - Ten Years of Euro). Still not found the Italian version, but it's just a matter of time, they made millions of them.



CNGL said:


> ^^ Yesterday I got a Irish €100 note .
> 
> And happy birthday to ChrisZwolle!!! Your name has been used for a hurricane this year


Are 10s and 20s with Draghi signature already around also in Spain?

And when your first Luxembourguese note?


----------



## hofburg

+1


----------



## Ron2K

Happy birthday Chris!


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> Are 10s and 20s with Draghi signature already around also in Spain?
> 
> And when your first Luxembourguese note?


Both Draghi €10 and €20 have been found in Spain . My cousin found one (€20) near Malaga and took it to my hometown. And no R-notes due to something strange, IMO is said with bad words. However I have a note which appears to be Finnish but I'm sure it was printed for Luxembourg.

Edit: Here's Draghi!
Luxembourg note, look at the comment.
And last but not least, Irish €100 note.
And if you want to join EBT, better to do it through the link in my signature.


----------



## CNGL

By the way, if you are wondering who Leudimin is, just look below my nick here .


----------



## seem

Happy birthday Chris! Have a good one! 

Last friday I got 1 euro coin from Malta.


----------



## italystf

I already have an EBT account but I got tired soon. I had a hit after I stopped. However I found out that my region has a very high hit rate (1 in every 700 bills). I think that most bills are entered by bank tellers who handle hundereds of bills every day.
I read that Luxembourguese notes don't exist yet even if the R was reserved for them.

Would you have acceptedthis note? 
(taken from the net, fortunately it didn't happen to me)


----------



## keber

must be from Greece.

I remember drahmas, they were usually so worn out that above example of 10€ note would be considered pretty good.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> must be from Greece.
> 
> I remember drahmas, they were usually so worn out that above example of 10€ note would be considered pretty good.


You didn't get the point. Look more careful.


----------



## Alex_ZR

italystf said:


> You didn't get the point. Look more careful.


Letter C don't yet exist on euro banknotes...


----------



## italystf

Alex_ZR said:


> Letter C don't yet exist on euro banknotes...


Off course! The crooker who made it wasn't enough smart to use a real code! Notice also the lack of security features, just normal printing paper! For police and bank tellers wasn't so difficult discover to him, but many common people would be screwed.
Surely CNLG would have noticed it.


----------



## Verso

I thought it was real.


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> Surely CNLG would have noticed it.


I dont know any CNLG, but I know someone nicknamed Leudimin a.k.a. CNGL. And yes, I noticed it, I knew the photo existed.


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> I dont know any CNLG, but I know someone nicknamed Leudimin a.k.a. CNGL. And yes, I noticed it, I knew the photo existed.


Sorry, little involontary misspelling, maybe because I was typing with a LG smart phone 
Since you entered thousands of notes did you ever find something counterfeit or with printing errors?


----------



## CNGL

I've entered tons of €50 notes with the most famous printing mistake up to date: The one in the printing code which displays M04x as MO4x. This lasted for 4 sheets, from M043 to M046. M047 is correct again. The last known Spanish €50 sheet up to today is M049.


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Obertilliach, Tirol, Österreich!


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile in Texas:
A 13-y.o. girl (3 years before the legal driving age there) try to steal her brother's car to meet a "boyfriend" that she knew online and lives more than 1000km away from her.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/07/elizabeth-annette-robinson_n_1866225.html


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The legal driving age in Texas is 15 years.


----------



## Road_UK

No its not. It's 16, like in the rest of the country.

http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/director_staff/public_information/pr122101.htm


----------



## keokiracer

So you can start getting lessons at 15 but only get a license at 16? In NL it's theory from 16, lessons from 16,5 and license from 17.


----------



## Road_UK

Not 18 anymore? Legal driving age in the UK is 17.


----------



## italystf

keokiracer said:


> So you can start getting lessons at 15 but only get a license at 16? In NL it's theory from 16, lessons from 16,5 and license from 17.


You can drive alone at 17 in NL?


----------



## Suburbanist

Road_UK said:


> Not 18 anymore? Legal driving age in the UK is 17.


No, they lowered to 17 in 2010 I think.

I bet keokiracer is happy for the change


----------



## Road_UK

No. I just looked it up. A new regulation that came in force recently. You can obtain a valid drivers license on your 17th, but will have to have an older person traveling with you, until you're 18.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Road_UK said:


> No its not. It's 16, like in the rest of the country.


The legal driving age of 16 in the United States is a generalization. There is no country-wide driving age, it's all up to the states. 

You can start driving at age 14 in some states.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learner's_permit#United_States


----------



## MajKeR_

Peines said:


> :baeh3:
> 
> *I started to driving at 14, legally, in Spain…*
> …but it was a 50cc scooter. And it not was exactly a driving licence… it was a paper test. Crazy, isn't it?
> 
> Then,* at 16, I get the A1 EU Driving License*: It allowed me to drive *125cc motorbikes*, in all type of roads like a car.
> 
> So, my first time in a Motorway was at the sweet 16 years. Really nice. Here.
> 
> Also, according to the spanish law, for get the A1 licence you should pass the B theorical test
> 
> *And when I was 18 just needed pass the driving test (practical) for driving a car.* A1 + B at 18, and 14 points instead of 8.
> 
> That's was easy and nice. :|


Same as me  But as for Polish law you should pass full exam (theoretical+pracital), if your last (for whatever category) was more than half year ago.


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> A lot of Russians obtain a drivers license without a theory test OR a driving test.


How? With bribery?
Do they sell driving licenses in Russia like economics degrees in Albania?
(Those who followed recent Italian politics understand this comparison )


----------



## Road_UK

Yes, something like that. Or just on the black market.


----------



## hofburg

when doing driving licence lessons, they never take you to the 3+lane motorway (well at least in slovenia they cant), they should.


----------



## keokiracer

^^ I drove here and here during one of my driving lessons


----------



## bogdymol

In Romania it's illegal to drive on a motorway if you don't have a driver's license (ex: you can't do the driving school on a motorway).

And yes, in Romania you can also get a license if you have enough money...


----------



## Road_UK

You're not allowed on motorways on a provisional license in the UK. And in France the speedlimit is 110 on motorways if you passed your driving test less then two years ago.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ In Romania, if you have your license for less than a year, the speed limit is -10 km/h on rural roads and -20 km/h on motorways.


----------



## Peines

Well, I'm experimenting with different designs for motorway signage… and I like to share and show to yourselves: 










(A-70 Exit 6, here)


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^
¡Hola!

I thought that area was bilingual (Castilian/Catalan)?


----------



## Peines

^^ Yeah, 3% speak Catalan (Valencian type).


----------



## Penn's Woods

I didn't know the percentage was so low.

I was just playing with Google Maps for Alicante: they've got street names in Catalan (or Valencian) and landmarks (a museum, a castle...) and the city itself labeled in Castilian. Then there's a town just to the north marked as Sant Joan d'Alacant.

Does that reflect how things really are there, or is Google Maps just being goofy (when they first started a few years ago, they had everything in Brussels labeled in Dutch only.:bash? What are the rules? Not taking sides, just curious how this sort of thing works.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> Sorry, little involontary misspelling, maybe because I was typing with a LG smart phone
> Since you entered thousands of notes did you ever find something counterfeit or with printing errors?


I am a tracker too, and recognized a 20€ fake bill my newsdealer gave me as change. It was an Italian note, so J in the little code and S in the long code, but the numbers were absolutely random. Fortunately I knew the newsdealer well and when I showed him the note he gave me a good one - cursing because it was the third bad note he received in a short time.


----------



## Peines

Penn's Woods said:


> I didn't know the percentage was so low.
> 
> *I was just playing with Google Maps for Alicante: they've got street names in Catalan *(or Valencian) and landmarks (a museum, a castle...) and the city itself labeled in Castilian. Then there's a town just to the north marked as Sant Joan d'Alacant.
> 
> Does that reflect how things really are there, or is Google Maps just being goofy (when they first started a few years ago, they had everything in Brussels labeled in Dutch only.:bash? What are the rules? Not taking sides, just curious how this sort of thing works.


The thing is that Alicante is controlling by the Valencia Goberment (Generalitat Valenciana, Comunidad Valenciana), and Valencian politician are a _Language Nazis _who doesn't know where are Alicante. It's a sad but true thing: they control a region and they dosen't care about that region (Alicante).

They still believe since late 70's that in Alicante province the people speak Valencian but the true fact is that nobody (or a minory <13%) speaks Valencian in Alicante province: in the coast, East, Alicante-Elche, and Bajo Segura (Vega Baja).

Also, Valencians believe that Valencian is not Catalan, when it's the same language :lol: . Stupid Grammar Nazi.

P.S.: People say San Juan Pueblo, not San't Joan d' Alacant or San Juan de Alicante. :nuts:


----------



## seem

Road_UK said:


> You're not allowed on motorways on a provisional license in the UK. And in France the speedlimit is 110 on motorways if you passed your driving test less then two years ago.





bogdymol said:


> ^^ In Romania, if you have your license for less than a year, the speed limit is -10 km/h on rural roads and -20 km/h on motorways.


Wtf one month after I got my driving license I was driving 160 km/h on R1.


----------



## keber

hofburg said:


> when doing driving licence lessons, they never take you to the 3+lane motorway (well at least in slovenia they cant), they should.


During my driving license lessons and exams I never saw a motorway. And yet I drive on 3+3 or 4+4 motorways without any problems.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You only really learn how to drive after you get the license. Experience is what counts.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> You only really learn how to drive after you get the license. Experience is what counts.


:applause:

That's perfectly true. I remember how I was driving the first days after I got my license... :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yeah me too. Driving lessons in the Netherlands are in diesel cars, and using the clutch in a gasoline-powered car is quite different. I remember I stalled quite a few times driving in my parents gasoline car in the beginning. I also had an accident in southern France six years ago that could be attributed to having a lack of experience.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Driving lessons are usually done in diesel cars because the engine stalls a lot harder than in gasoline cars. I did my driving lessons in a gasoline car, but my girlfriend now does it in a diesel Golf IV. 

I remember that after I got my license I was driving quite slow and I was very tense while driving, but now, after 50k+ kms in 13 countries on all types of roads and weather conditions I can drive relaxed.


----------



## g.spinoza

I think I really learned how to drive after my accident. That happened in 2008. I got my license in 1997.


----------



## x-type

Peines said:


> Well, I'm experimenting with different designs for motorway signage… and I like to share and show to yourselves:
> 
> http://f.cl.ly/items/0D1J433E2p0a2U0w3m3N/Untitled-1.png
> 
> (A-70 Exit 6, here)


"playas" on brown


----------



## Peines

^^ Not, in orange…!!!


----------



## Road_UK

x-type said:


> "playas" on brown


Yep, I was thinking that...


----------



## bogdymol

What software did you use for those signs?


----------



## Verso

I've never driven on snow (I'd drive very slowly) and I've had driver's license for 12 years.


----------



## Peines

x-type said:


> "playas" on brown





Road_UK said:


> Yep, I was thinking that...


Orange is for Leisure and sport.

Brown for natural landmarks.



bogdymol said:


> What software did you use for those signs?


Adobe Illustrator


----------



## bogdymol

I drove on snow. First time in Slovakia, then in Romania and Austria. You have to be very gentle with the car, but it's ok, especially if you drive a 4x4


----------



## Road_UK

Not too gentle...


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> I've never driven on snow (I'd drive very slowly) and I've had driver's license for 12 years.


I drove on snow even during driving lessons (it was pretty heavy winter of '96 although). Driving on snow is normal thing for me especially when I go into mountains (I don't have 4x4).


----------



## Peines

x-type said:


> "playas" on brown





Road_UK said:


> Yep, I was thinking that...


How about this…?


----------



## CNGL

^^ Mutxamiel :rofl:. It's Muchamiel (Spanish) or Mutxamel (Valencian Catalan), but not Mutxamiel.

I have "painted" some signs using the old "Autopista" font.


----------



## Road_UK

Peines said:


> How about this&#133;?


Very good. In France and England I'd be brown as well.


----------



## rene1234

italystf said:


> How? With bribery?
> Do they sell driving licenses in Russia like economics degrees in Albania?
> (Those who followed recent Italian politics understand this comparison )







p.s. The school he chose is a private one, well known in the country for being more a business to make money than a school (their diplomas are useless), they closed it though after the Bossi scandal:lol:


----------



## piotr71

I really recommend *this movie* for all road enthusiasts. I am just watching it on BBC and am amazed. Sometimes just cannot believe.


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> In Romania it's illegal to drive on a motorway if you don't have a driver's license (ex: you can't do the driving school on a motorway).
> 
> And yes, in Romania you can also get a license if you have enough money...





Road_UK said:


> You're not allowed on motorways on a provisional license in the UK. And in France the speedlimit is 110 on motorways if you passed your driving test less then two years ago.





bogdymol said:


> ^^ In Romania, if you have your license for less than a year, the speed limit is -10 km/h on rural roads and -20 km/h on motorways.


In Italy before getting the license you cannot drive on autostrade and superstrade. For three years after the license the limit is 100 on autostrade and 90 on superstrade. However respecting normal limits (130 and 110) is enough for beginning drivers to avoid troubles because speed traps don't recognize the driver and don't fine those below the normal limit.
On other roads the speed limits are the same for everybody.


g.spinoza said:


> I am a tracker too, and recognized a 20&#128; fake bill my newsdealer gave me as change. It was an Italian note, so J in the little code and S in the long code, but the numbers were absolutely random. Fortunately I knew the newsdealer well and when I showed him the note he gave me a good one - cursing because it was the third bad note he received in a short time.


Did you recognized it because EBT didn't accept the code you entered? Did it looked real at sight and touch?


keber said:


> I drove on snow even during driving lessons


Me too, and where I live it usually snow once or twice every winter (last winter none)! I never drove on the snow in other istances.


----------



## Peines

CNGL said:


> ^^ Mutxamiel :rofl:. It's Muchamiel (Spanish) or Mutxamel (Valencian Catalan), but not Mutxamiel.
> 
> I have "painted" some signs using the old "Autopista" font.


Muchamielda :crazy:


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> Did you recognized it because EBT didn't accept the code you entered? Did it looked real at sight and touch?


I recognized it before entering the code into EBT, then EBT confirmed my suspicions. The note didn't have holograms either, but this is not something you look for all the times you are given a banknote.


----------



## cinxxx

Damn, I never looked at the banknotes I received.
I think I wouldn't see if it's a fake...

Btw, I was in Italy for the first time in my life, about 2 hours.
I spent 1h30min in San Candido (Innichen), a really nice place.
I liked the Latin atmosphere .


----------



## Attus

I got my driving license in 1995. Since then I drove approx. 170,000 kilometers. I don't know exactly because we often do long journeys where we change the driver so that after arriving home I know the car ran 3,650 km in three days, but don't know how many of that was driven by me. 

I have no problem on any road surface and weather conditions but in heavy fog or rainfall in the night, when I can't see anything of the road, I'm usually a bit frightened. There is no such practice when you can easily drive in such a heavy rain or fog where you can't see more than 10 meters of the road in front if you.


----------



## italystf

cinxxx said:


> Damn, I never looked at the banknotes I received.
> I think I wouldn't see if it's a fake...
> 
> Btw, I was in Italy for the first time in my life, about 2 hours.
> I spent 1h30min in San Candido (Innichen), a really nice place.
> I liked the Latin atmosphere .


I think it's more Germanic/Mitteleuropean atmosphere than Latin 
And you didn't even cross the Alpine watershed between Danube and Po basins.


----------



## cinxxx

italystf said:


> I think it's more Germanic/Mitteleuropean atmosphere than Latin
> And you didn't even cross the Alpine watershed between Danube and Po basins.


Maybe for you 
I have to say, for someone living in Germany for 9 months, after living my whole life in a place with Latin atmosphere, Südtirol was more Latin then Germanic .
Even the driving style seemed more sporty then in Austria.
And I parked here, the driving space between the marked parking spaces was so narrow, that I hardly could back out. Didn't notice it when I arrived because the parking was only half full, but in just under 2 hours it got full. Disadvantage from driving an Audi A4, a compact car doesn't have any problem there.

Anyway I liked it a lot, also that some shops were open on Sunday.


----------



## Road_UK

They can put Italian on signs in Sweden. That doesn't make it Latin...


----------



## g.spinoza

San Candido has a significative (15%) Italian-speaking minority.


----------



## cinxxx

Road_UK said:


> They can put Italian on signs in Sweden. That doesn't make it Latin...


I don't want to start a dispute here, I very well know about Südtirol/Alto Adige, it's German speaking majority and Austrian/German origin.
I only stated about atmosphere, which *for me*, was more Latin then what I feel in Germany or Austria.


----------



## seem

lol I love this


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ LOL!

Where is this?


----------



## keokiracer

^^


Video description said:


> A very modern traffic light in central Germany


----------



## g.spinoza

keokiracer said:


> ^^


Yes, I already read that. But "Central Germany" is vague at best. I thought you knew the city.


----------



## keokiracer

After some research: nowhere: it's fake:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.405091629540349.84440.131293596920155&type=3


----------



## g.spinoza

Disappointment.


----------



## Suburbanist

There are disadvantages of having and office window that point straight west: direct sunlight on my face around equinoxes late afternoon.

I prefer south-face windows: protection during summer, a chance to "follow" the sun azimuth on winter.


----------



## x-type

two military helicopters have just flown over my house quite low. and few moments ago the movie Flight 93 has ended. the whole neighbourhood has turned on the lights and went out on the streets :lol: i see many of my neighbours very worried and upset :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Not "flought," "flown" (I fly, I flew, I have flown.) Not to correct people's English, but I read it at first as "fought" and thought war had broken out somewhere!

I saw Flight 93 when it came out. Terrifying.


----------



## Verso

Lol, I watched it yesterday on a Slovenian TV program.


----------



## seem

keokiracer said:


> After some research: nowhere: it's fake:
> http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.405091629540349.84440.131293596920155&type=3


What a shame 



Penn's Woods said:


> Not to correct people's English, but I read it at first as "fought" and thought war had broken out somewhere!


----------



## italystf

In the past someone talked about funny and weird coincidences: you think or speak about something that you it's not very often in your mind and suddenly you encounter the same thing or you read about it.

Last day we talked about Maltese coins and I said that I never saw one in 4 years (and I always looked at my pocket change because I collect unusual coins). Today after went shopping (and received change) that sentence isn't valid anymore! Now only Estonia and Monaco are missing.

Fortunately they didn't give to me any fake bill (we talked about them too).


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> In the past someone talked about funny and weird coincidences


Yes, the Synchronized User.  I've never even seen a euro-coin from Slovakia.


----------



## CNGL

For me is not valid, since I caught a Slovak €2 coin last year. And then some €20 notes, but in late July I exchanged a €50 note to smaller notes and I was surprised to get a €5 note with an E in the serial! On the other hand, I've never seen any Maltese or Estonian coin.


----------



## g.spinoza

CNGL said:


> For me is not valid, since I caught a Slovak €2 coin last year. And then some €20 notes, but in late July I exchanged a €50 note to smaller notes and I was surprised to get a €5 note with an E in the serial! On the other hand, I've never seen any Maltese or Estonian coin.


I have many Slovak coins. Only ones I never saw are Estonian, Vatican and Monegasque. I also have one from Cyprus.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> I have many Slovak coins. Only ones I never saw are Estonian, Vatican and Monegasque. I also have one from Cyprus.


Really? Vatican put in circulation 6 millions of 50-cent pieces between 2010 and 2012, they aren't so rare. I have 1 from 2010 and 2 from 2011.
I have 2 Cyprus (10-20c), 1 Malta (5c), 1 Lux (20c), 2 San Marino (1€ x2) and 5 Finland (2€ 1€ 1€ 10c 5c). I don't keep SLO and SK, they're not so rare (except commemoratives).
Still waiting for the 5 cent Italy 2003...


----------



## seem

I had to check what coins I have atm in my wallet - 3x 2 euros from Slovakia, one from Germany and France, then 50c from France, 20c from NL and 1c from Belgium :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I have just one Dutch coin in my wallet.


----------



## italystf

seem said:


> I had to check what coins I have atm in my wallet - 3x 2 euros from Slovakia, one from Germany and France, then 50c from France, 20c from NL and 1c from Belgium :nuts:


http://www.euro-auflagen.de/
You should look at the year on coins. Coins with low mintage are worth keeping. In Italy some Italian coins could be rarer than some Finnish or Cypriot.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I never care about years. I keep 1 specimen for each Krause number, the rest is not interesting to me.


----------



## Penn's Woods

European coinage was even more interesting before 2002.

(I know, it would be impractical to go back, and probably a bad idea for other reasons, and I'm certainly not suggesting it and it's none of my business anyway.

But it was.)

:runaway:


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> European coinage was even more interesting before 2002.
> 
> (I know, it would be impractical to go back, and probably a bad idea for other reasons, and I'm certainly not suggesting it and it's none of my business anyway.
> 
> But it was.)
> 
> :runaway:


In Italy the coinage was quite a mess. In the last years we had different kinds of coins for the same denomination (3 different sizes for £50 and £100). We had a lot of commemoratives and San Marino coins but they were common and not valuable. Lower denominations (1-2-5-10-20 lire) were never seen in circulation since the 80s and prices were rounded, although remained legal tender.
Many Italian coins were oversized related to their value: £50 and £100 (the most common kind) were bigger than the 2€ because when they were introduced in the 50s they had a much greater purchasing power.

With the euro all coins of the same denomination have the same common face but there are more "rarities" that can be found in your pocket change: commemoratives 2€, coins from far away countries and low mintage coins. For example I found a 20c Greece 2004 that was minted in just 470k pieces. Euro coins have a fair size in relation to their value.

Apart few far-right nationalists, nobody think to phase out the € and return to the national currencies. The disgregation of the Eurozone would lead to the disgregation of the EU itself, and thus generating a very bad political and economical crisis. If a country leave the Eurozone or the EU there is the risk of "domino effect" and EU is doing everything possible to remain united and avoiding single countries leaving. Once a country leave the EU, the doors for an authoritarian government are open...

@Penn's Wood: do you find very old coins in circulation there? USA never changed currency...


----------



## makaveli6

Meanwhile in Latvia.









^^ This is a speeding ticket, lol.


----------



## RipleyLV

^ Deja vu. I was discussing with a friend yesterday about this possibility. :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> ....
> @Penn's Wood: do you find very old coins in circulation there? USA never changed currency...


Designs change occasionally, and once that happens, the old ones seem to be hoarded by collectors.

Currently in circulation:

1-cent piece ("penny"): I don't think I've ever gotten a pre-1909 penny in my change. (Granted, 1909's a long time ago, but the front of the penny - Lincoln's head - has been the same since then. Before 1909, the penny was the same size and color - it's a sort of copper/bronze mixture - but a different design.)

5-cent piece ("nickel"): the last change of design was in the '30s or '40s; but again the size and metal didn't change. I think I may have gotten one or two of the old ones over the years.

Higher denominations than that all switched from silver to a different metal mixture in 1965, some with design changes, some without. I don't know if the silver ones were formally withdrawn from circulation, but I would guess they were: I've never, ever gotten a silver one in my change, and I'm just old enough - born 1964 - that I'd expect silver coins to have come my way if they weren't withdrawn, but not old enough to remember whether they were.

You're actually more likely to come across the occasional Canadian coin; they're the same sizes* and denominations as ours so they're easy to mix up if you're not paying attention.

*Actually the sizes are very slightly different, so that U.S. coins won't work in Canadian vending machines and vice versa. But not different enough that you'd notice unless you had a U.S. and a Canadian coin of the same denomination together.


----------



## Radish2

is it true that Slovenians are very patriotic and not very open peole? Whenever I go through slovenia I have this impression. the country is beautiful, great landscpae. But the people seem very patriotic and think very highly off themselves. Going through Slvoenia most radio stations play slvoenian Pop music instead of international music and electronic. stopping at rest areas Slvenians just look the way I described and even here on the forums any attempt by me to higher the atmosphere, make some joke or some fun in the Slovenian thread is being denied? Why?

such a beautiful country should have more open people, but I guess because of the beauty people are closed and want to keep it to themselves and protect it.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> You're actually more likely to come across the occasional Canadian coin; they're the same sizes* and denominations as ours so they're easy to mix up if you're not paying attention.
> 
> *Actually the sizes are very slightly different, so that U.S. coins won't work in Canadian vending machines and vice versa. But not different enough that you'd notice unless you had a U.S. and a Canadian coin of the same denomination together.


Your one-cent coin sometimes appears in Europe mistaken for a 2 eurocent. Size and color are almost the same.


----------



## makaveli6

RipleyLV said:


> ^ Deja vu. I was discussing with a friend yesterday about this possibility. :lol:


Ive heard of this several times already on some news, but havent seen a real picture of that since now.


----------



## CNGL

:nuts: at that ticket.

Some days ago riding my bike I did 30 km/h on a 20 km/h in front of police!


----------



## g.spinoza

Meanwhile in Mexico, a rapist was crucified at a road sign by the Narcos:


----------



## Road_UK

Radish2 said:


> is it true that Slovenians are very patriotic and not very open peole? Whenever I go through slovenia I have this impression. the country is beautiful, great landscpae. But the people seem very patriotic and think very highly off themselves. Going through Slvoenia most radio stations play slvoenian Pop music instead of international music and electronic. stopping at rest areas Slvenians just look the way I described and even here on the forums any attempt by me to higher the atmosphere, make some joke or some fun in the Slovenian thread is being denied? Why?
> 
> such a beautiful country should have more open people, but I guess because of the beauty people are closed and want to keep it to themselves and protect it.


Austrians are down to themselves as well. The Zillertaler are the worst. They really think the sun shines out of their arses.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Austrians are down to themselves as well. The Zillertaler are the worst. They really think the sun shines out of their arses.


Southern Italians as well. Even if they moved North, they never go to the seaside, say, in Rimini or Viareggio, because "our sea is way better". I attended a wedding in Salerno, last weekend, and the bride said that Salerno was "the most beautiful city in the world". I was about to burst into laughter...


----------



## Radish2

Road_UK said:


> Austrians are down to themselves as well. The Zillertaler are the worst. They really think the sun shines out of their arses.


I know that from Austrians, especially the older people in austria are very dissapoitning about this subject and praise austria to heaven, no doubt the mountains are beautiful, but that is no reason to behave like that, since the tectonic plates did not chose tog et up just there on porpuse. 

Could any slvenian say something about that subject?


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Southern Italians as well. Even if they moved North, they never go to the seaside, say, in Rimini or Viareggio, because "our sea is way better". I attended a wedding in Salerno, last weekend, and the bride said that Salerno was "the most beautiful city in the world". I was about to burst into laughter...


I noticed that younger south Italians are quite open to speak about the problems of their area. On the countrary, older generation get offended even if you say that mafia exist.


----------



## Verso

Radish2 said:


> Could any slvenian say something about that subject?


Cold Alpine folks. :dunno:


----------



## Radish2

that is not good Verson, it is not nice to see such a beautiful country shadowed by cold patriots.


----------



## Verso

Go to western Slovenia, they babble like Italians. :troll:


----------



## Radish2

and how about you personally?


----------



## Verso

I'm cold, stay away from me.  I'm from the capital after all.


----------



## Broccolli

...


----------



## hofburg

in slovenia it is thought that patriotism is something that one should be ashamed of. Slovenes are only patriotic when watching sports.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Go to western Slovenia, they babble like Italians. :troll:


Come onna! Whatdda ya say? We Italians do not babble, capisc'? Itsa stereotyppa!!!


----------



## Radish2

Road_UK said:


> Austrians are down to themselves as well. The Zillertaler are the worst. They really think the sun shines out of their arses.





Verso said:


> I'm cold, stay away from me.  I'm from the capital after all.


I have always regarded you as my slovenian friend, and despite what you say, I will always regard you as my slvenian friend.


----------



## Radish2

Broccolli said:


> @Radish2
> 
> Just look at the map and you will see on which countries Slovenia borders. if you look the historical facts about all of those countries around us you will see that they were always very "friendly" nations in general and also specially to us...So therefore we slovenians must be more "friendly" than they are to survive on this teritory
> 
> We are cold people but this is only vocational/professional deformation, sorry


that is very good then, did not know about that yet.


----------



## Broccolli

...


----------



## Road_UK

German patriotism is still considered as highly dangerous by some people, but I think its good to see that they are carefully starting to show their national flags on their cars during international football cups.


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> Come onna! Whatdda ya say? We Italians do not babble, capisc'? Itsa stereotyppa!!!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAFQFvSPhQ8 :lol:


----------



## keokiracer

Reminds me of this 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JhuOicPFZY


----------



## Chilio

Meanwhile in Burgas, Bulgaria:





































A 60-meter refinery reactor was transported through the town from the port to the refinery with a driver-less truck with 288 tires, commanded by a joystick.


----------



## x-type

Broccolli said:


> Like i said we are not like italians or croatians which very loudly express their national pride...we slovenians are more quiet but therefore nothing less patriotic we have just different way to express our national pride more secretly...like i said professional deformation because we were through all our history under foreign nations.


indeed


----------



## MattiG

seem said:


> I had to check what coins I have atm in my wallet - 3x 2 euros from Slovakia, one from Germany and France, then 50c from France, 20c from NL and 1c from Belgium :nuts:


Well let's see:

18.95 eur from Finland
1.31 Germany. Mostly 1 and 2 cent coins of no use in Finland
1.02 Spain
0.50 Vatican
0.40 the Netherlands
0.10 Italy
0.03 France
Plus one SIM card...


----------



## Road_UK

Only small change, surprisingly most from Spain. No wonder they have no money. Also got bits from France and Germany. No Austrian.


----------



## x-type

how do you find so cool euro coins? on my last trip to Spain i got only spanish, french and german coins. oh, and one greek, it was real surprise to me.
while traveling often to Italy, i get mostly italian, german, maybe some austrian and french coins. :dunno:


----------



## Broccolli

...


----------



## hofburg

Verso said:


> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAFQFvSPhQ8 :lol:


haha, I saw that one already, but it's good to see it again.

here is some french from friends show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqwzvtjeYBQ


----------



## Wilhem275

Suburbanist said:


> Congratz!
> 
> If I have children in Netherlands, an increasing possibility, I will give them Frisian names, which are the most interesting names in continental Europe.
> 
> What you think of naming your daughter Yfke for instance?


Call her Fyra :lol: (a railfan would actually do it...)



Road_UK said:


> Thank you.
> 
> It will be very European. We are not married (yet)


Congratulations, Road_UK! A mix of cultures always leads to great improvements.

Since you're already used to white vans, now you can buy this :lol:


----------



## Peines

^^ Petrol Euro6…?

:eek2:


----------



## MattiG

Wilhem275 said:


> Call her Fyra


That choice would gain respect in Sweden.


----------



## Road_UK

That'd make sense. First time we met was on the ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki, but still on the narrow bits of water in Sweden. (4 hours before the boat hits open sea.)


----------



## Zagor666

a realy nice tv programm on german television(hessen 3)called the "wild balkans" - reports about kanjon tare,kopacki rit,tikves,skadarsko jezero,dobrudza and the danube delta :cheers:


----------



## Alex_ZR

keber said:


> ^^ How can sodium lights blink so quickly?


No idea...maybe beacuse they already reached working temperature before. :dunno:




Zagor666 said:


> a realy nice tv programm on german television(hessen 3)called the "wild balkans" - reports about kanjon tare,kopacki rit,tikves,skadarsko jezero,dobrudza and the danube delta :cheers:


I watched it once on Viasat Explorer. Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro/Albania, Bulgaria, Romania...no Serbia there, unfortunately.hno:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Road_UK said:


> That'd make sense. First time we met was on the ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki, but still on the narrow bits of water in Sweden. (4 hours before the boat hits open sea.)


Romantic!

Congratulations!


----------



## Road_UK

Thanks buddy...


----------



## cinxxx

Congrats Road_UK! :cheers2:


----------



## Zagor666

Alex_ZR said:


> No idea...maybe beacuse they already reached working temperature before. :dunno:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I watched it once on Viasat Explorer. Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro/Albania, Bulgaria, Romania...no Serbia there, unfortunately.hno:


there are a few episodes of this documentary,i dont know in which one but there are reports from serbia - one from central serbia with wild animals and one from vojvodina with rode i caplje :cheers:


----------



## Road_UK

cinxxx said:


> Congrats Road_UK! :cheers2:


Merci very viel.


----------



## piotr71

Road Uk. Under any circumstance do not listen all these colleagues and friends who would say that you will have to give up your dreams and most dare plans only because you have a child. 

*If any doubts, check this*


----------



## Road_UK

Wow, what a wonderful trip!

I doubt if we would be doing anything like that, but my kid will be well travelled. Just like his/her mum and dad...


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> Wow, what a wonderful trip!
> 
> I doubt if we would be doing anything like that, but my kid will be well travelled. Just like his/her mum and dad...


What's are the most remote areas you went with your van? Russia? Turkey? Lapland?


----------



## Road_UK

Mo-i-Rana, northern Finland, the Baltic states, eastern Poland, Greece, southern Spain and Portugal.


----------



## g.spinoza

Just to give my congratulations to Road_UK.


----------



## Road_UK

Thanks G...


----------



## Wilhem275

Greetings from Den Haag!
Because there's no reason to follow a straight route from Venice to Berlin


----------



## italystf

Wilhem275 said:


> Greetings from Den Haag!
> Because there's no reason to follow a straight route from Venice to Berlin


You should repair your GPS.  :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Who can understand a sign like this in two seconds? I couldn't even comprehend it, driving at 50 km/h, the sign is also located in an S-curve.


verkeersbord by Chriszwolle, on Flickr


----------



## Road_UK

Yes, a failed invasion attempt by the Germans, which gave the Russians the idea to head for Berlin. That did not happen until 1945 though. First the western allies, under command of General Eisenhower had to liberate western Europe, so that Germany could be closed in on both sides. After a failed attempt by General Montgomery to parachute into occupied Holland and enter Germany from there, they finally managed to enter Germany after France, Belgium and eastern Netherlands was liberated, and then it became a cat and mouse game in who would enter Berlin first. This operation has cost a lot of lives to US and UK (with Canada and Belgian, Dutch and French troops under command of Montgomery, Eisenhower and de Gaulle) . Stalin played a roll, which ended up in a new war, and the Iron Curtain was born.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Penn's I may agree on most issues in your post, even on the slavery thing (which I don't, but that's just me), but Britain wasn't alone in its fight against Hitler. The way I see it, Russia had the biggest part in defeating Germany, even bigger than USA's. I'm not saying Hitler could be defeated without the US, but the situation, especially around 1942, wasn't that desperate.
> The key to the Allies' victory was around 1941-42, when US was basically absent from the European scene and only busy in the Pacific. In 1943-1944, when US put feet on European soil, Hitler's fate was almost only question of time. D-Day was a bit overrated. It was important, not decisive.
> 
> IMHO, for sure.


Britain was on its own until Hitler turned against Russia, wasn't it? And could Russia have defeated Hitler if they had to drive him all the way to the Atlantic? 

But it occurs to me that if Britain had sided with the Confederacy, they might have just annexed the North and had us - as a dominion in the Commonwealth - involved at the start.

Not trying to argue here... My basic point is that the outcome of this battle had effects beyond its time and beyond North America. Europe would have been different today in some way (we can speculate about what that "some way" would be) if the Confederacy had won.

Just a response to the it-only-counts-if-it-happens-in-Europe argument.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Germans lost a quarter of their Eastern front soldiers (more than 1 million deaths for them) during Operation Barbarossa; another million men were lost in the Battle of Stalingrad, which happened a little later. 

It was clear, already at that time I believe, that Germans could not sustain this kind of damage; the Allies strengthening their position in the Western front, and eventually the D-Day, were logical consequences of the Eastern front German disaster. But the single turning point, the unforced bad decision that changed all, was the invasion of Russia.



Penn's Woods said:


> Just a response to the it-only-counts-if-it-happens-in-Europe argument.


This has never been true. What happened in Asia in 11th century was about to change Europe forever. Gengis Khan was possibly the single most serious threat to the Western civilization in history.
From there on, we can never speak of "it-only-counts-if-it-happens-in-Europe". Decadence of Europe in 19th century was already ongoing, we were no more the center of the world...


----------



## Attus

Hitler's fate, just like that of Napoleon, 130 years earlier, was in Russia. 
However, I think that without the participation of the US, the war in West could have been much worse and much longer. France and the UK simply didn't have the needed financial background, and Stalin was not really interested in liberating Western Europe (and was not strong enough to conquer it). 

But, in matter of history, speaking about "what could have happened if..." is always pointless


----------



## cinxxx

Attus said:


> But, in matter of history, speaking about "what could have happened if..." is always pointless


If we believe in parallel universes, then maybe it's not


----------



## AUchamps

cinxxx said:


> If we believe in parallel universes, then maybe it's not


You mean like in Fringe?


----------



## cinxxx

AUchamps said:


> You mean like in Fringe?


Exactly!
Btw, great show (from my point of view), it's final season will begin September 28th in the US.


----------



## AUchamps

cinxxx said:


> Exactly!
> Btw, great show (from my point of view), it's final season will begin September 28th in the US.


The Observers are watching all of us.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> I've been to Barcelona, Paris, and Brussels by bus and it wasn't that bad (ok, to Barcelona in one direction I went by plane). But we'll stop in Belgrade and Sofia, so it won't be just transit. By train you'd need 30 hours. :lol:


my longest bus rides - twice in Barcelona by bus (tour - retour), twice in Ancona (tour - retour). i hate traveling by bus.


----------



## bogdymol

My longest bus rides:
Arad (RO) - Paralia Katerini (GR): 926 km
Arad (RO) - Giulianova (IT): 1552 km


----------



## keokiracer

My longest bus ride. Prague (CZ) - Bergen Op Zoom (NL) (980 km)

Some of my friends had this trip (with school during 'travelweek')
Bergen Op Zoom (NL) - Vilanova i la Geltrú (ES) (1493 km)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I had a bus vacation once, when I was 16 and wanted to party in Spain. About 22 bloody hours to cover 1400 km. Never again.


----------



## g.spinoza

My record bus ride was 18 hrs-1200 km (Jesi - Prague) when I was 18.


----------



## Verso

I've killed 4 mosquitoes in the last hour.


----------



## alserrod

ChrisZwolle said:


> Who can understand a sign like this in two seconds? I couldn't even comprehend it, driving at 50 km/h, the sign is also located in an S-curve.
> 
> 
> verkeersbord by Chriszwolle, on Flickr





OK, I take your bet and put one higher!!! :cheers::cheers::cheers:


Can anyone tell the rest of forum what does the signal on the centre of the image want to say?

https://maps.google.es/?ll=41.63652...=yYBzOQDd3-a9aq30aSSsiQ&cbp=12,271.22,,0,2.14

I let you guess... I will write the correct answer and everybody will say: THEY ARE STUPID!!!!!


This avenue have changed too much because rigth now the tramway crosses in the centre of the avenue, and the rest is a 2x2 avenue, but this signal keeps there.


----------



## keokiracer

No vehicles higher than 3 meters, right?


----------



## g.spinoza

Looks like "3m vertical clearance".


----------



## cinxxx

My long bus rides:
Timisoara-Karlsruhe with my parents, in 1992, that time through Cehoslovakia, to avoid Visa for Austria. It took a long time, with long stay at the Hungarian border and I think at other borders too.

Timisoara-Saarbrücken and back in 2000 - http://goo.gl/maps/KbnWR
it took a very long time if I remember correctly around 26 hours or so.

Timisoara-Frankfurt and back in 2008
this took also a long time and on return trip a tire blew up somewhere in Hungary and we lost there some 2-3 hours in a rest space. The good thing, it was summer and even though it was night, temperature was ok.

I would only do such a bus trip again if I would be constraint somehow.
It's terrible...


----------



## Fatfield

My longest bus ride was Glasgow - Sofia via Bucharest (Balkans war was in full flow). I've also done Glasgow - Bucharest on a previous occasion before the Iron Curtain came down.

We left Glasgow at 22:00 on a Saturday evening and arrived in Sofia at 21:00 on the Tuesday evening. Went to the Levski Sofia v Rangers game on the Wednesday evening and returned to Glasgow straight after the match arriving back at 13:00 on the Saturday.


----------



## Falusi

Mine longest was Budapest - Cala Llevado (1893 km) highs scool class trip 
Taksony - Rain am Lech (781 km) Stadtfest, sister city
and a Taksony - Romania (627 km) trip


----------



## seem

Žilina - Linz 465 km and back in one day, I wouldnt go by bus any further.. :nuts:


----------



## CNGL

With a regular service my longest bus ride was Huesca-Barcelona, only 266 km. But I've done longer ones:
From Huesca to near Cartagena, 700 km. By the time I did it the A-23 wasn't fully opened, and traffic still went through Daroca which is 10 km longer.
And from Huesca to Pisa, 1280 km in one shot overnight (Well, with some rest stops, with still). That was the start of the high school trip to Italy.


----------



## keber

My maximum distance covered with bus was 36 h, 2300 km trip Ljubljana - Stockholm in 1980ies.

And the slowest was in west Tanzaniato reach coast of lake Malawi (gorgeous!), 160 km in 9,5 hours (this includes pushing vehicle out of the mud - 2 times)


----------



## Orionol

Helsingborg(S)-Blanes(E) around 2168km

My longest trip with bus. I was a little kid back then (1999), and my family decided to take a vacation in near Barcelona with http://buss-special.se/. I loved this trip, and will never forget it.


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> And the slowest was in west Tanzaniato reach coast of lake Malawi (gorgeous!), 160 km in 9,5 hours (this includes pushing vehicle out of the mud - 2 times)


Why did you go from Tanzania to Lake Malawi? The border between Tanzania and Malawi lies on the lake's shore, so none of the lake belongs to Tanzania.


----------



## alserrod

g.spinoza said:


> Looks like "3m vertical clearance".





keokiracer said:


> No vehicles higher than 3 meters, right?




In fact they are saying that going to the left you can arrive to the G.Calamita Street (street which is about 100m long only) but with a tunnel that do not allow more than 3m high vehicles.

Ok in that way. 

The tunnel is in the centre of this image

https://maps.google.es/maps?q=isabe...e+Isabel+'La+Católica',+Zaragoza,+Aragón&z=20



buuuuuuuuuuutttttt

ALL, ALL, ALL buildings that are located between Isabel la catolica avenue, the park and river in the east, and G. Calamita in the south... and a two buildings besides P.Arrupe street is a huge hospital, the main in the city.

The tunnel pointed in the signal with a 3m high limit for vehicles was designed to arrive faster for ambulances and any other vehicle to the urgencies service with no traffic light. It is a two lane tunnel.

They changed of situation the sign but the same one. In the bottom (not clear to be read in google street) now it is written something like "medical urgencies" in black characters over yellow

But very small characters according to the signal.

Instead of writting the sign of a Hospital, a right arrow and a signal of 3m high limit... we have that signal


(I studied in a school that it is very close to that signal and I can assure that it has not being changed for more than 25 years!!!!!)



So I said... I accepted the bet and make higher!

*Is it possible to signal worst a huge hospital?
*


----------



## hofburg

Verso where are you reporting from?


----------



## Verso

Ljubljana. :dunno:


----------



## hofburg

didn't you go to Istanbul?


----------



## Verso

No, "soon" = in the end of October.


----------



## hofburg

oh, I thought you're going yesterday night  + I thought we have only mosquitos in Primorska


----------



## Verso

I live by Ljubljanica, so maybe there're more here. I have something against mosquitoes, but I don't use it too much, god knows what it emits.


----------



## keokiracer

*I just passed my driving test!* :banana::cheers::dance:


----------



## cinxxx

^^Congrats!


----------



## keokiracer

^^ Thanks!


----------



## Zagor666

keokiracer said:


> *I just passed my driving test!* :banana::cheers::dance:


congratulations :cheers:

now you can chase pedestrians with a 2t weapon on wheels


----------



## Dolph

My longest bus trip was New York-Chicago 24hrs with 2 connections.
My longest drive was Seattle - Miami :crazy:


----------



## g.spinoza

Don't know if it's fake or not but... meanwhile in Russia:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'd say it's not impossible. They tested it with Top Gear and the car remains functional after a lightning strike. That's why cars are very safe during thunderstorms.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'd say it's not impossible. They tested it with Top Gear and the car remains functional after a lightning strike. That's why cars are very safe during thunderstorms.


Yeah, Faraday cage. However I think your eardrums would explode, the sound felt too low.


----------



## alserrod

Dolph said:


> My longest bus trip was New York-Chicago 24hrs with 2 connections.
> My longest drive was Seattle - Miami :crazy:




How many days driving?


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ The thread reached 16 thousand posts


----------



## Suburbanist

keokiracer said:


> *I just passed my driving test!* :banana::cheers::dance:


When are you going to do your first triangular day drive from Zeeland to Maastricht and Groningen and back to Zeeland on the same day?


----------



## Falusi

g.spinoza said:


> Don't know if it's fake or not but... meanwhile in Russia:


I suppose it's fake, there are a lot of higher things trees, street lights, houses maybe equipped with lighning rods, which uses the peak effect, so the lightning should have been hit these instead a car's flat roof. But in a rural area it could have happened.

+ Congrats for keoikiracer ! Welcome in the club


----------



## Suburbanist

alserrod said:


> How many days driving?


On an Interstate-only route, it takes 5.374 km of driving between Seattle and Miami. So I'd say 5 days of driving + 4 overnight stops to make it comfortable.

Bangor (ME) - San Diego (CA), e.g., the trip between the NE and SW Interstate-served corners of Lower-48, takes 5.160km.

People generally grossly underestimate US land area, especially the Great Plains and the Rockies. The Rockies are definitively not like the Alps, tall but narrow


----------



## Road_UK

Suburbanist said:


> When are you going to do your first triangular day drive from Zeeland to Maastricht and Groningen and back to Zeeland on the same day?


They say you can do this on the train within 12 hours. I think you start in Eijsden, get up to Delftzijl, Den Helder, down to Vlisingen and Eijsden again.


----------



## Road_UK

keokiracer said:


> I just passed my driving test! :banana::cheers::dance:


Well done. Now you can forget everything they told you and follow your own instinct. But know your limits though, listen to your uncle Road....


----------



## keokiracer

Zagor666 said:


> congratulations :cheers:


 Thanks! 



Zagor666 said:


> now you can chase pedestrians with a 2t weapon on wheels


:laugh:



Suburbanist said:


> When are you going to do your first triangular day drive from Zeeland to Maastricht and Groningen and back to Zeeland on the same day?


I have no idea yet. I do like driving long stretches  
But it'll certainly take until wednesday, that's the day I can pick up my drivers license in Bergen Op Zoom.


----------



## italystf

Congrats, keokiracer!


----------



## Road_UK

I did my exams in Sneek in the morning, and picked up my license a couple of hours later in Workum where I was living. Then I went on the train to Schiedam, and drove back to Workum the next day in my first car that my uncle gave me. My first traffic jam in my life was that day in Amsterdam. I first got laid in my car a month later.


----------



## italystf

In Italy your driving license is already printed when you start driving lessons. They hand it to you just after you pass the exam. You don't need to wait.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> In Italy your driving license is already printed when you start driving lessons. They hand it to you just after you pass the exam. You don't need to wait.


In the past you had to wait until they mail the license to you...


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

Falusi said:


> I suppose it's fake, there are a lot of higher things trees, street lights, houses maybe equipped with lighning rods, which uses the peak effect, so the lightning should have been hit these instead a car's flat roof. But in a rural area it could have happened.


Nah, that could easily happen, especially in a wet weather like that. Almost anything is possible with these voltages.  I've personally seen lightning hitting the middle of the clearing instead of 15-20m tall trees all around.


----------



## hofburg

congrats, keokiracer!


----------



## Satyricon84

italystf said:


> In Italy your driving license is already printed when you start driving lessons. They hand it to you just after you pass the exam. You don't need to wait.


If they would be so fast when you renovate it, it would be better. I renovated it in July and I'm still waiting the revalidation sticker to put on :bash:


----------



## Road_UK

How can you renovate a drivers license? I know we've got some construction fans on here, but this is taking the piss...


----------



## Satyricon84

http://italy.angloinfo.com/transport/driving-licences/renewing-a-licence/


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> How can you renovate a drivers license? I know we've got some construction fans on here, but this is taking the piss...


Renew and renovate both translate into "rinnovare" in Italian...


----------



## alserrod

italystf said:


> In Italy your driving license is already printed when you start driving lessons. They hand it to you just after you pass the exam. You don't need to wait.




When I got my license it was enough for two days to have it as far as it was a printed document with photo and stamp. I do not know how much time does it takes now.

But after passing the exam, teacher said that officially we could return home by car. Should the police stopped us, it would be only a fine because not having on the pocket the driving licence only, but if required, two days later we could show it with the correct date


----------



## cinxxx

In Romania I remember I had to wait 1 or 2 days after I passed the exam, to get o temporary license paper, that was valid for 10 days or so I think and only after a week or so I got my drivers license in plastic card form.


----------



## seem

In Slovakia you have to wait for 2 days up to 3 weeks :nuts: and office where you have to go to get it is open 3 times a week for 5 hours or so. :nuts:


----------



## g.spinoza

Tomorrow I'm leaving for the extreme tip of Italian paeninsula... Brescia-Reggio Calabria non-stop. 1200 km of autostrad-y goodness


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm jealous  Calabria is a place I want to visit some time. It's a long haul from the Netherlands, over 2000 kilometers.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm jealous  Calabria is a place I want to visit some time. It's a long haul from the Netherlands, over 2000 kilometers.



I have mixed feelings about this. Calabria has a very bad reputation in Italy for what concerns crime, even worse than Sicily's. I'm not sure I will take pictures of the roads (but for that there's always the Italian A3 thread here on SSC, one of the most active), but for sure I will take landscapes 

Anyway I'll just try and stay out of troubles...


----------



## hofburg

I was in Salerno this summer. Appart horrible heat it was nice. 

in front of train station

2012-08-20-173 par d.hofburg, sur Flickr

and in a good spot on airport bus 

salerno par d.hofburg, sur Flickr


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I was there too! If I knew I would have recommended a great _pasticceria_


----------



## MajKeR_

seem said:


> In Slovakia you have to wait for 2 days up to 3 weeks :nuts: and office where you have to go to get it is open 3 times a week for 5 hours or so. :nuts:


In Poland - yep, that bureaucratic Poland - I waited 10 days and office in county council is opened from Monday to Friday, 5-9 hours.


----------



## Satyricon84

g.spinoza said:


> Tomorrow I'm leaving for the extreme tip of Italian paeninsula... Brescia-Reggio Calabria non-stop. 1200 km of autostrad-y goodness


I did that trip in 2005 (starting from Milan) non-stop with the van, just bit longer cause i had to deliver in Melilli, near Siracusa. I remember that Calabria was the slowest and most impegnative section of the entire trip, with road works every few kilometers and often swap of carriageway. Tiring and annoying. I hope now the things are better there.... The most beautiful part for me it was approaching Villa San Giovanni: it was already dark when I arrived and from the highway I could see the Sicily and calabrian coast with all lights on the Strait of Messina. It was really impressive! I didn't have my camera but just my phone with me, so I took only few pics unfortunately. Just a couple
Landscape seen from the rest area (I'm not sure but I think It was Lauria Sud rest area), in Basilicata









Landscape in Calabria









Pizzo Calabro (or town close to it) seen from the highway's viaduct (no idea which)


----------



## hofburg

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ I was there too! If I knew I would have recommended a great _pasticceria_


don't worry, I had plenty of mozarella, rucola, and sliced chicken down there.


----------



## bogdymol

Congrats keokiracer :cheers: Now ChrisZwolle can't drive anymore because you are also on the road... and who knows how you drive 

After I got my license I should have, in theory, waited 3-4 days untill I got that plastic. Instead, I drove starting with the afternoon after I got my license and everything was ok. Nobody stopped me, but if they would have stopped me I would have at most got a fine for not having the license in my pocket to show it to the officers.


----------



## Verso

A few years ago you could go by train from Trieste to Palermo for 30 euros.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> A few years ago you could go by train from Trieste to Palermo for 30 euros.


One euro per each day it would have taken...


----------



## x-type

we still have those old rose licences in HR :lol: 
i remember i got a paper as a confirmation that i have passed exams, had to pay little bit more, waited in a row and got the magic piece of carton in plastic


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> One euro per each day it would have taken...


:lol:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

In the UK you can drive immediately because you don't have to have your licence on you, you swap your Provisional for your proper one and it comes back in the post after a few days


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> we still have those old rose licences in HR :lol:
> i remember i got a paper as a confirmation that i have passed exams, had to pay little bit more, waited in a row and got the magic piece of carton in plastic


You will likely adopt the European credit card-size license in the next years.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I have a little EU-type card and an A4 paper that are only valid as a licence together, but as said, I wouldn't need them on me to drive in the UK so it's not as inconvenient as it might sound


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ When are you driving from London to Figueira da Foz?


----------



## Road_UK

It's not as far as it seems. I have done Manchester-Abrantes twice a week for a month in a curtain-sider van.


----------



## Peines




----------



## Road_UK

And then tell them that they only function as landing lights for UFO's.


----------



## RipleyLV

Not sure if sad or funny video:


----------



## Verso

^^ That's one of the worst I've ever seen.



italystf said:


> :lol:
> I don't think it was written by Radi himself but by another forumer to mock him.


It was written by an SSC moderator (who once gave me an infraction for no good reason).


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> ^^ That's one of the worst I've ever seen.
> 
> It was written by an SSC moderator (who once gave me an infraction for no good reason).


are you sure?


----------



## Road_UK

You did it?


----------



## x-type

perhaps  i think i did. it was few years ago, in the beginnings of the Struma tale.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> are you sure?


It was written by many people, you were one of them too, I guess.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I'm pretty sure that there was a bizarre but less extreme version than that at one point. It was stupid but you could believe that Radi actually wrote it, but this one is a bit over the top


----------



## CNGL

Unfortunately right now EuroBillTracker is offline as can be seen in my signature. Luckily I had already entered a few notes before this happenned. Hopefully tomorrow morning (UTC+2) I will revert my signature back to what it was before. Maybe with a new quote  (The current one, which says "Go up to 8,000 meters a.s.l. to put a hundred-kilogramme stone if you want", is a bit... outdated).


----------



## Peines




----------



## hofburg

Slovenia is selling its motorways. somebody's interested?


----------



## Verso

I'll steal them and hide them in my backyard.


----------



## CNGL

hofburg said:


> Slovenia is selling its motorways. somebody's interested?


I want the E61/E70 from Ljubljana to Postojna :troll:.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> I'll steal them and hide them in my backyard.


Maybe your pocket is enough:nuts:


----------



## hofburg

CNGL said:


> I want the E61/E70 from Ljubljana to Postojna :troll:.


why? 

potentional buyer would have to build Dravograd Črnomelj motorway by 2017, and, take care of 4 billion Dars debt


----------



## Road_UK

I would love to have my own motorway, but I don't think I'd go for a Slovenian one. I'd choose something more exotic, like the A75 in France, going through the Massive Central.


----------



## hofburg

hehe, France is exotic country. 

I would own A23 in Italy, and H4 and Crni Kal in Slovenia.


----------



## Road_UK

I think it is. Have you ever had sex with a local girl in the Provence? Makes me feel embarrassed to be of Germanic origin...


----------



## hofburg

not really.  so was she any good?


----------



## Road_UK

Good is not a big enough word...


----------



## italystf

Will DARS dissolve? Will SLO motorways be managed by different private companies? Will the vignette system remain the same?



hofburg said:


> why?
> 
> potentional buyer would have to build Dravograd Črnomelj motorway by 2017, and, take care of 4 billion Dars debt


Never heard of that planned new north-south route. How are going works for the H5-H6 in the littoral?
What about the project for the long awaited E61 motorway Divaca - Jelsane (or Kozina - Jelsane)? It vould be a vital link between Italy (and then France, Spain,...) and the Balkan region. I know Slovenia has no interest in that project because it doesn't connect Slovenian cities but it's very important from an European point of view, especially after HR will join EU. Trieste and Rijeka are two important industrial cities less than 100km apart and are connected only by a 1+1 road, often overcrowed in summer.


----------



## hofburg

I replied in Slo thread.


----------



## x-type

giving HR motorways in concessions is hot topic nowadawys, too. i hope it won't happen.


----------



## hofburg

which ones are state owned and which ones already in concession?


----------



## Alex_ZR

From now on, Google Street View is available in Croatia and Chile.


----------



## x-type

hofburg said:


> which ones are state owned and which ones already in concession?


HAC (A1 Bosiljevo - Ravča, A3, A4, A5) and ARZ (A1 Zagreb - Bosiljevo, A6, A7) are 100% owned by state.
AZM (A2) - 51% owned by Strabag, 49% owned by state
BINA Istra - 50,1% owned by French company Bouyges, rest is owned by combination of Croatian companies (HAC included). it has complicated structure because one of the owners is BINA Fincom, which is partially owned by companies which are also direct shareholders of BINA Istra. here is the scheme:


----------



## x-type

btw:









:cheer::cheer:


----------



## Verso

We're surrounded. :runaway:


----------



## x-type

they have surprised me with coverage, it is excellent! i thought they would cover just major cities and motorways.


----------



## keokiracer

^^ You mean what they did in parts of Chile? 

Thanks for showing me your email *starts spamming*


----------



## x-type

don't even joke with spamming, i got real bad argue with my friend because of it month ago


----------



## hofburg

nice!! I'm checking it out


----------



## dubart

^^ I do it for 2 hours already :nuts: Time to stop.


----------



## hofburg

found it! my favourite viaduct on D1 

https://maps.google.si/?ll=44.05718...d=AQIOSVd-teOSec4rb-yXxw&cbp=12,56.87,,0,2.83


----------



## Nordic20T

Nice, in Switzerland biggest part of Street View is now deleted. 
Btw what about Romania? Will there be more?


----------



## Road_UK

What is it with these German speakers and their dislike of Streetview? All over the world as common as muck, but still a large part of Germany missing, the Swiss deleting and the Austrians whingeing about privacy, even though they are all public roads...


----------



## Nordic20T

I am a German speaker and have no problem with Street View. Maybe I'm part of a minority...
Last thing I heard is, that Google lowers the camera and records Switzerland once more. Until now, nothing happened.


----------



## Road_UK

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ I really hope someday, somehow the central Austrian government railroads (pun intended) the whining annoying NIMBYs of Tyrol and build all those highway links, regardless of what anti-progress back-to-1830 villagers think.


 A villager in northern China attempting to resist a forced government relocation by remaining on his land was brutally crushed to death by a road flattening truck on the orders of a Chinese government official.

The story, which was censored in China’s state controlled media, has caused outrage amongst users of Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, given it’s horrifying similarity to what happened to student protesters who were crushed to death by tanks during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

The victim, He Zhi Hua, refused to accept a paltry payment from the government which has forcefully evicted Changsha Village locals in order to re-appropriate their land for commercial use.

When Hua began a protest by lying down on the spot through which construction vehicles had to pass, the local Vice Mayor ordered workers for the state-owned company to murder Hua by driving over his body with a huge road-flattening truck.

Shocking images show Hua’s pulverized brains and his mangled body in the aftermath of the state-sponsored execution.

Fearing unrest if the story got out to a wider audience, the government sent in 200 men to keep angry locals at bay and hide the remains of the body. The man’s family was offered a sum of money in order to keep quiet about the incident.


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> A villager in northern China attempting to resist a forced government relocation by remaining on his land was brutally crushed to death by a road flattening truck on the orders of a Chinese government official.
> 
> The story, which was censored in China’s state controlled media, has caused outrage amongst users of Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, given it’s horrifying similarity to what happened to student protesters who were crushed to death by tanks during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.
> 
> The victim, He Zhi Hua, refused to accept a paltry payment from the government which has forcefully evicted Changsha Village locals in order to re-appropriate their land for commercial use.
> 
> When Hua began a protest by lying down on the spot through which construction vehicles had to pass, the local Vice Mayor ordered workers for the state-owned company to murder Hua by driving over his body with a huge road-flattening truck.
> 
> Shocking images show Hua’s pulverized brains and his mangled body in the aftermath of the state-sponsored execution.
> 
> Fearing unrest if the story got out to a wider audience, the government sent in 200 men to keep angry locals at bay and hide the remains of the body. The man’s family was offered a sum of money in order to keep quiet about the incident.


China could look like modern for certain things nowaday. But concerning human right and working condition it's still stuck in the XIX century (if compared to Europe). That's really bad for a growing economical power.


----------



## Road_UK

I fully agree. But nobody in the west dares to say anything, as we heavily rely on their economy.


----------



## Road_UK

In the Netherlands there is a party for everything. Party for Animal Welfare is doing rather well, but there is also this fundamentalist Christian party, that favours a complete shutdown of airport's and trainstations on Sunday's. Even their website is offline on Sunday. And there used to be a party for pedophiles, that called for the age of consent to be lowered to 12, and make it lawful to walk around naked. But use a towel when sitting down on public benches at stations or in parks for hygienic reasons. Something for everybody.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> In the Netherlands there is a party for everything. Party for Animal Welfare is doing rather well, but there is also this fundamentalist Christian party, that favours a complete shutdown of airport's and trainstations on Sunday's. Even their website is offline on Sunday. And there used to be a party for pedophiles, that called for the age of consent to be lowered to 12, and make it lawful to walk around naked. But use a towel when sitting down on public benches at stations or in parks for hygienic reasons. Something for everybody.


In Italy too, but in the current electoral system small parties cannot get to the Parliament, so most people won't vote for them thinking that their vote is "wasted".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Significant fragmentation of the political landscape is also not ideal. We had a surprise election outcome in September (two parties gaining a majority together) but before that only 3 - 5 party coalitions seemed possible.


----------



## Road_UK

A left-centre right coalition. A lot of compromising to be done...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Better than extremes on both the left and right.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Better than extremes on both the left and right.


It depends. I prefer extremes.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> They don't tell you about these policies before elections...


I like the Swiss system where they have referendums for everything, that's real democracy, not a bunch of politicians who do whatever they want for 5 or 10 years.



Road_UK said:


> there is also this fundamentalist Christian party, that favours a complete shutdown of airport's and trainstations on Sunday's. Even their website is offline on Sunday. And there used to be a party for pedophiles, that called for the age of consent to be lowered to 12, and make it lawful to walk around naked. But use a towel when sitting down on public benches at stations or in parks for hygienic reasons. Something for everybody.


OMG! Reading such things make me thinking Italian politics suck less than I though, at least we never had such crazy parties.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> I like the Swiss system where they have referendums for everything, that's real democracy, not a bunch of politicians who do whatever they want for 5 or 10 years.


That system works only on small-medium scales. You can't organize referenda for everything, they cost sh*tloads of money and you risk a very steep declining rate of participation.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Swiss referendums already often have low turnouts. Sometimes less than 20% of the voters can reject a plan. I don't like referendums. Complex decisions should be made by experts, not civilians with no knowledge on the matter.

Referendums are just a tool for people who are against something. You don't need an absolute majority to reject something since a large silent proportion of the voters don't care and doesn't vote on the matter. People who are against something have a much stronger incentive to go and vote than people who are not against something but don't find it important enough to vote.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> That's how it works in a democracy. If you're not happy with policies, you send them home during election time.


Perhaps "shoving them a boot in the ass" was a metaphor for sending them home at election time....


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> That system works only on small-medium scales. You can't organize referenda for everything, they cost sh*tloads of money and you risk a very steep declining rate of participation.


This is not true in the electronic age.


----------



## g.spinoza

Surel said:


> This is not true in the electronic age.


If they were to introduce electronic vote, I'd never vote again.


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> Swiss referendums already often have low turnouts. Sometimes less than 20% of the voters can reject a plan. I don't like referendums. Complex decisions should be made by experts, not civilians with no knowledge on the matter.
> 
> Referendums are just a tool for people who are against something. You don't need an absolute majority to reject something since a large silent proportion of the voters don't care and doesn't vote on the matter. People who are against something have a much stronger incentive to go and vote than people who are not against something but don't find it important enough to vote.


Experts should be able to explain their oppinions to the broad public and make complex matters understandable to a layman. The population should then decide. Anyway, who decides who is a expert and who is not? If public can decide who is the expert, it can also decide whether the expert and what he is talking about is making sense or not.

If there are problems so complex that their effects can't be explained to the broad public, they are probably wrongly understood and prone to misuse anyway.

The reasons for so low turnoevers is verly low political awarness of the population. Its certainly something that can be improved. E.g. you could start with educational programs in the primary and secondary schools on that matter. You could also motivate participations in the referendas.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> That system works only on small-medium scales. You can't organize referenda for everything, they cost sh*tloads of money and you risk a very steep declining rate of participation.


Not necessarily: every election or referendum doesn't have to be a separate trip to the polls.

Here's what we were voting on in Philadelphia in the 2010 primary (the most recent sample ballot I could find on line in two minutes). The "Questions" on the right are referenda.

http://www.seventy.org/Downloads/Sample_Ballot/May_2010/182.pdf

I'm not necessarily endorsing the direct-vote-on-everything approach, though....


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> If they were to introduce electronic vote, I'd never vote again.


Why is that?


----------



## g.spinoza

Surel said:


> Why is that?


Are you serious? They can already mess with paper votes, although it is difficult to do. If we were to use electronic vote, it would be a _carte blanche_ for them to cheat as they please. No way, man.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Are you serious? They can already mess with paper votes, although it is difficult to do. If we were to use electronic vote, it would be a _carte blanche_ for them to cheat as they please. No way, man.


There absolutely needs to be a "paper trail" - a hard copy that can be referred to if a recount is needed. But electronic voting machines can produce that. That said, I've heard of places that were introducing electronic voting a decade ago that have changed their minds since....


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> Are you serious? They can already mess with paper votes, although it is difficult to do. If we were to use electronic vote, it would be a _carte blanche_ for them to cheat as they please. No way, man.


Do you use electronic banking? This is not question of technology, its a question of trust in the society.

No system is 100 % foolproof I agree on that. But, for one I think the safety measures can be so strong that it would be very hard and demanding to fake the results.


----------



## Surel

Road_UK said:


> Depends in which country you're in I guess. In the Netherlands there are so many political parties, ranging from far right to far left, and opinions are so divided, that governments are being formed based on coalitions and compromises.


They may have different programs, but the most imprtant think about any polititian is the moral character and work ethic. Its not really that easy to find this out before hand. Afterwards its bit too late.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> There absolutely needs to be a "paper trail" - a hard copy that can be referred to if a recount is needed. But electronic voting machines can produce that. That said, I've heard of places that were introducing electronic voting a decade ago that have changed their minds since....


How can you be sure that a paper trail produced by voting machine is right? Only the machine maker knows. And what if it has an agenda?



Surel said:


> Do you use electronic banking?


No. I don't even have a credit card, only a rechargeable one, so I wouldn't lose my money if something goes wrong.



> This is not question of technology, its a question of trust in the society.


It IS a question of technology, however no, I have no trust in society.



> No system is 100 % foolproof I agree on that. But, for one I think the safety measures can be so strong that it would be very hard and demanding to fake the results.


Electronic devices can be easily hacked. What strong measures are you thinking of, if crackers can penetrate the White House and the Pentagon archives? :nuts:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

When talking about money, it's an abstract concept anyway that's based on trust. Cash is still a piece of paper that's worth nothing if people don't put their trust in it. I'm pretty sure there are people in the world that have decided to keep their savings in gold because they don't trust money. I personally see no difference between electronic money and cash, I probably even trust electronic money more because it's less fragile.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> Well I am sure that in the US you can find your own solution for your ID problem.... .
> 
> mobile internet... that was a figure of speech. But ok, sooner or later elderly people without "mobile internet" will die out. Note: another figure of speech :O. Using mobile internet will become as normal as using clothes or knowing how to read. Not knowing something is not a benefit. You would have to pay the price for that matter and travel to the few places where there would be a voting assistence.


In the segregated South, that sort of thing was called a "poll tax." Which is why we're extremely sensitive to this kind of thing. (In fact, the cost of getting the ID - particularly if there's a direct fee for it, but also taking a day off of work to spend in line, traveling to the nearest DMV office... - was a big part of the legal argument. Voting is too fundamental a right to be hampered by obstacles like having to pay for ID.)


----------



## g.spinoza

Yes but in the US you have to be registered to vote. So you have to go... I don't know where, some place when you get registered, and spend time, take a day off, possibly spend money... isn't that the same thing?


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> So the system just stores two lists, the one with your real vote, and the other one with the vote changed accord to the machine maker's agenda. When you interrogate the system it will show the real vote; for other purposes, including electing people, it will use the changed one. Piece of cake.
> Besides, vote is secret. How can you prevent someone to steal your identification and access your voter's history?


Lets see. Imagine that someone then checks up the results in a district. All people send in the results that it shows on the real list. Then this is checked up with the list that is used for the results (the faked list). If there would be a problem it would be seen right away.

How about having a broad enough commission that would overlook the system design (but commission of experts in the field of course, also people with moral credit). Commission that would represent the whole society. That would be one safety feature in the desing of such a system. You would have to bribe them all.


The whole agrument is about that you say, paper votes are harder to fake, because the faking is more costly. I think that you can design such an electronic system, where the faking would be the same costly, but the whole system would operate with lower cost than the paper voting.

interesting debate, I am off for now


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## Penn's Woods

EDIT: For Spinoza, two posts back....

It's very easy to register. A month before an election, if you're out and about enough, you'll probably be asked by a nice volunteer for one of the parties or other organizations whether you're registered. If you're not, they have the form. You fill it out and give it to them, and they are obligated by law to turn it in for you.

When I moved in 2008 (a month before the primary), I actually changed my address as I was moving - a volunteer happened to be working the corner of my street (in a quiet area on a Sunday morning, yet) and asked if I was registered; I said "yes, but I'm moving into this block literally today; do you have a change-of-address form?" He did; I sat down and filled it out; done.

As far as getting to the polling place; they're extremely thick on the ground; in a city the size of Philadelphia it's not a question of going to City Hall. I vote in the lobby of an apartment building. I've heard of large apartment buildings that have their own polling places just for their residents. There's one at the parish hall of a church across the street from me but for some reason I'm not assigned there.

At any rate, people who are too unwell to get out, or who will be away, can apply for an "absentee ballot," fill it out at home and mail it in. (I don't know if it's "Business Reply Mail," which you don't have to stamp because the recipient pays for it.  )

More and more states are offering "early voting" - some states are already voting for this election - if Election Day is inconvenient for you. (In that instance, you won't have a bunch of polling places all over town, you'll have to go to the county board of elections or whatever.) And more and more states aren't requiring you to give a reason (illness, travel...) for the absentee ballot. Pennsylvania's still a bit old-fashioned in that respect: voting is on Election Day only and absentee ballots may need a justification (that I'm not sure about).


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Wait, how do you identify yourself without an ID?


----------



## g.spinoza

Surel said:


> Lets see. Imagine that someone then checks up the results in a district. All people send in the results that it shows on the real list. Then this is checked up with the list that is used for the results (the faked list). If there would be a problem it would be seen right away.


So you basically have to vote two times, the second of which on an open unsecured line. What if you deliberately change the second time your vote? What if someone maliciously changes it as you send it? What if you have better things to do than re-vote a second time just to prove that the first one was right?
It seems to me an unnecessary complication. Pencil and paper, as good as it gets.



> How about having a broad enough commission that would overlook the system design (but commission of experts in the field of course, also people with moral credit).


As you said, who gives them moral credit? Experts by judgment of whom?



> The whole agrument is about that you say, paper votes are harder to fake, because the faking is more costly. I think that you can design such a electronic system, where the faking would be seemingly costly, but the whole system would operate with lower cost than the paper voting.


I don't think so. And for sure I'm not gonna change my mind.



Penn's Woods said:


> EDIT: For Spinoza, two posts back....
> 
> It's very easy to register. [...]


I see. I doubt however that the against-ID sentiment is due to its cost. In Italy you just have to provide 2 pictures of yourself and voilà, your document is ready and valid for ten years. I don't think you have to pay, and if you have, I don't think it's more than 10 euro. 
I could understand, although not agree, if you're scared by big-brother state that registers you all. But the cost excuse doesn't hold.

EDIT: Issue and renewal of ID in Italy costs 5.42€


----------



## MattiG

Satyricon84 said:


> Meanwhile in Germany...


There was a similar case in Finland. The plumber company LVIS24 was banned from using the colouring scheme the Finnish police is using.










Last year I bought a new car. At the most important phase (selecting the colour), the sales guy noticed that the car configurator system would allow ordering the car in the colours of the Italian police. I rejected that proposal.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Rebasepoiss said:


> Wait, how do you identify yourself without an ID?


How did people vote before driver's licenses, or photography for that matter, were invented? 

Seriously, when you get to the polling place, there's a huge book with a page for everyone registered at that polling place. You tell the poll worker your name, they find your record, and you sign it. Your signature will need to match your signature from past elections and your original registration. (Signing it also prevents you from coming back later and trying to vote a second time.)


----------



## Road_UK

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't get all the fuss about showing ID to vote. You need to show your ID for pretty much anything. In the Netherlands you need to show your ID to vote.


It is an offence in the Netherlands not to present your ID when requested. For me that is a step to far, and in breach of personal liberty's. The Netherlands is not as free as people think.


----------



## g.spinoza

In Italy you are not required to carry the ID with you at all times, only to identify yourself to a policeman or other officer. However, if the officer is not satisfied by your oral identification, he can hold you until your identity is differently proven. In practical terms, it is always convenient to carry your ID with you.


----------



## Road_UK

In Holland you get fined when not having one on you. And probably taken into custody until ID is proven.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I see. Is the driving license equivalent to the ID? In Italy it is, as well as nautical license, gun license, and any other official document with picture and signature. I remember when I was 18 and went to the army medical, one of the guys with me had no ID but his fishing license. It was enough for the army officials.


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> It is an offence in the Netherlands not to present your ID when requested. For me that is a step to far, and in breach of personal liberty's. The Netherlands is not as free as people think.


It sounds ridiculous to you, but what if you were an illegal immigrant? You have to look at it from this perspective. It's the same here, but I'm not worried about it. I've never had to present my ID and it's very unlikely, if you behave normally.


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> It sounds ridiculous to you, but what if you were an illegal immigrant? You have to look at it from this perspective. It's the same here, but I'm not worried about it. I've never had to present my ID and it's very unlikely, if you behave normally.


Illegal immigrant with a native tongue? With what I gather, this id thing still gives a few steers in the old country, but I'm not sure. I haven't lived there for so long. Maybe Chris can tell a bit more.

G, I think a drivers license is a form of valid ID, yes.


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> Illegal immigrant with a native tongue?


What about real illegal immigrants? How would they identify themselves, if it were forbidden to ask them for their IDs?


----------



## cinxxx

Verso said:


> What about real illegal immigrants? How would they identify themselves, if it were forbidden to ask them for their IDs?


With an illegal (fake) ID? :nuts:


----------



## Verso

Why would they show a fake ID, if they didn't have to show their ID at all?


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> So you basically have to vote two times, the second of which on an open unsecured line. What if you deliberately change the second time your vote? What if someone maliciously changes it as you send it? What if you have better things to do than re-vote a second time just to prove that the first one was right?


And how do you do it in the paper votings. You have to count tbe ballots. How do you secure that there were no additional ballots or ballots missing? How do you secure that the ballots that you count are the same ones that were thrown in? How do you secure that commission did not signed on the list people that were not present. Believe me it wasn't that hard to make the communist party get its 99,6 percent with good old pen and paper.

You just have to trust the commission. There is no way to check the work of the commission, if you have doubts. You would have to repeat the voting.

I am not an expert on the electronic voting systems and digital security, but I would not dismiss this possibility before trying it out and experiencing it. I am sure, that if someone had tried to fake the results, you would have found out sooner or later.


----------



## Surel

Verso said:


> Why would they show a fake ID, if they didn't have to show their ID at all?


There are other forms of ID also in the US. E.g. I don't know if someone could argue that he is american (because born in US) even if he did not speak as native speaker (or even if he did speak as native) and his US birth certificate would not be existing.

This means, who has the burden of proving your identity. You or the government?


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> Let's cut the anti Americanism. We have a lot to thank for.


Off course, we can't forget the liberation and Marshall plan.


----------



## Road_UK

Exactly.


----------



## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> Schengen is your answer then why an ID card is mandatory.


No it is not the answer.

The Finnish citizens do not need to carry any ID card in Finland. The authorities have tools to get to know if the person has a right to stay in Finland or not.

For foreigners, various rules apply, depending on the case, for example

- Citizens of Sweden, Norway, Denmark or Iceland (Nordic passport union)
- Citizens of EU countries
- Citizens of non-EU countries needing no visa
- Citizens of non-EU countries needing a visa
- Persons having a residence permit
- Asylum seekers
- etc


----------



## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> Estonia has had electronic voting since 2005. In the 2011 parliamentary elections, roughly 25% of participants gave their vote over the Internet (including I). Very few people have a problem with that over here. Our banking is also very much online-based - 99.3% of money transactions withing Estonia are made online.


How does this system prevent say a husband forcing his wife to give her vote according to what he wants?

Preventing this, I think, is one of the cornerstones of free and democratic elections.


----------



## Wilhem275

Road_UK said:


> Let's cut the anti Americanism. We have a lot to thank for.


Anti Americanism is one of the funniest things Europeans can do: acting like douchebags while accusing the Americans of being douchebags :lol:

Lots of douchebaggery, though :lol:


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> Green card and social security number.


Do you carry them with you?



italystf said:


> Were Europeans also those who started the war in Vietnam, supported the fascist regime in Chile, segregated blacks and whites until the 60s, put an embargo towards Cuba just for political reasons, etc...?


Of course not, that's recent history, but we could say Indians were 'genocided' by Europeans, it was happening when they arrived in North America. Perhaps later 'Americans' were also killing them, not sure.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Of course not, that's recent history, but we could say Indians were 'genocided' by Europeans, it was happening when they arrived in North America. Perhaps later 'Americans' were also killing them, not sure.


The last massacre against natives happened in 1890, more than 100 years after the Declaration of Indipendence.


----------



## Surel

Verso said:


> I don't quite get your point. If you don't have any documents with you, how will the police identify you?


Imagine you are illegaly in the US. You don't have any documents anywhere nor are you registered anywhere. And you claim that you are american citizen. Who is there to prove that you are not?


----------



## Surel

Rebasepoiss said:


> Really, that's it? Seems a bit...primitive, if you ask me.
> 
> In Estonia, an ID is compulsory for all citizens. People with living permits can also apply for an ID card. Our ID-card is a smart card which means that you can plug it into a card reader and make online payments, vote online, give electronic signatures etc. It pretty much is your identification on the Internet.


Indeed, very nicely done.

Although I would like to see the identity yet verified by the fingerprint or retina scan, face recognition etc. etc. (really not a problem now a day to have this installed into any laptop) + a password.

Anything that cuts the middle man between the citizens and the government is a great leap and real economic improvement.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Having glanced over _this page of posts only_, it looks like I'm glad I skipped the last couple of hours. But seriously: why can't Europeans (I know I'm generalizing) accept it when Americans (or anyone for that matter) do something _differently_ from them? Can't we not have a national ID without you throwing words like "backwards" around? That's not enlightenment and "aheadness"; it's arrogant, narrow-minded provinicialism. Faults some of you all are in the habit of accusing us of, ironically.

Bullshit Eurocentrism is bullshit.


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> EDIT: For Spinoza, two posts back....
> 
> It's very easy to register. A month before an election, if you're out and about enough, you'll probably be asked by a nice volunteer for one of the parties or other organizations whether you're registered. If you're not, they have the form. You fill it out and give it to them, and they are obligated by law to turn it in for you.
> 
> When I moved in 2008 (a month before the primary), I actually changed my address as I was moving - a volunteer happened to be working the corner of my street (in a quiet area on a Sunday morning, yet) and asked if I was registered; I said "yes, but I'm moving into this block literally today; do you have a change-of-address form?" He did; I sat down and filled it out; done.
> 
> As far as getting to the polling place; they're extremely thick on the ground; in a city the size of Philadelphia it's not a question of going to City Hall. I vote in the lobby of an apartment building. I've heard of large apartment buildings that have their own polling places just for their residents. There's one at the parish hall of a church across the street from me but for some reason I'm not assigned there.
> 
> At any rate, people who are too unwell to get out, or who will be away, can apply for an "absentee ballot," fill it out at home and mail it in. (I don't know if it's "Business Reply Mail," which you don't have to stamp because the recipient pays for it.  )
> 
> More and more states are offering "early voting" - some states are already voting for this election - if Election Day is inconvenient for you. (In that instance, you won't have a bunch of polling places all over town, you'll have to go to the county board of elections or whatever.) And more and more states aren't requiring you to give a reason (illness, travel...) for the absentee ballot. Pennsylvania's still a bit old-fashioned in that respect: voting is on Election Day only and absentee ballots may need a justification (that I'm not sure about).



I guess there must be a central register of US citizens right, or is it perceived as great evil? Well, I read about some people that asked for US visa and they could not receive any as they told them at the embassy that they are american citizens, because they were born in the US . 

I would like to konw who checks that the voters lists correspond to the US citizens register, that there are not made up people on the list (faked registrations).

But anyway I think there are other systemic problems in the US voting system. E.g. the delegates - electors, the way the primaries work, decissions by public acclamation etc and in general the party conventions, it looks quite strange to me. I don't want to criticize too much as I am not that familiar with the system but some features are indeed not from this age anymore. Let alone talking about bipartism which I once thought is quite appealing concept but I am not that sure anymore.


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> Having glanced over _this page of posts only_, it looks like I'm glad I skipped the last couple of hours. But seriously: why can't Europeans (I know I'm generalizing) accept it when Americans (or anyone for that matter) do something _differently_ from them? Can't we not have a national ID without you throwing words like "backwards" around? That's not enlightenment and "aheadness"; it's arrogant, narrow-minded provinicialism. Faults some of you all are in the habit of accusing us of, ironically.
> 
> Bullshit Eurocentrism is bullshit.


LOL. I accept it. Am I not allowed to discuss it? I guess no one is planning an invasion to the US to change the matters. This post is like hearing some Russian ranting about the outsiders not respecting the Russian way of doing things...


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Having glanced over this page of posts only, it looks like I'm glad I skipped the last couple of hours. But seriously: why can't Europeans (I know I'm generalizing) accept it when Americans (or anyone for that matter) do something differently from them? Can't we not have a national ID without you throwing words like "backwards" around? That's not enlightenment and "aheadness"; it's arrogant, narrow-minded provinicialism. Faults some of you all are in the habit of accusing us of, ironically.
> 
> Bullshit Eurocentrism is bullshit.


I agree, every country is free to have its own laws and as long human right are respected they're ok.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> I guess there must be a central register of US citizens right, or is it perceived as great evil? Well, I read about some people that asked for US visa and they could not receive any as they told them at the embassy that they are american citizens, because they were born in the US .


Central register? I've never heard of one. The issue will, or may, come up from time to time for individuals. Last time I needed to prove my citizenship - to get a passport - I brought my birth certificate with me, and probably "proof of my Social Security number," which shows up on things like your paycheck. 

But if your friends were indeed US citizens they wouldn't need a visa to travel here; to get into the US, they could use American passports, which they'd be entitled to. At least that's my guess.



Surel said:


> I would like to konw who checks that the voters lists correspond to the US citizens register, that there are not made up people on the list (faked registrations).


Another prove-your-citizenship situation. I registered to vote 30 years ago, in New Jersey; don't remember how I proved it. Don't remember how it happened when I moved to Pennsylvania 12 years later - I do know you have to tell them you were registered in another state and they report it to that state so you're off their rolls.



Surel said:


> But anyway I think there are other systemic problems in the US voting system. E.g. the delegates - electors, the way the primaries work, decissions by public acclamation etc and in general the party conventions, it looks quite strange to me. I don't want to criticize too much as I am not that familiar with the system but some features are indeed not from this age anymore. Let alone talking about bipartism which I once thought is quite appealing concept but I am not that sure anymore.


Sigh.

This is a federal state where a lot of this stuff evolved. Is it ideal? No. But "not from this age"?

Primaries are a way of having parties' candidates chosen by the public, rather than party officials gathering privately (which is the way it used to happen - and still does in just about every other country I'm aware of). Any voter can participate in the primary of their choice. How is that less democratic than party officials' choosing candidates? The French Socialist Party had a primary to choose their last presidential candidate because they thought it was more democratic than the old way - but you had to pay to participate. Unthinkable here.

Party conventions are where said secretly-chosen representatives from state parties used to gather to choose national candidates. Now that the delegates are elected in primaries and therefore _obligated to respect the voters' wishes_ the convention has become a formality wrapped up in a four-day show, but I think that's an improvement.

The electors are likewise absolutely obligated to respect the wishes of their states' voters. It's a bit of a formality. It has its advantages (it assures that a candidate needs to have reasonably wide national appeal) and its disadvantages (about one election in 15, it doesn't match the popular vote), but I don't see it as less democratic than, say, Belgium requiring - perfectly appropriately in my opinion - that certain matters need to be approved by both Flemings and Francophones, or Canada giving Quebec a veto on language issues. Absolute majority rule in those countries would permit English Canadians to remove French as an official language or Flemings to unilaterally annex Brussels. This sort of mechanism protects minorities' interests, and as long as it was agreed to that's appropriate and desirable.

Bipartisanism? Well, the alternative seems to be a lot of tiny little parties who then form a coalition _in a process the voters have absolutely no say in_. The first Belgian election I followed (the 2004 regionals), where forming the governments took six weeks, I couldn't help thinking that if I were a Belgian I'd feel disenfranchised. And I mean no disrespect to Belgium or Belgians in saying so, and certainly wouldn't call them "backwards." (And we've seen since that six weeks is nothing there....)

"not from this age"? See my previous post.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> The last massacre against natives happened in 1890, more than 100 years after the Declaration of Indipendence.


Then Europeans and Americans were both guilty. 



Surel said:


> Imagine you are illegaly in the US. You don't have any documents anywhere nor are you registered anywhere. And you claim that you are american citizen. Who is there to prove that you are not?


My point exactly.


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^


about the first thing:

The guy in question did not know he is a US citizen. He was CZ citizen his whole life. He was just born in the US, but apparently never considered it. When he wanted to travel to the US, he was told at the embassy that he can't get a visa. Startled he asked why. They told him that he can't get a visa, because he is US citizen. But that he can get the passport right away. :nuts:

My point being. The gov. somehow had to find out that he is a US citizen. He did not prove it, they proved it. So I guess there has to be some sort of register anyway. Unless they had it only for such special cases... but not for an ordinary *******.

about the second thing:

It was not about you proving anything. My question was. How is anyone able to check that on the list with voters are not made up people? This problem is universal, not only in the US. Your problem was otherwise, you needed to prove that you are the person on that list, thats quite easily done.

about the american thing:

I am not going into that anymore tonight.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^"Undocumented" is in fact the current politically-correct term here for what we used to call "illegal aliens."

I'm guessing - just guessing - that if some government official reallly thinks you're in the country illegally, they have to take you to court and ask a judge to decide whether you can be deported. The burden of proof ought to be on the government in that case. No idea how the court hearings really play out....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> ^^
> 
> The guy in question did not know he is a US citizen. He was CZ citizen his whole life. He was just born in the US, but apparently never considered it. When he wanted to travel to the US, he was told at the embassy that he can't get a visa. Startled he asked why. They told him that he can't get a visa, because he is US citizen. But that he can get the passport right away. :nuts:
> 
> My point being. The gov. somehow had to find out that he is a US citizen. He did not prove it, they proved it. So I guess there has to be some sort of register anyway. Unless they had it only for such special cases... but not for an ordinary *******.


Hmm. I'm totally guessing here, but everyone gets a Social Security number (a Social Security card too, but I have no idea where mine is....) at birth. I suppose there'd be a government database of those numbers. Did he tell the embassy he was born here? That would in fact make him a citizen, as far as I know. So if he told them he was born here and they checked to see if he had a Social Security number and they found he did, that would probably be enough to entitle him to a passport.

So I guess that Social Security database might be what you call a register of citizens. But I can't believe it goes much farther than very basic information like name, date of birth, place of birth, parents.... Having a file on everyone is part of the fear about ID cards. Here's what the American Civil Liberties Union - a leading individual-rights organization that's perceived as left-wing - has to say about ID cards, but I'm sure you can find comparable objections from the other end of the political spectrum, and similar arguments in Britain: http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/5-problems-national-id-cards


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> Hmm. I'm totally guessing here, but everyone gets a Social Security number (a Social Security card too, but I have no idea where mine is....) at birth. I suppose there'd be a government database of those numbers. Did he tell the embassy he was born here? That would in fact make him a citizen, as far as I know. So if he told them he was born here and they checked to see if he had a Social Security number and they found he did, that would probably be enough to entitle him to a passport.


No he did not. It was complete surprise to him, since he had a flight in 9 days and expected a visa. I think the embassy does a search on any records of the people that are applying for a visa. And there somewhere boom, he showed up to be an american...:lol:

He might have had a social security number given if his parents arranged that, he did not know. At least thats what he claims.


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^"Undocumented" is in fact the current politically-correct term here for what we used to call "illegal aliens."
> 
> I'm guessing - just guessing - that if some government official reallly thinks you're in the country illegally, they have to take you to court and ask a judge to decide whether you can be deported. The burden of proof ought to be on the government in that case. No idea how the court hearings really play out....


"Undocumented-looking" Americans better have some document with them then.


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> its width made me confused. namely, i have seen Po at A14 and A21 bridges. it is very wide at both places, even wider by A21.
> Drava at Osijek (so some 20 km before its mouth) is half of that width. that's what made me believe that Po was longer.


You mean A13, A14 doesn't cross the Po.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> You mean A13, A14 doesn't cross the Po.


exactly. i consider whole motorway from Padova to Puglia as A14 :rebel:


----------



## CNGL

^^ I consider the "Autostrada Adriatica" E45 from Bologna (boo) to Cesena, then E55 to Bari and finally E843 to near Massafra :nuts:



x-type said:


> wow! i never thought that Drava was longer than Po!


And I didn't knew that! Anyway, the Po is the longest river _within_ Italy. Much like Ebro and Tagus, the former is the longest river within Spain, but the later is the longest Spanish river.


----------



## Road_UK

Are you Belgian?


----------



## CNGL

Nope, I'm Spanish. But I decided to use E-numbers where possible. I say E07 instead of A-23 and N-330, or E11 instead of A71 and A75, but now I find I have to say E45, E55 and E843 instead of A14 :nuts:. And in the UK I have to write the national number alongside the European, like E13/M1, because E-numbers aren't signposted!  British...


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^"There'll always be an England
And England shall be free!"

Resist, Britannia!


----------



## Road_UK

CNGL said:


> Nope, I'm Spanish. But I decided to use E-numbers where possible. I say E07 instead of A-23 and N-330, or E11 instead of A71 and A75, but now I find I have to say E45, E55 and E843 instead of A14 :nuts:. And in the UK I have to write the national number alongside the European, like E13/M1, because E-numbers aren't signposted!  British...


As long as you're aware that a lot of E-routes are barmy routes, and in a lot of countries you will get to your destination a lot faster by following national route numbers.


----------



## Wilhem275

I must admit I had to search for the definition of "barmy" :lol:

It's also a problem of communication: try asking anyone directions for the E843...

I know the E55 only because it's a great route for a travel; in Italy the only E-road vaguely recognized by travellers is the E45, only because it is a route of national importance not classifed as a motorway.


----------



## Penn's Woods

CNGL said:


> Nope, I'm Spanish. But I decided to use E-numbers where possible. I say E07 instead of A-23 and N-330, or E11 instead of A71 and A75, but now I find I have to say E45, E55 and E843 instead of A14 :nuts:. And in the UK I have to write the national number alongside the European, like E13/M1, because E-numbers aren't signposted!  British...


CNGL, here's one for you: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=96191383&postcount=4366

:cheers:


----------



## Coccodrillo

Wilhem275 said:


> ...in Italy the only E-road vaguely recognized by travellers is the E45, only because it is a route of national importance not classifed as a motorway.


And because it's national number is an illogic *SS 3 bis* :nuts: (a branch-style number for a main road)


----------



## Verso

Lol, some little kid mistook me for his father today and sat on my lap (I was like 'wtf'). By the time he realized he made a mistake, we started laughing. Poor kid ran to his (real) father and was totally embarrassed, so I had to tell him it happens.


----------



## Wilhem275

You've been at risk of being treated as a pedophile...


----------



## Verso

It did look odd. His father told him 'look better next time you decide to climb on someone'.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Lol, some little kid mistook me for his father today and sat on my lap (I was like 'wtf'). By the time he realized he made a mistake, we started laughing. Poor kid ran to his (real) father and was totally embarrassed, so I had to tell him it happens.


i did it once as a kid :lol: i remember it as it was yesterday, the weather, the location, everything. it was kinda 27 years ago :lol:

i also remember when i went to my aunt's flat, i was playing outside with kids and when i wanted to enter to flat, i entered into wrong apartment :lol: i was so confused, but people to whose apartment i entered were so kind and cool, as it happens every day :lol:


----------



## Verso

^ Then you know how funny it was. I haven't had such a good laugh in a long time.


----------



## italystf

The most embarassing street view scene ever


----------



## Wilhem275

Verso said:


> ^ Then you know how funny it was. I haven't had such a good laugh in a long time.


Some 60 years ago, when almost any car in Italy was this one:









my grandfather entered what was supposed to be his boss' Topolino, sat on the passenger seat and began talking about stuff, until the owner of the car asked him if he was sure about what he was doing


----------



## Verso

^^ :lol: Where is that license plate from?

-----------------------










Jesus is watching them. :runaway:


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Jesus is watching them. :runaway:


:rofl:


----------



## Verso

There are so many people in that car.


----------



## RipleyLV

You're drunk or something?


----------



## Verso

No no, but I didn't draw well (small face). It's like a clown (white face or so).


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Jesus is watching them. :runaway:


actually, this looks like shade of Ecce **** of Borja


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> actually, this looks like shade of Ecce **** of Borja


My restoration attempt? :troll:


----------



## keokiracer

I googled completely wrong after a tip on 9Gag....









Check it yourself!

https://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&...urce=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=H7p1UKOrLsLP0QXBl4DwDg


----------



## Road_UK

SafeSearch off. You obviously like to Google naughty things :lol:


----------



## keokiracer

Hadn't even noticed that :lol:
And no.... I use Ctrl+Shift+N for that :angel:


----------



## Penn's Woods

keokiracer said:


> I googled completely wrong after a tip on 9Gag....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Check it yourself!
> 
> https://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&...urce=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=H7p1UKOrLsLP0QXBl4DwDg


Love it!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's Romney saying Obama is completely wrong?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Given that Romney has taken every possible position on every issue, I suppose he can't be completely wrong, actually....


----------



## henry1394

http://acidcow.com/pics/37983-haunted-roads-10-pics.html


----------



## henry1394

http://acidcow.com/pics/31771-most-dangerous-roads-in-the-world-91-pics.html


----------



## henry1394

http://acidcow.com/pics/15853-beautiful-roads-99-pics.html


----------



## henry1394

http://acidcow.com/pics/12677-amazing-roads-around-the-world-41-pics.html


----------



## henry1394

http://acidcow.com/pics/24240-the-worlds-most-dangerous-roads-15-pics.html


----------



## Verso

henry1394 said:


> http://acidcow.com/pics/37983-haunted-roads-10-pics.html


Ten of the *world*'s most famous haunted roads? More like ten of the most famous Anglo-Saxon haunted roads. I bet I'd feel more haunted driving through the nearest forest in the middle of the night. :lol:


----------



## Verso

Why was henry1394 banned? :?


----------



## Road_UK

He was throwing around links everywhere, which (falsely) may have given the impression that he was spamming. And there has been a lot of spam attacks on SSC lately.


----------



## bogdymol

*It's live* :cheers:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

I just started watching the stream like 2 minutes before the jump itself.  

At some point during the freefall he was spinning quite a lot and I think he even mentioned after that he thought he was going to pass out. Quite scary stuff... But still, he broke all the records he hoped he'd brake apart from one - the longest freefall.


----------



## SeanT

In Denmark the police is very "edgy" about this scooter ishue. Monday evening, there was a program in the tv about a young fellow, which was taken by the police. He did not have a helmet, he had a passenger and the scooter could run with 60.
He got a fine around DKK 3500,- and if he get cut with a scooter like this within the next 3 years, he can say nothing but good-bye to it!
It will be confiscated!!


----------



## Road_UK

I hear a lot of stories about Danish police. Apparently they are a bit harsh and oppressive.


----------



## keber

That seems to be already for decades. I have relatives from Sweden (which has high fines too) and they often tell stories about Danish police from their friends or Swedish yellow news. I heard that it is almost a major crime to go 160 km/h on a motorway.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've never seen a speed check in Denmark, nor any speed cameras for that matter. If they are around on the motorway, they must be doing it with unmarked police vehicles. 

Anyway, the Danish speed limits are fairly reasonable, except for some remaining 110 km/h-stretches which are sometimes longer than necessary, but I believe it's policy to turn more segments to 130 km/h.


----------



## Road_UK

I have seen plenty of speed checks in Denmark. Their favourite is on the motorway bus stop behind the walls on the E47 between Copenhagen and Helsingor. But that is not my point. I am talking about harshness and a repressive police force. Several Danish friends told me about them, and I also had some Swedes confirming this.


----------



## Sponsor

Hello guys!

I need help.

I am doing a little elaboration:
*The urban transport organization - solutions in Western and Northern Europe* (hope I translated it well). 
I'd like to gather as much information as possible. It is meant to be about those classic issues like _zone 30_, _congestion charges_, _priority for public transportation_ and anything else that make life in the cities better, getting around easier, air cleaner and so on. 

We all know those tricks that developed over the years but I can't just write down what comes to my mind. What I need are *sources* that I could refer to. Books titles, authors, articles, anything...

If you have any ideas, please share with me. Thanks in advance!


----------



## Surel




----------



## Nordic20T

^^
What's special about these plates apart from the numbers?:?


----------



## keokiracer

Apart from the numbers I'd say nothing. But they could come in quite handy at speed checks


----------



## Surel

Nordic20T said:


> ^^
> What's special about these plates apart from the numbers?:?


Oh yeah, I forgot to tell the story. No one wanted to take these plates so the local police was forced to put them on their own car and use them.


----------



## cinxxx

Any of you have a recommendation for a 4 day mini vacation?
I have the period 1-4 November in mind.
It should be at decent distance from my location though, because booking a flight just 2 weeks before could be a little expensive


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Allgäu?


----------



## cinxxx

ChrisZwolle said:


> Allgäu?


Mountains in cold season, not really my thing. I grew up in the plain, love the sun and warmth. Also, don't have snow chains, and have no idea how to use them .

I could maybe try something like Berlin or Dresden or Strasbourg.
The weather is tricky in this period though.


----------



## italystf

Surel said:


> Oh yeah, I forgot to tell the story. No one wanted to take these plates so the local police was forced to put them on their own car and use them.


They should have given them to some Chinese residents, 8 is a lucky number for them. I read in the license plate thread that a rich Chinese paid a lot of money to have a plate with many 8s (and someone claimed to have seen that car in Reykyavik  ).


----------



## hofburg

cinxxx said:


> love the sun and warmth.


adriatic coast or termal resort


----------



## cinxxx

hofburg said:


> adriatic coast or termal resort


That could be a nice choice, Italy or Slovenia or Croatia.
My girlfriend wants Venice, but I heard in November there is high possibility of floods.


----------



## hofburg

I don't know about the floods. google Venice, Lignano, Grado, Zusterna, Portoroz, Opatija.


----------



## piotr71

cinxxx said:


> Mountains in cold season, not really my thing. I grew up in the plain, love the sun and warmth. Also, don't have snow chains, and have no idea how to use them .
> 
> I could maybe try something like Berlin or Dresden or Strasbourg.
> The weather is tricky in this period though.


Berlin could be quite depressing in autumn, as well as Dresden. I'd rather head up to Alsace, however would chose to visit very colourful Colmar and surrounding towns (Riquewihr, Kayserberg) instead of Strasbourg. In nearby Mulhouse is located one of the most impressive car's museums in Europe. They collected a largest number of Bugatti cars in the world, under one roof , including Veyron. After that you may land in charming Basel and make some photos (if you want ) of (CH)(D)(F) tripont. On the way back don't miss to put your foot in beautiful medieval Shaffhausen, nearby Neuhausen with its waterfall (widest in Europe?) and German exclave Bussingen.


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> I don't know about the floods. google Venice, Lignano, Grado, Zusterna, Portoroz, Opatija.


In Lignano there isn't so much in this period, in the nearby Bibione there's a famous spa with a big swimming pool open year round. To stay in hofburg's country I would recommend Catez, even if summer is better for it because there are many facilities outside.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> To stay in hofburg's country


Austria? :troll:


----------



## keber

Don't you?


----------



## Road_UK

Oh you communists...


----------



## keber

Not only communists, we're also still at war.


----------



## keber

And meantime (one month ago, actually) in Slovenia:








In a Lidl shop:
"Christmas articles on sale from 17th September. Thank you."

So, happy Christmas everyone.


----------



## hofburg

keber said:


> Not only communists, we're also still at war.


...and we speak serbian, our capital is bratislava


----------



## Road_UK

hofburg said:


> ...and we speak serbian, our capital is bratislava


Oh my god, a Yugo! Run for your lifes!


----------



## hofburg

a car?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^You wouldn't have to run from a Yugo. A brisk walk would do it.


----------



## Road_UK

LOL. In Austria (as racist as they are) all Croats, Bosnians, Serbs and Slovenians are a bunch of Yugo`s and they belong in jail. All Germans are assholes, all Dutch are loud and greedy, all Russians are suspicious and the English (a lot of them in Mayrhofen) dress really bad and are obnoxious.

We are getting more and more Americans in Mayrhofen every winter, so Michael... I will tell you what you are by the end of the season.


----------



## cinxxx

Road_UK said:


> LOL. In Austria (as racist as they are) all Croats, Bosnians, Serbs and Slovenians are a bunch of Yugo`s and they belong in jail. All Germans are assholes, all Dutch are loud and greedy, all Russians are suspicious and the English (a lot of them in Mayrhofen) dress really bad and are obnoxious.
> 
> We are getting more and more Americans in Mayrhofen every winter, so Michael... I will tell you what you are by the end of the season.


:lol:

What are Romanians named? (Gypsies?)
And do they make any difference between Romanians and Bulgarians?
And do they also expect us to speak Russian?

(just some of the things my GF was asked at her work)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> ....
> 
> We are getting more and more Americans in Mayrhofen every winter, so Michael... I will tell you what you are by the end of the season.


You could ask the Brits what I am. (Or the rest of them, probably.) But I watch too many Top Gear reruns, so I already have an idea.


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> You could ask the Brits what I am. (Or the rest of them, probably.) But I watch too many Top Gear reruns, so I already have an idea.


Now that is a typical Yankee statement. What are you, a cowboy? All you people do is invade other countries, while the fat wifes sit at home and eat chicken nuggets. I am beginning to think it was a real designated deer crossing in that youtube film, I wouldn't put it passed you. 



















(but in your defence


----------



## Road_UK

cinxxx said:


> :lol:
> 
> What are Romanians named? (Gypsies?)
> )


There is no distinction between Romanians and Gypsies. You are all criminals anyway.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Now that is a typical Yankee statement. What are you, a cowboy? All you people do is invade other countries, while the fat wifes sit at home and eat chicken nuggets. I am beginning to think it was a real designated deer crossing in that youtube film, I wouldn't put it passed you.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (but in your defence


What's more is, we shower more than twice a week, change clothes every day, and have dentists.


----------



## cinxxx

Road_UK said:


> There is no distinction between Romanians and Gypsies. You are all criminals anyway.


Great


----------



## x-type

hofburg said:


> ...and we speak serbian, our capital is bratislava


and north of you there is a plenty of kangaroos :lol:

2 months ago i was in international group of people and we've been making jokes of stereotypes of our nationalities. so, we had a Colombian. of course, wholesale of white powder was his occupacy. i was accused to steal the money. Austrian girl was actually Australian girl. Italian was, of course, mafioso. we just couldn't find anything stereotypical for Lithuanians :lol:


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> we just couldn't find anything stereotypical for Lithuanians :lol:


Russian speaker, communist and heavy vodka drinker.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Russian speaker, communist and heavy vodka drinker.


the thing about vodka is actually not stereotype at all. at lest not for the Lithuanian couple that was present there :lol:


----------



## Verso

The other day the Slovenian police chased a reckless driver into Italy (for some 15 km). Are Slovenian police often seen around Trieste? :shifty:


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> The other day the Slovenian police chased a reckless driver into Italy (for some 15 km). Are Slovenian police often seen around Trieste? :shifty:


Never seen it. I think that those are pretty rare instances but may happen and are allowed by agreements between EU members.


----------



## bogdymol

Road_UK said:


> There is no distinction between Romanians and Gypsies. You are all criminals anyway.


Thank you :bowtie:



Verso said:


> The other day the Slovenian police chased a reckless driver into Italy (for some 15 km). Are Slovenian police often seen around Trieste? :shifty:





italystf said:


> Never seen it. I think that those are pretty rare instances but may happen and are allowed by agreements between EU members.


The Schengen agreement allows cross-border pursuits up to 30 (or 50?) km inside the neighbouring country, but you also have to announce the other country about the pursuit so that somewhere in this 30 (50) km they will take your place.

I actually took part few years ago in a Schengen exercise between Romania and Hungary... too bad that I'm not allowed to post any pictures or video on the internet (but just for your information: it was great... high speed police chase across the border, special troops + helicopter surveilence etc. )


----------



## Verso

The driver probably thought he'd be safe in Italy. :lol: Not.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Never seen it. I think that those are pretty rare instances but may happen and are allowed by agreements between EU members.


Talk about invading people.... [JOKING!]


----------



## Chilio

30 km? 50 km? what about the opposite case - if Italian police chase someone across the border into Slovenia... they will end up in a third country


----------



## italystf

Chilio said:


> 30 km? 50 km? what about the opposite case - if Italian police chase someone across the border into Slovenia... they will end up in a third country


Croatia isn't in Schengen so the fugitive would be arrested at the border.


----------



## Verso

Chilio said:


> 30 km? 50 km? what about the opposite case - if Italian police chase someone across the border into Slovenia... they will end up in a third country


Or the other way around. :lol:


----------



## Attus

Budapest, October 23 1956.





_Come on Buda guys, come on Pest guys,
Students, peasants, workers: the sun will never rise in East again.

Six glorious days and six glorious nights, that's the timespan of our victory
But on the seventh days the Russians arrived with tanks.

The tanks broke our bones, but no one helped us,
The world only observed it, __sitting on the edge __of the pit.

My mates are facing the platoon, the first one falls, the second one too.
Our holidays are over burying the honor of the world._

Those that can understand Italian, will understand the rest of the lyrics as well, I only translated the most important parts.


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> Budapest, October 23 1956.
> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=554ZJUv-avQ#">YouTube Link</a>
> 
> Come on Buda guys, come on Pest guys,
> Students, peasants, workers: the sun will never rise in East again.
> 
> Six glorious days and six glorious nights, that's the timespan of our victory
> But on the seventh days the Russians arrived with tanks.
> 
> The tanks broke our bones, but no one helped us,
> The world only observed it, sitting on the edge of the pit.
> 
> My mates are facing the platoon, the first one falls, the second one too.
> Our holidays are over burying the honor of the world.
> 
> Those that can understand Italian, will understand the rest of the lyrics as well, I only translated the most important parts.
> 
> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIat-_cmhR4">YouTube Link</a>


Another similar Italian song is "La primavera di Praga" (Prague spring) by Francesco Guccini, related to 1968 events in Czeckoslovakia.


----------



## Satyricon84

To have a President of the Republic (Giorgio Napolitano) that agreed the soviet invasion in Hungary saying "it brings the peace" it's pretty ashaming hno:


----------



## italystf

Satyricon84 said:


> To have a President of the Republic (Giorgio Napolitano) that agreed the soviet invasion in Hungary saying "it brings the peace" it's pretty ashaming hno:


It was almost 60 years ago. In the west we didn't know everything about the hell that existed in the east. Many our connationals still believed in the socialist utopy.


----------



## Verso

Satyricon84 said:


> To have a President of the Republic (Giorgio Napolitano) that agreed the soviet invasion in Hungary saying "it brings the peace" it's pretty ashaming hno:


When did he say that?  I had a good opinion about him.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> When did he say that?  I had a good opinion about him.


Back in those years. IMHO we shouldn't judge someone for a juvenile statement, made in a total different sociopolitical background.


----------



## Suburbanist

italystf said:


> Back in those years. IMHO we shouldn't judge someone for a juvenile statement, made in a total different sociopolitical background.


Italy is full of (now) 70s and 80s years old politics that disgraced themselves by supporting guerillas, terrorist groups like the Brigade Rosse and similar terrorists from other countries. I don't think they should be "excused", since such statements were not made as some silly teenager comment, but by people on their mid-20s and older, an age where age-related ignorance is no longer tolerated. Or shouldn't be. 

I mean: I can excuse some now respectable person who had his days of thinking fascism or stalinism were great - when he/she was like 14 or 16. But not at age 24 or 26. Not those whose political factions planted bombs on trains, banks and schools, even if they were not directly involved.

Many people forget the filthy and disgusting communists always won the plurality in 2 parliamentarian elections in the early 1970s.

I think people in general only woke up to reality when the communists kidnapped and assassinated Aldo Moro in 1978.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Italy is full of (now) 70s and 80s years old politics that disgraced themselves by supporting guerillas, terrorist groups like the Brigade Rosse and similar terrorists from other countries. I don't think they should be "excused", since such statements were not made as some silly teenager comment, but by people on their mid-20s and older, an age where age-related ignorance is no longer tolerated. Or shouldn't be.
> 
> I mean: I can excuse some now respectable person who had his days of thinking fascism or stalinism were great - when he/she was like 14 or 16. But not at age 24 or 26. Not those whose political factions planted bombs on trains, banks and schools, even if they were not directly involved.
> 
> Many people forget the filthy and disgusting communists always won the plurality in 2 parliamentarian elections in the early 1970s.
> 
> I think people in general only woke up to reality when the communists kidnapped and assassinated Aldo Moro in 1978.


I won't justify commies, but Brigate Rosse and other terror groups had always been indipendent and never supported by any party included PCI.
Until Kruscev report in 1956 no one knew about Stalin crimes. And until the 90s foibe killings were kept almost secret by our government for an insane "political correctness" towards YU (that lead to the signature of Osimo agreement, that allowed Tito to have legal ownership of our former lands).


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

^^ And now this insanity. 



> Six Italian scientists and a government official were found guilty on Monday of multiple manslaughter for underestimating the risks of a killer earthquake in L'Aquila in 2009.
> 
> They were sentenced to six years in jail in a watershed ruling in a case that has provoked outrage in the international science community.
> 
> The experts were also ordered to pay more than nine million euros ($11.7 million) in damages to survivors and inhabitants. Under the Italian justice system, the seven will remain free men until they have exhausted two chances to appeal the verdict.
> 
> Full story; http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/si...-lateststories



:bash: What the **** is wrong with the Italian political and justice system? Are you kidding me?


----------



## Wilhem275

Most of the country's reaction was "WTF?". But there is a widespread anti-scientific culture (which began in the fascist years, but is somehow related with Catholic beliefs) which leads some less educated people -a lot of them- to being unable to accept facts as they are: there must always be a guilty responsible for any shit that happens (and, of course, he must be someone different than me).

The consequences are that anytime you speak about safety and prevention (e.g. building quake-resistant houses) a lot of people laughs and just hopes things will be fine, then when disaster strucks everyone cries for help and wants to hang the guilty scientist...

Little by little we're getting away from this idiocy, but it's gonna take a long time.


I think that in this case the Judge has gone crazy (and he's not the only one), and this trial will go through a huge revision...


----------



## Satyricon84

italystf said:


> I won't justify commies, but Brigate Rosse and other terror groups had always been indipendent and never supported by any party included PCI.


Do you still believe fairytales? Till stones knows that Brigate Rosse were financed and manovred by KGB and soviet government, the same that used to finance PCI


----------



## Satyricon84

Verso said:


> When did he say that?  I had a good opinion about him.


He's the worst president that this county had since it's a Republic. Anyway he said that in those years, but he changed mind taking back his words only in 2006...let's say it was more obligated to take back was he said due his position of president than to take it back cause he believes it for real. He never left his commie belief....


----------



## Satyricon84

italystf said:


> It was almost 60 years ago. In the west we didn't know everything about the hell that existed in the east. Many our connationals still believed in the socialist utopy.


Why, in the present not? Just few weeks ago Marco Rizzo said "If I were a worker I would prefere North Korea than South Korea" and is well know his admiration for Kim Jong II.


----------



## italystf

Satyricon84 said:


> Why, in the present not? Just few weeks ago Marco Rizzo said "If I were a worker I would prefere North Korea than South Korea" and is well know his admiration for Kim Jong II.


If he loves NK why he didn't move there? :lol:
BTW, I recently had a discussion with a law student who advocated theories like:
- Fascism was good
- democracy is bad because allow every stupid to express himself
- everybody who don't like Berlusconi is a commie
- death penality is right
- EU is evil
- immigration must be banned because we're superior
And he also said he is catholic 
How should we deal with those arguments?


----------



## cinxxx

Is this real? Just saw it on a friend's Facebook page.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> Croatian news portals are writing about a woman who was a wife of Anwar al-Aulaqi, some big face in al-Qaeda. that's not all, she is from my hometown. and that's not all, she is/was my neighbour :lol:


You can warn us about terrorist attacks.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

First snow didn't come easy this autumn:





PS! not my video


----------



## italystf

Rebasepoiss said:


> First snow didn't come easy this autumn:
> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ3p52A4Y3s">YouTube Link</a>


Is common having snow in Tallin in October? Even in the Alps is extremely rare, except 2000+ meters.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Oh, no:

FRANKENSTORM!

(Where's the "Chiller" font when you need it?)

http://weather.aol.com/2012/10/26/historic-frankenstorm-threatens-east-coast


----------



## keokiracer

Rebasepoiss said:


> First snow didn't come easy this autumn:
> <video>


I seriously thought you were listening to a Dutch/Flemish radio station in the first 30 sec. :lol:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

italystf said:


> Is common having snow in Tallin in October? Even in the Alps is extremely rare, except 2000+ meters.


It's not common but it does happen from time to time. This snow probably won't last more than a week or so. The weather changed quite quickly, though. Just a few days ago it was a nice sunny autumn weather


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Also in the Netherlands. Earlier this week it was 22 - 24 C and now it's 1 C with chances for some wet snow.


----------



## Verso

I'm not going to Istanbul by bus; not enough people applied.  So I'm going by plane.


----------



## Road_UK

Must be more comfortable. I love to fly.


----------



## Verso

^^ Me too, but I'd like to go to Istanbul by bus. My sister flew over Afghanistan today.


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> My sister flew over Afghanistan today.


My father flew over Iraq few months ago


----------



## CNGL

I sometimes walk across the most dangerous street in the world . The one in the background of this photo:


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> My father flew over Iraq few months ago


Me too two years ago. :bowtie: Did he go to Dubai? (I did, but only transit)


----------



## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> It's not common but it does happen from time to time. This snow probably won't last more than a week or so. The weather changed quite quickly, though. Just a few days ago it was a nice sunny autumn weather


Turku in the soutwestern Finland today:










It is quite common to have some snow or ice in October. The permanent snow arrives later, typically in December or early January.


----------



## Road_UK

Same here. We are getting snow tomorrow.


----------



## keokiracer

The northern part of NL (Groningen province) might get some (wet) snow tonight.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Yeah there's been a fair amount of relatively unforecasted snow in the North of the UK this evening, there might be some sleet here tonight


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> I sometimes walk across the most dangerous street in the world . The one in the background of this photo:


What's wrong in this pic? The STOP sign before the pedestrian\bicycle crossing?


----------



## RipleyLV

Rebasepoiss said:


> First snow didn't come easy this autumn:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> PS! not my video


:nuts: Yesterday we had 145 road accidents due to first snow, which is about half the more than on other days. hno:


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> What's wrong in this pic? The STOP sign before the pedestrian\bicycle crossing?


Nothing is wrong, just I forgot to put a :troll: or a [/ironic] after the pic . Anyway, I was not pointing to this street, but to the one in the background which is for pedestrians only. And believe me, the superhighway Z-40/E90 is running a hundred of meters to the right of the photo, which was taken from a bus.

Anyway, I know people who have flown over either Afghanistan or Iraq. My parents some years ago flew over the former.


----------



## keber

CNGL said:


> Anyway, I know people who have flown over either Afghanistan or Iraq. My parents some years ago flew over the former.


If you fly to or through UAE or Qatar (with any of popular Arabic airlines) you will almost surely fly over Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and/or Syria. At least in my opinion Iran is the most magnificent from the air.


----------



## Verso

Snow in Ljubljana. :bash:


----------



## keber

So? There are only 3 cm, easily drivable with my pretty slicked summer tires.


----------



## cinxxx

^^
Hey, no snow on Thursday please!
I will visit you then


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> So? There are only 3 cm, easily drivable with my pretty slicked summer tires.


I'm not talking about driving, I just don't like snow in October.


----------



## Penn's Woods

I must say I find it slightly amusing that you people are all worked up about an inch of snow. We're preparing for this:

http://www.weather.com/news/weather-hurricanes/depression-storm-eighteen-20121020


----------



## CNGL

^^ Naah, just a light breeze .

Yesterday the mountains North of here had no snow, today they were white.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

New Jersey governor Christi warned that people may be out of power for 7 - 10 days.

Something like that is unthinkable in the Netherlands, I can't remember the last time the power went out for more than 5 seconds.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> New Jersey governor Christi warned that people may be out of power for 7 - 10 days.
> 
> Something like that is unthinkable in the Netherlands, I can't remember the last time the power went out for more than 5 seconds.


Until 10-15 years ago I remember having no power for several minutes because of bad weather, now fortunately not anymore. The only times it happens is when I have too many electrical devices switched on.


----------



## Verso

It happens here once or twice a year and it can last up to an hour. Once I remember it lasted for some five hours.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands has the advantage of soft soil, which makes it affordable to put all local utilities underground, away from weather interference. Only high-voltage lines are above ground, but we don't have windstorms or tornadoes strong enough to topple those frequently. We do have Apache helicopters that crash into transmission towers though...  And I must admit that local outages (neighborhood-scale) do occur from time to time in the Netherlands (mostly after someone hit a line when digging into the ground), but they don't last very long.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> New Jersey governor Christi warned that people may be out of power for 7 - 10 days.
> 
> Something like that is unthinkable in the Netherlands, I can't remember the last time the power went out for more than 5 seconds.


Yes, I know, we're the Third World.


----------



## AUchamps

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands has the advantage of soft soil, which makes it affordable to put all local utilities underground, away from weather interference. Only high-voltage lines are above ground, but we don't have windstorms or tornadoes strong enough to topple those frequently. We do have Apache helicopters that crash into transmission towers though...  And I must admit that local outages (neighborhood-scale) do occur from time to time in the Netherlands (mostly after someone hit a line when digging into the ground), but they don't last very long.


But what about when the levees break?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Then we play Led Zeppelin.


----------



## Chilio

old but evergreen


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

^^ Czech record for the most people inside a standard bus. Set in Brno in 2003. 237 squeezed in there. :crazy:
More photos archived here. (This one is priceless )


----------



## italystf

For Spanish forumer: Do you like this restaurant in Milan?


----------



## CNGL

:rofl: It's one of thousand names the ***** has. But I prefer this Vietnamese restaurant in Paris named Tan Dao Vien, which sounds like "Te han dado bien" (They have hit you well ).


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> :rofl: It's one of thousand names the ***** has. But I prefer this Vietnamese restaurant in Paris named Tan Dao Vien, which sounds like "Te han dado bien" (They have hit you well ).


Change V with B and it sounds the same in Italian.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

hofburg said:


> there is this huge media coverage only because this is happening in the states.


Make that "New York". It appears most Dutch media just translate the NY Times and publicize it in Dutch. I've been reading the NY Times from time to time and I found many topics about U.S. affairs in the Dutch media are just basically shortened and translated versions of what the NY Times writes.

I browse a few foreign news sites from time to time, including the NY Times, Houston Chronicle, LA Times, Jyllands-Posten and several German news sites like Focus or Der Westen. I like to stay informed beyond what the Dutch media serves.


----------



## Penn's Woods

hofburg said:


> of course it matters and we symphatize with you guys that are on the east coast, must be horrible. what keber tried to say is that there is this huge media coverage only because this is happening in the states. if it would be somewhere else, it wouldn't 'matter' so much.


I know. Of course, it's only today that we're starting to see things like towns covered in sand. First helicopter flyovers of the Shore were this afternoon; President's visiting New Jersey tomorrow.

I'm concerned about my mother; don't know how long she'll be without power.

:cheers:


----------



## Chilio

Penn's, you got me completely wrong. I didn't say the floods, destruction and tragedy was fake. The only thing I said was the "shark swimming in the street" video was looking like fake. And think about it this way: Media should say how many thousands people need help... instead what they say is "Look! A shark! How odd!".


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Make that "New York". It appears most Dutch media just translate the NY Times and publicize it in Dutch. I've been reading the NY Times from time to time and I found many topics about U.S. affairs in the Dutch media are just basically shortened and translated versions of what the NY Times writes.
> 
> I browse a few foreign news sites from time to time, including the NY Times, Houston Chronicle, LA Times, Jyllands-Posten and several German news sites like Focus or Der Westen. I like to stay informed beyond what the Dutch media serves.


Can you read Danish?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Chilio said:


> Penn's, you got me completely wrong. I didn't say the floods, destruction and tragedy was fake. The only thing I said was the "shark swimming in the street" video was looking like fake. And think about it this way: Media should say how many thousands people need help... instead what they say is "Look! A shark! How odd!".


I was snarking at Keber, really. (Or I would have said Bulgaria instead of Slovenia!)


----------



## Chilio

I guess so, but I wrote it, becuase I was the one who used the word "fake", not him, and your post containing the same word was just after mine


----------



## Penn's Woods

And I'll assume he wasn't aware of the extent of this. We're just getting the full picture in the last few hours. (See point about sand-inundated towns above.)

[EDIT:] Actually, I'll admit I too felt we were seeing too much New York yesterday - Philadelphia's much closer to the storm - but now I realize it's really bad up there (to state the obvious); we've come through surprisingly well, at least as far as I can tell.[END EDIT]

Enough said.
:cheers:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> Can you read Danish?


On a basic level. Not enough to pick up nuances and I need to translate certain words, but Danish has a lot in common with Dutch, English and German, languages which I can read with ease.


----------



## Surel

Meanwhile in Belarus


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Delaware Route 1 at the Indian River Inlet Bridge:


----------



## Verso

As soon as temperatures dropped to 0°C, I caught cold (or even flu), so my trip to Istanbul will be crap. hno:


----------



## Road_UK

ChrisZwolle said:


> Make that "New York". It appears most Dutch media just translate the NY Times and publicize it in Dutch. I've been reading the NY Times from time to time and I found many topics about U.S. affairs in the Dutch media are just basically shortened and translated versions of what the NY Times writes.
> 
> I browse a few foreign news sites from time to time, including the NY Times, Houston Chronicle, LA Times, Jyllands-Posten and several German news sites like Focus or Der Westen. I like to stay informed beyond what the Dutch media serves.


Me too. On the net I read BBC and ad.nl. Newspapers wise I read the Times and Tiroler Tagezeitung.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Snippets from this evening's news:

Target date for power restoration in a lot of New Jersey is November 5. (I assume my mother's power is still out, as she's not answering the phone and the answering machine's not picking up. I did speak to her this morning - she called me on her cell phone - and my brother's three miles away from her and presumably checking on her. He went over there first thing this morning to check and clean up. I don't want to call her to conserve her cell battery, so I'm just left slightly concerned.)

20,000 to 25,000 people are "stranded" in Hoboken, N.J. (can't get out of their buildings because the streets are flooded thanks to the Hudson overflowing - only the National Guard has the equipment that can get down the narrow streets to reach them and it hasn't arrived yet).

Army Corps of Engineers has been called in to help drain flooded subway tunnels. (Flooding which, I gather, has never happened). Last time it had to do "something like this" (I'm not clear what "something like this" means...) was Katrina.

There are quite a few European countries with populations that are smaller (in some cases far smaller) than that of New York City alone, even without the suburbs. (8.3 million or so.)


----------



## keokiracer

We have no heating at school today because of works. Guess who's going to school in a t-shirt


----------



## seem

Google street view is finally availible in Slovakia!! Initialy there were only 15 towns to appear on Street view, however there is much more. :cheers:

Lol, Slovak google street view


----------



## Verso

I hate flu. My whole body hurts. :bash:


----------



## italystf

seem said:


> Google street view is finally availible in Slovakia!! Initialy there were only 15 towns to appear on Street view, however there is much more. :cheers:
> 
> Lol, Slovak google street view


Welcome to the European Union 2012! The Bronx in the 80s looks like Beverly Hills compared to that!


----------



## cinxxx

^^looks familiar with other places of the EU. 
Gypsy rule


----------



## Road_UK

I'm suprised that they allow people to live in these places...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've seen a report about a similar setup in Baia Mare, Romania. These derelict buildings often have no electricity or running water.


----------



## Surel

It is a question of what a gypsy would call profitting. When we would take civilized life as being prefferable, then the gypsies were profitting the most during the communism which socialized and civilized them with force. The gypsied were hit very hard with the freedom that came in the 90s (again question, what would they actually preffer) which meant also the freedom to not work and live on the social benefits. It is clear that the majority population would preffer if the gypsies would live similarly to the way they were forced to live in the communism, but that does not comply with the freedom rights.

This touches the question of should one have the freedom to live miserably if one wants so?

I mean what alternatives are there for the majority? Either employing an army of caretakers that will serve the gypsy population, or employ and army of policeman that will force the gypsy population to actually change. The second variant is deemed uncivilized in the modern society.

Its very long run problem, if ever solvable. Over the 600+ years the problem remains the same which is striking. The Roma people are originated in India. I once read some crazy theory (which I could not find any support for atm) that they origin is in the caste of untouchables, outcasts from the Indian society, therefore drifting into the world and eventually into Europe. This could explain the deeprooted characteristic divide between the cultures. Its not unsimilar to the separation of the Jews in the european society, however Jews had allways quite high socioeconomical status unlike the gypsies and were at least on the par with the majority population if not above when measured by any means we consider as living standards.

To my knowledge there is only one case of such deep divide of an european originated ethnicity in Europe itself, and those are German settlements in the eastern europe. However, those German settlemets as well as Jews settlements were divided only culturally, but not socioeconomically, which is the case with the gypsies.

Indeed very deep problem in the European society which solution I dont foresee yet.


----------



## italystf

Gypsies are the only ethinc group that cannot turn to civilization. Migrants from poor countries always struggle to get a job, a decent house and a modern lifestyle. Gypsies don't want those stuff even if they receive them like a gift. They like being uncivilized, that is not compatible with living in Europe.

Switzerland in the past decade had a very efficient system to solve the gypsy problem, but it was halted in the 70s because regarded as "barbaric". Gypsy children forced to live in terrible conditions in gypsy camps were taken away from their families and accepted in orphanotrophies.

Today, in all civilized countries of the world, native underage people who are treated by their parents in an unaccaptable way (phisical or moral violence, lack of adequate nutrition, hygiene, health care, education,...) are taken away from their families. So, I don't think it would be barbaric applying those laws also to gypsy children.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ It's barbaric if children are taken away only because they're gypsies. It's not however barbaric if children are taken away because the parents can't provide for them.


----------



## italystf

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ It's barbaric if children are taken away only because they're gypsies. It's not however barbaric if children are taken away because the parents can't provide for them.


It's exactly my point. Most gypsy parents can't provide for their children.

However it could work only in rich countries with few gypsies like Switzerland. I doubt Romania has enough money to maintain hundred of thousands of children in orphanotrophies that mustn't be lager.


----------



## JackFrost

@Surel: thats the point. they dont have the necessity for a better life, and therefore its really hard to deal with them. let me put it like this: one will not value a shower when one never washes himself. 

but at least now they can go freely across europe so also western europeans see how much of a curse they are to us (well, if they dont send them back home like the french did with romanian roma couple of months ago )


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ Helsinki had quite a severe gypsy problem so they bought them ferry tickets and sent them to Tallinn which resulted in an abnormally large number of gypsies on our streets. By now most of them have seemingly left, probably because we're not wealthy enough to tolerate the cold weather.


----------



## italystf

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ Helsinki had quite a severe gypsy problem so they bought them ferry tickets and sent them to Tallinn which resulted in an abnormally large number of gypsies on our streets. By now most of them have seemingly left, probably because we're not wealthy enough to tolerate the cold weather.


It's easy to solve Naples garbage problems by throwing their trash in other regions...


----------



## JackFrost

italystf said:


> It's exactly my point. Most gypsy parents can't provide for their children.
> 
> However it could work only in rich countries with few gypsies like Switzerland. I doubt Romania has enough money to maintain hundred of thousands of children in orphanotrophies that mustn't be lager.


and thats another problem: while most european women statistically not even give birth to 2 children, roma women have 5. statistically.

hungarian joke:

-how long does a roma girl stay a virgin?
-until she is stronger than her younger brother, faster than her older brother, and her father is in prison.


----------



## Road_UK

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ Helsinki had quite a severe gypsy problem so they bought them ferry tickets and sent them to Tallinn which resulted in an abnormally large number of gypsies on our streets. By now most of them have seemingly left, probably because we're not wealthy enough to tolerate the cold weather.


I see them all the time on the Silja Line Stockholm-Helsinki ferry. Complete with the traditional dresses...


----------



## italystf

A gypsy is driving in the countryside in the middle of nowhere when his old wreck break down.
He walks to the only house in the area and ask to the owner if he can accept he for a night.
The only inhabitant, an old man says: "Well, me too I've been very poor and so I'd like to help you. Yes, you can spend a night here, I will offer you some food and water."
The gypsy replies: "Thank you very much, most people don't trust stranger nowadays."
The old man: "Well, you're alone, you need help, the next house is very far away and I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING VALUABLE AT HOME."
The gypsy: "How far away is the next house?"


----------



## JackFrost

-2 gypsies sit in a car. who is driving?
-the policeman.


----------



## Satyricon84

italystf said:


> Today, in all civilized countries of the world, native underage people who are treated by their parents in an unaccaptable way (phisical or moral violence, lack of adequate nutrition, hygiene, health care, education,...) are taken away from their families. So, I don't think it would be barbaric applying those laws also to gypsy children.


The world is upside down. Right today I read this article, about a judge that sentenced 1 year in jail to a security guard, out of service in that moment, that shooted to a bank robber. And being that a bullet hitted him, he has to refund the robber with 10.000 € for the wound. And the robber? Free to go... and it's not the first time. Last summer an owner of a warehouse surprised two gypsies intented to rob in his warehouse. He shooted and wounded them. The judge sentenced that has to refund the gypsies with 120.000 euro for the wounds, money that the man hasn't. Now he is economically ruined, and gypsies are free to rob again somewhere else...


I don't know how is the justice abroad, but in Italy the justice is gypsies/criminals friendly...Last year police confiscated 8 luxury cars, a house and bank accounts (around one million €) to an idle gypsy with a lot of black affairs. The judge gave him back all, saying the there weren't enough motivations to confiscate his things hno:
http://www.gazzettino.it/articolo.php?id=144834&sez=NORDEST


----------



## seem

A Gypsy goes to unemployment office and says: " I want a job."

The official says "Well I've got just the thing for you. Salary is $2000 a week. Full pension benefits and all. Company car and expense account. The work is light and only 20 hours a week. And really you do not have to work that long anyways, you can always skip a few days."

"You are lying" says the gypsy.

Clerk replies: "Well you started it... saying you want a job."


----------



## Chilio

You find Slovak street view amazing? Wait till the Bulgarian one is released...


----------



## JackFrost

-what does the little roma kid get for christmas?
-your bike

so anyway, i have also no clue what to do with them. and europe has so much more important problems than dealing with a couple of people who are stuck in the middle age.


----------



## italystf

Satyricon84 said:


> The world is upside down. Right today I read this article, about a judge that sentenced 1 year in jail to a security guard, out of service in that moment, that shooted to a bank robber. And being that a bullet hitted him, he has to refund the robber with 10.000 &#128; for the wound. And the robber? Free to go... and it's not the first time. Last summer an owner of a warehouse surprised two gypsies intented to rob in his warehouse. He shooted and wounded them. The judge sentenced that has to refund the gypsies with 120.000 euro for the wounds, money that the man hasn't. Now he is economically ruined, and gypsies are free to rob again somewhere else...
> 
> I don't know how is the justice abroad, but in Italy the justice is gypsies/criminals friendly...Last year police confiscated 8 luxury cars, a house and bank accounts (around one million &#128 to an idle gypsy with a lot of black affairs. The judge gave him back all, saying the there weren't enough motivations to confiscate his things hno:
> http://www.gazzettino.it/articolo.php?id=144834&sez=NORDEST


The insane fear of being politically uncorrect lead to worse politically uncorrect results (criminals free to roam).
Can someone have the clear mind to prosecute them for WHAT THEY DO and not for WHO THEY ARE?
You hear far-right people who hate immigrants just because they're ethnically different and far-left people forgiving them whatever nasty thing they do. Is too difficult to stay in the middle and judge people for how they behave?
Those gypsy-friendly judges are very politically uncorrect.


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Ljubljana! 
Very nice city! :cheers2:


----------



## italystf

Jack_Frost said:


> -what does the little roma kid get for christmas?
> -your bike


Never hit gypsy cyclists with your car. The bike may be your!


----------



## D.O.W.N

Satyricon84 said:


> The world is upside down. Right today I read this article, about a judge that sentenced 1 year in jail to a security guard, out of service in that moment, that shooted to a bank robber. And being that a bullet hitted him, he has to refund the robber with 10.000 € for the wound. And the robber? Free to go... and it's not the first time. Last summer an owner of a warehouse surprised two gypsies intented to rob in his warehouse. He shooted and wounded them. The judge sentenced that has to refund the gypsies with 120.000 euro for the wounds, money that the man hasn't. Now he is economically ruined, and gypsies are free to rob again somewhere else...
> 
> 
> I don't know how is the justice abroad, but in Italy the justice is gypsies/criminals friendly...Last year police confiscated 8 luxury cars, a house and bank accounts (around one million €) to an idle gypsy with a lot of black affairs. The judge gave him back all, saying the there weren't enough motivations to confiscate his things hno:
> http://www.gazzettino.it/articolo.php?id=144834&sez=NORDEST


Not a long ago, court in Prešov has fined a school (I don´t know where) just because they splitted white and gypsy pupils into separated classrooms. Gypsy pupils were dangerous, rude and bullied white pupils. 
But courts in Slovakia don´t care about it, they think that splitting pupils is racism.


----------



## hofburg

cinxxx said:


> Greetings from Ljubljana!
> Very nice city! :cheers2:


sorry about the weather


----------



## cinxxx

hofburg said:


> sorry about the weather


Yeah, not the best weather.
I made a quick stop in Bled ignoring the rain, but didn't drive to Bohinj anymore.
Good thing is that in Ljubljana the rain stopped soon after it got dark, so I could enjoy the nice city center. I will probably do a little walking tomorrow morning if it won't rain.

In Austria on A10 there was much snow on the side of the road, but also on the road and those parts were frozen, I saw a car that was crashed in the side barrier. After Karawanke tunnel it seemed we got from winter to autumn


----------



## italystf

Yesterday night I was stopped by police outside a disco and it was the first time I was alchool-tested. Like every time I drive, I had 0%.


----------



## hofburg

yeah a10 isnt pleasant to drive these days. It will be warmer on the coast.


----------



## JackFrost

D.O.W.N said:


> Not a long ago, court in Prešov has fined a school (I don´t know where) just because they splitted white and gypsy pupils into separated classrooms. Gypsy pupils were dangerous, rude and bullied white pupils.
> But courts in Slovakia don´t care about it, they think that splitting pupils is racism.


still, one has only take a look of what people the jails consists of. in hungary most of the people doing time are -you might not guess- roma.

by the way, do you know whats the most shocking with hungarian jails? that according to a report, most of the imprisoned women were sentenced because they either killed their husbands in self-defense, or have taken revenge on their husbands for beating them up or for abusing them permanently.

now that really shocked me. that domestic violence is a private matter in hungary until it comes to an actual crime. i dont know how this is in your countries...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Jack_Frost said:


> -what does the little roma kid get for christmas?
> -your bike
> 
> so anyway, i have also no clue what to do with them. and europe has so much more important problems than dealing with *a couple of people who are stuck in the middle age*.


Problems such as blatant bigotry (from more than a couple of people)? Talk about the Middle Ages....


----------



## italystf

Jack_Frost said:


> now that really shocked me. that domestic violence is a private matter in hungary until it comes to an actual crime.


Until the 70s in Italy rape was a crime against the moral and not against the person. And until the 50s many men were left free after they killed their "infidel" woman.


----------



## seem

italystf said:


> Yesterday night I was stopped by police outside a disco and it was the first time I was alchool-tested. Like every time I drive, I had 0%.


Two weeks ago i ve tried it for the first time too. I had 0.08%.


----------



## JackFrost

Penn's Woods said:


> Problems such as blatant bigotry (from more than a couple of people)? Talk about the Middle Ages....


speaking of political correctness...
btw, heres what your blatant bigotrian neighbors think about this issue:

http://news.sympatico.cbc.ca/home/hungarian_roma_refugee_claimants_targeted_in_cbsa_report/4b5a56f9


----------



## Penn's Woods

That agency doesn't speak for all Canadians any more than you, I hope, speak for all Central Europeans or even all Austrians. (Or, I acknowledge before someone says it, than I speak for all Americans. But if you replaced every occurrence of the word "gypsy" or "Roma" on the last page of this thread with, say, "black," you'd come up with the sorts of garbage I sincerely haven't heard in decades except from Tea Partiers on TV or on the Internet. And replace them with "Jewish," you go to a place I would think Europeans would know better than to go to again.)


----------



## JackFrost

^^still, its an agency, judging roma after how they behave. i mean this agency experienced  that most of the roma are like that.

but anyway, i admit it, i dont like them, not because i am a racist but because of the way they behave. be proud of yourself the you have so much tolerance in your heart, i certainly dont. you can take them all if you want to the US, nobody will miss them here in eastern europe, thats for sure.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> That agency doesn't speak for all Canadians any more than you, I hope, speak for all Central Europeans or even all Austrians. (Or, I acknowledge before someone says it, than I speak for all Americans. But if you replaced every occurrence of the word "gypsy" or "Roma" on the last page of this thread with, say, "black," you'd come up with the sorts of garbage I sincerely haven't heard in decades except from Tea Partiers on TV or on the Internet. And replace them with "Jewish," you go to a place I would think Europeans would know better than to go to again.)


Jews and blacks are traditionally part of, respectively, the European and American society. They never had been a problem for the rest of the society (well, there are criminals among them like among whites, Asians, Christians, Muslims,...). Instead, they had been victims of the intolerance of the white and "christian" majority. They had been prosecuted several times for no reason. They want to be integrated.

Gypsies, on the other hand refuse to integrate and refuse the laws of the country where they live. It's not the same thing, sorry.

EDIT: agree to the previous Jack Frost post.


----------



## Satyricon84

Jack_Frost said:


> you can take them all if you want to the US, nobody will miss them here in eastern europe, thats for sure.


...and neither here in Western Europe!


----------



## cinxxx

hofburg said:


> yeah a10 isnt pleasant to drive these days. It will be warmer on the coast.


I will stll have to return on it on Sunday :shifty:


----------



## Attus

seem said:


> Two weeks ago i ve tried it for the first time too. I had 0.08%.


Sure? It's rather a high value. 0.08 percent means you're slightly drunk.


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> Greetings from Ljubljana!
> Very nice city! :cheers2:





hofburg said:


> sorry about the weather


That's why I'm escaping to sunny Turkey in a few hours.  Prepare for a flu pandemic. :troll:


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> That agency doesn't speak for all Canadians any more than you, I hope, speak for all Central Europeans or even all Austrians. (Or, I acknowledge before someone says it, than I speak for all Americans. But if you replaced every occurrence of the word "gypsy" or "Roma" on the last page of this thread with, say, "black," you'd come up with the sorts of garbage I sincerely haven't heard in decades except from Tea Partiers on TV or on the Internet. And replace them with "Jewish," you go to a place I would think Europeans would know better than to go to again.)


I don't really think that you understand the problem. As I already noted, the Roma were the most integrated into the majority society during the communism that forced them to integrate. The racial problems that were and are existing in the US were unheard of in e.g. Czech republic during the communism.

I can guarantee you, that the majority doesn't wish anything else than to have them integrated into the society. However, only very few individuals are able to fully integrate and have some success in achieving living standards on their own. It is very difficult for those individuals as the Roma community considers them not a role models, but sort of traitors and tries to drag them down back to the misery.

For example education or their children is not seen as a priority for the parents. However, if you are a politician and want a policy that would condition the payment of social benefits to the parents by checking whether the children are at school, you are of course called racists. Same when you would start special school curriculums, special schools are then unspeakable. 

Personally I know a czech majority family that adopted two roma kids and they are doing quite great... Their biggest worry allways was that when the kids grow up, the community will come and drag them. I have also experiences with a community program targeted mostly on the young Roma. I know a few Roma that are working and leading "normal" life. There are a few succesful Roma in the Czech republic music industry. etc etc. On the other side, there are multiple cases that someone I know was threatened or attacked by the Roma people.

Surelly, there are far right movements, that behave racists. Those are also mostly movements identifying themselves with the nazi ideology and I can assure you that they were and are on the radar of the police force and if ever there is attack on the Roma those are investigated as racial attacks with much stricter punishment appliable. The attacks from the Roma community directed towards the majority are although not looked up as racists many times.

It is not black and white problem, but denying that it is a problem is not making it dissapear.

To be honest I dont really think that it makes difference whether you use the word Gypsy, Roma, or the politically correct version Unadaptables when you are talking about the problem. It is anyway an ethnic problem. People of Roma ethnic minority are not accepting the rules of the majority regardless of the ethnicity of the majority around Europe.

It was quite common to hear in the 90s a ctiticism from the west europe about racism against the Roma in the Czech republic. It took only open borders and first Romas that moved into France, Germany, Great Britain, Netherlands etc and you now see real state "racism" in practise going on there. Well, why is that?

The political correctness is only making this problem grow deeper and rot as an untreated ulcer. Due to political correctness no one is allowed to talk about the problem openly, no one is allowed to treat the problem and try to improve the conditions of the Roma community, civilizing them. Programs targeted at the Roma community are deemed racists. What is then left?

some interesting videos:

UK:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBydNsiEKQY&feature=related

Serbia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuCpw1JDod0&feature=relmfu

Czech republic (some of the photos used are factually incorrect as I see it, but interesting talk neverthless):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JpWJc3HaAI

Czech eurovision representatives in 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsjBPt-GeFc

Attack on a Roma faimly in Czech republic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VY_QoLXbj8

Roma youngsters attacking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsUTUhxSc1g

RomeaTV in 2008 in Czech republic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cMdoY0r6zY

Slovakia(would like to see the arresting in the US ):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTltuHyZ1oY&feature=related

Slovakia petty crime
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl5-iCI-u3M&feature=related

Czech republic, Roma aggression
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=gnqRDhMHmRg&NR=1

well, anyway its more complex than few videos on youtube.


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> Yesterday night I was stopped by police outside a disco and it was the first time I was alchool-tested. Like every time I drive, I had 0%.


I'm sure I will be stopped by police for an alcohol test for the first time next Sunday .


----------



## JackFrost

Surel said:


> ...


thats the way it is. i couldnt stop laughing in 2010 when some french EU smartass was yelling at hungary for being racists, and in the meantime prime minister sarkozy had... well, lets say, other problems  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11080315

anyway, a big problem for us here, but definately not a race problem. as i said before, you will not value a shower, when you dont have the need to wash yourself. its as simple as that.

and i honestly believe, that western europe underestimated this problem when allowing eastern europe to join eu in 2004 and 2007.


----------



## seem

Attus said:


> Sure? It's rather a high value. 0.08 percent means you're slightly drunk.


I had just two beers. After about 1 hour I was going back home on my bike and suddenly police car stoped next to me and they asked me to stop. There is almost no traffic on that road so I was quite surprised. 

Policemen asked me if I had some alcohol and of coarse I said I didnt.  

After they tested me they just laught ironicaly and asked me why I was lying. I replied that I had some beer a long time ago and I thought it would be ok by now. I had both lights on my bike and they said they are not going to give me a fine as it really is a low number. I just should be more careful about that as the fines are really high. I was like wow, they were really nice for Slovak policemen. 0.08% is really low actually, Slovak parliament was voting about the limit for bikers last month. They wanted to change it to 0.21%, in some EU countries it is 0.5%.


----------



## seem

Welcome to Slovakia


----------



## Surel

Road_UK said:


> Bullshit. If you want them to integrate, you help them. If they don't, it's their own choice. If they cause trouble, you apply a zero-tolerance policy, and put a lot of cops in their villages, and smoke the criminals out. A bit like Giuliani did in New York city. Or the way France tackled the problem...
> 
> Edit: If you put them in housing with no electricity or water, you are asking for trouble.


Should we then put all these people in prisons like they solve the problem in the USA?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> *I am not calling you a racist. I am not calling any of the Eastern European regulars who write on here are racist, most of them have become my friends.* But you understand my point that countries like Hungary still have a long way to go to be on the same level as the west. I am not trying to downgrade you, you have been working hard already, and the change from communism to free market is always likely to be painful. Especially with the ones that had jobs and security in the past, are now left to roam the streets looking for food.
> 
> But some attitudes need to change really bad. And you must admit that racism in your part of the world is an ongoing issue, which makes cause for a lot of concern from western countries. We can see that when a black student gets beaten up, or when black footballers are being attacked and whistled...


+1 to the bold. I didn't say what I did to start a fight (and in fact have stayed away from this thread since then, until now, to keep myself out of trouble). I like this forum and the people on it, but I honestly found the conversation shocking to the point I felt I needed to say so.

And now, I'll shut up about it.


----------



## Road_UK

Surel said:


> Should we then put all these people in prisons like they solve the problem in the USA?


Yes. You put criminals - after a trial and found guilty - in prisons.


----------



## MajKeR_

Road_UK said:


> There is no excuse for large scale racism that we see in Eastern Europe every day. Eastern European countries have a very long way to go, before they can become reliable partners in the international community.


But before that they should finally exterminate polar bears.



Road_UK said:


> Just a note: Slovenia is on the right way. It even has a elected black African mayor.


Poland has two black deputies.


----------



## Surel

Road_UK said:


> Yes. You put criminals - after a trial and found guilty - in prisons.


Yeah, lovely. If only it was that easy.


----------



## Road_UK

Yes it is. Otherwise you get anarchy.


----------



## Surel

Well as I already posted. I would love to see this arrest in the US... they would have been tased or shot.






In Europe, you would have got headlines about racist police.


----------



## Road_UK

Let them talk. If convicted they go to prison. Or are fair trials still unknown in eastern Europe?


----------



## Surel

Road_UK said:


> Let them talk. If convicted they go to prison. Or are fair trials still unknown in eastern Europe?


Never had the chance to check, have you?


----------



## Attus

Road_UK said:


> Yes it is. Otherwise you get anarchy.


So, I promise itt will be my last post about gipsies. 
The main issue is that a quite large part of roma citizens are criminals. Usually not great crimes: pickpocketing, small robberies (stealing fruits from the garden), etc. And if you start sending them to prison, the whole world will shout you are racist. 
There was a law in Hungary that no one that has children of the age of 6-14 may get social benefits if the children don't go to school. Then liberals said this law was racist and forced the government to cancel it. 
Society gave them flats to live in. They tore up the floor and burnt it, they took the water pipes end electric wires and sold them. If you say you won't give them new flats again, you'll be called racist. 
There are towns in Eastern (especially in North Eastern) Hungary where gipsy population is over 30%. It means that pickpocketing, robberies, etc. are very common. But if you say that something should be done because it is insufferable, you will be said to be racist. 
Hungarian government said that every one that is able to work, must work, and the ones that refuse working won't get social benefits. A wide program for working started: cleaning streets, digs, etc. And now you can hear everywhere that this program is racist. 

It is very controversial but here in Central Europe even the liberals appreciate that roma people dont't work, their children don't go to school, they steal electricity, trheir main income source is stealing, etc., and every time the government want to do something, force these people to work, to send the children to school, to cancel stealing, they will say the government is racist. 
There is an expression here, I can not precisely translate it, but something like 'living costs crime'. It is when someone that doesn't work steals and robs for getting his/her living costs. And liberals say that living cost crime shall not be punished. But if you say that every single delinquency shall be punished - you're racist. 

America elected a half black president (I mean Mr Obama). I tell you, Hungary should elect a gipsy prime minister - if there was any candidate that has at least a high school degree and is able to speak about any political topic but racism. But there is not any. All the roma politicians are there because they're roma and a deputy of some roma organization. But even the former president of the Hungarian Roma Organization is under trial - you won't guess why: he stole the money. 

Everyone must understand that basically it is not a racist issue. The main issue is people that don't work, don't send the children to school, steal, rob, ruin their own environment. Accidentally, a vast majority of them are roma people; and vice versa, a quite large part of roma people does belong to this group. And this ethnic sutiation makes thing worse: anything you want to do, it will be by necessity against roma people. And, from that very moment you wll be called as racist. 
Circulus vitiosus.


----------



## JackFrost

^^ @Attus: +1. fully agree. 

@Penn's Woods, Road UK: its also my last post regarding gypsies, because i think you simply dont understand this problem. you have never experienced it. lucky you.

btw, you do realize that not one of us here from eastern europe had a good word about gypsies, right? coincidence? you think we are that simple-minded? think about this...


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> ...


+1 

The first step toward the resolution of a problem is admitting that it exists.

In the early years of Republican Italy, the Italian government ignored and denied the mafia problems. Consequentely, mafia became very powerful because it had no opposition. When the state started to struggle against the mafia, since the 70s more and more bosses had been arrested even if mafia is still long way to be defeated and mafia-politics collusions still made headlines.

That's true for every sort of problems, from economical recession to pollution, you can't solve them if you deny them.


----------



## Satyricon84

Attus said:


> ....


++++++1

Racist/m: the magic word of the XXI century. I think it's the most overused and abused term nowadays. An escape goat to avoid the problems and a very easy way to ruin someone's reputation. And people seem to be afraid of this word and afraid to say what really think. But in my opinion those xenophile anti-racist fanatics are more ignorant than racist. Cause intollerance to certain bad behaviours, to pretend that people observe rules and laws (especially if you live in a foreign country) is not being racist, it's civilization. The real racism is against all people that live cleanly, working and respecting rules. A simple example: If I don't pay the bill of the electricity, the electric company cut off my electric current. The gypsy camp near here, has an abused cable connected with the main electric cable that serves the closer city. Everybody know it, authorities included. But nobody can do nothing against it as long as the order to do something comes from upper levels...


----------



## italystf

Satyricon84 said:


> ...


+1 

The problem is that there are some racist politician that hate immigrants just because they are immigrants and, fortunately, most educated people condemn those views. If some smart and fair politician condemns just those immigrants who break the law, the uneducated masses wouldn't pick the difference between him and the real racists. And thus he would have been definied as racist.
I wouldn't imagine the current situation if the Italian state never did anti-mafia laws because "admitting that mafia exists would be politically uncorrect towards the inhabitants of the southern regions." We would still have Riina, Provenzano, Cutolo and many others wandering around.


----------



## Satyricon84

italystf said:


> I wouldn't imagine the current situation if the Italian state never did anti-mafia laws because "admitting that mafia exists would be politically uncorrect towards the inhabitants of the southern regions." We would still have Riina, Provenzano, Cutolo and many others wandering around.


Correct, but I'm pretty reluctant to believe that the Italian state took a position on its own. I rather think that got pressions to do something against the problem by other states, United States for first. In the 1982 (mafia association offence was introduced in this year) mafia held the 80% of the heroin market in the USA. Those were the years of the "Pizza Connection"


----------



## piotr71

Road_UK said:


> (..)
> 
> But some attitudes need to change really bad. And you must admit that racism in your part of the world is an ongoing issue, which makes cause for a lot of concern from western countries. We can see that when a black student gets beaten up, or when black footballers are being attacked and whistled...


Even if you are saying you do not read Daily Express, I still have a strange impression you sometimes do, and even believe what they write. 

I am probably one of the oldest forumers visiting this thread. Thanks to my age I have a good memory of the communist era and so called _pieriestroyka_. I also remember 1989 when _the wind of change_ came, as well as I was part of the wild capitalism of the nighties in my country. I lived in many parts of Poland including Gdansk area, Southern and Eastern Poland and the Capital City. I lived in several Western European Countries such as Sweden, The Netherlands and England. I know hundreds of people of various origins and races from many parts of the world. I even know some Gypsies. So, I am probably not so undeveloped Eastern European and may say one or two words about racism.

For the first time I discovered the meaning of the word 'racism' when visited Austria in 1991. Austria was a place where I heard words _verfluchte turk_. It also was the place where I was refused to be served in a restaurant after a quick chat with a waitress, who asked about my nationality. I could multiply the amount of examples of racial behaviour I experienced, saw and heard about in Western Europe, but see no particular point of it. Why am I writing all this? Only to say that I did not know the real meaning of that unpopular word, until I visited Western Europe. Also, I am going to say that the Gypsies' issue in Eastern Europe has not much to do with racism, it's more matter of their horrible behaviour. Never mind the colour of their skin.

Well, why then, all racism incidents having place in Eastern Europe are so widely popular around the world? The key word would be 'incidents'. They happen but aren't frequent, so we can hear of them. In the West, people learnt to whisper their thoughts. And even though, all(generalisation) whites hate others and all others hate whites, they don't say that too loudly. 

However, they sometimes do...


----------



## g.spinoza

Back from the depths of Italian South.


----------



## hofburg

welcome


----------



## Road_UK

piotr71 said:


> Even if you are saying you do not read Daily Express, I still have a strange impression you sometimes do, and even believe what they write.
> 
> I am probably one of the oldest forumers visiting this thread. Thanks to my age I have a good memory of the communist era and so called pieriestroyka. I also remember 1989 when the wind of change came, as well as I was part of the wild capitalism of the nighties in my country. I lived in many parts of Poland including Gdansk area, Southern and Eastern Poland and the Capital City. I lived in several Western European Countries such as Sweden, The Netherlands and England. I know hundreds of people of various origins and races from many parts of the world. I even know some Gypsies. So, I am probably not so undeveloped Eastern European and may say one or two words about racism.
> 
> For the first time I discovered the meaning of the word 'racism' when visited Austria in 1991. Austria was a place where I heard words verfluchte turk. It also was the place where I was refused to be served in a restaurant after a quick chat with a waitress, who asked about my nationality. I could multiply the amount of examples of racial behaviour I experienced, saw and heard about in Western Europe, but see no particular point of it. Why I am writing all this? Only to say that the real meaning of that unpopular word, I did not know until I visited Western Europe. Also, I am going to say that the Gypsies' issue in Eastern Europe has not much to do with racism, it's more matter of their horrible behaviour. Never mind the colour of their skin.
> 
> Well, why then, all racism incidents having place in Eastern Europe are so widely popular around the world? The key word would be 'incidents'. They happen but aren't frequent, so we can hear of them. In the West, people learnt to whisper their thoughts. And even though, all(generalisation) whites hate others and all others hate whites, they don't say that too loudly.
> 
> However, they sometimes do...


I do not have to read the Daily Express to learn that the UK Foreign Office issues travel warnings to British citizens of Asian and Caribbean decent to use extreme caution when travelling to eastern European countries. Many incidents have been reported at embassies and consulates. And you cannot deny that living standards in a lot of areas are to be desired for. Why else would you be living anywhere else?


----------



## Road_UK

Jack_Frost said:


> ^^ @Attus: +1. fully agree.
> 
> @Penn's Woods, Road UK: its also my last post regarding gypsies, because i think you simply dont understand this problem. you have never experienced it. lucky you.
> 
> btw, you do realize that not one of us here from eastern europe had a good word about gypsies, right? coincidence? you think we are that simple-minded? think about this...


Welcome to the 21st century. Or don't you think that Los Angeles has problems with Latinos? Or the Netherlands, Belgium and France with Moroccons? But they go about it two different ways. Your situation is not new here. But if they want to be members of society they will have the right to a far chance without being called bloody gibsy.


----------



## keber

Penn's Woods said:


> So, I was just watching TV (well, fooling around on the computer with the TV on, not actually looking at the TV) when I heard a bit of a sizzling noise, looked up and saw that the picture had contracted and the color was off.... When I went to change the channel, thinking it was just that one, I noticed a bit of smoke coming out of the top of the set.


You would be surprised how easily is to repair those 20+ years old TV sets, you just need to find an experienced technician (usually some older guy). I have a Hitachi from 1988, picture quality of SD resolution easily surpasses many 500+€ LCDs, and not even speaking about superb sound quality, no flat panel TV can match that.


----------



## Road_UK

What is this guy thinking? This is taken in Colchester, England and this foreign lorry driver was just following his GPS. But what was he the thinking when he made this turn?

A few metres, a few metres still... **** it, keep going!


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> What is this guy thinking? This is taken in Colchester, England and this foreign lorry driver was just following his GPS. But what was he the thinking when he made this turn?
> 
> A few metres, a few metres still... **** it, keep going!


It's not the first. The net is full of stories involving stupid drivers and GPS.


----------



## Road_UK

I know. I heard about this Turkish lorry driver, that was supposed to go to Gibraltar on the southern tip of Spain. But his satnav took him to Gibraltar near Newcastle in mainland UK. It probably didn't even spring into mind that he had to take a ferry from somewhere, and that eventually people started driving on the other side of the road...


----------



## Broccolli

...


----------



## CNGL

Road_UK said:


> I know. I heard about this Turkish lorry driver, that was supposed to go to Gibraltar on the southern tip of Spain. But his satnav took him to Gibraltar near Newcastle in mainland UK. It probably didn't even spring into mind that he had to take a ferry from somewhere, and that eventually people started driving on the other side of the road...


I still remember the Swedish couple that drove to Carpi instead of Capri.


----------



## Satyricon84

CNGL said:


> I still remember the Swedish couple that drove to Carpi instead of Capri.


Not a big deal. Carpi is on the way to Capri if you come from the A22.


----------



## italystf

Satyricon84 said:


> Not a big deal. Carpi is on the way to Capri if you come from the A22.


I remember they came from Venice so they did quite a detour.


----------



## Satyricon84

italystf said:


> I remember they came from Venice so they did quite a detour.


Well yes, I thought they came directly from Sweden. 

I read more than once that some people wanted to fly to Sydney in Australia but they flew to Sydney in Nova Scotia :lol:

Here the article. 
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/09/25/1222217366682.html


----------



## Satyricon84

Meanwhile in Taiwan....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Oh but a tv is soooo much more then just a picture these days... Don't tell me you just want to watch programmes on it... It's like putting a cd on to listen to music. Although, I remember the days when I wanted to change channels: I actually had to get up out of my chair and walk over all the way to the tv set...


Yes, but how often did anyone in Europe ever change channels? When I was first in France, there were only three....


----------



## Road_UK

Back in my childhood in the 80s in the Netherlands there were only two. Then a 3rd one came and everyone got very excited. My other part of my childhook in the UK there were 3.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Commercial television was only introduced in the early 1990s in the Netherlands. Before that there were just 3 channels of the so-called "pillarized society". Every belief and political spectrum had their own programming, distributed over the three channels. 

It's hard to believe television programming was so limited until then. There are dozens of channels nowadays, and you can expand that to hundreds of channels if you get subscriptions.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keber said:


> You would be surprised how easily is to repair those 20+ years old TV sets, you just need to find an experienced technician (usually some older guy). I have a Hitachi from 1988, picture quality of SD resolution easily surpasses many 500+€ LCDs, and not even speaking about superb sound quality, no flat panel TV can match that.


I was hoping I could repair it. For one thing, I remember reading (in Consumer Reports, which is very respected here for non-biased product reviews) a few years ago that flat-panel TVs are inferior to tube TVs. (Latest information from them is they've stopped rating tube TVs because no one's making them - I'd already looked at a few retail sites and not seen one for sale - and the flat-panels are getting better.)

On the other hand, some broadcasts now look funny on it because they're meant for the wider screens....

I think I'll buy a new one but not get rid of the old one yet; when I have nothing better to do, I'll look into repairing it. I can't just put it out in the trash anyway, I've learned: because of the nature of some of the components, they have to be handled specially. It's like (literally) disposing of nuclear waste.

-------

In other news, we switched to winter time overnight, and the temperatures a few days from now are forecast to be at levels that are normal for January. (43F/6C Wednesday). I hate winter.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Back in my childhood in the 80s in the Netherlands there were only two. Then a 3rd one came and everyone got very excited. My other part of my childhook in the UK there were 3.


I'm looking for the Keeping Up Appearances where Daisy changes the channel for Onslow by whacking the TV once on the top (which usually turns it on and off) and once on the side....

Of course, who needs a TV when you have YouTube?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I almost never watch TV programming. Just some movies and series I have on DVD. The internet has largely replaced TV for me.


----------



## Surel

Road_UK said:


> I know. I heard about this Turkish lorry driver, that was supposed to go to Gibraltar on the southern tip of Spain. But his satnav took him to Gibraltar near Newcastle in mainland UK. It probably didn't even spring into mind that he had to take a ferry from somewhere, and that eventually people started driving on the other side of the road...


Well he got the country right, thus maybe he thought this Gibraltar is bit bigger than he thought.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I almost never watch TV programming. Just some movies and series I have on DVD. The internet has largely replaced TV for me.


I gave up tv 6 years ago. Don't even own one.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Don't want to support Berlusconi?


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> I almost never watch TV programming. Just some movies and series I have on DVD. The internet has largely replaced TV for me.


I got rid of the TV some 9 years ago. At first I was still watching the TV sometimes on the local LAN broadcast and then skipped it completely, only watching some things on the internet now a days.

The comercialisaton began quite late in the Europe, both in the Radia broadcast and in the TV. The only early exception being ITV in the UK going on already in the 50s. I think the commercial TV broadcast followed in Italy and France at first, Germany shortly after that.


----------



## Chilio

"magazines" for Bulgarians can be even more misleading, as in Bulgarian it doesn't mean neither weekly journal nor warehouse... but a shop. Maybe it has come into our language as a consequence of the warehouse meaning, as in the far past warehouses weren't as big and were part of the shops usually  So it looks quite logical truck drivers to unload at shops too


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^In French, a "magasin" is a store (probably a large one; there's also "boutique"), and in Quebec "faire le magasinage" means to go shopping.

The word I know for warehouse is "entrepôt".

Native speakers feel free to correct me or elaborate.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^I assume those come in multiple versions for different languages?


The same picture for all, with local sound.


----------



## Attus

In Hungarian language a 'magazin' is a weekly or monthly paper with pictures, a 'boutique' (spelled 'butik') is a small shop for clothes, operated by a small company (in the 80's a 'butik' was a cloth shop owned and operated by a person, not the state).


----------



## italystf

Chilio said:


> "magazines" for Bulgarians can be even more misleading, as in Bulgarian it doesn't mean neither weekly journal nor warehouse... but a shop. Maybe it has come into our language as a consequence of the warehouse meaning, as in the far past warehouses weren't as big and were part of the shops usually  So it looks quite logical truck drivers to unload at shops too


Also in Italian magazzino is used with that meaning too.


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> In Hungarian language a 'magazin' is a weekly or monthly paper with pictures, a 'boutique' (spelled 'butik') is a small shop for clothes, operated by a small company (in the 80's a 'butik' was a cloth shop owned and operated by a person, not the state).


Boutique, that is a calque from the French, is used also in Italy, but is usually related with upscale and expensive clothes shops.


----------



## Penn's Woods

"Magazine" can also refer in English to a place for storing ammunition. Not being a gun user, I only come across it in reading about history.

Here's what the American online dictionary I usually refers to says:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/magazine

Although honestly, I'd never use it to describe a warehouse and I don't know that I've ever heard it.


----------



## italystf

Some years ago if you translated with Google "you're absolutely right" into Italian, you got something like "you're a fascist/nazi". 

Now the big G is more evolved and can even distinguish between the two meanings of the Italian verb "scopare": to sweep or to f**k. 
Io scopo il pavimento: I sweep the floor
Io scopo sul pavimento: I f**k on the floor
:lol:


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> "Magazine" can also refer in English to a place for storing ammunition. Not being a gun user, I only come across it in reading about history.
> 
> Here's what the American online dictionary I usually refers to says:
> 
> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/magazine
> 
> Although honestly, I'd never use it to describe a warehouse and I don't know that I've ever heard it.


I think I've heard it in several movies.


----------



## Fatfield

Road_UK said:


> I know. I heard about this Turkish lorry driver, that was supposed to go to Gibraltar on the southern tip of Spain. But his satnav took him to Gibraltar near Newcastle in mainland UK. It probably didn't even spring into mind that he had to take a ferry from somewhere, and that eventually people started driving on the other side of the road...


There's no such place in NE England. And as far as I know there's no such place near Newcastle under Lyme either.

There is, however, a cafe called Gibraltar Rock in North Shields. Maybe he was peckish.


----------



## cinxxx

1560km, 4 days, 5 countries... back in Ingolstadt


----------



## hofburg

how was the road? (and which?)

waiting for pics


----------



## cinxxx

The road back was hard.
Rain in SLO and IT, Austria ok, except one STAU at a Baustelle, Germany one continous STAU and Stockender Verkehr until A99, and it started raining too.

Whole trip was:
http://goo.gl/maps/0XFR1

I will post pictures.
Have to see when I will also find the time.

Unfortunately few pics from today, because of the rain.
It also hindered me to take shots of the the Črni Kal Viaduct, and combined with the fog, the view from Socerb towards Trieste was blocked.


----------



## hofburg

sorry about that. you made effort to go to panoramic spots and then weather spoils it, it's frustrating.

impressive map!


----------



## Chilio

Guys (& gals if some are reading)... I need advice for a destination for a 3-4-5 days trip in the beginning of January... Some place with mild climate as it is in the middle of winter, and enough thing for a tourist to visit and see. Also a place with an international airport, as I want to go together with my wife and 1.5 yo daughter which means many hours of travelling by car isn't a good option.


----------



## hofburg

Cagliari. (I gotta stop giving trip advices )


----------



## Chilio

Or start making money of it  Ever thought of starting a travel agency? j/k

What do you think about Venice in this time of winter? Or Florence?


----------



## cinxxx

^^ I will return, so the tips are noted.

I posted the 2 videos I made on youtube


----------



## hofburg

Chilio said:


> Or start making money of it  Ever thought of starting a travel agency? j/k
> 
> What do you think about Venice in this time of winter? Or Florence?


 Venice is cold. Florence might be, but there is no sea. Sea is good for climate in the winter, it keeps warm. Sardegna is also quite cheap.

@cinxx nice videos. how come you went to predjama? I don't think anyone suggested that to you


----------



## cinxxx

I really liked Piran


----------



## hofburg

...well, who doesn't  why did you go to Izola, and then all the way back?


----------



## cinxxx

hofburg said:


> ...well, who doesn't  why did you go to Izola, and then all the way back?


It was a beach recommended by you there 

I have also a new passport stamp


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Surel

^^:blahblah:


----------



## italystf

Chilio said:


> Guys (& gals if some are reading)... I need advice for a destination for a 3-4-5 days trip in the beginning of January... Some place with mild climate as it is in the middle of winter, and enough thing for a tourist to visit and see. Also a place with an international airport, as I want to go together with my wife and 1.5 yo daughter which means many hours of travelling by car isn't a good option.


In Sardinia is too cold for sea turism in this period. I would recommend better Sicily or mainland southern Italy. You won't sunbath there but there are more historical sites than in Sardinia, that are pleasant to visit in the chilly, but rarely cold especially on the coast, winter weather.
You can also go to Greece or Turkey, that is easily feasible also by car from Bulgaria.


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> Venice is cold. Florence might be, but there is no sea. Sea is good for climate in the winter, it keeps warm. Sardegna is also quite cheap.
> 
> @cinxx nice videos. how come you went to predjama? I don't think anyone suggested that to you


Florence isn't much warmer than Venice in winter. It's two parallels more south but also in a more continental area and closer to mountains.


----------



## italystf

cinxxx said:


> It was a beach recommended by you there
> 
> I have also a new passport stamp


Did you asked for it? Afaik they usually don't stamp it, since you can enter HR with ID.


----------



## Wilhem275

Chilio, I'd suggest Genoa, but the airport is not so well connected... you may find interesting connections with Milan airports, and then trains. And, even though the climate is mild in winter, the city gives its best with lots of sunlight


----------



## cinxxx

hofburg said:


> @cinxx nice videos. how come you went to predjama? I don't think anyone suggested that to you


A friend of mine was there and also in the cave, and Postojna too.
I didn't have the time for the caves, but liked the idea with castle in the cliff, so I went there. It was really nice


----------



## cinxxx

italystf said:


> Did you asked for it? Afaik they usually don't stamp it, since you can enter HR with ID.


No, I didn't ask.
The customs officer looked inside the pages, and then stamped it.
I only had a touristic stamp of Liechtenstein, my GF also had a stamp from Beograd airport 2 years ago.


----------



## hofburg

eh, del


----------



## Wilhem275

Oh, come on... that's not funny.


----------



## Chilio

Anyway, as I already posted in this thread... I think places near Milano are good options, as there are a lot of low-cost air connections to Bergamo. But I'm not asking only about Italy. So any advice about central European capitals etc. also is welcome. Any views of the January weather in Prague, Budapest... Is it tolerable for sightseeing?


----------



## Gyorgy

italystf said:


> Did you asked for it? Afaik they usually don't stamp it, since you can enter HR with ID.


Rarely if crossing by car, always on a train.


----------



## italystf

Chilio said:


> Anyway, as I already posted in this thread... I think places near Milano are good options, as there are a lot of low-cost air connections to Bergamo. But I'm not asking only about Italy. So any advice about central European capitals etc. also is welcome. Any views of the January weather in Prague, Budapest... Is it tolerable for sightseeing?


Prague and Budapest may be too cold and snowy in this period. What about Spain or Southern France? Or Central Italy (Rome)?


----------



## Chilio

I thought also of Spain and Portugal, but they are too far away and flight time is longer (it will be the first time my daughter will fly, so I don't know how it will be, as she is too small) and also flight tickets are quite more expensive.


----------



## g.spinoza

Just mounted winter tires. 23°C here :?


----------



## Attus

Chilio said:


> Anyway, as I already posted in this thread... I think places near Milano are good options, as there are a lot of low-cost air connections to Bergamo. But I'm not asking only about Italy. So any advice about central European capitals etc. also is welcome. Any views of the January weather in Prague, Budapest... Is it tolerable for sightseeing?


Budapest in January may be very cold.


----------



## Chilio

And what about Bucharest (probably by car)... I think there's also things for sightseeing and is a city worth visiting?


----------



## seem

italystf said:


> Prague and Budapest may be too cold and snowy in this period. What about Spain or Southern France? Or Central Italy (Rome)?


Budapest or Prague might be really cold (but rather rarely snowy) but I think that also windy and wet weather by the medditeranean might be harsh. At least in England it felt really cold by the sea when it was like 8C. Maybe inner Spain might be better in the Winter. I was thinking to go to Madrid in February/March.


----------



## MajKeR_

italystf said:


> Prague and Budapest may be too cold and snowy in this period


I wouldn't say. Or: it's matter of your preferences. I'm guy who loves summer, but the best winter for me is harsh winter - even with -20*C  View when there's a lot of snow may be really lovely, especially at night.

And by another way: who sightseen some old city during real winter? It may be great experience. I'd recommend Budapest, Prague or Cracow



g.spinoza said:


> Just mounted winter tires. 23°C here :?


Just wanted to use motorcycle and scooter to December... And slippy surface here...


----------



## Surel

MajKeR_ said:


> I wouldn't say. Or: it's matter of your preferences. I'm guy who loves summer, but the best winter for me is harsh winter - even with -20*C  View when there's a lot of snow may be really lovely, especially at night.
> 
> And by another way: who sightseen some old city during real winter? It may be great experience. I'd recommend Budapest, Prague or Cracow
> 
> 
> 
> Just wanted to use motorcycle and scooter to December... And slippy surface here...


I would recommend Prague in winter (and the other cities as well) but in December, not in January. It looks much better with the Christmas frenzy going on everywhere.


----------



## pobre diablo

Chilio said:


> I thought also of Spain and Portugal, but they are too far away and flight time is longer (it will be the first time my daughter will fly, so I don't know how it will be, as she is too small) and also flight tickets are quite more expensive.


There are always babies on transcontinental flights. It's fine.


----------



## Chilio

Problem is she's not really a baby any more, doesn't sleep all the time etc. She'll be 1 year and 8 months by then, and she can't stay idle at one place for long time, needs to do crazy stuff and throw a lot of energy all the time, which is actually very difficult to achieve aboard a plane. 
Actually, we plan this winter vacation in the dates 2-6 of January, so hopefully a lot of the Christmas and New Year's lights and other frenzy will still be on?


----------



## cinxxx

I would recommend you when you have 2-3 free days to visit my home town, Timişoara


----------



## keokiracer

Look at the viewcount on one of my videos!


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ What happened? The whole world is watching your video?


----------



## keokiracer

A bit of cheating 










As soon as you renew the tab the viewcount is back to normal


----------



## x-type

oh. i thought we had Lady Gaga foruming here


----------



## Verso

I'm back from Istanbul.  Wow, crazy city... and great weather down there.


----------



## Wilhem275

I sent my parents there last week. They liked it  And I did too, great feelings from a great town, hope to see it again soon.


----------



## Verso

^^ Your parents were in Istanbul last week? Quite a coincidence.  Btw, I was looking at license plates a little, but they were mostly only Turkish. I saw a few Bulgarians, Romanians, a Greek, Serbian, Hungarian, Russian and some Arabic plate, that's all. Turks positively surprised me with basic knowledge of Slavic languages.


----------



## Penn's Woods

FINALLY, Election Day (well, it's 11:10 p.m. Monday here)

Americans, DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!!!


----------



## Road_UK

Can I vote?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Somewhere, presumably, and on the appropriate date. Your heads of state, however - both of them - are chosen for you by their parents. And the will of God, or something.


----------



## Alex_ZR

cinxxx said:


> I only had a touristic stamp of Liechtenstein, my GF also had a stamp from Beograd airport 2 years ago.


That means you have a new passport since your visit to Zrenjanin and Novi Sad 2 years ago?


----------



## Road_UK

Stamp from Liechtenstein would mean a stamp from the Swiss authorities, as they control all customs and immigration affairs of Liechtenstein.


----------



## cinxxx

Alex_ZR said:


> That means you have a new passport since your visit to Zrenjanin and Novi Sad 2 years ago?


At that time and every other time I crossed the border to Serbia I did that only by ID.
I only have passport for a year, made it because I knew I will be moving to Germany. But next time I will be driving in Serbia, I will show the passport, maybe I will get a stamp.
My girlfriend had one from Nikola Tesla Airport as she flew in from Memmingen last year.



Road_UK said:


> Stamp from Liechtenstein would mean a stamp from the Swiss authorities, as they control all customs and immigration affairs of Liechtenstein.


No, as I wrote, touristic stamp, from Tourist Info in Vaduz.
It costs 5 CHF or Euros something.
Since FL and CH are in Schengen I don't think you get stamps anymore...


zFL_Passport_Stamp by cinxxx, on Flickr


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Somewhere, presumably, and on the appropriate date. Your heads of state, however - both of them - are chosen for you by their parents. And the will of God, or something.


And talking of unelected little old ladies (who I'm sure are perfectly nice people), I offer - strictly for humo(u)r - this. I've seen it about ten times, but received it from a South African-born co-worker yet again yesterday:

To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. (You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except North Dakota, which she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, David Cameron, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

-----------------------

1. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour,' 'favour,' 'labour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix '-ize' will be replaced by the suffix '-ise.' Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').

------------------------

2. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as ''like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter 'u'' and the elimination of '-ize.'

-------------------

3. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

-----------------

4. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can't sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you're not ready to shoot grouse.

----------------------

5. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. Although a permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

----------------------

6. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

--------------------

7. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.

-------------------

8. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

-------------------

9. The cold, tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable, as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth - see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

---------------------

10. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie Macdowell attempt English dialect in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

---------------------

11. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies). 

---------------------

12. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

--------------------

13.. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

-----------------

14. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

---------------

15. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 p.m. with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.

God Save the Queen!​


----------



## Ron2K

Penn's Woods said:


> I've seen it about ten times, but received it from a South African-born co-worker yet again yesterday:


I claim innocence... :cheers:


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Suburbanist showed me the new "car sleep train" from Den Bosch, NL to Koper, Slovenia. You load your car onto a train and get expressed to Koper.
> 
> Their slogan is "cheaper than you expect!".
> 
> http://www.autoslaaptrein.nl/tarieven/koper
> 
> Let's see...
> 
> Den Bosch - Koper:
> * auto: € 329
> * bedroom: € 477
> 
> Koper - Den Bosch
> * auto: € 269
> * bedroom: € 348
> 
> booking fee: € 25
> optional insurance: € 60 - 90
> 
> total: € 1.540 :nuts:
> 
> Cheaper than you expected?


Amtrak beens doing something like that for ages, from Lorton, Virginia (off I-95 south of Washington), to Orlando. Actually I'm not sure they still do it.

Now, why does it (the European one, I mean) cost more southbound than northbound?


----------



## piotr71

hofburg said:


> autoslaaptrein? dutch is like a weird english dialect.  now I get how *'sleep' went to 'schlafen'.*


The other way round, I think.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> Amtrak beens doing something like that for ages, from Lorton, Virginia (off I-95 south of Washington), to Orlando. Actually I'm not sure they still do it.
> 
> Now, why does it (the European one, I mean) cost more southbound than northbound?


Yep, the _Auto Train_. Apparently it has the highest revenue of any Amtrak train, so I suspect the costs are more or less similar. It's an 855-mile route, fairly similar to Den Bosch - Koper.

The different ticket prices are due to flexible fares. 

I think most people who use it are wealthy elderly who cannot drive such distances comfortably anymore, and sports car owners who don't want to get so many miles on their car.


----------



## x-type

DB has a number of destinations for such service. it used to run from Hamburg to Rijeka and it was nicely fullfilled. now it's been shortened to Villach, but there are still manya other destinations. https://www.dbautozug.de

another one - Optima Express from Villach to Edirne /Turkey): http://www.optimatours.de
i think this one runs daily. i ofetn saw it passing through Croatia. it had also branch to Greece, but it's been suspended.


----------



## cinxxx

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-france-gunman-brother-20121110,0,6778966.story



> Brother of French gunman denounces his family
> Abdelghani Merah, the brother of Mohamed Merah, who killed seven people in Toulouse, France, says they were raised with hatred, anti-Semitism and violence.
> 
> [...]


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> another one - Optima Express from Villach to Edirne /Turkey): http://www.optimatours.de
> i think this one runs daily. i ofetn saw it passing through Croatia. it had also branch to Greece, but it's been suspended.


No, it's just a few times a month, there's a timetable.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Off to Mom's: power finally came back on yesterday and now we need to clean out the refrigerator (which needed it anyway; we'll probably find roast mammoth in the back - don't tell her I said so).

She had to play the "I'm a 79-year-old woman" card with the power company yesterday morning; that seemed to do it.


----------



## Bobek_Azbest

Penn's Woods said:


> ...now we need to clean out the refrigerator


An awful job. I had to do this twice, first when I was helping my sister after the 2002 floods, then when my refrigerator broke while I was gone for a week. Nasty stuff.


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> Suburbanist showed me the new "car sleep train" from Den Bosch, NL to Koper, Slovenia. You load your car onto a train and get expressed to Koper.
> 
> Their slogan is "cheaper than you expect!".
> 
> http://www.autoslaaptrein.nl/tarieven/koper
> 
> Let's see...
> 
> Den Bosch - Koper:
> * auto: € 329
> * bedroom: € 477
> 
> Koper - Den Bosch
> * auto: € 269
> * bedroom: € 348
> 
> booking fee: € 25
> optional insurance: € 60 - 90
> 
> total: € 1.540 :nuts:
> 
> Cheaper than you expected?


:crazy:. What we found cheaper than we expected was the ferry across the mouth of Miño/Minho river, from near A Guarda (Spain) to Caminha (Portugal). I can't recall how much costed, but I'm sure was below €20. Not that bad, considering that someone can travel back on time only by using that ferry!


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> In fact, except shuttle services on Swiss and Austrian tunnels when passes are closed, car trains are a "niche" service, for those who want to have their car at destination without driving long distances. I don't thing flying + renting a car for a week or more is cheaper.


There are rather big variations in pricing. Thus, rules of thumbs are not easy to post.

There might be good prices for flying and rental. However, if you have lot of to carry then flying might not be an option at all.

The Finnish Railways have a few car train routes between the destinations in the south and the north. During the low-season weeks, the prices are good. For example the tomorrow's departure from Helsinki to Rovaniemi (900 km) for two adults with beds in brand new sleeping cars equipped with a private toilet and shower costs 165 euros. During the season weekends, the price may be double.


----------



## Wilhem275

When comparing the high prices of auto-night trains, we must consider not only the service of "not having to drive", thus being transported and having the vehicle transported too, but also the fact that you are sparing one night of hotel fees.
And I agree, that's a lot of money, but it's a kind of service pretty hard to keep working. I'm surprised, too, by the number of people using those trains.

But I use to travel with my RV or to urban destinations where I will not need a car at all, so I'm not so much concerned by the costs of auto trains or renting a car on site 



piotr71 said:


> The other way round, I think.


+1



Bobek_Azbest said:


> An awful job. I had to do this twice, first when I was helping my sister after the 2002 floods, then when my refrigerator broke while I was gone for a week. Nasty stuff.


Gosh, that smell... :madwife:uke:


----------



## cinxxx

Someone just posted this video and asked if anyone nows where it was filmed?
Any thoughts?


----------



## Broccolli

...


----------



## cinxxx

Pictures from Siria - explicit content
http://ir-ingr.livejournal.com/1185799.html


----------



## g.spinoza

Broccolli said:


> Italian cacciatore on the road


what's weird about that?


----------



## Broccolli

...


----------



## Verso

He seems to be blocking traffic for no apparent reason. :dunno:


----------



## Alex_ZR

Through 13 countries by Golf II... :lol:


----------



## CNGL

^^ I only count 12. I don't think Abkhazia is a country, just a part of Georgia.


----------



## Broccolli

...


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> You mean the French and American forums on SSC or French and American forums elsewhere?
> 
> I hardly ever get out of roads, except to Infrastructure and Mobility, and that's only because our fearless leader moved the license plate threads there.
> 
> You might want to join aaroads.com/forums and see if you can get into an interesting discussion about "why freeways with four lanes in each direction need three passing lanes in each direction." ;-) (I haven't been there in a while myself; they can get ornery, so at some point I just said to myself, "not until after the election," and I haven't been back yet.)


:lol:
Yes, I meant all the forums on SSC, but I only write on here, and get irritated for fun on the numberplate threads...


----------



## CNGL

Unbelieveable! Look at top result when I search "Matteo Biggi" in Google.es:









So I have to think anything so I can put myself at top result.


----------



## Verso

CNGL said:


> So I have to think anything so I can put myself at top result.


Nothing difficult, type "Triakontapentaddict" and you have it.


----------



## cinxxx

http://www.thelocal.de/national/20121115-46181.html


> *Blackout causes rush hour chaos in Munich*
> 
> Munich was thrown into early morning chaos on Thursday as a widespread power cut hit the city. Commuters were left stranded after the S-Bahn stopped running on some of the busiest lines and traffic lights went out.
> 
> The city's fire brigade said almost all the city was plunged into darkness at 7 am. The blackout caused fire alarms to go off, sparking a stream of fake alerts from those with an automatic line to the emergency services.
> 
> Parts of the city regained power within 15 minutes, but others had to wait up to an hour until they were re-connected, the Münchner Merkur newspaper reported.
> 
> Even drivers were affected as traffic lights cut out, significantly slowing down the flow of traffic. The S-Bahn, used by thousands of commuters each morning, stopped running after the lights in a tunnel failed. The trains have since resumed operation.
> 
> The cause of the blackout remains unclear, but local radio station Bayerischer Rundfunk suggested that it could have been a problem in an electrical substation in the north of the city.


and in German


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ It happened to me when I was living there a couple of times, with no apparent reason. I didn't expect something like that to happen. I see it's not so unusual.


----------



## cinxxx

I can't say it happened to me in Ingolstadt since I moved here.
Maybe it's not unusual, but it seems that this blackout was a serious one, affecting the whole city. At least the people from Bayern 3 Radio I listened on the way to work made it seem this way.


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> Nothing difficult, type "Triakontapentaddict" and you have it.


I've realized I misspelt it: It should be "Pentatriakontaddict" :tongue:. Anyway, I tried with the Spanish form, and the only result was from my post on a regional forum about my favourite bus route, which is #35 from Zaragoza.


----------



## italystf

Today, during some diggin works in my granparents' county house backyard we found a lot of vintage stuff buried there, including vases, aluminium pans and cultrery, old Coca Cola, Fanta and liquors glass bottles, old ceramic electric plugs, sockets and light fixtures and a 1951 10 lire coin.


----------



## Wilhem275

I might have a friend interested in ceramic electric equipment!


----------



## Suburbanist

Strange scene in Liège, Belgium (pics by me)









.


----------



## Wilhem275

More a "crime scene" than a "strange scene" 

Did you warn the Police?

EDIT: meanwhile in Michigan :lol:


----------



## keber

Are winter tires used in USA?


----------



## D.O.W.N

keber said:


> Are winter tires used in USA?


Not in Los Angeles


----------



## keber

And neither Florida.
But what about winter areas? Any difference between, let say, New York, Ohio, Kansas, Utah?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is hardly any info about snow tires (as they are called in the U.S.) in the United States. So I take it they are not required state-wide anywhere, but I believe the authorities can make a decision to allow only vehicles with snow tires or chains in mountainous areas.


----------



## Chilio

Especially in villages like Breckenridge, Colorado which is situated some 30 meters higher than the highest point of Bulgarian mountains  Roads and houses are situated about 3000 meters above sea level...


----------



## italystf

Why Google suggests stupid and useless 200 km longer alternatives? (see option 3)
http://maps.google.it/maps?saddr=ve...O9j5ACmfyjZRngdtRzFGW6JRiuXC_Q&mra=ls&t=m&z=7


----------



## italystf

Chilio said:


> Especially in villages like Breckenridge, Colorado which is situated some 30 meters higher than the highest point of Bulgarian mountains  Roads and houses are situated about 3000 meters above sea level...


The Eisenhower tunnel on I-70 in Colorado reaches the extreme altitude of 3401 meters! It's probably the highest motorway in the world.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is a substandard motorway in La Paz, Bolivia at 4.000 meters altitude.


----------



## keokiracer

italystf said:


> It's probably the highest motorway in the world.


It indeed is


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A refinery in the middle of a residential area....










Who can guess the location?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Houston? Just a guess....


----------



## keokiracer

Probably not. In Houston about 80% of the highways has frontage roads, and I don't seen those on Chris' pic 

I searched around quickly around the US, but couldn't find it. So I'll wait patiently until somone gives the answer (or another hint) :angel:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Houston is a good guess, but it's the other energy state; Louisiana (Shreveport). I'm surprised they allow refineries to be within residential areas (though the houses were maybe built later than the refinery).


----------



## g.spinoza

This is API refinery in Falconara Marittima, Italy. Two major roads (SS 16 Adriatica and Flaminia) run just beside it. The Bologna-Ancona railway runs just through it, dividing it into two parts! And houses all around:


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Houston is a good guess, but it's the other energy state; Louisiana (Shreveport). I'm surprised they allow refineries to be within residential areas (though the houses were maybe built later than the refinery).


Or maybe it is an old refinery (pre 1970s) built when health and environmental standards were low.


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> It reminds me of the Republic of Venice flag. When the Serenissima was at peace, St. Mark's lion had an open book between its paws:
> http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/_...px-Flag_of_Most_Serene_Republic_of_Venice.png
> 
> when it was at war, the lion had a closed book and a sword:
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Venetie_vlag.svg
> 
> howver, Italian wikipedia says that this was never codified...


the flag of Philippines changes in relation to peace of war time. in peace the blue field is over the red one, and in war the red one is over blue


----------



## Alex_ZR

Vojlovica monastery surrounded by oil refinery near Pančevo, Serbia:

http://goo.gl/maps/kVcz3


----------



## Chilio

The Bulgarian flag also changes in relation of peace or war - In wartime it should be hung upside-down - red, green, white (or if the flag is hung vertically, in this sequence from left to right).


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

ChrisZwolle said:


> A refinery in the middle of a residential area....


The Los Angeles area is full of them. I think there are about 10 refineries within the city, even at the beach, and all over the Los Angeles area. It is a very surreal and disconcerting thing to have something like this right next door. 

Torrance; https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=33.853524,-118.338718&spn=0.043623,0.077848&t=h&z=14

Near the beach, 2km south of LAX, and between two very expensive beach towns, El Segundo and Manhattan Beach where most homes are a million dollars and up... directly across the street:nuts:. https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=33.901784,-118.413498&spn=0.0109,0.019462&t=h&z=16

Long Beach/San Pedro https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=33.810175,-118.240356&spn=0.043645,0.077848&t=h&z=14

And there is an actual active oilfield in the middle of Los Angeles itself only about 5km south of Beverly Hills.:nuts: https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=33.998286,-118.371157&spn=0.003849,0.004866&t=h&z=18








source


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Houston is a good guess, but it's the other energy state; Louisiana (Shreveport). I'm surprised they allow refineries to be within residential areas (though the houses were maybe built later than the refinery).


That's why I guessed Houston: it has no zoning, or at least so I've heard.


----------



## Penn's Woods

AnOldBlackMarble said:


> The Los Angeles area is full of them. I think there are about 10 refineries within the city, even at the beach, and all over the Los Angeles area. It is a very surreal and disconcerting thing to have something like this right next door....


Talking of surreal and disconcerting, I went shopping Sunday, at an outlet center outside Philadelphia that's about a mile from the Limerick nuclear power plant. (May be more, actually, but it seems that close.) When I came out of the place to return to my car the cooling towers were looming straight ahead of me.


----------



## Road_UK

A Saudi man is almost literally married to education. The newspaper Okaz reported that a man in his 50s in Jizan, a coastal town 950 kilometers southwest of the capital Riyadh married four women from the same school. He first married the headmistress of a girls' school in the neighborhood where he lives. Since the local customs and religion allow multiple wives, he then married a teacher from the same school. His third wife is a student of the school under the supervision of the inspectorate, who regularly sends a woman to the school to inspect. She is the fourth wife of the man.


----------



## Satyricon84

Meanwhile in China...



























...the owners of a house that had to be expropiated and the government that wanted to construct a road where the house lies, didn't find a compromise. So the goverment decided to construct the road anyway... it's near Wenling, Zhejlang province


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ When I was younger there was something like that in my hometown, Jesi, on a local road (but quite busy). Strange thing was that the house was empty and, in fact, in ruins. They tore that down some twenty years ago, but I remember it vividly. I think it was in that place for at least 15 years.


----------



## Verso

Could go in the roundabout thread.


----------



## Fatfield

Probably the most famous one in England - Stott Hall Farm

Photo by ian1949









Contrary to popular belief the reason for the farm being in the middle of the M62 isn't because the owner refused to sell up. Its for engineering. More info.


----------



## Road_UK

I know it well. There is an underpass from the farmhouse to the land beside the motorway...


----------



## Alex_ZR

Satyricon84 said:


>


Bugs Bunny's hole vs highway:








:rofl:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

2 killed, 51 injured in a 100+ vehicle pileup on Interstate 10 in East Texas. The accident occurred during foggy weather.


----------



## hofburg

I stopped wearing watches at age of 12 I think.  the only downside is when you are on the plane, your phone must be switched off...


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> I stopped wearing watches at age of 12 I think.  the only downside is when you are on the plane, your phone must be switched off...


And also on the beach. Or during a public exam.


----------



## cinxxx

On the beach? Didn't know that...
About exams, I had colleagues that used the phone to get info, or use a headset to have their solution being dictated.


----------



## italystf

cinxxx said:


> On the beach? Didn't know that...
> About exams, I had colleagues that used the phone to get info, or use a headset to have their solution being dictated.


Obviously it isn't forbidden on the beach! But you can't have it if you are swimming, while you can wear a waterproof watch.
Cheating at exams is common, but a bit risky. One thing is risking to get a vital information that will let you to pass, another thing just to see the time


----------



## hofburg

hehe, once I googled on the exam. In France they don't see anything.


----------



## keokiracer

hofburg said:


> hehe, once I googled on the exam. In France they don't see anything.


Not during exams, but during all my physics tests in the 2nd and 3rd class of high school a group including me always discussed about the answers during the test. The teacher didn't hear anything


----------



## hofburg

do you usually sit in the back of the classroom?


----------



## keokiracer

Depends on the class 

Sometimes front row, other times the back row.


----------



## Zagor666

Does anybody else have problems with the smilies here?instead of the top smilies i see ad banner for a porn site and the "more" options doesnt work at all and the few smilies i see i cant use


----------



## hofburg

keokiracer said:


> Depends on the class
> 
> Sometimes front row, other times the back row.


I was in the 'back group' for most classes, except mathematics. sitting in the back is way more fun, especially for classes where one doesn't need to keep up to date


----------



## keokiracer

^^ Sometimes I like sitting in the back of the class. the classes I had problems with last year I decided to sit somewhere in front there. (except my German class). At my best subjects (geography & English) I'm in the back of the class room. And I'm still a 9 average on those subkects . I all thought it through  


Zagor666 said:


> instead of the top smilies i see ad banner for a porn site


You do realize those ads are based on what you search? :smug:

But I'm not having trouble with the smileys. Have you thought about using Adblock Plus?


----------



## hofburg

how is german class in NL? do you start from the very begining, or most students already know the basics?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The knowledge of German among the Dutch is worsening in recent years because they think they can use English everywhere. German is important because Germany is by far the biggest trade partner of the Netherlands.


----------



## keokiracer

From the beginning. Some part of the grammar is new to the Dutch, because we don't have 'naamvallen' (anymore), but the Germans do. This is probably the most difficult part about German. Not even all Germans use this properly!

But words do look alike, which comes in very handy. In tests, when you don't know a word: take the Dutch word and make it sound German, and fill it in on the test. In about 50% the answer will be correct


----------



## g.spinoza

hofburg said:


> I stopped wearing watches at age of 12 I think.  the only downside is when you are on the plane, your phone must be switched off...


I stopped wearing watches more or less at the same age you did. I realized my left wrist, where I used to wear it, was considerably smaller than the right one, because I use to wear a watch 24/7.


----------



## hofburg

ChrisZwolle said:


> The knowledge of German among the Dutch is worsening in recent years because they think they can use English everywhere. German is important because Germany is by far the biggest trade partner of the Netherlands.


ok. but, who's isn't 



keokiracer said:


> From the beginning. Some part of the grammar is new to the Dutch, because we don't have 'naamvallen' (anymore), but the Germans do. This is probably the most difficult part about German. Not even all Germans use this properly!


interestingly 'naamvallen' make german language more familiar to a slovene speaker 



g.spinoza said:


> I stopped wearing watches more or less at the same age you did. I realized my left wrist, where I used to wear it, was considerably smaller than the right one, because I use to wear a watch 24/7.


yes, it isn't healty.


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> interestingly 'naamvallen' make german language more familiar to a slovene speaker


I'd prefer German without it though. :lol: They're a PITA.


----------



## hofburg

apple PITA? that's quite good then


----------



## cinxxx

About Slovenian.
I came for the first time in contact with it, and for it sounds very close to Serbo/Croatian, even words that are the same like hvala, lepa/o, zvolite, etc.
One thing I noticed though, it sounded more melodically than what I heard from Serbian speakers, maybe the influence of Italian?


----------



## hofburg

maybe you heard people from Primorska (littoral)? they (we) are influenced by italian. I have no idea how slovenian sounds like, I would say less melodic than croatian/serbian


----------



## cinxxx

To us it sounded more light kind of, not so hard like Serbian.
Maybe they were people from littoral.

I'm pretty sure for ex-yugos it's not difficult to hear the different accents.
It's the same for me in Romanian.

But don't know if I can make the difference between yugo languages, and also Bulgarian.
The same with slovak/czech/polish.


----------



## hofburg

I can't make between some of them, how would you


----------



## piotr71

Not long time ago, my 7 year old son tried to teach 7 year old Slovak boy how to speak properly. He was not aware that Slovak is a different language, just thought the other chap did not speak well in Polish.


----------



## cinxxx

^^


----------



## x-type

hofburg said:


> I stopped wearing watches at age of 12 I think.  the only downside is when you are on the plane, your phone must be switched off...


But they have invented plane-mode on cell phones


----------



## Fatfield

ChrisZwolle said:


> The knowledge of German among the Dutch is worsening in recent years because they think they can use English everywhere. German is important because Germany is by far the biggest trade partner of the Netherlands.


Yes, but English is the international business language.


----------



## hofburg

x-type said:


> But they have invented plane-mode on cell phones


during take off and landing there are 2x 20min when even flight mode is not allowed


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Fatfield said:


> Yes, but English is the international business language.


True, but if you want to start a new business or expand into Germany, it's more convenient to speak German.


----------



## x-type

hofburg said:


> during take off and landing there are 2x 20min when even flight mode is not allowed


really? had no clue about it :lol:


----------



## seem

Quite nice Melbourne Metro safety video


----------



## Verso

Lol, that's some imagination.


----------



## keber

hofburg said:


> during take off and landing there are 2x 20min when even flight mode is not allowed


Not true. Flight mode is allowed in any time of the flight, but you must have deactivated mobile networking (or switched off entirely) during takeoff and landing.


----------



## hofburg

try telling that to stevardeses who repeat endlessly all electronic devices must be switched off during take off and landing


----------



## keber

Isn't necessary. They tell you over announcements that flight mode is allowed even during takeoff (at least for Air Berlin and Easy Air two months ago). Of course two or three years ago most phones didn't have those modes switchable.


----------



## cinxxx

^^
If you fly Lufthansa they will tell something else


----------



## hofburg

I'm regular easy jet flyer, except if they changed their policy in last 5 months, it's (was) like what I said at least in my case all the time.


----------



## x-type

i have once been even recording taking of with cell phone (in Adria Airways  ) and nobody told me anything :dunno:


----------



## bogdymol

x-type said:


> i have once been even recording taking of with cell phone (in Adria Airways  ) and nobody told me anything :dunno:


I did that at almost every takeoff / landing so far :colgate: 

... and my last flight I recorded it entirely (although I haven't published everything on youtube).


----------



## Lum Lumi

keber said:


> Not true. Flight mode is allowed in any time of the flight, but you must have deactivated mobile networking (or switched off entirely) during takeoff and landing.


Flight mode disconnects everything, including actual phone calls and mobile data.


----------



## keber

Therefore you don't need to turn off your phone. It is an overreaction to some isolated incidents (NOT accidents) which weren't proven fully that they were caused because of mobile devices.

Airlines and airports rather prohibit everything, like taking water bottle through security check (not in Asia, though).


----------



## italystf

I once had been told to switch off my digital camera during an Easyjet flight between Venice and Catania. However, when the hostes stopped looking at me, I continued to take pics.


----------



## Chilio

A bit late... 


cinxxx said:


> I meant bicycle


Me too! Something of this kind:









Not all models of bicycle speedometers have the time, but many have.


----------



## keokiracer

I used to have one of those. Someone stole it at school when I forgot to take is off my bike. Whoever did it was incredibly stupid. They took the device, but not the wires, so the thing is practically useless. Over 4 years later those wires are still on my bike :lol: 

I haven't had one of those since.


----------



## cinxxx

A friend here had a cheap 2€ lamp for her bike, but the support got broken, so she had to use duck-tape to make it stay on the bike to get home from our place. Until then she always removed it when leaving the bike on the street. Now with all the duck-type we thought no one would bother, but it seams someone did, the lamp disappeared one night, the bike being parked right at the entrance to the house.


----------



## keokiracer

cinxxx said:


> duck-tape


Must not make joke 

In case you didn't know, it's _duct tape_


----------



## cinxxx

keokiracer said:


> Must not make joke
> 
> In case you didn't know, it's _duct tape_


Shit! You're right :lol:
It always sounds like duck :lol:

Anyway, you got my idea


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The current term is duct tape, but duck tape is not wrong, because the current term originated from duck tape. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duct_tape


----------



## keokiracer

I did not know that 
You learn something new everyday


----------



## seem

x-type said:


> i have once been even recording taking of with cell phone (in Adria Airways  )


I have experienced landing together with pilots in 737 cockpit, what a shame I didnt have my mobile with me..


----------



## x-type

keokiracer said:


> I used to have one of those. Someone stole it at school when I forgot to take is off my bike. Whoever did it was incredibly stupid. They took the device, but not the wires, so the thing is practically useless. Over 4 years later those wires are still on my bike :lol:
> 
> I haven't had one of those since.


i had 2 of them. both of them were broken when the wires ran into the wheel wires. hno:


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> i have once been even recording taking of with cell phone (in Adria Airways  ) and nobody told me anything :dunno:


Where did you go?


----------



## bogdymol

Duck tape is correct


----------



## Ron2K

keber said:


> Not true. Flight mode is allowed in any time of the flight, but you must have deactivated mobile networking (or switched off entirely) during takeoff and landing.


It's very much dependent on a) the airline and b) the local aviation regulator. Our airlines down here allow you to use your mobile devices in flight mode, but they must be switched off (not deactivated, _off_) for take-off and landing.

One of our low cost carriers (recently liquidated) didn't allow mobile devices at all, regardless of flight mode. They were using a fleet of MD-80 type aircraft, which apparently are a lot more susceptible to electromagnetic interference than more modern aircraft (which everyone else here uses).


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Where did you go?


LJU-BCN. it was 6 or 7 years ago, golden age of Adria. i was even lucky to fly with B735 which they had 
i remember that i bought ticket in Zagreb in Adria Airways and got the ticket written by pen :lol:


----------



## CNGL

On today's banner: The thing .


----------



## italystf

Top reasons to say that Google Translate is an evil introduction:


----------



## Verso

^^ :lol:



x-type said:


> LJU-BCN. it was 6 or 7 years ago, golden age of Adria. i was even lucky to fly with B735 which they had
> i remember that i bought ticket in Zagreb in Adria Airways and got the ticket written by pen :lol:


I got a train ticket written in pen in Zagreb, but that's even worse. :lol: Adria is too expensive, although they have some actions lately.


----------



## italystf

Engrish again




































































































Breakfa*r*t


----------



## g.spinoza

Pic I took myself in Kyoto, Japan:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Google Translate is like a GPS; useful, but makes many people stop thinking beyond it.


----------



## ufonut

Reflective vest courtesy of the SSC Polish road infrastructure section:


----------



## Wilhem275

We all must keep that in our cars :lol:


----------



## CNGL

ufonut said:


> Reflective vest courtesy of the SSC Polish road infrastructure section:


Can I have one with EuroBillTracker logo instead, please?


----------



## Road_UK

ufonut said:


> Reflective vest courtesy of the SSC Polish road infrastructure section:


Sometimes I'd wish we would have some sort of a "Like" button on here, just like on Facebook. 
(And a dislike button as well, in order to be able to rate barmy posts)


----------



## Wilhem275

The forum I moderate uses Bulletin and has *such a button* (no dislike, indeed) 

AutoPareri.com, just to be clear 


[Language question: should I say "has such a button", "has such button" or neither are correct?]


----------



## g.spinoza

Chinese house in the middle of the road is gone:


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Chinese house in the middle of the road is gone:


It was clear that it would have ended in that way. How you can think to have a such sharp curve (plus a private driveway) on a motorway?


----------



## Verso

Wilhem275 said:


> The forum I moderate uses Bulletin and has *such a button* (no dislike, indeed)
> 
> AutoPareri.com, just to be clear
> 
> 
> [Language question: should I say "has such a button", "has such button" or neither are correct?]


such a button


----------



## MattiG

geor said:


> Concerning VC, article 7:
> 
> ‘Nothing in this Convention shall prohibit the use, for conveying information, warnings or rules applying only at certain times or on certain days, of signs which are visible only when the information they convey is relevant.’


What are you planning to justify by this statement allowing the variable traffic signs?


----------



## admirer of sir ALEX

Chinese citizen have got about 30 000 euros for the house


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Today I read a FB post written by a law student of Trieste university (from southern Italy) where he asked if the passport is needed to enter Slovenia. But the best thing is that he studies political sciences (they have many lessons about EU treaties and laws).


I've heard one of the most difficult questions for students of International Relations in Bari is _Which country borders Italy in the northeast?_ :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

A Bulgarian guy recently asked me if I knew which countries border Bulgaria. Being a map geek, I answered correctly and he was really surprised. I guess Italians have a bad fame about geography


----------



## bogdymol

Greetings from Vienna, Austria.


----------



## piotr71

I would not say so. I know a couple of Italians and even worked with one. The latter was a manager, actually an administrator back then, he has become a manger some time later. We both worked for an Italian luxury leather furniture company, which took over a British bankrupt firm. Anyway, he was, and with no doubt still is, well educated and have had really good geographical and historical knowledge of the world. I'd rather say, it was more than good.


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> A Bulgarian guy recently asked me if I knew which countries border Bulgaria. Being a map geek, I answered correctly and he was really surprised. I guess Italians have a bad fame about geography


An English guy, thick as a plank, met a girl on the internet once from Jamaica. He has never been abroad before and assumed that I'd be able to take him there in my van.


----------



## piotr71

Road_UK said:


> An English guy, thick as a plank, met a girl on the internet once from Jamaica. He has never been abroad before and assumed that I'd be able to take him there in my van.


Isn't Jamaica on the other side of the English Channel?


----------



## Road_UK

piotr71 said:


> Isn't Jamaica on the other side of the English Channel?


There is a Jamaican branch in Peckham, but he was chatting to the real one in the Caribbean.


----------



## D.O.W.N

g.spinoza said:


> I guess Italians have a bad fame about geography


And what about Americans? They think that Slovakia is part of France or that it is located somewhere in Siberia :lol:


----------



## Spookvlieger

USA'ns are really bad in Geography. Not to blame them, but the sole centric of world view of their media and system is tho.

When news agencies make fatal mistakes over and over again you wonder if they even care to take a look on a map....


----------



## Road_UK

If it's Tuesday this must be Belgium.


----------



## italystf

An engineering student I know though that the Principality of Monaco was in Germany. Maybe because Monaco is the Italian exonimus for Munich.
And another though that Estonia was in the Balkans, near Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia.
Someone from Sicily on the chat: "you live near Venice, so you're also near Switzerland." 


Verso said:


> I've heard one of the most difficult questions for students of International Relations in Bari is Which country borders Italy in the northeast?


Maybe because two countries (Austria and Slovenia) border Italy in the northeast.


----------



## Verso

^^ They can write both countries, so I'm not sure that's the reason.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Kelly Sildaru, a 10-year old Estonian girl doing some freeskiing:


----------



## Spookvlieger

Road_UK said:


> If it's Tuesday this must be Belgium.


nah Belgium lies in Illinois


----------



## Verso

That girl has balls!


----------



## CNGL

Americans are so dumb they put Cannes in Northwestern Spain! (They got confused with a small village called Cans). But the French got confused too, as they put Lorca in Navarre and Figueres in Norwestern Spain. And there is actually a Lorca in Navarre and a Figueras (Spanish form of Figueres, which is Catalan) in Northwestern Spain.


----------



## Road_UK

CNGL said:


> Americans are so dumb they put Cannes in Northwestern Spain! (They got confused with a small village called Cans). But the French got confused too, as they put Lorca in Navarre and Figueres in Norwestern Spain. And there is actually a Lorca in Navarre and a Figueras (Spanish form of Figueres, which is Catalan) in Northwestern Spain.


You really need to stop this crap that Americans are dumb. First of all there are Americans on here as well, and secondly I bet you cannot name the capitals of Nebraska or North Dakota within 3 seconds.

You are dumb to write on here that Americans are dumb.


----------



## CNGL

^^ Lincoln and Bismarck :tongue:. And out from memory. I know the names of all 50 capitols of the USA .


----------



## Road_UK

Very good. Behave yourself. The Americans are our friends, they are not dumber or smarter than us, and my good friend Michael (Penns Wood) gets offended about this ongoing anti-Americanism. And so do I. And I am not even American.


----------



## JackFrost

CNGL said:


> ^^ Lincoln and Bismarck :tongue:. And out from memory. I know the names of all 50 capitols of the USA .


still, most people -especially the youth- are not very good in geography no matter if they live in the US or in Europe. but until the GPS works, everything is OK


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I can confirm the geographic knowledge of many Dutch is appalling.


----------



## keokiracer

I remember a short clip from some kind of tv show where they ask people who are on vacation in some village in the most southern part of Spain to show where they are on a map.
The closest one was near Barcelona... There was 1 person who pointed at the Dutch coast picard and 1 person that pointed at the Baltic states... icard:icard:

On Whose Line is it anyway. Africa is a continent!




:lol:


----------



## JackFrost

well, i got to tell you, i love my girlfriend, and as a woman she knows the smallest things about our neighbors while I didnt even noticed that we actually have neighbors, but if i would leave her in a random country without GPS or a cell-phone, she'd most probably die of starvation. and thats not only about capitols, major cities or countries, she also would have no clue where to head east for example. because she has no clue where east is in the first place...

but i really love her


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Someone asked me the other day where Northampton was. Many people here don't know where some well known parts of London are :lol:


----------



## italystf

A common mistake made by ignorant people is considering a bunch of different countries\areas, maybe very different each other or thousands of kms far away each other, like a single entity or however an integrated area.
For example I heard of someone who was surprised that a Mexican friend have never been to Brazil/Argentina because "it's the same area". Let's explain to him that Mexico and Argentina are far away each other like New York and Moscow. But for him it was just "Latin America".
From Tunis to Cape Town is all black Africa, with all people living in traditional villages, riding camels and hunting wild beasts. China, Japan, Korea, Thailand,... are just a bunch of yellow people who go to temples and produce everything for us. From Slovenia to Vladivostock is all "Slavic countries", where everybody is communist, drink a lot of vodka, go West to steal and sell drugs and women have sex with everybody for few money.


----------



## cinxxx

What about western Europe, nothing interesting happening there


----------



## italystf

cinxxx said:


> What about western Europe, nothing interesting happening there


Well, being from Western Europe most people here have a deep knowledge about various Western countries:

Italy: pizza, pasta and mafia
Germany: wurstel, beer and everybody is nazi
France: unwrapped baguettes carried under sweaty arms
UK: tea at exactly 5p.m., rain 24-7, horrible food and poor hygiene
NL: drugs, hookers, gays and lesbians
Spain: bloody bullfightings
Ireland: everybody is always drunk
Switzerland: clocks, chocholate and money laundering
Scandinavia: year-long winter and polar bears
Greece: isn't it 3rd world?
:lol:


----------



## cinxxx

:lol:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Well, if there ever is an Estonian in a Hollywood movie, they always have a Russian accent, even though the Estonian accent is pretty much like the Finnish accent.  But there's no point in getting upset about it, it is what it is.


----------



## Verso

^^ Does the Finnish accent sound like the Russian accent by any chance? Just asking.


----------



## x-type

all finno-ugric languages sound supercool to me  i hope i will learn at least hungarian one day.
btw. all i can say in finnish is iksi, kaksi, vasen, oikea.  learnt it watchin WRC.


----------



## bogdymol

Speaking of Vienna...



Chilio said:


> Two years ago it was both great and romantic in this early autumn season... So romantic, that now I have a 1 year and 4 months old daughter


My trip was so romantic... that she said *yes* :banana:









^^ actual photo


----------



## Verso

^^ You're playing with your life.  Congrats. :cheers:


----------



## Nordic20T

^^
Congrats Bogdy!


----------



## Chilio

Verso said:


> It was at 5.36 CET (6.36 in Bulgaria).


It is really about the time the baby woke up and my wife told me she felt a quake and thinks the baby may have been woken by the tremor. The clock near my bed showed 6.35, but it can be easily be 2-3-4 minutes inaccurate. Still it is odd enough, as Bulgarian seismologists didn't detect any tremor at this time, moreover such which actually could be felt by humans 

Bogdy, congratulations! We visited with my wife and baby last week the touristic village Arbanassi near Veliko Turnovo, where 6 years and a month ago she said "yes" to the very same question  It was very romantic too and revived fond memories. Actually Arbanassi is an architectural reserve of 18-19th century Bulgarian renaissance buildings, so it's quite romantic and worth visiting. And last week I saw a lot of Romanian number plates both in Arbanassi and Veliko Turnovo. It looks like it is a popular touristic destination for the Bucharest region via Danube bridge.


----------



## seem

bogdymol said:


> My trip was so romantic... that she said *yes* :banana:


Congratulations Bogdan! :cheers:

Btw, I am going to Vienna in 6 hrs.


----------



## CNGL

^^ It's your avatar the infamous Ecce Mono? 

Congratulations Bogdymol! You aren't a kid anymore


----------



## cinxxx

Congrats Bogdi!
I'm going to Vienna in 12 days.
Thinking of also make a visit in Bratislava or Graz or both


----------



## cinxxx

*Texting turns twenty*



> Happy bday txt msg!
> 
> ON DECEMBER 3rd 1992 a young Vodafone engineer wished his boss "Merry Christmas" by SMS (short message service). This is widely regarded as the first ever text. (Tapping out 07734 on a calculator, turning it upside down and handing it to someone does not count.) Since then, texting has become a global phenomenon, growing particularly rapidly in the early-noughties when America finally embraced the medium and Chinese mobile subscriptions took off. According to Portio Research, a market-research firm, 7.8 trillion text messages were sent in 2011 and the number is expected to increase. The growth of social networks in recent years such as Facebook and Twitter (based on the SMS format) and services such as BlackBerry Messenger and WhatsApp (which offer free or cheap texts) are seen to herald the death of SMS. Portio predicts a decline in texting around 2016 as the mobile market reaches saturation and rival systems become more popular. Yet for the moment, people's thumbs continue to peck at the fingerpad to send texts, as the number of mobile subscribers worldwide continues to grow.


----------



## seem

CNGL said:


> ^^ It's your avatar the infamous Ecce Mono?


Yes I love it! 



cinxxx said:


> Congrats Bogdi!
> I'm going to Vienna in 12 days.
> Thinking of also make a visit in Bratislava or Graz or both


Visit Bratislava just to see how different is it from Austria just by crossing a order which is 1 km from the city center.


----------



## hofburg

congrats bogdymol


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Congrats! :banana:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

g.spinoza said:


> No. I don't know who he is.


Interesting.


I have heard him speak, don't really remember what he sounds like and sorry if this ends up being a double post, normally I would copy paste this to my other post but I'm on the phone.


----------



## cinxxx

seem said:


> Visit Bratislava just to see how different is it from Austria just by crossing a order which is 1 km from the city center.


Is it walkable?
Where?


----------



## JackFrost

todays question in the daily Ö3* poll: is the US located east or west of the equator?
answers: east, west, both, I don’t know, what is an equator?... 

:lol:

*Ö3: austrian radio station.


----------



## cinxxx

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/linesman-dies-attack-teenage-players-005300013.html



> *A football linesman beaten and kicked by teenage players during a youth match has died.*
> Three players aged between 15 and 16 were arrested after Richard Nieuwenhuizen collapsed at the Dutch club Nieuw Sloten in the town of Almere on Sunday.
> The 41-year-old, whose own son had been playing in the game, had left after the match and was unaware anything was wrong with him, but he then returned to the club later that night and collapsed.
> He died in hospital the next day. His team, Buitenboys, has not announced the exact cause of death, but Dutch TV station RTL said he had brain damage.
> "You can't believe this could happen. That kids of 15 or 16 are playing football, you come to watch and see something like that," said Buitenboys chairman Marcel Oost.
> "He did it every week. He enjoyed doing it. He was a real football man - he was always here."
> Dutch sports minister Edith Schippers said: "It is absolutely terrible that something like this can happen on a Dutch sports field."
> Parents and other volunteers regularly referee and officiate at sports matches involving their children in the Netherlands, where youth football and hockey is popular and well-organised.
> Anton Binnenmars, of the Royal Netherlands Football Association, said: "It is too crazy for words that somebody involved in a sporting hobby becomes a victim of this kind of aggression."
> 
> [...]


----------



## CNGL

Jack_Frost said:


> todays question in the daily Ö3* poll: is the US located east or west of the equator?
> answers: east, west, both, I don’t know, what is an equator?...
> 
> :lol:
> 
> *Ö3: austrian radio station.


:rofl::rofl: It is North or South of the Prime meridian? :rofl::rofl:


----------



## piotr71

seem said:


> (..)
> Visit Bratislava just to see how different is it from Austria just by crossing a order which is 1 km from the city center.


Is it?

Vienna.

IMGP1175 by 71piotr, on Flickr


IMGP1189 by 71piotr, on Flickr

Slovakia or Austria?

IMGP1223 by 71piotr, on Flickr

Slovakia, just behind the border.


IMGP1277 by 71piotr, on Flickr


IMGP1280 by 71piotr, on Flickr


IMGP1279 by 71piotr, on Flickr


----------



## hofburg

it isn't, at least as long you stick to the city center.

vienna is just much bigger and has taller buildings.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

When talking about Vienna, I was actually quite disappointed when I visited it. I went there straight from Budapest and in my opinion, Budapest is much nicer, at least in the city centre.


----------



## piotr71

I agree. Budapest is one of the most spectacular Capital in Europe. Vienna is great, too, however I would not put it in the same league.

There are 3 things about Austria, which make this country similar to Eastern Europe (mostly Poland) to a certain extend :
1. Kitsch.

IMGP1232 by 71piotr, on Flickr

2. Huge number of this crappy, ugly, mostly unreadable billboards and banners.

IMGP1171 by 71piotr, on Flickr


IMGP1157 by 71piotr, on Flickr

3. Noise barriers. They just grew up recently by Austrian motorways. 

IMGP1055 by 71piotr, on Flickr

I wanted to say about motorways' prostitutes, however they can be found in Spain and Italy, as well. In the Netherlands and Belgium I've seen male prostitutes in motorways' lay-bys. 

IMGP1150 by 71piotr, on Flickr


----------



## 1+1=3

*In the rich world, people seem to be driving less than they used to*
http://www.economist.com/node/21563280


----------



## hofburg

its not Austria that is similar to EE, former Austrian EE countries are similar to Austria


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> its not autria that is similar to EE, former austriam EE countries are similar to austria


Let alone the fact that pics above refers to the urban Austria (probably near Vienna), that is very different from the typical, stereotypized, Austrian landscape with green mountains and small towns that can be found in Tyrol or Carintia.


----------



## hofburg

...or oberkrain


----------



## italystf

Does anyone know if this pic is real and where is it?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

No it's not real. It's the I-405 in Los Angeles (near Sepulveda Pass).


----------



## Chilio

You mean they have doubled by Photoshop the number of lanes? And merged two different pictures of the same place, as the cars on each 5-lane version are different?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It was taken from the Getty Center. This is what it looks like in reality.


----------



## Chilio

yes, I know, I found it in Google Earth... Where on the latest picture the traffic actually is quite less


----------



## Penn's Woods

D.O.W.N said:


> And what about Americans? They think that Slovakia is part of France or that it is located somewhere in Siberia :lol:





joshsam said:


> USA'ns are really bad in Geography. Not to blame them, but the sole centric of world view of their media and system is tho.
> 
> When news agencies make fatal mistakes over and over again you wonder if they even care to take a look on a map....


Generalize much?

Don't make me look up the YouTube video of geographically-ignorant Parisians....

And what's a USA'n?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> If it's Tuesday this must be Belgium.


Well, one Tuesday's really enough for Belgium (JOKING! Love Belgium dearly, even when they're being annoying.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

CNGL said:


> ^^ Lincoln and Bismarck :tongue:. And out from memory. I know the names of all 50 capitols of the USA .


[Tongue in cheek mode on, because I'm in a good mood:]
Just for your "dumb" remarks, I sentence you to learn the difference between "capital" and "capitol." And "out from memory" is not English. It may well be Lazy-Continentals'-Esperantlish, but that's not the same thing.
[Tongue in cheek mode off.]


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Quite impressive if you know all the state capitols


----------



## Road_UK

Grinzz


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> Quite impressive if you know all the state capitols


Well, at least where are the state capitols, which are the state capit*a*ls . They should rename the state of Vermont to New Herault, though...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Funny how Russian translates everything phonetically instead of literally.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Just having glanced at that for ten seconds, I would have expected a KC in the middle of "Texas," instead of an X.

EDIT: Although on reflection, with the X it just ends up sounding Spanish, which is historically appropriate.


----------



## piotr71

^^

Actually, not everything.


----------



## D.O.W.N

Penn's Woods said:


> Generalize much?
> 
> Don't make me look up the YouTube video of geographically-ignorant Parisians....
> 
> And what's a USA'n?


C´mon, most of Americans doesn´t even know where is Tennesee.

And I speak a little Russian, so the state names in Russian language are really funny :lol:


----------



## hofburg

in fact europe has only one weather


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> I hope your threshold for closing Schipol is higher than...some other northwest-European airports I could mention. (I can see the headline now: "Flurry at Heathrow: *World* Cut Off.")


World cut off :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^There's a (possibly mythical) British newspaper headline: "Fog in Channel: Continent Cut Off." This is my take-off on that.


----------



## Verso

I know, Britain > Eurasia.


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> I know, Britain > Eurasia.


Actually, there is a thread going on in the skybar where people are debating whether Britain should become a part of Poland.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Huh?

(For starters, what's the skybar? And what are they smoking there?)


----------



## Rebasepoiss

keokiracer said:


> I want snow!


Snow is great for like a week. After that it's just white s**t...unless you love skiing.


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Huh?
> 
> (For starters, what's the skybar? And what are they smoking there?)


Skybar is a chitchat sub forum on SSC, and they are going on about the high amount of Poles in Britain...


----------



## Road_UK

Rebasepoiss said:


> Snow is great for like a week. After that it's just white s**t...unless you love skiing.


And I love skiing. Going to get my season pass tomorrow.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Skybar is a chitchat sub forum on SSC, and they are going on about the high amount of Poles in Britain...



Sounds like the Telegraph. ;-)

I found the Skybar, but not the thread in question. How long has it (the Skybar) been there? None of the threads are more than a month old, but the rules threads are. Did someone clean it out?


----------



## Road_UK

I bumped into that thread yesterday while browsing current topics on my SSC android app on my phone. It gives you all the latest threads in god knows how many languages. There are at least 10 posters ongoing within a few seconds...


----------



## Road_UK

I have just counted 12 posts on 12 different threads posted at 03:08am my local time a few minutes ago.


----------



## Penn's Woods

I just discovered the "In the News" subsection of the Skybar. Maybe that's where you were.


----------



## Road_UK

You bump into funny things at times... 



Ancient capital said:


> :lol::lol::lol:
> No ! ng Huế mới đầu có vẻ khó gần...nhưng khi đã thân quen rùi thì chơi hơi bị được đó ! :lol:


----------



## Road_UK

Someone must have found a dead rat and gave it a bang... 



thuongdo07 said:


> Người Nam Định thông minh, chém gió mạnh và cũng rất tốt bụng nữa ^^


----------



## Road_UK

HAHAHA 

Found in a forum issues: feedback and information thread. No idea which language this is, but if you put 1+1 together you can figure out what he is saying:



achernar said:


> nakakatawa din pala itong ibang trolls noh? ang kapal din ng apog para magreport din mga mga diunamoy troll-like posts. :nuts::lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

You must be very bored, or suffering from insomnia....


----------



## Road_UK

Sitting in my van waiting and browsing through my phone...


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> Funny how Russian translates everything phonetically instead of literally.


Quite normal for Slavic languages. They mostly don't use English transliterations (why should they?).
And how would you translate names in Latin alphabet into Cyrillic?

About Texac thing - its'e even more strange, that Hawaii are pronounced like Gawaii


----------



## keokiracer

keokiracer said:


> I swear to god, if there's less than 5 cms snow tomorrow I'm gonna flip


*starts flipping*


----------



## hofburg

adriatic coast ends in Trieste? :| snowing on slovenian coast as well.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MajKeR_ said:


> Where exactly? It's seems to be so stupid that I'd like to read it.


http://www.skyscrapercity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=15

and

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=16

I hold Road_UK responsible for anything idiotic I may say there.


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> in english, in french is k. congrats!
> 
> snowing in Nova Gorica.


Oh, I see. Congrats for your 2,400th post!  And it's quite rare that it snows in N. Gorica and the coast. 



Penn's Woods said:


> Horrifying media story of the day:
> 
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...oax-call-found-dead-in-suspected-suicide.html
> 
> Those DJs should be...well, I'm not sure what. At a minimum, lose their jobs.


Why did she commit a suicide? I don't get it.


----------



## Penn's Woods

These radio DJs from Sydney called the hospital pretending to be the Queen and Prince Charles. Apparently, this nurse who was filling in at reception believed them and put them through to the nurse on duty, who also seems to have taken them seriously and gave them information about Kate's condition. The first nurse - the one at reception - was the one who apparently killed herself this morning. Who knows what else may have been going on in her life, but I'm sure she'd been being hounded by the media all week and that wouldn't have helped....


----------



## Penn's Woods

The Beast from the East? Four inches and it gets a name?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/w...st-from-the-East-weather-front-closes-in.html


----------



## Verso

Imagine this as your pet:









http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthpicturegalleries/9730555/Animal-pictures-of-the-week-7-December-2012.html?frame=2421858


----------



## piotr71

del pls


----------



## piotr71

Penn's Woods said:


> http://www.skyscrapercity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=15
> 
> and
> 
> http://www.skyscrapercity.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=16
> 
> I hold Road_UK responsible for anything idiotic I may say there.


Any chance to get a link to the exact thread, please? Can't find it.


----------



## Road_UK

piotr71 said:


> Any chance to get a link to the exact thread, please? Can't find it.


I don't know where it is anymore. Best do a SSC search on the top right of the screen: should Britain become a part of Poland. I'd do it for you but I'm on the android app right now.


----------



## Penn's Woods

piotr71 said:


> Any chance to get a link to the exact thread, please? Can't find it.


I haven't found that thread yet.

Note to Road_UK: my post count's bigger than yours.


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> I haven't found that thread yet.
> 
> Note to Road_UK: my post count's bigger than yours.


I have to get typing then...


----------



## piotr71

Road_UK said:


> I don't know where it is anymore. Best do a SSC search on the top right of the screen: should Britain become a part of Poland. I'd do it for you but I'm on the android app right now.


Thanks, but it's probably deleted.


----------



## Road_UK

I'd be surprised if it did. Discussion was quite civil...


----------



## FMK94

Chelyabinsk, Russia


roman_csu said:


> Сегодня.


----------



## Road_UK

piotr71 said:


> Thanks, but it's probably deleted.


Found it

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=97882294#post97882294


----------



## g.spinoza

7 uninterrupted hours of snow here in Brescia, problems begin to arise. My car skidded (is that the word?) on a rather tight roundabout, but I was able to control it. And it mounts winter tires too.


----------



## piotr71

Road_UK said:


> Found it
> 
> http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=97882294#post97882294


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Found it
> 
> http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=97882294#post97882294


So it's not in the general Skybar, but the British Skybar. Clearly, I need to spend more time on the rest of SSC.

Or not.


----------



## Lum Lumi

g.spinoza said:


> My car skidded (is that the word?)


Just skid.


----------



## Verso

^^ "To skid" is not an irregular verb. :nono:


----------



## Lum Lumi

That's because you're supposed to say "my car went into a skid", as opposed to saying "my car skid".


----------



## Penn's Woods

"Skidded" is fine.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/skid


----------



## cinxxx

I did a little bit of wobbling too this week when heavy snowing began just some 10 minutes before I drove off. So parts of the road was covered with snow, and also there was some ice underneath it.


----------



## cinxxx

Just received some pictures from my parents in Timisoara








host images


----------



## cinxxx

And a story posted on Facebook today

"Out of crisis, whims and nostalgy, the idea to butchering a pork for Christmas came to me, just like I remember they were doing it at our countryside.
Allright, my family wasn't doing it for Christmas, but weeks earlier, for St. Andrew's, because we wouldn't have the patience nor too much left in the pantry, so we couldn't wait until Ignat.
After I sharpened my knifes on the kitchen tiles and found some halloween straw decoration, forsaken by some neighbor in front of our house, i started seeking for pork. I first made an announcement in the internet, saying I'd like to buy, for sacrifice, medium size animal, up to 150kg. No one answered, but a lunatic who said he liked my ideas and, if I'd want to, we could sacrifice together, not one, even more than one pig. (made me think all crazy people left the real world and went online - but this is not part of my story).
As I asked my colleagues at work if they knew some living pig somewhere, they became very curious of what I might want to do with it, saying it would be to big to keep it as a pet, and too messy.
When I told them, I wanted to butcher it, they gazed surprised and started questioning W H Y.
For eating it, that's why, I answered, when every last drop of sympathy, tolerance or understanding that they had for me, disapeared.
How can you slaughter an animal and eat it? what a savage thing to do! As I was seeing they would be ready to call the PETA, I started to describe the process thoroughly, insisting
on the sectioning of the carotid and collecting the blood in a crocked enamel basin, in order to prepare it,
especially preparing the borîndău. I didn't know how to translate borîndău to English, just like I don't know how to translate
it in Romanian, but I explained it was some sort of corn flour porridge, boiled with blood instead of water.
I think about three more sensitive of them disapeared to the bathroom, and the rest - because by now the whole
department was surrounding me, for listening to my story - were watching me, some with pity, some disgusted.
Then, I continued, we roast the skin on straw flames, for the crackling, but if we live in a flat, we roast it
at the gas tank. We cut the animal's ears and eat them out right, with a little salt.
This sent some other two of them to the restroom, but I continued, being aware that I wouldn't catch such
an attentive audience any time soon, maybe ever. After epilating the animal with a flame, i continue, we split it with an
ax or a hatchet or anything similar that we find in reach. We take out the organs, boil them with the head, for preparing the
caltaboș. You know - I told them breezily - I think, for the caltaboș you must use the large intestine, optionally washed,
and boil it in water with onion, for masking the natural miasm.
They left in groups after this phrase, there were only three left listening, who had the strongest minds and
stomaches, I think, in fact, just two, because one of them was a korean who doesn't understand English too well
and wears his headphones all day long, but gets close to any group discussion, approving everything.
With the rest of the meat, I continued my story, we make sausages, barbecues and cabbage roulades, and if
the deceased was fat, we can also fry a pot of bacon to cut off some strength of the drinks.
I'd still say I took them easily, thinking of how I could have told them about how the hot dogs and the
baloney they stuff into themselves at lunch are made, I would have gotten the whole company into the hospital."


----------



## BND

^^ This is how it goes. The pig is killed, minced and then stuffed back into itself (sausage). I'm going to such an event just before Christmas


----------



## Verso

Savages. hno: I like pork though.


----------



## cinxxx

^^
And how do you think the meat you eat comes from? The pig doesn't take it out himself


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> ^^
> And how do you think the meat you eat comes from? The pig doesn't take it out himself


You could give him a gun.  What about waiting till pigs die naturally? Old meat isn't good, right?


----------



## cinxxx

Verso said:


> You could give him a gun.  What about waiting till pigs die naturally? Old meat isn't good, right?


What I know is that if you eat young (little) pig meat, that's actually worse then a grown pig, it contains more cholesterol.


----------



## piotr71

Let's better back to the roads....and what we can eat, when travelling 



> Roadkill cuisine is preparing and eating roadkill, animals hit by vehicles and found along roads.
> It is a practice engaged in by a small subculture in the United States, Southern Canada, the United Kingdom and other Western countries as well as in other parts of the world. It is also a subject of humor and urban legend.


1.









2.









Source-wiki.


----------



## Robosteve

Hi all,

Haven't been here in years, I don't know how many of you remember me. I used to post pictures and videos of some highways in and around Sydney. A Google search for something semi-related brought me back here and reminded me about this place, and as I'm getting a new car soon (within the next 2 weeks or so) I thought it'd be a good opportunity to look at getting a camera securely fitted (instead of wedging it between the dashboard and the windscreen like I used to do) and post some more stuff on here. I didn't realise I missed this place until I remembered I'd been gone for years.

Anyway, don't let me get in the way of your discussion about eating roadkill.


----------



## cinxxx

Dust art


----------



## Verso

^^ Impressive, you should drive with that in nice weather.



Robosteve said:


> Hi all,
> 
> Haven't been here in years, I don't know how many of you remember me. I used to post pictures and videos of some highways in and around Sydney. A Google search for something semi-related brought me back here and reminded me about this place, and as I'm getting a new car soon (within the next 2 weeks or so) I thought it'd be a good opportunity to look at getting a camera securely fitted (instead of wedging it between the dashboard and the windscreen like I used to do) and post some more stuff on here. I didn't realise I missed this place until I remembered I'd been gone for years.


Welcome back. Check out my Australian road trip from two years ago. :cheers:


----------



## Robosteve

Verso said:


> Welcome back. Check out my Australian road trip from two years ago. :cheers:


Very nice. Some of those Queensland road signs gave me a chuckle -- never seen "TIRED DRIVERS DIE" down here in Sydney. 

It was cool to see signage for the A1 in Queensland. That was still very recent at the time you posted those pictures; it would have been National Highway 1 (same symbol without the 'A') previously. NSW is switching over to alpha-numeric numbering next year, I think it's a huge improvement over the old system.

I was surprised to see that you encountered a lot of trucks going 120 km/h. They're supposed to be limited to 100 km/h (at least in NSW, I don't know if Queensland is different) and they usually stick to that in my experience.

I see you enjoyed the cuttings coming into Sydney. That freeway is one of the better roads around here, I think it's a marvelously engineered route through some unforgiving terrain. Sadly, Sydney is lacking in many other good roads .

The "complicated interchange" pictured from a bus isn't actually a very complicated interchange -- it's a slight variation on a half-diamond. It looks complicated from that angle because the elevated freeway to your right is leading into a cut-and-cover tunnel. There are a couple of ramps from the street below that connect them to the freeway. The top isn't part of the interchange at all, it's the top of the tunnel.

When I saw you were going from Cairns to Melbourne, I thought you'd be taking the A2/A39 and not the M1/A1/M31 from Brisbane to Seymour. Did you choose that route so you could take in Sydney?

Sorry for the sudden barrage of comments. I wish I could have commented on this before, but I don't want to quote a years-old post in that thread now.


----------



## Chilio

If you open an roadkill restaurant on the Balkans, the most you will have on the menu will be stray dogs, eventually stray cats... And from time to time some hedgehog, snake or other small and not very eatable animal. Eating dogs and cats isn't very popular anyway, so this business doesn't look like very successful over here


----------



## x-type

Chilio said:


> If you open an roadkill restaurant on the Balkans, the most you will have on the menu will be stray dogs, eventually stray cats... And from time to time some hedgehog, snake or other small and not very eatable animal. Eating dogs and cats isn't very popular anyway, so this business doesn't look like very successful over here


khm, here in HR it would be mostly hedgehogs, frogs and rats


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In the Netherlands it would be cows and clogs for dinner.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Snow yesterday, rain today. All the white stuff will be gone...


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> In the Netherlands it would be cows and clogs for dinner.


cows?! do they really get hit often by vehicles on the roads?


----------



## Chilio

In Scandinavian countries it will be moose then


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## cinxxx




----------



## panda80

x-type said:


> cows?! do they really get hit often by vehicles on the roads?


I hit one in Romania. It's very dangerous, I was lucky I wasn't speeding...


----------



## x-type

panda80 said:


> I hit one in Romania. It's very dangerous, I was lucky I wasn't speeding...


i have once hit a roe-deer with my 1 day old car. fortunately, i was going very slow, maybe some 30-40 km/h and hit it into soft part (the part of leg where ham comes from, i don't know the word in english for it).
and once i have almost hit a fox. that would be very messy because i was speeding. very speeding. 140 or something like that.


----------



## x-type

one of the most bizzarre accidents that i have ever heard of happenned. the guy was drunk, wanted to drive, but fell asleep afterd he had turned on the car. as his foot pressed the power pedal, the engine overheated and got burned. and not only that, it burned also the other car beside. and still not all, it burned also the boat parked nearby icard:

article in croatian: http://www.vecernji.hr/regije/pijan...i-gasa-izgorjela-dva-automobila-clanak-484863


----------



## italystf

I know someone who almost ended in a ditch along a country road to kill a wild hare with his car and bring it at home to cook.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> I know someone who almost ended in a ditch along a country road to kill a wild hare with his car and bring it at home to cook.


useless. their bones spread to the meat and you cannot eat it. my friend did it with roe deer (killed it, but the meat was useless)


----------



## panda80

In Romania some people are hunting rabbits with the car, by night.


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> i have once hit a roe-deer with my 1 day old car. fortunately, i was going very slow, maybe some 30-40 km/h and hit it into soft part (the part of leg where ham comes from, i don't know the word in english for it).


Thigh? Buttocks? 



> and once i have almost hit a fox. that would be very messy because i was speeding. very speeding. 140 or something like that.


I hit a fox once. It was in Abruzzo, in a zone where I saw foxes often. It was night, I was like "I hope to see a fox this time too", when in the middle of the road there were two of them. I managed to avoid one but hit the other... my front license plate is still bent.


----------



## Alex_ZR

I almost hit an owl in flight. It was night and it flew very low, but luckily it raised just in front of my windscreen. Speed was about 90 km/h.


----------



## x-type

now i rermembered my friend who hit a boar at autobahn near München. his Mercedes was destroyed.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I once did a test drive with a new car and a hit a flying duck. One of the headlights was shattered and there was blood everywhere. I also hit a number of pigeons in the last few years, one with the bumper and another one straight at the windshield at 80 km/h.


----------



## Road_UK

I've hit a labrador once on the A26 in France.


----------



## bogdymol

Few years ago I was returning with a friend (each with his own car) from a swimming pool in Hungary by night. He was in front, and suddenly he hit the brakes hard... he did hit a rabbit and killed him (not on purpose). He took the rabbit and put him in the trunk.

At the border crossing the police officers didn't know why we were laughing


----------



## italystf

Once a flying pigeon hit my front right lamp and damaged it.
This summer, while I was driving 120kph on A28, a bird sh*t on my windshield.


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> I've hit a labrador once on the A26 in France.


Are highways fully fenced in France? If so, it was surely abandoned on purpose by someone I'd call criminal.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

In Estonia you can hit pretty much anything from foxes and rabbits to bears and moose with your car.


----------



## Verso

Robosteve said:


> Very nice. Some of those Queensland road signs gave me a chuckle -- never seen "TIRED DRIVERS DIE" down here in Sydney.
> 
> It was cool to see signage for the A1 in Queensland. That was still very recent at the time you posted those pictures; it would have been National Highway 1 (same symbol without the 'A') previously. NSW is switching over to alpha-numeric numbering next year, I think it's a huge improvement over the old system.
> 
> I was surprised to see that you encountered a lot of trucks going 120 km/h. They're supposed to be limited to 100 km/h (at least in NSW, I don't know if Queensland is different) and they usually stick to that in my experience.
> 
> I see you enjoyed the cuttings coming into Sydney. That freeway is one of the better roads around here, I think it's a marvelously engineered route through some unforgiving terrain. Sadly, Sydney is lacking in many other good roads .
> 
> The "complicated interchange" pictured from a bus isn't actually a very complicated interchange -- it's a slight variation on a half-diamond. It looks complicated from that angle because the elevated freeway to your right is leading into a cut-and-cover tunnel. There are a couple of ramps from the street below that connect them to the freeway. The top isn't part of the interchange at all, it's the top of the tunnel.
> 
> When I saw you were going from Cairns to Melbourne, I thought you'd be taking the A2/A39 and not the M1/A1/M31 from Brisbane to Seymour. Did you choose that route so you could take in Sydney?
> 
> Sorry for the sudden barrage of comments. I wish I could have commented on this before, but I don't want to quote a years-old post in that thread now.


Thanks for your comments!

About trucks going 120 km/h: I probably exaggerated a bit. I usually drove about 105 km/h where speed limit was 100 km/h (depends on accuracy of the speedometer), so trucks that overtook me must've driven 110-115 km/h, which is still fast for trucks.

The cuttings before Sydney were very impressive. But I forgot to take a photo of cuttings between both carriageways - those were most interesting to me. Like here.

I took the M1/A1 because of Sydney and the coast of course. I'm not sure the A2/A39 is very interesting. But I took the M31 only to Goulburn, then I turned to Canberra and the coast (Princes Highway).


----------



## x-type

i have killed one Scotch Collie, one sparrow, few frogs, rats and mice and 3 or 4 cats. i feel horrible after it each time.
my brother-in-law killed roe. it was really messy since he beheaded her (and the head has pulled all internal organs after it - rarely discusting scene and smell)

edit: of course, i'm talking about road killing


----------



## g.spinoza

I remember one time a hawk (possibly a buzzard) crossed flying the road where I was driving, just outside Bologna. It must have been not more than 5 meters away, 2 m above ground, just in front of my windshield. It looked absolutely amazing.


----------



## cinxxx

Driving is not much fun here, just returned from Munich, and there is snow, and driving speed was 40-60 km/h on the A9, and much much traffic.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> i have killed one Scotch Collie, one sparrow, few frogs, rats and mice and 3 or 4 cats.


hno: I haven't run over anyone or anything mention-worthy. Once my father was driving and we ran over a snake. My dog was also run over.


----------



## Road_UK

italystf said:


> Are highways fully fenced in France? If so, it was surely abandoned on purpose by someone I'd call criminal.


The Gendarmes took me to the nearest toll point, where I was able to file a complaint. I lost my front numberplate, and toll operator SANEF took full responsibility.


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

x-type said:


> now i rermembered my friend who hit a boar at autobahn near München. his Mercedes was destroyed.


Something similar happened to one of my cousins in Romania. He was driving trough a forest at 30 to 40km/h and a huge boar suddenly burst out of the forest and slammed into his passenger side door and somehow completely tore the door right off its hinges. The boar was not seriously hurt and quickly vanished back into the forest, but my cousin had to collect his torn up door and put it in the back seat. :nuts:


----------



## Robosteve

Verso said:


> About trucks going 120 km/h: I probably exaggerated a bit. I usually drove about 105 km/h where speed limit was 100 km/h (depends on accuracy of the speedometer), so trucks that overtook me must've driven 110-115 km/h, which is still fast for trucks.


Ah, fair enough. At least when they overtake, it's better than the occasional truck driver that thinks it's OK to tailgate a vehicle one-tenth his truck's size. It's happened to me at least once, and it's a very scary experience knowing there's a huge piece of steel and freight weighing many tonnes just a few metres behind you at 110 km/h.



Verso said:


> The cuttings before Sydney were very impressive. But I forgot to take a photo of cuttings between both carriageways - those were most interesting to me. Like here.


Indeed, quite interesting. I guess they thought it made a convenient median divider. :lol:



Verso said:


> I took the M1/A1 because of Sydney and the coast of course. I'm not sure the A2/A39 is very interesting. But I took the M31 only to Goulburn, then I turned to Canberra and the coast (Princes Highway).


It's a pity you didn't go south from Sydney to Kiama, and then west to Canberra. The Kiama blowhole and Macquarie Pass are both definitely worth seeing (though Macquarie Pass only for road geeks).

This is Macquarie Pass: https://maps.google.com.au/?ll=-34.563333,150.654831&spn=0.058277,0.035148&t=p&z=15

Crossing the Illawarra Escarpment is never easy, and this is one of the steepest places with a road crossing. Which of course makes it an interesting drive. 

I'll post a video of that road soon after I get my new car. Speaking of which, what do people here use to attach a camera to their car? I remember seeing a thread years ago on here about a device that attaches the camera securely, but I don't remember what it was called.


----------



## Road_UK

Monti about to resign, Berlusconi to run for office again, and the stock markets plummets upon hearing this news.

How can this buffoon that nearly dragged the whole of Europe in a irrecoverable crisis be allowed to run for president again...


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Monti about to resign, Berlusconi to run for office again, and the stock markets plummets upon hearing this news.


Monti resigned because one of his ministers said that "Berlusconi's comeback is bad for Italy". PDL withdrew its support to Monti so here we are.



> How can this buffoon that nearly dragged the whole of Europe in a irrecoverable crisis be allowed to run for president again...


He's got money.
He will be re-elected, trust me.


----------



## Road_UK

Great stuff, congratulations.
His comeback is not only bad for Italy, but indeed bad for the whole of Europe. I think we can all be certain of that.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Great stuff, congratulations.
> His comeback is not only bad for Italy, but indeed bad for the whole of Europe. I think we can all be certain of that.


Some people in this forum asked me why I am always saying bad things about Italy and told me to stop. I think this speaks for itself.


----------



## Road_UK

Italy as a country is great. I love Italy and its people. But there are certain elements in any country that are just...

weird!

Anyway, don't be afraid to speak out on a forum, that is what a forum is for. You know me by now, I have cussed many countries down, including my own, and boy the stick I got! But some things has to be said, and who can say it better then a native?


----------



## hofburg

I don't get politicians who are against austerity in a country with a high debt.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Monti resigned because one of his ministers said that "Berlusconi's comeback is bad for Italy". PDL withdrew its support to Monti so here we are.
> 
> 
> 
> He's got money.
> He will be re-elected, trust me.


I keep hearing that Monti was imposed by Brussels. Can someone remind me, as objectively as possible, exactly what happened? I'm not sticking my nose into Italian politics, just want to understand the facts.





hofburg said:


> I don't get politicians who are against austerity in a country with a high debt.


Well, that's the whole Democratic-vs.-Republican argument that we just went through here. Pinch pennies and you get Greece and Portugal; stimulate the economy a bit and you get the U.S. We're not as healthy as we should be and we do need to deal with the debt, but we're in much better shape at this point than most of Europe. I'm not an economist, though....


----------



## g.spinoza

hofburg said:


> I don't get politicians who are against austerity in a country with a high debt.


Monti was pro-austerity but he just kept increasing taxation, and not reducing costs. As you might know, he issued a decree "re-organizing" provinces, merging some of them, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. He should have canceled all of them.



Penn's Woods said:


> I keep hearing that Monti was imposed by Brussels. Can someone remind me, as objectively as possible, exactly what happened? I'm not sticking my nose into Italian politics, just want to understand the facts.


Facts are difficult to get, especially in Italy, but it is kind of true. Monti in Italy is seen as expression of banks and "high powers", and in no way was a political figure.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I mean the actual mechanics of how he was inserted in the job: did Brussels (whoever "Brussels" is...) get a majority of Parliament to accept him somehow? Was there an actual vote of confidence?


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^I mean the actual mechanics of how he was inserted in the job: did Brussels (whoever "Brussels" is...) get a majority of Parliament to accept him somehow? Was there an actual vote of confidence?


Brussel has no formal power to decide who is going to be PM in a sovereing country. But there are a lot of "informal ways" (read: blackmail) to get this job done. Of course we'll never get to know them.
Apparently during G20 in Cannes Berlusconi was urged by the others to resign or do something more to "save the country".
I don't know how Monti came into the job. We needed an international economist, Draghi was just appointed director of ECB, Padoa-Schioppa died recently... Monti was the only one left.


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> Apparently during G20 in Cannes Berlusconi was urged by the others to resign or do something more to "save the country".


Quite right.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Aren't GPSes the brilliantest invention ever??

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...OS-6-Maps-warning-from-Australian-police.html

:bash:


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I was just reading it. My conclusion is: GPSes are a wonderful invention. Apple maps... less so.


----------



## seem

^^ Although i have never experienced anything like this, it is quite common thing also here -


----------



## cinxxx

As long as they don't do it in the city in front of the flat and where everyone can see, I don't think it's bad. People living at the country side owning the pig and sacrificing it in private


----------



## g.spinoza

In my hometown the process of slaughtering the pig is associated to a feast, the "pista" (dialectal term for "beating up", "crushing"), and the whole village attended. Now it's still done but more privately, inviting relatives and friends. I witnessed it only once, though, at my sister's boyfriend house.


----------



## italystf

In Friulian there is a popular saying: "San Andree, il pursit sua bree" (St. Andrew, the pig on the table).


----------



## Robosteve

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's the problem, people stop thinking the moment they use a GPS. You sometimes see signs with "GPS off" in case road situations (like interchanges) changed recently, however this doesn't work because many people don't have a clue which direction on the signs to follow.
> 
> Even if you put up a giant sign that says "destination X left lane instead of right lane!" they don't know whether they have to follow that destination X or not.


Definitely agreed. This is one of the reasons I always like to keep a paper map in my car. It's cheaper than a GPS, and it allows me to navigate more effectively by showing me a bigger picture than just a computed route. Aside from that, I just enjoy it more when I'm planning my own way.



Verso said:


> Sorry, I first hear about the Kiama blowhole (looks interesting!) and Macquarie Pass. Do campervans cross it often? The road looks a bit narrow to me.


I was a passenger in a bus going down that road once, if memory serves. I've only actually driven it in a car before, so I don't know how well it handles in a larger vehicle, but it is a national route and the nearest escarpment crossing that would be easier is 20 km to the north, so I'd be surprised if work hadn't been undertaken to make it suitable for campervans.



Verso said:


> I just checked all threads and there's no such thread.  Some people use tripods, others elastic to fix it, differently.





Penn's Woods said:


> ^^It may not have been a separate thread, but I do remember discussion of that.


Fair enough, thanks for the comments. I'll experiment and see what works best for me.


----------



## CNGL

cinxxx said:


> Timisoara is smiling
> 
> http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...290161212.55502.232322846844323&type=1&ref=nf


Once I managed to make a :crazy: on gravel, I will post the photo when I have enough time.


----------



## cinxxx

Driving school for dogs in New Zealand


----------



## Verso

^^ I expect a rise in the number of accidents.


----------



## Chilio

Not much snow over here...









Still enough to buy a sledge which my 1.5 year old daughter enjoyed very much in the park 

This weekend most of ski resorts in Bulgaria have announced official opening. Some like Pamporovo have announced that both days all lifts will work for free.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Most ugly christmass tree ever in the townsquare of Hasselt, BEL


----------



## g.spinoza

Not as ugly as the Bruxelles one:









Belgium trees are no good


----------



## cinxxx

icard:


----------



## heightincreasing

haha modern!


----------



## TommyLopez

OMG hno: come to Prague to see how the christmas tree should looks like!


----------



## Spookvlieger

^^We really do know....I have no idea why some came up with these lol everyone allready hates them.


----------



## Thermo

Long live Antwerp :cheers: 









http://www.flickr.com/photos/visitflanders/7507523426/sizes/l/in/photostream/









http://www.flickr.com/photos/visitflanders/7507528836/sizes/l/in/photostream/


----------



## Alex_ZR

:lol:


----------



## Road_UK

Thermo said:


> Long live Antwerp :cheers:
> 
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/visitflanders/7507523426/sizes/l/in/photostream/
> 
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/visitflanders/7507528836/sizes/l/in/photostream/


Dutch influence?


----------



## Spookvlieger

Road_UK said:


> Dutch influence?


Why? looks Belgian to me, especially with those tacky wooden barracks you'll find in every market square. I like them tho.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^For some reason, every travel show on public television in the States, over the past week or two, has been running episodes about European Christmas celebrations, especially those markets. The "tacky wooden stalls" seem to be far more widespread than the Benelux (you'll find them in Vienna, for example). And they look sort of fun.

But what's Glühwein?


----------



## Road_UK

How did that end up in quote?


----------



## JackFrost

youre right, Road Uk, its not our business. and i would never say that americans are barbarians...

i just wonder if *I* could ever sit in a cinema, anywhere in the US, and dont have to be afraid of someone shooting in my head, just because he had a bad day. and the truth is: you cannot sit in a cinema in the US, not expecting anything wrong. because "it" could happen any time. and that -at least in my oprinion- is unacceptable. i could never live like that. 

Verso is right, banning guns is the only solution.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Sigh.

All right, I'll say this as thoughtfully as possible, hopefully calmly, and hopefully once.

1) Mass shootings are NOT exclusively an American phenomenon. Belgium just observed the first anniverary of the Liège one. Since then we've seen Toulouse....
And then there's Breivik. 

The Second Amendment is not in effect in Belgium, France or Norway, as far as I know, but that fact didn't prevent those incidents.

2) Violence is not exclusively an American phenomenon. We are not, over here, having discussions like Germans have enjoyed this week this week about whether to cage opposing groups of soccer fans from each other. (I can't imagine Yankee Stadium needing to corral Red Sox fans in a separate section of the stadium and keep them away from the men's rooms until the game's over. But an article earlier this year in the New York Times discussed such measures being taken in Glasgow for games against Aberdeen.) Jumping on this as an opportunity to tut-tut about how awful Americans are (like a prominent French news anchor last year who asked on the air* whether "the example of American society" was responsible for Liège) is unadulterated bigotry. And profoundly insensitive towards the families of the victims.

3) Crime rates in the U.S. overall and in cities like New York are - generally speaking - at their lowest point in my lifetime of nearly 50 years. The last few years you keep seeing stories like "lowest homicide rate in New York since 1964"; "no homicides in Newark this month"; "no gun deaths in Boston the entirety of last year". Which means something different is responsible for these mass shootings.

4) THAT SAID, we certainly have more than our share of them. Yes, this guy - just like Mohamed Merah or Anders Breivik or Hans van Themsche - had something wrong with him. But we make it too easy for him, through too-easy access to assault weapons, the fast-loading clips that were used in Tucson and so on. Is banning guns outright the solution? No. And it would require opening up the Bill of Rights for revision. Not just repealing the Second Amendment but permitting the house-to-house searches that would be necessary to collect all the guns that are already out there. I'll be damned if I want to start messing with free speech, trial by jury, and all sorts of other concepts that have been basic rights here since long before most of Continental Europe had any concept of what democracy was.

5) I don't know what the answer is. These things can't be completely prevented (or they wouldn't happen in "civilized" Europe). I do know gun control (as opposed to a complete ban) is part of the answer. But we want to get the answer right, not just do something because it makes us feel better; and as far as doing something because it makes *some* Europeans stop disapproving of us, f--k that. (Those Europeans who disapprove of us will find another reason to anyway.)

6.) All Americans are sick about this (except the occasional psycho, but they can exist outside this country too). The vast majority of Americans, even the vast majority of NRA members, understand some degree of gun control is part of the solution. There is a thoughtful discussion going on here about solutions, even though NRA leadership (and, disgracefully, the White House briefly yesterday) is saying it's "not the time." Non-Americans are welcome to participate in that thoughtful discussion. As opposed to rubbing their hands at the opportunity to denounce us as monsters.

-----

FOR THE RECORD, when I said I was afraid of the discussion being politicized, I was thinking as much of an argument about gun control among Americans (I'd already been on the Huffington Post doing that...) as I was of a xenophobic discussion about the supposed nature of Americans from our European friends.

-----


*David Pujadas, the day of or the day after Liège. The France2 8 p.m. news can be watched here on TV5 Monde and I was actually watching it that evening. I haven't watched the broadcast since.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Well not exactly the same. You can force people to switch from left- to right-hand traffic, but apparently you can't force them to switch from seven-ninety to ninety-seven.
> 
> By the way, I read somewhere that the German number spelling rule causes a higher number of dyslexia-like illnesses.


I read very recently (perhaps within the last week) - can't remember where - that dyslexia is higher in English- and French- speaking countries (among others) than in, say, Spanish-speaking countries, because of our bizarre spelling.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> I read very recently (perhaps within the last week) - can't remember where - that dyslexia is higher in English- and French- speaking countries (among others) than in, say, Spanish-speaking countries, because of our bizarre spelling.


I guess this is very likely. French and English spelling and writing are decoupled, while in Italian and in Spanish every character is always read the same way (apart from localized and easy-to-spot exceptions).

When I was a kid I had a book about dinosaurs, in English, and I was surprised to see, near every species's name, its phonetic spelling: Stegosaurus (Steg-owe-sore-uss). Italian and Spanish don't need that.


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> Say what you want. Expect me to respond when I read stuff that isn't any of your business in the first place. Or haven't you hear of freedom of speech?


Freedom of speech doesn't include _attack_ on freedom of speech, otherwise I can tell you the same and we start spinning in circles. :nuts: But I usually have to explain this in DLM, not here..



Road_UK said:


> Speaking of isolated incidents... That what happened in what your current homeland was a part of these days... Was that an isolated incident as well?


What are you talking about?


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> I guess this is very likely. French and English spelling and writing are decoupled, while in Italian and in Spanish every character is always read the same way (apart from localized and easy-to-spot exceptions).
> 
> When I was a kid I had a book about dinosaurs, in English, and I was surprised to see, near every species's name, its phonetic spelling: Stegosaurus (Steg-owe-sore-uss). Italian and Spanish don't need that.


The main issue I find with Italian is somewhat-unpredictable word stress. Spanish (and Portuguese and Catalan...) doesn't even have that problem, thanks to the way they use accents.

Pronunciation is in fact such a prominent feature of English dictionaries that most English-speaking people think "diction" means "correct pronunciation," whereas it actually means "choosing the right words." (Well, if most people think it means "correct pronunciation" I guess that means it does, now.) I'd been studying languages for some time before I noticed that, say, Dutch or Spanish dictionaries don't include phonetic transcriptions in each entry.)


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> The main issue I find with Italian is somewhat-unpredictable word stress.


I see. Most of the times Italian words are stressed on the second-to-last syllable, but there are several exceptions. This is somewhat localized too: names of towns around Brescia are often stressed on the third-to-last syllable, and I always get confused



> Pronunciation is in fact such a prominent feature of English dictionaries that most English-speaking people think "diction" means "correct pronunciation," whereas it actually means "choosing the right words." (Well, if most people think it means "correct pronunciation" I guess that means it does, now.) I'd been studying languages for some time before I noticed that, say, Dutch or Spanish dictionaries don't include phonetic transcriptions in each entry.)


Curious: "dizione" in Italian means "correct pronounciation"...


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> I see. Most of the times Italian words are stressed on the second-to-last syllable, but there are several exceptions. This is somewhat localized too: names of towns around Brescia are often stressed on the third-to-last syllable, and I always get confused


I can never remember whether it's "trattória" or "trattoría." I've noticed some Italian maps put accents on place names that you wouldn't use if you were writing them in a normal text.



g.spinoza said:


> Curious: "dizione" in Italian means "correct pronounciation"...


Hmm. I'm not doubting you, but why do you call a "dizionario" a "dizionario" in a language where correct pronuncation's not an issue?

Check this out: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diction
One print source I just looked at says the "diction doesn't mean pronunciation" argument is a purist one that was lost a century ago. Ah, well....


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> I can never remember whether it's "trattória" or "trattoría." I've noticed some Italian maps put accents on place names that you wouldn't use if you were writing them in a normal text.


It's trattorìa. Like pizzerìa, salumerìa, drogherìa, all shops ending in -ria get stressed on the last "i".



> Hmm. I'm not doubting you, but why do you call a "dizionario" a "dizionario" in a language where correct pronuncation's not an issue?


The main issue here is the "aperture" of vowels, which is something very much linked to dialects. "Me", in Italian has a closed "e", but in many Southern and Northern dialects it is pronounced open. It is not a very important issue, everyone can understand you, but if you want to speak "correct" Italian this is something you can look up on a "dizionario"... a book that's increasingly been called "vocabolario", though.
A dizionario can tell you the stress of a word, which as you said in Italian can sometimes be tricky (even though I'd say 95% of the words, to a native, are obvious).


----------



## Wilhem275

UberLOL for Google Translate 

This text:
"Nach Mauerbau und der Schließung der Hamburger Bahn nach einem Grenzdurchbruch Dezember 1961 nutzten auch die Züge Berlin–Hamburg den Abschnitt zwischen Wustermark und Nauen, die sogenannte Bredower Kurve. Für den Güterverkehr blieb die Strecke als Ergänzungsstrecke, vor allem zum nahegelegenen Rangierbahnhof Seddin, wichtig. *Gelegentlich wurden auch Transitzüge nach Berlin über diese Strecke umgeleitet.* Der Abschnitt Nauen–Oranienburg verlor dagegen an Bedeutung. Bereits 1967 ist der Personenverkehr eingestellt worden, auch der Güterverkehr verlief zum größten Teil über den schnelleren und leistungsfähigeren Außenring."

was translated into this:

"After construction of the wall and the closure of the Hamburger train after a border breach in December 1961 also took the train from Berlin to Hamburg and the section between Wustermark Nauen, called Bredower curve. For freight transport, the route remained as a supplementary route, especially to the nearby rail yard Seddin important. *Occasionally Transit trains to London were diverted via this route.* The section Nauen-Oranienburg lost in importance. Back in 1967, the passenger has been set, and the freight was mostly about the faster and more powerful outer ring."


It is true that a good translation must include some variations to better adapt to the reader's cultural background, but translating the capital city's name seems a little too overengineered :lol:


----------



## Robosteve

ChrisZwolle said:


> 30 km/h makes sense in areas that are actually designed as residential areas, with narrow streets, streetside parking, little or no sidewalks, no through traffic. 30 km/h throughout an urban area, even on detached main roads and multilane urban arterials is beyond ridiculous.


Definitely agreed, I was just about to say the same thing. I really wish they'd drop the speed limit in Sydney's CBD to 30 km/h (currently 50 km/h), due to the number of intersections in close proximity, lane merges, bus stops and pedestrian activity; but that proposal to make it 30 km/h in all residential areas makes no sense.


----------



## bogdymol

cinxxx said:


> Greetings from Vienna


The tradition says that a H&A forum user either proposes his gf there (me), or he will have a baby 9 months after (Chilio).


----------



## italystf

Wilhem275 said:


> UberLOL for Google Translate
> 
> This text:
> "Nach Mauerbau und der Schließung der Hamburger Bahn nach einem Grenzdurchbruch Dezember 1961 nutzten auch die Züge Berlin–Hamburg den Abschnitt zwischen Wustermark und Nauen, die sogenannte Bredower Kurve. Für den Güterverkehr blieb die Strecke als Ergänzungsstrecke, vor allem zum nahegelegenen Rangierbahnhof Seddin, wichtig. *Gelegentlich wurden auch Transitzüge nach Berlin über diese Strecke umgeleitet.* Der Abschnitt Nauen–Oranienburg verlor dagegen an Bedeutung. Bereits 1967 ist der Personenverkehr eingestellt worden, auch der Güterverkehr verlief zum größten Teil über den schnelleren und leistungsfähigeren Außenring."
> 
> was translated into this:
> 
> "After construction of the wall and the closure of the Hamburger train after a border breach in December 1961 also took the train from Berlin to Hamburg and the section between Wustermark Nauen, called Bredower curve. For freight transport, the route remained as a supplementary route, especially to the nearby rail yard Seddin important. *Occasionally Transit trains to London were diverted via this route.* The section Nauen-Oranienburg lost in importance. Back in 1967, the passenger has been set, and the freight was mostly about the faster and more powerful outer ring."
> 
> 
> It is true that a good translation must include some variations to better adapt to the reader's cultural background, but translating the capital city's name seems a little too overengineered :lol:


Another user noticed that if you set the translation Slovenian -> English it changes Nova Goria into New York. 
It must be one of the many Google easter eggs, like the famous advices "swim or kayak across the ocean".
http://translate.google.it/#sl/en/nova gorica


----------



## italystf

9gag pic for the user Radi


----------



## Road_UK

So the city of York in England must be Goria then.


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile in Slovakia


----------



## CNGL

I still remember when Google, with the translator set Spanish => Catalan, used to translate the name of my hometown as Lleida. Besides that, I ROFLMAOZEDONGed at some translations from Chinese into English (Or into Eng*r*ish ).


----------



## italystf

If Abbey Road was in Italy


----------



## Verso

^^ I saw this car today after a long time.


----------



## Verso

Verso said:


> On Baker Island and Howland Island (both uninhabited) it will still be 20.12.2012. Looking at the numbers, that's probably where it will start. :shifty:


In South Korea (the land of Gangnam Style) winter starts on 21.12.2012 at 20.12 local time.

:badnews:


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> I've just realized that winter starts on 21.12.2012 at 12.12 pm CET. Too many 12s. :runaway:


So world will "end" then . It will be 11:12 UTC (CET is one hour ahead), so in Howland and Baker it will be still 20-12-2012 (UTC-12)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Well, unless whatever natural force is going to tear the planet apart works time zone by time zone.... Perhaps we should assume that if we reach midnight the 21st/22d Mexican/Guatemalan time, we're safe.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> In South Korea (the land of Gangnam Style) winter starts on 21.12.2012 at 20.12 local time.
> 
> :badnews:


Gagnam Style at YT is doing just as proposed. it is almost perfectly punctual to turn 9 rings at doomsday.


----------



## Verso

Stop watching Gangnam Style, idiots!


----------



## keokiracer

Verso said:


> Stop watching Gangnam Style, idiots!











We're gonna die anyway, so I might as well die Gangnam Styling


----------



## RipleyLV

Verso said:


> Stop watching Gangnam Style, idiots!


Just checked the views.  As I do it daily. :smug:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Stop watching Gangnam Style, idiots!


Personally, I never have. But I'll assume you weren't addressing me.


----------



## Verso

RipleyLV said:


> Just checked the views.  As I do it daily. :smug:


You don't have to watch it to see that, you can just type "Gangnam Style" ("g" is enough actually) and see recommended videos (and their numbers of views).


----------



## Attus

cinxxx said:


> About Christmas Market.
> I visited Vienna, Graz and Bratislava.
> I have to say the one in Bratsilava was the nicest. No tourist hordes, local and friendly atmosphere, didn't have that fake feel you get in tourist places.


I visited Köln/Cologne and Bonn, and had the same feeling, especially in Cologne at the feet of the cathedral (however the market in Neumarkt is quite nice).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

How did you wound up in Rheinbach?  I thought you were from Budapest.


----------



## ufonut

Market square in Wieliczka, Poland


----------



## seem

^^ wow, thats cool, I visited Wieliczka mine 2 years ago, nice place. 



cinxxx said:


> And in order for the day to be complete, I drove to Bratislava, parked in a private parking, what I saw as 4.5 euros per day, it was per hour, so I had to pay 27 euros for 5.5 hours of parking. At least this time I didn't read the sign well, still even in Zurich underground parking was 2 times cheaper. And this one in Bratislava was not even a garage, but free air.


Wtf? 4,5€ is insane!! Where did you park? At Parliament? :nuts:

Even Carlton garáž is "only" 3,50€ for 1. hour and then 2€. And it is located on the most important square in the whole Bratislava. 

You should have asked on Slovak SSC, you could park you car at Aupark for free and walk 5mins to Old town.



cinxxx said:


> About Christmas Market.
> I visited Vienna, Graz and Bratislava.
> I have to say the one in Bratsilava was the nicest. No tourist hordes, local and friendly atmosphere, didn't have that fake feel you get in tourist places.


I m glad you liked it, its my favourite too, just a bit overpriced and sometimes lacks the quality of food in Vienna. Have you tried Cigánska?










http://www.ephoto.sk/fotogaleria/fotografie/329960/vianocna-bratislava/?filter=top&type=1


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ah, the underground salt mine. I've been there in 2003.


----------



## seem

Actually I thought it would be more about technical side of it, as it is listed in Unesco, but it was rather like Disneyland, a bit kitschy with all those dwarfs all around the place. :nuts:

Btw, on the journey back our bus almost crushed into lorry, quite scary when I saw it 15 cm from window.


----------



## hofburg

nice photo of Bratislava!


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> How did you wound up in Rheinbach?  I thought you were from Budapest.


I was but moved  I've been living here for three weeks now.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The European motorway network has grown by 1 454 kilometers this year, according to my logs (as of today). Nearly half of that occurred in Poland. Number 2 is Spain, followed by Romania. On average, all European countries with a motorway network opened 41.54 kilometers of new motorways each. 

The least new motorways opened in France, just 4 kilometers, though it should be noted they did open a number of motorway-like _Voie Expresses_. Slovakia opened 6 kilometers, the Netherlands just 10.

Out of all European countries with a motorway network, 11 of them did not open any new motorways, the biggest of them being Belgium and Austria. No European country opened their first motorway this year, the most recent being Kosovo in 2011.

The European motorway network is currently approximately 87 000 kilometers long. The three largest networks are found in Spain, Germany and France, the smallest in Kosovo (or Moldova, but it's unclear whether they actually have motorway status roads).


----------



## Attus

Nice photo of Bratislava (shot from the curch tower, I suppose)


----------



## seem

There is church next to it, but without a tower, it was shot from Old town hall tower- http://files.geoska.webnode.sk/200004693-8abf18bb7b/radnica.jpeg


----------



## Attus

^^ Funny, I was there several times but have never realized that this tower do not belong to the church but to the town hall  Thanks


----------



## g.spinoza

g.spinoza said:


> A meteor was seen yesterday by a little girl in Palermo suburbs' sky. This morning, the kid went to the point were she had seen the meteor falling, and found this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://palermo.repubblica.it/cronac...te_cade_alla_periferia_di_palermo-48839774/1/
> 
> :O


I heard today in the radio newscast: scientists analyzed that piece. 

It is a piece of wood :bash:


----------



## keber

Why would you need scientists to get to this conclusion?
Meteorites are heavy, wood is light, no other science is necessary.


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> Meteorites are heavy, wood is light, no other science is necessary.


Not true. Carbonaceous chondrites are not so heavy. They are made of some rock and a high percentage of carbon and water that lower their weight. Besides, even a rocky meteorite can be light: it can be hollow.


----------



## cinxxx

seem said:


> Wtf? 4,5€ is insane!! Where did you park? At Parliament? :nuts:
> 
> Even Carlton garáž is "only" 3,50€ for 1. hour and then 2€. And it is located on the most important square in the whole Bratislava.
> 
> You should have asked on Slovak SSC, you could park you car at Aupark for free and walk 5mins to Old town.
> 
> I m glad you liked it, its my favourite too, just a bit overpriced and sometimes lacks the quality of food in Vienna. Have you tried Cigánska?[/url]


I parked here http://goo.gl/maps/xXiBE
Should have asked, an I usually do, oh well, next time I will 

Prrices are way better then Vienna, for almost everything. And food/drinks at Weihnachtsmarkt were more then 2 times lower. Also prices in Billa where good. 

I only ate a pancake, it looked really good, but unfortunately didn't taste so good as it looked, and it was very hot, was microwave warmed.
We did stop to eat in an underground place under the Danish Embassy, although the girl the girl who took orders was very bored, didn't seem to know much English, and for whatever reason didn't want to bring to one of us beer, but brought to other tables, food was nice and price was good.

Overall a nice stay, to bad for the heavy fog. More reason to make another stop sometime in summer .

About Vienna, stupid parking system, never seen something like this in any place before.
No ticket machine, I had to buy from a store in the morning, and the lady didn't have 1h, 2h tickets, only 30min, so I have to go sown and change it until we leave. I also had to check the hour and date myself, so had to go up in he hotel because had no pen.

Soon I will drive back from Vienna to boring Ingolstadt.


----------



## g.spinoza

Got back yesterday from Roma Fair, near Fiumicino Airport, and just for the lolz I went through Rome, to the A24, instead of driving the GRA.

http://goo.gl/maps/o3ZBA

Boy, oh boy. Never again, never again.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Got back yesterday from Roma Fair, near Fiumicino Airport, and just for the lolz I went through Rome, to the A24, instead of driving the GRA.
> 
> http://goo.gl/maps/o3ZBA
> 
> Boy, oh boy. Never again, never again.


Google says 1h30' between Rome and L'Aquila. But in that case I guess it was the time needed to go from A91 to A24 via Rome centre. :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> Google says 1h30' between Rome and L'Aquila. But in that case I guess it was the time needed to go from A91 to A24 via Rome centre. :lol:


I left the Fair at 17.15, and reached A24 toll barrier Roma Est at 19.15 :bash:

I've seen them all: cars bumping into each other and fleeing the scene; motorcycles using systematically the emergency lane (or even the shoulder) to escape the queue; people honking like hell if someone in front of them stops to let people cross the road; people merging without looking...

I had this competitive exam for a job in Rome, but I almost hope I won't get it...


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> I left the Fair at 17.15, and reached A24 toll barrier Roma Est at 19.15 :bash:
> 
> I've seen them all: cars bumping into each other and fleeing the scene; motorcycles using systematically the emergency lane (or even the shoulder) to escape the queue; people honking like hell if someone in front of them stops to let people cross the road; people merging without looking...
> 
> I had this competitive exam for a job in Rome, but I almost hope I won't get it...


Some years ago I did a trip to Rome. Our hotel was 5-6 km from the centre and we usually needed 40-60 mins to cover that distance with our tour bus. Dozen of honks, zero lane discipline,...
Recently I drove to Vienna. Just 15 minutes to go from the A2 exit to our hotel near the Ringstraße and vice-versa. Not a single honk, vehicle cutting the road, scooter overtaking where isn't allowed and everybody stops at pedestrian/bicycle crossings. Even on 6-8 lanes boulevards.


----------



## hofburg




----------



## g.spinoza

^^
"Governing Italians is not difficult, is useless" - Giovanni Giolitti, Italian Prime Minister, circa 1910.


----------



## Road_UK

Driving in Rome is like a Sunday afternoon drive in Walton on the Naze compared to Naples and Athens.

*sorry Chris/Suburbanist : Roma, Napoli and Athina.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Driving in Rome is like a Sunday afternoon drive in Walton on the Naze compared to Naples and Athens.


I trust you, but it's hard to believe. I lived in Naples for some time - fortunately I didn't have a car back then :lol:


----------



## Road_UK

I've delivered a few times in Naples. Always an experience. My boss urges us to stay at motorway services overnight when we arrive the night before and not at the factory. Forklift drivers usually scrounges a cigarette off me before unloading, and after the stray dogs are gone, unloading can begin. I remember this Fiat Uno that actually let me in when I wanted to merge...


----------



## Verso

So, the world ends _the day after tomorrow_.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> So, the world ends _the day after tomorrow_.


I don't own a TV set, but here at my parent's they do. Today there was an ad for a show called "Speciale la fine del mondo" ("End of the world special").

Can't wait for it to actually end.


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> So, the world ends the day after tomorrow.


No it doesn't. It has been postponed to 3012 due to technical problems.


----------



## Verso

So, where will you be the day after tomorrow?


----------



## seem

By that time you will be flushed away by Adriatico.


----------



## Verso

Like this?


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Going from where to where?


He's going to Senkaku and take possess of the islands on behalf of Romania. So this China-Japan thing is gonna end...


----------



## bogdymol

What's Senkaku?


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> Just Bucharest - Timisoara... a short 50 minutes flight. Take off in approx 25 minutes


Are you trying to escape the doomsday?


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> What's Senkaku?


http://www.economist.com/news/chris...ks-lies-sad-magical-history-okinawa-narrative

A bunch of god-forsaken islands that's all over the news and about to start a war between China and Japan...


----------



## keokiracer

less than 1 minute left before gangnam style hits 1 billion!


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> I've seen that picture somewhere else (can't remember where), in a post-nuclear-attack context. Then I saw it on a news site a few days ago, and looked more closely....
> 
> Brits (or anyone else who knows, such as Anglo-Dutch Austrians) please contradict me if I'm wrong, but isn't the geography all wrong? If that's Saint Paul's and Tower Bridge in the background, they have no business being that close to the Houses of Parliament and in a straight line with them.


You are indeed right


----------



## keokiracer

Aww yeah!


----------



## keber

What minute? There are still more than 100.000 views to go.

Go to Youtube if you don't believe


----------



## Verso

keokiracer said:


> Aww yeah!


Refresh the page. :lol:


----------



## keokiracer

^^ I was on that page for only 1,5 minute. I had closed my laptop (couldn't login to youtube anymore and needed updates...) and was back just in time


keber said:


> What minute?


 Look at the bottom right of the pic  16:10 GMT+1



keber said:


> There are still more than 100.000 views to go. Go to Youtube if you don't believe


Youtube only updates every few hours.


----------



## Verso

keokiracer said:


> ^^ I was on that page for only 1,5 minute. I had closed my laptop (couldn't login to youtube anymore and needed updates...) and was back just in time


Well, it's again at less than a billion views and I suspect they will do it at least one more time.


----------



## keokiracer

Hey, what the crap :|


----------



## keokiracer

... And 1 billion again


----------



## Verso

It turned into a porn site now. :shifty:


----------



## keokiracer

Yeah, just discovered that too... Just after I put a link on the Dutch road forum...


----------



## D.O.W.N

One billion!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


----------



## Verso

If this is the end of the world, it's not that bad.


----------



## D.O.W.N

Now we can die :lol:


----------



## keokiracer

There's a little Psy dancing besides the view counter now :lol:


----------



## keber

You are making jokes, but meanwhile in Ljubljana meteors are raining from the sky:


----------



## Verso

^^ The light stays green for 15 minutes, then it turns gray. Unless you log out, then it turns gray instantly, I think.


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> You asked this like some Slovenian hillbilly.  Correct is "znaš špansko?". :cheers: Anyway, if you move your mouse to the green/grey light, it shows in Spanish. Now bogdymol no está en línea. Verso está invisible.


Sorry, it was Google Translator. I use Spanish as forum language, so maybe it's a bug in English version...


----------



## keokiracer

@Verso So you just logged out?


----------



## Verso

No, I'm invisible.


----------



## Penn's Woods

He bought Harry Potter's cloak when they auctioned the props.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> BBC World News' five-minute sports report (sport report, if you prefer) just showed highlights from a soccer match in Australia. Thought soccer was about as important in Australia as it is here.
> 
> Of course, they then moved on to cricket....


What is the attitude of Americans towards soccer? Is really so unpopular or with the globalization is gettin more and more popular (especially during World Cups, the USA hosted the 1994 edition)?


----------



## Verso

Globalization is mostly Americanization. :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> What is the attitude of Americans towards soccer? Is really so unpopular or with the globalization is gettin more and more popular (especially during World Cups, the USA hosted the 1994 edition)?


Well, people *play* soccer, but as a professional sport that people watch, it has competition, because we have our own sports that are long-established, rivalries between teams or universities or cities that are long-established. And it comes and goes. There was the...what was it called, the NASL?...when I was a teenager - I went to a couple matches of the New York Cosmos - but it failed. Now there's a professional league again, but.... If you hear an American talk about the "four major sports," they're baseball, (American) football, basketball and (ice) hockey. Although I believe hockey's on strike this winter. ("I believe," because I've never actually cared about hockey, so I'm not sure.)

There's some soccer, mostly European, on TV, and some Spanish-language channels carry Latin American, or at least Mexican matches. When you're watching sports on, say, ESPN, and they show scores on the bottom of the screen they'll now include soccer scores (our league, Mexico's, the Premier League, maybe Spain and Italy...) Just because I pay attention to Europe, I can name plenty of top European teams, quite a few in certain countries, even if I know nothing else about them; but I can name just two North American professional teams.

Some sports bars advertise that they've got soccer on and they'll get crowds for important matches and the World Cup, but I think a lot of that is, say, British expats gathering to watch and English team in the Champions League.

People do pay attention to the World Cup, but, that's as frequent as the Olympics....




Verso said:


> Globalization is mostly Americanization. :lol:


If anything, at least on the topic of sports and at least from my point of view, there's the opposite idea: that Americans ought to conform to the rest of the world on this. I remember lots of people in the media (and I'm talking Americans) during the '94 World Cup picking on us for not being as soccer-happy as Europeans, because it meant we weren't good citizens of the world. Which rubbed me the wrong way: I've studied enough languages, read enough European history, kept up with enough European news, gone to enough European films, and so on, that I don't need anyone telling me I'm not international enough, thank you. And we get a new round of that (although not as intense) every World Cup. I don't see anything wrong with this country having its own sports and anything wrong with Americans liking American sports. And there are plenty of public people - mostly right-wing media types but not entirely* (I'm not right-wing, at least by American standards, myself) who have the same reaction/opinion.

So for me, it just takes the form of making fun of Europeans' soccer obsession whenever the occasion arises.  I make fun of cricket too, but that's because it's silly.  When the Six Nations rugby tournament shows up on BBCAmerica, on the other hand, I'll actually watch it.


*Keith Olbermann - Americans will be familiar with the name, and right-wingers will probably start spitting... - was outspoken about this when it came up. I don't know if it was just because he was a baseball nut....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Although - troll mode on - isn't the prevalence of soccer in much of the world actually a lingering after-effect of British imperialism? - troll mode off. :runaway:


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Although - troll mode on - isn't the prevalence of soccer in much of the world actually a lingering after-effect of British imperialism? - troll mode off. :runaway:


It's probably one of the reasons of the unpopularity of that sport in America. When Brits invented it in the XIX century, UK and USA weren't exactly friends (independence gained recently) so probably Americans tried to distinguish themselves from their former colonizers, including in sports.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Well, soccer's not that big in Canada either, or in Australia or New Zealand as far as I know. I'm guessing it's less a matter of consciously distinguishing ourselves from Britain than of soccer's just not catching on here. (Why it became more popular on the Continent, let alone in Latin America, than in actual British colonies (at the time) like Canada, I have no idea....


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ FIFA World Cup of 1994 still holds the record for largest overall attendance record, by far and large, of all times, even if it was still played by only 24 national teams before they expanded to 32 from 1998 (thus adding 12 additional matches to the tournament!)


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^That surprises me!


----------



## g.spinoza

Wilhem275 said:


> So your lesson for today is: never try :lol:


I'm depressed enough.

My lesson is: try harder. Or at least kill everybody better than me.


----------



## Robosteve

I collected my new car on Thursday. I've driven about 500 km in it so far, just around Sydney to get used to the vehicle. It's pretty smooth to drive, and has a really comfortable interior.

I haven't yet tried fitting a camera to it so I can post videos of Sydney roads, but that's coming Real Soon Now. 

Some pictures of the car (the lighting is pretty bad):





































Also, the E-Tag we use to pay tolls electronically over here (I'm not sure how many other countries have something similar):


----------



## italystf

Robosteve said:


> Also, the E-Tag we use to pay tolls electronically over here (I'm not sure how many other countries have something similar):


There's in Italy too and it's called Telepass.


----------



## seem

cinxxx said:


> I only ate a pancake, it looked really good, but unfortunately didn't taste so good as it looked, and it was very hot, was microwave warmed.
> We did stop to eat in an underground place under the Danish Embassy, although the girl the girl who took orders was very bored, didn't seem to know much English, and for whatever reason didn't want to bring to one of us beer, but brought to other tables, food was nice and price was good.


It wasnt really a pancake, but Lokša, which is more similar to something like Markook or Yufka. Maybe it has Turkish orgin who knows.


----------



## bgd77

Robosteve said:


> I collected my new car on Thursday.


Very nice car! Congratulations!

Is it a VW Golf or Polo? Do you know where it was produced?


----------



## keber

italystf said:


> There's in Italy too and it's called Telepass.


Not really. This is E-Tag toll "station":









Now compare that to any Telepass toll station. 

@Robosteve: in Europe there are some countries, which use such system, mostly for trucks and buses.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> @Robosteve: in Europe there are some countries, which use such system, mostly for trucks and buses.


Germany?


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Eating roadkill's legal in Tennessee (and I have no idea about any place else - it's just that Tennessee got a lot of attention, i.e. jokes from Northerners, when they legalized it a few years ago), so maybe it's something aboiut being in the southeast of...whatever larger entity you're in?


Are there a lot of North vs South rivalries/jokes/stereothypes in the USA?


----------



## Road_UK

italystf said:


> Are there a lot of North vs South rivalries/jokes/stereothypes in the USA?


The southerners eat grits for breakfast. The northerners believe that this is the reason that they have lost the Civil War.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Personally, there are times I believe Lincoln should have just said "good riddance." But that wouldn't have helped the slaves....

That remark was a bit tongue-in-cheek. I don't like (as you may have noticed  ) stereotyping entire populations. But that region does seem to have more than its share of nuts, enough so that even non-nut politicians are afraid of them.

I better stop now. Have to do that shopping anyway. I'll ponder gift ideas while I take a bath, then go out, and hope my cold doesn't get any worse.

Later!

PS to Road_UK: grits are brilliant.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Personally, there are times I believe Lincoln should have just said "good riddance." But that wouldn't have helped the slaves....
> 
> That remark was a bit tongue-in-cheek. I don't like (as you may have noticed  ) stereotyping entire populations. But that region does seem to have more than its share of nuts, enough so that even non-nut politicians are afraid of them.
> 
> I better stop now. Have to do that shopping anyway. I'll ponder gift ideas while I take a bath, then go out, and hope my cold doesn't get any worse.
> 
> Later!
> 
> PS to Road_UK: grits are brilliant.


So it looks like there is still a lot of stigmatization towards certain US states. Does it refer only to the Southeast (former Confederacy) or also to the Southwest?
Are those states really so different from the North in terms of way of life and economy?


----------



## Orionol

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Beat me to it!






Road_UK said:


> Merry Christmas ho ho ho.
> 
> About an hour ago I got out of my van, fell over an icy patch and hurt my arm. Going tits over arse on a busy street is not very good for my street creds ;-)


:troll:


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> Santa is on his way...


When is Santa coming to Slovenia? I should buy him a programmed GPS like Garfield.

Anyway, Merry Christmas (vesel Božič) to everyone. :cheers:


----------



## hofburg

Verso became catholic  thanks! Enjoy christmas eve everybody! :cheers


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> Verso became catholic


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> When is Santa coming to Slovenia?


He's not. You've all been naughty.


----------



## hofburg

maybe Road_UK is driving Santa around Europe in his van and this is why Santa won't be coming here


----------



## Penn's Woods

Shopping's done!

We now have a Le Pain quotidien here; I'd never been in there before today. On my way out, I noticed the "Push" sign on the door was in five languages, the second of them being Dutch.

That's for our Dutch and Flemish friends, to make up for the fact that I wasn't sure how to say Merry Christmas earlier.

Now, I have a cold, and shall proceed to take a nap.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> http://maps.google.it/maps?q=latisa...=gIZrgWng5JxRFArdFOBaqQ&cbp=12,98.13,,0,11.06
> It's a "T" intersection with 3 branches and so it must have only a stop sign. The traffic in what is regarded as main road should flow freely in both directions. Traffic from the secondary branch must give priority. Have you ever see a 3 branches intersection with stop signs on 2 branches? It make no sense.





Verso said:


> Yes, actually I think there's one such intersection in Ljubljana. I don't get it.


Somewhat late reply, but I recently drove there and yes, there's definitely such an intersection in Ljubljana. It's here (the one in the middle, between _Trpinčeva ulica_ and _Chengdujska cesta_). The only priority road is the upper one (_Chengdujska cesta_), while both sides of _Trpinčeva ulica_ (left and right) have the yield signs when reaching _Chengdujska cesta_. I don't know why they did it like that, but I have a possible explanation. The upper road is the most important one (hence it has priority) and also the only one with road markings (the other two are somewhat narrow). There are many drivers coming from (or going to) the upper road and turning left or right, but there aren't many drivers going from left to right or vice versa. The second most important road is the left one (and the right one the least important). But if you turned the upper and the left road into one priority road, that would mean that someone coming from the upper road and turning left (to the right road) would have to yield to drivers coming from the right (from the left road) and perhaps they didn't want that. If you turned the upper and the right road into one priority road, you would change absolutely nothing in practice (just imagine all possible combinations, there's no difference). So I think it's better to leave it as it is than to give the impression that the right road is more important than the left one, because it isn't.

I don't know about the Italian case, but it looks similar, except that it's not in the "T" shape (it's a "Y" intersection) and there's also a backyard on the left that you can turn to.


----------



## Robosteve

Suburbanist said:


> By the way, a question: are there vehicular ferries between OZ and NZ?


Not that I know of. People usually fly between the two countries.



Suburbanist said:


> Is it common to spot cars from one country in the other?


I've never been to NZ myself, but I don't think I've ever seen a NZ car here in the 13 years I've lived here.



Suburbanist said:


> Can you use your Australian driver's license in NZ long-term and vice-versa?


I doubt it. You can't even use a licence from one AU state in another state long-term; if you move there, you're expected to get a licence in the new state.


----------



## MajKeR_

^^ What's the procedure of getting a new driving licence in case of removal to another state? May you just change your old one for new in your city/county council? Being forced to pass an exam again seems quite silly...


----------



## Robosteve

MajKeR_ said:


> ^^ What's the procedure of getting a new driving licence in case of removal to another state? May you just change your old one for new in your city/county council? Being forced to pass an exam again seems quite silly...


At least in NSW, you can exchange a licence from another state for a NSW licence with the same expiry date. Passing a test again isn't required.

It already seems a bit silly to me; if you can easily exchange one state's licence for another, why not just have a national licence?


----------



## bogdymol

Suburbanist said:


> Is it common to spot cars from one country in the other?


I've spotted in Romania one motocycle and one car registered in Australia.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

New Zealand is over 2 000 kilometers from Australia. It would be the same as seeing a Libyan car in Poland.


----------



## Road_UK

ChrisZwolle said:


> New Zealand is over 2 000 kilometers from Australia. It would be the same as seeing a Libyan car in Poland.


Actually, the shortest distance is 1491 km.


----------



## NordikNerd

Today it's 1 C raining and fog, bad weather conditions for driving.


----------



## Road_UK

Don't look that bad. At least the roads are clear.


----------



## NordikNerd

Road_UK said:


> Don't look that bad. At least the roads are clear.







Some sections were clear but at times it looked like this ^^




A couple of days before christmas it was colder about -8 C


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ That's nothing special, IMO


----------



## seem

He is from Scandinavia and never experienced something like this before. :shifty:


----------



## Verso

And there's quite a good visibility on the first picture. :lol:


----------



## Robosteve

NordikNerd said:


>


I took a drive through the Blue Mountains west of Sydney yesterday, and parts of it had visibility like this (no snow, though). Which is pretty bad, considering it's currently summer over here.


----------



## RipleyLV

Verso said:


> And there's quite a good visibility on the first picture. :lol:


I have experienced much worse conditions when whole European part of Russia was in smoke in 2010.


----------



## Verso

Robosteve said:


> I took a drive through the Blue Mountains west of Sydney yesterday, and parts of it had visibility like this (no snow, though). Which is pretty bad, considering it's currently summer over here.


I was in the Blue Mountains in the end of November (2010) and it was the same - cold and foggy. I only saw a silhouette of the Three Sisters, and even that just for a few seconds. Three weeks later there were severe floods in Australia and the Bruce Highway was impassable at places.


----------



## Wilhem275

NordikNerd said:


>


Well, in Northern Italy that's "full visibility ahead" during winter months :lol:


----------



## Chilio

There are a lot of places in Bulgaria where such visibility is considered normal during winter and happens almost at daily basis. For example on Radi's favorite Struma Autobahn's current ending near Dolna Dikanya, which is situated in a wet valley between several small mountains and hills.


----------



## NordikNerd

The Weather conditions have varied in this december

From snowstorm and -8 C to rain and +2 C. The worst days were around dec 5th, few people would even drive this day.


----------



## MattiG

NordikNerd said:


> The Weather conditions have varied in this december
> 
> From snowstorm and -8 C to rain and +2 C. The worst days were around dec 5th, few people would even drive this day.


Warm air from Sweden is just attacking the SW areas of Finland. We had -17C today morning, and it is now -1C. For Thursday, the maximum forecasted temperature is +2C and light rain is expected. That means traffic problems due to extremely slippery roads.


----------



## TrueBulgarian

Wilhem275 said:


> Well, in Northern Italy that's "full visibility ahead" during winter months :lol:


+1 As Chilio mentioned that's quite normal in Bulgaria as well. In fact, just a couple of days ago I was driving in such low visibility at night that I almost hit a truck in front of me. It's quite common in mountain regions with a lot of wetlands.


----------



## italystf

I just discovered a Google Maps fail:
http://maps.google.it/maps?hl=it&ll=45.78632,12.845378&spn=0.015592,0.042272&t=m&z=15
Until the Portogruaro bypass (SS14 var) is completed (likely late 2013 - early 2014), at the end of the already opened part there is a sign with "uscita obbligatoria" (mandatory exit). Google labelled "obbligatoria" like it was the real name of the exit.


----------



## MajKeR_

NordikNerd said:


> Today it's 1 C raining and fog, bad weather conditions for driving.
> 
> http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8363/8310628230_7e1e1f4888_c.jpg
> http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8363/8309577663_c441e60a3e_c.jpg
> http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8354/8309579647_059185f70a_c.jpg
> http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8502/8310633006_c93c945b43_c.jpg


You must be joking


----------



## Verso

Google Street View in Slovenia.


----------



## cinxxx

^^ cool find


----------



## Road_UK

Scientists have announced that a discovery of another planet identical to our own called Earth 2.0 is likely to be next year. 

I look forward to another sub forum or an few extra threads to discuss their roads.


----------



## hofburg

source?


----------



## Road_UK

mobile.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16040655


----------



## Suburbanist

I was reading some brochure on new plans for Mont St-Michel, in France. Not only have they closed the causeway to private car traffic, they will also demolish it in 2015 and substitute it for a pedestrian and horse-drawn carriage bridge with a mound on its end that will cut off the island from the continent on very high tides :bash:


----------



## Chilio

Meanwhile in Bulgaria, freshly reconstructed roads:


Backo said:


>


----------



## Road_UK

Suburbanist said:


> I was reading some brochure on new plans for Mont St-Michel, in France. Not only have they closed the causeway to private car traffic, they will also demolish it in 2015 and substitute it for a pedestrian and horse-drawn carriage bridge with a mound on its end that will cut off the island from the continent on very high tides :bash:


So? How is that your problem?


----------



## Suburbanist

Road_UK said:


> So? How is that your problem?


They are demolishing one of the oldest marine causeways in Europe for building a lesser pedestrian bridge that ends in a mound that FLOODS 6-10 times a year. Talk of going backwards there...


----------



## Wilhem275

Well, as long as they're happy... the whole business is theirs


----------



## mapman:cz

Romanian beaver from Timisoara spotted near Ventimiglia in Italy! 
http://goo.gl/maps/ng6nW


----------



## Verso

Suburbanist, why do you need a road to Mont Saint-Michel?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

To be independent of shuttle bus schedules.


----------



## Wilhem275

ChrisZwolle said:


> To be independent of horse-drawn carriage schedules.


Fixed


----------



## makaveli6

I was wondering, how many of you use Waze?


----------



## Road_UK

What's that? Sounds like a chocolate biscuit.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> So? How is that your problem?


Silly: in the same way the fact that there's not a freeway through the Spui is a problem. Seriously, what was God, or Mother Nature, or Who- or Whatever thinking, putting tides in the way of full, unfettered vehicular access to Mont Saint-Michel (and then making it so steep)?




ChrisZwolle said:


> To be independent of shuttle bus schedules.


Is he dependent on shuttle bus schedules now?




makaveli6 said:


> I was wondering, how many of you use Waze?


Whazzat?


----------



## bogdymol




----------



## NordikNerd

Snow makes it difficult for car owners these days.


----------



## makaveli6

Penn's Woods said:


> Whazzat?


http://www.waze.com/


----------



## D.O.W.N

NordikNerd said:


> Snow makes it difficult for car owners these days.


Don´t forget to mention slovak police :lol:










Maybe they were just trying to catch road hogs undercover :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Hey, my active light is gray, but I'm here?! :-O

Can Verso explain?

(I'm sure it'll turn green once I post this.)


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> To be independent of shuttle bus schedules.


Aren't they frequent? Mont Saint-Michel seems a bit small to me for all those cars (although I haven't been there).



Penn's Woods said:


> Hey, my active light is gray, but I'm here?! :-O
> 
> Can Verso explain?


Sorry, that's a case for The X-Files.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> Mont Saint-Michel seems a bit small to me for all those cars (although I haven't been there).


There used to be a parking area on the causeway just outside Mont Saint-Michel. Now it's a couple of kilometers inland, and you need a shuttle bus to reach it.

The last 2 -3 kilometers on the causeway was some of the most outstanding drives in France. Real one-of-a-kind. Too bad it ain't possible anymore.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> There used to be a parking area on the causeway just outside Mont Saint-Michel. Now it's a couple of kilometers inland, and you need a shuttle bus to reach it.
> 
> The last 2 -3 kilometers on the causeway was some of the most outstanding drives in France. Real one-of-a-kind. Too bad it ain't possible anymore.


Are there other roads (in Europe, in the world,...) that are regularily submerged with high tide (occasional floods doesn't count)?


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Google Street View in Slovenia.


Interesting extraterritorial road, similar to the Osimo road, I wasn't aware of it.

Street View in Slovenia is not something unheard of, click here 

Here you can see people walking in the street of Nova Gorica


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> Are there other roads (in Europe, in the world,...) that are regularily submerged with high tide (occasional floods doesn't count)?


At least the causeway to the island of Mandø on the west coast of Denmark.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Interesting. It's not paved though, if you get stuck you've got a major problem.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Interesting. It's not paved though, if you get stuck you've got a major problem.


Here a pic:









BTW, is true that all Frisian Islands (in NL, D and DK) can be reached by foot during low tide (although is dangerous and you must know tides' timetable)?


----------



## Wilhem275

If you're tall enough :troll:


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Interesting extraterritorial road, similar to the Osimo road, I wasn't aware of it.


Me neither and I'm not sure Slovenia even exercises its sovereignty over it. There's a border crossing only when you reach a road to the rest of Slovenia, there are no signs for Slovenia at the actual border (just a sign for the Croatian municipality of Lanišće) and there's a Croatian sign for the Croatian road 5011 in Slovenia.


----------



## bogdymol

Overtaking in Romania :bash:






http://www.trafictube.ro/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/accident1.png

http://www.trafictube.ro/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/accident.png


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Interesting. It's not paved though, if you get stuck you've got a major problem.


It is made of coarse gravel. You will not get stuck.


----------



## Wilhem275

bogdymol said:


> Overtaking in Romania


In Russia it would have been a full head-on. YouTube proves it.


----------



## Suburbanist

italystf said:


> BTW, is true that all Frisian Islands (in NL, D and DK) can be reached by foot during low tide (although is dangerous and you must know tides' timetable)?


Only on very low tides. I'm not sure you can ever walk to Texel though.


----------



## keokiracer

You can never walk to Texel, unless you're about 10 meters tall or so.


----------



## Chilio

MattiG said:


> It is made of coarse gravel. You will not get stuck.


Unless you are with a very very heavy machine, like 18-wheeler or something. Sometimes such gravel is used specially for this purpose.


----------



## Fatfield

italystf said:


> Are there other roads (in Europe, in the world,...) that are regularily submerged with high tide (occasional floods doesn't count)?


There's one in the NE of England to get to Holy island.

http://goo.gl/maps/A3f0M

https://ssl.panoramio.com/photo/39059512


----------



## Attus

makaveli6 said:


> I was wondering, how many of you use Waze?


I do. It has some issues but basically I like it.


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Timişoara 

Later Edit:

Fresh one from here, how to reserve parking space

pic upload


----------



## Road_UK

The first ab-und anreise day in Mayrhofen today. It's hustling and bustling with tourists from all over the world. Snow is great to ski on, plenty of beer as always and I'm not going anywhere until April. Doing my winter season of taxi work, lots of airport runs to Innsbruck, Munich and Salzburg, two days per week skiing and some serious drinking in between. Lots of plates from all over Europe as far as Russia (lots of Russians here among the Dutch, Germans, Brits and everybody else) so who needs to travel the world when the world is already here. 

Let the beer and schnapps flow!


----------



## keber

Road_UK said:


> Let the beer and schnapps flow!


Don't tell me ...
Just one another party to go and then I'll stop for some time. It's just damn too expensive. 50€ one day and another 40 second day and after few days again ...:drunk:


----------



## D.O.W.N

keber said:


> Don't tell me ...
> Just one another party to go and then I'll stop for some time. It's just damn too expensive. 50&#128; one day and another 40 second day and after few days again ...:drunk:


That is social life


----------



## hofburg

sheldonsquote.com


----------



## bogdymol

Have you guys seen this?






It's a Tupolev airplane that crashed in Russia yesterday.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=98733794#post98733794


----------



## Wilhem275

Yep. Received smokin' hot from my Russian crash provider, early this morning.


----------



## keokiracer

Which one of 5?

I've seen this video 5 times in my sub box right now


----------



## Wilhem275

My fav one is mxurkb or something like that


----------



## keokiracer

Ah yes, he makes awesome compilation 
The uploaders in my subbox: ciro1594cc, carcrashes2012, mxurkb, airboyd, CarCraschCompilation


----------



## RipleyLV

Car in the front got hit with a tyre, лол

Impressive footage though.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Um, are you guys all LOL-ing about footage of a plane crash in which people died?


----------



## keokiracer

Penn's Woods said:


> Um, are you guys all LOL-ing about footage of a plane crash in which people died?


Who is LOL-ing then?


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> Um, are you guys all LOL-ing about footage of a plane crash in which people died?


geez chill out! nobody's happy because people died there.


----------



## Wilhem275

No, we're actually LOL-ing about the fact that Russian crash videos have reached such popularity that we all have a list of recognized providers of that genre (in which _almost _no one dies).
Russian crash videos : YouTube = Porn : Internet 


The plane crash video made me reflect about how fast shit happens. You are peacefully driving on an empty motorway and eight seconds later you're asking yourself what the hell just happened, after going through a plane crash which made your car crash too. Probably you'll still be asking, thirty years later or so...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Wilhem275 said:


> No, we're actually LOL-ing about the fact that Russian crash videos have reached such popularity that we all have a list of recognized providers of that genre (in which _almost _no one dies).
> Russian crash videos : YouTube = Porn : Internet


Ah. Somehow I'd missed out on that particular cultural phenomenon.

Carry on....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't get all the fuzz about crash videos. It's much less fun when you're in one yourself.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't get all the fuzz about crash videos. It's much less fun when you're in one yourself.


That's exactly the fuzz. The fact that it's not you crashing.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I fail to see how any adult can watch hundreds of such videos...


----------



## keokiracer

Yeah, how could you guys do that? :angel:


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I fail to see how any adult can watch hundreds of such videos...


I fail to see how any adult can watch Harry Potter, but apparently...


----------



## bogdymol

keokiracer said:


> :angel:


That inocent look...


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't get all the fuzz about crash videos. It's much less fun when you're in one yourself.


well accidents are like fat girls. it's not pretty to see, but you cannot just pass by without staring.


----------



## keokiracer

bogdymol said:


> That inocent look...


How about this?


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> I fail to see how any adult can watch Harry Potter, but apparently...


You think it's strange an andult who watch Harry Potter? I know people in their twenties that declined invitations to go out on Saturday night because they're too busy with their anime, manga and computer games. 


x-type said:


> well accidents are like fat girls. it's not pretty to see, but you cannot just pass by without staring.


:lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> You think it's strange an andult who watch Harry Potter? I know people in their twenties that declined invitations to go out on Saturday night because they're too busy with their anime, manga and computer games.


Ok, they're nerds, I can dig that. But my absolutely normal and lovely girlfriend (in her mid-thirties) watches Harry Potter. This is something I cannot understand.


----------



## Chilio

People watch crash videos as well as they watch the news on TV. They want to see things that happen in real life but hopefully wont happen to them. It's the psychology moment "bad things happen all the time so I should be happy they don't happen to me!". And also with crash videos and drivers watching them - it's a way to know of what to be aware of, when you are on the road. We learn of others' mistakes.


----------



## xrtn2

Happy new year!!!

I hope for new highways everywhere in the world in 2013.

:dance:


----------



## Attus

Local fireworks were just before the house I'm living in 
Happy new year for you all


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In the Netherlands it's very common for residents to buy fireworks. I have a 270 degree display over the city and there is basically fireworks everywhere for like 50 minutes. 

Apparently large-scale private fireworks is not common in every country.


----------



## keokiracer

Happy new year everyone!!

Some footage from inside at family in Made


----------



## xrtn2

fireworks for + 1hour here.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Greetings from the past, those of you in 2013. 

As an (unplanned) parting tribute to 2012, I have Melancholia on TV....

EDIT: license-plate nerds may be interested to note that this film (actually filmed in Sweden) has Pennsylvania plates on the cars. On the front of the cars too. :bash:


----------



## hofburg

happy new year highways forumers! :cheers:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I heard about 3 fireworks going off.


----------



## Verso

Happy New Year, everyone! :cheers2:


----------



## x-type

all the best wishes and many kilometers to all forumers in 2013 from me!!!


----------



## RipleyLV

Laimīgu Jauno Gadu, as we say in Latvian! :cheers:


----------



## makaveli6

RipleyLV said:


> Laimīgu Jauno Gadu, as we say in Latvian! :cheers:


:drunk:


----------



## CNGL

Feliz año nuevo, as we say in Spanish! :cheers:


----------



## Pansori

Good morning the first day of 2013. Be all happy this year.


----------



## cinxxx

Happy New Year! Guten Rutsch! La mulţi ani! :cheers:


----------



## bogdymol

*La Mulți Ani !* :cheers:


----------



## italystf

Felice anno nuovo!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

bogdymol said:


> *La Mulți Ani !* :cheers:


Isn't that a birthday wish?


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Isn't that a birthday wish?


Many Romance languages have common salutations for birthdays and new year (or other milestones where the meaning is "have many others like this").


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Many Romance languages have common salutations for birthdays and new year (or other milestones where the meaning is "have many others like this").


Some Italians say "cento di questi giorni" (one hundred of those days) when is someone's birthday.


----------



## bogdymol

cinxxx said:


> Human nature


Indeed.










Recognize the picture?


----------



## cinxxx

Yep


----------



## keokiracer

My neighbours are from Pula, Croatia :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ Guys, please, this is middle-school yard level now.


----------



## keokiracer

You do realize that 'm still in middle school?


----------



## keokiracer

Just a quick question: what's the English word for taking a certain lane at an intersection. For instance, if you want to turn left you take the left turning lane. How do you call that in English? In Dutch it's 'voorsorteren' if it's any help.


----------



## Suburbanist

keokiracer said:


> You do realize that 'm still in middle school?


Aren't you in high school already? But I realize _hogeschool_ in Dutch means superior education in English.

Unless you were like 12 or 13 you'd not be on middle school 



keokiracer said:


> Just a quick question: what's the English word for taking a certain lane at an intersection. For instance, if you want to turn left you take the left turning lane. How do you call that in English? In Dutch it's 'voorsorteren' if it's any help.


"to bear"...

For instance: bear left to enter highway X7 500m ahead.

But it is not a perfect translation. To bear is used in this case as a gentler (wider) form of "to turn".


----------



## hofburg

sorteren is pretty much in every language


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Felice anno nuovo!


You could hear plenty of that here yesterday.  Is there some heavy advertising of Ljubljana or Slovenia in Italy? There seems to be half Italy here; I feel like living in Nova Gorica.


----------



## keokiracer

hofburg said:


> sorteren is pretty much in every language


But in English it sounds so weird to sort. 
_You need to sort better so others can pass you._
That just sounds weird.


----------



## hofburg

yes, i just ment the word, but it has slightly different meanings in other languages. Sortirati in slovene you can use with salad, to sort salad. 



Verso said:


> You could hear plenty of that here yesterday.  Is there some heavy advertising of Ljubljana or Slovenia in Italy? There seems to be half Italy here; I feel like living in Nova Gorica.


it just happens to be the cheapest bordering country with no alps in between


----------



## Verso

^^ Still, the number of Italian tourists in Ljubljana isn't normal.  Especially compared to other foreigners, particularly Austrians and Germans who are virtually inexistent. :s


----------



## x-type

How do you in slovenian say for "bearing" (regarding the lanes)? I am now thinking about our Croatian word for that (prestrojiti) which has unique meaning, you cannot use for any other meanings except taking the proper lane in traffic.


----------



## bogdymol

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ Guys, please, this is middle-school yard level now.


I posted that picture which in fact it's from *cinxxx* photo gallery. So it's his picture, not mine


----------



## Chilio

x-type said:


> How do you in slovenian say for "bearing" (regarding the lanes)? I am now thinking about our Croatian word for that (prestrojiti) which has unique meaning, you cannot use for any other meanings except taking the proper lane in traffic.


Same case in Bulgarian - "престроявам се" (prestroyavam se)...


----------



## hofburg

x-type said:


> How do you in slovenian say for "bearing" (regarding the lanes)? I am now thinking about our Croatian word for that (prestrojiti) which has unique meaning, you cannot use for any other meanings except taking the proper lane in traffic.


razvrstiti se


----------



## Penn's Woods

keokiracer said:


> Just a quick question: what's the English word for taking a certain lane at an intersection. For instance, if you want to turn left you take the left turning lane. How do you call that in English? In Dutch it's 'voorsorteren' if it's any help.


The "voor-" in "voorsorteren" meaning "in advance"? Can't think of a single word that works; if I understand you right it's like people sorting themselves out, but that may not be the way everyone would say it.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> Aren't you in high school already? But I realize _hogeschool_ in Dutch means superior education in English.
> 
> Unless you were like 12 or 13 you'd not be on middle school
> 
> 
> 
> "to bear"...
> 
> For instance: bear left to enter highway X7 500m ahead.
> 
> But it is not a perfect translation. To bear is used in this case as a gentler (wider) form of "to turn".


Or "keep" left? As in, if you're not in the left lane, get there; and if you're already in the left lane, stay there; because that's where you'll need to be?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think he means situations at traffic lights, not interchanges or lane splits on freeways. This Dutch word "voorsorteren" does not have a similar equivalent in English. I think queueing comes closest.


----------



## mapman:cz

Something as "please take the appropriate lane" comes to my mind. German has a verb "einordnen" for this, if I understand the meritum of this conversation well  BTW we use "zařadit se - do správného pruhu"


----------



## mapman:cz

Guys from Balkans or Alpe-Adria, one question in some way with regard to directional signage, how do you call Vienna in your languages? Some refer to it as Dunaj some as Beč, it's interesting how many variants od name this city has. 

I'm just amazed by all these expresions, so far I've found these particular european expressions - Beč (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, older Bulgarian), Beç (older Turkish), Bech or Vidnya (Romani), Bécs (Hungarian), Dunaj (Slovene), Fienna (Welsh), Vedunia (Celtic), Vena - Вена (Russian), Vídeň (Czech), Viden' - Вiдень (Ukrainian), Viedeň (Slovak), Viena - Виена (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian), Viena (Catalan, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish), Viéni - Βιέννη (Greek), Vienna (Italian), Vienne (French), Vieno (Esperanto), Viin (Estonian), Vin - װין (Yiddish), Vín (Irish, Icelandic), Vina - וינה (Hebrew), Vínarborg (Icelandic variant), Vindobona (Latin), Vīne (Latvian), Viyana (Turkish), Vjenë (Albanian), Vjenna (Maltese), Wean (local Bavarian dialect), Wenen (Dutch), Wiedeń (Polish), Wien (Danish, Finnish, German, Swedish, Norwegian)

Most can be summed up into two groups - 1) B group (Beč) 2) Ve or Vie (We/Wie) group but this "Dunaj" thing - where does that come from? )


----------



## xrtn2

mapman:cz said:


> Something as "please take the appropriate lane" comes to my mind. German has a verb "einordnen" for this, if I understand the meritum of this conversation well  BTW we use "zařadit se - do správného pruhu"


English is a rebelled language against its family.:lol:


----------



## italystf

Most large cities has a lot of exonimus in several foreign languages. BTW, Dunaj, seem an exonimus for the Danube river, rather for the Austrian capital.
I didn't know we're the only non-English-speaker country who uses "Vienna".


----------



## xrtn2

Germany its also interesting


1. From Old High German diutisc or similar:a

Danish: Tyskland
Dutch: Duitsland
Faroese: Týskland
Frisian: Dútslân
German: Deutschland
Icelandic: Þýskaland
Nahuatl: Teutōtitlan
Norwegian: Tyskland
Northern Sotho: Tôitšhi
Swedish: Tyskland
Vietnamese: Đức

2. From the Latin Germania and Greek Γερμανία:

Albanian: Gjermania
Aramaic:ܓܪܡܢ (Jerman)
Armenian: Գերմանիա (Germania)
Bengali:জার্মানি (Jarmani)
Bulgarian: Германия (Germaniya)
English: Germany
Esperanto: Germanujo (also Germanio)
Georgian: გერმანია (Germania)
Greek: Γερμανία (Germanía)

3. From the name of the Alamanni tribe:

Arabic: ألمانيا ('Almānyā)
Asturian: Alemaña
Azerbaijani: Almaniya
Basque: Alemania
Breton: Alamagn
Catalan: Alemanya
Cornish: Almayn
Filipino: Alemanya
French: Allemagne
Galician: Alemaña
Kazakh: Алмания (Almanïya)
Kurdish: Elmaniya
Occitan: Alemanha
Piedmontese: Almagna
Ojibwe ᐋᓂᒫ (Aanimaa)
Persian: آلمان ('Ālmān)
Portuguese: Alemanha
Spanish: Alemania
Tatar: Almania Алмания
Turkish: Almanya
Welsh: Yr Almaen

4. From the name of the Saxon tribe:

Estonian: Saksamaa
Finnish: Saksa
Livonian: Saksāmō
Võro: S'aksamaa
Romani: Ssassitko temm


----------



## mapman:cz

5. ^^ And there's also big group for Slavic languages - from the word "němý" - that does mean "mute", because they were speaking a incomprehensible language:
Německo, Nemecko, Njemačka, Niemcy etc...


----------



## g.spinoza

In Italian there's this odd thing - country is Germania but the adjective is "tedesco", coming from "diutisc" root.


----------



## Halfpipesaur

del


----------



## keber

italystf said:


> Most large cities has a lot of exonimus in several foreign languages.


Case of Wien/Vienna is probably more pronounced, because for centuries it was a capital city for many European nations (and languages). No other city in Europe was a "home" to so many nations.


----------



## FMK94

In Russian Germany translated as Germaniia-Германия, while Germans will be Nemcy-Немцы.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> Case of Wien/Vienna is probably more pronounced, because for centuries it was a capital city for many European nations (and languages). No other city in Europe was a "home" to so many nations.


Rome until 1600 years ago was


----------



## Penn's Woods

mapman:cz said:


> Guys from Balkans or Alpe-Adria, one question regarded in some way to directional signage, how do you call Vienna in your languages? Some refer to it as Dunaj some as Beč, it's interesting how many variants od name this city has.
> 
> I'm just amazed by all these expresions, so far I've found these particular european expressions - Beč (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, older Bulgarian), Beç (older Turkish), Bech or Vidnya (Romani), Bécs (Hungarian), Dunaj (Slovene), Fienna (Welsh), Vedunia (Celtic), Vena - Вена (Russian), Vídeň (Czech), Viden' - Вiдень (Ukrainian), Viedeň (Slovak), Viena - Виена (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian), Viena (Catalan, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish), Viéni - Βιέννη (Greek), Vienna (Italian), Vienne (French), Vieno (Esperanto), Viin (Estonian), Vin - װין (Yiddish), Vín (Irish, Icelandic), Vina - וינה (Hebrew), Vínarborg (Icelandic variant), Vindobona (Latin), Vīne (Latvian), Viyana (Turkish), Vjenë (Albanian), Vjenna (Maltese), Wean (local Bavarian dialect), Wenen (Dutch), Wiedeń (Polish), Wien (Danish, Finnish, German, Swedish, Norwegian)
> 
> Most can be summed into two groups - 1) B group (Beč) 2) Ve or Vie (We/Wie) group but this "Dunaj" thing - where does that come from? )


"Dunaj" wouldn't be the river?


----------



## Penn's Woods

mapman:cz said:


> 5. ^^ And there's also big group for Slavic languages - from the word "němý" - that does mean "mute", because they were speaking a incomprehensible language:
> Německo, Nemecko, Njemačka, Niemcy etc...


"Welsh" in English and "Waals" (Walloon) in Dutch both supposedly come from the same root that originally meant "people who speak incomprehensibly."


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> "Welsh" in English and "Waals" (Walloon) in Dutch both supposedly come from the same root that originally meant "people who speak incomprehensibly."


As in Greek and Latin words for "barbarians".


----------



## mapman:cz

Penn's Woods said:


> "Dunaj" wouldn't be the river?


In Czech and Slovak yes, but for Slovenes it's also the city ...


----------



## hofburg

idk, celtic vedunia comes the closest


----------



## x-type

some weird countries' names: Włochy, Węgry, Rakousko, Pays Bas, Venemaa/Venäjä (Valgevene/Valko-Venäjä), Viro, Leedu, Iirimaa. and, of course, Suomi and Soome - which are not similar at any other languages to original :troll:

of course, there are contries like Montenegro or Ivory Coast, which are weird when are not translated into foreign languages


----------



## kreden

mapman:cz said:


> In Czech and Slovak yes, but for Slovenes it's *only* the city ...


Danube in Slovenian is Donava, not Dunaj.


----------



## Attus

For Germany Hungarian use the slav version as well: "Németország", where "ország" means "land", so the nationality is "német". My own family name is Németh ("th" is ancient spelling, "h" is not pronounced) as well, and, funny, currently I live in Germany, so I'm really a Németh, a German 

Btw. Hungary (I mean the old, greater Hungary) was full of people of several ethnicities so "ethnical" family names are very common in Hungarian people. Magyar (Hungarian), Németh (German), Tóth (Slovak), Horváth (Croatian), Rác or Rácz (Serbian), Oláh (Romanian) are all very common names.


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> some weird countries' names: Włochy, Węgry, Rakousko, Pays Bas, Venemaa/Venäjä (Valgevene/Valko-Venäjä), Viro, Leedu, Iirimaa. and, of course, Suomi and Soome - which are not similar at any other languages to original :troll:
> of course, there are contries like Montenegro or Ivory Coast, which are weird when are not translated into foreign languages


Wegry, pronounced, is very similar like "Vengry", which is quite the same root as Hungary (e.g. Russian name for the country, "Vengrija" is almost the same. The root for all of them is the Latin "Hungaria". 
The Czech Rakousko is probably originated from ancient Ostarrichi, dropping the first part of the name (the suffix -sko is general in Czech language for countries). 
Pays Bas in French language means "Lower Lands", the same as "Niederlanden" or "Nederlanden". It's a translating of the original name.


----------



## cinxxx

In Romanian we call the country "Germania", and the people "germani", but we also call the people "neamţ/nemţi" where "ţ" is like zz in pizza. Also we can refer to the country as Nemţia.


----------



## Road_UK

What a load of crap! What about the Middle East? Africa? Nazi Germany? Most Americans live ordinary lifes.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Road_UK said:


> What a load of crap! What about the Middle East? Africa? Nazi Germany? Most Americans live ordinary lifes.


An I said they didn't? maybe re-read what I wrote.


----------



## Road_UK

joshsam said:


> An I said they didn't? maybe re-read what I wrote.


I know what you wrote. And I'm surprised that nobody takes any notice of the way they keep killing each other in the Middle East or parts of Africa, but comment on America instead, where most people live peaceful life's with jobs and families and where they worry if they can keep up with mortgage payments. Just like in Europe.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Also American foreign policies after 9/11 but also before (Cold War, Vietnam, Iraq,...) have been seen in Europe as a proof that "America is violent". However, those are only decisions of a central goverment and shouldn't made the majority of citizens guilty for that (I'm sure that most American citizens are against the war and the exploitation of poor countries committed by US companies).


I'm not so sure about that.


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> I know what you wrote. And I'm surprised that nobody takes any notice of the way they keep killing each other in the Middle East or parts of Africa, but comment on America instead, where most people live peaceful life's with jobs and families and where they worry if they can keep up with mortgage payments. Just like in Europe.


Because if people kill each other or are tortured/imprisoned in Rwanda, Congo or North Korea Western media don't give a single f... while when those things happens in oil-loaded countries with NATO involved they talk 24-7. And off course the average uninformed citizen has no clue of who is the real evil.

Apart from that, the USA became a really free and democratic country much later than most Western Europe countries. Until the 60s blacks and whites were segregated in some states. Many western politicians were denied the entry visa because of their leftist ideals. Homosexualiy and even bl...ob among eterosexual couples was illegal in some states until not so long ago. However Obama is now really very estimated in the world because of his propension to peace and welfare state. This will surely decrease anti-american feelings in Europe, that were higher during G.W.Bush.


----------



## piotr71

Let me try to change the subject. I suppose that it could be interesting for either Flemish people or an American called Micheal. Hopefully for both.

I do not think you may remember when I mentioned about (2 or 3 years ago) a Germanic minority, who settled in Southern Poland in XIII century. They live in a small town called Wilamowice and still use a language, which is related to Dutch, Saxon, Frisian and some Low German dialects. 

When I was very young and used to go to Wilamowice with my parents to buy a bread, only of its kind, made by Vilamovians, I could hear them speaking in unknown to me language. Now, Vilamovian - as it is called in English - is almost extinct. Some sources say that only 70 people use it on every day basis, other say that there is still about 500 speakers, what I find hard to believe. 

Anyway, why am I writing about this language again? Vilamovian was heard all over the world thanks to the chap on the picture below:










How come? Vilamovian imitates Old-Flemish language in Polish production "Młyn i Krzyż" (The Mill and The Cross). The film has been bought by 55 countries and a couple of very well known actors play in. 
It is inspired by Pieter Bruegel the Elder's art "Stations of the cross".

Want to hear some 4 minutes of Vilamovian?
Here you are:


----------



## italystf

There are two villages in the mountains of Friuli region, Italy, where unique languages are spoken by few hundreds of people:
- Sauris: they speak a German dialect related to the Tyroler but with Latin elements.
- Resia: they speak a Slovenian dialect that isn't spoken anywhere else.

There are Albanian and Greek speakers in many areas of Southern Italy, Croats in Molise and Catalans in Alghero (Sardinia). Not due recent immigrations, they're there for centuries.

I think linguistic islands are pretty common in Europe.


----------



## piotr71

I did not say they are (linguistic islands) uncommon or this one is unusual for European scale. However, Vilamovian is unique for Poland and might be interesting for Dutch speaking nations.


----------



## Spookvlieger

I can understand some words he says but damn that's bad articulation! Seems more related to German than Dutch though.


----------



## Surel

Road_UK said:


> I know what you wrote. And I'm surprised that nobody takes any notice of the way they keep killing each other in the Middle East or parts of Africa, but comment on America instead, where most people live peaceful life's with jobs and families and where they worry if they can keep up with mortgage payments. Just like in Europe.


Maybe thats the point. Maybe they should worry more about what their government is doing as you should worry more about what your government is doing.

I would not go into Middle East an US comparisons and discussions... certainly not if I wanted to make a point about how the Americans are unrightfully bashed.


----------



## Verso

piotr71 said:


> [MEDIA=youtube]ql2E9bOpw2E[/MEDIA]


It would be more interesting, if he weren't mumbling.


----------



## Suburbanist

It is normal that some languages go extinct over time. There is actually an exciting (if very small) science field using quantitative models to evaluate and study things like language die-out, or other cultural trends that cannot be easily changed by imposition or decree or force (such as declared religion).

Language is a good proxy for studying these phenomena on ancient times (pre-mass and long distance communication a.k.a radio/telegraph).

In a nutshell, small languages not transmitted through formal education and not used by some sort of government/military/religious/warlord bureaucracy suffer from problems of scale. Statisticians are going deep into earlier descriptive studies to test some models. 

Languages spoken by a handful of people, let alone just a few hundred, will naturally die out as those languages don't serve their purpose: allowing widespread communication with people you need to communicate with for your regular life affairs. It might have worked in the past with no TV, newspapers, extremely localized economies and population that hardly if ever traveled (on average). Not the case today.

===================

As for the overall bitterness of the H&A forum: for some reason, there are a handful of forummers getting more and more aggressive over last few months. Apparently disagreeing about some signage or traffic law has become reason to have your sanity, age, nationality, moral character called into question. Too much paranoia for no reason, and has been making this sub-section of SSC more annoying over time, you never know if writing the "wrong" opinion in the eye of someone else will render the other forumer attacking your person.


----------



## Road_UK

Surel said:


> Maybe thats the point. Maybe they should worry more about what their government is doing as you should worry more about what your government is doing.
> 
> I would not go into Middle East an US comparisons and discussions... certainly not if I wanted to make a point about how the Americans are unrightfully bashed.


I don't have a government. I follow Dutch, British, USA and French politics. I have a Dutch passport, but have lived in 4 different countries. Am semi English and now live in Austria . I am a wanderer.


----------



## piotr71

Verso said:


> It would be more interesting, if he weren't mumbling.


That's true. However, that young gentleman is pretty interesting himself. He decided to save the language of his predecessors, learnt it to the high proficiency level, teaches other teenagers, convinced a film director to use it in his production and appears from time to time in Polish media as well as wins some science awards. He's just 18 or 19... 



Suburbanist said:


> (..)
> 
> As for the overall bitterness of the H&A forum: for some reason, there are a handful of forummers getting more and more aggressive over last few months. Apparently disagreeing about some signage or traffic law has become reason to have your sanity, age, nationality, moral character called into question. Too much paranoia for no reason, and has been making this sub-section of SSC more annoying over time, you never know if writing the "wrong" opinion in the eye of someone else will render the other forumer attacking your person.


I do agree indeed!


----------



## Road_UK

Suburbanist said:


> It is normal that some languages go extinct over time. There is actually an exciting (if very small) science field using quantitative models to evaluate and study things like language die-out, or other cultural trends that cannot be easily changed by imposition or decree or force (such as declared religion).
> 
> Language is a good proxy for studying these phenomena on ancient times (pre-mass and long distance communication a.k.a radio/telegraph).
> 
> In a nutshell, small languages not transmitted through formal education and not used by some sort of government/military/religious/warlord bureaucracy suffer from problems of scale. Statisticians are going deep into earlier descriptive studies to test some models.
> 
> Languages spoken by a handful of people, let alone just a few hundred, will naturally die out as those languages don't serve their purpose: allowing widespread communication with people you need to communicate with for your regular life affairs. It might have worked in the past with no TV, newspapers, extremely localized economies and population that hardly if ever traveled (on average). Not the case today.
> 
> ===================
> 
> As for the overall bitterness of the H&A forum: for some reason, there are a handful of forummers getting more and more aggressive over last few months. Apparently disagreeing about some signage or traffic law has become reason to have your sanity, age, nationality, moral character called into question. Too much paranoia for no reason, and has been making this sub-section of SSC more annoying over time, you never know if writing the "wrong" opinion in the eye of someone else will render the other forumer attacking your person.


Not me, I've always stayed the same. But I feel that this subforum is slowly dying due to excessive moderation. Interesting debates are swiftly being deleted in order to protect off topic conversations and make room for photography of every junction of motorways that nobody with a right mind would bother to look at.


----------



## piotr71

Well, it sounds like the mind of mine is not right


----------



## Road_UK

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy a lot of these travel reports, and I've enjoyed your UK photo reports in bad weather. Even though I am on these motorways myself every day. And I take photos myself, but not of every road sign at every single junction. It's too much, pointless and totally takes away the fun of driving.


----------



## D.O.W.N

Slovak Google Street View will never stop entertaining us :lol:










It´s "The roadside rest area" thread anyway :lol:


----------



## D.O.W.N

Slovak Google Street View will never stop entertaining us :lol:










It´s "The roadside rest area" thread anyway :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

Is taking note and registering tag/plates legal or not (in your jurisdiction)?

On this day and age of people tracking things like Eurobill notes, airplane registration codes, train serial numbers, ship names etc., I think maybe someone would, if already haven't, set up a website where you can register the registration tags of cars you come across, just for the fun.

Should be fairly easy with a smartphone and an app: you take like 20 pics or cars parked in your street, upload them, some OCR (basic stuff at this level nowadays) match them with other trackers and then you suddenly know where certain car was parked


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are some more favelas around Lisboa.

For instance here


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> oh, you have discovered La Cañada Real  one of the most famous slams of EU


I found randomly this old thread:
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1080361

There's also this one
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1538310

I wonder why Google cars didn't covered its entire lenght.


----------



## piotr71

Interesting driver-free bus caught by myself in Rotterdam's suburbs.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

ChrisZwolle said:


> There are some more favelas around Lisboa.
> 
> For instance here


Indeed, but they're not called favelas in Portgual.

There used to be one behind my school in Figueira but it's mostly gone


----------



## Suburbanist

piotr71 said:


> Interesting driver-free bus caught by myself in Rotterdam's suburbs.


Is this near the Ahoy?


----------



## piotr71

It's near University in brainpark. 

Here:


----------



## seem

Suburbanist said:


> Is this near the Ahoy?


Does "ahoy" have any meaning in Dutch?


----------



## keokiracer

Apart from the 'pirate-meaning', no.


----------



## Suburbanist

seem said:


> Does "ahoy" have any meaning in Dutch?


It's the name of an event's complex/arena in Rotterdam.


----------



## Verso

seem said:


> Does "ahoy" have any meaning in Dutch?


Yes, it means "hi" among Dutch Slovaks.


----------



## x-type

keokiracer said:


> Apart from the 'pirate-meaning', no.


pirate?


----------



## Surel

Since you say "Hi" as "Hoi" in Dutch, most people would understand if you said "Ahoj" in Czech or Slovak as a greetings, although they would find it strange, and would think of you that you must really really love sailing.

Ahoy is a shipman greetings. Its funny that this is also the typical greetings in the CZ and SK, two countries without any sea.


----------



## keokiracer

x-type said:


> pirate?


You know, from the pirate movies? _Ahoy maties_ etc. Can't find an example quickly...


----------



## italystf




----------



## x-type

i am sure that police didn't understand it


----------



## italystf

Is this for real?








Hokkaido, Japan


----------



## Orionol

^^
In Japan, anything weird is real.


----------



## x-type

i was always wondering is this for real. i have never been to Paris, but i must visit it to make myself believe.






somebody can confirm it?


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile in China (or whatever other country with blue front plates)


----------



## Wilhem275

italystf said:


> Meanwhile in China (or *whatever other country with blue front plates*)


Must be the Netherlands :troll:


----------



## Wilhem275

Yep, that was the bit I was missing, thanks


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> Not to be rude, but am I the only one who doesn't laugh at all with 99% of doctored memes around on the Internet?


I don't find most of them funny either. I like spontaneous fun and jokes, for example among colleagues. That's also why I'm not a real fan of pre-fabricated cabaret or stand-up comedy.


----------



## Verso

Wilhem275 said:


> Yep, that was the bit I was missing, thanks


Btw, plural is usually "the Dutch" (masculine and feminine). You can also say Dutchies.


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> Btw, plural is usually "the Dutch" (masculine and feminine). You can also say Dutchies.


Or cloggies as the Brits call them. Käsekopfen as they are known to Germans and Austrians.


----------



## cinxxx

:lol:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_ethnic_slurs_by_ethnicity/old

Kaaskop meaning "cheese-head" (Käsekopf in German); is common in Flanders (also Kees, as the Dutch first name) and Germany, referring both to the cheese produced in the Netherlands, as well as an insinuation that they are a stubborn and inconsiderate people.¨


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Suburbanist said:


> Not to be rude, but am I the only one who doesn't laugh at all with 99% of doctored memes around on the Internet?


Some are funny, but I rarely literally laugh at them. Sometimes I do though.

Interesting that Chris doesn't like stand up comedy.


----------



## Road_UK

DanielFigFoz said:


> Some are funny, but I rarely literally laugh at them. Sometimes I do though.
> 
> Interesting that Chris doesn't like stand up comedy.


I bet he had a giggle or two at Hans Teeuwen.


----------



## Suburbanist

It is not that memes per se are all awful. Some are even funny - but only the fist time you see them. Same goes for animated gifs. It's not so cool when you see them for the n-th time. It is like hearing a given joke over and over.


----------



## Road_UK

Suburbanist said:


> It is not that memes per se are all awful. Some are even funny - but only the fist time you see them. Same goes for animated gifs. It's not so cool when you see them for the n-th time. It is like hearing a given joke over and over.


I see lots and lots in my Facebook news feed. I think some of them are really clever. Especially political satire.


----------



## italystf

I think there is noting wrong to post jokes here, except those that are offensive or that can be embarassing if you browse SSC at work/college or with your family (especially pics/vids).


----------



## Road_UK

italystf said:


> I think there is noting wrong to post jokes here, except those that are offensive or that can be embarassing if you browse SSC at work/college or with your family (especially pics/vids).


Shit! No porn?


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> Shit! No porn?


:lol:
There's plenty of websites that allow you to enjoy yourself with your hands 24/7 
But you know that are porn and you visit them only if there is absolutely no one around. 
But porn concealed in normal website can be very embarassing


----------



## Neverworld

Suburbanist said:


> It is not that memes per se are all awful. Some are even funny - but only the fist time you see them. Same goes for animated gifs. It's not so cool when you see them for the n-th time. It is like hearing a given joke over and over.


Exactly. Some are ok, especially witty ones about current affairs. But there are so many of them and some of them think a joke becomes funny or stays funny just because it is a so called running gag.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

italystf said:


> :lol:
> There's plenty of websites that allow you to enjoy yourself with your hands 24/7
> But you know that are porn and you visit them only if there is absolutely no one around.
> But porn concealed in normal website can be very embarassing


I remember once I was looking at photos of the Stockholm metro on here and half way through there was a photo of a man with his hands up his arse making it as wide as possible.

Two people saw it.


----------



## seem

italystf said:


> But porn concealed in normal website can be very embarassing


----------



## keokiracer

I was watching one of the gangnam style countdown (to 1 billion) websites. After it reached one billion I wanted to check the site again. It suddenly directed me to a porn site. Glad no one was watching at that moment (I was in a pretty busy room) :shifty:


----------



## x-type

that's all nothing. my boss once told me to search some product on the internet, i have typed its name, clicked to search photos and at top 10 results there was a *****. erected. i remained cool as there was nothing weird.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> But you know that are porn and you visit them only if there is absolutely no one around.


I don't care about neighbours though; they don't have to watch my PC.


----------



## italystf

Try to download some movie with Emule and 9 times out of 10 the filename and the content don't match very well. 
Father: "Kids, let's watch this Walt Disney cartoon".
Few seconds later: "Sorry, there's a problem I must shut down the player!"
:lol:

BTW, an acquiatance of mine, on the 1st April, setted a gay porn site as homepage in every PC at work.


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> that's all nothing. my boss once told me to search some product on the internet, i have typed its name, clicked to search photos and at top 10 results there was a *****. erected. i remained cool as there was nothing weird.


Once I was looking for an Italian furniture company named "bocchini", then my sister looked at the screen while lots of porn sites were listed by google... "bocchini" in Italian means blowjobs...


----------



## seem

Still quite expensive, I googled it and it is just 20€ here.


----------



## keokiracer

I do have to note that it's a class 10, the highest class you can get. 
http://www.mediamarkt.nl/mcs/produc...SD-ADAPTE,10259,350678,408057.html?langId=-11

(price I bought it for was 45 euros btw, not 40, my bad)


----------



## x-type

seem said:


> 40-50€ in NL? Are you sure? Here it costs about 9€ tho.





keokiracer said:


> I have no idea where he bought it. I recently bought a 32GB Micro-SD card for about 40 euros at the local Mediamarkt. I'm pretty sure a 16GB normal SD-card is a lot cheaper...


are you sure that you can find 16GB SD for 9€ in stores? i see their range is 15-20€ here, 32GB are 25-35€. 64GB are not that often, i have found them for cca 75€.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

seem said:


> 40-50€ in NL? Are you sure? Here it costs about 9€ tho.





keokiracer said:


> I have no idea where he bought it. I recently bought a 32GB Micro-SD card for about 40 euros at the local Mediamarkt. I'm pretty sure a 16GB normal SD-card is a lot cheaper...





keokiracer said:


> I do have to note that it's a class 10, the highest class you can get.
> http://www.mediamarkt.nl/mcs/produc...SD-ADAPTE,10259,350678,408057.html?langId=-11
> 
> (price I bought it for was 45 euros btw, not 40, my bad)


You can buy cheap 16 GB SD cards, but the problem is that they are a lower class, unsuited for writing large files such as high resolution photography or HD filming. You need a higher class SD card, with writing speeds of 30 mb/s or 45 mb/s for such photography/filming. I once tried a class 4 (or 3) SD card in my HD camera, but it crashed after a couple of seconds of filming.


----------



## cinxxx

I have this one, use it for my photos, and had no problems. It's class 10.
http://www.emag.ro/card-de-memorie-kingmax-sdhc-16gb-clasa-10-km16gsdhc10/pd/EW9HDBBBM/
And it costs 17 euros. Other models, they cost roughly same.

And for the 32GB ones the price is double or less 
http://www.emag.ro/carduri-memorie/...class-10-i1503/capacitate-gb--v3887,32-ig2447

Just took a quick look on Amazon.de prices are around the same.


----------



## italystf

In Canada they use bumper stickers to reduce speeding, In Italy we used the 3D version 








(Fortunately, pics on the lower row aren't take in Italy.)


----------



## Orionol

^^
WTF, does that really work???? :crazy:


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> You can buy cheap 16 GB SD cards, but the problem is that they are a lower class, unsuited for writing large files such as high resolution photography or HD filming.


A normal class 10 SD card is over the top (except if you use rapid shooting mode with raw files of high-end DLSRs). Last year I bought 16 GB class 10 card with my new camera (takes 1080p60 movies - full HD movies with progressive mode 60 fps - 24 MBit bitrate) hovewer camera is taking such movies even with 4 year old class 6 SD card. Remember, class 6 means max bitrate of 48 MBit.


----------



## Wilhem275

Seems like an ad of a suspension maker.

I'd never allow such things on the road... sooner or later you'll see a distracted driver who'll swerve to avoid them.


----------



## Nordic20T

@Chris
I mostly use Class 4 SDHC Cards (16 and 32GB) in both my Lumix TZ20 and Sony Camcorder. It works fine, even for large files >3GB. 
Btw, a 32GB Class 10 Card costs here around CHF 25.-


----------



## hofburg

italystf said:


> I wonder why the technology can't make mobile and laptop batteries that last much longer than the current ones.


battery takes space. what they can do is to lower power consumption of (mainly) processor. that's where whole techno industry is going


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> Hopefully high capacity SD cards become cheaper. I find € 40 - 50 for a 16 GB card too much. You can almost buy a low-end photo camera for that kind of money.


€40 for a 16GB SD card? :nuts:

I bought a 16GB class 10 SD-card for my camera for €35 and that was 3-4 years ago. Now they're €10-15, at least over here. (http://www.arvutikeskus.ee/est/TOOT...did218/Silicon-Power-16GB-SDHC-Class10-111858)

A 32 GB class 10 SD-card costs less than €30.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Here's a class 6 20 mb/s 16 GB SD card. € 39.95 Down from € 49.95


----------



## Surel

^^
bol is most of the times overpriced. Better use http://www.vergelijk.nl/


----------



## Suburbanist

They are available cheaper on Amazon UK, now with free shipping to NL


----------



## keber

Speaking of money, new €5 banknote was unveiled today (others will follow in coming months and years):



















http://www.ecb.int/euro/banknotes/europa/html/index.en.html


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ As awful as the previous one.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ As awful as the previous one.


At least they're more difficult to forge and this is the most important thing. However, lire notes were much more beautiful under an artistical point of view.
Talking about euro, I recently got a very strange 2€ coin dated 2007 and I found out that it's a Finnish commemorative, very rare to find in Italy.


----------



## keber

At least it is more colorful than previous. It is probably impossible to make a banknote for such a large number of different nations and opinions that is at the same time nice and acceptable to majority.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> At least it is more colorful than previous. It is probably impossible to make a banknote for such a large number of different nations and opinions that is at the same time nice and acceptable to majority.


They could leave one side equal for everybody and the other different from every country, representing a monument, a symbol or a historical person of that country. Just keep the colour the same to avoid confusion.


----------



## cinxxx

I heard on the radio this evening that more and more counterfeit money is in Germany, especially 20 euro bills.


----------



## italystf

cinxxx said:


> I heard on the radio this evening that more and more counterfeit money is in Germany, especially 20 euro bills.


Ironically, shopkeepers put them in the drawer without even looking at them, while they are very suspicious when they get large notes that are almost never forged.


----------



## keber

italystf said:


> They could leave one side equal for everybody and the other different from every country, representing a monument, a symbol or a historical person of that country. Just keep the colour the same to avoid confusion.


I don't think that would be good idea. We have national coins (with numerous commemorative issues) and that should be enough. Imagine how difficult would be for someone to think if the banknote is real or forged while considering at least 140 different national sides. They better stay on the coins only because they are rarely forged because of their low value.

@shopkeepers: in a market where I'm doing my regular grocery shopping (the biggest in Slovenia), all cashiers check all banknotes (from 5€ onward) that they receive with their hands.


----------



## keber

Meanwhile in my car:









It should last at least next 100,000 km.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Hope it won't do like Marshall's Fiero from How I met your mother...


----------



## hofburg

^ as long as it doesn't become too expensive to maintain, it should last. my car has 315k and last year I did last big service. as soon as something goes wrong I won't be driving it anymore.


----------



## cinxxx

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=132556196906142


----------



## italystf

I once saw 470k on a bus odometer.


----------



## keokiracer

cinxxx said:


> http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=132556196906142


That guy is my hero :rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> I once saw 470k on a bus odometer.


That is nothing. I know a bus driver who managed to reset the odometer back to 0! And I have a photo with 500k.


----------



## keber

italystf said:


> I once saw 470k on a bus odometer.


When my father bought an used truck (9 years old) it had over 900k km on odometer and over 1 billion engine revolutions. This year that truck has 25 years and is still working OK - German MAN quality.



g.spinoza said:


> Hope it won't do like Marshall's Fiero from How I met your mother...


I didn't see the movie, what happened there?

My Accord (made in Japan) is running very good with no major maintenance costs so I'm pretty sure that next 100k km should not be very expensive to reach.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> When my father bought an used truck (9 years old) it had over 900k km on odometer and over 1 billion engine revolutions. This year that truck has 25 years and is still working OK - German MAN quality.


100k a year or 300 a day? Impressive.


----------



## hofburg

keber said:


> I didn't see the movie, what happened there?


it's not a movie lol 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhcFpbnQghk (just some scene with fiero, not the one he gets rid of it)


----------



## Neverworld

italystf said:


> Ironically, shopkeepers put them in the drawer without even looking at them, while they are very suspicious when they get large notes that are almost never forged.


In the biggest retailer of the Netherlands (Albert Heijn) it's policy to check every banknote. Don't know about other shops.


----------



## Verso

So there's "euro" in Bulgarian on the new banknotes (Bulgaria isn't even in the Eurozone), but not in Slovenian and Maltese? Another brilliant one from eurocrats.


----------



## pobre diablo

Verso said:


> So there's "euro" in Bulgarian on the new banknotes (Bulgaria isn't even in the Eurozone), but not in Slovenian and Maltese? Another brilliant one from eurocrats.


Balkan jealousy hno:


----------



## g.spinoza

hofburg said:


> it's not a movie lol
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhcFpbnQghk (just some scene with fiero, not the one he gets rid of it)


I searched for the scene where the car breaks down at 199999, but couldn't find it.

And hofburg, the one you posted isn't the Fiero, it's Ted's new car. The Fiero is this one:


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> So there's "euro" in Bulgarian on the new banknotes (Bulgaria isn't even in the Eurozone), but not in Slovenian and Maltese? Another brilliant one from eurocrats.


Slovenian and Maltese, unlikely Bulgarian, use latin script so they can understand euro. Bulgaria could probably adopt it in 4-5 years so new notes are designed for the future.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

keber said:


> Meanwhile in my car:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It should last at least next 100,000 km.


^^ If you look at used cars in Estonia, practically none have more than 200 000km on the odometer :lol:


----------



## italystf

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ If you look at used cars in Estonia, practically none have more than 200 000km on the odometer :lol:


In Italy many used cars have odd numbers such 98,000, 99,000 or 198,000. Psycological reasons


----------



## Orionol

keber said:


> Meanwhile in my car:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It should last at least next 100,000 km.


I see you got a strong machine there.


----------



## MattiG

keber said:


> Meanwhile in my car:


Quite accurate. Almost 8.3 degrees.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Slovenian and Maltese, unlikely Bulgarian, use latin script so they can understand euro. Bulgaria could probably adopt it in 4-5 years so new notes are designed for the future.


As if Bulgarians can't read Latin. :lol: And even if they don't, they would know how their money looks like anyway.


----------



## g.spinoza

Wikipedia says that for all laws and regulations, Slovenia adopted the "euro" form, even if for everyday's use it's spelled "evro"... don't know if it's true, though.


----------



## hofburg

yes. to be clear, 'evro' in slovenian is pronounced 'euro' as well. 'v' is often pronouced like 'u'.

anyway, what's new with the server? some new features?


----------



## xrtn2

Works on SP-099 in Brazil will need 1,000 years to be completed.:crazy2:


----------



## pobre diablo

Verso said:


> As if Bulgarians can't read Latin. :lol: And even if they don't, they would know how their money looks like anyway.


Well, as if Slovenians can't figure out that euro means evro.


----------



## Orionol

xrtn2 said:


> Works on SP-099 in Brazil will need 1,000 years to be completed.:crazy2:



1,00*1* years. :colgate:


----------



## Verso

pobre diablo said:


> Well, as if Slovenians can't figure out that euro means evro.


The point was that if we know what euro means, you know it too, not the other way around.



g.spinoza said:


> Wikipedia says that for all laws and regulations, Slovenia adopted the "euro" form, even if for everyday's use it's spelled "evro"... don't know if it's true, though.


Yes, another dumb EU law. We had Slovenian on our money already in 1900, but somehow not in "democratic" EU.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> So there's "euro" in Bulgarian on the new banknotes (Bulgaria isn't even in the Eurozone), but not in Slovenian and Maltese? Another brilliant one from eurocrats.


neither in latvian (althought they are still not in € zone, but neither Bulgaria is)


----------



## Verso

There're other languages, but I only counted those in the Eurozone (SLO, M).


----------



## keber

Officially Euro in slovenia is called, yes, you guessed, Euro. Not Evro. Also in Malta, Latvia, Hungary etc ...
And do you really want about 30 languages written on a single banknote? No, it's plain stupid. This is (for a change) a good EU law.

@my machine:
Temperature reading shows about 2 degrees more than in reality.
Otherwise it is a good machine, this year it will see many European countries. And a car of higher middle class should make 300,000 km easily with no major malfunctions, however a proper maintenance and regular inspections are necessary.

@my father million+ km machine: before my father bought current truck it was used for freight hauling across whole Europe. That way a truck can easily make even 200,000 km a year or even more.


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> Officially Euro in slovenia is called, yes, you guessed, Euro. Not Evro.


Only in EU documents, otherwise it's evro (yes, officially).


----------



## Suburbanist

*Woman admits causing Amsterdam car park fire*

Funny if sad news for car owners 



> A fire in a car park in central Amsterdam on Tuesday, which destroyed several vehicles, was probably caused by engine trouble, according to media reports.
> 
> A woman who lives in one of the apartments above the Markenhoven garage told a residents' meeting* on Wednesday evening she drove in to park her car with smoke coming out of the engine.*
> 
> The woman said she then parked and took out her mobile phone to contact the ANWB repair service. 'At that moment I saw flames emerging from the right-hand wheel,' she told broadcaster RTV Noord-Holland.
> 
> 'It's my fault. I took a wrong decision,' she said. 'If I had left it outside, none of this would have happened.'
> 
> The broadcaster said other residents applauded the woman as she made her confession. *The blaze destroyed five cars, caused smoke and water damage to others and led to over 100 homes being evacuated*.


This is how a minor fire can escalate into a disaster if it happens in a tunnel..


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> neither in latvian (althought they are still not in &#128; zone, but neither Bulgaria is)


Latvia will join in 2014.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Only in EU documents, otherwise it's evro (yes, officially).


Is v pronunced as u in Slovenian (eg. avtocesta)?
Interesting, because also in Latin and in ancient Italian there was not the letter u and v was written instead. The pronunciation depended by the single word. However, in modern school books they use the u also in Latin.


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> Only in EU documents, otherwise it's evro (yes, officially).


Wikipedia is not an official document.
This one, however, is.


----------



## pobre diablo

Verso said:


> The point was that if we know what euro means, you know it too, not the other way around.
> 
> Yes, another dumb EU law. We had Slovenian on our money already in 1900, but somehow not in "democratic" EU.


There was *always* going to be a Cyrillic version on the money. This was never an issue as Cyrillic is one of the three alphabets of the EU. So it's not because it's Bulgarian and we're so special but because it's Cyrillic. 
The issue was the spelling. EU was pushing for ЕУРО (euro), which is not that we call it - ЕВРО (evro). In the end it was decided to be ЕВРО.

But this is what happens when you sell your ass to the Latin alphabet :troll:


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Is v pronunced as u in Slovenian (eg. avtocesta)?
> Interesting, because also in Latin and in ancient Italian there was not the letter u and v was written instead. The pronunciation depended by the single word. However, in modern school books they use the u also in Latin.


Depends on the word; sometimes it's [v] (like in _Slovenija_), sometimes [w] (like in _evro_ or _avtocesta_). AFAIK, there's always been "U" in Latin (f.e. this article in Latin is full of this letter), but "V" was easier to engrave (which is weird, because letters "B, C, D" etc. are also rounded).



keber said:


> Wikipedia is not an official document.
> This one, however, is.


As I said, only in official documents and only because Brussels pushed us. Why would they add the 25th article, if "evro" didn't mean anything in Slovenian? Moreover:


> In normative Slovene language usage ‘evro’ spelling should only be used, except as noted.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_issues_concerning_the_euro#Slovene (I hope you don't disagree just because it's Wikipedia again :lol


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> As I said, only in official documents and only because Brussels pushed us. Why would they add the 25th article, if "evro" didn't mean anything in Slovenian?


Look, regulations are regulations, there are always some compromises. Too much democracy is not a good thing. 30+ languages on a banknote is not practical nor sensible. Don't blame it on Brussels, some things they do, are good.

And about 25th article: read again and you'll understand it. If you won't then read again and as many times until you'll understand (and throw that nationalistic "bad Brussels" crap out of your mind).


----------



## Verso

Ok, whatever.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> AFAIK, there's always been "U" in Latin (f.e. this article in Latin is full of this letter), but "V" was easier to engrave (which is weird, because letters "B, C, D" etc. are also rounded).


False. U and V were distinct phonemes in Latin but were both written as "V". Modern "U" was introduced during the Middle Ages, and from then on, old Latin documents were re-written with the "U". The Latin page you linked uses "U" only for modern reader's sake.


----------



## CNGL

xrtn2 said:


> Works on SP-099 in Brazil will need 1,000 years to be completed.:crazy2:


In Zaragoza there is now some antique book show, and according to the Zaragoza University website (The show is made by the University library) it was taken back on time, since it ends on current month but it won't start until October 2102 .


----------



## DanielFigFoz

You know that thing that comes up on the side of the word document about recovering documents, one tthe other day said that it was saved in sixteen something. :lol: I took a screenshot, but I won't be able to post it till Monday.


----------



## bogdymol

Eastern Europe strikes again...


----------



## g.spinoza

DanielFigFoz said:


> You know that thing that comes up on the side of the word document about recovering documents, one tthe other day said that it was saved in sixteen something. :lol: I took a screenshot, but I won't be able to post it till Monday.


Some months ago I sent an email to a local administration in Southern Italy, about a hike I did on top of Mount Vulture. According to the header, their reply mail was sent in 2099


----------



## Chilio

bogdymol said:


> Eastern Europe strikes again...


Too foggy, can't see on which direction the sun is, so can't guess if they're moving towards Western Europe


----------



## cinxxx

---


----------



## cinxxx

Long compilation of fails


----------



## keber

_Bullshit news:_

*Brussels-bound driver ends up in Zagreb! *
The daily Het Nieuwsblad reports the unlikely tale of a lady from Hainaut Province in Wallonia (Belgium), who wanted to drive to Brussels but ended up in Zagreb in Croatia after using her GPS satellite guidance system. 

http://www.deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws.english/news/130113_driver_belgium_zagreb

Amazing that such stupid unreal news actually exist.:nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That sounds unlikely to me as well... You know it's a 1-hour drive, and this route crosses multiple borders, change of signage, languages, tolls, high mountain ranges, customs check, etc.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> That sounds unlikely to me as well... You know it's a 1-hour drive, and this route crosses multiple borders, change of signage, languages, tolls, high mountain ranges, customs check, etc.


It could be real only if she was mentally ill or suffered from memory losses that aren't so uncommon at a certain age. There was an old guy living near me that was stopped by police rougly 100km away from home. He didn't know where he was and where he was going. He brought 300k euro with him (he was from a rich family) and he said that just needed few money for gas.
For those reasons they renew driving licenses to elderly only after strict medical tests.


----------



## italystf

Apart the famous Capri/Carpi story and the British girl that drove into rail tracks and destroyed her car thanks to the GPS, I'm personally aware of people asking where's the beach in Karlovac, Croatia. They booked a hotel room in Karlobag.


----------



## cinxxx

Happy New Year to all who will celebrate this night! :cheers2:


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> That sounds unlikely to me as well... You know it's a 1-hour drive, and this route crosses multiple borders, change of signage, languages, tolls, high mountain ranges, customs check, etc.


and tunnels! you cannot avoid large tunnels traveling from Belgium to Croatia, unless you take the route via Wien and Budapest, which makes no sense. and not noticing these tunnels would be as driving from Hamburg to Malmo and not noticing the bridges or the sea.
my vision: granny probably drove from Belgium to Zagreb, but on purpose - she just wanted to take a ride and did it.


----------



## Fatfield

keber said:


> _Bullshit news:_
> 
> *Brussels-bound driver ends up in Zagreb! *
> The daily Het Nieuwsblad reports the unlikely tale of a lady from Hainaut Province in Wallonia (Belgium), who wanted to drive to Brussels but ended up in Zagreb in Croatia after using her GPS satellite guidance system.
> 
> http://www.deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws.english/news/130113_driver_belgium_zagreb
> 
> Amazing that such stupid unreal news actually exist.:nuts:


Blimey! Is it April 1st already?!


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Either the journalists made it up or she did.


----------



## italystf

DanielFigFoz said:


> Either the journalists made it up or she did.


A good share of news reported in websites that specifically collect "crazy news", "funny news", "incredible news" for entaintment purpose are viral hoaxes that circulate through out the net by copy-paste. Those reported in official mainstream media are almost all real.

I once read on a newspaper about a bus driver in Rome who got fired because he didn't do a trip during his service because he used the empty bus to pick up his gf at her home. 
And once farmer in Sardinia was arrested for having kidnapped and sexually abused the dog of his neighbour. :lol: Sometimes incredible news aren't hoaxes.


----------



## italystf

Where in the world does police have this uniform? :lol:









Very significative map


----------



## Orionol

^^
:rofl:


----------



## Orionol

Verso said:


> I think the cleaner was a woman.


That explains the accident. :troll:



D.O.W.N said:


> Yup, it is. She has got some very ugly injuries, but she will survive. Do you think she will go to prison?


Indeed, she will.


----------



## D.O.W.N

On the other hand, when I was a child, I always wanted to drive a train. My dream was never ralized . At least somebody was happy for a moment :lol:
Anyway, don´t trains have something like keys for starting up?


----------



## bogdymol

D.O.W.N said:


> On the other hand, when I was a child, I always wanted to drive a train. My dream was never ralized . At least somebody was happy for a moment :lol:
> Anyway, don´t trains have something like keys for starting up?


When I was a kid I "drove" an airplane (for only a few minutes, but it was in the air at 1200 m above ground). I will always remember that. My uncle was a train mechanic so my cousins had the chance of "driving" a train.


----------



## Wilhem275

D.O.W.N said:


> On the other hand, when I was a child, I always wanted to drive a train. My dream was never ralized . At least somebody was happy for a moment :lol:
> Anyway, don´t trains have something like keys for starting up?


Usually you have to follow some procedures before being able to accelerate a train. Older trains are indeed much simpler, their commands being in fact just a bunch of electric switches.
Let's say that an older train will be easier to start up but harder to drive; modern ones require going through complex interfaces to start up, but then they're much easier to drive. I know how to do it and once I did, that's actually easier than driving a A/T car... 

Main problem is that starting one without supervision will easily mean NOT activating safety devices first, thus having an out of control machine (s)trolling around.

The point is that the control room must be locked, not the commands.


----------



## keber

D.O.W.N said:


> On the other hand, when I was a child, I always wanted to drive a train. My dream was never realized


hehehe :baeh3:


----------



## bogdymol

This is the closest I got to driving a train: I managed to record the railway line I used weekly for 4 years from the train drivers window:





I advise you to lower the speakers volume in the first minute of the video. YouTube audioswap has some weird songs


----------



## Orionol

Haha, now thats a good song. :crazy2:

Thank god you warned me, otherwise my parents would have heard it.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Haha, really?!  That's on Youtube's audioswap?


----------



## Verso

She was probably giving a birth.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Verso said:


> She was probably giving a birth.


That sounds so funny, sorry :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

When I uploaded the video I didn't have time to search for a good song, so I checked "random" on YouTube audio swap. Next day I didn't knew why my friends were asking me about THAT song :lol:


----------



## keokiracer

That reminded me of this remix


----------



## NFZANMNIM

ChrisZwolle said:


> Somebody made a lane count map of the world:
> 
> http://www.itoworld.com/map/179#fullscreen


There is something wrong with Iran-Azerbaijan Border here. They gave us a whole new province, the Mountainous Karabakh


----------



## Spookvlieger

keokiracer said:


> That reminded me of this remix


It mainly reminds me of the Belgian Lords Of Acid tho. I think the voice is the same! And they have way more sick songs but youtube bans them all the time xD gotta love those 90ties....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hkwtZ29uFc

or this one is gold to :lol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkZdNtew69Q


----------



## Verso

DanielFigFoz said:


> That sounds so funny, sorry :lol:


Is it because I mistakenly added "a"?


----------



## hofburg

haha, very good bogdymol


----------



## keber

Meanwhile in Bosnia - winter transportation on entirely different level:


----------



## Suburbanist

*Diesel in EU fleetr*

A graph for a drab Wednesday


----------



## bogdymol

keber said:


> Meanwhile in Bosnia - winter transportation on entirely different level:


----------



## cinxxx

:lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nice job?


TEOC, Hampton Roads District, Traffic Emergency Operations Center by VaDOT, on Flickr


----------



## seem

:troll:



SureThing_II said:


> Meanwhile in Slovakia


----------



## hofburg




----------



## hofburg

Road_UK said:


> Put 6 drunken Dutchmen and 6 drunken Brits in a après skibar in Mayrhofen, and the result? A new British - Dutch war, this time being fought out in the Alps.


which side are you taking and what are they fighting about


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^



hofburg said:


> which side are you taking


Hey, I was going to ask that!



hofburg said:


> what are they fighting about


"My Queen's more majestic than your Queen"?

And also, um, hi?


----------



## bogdymol

Some of you will understand...


----------



## cinxxx

^^:lol:
I'm also curious what the Dutch and Brits were fighting about 

Here, an interesting video I found on Facebook, Belgian cinema experience
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=524274374272581


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> Some of you will understand...


No... no.


----------



## Road_UK

cinxxx said:


> ^^:lol:
> I'm also curious what the Dutch and Brits were fighting about
> 
> Here, an interesting video I found on Facebook, Belgian cinema experience
> http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=524274374272581


I have no idea, but one Brit managed to put two Dutch guys in hospital. Wouldn't surprise me if the Dutch started all this. There are a lot of problems with them: loud and provocative. Unfortunately for them they're not very strong. Last year they destroyed an entire hotel.


----------



## CNGL

Okay guys, I decided to return a feature involving some inexistent date to my signature . Keep searching...


----------



## RipleyLV

Top Gear returns on 27th of January.


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> Okay guys, I decided to return a feature involving some inexistent date to my signature . Keep searching...


Meanwhile, in Latvia


----------



## g.spinoza

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30th_February


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> Meanwhile, in Latvia


What happens between the last day of February and first one of March?


----------



## CNGL

MattiG said:


> What happened to February?


FTFY


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Nice job?


A similar setup to the control room of the Finnish Road Agency in Tampere. I visited it a few years ago when they had an open door day. Nice to see how they managed the speed limit signs of the motorway 29 located 500 km to the north.

The control rooms are rather similar regardless of the industry:









Pulp Mill









Power grid









Oil refinery









Mine


----------



## italystf




----------



## PhirgataZFs1694

*Alex_ZR,keokiracer,seem;cinxxx;Orionol;Rebasepoiss;joshsam;Surel;suburbicide*

Thank you so much guys!:cheers:









:rofl:


----------



## keokiracer

PhirgataZFs1694 said:


> (...)*keokiracer* (...)
> 
> Thank you so much guys!:cheers:


Thank you, but what for? :lol:


----------



## cinxxx

I'm thinking for Eastern New Year best wishes


----------



## italystf

Stupid girl at driving school


----------



## seem

PhirgataZFs1694 said:


> *Alex_ZR,keokiracer,seem;cinxxx;Orionol;Rebasepoiss;joshsam;Surel;suburbicide*
> 
> Thank you so much guys!:cheers:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> :rofl:


I have just realised that is a police car, I suppose.. :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> Stupid girl at driving school


A camera inside the car and another one in another car following the first? Staged.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> A camera inside the car and another one in another car following the first? Staged.


Yes, the description said that is from a Polish TV programme.


----------



## keokiracer

Probably from a tv-show. Just like this one from The Netherlands. It sent the host into the hospital.





Or this one, which ruined a mans project on restaurating an old car.


----------



## Spookvlieger

lol right of way? never heard of


----------



## italystf

:rofl: the worst drivers of the Nerherlands 
http://translate.google.it/translat...iki/De_Allerslechtste_Chauffeur_van_Nederland


----------



## Suburbanist

Now we haves likes/dislikes.


----------



## keokiracer

I don't see a dislike button anywhere though...


----------



## Suburbanist

keokiracer said:


> I don't see a dislike button anywhere though...


Oh, my bad. Only likes indeed.

But they should put a post count as well as a forumer count.


----------



## Verso

I _like_ the new feature.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Like


----------



## Verso

Well, then cheers for me giving the first and you receiving the first like (I had to test it ). :cheers:


----------



## cinxxx

ok, so you receive a notification when you get a like


----------



## keokiracer

Do you? I didn't know.


----------



## cinxxx

^^and now?


----------



## keokiracer

Ah yes, now I do.  A differrent place as to where I was expecting. Surprisingly it said 2 notifications while I only had 1. Weird...


----------



## Suburbanist

You can disable notifications on the User CP, then go all the way to the bottom


----------



## MattiG

Getting cold in the coming night.


----------



## NordikNerd

MattiG said:


> Getting cold in the coming night.


-13 here right now. Going to be below -20 C this weekend. Brr..

I don't like to start up my car when it's below -20 C because the engine wears out when it does not get sufficient lubrication at a cold start.


----------



## MattiG

NordikNerd said:


> -13 here right now. Going to be below -20 C this weekend. Brr..
> 
> I don't like to start up my car when it's below -20 C because the engine wears out when it does not get sufficient lubrication at a cold start.


It was -21 today morning here. 40 minutes pre-heating with Webasto, and no problem on starting, and the inside temperature was rather comfortable. Nice piece of hardware in the arctic conditions.


----------



## italystf

Traffic lights around the world:


----------



## italystf

:rofl:


----------



## bogdymol

italystf said:


> Traffic lights around the world:
> http://d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net/photo/4073501_700b.jpg[/ IMG][/QUOTE]
> 
> I really like the system used in UK and Germany. We had that system in my town, but now we have the US one.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Former Romanian president, Ion Iliescu:


----------



## bogdymol

*Contest: how many likes can this post get? *

Facebook style :troll:


----------



## Road_UK

I have no like option on the SSC Android app.


----------



## Chilio

bogdymol said:


> I really like the system used in UK and Germany. We had that system in my town, but now we have the US one.


Bulgaria uses the same system everywhere in the country - always 1-2 sec of red+yellow after red and before green.


----------



## Pansori

I like the like function


----------



## RipleyLV

italystf said:


> Traffic lights around the world:
> http://d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net/photo/4073501_700b.jpg


Ah, that's why red has bigger size in Italy.


----------



## CNGL

Finally, after a long time, I decided to retire my sad cat avatar. I replaced it with a MN I-35 shield (The same I have in AARoads). The I-35 choice is obvious (read my signature ). The Minnesota choice has a background history that starts just after Expo 2008 ended.

BTW, I don't mind about that like thing.


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> Finally, after a long time, I decided to retire my sad cat avatar. I replaced it with a MN I-35 shield (The same I have in AARoads). The I-35 choice is obvious (read my signature ). The Minnesota choice has a background history that starts just after Expo 2008 ended.
> 
> BTW, I don't mind about that like thing.


Wait for the Italian A35 being built between Milan and Brescia.


----------



## seem

bogdymol said:


> ^^ Former Romanian president, Ion Iliescu:



Kroatian prajm ministr Jadranka Kosor -


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> Traffic lights around the world:


AAMOF, here in Northern Italy I never saw someone running a red light.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> AAMOF, here in Northern Italy I never saw someone running a red light.


It's a joke and all jokes are exaggerations 

Anyway, I like the system where red and yellow appear together before green.


----------



## cinxxx

bogdymol said:


> I really like the system used in UK and Germany. We had that system in my town, but now we have the US one.


I think it's generally in Romania.

I also like the the system in Germany, Austria, where you get the yellow light before the green, so you can shift into gear until green comes. 

I've been in France a month ago, and seen the same style as in Romania.
Also road lining is not as intuitive as in Germany, had some difficulties where exactly to go being new to the place.


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> Wait for the Italian A35 being built between Milan and Brescia.


Thanks, but I have to clinch TE-35, C-35, CV-35, A-35 and RM-F35 before . Oh, and ride bus routes 35 in Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga, Granada and San Sebastian. I have already ridden bus routes 35 of Valencia and Zaragoza, the later one is my favourite bus route (I have ridden the entire route!) and the one which stated my 35 obsesion.


----------



## hofburg

Austria has extremly long flashing green light. in Slovenia it was removed years ago, probably because of speeding during flashing.


----------



## cinxxx

hofburg said:


> Austria has extremly long flashing green light. in Slovenia it was removed years ago, probably because of speeding during flashing.


Ah, yes, forgot about that, it's kinda stupid.


----------



## x-type

seem said:


> Kroatian prajm ministr Jadranka Kosor -


thank god she is an ex prime minister. the hen.
here is more of her:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u83RsfmmiTs

or Zagreb mayor (hopefully, soon will be ex mayor):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO_J-gyCZBU

a bunch of high-positioned idiots.


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> Yeah, it exists, but we mainly use it when speaking. I don't remeber seeing it written down. For the written form we use "este", and the meaning is "is" (like in the sentence "Graziano este înalt", "Graziano îi înalt", "Graziano is tall").


and what about pronouns? shouldn't_ îi_ mean _them_ (masculine) or _to him/to her_?


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Nope, this time it's the same for him/her. But as I said, we use this word only when speaking, not when writing.


----------



## Penn's Woods

This "like" function is just what we needed....hno:


----------



## cinxxx

I use it when chatting. Not in formal/official writing though.


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> Yeah, it exists, but we mainly use it when speaking. I don't remeber seeing it written down. For the written form we use "este", and the meaning is "is" (like in the sentence "Graziano este înalt", "Graziano îi înalt", "Graziano is tall").


Many languages have such forms like the contract forms of the verbs be, have, do and can in English (he's, we're isn't, haven't, don't, can't,...) or the "col" instead of "con il" (with the) in Italian.
They're correct but are usually avoided in formal written texts.


----------



## Broccolli




----------



## keokiracer

Penn's Woods said:


> This "like" function is just what we needed....hno:


I need a dislike button for this post  :lol:



:jk:


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> Yeah, it exists, but we mainly use it when speaking. I don't remeber seeing it written down. For the written form we use "este", and the meaning is "is" (like in the sentence "Graziano este înalt", "Graziano îi înalt", "Graziano is tall").


May I ask why did you choose this particular and not very common first name?


----------



## cinxxx

Yeah like for example in Romanian, "Graţian"


----------



## keokiracer

bogdymol said:


> Yes, you just have to click the "dislike" button:


+1 for you dude :lol:

Hadn't heard that song for a while


----------



## Orionol

How do I insert a youtube clip???


----------



## keokiracer

(just a music video I'm listening to, so don't pay attention to that)

Full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIqvNp_x0HE
Grab the part after _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ , which in this case is *SIqvNp_x0HE*. Place the last bit between youtube tags [youtube ][ /youtube] (without the spaces) and you get yourself a video


----------



## Orionol

Thank you Keokiracer!!! :cheers:
Heres a clip from Bulgaria.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keokiracer said:


> I need a dislike button for this post  :lol:
> 
> 
> 
> :jk:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


>


You haven't been around much lately!


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^'cause I was bad. Self-:bash:


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^'cause I was bad. Self-:bash:


Why were you bad?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^PMed you.


----------



## Penn's Woods

BBC World News is running a half-hour British football recap. Never seen it before. (Probably because I'm not usually watching at this hour.) Less interested in the sport as such than in the geographical aspect of it...Why is Berwick playing in Scotland?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> BBC World News is running a half-hour British football recap. Never seen it before. (Probably because I'm not usually watching at this hour.) Less interested in the sport as such than in the geographical aspect of it...Why is Berwick playing in Scotland?


There is a wee territorial dispute over Berwick-upon-Tweed.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^"Wee," indeed.

You've got, like, hundreds of teams. Are they all professional?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^"Wee," indeed.
> 
> You've got, like, hundreds of teams. Are they all professional?


The top few leagues (the League) but after a while they're amateur.


----------



## Orionol

Now this is something Road_UK should drive. 
Swedish mean machine!!!!


----------



## D.O.W.N

:lol: :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Romania:


----------



## MattiG

Orionol said:


> Now this is something Road_UK should drive.
> Swedish mean machine!!!!


The passenger car version:


----------



## Wilhem275

Luckily these devices are going to be a standard.


----------



## D.O.W.N

But sometimes it doesn´t work :lol:


----------



## Wilhem275

:lol: And still the system is doing better than most drivers :lol:


----------



## Alex_ZR

Interesting map of Europe on a first day cover issued by Liechtenstein Post. Borders are quite consfusing! :lol:

http://coverspostcardsworldwide.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/li_europa-2012.jpg


----------



## italystf

Alex_ZR said:


> Interesting map of Europe on a first day cover issued by Liechtenstein Post. Borders are quite consfusing! :lol:
> 
> http://coverspostcardsworldwide.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/li_europa-2012.jpg


Scottish and Welsh are happy. Englishmen less. Russians declare war to Poland to reconquer the Kaliningrad oblast. Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Bosnians, Macedonians, Kosovans and Montenegrinians try to get their independence from Czechoslovakia and Yougoslavia. Turkey is angry because arabs invaded 90% of its territory.


----------



## Alex_ZR

italystf said:


> Scottish and Welsh are happy. Englishmen less. Russians declare war to Poland to reconquer the Kaliningrad oblast. Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Bosnians, Macedonians, Kosovans and Montenegrinians try to get their independence from Czechoslovakia and Yougoslavia. Turkey is angry because arabs invaded 90% of its territory.


And Moldova isn't landlocked country anymore!


----------



## xrtn2

D.O.W.N said:


> :lol: :lol:


Seriously here in Brazil:smug:


----------



## italystf

Alex_ZR said:


> And Moldova isn't landlocked country anymore!


According to a recent (yesterday) twitter post by the Rijeka's mayor, Slovenia will became a landlocked country if it try to oppose Croatia's accession to UE.


----------



## Verso

^^ He later said he'd been joking.  Anyway, he has Slovenian roots and his name is also Slovenian (Vojko Obersnel), but of course he cares about Croatia more. Besides, I think he meant that we wouldn't be able to buy Croatian land until they join the EU.


----------



## Verso

Now christos-greece is a mod.


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> Now christos-greece is a mod.


 Very nice post.
:cheers:


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Now christos-greece is a mod.





keber said:


> Very nice post.
> :cheers:


I don't get it. Probably I missed something.


----------



## Broccolli

Verso said:


> ^^ He later said he'd been joking.  Anyway, he has Slovenian roots and his name is also Slovenian (Vojko Obersnel), but of course he cares about Croatia more.


Who is the real Kekec !?


----------



## keber

italystf said:


> I don't get it. Probably I missed something.


His posts range from "Very nice pictures. " to "Very nice motorway. "


----------



## Penn's Woods

CNGL said:


> Ca. 470 meters a.s.l. Anyway, it has stopped now.


We've got all the winter weather you could possibly want over here at the moment, and for the next few days.

http://www.weather.com/news/winter, if you like playing with that sort of thing.


----------



## keokiracer

Our old car:




 (was a 1995 model, this is the closest)

Our current car (is a 1999 model, is practically the same)





Definitely an improvement :yes:


----------



## keber

keokiracer said:


> Definitely an improvement :yes:


That is normal, higher car class and larger car.

I was involved in an accident twice: first with a 1990 Honda Accord without airbags and about 40 km/h collision
Second time with 1999 Daewoo Lanos with airbags and with much lower speed (but exactly the same angle of hit). 
In first case nothing happened inside passenger cabin, in second case it was quite damaged and I had to go to hospital for a medical check.

Those two accidents are also a reason that I buy just higher class cars.

And yes, I'm driving Honda Accord from y. 2000.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I dig that. My only accident was with a Ford Ka with no ABS. Had it such a device, the accident itself wouldn't probably happen.


----------



## keokiracer

keber said:


> And yes, I'm driving Honda Accord from y. 2000.


kay:


----------



## cinxxx

They announced all day on radio that today we celebrate 50 years of French-German friendship 

http://www.dw.de/top-stories/50-years-of-franco-german-friendship/s-32276
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/...-france-germany-celebrate-50-years-friendship


----------



## Road_UK

That's good to know. In reality they still hate each other.


----------



## g.spinoza

French people despise everybody


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> That's good to know. In reality they still hate each other.





g.spinoza said:


> French people despise everybody


I'm not touching this... :angel:


----------



## Spookvlieger

Is there anyone that happens to drive a Toyota 2010 or 2012 Hilux around here? I really liek that car in maybe I might buy one next year second hand. I noticed they used the slogan from top gear when they tried to destroy a toyota hilux from 1985 but failed


----------



## Penn's Woods

"le stink," it said on the home page:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/ea...nch-hits-southern-England-after-gas-leak.html

"another pungent Gallic release" (in the subheading)

:lol:

Okay, now I'm being good again. :angel:


----------



## keokiracer

g.spinoza said:


> French people despise everybody


And everyboy despises the French


----------



## Wilhem275

keokiracer said:


> And everyboy despises the French





Penn's Woods said:


> "le stink," it said on the home page:
> 
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/ea...nch-hits-southern-England-after-gas-leak.html
> 
> :lol:


And with good reasons :lol:


----------



## Road_UK

keokiracer said:


> And everyboy despises the French


No they don't. Only the ones who don't know a thing about France.


----------



## keokiracer

Here we go again :|. Lemme guess, you know everything about the French...

Oh, and you can keep the speech to yourself,


----------



## bogdymol

First Dacia commercial for the UK:






The new model has standard ABS+ESP + 4 airbags. And it costs just £ 5995.


----------



## Chilio

*@josham*, it's quite incorrect to compare safety of a car without airbags to the one of a car with airbags.


----------



## Wilhem275

Chilio said:


> *@josham*, it's quite incorrect to compare safety of a car without airbags to the one of a car with airbags.


And cars sold in Latin America often obtain sensibly different results in crash tests, even those who appear as identical models, due to different body elements applied under the skin.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I have noticed a huge increase in the amount of Romanian cars about here lately (last month or so).

I would even dare say that most of the foreign cars I see now are Romanian, which is a bit odd considering that Romanians don't have full EU rights here untill December I think


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Yes, but did the pungent Gallic release reach you?


----------



## hofburg

I have respect for the French. they might have the worst bureaucracy in the world and extremly lazy public sector, but they are very fair and a lot less nationalistic than other big eu countries.


----------



## Wilhem275

hofburg said:


> a lot less nationalistic than other big eu countries.


Well... this could be debatable 

I don't think they're nationalistic in a badass fanatic way (or, they're not worse than any other country), but IMHO they have an excessively self-centered vision of the world.
I often had the best example during my trips there, when in many occasions I tried starting a casual conversation, following my usual pattern: a basic greeting in the local language, and the question if the person speaks English (if possible, asked in the local language too). People usually understand that I can't speak what they speak but at least I'm making an effort to get closer.

France is the only place where, when I ask:
"Parlez-vous anglais?"
I get the answer:
"No; parlez-vous français?"

Oh, for ****'s sake :lol: that's pretty obvious I don't, why would I ever try speaking English in France to a Frenchman if I knew French? :lol:
Actually they don't do that to provoke, that's just natural that a citizen of the world is supposed to speak French  I'm making my part in speaking a common language, now do yours... :|

(of course this happens more in rural areas)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Yes, but did the pungent Gallic release reach you?


My first "like"!

[snif]


----------



## Wilhem275

You're welcome


----------



## Road_UK

keokiracer said:


> Here we go again :|. Lemme guess, you know everything about the French...
> 
> Oh, and you can keep the speech to yourself,


I happen to know a lot about France and the French, and I don't have to keep anything from snotty boys from Holland.


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Yes, but did the pungent Gallic release reach you?


It's not always garlic, sometimes it is fresh onion(with smoked bacon). :yes:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> That's good to know. In reality they still hate each other.


All right, let's make this more positive: who do they like?


----------



## AUchamps

Penn's Woods said:


> All right, let's make this more positive: who do they like?


The Russians.


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> All right, let's make this more positive: who do they like?


Me. And I never have any problems there. Always friendly and helpful.


----------



## MattiG

Road_UK said:


> Me. And I never have any problems there. Always friendly and helpful.


I have driven there my own Finland-registered cars, and German-registered rental cars, and that makes some difference. Some Frenchmen seem to enter primitive reactions if they see a German car. Never problems with the Finnish license plates.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Me. And I never have any problems there. Always friendly and helpful.


Which "there" are you talking about: France or Germany?


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> Which "there" are you talking about: France or Germany?


France. I have more problems in Germany. Not that I dislike Germany or Germans...


----------



## Road_UK

MattiG said:


> I have driven there my own Finland-registered cars, and German-registered rental cars, and that makes some difference. Some Frenchmen seem to enter primitive reactions if they see a German car. Never problems with the Finnish license plates.


I never notice any difference, whether I'm driving with a French, British, Austrian or Dutch plate...


----------



## italystf

Wilhem275 said:


> France is the only place where, when I ask:
> "Parlez-vous anglais?"
> I get the answer:
> "No; parlez-vous français?"
> 
> Oh, for ****'s sake :lol: that's pretty obvious I don't, why would I ever try speaking English in France to a Frenchman if I knew French? :lol:
> Actually they don't do that to provoke, that's just natural that a citizen of the world is supposed to speak French  I'm making my part in speaking a common language, now do yours... :|
> 
> (of course this happens more in rural areas)


It's probably because until around 30 years ago French was the most taught foteign language in Italian schools, when they finally realized that was more useful to teach English. So, they're used to the old generation of Italians having a basic knowledge of French.
Apart this, the French hate towards English language is well-known. Are they the only folk that translate the word computer?


MattiG said:


> I have driven there my own Finland-registered cars, and German-registered rental cars, and that makes some difference. Some Frenchmen seem to enter primitive reactions if they see a German car. Never problems with the Finnish license plates.


I guess that most people in Europe don't even know from where a Finnish plate is, you don't see them often.


----------



## cinxxx

italystf said:


> Apart this, the French hate towards English language is well-known. Are they the only folk that translate the word computer?


Yeah, for the first part, but I met also some Germans that don't like, don't speak, or speak very bad English. Many colleagues from work can't watch films without at least German subtitles. I"m guessing it's the consequence of voice doubling in TV and media.

Also after one year spent here it's still hilarious how they can't pronounce "th" and "w" and how they set the accent on the _vrong_ vowel.

About the word computer, the Germans have their own word too, Rechner, it has kind of the same meaning as the French one. They also have the Windows interface in German and it's very unsuggestive to me used to the English one. And the keyboard layout, I hate it, I brought 2 English leyboards from Romania with me, just in case one goes kaputt, you almost can't find any here.


----------



## Road_UK

There are only a very few Italians that speak English.


----------



## cinxxx

My Italian is pretty ok, so not that big of a problem. My girlfriend even understands almost everything, and Spanish too, but has problems with speaking. And yes, she speaks also French


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> There are only a very few Italians that speak English.


Young people usually have a quite good English knowledge, at least in the written form. The pronunciation is more problematic. 
I read that the worst in Europe are the Spanish, the best Dutch and Scandinavians.


----------



## cinxxx

italystf said:


> Young people usually have a quite good English knowledge, at least in the written form. The pronunciation is more problematic.
> I read that the worst in Europe are the Spanish, the best Dutch and Scandinavians.


Yeah, I heard some Spanish speaking either German or English. Terrible accent and pretty hard to understand if not used to .


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> Apart this, the French hate towards English language is well-known. Are they the only folk that translate the word computer?


In Swedish, a computer is "datamaskin" ("data machine"), and the Finnish word "tietokone" means exactly the same.



> I guess that most people in Europe don't even know from where a Finnish plate is, you don't see them often.


Or the Frenchmen recognize the Finns being the miserable folk from the northwest Russia not to harass but to feel sorry for.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> There are only a very few Italians that speak English.


That's because until not very long ago the preferred second language in school was French. French is still exclusively taught in some schools, God knows why.



italystf said:


> Young people usually have a quite good English knowledge, at least in the written form. The pronunciation is more problematic.
> I read that the worst in Europe are the Spanish, the best Dutch and Scandinavians.


My experience with Germans is that their English is overrated. The share of Germans speaking good English is not that different from that of Italians (but when they do, they speak a lot better).


----------



## cinxxx

g.spinoza said:


> That's because until not very long ago the preferred second language in school was French. French is still exclusively taught in some schools, God knows why.


It's still being taught in Romania in almost every school as second foreign language after English or maybe the other way around. I had it too in highschool, I feel a little sorry I didn't bothered to much learning it, since knowing many languages is not bad. But German is coming strong from behind, and many parents want to give their children to German speaking schools, at least from where I come from. Many engineers and doctors are emigrating to Germany.



g.spinoza said:


> My experience with Germans is that their English is overrated. The share of Germans speaking good English is not that different from that of Italians (but when they do, they speak a lot better).


You lived in Germany, I do to for a year, and I give you right. Before I came here, I thought that many Germans speak English and good, that was my experience at the former work place in Romania, where I had to do a lot of talking with Germans and French, and Germans were a lot better at English, some really good, but there still were some that spoke pretty bad, so I switched to German after a while when phoning there.

After arriving, I realized that it's as you say overrated. Still, pretty much better then other places, like Hungary or Czech Republic.


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> That's because until not very long ago the preferred second language in school was French. French is still exclusively taught in some schools, God knows why.
> 
> My experience with Germans is that their English is overrated. The share of Germans speaking good English is not that different from that of Italians (but when they do, they speak a lot better).


True. I speak German anyway, but a lot of my UK colleagues have to endure the angry 'nur Deutsch' remark. 

But the French (and Americans) are pretty much scapegoats. For me, I find France one of the most pleasant countries to be on.


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> That's because until not very long ago the preferred second language in school was French. French is still exclusively taught in some schools, God knows why.


and never mind some narrow-minded politicians who say the most important thing is to foster the learning of outdated local dialects instead of English... as I recently read from someone in Bergamo who thinks milanese will take youngster to a good career and life possibilities :bash:


----------



## Road_UK

Suburbanist said:


> and never mind some narrow-minded politicians who say the most important thing is to foster the learning of outdated local dialects instead of English... as I recently read from someone in Bergamo who thinks milanese will take youngster to a good career and life possibilities :bash:


Keeping a dialect (or local languages like Frisian) intact is not a bad thing, as long as nobody is hoping that you'll get far...


----------



## Fatfield

Gerrin! Whu gonna gerra referendum on whetha to stay or leeve tha EU. :banana:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^(Talking of dialects...)

Wot's all this then?

Meaning (1) what did you say? and (2) what did Cameron say?


----------



## Spookvlieger

DanielFigFoz said:


> I have noticed a huge increase in the amount of Romanian cars about here lately (last month or so).
> 
> I would even dare say that most of the foreign cars I see now are Romanian, which is a bit odd considering that Romanians don't have full EU rights here untill December I think


RO, PL, most common on Belgian roads besides Dutch plates.


----------



## cinxxx

DanielFigFoz said:


> I have noticed a huge increase in the amount of Romanian cars about here lately (last month or so).
> 
> I would even dare say that most of the foreign cars I see now are Romanian, which is a bit odd considering that Romanians don't have full EU rights here untill December I think


We have an old saying here "If you (plural) don't me, I want you (plural)"


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^(Talking of dialects...)
> 
> Wot's all this then?
> 
> Meaning (1) what did you say? and (2) what did Cameron say?




Get in! We're going to get a referendum on whether to stay in, or leave the EU.

Full story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21148282

On a personal note, although I don't class myself as European (its a British thing), I'm in favour of staying in the EU specifically for economic reasons. I'm against full integration at the moment but that position is always under review.


----------



## Fatfield

DanielFigFoz said:


> I have noticed a huge increase in the amount of Romanian cars about here lately (last month or so).
> 
> I would even dare say that most of the foreign cars I see now are Romanian, which is a bit odd considering that Romanians don't have full EU rights here untill December I think


1st January 2014 iirc. Along with Bulgarians I think it means an extra 29 million will be eligible to live & work in Britain unrestricted.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> True. I speak German anyway, but a lot of my UK colleagues have to endure the angry 'nur Deutsch' remark.


I never got such a remark, not even angry looks. As a matter of fact, during my stay in Germany I tried as much as possible to speak German but when I couldn't (when I had to deliver complex sentences or couldn't find a German word) and spoke English, people were embarrassed when they had to answer in German. I mean, I was the one who had to feel embarrassed (living in a country and speaking badly their language) but most of the times it was the other way around.
Germans were all very kind with me.




Suburbanist said:


> and never mind some narrow-minded politicians who say the most important thing is to foster the learning of outdated local dialects instead of English... as I recently read from someone in Bergamo who thinks milanese will take youngster to a good career and life possibilities :bash:


This is not unheard of in Northern Italy, whether they managed to get a "local language" recognized (like Friulian, or Ladin) or not (like Bergamasque or Brescian). Here in Brescia there are a lot of ads in the street in local language. It took me quite a lot to understand that "Lönare Bressà" meant "Brescian calendar" (in Italian it would be "Calendario Bresciano"). I guess how many Brescians know that, given the fact that more than a quarter of the residents are born abroad and more than another quarter are born in other parts of Italy.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Fatfield said:


> Get in! We're going to get a referendum on whether to stay in, or leave the EU.
> 
> Full story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21148282
> 
> On a personal note, although I don't class myself as European (its a British thing), I'm in favour of staying in the EU specifically for economic reasons. I'm against full integration at the moment but that position is always under review.


Is staying in without full integration an option? Just as a somewhat casual observer I thought that was the issue.

If the vote were held today (or after, say, a month's campaigning), what do you think would happen?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> and never mind some narrow-minded politicians who say the most important thing is to foster the learning of outdated local dialects instead of English... as I recently read from someone in Bergamo who thinks milanese will take youngster to a good career and life possibilities :bash:


Does it need to be either/or? My suburban public high school in a country that has the reputation of not caring about foreign languages offered five. Not counting Latin.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Does it need to be either/or? My suburban public high school in a country that has the reputation of not caring about foreign languages offered five. Not counting Latin.


Well, you can't teach everything. I mean if you choose to teach a local language at school, you must take something else off the schedule. In this respect, learning local languagues is useless (because you'll never use it except at home) and detrimental (because you would not learn something else useful).


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> and never mind some narrow-minded politicians who say the most important thing is to foster the learning of outdated local dialects instead of English... as I recently read from someone in Bergamo who thinks milanese will take youngster to a good career and life possibilities :bash:


Those politicians are anachronistical and also ignorant. Ok, preserving local traditions, but pretend to hire in the public sector only those who speak the local dialect is too far!
Once Umberto Bossi said: "We should have stronger relationship with Switzerland, since it's a neighbooring country where most people speak Italian." Tell to him that less than 10% of Swiss speak Italian and they're all in Ticino region.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Italystf, "pretend" in English does not mean the same as in Italian...

EDIT: or does it? English mothertongue speakers, can "pretend" here be used in lieu of "demand"?


----------



## italystf

And I guess that outsiders that get lost around Udine don't like very much those signs with 10 destinations in the same pole, all Italian-Friulan bilingual. I understand local names that are known with Friulan names but do we need autostrada-autostrade, stadio-stadii, municipio-municipi and universitá-universitat?


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> Is staying in without full integration an option? Just as a somewhat casual observer I thought that was the issue.
> 
> If the vote were held today (or after, say, a month's campaigning), what do you think would happen?


Yes staying in without full integration is an option which is our current status. The main stumbling block is, as always, money. We pay a hefty amount into the EU coiffeurs without gaining anything (visible) back. Most people equate this to be a drain on resources.

Another problem is immigration. There are those who want us to stop the amount of Poles, Romanians & Bulgarians from being able to come and work over here. We already have an illegal immigration problem so, rightly or wrongly, they're grouped together as the same problem.

Believe it or not, there are actually people in the south & south east of England who don't want monetary union because a picture of the Queen won't be on the Euro! :bash:

I think the outcome of the vote would be to maintain the status quo. I do honestly believe that full monetary integration will happen in the future and although I'm a royalist I really couldn't care less if Liz appeared on the Euro or not. However, the exchange rate would have to be in our favour for any of the main parties to even consider changing.

The longer our membership of the EU continues the more people will want more & more integration. We now even use the European Courts of Justice (when it suits us) to bash our own judicial system. As our cheese eat.... sorry, French cousins would say, c'est la vie & que sera sera.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Italystf, "pretend" in English does not mean the same as in Italian...
> 
> EDIT: or does it? English mothertongue speakers, can "pretend" here be used in lieu of "demand"?


No. I thought Italystf meant "claim," in the sense of Bossi's telling the public that he was doing something (hiring dialect-speakers?). (I don't think I'd use "pretend" even in that meaning, although the difference is subtle: if you claim to be doing something, it might be true; if you pretend to be doing something, you're lying. So it would be safer - more neutral - for, say, a journalist to use "claim" in a sentence like that.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Fatfield said:


> Yes staying in without full integration is an option which is our current status. The main stumbling block is, as always, money. We pay a hefty amount into the EU coiffeurs without gaining anything (visible) back. Most people equate this to be a drain on resources.
> 
> Another problem is immigration. There are those who want us to stop the amount of Poles, Romanians & Bulgarians from being able to come and work over here. We already have an illegal immigration problem so, rightly or wrongly, they're grouped together as the same problem.
> 
> Believe it or not, there are actually people in the south & south east of England who don't want monetary union because a picture of the Queen won't be on the Euro! :bash:
> 
> I think the outcome of the vote would be to maintain the status quo. I do honestly believe that full monetary integration will happen in the future and although I'm a royalist I really couldn't care less if Liz appeared on the Euro or not. However, the exchange rate would have to be in our favour for any of the main parties to even consider changing.
> 
> The longer our membership of the EU continues the more people will want more & more integration. We now even use the European Courts of Justice (when it suits us) to bash our own judicial system. As our cheese eat.... sorry, French cousins would say, c'est la vie & que sera sera.


Just found and skimmed the transcript: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/9820230/David-Camerons-EU-speech-in-full.html

But "Qué será será" is Spanish.  (In French, it'd have to be "ce qui sera...")

Haven't read your comments yet; I'll do so now.

EDIT: Now having read your comments: (1) What I meant by asking whether the status quo was an option was that I thought there was fairly strong pressure from some Continental powers and politicians to centralize more power in EU institutions and that those people would insist that Britain either go along with that or get out. (A brief glance at the Telegraph shows such reactions to the speech from a couple of foreign ministers, including the German one; but then Merkel took a much more compromising tone.) (2) Note that Cameron's ruled out joining the euro.

:cheers:


----------



## italystf

Fatfield said:


> Yes staying in without full integration is an option which is our current status. The main stumbling block is, as always, money. We pay a hefty amount into the EU coiffeurs without gaining anything (visible) back. Most people equate this to be a drain on resources.
> 
> Another problem is immigration. There are those who want us to stop the amount of Poles, Romanians & Bulgarians from being able to come and work over here. We already have an illegal immigration problem so, rightly or wrongly, they're grouped together as the same problem.
> 
> Believe it or not, there are actually people in the south & south east of England who don't want monetary union because a picture of the Queen won't be on the Euro! :bash:
> 
> I think the outcome of the vote would be to maintain the status quo. I do honestly believe that full monetary integration will happen in the future and although I'm a royalist I really couldn't care less if Liz appeared on the Euro or not. However, the exchange rate would have to be in our favour for any of the main parties to even consider changing.
> 
> The longer our membership of the EU continues the more people will want more & more integration. We now even use the European Courts of Justice (when it suits us) to bash our own judicial system. As our cheese eat.... sorry, French cousins would say, c'est la vie & que sera sera.


We have people that want to ban kebab and cous cous, but not for health reasons, just because it's related to an "evil" culture! But if pizza and pasta are exported in the world it's fine, because we (not only Italians, but westerners in general) are superior to the rest of the world and we must export our culture while others... should stay in the jungle with monkeys or in the desert with camels and stay away from us! (Literal speech of an Italian politician).


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> No. I thought Italystf meant "claim," in the sense of Bossi's telling the public that he was doing something (hiring dialect-speakers?). (I don't think I'd use "pretend" even in that meaning, although the difference is subtle: if you claim to be doing something, it might be true; if you pretend to be doing something, you're lying. So it would be safer - more neutral - for, say, a journalist to use "claim" in a sentence like that.)


I think he meant "demand", or "oblige" because "pretendere" in Italian means that: it is a so-called "false friend". Bossi wanted to force legislation into admitting as civil servants only those who spoke local languages.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Got it.


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ Most of the time, the issue is not really local dialects (that were never formalized and standardized as stand-alone languages first place) but to find some proxy that would allow people from an area to exclude others from coveted public sector jobs or certain professional orders.

Job market in Italy has a lot of structural problems, and has had them for 20 years, not only number of regular "career-bound" jobs but also issues like reverse ageism etc. Then, part of the population might be tempted to accept the idea the real problem is really "all those people coming from Puglia to work here" (or immigrants). 

Sometimes localism in Italy can go to extreme lengths, a semi-famous politician once suggested Italian armed forces should be "regionalized" as in people from southern regions having "no ability or culture" to deal with demands of Alpine infantry regiments because there isn't much snow in Palermo or Cagliari.

Finally, you have the issues of certain small valleys where some small, but extremely vocal, cadre of activists try to create ridiculous things like some valley identity that is full of buzzwords disguised as a way to keep lucrative money from ski resorts "in the valley only".

This is mostly a folcloric thing though. Sometimes, however, people take advantage of merely symbolic platforms and get elected to local offices as "protest" candidates, and then they become a PITA to get things done. 

The only real linguistic-ethnic mistake was for the Italian state to have had caved in to tirolese terrorists in the 1970s. That was a big error, impossible to reverse now since they get to keep almost all tax money, while receiving still the benefits of national services without paying for it (including an extremely flawed provision that doesn't reduce their handouts according to any 'fair share' of the province on Italian national debt)


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I quote every single word of Suburbanist's.

As for the small valley identity, I read that at the next elections there will be also a party named "Vallecamonica zona franca", whose agenda only covers one issue: they just want to institute a special economic zone in Valle Camonica (the valley north of Lake Iseo), just like the Livigno one. That is to say "we only look at our small garden, and to hell with the rest".


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ I quote every single word of Suburbanist's.
> 
> As for the small valley identity, I read that at the next elections there will be also a party named "Vallecamonica zona franca", whose agenda only covers one issue: they just want to institute a special economic zone in Valle Camonica (the valley north of Lake Iseo), just like the Livigno one. That is to say "we only look at our small garden, and to hell with the rest".


Livigno special tax status should be removed, it's a free pass for smuggling (you buy a lot of stuff there for cheap because there is no VAT and you resell in Italy at the black market, border controls are a joke).
It made sense 100 years ago when there were no roads to Livigno, but not today when they get a load of money from winter tourism.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ And i quote every single word of italysft's.


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> But "Qué será será" is Spanish.  (In French, it'd have to be "ce qui sera...")


You see, I told you we weren't very good at doing European.


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> EDIT: Now having read your comments: (1) What I meant by asking whether the status quo was an option was that I thought there was fairly strong pressure from some Continental powers and politicians to centralize more power in EU institutions and that those people would insist that Britain either go along with that or get out. (A brief glance at the Telegraph shows such reactions to the speech from a couple of foreign ministers, including the German one; but then Merkel took a much more compromising tone.)


There is and to be honest I'd expect a reaction along those lines. Although as usual a compromise will be made. The fact of the matter is we both (EU & Britain) need each other. Whether Europeans & Brits think the same is a moot point.

However, when all Europeans realise they have to speak English as their natural language, drive on the left hand side of the road, use the £ and swear allegiance to Liz then the sooner we can have a fully integrated EU. 

PS We can exchange the above for French & Italian food, German beer, Spanish sun and Dutch, Scandanavian & Eastern European women. Maybe then the EU will have reached Utopia.


----------



## Fatfield

Suburbanist said:


> Finally, you have the issues of certain small valleys where some small, but extremely vocal, cadre of activists try to create ridiculous things like some valley identity that is full of buzzwords disguised as a way to keep lucrative money


Wales?


----------



## RipleyLV

Meanwhile in Russia


----------



## Penn's Woods

Fatfield said:


> Wales?


If you're not nice, they'll secede!


----------



## Wilhem275

RipleyLV said:


> Meanwhile in Russia


Was that a dog or a kid? :eek2:


----------



## g.spinoza

A kid, it was in online newspapers in Italy, too.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Young people usually have a quite good English knowledge, at least in the written form. The pronunciation is more problematic.
> I read that the worst in Europe are the Spanish, the best Dutch and Scandinavians.











http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Knowledge_of_English_EU_map.svg


----------



## JackFrost




----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Go ahead, comment.


----------



## keokiracer

Ok, you asked for a reply: That guy is a retard.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Indeed he is. Heck, that's putting it mildly. But why would you assume I (or most Americans) would think otherwise?


----------



## pobre diablo

Broccolli said:


> Let's cut the bullshit we all know how it is


Slovenians don't deserve high quality anyway :troll:

And FYI, Milka made in BG tastes the same as the ones made in Austria.


----------



## Broccolli

pobre diablo said:


> And FYI, Milka made in BG tastes the same as the ones made in Austria.


Great....Bon appétit


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> There was never a wall or barbed wire around Slovenia, except on the Hungarian border (barbed wire probably, not a wall).


Yes there was. For us, civilization stopped after Austria.


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> Yes there was. For us, civilization stopped after Austria.


Is trolling the purpose of your life?


----------



## cinxxx

Just passed my trial period on the workplace, got even a raise


----------



## keokiracer

Verso said:


> Is trolling the purpose of your life?


Is that a rhetorical question?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

italystf said:


> Don't think so. Products from international companies are usually the same everywhere. Coca Cola in Rome tastes like in London, New York, Tokyo and Beijing.


I may be mistaken here but as far as I know, the amount of sugar in Coca-Cola varies by country.

Also, Carlsberg that is made in Latvia (that's sold in Estonia as well) tastes different that the one sold in Western Europe.


----------



## Gyorgy

Verso said:


> There was never a wall or barbed wire around Slovenia, except on the Hungarian border (barbed wire probably, not a wall).


Was this border better than others? 
http://www.muzej-vrtojba.si/about_slo.php


----------



## Nordic20T

@Rebasepoiss: But is it worse or just "different". This seems to be the point of this discussion here.


----------



## Verso

Gyorgy said:


> Was this border better than others?
> http://www.muzej-vrtojba.si/about_slo.php


Well, my statement still holds, it wasn't a wall or barbed wire. Anyway, don't take my "never" too literally, of course the border was "tough" the first years after WWII. But that was half a century ago.


----------



## Gyorgy

Verso said:


> Well, my statement still holds, it wasn't a wall or barbed wire. Anyway, don't take my "never" too literally, of course the border was "tough" the first years after WWII. But that was half a century ago.


There was no barbed wire in Germany and Hungary yet at that time, so YU - I border was just as typical cold war border as others. Even more troublesome due to ongoing teritorial dispute.


----------



## Verso

I never claimed otherwise.


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> Is trolling the purpose of your life?


Actually, Road_UK is right.

Anything south of Austria was never considered orderly by western Europeans.

EDIT: To be honest, it wasn't orderly anyway.


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> Actually, Road_UK is right.
> 
> Anything south of Austria was never considered orderly by western Europeans.
> 
> EDIT: To be honest, it wasn't orderly anyway.


I know what it was like, but Road_UK's reply (to what exactly?) was completely uncalled for and just his usual trolling. I'd prefer, if we kept discussions here _civilized_ and friendly, if it's not too hard.


----------



## keber

I understood his comment as sarcastic. He also says things directly without any curves, that could mean for many also not politely. 
Personally that does not bother me actually I'm often like him.


----------



## Broccolli

Here is a short slovenian movie

*Zemlja Gostov (The Border / La Terra Degli Ospiti)* 
from Marco Devetak

42881340


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> Personally that does not bother me


Does it also not bother you when he doesn't allow any criticizing of America whatsoever? Quite hypocritical of him, isn't it?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> I know what it was like, but Road_UK's reply (to what exactly?) was completely uncalled for and just his usual trolling. I'd prefer, if we kept discussions here _civilized_ and friendly, if it's not too hard.


I really don't think he was trying to be unfriendly or uncivilized, just expressing what the perception of Eastern Europe was at the time.

For what it's worth.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Does it also not bother you when he doesn't allow any criticizing of America whatsoever? Quite hypocritical of him, isn't it?


How'd we become involved in this?

EDIT: For that matter, there are forums where discussing other participants in this way can get you into trouble....


----------



## Wilhem275

Penn's Woods said:


> How'd we become involved in this?


The evil U.S. are involved in and responsible for anything bad happens on Earth, remember. Including Road_UK harsh manners :nuts:


----------



## Surel

Road_UK said:


> This seems to be applying to cigarettes as well. Marlboro sold in western Europe, including UK are made by Philip Morris in Neuchatel, Switzerland, while anything sold in Poland or Czech Republic are produced in those countries.


The problem is really not that about where the product is made. But how is it made.
The products to Eeastern Europe are often plain downgraded on the content. You can read it on the package.

There are also many old "national" prducts that were downgraded as well, after being acquired in the foreign multinationals the likes, Nestle, Krafts food, Unilever.
The retail also often demand such downgraded custom made products. The same retail then sells under same name different custom made products in the west and in the east. The price is the same. E.g. Ahold and Tesco are masters in this.
To be honest, German discount chains like Lidl, or Aldi are not doing that on such a scale.


----------



## italystf

Are those low-quality products only less tasteful or also less healty and made with poor hygienic conditions?


----------



## italystf

In Italy there is a sort of market segmentation in many supermarkets. Biggest supermarkets chains (Spar, Coop, Pam,...), along products with famous brands (Barilla pasta, Coca Cola, Parmalat milk, Nutella,...) sell products with their own brand. Those products cost less than branded products but are usually from quite good to very good quality and are produced by the same factories that produces branded products.
Some supermarkets, most notabily Spar, sell a chain of products with even a lower grade than the ones with the supermarket name. They're labelled as "budget products" and cost like 1/2 or 1/3 of normal products. However, aften hearing some "horror stories" about them (like worms in a bar of chocolate), I never purchased them.

Example:
Product with famous brand (good, high price)









Product with the brand of the supermarket (usually good, relatively cheap)









"Budget product" (very cheap but also very low quality)









It's perfectly possible that all those products are made by the same company, even in the same factory.


----------



## x-type

S-budget has ok products. not always, but some of them are really good considering the price.
worms in chocolate? come on. do you really think that worm would come to chocolate because of poor hygiene?


----------



## Suburbanist

The area where lower-priced brands usually have a remarkably lower quality are processed foods, especially frozen food.


----------



## Surel

The segmentation happens in several ways.

1) marketing
not modified product gets different package and different marketing treatment and is sold under different price. This happens across countries, as well as nationally.

2) actuall production
Product is modified and sold under different quality marketed brands. Again this happens both nationally as well as internationally.

THE west versus east problem (This happens mainly across countries, due to the legal issues, but once you state everything on the package, which is otherwise the same, you should be safe also nationally - i.e. selling different weigh, ortherwise same products for different prices in different chains).

What I am talking is something different. It is having product that is marketed under the same name, under the same package, but being modified based on the place where it is sold. The modification can be in size, used resources, modifications etc etc. The goal is increasing the margin on the sold product. The products can be produced in the same or different place, that doesnt play a role, because the know how of their production is the same. It is the need to save on the production costs that drives the modification, not the place of production.

This can happen across retailers, but here could be legal problems. More importadly this happens across countries. It happens on huge scale and with many products in the West and East Europe.

Such products are mostly, less tastefull, less healthy, using less suitable resources/ingredients . The hygienic conditions of production are not a problem.

EDIT: Another qeustion is that also when we just go and compare the same price category products, this time it doesnt have to be the same name, those in the Eastern Europe will mostly be of much worse quality. Especially in the lowest price sector. This might be explained by different producers, but the real reason is the retail sector pushing the quality down to increase its margins.


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> You mean 19*8*5? In 1995 it shouldn't have been problematic any more. I went to Hungary in 1996 and it was no problem (entered from Austria).


No, 1995. It was quite a procedure to go with the bus. Comparing to almost non-stop transfer into Italy (also with the bus) it still felt like crossing iron curtain.


----------



## Verso

Well, I went by car. I've never been to Hungary by bus. In 1996 I went to the Czech Republic by bus though and yes, it was quite a lengthy procedure.


----------



## cinxxx

I went in 1992 by bus from Timisoara, Romania to Karlsruhe, Germany with my parents.
Was just a child then and don't remember that much.
The bus didn't drive through Austria because additional visa was needed, but through Cehoslovakia. I remember we spent much time at HU border, some 2 hours or something and quite some bags were checked.

I was again by bus in 2000, procedures were lighter this time. Still required visa, but this time the Schengen one covered also Austria, and the bus drove through Austria. Before entering HU each passenger "donated" 5 DM in a bag that was passed through the bus for quick and easy passage.

The same donation-procedure happened again in 2008, last time I traveled by bus to Germany, but this time not more visa needed, only an ID (passport or personal id).


----------



## Penn's Woods

cinxxx said:


> ....
> The same procedure happened again in 2008, last time I traveled by bus to Germany.


Complete with the "donation"?


----------



## cinxxx

Penn's Woods said:


> Complete with the "donation"?


Yep! And as I heard, it's still being done


----------



## bogdymol

I traveled by bus from Arad, Romania, to Giulianova, Italy (via Wien, Austria) and we didn't have any problems at the border controls (RO/HU + HU/AT). Maybe this happened because 90% of the bus passengers were police officers on vacation 

In 2006 I traveled to Greece by bus (via Bulgaria), and we also didn't have any problems at the border. The only problem was a Bulgarian police officer that stopped us and asked for bribe... but the bus driver didn't want to give him any money without a "piece of paper" (receipt). Finally he had to give him 10 € or so to let us go...


----------



## MattiG

x-type said:


> it was not actually. Yugoslavia was more like kinda zone tampon. i am almost sure that it was easier for us to go to Italy than to Hungary in 80es.


I would like to remind about elementary logic: Two things may belong to a same category even if they are different. There were differences among the countries behind the iron curtain, but that does not make the iron curtain non-existent.

For example, it was less bureaucratic to enter Czechoslovakia than Poland. Still, both those counties were known to be located behind the iron curtain.


----------



## keber

cinxxx said:


> Yep! And as I heard, it's still being done


I presume this is a donation for the bus driver, not for border officials. 
Maybe I'm wrong, but I've wouldn't underestimate ingenuity of those drivers. Balkan is still Balkan.


----------



## cinxxx

keber said:


> I presume this is a donation for the bus driver, not for border officials.
> Maybe I'm wrong, but I've wouldn't underestimate ingenuity of those drivers. Balkan is still Balkan.


The bus company tells you when you buy a ticket, that besides the normal ticket price, there is the 5 euro "donation" for border crossing without luggage checks.


----------



## g.spinoza

This is all really sad.


----------



## italystf

Fot those reasons EU don't let RO and BG to join Schengen.


----------



## cinxxx

^^
Aha, but what about Hungarians who accept the bribe? :bash:

With or without Schengen, crossing the border to Hungary is only a joke for RO cars and buses.
Only trucks have a harder time, and this is a negative thing for EU economy.


----------



## Verso

MattiG said:


> I would like to remind about elementary logic: Two things may belong to a same category even if they are different. There were differences among the countries behind the iron curtain, but that does not make the iron curtain non-existent.
> 
> For example, it was less bureaucratic to enter Czechoslovakia than Poland. Still, both those counties were known to be located behind the iron curtain.


Can you show us the Iron Curtain on Yugoslavia's border?









http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Curtain

Iron Curtain ≠ socialism


----------



## italystf

It was impossible to travel between Italy and Yugoslavia until around 1960.


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> Can you show us the Iron Curtain on Yugoslavia's border?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Curtain
> 
> Iron Curtain ≠ socialism


Yugoslavia wasn't behind the iron curtain. It pretty much did its own thing in those days. Although Dubrovnik holidays may have been popular among some people, it was still a world away from freedom and peace. And the way Yugoslavia collapsed, and all the things that has happened there in the aftermath... That sort of brutality is not known in pretty much all of Europe since WW2. I'm glad though that Slovenia and its citizens have kept their heads high, and has become a succesfull and relativly wealthy EU member.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> It was impossible to travel between Italy and Yugoslavia until around 1960.


So long? I didn't know. That's long ago though. Anyway, there's no Iron Curtain around Albania either.


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> Although Dubrovnik holidays may have been popular among some people, it was still a world away from freedom and *peace*.


What are you talking about? There was peace in SFRY until 1990s when it ceased to exist anyway. Certainly a more peaceful place than Northern Ireland, for example.


----------



## Road_UK

Freedom before, horrors after. Happy?


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> So long? I didn't know. That's long ago though. Anyway, there's no Iron Curtain around Albania either.


I read that it was totally closed until 1954 (London Memorandum) but for some years later traffic was heavily restricted (only those who had relatives on the other side, only few times a year, entry and exit through the same border, etc). I cannot find the exact date, though. I don't have elderly relatives who lived near the border back then who might remember.
I'm sure it was possible to cross from Italy into the Free Territory of Trieste and also between the two sectors of the Free Territory of Trieste (maybe you could travel from I to YU via Trieste?)


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> Freedom before, horrors after.


That's the case with many countries, including those in the West.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> It was impossible to travel between Italy and Yugoslavia until around 1960.


Was it? My father went to a football competition in Belgrade around '63. He even went to play against the university team (or was it the young Red Star team? I can't remember).


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Was it? My father went to a football competition in Belgrade around '63. He even went to play against the university team (or was it the young Red Star team? I can't remember).


Probably it was unti middle-late 50s.


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> That's the case with many countries, including those in the West.


Not since WW2. And I hope it won't happen again. Anywhere. But with threads from Iran and North Korea, problems in Africa and worldwide terrorism, nothing is certain these days...hno:


----------



## hofburg

Verso said:


> Can you show us the Iron Curtain on Yugoslavia's border?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Curtain
> 
> Iron Curtain ≠ socialism


picture above shows border line between Nato-Warsaw pakt. doesn't the world iron curtain come from Churchil? he said iron curtain was by Trieste/Trst.
anyway, border in first 10 or 15 years after WWII between I and YU was certainly ironcurtain-ish.


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> picture above shows border line between Nato-Warsaw pakt. doesn't the world iron curtain come from Churchil? he said iron curtain was by Trieste/Trst.
> anyway, border in first 10 or 15 years after WWII between I and YU was certainly ironcurtain-ish.


Yes. According to him it streched between Stettin and Trieste, including Yugoslavia but excluding the DDR. He added that a lot of European capitals now lays behind it. Those capitals were: Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, Warsaw but also Berlin, Belgrade and Vienna (yup, eastern Austria was under Soviet rule until 1955). So, it was a mistake to put Stettin as northern terminus, Lubeck would have been more appropriate.


----------



## g.spinoza

hofburg said:


> picture above shows border line between Nato-Warsaw pakt. doesn't the world iron curtain come from Churchil? he said iron curtain was by Trieste/Trst.


Not really. Churchill was talking about Poland.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> I'm sure it was possible to cross from Italy into the Free Territory of Trieste and also between the two sectors of the Free Territory of Trieste (maybe you could travel from I to YU via Trieste?)


No idea. What about I to YU via Austria?



hofburg said:


> picture above shows border line between Nato-Warsaw pakt. doesn't the world iron curtain come from Churchil? he said iron curtain was by Trieste/Trst.


No, it's an Iron Curtain map; Austria and Finland weren't/aren't in NATO. Winston Churchill had that speech in 1946 when Yugoslavia was actually behind the Iron Curtain, but that changed just two years later. As italystf already pointed out, Churchill made a mistake anyway. The Iron Curtain didn't start by Stettin/Szczecin, but Lübeck.


----------



## pobre diablo

^^

Face it. Yugoslavia was more an Eastern than Western country.


----------



## Skopje/Скопје

pobre diablo said:


> ^^
> 
> Face it. Yugoslavia was more an Eastern than Western country.


I think it's fair to say that Yugoslavia was neither eastern neither western country. Yugoslavia tried to find it's own way, but failed. Although, Yugoslavia was a socialist country.


----------



## Verso

pobre diablo said:


> ^^
> 
> Face it. Yugoslavia was more an Eastern than Western country.


We're talking about the Iron Curtain, not whom Yugoslavia was closer to (which is subjective anyway). It was neither.


----------



## italystf

Even if not member of the Warsaw pact it was more close to the East: it had a socialist economy and it was a single-party state with no free elections.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Even if not member of the Warsaw pact it was more close to the East: it had a socialist economy and it was a single-party state with no free elections.


Elections here are a farce anyway; always the same crooks. :bash:


----------



## Suburbanist

What about travel between Warsaw pact countries and Yugoslavia? Was it easy?

Albania also tries "its own way" and their dictator Enver Hhonxa went psychotic


----------



## Penn's Woods

Well, that was exciting: just spent the morning in the hospital, thanks to a kidney stone. Hope it passes soon. But morphine's a great invention.

(There - how's that for a subject change?)


----------



## pobre diablo

Verso said:


> TLDR. :lol:


Je ne comprends pas qu'est ce que tu veut dire.


----------



## Verso

Too long, didn't read.


----------



## Penn's Woods

pobre diablo said:


> ^^
> 
> ...Food in the US, for example, is very cheap in comparison but are of very low quality.


Why do you say that?
And why do people keep bringing us into this?


----------



## Surel

pobre diablo said:


> ^^
> 
> Well, cheaper in Germany doesn't mean high quality. Food in the US, for example, is very cheap in comparison but are of very low quality.


Read my post http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=99577334&postcount=18786


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> Why do you say that?
> And why do people keep bringing us into this?


Generally its true, healthy quality food is more expensive in the USA than in the EU.

Because US is a benchmark country for many. On the other side its just a country as any other thus why it should not be discussed?


----------



## Penn's Woods

1) Data, please. And proof that European-made food is more expensive in the U.S. than in the E.U. does not equate to proof that good food is more expensive in the U.S. than in the E.U. I've got to believe that our long-established food-regulation system is at least as good as, say, Bulgaria's.

2) The last time the US was brought up on this thread was early in Verso's rather trollish, unfriendly and uncalled-for multi-page Road_UK's-a-troll argument.

And "benchmark"? Please. Whipping boy. A lot of people in Europe - just as far as I can see from here - get off, for some reason, on congratulating themselves (quite often without basis) for being better than us. It's a bit pathetic, actually. And very annoying. Some idiot on Le Monde's forum spent three weeks in November trying to convince me that the food in New York is disgusting. (Original topic was French competitors in the New York Marathon suing the owners for canceling it, the weekend after Sandy, but I can see how that would quickly mutate into "why would anyone want to go to New York? The food is disgusting." Because, you know, that's more important than what people in the New York area were going through at that point. This, apparently, on the basis of some time living in OTTAWA, and the usual stereotypical assumptions.)

By the way: did you know we Americans are "unnaturally fixated on personal dentition"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Americanism - end of first paragraph. I suppose that's because we have dentists....


----------



## pobre diablo

Surel said:


> Read my post http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=99577334&postcount=18786


Well, based on this, I conclude that if they sell the same thing in a rich and poor country, they have to sell for less money in a poor country and thus make less on the product as compared to the one in the rich country. Therefore, they decrease the quality in order to make the product cheaper to make and then make the same margin as in the rich country. Do I understand correctly? But then why are things cheaper in Germany?


----------



## Verso

US mentioned => Penn's Woods freaks out again


----------



## pobre diablo

Penn's Woods said:


> 1) Data, please. And proof that European-made food is more expensive in the U.S. than in the E.U. does not equate to proof that good food is more expensive in the U.S. than in the E.U. I've got to believe that our long-established food-regulation system is at least as good as, say, Bulgaria's.
> 
> 2) The last time the US was brought up on this thread was early in Verso's rather trollish, unfriendly and uncalled-for multi-page Road_UK's-a-troll argument.


I can speak from personal experience. US food, for one, is much saltier, greasier, and sweeter than in Europe (I can't speak for other places, as I haven't been). Fruits and vegetables taste like cardboard. I'm talking about local supermarket food, not specialized organic supermarkets or local farms.
Also obesity levels did not happen out of nowhere.


----------



## pobre diablo

Regulation system might be better at catching things but the things allowed are scary with all the hormones, colorings, preservatives, and additives. Not that other places don't have them, but not to that extent. You just need to look at the size of things to realize that it's not normal.


----------



## Road_UK

Edit. Not worth the aggro.


----------



## Road_UK

pobre diablo said:


> I can speak from personal experience. US food, for one, is much saltier, greasier, and sweeter than in Europe (I can't speak for other places, as I haven't been). Fruits and vegetables taste like cardboard. I'm talking about local supermarket food, not specialized organic supermarkets or local farms.
> Also obesity levels did not happen out of nowhere.


It's either sweeter or saltier. If it's both it means there is a wide range available to choose from. Same as in most of Europe.


----------



## pobre diablo

^^

I didn't mean one thing was sweet and salty. Sweet things are much sweeter, and everything else is much saltier. The latter is a wide-known fact.


----------



## Road_UK

pobre diablo said:


> ^^
> 
> I didn't mean one thing was sweet and salty. Sweet things are much sweeter, and everything else is much saltier. The latter is a wide-known fact.


Bollucks.


----------



## Suburbanist

I think people on this thread need to give others the benefit of the doubt. It is become ever-more-annoying.

What about *not* assuming an ambiguous statement was meant to offend someone's country?

What about *not* going ape-shit because somebody doesn't agree with some of your personal observation?

What about *not* calling other people's names and sticking them to stereotypes just because you didn't like something you read?


----------



## Chilio

pobre diablo said:


> Regulation system might be better at catching things but the things allowed are scary with all the hormones, colorings, preservatives, and additives. Not that other places don't have them, but not to that extent. You just need to look at the size of things to realize that it's not normal.


Speaking of regulations, you didn't mention also the genetically modified products, which is quite an issue - banned in most of European countries, allowed and widely used in most of the States. Or at least they were, I'll be glad if regulations have been changed and are now or about to become more restrictive.

Penn's, it's not about stereotyping people or countries. I'm also quite disgusted how many make their conclusions from rather unfair and untrue stereotypes. And also am sure that because of the States being so wide and multipopulated with quite a different people and cultures, there are all type of foods, good ones, bad ones... That's why I only speak about regulations.

It's not like telling how BG and RO don't deserve to enter Schengen because HU border officers accepted bribes...  Or not knowing what chocolate is made of, but being sure it's made of worse things only because it's made in EE and not WE.


----------



## italystf

Surel said:


> Yugo was something in between. It was holiday resort that could be used by both sides.
> 
> I remember "funny" story from an Adriatic beach my mother told me. My brother was one little angel when he was around 3 years. Arian angel you could say. Blond curly hair, blue eyes, but he can have nice tan as well. Some German family from BRD wanted to buy him from my parents because they could not have their own kids. That woman was just crazy and it meant premature end of holiday for my parents as they had to watch him all the time to not get him stolen.


BRD, West Germany? And they said that communists eat children. 



Verso said:


> ^^ You quote the Executive Director of Kraft Foods Bulgaria? icard: That's like asking a criminal, if he's innocent. I rather believe the Slovak Association of Consumers.


In Italy we say "It's like asking the barman if wine is good."


----------



## Broccolli

pobre diablo said:


> Yes, it is. And for the person who was lamenting bad Bulgarian Milkas sold in Slovenia, I found this quote from an interview with the *director of Kraft Foods Bulgaria*, for all it's worth.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=136309


----------



## bogdymol

Wow. He had hair?


----------



## Road_UK

Chilio said:


> Speaking of regulations, you didn't mention also the genetically modified products, which is quite an issue - banned in most of European countries, allowed and widely used in most of the States. Or at least they were, I'll be glad if regulations have been changed and are now or about to become more restrictive.
> 
> Penn's, it's not about stereotyping people or countries. I'm also quite disgusted how many make their conclusions from rather unfair and untrue stereotypes. And also am sure that because of the States being so wide and multipopulated with quite a different people and cultures, there are all type of foods, good ones, bad ones... That's why I only speak about regulations.
> 
> It's not like telling how BG and RO don't deserve to enter Schengen because HU border officers accepted bribes...  Or not knowing what chocolate is made of, but being sure it's made of worse things only because it's made in EE and not WE.


Even regulations can be interpreted in many ways. A lot of people don't like EU mingling. Others don't like over the top Health and Safety regulations as they have in the UK. Very easy for Europeans to criticize Americans and their 2nd Amendment, or their food or other internal affairs, and then preferably make it sound like they're a bunch of ******** who haven't got a clue. But we've got so many problems and diversions of our own. 

That sweeter and saltier statement is an absolute bunch of nonsense.


----------



## x-type

i don't buy Bulgarian Milka from one simple reason: they are mostly done in 80 g bars (or 250 g for large bars), and not in usual 100/300 g bars. and the price is equal.
thank heaven for Müller, they import only Milka "made in Austria" in 100 g bars.


----------



## Broccolli

x-type said:


> thank heaven for Müller, they import only Milka "made in Austria" in 100 g bars.


I don't trust austrians neither


----------



## Surel

pobre diablo said:


> Well, based on this, I conclude that if they sell the same thing in a rich and poor country, they have to sell for less money in a poor country and thus make less on the product as compared to the one in the rich country. Therefore, they decrease the quality in order to make the product cheaper to make and then make the same margin as in the rich country. Do I understand correctly? But then why are things cheaper in Germany?


Yes, that would be the normal logic. But often it works bit differently, the margin is in fact bigger in the poorer countries. It is that the same priced products have different quality, and the same quality products are in fact cheaper in the richer countries.

Why? Because market allows this and there is no regulation on this (at least on the quality, regulating price would be overkill, and not really something that we want, quality regulation is different thing - especially in marketing). BTW most of the quality regulation in the Eastern Europe was scrapped in the 90s. Substantial part of it reasoned by the EU single market. While many quality regulation persisted in the Western Europe.

The bigger the market the bigger the competition the lower the price. thats why in Germany it is cheaper.


----------



## italystf

Food companies like Milka should offer two different versions of every product: a "premium" product (like the Austrian chocolate) and a "budget" one (like the Bulgarian chocolate) that must appear together on supermarket shelves. Earning margins on premium products would be bigger (ex: if the cost to made them is 0,70 and 1,00 they would sell at 1,20 and 2,50).
In that way the company could cover a vast part of the market, satisfying both those who seek quality and those who seek conveniency. This could work both in Western and Eastern Europe.


----------



## g.spinoza

pobre diablo said:


> ^^
> 
> I didn't mean one thing was sweet and salty.


Sometimes they are both. I remember a Virginian professor visiting when I was working at the university in Italy. He brought from the US something I could never start to describe - a piece of salty toffee caramel. It was the most disgusting thing I ever ate: and I ate Columbian ants.


----------



## Surel

italystf said:


> Food companies like Milka should offer two different versions of every product: a "premium" product (like the Austrian chocolate) and a "budget" one (like the Bulgarian chocolate) that must appear together on supermarket shelves. Earning margins on premium products would be bigger (ex: if the cost to made them is 0,70 and 1,00 they would sell at 1,20 and 2,50).
> In that way the company could cover a vast part of the market, satisfying both those who seek quality and those who seek conveniency. This could work both in Western and Eastern Europe.


They do it. And the making of such segments is much simpler. You can just change the package and sell under different brand while the content is completaly the same. Thats how it is done. Especially some retailer custom made products are made in this way. Though don't know if Milka is doing it.


----------



## italystf

I've heard that they eat salty liquorice in Sweden and Finland while people from other countries feel it disgusting. However I don't know since I never ate it.


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> Sometimes they are both. I remember a Virginian professor visiting when I was working at the university in Italy. He brought from the US something I could never start to describe - a piece of salty toffee caramel. It was the most disgusting thing I ever ate: and I ate Columbian ants.


Salty Tofee caramel? Then it should be different than the dutch drop, right? The worst tasting candy I ever ate :lol:.


----------



## pobre diablo

Road_UK said:


> Bollucks.


Oh, sit down. I live in America. I know what the food is like here. I haven't been to UK, may be the food there is even worse in comparison :dunno:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> US mentioned => Penn's Woods freaks out again


Baseless assumption about US made in ridiculous argument among ignorant inhabitants of Third World countries about the respective qualities of said Third World countries = > Michael gets irritated. Because it's old.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Baseless assumption about US made in ridiculous argument among ignorant inhabitants of Third World countries about the respective qualities of said Third World countries = > Michael gets irritated. Because it's old.


Developing countries


----------



## g.spinoza

I only mentioned one piece of US food I cannot eat. I love pancakes+maple syrup!


----------



## Penn's Woods

pobre diablo said:


> ^^
> 
> I didn't mean one thing was sweet and salty. Sweet things are much sweeter, and everything else is much saltier. The latter is a wide-known fact.


Which is why fitness magazines, for example, always advise you to "shop the outside of the supermarket" - i.e. buy ingredients (meat, vegetables, and so on) rather than the processsed food that's in interior aisles. And processed food has "nutritional information" labels that other countries have taken as a model for their ow. And the diversity of what's available here...you can eat as well here as anywhere else if you want to.

And I've never had a problem with cardboard-tasting fruits and vegetables.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Developing countries


Third World.


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> Baseless assumption about US made in ridiculous argument among ignorant inhabitants of Third World countries about the respective qualities of said Third World countries = > Michael gets irritated. Because it's old.


0.5/10



Surel said:


> Salty Tofee caramel? Then it should be different than the dutch drop, right? The worst tasting candy I ever ate :lol:.


I don't like those black candies either. What's the main substance actually?


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Sometimes they are both. I remember a Virginian professor visiting when I was working at the university in Italy. He brought from the US something I could never start to describe - a piece of salty toffee caramel. It was the most disgusting thing I ever ate: and I ate Columbian ants.


I don't suppose you mean salt-water taffy? Invented by mistake in Atlantic City, supposedly, when a candy maker somehow got sea water into a barrel of taffy and said, hey, this isn't bad. You buy it at the beach in the summer, because it's (and you're) there, and forget about it the rest of the year.

I have a Johannesburg-born co-worker who occasionally orders things like Marmite (ugh!) and some beef-jerky-type thing from a mail-order place in North Carolina that specializes in South African products. (I know Marmite's not South African.) On the other hand, I was unaware that peanut butter was a North American oddity until Brits on another forum started talking about it: either they'd never had it or they thought it was gross.

As far as pancakes are concerned, I've never liked heavy breakfasts.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> I don't suppose you mean salt-water taffy? Invented by mistake in Atlantic City, supposedly, when a candy maker somehow got sea water into a barrel of taffy and said, hey, this isn't bad. You buy it at the beach in the summer, because it's (and you're) there, and forget about it the rest of the year.


Don't know. Google images gives me pics of individually-wrapped candies, but I remember this... thing being more like a candy-bar, with this color and shape:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thorntonstoffee.jpg



> On the other hand, I was unaware that peanut butter was a North American oddity until Brits on another forum started talking about it: either they'd never had it or they thought it was gross.


I never saw or ate peanut butter until a roomate of mine during my university time, an American, brought one can from the US (he came from a NJ town near Philly, can't remember its name). At first I didn't like it, but now I do. Sometimes you can find peanut butter in Italian supermarkets (only the big ones) but it's impossibly expensive. I bought recently an economic one made by Calvè, but it's terrible. I bought peanuts and the other ingredients to make it myself.



> As far as pancakes are concerned, I've never liked heavy breakfasts.


As a matter of fact my normal breakfast is cappuccino with some biscuits (sorry, cookies), but from time to time I like to indulge myself with heavier things...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Peanut Butter is widely available in the Netherlands. Every supermarket sells it, usually in several price ranges and variants.


----------



## Penn's Woods

[Reply to Spinoza]

I've seen and eaten things like that Thornton's toffee. I wouldn't go out of my way for it. I've never heard of that brand, but it says here it's British: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorntons. Salt-water taffy is much softer and milder in flavor. I don't know if there's a difference between taffy and toffee other than one being an American word and the other British.

I used to (when I lived closer to it) do a lot of my shopping at the wonderful Reading Terminal Market (http://www.readingterminalmarket.org/) There were Amish merchants with a stand in there who, if you asked for a pound of peanut butter, would pour a bunch of peanuts, some oil, and I don't know what else into a thing to grind it. And no, it wasn't the same grinder they used for meat.

:cheers:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> Baseless assumption about US made in ridiculous argument among ignorant inhabitants of Third World countries about the respective qualities of said Third World countries = > Michael gets irritated. Because it's old.


I apologize for the "ignorant" and the "Third World." And for the "baseless," I suppose, although my experience is very different.
self-:bash:

That's all.


----------



## Wilhem275

You should apologize for the "Michael" and the "old", too


----------



## Road_UK

pobre diablo said:


> Oh, sit down. I live in America. I know what the food is like here. I haven't been to UK, may be the food there is even worse in comparison :dunno:


And how in comparison to Holland, Belgium, Germany, Austrian, Poland, France, Spain, Portugal, Canada, Suriname, Luxembourg, Switzerland........... 


...


----------



## Orionol

How the hell can you not love lakrits (licorice)?
Its the best candy in the world! We Swedes are crazy for this shit!


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> I only mentioned one piece of US food I cannot eat. I love pancakes+maple syrup!


Why can't you eat that? It's widely sold throughout Europe...


----------



## CNGL

Road_UK said:


> And how in comparison to *Holland*, Belgium, Germany, Austrian, Poland, France, Spain, Portugal, Canada, Suriname, Luxembourg, Switzerland...........
> 
> 
> ...


If you say Holland (Both North and South), you have to say too North Brabant, Drenthe, Flevoland, Friesland, Gelderland, Groningen, Limburg, Overijssel (Chriszwolleland ), Utrecht and Zeeland. Or just Netherlands instead of all those.


----------



## Road_UK

CNGL said:


> If you say Holland (Both North and South), you have to say too North Brabant, Drenthe, Flevoland, Friesland, Gelderland, Groningen, Limburg, Overijssel (Chriszwolleland ), Utrecht and Zeeland. Or just Netherlands instead of all those.


I just say what's internationally well known.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Why can't you eat that? It's widely sold throughout Europe...


I can assure you Thornton's toffee (if that's what I ate, I'm still not sure) is not sold in Italy. It would sell zip.
I can't eat it because I would get sick and throw up...


----------



## Verso

Orionol said:


> How the hell can you not love lakrits (licorice)?
> Its the best candy in the world! We Swedes are crazy for this shit!


Once a Finn gave me those candies (Finnish). I felt stupid when I thanked him.


----------



## Orionol

Verso said:


> Once a Finn gave me those candies (Finnish). I felt stupid when I thanked him.


:rofl:


----------



## cinxxx

I don't really like the taste of them


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> I can assure you Thornton's toffee (if that's what I ate, I'm still not sure) is not sold in Italy. It would sell zip.
> I can't eat it because I would get sick and throw up...


Oh sorry, I thought you meant pancakes.


----------



## Orionol

cinxxx said:


> I don't really like the taste of them


Why not?  Everybody loves them!


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Oh sorry, I thought you meant pancakes.


Pancake mix is not so easy to find in Italy. I used to find it in some specialized stores in Bologna, but still wasn't able to find it in Brescia...


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> Pancake mix is not so easy to find in Italy. I used to find it in some specialized stores in Bologna, but still wasn't able to find it in Brescia...


How about just flour, eggs, milk and a pinch of salt? That's what I use for my pancakes...


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> How about just flour, eggs, milk and a pinch of salt? That's what I use for my pancakes...


That's what I used when I made pancakes yesterday 
But pancake mix is tastier, I don't know what's the secret ingredient


----------



## cinxxx

Orionol said:


> Why not?  Everybody loves them!


Everybody except me then .
I'm more a Gummibärchen fan .

In other words, we had some guests today, and I showed them the pictures from my trip to Slovenia, and they were very impressed, didn't expect to be so beautiful, so they will drive there probably in autumn


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> That's what I used when I made pancakes yesterday
> But pancake mix is tastier, I don't know what's the secret ingredient


I'm sure you can get them at the hypermarkets in your area like Auchan or Carrefour...


----------



## Broccolli

g.spinoza said:


> That's what I used when I made pancakes yesterday
> But pancake mix is tastier, I don't know what's the secret ingredient


If you want better taste you can add to the mix (eggs, flour, milk, salt, sugar) one tablespoon of sour cream, a little bit of sparkling water (Radenska) and instead of sunflower oil you use butter to bake.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> I'm sure you can get them at the hypermarkets in your area like Auchan or Carrefour...


Believe me, I searched it at Auchan and didn't find it. Carrefours are at the other side of the city, not worth it 



Broccolli said:


> If you want better taste you can add to the mix (eggs, flour, milk, salt, sugar) one tablespoon of sour cream, a little bit of sparkling water (Radenska) and instead of sunflower oil you use butter to bake.


Thanks! Gonna try.


----------



## Road_UK

Broccolli said:


> If you want better taste you can add to the mix (eggs, flour, milk, salt, sugar) one tablespoon of sour cream, a little bit of sparkling water (Radenska) and instead of sunflower oil you use butter to bake.


Some people use a bit of buttermilk as well...


----------



## Broccolli

Road_UK said:


> Some people use a bit of buttermilk as well...


Interesting, well this must add a little bit of sourish taste to the dough mix 
You cant make a mistake with pancake mix :lol: you add that kind of additions which you prefer...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Orionol said:


> How the hell can you not love lakrits (licorice)?
> Its the best candy in the world! We Swedes are crazy for this shit!


The rest of my family hates licorice jelly beans. Which works out fine, 'cause they're my favorite.


----------



## bogdymol

Meanwhile in Russia,


----------



## Penn's Woods

CNGL said:


> If you say Holland (Both North and South), you have to say too North Brabant, Drenthe, Flevoland, Friesland, Gelderland, Groningen, Limburg, Overijssel (Chriszwolleland ), Utrecht and Zeeland. Or just Netherlands instead of all those.


"Liked" because it's high time you got one from someone other than your alter ego.


----------



## keokiracer

CNGL said:


> If you say Holland (Both North and South), you have to say too North Brabant, Drenthe, Flevoland, Friesland, Gelderland, Groningen, Limburg, Overijssel (Chriszwolleland ), Utrecht and Zeeland. Or just Netherlands instead of all those.


This video fits nicely here 








bogdymol said:


> Meanwhile in Russia,


*raises bar*


----------



## Orionol

cinxxx said:


> Everybody except me then .
> I'm more a Gummibärchen fan .


Mmmmm, gummibärchen is tasty indeed.





Penn's Woods said:


> The rest of my family hates licorice jelly beans. Which works out fine, 'cause they're my favorite.


Then we are two who likes it! :cheers:



BTW: Have anyone tried Turkish Pepper Candy?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

keokiracer said:


> *raises bar*


Erm


----------



## keokiracer

Hadn't thought of it that way, My dirty mind failed me.


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> I don't suppose you mean salt-water taffy? Invented by mistake in Atlantic City, supposedly, when a candy maker somehow got sea water into a barrel of taffy and said, hey, this isn't bad. You buy it at the beach in the summer, because it's (and you're) there, and forget about it the rest of the year.
> 
> I have a Johannesburg-born co-worker who occasionally orders things like Marmite (ugh!) and some beef-jerky-type thing from a mail-order place in North Carolina that specializes in South African products. (I know Marmite's not South African.) On the other hand, I was unaware that peanut butter was a North American oddity until Brits on another forum started talking about it: either they'd never had it or they thought it was gross.
> 
> As far as pancakes are concerned, I've never liked heavy breakfasts.


Try putting Marmite & peanut butter on your toast on a morning. Nectar!


----------



## CNGL

Anyone remember that back in summer I built a (stub of) road? Now is going to receive a number, and it may be the shortest numbered road in the world at only 10 meters. The great inauguration of Skyscrapercity highway 35 will be held next Friday if weather allows. I promise some photos!

PS: The road is located at the green arrow: http://goo.gl/maps/wxQzb.


----------



## seem

Street view Slovakia -


----------



## ChrisZwolle

For king and country!

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands will announce her abdication this evening.


----------



## CNGL

What will happen then to the reverse of Dutch euro coins? :?


----------



## Wilhem275

Why? And what happens next? Do you finally stop being a fairytale country? :troll:


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> For king and country!
> 
> Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands will announce her abdication this evening.


As a coin collector, I am glad because they will issue new designs


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> For king and country!
> 
> Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands will announce her abdication this evening.


Well, that's quite a development. Passing it on to one of the sons? (And when's the last time you had a king - 1890ish?)

EDIT: So will April 30 now be Koningsdag?


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Well, that's quite a development. Passing it on to one of the sons? (And when's the last time you had a king - 1890ish?)
> 
> EDIT: So will April 30 now be Koningsdag?


The 30 April will probably remain since it was the birthday of the previous queen, Juliana.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^It's now called "Koninginnedag" - Queen's Day. I was guessing the name would be changed.

:cheers:

Although Queen Victoria's birthday - known as Victoria Day - is still a major national holiday in Canada, if nowhere else....

So, there'll be a Queen Maxima? Born in Argentina? If Eva Perón's looking on from the afterlife, she'll be very jealous....


----------



## da_scotty

It's official! On the 30th of April Queen Beatrix will abdicate and (the Prince of Orange) King Willem IV and Queen Maxima will be inaugruated.

Long live the King!


----------



## Penn's Woods

Won't catch Liz doing that...

Seriously, is she unwell? Just retiring? Didn't Juliana abdicate as well? In the English-speaking world (including countries that officially shouldn't care one way or the other about monarchy), we're used to them dying on the job.


----------



## CNGL

da_scotty said:


> Oh, it's going to be "King Willem-Alexander", not Willem IV


It sounds like King Juan Carlos of Spain or Pope John Paul II .

Anyway, I'm looking forward the new Dutch coins. I have collected euro coins since the introduction in 2002 (When I was 8), and notes since 2011. I haven't seen a commemorative €2 coin for a while now, but OTOH I've caught an Austrian €5 note with Duisenberg's signature recently.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Ron2K said:


> It's called "biltong" -- and it's made of awesome!


That's the stuff!


----------



## keber

North Korea is now covered in Detail in Google Maps.
Now Bosnia and Herzegovina, almost in the middle of Europe, is the only country in the world not being covered with Google Maps. Even Somalia (a "failed state") is better covered.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keber said:


> North Korea is now covered in Detail in Google Maps.
> Now Bosnia and Herzegovina, almost in the middle of Europe, is the only country in the world not being covered with Google Maps. Even Somalia (a "failed state") is better covered.


The mapping function too, or only photos? Which I think were already there.


----------



## keber

Mapping function was vastly improved, you can check for yourself (North Koreans can't ...)


----------



## italystf

It would be nice to have street view in NK. Off course it would show only the places that Kim want us to see.


----------



## keber

It would be nice to have streetview of whole world not just North Korea.
It would be nice to have promptly updated maps (not just once or twice a year).
It would be nice to have operating public transport instructions. I can plan public transport ride in Ljubljana, I can plan that in Bangkok, but I can't do that in Berlin.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Brilliant!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/quiz/2013/jan/27/british-citizenship-test-quiz-new

I got ten out of ten.

:cheers:


----------



## g.spinoza

The city of Naples stopped its urban bus service because... they have no money to buy gasoline.
http://napoli.repubblica.it/cronaca...i_fermi_non_c_una_goccia_di_gasolio-51547421/

:O :O


----------



## MattiG

Penn's Woods said:


> Brilliant!
> 
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/quiz/2013/jan/27/british-citizenship-test-quiz-new
> 
> I got ten out of ten.


I got 8 of 10, and met the criteria percentage. Am I now forced to take the citizenship of the UK?


----------



## Suburbanist

April 30th will no longer be a holiday in Netherlands. That will be moved to April 27th, the day of birth of Willem-Alexander.


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> The city of Naples stopped its urban bus service because... they have no money to buy gasoline.
> http://napoli.repubblica.it/cronaca...i_fermi_non_c_una_goccia_di_gasolio-51547421/
> 
> :O :O


Many Italian cities have outdated networks of urban public transportation, with an excessive number of buses aiming at providing one-seat rides, which mean buses clogging central areas. 

The concept of integrated fares and transfers hasn't arrived in many places. As many provinces and cities are facing financial crisis, they cannot afford the hefty subsidies they pay for transit agencies. Fares are often too low as well.

ATM, the transit agency of Milano, had an abysmal farebox recovery ratio of 16%. It increased a bit when they jacked up fares 1 1/2 years ago, but still lackluster. They have many duplicate bus routes, God forbids people take 3 vehicles to arrive at destination.

I'm not familiar with the network design in Napoli, but it is probably affected on the same way, too many buses duplicating rail and subway routes.


----------



## Chilio

I also got 9/10... where to apply for citizenship? Oh, gosh, I forgot... British wont accept us naughty 37 mln Bulgarians and Romanians


----------



## g.spinoza

MattiG said:


> I got 8 of 10, and met the criteria percentage. Am I now forced to take the citizenship of the UK?


8 out of ten for me, too.



Suburbanist said:


> April 30th will no longer be a holiday in Netherlands. That will be moved to April 27th, the day of birth of Willem-Alexander.


Had the Queen abdicated on April 29th, you would've skipped one holiday 



Suburbanist said:


> Many Italian cities have outdated networks of urban public transportation, with an excessive number of buses aiming at providing one-seat rides, which mean buses clogging central areas.
> 
> The concept of integrated fares and transfers hasn't arrived in many places. As many provinces and cities are facing financial crisis, they cannot afford the hefty subsidies they pay for transit agencies. Fares are often too low as well.
> 
> ATM, the transit agency of Milano, had an abysmal farebox recovery ratio of 16%. It increased a bit when they jacked up fares 1 1/2 years ago, but still lackluster. They have many duplicate bus routes, God forbids people take 3 vehicles to arrive at destination.
> 
> I'm not familiar with the network design in Napoli, but it is probably affected on the same way, too many buses duplicating rail and subway routes.


I don't know too much about Naples, but its public transportation network is quite extended. When I was there I enjoyed riding the subway train.


----------



## hofburg

g.spinoza said:


> The city of Naples stopped its urban bus service because... they have no money to buy gasoline.
> http://napoli.repubblica.it/cronaca...i_fermi_non_c_una_goccia_di_gasolio-51547421/
> 
> :O :O



doesnt surprise me, i took a regional bus in Salerno, we were 3 people on it, like kings, and it was very cheap.


----------



## hofburg

0/10 I dont know UK at all


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> I don't know too much about Naples, but its public transportation network is quite extended. When I was there I enjoyed riding the subway train.


The problem is not the subway, not even the Circumvesuviana (though it is crap and need new trains badly), but buses. Despite the whining about fuel costs, the total cost incurred on bus drivers (not only their wage but taxes on wages, paid leave etc. etc.) is the biggest component of the bus system, whereas in the subway one single driver can drive a vehicle transporting much more people.


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> The problem is not the subway, not even the Circumvesuviana (though it is crap and need new trains badly), but buses. Despite the whining about fuel costs, the total cost incurred on bus drivers (not only their wage but taxes on wages, paid leave etc. etc.) is the biggest component of the bus system, whereas in the subway one single driver can drive a vehicle transporting much more people.


Yes but maintenance is much more expensive for subway than for buses.


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> doesnt surprise me, i took a regional bus in Salerno, we were 3 people on it, like kings, and it was very cheap.


PT fares are usually subsidized (i.e. costs aren't covered entirely by tickets).


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> 0/10


:rofl: I got 4/10. Luckily I'm not aspiring after British citizenship. :lol:


----------



## Fatfield

That test in the Guardian is p!$$ easy. No the wonder some of you are getting high scores.

Time to close the borders methinks.


----------



## Alex_ZR

8/10 for me! :cheers: On the other hand, did you know that Hungarian citizenship can be given to any person whose ancestors were born on the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary before 1921? Another requirement is that you speak Hungarian.


----------



## keber

9 of 10, not bad. I was most unsure about jury age. What is the correct answer (I answered 21 years)?


----------



## Fatfield

keber said:


> 9 of 10, not bad. I was most unsure about jury age. What is the correct answer (I answered 21 years)?


18 same as voting. In the eyes of the law at the age of 17 you're still classed as a minor (youth) and an adult once you reach 18.


----------



## keber

Ok, I thought that for jury you need to be older - 18 years didn't seem right for me. At least other thing were right without much thinking.


----------



## g.spinoza

Thank God there's no such thing as jury duty in Italy...


----------



## Orionol

Alex_ZR said:


> 8/10 for me! :cheers: On the other hand, did you know that Hungarian citizenship can be given to any person whose ancestors were born on the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary before 1921? Another requirement is that you speak Hungarian.


Wait a sec, so if I speak fluent Hungarian, then it means that I can get their citizenship? Even if I was born in Sweden????


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> The problem is not the subway, not even the Circumvesuviana (though it is crap and need new trains badly), but buses. Despite the whining about fuel costs, the total cost incurred on bus drivers (not only their wage but taxes on wages, paid leave etc. etc.) is the biggest component of the bus system, whereas in the subway one single driver can drive a vehicle transporting much more people.


I do like the name Circumvesuviana....


----------



## Alex_ZR

Orionol said:


> Wait a sec, so if I speak fluent Hungarian, then it means that I can get their citizenship? Even if I was born in Sweden????


Correct, but just in case your great-grandfather was born in what was then Hungary...


----------



## italystf

Alex_ZR said:


> 8/10 for me! :cheers: On the other hand, did you know that Hungarian citizenship can be given to any person whose ancestors were born on the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary before 1921? Another requirement is that you speak Hungarian.


Was this law recently introduced by Victor Orban? I read that generated a controversy with Slovakia, that was once part of the Hungarian Kingdom and has still Hungarian minorities.


----------



## CNGL

9 out of 10 on that British test. But I refuse unless those su adopt the €uro .


----------



## Alex_ZR

italystf said:


> Was this law recently introduced by Victor Orban? I read that generated a controversy with Slovakia, that was once part of the Hungarian Kingdom and has still Hungarian minorities.


^^


> With the new Hungarian nationality law, by January 2011, every person who was a Hungarian citizen or is a descendant of a person who was a Hungarian citizen before 1920, and speaks Hungarian may apply to become a Hungarian citizen even if he or she does not live in Hungary. As of July 22, 2011, more than 120,000 applications have been filed and 20,000 people have been granted citizenship thanks to the new nationality law. These people are mostly from Transylvania (Romania), Vojvodina (Serbia) and Ukraine.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_citizenship

Yes, this law was introduced by Orbán's government.


----------



## Wilhem275

g.spinoza said:


> Yes but maintenance is much more expensive for subway than for buses.


You have to divide it by the riders' number


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> Yes but maintenance is much more expensive for subway than for buses.


Is it?

I'm not sure, buses take a lot of damage, and don't last as nearly as much as trains.


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> Is it?
> 
> I'm not sure, buses take a lot of damage, and don't last as nearly as much as trains.


Maybe. But trains are a lot more expensive. Then you have to add excavating tunnels, mantaining tunnels, rails, underground stations... With buses you don't have to take care of roads and infrastructures. And "stations" are often just poles.


----------



## Wilhem275

You have to divide the costs by the fucking ridership numbers! My first post wasn't clear enough


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> Many Italian cities have outdated networks of urban public transportation, with an excessive number of buses aiming at providing one-seat rides, which mean buses clogging central areas.
> 
> The concept of integrated fares and transfers hasn't arrived in many places. As many provinces and cities are facing financial crisis, they cannot afford the hefty subsidies they pay for transit agencies. Fares are often too low as well.
> 
> ATM, the transit agency of Milano, had an abysmal farebox recovery ratio of 16%. It increased a bit when they jacked up fares 1 1/2 years ago, but still lackluster. They have many duplicate bus routes, God forbids people take 3 vehicles to arrive at destination.
> 
> I'm not familiar with the network design in Napoli, but it is probably affected on the same way, too many buses duplicating rail and subway routes.



But you're one of this forum's leading proponents of the one-seat ride. So I'm not clear what your objection is. (Granted, the seat in question is in your own personal vehicle...)

That said - and I'm not the sort of person who makes a habit of reading studies, so don't ask me to cite it, or them - haven't studies shown that the more times someone has to change vehicles on a public-transit trip, the more likely he or she is to just say screw it and drive instead?


----------



## hofburg

Orban taking advantage of Schengen...


----------



## g.spinoza

Wilhem275 said:


> You have to divide the costs by the fucking ridership numbers! My first post wasn't clear enough



I didn't read it. But do you really think that tickets sold have something to do with maintenance? 
Trains can carry much more people that buses. But if in Italy so many train lines have been closed down, replaced by buses because "less expensive", it must mean something.

EDIT: No need to swear.


----------



## Surel

You need really very good network in order to have working public transport. Its not a problem to change a bus, tram or metro as long as you don't have to wait too long somewhere. Its better to organize the network around hubs.

Btw. the public transport can't ever be paid only by the fares. That just does not work. People compare just actuall cost and not the sunk cost in their transportation.


----------



## Wilhem275

Mainly it means regional administrators are morons voted by other morons who don't give a damn about anything of public property. And that's it.

Believe me, my main activity is about studying and promoting PT...



Being less acid: PT, and especially rail services, works very well as long as you plan it carefully. If you stop planning, then you get just a bunch of money-eating useless vehicles which will not be used by people because they won't be found useful. Then, of course, it's less expensive closing them down... until you have to face the indirect costs of private mobility, but that comes later, so in the meantime everything seems nice.


----------



## Surel

italystf said:


> Was this law recently introduced by Victor Orban? I read that generated a controversy with Slovakia, that was once part of the Hungarian Kingdom and has still Hungarian minorities.


Well the controversy was about Slovakians deciding that those who obtain the foreing (Hungarian) citizenship in this manner (but it was defined in general way I think) would lose the Slovakian one, which I find quite understandable.

Btw. the Germans have similar approach to granting citizenship to those "ethnic Germans" living abroad.


----------



## g.spinoza

Wilhem275 said:


> Being less acid: PT, and especially rail services, works very well as long as you plan it carefully. If you stop planning, then you get just a bunch of money-eating useless vehicles which will not be used by people because they won't be found useful. Then, of course, it's less expensive closing them down... until you have to face the indirect costs of private mobility, but that comes later, so in the meantime everything seems nice.


I agree with you on this, but hey, this applies to pretty much everything.


----------



## g.spinoza

Surel said:


> Btw. the Germans have similar approach to granting citizenship to those "ethnic Germans" living abroad.


Italians too. You needn't speaking Italian, just having some Italian ancestors. In practice, half of South America could apply for Italian citizenship.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I remember seeing pictures, during the Argentine economic crash of about 2002, of lines outside the Italian embassy in Buenos Aires.


----------



## Orionol

Alex_ZR said:


> Correct, but just in case your great-grandfather was born in what was then Hungary...


Oh  and I already signed up for learn-Hungarian lessons.


----------



## Suburbanist

These are the trains from Circumvesuviana






Europe or Central Africa? Terrible infrastructure with overgrown grass, graffiti, broken windows, litter on tracks - and we even haven't started talking of low reliability of service.


----------



## cinxxx

Someone here wrote about Bosnia and Herzegovina being not covered in Google Maps. I just tried to route in BiH, and it really works. I'm guessing the road network is not the best though...


----------



## x-type

cinxxx said:


> Someone here wrote about Bosnia and Herzegovina being not covered in Google Maps. I just tried to route in BiH, and it really works. I'm guessing the road network is not the best though...


that must be something new.


----------



## keber

Bosnia and Herzegovina does not have the best network of the world, but it is still quite good if we take into account very demanding terrain, which makes any motorway construction over central Bosnia incredibly expensive task.

However you can be sure, that Sarajevo has quite more than two (2) roads. Compare Google Maps coverage with Openstreetmap and see difference


----------



## g.spinoza

Meanwhile in Ferrara, Italy:










:nuts::cheers:


----------



## Pansori

Lithuania now has Google Street view!!! :banana:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

It'll keep the cyclists awake anyway.


----------



## cinxxx

keber said:


> Bosnia and Herzegovina does not have the best network of the world, but it is still quite good if we take into account very demanding terrain, which makes any motorway construction over central Bosnia incredibly expensive task.
> 
> However you can be sure, that Sarajevo has quite more than two (2) roads. Compare Google Maps coverage with Openstreetmap and see difference


I ment the roads found on Google maps. At least you can route those.
But I'm sure the infrastructure is far better then many think, and not only limited to what we see on GMaps...


----------



## CNGL

Pansori said:


> Lithuania now has Google Street view!!! :banana:


And also Austria has Street Ski View .


----------



## Penn's Woods

So, the fricking TV show that two or three times a month closes streets in my neighborhood, including my block, to parking so they can park their filming equipment there premieres tonight....

http://www.nbc.com/do-no-harm/

Last time they did this was yesterday, so I guess they're working on episodes for later in the season.

At least they're not doing the film-in-Philadelphia-but-pretend-it's-New-York bit. I suppose I'll have to watch to see if there's anything recognizable....


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Usually is film-in-Vancouver-but-pretend-it's-New-York...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Or Canada in general. (I'm not sure how easily Vancouver passes for New York; it's more likely film-in-[oh, screw the hyphens] Vancouver and call it Seattle or LA, film in Toronto and call it New York....)

I guess it's good for the city that this sort of thing is going on - at one point last fall there were two or three things being filmed simultaneously - but the selfish part of me is a bit annoyed. I had to come back early from Thanksgiving weekend because there was a closure for filming starting at 6 p.m. Sunday, so if I wanted to park in my block it would have to be earlier than that. Not that I expect to be able to park in my own block, or mind walking a couple of blocks, but I had stuff to bring inside. So it was, arrive early enough, unload, then move the car to a legal spot at a time when everyone else is doing the same thing....

Ahem. End soapbox mode.


----------



## x-type

there is a little debate about unpaved roads in Italy at their thread. do you have them in your countries? i don't mean the paths, but the roads.
afaik we have one state road that is unpaved, it is D49 at one part. i drove it 2 years ago and it is very interesting. here is the most interesting part of it:
https://maps.google.hr/?ll=45.52308...=FuhhIR7kNXA9C3hj_5dAlg&cbp=12,185.45,,0,5.23


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> there is a little debate about unpaved roads in Italy at their thread. do you have them in your countries? i don't mean the paths, but the roads.
> afaik we have one state road that is unpaved, it is D49 at one part. i drove it 2 years ago and it is very interesting. here is the most interesting part of it:
> https://maps.google.hr/?ll=45.523082,17.683117&spn=0.010148,0.022724&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=45.523172,17.683198&panoid=FuhhIR7kNXA9C3hj_5dAlg&cbp=12,185.45,,0,5.23


I know a couple of SP (provincial roads) that aren't paved but they connect nothing but some isolated country houses and farms. I don't know why they are classificated as SPs.
Dirt roads connecting towns are very rare in Western Europe.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Street View covers the Grand Canyon (in French):

http://www.lalibre.be/societe/cyber...reet-view-se-tape-le-grand-canyon-a-pied.html


----------



## italystf

@x-type
I remember in 2008 that the road between Senj (junction with the Jadranska Magistrala) and the Plitvice lakes had some gravel sections and there were ongoing roadworks. Was the entire road unpaved before or did they remove the old asphalt for repaving it?


----------



## g.spinoza

In Italy, (former) national unpaved roads are SS345 between Passo Maniva and Passo Crocedomini, and SS508 up to Passo di Vizze/Pfitscherjoch.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> @x-type
> I remember in 2008 that the road between Senj (junction with the Jadranska Magistrala) and the Plitvice lakes had some gravel sections and there were ongoing roadworks. Was the entire road unpaved before or did they remove the old asphalt for repaving it?


if you think of this route, it's been paved since tens of years ago. i drove it whole in 2007.


----------



## CNGL

CNGL said:


> And also Austria has Street Ski View .


Oh, and I forgot about the blank that _was_ North Korea. It has been filled now .


----------



## RipleyLV

Pansori said:


> Lithuania now has Google Street view!!! :banana:


Welcome to the club! :cheers:


----------



## Verso

We're in the exclusive sovereign club.


----------



## hofburg

not an honour to be a member of it


----------



## Verso

You just stay quiet, you can see half of Nova Gorica from Italy.


----------



## cinxxx

g.spinoza said:


> Two consecutive lines from Barack Obama article in Romanian Wikipedia:
> 
> *"De la șase până la zece ani a trăit în Jakarta, împreună cu mama lui și cu tatăl vitreg, indonezian."*
> 
> I only understand Jakarta and "indonesian". (And maybe "zece ani" means "ten years"?)
> 
> From 6 to 10 years he has lived in Jakarta together with his mother and his step father, (an) Indonesian
> 
> *"Absolvent al Universității Columbia și al Facultății de Drept de la Harvard, înainte de a candida pentru intrarea în administrația publică și de a deveni membru al Senatului statului Illinois între 1997 și 2004, Obama a lucrat ca mobilizator comunitar, docent universitar și ca avocat specializat în apărarea drepturilor civile."*
> 
> This in pretty clear to me, instead.
> 
> EDIT: But this is Danish page, let's end the OT here.


I moved the discussion here to not go further OT on DK page.
It's clear you won't understand everything, I don't understand all Italian writing. But fact is, it's not that different as you think, and if you would live in RO for a while you would learn quickly, I know of many such cases. Italian accent is there, and they have a problem pronouncing "ș = sh in English" and "ă = last "e" in German word "rotes (Auto)" or "e" in English word "younger", î â = I don't know how to explain these, but it's the same as Kîrgîstan", but they speak fluent and perfectly understandable.


----------



## g.spinoza

I recognized "zece" as "ten" more from German "zehn" than from Latin "decem"...


----------



## cinxxx

If you here it spoken, it's like German "sätsche", so pretty close to "dieci" 
RO has also different dialects, so pronunciation also sound different depending on region.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Putting my linguist hat on, the D palatalized to a Z. I believe Romanian has lots of Zs where other Romance languages have Ds.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Hmm, I'm not that sure.
There are not so many words with z, as are with d.

dicembre=decembrie
due=doi
dodici=doisprezece
discussione=discuție
diocesi=dieceză
dio=dumnezeu

zodiaco=zodiac
...


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> dio=dumnezeu
> ...


Beware! In Italian there's this old fashioned word for God, "Domineddio" (from latin "Domine deus" (vocative), "God the Lord"). In this case dumne/zeu, the Italian "dd" becomes a "z" in Romanian.


----------



## cinxxx

g.spinoza said:


> Beware! In Italian there's this old fashioned word for God, "Domineddio" (from latin "Domine deus" (vocative), "God the Lord"). In this case dumne/zeu, the Italian "dd" becomes a "z" in Romanian.


Ok, if dio has the meaning of god (not The God), then the Romanian word is "zeu" (coming from deus I'm guessing or from the greek god Zeus), you're right there


----------



## Penn's Woods

cinxxx said:


> ^^Hmm, I'm not that sure.
> There are not so many words with z, as are with d.
> 
> dicembre=decembrie
> due=doi
> dodici=doisprezece
> discussione=discuție
> diocesi=dieceză
> dio=dumnezeu
> 
> zodiaco=zodiac
> ...


Might depend on what vowel's next (palatalization is less likely before "low" vowels - vowels spoken low in the mouth like O) than high ones. And these sorts of changes tend to happen once, so words borrowed into the language afterwards wouldn't be affected.

Okay, now you've got me curious. Wiki language articles are sometimes pretty good. I shall return....

EDIT: Voilà : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_language#Phonetic_changes (Last bullet)


----------



## cinxxx

Penn's Woods said:


> Might depend on what vowel's next (palatalization is less likely before "low" vowels - vowels spoken low in the mouth like O) than high ones. And these sorts of changes tend to happen once, so words borrowed into the language afterwards wouldn't be affected.
> 
> Okay, now you've got me curious. Wiki language articles are sometimes pretty good. I shall return....


I haven't really studied this subject. But I think most of the words that are similar, are pretty much similar, and there are also a lot of words that have nothing similar, could be that one of the languages has a similar word with the same meaning (that is outdated now), or has no similar word, for example many RO words come from Slavic.

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_language#Phonetic_changes
Go to *Language sample*, that's very interesting

Although I understand all variants, I wouldn't use the last 2 of them, could be that Romanian ethnics (and Banatian) from Serbia would use the 3rd one more. They're dialect was not so hard affected by the reform in 1848 and French additions. The Banat dialect for example remained pure in Serbian Banat, while in Romanian one, it's much more uniformed with written/standard language.


----------



## italystf

Apart some words that are quite obvious, Rumanian is very difficult for me to understand, compared to other major latin languages (Spanish, French, Portoguese and Catalan).
For example in this song:




the only words that are similar to Italian are "ochii tai" (occhi tuoi, your eyes).


----------



## NordikNerd

italystf said:


> the only words that are similar to Italian are "ochii tai" (occhi tuoi, your eyes).


Are there any differences between the romanian & moldovan languages ?


----------



## x-type

before translating Numa Numa i understood only "un haiduc" :lol:
i also caught the word "voinic", but i thought it had completely different meaning


----------



## Verso

Yeah, hajduk and vojnik.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Yeah, hajduk and vojnik.


i will never forget when i heard that song for the first time, i exactly remember that i was in car and in which street. the weather, the part of the day, everything. and at first i thought it was in some weird slovenian dialect, exactly because of _haiduc_ and _voinic_  romanian disco was still not popular here so i really didn't think of romanian language.


----------



## cinxxx

As I said, the Slavic influence is pretty big, think only on the Romanian YES=DA . 
It used to be bigger, but after the great French import, many words of Slavic origin were discarded, and are now archaisms.

About Moldovan language, I have no idea, I'm not exactly sure it's recognized anywhere else out of Moldova as a separate language. You could call it Romanian dialect. But for Romanians, maybe excepting including Romanian part of Moldova, it can be hard to understand, because of strong accent (sounds much like Russian) and many regional words used only in that part. Mostly Moldovans, as I have met some, speak Moldovan, Romanian that's more close to standard language but with Moldovan accent, and Russian.


----------



## g.spinoza

I'm curious to know why did French have an impact so important in Romanian. Napoleon?


----------



## Penn's Woods

cinxxx said:


> ...
> 
> About Moldovan language, I have no idea, I'm not exactly sure it's recognized anywhere else out of Moldova as a separate language. You could call it Romanian dialect. But for Romanians, maybe excepting including Romanian part of Moldova, it can be hard to understand, because of strong accent (sounds much like Russian) and many regional words used only in that part. Mostly Moldovans, as I have met some, speak Moldovan, Romanian that's more close to standard language but with Moldovan accent, and Russian.


I believe that during the Soviet period Moldovans (Moldavians, we said in English at the time) wrote in the Cyrillic alphabet? I thought that that was the reason, or at least the main reason, Moldavian was considered a separate language.


----------



## bogdymol

NordikNerd said:


> Are there any differences between the romanian & moldovan languages ?





cinxxx said:


> About Moldovan language, I have no idea, I'm not exactly sure it's recognized anywhere else out of Moldova as a separate language. You could call it Romanian dialect. But for Romanians, maybe excepting including Romanian part of Moldova, it can be hard to understand, because of strong accent (sounds much like Russian) and many regional words used only in that part. Mostly Moldovans, as I have met some, speak Moldovan, Romanian that's more close to standard language but with Moldovan accent, and Russian.


Come on, it's the same language... It's like American English vs. British English. 

For us, Romanians, when we hear a person speaking Moldavian we imeddiatly recognise the funny accent used there. But there are no problems in understanding 99% of what they are saying. I had a classmate at the university which was from Rep. of Moldova and there were no problems in communicating with him. Also, sometimes I watched news from Moldavian TV stations and I had no problems in understanding.


----------



## cinxxx

g.spinoza said:


> I'm curious to know why did French have an impact so important in Romanian. Napoleon?


I have no idea, but since 1848 the French model was adopted in the Romanian states. We still have it now. Centralized national, unitary state, school system. They also decided there is to much Slavic in the language, including the Cyrillic alphabet, so they switched to Latin and also brought a lot of words from French. I'm guessing they wanted to reinforce the Latin character of the language.



Penn's Woods said:


> I believe that during the Soviet period Moldovans (Moldavians, we said in English at the time) wrote in the Cyrillic alphabet? I thought that that was the reason, or at least the main reason, Moldavian was considered a separate language.


Romanian was also written in Cyrillic before the reform in 1848. But that script should not be confused with the Russian one. You can google it, it was not the same. 
After Moldova became SSR Republic, people were forced to speak and learn Russian, and the Russian Cyrillic alphabet was also forced, so people ended up writing Romanian in Russian Cyrillic.


----------



## cinxxx

bogdymol said:


> Come on, it's the same language... It's like American English vs. British English.
> 
> For us, Romanians, when we hear a person speaking Moldavian we imeddiatly recognise the funny accent used there. But there are no problems in understanding 99% of what they are saying. I had a classmate at the university which was from Rep. of Moldova and there were no problems in communicating with him. Also, sometimes I watched news from Moldavian TV stations and I had no problems in understanding.


Did you hear him speak with fellow Moldavian?
Because I did, and you don't understand it, especially when they speak fast. They use many unknown words, the accent and pronunciation is much stronger then when they speak with you.
It's the same when Bavarians here speak German so that "Prussians" understand it easier, and when they speak wit each other in full blown Bavarian. I spoke with someone and had no problems, and then she called his brother, and believe me, it was much harder to understand everything.

I once phoned a work colleague from Iasi and he spoke with strong accent and fast, and I really had problems getting his words, understood mostly from context.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Have you ever watched the Moldavian news? I can understand everything from them, although I find the accent funny.

And about the writing: it's 99,9% identical with the Romanian one.


----------



## cinxxx

bogdymol said:


> ^^ Have you ever watched the Moldavian news? I can understand everything from them, although I find the accent funny.
> 
> And about the writing: it's 99,9% identical with the Romanian one.


Again, they speak as close to no dialect as possible there.
Go to Moldova (Basarabia or the Romanian part) and listen them speak. The watch TV from there. You will see what I mean.

We have a friend here originating from Chisinau, and believe me, when she phones at home it's not the same as when speaking with us...


----------



## hofburg

cinxxx said:


> I have no idea, but since 1848 the French model was adopted in the Romanian states. We still have it now. Centralized national, unitary state, school system. They also decided there is to much Slavic in the language, including the Cyrillic alphabet, so they switched to Latin and also brought a lot of words from French. I'm guessing they wanted to reinforce the Latin character of the language.
> 
> 
> 
> Romanian was also written in Cyrillic before the reform in 1848. But that script should not be confused with the Russian one. You can google it, it was not the same.
> After Moldova became SSR Republic, people were forced to speak and learn Russian, and the Russian Cyrillic alphabet was also forced, so people ended up writing Romanian in Russian Cyrillic.


I had few Romanian friends in Paris. It's interesting Paris is the first choice for students from Romania who want to study abroad, while slavic countries seem to prefer german cities.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Where were they from? Bucharest?

It's well known that the old kingdom was francophone, while Banat and Transylvania were closer to Austria-Hungary. I now no one that went to Paris, but have many colleagues that went to Germany/Austria.


----------



## hofburg

that's new to me. yes, they were from 100km around the Bucharest.


----------



## cinxxx

hofburg said:


> that's new to me. yes, they were from 100km around the Bucharest.


It's no wonder that Bucharest was called Little Paris, you even find a triumph Arch there.
While Timisoara was called Little Vienna.


----------



## hofburg

yes, I noticed that, Timisoara is so Austro-hungarian!











http://www.sheldonsquote.com/258-did-you-get-the-part-gif/


----------



## Suburbanist

Since people are all talking of different languages, I thought of presenting some videos of one of the most annoying songs ever to have reached top charts (# 1 in Netherlands and one of the top 5 in several other European countries this winter)

PS: I mean top adult charts, not the kids' one :bash: :nuts:





.





If this hasn't arrived in your country, it probably will.:banana:


----------



## cinxxx

^^I so hate this stupid regulations here, I can barely see something on Youtube! :bash:


----------



## Suburbanist

cinxxx said:


> ^^I so hate this stupid regulations here, I can barely see something on Youtube! :bash:


Get yourself a VPN, which allows you to watch unfiltered content (and also American broadcast sites like Hulu). I use Overplay (www.overplay.net), spend US$ 9,00/month


----------



## ChrisZwolle

cinxxx said:


> ^^I so hate this stupid regulations here, I can barely see something on Youtube! :bash:


It's noticeable, the German version has barely 100,000 views while other versions usually have 10 - 20 times more views.

The video is mind-numbingly stupid, but it's kind of funny to see what noises animals make in other languages.


----------



## Verso

^ Yes, particularly Salzburg and Graz, not so much Vienna.


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> I remember (in the past, BBCAmerica had a pre-game explain-rugby-to-the-Yanks show, and switched to the stadium for the anthems) a line about "to be a nation again..."


I must've drank more than I thought yesterday! Their anthem is Flower of Scotland.

I believe rugby is quite a big game in New England.


----------



## italystf

Talking about an old discussion: yesterday I refuelled at the OMW gas station in Fernetti (200 meters outside Italy). Inside the shop there was a huge sortiment of Milka products. And yes, I checked and everything was made in Bulgaria. Those sold in Italy (even near SLO border) are made in Milan. I didn't buy anything to see if there was difference, though.


----------



## Broccolli

^^

You see this is called invisible iron curtain!


----------



## x-type

buying Milka at OMV = death for the vallet


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> Talking about an old discussion: yesterday I refuelled at the OMW gas station in *Fernetti (200 meters outside Italy)*


You were in Sežana then, since Fernetti is still Italy.


----------



## piotr71

Zagor666 said:


> This is how my "workingplace" is looking now :cheers:


More than cool!


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> You were in Sežana then, since Fernetti is still Italy.


Yup, Sezana. But Fernetti is the official name of the border crossing (the town of Sezana is few km from there).
BTW, Fernetti is only few houses scattered along a single street (Strada per Vienna/SR58/E65).


----------



## Alex_ZR

italystf said:


> Yup, Sezana. But Fernetti is the official name of the border crossing (the town of Sezana is few km from there).
> BTW, Fernetti is only few houses scattered along a single street (Strada per Vienna/SR58/E65).


You mean Fernetiči? :dunno:
Fernetti is on the Italian side.


----------



## kreden

Fernetti=Fernetiči. There is no Fernetiči in Slovenia.


----------



## da_scotty

Meanwhile in the Netherlands

The IKEA has caused the Delft-City exit to be closed off due to jams caused bij the IKEA.


----------



## keokiracer

... Again!

Though it has been some time since it happened.

Pic from TomTom


----------



## italystf

kreden said:


> Fernetti=Fernetiči. There is no Fernetiči in Slovenia.


The double name is just because there are Slovenian minorities there like in other villages in the Italian Carso.


----------



## x-type

where exactly is Fernetti? these 3 houses between border crossing and Villa Opicina?


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> The double name is just because there are Slovenian minorities there like in other villages in the Italian Carso.


More like majority. :troll: And of course the Slovenian side of the border crossing is called Fernetiči, not Fernetti (although it could be Sežana as well). Btw, that road is E61, not E65.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> More like majority. :troll: And of course the Slovenian side of the border crossing is called Fernetiči, not Fernetti (although it could be Se&#158;ana as well). Btw, that road is E61, not E65.


Sorry, I was relying on memory, I didn't look at a map. The E number isn't signposted along the SR58.


----------



## Verso

^^ Maybe the RA14 motorway is the E61.


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> where exactly is Fernetti? these 3 houses between border crossing and Villa Opicina?


Exactly. There's also a hotel, a bar and a pharmacy.


----------



## pobre diablo

Broccolli said:


> ^^
> 
> You see this is called invisible iron curtain!


More like a marketing distribution.


----------



## piotr71

Top gear guys played the music today 

*Good Vibrations? A California Road Plays 'The William Tell Overture'*


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> I disagree. If you don't like what you hear, you should just ignore it. I don't feel inferior just because someone told me so (and if I do, I should get more self-confidence or stop being strange, if I am).


Ok, i can ignore someone that tell me that my haircut is ugly, that I'm not smart or that my political view sucks. But would you ignore someone who regularily harasses you verbally, for example your boss that want to persuade you to quit the job just because he doesn't like you? I don't think so. Human dignity is a right and must be preserved.
And how would you justify a politician that openly discriminates certain categories while the constitution of the country who represents (and get a shitload of money from) says that everybody is equal in front of the law?
Legalizing insult and racism means removing legal protection to "weaker" categories, such minorities, etc...
Verbal hate may degenerate in other kind of hate. If you hear people that openly say that blacks, jews, women, gays, etc... are inferior to other you may think that is also normal to discriminate them in the society, so not hiring them, emarginating them,...


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> Tell that to these assholes in the Middle East who get all upset and weary about a few cartoons in a Danish newspaper... They are offended and respond with violence and anger...


Their responses are absolutely ridiculous, but mind you, I don't like those cartoons either, because I don't see the point of their provoking. But I'm for free speech in any case.



italystf said:


> Ok, i can ignore someone that tell me that my haircut is ugly, that I'm not smart or that my political view sucks. But would you ignore someone who regularily harasses you verbally, for example your boss that want to persuade you to quit the job just because he doesn't like you? I don't think so. Human dignity is a right and must be preserved.
> And how would you justify a politician that openly discriminates certain categories while the constitution of the country who represents (and get a shitload of money from) says that everybody is equal in front of the law?
> Legalizing insult and racism means removing legal protection to "weaker" categories, such minorities, etc...
> Verbal hate may degenerate in other kind of hate. If you hear people that openly say that blacks, jews, women, gays, etc... are inferior to other you may think that is also normal to discriminate them in the society, so not hiring them, emarginating them,...


Saying that blacks etc. are inferior won't necessarily lead to their discrimination. But if discrimination happens, that's not (free) speech any more and should be sanctioned. Blacks, Jews, women, gays etc. have a possibility to ignore them or call whites, non-Jews, men, straights etc. inferior and laugh about it. As for bosses at jobs, it's a complex matter and hiring or firing someone easily also depends on a country's policy.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> As for bosses at jobs, it's a complex matter and hiring or firing someone easily also depends on a country's policy.


In many countries the boss cannot fire an employee with no valid reason: violation of basic duties, cheating, stealing, expired contract...
So, many employers who want to reduce personnel or get rid of a worker that they don't like personally but never didn't anything bad use the weapon of mobbing. It's very sad to have to chose between tolerating everyday emargination and humiliations or not having money to support your family. hno:
Sometimes defamation may fall into the category of "unfair competition" when you attack rival businesses to steal them customers.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Oy.

I was really just thinking out loud: if the issue in the question of this Canadian Super Bowl contest winner was that U.S. law prohibits entering the country with a criminal conviction, no matter how minor or silly it may seem, and I don't know that that's what U.S. law says, then what would that mean for - for example - someone convicted in Europe (sorry, Rebasepoiss - the only way I could have expressed that without "generalizing" would be singling out one or two countries in particular, or inventorying every country with, say, blasphemy laws) for publishing an offensive cartoon (just for example, and if that's something one could be convicted for in the country in question), could conceivably be prevented from entering the U.S. for an act that would be protected here by the First Amendment. Which presents, at this end, the question of whether U.S. Immigration would be violating the First Amendment by doing so. I don't know what the answer to that question is.

That's all.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keber said:


> Can I burn US dollar note in USA? How not? It is just one dollar. What century is this?


You can certainly burn a flag as an act of protest.
If it's true that you can't burn a dollar bill (because...I don't know...you're corrupting the money supply?), then in my opinion doing it as an act of protest should be legal.
Just like saying you don't like Queen Beatrix's hat should be.

Not that I'd dream of doing any of those things (well, maybe the hat, but I'm outside her jurisdiction anyway...)


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> In Italy is forbidden to insult the flag, the constitution, to pronunce hate speech against certain ethnic groups, religions or homosexuals, to apologize fascism and nazism (but, strangely, not communism or other regimes), to display nazi-fascist symbols, to defamate or insult people, to educate other to break the law.
> Lack of free speech is not democracy, but also tolerating hate speech isn't.
> I think every European country, as well other democracies such the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia,... have such laws.


I see your point, but once you start permitting the government to start deciding what's permitted.... 

The US has hate-crimes laws: yelling insults at someone because he's gay isn't illegal, beating him up because he's gay is. Because beating someone up isn't speech or expression.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> You responded like an attention *****, as usually.


THE ****?
And that goes for Keoki too.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Violence is an action, not speech, to begin with. My opinion is somewhere between that of you and italystf. Calling for violence shouldn't be tolerated IMO, but insulting others should, even if it's not a nice thing to do (I'm talking about real life, of course, not this forum).


LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Depend what kind of insult. If you scream "stupid" to someone who crossed the road in front of you or spilled some drink on your clothes or to a footballer who miss a goal is normal, I don't say that you should be punished for that.
> But if you regularily humiliate a collegue because you want persuade him to fire himself or you advocate that categories such ethnic minorities or LGBT are inferiors to the "majority" this is unacceptable. I don't say you should be jailed for hate speech, but maybe fined in proportion of the social harm causated by your speech.


Or if you regularly go out of your way to call everyone who disagrees with you a troll or an attention *****.

Sorry I dropped back into this thread. Assholes. But *I'm* the problem....


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> Verso said:
> 
> 
> 
> You responded like an attention *****, as usually.
> 
> 
> 
> THE ****?
> And that goes for Keoki too.
Click to expand...

I thought I was on your ignore list.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> You can certainly burn a flag as an act of protest.
> If it's true that you can't burn a dollar bill (because...I don't know...you're corrupting the money supply?), then in my opinion doing it as an act of protest should be legal.
> Just like saying you don't like Queen Beatrix's hat should be.
> 
> Not that I'd dream of doing any of those things (well, maybe the hat, but I'm outside her jurisdiction anyway...)


Since I collect coins I read in the Italian numismatic forum "Lamoneta" a debate if it was illegal or not to damage money (like writing on bills or pressing 2-eurocent coins to make souvenir medals). It appeared that in Italy isn't illegal but cash damaged volountairly can't be exchange at the bank. I never heard of people burning a bill for protest, too. I read about an American who paved his floor with cents. If the problem is the decreasing of the money supply they would also ban collecting circulating coins that would be absurd (in the eurozone there is a large variety of coin and many people hoard them, especially the rare one).

Back to the topic I think it's more acceptable to burn a flag rather to support racism or defamate individuals.


----------



## Suburbanist

racist slurs are idiot and idiot, but they should be amply tolerated, without any restriction, if they are only slurs.

No group in society should have ANY rights for special protection against criticism, stereotypization and the likes, even if, again, that is stupid.


----------



## Verso

Suburbanist said:


> racist slurs are idiot and idiot


:shifty:


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> racist slurs are idiot and idiot, but they should be amply tolerated, without any restriction, if they are only slurs.
> 
> No group in society should have ANY rights for special protection against criticism, stereotypization and the likes, even if, again, that is stupid.


Criticism and stereotypization against certain groups, especially with joking intentions, is something VERY different than the true ethnic-motivated hate.

Meanwhile in Vukovar, Croatia, local citizens and war veterans complain about Croatian-Serbian bilingual signs: "We fough a war for independence, not for bilinguism". Very childish if you ask me. Leave your cave and open your eyes guys, a lot of places in Europe have linguistic minorities and go along with that.


----------



## Road_UK

Suburbanist said:


> racist slurs are idiot and idiot, but they should be amply tolerated, without any restriction, if they are only slurs.
> 
> No group in society should have ANY rights for special protection against criticism, stereotypization and the likes, even if, again, that is stupid.


I couldn't agree more! Well said!


----------



## KHS

italystf said:


> Meanwhile in Vukovar, Croatia, local citizens and war veterans complain about Croatian-Serbian bilingual signs: "We fough a war for independence, not for bilinguism". Very childish if you ask me. Leave your cave and open your eyes guys, a lot of places in Europe have linguistic minorities and go along with that.


We have lots of towns and even regions with bilingual sighns in Croatia. 
But Vukovar is a bit specific don't you think so?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A swath of snow across the Netherlands resulted in severe traffic congestion on some motorways, with several traffic jams exceeding 30 kilometer in length. Places with no snow had no more congestion than usual (varying from nothing to severe).


----------



## Verso

It snows here as well.


----------



## g.spinoza

10°C and shining sun here in Brescia :dunno:


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> 10°C and shining sun here in Brescia :dunno:


Heavy rain since this morning here in Friuli.


----------



## D.O.W.N

ChrisZwolle said:


> What happened? Did a neighboring country close its borders?


Nope. It has fallen 50 cm of snow in 2 hours. There werw a lot of problems yesterday across eastern Slovakia, like closed mountain passes, car accidents, even highway Košice-Prešov was closed. Around 20 000 households still don´t have electricity.


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> lol, when procession came it cracked me up


And prosciutto on a motorbike. :lol:


----------



## piotr71

Do you remember recent pancakes discussion here? I've made some today. I used French recipe and added some Polish ingredients, as my mother do. They are filled with Polish white cheese mixed with one egg, milk and cinnamon.
And covered with whipped cream, dark chocolate's chippings and canned peach  


IMGP8886 by 71piotr, on Flickr


IMGP8887 by 71piotr, on Flickr


IMGP8889 by 71piotr, on Flickr


----------



## cinxxx

*Conti Style*

1.
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNTA5NzY3Njc2.html

2.


----------



## MattiG

Summer is approaching. I visited the Helsinki Boat Exhibition yesterday. This time, I did not buy a new one.


----------



## D.O.W.N

Are there any plans for Google street view in Slovenia?


----------



## Road_UK

MattiG said:


> Summer is approaching. I visited the Helsinki Boat Exhibition yesterday. This time, I did not buy a new one.


Yeah well, let me know when they put the Silja Serenade or Symphony up for sale. I love these boats...


----------



## bogdymol




----------



## D.O.W.N

But I still think that explorer is a piece of sh*t :lol:


----------



## MattiG

Road_UK said:


> Yeah well, let me know when they put the Silja Serenade or Symphony up for sale. I love these boats...


My boat is somewhat smaller.


----------



## Levi Ru

bogdymol said:


>


Nice spot 

But I have to say: I tried the new IE.. still doesn't convince me, I'm sorry. I'm ready to give you a chance Microsoft, I like your sleek new Metro design scheme, I use the new outlook services for example, including skydrive. But the browser, no, I'll stick with chrome.

But good on you for such a nice spot, at least your ten times more sympathetic than Apple


----------



## x-type

i really don't know what should Microsoft offer me with IE to start using it. money maybe? i can't think of anything else.


----------



## bogdymol

x-type said:


> i really don't know what should Microsoft offer me with IE to start using it. money maybe? i can't think of anything else.


They will give you the best browser available currently on the internet.































































:troll:


----------



## RipleyLV

What's wrong with Internet Explorer?


----------



## bogdymol

I hate when this happens...


----------



## x-type

RipleyLV said:


> What's wrong with Internet Explorer?


they were a bit, khmmm, old-fashioned few years ago. and got a bad reputation.
Mozzila came out with tabs. Microsoft took a year or two to implement it. Mozilla came with ad-blocks. Microsoft took ages to implement it. Chrome came out with floating tabs. IE10 still doesn't have them(ok, that's just trendy thing, but you get used on it). and finally, mass of web pages simply don't work with IE just because of those gaffes in the IE's past.


----------



## Zagor666

piotr71 said:


> Do you remember recent pancakes discussion here? I've made some today. I used French recipe and added some Polish ingredients, as my mother do. They are filled with Polish white cheese mixed with one egg, milk and cinnamon.
> And covered with whipped cream, dark chocolate's chippings and canned peach
> 
> 
> IMGP8889 by 71piotr, on Flickr


Palačinke  

i found i my stuff some old distance map of yugoslavia :cheers:


----------



## keokiracer

Ooh nice kay:. From what year is it?


----------



## Zagor666

keokiracer said:


> Ooh nice kay:. From what year is it?


I dont know,but it must be something from the 70s


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Nice map!


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> I saw today on the road to work a Toyota Corolla *Verso*










:lol:


----------



## cinxxx

^^I saw dozens of Toyota Corollas until now, but never one Verso


----------



## Penn's Woods

As has already been pointed out privately, this rant is a hoax:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/billcosby/a/I-Am-76-And-I-Am-Tired-By-Bill-Cosby.htm

http://billcosby.com/2011/09/if-you-got-the-bogus-email-its-time-to-hit-delete/

I wasn't going to waste any more time here, but Cosby's very respected in these parts, and I know bullshit when I see it.

Ciao.




Road_UK said:


> Bill Cosby "I'm 83 and Tired"
> 
> I've worked hard since I was 17. Except for when I was doing my National Service, I put in 50-hour weeks, and didn't call in sick in nearly 40 years. I made a reasonable salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, it looks as though retirement was a bad idea, and I'm tired. Very tired.
> I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.
> I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honor"; of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers"; Muslims burning schools for girls; Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery"; Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to.
> I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries use our oil money to fund mosques and Madrasa Islamic schools to preach hate in Australia , New Zealand , UK, America and Canada , while no one from these countries are allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia or any other Arab country to teach love and tolerance..
> I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate.
> I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses or stick a needle in their arm while they tried to fight it off?
> I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of all parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.
> I'm really tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination or big-whatever for their problems.
> I'm also tired and fed up with seeing young men and women in their teens and early 20's be-deck themselves in tattoos and face studs, thereby making themselves unemployable and claiming money from the Government.
> Yes, I'm damn tired. But I'm also glad to be 83.. Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making. I'm just sorry for my granddaughter and their children. Thank God I'm on the way out and not on the way in


----------



## Road_UK

I thought it was real. Shame. I really like Bill Cosby.


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> ^^I saw dozens of Toyota Corollas until now, but never one Verso


I see them every now and then.


----------



## keokiracer

Meanwhile in The Netherlands. :crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy:






Hobbelpaard = Rocking horse


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I saw something interesting but I've forgotten what it was.


----------



## CNGL

While Daniel remembers what was that interesting thing, here is my latest catch :









I got it in Zaragoza for some €20.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I prefer Rand McNally for American atlases. I think their 2014 atlas will be released in a month or two.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> I prefer Rand McNally for American atlases. I think their *2014* atlas will be released in a month or two.


I don't get one thing. Why will the release the 2014 version in 1-2 months? Why not 2013 version in 1-2 months?

This doesn't apply only to road atlases, but to many other products. For example: in 2007 I've ordered my car from the dealer at the beginning of the summer. In August 2007 I actually received it, and at the end of same August 2007 everything regarding it's registration for using on public roads was done. Of course, on the papers it's written "first registration: August 2007". But here is the interesting thing: the car is 2008 version, and everywhere, on all it's papers, it's written "production year: 2008". So I received and registered my car before it was produced


----------



## CNGL

^^ I have a book that says it was finished printing on 31st December, 2011 and I had read it before then.

According to AA Roads, the 2014 version of RandMcNally will be out on 3rd of May. But at least since an American road atlas is so rare around here... BTW, it's the second one I buy, the first one I got was back in 2008 and is already in bad condition.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

bogdymol said:


> I don't get one thing. Why will the release the 2014 version in 1-2 months? Why not 2013 version in 1-2 months?


It's an attempt at boosting sales. Nobody wants to travel around with an outdated road atlas (the people that still use them) and they put their "next year atlas" ahead in recent years, so it's released in late April or early May. 

While I do have a GPS for city navigation, I still prefer an atlas or Google Maps on something larger than a smartphone screen for planning. There is no way you can get a good context of a route in a region on a tiny GPS or smartphone screen. It's fine for navigating, but not for planning. GPS's have many points of interests for tourists (other than a hotel or gas station), but you need to know they are there in the first place. 

Michelin atlases have very subtle but useful ways to show how interesting an area or road is. GPS doesn't have that. They assume you know there is something interesting so the GPS can lead you to it.


----------



## Verso

CNGL said:


> BTW, it's the second one I buy, the first one I got was back in 2008 and is already in bad condition.


Do you sleep with it?


----------



## Zagor666

keokiracer said:


> Meanwhile in The Netherlands. :crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Hobbelpaard = Rocking horse


This is the best thing comming from the Netherlands :cheers:





this summer i must ride to maaskantje :cheers:


----------



## piotr71

If it comes to Michelin atlases, I have bought one of Great Britain recently (six months ago, actually ). And have to say it's the best atlas of Britain I have ever had. Do you remember discussion in GB's roads thread how to distinguish grade separated dual carriageways from others on maps? This atlas could be very useful in distinguishing such roads, it shows every junction, crossroads and roundabout in every detail. I really recommend it.

--------------------

Food and ... "not in Western Europe" issue.

Firstly they tried to blame Ukraine and Poland for adding horsemeat to beef, then Romania. However, it did not come so easy with those 3 proud countries. And suddenly emerged...

_"This is absolutely shocking. It's totally unacceptable if any business in the UK is defrauding the public by passing off horsemeat as beef.

"I expect the full force of the law to be brought down on anyone involved in this kind of activity."

Slaughterhouse owner Peter Boddy told Sky News: "I have not been supplying meat to Farmbox. I don't know who they are."_

http://news.sky.com/story/1051259/horsemeat-scandal-uk-slaughterhouse-raided


----------



## keokiracer

Zagor666 said:


> This is the best thing comming from the Netherlands :cheers:
> 
> <video>


I hate those fucking German voice overs









The trailer of the original Dutch movie (the first movie: Turbo)


----------



## Zagor666

I like it when dutch people speak german,especialy when the gay say:"ich mach ihn kaputt"


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> While Daniel remembers what was that interesting thing, here is my latest catch :
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I got it in Zaragoza for some €20.


Is this the border beach between San Diego and Tjuana?


----------



## Suburbanist

italystf said:


> Is this the border beach between San Diego and Tjuana?


No

That border looks like this:


----------



## Suburbanist

I voted for a minor party on Italian elections (absentee ballots). Tomorrow I'll send it by mail.


----------



## Zagor666

italystf said:


> Is this the border beach between San Diego and Tjuana?


Looks more lika a scene from the movie jaws :cheers:


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> I don't get one thing. Why will the release the 2014 version in 1-2 months? Why not 2013 version in 1-2 months?


Even better: this song was released in 2009, but the video was uploaded in 2008.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> While I do have a GPS for city navigation, I still prefer an atlas or Google Maps on something larger than a smartphone screen for planning.


I usually plan my trip on Google Maps on my laptop. But now, since I'm in Bucharest for 2 weeks, I also had to plan my trip on my tiny smartphone screen. Although it wasn't that easy as the laptop version, it's still quite good.



Verso said:


> Even better: this song was released in 2009, but the video was uploaded in 2008.


Yeah, they released the song on youtube 1 month they released the album on the market. January 2009 is not the "creation" date, but the release of "option to buy". This can happen, but how can you buy an object before it was manufactured (example: my car)?

Romania, today (interesting part at 0:40):






edit: we spoke some time ago about how our politicians "speak" English. Check out the Romanian ambassador in UK:



Radu CORNESCU said:


>


----------



## Alex_ZR

^^ It's also funny how CNN journalist pronounces his surname (like it is Spanish).


----------



## Verso

Wow, terrible English for an ambassador to the UK. :lol:


----------



## cinxxx

Alex_ZR said:


> ^^ It's also funny how CNN journalist pronounces his surname (like it is Spanish).


That was exactly what I was thinking too. "j" in Romanian is read like Serbian "ž"



Verso said:


> Wow, terrible English for an ambassador to the UK. :lol:


Dunno, think it's average English spoken by our politicians generally. Not that Romanian of UK's ambassador in RO, is better, right?


----------



## Verso

Yeah, but English and Romanian are on a different level.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## hofburg

^mixture of slavic and italian accent I would say


----------



## Wilhem275

Suburbanist said:


> I voted for a minor party on Italian elections (absentee ballots). Tomorrow I'll send it by mail.


Maybe a minor and new-born liberal party represented by a weirdly dressed journalist? 

BTW: are you Italian or what?


----------



## Road_UK

Wilhem275 said:


> Maybe a minor and new-born liberal party represented by a weirdly dressed journalist?
> 
> BTW: are you Italian or what?


That has been the big mystery for a long long time with good ol' Surby


----------



## keokiracer

I know :angel:

But I'm not going to tell you


----------



## Wilhem275

Surby is the Stig of SSC 

_Some say..._


----------



## Verso

I thought he was from Brazil and living in Italy now. :dunno:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

No he's told us where he was born, where he lived, where he lives agus where his parents are from


----------



## Road_UK

Yes. He has lived in Italy, but now lives in the Netherlands. He speaks Portuguese.


----------



## Verso

Does he live in a suburb?


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> Does he live in a suburb?


Well, Tilburg is not the prettiest place. A lot of boring concrete and bricks. I suppose it could go for a suburb to Eindhoven or Antwerp...


----------



## Suburbanist

Wilhem275 said:


> Maybe a minor and new-born liberal party represented by a weirdly dressed journalist?
> 
> BTW: are you Italian or what?


No, I didn't vote for Beppe Grillo's (5 stelle) list (nor did I vote for crazy commies). I voted for a blogger with whom I've had occasional contact and now is running. There is an Italian voting "district" for Europe, it elects 5 deputies and 2 senators. 

Actually I haven't voted yet, I've been lazy to go to mail box to post my voting. But I've sealed all stuff and put in the envelope already


----------



## Suburbanist

Road_UK said:


> Yes. He has lived in Italy, but now lives in the Netherlands. He speaks Portuguese.


I speak 5 languages btw, 3 of them fluently.



Verso said:


> I thought he was from Brazil and living in Italy now. :dunno:


I've lived in 4 countries.

But now I'm living somewhere shown on this map: http://goo.gl/maps/uUldi (assuming a 16x9 screen format )


----------



## italystf

Special edition for the Netherlands: :lol:


----------



## Verso

^^ :lol:



bogdymol said:


> But you don't need instructions for that one, don't you?


No, there are additional languages there (Slovenian, Croatian etc.).


----------



## Orionol

^^
^^

That's a nice surprise for the kids.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Do you all eat Kinder chocolate?


----------



## x-type

DanielFigFoz said:


> Do you all eat Kinder chocolate?


i actually steal it from my colleague who often buys it


----------



## italystf

Street View in Austria and in Slovenia


----------



## keokiracer

Global warming visible in Croatia. Click

And here's a Streetview-dude that went through Split.

(both originally found by Palance)


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Street View in Austria and in *Slovenia*


"Varstveno območje vodnega vira" (Protected area of water source)


----------



## MattiG

This is the way they keep them out of sight on the Elbe ferry.


----------



## Suburbanist

When will Google Street View come to the hold-out countries in Europe? It annoys be beautiful and landscape-diverse (=moutains) countries like Portugal, Slovenia and Austria are still off GSV.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> When will Google Street View come to the hold-out countries in Europe? It annoys be beautiful and landscape-diverse (=moutains) countries like Portugal, Slovenia and Austria are still off GSV.


In some countries it's against local privacy laws.


----------



## piotr71

Road_UK said:


> Nobody uses that word in Britain. Trust me.


Well established middle class people use the word "kindergarten" in the UK. It's been introduced and adapted in England first and then in USA. However, "nursery" is definitely more popular in every day use in the UK.


----------



## Verso

Suburbanist said:


> When will Google Street View come to the hold-out countries in Europe? It annoys be beautiful and landscape-diverse (=moutains) countries like Portugal, *Slovenia* and Austria are still off GSV.


Over our Information Commissioner's dead body. :lol:


----------



## x-type

keokiracer said:


> Global warming visible in Croatia. Click


:lol: somebody has cut the part of Krk island! probably some guy from Cres island (if you didn't know, little bit of trivia: Croatia doesn't have the largest island - it has officially 2 largest islands - Krk and Cres, with equal area  )


----------



## piotr71

Polish way of decreasing CO2 emission...


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> :lol: somebody has cut the part of Krk island! probably some guy from Cres island (if you didn't know, little bit of trivia: Croatia doesn't have the largest island - it has officially 2 largest islands - Krk and Cres, with equal area  )


Krk 405,78 sq km
Cres 405,70 sq km
:lol:


----------



## italystf

piotr71 said:


> Polish way of decreasing CO2 emission...


There should be a moped in the car's trunk.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Krk 405,78 sq km
> Cres 405,70 sq km
> :lol:


No, they are both exactly 405.78 sq km.


----------



## italystf

The area of the Philippines is exactly 300,000 sq km.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Not all subdivisions have their exact area known. Many Russian oblasts have areas rounded in square kilometers.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

piotr71 said:


> Well established middle class people use the word "kindergarten" in the UK.


Hmm. Maybe regionally


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> No, they are both exactly 405.78 sq km.


actually, you cannot precise exact area due to sea tides. you also probably learned in school that largest island in Croatia (Yugoslavia) was Krk. but lately, the newest measurings show that they are exactly equal, or some claim that Cres is even larger. 
on each island's homepage they claim that their island is the largest


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> The area of the Philippines is exactly 300,000 sq km.


National Mapping and Resource Information Authority of the Philippines says 299,404 sq km. I also very much doubt that Antarctica has exactly 14,000,000 sq km.


----------



## MattiG

Verso said:


> . I also very much doubt that Antarctica has exactly 14,000,000 sq km.


Is it somewhere said that it is exactly 14,000,000 sq km, and what is "exactly"? We do not know the precision of that figure. It may be 2 significant digits, but it may be ten, too.


----------



## italystf

MattiG said:


> Is it somewhere said that it is exactly 14,000,000 sq km, and what is "exactly"? We do not know the precision of that figure. It may be 2 significant digits, but it may be ten, too.


I read in a Italian website that Philippines are exactly 300,000km2 but maybe it is a myth.


----------



## Verso

MattiG said:


> Is it somewhere said that it is exactly 14,000,000 sq km, and what is "exactly"? We do not know the precision of that figure. It may be 2 significant digits, but it may be ten, too.


It doesn't, but since other continents show their areas to the last square kilometre, one could conclude that Antarctica does as well. And by "exactly 14,000,000 sq km" I mean between 13,999,999.5 and 14,000,000.4999... sq km.


----------



## keber

Surface area of Antarctica changes yearly because of changing ice sheets (one year there are more, other less). 14 million sq. km is just an approximate number.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> Surface area of Antarctica changes yearly because of changing ice sheets (one year there are more, other less). 14 million sq. km is just an approximate number.


The Antarctic landmass don't change but it's difficult do distinguish where there's land below the ice sheet and where there's only water. This explains the approximation.


----------



## Verso

^^ No, because ice is counted as well, otherwise Antarctica would be much smaller than 14M sq km.


----------



## italystf

Greenland is known as the largest island in the world while in reality is an archipelago covered by ice.


----------



## MattiG

Verso said:


> It doesn't, but since other continents show their areas to the last square kilometre, one could conclude that Antarctica does as well.


No, we cannot make that conclusion, for obvious reasons.

Better to say the the area is 14 million sq km. Then we know the precision, two significant digits, and anything between 13.5 and 14.5 million can be rounded to 14 milion.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## keokiracer

I was browsing www.hadonejob.com and came across this pic:








I immediately recognized the location. Looked into the pics I made from my Berlin-trip (with school) and came across this. my pic was also taken near the Reichstag. Possibly the same intersection!








(almost the entire city of Berlin was a frikken construction zone when I was there :bash:. Still a very nice city though :yes


----------



## Verso

MattiG said:


> No, we cannot make that conclusion, for obvious reasons.


An average person doesn't know or doesn't think of those reasons. But most people would probably doubt about preciseness of that number anyway.


----------



## italystf

keokiracer said:


> I was browsing www.hadonejob.com and came across this pic:


For a moment I though you linked a porn site since I read "www.handjob.com" at the first sigh. :lol:


----------



## Peines

Meanwhile in spain...






:rofl:


----------



## MattiG

Verso said:


> An average person doesn't know or doesn't think of those reasons. But most people would probably doubt about preciseness of that number anyway.


Trailing zeros of integers are not significant figures in terms of precision. Trust me.

Thus, 14000000 is not a more precise expression that 14 million if no information of the precision is provided. I have seen no credible reference showing 14.000000 million sq km as the area.

Basics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_precision
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures


----------



## Verso

Are you always so anal? :nuts:


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

Peines said:


> Meanwhile in spain...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> :rofl:


Those guys must be Romanians. :lol:


----------



## keokiracer

italystf said:


> For a moment I though you linked a porn site since I read "www.handjob.com" at the first sigh. :lol:


So did I when someone posted it on another site :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

Isn't there any ski resort on the Carphatians?


----------



## bogdymol

^^ There are many small ski resorts in Romania, but I like skiing in Austria. Ski areas are larger, slopes are well mantained etc.


----------



## cinxxx

Goodbye bow knots! This is the end of tying shoelaces. Just slip your feet in and you're out the door. Never tie your shoes again! 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects...le-design-for-simple-people?ref=home_location

60113510

59170651


----------



## D.O.W.N

Suburbanist said:


> Isn't there any ski resort on the Carphatians?


There are only few small ski resorts in Romania. On the Carphatians is the biggest ski resort Jasná-Chopok in Low Tatras in Slovakia. 
But I´ve heard that it is good skiing in Romania.


----------



## Chilio

There are even a lot of Romanians who come skiing in Bulgaria (especially in Bansko resort) even though it's so much to the South and quite a lot of kms far away.


----------



## bogdymol

^^











D.O.W.N said:


> There are only few small ski resorts in Romania. On the Carphatians is the biggest ski resort *Jasná-Chopok* in Low Tatras in Slovakia.


I've been skiing in Jasna in 3 winters. It's a nice and good resort (better than what I can find in Romania), but Austrian ones are better.


----------



## D.O.W.N

I like Italian Dolomiti Ski Resort more than Austrian ones


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Austrian ski resorts serve a much bigger market than those in Romania. Practically all of the Benelux and Germany (100 million+ people) go skiing there (Austria being closer than France and cheaper than Switzerland).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_Tunnel


----------



## keber

When you try big ski areas in France (like Val Thorens, Tignes, Alpe d'Huez ...) you don't want to ski anywhere else.

In other news, there is such heavy snowing here that I can barely see nearby buildings (it is snowing with 5 to even 10 cm per hour). Some motorways are completely closed with stuck drivers there - combination of heavy snowfall and 100+ km/h bora gusts. Not "every year" winter.


----------



## Orionol

cinxxx said:


> Goodbye bow knots! This is the end of tying shoelaces. Just slip your feet in and you're out the door. Never tie your shoes again!


That is exactly what I always do.  It is the most comfy way to put your shoes on and be ready to walk.


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile in Russia
http://video.repubblica.it/motori/russia-deltaplano-a-motore-fa-il-pieno-dal-benzinaio/120323/118806


----------



## bogdymol

italystf said:


> Meanwhile in Russia
> http://video.repubblica.it/motori/russia-deltaplano-a-motore-fa-il-pieno-dal-benzinaio/120323/118806


Look at my previous posts from Funny Video thread on DLM. There I said that this also happens in Romania. I also attached 1 pic.


----------



## Verso

It's been snowing here for like 12 hours. Some guy from Beli Manastir can't get out with his car.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Verso

Verso said:


> It's been snowing here for like 12 hours.


Oops, I meant 20 hours! And now I see I can't get out of my garage either. I'll go by bus then.


----------



## Suburbanist

there has been talk the snow in Italy will disporportionally affect Berlusconi's core cohorts.


----------



## g.spinoza

Last friday it took me 7 hours to go from Brescia to Ancona instead of the usual 3.5. Snowmageddon all the way from Modena to Ancona, average speed of 50 km/h.


----------



## Verso

Someone cleared snow in front of our garage, which resulted in a 2-metre pile of snow in front of the house.


----------



## Suburbanist

Verso said:


> Someone cleared snow in front of our garage, which resulted in a 2-metre pile of snow in front of the house.


A bit more and you can build a tunnel to access the sidewalk


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## cinxxx

These guys started a journey on foot from Fălticeneni, Romania to Gibraltar.


----------



## CNGL

Just some days after I got my American road atlas, my dad has been to Switzerland, Germany and Austria and got this German road atlas for me:









Huge mistake: Bielefeld doesn't exist, but appears in this map:









:troll:

See Bielefeld Conspiracy.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Rebasepoiss

Only 4 people have been killed in traffic accidents in the first 2 months of 2013 in Estonia compared to 17 in 2012. Interestingly, all 4 were pedestrians.


----------



## bgd77

cinxxx said:


>


This is not how a cop should behave.


----------



## cinxxx

^^I agree.


----------



## Verso

No shit.  He's an asshole. One of the comments:


SubZero1703 said:


> This is why USA's tourist industry is in﻿ the shitter.


:lol:


----------



## Broccolli




----------



## Verso

Chris Rock is hilarious. I always liked his giant teeth.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## g.spinoza

Today the first subway line of Brescia has been inaugurated. A trip from my home to the city centre, 25 minutes long by bus, now can be done in 6. First day was free of charge, so thousands of people used the metro, more than the organizers expected, resulting in glitches and long queues.


----------



## Verso

^^ Congrats! :cheers:


----------



## YU-AMC

cinxxx said:


> ^^I agree.


I found him sort of funny for some reason... I loved the part when he said; "Germany boy" hahaha. The thing is, many rich states have huge police budgets to fun strong highway police force, so you will run into a few funny cops. Until now, I had an amazing experience with american cops, but you also have to be smart with them. You have to use the term such as "dear officer" and so on.


----------



## cinxxx

A friend just returned from a trip to Rome and Napoli.
He said traffic in Napol is horrible, honking all the time, scooter drivers using the pedestrian parts and yelling to make room. The tram he took from the train station to the hostel made an accident with a car. It seemed to him, that rules or color signs are optional too


----------



## Verso

I was in Naples almost 20 years ago. Looks like it hasn't changed much in this respect. :lol:


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

cinxxx said:


>


"...or you will get violated." :nuts:

I think this cop was horny, and frustrated, since he's not a prison guard any more. hno:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

cinxxx said:


> http://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM


Holy crap! The top 1% has 40% of the wealth while the bottom 80% has only 7% of the wealth - that is a really shocking difference. :nuts: I guess GDP really is a useless indicator of the well-being of people.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The minimum wage is far too low in the United States. A person should be able to make a living with one full-time job. The federal minimum wage is only $ 7.50 per hour (or about $ 1,250 per month at 40 hrs a week).


----------



## bogdymol

Back home after driving 2100 km in one week. Later I will post pictures on the Austrian Autobahn thread.


----------



## Surel

Rebasepoiss said:


> Holy crap! The top 1% has 40% of the wealth while the bottom 80% has only 7% of the wealth - that is a really shocking difference. :nuts: I guess GDP really is a useless indicator of the well-being of people.


Funny, when someone has it right he is "banned"... The same holds for the Europe, in fact its the general truth.

Banned TED Talk Nick Hanauer. You won't find this on the TED side as being "too politically charged", lol.


----------



## g.spinoza

g.spinoza said:


> Today the first subway line of Brescia has been inaugurated. A trip from my home to the city centre, 25 minutes long by bus, now can be done in 6. First day was free of charge, so thousands of people used the metro, more than the organizers expected, resulting in glitches and long queues.


Some pictures from the Italian thread, thanks to Ale73:



Ale73 said:


>





Ale73 said:


>





Ale73 said:


>





Ale73 said:


>





Ale73 said:


> Spero vi piacciano e spero di essere riuscito a dare l'idea di quant'è bella la vostra nuova Metropolitana.


----------



## hofburg

very modern and good looking! automatic stairs and elevators everywhere. compared to that, Paris is one pile of garbage.


----------



## bogdymol

Great metro system!


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> The minimum wage is far too low in the United States.


Germany or Scandinavia don't have it at all though.



Rebasepoiss said:


> Holy crap! The top 1% has 40% of the wealth while the bottom 80% has only 7% of the wealth - that is a really shocking difference. :nuts: I guess GDP really is a useless indicator of the well-being of people.


Median wage would be a better indicator (although not ideal either).


----------



## Blackraven

hofburg said:


> very modern and good looking! automatic stairs and elevators everywhere. compared to that, Paris is one pile of garbage.


LOL. Philippines is worse.

I think we have the worst quality of rail transportation in all of South East Asia.

:bash:

With that said, just look at this:










^^^That is economic progress in action

For the Philippines to get something like this, I have to say (and I hate to admit this) but it will sadly take decades for our rail transport network to achieve this level of modernization, quality and improvement.

Also, they say Italy = in economic crisis?

What crisis?


























^^^With what I'm seeing above, I don't think there is any to begin with.......


----------



## D.O.W.N

Slovakia - country where you do the Harlem Shake involuntarily :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

Blackraven said:


> Also, they say Italy = in economic crisis?
> 
> What crisis?


I have to say, works began more than 10 years ago, before the crisis. And there is a number of articles in newspapers criticizing the enormous cost of this infrastructure (1 billion euro, more than 5 thousand per Brescia inhabitant). It will take more than 30 years for the city of Brescia to repay the loan to the banks...


----------



## cinxxx

If we are still at metro system in Italy, some pictures taken by a friend this week from Naples metro.



cinxxx said:


> Some pictures taken by a friend this week from Naples metro
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> photo storage


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> It will take more than 30 years for the city of Brescia to repay the loan to the banks...


Just ignore them. :troll:


----------



## Broccolli

marcobs said:


>


@ g.spinoza


I must say that this is one bad ass metro sistem....I envy you 

Are all those blue stations (_blue metro track_) underground stations? im asking because there i see that this blue line is going through gallery (galleria). So is it open on one side or is it completely underground??

Is this blue track?



Ale73 said:


>




What is the deal with red stations ...and what does it mean this word _trincea_ is it trench ? So metro is going through trench so it is open here and red metro stations are on the surface, or?

Thx for your answers


----------



## Wilhem275

Broccolli said:


> What is the deal with red stations ...and what does it mean this word _trincea_ is it trench ? So metro is going through trench so it is open here and red metro stations are on the surface, or?













While tunnels (blue on the map) are fully underground 


Working in PT field, I'm with those who think this underground is a typical overengineering political work...
A good tramway would have fit [or fitted?] perfectly into that city, with lot less money needed.
If you carefull plan it, you get a ride not much slower than a subway and a good revision of the urban environment.
In such a city the tram travel time usually competes with metro travel time+time spent reaching the station underground... 

What is more, the day they'll want to draw a second line they will have no money to dig another subway, and if they go with a tram they'll face the diseconomy of running two separate systems.


----------



## Broccolli

Wilhem275 said:


> While tunnels (blue on the map) are fully underground



Ok thank you for your answers, I understand now


----------



## hofburg

Verso said:


> Just ignore them. :troll:


Brescia should borrow money from Ljubljanska banka, so they wouldn't have to back up the loan with warranty and eventually pay it back. :troll:


----------



## bogdymol

My town borrowed money for 20 or 25 years just to change the tram lines with some new ones and to pave the road with new asphalt along...


----------



## g.spinoza

Broccolli said:


> I must say that this is one bad ass metro sistem....I envy you
> 
> Are all those blue stations (_blue metro track_) underground stations? im asking because there i see that this blue line is going through gallery (galleria). So is it open on one side or is it completely underground??
> 
> What is the deal with red stations ...and what does it mean this word _trincea_ is it trench ? So metro is going through trench so it is open here and red metro stations are on the surface, or?
> 
> Thx for your answers


Blue is fully underground (-30m); red is covered trench (-7m); yellow is ground level; green is viaduct.



Wilhem275 said:


> A good tramway would have fit [or fitted?] perfectly into that city, with lot less money needed.
> If you carefull plan it, you get a ride not much slower than a subway and a good revision of the urban environment.
> In such a city the tram travel time usually competes with metro travel time+time spent reaching the station underground...


I don't know how much you know Brescia, but there is not much room for a surface tram. Brescia is narrow, between two high hills, and traffic is nigthmare, always.


----------



## cinxxx

Booked a 3 night stay in Venice area for Catholic Eastern period 29.03-01.04.
Thinking in doing something like this as route http://goo.gl/maps/JKpjO

What do you think? Any recommendations? I'm planning to visit Venice and islands nearby for the first 3 days, maybe on the first day stop somewhere on the way (where? Udine?), and also stop somewhere on the last day on the way back (Verona? Lake Garda?)

Thanks!


----------



## g.spinoza

Western Garda shore is nicer than Eastern, imho.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Palmanova is apparently a nice town. It's just south of Udine at the A4/A23 interchange.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Palmanova is apparently a nice town. It's just south of Udine at the A4/A23 interchange.


Yes, it was a Venetian fortress in the XV century and it's shaped as a star with 9 corners.
Don't forget Aquileia, with its famous Roman ruins. Also Cividale and Grado are nice towns.


----------



## RipleyLV

In the latest Top Gear episode, where the team travel to Africa to find the source of river Nile, Jeremy compared Lake Victoria size with Latvia.


----------



## bogdymol

cinxxx said:


> Booked a 3 night stay in Venice area for Catholic Eastern period 29.03-01.04.
> Thinking in doing something like this as route http://goo.gl/maps/JKpjO
> 
> What do you think? Any recommendations? I'm planning to visit Venice and islands nearby for the first 3 days, maybe on the first day stop somewhere on the way (where? Udine?), and also stop somewhere on the last day on the way back (Verona? Lake Garda?)
> 
> Thanks!


Go skiing in the Austrian Alps. It's great!









^^ My picture from last week.


----------



## italystf

RipleyLV said:


> In the latest Top Gear episode, where the team travel to Africa to find the source of river Nile, Jeremy compared Lake Victoria size with Latvia.


Because everybody in the world know how big Latvia is


----------



## RipleyLV

He did not compare it with Lithuania though. :troll:


----------



## cinxxx

http://falkvinge.net/2013/03/04/after-being-cut-from-norway-the-pirate-bay-returns-from-north-korea



> People using The Pirate Bay right now will observe that it’s slightly slower than usual. Earlier today, the Norwegian Pirate Party sent a press release that they no longer supplied bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, as the party’s uplink had caved to threats from the copyright industry about kicking out The Pirate Bay. (This remains a concern in itself.)
> 
> Ten minutes after that article was posted, The Pirate Bay came back online with a new provider that was as-yet unidentified. The swarm has worked and discovered the origins of the new provider: North Korea.
> 
> This has all sorts of interesting geopolitical consequences.
> 
> (For the technically interested, the last link in the traceroute chain is 175.45.177.217. A whois lookup will tell you that this is an ISP based in North Korea.)
> 
> North Korea may have the one government on this planet which takes pride in asking Hollywood and United States interests to take a hike in the most public way imaginable. Many more governments could do well to learn that particular idea, even if they don’t need to pick up the other things that the NK government is up to.
> 
> The world’s most resilient site for safeguarding freedom of expression, going against the political interests of the United States’ elite cronyists, is now run from North Korea. Imagine that.
> 
> This is going to be really fun to watch. The local convenience store may run out of popcorn when this becomes known.
> 
> UPDATE: The operators of The Pirate Bay confirm the story in a press release with comments: “This is truly an ironic situation. We have been fighting for a free world, and our opponents are mostly huge corporations from the United States of America, a place where freedom and freedom of speech is said to be held high. At the same time, companies from that country is chasing a competitor from other countries, bribing police and lawmakers, threatening political parties and physically hunting people from our crew. And to our help comes a government famous in our part of the world for locking people up for their thoughts and forbidding access to information.”


https://thepiratebay.se/blog/229


----------



## cinxxx

@bogdymol: I'm sick and tired about winter, snow and coldness 

Must I watch out for some special signs in Italy that ban access of cars in some places (I remember reading something about this)?
Also I remember reading something about parking spaces in Italy, about color marking?

Thanks!


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Yes, it was a Venetian fortress in the XV century and it's shaped as a star with 9 corners.
> Don't forget Aquileia, with its famous Roman ruins. Also Cividale and Grado are nice towns.


I haven't been to any of them.


----------



## g.spinoza

piratebay is inaccessible from Italy since last year...


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> @bogdymol: I'm sick and tired about winter, snow and coldness
> 
> Must I watch out for some special signs in Italy that ban access of cars in some places (I remember reading something about this)?
> Also I remember reading something about parking spaces in Italy, about color marking?
> 
> Thanks!


Usually blue markings means pay parking spots, white are free and orange are reserved for handicapped people. But better look at the vertical signs, some white spots are pay parkings too.


----------



## hofburg

Verso said:


> I haven't been to any of them.


been to all of 'em except Palmanova


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> been to all of 'em except Palmanova


Really? It's half hour from you!


----------



## Verso

Once I mistakenly drove through Monfalcone.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Once I mistakenly drove through Monfalcone.


In which sense mistakenly?


----------



## Verso

I couldn't pay for A4 with my bank card for some reason, so I went back to the last interchange (Monfalcone ovest) and I just drove through the town on SS14.


----------



## Wilhem275

cinxxx said:


> Must I watch out for some special signs in Italy that ban access of cars in some places (I remember reading something about this)?
> Also I remember reading something about parking spaces in Italy, about color marking?


Many city centres have "z.t.l." zones which you should avoid at all (there may be allowed access times but just to be sure...). But those areas are usually pretty deep into the city, so you should have no reason to get there with the car.
Once you have defined your trip we can get more parking advices 

I suggest a morning or afternoon in Padova, the city centre is the most interesting in Veneto after Venice. Verona is nice too but it's tiny, it ends up pretty soon.
I may be hanging around in Padova, I study there.



g.spinoza said:


> I don't know how much you know Brescia, but there is not much room for a surface tram. Brescia is narrow, between two high hills, and traffic is nigthmare, always.


Same as many EU towns  standard solution: you reserve a lane on wider roads (outside the old walls), and let the tram go through the narrow center on a path shared with pedestrians and bikes; and doing so you renew the center urban environment and improve modern traffic management on major routes... and still costs a gazillion less than a subway.

Fitting a tram seemed impossible almost everywhere, before they did it... because traffic is seen as a limit and not as a symptom


----------



## hofburg

italystf said:


> Really? It's half hour from you!


actually less, but I guess it's not such a touristic town. except for outlets, but I don't do outlets


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> I haven't been to any of them.


neither have I. and i have passed there plenty of times (travelling to more interesting places  ). i haven't neither been to Trieste, just passed the suburb once :lol: the nearest places to I-SLO border where i spent some more time were Manzano (business) and Portogruaro (shopping in 90es). and i had a dinner in Sgonico once


----------



## RipleyLV

hofburg said:


> been to all of 'em except Palmanova


Just take the Google Street View tour.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> the nearest places to I-SLO border where i spent some more time were Manzano ...


Had to google it.  But I guess I was close when I drove on SR56 from Udine to Gorizia 15 years ago.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Had to google it.  But I guess I was close when I drove on SR56 from Udine to Gorizia 15 years ago.


Where there's the giant chair.


----------



## italystf

A potential candidate for the Ig-nobel prize for renovable energy


----------



## Night Fury

Russians must be so envious at this guy.


----------



## bogdymol

Didn't they do something similar at TopGear?


----------



## Alex_ZR

There was similar thing in Serbia some 10-15 years ago:


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> A potential candidate for the Ig-nobel prize for renovable energy


He probably comes from Ig. :lol:


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## MattiG

Alex_ZR said:


> There was similar thing in Serbia some 10-15 years ago:


Vehicles run on wood gas were rather common during the WWII, when there was lack on gasoline.

It has been estimated that there were 150,000+ such vehicles in Germany in 1942. In Finland, gasoline was not available to public at all. Therefore, about 25,000 vehicles were converted to wood gas driven ones by 1944. Some sources show higher figures, even 40,000+










The wood gas equipment were heavy (even 300 kg), and the energy content of wood is low (about 2.5 kg wood was equal to 1 liter gasoline), and the loss of power was about 60%. Therefore, the range of such vehicles was rather limited. The equipment needed a lot of maintenance. Therefore, the wood gas vehicles vanished rather quickly as soon as gasoline became freely available in 1949.


----------



## italystf

Talking about VW Beetles, those guys, back in 1964 managed to cross the Messina strait with a converted one:
http://www.sambabug.it/forum/viewtopic.php?t=602


----------



## cinxxx

*Philip Zimbardo: The psychology of evil*
http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil.html

very good video


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile in America:


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile in Greece


----------



## Verso

^^ Is the last pic from Samos by any chance?


----------



## Angelos

Look how nice and shiny are the roadmarkings ! :banana:


----------



## Verso

Today I saw a Dacia Duster. But instead it said Dacia Disaster.


----------



## cinxxx

^^:lol:


----------



## cinxxx

Habemus Papam!
Jorge Mario Bergoglio - Franciscus, from Buenos Aires, Argentina


----------



## Verso

I even saw the only Slovenian cardinal next to him.


----------



## Attus

At first sight our new pope (I'm catholic, so I can say 'our') seems to be a nice man. He's form Argentina and took the name of Francis (by St. Francis of Assisi), and both shows that the church will under his lead care more for poor people.


----------



## Fatfield

Meanwhile in Paranoia Central (China)......



> Coca-Cola is being investigated by Chinese authorities for using satellite navigation to deliver their drinks.
> 
> Commercial sat navs using the US-made Global Positioning System (GPS) are restricted in China as the country keeps tight control on who has access to maps.
> 
> The only satellite navigation systems allowed to be sold use maps that are approved by the government.
> 
> It is not known if Coca-Cola is being investigated for using vehicle-mounted systems, similar to those made by Garmin or Tom Tom, or hand-held devices that merely give a user's exact position.


http://news.sky.com/story/1064514/coca-cola-china-investigates-sat-nav-use


----------



## Attus

A joke for this day:

Thee Englishmen are drinking beer in a pub. Then they see that an Irish guy sits there, drinking beer, too. They decide to make this guy angry. 
One of them goes there and says: "Hello, St. Patrick was a murderer!". The Irish does not answer, drinks his beer on.
The second one goes there and says: "Hello, St. Patrick was gay!". No answer, again. 
The third one says to his friends: "Idiots, now I will really made him angry". Goes there and says: "Hello, St. Patrick was an Englishman!". Now the Irish answers: "Yes, I know, your friends told me that".


----------



## cinxxx

Nukes ready to fly:
http://i.imgur.com/HxjY8Ks.gif


----------



## MattiG

Finally, the dark half of the year is behind. The length of the day was yesterday 11:57 hours and today it is 12:02 hours. The March equinox will take place on Wednesday at 11:01 UTC time.










Bloody cold it is but it is a different story.


----------



## ssh

The last week has been pretty weird. Not a single degree above zero, but staying out in the sun really gives you a feeling that spring is here soon.


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> You can drink beer with friends even on non-holidays. And no holiday in the world can convince me to wear a green sweater
> 
> By the way, the only other holiday we haven't imported yet is Thanksgiving.


And Independence Day.


----------



## hofburg

seems like MattiG lives at Nokia HQ


----------



## Road_UK

hofburg said:


> seems like MattiG lives at Nokia HQ


Nice place to be. I used to deliver at the Nokia plant a lot in Salo, Finland. (and the Nokia plants in Komarom, Hungary, in Cluj, Romania and Bochum, Germany when it still existed.


----------



## dubart

Road_UK said:


> And Independence Day.


And Hanuka.


----------



## Road_UK

dubart said:


> And Hanuka.


Isn't that a Jewish thing?


----------



## dubart

^^ It is.


----------



## MattiG

hofburg said:


> seems like MattiG lives at Nokia HQ


Not far away. 9 km in a beeline, 14 via the streets.

I have spent quite a time in my earlier life at the Nokia HQ. Still, I would not call it living.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> And Independence Day.


But we have our own. April 25th - Liberation Day; June 2nd - Republic Day.



dubart said:


> And Hanuka.


Not a bank holiday, though.


----------



## x-type

Road_UK said:


> And Independence Day.


interesting in Yugoslavia 4th July was national holiday. it was called Day of the Combatant. it was some partizan thing  (i remember it because my street's former name is St. 4th of July  )


----------



## italystf

There is another pair of countries with the same national holyday: 25 April in Italy and Portugal for different reasons.


----------



## Road_UK

The reason Independence day in the US is quite simple. It has been a memorable day for a long time, but there was this particular day when aliens were going to kill everyone and use all the earth's recourses for their own consumption. We fought back though, and we remember Independence Day as the day that freedom remained worldwide.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> There is another pair of countries with the same national holyday: 25 April in Italy and Portugal for different reasons.


BTW, the probability of no pair of countries to have their national day at the same day would be less than 1 to one quintillion (1 followed by 30 zeroes). The math of the famous Birthday Paradox applies.


----------



## italystf

MattiG said:


> BTW, the probability of no pair of countries to have their national day at the same day would be less than 1 to one quintillion (1 followed by 30 zeroes). The math of the famous Birthday Paradox applies.


Yes, off course. There are 365 or 366 days and roughly 200 countries (depends by the definition of country, there are many unrecognized states like Northern Cyprus and semi-independent protectorates such Honk Kong and Cayman islands).


----------



## italystf

Other interesting coincidences:
Italy has 8092 municipalities, Spain 8116. Is 24 a really narrow difference in a such large number, isn't it?
Italy is divided in 20 regions and 110 provinces, France in 22 regions and 101 departments (comparable to our provinces).


----------



## italystf

A thing you shouldn't do on a motorway 
http://notizieincredibili.scuolazoo.com/incredibile/coppia-fa-sesso-in-moto-video


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Sunny California.


----------



## RipleyLV

^^ That is how Arctic Ocean will look like few decades later.


----------



## bogdymol

There are so many dash cams in Russia that now you can see an accident from the cameras of each car involved:


----------



## italystf

Continue straight along this road and see what happens 
http://maps.google.it/maps?ll=36.99...d=eczpWqne_HBXMMS1ZbbFXw&cbp=12,329.65,,0,1.1


----------



## bogdymol

^^ :??


----------



## keokiracer

It becomes snowy


----------



## italystf

I was just looking at various south Italian expressways to see which are real expressway and which aren't (i.e. if they have proper junctions). I randomly ended here. 
And big trucks drive on the left lane with nobody around. http://maps.google.it/maps?q=bisceg...Q8u-om1Mw-I1gSc9cg&cbp=12,254.78,,0,9.75&z=17


----------



## cinxxx

^^what does the lady offer?


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> And big trucks drive on the left lane with nobody around. http://maps.google.it/maps?q=bisceg...Q8u-om1Mw-I1gSc9cg&cbp=12,254.78,,0,9.75&z=17


The truck is overtaking the Google car.


----------



## keokiracer

Verso said:


> The truck is overtaking the Google car.


Yeah, those things seem to drive so slow that they get overtaken by trucks quite a lot.


----------



## da_scotty

cinxxx said:


> ^^what does the lady offer?


A trick, if you continue one click on google streetview, she is gone!


----------



## keber

italystf said:


> Continue straight along this road and see what happens
> http://maps.google.it/maps?ll=36.99...d=eczpWqne_HBXMMS1ZbbFXw&cbp=12,329.65,,0,1.1


Google didn't have enough money to pass a checkpoint?
300$ per person, they have to be kidding.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think it's $ 3.00, not $ 300


----------



## cinxxx

da_scotty said:


> A trick, if you continue one click on google streetview, she is gone!


If you take the exit, she's still there


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think it's $ 3.00, not $ 300


And "busses" misspelt (should be "buses").


----------



## Verso

Photobucket finally works properly. I just don't like that you have to scroll endlessly to get to the last photo instead of clicking on the last page.


----------



## RipleyLV

Ugh, the new Photobucket.. too many clicks to get IMG link for the forum.


----------



## Verso

Yeah, that's annoying.


----------



## cinxxx

Meanwhile in Ukraine:

One politician made his speak in Russian...


----------



## Suburbanist

I'm happy to see Russian language shunned from former Eastern European countries. I wish its use decline more and more. 

Incidentally, I'm quite sad with the slowdown on the removal of former communist symbols, some countries almost stopped defacing hammer and sickle minor signs or removing vestiges of communist administrations from public buildings, hospitals etc.


----------



## cinxxx

What did this guy take? :lol:


----------



## Alex_ZR

^^ He is Jovan Deretić, pseudohistorian who has some theories in which Serbs are the oldest nation in the world! :lol:


----------



## cinxxx

^^Yeah, seems that your description fits


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wanna play golf?


----------



## Wilhem275

Speed limit 20 :lol: I'd keep a gazillion of mph there :lol:


----------



## Attus

Suburbanist said:


> how different is Croatian from Serbian language, other than alphabet used?


I have a Croatian workmate and our boss is Serbian. They speak to each other in their our languages and understand each other perfectly. 

Btw. Serbian language has an offcial Latin based alphabet as well, and in some parts of the country it is used more as the traditional Cyrillic one.


----------



## RipleyLV

Welcome to Red Square.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> When I was in Germany, at my workplace a Bulgarian girl once threw a little goodbye party as she was relocating to Bologna. A Russian professor came by and asked what was that about:
> - I'm going to Bologna for a post-doc.
> - Ah, Bologna! Emilia-Romagna! The most communist place in Western Europe!
> 
> The girl looked at me, terrified, as she knew I came from Bologna myself.
> 
> - Don't worry - I replied. - It's a completely different kind of communism.


http://maps.google.it/maps?q=piazza...noid=dfKyAhA8z4fib3Yw3NGU2g&cbp=12,46.14,,1,0

http://maps.google.it/maps?q=Via+Ti...=t7BEYiD2gKcg8GW1d6cQ1A&cbp=12,152.39,,1,1.55

http://maps.google.it/maps?q=Via+Ti...80mnYjIJC_F45K9rwXqS0Q&cbp=12,290.89,,3,-1.98

Ironically, today the apology of communism is far more accepted in Italy than in the European countries that were communists before 1989. Maybe because we never sufferered from a communist repression (not considering foibe killings and Trieste Yugoslav occupation in 1945). However, since recently, many Italian streets have been named after foibe victims.


----------



## Verso

There are Via Tito in Italy? :uh:


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> There are Via Tito in Italy? :uh:


Parma is in Emilia-Romagna, "the most communist place in Western Europe". :cheers:


----------



## Suburbanist

Verso said:


> There are Via Tito in Italy? :uh:


Worse than that... 

there is a Via Stalin in a city in Sicilia...

couple cities have streets named after Lenin

Many cities have streets named after Gramsci, the most nefarious of all Western theoretical communists...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> Parma is in Emilia-Romagna, "the most communist place in Western Europe". :cheers:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivry-sur-Seine

It has non-stop communist mayors since 1925


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivry-sur-Seine
> 
> It has non-stop communist mayors since 1925


That's a small city. Emilia-Romagna has 4.5 million inh. Parma itself has almost 200.000 citizens.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Worse than that...
> 
> there is a Via Stalin in a city in Sicilia...
> 
> couple cities have streets named after Lenin
> 
> Many cities have streets named after Gramsci, the most nefarious of all Western theoretical communists...


Gramsci was more an intellectual and, unlikely Eastern Europeans dictators, he never killed or tortured anybody. Itself was prosecuted and imprisoned by fascists.
If I think about an evil Western communist leader, Palmiro Togliatti comes to my mind. He was a close friend of Stalin and after WWII, as leader of the PCI, he wanted to put Italy on the wrong side of the iron curtain. Fortunately they never won the elections and the, although controversial, Christian Democracy managed to keep us living in a democracy. In the 70s also the PCI became more moderate and looked for a cooperation with other Wester communist parties rather than the Soviet Union.
Few people know that after WWII, while 300,000 Italians left Istria, Fiume and Zara, some thousands of Italian workers, PCI voters, went to Yugoslavia, especially to Pula and Rijeka shipyards, to live in the "worker's paradise". In 1948 Tito broke the relationship with Stalin, while the Italian communist party continued to support the Soviet Union instead of Yugoslavia. As revenge, the Titoist regime started imprisoning and torturing those Italian workers.
And Italian media almost never spoke of foibe killings until the 90s because we wanted to avoid diplomatic troubles with our Eastern neighbours. This may explain that Tito street in Italy.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivry-sur-Seine
> 
> It has non-stop communist mayors since 1925


In Italy a mayor can't be elected more than 2 consecutive times (2x5 years). Only exception are small municipalities (<5000ppl) in the autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, where the limit is 3 times (15 years).


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> there is a Via Stalin in a city in Sicilia...


Here it is.
With all those rundown buildings and unmantained streets it really feel like being in the former Soviet Union :lol:.
It's located between Via Roosevelt and Via Churchill.

EDIT: And also Via Mao Tse Tung and Via Ho Chi Min. hno:


----------



## Broccolli

italystf said:


> Gramsci was more an intellectual and, unlikely Eastern Europeans dictators, he never killed or tortured anybody. Itself was prosecuted and imprisoned by fascists.
> If I think about an evil Western communist leader, Palmiro Togliatti comes to my mind. He was a close friend of Stalin and after WWII, as leader of the PCI, he wanted to put Italy on the wrong side of the iron curtain. Fortunately they never won the elections and the, although controversial, Christian Democracy managed to keep us living in a democracy. In the 70s also the PCI became more moderate and looked for a cooperation with other Wester communist parties rather than the Soviet Union.
> Few people know that after WWII, while 300,000 Italians left Istria, Fiume and Zara, some thousands of Italian workers, PCI voters, went to Yugoslavia, especially to Pula and Rijeka shipyards, to live in the "worker's paradise". In 1948 Tito broke the relationship with Stalin, while the Italian communist party continued to support the Soviet Union instead of Yugoslavia. As revenge, the Titoist regime started imprisoning and torturing those Italian workers.
> And Italian media almost never spoke of foibe killings until the 90s because we wanted to avoid diplomatic troubles with our Eastern neighbours. This may explain that Tito street in Italy.



if you insist on that topic...

Every crime against humanity is unexceptable i agree in that point, and we must condemned foibe kilings, or other kilings after WW2 committed by yugoslav communist regime without fair trial, no question about that.
But we also can not forget the crimes that italian soldiers did during WW2 on Slovenian territory.They were occupiers here! They barbed-wire the entire city of Ljubljana and created some sort of prison camp. My grandmothers and grandfathers village was also burned to the ground and italian soldiers killed all men in a village which they can find, also my grand grandfather.
Italian fascist regime systematically italianized slovenian last names, they bannned to speak slovenian in public, they closed all slovenian schools...the final goal was forced assimilation of slovenian people and if that was not possible extermination. From my point of view that was genocide.

So now they are trying to be victims here, that is hilarious.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_of_Remembrance_and_Comradeship


----------



## italystf

Broccolli said:


> if you insist on that topic...
> 
> Every crime agains humanity is unexceptable i agree in that point, and we must condemned foibe kilings, or other kilings after WW2 committed by yugoslav communist regime without fair trial, no question about that.
> But we also can not forget the crimes that italian soldiers did during WW2 in Slovenian territory.They were occupiers here! They barbed-wire the entire city of Ljubljana and created some sort of prison camp. My grandmothers and grandfathers village was also burned to the ground and italian soldiers killed all men in a village which they can find, also my gradgrandfather.
> Italian fascist regime systematically italianized slovenian last names, they bannned to speak slovenian in public, they closed all slovenian schools...the final goal was forced assimilation of slovenian people and if that was not possible extermination. From my point of view that was genocide.
> 
> So now they are trying to be victims here, that is hilarious.
> 
> Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_of_Remembrance_and_Comradeship


I know everything about fascist crimes and I hate fascist like everybody who commits crimes against humanity. Off course you've read about the Risiera di San Sabba, Gonars death camp, Narodni Dom on fire, forced italianization and the occupation of Ljubljana, Dalmatia and Montenegro. All terrible crimes against humanity.
But when Tito starded killing Italians in foibe our evil regime was already gone. They took revenge against normal people, also anti-fascists, women and children just because they were Italians. It's called ethnic cleasing.
It's like if Jews decided to kill random German people after WWII as revenge for holocaust.


----------



## Broccolli

italystf said:


> *But when Tito starded killing Italians in foibe our evil regime was already gone. They took revenge against normal people, also anti-fascists, women and children just because they were Italians. It's called ethnic cleasing.*It's like if Jews decided to kill random German people after WWII as revenge for holocaust.


And execly the same was happening to our children nad women during the WW2. repression and forced assimilation encouraged by italian authorities against slovenians which get under Italy after WW2 (about 150.000) was strong up to the present day. 
Last couple of years are better, i think that i has something to do with meeting of all three presidents (Italian, Croatian, Slovenian). But there is a lot to be done for our slovenian minority in your country 


Like i said:

Every crime against humanity is unexceptable i agree in that point, and we must condemned foibe kilings, or other kilings after WW2 committed by yugoslav communist regime without fair trial, no question about that.

But in the other hand we must not forget who started the war! 

over and out


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> It's like if Jews decided to kill random German people after WWII as revenge for holocaust.


No, but everyone else did. :shifty:


----------



## italystf

Broccolli said:


> And execly the same was happening to our children nad women during the WW2.


I never denied that. And not only in Yugoslavia, also in Albania, Greece, Lybia and East Africa.
I talked about communism b\c there was an ongoing discussion about it, but it's obvious for me that fascism was the same.
Everything is clear, so no further discussions are needed.


----------



## Broccolli

^^

I agree all those systems are totalitarian system. (communism, fascism, nazism)



But there is another thing. You see all those slovenian partizans (99% of them) were just simple peasant boys, most of them from villages. Those boys didnt know anything about political systems nothing about communism, they just resisted to the occupiers so they joined partizans, resistance organization. And that is it. That part of our history is clean as a whistle. Those men and women just stood up for themselves because they were tired of represion and kilings commited by ocupiers on slovenian theritory (german or italian in some small part also croatian). 
But it is also true that communist later exploited partizan resisting organization to promote themselves, with one goal to become the main political party, and the main and only political player in country.


----------



## Suburbanist

I don't think nobody is justifying one crime with other.

What I hate is that while any person professing to be fascist or neonazi is mostly seen as a clown/stupid/out of his-her mind, communism still has mainstream acceptance. People talk of "true communist state" have never been implemented and keep discussing it as if it were possible, whereas no one would serious suggest fascism just didn't work well as it should by its books because it wasn't properly implemented in Italy. 

Examples we are discussing: there are streets named after communist dictators in France, Italy and some other countries, whereas you won't find any street named after Mussolini, Hitler or Hiroito in the Eastern block.

I'd actually have all those street names removed. 

There is also the case of Germany, where they have streets named after Karl Marx (like the 3rd busiest thoroughfare of Berlin). Could you imagine a street named after Gobbels in Poland? 

In any case, Italy was twice affected by the major players on WW2. First, it went through a fascist dictatorship. Later, 2/3 of its territory were brutally occupied by Germans in a way no better than what they did in France (though not as violent as they did in their occupied Eastern territories), including mass killing of whole village populations as reprisal. Meanwhile, Allied forces gave the mafiosi a free reign in business in the 1/3 that was liberated earlier, creating problems that last to this day.

Then, they expelled hundreds of thousands of ethnic Italians living in Dalmatia for as long as 4 centuries, since the times of Venice prominence on the Adriatic, and ethnically cleansed the whole area.

It should be noticed some harcore Italian communist operatives wanted, in the immediate aftermath of WW2, to expel all ethnic Germans from Alto Adige and Tyrol as revenge.

Everything much complicated, but my point remains: there shouldn't be streets named after Tito, Stalin and the likes.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> In Italy a mayor can't be elected more than 2 consecutive times (2x5 years). Only exception are small municipalities (<5000ppl) in the autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, where the limit is 3 times (15 years).


Are you sure? Giovanbattista Sinicropi was mayor of Sant'Alessio in Calabria for 43 consecutive years. And I remember something about a mayor in Emilia Romagna who was in charge for a comparable amount of time.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> I don't think nobody is justifying one crime with other.
> 
> What I hate is that while any person professing to be fascist or neonazi is mostly seen as a clown/stupid/out of his-her mind, communism still has mainstream acceptance. People talk of "true communist state" have never been implemented and keep discussing it as if it were possible, whereas no one would serious suggest fascism just didn't work well as it should by its books because it wasn't properly implemented in Italy.
> 
> Examples we are discussing: there are streets named after communist dictators in France, Italy and some other countries, whereas you won't find any street named after Mussolini, Hitler or Hiroito in the Eastern block.
> 
> I'd actually have all those street names removed.
> 
> There is also the case of Germany, where they have streets named after Karl Marx (like the 3rd busiest thoroughfare of Berlin). Could you imagine a street named after Gobbels in Poland?
> 
> In any case, Italy was twice affected by the major players on WW2. First, it went through a fascist dictatorship. Later, 2/3 of its territory were brutally occupied by Germans in a way no better than what they did in France (though not as violent as they did in their occupied Eastern territories), including mass killing of whole village populations as reprisal. Meanwhile, Allied forces gave the mafiosi a free reign in business in the 1/3 that was liberated earlier, creating problems that last to this day.
> 
> Then, they expelled hundreds of thousands of ethnic Italians living in Dalmatia for as long as 4 centuries, since the times of Venice prominence on the Adriatic, and ethnically cleansed the whole area.
> 
> It should be noticed some harcore Italian communist operatives wanted, in the immediate aftermath of WW2, to expel all ethnic Germans from Alto Adige and Tyrol as revenge.
> 
> Everything much complicated, but my point remains: there shouldn't be streets named after Tito, Stalin and the likes.


I agree everything but there should be made some precisations:

- Karl Marx was a philosopher and died decades before communists took the power with the Russian revolution. He talked about communism as an alternative economical system to replace the, equally wrong, wild and unregulated capitalism that existed in the industrial Europe of the XIX century, where women and children worked like slaves in terrible conditions and with a very low salary. He never wrote about gulag and so... Also Friederich Nietzsche is often associated with the nazism because of his ubermensch theory, but again he lived well before this regime and never talked about invading Europe or exterminating a race.

- The problems of Southern Italy date far more back in the past than the Allied occupation in 1943-45. Just after Italian unification in 1861 this area was fare more underdeveloped than the northern-central part, it has social unrest problems (brigandage) and mafia started to exist in those years.

- Is true that some Italian communists wanted to expell Germans from Alto Adige (and if done it would have been a crime like the expulsion of Italians from Istria). But it's also true that in the 50s and 60s many Sudtiroler separatists committed bomb attacks against Italian institutions and killed some Italian cops. To avoid an armed conflict, the Italian government started giving economical privileges to Alto Adige, that last even today. And some Sudtirolers still celebrate those terrorists and murderers like heroes.

I agree 100% that we should see history from a neutral point of view (i.e. oppressive regimes are always wrong, doesn't matter if they're right or left) and that streets named after dictators and war criminals should be removed.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Are you sure? Giovanbattista Sinicropi was mayor of Sant'Alessio in Calabria for 43 consecutive years. And I remember something about a mayor in Emilia Romagna who was in charge for a comparable amount of time.


Don't know, maybe every region has its own rules or rules changed often in the years. I know that in my town few years ago the mayor couldn't candidate himself the 3rd time.
Or maybe there are exception for very small municipalities (Sant'Alessio in Aspromonte has 300 inhabitants), since they don't have many possible candidates.


----------



## hofburg

Broccolli said:


> ^^
> 
> But it is also true that communist later exploited partizan resisting organization to promote themselves, with one goal to become the main political party, and the main and only political player in country.


while partisan resistance was honourable, I think it was from the very begining intiated by communists with the goal of communist revolution.





italystf said:


> I agree 100% that we should see history from a neutral point of view (i.e. oppressive regimes are always wrong, doesn't matter if they're right or left) and that streets named after dictators and war criminals should be removed.


that


----------



## cinxxx

Meanwhile in Munich, Bavaria...





"Rock mi" flashmob in den Riem Arcaden in München


----------



## Broccolli

hofburg said:


> while partisan resistance was honourable, *I think it was from the very begining intiated by communists with the goal of communist revolution*.


Most of people (i would say 99%) who joined partizans didnt know that. They werent aware of this "plan".

And like i said:



Broccolli said:


> ^^
> 
> But there is another thing. You see all those slovenian partizans (99% of them) were just simple peasant boys, most of them from villages. Those boys didnt know anything about political systems nothing about communism, they just resisted to the occupiers so they joined partizans, resistance organization. And that is it.


----------



## Broccolli

....


----------



## Verso

This sentence from Wikipedia sums it up about Tito:


> While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian,[9][10][11] due to his successful economic and diplomatic policies, Tito was "seen by most as a benevolent dictator,"[12] and was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad.


----------



## hofburg

^ I could quote italystf again...


----------



## Verso

That's how it was, not how it should've been.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## x-type

cinxxx said:


> Meanwhile in Munich, Bavaria...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "Rock mi" flashmob in den Riem Arcaden in München


i adore these flashmob things! that is probably the most positive invention related to amusment in modern times. it always makes me happy watching it


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> i adore these flashmob things! that is probably the most positive invention related to amusment in modern times. it always makes me happy watching it


I feel quite the opposite. I don't like unwanted shows, as much as I don't like people who are trying to sell me something I don't want. I like music and ballet, but I must want to see them.


----------



## Broccolli

...


----------



## Broccolli

It is also true that, he was really respected by all world leaders.


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

cinxxx said:


> Maybe the owner *tuned* the car


It's not exactly a convertible, but a _side_-vertible. Maybe this way you can drive with the wind in your hair, even on a rainy day. :yes:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Strange weather in northern Europe. Spring doesn't come. A fierce easterly wind originating from the arctic bringing wind chills below -10 today. The Dutch, Danish and German media I read are all complaing about the "verrückte Frühling". :lol:


----------



## TrueBulgarian

It's been really cold in Scotland as well and the wind is just killing me.


----------



## Verso

We'll get your weather today.


----------



## Verso

Lol, I've just got a Like for an exactly 4-year-old post.


----------



## RipleyLV

I got a like from 2008. Someone actually watches older posts.


----------



## piotr71

italystf said:


> (..)
> With all those rundown buildings and unmantained streets it really feel like being in the former Soviet Union :lol:.
> It's located between Via Roosevelt and Via Churchill.
> 
> EDIT: And also Via Mao Tse Tung and Via Ho Chi Min. hno:


I would not mind to delete Roosevelt name from Polish streets, too.

---------------------------

By the way, reading about Foibe killing I found something interesting. As one of the Wiki translated to languages appears Venetian. That language, along Polish, Sorbian, Kashubian and only Germanic lang. Vilamovian uses letter "_Ł_" and seems to be only Romance one having such a character in its alphabet.


----------



## Road_UK

Why Roosevelt?


----------



## piotr71

In two words: for his full of ignorance, close "friendship" to Stalin. Double faced playing with Polish minority living and voting for him in the USA. And finally for his treason committed against Poland. 

Yes, for Americans he may be a hero and great president, for us, none of our streets is cheap enough to be named after him. However, some still are, I am afraid.


----------



## cinxxx

^^What about streets of German people? Are there any?
No offense intended, just curious.


----------



## g.spinoza

piotr71 said:


> By the way, reading about Foibe killing I found something interesting. As one of the Wiki translated to languages appears Venetian. That language, along Polish, Sorbian, Kashubian and only Germanic lang. Vilamovian uses letter "_Ł_" and seems to be only Romance one having such a character in its alphabet.


And its pronounciation is similar to the Polish one.


----------



## Fatfield

Road_UK said:


> Why Roosevelt?


Possibly because he left the Poles & Czechs to their fate with the commies.

I watched a documentary last night about the last 10 days of WWII. The Western Allies could've reached Prague long before the commies did but Roosevelt ordered Patton to concentrate on Germany. Denmark was only saved from the commies by 6-8 hours after Churchill ordered Montgomery to take NW Germany by any means and cut off the advancing Red Army. The RA had already taken Rostock and were advancing towards Lubeck.


----------



## keokiracer

Don't you just love spring?


----------



## x-type

here too


----------



## Attus

piotr71 said:


> I would not mind to delete Roosevelt name from Polish streets, too


In Budapest, Hungary, there was a square named by him, and the name was changed last year.


----------



## Attus

I've lost my cap two weeks ago and I can't find a shop where I could by a new one. In every shops there are only summer clothes. Alright, it's late March but...


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> Why Roosevelt?


There's no problem with Roosevelt and Churchill. Only with Stalin. But those streets were named after WWII "big three" ignoring Stalin crimes.


----------



## italystf

cinxxx said:


> ^^What about streets of German people? Are there any?
> No offense intended, just curious.


What's wrong with a street named after a German in Poland? German not necessarily means nazi.


----------



## keber

Attus said:


> I've lost my cap two weeks ago and I can't find a shop where I could by a new one. In every shops there are only summer clothes. Alright, it's late March but...


I had similar problem when I wanted to buy swimming shorts in middle of September.


----------



## cinxxx

italystf said:


> What's wrong with a street named after a German in Poland? German not necessarily means nazi.


As I wrote, nothing!
I was just asking if there are such streets?
It is known that many many Germans were banished from Czechoslovakia and Poland after the war.


----------



## piotr71

I only know Karl Marx (ulica Karola Marksa) in Gliwice and saw somewhere Karl Liebkneht, not sure where. I think, Angela Merkel will have her street in Poland some day, particularly because quite a fraction of Polish blood is present in her veins.


----------



## Verso

Attus said:


> In Budapest, Hungary, there was a square named by him, and the name was changed last year.


That's now _Széchenyi István tér_ (square)? Interesting, that's a major square in Budapest; we parked there in 1996. My map still shows Roosevelt though.


----------



## Alex_ZR

^^ July 2012. For those with old maps they kept the old plate


----------



## hofburg

we dont have anyone from cyprus on this forum?


----------



## bogdymol

Alex_ZR said:


> ^^ July 2012. For those with old maps they kept the old plate
> 
> http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q138/alexzr88/DSC_6290.jpg[/ IMG][/QUOTE]
> 
> Now that's a very good ideea! Signs like this should be on every street that changed it's name in the last... let's say 5 years.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> Now that's a very good ideea! Signs like this should be on every street that changed it's name in the last... let's say 5 years.


Many Italian cities, especially in city centres, have this, usually to keep track of historic denominations.


----------



## Alex_ZR

bogdymol said:


> Now that's a very good ideea! Signs like this should be on every street that changed it's name in the last... let's say 5 years.


Challenge accepted... 










List of previous names of a street in Belgrade in the last 140 years. :naughty:


----------



## bogdymol

What's wrong with that street? :lol:


----------



## italystf

In Veneto there's a village called Mussolini. This name tracks back to the XIII century but now everybody associates it to the fascist dictator.


----------



## Alex_ZR

bogdymol said:


> What's wrong with that street? :lol:


Well, many streets in Belgrade changed their names during 20th for ideological reasons. Streets with royal names were renamed by communists after the war and they were restored in 1990s... This street (Светогорска) was named after "Two White Pigeons", Holy Mountain of Athos in Greece, city of Bitola, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and Yugoslav communist Ivo Lola Ribar. Since 1997 its again Светогорска.


----------



## Nordic20T

hofburg said:


> we dont have anyone from cyprus on this forum?


recycle


----------



## hofburg

tnx, he doesn't seem to be too concerned about bank crisis


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> we dont have anyone from cyprus on this forum?


Here they are. The only Cypriot I know is WhiteMagick.


----------



## keber

Our minister for infrastructure resigned just five days after being in the office (including weekend). Cause: he illegally built a small house on his parcel without official permission. He said to public that there was already a building there when he bought that parcel years ago but Google Earth and other aerial imagery available to public told different story.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> Our minister for infrastructure resigned just five days after being in the office (including weekend). Cause: he illegally built a small house on his parcel without official permission. He said to public that there was already a building there when he bought that parcel years ago but Google Earth and other aerial imagery available to public told different story.


I really like when dishonest politicians resign or are forced to resign. It should work in that way in a civilized country. Too many times instead..


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Alex_ZR said:


> Well, many streets in Belgrade changed their names during 20th for ideological reasons. Streets with royal names were renamed by communists after the war and they were restored in 1990s... This street (Светогорска) was named after "Two White Pigeons", Holy Mountain of Athos in Greece, city of Bitola, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and Yugoslav communist Ivo Lola Ribar. Since 1997 its again Светогорска.


I was going to ask what the names meant until I read that.


----------



## italystf

Spring on the Adriatic coast :nuts:


----------



## cinxxx

WTF???
What should I expect on Friday in Venice? :wallbash:


----------



## dubart

^^ This?


----------



## cinxxx

Anyway I will share my pictures


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My brother is working near Venezia and says it's no more than +5 C with wet snow.


----------



## Verso

It hasn't been so cold here in the end of March for 50 years, and we haven't had so much snow in one season ("winter") for 43 years.


----------



## x-type

Wilhem275 said:


> Mmh... So they don't celebrate Easter... in Vatican City? :lol:


oh, and they are working somewhen actually? :lol:


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> @attus: can we get translation on 2:19?


Are you sure you want to know that? ;-) OK, it is not possible to translate it literally, but it is something like "****, why can't you stop you motherfucker"


----------



## g.spinoza

Wilhem275 said:


> Mmh... So they don't celebrate Easter... in Vatican City? :lol:


Actually they do:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Città_del_Vaticano#Festivit.C3.A0

Map must be inaccurate.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> The USA is weird in not having an Easter Monday as a national holiday, like virtually all western countries.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yellow = Easter Monday.


Stupid secular Estonia :lol:


----------



## italystf

The map shows countries that celebrate Easter Monday, not those that celebrate Easter.


----------



## keber

Portufal (as a quite catholic nation) not and Ukraine (orthodox nation) yes? Strange.


----------



## cinxxx

Romania is also Orthodox, it celebrates Easter Monday, but not Good Friday (Karfreitag).


----------



## CNGL

Spain is somewhat wrong. Some regions, including mine, don't observe Easter Monday as holiday, instead the Thursday before Easter is. And the Friday before Easter is holiday in all over the country.


----------



## Attus

Easter Monday is not quite a catholic feast (btw. Whit Monday is absolutely not celebrated in catholic church).


----------



## g.spinoza

Happy birthday, Charlemagne!


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> Easter Monday is not quite a catholic feast .


Not true. In Italy it's called "Lunedì dell'angelo" (Angel monday), celebrating the women who went to the tomb and found it empty, and their encounter with the Angel.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> Not true. In Italy it's called "Lunedì dell'angelo" (Angel monday), celebrating the women who went to the tomb and found it empty, and their encounter with the Angel.


It may be an Italian feast, however, unknown in the rest of the catholic world. In many places Monday is celebrated as well, but only as a second day of eastern, usually not so many people are visiting churches, and this day has not any importance in the church, no more than Tuesday one day later (actually today).


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> It may be an Italian feast, however, unknown in the rest of the catholic world.


We have the Pope. If we say it's a holy day, then it is. :cheers:

But seriously, it's not a "festa di precetto", i.e. a day when a catholic is required to attend to mass. It's somewhat a "second class holy day"


----------



## Chilio

You don't have the Pope, Vatican does... Although you have surrounded the Vatican


----------



## Spookvlieger

Meanwhile in Belgium:


----------



## Attus

Chilio said:


> You don't have the Pope, Vatican does... Although you have surrounded the Vatican


The pope is, officially and traditionally, the bishop of Rome. It means that Rome (and therefore Italy) really has the pope.  I don't know whether you saw the current pope's first speech, just after being elected, in St. Peter's square. His first sentences were "Rome needed a new bishop, and the cardinals searched someone for you from the end of the world" (or something like this, my Italian is not quite good).


----------



## makaveli6

Just returned from my one day trip to Siauliai. On the way there, there was a huge fog, couldnt see more than 20 meteres ahead of the road. Felt like I was driving between clouds, everything was so foggy. This was what I saw on both sides of the road for the whole 140km trip.


----------



## keokiracer

joshsam said:


> Meanwhile in Belgium:


What the hell happened there? :nuts:


----------



## MajKeR_

Wilhem275 said:


> Mmh... So they don't celebrate Easter... in Vatican City? :lol:


They don't, as there's mostly clerge and church is workplace for priests.


----------



## Spookvlieger

keokiracer said:


> What the hell happened there? :nuts:


Yet another truck crash on the highway with never ending lanes of trucks (E313) I bet there is no other highway in Europe where as much truck crashes happen as on this particular road. Ofthen multiple trucks crash into eachother blocking the whole road.

To busy traffic, to high speeds, to much trucks.

The logic they have for not making the highway wider: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC8QF5BprOc hno: (only in Dutch)


----------



## Alex_ZR

Google Maps finally available in Bosnia and Herzegovina. :banana:
I think that Bosnia was the only "black hole" in Europe which wasn't mapped.


----------



## keber

Alex_ZR said:


> I think that Bosnia was the only "black hole" *in Europe* which wasn't mapped.


In the world - even North Korea was better covered.

It was about time, I wonder what took them so long.


----------



## cinxxx

*Brian Goldman: Doctors make mistakes. Can we talk about that?*

watch video -> http://www.ted.com/talks/brian_goldman_doctors_make_mistakes_can_we_talk_about_that.html



> Every doctor makes mistakes. But, says physician Brian Goldman, medicine's culture of denial (and shame) keeps doctors from ever talking about those mistakes, or using them to learn and improve. Telling stories from his own long practice, he calls on doctors to start talking about being wrong. (Filmed at TEDxToronto.)
> 
> Brian Goldman is an emergency-room physician in Toronto, and the host of CBC Radio’s "White Coat, Black Art.


----------



## Wilhem275

"A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only plant trees" 

BTW, what happened about your Venice trip?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Google now offers turn-by-turn navigation in Estonia, also in Ghana, Kenya, Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia


----------



## Suburbanist

*TomTom Congestion Index*

TomTom released 2012 Congestion Index reports. Neat read if you like (http://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/congestionindex/)


----------



## x-type

believe or not, this is Peugeot. happened today in eastern HR.


----------



## cinxxx

^^hno:


----------



## cinxxx

Rooms booked in Krakow and Košice.
One month left


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Drove my car in the Continent for the first time yesterday.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Holland Style Motorcyclist: two large clogs with a huge teddy bear.


----------



## piotr71

DanielFigFoz said:


> Drove my car in the Continent for the first time yesterday.


Portugal?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

piotr71 said:


> Portugal?


Went to France and Belgium for a day


----------



## hofburg

^did you encounter la douane


----------



## Suburbanist

DanielFigFoz said:


> Went to France and Belgium for a day


How did you crossed the strait? Euroshuttle or ferries?


----------



## NordikNerd

DanielFigFoz said:


> Drove my car in the Continent for the first time yesterday.


I'm 40 years old and drove to the continent first time last year. (To Germany)

I don't count S,N, FIN, EST or RUS as continental countries.

Denmark may be counted as "semicontinental". 

The continent is (as for the brittish) a common designation for countries in mainland Europe.


----------



## Verso

Too many earthquakes here.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I went on the Chunnel, as it "happened" to be exactly the same price as the ferry and I didn't have much time and I was stopped both ways.


----------



## italystf

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151544455235700


----------



## Verso

^^ I watched Wreck Trek on Travel Channel a few times (once they went from Europe to Cambodia and the other time to Cape Town). They are pathetic. Instead of enjoying the adventures they argue all the time. I don't know why they even go on such journeys, if they don't like them.


----------



## Nexis

Meanwhile in the Swedish fictional world...


----------



## Verso

Better bad publicity than no publicity. :troll:


----------



## Orionol

^^
^^
Is that the newest Euro Truck Simulator?


----------



## cinxxx

^^:shifty:
I just read a Romanian article about bank problems in Slovenia


----------



## CNGL

Nexis said:


> Meanwhile in the Swedish fictional world...


That is just a mod, Scandinavian DLC is not confirmed yet. OTOH, I've read about SCS Software working on a Eastern European Expansion.

(Oh, almost forgot, this is Euro Truck Simulator 2)


----------



## hofburg

few days ago I got a parking ticket in Italy.  should I pay? or what can happen if I don't?


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> few days ago I got a parking ticket in Italy.  should I pay? or what can happen if I don't?


Initially ignore it, if you'll receive a recall later, then pay it.


----------



## Nexis

Orionol said:


> ^^
> ^^
> Is that the newest Euro Truck Simulator?


Its a Map expansion done by modders , they are in talks with SCS about making it an official DLC probably for free. SCS would have to redo a few bridges realistically like Oresund and Storebelt , and add in landmarks in all the cities but thats about it. Most of the smaller things like the Road markings and signs have been recreated.... Theres also the map limit , they can only do Southern Scandinavia and the Baltic States while SCS can come in and do the rest. I have this strong feeling that SCS will seek out some of the talented and realistic modders in the community and ask them to help with the expansions and enhancements... They left expansions point all over the map so it can easily be expanded.... Some Modders have gone back and added towns in between the cities on the secondary roads to make it more realistic...its a possibility that SCS will allow for a select handful of modders to go back and redo certain parts of the map more realistically... The Map DLC's will be even more Realistic then the game itself , so they are taking a long time with each one. Cities and towns will be bigger and more diverse.

The Official Eastern Euro Expansion Phase 1....they have hinted at putting in some of the cities listed in the wishlist below as well...but we have these for now.

Poland : Gdansk , Olsztyn , Bialystock , Warsaw , Lodz , Lublin , Krakow , Katowice 
Czech : Ostrava 
Slovakia : Banska-Bystrica , Kosice 
Hungary : Budapest , Debrecen 




Most of the community would be happy with an expansion like this...which is possible if done in phases.

Western France/Andorra/Iberian Peninsula - 31 Cities - Le Harve , Le Mans , Breast , Nantes , Orleans , Bordeaux ,Limoges , Andorra La Vella , Barcelona , Zaragoza , Bilboa , Burgos , Leon , Oviedo , A Corunha , Viga , Porto , Salamanca , Madrid , Coimbra , Valencia , Caceres , Evora , Cordoba , Seville , Granada , Cartagena , Malage , Gilbraltar , Faro , Lisboa 

Scandinavia - 30 Cities - Esbjerg , Kolding , Aarhus , Aalborg ,Odense , Kobenhavn , Malmo , Goteborg , Kalmar , Stockholm , Orebro , Olso , Kristiansand , Stavanger , Bergen , Trondheim , Narvik , Gavle , Sundsvali , Umea , Lulea , Oulu , Vaasa , Pori , Tampere , Helsinki , Turku , Kuopio

Baltic States - 11 Cities - Riga , Lieaja , Daugavpils , Tallin , Parnu , Tartu , Narva , Klaipeda , Kaunas , Vilnius , Panevezys 

Southeastern France/Monaco/Italy Peninsula/Sicily - 25 cities - Toulouse , Nice , Marseille , Manaco , Genova , Pisa , Udine , Venezia , Bologna , Firenze , Ancona , Pescara , Roma , Foggia , Napoli , Bari , Lecce , Cosenza , Villa San Giovanni , Messina , Catania , Palermo , Triste , Marsala , Reggio Calabria 

Southern Austria/Slovenia/Slovakia/Croatia/Hungary - 17 Cities - Graz , Villach , Klagenfurt , Ljubljana , Maribor , Zagreb , Rijeka , Split , Gyor , Budapest , Pecs , Szeged , Trnava , Nitra , Zillina , Presov , Kosice 

Poland/Ukraine/Moldova/Romania/Bulgaria - 23 Cities - Katowice , Krakow , Warsaw , Gdansk , Rzeszow , Lodz , Lviv , Burcharest , Constanta , Sibu , Brasov , Cluj Napoca , Sofia , Burgas , Plovidiv , Chisinau , Odesa , Sevastopol , Kiev , Dnipropetreosk , Kharkiv , Mariupol , Donetsk 

Western Russia - 7 Cities - Moscow , St. Petersburg , Murmansk , Nizhny Novgorod , Volgograd , Kaliningrad

Bosnia&Herzegovina/Montenegro/Serbia/Albania - 10 Cities - Durra , Tirana , Belgrade , Nis , Mostar , Banja Luka , Prishtine , Prizren , Niksic , Podgorica 

Greece/Macedonia - 6 Cities - Athens , Patra , Kalamata , Thessaloniki , Ioannina , Skopje 

Northern Ireland/Ireland - 10 Cities - Belfast , Londonderry/Derry , Newry , Dublin , Dundalk , Limerick , Cork , Galway , Rossalre , Sligo 


Infill Cities - 3 Cities - Ostrava , Fishgaurd , Cairnryan 

*Total amount of cities - 171 New Cities
*
Ferry Routes 

Dublin - Liverpool 
Fishguard-Rossalre
Belfest-Liverpool
Felixstowe-Esbjerg 
Frederikshaven-Goteberg
Frederikshaven-Olso
Kiel-Olso
Rostock-Malmo
Helsinki-Tallin
Vaasa-Umea
Stockholm-Helsinki
Stockholm-Tallin
Stockholm-Riga
Rostock-Klaipeda 
Lieaja-Rostock 
St. Petersburg-Stockholm



Bridge's we like to see...

Millau Viaduct 
Rio–Antirrio bridge
Great Belt Bridge
Oresund Bridge
Pont de Normandie
Vasco da Gama Bridge
Surgut Bridge
25 de Abril Bridge
Little Belt Bridge
Straits of Messina Bridge


----------



## Orionol

Nexis said:


> Its a Map expansion done by modders , they are in talks with SCS about making it an official DLC probably for free. SCS would have to redo a few bridges realistically like Oresund and Storebelt , and add in landmarks in all the cities but thats about it. Most of the smaller things like the Road markings and signs have been recreated.... Theres also the map limit , they can only do Southern Scandinavia and the Baltic States while SCS can come in and do the rest. I have this strong feeling that SCS will seek out some of the talented and realistic modders in the community and ask them to help with the expansions and enhancements... They left expansions point all over the map so it can easily be expanded.... Some Modders have gone back and added towns in between the cities on the secondary roads to make it more realistic...its a possibility that SCS will allow for a select handful of modders to go back and redo certain parts of the map more realistically... The Map DLC's will be even more Realistic then the game itself , so they are taking a long time with each one. Cities and towns will be bigger and more diverse.
> 
> The Official Eastern Euro Expansion Phase 1....they have hinted at putting in some of the cities listed in the wishlist below as well...but we have these for now.
> 
> Poland : Gdansk , Olsztyn , Bialystock , Warsaw , Lodz , Lublin , Krakow , Katowice
> Czech : Ostrava
> Slovakia : Banska-Bystrica , Kosice
> Hungary : Budapest , Debrecen
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Most of the community would be happy with an expansion like this...which is possible if done in phases.
> 
> Western France/Andorra/Iberian Peninsula - 31 Cities - Le Harve , Le Mans , Breast , Nantes , Orleans , Bordeaux ,Limoges , Andorra La Vella , Barcelona , Zaragoza , Bilboa , Burgos , Leon , Oviedo , A Corunha , Viga , Porto , Salamanca , Madrid , Coimbra , Valencia , Caceres , Evora , Cordoba , Seville , Granada , Cartagena , Malage , Gilbraltar , Faro , Lisboa
> 
> Scandinavia - 30 Cities - Esbjerg , Kolding , Aarhus , Aalborg ,Odense , Kobenhavn , Malmo , Goteborg , Kalmar , Stockholm , Orebro , Olso , Kristiansand , Stavanger , Bergen , Trondheim , Narvik , Gavle , Sundsvali , Umea , Lulea , Oulu , Vaasa , Pori , Tampere , Helsinki , Turku , Kuopio
> 
> Baltic States - 11 Cities - Riga , Lieaja , Daugavpils , Tallin , Parnu , Tartu , Narva , Klaipeda , Kaunas , Vilnius , Panevezys
> 
> Southeastern France/Monaco/Italy Peninsula/Sicily - 25 cities - Toulouse , Nice , Marseille , Manaco , Genova , Pisa , Udine , Venezia , Bologna , Firenze , Ancona , Pescara , Roma , Foggia , Napoli , Bari , Lecce , Cosenza , Villa San Giovanni , Messina , Catania , Palermo , Triste , Marsala , Reggio Calabria
> 
> Southern Austria/Slovenia/Slovakia/Croatia/Hungary - 17 Cities - Graz , Villach , Klagenfurt , Ljubljana , Maribor , Zagreb , Rijeka , Split , Gyor , Budapest , Pecs , Szeged , Trnava , Nitra , Zillina , Presov , Kosice
> 
> Poland/Ukraine/Moldova/Romania/Bulgaria - 23 Cities - Katowice , Krakow , Warsaw , Gdansk , Rzeszow , Lodz , Lviv , Burcharest , Constanta , Sibu , Brasov , Cluj Napoca , Sofia , Burgas , Plovidiv , Chisinau , Odesa , Sevastopol , Kiev , Dnipropetreosk , Kharkiv , Mariupol , Donetsk
> 
> Western Russia - 7 Cities - Moscow , St. Petersburg , Murmansk , Nizhny Novgorod , Volgograd , Kaliningrad
> 
> Bosnia&Herzegovina/Montenegro/Serbia/Albania - 10 Cities - Durra , Tirana , Belgrade , Nis , Mostar , Banja Luka , Prishtine , Prizren , Niksic , Podgorica
> 
> Greece/Macedonia - 6 Cities - Athens , Patra , Kalamata , Thessaloniki , Ioannina , Skopje
> 
> Northern Ireland/Ireland - 10 Cities - Belfast , Londonderry/Derry , Newry , Dublin , Dundalk , Limerick , Cork , Galway , Rossalre , Sligo
> 
> 
> Infill Cities - 3 Cities - Ostrava , Fishgaurd , Cairnryan
> 
> *Total amount of cities - 171 New Cities
> *
> Ferry Routes
> 
> Dublin - Liverpool
> Fishguard-Rossalre
> Belfest-Liverpool
> Felixstowe-Esbjerg
> Frederikshaven-Goteberg
> Frederikshaven-Olso
> Kiel-Olso
> Rostock-Malmo
> Helsinki-Tallin
> Vaasa-Umea
> Stockholm-Helsinki
> Stockholm-Tallin
> Stockholm-Riga
> Rostock-Klaipeda
> Lieaja-Rostock
> St. Petersburg-Stockholm
> 
> 
> 
> Bridge's we like to see...
> 
> Millau Viaduct
> Rio–Antirrio bridge
> Great Belt Bridge
> Oresund Bridge
> Pont de Normandie
> Vasco da Gama Bridge
> Surgut Bridge
> 25 de Abril Bridge
> Little Belt Bridge
> Straits of Messina Bridge


Could you mail me when the expansion is ready. Would really like to try it. Seems to be very interesting and AWESOME!!!!


----------



## CNGL

Nexis said:


> Western France/Andorra/Iberian Peninsula - 31 Cities - Le Havre , Le Mans , Brest , Nantes , Orleans , Bordeaux ,Limoges , Andorra La Vella , Barcelona , Zaragoza , Bilbao , Burgos , Leon , Oviedo , A Coruña , Vigo , Porto , Salamanca , Madrid , Coimbra , Valencia , Caceres , Evora , Cordoba , Seville , Granada , Cartagena , Malaga , Gibraltar , Faro , Lisboa


FTFY. I would put Alicante instead of Cartagena. But I want to see Zaragoza any day in ETS2 .


----------



## hofburg

@italystf

tnx I'll do that


----------



## Nexis

Orionol said:


> Could you mail me when the expansion is ready. Would really like to try it. Seems to be very interesting and AWESOME!!!!


----------



## Orionol

When is it expected to be ready/finished?


----------



## Nexis

Orionol said:


> When is it expected to be ready/finished?


By June , there also working on Euro Coach Simulator which would be a world addon , American Truck Simulator , and Ports for Linux and MAC..... Its a small team of about 20 people.... They did replace a few intersections that gave players problems with merging or turning with traffic lights or roundabouts...so they do pay attention to the feedback :lol:

Recent Timelapse...Austria to the UK - Takes about 65mins






Poznan - Szczecin


----------



## Attus

According to recent statistics, turnover of fuel decreased by 4 percent in Hungary related to the recent year (diesel -2%, benzin -6%). Related to 2009 Q1, diesel is -10%, benzin -39%.


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ Has congestion decreased significantly as well? Have people migrated to NLG?


----------



## Attus

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ Has congestion decreased significantly as well? Have people migrated to NLG?


No, people have migrated to Germany, Austria, UK... And those that are still in Hungary have no money to buy fuel so they use public transport. And, yes, congestions decreased significantly, in some regions drastically.


----------



## Verso

What's NLG?


----------



## Suburbanist

Verso said:


> What's NLG?


I meant LPG  (liquefied petroleum gas)


----------



## Suburbanist

Attus said:


> No, people have migrated to Germany, Austria, UK... And those that are still in Hungary have no money to buy fuel so they use public transport. And, yes, congestions decreased significantly, in some regions drastically.


with such a drastic reduction on fuel use, unless a massive substitution of fleet that happened, traffic jams are bound to collapse. 

I know many Eastern European countries rely on second-hand cars from Western Europe as a very important part of their car market. Since people are hanging out longer on their cars in Western Europe, I keep wondering which effects if any this will have on Eastern European fleet. 

I once read 70% of new registration of cars in Romania were second-hand cars formerly registered in Germany, France, Italy etc.


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## cinxxx

Art and precision 
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=239290029550478


----------



## Peines

1000 pages :shocked:


----------



## Wilhem275

Did we win something?


----------



## keokiracer

I have nothing relevant to say, I just want to be on page 1000


----------



## Wilhem275

Attention *****! :baeh3:


----------



## Alex_ZR

g.spinoza said:


> No difference. But in two years or so, they will have to elect a new one. Besides, he is supposed to travel and represent Italy. Nice way to be represented: an old man, barely capable to stand up by himself. Sounds appropriate for a country like Italy


Current Israeli president Shimon Peres is 90 years old, which means he is the oldest head of the state. His term expires next year.


----------



## cinxxx

keokiracer said:


> I have nothing relevant to say, I just want to be on page 1000


I opened page 1000


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## makaveli6

keokiracer said:


> I have nothing relevant to say, I just want to be on page 1000


This.


----------



## x-type

cinxxx said:


> I opened page 1000


Lemme screw your delirium: at mobile version it is page 1333


----------



## D.O.W.N

So next challenge is 20000 posts... We´ll see who will have that luck...


----------



## Road_UK

Actually, on my android app it says 1999 pages. 

Edit: with this post I've hit 2000.


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> Giorgio Napolitano has been re-elected for a second term as President of Italy. Now we have a 88-years-old guy for a 7-years term. hno:


He is 88 already? Well, hopefully he'll be at least 95.


----------



## x-type

Road_UK said:


> Actually, on my android app it says 1999 pages.
> 
> Edit: with this post I've hit 2000.


oh really? obviously iOS and Androis apps don't use the same format


----------



## Road_UK

Is it still the same software from Forumrunner?


----------



## CNGL

D.O.W.N said:


> So next challenge is 20000 posts... We´ll see who will have that luck...


Well, I originally wrote post number 10000 , now it is "only" the 9987th one. I'll try 20000th post, as we are now on page 1000. I still remember page 666, though.


----------



## D.O.W.N

We´re also close to 1 000 000 views


----------



## italystf

Giulio Andreotti, now 94 y.o., has been continuosly in the Italian parliament since our current political system was founded in 1948.


----------



## Verso

^ 65 years in the parliament? Some people really have it good in their lives.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Politician is the only profession for which you don't need any training.


----------



## CNGL

Well, you don't know those Spanish politicians corrupt people . BTW, the now deceased Manuel Fraga was already a minister under the Franco dictatorship, and then was the president of a regional parliament during many years.

And with this post, this thread reaches 20000 messages! CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL!!!
:dance:


----------



## D.O.W.N

:dance:

New era can begin now!


----------



## Verso

Hmm, we're having a summer-like storm, and it was just 20°C. I didn't see this one coming.


----------



## bogdymol

I missed the 1000th page 

@Chris: please delete some of the posts of these _noobs_ so I can also be on page 1000


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## cinxxx

Meanwhile in Romania, 5th league


----------



## hofburg

eh, I missed the 1000th page. but ok, being on the 1001st isn't bad either


----------



## Suburbanist

@CNGL: what is your thing with the number #35?


----------



## CNGL

Since one pic is more than a thousand words (As we say in Spanish):


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ Okay, but I still don't get it :dunno:

Do you have some particularly nice/remarkable story when riding this bus line?


----------



## CNGL

It goes from the main university campus to my favorite spot in Zaragoza . It used to run in front of the main gate of the university before the tram came into service, now runs on the street that is on the back. Now that the tram line is complete I prefer it to go to the city centre and there switch to bus line 35.

BTW, the pic was taken from the tram.


----------



## Suburbanist

Is your favorite spot Goya park then?


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## CNGL

Suburbanist said:


> Is your favorite spot Goya park then?


Nope. Parque Goya is the northernmost neighborhood of Zaragoza (And I say jokingly it's already my hometown ), but my favorite spot is just before that. Anyway, lets stop this, as rule #1 of the forum says this is not a chat.


----------



## cinxxx

Streetview is now almost fully covered in Romania and Hungary 

One of the things I saw when going through the village where one of my girlfriends grandparents are from: 
http://goo.gl/maps/H2FEG

Edit: State of the art architecture (just follow the street) http://goo.gl/maps/8RGxI


----------



## albertocsc

cinxxx said:


> State of the art architecture (just follow the street) http://goo.gl/maps/8RGxI


Gypsy Palace??

In fact, it even shocks you more than a fat man when you find your ex-gf there... http://goo.gl/maps/cPPS9


----------



## cinxxx

albertocsc said:


> Gypsy Palace??


Yes.

And here some nice piece of art, even the Viennese will envy 
http://goo.gl/maps/3r0SJ


----------



## keber

cinxxx said:


> Edit: State of the art architecture (just follow the street) http://goo.gl/maps/8RGxI


Entrance from the road is not so "state of the art" (grass, gravel)


----------



## cinxxx

keber said:


> Entrance from the road is not so "state of the art" (grass, gravel)


That's very tipical to the kind of people that build such "castles"


----------



## Verso

Now just Austria needs to get Google Street View and we'll be like North Korea.


----------



## Bad_Hafen

i find this better
http://goo.gl/maps/f51B6
http://goo.gl/maps/SylOE


----------



## Night Fury

Wow, it's a massive update. The whole of Poland is available, Hungary and Kaliningrad as well.

Bucharest looks so clean without those awful cables.

University Square in 2008 2010

University Square now


----------



## cinxxx

^^


----------



## Verso

Poor E70 travellers. Btw, I've always thought E70 ran via Piteşti, not Alexandria.


----------



## hofburg

what's the deal with those castles in Romania? why are they 'popular'? isn't it hard to get a construction permission for such building?


----------



## Night Fury

Gyppo's idea of wealth and fortune, I don't think any those buildings actually have a building permit. And, no, it's very easy to build in the Romanian countryside without one.


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

cinxxx said:


> Edit: State of the art architecture (just follow the street) http://goo.gl/maps/8RGxI


What's the problem? :dunno: Clearly it's Victorian-nouveau(with a hint of curry).


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

Bad_Hafen said:


> i find this better
> http://goo.gl/maps/f51B6
> http://goo.gl/maps/SylOE


If they turn those first floors into shops and cafe's than it could become quite an interesting and eclectic small town. :|


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> what's the deal with those castles in Romania? why are they 'popular'? isn't it hard to get a construction permission for such building?


In Italy the biggest problem wouldn't be "how to get a construction permission for that kitch house" but "how to justify a such expensive building if you don't have an official taxable income".
If a piece of land that you own, outside a place classificated as "of historical or environmental interest" is legally suitable for edification (and designed as such on municipal maps), you can build with whatever style you want, as long as you respect safety laws and other regulations (like the minimun distance between a building and a propertry border).


----------



## NordikNerd

Accident involving pigs.


----------



## Attus

Night Fury said:


> Wow, it's a massive update. The whole of Poland is available, Hungary and Kaliningrad as well.http://maps.google.ro/maps?hl=ro&ll...3XYYRIQ4koYpy36Pw&cbp=12,324.32,,0,-8.33&z=18


Yes, whole Hungary is in Streetview now. Photos are a little bit old (usually Nov 11 - Feb 12) but Google said they will come once again and update them. Of course everyone searched his own house right in the rist hours  
Strange, that while in some towns even the very last muddy road is explored, there are some towns where only some main streets are explored, nothing more.


----------



## cinxxx

I did a quick look in Kaliningrad. Doesn't look so nice, at least not comparing with former Königsberg. And they built that monster where a castle was hno:


----------



## italystf

cinxxx said:


> I did a quick look in Kaliningrad. Doesn't look so nice, at least not comparing with former Königsberg. And they built that monster where a castle was hno:


Yes, the distruction of Konigsberg by the Soviets (and the reconstruction with Soviet style) was one of the worst crimes against the historical heritage ever committed in Europe. There are some threads about the topic:
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=185865
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1080975
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=288123
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=288127
Similar things were committed in Romania during Ceasescu regime:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematization_(Romania)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceaușima
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Kaleh


----------



## cinxxx

^^Communism 
I'm wondering if driving style in Saliningrad is better then what we know about Russia?


----------



## CNGL

Street View has really old images. I remember seeing pics from July 2007 somewhere in the US :nuts:. Around here the oldest ones are from May 2008. But I really like Google hit the right area at the right time: This paper sheet has been looooooooooong gone by now, I'm sure it is about the crazy fundraiser that happened that month (And it explains indirectly why I like Zaragoza bus line 35 and by extension any route numbered 35).


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Yes, the distruction of Konigsberg by the Soviets (and the reconstruction with Soviet style) was one of the worst crimes against the historical heritage ever committed in Europe.


Königsberg was destroyed by the Royal Air Force in 1944. Soviets would've had to reconstruct it, if it wanted to look the same. But everything German was hated then.


----------



## Satyricon84

Meanwhile in Norway...










The local football team Ny Krohnborg IL returned from their winter break discovered that the council had built a new road on their home pitch.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## keber

Satyricon84 said:


> The local football team Ny Krohnborg IL returned from their winter break discovered that the council had built a new road on their home pitch.


I believe that they did not discover that only now. I'm sure they were notified months in advance. Looks like that footbal pitch was made from artificial grass which could be good as a geosynthetics layer between ground and road body (much better than ordinary grass) so they did not remove it before road construction.


----------



## Satyricon84

^^ newspaper says that they didn't know



> Krohnborg chairman Radney Thomsen told reporters:
> 
> We were quite shocked when we discovered that the road cut [into the pitch]. The start of the season is just around the corner, but no-one had informed us. We feel simply run over.
> 
> Comically this is not the first time that the council had screwed over Ny Krohnborg IL, as three years ago the pitch was cut down in size after a new path was inserted into the far end of the playing surface.


http://www.101greatgoals.com/blog/m...n-to-find-a-road-running-through-their-pitch/


----------



## Attus

My favorite traffic sign:

- Town area, no special speed limit. It means in Hungary max. 50 km/h.
- So check that blue sign in the middle of the previous picture! In the left lane minimal allowed speed is 50 km/h.

So in the left lane it's allowed only to drive at exactly 50 km/h!


----------



## keber

Satyricon84 said:


> ^^ newspaper says that they didn't know


Funny how can they not know - or is in Norway normal, that they demolish your property not even asking you anything? Even in China they don't do this.


----------



## Satyricon84

keber said:


> Funny how can they not know - or is in Norway normal, that they demolish your property not even asking you anything? Even in China they don't do this.


In Italy yes even if little bit different. It happened near L'Aquila, comune ordered the demolition of a XVIII century villa damaged by the earthquake (that was however in a huge private area, so it wasn't a danger for anybody and waiting to be rebuilt). The owner subpoenaed the comune for € 800.000 as reimbursement for damages 

In another case, near Modena, the comune demolished a palace for "mistake" thinking was damaged by the earthquake when in reality it wasn't. The owners got to know they were demolishing their house from television (losing furnitures and anything was inside)

http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/201...tta-ma-il-comune-la-fa-demolire-video/280193/


----------



## Wilhem275

Today my usual bus line was detoured via the city's beltway: it was nice to ride as a passenger at 50 km/h on the road that I use to drive at 110 :lol:


----------



## Road_UK

You travel on the bus???


----------



## Wilhem275

Pretty much every day! Being a national holiday, today I actually took it just for the unusual trip...


----------



## bogdymol

Now, since we have Street View in Eastern Europe, some "specific" things start to appear: http://goo.gl/maps/MIaOS


----------



## D.O.W.N

Vivat eastern block!


----------



## NordikNerd

When is Google Earth coming to Reykjavik, Iceland ?


----------



## Alex_ZR

My future favourites for Google Street View in Europe (beside Serbia) are Austria, Slovenia and Greece.


----------



## cinxxx

Was the Google Streetview car spotted in Serbia until now?


----------



## Alex_ZR

cinxxx said:


> Was the Google Streetview car spotted in Serbia until now?


As far as I know, no. hno:


----------



## hofburg

Alex_ZR said:


> My future favourites for Google Street View in Europe (beside Serbia) are Austria, Slovenia and Greece.


that's pretty much everything left 

anyone drove a streetview car from this forum? I wonder if it's possible to apply, when it comes to Slovenia


----------



## Verso

Slovenian gypsies join a cleaning action. 









http://www.rtvslo.si/lokalne-novice/romi-cistili-svojo-vas/307509


----------



## italystf

Few months ago I saw two gypsy women (with their obvious traditional dressings) searching inside a dumpster outside a supermarket in Trieste and leaving a lot of the trash on the sidewalk. hno:


----------



## italystf

A 'scary' place to see with Street View is the "Spanish Quarters" in Neaples, one of the worst and most violent getto in Western Europe:
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=quarti...=9xHzlA9ALm3hU2ftzbPpLg&cbp=12,21.02,,0,-3.93
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=quarti...d=7r1raDkP6_NVtXtQok7Gkw&cbp=12,186.4,,0,2.47
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=quarti...d=9shySGPreYrPn4zKV1KLRw&cbp=12,12.26,,0,-0.2

Scampia (it was the last suburb of Neaples to be covered because they received treats by camorra and Google Cars had to be escorted by police):
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=scampia&hl=it&ll=40.897717,14.240727&spn=0.016901,0.042272&sll=40.8947,14.261885&sspn=0.016901,0.042272&t=h&radius=1.32&hq=scampia&z=15&layer=c&cbll=40.897599,14.240733&panoid=nHHw2dJodT5JzekDYh8ezg&cbp=12,15.26,,0,-7.49
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=scampi...byWWWuN62H9NydeLOe7Ikg&cbp=12,161.18,,0,-8.77
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=scampi...MSMVXAoTPWsAH1gsqHJ0w&cbp=12,126.64,,0,-11.79

Some from Palermo (Zen suburb)
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=ZEN,+P...=NzWGCVfJPa5gOkCwkY1_jA&cbp=12,253.28,,0,4.11
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=ZEN,+P...id=K3edmI89Iv1an169B8VKew&cbp=12,75.32,,0,6.1
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=ZEN,+P...=k62b78vKuEdoeDBTyu3wsw&cbp=12,213.48,,0,2.72
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=ZEN,+P...d=oqynUgbWzg8mr07L6l1HJQ&cbp=12,351.5,,0,11.7
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=ZEN,+P...d=A7R4Epynr8yNgVvLPZ_WyA&cbp=12,266.07,,0,9.5
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=ZEN,+P...=1U5RAJyNwsUlSwHUklQc2Q&cbp=12,194.3,,1,18.55
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=ZEN,+P...V4uArgL6fif_YeExIAVJDA&cbp=12,180.75,,0,16.07
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=ZEN,+P...=tREu4OiRdmAuYMBgcL3EmA&cbp=12,261.25,,0,9.31
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=ZEN,+P...=my5OcvXgpitZu5_7bl7gGA&cbp=12,279.14,,0,0.37
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=ZEN,+P...kIq9WkbiZUCQYG9PZdMDgA&cbp=12,225.32,,0,19.19

Nice place to sit, in the median of a dual carriaggeway!
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=ZEN,+P...=IAqKVbBXqJolc98mIXgBCQ&cbp=12,136.05,,0,8.41
Water bottles keeps all day long under the hot Sicilian sun
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=ZEN,+P...d=vHgPEQZd0ddOrzkxPESN1g&cbp=12,276.4,,1,4.98
Car demolition and pare car parts on sale (guess where many stolen cars end up)
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=ZEN,+P...oid=n0mw0G8dbZGnqbc5kNe8LA&cbp=12,234,,0,3.65


----------



## italystf

Via Salaria, Rome
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=Via+Salaria,+Roma,+RM&hl=it&ll=41.962809,12.506261&spn=0.016626,0.042272&sll=45.517384,9.121227&sspn=0.015787,0.042272&oq=via+salar&t=h&hnear=Via+Salaria,+Roma,+Lazio&z=15&layer=c&cbll=41.962934,12.506267&panoid=5QfEZdQBgPUoCj_V2svLUA&cbp=12,98.44,,1,11.24
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=Via+Sa...3wJRBTPUc4DtZW2gw&cbp=12,133.53,,1,16.36&z=15


----------



## Verso

Half-house in Hungary.


----------



## RipleyLV

Well hello there!
http://goo.gl/maps/njE1N


----------



## Verso

Did you search through entire Poland to find her?


----------



## RipleyLV

When you cross the country for a gazillion times, you know where to look. 

Heres more: http://goo.gl/maps/TxhO9; after 100 m on the same road: http://goo.gl/maps/OYooC; http://goo.gl/maps/AbWNk & on the other side http://goo.gl/maps/DN9P7; etc..


----------



## Verso

RipleyLV said:


> When you cross the country for a gazillion times, you know where to look.


Oh, it used to be the main Warsaw-Berlin road.


----------



## RipleyLV

^^ Former DK2.


----------



## Verso

I don't like renumbering of old roads. It's even worse in Slovenia.


----------



## hofburg

if you randomly drop the little yellow guy in the easternmost part of the EE countries, chances are you will get something weird


----------



## bogdymol

Romania has them too: http://goo.gl/maps/DFqmw


----------



## piotr71

There is no streetview i Austria yet...


IMGP1150 by 71piotr, on Flickr

Yellow building in the background is a budget hotel on A1 in Vienna, just where motorway ends up, and it's probably very popular within Romanian guests (almost all cars parked by were registered in Romania). So, I let myself make a presumption that the lady on the picture comes from Romania, however I could be wrong and she might be a Polish.


----------



## Road_UK

Alland? My colleague got robbed there once... By Romanias


----------



## Alex_ZR

When you go through this street in Székesfehérvár, in street mode it says it's Lenin street. When you go out from the street view it says Prohászka Ottokár street. Interesting...

http://goo.gl/maps/cbhD2


----------



## Nordic20T

Road_UK said:


> Alland? My colleague got robbed there once... By Romanias


Alland is on A21. I think it's here.


----------



## piotr71

Road_UK said:


> Alland? My colleague got robbed there once... By Romanias


It's called Hotel Lenas West.


----------



## Road_UK

Oh yeah, I forgot.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> I don't like renumbering of old roads. It's even worse in Slovenia.


I think the countrary. For practical reasons, main routes should have the same number for their entire lenghts. When a new bypass is built, they should give it the number of the main road and issue a new number for the, now downgraded, former main road.
The main problem is that the overall lenght of the main road changes and you need to move all km posts along it. And this isn't nothing if the realignment occurs at the beginning of a road hundreds of km long!
In some places there are situations like this:
Veneto - Friuli border on the SS14. The sign still in Veneto indicates the km 76 (from Mestre).
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=San+...d=twAkOqJEGdcFbB-VvzWgxA&cbp=12,92.92,,1,-2.6
50 meters after, in Friuli, a sign says km 79,213.
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=San+...=Tn1T7YZyPJH7ImXMTt6zow&cbp=12,99.95,,0,11.09
Why? The Venetian part of the SS14 was shortened a while ago (I think post-war years) and km-posts in Friuli weren't changed since then (SS14 was classificated as Strada Statale from Mestre to Fiume in 1927).


----------



## Verso

^^ Ok, I agree in such cases, but not when a new motorway is built. The old road should keep its previous number. The worst example in Slovenia is probably the old road between Maribor and Hungary (G1-3). Now it's (starting from Maribor) R2-449, R1-230, R1-235, R3-740, R1-232, R2-443, through Lendava and Dolga vas it's LC206070 :nuts: (LC = lokalna cesta = local road), and the last 0.5 km it's H7 (but not an expressway).


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> ^^ Ok, I agree in such cases, but not when a new motorway is built. The old road should keep its previous number. The worst example in Slovenia is probably the old road between Maribor and Hungary (G1-3). Now it's (starting from Maribor) R2-449, R1-230, R1-235, R3-740, R1-232, R2-443, through Lendava and Dolga vas it's LC206070 :nuts: (LC = lokalna cesta = local road), and the last 0.5 km it's H7 (but not an expressway).


Why? In Slovenia (like in most of Europe except Scandinavia), motorways and normal roads have different classifications (Ax and Gx in the case of Slovenia). So, they could keep A5 and G1-3 at the same time, like our A4\SS14 or A23\SS13.
In other cases it's different. When new parts of expressways open along the Jonian coast (Taranto-Reggio Calabria), they are classificated as SS106 and the old road get downgraded. When the Livorno - Grosseto expressway opened, it got the SS1 number and the former 1+1 SS1 was downgraded with different numbers. When the current SS1 expressway will be upgraded into the new A12 motorway there are chances that the old road will return SS1 again.
In Italy roads often get their official numbers many years after their opening and "temporary" numbers (NSAxxx) remains for years. The lack of a special classification of expressway is also a problem.
In some places there are irrational situations: if you drive from Messina to Rosolini you have: A20, A18, RA15, the unnumbered "Autostrada Catania - Siracusa", SS114 and A18 again, and you never turn!
From Monfalcone to Trieste harbour you have: A4, RA13, NSA314 and SS202, without any turn.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Why? In Slovenia (like in most of Europe except Scandinavia), motorways and normal roads have different classifications (Ax and Gx in the case of Slovenia). So, they could keep A5 and G1-3 at the same time, like our A4\SS14 or A23\SS13.


Because "G" stands for _glavna cesta_ (main road) and the G1-3 wasn't a main road any more, because the A5 became the main road there. At least that's their logic. I'm surprised this road is still G1-8 (the tunnel was opened already in 2008).


----------



## piotr71

Gentlemen! Don't you think that such interesting and directly related to roads discussion should be shifted somewhere else? Let's say here.


----------



## Road_UK

Gentleman. Good point... I haven't come across any ladies yet. Not that I know of anyways. Piotr, what sex are you?


----------



## piotr71

I always thought England is a country full of gentlemen, actually inhabited only by gentlemen. You know, this type of men walking slowly, with eyesight pointed slightly above you, wearing three pieces suits and bowler hat and using received pronunciation all the time. No words can describe how strongly I was disappointed when met an Englishman for the first time and asked _How do you do?_. He and hundreds others did not even know what the answer should be  

I am a 22 nice girl with well shaped tits and arse, off course. 
Hello!


----------



## Verso

piotr71 said:


> Gentlemen! Don't you think that such interesting and directly related to roads discussion should be shifted somewhere else? Let's say here.


Sorry, forgot about it.


----------



## x-type

Verso, I exactly know what you are talking about. before we had introduced Ax system of numbering, all main roads were D roads. road from Hungary (Goričan - Varaždin - Zagreb - Karlovac - Rijeka - Pazin - Pula) used to be D3. when they would have opened new section of motorway, it would become D3, and ex D3 would become Ž-road (županijska, county road, it's the 3rd grade of roads in HR after A and D roads). so in one moment you had D3 from Goričan to Varaždin following motorway, than old road up to Breznički Hum, and than again motorway up to Vukova Gorica, normal road to Kupjak bla bla... each while it was interrupted. in 2000 they have introduced A numbering scheme. So motorway sections of D3 became A4, A1, A6, A8, A9. (it even runs on certain sections of A3 and A7, what a variety!). but: D3 wasn't turned back to old parallel road. so parallel road used to be combination of various Ž roads and D3. it took them more than 10 years to rename whole parallel road to D3 again (it is only interrupted between Zagreb (Sesvete) and Karlovac, and it ends in RIjeka, not in Pula anymore)


----------



## NordikNerd

x-type said:


> this is like nuclear powerplants. they are probably the least devastating for enviroments. but when crap happens, then it is real crap. the same is with flying - mortality in very rare accidents is extremely high.


I would rather die in a car/train crash than falling from the sky experiencing the force of 5G before I leave this world.

I haven't flied since 1997 and I feel happy about that.


----------



## Suburbanist

x-type said:


> this is like nuclear powerplants. they are probably the least devastating for enviroments. but when crap happens, then it is real crap. the same is with flying - mortality in very rare accidents is extremely high.


Mortality for airplane crashes that were airborne is around 40% these days. Used to be more like 70% in the 1970s.


----------



## x-type

NordikNerd said:


> I would rather die in a car/train crash than falling from the sky experiencing the force of 5G before I leave this world.
> 
> I haven't flied since 1997 and I feel happy about that.


I certainly wouldn't. In car accident there is huge possibility to become disabled, for instance to lose a leg or a hand or to break neck.


----------



## cinxxx

Got back from a 36 km bike tour  
http://goo.gl/maps/gx4rz


----------



## piotr71

I did 16 only.

By the way, I can't understand cyclist riding on busy road in peak hours instead of using very wide and safe cycle path alongside main road.


----------



## hofburg

I don't like flying. mainly because of unconfortable seats, long waiting at airports, big distances between airports and centres, angry stevardeses, expensive sandwiches and overexpensive water bottles which should be free at the airport given the fact you cannot carry water on board. and only then because of disturbing turbulance.


----------



## Attus

I, too, don't like flying. But e.g. from Bonn to Budapest flying is cheaper and faster as any other vehicle (at least for 1 single person). And driving 1,100 km is not quite comfortable at all.


----------



## Road_UK

I love to fly.


----------



## Wilhem275

I love to fly too, I just hate everything before and after being airborne...


----------



## Road_UK

I don't. It's part of the deal, and plenty of places where you can have a beer while you wait...


----------



## Alex_ZR

New 5 euro banknote is put into circulation today.


----------



## Pepov

Hello German friends 

On Saturday i am going to visit Legoland Gunzburg. But i will be there from friday evening to sunday evening. Which cities are worth visit in evening (ca. from 17:00), Augsburg, Ulm? And what is worth seeing there?. After that, on sunday i will be going to Wurzburg. Is Rothenburg really that nice? Should i go there? Thanks a lot in advance.


----------



## Wilhem275

You could even reach Nürnberg in 1,5 h


----------



## italystf

Alex_ZR said:


> New 5 euro banknote is put into circulation today.


Is "EBPO" Bulgarian?


----------



## Alex_ZR

italystf said:


> Is "EBPO" Bulgarian?


Yes. It's the same in Serbian, but Serbia isn't part of the EU yet.


----------



## cinxxx

Were is it better to tank (diesel):
Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary?

I will be doing a trip from Ingolstadt to Timisoara over Krakow, Auschwitz, Kosice, Debrecen. In Germany I could tank somewhere in Görlitz I guess, but further on the way, I have no clue.


----------



## bogdymol

During my trips I had no problem filling up with diesel in Slovakia and Hungary. Although I passed through Germany & Poland, I didn't need fuel at that time, so I haven't refilled in those countries.


----------



## hofburg

where is cheaper


----------



## cinxxx

^^But where is it cheaper?


----------



## bogdymol

^^ In Venezuela :troll:


----------



## hofburg

ask google  I only know one site http://amzs.si/Cene_goriv_po_Evropi.aspx


----------



## mapman:cz

We've made some table comparing prices throughout Europe on our site, using adjusted data of IRU (diesel/natural prices) and CNB (exchange rates):
http://www.ceskedalnice.cz/zahranici/ceny-phm


----------



## dubart

http://www.fuel-prices-europe.info/

They don't state the source, though...

Edit: actually they do, but they're wrong for Croatia


----------



## italystf

Here you can see two bridges. Then, try to zoom closer. 
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=Santo+...to+Stino+di+Livenza,+Venezia,+Veneto&t=h&z=17
Explanation: the narrow bridge on the left was tear down in 2007 and only closer 3D images are updated.


----------



## Suburbanist

*Crazy driver trying to provoke an accident*






this is scary


----------



## Wilhem275

Better thing is to stop in a decent place, stay in the car and call the police...


----------



## Verso

That happened to me once (but not all the time like in the above video), but it wasn't me driving. The driver of our car was hogging the leftmost lane on the 6-lane Italian A4 without overtaking anyone, but I didn't wanna interfere in his driving, because I was sitting in the back, and the driver was much older than me (he's actually famous in Slovenia, although not in the best way). He was also more talking to the co-driver than looking on the road, so we almost crashed when that idiot braked in front of us. He had Italian license plates, but a Japanese face.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> (he's actually famous in Slovenia, although not in the best way).


Were you in car with some notorious criminal? :lol:


----------



## Verso

His wife is even worse. Then again, my _first cousin once removed_ is the most famous Slovenian female prisoner.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Great!


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> His wife is even worse. Then again, my _first cousin once removed_ is the most famous Slovenian female prisoner.


Wow, a nice couple. :lol: Did they murder a family member after a litigation or to get the inheritance?:nuts:


----------



## Verso

Hey, we're talking about two different women here (they are both the most famous Slovenian female prisoners though ). My relative is called "the construction baroness". :lol:


----------



## italystf

^^I think I got it. :lol:


----------



## Verso

Yes, she's mentioned. :lol:


----------



## Alex_ZR

A friend of mine saw a Google camera guy in Venice last week. Since no bicycles are allowed there, shooting is performed by foot.


----------



## italystf

Alex_ZR said:


> A friend of mine saw a Google camera guy in Venice last week. Since no bicycles are allowed there, shooting is performed by foot.


I don't think Google would have problems to get a permit by the municipality to ride a Google bike in Venice. They probably went by foot because there are many stairs where bycicles would have needed to be lifted by hand.


----------



## Road_UK

It'd be nice if Google implemented streetview on pedestrian areas, like parks, pedestrianised zones in shopping areas etc.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Or on cable cars in the Alps.


----------



## g.spinoza

I'd like very much a "Google hiking path view". I volunteer.


----------



## Road_UK

Me too


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Me too


(Went hiking two days ago to Obernberger See, not far from your home.. lovely!)


----------



## Road_UK

Come here in the summer, and I'll take you for a pub crawl in the mountains. The beer in the huts is cold, the views are magnificent, the cows are happy, and so are you when you get to see the national Zillertaler Naturpark...


----------



## g.spinoza

Thanks for the offer, I hope I'll get the chance to come back there soon, before I - probably - relocate to Western Alps


----------



## Road_UK

Oh yes, that's right, you're moving to Turin. Good, you show me yours, and I'll show you mine LOL...


----------



## italystf

It would be cool having a "rail view" with a cam mounted over a running train. Or a "canal view" in Venice, with a cam mounted on a boat.


----------



## x-type

Road_UK said:


> It'd be nice if Google implemented streetview on pedestrian areas, like parks, pedestrianised zones in shopping areas etc.


like this?


italystf said:


> It would be cool having a "rail view" with a cam mounted over a running train. Or a "canal view" in Venice, with a cam mounted on a boat.


like this?

or this?

or skiing?

or museums?


----------



## keber

g.spinoza said:


> I'd like very much a "Google hiking path view". I volunteer.


Don't be afraid of heights however - they might send you here ...





It would be interesting job though - imagine Google street view through famous Dolomites ferratas. Cable car views would be boring as Google Airplane view.


----------



## g.spinoza

Wasn't Camino del Rey closed?


----------



## Wilhem275

italystf said:


> It would be cool having a "rail view" with a cam mounted over a running train.


Almost every main line has its own youtube cabview video. But in some spots it would be interesting a 360° view.


----------



## Satyricon84

Meanwhile in Taiyaun, China...


----------



## Attus

keber said:


> Don't be afraid of heights however - they might send you here


I'm sick just of watching it...


----------



## keber

g.spinoza said:


> Wasn't Camino del Rey closed?


Already long time ago. Still many adventures seek adrenalin going over the path. I would try that (with harness and rope, of course) but it is far away from here. 
We still have here around some amazing vertical drops to experience completely safe, like Sphinx in Triglav with 300 m of vertical drop and additional 500 m to safe ground








Maybe from this photo it does not look so frightening but be sure that a view of this on the site is a good test of rigidity of your stomach.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Try to scale the Eiger Nordwand.


----------



## keber

Vertical on Eiger Westflank looks higher, but only few hundred meters. And accessibility of that viewpoint in not comparable. Above picture was taken from a viewpoint which is accessible with normal hiking, albeit long one.


----------



## Verso

^^ I chose an easier path to Triglav. 



italystf said:


> Giulio Andreotti, now 94 y.o., has been continuosly in the Italian parliament since our current political system was founded in 1948.


Poor bastard is dead.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> ^^ I chose an easier path to Triglav.


Is there a disposition that every Slovene has to climb Triglav once in his lifetime, like Muslims go to Mekah? :lol::cheers:


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Poor bastard is dead.


Don't know if you already know, but he was also involved in corruption and collusion with the Sicilian mafia.


----------



## Wilhem275

In 50 years of political activity, one gets involved in almost anything, I think.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Is there a disposition that every Slovene has to climb Triglav once in his lifetime, like Muslims go to Mekah? :lol::cheers:


They even have it on their flag and on their 50-cent coin.


----------



## keber

g.spinoza said:


> Is there a disposition that every Slovene has to climb Triglav once in his lifetime, like Muslims go to Mekah? :lol::cheers:


Yes, therefore in nice summer weekends there are very large crowds going to the top and you could wait quite some time to reach the top, as all routes to the top are ferratas with often very limited space for meeting opposing groups of people.
So I rather choose more suitable day for ascending Triglav. I also plan to reach the top in the winter (which is vastly more difficult) and to ascent on at least one alpinistic route from the north; my secret (very distant) wish is skiing from the top.


----------



## keber

Here:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Carte_Mieulet_Mont_Blanc+frontispice.jpg


----------



## Road_UK

Oh right. So Mont Blanc comes third?


----------



## keber

Don't know, Elbrus has two summits so that gives Mont Blanc only fourth place. I don't bother which country haw which mountain, I rather bother how to reach this or that summit. Both highest peaks in Europe (Caucasian and Alpine) are on my checklist.


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> Oh right. So Mont Blanc comes third?


More like tenth.


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> Up there it doesn't matter in which country lies the peak. Also most climbed route is from Chamonix, France, anyway.


So what? Summit is shared between two countries nonetheless.


----------



## kozorog




----------



## keokiracer

Awesome! We need such a thing in the Velsertunnel over here. Some truck hits the top of the tunnel at least once a month...


----------



## keber

Cool looking thing. However I wonder why do they not install steel portal of necessary height before tunnel, which is common in European countries.


----------



## g.spinoza

Why spend so much money on hi-techy thing while steel portals, as keber says, would do the same a hundredth the price?


----------



## keber

Steel portal is actually not so cheap, it can cost few tens of thousand €. But it is very effective in all cases, which I would not say for that holographic Australian thing with a price tag in a similar range. This thing is nothing more than a water curtain and LED projector, added to previously installed complicated electronic equipment for detecting out-of clearance vehicles.

I'm wondering how it is possible that they construct important tunnels without necessary clearance?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Harbour Tunnel opened in 1992. It's next to the iconic Harbour Bridge near central Sydney.


----------



## keokiracer

g.spinoza said:


> Why spend so much money on hi-techy thing while steel portals, as keber says, would do the same a hundredth the price?


Well, if a truck takes out one of those steel portals there's a high chance that that thing gets all over the road. That could endanger other road users near the truck. They might get hit by (remains of) the steel portal.


----------



## g.spinoza

keokiracer said:


> Well, if a truck takes out one of those steel portals there's a high chance that that thing gets all over the road. That could endanger other road users near the truck. They might get hit by (remains of) the steel portal.





keber said:


> Steel portal is actually not so cheap, it can cost few tens of thousand €. But it is very effective in all cases, which I would not say for that holographic Australian thing with a price tag in a similar range. This thing is nothing more than a water curtain and LED projector, added to previously installed complicated electronic equipment for detecting out-of clearance vehicles.


Sure, a nice flashy blinking light isn't gonna stop a driver under the influence or simply distracted. He will smash into the tunnel anyway, damaging more than just few tens of thousands of euro worth of infrastructure. I think that there should be _physical_ barriers before the actual tunnel, actually stopping runaway trucks, rather then simply saying "hei pal, you cannot enter, please stop"...


----------



## keber

keokiracer said:


> Well, if a truck takes out one of those steel portals there's a high chance that that thing gets all over the road. That could endanger other road users near the truck. They might get hit by (remains of) the steel portal.


Steel portals are constructed in such way that normal truck trailer cannot destroy them. Usually tops of overloaded trucks are pretty light so just some cargo and parts of vehicle could be strewn over pavement.

It works in Alpine countries and I never heard anyone to destroy such portal. It could work elsewhere. Amazing that "non-tunnel nations" always try to invent new, costly and inefficient solutions for problems that have been already solved in "tunnel nations" with simple, cheap and efficient means.


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Harbour Tunnel opened *in 1992*.


Even worse - how couldn't they construct a tunnel with a proper clearance?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands now builds all tunnels with a standard 4.7 meter clearance. That way overheight trucks are never an issue. Formerly tunnels were built with 4.2 meters clearance and hyper sensitive detection, resulting in over a thousand tunnel closures per year at a single tunnel, very few of them actually involving overheight trucks.


----------



## MajKeR_

bogdymol said:


> This evening I participated at the inauguration of the venue where I will hold my wedding next year. Pictures:


Will you celebrate your wedding in Poland?


----------



## Wilhem275

Went to the post office, sent a packet to Germany, and got a new €5 note in return


----------



## Road_UK

I got my first few of those last Friday.


----------



## italystf

Wilhem275 said:


> Went to the post office, sent a packet to Germany, and got a new €5 note in return


I got my first (and also last) at the supermarket on Monday, 6 May. Old notes are still more common.
But today I received a 2€ with Postojna caves.


----------



## Verso

^^ That one looks like a snail shell.


----------



## bogdymol

MajKeR_ said:


> Will you celebrate your wedding in Poland?


Nope, the pictures are from Romania. Why?


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> I got my first (and also last) at the supermarket on Monday, 6 May. Old notes are still more common.
> But today I received a 2€ with Postojna caves.


I didn't saw any new €5 notes yet . Nor commemorative €2 coins I haven't.


----------



## keber

CNGL said:


> Nor commemorative €2 coins I haven't.


None? If you live in Eurozone that is practically impossible.

I still wait for my first 5€ banknote. But here around are not that common than elsewhere because ATMs give just 10, 20 and maybe 50 € notes.


----------



## cougar1989

Today I got two new 5€ notes.
I got one from my mum at her work
http://de.eurobilltracker.com/notes/?id=125161762
and the other one from the key service
http://de.eurobilltracker.com/notes/?id=125164283


----------



## CNGL

keber said:


> None? If you live in Eurozone that is practically impossible.


I have a few commemorative €2 coins, though .



keber said:


> I still wait for my first 5€ banknote. But here around are not that common than elsewhere because ATMs give just 10, 20 and maybe 50 € notes.


Also here, although €50 notes are more common. But still, I have put into circulation around €500 in €5 notes during 2012 due to that EuroBillTracker thing...


----------



## cinxxx

Arrived in Timisoara after a long roadtrip 
Stayed 3 nights in Krakow and one in Kosice.


----------



## bogdymol

Welcome home!


----------



## Orionol

How was the trip?


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile in Karlsruhe, Germany


----------



## cinxxx

Orionol said:


> How was the trip?


Great


----------



## italystf

Meawhile in Italy:
4 y.o. child stopped by the police on a provincial road after he escaped from home with a plastic toy tractor.








http://www.fanpage.it/il-bimbo-che-viaggia-in-triciclo-sulla-provinciale-fermato-dai-carabinieri/


----------



## GordonBennett

keber said:


> I still wait for my first 5€ banknote. But here around are not that common than elsewhere because ATMs give just 10, 20 and maybe 50 € notes.


I dont think that you can get 5€ from cashpoint in any Ezone country.

I got my first new 5€ from post office about 2 weeks ago. Lol my friends thought its fake.


----------



## Wilhem275

I've never seen ATMs with €5 (often they don't even have tens), but many modern vending machines use mostly fives as change.


----------



## Wilhem275

Hey people, where's Penn's Woods? He's been away since February.

(sorry for the double post)


----------



## Road_UK

He has not been happy with the way he has been treated by certain forum members. And I don't blame him...


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> I still wait for my first 5€ banknote. But here around are not that common than elsewhere because ATMs give just 10, 20 and maybe 50 € notes.


I got it today. Much better-looking than the old one, there are more colors. Actually, all euro notes have just one color each, which looks quite boring.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> I got it today. Much better-looking than the old one, there are more colors. Actually, all euro notes have just one color each, which looks quite boring.


At least every denomination is different, unlike USD.


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile in Latvia:


----------



## Attus

Wilhem275 said:


> I've never seen ATMs with €5 (often they don't even have tens), but many modern vending machines use mostly fives as change.


Here (Western Germany), if I take 100 euro from ATM, it provides 1×50, 1×20, 2×10, 2×5 euro notes. I haven't seen any new 5 euro note, nonetheless.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> At least every denomination is different, unlike USD.


I actually like USD bills more. And they are more colorful now.



italystf said:


> Meanwhile in Latvia:


Today I saw an Italian parking his car on a parking space reserved for the Latvian embassy.


----------



## keber

Attus said:


> Here (Western Germany), if I take 100 euro from ATM, it provides 1×50, 1×20, 2×10, 2×5 euro notes. I haven't seen any new 5 euro note, nonetheless.


In France I did get all denominations from 5 to 100 € when I withdrew 300 €.


----------



## g.spinoza

In Italy you get only 50s€ and 20s€.


----------



## albertocsc

It also depends on which ATM you use. Here you can get only 20 and 50 € notes in one bank, or a wide variety in another one, for example. But I think none of them gives you 5 € notes.

Btw, we tried to get a new 5€ one two weeks ago in Munich, but they hadn't arrived by that moment.


----------



## Road_UK

Austria from 10€ onwards. UK from £10 and €10 onwards.


----------



## piotr71

In some Tesco's ATM's five pound notes are available.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Meanwhile in The Netherlands


----------



## CNGL

Luckily photos don't smell yet, if it was the case I would be puking now.


----------



## keokiracer

It doesn't smell at all. It's "art"


----------



## ChrisZwolle

West, Texas already has post-explosion imagery on Google Earth:


----------



## Broccolli

Train Crash Airbags...are they any good ??


----------



## Wilhem275

Yesterday I was driving in the mountains, alone in the dark, and I saw an adult deer some 10 meters from the road. That's a huge beast...

Boy, there were so much stars in the sky I felt confused.


----------



## piotr71

Didn't you know how to navigate towards north?


----------



## Broccolli

I watched Giro d'Italia yesterday, and i was also watching Italian nature, its very nice lots of vineyard and village after village, but no real forest you know (its Mediterranean of course but still). And i was wondering how freak out must be average italian that comes to slovenian forest, with all that wild life, bears, wolfs, lynx, wild pigs, deer :lol: even for me is not always that pleasant if i go to forest by my self you know, so i always have a whistle and a wooden stick with me. 

Kočevski rog forest 

http://www.kocevska.com/


----------



## keber

Finally Google Streetview cars are coming to Slovenia this summer.kay:

As for the deers, I often encounter various wildlife in the woods and mountains. Like those ibex (-es?) few meters from me on the mountain path, are quite big and could pose danger if threatened:









A month ago I met two deer in the forest when doing cycling in the middle of nowhere. Probably my first sighting of deer Just 10 km further I followed fresh bear tracks, maybe 15 or 20 minutes old.
Roe deer are plenty here, almost too much, I already almost hit some (missed them for centimeters only)

Although those are "a bit" more dangerous:

















In Laos I've encountered about 3 m long snake which I almost hit with a motorcycle going around 60 km/h (missed just millimeters away) - I rather don't imagine what would happened if I would hit it, I would fall and snake would survived?


----------



## xrtn2

>





keokiracer said:


> I understand if most africans and people from the middle east and central asia need a visa to Brazil, but why do americans and canadians need one if it's visa free for europeans and russians?


The thread is closed.:nuts::nuts:

This Map is about Visa Requirements for brazilian citizens.



Brazil allows citizens of specific countries to travel to Brazil without a visa:


----------



## keokiracer

Uhh,... I did not post that pic


----------



## xrtn2

keokiracer said:


> Uhh,... I did not post that pic


Yeah. I know, The thread is closed,so i cannot quote your comment and my comment.


----------



## Road_UK

Why is it closed?


----------



## piotr71

It was not much about border crossing there in recent posts?


----------



## Road_UK

Still an interesting debate, and visa procedures has everything to do with border crossings.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

piotr71 said:


> It was not much about border crossing there in recent posts?


Yes, some people continued to ignore that offtopic nonsense was being deleted, that is why the thread was closed for some time. I'll reopen it.


----------



## xrtn2

Road_UK said:


> Why is it closed?



Yes because country vs. country comments.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

It has been unusually hot in the last week in Estonia - up to 30C in some places - which has caused almost daily thunderstorms. We usually have this kind of weather in August :crazy: 6 weeks ago there was still snow on the ground.
A very nice photo to illustrate all this. _Photo by Jüri Voit, taken from http://www.ilmajaam.ee/1240420/lugeja-pildid-lahemaal-valkusid-kumned-piksenooled_


----------



## MajKeR_

bogdymol said:


> Nope, the pictures are from Romania. Why?


Because that venue looks like buildings from this thread:

[Polska] Gargamele i kaszaloty


----------



## NordikNerd

The Gumball Dorks have arrived in Sweden, and caused queues on the motorway










The Hoff filling up his car Gumballstyle at the service station in Värnamo.


----------



## Orionol

I heard there were a road accident on E4. One of those Gumball car crashed or something. Anyway they were in Helsingborg & Ängelholm (Koenigsegg factory). Couple of miles away from me!


----------



## NordikNerd

Orionol said:


> I heard there were a road accident on E4. One of those Gumball car crashed or something. Anyway they were in Helsingborg & Ängelholm (Koenigsegg factory). Couple of miles away from me!


A Gumball driver crashed at E4 Mjölby. This is a ridiculus circus, these rich and famous stars drive however they want not respecting anyone not even the police. If they break the speed limits they get a fine of 4000SEK(438EUR/562$) which they pay with a smile and drive further at the same speed.


----------



## makaveli6

Tomorrow they should arrive in Riga.


----------



## italystf

A Bulgarian guy drove 13km wrong way on the Italian A4 between Portogruaro and Latisana. Stopped by the police he said: "I made an U-turn because I had no money to pay the toll." :nuts:


----------



## Broccolli

italystf said:


> A Bulgarian guy drove 13km wrong way on the Italian A4 between Portogruaro and Latisana. Stopped by the police he said: "I made an U-turn because I had no money to pay the toll." :nuts:


But he had money for gas :nuts:


----------



## bogdymol

Speaking of that... what happens on tolled motorways (Italy, France, Spain, etc.) if you get to the toll gate and have no money, no credit card or any other means for payment?


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> Speaking of that... what happens on tolled motorways (Italy, France, Spain, etc.) if you get to the toll gate and have no money, no credit card or any other means for payment?


http://www.autostrade.it/il-pedaggio/mancato-pagamento.html

They give you a receipt (mancato pagamento - failure to pay), and you can pay later via internet or at your bank. If you don't pay within 15 days, they can call public force to obtain their money from you.


----------



## italystf

Incredible, other two episodes of wrong way driving happened on the Italian motorways in the past 24 hours. One on the A28 near Pordenone (ended with a bad crash) and the other (an elderly woman) on the A14dir near Ravenna.


----------



## NordikNerd

makaveli6 said:


> Tomorrow they should arrive in Riga.


The Gumball-dorks have arrived with the ferry in Turku, Finland.

which means immediate headlines..

Some of the drivers hit the pedal to the metal and drove 205km/h in a 
residential area. So the police arrested a couple of them=GOOD JOB ! Finnish police. I know it's a spectacular show, but these rich playboys think they own the world and that they can bribe themselfes away, which they probably could in eastern europe but not in Finland.


















Thumbs up dork ! In sweden max fine is flat about 436 EUR which is chickenfeed for the Hoff.

In Finland it depends on your income, there's no limit and if you're rich you can look forward to a 30.000$ fine and suspended driver's license.


----------



## keber

NordikNerd said:


> In Finland it depends on your income, there's no limit and if you're rich you can look forward to a 30.000$ fine and suspended driver's license.


For other nationalities too?


----------



## RipleyLV

makaveli6 said:


> Tomorrow they should arrive in Riga.


Do you know where and at what time they will stop?


----------



## NordikNerd

keber said:


> For other nationalities too?


For everyone. The police have even have the right to confiscate your vehicle.

In 2010

The 37-year-old "swede" (not ethnic) was caught when he drove his Mercedes SLS AMG at 300 km / h on a highway south of Bern in Switzerland.

For anyone wondering where the allowable speed was 120 km / h

- I think the speedometer, which is new, is not working properly, said the Swede to the police according to the Telegraph.

- We have never seen a car that has been traveling faster in the country, says a person saying the police to Telegraph.

The penalty was 300 daily fine of a total of 7.5 million. SEK (1.123.225$/873.291EUR)

The speeding fine was so high is because in Switzerland speeding fines are based on how much you earn, combined with how much he drove too fast.


----------



## NordikNerd

RipleyLV said:


> Do you know where and at what time they will stop?


Tuesday 21/5 

HELLO RIGA
Time: 15:00 – 00:00
Location: Radisson Blu Elizabete, Elizabetes iela 73
City: Rīga
Country: Latvia

Come and see Gumball takin

They are in Tallinn 11.00-15.00 the same day. How can they make it in time?


----------



## Verso

I don't want them here.


----------



## RipleyLV

@NordikNerd - Thanks!))


----------



## NordikNerd

RipleyLV said:


> @NordikNerd - Thanks!))


Tomorrow you have to drive to Riga and the Radison Hotel. Bring your camera and take a photo of yourself together with the Hoff. If you do that I'll give you a like.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

NordikNerd said:


> They are in Tallinn 11.00-15.00 the same day. How can they make it in time?


Tallinn-Riga is only 310km, a 4h drive by car (at normal speeds). Although I'm 100% sure that there are LOADS of police patrols on Tallinn-Pärnu-Ikla highway, ready to stop gumball drivers. :lol: And in Estonia, if you drive fast enough, you will be arrested and given a sentence by the court.

A few years ago, a Dutch "rally" similar to Gumball went through Estonia. A Lamborghini driver was sentenced to 10 days in jail.

Unlike in many other Eastern European countries, Estonian traffic police doesn't take bribes.


----------



## cinxxx

Never heard of these Gumbolls, what the hell is it?


----------



## Road_UK

I've never heard of it. Sounds like a bunch of the Fast and the Furious wannabes.


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> Speaking of that... what happens on tolled motorways (Italy, France, Spain, etc.) if you get to the toll gate and have no money, no credit card or any other means for payment?


happened to me once 
i was driving in HR to the south. it was night, i entered the motorway and intended to fill up some gas and take some cash at ATM. but at the rest area i saw a message "no cards received up to 6h in the morning" (it was around 23h). i stopped at the other rest area, again the same thing. i asked cashier what was happening, he told me that it was the same at whole A1 motorway that night, some communication issues. i payed gas with cash and couldn't take money at ATM due to the same reason. i was hoping that cashier would accept the card at toll station. yeah right 
so i have fullfilled the form and the bill came to me in one week on my address.
fortunately it was 1h in the night, so no cars were behind me while i was fullfilling that form, which was not short, it took me at least 3 minutes.


----------



## Road_UK

Same in France.


----------



## hofburg

almost happened to me, when going to venice airport I couldnt find my wallet in the car so I thought I forgot it at home. I stopped my car 100m before the toll station and searched the wallet for 5 minutes. as it turns out, it has slipped below the seat and it was well hidden.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> ^^I think I got it. :lol:


They let her go and she ran away.  Our judiciary is a joke.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> They let her go and she ran away.  *Our* judiciary is a joke.


It's not much different in your Western neighbour... especially if you have a political position you're very unlikely to spend much time in jail, even if you do nasty things. hno:


----------



## Broccolli

Evergreen song


----------



## Verso

^^ Umm, English, please. :shifty: Anyway, I'm not hiding her.


----------



## Broccolli

For non-slovenian speakers, just listen to the melody 

UUf she is long gone, probably somewhere on Papua New Guinea by now :bash:


----------



## Wilhem275

hofburg said:


> almost happened to me, when going to venice airport I couldnt find my wallet in the car so I thought I forgot it at home. I stopped my car 100m before the toll station and searched the wallet for 5 minutes. as it turns out, it has slipped below the seat and it was well hidden.


Well, at least you stopped before the toll... most people arrive there and block traffic.

In Italy at all tolling stations we have "Telepass" lanes, market in bright yellow, for radio tolling without stopping the car (there's a device onboard).
The system was introduced in 1989 and dammit, still it's common to see people without the device getting in those lanes and blocking everyone.
I can't get why the hell should they get there, the signage is excellent and the Telepass system is well known among the public.

Anyway, there's an intercom which lets you talk immediately with an operator, and they have cameras to see plates.
And still those dumbarses try to reverse, which mean at least 4 cars reversing into an highway flow coming towards them, and then performing a blind lane shift.

I'm sick of this, mainly because it's dangerous (and reversing while on highway means a serious fine), next time I get a blocker in front of me I'll call the operator myself...



EDIT: another nice trick about tolling stations  In the last years fully automated cash machines were introduced in few stations. Those machines have a tricky way of giving your change back... some coin may just fall down.
First time it happened to me it was in the middle of the night and nowhere, so I just stepped off to collect my coin... and I collected a little metal fortune


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ Once I had to deal with a microphone operator on A1 toll plaza.

It as like 2am or something. It was very cold, and I was looking for the toll ticket on my car, having parked very close to the automated machine. I finally found it, put it on the machine, put my card and then a fast-moving motorbike zoomed past me on the right :|

I had to explain the situation to the operator, it took like 2 minutes for her to open the gate for me.


----------



## hofburg

flickr is all new and fancy http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/20/4349620/yahoo-revitalizes-flickr-with-huge-images

pro accounts will transform in some other forms


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I absolutely hate the new design. It's slow, messy and cluttered.


----------



## g.spinoza

Flickr was nice, but the limited upload slot (100 mb per month) was a major showstopper for me.


----------



## hofburg

now is 300 MB for free account


----------



## ChrisZwolle

300 MB/month = 280 years until you used up the 1 TB.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Why will Andorra have the old EU15 on their coins?


They will have the new (post 2007) map. Images above are just drawings, not real pics.
Also Latvia will issue its eurocoins since 2014.
Unfortunately I think they will be very difficult to find here in Italy. I only found two Sammarinese coins in 11 years, none from Monaco and none from Estonia. Vatican 50-cents dated 2010-11-12 appear in circulation relatively often and they aren't particularily rare.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> Ads are not so profitable as many think. Also, it is their choice, not yours, you have also other options for uploading pictures.


Facebook, Google, Twitter, Youtube and such are still free for users and they make a shitload of money with ads.


----------



## g.spinoza

Just received with the mail a speeding ticket 

Spot is most likely this:
http://goo.gl/maps/BjIZ8

54 euro for going 85 where 70 is the limit.


----------



## Road_UK

That's not so bad. You'd pay three times as much in Holland.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The fine would be € 85 in the Netherlands for driving 15 km/h over the limit on non-urban roads.


----------



## Attus

The fine would be 0 euro in Hungary for the same action. However, for breaking the limit by 16 km/h, the fine is 30,000 forint, approx. 100 euro.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> That's not so bad. You'd pay three times as much in Holland.





ChrisZwolle said:


> The fine would be € 85 in the Netherlands for driving 15 km/h over the limit on non-urban roads.


Considering tolerances and other factors, I was sanctioned for going 80 (just 10 km/h over the limit), although recorded speed was 85.

That section of the road (SS11 Padana Superiore) is really tricky, because general limit is 90 but just before the tunnel it is reduced to 70 (where the trap is placed) and then 50 in the tunnel. I just couldn't brake fast enough.


----------



## bogdymol

In Romania the fine would be ~18 € (if you pay in max. 48 hours), or 37-55 € if you pay later.



Attus said:


> The fine would be 0 euro in Hungary for the same action. However, for breaking the limit by 16 km/h, the fine is 30,000 forint, approx. 100 euro.


Isn't in Hungary allowed +10% of the speed limit? So at speed limit of 70 km/h, you get a fine only after you pass 77 km/h.


----------



## Attus

bogdymol said:


> Isn't in Hungary allowed +10% of the speed limit? So at speed limit of 70 km/h, you get a fine only after you pass 77 km/h.


No, it is not defined in percent but in km/h. Tolerance is 15 km/h up to 100, and 20 km/h over 100 km/h. It means that at a speed limit of 30 km/h (e.g. in front of a school) you can drive at 44.5 km/h and you won't be fined.


----------



## bogdymol

And I was scared and drove with max 54 km/h inside villages near the Romanian border, while I could have done 64 km/h.

Are you sure it's like that? Because in the past I heard it's 10%.


----------



## Attus

bogdymol said:


> Are you sure it's like that?


Absolutely. 
However, if police stops you in the field (which may only happen if you have some other problem as well, e.g. you drive without lights in the night), then you may be fined even for a very slight speeding (limit + 4 km/h).


----------



## Rebasepoiss

g.spinoza said:


> Just received with the mail a speeding ticket
> 
> Spot is most likely this:
> http://goo.gl/maps/BjIZ8
> 
> 54 euro for going 85 where 70 is the limit.


In Estonia that would be a fine of €33. If you get caught in a speed-trap, the fine is €3 for every km/h over the speed limit and 4km/h is detracted from the recorded speed due to tolerances. Anything below 7km/h over the limit isn't even recorded.


----------



## Wilhem275

In Italy it's -5 km/h up to 100, then 5%.

Those machines today are precise, so if one gets a ticket for doing 85, he was doing 85; then he'll be fined for doing 80.

Given the -5 rule, plus the error of cars' speedometer, you can keep slightly under 10 km/h over the limit with no worries, at least outside town. Let's say the needle should not touch the next step.

To be fined in a 50 zone with my Passat, I should do at least 61 according to the speedometer.


----------



## keber

Car speedometers are mostly quite precise in the region around 50 km/h and less. Above 100 km/h however precision varies quite a lot. I was fined once for going 99 in 80 km/h zone, my speedometer was targeted exactly on 100 with cruise control.


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ Speedometer visual precision varies among models/makers as well. At least that is what I got from checking speed info from GPS readings (using different cars with cruise control)


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ It also depends on the size of the wheel and the tyre profile etc. 

When I was in Italy we drove a Fiant Grande Punto and when we were doing 130km/h according to the GPS, the speedometer showed 140+km/h.


----------



## keber

Rebasepoiss said:


> When I was in Italy we drove a Fiant Grande Punto and when we were doing 130km/h according to the GPS, the speedometer showed 140+km/h.


My experience shows that most cars have around 10% error at motorway speed, especially older and/or cheaper ones. However at slower urban speed most are more or less correct (maybe a couple km/hs of difference). They were mostly purportedly built so.


----------



## CNGL

Finally did a complete lap around Z-40, Zaragoza beltway. It was on my to-do list. But I didn't drive it in one shot, I drove from E07 to A-23 and then back to E07 but via the other side. I have nicknamed every section of the beltway, as well as every major crossing.


----------



## g.spinoza

Meanwhile in Naples...


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ Looks photoshoped


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> Some changes to the forum. You can finally see (again) how many people are viewing H&A.


They have done some changes on Spanish forum too. I was looking for the Chinese infrastructure thread where it always has been (The Resto del Mundo, i. e. "Rest of the world" subforum) without noticing they had created a new subforum for all infrastructure around the world.


----------



## bogdymol

On the bottom-right corner of *Highways & Autobahns* it's written who are the moderators of the section. Anything strange?

Edit: fixed


----------



## italystf

cinxxx said:


> Sign towards YU in Timisoara


The town of Rufina, Italy, is still twinned with Kurgan, Soviet Union!!!


----------



## Peines

Right now I'm making a research project about a new design for road signs in spain (for the university) and I need some opinions about this sketch:


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> The town of Rufina, Italy, is still twinned with Kurgan, Soviet Union!!!


Heck, when I went to Tarbes (France) they had a sign saying it is twinned with my hometown and with some place in West Germany 

Technically West Germany still exists, but no East Germany anymore .


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> Technically West Germany still exists, but no East Germany anymore .


West Germany and East Germany still exist like do exist Northern Italy, Southern Italy, Northern Spain, South-West England, Eastern USA,...:troll:


----------



## Attus

^^ Yes, but using the term "East Germany" is not a good idea. The area of ex-GDR is often called as "Mitteldeutschland" ("Central Germany"), where East Germany would be the region that's now a part of Poland. Of course politically it is not correct, but, nonetheless, if you say "East Germany", is not clear and is a little bit ambigous.


----------



## bogdymol

Peines said:


> Right now I'm making a research project about a new design for road signs in spain (for the university) and I need some opinions about this sketch:
> 
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2145996/Proyecto%20Final/01.png[/IMG ][/QUOTE]
> 
> My oppinion:
> - make the signs larger (also with larger font)
> - keep that small "motorway exit" sign next to "200 m"
> - keep the arrow for the right sign
> - center the A1 & R2 signs on the middle sign
> 
> :cheers:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Don't try this at home!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22664659


----------



## x-type

Peines said:


> Right now I'm making a research project about a new design for road signs in spain (for the university) and I need some opinions about this sketch:
> 
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2145996/Proyecto Final/01.png


rule no1: if you want signs to look good, make all the boards in the same dimension on y axis (vertically). 
the largest problem at spanish signs is mess with road numbers. try to reduce them and leave the rest as it was. or try to imitate some other countries (Germany for instance) but leave spanish font.


----------



## piotr71

I've already read an interesting discussion in "border crossings", initiated by a Swedish forumer NordikNerd. I was thinking for some time what a devil made him considering himself as an Scandinavian-Euro-Asian more than just a simple European. Only logical conclusion I come to, is that it (devil) has to be a moonshine or so. 

We all know that Swedes have quite limited access to alcohol and it's also very expensive. So, all the restrictions put them into dark area of home made liquors called nicely "moonshine". I experienced some of Swedish ones and must admit its highest quality and best taste possible. 

By the way. Did you know that one of the most known illegally produced liquor is Polish "Śliwowica Łącka" (plum brandy of Łącko). It was even awarded the best "Śliwowica" in the world by an American jury. Similary to French Cognac and some other regional products, its area of distillation is limited exclusively to Łącko commune. It's even got a trade mark and is still illegal.


----------



## Road_UK

And on that note I'd like to congratulate you on your 3000th post. I'm not far behind you...


----------



## italystf

piotr71 said:


> By the way. Did you know that one of the most known illegally produced liquor is Polish "Śliwowica Łącka" (plum brandy of Łącko). It was even awarded the best "Śliwowica" in the world by an American jury. Similary to French Cognac and some other regional products, its area of distillation is limited exclusively to Łącko commune. It's even got a trade mark and is still illegal.


What do you mean? It can be produced legally only in Lacko but it's produced illegally elsewhere?
BTW, illegally-distilled liquors aren't illegal just because of tax issues but also because they aren't controlled and can contain hazardous chemicals like methanol if improperly produced. I wouldn't drink them.


----------



## Road_UK

Talking about NordikNerd... I admire the balls. He's opened up a thread this morning that will have the entire Yugo mob on SSC go after him... www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1629511

Chris, perhaps you ought to get rid of it, if you're not limited to your jurisdiction...


----------



## piotr71

Road_UK said:


> And on that note I'd like to congratulate you on your 3000th post. I'm not far behind you...


Tack så mycket!



italystf said:


> What do you mean? It can be produced legally only in Lacko but it's produced illegally elsewhere?
> BTW, illegally-distilled liquors aren't illegal just because of tax issues but also because they aren't controlled and can contain hazardous chemicals like methanol if improperly produced. I wouldn't drink them.


Let me quote a Wikipedia article as the answer why distilling "Śliwowica Łącka" does not correspond to the Polish law:



> In Poland it is a well-recognised brand and it also gained much fame abroad.[1] However, as producing alcohol outside of established industrial distilleries is illegal in Poland, so is the Śliwowica łącka.[1] Numerous social organisations have been campaigning to have this law changed, so far unsuccessfully.[1] A "Fruit-harvesting Festival" celebrating the Śliwowica is held yearly in Łącko.[1]


----------



## x-type

piotr71 said:


> By the way. Did you know that one of the most known illegally produced liquor is Polish "Śliwowica Łącka" (plum brandy of Łącko). It was even awarded the best "Śliwowica" in the world by an American jury. Similary to French Cognac and some other regional products, its area of distillation is limited exclusively to Łącko commune. It's even got a trade mark and is still illegal.


the same thing as _casu marzu_ cheese in Italy


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> the same thing as _casu marzu_ cheese in Italy


Some thypical Northern Italian wines (Fragolino and Clinto) have been banned by the EU few years ago because they may contain methanol. However many people still produce them and it's not difficult to buy them from farmers and even many restaurants keep some unlabelled bottles "under the table". Producing them for personal consumption is still legal but the commercialization isn't (although is often tolerated).


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> Talking about NordikNerd... I admire the balls. He's opened up a thread this morning that will have the entire Yugo mob on SSC go after him... www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1629511
> 
> Chris, perhaps you ought to get rid of it, if you're not limited to your jurisdiction...


The thread itself isn't so stupid but it should renamed as "Homeless people in your city", "Beggars in your city" or "Illegal immigants in your city", to make it not racist and inoffensive. I doubt it's only a Balkan problem, I'm sure there are immigrants from other parts of the world and even native Swedes with alchool\substances addiction problems who cause such troubles.


----------



## Road_UK

Of course there are.


----------



## Peines

I need more opinions from my sketches.

Which is better (please give attention to the position of the right panel):

(a)









(b)









Please don't notice the forms or colors, this isn't the final form yet, only is a _wireframe_


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> In Romania, at least at my University, if you get a 6 for example, and want a higher mark, you can retake the exam, but the grade considered is the 2nd grade. So you can take a 10... and it will remain a 10... but you can also fail with a 4, and remain with the failed mark.


Uh, that's tricky.



Suburbanist said:


> This graph is part of a larger scientific survey on American lingo for different things and actions:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Source


Sorry, I'm daltonic. I can't find the "I have no word for this" spots.


----------



## keokiracer

g.spinoza said:


> Sorry, I'm daltonic. I can't find the "I have no word for this" spots.


I'm not colorblind and I can't seen green either.


----------



## Wilhem275

Green covers mainly Montana, N&S Dakota and Minnesota, but it's very weak compared to the other colors. On a low-contrast monitor it could appear almost white.

There are also many areas in plain white.

EDIT
Maybe this can help:


----------



## cinxxx

bogdymol said:


> In Romania, at least at my University, if you get a 6 for example, and want a higher mark, you can retake the exam, but the grade considered is the 2nd grade. So you can take a 10... and it will remain a 10... but you can also fail with a 4, and remain with the failed mark.


It depends, there is also the possibility that you stay with the previous note, if it was higher.


----------



## bogdymol

cinxxx said:


> It depends, there is also the possibility that you stay with the previous note, if it was higher.


It means you had good teachers


----------



## keokiracer

Wilhem275 said:


> EDIT
> Maybe this can help:
> 
> http://i561.photobucket.com/albums/...smo/so-are-traffic-circlesjpg_zps78c0e9f5.png


kay:

I should've pushed my laptop screen a bit back, when I do that I can see the green.


----------



## Alex_ZR

I wouldn't like to live in a place called like this: :runaway:
http://goo.gl/maps/dA6x1

BTW, nice alley! kay:


----------



## Suburbanist

ANyway, people in Montana and the DAkotas don't know about roundabouts, apparently. And it would serve them well, to prevent accidents on intersections of major 1+1 routes.

US should have a program to build like 20.000 roundabouts especially on rural areas.


----------



## bogdymol

Alex_ZR said:


> I wouldn't like to live in a place called like this: :runaway:
> http://goo.gl/maps/dA6x1
> 
> BTW, nice alley! kay:


Why not? The legend says that during his reign there were no thieves or criminals in Romania. You would be perfectly safe there.


----------



## Attus

To say that a dam at Nagymaros could have saved the whole Danube region from the floods is simply crazy. I don't even think that the situation in Bratislava would be better if that dam had been built. 

So, water is coming to Budapest. Highest water is expected for Tuesday next week, specialists except 8.8m which would be 20cm higher then the highest ever measured level. However, the city will not be flooded any way, the river has so high banks both sides. Some smaller town above Budapest, and a residential area in Norther Budapest may be flooded.


----------



## Verso

Alex_ZR said:


> I wouldn't like to live in a place called like this: :runaway:
> http://goo.gl/maps/dA6x1


Or in the Romanian town of Ştei, which was previously called "Dr. Petru Groza" (_groza_ means horror in Slovenian).


Btw, which letter is "more correct" in Romanian? "ş" or "ș"? I like "ş" more.


----------



## Lum Lumi

Suburbanist said:


> ANyway, people in Montana and the DAkotas don't know about roundabouts, apparently. And it would serve them well, to prevent accidents on intersections of major 1+1 routes.
> 
> US should have a program to build like 20.000 roundabouts especially on rural areas.


Just because they have no word for it doesn't mean they're not aware of its existence. And the question was very poorly worded anyway.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ _Groza_ is a usual romanian name.

In Romanian _Groază = horror_

_ș_ is the correct version in romanian.


----------



## cinxxx

Verso said:


> Or in the Romanian town of Ştei, which was previously called "Dr. Petru Groza" (_groza_ means horror in Slovenian).
> 
> 
> Btw, which letter is "more correct" in Romanian? "ş" or "ș"? I like "ş" more.


"ş" or "ș"? - never thought about this, but I think "ș" is correct 

_groza_ means the same in Romanian. And the guy was not far from it.


> After Groza was succeeded by Gheorghiu-Dej in 1952, he occupied the position of chief of state for the next six years until 1958, when he died from complications following a stomach operation. Although never a Communist Party member, Groza had permitted the gradual introduction of a communist regime in Romania. By pretending a limited independence from the Soviets and Communist Party leaders, Groza allowed the Communist Party to develop a more substantial backing and, through his repression of both the media and political organizations, limited any form of opposition or dissent within the state. After ousting the king and declaring the nation a "People's Republic", Groza served to ease the transition towards the later communist regime under Gheorghiu-Dej.
> The mining town of Ştei was named Dr. Petru Groza after him, a name it kept until after the Romanian Revolution of 1989.


----------



## bogdymol

*New SSC logo:*


----------



## g.spinoza

Romanian version?


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> _ș_ is the correct version in romanian.


Notice how even the letters "s" are a bit different (ş, ș).  So "ş" isn't correct? Too bad, I like it more. Don't you think that "Ș" in the article looks a bit out of place? To me it looks like some different font inserted in the text.


----------



## nenea_hartia

Verso said:


> Notice how even the letters "s" are a bit different (ş, ș).  So "ş" isn't correct? Too bad, I like it more. Don't you think that "Ș" in the article looks a bit out of place? To me it looks like some different font inserted in the text.


It depends on which fonts you have loaded on your keyboard. But that's the correct Romanian letter and you have to read it as a Slovenian "Š".
As far as I know, ''ş'' is used in Turkish.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Greetings from Northeast Germany. Excellent weather here.


----------



## Verso

^ Are you going to Poland?



nenea_hartia said:


> It depends on which fonts you have loaded on your keyboard. But that's the correct Romanian letter and you have to read it as a Slovenian "Š".
> As far as I know, ''ş'' is used in Turkish.


If you compare capital letters "S" and "Ș" in the Romanian article, they are a little different. Or if you compare *Ș*tei with *S*pain in the title, they are a lot different (and apparently in this forum as well, if they are bolded (while the Turkish "ş" stays the same)).


----------



## cinxxx

Anyone else got heat wave these days?


----------



## hofburg

1 heat wave over here


----------



## keokiracer

Heat wave coming up soon.
Wednesday 33 degrees average.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's sort of ridiculous weather. The normal June maximum temperature in the Netherlands is 21 C. It's been below that for most of the time, it looks like the entire first half of 2013 will be too cold on average. However, they expect a major outburst of heat Tuesday-Wednesday, with some weather bureaus claiming 38 or 39 C will be possible on Wednesday. After that, temperatures will return to below normal.

So we have a weird weather pattern, with extended periods of below normal 17 - 20 C, then 2 days of exceptional 34 - 39 C and then another period of below normal 17 - 20 C. Crazy...


----------



## CNGL

^^ Here we are dropping from 30-35ºC yesterday to 16ºC tomorrow. Insane.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> I have troubles reading too many consonants in a row


I suggest you not to learn slav languages


----------



## Verso

I was waiting in front of the Karawanks Tunnel today on hot sun. It wasn't more than 20 minutes, but it felt like eternity.


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> I suggest you not to learn slav languages


Or south Italian dialects: for example *trm*on is one of the most common insult in Bari area. :lol:
In Venetian it's the countrary: consonants are often skipped and there are many consecutive wovels, for example in c*ùeo*. :lol:


----------



## keber

cinxxx said:


> Anyone else got heat wave these days?


It was a bit warmer today, true.:lol:
At 8 o'clock it was already 25°C so I rather postponed doing some midday photographing from a tall steel light mast in the middle of large train station.

However it was 34°C, hot but not too hot, because I'm quite used to extreme weather conditions.


----------



## Broccolli

keber said:


> It was a bit warmer today, true.
> 
> However it was 34°C, hot but not too hot, because I'm quite used to extreme weather conditions.


Bear Keber :lol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37wZ2oIzuR4


----------



## keber

This weekend I was going with my bike into places where even bears don't want to go 
There were quite some fresh wild boar traces however.

My quote is, what doesn't kill you it makes you stronger.


----------



## Road_UK

Greetings from a sunny Sneek, Netherlands. Temperatures rather cool, 22C. I know, it's quite pleasant but tomorrow I'm heading back to a 38C Mayrhofen, Austria.


----------



## g.spinoza

Meanwhile on Italian A10 (Imperia Ovest):


----------



## keokiracer

Road_UK said:


> Greetings from a sunny Sneek, Netherlands. Temperatures rather cool, 22C. I know, it's quite pleasant but tomorrow I'm heading back to a 38C Mayrhofen, Austria.


You can stay here as well for 38 degrees tomorrow... Currently 27 degrees here now.


----------



## g.spinoza

Tomorrow I'm gonna escape the 38°C forecasted for Brescia, and hike the Monte Pasubio (2230 m)  Hope to find some fresh air!


----------



## CNGL

Lucky yours. Here is raining now. And all this thanks to low Manni.


----------



## keokiracer

Being someone who can't stand the slightest amount of heat, rain is starting to sound very good :lol:


----------



## keber

g.spinoza said:


> Hope to find some fresh air!


I hope too. Currently centrally managed air-con on my job is not working well, there is hardly any cold air going out of vents. As my office is on the south side of the building then you know how it feels like when there is 30+ °C


----------



## cinxxx

keokiracer said:


> Being someone who can't stand the slightest amount of heat, rain is starting to sound very good :lol:


I hate rain and cold :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

Quite hot in Arad, Romania, today:









^^ The A/C was turned on.


----------



## hofburg

Wtf? was that on sunlight?


----------



## bogdymol

Inside my office were 30 degrees with the a/c turned on. But I spent most of the time outside today, in the sun, at 3548903653 degrees. Yes, the outside sensor was in the sun, but still...


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Currently 20C at Heathrow, 24C tomorrow. It's very cloudy and humid though .


----------



## italystf

Smart home-made solution to keep your hands clean when you throw the trash 
http://maps.google.it/maps?q=messin...d=Ek1woOtlzhR0wO5k-hsVQQ&cbp=12,79.08,,1,13.8


----------



## x-type

i'm going to Bregenz tomorrow. i am not driving, but i am really wondering which route will we take (i really hope for A12-S16-A14 through Austria)


----------



## hofburg

you can suggest it


----------



## g.spinoza

g.spinoza said:


> Tomorrow I'm gonna escape the 38°C forecasted for Brescia, and hike the Monte Pasubio (2230 m)  Hope to find some fresh air!


Hike postponed to tomorrow. I didn't sleep very well last night (heat and a sore throat).


----------



## cinxxx

Most colleagues here at work are kaput from the heat, for me it's not that bad, although I prefer temperatures to not exceed 30C.


----------



## keber

Air-con works today at work. Good, there is already 33°C outside and few degrees more can be still expected. Tomorrow I plan first after-work Lake Bled swimming this summer. Temperature of the lake rose for 5 degrees in just a few days.


----------



## cinxxx

^^keber, were you a mod before?


----------



## keber

Yes, but not on SSC.


----------



## cinxxx

Ok. My girlfriend called me. She was almost ready to leave for work, when the police rang on the door. A house just behind ours was torn down and they are doing diggings there. What do you thing they found? A BOMB! So the whole area was evacuated, blocked. I hope they will disarm it and I will be able to get into my house.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes they frequently find large explosives from World War II. Even after almost 70 years the bomb squad still has a lot of WWII explosives to defuse. Many areas were intensively bombed, both in Germany and abroad. They still find explosives in the Netherlands at many construction sites. Especially in the areas that were quickly rebuilt in the 1950s and early 1960s. Dredging canals and shipping channels frequently returns explosives and mines as well.


----------



## Verso

A few days ago they found a bomb from WWII in Slovenia as well, I think, but I can't remember where.


----------



## g.spinoza

This morning I heard a lot of ambulances and fire trucks with sirens wailing running on the tangenziale here in Brescia. I guessed something bad happened and I was right:









a landslide happened in Botticino, a marble cave just outside the city: some people are missing and one is badly hurt. Botticino is the secondmost important marble cave in Italy, after Carrara's. Botticino marble was used to build White House in Washington, Altare della Patria in Rome, parts of Central Grand Station in New York and the basement of the Statue of Liberty


----------



## keber

In Tolmin, 2 policemen found it and didn't call experts for defusing bomb and bomb blew up. One policemen lost sight, both hands and has other heavy injuries.
Also there are still incidents with World War I bombs, even deadly. After almost a century those explosives can be still dangerous as they were in 1910s.


----------



## cinxxx

Got home. Everything was quiet. Problem it seems was solved.


----------



## Wilhem275

ChrisZwolle said:


> Especially in the areas that were quickly rebuilt in the 1950s and early 1960s.


True, and I blame those who just built over them... many private contractors preferred to sweep the dust under the carpet.
And they were no more in the emergency of the immediate post-war rush, so there's no excuse for that.


----------



## italystf

When I was 15 I took part in a summer camp in a mountanious area in Friuli near the Austrian border. In this place some battles between Italians and Austrians had been fought during WWI. The hiking guide told us that the year before a stupid teen found an unexploded bomb and, ignoring every possible risk, put it in his rucksack and bring it at the refuge! When the guide discovered it, very scaried, called the Carabinieri, who contacted some experts technicians to dispose properly the device.
In that refuge we had an empty (thus not dangerous) bomb shell used to keep pens and pencils in the office.


----------



## cinxxx

Here is the bomb (and video with the bomb specialist) 
http://www.donaukurier.de/lokales/i...ombe-in-Wohngebiet-entschaerft;art599,2773785

---

some shots from under the hood of my car, it has serious accelerating problems, stupid old car



















and fault code


----------



## x-type

hofburg said:


> you can suggest it


We took the route through Germany although me and driver were for Innsbruck. It was mistake. First 1,5h waiting time on Karawankentunnel (what a bad timing for works there!). Than shortcut through Munchen. Baustelle all the way between A996 and A96. And finally half an hour waiting time on Pfändertunnel due to overdimensioned transport in opposite direction. I hope we're taking Innsbruck going back.


----------



## Broccolli

*Ambulance intervention in Slovenia*

1. Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb0dZyyO0sc&feature=player_embedded
2. Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfQvHKHSmts&feature=player_embedded


----------



## hofburg

x-type said:


> We took the route through Germany although me and driver were for Innsbruck. It was mistake. First 1,5h waiting time on Karawankentunnel (what a bad timing for works there!). Than shortcut through Munchen. Baustelle all the way between A996 and A96. And finally half an hour waiting time on Pfändertunnel due to overdimensioned transport in opposite direction. I hope we're taking Innsbruck going back.


when going back check the traffic information for Karavanke, maybe you can take Ljubelj or Korensko sedlo instead. I would also choose Innsbruck over Munchen any time.


----------



## cinxxx

Rip _Tony_


----------



## g.spinoza

g.spinoza said:


> Hike postponed to tomorrow. I didn't sleep very well last night (heat and a sore throat).


Hike indefinitely postponed. At trailhead I realized I forgot map and flashlight, and the water bladder ruptured soaking my backpack.

Not a good day.


----------



## Broccolli

In the mountains, we must be careful!

*Helicopter Rescue under Mt. Jalovec, Julian Alps Slovenia*


----------



## keber

g.spinoza said:


> and the water bladder ruptured soaking my backpack.


Silvertape from both sides effectively solves the problem, if the rupture is not too large.
As for flashlight: did you plan to stay overnight somewhere or you were planning very late return? Because I usually take it only in those two cases, every dag counts when you hike for the whole day.


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> Silvertape from both sides effectively solves the problem, if the rupture is not too large.


Rupture is small but I'm not sure I want to risk a homemade fix. Once I tried to fix a leakage in my bathroom, and when I got home there were 10 cm of water on my floor...



> As for flashlight: did you plan to stay overnight somewhere or you were planning very late return? Because I usually take it only in those two cases, every dag counts when you hike for the whole day.


I planned to hike a very particular trail:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strada_delle_52_Gallerie

A wartime mule track 6.5 km long, 2.5 of which built in (unlit) tunnels. Flashlight is mandatory.


----------



## italystf

Dramatic letter secretely placed by a Chinese worker in the box of a product sold in the USA:


----------



## Broccolli

_Group of international experts with the Slovenian archaeological expert for Maya history Ivan Šprajc at the head, have found about 1.400 years old Maya city, deep in the Mexican jungle._ :cheers:

Slovenian Indiana Jones - dr. Ivan Šprajc


----------



## Verso

^^


john maia said:


> Porque chingados﻿ es extranjero el arqueologo???


:lol:


----------



## keber

g.spinoza said:


> Rupture is small but I'm not sure I want to risk a homemade fix.


Silvertape is ideal for repairing water bladder. I ruptured it one day with crampons and then I've repaired it with silvertape - it still holds like new.


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> Silvertape is ideal for repairing water bladder. I ruptured it one day with crampons and then I've repaired it with silvertape - it still holds like new.


Thanks for your tip, but I bought another one. I know I am a disaster at fixing things and I don't want to risk, especially now that I decided my next conquer: Monte Amaro in Abruzzo (2800 m). Too long and tricky a hike to risk wasting my water reservoir.


On another matter, strong earthquake today in Northern Italy, between Tuscany and Emilia:
http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=322718

5.3 Richter, still no reports on damages and casualties. Let's hope for the best.


----------



## keber

I often want to repair cheap things - last time I've bothered whole evening unsuccessfully to repair broken balcony door handle just to find out next day that new handle costs just 4.5 €
Also I still hold 25 year old television which needs about 40€ worth of repair. As much as I watch TV it is currently enough.


----------



## Broccolli

keber said:


> Also I still hold 25 year old television *which needs about 40€ worth of repair.* As much as I watch TV it is currently enough.



Neeh just kick the bloody thing and it will work as new.


----------



## keber

It's a Japanese masterpiece of end of 80ies electronics, it doesn't work that way anymore - a failed power supply is the reason - something that can be easily changed at old electronics. Everything else works like a new, sound is much better than with current LCD&Plasma TVs. Picture quality is debatable - for me colors and contrasts are still better on that TV, but resolution is lower - which is not so important as great majority of TV programs have still standard PAL resolution.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Color, contrast and depth of blacks of cathodic tubes are still unmatched by LCDs and plasmas.


----------



## Broccolli

keber said:


> It's a Japanese masterpiece of end of 80ies electronics, it doesn't work that way anymore


I was joking. 



keber said:


> a failed power supply is the reason - something that can be easily changed at old electronics. Everything else works like a new, sound is much better than with current LCD&Plasma TVs. Picture quality is debatable - for me colors and contrasts are still better on that TV, but resolution is lower - which is not so important as great majority of TV programs have still standard PAL resolution.


It's true, thats why we (in our family) are also fans of japanese *Sony* TVs. They are the best.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Yesterday I have received a postcard which my friend sent me from Verona. It was sent in April, and it finally arrived after two months. There's interesting stamp on it: "MISSENT TO THE PHILIPPINES"! :nuts:


----------



## g.spinoza

Alex_ZR said:


> Yesterday I have received a postcard which my friend sent me from Verona. It was sent in April, and it finally arrived after two months. There's interesting stamp on it: "MISSENT TO THE PHILIPPINES"! :nuts:


:O

Is there anything in your place that can be confused with Philippines?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Japan does that as well.


----------



## Verso

Speaking of gypsies... Someone tried to break into my house last night. I didn't actually realize it until I saw damaged door today, but I did hear someone walking around at night, so I woke up and saw a little boy walking away. Seriously, a little boy trying to break into a house? This could only be gypsies. I'll be on high alert tonight.


----------



## Road_UK

Racism of you eastern Europeans is unbelievable. As if there are no criminals among ethnic Slovenians...


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> Racism of you eastern Europeans is unbelievable. As if there are no criminals among ethnic Slovenians...


Therefore you western Europeans send them back If they want to move to you.


----------



## cinxxx

Politically correctness on you Western Europeans is unbelievable


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> As if there are no criminals among ethnic Slovenians...


Almost none among children, but quite high among gypsy children.



Road_UK said:


> Racism of you eastern Europeans is unbelievable.


Great generalization! kay: It's also funny coming from someone who generalizes about eastern Europeans all the time.


Next thing you'll say is that I tried to break into my own house, so I'll just ignore you, bye.


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> Therefore you western Europeans send them back If they want to move to you.


Only when they commit crimes. Or when you're not a part of Schengen.


----------



## Road_UK

cinxxx said:


> Politically correctness on you Western Europeans is unbelievable


At least we try to be a part of the solution, not the problem.


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> Almost none among children.
> 
> Great generalization! kay: It's also funny coming from you since you generalize about eastern Europeans all the time.
> 
> Next thing you'll say is that I tried to break into my own house, so I'll just ignore you, bye.


No I don't. In fact I'm married to one.


----------



## cinxxx

Road_UK said:


> At least we try to be a part of the solution, not the problem.


Yeah, good luck with that 



Road_UK said:


> No I don't. In fact I'm married to one.


What is her opinion about Gypsies?


----------



## x-type

Road_UK said:


> Racism of you eastern Europeans is unbelievable. As if there are no criminals among ethnic Slovenians...


yeah, we are racists, and there is no word about racism in France, Italy or Spain regarding gypsies. (the fact that here ni HR they drive cars only with I, F and E plates in last 5 years is just an coniscedence, right? :weird: )


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> Only when they commit crimes. Or when you're not a part of Schengen.


I find this correct. But some non-goverment organizations in Eastern Europe try to uderstate their crimes without offering any solution and it is seemingly counterproductive. 

According to them:
When non-Roma man is attacked by non-Roma man = it is a common crime.
When Roma man is attacked by non-Roma man = it is a supercrime, demonstration of racism, etc.
When non-Roma man is attacked by Roma man = so what now? sometimes it happens. Maybe the non-Roma man has deserved it. Maybe he was provocative.

And sometimes, common people get tired of that. Personally, I have nothing against Roma people. Actually I hate those organizations trying to earn as much as it is possible from such situations.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Replace "Roma" with "Black" and you get the same result


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> ^^Replace "Roma" with "Black" and you get the same result


I still don't get what is wrong on justice. All people regardless of race, ethnical origin, religion, gender or sexual orientation have to have the same rights and obligations. 

Why am I considered as a racist when I am angry in case I have to pay for electricity, drinking water, submit about million documents (I have to pay for) to build a house and another group of population has this conveniences for free? This is neither democracy nor justice.


----------



## Road_UK

You're either a part of the problem or a part of the solution. Verso, cinxxx, xtype and Co are definitely a part of the problem. They label them, box them and put them in storage, just like Hitler did by creating these getto's. Western reporters and documentary makers have gone to countries like Slovakia and Romania and they have come back with alarming news from those countries in the way these community's have been treated and how some of them resolved to crime in the first place. And you're definitely a part of the problem when you throw these people over one basket and automatically assume that they are the ones who commit crimes. If a gypsy kid, or any kid commits crimes, the parents are to be held responsible, and if needed you take them away and put them in stable homes. A lot of these children have been going to foster parents in Britain over the last few decades that way.


----------



## Verso

Anyway, my point wasn't to bash gypsies (we don't have many here anyway), but that I find it highly disturbing that a child was trying to break into my house.


----------



## Road_UK

cinxxx said:


> ^^Replace "Roma" with "Black" and you get the same result


In places like in East St Louis: yes. In Amsterdam : no.


----------



## cinxxx

Road_UK: and you label us and put us in a box :nuts:


----------



## Road_UK

cinxxx said:


> Road_UK: and you label us and put us in a box :nuts:


How


----------



## cinxxx

Look, I won't bother trying to make you understand, you will always have a counter argument. Maybe if you will live in a place where large groups of gypsies live too you will get the better picture. There's not more to say.


----------



## cinxxx

*Apply now to be the next Google Maps Trekker*



> We’re working to build the very best map of the world, and we’d love your help to do it. Today we’re kicking off a pilot program that enables third party organizations to borrow the Street View Trekker and contribute imagery to Google Maps. For the first time ever, this program will enable organizations to use our camera equipment to collect 360-degree photos of the places they know best -- helping us make Google Maps more comprehensive and useful for all. This program is part of our ongoing effort to make it possible for anyone to contribute to Google Maps.
> 
> Our first partner, the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau (HVCB), has already begun using the Trekker to take photos of the most popular, well-trafficked sites on the Hawaiian islands for future inclusion on Google Maps.
> 
> [...]


http://google-latlong.blogspot.de/2013/06/apply-now-to-be-next-google-maps-trekker.html


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## cinxxx




----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

Road_UK said:


> Yes.
> Ethnic minorities in countries you have mentioned stand a better chance than in the countries you live in. Especially in multicultural France.
> In Italy there are a few problems of violence against African and Roma immigrants.


You mean like this? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11258439


So a according to you Romania should follow France's example and do the same.  So where should Romania deport them to, Mayrhofen? Would you accept them in your neighborhood? If you do prove it. Put your money, where your mouth is.


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

Road_UK said:


> There's a difference between political correctness and tolerance. Something *people like you* have to learn. I'm not political correct neither. I'm saying you are a racist. You're blaming *all the crap in your country on ethnic minorities*. You do it over and over again, just like your buddies from the other side of the former iron curtain. A heritage from communist times, where something different is regarded as strange. Take a stroll around Paris, New York, Amsterdam and learn. I've never seen anyone from these countries spitting at people who are different on SSC.


*Projecting much?* (your own racism)

1st The only racist here is YOU. I've been lurking these forums for years and you persistently denigrate "those people", from the East, as if they are a different species. :nuts:

2nd And to respond to your full comment, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT when you say this: *"all the crap in your country on ethnic minorities"*. The ONLY THING blamed on gypsies is petty crime, and bad cultural philosophy and behavior, both of which are HARD CORE FACTS. I challenge you to find ANY ROMANIANS that blame politics or the economy on Gypsies. In fact here is the Romanian Politics thread. http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1395904 Just use Google translate and I DARE YOU to find ONE EXAMPLE, only one if it exists, where the Romanians are blaming the Gypsies, for the overall poor economy of the country, the way Brits and Americans do. It is a British and American disease of blaming your own failures on minorities, Romanians blame themselves and their government, NOT gypsies, NOT Hungarians, NOT Turks, NOT history, NOT even the Russians, BUT THEMSELVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PLEASE! Go through the Romanian forum with a fine pick and comb and find where the Romanians blame minorities on the economic situation of the country. Do it! I challenge you.


----------



## SeanT

Welcome Croatia/Horvátország/neighbours in the EU!:banana::banana::banana:


----------



## cinxxx

Bought new toy today! 










*Full specs here*


----------



## SeanT

ONCE FOR ALL!!!!! Nobody in these countries blame the gipsies for bad economy, only for CRIME.
There was an incident where some gipsies went to Strasbourg to blame the hungarian goverment for something and what happened??
Within some weeks a lot of them were in prison for ordinary crime. So is the french goverment racist or "oldschool" former communist country or what?!!!!!!!:lol:


----------



## Verso

Which Seat is that, cinxxx?


----------



## cinxxx

Verso said:


> Which Seat is that, cinxxx?


Seat Leon 1.4 TSI Style 120 PS.
Check out the link on the bottom of the post for all features.


----------



## Verso

Oops. :doh:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wow, the exact same car in the Netherlands costs € 10.000 more. € 27.000 for a Seat Leon with the same specs.


----------



## Peines

That car cost in Spain 22.400€, same configuration, but could be around 18.000 ~ 20.000€ if the dealer make some discount.


----------



## cinxxx

This was a _Vorführwagen_, a test car, had only 170 km when I did the test drive. A new car with same specs costs around 23,500 if dealer doesn't make discounts.


----------



## g.spinoza

After a couple hundred km in local roads in Abruzzo I seriously have to have my shocks checked. 

Provincial roads in province Chieti are _terrible_. On a 65 km trip, today, I counted _seven_ landslided road, partially opened as if nothing happened. Some of these slides are decades old, and no-one repaired them yet.

Local roads in province Pescara are slightly better.


----------



## hofburg

you will have two VAGs now?  what will happen with audi?


----------



## cinxxx

With the Audi I had 2 times until now problems with weak accelerating. Some air hoses broke, some other places with leaks. And since 2 weeks again the problem. Replaced a hose that seemed to be bad, no results, will take it to service on Wednesday. I hope I can find the problem and fix it if it's not very expensive and then sell it.

The car is drivable, but with very slow acceleration, and I drove to Regensburg with it today, horrible :lol:

About the Leon, I will have to get used to 6 gears, especially because the Audi had the reverse gear in the place where the Leon has the 6.


----------



## bogdymol

cinxxx said:


> About the Leon, I will have to get used to 6 gears, especially because the Audi had the reverse gear in the place where the Leon has the 6.


:doh:

Audi didn't have the reverse there. That *R* stands for "rocket".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You mean "Romania Style Driving" ?


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I heard a joke regarding this "R" from the gear shift. 

Short version: a romanian buys a new Mercedes, but the next day he comes back to the dealer with it with the transmission completely damaged. The dealer replaces his car with another new one. This happened for a few times, and after that the dealer asks:
- What the hell do you do with the cars? You always brake them. We didn't have so far any broken Mercedes sold here in years.
Customer replays: Well... I bought a Mercedes, so I went with it on the motorway, on straight road, and started to push the pedal down... 1st gear... 2nd... 3rd... ... ... 6th... 250 km/h... and then I put the gear stick into Rocket (R) mode.


----------



## cinxxx

bogdymol said:


> :doh:
> 
> Audi didn't have the reverse there. That *R* stands for "rocket".


Lol, heard that also in a joke, and to continue the Gypsy thing, it was a rich one that came to the dealer complaining that his brand new Ferrari broke after he put it in "Rocket" mode.



ChrisZwolle said:


> You mean "Romania Style Driving" ?


What do you want to say with that?oke:


----------



## Road_UK

Had a bit of a track yesterday: Sneek - Emmeloord - Kampen - Zwolle - Arnhem - Eindhoven - Maastricht - Liége - Luxembourg - Metz - Nancy - St Die - Tunnel des Vosges - Colmar - Freiburg - Donauespringen - Friedrichshafen - Bregenz - Innsbruck and Mayrhofen.


----------



## piotr71

cinxxx said:


> What do you want to say with that?oke:


I think it does not differ too much from "Poland Style Driving" in recent past  No need for being offended. We all have to learn a lot.


----------



## MajKeR_

cinxxx said:


> With the Audi I had 2 times until now problems with weak accelerating. Some air hoses broke, some other places with leaks. And since 2 weeks again the problem. Replaced a hose that seemed to be bad, no results, will take it to service on Wednesday. I hope I can find the problem and fix it if it's not very expensive and then sell it.


Sell to Poland, even if it was not fixed. It's Audi, so you won't have to wait for some buyer long. Probably the buyer will be some tradesman who will sell it as fully efficient, with only 80 000 km at odometer, bought from 80-years old grandpa who drove only for SS veterans meetings once a week.

By the way, I have never seen such a car. You would be quite original here  Greetings!


----------



## cinxxx

piotr71 said:


> I think it does not differ too much from "Poland Style Driving" in recent past  No need for being offended. We all have to learn a lot.


I know, no offense taken 



MajKeR_ said:


> Sell to Poland, even if it was not fixed. It's Audi, so you won't have to wait for some buyer long. Probably the buyer will be some tradesman who will sell it as fully efficient, with only 80 000 km at odometer, bought from 80-years old grandpa who drove only for SS veterans meetings once a week.
> 
> By the way, I have never seen such a car. You would be quite original here  Greetings!


Haha, about the grandpa story 
By original you mean the Seat?


----------



## MajKeR_

No, just the new Leon. To be honest, I haven't known that it already exists


----------



## cinxxx

It's out since late 2012 if I remember correctly. 
The Audi A3 is to expensive, the Golf is great, but the Leon is sporty and seems to be highly oriented for younger buyers, while being cheapest.
The new Skoda Octavia is also great, but also pretty expensive with the better motorization and extra-options.


----------



## bogdymol

I've only seen the new Seat Leon once on the streets. They are quite rare (even the old model was rare).


----------



## cinxxx

I can't say I've seen it often too, although there are many of them from the previous generation and Ibizas too.


----------



## lukaszek89

Norwegian driver caused an accident in Poznan. 17 people injured.


----------



## italystf

Sign in Forlì, near to one of the most prestigious languages university in Italy.


----------



## x-type

Ok So we are in the club in some 5 minutes


----------



## cinxxx

^^You are already there for most of the EU countries.
In RO and BG you still have to wait 40 minutes


----------



## hofburg

welcome! :cheers:


----------



## hofburg

cinxxx said:


> ^^You are already there for most of the EU countries.
> In RO and BG you still have to wait 40 minutes


you've been to Romania recently? last time I checked, they are an hour ahead  in G.Britain they have to wait.


----------



## keokiracer

Welcome to the EU. You're officially doomed now


----------



## cinxxx

hofburg said:


> you've been to Romania recently? last time I checked, they are an hour ahead  in G.Britain they have to wait.


Lol :nuts:
Of course, RO is GMT+2, made a fool of myself :bash:

GB and Portugal still have to wait


----------



## Broccolli

Cinxxx great car, how many horse power does it has?


One question for all you guys, which 3 or 4 years old car would you buy for 12.000 euros? 
I was watching Citroen C5, what do you think about this car?


----------



## cinxxx

Broccolli said:


> Cinxxx great car, how many horse power does it has?
> 
> 
> One question for all you guys, which 3 or 4 years old car would you buy for 12.000 euros?
> I was watching Citroen C5, what do you think?


Thanks. It's a 1.4 TSI with 122 HP (turbocharged). I will return with pictures and impressions after I pick it up, I hope this week.
There is also the 1.4 TSI with 140 HP (turbocharged and compressor).
122 should be enough for what I need

Regarding your question, it depends what type of car you want (producer, motorisation, size, etc), how many km it has...

I think you could find VW Passat/Jetta, Skoda Octavia/Superb


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> GB and Portugal still have to wait


Croatia is in the EU, no one has to wait for their own midnight. :lol:


Welcome, Croatia. :cheers:


----------



## Broccolli

cinxxx said:


> Thanks. *It's a 1.4 TSI with 122 HP (turbocharged)*. I will return with pictures and impressions after I pick it up, I hope this week.
> There is also the 1.4 TSI with 140 HP (turbocharged and compressor).
> 122 should be enough for what I need


Uff that is more than enough




cinxxx said:


> Regarding your question, it depends what type of car you want (producer, motorisation, size, etc), how many km it has...
> 
> I think you could find VW Passat/Jetta, Skoda Octavia/Superb


Link: http://www.avto.net/_AVTO/results.a...&MEN=0&zaloga=10&presort=1&tipsort=ASC&stran=
Well i need a car with big trunk, so i was watching mostly caravans and SUV.


----------



## cinxxx

Verso said:


> Croatia is in the EU, no one has to wait for their own midnight. :lol:
> 
> 
> Welcome, Croatia. :cheers:


I know, it was just for the sake of writing something.

Anyway, welcome, Croatia. :cheers:


----------



## Broccolli

Yes welcome


----------



## cinxxx

When I was in Istria in November last year, the weather was so nice and warm comparing to what there is here in Germany. 
My gf asked me if they need doctors, she would even learn the language, just to have more sun and the sea all year long 
What about software engineers? :tongue2:


----------



## albertocsc

x-type said:


> Ok So we are in the club in some 5 minutes


Welcome to EU!!

We are now 28 in the club. Who's going to be next? Iceland? Any Balkan country? No more enlargment? Any new country? Let's bet


----------



## hofburg

cinxxx said:


> When I was in Istria in November last year, the weather was so nice and warm comparing to what there is here in Germany.
> My gf asked me if they need doctors, she would even learn the language, just to have more sun and the sea all year long
> What about software engineers? :tongue2:


seems like you and your girlfriend have the two most wanted professions in Europe?


----------



## Road_UK

albertocsc said:


> Welcome to EU!!
> 
> We are now 28 in the club. Who's going to be next? Iceland? Any Balkan country? No more enlargment? Any new country? Let's bet


No more I hope. Enough is enough.


----------



## volodaaaa

albertocsc said:


> Welcome to EU!!
> 
> We are now 28 in the club. Who's going to be next? Iceland? Any Balkan country? No more enlargment? Any new country? Let's bet


Well I think, first, it is necessary to do some cleaning in that club. Otherwise we are just caricature of United States :dead:


----------



## Attus

Iceland reported some days ago that they do not want to join any more (actually it's a long story). 

Some days age a Youtube video was posted here about "Welcome, Croatia". Unfortunately the very first person to be seen in the video is Viviane Reding who is known to be a great enemy of Hungary, so I didn't dare to post that video anywhere in Hungarian forums.


----------



## Road_UK

Are we aware of any national highway agencies or authorities reading on this forum?


----------



## Road_UK




----------



## bogdymol

Road_UK said:


> Are we aware of any national highway agencies or authorities reading on this forum?


About 1 year ago on the Romanian forum it was present a consultant of Romanian Transport Ministry. She even answered in an 'official' way to some of the questions we had, on a special thread. After the governent was changed last year, she didn't post anymore.

But it's a well known fact that the Romanian gov. is watching SSC posts (on the Romanian forum), and we also have members that either work or are involved somehow in national road development.


----------



## Road_UK

Hello Romanian government.


----------



## cinxxx

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/...-of-email-login-message-sending-or-chat-usage

*New PRISM leaks detail ‘live notification’ of email logins, sent messages, and chat service usage*



> The NSA can track real-time events such as email logins or the sending of email, and the logging in or out of a user to a chat service according to the Washington Post.
> 
> New PRISM slides shed further light on the program, a facet of the wider NSA surveillance programs that have in essence, along with cohort efforts by other nations, ended digital privacy. Contained in the new information is the inference that someone is lying: new allegations of government hardware on-premises at technology companies surface, placing earlier denials by firms that you know and use into doubt.
> 
> The slide and added explanation of the surveillance program’s data collection practice follows:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> [...]


Hello US gov :cheers2:


----------



## bogdymol

:wave:


----------



## Road_UK

cinxxx said:


> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/06/30/new-prism-leaks-detail-live-notification-of-email-login-message-sending-or-chat-usage
> 
> New PRISM leaks detail ‘live notification’ of email logins, sent messages, and chat service usage
> 
> Hello US gov :cheers2:


To the ones who have been nasty to Penn's Woods: be afraid. Be very afraid.


----------



## mapman:cz

Road_UK said:


> Are we aware of any national highway agencies or authorities reading on this forum?


:wave: :angel:


----------



## bogdymol

mapman:cz is the prime-minister of Czech Republic? Or the Transport/Road ministry?


----------



## mapman:cz

I thought that you are? I used your smiley from your post above 

As for the topic, I work at our ministry and I have to say I've already used plenty of pictures and information from SSC for official purposes and meetings. It is a fast and in some cases reliable source of information...


----------



## bogdymol

I was just waving the hand wave to the Romanian government that is looking on the Romanian forum.

I don't work for the state, but I'm involved in the road development of my country.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Hopefully it will note come next a bigger one. I never felt an earthquake. 

I asked this question few weeks ago, and I ask again: do you guys know what happened to forum user *seem*? He dissappeared few months ago without saying anything.

Or he just changed his nickname to _volodaaaa_?  Both are from Bratislava, SK.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> Or he just changed his nickname to _volodaaaa_?  Both are from Bratislava, SK.


FYI that is not me :cheers: I have found this forum just few months ago.


----------



## bogdymol

So where is_* seem*_ then? Did you hide him in the basement?

PS: welcome to SSC :cheers:


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> It was much worse vice-versa :lol: I mean Easterns driving in Western Europe :nono:


Interesting. In 1985 my father, after visting Prague and Bratislava by car, he went to Vienna and he knew a girl from East Germany that was studying there. She must have been the daughter of some big name in the party to be allowed to study in the West. Or maybe a Stasi spy. Or maybe she was West German and claimed to be East German to get money and gifts.

I don't know if, before 1989, we were allowed to visit Albania and Soviet Union by ourselves (i.e. without being part of a guided tour, like is now mandatory in N. Korea and Saudi Arabia). However I read in a newspaper that the ferry line between Trieste and Durres was estabilished in 1983, so it probably was possible.


----------



## Verso

I think it was hard to get into Albania even for neighboring Yugoslavs and Greeks. I was in Montenegro (very close to Albania) in 1986 (I was 3 ).


----------



## lukaszek89

italystf said:


> Interesting. In 1985 my father, after visting Prague and Bratislava by car, he went to Vienna and he knew a girl from East Germany that was studying there. *She must have been the daughter of some big name in the party to be allowed to study in the West. Or maybe a Stasi spy. Or maybe she was West German and claimed to be East German to get money and gifts.*
> 
> I don't know if, before 1989, we were allowed to visit Albania and Soviet Union by ourselves (i.e. without being part of a guided tour, like is now mandatory in N. Korea and Saudi Arabia). However I read in a newspaper that the ferry line between Trieste and Durres was estabilished in 1983, so it probably was possible.


She could cooperate with DDR Secret Service. During the commie times if you wanted to study abroad/or even to go abroad you had to ask for the passport-and to get it you usually had to aggree to cooperate with Secret Service(of course if you were interesting for them). Universities were heavily inflitraded. Besides Vienna had probably residents of the all Warsaw Pact coutries Secret Services-island of capitalism in the sea of communism.


----------



## Broccolli

Unbelievable... I missed 2 Bigfoots while walking by on close distance... I only recently discovered these impressive creatures on some old material. Filmed in the *Forests of Šnickltj*, known for it's Bigfoot sightings. Slovenia 2005. 
Sorry for the crappy quality... :lol:


----------



## Verso

^ How did they get across the Atlantic? Did they buy plane tickets?


Btw, how do you add tags?


----------



## Broccolli

^^

They have always been around, they are indigenous species, but because they were mating with close relatives, that weakened their immune system so now they are on the verge of extinction. :crazy:


----------



## TurboEngine

Suburbanist said:


> Could Westerns drive their own cars in Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary before 1989?


Of course. Did you expect to be assigned a chauffeur?


----------



## Suburbanist

TurboEngine said:


> Of course. Did you expect to be assigned a chauffeur?


Maybe foreigners were just not allowed to drive there altogether and had to visit the country only on organized trips, as was the case of USSR, China and still is the case of backward regimes in countries like North Korea, SAudi Arabia etc.

BTW, I was thinking... China doesn't allow foreigners to drive in China. Even if you have a visa you can't get a Chinese driver license, let alone use your foreign one. Should EU reciprocate (not allowing Chinese citizens to drive private cars in Europe)? The same would apply to other countries as well - if EU citizens can't drive in your land, you can't drive here.


----------



## lukaszek89

You were ok unless black Volga started to follow you.


----------



## Wilhem275

Suburbanist said:


> Should EU reciprocate (not allowing Chinese citizens to drive private cars in Europe)?


That would be a giant step towards safety. At no cost, EU would put an immediate end to most DWA cases in its jurisdiction.





This is making me crazy, it gets better and better every time you see it :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

Wilhem275 said:


> That would be a giant step towards safety. At no cost, EU would put an immediate end to most DWA cases in its jurisdiction.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is making me crazy, it gets better and better every time you see it :lol:


^^:rofl:


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Interesting. In 1985 my father, after visting Prague and Bratislava by car, he went to Vienna and he knew a girl from East Germany that was studying there. She must have been the daughter of some big name in the party to be allowed to study in the West. Or maybe a Stasi spy. Or maybe she was West German and claimed to be East German to get money and gifts.
> 
> I don't know if, before 1989, we were allowed to visit Albania and Soviet Union by ourselves (i.e. without being part of a guided tour, like is now mandatory in N. Korea and Saudi Arabia). However I read in a newspaper that the ferry line between Trieste and Durres was estabilished in 1983, so it probably was possible.


Some people were allowed to study or move to West, but as you already mentioned, they were relatives of important and influent people (especially politicians).

Travelling to other Eastern countries was limited a bit, but West was something unreachable. I experienced a ridiculous situation since I lived on borderline with Austria. From nearest hill there were a great overview to Austria but it was impossible to get there.

Something like "the island of hope" was Yugoslavia. Since Tito and Stalin broke up, Yugaslavia had its own communist regime - in some ways a bit less strict (e.g. travelling). 

Our (stalinist) politicians didn't like to allow other people travel to Yugoslavia, but it was traditional and popular holiday destination so there was rather higher chance to get permission than in case of other western countries.

Then, If you were in yugoslavia, it was no problem to escape wherever you wanted.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> BTW, I was thinking... China doesn't allow foreigners to drive in China. Even if you have a visa you can't get a Chinese driver license, let alone use your foreign one. Should EU reciprocate (not allowing Chinese citizens to drive private cars in Europe)? The same would apply to other countries as well - if EU citizens can't drive in your land, you can't drive here.


If so, how are possible the several Europe to China overland rallies that often we read about?
Also Japan doesn't recognize European driving licenses.
I don't think the EU can reciprocate everything. We would end up in many discrimination episodes (like Turkish muslims allowed to profess their religion here but Iranian muslims who cannot). Also because most Chineses in Europe are residents. Probably also foreign residents in China can drive.



volodaaaa said:


> Our (stalinist) politicians didn't like to allow other people travel to Yugoslavia, but it was traditional and popular holiday destination so there was rather higher chance to get permission than in case of other western countries.
> 
> Then, If you were in yugoslavia, it was no problem to escape wherever you wanted.


Why East Germans died to cross the wall if they could have escaped to the West via Yugoslavia? Why they had to wait Hungarians opening the Austrian border in summer 1989 to escape?
I don't think it was easy, probably it was full of Yugoslav soldiers on the borders with Italy, Austria and Greece.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Why East Germans died to cross the wall if they could have escaped to the West via Yugoslavia? Why they had to wait Hungarians opening the Austrian border in summer 1989 to escape?
> I don't think it was easy, probably it was full of Yugoslav soldiers on the borders with Italy, Austria and Greece.


You had to pretend going to holidays to Yugoslavia. The competent offices has checked you and your whole family, relatives and friends whether you are not a "dissident" or just anti-communist. If the verification was succesful, you got a permission to have holiday in Yugoslavia. If not, you just could have sit home and wait.

The verification was not easy: only few irrelevant datails were enough to rejection. E.g. If you had a family on West, you have no chance to pass since you may have left and never went back. It is needless to say the summer holiday was not cheap as well.

For lot of people it was much easier just to cross borders and risk being killed.


----------



## Suburbanist

I think the Yugoslav border police didn't let people from other communist countries escape to Italy or Austria, right?


----------



## volodaaaa

Suburbanist said:


> I think the Yugoslav border police didn't let people from other communist countries escape to Italy or Austria, right?


Dunno. But most of the escapes were done through Yugoslavia, mostly by plane to US and Canada.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Suburbanist said:


> I think the Yugoslav border police didn't let people from other communist countries escape to Italy or Austria, right?


At that time army guarded the borders, unless you think on border police at border crossings. There was no reason to prevent foreign citizen to leave Yugoslavia, unless he/she is violating border rules (crossing the border without passport or out of crossing).


----------



## veteran

Friends of my mother escaped to west through some small YU/AT border crossing in 1986. They had such a big luck - there were no barriers on the road so they didn't stop at YU-customs, just on Austrian side where they asked for asylum. 

They had only a permission to travel to Yugoslavia from Czechoslovak police authorities.


----------



## Verso

http://wikitravel.org/en/Driving_in_China


----------



## italystf

Alex_ZR said:


> At that time army guarded the borders, unless you think on border police at border crossings. There was no reason to prevent foreign citizen to leave Yugoslavia, unless he/she is violating border rules (crossing the border without passport or out of crossing).


You mean that a Warsaw pact citizen, legally entered in Yugoslavia, could have shown his passport at the Italian or Austrian border and just let pass through? I don't think it was so easy, otherwise the entire iron curtain system would have been useless.


Verso said:


> http://wikitravel.org/en/Driving_in_China


Probably Honk Kong and Macau citizens are allowed to drive in China more easily than other foreigners, since China claim those territories as part of it. I read that Honk Kong - Shenzen is one of the busiest border crossing in the world, so I suppose it's quite accessible to locals.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> You mean that a Warsaw pact citizen, legally entered in Yugoslavia, could have shown his passport at the Italian or Austrian border and just let pass through? I don't think it was so easy, otherwise the entire iron curtain system would have been useless.


That is the point. Yugoslavia was out of iron curtain system, or I may rather say - It has its own system.


----------



## Fatfield

I seem to remember lots of East Germans crossing the border from Hungary to Austria around the mid to late 80's. There may have been other Eastern Europeans too of course.

I also remember driving through Hungary an the way to, and from, Romania that Hungary seemed to be a lot more relaxed and more 'westernised' than Romania at that particular time; especially Budapest. Adverts for western products and western graffiti seemed to be everywhere.

We weren't supposed to stop in Hungary either as we were classed as transit tourists but no-one took a blind bit of notice when we did once on the way to Romania and twice on the way back.

Contrast that with Romania where we were chaperoned by some security bloke and could only stop at designated places ie the hotel, restaurant and football ground. We couldn't leave any of those places without an escort and only go to/from the coach.


----------



## Zanovijetalo

bogdymol said:


> I asked this question few weeks ago, and I ask again: do you guys know what happened to forum user *seem*? He dissappeared few months ago without saying anything.


*GordonBennett *perhaps? Keep seeing him in similar DLM threads *seem *used to frequent.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/member.php?u=837977


----------



## Verso

Nah, that's Suleiman.


----------



## D.O.W.N

bogdymol said:


> Or he just changed his nickname to _volodaaaa_?  Both are from Bratislava, SK.


Wasn´t Seem from Žilina or Martin?


----------



## Surel

italystf said:


> You mean that a Warsaw pact citizen, legally entered in Yugoslavia, could have shown his passport at the Italian or Austrian border and just let pass through? I don't think it was so easy, otherwise the entire iron curtain system would have been useless.


How it was in Czechoslovakia.

There was a passport. In that passport you could get a permit to enter certain countries, with this permit the border police would allow you in or out of the country (communist countries).

Thus a Czechoslovak could have a permit for entering Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland etc... but no permit to enter e.g. Austria or Italy. If such a person would be checked at the Yugoslavia Austria or Yug. Italy borders, the border police would not let him leave Yugoslavia.

The border police in Yugoslavia was bit more relaxed, thus it was sometimes possible to fool them. The border was generally much less secured, thus it was also possible to cross it outside the border crossing. However, if captured by the Yugoslav authorities, there would be consequences for illegal border crossing, etc. I might be that the Yugoslav authorities might or might not inform the Czechoslovak authorities.


----------



## italystf

I know the story of an Italian hiker that was jailed for a week in Koper for not having looked carefully at border stones in the Carso near Muggia. It was in 1979.

EDIT: mods, please move this discussion on the border crossing thread


----------



## volodaaaa

Surel said:


> How it was in Czechoslovakia.
> 
> There was a passport. In that passport you could get a permit to enter certain countries, with this permit the border police would allow you in or out of the country (communist countries).
> 
> Thus a Czechoslovak could have a permit for entering Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland etc... but no permit to enter e.g. Austria or Italy. If such a person would be checked at the Yugoslavia Austria or Yug. Italy borders, the border police would not let him leave Yugoslavia.
> 
> The border police in Yugoslavia was bit more relaxed, thus it was sometimes possible to fool them. The border was generally much less secured, thus it was also possible to cross it outside the border crossing. However, if captured by the Yugoslav authorities, there would be consequences for illegal border crossing, etc. I might be that the Yugoslav authorities might or might not inform the Czechoslovak authorities).


And it is need to be mentioned, that if was someone caught escaping, his/her life changed to hell. Unsuccesful escaper was punished and attended to worst occupation. His or her descendants and family were punished as well (e.g. they were not accepted to universities and unfortunately were predestined to get no permision to travel outside the country.


----------



## Road_UK

So basically life behind the iron curtain was a hell hole.


----------



## Suburbanist

Could people from Yugoslavia cross into Albania?


----------



## Road_UK

Suburbanist said:


> Could people from Yugoslavia cross into Albania?


You'll have to open a few doors and tell us where you're from. We know you live in the Netherlands, you've lived in Italy and speak Portuguese. So what nationality are you?


----------



## Suburbanist

Road_UK said:


> So basically life behind the iron curtain was a hell hole.


Sure, that was one of the worst parts of communism if not the worst: imprisoning their own populations under the excuse of "we give you education and housing, you can't leave".

At least around 4 of the 17 million people living in former DDR territory after WW2 managed to escape in the 1940s and 1950s. I still think Western powers should have done more to empty out communist countries outside USSR from their population, like playing hardball with critical exports they needed from the West with the Soviets unless they let non-Soviet communist countries allow free emigration. It wouldn't have worked before Stalin death, but could have worked in the 1970s, and I'm sure millions would leave Poland, Hungary etc. if given the opportunity. 

I read that the DDR government was allowing some people they qualified as dissidents (often intellectuals) to emmigrate to FDR for a payment (made by West Germany) or around DM 20.000 per head. Other Eastern European countries, particularly Romania and Bulgaria, were taking big monies from Israel to let Jews from there to emmigrate.


----------



## Suburbanist

Road_UK said:


> You'll have to open a few doors and tell us where you're from. We know you live in the Netherlands, you've lived in Italy and speak Portuguese. So what nationality are you?


Lol I speak 4 languages (I still don't consider that I speak Dutch fluently enough to count as a 5th) and I've lived in 4 countries. 

My nationalities are Italian (father), Spanish (mother), Brazilian (mother)...


----------



## NordikNerd

bogdymol said:


> ared few months ago without saying anything.
> 
> Or he just changed his nickname to _volodaaaa_?  Both are from Bratislava, SK.


And he totally copied my signature :bash:


----------



## volodaaaa

The best part is this: we often heard something like this "the iron curtain with guarding soldiers is built to defend us from poor imperialists who envy our communist paradise"


----------



## Suburbanist

volodaaaa said:


> The best part is this: we often heard something like this "the iron curtain with guarding soldiers is built to defend us from poor imperialists who envy our communist paradise"


Well, before Stalin crimes became more known and Western Europe was still recovering, it is estimated that roughly 120.000 Western Europeans moved on their own volition to communist countries (as in immigrating in search of a better life). A sizable number of Italians actually moved to Yugoslavia (not necessarily those expelled during the ethnic cleansing, but communists that thought they should help the efforts there).


----------



## Suburbanist

NordikNerd said:


> And he totally copied my signature :bash:


You need to drive your car to Portugal and add a lot of abbreviations to that signature


----------



## piotr71

Road_UK said:


> So basically life behind the iron curtain was a hell hole.


It was not that bad, actually. I spent all my childhood and almost all teen years in comunist Poland, which, in my opinion was the safest and most fascinating 'playground' possible. We, children of prl, had also perfectly known what discipline and good manners are. On contrary to nowadays yovng people. we'd paid respect to the elder, too. We weren't that spoilt as our west European counterparts either.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Well, before Stalin crimes became more known and Western Europe was still recovering, it is estimated that roughly 120.000 Western Europeans moved on their own volition to communist countries (as in immigrating in search of a better life). A sizable number of Italians actually moved to Yugoslavia (not necessarily those expelled during the ethnic cleansing, but communists that thought they should help the efforts there).


http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esodo_dei_cantierini_monfalconesi
Roughly 2,500 worker from Friuli-Venezia Giulia (mostly employed at Monfalcone and Trieste shipyards) moved to Yugoslavia between 1946 and 1948. They mostly worked in shipyards in Rijeka and Pula.
Some supported a communist movement that wanted to turn Trieste into the 7th Yugoslav federative republic.
When Tito broke diplomatic relationship with Stalin, the Italian communist party (PCI), whose leader, Palmiro Togliatti, was very close of Stalin, started to oppose Tito regime. Thus, Italians that emigrated in Yugoslavia were prosecuted by the Yugoslav regime. Some returned to Italy, other remained, other moved to Warsaw Pact countries.


piotr71 said:


> It was not that bad, actually. I spent all my childhood and almost all teen years in comunist Poland, which, in my opinion was the safest and most fascinating 'playground' possible. We, children of prl, had also perfectly known what discipline and good manners are. On contrary to nowadays yovng people. we'd paid respect to the elder, too. We weren't that spoilt as our west European counterparts either.


Those social changes happened in capitalistic countries too in the past decades.


volodaaaa said:


> The best part is this: we often heard something like this "the iron curtain with guarding soldiers is built to defend us from poor imperialists who envy our communist paradise"


The official name of the Berlin wall was "antifascist protection barrier".


----------



## Road_UK

Suburbanist said:


> Lol I speak 4 languages (I still don't consider that I speak Dutch fluently enough to count as a 5th) and I've lived in 4 countries.
> 
> My nationalities are Italian (father), Spanish (mother), Brazilian (mother)...


Cool. I'm international like that. Where did you grow up?


----------



## Road_UK

piotr71 said:


> It was not that bad, actually. I spent all my childhood and almost all teen years in comunist Poland, which, in my opinion was the safest and most fascinating 'playground' possible. We, children of prl, had also perfectly known what discipline and good manners are. On contrary to nowadays yovng people. we'd paid respect to the elder, too. We weren't that spoilt as our west European counterparts either.


I've heard that something that bothers most people is that crime rates went through the roof after the Berlin Wall. There used to be hardly any crime whatsoever...


----------



## riiga

italystf said:


> The official name of the Berlin wall was "antifascist protection barrier".












:cheers:


----------



## Verso

Suburbanist said:


> Could people from Yugoslavia cross into Albania?


I think it was quite hard to get in.


Anyway, life in the Eastern Block was probably ok, if you got used to it. :troll:


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> I've heard that something that bothers most people is that crime rates went through the roof after the Berlin Wall. There used to be hardly any crime whatsoever...


this is partially true, but in my opinion, as it has been already mentioned here, it is just something like delayed and accumulated social change.


----------



## Attus

In communist Eastern Europe the base of the society was equality. OK, just as orwell wrote it, some were more equal than others, but basically, in everyday life, we all were equal. 
It ment that every one had a job. Yes, many people had nothing to do in this job, or there were 16 people doing what 4 could have been done, but there was no unemployment. In Hungary, having no job, was a crime that time! On the other side, everyone got the same salary. Those, that worked hard, got no more than the lazy ones. Those, being skillful, working more efficient, got no more than the ones being heavy handed and working with a low efficiency. Equality, was the motto. 
And, of course, this method had the impact that no one worked really hard. Why should have any? And in a nation where no one is working hard, where no one want to study more, no development is possible. 
Nonetheless, safety was much better than nowadays. Every one had a job, every one had a salary, no need for additional money. And if you steal money, how could you use it? Buying a car? Western cars were impossible to be bought in Hungary. Building a house? Right, the government came and asked how you got the money for that - for sure you could not have it from a good salary, since salaries were more or less equal. 

And the wind of change came. Equality is over. 
For people that can work hard, that are skillful, that study more, it is favourable. For lazy people, it is not. Now they have a low salary, or no job at all. For uneducated people the situation now is far worse than in communism: they're unemployed now. They want go back to communism.
And good safety, too, is over. Lazy people steal instead of work. Having no job is not punished any more. And you can not trust police for a large share of police are criminals as well.


----------



## Iluminat

Deindustrialization was probably the most important factor when it comes to crime, many people lost their jobs in relatively short period of time and of course there were new opportunities for crime. I think it was mostly '90 phenomenon when bars appeared in many windows or even the corridors of appartment buildings and you could hear about some organized crime groups with guns in the TV (although still it was unlikely that you meat such dangerous people in real life) but it's history now.


----------



## volodaaaa

We know too little to do any exact conclusions. Everything has its advantages and disadvantages. 

But in case of communist regime we may say: Equality was based on the fact that everyone was equally poor. That was not good.

Yeah, current situation is not much better, but still is better. Obviously that depends on your age what influences your opinion. E.g. in early 60's my grandma had gotten a flat in the center of Bratislava she had to buy after the fall of communism. But the price for her was not based on market-price but *700 Eur*!!!! Current market-price for that flat is approximately 150.000 Eur and young family has to take a loan for 30 years (corresponding to 417 Eur per month + interest rate) to have it. We may indeed say that communists were handing out the flats for free. 

But in one breath I must admit, that our family had inherited a flat without having an adult member to populate it. Therefore the government just asked for the keys and gave it to another man. After the communism era the flat has been probably sold for non maket-price to another owner.

In spite of many disadvantages, I prefer to living in current era.


----------



## Suburbanist

The problem with low-skilled people is related to industrialization and automation. They greatly reduced the need for low-skilled menial jobs, from agriculture to industry and even services.

There were also all sorts of shortages, and things that didn't work, ration cards like in Poland etc. Even if you had money, you had not means to spend on nicer things because of waiting lists for items like cars. In some countris like Albania, there were waiting lists even for cutlery and, for a time, clothes.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> There were also all sorts of shortages, and things that didn't work, ration cards like in Poland etc. Even if you had money, you had not means to spend on nicer things because of waiting lists for items like cars.


In the movie Goodbye Lenin the East German woman says: "Wow, our car arrived after only 3 years!"



Attus said:


> In communist Eastern Europe the base of the society was equality. OK, just as orwell wrote it, some were more equal than others, but basically, in everyday life, we all were equal.
> It ment that every one had a job. Yes, many people had nothing to do in this job, or there were 16 people doing what 4 could have been done, but there was no unemployment. In Hungary, having no job, was a crime that time! On the other side, everyone got the same salary. Those, that worked hard, got no more than the lazy ones. Those, being skillful, working more efficient, got no more than the ones being heavy handed and working with a low efficiency. Equality, was the motto.
> And, of course, this method had the impact that no one worked really hard. Why should have any? And in a nation where no one is working hard, where no one want to study more, no development is possible.
> Nonetheless, safety was much better than nowadays. Every one had a job, every one had a salary, no need for additional money. And if you steal money, how could you use it? Buying a car? Western cars were impossible to be bought in Hungary. Building a house? Right, the government came and asked how you got the money for that - for sure you could not have it from a good salary, since salaries were more or less equal.
> 
> And the wind of change came. Equality is over.
> For people that can work hard, that are skillful, that study more, it is favourable. For lazy people, it is not. Now they have a low salary, or no job at all. For uneducated people the situation now is far worse than in communism: they're unemployed now. They want go back to communism.
> And good safety, too, is over. Lazy people steal instead of work. Having no job is not punished any more. And you can not trust police for a large share of police are criminals as well.


With those arguments many leftists support the Cuban regime saying that poverty level, education, health care, children living conditions are much better in Cuba rather than in capitalistic Latin American countries. In this case is probably true since most of Latin America is very poor, but it wasn't the case of the pre-1989 Europe where all commie countries were behind free countries.

I think the failure of communist regimes is related to the fact that the self-determination and the private property are part of the human nature.
So, a regime that deprives men of the chance to chose their own career, accumulating money and buy whatever they want (in relation with their sisposable income, of course), cannot be imposed pacifically but only with the oppression. This is because most people would never accept to get rid of what they have or what they like to have for the sake of the community and, if free elections exist, they would vote against the communist party.
The main weapons used by commie governments were: limitation of freedom of speech and limitation of freedom of travel. This means that communist rulers recognized the fact that their regime was unpopular so they didn't allowed their citizen to defect. If they really thought that communism was a paradise, they wouldn't have set the iron curtain because "nobody would leave this paradise".
If everybody was freely allowed to leave commie countries, most of ambitious, educated and skilled people would have moved West and only poor, elderly, homeless and uneducated people that don't want to work hard would have remained in the East. In that way the economics of Eastern countries, without skilled labor, would have collapsed.

Another problem is that communist regimes (but also every sort of dictatorial regime) spend load of money for military expenses and leave the general population with hardly sufficient food.


----------



## Broccolli

Well nothing in the World is completely black or white, in most cases is grey.  


Didnt know about this


----------



## Verso

^^ Why do you think they built the Cultural Centre of European Space Technologies in Vitanje last year?









http://www.radioantena.si/img/Gallery/Photo/im_f7b0a00f-cb4e-472f-bbcf-f608ee5375be.jpg


----------



## Broccolli

Verso said:


> ^^ Why do you think they built the Cultural Centre of European Space Technologies in Vitanje last year?


Yea i know about Herman Potočnik - Noordung, and his work, but i didnt know about Yugoslav space program.


----------



## Verso

Yes, Slovenia can into space.


----------



## Broccolli

Yes We Can! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uX2cS8wvQHI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWS3yTqtapo


----------



## Attus

Suburbanist said:


> The problem with low-skilled people is related to industrialization and automation. They greatly reduced the need for low-skilled menial jobs, from agriculture to industry and even services


Yes, it is true. But you must see that in Eastern Europe it broke in 1989-90 very quickly. In the 70's and 80's factories gave people a job, even if their work was not needed at all. In 1989 or '90 it was over and lots of undereducated people lost their job suddenly, in a very short period. A large part of them have not found a new job since then. 
And now all of them say: In communism I had a job which I lost through the fall of communism, so let's get communism back!


----------



## Road_UK

But after communism major western European and Japanese corporations have opened up plants in eastern Europe due to cheap labour. I know, because I used to collect and deliver car parts and mobile phones in Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia.


----------



## Fron

Attus said:


> In communist Eastern Europe the base of the society was equality. OK, just as orwell wrote it, some were more equal than others, but basically, in everyday life, we all were equal.
> It ment that every one had a job. Yes, many people had nothing to do in this job, or there were 16 people doing what 4 could have been done, but there was no unemployment. In Hungary, having no job, was a crime that time! On the other side, everyone got the same salary. Those, that worked hard, got no more than the lazy ones. Those, being skillful, working more efficient, got no more than the ones being heavy handed and working with a low efficiency. Equality, was the motto.
> And, of course, this method had the impact that no one worked really hard. Why should have any? And in a nation where no one is working hard, where no one want to study more, no development is possible.
> Nonetheless, safety was much better than nowadays. Every one had a job, every one had a salary, no need for additional money. And if you steal money, how could you use it? Buying a car? Western cars were impossible to be bought in Hungary. Building a house? Right, the government came and asked how you got the money for that - for sure you could not have it from a good salary, since salaries were more or less equal.
> 
> And the wind of change came. Equality is over.
> For people that can work hard, that are skillful, that study more, it is favourable. For lazy people, it is not. Now they have a low salary, or no job at all. For uneducated people the situation now is far worse than in communism: they're unemployed now. They want go back to communism.
> And good safety, too, is over. Lazy people steal instead of work. Having no job is not punished any more. And you can not trust police for a large share of police are criminals as well.


That you wrote is true for the stalinist Rákosi era (pre-1956), but nor for later. 
1. In the Merkur shops you could order western cars.
2. There was wage differentialization. An electric engineer has a lot higher salary than a cleaner. Wages did differ company to company.
3. You could accumulate wealth by running small enterprises or doing 8+4(state+GMK) shifts on the price of self-exploitation.
4. You could spend that money on large houses, cars, fashion, hobby gardens, summer houses at Lake Balaton, etc...

55180520


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> (some people told me it smelt of cow shit :nuts.


When it was new, my car never smelt of cow shit.
I guess we're talking about two different kinds of smell :lol:


----------



## Verso

Nice new pavement on the sidewalk.


----------



## cinxxx

Verso said:


> Nice new pavement on the sidewalk.


They put fiber optics there last year...


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> When it was new, my car never smelt of cow shit.
> I guess we're talking about two different kinds of smell :lol:


Regarding the smell of a car interior, my future father-in-law has bought a used (approx. 2 years old) vehicle with some driven kilometres. I was really suprised when I sat in since it smelt as a pure new car as well. 

Maybe every car we drive has its own smell, but as we use it daily, the smell becomes ordinary to our nose. Perhaps, the other people who we don't usually travel with, can smell the smell (yo dawg) of our cars and furhermore it may smell as a novelty to them. Who knows?


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> Maybe every car we drive has its own smell, but as we use it daily, the smell becomes ordinary to our nose. Perhaps, the other people who we don't usually travel with, can smell the smell (yo dawg) of our cars and furhermore it may smell as a novelty to them. Who knows?


I don't think so. When I travel in other people's cars, I never smell the new car smell... unless it's new, of course :bash:


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> I don't think so. When I travel in other people's cars, I never smell the new car smell... unless it's new, of course :bash:


really?! i do. actually, i don't feel it in my car because i get used on it.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## volodaaaa

Two Russians tried to fool a Ukrainian policeman by speaking english. Could be fake but is still good and funny


----------



## italystf

100% fake, he would have been arrested for joking in that way, he should have better paid the fine. And, if it was real, the cop would have been more angry at the end, after he discovered he was mocked!


----------



## Road_UK

Depends on the cop. German cops don't have a sense of humour, Ukraine I don't know.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> 100% fake, he would have been arrested for joking in that way, he should have better paid the fine. And, if it was real, the cop would have been more angry at the end, after he discovered he was mocked!


Why would you be arrested for joking? I don't think it's prohibited for Russians to speak English in Ukraine. And I doubt Ukrainian cops would play in a joke video like that.


----------



## volodaaaa

^^^^^^

I suppose it depends on particular policeman and on his/her mood possibly. 

A friend of mine has been caught by a police to check the car mandatory equipment (especially reflective jacket). In Slovakia, you are obliged to have the reflective jacket at hand, so that you can get out of the car with the jacket on in case of any accident. The friend had the jacket in the trunk since according to him, it was waste of place to have it at hand. As the police asked him to show the reflective jacket, he just crawled to backseat, opened the trunk from there, took the jacket, crawled back to frontseat, put the jacket on, got out of car and asked police "problem?" :troll: The policemen just LOLed and let him go. :lol:

But I have also personally experienced a policeman who took everything too seriously. I just passed over the traffic light through red light (actually it was amber, but police does not care) and if I tried to relieve it, he got angry and almost seized my driving licence. I better have paid.


----------



## cinxxx

Took some pictures today


----------



## Broccolli

^^

Approved by Primož Kozmus Olympic gold medalist in hammer throw


----------



## Peines

cinxxx said:


>


It remembers me Saab…










:weird:


----------



## bogdymol

Watch from 0:30 :goodnight:runaway::fiddle:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

"holy shit" LOL.

Bears are actually great tree climbers. You can't hide from a bear climbing in a tree.


----------



## volodaaaa

To manual transmission drivers. Do you often brake your car by shifting down or brake only by using brakes?


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> To manual transmission drivers. Do you often brake your car by shifting down or brake only by using brakes?


shifting down as much as possible.


----------



## bogdymol

I also break shifting down. If I'm going downhill then I will use the engine brake at full capacity.

You drive an automatic?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Never in the Netherlands, except in parking garages. Engine braking makes no sense in an ultra-flat country like the Netherlands.


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> Never in the Netherlands, except in parking garages. Engine braking makes no sense in an ultra-flat country like the Netherlands.


It saves on fuel.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I usually let the vehicle roll out as much as possible, but I don't shift down to decelerate ahead of a traffic light or off-ramp.


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> I usually let the vehicle roll out as much as possible, but I don't shift down to decelerate ahead of a traffic light or off-ramp.


I try to do it, but I am not always that patient. It also forces one to react to the road beforehand and make the drive smoother, but slower. Most of the time one has to change the gear anyway, so it's quite ok to utilize it a bit.

Although, I use breaks in slowing down for possible priority of those countless right hand side streets. Basically inside build up area it is mostly pointless to use engine break, aside from roundabouts and turning (because that's the only place where one changes the gear anyway).


----------



## volodaaaa

Surel said:


> I try to do it, but I am not always that patient. It also forces one to react to the road beforehand and make the drive smoother, but slower. Most of the time one has to change the gear anyway, so it's quite ok to utilize it a bit.
> 
> Although, I use breaks in slowing down for possible priority of those countless right hand side streets. Basically inside build up area it is mostly pointless to use engine break, aside from roundabouts and turning (because that's the only place where one changes the gear anyway).


I always try to do the same. But still think it might have sense to engine brake in built up areas as the speed limits are set quite low. I have experienced shifting down to second gear may slow down the vehicle from fifty to twenty. Then it is better for brakes preservation. 

Obviously if i have to suddenly slowdown eg in case of accident on motorway, i do not bother about engine braking.


----------



## hofburg

It saves money on breaks maintenance and fuel. I always engine break, I like shifting  but one must be moderate on clutch as well.


----------



## Verso

How does it save money on fuel? Isn't it the other way around? Less revolutions - less fuel?


----------



## hofburg

I dont know, but I saw already comsuption computer showing minimal comsuption when using clutch + break combo, instead of engine breaking


----------



## Peines

I rarely use the brakes, they even have dusk an oxide on it and the car only have +56k kms…

In fact, *I use "shift down & shift up"*. Yes, I said shift up. My Polo, like TDIs and other engines, has injection system controlled by computer and it has a program that disconnect the fuel injection when the engine can be moved by the movement of the wheels.

So, if the car can be moved by inertia and the wheels are connecter to the engine, the consumption will be zero. That's why I shift up, the car still "roll out" but the fuel injection will be disconnected, plus, my car has a low retention rate.

Also I shift down when I want to reduce speed or stop, or even maintain the speed when I downhill, and the injection will be disconnected.

Obviously the injection is disconnected if I don't touch the accelerator.

But in city normally I roll out, specially if I was in 1st or 2nd gear and the stop, give way or red light is far away.

Also I roll out inside parkings. In my garage (a 4 semi-level underground garage ) I roll out down hill the 8 ramps until my spot.


----------



## Wilhem275

Verso said:


> How does it save money on fuel? Isn't it the other way around? Less revolutions - less fuel?


Just ask the expert :nuts:
In modern engines (let's say all those with electronic injection), when you engine brake, the "cut-off" function is engaged: the engine rotates but no fuel is injected. The engine is moved by the vehicle's kinetic energy, flowing through the powertrain; and that energy is spent contrasting the engine's internal frictions, thus slowing down the vehicle.

In fact you can have three conditions:
- idle, at minimum rpm, with a minimum of fuel injected in order to win the internal frictions
- accelerating (or keeping constant speed), with fuel injected to generate the necessary amount of torque
- coasting (= engine braking), with no fuel injected

Slowing down a vehicle means dissipating the amount of kinetic energy previously gained by burning fuel while accelerating. You have two main options (plus all shades of gray in the middle):
1) you can depress the clutch and apply brakes, which means you will convert kinetic energy to heat generated by the brakes fricton (consuming them), AND you will burn fuel to let the engine idle. This can also be dangerous because getting in a bend without a gear engaged can easily challenge the vehicle's balance.
2) you can lift the gas pedal, so that the cut-off function will be immedately engaged and no fuel will be injected, and energy will be converted into bringing the engine to higher revs, as we said before.
The higher the revs, the higher the amount of energy needed to push the engine (due to more internal frictions), so shifting down to a lower gear will bring to a quicker stop; but also to higher wear, and that's way it's a sporty trick to not exceed with.
A good rule-of-thumb is to keep the same speed-gear ratio you apply when accelerating, or just forcing it a bit down. Shift down before the engine reaches its minimum revs (same way you shift up, but reversed).

The only limits of coasting are that the rate of kinetig energy reduction will be lower than by simply braking, so you will need more space/time to reach the same low speed; and, of course, when the engine comes to its minimum revs it can't go down anymore and you'll need to brake anyway.
In real situations you will usually combine the two methods, with brakes integrating the cut-off operation. This way you will have all the advantages of coasting while still perfectly controlling your stopping distance.

Also, never shift down into 1st gear because it's too weak to withstand full deceleration, and you may damage the transmission.
Unless you drive my damn Passat TDI, which thanks to stupid "Bluemotion" engineering has such looong ratios that 2nd gear can't go below 25 km/h :bash: only vehicle with which I shift all the way to 1st gear.


I make an intense use of coasting and I can state that it's the main way of reducing fuel (and brakes) consumption. A LOT of fuel.
Compared with my parents (with same cars), who don't use it enough, I burn 30 to 50% less fuel, and I'm in an ultra-flat area 
When I first drove an A/T I felt dumb, too much brake pressing and no control when setting up curves... then I discovered the trick for forcing it into lower gears :banana:

A good way to improve the system (and general driving safety) is keeping a good distance and anticipate what's going on in front of the car you're following: e.g. shift down immediately when next cars are braking or signalling a turn, or if the traffic light down the street turned yellow (and you won't reach it in time...).
The trick at traffic lights is great because coasting from a long distance means I may still be at 20-30 kph when it turns green*, so I'll speed up immediately and with LOT less fuel.

Other tricks are, of course, keeping a perfectly constant speed (a good distance helps a lot); and my experience says that it's better a strong acceleration, to get quickly to constant speed, than a loooong mild acceleration (less fuel per distance, but for much more time!).


So I find the best possible behaviour is to accelerate quickly, then keeping constant speed and wide distance, and decelerate as slowly as possible.
*This will be great both for fuel consumption AND to keep a smooth traffic flow.*

There's no need to drive as grandma if you want to save fuel... you may even waste it.

I'm an absolute pro with these issues 


*some new Dutch lights fooled me  they're permanently red on all directions until you pass the sensor, then they give you an instant but short green.
So I arrived ultra slow on the sensor, very distant from the intersection, then I got an unexpected quick green-yellow sequence and I had to run to catch it :lol:


----------



## Verso

^^ Too long, didn't read. :colgate: :jk: Thanks for your exhaustive explanation, I learnt a few new things. Once I drove down from a mountain pass in neutral to save on fuel. icard:


----------



## Surel

^^

It's some time already but I remember that when doing the driving license rides my instructor insisted on engine breaking and explained it quite well why.

Besides fuel economy and letting breaks to rest, it is also good for the engine itself as the forces on the engine are smaller than the combustion forces.


----------



## Suburbanist

I like automatic transmission. Modern A/T let you up- and down-shift. I drove a car with 6 automatic shifts on A/T, pretty cool.


----------



## Peines

^^

Modern A/T are pretty awesome.  

Nothing to do with old american 4 speed with torque conversion.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> ^^ Too long, didn't read. :colgate: :jk: Thanks for your exhaustive explanation, I learnt a few new things. Once I drove down from a mountain pass in neutral to save on fuel. icard:


i did it to. and burnt the brakes.


----------



## Road_UK

Most tourists do that around here. The smell of burning brakes is unbearable.


----------



## x-type

Road_UK said:


> Most tourists do that around here. The smell of burning brakes is unbearable.


----------



## italystf

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Friu...ellAustria/393396410713453?hc_location=stream
Friuli-Venezia Giulia, autonomous region of Austria :lol:
Again together? :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

Peines said:


> ^^
> 
> Modern A/T are pretty awesome.
> 
> Nothing to do with old american 4 speed with torque conversion.


It depends on a car. Once I have driven a car with automatic transmission and did not like it. The car was lazy. I stepped on the acceleration pedal with full strength, but the car reacted few seconds late. It was Seat Althea.


----------



## cinxxx

*Meanwhile in Košice* - wall against Roma erected
http://spectator.sme.sk/articles/view/50685/10/another_wall_against_roma_erected_in_kosice.html

There is even Wiki article about this kind of wall
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_wall


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> *Meanwhile in Košice* - wall against Roma erected
> http://spectator.sme.sk/articles/view/50685/10/another_wall_against_roma_erected_in_kosice.html
> 
> There is even Wiki article about this kind of wall
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_wall


^^
Bsht...
My family owns a small garden with small cottage. It is in Bratislava in district, where lot of homeless move around. Since we have bought it, the cottage has been robed many times by them. Thus my parents have decided to build up a wall. No robbery since that. 

So what is the difference between my case and case if they had been Roma? Would I have been considered as a racist?

What's is wrong on preserving my own property? Especially when it is constantly damaged by other (regardless of nationality, ethnicity or religiosity) people?


----------



## cinxxx

I only posted the articles, didn't issue any opinions. I think I stated my point of view regarding these things in the posts before. I'm waiting for the "Easter Europeans are racists" post though


----------



## Road_UK

Ah, an attempt to be provocative.


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> I only posted the articles, didn't issue any opinions. I think I stated my point of view regarding these things in the posts before. I'm waiting for the "Easter Europeans are racists" post though


Some of them surely are. But making an issue of those walls is nothing than pretending at least minimal activity by those NGOs.


Let's imagine I have bought a house with a yard. Now I've got two neighbors - first one is annoyingly social (always wants to have some parties, always minds my bussiness etc.) and the second one is a bit lazy and always walks across my yard to reduce time taking to reach the bus stop. Both are the same nationality, ethnicity, sexual-orientation and religiosity as me. I'd prefer to have more privacy, thus I've decided to erect a wall and change my locks. Everything is alright.

And now pretend one of them, or better both, are Roma. Regardless I have taken an action because of their particular behaviour (and not nationality) I would be marked as the racist by those NGOs.

According to them, as I have Roma people as neighbours, I should tear down all walls, unlock and open all my doors and write a sign above the entrance "Dear Roma neighbours, welcome. You can take everything from my house. Don't bother to asking me at all. Best wishes".

Perhaps, this behaviour would be anti-racist. 
:cheers:


----------



## Verso

We aren't by gypsies again?


----------



## Road_UK

Not me . I'm innocent.


----------



## x-type

just stalking :lurker:


----------



## cinxxx

:lol:


----------



## bogdymol

TomTom (street view?) in Pecica, jud. Arad:


----------



## Alex_ZR

Just returned from a three-day-trip to Slovenia and I haven't seen any Google car...


----------



## keokiracer

bogdymol said:


> TomTom (street view?) in Pecica, jud. Arad:


The hell is a Belgium car doing there. Didn't they have a more local car?


----------



## Verso

Alex_ZR said:


> Just returned from a three-day-trip to Slovenia and I haven't seen any Google car...


Me neither, if you feel any better. :lol: Where were you and did you like it?


----------



## Alex_ZR

Verso said:


> Me neither, if you feel any better. :lol: Where were you and did you like it?


Ljubljana, Predjamski grad, Bled, Kranjska Gora plus Trieste which is not in Slovenia, but not so far away... :lol: This wasn't my first time in Slovenia, and I liked it as always.


----------



## cinxxx

bogdymol said:


> TomTom (street view?) in Pecica, jud. Arad


I saw a similar car from TomTom in Ingolstadt at my workplace.

Meanwhile, also in Romania


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> I saw a similar car from TomTom in Ingolstadt at my workplace.
> 
> Meanwhile, also in Romania


Opel Vectra Sedan is definitely not a car to moving :lol:


----------



## cinxxx

I think this will be the last, I don't want to bore you


----------



## RipleyLV

cinxxx said:


> Meanwhile, also in Romania


Meanwhile in Russia (3 years ago)


----------



## volodaaaa

RipleyLV said:


> Meanwhile in Russia (3 years ago)


:lol::lol::lol: I'd like to see him driving under (e.g. trolleybus) overhead wires


----------



## Verso

Yes, cinxxx, nice car.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

How are those LED headlights?

Love the new Leon, BTW.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

In Tallinn, a week ago one guy was trying to run from the police on a moped. He didn't get too far but it did make an entertaining video:


----------



## Attus

^^ Actually I've never tried to escape from police (and the last time I drove a moped was 16 years ago), but if I tried to do it I surely wouldn't take the widest roads of the town but narrow ones where the police car can't drive.


----------



## Verso

I didn't know there was a leaning tower in Črni Kal, SLO. Competition for Pisa. 









http://www.panoramio.com/photo/82530557


----------



## Wilhem275

It seems they also have a leaning Scudo  Pretty much everything is leaning, in that picture :lol:


----------



## Verso

Indeed. 









http://www.siol.net/avtomoto/zanimivosti/izleti/2007/11/z_oplom_gt_po_brkinih.aspx

Apparently it happens because of interaction between limestone and flysch.


----------



## x-type

Wilhem275 said:


> It seems they also have a leaning Scudo  Pretty much everything is leaning, in that picture :lol:


it's Expert


----------



## Wilhem275

Which means it's a Scudo :troll:


----------



## x-type

Wilhem275 said:


> Which means it's a Scudo :troll:


i'm splitting the hairs


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> I didn't know there was a leaning tower in Črni Kal, SLO. Competition for Pisa.
> 
> http://www.panoramio.com/photo/82530557


Well, there are three leaning towers in Pisa . And one in Zaragoza.


----------



## Suburbanist

There is a leaning tower in Leeuwarden, Netherlands as well


Leeuwarden Oldehove by eurograd, on Flickr


----------



## g.spinoza

Leaning towers in Bologna:


----------



## Verso

Yes, there are more leaning towers in the world than we may think (I thought there was just the one in Pisa). Here is a list, but there is none from Slovenia (and it's appalling that we never hear about it even here).


----------



## cinxxx

There was on in Timisoara some years ago. It was demolished and something else built there.
It was really badly inclined, I think it was roughly 10 years ago.

it's right


----------



## Wilhem275

It is interesting that all these leaning towers became so famous, while actually being structural failures :lol:


----------



## CNGL

In the Wikipedia list is the demolished Torre Nueva, while the one of San Juan de los Panetes (Which is still standing) is missing (Both in Zaragoza, BTW)
And the three leaning towers of Pisa are San Nicola, San Michele degli Scalzi (I wasn't sure about the name) and the most obvious one .


----------



## Road_UK

What if these towers would stop leaning? That would leave a hell of a mess...


----------



## g.spinoza

Wilhem275 said:


> It is interesting that all these leaning towers became so famous, while actually being structural failures :lol:


Technically they're not structural failures: they are still up and standing after centuries (Bologna Towers were built a whole millennium ago). To me this is a complete success.

It's just a poor choice of location (bad terrain).


----------



## Verso

CNGL said:


> Well, there are three leaning towers in Pisa . *And one in Zaragoza.*


Demolished in 1893. :troll:


----------



## CNGL

^^



CNGL said:


> In the Wikipedia list is the demolished Torre Nueva, while *the one of San Juan de los Panetes (Which is still standing)* is missing (Both in Zaragoza, BTW)


https://maps.google.es/maps?ll=41.657155,-0.881106&spn=0.004441,0.009645&t=m&z=17&layer=c&cbll=41.657122,-0.881395&panoid=6EPjROvdbPFLMTMrVWCUJA&cbp=12,31.03,,0,-22.63

:troll: x2


----------



## cinxxx

Today I pushed the peddle a little on my car. Went to 175kmh on the clock, the car felt really ok. Only that the A9 between Nürnberg and Ingolstadt has some curvy places where you feel the adrenaline, so driving is not so relaxed/lade back like with 120.


----------



## MajKeR_

In case of leaning towers, we also have something - in Toruń:


----------



## MajKeR_

ChrisZwolle said:


> Most of the money goes to brakes and suspension, I suppose I may have damaged the suspension on the bumpy stretch of A11 in Germany.


So I should drive without wheels already, from that ' perfect ' condition of Polish roads...


----------



## Attus

Some pictures of today's Rheinbach Classics oltimer festival HERE.


----------



## Verso

Awesome:


----------



## Road_UK




----------



## italystf

Stupid driver can't do an u-turn and blocks the traffic in Naples for a while.


----------



## Verso

^^ We've had it here already; it's fake, but still funny.


----------



## CNGL

About today banner (Loarre castle, which is about 30 km Northwest of my hometown), I have visited it a ton of times, not less than twice a year when I was a kid. The main reason is simple: One of my grandmothers is from the town located below it, so I went there on a regular basis. But now I haven't been there since October last year, so maybe it's time for another visit.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


>


Fake. Shadows do not match.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## CNGL

Hey hey HEY! Spanish IS NOT Mexican!


----------



## Wilhem275

Very trollish, and Italian was almost completely wrong (and Spanish too), but still funny :lol:

_Geschlechtverkehr _is super silly if you translate it technically :lol: "Generation traffic" :lol:



CNGL said:


> Hey hey HEY! Spanish IS NOT Mexican!


I don't believe you.










:troll:


----------



## Peines

CNGL said:


> Hey hey HEY! Spanish IS NOT Mexican!


I can't agree that, because Mexican and Spanish are the same language as British English and American English are English.

:cheers:


----------



## x-type

Wilhem275 said:


> Very trollish, and Italian was almost completely wrong (and Spanish too), but still funny :lol:


actually, that Mexican guy has more Italian accent than Italian one :lol:


----------



## Road_UK




----------



## volodaaaa

and my favourite one


----------



## Peines

Even more funny, the difference to say Concha in Spain (A women name and a shell) and what the hell means concha in Argentina… guess what… :troll:


----------



## volodaaaa

Peines said:


> Even more funny, the difference to say Concha in Spain (A women name and a shell) and what the hell means concha in Argentina… guess what… :troll:


Right now I am browsing the internet, but I am still unsuccessful to find the similar photo.

The photo has been made in tavern focusing on daily menu offer. In Slovak language there has been written "Mušličková polievka", what literally means "Soup with shell(-shaped pasta)". The English translation below stated "Pussy soup" :lol:

We also call that you-know-what-I-mean "pussy" as "shell" due to visual similarity. A small translation error.


Edit: I have finally found it  It is in Czech language, but the nature is the same.


----------



## Verso

We call football _nogomet_, which means "foot-throw".


----------



## italystf

^^ In Italian is _calcio_, that is also completely different from football.

This is a funny translation in a Chinese hospital 








Istead of the scientific term "******", they wrote a ruder slang.


----------



## Verso

Tell more; why did you punch him? opcorn:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Maybe for asking too many questions...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ :lol: Let's just say he was begging for it and I got punished for reacting so stupidly...definitely keeps me away from getting into this kind of trouble in the future, though.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch Wikipedia went through great lengths to become the second largest Wikipedia. They took a very active "quantity over quality" approach. Its depth is only 10% or less than that of the 10 largest Wikipedias. The Swedes seem to be doing the same. 

Most Dutch seem to prefer the English language Wikipedia though, especially on non-Dutch subjects. Statistics show the Netherlands has one of the highest proportion of users of the English language Wikipedia, despite having the #2 Wikipedia available.


----------



## cinxxx

I also mostly use the English one, but for German specific things the German one is better. Can't say the same for the Romanian, I found in many cases better and richer articles on the English and also on the German site, especially for the Banat and Transylvania part.


----------



## Verso

I'm surprised to see that the Slovak Wikipedia has just one third more articles than the Slovenian one. I very often see _slovenčina_ when I'm searching for _sloven*š*čina_ (sometimes accidentally click on it) and then there's like one sentence.

What's "Total", btw?


----------



## keber

And some technical things, especially road and rail transport articles are in average way better on German Wikipedia.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Articles about Croatian motorways are also much better on EN Wikipedia than HR Wikipedia. German Wikipedia also has fairly good coverage about roads in southeastern Europe. Usually specific projects like that are dependent on a very small group of volunteers.


----------



## italystf

How is calculated the depth of a Wikipedia? Average lenght of articles?
However stubs aren't that bad, more people are likely to expand an existing article instead of creating a new one.

Road-wise, it.wiki is very detailed about Italian roads but very scarce and outdated about foreign roads.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Depth


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Articles about Croatian motorways are also much better on EN Wikipedia than HR Wikipedia. German Wikipedia also has fairly good coverage about roads in southeastern Europe. Usually specific projects like that are dependent on a very small group of volunteers.


Will be no more if you say so


----------



## cinxxx

How can you get back the old Google Maps?
If I chose the "Get old maps" option, I only get it for the current session, when I get to Google Maps again, the new version is enabled...


----------



## bogdymol

For road-related articles I mostly use the Dutch wegenwiki.nl :wink:


----------



## x-type

cinxxx said:


> How can you get back the old Google Maps?
> If I chose the "Get old maps" option, I only get it for the current session, when I get to Google Maps again, the new version is enabled...


as i was affraid - new maps suck big time. they have successfully screwed well running easy-to-use thing hno:


----------



## cinxxx

^^It's slower, I don't find the easy buttons anymore. Can't see pictures on the whole map. No Streetview thingie to see where there is Streetview.
What are these people thinking? 
The same with the stupid Facebook new look.

So do you know how to get the old one back permanently? It's stupid to have to select it every time...

LE: I found it, thank God!


----------



## x-type

the worst thing is that is uses obviously at elast 50% more resources than previous version, what makes it stucking, irritating and slow.


----------



## bogdymol

I still don't know how to make a multiple-destination route on the new Google Maps. And more, I can't get the short link for a map to share, but only the 1000-characters long link


----------



## Fatfield

Google street view has just been updated here in England. I checked out my street and nothing is out of the ordinary apart from my cat peering out of the window directly at the camera. :banana:


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> I still don't know how to make a multiple-destination route on the new Google Maps. And more, I can't get the short link for a map to share, but only the 1000-characters long link


Apparently, the totally ducked it up.


----------



## bogdymol

In Paralia Katerini.


----------



## italystf

Epic prank on the beach :rofl:


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> Going on a great trip in 2 weeks :banana: Map: http://goo.gl/izmlOQ


What will you do to hofburg?


----------



## hofburg

maybe we'll meet for a drink if bogdymol won't be too tired of driving


----------



## lukaszek89

Squadron of Mig's-21 landing on highway strip in Poland. Take off's after refueling and rearming. Scenes from polish movie "NA niebie i na ziemi" (1973)


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> What will you do to hofburg?


But what will I do to you? Remember that I pass through Ljubljana :naughty:



hofburg said:


> maybe we'll meet for a drink if bogdymol won't be too tired of driving


We could do that :cheers:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

:facepalm:


----------



## Alex_ZR

Once again blue spots of images from Panoramio returned to Google Maps (which you can see by picking Street View man). They often disappear from time to time, maybe because of some changes or maintenance...


----------



## Lum Lumi

Alex_ZR said:


> Russian 2-year-old girl recognises car brands:


She's very cute.


----------



## bogdymol

Lum Lumi said:


> She's very cute.


----------



## bogdymol

Why is Montenegro coloured lighter than the sorrunding countries on Google Maps?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It recently got newer base imagery for the entire country.


----------



## Wilhem275

Possibly photographed in a different moment (a later update, usually).

EDIT: damn, I got beaten


----------



## Alex_ZR

Montenegro is photographed in high resolution, which may not be satellite but airplane shot. Interesting thing is that high resolution follows the border of Montenegro.


----------



## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> Montenegro is photographed in high resolution, which may not be satellite but airplane shot. Interesting thing is that high resolution follows the border of Montenegro.


It is not that difficult to apply a mask on image montage. Btw. you are right about the "satellite images". It is seemingly the result of aerial remote sensing. Notice there are no clouds at all.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## italystf

RipleyLV said:


> Border between Europe and Asia: http://goo.gl/maps/xOKJI


There are many countries split between two continents but Istanbul, Turkey and Magnitogorsk, Russia are probably the only transcontinental cities in the world. I didn't know about the second. Are there some more?


----------



## Verso

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_spanning_more_than_one_continent :cheers: (interestingly, Magnitogorsk isn't mentioned)


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_spanning_more_than_one_continent :cheers: (interestingly, Magnitogorsk isn't mentioned)


Now it is. 

This one isn't a transcontinental city but a transcontinental municipality (local administrative subdivision): the Italian municipality of "Lampedusa e Linosa" is made up by those two islands, the first African and the second European.

Also many Greek islands (yellow on the map) belong to Asia


----------



## volodaaaa

Good topic. :cheers:

Ever heard about doubly landlocked countries? There are only two of them in the world


----------



## piotr71

I have recently visited Lunik IX. My god, what a place it is...


----------



## volodaaaa

piotr71 said:


> I have recently visited Lunik IX. My god, what a place it is...


RIP piotr71.
Is not it the same as "Gypsy sisters" on TLC channel?


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> Your sensor(s) seems a little dirty, but pics are good. Last one is perfectly freezed


Yes, I know that my camera's sensor is a little bit dirty. I will try to fix this when I will be in the mood.

There are also other nice pictures if you follow the link that I posted above.



hofburg said:


> with such a collection of dslrs, it's hard to not take photos






piotr71 said:


> I have recently visited Lunik IX. My god, what a place it is...


I googled it... and OMG. In gypsy-land Romania I don't know about any place that looks similar to this. We have our bad areas... but not this bad.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

bogdymol said:


> I googled it... and OMG. In gypsy-land Romania I don't know about any place that looks similar to this. We have our bad areas... but not this bad.


Baia Mare
https://maps.google.com/?ll=47.6584...=FWcH42S1UaMtrofgPbUr7A&cbp=12,133.58,,0,-8.2


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> Yes, I know that my camera's sensor is a little bit dirty. I will try to fix this when I will be in the mood.


Didn't mean to touch a nerve here, sorry.



> There are also other nice pictures if you follow the link that I posted above.


Will do, thanks. I'm not particularly interested in planes but I like good photography.


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> Didn't mean to touch a nerve here, sorry.


No problem :cheers:

I just wanted to say that I know that the sensor is a little dirty, but I was always too lazy to fix it myself or to send the camera to a service. When my lazy-ness will end I will clean it 

edit: an Italian picture for you:


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> No problem :cheers:
> 
> I just wanted to say that I know that the sensor is a little dirty, but I was always too lazy to fix it myself or to send the camera to a service. When my lazy-ness will end I will clean it


Maybe it's just the mirror, in this case it's easier to clean. Just a manual air pump and the camera in-built function to block the mirror in reversed position...

EDIT: Thanks for the Italian picture, but Frecce Tricolori always scare me off... since Rammstein, I guess...


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> EDIT: Thanks for the Italian picture, but Frecce Tricolori always scare me off... since Rammstein, I guess...


I wasn't even born when that tragedy happened.

Look at the crazy drunk Russians how they fly :nuts:


----------



## x-type

the coldest city in Croatia today was - Dubrovnik :lol:


----------



## Verso

^^ Sea is cooling it down a little. 

There was 38.4°C in Ljubljana.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> ^^ Sea is cooling it down a little.


yep. but at the same time Split had 10° more.

there was also another interesting atmospherical condition in Dubrovnik today - the summer fog. very rare thing there. it happened around 9h30 .


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> yep. but at the same time Split had 10° more.


Split is much larger and I assume sea is a bit warmer there, but that doesn't really explain such a big difference. What's the reason for this summer fog? It looks cool.


----------



## bozenBDJ

x-type said:


> yep. but at the same time Split had 10° more.
> 
> there was also another interesting atmospherical condition in Dubrovnik today - the summer fog. very rare thing there. it happened around 9h30 .


Great weather condition there   .


----------



## Surel

bogdymol said:


> I googled it... and OMG. In gypsy-land Romania I don't know about any place that looks similar to this. We have our bad areas... but not this bad.


Lunik IX, just finished kindergarten in before 1990 


















http://www.pluska.sk/fotogaleria-plus7dni/?foto=lunik07.jpg&clanok=567985


----------



## bogdymol

*Google Maps cars from Romania*


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> *Google Maps cars from Romania*


Google Maps cars from Croatia


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Split is much larger and I assume sea is a bit warmer there, but that doesn't really explain such a big difference. What's the reason for this summer fog? It looks cool.


hot and humid air moves from area above warm land to area above colder sea mass. it starts to cool quite fast because of colder water mass under it, and the result are tiny particles of condensed water in the air.

actually, it is the same thing when you see the fog looking like water steam above rivers, ponds, lakes or even smaller creeks, the most often in late august and september mornings.

look here, search for "advekcijska megla"


----------



## cinxxx

Speaking of Google Maps cars, how can you access older Streetview pictures?


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> ^^ Sea is cooling it down a little.
> 
> There was 38.4°C in Ljubljana.


btw weather in Dubrovnik went completely crazy. yesterday they had hardly 28°C early afternoon. during the evening and the night the temperature has been rising (31°C at 2 AM, 33°at 5, 37°at 10), so today they will be among the warmest cities in HR. they are even talking about new record set (interesting, it is only 38,6°, not more)


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> during the evening and the night the temperature has been rising (31°C at 2 AM, 33°at 5


:wtf:


----------



## keokiracer

Yeah it was started by a different user, but just get a couple of pages further in the thread and you'll see Road_UK popping up. I never said he dedicated the thread to ES vs GIB, I said that the thread was dedicated to ES vs GIB.

And DLM. So? Does that make it different? (I never go there )


----------



## bozenBDJ

^^ Thanks for reminding. 

Nah, that forum section is great! :yes::yes:


----------



## Verso

keokiracer said:


> Afaik it's new yeah


Reintroduced after several years.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keokiracer said:


> Afaik it's new yeah


I'm not sure I like it: if I'm going to lurk in Dutch threads seeing how much I understand (I was doing that a few hours ago), I'm not really "participating"....


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> Reintroduced after several years.


You are old


----------



## volodaaaa

Hi guys. I have just managed the journey to Greece with my fiancee and here are some of my findings: 

The bypass of Budapest is something great. What an improvement. Much better than last year. Now they have only to finnish the connection between western and eastern section of M0 and Budapest will become the very good example of how to do it.

Serbia did not disappoint me too. Some section are being renewed. Some drivers drove madly like they have not got any sense for saving their lives. Euro has been accepted at putarinas. I can not tell you which currency they give you back since I had prepared the exact amount.

Macedonians were a bit ridiculous but it might be only my opinion. Someone has written in MK thread that Macedonia officially accepts euro at pay tolls. 

Here is it. The only thing they accept is five euro banknote and then they give you back denars.

About Greece, I like they friendly and peacefully way how they drive. Wide roads, moving to the shoulder when someone overtakes you, no speed traps.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> and then they give you back denars.


It's quite a general habit in non-euro nations that even if euro is accepted in a shop, toll station, etc., change is always in local money. Actually the cashiers don't have change in euro.


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> You are old


And you're a n00b. :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> It's quite a general habit in non-euro nations that even if euro is accepted in a shop, toll station, etc., change is always in local money. Actually the cashiers don't have change in euro.


It was the same during euro changeover. You could still pay in lire but change was given in euro.


----------



## Wilhem275

Which I tried just once, and it was such a mess I immediately gave up the idea and exchanged all lire I had...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> It's quite a general habit in non-euro nations that even if euro is accepted in a shop, toll station, etc., change is always in local money. Actually the cashiers don't have change in euro.


It was standard practice in Europe in the 80s. Even banks and foreign-exchange counters didn't have coin from other countries, so if you wanted to get the most bang for your buck, so to speak, when crossing a border, you'd change money in the country you were leaving. I still have collections of French, Belgian, Dutch, etc., coin somewhere. (Do Dutch people today know what a "rijksdaalder" or a "stuiver" was?)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> (Do Dutch people today know what a "rijksdaalder" or a "stuiver" was?)


People born before the early 1990s will likely know what they were. 

I remember in the late 1990s that there was an outrage that the gas price was approaching a "_rijksdaalder_" per liter (NLG 2.50 per liter). Today we pay the equivalent of 4.00 NLG per liter. A _rijksdaalder_ seems cheap now...


----------



## keokiracer

ChrisZwolle said:


> People born before the early 1990s will likely know what they were.


I know as well 
(1995)


----------



## italystf

The old Dutch 10 cents coin is probably one of the smallest coin ever minted in the world. Even the 1 eurocent is larger.


----------



## hofburg

I saw ISS travelling in the sky couple of minutes ago. pretty cool.


----------



## Peines




----------



## Wilhem275

^^ :lol: :lol: :lol:



hofburg said:


> I saw ISS travelling in the sky couple of minutes ago. pretty cool.


They saw you too:


----------



## keokiracer

Wow... If you violate Youtube copyright laws they force you to answer a f*cking quiz... How f*cking retarded is this... hno:


----------



## bozenBDJ

^^ English please  .


----------



## keokiracer

(Quite ironic that someone made a video that included a video about copyright )


----------



## cinxxx

I'm greeting you from Switzerland. Weather is wonderful.

But driving discipline is horrible, so many people hogging the left lane, it stressed me a lot, also pretty much traffic, even late in the evening. And in towns, cyclists are all over the streets, driving like crazy, almost no cycle paths on the sidewalk, they drive in the middle of the road, on tram tracks...


----------



## Alex_ZR

Meanwhile (actually 2 years ago  ) in Arad:

http://goo.gl/maps/lz2WN

:lol:


----------



## Peines




----------



## DanielFigFoz

Road_UK said:


> About time! M25 finally open for business!


I highly doubt that it'll make any difference, especially not on the M25, I don't think that anything applies on the M25 :lol:.



italystf said:


> Why should they? I'm personally against all such discrimination towards beginner drivers (max 100 on motorways, not powerful cars, double penalities, no rental cars). You're a beginner for the first months, not 3 years.


I got my licence when I was 17, I can't rent a car till I'm 25, which is 8 years. It does sound like a long time but then I see how a good deal of young drivers drive...


----------



## Road_UK

If they were to enforce lane discipline strictly, you might not get these typical UK situations with freight on lane one, an empty middle lane, and practically stationary traffic on lane three.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> Why should they? I'm personally against all such discrimination towards beginner drivers (max 100 on motorways, not powerful cars, double penalities, no rental cars). You're a beginner for the first months, not 3 years.


I may be a slow learner, but I really learnt how to drive after 10 years and an accident. Before that I could drive, but I didn't really _know_ how to drive.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Driving experience expressed in years doesn't tell the whole story. I know people who have a driving license for 6 years, but do not own a car (still live with their parents) and barely drive. 

I'd say that 100 000 kilometers of driving experience makes you an experienced driver. But you never stop to learn on the road, even experienced drivers make mistakes, including me.


----------



## bogdymol

Beeing an experienced driver count both km's driven and years of experience, but it's very important km/year ratio. 

For example, I have an aunt that has her license for 20 years, but I've never seen her driving. But she is an "experienced" driver since she "drives" for 20 years without any accident of traffic fine.

On the other hand, I have a cousin that when he turned 18 he got his license and was hired as a driver in one of his friend's companies. He drove a lot of km's every day in entier Europe because this was his job... and soon he started to drive also trucks. It's clear that after 1 year he had more experience than many people get in 10 years of driving.


----------



## italystf

It depends also by the kind of driving you are accustomed to. Many people have driven for decades, but never or almost never outside their local area. Thus, they would have problems to drive in unfamiliar scenarios like motorways, big cities (if they live in small towns) or mountain roads (if they live in flat areas).


----------



## italystf

@bodgymol
Today I saw an exhibition of the Frecce Tricolori in Lignano.


----------



## makaveli6

Greetings from Gdansk, just got here from Riga. Drove for the first time on any Polish motorway (A1). Those Polish truck drivers on 5xx roads are just crazy. I was driving on this very rural road somewhere near Ketrzyn in the middle of the night. I cant remember which number it was, but it was very narrow and the weather was very foggy (I couldn't see anything further than 5 meters away from me). And those truck drivers were just blasting these roads with 90km/h+ speed. It was a very scary experience, there were countless near head on collisions.


----------



## Attus

My mother has had a driver license for approximately thirty years. She has driven no more than ten thousand kilometers in all her life, and all of them in her local environment, in some small towns and 1+1 roads between them. 
(While my father had a license, my mother haven't driven at all, for several years. Nowadays my father has no license, my mother drives some 2,000 kms yearly). 
But she's "experienced"


----------



## keber

bogdymol said:


> Back home after 3575 km in 7 days in Romania, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy and San Marino. Awesome trip! I think I will share on SSC some pictures from the trip when I will have time.


I'm also just back from Stockholm, done over 4600 km in 12 days.
I'll post some thoughts later but for now most unexpected thing for me was pretty high rate of excessive speeding and road rage on Denmark motorways, by Danish drivers.


----------



## cinxxx

I'm back from an 1850 km trip to Switzerland, Liechtenstein, France (Alsacia), Germany and Austria. Roadmap here

---

Meanwhile in Ingolstadt there's a hostage situation at the old town hall. Also priminister Merkel was expected today in the same are to hold a speech. Situation has nothing to do with her though, it seems a stalker escaped from psychiatry and went to the woman he stalked, that works in the town hall.

More in German here


----------



## Road_UK

keber said:


> I'm also just back from Stockholm, done over 4600 km in 12 days.
> I'll post some thoughts later but for now most unexpected thing for me was pretty high rate of excessive speeding and road rage on Denmark motorways, by Danish drivers.


Yes that always gets to me as well after returning from calm Sweden. These Danes are not pleasant drivers. Some are aggressive and fast, others are dead slow, none of them are really courtesies and lane discipline is never heard of.


----------



## Road_UK

cinxxx said:


> I'm back from an 1850 km trip to Switzerland, Liechtenstein, France (Alsacia), Germany and Austria. Roadmap here
> 
> ---
> 
> Meanwhile in Ingolstadt there's a hostage situation at the old town hall. Also priminister Merkel was expected today in the same are to hold a speech. Situation has nothing to do with her though, it seems a stalker escaped from psychiatry and went to the woman he stalked, that works in the town hall.
> 
> More in German here


Where are you now?


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Driving experience expressed in years doesn't tell the whole story. I know people who have a driving license for 6 years, but do not own a car (still live with their parents) and barely drive.
> 
> I'd say that 100 000 kilometers of driving experience makes you an experienced driver. But you never stop to learn on the road, even experienced drivers make mistakes, including me.


You never stop learning, you mean. ;-)


----------



## g.spinoza

I'm back from a 200 km trip to Fassatal. Not really interesting per se, but I managed to climb 5 peaks in 3 days (40+ km on foot)


----------



## cinxxx

Road_UK said:


> Where are you now?


I'm at work, in Gaimersheim Gewerbegebiet...


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> I'm back from a 200 km trip to Fassatal. Not really interesting per se, but I managed to climb 5 peaks in 3 days (40+ km on foot)


I though you were somewhere in Austria before realizing that Fassatal was the famous valley in Trentino between Moena and Canazei that we call Val di Fassa (where I spent summer holidays in 2010-11-12). :lol:
I never heard the German name in Italy, cause it's in Trentino, not Alto Adige and thus not bilingual.
Anyway, nice mountains there.


----------



## Road_UK

cinxxx said:


> I'm at work, in Gaimersheim Gewerbegebiet...


Good. You're off the hook.


----------



## cinxxx

Yep. It looks as there were 3 hostages, one of them the vice-mayor, he was released, but there still are 2, the stalked woman and another person. The hostage taker seems to have a gun, and police fears he will use it.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> I though you were somewhere in Austria before realizing that Fassatal was the famous valley in Trentino between Moena and Canazei that we call Val di Fassa (where I spent summer holidays in 2010-11-12). :lol:
> I never heard the German name in Italy, cause it's in Trentino, not Alto Adige and thus not bilingual.
> Anyway, nice mountains there.


You're right, it's not bilingual. At least, not with German. It's actually bilingual Italian-Ladin, sometimes even monolingual with Ladin (street names are only in Ladin, at least in Vigo/Vich). German signs are widespread, though, due to closeness with Südtirol and the massive presence of German tourists.

I thought Fassatal would be more recognizable to our Northern European forumers here than Val di Fassa (or Val de Fascia).


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> You're right, it's not bilingual. At least, not with German. It's actually bilingual Italian-Ladin, sometimes even monolingual with Ladin (street names are only in Ladin, at least in Vigo/Vich). German signs are widespread, though, due to closeness with Südtirol and the massive presence of German tourists.
> 
> I thought Fassatal would be more recognizable to our Northern European forumers here than Val di Fassa (or Val de Fascia).


Right. The Ladin language, spoken in several places in the provinces of Trento, Bolzano and Belluno and recognized as minority language by the Italian state, is very widespread in Val di Fassa, where more than 80% of people are Ladin motherlanguage. However, they all speak Italian perfecly, unlikely many germanophone Suedtirolers that sounds like foreigners while they speak Italian. In Vigo di Fassa there's a museum of the Ladin culture.


----------



## Road_UK

Of course. The real Südtirolians don't consider themselves Italian, and they're still a few of those who don't speak Italian at all...


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Of course. The real Südtirolians don't consider themselves Italian, and they're still a few of those who don't speak Italian at all...


And it's not just them. My late father-in-law from Abruzzo didn't speak Italian either...

Of course yours is a generalization, there are many Südtirolers who feel Italian. Race walker Alex Schwazer comes to mind, who always felt Italian (and for that was threatened by the Schutzen, Tirolean nationalists). Of course, he also said he didn't do doping...


----------



## italystf

Many 70+ y.o. Italians don't speak Italian or speak it uncorrenctly. In fact, especially in rural areas (also in the north), it was common to leave school after few years of elementary school because they have to help their parents in the fields or take care of their younger brothers. People hardly any travelled so they could communicate each other with the local dialect.


----------



## Verso

Yesterday I saw someone walking his cat; have you ever seen that?


----------



## cinxxx

^^Yep :lol:


----------



## Road_UK

Seen it? I've done it!


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> Yesterday I saw someone walking his cat; have you ever seen that?


I saw that once and thought it was very weird.


----------



## g.spinoza

I've seen people walking chicken, on leash and stuff. Nuff said.


----------



## Verso

Once I saw in Ljubljana someone walking around with a python around his neck. :weird:


----------



## bogdymol

Check out what was "walking" this guy a few weeks ago in Arad, Romania:


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ It took me a while to spot it.


----------



## Verso

Looks like a rucksack decoration.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's a lizard walking his pet human.


----------



## Surel

A foreign driver faces 6 years for speeding in CZ, alcohol and bribing police officers. His repeating "Kein Punk, kein Problem" with 20 euro in his hand did not help.

Eh 20 euro? :hilarious

http://www.novinky.cz/krimi/311068-...rohlasil-cizinec-a-hlidce-nabidl-uplatek.html


----------



## Road_UK

Me and a colleague driver were speeding through CZ once on B roads. We doing about 120 behind each other in our vans where the speedlimit was 90. Had to pay about 10 euros each...


----------



## Verso

Surel said:


> "Kein Punk, kein Problem"


If anyone is wondering, he was saying "kein Punk*t*, kein Problem".


----------



## Blackraven

Who do you think is the main culprit that caused this?

1) Mother nature?
or
2) Cheapshit, cost-cutting and shoddy/defective construction work?











*SCTEX repair may take weeks*
Report by Jorge Cariño, ABS-CBN News
Posted at 08/22/2013 1:19 AM | Updated as of 08/22/2013 1:19 AM











BCDA President Arnel Casanova stands over a fissure at Pasig-Potrero bridge in SCTEX. _(Photo by Jorge Cariño, ABS-CBN News)_









A worker tends a railing on the side of SCTEX. _(Photo by Jorge Cariño, ABS-CBN News)_

By the way, for those that don't know what "lahar" is, you can check it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahar



Wikipedia said:


> A lahar /ˈlɑːhɑr/ is a type of mudflow or debris flow composed of a slurry of pyroclastic material, rocky debris, and water. The material flows down from a volcano, typically along a river valley.[1] Lahars are extremely destructive: they can flow tens of meters per second, be 140 metres (460 ft) deep, and destroy any structures in their path.



And this also raises another question:
If there were vehicles and/or people in that area at that time, would any injury or damage result as part of *"ACT OF GOD/FORCE MAJEURE"*?

Or will the operator/builder of the expressway be liable to pay for damages and other form of compensation to injured or affected party? (especially if it was found that there are defects in construction)

P.S.
Has this even happened recently in first world/developed countries?

Or is this mainly a third world/developing country thing? (i.e. which can be related to cost-cutting and cheapening of construction budgets)


----------



## g.spinoza

Blackraven said:


> Who do you think is the main culprit that caused this?
> 
> 1) Mother nature?
> or
> 2) Cheapshit, cost-cutting and shoddy/defective construction work?
> 
> P.S.
> Has this even happened recently in first world/developed countries?
> 
> Or is this mainly a third world/developing country thing? (i.e. which can be related to cost-cutting and cheapening of construction budgets)


In Italy it happened, even recently:

































Keep in mind that bridges are designed to withstand a certain level of stress, if the stress goes further, it may collapse. 
(And lahar doesn't happen every day)


----------



## italystf

^^ The bridge above (on the Po river, SS9 border Lombardy - Emilia Romagna) is 100 years old.

This bridge in Sicily also collapsed few years ago.













































This bridge in Friuli collapsed during tests before its opening (2004)


----------



## bogdymol

italystf said:


> This bridge in Friuli collapsed during tests before its opening (2004)


This is interesting. Never heard before of a bridge colapsing during the final tests. Do you have more details?


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> This is interesting. Never heard before of a bridge colapsing during the final tests. Do you have more details?


https://maps.google.it/maps?q=Tramo...JWMx5Ifx8zDPe-TyRg951A&cbp=12,344.41,,0,20.83
They built a new bridge (made of reinforced concrete) to replace the old single-lane medieval bridge made of stone. On 15th December 2004, after completation, they drove 3 trucks full of gravel over the bridge to test it. The bridge collapsed immediately but fortunately the 3 drivers survived. The bridge was later reconstructed and opened on 25th July 2009.
In 2011 4 men that were responsible for the project were sentenced from 8 to 16 months of prison.
The bridge is on the road SS552 that was under ANAS until 2008 and now it's regional (SR552).


----------



## italystf

informazioneveneta.blogspot.it/2008/04/perch-crollato-il-ponte-chiavalir.html
The number of screws used was 1\4 of those needed.


----------



## bogdymol

Thank you for your answers


----------



## Surel

^^

I always considered the testing of the bridges is rather tricky for the drivers of those trucks/tanks whatever.

Part of the dynamic testing of Nuselský bridge in Prague in 1974 were done by using rocket engines. Are there any other possibilities that don't required manned operation (besides remotely controlled vehicles now a days)?


----------



## bogdymol

Now the most used method of testing is filling the bridge with trucks (or trains) fully loaded. With modern construction technology, bridge colapses should not appear even if the bridge is overloaded. The engineers are mostly measuring the bridge deformations and checking if this are in the limit or outside the limit.

Example: test loading of Vidin (BG) - Calafat (RO) bridge over Danube a few months ago:


----------



## Wilhem275

Blackraven said:


> Who do you think is the main culprit that caused this?
> 
> 1) Mother nature?
> or
> 2) Cheapshit, cost-cutting and shoddy/defective construction work?


To choose between 1 or 2, you must consider the religious background of the country where the problem happened...


----------



## Surel

bogdymol said:


> Now the most used method of testing is filling the bridge with trucks (or trains) fully loaded. With modern construction technology, bridge colapses should not appear even if the bridge is overloaded. The engineers are mostly measuring the bridge deformations and checking if this are in the limit or outside the limit.


Yes, but 2004 is not that long ago, is it? I mean, is there any other way?


----------



## bogdymol

Indeed, 2004 is not so far away and we can call it "modern construction era".



italystf said:


> informazioneveneta.blogspot.it/2008/04/perch-crollato-il-ponte-chiavalir.html
> The number of screws used was 1\4 of those needed.


This could happen because of 2 reasons:

1. The project designer had misscalculated or made an error in the design, so the number of screws was insufficient.
I doubt a little bit that this was the problem, because such projects are verified before construction starts by other engineers.

2. The company that built the bridge mounted just 1/4 of the screws from the project.
I also doubt this situation because on such a project there is always some engineer (that is not an employee of the constructions company) that checks every stage of the execution and who would make a report about any things done wrong. More, if it was a metalic bridge, the girdens and trusses come from the factory with the necessary screw holes (not too many, not too few, but the exact number of holes that need to have a screw inside).


----------



## DanielFigFoz

They wanted to save money on screws and hoped they'd get away with it.


----------



## x-type

i don't remember road bridge collapses in Croatia, but there was a railroad bridge failure in 2009. that is freight railroad and it collapsed under heavy freight train, which miracleously succeeded to cross it. i wouldn't be at that engineer's situation feeling the bridge collapsing under his train.
the reason of the bridge failure is uncontrolled exploitation of gravel near the bridge.


----------



## Alex_ZR

This bridge in Serbia collapsed in 2005 under 69 tons crane:


----------



## italystf

The most famous bridge ever collapsed:





A similar, recent, oscillation episode in Russia, but they managed to repair it before collapse:





Bridge over Tagliamento river collapsed during a flooding on 4th November 1966 (half of Italy went underwater that day, including the terrible flooding in Florence).


----------



## Suburbanist

A neat graph


----------



## bogdymol

Bucharest traffic:


----------



## g.spinoza

So in Bucharest red lights never turn green?


----------



## Verso

Slovenian railway network. Gdynia, Paris, Ankara. icard: Maribor, Udine and Verona are also a bit misplaced.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> Slovenian railway network. Gdynia, Paris, Ankara. icard: Maribor, Udine and Verona are also a bit misplaced.


Apparently, Gdansk is somewhere in Normandie :lol:


----------



## Verso

Problem? :troll:


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> So in Bucharest red lights never turn green?


May be just as well....


----------



## Fane40

bogdymol said:


> Bucharest traffic:



I always want to do that in France when I see snails drivers in front of me !
But when I see your cartoon, I cannot think they respect red light in Romania. Because you block a street.


----------



## Peines

_Not for sensibles or children…_


----------



## keokiracer

^^ http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=106416152&postcount=971


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Peines said:


> _Not for sensibles or children…_


I think you mean sensitive. :lol:.

I might watch it. Maybe


----------



## italystf

Mestre is just a big industrial area, there's nothing interesting to see (almost nothing )
https://maps.google.it/maps?q=venez...=zbJ1Qa4Wzgq0pSb2DI_fLA&cbp=12,202.89,,2,2.65


----------



## Attus

A clear sign of democracy, or one of the most absurd things of the world? 
A plebiscit was organized about Margitsziget (an island of the Danube in Budapest, check the map). Three (3) inhabitants may vote. 
Two of them have already voted, the vote counter officials are now waiting for the third person - or till 7PM, when the voting will be closed any way. 
HERE are the officials (almost twice as more as the voters). 
HERE are two voters (mother and son). 

In Hungary participation in plebiscites is not mandatory, and usually only 40-50% of the eligible people participate. In this current case participation will be at least 66.7%


----------



## hofburg

they want independentcy?


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Mestre is just a big industrial area, there's nothing interesting to see (almost nothing )
> https://maps.google.it/maps?q=venez...=zbJ1Qa4Wzgq0pSb2DI_fLA&cbp=12,202.89,,2,2.65


isn't that just part of all industrial areas and ports?


----------



## Attus

hofburg said:


> they want independentcy?


No. Actually the want nothing 
The island was a part of the 13. district of Budapest (Angyalföld). Some months ago a new law took it from Angyalföld and placed directly under the control of Budapest. 
The mayor of the disctrict objected, and organized a plebiscite which is held today.


----------



## Road_UK

Quiet as hell here, and suddenly they show up at once. Rudely awakened in my little sleep, like a party of Polish truck drivers gathering together on the ferry just when I'm about to get some shut eye...


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Nice try...


----------



## Road_UK

...


----------



## keokiracer

What am I missing?


----------



## Road_UK

Check for yourself...


----------



## italystf

Someone tried this joke already a couple of years ago.


----------



## keokiracer

Road_UK said:


> Check for yourself...


I don't have Facebook so I can't.


----------



## Road_UK

Right, Penn's Woods and keokiracer are of the hook. But italystf....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Right, Penn's Woods and keokiracer are of the hook. But italystf....


Yes, but you could put up a screen cap or something. Especially if it's a joke. I like a good joke.


----------



## keokiracer

Penn's Woods said:


> I am a proud member of that rapidly diminishing portion of humanity that are NOT on Facebook. So....


*brofist*


----------



## CNGL

Penn's Woods said:


> I am a proud member of that rapidly diminishing portion of humanity that are NOT on Facebook. So....


Add me to that list. I won't change Twitter for anything.

(BTW, entering "CNGL" onto the Twitter searcher will take you to some Irish research center profile , not me obvously)


----------



## Road_UK

CNGL said:


> Add me to that list. I won't change Twitter for anything.
> 
> (BTW, entering "CNGL" onto the Twitter searcher will take you to some Irish research center profile , not me obvously)


Hmmmm I don't know...


----------



## Penn's Woods

CNGL said:


> Add me to that list. I won't change Twitter for anything.
> 
> (BTW, entering "CNGL" onto the Twitter searcher will take you to some Irish research center profile , not me obvously)


In that case, this one's for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfSlqA6qo3M

(From the bloody brilliant British show Broadchurch, which started airing here three weeks ago - WHICH MEANS NO ONE DARE SAY HOW IT COMES OUT - the David Tennant character, who's in charge of the investigation, has just discovered that the identity of a murdered 11-year-old has been Tweeted by a local reporter who guessed it and the family's upset and thinks the police released it without telling them....)

Apparently Tennant crying "Bloody Twitter!" is now available as a ringtone.


----------



## Road_UK

Someone appears to have fallen for it...


----------



## Attus

3rd eligible citizen did not come to vote. So the officials have to count all two (2) votes.


----------



## Road_UK

???


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Post #21629 

(Have to do everything for some people....hno

EDIT: Over 3000 posts. Some of them more worthwhile than others, no doubt.


----------



## piotr71

Attus said:


> 3rd eligible citizen did not come to vote. So the officials have to count all two (2) votes.


----------



## Penn's Woods

So we have a Dutch (and Scandinavian) restaurant in Philadelphia now:

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/food/Northern_Exposure-220413781.html

(Haven't been there - just read this.)

We already have a few Belgian ones.


----------



## Peines

Maximum trolling.


----------



## albertocsc

CNGL said:


> Add me to that list. I won't change Twitter for anything.
> 
> (BTW, entering "CNGL" onto the Twitter searcher will take you to some Irish research center profile , not me obvously)


It is not difficult to find you on Twitter, hehe.


----------



## bogdymol

Romanian granny helping out a rally team near my town:


----------



## cinxxx

Interesting statistic. Number of registered cars in 1927.
I think most of it is pretty easy to translate


----------



## crimio

China had almost the same number like Romania! :lol:


----------



## bozenBDJ

Could not find the Netherlands East Indies in there hno: .


----------



## Attus

bozenBDJ said:


> Could not find the Netherlands East Indies in there hno: .


India Olandeza, I suppose.


----------



## crimio

bozenBDJ said:


> Could not find the Netherlands East Indies in there hno: .


Attus answered


Attus said:


> India Olandeza, I suppose.


yes!


----------



## Verso

We sucked, but at least my neighborhood had the first car in the Balkans.


----------



## g.spinoza

Oddly enough, aircrafts' altitude is still measured in feet worldwide.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands uses the Beaufort Scale (bft) for wind speeds, which is not an SI unit either. Severe wind gusts are given in km/h though, but no Dutch would know what kind of wind 6 m/s is.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ That's international (not only Netherlands) because it's nautical. Sea people are always using weird units like nautical mile, knots, fathoms and whatnot.

To be precise, though, the Beaufort scale does not measure wind speed, it's only an empirical and subjective estimate of its effect. Let's say, Beaufort scale is to wind what Mercalli scale is to earthquakes: no one should seriously use that. It's like saying that "hot" is a measure of temperature.


----------



## italystf

Another situation where an Imperial unit is still used worldwide is the size of set TV screens. They're commercially measured in inches, although I've seen some labels with the conversion in centimeters too.

Sea distances aren't measured in km either, but in marine miles, that are different from Imperial road miles (1852m vs 1609m). 1852m it's 1/60 of the distance between two parallels.


----------



## Attus

So, what is your opinion? 

In Hungary, many people discuss about a story these days. 
An old man, supposed to be about 80, got on a bus. The driver asked him to show a ticket (in Budapest bus drivers have to check the tickets in several bus lines) and the man had nothing. He said he was older than 65 (in Hungary riding a bus is free for all people over 65) but had not any pass or document to prove it. 
The driver asked him to leave the bus. He did not want to do it, sayin' he was old enough to ride free, and then the driver shouted and sent him off the bus. 

So, what do you think did the driver well, or, on the contrary, it was a wrong behavior and he should have let the man taking the bus? Is the old man a a victim, or a bastard that want to take without having a pass? 

In Hungary the story has a secondary importance, too, but before talking about it I would like to know how people from other countries see it.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> Another situation where an Imperial unit is still used worldwide is the size of set TV screens. They're commercially measured in inches, although I've seen some labels with the conversion in centimeters too.


Or disk sizes, hard or floppy.


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> So, what is your opinion?
> 
> In Hungary, many people discuss about a story these days.
> An old man, supposed to be about 80, got on a bus. The driver asked him to show a ticket (in Budapest bus drivers have to check the tickets in several bus lines) and the man had nothing. He said he was older than 65 (in Hungary riding a bus is free for all people over 65) but had not any pass or document to prove it.
> The driver asked him to leave the bus. He did not want to do it, sayin' he was old enough to ride free, and then the driver shouted and sent him off the bus.
> 
> So, what do you think did the driver well, or, on the contrary, it was a wrong behavior and he should have let the man taking the bus? Is the old man a a victim, or a bastard that want to take without having a pass?
> 
> In Hungary the story has a secondary importance, too, but before talking about it I would like to know how people from other countries see it.


I can't see the problem here. If the rule is "show your ID to prove your age", the old man was wrong and the driver was right. The man could have been 62 but in bad shape.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Or disk sizes, hard or *floppy*.


I forgot that. I guess it's almost a decade since I last used one of those 3,5 inches black plastic square thing. :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> I can't see the problem here. If the rule is "show your ID to prove your age", the old man was wrong and the driver was right. The man could have been 62 but in bad shape.


The driver shouldn't have shouted, though.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Another situation where an Imperial unit is still used worldwide is the size of set TV screens. They're commercially measured in inches, although I've seen some labels with the conversion in centimeters too.
> 
> Sea distances aren't measured in km either, but in marine miles, that are different from Imperial road miles (1852m vs 1609m). 1852m it's 1/60 of the distance between two parallels.


or tyres dimensions, or bicycle frames, or plank dimensions, or container dimensions


----------



## CNGL

I used to think golf holes were measured in yards only. This changed when I saw in a golf course near here that the hole info signs stated the lenght in meters.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Is an AU (Astronomic Unit) SI?


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Is an AU (Astronomic Unit) SI?


Not in the slightest bit.
As for length, only meter and its multiples are allowed.


----------



## Haljackey

Interesting video arguing why low speed limits are bad


----------



## Wilhem275

Wheel rims are in " too, and some plumbing pipes.


Actually I'm iffy even about the concept of "km/h" (and mph too).

One of my utopian ideas it to convert vehicles speedometers from km/h to m/s.
For our uncivilized friends on the wrong side of the pond, the conversion would be from mph to "bare feet with untrimmed nails per sexagesimal fortnight" :troll:

The reason is to make drivers more aware of how much space they actually need to stop, because the important thing in driving is to know what will happen in moments, not in one hour.
Everyone can easily relate with a space measured in a few meters, or how long lasts a second, so even someone without scientific skills can easily figure a vehicle covering 14 meters in one second; thus understanding the difference between 14 m/s and 50 m/s.

Measuring speed in km/h has the only theoretical advantage of giving the idea of the time needed to cover a certain distance; but in fact the final average speed of a trip has really little to do with the driver's intention to keep a certain punctual speed.
Km/h and mph are useful to represent average speeds, but they're totally useless in figuring out the immediate dynamics of a vehicle.

As I driver, knowing that if I keep my speed I'll cover 50 km in 60 minutes is useless, since that speed won't be kept for more than a few minutes. We know it is the speed of urban areas only because it is a conventional limit, we're just used to it but the value has no real meaning to us.
Knowing that I'm covering 14 meters in the next second is much different, because I can actually see that distance as a point in front of me, and figure out that I will reach that point in a span of time which I know with precision.


It's just a problem of scale. The same reason we measure an athlete's lap as 41 seconds and not as 0,01139 hours...


And since psychologically it could be seen as "I'm going slower" (14 is much less than 50), speedometers should actually show "14,0", since 140 is much more than 50


----------



## italystf

There was an internet joke about a guy caught driving at 179km\h in a 50 limit. He claimed that since the speed is measured in m\s in the SI he was OK because he was driving below 50m\s (that is 180km\h).


----------



## bogdymol

Speaking about the SI and the americans not having SI: back in 2009 when I was in USA I was with my parents and we stayed at some friends. One day, my mom wanted to cook something 'romanian' and sent me to a supermarket (wallmart) to buy something (she made me a small list). When I got there I had some problems, because on the list she wrote 300 grams of X, 500 grams of Y, but none of the labels had grams on them, but oz or pounds.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^A lot of consumer goods here have measurements in both systems. I thought most did.


----------



## italystf

Also here many liquid products have fl. oz. (fluid ounces) besides ml, probably because they're sold also in USA and UK.


----------



## g.spinoza

I remember having troubles cooking following an American recipe (can't remember what). I read about "teaspoon" and it didn't occur to me it was a unit of measure. I had teaspoons in different sizes and wasn't sure which one to use to measure the fluid...


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Verso

Is anyone else unable to run Google Earth?


----------



## keokiracer

Verso said:


> Is anyone else unable to run Google Earth?


No problems whatsoever here :|


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> Is anyone else unable to run Google Earth?


Runs fine here.

I think Google Earth wanted to send you a message: _go to sleep. It's 3 a.m. _


----------



## volodaaaa

Longest words in different languages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_words


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> Runs fine here.
> 
> I think Google Earth wanted to send you a message: _go to sleep. It's 3 a.m. _


Maybe in Romania.  It still doesn't work.


----------



## keber

A fault must be at your computer or ISP. Here it works fine.


----------



## italystf

A question to everybody: is there any city or town in your country that is usually called with a name different to the official one?
For example in Italy Reggio nell'Emilia and Reggio di Calabria are always called Reggio Emilia and Reggio Calabria. In Veneto everybody says San Stino di Livenza instead of Santo Stino di Livenza. In 2011 the town of Castello Lavazzo (near the infamous Vajont dam) changed officially its name in Castellavazzo with a referendum because everybody used that name in spoken language.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Apart from nicknames, we also have a few names that are daily speech instead of the official one.

* 's-Gravenhage, better known as Den Haag or The Hague
* 's-Hertogenbosch, Den Bosch is more used but 's-Hertogenbosch is not entirely unused (it's used on trains and road signs)
* Gorinchem. It is pronounced like "Gorkum" by everyone.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> A question to everybody: is there any city or town in your country that is usually called with a name different to the official one?
> For example in Italy Reggio nell'Emilia and Reggio di Calabria are always called Reggio Emilia and Reggio Calabria. In Veneto everybody says San Stino di Livenza instead of Santo Stino di Livenza. In 2011 the town of Castello Lavazzo (near the infamous Vajont dam) changed officially its name in Castellavazzo with a referendum because everybody used that name in spoken language.


yes. in Croatia from some reason everybody says Jaska instead of Jastrebarsko. :dunno:


----------



## Road_UK

The homecoming of Jesus, but with a less obvious name..


----------



## Broccolli

For instance _Ljubljana_. Everybody in Slovenia, (especially inhabitants of Ljubljana) are saying _Lublana_ and not_ L*j*ubl*j*ana_.


----------



## x-type

Broccolli said:


> For instance _Ljubljana_. Everybody in Slovenia, (especially inhabitants of Ljubljana) are saying _Lublana_ and not_ L*j*ubl*j*ana_.


i think it's not what are we discussing about. for instance, in the area where i live people have habbit of ommitting last letter "i" in the words. so the village Pisanica is actually Pisan'ca (and whole Croatia except us locals has wrong accent on that toponym  ), or even more - Trnovitica is Trnov'ca.  but those are only local colloquial pronounciations.


----------



## Verso

Part of Ljubljana is called Nove Fužine (New Fužine), but everyone calls it just Fužine. However, there is Fužine on the other side of a river. I don't know whether people call it the same or they say "old Fužine" (stare Fužine). Interestingly, "New" in names of other parts of Ljubljana is always used.

Mount Prisojnik in the Julian Alps is called Prisank by locals. I'm not sure both names are official. Same with Mangart/Mangrt.


----------



## Broccolli

@x-type



italystf said:


> In Veneto everybody says *San Stino di Livenza* instead of* Santo Stino di Livenza*. In 2011 the town of *Castello Lavazzo* (near the infamous Vajont dam) changed officially its name in *Castellavazzo* with a referendum because everybody used that name in spoken language.


They do the same thing, they combine words, "droping" letters :lol: 

Btw, we must ask Hofburg how he calls Nova Gorica


----------



## bogdymol

In Romania we have a city called _Drobeta Turnu Severin_, but people don't say it's entire name, but only _Drobeta_, only _Severin_ or _Turnu Severin_.



Broccolli said:


> Btw, we must ask Hofburg how he calls Nova Gorica


Gorizia


----------



## Broccolli

@bogdy


I think it starts with a letter_ H_


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> Gorizia


No, they say Horica. :lol: But then, they always say _H_ instead of _G_ (like some other Slavic nations).

I live close to a part of Ljubljana called Selo (Village ), but luckily I've never heard anyone use it. There are some other parts of the city that I've never heard their names used, like London, Sibirija, or Kosovo Polje.


----------



## Broccolli

Ok London that part is i think in Moste, Sibirija is a gipsy ghetto near Rakova Jelša , but Kosovo Polje :lol: where is that?


----------



## g.spinoza

Brùnico is very often pronounced as Brunìco.


----------



## keokiracer

:master::master::master::master::master::master::master::master::master::master::master::troll::troll::troll::troll::troll::troll::troll::troll::troll::troll:


----------



## cinxxx

Alex_ZR said:


> My hometown is called Zrenjanin since 1946. It was named after Žarko Zrenjanin, a communist partisan who fell in war in 1942. Before that, Zrenjanin was called Petrovgrad since 1935, named after Serbian king Petar I, whose monument is at the main square. Before 1935, it was called Veliki Bečkerek in Serbian, or Nagybecskerek in Hungarian during Austro-Hungarian rule. There is no consensus how the city should be called. Some people find Petrovgrad to be too nationalistic and monarchistic, some don't like Bečkerek because it's "too Hungarian". Some people don't like name Zrenjanin because it's communist, and the person had nothing with the city (he was from the Vršac area, some 100 km away).


It was called Veliki Bečkerek, while in today Romanian Banat, there was and still is a Small _Becicherec_, Mali Bečkerek in Serbian. It retained the name although there is no other town with the same name, not even in Serbian Banat.

For example, in Romania, the city Oradea, previously when Transylvania was part of Hungary was called Great Oradea, Nagyvárad in Hungarian, still used as official name in Hungarian. The same with the city Salonta, Nagyszalonta in Hunarian, also in the same region.


----------



## Alex_ZR

cinxxx said:


> It was called Veliki Bečkerek, while in today Romanian Banat, there was and still is a Small _Becicherec_, Mali Bečkerek in Serbian. It retained the name although there is no other town with the same name, not even in Serbian Banat.
> 
> For example, in Romania, the city Oradea, previously when Transylvania was part of Hungary was called Great Oradea, Nagyvárad in Hungarian, still used as official name in Hungarian. The same with the city Salonta, Nagyszalonta in Hunarian, also in the same region.


I know that, it's near Timisoara and there are few Serbs living there. There was also another name, used by Catalans who were settled in Banat after Austria conquered it from Ottomans in early 18th century: New Barcelona. :lol:

Also there is a neighbourhood in Zrenjanin officialy called "Mala Amerika" ("Little America"). You can find it if you type in Google Maps.


----------



## Verso

The oldest living man has become Arturo Licata from Italy. Congrats. :cheers:


----------



## Wilhem275

keokiracer said:


> :master::master::master::master::master::master::master::master::master::master::master::troll::troll::troll::troll::troll::troll::troll::troll::troll::troll:


Ah, the joys of a job where you come in contact with sociopaths...

Could have been a funny prank, but the guy is clearly disturbed.


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> It was called Veliki Bečkerek, while in today Romanian Banat, there was and still is a Small _Becicherec_, Mali Bečkerek in Serbian. It retained the name although there is no other town with the same name, not even in Serbian Banat.
> 
> For example, in Romania, the city Oradea, previously when Transylvania was part of Hungary was called Great Oradea, Nagyvárad in Hungarian, still used as official name in Hungarian. The same with the city Salonta, Nagyszalonta in Hunarian, also in the same region.


Strange . I have just realized, that Slovak exonyms for Romanian cities are derived from Hungarian language. Oradea is Veľký Varadin (Great Varadin), Cluj-Napoca is Koložvár and Timisoara is Temešvár.


----------



## hofburg

austro-hungary was a linguistic mess


----------



## Wilhem275

Colorado is going through some serious floodings, more than 500 missing people.



















http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/15/us/colorado-flooding/


----------



## keokiracer

Wilhem275 said:


> Colorado is going through some serious floodings, more than 500 missing people.


----------



## bogdymol




----------



## volodaaaa

hofburg said:


> austro-hungary was a linguistic mess


Sure. Regarding to slavic languages, Vienna is Wiedeń in Polish, Vídeň in Czech, Viedeň in Slovak and Vena in Russian. However it is Beč in Serbian/Croatian surely derived from Hungarian Language (Bécs). But the craziest thing ever related to Vienna is Dunaj in Slovenian language :lol:


----------



## Broccolli

Tell me Volodaaa how du you say river Danube in Slovak?:naughty:


----------



## volodaaaa

Broccolli said:


> Tell me Volodaaa how du you say river Danube in Slovak?:naughty:


Dunaj. But I ain't talking about river, but city. Vienna in Slovenian is Dunaj.


----------



## cinxxx

Can't find an English link. Mam destroys his 120,000 € BMW in front of the IAA in protest that it doesn't have the comfort he expects from it.

http://www.bild.de/regional/frankfurt/proteste/bmw-vor-der-iaa-demoliert-32405832.bild.html


----------



## Broccolli

volodaaaa said:


> Dunaj. But I ain't talking about river, but city. Vienna in Slovenian is Dunaj.


You say Dunaj hmm interesting  i think its the same in Czech as well.

Well if you take into consideration that the river Danube flows through Vienna, and fact that we were all under the same empire for a quite some time, the result is logical. The language is "a live thing".


----------



## volodaaaa

Broccolli said:


> You say Dunaj hmm interesting  i think its the same in Czech as well.
> 
> Well if you take into consideration that the river Danube flows through Vienna, and fact that we were all under the same empire for a quite some time, the result is logical. The language is "a live thing".


Well the name Dunaj for Vienna is obviously logical. But the significant difference in respect to neighbouring languages fascinate me a bit. Why have Slovenes decided to call it Dunaj instead of original Wien derivation or avarish Becs derivation possibly?


----------



## hofburg

there was this discussion already http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=581742&page=906

dunaj probably comes from vedunia, which I don't know what origin is


----------



## Broccolli

hofburg said:


> there was this discussion already http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=581742&page=906
> 
> dunaj probably comes from vedunia, which I don't know what origin is


It is Celtic origin.

Link: http://www.wieninternational.at/en/content/part-1-from-the-neolithic-to-a-roman-encampment-en


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> Why have Slovenes decided to call it Dunaj


Because it rhymes: _Ko greš na *Dunaj*, pusti trebuh *zunaj*._ (When you go to Vienna, leave your stomach outside.)


----------



## x-type

Wilhem275 said:


> Ah, the joys of a job where you come in contact with sociopaths...
> 
> Could have been a funny prank, but the guy is clearly disturbed.


yeah. he should have stayed calm watching them counting coins for an hour or something.
this making mess is stupid.


----------



## italystf

Does someone know if these statistics are accurate and updated?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_length_of_expressways
I see that Italy has 9727km of motorways and expressways. This figure seems likely to me but I don't know how the expressway lenght was calculated.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What is a motorway and what is not is always debatable, due to differences between countries. Creating a list is one thing, keeping it up to date will prove much harder. 

I don't see where the 75 kilometers of motorways on the Marshall Islands would be. Some figures appear to be fairly accurate though. The Italy figure was copied from the Dutch _wegenwiki_, which also includes superstrade. As usual, which superstrade is motorway-like, and which is not, is always debatable. I don't think you can come to a definite uncontested figure in all cases.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Does someone know if these statistics are accurate and updated?
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_length_of_expressways


Length of motorways per capita and motorway density are messed up.


----------



## volodaaaa

Something to think about


----------



## italystf

Many people still think that what they do on the net is perfectly anonymous, so they lost their inhibitions that they have in real life. Big mistake...


----------



## g.spinoza

That's true, one should insult people on the internet AND in real life.

JJ...


----------



## volodaaaa

The last sentence said everything... Fortunately, I have experienced only peaceful people here on SSC


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> The last sentence said everything... Fortunately, I have experienced only peaceful people here on SSC


Stupid motherfucker. You're toast!


----------



## Road_UK




----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> That's true, one should insult people on the internet AND in real life.
> 
> JJ...


On a different note... How's your job coming along? Where are you residing these days?


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> On a different note... How's your job coming along? Where are you residing these days?


Still in Brescia, I'll start my job next November 4th. Apparently guys at human resources messed up badly and prepared my contract for September 16th, but my boss and more than half of my team are abroad and won't coming back for the whole October, so it makes no sense for me to begin... I wouldn't know what to do :bash:

In the meantime I found an apartment, cozy and nice with a spectacular view on Gran Paradiso. A little far from work but I hope it won't turn out a daily traffic jam.


----------



## Road_UK

Best of luck. I hope it will work out for you. I'm expecting to be in Turin a lot again after a few months. Must have a coffee together some time...


----------



## bogdymol




----------



## bogdymol

I just found a gif with g.spinoza researching the Kelvin degree:


----------



## g.spinoza

Nah, that's one of those misfit, lunatic theorist.

I'm an experimentalist. And there's no way i can grow a beard like that.


----------



## g.spinoza

http://corrieredelveneto.corriere.i...ro-demolisce-statua-gatta-2223255728210.shtml

Van doing a wrong maneuvre destroys a 15th century statue in Padua centre. The statue was placed in a pedestrian only area and the van had no authorization to enter.

UK, you ever do something like that, I'll chase you everywhere.


----------



## Road_UK

I'll be very careful. Always have been going through these old narrow streets in Italy...


----------



## Road_UK




----------



## Penn's Woods

^^That person should turn around, face the building behind them, and get close enough to it that the people inside can read it.

Not that it'd do much good....


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> http://corrieredelveneto.corriere.i...ro-demolisce-statua-gatta-2223255728210.shtml
> 
> Van doing a wrong maneuvre destroys a 15th century statue in Padua centre. The statue was placed in a pedestrian only area and the van had no authorization to enter.
> 
> UK, you ever do something like that, I'll chase you everywhere.


i was in Padova for the first time in my life this year and i was deeply dissappointed. i didn't know it was so ugly city. i expected explosion of culture (especially religious), and i found there nothing.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Cappella degli Scrovegni with Giotto's frescos?
Santa Giustina Basilica in Prato della Valle?
Sant'Antonio Basilica with Donatello statues?
Caffè Pedrocchi?

I never been there myself, just passing by once by train. Just to say that it shouldn't be so ugly...


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Cappella degli Scrovegni with Giotto's frescos?
> Santa Giustina Basilica in Prato della Valle?
> Caffè Pedrocchi?
> 
> I never been there myself, just passing by once by train. Just to say that it shouldn't be so ugly...


i thought so that it shouldn't, too. but... 
Caffe Pedrocchi has famous story. i saw it from outside, it is at the beginning of main walking street where almost all stores are closed, and buildings are full of grafitti.
Basilica di Sant'Antonio is also very dissapointing. e.g. San Francesco in Assisi is way more interesting. Antonio is just typical christian kitsch.
Prato della Valle would be nice without 3 things: 1. dogs' shit 2. horrible mixture of architecture 3. Africans smoking weed on open air with no fear of police
really, among large Italian cities, Padova is at the bottom.


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> i was in for the first time in my life this year and i was deeply dissappointed. i didn't know it was so ugly city. i expected explosion of culture (especially religious), and i found there nothing.





g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Cappella degli Scrovegni with Giotto's frescos?
> Santa Giustina Basilica in Prato della Valle?
> Sant'Antonio Basilica with Donatello statues?
> Caffè Pedrocchi?
> 
> I never been there myself, just passing by once by train. Just to say that it shouldn't be so ugly...





x-type said:


> i thought so that it shouldn't, too. but...
> Caffe Pedrocchi has famous story. i saw it from outside, it is at the beginning of main walking street where almost all stores are closed, and buildings are full of grafitti.
> Basilica di Sant'Antonio is also very dissapointing. e.g. San Francesco in Assisi is way more interesting. Antonio is just typical christian kitsch.
> Prato della Valle would be nice without 3 things: 1. dogs' shit 2. horrible mixture of architecture 3. Africans smoking weed on open air with no fear of police
> really, among large Italian cities, Padova is at the bottom.


I agree. Padua is one of the worst Italian city in term of crime and urban decay (probably the worst north of Rome). It's one of the biggest "drug market" in Europe. Many people who live there say that it's dangerous to wander alone at night, except in some central areas.
Many Italian cities have ZTL (limited traffic zone) in their historical centres. In Padua, apart it, many suburban roads are closed to traffic from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. (apart residents and autorized). The reason: those suburbs, inhabitated mostly by illegal immigrants, are a hub for drug traffiking and the administration try to reduce this problem.
Padua is a very important university city, and this help the decay because it means a huge affluent of young people from the whole Italy, that causes troubles and demand for drugs.


----------



## g.spinoza

I didn't know that. But I don't see how being a university city helps the decay. I lived for 12 years in Bologna, where a quarter of its 400 thousand inhabitants are students: I never saw a more lively city. Sure, there's drugs, but I never felt unsafe walking in the city, even very late at night.


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> I lived for 12 years in Bologna, where a quarter of its 400 thousand inhabitants are students: I never saw a more lively city. Sure, there's drugs, but I never felt unsafe walking in the city, even very late at night.


I walked in Bologna on this route to my hotel at about 10-11 p.m. and didn't feel too comfortable doing it.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> I walked in Bologna on this route to my hotel at about 10-11 p.m. and didn't feel too comfortable doing it.


It's more a car route than a walk route, it's like walking on an expressway 

I lived for a year in via Gandusio, just near the A of your route, and it was ok. Near B there has been lots of works with skyscrapers and such.

I never had such bad feelings passing there. But of course South Bologna is nicer than North one. And of course there are zones not particularly attractive, like Pilastro and maybe Bolognina...


----------



## x-type

btw i'm going to Milano next week. somehow i have never been in the core of Lombardia, always took A21


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> btw i'm going to Milano next week. somehow i have never been in the core of Lombardia, always took A21


Are you going by car? I drove only once inside Milano, I was about to abandon the car and run away screaming


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> Are you going by car? I drove only once inside Milano, I was about to abandon the car and run away screaming


First time I drove in Milan I was like that. But having done Napels a few times since, driving in Milan and even Rome is comparable with church traffic...


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I lived in Naples for a while but had no car back then. Worst driving experiences of my life are Palermo and Granada...


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> It's more a car route than a walk route, it's like walking on an expressway
> 
> I lived for a year in via Gandusio, just near the A of your route, and it was ok. Near B there has been lots of works with skyscrapers and such.
> 
> I never had such bad feelings passing there. But of course South Bologna is nicer than North one. And of course there are zones not particularly attractive, like Pilastro and maybe Bolognina...


We choosed to walk because we knew about ZTL area in Bologna and didn't want to risk a fine for entering it. It wasn't a very pleasant walk back to the hotel because in that area there are a lot of immigrants just staying and chatting by the side of the road... and they don't look very trustful. I always had the sense that someone is chasing us. More, near the hotel I noticed that is an area where hookers like to stay. I saw them every evening during my 3-nights stay there.


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> Are you going by car? I drove only once inside Milano, I was about to abandon the car and run away screaming


i drove suburbs of Napoli, and crazy road Castellammare di Stabia - Sorrento so I'm not that affraid.
btw, I'm actually going to Biella, but I think i will try to catch few hours in Milano.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> We choosed to walk because we knew about ZTL area in Bologna and didn't want to risk a fine for entering it. It wasn't a very pleasant walk back to the hotel because in that area there are a lot of immigrants just staying and chatting by the side of the road... and they don't look very trustful. I always had the sense that someone is chasing us. More, near the hotel I noticed that is an area where hookers like to stay. I saw them every evening during my 3-nights stay there.


Yes, via Stalingrado is famous for hookers. But you can find them also in the viali (I remember one elderly hooker every night in viale Carlo Berti Pichat... )

ZTL in Bologna is only in the historical centre, and not all of it. Via Indipendenza (from via Righi to the city centre), via Ugo Bassi and via Rizzoli are off limits, and the most central part of via Zamboni, too. Sometimes they shut via Marconi, but it's usually well signed.
Rest is drivable :cheers:

EDIT: Apparently, it's not like that anymore
http://www.comune.bologna.it/media/files/mappa_ztl_20122013.pdf


----------



## Road_UK

I used to see them by the dozens entering Rome via the Via Salaria...


----------



## g.spinoza

Turin is also not trivial to drive in. They have this long boulevards and accessory roads on their side (called counter-boulevards, "controviali"), and driving on them is tricky. For instance, on the boulevard you can just go straight; if you want to turn left or right, you have to go before on the counter-boulevard. So basically you are in the boulevard, you go right into the counter-boulevard and then you can turn left, crossing the boulevard at the intersection.

I was scared as hell last week, but I guess I will get used to it.


----------



## Attus

I've been 4 times in Padova. I like the great churches, Il Santo, Santa Giustina, Duomo with Battistero. The rest of the city did not impressed me at all...

In October I'll visit Milano (3rd visit), Bergamo (4th visit), Brescia and Bologna (1st visit in my life for both). I'll fly (from Frankfurt Hahn to Bergamo 17€, from Bologna to Hahn 20€), and travel by train between these towns. I want to ride Italo trains


----------



## Attus

Sándor Tarics, born 23 Sep 1913 was olympic champion in water polo, 1936. 








He's currently the oldest olympic champion in live.


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> In October I'll visit Milano (3rd visit), Bergamo (4th visit), Brescia at Bologna (1st visit in my life for both).


Feel free to ask, I will still be in Brescia in October.


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> Sándor Tarics, born 23 Sep 1913 was olympic champion in water polo, 1936.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> He's currently the oldest olympic champion in live.


Well, doping wasn't invented yet.


----------



## SeanT

I gues not, another world. Immagine Bud spencer once said that back in the ´50s waterpolo and other competitions were very tough as today but dopping....well nothing like that were existing and after 60 something years he could remember some hungarian waterpolo players by name!!:lol:


----------



## hofburg

average financial wealth

western europe: 60.000€ per capita
eastern europe: 4.000€ per capita

https://www.allianz.com/v_137993774...search/publications/specials/en/AGWR2013e.pdf (pages 72 and 85 respectively)

what a major difference hno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Does that include homeownership wealth? I doubt if the average Western European has € 60.000 on their bank account. I know people who earn € 2000 net per month and have no savings at all because they piss it all away.


----------



## cinxxx

Where is Slovenia located, east or west?


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Every time I passed through Slovenia I had a feeling that I'm in Western Europe, not in ex-Yugoslavia.

*except for the language, which I don't like


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> *except for the language, which I don't like


Why?


----------



## bogdymol

Maybe because my native language is latin-based (so I understand easily French, Italian or Spanish for example) and my second language is English, which is Germanic (Anglo-Saxon). Slavic languages have nothing in common with the 2 types of languages that I'm used to, so that's why I don't understand it and don't like it in particular.


----------



## cinxxx

bogdymol said:


> ^^ Every time I passed through Slovenia I had a feeling that I'm in Western Europe, not in ex-Yugoslavia.
> 
> *except for the language, which I don't like


Slovenia is very interesting. In the area near Austrian border, it feels Austrian, on the coast, it has an Italian feel. But it feels clean and tidy and people civilized. In Croatia I only was in Istria, where I had a similar impression. 

Have to go also in the east part someday. Maybe next year, since I'm thinking to detour my vacation in Romania through Maribor/Zabgreb...



bogdymol said:


> Maybe because my native language is latin-based (so I understand easily French, Italian or Spanish for example) and my second language is English, which is Germanic (Anglo-Saxon). Slavic languages have nothing in common with the 2 types of languages that I'm used to, so that's why I don't understand it and don't like it in particular.


Not entirely true, Romanian has quite some Slavic influence. I recognized a lot of words which where the same, if not in High Romanian, then in Banatian dialect.


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> [...]it has an Italian feel. But it feels clean and tidy and people civilized.


I like that "but"


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Does that include homeownership wealth? I doubt if the average Western European has € 60.000 on their bank account. I know people who earn € 2000 net per month and have no savings at all because they piss it all away.


This is very important. People outside Bratislava always complain about how much money do workers in Bratislava earn. The average monthly income is about 1 200 € in Bratislava, 900 € in entire Slovakia and 750 € in less developed regions. 

But the three-room apartment costs at least 100.000 € in Bratislava and 9.000 € in less developed areas in Slovakia at the same time. What a huge difference especially if we talk about occupations with chart-related salaries (e.g. medicine doctor with 1 year experiences earn 500 € everywhere).

This goes also for Europe


----------



## cinxxx

g.spinoza said:


> I like that "but"


That "but" was meant for comparison with "eastern Euope", not Italy 

I was only in Südtirol until now, only till San Candido and back to Austria. I have to say, even there, for a person used with Germans all the time, it was different and more alive . I forgot, I've also driven through whole Trieste and then on A4 and all A23. It was ok pretty much ok.

I will see more next week . My route will be over Brenner towards Venice and back over A4 and A23.


----------



## hofburg

^good route 

slovenia only looks austrian or italian in some places, the system underneath is well eastern (still) 

it says per capita, so an average westerneuropean familly would have 240.000€ on its account, which sounds a bit not real to me.

and no, it doesn't include real estate.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Switzerland, Luxembourg, Norway and some microstates (Liechtenstein, Monaco) are well above that.


----------



## cinxxx

hofburg said:


> ^good route


On return trip, that will be Friday the 4th, I plan to visit Udine and Gorizia, also the Piazza della Transalpina/Evropski trg. I saw on Streetview that you can park directly at the square, is that right?


----------



## hofburg

sure, it's not city centre type square


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> Does that include homeownership wealth? I doubt if the average Western European has € 60.000 on their bank account. I know people who earn € 2000 net per month and have no savings at all because they piss it all away.


No, its just the financial wealth. You need to look at it only as a statistics. The wealth is highly skewed. The average sits quite higher then the median and the top 10 % has most of the pile.

Furthermore, the are several types of financial wealth. The actual savings are not that high, the pension plans and stock shares make the bulk of it.


----------



## g.spinoza

http://milano.repubblica.it/cronaca/2013/09/25/foto/auto-67258219/1/?ref=HRESS-10#1

A guy with his VW, not knowing the area, was stuck inside a pedestrian underpass in Saronno, near Varese (Italy). From one side the underpass is road like, but on the other side there are tight curves and stairs. He was freed by firemen after one hour of work, but he was not fined: policemen noticed the absolute lack of signs in the area, so the guy did nothing wrong, technically:


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> average financial wealth
> 
> western europe: 60.000€ per capita
> eastern europe: 4.000€ per capita
> 
> https://www.allianz.com/v_137993774...search/publications/specials/en/AGWR2013e.pdf (pages 72 and 85 respectively)
> 
> what a major difference hno:


Switzerland ahead of India in total financial assets.


----------



## bogdymol

cinxxx said:


> On return trip, that will be Friday the 4th, I plan to visit Udine and Gorizia, also the Piazza della Transalpina/Evropski trg. I saw on Streetview that you can park directly at the square, is that right?


Park here, in Slovenia, near the railway station. It's free and it has plenty of unoccupied parking spaces.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The latest development to fuel mankind's social media addiction:

*Governor Cuomo Unveils "Texting Zones" Along NYS Thruway and Highways for Drivers to Pull Over and Use Their Cell Phones*​
http://www.governor.ny.gov/press/09232013-governor-unveils-texting-zones


Governor Cuomo Unveils "Texting Zones" Along NYS Thruway and Highways by governorandrewcuomo, on Flickr


----------



## g.spinoza

Unbelievable.


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> Park here, in Slovenia, near the railway station. It's free and it has plenty of unoccupied parking spaces.


Yes, and continue by train.


----------



## cinxxx

:lol:


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> Yes, and continue by train.


I continued by foot all the way into Gorizia.


----------



## volodaaaa

Next true thought:


----------



## keokiracer

4th circle in the category incompetence is the one I am


----------



## bogdymol

I'm in the vestibule: I don't read rules and FAQs


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The latest development to fuel mankind's social media addiction:
> 
> *Governor Cuomo Unveils "Texting Zones" Along NYS Thruway and Highways for Drivers to Pull Over and Use Their Cell Phones*​
> http://www.governor.ny.gov/press/09232013-governor-unveils-texting-zones
> 
> 
> Governor Cuomo Unveils "Texting Zones" Along NYS Thruway and Highways by governorandrewcuomo, on Flickr


There is further discussion of this (I didn't put it there...) on the Non-Interstate thread. (Probably should be on Interstates...)


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Unbelievable.


Why?

A bit nanny-statish perhaps, but I assume it's targeted not at people like yours truly who are capable of going a few hours (or a few days...) without texting, but at those who'd rather endanger themselves and others by texting at 60 mph than be cut off from communication for a few minutes. So, provide them a place to park and thereby hopefully discourage them from endangering the public.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ On general terms I agree with you but... aren't service areas and parking areas good enough for texting? Did we really need something dedicated?

EDIT: I just read the similar conversation with MichiH in the Non-Interstate thread, so no need to continue here...

EDIT2: Besides, many smartphones, even low-end, have a synthetic voice that can read sms's and even voice recognition for writing them...


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> I continued by foot all the way into Gorizia.


It must've been exhausting to walk 20 metres.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I was thinking about calling a taxi for that ride


----------



## Verso

Taxis _drive on_ the road, they don't cross it. :lol:


----------



## Road_UK




----------



## Verso

A question for everyone: how many (international) tripoints have you been to?

I've been to all Slovenian tripoints - SLO-I-A, SLO-A-H and SLO-HR-H (approximately) - and CH-D-F (Swiss side), as well as L-D-F (drove on the bridge). That's 5 tripoints (unless driving on the Swiss A13 by a CH-A-FL tripoint also counts ).


----------



## cinxxx

Verso said:


> A question for everyone: how many (international) tripoints have you been to?


1. D/F/L in Schengen
2. A/SK/H
3. D/F/CH in Basel
4. A/CH/FL on East bank of river Rhine

Bonus:
- Former tripoint DDR (East Germany)/BRD (West Germany)/ČSSR - now tripoint Bavaria/Saxony/CZ
- drove on Austrian and German side in the area of tripoint D/A/CH which is located on Lake Constance.

I will try to add some new ones to the list in the future 

I will be in the area of the tripoint A/I/SLO next week, driving on Italian A23. If the weather would be fine, I maybe drive to the tripoint. But I won't have so much time for walking, as I want to visit Udine and Gorizia before that, and then drive all the way to Ingolstadt. I saw on Panoramio some kind of lift to the hill. I think an access point from Austria would be best to not have to drive back so much after...
To bad there is no Streetview in SLO or A


----------



## Verso

PS: anyone who's driven on the eastern Ljubljana bypass has driven through a quadripoint between (four) Ljubljana districts.


----------



## Road_UK

D-NL-B


----------



## hofburg

are there any quadripoints on international level?


----------



## Road_UK

Not in Europe I don't think.


----------



## Verso

There are between 2 countries, but not 4 (unless Zambia-Zimbabwe-Botswana-Namibia is a quadripoint, but probably not).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadripoint


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Yes, I thought about it. But I have plenty of 3000+ peaks to climb next year in Piedmont, I'd go for them.
> 
> Too far, too low and I guess too crowded for me


And Zillertal. My invitation still stands.


----------



## g.spinoza

Kinda far from me now, but thanks. We'll see in the future.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keber said:


> And I thought Europe, especially south, is the main place for bureaucrats showing themselves in public.:lol:


He probably wants to be President. (I'm perfectly serious.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Fatfield said:


> This isn't necessarily a quadrapoint but if you stand at the end of the Mull Of Galloway peninsula in Scotland you can see 4 countries -Scotland (obviously), England, Northern Ireland & Isle of Man.


But only one nation-state. ;-) (Plus a crown dependency?)

In certain parts of the (American) South, you can see billboards advertising a tourist trap near Chattanooga: "Visit Rock City - See Seven States!"


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> No, you cannot drive till the tripoint, certainly not from Italy. FVG region has a regional law (L.R. 15\1991) against private traffic on most mountain dirt roads.
> Only vehicles with an autorization from the forestal autority can get in.
> 
> 
> If you're interested in hiking you can climb the Monte Forno too (I-A-SLO).
> 
> 
> 
> BTW, there's also a quadripoint between 4 Canadian provinces.
> The exclave of Jungholz forms a quadripoint between A and D.


Two provinces (Manitoba and Saskatchewan) and two territories (NWT & Nunavut) - is that the point you mean? (Only one I can think of, and it's only existed since Nunavut became a separate territory in 1999 or thereabouts.)


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Two provinces (Manitoba and Saskatchewan) and two territories (NWT & Nunavut) - is that the point you mean? (Only one I can think of, and it's only existed since Nunavut became a separate territory in 1999 or thereabouts.)


Yes. Is it marked someway?


----------



## x-type

i have only seen A-D-CH tripoint at Bodensee (and was very dissapointed that there is even not a buoy signing it 
since non of yugoslav tripoints were not at HR teritory, today's HR tripoints are hardly accessible unfortunately.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> i have only seen A-D-CH tripoint at Bodensee (and was very dissapointed that there is even not a buoy signing it


That's because it isn't defined.


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> i have only seen A-D-CH tripoint at Bodensee (and was very dissapointed that there is even not a buoy signing it
> since non of yugoslav tripoints were not at HR teritory, today's HR tripoints are hardly accessible unfortunately.


Neither HR-SRB-H and HR-SRB-BIH? They are located on rivers.


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> They are located on rivers.


That's supposed to be easily accessible? :lol:


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> Neither HR-SRB-H and HR-SRB-BIH? They are located on rivers.


not really. HR-H-SRB tripoint is actually not on Danube, but on Danube branch. from SRB side it probably is accessible, from H maybe, brom HR there is forest swamp, but i see a path that comes 1 km before tripoint so maybe it isn't that wild.
HR-SRB-BIH seems to be more accessible.
HR-H-SLO - only for real enthusiasts, HR-BIH-MNE too (it doesn't seem so, but it is on some peak actually)


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> HR-H-SLO - only for real enthusiasts


That's true. :lol:



PS: I've just discovered that there's a wood in Ljubljana called... Tiči*stan*!


----------



## CNGL

Penn's Woods said:


> But only one nation-state. ;-) (Plus a crown dependency?)
> 
> In certain parts of the (American) South, you can see billboards advertising a tourist trap near Chattanooga: "Visit Rock City - See Seven States!"


Actually, one can see only five states from Rock City AFAIK. Georgia, both Carolinas, Alabama and Tennessee itself. The other two are a measurement error, they claim one can see a mountain on the Kentucky/Virginia border but it is further than they say.

I haven't visited any tripoints of any level. But I have to drive by the Rioja/Navarre/Aragon tripoint, it is located at the side of a road. A few kilometers South, the Rioja/Aragon/Castile and Leon tripoint is accessible too.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Yes. Is it marked someway?


No idea. I'd guess you can't get anywhere near it by road. Not lots of roads up there.


----------



## Verso

Do you people know how to use the Internet? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_corners_(Canada)


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> That's supposed to be easily accessible? :lol:


Yes, e.g. by canoe. I admit I only googled it, but there are at least unpaved roads nearby. It must be surely much easier to reach it than climbing around hills somewhere in Montenegro :lol:



x-type said:


> not really. HR-H-SRB tripoint is actually not on Danube, but on Danube branch. from SRB side it probably is accessible, from H maybe, brom HR there is forest swamp, but i see a path that comes 1 km before tripoint so maybe it isn't that wild.
> HR-SRB-BIH seems to be more accessible.
> HR-H-SLO - only for real enthusiasts, HR-BIH-MNE too (it doesn't seem so, but it is on some peak actually)





Verso said:


> That's true. :lol:


Come on guys, there are roads within 50-70 m from there. At lest from Hungarian side.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Do you people know how to use the Internet?


Yes. But too lazy to bother confirming what I already knew. 

It says: 

"The four corners are located between Kasba Lake to the north and Hasbala Lake to the south at a place which, according to the Canadian Tourism Development Corporation is "*extremely remote and inaccessible*".[2][3] It is located by an area of marginal taiga forest, the only place in Nunavut which is not Arctic tundra or ice cap.[2] It is in remote northern wilderness, *hundreds of kilometres from any road or railway*" Bolding by yours truly.


----------



## keokiracer

Suddenly... Tornado
Start at 1:00


----------



## albertocsc

In Spain I know one quadripoint (provincial), in Four Provinces Island (obvious name), which lies in Cíjara Dam in Guadiana River. The provinces are Cáceres and Badajoz in Extremadura and Toledo and Anchuras exclave of my province (Ciudad Real) in Castilla-La Mancha.

http://goo.gl/maps/OE45V

I am not really sure if the four provinces coincide at a point, but of course that Island (formerly just a mount, before the construction of that dam) contains that four provinces and they say there is some kind of marker there. It is only reachable by boat.


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> Come on guys, there are roads within 50-70 m from there. At lest from Hungarian side.


And then you'll have to swim. There's also high grass everywhere.


----------



## keber

g.spinoza said:


> No tripoints for me yet. I'm not very interested in them, just those in the mountains. I'm planning in visiting the Piz Lat one (I-A-CH) some day.


Maybe someday F-I-CH triplepoint for me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Dolent

Not extremely hard but you need glacier experience and ice equipment.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I've planned to attend to glacier climbing courses while in Turin next year. It's not really my cup of tea, since I'm a solitary hiker and, as a general rule, I don't like trusting others, while in glacier climbing you must proceed in a roped party with trustworthy companions.


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ What do you think of _vie ferrate _climbs?


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ What do you think of _vie ferrate _climbs?


Never done one. Not the technical ones with gears, anyway. I am slowly battling against fear of heights, so vie ferrate are not the ideal environment for me.

But there's another thing: I don't like vie ferrate in places where there's another hiking trail. If I ever do a via ferrata, it's for places where that is the only (or simpler) way to go up.


----------



## Fatfield

I see Spain is considering changing their time-zone to the same as Britain (& Portugal).

http://news.sky.com/story/1147167/spain-mulls-turning-back-the-time-zone-clock

Is there anything they won't do to try and get Gibraltar back?!


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ It makes sense. During winters, sunrise is almost 9am in A Coruna. 

It would also be an extra help for the great effort they are putting to eradicate, once and for all, the unproductive and outdated habit of taking _siestas_.


----------



## Penn's Woods

[Reply to Fatfield]

Well, it is ridiculous that La Coruña should be an hour ahead of Folkestone....

One almost suspects the EU of trying to get everyone onto Brussels time. (You lot are next.)

----------

Bon.

It's a lovely day for a little drive: http://www.meteomedia.com/meteo/canada/quebec/montreal

À plus tard....

:cheers:


----------



## Road_UK

Fatfield said:


> I see Spain is considering changing their time-zone to the same as Britain (& Portugal).
> 
> http://news.sky.com/story/1147167/spain-mulls-turning-back-the-time-zone-clock
> 
> Is there anything they won't do to try and get Gibraltar back?!


I wonder if Gibraltar would do the same...


----------



## g.spinoza

Have some of the last posts been removed?


----------



## Road_UK

Yep. I'm beginning to think it's a personal thing towards me.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Well, most of the posts were mine. And Penn's woods started.
I fail to see how one can go off topic in an off topic thread...


----------



## Road_UK

I think it has something to do with the references about the ongoing whining in the International Borders thread. Posts have been deleted over there as well. They're getting pretty itchy on the trigger in this section of SSC.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

These forums are not a chatbox. Excess OT gets deleted from time to time. There have been complaints about the amount of uninteresting off topic posts.


----------



## Road_UK

This thread is more or less a chat box...


----------



## Verso

Fatfield said:


> I see Spain is considering changing their time-zone to the same as Britain (& Portugal).


Makes sense to me. Communication with France can't be that high with Pyrenees along the entire border. It would also be great for Portugal.


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> Makes sense to me. Communication with France can't be that high with Pyrenees along the entire border. It would also be great for Portugal.


Actually, they've got strong relationships, and in some towns they've got the border running right through streets and houses.


----------



## Iregua

Fatfield said:


> I see Spain is considering changing their time-zone to the same as Britain (& Portugal).
> 
> http://news.sky.com/story/1147167/spain-mulls-turning-back-the-time-zone-clock
> 
> Is there anything they won't do to try and get Gibraltar back?!


It's the first step to adjust our schedule to the rest of Europe. It was Franco who decided to adopt the German time in 1940, so we will finally return to our _natural_ time.



Suburbanist said:


> It would also be an extra help for the great effort they are putting to eradicate, once and for all, the unproductive and outdated habit of taking _siestas_.


The influence of _siesta_ on the Spanish unproductiviness is overrated IMO, as it's only really common among retired people. I'd say that over the 70% of students or workers don't take siestas.

I think that the main problem is our meal schedule: A very light breakfast before 8am, a cup of coffee at ~11am, a very copious lunch at 2-3pm which makes people dizzy for the next 2 hours, and an abundant dinner at 9pm which makes you go to bed at ~12am. Many people get up tired and are not really awake after the 11am coffee.

But I think it hasn't always been the same, because there are many proverbs/idioms which are totally the opposite to the current Spanish lifestyle. My mom always told me to "eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper" but most people in Spain _eat breakfast like a pauper, lunch like a king, and dinner like a prince_ :lol: I also remember my grandmother telling me "better before than after 10 you should be in bed" (_A las 10 en la cama estés, mejor antes que después_), and I guess that very few Spaniards do that nowadays.


----------



## Verso

Iregua said:


> My mom always told me to "eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper"


Same here (except "lunch like a farmer"), but that's for hard-working people. :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

Iregua said:


> It's the first step to adjust our schedule to the rest of Europe. It was Franco who decided to adopt the German time in 1940, so we will finally return to our _natural_ time.


This would eliminate the time difference with Islas Canarias.

The influence of _siesta_ on the Spanish unproductiviness is overrated IMO, as it's only really common among retired people. I'd say that over the 70% of students or workers don't take siestas.



> I think that the main problem is our meal schedule: A very light breakfast before 8am, a cup of coffee at ~11am, a very copious lunch at 2-3pm which makes people dizzy for the next 2 hours, and an abundant dinner at 9pm which makes you go to bed at ~12am. Many people get up tired and are not really awake after the 11am coffee.


Oh, I was referring more to the very long pauses in the middle of the day than to the act of sleeping itself.


----------



## Fatfield

Road_UK said:


> I wonder if Gibraltar would do the same...


Gib should do the opposite of Spain purely to annoy them.


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> [Reply to Fatfield]
> 
> Well, it is ridiculous that La Coruña should be an hour ahead of Folkestone....
> 
> One almost suspects the EU of trying to get everyone onto Brussels time. (You lot are next.)


There's already been debates in Parliament about scrapping BST. Nothing has come of it though.

As for the EU, we shall fight them on the beaches............


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> This thread is more or less a chat box...


"More or less"? No, explicitly: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=18322519&postcount=1


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Actually, they've got strong relationships, and in some towns they've got the border running right through streets and houses.


Please. If Indiana or Tennessee can cope with two time zones, why can't two countries with a mountain range between them? Maybe Brussels should see what it can do about the behavior of the sun, while it's at it. It should rise and set at the same time from Bialystok to Badajoz. (And then they can decimalize our hours, days, years.... :troll: )


----------



## Penn's Woods

New York State Texting Zone Field Report:

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=18322519&postcount=1

:cheers:

----------

Unrelated: Google knows where I am - it's feeding me ads in French (alternately with English).


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Well, most of the posts were mine. And Penn's woods started.
> I fail to see how one can go off topic in an off topic thread...


Wait, my stupid joke about glaciers in Turin needed to be erased???

Whatever....


----------



## x-type

i have a question for Italians here: i have free afternoon tomorrow, so I will visit the centre of Milano. is it better to leave the car in suburbia and take the metro, or i should enter to the city with my car? any solutions for secure and if possible free parkings in metro zone? metro works normally at sunday?


----------



## Suburbanist

x-type said:


> i have a question for Italians here: i have free afternoon tomorrow, so I will visit the centre of Milano. is it better to leave the car in suburbia and take the metro, or i should enter to the city with my car? any solutions for secure and if possible free parkings in metro zone? metro works normally at sunday?


Subway works on Sunday.

There are several "park and ride" facilities around MEtro stations (http://www.atm-mi.it/IT/VIAGGIACONNOI/AUTO/Pagine/ParcheggiStruttura.aspx), they care called "parcheggio di interscambio".

Some of the best positioned if you don't want to do city driving are on Cascina Gobba (A51), Rogoredo (A1 terminus) or Bisceglie (not far from A50).

You can drive to central areas, the Area C hideous congestion charge is not applicable on weekends.


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> i have a question for Italians here: i have free afternoon tomorrow, so I will visit the centre of Milano. is it better to leave the car in suburbia and take the metro, or i should enter to the city with my car? any solutions for secure and if possible free parkings in metro zone? metro works normally at sunday?


If you come from the East, I *strongly* recommend you leave your car at Cascina Gobba huge parking (there's a dedicated exit in the East Tangenziale). Fee is small, there's a subway entrance directly inside the parking, and you still have to pay normal urban fare (Cascina Gobba is the last "urban" subway station, those further out are extraurban and you would have to pay more).


----------



## x-type

thx spinoza, that sounds very good.
A1 and A51 are not the options because i don't want to go far from A4 since I must proceed to Novara in the evening.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Well, Cascina Gobba IS on A51, but it's not far from A4. When you resume your course, you can go back to the A4 by using A52, it's even closer.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Couple of days ago Swaziland got Google Street View...


----------



## bogdymol

Just a bridge in Russia: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=339_1380358245


----------



## piotr71

Not long time ago I helped a minicab driver to change a wheel. He was about 50 year old Englishman and called himself an experienced driver. Some other chaps tried to give him hands, however they could not cope with this simple, straightforward operation. Then I came and surprisingly had been interviewed in the matter of my competence by the driver. He actually asked me whether I am a mechanic or not. The question kind of stroke me  I carried the job anyway, finished after 5 minutes and finally heard some words of appreciation.

Since then I have began to pay a certain attention to all those cars hanging on hard shoulder in Britain and noticed that most of their faults are only punctured tyres. Some other facts let me presume that the drivers are not capable of replacing wheels. Thus, a question will be asked: do you know, guys how to change the wheel?


----------



## Road_UK

piotr71 said:


> Not long time ago I helped a minicab driver to change a wheel. He was about 50 year old Englishman and called himself an experienced driver. Some other chaps tried to give him hands, however they could not cope with this simple, straightforward operation. Then I came and surprisingly had been interviewed in the matter of my competence by the driver. He actually asked me whether I am a mechanic or not. The question kind of stroke me  I carried the job anyway, finished after 5 minutes and finally heard some words of appreciation.
> 
> Since then I have began to pay a certain attention to all those cars hanging on hard shoulder in Britain and noticed that most of their faults are only punctured tyres. Some other facts let me presume that the drivers are not capable of replacing wheels. Thus, a question will be asked: do you know how to change the wheel?


I do, but it's not one of the main reasons they leave vehicles on the hard shoulder in Britain, because people can always call the AA or RAC out. Usually they're either stolen vehicles, or an insurance scam, which means they report them stolen. Sometimes they even set them on fire. It's a British way of life in a sense...


----------



## bogdymol

piotr71 said:


> Thus, a question will be asked: do you know how to change the wheel?


I had my drivers license for a few years, but never had to change the wheel. Last year, after I got my job, on one of the first days of my new job I found out that I have a flat tire at my car after arriving at work. I had to change it by myself. It didn't take me 5 minute since it was the first time I did that, but in about 15-20 minutes the problem was solved.










This brand-new tire wasn't taken out from the car's spare wheel place since the car was built:


----------



## hofburg

for those who still don't know how to change a wheel, here is good tutorial from slovenian 
pop singer 






I think on motorway shoulder replacing the left wheels is impossible.


----------



## g.spinoza

piotr71 said:


> Thus, a question will be asked: do you know, guys how to change the wheel?


Never done that myself. But I am an instruction book geek: every now and then I _read_ how to change a tire. And feel educated. And know absolutely that I will not be able to do change a tire in real life.


----------



## Wilhem275

I swapped my winter tyres on my own, last time (tyres already on rims). Nothing difficult, but too much effort for the 20€ I spared...


----------



## riiga

We have to change wheels every winter season, so yes I know how to change a wheel.


----------



## piotr71

g.spinoza said:


> Never done that myself. But I am an instruction book geek: every now and then I _read_ how to change a tire. And feel educated. And know absolutely that I will not be able to do change a tire in real life.


Changing a tyre is much more complex job comparing to changing a wheel. I have never done it myself either and wouldn't even think about doing it. I always have it done by a tyre-man.


----------



## Suburbanist

I know how to do it, but I dislike it. I also hate it with passion fitting chains to tires.


----------



## volodaaaa

I have changed wheel twice. First time I have panicked a bit and despite following the guide, it did not work. I locked off all the matrices, but the wheel could not be detached. I felt like stupid blonde girl. So I had to call my dad who had changed wheels many times. Unfortunately, he did not help me, since the wheel was unable to detach from the axis. Since it was in summer, the axis was seemingly too hot and therefore held the wheel despite all locked off matrices. So we tried hit it by a middle wooden log and the wheel finally fell off the axis.

Second time it was in last December. I was in the centre of Bratislava and there was no place to park my car. Fortunately, it was within 30 kph speed limit zone. I fellow the guide and everything worked perfectly. I must admit, that I was a bit afraid, where I could find a wooden log in the middle of the city  Thanks God for winter 

The car is now sold and I have another one I have not changed the wheel on yet.



Suburbanist said:


> I know how to do it, but I dislike it. I also hate it with passion fitting chains to tires.


There should (have) be(en) a special hell for people who have invented it.


----------



## volodaaaa

Btw. sorry for the offtopic, but I would like to start creating traffic time-lapse videos based on DSLR images. I just want to ask whether someone of you don't know answer to my technical issue.

The intervalometers are quite expensive here (about 60 Euro), but there is an Android application called Camera Timer USB. The description says that special USB cable is necessary. Nothing else is added. Do you think it may work with regular Smartphone USB cable with micro USB adapter? The USB micro adapter costs 3 Eur, what is much lesser than 60 Euro. I know some of you like DSLR shooting.


----------



## cinxxx

Buona sera da Dolo, Venezia!


----------



## Penn's Woods

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Montreal. Pity about the winters, though.


----------



## x-type

cinxxx said:


> Buona sera da Dolo, Venezia!


buongiorno da Novara


----------



## cinxxx

Weather is crap


----------



## Ron2K

I'm just going to leave this here.


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> Buona sera da Dolo, Venezia!





x-type said:


> buongiorno da Novara


Buongiorno da Lubiana.


----------



## CNGL

Buona sera da Huesca


----------



## g.spinoza




----------



## keokiracer

Uhh... Okay.


----------



## Wilhem275

cinxxx said:


> Buona sera da Dolo, Venezia!


Just wanted everyone to know that at the moment this guy is standing some 6 km away from my desk :lol:

Cinxxx, I'll call you tomorrow, I just got home from Ireland and I'm just falling into the bed...


----------



## hofburg

how do you know he's standing, maybe he's sitting


----------



## Wilhem275

I hope he's sleeping by now :lol:


----------



## Zagor666

hofburg said:


> how do you know he's standing, maybe he's sitting


maybe he forgot how to do it


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

Horrible video. Happened yesterday in New York. Watch at your own risk.


----------



## volodaaaa

AnOldBlackMarble said:


> Horrible video. Happened yesterday in New York. Watch at your own risk.


No more else to say: The driver of the SUV completely fck'd it up :lol: provoking against predominance.


----------



## keber

And what happened then?

(nothing horrible in that video though - especially after I've read gory details about Nairobi terrorist attack right during my lunch)


----------



## Surel

A Chinese car Quoros 3 is the safest car on the European market tested in 2013 so far according to the NCAP test.
http://www.euroncap.com/results/2013.aspx


----------



## bozenBDJ

^ They sell _Chinese _cars to the European market too?


----------



## g.spinoza

bozenBDJ said:


> ^ They sell _Chinese _cars to the European market too?


They do. I've seen some Great Wall cars around. There's a huge retailer just besides the A4 around Bergamo.


----------



## Road_UK

Do you get sambal and prawn crackers when you buy a car there?


----------



## Alex_ZR

Chinese brand of cars "Chery" is sold in Serbia.


----------



## CNGL

Chinese cars cannot into Spain. AFAIC.


----------



## hofburg

cinxxx said:


> Weather is crap


what about today?


----------



## Road_UK

CNGL said:


> Chinese cars cannot into Spain. AFAIC.


Why not?


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> Why not?


I think they can't be registered in EU. Like I can't buy Chinese car, get the registration certificate and put the Slovak plates on it. But have not heard that foreigner can't drive on European roads.


----------



## italystf

@Verso
Do you like today banner?


----------



## Surel

volodaaaa said:


> I think they can't be registered in EU. Like I can't buy Chinese car, get the registration certificate and put the Slovak plates on it. But have not heard that foreigner can't drive on European roads.


Well that Quoros has a dealer with a showroom in Bratislava. The dealer is organized through Dutch import company.

http://spectator.sme.sk/articles/view/51289/10/qoros_starts_selling_cars_in_slovakia.html


----------



## volodaaaa

Surel said:


> Well that Quoros has a dealer with a showroom in Bratislava. The dealer is organized through Dutch import company.
> 
> http://spectator.sme.sk/articles/view/51289/10/qoros_starts_selling_cars_in_slovakia.html


I meant it generally in case of all forbidden cars. There were some analyses in newspaper related to Indian brand Tata. But I have just realized those cars are being sold here as well. :dunno: Maybe it was concerned to model Tata Nano


----------



## volodaaaa

This is amazing to me:
Migration track map of the Lesser spoted eagle called Arnold 
http://spravatanap.sk/web/index.php/2-uncategorised/140-lety-arnolda.

The eagle was nesting in Slovak Tatra national park until he left on the journey to Africa on September 26th. Fortunately, today he made it through Syria and currently is in Lebanon.

It is really wonderful and amazing how he took the right course through Bosporus at the beginning (since Eagles don't like flying over sea) without wandering at coast. Average daily distance is 300 km. 

Have a nice vacation Arnie :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

Driving on the motorway today. Please meet my speedometer:


----------



## Wilhem275

hofburg said:


> what about today?


Today was a nice day and I guess he enjoyed Venice 

And still I have to call him icard:


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> @Verso
> Do you like today banner?


It's quite average. There's just the castle and a bunch of buildings.


----------



## italystf

A question about international law: what happens if one wants to enter a country that doesn't recognize his\her own country? Is his\her passport rejected? For example a Kosovan who go to Serbia, Romania or Spain, a Taiwanese in China or an Abkhasian in most of the world.


----------



## Alex_ZR

italystf said:


> A question about international law: what happens if one wants to enter a country that doesn't recognize his\her own country? Is his\her passport rejected? For example a Kosovan who go to Serbia, Romania or Spain, a Taiwanese in China or an Abkhasian in most of the world.


Slovakia doesn't recognize Kosovo, but recognize it's passports (same goes for Romania). Taiwanese can visit Serbia although it doesn't recognize it. Visa will be issued on a separate piece of paper.


----------



## cinxxx

Wilhem275 said:


> Today was a nice day and I guess he enjoyed Venice
> 
> And still I have to call him icard:





hofburg said:


> what about today?





Wilhem275 said:


> Just wanted everyone to know that at the moment this guy is standing some 6 km away from my desk :lol:
> 
> Cinxxx, I'll call you tomorrow, I just got home from Ireland and I'm just falling into the bed...





Wilhem275 said:


> I hope he's sleeping by now :lol:


Arrived at the hotel not long ago. Full day yesterday, today - extra plus awesome weather. Visited almost only islands. Tomorrow I'm thinking of a sidetrip for the first part of the day, but I'm not sure yet where. Thursday, also sidetrip somewhere.

Great vacation this far, Venice is amazing!



hofburg said:


> how do you know he's standing, maybe he's sitting


How's you're schedule on Friday around dinner time?


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

bogdymol said:


> Driving on the motorway today. Please meet my speedometer:


Wow, you're slow, but stylish.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> A question about international law: what happens if one wants to enter a country that doesn't recognize his\her own country? Is his\her passport rejected? For example a Kosovan who go to Serbia, Romania or Spain, a Taiwanese in China or an Abkhasian in most of the world.


Maybe he/she can get some temporal official documents. I heard, that if Kosovan wants to go to Serbia with his/her car, he/she has to change the licence plates from Kosovan to temporal Serbian since Kosovan are not recognized and police may consider his/her car as not alowed to be driven in traffic. But have no clue what is practice. 



Alex_ZR said:


> Slovakia doesn't recognize Kosovo, but recognize it's passports (same goes for Romania). Taiwanese can visit Serbia although it doesn't recognize it. Visa will be issued on a separate piece of paper.


This is true, but serious bllsh't. Does not it mean that Slovakia de facto recognizes Kosovo? :lol: Slovaks obviously like Serbs and this is just the results of the every government policy: they know, that EU would be like if we recognize Kosovo, and due to very good reputation Serbs (and other ex-Yugoslav countries) in Slovakia has (have) they know, people will be like if we do not recognize Kosovo sooner than Serbia do. Colleagues in EU are important, but people here in Slovakia are more important since of right of vote


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## bozenBDJ

^ With your g.f.? :dunno:


----------



## bogdymol

cinxxx said:


> https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-hiM9ckY_92I/UlFC22672RI/AAAAAAABNCM/cfC31rlKVNU/s1024/P1280738.jpg


The original picture


----------



## ChrisZwolle

So, whose shoes are nicer?


----------



## cinxxx

:lol:



bozenBDJ said:


> ^ With your g.f.? :dunno:


Yep


----------



## Alex_ZR

Romanians occupied Gorizia/Nova Gorica! :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Noudeal


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> So, whose shoes are nicer?


They are both kind of funny.


----------



## italystf

That photo in Gorizia has became a classical touristic habit like these ones in Pisa:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Besides the "classic" picture, I did this one in Pisa:










More pictures from Pisa & the rest of my trip in Italy.


----------



## Verso

Do you play golf with those shoes? :troll:


----------



## volodaaaa

My fiancee would complain the hell of me if I encouraged her to wear such open shoes in such weather. Unless the weather near Gorizia was nice


----------



## bogdymol

^^
The weather in Gorizia was nice and hot when I was there.



Verso said:


> Do you play golf with those shoes? :troll:


What's your problem with my shoes? They are nice shoes.


----------



## volodaaaa

Brace yourselves, the fetishists are coming :troll:


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> What's your problem with my shoes? They are nice shoes.


I don't know, they look like for playing golf.  But ok, they are nice.


----------



## Verso

I was thinking about reorganization of this forum. All other infrastructure subforums are well and nicely organized, while it doesn't look that nice in H&A. Thread titles aren't standardized and I'd throw out local languages. Example:

SLOVENIA | Highways

It's just an example and it can say something else and include "SLO". What do you say?


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> I was thinking about reorganization of this forum. All other infrastructure subforums are well and nicely organized, while it doesn't look that nice in H&A. Thread titles aren't standardized and I'd throw out local languages. Example:
> 
> SLOVENIA | Highways
> 
> It's just an example and it can say something else and include "SLO". What do you say?


I think there will be bunch of Highway threads.


----------



## bogdymol

I think Chris will have to get a day off from his work just to change the thread's names.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

We have weekends in the Netherlands as well, Bogdy 

I like the idea. Any more input? 

I would also like to make clear the threads are not necessarily about motorways alone. Some other non-motorway information would be nice as well. I remember the Polish thread has relatively few posts about non-A/S roads.


----------



## Verso

Something like this looks quite nice to me. As I said, we could somehow incorporate country codes as well (not necessarily though).


----------



## Verso

Or perhaps:

SLO - Slovenia

[SLO] Slovenia

?


----------



## bogdymol

RipleyLV said:


> Why even bother with highways/motorways/roads names? This is the Highways & Autobahns section, logically this subsection is about roads. My proposal is just with country codes and countries names, and since this is an international forum, then country names should be only in English.
> 
> LV | Latvia
> 
> SLO | Slovenia
> 
> RO | Romania


Some people arrive on this forum or on a certain thread from other corners of the internet, so they would think that it might be a thread about general discussions about country X. I think it's better to have in the thread's name written _road / highway / motorway / etc._


----------



## Wilhem275

riiga said:


> Having the brackets is what makes it easy to tell the difference between country threads and general thread. I'd rather they be kept that way.


+1. The country code would be "lost" without brackets, they're there to identify it.

I'd also keep in the name the fact we're talking about motorways of the country: 95% of threads will be about it, but sometimes we might talk about different road-related stuff for a specific country.

e.g.: "[RUS] Russia | Crash videos"


----------



## bozenBDJ

^ Seems appropriate to have a thread just for _[RU] Crash videos _:yes::yes: .


----------



## keokiracer

bozenBDJ said:


> ^ Seems appropriate to have a thread just for _[RU] Crash videos _:yes::yes: .


http://rusdtp.ru/video/
And thread filled :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ And the Romanian version: trafictube.ro


----------



## ChrisZwolle

RipleyLV said:


> Why even bother with highways/motorways/roads names? This is the Highways & Autobahns section, logically this subsection is about roads. My proposal is just with country codes and countries names, and since this is an international forum, then country names should be only in English.
> 
> LV | Latvia
> 
> SLO | Slovenia
> 
> RO | Romania


The problem with that is that it doesn't show as a road-related thread on Google, or when linked on Facebook for example. I'd prefer to keep it in the title. 

I like this approach:

[SLO] Slovenia | Avtoceste 

or

[SLO] Slovenia | Ceste & Avtoceste

to make sure it's not exclusively about motorways but other road types as well.

I prefer to keep the country names lower case. There's no need to USE ALL CAPS.

Instead of the | we could also use the •


----------



## bogdymol

I think this is the best version:

*[RO] Romania | Drumuri și autostrăzi*


----------



## bozenBDJ

bogdymol said:


> ^^ And the Romanian version: trafictube.ro


And RO can into of crash videos. :yes::yes:


----------



## albertocsc

bogdymol said:


> I think this is the best version:
> 
> *[RO] Romania | Drumuri și autostrăzi*


An then we could have *[E] Spain | Autopistas, autovías, carreteras y caminos de cabras*

The caminos de cabras part was a joke. I like this renaming idea.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The problem with that is that it doesn't show as a road-related thread on Google, or when linked on Facebook for example. I'd prefer to keep it in the title.
> 
> I like this approach:
> 
> [SLO] Slovenia | Avtoceste
> 
> or
> 
> [SLO] Slovenia | Ceste & Avtoceste
> 
> to make sure it's not exclusively about motorways but other road types as well.
> 
> I prefer to keep the country names lower case. There's no need to USE ALL CAPS.
> 
> Instead of the | we could also use the •


Coming in on the middle of this, but without "Roads" or "Highways" or something in English you'd have the same Google problem, wouldn't you?

I'd also point out - at the risk of being labeled a dumb American :jk: - that I'm not sure how widely known the country codes are outside of Europe. I assume they're the ones that used to appear on the ovals and now appear on Eurobands)?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> Coming in on the middle of this, but without "Roads" or "Highways" or something in English you'd have the same Google problem, wouldn't you?


Not necessarily. Google hits are from inside the thread, but it displays the thread name at the top of the search result. I'm also not sold on not using English in the thread title (other than the name of the country).


----------



## Wilhem275

^^ Me neither. Using just the local word seems something better for the local forums, this is the general one.



Out of context, this is for Cinxxx


----------



## bogdymol

How about this?

*[RO] Romania | Roads and Highways • Drumuri și autostrăzi*

I know it's longer, but I prefer it because some people know just the local language of their own country (so they will search for the thread in their language), but others want to search for the roads thread from another country (from where they don't know the language, but they will use English)


----------



## Wilhem275

Seems fine to me.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Roads and highways means the same. I know many Europeans think a highway is synonymous to an Autobahn / Autopista, etc, but the word highway is not confined to motorways or freeways only, but can mean any type of (rural) public road (i.e. US Highway, State Highway, etc, which may or may not be motorways). The New Zealand State Highway network consists probably for over 90% of two-lane roads.

We could also use the term "road infrastructure", with the local name suffixed to it. 

That would be:

*[RO] Romania | Road infrastructure • Drumuri și autostrăzi*


----------



## Penn's Woods

I can think of plenty of roads I wouldn't call highways.

Google "definition highway." The first several hits all start out by saying a highway is a *main* road.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/highway

And if we must engage in this exercise at all (why?), "road infrastructure" just seems a bit, a bit...wordy I guess.


----------



## Verso

India is already ahead of us.


----------



## volodaaaa

Guys, highway is major road. Motorway is what is often confused with highway. Expresway is low-grade motorway.

But I would like to bring up another question. Is there any difference between *interchange* and *intersection*? I got it that interchange is the crossing of more motorways/expresways (not exit) and intersection is just another name for exit, or more precise, the set of exits and on-way ramps at one place. Am I right?


----------



## bogdymol

^^ *Interchange:* several roads meet, but it's on different levels.










*Intersection:* several roads meet on the same level.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> ^^ *Interchange:* several roads meet, but it's on different levels.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *Intersection:* several roads meet on the same level.


Well, it explains a lot :lol: Thanks.


----------



## Penn's Woods

A tiny correction (sorry...): "several" is at least three. I'd say "two or more roads...."

:cheers:


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> India is already ahead of us.


However some of their languages and writings are missing.


----------



## bogdymol

Picture shot yeserday in Arad, Romania:










Drivers that come from the street on the right might get confused with this signs.


----------



## Verso

Have we now agreed to a new title format? If not, then at least correct Kazahkstan into Kaza*kh*stan for starters.


----------



## Zagor666

bogdymol said:


> Picture shot yeserday in Arad, Romania:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Drivers that come from the street on the right might get confused with this signs.


 post this in the strange signs thread


----------



## Suburbanist

Any reorganization of thread titles should consider keeping English names of countries and generic descriptions (freeways, urban road, tunnels etc) to keep SSC H&A threads high on Google Search results.

If you rename a thread ITA | Autostrade or NLD | Autosnelwegen, it will attract less international visitors to these threads, at least those who browse directly from Google Search. 

So I'd keep country and description in English, maybe followed by local one like this

ITALY | Expressways ** Italia | Superstrade


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Except I'd say "Roads and Highways" (to cover all types of roads)*. Except in countries, like the US (is there any other), for which we have two threads, for different levels of road.

*Although on rereading, I wonder if I haven't just shown that "roads" would actually cover everything! hno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I renamed some threads on the first page.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I like how it looks, but please capitalise first letters of the words.

[RO] Romania | road infrastructure • autostrăzi şi drumuri

should look like this:

[RO] Romania | Road Infrastructure • Autostrăzi şi Drumuri


----------



## Verso

If we're renaming threads, it should be standardized. Some titles now include country adjectives in local languages and some don't. I prefer without them.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Some people have too much time on their hands....


----------



## piotr71

A Macedonian word in Cyrillic intruded into the title of the Mexican section.


----------



## Peines

This afternoon, parked on my street…










…everyone looking, like if we all want to appear on streetview…


----------



## x-type

i have just had technical examination of my car and braking lights have stopped working just before my turn.


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> i have just had technical examination of my car and braking lights have stopped working just before my turn.


Ouch. Did you pay for it?


----------



## Surel

Can't get enough of it.









that gif


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> Ouch. Did you pay for it?


pay? i have payed technical examination, but i failed to pass. fortunately, second attempt is free.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

http://www.derwesten.de/panorama/ma...f-hochzeitsreise-an-tankstelle-id8549358.html

A man forgets his newlywed wife at their honeymoon trip at a rest stop, founds out after 2 hours of driving alone. :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Where is Road_UK?


----------



## volodaaaa

Guys, how do you solve the initial coldness in your car after entering on in winter times. I mean, until the engine get warm and the fans starts to blow the heat air in.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> Guys, how do you solve the initial coldness in your car after entering on in winter times. I mean, until the engine get warm and the fans starts to blow the heat air in.


Jackets.


----------



## cinxxx

Seat heating 
Some even have steering wheel heating...


----------



## keokiracer

Just sit in the cold and hope that the fans kick in quickly


----------



## Wilhem275

Swearing. A lot. It helps.


----------



## hofburg

turn your car on 5 min before departure?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Today's engines are very efficient, which is a good thing, but they don't produce much heat when running idle.


----------



## cinxxx

Is it only in Germany not allowed to turn the engine on to defrost?


----------



## Penn's Woods

hofburg said:


> turn your car on 5 min before departure?


Some people would say that isn't very green, and in at least one American state (I suspect more), it's illegal.* Google "anti-idling laws."

You could also google "winter plug-ins" for what they do in places where it can get so cold that the car might not start, like Minnesota.

*Whether that's true on your own property, in your own driveway, I don't know.


----------



## Penn's Woods

cinxxx said:


> Is it only in Germany not allowed to turn the engine on to defrost?


Think I answered your question before I saw it. See my previous post.


----------



## Penn's Woods

69 likes.
Double-entendre potential there. Don't know what to do with the "received" part, though.


----------



## Penn's Woods

piotr71 said:


> ....Anyone plucky enough to show himself?
> 
> (PLH, remember it's the Roadside Rest Area thread and don't say it''s not a chat or so and do not use your scissors, please)


We know Spinoza looks like John Belushi....


----------



## Road_UK

piotr71 said:


> Don't you think, it's time to to introduce (show)myself, after so many years on the forum? Here I am (guess the location).
> 
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/71piotr/10211339374/
> IMGP1543 by 71piotr, on Flickr
> 
> I put on Belgian t-shirt, probably Chinese trousers, German shoes made in Taiwan and Umbro sox. Anyone plucky enough to show himself?
> 
> (PLH, remember it's the Roadside Rest Area thread and don't say it''s not a chat or so and do not use your scissors, please)


Sure what the hell.


----------



## italystf

Crop circles?
https://maps.google.it/maps?ll=45.930871,13.45911&spn=0.008462,0.021136&t=h&z=16&lci=weather


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> Today's engines are very efficient, which is a good thing, but they don't produce much heat when running idle.


Especially the new diesel engines. It's not uncommon that during cold weather (-20C and below) the engine coolant temperature will actually drop while running idle. Therefore it's completely pointless to run your engine idle before setting off.

Talking about starting your engine during cold weather, this is a very extreme example


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Sure what the hell.


The first one looks more in character. :jk:


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> The first one looks more in character. :jk:


Nah that'd be this one...


----------



## Attus

Either these pictures are too old or you're younger than what I thought you were 

(Isn't it very painful to native English speakers to read lots of posts having several grammatical mistakes?)


----------



## Wilhem275

ChrisZwolle said:


> Today's engines are very efficient, which is a good thing, but they don't produce much heat when running idle.


Also, most modern cars have bypasses to send hot coolant directly to the A/C radiator when needed; this way, even if the engine has been running for few seconds, you'll get a bit of hot air.

My Benz W169 really surprised me, first time.


----------



## cinxxx

*Cittadella, Veneto* - "Jesus is my airbag"


fotos hochladen


----------



## cinxxx

^^i35x?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's going to be a gasoline powered car for tax reasons. The road tax on diesel cars is just absurd, even with the lower fuel prices and better mileage diesel cars are more expensive. Even a small diesel car costs € 100 per month in road tax, while a small gasoline car costs € 25 per month. 

So I want a fuel-efficient gasoline powered car. I like the Hyundai i30, but it wasn't facelifted until the 2012 model year, which means it's too costly (new cars are taxed 45% + 21% VAT in the Netherlands). I'm interested in the i20. They are slightly larger than the i10 (city car) because most of my driving is long-distance (I don't need a car to get to work).


----------



## cinxxx

^^Go for the Seat Leon gasoline


----------



## Verso

dubart said:


> Ford *Kuga* is hno: here. Kuga = Plague.


I rarely see them here. I guess no one wants to have a car with such a name. :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

I think Chris should buy a Toyota Aygo (or the Citroen version which is essentially the same with other name). Or a Yaris...


----------



## riiga

Seems like road/car tax is crazy expensive in the Netherlands. :nuts:

My old station-wagon Volvo 740 was 216 € per year in tax, or 18 €/month.


----------



## cinxxx

I pay car tax 58€ per year for my 6 monthts old Seat Leon 1.4L 122PS gasoline in Germany


----------



## Penn's Woods

My car registration is $36.00 a year.
:cheers:


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> Italian Fiat Ritmo was renamed as "Fiat Strada" in USA... maybe Penn's Woods can explain why


do you know that last (actual) generation of Bravo is still called Ritmo in Australia?


----------



## Peines

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's going to be a gasoline powered car for tax reasons. The road tax on diesel cars is just absurd, even with the lower fuel prices and better mileage diesel cars are more expensive. Even a small diesel car costs € 100 per month in road tax, while a small gasoline car costs € 25 per month.
> 
> So I want a fuel-efficient gasoline powered car. I like the Hyundai i30, but it wasn't facelifted until the 2012 model year, which means it's too costly (new cars are taxed 45% + 21% VAT in the Netherlands). I'm interested in the i20. They are slightly larger than the i10 (city car) because most of my driving is long-distance (I don't need a car to get to work).





cinxxx said:


> ^^Go for the Seat Leon gasoline


Seat León TSI 1.4. No doubt 

But if you're looking for a i20 you'll should look the new Renault Capture TCe.

Other options: Fiat bravo or 500L with twinair engines, KIA Ceed, i30, Skoda Rapid Spaceback, Skoda Yeti, the recently facelifted Renault Megame TCe, ford focus ecoboost...

And never buy a car with a PSA Peugueot-Citroen petrol engine, they have probably the best diesel engines, but they don't know how to design a petrol engine.


----------



## bogdymol

Dacia Sandero


----------



## piotr71

Penn's Woods said:


> Native speakers make mistakes too, you know. Not the same ones, necessarily.... (A native speaker knows instinctively when to say "went" and when to say "have gone"... but even Continentals whose English is nearly perfect occasionally slip on that. But even a native speaker can be a bad speller, or bad at some school-taught rules that don't really come naturally (like "who" vs. "whom" or the so-called "split infinitive").(..)


There is also common misuse of apostrophe in England. Huge amount of people say 'he were' and 'he don't', too. I think it's generally typical for working class as well as pronouncing '_-age_' in 'garage' as '_-idge_' in 'bridge'. 



Peines said:


> *Even in europe*: In spain we don't have the same versions like the rest of europe. (..)


I remember some 'indigenous' Spanish vehicles such as: Renault 7, Santana (Land Rover), Small MB vans which had different symbols to those sold in the rest of Europe (MB100D) and alsa trucks called Ebro. 



ChrisZwolle said:


> It's going to be a gasoline powered car for tax reasons. The road tax on diesel cars is just absurd, even with the lower fuel prices and better mileage diesel cars are more expensive. Even a small diesel car costs € 100 per month in road tax, while a small gasoline car costs € 25 per month.
> 
> (..)


It's just hard to believe! I keep 2 youngtimers in Poland and pay no tax at all for them. In the UK I am charged about 300 pounds for Fiat Multipla and 280 for BMW 3. I also rent some other vehicles, however they are already taxed.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I am by no means perfect in English, but I've seen several recurring spelling errors amongst native speakers, especially then/than, we're/were and your/you're. I find it personally hard to decide when to use "farther" and "further". Further up the road, farther west than...?


----------



## Road_UK

Farther is more American. And seeing that you prefer everything in American (gasoline, Utrecht province, where we'd say the Province of Utrecht) you can use it as much as you like


----------



## g.spinoza

I always thought "farther" is more related to actual spatial distances while the meaning of "further" is broader. "After further considerations" not "after farther considerations".


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> I am by no means perfect in English, but I've seen several recurring spelling errors amongst native speakers, especially then/than, we're/were and your/you're. I find it personally hard to decide when to use "farther" and "further". Further up the road, farther west than...?


It is the same to me :lol: But conservative Englishman may protest.

Well phrasal verbs are horror to me. The more I learn, the more new appear somehow.

I don't understand some mistakes among natives - your vs. you're etc. is easy and obvious as hell. But there are some words I am never sure about: eg. differences among "nevertheless/nonetheless/furthermore/moreover" what are very very similar words, or "made from" vs. "made up by", "therefore" vs. "hence" and some rules among them (e.g. must be standing at the beginning of the sentence).

I am also very confused about pairs upon/beneath, over/under, above/below, about/over (argue about something vs. argue over something).

Special category are tenses. But according to my experiences, the use of past simple instead of present perfect is not a problem, whereas opposite situation is. 

And sometimes, I am not sure about articles :lol:


----------



## piotr71

Romani people's camp in Ledbury, England.


----------



## Road_UK

Yes, but again mostly in America. I can't say that Brits never use the word farther, but it's not common use anyway. My UK spelling checker only knows it with a capital F - like as if it's some locality or something...

Edit, reply to G.


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> Yes, but again mostly in America. I can't say that Brits never use the word farther, but it's not common use anyway. My UK spelling checker only knows it with a capital F - like as if it's some locality or something...
> 
> Edit, reply to G.


Good name for locality. 
- "Do you live farther?" Yes, literally. :lol:


----------



## Road_UK

Reminds me of the town of Fucking in Austria.


----------



## volodaaaa

NordikNerd said:


> Yes ! Now they are all over the internet. Some person on youtube wrote:
> 
> Romania is the gypsy land full of thiefs, retards, liars and cheap whores....
> rumanians are descendents of wlach shepperds,? gypsies, goats and donkies !!!!


Pretty much inapropriate and unnecessary


----------



## piotr71

bogdymol said:


> Excuse me for not beeing born in Scandinavia


. 

No worries mate. It would not be worth...

My cousin, civil engineer, couple of years ago worked as a project manager on a large construction in Malmoe. He once had to deal with a Swedish electrician, who was not able to earth some typical, wall-built-in electrical sockets. My cousin asked him what he actually was doing there if he couldn't cope with such straightforward job. He answered that it's not his specialisation, he was a bulb-installing electrician (or so) and there was need to wait for another chap, who specialised in sockets.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> I remember when I registered back in 2006, there wasn't a single active Romanian on SSC (at least not here or in Euroscrapers). They only started appearing when they joined the EU in 2007.


me too 
i actually came here searching for motorways' photos. in that time, believe or not, they were quite exotic in the internet. not to mention photos from Romanian or Bulgarian motorways, that was rare as hell (i remember only 2 or 3 of RO amd maybe 5 from BG available).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Times have surely changed for internet road enthusiasts. I too remember that photos from eastern Europe were scarce before 2005. The interest in highway photography (sign-by-sign photography) has been reduced by Google Street View and the fact that most motorways have been photographed by now. Right now highway filmography is quite popular, there isn't a major U.S. metro area that's not been covered by highway filmers.


----------



## volodaaaa

I used to kept myself out of this forum, since I thought it was about skyscrappers only (what interest me not).  Then, I was thinking about buying a new apartment in April, and since in Slovak section, new apartment buildings in Bratislava are discussed, I registered. After that I found this great section.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I happened on SSC through an image search for either the Périphérique or the "voies sur berges" in Paris (I forget which).


----------



## Road_UK

I got here through image searching on Google as well...


----------



## keokiracer

I got here because Chris kept linking stuff from the Highway and Autobahn section when I asked for sources of pics that he posted on the Dutch road forum


----------



## bogdymol

I registered on SSC in 2010, but I found the site about 1 year earlier. I kept lurking around until I had something interesting to say and then I registered.

I found SSC after searching for some road related pictures and information from Romania. I mostly read the Romanian road section at the beginning of my SSC time, but after that I discovered the Romanian thread on H&A, and after I realized how the forum is divided I found out H&A section.



volodaaaa said:


> Because all Romanians were playing erepublik. Romania used to be the most dangerous superpower


I still play eRepublik. You can join too if you want 

-----------------------------

A nice picture from Timisoara: *you came to the wrong neighborhood bro*


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ Great pic


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Times have surely changed for internet road enthusiasts. I too remember that photos from eastern Europe were scarce before 2005.


There were very few photos of Slovenian motorways before I photographed them all in 2007.


----------



## Road_UK

Shit. I wouldn't want to mess with that crowd...

(reply regarding that photo of that dangerous street gang)


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> I still play eRepublik. You can join too if you want


I used to play it in 2007-2008. Hungary had occupied Czech Republic and Slovakia, then Romania had occupied Hungary :lol: After that, programmers invented resistance war and Romania promised us to do a planned resistance fight in order to recreate Slovakia. I remember negotiations with Romanian president the_mihai. 

Then it started to bore me too much, because group of Slovak nationalists took control and everything has to be according to them. Also, it took too much time to fight, govern and write some articles in newspapers. Since I was working on my PhD, I had to spend time wiser, eg. writing scientific papers in real life :lol: So I gave it up.


----------



## cinxxx

Meanwhile at Mercedes...


----------



## albertocsc

ChrisZwolle said:


> I too remember that photos from eastern Europe were scarce before 2005.


It has improved a lot since then (well, I just know since 2009 or a little bit earlier, when I first started following Romanian highways news and then created an account), but we would still need to extend eastwards. For some ex-USSR countries, for example, information and pictures are still scarce, and maybe we should need some colaborators from there (there already are some, but we need more involvement).


----------



## hofburg

Verso said:


> There were very few photos of Slovenian motorways before I photographed them all in 2007.


a pioneer 
I wonder about the future of motorways photography, there are less and less new motorways built, google streetview is covering almost everything, and on this forum a major part of motorways was already photodocumented (at least in Europe).


----------



## bogdymol

volodaaaa said:


> I used to play it in 2007-2008. Hungary had occupied Czech Republic and Slovakia, then Romania had occupied Hungary :lol: After that, programmers invented resistance war and Romania promised us to do a planned resistance fight in order to recreate Slovakia. I remember negotiations with Romanian president the_mihai.
> 
> Then it started to bore me too much, because group of Slovak nationalists took control and everything has to be according to them. Also, it took too much time to fight, govern and write some articles in newspapers. Since I was working on my PhD, I had to spend time wiser, eg. writing scientific papers in real life :lol: So I gave it up.


Speaking about eRepublik: is here any forum member that is still an active player?


----------



## Road_UK

ChrisZwolle, keokiracer?


----------



## keokiracer

I am known for doing that yes. But when you look at my signature underneath my username you can see that I am a big hypocrite


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> ChrisZwolle, keokiracer?


You mean a former region that has given its name to two current provinces, I think.

[exits hastily, dodging brickbats]

PS. they're going to lose to Belgium anyway.


----------



## keokiracer

Penn's Woods said:


> You mean a former region that has given its name to two current provinces, I think.











Penn's Woods said:


> PS. they're going to lose to Belgium anyway.


And then you woke up from your dream


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Luckily I don't care about football/soccer at all.


----------



## keokiracer

I only care about the national team.  

Go Holland! Err... I mean; Go Nederland!


----------



## Penn's Woods

keokiracer said:


> ...And then you woke up from your dream


All I know is what I see on Belgian sites, which is that the current Belgian national team is, like, the best soccer team in world history....


----------



## keokiracer

Penn's Woods said:


> soccer team


Oi!
















:lol::lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Soccer team.


----------



## Road_UK

ChrisZwolle said:


> Luckily I don't care about football/soccer at all.


Don't you even feel a little sense of pride when the national team is doing so well?


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> All I know is what I see on Belgian sites, which is that the current Belgian national team is, like, the best soccer team in world history....


Belgium happen to be blessed with some cracking football players at the moment but, like Spain (until recently) they always fail to impress in the finals of major tournaments.


----------



## Attus

As a Hungarian, I ask you not to speak about the Dutch national team ;-)


----------



## Road_UK

Attus said:


> As a Hungarian, I ask you not to speak about the Dutch national team ;-)


Ok we won't. How's your (ex) coach doing by the way?


----------



## cinxxx

*Why I Will Never, Ever, Go Back to the United States *
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/niels-gerson-lohman/us-border-crossing_b_4098130.html



> [...]
> 
> I have been cursed at a Chinese border. In Dubai, my passport was studied by three veiled women for over an hour and my suitcase completely dismembered. In the Philippines I had to bribe someone in order to get my visa extended for a few days. Borders, they can be tough, especially in countries known for corruption.
> 
> But never, ever, will I return to the United States of America.
> 
> Niels Gerson Lohman is a writer, designer and musician from The Netherlands.


----------



## Penn's Woods

cinxxx said:


> *Why I Will Never, Ever, Go Back to the United States *
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/niels-gerson-lohman/us-border-crossing_b_4098130.html


Sure. Generalize about 300 million human beings because of a few idiots at the border. (I've already read this crap on the Huffington Post - an *AMERICAN* site - might I add, which had no trouble publishing it.)

As far as I'm concerned, he's perfectly welcome to stay away. And we'll keep our tourist and other dollars out of Europe in return. 'k?

(Seriously, why post this shit, cinxxx? And "like" it, Keoki?)

Continental [self-censored]


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> Sure. Generalize about 300 million human beings because of a few idiots at the border. (I've already read this crap on the Huffington Post - an AMERICAN site - might I add, which had no trouble publishing it.)
> 
> As far as I'm concerned, he's perfectly welcome to stay away. And we'll keep our tourist and other dollars out of Europe in return. 'k?
> 
> (Seriously, why post this shit, cinxxx?)
> 
> Continental [self-censored]


But... I was looking forward to my trip in April..


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> But... I was looking forward to my trip in April..


*You*'re welcome.


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> You're welcome.


Thanks  Last time I flew into Newark. I had no problems. They asked a few questions, and I went through with a smile, a joke and a handshake. Customs had a quick look in my suitcase, and got a warm welcome.


----------



## keokiracer

Penn's Woods said:


> Sure. Generalize about 300 million human beings because of a few idiots at the border.


Yeah, of course we do. Just like you Americans always generalize as well 




Penn's Woods said:


> (Seriously, why post this shit, cinxxx? And "like" it, Keoki?)


I can't speak for cinxxx, but I found the story interesting, hence the reason I liked it.



Penn's Woods said:


> Continental [self-censored]


I've never seen you like this. Did you fall out of bed this morning or so?


----------



## Road_UK

No don't, please....


----------



## x-type

Road_UK said:


> No don't, please....


let's change the subject. so, the gypsies...

:troll:


----------



## keokiracer

Yes, I will Road_UK. Because f*ck you, that's why!


----------



## cinxxx

I posted it because it was interesting. It's the man's opinion, he has the freedom of expressing it, or not? 

I for one wasn't ever outside of Europe, still have a lot to see in Europe. Am not in a rush to visit the US anyway, still would need a Visa, while in Europe I can travel almost everywhere without it...


----------



## Road_UK

keokiracer said:


> Yes, I will Road_UK. Because f*ck you, that's why!


???


----------



## Wilhem275

Tonight everyone's on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

So, just screw everyone of you


----------



## keokiracer

Road_UK said:


> ???


You said please no don't... And I said what I said


----------



## keokiracer

Wilhem275 said:


> Tonight everyone's on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
> 
> So, just screw everyone of you


Screw you too  :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Are you soliciting for a ban?


----------



## keokiracer

Me? Well, if you feel it's necessary I don't think I can say anything to prevent that, or could I?

edit: I might be a little bit over-happy and enthousiastic now that I finally have some sort of actual internet connection as opposed to the .2MB/s connection


----------



## keokiracer

And nvm, the crappy connection is back


----------



## riiga

keokiracer said:


> And nvm, the crappy connection is back


----------



## keokiracer

Giiiive me!! :lol:

At home it's 60MB/s download and 5 MB/s upload. But on vacation it's this:









And every afternoon it's just complete #%#^&








It took about 1hr to do the bottom one because the connection just kept randomly failing...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You should start using carrier pigeons, it's faster.


----------



## riiga

ChrisZwolle said:


> You should start using carrier pigeons, it's faster.


This has in fact been tested, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers.


----------



## bogdymol

I found cinxxx's article interesting to read. It's clear that if you have stamps on your passport from not very friendly countries you might get a an extra check.

As for myself: clearing US customs at New York JFK airport was piece of cake back in 2009.

It was a lot harder though to enter UK from France with the Eurostar back in 2007. I was asked a million questions there.


----------



## bogdymol

... and this is at 10 p.m. when the network is busy. More, now my internet carrier has an option for 1 Gbps internet connection (at a resonable price like 20 € or something like that). But I haven't upgraded yet.

edit: I just checked the internet speed on my phone, from the mobile internet (not wi-fi). I have faster mobile internet than keokiracer has at his PC :lol:

2.50 MB download and 1.81 MB upload.


----------



## italystf

I've heard that American custom\immigration officers use to ask aparently idiot questions to travellers entering the USA, like: "Have you drugs?", "Have you weapons?" and so. The answer is obvious but those officers can read the face expression that varies between innocent (who say a sincere no) and guilty (who say a false no) persons. If one appears suspiocious, they search deeper his luggage.
However there's nothing bad with though border checks, it's their duty to prevent criminals entering their country. Border-crossing bribes asked in some poor countries, instead, are bad.


----------



## cinxxx

^^


----------



## keokiracer

^^ That's approx what we have at home


----------



## volodaaaa

Damn, it looks like I am connected in fourth world country


----------



## Attus

italystf said:


> I've heard that American custom\immigration officers use to ask aparently idiot questions to travellers entering the USA, like: "Have you drugs?", "Have you weapons?" and so. The answer is obvious but those officers can read the face expression that varies between innocent (who say a sincere no) and guilty (who say a false no) persons. If one appears suspiocious, they search deeper his luggage.
> However there's nothing bad with though border checks, it's their duty to prevent criminals entering their country. Border-crossing bribes asked in some poor countries, instead, are bad.


Some years ago me and three mates travelled to Denmak by a car having a Hungarian registration number (we visited an international handball game). Approx. 100 meters beyond the D-DK border a police officer ordered us to stop. He checked our IDs and had some questions, he asked whether we had drugs. One of my friends found this question funny and started to laugh. It was not a good idea, the officer got angry, we all had to get off, he shouted and examined our bags. He did not find anything and after all let us go.


----------



## keokiracer

*volodaaaa*
Not when you compare it to my current connection :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

keokiracer said:


> *volodaaaa*
> Not when you compare it to my current connection :lol:


I'm connected via WiFi, so it may have something with my router located on the opposite corner of my apartment.


----------



## hofburg

which one?


----------



## Penn's Woods

The colors were spectacular through the Catskills and Adirondacks on my way to Montreal three weeks ago, and coming along nicely in Quebec and Maine.

People travel hundreds of miles to spend time in, say, Vermont at "peak foliage season." There's even at least one site where you can track how it's coming along: http://www.foliagenetwork.com/index...s-current-season/489-ne-foliage-report-1-2023

One of my favorite times of year for just tooling randomly around the countryside (although the spectacle is really dulled by cloudy weather).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

U.S. state capitol


D5725_CM_R7-95 by MoDOT Photos, on Flickr

Dutch "province house" :fiddle:


Provinciehuis Wezenlandenpark by A3aan Holsappel, on Flickr


----------



## cinxxx

Someone was saying something about gypsies here ealier
http://blog.filmulusturoi.ro/surpriza-avem-teaser/

54889482

54881840


----------



## keokiracer

Meanwhile in Russia... :lol:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> The colors were spectacular through the Catskills and Adirondacks on my way to Montreal three weeks ago, and coming along nicely in Quebec and Maine.
> 
> People travel hundreds of miles to spend time in, say, Vermont at "peak foliage season." There's even at least one site where you can track how it's coming along: http://www.foliagenetwork.com/index...s-current-season/489-ne-foliage-report-1-2023
> 
> One of my favorite times of year for just tooling randomly around the countryside (although the spectacle is really dulled by cloudy weather).


I would love to go.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Are you living in Wales now? Did I miss a step?


----------



## volodaaaa

Read this carefully :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol: Especially posts about cinxxx commuting:lol:

http://www.gizoogle.net/tranzizzle.....php?t=581742&page=1130&se=Go+Git+Dis+Shiznit


----------



## Wilhem275

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: I almost fell off my chair :lol:

I can't stand Penn's -sorry, Pennz- talking like that :lol: and look at his sign :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

But bogdymol's posts are the best :lol::lol::lol::lol:


----------



## hofburg

lol


----------



## bogdymol

LOL

I read part of that on my phone. I will read all later on the laptop.

Funny :lol:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Are you living in Wales now? Did I miss a step?


Yeah for university, I suppose you did :lol:.


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> But bogdymol's posts are the best :lol::lol::lol::lol:


But bogdymolz posts is tha dopest.


----------



## bogdymol

reach:


----------



## volodaaaa

what about this? just skip to 2:30


----------



## keokiracer

^^ 1 guy with extreme luck and 1 dead guy...
(you can see 2 people in the car when the car comes sliding by at around 2:37)


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## MajKeR_

Verso said:


> And as for the customs officer asking him "What the hell were you doing in Yemen?": I guess he doesn't travel much, but Yemen isn't just al-Qaeda. Actually its capital Sana'a is one of the most beautiful cities and protected by UNESCO:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Socotra isn't bad either.


Looks like from there:

[Architektura] Gargamele i kaszaloty

I'm pretty supersensitive as I live in that country...


----------



## Verso

Did you just compare old Sana'a to that kitsch? :sleepy:


----------



## volodaaaa

Ship-shipping ship, currently shipping shipping ships


----------



## volodaaaa

I have just passed the technical check of my vehicle. The left low beam stopped lighting just after certificate that everything is alright was printed and stamped. Success :-D


----------



## Penn's Woods

Hooray for today's banner!
:cheers:


----------



## g.spinoza

I can't see no woods.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Philadelphia, in my humble opinion the nicest name of any large U.S. city. It comes from Greek Φιλαδέλφεια and means "brotherly love". 

Arkansas also wanted a fancy name, so they also introduced Arkadelphia.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^

Not the best picture. But still, it's home.
As far as woods are concerned, Fairmount Park - much of which is more a wooded natural area than a landscaped urban park - is claimed to be the largest city park in the world. I'm partial to this spot: http://www.fow.org/about-park

EDIT: Tongue is for Spinoza/Belushi.


----------



## Zagor666

volodaaaa said:


> Ship-shipping ship, currently shipping shipping ships


----------



## Zagor666

http://inserbia.info/news/2013/10/fans-of-bih-footbal-team-ended-up-in-latvia-instead-of-lithuania/

next time check out this forum and something like that will not happen :cheers:
2012 there was a similar example when fans of athletic bilbao booked a flight to budapest instead of bucharest


----------



## italystf

^^ What 99% of people here think when they hear Philadelphia :troll:


----------



## Zagor666

italystf said:


> ^^ What 99% of people here think when they hear Philadelphia :troll:


----------



## italystf

Zagor666 said:


> http://inserbia.info/news/2013/10/fans-of-bih-footbal-team-ended-up-in-latvia-instead-of-lithuania/
> 
> next time check out this forum and something like that will not happen
> 2012 there was a similar example when fans of athletic bilbao booked a flight to budapest instead of bucharest


At least they didn't end far away from their destination.
Still better than those who landed in Sydney, Canada instead of Sydney, Australia (it was somewhere in July-August so they had packed a lot of warm clothes for the austral winter).


----------



## volodaaaa

Zagor666 said:


> http://inserbia.info/news/2013/10/fans-of-bih-footbal-team-ended-up-in-latvia-instead-of-lithuania/
> 
> next time check out this forum and something like that will not happen :cheers:
> 2012 there was a similar example when fans of athletic bilbao booked a flight to budapest instead of bucharest


Don't know how in Serbia, but here it is very confusing since:
Lithuania (LT) = Litva 
Latvia (LV) = Lotyšsko


----------



## Alex_ZR

volodaaaa said:


> Don't know how in Serbia, but here it is very confusing since:
> Lithuania (LT) = Litva
> Latvia (LV) = Lotyšsko


Lithuania (LT) = Litvanija
Latvia (LV) = Letonija


----------



## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> Lithuania (LT) = Litvanija
> Latvia (LV) = Letonija


sounds better. So what went wrong then?


----------



## volodaaaa

:wtf: What has happened to maps.google?


----------



## albertocsc

^^ maps.google.es works fine
What's going on with maps.google.sl ?


----------



## Verso

albertocsc said:


> What's going on with maps.google.*sl* ?


Sierra Leone? So what's going on? It works fine here.


----------



## albertocsc

^^ .sk, I think I meant 

Btw...



volodaaaa said:


> http://www.gizoogle.net/tranzizzle.....php?t=581742&page=1130&se=Go+Git+Dis+Shiznit


In Spain we have El Chonizador, but it is not as cool as that tool.

http://chevismo.com/chonizador


----------



## Verso

Italian Grado longs for Austrian realm?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Zagor666 said:


>


Whazzat?



italystf said:


> At least they didn't end far away from their destination.
> Still better than those who landed in Sydney, Canada instead of Sydney, Australia (it was somewhere in July-August so they had packed a lot of warm clothes for the austral winter).


Sydney, Nova Scotia's, not the warmest place in the world, so even in August.... (Or Sidney, British Columbia.  )


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> So, where is all this America bashing from you coming from? Do you think you're superior? Because it seems to me you're trying to take off into space on a horse and carriage.


"Liked" not to make fun of Estonia or Estonians, but because he's done this before. (Just for the record.)


----------



## Road_UK

He does it all the time. Whenever America is mentioned he's out there like a bat out of hell bashing the crap out of it.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Apparently distance markers on UK's motorways are in kilometres...


You mean the, well, mileposts for lack of a better word, right? (Kilometerpalen as I believe they'd say across the North Sea.  )

The more prominent signs saying things like "Birmingham 20, Manchester 110" or "1/2 m" to the next junction are in miles. They even got permission from Brussels to keep doing that, I believe. (Which brings us back to the EU. :troll


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> He does it all the time. Whenever America is mentioned he's out there like a bat out of hell bashing the crap out of it.


Exactly.

So... enjoying the sun going down at 5 p.m. or whenever? (Shudder.)


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> You mean the, well, mileposts for lack of a better word, right? (Kilometerpalen as I believe they'd say across the North Sea.  )
> 
> The more prominent signs saying things like "Birmingham 20, Manchester 110" or "1/2 m" to the next junction are in miles. They even got permission from Brussels to keep doing that, I believe. (Which brings us back to the EU. :troll


I don't know the proper word of it in any language. But the French say distance markers in their English language traffic bulletins on the radio, so I've just copied them. It pays off to get English lessons from the French at times...


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> Exactly.
> 
> So... enjoying the sun going down at 5 p.m. or whenever? (Shudder.)


5 is about right. I'm in Holland at the moment, heading back to Austria tomorrow where the sun goes down even earlier...


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Well, that was more than 200 years ago, standardization wasn't feel much important back then. Imagine that in Italy every city or region had its own measurement units.
> Ironically, the French who created their own calendar, also invented the metric system in the same years.


Well, we can't control the rotation of the earth or how long it takes to go around the sun (yet...), but all these 24s and 60s and 7s in our time-keeping system are inefficient! And months of different lengths? What are we waiting for: 100 seconds per minute, 100 minutes per hour, 20 hours per day (10 before noon and 10 after noon), 10 days per week, 3 weeks per month, now! Progress demands it! :jk:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> I don't know the proper word of it in any language. But the French say distance markers in their English language traffic bulletins on the radio, so I've just copied them. It pays off to get English lessons from the French at times...


I recently read the SNCF (French national railways) are going to be offering English lessons on the audio systems on certain trains (what better way to use the time it takes to get from Lille to Paris?). And not just ones heading for the Channel. Very un-French-is-first of them; I'm waiting for the protests to start. (And seriously, I don't see the need.)


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> Well, we can't control the rotation of the earth or how long it takes to go around the sun (yet...), but all these 24s and 60s and 7s in our time-keeping system are inefficient! And months of different lengths? What are we waiting for: 100 seconds per minute, 100 minutes per hour, 20 hours per day (10 before noon and 10 after noon), 10 days per week, 3 weeks per month, now! Progress demands it! :jk:


I would agree


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> Exactly.
> 
> So... enjoying the sun going down at 5 p.m. or whenever? (Shudder.)


Yeah something like that, a bit later though I'd say, twenty past five maybe till it's properly dark.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What's up with the Road_UK / Penn's Woods love affair?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Damn! We were hoping no one would notice. :blush:


----------



## Road_UK

Oh god honey, you told them!


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^:snorts coffee all over keyboard:...


----------



## keokiracer

My videos keep becoming more popular :banana::banana::banana:

Best of Dutch Dashcam (original @ Youtube)

- http://www.geenstijl.nl/mt/archieven/2013/08/stunteltv_17_minuten_nederland.html
- http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/6556612/0044eddf/17_minuten_hollandse_dashcamcompilatie.html
- http://www.telegraaf.nl/tv/opmerkelijk/21791876/__Bijzondere_blik_op_NLse_weg__.html

Best of Dutch Dashcam #2 (original @ Youtube)
- http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/6569183/98ae9e2c/neerlands_dashcams.html

Cyclecam compilation #3 (original @ Youtube)
- http://www.telegraaf.nl/tv/opmerkelijk/21847771/__Fietscam_filmt_ons_prachtige_land__.html

Nearly knocked off bike by stupid inatentive woman (original @ Youtube)
- http://www.telegraaf.nl/tv/opmerkelijk/22008834/__Kijk_uit_je_doppen___.html


----------



## volodaaaa

Things countries are best and world-known in:








full res here

Remember the talks about download speed few pages back? :-D


----------



## keokiracer

The pic is a little bit too small, do you have a bigger version?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Cute. But what's "Mohnflesserl"?


----------



## volodaaaa

keokiracer said:


> The pic is a little bit too small, do you have a bigger version?


click on the link below.



Penn's Woods said:


> Cute. But what's "Mohnflesserl"?


Have no idea, but it has something to do with bakes according to image.google.com results.


----------



## keokiracer

volodaaaa said:


> click on the link below.


That was a sarcastic remark cause I came into this thread when you had posted the insanely big version directly here


----------



## volodaaaa

keokiracer said:


> That was a sarcastic remark cause I came into this thread when you had posted the insanely big version directly here


Now I get it. Sorry, I have just copied the link and have no idea about the huuuuge resolution of that pic :lol:


----------



## CNGL

Kyrgyzstan has the highest number of walnut forests, great. And Liechtenstein would contest the Uzbekistan claim of "Being double landlocked".


----------



## keber

I know it's a fun page, but ...
What flowers in Kenya?
What solar energy in Laos?


----------



## volodaaaa

keber said:


> I know it's a fun page, but ...
> What flowers in Kenya?
> What solar energy in Laos?


I dunno, it is every country's best of, but I can't tell you the source of such information and whether are they relevant.

My personal cognitive map would look completely different :cheers:


----------



## Wilhem275

It was already posted in the Maps Topic, it comes from a humor site so it's not meant to be precise, just a bit weird.
Those are the sources: http://thedoghousediaries.com/maplesyrup


----------



## italystf

Two pensioneers were caught by police while attempting to remove and steal the 136km milestone of the SS14 near Duino-Aurisina. :nuts:


----------



## Wilhem275

What a pity. Those things can be useful. Today I waited for a bus sitting on milestone 392 of SS11 :lol:


----------



## CNGL

Once I caught the Zaragoza-Huesca bus at kmpost 529 of N-330.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I was just at Swansea West services on the M4 and someone's written 'PROFIT MOHAMID IS GAY' in a cubicle.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Sounds as if their time might be better spent learning to spell.


----------



## Road_UK

Yeah. And I think it's the most ridiculous form of unashamed islam bashing as well. Everybody knows he was a pedophile.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^You're bad!


----------



## Road_UK

You just figured that out? :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Anyhow, I hereby announce that any sympathy the Red Sox enjoyed from me due to The Curse is definitively history. I am aware that no one on this thread will have a clue what I'm talking about, and I'm fine with that. 

Thank you; I feel better now.


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> Yeah. And I think it's the most ridiculous form of unashamed islam bashing as well. Everybody knows he was a pedophile.


Better than being a pedophobe. :troll:


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> Anyhow, I hereby announce that any sympathy the Red Sox enjoyed from me due to The Curse is definitively history. I am aware that no one on this thread will have a clue what I'm talking about, and I'm fine with that.
> 
> Thank you; I feel better now.


They won, right?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Indeed. After 86 years (1918-2003) without winning the World Series (hence "The Curse"), they've won it three times since.
At least my Dad (whose favorite team they were, for some reason, even though he was from New York), after enduring most of the 86 years, lived to see two of the wins.


----------



## volodaaaa

Funny, but true. However, I have never had the need to be proud of my nationality, race or religion. Only behaviour and acting are important things to evaluate the people.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Is Spinoza/Belushi mad at us?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

State Route 520 in Seattle, unused flyover.


----------



## Road_UK

Ok, geniuses... Take your shot!


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> Ok, geniuses... Take your shot!


79?


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> 79?


Alright. I'll admit. You're today's genius.


----------



## Wilhem275




----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> Alright. I'll admit. You're today's genius.


Thanks, although i was the only one who participared.


But here is another puzzle:

Three youngsters had decided to buy a football ball. So they went to the shop and asked for the price. The shop assistant told them it added up to 30 euro, so everyone paid for 10. Then came in front of the shop to start playing. Soon after that, the shop assistant realized, the ball costed only 25. He decided to pay them 5 euro back but did not know how to divide 5 euro for three kids. Only solution was to give 1 euro to each kid and keep the remaining two. 

And now some math:
Each kid then payed 9 Euro (thus 3x9=27) while shop assistant kept 2 euro. But it adds up to 29 euro. So where the hell the last euro disappeared?


----------



## hofburg

it must equal 25, not 30, the ball costed 25. +27 paid, kept -2, +27-2=+25

living standard by countries: http://prosperity.com/#!/


----------



## keokiracer

If every kid pays 9 euros including the one that they got back they payed 8 euros without getting the money back. And 3x8 equals 24 and not 25. There's your extra Euro...


----------



## volodaaaa

hofburg said:


> it must equal 25, not 30, the ball costed 25. +27 paid, kept -2, +27-2=+25
> 
> living standard by countries: http://prosperity.com/#!/



Congratulations, you did not let yourself being fooled  that is the right answer



keokiracer said:


> If every kid pays 9 euros including the one that they got back they payed 8 euros without getting the money back. And 3x8 equals 24 and not 25. There's your extra Euro...


Correct answer as well


----------



## hofburg

it seems ilogical at first sight (or couple of minutes  ) that's true


----------



## Verso

It doesn't matter how much money he kept, it matters how much he gave them back. 27 + 3 = 30.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Spend the day off line and MATH breaks out. [shudder]


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

volodaaaa said:


> hofburg said:
> 
> 
> 
> it must equal 25, not 30, the ball costed 25. +27 paid, kept -2, +27-2=+25
> 
> living standard by countries: http://prosperity.com/#!/
> 
> 
> 
> Congratulations, you did not let yourself being fooled  that is the right answer
> 
> 
> 
> keokiracer said:
> 
> 
> 
> If every kid pays 9 euros including the one that they got back they payed 8 euros without getting the money back. And 3x8 equals 24 and not 25. There's your extra Euro...
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Correct answer as well
Click to expand...

Sorry, but all of you are INCORRECT. You got "fooled" by the "syntax" of the equation because the 25 and the 2 play no role in this equation, only the 30 the 27 and the three 1s do. Initially, 30 was paid, 3 returned, leaving 27 in the sellers pocket. There is no "missing" 1, only confusion as a result of the word structure of the scenario. It is a literary gimmick, not a mathematical paradox. 

Another way to look at it is that he discounted the ball only 3 instead of the correct 5, keeping 27 instead of 25, because he was too lazy to split up the 5 into 1.66x3.


----------



## volodaaaa

AnOldBlackMarble said:


> Sorry, but all of you are INCORRECT. You got "fooled" by the "syntax" of the equation because the 25 and the 2 play no role in this equation, only the 30 the 27 and the three 1s do. Initially, 30 was paid, 3 returned, leaving 27 in the sellers pocket. There is no "missing" 1, only confusion as a result of the word structure of the scenario. It is a literary gimmick, not a mathematical paradox.
> 
> Another way to look at it is that he discounted the ball only 3 instead of the correct 5, keeping 27 instead of 25, because he was too lazy to split up the 5 into 1.66x3.


Who is talking about mathematical paradox? It is supposed to be a gimnick.  i am glad that guys above did not let themselves being fooled.


----------



## Verso

I don't get hofburg's and keokiracer's logics either. As I said, those €2 that he kept are already counted in the €27 that they paid, so it doesn't matter that 27 + 2 = 29, what matters is that 27 + 3 = 30.


----------



## volodaaaa

One of the most popular newspapers in Slovakia has cited skyscrapercity, even with link to the particular post :lol: AFAIK it is the first time the newspaper has noted the source. Downloading pictures and content from skyscrapercity without citing is, sadly, common practice among Slovak journalists. 

http://reality.etrend.sk/komercne-nehnutelnosti/bratislavsky-aupark-moze-byt-park-west.html

First paragraph, second line + notice the screenshot 



> The ongoing reconstruction of Aupark, Bratislava shopping centre, may not ended up only by interior renovation. Credible visualisations with the new, intended name has appeared on discussion board skyscrapercity.com


----------



## Peines

Today it's the first time in my life that I'm going to *install Adobe programs (Paid Apps)… legally…* :cheers:










…and for free… 

:cheers::cheers::cheers::banana::banana::cheers::cheers::cheers::cheers::banana:


----------



## Wilhem275

Penn's Woods said:


> Spend the day off line and MATH breaks out. [shudder]


Well, stay away more often 

I owed you an explanation of my signatures, so:

1) _*I've sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrooke, and by gum, it put them on the map!
Well, sir, there's nothing on earth like a genuine, bona fide, electrified, six-car monorail!*_






Since my main activity is about public information about transportation politics, I often have to cope with idiotic ideas about fancy futuristic transit solutions, while in practice the best systems are those based on classic designs, 97% of the times.
But people tend to fall for those supersilly things... probably because everyone wants to believe being that special 3%.

That Simpsons' episode is the perfect synthesis of how public decisions about PT can take a bad spin and get out of control.
In general, I'm a big fan of those early Simpson shows (let's say, IMO, they started to fade in 8th season and died in 11-12th).

2) _Marchionne_ means never having to say you're sorry

This is a bit of an inside joke. I moderate what is probably the most important Italian forum about cars, and the main issue 2003~today has been how FIAT moved from its deepest crisis and got back into the game, under the lead of Sergio Marchionne.
As in every forum, there are factions: those who never believed FIAT could survive, and those who did (or at least hoped so); I fall into the second one 
After 10+ years our ideas proved right, and among many jokes we created this symbolic character of "Marchionne Almighty", a mythical superhero who never goes wrong on anything :lol:

So there are many references about this supervillain's undefeatability, and that famous Love Story bit is such an absolute sentence that it was perfect for the job :lol:







Seriously, these changes were so fast and unpredictable that we still are surprised. In the automotive field sometimes we scratch our heads and ask to each other "Yesterday we were about to shut down, and today we own Chrysler? What the hell just happened? :nuts:"


----------



## bogdymol

volodaaaa said:


> One of the most popular newspapers in Slovakia has cited skyscrapercity, even with link to the particular post :lol: AFAIK it is the first time the newspaper has noted the source. Downloading pictures and content from skyscrapercity without citing is, sadly, common practice among Slovak journalists.
> 
> http://reality.etrend.sk/komercne-nehnutelnosti/bratislavsky-aupark-moze-byt-park-west.html
> 
> First paragraph, second line + notice the screenshot


Romanian newspapers are constantly citing skyscrapercity.com and another romanian infrastructure forum in their articles. Also they are taking pictures/videos that the forum member record and post them on their site (mostly with a link to SSC).

But the weirdest thing is that once one of my pictures of a Romanian motorway that I posted on SSC ended up on a flyer that I got on the street during the elections campaign :nuts:


----------



## Attus

On 4th November 1956 the Soviet Army invaded Budapest, crushed the revolutionary Hungarian government and restored the communist regime. 
In the following years approximately 400 people were executed in Hungary because of their participation in the revolution, some members of the government included. The prime minister Imre Nagy was executed in 1958. 
Additionally, lots of people died in the hopeless fight against Soviet tanks. 








We will never forget our heroes!


----------



## Langeveldt

DanielFigFoz said:


> I was just at Swansea West services on the M4 and someone's written 'PROFIT MOHAMID IS GAY' in a cubicle.


Just had a rest on the M5 northbound in Somerset.. Disgusting.. I always am fascinated how a first world country like the UK can have such dirty rest areas. Still, at least you never have to buy your own newspaper


----------



## Broccolli

Meanwhile in Eslovenia 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OldBVRSnX3U


----------



## Attus

A very recent story.

A young man stole often wine from another man. His brother says now: "My brother used to(!) steal this man's wine". Not much, every time only so much that he and his friends drink. 
The man that had the wine reported it several times to the police but the police did nothing. 
In this case the wine was poisoned and the thief died. The wine owner is arrested but up till now there is no proof that he put the poison into the wine. 
It happened in a village in Hungary, 20km apart from Budapest. 

The story is heavily discussed in Hungary. 

Another man says that his bacons or straw bales are stolen regularly. The police does nothing. In a certain case the police, too, saw the thief and he was arrested but next day he was free again. 
A shop owner says his shop was robbed several times. The police says: "We can't do anything, this is a village of high criminal rates, we're sorry". 
The dead thief's brother says: "Yes, it is so: we steal, sometimes we're arrested and then let free again". 

Hungary, Europe, 2013.


----------



## SeanT

What is the lesson here?
NE LOPD MÁS BORÁT!!!😉


----------



## Peines

MEANWHILE IN SOVIET RUSSIA


----------



## Wilhem275

Good ol' Fiat 124...


----------



## Attus

In the '90s I had a Lada 1200s, with rounded headlights, just like THIS ONE (but my one was red). It broke down in Italy. In auto service young technicians had no idea about that car but later on an older one came and said: "I know it, it's a Fiat 124"  He could repair it!


----------



## Nordic20T

^^
The car on the pic is a Lada 1200. The 1200s has an additional ventilation grille on the "C"-pillar.


----------



## x-type

Antonov An-225 has landed to Zagreb tonight. i went there to see the landing because who knows when i will be able to see that spectacular bird again, when that italian piece of shit that i own has stopped on motorway 10 km before the airport


----------



## Wilhem275

Was that a Lada 1200? :lol:

Pics or it didn't happen


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> Antonov An-225 has landed to Zagreb tonight. i went there to see the landing because who knows when i will be able to see that spectacular bird again, when that italian piece of shit that i own has stopped on motorway 10 km before the airport


Are you talking about *F*ailure *I*s *A* *T*radition brand?


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> Are you talking about *F*ailure *I*s *A* *T*radition brand?


si.


----------



## Verso

It was supposed to land in Ljubljana at first.


----------



## italystf

*F*ix *I*t *A*gain *T*ony!


----------



## piotr71

As far as I remember Autowaz put Another Lada model into production again in April 2012. It was 2107 for whch demand was high enough to do so. The waiting time for a new car was about 6 months and the price slightly over 5000 Euro. 

So, if we are in Ladas, I have to say a short story  My very good friend, who runs a Polish branch of a Dutch Forklifts' company was asked by the company's owner to import a new Lada, several years ago. I think it was 2005. Interestingly, the car supposed to be shipped to Cuba, where company has another branch. In Cuba Ladas are/were considered as very prestigous cars. 

It took him about a month to clear all shipping documentations in Ukraine and Lada was ready to go. He drove through Poland and Germany to the Netherlands with no issues, however, whilst he stopped for refuelling in former East Germany the Lada attracted incredible interests among passers by. Interest was so huge that even local police appeared and had undertaken very detailed car's and my friends' papers checks. Finally the car arrived to its destination and the big Dutchman could proudly drive her around the island. Actually he was driven.


----------



## hofburg

it's 9th November and I just got bit by a mosquito.  18°C here...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

1987: progress in the Netherlands, the first McDonald's drive-thru opens for business.


----------



## Penn's Woods

hofburg said:


> it's 9th November and I just got bit by a mosquito.  18°C here...


Chance of a flurry tomorrow here. :-( High 43F/6C.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> 1987: progress in the Netherlands, the first McDonald's drive-thru opens for business.


I never use drive-throughs. [Curmudgeon mode on] God forbid anyone should walk ten feet. [Curmudgeon mode off]


----------



## Road_UK

Well, it's not really that, but when I'm hungry and in a hurry I save a lot of time going through the Drive thru. After all, anyone can eat a Big Mac, eat some fries, drink a coke, read a newspaper and make a phone call behind the wheel...

(for some reason the Dutch I think are the only ones calling it McDrive.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Well, it's not really that, but when I'm hungry and in a hurry I save a lot of time going through the Drive thru. After all, anyone can eat a Big Mac, eat some fries, drink a coke, read a newspaper and make a phone call behind the wheel...
> 
> (for some reason the Dutch I think are the only ones calling it McDrive.)


...and post on SSC at 2:30 in the morning. 

Hopefully while not moving!


----------



## Road_UK

Nah, just moving my hands... 
Had a good night out with 6 members of the US military last night. God they know how to drink, but they were great fun...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wikipedia: 

The first drive-through restaurant (a McDonald's drive-through) in Europe opened at the Nutgrove Shopping Centre in Dublin, Ireland in 1985.[10]

In Spain and Russia, McDonald's drive-through services are often called McAuto.

In the Netherlands, Germany, France, Portugal and other northern European countries, McDonald's drive-through service is called McDrive.

In Argentina and Mexico, McDonald's drive-through service is called AutoMAC.​


----------



## Wilhem275

Road_UK said:


> Well, it's not really that, but when I'm hungry and in a hurry I save a lot of time going through the Drive thru. After all, anyone can eat a Big Mac, eat some fries, drink a coke, read a newspaper and make a phone call behind the wheel...
> 
> (for some reason the Dutch I think are the only ones calling it McDrive.)


You forgot the prostitute on your lap :lol:



Penn's Woods said:


> Curmudgeon


+1 word learned.


----------



## Alex_ZR

ChrisZwolle said:


> Wikipedia:
> 
> In the Netherlands, Germany, France, Portugal and other northern European countries, McDonald's drive-through service is called McDrive.​


In Serbia it's also called McDrive. :dunno:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Wilhem275 said:


> +1 word learned.


Thought it might be new to some people. My work here is done. 

But where the heck did you even see the "the more you know thing"? (That appears, with a little four-note tone, at the end of "educational" announcements on NBC television, surprised anyone in Europe's seen it...)


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> I never use drive-throughs. [Curmudgeon mode on] God forbid anyone should walk ten feet. [Curmudgeon mode off]


they usually have tiny parking lots, that's the main reson why i use drive-through option rather.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I always feel guilty after having had "dinner" at McDonald's. It's not tasty, too salty and you get hungry an hour after you've eaten despite the huge amount of calories. I prefer to pick something up from the local cafeteria and only use McDonald's on trips.

Europe doesn't have as many fast food brands as the U.S. I think over 90% of all fast food restaurants along major roads in the Netherlands are McDonald's. It rare to see something else, though Burger King and KFC are somewhat common, though far fewer in number than McD.


----------



## Road_UK

More Burger King's than Maccies in the UK. I luv my fast food burgers. In France and Belgium you've got the Quick hamburger restaurants chain. I think they're the best.


----------



## x-type

i am not hungry 1 h after eating in McCrap. i don't find it more toxic or unhealty than most of the other fast food bars. i actually feel safer there because hygiene is regularly at higher level than 90% of other fast foods. 
in last year or two in HR (actually in Zagreb) we have flood of those restaurants with high quality burgers. i like eating there, and it really doesn't have anything in common with McCrap. and they are not that more expensive.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Haven't been to a McDonald's in months.

I occasionally have an Arby's craving, and Burger King does chicken sandwiches that I can convince myself are healthier than burgers. One advantage, if it is an advantage, of living downtown is that we don't have fast food nearby, except McDonalds. For a cheapish meal when I don't feel like cooking, I'll go to one of the neighborhood takeout places; for lunch on work days, I usually get a sandwich from a deli a block away.

Some convenience store chains like Sheetz and Wawa have decent food, even (in the case of Sheetz) seating; I'll lean towards that sort of thing when I'm traveling. But those are regional chains, so what's around depends on what part of the country you're in. (Sheetz actually seems to be avoiding the Philadelphia area; nearest one's 40 miles away, but they're pretty thick on the ground in most of Pennsylvania and the states to the south.) Developed a taste for Tim Horton's on my last trip to Canada, but they don't exist in the US except fairly close to the border. (Come to think of it, the last McD's I was at was probably at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Quebec, and that was just for an iced latte because I was groggy.)


----------



## x-type

btw, magic carpet ride today in Zagreb :lol:
http://www.vecernji.hr/hrvatska/sna...-ove-linije-obustavljene-902112/multimedia/p2


----------



## cinxxx

In Romania I know it also as McDrive...


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> Well, it's not really that, but when I'm hungry and in a hurry I save a lot of time going through the Drive thru. After all, anyone can eat a Big Mac, eat some fries, drink a coke, read a newspaper and make a phone call behind the wheel...
> 
> (for some reason the Dutch I think are the only ones calling it McDrive.)


Also in Italy are called McDrive.


----------



## Wilhem275

Penn's Woods said:


> Thought it might be new to some people. My work here is done.
> 
> But where the heck did you even see the "the more you know thing"? (That appears, with a little four-note tone, at the end of "educational" announcements on NBC television, surprised anyone in Europe's seen it...)


Most of those bits of US popular culture come to me through shows as The Simpsons and Family Guy, who use to parodize a lot of TV stuff. Then they tickle my curiosity and I look out for the originals...

https://myspace.com/113620280/video/the-more-you-know/54998638

Well, I also have a great memory for almost useless details...


----------



## Peines

Talking about fast food: In Spain we had our local fast-food chain: 100 Montaditos. *They even have restaurants in the USA*, México, Colombia and Italy.


















Beer's and Montaditos (small sandwiches)


----------



## bogdymol

Speaking about fast-food restaurant chains, I sometimes eat at McDonald's, but I rather go to KFC or Subway. And one more thing: every time I eat at a Burger King I regret it. I never liked their burgers.


----------



## Road_UK

Wilhem275 said:


> Most of those bits of US popular culture come to me through shows as The Simpsons and Family Guy, who use to parodize a lot of TV stuff. Then they tickle my curiosity and I look out for the originals...
> 
> https://myspace.com/113620280/video/the-more-you-know/54998638
> 
> Well, I also have a great memory for almost useless details...


A lot of the US shows are becoming increasingly popular, since they've introduced Comedy Central in a lot of European countries. I personally love the Daily Show.


----------



## keber

bogdymol said:


> Speaking about fast-food restaurant chains, I sometimes eat at McDonald's, but I rather go to KFC or Subway. And one more thing: every time I eat at a Burger King I regret it. I never liked their burgers.


I'm patiently waiting for KFC to arrive here. Some rumors are circulating about that.

To me BK has better meat - sadly there is only one BK restaurant here and even that only in a shopping center. I go to McD mostly after taking some sport, like full day of cycling and taking some of "feature" meals.
For example during my last visit I ate that:








1600 kcal
When I spend almost double of that during sport then I'm pretty calm about (un)healthiness of fast food.


----------



## x-type

1600 kcal is minor thing here. major fact is that you've spent 15€ on that.


----------



## volodaaaa

I don't always suddenly turn the heating in my car at full range up, but when I do, I completely confuse the temperature control with volume one and temporary become deaf.

(happened to me today: almost crash and was almost deaf for 3 hours)


----------



## x-type

1,60 for espresso and brioche in McCafe? not here. maybe only for brioche.


----------



## Wilhem275

Not espresso, but cappuccino: it costs even more 

I'll check actual prices in the next days.


----------



## volodaaaa

In Mccafe you'll get common ceramic mug, no plastic glass (btw. this word is little bit weird in english  ). But it is expensive. E.g. Strawberry cheescake costs 2,80 here.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^What's weird - "plastic glass"? I'd say "plastic cup."


----------



## Wilhem275

Clearly they adopted a completely different placement in our coutries...


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> In Mccafe you'll get common ceramic mug, no plastic glass (btw. this word is little bit weird in english  ). But it is expensive. E.g. Strawberry cheescake costs 2,80 here.


here in McCafe they serve espresso in real espresso cups. but i've seen very few people having espresso in McCafe. usually people take those frapuccinos and i don't know what their names are (i don't like those things). also, espresso is quite ok there, but i don't like it because preparation is completely automatized.
cakes also cost about 2-2,5€.


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't get why they always say poor people get obese because they eat at McDonald's. It's not cheap at all, you can prepare a healthy meal at home at at least half the cost. I can make a whole meal for the price of just a Big Mac (€ 3.50 I believe).


From time to time you need to eat some messy stuff so your organism is prepared for something unexpected.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't get why they always say poor people get obese because they eat at McDonald's. It's not cheap at all, you can prepare a healthy meal at home at at least half the cost. I can make a whole meal for the price of just a Big Mac (€ 3.50 I believe).


I can't agree more. It's not because of the lack of money but because of the lack of good food culture that people get obese. Many people are too lazy to cook, they only like to eat ready-to-eat junk food.


----------



## Peines

I love McCafe for only one reason: the Cafe Latte with soy milk cost the same as with normal milk: 1.2€. Cow Milk makes me ill.

In Starbucks, for the same Latte it cost around 3.40€, and there's not so many places where you can find soy milk specially here in Spain.

But if i want a cheap breakfast i just go to the bar in front my house, 1.75€ for a coffee and toast with tomato and _Jamón Serrano_.


----------



## albertocsc

Question for Dutch forumers: is it possible to go from Schiphol to any interesting place in Amsterdam in less than 30 min.?


----------



## Road_UK

Train takes you right into the heart of Amsterdam in something like 15 minutes.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> I can't agree more. It's not because of the lack of money but because of the lack of good food culture that people get obese. Many people are too lazy to cook, they only like to eat ready-to-eat junk food.


...or they don't have good food available to them. In this country, supermarkets often avoid the worst inner-city neighborhoods.

It's certainly more effort for them to get and cook good food than it is for us to sit behind our computer screens making two-bit generalizations.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Venice is finally available at Google Street View.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Google Canal View, more like it....

(Do they have that in Holland* too?)

*I know, I know. Two Hollands and ten other provinces.


----------



## hofburg




----------



## bogdymol

Here's a clip with a Dacia Sandero that want's to park (and can't do it properly). Nothing unusual... until you see who's getting out from the car's driver seat:






First woman in Romania to get a drivers license is still driving :lol:

She's just 91 years old.


----------



## italystf

Alex_ZR said:


> Venice is finally available at Google Street View.


Yesterday I spent more than an hour exploring it. Also small islands and less-touristic spots are covered.
I was surprised that there are few cars on Sant'Erasmo island, that has no ferry boats that carry vehicles. Maybe they arrived there with private boats.


----------



## italystf

Is Barbara4u2 famous in Slovenia?


----------



## cinxxx

^^I have her page in my FB list, after I saw her video with "Slovenia vs Slovakia" posted by bogdymol, I think, here 
I saw she posted a link to some Slovenian newspaper where they wrote about a video of hers with Slovenian curse words.


----------



## hofburg

not so much, only on internet perhaps more


----------



## MajKeR_

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Suburbia, or neighborhoods with homeowners associations that have silly rules, being the "habitat" whose human mentality is weird?
> 
> :cheers:


Both. The one which requires so hard making everything decent by its own rules and one which doesn't know what taking care about tidiness actually is. It's bad to punish that guy so hard for him silly neglect, but interesting for guy living where ALL rules of arranging common space are actually unexisting.


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> Why is that a problem? Things work a little bit different over there. Besides, Bern is the capital of Switzerland but Zurich is the place to be. And when there were still two Germanies, they picked Bonn as the capital in Western Germany, instead of Hamburg or Munich...
> 
> The Netherlands has gone for a different approach as well. Even though Amsterdam is the capital, the government and parliament, the head of State (the King) and all embassies are in The Hague.


If someone, let's say from Italy, study at school that Madrid it's the capital of Spain, he would probably remind it forever, since Madrid it's famous, many people go there and you often hear about it. If someone from Oregon read that Tallahassee is the capital of Florida, maybe he will forget it because one doesn't hear of Tallahassee every day.

By the way, being capital of an administrative territory, does make a town more famous in its country. For example in Italy everybody have heard of Sondrio and Isernia, even if they are small towns, because they are provincial capitals. Probably less people know about Giugliano in Campania, Sesto San Giovanni, Martina Franca, Busto Arsizio, Nichelino, San Donà di Piave,... that are bigger but they aren't provincial capitals.


----------



## Road_UK

I thought Giovanni was the head of a mobster crime family in New York...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The fact that U.S. state capitals are frequently small cities doesn't help either. What's the capital of Missouri? Not Kansas City or St. Louis (two large metropolitan areas), but the small city of Jefferson City. The same counts for numerous other state capitals which are more often than not a smaller city than the largest city. Even Austin is not that well-known due to its legacy as a small city, despite having grown tremendously over the last few decades and getting close to a 2 million metro population.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Every time I refresh this page, I think that thing (a small boat?) in the river in Omsk in today's banner is a defect on my screen....


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> If someone, let's say from Italy, study at school that Madrid it's the capital of Spain, he would probably remind it forever, since Madrid it's famous, many people go there and you often hear about it. If someone from Oregon read that Tallahassee is the capital of Florida, maybe he will forget it because one doesn't hear of Tallahassee every day.
> 
> By the way, being capital of an administrative territory, does make a town more famous in its country. For example in Italy everybody have heard of Sondrio and Isernia, even if they are small towns, because they are provincial capitals. Probably less people know about Giugliano in Campania, Sesto San Giovanni, Martina Franca, Busto Arsizio, Nichelino, San Donà di Piave,... that are bigger but they aren't provincial capitals.


Actually, we were hearing about Tallahassee all the time during that 2000 Florida election mess. And there's a major university there - perhaps better known for its (American-) football team than anything else, but still. But you have a point.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MajKeR_ said:


> Both. The one which requires so hard making everything decent by its own rules and one which doesn't know what taking care about tidiness actually is. It's bad to punish that guy so hard for him silly neglect, but interesting for guy living where ALL rules of arranging common space are actually unexisting.


Well, you do have some regulations, I assume? What we call zoning? And things like "don't put out the trash earlier than 7 p.m. the night before it's picked up, rather than leaving it out all week..." (Which is an actual rule in Philadelphia, although I didn't know it until we all got a letter from the landlord about it.)


----------



## MajKeR_

^^ Actually I meant the urban tidiness, the matter which that guy from Florida didn't manage well. Of course there are regulations in case of trash and, let I say, social conhabitation. They are good and being kept well by people. But Poland after the communist era, when everything was centrally planned not because of taking care about tidiness, but to deprive people of their influence for their habitats and show the ' force ' of country, let people decide in all case concerning their houses (of course making some common public space) and another their still property. Simply there are very vestigial rules about estate's look, which, adding people's poor taste and architectural ignorance, makes Poland very messy and actually nasty country (instead of historic places).


----------



## italystf

MajKeR_ said:


> ^^ Actually I meant the urban tidiness, the matter which that guy from Florida didn't manage well. Of course there are regulations in case of trash and, let I say, social conhabitation. They are good and being kept well by people. But Poland after the communist era, when everything was centrally planned not because of taking care about tidiness, but to deprive people of their influence for their habitats and show the ' force ' of country, let people decide in all case concerning their houses (of course making some common public space) and another their still property. Simply there are very vestigial rules about estate's look, which, adding people's poor taste and architectural ignorance, makes Poland very messy and actually nasty country (instead of historic places).


I've never been to Poland but I think that most of the ugly architecture of Eastern Europe belong to the commie times (huge grey commieblocks, destructions of historical buildings like in Bucharest or Kaliningrad). The current free market and civil liberties can produce better results, can't they?


----------



## x-type

Attus said:


> I'm sure you know that American states are not independent nations so they shouldn't be compared to Slovenia, etc.
> But I am not sure that the majority of European people know what the capital city of Canada is. Although Canada is (by territory) the second largest nation of the world.
> Mexico or Brazil is easy, but how many people in Europe know the capital of Chile? Chile has an area larger by France, and 17 million inhabitants, so it is not some almost unknown island republic of the Pacific ocean.


you are actually right. analogy would be to expect from Americans to know for instance all German Bundesrepublik names and their capitals (or if Germany is to small, there is even better analogy with China and its provinces)


----------



## Wilhem275

italystf said:


> The problem in USA is that state capitals aren't the biggest\most known city in the state, like in Europe.


Not all Europe, actually: Milan vs. Rome, Munich/Frankfurt vs. Berlin...


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> you are actually right. analogy would be to expect from Americans to know for instance all German Bundesrepublik names and their capitals (or if Germany is to small, there is even better analogy with China and its provinces)


LOL, there are multi-millions-people cities in China I never heard about.


----------



## italystf

Wilhem275 said:


> Not all Europe, actually: Milan vs. Rome, Munich/Frankfurt vs. Berlin...


Rome and Berlin are bigger (and most famous) than Milan, Munich and Frankfurt.
If Europe was like the USA, we could have, let's say, Regensburg and Perugia as capitals of Germany and Italy.


----------



## Wilhem275

You can't just look at the city inhabitants... Milan city boundaries are the size of my backyard.


----------



## MajKeR_

italystf said:


> I've never been to Poland but I think that most of the ugly architecture of Eastern Europe belong to the commie times (huge grey commieblocks, destructions of historical buildings like in Bucharest or Kaliningrad). The current free market and civil liberties can produce better results, can't they?


You're partly right, but not at all.

Firstly, historical architecture in Poland wasn't being treated very well during the gone era, but it also wasn't being destroyed because of its ideology. I know about only few examples when old building were being replaced by new, brutal ones. Even there were some reconstructions of old buildings - like Royal Castle in Warsaw.

During first years of socialist era there was quite decent and very interesting style introduced to Polish architecture: socrealism. Main example - Nowa Huta estate, nowadays district of Cracow.

Then modernism was the valid style and many very good modern buildings were constructed in those times. Of course those very good are minority of all, but amount of them is huge. And now it's the time when your opinion begins the truth. Many modern buildings of those times were those sad commieblocks. 

But, what might be suprising for you, those commieblocks in grey were more pleasant than they often are nowadays! It's some trend from ~10 years to paint commieblocks with colorful patterns, just for making some difference with communistic times. Example (hard, but real):










And nowadays in Poland many new houses are like from this thread. 

I have some perplexities if current free market and civil liberties are better.


----------



## x-type

Wilhem275 said:


> You can't just look at the city inhabitants... Milan city boundaries are the size of my backyard.


the thing that world knows as Milano is actually a collection of bunches of small cities


----------



## cinxxx

Surel said:


> I am glad that some people from the UK begin to understand the Roma question. Ehm, at least partially.
> 
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24909979
> 
> 
> 
> Ok, there is some understanding of the problem.
> 
> 
> 
> Not that high understanding after all, talking about state harassment http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24721538.


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> the thing that world knows as Milano is actually a collection of bunches of small cities


Like Paris.


----------



## volodaaaa

MajKeR_ said:


> You're partly right, but not at all.
> 
> Firstly, historical architecture in Poland wasn't being treated very well during the gone era, but it also wasn't being destroyed because of its ideology. I know about only few examples when old building were being replaced by new, brutal ones. Even there were some reconstructions of old buildings - like Royal Castle in Warsaw.
> 
> During first years of socialist era there was quite decent and very interesting style introduced to Polish architecture: socrealism. Main example - Nowa Huta estate, nowadays district of Cracow.
> 
> Then modernism was the valid style and many very well modern buildings were constructed in those times. Of course those very well are minority of all, but amount of them is huge. And now it's the time when your opinion begins the truth. Many modern buildings of those times were those sad commieblocks.
> 
> But, what might be suprising for you, those commieblocks in grey were more pleasant than they often are nowadays! It's some trend from ~10 years to paint commieblocks with colorful patterns, just for making some difference with communistic times. Example (hard, but real):
> 
> 
> 
> And nowadays in Poland many new houses are like from this thread.
> 
> I have some perplexities if current free market and civil liberties are better.


What about this camouflage-painted house in Bratislava. :lol:


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> is this phenomenon of St. Nick arriving three weeks early something new?


I don't understand the original Dutch article you linked. However in Hungary Santa Claus (or let's call him as you want as Santa Claus is very American, I think) comes in 6th December (memorial day of St. Nicholas of the 4th century), and Christmas eve it's little Jesus that brings gifts to the children (although recently American culture has more influence and red clothed Santa Claus belongs more and more to Christmas).


----------



## keokiracer

Attus said:


> I don't understand the original Dutch article you linked. However in Hungary Santa Claus (or let's call him as you want as Santa Claus is very American, I think)


Yet it's a sort of copy if the Dutch Sinterklaas 

Sinterklaas (St. Nick) comes here, well, now, and then leaves on december 6th. It has always been like this, he always comes mid-November. After that is't time for Santa Claus (we have both ). He doesn't arrive or anything special, he's just here basically after Sinterklaas goes away.


----------



## piotr71

Apart from St. Claus coming in every 6th of December, there is also a "star" visiting homes with presents. She arrives in Christmas eve. 

In nice and funny communists era authorities tried to introduce another interesting, bringing gifts, character It was 'Grandad Frost" (dziadek mróz) better known as "Дед Мороз". He actually was to replace Santa Claus, but thank god never did.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keokiracer said:


> Yet it's a sort of copy if the Dutch Sinterklaas
> 
> Sinterklaas (St. Nick) comes here, well, now, and then leaves on december 6th. It has always been like this, he always comes mid-November. After that is't time for Santa Claus (we have both ). He doesn't arrive or anything special, he's just here basically after Sinterklaas goes away.


I called him "St. Nick" rather than "Santa" because, well, I'm not sure, really. I know the origins of the character Santa Claus, but maybe it just seems that the two characters have moved so far apart, both in look and on the calendar...?

I knew about St. Nick coming on December 6 (his feast day) to kids, and assume that it's on December 6 that you give, um, end-of-year-holiday gifts to kids and on December 25 to grown-ups. But this arriving three weeks early and being greeted by the mayor on live TV (apparently the VRT covered the arrival in Antwerp yesterday), I didn't know about.


----------



## cinxxx

St. Nikolaus comes on 6th December and is not the same as Santa Claus.
In Romania we have these too.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Saint Nicolas was a huge thing when I was a kid, and kids were in much more anticipation of Saint Nicolas than Santa Claus, because the Dutch did generally not exchange gifts with Christmas, although it seems that Santa is becoming more popular over here. There's a commercial point there as well, because they can sell more stuff if there are two holidays. Although Saint Nicolas is not actually a public holiday in the Netherlands, people have to work that day. 

Halloween also has increasing popularity but Thanksgiving not as far as I am aware. We also don't have a Black Friday or Boxing Day shopping spree on the day after Christmas. The Netherlands has two public holidays with Christmas, called the first and second day of Christmas. Christmas eve however, is not a public holiday although many people take a week off (schools usually have two weeks off).


----------



## Penn's Woods

Americans do call Santa "St. Nick" or "Saint Nicholas"; at least he's referred to as such in older poems and songs and so on. But it's totally the same character and totally associated with Christmas. December 6 is just another early-December day.

We don't do Boxing Day, but people are starting to become aware of it, through enough exposure to British (and Canadian) culture and media.

Thanksgiving is nothing to do with Christmas*, and non-Christians observe it too. It was totally uncommercial until the last few years (forgetting about the parades), except for people who sell Thanksgiving food (turkey, pies...); you'll see ads for that sort of thing and, say, butchers encouraging people to order their turkey, a few weeks out.

Since Thanksgiving is a Thursday, and a month before Christmas, a lot of people have the next day off and use it for Christmas shopping. Hence the term "Black Friday": it's supposedly the day a lot of retailers move "into the black" on their "books" - move out of debt and into profit on their accounts. It's only in the last few years that some retailers have pushed Black Friday into Thanksgiving by opening Thursday evening, although they've been opening abnormally early or even at midnight, and offering specials that are only good for the first few hours, for some time (and there's this ridiculous phenomenon of people lining up waiting for stores to open and getting into fights over the toy of the moment), and now there's talk of opening during the day Thanksgiving Day, but a lot of people find this almost sacrilegious, not to mention inconsiderate of retail employees: There's a strong sense that Thanksgiving is a family day, and that retail employees should be able to enjoy it too. I was in a large bookstore yesterday - a national chain - which seems to have decided that this coming Friday is the beginning of Christmas shopping season - they're calling it Discovery Friday or something. A factor in that may be that Chanukah, which usually falls in December, actually begins on Thanksgiving Eve this year, or that Thanksgiving is late - the 28th. (By the way, people weren't saying "Thanksgiving Eve" when I was growing up.)

Canada has a Thanksgiving, but it's the second Monday in October. A Canadian can tell us about how significant it is: all I know is a former supervisor of mine who had in-laws in Montreal said it wasn't on the scale of ours - people "don't go flying across the country to eat turkey."

*although the term "the holidays" covers Thanksgiving to New Year's.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> I know the origins of the character Santa Claus, but maybe it just seems that the two characters have moved so far apart, both in look and on the calendar...?


The American Santa Claus (which influences the whole world nowadays) is a mix of at least three different guys and one of them is St. Nicholas (actually getting to the U.S. through the Dutch Sinterklaas that is already a mix of an ancient German guy and St. Nicholas). 
However in Hungary St. Nicholas, although remaining in Dec 6, got all the well known properties of the American Coca-Cola Santa Claus: long white beard, red clothes and a red bag. And that's why in Hungarian culture there can be a separated St. Nicholas and then another Santa Claus at Christmas.


----------



## MajKeR_

volodaaaa said:


> What about this camouflage-painted house in Bratislava. :lol:


Quite nice, I'd prefer that instead of the commieblock I've posted (it's at Wyżyny estate in Bydgoszcz).


----------



## volodaaaa

MajKeR_ said:


> Quite nice, I'd prefer that instead of the commieblock I've posted (it's at Wyżyny estate in Bydgoszcz).


I prefer, when the colour combination matches with surrounding architecture. The less colours, the better. But I really don't like patterns like smiling suns or camouflages :lol: 



Attus said:


> The American Santa Claus (which influences the whole world nowadays) is a mix of at least three different guys and one of them is St. Nicholas (actually getting to the U.S. through the Dutch Sinterklaas that is already a mix of an ancient German guy and St. Nicholas).
> However in Hungary St. Nicholas, although remaining in Dec 6, got all the well known properties of the American Coca-Cola Santa Claus: long white beard, red clothes and a red bag. And that's why in Hungarian culture there can be a separated St. Nicholas and then another Santa Claus at Christmas.


In Slovakia, we do not have Santa Claus, but Christkind. Basically, it is the same as in Austria. But we have Saint Nicolas though. He comes in night at the turn of 5th and 6th of December with Angel and Old Nick and gives sweets to good children. When the child was bad during year, he or she gets onion, garlic, potato and piece of coal. He looks exactly like Santa Claus but has different hat. Sometime he wears white coat instead of red. Today's children often confuses Santa Claus with Saint Nicolas. Saint Nicolas brings only sweets, for gifts, there is Christkind at 24th of December.

Here is the trio:









Btw. I am curious if there is a map of common Christmas gift bringer in the World :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

When you think of Germany, you think of green energy.


Garzweiler by Chris Wevers, on Flickr


----------



## Road_UK

Ludwigshafen? Duisburg has the same pittoresk landscape.


----------



## keokiracer

Road_UK said:


> Ludwigshafen?


Look at the name below the pic 
It's Garzweiler.


----------



## Road_UK

Ok. Never heard of it, but the name sounds pretty Saarlanderisch to me... I could look it up, but I can't be bothered.


----------



## keokiracer

I still have it opened on GMaps anyway so here you go
https://maps.google.nl/maps?q=Garzw...rzweiler&t=h&hnear=Garzweiler,+Duitsland&z=13


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> When you think of Germany, you think of green energy.


You, perhaps. I surely don't. 
I'm living in Germany and know that "Energiewende" ("energy turnaround") means using MORE coal/oil energy than before. The government has reopened coal plants and plans to open new ones. 
The base of Energiewende is not to use nuclear energy any more. But not any single nation of the world is able to use 100% green energy (considering that nuclear energy is counted as devil energy), so we need more and more conventional (coal or oil based) energy. 
Especially that green energy is expensive and many people (especially poor families) suffer from constantly increasing electricity prices.


----------



## italystf

Today I have the pleasure to meet a such dangerous idiot. 
Blue: me, red: him.
Junction of Padova ovest on the A4. I was going straight west-east and he turned right from the 3rd lane.


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> Trivia question: guess how many U.S. states have been states longer than Belgium has beem a country. (All 50 are older than independent Slovenia... ;-) )


What kind of a comparison is that? :crazy: It's like Montenegro boasting that it's been a republic longer than Slovenia's been independent. :lol: At least Slovenia's been a republic longer (since 1945) than Alaska and Hawaii have been states (both since 1959).


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> What kind of a comparison is that? :crazy: It's like Montenegro boasting that it's been a republic longer than Slovenia's been independent. :lol: At least Slovenia's been a republic longer (since 1945) than Alaska and Hawaii have been states (both since 1959).


Meanwhile in Mesopotamia: Bitch please...


----------



## italystf

I found this funny post on the Aaroads forum (written by an American):

"As for wrong turns made by people I was traveling with, there was the time I was going to Canada with my dad and some other relatives. Dad was driving the car I was in, and my cousin was driving another car. My cousin was annoyed that my dad was (in his opinion) driving too slow, so he went ahead of my dad. We were on the QEW near Toronto when the cousin says over the CB radio that he thinks he's lost. Just then we see him passing by, going the other direction. We never did figure out how he got turned around. That same trip, *he also got a ticket for going 100 mph in a 100 km/h zone...*"


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> ... I could look it up, but I can't be bothered.


A sentiment I often share.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I don't even know what it means....


----------



## Attus




----------



## piotr71

Ok then, so I've seen some of them including the one on the Attus' photos. It's "Ruhrsnellweg" near Essen, isn't it.


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ Russian version of guided bus


----------



## Attus

piotr71 said:


> Ok then, so I've seen some of them including the one on the Attus' photos. It's "Ruhrsnellweg" near Essen, isn't it.


Precisely.


----------



## piotr71

My 3 year old son's first car's drawing:


----------



## Wilhem275

Seems legit.


----------



## Surel

Interesting. I did not know that Porsche chose for the Czechoslovak citizenship after the WWI. I knew that he was born in Bohemia (nearby Liberec) but I thought that he chose for Austrian citizenship. Porsche went on living in Germany since 1931 and then in 1934 he became naturalized German (probably under the influence by Hitler).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Porsche#cite_note-6


----------



## JackFrost

i remember some people were interested in this (but i am not gonna spoil the hungarian motorway thread with this): yesterday ms. rezesova received 6 years in prison for killing 4 people on M3 in august 2012. she will be out in 4 most probably...

http://index.hu/belfold/2013/11/22/eva_rezesova_szlovak_milliomosno_itelet/

(appeals on the judgment possible)


----------



## volodaaaa

Very low sentence. Apparently, money have influence everywhere. She broke many traffic rules at once and horribly killed four people in poor fiat while being drunk or under drug influence. And she get 6 years in luxurious apartment on the Danube bank in the center of Budapest. What a justice. 

But thanks got she was not held for trial in Slovakia.


----------



## x-type

Jack_Frost said:


> i remember some people were interested in this (but i am not gonna spoil the hungarian motorway thread with this): yesterday ms. rezesova received 6 years in prison for killing 4 people on M3 in august 2012. she will be out in 4 most probably...
> 
> http://index.hu/belfold/2013/11/22/eva_rezesova_szlovak_milliomosno_itelet/
> 
> (appeals on the judgment possible)


who is Ms. Rezešova?


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> who is Ms. Rezešova?


A daughter of superrich postsocialist thief in Slovakia. Mr. Rezeš was a very close friend to post-socialist prime minister, who sold him the biggest national steel factory in Slovakia for funny price and then it was sold to american company U.S. Steel for market price. So he became super rich for nothing and members of his family became "celebrities". So they do nothing but driving on expensive cars and running over other people.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> A daughter of superrich postsocialist thief in Slovakia. Mr. Rezeš was a very close friend to post-socialist prime minister, who sold him the biggest national steel factory in Slovakia for funny price and then it was sold to american company U.S. Steel for market price. So he became super rich for nothing and members of his family became "celebrities". So they do nothing but driving on expensive cars and running over other people.


poor Hungarians. our minister of construction killed 2 people at M7 3 years ago and is now in jail because of it.
http://index.hu/kulfold/2013/06/17/bevonult_a_foghazban_az_m7-esen_karambolozo_miniszter/


----------



## JackFrost

x-type said:


> poor Hungarians. our minister of construction killed 2 people at M7 3 years ago and is now in jail because of it.


yeah, for 1 year and 10 months. great. and he is eligible for parole after 11 months. 5,5 months/life. nice job hungary.


----------



## italystf

In 1981 the, then Italian comedian, Beppe Grillo, killed 3 people in a road accident. It was condemned for unvolontary murder but he was never jailed. Almost 30 years later, when he starded being involved in politics (and founded the M5S party), he stated that people with criminal records should never be allowed in parliament. And obviously many people remembered it.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> In 1981 the, then Italian comedian, Beppe Grillo, killed 3 people in a road accident. It was condemned for unvolontary murder but he was never jailed. Almost 30 years later, when he starded being involved in politics (and founded the M5S party), he stated that people with criminal records should never be allowed in parliament. And obviously many people remembered it.


There is nothing more to add. Typical politician with rubber hosepipe instead of spine.


----------



## radamfi

piotr71 said:


> We don't see guided buses too often, do we? I haven't seen one either, or at least, I am not aware of.


That looks like the recently opened Luton to Dunstable busway, just east of Dunstable town centre.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Does anyone know a way of disabling Google Doodles, especially the animated ones? No smart-ass suggestions like "switch to Bing," please. 

Talking about both google.com as a homepage and Google's search engine.
Although if there was such a thing as a generic, completely blank home page (or a way to open your browser without it going anywhere until you typed something into the address bar), I'd take it.


----------



## Wilhem275

Open your browser's settings, and type "about:blank" in the home page field  Then specify to open the home page at startup (if not already so).


----------



## bogdymol

I use Google Chrome, and every time I want to Google something I just type it in the address bar above. It does the same thing as opening google.com and typing there what I want to search.


----------



## bogdymol

Nice houses

http://goo.gl/maps/EUuZP


----------



## Alex_ZR

bogdymol said:


> Nice houses
> 
> http://goo.gl/maps/EUuZP


I think that we already discussed about Gypsy architecture in Romania.


----------



## bogdymol

Yes, but just now I discovered this street.


----------



## Chilio

The street looks even nicer  You can drive or you can swim or you can row a boat... whatever you like


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> You can tell when they're taking, although I believe Australian and British English spelling are completely the same. I'm not sure about Canadian, they nearly talk the same as US Americans, although I believe at least some of the spelling is the same. Perhaps Michael can shed a little light on that. French-Canadian is jibberish for the European Frenchman, resulting in all French-Canadian films being subtitled in France.


There are French-Canadians I don't understand, and those who speak standard French with a bit of an accent. (Well, to a Parisian perspective it would be an accent.)

Canadian English probably sounds American to someone from Britain or Australia... the differences are subtle, but they do exist; you can find Canadian editions of dictionaries in bookstores up there. Canadian spelling tends to be more British than American.

I have a co-worker who was born in Johannesburg whose English sounds completely "Received Pronunciation" British to me, except her short I's (the vowel in words like "bit").


----------



## x-type

at our tiny 56000 km2 we have such dialects that people don't understand each other at all :lol:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

WOOOOOOO YOOHOOO


----------



## x-type

question for Italians: I have got a fine for parking 2 months ago in Italy. it is something like 28€. I still ahven't paid it, but i would like to. how can i know if i have to pay some interests too because i haven't paid it immidiately?


----------



## Wilhem275

DanielFigFoz said:


> WOOOOOOO YOOHOOO


I appreciate your enthusiasm; now, what is it due to? :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

x-type said:


> question for Italians: I have got a fine for parking 2 months ago in Italy. it is something like 28€. I still ahven't paid it, but i would like to. how can i know if i have to pay some interests too because i haven't paid it immidiately?


Can you post a print screen of the notice of payment (of course blanking out your personal data)?


----------



## Penn's Woods

DanielFigFoz said:


> WOOOOOOO YOOHOOO





Wilhem275 said:


> I appreciate your enthusiasm; now, what is it due to? :lol:


Indeed. Daniel, what are you on about? Some teenage rite of passage? 

:cheers:


----------



## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> question for Italians: I have got a fine for parking 2 months ago in Italy. it is something like 28€. I still ahven't paid it, but i would like to. how can i know if i have to pay some interests too because i haven't paid it immidiately?


I'm not Italian (obviously) but when did you get the notice, and if it was a while ago, have you heard from them again?

If you've got a bill for 28 euros, I'd be inclined to just pay that. If they want more from you after that, let them ask for it.


----------



## Verso

Wilhem275 said:


> I appreciate your enthusiasm; now, what is it due to? :lol:





Penn's Woods said:


> Indeed. Daniel, what are you on about? Some teenage rite of passage?


I assume he's turned 18.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

19. And I had forgotten about that. Dear lord...


----------



## volodaaaa

Just working on my paper now and have written around 2 pages in English. As I have finished one part, I decided to copy one table from another MS Word document. Here is what I have done

1. Let the a.doc be my paper and b.doc the document I'd have liked to copy the table from.
2. Opened b.doc
3. Copied table from b.doc to a.doc
4. Closed a.doc instead of b.doc
5. "Would you like to save any changes in your document?" - *NO*
6. Enjoy my rage :troll:


----------



## bogdymol

Romanian national day military parade live from Budapest Bucharest: http://stirileprotv.ro/protvnews


----------



## Attus

bogdymol said:


> Romanian national day


Your 'national day' is quite unpopular in Hungary...


----------



## bogdymol

Your 'national day' (March 15th) is quite unpopular in Romania... so we're even 

:cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

Guys stop it! How old are you? 7 and 9?


----------



## JackFrost

Attus said:


> Your 'national day' is quite unpopular in Hungary...


romanians have added so much value, culture and infrastructure to transylvania in the last 100 years, that it certainly would be a different place without them. just let them celebrate...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Other sources describe donut-shaped tire tracks in the roadway (but they could have already been there) and signs warning of a dangerous curve....

EDIT: I'm not trying to point fingers or judge... I'm sure most of us have done things on the road we wish we hadn't (I get impatient...) Dying young (or not young for that matter) for something like this is just so unnecessary. And the families left behind.... And of course this sort of thing happens to non-celebrities, too, and those people are just as important and their deaths just as tragic; maybe the function of fame, of bad things happening to famous people, is to make us pay attention.

[End soapbox mode]


----------



## Penn's Woods

Okay so, apparently, if you're an American and say something in an American magazine and it gets translated and published in France, you can be prosecuted in France for hate speech?

http://www.lalibre.be/dernieres-dep...e-association-croate-529cd5553570386f7f3a38fe

Now in English!:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/30/bob-dylan-sued-croatian-group_n_4365425.html

By the way, the American in question is Bob Dylan. Not that that should matter.

I'm sorry, as far as I know, the First Amendment is still in effect here, whether the French like it or not.
(But if you murder a Philadelphia police officer, they'll name streets after you; and if you drug and sodomize a 13-year-old girl then spend 30-odd years on the lam, you'll be a national hero.)


----------



## Surel

Now now



> Amazon trialling the use of drones for parcel delivery
> CEO Jeff Bezos hopes online retailer's drone scheme will be operating in major US cities in 2015


http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...ialling-the-use-of-drones-for-parcel-delivery


----------



## Penn's Woods

I knew these drones were a bad idea....

(Seriously, I don't approve of "the drone program" in the "war on terror" and please don't assume I'm the only American who doesn't.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Now, let's see who can make a connection between Paul Walker, Bob Dylan, drones, the First Amendment and fast Porsches.

Or we could wait for an update on Verso's mosquito colony.

(Sorry, been a long day and I'm feeling silly.)


----------



## volodaaaa

Surel said:


> Now now
> http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...ialling-the-use-of-drones-for-parcel-delivery


I am just curious, will it ring my bell at the entrance to my apartment house on ground floor or will it hover in front of my kitchen window on 2nd floor and nervously knockin on it? :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

It'll send your packages through a window. Keep them open if you don't want to have to clean up broken glass.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Did you know that if you do something like drafting a private message that's too long, SSC will inform you, and I quote, "Los siguientes errores ocurrieron al enviar este mensaje: "? Or "¿?"


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> Or we could wait for an update on Verso's mosquito colony.


One less.


----------



## volodaaaa

Soccer in a nutshell


----------



## Capt.Vimes

FOOTBALL... FFS hno:

More italian football:


----------



## volodaaaa

A story of my apartment house go on.

In September, we (owners) made a deal, that if someone knows a realizable company with good references, he/she can submit it to the tendering. Nobody even said a word. And now, three days after the deadline, when only one company was submitted to tendering, an elderly lady who have unfortunately two votes (because she have an garage in basement in addition), told me she will block everything, because her cousin can do it, and now listen...... 100 € cheaper! (the price for project documentation is around 5 000 € )


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> Soccer in a nutshell


What happened next? Was he sent out?


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> What happened next? Was he sent out?


IDK :lol:


----------



## keber

Penn's Woods said:


> Now, let's see who can make a connection between Paul Walker, Bob Dylan, drones, the First Amendment and fast Porsches.
> 
> Or we could wait for an update on Verso's mosquito colony.


*Conspiracy theory:*_
A spying drone was recording conversations regardless of First Amendment when suddenly was distracted by a mosquito colony and therefore collided with a fast Porsche driven by Paul Walker as he was listening Bob Dylan._


----------



## Surel

what a story


----------



## x-type

gotta new car plates today


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> gotta new car plates today


do they have euroband already?


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> do they have euroband already?


no, not yet.
btw I have realized that 0 and O are completely equal at HR plates


----------



## MajKeR_

^^ Is introducing of euroband at HR plates being planned at least?


----------



## bogdymol

Can you guys please "Like" this post: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=109385792&postcount=11097

Thank you.


----------



## keokiracer

Why? I don't believe he's a computer. He asked a question I was wondering about as well. Why open a non-finished motorway. I have an answer now and so does he.


----------



## Penn's Woods

bogdymol said:


> Can you guys please "Like" this post: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=109385792&postcount=11097
> 
> Thank you.


What did he or she say that's bothering you? Link, your explanation and so on....


----------



## bogdymol

^^ If you would read Pascal's posts you wouldn't need any explanations.


----------



## Broccolli

volodaaaa said:


> do they have euroband already?


They had home made euroband stickers on plates since early nineties already. Europa baby Europa :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

bogdymol said:


> ^^ If you would read Pascal's posts you wouldn't need any explanations.


Well, you're asking us to gang up to have someone banned. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that to start with, so I certainly don't think it's up to me to go out of my way to figure out why. If you really think you have a case, make it, please.


----------



## bogdymol

I'm sleepy. It's almost midnight here. Maybe tomorrow :goodnight


----------



## Alex_ZR

Maybe he's just a troll.


----------



## x-type

MajKeR_ said:


> ^^ Is introducing of euroband at HR plates being planned at least?


it will obviously be introduced in some future, but there are not yet specified plans not design of new plates. my opinion is that it could be introduced in 2014.


----------



## hofburg

He's just asking questions repeatedly. I don't think that violates forum rules.


----------



## Verso

Alex_ZR said:


> Maybe he's just a troll.


More like a spammer, if you ask me.


----------



## Road_UK

His posts are very annoying, however, I don't believe in ganging up together to get someone banned. We don't really know him, we don't know his background and he hasn't been abusive to anyone. He might be mentally ill for all we know, and then we end up looking like schoolkids bullying. 
We are not forced to read and respond to his posts. And it's not our job to decide who's not welcome here. Let a local moderator have a word with him first.


----------



## volodaaaa

Crazy people here. Just have heard the traffic report  "Three cars crashed on D2 motorway in Slovakia in left lane. Watch out suicides filling in the insurance papers in front of crashed cars (in left lane). Furthermore four another cars full of curiosity catchers crashed at same place in opposite direction".


----------



## Wilhem275

Road_UK said:


> And it's not our job to decide who's not welcome here. Let a local moderator have a word with him first.


At my forum, if Guy X creates a public team to ban Guy Y, we'll begin thinking if we have to ban Guy X









If people don't like something, there's this:







Then a Mod will work out something.
And the best of all solutions is always the Ignore List...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is no reason to ban somebody for asking questions. He's not trolling, just annoying, which has been pointed out to him a long time ago.


----------



## volodaaaa

Football again









Slovak football player Stoch showing off he can speak serbian: "Heeeey, f**c you" in friendly manner


----------



## x-type

Suburbanist said:


> Can you post a print screen of the notice of payment (of course blanking out your personal data)?


i was lazy to take a photo sooner. so, here it is, i got those 2 papers:


----------



## MajKeR_

x-type said:


> it will obviously be introduced in some future, but there are not yet specified plans not design of new plates. my opinion is that it could be introduced in 2014.


So Croatia is the second country in which euroband wasn't introduced at the moment of joining EU. The first one was Poland...

But, to be honest, I hadn't felt disappointed because of that case.


----------



## JackFrost

denmark introduced them later too. and its still not mandatory, if i am not mistaken.


----------



## Broccolli

One question 
Is it obligatory to have country tag (bumper sticker) on your vehicle if you go into another country, let's say not EU member state, or is enough to have euroband license plate?


----------



## bogdymol

volodaaaa said:


> Despite the specific weather conditions, especially their results(snow, mud, etc.), I like this solution more. One simple reason.
> 
> Coloured lines are simple and indisputable solution.


^^ Let me respond to you with a quote from keokiracer's post:



keokiracer said:


> However, at some locations the road markings don't match the posted speed limit, which doesn't make it very clear...


----------------------------

If there would be an EU-standard for speed limit signs + markings then it would be ok. But when every country/region has it's own standards it's hard to make this a good solution.


----------



## keokiracer

Well, nvm editing my previouw post, I'll post a new one. :lol:
(excuse for the sometimes really big and kind of crappy pics, but ever since Google+ has been implemented with Youtube and Picasa all Picasa pics are stretched insanely big, which doesn't really help with the quality if you use a videocamera to take pictures like I do)

The green line = 100 km/h (pic coincidentally taken just a bit south of the Oosterscheldt Barrier on the _Veerse Gatdam_)









This is 80 km/h. Basically 100 km/h without the green line:










60 km/h: lines on the side of the road









Or no lines at all (not really recommended and unsafe during the night)


----------



## Wilhem275

keokiracer said:


> 60 km/h: lines on the side of the road


Never fully understood how to drive here: I guess I should keep just left of the line (which means driving in the middle of the road), to protect cyclists, and move to the side only when crossing other vehicles, if no other users are standing there. Right?


----------



## MajKeR_

Jack_Frost said:


> denmark introduced them later too. and its still not mandatory, if i am not mistaken.


I meant countries which might have done it at the moment of joining EU. Denmark is a member of EU since 70's, then nobody even thinks about marking anything at license plates 



x-type said:


> jesus christ! that is 41? i thought it was a signature or something.
> btw how did you come out with that max fine of 168€ and half of it?
> 
> the worst thing is that i really intended to pay that, but i couldn't find post office, and at tabacchi nobody knew how to use terminal for paying that. :bash:


Welcome in... more civilised part of EU? No, I don't think so; I guess if you give it up, it won't come back to you in the future. 

My father got a shot from speed camera in Austria in 2000 or 2001, I can't remember. Gave it up and nothing happened. But, what might be important, he drove a car with black Polish plates, without any country code or something.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Wilhem275 said:


> ....Penn, how does that work among different States of the US?


Penn is a very law-abiding person who's gotten one speeding ticket and a few parking tickets in his life. All the parking tickets were in Philadelphia and the last couple I got thrown out for being invalid (they really were). The speeding ticket was in Maryland (fricking automatic camera) and I paid it. 

So my experience is limited. 

That said, the Constitution requires the states to recognize legal actions of other states, so if I'd ignored that Maryland ticket and they felt strongly enough about it, they could sue in Pennsylvania to collect the debt. And of course there's no issue of differing currencies.


----------



## keber

keokiracer said:


> Or no lines at all (not really recommended and unsafe during the night)


How ... what? Unsafe? Not recommended?
Don't you people know how to drive anymore?


----------



## italystf

Also Austria uses the painted green median in some roads. I saw it on the S37 near Klagenfurt, that is 4 lane single carriaggeway.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keokiracer said:


> Well, nvm editing my previouw post, I'll post a new one. :lol:
> (excuse for the sometimes really big and kind of crappy pics, but ever since Google+ has been implemented with Youtube and Picasa all Picasa pics are stretched insanely big, which doesn't really help with the quality if you use a videocamera to take pictures like I do)
> 
> ....


Pix edited out 'cause some people don't like copying them in replies.

Wait, I haven't been paying close attention to this, but are you saying that the different types of lines are the *only* indication of the speed limit, or are there signs as well?


----------



## Road_UK

Wilhem275 said:


> Never fully understood how to drive here: I guess I should keep just left of the line (which means driving in the middle of the road), to protect cyclists, and move to the side only when crossing other vehicles, if no other users are standing there. Right?


Uninterrupted lines may be crossed at all times. So it's up to you if you wish to drive in the middle of the road and move to the right if a vehicle is coming from the other side, or if you want to keep right and move to the middle to overtake a cyclist or something else slow moving.


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> Uninterrupted lines may be crossed at all times. So it's up to you if you wish to drive in the middle of the road and move to the right if a vehicle is coming from the other side, or if you want to keep right and move to the middle to overtake a cyclist or something else slow moving.


Is the general rule "dashed:yes cross, solid: no cross" applied worldwide?


----------



## keokiracer

keber said:


> Don't you people know how to drive anymore?


Go ahead, try and drive in the middle of the night in pitch black without road markings or anything on a road you've never been.


@Penn's: there are signs as well.


----------



## Wilhem275

Road_UK said:


> Uninterrupted lines may be crossed at all times. So it's up to you if you wish to drive in the middle of the road and move to the right if a vehicle is coming from the other side, or if you want to keep right and move to the middle to overtake a cyclist or something else slow moving.


So, I guess what they try to do is a psychological trick to have you driving in the middle (I wouldn't like to drive OVER a line for a long time).


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> volodaaa iz right - if you don' have country code tag at plates, then you must have oval sticker. if you have country tag, you don't have to stick anything.


Are you sure you don't need an oval in say... Afghanistan?  You don't need it in the EU (and I think EEA and CH, although I'm not sure), but Broccolli was asking about non-EU countries. Here's what Wikipedia says:


> Vehicles with EU number plates do not need to display the white oval international vehicle registration code *while within another member state*.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_the_European_Union#Format


----------



## cinxxx

I drove in Serbia with a Romanian plate that had the country code and flag on it, like this one. Nobody had a problem with that.










I drove in Croatia last year, it was not in the EU then, with German license plate, that had the country code and flag on it, also no problems. In Switzerland and Liechtenstein, the same. No other non-EU countries driven.


----------



## bogdymol

Here's a good joke from Romania:

A Romanian supermarket chain called Mega Image has 200+ stores in Romania, but most of them are in Bucharest. They are relatively small stores at the first floor of buildings and they are all over Bucharest.

A Romanian humor website called timesnewroman.ro is always making jokes about this supermarket chain that builds a new store every night. They had some articles saying that they opened a store within a store, a store factory, a store in somebody's living room etc. Basically they are joking about the store's expansion.

On Monday morning the website's authors had a big surprise when they headed to their office:


----------



## bogdymol

I drove a Romanian-registered car without the oval, but only the country-flag and RO on the license plate in Hungary, Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Croatia (non-EU at that time), Slovenia and Serbia, without any problems.

I also drove a Romanian-registered car without the oval, but with the EU stars and RO on the license plate in Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, Italy, San Marino, (and Serbia + Greece - my parents) without any problems.

I believe that in Europe (EU + non-EU) you can drive without any problems if you have your country's standard license plate (with the country code and flag/stars).


----------



## Broccolli

So in the past years ( i haven't got oval sticker since euroband license plates were introduced in Slovenia) i was breaking the law every time i crossed SLO-CRO border? :discoduck:


----------



## cinxxx

^^Euroband license plate have the country code inside the circle of stars


----------



## Broccolli

cinxxx said:


> ^^Euroband license plate have the country code inside the circle of stars


Yes that's why i don't have oval sticker anymore


----------



## Alex_ZR

cinxxx said:


> ^^Euroband license plate have the country code *inside the circle of stars*


What?!


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> ^^There are a lot of countries that don't use the ISO 3166-1 code: Germany, France, Luxembourg, etc.


IMHO, three-characters codes are much worse legible especially on blue euroband. The use of three characters is moreover useless, since there is no that many independent areas in the world the three-characters would be necessary for.

The "Winner" in category legibility is Montenegro : MNE on blue band looks like three unrecognisable white rectangles.


----------



## Broccolli

cinxxx said:


> ^^There are a lot of countries that don't use the ISO 3166-1 code: Germany, France, Luxembourg, etc.


Yes you are right, my bad :hammer:

I just wanted to show an example with Germany and then i remember that they use only D on oval stickers not DE


----------



## cinxxx

volodaaaa said:


> IMHO, three-characters codes are much worse legible especially on blue euroband. The use of three characters is moreover useless, since there is no that many independent areas in the world the three-characters would be necessary for.
> 
> The "Winner" in category legibility is Montenegro : MNE on blue band looks like three unrecognisable white rectangles.


There is also FIN and BIH


----------



## keokiracer

For those who like simple humor  (short video)
http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/6575199/0270c319/intussen_tijdens_de_sinterklaasstorm_des_doods.html


----------



## Attus

cinxxx said:


> There is also FIN and BIH


And Finland used to be SF many years ago.


----------



## Verso

We're one of few countries in Europe that use the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code (SI) for postal code _de jure_ AND _de facto_ (all of them should, but they mostly use vehicle registration codes).


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Almost ran a cat over last night.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Verso said:


> Georgia is interesting. Its official code is "GE", but they put "GEO" on plates.


Here you are:










They first used GEO and then changed to GE.


----------



## bogdymol

Georgia license plate without the country code:


----------



## Verso

Alex_ZR said:


> They first used GEO and then changed to GE.


But only on plates, otherwise it's always been GE.



bogdymol said:


> Georgia license plate without the country code:


Georgia, USA:


----------



## Penn's Woods

DanielFigFoz said:


> Almost ran a cat over last night.


Response number 1: BAD Daniel. :bash:

Response number 2: Well, find it and try again. :devil:



Verso said:


> But only on plates, otherwise it's always been GE.
> 
> Georgia, USA:


AAAAH, MY EYES! (It reminds me of when people photoshop perfectly nice American road signs to Europeanize them.)


----------



## MattiG

Attus said:


> And Finland used to be SF many years ago.


Finland switched from SF to FIN as of January 1st, 1993. The blue euroband was taken into use in 2001.

(The letters S and F were the initials of the name of the country in Finnish and Swedish, Suomi-Finland.)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I remember seeing cars with an SF sticker far beyond 1993. I haven't seen them in the last couple of years though, the cars that still have them must be over 20 years old, and people generally don't take such long trips with an old beater. Finnish cars are somewhat rare to spot in the Netherlands, but not exceptional.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> I remember seeing cars with an SF sticker far beyond 1993.


People did not remove the old sticker, even if they should have done that by Aug 31st, 1993. In those times, nobody was any more interested in the ovals, except some German border officers. Ordnung muss sein.


----------



## Alex_ZR

I have a feeling that Slovenia will be available at Google Street View very, very soon... Maybe in a few days.


----------



## Verso

^^ I think they said in January.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Have to wait for the mosquitos to clear up? :jk:


----------



## italystf

A friend of mine spotted herself in the new Venetian street view.

After Slovenia, I wait for Austria and the whole Germany and Switzerland.


----------



## MajKeR_

del


----------



## Attus

italystf said:


> A friend of mine spotted herself in the new Venetian street view.
> 
> After Slovenia, I wait for Austria and the whole Germany and Switzerland.


For Austria and Germany should you not wait.


----------



## keber

As I saw on Street View website there is much driving happening through Switzerland in these months.


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> For Austria and Germany should you not wait.


Austria may have crazy privacy laws but Germany is already partly covered so I don't think there are legal prohibitions.



RIP Nelson Mandela 1918-2013


----------



## Broccolli

Does anybody know which road is this?






I found it, this road (656) is near Zgornji Čačič:banana:


----------



## hofburg

for streetview they mentioned december as earliest possible time.


----------



## Attus

italystf said:


> Austria may have crazy privacy laws but Germany is already partly covered so I don't think there are legal prohibitions.


In Germany there are no legal prohibitions but everybody are allowed to ask Google to mask his/her house/car/etc. And so many people asked for that, that Google announced not to make any more Streetview in Germany.


----------



## italystf

Having nothing to do, I was looking on Google Maps about how many European capitals have a complete ring road (that encircle the whole city).

When I dropped the little yellow guy around Bucharest, I randomly stumbled across this:
https://maps.google.it/maps?q=bucar...d=L98zM7f2LLQMeeqSPmTehw&cbp=12,280.8,,1,6.83
It's a guy walking on the motorway!!


----------



## volodaaaa

Some curiosities from Slovakia. Enjoy.










Just small coincidence (these are not personal plates)



























Lunik IX









Poor guys









Cpt. Picard









Yeah a lady









Lunik









Sorry for a long post.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Having nothing to do, I was looking on Google Maps about how many European capitals have a complete ring road (that encircle the whole city).
> 
> When I dropped the little yellow guy around Bucharest, I randomly stumbled across this:
> https://maps.google.it/maps?q=bucar...d=L98zM7f2LLQMeeqSPmTehw&cbp=12,280.8,,1,6.83
> It's a guy walking on the motorway!!


Oh my, I'd never expect that in Romania.


----------



## italystf

Who said that Americans are car-dependent and have an unhealty lifestyle?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^:bash:

Hey, at least she's trying....


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Some curiosities from Slovakia. Enjoy.
> Just small coincidence (these are not personal plates)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Sorry for a long post.



"Réservé"?

Who knew Slovak was so easy?!


----------



## Penn's Woods

You're not all discussing the World Cup drawing? It's knocked Mandela down the home pages in Europe (well, okay, the ones I've glanced at).


----------



## bogdymol

italystf said:


> Having nothing to do, I was looking on Google Maps about how many European capitals have a complete ring road (that encircle the whole city).
> 
> When I dropped the little yellow guy around Bucharest, I randomly stumbled across this:
> https://maps.google.it/maps?q=bucar...d=L98zM7f2LLQMeeqSPmTehw&cbp=12,280.8,,1,6.83
> It's a guy walking on the motorway!!


What I personally saw those few times when I drove on the Romanian motorway A1 between Bucharest and Pitești:

hitchhikers
prostitutes
people selling flowers on the hard shoulder (emergency lane)
people selling mushrooms on the hard shoulder (emergency lane)
people crossing the motorway like if there was a pedestrian crossing
people stopped on the hard shoulder for peeing
a sheep herd (ok, not on the motorway, but 1 meter from the asphalt... but without anything that could prevent the sheeps from getting on the road)

Shortly after the motorway was opened near my home town I spotted an old lady crossing the motorway. My own video:


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> "Réservé"?
> 
> Who knew Slovak was so easy?!


It seems a word borrowed from French, isn't it?



Penn's Woods said:


> You're not all discussing the World Cup drawing? It's knocked Mandela down the home pages in Europe (well, okay, the ones I've glanced at).


We're in the group with England, Uruguay and Costa Rica. Not very good, since the first two are quite strong adversaries and the match against England* will be held in the extremely hot and humid Manaus (in the Amazon forest).

Yes, England is correct there, since each of the 4 constituent nations of the UK has its own football team.


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> Shortly after the motorway was opened near my home town I spotted an old lady crossing the motorway. My own video:


trafictube.ro
Just the domain name suggest the kind of content of this website.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Yes, it's that type of content there... hno:


----------



## piotr71

Penn's Woods said:


> "Réservé"?
> 
> Who knew Slovak was so easy?!


I did. It's really easy 


============

Yesterday I was looking for a parking space in a supermarket's car park. I stopped for a while to let some one reverse out, then I noticed a car slowly moving out of a parking space. I assumed, it must have been an elderly driver trying to go back, so I had waited patiently. However, I realized there were no living creature sitting behind the steering wheel. Here are two pictures ilustrating that situation.



















I also have a question: do you put your car on neutral (manuals) and pull hand brake or engage 1st gear with no hanbrake on, or maybe both?


----------



## italystf

I uses both handbrake and 1st gear, I was taught in that way at the driving school and continued doing that.


----------



## x-type

piotr71 said:


> Yesterday I was looking for a parking space in a supermarket's car park. I stopped for a while to let some one reverse out, then I noticed a car slowly moving out of a parking space. I assumed, it must have been an elderly driver trying to go back, so I had waited patiently. However, I realized there were no living creature sitting behind the steering wheel. Here are two pictures ilustrating that situation.
> 
> http://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-N2nK4PCWUGs/UqIfsfapMxI/AAAAAAAAOAk/Mw7m4IKAxDU/s1024/DSC02579.JPG
> 
> http://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-CojmHQguiBE/UqIfxCA9jlI/AAAAAAAAOAs/aooS3kGHCLA/s1024/DSC02580.JPG
> 
> I also have a question: do you put your car on neutral (manuals) and pull hand brake or engage 1st gear with no hanbrake on, or maybe both?


i saw that situation twice:
1. once in the center of Zagreb in tram zone, guy has parked his car at the midle of the road not to be obstacle to the trams 
2. in my former firm we had parking lot at downhill. my chief's secretary parked without engaged handbrake and her car crashed into, you guess, our chief's car  it was so freaking funny to all of us. except to him  (interesting, I have met him today and we had nice chat)

i always park with handbrake, except in winter when i'm afraid of freezing of the cord.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't use handbrake except on steep grades (which obviously are very rare in the Netherlands). They say the handbrake can freeze solid if applied in winter. I don't know whether that's true. 

I have a kind of routine when going to drive. The first thing I do when I get into the car is putting on the seatbelt, then start the engine and then turn on the lights if necessary. When parking, I always reverse into a spot. I don't leave it in reverse when parked though, I always put it in first gear. I practically never put it in neutral except for leaving the engine running while parked for a short amount of time (for example to take a photo from an overpass).


----------



## volodaaaa

nbcee said:


> Sadly there are/were some politicians on both sides who keep fueling these things. It is always easy to blame the minorities if something bad happens (and I'm talking not just about Hungarians or Romanians) ot to create a national sentiment based on irrational fears.


Paradox situation took place here in Slovakia during last regional elections three weeks ago.

In Trnava, region with huge rate of Hungarian majority, ruling-party candidate was supported only by government party (SMER), whereas two Hungarian parties supported another one. In Košice, region with less but still significant rate of Hungarian minority, ruling-party candidate was supported by both Hungarian parties (SMER-Most-MKP). 

Result: R. Fico, leader of government party and PM claimed, that in Trnava pure Slovak candidate should have win. The same (ruling) party had billboards in Košice in Hungarian language to support their candidate.hno:


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> PM claimed, that in Trnava pure Slovak candidate should have win.


Probably it was only good for one thing - to make things easier for Kotleba in BB hno:


----------



## volodaaaa

nbcee said:


> Probably it was only good for one thing - to make things easier for Kotleba in BB hno:


Yeah... definitely... hno:


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Despite my hatred towards nationalism, I must confess, I can hardly understand some irrational "reasons" for nationalism:
> 
> I can understand the Romanian fear of Hungarian supremacy and vice-versa
> I can understand the Hugarian fear of Slovakian supremacy and vice-versa
> I can understand the German fear of French supremacy and vice-versa.
> I can understand the Catholics fear of Muslim supremacy and vice-versa.
> 
> Imagine the surroundings of Eiffel Tower in Paris speaking in German, imagine Muslims in Vatican, etc.
> 
> But I will never ever understand the Serbian fear over Croats and vice-versa.
> 
> Imagine Vukovar annexed by Serbia or Vojvodina annexed by Croatia. Will something change? Same people, same traditions, (almost 99% )*same language*.


In 1935 maybe, but in 2013? Germany would never attack France (or vice-versa), Hungarians would never attack Slovaks (or vice-versa), Romanians would never attack Hungary (and vice-versa). We're all in EU and despite historical, cultural, lingustic and religious differences we're united by democratic governments and EU institutions that certainly don't support a such armed conflict.
The Muslim issue is a bit more complicated since *some* of them are known for supporting and practising terrorism, so some kind of fear is in some way justificated (however this don't justify a racism against *all *of them).

The Balkan region has the strongest nationalisms in contemporary Europe and that's quite understandable since only 15-20 years ago different ethnic groups were killing each other in a horrible lawless conflict and many people who partecipated are still alive and integrated in the society. In the rest of continent only relatively small far-right groups advocate ideologies such "ethnic supremacy" (with higher percentages in some 'sensitive' areas like Catalonia, Basque countries, Belgium and Ireland).


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> The Balkan region has the strongest nationalisms in contemporary Europe


I think nationalism is even stronger in Russia, they have plenty of neo-Nazis.


----------



## volodaaaa

today I've got a job interview.I feel completely shy.


----------



## bogdymol

Don't be shy. Be yourself.

Good luck :cheers:


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> today I've got a job interview.I feel completely shy.


Break a leg!
(It's a kind of acting...)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

volodaaaa said:


> today I've got a job interview.I feel completely shy.


You are going for the job of Mr. Počiatek? :cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

Thank to all for your support. Nice to read such words. It worked out better than expected and I finally succeed


----------



## g.spinoza

Good!
Field?
Starting date?


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> Good!
> Field?
> Starting date?


Half time high school geography teacher. To not getting it wrong, i have to explainit a little bit. I am PhD student and teaching assistant at uni and i am not satisfied with the sallary. Since i have a little bit more free time than it is common. I have decided to spent it more effectively. To stay inside my field, high school teacher is a good choice, but i don't have as much time to work there full-time. Fortunarely, all the schedules fit perfectly.
I will start since start of the following new year


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> 10 December 2013
> 
> The new Grant MacEwan Bridge in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, opens to traffic with full capacity of 10 lanes. This concludes the reconstruction of Highway 63 into a freeway. Fort McMurray is the center of the Athabasca Oil Sands developments and is a fast-growing city. *It is the northernmost freeway of Canada.*


I start wondering where's the northernmost motorway\freeway in the world. It looks like there's a short piece in Finland at the top of the Bothnia gulf. Is there one further north?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Finnish main road nr 29 between Kemi and Tornio is the northernmost road in the world that has motorway status at 65.50 N. However there is a 4-lane controlled access expressway in Rovaniemi at 66.31 N. The 4-lane Tromsøysund Tunnel in Tromsø is at 69.41 N. The Johansen Expressway in Fairbanks, Alaska is at 64.50 N.


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> Half time high school geography teacher. To not getting it wrong, i have to explainit a little bit. I am PhD student and teaching assistant at uni and i am not satisfied with the sallary. Since i have a little bit more free time than it is common. I have decided to spent it more effectively. To stay inside my field, high school teacher is a good choice, but i don't have as much time to work there full-time. Fortunarely, all the schedules fit perfectly.
> I will start since start of the following new year


First lesson: the 50 states of the US. Let those blank mappers burn:guns1:
Anyway I'm satisfied with my celery:








HAHA!


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> Half time high school geography teacher. To not getting it wrong, i have to explainit a little bit.


Why would we get it wrong? A job, every job, is wonderful and deserving.


----------



## licenseplateman

italystf said:


> I start wondering where's the northernmost motorway\freeway in the world. It looks like there's a short piece in Finland at the top of the Bothnia gulf. Is there one further north?


Me and my father drove there this summer. I took many photos but most of them are really bad since I had to use the camera I had then which was crap.


----------



## Surel

The Prague's traffic police presents.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Finnish main road nr 29 between Kemi and Tornio is the northernmost road in the world that has motorway status at 65.50 N. However there is a 4-lane controlled access expressway in Rovaniemi at 66.31 N. The 4-lane Tromsøysund Tunnel in Tromsø is at 69.41 N. The Johansen Expressway in Fairbanks, Alaska is at 64.50 N.


The motorway Kemi-Tornio (Kemi-Keminmaa as road 4/E8/E75, Keminmaa-Tornio 29/E8) was completed recently and the total length is about 32 kilometres. It is a full-scale motorway, thus differing a lot from the short urban 2+2 section of 4/E75 within the city limits of Rovaniemi.










The variable speed limits and other telematics are controlled by the road operations center in Tampere, about 600 km to the south.










The motorway is the release 3 of the main road to Tornio. The old map from the late 1930's shows a very windy old road (release 1) having eight level crossings with a railway within 26 kilometres. At that time, the border town of Tornio was connected to Sweden by a bridge but to mainland Finland by a ferry only. The bridge over the river was complete in 1939.


----------



## bogdymol

next page


----------



## bogdymol

Let me present you the great achievements of my girlfriend while she used her computer:

She is a fan of Barcelona and this evening they had a match in UEFA Champions League. Unfortunately the match wasn't broadcast live by any Romanian TV station, so she searched on the internet for a way to see the game. She found a site where she could watch the game, but only if she installs some kind of plugin for this. Of course she installed it without checking out if that's genuine or not... After that she tried to watch the game, but... big surprise... it didn't work. She then called me for "assistance" and I told her that she shouldn't have installed everything she found on internet. Also she told me that now, when she opens Chrome browser, the _default_ page is not her usual page with the top proffered sites, but it opens directly on Google.com. 

After finishing the call with me, she wanted to do a 'good thing' and delete that bad software from her computer, so she opened Control Panel and started uninstalling what she didn't knew what it was. Guess what she uninstalled first... a "program" called "Realtek" which we all know it's one of the drivers from the computer's hardware. It was actually her LAN chip set driver so after uninstalling it her internet stopped working.

She called me again so I went to her house to see what's the problem. Remember that she said that her _default_ page on Chrome is now Google? It wasn't google, but a search engine that looked like google. I had to uninstall that thing and to set the default search engine back to Google.com. After that I had to uninstall some programs from Control Panel that were installed together with that "football game viewing software". Finally, I had to search for the missing driver software and install it again so that her internet would work again.


----------



## volodaaaa

nbcee said:


> First lesson: the 50 states of the US. Let those blank mappers burn:guns1:


Actually, 85 % of students somehow thinks about USA with 52 states. Perhaps and this is my own opinion, it is caused by the interpretation of internal spatial organization of US - often introduced as 48+2 states (Alaska and Hawaii) or 50. Some students made 50+2 of it. Anyway, I consider blank maps important, but I have and never insist on empty memorizing of fact without some interactive lecturing or highlighting the curiosities.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> Let me present you the great achievements of my girlfriend while she used her computer:
> 
> She is a fan of Barcelona and this evening they had a match in UEFA Champions League. Unfortunately the match wasn't broadcast live by any Romanian TV station, so she searched on the internet for a way to see the game. She found a site where she could watch the game, but only if she installs some kind of plugin for this. Of course she installed it without checking out if that's genuine or not... After that she tried to watch the game, but... big surprise... it didn't work. She then called me for "assistance" and I told her that she shouldn't have installed everything she found on internet. Also she told me that now, when she opens Chrome browser, the _default_ page is not her usual page with the top proffered sites, but it opens directly on Google.com.
> 
> After finishing the call with me, she wanted to do a 'good thing' and delete that bad software from her computer, so she opened Control Panel and started uninstalling what she didn't knew what it was. Guess what she uninstalled first... a "program" called "Realtek" which we all know it's one of the drivers from the computer's hardware. It was actually her LAN chip set driver so after uninstalling it her internet stopped working.
> 
> She called me again so I went to her house to see what's the problem. Remember that she said that her _default_ page on Chrome is now Google? It wasn't google, but a search engine that looked like google. I had to uninstall that thing and to set the default search engine back to Google.com. After that I had to uninstall some programs from Control Panel that were installed together with that "football game viewing software". Finally, I had to search for the missing driver software and install it again so that her internet would work again.


Mine is a secret collector of toolbars. I do not why and how, but she have always installed at least 5-6 toolbars. She is also an expert in filling of dishwasher. Never places glasses, bowls, mugs, etc. upside down, so that the water can drain off, but normally so the dishes are full of water after washing :lol:. Slamming the doors on car is another topic :lol: Women are women, we love them anyway.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Actually, 85 % of students somehow thinks about USA with 52 states. Perhaps and this is my own opinion, it is caused by the interpretation of internal spatial organization of US - often introduced as 48+2 states (Alaska and Hawaii) or 50. Some students made 50+2 of it. Anyway, I consider blank maps important, but I have and never insist on empty memorizing of fact without some interactive lecturing or highlighting the curiosities.


Once there was on the Italian SSC a discussion about geographic knowlwdge and a forumer said that he was good at geography and could name all *51* American states. 
After many funny replies, he apologized saying that he was including Washington D.C. (that isn't a state).


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Once there was on the Italian SSC a discussion about geographic knowlwdge and a forumer said that he was good at geography and could name all *51* American states.
> After many funny replies, he apologized saying that he was including Washington D.C. (that isn't a state).


He would have been right if he had been talking about the _subunits_ USA are made up by.


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> Let me present you the great achievements of my girlfriend while she used her computer:
> 
> She is a fan of Barcelona and this evening they had a match in UEFA Champions League. Unfortunately the match wasn't broadcast live by any Romanian TV station, so she searched on the internet for a way to see the game. She found a site where she could watch the game, but only if she installs some kind of plugin for this. Of course she installed it without checking out if that's genuine or not... After that she tried to watch the game, but... big surprise... it didn't work. She then called me for "assistance" and I told her that she shouldn't have installed everything she found on internet. Also she told me that now, when she opens Chrome browser, the _default_ page is not her usual page with the top proffered sites, but it opens directly on Google.com.
> 
> After finishing the call with me, she wanted to do a 'good thing' and delete that bad software from her computer, so she opened Control Panel and started uninstalling what she didn't knew what it was. Guess what she uninstalled first... a "program" called "Realtek" which we all know it's one of the drivers from the computer's hardware. It was actually her LAN chip set driver so after uninstalling it her internet stopped working.
> 
> She called me again so I went to her house to see what's the problem. Remember that she said that her _default_ page on Chrome is now Google? It wasn't google, but a search engine that looked like google. I had to uninstall that thing and to set the default search engine back to Google.com. After that I had to uninstall some programs from Control Panel that were installed together with that "football game viewing software". Finally, I had to search for the missing driver software and install it again so that her internet would work again.


When it happens to me (rarely, because i'm carefull not to install unknown things) to get undesired toolbars or home pages (usually bad imitations of Google who give very bad search results), I open the control panel and look at the last software installed (it appears the date).
Then I google their names and, if they are known for being malaware or spyware, I uninstal them and this always worked.
Never delete anything you don't know what is it, it may be important for the OS or other useful software installed.
And if you use anything like Utorrent, Emule, never download anything with .exe extesion (you find "songs" or "movies" with this extension but they obviously aren't).


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> He would have been right if he had been talking about the _subunits_ USA are made up by.


Then he should have said 56 (Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Northern Mariana, US Virgin Islands and Guam).


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Then I google their names and, if they are known for being malaware or spyware, I uninstal them and this always worked.


Lucky man!!! I have had two, but it took me several days to get rid of it. I had uninstalled them, but they were immediately back after re-startarting my browser.


----------



## italystf

A woman from Trieste was arrested for using a fake ID with the "Territorio Libero di Trieste" intestation. They're issued by the independentist movement but obviously they haven't legal value. Some time ago a man refused to pay a traffic fine because "he doesn't regognize the Italian sovreignity over the Free Territory of Trieste".

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since December 15, a new train of the Slovenske Zeleznice will run from Ljubljana to Opicina (near Trieste) and back twice a day. It will be the first passenger rail link between the two countries since a long time. It will stop in Sezana, Divaca and Postojna.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> Mine is a secret collector of toolbars. I do not why and how, but she have always installed at least 5-6 toolbars. She is also an expert in filling of dishwasher. Never places glasses, bowls, mugs, etc. upside down, so that the water can drain off, but normally so the dishes are full of water after washing :lol:. Slamming the doors on car is another topic :lol: Women are women, we love them anyway.


Mine slams car doors too, but when exiting. So basically she slams the door agaist everything outside (a wall, a tree, anything).
About the computer, she does not have any kind of organization: some videos are stored under "videos", some others under "download", some others on the Desktop, some others in Documents folder, and who knows where else...

(Unfortunately this reflects on her wardrobe organization :madwife: )


----------



## cinxxx

^^:lol:


----------



## Verso

Finally my house on the banner.


----------



## Penn's Woods

bogdymol said:


> Let me present you the great achievements of my girlfriend while she used her computer:


She has my sympathy. My computer's evil.
About two weeks ago, Adobe prompted me to upgrade to the latest reader because the version I had wasn't being supported any more.

I did, and it's been running very, very, slowly - painfully slowly - ever since, so the other night I uninstalled Adobe. Yesterday I googled and found a link - a legitimate link at adobe.com - to the old version. Tried six times last night to download and install that.... "the installer failed to initialize" every time.

As soon as my new apartment is pinned down - which may be as soon as tomorrow if all goes right [hooray!!!] - I'm going to finally replace the bloody thing. It's old - runs XP - but it's been reliable until now.



volodaaaa said:


> Actually, 85 % of students somehow thinks about USA with 52 states. Perhaps and this is my own opinion, it is caused by the interpretation of internal spatial organization of US - often introduced as 48+2 states (Alaska and Hawaii) or 50. Some students made 50+2 of it. Anyway, I consider blank maps important, but I have and never insist on empty memorizing of fact without some interactive lecturing or highlighting the curiosities.


In an episode of the classic 1950s American sitcom "I Love Lucy," Lucy, the ditzy redhead star, goes on a quiz show. She's asked how many states there are. This is before Alaska and Hawaii became states, so the correct answer would be 48 (and that had been the number since before Lucy was born). She says "46." Announcer: "I'm sorry...it's 48." Lucy: "Oh, yeah. I forgot Alaska and Hawaii."


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Finally my house on the banner.


Yeah, but mine's on StreetView.


----------



## Verso

We're getting it very shortly too, so stay tuned.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Any date for that available yet?


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> He would have been right if he had been talking about the _subunits_ USA are made up by.


And what about Puerto Rico, Guam or the other territories of the USA? :troll:

Anyway I love geography, during my first years at the university I tried to impress girls with my knowledge of their country or hometown. And it worked. :colgate: Well... okay, it only worked once... but it worked!


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> ^^Any date for that available yet?


This or next month, we don't know exactly.


----------



## volodaaaa

nbcee said:


> And what about Puerto Rico, Guam or the other territories of the USA? :troll:
> 
> Anyway I love geography, during my first years at the university I tried to impress girls with my knowledge of their country or hometown. And it worked. :colgate: Well... okay, it only worked once... but it worked!


Everything depends on how we define each notion. Personally, I do not think playing with words has something to do with geography knowledge:lol:


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> Everything depends on how we define each notion. Personally, I do not think playing with words has something to do with geography knowledge:lol:


Well I used the :troll: sign for a reason.  But to be a bit sincere sometimes you have to be very accurate when you refer to a country:


----------



## volodaaaa

nbcee said:


> Well I used the :troll: sign for a reason.  But to be a bit sincere sometimes you have to be very accurate when you refer to a country:


This is indeed great!!! :-D Something for my students :-D


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I've never heard of the "British Islands," and if I did I'd think it meant the same thing as "British Isles."

And "Ireland" can, depending on context, refer to the nation-state, i.e. the Republic. In fact it's probably the usual way of referring to the nation-state, at least in North America


----------



## bogdymol

Penn's Woods said:


> Yeah, but mine's on StreetView.


Besides the fact that my house is on StreetView, I also can see myself in 2 places on Street View. One time I am a pedestrian, and the second time I also managed to take this pic:










Google Street View -> http://goo.gl/maps/MhM4a


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^I've never heard of the "British Islands," and if I did I'd think it meant the same thing as "British Isles."
> 
> And "Ireland" can, depending on context, refer to the nation-state, i.e. the Republic. In fact it's probably the usual way of referring to the nation-state, at least in North America


Neither have I, it's the British Isles.

In Britain the RoI is commonly referred to as Ireland. Northern Ireland is thus called, except for some parts of Scotland where its known as Ulster. The whole island is known as the 'island of Ireland'.

And as we all get along like a house on fire (yeah, right!) on these islands.......
The Irish hate the English
The English hate the Scottish
The Scottish hate the Irish
And everyone hates the Welsh!


----------



## Verso

Fatfield said:


> Neither have I, it's the British Isles.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Islands


----------



## nbcee

Fatfield said:


> In Britain the RoI is commonly referred to as Ireland. Northern Ireland is thus called, except for some parts of Scotland where its known as Ulster. The whole island is known as the 'island of Ireland'.


Well I've been to the _Emerald Isle _last month and they were very serious about this. It was also interesting to see that they have some maps of the island without the border separating NI from the RoI.


----------



## Fatfield

Verso said:


> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Islands


It may well be written into law but you'll not hear anyone except the Irish call it anything else but the British Isles. And even then the Irish don't call it the British Islands. They want to call them the Atlantic Islands or some such.


----------



## Fatfield

nbcee said:


> Well I've been to the _Emerald Isle _last month and they were very serious about this. It was also interesting to see that they have some maps of the island without the border separating NI from the RoI.


There are some people who want us (Britain) to cede Norn Iron back to the RoI. It won't happen until the majority of Norn Iron want that. When that happens they will be more than welcome to it and all of the associated shit that comes with the 6 counties will be their problem. Don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen though.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Islands


Verso, I'm a 49-year-old native speaker who writes and edits for a living. If I (and Fatfield) have never heard "British Islands" and take it when it comes up here as a synonym for "British Isles," I strongly suspect that there are other native speakers who have the same reaction to it, Wiki and legal usage notwithstanding. (That said, I do see the utility of something that covers the UK, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man but not, say, Gibraltar or Bermuda. On the other hand, it's odd that "British Islands" excludes part of one of those islands, but that wouldn't have been the case in 1889 when it was apparently legislated. :cheers: )




Fatfield said:


> It may well be written into law but you'll not hear anyone except the Irish call it anything else but the British Isles. And even then the Irish don't call it the British Islands. They want to call them the Atlantic Islands or some such.


I (half-)read a book about the Reformation ("The King's Reformation"; I don't remember the author's name), where the author, who I believe is British, has a little intro on terminology where he explains that he's going to talk of "the Atlantic Isles" so as to be respectful of the Irish, or some such.


----------



## nbcee

Fatfield said:


> There are some people who want us (Britain) to cede Norn Iron back to the RoI. It won't happen until the majority of Norn Iron want that. When that happens they will be more than welcome to it and all of the associated shit that comes with the 6 counties will be their problem. Don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen though.


You know being a Central-Eastern European it's very hard for me to imagine these things you are talking about. Neighbouring countries disliking each other and demanding _clays_. hno:

Why can't we all be like this?


----------



## Fatfield

nbcee said:


> You know being a Central-Eastern European it's very hard for me to imagine these things you are talking about. Neighbouring countries disliking each other and demanding _clays_. hno:


The irony of it all is the English, Irish, Scots & Welsh all get on with each other when in foreign climes.

Great band btw. I had the pleasure of meeting Bill Berry in Portland, Oregon in 2005. A really down to earth bloke who also got his round in! :cheers:


----------



## nbcee

I believe this settles it:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1978/30



Interpretation Act 1978 said:


> “British Islands” means the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. [1889]


http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1346048/British-Isles



Encyclopaedia Britannica said:


> British Isles, group of islands off the northwestern coast of Europe. The group consists of two main islands, Great Britain and Ireland, and numerous smaller islands and island groups, including the Hebrides, the Shetland Islands, the Orkney Islands, the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Man. Some also include the Channel Islands in this grouping. Although the term British Isles has a long history of common usage, it has become increasingly controversial, especially for some in Ireland who object to its connotation of political and cultural connections between Ireland and the United Kingdom.


----------



## Penn's Woods

That settles it *in UK legal usage*. Not elsewhere.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I have heard it, I think it appears on IoM passports.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Are Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man considered part of the European Union? How about Gibraltar and non-European dependencies* like Bermuda?

By the way, I'm not sure how clear the distinction between independent and, um, other members of the Commonwealth is. You can probably find British/Commonwealth constitutional lawyers who'd argue that all authority in the Commonwealth derives from Westminster and could theoretically be revoked at any time.

I know you can get Canadian historians to argue about when Canada actually became independent, and there's a strong argument to be made for 1931.

*I'm guessing that's the politically correct way of saying colony these days.

Ahem. I realize that was inappropriately serious for a Friday afternoon/evening. I apologize. :runaway:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

None of them are considered part of the EU except Gibraltar.


----------



## Verso

Saint Pierre and Miquelon (France) pretends to be in the EU even though it isn't. 


> *Immigration and Visas* - Altough part of the European Union, Saint-Pierre & Miquelon has its own Immigration procedures and regulations.


http://www.st-pierre-et-miquelon.com/english/questions.php

They are EU citizens though. :shifty:


----------



## Verso




----------



## piotr71

Snowing in Ljubljana?


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


>


Literally "cool" guardian dog


----------



## Wilhem275

Penn's Woods said:


> As soon as my new apartment is pinned down - which may be as soon as tomorrow if all goes right [hooray!!!] - I'm going to finally replace the bloody thing. It's old - runs XP - but it's been reliable until now.


My advice is to keep using XP, just have a fresh start. XP has the advantage to run smoothly even on old machines and, as of today, I never found any useful feature XP has not while newer OSs have, so I see no point in "upgrading".
Yes, on a comparison other systems may be easier to use, but since you're already used to XP... that is the easiest 

In a few days I'll have more free time, and I'll write some quick advice to keep XP clean.


Meanwhile, you can use this for your pdf needs:
http://www.nitroreader.com/

It also generates pdf files from any other program, very easily, acting as a printer.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Microsoft will end its support for Windows XP in April 2014. That means no more updates and patches, leaving the system wide open for compromise.


----------



## piotr71

Is it possible to watch youtube's 1080 HD movies in XP? I see quite a difference when playing youtube on Windows8 and Windows Vista. I use the latter as my operating sytem on my older laptop and it does not cope with Ful HD equally well as W8.


----------



## Wilhem275

^^ I can, but my actual limit is the connection speed, so I never actually do it...



ChrisZwolle said:


> Microsoft will end its support for Windows XP in April 2014. That means no more updates and patches, leaving the system wide open for compromise.


This is true; but the system is mature, so it won't need major updates anymore. Important thing is that sensible programs will be updated (browsers etc.) to avoid leaving open backdoors.
I also think that indipendent (open) projects will rise, since that OS is still pretty popular.

Of course brand new technologies and protocols will not be easily implemented.


----------



## italystf

Wilhem275 said:


> ^^ I can, but my actual limit is the connection speed, so I never actually do it...
> 
> 
> 
> This is true; but the system is mature, so it won't need major updates anymore. Important thing is that sensible programs will be updated (browsers etc.) to avoid leaving open backdoors.
> *I also think that indipendent (open) projects will rise, since that OS is still pretty popular.*
> 
> Of course brand new technologies and protocols will not be easily implemented.


Windows is a proprietary software (i.e. not open-source), so are you sure that will be freely modifiable after the end of the support? Does the end of the support mean automaticaly also the end of the copyright?


----------



## keber

Of course not.


----------



## Peines

piotr71 said:


> Is it possible to watch youtube's 1080 HD movies in XP? I see quite a difference when playing youtube on Windows8 and Windows Vista. I use the latter as my operating sytem on my older laptop and it does not cope with Ful HD equally well as W8.


Probably is because Vista could not handle all the performance of the processor as W8 do, or it's just a DirectX version issue.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Wilhem275 said:


> My advice is to keep using XP, just have a fresh start. XP has the advantage to run smoothly even on old machines and, as of today, I never found any useful feature XP has not while newer OSs have, so I see no point in "upgrading".
> Yes, on a comparison other systems may be easier to use, but since you're already used to XP... that is the easiest
> 
> In a few days I'll have more free time, and I'll write some quick advice to keep XP clean.
> 
> 
> Meanwhile, you can use this for your pdf needs:
> http://www.nitroreader.com/
> 
> It also generates pdf files from any other program, very easily, acting as a printer.


Thanks, but it's now definite I'll need a new computer. Clearly the current one's at the end of its life (snif). Couldn't install Adobe 9.5 when I tried a few days ago, then it became unable to detect my wireless modem (I just walked to my office in snow on a Saturday to get on line for a bit). Assuming it's become corrupted. Defragged a few days ago - didn't help. Tried system restore to a few different restore points last night and it tells me it's unable to. So, enough. I'll get my files off it while it still actually works and dispose of it decently.

I have Windows 7 on this (office) computer, so as far as what I'm used to is concerned, I could just as easily use 7 as XP.


----------



## g.spinoza

For everyday use xp may be ok, but it's not sufficient for internet security anymore. Upgrade and don't look back.


----------



## Attus

I use Ubuntu Linux 13.04.


----------



## Road_UK

Fatfield said:


> Neither have I, it's the British Isles.
> 
> In Britain the RoI is commonly referred to as Ireland. Northern Ireland is thus called, except for some parts of Scotland where its known as Ulster. The whole island is known as the 'island of Ireland'.
> 
> And as we all get along like a house on fire (yeah, right!) on these islands.......
> The Irish hate the English
> The English hate the Scottish
> The Scottish hate the Irish
> And everyone hates the Welsh!


Nobody hates the Welsh, Fatfield. As a matter of fact, we're a bit jealous because of their sexual adventures with sheep...


----------



## Fatfield

Road_UK said:


> Nobody hates the Welsh, Fatfield. As a matter of fact, we're a bit jealous because of their sexual adventures with sheep...


Baa humbug!


----------



## Verso

Just seen a license plate from Iceland in Ljubljana.  The only time I'd seen one was 11 years ago in Switzerland.


----------



## MattiG

Road_UK said:


> Nobody hates the Welsh, Fatfield. As a matter of fact, we're a bit jealous because of their sexual adventures with sheep...


The Welsh? I have been told that the Scotchmen use a kilt because the sheep can hear a zipper from a mile away.


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> I use Ubuntu Linux 13.04.


Ubuntu went down the hill a couple years ago. Last usable one, to me, was Natty.


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> Just seen a license plate from Iceland in Ljubljana.  The only time I'd seen one was 11 years ago in Switzerland.


I've never spotted one of these. And only a couple American ones.

I may join the H&A skiers club soon! I always wanted to ski, so I could take a skiing course in January and February in the biggest ski resort of this side of the Pyrenees: Formigal. If this finally goes on I would see the progress of the U/C E07 motorway up to Sabinanigo* for seven weeks. Oh, and I would avoid the traffic jams of Sunday evening as I would go up there on Saturdays .

* Damn budget cuts, "Sabinanigo" looks (and sounds) weird...


----------



## italystf

Last night on the A7 Milan - Genoa. He was caught
http://video.ilmessaggero.it/?p=video&id=20131214_video_14210115


----------



## bogdymol

CNGL said:


> I've never spotted one of these. And only a couple American ones.
> 
> I may join the H&A skiers club soon! I always wanted to ski, so I could take a skiing course in January and February in the biggest ski resort of this side of the Pyrenees: Formigal. If this finally goes on I would see the progress of the U/C E07 motorway up to Sabinanigo* for seven weeks. Oh, and I would avoid the traffic jams of Sunday evening as I would go up there on Saturdays .
> 
> * Damn budget cuts, "Sabinanigo" looks (and sounds) weird...


I miss skiing...

Picture of me taken last winter:


----------



## Road_UK

Skiing season fully started here in Mayrhofen. I'll be on the slopes myself on Wednesday. Will get myself a season pass again.


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> Yes, but do you speak Frisian? (I realize that doesn't follow....)


I do a little from my grandparents on my mum's side...


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> This "winter" so far sucks in the Netherlands (if you like snow & ice). We had maybe three nights with temperatures at just below freezing, but most of the days it's +6 - +12 C. December was also quite sunny.
> 
> How's your winter?


Does not exist.


----------



## x-type

we had maybe a week or 10 days with mornings below 0°C, but that's all for now (and for next 2 weeks at least)


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> This "winter" so far sucks in the Netherlands (if you like snow & ice). We had maybe three nights with temperatures at just below freezing, but most of the days it's +6 - +12 C. December was also quite sunny.
> 
> How's your winter?


Same here... Sometimes I get a feeling I can smell spring in the air.but as far I remember, last winter started same way, but then the winter came in full strengh and i was really fed up by cleaning the snow off my car in late March


----------



## Verso

We haven't had snow yet in Ljubljana (unlike Cairo). Today it rained in Doha (Qatar).


----------



## Wilhem275

ChrisZwolle said:


> This "winter" so far sucks in the Netherlands (if you like snow & ice). We had maybe three nights with temperatures at just below freezing, but most of the days it's +6 - +12 C. December was also quite sunny.
> 
> How's your winter?


Annoyingly humid. Now it's raining, and it's a relief, because it's actually cleaning the air...


----------



## MattiG

MattiG said:


> Does not exist.


Local weather forecast for next 5 days:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Several inches (2.5 times several centimeters  ) of snow expected here tonight. Fourth significant snowfall of the winter. But we have nine hours of daylight.

EDIT: Here's a map to play with: http://www.weather.com/weather/map/interactive/19103


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> We haven't had snow yet in Ljubljana


Of course we had some snow, it lasted for several days because of temperatures between -3 and -5.

(at the same time just 300 meters higher temperatures were around +10, sunny with no clouds for days)


----------



## CNGL

Weird weather, down here it is only a bit above average.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> This "winter" so far sucks in the Netherlands (if you like snow & ice). We had maybe three nights with temperatures at just below freezing, but most of the days it's +6 - +12 C. December was also quite sunny.
> 
> How's your winter?


In Italy there has been unusual good weather, not necessarily warm but there have been lots of shiny sunny days. Of course, today it rained all the time...


----------



## Alex_ZR

:lol:


----------



## x-type

:lol:


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> Of course we had some snow, it lasted for several days because of temperatures between -3 and -5.


Which Ljubljana are you talking about? :shifty:


----------



## CNGL

Alex_ZR said:


> :lol:


:rofl:


----------



## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> :lol:


:lol:
Biatch please


----------



## italystf

:lol: :cheers::lol:


----------



## bozenBDJ

Journalists and/ or Editors need to take *geography *courses seriously.


----------



## keokiracer

Meanwhile in Belgium...










It's located somewhere in this little forest near R0 around Brussels.


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> :lol: :cheers::lol:





















:lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

I must confess although they confused countries, i like how they put cities in rigtht parts of them. E.g. Gdansk on north, Bratislava on SW


----------



## Fane40

volodaaaa said:


> Should not have the pig sat on the regular seat with seatbelts on? :lol:
> 
> Duck is, personally, the best meat ever...


He has ropes around him.
He cannot move even if the car does a backflip !

Like you, I love duck meat.
My region is specialized with that (foie gras,...)


----------



## Chilio

The pig could not fit inside the car anyway, although we have seen some Russian and Polish (and also other EE countries) pictures of cows and horses inside even smaller cars...


----------



## volodaaaa

Chilio said:


> The pig could not fit inside the car anyway, although we have seen some Russian and Polish (and also other EE countries) pictures of cows and horses inside even smaller cars...





















*Daddy? Have you said that Ferrari is often red-coloured with horse? *


----------



## Chilio

^^ The first one with the Moskvich carrying the Zhiguli is IMHO from Bulgaria... But doesn't have a livestock in it... does it?

The "Ferrari" one is obviously Hungarian, although I have no idea why the registration plate is upside-down


----------



## volodaaaa

Chilio said:


> ^^ The first one with the Moskvich carrying the Zhiguli is IMHO from Bulgaria... But doesn't have a livestock in it... does it?
> 
> The "Ferrari" one is obviously Hungarian, although I have no idea why the registration plate is upside-down


No, it does not. The second one is from Slovakia (HC- Hlohovec), but I still have not figured out, why the plate is upside down as well.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Chilio said:


> The "Ferrari" one is obviously Hungarian, although I have no idea why the registration plate is upside-down


That's Slovak plate (HC=Hlohovec).

Edit: volodaaa was faster. 

Upside-down plates in Serbia:


----------



## Chilio

And here's the Russian cow I remembered about:


----------



## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> That's Slovak plate (HC=Hlohovec).
> 
> Edit: volodaaa was faster.
> 
> Upside-down plates in Serbia:


What's that for strange fashion? To confuse police or what?


----------



## Alex_ZR

volodaaaa said:


> What's that for strange fashion? To confuse police or what?


No idea. :dunno: Maybe some kind of protest.

Croatia:










Ukraine:


----------



## italystf

Russians win


----------



## x-type

Few weeks/months ago we have been discussing about editing the web motorway-exitlist.com and we haven't heard for a while from the main editor Michal. Well I have just received his mail, what means that editing goes on


----------



## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> No idea. :dunno: Maybe some kind of protest.
> 
> Croatia:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ukraine:


I am not quite sure, but i think there is no mention in Slovak law about the orientation of the plate, just that the plate have to be clearly legible and must have prescribed size. So it seems to be fully legal + despite it is easy legible, it is not memorable by police.


----------



## italystf

Illegal windows cleaner (and vandalizad signs) in Naples caught by Street View 
https://maps.google.it/maps?q=piazz...d=gQ4Z5AhB5AUmOGMfPO-rnA&cbp=12,30.88,,1,7.45


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I saw them in Bologna and at the traffic lights between Rimini and San Marino.


----------



## bozenBDJ

What the fcuk is being posted here lol? *laughs* Animals-in-a-car/upside-down-license-plates penchant, much?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Current temperature in Philadelphia: 4F. Which I think (my brain is still thawing) is -15.5C.

There's supposedly a wind chill, but truth be told I didn't have much wind on my walk to work.


----------



## MajKeR_

^^ And on the other side of Atlantic ocean, I've been driving my motorcycle today.


----------



## cinxxx

Regarding Romanian and Bulgarian "invasion" into Germany
http://ostpol.de/beitrag/3843-ana_gruesst_horst_es_reicht

I'm to lazy to translate, use Google Translate 


> Romanian journalist Ana Saliste-Iordache is tired of the debate on poverty migration. They experienced that people have to wonder suddenly about her good German. Although she lives a long time in Berlin.
> 
> We are an EU citizen, it is our right to be there, part of the European idea. But we must not justify not defend. This should not and must not be up for debate! How can you actually so loose trample on the law of an EU country to freedom of movement? How can you even suggest fingerprints and entry barriers than solutions?
> 
> You insult us. You insult engineers, professionals, technicians, cleaners, economists, doctors, nurses, students. People who work, who have integrated well and pay their taxes. People who twice now have it so hard in an apartment search at all to get an appointment. "I'm sorry, the property manager does not want Romanians" I was told a friend from Hamburg. He is an economist, well deserved and speaks German.


I know the girl since childhood, was colleague with her in kindergarten and also in school from first to 12th grade


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> Regarding Romanian and Bulgarian "invasion" into Germany
> http://ostpol.de/beitrag/3843-ana_gruesst_horst_es_reicht
> 
> I'm to lazy to translate, use Google Translate
> 
> 
> I know the girl since childhood, was colleague with her in kindergarten and also in school from first to 12th grade


Well this is something I will have never understood. I would not like to insult anyone, but Western cities are *full* of people with different belief, different culture, with different, perhaps opposite opinions on women, criminality, family etc. and this is totally okay. Because it is under the prism of multiculturalism and political correctness. 

But Eastern Europeans are seen like something to be afraid of, though our culture and basic being questions are rather similar if not the same. 

Well, just try to let you girlfriend wear miniskirt and offshoulder top in Berlin, Milano, Sofia, Lviv and Islamabad and see the difference. Or just lay down with your girlfriend at beach and kiss her belly button. From cultural view, there are almost no differences among Great Britain, Spain, Greece, Romania, Poland etc. So why are they so sensitive over Eastern Europe?


----------



## Wilhem275

volodaaaa said:


> Or just lay down with your girlfriend at beach and kiss her belly button.


And try to do that with your _boy_friend! :siren:


----------



## cinxxx

This is the way to park 



















source


----------



## Kanadzie

Like I tell my friends, mit Stern alles ist erlaubt. But the police never seem to understand...


----------



## JackFrost

^^not only with "Stern". let me introduce you the mother of reckless driving (filmed on M7). police? anywhere? forget it...






you have everything here: guns, gloves, calling the other drivers slow motherf*ckers etc...


----------



## cinxxx

*British man becomes first person to visit all 201 countries... WITHOUT using a plane*










Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-visit-201-countries-WITHOUT-using-plane.html


----------



## CNGL

I wonder how he managed to set foot in North Korea...


----------



## bogdymol

cinxxx said:


> This is the way to park
> 
> http://www.voceatimisului.ro/wp-con...-pe-pista-de-biciclisti-2.jpg&q=90&w=650&zc=1
> 
> http://www.voceatimisului.ro/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Nesimtit-parcat-pe-pista-de-biciclisti-1.jpg
> 
> source


That's in Timisoara, RO. I was yesterday there, because exactly in the building where this idiots were parked was an wedding fair (exhibition). There was also a guy with a Skoda parked like that when I was there, and he was still in his car. I wanted to ask him if he likes how he parked... but I kept my mouth shut, because I didn't want trouble.


----------



## Kanadzie

Jack_Frost said:


> ^^not only with "Stern". let me introduce you the mother of reckless driving (filmed on M7). police? anywhere? forget it...
> 
> 
> 
> you have everything here: guns, gloves, calling the other drivers slow motherf*ckers etc...


He is just using reserved lane! :lol:

Nothing wrong with guns, but what is with the gloves? :nuts:

As usual the Rossiyans have better than this!


----------



## keokiracer

You just got owned


----------



## JackFrost

Kanadzie said:


> He is just using reserved lane! :lol:
> 
> Nothing wrong with guns, but what is with the gloves? :nuts:
> 
> As usual the Rossiyans have better than this!


his hands became sweaty after a while. 

hungary is not russia, and i really hope this 3 idiots hit a tree. but the absence of *any *police is ridiculous, these guys did almost 100 kilometers...

i wonder what would happen to a guy like this in the US for example.


----------



## timeandspace

bogdymol said:


> That's in Timisoara, RO. I was yesterday there, because exactly in the building where this idiots were parked was an wedding fair (exhibition). There was also a guy with a Skoda parked like that when I was there, and he was still in his car. I wanted to ask him if he likes how he parked... but I kept my mouth shut, because I didn't want trouble.



what can work in traffic in romania is (when there's eye contact) to point at your cheek to suggest the person is crassly unashamed, saves you a direct convo, point to the bike lane too. no guarantees you get away without being complimented back or engaged though.


----------



## Kanadzie

Jack_Frost said:


> his hands became sweaty after a while.
> 
> hungary is not russia, and i really hope this 3 idiots hit a tree. but the absence of *any *police is ridiculous, these guys did almost 100 kilometers...
> 
> i wonder what would happen to a guy like this in the US for example.


In the US probably would have crashed as shoulder edges have "rumble strip" grooves and tyre might have been damaged running over that at such speed 

Otherwise probably nothing, it is only product of chance that police is waiting. Anyway someone driving in such manner is sure to find police very quickly in any event


----------



## Broccolli

Today's handball qualification game between Slovenia and Ukraine :lol:

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPV12A44qBs


BTW we won SLOVENIA - UKRAINE 35:23


----------



## volodaaaa

Jack_Frost said:


> his hands became sweaty after a while.
> 
> hungary is not russia, and i really hope this 3 idiots hit a tree. but the absence of *any *police is ridiculous, these guys did almost 100 kilometers...
> 
> i wonder what would happen to a guy like this in the US for example.


Well I don't wish their died, but at least on a wheel chair. The gloves could go as well. 

Btw. my neighbour's son drove... ehrm... were racing at 150 kph through Bratislava and hit a brick bus stop. He ended up in coma but woke up 3 years later. He is literally helpless cripple. Unfortunately, the bus stop was empty. But I think he deserved it. He used to race and do the stupid things like guys on video afore did. Since he is not mentally disabled, now he got so much time to think over his stupidity. hno:

I feel sorry for people who were injured in car accident by not their fault. I also know what does it mean "youthful stupidity". But intently drive like a ****** and risk other's life is not very wise.


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> I wonder how he managed to set foot in North Korea...


There are train tours from China.
I wonder how he got in some remote insular countries in the Pacific.


----------



## italystf

Today in Milan:


----------



## Alex_ZR

New 10 euro banknote presented today. It will be introduced in circulation in September 2014.


----------



## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> New 10 euro banknote presented today. It will be introduced in circulation in September 2014.


It is necessary to point out, that regular version *will not contain* the "specimen" watermark.:lol:

Like in Slovakia in first weeks of 2009, when old ladies in kiosk refused to accept my Greek Euro coins (from previous summer holiday), because they did not have Bratislava castle depicted on it.:lol:



italystf said:


> Today in Milan:


What is wrong? With this car, you have the permission to park everywhere in basic equipment


----------



## cinxxx

Alex_ZR said:


> New 10 euro banknote presented today. It will be introduced in circulation in September 2014.


Heard about it on the radio half an hour ago


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Well I don't wish their died, but at least on a wheel chair. The gloves could go as well.
> 
> Btw. my neighbour's son drove... ehrm... were racing at 150 kph through Bratislava and hit a brick bus stop. He ended up in coma but woke up 3 years later. He is literally helpless cripple. Unfortunately, the bus stop was empty. But I think he deserved it. He used to race and do the stupid things like guys on video afore did. Since he is not mentally disabled, now he got so much time to think over his stupidity. hno:
> 
> I feel sorry for people who were injured in car accident by not their fault. I also know what does it mean "youthful stupidity". But intently drive like a ****** and risk other's life is not very wise.


"Drive like a ******"?


----------



## bogdymol

Picture taken by a Romanian blogger on a highway in Dubai:


----------



## Penn's Woods

keber said:


> Sounds or tastes?
> Looking at ingredients it should taste pretty good.


"Meat off-cuts and offal"?


----------



## volodaaaa

Given the old-fashioned Yugoslavian singers, I remember one woman with non-shaved legs on cover.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Well, sorry for offtopic, but I have one small grammar issue.
> 
> Imagine these sentences:
> 1 The house is painted.
> 2 The house is being painted
> 3 The house is to be painted
> 4 The house will be painted.
> 
> 1st means the house is already painted. 2nd means that some people are currently painting the house and it is not yet finished. Forth means further plans to paint the house.
> 
> But I don't understand the third one. I was taught that the main difference between "will" and "going to" is that the latter one has greater certainty. Is not it just "going to" in shorter way in third case? I mean is not "The house is to be painted" equal to "The house is going to be painted"?
> 
> thanks a lot.


The house is painted: the house has paint on it and probably has as long as anyone can remember.
The house has been painted: the house has paint on it and that happened recently. (Say, the house was just built recently and painting was the last step....)
The house is being painted: it's happening right now. (Or at least, it's in progress - they started this morning, it's nighttime now, and they'll continue tomorrow.)
The house is to be painted: Current plans are that someone will paint it?

I'm not sure I see a difference between "is to be painted" and "will be painted," really; I'd probably say "will" rather than "is to," more naturally.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> ^^
> 
> I would look here for the general idea on the "going to" versus "is to": http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/66291/is-about-to-vs-is-going-to
> 
> In my eyes: "it is about to be" has bit less certainty than "is to be". "it is to be" sounds more definite, more like it has to be done. While "it is about to be" is more imminent.
> 
> 
> 
> When I would say those three (four) sentences:
> 
> The garbage is to be emptied.(!) => I would like someone to empty the garbage. In fact, I imply that someone has to do it or that someone forgot to do it.
> 
> It is about (the time) the garbage is emptied. => I would like someone to empty the garbage as well, but I might be willing doing it too. I am more concerned about that it is done before it is too late. I am sort of announcing it.
> 
> Is the garbage going to be emptied? => I can't even put the same question/demand intention in an indicative sentence. I am merely asking whether it would happen.
> 
> The garbage is going to be emptied. => I am just announcing that it will happen.


"The garbage needs to be emptied" works for "is to be" as well.

"It's about time..." - no "the"


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Does "is to be" have a certain "judgemental" tone or it's just that to my foreign ears? "The house is to be painted" like "the house needs to be painted"?


No.

"The house is to be painted" means that someone - perhaps the speaker, perhaps not - has decided it will happen. No notion of "need." (Which brings me back to my example of the new house. Perhaps a group of houses in a new development are ready to be painted, so it's been decided that that'll happen tomorrow or next week.")

"The house needs to be painted" - I'm looking at it and I see the paint peeling. I see that as a problem and painting it as a solution to the problem. I may not have the actual authority to make it happen; I may just be a passer-by observing the state of the place....


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Well this is what I like in English :lol: We are discussing over sentences and the native speaker would say "Gonna take the trash out" :lol:
> 
> In my eyes:
> - The trash will be emptied = uncertain future. Someone, sometime will do it.
> - The trash is going to be emptied = someone is preparing thrash to be emptied.
> - The trash is about to be emptied = I am standing in front of thrash can.
> - The trash is to be emptied = The sack of garbage is falling into thrash can.
> 
> But I am definitely not sure :lol:


"Trash" is garbage. (Or rubbish, but Americans don't say "rubbish.")
"Thrash" is a verb. Looks like this: :bash:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> ...You can't say "I've just decided I'm going to paint my house tomorrow", just as it's silly to say "tomorrow will be Wednesday".


Yes, you can.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Given the old-fashioned Yugoslavian singers, I remember one woman with non-shaved legs on cover.


I'm too young to remember but, according to my parents' tales, after the iron curtain fell, it was easy to spot Eastern European women on Italian beaches. They simply didn't shave themselves. :lol:


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> Yes, you can.


In slang only? Or if you're very determined to do it?


----------



## Penn's Woods

No, it's completely normal. And tomorrow will be Wednesday.


----------



## Verso

Americans and their English. :troll:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^

You mean, "most of the world's native speakers of English and their English."


----------



## x-type

cinxxx said:


> *The 21 most ridiculous Yugoslav album covers ever*
> http://justsomething.co/the-21-most-ridiculous-yugoslav-album-covers-ever/
> 
> 
> more pictures in the article...


i have those two records at home


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> "It's about time..." - no "the"


I see there might be change in the meaning when adding "the" but I would not mind using it both ways . Perhaps it depends on the sentence melody and context as well, doesn't it?

btw. Google search gives around 200 million for both variants. Actually the "the" variant gets bit more  but yeah, the "it is about" phrase is what take precedence to "about time" phrase when you use the "the" variant.


----------



## Penn's Woods

"It's about time" is a set expression meaning "you should have done this already."


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> I'm too young to remember but, according to my parents' tales, after the iron curtain fell, it was easy to spot Eastern European women on Italian beaches. They simply didn't shave themselves. :lol:


I know what are you talking about bro, my fiancee has currently very difficult finals :lol:

Finally, I have found it:


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> "It's about time" is a set expression meaning "you should have done this already."


And "It's about ...." is also set expression.

My point was that by adding the the, you jump from the first one to the second one. But that it doesn't need to be understood like that, depending on context, intonation, etc.

I can imagine a mother (father, brother, sister, friend, whoever) shouting: 

_It's about *the *f...g time you get up and go to ....._

I doubt that it would go without "the"

The other meaning would then be:

_It's about the great time we spent ...._


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> ...
> I can imagine a mother (father, brother, sister, friend, whoever) shouting:
> 
> _It's about *the *f...g time you get up and go to ....._
> [/I]


Nope. It's unidiomatic.


----------



## cinxxx

volodaaaa said:


> Finally, I have found it:


I didn't want to post that, but as you wrote about a cover with a women with hairy legs, I thought it could be it


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> Nope. It's unidiomatic.


Ok, I see, AFT, .


----------



## volodaaaa

http://www.ukdataexplorer.com/european-translator/?word=example

You are welcome


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> Ok, I see, AFT, .


??


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> http://www.ukdataexplorer.com/european-translator/?word=example
> 
> You are welcome


What do they have against Lëtzebuergesch?


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> ??


http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=a.f.t.&defid=4123223

a.f.t. that I got it.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Ah.

:cheers:


----------



## keokiracer

This guy is epic!


----------



## Kanadzie

Verso said:


> Gaddafi?


Here is the music video


----------



## Verso

Gaddafi: Zenga Zenga

Bajramović: Zvezda Zvezda


----------



## keber

Penn's Woods said:


> "Meat off-cuts and offal"?


Yeah, it's a common thing in Europe and elsewhere. And is tasty too.
In US you eat just first class tenderloin steaks?


----------



## Penn's Woods

[rolleyes]

Personally, I don't eat red meat all that often.

As far as what we eat in the U.S., I know we don't eat horsemeat and label it beef, then hypocritically complain about evil Americans imposing genetically-modified food on civilized people. 

(Seriously, I was watching a news broadcast from Belgium about a month ago - I get TV5 Monde - and there was a protest in Brussels about EU/US free trade and some leader of the farmers' union complaining about how "Americans don't follow the same standards as us...." Please. She's full of offal. And I for one was glad during the horsemeat scandal that we don't import European beef.)

More seriously, we may, culturally, be more squeamish than you. I still remember sausages I was served in France that I found unappetizing because it was too obvious what was in them. (What's this - a blood vessel?!) We process them more heavily. But there is an old-time Philadelphia delicacy called scrapple. Which I've eaten maybe once. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapple


----------



## keber

Horse meat scandal? Scandal was just for UK and maybe some other countries. Mostly that was just overblown news by sensationalistic media (even here despite horse meat here is nothing uncommon).


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^There were headlines in France and Belgium for a month or more. And a recurrence a couple of months ago where horses that had been used for medical testing and hence been declared unfit for human consumption got into the food chain (in France) notwithstanding.


----------



## Verso

At least it wasn't genetically-modified horse meat. :troll:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I've just glanced at Wikipedia's articles (in English) on the "2013 meat adulteration scandal," which led to an article on food taboos, where there are actual entries on horsemeat (it's taboo in most of the Balkans but not Slovenia, it says) and "offal."

Truth be told, I've never (knowingly) eaten horsemeat, but never gave any thought to why until those headlines from Europe started last year. We just don't eat it.


----------



## g.spinoza

I guess the scandal was not regarding the horsemeat per se, but the fact it wasn't written in the ingredients.

EDIT: Is rabbit meat eaten in the USA?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^That's what seemed most serious to me. Forgetting about the cultural taboos - even if it's acceptable in a given country to eat X, the package should say it's X, not Y, and I'd think everyone could agree on that....

(BTW, Wiki tells me this started a year ago today, at least the public aspect of this....)

:cheers:


----------



## Verso

Horse meat _is_ taboo in Slovenia to some extent, but many people eat it. I don't eat it often.

Once I ordered something with goose meat in a restaurant here. After a while the waiter returned and said: we've run out of geese, so I brought you a bear.  It was delicious.


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> But there is an old-time Philadelphia delicacy called scrapple. Which I've eaten maybe once. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapple


That looks and sounds like run of the mill meatloaf. Which is tremendous if done right. Offal rules too!


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^I've just glanced at Wikipedia's articles (in English) on the "2013 meat adulteration scandal," which led to an article on food taboos, where there are actual entries on horsemeat (it's taboo in most of the Balkans but not Slovenia, it says) and "offal."
> 
> Truth be told, I've never (knowingly) eaten horsemeat, but never gave any thought to why until those headlines from Europe started last year. We just don't eat it.


It wasn't just that it was horsemeat (lovely btw) but also that it was unregulated horsemeat. The tabloids in Britatin were more worried about the state of the health of the horses and whether they'd been beefed _sic_ up with hormones or any other treatment.

Any way, it was the gyppos in Romania what did it mister, honest! :runaway:


----------



## piotr71

Horsemeat was blended and sold across Europe by large West European concerns, which was bought from Romania as a raw product. Moreover, there is nothing wrong with killing and eating horses anywhere else, except of the UK. It's just the same butcher's job as with cows or lambs.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I think the lying bothered people more than the actual fact of eating horse meat and also the fact that because it was well somewhat hidden, the horse meat wasn't going through proper procedure.


----------



## cinxxx

Meanwhile 





http://www.33mag.com/en/2014/01/15/worst-tow-lift-fail-ever


----------



## Verso

Funny, but stupid title.


----------



## cinxxx

I find this very inspirational. There are many interesting talks on Ted...


----------



## cinxxx

Google Translation is hilarious, so I leave it too...

Short story: Welcome to Romania again. Woman is stopped by police, is caught driving with suspended license (it got suspended because she drove an unregistered vehicle on public roads). She is very upset, curses and accuses the policeman of threatening her with his gun like a hot-shot. Then she decides she has to go, honks hard, then starts the car, hitting the officer while he was writing his report. After all o that, she says she will complain, because she is shocked about the way she was threatened.








> Nadina Simon, a former adviser on Neamt County, was caught driving with a suspended license. Upset that was stopped in the road, the lady decided to do the only right and tried to give the car 2 times over the police officer who had the "guts" to take to heart.
> 
> "Are you a gun, hotshot. Figure because we have not allowed your computers have not we extend that I have proof," she said.
> 
> While writing the police report, the woman tried to start the car and did not hang them sees the police and hit.


----------



## volodaaaa

Smart guy


----------



## italystf

:lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Fatfield said:


> That looks and sounds like run of the mill meatloaf. Which is tremendous if done right. Offal rules too!


I love my mother's meatloaf.

Scrapple is fried and eaten for breakfast. Whereas meatloaf (at least my mother's) is baked and eaten for dinner, or eaten cold as leftovers.


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> Smart guy


Well... in that case I need one of these


----------



## keokiracer

nbcee said:


> Well... in that case I need one of these


And then you woke up from your dream


----------



## volodaaaa

nbcee said:


> Well... in that case I need one of these


I thought both jokes were about car colour? were not? :lol:


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> I love my mother's meatloaf.
> 
> *Scrapple is fried and eaten for breakfast.* Whereas meatloaf (at least my mother's) is baked and eaten for dinner, or eaten cold as leftovers.


Ahh, I didn't pick that up from Wiki. I wouldn't mind trying it but it'll probably never beat a full English or Irish breakfast.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Well, you'd eat it with eggs or something.

The future Edward VII, as Prince of Wales, visited North America about 1860. Supposedly he wrote home that in Philadelphia he'd met a family called the Scrapples and eaten a food called biddle. It's the other way around.


----------



## Fatfield

^^^^

If its got tomato sauce on i'll eat anything. Actually there's not much I can think of that I wouldn't eat. I was brought up eating offal so there's not much would turn my stomach except cat.


----------



## cinxxx

A Dutch truckdriver is facing court after doing the thing u always wanted... he pushed a very anoying driver sideways. He has to see a judge on 25 or 27th of this month. Futher news not available; the trucker deleted the Facebooksection with this vid.


----------



## keokiracer

Ah, I was looking for the youtubeversion. I see that someone finally posted it from Dumpert 
Kinda weird to see 3 watermarks in the top left though...


----------



## Kanadzie

cinxxx said:


> A Dutch truckdriver is facing court after doing the thing u always wanted... he pushed a very anoying driver sideways. He has to see a judge on 25 or 27th of this month. Futher news not available; the trucker deleted the Facebooksection with this vid.


Hopefully is a jury trial. All will say not guilty :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

Kanadzie said:


> Hopefully is a jury trial. All will say not guilty :lol:


No such thing as "jury trials" in Netherlands AFAIK.


----------



## keokiracer

Suburbanist said:


> No such thing as "jury trials" in Netherlands AFAIK.


Dutch truck driver but it took place in Germany therefor German laws apply.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## volodaaaa

Porn plot


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> In Italy it's illegal to sell alchool on motorway rest areas.


Are you sure? I remember it's illegal to sell alcohol to drink immediately, and only after 10pm (or 11, or something like that), but bottles of wine and spirits are available 24/7...

EDIT: Here:
http://sicurezzapubblica.wikidot.com/alcoolici



> Divieto di vendita per asporto di bevande superalcoliche
> 
> Nelle aree di servizio situate lungo autostrade è vietata la vendita per asporto di bevande superalcoliche dalle ore 22 alle ore 6. La violazione è punita con la sanzione amministrativa pecuniaria da euro 2.500 a euro 7.000.
> Divieto di somministrazione di bevande alcoliche e superalcoliche
> 
> Quanto alla somministrazione nelle medesime aree, occorre distinguere.
> • la somministrazione di bevande superalcoliche è sempre vietata;
> • la somministrazione di bevande alcoliche è vietata dalle ore 2 alle ore 6.
> 
> La violazione è punita con la sanzione amministrativa pecuniaria da euro 3.500 a euro 10.500.
> Vendita per asporto di bevande alcoliche
> 
> Nei minimarket degli autogrill, che rientrano nella definizione di “esercizi di vicinato” il divieto di vendita opera dalle ore 24 alle ore 6.
> 
> Nei bar degli autogrill, come in tutti gli esercizi esterni all’autostrada, si dovrebbe applicare l’art. 6 del D.L. 3 agosto 2007, n. 117 che vieta la vendita per asporto dalle 3 alle 6. Tuttavia, poiché, come si è visto, la somministrazione deve essere interrotta alle ore 02, e la possibilità di vendita deriva dall’autorizzazione alla somministrazione, si ricava che anche la vendita per asporto deve cessare alle 02.
> 
> Peraltro, secondo parte della dottrina, in base ad una diversa interpretazione all’art. 5 della legge 287/91, solo la somministrazione potrebbe proseguire fino alle 02, mentre la vendita per asporto dovrebbe cessare alle 24, come nel minimarket.


Spirits to go are forbidden 10pm-6am. Spirits to drink on the spot are forbidden always; normal alcoholic beverages (wine-beer) are forbidden 2am-6am.


----------



## italystf

I though that drink-on-the spot alchool was always forbidden in Autogrills.
Of course, bottled alchool is allowed as Autogrills usually have a good sortiment of local wines (that are supposed to be purchased and brought home).

BTW in Italy, for a couple of years, the sale of every kind alchool is always forbidden everywhere between 2 and 6 a.m.
This law was meant to reduce DUI (if people have the last drink at 2 a.m., they are no longer drunk when they drive home at 7 a.m.) but I doubt it's effective since people can bring bottles of spirit from home and drink all night long. It was more a political move to say: "we're doing something to make people drinking less."


----------



## Penn's Woods

The sky is falling! 

http://www.weather.com/news/weather-winter/winter-storm-janus-forecast-20140120


----------



## keokiracer

Could you send some of that stuff over here Penn's Woods?
I want snow!


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^You're welcome to it, believe me!

My boss is going to Aruba next week. Don't want to hear too many complaints from her about the weather. (I mean the weather here, now.)


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Russian-style road rage in Estonia hno:


----------



## volodaaaa

Rebasepoiss said:


> Russian-style road rage in Estonia hno:


I will never understand those people. If they are in hurry, well okay, they might be aggressive, but I suppose they watch their time and don't have any to fight or do any offensive movements. But these morons.

I have one experience. The road I had turned on was narrow only for one car and I see a lady driving towards me. So before I enter the narrowed section I flash my brights to let her go. As she accelerated a stupid moron overtook me and blocked all of us. I did some gestures to show him how stupid he was. He drove backward to tell me I am piece of sh*t and went on with offensive words. A very ugly lady was sitting beside him, so I guess he wanted to show her how he can look down on other people. Then he force the lady in opposite car drive back. 

Okay, he might have been angry for slow drivers, he might have objective reason to be in hurry, but tell why the hell he had time wasting with other drivers.


----------



## keokiracer

Am I the only one that can't open the last page of the German Autobahn thread? Every time I click on it, it tries opening it and halfway into loading the tab just completely freezes. :dunno:


----------



## Verso

0% cheaper!


----------



## keokiracer

That's what you get for parking like a douche.


----------



## Kanadzie

italystf said:


> In Italy it's illegal to sell alchool on motorway rest areas.


I've seen drive-through liquor stores in the USA :cheers:

People say it is bad but can't explain why. Everybody drives their car to the liquor store anyway, nobody is going to be walking home with 5 bottles vodka and some boxes of wine :lol:


----------



## italystf

Kanadzie said:


> I've seen drive-through liquor stores in the USA :cheers:
> 
> People say it is bad but can't explain why. Everybody drives their car to the liquor store anyway, nobody is going to be walking home with 5 bottles vodka and some boxes of wine :lol:


On the other hand, in the States, police bother you if you drink a beer walking in the street cause you're supposed to do that at home or at the bar.
Drive-through things ain't that popular in Europe, except some new McDonald's restaurants.


----------



## Kanadzie

italystf said:


> On the other hand, in the States, police bother you if you drink a beer walking in the street cause you're supposed to do that at home or at the bar.
> Drive-through things ain't that popular in Europe, except some new McDonald's restaurants.


My favorite one in that you aren't allowed to be drunk in public. But also not allowed to drive drunk, and if you are drunk, bar owner can throw you outside. So - how are you supposed to go home? :lol:

Or even that it is illegal to have open container of alcoholic beverage inside the car while driving, so that passenger cannot drink and neither driver. Why not? In the limousines the back is always well stocked and we can party but it is always illegal:bash: Mind you I guess the cocaine back there illegal is also :nuts:

The drive-through liquor stores were really drive-through in that sense of the word. It had two large doors on each side of the building, and you drove inside it with your car, and could peruse the offers on display as you drove through, and the attendant would take your money and give your product on the spot.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> Or even that it is illegal to have open container of alcoholic beverage inside the car while driving, so that passenger cannot drink and neither driver.


Do you mean container as a part of car, or container as a pack of several bottles?


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> Do you mean container as a part of car, or container as a pack of several bottles?


No, just a single bottle in your hand or glass even!

I wonder what happens if you take empty beer bottles back to the store for recycling...


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> No, just a single bottle in your hand or glass even!
> 
> I wonder what happens if you take empty beer bottles back to the store for recycling...


Actually, I have not been thinking about that since it is not common to drink alcoholic beverages in car within my friend or family, but I can hardly imagine the law enforcement. According to what you say, if I bought something in wholesale and the passenger in my car wanted to taste it, we would be arrested by police?


----------



## Kanadzie

Indeed. I think in my area fine is about $150 or $300.

It makes no sense, since even driver can drink the bottle and still be less than limit for alcohol... I can't say I have ever done so or wanted to.

Mind you once, in my university days, I was driving to a party in the cottage country with a passenger, who bought can of beer at the gas station when I was filling up, and opened that can in my convertible while I was driving on the curvy road, I had beer all over my carpet and console, I was not happy... and did pass a police, but he didn't notice either the can or my speed, maybe sleeping, or in the middle of eating donut...

I did have a friend whose mother frequently filled vodka into bottled water bottle and sipped that while driving. I was young but remember thinking "wow you are crazy" 

On an unrelated note, here is a delightful map of Poland someone sent me, note that Zielona Gora (or is it Zgorzelec) is a very happy place indeed


----------



## ChrisZwolle

keokiracer said:


> That's what you get for parking like a douche.


Looks like Malaysia.


----------



## italystf

Kanadzie said:


> My favorite one in that you aren't allowed to be drunk in public. But also not allowed to drive drunk, and if you are drunk, bar owner can throw you outside. So - how are you supposed to go home? :lol:


In Italy drinking or being drunk in public is not illegal, unless you drive or annoy other people. Also here barmans are forbidden to sell alchoolic beverage to those who are visibly drunk and pubs and discos can even forbid them to entry (a friend of mine knew well this few saturdays ago :lol.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Canaries, Azores, Madeira, Ceuta, Melilla and Lampedusa are considered part of Africa, Greenland part of North America.


And there is even French Guyana in Southern America depicted on Euro banknotes :lol:









Btw. I have heard, that Europe map on Euro banknotes has one defect made purposely. As I have been looking for it, I have found only one, Thassos island in Greece is moved too southbound, but I am not sure about it.


----------



## Alex_ZR

^^ No Cyprus on the euro banknotes, even though euro is currency of Cyprus (since 2008).



bogdymol said:


> ^^ And Google Street View pics taken on the track: http://goo.gl/maps/JO1uV


Photos taken in October 2013. What about Google Street View images of Slovenia taken in July or August 2013? :gaah:


----------



## CNGL

^^ Bitch, please :troll:

Personally I put the Europe-Asia border in the Caucasus area on the Kura river, effectively dividing Tbilisi (Or was it Atlanta?) between two continents.

By the way, I'm going to do a lap around the Top Gear test track on Street View.


----------



## volodaaaa

CNGL said:


> ^^ Bitch, please :troll:
> 
> ...Or was it Atlanta?...


:lol: niiice


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> And there is even French Guyana in Southern America depicted on Euro banknotes :lol:
> 
> 
> Btw. I have heard, that Europe map on Euro banknotes has one defect made purposely. As I have been looking for it, I have found only one, Thassos island in Greece is moved too southbound, but I am not sure about it.


They drawed French oversea departments on euro notes because they use the euro, but it doesn't make them part of Europe. New 5€ notes do have Cyprus and Malta.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> :lol: niiice


Ah! Didn't get that....


----------



## italystf

Various definitions of the Europe - Asia border. The red one is presented as "the most commonly adopted", although I think that the Russian Caucasus is usually considered Europe.


----------



## italystf

Here the theory is much different: in red is presented the "modern border" and in yellow all the old ones.


----------



## Alex_ZR

^^ That's why Kazakhstan plays football in UEFA.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

volodaaaa said:


> ^^ What did it mean (Estonian road rage videos). Small ***** confessions or what?


Most likely, yes. :lol:


----------



## cinxxx

*Smoking in Serbia will be completely banned in restaurants, hotels, cafes and all the other restaurants by 2015*
http://trojka.rs/vesti/drustvo/totalna-zabrana-pusenja-2015


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> *Smoking in Serbia will be completely banned in restaurants, hotels, cafes and all the other restaurants by 2015*
> http://trojka.rs/vesti/drustvo/totalna-zabrana-pusenja-2015


No smoking-allowed rooms in restaurants (I am not a smoker though)? 

Btw. Chairman of Slovak parliament proposed a law restricting freedom of press. Every journalist who will record drunk MP will be sanctioned by losing his/her license. It seems Ukrainian flu is contagious and we are about to come down therewith. hno:


----------



## cinxxx

volodaaaa said:


> No smoking-allowed rooms in restaurants (I am not a smoker though)?


I saw the article on someones FB page, used Google Translate to figure out what's in it. But in Germany it's the same, it's really great, no-smoking anywhere, not even clubs, pubs, bars.
I think in Austria too, but I'm not sure if in all Länder.

Everytime I go to Romania, when I'm in a restaurant, pizzeria, bowling, playing pool, I end up smelling of smoke, even if there are separated rooms for smokers and non-smokers (in many places that's really a joke, sometimes to get to the non-smoker room you have to pass through the smoker room, or there is no real separation, like a door or something).


----------



## italystf

cinxxx said:


> Everytime I go to Romania, when I'm in a restaurant, pizzeria, bowling, playing pool, I end up smelling of smoke, even if there are separated rooms for smokers and non-smokers (in many places that's really a joke, sometimes to get to the non-smoker room you have to pass through the smoker room, or there is no real separation, like a door or something).


It was the same here until 10 years ago, thanks God now it's forbidden in every plublic indoor place, except in some designated closed areas within some restaurants and discos. It was a nightmare especially for families with little children.
It was shown that the smoking ban reduced the number of teens who started to smoke because they have less occasions to smoke during their social life with mates.


----------



## hofburg

cinxxx said:


> I saw the article on someones FB page, used Google Translate to figure out what's in it. But in Germany it's the same, it's really great, no-smoking anywhere, not even clubs, pubs, bars.
> I think in Austria too, but I'm not sure if in all Länder.
> 
> Everytime I go to Romania, when I'm in a restaurant, pizzeria, bowling, playing pool, I end up smelling of smoke, even if there are separated rooms for smokers and non-smokers (in many places that's really a joke, sometimes to get to the non-smoker room you have to pass through the smoker room, or there is no real separation, like a door or something).


Austria is a bit special, in smaller bars and restaurants smoking may be allowed. In bigger restaurants I saw separate smoking rooms. 

I must say as a non smoker I really enjoy smoking ban law (introduced in 2007 in Slovenia), quality of air improved drastically since then (when you go out).


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> It was the same here until 10 years ago, thanks God now it's forbidden in every plublic indoor place, except in some designated closed areas within some restaurants and discos. It was a nightmare especially for families with little children.
> It was shown that the smoking ban reduced the number of teens who started to smoke because they have less occasions to smoke during their social life with mates.


It is really annoying to come home after party in pub having all my clothes smoked. Apart from the necessary shower (my hair stinks like ashtray), I have to wash my clothes immediately. Because if I left the clothes in whatever room, the room stinks like the pub next morning.


----------



## Kanadzie

italystf said:


> It was the same here until 10 years ago, thanks God now it's forbidden in every plublic indoor place, except in some designated closed areas within some restaurants and discos. It was a nightmare especially for families with little children.
> It was shown that the smoking ban reduced the number of teens who started to smoke because they have less occasions to smoke during their social life with mates.


we have this here too, but it is crazy, there is for example a cigar lounge but smoking is illegal :nuts:

I dislike such laws, business owner should be able to choose if he wants smoking or not, and customer free to choose to go there or not...


----------



## italystf

Kanadzie said:


> we have this here too, but it is crazy, there is for example a cigar lounge but smoking is illegal :nuts:
> 
> I dislike such laws, business owner should be able to choose if he wants smoking or not, and customer free to choose to go there or not...


Yes, but before the law in 90% of places the owner allowed smoking. Families had a hard time to find a place to eat or drink with clean air.
Smokers claim the right to smoke, that is opposed to the right to breath clean air claimed by non-smokers. Since science has proven that smoking is harmful, including the passive one, I think it's more fair to protect the interest of non-smokers, and also of people who work there all day.


----------



## Kanadzie

italystf said:


> Yes, but before the law in 90% of places the owner allowed smoking. Families had a hard time to find a place to eat or drink with clean air.
> Smokers claim the right to smoke, that is opposed to the right to breath clean air claimed by non-smokers. Since science has proven that smoking is harmful, including the passive one, I think it's more fair to protect the interest of non-smokers, and also of people who work there all day.


But right of business owner should win  Only just need people wanting the "clean air" to refuse to go to smoky places, then quickly they will appear... or even have some kind of exemption, like "no not smoking" if the owner wishes to cater to smoker only... (and I say this as non smoker myself as I am too familiar with health risks of it unfortunately). It seems the law is a big, heavy hammer to smash a mosquito and it also destroyed the table 

Like I said, near me is a cigar lounge, and they are at risk of a large fine, so far police has not gone, but really, no reason to go there if not smoking...

Anyway, what was with the Chinese driving his car on the river and the article saying:


> Onlookers watched in horror as the unidentified man risked his life just to save pennies, gasping each time they heard the ice creak under the weight of the silver-coloured car.


But he made it to the other side without problems, so he is the WINNER, we should all be proud and happy for him. Thinking about it, I spend a lot of time to cross river to work and back, and, it is -23 *C this week. I think river should be hard enough, maybe I will try it


----------



## italystf

In some cold places in Russia, Canada, Scandinavia frozen rivers and lakes are regularily crossed by vehicles during winter. The ice surface is made smooth with buldozers and the ice road is closed when ice is too thin.
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1446857
There's even a TV series about the life of a group of truckers who cross the frozen and desolated Canadian Arctic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Road_Truckers


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> 70 is a fixed sign. 30 a temporary one. So you want to take down the fixed sign, spending money for no reason when it's perfectly clear what that means?


The "for no reason" is debatable. As is the "it's perfectly clear."

Other countries do; see Chris's answer.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> In the Netherlands they usually turn the sign 90 degrees so it isn't visible to traffic. Or put a temporary sign right in front of it, or cover the sign up with some canvas.


I think that depicted case was just a mistake. Signs that are not valid are often turned 90°, or covered up by canvas or crossed out by fluorescent contrast material (red tape put in X shape is used in Slovakia)


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^No, no, no! It's easier to just leave them standing there while you have an espresso. :jk:


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Broccolli




----------



## hofburg

g.spinoza said:


> That's a different thing, I never mentioned minimum speed. I don't know this rule.


I doublechecked, in Slovenia this is the rule: if you drive below half the speed limit, you must turn on all turn signals a.k.a. hazards.


----------



## keokiracer

hofburg said:


> you must turn on all turn signals.


I think you mean 'hazard lights' or 'hazards'


----------



## g.spinoza

Delete, That's better.


----------



## volodaaaa

I'm just curious: why did Serbia change its flag (or rather CoA) in 2010? The difference is very hard to notice, only if I zoom in I can see the different mimic of eagles and different structure of feather.


----------



## Alex_ZR

volodaaaa said:


> I'm just curious: why did Serbia change its flag (or rather CoA) in 2010? The difference is very hard to notice, only if I zoom in I can see the different mimic of eagles and different structure of feather.


I asked the same question to myself. hno:

CoA adopted in 2004 was revival of the old CoA of the Kingdom of Serbia from 1882. In 2010 they redesigned it, without any indication. Public opinion is divided, with majority in favour of 2004 CoA. Beaks of the doubled-headed eagle in 2010 looks like parrot's! :lol: However, new CoA is depicted on banknotes and coins since 2011, while 2004 version is still on personal documents and license plates. Both version flags can be seen.
Eagle in 2010 version looks like copy from the German CoA.
Obviously someone wanted to make money of this unnecessarily change... hno:

On the left 2010 version, on the right 2004 version of the great CoA of Serbia:


----------



## xrtn2

Meanwhile in Brazil










:hahano:


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Verso

Triple Slovenian victory in ski jumping in Sapporo. :troll: I'm expecting a wave of Japanese tourists here.


----------



## x-type

^^
nice reinforcing job done there :lol:

(btw is there more irritating music than this one?!)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Chris, you're one of the two moderators listed in the general developments forum; what do you know about this?



NumberPlates said:


> What happened to the strangest and most distant plates thread?





mkt said:


> Erased... don't know why. I've got a few pics to add to that thread.





Penn's Woods said:


> Erased? Really? Why?
> If there was trouble, they could have just locked it and erased the troublesome posts.


----------



## keokiracer

Ah, so that's the reason my postcount dropped. I was wondering how that had happened :lol:


----------



## Verso

I guess it's not a good idea to post other peoples' license plates.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^There are other license plate threads.


----------



## volodaaaa

What is the difference of seeing a licence plate in reality or on photo


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I have no idea what happened to that thread. I can't find it either, nor any explanation what caused its disappearance.


----------



## CNGL

keokiracer said:


> Ah, so that's the reason my postcount dropped. I was wondering how that had happened :lol:


Yup. I had over 4,000 posts and now I'm below that mark again.


----------



## keokiracer

I had the same with my 2500 mark


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I have no idea what happened to that thread. I can't find it either, nor any explanation what caused its disappearance.


Thanks for the response.


----------



## Verso

I've just noticed that the terrain map of Slovenia in GMaps is slightly better than of neighbouring countries (except eastern Austria).  But nothing compared to Switzerland.


----------



## cinxxx

Russians having some fun


----------



## volodaaaa

Pure GTA


----------



## Verso




----------



## Kanadzie

^^They are so fast, but they are so SLO? :cheers:^^



cinxxx said:


> Russians having some fun


The Americans have a saying, when two or more people are in conflict, "to bury the hatchet". In this case, perhaps these Russians have misinterpreted the saying, to bury the hatchet in the other person's head :lol:

Only problem, why damage the poor W210 Mercedes hno:


----------



## x-type

cinxxx said:


> Russians having some fun


what is that car just left of Touareg?


----------



## JackFrost

cinxxx said:


> Russians having some fun


people look so absurdly funny when fighting in real life...


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


>


The flying slovenes are there :lol:


----------



## cinxxx

A wild pig having fun on a national road in Romania 
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=686787774706066&set=vb.481660638552115&type=2&theater


----------



## italystf

A month ago 3 roe deers crossed the road in front of me. I risked to hit them (it was dark and it was an unlit country road with no other traffic).


----------



## Alex_ZR

x-type said:


> what is that car just left of Touareg?


Looks like Volga.


----------



## x-type

Alex_ZR said:


> Looks like Volga.


not Volga, Volga is in front of him. i ask for the car parked between Touareg and some small yellow-black car.


----------



## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> I asked the same question to myself. hno:
> 
> CoA adopted in 2004 was revival of the old CoA of the Kingdom of Serbia from 1882. In 2010 they redesigned it, without any indication. Public opinion is divided, with majority in favour of 2004 CoA. Beaks of the doubled-headed eagle in 2010 looks like parrot's! :lol: However, new CoA is depicted on banknotes and coins since 2011, while 2004 version is still on personal documents and license plates. Both version flags can be seen.
> Eagle in 2010 version looks like copy from the German CoA.
> Obviously someone wanted to make money of this unnecessarily change... hno:
> 
> On the left 2010 version, on the right 2004 version of the great CoA of Serbia:


Thank you for the explanation. I think the earlier one looked better.


----------



## Surel

Meanwhile in China.


----------



## keokiracer

Best ping pong game ever! 
http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/6582369/c2975ef6/leukste_pingpongwedstrijd.html


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Snow in Atlanta = chaos


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Is it snow or even nastier stuff like freezing rain and sleet? I haven't checked the weather since early this morning, but the Weather Channel at that point was predicting (or observing already) truly unsafe driving conditions across the Deep South (Baton Rouge, Jackson (Mississippi), Savannah, Charleston...) Houston had some of this a few days ago.


----------



## volodaaaa

Snow is more drivable to me than frozen wet carriageway


----------



## keokiracer

All I know is, that traffic isn't going anywhere. Seems to be a mix of snow and sleet/rain (something not white :lol

Traffic cameras:
http://www.11alive.com/news/travel/traffic/cams.aspx
http://www.511ga.org/


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Penn's Woods

Keoki, play with this: http://www.weather.com/news/weather-winter/winter-storm-leon-live-updates-snow-ice-storm-20140127


----------



## cinxxx

*Flatulent cows start fire at German dairy farm*



> Methane gas from 90 flatulent cows exploded in a German farm shed on Monday, damaging the roof and injuring one of the animals, police said.
> 
> High levels of the gas had built up in the structure in the central German town of Rasdorf, then "a static electric charge caused the gas to explode with flashes of flames," the force said in a statement.
> 
> One cow was treated for burns, a police spokesman added.


http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/27/us-germany-cows-idUSBREA0Q1HY20140127


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Words fail me....


----------



## keokiracer

cinxxx said:


> *Flatulent cows start fire at German dairy farm*


Oh shit


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I laughed out loud. Literally.


----------



## cinxxx

mg:


----------



## keokiracer

del


----------



## keokiracer

cinxxx said:


>


And not a single **** was given by the driver...


----------



## keokiracer

ChrisZwolle said:


> Snow in Atlanta = chaos


In the northern part of Atlanta State Route 400, I-75, I-85, I-285 and I-575 are parking lots. I-75, I-85 due to crashes, I-575 and I-285 due to crashes on earlier mentioned roads and SR-400 for no specific reasonother than the weather. The last one looks like this for well over 10 miles:









Multiple crashes on I-75 caused huge delays > 3 hours


















Which lead to illegal use of the hard shoulder. This is looking southbound on I-75 near the split with I-575 (the viaduct with cars ahead). This was 4,5 miles away from the crash. About 10 minutes after I took the PrintScreen from http://www.511ga.org/ the hard shoulder was also backed up with traffic. hno:









This is what the widest highway in the Atlanta metro area looks like. I-75 just north of I-285. _This is due to a crash near the exit with State Route 120. 4/6 northbound lanes are closed there._










The nothern part however, was the luckiest part of Atlanta weather-wise, since they had snow and less/no sleet. The southern part was basically screwed:








7 cars and 1 truck in the barrier on State Route 154 (eastbound)

Well this should've been a fun day for anyone commuting in Atlanta :|


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Oh my god it's 3:30 am and Atlanta is still gridlocked :nuts:


----------



## bogdymol

From those images I see that they had just a few cm (inches) of snow. Look what we had in southern part of Romania this days:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A few things to note about Atlanta though;

* metro area with over 5 million people
* area not used to significant snow / ice events
* area with an incredible amount of lane miles to plow
* area with extremely high traffic volumes
* area with few equipment to remove snow and treat roads


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^And, the Weather Channel (which is based there) keeps pointing out this morning, actually quite hilly. Which doesn't help. Apparently, businesses and schools and so on didn't close yesterday morning despite the weather warnings, but let everyone out at midday when it started to get bad. Which means what equipment there is in that area (not as much as you'd have in, say, Chicago; or Philadelphia) was trying to work in traffic. Not good.

The day of our 14-inch snowfall last week, we had the same timing. It was a nasty all-afternoon rush hour and they couldn't do much until it cleared.

Plenty of political finger-pointing going on in Georgia today, apparently.


----------



## keokiracer

About atlanta: seems like some people chose to abandon their car. On I-285 east of Cham-Dunwoody there's a van parked on the shoulder that has snow all over it. 

And then just a bit west of the exit at Cham-Dunwoody:








What the hell :nuts: :nuts:

Also, apparently, a woman actually gave birth in the traffic jam last afternoon/night


----------



## CNGL

Wow, Tbilisi Atlanta is still gridlocked as of now. But not as bad as yesterday was.

I also got a chaos in my brain, as I know both Tbilisi and Atlanta are the capitals of Georgia, but there are two Georgias out there...


----------



## bogdymol

Just a car in Bucharest...


----------



## SeanT

What is the highest sommer and lowest winter temperature in Bucharest ever?


----------



## bogdymol

^^ See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucharest#Climate

Record high: +40 °C
Record low: -23.9 °C

The problem this days isn't so much the low temperatures, but the massive snowfalls combined with heavy winds, so every time a snow plow passes, in a few minutes the snow is back on the road.


----------



## SeanT

...still, impressive jump from summer to winter temperatures.


----------



## g.spinoza

Snowing in Turin too...


----------



## italystf

SeanT said:


> ...still, impressive jump from summer to winter temperatures.


It isn't so extreme. In some parts of Russia the record jump is around 100°C (-60 +40).


----------



## SeanT

yes, and some other parts of the world even higher! Russia is big and I do not compare it to "european norms" if we talk about weather.


----------



## italystf

Verkhoyansk
record low: -67,8°C
record high: +37,3°C

Oymyakon
record low: -67,7°C
record high: +34,6°C


----------



## Verso

Google Street View finally available in Slovenia! :cheers:


----------



## bogdymol

:banana2:


----------



## bogdymol

There are images from inside the Karawanken tunnel, until the Austrian border.


----------



## CNGL

Nice! Now I can go all the way from home to the Bulgarian coast entirely on Street View.

River river, this one for the Strange Road Sign thread since it's redundant. This is the last bridge before the Reka disappears underground.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Verso said:


> Google Street View finally available in Slovenia! :cheers:


Now I can enjoy watching Slovenia in summer and autumn and plan my next trip there! :cheers:


----------



## CNGL

By the way, some days ago I said the Isonzo river used to flow further West than it does now until a landslide forced it to take its current path. This appears to be the old river bed, and the landslide apparently occurred to the back of that point.


----------



## bogdymol

I present you *Slovenia's longest tunnel (L = 15 m)* 









https://goo.gl/maps/OCfMr

(I know that _most = bridge_, but what's the tunnel sign doing there?)


----------



## Verso

It's a tunnel bridge.


----------



## keber

Defacto it is a tunnel - "bridge" was actually dug under railway.

@Street view - amazingly Google took also many dirt roads


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> I present you *Slovenia's longest tunnel (L = 15 m)*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://goo.gl/maps/OCfMr
> 
> (I know that _most = bridge_, but what's the tunnel sign doing there?)


It's the longest entirely within Slovenia, the longest is the Karavankentunnel. (I expected they had some tunnels on Slovenian mountain roads).


----------



## bogdymol

keber said:


> Defacto it is a tunnel - "bridge" was actually dug under railway.


So the railway was built first, and many years later they decided to build the motorway... so they had to dig out under the railway? That's cool 



italystf said:


> It's the longest entirely within Slovenia, the longest is the Karavankentunnel. (I expected they had some tunnels on Slovenian mountain roads).


There are many other (motorway) tunnels in Slovenia, besides Karawankentunnel and this 15-long one.


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> So the railway was built first, and many years later they decided to build the motorway... so they had to dig out under the railway? That's cool
> 
> 
> 
> There are many other (motorway) tunnels in Slovenia, besides Karawankentunnel and this 15-long one.


If I remember well (it was almost 4 years ago), there are only a couple of wildlife crossings all the way from Sezana to Bregana and no real tunnels. However there is this tunnel in Nova Gorica (non motorway, though).
https://maps.google.it/maps?q=slove...=MllHHssHSoQaY8b0fANCuA&cbp=12,105.4,,0,-7.87


----------



## bogdymol

italystf said:


> However there is this tunnel in Nova Gorica (non motorway, though).
> https://maps.google.it/maps?q=slove...=MllHHssHSoQaY8b0fANCuA&cbp=12,105.4,,0,-7.87


I drove through that tunnel 

And through this one also...


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> There are images from inside the Karawanken tunnel, until the Austrian border.


And it says photos taken in July 2009. :nuts:



italystf said:


> If I remember well (it was almost 4 years ago), there are only a couple of wildlife crossings all the way from Sezana to Bregana and no real tunnels.


There are two tunnels SE of Ljubljana and elsewhere on the motorway network.


----------



## Kanadzie

CNGL said:


> Wow, Tbilisi Atlanta is still gridlocked as of now. But not as bad as yesterday was.
> 
> I also got a chaos in my brain, as I know both Tbilisi and Atlanta are the capitals of Georgia, but there are two Georgias out there...


I never forget this one:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080824153903AAg7ojA

:lol::nuts:



bogdymol said:


> Just a car in Bucharest...


And the snow has shaped it like a Dacia 1310!


----------



## hofburg

:banana: :banana: :banana:

eh, I am late to the party


----------



## hofburg

CNGL said:


> By the way, some days ago I said the Isonzo river used to flow further West than it does now until a landslide forced it to take its current path. This appears to be the old river bed, and the landslide apparently occurred to the back of that point.


I don't know about that. It did change its path over years, but it is believed that the dry Čepovan valley could be a candidate for that.
http://goo.gl/maps/fNa9o


----------



## Kanadzie

hofburg said:


> :banana: :banana: :banana:
> 
> eh, I am late to the party


No no, where I sit you are late. Where you stay, you are early! :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

Meanwhile in Alto Adige/Suedtirol, a landslide happened near Termeno/Tramin. Some rocks fell from a mountain over a farm. Two big rocks destroyed part of the barn and garage:


















but another one, 400 cubic meters in volume, stopped literally inches from the main residence:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Holy cow they were lucky it missed the house!

edit: the boulder farthest downhill was pre-existing: http://goo.gl/maps/bVZb9


----------



## bogdymol

*Bucharest, today:*



























^^ Yes, there are cars parked there :nuts:

All pictures from cabral.ro.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Holy cow they were lucky it missed the house!
> 
> edit: the boulder farthest downhill was pre-existing: http://goo.gl/maps/bVZb9


I suspected as well, since there is no destruction path behind it. .


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> I suspected as well, since there is no destruction path behind it. .


That boulder obviously it's the remain of an old landslide. So they should have know that it wasn't the right place to build a house.


----------



## Fatfield

italystf said:


> That boulder obviously it's the remain of an old landslide. So they should have know that it wasn't the right place to build a house.


We know where flood plains are all over the world. We still build houses etc on them though.


----------



## cinxxx

I'm planning 2 trips in May:
1. 4 day trip 1-4 May - http://goo.gl/maps/CDPDG
2. Longer trip end of May - http://goo.gl/maps/rA8f0

Plans are still drafts, suggestions are welcome.
And at that time, if anyone wants too meet, gladly


----------



## italystf

If you like to explore mountain passes, have a lot of time, and the weather is good, you may try this trip:
https://maps.google.it/maps?saddr=B...A;FeBaxQIdZmnSAA&mra=mi&mrsp=8&sz=14&t=m&z=11


----------



## keber

Kranj is nothing to see, go instead to Škofja Loka. As a side trip also visit Vršič pass from Kranjska Gora, it should be already open by that time. Mangart road is usually opened end of May or even June, depends of snow conditions.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A huge amount of snow fell along the southern flanks of the Alps. 1.2 meters of fresh snow was reported in Carinthia.


----------



## g.spinoza

And this is Cortina d'Ampezzo (more than 1 m in the town, more than 3 m in the hamlets on the mountains):


















http://www.corriere.it/foto-gallery...-276fbc26-8a5d-11e3-aecc-b2fa07970b97.shtml#6


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^'Bout time Europe got some....


----------



## g.spinoza

5 cm we had yesterday in Turin are all gone...


----------



## cinxxx

keber said:


> Kranj is nothing to see, go instead to Škofja Loka. As a side trip also visit Vršič pass from Kranjska Gora, it should be already open by that time. Mangart road is usually opened end of May or even June, depends of snow conditions.


Thanks!
I will see, Škofja Loka is also in the area, I'm looking for a place to stay over night and also walk a little. Ljubljana I already visited.



italystf said:


> If you like to explore mountain passes, have a lot of time, and the weather is good, you may try this trip:
> https://maps.google.it/maps?saddr=B...A;FeBaxQIdZmnSAA&mra=mi&mrsp=8&sz=14&t=m&z=11


That's already in the bucketlist, I was thinking to go for that later in summer, I think a normal weekend should be enough for it. And I want to add the tripoint A/SLO/I to that trip, I saw there is a cable cart from Austria.


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> And I want to add the tripoint A/SLO/I to that trip, I saw there is a cable cart from Austria.


Sounds like a good inspiration for one-day-long trip :cheers:


----------



## Fane40

Because we are in some weather problems, if somebody needs some water we can send it for free 
Floods in my city.
Pics in the link:

http://www.sudouest.fr/2014/01/31/en-images-dax-a-les-pieds-dans-l-eau-1447444-3350.php

A big mess to cross the city and surroundings areas for a week in the region and it is not finished.




The only positive thing was this week the opening of a portion of the eastern ring road. 
But crossing over the river will not be finished for several months.


----------



## hofburg

some of them, mostly the ones who speak strong dialects near the border. I don't (curse).


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Is true that Slovenes *(especially near Italy, @hofburg )* do use Italian cursing words while speaking in Slovenian??


Who in Slovenia doesn't live near Italy? :lol:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> With "****" and "shit," I'm sure it's the law, or regulations for broadcasters. (For broadcasters. No rules for print.) And beyond that, societal taboo. (I'd never, ever say them in the presence of my mother, for example.)


I remember one episode of a British programme within which Zach Braff was a guest and another guest said something or another, and Braff was surprised that they could get away with saying that.


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> Do they use the English "****" while speaking in French?
> 
> Green Day concert in Italy. At the end Billie shouts a very obscene profanity in Italian. :lol: He does the same at every concert in Italy and every time it's a big scandal because those kind of cursing expressions are censored from Italian media.


The anagram of Codroipo!


----------



## italystf

Some years ago in the Hungarian version of the Big Brother there was an Italo-Hungarian partecipant that said a blasphemy in Italian. However it wasn't censored because the Hungarian staff didn't know what he said. :lol:
In a German episode of The Simpson, the Italian cook Luigi reply with a blasfemy in Italian after Homer complained because he didn't like the food. :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

Btw. the word "f*ck" is itself very unclear to me. Because there are many many possible translations of this word to my language. Depending on context, it might be translated as a funny innocent invective or as a very very offensive dirty word at the same time.

I really don't know how it is perceived by native speakers. Because we have vast field of invectives with different level of dirtiness and all are translated as "f**k" to english 

With the Slovenian language, they have words "jedi i piće" which means "food and drinks". In my language it literally sounds like "Poisons and c*nts"  Fairly opposite meaning according our common Slavic origin


----------



## italystf

Yes, sometimes Brits use **** as an exclamation: "****, I lost my keys!" or "Where the hell is that fucking book?"
In those cases the word isn't connected with its original sexual connotation and isn't even an insult (like "**** you"). It can be replaced with more polite expressions, like "gosh" or "oh, no".


----------



## x-type

Italians are often considered as nation who swears a lot (as all mediteranean nations). but i am extremely dissapointed that p... dio is the best they could invent. it is considered to be so rude probably because of its religious conotation, but I would expect something much more creative from Italians.
translated into Croatian for instance it would be very mild thing (except in front of religious people)


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> Italians are often considered as nation who swears a lot (as all mediteranean nations). but i am extremely dissapointed that p... dio is the best they could invent. it is considered to be so rude probably because of its religious conotation, but I would expect something much more creative from Italians.
> translated into Croatian for instance it would be very mild thing (except in front of religious people)


Also in Britain they use "oh, my fucking God" and this isn't nowhere as rude as Italian swearing expressions with God. It's probably because of the Catholic tradition that says "don't mention God's name without a reason", so if you aren't supposed to mention it with no reason, it's even worse to mention it next to an insult.
On the other hand, American and Brits find very rude the word "c*nt" (it's used not only for the female genitalia, but also as a strong insult), while the corrispondent Italian word (f1ga or f1ca) it's more mild and used also as synonimous of "hot girl" (only in very informal context, such with friends, however).


----------



## cinxxx

Romanian swearing is not bad either, pretty inventive


----------



## bogdymol

Romanian swearing explained in english: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_profanity


----------



## piotr71

volodaaaa said:


> (..)
> 
> With the Slovenian language, they have words "jedi i piće" which means "food and drinks". In my language it literally sounds like "Poisons and c*nts"  Fairly opposite meaning according our common Slavic origin


That's quite funny, however, with not even a shade of doubt, you probably know actual meaning of that Slovenian words without looking into dictionary, same as I do  In Polish it would be "*jed*zenie i picie" (food and drinks) or "*jad*ło i picie" and "jady i picze" (the other one) And word "picza" is rather softer version of "cipa", which would be proper "c" word.


----------



## cinxxx

Nice video
http://vk.com/video-65948761_167631672?hash=d5b4995bbbf7f427


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> Romanian swearing explained in english: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_profanity


Wow, I didn't expected en.wikipedia being so exhaustive in these topics (and in so much languages) 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Profanity_by_language


----------



## volodaaaa

piotr71 said:


> That's quite funny, however, with not even a shade of doubt, you probably know actual meaning of that Slovenian words without looking into dictionary, same as I do  In Polish it would be "*jed*zenie i picie" (food and drinks) or "*jad*ło i picie" and "jady i picze" (the other one) And word "picza" is rather softer version of "cipa", which would be proper "c" word.


Polish language has good word for "looking for" or "search" : szukać. Especially in Czech language it means modest synonym for copulating (šukat)  But it is not considered as rude.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> gen*italia*






volodaaaa said:


> With the Slovenian language, they have words "jedi i piće" which means "food and drinks". In my language it literally sounds like "Poisons and c*nts"  Fairly opposite meaning according our common Slavic origin


It's "jedi in pijače" in Slovenian. In Serbo-Croatian it's "jela i pića" ("piće" is singular (drink)).


----------



## Suburbanist

Oh, I hadn't been reading this thread much in months, but just realized swearing-and-languages still dominates it


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> It's "jedi in pijače" in Slovenian. In Serbo-Croatian it's "jela i pića" ("piće" is singular (drink)).


Well, I've accidentally mixed it up.  But cold drinks in Serbo-Croatian (hladna pića) sounds to me like "hungry c*nt"


----------



## Alex_ZR

volodaaaa said:


> Well, I've accidentally mixed it up.  But cold drinks *in Serbo-Croatian (hladna pića) sounds to me like "hungry c*nt" *


That's because in Serbian and Croatian where there is "g" Czech and Slovak languages has "h" (grad-hrad, gladan-hladný). 

False friends: "hladan" (cold in Serbian) - "zima" in Slovak, "zima" (winter in Serbian) - "zimné" in Slovak.


----------



## cinxxx

Big news everyone 

Engagement ring by cinxxx, on Flickr

... and she said yes


----------



## x-type

in czechoslovakian language there are also some funny words translated into croatian.


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> Big news everyone


Felicitări! La mulți ani!


----------



## cinxxx

^^Mulţumesc (or in Banatian: Mulţam)!


----------



## CNGL

cinxxx said:


> Big news everyone
> 
> ... and she said yes


Congratulations!

As for bad language, we like to exclaim "¡coño!" (literally c**t) when we see something socking. Anyway, bad words change from Spain to the Americas: for example, here "coger" means to pick, to catch, but there it means to f**k.


----------



## cinxxx

Shot today just outside Ingolstadt 


foto upload


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> in czechoslovakian language there are also some funny words translated into croatian.


Yeah... Chicken soup... Kuracia polievka  I know...


----------



## Peines

Meanwhile in rusia Madrid…



















Velvet car :dead:

Source


----------



## Penn's Woods

DanielFigFoz said:


> I remember one episode of a British programme within which Zach Braff was a guest and another guest said something or another, and Braff was surprised that they could get away with saying that.


Well, you can here on channels that are available only on cable and satellite, as opposed to by antenna. Regulations are less strict (if they exist at all) for the former. But there's also "the watershed" in Britain, isn't there?


----------



## volodaaaa

English + German = Genglish?

Moreover with great Czech accent


----------



## CNGL

volodaaaa said:


> English + German = Genglish?


Denglisch , though "Genglish" is not incorrect after all. Feel free to remove the c if you want.


----------



## Kanadzie

I guess, when I was in CZ, that must have been how I sounded except throwing some Czech and Polish in there too :lol:


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> Yeah... Chicken soup... Kuracia polievka  I know...


or napoj.


----------



## hofburg

volodaaaa said:


> It's been 3 hours since I installed *flappy bird* app, and almost destroyed my tablet 10 times


fortunately for your tablet, the game be pulled from app stores soon


----------



## piotr71

cinxxx said:


> Big news everyone
> 
> Engagement ring by cinxxx, on Flickr
> 
> ... and she said yes


_"So many good chaps have been wasted because of the women..."_

_Jan Himilsbach_


----------



## x-type

hofburg said:


> fortunately for your tablet, the game be pulled from app stores soon


because of plagiarism or?


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ No, author is supposedly brought down because of negative critics.


----------



## keokiracer

Is anyone else's user control panel bugged at the moment?


----------



## Alex_ZR

Over here everything is frozen at this morning's time: (un)read posts, time of lats post in a thread...


----------



## x-type

yes. you cannot mark threds as read, nor quote function works. probably there are some more things.


----------



## bogdymol

Same problem here. Forum admins were notified and will fix it ASAP.


----------



## cinxxx

g.spinoza said:


> Rifugio Albani, Orobie Alps (near Bergamo), only 2000m of altitude... 8 m of snow:
> http://www.meteoreport.net/images/Report/2014/febbraio/Orlandi/08_02/3.jpg


And here in Upper Bavaria we only had snow once, in January... and it lasted maye 1-2 days


Alex_ZR said:


> Yes, when nicer weather comes.  On the other hand, I was exploring these roads and places in Romanian Banat, because they are out of my way.


Well, I read that the weather will be very mild for the next 2 weeks, with temperatures topping 16C in the day...


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^6 to 12 inches - 15 to 30 cm - (depending who you listen to) forecast here Wednesday night/Thursday. It's "Winter Storm Pax," of all things.


----------



## keber

Kanadzie said:


> If the EU was able to make an official EU standard cell phone charger surely this simple thing can be done


Simple?
Eurocrats can't even decide how much curvature should a banana have.


----------



## volodaaaa

keber said:


> Simple?
> Eurocrats can't even decide how much curvature should a banana have.


I think it was about cucumbers :lol: Believe it or not, we have a politician who has tried to defend it.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^You have to give the EU (even if you're well outside of it) points for entertainment value....


----------



## italystf

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-and-curved-cucumber-rules-dropped-by-EU.html
:rofl:

However is still better having the EU making crazy regulations rather than 28 countries each with his own crazy ragulation. Imagine all the problems with some stuff legal in a country but not in another due to a tiny legal difference. 
Apart some ridiculous example, many times EU regulations are useful, for example those about food hygiene and labelling and banning the sale of antiquate and non eco friendly products like inefficient electric appliances, non-catalized cars, incandescent light bulbs, non-biodegradable plastic bags,...


----------



## volodaaaa

^^
You can reportedly fit more cucumbers to transport box when they have regular straight shape than bent one. Very weak justification though


----------



## italystf

This Italian farmer tried to grow watermelons inside boxes to occupy less space in transport.








No EU law about them, yet 



volodaaaa said:


> You can reportedly fit more cucumbers to transport box when they have regular straight shape than bent one. Very weak justification though


Also because you must consider that disposing all the curvy cucumbers and bananas is a waste and an insult to people starving in the world.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Also because you must consider that disposing all the curvy cucumbers and bananas is a waste and an insult to people starving in the world.


Very true.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> This Italian farmer tried to grow watermelons inside boxes to occupy less space in transport.


The Japanese are doing this for decades (BBC article from 2001, where they claim it was an idea from 20 years before):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1390088.stm


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> This Italian farmer tried to grow watermelons inside boxes to occupy less space in transport.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No EU law about them, yet
> 
> 
> Also because you must consider that disposing all the curvy cucumbers and bananas is a waste and an insult to people starving in the world.


I totally agree. The same went for horse meat scandal. It should have finally ended up in starving world.


----------



## x-type

watch out the chestnut :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> watch out the chestnut :lol:


Reminds me Alien movie :lol:


----------



## italystf

Street art


----------



## cinxxx

Quick question: 
Which route is faster/easier/nicer of these two?

1. I'm planning to do this on May 2, then stay over night in Zadar, then on May 3, in Zagreb. Return to Ingolstadt will be via Maribor and Graz
http://goo.gl/maps/D7vhP 
vs
http://goo.gl/maps/ZxHTq

2. What about this one? 
I'm planning this around 22-23 May towards Trogir/Split.

http://goo.gl/maps/Q8JfS
vs
http://goo.gl/maps/BQnh4

I was thinking to do both routes somehow...


----------



## italystf

I'd choose to go via Metlika, less fuel and toll.


----------



## cinxxx

I was thinking going on May 2 via Zagreb, to also clinch the Slovenian A2, and next time via Metlika. I don't really care about fuel and toll costs, only not to encounter big congestion and lose time stupidly


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> I was thinking to do both routes somehow...


Yes, you can drive on both routes.


----------



## x-type

cinxxx said:


> Quick question:
> Which route is faster/easier/nicer of these two?
> 
> 1. I'm planning to do this on May 2, then stay over night in Zadar, then on May 3, in Zagreb. Return to Ingolstadt will be via Maribor and Graz
> http://goo.gl/maps/D7vhP
> vs
> http://goo.gl/maps/ZxHTq
> 
> 2. What about this one?
> I'm planning this around 22-23 May towards Trogir/Split.
> 
> http://goo.gl/maps/Q8JfS
> vs
> http://goo.gl/maps/BQnh4
> 
> I was thinking to do both routes somehow...


Novo mesto - Karlovac will take you about 1h15. if you're not in fond of sparing the fuel and tolls, or driving at rural roads with lovely landscape, then chose the motorway route. 45 km more and 3€ tolls (so cca 8€ more per direction).
motorway route will take you not more than 1h.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

6 - 10 inches / 15 - 25 cm of snow is paralyzing North Carolina traffic, the worst is around Raleigh.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> Exactly. However, Austria was part of the German Empire (actually called as Holy Roman Empire) until the Napoleonic wars. So the current CZ-SK border, the former Austrian-Hungarian border was the historic border between Hungary and Germany (i.e. the Holy Roman Empire).
> See maps HERE and HERE.


Seemingly, it is paradox that Czecho-Slovak border was defined even before the creation of Czechoslovakia. The city Uhersky Brod (literally Hungarian "gateway" or "ford") on Czecho-Slovak border is the proof. In contrast, border between two Ukraines is currently not defined. It might be worse than in Bosnia.


----------



## cinxxx

The Czechoslovakia-Hungary border was not a great deal for many Hungarians living in after war Czechoslovakia. 

I saw an interesting documentary with families from once the same village being separated. Relations between the 2 countries were not great, so those people couldn't meet. I think they talked over the fence from time to time. After both Hungary and Slovakia joined the EU, situation relaxed, people could even meet or hug on the border line, guards permitting that. After that they built an official border crossing there, and some years later, both countries joined Schengen, so now families can visit every time they want without being asked anything.

A happy ending after may years of sorrow


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> The Czechoslovakia-Hungary border was not a great deal for many Hungarians living in after war Czechoslovakia.
> 
> I saw an interesting documentary with families from once the same village being separated. Relations between the 2 countries were not great, so those people couldn't meet. I think they talked over the fence from time to time. After both Hungary and Slovakia joined the EU, situation relaxed, people could even meet or hug on the border line, guards permitting that. After that they built an official border crossing there, and some years later, both countries joined Schengen, so now families can visit every time they want without being asked anything.
> 
> A happy ending after may years of sorrow


I am not sure about the socialist period, but after the fall of communism, it was not very hard to get to Hungary. I've got family there and it had never been problem to visit them. The Slovak-Hungarian border is anyway very young comparing with Czecho-Slovak one. But the ethnic line was nevertheless very clear (many ethnic maps from pre-WWI period proved that) unlike that between Ukrainians and Russians in Ukraine.


----------



## nbcee

cinxxx said:


> The Czechoslovakia-Hungary border was not a great deal for many Hungarians living in after war Czechoslovakia.
> 
> I saw an interesting documentary with families from once the same village being separated. Relations between the 2 countries were not great, so those people couldn't meet. I think they talked over the fence from time to time. After both Hungary and Slovakia joined the EU, situation relaxed, people could even meet or hug on the border line, guards permitting that. After that they built an official border crossing there, and some years later, both countries joined Schengen, so now families can visit every time they want without being asked anything.
> 
> A happy ending after may years of sorrow


...and one of the reasons why I would like Romania and in the long run all European countries to join Schengen.


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> I am not sure about the socialist period, but after the fall of communism, it was not very hard to get to Hungary. I've got family there and it had never been problem to visit them.


Around where if I'm not too indiscrete?


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> No. Lvov (Polish Lwów, German Lemberg, Ukrainian Lviv) was never a part of Czechoslovakia. The town, just like major parts of the current Ukraine, belonged to Poland between both world wars.
> See map HERE.


Sorry, I remembered that Czechoslovakia had to give some Eastern territories to the Soviet Union after WWII, but they were only the westernmost part of Ukraine, not Lvov.


----------



## volodaaaa

nbcee said:


> Around where if I'm not too indiscrete?


In the midnight hour, she cried *Mór, Mór, Mór*. :lol:


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> In the midnight hour, she cried *Mór, Mór, Mór*. :lol:


Nice town, I've been there at the wine festival. :cheers:


----------



## Suburbanist

The problem is that many areas on Russian (on its various iterations) domain didn't follow the more established patterns of fixed borders and/or client states that dominated Central Europe (France, UK, Spain etc. had been consolidated as nation states much earlier).

That yielded fluid mixed areas within what went to become Russia, in a way that you didn't have serious assimilation going on along defined and relatively stable borders.

To top that, Stalin really messed up with his mass relocation and deportation programs of the 1920s and 1930s.


----------



## CNGL

Today's banner is Teruel, a small city which is said not to exist, much like Bielefeld. It is rather obscure despite being the capital of a province due to its location in the middle of nowhere, and some years ago the inhabitants did a movement called "Teruel exists!". But this only served to make jokes that state "Teruel does not exist".


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Alex_ZR

cinxxx said:


> I saw an interesting documentary with families from once the same village being separated. Relations between the 2 countries were not great, so those people couldn't meet. I think they talked over the fence from time to time. After both *Hungary and Slovakia* joined the EU, situation relaxed, people could even meet or hug on the border line, guards permitting that. After that they built an official border crossing there, and some years later, both countries joined Schengen, so now families can visit every time they want without being asked anything.
> 
> A happy ending after may years of sorrow


Are you sure about this? I've heard for a divided villages between Slovakia and Ukraine (Velke Slemence-Mali Selmenci), not Slovakia and Hungary. Until few years ago there was barbed wire at the border and people had to go kilometres to visit their relatives on the other side (mostly Hungarians). Finally, border crossing was opened.


----------



## ufonut

Liquidation sale of assets of now bankrupt Hydrobudowa Polska S.A road builer.










Complete set of samurai swords


----------



## Kanadzie

Attus said:


> No. Lvov (Polish Lwów, German Lemberg, Ukrainian Lviv) was never a part of Czechoslovakia. The town, just like major parts of the current Ukraine, belonged to Poland between both world wars.
> See map HERE.


And thus, easy solution, give it back to PL and they can be in EU and the other side can stay in Putinstan :lol:


----------



## keokiracer

Dutch speedskating coach Jillert Anema powns American tv host  




(Dutch subs)


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> And thus, easy solution, give it back to PL and they can be in EU and the other side can stay in Putinstan :lol:


And Germany will start claiming Eastern Prussia. Then Czechoslovakia Ruthenia. Then Hungary pre-1918 Hungarian Kingdom and Austria Austria-Hungary. Indians in US will create United Reservations of Indigenous people and then, Rome will kick our asses and re-establish Romanian Empire.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Romanian Empire? :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> ^^Romanian Empire? :lol:


:lol: I meant Roman Empire :lol::lol: Nice mistake :lol:


----------



## nbcee

cinxxx said:


> ^^Romanian Empire? :lol:


It hit me like this: :lol:


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> Rome will kick our asses and re-establish Romanian Empire.


He would like to have a word with you:


----------



## bogdymol

*^^ volodaaaa is Brutus!*


----------



## italystf

I was thinking about the French oversea department of French Guyana, in South America. You almost never heard anything about its existence, its sights and how it's life there. You never heard of people going there. I only found it mentioned in SSC when talking about the new bridge to Brazil.
Not that the nearby Guyana and Suriname are more famous, but French Guyana it's part of an important EU country, so for Europeans it should be very easy to get there. Also, living conditions must be better than in the rest of South America and given its location it must have a warm weather year-round and beautiful tropical beaches.
But however, you never heard people who went there neither you see it on touristic brochures,...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

French Guyana consists nearly entirely of inaccessible jungle. It has almost no beaches so not a lot of tourists want to go there. 

Suriname is also not a major tourist attraction for Dutch of non-Surinamese background. Most Dutch tourists that are going in that direction go to Aruba or Curaçao.


----------



## CNGL

I used to think French Gu*i*ana was a country in its own until I saw it on an inset of a map of France


----------



## ChrisZwolle

"*Co-operative Republic* of Guyana". What is that supposed to mean


----------



## Verso

CNGL said:


> I used to think French Gu*i*ana was a country in its own until I saw it on an inset of a map of France


Why would *French* Guiana be independent? :lol:


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> "*Co-operative Republic* of Guyana". What is that supposed to mean


This should answer the question:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative
http://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2012/01/18/the-significance-of-co-operatives-in-guyana/


----------



## volodaaaa

CNGL said:


> I used to think French Gu*i*ana was a country in its own until I saw it on an inset of a map of France


Even on Euro banknotes


----------



## Penn's Woods

Okay, so, what was wrong with the old Google Maps? Who thought making it impossible to scroll was an improvement?

:bash:


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> Okay, so, what was wrong with the old Google Maps? Who thought making it impossible to scroll was an improvement?
> 
> :bash:


Mine is working well so far.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Google is switching everybody to the new maps in the next few days/weeks.


----------



## keokiracer

I still have the old version. Well... I'll enjoy it while it lasts :|


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^And then switch to Bing?


----------



## cinxxx

keokiracer said:


> I still have the old version. Well... I'll enjoy it while it lasts :|


me too...


----------



## volodaaaa

The very first thing I did after the new version emerged was switching it back to the old one. So I know that feeling bros.


----------



## keokiracer

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^And then switch to Bing?


No. Google recently updated imagery of the area where I live so they now have the newest footage :|
Otherwise I'd be 'Binging' already.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> The very first thing I did after the new version emerged was switching it back to the old one. So I know that feeling bros.


Well, at some point I seem to have cleared cookies or something. When I go into Google not signed in to my Google account, it tosses me the new version. The good news is, at some point I got a prompt permitting me to switch to the old, and when I did it asked me to take a survey to tell them why. I did. (Much good it will do....)


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> The very first thing I did after the new version emerged was switching it back to the old one. So I know that feeling bros.


me too. tried to use new maps for week or two, but i was suffering too much. it is simply pure crap.

at work i have new maps (i cannot switch it back to old :dunno: ) and i hate them.

bing maps also suck big time.


----------



## CNGL

I will be forced to switch to the new maps in order to continue my exploration of Chinese things. Google Maps have the best maps of China I know (apart from Chinese sites, which I have out of reach due to language issues).


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Why would *French* Guiana be independent? :lol:


Like *British *Columbia isn't part of the UK. :lol:



CNGL said:


> I will be forced to switch to the new maps in order to continue my exploration of Chinese things. Google Maps have the best maps of China I know (apart from Chinese sites, which I have out of reach due to language issues).


Doesn't Google Translate give an understandable English translation from Chinese? I sometimes look at the website www.wegenwiki.nl, written in Dutch. I translate it into English with Google, it's far from perfect but I can understand. If I translate from Dutch into Italian, it's a disaster.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Like *British *Columbia isn't part of the UK. :lol:


But it's not independent either.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Why would *French* Guiana be independent? :lol:


Current Belize was once known as British Honduras. Current Guyana was British Guiana. Suriname was Dutch Guiana. Why wouldn't French Guiana be independent?


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> Current Belize was once known as British Honduras. Current Guyana was British Guiana. Suriname was Dutch Guiana. Why wouldn't French Guiana be independent?


They want be the part of EU


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> They want be the part of EU


Like Puerto Rico, they prefer to renounce to their national identity for better living conditions.


----------



## g.spinoza

Of course. I was just pointing out to Verso that having a national adjective in a country's name is not necessarily an obstacle to independence.


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> Of course. I was just pointing out to Verso that having a national adjective in a country's name is not necessarily an obstacle to independence.


Of course. Name is just a name, can be whenever changed. And you can see the practise is like: the more is adjective "democratic" in a country name stressed the more authoritative regime it has :lol:


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> Of course. Name is just a name, can be whenever changed. And you can see the practise is like: the more is adjective "democratic" in a country name stressed the more authoritative regime it has :lol:


_ "Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors Than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters."_ Lord of War


----------



## bogdymol

*Democratic People's Republic of Korea*


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> *Democratic People's Republic of Korea*


Neither democratic or people's :lol:


----------



## cinxxx

Two new roadtrips in mind 

1. In Easter period: San Marino, Rimini, Urbino, Mantova, Bologna, Ferrara, Fano, Ravenna (not necessarily all of them), and the last day, Lake Garda, with Sirmione, the eastern shore road and Torbole.

2. In late June, another long weekend opportunity: Genova, Cinque Terre, Pisa, Florence


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ You can easily spare Rimini and Fano... not much to see there. I was also a little disappointed by Mantova.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ You can easily spare Rimini and Fano... not much to see there. I was also a little disappointed by Mantova.


In Rimini the "Italia in Miniatura" theme park worth an afternoon IMHO.


----------



## cinxxx

I will have to see where I will eventually go, I have some locations written, and will make a plan. Rimini could have been a place where to sleep.
Perugia and Cesena also seem nice.

The second trip won't go unfortunately, my gf doesn't seem to be able to take the Friday _Brückentag_ off


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> In Rimini the "Italia in Miniatura" theme park worth an afternoon IMHO.


Only if you are under 8.


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> I will have to see where I will eventually go, I have some locations written, and will make a plan. Rimini could have been a place where to sleep.
> Perugia and Cesena also seem nice.


Between them I would definitely choose Perugia.


----------



## keokiracer

bogdymol said:


> *Democratic People's Republic of Korea*


General rule: if the name of the country has 'democratic' or anything like that in the name, it's most of the time certainly not a democracy.


----------



## Surel

^^
There are actually almost none democracies in the world as mostly there are just republics.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Unless you count New England towns where decisions are still made at town meetings.


----------



## cinxxx

Ok, draft plan for the roadtrip:
Entire roadmap -> http://goo.gl/maps/LW5ts

*Day 1* - http://goo.gl/maps/zMBOJ
Ingolstadt (leave work early, at around 15) - stop somewhere on the way - Ferrara (accommodation)

*Day 2 *- http://goo.gl/maps/T0EHK
Ferrara - Ravenna - Cesena (accommodation) - San Marino - Cesena

*Day 3* - http://goo.gl/maps/aoRwU
Cesena - Rimini - Urbrino - Perugia - Cesena

*Day 4* - http://goo.gl/maps/MxrUu
Cesena - Bologna - Accommodation somewhere near Sirmione

*Day 5* - http://goo.gl/maps/JM3eH
Sirmione - East road of Lake Garda: Malcesine - Riva del Garda - Nago-Torbole ( - stop somewhere on the way) - Ingolstadt


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> Current Belize was once known as British Honduras. Current Guyana was British Guiana. Suriname was Dutch Guiana. Why wouldn't French Guiana be independent?


None of those was independent under those names.



g.spinoza said:


> Of course. I was just pointing out to Verso that having a national adjective in a country's name is not necessarily an obstacle to independence.


I'm not saying it's an obstacle to independence, but when I first heard of the name "French Guiana", I certainly didn't think "yeah, I'm sure it's independent". The only way I can think of considering it independent is if I saw it on a map and didn't actually know its name at first (like seeing a blank map of South America). Even if there was such an independent state, I'd first check out its status.


----------



## Attus

Western Germany (near to Bonn): in this winter there was not any snow (not even so that it melt just after falling onto the earth). In this winter there was not a single day when the temperature was under zero the whole day.


----------



## Kanadzie

Montreal Canada, has been very cold. This morning -17 *C and some -20's for next week (real temperature not "wind factor")

However the upside is not too much snow. Still quite a lot but less than last year. When it's -20, there is no humidity left for snow


----------



## ChrisZwolle

CNGL said:


> In most of Spain this winter was among the wettest we ever had. Ironically, the Valencian community just received only 1/4 of average precipitation, so that part is now in drought status.


A wet winter is good for the summer, to fill up those reservoirs.


----------



## keber

Mountains in south of Alps have such deep snow blanket that can surpass prevoius record values in some areas.
For example last weekend on Pokljuka, Slovenia, 1300 m altitude, about 2 meters:

Just 30 km more west (straight line) there is a 0,5-1,0 m extra snow to this picture for the same altitude


----------



## nbcee

bogdymol said:


> This winter was the hottest one I can remember in my region (western Romania). We had just a few snowflakes 2 times, and that's all. No problems with road traffic because even when it snowed, the snow melted quickly because of traffic (maybe they also sprayed some salt on the roads).
> 
> Anyway, very mild winter compared to last year for example.


Same here (Budapest and Kecskemét). This was the warmest winter of my life. I saw the most snow when I turned on the Olympic broadcast.

Of course this didn't stop me from getting a cold which lasted 10 days.


----------



## bogdymol

nbcee said:


> Same here (Budapest and Kecskemét).


Western Romania weather = Central-Eastern Hungary weather


----------



## cinxxx

Western Romania was part of Hungary :troll:


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> A wet winter is good for the summer, to fill up those reservoirs.


Yup. And due to that the reservoirs are in record high levels. We won't run short of water next summer.


----------



## nbcee

cinxxx said:


> Western Romania was part of Hungary :troll:












No one ever told me that before.


----------



## bogdymol

And Eastern Hungary was part of Romania at some time.










But I think it's better not to get into this things because we all know the story.


----------



## nbcee

Actually most Romanians here on SSC are quite decent guys compared to what I have seen on some other parts of the internet. Of course there are (and will be) some things that we see very differently but so far the conversations I've had here were in the spirit of mutual respect.


----------



## bogdymol

Everywhere on this planet you will find reasonable people to have a nice and decent discussion, even though your views are totally different. 

There are also trolls and idiots everywhere you will go, and arguing with those guys is not something you want. We have them, your country has them and unfortunately every country in the world has them.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Most of the ones posting in international section. In the local section there are some Great Romanian "patriots".

@bogdymod: we both know that was not Romania 
Romania as a real recognized state only exists from 1859.

Anyway, I'm not trying to start anything here, just stating some facts


----------



## x-type

KLM has invented a new country in Europe :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ You haven't heard yet about Balkan Republic? :bash:


----------



## riiga

Surely that's just another name for Yugoslavia... :lol:


----------



## CNGL

Guess which year I took this photo :


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^2014?

Well that's comforting, given that I just happened on yet another round of "Americans Are Stupid" in the "cultured" European press: http://www.lalibre.be/light/insolit...ne-chaine-americaine-5311dc9e35708d729d85c33b

I guess that's how one proves how cultured one is....


----------



## Alex_ZR

CNGL said:


> Guess which year I took this photo :


Last 29th February was in 2012.


----------



## Kanadzie

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^2014?
> 
> Well that's comforting, given that I just happened on yet another round of "Americans Are Stupid" in the "cultured" European press: http://www.lalibre.be/light/insolit...ne-chaine-americaine-5311dc9e35708d729d85c33b
> 
> I guess that's how one proves how cultured one is....


No is just MSNBC which is stupid :lol:


----------



## keokiracer

icard:









edit: I completely missed Penn's post


----------



## John Maynard

hno:


----------



## Kanadzie

John Maynard said:


> hno:


I know, where the hell is Transdniestria?


----------



## italystf

Kanadzie said:


> I know, where the hell is Transdniestria?


Obviously they didn't show it in Western maps. And the black area in the South East in that map is, _ de facto _ Abkhazia.


----------



## Surel

keokiracer said:


> icard:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> edit: I completely missed Penn's post


Still better than Iraq in place of Germany.










Or Switzerland in place of the Czech Republic.











Its true that Czechoslovakia is a stronger trademark in many parts of the world. There are two things that people often remember. Either it is Prague, or Czechoslovakia.


----------



## CNGL

It seems somebody didn't updated his maps since 1992.



Penn's Woods said:


> ^^2014?


Yes, exactly yesterday 



Alex_ZR said:


> Last 29th February was in 2012.


Yes, but that was a nice mistake I caught.


----------



## Kanadzie

Surel said:


> Still better than Iraq in place of Germany.


If I worked at the TV station I would do something like that ^^^ at least once (probably only would be able to once :lol


----------



## volodaaaa

keokiracer said:


> icard:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> edit: I completely missed Penn's post


Damn! Now it is obvious that whole Ukrainian theatre was driven by Czechs to confuse the entire world and quietly get Slovakia back. I should change the location information in my profile. :cheers: Time to merge Slovak and Czech motorways thread.


----------



## Alex_ZR

volodaaaa said:


> Damn! Now it is obvious that whole Ukrainian theatre was driven by Czechs to confuse the entire world and quietly get Slovakia back. I should change the location information in my profile. :cheers: Time to merge Slovak and Czech motorways thread.


Border between Slovakia and Czech Republic is still there on the map, so it means that Slovakia renamed itself!


----------



## Natomasken

Worse than these kind of embarrassing mistakes is that US news channels and programs usually carry very little news from outside the US (the Ukraine situation is an exception, it's getting a lot of coverage). My cable system recently started carrying BBC World News and I'm addicted to it. It's good to know there are actually important things happening in the world outside the US!


----------



## Verso

Surel said:


> Still better than Iraq in place of Germany.
> 
> Or Switzerland in place of the Czech Republic.


I think it's worse to show a country that hasn't existed since 1993.


----------



## Kanadzie

But they show the current country (as Alex notes), just wrong name :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

Russian Army is reportedly near Polish border. Well, maybe I am paranoid, but I already bought spare pack of flour, oil, pasta, some pates and cans and electric heater. Things are getting pretty serious...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

They have a huge amount of salt left over in the Netherlands after the very mild winter. Rijkswaterstaat district east reports they have used just 20% of their salt stock, and I've seen them spreading salt just to get rid of it (temperatures well above freezing). Actual usefulness of salting this year was close to zero. It hasn't snowed for a single day and night temperatures were only a few times below zero in dry conditions.


----------



## italystf

Putin isn't crazy enough to attack any EU member. But the war in Ukraine and the blockade of road and rail routes may have impact on the Europe - Asia trades and increase the price of some stuff that would need to be transported on longer routes.
Currently, going overland from Italy to southern Russia (like Sochi) means going as far north as Belarus (with one more visa) or even Latvia (without other visas).


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Putin isn't crazy enough to attack any EU member. But the war in Ukraine and the blockade of road and rail routes may have impact on the Europe - Asia trades and increase the price of some stuff that would need to be transported on longer routes.
> Currently, going overland from Italy to southern Russia (like Sochi) means going as far north as Belarus (with one more visa) or even Latvia (without other visas).


No doubt that EU is Russia-safe, but you know, we (especially east EU countries) are quite dependent on Russia regarding natural gas and oil and therefore, in the most disastrous scenario, power or energy blackouts are possible.


----------



## Alex_ZR

volodaaaa said:


> No doubt that EU is Russia-safe, but you know, we (especially east EU countries) are quite dependent on Russia regarding natural gas and oil and therefore, in the most disastrous scenario, power or energy blackouts are possible.


Remember the January 2009:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_gas_dispute


----------



## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> Remember the January 2009:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Russia–Ukraine_gas_dispute


That was exactly I thought of...


----------



## Surel

volodaaaa said:


> That was exactly I thought of...


You better get ready:

http://en.itar-tass.com/economy/721798


----------



## sponge_bob

Last nights Top Gear was one of the funniest ever, particularly the bits where they tried to educate cyclists. 

This one of the 'public service announcements'. Irish and British cyclists are, and always have been, _*Reeeealllllly*_ stupid when it comes to traffic lights!!!! 






2 More Videos Follow. There were a few more in the programme that have not appeared on youtube....yet 

1




2


----------



## keokiracer

ChrisZwolle said:


> The biggest Dutch news site is nu.nl which is notorious for its many errors in their news reports, not to mention their reader comments seem to have the IQ of a baseball. I don't get why that site is so popular.


Don't forget the ever-stupid comments on the Telegraaf news website icard:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

volodaaaa said:


> Well, so Slovak media published the faked one :lol:. Glad to know I am not the only that got fooled. Thanks :lol:


Estonian media also published the fake one hno:


----------



## Alex_ZR

Last week popular Serbian magazine "Politikin Zabavnik" published a photo of famous Eugène Delacroix painting "Liberty Leading the People" with Soviet flag in Liberty's hand instead of French tricolor! :lol: They probably just googled it and found version of some modern artist.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> You can say this part about almost any Romanian newspaper... hno:


Same here. We have newspaper called "Nový čas" (lit. New times). Article on Crimean crisis has as many views as article over some "celebrities and their celebrations" (read 45 years and older "recycled" "popular" "female" "singers" - thinking about it, I am not quite sure which word should be in quotes :lol. Or article about "Batman reported near Vienna" published year ago has fairly lot of views. :bash:


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> Same here. We have newspaper called "Nový čas" (lit. New times). Article on Crimean crisis has as many views as article over some "celebrities and their celebrations" (read 45 years and older "recycled" "popular" "female" "singers" - thinking about it, I am not quite sure which word should be in quotes :lol. Or article about "Batman reported near Vienna" published year ago has fairly lot of views. :bash:


We all know that Batman is in Turkey 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman,_Turkey


----------



## italystf

One of the worse habit of medias is the use of "stock pics" and "stock vids" from archives instead of real ones. In this way news are correlated with pictures or footages that have nothing to do with them and often were shot years before in the other side of the world.


----------



## hofburg

where did the likes go?


----------



## cinxxx

hofburg said:


> where did the likes go?


Likes turned off for now


----------



## crimio

hofburg said:


> where did the likes go?


That's right!


----------



## Rebasepoiss

The forum was indeed becoming a little bit slow lately.


----------



## cinxxx

Today is the 2nd day in a row we get hail here...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Hmm Flickr changed its photo page layout once again. As usual it's not much of an improvement (more clicks to post something), but at least the important functions are still there. They also have new URLs containing flic.kr. The text with the credits below the photo is also removed.


----------



## keokiracer

hofburg said:


> where did the likes go?





cinxxx said:


> Likes turned off for now


They're back


----------



## ChrisZwolle




----------



## bogdymol

Indian Ocean waves :runaway:


----------



## keber

^^ I was once in a catamaran during storm between Zanzibar and African continent. That was still on the edge of Indian Ocean but it was a hell of a ride. I would rather not imagine how big storms look in the middle of the ocean.


----------



## tom666

ChrisZwolle said:


>


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqhlQfXUk7w


----------



## da_scotty

ChrisZwolle said:


>


St.Andrews?


----------



## cinxxx

Time for some more European generalizations


----------



## hofburg

it's very loose


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I wonder if anyone actually does that.


----------



## g.spinoza

DanielFigFoz said:


> I wonder if anyone actually does that.


Reading comments on the youtube page there's some confusion as well. Some say you have to lower it every time you pass, even when the light is green, or you can get fined. This is absurd to me, it would imply that every car approaching the crossing has to stop, raise the gate, pass, stop, lower the gate, and then continue. 

Some others say that if your don't lower the gate, a train coming would automatically brake. That's even more absurd, because what if there's nobody at the crossing and the last one passing left it open? The train would not be able to resume its course. And more, if the installed an automatic brake for the train, why wouldn't they have installed an automatic gear to lower and raise the gate? Much cheaper, much safer.

Anyone who knows more?


----------



## Verso

DanielFigFoz said:


> Yes it is. I remember a while ago, someone saw it and had a massive go at us for being way off topic, not sure if he was joking or whether he misunderstood the title.


That was Radi. 

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=27946228#post27946228


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> Is this a topic where you can say what ever you want,or it is about something special ?


This is the miscellaneous / skybar topic of Highways & Autobahns. Everything that doesn't fit in one of the existing threads and is not important enough for a new thread can be posted here. Offtopic is not a problem, as long as it is reasonable.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radi6404 said:


> Guys, here´s my shiny balcony which some of you wanted see, by now the balcony is even shinier because I used a technology which makes the color painted smooth.


:cheers:


----------



## x-type

i remembered him few days ago when i saw Fiat Coupe with BG plates at A3 :lol:


----------



## riiga

How's the shiny Struma motorway doing these days? :lol:


----------



## keber

It's shinier than ever. It still blinds your eyes after years of awesomeness of this exquisite work of mankind. :master:


----------



## Broccolli

Invisible car technology :naughty:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Verso said:


> That was Radi.
> 
> http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=27946228#post27946228


:lol:


No, that's not the post I was thinking of, pretty sure it was at least four lines, and I don't think it was in 2008. But it might have been. Oh dear. W

Is the Struma Motorway still about six feet long? Hasn't been mentioned in a while.


----------



## italystf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struma_motorway
Currently 33km are open, 55 are U/C and 156 are in planning stage.

And the talk page :rofl:


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## volodaaaa

A small talk between two computer scientists:

a) Do you have a new notebook?

b) Yes, and totally for free.

a) Wow, how come?

b) It is simple. Tomorrow I was at my classmate and she asked me whether I could help to fix her notebook. It took me almost 4 hours, but finally, it worked out. As I finished, she took off her panties and offered me to take whatever I want. So I took the notebook.

a) Nice, good choice. You would have looked gay if you had taken the panties.


----------



## keokiracer

volodaaaa said:


> Tomorrow I was at my classmate


Tomorrow? :lol:
I think you mean 'This morning' 

Personally I didn't even notice it, someone on another forum where I posted the joke in the jokes-thread noticed it


----------



## volodaaaa

keokiracer said:


> Tomorrow? :lol:
> I think you mean 'This morning'
> 
> Personally I didn't even notice it, someone on another forum where I posted the joke in the jokes-thread noticed it


Damn, I thought "yesterday" :lol:


----------



## keokiracer

Yesterday is possible as well in that sentence


----------



## Surel

keokiracer said:


> Tomorrow? :lol:
> I think you mean 'This morning'
> 
> Personally* I didn't even notice it*, someone on another forum where I posted the joke in the jokes-thread noticed it


Perhaps because in Dutch _tomorrow_ and _this morning_ there is a same word _morgen_ used for both? I know there are other words that can be used as well, but sometimes it can be troublesome .


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## cinxxx




----------



## keokiracer

Or you could get a Westfield


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Broccolli

1st Istrian Marathon in progress 

http://www.rtvslo.si/radiokoper/stream

http://www.istrski-maraton.si/en/


----------



## Skyline_

Roadside Rest Area in Greece.


----------



## volodaaaa

Skyline_ said:


> Roadside Rest Area in Greece.


Just looking into accommodation offer at Sarti. Can't wait to use one of these Greek roadside rest areas  I love the atmosphere there. The sea air, high temperatures and the smell of hot asphalt. And the stray dogs everywhere I look :lol: Last year, my fiancée decided to feed one of them by remaining pieces of our frankfurters. The rest of the pack came very soon and it was almost unable to get rid of them :lol:


----------



## Skyline_

volodaaaa said:


> Just looking into accommodation offer at Sarti. Can't wait to use one of these Greek roadside rest areas  I love the atmosphere there. The sea air, high temperatures and the smell of hot asphalt. And the stray dogs everywhere I look :lol: Last year, my fiancée decided to feed one of them by remaining pieces of our frankfurters. The rest of the pack came very soon and it was almost unable to get rid of them :lol:


Sarti? That's in Chalkidiki. Been there, done that. When are you planning to go there?


----------



## volodaaaa

Skyline_ said:


> Sarti? That's in Chalkidiki. Been there, done that. When are you planning to go there?


Sometime in the second half of July.  Been there once too. Nice place to me.


----------



## Skyline_

volodaaaa said:


> Sometime in the second half of July.  Been there once too. Nice place to me.


Indeed. The beach is long and wide and the sea is shallow...:cheers:
Enjoy yourself, again!


----------



## Penn's Woods

Oh, will someone just overthrow Putin already? I'm sick of having to worry about places like Donetsk.

[Sorry. Had to get that off my chest.]


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> Oh, will someone just overthrow Putin already? I'm sick of having to worry about places like Donetsk.
> 
> [Sorry. Had to get that off my chest.]


yeah, maybe you could engage some of those GWB guys


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Nah, they need to handle it internally and WE need to stay out of it.


----------



## volodaaaa

It is indeed very nice theatre for common people. Putin makes "troubles" and the West makes "sanctions". And of course, Ukraine is like a nice prostitute, waiting for the one who can offer her more. 

I still don't understand, why is European Union so against Scottish independence referendum, and menace by possible re-joint complications, whereas Ukrainian attempts to be part of the EU appreciates infinitely. Why EU did not support Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia etc. that way in pre-2004 period?


----------



## Iluminat

^^Maybe because Russia didn't try to destroy our economies :dunno: But actually it's pretty obvious that Ukraine is not going to join any time soon.


----------



## volodaaaa

Today I started to learn to speak in Hungarian. It is not that difficult as it looked at first glance. But the word order is totally upside down


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> Today I started to learn to speak in Hungarian. It is not that difficult as it looked at first glance. But the word order is totally upside down


Great! :cheers: If you need any help just ask us.


----------



## cinxxx

volodaaaa said:


> Today I started to learn to speak in Hungarian. It is not that difficult as it looked at first glance. But the word order is totally upside down


Interesting. What motivated you? 
I only know few words, most of them I heard from Hungarian friends or at church, since the mass was in German and Hungarian.


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> Interesting. What motivated you?
> I only know few words, most of them I heard from Hungarian friends or at church, since the mass was in German and Hungarian.


Don't know. My dad is Hungarian and he never taught me speaking Hungarian. So I've decided to do it on my own. My goal is to improve my German and learn to speak Hungarian by the end of this year. I am just curious and a think it is necessary to know languages today.


----------



## cinxxx

^^To bad he didn't speak with you when you were still a child. Children learn very fast, and every language brings only benefits.
But it's still not to late, you should ask him to 

I had a school colleague, he spoke all 4 major languages of Banat:
- with his mother and her mother, German, 
- with his father and his father's parents, Serbian, 
- with the father of his mother's father, Hungarian,
- and with the other ones, Romanian or any of the above


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> Today I started to learn to speak in Hungarian. It is not that difficult as it looked at first glance. But the word order is totally upside down


Welcome to the world of the Finno-Ugrian family of languages. You will have an interesting journey ahead.

Even if the Hungarian and Finnish languages were separated perhaps 5000 years ago, they still have much common in terms of grammar. The vocabularies are totally different, with a few coincidental exceptions.


----------



## Attus

A vast majority of European languages (and lots of non-European languages, too) belong to Indo-European group. They have not only a common basic vocabulary, but all have the same basic grammar structures (with lots of variations, though). 
Finno-Ugric languages have a very different grammar structure and therefore are very difficult to learn for native Indo-European speakers (notice however that we had the same difficulties by learning the first Indo-European language!). 
This differences make difficulties e.g. by film dubbing. In Hungarian there are no grammatic genders, i.e. we have the same word for "he" and "she" => "ő". In our language "ő" can be either a man or a woman and it is not possible to make a difference. You may know the scene of stoning in Monthy Python's Life of Brian. The Jewish official asks: "Who threw that stone?". There are many women there, although it is forbidden. And many of them answer: "She!", and a second later: "Oh, no, he, he!" because they realize a woman couldn't be there at all. It is fully impossible to translate it to Hungarian, because we have no different words for "she" and "he". In Hungarian dubbing it's at first "Az a nő" and then "Az a férfi" which literally means "that woman" and "that man". It is absolutely unnatural to speak so but it's the only way to translate the scene so that the translation has the same sense as the original.


----------



## Skyline_

Attus said:


> This differences make difficulties e.g. by film dubbing. In Hungarian there are no grammatic genders, i.e. we have the same word for "he" and "she" => "ő". In our language "ő" can be either a man or a woman and it is not possible to make a difference.



Does that apply to Finnish as well? What about IT? He-she-it? Are they all one grammatical gender?


What about verbs? Do they have many different forms or are they like in English (very few basic forms like do, does, did, doing).


----------



## g.spinoza

There are similar problems even within the indo-european language group. Latin languages can have masculine and feminine of "this" and "that" (eg. Italian "questo/questo" and "quello/quella") and of "a" and "the" ("uno/una", "il/la") that can enter same kind of untranslatable jokes.


----------



## Skyline_

g.spinoza said:


> There are similar problems even within the indo-european language group. Latin languages can have masculine and feminine of "this" and "that" (eg. Italian "questo/questo" and "quello/quella") and of "a" and "the" ("uno/una", "il/la") that can enter same kind of untranslatable jokes.


Indeed. That doesn't happen in Greek though. It remains complicated enough.


----------



## MattiG

Skyline_ said:


> Does that apply to Finnish as well? What about IT? He-she-it? Are they all one grammatical gender?


No genders. Both 'she' and 'he' translates to 'hän'. 'It' translates to 'se'.



> What about verbs? Do they have many different forms or are they like in English (very few basic forms like do, does, did, doing).


Like Hungarian, Finnish is based on conjugation of both nouns and verbs. Each verb has thousands of conjugated forms. Conjugated verbs have noun-like forms and they can be used to form nouns. The distinction between a conjucated verb and a noun is not crystal clear.

Because of the conjugation, one single word can express many things. Like the verb 'juoksentelisin' translates about to 'I would run a little here and there without any specific reason'.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> A vast majority of European languages (and lots of non-European languages, too) belong to Indo-European group. They have not only a common basic vocabulary, but all have the same basic grammar structures (with lots of variations, though).
> Finno-Ugric languages have a very different grammar structure and therefore are very difficult to learn for native Indo-European speakers (notice however that we had the same difficulties by learning the first Indo-European language!).
> This differences make difficulties e.g. by film dubbing. In Hungarian there are no grammatic genders, i.e. we have the same word for "he" and "she" => "ő". In our language "ő" can be either a man or a woman and it is not possible to make a difference. You may know the scene of stoning in Monthy Python's Life of Brian. The Jewish official asks: "Who threw that stone?". There are many women there, although it is forbidden. And many of them answer: "She!", and a second later: "Oh, no, he, he!" because they realize a woman couldn't be there at all. It is fully impossible to translate it to Hungarian, because we have no different words for "she" and "he". In Hungarian dubbing it's at first "Az a nő" and then "Az a férfi" which literally means "that woman" and "that man". It is absolutely unnatural to speak so but it's the only way to translate the scene so that the translation has the same sense as the original.



Unlike German, I indeed welcome the lack of gender in Hungarian language. It makes the grammar much easier. Hungarian grammar does not seem difficult to me, the only problem is (as I've already mentioned) the word order and the lack (or rather intended omission) of the verb "to be".

"Pozsony a város Szlovákiaban"
-
Literal translation
"Bratislava (is) the city Slovakia-in"

Why couldn't I use
"Pozsony a váaros Szlovákiaban van"?


----------



## Skyline_

MattiG said:


> Like Hungarian, Finnish is based on conjugation of both nouns and verbs. Each verb has thousands of conjugated forms. Conjugated verbs have noun-like forms and they can be used to form nouns. The distinction between a conjucated verb and a noun is not crystal clear.



Thousands? How is that possible? :nuts: How can anyone remember all forms of each verb?

Are you saying that a noun and a verb could be identical?


----------



## Attus

Skyline_ said:


> What about IT? He-she-it? Are they all one grammatical gender?


In Hungarian:
All human beings, animals, and human-like fictional characters => ő
Vegetables, objects, ideas (e.g. "love") => az


----------



## Attus

Skyline_ said:


> Thousands? How is that possible? :nuts: How can anyone remember all forms of each verb?


The basic idea is for verbs: no (or very few) auxiliary verbs, but everything in conjugation. 
Example:
do = csinál 
we do = csinálunk
I do = csinálok
we may do = csinálhatunk
I may do = csinálhatok
etc. 

The similar for nouns:
house = ház
our house = házunk
in our house = házunkban
our houses = házaink
in our houses = házainkban


----------



## g.spinoza

What's the longest word you can write in Hungarian?


----------



## nbcee

And I just love it how sometimes phrasal verbs can change the whole meaning of the verbs theys are conjugated with.


----------



## cinxxx

Leaving languages aside, today at my workplace you get your browsing statistic. According to the declarations of consent you have to agree to, you are only allowed to use the Internet connection for private stuff, 5 hours in a month and starting now, only 500 MB.

Looking at my stats, except one month, in the last year, I exceeded this 500 MB limit by far...


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> The basic idea is for verbs: no (or very few) auxiliary verbs, but everything in conjugation.
> Example:
> do = csinál
> we do = csinálunk
> I do = csinálok
> we may do = csinálhatunk
> I may do = csinálhatok
> etc.
> 
> The similar for nouns:
> house = ház
> our house = házunk
> in our house = házunkban
> our houses = házaink
> in our houses = házainkban


So that you don't have to use pronouns.


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> Leaving languages aside, today at my workplace you get your browsing statistic. According to the declarations of consent you have to agree to, you are only allowed to use the Internet connection for private stuff, 5 hours in a month and starting now, only 500 MB.
> 
> Looking at my stats, except one month, in the last year, I exceeded this 500 MB limit by far...


Those pictures of motorways :lol:


----------



## nbcee

g.spinoza said:


> What's the longest word you can write in Hungarian?


I have found this:

_eltöredezettségmentesítőtleníttethetetlenségtelenítőtlenkedhetnétek_ 
(~_you could get rid of your ability of getting rid of __your lack of unfragmentationability _- or something like that. I got lost in the middle :nuts

But don't worry our words are usually not this long.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> What's the longest word you can write in Hungarian?


It's "megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért". However I don't think anyone has used this word any time in a normal speech  It's translation could be something like "for your behaviors as being not able to be profanized", where "you" is plural form ("voi" in Italian, not "tu").


----------



## volodaaaa

nbcee said:


> I have found this:
> 
> _eltöredezettségmentesítőtleníttethetetlenségtelenítőtlenkedhetnétek_
> (~_you could get rid of your ability of getting rid of __your lack of unfragmentationability _- or something like that. I got lost in the middle :nuts
> 
> But don't worry our words are usually not this long.






 :lol:

I also like the name of the city Mosonmagyaróvár. Especially the German translation which is two rows long :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

I like Hungarian girls better than their language


----------



## Skyline_

Body language is more important anyway!!!


----------



## volodaaaa

We should not paste any more youtube videos with girls, because cinxxx will be fired


----------



## cinxxx

^^That's the thing. Youtube, Picasa, Flickr, Facebook, Imgur, a lot of stuff is blocked here... there still seem to be enough pictures, or maybe Google Maps uses much bandwith, dunno


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> There are similar problems even within the indo-european language group. Latin languages can have masculine and feminine of "this" and "that" (eg. Italian "questo/questo" and "quello/quella") and of "a" and "the" ("uno/una", "il/la") that can enter same kind of untranslatable jokes.


To make it more complicate, also some verbs are declinated according to the gender:
He's gone. = Lui è andat*o*.
She's gone. = Lei è andat*a*.
They (men) are gone. = Loro sono andat*i*.
They (women) are gone. = Loro sono andat*e*.
Where have you (man) been? = Dove sei stat*o*?
Where have you (woman) been? = Dove sei stat*a*?
Where have you (men) been? = Dove siete stat*i*?
Where have you (women) been? = Dove siete stat*e*?
No wonder that many foreigners make mistakes while speaking our language.
Even better is explaning them that the masculine singular article is "il" but is "lo" for words starting in s* (with * being a consonant), z or ps and l' for words starting with a wovel.


----------



## MattiG

Skyline_ said:


> Thousands? How is that possible? :nuts: How can anyone remember all forms of each verb?


With all syntactically valid combinations, the number of valid conjugated forms may approach about infinity. The idea is not to remember all the forms but take the stem of the verb and begin conjugating.

Of course, only a fraction of the theoretical number of combinations are in active use.



> Are you saying that a noun and a verb could be identical?


Not exactly. The verbs have participle conjugations producing adjective-like words, and infinity conjugations producing noun-like ones. These can be further conjugated exactly like 'real' adjectives and nouns.

To add some complexity, a verb can be derived from a noun, and further conjugated back to a noun-like word. For example 'auto' ('a car') > 'autoilla' ('to drive a car') > 'autoileva' ('a person driving a car') > 'autoilevaton' ('a person not driving a car') > 'autoilevattomatta' ('without a person not driving a car'), etc.

There are internet sites to conjugate Finnish verbs, giving a very rough overview about the conjugation. For example, the URL http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/Finnish/juoda.html shows the basic conjugation of the verb 'juoda', 'to drink'. It makes no attempt to conjugate the infinitive ja participle forms.


----------



## italystf

MattiG said:


> To add some complexity, a verb can be derived from a noun, and further conjugated back to a noun-like word. For example 'auto' ('a car') > 'autoilla' ('to drive a car') > 'autoileva' ('a person driving a car') > 'autoilevaton' ('a person not driving a car') > 'autoilevattomatta' ('without a person not driving a car'), etc.


So, it's a bit like German, where long composed words are created to express complex phrases (that would require 3-4 words in English, Italian, French,...).


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> So, it's a bit like German, where long composed words are created to express complex phrases (that would require 3-4 words in English, Italian, French,...).


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> So, it's a bit like German, where long composed words are created to express complex phrases (that would require 3-4 words in English, Italian, French,...).


Something like that but perhaps even more rich. What is different, Finnish does not have many prepositions and postpositions (and no articles and genders), but builds on conjugation.

The words and expressions are longer than in English: A Harry Potter novel having 500 pages in English may be 700 pages translated in Finnish using an equivalent font and page size.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

MattiG said:


> To add some complexity, a verb can be derived from a noun, and further conjugated back to a noun-like word. For example 'auto' ('a car') > 'autoilla' ('to drive a car') > 'autoileva' ('a person driving a car') > 'autoilevaton' ('a person not driving a car') > 'autoilevattomatta' ('without a person not driving a car'), etc.


I never knew that Finnish grammar is so complicated :crazy:


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> To make it more complicate, also some verbs are declinated according to the gender:
> He's gone. = Lui è andat*o*.
> She's gone. = Lei è andat*a*.
> They (men) are gone. = Loro sono andat*i*.
> They (women) are gone. = Loro sono andat*e*.
> Where have you (man) been? = Dove sei stat*o*?
> Where have you (woman) been? = Dove sei stat*a*?
> Where have you (men) been? = Dove siete stat*i*?
> Where have you (women) been? = Dove siete stat*e*?
> No wonder that many foreigners make mistakes while speaking our language.
> Even better is explaning them that the masculine singular article is "il" but is "lo" for words starting in s* (with * being a consonant), z or ps and l' for words starting with a wovel.


 essere -> adjust gender. avere -> don't adjust gender.
of course, with some exeptions (l'ho vista)


----------



## italystf

Rebasepoiss said:


> I never knew that Finnish grammar is so complicated :crazy:


Aren't Finnish and Estonian quite close each other?


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> To make it more complicate, also some verbs are declinated according to the gender:
> He's gone. = Lui è andat*o*.
> She's gone. = Lei è andat*a*.
> They (men) are gone. = Loro sono andat*i*.
> They (women) are gone. = Loro sono andat*e*.
> Where have you (man) been? = Dove sei stat*o*?
> Where have you (woman) been? = Dove sei stat*a*?
> Where have you (men) been? = Dove siete stat*i*?
> Where have you (women) been? = Dove siete stat*e*?
> No wonder that many foreigners make mistakes while speaking our language.
> Even better is explaning them that the masculine singular article is "il" but is "lo" for words starting in s* (with * being a consonant), z or ps and l' for words starting with a wovel.


In Spanish it only happens with some participles. It's worse the many, many verb tenses we have.



cinxxx said:


> ^^To bad he didn't speak with you when you were still a child. Children learn very fast, and every language brings only benefits.
> But it's still not to late, you should ask him to


I think all my knowledge of Catalan is thanks to the exposure I had as a kid even if I had no relatives in Catalonia, since we used to get the Catalan TV as far as where I live, and the trips to the beach. I haven't practiced for a while now due to those independentists suckers.


----------



## Peines

CNGL said:


> I think all my knowledge of Catalan is thanks to the exposure I had as a kid even if I had no relatives in Catalonia, since we used to get the Catalan TV as far as where I live, and the trips to the beach. I haven't practiced for a while now due to those independentists suckers.


I never speak Valencian/Catalan or go to Narnia Catalunya for the same reason

They are only spanish when they receive money, when not there are independentists. _Peseteros_. Suckers.


----------



## Skyline_

CNGL said:


> In Spanish it only happens with some participles. It's worse the many, many verb tenses we have.


How many tenses have you got?


----------



## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> I never knew that Finnish grammar is so complicated :crazy:


Quite many people learning Finnish say that the grammar is nearly impossible, but some of those say it is complicated but logical. 

For native speakers of Indo-European languages, it is hard to parse the conjugated words. For example, the indicator whether the word is singular or plural is often hidden in the middle of the word, and the indicator varies by the case.

'Mittari näyttää punaista' (singular), 'Mittari*t* näyttävät punaista' (plural) ('The meter(s) show red')

'Autossa on yksi mittari', 'Autossa on kaksi mittari*a*' ('There is one meter/are two meters in the car')

'Mittarissa on vikaa', 'Mittar*e*issa on vikaa' ('The meter(s) fail')

'Mittariin ei voi luottaa', 'Mittar*eih*in ei voi luottaa' ('The meter(s) cannot be trusted')


----------



## CNGL

Skyline_ said:


> How many tenses have you got?


Nine of them, all except imperative with six declinations each (I, singular you, it, we, plural you, they). And without counting compound tenses, which practically doubles the number. Luckily we merged a couple tenses onto a single one in the past, but Portuguese still has that difference!


----------



## volodaaaa

CNGL said:


> Nine of them, all except imperative with six declinations each (I, singular you, it, we, plural you, they). And without counting compound tenses, which practically doubles the number. Luckily we merged a couple tenses onto a single one in the past, but Portuguese still has that difference!


omg. My language has only three: past, present and future :lol:


----------



## Skyline_

3 tenses are not enough...

Modern Greek has 8 tenses. Ancient Greek had more (I think...).


----------



## x-type

we have 7 tenses (conditionals and imperative excluded), of which we use only 3 regularly (present, perfect, first future), we use 1 in 80% wrong occasions (second future), 2 are considered archaic and are used only in books (or if you use it in your speech, people look at you weirdly :lol: - aorist and imperfect ), and 1 is used only in very formal, usually written forms (pluperfect).
actually, i think that all Slavic languages consider that 3 tenses are enough. (but we cannot imagine having less than 3 genders :lol: )


----------



## SeanT

nbcee said:


> I have found this:
> 
> _eltöredezettségmentesítőtleníttethetetlenségtelenítőtlenkedhetnétek_
> (~_you could get rid of your ability of getting rid of __your lack of unfragmentationability _- or something like that. I got lost in the middle :nuts
> 
> But don't worry our words are usually not this long.


 I do not understand this, it would never be used in written/spoken language. It just shows the grammar (what the language can do)of the hungarian language, but WAAAY out of common conversation:lol:


----------



## keber

We have dual form, which is used in everyday life except in SW Slovenia. And plural has two forms when counting things.
1 vozilo (vehicle)
2 vozili
3 (or 4) vozila
5 (or more) vozil


----------



## g.spinoza

SeanT said:


> I do not understand this, it would never be used in written/spoken language. It just shows the grammar (what the language can do)of the hungarian language, but WAAAY out of common conversation:lol:


Why do you say so? My lack of unfragmentability, or getting rid of the ability of getting rid of it, is all I talk about all day.


----------



## Fane40

For people who want to learn french, I've found this:

French tenses:

Indication present, imperfect, simple past, simple future, more-than-perfect, previousperfect, previousfuture; 8 
Subjunctive: present, past, imperfect, more-than-perfect; 4 
Conditional: present, past the first form, past the second form; 3 
Imperative: present, past, 2 
That makes 17 times for personal modes. Among them, three are hardly ever used and 2 are used only in the written rather literary language. That leaves 12 commonly used. 

You can add impersonal modes 
Infinitive: present, past (eg have done) 
Participle: present, past 
For the gerund, there is a form (in + present participle).

Don't forget 6 declinations more "on (fr)", a sort of "we".
More illogical manners to write some of them.
Foreigners tell here that they need to see the written word to learn to write it.
Many words have the same pronunciation but have a completely different way to write.

We think in france that nordic languages are harder to learn with the hungarian. I add the welsh.


----------



## cinxxx

I have a question regarding taking pictures from the car while driving.
Are there recommended settings, for example minimum shutter speed, so that objects from outside don't appear moving?
I guess in perfect light conditions you get a quick enough shutter speed with automatic settings, but what about low light, for example tunnels?


----------



## Road_UK

We got those temperatures at the beginning of March...


----------



## Road_UK

Kanadzie said:


> can't you just... drive back to UK every few months then be okay?


Nobody is ever going to check it. I mean... who would you report to when you get to the UK?


----------



## Kanadzie

The country with a Ministry of Silly Walks surely has such a department!


----------



## Road_UK

John Cleese lives in America.


----------



## Kanadzie

He defected!


----------



## Road_UK

So did I...


----------



## Alex_ZR

Few days ago most of the Hungary (Budapest for example) was updated on Google Street View with fresh images from summer 2013. I find this strange since previous images were from late 2011 or early 2012. On the other hand, Paris or London images are from 2008 or 2009. Google loves Hungary! :lol:


----------



## hofburg

would you live _in _ the viaduct? 

http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/26/5...-reconceived-as-vertical-cities-of-the-future


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ It's oh so easy to draw some lines...


----------



## Verso

Where have you been, hofburg? There was an SSC meeting in Nova Gorica and Gorizia on Tuesday.


----------



## hofburg

I had no idea


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> would you live _in _ the viaduct?
> 
> http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/26/5...-reconceived-as-vertical-cities-of-the-future


They said that the highway was never completed in 50 years. Wrong, it opened in the early 1970s after few years of works but it was a narrow substandard motorway. The viaduct was recently abandoned, when a modern motorway was built next to the old stretch.


----------



## keokiracer

New Belgium numberplates:








:lol:

Source: http://vanityplates.be/


----------



## volodaaaa

keokiracer said:


> New Belgium numberplates:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> :lol:
> 
> Source: http://vanityplates.be/


Nice :lol:

Just today, I have parked my car behind the car that had the opposite plate as me. Mine is BA-abcXX, and his was XX-abcBA  Nice coincidence.


Btw. Sorry to bother you with my english-grammar-related questions, but I have noticed strange kind of sentences with common word order, but question mark at the end. What does it mean?

I've observed, that these questions almost always occur in case, the person who ask is sure about the answer.

Like my grandma is handing me a plate full of chocolate pancakes and I ask her: *I can have chocolate pancakes?* (it is obvious that the answer is *yes*).

Am I right? Or is that strange kind of slang?


----------



## Road_UK

I can have chocolate pancakes? is broken English. 

Can I have some chocolate pancakes? is proper English.

In your context: are they mine? Thank you very much indeed!


----------



## Jasper90

volodaaaa said:


> Btw. Sorry to bother you with my english-grammar-related questions, but I have noticed strange kind of sentences with common word order, but question mark at the end. What does it mean?
> 
> I've observed, that these questions almost always occur in case, the person who ask is sure about the answer.
> 
> Like my grandma is handing me a plate full of chocolate pancakes and I ask her: *I can have chocolate pancakes?* (it is obvious that the answer is *yes*).
> 
> Am I right? Or is that strange kind of slang?





Road_UK said:


> I can have chocolate pancakes? is broken English.
> 
> Can I have some chocolate pancakes? is proper English.
> 
> In your context: are they mine? Thank you very much indeed!


Yeah, it's probably a grammar structure coming from the first language of the speaker. For example, Italian language has no verb-subject inversion in questions.
So Italians like me tend to do that kind of mistake, when speaking English


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> I can have chocolate pancakes? is broken English.
> 
> Can I have some chocolate pancakes? is proper English.
> 
> In your context: are they mine? Thank you very much indeed!


I'm trying to avoid such word order, which is quite easy in questions and sometimes confusing in subordinate clauses, but I've seen such word order many times. So perhaps it is a kind of slang or what (established on sites like 9gag.com, reddit.com etc. sites)


----------



## Natomasken

volodaaaa said:


> Like my grandma is handing me a plate full of chocolate pancakes and I ask her: *I can have chocolate pancakes?* (it is obvious that the answer is *yes*).
> 
> Am I right? Or is that strange kind of slang?


Yes, it is a bit odd. It usually would occur when someone didn't think something was true, but just realized maybe it was. So it's used to express surprise, and maybe just to confirm his new understanding of the situation. In this case, the person didn't think he could have chocolate pancakes, but since he was just handed some, realized that maybe he could.  Another way to say it would be: Is it true that I can have chocolate pancakes?


----------



## volodaaaa

Natomasken said:


> Yes, it is a bit odd. It usually would occur when someone didn't think something was true, but just realized maybe it was. So it's used to express surprise, and maybe just to confirm his new understanding of the situation. In this case, the person didn't think he could have chocolate pancakes, but since he was just handed some, realized that maybe he could.  Another way to say it would be: Is it true that I can have chocolate pancakes?


Well, it happens to me in my language too. Sometimes I state a common notification sentence, when the doubts cuts in during the last word and it sound like a clumsy question with wrong word order eventually. But I was speaking about written text, not about speech.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> I can have chocolate pancakes? is broken English.
> 
> Can I have some chocolate pancakes? is proper English.
> 
> In your context: are they mine? Thank you very much indeed!





Jasper90 said:


> Yeah, it's probably a grammar structure coming from the first language of the speaker. For example, Italian language has no verb-subject inversion in questions.
> So Italians like me tend to do that kind of mistake, when speaking English


It's not a mistake or even "bad," necessarily, depending on what you're trying to say: with the right intonation, a native speaker can say "I can have chocolate pancakes?"...it implies that he's surprised, that he thought he couldn't. (But yes, if you're just asking for some pancakes, say "can I...?" or, better, "may I...?" I was taught as a child that "may I" is more polite. If I said "can I," I was corrected.)

EDIT: What Natomasken said (I hadn't read that post yet.)


----------



## volodaaaa

Finns "successfully" changing lines in ice hockey play.  Czech commentary is not necessary.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Jasper90 said:


> I made an extreme example, but my point is that the least number of countries have nuclear bombs, the better


Of course, a world without nuclear bombs would be perfect but that is never going to happen. The difference between my logic and your logic is that I think it's the total number of nuclear warheads that matters, not the number of countries that have them. I think it's hypocritical to think that it's OK for Israel to have nuclear weapons but not for the Baltic States, for example.


----------



## NordikNerd

Welcome to Sweden Gypsy-beggars !!

I wonder how they can afford to drive this VW Van all the way from Bulgaria. Must be very profitable to come here and beg. 
Pretty much like digging for gold in Alaska.


----------



## JackFrost

^^C'mon, there were at least 15 more adults, and at least 10 children in that van. Cost-sharing.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Maybe they stop and beg in Romania, Hungary, Austria, Germany on their way to Sweden?


----------



## NordikNerd

Alex_ZR said:


> Maybe they stop and beg in Romania, Hungary, Austria, Germany on their way to Sweden?


This a quite a new phenomenon in Sweden. The first balkan beggars arrived here about 1 year ago or so. I remember that I saw them already in 2009 in Paris and thought about if they were french locals or not. So they have probably been touring for a while in continental europe before the people there ran out of patience and got tired of them, so they decided to go further north to explore new claims.

Begging is not illegal yet here in Sweden. But now there is a discussion about if it will be an offense. Some politics also want to introduce visa requirements for tourists from Romania & Bulgaria.


----------



## cinxxx

NordikNerd said:


> Some politics also want to introduce visa requirements for tourists from Romania & Bulgaria.


Well, that can never happen as long as we are all EU members. It's just stupid propaganda.


----------



## volodaaaa

NordikNerd said:


> Some politics also want to introduce visa requirements for tourists from Romania & Bulgaria.


That is indeed a populist solution.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

I never give beggars money. It's mostly just organised business nowadays, not a last resort to survive. We don't have that many gypsies here because more profitable places are quite close i.e. Helsinki and Stockholm  but there are many local beggars as well. 

I have nothing against good buskers, though. London Underground has an excellent system for that, IMO.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## NordikNerd

Rebasepoiss said:


> I never give beggars money. It's mostly just organised business nowadays, not a last resort to survive. We don't have that many gypsies here because more profitable places are quite close i.e. Helsinki and Stockholm  but there are many local beggars as well.


Of course it's a scam. Look at the photo of the gypsies standing at the VW van. They are well dressed and wear clean clothes. Before they sit down outside the stores they change their looks, put on dirty clothes and a face of despair.

When I saw these gypsies at Ica Maxi, Tornby Linköping they were standing outside McDonalds, they looked happy and were smiling. It was a group of at least 15 people of men and women. No children were present of course, they know that children who are caught begging will be handed over to the authorities. 

I'm not totally against them unless they comitt crimes here, but it doesnt feel very pleasant to see them almost at every store, even in small villages. They could at least play the harmonica for some entertainment instead of just sitting there. 

The EU means possibilities, it makes it easier for those who want to study or work abroad, but it also means disadvantages and I have to say that the beggars are one of those negative things. Exporting poverty to Sweden so we have to pay for their bustickets back to Romania :bash:

Also I think that it was to early for Romania and Bulgaria to join the EU. They should have had a higher GDP and gotten rid of the corruption and poverty before they became members.



volodaaaa said:


> That is indeed a populist solution.


Yes, it's a suggestion by the swedish nationalist party.


----------



## Alex_ZR

cinxxx said:


>


Excellent colour recording quality! Interesting view of pre-Ceausescu Romania.


----------



## nbcee

That's globalization for ya. You see the same fast food restaurants, the same banks, the same clothing stores all over the continent - and the same beggars too. I mean literally some beggars I've seen in e.g. Varna and Dublin looked like if they were from the same family. :nuts:


----------



## Adde

NordikNerd said:


> This a quite a new phenomenon in Sweden. The first balkan beggars arrived here about 1 year ago or so.


No, they turned up much earlier than that in the bigger cities. I first saw them in Uppsala maybe 4 years ago. Around 2010, I'd say. Their numbers have increased significantly in the last 2 years though.


----------



## Quilavoce

NordikNerd said:


> Also I think that it was to early for Romania and Bulgaria to join the EU. They should have had a higher GDP and gotten rid of the corruption and poverty before they became members.


The begging business has nothing to do with GDP, corruption and poverty. This is their job and fits nicely with the nomadic culture they still keep.


----------



## volodaaaa

ufonut said:


> Poland - S8 expressway
> 
> 11 car pileup and 3 dead.
> 
> Involved: 2 Russian TIRs and 3 dead Czechs (out of family of 4). Polish family survived only because they exited their car seconds before a speeding Russian TIR slammed into them. It was too late for the Czechs. Out of family of 4 only one baby survived, mother and father and another baby died instantly.
> 
> Cause: Fog
> 
> RIP


Today, my colleague told me, there are rumours, that two well-known people in our business died in car accident in Poland recently. Two children were on board as well.

I don't know them personally (only by name), but still hoping rumours remain rumours.


----------



## Attus

Rebasepoiss said:


> I never give beggars money. It's mostly just organised business nowadays, not a last resort to survive.


Exactly. In Budapest, Hamburg, and, I don't now but probably in Stockholm and Tallin as well. 
Begging in city centers is organized crime, nothing else.


----------



## Road_UK

Snobs.


----------



## Pansori

Attus said:


> Exactly. In Budapest, Hamburg, and, I don't now but probably in Stockholm and Tallin as well.
> Begging in city centers is organized crime, nothing else.


This is one principal I go by. Never EVER give money to beggars. 

Only time I gave one euro to some old dude (didn't look like a beggar though) in Munich who was playing accordion in a very skilful manner and actually made the place more cheerful.


----------



## Preibiton

Not all beggars are like that.










"Meet 98 year old Dobri Dobrev,
a man who lost his hearing in the
second world war. Every day he walks
10 kilometers from his village in his homemade
clothes and leather shoes to the city of Sofia,
where he spends the day begging for money.
Though a well known fixture around several
of the city’s churches, known for his prostrations
of thanks to all donors, it was only recently
discovered that he has donated every penny
he has collected — over 40,000 euros —
towards the restoration of decaying Bulgarian
monasteries and the utility bills of orphanages,
living instead off his monthly state pension of 80 euros."
http://alfwebdesigns.com/blog/have-you-ever-heard-of-dobri-dobrev/


----------



## volodaaaa

Car selfies? Okay then  My old car


----------



## Verso

Bled should seriously reform itself. The nature is nice, but the town is stuck in the '80s.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My car selfie. I bought it today


----------



## DanielFigFoz

What happened to the van?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I forgot where I parked it so I bought a new one


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> I forgot where I parked it so I bought a new one


My mother-in-law worked in insurance company and one of her clients was a popular Slovak rich businessman. He used to vaunt that if his jeans got dirty, he did not even bother to wash it, just threw it away and bought a new one  In the end, he always stressed how much water he saved by washing :lol:


----------



## x-type

wow ix20! that's really rare car here  (i remember you were thinking of i30)


----------



## bogdymol

volodaaaa said:


> Car selfies? Okay then  My old car
> http://oi59.tinypic.com/18gmmc.jpg[/ IMG][/QUOTE]
> 
> [QUOTE="ChrisZwolle, post: 113831813, member: 56665"]My car selfie. I bought it today :)
> [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/meOuWcO.jpg[/ IMG][/QUOTE]
> 
> Car selfies day? Here's a picture of my car, shot today. Mine is the gray one:
> 
> [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/UpgPC9P.jpg


----------



## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> wow ix20! that's really rare car here  (i remember you were thinking of i30)


It's actually a 2011 Hyundai i10. The facelift version looks much better than the original i10. I got the most powerful engine available for this car, a 1.2 L with 86 HP. 

I traded the Kangoo in, got a pretty good deal actually. The Kangoo had driven 226,000 km and is nearly 10 years old, so it was time for a new one. I contemplated buying another van, but they are heavier and I didn't feel like paying € 90 - 100 per month in road taxes. The Hyundai i10 gets approximately the same gas mileage, and costs only € 25 per month in road tax.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Kanadzie said:


> In Quebec, Canada we have the deposit (on plastic bottles, aluminium cans and glass bottles). In Ontario, Canada, no deposit. Both places have recycling programme.
> 
> The effect of litter is not apparent, nor on rate of recycling. However, since the aluminium cans have value, it means Quebec people spend much more money, to pay all the deposits, the deposit bureaucracy, and also have to pay more for the recycling pickup, since the recycled material does not have the valuable aluminium waste.
> 
> It really seems a terrible system this deposit... (it makes sense maybe for re-usable bottles like for beer, but not 1 time use containers...)
> 
> another silly one is we have to pay 10 cents deposit on beer bottles. Most (Canadian-bottled) beer uses same bottle and the bottle is washed and used again. But imported beer (e.g. Heineken) comes from Europe or elsewhere in a special bottle. These bottles are also subject to deposit, but they are not re-used, just thrown away once they are returned. We could just throw it in the recycling bin for free, but instead, we need to pay, and carry them back to the store, who throws them in the garbage


The deposit system in Estonia works very well. Even if you consider that the amount of re-usable bottles is quite small, the rest gets recycled as well, nothing is taken to the dump. 

If people are reluctant to take containers back to the store it means the deposit is too small. In Estonia it's € 0.08 or $ 0.11 for most containers.

In 2013 the number of bottles or cans returned was 240 million or 185 per person.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's actually a 2011 Hyundai i10. The facelift version looks much better than the original i10. I got the most powerful engine available for this car, a 1.2 L with 86 HP.
> 
> I traded the Kangoo in, got a pretty good deal actually. The Kangoo had driven 226,000 km and is nearly 10 years old, so it was time for a new one. I contemplated buying another van, but they are heavier and I didn't feel like paying € 90 - 100 per month in road taxes. The Hyundai i10 gets approximately the same gas mileage, and costs only € 25 per month in road tax.


oh, so i10. couldn't get the feeling of size on that photo 

btw you think very rational when buying a car  i don't that much, so here is what has substituted Punto few months ago


----------



## Penn's Woods

Quiz of the day:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/marietelling/how-french-are-you


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ If being French means "86. You shower every day", then I'm French and proud to be.

EDIT: Car selfie in your average dirty Turin roads:


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> Car selfies day? Here's a picture of my car, shot today. Mine is the gray one:


How did you manage to put an Austrian plates on? :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Wait, you have Chevrolets over there?


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> Wait, you have Chevrolets over there?


Yes. AFAIK they replaced Daewoo.


----------



## Alex_ZR

^^ Not for long:



> *General Motors to withdraw Chevrolet brand from Europe*
> 
> General Motors, the US car giant, has said it plans to withdraw its Chevrolet brand from Europe and concentrate more on its Opel and Vauxhall brands.
> 
> The withdrawal will begin from 2016, the company said.


http://www.bbc.com/news/business-25237227


----------



## Broccolli

cinxxx said:


> 2 "selfies" from my recent trips
> 
> *In Bled, Slovenia*


Really nice colour. Bring back memories...

My father once owned Renault 18 TLJ, which was also blue. I remember that this particular model TLJ had for those times new "innovative" 5 speed gearbox. Older model Renault 18 TL had just 4 speed gearbox.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> Wait, you have Chevrolets over there?


American style Chevy's are usually imported, you do see a Chevrolet Suburban or a Corvette from time to time. 

Back in the days there was Daewoo, a Korean brand. I'd say it was the least popular of the three major Korean carmakers (Hyundai, Kia & Daewoo). Chevrolet took over Daewoo for the European market, but they weren't very successful.


----------



## Attus

Chevrolet closes all businesses in Germany this year. 
In Hungary their cars were pretty popular before the crisis because of low prices of course.


----------



## TheCat

ChrisZwolle said:


> What do you guys pay for car insurance? I bought a new car and the insurance actually went down. It's now € 25 per month for an all-risk insurance.


Wow, that's incredibly cheap, although I suppose it is balanced by the much higher costs of buying and owning a car in the Netherlands (and many other parts of Europe).

Insurance in Ontario is a ripoff.

I pay about $1900 per year for comprehensive insurance (similar to your full Casco I guess), which is actually quite cheap for someone my age because the particular insurance company provides big discounts to graduates of certain universities. Also, I declare a very low mileage (~6000km/year) because I mainly use public transit. Many other insurance companies quoted me double this price (I have a clean driving record). Mind you, the location plays a huge role too - I live in a pretty central area of Toronto (but not downtown).

If you get into an accident that's your fault, even if it's fairly minor, or you get a speeding ticket once in a blue moon, the insurance can skyrocket at the next renewal (I'm talking about double or more) and stay high for many years.

Like Pen's Woods said, you report the mileage on your car when you re-register your plates, usually every 2 years. That information gets passed down to the insurance companies.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

TheCat said:


> Wow, that's incredibly cheap, although I suppose it is balanced by the much higher costs of buying and owning a car in the Netherlands (and many other parts of Europe).


They say Dutch car insurances are sold at a loss. There is a lot of competition from "no frills" insurances (i.e. very low premiums), often subsidiaries of the big insurance companies.


----------



## Kanadzie

ChrisZwolle said:


> What do you guys pay for car insurance? I bought a new car and the insurance actually went down. It's now € 25 per month for an all-risk insurance.


I pay approx 140 EUR per year for mandatory insurance only on two cars, however I am in a "group" insurance for members of my profession that has nice rates  This is in Quebec, in Ontario it is much higher for some reason (like fraud for one). I got the same offer as the Cat from my university and they quoted me something like 500 EUR, LOL


----------



## Road_UK

Here in Austria I pay approx 110€ pm, but this includes road tax.


----------



## Attus

Opel Corsa 1.2, year 2001. 
Road tax: 87€ / year
Mandatory 3rd party insurance: approx. 640€ / year.
Own risk insurance: has no sense for a car of a value of 2,000 euro 

Oh, it's in Germany (in Hungary I paid approx. 100 euro for insurance and approx. 40 € for road tax).


----------



## MajKeR_

In Poland - VW Sharan 1.9 TDI, 2005, for person living at countryside and having 30% discount would costs approx. 1800 PLN (~450 EUR) per year for full insurance (in Compensa company, in national Polish insurance company - PZU - such an insurance is more expensive). Only mandatory one is circa 800 PLN (~200 EUR), but I can't remember how much exactly. I guess it's cheap in comparison with other EU countries. Poland's insurance is generally thought as cheap.


----------



## bogdymol

Romania, 2007 Chevrolet Aveo 1.4 petrol+lpg engine, registered on my father's name (has a discount for being retired and another discount for having a clean accident record): 42 € for third party insurance (per year) and about 40 € more for road tax (per year).


----------



## CNGL

I was thinking of some oddities in my clinched highways. Apart from having driven A-1304 instead of the nearby parallel, 'more important' A-220, I have also driven E90/A-2 from the aforementioned A-1304 to Z-40 three times... but never the other way round! Another thing is that half kilometer of N-II I have clinched on the Maresme coast which is totally isolated from all other roads I've been to.


----------



## volodaaaa

Mothers' day today. Flower prices came up to twice  Good business.


----------



## Verso

^^ We celebrate it on 25th March.


----------



## CNGL

In Spain it happened last Sunday.


----------



## volodaaaa

CNGL said:


> In Spain it happened last Sunday.


Really, I thought it is worldwide up to now. 

Apparently, I was wrong


----------



## cinxxx

I have a question: Are there special rules regarding how much quantity of coffee (per person) you can bring with you over the border? 
1. for intra-EU?
2. for EU-> non-EU (BiH, MNE, AL, MK, SRB, etc.)

I know there are for alcohol and tobacco products...


----------



## Road_UK

Within the EU I don't think there is a limit on coffee.


----------



## cinxxx

^^I found this regarding EU, seems there are no limitations
http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/common/travellers/enter_eu/index_en.htm

Why I ask, a really stupid situation I'm always in, when I travel back home. I always have to bring at least 10 packs of coffee, because it should be much better then the one you get home, and my parents like to give them away to other friends and relatives (because those people to also can taste the difference and they are very happy if they receive such a gift) :bash:

I'm always fed up by it, travel with 10 kg or so of coffee, but if I don't do it, there is trouble. 

Thing is, I'm planning to drive to BiH, MNE, AL, MK and SRB before getting back home and to the EU, and I would really not want to get in trouble because of such a stupid thing.

------

Another thing, I read in BiH it's mandatory to have a towing kit/rope with you, can you recommend me a cheap one (from Amazon_de or such)? Does it depend on car type?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

CNGL said:


> In Spain it happened last Sunday.


Was a month ago here.


----------



## Road_UK

You can normally pick up a towing rope at any motorway petrol station. Shouldn't cost more than 10€ and you can use it on any vehicle.


----------



## x-type

cinxxx said:


> ^^I found this regarding EU, seems there are no limitations
> http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/common/travellers/enter_eu/index_en.htm
> 
> Why I ask, a really stupid situation I'm always in, when I travel back home. I always have to bring at least 10 packs of coffee, because it should be much better then the one you get home, and my parents like to give them away to other friends and relatives (because those people to also can taste the difference and they are very happy if they receive such a gift) :bash:
> 
> I'm always fed up by it, travel with 10 kg or so of coffee, but if I don't do it, there is trouble.
> 
> Thing is, I'm planning to drive to BiH, MNE, AL, MK and SRB before getting back home and to the EU, and I would really not want to get in trouble because of such a stupid thing.


are you going to Italy before Balkans? if yes, then your question is ok. if not, why to buy coffee somewhere else (unless it's Italy, where coffee is much cheaper).


----------



## cinxxx

It has nothing to do with price. Actually, my parents believe that the same brand of coffee in Germany tastes much better then what you find in Romania. If I'm not mistaken it actually costs more in Germany. But that doesn't interest them since they don't pay for it...


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> It has nothing to do with price. Actually, my parents believe that the same brand of coffee in Germany tastes much better then what you find in Romania. If I'm not mistaken it actually costs more in Germany. But that doesn't interest them since they don't pay for it...


That is true. I often go shopping to Austria and the same products often tastes differently. To me, Fanta is the product that taste most different in particular country.


----------



## Natomasken

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wish the European fast-food landscape was as diverse as the U.S. Fast-food is dominated by McDonald's, especially along major highways. You have a much better choice in different styles of fast-food in North America.


Plus, there are probably a couple hundred national and regional full-service restaurant chains, with many different types of food: Outback (steak), Olive Garden (Italian), Red Lobster (seafood), Chili's (American), Famous Dave's (barbecue), just to name a few. You can find something familiar wherever you go. I don't think I ever noticed any chain-type restaurants other than fast-food in Europe. Although a lot of people think that's a good thing, I'm sure, I do like being able to know what I'm getting.

The only non-American fast food chain I ever saw in Europe was Quick.

Edit: Oh yeah, I have seen (and eaten a couple times at) Nordsee. I don't think there's a US chain like it (fast seafood). I'd like that here.

By the way, McD's menu does change quite a bit from country to country based on local preferences. You can see the different menus on their website. For instance, I think in India they don't have any sandwiches with meat, IIRC.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> The Harvey's chain in Canada probably best fast food burger around here, they cook the patties fresh on charcoal grille
> 
> However their fries / onion rings are lacking and they don't serve beer at all


Now I was devastated when I checked into my regular Montreal hotel last September to discover that the Chez Cora across the street had closed. (I gather they're not out of business?) But a Tim's had appeared actually attached to the hotel. And the nice Italian restaurant up the street had been replaced by a Saint-Hubert. I can never see Saint-Hubert on a map of Belgium without "pronouncing" it in my head in the silly voice of Saint-Hubert commercials....




Natomasken said:


> By the way, McD's menu does change quite a bit from country to country based on local preferences. You can see the different menus on their website. For instance, I think in India they don't have any sandwiches with meat, IIRC.


Or regionally, even: there's such a thing as a McLobster sandwich available in Maine and the Canadian Maritimes, at least at certain times of year.

Other chains do that too. There were differences - don't remember what - between Tim's in Maine and Tim's in Quebec. And not just the fact that in the U.S., the straws are wrapped. 

I saw headlines a week or two ago about Subway no longer serving pork in Britain.


----------



## Road_UK

Why is that, because it may offend muslims? I wouldn't put it past those Brits, they've completely lost the plot in these matters.


----------



## g.spinoza

Natomasken said:


> The only non-American fast food chain I ever saw in Europe was Quick.


Well, in Italy there's Spizzico, a pizza-based fast food restaurant (according to Wikipedia there are some in the US too). We had Burghy too, until McD took over the franchise.


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> Well, in Italy there's Spizzico, a pizza-based fast food restaurant (according to Wikipedia there are some in the US too). We had Burghy too, until McD took over the franchise.


I like Spizzico. They're in most Autogrill services in Italy, and use it a lot when I'm in a hurry and I want a quick bite to eat. When I have more time I usually go for a proper meal. 

I like the Quick restaurants in France and Belgium as well. These "Giant" burgers are lovely.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Why is that, because it may offend muslims? I wouldn't put it past those Brits, they've completely lost the plot in these matters.


I gather that was the idea.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Well, in Italy there's Spizzico, a pizza-based fast food restaurant (according to Wikipedia there are some in the US too). We had Burghy too, until McD took over the franchise.


Never heard of it. Spizzico I mean. (Or the other.) But it's a big country....


----------



## volodaaaa

But the most spread fast-food is Chinese bistro called (very originally) Panda


----------



## Road_UK

Never heard of it.


----------



## volodaaaa

Especially in former Commie countries, there is an overload of Chinese fast-foods. And the most common name is Panda (although they are owned by non-related individuals outside any corporation or franchising).


----------



## Road_UK

I've noticed that in Tesco stores in the Czech Republic they've got a lot of Chinese or Vietnamese restaurants inside. Are they a part of it?


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> I've noticed that in Tesco stores in the Czech Republic they've got a lot of Chinese or Vietnamese restaurants inside. Are they a part of it?


In most cases it is not part of anything, just owned by individuals. There are many many immigrants from China end far south-east Asia doing business especially in gastronomy. Some are good but some... barely satisfying the hygiene requirements. Some cases like grilled rats served as grilled duck has already occurred. 

If you have ever arrived to Brno (CZ) by train, you must have had a felling like you were in the middle of Saigon :lol:


----------



## Surel

An Austrian Renault Clia caused accident while driving in the wrong direction on the Czech D1 killing two in a Slovakian Opel Zafira and himself.


----------



## makaveli6

volodaaaa said:


> Especially in former Commie countries, there is an overload of Chinese fast-foods. And the most common name is Panda (although they are owned by non-related individuals outside any corporation or franchising).


I dont know any chinese fast-food in Baltics, except for maybe Woki Toki, but I would not call it fast-food.


----------



## bogdymol

Romanian farmers wedding:


----------



## Verso

Surel said:


> An Austrian Renault Clia caused accident while driving in the wrong direction on the Czech D1 killing two in a Slovakian Opel Zafira and himself.


Regular sight on Slovenian motorways.


----------



## volodaaaa

Surel said:


> An Austrian Renault Clia caused accident while driving in the wrong direction on the Czech D1 killing two in a Slovakian Opel Zafira and himself.


40 year old women with her 16 year old daughter died hno: Motorway police watched the opposite driver on security cameras. 

Original article

Btw. The lecturer in my driving school often told me "Drive, like everyone else is a stupid idiot". Although it has had saved my life many times, I doubt if it is enough.


----------



## Broccolli

Back to fast food topic...
Very popular in Ljubljana Hot horse


----------



## Verso

^^ It might be popular, but many people don't eat horses.


----------



## Broccolli

Why not:?

Just read that: 
_Horse meat contains large amounts of high valuable proteins and is extremely rich in iron.Due to low fat content the calorific value of horse meat is lower than other sorts of meat. _


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> Snails and frogs are known to be French delicatessens. I don't like everything about France..


Ljubljana's delicacies as well. Never tried them, thanks a lot.


----------



## Broccolli

Yeah inhabitants of Ljubljana are also known as Frogs , because the city lies on Ljubljana marshes.


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> We already had this discussion... it seems that the same topics resurface again and again


What's that, Guinea? :naughty:


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> What's that, Guinea? :naughty:


I was talking about food taboos, not racial stereotypes...

PS: I never understood this guinea thing. I'm as pale as a regular Scot :nuts:


----------



## Verso

Broccolli said:


> Yeah inhabitants of Ljubljana are also known as Frogs , because the city lies on Ljubljana marshes.


I'm a Froggy, not a frog, thank-you-very-much.  I don't know about Frenchies, but we're called Froggies because we say "what" _kva_ instead of standard Slovenian _kaj_, which happens to be the same as in French (_quoi_) and that's what frogs sound like (_quack_).


----------



## cinxxx

In Romania we have these stereotypes for Italians 
- Mascalzone
- Macaronar
- Broscar (broască means frog)

I guess the other two don't need translations


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^DUCKS say "quack"; frogs say "ribbit."

EDIT: Arrows for Verso.


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^DUCKS say "quack"; frogs say "ribbit."


Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit... doesn't sound like a frog to me. Slovenian ducks say "gagaga".


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> I was talking about food taboos, not racial stereotypes...
> 
> PS: I never understood this guinea thing. I'm as pale as a regular Scot :nuts:


Apparently that's what American-Italians are.


----------



## piotr71

Ghere, ghere, khum-khum means proper frog's sound


----------



## cinxxx

the frog actually says "oac oac"...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Apparently that's what American-Italians are.


?

The usual offensive term for Italians over here is "***." Don't ask me what it means. And I'd never use it.

Personally, I associate Italy and Italians (and Italian-Americans) with good food more than anything else.

:cheers:

- although perhaps not good beer.


----------



## Penn's Woods

cinxxx said:


> the frog actually says "oac oac"...


Still sounds like a duck to me.

Maybe English-speaking frogs speak differently than Slovenian and Romanian frogs.

As for English-speaking Frogs.... :runaway:


----------



## cinxxx

^^ The duck actually makes "mac mac" :lol:

Still silliest animal interjections I heard are in German:
- the dog: wau wau (where w is read like v), in Romanian ham-ham
- the rooster: kikierki (in Romanian it's "cucurigu"), actually the English is not bad either (****-a-doodle-doo)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

uh-oh


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> ?
> 
> The usual offensive term for Italians over here is "***." Don't ask me what it means. And I'd never use it.
> 
> Personally, I associate Italy and Italians (and Italian-Americans) with good food more than anything else.
> 
> :cheers:
> 
> - although perhaps not good beer.


Some of them are. But I admit that's not our best product...


----------



## Penn's Woods

By the way, the normal French transliteration for Putin (as in You-Know-Who) is "Poutine."

But in Quebec, "poutine" is also this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/montreal_poutine/6138504180

Never tried it myself. Kanadzie?


----------



## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^DUCKS say "quack"; frogs say "ribbit."


Which brings the question: what does the fox say?

/jk

-----------------------------


There had been some thunders today at my place. They are a rater uncommon occurrence in this part of the World.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit... doesn't sound like a frog to me. Slovenian ducks say "gagaga".


that's how geese sound, not?


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> - the dog: wau wau (where w is read like v), in Romanian ham-ham


In which universe ham-ham is less silly than wau-wau for dog's barking?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^As safe a topic as any. Although we're on the verge (over here) of caring about soccer again. Happens for a month or two every four years.


----------



## JackFrost

^^By the way, is there any definition in what cases you use gallons and when liters?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^
I *think* officially both systems are accepted*, which is used is a question of what's more convenient, and of custom. But that usually comes down on the side of traditional measures.

The only context I can really think of off the top of my head in which the general public uses liters is in expressions like "two-liter bottle" (of soda). Back in the 70s, when we were supposed to be switching in the near future, the soft-drink manufacturers adjusted their machinery so that they could produce liter and two-liter (and so on) bottles instead of 32-ounce, 64-ounce, etc. So now we have bottles of soda marked in weird amounts like "33.8 ounces (1 liter)" and people call that a liter bottle.

Fuel for motor vehicles is sold in gallons. It's the gallon price you'll see on pumps, on gas-station signs....

*There's a government agency in Washington called the National Bureau of Standards where they keep very precisely measured examples... I'm visualizing a little metal cube that's an inch on each side, for example... and I'm pretty sure they have metric examples too.


----------



## Natomasken

^^ We use liters for car engine sizes. When I was a kid it was cubic inches. 

There was a time a few decades past when there was serious talk of us converting to metric, but these days, you never hear of it. Too bad. We remain stuck with a random illogical system. Except for money! (back to that topic ) If I were in charge, I'd get rid of the penny and round everything up or down to the nearest 5c, like in Australia. It all evens out in the end. I'd also eliminate some coins and bills, making each a multiple of 4 or 5 times the one below, like 5c, 25c, $1 coins, then $1, $5, $20, $100 bills and so on.


----------



## JackFrost

I dont think the US will stuck in this "illogical" system forever, you have way too many different cultures overthere, that use the metric system. They live their lives in meters and liters so to say. And I think this will cause the imperial system to fade away slowly. I have seen kilometers signs in California for example.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Natomasken said:


> ^^ We use liters for car engine sizes. When I was a kid it was cubic inches.
> 
> There was a time a few decades past when there was serious talk of us converting to metric, but these days, you never hear of it. Too bad. We remain stuck with a random illogical system. Except for money! (back to that topic ) If I were in charge, I'd get rid of the penny and round everything up or down to the nearest 5c, like in Australia. It all evens out in the end. I'd also eliminate some coins and bills, making each a multiple of 4 or 5 times the one below, like 5c, 25c, $1 coins, then $1, $5, $20, $100 bills and so on.


Canada has recently abolished the penny. If you pay for your $7.92 purchase with a card, it will go through for that exact amount, but if you pay with a $10 bill, you'll get $2.10 back. (If it's $7.93, you'll get $2.05 back.)

They abolished the dollar and two-dollar bills, replacing them with coins, a good 20 years ago. The problem with having the lowest-denomination bill being that large, in my experience, is your pockets get heavy fast.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Jack_Frost said:


> I dont think the US will stuck in this "illogical" system forever, you have way too many different cultures overthere, that use the metric system. They live their lives in meters and liters so to say. And I think this will cause the imperial system to fade away slowly. I have seen kilometers signs in California for example.


This "people are used to metric" argument has never made sense to me: I fail to see why adapting to a different measurement system is a bigger adjustment for them (or anyone else) than learning the language.

(And why should the immigrants' being used to metric matter more, here, in the domestic context, than the 300 million or so of us who grew up here and "live our lives in miles and inches"? Not that I'm anti-immigrant or anti-immigration at all. That would be hypocritical for any American of non-Native American ancestry. I also find that there are plenty of Canadians and Brits who grew up with miles and inches who are still using them unofficially.)

Sorry....


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Hooray! Another American on this thread!


_It's the end of the world as we know it ..._


----------



## riiga

Appearently this way of rounding money is called Swedish rounding.


----------



## cinxxx

Changing the topic, what's up with the crazy weather in the Balkans?

It looks like Austria and Germany will get their share too:
http://www.wetter.de/cms/heftige-unwetter-in-oesterreich-3b56f-bed3-68-1908546.html


----------



## Road_UK

We already have.


----------



## Kanadzie

Yeah in Canada, we never learned inches system, but we use it all the time in my industry and colloquially

It's quite simple, it is often more simple than metric since things are not based on 10 but more convenient numbers. Example 12 inches per foot, so 1/2' is 6", 1/3' is 4", 1/4' is 3" and so on. 1/2 m is easy, 500 mm, but 1/3 m is 333.3333 mm sillyness. But now everyone has smartphone so why care?


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> Yeah in Canada, we never learned inches system, but we use it all the time in my industry and colloquially
> 
> It's quite simple, it is often more simple than metric since things are not based on 10 but more convenient numbers. Example 12 inches per foot, so 1/2' is 6", 1/3' is 4", 1/4' is 3" and so on. 1/2 m is easy, 500 mm, but 1/3 m is 333.3333 mm sillyness. But now everyone has smartphone so why care?


It is not that easy :lol: or it is time to go sleep. But, I would never blame countries using imperial system. Perhaps people are not aware, but we daily us more non-logical systems: 60 secs = 1 min, 60 min = 1 hour, 24 hours = 1 day, 7 days = 1 week, (Houston, we've got a problem) 1 month = ? weeks?, 1 year = ? weeks?, 1 month = 28/29/30/31 days :lol: and that is it.

Moreover, it is quite common here in continental Europe to use e.g. inches to describe properties of technical devices (tables, computer screens, TV screens, etc.). Believe me or not, but I can rather lively imagine 24" TV than 105 cm TV in diagonal.


----------



## Kanadzie

indeed, what I mean is the numbers are more easily divisible than a number like 10. The best one is metric angle, 1 circle = 2 times PI, try to work with that one, compared to imperial 360 degrees...

it reminds me of the 3-1/2 inch floppy disk... measure it, it isn't exactly 3.50 in... but rather 90 mm :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> Yeah in Canada, we never learned inches system, but we use it all the time in my industry and colloquially
> 
> It's quite simple, it is often more simple than metric since things are not based on 10 but more convenient numbers. Example 12 inches per foot, so 1/2' is 6", 1/3' is 4", 1/4' is 3" and so on. 1/2 m is easy, 500 mm, but 1/3 m is 333.3333 mm sillyness. But now everyone has smartphone so why care?


"liked," but not clear where the smartphone came from....


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I've noticed a few private signs around in Mid Wales on rural roads advertising things (one on the road from Rhayader to Llangurig marking the entrance to a farm, one on the road south of Aber advertising a village shop and another one somewhere else) as being in 300 metres or whatever, not sure if they would be in metric in rural England, but maybe they would be.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Hey, Daniel, or whoever knows - 

How much trouble is Jeremy Clarkson in?


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> Believe me or not, but I can rather lively imagine 24" TV than 105 cm TV in diagonal.


In Hungary TV screens are measured in centimeters, smartphone screens in inches. In Germany the other way. When I moved to Germany and wanted to buy a TV and a smartphone I had to calculate from inch to cm and vice versa again and again


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> Hey, Daniel, or whoever knows -
> 
> How much trouble is Jeremy Clarkson in?


He isn't. Storm in a glass of water. If anything else the BBC is in trouble with its over the top political correct views. And we're used to a little controversy from good ol' Jeremy.


----------



## cinxxx

In Romania computer or laptop displays are always referred in inches, while TVs are mostly in cm. Funny. Smartphones are in inches afaik. May people also don't say "inch", but "ţol" (from German Zoll).

Meanwhile in Germany, for the upcoming European elections:
http://werbemittel.npd.de/contents/media/l_entwuerfe_btw14.jpg
"Money from grandma (oma) instead for Sinti and Roma"


----------



## Fatfield

Cats rule OK!


----------



## Penn's Woods

Cats are evil.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> He isn't. Storm in a glass of water. If anything else the BBC is in trouble with its over the top political correct views. And we're used to a little controversy from good ol' Jeremy.


Minor linguistic point: Americans say "tempest in a teapot" and I would have assumed that the English would too. Or is that the Dutch-Austrian in you? I've seen the glass-of-water version in French.

Jeremy is an ass, and we're used to him being an ass, and he's (usually) amusing about it. I've seen headlines, and seen what he's supposed to have said. And this may be a rare instance when he might have gotten into more trouble here than in Britain. (We never, ever use that word. The version I grew up with, and I never knew there was another one, is "catch a tiger...") But wasn't there talk of "one more strike you're out"?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Storm in a glass of water
Storm in een glas water

Almost the same


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> Hey, Daniel, or whoever knows -
> 
> How much trouble is Jeremy Clarkson in?


Everyone has forgotten about it already, as I said they would. And I would use the same expression as Road did, well I don't think I'd actually say it, but it is what I'd used if I decided to say it.

And the word Clarkson used, whilst unacceptable here, was the way he would have learnt 'eeny miny miny mo' or however you spell that in those days, though I've only seen it in old books and the like.


----------



## Road_UK

Jeremy is alright. Sometimes he speaks before he thinks, but that's what I like about him. He doesn't let political correctness get in the way. I own and have read a few books he has written, and he is actually a very intelligent and warm-hearted man.

BBC on the other hand are making one blunder after the other. Only the other week they sacked an elderly DJ who played a song from 1947 with the word n*gger in it. The DJ wasn't aware, but they sacked him anyway, causing a storm of protests. The BBC offered him his job back with an apology, but the DJ refused, as he felt humiliated enough as it is.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^So being an ass is sort of an act? His shtick, in American pseudo-Yiddish?


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^So being an ass is sort of an act? His shtick, in American pseudo-Yiddish?


Of course it's all an act. If you get a chance, do read this book...










It's a wonderful bundle of short stories about his travels around Europe and the USA. Very honest, and very easy to relate to. I'm sure it's downloadable somewhere, and you get a whole new insight about the man.


----------



## Verso

Fatfield said:


> Cats rule OK!


When I was small, a dog bit me in the back that I lost consciousness.


----------



## x-type

Kanadzie said:


> Yeah in Canada, we never learned inches system, but we use it all the time in my industry and colloquially
> 
> It's quite simple, it is often more simple than metric since things are not based on 10 but more convenient numbers. Example 12 inches per foot, so 1/2' is 6", 1/3' is 4", 1/4' is 3" and so on. 1/2 m is easy, 500 mm, but 1/3 m is 333.3333 mm sillyness. But now everyone has smartphone so why care?


this is ok when you must make thirds, quarters etc. but hell, in metric system all you need to know is 10. in imperial system you have inch, 12 inches is foot, 3 feet is yard, 1760 yards is mile (now i see there are some never-heard things like chains and furlongs inbetween, and numbers of 22, 10 and 8 in relation :nuts:

btw, how you measure ver small lenghts? we can always put in relation mile - kilometer, yard - meter, inch - centimeter. but how to express less units? milimeters are really often used here in metric system. do you use [inch]x10^(-1) or what?


----------



## italystf

del


----------



## keokiracer

I think your link is wrong :nuts:


----------



## italystf

Road fatalities in the world, year 2010
http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.A997?lang=en
San Marino is the only country in the list without fatalities.
The most dangerous country appears to be the small island of Niue, but just for statistical reasons, because 1 person died in a very small population. Maybe they won't have any road-related death in the next decade or so.
Russia obviously has the worst score in Europe, but surprisely, it's better than most African, Asian and Latin American countries. Probably the widespread use of dashcams in that country, which is almost non-existent elsewhere, contributed to exagerate the association of Russia with bad driving.
China has the highest overall number of fatalities, followed by India, Nigeria, Brazil and the United States.
Egypt, also known in Europe for terrible driving habits, surprisely, ranks quite well in the African continent.
Excluding microstates, that aren't rapresentative because statistics can be influenced by 1 or 2 accidents and because cars are rarely used in small islands, the safest countries (less than 5 deaths in 100k people) are Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Ireland and Israel.
The most dangerous countries (more than 30 deaths in 100k people, also excluding microstates) are Thailand, Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria, South Africa, Iraq, Guinea Bissau and Oman.


----------



## Natomasken

x-type said:


> btw, how you measure ver small lenghts? we can always put in relation mile - kilometer, yard - meter, inch - centimeter. but how to express less units? milimeters are really often used here in metric system. do you use [inch]x10^(-1) or what?


An inch is really the smallest unit used. Everything is in a fraction (not 10ths) of an inch. My metric wrenches are 6mm, 7mm, 8mm, 9mm, 10mm, etc. Perfectly easy and logical. My imperial wrenches are 1/4", 5/16", 3/8", 7/16", 1/2", etc. And my drill bits are 1/16", 5/64", 3/32", 7/64", etc.! It's just ridiculously harder to use. Especially when measuring something with a ruler that will typically have markings down to 1/16". Is that mark 3/8ths or 7/16ths? It's hard to easily tell.


----------



## Road_UK

Talk about Jeremy Clarkson was far more interesting. I think he disclosed the length of his dick in inches once, but I can't quite remember.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Something I'm not sure I care about, really....


----------



## Road_UK

Not sure = maybe


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Or a polite way of saying one doesn't give a ****.

But why are you bringing it up? As it were.


----------



## Road_UK

Felt like a good idea


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Whatever floats your boat.

:cheers:


----------



## Skyline_




----------



## italystf

Natomasken said:


> An inch is really the smallest unit used. Everything is in a fraction (not 10ths) of an inch. My metric wrenches are 6mm, 7mm, 8mm, 9mm, 10mm, etc. Perfectly easy and logical. My imperial wrenches are 1/4", 5/16", 3/8", 7/16", 1/2", etc. And my drill bits are 1/16", 5/64", 3/32", 7/64", etc.! It's just ridiculously harder to use. Especially when measuring something with a ruler that will typically have markings down to 1/16". Is that mark 3/8ths or 7/16ths? It's hard to easily tell.


Those fractions of inch are just insane, very unpractical to calculate mentally. If even an American think so...


----------



## volodaaaa

I just ran over a hedgehog yesterday  Poor guy, I tried to dodge it, but I closely hit its head.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> I just ran over a hedgehog yesterday  Poor guy, I tried to dodge it, but I closely hit its head.


well at least you haven't made meatloaf of him. this was probably not that messy.


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> well at least you haven't made meatloaf of him. this was probably not that messy.


Meatloaf not, but pancake from his head yes :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Those fractions of inch are just insane, very unpractical to calculate mentally. If even an American think so...


Sure, but how often does that come up?

[snark mode on] May even come up less often than Europeans feel the need to discuss this. [snark mode off]


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> ...pancake from his head yes :lol:


Hey, some of us haven't had breakfast yet!
Fortunately, I'm not eating pancakes.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Millimeters are a pretty common measure in metric, for example in engineering and _do it yourself_ works.


----------



## Verso

Blackraven said:


> I also forgot that Moldova is the poorest country in Europe (either that or Greece).


Greece is far from being the poorest country in Europe.



italystf said:


> Greece was badly affected by the 2008-present crisis but before it was not so bad, poorer than West European countries but richer than East European countries. The difference between Greece and East European countries is that the first experienced a major economical shrink in a couple of years (and this make big news), while the latters had always been poor (but are improving in the last 20 years).


Greece was never much richer than Slovenia and the Czech Republic. But Greece always lived off loans and never had a sustainable economy. Slovenia produces and exports (at least it used to) much more than Greece despite being much smaller. I'm not sure you know any Slovenian company since you don't really need them, but all I know about Greece is olive oil and feta cheese.



ChrisZwolle said:


> All 2004 EU members in eastern Europe have a GDP per capita in the $ 21,000 - 30,000 range, which is similar to Greece or Portugal. Romania and Bulgaria are lagging in that aspect though. I know it's a pretty popular opinion to divide Europe in a wealthy west and a poor east, but the per capita GDP in the Czech Republic is twice that of Bulgaria and even exceeds that of Italy.


It doesn't exceed Italy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita


----------



## ChrisZwolle

According to this list there is a $ 41 per year difference between CZ and Italy (and CZ not exceeding Italy, but pretty much matching it, my bad)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

The Russian GDP per capita seems vandalized though.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> but all I know about Greece is olive oil and feta cheese.


It is pretty sad, but Greece produces some good products, especially in food industry. But they seem to be intentionally produced only for national consumption. Greece has (to me) one of the most tasteful chocolate (Lacta), just after Swiss one (Lindt)


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> According to this list there is a $ 41 per year difference between CZ and Italy (and CZ not exceeding Italy, but pretty much matching it, my bad)
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
> 
> The Russian GDP per capita seems vandalized though.


The map doesn't match the list; CZ has $26,590 in the list. That's some random article.


----------



## sponge_bob

Try this. 

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2014/01/weodata/index.aspx


----------



## Verso

sponge_bob said:


> Try this.
> 
> http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2014/01/weodata/index.aspx


Same as in my link. 

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft...1&pr1.x=59&pr1.y=9&c=935,136&s=PPPPC&grp=0&a=


----------



## hofburg

I don't like PPP too much, simple gdp per capita is more representative I think.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The PPP takes the differences in cost of living into account, which is important to compare countries. Especially the cost of housing varies a lot between countries, as well as taxation levels (just compare Dutch road taxes to German road taxes while incomes are similar).


----------



## Skyline_

volodaaaa said:


> It is pretty sad, but Greece produces some good products, especially in food industry. But they seem to be intentionally produced only for national consumption. Greece has (to me) one of the most tasteful chocolate (Lacta), just after Swiss one (Lindt)


Actually, I have found Greek products even in British grocery stores...:cheers:


----------



## Road_UK

What's that name of that Greek dip again? Goes nice with Pringles... Vol.....???


----------



## Blackraven

Verso said:


> Greece is far from being the poorest country in Europe.


It isn't........or at least it wasn't...........until the Global Economic Crisis hit. 

Here's the thing though, out of the most affected countries, Greece hasn't been able to make a good recovery.

Imagine this, Iceland made a huge turnaround (after problems with their banks), Ireland is coming back around and Portugal is beginning it's path to recovery. Spain, though having some problems with a high unemployment rate, is starting to see some recovery action.

But as for Greece..............



> But Greece always lived off loans and never had a sustainable economy.


^^^
As you said, that's one thing that is preventing a Greek economic recovery. 

But it would be interesting to see which would eventually be the better economy: 
A currently-battered Greece or Moldova (the poorest out of the former Yugoslavian territories)

Heck, even after the NATO airstrikes that have damaged Kosovo, it appears that Kosovo has a better economy than Moldova.

Point is: This is going to be interesting to observe 

Moving on:


> Slovenia produces and exports





> I'm not sure you know any Slovenian company...........


Oh I definitely know of one Slovenian company










































That is the company that adds extra sound and exhaust intensity to any BMW M5 (F10) or BMW M6 (F06/F12/F13) :cheers:


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> I don't like PPP too much, simple gdp per capita is more representative I think.


I used PPP, because by nominal, the difference between CZ and Italy is even bigger (much bigger).


----------



## Quilavoce

^^

Receiving Moldovans as immigrants is one thing, but incorporating the territory completely different involving development of infrastructure, for example. And Romania has a long way to go in this respect on its current territory, let alone having the capacity of transforming the poorest country in Europe. Plus, Moldova really doesn't have much resources and it's landlocked. Romania would gain nothing.


----------



## MajKeR_

So what about annexation of former Democratic Republic of Germany to the other part in 1990? It was the same faint business, but no one says that it was unnecessary. And it was quite similar situation to the Moldovan.

I guess that if there's a land with the same (or almost the same) culture, divided mostly for political matters (as Moldova was a part of USSR and Romania - just in communist block) there's no serious reason to maintain that state. See that progress with economy and integration with other countries goes very weakly in Moldova. That country is at the best way to stay the poorest and become an European outsider. And another Russian zone. No one in EU needs this.

As for it, I guess that Moldova should become an another Romanian state, as Romania is stable and civilized country. Then should be modernized, using EU funding, for better and calmer life of everyone living in Europe.


----------



## Alex_ZR

I think that Moldovans can get Romanian citizenship and passport, so actually many Moldovans work in the EU thanks to Romanian passport.


----------



## volodaaaa

MajKeR_ said:


> So what about annexation of former Democratic Republic of Germany to the other part in 1990? It was the same faint business, but no one says that it was unnecessary. And it was quite similar situation to the Moldovan.
> 
> I guess that if there's a land with the same (or almost the same) culture, divided mostly for political matters (as Moldova was a part of USSR and Romania - just in communist block) there's no serious reason to maintain that state. See that progress with economy and integration with other countries goes very weakly in Moldova. That country is at the best way to stay the poorest and become an European outsider. And another Russian zone. No one in EU needs this.
> 
> As for it, I guess that Moldova should become an another Romanian state, as Romania is stable and civilized country. Then should be modernized, using EU funding, for better and calmer life of everyone living in Europe.


Then we can bring up a topic over importance of Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland or Liechtenstein accordingly. Btw. I don't refuse your opinion. I'm just trying to understand and explain the Romanian statement.


----------



## MajKeR_

^^ There are significant differences between countries you've written between ones you mean as similar (I guess Germany, France and Netherlands). Maybe except Austria, which, indeed, was formerly seen as a part of German _Reich_, but in case of possibility of getting force like before WWI and WWII the idea was abandoned and nowadays, at era of EU, it would be useless. What's more, there are serious reasons to maintain the current state, historical and economical. Excluding Belgium, all of written countries are very stable, but perspectives of some partitions of Belgium are much smaller than in case of Moldova or Ukraine.

And except Moldovan poverty, instability and cultural relationship with Romania, it's worth mention that more Moldovans live in Romania than in Moldova!


----------



## volodaaaa

MajKeR_ said:


> ^^ There are significant differences between countries you've written between ones you mean as similar (I guess Germany, France and Netherlands). Maybe except Austria, which, indeed, was formerly seen as a part of German _Reich_, but in case of possibility of getting force like before WWI and WWII the idea was abandoned and nowadays, at era of EU, it would be useless. What's more, there are serious reasons to maintain the current state, historical and economical. Excluding Belgium, all of written countries are very stable, but perspectives of some partitions of Belgium are much smaller than in case of Moldova or Ukraine.
> 
> And except Moldovan poverty, instability and cultural relationship with Romania, it's worth mention that more Moldovans live in Romania than in Moldova!


Many of USSR republics were made and treated as kind of statistical units, therefore, lot of consequences occurred after the dissolution of USSR.


----------



## sponge_bob

It all depends on consent. If both Moldova and Romania decide to join and vote for it then fine ( it may even happen sooner rather than later and Transnistria may have very little say in it at the end of the day) ...now that Putin seems to have gone megalomanic. Putin cannot have it both ways can he?!?!

Belgium split from Holland by consent..and is effectively split in two nowadays. 

Slovakia split from the Czechs by consent.

Scotland votes later this year, too close to call that but I think a simple majority in favour is not enough and it may be 50.1%-49.9% on the day. At 55-45 things are more clearcut.

Kosovo will probably join Albania after its final status is determined in 10 years or so but some of Kosovo may equally join Serbia or Macedonia ( again by mutual consent)

The Basques are split across two states and only recently ( since 1980) achieved cultural recognition from either of the French and Spanish. The Catalans are not as split up, being mainly in Spain, but the possibility always remains that they may do a Slovakia on it and that the rest of Spain will not be inclined to hold on to them against their wishes. 

I would not see borders as immutable in Europe, only that using military force to change them or to deliberately displace populations in cleansing operations is not acceptable behaviour.


----------



## volodaaaa

Nice gesture from Italian goalie after Slovak hockey player in front of him were hit by puck in face. He immediately leaned over and asked if everything is all right. The name of the goalie fits his character


----------



## Kanadzie

Natomasken said:


> An inch is really the smallest unit used. Everything is in a fraction (not 10ths) of an inch. My metric wrenches are 6mm, 7mm, 8mm, 9mm, 10mm, etc. Perfectly easy and logical. My imperial wrenches are 1/4", 5/16", 3/8", 7/16", 1/2", etc. And my drill bits are 1/16", 5/64", 3/32", 7/64", etc.! It's just ridiculously harder to use. Especially when measuring something with a ruler that will typically have markings down to 1/16". Is that mark 3/8ths or 7/16ths? It's hard to easily tell.


Sometimes people use fractional inch to describe things to me, like 3.4375 inch instead of 3-7/16, it annoys me :lol: 7/16 and 3/8 are easy to tell apart, 7/16 is the one closer to half 

We use a lot the unit "thou" for like a machine shop (engineering works), it's 1/1000 of an inch. Curiously though we are officially metric, most machinists think in "thou" and convert ISO tolerances back to thou...

Metric fasteners have taken over. I have both sets of tools, my inch ones mostly shiny, my metric all dirty and nasty because actually used. Even American cars made in the USA are basically 100 % metric fasteners since the late 1980's. (but there was a while (say 1977 - 2000 ish) when some parts were metric, some inch, _that _was fucking annoying)



sponge_bob said:


> Belgium split from Holland by consent...


LOL, by consent after they had been killing each other for a year :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

Back from Metrology group meeting in Paris. Best quote from the British representative: "Do you know about the F word? Yes, that one: Fahrenheit"


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^[yawn]

Seriously, can we PLEASE try to go 24 hours on this forum without discussing the metric system and how bizarre/stupid/"learning-disabled"* countries that don't use it are? Sheesh. Get a more interesting obsession.

*in a post since erased

PS: Nine possible values to every five, Spinoza....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Happy Victoria Day (or Jour des patriotes, if you prefer), Canadians!


----------



## Penn's Woods

Okay, here's a suggestion for a game: say something positive about the previous poster's country. Who wants to start?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> Okay, here's a suggestion for a game: say something positive about the previous poster's country. Who wants to start?


The Ford Mustang.










(Interesting, I was wondering which country I would be classified as being from)


----------



## bogdymol

Madeira Airport's runway is really cool


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Romania's come a long way since 1989.


----------



## volodaaaa

US gave the world the internet and e-mail








:lol:


----------



## Quilavoce

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Romania's come a long way since 1989.


What does it have to do with a Portuguese airport?


----------



## bogdymol

Absolutely nothing ->



Penn's Woods said:


> Okay, here's a suggestion for a game: say something positive about the previous poster's country. Who wants to start?


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^[yawn]
> 
> Seriously, can we PLEASE try to go 24 hours on this forum without discussing the metric system and how bizarre/stupid/"learning-disabled"* countries that don't use it are? Sheesh. Get a more interesting obsession.
> 
> *in a post since erased
> 
> PS: Nine possible values to every five, Spinoza....


Mine was just a joke. You should laugh more. And 9 values instead of five dont make yoir system more accurate, that law zero od metrology (otherwise we could simply increase our measurement precision by arbitrarily choose a smaller unit, which is a physics nonsense...)!

Ps keep in mind that the joke was made by a Brit, who used F until basically yesterday...


----------



## makaveli6

My first mosquito smash this year was in March.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^March? Latvia? Could it have been an extremely small Russian drone?


----------



## makaveli6

Believe me, I was also suprised, but it was around +20°C a few days in March.


----------



## Fatfield

Just had a phone call from my mate. He's currently in hospital in Benidorm with a fractured vertebrae after the roof of a bar he was drinking in collapsed. There's 20 odd of the lads on their way back uninjured. 😐

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk


----------



## Kanadzie

Well at least he wasn't feeling any pain...


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> THOSE WERE MY POSITIVE THINGS ABOUT ITALY!
> 
> "Learn to laugh more," my ass.


One can be offended even by positive things, if repeated ad nauseam. 



> Of course - JOKE ALERT - someone who'd spend a spring weekend in Paris at a "metrology conference" would be humor-impaired, even if he does come from and live in one of the most beautiful countries in the world....


I spent a whole day inside a dark room full of people talking about vacuum tubes and temperatures and gas fluxes, instead of visiting the Louvre. I am humour-impaired :cheers: :lol:

Seriously: do your really think of Italy as one of the most beautiful countries in the world? Have you been in Italy?



Skyline_ said:


> Maybe he is only proud of spaghetti western movies! :cheers:
> 
> I am under the impression that "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" was filmed in Italy!


It was actually filmed in Spain.


----------



## CNGL

I've 'ordered' a 2015 Rand McNally road atlas. I have a relative who just arrived in New York City, I asked her if she can find one for me .


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^March? Latvia? Could it have been an extremely small Russian drone?


A Russian drone is more likely.


----------



## volodaaaa

Rebasepoiss said:


> A Russian drone is more likely.


Is not it SSR Latvia, you are talking about guys, is it? ^^


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Seriously: do your really think of Italy as one of the most beautiful countries in the world? Have you been in Italy?


Been to Milan and Florence.

I think lots of people think Italy's beautiful. You did know that, didn't you? That's why it's swarming with foreigners all summer.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Rebasepoiss said:


> It's 30 C - 86 F (or more) in Estonia - very unusual in the middle of May. Heck, it would be unusual even in the middle of July


All time records for the month of May were broken in Kunda (33.1 C), Tallinn (31.4 C), Tartu (30.9 C), Narva (31.7 C) and Võru (31 C). The all time highest temperature measured in Estonia was 35.6 C in Võru on the 11th of August 1992.


----------



## cinxxx

I think Italy is beautiful


----------



## Jasper90

cinxxx said:


> I think Italy is beautiful


Thank you 
I think Italy is beautiful too, but we like to complain about everything, even good stuff. I don't know why g.spinoza thinks our country isn't beautiful, it looks like overcomplaining to me!

I also think Romania is a great country, and I'm planning to visit someday. I think I'll come for a trip next April, as a present-to-myself for my future graduation  I'll need a lot of advice, obviously.


----------



## volodaaaa

I love this gif


----------



## cinxxx

@Jasper90: You mean April next year, right? There is still a lot until then.
Anyway, I can tell you one thing, you will feel like home  (I did in Italy), and many people will understand you (Italian), you will understand them harder though


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Everyone loves Italy! How can you not?






Listen to that music!


----------



## x-type

i need suggestion for route to Opole, PL.

this is somehow the most common. my friends from PL use it (but they go through Graz and Maribor, i prefer this cheaper one)
https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=...&oq=opole&t=h&mra=dpe&mrsp=1&sz=7&via=1,2&z=7

i am thinking of this one too
https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=...h2TGJQ&oq=opole&t=h&mra=mrv&via=1,2,3,4,5&z=7

something third?


----------



## Jasper90

cinxxx said:


> @Jasper90: You mean April next year, right? There is still a lot until then. Anyway, I can tell you one thing, you will feel like home  (I did in Italy), and many people will understand you (Italian), you will understand them harder though


Yeah, I mean April 2015. I've recently began learning Romanian, so I guess I'll be able to speak at least a little, by next year 
I can already quite understand written Romanian, it's very similar to Italian. We're brothers from the same parents (Latin)! :cheers:


----------



## crimio

Hello!
I need suggestion for route to Ouranoupoli, Chalkidiki, GR

I've been 2 times in Greece on this route:
https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=...u--8ioFDHTIGxUTEJJOQ&oq=ourano&mra=ls&t=m&z=6

I am thinking of this one:
https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=...--8ioFDHTIGxUTEJJOQ&oq=calafat&mra=ls&t=m&z=6

or this?
https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=...Wvu--8ioFDHTIGxUTEJJOQ&oq=ruse&mra=ls&t=m&z=6

Thanks in advance!


----------



## volodaaaa

crimio said:


> Hello!
> I need suggestion for route to Ouranoupoli, Chalkidiki, GR
> 
> I've been 2 times in Greece on this route:
> https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=...u--8ioFDHTIGxUTEJJOQ&oq=ourano&mra=ls&t=m&z=6
> 
> I am thinking of this one:
> https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=...--8ioFDHTIGxUTEJJOQ&oq=calafat&mra=ls&t=m&z=6
> 
> or this?
> https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=...Wvu--8ioFDHTIGxUTEJJOQ&oq=ruse&mra=ls&t=m&z=6
> 
> Thanks in advance!


what about this one?
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Sib...c20d3!2m2!1d23.9813901!2d40.3258678!3e0?hl=ro

Btw. Ouranopoli is a nice town. I've been there on a trip from Asprovalta. I wanted to take it by a scooter, but there was no rent a scooter service in Asprovalta, so I take it by a car. Fortunately. The road is so curvy.


----------



## Road_UK

Then I'd definitely stick with "above". I looked the word afore up, it dates back to the year 900. I don't think it's used in modern English these days, unless you're preparing a speech in Ye Olde Village Pub. So your best bet:

The advantage of its simplicity has been taken to verify the hypothesis *as* stated *above*


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> Then I'd definitely stick with "above". I looked the word afore up, it dates back to the year 900. I don't think it's used in modern English these days, unless you're preparing a speech in Ye Olde Village Pub. So your best bet:
> 
> The advantage of its simplicity has been taken to verify the hypothesis *as* stated *above*


Ok, thank you very much then :lol: I should stop reading Stoker's Dracula.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Penn's Woods said:


> How about the EU elections? (Or Belgian ones?) Or does no one care? I caught a bit of the BBC TV coverage around 10 to 11:30 p.m. British time yesterday but they were talking precious little about anything outside Britain. A few minutes about France and a lot of "calls" of results in British constituencies.


Although Eurosceptic parties did receive more seats than before (and even won in the UK, France, Denmark and Greece), the majority of seats still belong to pro-EU parties so the EU will follow its current course, I guess.

By voting for Eurosceptic parties, those countries actually decreased their influence in the EU since they will have more seats in the opposition.


----------



## volodaaaa

Rebasepoiss said:


> Although Eurosceptic parties did receive more seats than before (and even won in the UK, France, Denmark and Greece), the majority of seats still belong to pro-EU parties so the EU will follow its current course, I guess.
> 
> By voting for Eurosceptic parties, those countries actually decreased their influence in the EU since they will have more seats in the opposition.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Sorry for cutting in, but I need an English-related advice.
> 
> I need to transform the following sentence into passive voice:
> "We took the advantage of its simplicity to verify the hypothesis stated afore".
> 
> Could it be done like this?
> "The advantage of its simplicity has been taken to verify the hypothesis stated afore"?
> or
> "Its simplicity has been taken advantage to verify..."
> 
> Thank you very much ;-)


I'll get back to you on that after the caffeine's kicked in.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


>


I know voting in Belgium is obligatory, but what's the reason for the high turnout in Italy?


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> That said, on the day Pope John Paul II died, I was in Washington


I was on my way to Brussels (by bus). He was still alive when we left Ljubljana, but died before we reached Austria. :shifty:


----------



## Skyline_

The Far Right and euroscepticism are rising.... Maybe it's time for federalization before it's too late... If other countries follow France, we 're f****


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> I know voting in Belgium is obligatory, but what's the reason for the high turnout in Italy?


Pretty interesting. It is even above common average.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> I know voting in Belgium is obligatory, but what's the reason for the high turnout in Italy?


Italy always had a larger turnout than the rest of UE, regarding European elections. The overall UE turnout is 43% (+0.1% with respect to the previous elections), while Italy stands at 58% with a solid -8% difference with 2009.

I don't really know why turnout is so large here.


----------



## volodaaaa

Skyline_ said:


> The Far Right and euroscepticism are rising.... Maybe it's time for federalization before it's too late... If other countries follow France, we 're f****


European Union is a great invention. But it seems it has problem to define its basic nature.hno:


----------



## Verso

Skyline_ said:


> The Far Right and euroscepticism are rising.... Maybe it's time for federalization before it's too late... If other countries follow France, we 're f****


That would bring even more euroscepticism. And it's not like federalization can't be reversed. But it usually ends up worse.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> That would bring even more euroscepticism. And it's not like federalization can't be reversed. But it usually ends up worse.


Aren't you talking about YU, are YU?


----------



## Verso

^^ Well, I don't want the EU to follow its path.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Sorry for cutting in, but I need an English-related advice.
> 
> I need to transform the following sentence into passive voice:
> "We took the advantage of its simplicity to verify the hypothesis stated afore".
> 
> Could it be done like this?
> "The advantage of its simplicity has been taken to verify the hypothesis stated afore"?
> or
> "Its simplicity has been taken advantage to verify..."
> 
> Thank you very much ;-)


At first (pre-caffeine), I thought you were trying to say "take advantage of." You mean that you're taking the fact that whatever it is is so simple as proof of the aforementioned hypothesis?




volodaaaa said:


> it is used in scientific paper instead of "above" :lol: Referring to something you are expected to have already read.


There is a word "aforementioned." Means "mentioned previously." But I don't know if I'd use it for something you're expected to have read elsewhere...only for something that has already been discussed in this article.



Road_UK said:


> Then I'd definitely stick with "above". I looked the word afore up, it dates back to the year 900. I don't think it's used in modern English these days, unless you're preparing a speech in Ye Olde Village Pub. So your best bet:
> 
> The advantage of its simplicity has been taken to verify the hypothesis *as* stated *above*


I like this, although I don't know if you need the "as."


----------



## Skyline_

Verso said:


> That would bring even more euroscepticism. And it's not like federalization can't be reversed. But it usually ends up worse.


Not if euroscepticism is beaten by EU campaigns that inform the public about the potential of this project.


----------



## volodaaaa

Thank you, PW ;-)


----------



## g.spinoza

Roadgeeks, tune your TV sets on Giro d'Italia, Stelvio Pass starring, featuring snowfall...


----------



## Road_UK

Skyline_ said:


> Not if euroscepticism is beaten by EU campaigns that inform the public about the potential of this project.


It's not going to happen. Too many people are too proud of their country. It will never work. Not in a democratic way anyway. The EU itself can work, but not if nationals are to be governed by this institution. I think it's quite right if people want powers to be taken away from Brussels.


----------



## Jasper90

Penn's Woods said:


> I know voting in Belgium is obligatory, but what's the reason for the high turnout in Italy?





volodaaaa said:


> Pretty interesting. It is even above common average.





g.spinoza said:


> Italy always had a larger turnout than the rest of UE, regarding European elections. The overall UE turnout is 43% (+0.1% with respect to the previous elections), while Italy stands at 58% with a solid -8% difference with 2009.
> 
> I don't really know why turnout is so large here.


I don't know either 
But it's always been very high, both in National and in European elections. I can guess that EU turnout is high because a lot of people see EU elections as a smaller version of the national ones. A lot of people don't vote for Europe, but they vote pro/against national parties.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^In just five years?

[shakes head sadly]

-----

Road_UK, can you take that dog to England?


----------



## Road_UK

I could if I wanted to... I rather take my two Beagles though. They're more my league. But they're getting a bit too old. That dog in the picture is one of the 4 Chinese Crested we've got.


----------



## Road_UK

My two beagles and a part of my car...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> I could if I wanted to... I rather take my two Beagles though. They're more my league. But they're getting a bit too old. That dog in the picture is one of the 4 Chinese Crested we've got.


So there's no longer a quarantine? [Something to blame on Brussels :troll: ]


----------



## Road_UK

No, however, when traveling to the UK with dogs, they must be treated against tapeworm no less than 24 hours and not more than 120 hours before arriving in the UK. This treatment must be recorded in the pet passport by a veterinary surgeon. Most dogs in the EU have a EU passport with a vet log in it.


----------



## Road_UK

ChrisZwolle said:


> If anyone's looking for a more off-the-beaten-path holiday destination... Detroit may be right for you.


I'm just going through that street now on Google Streetview, and look....








House is falling apart but they've left a friggin satellite dish on it...


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Owners foreclosed on, got out in a hurry and left it behind...? Is there anything a criminal could do with it? It probably comes from a specific provider - Dish Network or Direct TV are the main satellite providers I know of here - and wouldn't theoretically work without a subscription.


----------



## Road_UK

They could sell it I suppose... I'm surprised it didn't get nicked. Half a mile down the road it looks decent again, with people on the streets. A prominently black neighborhood from what I can see....


----------



## Verso

Get a room, you two. :troll:


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> Get a room, you two. :troll:


We already have. I'm in my room, he's in his.


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> I'm just going through that street now on Google Streetview, and look....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> House is falling apart but they've left a friggin satellite dish on it...


I would not like to bring the _Settlers_ topic up, but you should visit one of their colonies in Slovakia. :lol:

It is pretty common: house is put together from different materials and looks like a pile of rubbish eventually, but BMW X6 is must have :lol:

Just take a ride

Btw. today I have visited our southern neighbours. Took a ride on M15 and brought this:










to my pantry. Definitely recommend it.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Well, your pantry's not all that convenient for me. But it's the thought that counts.


----------



## Fatfield

Road_UK said:


> My two beagles and a part of my car...


Class dogs. Used to have one myself. 

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk


----------



## volodaaaa

My doggy before rafting


----------



## bogdymol

Now click on the dancing man near the views number


----------



## CNGL

bogdymol said:


> Now click on the dancing man near the views number


I wonder what will happen when the video view counter hits 2,147,483,647. It will overflow? 
I remember when it reached the first billion (thousand million in the long count) the world 'ended'.


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> Now click on the dancing man near the views number


What's the last number? "20" and what's right of it? Something in Korean?


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> So, one day absence for a short road trip,


where?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> where?


I was bored this long weekend (5 days off, but 3 days lost to rain). So I took a little 680 km / 8 hr trip to drive some roads I haven't driven before and see some hills again.










The German Autobahn fuel price was cheaper than the unmanned discount stations in the Netherlands...


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from (my first) home! :cheers2:


----------



## Road_UK

Sexy and naughty France...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Où t'as trouvé ça ?

Ah, pardon. Where'd you find that?


----------



## Road_UK

Facebook. (la France page)


----------



## cinxxx

Statistics from my Balkan trip:
- 11 days
- 10 countries
- 2800 km
- 47 hours of driving
- 60 km/h average speed
- 5.9 L/100km fuel consumption
=> 165 L of fuel burned

The route:
Ingolstadt (D), Novo Mesto (SLO), Trogir (HR),
Split (HR),
Kravice Falls (BiH), Pocitelj (BiH), Mostar (BiH),
Stolac (BiH), Ston (HR),
Dubrovnik (HR), Cavtat (HR),
Kotor (MNE), Budva (MNE),
Shkodra (AL), Tirana (AL),
Sveti Naum (MK), Ohrid (MK),
Skopje (MK),
Timisoara (RO)


----------



## Alex_ZR

^^ Just transit through Serbia?


----------



## cinxxx

Just transit. The weather was not really good, and we wanted to reach our destination during daylight. And there are also not many places left to see in this area of Serbia.

Does someone know why Albania is so little covered on the clinched map system? I thought I will add some European corridors and some motorways (even though on I drove on was very substandard, but signed as a motorway, and Tirana-Elbasan is opened only half profile). Macedonia also seems to have parts missing.


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> Sexy and naughty France...


They forgot the most famous one :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

Had to quote this here :lol:



CosteaH said:


> De pe FB:


----------



## Road_UK

Yes, I've seen that on Facebook. Apparently that is in Belgium.


----------



## volodaaaa

ˆˆ It was as of 1st April and if I am not mistaken, the railroad has been abandoned.


----------



## bogdymol

Abandoned or not, why would you do that?


----------



## keokiracer

bogdymol said:


> Abandoned or not, why would you do that?


As a joke.


----------



## zezi

cinxxx said:


> Statistics from my Balkan trip:
> - 11 days
> - 10 countries
> - 2800 km
> - 47 hours of driving
> - 60 km/h average speed
> - 5.9 L/100km fuel consumption
> => 165 L of fuel burned
> 
> The route:
> Ingolstadt (D), Novo Mesto (SLO), Trogir (HR),
> Split (HR),
> Kravice Falls (BiH), Pocitelj (BiH), Mostar (BiH),
> Stolac (BiH), Ston (HR),
> Dubrovnik (HR), Cavtat (HR),
> Kotor (MNE), Budva (MNE),
> Shkodra (AL), Tirana (AL),
> Sveti Naum (MK), Ohrid (MK),
> Skopje (MK),
> Timisoara (RO)


What car, and engine?


----------



## zezi

keokiracer said:


> As a joke.


Same as this during flooding in Croatia


may day said:


>



Joke


----------



## cinxxx

zezi said:


> What car, and engine?


Seat Leon 5F 1.4L TSI 122 HP


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> Seat Leon 5F 1.4L TSI 122 HP


Where did you sleep? Facilities booked via booking.com?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^When I went to Gettysburg last year (for the 150th anniversary, so the town was booked solid and everything was overpriced), I used trivago.com, which gathers rates from several sites and finds (or claims to find) the best one.

Used them for Quebec a few months later.

Since that, I haven't been farther than Mom's, which doesn't cost anything.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I like camping. It's cheap and it's nice to be outside after a day of driving. I've been camping all my life. I like the combination of a road trip and vacation.


----------



## cinxxx

volodaaaa said:


> Where did you sleep? Facilities booked via booking.com?


Everything was booked in advance via booking, in Skopje I used airbnb.
I stayed in Trogir 2 nights, Mostar, Dubrovnik 2 nights, Budva, Tirana, Ohrid, Skopje 2 nights.



ChrisZwolle said:


> I like camping. It's cheap and it's nice to be outside after a day of driving. I've been camping all my life. I like the combination of a road trip and vacation.


I don't like camping


----------



## Road_UK

The Dutch love to camp. Here in Mayrhofen they'll all be here soon with their caravans. I bet the Germans are looking forward to them...










I'll be camping myself in France in two weeks...


----------



## Road_UK

It's a robot that visits construction sites, asking when it's going to be finished. It'll insert the data, plugs it into a computer using USB and it'll automatically be uploaded to Skyscrapercity.


----------



## volodaaaa

Please, not again
:rofl:


----------



## Road_UK

Sorry, I couldn't help it...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

CNGL said:


> King John Charles I of Spain abdicates. Only Queen Elizabeth II of the UK remains...





Penn's Woods said:


> PS: we do call him "Juan Carlos," not "John Charles."


A quick browse of European news shows it's also Juan Carlos in other languages, for example in Norwegian, German, Dutch, Italian, French and Polish


----------



## Jasper90

ChrisZwolle said:


> A quick browse of European news shows it's also Juan Carlos in other languages, for example in Norwegian, German, Dutch, Italian, French and Polish


Sure, I mean... Re Giancarlo di Borbone wouldn't really sound nice :nuts:


----------



## g.spinoza

There's isn't really a rule. Juan Carlos stays the same in Italian, but Beatrice of Netherlands and Alberto of Monaco are italianized, just like Elizabeth II always goes "Elisabetta". Funny thing is her son Charles goes "Carlo" but her nephews grandsons remain "William" and "Henry", never "Guglielmo" and "Enrico"...


----------



## x-type

Road_UK said:


> I do believe he has a genuine interest in motorways, and he has never been nasty to anyone. We don't really know him. He might be a young kid, he might have mental problems. We just don't know.
> 
> I suggest, Chris, that you delete all these messages about him on here. We don't want to cause unnecessary damage. And we'll just continue to put up with him.


yeah, i have noticed that. i think that guy has the language barrier, so that's why his posts look annoying, he is using the same simple expression all the time (when will it be built?), but his intention is actually entering some conversation and discussion.

(i admit, few times i got annoyed by that, too).


----------



## Road_UK

Good point, I never thought of that. Perhaps I'll invite him for a drink at out Roadside Rest Area. He's genuine and deserves a chance to be one of us.


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> Good point, I never thought of that. Perhaps I'll invite him for a drink at out Roadside Rest Area. He's genuine and deserves a chance to be one of us.


Perhaps we should organize a SSC meeting and invite him 

There is a relative huge site in Slovakia devoted to public transport. It also attracts fellows like himself. Once there has been similarly annoying user. At one meeting, we have figured out it was 8 years old kid :cheers:


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> There's isn't really a rule. Juan Carlos stays the same in Italian, but Beatrice of Netherlands and Alberto of Monaco are italianized, just like Elizabeth II always goes "Elisabetta". Funny thing is her son Charles goes "Carlo" but their nephews remail "William" and "Henry", never "Guglielmo" and "Enrico"...


Their nephews? :shifty:



x-type said:


> yeah, i have noticed that. i think that guy has the language barrier, so that's why his posts look annoying, he is using the same simple expression all the time (when will it be built?)


Sometimes he has quite a rich vocabulary.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Good point, I never thought of that. Perhaps I'll invite him for a drink at out Roadside Rest Area. He's genuine and deserves a chance to be one of us.


Thank you for that pronouncement. 

(But is being one of us really a reward?)


----------



## Road_UK

Sorry, sometimes I speak multiple. One of me. Better?


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> Perhaps we should organize a SSC meeting and invite him
> 
> There is a relative huge site in Slovakia devoted to public transport. It also attracts fellows like himself. Once there has been similarly annoying user. At one meeting, we have figured out it was 8 years old kid :cheers:


He very well might be. We just don't know. We need to know a bit more about him before we judge, bully and reject him.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Their nephews? :shifty:


Dammit, I knew I was gonna do this.
"Nephews" and "grandchildren" in Italian are translated to the same word "nipoti".


----------



## cinxxx

^^in Romanian the same


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> ^^in Romanian the same


It is obvious, Romanian and Italian language has common roots. And there existed the "Romanian empire" lol on the territory of current Italy, didn't it?


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> A quick browse of European news shows it's also Juan Carlos in other languages, for example in Norwegian, German, Dutch, Italian, French and Polish


Strange :nuts:. Here in Spain we call Queen Elizabeth II of the UK Isabel II...


----------



## Alex_ZR

volodaaaa said:


> I've just finished preparing for tomorrow classes. *The topic is clear: Bosnia and Hercegovina, Serbia and Montenegro.* Students are 16-17 yrs old, it is gonna be okay. Also finished writing two thesis reviews at faculty.


So, what do students in Slovakia know about these countries?

Talking about royal head names translation, in Serbian it used to be translated but this was abandoned about 50 years ago. Now we translate only names of the popes (John Paul II=Jovan Pavle II).


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Dammit, I knew I was gonna do this.
> "Nephews" and "grandchildren" in Italian are translated to the same word "nipoti".


Yes, but when's Italy going to restore its monarchy?


----------



## Road_UK

youtalkadimoneywetalkadikingordiqueen


----------



## volodaaaa

Natomasken said:


> "Usonian" which I kind of like.


:lol: I don't know why, but it somehow sounds extraterrestrial :lol: But yes, it is hard to define the demonym for US


----------



## Road_UK

Why don't you all keep quiet! I can't hear myself think!!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The term "Dutch" is also weird if you think about it. The Dutch live in the Netherlands and speak Dutch. In Dutch itself, there is no such word, the language is called "Nederlands" (Netherlandish) and people from the country are called "Nederlanders" (Netherlanders). Also, the Netherlands in Dutch is singular (Nederland). Kingdom of the Netherlands remains plural in Dutch though (Koninkrijk der Nederlanden), but that term is almost never used in daily life.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Step away from the keyboard....


----------



## Road_UK

Yeah Chris! Do as you're told!


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Those arrows were for you.


----------



## Road_UK

Too late 

You've upset our chef.


----------



## Attus

To "Dutch":
In Hungarian language there are some quite funny nation/country names.

"Holland" does not mean a country (neither the Netherlands, nor the real Holland), but it is an adjective and means the nation => "Dutch" in English.
"Hollandia" is the name of the country => "the Netherlands" in English.

"Francia" does not mean a country, but is an adjective for the nation => "French". 
"Franciaország" (literally "Frenchland") is the name of the country => "France"

"Portugál", too, is an adjective => "Portugues" while
"Portugália" is the name of the country => "Portugal"

The same for
"Brazil" => "Brazilian" and
"Brazília" => "Brazil"


----------



## Jasper90

^^ What about Italy and Italian? I remember Hungarian has a very strange name beginning with O, but I can't recall  Where does that come from?

As for The Netherlands, here in Italy the country is called "Paesi Bassi" (lit.: Low Countries). But we don't really have a word for Dutch, so we go for Olandese (from Holland).
I've heard "nederlandese" as a translation for Dutch, but it's rarely used.


----------



## Attus

^^ Actually Niederlanden means Low Countries.

Italian => Olasz
Italy => Olaszország ("Italianland")
No idea where this name comes from.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Italy is Włochy in Polish...


----------



## Jasper90

Attus said:


> ^^ Actually Niederlanden means Low Countries.
> 
> Italian => Olasz
> Italy => Olaszország ("Italianland")
> No idea where this name comes from.


I tried to look on Wiktionary, and this is what it says 

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/olasz


> From Serbo-Croatian Vlah (“Romanian”) (dialectal, "Italian", "Latin"), Vlasi pl, from Proto-Slavic *volxъ, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *walhaz, from Latin Volcae (“name of a Celtic tribe”). See also the doublet oláh.


So, we're really part of the Romanian empire!! :cheers:



ChrisZwolle said:


> Italy is Włochy in Polish...


Seems to me that they share the same origin!
Another funny name for Italy is in Vietnamese: Ý. Only one letter! :lol:
http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ý


----------



## Earthchild

And the southern part of Romania was named Wlachia or Walachia in the Middle Ages...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Jasper90 said:


> I tried to look on Wiktionary, and this is what it says
> 
> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/olasz
> 
> 
> So, we're really part of the Romanian empire!! :cheers:
> 
> 
> 
> Seems to me that they share the same origin!
> Another funny name for Italy is in Vietnamese: Ý. Only one letter! :lol:
> http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ý


walhaz? Interesting since both "Welsh" in English and "Waals" (Walloon) in Dutch are supposed to come from the same root...basically it meant "people who don't talk like us." Could this be another example of the same Germanic word?


----------



## CNGL

:rofl: at Ý.

I prefer those countries that are hard to spell, like Liechtenstein or Kyrgyzstan. Although the later isn't that hard to spell in Spanish (Kirgui(zi)stán).


----------



## Penn's Woods

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/announcement.php?f=813&a=1604


Blessed be the Name of the Moderators!


----------



## CNGL

My condolences for bogdymol .

This is a long established tradition on Spanish forums


----------



## volodaaaa

Last two weeks in high school as a teacher. I am so tired of those kids :lol: Never realized how difficult is to design an exam. 

Btw. bogdy - congrats :cheers:


----------



## cinxxx

Spiderman was in Tirana last week 


gratis bilder


----------



## Alex_ZR

Greece appeared on Google Street View. Shots are mostly from 2011.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> Notice how Cape Town is further away from e.g. Paris than Magadan is, although it looks much closer. Blame the Mercator projection.


It's fairly ridiculous that Google has opted for Mercator projection instead of equidistant one, which is (personally) more important in account of route planning. But yeah, it should probably require google earth interface


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I hope you'll be very happy together.

EDIT: Arrows for Road_UK, re France. I hate it when that happens.


----------



## Verso

Africa is scary.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> Africa is scary.


Because the reference parallel is not equator but +- 40°N.


----------



## piotr71

*Google Car in Portsmouth.*

Here is a short and, I am afraid, poorly recorded movie for those, who dream to become a Google Street View's drivers and find that job particularly fascinating. Personally, I would dare to say that such profession may have quickly turned into a very boring job...apparently after some time. On the beginning, yes, it could make many pretty happy


----------



## volodaaaa

Comparison of satellite images of Slovakia in 1950 and 2014. Some motorways are depicted as well:

http://komentare.sme.sk/c/7219724/ako-sa-meni-slovensko.html

Just click and drag the divider between BW image from 1950 and coloured image from 2014


----------



## g.spinoza

I seriously doubt there were satellites in 1950...


----------



## CNGL

volodaaaa said:


> Comparison of satellite images of Slovakia in 1950 and 2014. Some motorways are depicted as well:
> 
> http://komentare.sme.sk/c/7219724/ako-sa-meni-slovensko.html
> 
> Just click and drag the divider between BW image from 1950 and coloured image from 2014


Sputnik wasn't launched until 1956 . So the imagery from 1950 was definitely taken from airplanes.


----------



## volodaaaa

Yeah, I meant aerial images...


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> Africa is scary.


Africa is big. Very big.


----------



## bogdymol

Traffic in Wien sucks big time right now. 1h15m to get from A21 (west) to A4 (east).


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> Traffic in Wien sucks big time right now. 1h15m to get from A21 (west) to A4 (east).


traffic in Wien always sucks. if it is not crowded, then you must drive 80 on empty wide motorways in the middle of the night hno:


----------



## bogdymol

80 was just a dream today...


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> 80 was just a dream today...


i know. i wrote in the middle of the night.


----------



## Road_UK

Um...

Verso?


----------



## Verso

Um...

yes?


----------



## Road_UK

You live in Jakarta now?


----------



## Verso

That was just a joke, I'm not in Jakarta.


----------



## volodaaaa

Four 14-15 yrs old girls have died today in accident on D1 motorway in Slovakia near Piešťany. 

The bus were reported to rolled off the carriageway, probably due to drowsiness of the driver. According to the trajectory, after having woken up, driver tried to get back to the road , but unfortunately, the slope near road was too steep and thus, the bus turned over. People in respective discussions are asking why there were not crash barrier installed.

Bus were full of high school students getting back from school trip at the end of the semester.


----------



## Penn's Woods

E-mail of the Day:

(From a co-worker on her way to the beach):

"SUBJECT: Dumb question.

"Is fast lane left or right?"

icard:

No, I'm not making this up. At least (she claims) she wasn't behind the wheel at the time. And she wasn't born in the U.S. and didn't learn to drive here, so it's not our fault.


----------



## riiga

I have a 10 € and a 20 € note left over from my trip to the Netherlands last year. That's all the euro I have. :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

Very interesting topic has been brought up in Slovak newspaper after the two tragic accidents, that happened past 5 days.

First, there was a crashed school bus led by driver with drowsiness. The bus rolled off the carriageway and fall into ditch due to lack of the crash barriers. Four fresh 18 yrs adults died there. Some people angrily remarked that if there had been a crash barriers and mandatory seat belts in bus, no one would have died.

Second, last night a tragic accident occurred on the same motorway. The driver of polish truck had fell asleep and similarly rolled off the carriageway but in contrast with aforementioned case, crash barriers were present here. The truck hit the barriers and was bounced back to the motorway, smashing some vehicles and the divider barriers. The trailer flew over the divider crash barriers and hit the cars in opposite direction. Horrible accident and it is a miracle that the only passed away person was the driver of the truck. 

Now there is a question, are crash barriers good or not on motorways?

Furthermore, there was a bus crash test in media, showing that two-point seat belts usually installed in buses may hurt even more, since even in crash at small speed, the upper and lower parts of the body comes apart.


----------



## Fatfield

italystf said:


> You mean FRG (West Germany), not GDR (East Germany).


Aye, them as well. :doh:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> ^^In euro currency zone people usually do not check the coins they get. Of course every euro and eurocent coins are valid in the whole area of the zone but it may be interesting to see what you have.
> Currently I have 8 coins (not counting the great amount of 1 and 2 cent coins which are stored in a little box).
> - 1 from Fance
> - 1 from the Netherlands
> - 2 from Belgium
> - 1 from Austria
> - 2 from Germany
> - 1 from I don't know which country (but surely not Germany)
> And I live in Germany and I'm quite sure I got all of them here in Germany.


Well I have, somewhere, Continental coins from back when Continental coinage was actually interesting.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Very interesting topic has been brought up in Slovak newspaper after the two tragic accidents, that happened past 5 days.
> 
> First, there was a crashed school bus led by driver with drowsiness. The bus rolled off the carriageway and fall into ditch due to lack of the crash barriers. Four fresh 18 yrs adults died there. Some people angrily remarked that if there had been a crash barriers and mandatory seat belts in bus, no one would have died.
> 
> Second, last night a tragic accident occurred on the same motorway. The driver of polish truck had fell asleep and similarly rolled off the carriageway but in contrast with aforementioned case, crash barriers were present here. The truck hit the barriers and was bounced back to the motorway, smashing some vehicles and the divider barriers. The trailer flew over the divider crash barriers and hit the cars in opposite direction. Horrible accident and it is a miracle that the only passed away person was the driver of the truck.
> 
> Now there is a question, are crash barriers good or not on motorways?
> 
> Furthermore, there was a bus crash test in media, showing that two-point seat belts usually installed in buses may hurt even more, since even in crash at small speed, the upper and lower parts of the body comes apart.


I see another issue here besides crash barriers....


----------



## Skyline_

Grammar police FTW!


----------



## volodaaaa

Skyline_ said:


> Grammar police FTW!


I think Penn's only pointed the primary reason of accident out  Namely the neglected rest on road.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Attus said:


> ^^In euro currency zone people usually do not check the coins they get. Of course every euro and eurocent coins are valid in the whole area of the zone but it may be interesting to see what you have.
> Currently I have 8 coins (not counting the great amount of 1 and 2 cent coins which are stored in a little box).
> - 1 from Fance
> - 1 from the Netherlands
> - 2 from Belgium
> - 1 from Austria
> - 2 from Germany
> *- 1 from I don't know which country (but surely not Germany)*
> And I live in Germany and I'm quite sure I got all of them here in Germany.


Is this possible in the Internet era? hno:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Exactly. I never correct non-native speakers' English unless I'm asked (I hope). Or unless I know them (even virtually) well enough to feel they'd appreciate it in that instance. Or unless they've been rude to me and I'm not in the mood.

40 years of studying French and I'm still not at the level that some of you all are at in English and I envy that.

EDIT: Arrows for volodaaaaaaa


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Exactly. I never correct non-native speakers' English unless I'm asked (I hope). Or unless I know them (even virtually) well enough to feel they'd appreciate it in that instance. Or unless they've been rude to me and I'm not in the mood.
> 
> 40 years of studying French and I'm still not at the level that some of you all are at in English and I envy that.
> 
> EDIT: Arrows for volodaaaaaaa


I think this forum gives me much more than tens of English teachers, so I don't consider grammar-nazi if a native speaker gives me a constructive criticism. I also try to do my best to write as much as possible flawless and use as natural as it is possible expression phrases, but sometimes I write in rush and therefore do mistakes.

Btw. English still belongs among the most easiest languages. Declination is very easy, tenses are comprehensible and there are only few exceptions comparing to other languages. The only thing I will never learn are phrasal verbs :lol: Once I've seen a American show - can't remember the name - and the people spoke only with words _take, get, put, come _with some prepositions. Understood nothing. So don't give up French.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Attus said:


> ^^In euro currency zone people usually do not check the coins they get. Of course every euro and eurocent coins are valid in the whole area of the zone but it may be interesting to see what you have.
> Currently I have 8 coins (not counting the great amount of 1 and 2 cent coins which are stored in a little box).
> - 1 from Fance
> - 1 from the Netherlands
> - 2 from Belgium
> - 1 from Austria
> - 2 from Germany
> - 1 from I don't know which country (but surely not Germany)
> And I live in Germany and I'm quite sure I got all of them here in Germany.


It's true people don't check. i only notice when It's a coin I've never seen before.
I rarely see any coins from Spain but I've seen many from Portugal wich is strange.

In my wallet:
Germany 2
Belgium 9
France 2
Italy 1
The Netherlands 1
Luxemburg 1


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^The only thing I've collected systematically recently is these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_State_Quarters

I dropped it when they ran out of states (and territories) and moved into national parks.


----------



## CNGL

Just discovered I had in my wallet a Greek €0.05 coin, which I had missing.

Out of the other 11 coins I have right now, I have the following:
5 Spanish coins
2 French
1 Belgian
1 German
1 Greek
1 Italian
And a French €10 note .

I see many Irish coins here, though.


----------



## cinxxx

I have:
- 1 Spanish 10 cent
- 1 Austrian 20 cent
- 1 German 50 cent
- 1 German 2€
- 1 French 2€


----------



## italystf

I currently have:

1€ Belgium
50c Italy
20c Italy
3x5c Austria
2c Italy
2x1c Italy

Throghout the years I found coins from every euro country, except Latvia that joined 5 months ago.


----------



## Penn's Woods

European coinage these days is sort of like European license plates.... :troll:


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> EDIT: Arrows for volod*aaaaaaa*


:lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^The A got stuck. :angel:


----------



## JackFrost

Penn's Woods said:


> European coinage these days is sort of like European license plates.... :troll:


C'mon, I admit I like American plates. Reason: they all look kind of unique.  And I also like that you dont need front plates in some states, f.e. in Pennsylvania, right? Btw something we should introduce in Europe, if you ask me...


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Pennsylvania is among the many states that don't require* front plates, but I have no idea why.

*In fact Pennsylvania doesn't even offer them, as far as I know, at least on passenger vehicles.


----------



## JackFrost

^^









Red: State requires both front and rear plates for passenger vehicles.
Blue: State requires only rear plate for passenger vehicles.
Purple: State requires front and rear plate for most, but not all passenger vehicles.


----------



## AsHalt

volodaaaa said:


> Very interesting topic has been brought up in Slovak newspaper after the two tragic accidents, that happened past 5 days.
> 
> First, there was a crashed school bus led by driver with drowsiness. The bus rolled off the carriageway and fall into ditch due to lack of the crash barriers. Four fresh 18 yrs adults died there. Some people angrily remarked that if there had been a crash barriers and mandatory seat belts in bus, no one would have died.
> 
> Second, last night a tragic accident occurred on the same motorway. The driver of polish truck had fell asleep and similarly rolled off the carriageway but in contrast with aforementioned case, crash barriers were present here. The truck hit the barriers and was bounced back to the motorway, smashing some vehicles and the divider barriers. The trailer flew over the divider crash barriers and hit the cars in opposite direction. Horrible accident and it is a miracle that the only passed away person was the driver of the truck.
> 
> Now there is a question, are crash barriers good or not on motorways?
> 
> Furthermore, there was a bus crash test in media, showing that two-point seat belts usually installed in buses may hurt even more, since even in crash at small speed, the upper and lower parts of the body comes apart.


The problem with seat belts on the buses is that the rider/passengers would they ACTUALLY wear em'.
In Singapore ,the LTA (Transport Authority) set a rule for all the private buses to have the belts and some of the seats on the public buses have em' 
But in the 2-3 years of the rule being implemented here ,I hardly see anyone use them belts


----------



## Verso

Jack_Frost said:


>


Which one is Pennsylvania?


:troll:


----------



## JackFrost

south of New York state


----------



## Attus

Alex_ZR said:


> Is this possible in the Internet era? hno:


I googled. It's Italian


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I was at a campsite in Sweden today, and there was a Finnish guy in front of me who spoke Swedish with the attendant. Surprisingly I could understand most of it, but it helps if you know the context.


----------



## Jasper90

Attus said:


> I googled. It's Italian


Our coins are tricky because there's a different design for every single value


----------



## Verso

Jack_Frost said:


> south of New York state


I know, I was just poking Penn's Woods.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Jasper90 said:


> Our coins are tricky because there's a different design for every single value


As well as Austrian, Greek, San Marinese, Slovenian coins. 
I've noticed that Slovenian coins are not dominant in Slovenia. Most seen coins in Slovenia are German, Austrian and Italian. Slovenian coins must gone abroad.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Which one is Pennsylvania?
> 
> 
> :troll:


It's one that's several times the size of Slovenia.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Alex_ZR said:


> ...Slovenian coins must gone abroad.


Well, if you were in Slovenia, wouldn't you go abroad? 

Joke, Verso! :cheers:


----------



## Spookvlieger

Big fail on the N3 Bypass of my town: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10201342696047660&fref=nf
That brigde is probably 60 years old and carries a railwayline into the city.


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> It's one that's several times the size of Slovenia.


Pennslovenia? :troll:



Alex_ZR said:


> I've noticed that Slovenian coins are not dominant in Slovenia. Most seen coins in Slovenia are German, Austrian and Italian. Slovenian coins must gone abroad.


I have plenty of Slovenian coins in my wallet.  SLO, I, D, A coins are most common here.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> Pennslovenia? :troll:
> 
> I have plenty of Slovenian coins in my wallet.  SLO, I, D, A coins are most common here.


Apart from Slovak coins, I have predominantly German, French and Irish ones.


----------



## volodaaaa

joshsam said:


> Big fail on the N3 Bypass of my town: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10201342696047660&fref=nf
> That brigde is probably 60 years old and carries a railwayline into the city.


I love those doubled vowels


----------



## Penn's Woods

I'm now having a craving for a caipirinha.

Just thought I'd put it out there....


----------



## CNGL

Some days ago I had a Slovenian coin too. They are rare here. Apart from Spanish coins, French, German and Italian ones are common in my area. And by next year Andorran coins won't be too hard to catch .


----------



## Verso

Slovakia's been in the Eurozone for 5.5 years and I've seen only one Slovak euro coin so far (and it's not far away either).


----------



## Kanadzie

Jack_Frost said:


> C'mon, I admit I like American plates. Reason: they all look kind of unique.  And I also like that you dont need front plates in some states, f.e. in Pennsylvania, right? Btw something we should introduce in Europe, if you ask me...


I am very happy to have no front plate rule where I live... on my European-made Mercedes there isn't even a place on the car to put it. I guess front-plate is installed with some ugly bracket hno: My old Saab though has a nice place for it, so I put old European license plate there 



volodaaaa said:


> Now there is a question, are crash barriers good or not on motorways?


I prefer no barrier, and wide, depressed grassy median. I think it is safest. But as for bus safety, stop taking bus to places, drive your car instead


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> Slovakia's been in the Eurozone for 5.5 years and I've seen only one Slovak euro coin so far (and it's not far away either).


I remember my visit in Slovenia in 2007. I was at the trip with classmates in Italy and we travelled through Slovenia. My desire to get Slovenian Euro coins was so strong, I stopped at the roadside rest area to purchase chewing gums. It added up to 0,60 €, but I paid by 50 € banknote just for sure. It worked out :lol:.

Btw. the code displayed on Euro banknotes says the country it was issued in too.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> I prefer no barrier, and wide, depressed grassy median. I think it is safest. But as for bus safety, stop taking bus to places, drive your car instead


Actually, I am afraid of buses. Safety development of passenger cars still goes on and new devices and systems are being invented and introduced to make a indestructible tank of car. But look at the buses. Except the design, it is still a fragile cartoon box. If I can't ride my car, I prefer trains more.


----------



## JackFrost

Kanadzie said:


> I am very happy to have no front plate rule where I live... on my European-made Mercedes there isn't even a place on the car to put it. I guess front-plate is installed with some ugly bracket hno: My old Saab though has a nice place for it, so I put old European license plate there


Lucky you. My car would definitely look better without front plate or bracket.


----------



## AsHalt

volodaaaa said:


> Actually, I am afraid of buses. Safety development of passenger cars still goes on and new devices and systems are being invented and introduced to make a indestructible tank of car. But look at the buses. Except the design, it is still a fragile cartoon box. If I can't ride my car, I prefer trains more.


I believe that they designed the buses to be a slow ass beast that carry 20 over ppl ,rather than a bullet speed express buses that goes 60kmh on the highway . In a accident that have the bus overturned the roof, simply crumples rather than supporting it like a car. Countries should really consider banning express buses routes up to 2-3 hours and recommands trains for journey more then that.


----------



## Skyline_

I am wondering if there is a connection between Pen-nsylvania and Tra-nsylvania.


----------



## volodaaaa

Skyline_ said:


> I am wondering if there is a connection between Pen-nsylvania and Tra-nsylvania.


The prefix is Trans-(s)ylvania, so better compare it with Penn-sylvania 

The prefixes "trans" and "cis" are more used in chemistry, but also in geography:
trans- is basically referring to something farther and
cis - is something closer.

Transdnistria, Transcarpathia, Cisleithania and Transleithania etc.


----------



## italystf

In Roman times there were Gallia Cisalpina (before the Alps, present-day northern Italy) and Gallia Transalpina (across the Alps, present-day France).


----------



## CNGL

The West Bank is known here as Cisjordan, and Jordan was formerly known as Transjordan.



volodaaaa said:


> Btw. the code displayed on Euro banknotes says the country it was issued in too.


And there is also a small code which says where it was printed. I know the Dutch printer (G in the 1st series) has printed notes for almost every damn country in Eurozone.

By the way, I've caught some rare notes. The rarest one I have is an Irish €100 note. I wonder how much is paid for one...


----------



## Alex_ZR

Skyline_ said:


> I am wondering if there is a connection between Pen-nsylvania and Tra-nsylvania.


silva, ae, f. - forest in Latin

Female name "Silvia" has the same root.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Skyline_ said:


> I am wondering if there is a connection between Pen-nsylvania and Tra-nsylvania.


The king of England who gave the land* to William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, named it after him. (Okay, that was a messy sentence, but I've played with it enough and I haven't had any caffeine yet. Grammar-naziing myself. ;-) )

Yours truly's user name is how it's usually translated.

"Trans" means across, so Transylvania = across the woods? My Latin's rusty.

*yes, no one asked the Indians....


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> "Trans" means across, so Transylvania = across the woods? My Latin's rusty.


Doesn't "across" mean "through"? Because "trans" in Latin conveys more the idea of "on the other side of".


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^You could describe a building as being "across the street" from the one you're in. No idea of "through" in that instance.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^You could describe a building as being "across the street" from the one you're in. No idea of "through" in that instance.


Right. Thanks for the clarification.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Here's a term that's new to me....:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubly_landlocked_country#Doubly_landlocked_country


----------



## cinxxx

What company would you recommend and what advises for renting a car in Portugal? I'm planning to fly there in a month. 

I have never rented a car before.

I will stay 10 nights, arriving after 23:00 in Porto, and departing from Faro at 16:00.
Should I consider renting multiple times, only for the days I know I will do longer trips or for the whole time? 

My driving plans would be:
1. Porto-Coimbra-Lisbon - 1 day
2. The Sintra park area and Cabo da Roca - 1 day
3. Lisbon to south coast, then drive along the coast to some destinations and tot the airport - 4 days

Last 2 I could plan to have 5 consecutive days...


----------



## Penn's Woods

So have our Dutch friends already broken out the jenever? (Or is it genever?)


----------



## keokiracer

It's jenever 

And I don't drink alcohol so no


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Are there hooligans at American sports? It appears to me Americans have 1) more family friendly sports and 2) have more varied sports with large public interest. In Europe it's 90% soccer, the rest is niche market most of the times (except perhaps the Tour de France). Ice skating seems to be a Dutch thing.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Hooliganism doesn't seem to be anywhere near as widespread here as it apparently is in Europe. Things you read about like English football stadiums needing to keep the visiting fans separated from home ones - physically separated, I mean - or Italian teams playing to empty houses because there was trouble last time those teams played each other... seem inconceivable to me. Even in the most heated rivalries. I can't imagine Yankee Stadium needing to keep Red Sox fans in a separate section, for example.

(Now, people from outside Philadelphia like to bring up the time a football crowd here threw snowballs at Santa Claus, but that was 35 years ago and I wasn't there....)


----------



## Quilavoce

Alex_ZR said:


> silva, ae, f. - forest in Latin
> 
> Female name "Silvia" has the same root.


Silvia is not just a female name. Ask Berlusconi.


----------



## Penn's Woods

People take their kids to sports - baseball, (American) football, basketball, hockey...even soccer*, all the time. Never been to a hockey game myself (that's ice hockey, by the way...what's called "hockey" in, say, Belgium is "field hockey" here), but to plenty of the other four while I was growing up.

*If there are a "big four" sports, and I think there still are, soccer would be 5th now.


----------



## keokiracer

Quilavoce said:


> Silvia is not just a female name. Ask Berlusconi.


His name is SilviO, not SilviA


----------



## CNGL

Nice one Chris, you win. But we won all against you four years ago .


----------



## bogdymol

Greetings from München


----------



## keokiracer

CNGL said:


> Nice one Chris, you win. But we won all against you four years ago .


Today was revenge!


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^For everything since the 16th century, from the looks of it!


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> Hooliganism doesn't seem to be anywhere near as widespread here as it apparently is in Europe. Things you read about like English football stadiums needing to keep the visiting fans separated from home ones - physically separated, I mean - or Italian teams playing to empty houses because there was trouble last time those teams played each other... seem inconceivable to me. Even in the most heated rivalries. I can't imagine Yankee Stadium needing to keep Red Sox fans in a separate section, for example.
> 
> (Now, people from outside Philadelphia like to bring up the time a football crowd here threw snowballs at Santa Claus, but that was 35 years ago and I wasn't there....)


This is what I like on USA and Canada 

Btw. Ex-Yugoslav countries have a good tradition on hooligans :lol:





In Slovakia, football is definitely not a sport for families to watch. Vulgarisms, neonazis, hooligans, stupid people fighting etc. And there is nothing to watch either. Much favourable situation is in ice hockey. 

Only exception was the game against Italy in 2010 which attracted as much audience as ice hockey. I suspected that Italians and Slovaks changed they jerseys before the match possibly. Because in next game, Netherlands wiped their asses by us. :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa




----------



## italystf

:rofl:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Be nice, or they'll ban football/soccer discussion.

Besides, Belgium or the US will get them both in the end. 

Anyhow, relevant linguistic tidbit of the day:

http://m.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/why-we-call-soccer-soccer/372771/

(I'd forgotten that this was the derivation of "soccer." Someone just posted it in another forum.)


----------



## g.spinoza

Greetings from the top of Monte Palon (2965 m - 9728 feet)


----------



## Verso

We call football/soccer "nogomet", which means foot-throw. They used to call it "žogobrc" (ball-kick). Football would translate into "nogožog(a)".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm back from my week-long road trip in Scandinavia. I drove 4702 kilometers


----------



## Road_UK

Greetings from Normandy, France. I'll be here all week by the sea...


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm back from my week-long road trip in Scandinavia. I drove 4702 kilometers


Did you travel all the way to North Cape?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Greetings from my apartment.

But I'll be hitting the outlets later and maybe doing some grocery shopping on the way home.... :shrug:


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Did you travel all the way to North Cape?


That would be at least 6,000 km.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> Greetings from my apartment.
> 
> But I'll be hitting the outlets later and maybe doing some grocery shopping on the way home.... :shrug:


That will be at least 2 mi...


----------



## Broccolli

Verso said:


> We call football/soccer "nogomet", which means foot-throw. They used to call it "žogobrc" (ball-kick). Football would translate into "nogožog(a)".


Also _Fusbal_ is another word for soccer in Slovenia. It's more informal/slang word. I would say that it is the most commonly used word in everyday speech or in conversation among friends. 

I always say: "Dej gremo na fusbal"/"Let's go play some soccer" :lol:


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> We call football/soccer "nogomet", which means foot-throw. They used to call it "žogobrc" (ball-kick). Football would translate into "nogožog(a)".


you and we are rare nations that don't use some derivate of football for that sport


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> That will be at least 2 mi...


35, it says here: 
http://www.premiumoutlets.com/outlets/directions.asp?id=75



Broccolli said:


> Also _Fusbal_ is another word for soccer in Slovenia. It's more informal/slang word. I would say that it is the most commonly used word in everyday speech or in conversation among friends.
> 
> I always say: "Dej gremo na fusbal"/"Let's go play some soccer" :lol:


You mean Verso misled us about Slovenian?!


----------



## Broccolli

Penn's Woods said:


> You mean Verso misled us about Slovenian?!


:yes:

maybe he forgot about this word..

How about that...


----------



## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> you and we are rare nations that don't use some derivate of football for that sport


Except apparently he was lying.
Of course, some nations use "football" for other sports.


----------



## Broccolli

...


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> you and we are rare nations that don't use some derivate of football for that sport


In Italian we call it "calcio", literally meaning "kick".


----------



## volodaaaa

Broccolli said:


> Also _Fusbal_ is another word for soccer in Slovenia. It's more informal/slang word. I would say that it is the most commonly used word in everyday speech or in conversation among friends.
> 
> I always say: "Dej gremo na fusbal"/"Let's go play some soccer" :lol:


And it is 'kopaná' (kickgame) in Czech language. Neverheless, it is 'futbal' in Slovak. Pronounced like football.


----------



## Broccolli

volodaaaa said:


> And it is 'kopaná' (kickgame) in Czech language. Neverheless, it is 'futbal' in Slovak. Pronounced like football.


Kopana interesting..how would you say in czech or slovak "Lets play some soccer"?..Pojďte na fotbal/kopanou? 
Fusbal (coming probably from german word Fußball), pronounced like Fussball.


----------



## volodaaaa

Broccolli said:


> Kopana interesting..how would you say in czech or slovak "Lets play some soccer"?..Pojďte na fotbal/kopanou?
> Fusbal (coming probably from german word Fußball), pronounced like Fussball.


Exactly  it is 'poďte na futbal' in Slovak. But much common is to say 'poďte si zaskopať' meaning 'let's have some kick'

We have futsal as well. It is football played in arena.


----------



## Broccolli

*Europe VS USA* :cheers:









Penn's Woods said:


> Of course, some nations use "football" for other sports.


----------



## Verso

Broccolli said:


> Also _Fusbal_ is another word for soccer in Slovenia. It's more informal/slang word. I would say that it is the most commonly used word in everyday speech or in conversation among friends.
> 
> I always say: "Dej gremo na fusbal"/"Let's go play some soccer" :lol:


I remember we had a game in primary school. We were in groups and we had to write down some sports. My group's leader wrote _fuzbal_ instead of _nogomet_ despite me telling him to write the proper word _nogomet_. It didn't count, of course. 



Penn's Woods said:


> You mean Verso misled us about Slovenian?!


No, _fuzbal_ is a slang word from German.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> I remember we had a game in primary school. We were in groups and we had to write down some sports. My group's leader wrote _fuzbal_ instead of _nogomet_ despite me telling him to write the proper word _nogomet_. It didn't count, of course.
> 
> No, _fuzbal_ is a slang word from German.



The suffix "-met" must have some common Slavic roots in this context. We do not use _nogomet_ or _rukomet_, but there are some common words in Czech or Slovak vocabulary like _svetlomet_ (low/high beam) or _plameňomet _(flame thrower) or _raketomet _(rocket launcher or bazooka), _gulomet_ (machine gun) atc. 

so I guess, the suffix "-met" has something with submitting, giving or throwing away.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> The suffix "-met" must have some common Slavic roots in this context. We do not use _nogomet_ or _rukomet_, but there are some common words in Czech or Slovak vocabulary like _svetlomet_ (low/high beam) or _plameňomet _(flame thrower) or _raketomet _(rocket launcher or bazooka), _gulomet_ (machine gun) atc.
> 
> so I guess, the suffix "-met" has something with submitting, giving or throwing away.


lesson of slavic languages: i don't have time now, but i bet that it has something with word "place", so место, място, miejsce, miesto, mesto, mjesto, místo... which you can transform into verb with meaning "to place, to stow". so, to place your foot (or leg literally translated) on something (the ball)


----------



## Verso

"Met" means a throw in Slovenian. Handball is called "rokomet", which means hand-throw. It's also used in slang for wanking.


----------



## Broccolli

Verso said:


> I remember we had a game in primary school. We were in groups and we had to write down some sports. My group's leader wrote _fuzbal_ instead of _nogomet_ despite me telling him to write the proper word _nogomet_. It didn't count, of course.
> 
> No, _fuzbal_ is a slang word from German.


_Fuzbal/Fusbal, Potayto/Potahto_. 




volodaaaa said:


> so I guess, the suffix "-met" has something with submitting, giving or throwing away.


Exactly!


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> "Met" means a throw in Slovenian. Handball is called "rokomet", which means hand-throw. It's also used in slang for wanking.


:lol: That's why it is called handjob :lol: I remember the holiday in Greece, it was about 2-3 years ago. There was a shop with souvenirs, and the announcement stating "buy 1 handjob and get second for free" :lol: Obviously, they mixed the handjobs with handmades up :lol:


----------



## Broccolli

Speaking of slavic words...i heard croatian word for bicycle, _"dvokotačno međunožno guralo"_  (don't know how much they use it today, x-type ?) they also use word _"Bicikl._"

In serbian is also called "Bicikl", in slovenian is called _"Kolo"_, in czech also _"Kolo"_ or _"Jízdní kolo"_ (i think,  correct me Volodaaaa if im wrong) in slovak _"Bicykel or Koleso"_


----------



## cinxxx

Booked plane tickets for a 9 day trip to Portugal starting in a month


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ You are busy travelling between work


----------



## volodaaaa

Broccolli said:


> Speaking of slavic words...i heard croatian word for bicycle, _"dvokotačno međunožno guralo"_  (don't know how much they use it today, x-type ?) they also use word _"Bicikl._"
> 
> In serbian is also called "Bicikl", in slovenian is called _"Kolo"_, in czech also "Kolo" (i think,  correct me Volodaaaa if im wrong) in slovak _"Bicykel or Koleso"_


It is _Bicykel_ in Slovak, but the notion of _bike _is also very spread amongst youngsters.

I write a scientific paper in English about commuting with a Serbian colleague. First time I've been really surprised that he completely omitted the word "commuter" in his part of the draft. He put the descriptive collocation "the one who regularly travels to work" instead. So I opened the google translate and translate word "commuter" from English to Serbian. It seems there is no word derived for that in Serbian language, because it translates it as "онај који редовно путује на посао возом", what means "the one who regularly travels to work by train"


----------



## Jasper90

Broccolli said:


> Speaking of slavic words...i heard croatian word for bicycle, "dvokotačno međunožno guralo"  (don't know how much they use it today, x-type ?) they also use word "Bicikl."


Omg that's sooooo long to say! Couldn't they shorten it? Maybe something like "dvomeralo" 
Btw, is dvo = two?



volodaaaa said:


> I write a scientific paper in English about commuting with a Serbian colleague. First time I've been really surprised that he completely omitted the word "commuter" in his part of the draft. He put the descriptive collocation "the one who regularly travels to work" instead. So I opened the google translate and translate word "commuter" from English to Serbian. It seems there is no word derived for that in Serbian language, because it translates it as "онај који редовно путује на посао возом", what means "the one who regularly travels to work by train"


The Italian word for commuter is "pendolare", because these guys go back and forth like a pendulum


----------



## Broccolli

Jasper90 said:


> Omg that's sooooo long to say! Couldn't they shorten it? Maybe something like "dvomeralo"


Nope dont think so.. it literally means two wheels, between legs vehicle :lol:





Jasper90 said:


> Btw, is dvo = two?


Yes it means _two_ or _double_..


----------



## Verso

"Dvokotačno međunožno guralo" would translate as "two-wheel between-leg pusher". 


Commuter is "vozač" in Slovenian (don't mistake for "voznik", which means a driver).


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> "Dvokotačno međunožno guralo" would translate as "two-wheel between-leg pusher". .


You know that joke:

A bunch of nuns is riding a bicycle through forest. After a while, the main one tells the others: "All right girls, enough pleasure, put your seats back on".
reach:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Go out for a few hours and Slavic breaks out....

I could have bought an orange T-shirt that said KNVB on it, had I been so inclined (and I bet I'd have been the only one in the store who knew what it meant). But I didn't. :cheers:


----------



## x-type

Jasper90 said:


> Omg that's sooooo long to say! Couldn't they shorten it? Maybe something like "dvomeralo"


 it's only a joke, we don't say that. We say bicikl.


----------



## bogdymol

One advice: never accept a ride from cinxxx on the Autobahn. He has quite a heavy right foot.


----------



## cinxxx

You do remember the car overtaking us, right? :lol:


----------



## hofburg

there is a chance that car was a Porsche or something similar


----------



## cinxxx

^^Either that or a BMW. It was doing at least 250 km/h...
The engine was also roaring very loud.

PS

gratis bilder hochladen


----------



## cinxxx

The Dalmatian riviera is very beautiful 


HR_60943/60944 von cinxxx auf Flickr


----------



## Skyline_

cinxxx said:


> ^^Either that or a BMW. It was doing at least 250 km/h...
> The engine was also roaring very loud.
> 
> PS
> 
> gratis bilder hochladen



Overtaking another car, while travelling at 250 km/h is no big deal these days...

Overtaking at 340 km/h on the other hand........ :cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

Finally, a new president was appointed today. I am still little doubtful towards him, but it is much much much better than the previous one, who was elected in two 5-years long terms. Andrej Kiska, our new president is the first independent president in Slovakia ever. Hope, he will fulfil his promises.

The leaving one, Ivan Gasparovic, probably suffers of Alzhaimer and had some popular bloops. I tried to translate some remarkable ones to illustrate, how stupid our previous president of 10 years was:

1. I will respond by * two* words: Yes, you are right.
2. Are you illiterate? It is noted in the law by *white on black*! (response to reporter's question about some law).
3. They could have had fun. But the *fun* will be different. It will be *sadness*. (official reaction on Slovak army plane crash flying from Kosovo to Slovakia, where 43 soldiers died). 
4. I was on about *400 days* long trip around Slovakia, which is almost *one year*.
5. Let me open this year Peace marathon by saying the ordinary proverb: Honour to the *Winners*, Glory to the *Losers*. :lol::lol:
6. We have to discuss some questions leading to the stabilization of Western Balcony... .... ehrmm... Balkan. (sk. Balcony = _Balkón_, Balkan = _Balkán_)
7. I've had a great time on *Serbian seaside* :lol:
8. _Organizácia spojených nádorov.... názorov.... ehm národov_ (literally: The United Tumours... Opinions.... Nations)
9. According to the Treaty of *Libanon* :lol:
10. The new pope,* Dominik XIV*. 
11. On the other hand I think, that Slovakia sometimes unfortunately, but sometimes it is fortunately, that unfortunately, that there is still cheap labour force in Slovakia and it is fortunately cheaper in past years. :grandpa:
12. The respective article is not against the Constitution! It collides only with three articles thereof. :applause:

He is gone since today. Fortunately, that unfortunately fortunately :lol:


----------



## italystf

It would take a long time to translate in English the Berlusconi's compilation but it would be funny. :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> It would take a long time to translate in English the Berlusconi's compilation but it would be funny. :lol:


Berlusconi has moreover very legible body language :lol:


----------



## italystf

Silvio Berlusconi best quotations:

- After 9/11: "We must be proud of our civility superior to Arabians."
- 2003, to the German politician Martin Shultz: "In Italy we are making a film about nazi concentration camps, you're suitable to the role of kapo."
-"In Italy people make jokes about the holocaust because we can joke about tragedies to overcome them."
- During Iraqi war: "Mussolini, unlikely Saddam Hussein, never killed anybody, just sent people on holiday at the confino." (The "confino" was a punishment in which political prisoners, during fascism, were sent to live in remote places (islands or mountains) in inhumane conditions.
- "Italian judges are mentally disturbed."
- "I adopted my playboy abilities to persuade the Finnish PM Tarja Halonen to settle the European Food safety Authority in Parma instead of Helsinki. In fact Parma ham isn't even comparable with Finnish smoked reindeer."
- "You should read the Black Book of Communism. Communists didn't eat children, they boiled them to fertilize fields."
- "People say bad things on me, even that I'm like that Argentinian dictator who killed his oppositors by taking them in a plane with a ball and opened the door and told them to go outside and play football." It's a reference to the desaparecidos tragedy in the 1970s and 1980s, when political oppositors were dumped in the ocean by planes.
- "Barrack Obama is young, handsome and suntanned." (Suntanned is also a racist American slang for black).
- "Judges are politicized and are the cancer of our democracy."
- "Italy is a shitty country."
- "Angela Markel is an unfuckable lard-arse."
- "Italian judges are like East German secret police."
- To Obama: "In Italy we have the dictatorship of leftist judges."
- "Germans still deny the holocaust."
- "I never paid for sex."
- "To save our economy we should print more money."
- "Vittorio Mangano* was an hero." *a guy convicted for mafia crimes
- To refugees of 2009 L'Aquila eartquake living in camps: "Imagine you were on holiday in a camping."


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Silvio Berlusconi best quotations:
> 
> - "To save our economy we should print more money."


----------



## keokiracer

That reminds me of the USA-discussion on whether or not to print the one trillion dollar coin icard:


----------



## Kanadzie

I think I like this Slovak president 

We had in Canada prime minster though the 90's that had a lot of stupid quotes, but everyone just laughed 
in regards to Iraq "weapons of mass destruction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX6XMIldkRU


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Feh. His French was almost as bad as his English. :jk:

(George Bush, Jr.'s, English, on the other hand...)


----------



## Kanadzie

Hehe, we used to joke he had "two second languages" :lol: (really, francophone Canadians had just as much fun as the anglos)


----------



## Road_UK

Greetings from Jersey. It's good to be back in the UK. Back in France tonight...


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Technically, Jersey isn't the U.K. 

(No, this isn't an it-really-ought-to-belong-to-someone-else thing... it's a Crown Dependency or some such without representation in Parliament and so on. You are back in the British Empire. Such as it is.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Positive Stereotype of the Day: Americans are too honest!

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/s...nesty-may-not-be-the-best-policy.html?hp&_r=0

Also, someone posted this on another forum:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur5fGSBsfq8

Haven't actually watched past the beginning yet, but it's Monty Python. How bad can it be?


----------



## Skyline_

Too honest? WTF is that supposed to mean?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Read it.

(A minute after I post, you're already reacting?)


----------



## Skyline_

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Read it.
> 
> (A minute after I post, you're already reacting?)


Yeah 'cos some phrases don't sound right....

You can't bee "too" honest. hno:
Honesty is like pregnancy.... You either ARE or AREN'T. There is no in-between! :cheers:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Did you read it?

Fine. Since you'd rather jump on every post of mine (you do, lately...):

The point of the story was that "play-acting" - exaggerating how hurt or offended you are by the other side's moves, in order to influence the referee's decisions - is an accepted technique in high-level international soccer. Sorry, football. And that the American team falls short in this. Hence "not dishonest enough." (The headline in the print edition of the article was along those lines.) In other words, if you'll allow me to be a bit tongue-in-cheek, "too honest."

EDIT: Besides, the idea that it's not possible to be too honest is just not true. Do you go through life telling everyone exactly what you think of them? (Maybe you do...)


----------



## Verso

Does anyone know how to edit a picture in Paint without it worsening its quality? So annoying. Does it happen only with small pics?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Use Paint.net, much more options and you can set the quality when saving.

Paint is as antiquated as Windows 95.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> Does anyone know how to edit a picture in Paint without it worsening its quality? So annoying. Does it happen only with small pics?


What kind of graphics do you work with? If you talk about quality, aren't you think about vector graphic?



ChrisZwolle said:


> Use Paint.net, much more options and you can set the quality when saving.
> 
> Paint is as antiquated as Windows 95.


Actually, I have opened the Paint in my Win 7 and was pretty surprised :lol: It is not photoshop, but good enough to e.g. crop images.


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Use Paint.net, much more options and you can set the quality when saving.


This? What can I do with this?


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> What kind of graphics do you work with? If you talk about quality, aren't you think about vector graphic?


I don't know, a picture just gets worse after I cut a part of it. Maybe because it's a small picture, I don't know.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> This? What can I do with this?


troller

this: http://www.getpaint.net/


----------



## cinxxx

You can also use Microsoft's Photo Gallery from the Live Suite. It's free.
Or IrfanView, or Picasa...

For more control and options, Adobe Lightroom is great


----------



## volodaaaa

Funny story I have to share with you.

Last year, I have decided to send an English paper to CCC indexed journal in Czech republic. Last week I got two reviews, one written in Slovak language, where reviewer refused to publish my paper and tried to bring me down and the one in English from polite reviewer (abroad) who recommended to publish my paper with minor changes. Nevertheless, the editorial board decided not to publish my paper. Was little bit disappointed, so I complained to my colleague.

He told me to avoid Slovak reviewers and to send the paper to completely foreign country as he had done (Great Britain). Today, he got two reviews.... both negative.....in Slovak language: those crazy scientists in Great Britain decided according to the residence of my colleague to sent the paper to review to Slovak scientists  What a boomerang  Mafia octopus is all around the world.


----------



## Penn's Woods

I predict a U.S.-Belgium final.

:cheers:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Python on soccer. Or football.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur5fGSBsfq8


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Does anyone know how to edit a picture in Paint without it worsening its quality? So annoying. Does it happen only with small pics?


It depends on the format of the picture. Try saving in bmp, it should not alter its quality.


----------



## Penn's Woods

I just overheard a colleague talking on the phone about the best way to get from Zagreb to Ljubljana.... (I mean bus (coach) vs. train.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> I predict a U.S.-Belgium final.
> 
> :cheers:


And a Stella, or a Chimay Rouge, to the Belgians!

:cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

It has been long time since I wonder about this commercial

This is Czech version





This is Slovak one





The Romanian one





I understand that the commercials differ at the end to fit the slogan "The best of XX, the best of Europe".

But why *the hell there is a blonde instead of brunette in Romanian one*?


----------



## volodaaaa

Skyline_ said:


> Well, I don't think France is the most beautiful country in Europe. Why not? Because it's not my home country :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol: Home sweet home, right?


Yeah, i like FYROM too:troll::troll:


----------



## JackFrost

^^well, i`m not saying the US is the most beautiful country, but it certainly has everything compressed what nature has to offer in one place, which makes it quite unique 

oceans, lakes, rivers, deserts, woods, mountains, planes, swamps, arctic/tropic climate etc...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The U.S. is vast and very diverse. However, it's size means landscape is pretty montonous across large distances. For example the endless forests of the Southeast, or the prairies of the Midwest. 

I've read many tourists underestimate the size of Florida. Once you've entered the state on I-95 at Jacksonville, it's another 350 miles to Miami and 500 miles to Key West, which is similar to the distance from Richmond, VA to Jacksonville.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ convincing argument.... :nuts:


Well, since beauty's subjective, it's as good an argument as any.


----------



## cinxxx

Speaking of nice countries 
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjkiebus/reasons-studying-abroad-in-italy-ruins-you-for-life


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ These "XX reasons etc etc" became a - quite annoying - thing in no time.

I saw a "15 reasons to support Italy soccer team": 7 of them were "because players look better", the other 8 "because players look better in photos"


----------



## cinxxx

^^Maybe so.
For me, it just reminded me that I loved it to death in Italy every time and I can hardly wait to visit again


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ These "XX reasons etc etc" became a - quite annoying - thing in no time.
> 
> I saw a "15 reasons to support Italy soccer team": 7 of them were "because players look better", the other 8 "because players look better in photos"


We already know you find people who say nice things about Italy annoying, if not insincere.

Is there anything you're not negative and cynical about? I'm sorry to take you to task, but I actually find it a bit sad....

(Also, I have mayonnaise, but just a little, on most of my sandwiches. I mean, I know it wouldn't work with meatballs in meat sauce, but I never order that anyway. :cheers


----------



## Angelos

Guys there's no doubt the most beautiful country in Europe is Italy!


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> We already know you find people who say nice things about Italy annoying, if not insincere.
> 
> Is there anything you're not negative and cynical about? I'm sorry to take you to task, but I actually find it a bit sad....
> 
> (Also, I have mayonnaise, but just a little, on most of my sandwiches. I mean, I know it wouldn't work with meatballs in meat sauce, but I never order that anyway. :cheers


It's not about Italy this time, I mentioned the soccer team just because it was the last - and stupidest - I found online.
I don't like the "XX reasons" format: I think it's full of cliches, be it about Italy, Germany, of the US. What I don't like most is that they itemize 40 points, but all of them are basically the same.

About being cynical: why wouldn't I be? I prefer to be cynical and lower my expectations about people, just to be positively surprised, than be open, warm and friendly and then be disappointed.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Fair enough....


----------



## cinxxx

I think it's also a common thing for people to criticize and highlight the negatives of their country or city they live in and praise the positives of others, it happens to me too, regarding Romania 
And as a tourist you always tend to remember the positives, and classify the negatives as part of the experience...


----------



## Verso

Angelos said:


> Guys there's no doubt the most beautiful country in Europe is Italy!


Just don't drive from Gorizia to Torino.


----------



## Penn's Woods

cinxxx said:


> I think it's also a common thing for people to criticize and highlight the negatives of their country or city they live in and praise the positives of others, it happens to me too, regarding Romania
> And as a tourist you always tend to remember the positives, and classify the negatives as part of the experience...


In The Mikado, the Lord High Executioner makes a list of people who wouldn't be missed. Among them:

"the idiot who praises, in enthusiastic tone, every century but this and every country but his own."


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> In The Mikado, the Lord High Executioner makes a list of people who wouldn't be missed. Among them:
> 
> "the idiot who praises, in enthusiastic tone, every century but this and every country but his own."


This would mean that the present century, and your home country, can never be the worst one. Although improbable, it can happen. A 17th century guy from Nigeria could have said that and be no idiot...


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Well, they might be *right*; but no one would mind if they shut up about it.


----------



## Road_UK

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ Care to elaborate?
> 
> France is a very nice country, but seems like a difficult place to live if you don't speak good French.
> 
> Learning the local language is the key to success. For example, almost everybody in the Netherlands speaks English, however, if you want to migrate and want to get a job that pays more than around the minimum wage, you absolutely have to learn the language.


The newer generation in France speak English. And it's the same to be said with for example Germany. I don't mind learning French properly to live in this beautiful country. Went to visit Utah Beach today, they certainly made an effort....


----------



## Suburbanist

If you had the wrong looks in US, you needed this to take road trips to the hinterland well into the 1960s 










.








Source: teachingushistory.org

.

A later edition, from the 1950s already








From H Ford collection online


----------



## Kanadzie

I really like that last phrase, "there will come a day", well it did


----------



## italystf

It's really surprising now the word "negro", now derogatory, was commonly used in printed publications as late as in the 1950s (during Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks protests, few years before Kennedy presidency), in the same way we would write Afro-American today.
And this one doesn't even look like a racist publication, like it could be a KKK propaganda poster, but a text addressed to Afro-Americans to help them to "survive" in a openly racist society.

1776 Declaration of Independence:


> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.


Reality:
Slavery until the 1860s, Indian wars until the 1890s, racial segregation until the 1960s, homosexuality prosecuted in some states until 2003.hno:


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> The country of Montenegro.


That comes from Venetian language "black mountain". In Italian it would be "Montenero".


----------



## x-type

those racism things are really going over all limits. 
in 1990es they teached us at english lessons that negro was a proper word. what are black men called if negro insults them? and why they call each other with insulting terms, and when white men (or asians, however they are called, i am afraid not to insult them) call them the same, it is rasicm?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Two cute (well, I found them cute) articles from the New York Times on (1) Americans' sudden enthusiasm for soccer/football (actually, it happens every four years and lasts a month...or until elimination) and (2) what to call soccer/football:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/o...ctions-on-soccer-of-old.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/s...module=Recommendation&src=recg&pgtype=article


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> those racism things are really going over all limits.
> in 1990es they teached us at english lessons that negro was a proper word. what are black men called if negro insults them? and why they call each other with insulting terms, and when white men (or asians, however they are called, i am afraid not to insult them) call them the same, it is rasicm?


This accurately sums it up :lol:










Btw. I've never felt any kind of pride for being white. And never considered black people stupid. Those who live here (it is pretty rare) are very well educated. And the same goes for Asians. And my girl turns me on more if she is tanned in summer than snow white in winter.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Soccer is apparently the third most played sport in the U.S.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_in_the_United_States#Soccer

But U.S. soccer has more competition from other sports than in Europe, where it is by far the most popular sport.


----------



## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> those racism things are really going over all limits.
> in 1990es they teached us at english lessons that negro was a proper word. what are black men called if negro insults them? and why they call each other with insulting terms, and when white men (or asians, however they are called, i am afraid not to insult them) call them the same, it is rasicm?


That's how language works: "gay" used to mean happy; now it doesn't. (Well, it could, but...) Words come with nuances and connotations, not just their basic meanings. Since even basic meanings aren't "intrinsic" to a particular combination of letters or sounds (if they were, we'd all speak the same language all over the planet and throughout history) - they're a function of what meaning a given population gives to that combination. I quoted the Mikado the other day...in the same song there's a use of 'the N word" that was acceptable in England in the 1880s when it was written but that modern producers have to change. (Where it goes too far, in my opinion, is when Schools ban Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn because of the now-unacceptable language rather than retaining them for their overall merit and taking the opportunity to explain this.)

And the phenomenon of members of a group getting to use words to each other that outsiders can't isn't limited to American blacks.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Soccer is apparently the third most played sport in the U.S.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_in_the_United_States#Soccer
> 
> But U.S. soccer has more competition from other sports than in Europe, where it is by far the most popular sport.


It has yet to catch on, really, as a professional-level spectator sport. There was the NASL in the 70s (I've personally seen Pele and Beckenbauer play for the New York Cosmos), but it disappeared. Now there's MLS.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> And the phenomenon of members of a group getting to use words to each other that outsiders can't isn't limited to American blacks.


Well, it is fully acceptable to hit your friend on the back and call him a ****** in the pub. But try this with your boss on meeting :colbert:


----------



## Jasper90

Negro and Negri are very common surnames in Italy. I didn't know the candies were called after the Italian surname! :cheers:

And I simply love them :drool: I've recently tasted the blue version too, but they're not as good as the black ones.

Btw, what about the countries Niger and Nigeria? The word niger, *****, nigrum is Latin for black


----------



## volodaaaa

I always wonder about the surnames, since their introduction had to be influenced by some reasonable traits of the ancestors. 

Btw. "Black" and its translations are perhaps ones of the most surnames in every country. But why could someone be black according to the traits? "Whites" are not that common.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Because black - or I guess dark-complexioned - people would have stood out more in most of Europe? Just a guess. Calling someone "John the Black" would have been as specific in a small village as "John the Tailor" or "John the Candle-maker." Calling someone "John the White" would be pointless if there were a bunch of people that could mean.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> I always wonder about the surnames, since their introduction had to be influenced by some reasonable traits of the ancestors.
> 
> Btw. "Black" and its translations are perhaps ones of the most surnames in every country. But why could someone be black according to the traits? "Whites" are not that common.


"Bianchi" or "Bianco" in Italy is a very common surname, as is "Blanc" in French or "Blanco" in Spain, maybe even more.


----------



## Jasper90

volodaaaa said:


> I always wonder about the surnames, since their introduction had to be influenced by some reasonable traits of the ancestors.
> 
> Btw. "Black" and its translations are perhaps ones of the most surnames in every country. But why could someone be black according to the traits? "Whites" are not that common.





g.spinoza said:


> "Bianchi" or "Bianco" in Italy is a very common surname, as is "Blanc" in French or "Blanco" in Spain, maybe even more.


Sure, even though the most common surname in Italy is Rossi (meaning "reds") :lol:


----------



## MattiG

*Summer Solstice*

Midsomer Eve. Sunset at 23:03. Sunrise at 03:42.


----------



## g.spinoza

MattiG said:


> Midsomer Eve. Sunset at 23:03. Sunrise at 03:42.


Impressive.
One of my coworkers is in Svalbard now with midnight sun and all.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I was in Norway last week, where the sun does set for about 4 - 4.5 hours, but it doesn't get really dark at night. I could read a book at 2 a.m. without a light.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MattiG said:


> Midsomer Eve. Sunset at 23:03. Sunrise at 03:42.


I'm jealous. Latest we get at this latitude is about 8:33 p.m. (On the other hand, the earliest sunsets we get in December are at about 4:33.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I was in Norway last week, where the sun does set for about 4 - 4.5 hours, but it doesn't get really dark at night. I could read a book at 2 a.m. without a light.


On the night of the European elections, the BBC had someone talking from Aberdeen, at about 11:15 British time and the sky outside the studio behind him (assuming that was real and live) was still fairly light.


----------



## Fatfield

^^

That will be about right but bare in mind that the cameras will make it look lighter.

Todays sunset where I live is 21:48 but the twilight will last until about 23:00.


----------



## g.spinoza

g.spinoza said:


> Impressive.
> One of my coworkers is in Svalbard now with midnight sun and all.


He just wrote an email, stating that they're not allowed to leave their accomodation in Ny Ålesund without an armed escort, due to bears...


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> I think the sea doesn't freeze extensively due to the the last spur of the gulf stream: I'm pretty sure bears are resident there.


So theoretically the bears could be sterilized so in couple decades there are no more bears threatening the human population...


----------



## Jasper90

Suburbanist said:


> So theoretically the bears could be sterilized so in couple decades there are no more bears threatening the human population...


OMG no, not again!!! :lol:


----------



## Road_UK

piotr71 said:


> How did you know that? She looks like a Polish girl forced to beg on street by Irish travelers, doesn't she?


He doesn't. He thinks all beggars are gypsies. And he films them. Quite sick really... 

How come that the discussions on here always lead to gypsies anyway?


----------



## piotr71

Just too many East Europeans here. And maybe some of them are even undercover Gypsies  ... looking for a prey.


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> He doesn't. He thinks all beggars are gypsies. And he films them. Quite sick really...
> 
> How come that the discussions on here always lead to gypsies anyway?


Not always we could have discussed soccer and fahrenheit issues as well.

Btw. Theoretically, after today, we are leading back to winter


----------



## piotr71

*Beginning of a wedding party on the largest car park in the world *


----------



## volodaaaa

This FIFA WC is a bulldump. Who has apointed those refrees? Poor Bosnia:-(


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> This FIFA WC is a bulldump. Who has apointed those refrees? Poor Bosnia:-(


The vast majority of the games is decided by wrong decisions of referees. Yesterday we saw three games: the referee did not call penalty for Iran although he must have done it, and another referee cancelled Bosnian score although it was definitely not offside. 2 serious mistakes in three games. And it happens almost every day.
It's quite ridiculous.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Referees are humans as well. Perhaps there should be an option to appeal to a maximum number of dubious decisions by a referee.


----------



## JackFrost

^^still, at least when the mistakes are obvious, they should reset the score. Mistakes like this we saw yesterday are inacceptable on this level. I mean, all the effort, work and money for nothing, just because the referee made a mistake...


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ Or use technology for situations that can be objectively measured, like goal-line technology (in use), off-side positioning (potential), balls out-of-bounds (very easy to implement, just a variation of goal-line).


----------



## volodaaaa

Jack_Frost said:


> ^^still, at least when the mistakes are obvious, they should reset the score. Mistakes like this we saw yesterday are inacceptable on this level. I mean, all the effort, work and money for nothing, just because the referee made a mistake...


I've seen Bosnia tomorrow. They performance got very low after that disputable situation. Nigeria played very well anyways.


----------



## Alex_ZR

volodaaaa said:


> I've seen Bosnia *tomorrow*. They performance got very low after that disputable situation. Nigeria played very well anyways.


You mean "yesterday"?


----------



## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> You mean "yesterday"?


Sure


----------



## Skyline_

g.spinoza said:


> Impressive.
> One of my coworkers is in Svalbard now with midnight sun and all.


The midnight sun is marvellous and outlandish! Can't wait to get back to Svalbard, even buy a house for summer holiday!:cheers:


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> Here in Southern Netherlands, for 35 days around the summer solstice it doesn't get completely dark at night. I don't know the exact astronomical explanation, but it is something like at this latitude, during these weeks, there is enough refraction on the atmosphere to prevent total darkness. The effect is not that strong, but noticeable for the attentive eye used to look up to the sky.
> 
> At Frankfurt latitude, though, this doesn't happen.


That is more an atmospheric phenomena than an astronomical one. And it depends on how you define the word "dark". 

The basic reason why there is such a thing as a twilight is that the atmosphere reflects the light of the Sun even when the Sun is below the horizon. The following way to define three degrees of twilight in a formal way is in a widespread use:

- Civil twilight occurs when the center of the Sun is up to 6 degrees below the horizon: One can rather well read and work without artificial light.

- Nautical twilight occurs when the center of the sun is 6-12 degrees below the horizon: The horizon is still visible at sea, and the brightest stars appear. Thus, the measurements by a sextant are possible.

- Astronomical twilight occurs when the center of the Sun is 12-18 degrees below the horizon: For most people, this period is dark, but for the astronomers not because all the stars are not yet visible.

The altitude (not corrected for refraction) of the center of the Sun at the solar midnight on the northern hemisphere is calculated as following:

Altitude = Latitude+Declination-90

The declination of the Sun varies roughly between -23.4 and +23.4 degrees during the year. In theory, the midnight Sun on the day of the summer solstice is visible between the latitude 66.6 (Arctic Circle) and the North Pole. However, the impact of refraction and the apparent size of the Sun is about 50 arc minutes, and the midnight Sun is visible as south as on the latitude 65.7 degrees.

On the same day, the civil twilight lasts all night long on the latitudes 60.6-65.7. Respectively, the solar midnight occurs at the nautical twilight on the latitudes 54.6-60.6, and at the astronomical twilight on the latitudes 48.6-54.6.

For example, the following are the hours of the Sun's movement visible in Helsinki this night (local time):

22:49 - Sunset
00:40 - End of civil twilight, nautical twilight begins
01:22 - Solar midnight
02:04 - End of nautical twilight, civil twilight begins
03:55 - Sunrise


----------



## Kanadzie

ChrisZwolle said:


> A typical trap in English language
> 
> Another frequent mistake is "payed" (when they mean paid).
> 
> Once I saw someone posting about a "knot-point". That is a very literal translation of Dutch "knooppunt" (interchange). :lol:


Ik niet spreek nederlands but I really really like the word "knooppunt", it feels more like it is than "interchange"...


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> So theoretically the bears could be sterilized so in couple decades there are no more bears threatening the human population...


Go tell the WWF.

By the way, greetings from construction sites-ridden Karlsruhe!


----------



## Surel

MattiG said:


> That is more an atmospheric phenomena than an astronomical one. And it depends on how you define the word "dark".
> 
> The basic reason why there is such a thing as a twilight is that the atmosphere reflects the light of the Sun even when the Sun is below the horizon. The following way to define three degrees of twilight in a formal way is in a widespread use:
> 
> - Civil twilight occurs when the center of the Sun is up to 6 degrees below the horizon: One can rather well read and work without artificial light.
> 
> - Nautical twilight occurs when the center of the sun is 6-12 degrees below the horizon: The horizon is still visible at sea, and the brightest stars appear. Thus, the measurements by a sextant are possible.
> 
> - Astronomical twilight occurs when the center of the Sun is 12-18 degrees below the horizon: For most people, this period is dark, but for the astronomers not because all the stars are not yet visible.
> 
> The altitude (not corrected for refraction) of the center of the Sun at the solar midnight on the northern hemisphere is calculated as following:
> 
> Altitude = Latitude+Declination-90
> 
> The declination of the Sun varies roughly between -23.4 and +23.4 degrees during the year. In theory, the midnight Sun on the day of the summer solstice is visible between the latitude 66.6 (Arctic Circle) and the North Pole. However, the impact of refraction and the apparent size of the Sun is about 50 arc minutes, and the midnight Sun is visible as south as on the latitude 65.7 degrees.
> 
> On the same day, the civil twilight lasts all night long on the latitudes 60.6-65.7. Respectively, the solar midnight occurs at the nautical twilight on the latitudes 54.6-60.6, and at the astronomical twilight on the latitudes 48.6-54.6.
> 
> For example, the following are the hours of the Sun's movement visible in Helsinki this night (local time):
> 
> 22:49 - Sunset
> 00:40 - End of civil twilight, nautical twilight begins
> 01:22 - Solar midnight
> 02:04 - End of nautical twilight, civil twilight begins
> 03:55 - Sunrise


I would also say that the phenomena is influenced by the closeness of the sea. More water, more evaporation, more water vapor in the atmosphere, more refraction.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Just back from an overnight stay at Mom's, where my wireless doesn't work. Did you have fun without me?  (I haven't read back yet...)

Nice game, soccer: you can take a nap in the middle of a match and not miss anything.


----------



## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> But really Penns, what is the proper word for black people?


In the U.S.: "black" or "African-American." (There was a bit of a campaign, on the part of some activists, 20-odd years ago to get people to say "African-American" instead of "black," but asking people to drop a one-syllable word and replace it with seven.... We're back into "language just doesn't work that way" territory. One of the ways it does work, on of the things it does do, is change. You really don't hear or see "negro" here any more, and even when I was younger (I'm 50 ) it sounded old-fashioned - only people older than me used it. Whether it's because it's too similar to "the other N-word" I don't know. No one says "colored" any more either. There are organizations called the United Negro College Fund and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People which have been in existence for a century or more and haven't "updated" their names, but apart from that....


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Listen, a stinky and loud white man is sitting in the bus. He is annoying and I ask him to leave the bus. Pretty much common situation, agreed?
> 
> Now imagine the similar situation - a stinky and loud Roma man is sitting in the bus. He is annoying and I ask him to leave the bus. Should I blame myself for being xenophobist or racist? It is completely ridiculous.
> 
> Me, personally, but majority of people from Eastern Europe as well, don't hate Roma people because they are Roma people. But hate certain individuals who behave very bad. If a Roma individual tries to fix the reputation and is raletively well educated and good behaved to apply for a job, he or she will surely get the same chance as the non-Roma individual.
> 
> There is no aparheid at all as some non-governmential organisations try to prove. I finished my job as a teacher yesterday and I had a bunch of non-white pupils: some Asians, one Muslim and two Romas.
> 
> If they were good, were given good marks, if not, were given bad marks as well as the others were. Am I racist? Should have I given them only good marks because they were different?
> 
> Because the Roma situation is pretty nebulous. If a society tries to treat them equally, it is racism, because they are different, you can't treat them similarly. Well ok then, society tries to treat them differently, but.... what hell do you think, it is racism! How can you treat them differently? Ok, treat them equally.... on and on...
> 
> What would you do, if a criminal Roma moved in next to you? Would you respect his "culture" and let him disturb your life or would you treat him as a regular citizen of United States and call for you rights given (I assume) by Constitution?
> 
> To be honest, Slovaks are shitty nation and I am totally aware it despite I have lot of friends and family amongst and fiancee as well. And I will never blame anyone who tell that Slovaks are lazy, rude, stupid and stealers. I would try to convince him/her they are not and would try to fix the reputation instead.


I was talking about the specific example of beating up someone you suspect of being a thief and leaving him for dead: if it's okay to do that when the suspect is Roma but not when he isn't, that's xenophobic. If beating up someone JUST because he's Roma whether he's committed a crime or not is okay, that's xenophobic. And if you tolerate or apologize those sorts of attitudes in your own societies while throwing the label "racist" or "xenophobic" at others, that's hypocrisy.

Treat people like people. Person commits a crime, punish him or her accordingly. Don't make special allowances for him OR make his punishment more severe because of his race or ethnicity or "culture." Don't ban them from your schools and refuse to hire them then blame them for not assimilating.... (What is this "criminal Roma moving next door" thing? If he's really a criminal, why isn't he in jail? If he's served his time, why can't he live wherever he wants. Unless you're prepared to check on the police records of even non-Roma potential neighbors.)


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> What is this "criminal Roma moving next door" thing? If he's really a criminal, why isn't he in jail?


Very good question... You don't even know what a good question you had.


----------



## nbcee

Penn's Woods said:


> I was talking about the specific example of beating up someone you suspect of being a thief and leaving him for dead: if it's okay to do that when the suspect is Roma but not when he isn't, that's xenophobic. If beating up someone JUST because he's Roma whether he's committed a crime or not is okay, that's xenophobic. And if you tolerate or apologize those sorts of attitudes in your own societies while throwing the label "racist" or "xenophobic" at others, that's hypocrisy.
> 
> Treat people like people. Person commits a crime, punish him or her accordingly. Don't make special allowances for him OR make his punishment more severe because of his race or ethnicity or "culture." Don't ban them from your schools and refuse to hire them then blame them for not assimilating.... (What is this "criminal Roma moving next door" thing? If he's really a criminal, why isn't he in jail? If he's served his time, why can't he live wherever he wants. Unless you're prepared to check on the police records of even non-Roma potential neighbors.)


This is a *very complex issue *and sadly many people fail to stay away from racist or semi-racist ideologies AND not to jump into some über-tolerant fact-ignoring BS at the same time. 

First of all the main problem is that the Roma are the biggest losers of the fall of socialism. Many of them were unskilled factory workers or miners - but those factories and mines were shut down, not to mention the collective farms which also used to employ them. That was a big blow and many of them still couldn't recover from it.

Like I mentioned before there are various Roma groups in Hungary. Those called _Romungro_s* or Hungarian-Roma are so well integrated into our society (rumour has it that _a certain high-ranking politician _also has some Roma blood in his veins  ) that sometimes you don't even notice that they are Roma. Sadly this is not the case with members from some other groups - ususally they are the ones you see in foreign reports. Now the question is that we should ask *both *from them and the rest of society: If many Roma people are assimilated then why isn't this the case with all of them?

What I want is a country where murdering 6 people just because they were Roma** cannot happen. But on the other hand I don't want to read about Roma people lynching and killing a non-Roma teacher*** or beating ambulance workers either. I don't want to see the far-right openly marching in the streets but I don't want to hear some "liberal" politician saying that a Romanian handball player kinda deserved being stabbed in the heart by a few Roma criminals**** because "_He must've said something racist_" either.

The sad thing is that even Western countries can't deal with this issue - and the lynching in France is a tragic sign of that.

*note that the term Romungro is sometimes used to describe children of Roma-non-Roma couples
**The murders were committed between 2008-2009 in the eastern parts of the country
***Happened in 2006 in the village of Olaszliszka
****Happened in 2009 in the town of Veszprém


----------



## MattiG

Surel said:


> I would also say that the phenomena is influenced by the closeness of the sea. More water, more evaporation, more water vapor in the atmosphere, more refraction.


It is not that straightforward. The twilight is not based on atmospheric refraction (=light deviates from the straight line because of travelling through several air layers of different density) but on reflection of the light at the upper layers of the atmosphere. The darkest periods of the twilight are caused by the light scattering at the altitudes the water vapor cannot reach.

The rays reflected over the sea may hit the ground 1000+ kilometers away.

Some of the rays may be a result from multiple reflections (air then ground the air then ground then air etc). The reflexivity of the ground is much bigger that that of the sea. This compensates the increased refraction at the sea.

The local weather has the strongest impact on the phenomena: The thicker the clouds are, the darker it is.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> I was talking about the specific example of beating up someone you suspect of being a thief and leaving him for dead: if it's okay to do that when the suspect is Roma but not when he isn't, that's xenophobic. If beating up someone JUST because he's Roma whether he's committed a crime or not is okay, that's xenophobic. And if you tolerate or apologize those sorts of attitudes in your own societies while throwing the label "racist" or "xenophobic" at others, that's hypocrisy.
> 
> Treat people like people. Person commits a crime, punish him or her accordingly. Don't make special allowances for him OR make his punishment more severe because of his race or ethnicity or "culture." Don't ban them from your schools and refuse to hire them then blame them for not assimilating.... (What is this "criminal Roma moving next door" thing? If he's really a criminal, why isn't he in jail? If he's served his time, why can't he live wherever he wants. Unless you're prepared to check on the police records of even non-Roma potential neighbors.)


Okay, we are in "Highways and Autobahns section". So imagine an unexpected sharp curve on motorway. Every second driver crashes a car there. What would you do? Of course you would put a sign "warning! sharp curve ahead" there. But it actually means, that you don't believe in other drievers' skills. But the experience told you, the half of the drives is not responsible. We can say your statement is prejudice. 

And now, transform this issue to the people. You have a group of people, the majority of which is irresponsible, weak educated, criminals, stealers, etc. Somewhere inside you would not believe in them too.

I must admit that I am suspicious against Roma people somewhere inside me and I am not proud of it. But experiences are experiences. However I don't consider myself racist, because I *always give them a chance*. And it predominantly worked out.

People are getting more and more angry, because they have to work hard to pay back their loans for living and this minority is given everything for free. Moreover they destroy everything (of course I am angry, it was built from the taxes I've paid).

This has nothing to do with culture (google "Lunix IX")









They refuses to pay for electricity, for landfill services, for water, etc. When a city decided to cut the basic services off, non-govermential organizations started to talk about racism. 

This is "Blue house" (google "Modrý dom v Petržalke") in Bratislava. Was built in 1999. Note that plastic windows and termo-isolating façade was not standard in Slovakia that time. Roma people moved there - note how it looks after 15 years! It was built from public resources. They destroy it. So they will be given another new house built from public resources. I just want to stress that people who live there *was given second and third chance*. If a non-Roma encounter unfavourable situation in his/her life, become homeless. 



















As for the criminal neighbour. I didn't mean it in a juridical way. Just imagine a neighbour who create a landfill on his/her yard, neighbour who shit on your lawn, etc. And also imagine police, who is afraid of non-govermential organization so they will do nothing. And also imagine the market price of your property. No chance to sell it. That is what I talking about. 

Once again, I don't talk about the a priori situation, but about the experience. Of course it is not right to blame your neighbours before they move it. Don't get me wrong, but the Roma issue will never be solved unless they are punished same way as others are. If I don't pay for electricity, I will be cut off. If a Roma family don't pay for electricity, they should be cut as well. If I damage a public property, I will be fined or go to jail. If a Roma individual damage a public property, he/she should be fined or go to jail too. I don't see anything racist in this statement. 

And I think we should go back to the off-topic topic.


----------



## NordikNerd

nbcee said:


> First of all the main problem is that the Roma are the biggest losers of the fall of socialism.


So now your gypsies arrived here, why dont they beg in their home countries ?

In Sweden the first gypsies arrived in 1512.

The most prominent gypsies here are the finnish Kale, they wear traditional clothes. Most of them are making a living out of dealing with used cars.

After about 2006 the Balkan-gypsies arrived. Today all major swedish cities are full of romapeople begging.









I never give gypsies money









This guy I gave 4SEK for entertaining in the street. He's a playing the xylophone. Buskers are a pleasant element in the cityscape.


----------



## nbcee

NordikNerd said:


> In Sweden the first gypsies arrived in 1512.


Well the first Roma groups arrived in Hungary in the 14th-15th century - these are the ones who were assimilated in the 18th century. The other groups which are not yet perfectly integrated came in the 19th and 20th centuries.

As for all the other countries please check this map:












NordikNerd said:


> So now your gypsies arrived here, why dont they beg in their home countries ?


Because they get will get more money there. It's that simple. The new Roma immigrants you see in Western Europe nowadays are mostly from Romania and Bulgaria (some come from other CEE countries), the two EU members with the lowest GDP/capita figures.


----------



## Road_UK

NordikNerd said:


> I never give gypsies money
> /QUOTE]
> 
> No, you film them as if they're some animals in a zoo. Which is a sick thing to do...


----------



## NordikNerd

nbcee said:


> Well the first Roma groups arrived in Hungary in the 14th-15th century - these are the ones who were assimilated in the 18th century. The other groups which are not yet perfectly integrated came in the 19th and 20th centuries.


From where came the other groups in the 19th and 20th centuries ? Seems like the roma is a part of hungarian culture now especially as gyspy musicians like violinists Roby Lakatos. He is assimilated. 

We had a famous accordion player and composer "Calle Jularbo" He composed many traditional folk songs considered to be an important part of the swedish cultural heritage, promoted by the nationalists. 

Most people today dont know that he was a gypsy but if you look at photos of him you clearly see that was not of swedish origin allthough he had a swedish name.


----------



## volodaaaa

I like those Gypsy buskers... Found one on the ferry in Greece. He played three instruments at once and it sounded pretty much good.


----------



## JackFrost

^^Maybe also the blatant liberals will realize finally that this is not about racism, and not even about xenophobia, but we have a real problem here in Europe which needs to be solved.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f6SXeQKIys

(i mean, either this, or poor Rosie and her girlfriend in this video are racist bastards)


----------



## nbcee

Just to show you the diverse world of the Roma here's some info about their groups (Note that they mostly have the Roman Catholic faith with the exception of the Gábor Roma who are mostly Adventists and some who recently came from Romania are Romanian Orthodox)

*Main group*: _Romungró_ 
Subgroup: _Hungarian-Roma_
Language: Hungarian
They constitute roughly 2/3 of the Hungarian Roma population, scattered across the country









Margit Bangó, a famous Romungró singer

Subgroup: _Carpathian-Roma_
Language: Hungarian and the Carpathian dialect of the Romani language
They constitute roughly 10% of the Hungarian Roma population, they mostly live in Nógrád county and Budapest

*Main group*: _Oláh Roma_ 
Subgroups: 10-12 mostly defined by their dialects
Language: as I just mentioned it they use 10-12 dialects of the _Oláh_ Romani language e.g. _Lovári_.
They are the second biggest Roma group, scattered across the country. They came to Hungary from Wallachia in the 19th century.









Romengo, an Oláh roma music band

*Main group*: _Beás_
Subgroups: _Árgyelán_, _Muncsán_, _Ticsán_
Language: an archaic form of Romanian
They are the third biggest Roma group, they also came from present-day Romania, they live mostly in Southern Transdanubia and the northern parts of the Great Plain









Old Beás woman
*
Main group*: _Romanian-Roma_
Language: Romanian 
There are very few of them in Hungary, they mostly live in Békés county near the Romanian border but some of them came to Budapest.

*Main group*: _Sinti_
Language: Carpathian dialect of the Romani language mixed with some German words
There are very few of them in Hungary

*Main group*: _Gábor Roma_
Language: Romanian, Hungarian and Romani dialects
They mostly live in Transylvania but lately started appearing in Hungary too









Gábor Roma man wearing his traditional hat and mustache


----------



## Surel

nbcee said:


> First of all the main problem is that the Roma are the biggest losers of the fall of socialism. Many of them were unskilled factory workers or miners - but those factories and mines were shut down, not to mention the collective farms which also used to employ them. That was a big blow and many of them still couldn't recover from it.


*About socialism and Roma culture.*

Socialism had one big civilizing effect. It required everyone to be employed or prove income or be jailed. It was quite difficult to live just from petty criminality and small private income from by-work. Socialism also took much more control about what the children do and whether they visit school and it made parents feel the responsibility for it. Another consequence was that it made nomadic way of life impossible. It was harsh and it was one of those things that made socialism unfit for being a free society.

With socialism gone, all this became personal responsibility. The Roma culture has rather different understanding of the concept of personal responsibility and personal freedom than the mainstream culture in European countries. This causes that the Roma people are put in a very difficult position in the European countries if they want to keep their culture. Socialism took the personal responsibility completely away together with the freedom. The Roma people were forced to behave conform for the time being. With socialism gone, the majority had to learn to take personal responsibility again. It became much harder for the Roma people to learn it.

The tradition of nomadic way of life never got the chance to adapt gradually to the new age as well due to the socialism abrupt stop to it, but the patterns of it that are still in the Roma people culture are incompatible with the accommodation they were forced to start to use. With the repressive factor gone, this became more pronounced.

*About Gypsies, Roma, and differences between WE and EE.*

The word Gypsy in English is rather more related to a certain kind of behavior than to the actual Roma people as ethnicity in WE. In most EE the word is used interchangeable (although not officially used anymore - media, authorities, etc.) with the word Roma although having a negative taste to it. The word Roma is promoted and officially used for the ethnicity. 

Most people in WE are imagining g(G)ypsies or rather pikeys when talking about Roma. Pikeys/gypsies are a socioeconomic group and not an ethnicity. They could be compared to the caravan trash in the USA, but they also represent the Bohemian lifestyle. Yes, they are closely connected to the Roma people and the Bohemian nickname comes from the fact that the Roma people first appeared in France in the middle ages coming from then Bohemia which gave them the name. The point is that gypsies (in WE), pikeys, Bohemians don't represent fairly the Roma ethnicity, because they are mixed with the original population in the WE. And their culture is a mixture of the Roma culture and various other European cultures. With the opened borders in the last 20 years, the WE is just being again exposed to the Roma ethnicity and culture on a larger scale.

*About the experience driven rejection of the Roma people.*

I would not dare to say that the people in EE are more xenophobic than the people from WE. Does it mean that there is no discrimination against the Roma people? No. There most certainly is a discrimination. The discrimination however stems from personal experiences. The reasons for why the majority has negative experiences are not that important for the individuals when they make their decisions (i.e. because the Roma minority socioeconomic starting position or their culture or other factors). It is stereotyping though and it is not fair to those that don't cause any trouble. But hey, WE is full of stereotyping. Another thing is that the Roma culture is partly not compatible with the majority culture, which naturally drives negative experiences. The problem is hardly to become solved should the Roma majority not modify their culture.


----------



## da_scotty

Just slightly of topic, the mother of all Summer-(dance)-Hits has been created! You must love the mockery!






Based on the basic mix of:
Saxophone
Random Spanish Lyrics
Accordeon
Dance Beat


----------



## Suburbanist

da_scotty said:


> Just slightly *of topic*, the mother of all Summer-(dance)-Hits has been created! You must love the mockery!
> 
> 
> Based on the basic mix of:
> Saxophone
> Random Spanish Lyrics
> Accordeon
> Dance Beat


This is an off-topic thread in purpose anyway.

Gypsies and city-names-that-sound-funny-in-other-languages are not the exclusive topics of this thread


----------



## riiga

Road_UK said:


> No, you film them as if they're some animals in a zoo. Which is a sick thing to do...


How horrible, someone is using their right to film or photograph whatever they want.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Is the Swedish spoken in Finland very different from Swedish in Sweden?


----------



## NordikNerd

ChrisZwolle said:


> Is the Swedish spoken in Finland very different from Swedish in Sweden?


Yes. It's sounds different and is a bit more old fashioned, they use some other words sometimes.

I saw this program about volontary danish soldiers fighting for the sake of Finland in the finnish-russian winter war in 1939, the danish soldiers told that it was easier to understand the finnish swedish because of the distinct pronounciation.


----------



## Penn's Woods

riiga said:


> How horrible, someone is using their right to film or photograph whatever they want.


Still, I'm not sure photographing people you don't know to present them as an anthropological curiosity is, well, quite nice. There are countries (at least one) that ban Google Street View on the grounds that showing the exterior of people's houses is an invasion of privacy. I personally don't agree with that, but that shows that the sentiment is out there. And people on this forum routinely obscure people's license plate numbers. If photographing a house or a car would be an invasion of privacy, surely photographing the actual person would be. Over here, the Amish generally ask tourists not to take pictures of them because their religion prohibits being photographed (the same ban on "images" that also shows up in stricter forms of Judaism and Islam); would you respect that?


----------



## Surel

italystf said:


> An efficient solution could be removing children from families who force them to live in favelas, with terrible hygienic conditions and teach them to beg and steal instead to study. Most developed countries already have laws to remove children from parents who don't take care of them properly, should it be a taboo to apply them also to minorities?


I have to say that I am not a friend of the juvenile courts. I don't consider it something where we should be heading for.

The parents should be forced/motivated and helped to be able to take better care for their kids. The stories I heard about Norway, Finland and UK and their "child protection policies" are rather crazy. There are very few things that can damage child more than taking him/her from his/her parents. And poverty or lack of education should not be a crime.

Btw, I heard interesting sociological remark, that the prisons substitute for the lack of social housing and social programs in the USA.


----------



## italystf

Surel said:


> It is certainly better to mix high income houses with low income houses. I would not put my faith into reporting and repression though. It is rather the better, motivating, sphere, positive example and lack of social aggregation of the problem makers that might keep the neighborhood livable. Otherwise, you will face following problems:
> 
> The reporting won't get the problem resolved many times, the problem makers won't change their behavior, when you report them, they might actually threaten you. *They won't get arrested either though, because the police will say that they did not do anything that serious to be arrested and convicted.*
> 
> The high income people will thus see no other solution than to move away.
> 
> The high income houses will become unattractive for high income people.
> 
> The whole neighborhood might fall back.
> 
> If the problem makers are not arrested, but would be removed from the house. They would need to be placed somewhere else (at least in the countries that prevent people become homeless). That "else" place would become a problem neighborhood.


In bold the key problem: at least here in Italy the police is very weak in such cases. If someone reports a petty crime (report against unknown), cops would only write a note of the report, without making further investigation. Even if caught, thieves and vandals often spend very little or no time in prison. On the other hand, if you assault a thief or vandal in your propertry, yes, you go to jail because assault is a serious crime. This attitude really encourages criminals and punishes honest people.


----------



## nbcee

ChrisZwolle said:


> Liveable cities rankings are overrated. Many are only liveable if you can afford it. Many of the high-ranking liveable cities have exorbitant housing prices that only favors the wealthy and the 'incumbents' (those who bought their houses decades ago for much lower prices).


Kinda like the way the US healthcare system is the best in the world - if you have money. But if you don't...

And in many cases life (or liveability) is what you make of it. Of course it's easier to be happy in a Swedish town than in a refugee camp in the desert but if you can fulfill your basic needs the rest is more or less up to you.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> I was going to say I preferred "liveable" but my spell-check underlined it. No one's infallible. Maybe that's a British spelling. (My reason for preferring it with the E is that without, it looks as if the I should be pronounced long. But I guess I stand corrected. self-:bash


Oxford Dictionaries (on line) spells it with the E in the "British and world" edition and without in the US edition. British side mentions the non-E spelling as optional in the US; US side doesn't mention the with-E spelling at all. For what it's worth. Can't play more with it now.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/livable
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/english/liveable


----------



## italystf

Surel said:


> There are not so many public owned housings in the Czech Republic left. Most were privatized, sold or they are owned by the cooperative made by the inhabitants. Of those left, they are almost always owned by the municipalities. They are never free. When we have it about the people with the lowest incomes, or jobless, the rent they paid to the municipality in fact comes directly from various benefits they get.
> 
> However, there is structural difference (generalizing of course) in how the Roma people care about those houses. This in return causes lack of investment and renovation by the municipalities. This is a cultural problem. Even if you would make them owners of those flats, it would not improve the thing, because you would create just another sort of entitlement feeling for a new flat once the last one becomes unlivable. Similar sort of entitlement is at the core of the current problem with the rented flats. I would say that there is a difference pattern by those of the Roma community that had to buy or build their own house.
> 
> Now, in many places a new sort of business emerged. When the municipality moves them out of the flats, either because they don't pay, or because they destroy it etc... there emerged private "residences" that are *small flats of very poor quality*, privately owned, where the renting is paid on daily or weekly bases. The private owners make sure that the occupants pay their rent (which is mostly directly covered by social benefits) and *the houses have so poor quality that they don't have to care about the damage*. Let's say it is their know how how they keep the houses in tact and collect the rent. The important thing is however, that the rent is mostly 2-3x higher than in a alternative normal housing, and it is all covered by the social benefits. Thus the money goes right from the government into the pockets of those private residences owners, without having any influence on the quality of the housing those socially weakest live in. I don't know the details, but basically the higher the rent, the more the government has to pay them on the benefits to cover their housing expenses.
> 
> A municipally owned housing which would be able to make sure that the houses are not being destroyed would be cheaper and would improve the quality of their lives much more.


Renting houses that don't meet safety and hygienic standards acceptable for 1st world should be a felony.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ That seems wrong though. Can't the free market easily solve that problem immediately? (if safety and hygiene is not there, move somewhere else)



italystf said:


> Wow, and I remember that few years ago Vancouver got ranked the 1st most liveable city in the world.
> However in such cases it's not the government that houses people in squalor. Initially those are normal flats (for the years they were built). Their tenants reduce them in squalor.
> 
> I think urban planning should always choose gentrification instead of segregation. It's better to build houses of different levels mixed each other.
> If a large group of "problematic people"(*) is scattered across a city it would never create a lawless ghetto and can be better controlled.
> Imagine a 10-flats block. 9 flats are occupied by normal people, one by problematic people who create a lot of troubles like thefts, vandalism, graffiti, littering, drug dealing,... Inhabitants of other 9 flats would report them to the police, so they can be evicted, and eventually arrested, well before the building get dilapidated.
> If a large group of problematic people is concentred in a small place, it become a ghetto where the law isn't enforced, normal people fear to go, nobody would ever open a business,... It also become difficult to catch single responsibles of criminal acts and punish them, if the whole community lives outside laws.
> 
> (*)absolutuely unrelated with ethnicity or income, just with actual behaviour


In Vancouver Downtown Eastside, there are a couple of new restaurants, but always people are smashing their window or protesting outside blocking customers to go in, because they call it "gentrification" :lol:


----------



## Surel

The rivers are drying up in the Czech Republic. This is Labe in Ústí nad Labem. More than 1 m under the normal level. The lowest levels in 70 years.


----------



## italystf

Bye bye World Cup 
We didn't play well but the referee was a disaster also this time.


----------



## Road_UK

No worries. Portugal and Spain have also hit the road. And they never expected much from England in the first place...


----------



## Penn's Woods

I'll still be watching
Even if they are making us play at noon on a workday.

:cheers:


----------



## x-type

dafaq, we still have the netherlands and France to root for!


----------



## Road_UK

No chance! Only because I bloody say so! I happen to support the Netherlands and France!

Hup Holland and vive la France! I don't support Belgium, because they keep on changing their bloody minds. Now they're all patriotic all over the sudden... Honestly, Michael - I can't see how you're able to keep up with these people... :nuts:


----------



## italystf

I was noticing that in the Italian highway code, the following signs are classificated as "indication signs", in contrapposition of "prescription signs". However I think that they're more prescription signs, since they indicate a mandatory behaviour instead of just showing directions:

Road for motorized traffic only: it *bans* non-motorized traffic.









Pedestrian crossing: it *mandates* drivers to stop or slow down if there are pedestrians.









One-way road: it *forbids* drivers to make an U-turn

















It looks like that they're classificated as indication signs just because of their square\rectangular shape, while prescription signs are round. :nuts:


----------



## Road_UK

In Italy they're nothing more than suggestions worth considering?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> No chance! Only because I bloody say so! I happen to support the Netherlands and France!
> 
> Hup Holland and vive la France! I don't support Belgium, because they keep on changing their bloody minds. Now they're all patriotic all over the sudden... Honestly, Michael - I can't see how you're able to keep up with these people... :nuts:


*LEVE *BELGIË/*VIVE* LA BELGIQUE.

Unless they play us.


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> *LEVE *BELGIË/*VIVE* LA BELGIQUE.
> 
> Unless they play us.


You forgot Belgien über alles. You don't want to upset the Belgian German-speaking minority


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Isn't in enough that I now know the Brabançonne in two languages?

(De Standaard published the words last week. There used to be a joke that only the king and Justine Henin knew them.)


----------



## Road_UK

They say that the king is the only true Belgian. If that is the case, if he were to attend a match in Brazil to support his team, in which language would he sing along with the national anthem? I wouldn't bother turning up. I can only imagine it ending up in (another) major embarrassment!


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^He did attend the Russia match. I didn't see his lips moving during the anthem.
Of course, since there's a mention of the king in it, one could argue that his singing it would be inappropriate. Like toasting oneself. I know Elizabeth II never sings "God Save, um, Me" in public.

I do like a good national anthem, actually. Had the Russian one stuck in my head for a couple of days last week because the tune's nice....


----------



## Road_UK

I like tuna as well.


----------



## x-type

Road_UK said:


> They say that the king is the only true Belgian. If that is the case, if he were to attend a match in Brazil to support his team, in which language would he sing along with the national anthem? I wouldn't bother turning up. I can only imagine it ending up in (another) major embarrassment!


does spanish king sing their anthem?

:troll:


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> I do like a good national anthem, actually. Had the Russian one stuck in my head for a couple of days last week because the tune's nice....


There was a rock version on youtube few years ago. I can't find it right now. But it was indeed good despite my disfavour towards Russian policy.


----------



## Road_UK

I always had a deep interest in Russia and Russians. Until I got involved and married my Russian wife, to who I'm not talking anymore.

(Hello dear, I know you're still watching me)


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Oy.*

Vacation over? We're hearing a lot from you this evening....


*I mean the East Coast faux-Yiddish "oy," not the British one.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Road for motorized traffic only: it *bans* non-motorized traffic.


No, this sign *informs *you about the specific rules valid after passing it. Like the maximum/minimum speed limit restriction (130 kmh/80 kmh), driving on the rightmost lane, etc.



italystf said:


> Pedestrian crossing: it *mandates* drivers to stop or slow down if there are pedestrians.


False, it *informs you *about the pedestrian crossing. Except intersection, this sign is preceded by this one, which warns you about the pedestrian crossing ahead:











italystf said:


> One-way road: it *forbids* drivers to make an U-turn


This also only *informs you *about the one-way road. Because it is not dangerous to not knowing you are in the right direction of the one-way road. Dangerous is to be in the wrong direction of the one-way road. Therefore there is always this prohibitory sign posted on the other side:


----------



## Road_UK

^^

Nearly over. Just got back from France. In the Netherlands now staying at my 88-year old nan's. I installed internet, which is great. Gives me something to do. Going back to Austria in a few days...

Edit: Michael this post was for you. This is exactly why I never use arrows to reply!


----------



## italystf

Talknig about anthems, the UK will need to change it when they will have a king instead of a queen.
And the Russian anthem has the same music, but different words, to the old Soviet one.


----------



## Road_UK

The UK anthem has always been the same. God save the King, God save the Queen. If a monarch would ever decide to have a sex-change, then the fate of the current anthem might be at risk...


----------



## piotr71

If it comes to the UK...

...will we witness a rise of a new state soon? 

"Hay can do it, if Scotland can"


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Hay-on-Wye, I take it?


----------



## italystf

This sign in Italy just tell you're entering a road (other than a motorway or expressway, they have specific signs) that is reserved to motorized traffic. It doesn't say nothing about the speed limit, that can't be higher than 90, since it isn't neither a motorway, nor an expressway. So, it acts also as prescription sign, like the ones below:








In other countries, like Slovenia, it indicates a specific type of road, and thus a general speed limit.









This one it's the only vertical sign present in most pedestrian crossings in Italy.








This one, instead, is located before a pedestrian crossing. It's rarely used in Italy, mostly on fast roads outside built-up areas. So, the first one is the real pedestrian crossing sign.

















Those don't indicate a danger or a mandatory direction, but implicitally, forbide you to do something (an U-turn), so they aren't mere indication signs like a sign pointing to Rome or to the railway station, that doesn't mandate anything.


----------



## piotr71

Yup! 

The quoted words can be found over the griffin in the right top corner.


----------



## Road_UK

piotr71 said:


> If it comes to the UK...
> 
> ...will we witness a rise of a new state soon?
> 
> "Hay can do it, if Scotland can"


They're never going to vote in favour. But it's nice to dream if you're a nationalist.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> This sign in Italy just tell you're entering a road (other than a motorway or expressway, they have specific signs) that is reserved to motorized traffic. It doesn't say nothing about the speed limit, that can't be higher than 90, since it isn't neither a motorway, nor an expressway. So, it acts also as prescription sign, like the ones below


You are telling me, you don't have expresways in Italy? And of course, every sign has some additional meaning.

You can tell that this *warning sign








*is also *prohibitory*, because it prohibits you to drive fast to crash


----------



## Broccolli

italystf said:


> This sign in Italy just tell you're entering a road (other than a motorway or expressway, they have specific signs) that is reserved to motorized traffic. It doesn't say nothing about the speed limit, that can't be higher than 90, since it isn't neither a motorway, nor an expressway. So, it acts also as prescription sign


You are right, if you see this sign " road reserved for motorized vehicles" in Slovenia speed limit is 110 Km/h. 

Here is an example (until ~4:23 min look at the sign)


----------



## Road_UK

In Austria these roads are meant for communist classics only:


----------



## volodaaaa

Yesterday my SO asked me, what does that *lemon* mean:


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> You are telling me, you don't have expresways in Italy? And of course, every sign has some additional meaning.


Yes, we use this sign for expressways (strade extraurbane principali):











volodaaaa said:


> You can tell that this *warning sign
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *is also *prohibitory*, because it prohibits you to drive fast to crash


The curve sign doesn't mandate a specific speed limit, just tell you to be alert, and thus moderate your speed.


----------



## italystf

Broccolli said:


> You are right, if you see this sign " road reserved for motorized vehicles" in Slovenia speed limit is 110 Km/h.
> 
> Here is an example (until ~4:23 min look at the sign)


This in Slovenia









is this in Italy


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Yes, we use this sign for expressways (strade extraurbane principali):
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The curve sign doesn't mandate a specific speed limit, just tell you to be alert, and thus moderate your speed.


basically, it mandate me to moderate my speed :lol:

We use these signs









The first one is an expressway and the second one is motorway. Both roads have lot of things common:
- Maximum speed limit is 130 kph
- Minimum speed limit is 80 kph (according to the registration certificate)
- Bicycles, tractors and pedestrians are not allowed
- Rightmost lane is designated to regular drive

The only differences are that the first category 
- can have intersections, the latter one only exits and interchanges
- can have sharp curves and steeper sections
- can have more narrow lanes.


----------



## italystf

Can R-roads in CZ and SK have at-grade intersections or lack median?


----------



## Alex_ZR

From today's Višegrad group meeting:










Note the Czech flag. :nuts:


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Can R-roads in CZ and SK have at-grade intersections or lack median?


The situation was little bit confusing before, because R roads were marked as expresways and D roads as motorways.

The last amendment to the Act from January sorted it out.
The current situation is as follows:

R and D road can be signposted as *motorway* if they are built in full profile and fulfil the basic criteria (like lane width, lowest radius, etc.)

R and D road can be signposted as *expresway* if they are not built in full profile or fulfil only criteria for *expresway*.

Expresways can have at-grade intersections, lack divider, etc.. Even primary road in very good condition can be signposted as expresway. 

Like this: D road (D4) built in half profile and marked as expresway.
https://www.google.com/maps/@48.250...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sYPO9by6YPgpBPSsMzMqLVQ!2e0


----------



## Broccolli

italystf said:


> is this in Italy


Must say that i like this sign better..it is more logical

I hope that Slovenia will change it.. and here it is proposal for a new sign



Kazzo said:


> Novosti iz osnutka novega Pravilnika o prometni signalizaciji in opremi...
> Nov znak za hitro cesto npr. :cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

Btw. Not very safe overtaking is caught on the link I posted. Featuring lorry and tailgating car in opposite direction


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

What country's have green signs for motorways in Europe ?


----------



## Surel

italystf said:


> Can R-roads in CZ and SK have at-grade intersections or lack median?


Not in CZ.


----------



## Verso

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> What country's have green signs for motorways in Europe ?


http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=429095


----------



## Skyline_

WE f****** won last night, against Ivory Coast. Very few European teams made it to the next phase of World Cup!


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> Like this: D road (D4) built in half profile and marked as expresway.
> https://www.google.com/maps/@48.250...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sYPO9by6YPgpBPSsMzMqLVQ!2e0


i remember that Čadca bypass used to be signed as D3 when it was opened (cca 10 years ago if i remember well), but they have turned it back to road 11, right?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Skyline_ said:


> WE f****** won last night, against Ivory Coast. Very few European teams made it to the next phase of World Cup!


I saw that. And at the very end, too. It's only you, Belgium and the Netherlands, and some others that still aren't decided. (See, I am paying attention this time....) :cheers:


----------



## CNGL

^^ I don't pay that much attention to World Cup. I'm making my own world cup, with teams like Antarctica, the Vatican (Both are already out), the Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God or even Rosales del Canal (a neighborhood of Zaragoza).


volodaaaa said:


> Yesterday my SO asked me, what does that *lemon* mean:


Much like the largest city in Germany, which as most of us know is Ausfahrt .


----------



## Verso

CNGL said:


> I'm making my own world cup


You're what?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

World cup:

43 world in my coffee cup by and a Truck, on Flickr


----------



## Road_UK

CNGL said:


> ^^ I don't pay that much attention to World Cup. I'm making my own world cup, with teams like Antarctica, the Vatican (Both are already out), the Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God or even Rosales del Canal (a neighborhood of Zaragoza).
> 
> 
> Much like the largest city in Germany, which as most of us know is Ausfahrt .


I'm still trying to find my way to the largest city in France: Peage... I hear it's nicer than Ausfahrt, but you pay a bit more.


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> World cup:


Yes, hopefully he's making that.


----------



## x-type

you guys as kids you never made your world cups and similar things?


----------



## Verso

Yes, maybe as kids.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Yes, maybe as kids.


well it seems that some still do it 

btw now i remembered when me and my friend made tournaments in playing cards. we played each alone, but the game that we played was actually only for 4 players :lol:


----------



## Verso

We haven't shown ourselves in a long time, so I thought it would be cool to do it again. I'm feeling kind of badass today.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Oddly enough, we're having what I'm jokingly calling mug shots taken at work now, to attach to our GMail accounts. (Some people think it's unprofessional, but the new boss thinks it's friendly...whatever...I said to myself, well I could use a current photo, what the hey.) I'll have mine tomorrow and have been intending to post it here if it isn't totally grotesque.


----------



## Road_UK

That's not really you, is it?


----------



## cinxxx

Speaking of card games, do you know/played the game - in Romanian it's called "Cruce" which means "Cross"?
It's a variant of the "66 card game" as far as I found on wiki, the one with bidding, and it's very fun if played in 4 (2 teams)


----------



## Road_UK

Sod it. Here's me having my tea on Jersey last week...


----------



## Road_UK

And me in the hire car, also on Jersey.


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> That's not really you, is it?


Sure it is, why not? (damn, I'm already on the previous page)


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Sure it is, why not? (damn, I'm already on the previous page)


but you have never shown yourself previously :dunno:


----------



## Road_UK

Sure feels good to be by the sea again...



And these are in France....


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> but you have never shown yourself previously :dunno:


Yes, I have, you just don't remember.


----------



## x-type

hm, i just remember when you once refused to show your photo here :dunno:


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> hm, i just remember when you once refused to show your photo here :dunno:


Lol, I was the _first_ one to post a photo of myself in this thread.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Lol, I was the _first_ one to post a photo of myself in this thread.


i always thought it was fake :lol:


----------



## Verso

Coming from someone with a selfie from the Millionaire quiz.


----------



## Road_UK

Thank you for that link, Verso. We now know what Chris looks like. Funny how internet forums can give you such a wrong impression to the real thing. 

With me it's different, I know. I think I have met everybody's expectations...


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Coming from someone with a selfie from the Millionaire quiz.


actually it was "Deal or no deal" 
and it was not a selfie, but screenshot 

however, i think i had posted even before that my photos.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Sod it. Here's me having my tea on Jersey last week...


Bitchen shades.


----------



## Road_UK

I just did a Google on that:

Showing results for bitchin shades
Search instead for bitchen shades


----------



## Penn's Woods

I'm dating myself. "Bitchen" is Val-speak for cool. Val-speak was (briefly) popularized by a song called "Valley Girls" by one Moon Unit Zappa. That's her real name. Frank Zappa's daughter. About 1981.

http://language-dossier.webs.com/americanslangvalspeak.htm

Gag me with a spoon!


----------



## volodaaaa

Gonna add something to your "show me your face" session :lol:
Here you are guys.


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> Gonna add something to your "show me your face" session :lol:
> Here you are guys.


Cool! I expected something with longish hair.... And I expected Chris with spectacles...


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> Talking of the Cup and biting... Biting, really? And the guy doesn't get banned? In the NBA (North American professional basketball) they stop play if anyone gets so much as a small cut until he can cover it up. Any risk of blood exposure....


No risk, no fun. You now know what G. looks like. There's no escaping, there's no hiding. Yesterday's tomorrow is today. Show us what you got!


----------



## Penn's Woods

I have no photos on this computer or (that I know of....) on line* and I don't play with Photobucket until I've had caffeine.

*Except for the one mentioned yesterday of me at a work thing at the ballpark. Which I *really* don't like. I look glum.


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> I have no photos on this computer or (that I know of....) on line* and I don't play with Photobucket until I've had caffeine.
> 
> *Except for the one mentioned yesterday of me at a work thing at the ballpark. Which I *really* don't like. I look glum.


Nothing out of ordinary. :troll:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Chris,let's see you !


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Nothing out of ordinary. :troll:


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Metrologist, but involved in a project with meteorologists as well.


The Conformity Project, I know.... :jk:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Mug shot has been taken; don't have the file yet, and when I do I'm going to have to do something about that gut.

To tide you all over, yours truly about 1968:


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> The Conformity Project, I know.... :jk:


Yeah, but this time it's not about units, but about uncertainties... we would like all climatic stations in the world operated in the same way, so we can compare apples with apples and not with oranges. I found the meteorological community oddly uninterested, they just look in their small backyard and care little about the rest.
By the way, don't take global warming for certain: I saw their satellite temperature maps over Africa, with uncertainties up to 7 (SEVEN) degrees... and was there to propose to cut down their errors to 0.05 degrees hno:


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> Yeah, but this time it's not about units, but about uncertainties... we would like all climatic stations in the world operated in the same way, so we can compare apples with apples and not with oranges. I found the meteorological community oddly uninterested, they just look in their small backyard and care little about the rest.
> By the way, don't take global warming for certain: I saw their satellite temperature maps over Africa, with uncertainties up to 7 (SEVEN) degrees... and was there to propose to cut down their errors to 0.05 degrees hno:


What is the satellite actually able to measure? Temperature of the surface or of the atmosphere? Why is it having so high uncertainty?


----------



## g.spinoza

Surel said:


> What is the satellite actually able to measure? Temperature of the surface or of the atmosphere? Why is it having so high uncertainty?


It depends on the wavelength. Some bands of IR are for surface temperature (but they get absorbed by clouds so they're subject to gaps in data coverage), some others for atmospheric, microwave is for temperature of the soil at some depth (a couple of meters if I remember correctly).

From what I understand the main problem is the emissivity of ground they use to correct the blackbody radiation they get from measurements: the emissivity changes as the ground changes, not only from site to site but also with time (crops getting harvested, soil moisture, tree coverage etc.)


----------



## keokiracer

Penn's Woods said:


> Talking of the Cup and biting... Biting, really? And the guy doesn't get banned? In the NBA (North American professional basketball) they stop play if anyone gets so much as a small cut until he can cover it up. Any risk of blood exposure....


You aren't allowed to have blood on your shirt or on yourself either in football (soccer for you ). You have to go off the field to stop the bleeding and/or change shirts.
Meh, there are sports where some murderers don't even get banned... But I certainly wouldn't mind Suarez getting banned.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Glad to hear it.

From CNN an hour or so ago:

"Heavy rains in Recife, Brazil, the location of today's World Cup match between the U.S. and Germany, has caused extensive flooding, turning roads into rivers and making access to the stadium difficult.

"FIFA, the world governing body of soccer, just announced that the U.S. game will be played as scheduled at noon ET.

"*FIFA also announced that Luis Suarez*, Uruguay's star striker, has been suspended for the rest of the World Cup tournament for biting Italy's Giorgio Chiellini during the game between the two soccer powers on Tuesday. He is suspended for a total of nine matches and is banned from any kind of soccer-related activity for four months."

PS: Our IT department, at the request of one of our vice presidents, has set up a TV in one of the meeting rooms for the US/Germany match. We are welcome to take our lunch hours there, but only an hour please.

PPS to Road, I still don't have that file yet. Have a schnapps or jenever or something and chill. Or a nice cuppa.


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> From what I understand the main problem is the emissivity of ground they use to correct the blackbody radiation they get from measurements: the emissivity changes as the ground changes, not only from site to site but also with time (crops getting harvested, soil moisture, tree coverage etc.)


Why do they need to correct the measurements? I would think that over the long time span it doesn't matter that much. I would think that they would not so much be interested in the absolute precise measurement of the temperature, but in measurement of the changes in the temperature. Those should be more interesting, shouldn't they?

Regular, seasonal, changes should not matter at all - i.e. crops. And the long lasting, or irregular, changes as e.g. tree coverage, or soil moisture, should actually be part of the whole picture and should not get corrected.

If the soil moisture has a long lasting effect on the temperature, it is part of the changes that I would be interested in. Getting correction for it actually look like tampering the data. The same holds about vegetation. If the vegetation changes over the years and in effect this changes the temperature of the environment, this should be included in the measurement I would say.


Or do you mean that because e.g. different vegetation, they are not able to get the measurements of the atmospheric temperature right? Then the corrections would make sense, but indeed would make the satellite data highly untrustworthy without doing control measurements on the ground.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Yeah, but this time it's not about units, but about uncertainties... we would like all climatic stations in the world operated in the same way, so we can compare apples with apples and not with oranges. I found the meteorological community oddly uninterested, they just look in their small backyard and care little about the rest.
> By the way, don't take global warming for certain: I saw their satellite temperature maps over Africa, with uncertainties up to 7 (SEVEN) degrees... and was there to propose to cut down their errors to 0.05 degrees hno:


I still think it's probably prudent for us as a planet to assume that global warming is happening, or may, and that changing our ways in certain ways may be useful to mitigate or prevent it. 

Ahem. Sorry. End soapbox mode. GO USA!


----------



## Road_UK

Elderly couple posing for picture after their car flipped. Wife still trapped inside...


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Most peculiar.

----------

Okay, Belgians: It looks as if you're likely to be our next opponent. You do understand I can't root for you in that one.... [snif]


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Road_UK said:


> Elderly couple posing for picture after their car flipped. Wife still trapped inside...


OMG !!:nuts:


----------



## g.spinoza

Surel said:


> Or do you mean that because e.g. different vegetation, they are not able to get the measurements of the atmospheric temperature right? Then the corrections would make sense, but indeed would make the satellite data highly untrustworthy without doing control measurements on the ground.


Exactly. There are a number of ground validation stations, too few in my opinion and with calibration procedures not so transparent and accurate.

Data needs to be corrected because the different behaviour of different components of the ground. Surface temperature is defined at circa 2 m above ground, but how can you measure it from satellite inside the pluvial forest? Even fields of corn can alter the correct reading of air temperature near the ground.


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> Exactly. There are a number of ground validation stations, too few in my opinion and with calibration procedures not so transparent and accurate.
> 
> Data needs to be corrected because the different behaviour of different components of the ground. Surface temperature is defined at circa 2 m above ground, but how can you measure it from satellite inside the pluvial forest? Even fields of corn can alter the correct reading of air temperature near the ground.


OK, it is clear now.

I meant also this. If I am interested in the long term changes of the temperatures I don't need to know the size of the error if I know that the error keeps the same over time. It is more precise to measure with the error while keeping the same error than to try to correct for the error, but not being able to correct consistently.


----------



## g.spinoza

Surel said:


> OK, it is clear now.
> 
> I meant also this. If I am interested in the long term changes of the temperatures I don't need to know the size of the error if I know that the error keeps the same over time. It is more precise to measure with the error while keeping the same error than to try to correct for the error, but not being able to correct consistently.


No. Today you measure a temperature of 30 degrees with an error of 5 degrees. That means that you have 95% probability that the true temperature is between 27.5 and 32.5. Tomorrow you measure 31 with the same error. You can't really say that the temperature has risen: what if the true temperature of today was 31 and that of tomorrow is 30?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I90tpTXOs7U&feature=player_detailpage
Is this the way to that place ?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's the road that leads by it. This video starts about 3.5 hours away from it though.


----------



## MattiG

Road_UK said:


> Yes but you can get to Peage by train. It has a gare de Peage...


Traveling in Paris is somewhat troublesome, because the name of every metro station is Sortie.


----------



## Verso

First time I was in Bratislava I missed the city centre.


----------



## cinxxx

First time I drove to Bratislava, I drove into the city center, just past the US embassy.
There was also some kind of barrier, which was raised. I realized I am on the pedestrian street, so I turned around


----------



## Verso

Once I went out in pyjamas and needed 5 minutes to realize it. Walking back home was so embarrassing.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

^^
That happened to me once


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> Once I went out in pyjamas and needed 5 minutes to realize it. Walking back home was so embarrassing.


Good thing you're not sleeping naked...


----------



## cinxxx

In a month I have to do the first maintenance service for my Leon.
A year has already passed since I have it, drove almost 23.000 km with it...


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

cinxxx said:


> In a month I have to do the first maintenance service for my Leon.
> A year has already passed since I have it, drove almost 23.000 km with it...


Do you know how much that would cost ?


----------



## cinxxx

I just made the appointment, the estimated price is 230-250 euros...
I have to go to an official Seat partner since I have 1 year warranty left for the car.


----------



## Surel

cinxxx said:


> I just made the appointment, the estimated price is 230-250 euros...
> I have to go to an official Seat partner since I have 1 year warranty left for the car.


Actually, I don't think you need to go to the official Seat service. What is the jurisprudence on this in Germany? The EU stated already 10 years ago that by going to a not official service you can't lose the warranty on the car, there are other rights added to this law as well over time. The dealers are still using this threat of losing warranty to illegally force the customers to accept the high prices at the official service.

The EU legislation is called BER, look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_Exemption_Regulation_(EU).

E.g. you should be able to use non brand spare parts without losing the guarantee either. The only thing that can endanger the warranty would be if the service or the parts were not up to the standards. I don't know the exact details though.


----------



## cinxxx

Could be. Anyway, they are not Audi or VW, so prices are more acceptable.
I will see how much the work will cost (parts should cost the same as somewhere else, I'm not fond of 3rd party in new cars) and then I can know if they are more expensive then a Freie Werkstatt...


----------



## Suburbanist

A commission of a Dutch ministry responsible for culture and education declared this to be one of official national traditions


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A national heritage even.

Which is ridiculous. It's a ******* tradition. At the same time they want to ban fireworks.


----------



## Surel

cinxxx said:


> Could be. Anyway, they are not Audi or VW, so prices are more acceptable.
> I will see how much the work will cost (parts should cost the same as somewhere else, I'm not fond of 3rd party in new cars) and then I can know if they are more expensive then a Freie Werkstatt...


I am very reluctant to go to official service since we paid 600 € for the check up of one year old Peugeot 206 at one years ago. They did absolutely nothing though (maybe changed oil).


----------



## cinxxx

^^Well, I have no Peugeot


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> A national heritage even.
> 
> Which is ridiculous. It's a ******* tradition. At the same time they want to ban fireworks.


Do they do it anywhere else than in Friesland? I am not sure that they would agree with being labeled ******** . Although when you tell in Randstad that you live in Friesland, you are instantly labeled as crazy .


----------



## Surel

cinxxx said:


> ^^Well, I have no Peugeot


Good decision!


----------



## Verso

Some people here do that as well.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Surel said:


> Do they do it anywhere else than in Friesland?


As far as I can tell it happens in all rural areas, though I'm not sure how much they do it in the south. 

The tradition started with those giant milk churns, which were often only found on farms. Nowadays they use just about anything to make the loudest explosion possible. 

But it's weird, this year they want to ban fireworks outside a short time period in the late evening of 31 December, because fireworks cause so much annoyance and damage. At the same time they make these enormous explosions part of the national heritage...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> Good decision!


Can't even get 'em here. (I'm quite serious: Peugeot and Renault haven't sold in the US, to my knowledge, since the early 90s.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> ... Although when you tell in Randstad that you live in Friesland, you are instantly labeled as crazy .


Road_UK has family in Friesland. I'm just sayin'....

:troll:


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> Road_UK has family in Friesland. I'm just sayin'....
> 
> :troll:


I was talking first hand experience. I live there.


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> I just made the appointment, the estimated price is 230-250 euros...
> I have to go to an official Seat partner since I have 1 year warranty left for the car.


I went last week. It added up to 200€ + i got expansion tank broken down (60€) + inquired air condition cleaning (30€).

Fortunately, opel provides 30% for cars older than 7 years. I do this chceck every summer before holiday, last year I got exhaust and brakes broken down (800€), this year only steering assistant


----------



## Road_UK

Surel said:


> I was talking first hand experience. I live there.


Where? I'm in Sneek at the moment. Heading back to Austria tomorrow (via Mechelen, Belgium. Have to visit someone there, God help us...)


----------



## da_scotty

I love Carbid-Fails though!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

cinxxx said:


> ^^Well, I have no Peugeot





Surel said:


> Good decision!


I've had a Peugeot once, a Peugeot 306. I had no major problems with it, but I only had it for a bit more than a year. 

I've had a Renault Kangoo for six years and drove over 100,000 kilometers with it, with no unusual problems. However, I think delivery vans are built a little sturdier than passenger cars. 

French cars are usually the cheapest around, but I'm not convinced of the quality, if they produce them in a high-wage country like France, they must cut back on costs elsewhere, such as reliability. I can't back that one up with statistics, but I'm not inclined to buy a French car the next time.

Right now I drive a Hyundai, my first. It has 5 years warranty with unlimited mileage, so they must have some faith in their product. I drove 6,000 kilometers with it in just four weeks. The seats are amazing for a small car, I had no problems with my back at all after 60 hours of driving in 7 days.


----------



## Road_UK

The French automotive industry has production going on all over eastern Europe. I know this, as I delivered parts at large PSA factories in mainly the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. (as well as factories all over France of course) 

And the vehicles they produce are of very high standard. Higher than some of that plastic coming from Japan.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/picturegalleries/9317194/The-10-least-reliable-family-cars.html

Of the 10 least reliable family cars in the UK, 5 are French. No Asian brand is listed. The most reliable family car is a Toyota Corolla, the next 5 most reliable cars are Toyota, Honda or Mazda (also known as plastic from Japan).


----------



## Road_UK

Why do you pick the Daily Telegraph as a source of all sources in the world?


----------



## Verso

In my family we've been driving Peugeots since 1990 (yeah, we're a little crazy for that) and haven't had many problems with them.


----------



## Surel

Today it's 100 years since the assassination of Archduke Franc Ferdinand and the trigger of the WWI.

He was assassinated in this car on the road in Sarajevo when his chauffeur lost direction and had to reverse.









Some 300 000 of Czech Crown Lands died in the WWI, in that some 150 000 had Czech nationality.

Historical enactment of the C.K. armed forces in Benešov, end of May 2014.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Czech Crown Lands? Czech nationality?


----------



## Road_UK

Is anyone else experiencing a spontaneous change of language of this forum? It's all in Spanish now for some odd reason...


----------



## CNGL

I have the language of this forum set to Spanish by default, so it doesn't happen to me...


----------



## MattiG

Surel said:


> Today it's 100 years since the assassination of Archduke Franc Ferdinand...


His nephew succeeded to the throne in 1916 as Karl I of Austria and Karl IV of Hungary. Karl's widow Empress Zita died at the age of 96. I happened to be in Vienna on the day of her funeral in April 1990. The lenght of the funeral procession was several kilometers, taking about three hours. It is still somewhat unbelievable to me that I have participated in the funeral of the last empress of the Austrian-Hungarian regime.


----------



## Penn's Woods

I was in Munich on the centennial of the death of Mad King Ludwig. (Just by happenstance.) Saw a bit of a crowd waiting to get into a church.... That's as close as I can come to that.

:cheers:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^


That's charming. (And remind me who England's playing next?)

Now visit the UK thread and let us know what you, as a van driver, think about doing your laundry at motorway services.

PS: Headline on standaard.be: "Brazil avoids [vermijdt] national drama." Suppose I ought to check the score in the other one....


----------



## Road_UK

I support Holland! 

I've seen it. Handy for truckers who are never home, but I've got nanny's, mums, sisters, brothers, girlfriends and all sorts to do my laundry for me


----------



## Penn's Woods

Why isn't "sudden death" an option? Perhaps after a full 15-minute overtime period or two. Since scoring is so difficult (hence the problem), ending the game when the first team scores seems as reasonable and fair a way as any.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Why isn't "sudden death" an option? Perhaps after a full 15-minute overtime period or two. Since scoring is so difficult (hence the problem), ending the game when the first team scores seems as reasonable and fair a way as any.


Scoring is difficult. If a match ends in 0-0 after 120 minutes, maybe there's a reason. You can't simply go on for hours until one scores - something that may very well not happen.


----------



## Penn's Woods

[Damn. Had a nice reply drafted and lost it.]

^^Surely, eventually, someone would score. You're the statistician (apparently): do the odds of a game remaining scoreless decrease over time?

Baseball games routinely go into "extra innings" (if they're tied). And Major League teams play 162 games a year, through the summer, in places like... well, any place in North America that has a Major League baseball team can get hot in the summer, really. The major difference, and I understand it's major, is that baseball has built-in rest periods and much less running around.

Now I had a ridiculous idea about just resuming the next day, like they (apparently) do in cricket....


----------



## Jasper90

keber said:


> So, dear Italians, explain to me:
> How is it possible that it is not possible to get warm meal about 3 hours in the afternoon even in very tourist places like Dolomites?
> I was almost shocked that it was not possible to get something to eat (except some sandwiches) on Tre Cime between 2:30 and 6 PM - when you make a pretty long and physically demanding bicycle ride just to find out that in rifugio (actually more like hotel) they still have 19th century restaurant timetables despite loads of tourists with buses, cars, motors and bicycles arriving every minute. Of course souvenir stand was operating without interruption.
> 
> And not only that on Saturday it was impossible to find even ONE restaurant or pizzeria that would serve warm meals outside those fixed timeframes in 100 km circle. Not only in small villages (which would be reasonable) but also in larger and really tourist towns. I find that really awkward in 21st century.
> 
> You really should import more people from Balkans as they will at least teach you that people could be hungry even outside of those ridiculously fixed timeframes for colazione, pranzo and cena.


I'm sorry for your experience 
We have a lot to do to improve our services for tourists. What happened to you is probably one of the main reasons why Spain has 1.5 times as many tourists as Italy. Things are quickly improving


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> [Damn. Had a nice reply drafted and lost it.]
> 
> ^^Surely, eventually, someone would score. You're the statistician (apparently): do the odds of a game remaining scoreless decrease over time?


I am no statistician. But I imagine that, the more tired the players are, the more difficult a goal becomes.



> Baseball games routinely go into "extra innings" (if they're tied). And Major League teams play 162 games a year, through the summer, in places like... well, any place in North America that has a Major League baseball team can get hot in the summer, really. The major difference, and I understand it's major, is that baseball has built-in rest periods and much less running around.


Scoring in baseball, or any other American sport, is easier than in soccer.



> Now I had a ridiculous idea about just resuming the next day, like they (apparently) do in cricket....


They used to do that is soccer, too, back in the Thirties or so...
... and cricket isn't really a sport.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A main complaint of Dutch tourists who go to campsites is the poor price/quality ratio. Italy is seen as one of the most expensive countries to go camping.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> A main complaint of Dutch tourists who go to campsites is the poor price/quality ratio. Italy is seen as one of the most expensive countries to go camping.


But Italian autocamps cars are all over Europe


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Surely, eventually, someone would score.


someone would score, but after 120' the match would become unwatchable. players are extremely exhausted after those 120', and imagine football equivalent of this. who would watch it?


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> A main complaint of Dutch tourists who go to campsites is the poor price/quality ratio. Italy is seen as one of the most expensive countries to go camping.


In Italy one must stick to autorized campings, since it's illegal to plant a tent in open spaces like mountains, beaches, fields,... (there are some exceptions for alpinists or groups like the Scouts who get permits from _Guardia Forestale _to camp during hiking expeditions that last more than a day). This make impossible to do cheap hippy-style adventures.
However, sleeping in your vehicle is not illegal, as long as it's parked where overnight parking is allowed.


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> someone would score, but after 120' the match would become unwatchable. players are extremely exhausted after those 120', and imagine football equivalent of this. who would watch it?


Moreover, many spectators may have to go to sleep or have planned to do something else after the match, or booked a plane, train or bus to return home from the stadium. Tired players can be replaced, every team has far more than 11 of them.


----------



## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> someone would score, but after 120' the match would become unwatchable. players are extremely exhausted after those 120', and imagine football equivalent of this. who would watch it?


They're unwatchable anyway.... :troll:

:jk:, but seriously, I'm finding during this Cup that if you start at about minute 75 you don't miss anything important.


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> but seriously, I'm finding during this Cup that if you start at about minute 75 you don't miss anything important.


i have always been finding the same thing for basketball matches  i mean, the results would always be 80-78, 77-76 or similar, although one of the teams would have +15 at the end of 3/4


----------



## ChrisZwolle

italystf said:


> In Italy one must stick to autorized campings, since it's illegal to plant a tent in open spaces like mountains, beaches, fields,... (there are some exceptions for alpinists or groups like the Scouts who get permits from _Guardia Forestale _to camp during hiking expeditions that last more than a day). This make impossible to do cheap hippy-style adventures.


That is illegal in most European countries. However, official campsites in Italy are generally much more expensive than in Germany or France. Some are very luxurious indeed, but not all of them are. 

I was surprised by the low prices of campsites in Scandinavia. I expected having to pay about € 25 per night, after reading that most campsites charge for a pitch, instead of a breakdown per person / equipment. However, I only paid € 25 once in Sweden, the rest was all in the € 12-18 per night range, most of them with free wifi and free showers too.


----------



## italystf

I think that in very touristic places (beach and mountain resorts) campsites prices follow prices of other accomodations and never get that cheap. Probably in some villages outside the most beaten paths there are campsites where you can get away with less, but you will be far away from main touristic attractions, although we have many unknown villages that are interesting to visit and offer opportunities for hiking in beautiful landscapes.
In Scandinavia it's different: due to different geography and climate there aren't beaches and mountain resorts where people from all over Europe spend a week-long summer holiday (one exception are Norweigian mountain resorts). Tourism there is different, people visit cities and other interesting places like islands and fjords but don't stay for long in the same place.
There is not the "cool factor" that keeps prices high in well-known touristic places like Cortina, Sestriere, Courmayeur, Rimini, Viareggio, Jesolo, Capri, Taormina,...


----------



## piotr71

ChrisZwolle said:


> That is illegal in most European countries. However, official campsites in Italy are generally much more expensive than in Germany or France. Some are very luxurious indeed, but not all of them are.
> 
> I was surprised by the low prices of campsites in Scandinavia. I expected having to pay about € 25 per night, after reading that most campsites charge for a pitch, instead of a breakdown per person / equipment. However, I only paid € 25 once in Sweden, the rest was all in the € 12-18 per night range, most of them with free wifi and free showers too.


Scandinavian campsites are also equipped with usable kitchen, which is not so obvious in another European countries.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> In Italy one must stick to autorized campings, since it's illegal to plant a tent in open spaces like mountains, beaches, fields,...


I've always considered that fascist (excuse my hard wording). I mean, why is it anyone's business if I place my tent in the middle of nowhere?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

piotr71 said:


> Scandinavian campsites are also equipped with usable kitchen, which is not so obvious in another European countries.


I noticed that too. Practically every campsite had that. Nearly all campsites also offered little chalets (hytter / stugor) which are a good alternative to the outrageously expensive hotels.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Nearly all campsites also offered little chalets (hytter / stugor) which are a good alternative to the outrageously expensive hotels.


this is becoming very common in Croatian camps too. and those things are expensive as hell, mostly 130-170€ for night. although they are cute, it is not part of camping imo.


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> I've always considered that fascist (excuse my hard wording). I mean, why is it anyone's business if I place my tent in the middle of nowhere?


It's not just in Italy. It's all over Europe. Probably to prevent Gypsies camping in people's backyard?


----------



## Road_UK

Duplicate.


----------



## cinxxx

The game is not bad, the Belgians had many chances.


----------



## keokiracer

1-0 Belgium!

USA has about 25 minutes to score (at least) one goal


----------



## Fatfield

Game over. 2-0. Lukaku has made a massive difference. Belgium now look like the team that most pundits in England think can at least reach the semis.


----------



## keokiracer

2-1 now. This is gonna get tense!


----------



## Fatfield

Me and my big gob!


----------



## Verso

Football/soccer in this thread again? :yawn:


----------



## Fatfield

Edge of the seat stuff this.


----------



## Fatfield

Verso said:


> Football/soccer in this thread again? :yawn:


Aye, its one way traffic at the moment.


----------



## bogdymol

Greetings from Birmingham, UK. Today I drove for the first time on the "wrong" side, but it was fine


----------



## keokiracer

Fatfield said:


> Aye, its one way traffic at the moment.


It's been one-way traffic most of the match. Then Belgium in full attack mode, then USA again, then Balgium and now USA again. It's insane :nuts::nuts:


----------



## keokiracer

Belgium has won the match.

Probably one of the best matches so far this world cup!


----------



## Attus

Verso said:


> Football/soccer in this thread again? :yawn:


It was Michael's mistake ;-)
It's sad that USA is out. They played well, I liked it. I think they are in the best 8 teams of the world but had no luck with draw and had to play against Belgium. 

Btw., this World Cup may get a breakthrough for soccer in the USA (20 years after the one organized there). Public Viewing of soccer, almost 100 thousand(!) American fans travelled to Brazil, 20 million people watched the games in TV. These are top numbers, never seen before. OK, football is more popular of course and it will remain so but USA does not mean any more "say no to soccer". 
So, even Michael watched it.


----------



## keokiracer

Attus said:


> It was Michael's mistake ;-)


Not this time, I am the one that mentioned the game first.:cheers:


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> Greetings from Birmingham, UK. Today I drove for the first time on the "wrong" side, but it was fine


It's ok once you get used to it, you just have to be more careful. I've already driven in Australia, but I haven't been to the UK yet despite EasyJet and Wizz Air flying between Ljubljana and London.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Okay, so, when I heard "two 15-minute periods of extra time, then penalty kicks," I thought that meant (as it would in a normal sport :jk: ) one 15-minute period, then *if it's still tied* a second 15 minutes, then if it's still tied, penalty kicks (which are stupid and I'm glad we were spared that).

Result: when Belgium went up 2-0 with seconds left in the first 15 minutes (and Lukaku, like, licking the camera), I assumed it was over and went and watched something else. After 10 minutes I thought I'd see what they were saying about the match and discovered that (a) they were still playing and (b) I'd missed a goal. What the?

So I was excited, but eventually it felt like losing twice. Hmph.

Belgium, I'll be mad at you for about 24 hours. Then root for you against Argentina. And De Bruyne has class (helping Jones when he'd collided with him.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> It was Michael's mistake ;-)
> It's sad that USA is out. They played well, I liked it. I think they are in the best 8 teams of the world but had no luck with draw and had to play against Belgium.
> 
> Btw., this World Cup may get a breakthrough for soccer in the USA (20 years after the one organized there). Public Viewing of soccer, almost 100 thousand(!) American fans travelled to Brazil, 20 million people watched the games in TV. These are top numbers, never seen before. OK, football is more popular of course and it will remain so but USA does not mean any more "say no to soccer".
> So, even Michael watched it.


Actually, Michael mostly started at minute 75, on the theory (confirmed by the soccer nut at work with a big orange KNVB flag covering the front of his desk) that anything that happens before that is irrelevant.

And imagine what that TV viewing would be like if every freaking game didn't start (and more than half of them finish) during the work day.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keokiracer said:


> Not this time, I am the one that mentioned the game first.:cheers:


:nono:


----------



## keokiracer

^^ I'm pretty sure I was first at 10:01 PM
Else I'd like to see a link to the post cause I can't seem to find it


----------



## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> Why isn't "sudden death" an option? Perhaps after a full 15-minute overtime period or two. Since scoring is so difficult (hence the problem), ending the game when the first team scores seems as reasonable and fair a way as any.


Penalty shootouts are an option after an extra 30 min of play!

"Sudden death", also known as "golden goal", was used by FIFA between 1998 and 2004. The rules were simple: after regular time, teams would come to extra-time, the first to score won the match. If after 90min no one scored, then they'd have penalty shootouts.

What FIFA wanted: to reduce the overall number of matches going to be decided on penalties shooting scores, perceived as semi-random. 

What FIFA got: ultra-defensive tactics for extra-time, with neither of teams involved risking much. The proportion of matches with draws on regular time that ended on shootouts actually increased.

FIFA then ended the practice. 



italystf said:


> In Scandinavia it's different: due to different geography and climate there aren't beaches and mountain resorts where people from all over Europe spend a week-long summer holiday (one exception are Norweigian mountain resorts). Tourism there is different, people visit cities and other interesting places like islands and fjords but don't stay for long in the same place.
> There is not the "cool factor" that keeps prices high in well-known touristic places like Cortina, Sestriere, Courmayeur, Rimini, Viareggio, Jesolo, Capri, Taormina,...


I think Stavenger, Bergen (fjords) and Trondheim (Viking archaeology, Northern Lights and wooden houses) get a lot of tourists, don't they? 



keber said:


> But don't worry, for me Italy still has the best looking nature in Europe, I just need to adjust to those pesky 19th century traditions that don't want to die off.


Now imagine living in a small city where the supermaket also closes during mid-afternoon, or where other businesses are still following a 1950 logic where women don't work and have all their daytime free to shop on short opening hours. Additionally, consider the bizarre idea of whole line of businesses closing off for 2 periods a week on each city :bash:


----------



## Penn's Woods

keokiracer said:


> ^^ I'm pretty sure I was first at 10:01 PM
> Else I'd like to see a link to the post cause I can't seem to find it


I'm wagging my finger at you *for* mentioning it first. Bad Keoki!


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Or a four-way stop. Stop signs in the Netherlands are usually used for traffic calming purposes, it's rarely necessary to come to a full stop in order to safely cross another road or bicycle path.
> 
> For most people in the Netherlands, a STOP sign means 'proceed with caution', instead of 'come to a full stop at all times'. For example, pretty much nobody stops here if there are no cyclists coming.


Stopping on stop sign is considered very strictly in my country. Once you don't stop, you will pay fine. Remembering my visit in Greece. They have stop signs on motorway merging lanes :lol: Almost caused an accident when I saw it first.


----------



## Penn's Woods

riiga said:


> ^^ Priority to the right


Just need one more person there - in the spot that's not currently occupied - and everyone could sit there yielding to the person to their right until the end of time.


----------



## keokiracer

Penn's Woods said:


> Just need one more person there - in the spot that's not currently occupied - and everyone could sit there yielding to the person to their right until the end of time.


As my driving instructor used to say. In a lockdown like that, f you're the last to arrive: just drive on (with extra caution of course), if you stop you're only going to make things worse.
And if the 4th person actually stops, it basically comes down to who of the 4 has the biggest balls and just goes.


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ Same here  But actually, I have never been in such situation...


----------



## Broccolli

keokiracer said:


> As my driving instructor used to say. In a lockdown like that, f you're the last to arrive: just drive on (with extra caution of course), if you stop you're only going to make things worse.
> And if the 4th person actually stops, it basically comes down to who of the 4 has the biggest balls and just goes.


Chinese/Italian style ...not possible in Slovenia though, because of the low driving culture of slovene drivers.


----------



## riiga

Penn's Woods said:


> Just need one more person there - in the spot that's not currently occupied - and everyone could sit there yielding to the person to their right until the end of time.





keokiracer said:


> As my driving instructor used to say. In a lockdown like that, f you're the last to arrive: just drive on (with extra caution of course), if you stop you're only going to make things worse.
> And if the 4th person actually stops, it basically comes down to who of the 4 has the biggest balls and just goes.





volodaaaa said:


> ^^ Same here  But actually, I have never been in such situation...


That's why we have yield and priority signs to use.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'd love to see this in Europe. I believe there are similar signs in the UK (slow traffic use layby or something?)


Pull Over, Please by TranBC, on Flickr


----------



## Penn's Woods

riiga said:


> That's why we have yield and priority signs to use.


Or - as already suggested - traffic lights.

:cheers:


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'd love to see this in Europe. I believe there are similar signs in the UK (slow traffic use layby or something?)
> 
> https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3925/14372991677_3fbc73cdbf_c.jpg


that.
unfortunately, here even ban of overpassing for heavy vehicles between 7 and 19h on frequent motorways doesn't work


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'd love to see this in Europe. I believe there are similar signs in the UK (slow traffic use layby or something?)
> 
> 
> Pull Over, Please by TranBC, on Flickr


It is mandatory in some European countries. However, seen this applied very rarely. The same goes for overtaking prohibition for 3,5t over vehicles on motorways.


----------



## Broccolli

The highest building in Slovenia...Crystal Palace (89m)


----------



## Road_UK

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'd love to see this in Europe. I believe there are similar signs in the UK (slow traffic use layby or something?)
> 
> 
> Pull Over, Please by TranBC, on Flickr


I wonder how many Germans and tractors would pull over in Mayrhofen when this regulation becomes mandatory in Austria.

I haven't seen anything like this in England, however, in Scotland there are lots of signs advising slow moving vehicles to allow faster traffic to overtake as delays causes aggression. (on single carriageways only)


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'd love to see this in Europe. I believe there are similar signs in the UK (slow traffic use layby or something?)
> 
> 
> Pull Over, Please by TranBC, on Flickr


I guess you first need a infrastructure that would allow safe pullouts. It could be doable on those N roads in NL where you see often a parking bay.

Also what about when the slow vehicle would pull out and then before it would get running again, it would have a train of five vehicles behind.

And how would you define slow on 80 km/h roads...


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Stopping on stop sign is considered very strictly in my country. Once you don't stop, you will pay fine. Remembering my visit in Greece. They have stop signs on motorway merging lanes :lol: Almost caused an accident when I saw it first.


Also in Italy, the stop sign is used only where you need to stop. In other places, this sign is used:


----------



## CNGL

Same in Spain.

Speaking of signs, here is one I'd like to see :









Credit goes to Ga293 on AARoads forum


----------



## radamfi

One thing UK drivers have a problem with when driving abroad is uncontrolled intersections. In the UK, one road is nearly always chosen to be the 'major' road, even if the two roads are both minor, so you don't have to worry about priority from the right.

Stop signs are rare in the UK. If you see a Stop sign then you know that the junction is particularly dangerous.


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> How would you solve this intersection in your country? (just want to find out whether the basic traffic rules are similar)


Here they would put a STOP sign on all 4 legs, and the one to stop first would go. Except nobody stops 100% as it is idiotic, normally passing instead at 15-20 km/h and sometimes, the police are waiting and hungry :bash: The ticket is the same as running a red light.

I've had that situation where two other drivers are too polite and want to let the other one go first. I usually come up and then floor the gas, chirp tires and go first, laughing maniacally :lol:


----------



## Fargo Wolf

volodaaaa said:


> How would you solve this intersection in your country? (just want to find out whether the basic traffic rules are similar)


The green car goes first, since it is to the right of the blue car.

Because the red car is turning left, it gives way to the blue car, which is traveling straight through the intersection.

After the blue car has cleared the intersection, the red car turns left, but only after the driver has checked to make sure it is safe to do so.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> How would you solve this intersection in your country? (just want to find out whether the basic traffic rules are similar)


The typical deadlock situation where everyone has to yield. The bravest goes first.


----------



## bogdymol

What I found weird in UK is that they do not have the yield sign before the roundabouts, but just the roundabout itself.

2 days ago I drove for the first time in UK for about 250 km and it was weird. Yesterday I drove again and today once more. I already got used to it and it's quite ok... I just have to be a little bit more careful. What I found quite hard to do is to park the car, as all the parking spaces are quite narrow and I'm not used with the car dimensions from the right seat.


----------



## x-type

i was once chosen in theatre to act in a play :lol:
it was a play about making play actually, some countryfolk make Shakespeare's Hamlet. after play itself they have chosen few people from the audience to act, and i was one of them


----------



## Airman Kris™

Kanadzie said:


> Must be. The "upstate" New York area (the part that is not NYC) is so empty and stagnant, at least in appearance.
> 
> Note how California population explodes as soon as air conditioning (klima) for houses is invented :lol:


Upstate New York may seem stagnant, but it is beautiful and the heart of the state.

I am sure the invention of air conditioning was _not_ the reason for population growth in California. It was almost certainly the gold rush, business opportunity, and the fact the weather is pleasant in areas with the highest populations.


----------



## Attus

I'm a native Hungarian and speak both English and German fluently - although but of them with lots of grammar mistakes. I used to speak and write English a little bit wasier and better than German.
But for 1.5 years I have been living in Germany and use German every single day, in thee office where I work, in the shop, etc. And nowadays I see quite often that I use English with German grammar. Or sometimes I realize it's German grammar, but I simply can find the proper English grammar although I know it but even if I try to think hard, I find always the German way.


----------



## JackFrost

Almost same story here.

But nothing beats the "weiss ich richtig, dass...?" expression from my Hungarian fellows, which is an exact translation of the hungarian "jól tudom, hogy...?" sentence. I here it so often and it sounds a little funny, however, people seem to understand it


----------



## Alex_ZR

Google announced release of Street View in Serbia for 10th July. Unfortunately, only three largest cities will be available (Belgrade, Novi Sad and Niš) since rest of the country haven't been recorded.


----------



## Attus

Attus said:


> I'm a native Hungarian and speak both English and German fluently - although but of them with lots of grammar mistakes. I used to speak and write English a little bit wasier and better than German.
> But for 1.5 years I have been living in Germany and use German every single day, in thee office where I work, in the shop, etc. And nowadays I see quite often that I use English with German grammar. Or sometimes I realize it's German grammar, but I simply can find the proper English grammar although I know it but even if I try to think hard, I find always the German way.


I think I have never had a post with so much typo errors. :nuts:


----------



## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> Google announced release of Street View in Serbia for 10th July. Unfortunately, only three largest cities will be available (Belgrade, Novi Sad and Niš) since rest of the country haven't been recorded.


Better than nothing.... ;-)


----------



## cinxxx

This one's for NordikNerd 
Long story short, the head of the clan was arrested and sentenced to prison, and this was the reaction :lol:


----------



## Road_UK

^^ Don't do that.


----------



## JackFrost

shit, the forbidden subject


----------



## cinxxx

:lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

I've already posted this pic to the respective topic, but must post it here as well. This is from some roadworks in Bratislava.










Note the "warning bidirectional traffic" sign (hint: concern on the arrows)  Slovak road workers are incredibly stupid.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## italystf

edit delete please


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Surel

cinxxx said:


>


I guess this will be interesting document about car tunning youngsters. It was well received at the Karlovy Vary film festival this year. Just a link to the trailer at Vimeo because there is some explicit content in the video.


----------



## Broccolli




----------



## x-type

cool car is cruising in Zagreb last few days.


















3700 ccm twin-turbo boxer, 750 HP, 960Nm, 1380 kg. 2,8 sec 0-100 km/h, 390 km/h top speed 
7 pieces will be produced, price 3,4 mln USD (what makes her 3rd most expensive car in the world)


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Going around town at 50 kmh...


----------



## Skyline_

I 'd rather have a modified Nissan GT-R that makes 1400 (engine) horsepower on premium pump fuel (98-100 octane [RON]).


----------



## Alex_ZR

^^ As far I can see he has a Football Association of Serbia badge on his hat:


----------



## volodaaaa

This guy is my new hero... Really... Wishing him the best in his life... he deserve it. Nice and very beautiful gesture 

Btw. more info here


----------



## Penn's Woods

Come on, Dutch people! Goals, we want goals!


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> Come on, Dutch people! Goals, we want goals!


Oh, dear.... hno:


----------



## Airman Kris™

"_Don't cry for me Argentina_"....


----------



## volodaaaa

Nice banner :troll:


----------



## Skyline_

Germany vs. Argentina and Brazil vs. the Netherlands. Europe vs. South America. Not bad.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Nice banner :troll:


Is that big building towards the back your famous condo or co-op or whatever it is?


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ No I don't live in the castle, but I'd like though. My condo is not on this picture. It is just behind the horizon.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I just saw a right hand drive people carrier with a North Carolina registration and my back number plate's not in a great state so I'm going to get new ones with eurobands, as my roundel looks a bit precarious when I put it on ( at the top it's loose) and I don't want to keep buying new ones.


----------



## Road_UK

You may have to buy new ones again within 5 years if Nigel Farage gets his way...


----------



## Alex_ZR

Some info about Street View in Serbia:

http://www.b92.net/eng/news/society.php?yyyy=2014&mm=07&dd=10&nav_id=90940

Don't know how it's possible to get it like this below: :dunno:


----------



## volodaaaa

I assume, there is a beta version of streetview already launched for media and the access is based on invitation. gmail started that way if I am not mistaken.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> You may have to buy new ones again within 5 years if Nigel Farage gets his way...


??


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> ??


He's an MEP for the British anti-EU UKIP party. (UK Independence Party). He advocates a EU-exit for Britain. And he has upset a lot of bureaucrats in the European parliament and commission. Just type Nigel Farage into YouTube and see for yourself.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I know who he is, but I don't see what....ah, the EU stars. (I thought he was advocating Welsh independence or something. Sorry, long day....)


----------



## volodaaaa

I've got somehow a feeling, those nationalists have decided to take the EU apart from the inside.


----------



## SeanT

Today in Ebeltoft DK, was 26 C° yesterday even higher. Perfect sommer


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ulvik, Norway had over 34 °C.


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> I've got somehow a feeling, those nationalists have decided to take the EU apart from the inside.


Well, Nigel is pretty honest about it at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. He not only wants Britain to divorce from the EU. He wants the whole of Europe to divorce from the EU. And just be good neighbours and partners, but without the bureaucracy.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Do you guys like the way Belgrade looks ?
Because you have probably see him on Street view.


----------



## riiga

Today was unbearable at 29 °C and a constant 28 °C in my apartment, no matter how many windows I opened. hno:


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> Well, Nigel is pretty honest about it at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. He not only wants Britain to divorce from the EU. He wants the whole of Europe to divorce from the EU. And just be good neighbours and partners, but without the bureaucracy.


I know about his statements. For a short period of time, he was quite popular in my country. EU is in crisis. But nationalism and isolatism is not the solution. Bureaucracy is a problem. On the other hand, important things are not solved at all (transportation is a proper example).

Personally, I agree with him in some points (especially in criticism towards mechanism how EU parliament works), but I think, Europe should be renewed, not fallen apart.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Ulvik, Norway had over 34 °C.


Weird. Today in Trieste 17°C, rain and wind. We had warmer days in late March!


----------



## italystf

Still no Street View in Serbia
https://www.google.it/maps/place/Se...m2!3m1!1s0x47571ddff2898095:0x55e50ea3723865d


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Still no Street View in Serbia
> https://www.google.it/maps/place/Se...m2!3m1!1s0x47571ddff2898095:0x55e50ea3723865d


About 10 minutes ago, I tried to click on the human icon and then clicked somewhere in Belgrade no matter there was not a blue line. It accidentally started :lol: Now trying it on and on and it does not work.


----------



## keber

riiga said:


> Today was unbearable at 29 °C and a constant 28 °C in my apartment, no matter how many windows I opened. hno:


Unbearable? This is just right.
Only 14°C here today, tomorrow it will be already 25. Let the summer finally begin.:cheer:


----------



## volodaaaa

keber said:


> Unbearable? This is just right.
> Only 14°C here today, tomorrow it will be already 25. Let the summer finally begin.:cheer:


Different standards in accordance with latitude :lol:


----------



## cinxxx

italystf said:


> Still no Street View in Serbia
> https://www.google.it/maps/place/Se...m2!3m1!1s0x47571ddff2898095:0x55e50ea3723865d


Read this 



Alex_ZR said:


> Actually, Google held a conference today in which they presented Street View, but it will be available in a few days...
> On the other hand, good news is that they will continue shooting rest of the Serbia in next three-four months. Here are Opel Astras newly registered to Belgrade plates, which will be used in Serbia:


----------



## Alex_ZR

volodaaaa said:


> About 10 minutes ago, I tried to click on the human icon and then clicked somewhere in Belgrade no matter there was not a blue line. It accidentally started :lol: Now trying it on and on and it does not work.


Maybe you picked some of the photo spheres that exist there:

http://goo.gl/maps/67s11


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ Could be possible


----------



## italystf

How many Google Cars do exist? Are they registered in every country who has coverage? I read that Google Cars with Dutch plates have been spotted in Milan years ago, so probably there's not relationship between license plates and covered area.
So, why they purchased new cars for Serbia while they could use cars that were previously used in other countries, where they aren't needed anymore since they're already mapped?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I notice that Google is using Opel Astra J.
But in some other countries Google was using Opel Astra H.
Obviously Google loves Opel


----------



## Verso

Slovenia was photographed by Greek-plated cars.


----------



## Penn's Woods

riiga said:


> Today was unbearable at 29 °C and a constant 28 °C in my apartment, no matter how many windows I opened. hno:


This is why God invented air conditioning....


----------



## keokiracer

Speaking of Streetview cars, a Google Streetview car was spotted today (well, technically yesterday) in the city centre of Utrecht (NL)


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> I know about his statements. For a short period of time, he was quite popular in my country. EU is in crisis. But nationalism and isolatism is not the solution. Bureaucracy is a problem. On the other hand, important things are not solved at all (transportation is a proper example).
> 
> Personally, I agree with him in some points (especially in criticism towards mechanism how EU parliament works), but I think, Europe should be renewed, not fallen apart.


You and me have exactly the same opinion. We should form a party :lol:

Mind you, Nigel is hilarious when it comes to some of his speeches in parliament. Especially the way he crosses swords with Guy Verhofstad, the former prime-minister of Belgium. (he doesn't like Belgium and keeps on revering it as a non-country)






Farage tells former Belgian prime minister to shut up and listen for a change, and also comments to a Romanian MEP about the Romanian treatment of a minority group I won't mention  )


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> This is why God invented air conditioning....


29 degrees "unbearable"? Air conditioning? I guess everything is relative


----------



## nbcee

Road_UK said:


> You and me have exactly the same opinion. We should form a party :lol:


Count me in! kay:


Road_UK said:


> Mind you, Nigel is hilarious when it comes to some of his speeches in parliament. Especially the way he crosses swords with Guy Verhofstad, the former prime-minister of Belgium. (he doesn't like Belgium and keeps on revering it as a non-country)


 The thing is that he has many good points. Like when he starts with that the anti-Assad forces are not clearly the "good guys" in the Syrian civil war - and with the rise of ISIS/ISIL he was damn right about that. Now of course he often uses these valid points of arguments to support his wacky ideas and his style can be offensive to some - but you can't ignore how entertaining he is. :lol: Heck, he even made my little brother watch political speeches - a thing which didn't happen since 2006.  Anyway I still wouldn't vote for him but I think we should consider some of his points.


----------



## nbcee

g.spinoza said:


> 29 degrees "unbearable"? Air conditioning? I guess everything is relative


I was once talking with a lady from Cyprus who was *horrified *when she learned that temperatures can drop below 20 degrees in September here...


----------



## keokiracer

g.spinoza said:


> 29 degrees "unbearable"? Air conditioning? I guess everything is relative


Air conditioning goes on here from 25 degrees (Celsius of course, and in-room temperature, not outside temperature). I can't stand heat. On the other hand, the heating won't go on here unless the temperature drops below 15 degrees. And now that I think of it I'll probably just put on a sweater if it ever drops below 15 degrees, since I always wear t-shirts. I haven't worn a sweater in about 3 years now. When it was -15 degrees outside a couple of winters ago I went to school in t-shirt and winterjacket and walked around in school with only a t-shirt on. People thought I was nuts. And they weren't completely wrong...


----------



## Skyline_

riiga said:


> Today was unbearable at 29 °C and a constant 28 °C in my apartment, no matter how many windows I opened. hno:


That's weird.... My room temperature gets to 28 C only when outside temperature is over 30 C. Once it was 31 C inside my room and I didn't even switch on the A/C. :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

keokiracer said:


> Air conditioning goes on here from 25 degrees (Celsius of course, and in-room temperature, not outside temperature). I can't stand heat.


Don't get me wrong, I can't stand heat either. For me, everything above 20°C is nothing short of hell.
But I don't like air conditioning. Every time I get inside a building with air conditioning, then go out in the heat, I get sick. hno:


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> You and me have exactly the same opinion. We should form a party :lol:
> 
> Mind you, Nigel is hilarious when it comes to some of his speeches in parliament. Especially the way he crosses swords with Guy Verhofstad, the former prime-minister of Belgium. (he doesn't like Belgium and keeps on revering it as a non-country)
> 
> Farage tells former Belgian prime minister to shut up and listen for a change, and also comments to a Romanian MEP about the Romanian treatment of a minority group I won't mention  )


I like this performance





"charisma of a damp rag and appearance of a low grade bank clerk" :lol: Of course he did not resisted to mention Belgium as a non-country :lol: 

Btw. note the attendance  If I earned that money and had that competences, I would be there everytime I could. And I also don't like Mr. Schulz.


----------



## Road_UK

Nigel Farage has many good points, and he's a brilliant politician. We need people like him, even though I'm not in favour of an EU exit, but a complete restructure. 

Martin Schulz is a pillock. So is his buddy Guy Verhofstad.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> 29 degrees "unbearable"? Air conditioning? I guess everything is relative


I was being a bit facetious - 29 (84 to me) isn't unbearable at all; it's perfect. If it's outdoors. But I can't sleep when it's that warm inside.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Airconditioning in houses is rather uncommon in the Netherlands. It's definitely a luxury option, not a standard equipment. Most offices are equipped with A/C or some other kind of cooling. I have two offices, one is A/C'ed and the other is not. The one without A/C often reaches 25 - 27 °C despite not getting a lot of direct sunlight on it.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Airconditioning in houses is rather uncommon in the Netherlands. It's definitely a luxury option, not a standard equipment. Most offices are equipped with A/C or some other kind of cooling. I have two offices, one is A/C'ed and the other is not. The one without A/C often reaches 25 - 27 °C despite not getting a lot of direct sunlight on it.


I work in a temperature lab... our labs and offices are all set at 24°C with an accuracy of 0.1°C


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Did anyone heard about the strikes on Greece border checkpoint's ?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Strikes? What sort of strikes? By whom?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

By Greece officers.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Oh, THAT sort of strike! I thought you meant a military attack.

:cheers:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Penn's Woods said:


> Oh, THAT sort of strike! I thought you meant a military attack.
> 
> :cheers:


Haha :lol::lol:
The same thing happened 3 years ago .


----------



## volodaaaa

Yesterday, I purchased GPS navigation *Sygic Voucher version*. Found it at the local appliances store with small discount - so it costed 25 €. Ask myself why not? There was nothing in the pack but small ticket with an activation code. Was in Austria today to try it out. *what a great tool and for that price!* I have not seen such intuitive navigation and already have had six. It considers my speed and the radius of curve ahead and gives me a warning. Also shows upcoming speed changes and if I turn on my wifi or packet data, it informs me about the congestions or extraordinary situations. Works offline, but you have to have an internet connection to download the maps before journey, which are stored at SD card (or whatever periphery store device you have). And the lane assistant. Or direction traffic signs indicator. All matched the reality. Completely satisfied. Totally worth the price.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Very long traffic jam...


----------



## Airman Kris™

ChrisZwolle said:


> Very long traffic jam...


Where is this located ? It almost looks like a backlot prop set.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Châtillon, Belgium. 

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/224339/photos-of-a-traffic-jam-stuck-in-the-woods-for-70-years/

However one source says it was cleared in 2010...

http://www.boredpanda.com/chatillon-car-graveyard-abandoned-cars-cemetery-belgium/


----------



## keokiracer

Airman Kris™ said:


> Where is this located ?


In this strip of forest


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> Don't get me wrong, I can't stand heat either. For me, everything above 20°C is nothing short of hell.


Do you come from Tarvisio? :shifty:


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Do you come from Tarvisio? :shifty:


No but I'd love to live there...


----------



## Verso

You could hike to the tripoint every day.  (btw, that's also the highest point of the small Italian part of _Caravanche_)


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Next September I'm going to a conference in Slovenia, Brdo pri Kranju if I'm not mistaken: I'm trying to find an excuse to skip one day and climb Triglav


----------



## Verso

^ September 2015? Brdo pri Kranju? Fancy!


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Nice place


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> ^ September 2015? Brdo pri Kranju? Fancy!


Next September, I mean the nearest one: September 2014.


----------



## Road_UK

Remember that my invitation is still open if you want to master some of the summits here. People from all over the world come here to climb some of the most breathtaking mountains available - up to 3500 metres...


----------



## g.spinoza

Thanks but... aren't you going to move to France?
In two weeks I'm going to Pustertal for 7 days of hiking


----------



## Road_UK

Directly on the other side of my mountains. Let me know if you intend to climb to the Pfitscher Joch. I'll come from the other side and buy you a beer...


----------



## Road_UK

And I am still intending to move to France, but it won't be until after autumn...


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Pfitscher Joch? They should choose an easier name for international use. ;-)


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Directly on the other side of my mountains. Let me know if you intend to climb to the Pfitscher Joch. I'll come from the other side and buy you a beer...


I have more plans than days  ...but if I decide to climb Rotbachlspitz I'll pass there. But Pfitscher Tal is not really easily accessible from Pustertal.



Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Pfitscher Joch? They should choose an easier name for international use. ;-)


There is already, it's "Passo di Vizze"


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> Next September, I mean the nearest one: September 2014.


Ok. I don't know about English, but I asked, because in Slovenian ("naslednji september") it would mean September 2015. For Sep. 2014 we'd just say "in September" ("septembra" in Slovenian ).



Road_UK said:


> Remember that my invitation is still open if you want to master some of the summits here. People from all over the world come here to climb some of the most breathtaking mountains available - up to 3500 metres...


I envy Austria (and Italy) for its high mountains. Triglav is just 136 m short of 3,000 m.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Ok. I don't know about English, but I asked, because in Slovenian ("naslednji september") it would mean September 2015. For Sep. 2014 we'd just say "in September" ("septembra" in Slovenian ).


There's ambiguity even within Italian: to me, "domenica prossima" ("next Sunday") means in two days (today being Friday). To Southerners it means "Sunday of the next week", so in 9 days...


> I envy Austria (and Italy) for its high mountains. Triglav is just 136 m short of 3,000 m.


My highest plan for this summer is Rocciamelone/Rochemelon, 3500 m and just 50 km from Turin


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Measure them in feet: you get more impressive numbers. :troll:

[Exits hastily, dodging rotten tomatoes thrown by Spinoza.]

EDIT: Arrows for Verso, dammit!


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Measure them in feet: you get more impressive numbers. :troll:
> 
> [Exits hastily, dodging rotten tomatoes thrown by Spinoza.]


In one episode of Family guy, someone said: "You converted _The Biggest Loser_ to the metric system making it look like the contestants aren't losing enough weight!"


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> I envy Austria (and Italy) for its high mountains. Triglav is just 136 m short of 3,000 m.


In the last week of July I will be near a 3,404 meter high mountain (Aneto), the highest in my area. That's only 10 feet higher than the Eisenhower tunnel on I-70 in Colorado...


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Measure them in feet: you get more impressive numbers. :troll:


Not necessarily. 3,000 m = 9,843 ft.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Meanwhile in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia






What a mess, and not a single crash! I can imagine what would happen in Russia in this situation... :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Not necessarily. 3,000 m = 9,843 ft.


So round up.


----------



## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> Meanwhile in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What a mess, and not a single crash! I can imagine what would happen in Russia in this situation... :lol:


Ugly crash followed by giant street fight. All caught by several camcorders at once. Post processed, enriched by hardcore Russian rap and uploaded on youtube.


----------



## Road_UK

Attus said:


> What is your opinion about this situation? It is very common in Hungary.
> Motorway, 3 lanes in your direction. Speed limit is 130 km/h. You drive exactly at that speed in the right (slow) lane. The right lane is empty as far as you can see.
> Some cars drive 100-110 km/h in the middle lane. You drive on in the right lane 130 km/h, without changing lane or your speed.
> It is legal? You overtake them in the right side which is basically strictly forbidden.


Overtaking on the inside is called undertaking and is indeed illegal in most countries. But so is lane hogging, which is unnecessary and lazy. I do a bit of undertaking myself sometimes because 1: I can't be bothered to switch two lanes, and 2: I'm trying to make a point that they should keep to the right unless overtaking at all times.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> What is your opinion about this situation? It is very common in Hungary.
> Motorway, 3 lanes in your direction. Speed limit is 130 km/h. You drive exactly at that speed in the right (slow) lane. The right lane is empty as far as you can see.
> Some cars drive 100-110 km/h in the middle lane. You drive on in the right lane 130 km/h, without changing lane or your speed.
> It is legal? You overtake them in the right side which is basically strictly forbidden.


Yeah, the same situation is in Slovakia on D1 motorway between Bratislava and Trnava. There have been an interview with police chief on this issue.

He has told following: Overtaking in the right side is forbidden. But the crucial question is, whether straight drive without changing lanes is defined as overtaking. 

The current situation is that police does not fine drivers who drive straight in right lane and overtake middle lane hoggers. Sometimes, when they have mood, they fine middle lane hoggers. Unfortunately it is pretty much rare.

However, I find it dangerous and overtake in the right very carefully. I really hate (HATE!!!) those middle lane hoggers. They makes dangerous situations and negate the nature of motorways. I think, they should be expelled from there.

Personally, when I'm in bad mood, I tailgate them sometimes and flash my high beams (do so called stroboscope) :lol:

If they are afraid of driving at motorways, they should not be there!


----------



## italystf

Broccolli said:


> Tranvia Trieste-Opicina/Openski tramvaj / after two years in service again!  :cheers:
> 
> _In Triestine dialect:_
> _El tram de Opcina_
> 
> _E anche el tran de Opcina xe nato disgrazià
> venindo zo de Scorcola una casa ga ribaltà
> bona de Dio che iera giorno de lavor
> e dentro no ghe iera che 'l povero frenador_
> 
> In Slovenian:
> 
> _Openski tramvaj že ob rojstvu ni imel sreče.
> Ko se je spuščal po Škorklji, se je zaletel v hišo.
> Hvala Bogu, da je bil delavnik in
> v tramvaju ni bilo nikogar razen ubogega zavirača._






English translation:
And also Opicina tram was born unfortunate,
going down from Scorcola (an uphill Trieste suburb, ndr), it torn down a house,
thanks God it was a work day,
and inside there was only the poor conductor.

This tram was inaugurated in 1902 and, the first day of operation, derailled demolishing a house, hence the origin of that popular song in Trieste's dialect.
Currently it's the oldest tram in operation in the world.

Map of Trieste tram network in the early 1930s.
Most lines, except the "Tram de Opcina" marked in blue where shut down between 1935 and 1970 when they though it was better to replace them with buses.  I think it was a great loss for the city.


----------



## hofburg

in Slovenia it is legal to overtake on the right if you are not exactly "overtaking". there must be two rows (3 or more cars) of cars driving at different constant speed on two paralel lanes, if the right one is faster than the left one, it's technically not overtaking and it is legal to be faster. I believe the same goes for Italy.


----------



## Broccolli

italystf said:


> Currently it's the oldest tram in operation in the world.


And one more interesting fact...this tram is actually amphibian, because on the steepest part of the course (uphill Scorcola/Škorklja) "transform itself" into a funicular


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> in Slovenia it is legal to overtake on the right if you are not exactly "overtaking". there must be two rows (3 or more cars) of cars driving at different constant speed on two paralel lanes, if the right one is faster than the left one, it's technically not overtaking and it is legal to be faster. *I believe the same goes for Italy.*


Yes, it is. It's not overtaking if you don't change lane. If I'm driving 130 on the right lane and one is driving 110 on the left lane, it's his\her fault.


----------



## italystf

Broccolli said:


> And one more interesting fact...this tram is actually amphibian, because on the steepest part of the course (uphill Scorcola/Škorklja) "transform itself" into a funicular


Trieste could now have a network of historical trams like Lisbona or San Francisco, with high touristic interest, if the local administration didn't care only about spending less money. hno:
Back in the old days Trieste was also an important railway node, with connections with Italy and Central-Eastern Europe. Now trains run only towards Italy. The Opicina-Ljubljana service was recently restored by Slovenske Zeleznice, however Opicina railway station isn't reacheched by any Italian train since the discontinuation of the Venice-Ljubljana-Zagreb-Budapest euronight in 2011. The Italian part of the "Transalpina railway", between Campo Marzio and Opicina was closed in 1959 and it's only used occasionally by freight trains. Also the line to Istria was shut down after WWII and it's now a cycle route between Trieste and Kozina.
Now if one wants to travel by train between Lisbona and Teheran the only gap it's probably between Trieste railway station and Opicina.
Closing down local railway lines and urban streetcar systems in favour of buses had always been popular in Italy.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Attus said:


> What is your opinion about this situation? It is very common in Hungary.
> Motorway, 3 lanes in your direction. Speed limit is 130 km/h. You drive exactly at that speed in the right (slow) lane. The right lane is empty as far as you can see.
> Some cars drive 100-110 km/h in the middle lane. You drive on in the right lane 130 km/h, without changing lane or your speed.
> It is legal? You overtake them in the right side which is basically strictly forbidden.


In Serbia that is forbidden.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Yes, it is. It's not overtaking if you don't change lane. If I'm driving 130 on the right lane and one is driving 110 on the left lane, it's his\her fault.


Yes, but you still have to be very careful.


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> What is your opinion about this situation? It is very common in Hungary.
> Motorway, 3 lanes in your direction. Speed limit is 130 km/h. You drive exactly at that speed in the right (slow) lane. The right lane is empty as far as you can see.
> Some cars drive 100-110 km/h in the middle lane. You drive on in the right lane 130 km/h, without changing lane or your speed.
> It is legal? You overtake them in the right side which is basically strictly forbidden.


You can do that in Italy.
Source: http://www.poliziadistato.it/artico...tra_della_mia_es_quella_centrale_o_quella_di/ (Italian only)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This is going nowhere, locked for moderation purposes.

Reopened, be nice.


----------



## Road_UK

So.... The big game starts in a little over an hour. Who will be watching?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Not I.
It's nice out. (In fact, what am I doing on here now...?)


----------



## Road_UK

Relaxing. LOL


----------



## Penn's Woods

Being lazy. Checking news and e-mail. Being indecisive about what to have for lunch. Putting off errands and laundry. And the air conditioning feels good.

But I think I'll do that lunch now.

:cheers:


----------



## Road_UK

Cool. I already had dinner, then shower and I'm already in my nighties. Watching the game from my bed, with tea and biscuits.


----------



## Skyline_

Merkel vs. Argentina. Whom should I support? Hmmmm.


----------



## Road_UK

Um ok... I think I'll make myself scarce from this thread for a bit and let it run its natural cause without me.


----------



## Attus

I'll watch it.
And it will be the second world cup final for me today: afternoon I watched handball U20 WC final (South Korea won it).


----------



## OulaL

I'm personally not interested in football at all, but my customer (a newspaper printing and delivery company) is. Due to time differences the match takes place in a time in which newspapers are normally printed in Finland, and as the readers may want to read about the match in the morning, this might delay my work tonight...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> So.... The big game starts in a little over an hour. Who will be watching?


[yawn]

Is it over yet?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Skyline_ said:


> Merkel vs. Argentina. Whom should I support? Hmmmm.


Eva Peron was prettier than Angela Merkel....


----------



## JackFrost

Penn's Woods said:


> [yawn]
> 
> Is it over yet?












:cheers:


----------



## Kanadzie

Penn's Woods said:


> Eva Peron was prettier than Angela Merkel....


Except Angie would correctly manage all home affairs and cook you a good German food, while Eva would probably just stab you :lol:


----------



## Skyline_

Penn's Woods said:


> Eva Peron was prettier than Angela Merkel....


Angela won though! :cheers:


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> [yawn]
> 
> Is it over yet?



I didn't even make it to the end. I fell asleep in extra time, possibly only minutes before Germany scored.


----------



## keber

Another short night for me, thank God at least this football is over.


----------



## Airman Kris™

It was a very dull brutal final match but all is well with the ending. Looking forward to 2018.


----------



## g.spinoza

Am I the only one experiencing access problems to the forum?


----------



## Road_UK

No. It's been on- and offline since yesterday. I don't know if you're on Facebook, but if you "like" the Skyscrapercity page, they normally give updates.


----------



## keokiracer

Yay for DDOS attacks...

(Screenshot by Palance)


----------



## CNGL

I've asked them to go to Iraq, or Syria, or that Fucking village in Austria, or... Well, anywhere but here.


----------



## piotr71

Michael, did you know you live so close to France?


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Porto! :cheers2:


----------



## Skyline_

So, Pennsylvania is actually a village in the UK?


----------



## Road_UK

Hi guys.

I am about to be transported to a clinic in Innsbruck. I keep on getting high scale nerve attacks. and last night was the worst ever. I got examined and apparently it's pretty serious. I don't know how long I am going to be away for, but I just wanted to let you know.


----------



## Skyline_

Road_UK said:


> Hi guys.
> 
> I am about to be transported to a clinic in Innsbruck. I keep on getting high scale nerve attacks. and last night was the worst ever. I got examined and apparently it's pretty serious. I don't know how long I am going to be away for, but I just wanted to let you know.


I hope you will be alright soon. Take care, mate. Stay strong!


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Hi guys.
> 
> I am about to be transported to a clinic in Innsbruck. I keep on getting high scale nerve attacks. and last night was the worst ever. I got examined and apparently it's pretty serious. I don't know how long I am going to be away for, but I just wanted to let you know.


Take care, and keep us updated.


----------



## volodaaaa

Greetings from Central Macedonia, Greece  and wish roadUK to get over it soon...


----------



## Skyline_

volodaaaa said:


> Greetings from Central Macedonia, Greece  and wish roadUK to get over it soon...


You must be within 100 km radius of my current location, I guess!:cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

Skyline_ said:


> You must be within 100 km radius of my current location, I guess!:cheers:


Sarti, Sithonia


----------



## Verso

@Road, I feel for you. I don't know what exactly is happening with you, but I had similar problems three years ago, so I know what it's like. I really hope you'll be fine.


----------



## CNGL

Road_UK said:


> Hi guys.
> 
> I am about to be transported to a clinic in Innsbruck. I keep on getting high scale nerve attacks. and last night was the worst ever. I got examined and apparently it's pretty serious. I don't know how long I am going to be away for, but I just wanted to let you know.


I hope it won't be that serious after all. Just look at ill kids, they are always grinning and don't seem to be ill. And I've seen that lately, as I became friend with one...


----------



## keokiracer

Meanwhile in Russia. Holy crap    







Also good luck Road_UK, I hope you get better soon!


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Hi guys.
> 
> I am about to be transported to a clinic in Innsbruck. I keep on getting high scale nerve attacks. and last night was the worst ever. I got examined and apparently it's pretty serious. I don't know how long I am going to be away for, but I just wanted to let you know.


I can't think of anything appropriate to say that hasn't been said already. Take care of yourself and be back soon.


----------



## g.spinoza

Something like that happened to me last Saturday at Lake Iseo: temperature dropped from 28°C to 13°C in a matter of minutes, ad a 45-minute hailstorm caught us while on an island in the lake. Ferry couldn't travel so we waited for an hour under the hail. Result: I got a cold.

Hail was smaller than that, though 



keokiracer said:


> Meanwhile in Russia. Holy crap


----------



## piotr71

Road_UK said:


> Hi guys.
> 
> I am about to be transported to a clinic in Innsbruck. I keep on getting high scale nerve attacks. and last night was the worst ever. I got examined and apparently it's pretty serious. I don't know how long I am going to be away for, but I just wanted to let you know.


Take care mate!


----------



## Road_UK

Thanks guys, I really appreciate this. 

Spent a whole day in Innsbruck Hospital today after a complete nerve attack last night. Test after test and even had to spend a whole hour in a machine like those you see on Star Trek (sMRT), with all these buzzing sounds going on. I've got a swollen skin slime inside my head. Doctors are going to have a meeting about that tomorrow, and on Tuesday I am due to report back to Innsbruck Hospital again. The findings will be discussed and an operation may follow. The possibility of a tumor has as of now not been denied. I'm going to work as normal tomorrow...


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> The possibility of a tumor has as of now not been denied.


Even a potential tumor is not necessarily malignant. Just wanted to say that.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Road_UK said:


> Thanks guys, I really appreciate this.
> 
> Spent a whole day in Innsbruck Hospital today after a complete nerve attack last night. Test after test and even had to spend a whole hour in a machine like those you see on Star Trek (sMRT), with all these buzzing sounds going on. I've got a swollen skin slime inside my head. Doctors are going to have a meeting about that tomorrow, and on Tuesday I am due to report back to Innsbruck Hospital again. The findings will be discussed and an operation may follow. The possibility of a tumor has as of now not been denied. I'm going to work as normal tomorrow...


Everything is going to be just fine !


----------



## italystf

Good luck, Road UK, I'm sorry to hear this, I hope everything will be OK.


----------



## italystf

Our PM Matteo Renzi tries to speak English:
:rofl:


----------



## Airman Kris™

Road_UK said:


> Thanks guys, I really appreciate this.
> 
> Spent a whole day in Innsbruck Hospital today after a complete nerve attack last night. Test after test and even had to spend a whole hour in a machine like those you see on Star Trek (sMRT), with all these buzzing sounds going on. I've got a swollen skin slime inside my head. Doctors are going to have a meeting about that tomorrow, and on Tuesday I am due to report back to Innsbruck Hospital again. The findings will be discussed and an operation may follow. The possibility of a tumor has as of now not been denied. I'm going to work as normal tomorrow...


My thoughts are with you ! I am hoping for the best.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Okay, Russians, Ukrainians, Ukrainian-Russians, world leaders (if any are reading this, I mean, who am I...)... We don't know and I don't care who was responsible for this Malaysian Airlines crash... And I'm guessing most of the people on board didn't care about the issues you're all killing each other, or considering killing each other, over. But now they're dead for your, um, issues. It's time to calm this down!


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

The another example where innocent people are dieing without no reasons .
Let's stop this fucking war !


----------



## hofburg

I don't understand international politics how most governments are so selfish and see only their own interests and nothing else.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

They are behaveing like that because they are selfish


----------



## Verso

^^ Happy 16th birthday!  I'd give everything I have to be 16 again, and I'd also take a million euro loan and probably even sell some of my relatives. :lol:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Thank you !
You're not the only one !


----------



## cinxxx

Road_UK, take care mate!

Greetings from Lisbon, Portugal :cheers2:


----------



## Road_UK

I have some wonderful news. North Korea has made it to the finals, after beating everyone in the group stage. (they beat USA with 4-0). They'll be playing Portugal in the finals.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> There are no kangaroos in Austria.


Now, now.

They had separate entries for Mayrhofen and Mayrhofen-Zillertal, and a proper map...obviously (if we take your word for it.  ) their data's just wrong. (Actually, the "-Zillertal" information matches what your site has for the top of the mountain.)


----------



## Road_UK

That with the kangaroos is what you can buy on t-shirts in souvenir shops. Zillertal is the name of the valley my Mayrhofen is in. There's another Mayrhofen when heading towards Salzburg apparently...


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> i think that in HR in such situation they treat you like losing the ticket with double longest possible route.


I think here too, in fact I paid nothing at the toll booth by intervention of the assistant, but the bill was for 79€. I'll go to Autostrade office to check, but I'm not going to pay this monstrosity for just 150 km.


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> I think here too, in fact I paid nothing at the toll booth by intervention of the assistant, but the bill was for 79€. I'll go to Autostrade office to check, but I'm not going to pay this monstrosity for just 150 km.


btw, you would never make an U-turn just in front of the booths at local exit?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Greetings from Nea Vrasna,Greece !


----------



## Suburbanist

*Frustation with online maps*

I'm quite frustrated with the current state of online maps on bigger scale maps.

Google Maps, after its last revamp, now shows just very few roads if you zoom out, mainly the highways and nothing else on Satellite mode. On map mode, it shows more roads, but it is very difficult to spot the other ones shown in colors that don't distinguish them at all.

Bing Maps used to offer a more "dense" visualization, but now it will behave quite randomly for displays other than those in North America (where it works well).

ViaMichelin was my favorite map. Pretty looking, accurate, and with nice illustration job. However, it seems they have just stopped updating it altogether, I see road projects completed more than 2 years ago without any update on the online engine. I wonder if they will falter and stop printign atlases as well.


----------



## Peines

Suburbanist said:


> I'm quite frustrated with the current state of online maps on bigger scale maps.
> 
> Google Maps, after its last revamp, now shows just very few roads if you zoom out, mainly the highways and nothing else on Satellite mode. On map mode, it shows more roads, but it is very difficult to spot the other ones shown in colors that don't distinguish them at all.
> 
> Bing Maps used to offer a more "dense" visualization, but now it will behave quite randomly for displays other than those in North America (where it works well).
> 
> ViaMichelin was my favorite map. Pretty looking, accurate, and with nice illustration job. However, it seems they have just stopped updating it altogether, I see road projects completed more than 2 years ago without any update on the online engine. I wonder if they will falter and stop printign atlases as well.


Mee too, they're desinged for normal people, not for a maps freak 

I rather prefer Openstreetmap, Waze, and Apple Maps.

Anyway I have a lot of troubles with Google Maps in Alicante: all street and landmarks naming are so fuc#&% bad: they translate everything to Catalan, not even in Valencian (there're some little differences), in the spanish/english version with no reason.

Calatalan/Valencian is spoken by a small part of the population in Alicante City and Elche, so all names are popularly known in Spanish rather in Valencian. If someone says otherwise is who has never lived in Alicante.

Change all names into Valencian in the spanish/english versions has no sense when there's a Catalan/Valencian version of all Google Services, specially when the locals didn't speak Valencian (but they know the language).

I could understand that street names in Calalonia are in Catalan in the spanish version of Google Maps because people in there speak Catalan and everything is in Catalan and a little part speak Spanish, but here in Alicante is the opposite!, so naming must be in Spanish in the spanish versions cause everyone and everything is in spanish.

For example, when someone search an street name given by someone, like _Avenida de Juan Carlos I, Elche_ google maps will return _Avinguda de Joan Carles I / Elx_.

Another example, and pisses me off so hard, is when someone search _Torrellano_ google will return _Torre del Plà_ which is really a huge error because _Torrellano_ has no translation into Valencian, so _Torre del Plà_ is an invented name.

Also, they changed the name _Alicante_ to _Alacant_ and _Elche_ to _Elx_ in the Spanish/English version, and that's like to change the name from New York to _Nueva York_ in english versions, or London to _Londres_, or _Gèneve_ to _Ginebra_… :bash:


----------



## MattiG

*Summer*

Summer has arrived to the North. Midnight. Temperature +20 centigrade. +26 forecasted for tomorrow. Sunset at 2310 local time. Civil twilight occurs until the sunrise at 0400. Solving sudokus without artificial light. Latitude 65 north. Almost total silence. Some insects trying to attack. Spanish white wine chilled.


----------



## Road_UK

Spanish white whine. Yuk


----------



## Penn's Woods

Talking of Spain, I was watching BBC World News a bit after 3 p.m. my time - 7 p.m. GMT, 8 p.m. British Summer Time - and they were talking with someone in Barcelona and had a graphic informing us it was 20:09 "local time" (then 20:10, then 20:11...) Were they an hour off or has Spain (a) moved to a time zone that would make more sense for it or (b) opted out of Summer Time?


----------



## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> Talking of Spain, I was watching BBC World News a bit after 3 p.m. my time - 7 p.m. GMT, 8 p.m. British Summer Time - and they were talking with someone in Barcelona and had a graphic informing us it was 20:09 "local time" (then 20:10, then 20:11...) Were they an hour off or has Spain (a) moved to a time zone that would make more sense for it or (b) opted out of Summer Time?


Spain is GMT+2 right now, no change whatsoever. They put a wrong "local time" notice.


----------



## Jasper90

Peines said:


> Mee too, they're desinged for normal people, not for a maps freak
> 
> I rather prefer Openstreetmap, Waze, and Apple Maps.
> 
> Anyway I have a lot of troubles with Google Maps in Alicante: all street and landmarks naming are so fuc#&% bad: they translate everything to Catalan, not even in Valencian (there're some little differences), in the spanish/english version with no reason.
> 
> Calatalan/Valencian is spoken by a small part of the population in Alicante City and Elche, so all names are popularly known in Spanish rather in Valencian. If someone says otherwise is who has never lived in Alicante.
> 
> Change all names into Valencian in the spanish/english versions has no sense when there's a Catalan/Valencian version of all Google Services, specially when the locals didn't speak Valencian (but they know the language).
> 
> I could understand that street names in Calalonia are in Catalan in the spanish version of Google Maps because people in there speak Catalan and everything is in Catalan and a little part speak Spanish, but here in Alicante is the opposite!, so naming must be in Spanish in the spanish versions cause everyone and everything is in spanish.
> 
> For example, when someone search an street name given by someone, like _Avenida de Juan Carlos I, Elche_ google maps will return _Avinguda de Joan Carles I / Elx_.
> 
> Another example, and pisses me off so hard, is when someone search _Torrellano_ google will return _Torre del Plà_ which is really a huge error because _Torrellano_ has no translation into Valencian, so _Torre del Plà_ is an invented name.
> 
> Also, they changed the name _Alicante_ to _Alacant_ and _Elche_ to _Elx_ in the Spanish/English version, and that's like to change the name from New York to _Nueva York_ in english versions, or London to _Londres_, or _Gèneve_ to _Ginebra_… :bash:


In Venice they did even worse.
All the streets of the city have names in Venetian language, they're widely accepted and they have no Italian translation.
Some of the main streets are called "Salizada", which in Italian would translate "Strada selciata", street covered with flint (selce). They're called like that because they were the first streets to be paved, in ancient times.

Well, Google Maps decided to translate it. But they totally misinterpreted it, and translated it to "Salita", which in Italian means... Ramp, rising street! :cripes:

I mean... Hilly streets in Venice? :bash:


----------



## CNGL

Peines said:


> Mee too, they're desinged for normal people, not for a maps freak
> 
> I rather prefer Openstreetmap, Waze, and Apple Maps.


I'm into Chinese things, and I thought there weren't any more up to date maps than Google until I discovered Baidu Maps. It's always up to date, which is unbelieveable because as many of us know every damn road map of China is already outdated when it gets out.


Penn's Woods said:


> Talking of Spain, I was watching BBC World News a bit after 3 p.m. my time - 7 p.m. GMT, 8 p.m. British Summer Time - and they were talking with someone in Barcelona and had a graphic informing us it was 20:09 "local time" (then 20:10, then 20:11...) Were they an hour off or has Spain (a) moved to a time zone that would make more sense for it or (b) opted out of Summer Time?


Mistake of BBC. We are still one hour ahead of the UK.


----------



## g.spinoza

Greetings from a very rainy and chilly Brunico-Bruneck (Alto Adige-Sudtirol). I think a week's worth of hiking will go down the drain, since forecasts are very bad :-(


----------



## Road_UK

That's strange. You're only across the mountains from me, but the forecast here is very good. It's raining here as well though...

Just out of interest... do you speak German or Italian with the locals?


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Greetings from a very rainy and chilly Brunico-Bruneck (Alto Adige-Sudtirol). I think a week's worth of hiking will go down the drain, since forecasts are very bad :-(


Also here near the Adriatic sea it's rainy and chilly, yesterday we had 32°C.


Road_UK said:


> That's strange. You're only across the mountains from me, but the forecast here is very good. It's raining here as well though...
> 
> Just out of interest... do you speak German or Italian with the locals?


 You can communicate anywhere in Alto Adige\Suedtirol in Italian. Everybody understand it even if it's not their primary language. However some of them speak a very poor Italian and write with grammar mistakes (even in restaurants' menus).


----------



## Jasper90

Road_UK said:


> Just out of interest... do you speak German or Italian with the locals?





italystf said:


> You can communicate anywhere in Alto Adige\Suedtirol in Italian. Everybody understand it even if it's not their primary language. However some of them speak a very poor Italian and write with grammar mistakes (even in restaurants' menus).


They take the language issue quite seriously. In fact, all signs and writings are totally bilingual and sometimes even trilingual in some mountain cities where they speak Ladin. This applies either in the streets and in the shops.

I've only been to Bolzano and Merano, the two most Italian speaking cities (75% and 50% Italians, in the two cities). My experience is that, when you enter a shop, they don't greet you. They wait for you to either say "Ciao" or "Hallo", so they know if they have to answer in Italian or German 

If they're German native speakers, they'll probably know not so good Italian, with an extremely strong accent. But it's more than enough to communicate 

I don't know how the situation is in other areas, though. The rest of Alto Adige/Sudtirol is mostly German speaking. In some areas such as Valle Aurina/Ahrntal, virtually everyone is a native speaker of German (98.76% according to the last census).


----------



## Road_UK

Obviously, whenever I am there I speak German to them. In the area around Bruneck, where G Spinoza is at the moment, it's the main language anyway. But with G being a native Italian speaker, but also with good knowledge of the German language I am just wondering which language he uses in the area around Bruneck...


----------



## Road_UK

italystf said:


> Also here near the Adriatic sea it's rainy and chilly, yesterday we had 32°C. You can communicate anywhere in Alto Adige\Suedtirol in Italian. Everybody understand it even if it's not their primary language. However some of them speak a very poor Italian and write with grammar mistakes (even in restaurants' menus).


Not really. I have been told that especially in Sterzing the knowledge of Italian is not overwhelmingly good.


----------



## Penn's Woods

A month or two ago I was watching a food/cooking show (there was nothing else on...). It was certainly a show about Italian food, one I've never seen before and I don't remember the name so I can't find it again but I think they visit different regions.... The region for that show was Trentino-Alto Adige and they talked at length with one chef/restaurant owner about her particular specialty. I can't remember whether she was speaking accented Italian with the occasional word of German or just speaking German. Whichever it was, the host was understanding her and translating her into English for the American audience.

For what it's worth....


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> Not really. I have been told that especially in Sterzing the knowledge of Italian is not overwhelmingly good.


Most time their knowledge is sufficient to basic comunication. You don't have to talk about complex topics in a shop or restaurant, it's only necessary that they know basic words. Obviously, a German-speaking Sudtiroler, while speaking in Italian, sounds like a foreigner, with a strong accent and some grammar mistakes (our irregular verbs aren't easy for non-motherlanguages). People working in the tourist sector have an Italian knowledge higher than the average villager. Some people are strong nationalists and don't like people speaking in Italian, but they aren't a majority and business owners don't want to lose customers regardeless their nationality.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Here's the show I was talking about, but I don't have time to watch it now: http://watch.wliw.org/video/2365172682/


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> Here's the show I was talking about, but I don't have time to watch it now: http://watch.wliw.org/video/2365172682/


it's german with very strange accent 
also the dish that she's preparing is more common for Austria than Italy  (although the dish is really weird, Austrians would usualy make a bath for those knödeln in some goulashsuppe or something)


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Faro, Algarve, Portugal :cheers2:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Greetings from my apartment.


----------



## Road_UK

Greetings from my apartment as well. Greetings from Innsbruck hospital tomorrow... I'm losing my mind over this.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Don't worry, there are a lot of good doctors in Innsbruck


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Greetings from my apartment as well. Greetings from Innsbruck hospital tomorrow... I'm losing my mind over this.


I see you're on line - how goes it?


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> I see you're on line - how goes it?


Not so good. I keep on getting heavy attacks and got ongoing headaches now.My local GP tried to get hold of the special doctor in Innsbruck today, but without luck. All findings from last Wednesday should have been examined now and I should have been in hospital already, but seeing that the GP office hasn't received the findings we will have to wait until tomorrow...


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> That's strange. You're only across the mountains from me, but the forecast here is very good. It's raining here as well though...
> 
> Just out of interest... do you speak German or Italian with the locals?


When I have to express complex sentences, I speak Italian. If I just have to order something at the restaurant or say hi to the occasional hiker, I go with German first.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Not really. I have been told that especially in Sterzing the knowledge of Italian is not overwhelmingly good.


Sterzingers speak Italian almost with no accent... Lots of Italian speakers there. Here in Bruneck, knowledge of Italian is more limited. The hotel owner's wife doesn't speak any Italian.


----------



## Road_UK

Guideline to saying hi in the mountains:

Normal people: Servus, hallo
German tourists: Gruß Gott. There are some real fanatics among them :lol:


----------



## SeanT

What a summer day in Denmark today, 29° my in-laws' swimmingpool is 23°


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Guideline to saying hi in the mountains:
> 
> Normal people: Servus, hallo
> German tourists: Gruß Gott. There are some real fanatics among them :lol:


Gruss Gott is my favourite, but it was my understanding that it is used only in south Germany and Austria...


----------



## Penn's Woods

SeanT said:


> What a summer day in Denmark today, 29° my in-laws' swimmingpool is 23°


BRRRRR! :troll:


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> Gruss Gott is my favourite, but it was my understanding that it is used only in south Germany and Austria...


Only by older generations and fanatically yodeling German tourists who believe that Grüß Gott is the norm around here. Most people go by Grüss dich, hallo, hi, servus etc etc.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> Gruss Gott is my favourite, but it was my understanding that it is used only in south Germany and Austria...


Yes, Grüss Gott is almost unknown in other parts of Germany (people will understand it but will never use it). But even in South it is used less and less.


----------



## Penn's Woods

EU Draft Statement on Russia:

https://twitter.com/Berlaymonster/status/491509523912605696/photo/1


----------



## Road_UK

I don't think that is very funny. I am very sad and even emotional and angry about what happened and how the political witch hunt has begun out there in a war that is not supposed to be ours. But we're up our necks in it now...


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> Gruss Gott is my favourite, but it was my understanding that it is used only in south Germany and Austria...


i don't have favourite german incoming greeting, but i have outgoing one - bis bald


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> I don't think that is very funny. I am very sad and even emotional and angry about what happened and how the political witch hunt has begun out there in a war that is not supposed to be ours. But we're up our necks in it now...


You think I'm not upset? I've been upset for the last five months (nearly) that we suddenly seem to be contemplating risks that I thought were safely in the past. But I'm sorry to have upset you - you're going through enough - and anyone else. As to being up to our necks in a war, God I hope not. More killing, especially if it escalates to include all of us, solves nothing. They need to stop the fighting, and the perpetrators of this crime brought to justice. I mean, I'm not holding my breath.... :-/


----------



## Road_UK

We're on the brink of a new Cold War. Once the dead has been buried, it's going to be a one big whodunnit game, with sanctions and isolations and more fighting. If it weren't, the victims would have been brought home already, instead of this stupid cat and mouse saga with the separatists and their Russians.


----------



## SeanT

Brrrrrrrrr. Troll as well, or what and WHAT A HELL IS that, sorry please


----------



## Road_UK

??


----------



## Penn's Woods

SeanT said:


> Brrrrrrrrr. Troll as well, or what and WHAT A HELL IS that, sorry please


In Fahrenheit, 23 and 29 are cold. :cheers:


----------



## keokiracer

Meanwhile in China


----------



## SeanT

Well, yes there is a point there.


----------



## Broccolli

Does anyone know what term _"Mobile-accessed collaboration platforms" _mean?


----------



## ChrisZwolle




----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> i don't have favourite german incoming greeting, but i have outgoing one - bis bald


You kidding? The best one is the musical, bi-tonal "tschüss!" :-D


----------



## Verso

Meh, I don't like the banner. Moreover, it's Škofja Lok*a*, not Škofja Lok, lol.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Google Street View is finnaly available in some parts of Serbia.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

^^ Great news !:cheers:


----------



## Peines

Kids today… icard:


----------



## JackFrost

:cheers:


----------



## Road_UK

It appears that a Dutch member of SSC is one of the victims of the MH17 crash. I have left a message of condolence on behalf of all of us in a dedicated thread in his local section. 

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1740354&page=3


----------



## Skyline_

Road_UK said:


> It appears that a Dutch member of SSC is one of the victims of the MH17 crash. I have left a message of condolence on behalf of all of us in a dedicated thread in his local section.
> 
> http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1740354&page=3


What were the odds for that to happen? hno:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I am sorry of his family.
This thing should never happened


----------



## CNGL

Greetings from Benasque


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> I wish I knew how we got there, though....


I don't want to comment on this issue here and I was banned at DLM thus won't comment there either, although I think that is the appropriate place for this kind of discussion.

I did not think that this would get so far out of hand. I was quite confident, that all the parties involved would be reasonable enough to just solve it at the round tables. I was wrong. I have some guesses about where are we going now, but I won't discuss them here either.

Although you mean something else with your last sentence I would answer you like this.



> **** the EU.


I think I know how we got there.


----------



## Surel

On another note, my gf family member went with the same flight a week earlier. I don't know anyone on that flight but there are people that I know that knew someone.

I read a very interesting Dutch column http://www.nrc.nl/youp/2014/07/19/niet-te-bevatten/ which impressed me with this, I quote:



> Of ik het niet verschrikkelijk vind? Natuurlijk wel. Maar het is al jaren overal verschrikkelijk. Mijn lange leven lang. Overal en ergens. Vooral ergens anders. Daar waar we normaal op tien kilometer hoogte overheen vliegen. En nu heeft een oetlul een paar van ons uit de lucht geknald en zijn we in shock. Terecht. Maar moeten we niet eigenlijk altijd in shock zijn?


I won't translate it. Just present my ideas what I make of it for myself.

The idea is simple. We live in our safety bubble, the conflicts we induce (or let be induced without thinking about our responsibility) don't affect us, they are on the other side of the world and we are not really concerned. We literally fly over them ignoring them and we feel safe. Then one day the bubble bursts. This should be a memento. Memento that we are not safe. That we should not be lulled by the fake feeling of safety thinking we are flying over.


----------



## Kanadzie

Verso said:


> ^^ And what would you do, attack Russia because of it? Yes, they should get over it. It's not a war between Russia and the Netherlands, so there's no need to get personal about it. Whoever shot down that plane is an idiot or just made a stupid mistake (mistaking it for a military plane, f.e.), but it was stupid to fly there in the first place. The whole situation should just calm down instead of this escalation, which brings nothing good.


Honestly if I was Rutte I would launch a missile straight at Kremlin for that one. There is no possible excuse for such a stupid mistake, escalation seems okay.


----------



## Verso

Expect a missile on Amsterdam then. :dunno: (or Zwolle :troll


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Maybe they should launch a missile on a Mayrhofen


----------



## Road_UK

The map of Europe according to the Los Angeles Times.










It's all there except of France. Totally disappeared into the sea and with Spain and Portugal becoming a part of Africa. Genève-sur-Mer has appeared on the Atlantic Coast, and Belgium is now where continental Europe stops...

http://bigbrowser.blog.lemonde.fr/2...los-angeles-times-raye-la-france-de-la-carte/


----------



## Kanadzie

Verso said:


> Expect a missile on Amsterdam then. :dunno: (or Zwolle :troll


Yes, probably! But, you can't turn away rage with submission either. It is almost worth it to let Amsterdam burn _just_ to prove the point. I mean, they blew up a civilian airliner in 2014! It's completely insane, completely unacceptable and it cannot be ignored.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Serbia and Montenegro are still the same country.


----------



## Road_UK

Kanadzie said:


> Yes, probably! But, you can't turn away rage with submission either. It is almost worth it to let Amsterdam burn just to prove the point. I mean, they blew up a civilian airliner in 2014.


Well, this is why some European countries are willing to take a bit of the bitter pill as well when sanctioning Russia. Economically it's not going to be in anyone's advantage, but Russia really has to be put in its place now.


----------



## Road_UK

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> Serbia and Montenegro are still the same country.


And I just noticed that Ukraine has fully gone up in Russia...


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ except they aren't, not at all, at least the ones that matter. Park your car and shut off the oil taps and you will tame the bear faster than Reagan did. Us Canadians would be plenty happy to offer all the oil you like!


----------



## Verso

Kanadzie said:


> I mean, they blew up a civilian airliner in 2014!


You don't know who did it, and it was probably mistaken for a military plane.


----------



## keokiracer

Road_UK said:


> The map of Europe according to the Los Angeles Times.


Well, someone at the LA Times obviously doesn't like France 



Road_UK said:


> and with Spain and Portugal becoming a part of Africa.


If you look very closely you can still see the Gibraltar strait, so in this pic Spain and Portugal aren't the Iberian peninsula but the Iberian island :nuts::lol:


----------



## Road_UK

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> Maybe they should launch a missile on a Mayrhofen


Let them do it in January, and they'd be killing thousands of their own people...


----------



## Kanadzie

Verso said:


> You don't know who did it, and it was probably mistaken for a military plane.


We know who enabled the situation to happen, and considering that both you and I can easily identify what plane it was in 30 seconds by flighttracker on a smartphone, there is absolutely no excuse. Sure, probably mistaken, but not a mistake that can pass without some heads rolling.
There were 300 people in there with lives, families, dreams...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Oy. Are we still on this?

I must say I recommend these little bouts of anxiety (didn't finish my lunch again) for weight loss....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> Honestly if I was Rutte I would launch a missile straight at Kremlin for that one. There is no possible excuse for such a stupid mistake, escalation seems okay.





Kanadzie said:


> Yes, probably! But, you can't turn away rage with submission either. It is almost worth it to let Amsterdam burn _just_ to prove the point. I mean, they blew up a civilian airliner in 2014! It's completely insane, completely unacceptable and it cannot be ignored.


This is exactly what we don't need. Escalation* is not OK, even in jest. This is exactly why THE FIGHTING NEEDS TO STOP! Because as long as it goes on, there's a chance of some unexpected incident leading to places we really don't want to go.

(I still haven't read a few hours of this thread. Think I won't....)

*EDIT: I mean military escalation. Sanctions are totally appropriate.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> Yes, probably! But, you can't turn away rage with submission either. It is almost worth it to let Amsterdam burn _just_ to prove the point. I mean, they blew up a civilian airliner in 2014! It's completely insane, completely unacceptable and it cannot be ignored.


Well, I don't want to see Montreal (among many other places) burn. Do you? I mean, at a time when you're in it?


----------



## Kanadzie

No, not really. But realistically, what can be done, to respond sufficiently to this? Sanction is one thing but already had many in place before it happened. Ban Aeroflot like Reagan did after KAL 007?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^That's the problem. There's nothing we can do that doesn't get us all killed (or at least run an unacceptably high risk of getting us all killed) if Putin's determined to keep behaving the way he is. I think we're stuck with Putin until he's out of power. (And I'm not quite as...dramatic (not sure that's the word)...as Road_UK is in evaluating the threat he poses to the rest of Europe. And he certainly poses no threat whatsoever to you and me in North America. Unless *we* (or our leaders) react in such a way as to make him one.)

Just like we were stuck with the Soviets. I'm old enough to remember well, too well, the last years of the Cold War. Not at all happy to find myself living in something similar. But it's better than dying in a hot one. We lived with them until they eventually went away.

Now, more positively:

Verso and others should note that American leaders (Obama since March, Kerry as recently as Sunday on TV here) have been clearly ruling out sending in American troops. Kerry also on Sunday (answering I-forget-what question) acknowledged the role Putin's played in getting chemical weapons out of Syria and in the nuclear negotiations in Iran. They wouldn't be talking that way if they were warmongering. They're angry that this stupid thing happened, yes. And justifiably so. Not only because of the lives lost but because of the anger it's stirred up...of which the latest posts on this thread are an example. I wish they were talking, though.

I've seen articles over the last couple of weeks indicating the Ukrainian government/military may be close to stamping out the rebellion.

Also seen Russia's economy is hurting and public opinion...well, is not unanimously taken in by his propaganda. Saw something the other day on CNN about the makeshift memorial to the crash victims that appeared in Moscow, with a lot of the notes reading "we're sorry," and "forgive us." And then there's this: http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20140725_01191419

Going to war won't bring back the dead or relieve any of the pain.


----------



## Verso

He wants to know her nickname, Road. :naughty:


----------



## Road_UK

Yes, but that was a long time ago - before Autoputevi kao hobi joined our little tea-party. We've been having a few problems as a lot of you know - so I tried not to think about her. But things are getting a little better now.


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> He wants to know her nickname, Road. :naughty:


No problem.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/member.php?u=891044

Now you guys will have to protect me, you understand this, right?


----------



## Skyline_

It looks like there are some international couples in here....


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Road_UK said:


> How do you know about her? She's active on this forum, usually in the Russian sections. Have you met her?


You told us about that.
OMG Skyline i am 16 years old ! xD


----------



## Road_UK

She's in Bulgaria at the moment until October. I was going to visit her next week but then I got ill. I still might go there once I feel a little better and all the tests in hospital are through.


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> No problem.
> 
> http://www.skyscrapercity.com/member.php?u=891044


Recent visitors: Verso, Road_UK, Autoputevi kao hobi, ChrisZwolle, Skyline_, keokiracer ... :lol:


----------



## Road_UK

:rofl:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

She is popular!
And he is getting crazy


----------



## x-type

and me


----------



## Road_UK

I just told her on WhatsApp. I expect she'll come on here and say hi soon when she has time. She's running a hotel on the Black Sea coast at the moment.


----------



## Skyline_

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> OMG Skyline i am 16 years old ! xD


Ok, so? :nuts:


----------



## volodaaaa

Great time in Sarti. Two days ago a man drowned here, today a horrible motorbike accident took place... His motorbike landed 2 m from my car. Wish he will be fine.


----------



## Skyline_

volodaaaa said:


> Great time in Sarti. Two days ago a man drowned here, today a horrible motorbike accident took place... His motorbike landed 2 m from my car. Wish he will be fine.


As the Americans say.... "Shit happens". hno:


----------



## Alex_ZR

It appeared that Google car witnessed a police chase in Novi Sad last October:

http://www.021.rs/Novi-Sad/Vesti/FOTO-Google-snimio-policijsku-poteru-u-Novom-Sadu.html

Street where it happend (you can see a guy running and a police car behind Google car):

http://goo.gl/maps/2A5st


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> Recent visitors: Verso, Road_UK, Autoputevi kao hobi, ChrisZwolle, Skyline_, keokiracer ... :lol:


Recent Visitors
The last 10 visitor(s) to this page were:
Attus Autoputevi kao hobi+ ChrisZwolle italystf keokiracer Natomasken piotr71 Road_UK volodaaaa x-type



All the Russian vistors are gone now.


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> Recent Visitors
> The last 10 visitor(s) to this page were:
> Attus Autoputevi kao hobi+ ChrisZwolle italystf keokiracer Natomasken piotr71 Road_UK volodaaaa x-type


Verso está invisible.







:lol:


----------



## Road_UK

I wondered where you were...


----------



## Fatfield

Road_UK said:


> Recent Visitors
> The last 10 visitor(s) to this page were:
> Attus Autoputevi kao hobi+ ChrisZwolle italystf keokiracer Natomasken piotr71 Road_UK volodaaaa x-type
> 
> 
> 
> *All the Russian vistors are gone now.*


Good, hopefully the commie bastards don't come back.


----------



## cinxxx

cinxxx said:


> https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=804144202959100


----------



## cinxxx

Verso said:


> Haha, some German guy drove 63 km/h in Ljubljana (speed limit 50 km/h), but the penalty of €250 was sent to a Slovenian woman with an identical license plate. They're both from "SG": Slovenj Gradec in Slovenia and Solingen in Germany. The best part: the woman drives a tractor with a maximum speed of 40 km/h.


Penalty of 250 euros? WTF!?
My gf drove 43 km/h in a 30 km/h zone, and had to pay 25 euros...


----------



## Verso

Totally fascist, I know.


----------



## cinxxx

Not fascist, just over the top.
I mean 10 times is something, and there is a difference between Germany and Slovenia regarding living costs and prices...


----------



## Verso

Driving 43 km/h in a 30-km/h zone will cost you €300 here. Driving 51 km/h will cost you €1,000.


----------



## CNGL

I prefer the Swiss and Finnish fine systems, which are income-based, and this sometimes produce fines of over €100000 for just a few km/h above the speed limit .


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Can you guys tell me what is the name of a song,which is on this video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UpwsSiGeVg


----------



## Road_UK

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> Can you guys tell me what is the name of a song,which is on this video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UpwsSiGeVg


Electric Feel 

by MGMT.

Haven't you got Soundhound on your smartphone? It'll listen to a part of a song and tell you what it is.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I don't have a smartphone.
Waiting to get Galaxy S4 or S5 .
Probably S4.


----------



## italystf

Yesterday I came back from Prague, where I spent three nights, very beautiful city. Road-wise, driving the road E55 (Bundestrasse 310 in A \ state road 3 in CZ) from the end of the Austrian A7 north of Linz to the junction with the Czech D1 S-E of Prague (except the section of D3 already opened) is a nightmare: huge lines of cars and trucks, slow curves and steep slopes, a Linz-Prague motorway is really needed! Fortunately, Austrians are progressing quickly with the construction of the S10 motorway till the Czech border (I spotted some Asfinag billboards advertising its opening in late 2015), while the Czech D3 is still only in planning stage. (Bright side: I vistied České Budějovice on the way back, I wouldn't have done this if i was on a motorway).


----------



## cinxxx

^^Next time make a stop in Český Krumlov, it's a great place


----------



## italystf

cinxxx said:


> ^^Next time make a stop in Český Krumlov, it's a great place


I know, on the way back I was about to switch the right turning indicator at that intesection, but then I realized I would arrive home too late (without this, I arrived home at 11,15 p.m.). České Budějovice, instead, it's not a detour, you have to pass through anyway.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Extreme rain in western Germany. This is in Münster


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Yesterday I came back from Prague, where I spent three nights, very beautiful city. Road-wise, driving the road E55 (Bundestrasse 310 in A \ state road 3 in CZ) from the end of the Austrian A7 north of Linz to the junction with the Czech D1 S-E of Prague (except the section of D3 already opened) is a nightmare: huge lines of cars and trucks, slow curves and steep slopes, a Linz-Prague motorway is really needed! Fortunately, Austrians are progressing quickly with the construction of the S10 motorway till the Czech border (I spotted some Asfinag billboards advertising its opening in late 2015), while the Czech D3 is still only in planning stage. (Bright side: I vistied České Budějovice on the way back, I wouldn't have done this if i was on a motorway).


Drove there in 1996; thought the bus driver would kill us.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Last year when i was going on a vacation to Leptokaria in Greece,the guy who was driving us was going 100 km/h where the speed limit is 40 km/h.I freak out and wake up the whole bus


----------



## Peines

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I don't have a smartphone.
> Waiting to get Galaxy S4 or S5 .
> Probably S4.


hno:

Samsung smartphones has tons of bloatware (also known as bundled software or crapware).

If you want to show off buy an iPhone, seriously,  , (and will be the best buddy if you have a Mac computer).

Anyway, if all you want is Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook, etc etc… Motorola Moto G is a good deal: is cheap and has has one of the best android performances.

Like Nexus phones has no personalisation of the Android GUI and no bloatware, so has the best performance compared to the most expensive android phones in the market, like samsung S series.

Also have a look at Xiaomi, LG and HTC, they have better models, and cheaper than samsung.

And yes, I have an Moto G, it's the best smartphone since the dead of my Nokia E71 and the following 2 phones, all of them android.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't use my phone very much, so I bought a Samsung Galaxy Y on the cheap. The phone is total crap, it has only like 200 MB of internal storage, so you can put about 5 apps on it before it runs out of memory, and Android doesn't allow all apps to be moved to an SD card. I couldn't even update Whatsapp a while ago.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ There are Android apps that will make possible for you to install other apps on the SD card.


----------



## bogdymol

This is nice:



xwisz said:


> ce dragut din partea lor :hug:


----------



## bogdymol

This is nice:



xwisz said:


> ce dragut din partea lor :hug:


----------



## Alex_ZR

Even though "E" in "BYE" is missing...


----------



## Kanadzie

CNGL said:


> I prefer the Swiss and Finnish fine systems, which are income-based, and this sometimes produce fines of over €100000 for just a few km/h above the speed limit .


LOL, once you get that promotion you want you will hate those fine systems :lol:


----------



## Broccolli

"Anglo/French" rap from Quebec...Ce qui se passe!?


----------



## Peines

CNGL said:


> I prefer the Swiss and Finnish fine systems, which are income-based, and this sometimes produce fines of over €100000 for just a few km/h above the speed limit .


If I ever get a 1,000,000€ ticket this will be me my reaction…


----------



## g.spinoza

g.spinoza said:


> Yesterday I experienced what happens when you enter and exit a motorway at the same toll barrier...
> 
> I left Torino for Brescia, using A4, only to realize after 50 km that I forgot something important. Not wanting to leave motorway, I took A26/A4 to Vercelli, A26 north, the A4 back to Torino, closing the circle.
> 
> As soon as I put my ticket into the toll machine, the voice of an operator told me "what did you do? You made a U-turn on the motorway?!? You broke the highway code"
> "No sir, I did not. I made a full circle on A4, A26/A4, A26 and back on A4"
> "I see. Here I can't make you pay anything, but in the next few days you need to go to our central offices, where you must pay _something_. Your license plate has been recorded"
> "..."


I received an answer by the concessionaire: they're making me pay 9.80€, trusting my own statement about my travel path, not the full 79€ of the longest motorway stretch possible.


----------



## CNGL

I was there , though not in this video:


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> I received an answer by the concessionaire: they're making me pay 9.80€, trusting my own statement about my travel path, not the full 79€ of the longest motorway stretch possible.


As Google Instant suggests, many people wondered about this thing:


----------



## g.spinoza

Not as creepy as the third option "access other people's email"


----------



## volodaaaa

Finally home  Trip started at 8:00 CET in Greece. Arrived to Bratislava at 2:30. Tried Kelebia-Tompa instead of Horgoš-Rözske. Was the only car on the border crossing. However, the customs check was much more strict than at Rözske. The officer looked my luggage over and even check my travel refrigerator.

Was really surprised how Subotica nice and sympathetic city is.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I hope that you had a nice time at Subotica.


----------



## cinxxx

Subotica is nice, and while in the area, Palic lake is a great place to visit.

I remember when I crossed at Kelebia-Tompa, the Hungarian requested me to to open the trunk, the boot, asked if I had alcohol or cigarettes.
But at that time (2010) the same procedure was done also at RO/SRB crossings.


----------



## Nordic20T

volodaaaa said:


> ... However, the customs check was much more strict than at Rö*zs*ke. ...


You mixed them up again!


----------



## volodaaaa

Nordic20T said:


> You mixed them up again!


... no comment... :lol: hope, I will remember it until the next year. :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> Subotica is nice, and while in the area, Palic lake is a great place to visit.
> 
> I remember when I crossed at Kelebia-Tompa, the Hungarian requested me to to open the trunk, the boot, asked if I had alcohol or cigarettes.
> But at that time (2010) the same procedure was done also at RO/SRB crossings.


I was really surprised about that.... But it was still worth crossing.

And on the way to the Greece, I experienced something like "batch fining in Serbia". There was a speed reduced at the certain point of Subotica-Novi Sad motorway, a police car standing in shade and then, all traffic was redirected to a rest area. A police guard stood there on the entrance and exit of the roadside rest area. Everyone who exceeded the speed limit was pulled over and fined :lol: Fortunately, I obeyed the law that time and therefore belonged among three of cars who were asked to carry on. 

Macedonia also made something up. The toll was 1,50 € without taking the price in Denars (supposedly to follow the length of the motorway section) and the exchange rate into account.


----------



## volodaaaa

Horrible looking accident on Slovak D1 happened this morning:



















Fortunately, no causalities. Only one person suffers from light injuries (broken arm).

It were de facto two separate accidents. A polish truck got flat tyre and lost control. Then collided with another car and crashed to the divider barriers. After that caught in fire. The impact moved the divider barriers to the opposite direction and narrowed the left lane there. Scared lady in that lane (no wonder if you see a truck hurtling towards you) lost control and collided with other three cars.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Help us to find this girl:https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pomozite-da-se-nadje-Tijana-Juric/763891310300873
The members who live in Hungary should tell to the authorities if they see this girl.


----------



## JackFrost

This must be embarrassing :cheers:

http://www.carstyling.hu/mikroblog_shower.php?id=1512

(sorry, dont know how to embed it)


----------



## nbcee

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> Help us to find this girl:https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pomozite-da-se-nadje-Tijana-Juric/763891310300873
> The members who live in Hungary should tell to the authorities if they see this girl.


Thanks for posting it, the police here is already looking for her.
http://www.police.hu/hirek-es-infor...ink/felhivasok/keressuk-a-15-eves-szerb-lanyt

I hope that someone will find her.


----------



## CNGL

^^ police.hu? Didn't Hungarian people call the police 'rendorszeg' or something like that?


----------



## nbcee

CNGL said:


> ^^ police.hu? Didn't Hungarian people call the police 'rendorszeg' or something like that?


Yepp, it's Rendőrség but they're using the English name for their website for some reason. :dunno:


----------



## x-type

in 90es there was written Police on cars in Hungary.


----------



## volodaaaa

If everything turns good, I will be given a part-time job at the Ministry of Transportation of Slovak republic next month.


----------



## CNGL

^^ In AARoads Forum they would mark you as DOT (department of transportation) employee .



nbcee said:


> Yepp, it's Rendőrség but they're using the English name for their website for some reason. :dunno:


It's more recognizable than 'Rendőrség'. Most other European languages use variants of police, even Basque (Unrelated to other languages) uses 'polizia', which is the same word as in Italian.


----------



## nbcee

CNGL said:


> ^^ In AARoads Forum they would mark you as DOT (department of transportation) employee .
> 
> 
> 
> It's more recognizable than 'Rendőrség'. Most other European languages use variants of police, even Basque (Unrelated to other languages) uses 'polizia', which is the same word as in Italian.


I can only think of one other exception: the Irish use the word _Garda_.


----------



## volodaaaa

CNGL said:


> ^^ In AARoads Forum they would mark you as DOT (department of transportation) employee .


We will see... But I am quite happy about that.



nbcee said:


> I can only think of one other exception: the Irish use the word _Garda_.


Does not Italy use "carabinieri"? Or is that only a name for certain police section?


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> Does not Italy use "carabinieri"? Or is that only a name for certain police section?


Those are two different organistaions:


----------



## italystf

nbcee said:


> I can only think of one other exception: the Irish use the word _Garda_.


It may have a Latin etymology, since in Italian _Guardia_ means 'watchman'.


----------



## italystf

edit. delete this.


----------



## Road_UK

Deleted.


----------



## italystf

nbcee said:


> Those are two different organistaions:


Yes. _Polizia_ is a civil institution, subordinated to the Minister of the Internal Affairs. _Carabinieri_ is a military institution, subordinated to the Minister of the Defence. _Carabinieri_ usually do civil functions like _Polizia_, but they can also work with the Italian army in "peace missions"(*) abroad.​(*) politically-correct expression for war


----------



## Road_UK

Watching a bit of Dutch TV right now. My nan gave me a Dutch satellite smart-card, so I've got all Dutch channels here in Austria. Got Sky as well, so I got all British channels. Who wants to watch German and Austrian TV anyway - there is nothing worse then to hear a jive African-American talking with a Hamburg accent.

Anyway, some US military friends of mine who are stationed in Germany feel more at home in Holland. Somewhat more American they say. I see their point...

In America there are a lot of car-thefts. So the police use bait-cars, which they park somewhere - usually with the engine running and they wait for a potential thief to come and take it, only to be nicked by the police minutes later and a few hundred metres down the road.

On Dutch TV they were just talking about bait-bicycles. A scheme apparently in operation in Utrecht where they catch bicycle-thief's by the dozens. 
I can't even tell how many bikes they nicked from me. But I only stole about 3 or 4 in my life, so I have to steal a few more to get the balance right :lol:


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> In America there are a lot of car-thefts. So the police use bait-cars, which they park somewhere - usually with the engine running and they wait for a potential thief to come and take it, only to be nicked by the police minutes later and a few hundred metres down the road.
> 
> On Dutch TV they were just talking about bait-bicycles. A scheme apparently in operation in Utrecht where they catch bicycle-thief's by the dozens.


This should be illegal. As they say, opportunity makes a thief. Anyone would steal, given a chance to do so without being punished. You can throw 90% of the world in jail then.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> This should be illegal. As they say, opportunity makes a thief. Anyone would steal, given a chance to do so without being punished. You can throw 90% of the world in jail then.


It's not an excuse. A honest people won't never steal anything unless it's clearly abandoned by the owner. The same thing may be said about supermarkets, things are left at customer's reach but it's not a justification to steal them. An unlocked car or bicycle shouldn't be a justification to theft. It's like police officers posing like drug addicts to catch pushers.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> An unlocked car or bicycle shouldn't be a justification to theft.


I didn't say that, but those bait-cars are highly controversial IMO. I've already stolen some money myself, because I knew I wouldn't be punished (saleswoman gave me back way too much change). I still feel a little guilty though.


----------



## Kanadzie

I don't know if I would say I don't want to steal things because of punishment, more of not wanting to hurt the owner...

Getting too much change and walking off isn't stealing, it's grabbing the cash register and running away that is stealing :lol:


----------



## Verso

Kanadzie said:


> Getting too much change and walking off isn't stealing


Well, I was in an exchange office, so I was given quite some money in any case (it wasn't actually change). The point is that you _always_ check, if you're given the correct sum of money in the other currency. We still had _tolar_ instead of euro, and I think I was given some 20,000 SIT instead of 3,000 SIT, so that was a big difference (€70 or 7 times as much). Of course I immediately noticed it and walked out pretty quickly.  My point is that if she'd eventually noticed, I would've been extremely embarrassed, because we'd both have known very well that I'd noticed way too much money, so that would've been pretty much like stealing (although indeed not literally).


----------



## volodaaaa

I don't know what is controversial. Whovere has lust for stealing unlocked car is a thief in his soul. And i don't steal or abuse opportunities not because of punishment or hurting the owner, but because it is against my moral codex. Once i've found 50€ on sidewalk. I left it there like I had not noticed.


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> Once i've found 50€ on sidewalk. I left it there like I had not noticed.


What? Are you nuts???


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> What? Are you nuts???


I've been also affraid there was children or TV trying to fool me


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> I've been also affraid there was children or TV trying to fool me


And you were willing to spend a 50 smackeroonies to find out...


----------



## x-type

once i saw some money at the floor at corridor of shopping center. i was making my mind up to take it or not, and then some guy took it in front of my nose. i felt so stupid.


----------



## Road_UK

^^ Obviously didn't get involved with mutiny lately :lol:


----------



## Verso

Black man in front of my house. Not exactly an everyday sight.


----------



## Road_UK

What happened to Slovenia's most popular mayor who happened to be black as well?


----------



## Verso

He's still reigning.


----------



## Road_UK

Excellent.


----------



## Road_UK

Meanwhile in China...


----------



## italystf

Surel said:


> Meanwhile in Belarus. Notice those nice roads.


And strong водка. :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

Surel said:


> Meanwhile in Belarus. Notice those nice roads.


Past few years, I don't know what to think about Belarus. The country is all weird. They have dictature, but the opposition is somehow quite weak and people from there seem to be happy. And it seems the travelling restrictions is getting looser as I've seen so many Belarussians on European roads than ever before. And it needs to be stressed that they don't look like poor people at all (I mean like us in cheap cars possessing cheap junk food in tins and pates when Iron curtain fell down).


----------



## cinxxx

^^I don't think I have seen cheap cars with BY plates in Europe. Maybe only rich people (party members) from there afford to travel to the West?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I think that Belarus is a great and modern country.Dictatorship doesn't has to be bad if you know how to act properly and behave.I think that soon Belarus is going to be as modern as a vestern Europe countrys.


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> Meanwhile in China...


:crazy: <- please don't rape me


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

:wtf:
If i am the rapist,i would never rape that girl 
She is fuc..ng ugly


----------



## Surel

cinxxx said:


> ^^I don't think I have seen cheap cars with BY plates in Europe. Maybe only rich people (party members) from there afford to travel to the West?


It is fairly easy to travel from Belarus for Belorussians. It is not that easy to travel from Belarus inside e. g. EU. Visa is the biggest problem. It is also bit troublesome to travel to Belarus., but not a big deal. One interesting thing is that the belorussians living abroad have to deposit substantial amount of money when traveling to Belarus. This so that they would not sell their cars there. I am not sure what counts for foreigners. Being in a "party" is irrelevant in Belarus for travel, having money is what counts. Belarus in many ways resembles China, but the party is not that relevant, it is rather personal ties, positions etc. The country is rather small for creating such party apparatus as china. It is quite possible to do very profitable business there if you share with the right people. 

It is very interesting to compare the evolvement of Belarus and Ukraine. Ukraine was rather rich compared to Belarus in the SSSR times but ended up much poorer in the freedom times.

As about traveling. Of course that mostly the richest travel as traveling is expensive. And you rarely see poor man's old cars abroad in general, because it is not feasible for long distances anyway.


----------



## volodaaaa

Surel said:


> It is fairly easy to travel from Belarus for Belorussians. It is not that easy to travel from Belarus inside e. g. EU. Visa is the biggest problem. It is also bit troublesome to travel to Belarus., but not a big deal. One interesting thing is that the belorussians living abroad have to deposit substantial amount of money when traveling to Belarus. This so that they would not sell their cars there. I am not sure what counts for foreigners. Being in a "party" is irrelevant in Belarus for travel, having money is what counts. Belarus in many ways resembles China, but the party is not that relevant, it is rather personal ties, positions etc. The country is rather small for creating such party apparatus as china. It is quite possible to do very profitable business there if you share with the right people.
> 
> It is very interesting to compare the evolvement of Belarus and Ukraine. Ukraine was rather rich compared to Belarus in the SSSR times but ended up much poorer in the freedom times.
> 
> As about traveling. Of course that mostly the richest travel as traveling is expensive. And you rarely see poor man's old cars abroad in general, because it is not feasible for long distances anyway.


I've seen lot of middle-class families in Greece, just like mine. Cars like Volkswagen Passat or Skoda Fabia. Definitely not poor.

But once I've seen a Cadillac Escalade from Belarus. Black colour, black windows and licence plate like AAA1111AAA. :lol:


----------



## Kanadzie

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I think that Belarus is a great and modern country.*Dictatorship doesn't has to be bad if you know how to act properly and behave.*I think that soon Belarus is going to be as modern as a vestern Europe countrys.


OMG OMG duuude :lol:

The roads seem pretty nice, but I like the part where one cop takes the gun and the other one has to content himself with throwing rocks :lol:


----------



## Skyline_

This thread is getting boring so.... this will wake you up!

0-300 km/h in 10.4 seconds and 0-355 km/h in 15.5 seconds! Choose your weapon...


----------



## italystf

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I think that Belarus is a great and modern country.Dictatorship doesn't has to be bad if you know how to act properly and behave.I think that soon Belarus is going to be as modern as a vestern Europe countrys.


Apart the dictatorship, that is even worse than the Russian one, Belarus has a GDP pro capita of 6,739$, that is extremely low for European standards.


----------



## Road_UK

italystf said:


> Apart the dictatorship, that is even worse than the Russian one, Belarus has a GDP pro capita of 6,739$, that is extremely low for European standards.


And then there is of course the corruption and human rights issue...


----------



## Attus

How long must you as a driver remember a traffic sign? In your opinion is it OK to have a sign "100" wich is valid 12 km long?


----------



## Road_UK

Attus said:


> How long must you as a driver remember a traffic sign? In your opinion is it OK to have a sign "100" wich is valid 12 km long?


No. Reminder signs must be placed after every exit. If the distance is too long between exits, then reminder signs must be placed on intervals.


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> No. Reminder signs must be placed after every exit. If the distance is too long between exits, then reminder signs must be placed on intervals.


When I've been on Balkan, I really liked the way of signage. They repeat every sign at every exit even it was defined in general or were duplicated. Even on motorways (e.g. in Serbia), there was a small 120 kph sign after every exit.

In contrast, we have a very stupid law in Slovakia: It is prohibited and even fined to duplicate the sign.

For example: If you are in inhabited area with general speed limit 50 kph, it is prohibited to post a sign with 50 kph speed limit. It is all sick. 

The most stupid is the bypass of Bratislava. There is a general speed limit for *motorway in inhabited area* (I guess we are the only country in Europe with that defined) and the bypass is signed by motorway sign with the city entrance sign. The speed limit is 90 kph and it is not displayed there at all. The lenght is about 20 km in total.

Btw. Why do I have the forum in spanish language?


----------



## Alex_ZR

volodaaaa said:


> When I've been on Balkan, I really liked the way of signage. They repeat every sign at every exit even it was defined in general or were duplicated. Even on motorways (e.g. in Serbia), there was a small 120 kph sign after every exit.


Same thing is in Croatia, 130 sign after every entry to motorway to remind you.

http://goo.gl/maps/f3Upp


----------



## cinxxx

^^Yes, I liked this too.
In Germany for example, also on non-motorway roads (at least here in Bavaria), if there was a restriction previous, you have a sign after every intersection, if the restriction is canceled, you have the canceling sign. You can drive more relaxed not having to think every time "now I passed an intersection, now there is no more limitation"


----------



## Road_UK

cinxxx said:


> ^^Yes, I liked this too.
> In Germany for example, also on non-motorway roads (at least here in Bavaria), if there was a restriction previous, you have a sign after every intersection, if the restriction is canceled, you have the canceling sign. You can drive more relaxed not having to think every time "now I passed an intersection, now there is no more limitation"


Sometimes I miss the cancellation sign and keep on toodling as everyone else flies past me...


----------



## Hank Hodinky

Could some Croatian speaker translate this for me, pretty please?

"geače"

"što se ovim i čini"

Thanks!


----------



## Road_UK

I bet it's something terribly rude...


----------



## Attus

Road_UK said:


> No. Reminder signs must be placed after every exit. If the distance is too long between exits, then reminder signs must be placed on intervals.


Must? Or shall, or should?


----------



## Road_UK

Must and should.


----------



## broken0099

Attus said:


> How long must you as a driver remember a traffic sign? In your opinion is it OK to have a sign "100" wich is valid 12 km long?


In Spain, IIRC, the driver must be reminded about the speed limits each 1 minute. So, on motorways, you'll find signs that say "120" every 2 km, or after each entrance ramp, whichever is closer.

Also, on non-motorways, as in Germany, you're reminded after each town/crossing with an "End of all restrictions" sign. The most common scheme is something like this:

(Do not overtake)
(80)
(50)
[Villarriba]
...
[/Villarriba]
(/) or (/80)


----------



## Road_UK

G. Spinoza? Penn's Woods? What's with the silent treatment???


----------



## g.spinoza

No silent treatment. Between yesterday and today I travelled Pescara-Brescia-Turin and had little time online. Plus, I've got nothing really to add to the current topic of the thread.


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> No silent treatment. Between yesterday and today I travelled Pescara-Brescia-Turin and had little time online. Plus, I've got nothing really to add to the current topic of the thread.


Apart from this one


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> Penn's Woods? What's with the silent treatment???


Taking measures against ebola?


----------



## cinxxx

broken0099 said:


> In Spain, IIRC, the driver must be reminded about the speed limits each 1 minute. So, on motorways, you'll find signs that say "120" every 2 km, or after each entrance ramp, whichever is closer.
> 
> Also, on non-motorways, as in Germany, you're reminded after each town/crossing with an "End of all restrictions" sign. The most common scheme is something like this:
> 
> (Do not overtake)
> (80)
> (50)
> [Villarriba]
> ...
> [/Villarriba]
> (/) or (/80)


That's nice. Every time I drive in Romania I curse at the lack of signage (or bad signage). 

While I was in Italy, I also found the signage pretty bad. For example there was a construction site on a motorway, speed limited to 80, no one obeyed the speed limit, I did, then no cancellation sign when speed limit is back to 130, so I had no idea (since people where already driving 130)...


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Sometimes it happens... I don't find construction site signage all that bad in Italy... for example, I think lane closures are signed better in Italy than in Germany. When I was there I found myself at the end of a closed lane more than once, having to come to a full stop and hoping someone would let me merge.

But you're right, nobody here respects speed limits, be they normal or construction site related. I do, but I think the 60 km/h ones are more dangerous than useful.


----------



## Road_UK

The German system of signing lane closures is not that bad if Germans would only merge in turn at the end. Which I must say has gone a lot better in recent years. I do feel strongly about using both lanes when queuing and merge at the end. Problem with Germans is that when there is no queue they move to the far end and merge in the last minute, creating these queues in the first place.


----------



## Broccolli

(2 min.50 sec.) This sort of human behaviour i will never understand! icard: hno:


----------



## cinxxx

Moldovan Wedding


----------



## KHS

Hank Hodinky said:


> Could some Croatian speaker translate this for me, pretty please?
> 
> "geače"
> 
> "što se ovim i čini"
> 
> Thanks!


I don't know what _geače_ means... maybe _gaće_ which means _underpants_ :dunno:

_Što se ovim čini_ is a local dialect... roughly translated something like _What should I do with this?_  :lol:


----------



## nbcee

g.spinoza said:


> But you're right, nobody here respects speed limits, be they normal or construction site related.


Maybe I have too much German blood in my veins :shifty:


----------



## Road_UK

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I don't think so,because Serbia is curently negotiate with European Union about entering Serbia as it's member , and i think that European Union will have better economy because of Serbia and it's deal with Russia.


You're missing the point. The EU and Russia are not the best of friends right now. We are placing economic sanctions on Russia right now. Basically we don't want to do any business with Russia at all because of its appalling behaviour. So no, we will not be better off if Serbia joins the EU and continues to do business with Russia. That has been made clear in the Ukraine situation. Besides, I do believe business between Germany, France and Russia were a lot stronger than between Serbia and Russia.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> We did not face Russia directly in Kosovo.


We won't now either. It's just Ukrainians against Russian-speaking Ukrainians, Russia won't enter officially the conflict. Of course Russia is already in the conflict, but masquerading as discontent Ukrainians who want to join the Motherland.


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> Economical sanctions are the measure of EU's powerlessness.


EU powerlessness is seen in the first place in the fact that there are any sanctions at all. Instead of reacting with **** the USA when hearing **** the EU, the EU countries introduces sanctions that will only benefit the USA. :nuts:

I would not react to this issue as my opinions on it were not welcomed on this forum and got me banned on the DLM. It is just that I don't want to be included in sides when I hear someone proclaiming here "our of their side" mantra when exactly this mantra and its strengthening in the public discourse is behind the whole problem and lots of other problems in international politics. The our side mantra is even more dangerous/idiotic when the actual "side" is to the benefit of someone else than those that are made/compelled supporting it.


----------



## Surel

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I don't think so,because Serbia is curently negotiate with European Union about entering Serbia as it's member , and i think that European Union will have better economy because of Serbia and it's deal with Russia.


Just a fact remark. If the Serbia was to enter the EU, any "special trade deals" it has with Russia would have to be most probably cancelled. This comes from the basic fact that EU is a customs union.


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> We won't now either. It's just Ukrainians against Russian-speaking Ukrainians, Russia won't enter officially the conflict. Of course Russia is already in the conflict, but masquerading as discontent Ukrainians who want to join the Motherland.


We are already involved. Sanctions from both sides are hitting us hard. We are also still dealing with the aftermath of the downing of MH17, the Russian hostility towards NATO and the fact that major armies in Europe are now holding exercises in the Baltic area. Also especially Poland is alarmed as we speak because of high concentrations of Russian troops along the border with the Ukraine. I am highly active in the Dutch Ukraine thread right now, which has been given a boost since flight MH17 came down, killing mostly Dutch citizens. 

We are in the middle of it.


----------



## g.spinoza

It's not the first time that an airliner has been shot down, as sad as it may be, and it probably won't be the last:

- Korean Airlines flight 007
- Iran Air 655
- Siberia Airlines 1812

not to mention Itavia 870, known in Italy as "the Ustica massacre", for which no definitive truth has come up in 30 years.

Not one of these episodes started a war.


----------



## Capt.Vimes

An Israeli passenger plane was shot down over Bulgaria in the 50s. The plane was supposed to fly over Yugoslavia, but for unknown reasons it entered Bulgarian airspace. Two jets, that were scrambled from the unit responsible for defending Sofia tried to warn the pilots and make them follow them. They didn't and the fighter pilots received an order if the plane tries to escape to shoot it down. 58 people died.


----------



## aubergine72

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I don't think so,because Serbia is curently negotiate with European Union about entering Serbia as it's member , and i think that European Union will have better economy because of Serbia and it's deal with Russia.


That deal will be void. 

EU doesn't need another (even bigger) Russian trojan horse.


----------



## italystf

I don't like economical sanctions against any country. They usually punish the poorer part of the population, instead of the government. Putin and other powerful Russian men would still be rich even with sanctions, while the common Russian population would suffer the biggest consequences. Look at what is happening in Cuba, with 50 years of US sanctions. After the USSR collapsed, Cuba is no longer a danger for the world peace, since it is isolated and not anymore backed by a superpower. But nevertheless, Americans still countinue with sanctions, impoverishing the general population. It's even illegal for an American citizen to do tourism in Cuba. The only embargo that is acceptable (against Russia or any other "dangerous" country) is the weapon embargo. We should not sell weapons to a country that can use them against other countries or its citizens.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> We won't now either. It's just Ukrainians against Russian-speaking Ukrainians, Russia won't enter officially the conflict. Of course Russia is already in the conflict, but masquerading as discontent Ukrainians who want to join the Motherland.


Also EU\Nato are probably already in the conflict, but masquerading as pro-EU Ukrainian citizens. Remember the CIA involvement in the 1973 Chilean coup...
It's a contraddiction that the EU strongly condemns some right-wing politicians of EU countries (Le Pen, Farange, Wilders, Orban,...), who, albeit with some extreme ideologies, operate within the democratic system, and at the same time, supports far-right movements in the Ukraine (Svoboda and Pravy Sektor), that are true terroristic organization (before Yanukovic deposition and rise of pro-Russian violence in the east, the pro-EU groups were the most violent).
It's like with Muslim fondamentalists: enemies and terrorists after 9/11, peace heroes and freedom fighters when they fight against Gheddafi, Mubarak, Assad,...


----------



## Kanadzie

italystf said:


> I don't like economical sanctions against any country. They usually punish the poorer part of the population, instead of the government. Putin and other powerful Russian men would still be rich even with sanctions, while the common Russian population would suffer the biggest consequences. Look at what is happening in Cuba, with 50 years of US sanctions. After the USSR collapsed, Cuba is no longer a danger for the world peace, since it is isolated and not anymore backed by a superpower. But nevertheless, Americans still countinue with sanctions, impoverishing the general population. It's even illegal for an American citizen to do tourism in Cuba. The only embargo that is acceptable (against Russia or any other "dangerous" country) is the weapon embargo. We should not sell weapons to a country that can use them against other countries or its citizens.


You have a point but the effect of US sanction on Cuba is essentially trivial, selling a few cigars would not stop those people from being crushingly impoverished.


----------



## nbcee

@italystf: or even if we go back further: The CIA supported Bin Laden against the Soviets, the US openly supported Saddam's Iraq against Iran (even after the war crimes that regime committed against the Kurds) and so on. These were not about _principles_, these were about _interests_.


----------



## hofburg

what to do in case of being tailgated? do you react somehow?


----------



## Verso

panda80 said:


> And if we think that we also pay a lot because these people are against surveillance cameras...If there will be cameras on public spaces not so many cars would be stolen, so the insurance will be much cheaper, equally with house insurance. And for normal people that have nothing to hide it doesn't affect anything. What can I loose if NSA sees me everyday and I behave absolutely normal? How can someone use this against me?


Replace "NSA" with "KGB", there's not much difference.


----------



## Kanadzie

hofburg said:


> what to do in case of being tailgated? do you react somehow?


I drive fast enough I never get tailgated :cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

hofburg said:


> what to do in case of being tailgated? do you react somehow?


First I try to ignore it (assuming I am not fast lane hogger). But when it gets too annoying I usually
1. Speed up a little bit
2. Slow down and give a tailgater chance to overtake me. If he doesn't understand I turn the indicator to the right. If he doesn't get it either I am angry.
3. If he hang on my rear too long and I drive quite fast, I start very frequently slightly stepping on the brake pedal. My car doesn't slows down, just lights the brake lights up.
4. If nothing above works, I turns the wipes and screen washer on.


----------



## volodaaaa

nbcee said:


> @italystf: or even if we go back further: The CIA supported Bin Laden against the Soviets, the US openly supported Saddam's Iraq against Iran (even after the war crimes that regime committed against the Kurds) and so on. These were not about _principles_, these were about _interests_.


This cold war 2.0 is not about priciples either. A France state-owned company (basically controlled by French government) is selling warships to Russian army (basically controlled by Russian government) and it is absolutely all right.

But if a private enterpriser from EU (the only thing he has common with his home country is that he pays taxes there) sells a product to a Russian individual (also, we don't know if he supports Putin and current Russian government and it should not be relevant) we say "How did he dare!? Poor Ukrainians are dying and they've lost Crimea! What a heartless monster! The money are more important over human rights to him! 

It is all ridiculous.


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> This cold war 2.0 is not about priciples either. A France state-owned company (basically controlled by French government) is selling warships to Russian army (basically controlled by Russian government) and it is absolutely all right.
> 
> But if a private enterpriser from EU (the only thing he has common with his home country is that he pays taxes there) sells a product to a Russian individual (also, we don't know if he supports Putin and current Russian government and it should not be relevant) we say "How did he dare!? Poor Ukrainians are dying and they've lost Crimea! What a heartless monster! The money are more important over human rights to him!
> 
> It is all ridiculous.


Yeah, we already discussed this if I remember it correctly. Which are more dangerous: warships or cherries?

anyway If you read a few things about the 1944 Warsaw uprising and its aftermath, you will see the true colors of both the East and the West.


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> I am sorry to bring that topic up, but Yugoslavia and its breakup is a great example of border crossings and the ways they've been erected.
> 
> I'm still hoping ex-Yugoslav nations (mostly young generations) understand what is going on and are used to get along. Sometimes, these stupid flamewars really disappoint me.
> 
> Yugoslavia and its successor republics are beautiful and people there are so kind and hospitable. Don't know where such hatred origins.


Because the war are still on peoples minds. Not just the territorial side, but some pretty awful things has happened there with mass killings and everything. Quite recent as well. They are still blaming each other.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> This cold war 2.0 is not about priciples either. A France state-owned company (basically controlled by French government) is selling warships to Russian army (basically controlled by Russian government) and it is absolutely all right.
> 
> But if a private enterpriser from EU (the only thing he has common with his home country is that he pays taxes there) sells a product to a Russian individual (also, we don't know if he supports Putin and current Russian government and it should not be relevant) we say "How did he dare!? Poor Ukrainians are dying and they've lost Crimea! What a heartless monster! The money are more important over human rights to him!
> 
> It is all ridiculous.


It happens also with sport events: South Africa was banned from all international competition because of the apartheid. Some partially-recognized countries like Kosovo and Abkhazia cannot take part to the olympics and other international competitions because other countries wouldn't accept that. But on the other hand we allow evil regimes like North Korea or Saudi Arabia to take part of international competitions. It's known that North Korean footballer are tortured if they lose a match. They never excluded East Germany either, and they knew how they manage to win so many medals,...


----------



## Skyline_

Road_UK said:


> What happens on UK motorways when a police car is in the area, driving slowly. This is the truth. I see it myself every time. I eventually reluctantly would pass the copper.


In Greece, they would overtake the police car on the slow lane at 80 mph. :banana:


----------



## Road_UK

In Greece I've noticed that people actually move over onto the hard shoulder to let faster traffic pass. I see it every time I get off the ferry at Patras heading towards Athens.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Road_UK said:


> What happens on UK motorways when a police car is in the area, driving slowly. This is the truth. I see it myself every time. I eventually reluctantly would pass the copper.


I should use mirror to convert this to understandable traffic... :lol: :troll:


----------



## Road_UK

I finally uploaded my report of my trip from England to northern Norway. It's to be found in the dedicated threads of the UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Sorry, I left Germany out. I think I forgot to take pictures...
In the Netherlands I stayed one night in Schiedam, then drove to Sneek to pick my granddad up. On the way back I dropped him back off in Sneek and had to go to Mönchengladbach for a reload to Manchester. So my weeks worth looked a bit like this:



I've put a lot of work into this, so I hope you enjoy it


----------



## Skyline_

So most of your life is spent driving on highways....


----------



## Road_UK

Not at the moment. Work has dried out and did a bit of taxi driving here. I'm ill at the moment. But once I get better I will pick up my European Express deliveries up again. I've got a new job lined up for a firm in Stuttgart doing just that. And if not, there is a great possibility that I might be moving back to the UK permanently, as there are a few companies there who wants me.


----------



## Skyline_

Home sweet home, huh?


----------



## Road_UK

But I really do miss it. Done it for 8 years. Not much sleep, keep on goin. London-Naples twice in a week, Manchester - Portugal twice in one week, London to Stocholm to Magdenburg to Valencia - only a few days to do that - shit like that. But I also had time to see and visit things, friends, family... 

And of course the nostalgia. Camping in the Swedish woods in Sweden for a weekend with two vans for example... Here my van in my garden in Mayrhofen...


----------



## Skyline_

Adventures.... yep, count me in!


----------



## cinxxx

Who the Poles like/dislike the most :nuts:


----------



## g.spinoza

We win!!!
I knew that... one of my gf's in the past was half Polish... so is one of my cousins... Polish girls love Italian men


----------



## volodaaaa

Skyline_ said:


> In Greece, they would overtake the police car on the slow lane at 80 mph. :banana:


I haven't ever seen a police in Greece. Except the case they was eating gyros :-D but traffic there is charmfully relaxed


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

The only policeman i saw in Greece was at the "Euzoni " border checkpoint.


----------



## volodaaaa

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> The only policeman i saw in Greece was at the "Euzoni " border checkpoint.


When I seen one last time, he smiled and said "Slovenia my friend? Carry on!" in a very friendly manner :lol:

This country is in deep economical $hit, but I love the way the people live there. I wish to have at least 5% of Greek blood in my veins. :lol: No wonder they have the lowest suicide rate in Europe.


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> We win!!!
> I knew that... one of my gf's in the past was half Polish... so is one of my cousins... Polish girls love Italian men


So do Austrians. I fail to see what they've got that I haven't got. I just had a pizza for crying out loud.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> So do Austrians. I fail to see what they've got that I haven't got. I just had a pizza for crying out loud.


It's just mojo. Just mojo. :banana:

For what it's worth, I _love_ German girls... they have everything that Italian ones haven't. Mostly, height. And blonde hair


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

But the German and Austrian ones have big boobs


----------



## Skyline_

volodaaaa said:


> This country is in deep economical $hit, but I love the way the people live there. I wish to have at least 5% of Greek blood in my veins. :lol: No wonder they have the lowest suicide rate in Europe.


You wouldn't gain anything by having 5% Greek blood except some more.... debt!


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> I haven't ever seen a police in Greece. Except the case they was eating gyros :-D but traffic there is charmfully relaxed


You obviously haven't driven in Athens.


----------



## cinxxx

^^I heard Athens is the only chaotic spot in Greece for drivers...


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

^^ Industrial area in Thessaloniki too


----------



## Road_UK

All densely populated areas I reckon.


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> You obviously haven't driven in Athens.


No I have not. But on the north parts it's been always very very relaxed. As you've said: slower drivers moving over shoulders, etc. 

I've just come back from tiny Slovakia trip and the journey was much more stressful. I can't explain why.


----------



## Road_UK

Because people like myself get hards-ons with these new juicy expressways you have been building. Especially the one from Nitra to Zvolen...


----------



## volodaaaa

Speaking of hard-ons
It might sounds unbelievable, but past three weeks, there was a bunch of drivers speeding over 200 kph  It was covered by media.

This one was the most noticeable:

*Driver of Ferrari exceeded the speed limit over 128 kph: his granma gets angry* (you know - tabloid)
Article in Slovak



> A police cop from Banska Bystrica annouced that there was a Ferrari on R1 expresway driving significantly fast towards Nitra on Wednesday about 6 PM. Another cop measured and pulled over a car speeding at 258 kph few minutes later. Driver's (29 yo) driver licence were immediately confiscated and further drive was forbidden.


Some photos:









My brief remark: some curves are difficult to pass even at 130 kph there.


----------



## Skyline_

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> ^^ Industrial area in Thessaloniki too


With no GPS installed, you may get lost in the Industrial Zone of Thessaloniki. It's vast.


----------



## volodaaaa

Skyline_ said:


> With no GPS installed, you may get lost in the Industrial Zone of Thessaloniki. It's vast.


Indeed. Lot of turnoffs, traffic signs, turning lanes, curves. Very hard to follow.:cheers:


----------



## x-type

situation from yesterday: i was travelling back from the seaside when at last 40 km of 600 km long journey i spotted an idiot on some super-cool sport bike (very likely professionaly equiped) cycling at motorway. i am cycling at that area often and it is really not a problem to take state road instead on that strech. i did stupid thing passing as mush as possible close to him at speed of cca 120 km/h to make him think a bit. but now interesting part: i stopped at nearby rest area, only polce car was parked there. i was waiting a bit to see what would happen when policeman spot an idiot on the bike, but nothing happened. then i watched little bit closer - policeman was sleeping in the car icard:


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> situation from yesterday: i was travelling back from the seaside when at last 40 km of 600 km long journey i spotted an idiot on some super-cool sport bike (very likely professionaly equiped) cycling at motorway. i am cycling at that area often and it is really not a problem to take state road instead on that strech. i did stupid thing passing as mush as possible close to him at speed of cca 120 km/h to make him think a bit. but now interesting part: i stopped at nearby rest area, only polce car was parked there. i was waiting a bit to see what would happen when policeman spot an idiot on the bike, but nothing happened. then i watched little bit closer - policeman was sleeping in the car icard:


What motorway was it? Did he need to pass through a toll barrier to exit?


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> What motorway was it? Did he need to pass through a toll barrier to exit?


actually it was expressway (D28, or the newst name D10), free of charge.
here: https://maps.google.com/?ll=45.8718...=8MQcqr0i73U7IhlQSi8r0w&cbp=12,129.86,,0,2.97


----------



## Verso

I thought he was cycling on hard shoulder of a motorway at least. :nuts:


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> actually it was expressway (D28, or the newst name D10), free of charge.
> here: https://maps.google.com/?ll=45.8718...=8MQcqr0i73U7IhlQSi8r0w&cbp=12,129.86,,0,2.97


Someone hates himself very hard. :lol:


----------



## Peines

I changed my Volkswagen 1.6 TDI L4, Common Rail, Manual 5-Speed, 105hp to an Ford PSA-Peugeot-Citroën *3.0 HDI V6*, *Twin Turbo*, *Automatic Transmission* (Torque Converter, USA style) and* Common Rail*, *271hp for this days of vacation and road trips*.

Also I changed from 4,9l/100km to 10,8l/100km, but, the V6 is worth.










_Me, right now._

Plus, my favorite song for this holidays…






Note: For USA users, TDI and HDI are diesel engines, you know, that thing that is not gasoline


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

volodaaaa said:


> Indeed. Lot of turnoffs, traffic signs, turning lanes, curves. Very hard to follow.:cheers:


And there is also a big number of trucks.


----------



## volodaaaa

Peines said:


> I changed my Volkswagen 1.6 TDI L4, Common Rail, Manual 5-Speed, 105hp to an Ford PSA-Peugeot-Citroën *3.0 HDI V6*, *Twin Turbo*, *Automatic Transmission* (Torque Converter, USA style) and* Common Rail*, *271hp for this days of vacation and road trips*.
> 
> Also I changed from 4,9l/100km to 10,8l/100km, but, the V6 is worth.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Me, right now._
> 
> Plus, my favorite song for this holidays…
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Note: For USA users, TDI and HDI are diesel engines, you know, that thing that is not gasoline


Photos or did not happen


----------



## Peines

volodaaaa said:


> Photos or did not happen












And if anyone asks, it is borrowed, it is the company car.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I was listening this song for the last one hour:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nt4Lujk9NE&feature=player_detailpage
What do you guys think about it ?


----------



## volodaaaa

What do you think about self service cash desks at Tesco? Shouldn't customers who use it deserve at least one plastic bag for free?


----------



## Road_UK

Which Tesco's? Slovakia or the UK motherland of Tesco's? Because in the UK they are free at any check-out.


----------



## Angelos

@Road UK as I understand you have yes eked w lot around Europe therefore you have experienced many cultures and diverse cities, may I ask which is your favourite country to drive in or to live in  ?


----------



## Fatfield

M&S charge 5p for a standard plastic bag at their self service checkouts. I always use the 'no bag' option as I believe I should be getting a discount for doing their work for them. Sainsburys, Asda & Tesco don't charge for them. And as far as I know, neither do Aldi or Lidl.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

You need to pay for a plastic bag in Lidl too


----------



## volodaaaa

In my country, plastic bags are charged which is okay.
In Tesco it is 3c in particular. The price is ridiculous, but I still think in case when I, as a customer, decide to use self-service cash desk deserve some small benefit and 1-2 plastic bags for free would be fair enough.

Well, there is still at least one great advantage on paying at those self-service cash desks, namely you don't have to spend time in line because there are often bunch of empty cash desks, but I think this could motivate some lazy people slightly.


----------



## Road_UK

Angelos said:


> @Road UK as I understand you have yes eked w lot around Europe therefore you have experienced many cultures and diverse cities, may I ask which is your favourite country to drive in or to live in  ?


You may indeed.  I currently live in Austria, but my favourite country has to be France. I love the people, landscapes, food, roads, villages, towns, cities... I'd love to live there some day...


----------



## cinxxx

Today I am feeling homesick 
I hate the cold wet weather in Germany...


----------



## Skyline_

Road_UK said:


> You may indeed.  I currently live in Austria, but my favourite country has to be France. I love the people, landscapes, food, roads, villages, towns, cities... I'd love to live there some day...


You wouldn't exchange Britain for France now, would you?:cheers:


----------



## Road_UK

Actually, if the prospect was there and I can get nice secluded property in the Provence or Dordogne, then I would.


----------



## Skyline_

You traitor! BNP won't happy with this post. LOL (just kidding).


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> Today I am feeling homesick
> I hate the cold wet weather in Germany...


I don't know about Romania, but this summer I'm spending here in Turin reminds me a lot of the one I spent in Munich... lots of rain temperature rarely over 20°C...


----------



## cinxxx

g.spinoza said:


> I don't know about Romania, but this summer I'm spending here in Turin reminds me a lot of the one I spent in Munich... lots of rain temperature rarely over 20°C...


There was a lot of rain comparing with usual values, but temperatures higher (around 25-30), although not as high as usual. July is called "the oven", it didn't confirm it's name though, still warmer then Germany. 

But I think this summer is weird in all of Europe. 
As was the winter, which was no winter at all.


----------



## Attus

Here in NRW June was 4-5 degrees warmer than February which is crazy in this part of the world. July was a bit warmer, the hottest day of the year was that of the German Formula One GP (near to 40 °C) but August is so far rainy and not quite warm, today it was 21 °C.


----------



## Road_UK

I have opened up a poll in the Dutch section asking people whether they prefer London or Paris. Do vote at http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1743871&page=2


----------



## Road_UK

RIP Robin Williams


----------



## SeanT

Very bad news indeed!hno:


----------



## volodaaaa

Mr. Actor...


----------



## cinxxx

Sad 
He was apparently suffering from depression and alcohol abuse. First clues hint that it was a suicide. He was found at home.


----------



## Road_UK

News is just coming in that apparently he hanged himself.


----------



## italystf

In those cases we'll never know the truth. hno: 10 years ago the former cyclist Marco Pantani died in a hotel room, aparently for cocaine overdose But recently, some rumours about a possible murder came out.


----------



## Skyline_

Road_UK said:


> News is just coming in that apparently he hanged himself.


Proof that money doesn't buy happiness.


----------



## cinxxx

^^It doesn't have to do with money. You can be depressed with or without money...


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from the Saxon Switzerland (Sächsische Schweiz) :cheers2:


----------



## Alex_ZR

cinxxx said:


> Greetings from the Saxon Switzerland (Sächsische Schweiz) :cheers2:


Well, well, are you ever at Ingolstadt? :naughty:


----------



## cinxxx

During work days


----------



## Skopje/Скопје

cinxxx said:


> Greetings from the Saxon Switzerland (Sächsische Schweiz) :cheers2:


You travel a lot. I envy you! :cheers:


----------



## cinxxx

We have the Friday off so long weekend 
Weather is not really great though...


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> which destilery?
> 
> (btw be careful with it, it is not a drink to get drunk of it because it's too sweet for that, and you will lose all taste senses except bitter for 3 days :lol: )


Well, we played a drinking ludo with that :lol: Btw. the destilery is called "Pokorny", but I have not found a thing about that on the internet. It gave me my uncle who bought it in Eastern Slavonia during peace mission there in years 1995-1998, so it is possible that the distillery already stopped its production.


----------



## Road_UK

I have a question. Why do people in this section of SSC always talk about NIMBY's in a very degrading way? Are their interests really that unworthy in car- and road eccentric eyes?


----------



## volodaaaa

Okay, it is time to annoy you with grammar issues, now cardinal directions.
Can sameone confirm my thoughts?

The problems are with words derived from e.g. West

Western = more west than something or adjective of west?
On the west of = included in region? Like Sopron is on the west of Hungary?
On the west from = excluded from the region? Like Austria is on the west frtom Hungary?
Westward = adjective for something moving to the west?
Westwards = adverb for the manner of moving to west?
Westbound = adjective and adverb for somethin heading toward west?
Westerly = adverb for somethin that originates on the west? Like westerly winds?

Because I am completely confused :-D


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> I have a question. Why do people in this section of SSC always talk about NIMBY's in a very degrading way? Are their interests really that unworthy in car- and road eccentric eyes?


It depends on what people you are talking about. In East bloc, land and properties were owned by state. After the end of the cold war and transition to a market economy, people were allowed to purchase the properties they had been using or living in. Some certain people who got information in advance knew what properties are worth purchasing (especially those the future motorways were planned through). So they purchased it for the few bucks and then, upon the project documentation (stating the motorway would run through their backyards) came out, they decided to extort respective ministry.

The ministry or the contracted company had to purchase the certain property and often spent much more resources than the real value of property was.

The owners of such properties were often individuals related or really close to particular politicians (friends, wives, siblings-in-law, classmates) an the above mentioned method was the easiest and legal way how to obtain public resources.

Unfortunately, it makes no good reputation for true Nimbies.


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> I have a question. Why do people in this section of SSC always talk about NIMBY's in a very degrading way? Are their interests really that unworthy in car- and road eccentric eyes?


NIMBYies, unlike environmentalists, care only about the interests, not the interests of the society.
Infrastructure expert:
- Useful project: when it has a high benefit\cost ratio
- Useless project: when it has a low benefit\cost ratio
Average people:
- Useful project: when I need it for my movements
- Useless project: when I don't need it for my movements or simply annoys me
NIMBY propaganda highlights only disvantages of the infrastructure they oppose to, ignoring all possible benefits, simply because they don't want it at any cost. Those campaigns are often held by activist with very little scientific knowledge about fields like geology, biology, engineering and economics, that are very important when talking about infrastructure and environment.
On the other hand, a serious environmental analysis, should analyze pros and cons of a certain project from a neutral point of view and with a scientific method.
Unfortunately it's easier to persuade masses with populist arguments rather than scientific discussions. People are used to reason with stereothypes "it would destroy the environment", "it would only benefit politicians and big companies", "we managed to do without for decades", "we could feed poor people with that money",... Sometimes stereothypes are true, sometimes not.
NIMBYsm exist only in countries that have been developed for decades, in developing countries everyone loves modernity, with the consequent that developing countries usually create the worst environmental disasters, since they grow fast ignoring environmental issues and are usually more corrupted and less democratic. Of course NIMBYsm can occur only where the free debate is allowed, and not where the government dictates everything.


Road_UK said:


> I have a question. Why do people in this section of SSC always talk about NIMBY's in a very degrading way? Are their interests really that unworthy in car- and road eccentric eyes?


NIMBYsm doesn't only involve road infrastructure. In my country the strongest NIMBY groups are the ones against high-speed rail infrastructure (TAV = Treno Alta Velocità) and garbage disposal plants (the latter especially in Campania).


----------



## Verso

I've just seen four cars with Chinese license plates in central Ljubljana for the first time, going from Beijing to Paris! :banana:


----------



## Natomasken

volodaaaa said:


> Okay, it is time to annoy you with grammar issues, now cardinal directions.
> Can sameone confirm my thoughts?
> 
> The problems are with words derived from e.g. West
> 
> *Western = more west than something or adjective of west?
> *
> Yes, adjective indicating the western portion of a place (e.g., He lives in western Pennsylvania.).
> 
> *On the west of = included in region? Like Sopron is on the west of Hungary?
> On the west from = excluded from the region? Like Austria is on the west frtom Hungary?*
> 
> Both of these sound awkward to me, and I don't think the meaning would be clear to an English speaker. I would say "in the west of" (or more commonly, "in western ...") for a place within the larger place; and "to the west of" (or, more commonly, just "west of") for a place outside of another place. For example, Bratislava is in the west of Slovakia (or Bratislava is in western Slovakia); and Austria is to the west of Slovakia (or Austria is west of Slovakia).
> 
> *Westward = adjective for something moving to the west?
> Westwards = adverb for the manner of moving to west?
> Westbound = adjective and adverb for somethin heading toward west?*
> 
> Yes to these. (But I'm a little uncertain about "westwards." I think the adverb "westwardly" might be better.)
> 
> *Westerly = adverb for somethin that originates on the west? Like westerly winds?*
> 
> This one is confusing. Generally, westerly indicates a movement TO the west (e.g., He's walking in a westerly direction.). But when referring to winds, it means the direction the wind is coming FROM (e.g., There are strong westerlies today.) To me, it would make more sense and be more consistent to describe the direction the wind is blowing TO, not FROM.
> 
> Actually, these last 3 words (westward, westbound, westerly) really mean the same thing, but are used in different situations. For example, westbound generally is used in relation to transportation (e.g., a westbound train, westbound traffic, westbound lanes, a westbound flight) but you would use westward to indicate a mass movement (e.g., There was a westward settlement of the US in the 1800's.). Westerly is typically used with the word "direction" (e.g., The river flowed in a westerly direction.). I know this has to be confusing but you would still be completely understood even if you used the wrong word for the situation.
> 
> Because I am completely confused :-D


I hope this helps!


----------



## Attus

Road_UK said:


> I have a question. Why do people in this section of SSC always talk about NIMBY's in a very degrading way? Are their interests really that unworthy in car- and road eccentric eyes?


Yes. (But we must consider, such a behavior can obstruct constructing railways, cellphone towers, etc., not only roads).
It is basically a very normal behaivor. I, too, were not happy having a motorway or even a tram line 25 meters apart from my windows. If someone has a real estate property, its value may decrease drastically if a new motorway will be built nearby. For me it is alright that people are angry in such a case. 
And I find it OK if people ask for a restitution. So actually I can respect their interests. What I can not accept is if someone interferes the construction completely. If s/he says: here will nothing be constructed, not any way. Such a behavior is unacceptable.


----------



## Attus

^^"Restitution" may be not the proper word here, what I mean is a financial compensation.


----------



## Suburbanist

The fundamental problem of NIMBYs and a significant part of environmentalism is the tunnel-vision and ad-hoc focus on specific projects with complete disregard to the systemic needs of society and economy.

Most drivers benefit from the existence of a freeway network in their countries. But the NIMBYs, while using highways extensively, think that their neighborhood is some special place that don't deserve to share the burden of having a highway ROW through it. It is not a matter of fitting proper noise barriers or using tunnels to avoid demolitions, they just won't put up with anything on their turf.

A good example was the hysterical opposition to the completion of A32 in Italy (up to the Frejus tunnel portal). Places like Bardonecchia, Oulx and Susa had always benefit from the existence of fast links, but there were some bitter local opposition then the gap was finally close in the not so distant past. They framed it on various terms, including "economic doom" that would come once long-distance traffic didn't have to pass crawling any longer at local streets. 

There is also the tunnel-vision of many environmentalists. Like people who scream at any new house or office construction project, and then cringe at high housing prices. Or those who say they are anti-pollution, but then oppose windmills because they "spoil views and kill birds', oppose nuclear power because it is "dangerously uncontrollable", and end up with having a lot of coal-fired plants that are much more polluting (Germany anyone?)


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Verso said:


> I've just seen four cars with Chinese license plates in central Ljubljana for the first time, going from Beijing to Paris! :banana:


For the first time in my live i saw a car with UK plates on E-75 one month ago.


----------



## Verso

Geez, really?


----------



## volodaaaa

Natomasken said:


> I hope this helps!


Helped a lot! Thank you very much. Now is all clear  :cheers:


----------



## Fatfield

Meanwhile in Fatfield, England.

Before renovation.
http://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.88...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sujs-0NplFs_NOlSNEX843Q!2e0

After renovation.









I wouldn't want to be parking here everyday. Its also on a major bus route and thoroughfare through the village.


----------



## Road_UK

And the owner agreed to have it put there???


----------



## Attus

Put what where?


----------



## Road_UK

That lamppost in front of his driveway.


----------



## keokiracer

Look at Streetview. The lamppost was already there before he built his driveway


----------



## Road_UK

Ah ok. I'm on my mobile at the moment, so I don't really click on links.


----------



## Majestic

_@Chriszwolle_

What did I just see 

(signature under the picture)

btw, the article is about a flawed toll system on Polish motorways which creates havoc and massive jams at toll booths.

http://moto.money.pl/wiadomosci/publikacje/artykul/gdzie;sa;bramki;tam;sa;korki;zobacz;jak;placi;sie;za;autostrady;w;innych;krajach,53,2,1599029.html


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Next one is my photo as well


----------



## Suburbanist

As I wrote on the Dutch Highawys thread, car sales here are projected to be only 369.000 this years, keeping a long decline started in 1999. I wonder if the same phenomenon is happening on Eastern European countries, which got richer on average over last 15 years (recent crisis notwithstanding). If fewer new cars are sold in countries like Netherlands, France and Italy, that must reduce even the supply of second-hand cars to Poland, Romania, Hungary...


----------



## Suburbanist

An unusual video: traffic management at the end of the Burning Man festival in US. It is held in a desert flat in Nevada, lasts one week, and involves ushering out more than 50.000 people through a small local 2-lane road 70 miles north of I-80.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Like the song


----------



## volodaaaa

I really hate people chatting on pedestrian crossings. Today I stopped four times to let people cross the road. They looked at me with puzzle faces and carry on chatting.


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> I really hate people chatting on pedestrian crossings. Today I stopped four times to let people cross the road. They looked at me with puzzle faces and carry on chatting.


That's nothing. A few days ago I saw a woman chatting on phone in the middle of a pedestrian crossing. She had green light, but she just stopped in the middle and started talking. :nuts::nuts::nuts:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I hate that too.Sometimes i would like to get out of a car and punch them in a face.(just kidding )


----------



## cinxxx

What's the best way to go from Munich Airport to Florence on the last Saturday of September?
I would have to drive off around 15:00 from the airport, so I would like to get to Florence before midnight...

Is this the way to bypass the A12 in Austria if driving from Garmisch?
http://goo.gl/maps/Khe8z


----------



## Road_UK

Yeah that is the way. But expect delays at Garmisch, they are doing roadworks there. A12 route is not much better at the moment. From Munich there are works in progress on A8, A93 and four different sets on the A12.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

You should use in Germany:A8,A93
in Austria :A12,A13
in Italy :A22 and A1


----------



## cinxxx

^^Yeah, that would be the easy way, but traffic on German A8 can be horrible...


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

It can be,but in opposite direction.Because Turkish workers are going back home.


----------



## italystf

cinxxx said:


> What's the best way to go from Munich Airport to Florence on the last Saturday of September?
> I would have to drive off around 15:00 from the airport, so I would like to get to Florence before midnight...
> 
> Is this the way to bypass the A12 in Austria if driving from Garmisch?
> http://goo.gl/maps/Khe8z


You don't need the Austrian vignette for that route.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It is the coldest 19 August in 90 years in the Netherlands. The maximum temperature reached 15.9 °C today.


----------



## Road_UK

I just saw on the news that some areas in the Netherlands have reached all time lows of 7C.


----------



## Skyline_

7 C in August is no big deal. It happens in Greece every year on mountainous villages.


----------



## g.spinoza

There are no mountains in the Netherlands.


----------



## volodaaaa

I 've just realized the big mystery from my student times: how to write roman numerals greater than 3999:-D


----------



## Alex_ZR

volodaaaa said:


> I 've just realized the big mystery from my student times: how to write roman numerals greater than 3999:-D














Learned that from my Latin teacher in high school.


----------



## Attus

If we talk about the Romans: today is the 2000th anniversary of the death of the first Emperor, Augustus. He died 19th Sextilis 14 AD (a.u.C. 767).


----------



## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> Learned that from my Latin teacher in high school.


Exactly :lol: The line just means "multiply by 1000"  The more lines, the more time is the basic number multiplied by 1000.

so the 5,000,000 would be V with two lines above.


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> I 've just realized the big mystery from my student times: how to write roman numerals greater than 3999:-D


4000 = MMMM, isn't it?


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> 4000 = MMMM, isn't it?


and 30000 would be MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM? :cheers:


----------



## Road_UK




----------



## volodaaaa

Btw. a very suited joke about the situation in Ukraine is spreading on the internet:

"And now, our reporter will briefly explain you the situation in Kyjev, Ukraine:

- Well, few days ago a unique situation has occurred. Actors of maidan, who had no been satisfied with the aftermath of maidan organized maidan. Leaders of maidan decided to stood against the maidan and immediately arrested some maidan actors for hosting the maidan. All the actors of maidan, who went against maidan, were relased for the merits of maidan"


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> and 30000 would be MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM? :cheers:


I don't know about 30000, but 4000 is MMMM, right?


----------



## Alex_ZR

Verso said:


> I don't know about 30000, but 4000 is MMMM, right?


Yes. In the past, they used to write 4 as IIII instead of IV.










By the way, I've just had Latvian euro coins in my hands for the first time.


----------



## italystf

Alex_ZR said:


> Yes. In the past, they used to write 4 as IIII instead of IV.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> By the way, I've just had Latvian euro coins in my hands for the first time.


The original rule said not to use more than 3 equal signs in the same number. So 4 is IV and not IIII.
However in some later (Middle Age and modern) inscriptions and in some modern clocks IIII is used.


----------



## Suburbanist

Attus said:


> If we talk about the Romans: today is the 2000th anniversary of the death of the first Emperor, Augustus. He died 19th Sextilis 14 AD (a.u.C. 767).


Julian or Gregorian calendar?

I know it is nitpicking but any anniversary from dates earlier than 1582 has a 10-day gap.


----------



## volodaaaa

Another fun fact is, if there had been no leap year introduced, today would have been a day within March 2016


----------



## bozenBDJ

Google Streetview is now *available *in Indonesia. :cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

What would you say on SCS-RRA meeting proposal? I guess, the place could be chosen the way that most of us will not have to travel more than 450 km.


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> What would you say on SCS-RRA meeting proposal? I guess, the place could be chosen the way that most of us will not have to travel more than 450 km.


The Dutch section has meetings regularly, but that's a local section and Holland is a small country. Here I think it's a bad idea. Distances are too large, and although most of you are from the east we also have Americans and Scandinavians on here who will feel left out and won't be able to make it. People have jobs and lifes in all corners of the world. Nice idea but it won't work. But I'm happy to let you know when I'm in the area next and have a coffee with you. Also got a meeting planned with a French member soon.


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> The Dutch section has meetings regularly, but that's a local section and Holland is a small country. Here I think it's a bad idea. Distances are too large, and although most of you are from the east we also have Americans and Scandinavians on here who will feel left out and won't be able to make it. People have jobs and lifes in all corners of the world. Nice idea but it won't work. But I'm happy to let you know when I'm in the area next and have a coffee with you. Also got a meeting planned with a French member soon.


Yeah I am completely aware of the difficulties that are inherent. It was just an idea. I am personally able to travel everywhere within 450 km. So if there would be meeting let's say in Budapest, Trieste, Vienna or Ljubljana, I would surely come. 

It is hard because we have our families, jobs and it is not easy to manage time even for close friends which are in situ. I know it


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> Yeah I am completely aware of the difficulties that are inherent. It was just an idea. I am personally able to travel everywhere within 450 km. So if there would be meeting let's say in Budapest, Trieste, Vienna or Ljubljana, I would surely come.
> 
> It is hard because we have our families, jobs and it is not easy to manage time even for close friends which are in situ. I know it


I would come too. But I think it's just you, me, Cinxx and Verso who live close enough from each other to pick a central point somewhere, probably Salzburg or something. All the others (Holland, Sweden, Poland, western France, USA, Canada, Turin) live too far away, and I bet they will feel left out.


----------



## Wilhem275

Surel said:


> Did you try this site? http://kamernet.nl/


Yes, but out of something like 40 messages sent, I got 3 answers (all of which useless). I'm a bit upset with Kamernet, since I'm giving them good money to NOT receive replies...

I should better specify this: I'm looking for a semester stay, possibly sharing the house with other students.


----------



## Road_UK

Do what I told you to do last night. I am there to back you up.


----------



## Skyline_

g.spinoza said:


> What do you mean? The design is exactly the same of the old one:


No.... the head of Europa on the right side wasn't there in the old design. :cheers:


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I'm confused... you were talking about the "Greek Ionian order of the columns", which were there even before..


----------



## Skyline_

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ I'm confused... you were talking about the "Greek Ionian order of the columns", which were there even before..


My bad... Anyway, the head of Europa is a new addition and I like it a lot!


----------



## x-type

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> Members who live in Croatia,Serbia and other Balkan country's would not going to be able to come,becase they live too far away.


:?
a friend of mine went to a lunch to Salzburg and Padova (i know, it's not common, but not impossible at all). 
i went to Wien to meet my friends from Poland. Poland and Croatia are too far for such one-day trips, so we made it at half-way in Wien.
for me it would be acceptable anything in the circle Venezia - Wels - Wien - Bratislava - Budapest - Timisoara - Beograd - Sarajevo - Split. even famous Salzburg wouldn't go too far of that circle. i wouldn't have to calculate too much for such a trip, it is just "sit in car and drive".


----------



## Surel

Wilhem275 said:


> Yes, but out of something like 40 messages sent, I got 3 answers (all of which useless). I'm a bit upset with Kamernet, since I'm giving them good money to NOT receive replies...
> 
> I should better specify this: I'm looking for a semester stay, possibly sharing the house with other students.


You should find someone that is also leaving for half a year and exchange the rooms. You will possibly not be able to officially sign yourself at rhe city hall as most of the rooms are not allowed to be sub leased though.

In fact you are quite late now.You could try a hostel for a month and keep searching as being able to show yourself personally wil be a plus.

You could still cobtact the uni though.


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> :?
> a friend of mine went to a lunch to Salzburg and Padova (i know, it's not common, but not impossible at all).
> i went to Wien to meet my friends from Poland. Poland and Croatia are too far for such one-day trips, so we made it at half-way in Wien.
> for me it would be acceptable anything in the circle Venezia - Wels - Wien - Bratislava - Budapest - Timisoara - Beograd - Sarajevo - Split. even famous Salzburg wouldn't go too far of that circle. i wouldn't have to calculate too much for such a trip, it is just "sit in car and drive".


I once drove from near Udine to Florence and back in the same day to meet a friend (650km in total). For longer distances I'd prefer to spend at least a night out. My father once drove Udine-Rome-Udine in the same day (1200km in total!) for job reasons.
But why Wels is so important for being included in the list?


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> But why Wels is so important for being included in the list?


i couldn't find anything better to round that part of circle


----------



## Attus

italystf said:


> I once drove from near Udine to Florence and back in the same day to meet a friend (650km in total). For longer distances I'd prefer to spend at least a night out. My father once drove Udine-Rome-Udine in the same day (1200km in total!) for job reasons.
> But why Wels is so important for being included in the list?


I am not a professional driver but I drive 1,100 km with only some short breaks sevrral times a year (it is the distance from my current accomodation to my parents' house).
However, I prefer flying. Currently I'm sitting in the airport Colongne-Bonn, waiting for the flight to Budapest


----------



## Road_UK

italystf said:


> I once drove from near Udine to Florence and back in the same day to meet a friend (650km in total). For longer distances I'd prefer to spend at least a night out. My father once drove Udine-Rome-Udine in the same day (1200km in total!) for job reasons.
> But why Wels is so important for being included in the list?


I once loaded in Northampton on a Saturday, delivered Naples on a Monday, Northampton again on the following Wednesday and Naples on a Friday 

On the way down through Mont Blanc, coming back empty through Switzerland.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Meanwhile in Culver City, California...


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Meanwhile in Culver City, California...


Worse than Italian ZTLs signs. :lol:


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> I once loaded in Northampton on a Saturday, delivered Naples on a Monday, Northampton again on the following Wednesday and Naples on a Friday
> 
> On the way down through Mont Blanc, coming back empty through Switzerland.


Yes, but for job reason it's another thing. If I travel for pleasure, I want a more relaxed timetable.


----------



## Road_UK

Here is one that I have done a number of times:

Load Huddersfield on a Saturday
Deliver Stockholm Monday
Load Magdeburg Tuesday
Deliver Valencia Wednesday and mostly reloads somewhere in France going back to the UK on a Thursday. And do the same round again on Saturday...


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> Meanwhile in Culver City, California...


I'm sure you found this on AARoads forum :lol:.


----------



## Skyline_

My longest journey so far. From Greece to the "red" island North of Scandinavia. Definitely longer than Road UK's euro-trips!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

CNGL said:


> I'm sure you found this on AARoads forum :lol:.


Wrong! :cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

On and on I wonder about the ongoing Cold War II.

A story about Austria´s plans to build broad gauge railway from Moscow to Vienna has appeared in Slovak media. According to the competent people, the War in Ukraine is not relevant and they don't see any reason to reconsider the plans.

But cherries from Hungary or nectarines from Greece for Russian market seem to be a great problem. Sometimes I have feeling, this war is only about to weaken the small enterprisers


----------



## italystf

Skyline_ said:


> My longest journey so far. From Greece to the "red" island North of Scandinavia. Definitely longer than Road UK's euro-trips!


Flights don't count. It's easier to fly to the other side of the world than driving 2000km in Europe. Flying it's probably the only way to get to Spitsbergen.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

The friend of mine is planing to emigrate to France or Italy.Which country has better standard and bigger average wage?


----------



## Road_UK

I'd say France. But hopefully he'd prepare a bit better rather than waiting for answers on an internet forum...


----------



## Skyline_

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> The friend of mine is planing to emigrate to France or Italy.Which country has better standard and bigger average wage?


Tell him to go to Switzerland, instead.


----------



## Road_UK

I'd tell him to stay at home if he hasn't even got a country in mind...


----------



## volodaaaa

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> The friend of mine is planing to emigrate to France or Italy.Which country has better standard and bigger average wage?


Sometimes, the wage is not that determining as it could be. I know bunch of people who decided to go abroad, earned much more money, but were not happy. Of course there is also a group of people who were. 

The best solution is to do what you like. I guess your friend is not considering living abroad just because it has struck him somehow in exact moment, but because he got a serious job offer.

Tell him to take the one he think he would be more satisfied.

I personally think it is better to do something what make me happy for lower wage than something I do just for the money. Because in the first case you have the chance to show up how good you are, you are more likely to became /or be/ the expert and thus (sooner or later) to move upward and earn much more money than in latter case ultimately.

But those are just my thoughts. Right now I have one full-time job. I've been working it for 3 years and even though I earned little bit more money than my classmates just after graduation, now they are in much better situation. But I got a job on ministry from 9/2014, which has been my dream since my age of 15  I guess I would not have gotten the possibility to work there If I had not showed up my passion in the area.


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> Yes, but for job reason it's another thing. If I travel for pleasure, I want a more relaxed timetable.


Same here but not without exceptions. Sometimes it is good to save holidays by driving all day long. I have often driven from Helsinki to the ski resorts in the north Finland within one day. The trip is 1100-1200 kilometres and takes 14-16 hours in the winter, breaks included.

Another typical driving session is 1000 kilometres Stockholm-Hamburg. Leaving home at 1800 and taking the night ferry in Turku, brings me to Stockholm at about 0630 next morning, just before the morning rush hours begin. There is a good time to drive the whole day and to arrive at the outskirts of Hamburg in the early evening, having avoided high hotel prices in Sweden and Denmark.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Are price levels in Finland lower than the other Nordic countries?


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Are price levels in Finland lower than the other Nordic countries?


For the hotel prices, hard to compare. The list prices typically are significantly higher in Sweden and Denmark, but the prices fluctuate a lot by season. 

The budget hotel chains have not been very successful in the Nordic countries. The bed-and-Breakfast lodging is not a wide-spread concept either. These explain the price level partly.


----------



## volodaaaa

A very heavy rain hit Bratislava today. Some funny photos were taken. The author is seemingly unknown, so I share them with you  Welcome to Venice











The better one


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

This reminds me on youre yard


----------



## da_scotty

It's been terrible... It's been thundering the last two weeks here with nearly daily downpours... such a shame...


----------



## volodaaaa

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> This reminds me on youre yard


Seeing the intensity of the rain and the time it took, I was really scared about my yard :lol: But fortunately no flood occurred there.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Yeah .But shit was everywhere


----------



## Peines

Meanwhile on the internet…






Angry Dad :troll:


----------



## Road_UK

Richard Attenborough has died today... 1923-2014


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> Richard Attenborough has died today... 1923-2014


Just few days ago I was watching Jurassic Park and were positively surprised he is still alive hno: Rest in peace.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I have noticed that ice bucket challenge is getting very popular in Serbia.What about other country's?


----------



## Road_UK

https://www.google.nl/webhp?sourcei...spv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=ice+bucket+challenge&spell=1


----------



## x-type

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I have noticed that ice bucket challenge is getting very popular in Serbia.What about other country's?


people are dumb all around the world, don't worry


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ It is being spread like a plague. And media cover it more diligently than other more important topics (like expanding of Islamic State or UA-RU crisis). Even our new president has taken part


----------



## italystf

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I have noticed that ice bucket challenge is getting very popular in Serbia.What about other country's?


In Italy is very popular.
Our PM Matteo Renzi




The footballer Mario Balotelli


----------



## Attus

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I have noticed that ice bucket challenge is getting very popular in Serbia.What about other country's?


In Hungary everyone does it. However, the original purpose, getting attention to ALS, is absolutely forgotten, nobody talks about that disease or any other charity action about it. It's simply a cool thing to dump yourself.


----------



## da_scotty

I've heard the best reply for not doing this yesterday:

1) The ALS attention is gone, it's just about being cool and part of a hype
2) Instead of dumping a bucket of money, donate a bucket of money..
3) all the water we're wasting with this challenge is a insult to country's who suffer drought


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Brrr, another summer day with a high of 15 °C. This weather is more appropriate in October.


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ When I woke up today, the heating in my apartment was turned on  It cuts in when the room temperature drops bellow 23°C, which usually occur in early October.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> ^^ When I woke up today, the heating in my apartment was turned on  It cuts in when the room temperature drops bellow 23°C, which usually occur in early October.


Are you allowed to turn on heat in the summer? In Italy, in general, we aren't: every municipality is given a code, according to which heating can be turned on in different times of the year. There are six classes (from A to F) according to the amount of degree days of that specific town.
For instance:
A class towns can turn the heat on only between 1st December and 15th March; F class towns can all year long


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> Are you allowed to turn on heat in the summer? In Italy, in general, we aren't: every municipality is given a code, according to which heating can be turned on in different times of the year. There are six classes (from A to F) according to the amount of degree days of that specific town.
> For instance:
> A class towns can turn the heat on only between 1st December and 15th March; F class towns can all year long


It works similar way here. But in houses/apartment we have three different types of heating:
- provided by heating plant
- provided by local boiler room
- provided by local heating

The first one is a building with lots of boilers heating the water that runs to heating system. Usually, entire streets are connected to that system. It is pretty much common in cities. It also heats water that runs to plumbing. The heating season starts after three days with local high lower than 13°C. Inhabitants of apartments in such houses pay heating plant companies for providing heat according to the values from special measure unit.

The second one is an apartment house with a room where boilers are situated. One of them usually works all day long and heat water for plumbing, others starts when a competent (usually elected) person from owners turns the heating on. The boilers are usually gas boilers and therefore the sooner in year it starts, the higher invoices inhabitants get. The heating season usually depends on internal agreement.

The last one is often in case of villas or older apartment house. Each dwelling is equipped by boiler and the owner of the apartment controls it by him/herself. Sometimes it is powered by pellets, wood, electric power or gas. The more you heat, the more you pay for energies.

My apartment is the last one, so if I set the requested room temperature to 35°C in the middle of July, my boiler turns on and starts to heat :lol: I've got set it to 23°C (from 5 AM to 22 PM)/ 22°C (22PM - 5AM) all day long.


----------



## g.spinoza

I wasn't really referring to the ability of turning the heat on, but to the _legality_ of that. I can turn the heat on whenever I like, but if they find out I did that outside the terms I may get a fine.


----------



## x-type

da_scotty said:


> 3) all the water we're wasting with this challenge is a insult to country's who suffer drought


this is stupid. water is circulating in enviroments.


----------



## Jasper90

g.spinoza said:


> I wasn't really referring to the ability of turning the heat on, but to the legality of that. I can turn the heat on whenever I like, but if they find out I did that outside the terms I may get a fine.


In addition to that, our law sets the temperature to 20 ºC, with 1 degree tolerance. So 23 degrees would be too high 
However, most of the older central heatings don't have a proper regulation system and you get higher temperatures in your home.


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> I wasn't really referring to the ability of turning the heat on, but to the _legality_ of that. I can turn the heat on whenever I like, but if they find out I did that outside the terms I may get a fine.


That is interesting...:nuts: Never heard of a similar law anywhere.


----------



## Attus

In my flat I haven't had 23°C for at least ten days...


----------



## bogdymol

This morning there my car showed 4°C when going to work. Heating was turned on during the night.


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> Are you allowed to turn on heat in the summer? In Italy, in general, we aren't: every municipality is given a code, according to which heating can be turned on in different times of the year. There are six classes (from A to F) according to the amount of degree days of that specific town.
> For instance:
> A class towns can turn the heat on only between 1st December and 15th March; F class towns can all year long


Aaaargh... We have all sorts of funny regulations, but nobody has invented that.

Is a modern device called "thermostat" unknown in Italy? That device cuts off the heating at a predefined temperature, thus avoiding excessive spending of energy.

We arrived at our leisure-time home a few days ago. The inside temperature was +17 and I turned the heating on because of the humidity. The cut-off temperature is +21. The total heating capacity is 5.6 kW and the consumption log shows the current average usage being 0.4 kW approx. Thus, the thermostats are in order. The outside temperature has varied from +8 (night) to +17 (day).


----------



## g.spinoza

MattiG said:


> Aaaargh... We have all sorts of funny regulations, but nobody has invented that.
> 
> Is a modern device called "thermostat" unknown in Italy? That device cuts off the heating at a predefined temperature, thus avoiding excessive spending of energy.


I don't think this is funny at all, and no need of sarcasm. Of course thermostats are widespread in Italy... Thermostats are still responding to human control, though. Resources like methane and coal are scarce and they have to be used wisely. Paying for them is not enough: I may be rich and careless and waste tons of fuel just because I feel like it, even in summer, wasting forever something that can be put aside and used when it's really necessary.


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> I wasn't really referring to the ability of turning the heat on, but to the _legality_ of that. I can turn the heat on whenever I like, but if they find out I did that outside the terms I may get a fine.


There is no law for that. We have some obligations like annual chimney check, boiler check once in two years, etc. but if I feel cold, I can turn the heating on even in summer.

I have quite modern system (Buderus Logamax 152GB with remote control in my living room) built in 2008. It knows equithermics (can calculate how hot the water in system must be to reach the desired room temperature) and the temperature can be set very preciously.

Unfortunately I live in old apartment house with very bad thermoisolation attributes and I have serious problem with moulds on walls. If I set the temperature under 23°C the apartment is very cold and moulds emerge.


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> Are you allowed to turn on heat in the summer? In Italy, in general, we aren't


Dictatorship. :troll:


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> Unfortunately I live in old apartment house with very bad thermoisolation attributes and I have serious problem with moulds on walls. If I set the temperature under 23°C the apartment is very cold and moulds emerge.


And the moulds may make you incurably sick. That is why keeping the homes cold and humid seldom is wise.


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> Dictatorship. :troll:


Tell me about it. I wanted to show you a picture of me and my wife, but apparently I am not allowed to do that and it got deleted on here. I know you guys have been asking about that, but never mind...


----------



## keber

Speaking of heating - I just found out that I have a leaking pipe from central heating. It is not yet critical but repair must be done before actual heating begins. As I live in modestly sized apartment block, repairing it will be fun.


----------



## Road_UK

Mayrhofen is getting modern. There are works going on througout town, replacing oil-heating with gas....


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> And the moulds may make you incurably sick. That is why keeping the homes cold and humid seldom is wise.


But they occurs just in the moment when my home is humid and cold. On the other hand, when I regularly ventilate (I mean open the whole window for 5 minutes to get some fresh air but don't let the heat escape) and turn the heating up, the moulds disappear. They take place only when the humidity is over 55 %.


----------



## g.spinoza

I had moulds problems when I lived in Germany... in Italy, out of the 10+ houses I've lived in, only one had these problems (it was a building from the 17th century). 

One architect friend of mine told me it depends more on the way houses are built, than the heating... I can't tell you what it is, I'm no expert and can't remember details. I also recall, back when I was in Germany, that I was supposed to live in the guesthouse of the university for a while... except it was being torn down and rebuilt because it had design flaws and moulds were out of control...


----------



## Verso

Mold is terrible. I had it this year and I was sneezing and had full nose all the time.


----------



## volodaaaa

They have appeared as we replaced old gas heaters from the central walls of flat by radiators placed under windows on perimeter walls.


----------



## volodaaaa

- How do you call a Chinese man on every website? 
- Loa Ding.

(ba dum tsss)


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> One architect friend of mine told me it depends more on the way houses are built, than the heating... I can't tell you what it is, I'm no expert and can't remember details. I also recall, back when I was in Germany, that I was supposed to live in the guesthouse of the university for a while... except it was being torn down and rebuilt because it had design flaws and moulds were out of control...


First you need to make sure that the house is perfectly waterproof. E.g. no leaking water from the rain, or capillary rising from the ground.

Very good thermic isolation is the second most important thing as molds appear at moist places and the moist appears there where you have thermal bridges because of the vapor condensation and generally places with high thermal gradients.

You will never be completely able to get rid of the vapor with heating or ventilation, therefore the building design is really very important to prevent condensations. In very moist places like the bathroom you need good ventilation, but aside from that I would advice anti mold penetrations or tiling and mold resistant furnishing there.


----------



## Surel

volodaaaa said:


> They have appeared as we replaced old gas heaters from the central walls of flat by radiators placed under windows on perimeter walls.


I would think of those causes. Either the central walls are getting moist somehow and because they are not directly dried anymore the mold appears. Or e.g. the windows are poorly isolated and cause thermal bridges. Due to the higher thermal gradient the condensation increased and you get problems with mold around the windows and in the corners.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I can turn on the heating when ever i want,because that is my own system.In my own house.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Is it justified that some members of an ethnic minority, even young, barely speak official language of the country where they were born and where they live? I know some of them and I think it's a shame. hno:


----------



## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> Is it justified that some members of an ethnic minority, even young, bearly speak official language of the country where they were born and where they live? I know some of them and I think it's a shame. hno:


Basically, it is they own business (and it is not only about official language, but also about foreign language skills, IT skills or experiences). They will be disadvantaged at the market job and therefore you will have one opponent fewer  

I see it in on Southern Slovakia with the presence of Hungarian minority (or majority if you want :lol. Slovaks from there rely only on job offers from Slovakia. Hungarians who refuse to learn Slovak rely only on job offers from Hungary (the situation got much better as we joined Schengenland). And, tada... the most successful are people who speak both languages. 

There is a proverb:
"The more languages you know, the more times you are a person"

People who want to educate, will educate and *will be successful*.
People who refuse to educate, will always complain* and will be poor, unsatisfied and unhappy.

*"why do I need to learn languages? why do I need to know working on computer? Who needs modern technologies if everything had worked without them before?, etc."


----------



## italystf

Alex_ZR said:


> Is it justified that some members of an ethnic minority, even young, bearly speak official language of the country where they were born and where they live? I know some of them and I think it's a shame. hno:


Are you talking about THAT minority? I forecast a long discussion that will require mod's cleanup. :lol:



volodaaaa said:


> *"why do I need to learn languages? why do I need to know working on computer? Who needs modern technologies if everything had worked without them before?, etc."


People who say that are those who are too lazy or stupid to study and try to justify their lack of culture by saying that culture isn't important. hno: And when they are unsuccesful at work, it's society's fault.


----------



## cinxxx

italystf said:


> Are you talking about THAT minority? I forecast a long discussion that will require mod's cleanup. :lol:


I would say he was talking about Hungarian minority 
The same discussion you can also have in Slovakia (as volodaaaa pointed out) or in Romania.


----------



## Verso

Alex_ZR said:


> Is it justified that some members of an ethnic minority, even young, *bearly* speak official language of the country where they were born and where they live? I know some of them and I think it's a shame. hno:


Which minority are you talking about? Bears? :troll:


----------



## Alex_ZR

cinxxx said:


> I would say he was talking about Hungarian minority
> The same discussion you can also have in Slovakia (as volodaaaa pointed out) or in Romania.


Yes, I talked about Hungarian minority, but I didn't intend to offend anyone. My colleague at the university is Hungarian, and once she had to read her written work in front of professor and other students. It was so bad, it sounded almost like Google translate. icard: On the other hand, she lives in a town where 86% of population are Hungarians.



Verso said:


> Which minority are you talking about? Bears? :troll:


Typing mistake!


----------



## cinxxx

My father is a university professor. One time a student coming from the Sekely region, asked him if he could do the exam in Hungarian? 

I had Hungarian colleagues at my work place in Timisoara. You could notice Romanian was not their first language, they made mistakes, especially with the genders (since Hungarian language doesn't have them), but in the end you could understand them.

I also had Hungarian colleagues at the university. Some spoke really bad Romanian, but they learned it and spoke better after a few years. But one of them had a girlfriend that only spoke Hungarian. In the end, the ones who wanted to complete their study and find a good work place learned the language, although at home they seldom use it.

Also no offence intended by me


----------



## g.spinoza

My girlfriend's late father didn't speak Italian, only Abruzzese (a variant of Neapolitan, which is a language on its own). This didn't block him from going to work in Australia, Germany and France. I wonder how could he be understood by other people...


----------



## italystf

Many Italian elderly people can only speak their own dialect. They usually understand standard Italian though, except seldom used words.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Mayrhofen is getting modern. There are works going on througout town, replacing oil-heating with gas....


I've been reading an interesting book on daily life in 19th-century England, so when I first read this, I thought you were being tongue-in-cheek calling gas heating "modern." Since I just read last night about gas-lit streets in 1860s London and the battalions of servants some aristocrats employed just to keep the lamps and candles and so on going; it was that labor-intensive.


----------



## nbcee

Verso said:


> Which minority are you talking about? Bears? :troll:


Well they do have a few:


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> Many Europeans and Americans study in Innsbruck. Many Südtirolers use Innsbruck hospital and also use the airport and of course shopping. Many Italian taxi's around in Innsbruck


Using of shops, hospital, airport, ecc... abroad is common in every border area regardeless linguistic issues.
Many people from across the world study abroad to learn a second language and live in a different place making new experiences. In that case it was about people studying in another country... to study in their own language!
Europe is full of linguistic islands.

BTW, for native speakers: do the English expression "_linguistic peninsula_" exist? In Italian it's used to define a territory that border a foreign country, whose inhabitants speak the language of the neighbouring country instead of the language of the country where the "_linguistic peninsula_" is located.


----------



## Skyline_

Road_UK said:


> I'm 38 years old...





volodaaaa said:


> 27


35


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I think that everybody of you guys know how much old i am,because i am the youngest member here.For ones who don't know i am 16 years old.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> ....
> BTW, for native speakers: do the English expression "_linguistic peninsula_" exist? In Italian it's used to define a territory that border a foreign country, whose inhabitants speak the language of the neighbouring country instead of the language of the country where the "_linguistic peninsula_" is located.


Never heard it, and when I Google "Wikipedia linguistic peninsula" the first two hits are the Iberian peninsula and Scandinavia. I thought this might do it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_island

but they define it differently. None of these expressions, obviously, is in general use.


----------



## Skyline_

A lovely, traditional Swedish school...


----------



## Verso

We were doing that at gym.


----------



## Skyline_

Verso said:


> We were doing that at gym.


Without praying to Allah, with a Koran next to your head... :banana:


----------



## Verso

Always turned away from Mecca just in case. :troll:


----------



## Attus

Road_UK said:


> Well, if you need any advice on what it's like you can always talk to me, and I'm sure Penn's Woods as well, son...


I suppose I may remember better then Michael, it's only two years since I was 38 ;-)


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Never heard it, and when I Google "Wikipedia linguistic peninsula" the first two hits are the Iberian peninsula and Scandinavia. I thought this might do it:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_island
> 
> but they define it differently. None of these expressions, obviously, is in general use.


Aparently the difference exists only in Italian:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isola_linguistica
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penisola_linguistica


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> We were doing that at gym.


I always do that, when something falls off the coffee table in my living room and end up in the space under the sofa.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Verso said:


> We were doing that at gym.


Since i live in southern Serbia where big number of Albanians live i can expect that my kids will do that in school because Albanians are going towards the north.


----------



## keokiracer

You can't even safely park your car anymore...




















The other driver (female) had the most damage


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ She didn't stop at all, did she?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Renault looks like a total loss (economically).


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Renault looks like a total loss (economically).


My mother's car had some 3,000€ damage (roughly the estimated value of the car) after an accident last year, it was probably more damaged than the one in the photo (it was crushed between two cars). But, since we managed to keep low repairing costs by using spare parts from demolished cars, we eventually managed to repair it entirely with insurance money (the accident happened due someone's else fault).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In 2006 I had an accident with a '93 Toyota Corolla. It looked a bit like the damage on the Renault above, I had an accident on French A10 near Bordeaux. It was an economical total loss, but I got € 400 for the 'wreck', and they later repaired it and sold it to an old lady. Kind of funny to see your 'wreck' parked as if nothing happened. After that I purchased a Peugeot 306.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> My mother's car had some 3,000€ damage *(roughly the estimated value of the car)* after an accident last year


That was just its market value, it was probably worth more than that to your mother (ability to be mobile).


----------



## keokiracer

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ She didn't stop at all, did she?


She said that she lost grip of her steering wheel coming out of the corner. However, if you were to lose grip there you'd drive into the bushes on the other side of the road... Our guess is screwing around with her phone.

She hit the car, swerved around and stopped half on the sidewalk a bit further (say 50 meters) Our car got pushed back around 5-6 meters. If it were on the parking brake our car would've been totalled. Damage noq is around €7000 for our car. (there's also minor engine damage and multiple panels that have to be replaced which you can't see on the pics very well). Her car is probably economically total loss yes, however, she is going to try and fix it 'outside of the system', so with friends or hiring someone herself and such. 

Her car is currently still parked in front of our house. We already got it towed away (bumper almost got pushed into the tyre, you can't steer properly now).It's gonna take about 2 weeks until we have the car back.


----------



## Road_UK

How many of you have gone through the Ice Bucket Challenge already? I got nominated and had to endure my soak an hour ago...


----------



## Fane40

joshsam said:


> Look at axes though :lol: They can only transport air with that.



Maybe bicycles or rowing, kayak, ballons, something like that.
Very light like the air, sure.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

cinxxx i have noticed that you travel a lot.In what countryes have you been ?


----------



## Alex_ZR

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> cinxxx i have noticed that you travel a lot.In what countryes have you been ?


You have a list in his signature:



> AL, AUT, BiH, CH, CZ, DE, F, FL, HR, HU, ITA, LU, MNE, MK, P, PL, RO, RSM, SK, SLO, SRB


----------



## cinxxx

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> cinxxx i have noticed that you travel a lot.In what countryes have you been ?


I do my best 
Have a look in my signature, I think I've enumerated all of them


----------



## Road_UK

cinxxx said:


> I do my best
> Have a look in my signature, I think I've enumerated all of them


I hope the Netherlands will be on your list...


----------



## cinxxx

^^It is, I had it planned for this year, together with Belgium, but it didn't work out. I hope also to get to Greece next year. Nordic and Baltic countries are also on the list. Also UK, Malta and Marocco.

But there is to little time for travels


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Verso

Oh god, at least they could've brought a van instead of this tiny car.


----------



## RipleyLV

Did that guy just steal his wife?


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## cinxxx

More under the link
http://www.storyfox.de/verrueckte-google-street-view-maps/


----------



## volodaaaa

I hate drivers who does not accelerate on merging (speeding) lanes, keeps their (low) speed and then at the end of the lane they suprisingly realize there is no gap to merge in through lane. I dropped off my girlfriend to work and experienced it three times. Once it was on motorway and the lady literally stopped her car at the end of merging lane... Obviously all cars behind her had to stop too and I will not tell you how difficult is to merge on motorway from 0 kph.


----------



## Verso

^^ That happened to me once on the Trieste bypass. I was taking pics though. 



cinxxx said:


>


What's going on here? :shifty:


----------



## Alex_ZR

Verso said:


> ^^ That happened to me once on the Trieste bypass. I was taking pics though.
> 
> What's going on here? :shifty:


Someone is giving birth.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Verso said:


> ^^ That happened to me once on the Trieste bypass. I was taking pics though.
> 
> What's going on here? :shifty:


At first i thought that she has a hearth attack,but then i saw a baby.


----------



## Verso

Oh, I had no idea what that _thing_ was.  I also thought it was a guy lying on the floor for some reason.


----------



## Peines

Well… is friday… :cheers:

Let me introduce the Hot/Crazy Scale :lol:















According with that, I always get into the Danger Zone icard:


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Leipzig! :cheers:


----------



## Verso

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> cinxxx i have noticed that you travel a lot.


Who hasn't? :|


----------



## Suburbanist

Early car ad 








Source: FACOBRAS


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Orcières-Merlette ski resort in France. Apparently they have a lot of Hungarian bus drivers there.


Orcières Merlette by Chriszwolle, on Flickr


----------



## nbcee

^^ Kind of an interesting way to write accentuated letters


----------



## Verso

Sometimes some nations go to specific places, like Russians to Rogaška Slatina in Slovenia. Once I saw plenty of Hungarian cars in Čezsoča. :shifty: (they probably pronounced it [čežoča] :troll


----------



## volodaaaa

Lol, I've just been given an e-mail invitation to participate in a conference held in Kharkiv. I would rather refuse to take a part, but it is kind of funny to see scientists completely isolated from reality  On the other hand, I like it. According to the invitations there will be lot of scientists from all over the world (Americans, Dutch, Germans, Poles, Ukrainians and Russians) together. And this is nice.

Given the fact it is few kilometres from the battle line, I am just wondering there is no mention about the guests safety at all.


----------



## Road_UK

Kharkiv is perfectly safe.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kharkiv is more like 250 km from the battle zone.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Kharkiv is more like 250 km from the battle zone.


Close enough for a wandering rocket launched by crazy paramilitary lunatics.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

So is Bratislava in case of an ICBM


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Meanwhile in Polandhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=sANTC7oaaJg


----------



## keber

volodaaaa said:


> Close enough for a wandering rocket launched by crazy paramilitary lunatics.


In time of war in Bosnia people (including me) took summer vacation on Adriatic coast, even in places that were 100 km or less from the front lines.
Also your fellow Slovak.


----------



## Penn's Woods

So maybe Putin will help liberate Scotland now? :troll:

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09...on=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> Kharkiv is more like 250 km from the battle zone.


And less than 20 kms from the Russian border. :troll:


----------



## italystf

> [...]The Department of State warns U.S. citizens to defer *all travel* to the eastern regions of *Donetsk and Luhansk*.[...]The Department of State also warns U.S. citizens to defer *all travel* to the *Crimean Peninsula*, and to *exercise caution* in the regions of *Odesa, Kharkhiv, Zaporizhia and Kherson*.[...]


http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/alertswarnings/ukraine-travel-warning.html
So, Kharkhiv is not that safe; it has a sizeable Russian minority and there is the risk of violence.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Kharkiv is perfectly safe.





ChrisZwolle said:


> Kharkiv is more like 250 km from the battle zone.


I have a co-worker who's from there. Not someone I'm close to, really, but a few days after the Maidan protests turned violent her mother died and her relatives advised her it wasn't safe to return home for the funeral. We're a small enough workplace that this piece of information was posted on our internal website (in the context of a please-offer-your-condolences-and-we're-taking-up-a-collection-for-I-forget-what piece). So next time I saw her I asked how her family was and once in a while since I'll do so.

Ran into her in the elevator maybe two weeks ago and I remarked "we're not hearing about Kharkov* any more" and she said something like it's really not any better, just not getting media attention. But this was one of those 30-second conversations in an elevator...didn't go any deeper.

*Yes, I called it KharkOV. Force of habit.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> *Yes, I called it KharkOV. Force of habit.


Many transliterations are possible from Cyrillic, but the main issue here is not transliteration, but the choice of language. For example, Kiev is the transliteration of the Russian name of the city. The Ukrainian name transliterated is Kyiv (see today's banner). So which one you use could make people think you're taking sides even if you're not aware of it.

Other examples

Luhansk (UA) / Lugansk (RUS)
Dnipropetrovsk (UA) / Dnepropetrovsk (RUS)
Kyiv (UA) / Kiev (RUS)
Odesa (UA) / Odessa (RUS)


----------



## italystf

What's the difference between the two spellings?

EDIT: Chris already explained.


----------



## italystf

However everyone here writes Kiev, also on TV, newspapers,... if one writes Kyiv most people won't understand which city is it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Name changes take a very long time to get used among the general populace, whether it's a skyscraper, person or placename. Many people still use Alma-Ata (the former capital of Kazakhstan) which is known as Almaty since 1993.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Many transliterations are possible from Cyrillic, but the main issue here is not transliteration, but the choice of language. For example, Kiev is the transliteration of the Russian name of the city. The Ukrainian name transliterated is Kyiv (see today's banner). So which one you use could make people think you're taking sides even if you're not aware of it.
> 
> Other examples
> 
> Luhansk (UA) / Lugansk (RUS)
> Dnipropetrovsk (UA) / Dnepropetrovsk (RUS)
> Kyiv (UA) / Kiev (RUS)
> Odesa (UA) / Odessa (RUS)


I understand that, and I don't know what this woman's view of the politics of the situation is and haven't wanted to ask. (She did once describe Kharki/ov as "our first capital.") I know she speaks Russian, she's a member of the sizable "Russian"-immigrant community in Philadelphia most of whom, apparently, are actually from (the) Ukraine, and many of whom are Jewish. And a Russian-speaking Ukrainian could still be anti-Russian-intervention.... And if they're over here, of course, and especially if they're Jewish, they may not have a lot of sympathy for either side of "leaders."

May come down to my age: I've been seeing these places on maps since Soviet times when the (transliterated) Russian version was all you saw.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Name changes take a very long time to get used among the general populace, whether it's a skyscraper, person or placename. Many people still use Alma-Ata (the former capital of Kazakhstan) which is known as Almaty since 1993.


Sometimes you still hear people who fill the tank or go to holiday in Yugoslavia! And once I heard Czechoslovakia in a television service about outsourcing of industrial production in Eastern Europe (it was mentioned in a list together with Poland, Hungary, Romania,...). :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Sometimes you still hear people who fill the tank or go to holiday in Yugoslavia! And once I heard Czechoslovakia in a television service about outsourcing of industrial production in Eastern Europe (it was mentioned in a list together with Poland, Hungary, Romania,...). :lol:


I don't know what are you talking about! Czechoslovakia still exists. Only bloody Czechs decided to separate from us :lol:


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> Many transliterations are possible from Cyrillic, but the main issue here is not transliteration, but the choice of language. For example, Kiev is the transliteration of the Russian name of the city. The Ukrainian name transliterated is Kyiv (see today's banner). So which one you use could make people think you're taking sides even if you're not aware of it.
> 
> Other examples
> 
> Luhansk (UA) / Lugansk (RUS)
> Dnipropetrovsk (UA) / Dnepropetrovsk (RUS)
> Kyiv (UA) / Kiev (RUS)
> Odesa (UA) / Odessa (RUS)


My take on these, based on its translliteration from Cyrillic: Lugansk, Dnipropetrovsk, Kiiv, Odesa. Ukrainian has a letter Russian doesn't have that is similar to our i. By the way, Х is translliterated here as 'J' instead of 'Kh', so Kharkiv becomes Jarkiv .


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Why not Jarquiv?


----------



## italystf

In Italian sometimes Charkiv (UA) or Char'kov (RUS) is used. I don't know why there's the need of the apostrophe like it was a truncation.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> In Italian sometimes Charkiv (UA) or Char'kov (RUS) is used. I don't know why there's the need of the apostrophe like it was a truncation.


I have never understood those Russian to English transliterations. It is just "Charkov" in Slovak language and we read is as "Kharkov"


----------



## Penn's Woods

Well, CH has a different sound in English. (And the KH sound barely exists. I was going to say "doesn't exist," then I remembered the Scottish word Loch. But even that, a lot of people would just pronounce Lock.)


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Well, CH has a different sound in English. (And the KH sound barely exists. I was going to say "doesn't exist," then I remembered the Scottish word Loch. But even that, a lot of people would just pronounce Lock.)


Scottish is a different language than English, Loch sounds having German origin.
Also many Italian dialects and local languages close to Italian have phonemes and graphemes that are non-existent in Italian language. It doesn't mean that they belong to Italian.
For example, we don't use the J (except in borrowed foreign words like 'jeans'), but some our surnames and toponyms do contain it. In fact, it was used in ancient Italian and it's still used in some dialects.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Well, "Loch" shows up in plenty of Scottish place names, so English-speaking people (at least British people) are familiar with it. And everyone's heard of the Loch Ness Monster.

Seriously, I can remember Berlitz phrase books telling people to pronounce, say, the German "ach-Laut" "like the CH in Scottish 'loch.'"


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

New fucking awesome revenge by Viral Brothers:https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=QJ7CSrcjo_4


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Well, "Loch" shows up in plenty of Scottish place names, so English-speaking people (at least British people) are familiar with it. And everyone's heard of the Loch Ness Monster.
> 
> Seriously, I can remember Berlitz phrase books telling people to pronounce, say, the German "ach-Laut" "like the CH in Scottish 'loch.'"


Here in Friuli (northern Italy) we have plenty of place names ending in s. Italian words never ends in s, but Friulan ones often do. However, these toponyms are official and also used in Italian.
Similarily, many Sardinian surnames and toponyms end in u. Italian words never end in u. Still, those names are used while speaking in Italian, like Loch is used in English.
There is a mountain place in northern Friuli near the Austrian border called 'Pierabech', with the ch pronunced in the German way. In the nearby village of Sappada, they speak a unique Bavarian dialect. Also near the Austrian border we have Timau and Coccau, with names of clear German origin.
In Italy we have places called Thiene and Rho, although th and rh don't exist anywhere in Italian. They have, respectively, Latin and Celtic origin and have never been adapted to the Italian language.
An unique case is the city of Vibo Valentia, that is pronunced at the Latin way (Vibo Valenzia), instead like it's written.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I saw a Tesla the other day, looked very nice.


----------



## Peines

DanielFigFoz said:


> I saw a Tesla the other day, looked very nice.




Me too, I saw the roadster and the model s, there are nice, but no perfect.

But there's something that i don't like about the model s, and that's is the climate and the infotainment systems (audio, apps, gps, trip computer…) are controlled by the touchscreen. Basically everything, there's no button, except on the steering wheel.










I'm not saying that touch screens are bad, but some buttons are helpful to control some things without looking at the screen, keeping the eyes on the road and only using the hands to touch. Touch screens are great for complex things, like search on the phone book, for the keyboard, etc… but for using the warning lights :nuts:

When I was driving this summer an Range Rover it was so tricky using the touch screen when I was driving.


----------



## volodaaaa

I was on as short bike trip in mountains above Bratislava yesterday and accidentally found a small memorial devoted to Bulgarian plane crash victims. I had had no knowledge on that crash, but later read it was one of the most tragic flight disasters in Czechoslovakia. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TABSO_Flight_101

The most paradox is the name of the hill where the plane crashed: it is called *Sakrakopec* and means literally _Damn-hill_. I went there intentionally, because I wanted to know, how the damn hill would look. And found this.


----------



## Peines

Finally I got the Via-T, not the Via-T that offered me the bank because they needed a credit card for a f#ck'n e-toll tag.

So finally I choose a prepaid tag, which can be managed by Internet, by card or bank account, and can be used both Spain and Portugal tolls and parkings.


----------



## hofburg

of course you can use touchscreen only when you stop the car.
tesla s comes around 55.000€ without taxes, which is not far from gasoline competition.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> I was on as short bike trip in mountains above Bratislava yesterday and accidentally found a small memorial devoted to Bulgarian plane crash victims. I had had no knowledge on that crash, but later read it was one of the most tragic flight disasters in Czechoslovakia.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TABSO_Flight_101
> 
> The most paradox is the name of the hill where the plane crashed: it is called *Sakrakopec* and means literally _Damn-hill_. I went there intentionally, because I wanted to know, how the damn hill would look. And found this.


The Monte Toc (the mountain that generated the landslide that provoked the Vajont disaster in 1963) means "rotten mountain" in the local dialect. This place was already known for being landslide prone.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> The Monte Toc (the mountain that generated the landslide that provoked the Vajont disaster in 1963) means "rotten mountain" in the local dialect. This place was already known for being landslide prone.


That is creepy. And Chernobyl means _black grass_. Well the grass did not turn black after the explosion, but the collocation describes something unnatural.


----------



## cinxxx

The great pyramids and the sphinx available on StreetView
http://goo.gl/maps/uwZ88


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A mentally ill man was released from a psychiatric hospital and found a parking ticket on his car. He then went berserk and destroyed his own car with a sledgehammer.


----------



## g.spinoza

A mentally ill man is allowed to drive a car?


----------



## keokiracer

g.spinoza said:


> A mentally ill man is allowed to drive a car?


They had him 'tested', he turned out not to be mentally unstable, got sent home, saw the parking ticket, went mental and is now back at the psychriatic hospital.


----------



## italystf

The doctors who tested him and judge him as sane should be fired.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> The doctors who tested him and judge him as sane should be fired.


Perhaps it was part of his examination :lol:

You know that proverb:

To find out what person you deal with, let him/her take a chair and run youtube with slow internet.


----------



## cinxxx

italystf said:


> The doctors who tested him and judge him as sane should be fired.


It's so easy to judge like that.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to diagnose such a patient? You can't confine a person without proof that he would harm someone or himself.
Here in Germany, you have to convince the patient to stay, if he doesn't want to, you have to let him go, or ask for a judge (that is specialized in this field). He is the only one who could confine him. The only reason not to let someone go, is, if he is intoxicated with over 2 pro mile, case he is considered unable to decide for himself.


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> It's so easy to judge like that.
> Do you have any idea how hard it is to diagnose such a patient?


So? Every job is difficult. A postman who doesn't deliver mail, an architect who designs a building that can't stand, a researcher cheating on his work, every one of them gets fired... why shouldn't a psychiatrist who fails a diagnosis?


----------



## cinxxx

^^
Because patients are human beings and not the mail.

You have actually no method of knowing exactly what your patient will do. He could be lying to you and then go kill himself without showing any symptoms of being suicidal. But you can't confide every patient preventive?
And it's not like you can solve the problem by giving the patient a pill. Firstly you can't force him to take it, secondly, the human brain is so complex...


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> ^^
> Because patients are human beings and not the mail.
> 
> You have actually no method of knowing exactly what your patient will do. *He could be lying to you* and then go kill himself without showing any symptoms of being suicidal. But you can't confide every patient preventive?



a short example from my fiancée who is in last grade of medicine school and spend lot of time with patients as a trainee.

People from genuine wine areas don't consider wine an alcohol. They tell you with poker face they are abstainers and admit drinking at least 5dl of wine daily on a regular base at the same time :lol:



g.spinoza said:


> researcher cheating on his work


Not a good example. Sadly, common practice all over the world


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> ^^
> Because patients are human beings and not the mail.


Then again, so? An architect builds a house that crashes, killing all of its occupants. Shouldn't he be fired?
Working with people is no excuse for being sloppy.



> You have actually no method of knowing exactly what your patient will do. *He could be lying to you *and then go kill himself without showing any symptoms of being suicidal. But you can't confide every patient preventive?
> And it's not like you can solve the problem by giving the patient a pill. Firstly you can't force him to take it, secondly, the human brain is so complex...


If you can't recognize a patient lying to you, you are a bad psychiatrist and deserve to be fired.


----------



## cinxxx

g.spinoza said:


> If you can't recognize a patient lying to you, you are a bad psychiatrist and deserve to be fired.


No one can read peoples minds.
Why don't you fire every surgeon, there is none that successfully operated every patient.



volodaaaa said:


> a short example from my fiancée who is in last grade of medicine school and spend lot of time with patients as a trainee.
> People from genuine wine areas don't consider wine an alcohol. They tell you with poker face they are abstainers and admit drinking at least 5dl of wine daily on a regular base at the same time :lol:
> 
> Not a good example. Sadly, common practice all over the world


What medicine branch is your fiancee thinking on going after she finishes studies?


----------



## cinxxx

double post


----------



## nbcee

On a sidenote I bought a GPS device last week. But it had one major flaw: the default map didn't include the Balkans. So my first thing to do was to install a new one


----------



## cinxxx

nbcee said:


> On a sidenote I bought a GPS device last week. But it had one major flaw: the default map didn't include the Balkans. So my first thing to do was to install a new one


I have bought a Miro, but I installed iGO on it


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> No one can read peoples minds.
> Why don't you fire every surgeon, there is none that successfully operated every patient.


That's different. You make the family sign a consent.
If a psychiatrist isn't sure whether a patient is dangerous, he should not release him. If he does, then he has to be 101% sure.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A psychiatrist is a doctor, not a prison guard. A psychiatrist cannot keep someone locked up unless there is a judge order to do so.


----------



## cinxxx

g.spinoza said:


> That's different. You make the family sign a consent.
> If a psychiatrist isn't sure whether a patient is dangerous, he should not release him. If he does, then he has to be 101% sure.


And what did the guy? He trashed his own car. You don't have to be psychiatric ill to do that.


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> And what did the guy? He trashed his own car. You don't have to be psychiatric ill to do that.


According to what keokiracer said, he actually is.



ChrisZwolle said:


> A psychiatrist is a doctor, not a prison guard. A psychiatrist cannot keep someone locked up unless there is a judge order to do so.


But the judge almost always relies on what the psychiatrist says.


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> No one can read peoples minds.
> Why don't you fire every surgeon, there is none that successfully operated every patient.
> 
> 
> 
> What medicine branch is your fiancee thinking on going after she finishes studies?


She'd like to be GP. First she wanted to be paediatrician, but after exercises she definitely changed her mind. 99 % of mothers have PhD. in google browsing and they are often very annoying. If you don't cure the children with influenza within 1 day or don't prescribe antibiotics to coughing, you are definitely a bad doctor and mothers will tear you up on those bored-and-worried-mothers-discussion-boards :lol: They don't understand antibiotics are not a magic wand and the threat of side effects as well as fading efficiency.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Most cases don't even get to a judge. I once had a neighbor a couple of apartments apart who was mentally ill (under psychosis sometimes) and he wrecked a lot of windows of the public part of the building. He was under treatment by a psychiatrist, but this is usually voluntary. 

We wanted to get rid of him, but we couldn't because he was not a 'demonstrable risk'. That changed when he burned down a moped and filled his apartment with gas. He was then detained by police and then admitted to involuntary commitment, as they call it. Basically a mental institution run like a prison.


----------



## cinxxx

Chris, you argue very well, as if you would be a psychiatrist or have one in your house 

And if we are at the subject, it was posted by my finacee on her FB (she is a psychiatrist)


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Most cases don't even get to a judge. I once had a neighbor a couple of apartments apart who was mentally ill (under psychosis sometimes) and he wrecked a lot of windows of the public part of the building. He was under treatment by a psychiatrist, but this is usually voluntary.
> 
> We wanted to get rid of him, but we couldn't because he was not a 'demonstrable risk'. That changed when he burned down a moped and filled his apartment with gas. He was then detained by police and then admitted to involuntary commitment, as they call it. Basically a mental institution run like a prison.


It is not fun when it comes to gas. Remembering the case from Frenštát pod Radhoštem Czech Republic:

Before 16th february of 2013:









After 16th february of 2013:









Insane man in dept killed 6 people.:weird:

We had similar individual in our house. Fortunately he has alternative house where to live and he sell his apartment this week.


----------



## KøbenhavnK

Respect to Dutch policing. 

The officer reaches for the handcuffs and let's the situation calm down.

In many countries the guy with the sledge hammer would have gotten blown away.

We just have a situation today in Denmark with two policemen sitting on top of a guy in handcuffs who some spectators say is shouting that he cannot breathe. The police respond by emptying a pepper spray into his eyes to make him shut up.

I feel good to know that I live in the country on Earth with the best police. But it does bother me that everyone who come into contact with them say otherwise....


----------



## Road_UK

I've been told that Denmark has the most brutal police force in Western Europe. Even the Germans are warning its citizens to stay in line in Denmark...


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> It is not fun when it comes to gas. Remembering the case from Frenštát pod Radhoštem Czech Republic:
> 
> Before 16th february of 2013:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> After 16th february of 2013:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Insane man in dept killed 6 people.:weird:
> 
> We had similar individual in our house. Fortunately he has alternative house where to live and he sell his apartment this week.


And what about that psychotic Ghanese guy living in Milan, who around a year ago killed three random people in the street with a pick?
In that case they were lucky that the guy destroyed only his own car, but a mentally ill man like him could have used the axe against other people. Or he could have driven his car over someone else. When someone is mentally ill, one can expect everything from him, especially if he has already shown some aggressive behavior.


----------



## Surel

Road_UK said:


> I've been told that Denmark has the most brutal police force in Western Europe. Even the Germans are warning its citizens to stay in line in Denmark...


Interesting. When the young Danes went drinking to Prague during the spring school holiday, the second time it was agreed that couple Danish police officers went with them to calm it down .

Danish police in Prague.


----------



## italystf

During the Oktoberfest there is a group of Italian police too. They're usually from South Tyrol, since they know both languages and may act as interpreters between Italian visitors and the German police, in case of troubles.


----------



## italystf




----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> Most cases don't even get to a judge. I once had a neighbor a couple of apartments apart who was mentally ill (under psychosis sometimes) and he wrecked a lot of windows of the public part of the building. He was under treatment by a psychiatrist, but this is usually voluntary.
> 
> We wanted to get rid of him, but we couldn't because he was not a 'demonstrable risk'. That changed when he burned down a moped and filled his apartment with gas. He was then detained by police and then admitted to involuntary commitment, as they call it. Basically a mental institution run like a prison.


This is actually becoming a widespread problem in the Netherlands as there are not so many mental institutions and in fact the government is limiting the funds for them.

The approach is to place such people in normal houses amongst the rest of the population and arranging some professional help visiting them.

Indeed the police needs first to make a serious case to step in. Many people just give up and move away rather then expecting the authorities to do anything. I heard several such stories already.

Luckily, we don't seem to be bothered by anyone.


----------



## italystf

Trucker demolish a pedestrian overpass in Turkey http://notizie.tiscali.it/videonews/216458/Esteri/


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> I was on as short bike trip in mountains above Bratislava yesterday and accidentally found a small memorial devoted to Bulgarian plane crash victims. I had had no knowledge on that crash, but later read it was one of the most tragic flight disasters in Czechoslovakia.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TABSO_Flight_101
> 
> The most paradox is the name of the hill where the plane crashed: it is called *Sakrakopec* and means literally _Damn-hill_. I went there intentionally, because I wanted to know, how the damn hill would look. And found this.


It is a tragedy, but it is kind of curious in a karmic way considering what the (well some) bastard Bulgarians did about 10 years earlier:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_Flight_402


----------



## KøbenhavnK

Road_UK said:


> I've been told that Denmark has the most brutal police force in Western Europe. Even the Germans are warning its citizens to stay in line in Denmark...


I stay away from them. As do all other people that know people who have been in contact with them (apart from jay walking and speeding I don't break any laws).

Unfortunately this sick culture has been able to develop because the police are serving the Ministry of Justice. Which also employs the prosecutors and the judges. 

One big happy family.

Good luck filing a complaint....


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> And if we are at the subject, it was posted by my finacee on her FB (she is a psychiatrist)


Ah, I see now.


----------



## cinxxx

^^It's not that I keep her side, it's just that I know more info from the inside than others...


----------



## aubergine72

Kanadzie said:


> It is a tragedy, but it is kind of curious in a karmic way considering what the (well some) bastard Bulgarians did about 10 years earlier:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_Flight_402


Who's fault is it that the Israeli pilots got fresh and didn't obey the military jets? It was a terrible thing to do but it's hard to imagine that Israel wouldn't do the same if a foreign plane ignored its commands.


----------



## cinxxx

Meanwhile in Romania...


----------



## Alex_ZR

^^ It seems that they haven't heared for something like this:










Or the bunch of asphalt is more effective?


----------



## cinxxx

^^I think I saw asphalt bumpers in Serbia while I drove there.
They were better signed and had a more normal shape, but still annoying as hell.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Road bumpers have always been annoying.


----------



## volodaaaa

We have several concrete ones in Slovakia. But more popular are the collapsible ones. I asked for one in 2010 to the road in front of our house, wrongly used as a shortcut. It actually worked but not as I'd desired. So now is one-way street under consideration.


----------



## Verso

Once I drove somewhere for the first time, so I didn't know the road. There was a car in front of me and as we were approaching the end-of-village sign (speed limit raised from 50 to 90 km/h), it started slowing down. I thought 'wtf' and decided to overtake it. When I raised my speed and started overtaking, I saw a speed bump in the last moment. I made a nice jump.  But seriously, what a stupid place for a speed bump.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> Once I drove somewhere for the first time, so I didn't know the road. There was a car in front of me and as we were approaching the end-of-village sign (speed limit raised from 50 to 90 km/h), it started slowing down. I thought 'wtf' and decided to overtake it. When I raised my speed and started overtaking, I saw a speed bump in the last moment. I made a nice jump.  But seriously, what a stupid place for a speed bump.


What about these two?
https://www.google.sk/maps/@48.1691...m4!1e1!3m2!1sKc-Pl6Rdpa0jIbFTvrOmkg!2e0?hl=sk

:lol:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Is this you're neighborhood?


----------



## volodaaaa

No, but it is close. I ride on that street when I do my bike workout. And always think over how could someone place a speed bump in front of garage 

This is my street


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I think i found it.It wasn't so hard,but i'll not tell you which one it is .There is a bunch of creepy people here.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Alex_ZR said:


> ^^ It seems that they haven't heared for something like this:
> 
> 
> Or the bunch of asphalt is more effective?


The asphalt bumpers are by far more common in the UK, they have white triangles on them and are everywhere. Sometimes they cover the whole road, and sometimes there are two or three with gaps in between.


----------



## cinxxx

Verso said:


> Once I drove somewhere for the first time, so I didn't know the road. There was a car in front of me and as we were approaching the end-of-village sign (speed limit raised from 50 to 90 km/h), it started slowing down. I thought 'wtf' and decided to overtake it. When I raised my speed and started overtaking, I saw a speed bump in the last moment. I made a nice jump.  But seriously, what a stupid place for a speed bump.


If they would have put the speed bump only on the side entering the village, many drivers would have "overtaken" it. At least this is why in Romania they put slowing down road markers on both sides...


----------



## hofburg

it looks like there are no markers at all on that video


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> If they would have put the speed bump only on the side entering the village, many drivers would have "overtaken" it. At least this is why in Romania they put slowing down road markers on both sides...


We almost never place speed bumps on village entrances, so it surprised me.


----------



## cinxxx

hofburg said:


> it looks like there are no markers at all on that video


I meant this kind of markers http://goo.gl/maps/Wv2lR or http://goo.gl/maps/gxk7X
The video shows the typical stupidity of road maintenance in Romania...


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Once I drove somewhere for the first time, so I didn't know the road. There was a car in front of me and as we were approaching the end-of-village sign (speed limit raised from 50 to 90 km/h), it started slowing down. I thought 'wtf' and decided to overtake it. When I raised my speed and started overtaking, I saw a speed bump in the last moment. I made a nice jump.  But seriously, what a stupid place for a speed bump.


here is cca 5 km long section covered with them, but not densely. happens the same as in your case.
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Popo...d=_o85EuhZCTRGkBlUYN9iAg&cbp=12,39.26,,0,8.16

normal speed can be 60-70 there, but those rubber bastards don't allow even suggested 40 km/h, especially when i drove Punto which was too narrow so should have pass over highest part of it.


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> This is my street


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> here is cca 5 km long section covered with them, but not densely. happens the same as in your case.
> https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Popo...d=_o85EuhZCTRGkBlUYN9iAg&cbp=12,39.26,,0,8.16
> 
> normal speed can be 60-70 there, but those rubber bastards don't allow even suggested 40 km/h, especially when i drove Punto which was too narrow so should have pass over highest part of it.


_Kolačići nam pomažu pružati usluge. Upotrebom naših usluga prihvaćate našu upotrebu kolačića._

_Shvaćam_


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> _Kolačići nam pomažu pružati usluge. Upotrebom naših usluga prihvaćate našu upotrebu kolačića._
> 
> _Shvaćam_


Don't you have "piškotke?" :lol: We do not translate it however. Those are called "cookies" as in English.

But Czechs are experts in translations. I've worked in an Excel sheet and was computing "average" of certain cells. I've had Slovak version of Excel installed so I typed in the obligatory "=Average(...)" and got a result. 

Later, I opened the sheet at work and continue computing other cells. It was Czech version. I typed in the obligatory "=Average(...)" and the command resulted in error "unknown command". Tried it several times but it ended up alike. So I opened the dropdown menu, checked the list of commands and almost did not believed my eyes. The correct command was "=PRŮMER(...)" :lol::lol::lol: it means "average" literally of course.


----------



## cinxxx

^^I hate that shit. The same in German version, I never know those function names...


----------



## volodaaaa

Btw. english grammar related question.
Can I use the past perfect in case the obvious fact is not said?
Like
"Peter had been proven to be the great player" - and it is obvious Peter is not an active player already from the context.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ not really like that. You could say something like "Peter proved himself a great player" though


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ not really like that. You could say something like "Peter proved himself a great player" though


Thanks, and if I say
"Peter has shot six hattricks" after Peter's death, could i say "Peter had shot six hattricks (before he died)"?


----------



## Kanadzie

I think that works

but maybe I would write it like "during his career, Peter scored six hattricks" (or similar)


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> I think that works
> 
> but maybe I would write it like "during his career, Peter scored six hattricks" (or similar)


Thank you very much for the suggestions. Off-topic off (assuming it is possible to have an off-topic topic in off-topic thread).


----------



## Pepov

volodaaaa said:


> Thank you very much for the suggestions. Off-topic off (assuming it is possible to have an off-topic topic in off-topic thread).


^^


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Would you guys like to learn some bad words which are very used in Serbian ?


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> Thank you very much for the suggestions. Off-topic off (assuming it is possible to have an off-topic topic in off-topic thread).


Sometimes, not always. Don't ask my why, I just don't know. Anyway, anybody else fancy a giggle when I mention my friend Biggus..... Dickus.....?


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Penn's Woods

So does anyone know what time polls close in Scotland on Thursday?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

cinxxx said:


>


I think that the guy in Black SUV is a member of mafia.


----------



## cinxxx

I remembered about this today. Taken in Tirana around 4 months ago.
*Albanian Fried Chicken* :lol:

Tirana by cinxxx, on Flickr

Tirana by cinxxx, on Flickr


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

:lol::lol: I was just watching that picture here :http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1735661&page=5


----------



## volodaaaa

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I think that the guy in Black SUV is a member of mafia.


He is apparently disabled at the first place.... mentally... perhaps syndrome of small d**k


----------



## italystf

:rofl:


----------



## Kanadzie

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I think that the guy in Black SUV is a member of mafia.


LOL you think, black G-wagen in Rossiya parked in the handicapped spot :lol:

if she was a guy she'd be dead by now :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

Greetings from Brdo pri Kranju, Slovenia!


----------



## da_scotty

The coppers in the Netherlands have a new toy!


----------



## keokiracer

^^ Easy to escape from that Bugatti, just drive into a street with a speedbump :troll:


----------



## da_scotty

Hmm in some cases, get of the motorway. In my home town (Oss) you have the Paalgraven Interchange, which has speedbumps at the end of the motorway section!


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Kanadzie said:


> LOL you think, black G-wagen in Rossiya parked in the handicapped spot :lol:
> 
> if she was a guy she'd be dead by now :lol:


I thought that this is the guy.


----------



## RipleyLV

da_scotty said:


> The coppers in the Netherlands have a new toy!


Dat Beamer behind!


----------



## x-type

RipleyLV said:


> Dat Beamer behind!


vacuum cleaner


----------



## keokiracer

x-type said:


> vacuum cleaner


That BMW i8 will mop the floor with whatever car you drive. It might be electric, but it's insanely quick when it comes to accelerating


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> So does anyone know what time polls close in Scotland on Thursday?


22:00 BST. The result should become clearer from 05:00 on Friday after Edinburgh, Glasgow & Scottish Borders councils declare. Final result will be announced approx 07:00.

Then we'll know whether Scotland will have been 'liberated' from the union they wanted to join over 300 years ago after the complete & utter ****-up of the Darien Scheme.


----------



## volodaaaa

I wanted to bet for a combo: Scottish independence & the turnout less than 82 % but I've missed the deadline. The odd was 9,5 in Slovak betting companies.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Fatfield said:


> 22:00 BST. The result should become clearer from 05:00 on Friday after Edinburgh, Glasgow & Scottish Borders councils declare.  Final result will be announced approx 07:00.
> 
> Then we'll know whether Scotland will have been 'liberated' from the union they wanted to join over 300 years ago after the complete & utter ****-up of the Darien Scheme.


Thanks.

After I posted the other day I found something to that effect on either the BBC or the Guardian site (I forget which). But the idea was that they wouldn't start counting until the polls closed and the most populated areas would, logically, take longest. So I'm wondering why you mention Scottish Borders...I was wondering earlier whether there are geographical variations in sympathy...areas where the yes or the no is significantly different from Scotland as a whole. So that if I'm watching BBC World News - which has promised live coverage - this evening (my time) and I hear that, say, Kincardineshire voted a certain way.... (I do enjoy a good election night, even if it's one that doesn't concern me.)


----------



## radamfi

Hasn't Hungary heard of global overpopulation?

My father is Hungarian and used to boast to me when I was growing up (in the 80s) that Hungarians were proud of not having many children, unlike 'feckless' British teenage girls who couldn't stop getting pregnant.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A country will get into major problems if the fertility rate remains below replacement level for a longer period of time. Overpopulation is bad, but so is a fast population decline, because it makes the social systems unaffordable. The working (tax-paying) population will become too small compared to the elderly population. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing_of_Europe


----------



## nbcee

radamfi said:


> Hasn't Hungary heard of global overpopulation?
> 
> My father is Hungarian and used to boast to me when I was growing up (in the 80s) that Hungarians were proud of not having many children, unlike 'feckless' British teenage girls who couldn't stop getting pregnant.


If there is a flood in another country that doesn't mean your house can't be on fire.

Nowadays a bit higher Total Fertility Rate would be preferable for us and this tax system tries to encourage that.


----------



## Attus

nbcee said:


> According to the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH) the average net wage was 153 939 HUF in the first half of 2014 which is ~500 EUR.
> 
> http://www.ksh.hu/docs/hun/xstadat/xstadat_evkozi/e_qli030.html


But consider that quite many people work semi-legal, i.e. they have an official labour relation but their salary is on paper significantly lower than in reality, in order to pay less tax. These people pull the statistical average down.


----------



## radamfi

I bet an extra 80,000 forint doesn't cover the cost of having 3 kids, even in Hungary. Searching for 'cost of raising a child' shows the cost is 245,000 USD to age 18 or 225,000 GBP to age 21. Imagine how much money you would have if you invested that money.


----------



## nbcee

While an extra 80k HUF can't cover all the costs of raising 3 kids, it's certainly a _noticeable _amount of help together with other benefits (like free schoolbooks for example). As you already hinted, costs of living differ from country to country.And I presume the figures in GBP and USD come from the UK and the USA. According to a recent study it's 13-15M HUF in Hungary in case the kid gets a college degree.

Average monthly costs of a child by age:








the columns show figures for babies, day-nursery, kindergarten, primary school, high school, uni/coll


----------



## aubergine72

radamfi said:


> Hasn't Hungary heard of global overpopulation?
> 
> My father is Hungarian and used to boast to me when I was growing up (in the 80s) that Hungarians were proud of not having many children, unlike 'feckless' British teenage girls who couldn't stop getting pregnant.


So how come he had you? :troll:


----------



## radamfi

Do those costs in Hungary include lost income due to one partner having to give up work, or paying for child care, or having to buy or rent a bigger house?

Doesn't every country give free school books? Maybe the USA doesn't.


----------



## radamfi

aubergine72 said:


> So how come he had you? :troll:


My mum insisted!


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Kanadzie

radamfi said:


> Hasn't Hungary heard of global overpopulation?


Considering global standard of living is at highest it has ever been, number of people starving is at its lowest, and rich countries have obesity problem if anything, overpopulation does not exist.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> ....Doesn't every country give free school books? Maybe the USA doesn't.


We did when I was growing up.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Brdo pri Kranju is a protocol place where you usually see presidents and prime ministers.


All I saw were scientists, golfers and children having birthday parties


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

cinxxx said:


>


What language sre people apeaking on this video ?
Isn't it Turkish ?


----------



## volodaaaa

As for the Hungarian topic:

There are at least three grades of lies in all:
- lies
- greater lies
- statistics

The value of average net salary in Hungary says absolutely nothing. 

An example. The average net salary in Bratislava region is about 1000 Eur. Comparing it with the rest of Slovakia, where are regions with 400 Eur net salary, we definitely look like the richest region in whole Slovakia. 

But the value includes bunch (perhaps few tens) of people working as senior managers or CEOs of companies with headquarters here, with the income higher than 10 000 Eur (!). It completely distorts the statistics. Taking the living standards and cost into account, we are not much richer than the rest of Slovakia (excluding the settlers areas of course). Visually Hungary looks much richer than Slovakia or Czech republic to me. I've never been in eastern Hungary, which is reportedly poorer, but the area in triangle Vienna-Bratislava-Budapest looks completely alike and more occidental or Austria-like


----------



## radamfi

It is best to look at median income rather than mean income. That way, you remove the distortion caused by a few very high earners.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yep. But an adjustment for the cost of living is an interesting, and often overlooked issue when comparing cities or countries. For example, San Francisco has a very high median income, but also extremely high median housing prices (in excess of $ 1 million), so when adjusted for cost of living, the income is not as high. It is generally understood that Houston has the highest - adjusted for cost of living - income among the large cities in the United States.


----------



## radamfi

When comparing GDP between two countries, you can measure it at purchasing power parity per capita, which attempts to adjust for the cost of living.

According to Wikipedia, here is the GDP per capita (nominal) for a few selected countries:

Netherlands $47,633
UK $39,567
Hungary $13,404

When adjusted for PPP, these become

Netherlands $41,711
UK $37,307
Hungary $20,065

This suggests that the cost of living is highest in NL, then UK, then HU. Measuring by PPP narrows the gap between the three countries. That's a reasonable guide for the average person, but if you live a particularly frugal life, for example if you have no kids and choose to live in a shared house, the cost of living becomes less relevant.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The cost of living adjustment is often made on a country basis, while the cost of living could fluctuate wildly within a country as well, for example California and New York lose a lot of population through domestic migration (more people moving from California or New York than to those states). This is often replenished by international migration (and sometimes, natural population growth). These trends can be quite significant over a longer period of time.


----------



## radamfi

Another thing to watch when comparing cities is where the city boundary is drawn in relation to its urban/metro area. If I search for "San Francisco cost of housing" in Google, I get the following in a box right at the top of the search listings:



> The median list price per square foot in San Francisco is $788, which is higher than the San Francisco Metro average of $410. The median price of homes currently listed in San Francisco is $899,000 while the median price of homes that sold is $999,200.


Wikipedia shows the population of the consolidated city-county of San Francisco to be 837,442, and the metro area as 4,516,276. So you could live in the wider Bay Area at considerably less cost than in the city proper, whilst still taking advantage of highly paid employment in the city itself.

Houston appears to have more of its urban/metro area within the city itself compared to San Francisco (2.2M in the city, 4.9M urban, 6.3M metro), which might partly account for why average housing costs appear to be cheaper.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's a choice between extremely unaffordable housing at the hottest locations, or affordable, but distant housing further east. Both have their disadvantages.

It's not only a demand/supply issue. The housing market in some hot locations resembles a commodity market, where housing is used as an investment to drive up prices. There was recently a documentary about Toronto, where a large proportion of new condos is not permanently inhabited, and often of poor construction quality. They are used by investors to park their money and make a profit. However, this comes at the expense of ordinary citizens. 

I think it's a real problem if you can't afford to buy or rent a home by yourself even if you have a decent-paying full-time job. Raising the minimum wage to $ 15 in San Francisco won't help much in that aspect, you still need like 5 full-time jobs to afford a house there


----------



## radamfi

On my regional TV news (covering London and surrounding area) we often get reports of how rich foreigners (especially Russians and Asians) are buying flats in exclusive parts of London and only living there a few days a year. Local residents complain that their local areas have turned into ghost towns as so few people are around. Average asking prices in the two most expensive London boroughs (Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster) are now £2.4 million and £1.6 million. Obviously normal people can't afford that kind of money. This has driven average house prices in Greater London to over £500,000.

In the biggest cities like London, it is probably too unrealistic to be able to live near work if you work in the city centre, so commuting a fair distance is inevitable. When we wanted to by a flat in 1997, when we were both working in central London, we could have bought a flat quite close to the centre, but it would still have been around a 30-40 minute commute. So it seemed logical to move to a commuter town 50 km from the centre and benefit from much lower property prices, yet still have a reasonably fast train journey.


----------



## cinxxx

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> What language sre people apeaking on this video ?
> Isn't it Turkish ?


I think it's rather Romanian, spoken by gypsies (from the accent and appearance).


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> But the value includes bunch (perhaps few tens) of people working as senior managers or CEOs of companies with headquarters here, with the income higher than 10 000 Eur (!). It completely distorts the statistics. Taking the living standards and cost into account, we are not much richer than the rest of Slovakia (excluding the settlers areas of course). Visually Hungary looks much richer than Slovakia or Czech republic to me. I've never been in eastern Hungary, which is reportedly poorer, but the area in triangle Vienna-Bratislava-Budapest looks completely alike and more occidental or Austria-like


Bratislava and a few other Slovakian cities (especially those which have car factories) are comparable to Central BP or some of our rich towns like Győr. However the more I go to the east the quality drops significantly and in the end there is Lunik IX. 

In Hungary you still have huge differences between the regions but to my experiences the contrast is a bit higher within Slovakia.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

cinxxx said:


> I think it's rather Romanian, spoken by gypsies (from the accent and appearance).


Maybe...


----------



## Kanadzie

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yep. But an adjustment for the cost of living is an interesting, and often overlooked issue when comparing cities or countries. For example, San Francisco has a very high median income, but also extremely high median housing prices (in excess of $ 1 million), so when adjusted for cost of living, the income is not as high. It is generally understood that Houston has the highest - adjusted for cost of living - income among the large cities in the United States.


You see this in Toronto and Montreal. Typical salary for same job in Toronto is 20% higher. Gasoline is 10% cheaper, electricity is like 200% higher and taxes are generally lower. But, your house will cost 30-40% more.


----------



## volodaaaa

nbcee said:


> Bratislava and a few other Slovakian cities (especially those which have car factories) are comparable to Central BP or some of our rich towns like Győr. However the more I go to the east the quality drops significantly and in the end there is Lunik IX.
> 
> In Hungary you still have huge differences between the regions but to my experiences the contrast is a bit higher within Slovakia.


Right. I'm still getting shocked for the differences.


----------



## radamfi

As I said earlier, I am half Hungarian, my dad was born in Oroshaza, however I have only ever lived in the UK and only have British nationality. Is it possible for me to acquire Hungarian nationality as well? I am concerned that the UK might leave the EU in the next few years, which might mean I am unable to emigrate to the Netherlands, which has been my plan for a number of years. Or at least it might not be as easy as it is now. So if I am also Hungarian, I would still be an EU citizen and so I would still enjoy freedom of movement.

Unfortunately my father died 20 years ago and I lost contact with the Hungarian side of my family after that, primarily because of the language barrier.


----------



## Kanadzie

I think it would be extremely difficult to acquire Hungarian nationality without language ability, but I wouldn`t worry about the UK going out of the EU either.


----------



## volodaaaa

I would be simpler: The chances UK will leave EU and you will learn Hungarian are equal  so don't worry.


----------



## radamfi

But some major UK parties are promising an 'in out' referendum on EU membership.


----------



## Kanadzie

Think of the worst case scenario, you have UK citizenship, UK is non-EU country and you want to move to NL. I am not sure of Dutch immigration laws but surely if you`re British and decent (educated, having some money) you should have little problem moving there.


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> Right. I'm still getting shocked for the differences.


It was quite interesting for me too. I'm not trying to bash Slovakia or anything I'm just saying that according to what I've seen the rich are richer and the poor are poorer. 


radamfi said:


> As I said earlier, I am half Hungarian, my dad was born in Oroshaza, however I have only ever lived in the UK and only have British nationality. Is it possible for me to acquire Hungarian nationality as well? I am concerned that the UK might leave the EU in the next few years, which might mean I am unable to emigrate to the Netherlands, which has been my plan for a number of years. Or at least it might not be as easy as it is now. So if I am also Hungarian, I would still be an EU citizen and so I would still enjoy freedom of movement.
> 
> Unfortunately my father died 20 years ago and I lost contact with the Hungarian side of my family after that, primarily because of the language barrier.


Don't worry, it's quite easy to acquire Hungarian citizenship though you'll need to learn at least some Hungarian first.


----------



## hofburg

radamfi said:


> On my regional TV news (covering London and surrounding area) we often get reports of how rich foreigners (especially Russians and Asians) are buying flats in exclusive parts of London and only living there a few days a year. Local residents complain that their local areas have turned into ghost towns as so few people are around. Average asking prices in the two most expensive London boroughs (Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster) are now £2.4 million and £1.6 million. Obviously normal people can't afford that kind of money. This has driven average house prices in Greater London to over £500,000.
> 
> In the biggest cities like London, it is probably too unrealistic to be able to live near work if you work in the city centre, so commuting a fair distance is inevitable. When we wanted to by a flat in 1997, when we were both working in central London, we could have bought a flat quite close to the centre, but it would still have been around a 30-40 minute commute. So it seemed logical to move to a commuter town 50 km from the centre and benefit from much lower property prices, yet still have a reasonably fast train journey.


there is stuff a government can certainly do about that problem.
-first there is decentralization, making othere places beside London equaly tempting to live
-then there is building more appartment buldings so there is more offer than demand
-and regulation of the real estate market, they can limitate 3rd country (except eu) citizens buying possibilities


----------



## radamfi

nbcee said:


> Don't worry, it's quite easy to acquire Hungarian citizenship though you'll need to learn at least some Hungarian first.


Just seen this BBC news article, about how lots of people, notably Serbs, have acquired Hungarian citizenship thanks to a relaxation in the law.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24848361

Learning a bit of Hungarian is fair enough, however how good do you have to be? The BBC article suggests that only a passable knowledge of Hungarian is acceptable. 

Apart from insurance against the UK leaving the EU, it would also be good to be able to travel within Europe without having to carry my UK passport, and instead just use a Hungarian ID card.


----------



## nbcee

^^ First of all though there have been _some _instances where people got citizenship who weren't able to speak Hungarian and who most likely did it for EU job opportunities - there were a few articles about it this week too. But saying that this is _all _this thing is about - well that would be too harsh. 500,000 - which is now more than 600,000 - is a big number indeed. But despite "_While Romania and Slovakia are already in the EU, the value of a Hungarian passport is inestimable for a Serbian citizen_" most of these people *are *living in Romania. Which indicates that the great majority of these people did it for emotional reasons.

If we look at the data from 2013: When the total number was 422,870, roughly 283,000 were from Romania, 76,000 from Serbia and 50,000 from Ukraine and a few hundred from Slovakia (mostly because the Fico government would strip them of their Slovak citizenship). If we look at the figures for the Hungarian diaspora (1,227,623 in Ro, 458,467 in Sk, 253,899 in Sr and 156,600 in Ukr) then we can see that it (with the exception of Slovakia for the reason mentioned above) correlates with the aforementioned numbers so it's not a far-fetched statement that most of these people are ethnic Hungarians.

Anyway I never understood the over-the-top criticism coming from certain politicians. First of all Germany is doing a similar thing, like it is mentioned in the article Romania does the same thing (mostly to people living in Moldova), etc.. And those "irredentist claims" are just BS. I mean just look at the situation in Romania: a few hundred thousand people got a paper they wanted and it hurt nobody.


----------



## Orionol

Could someone help me?

Today I saw an American registration plate with wheat fields on the background, here in Sweden. From which state is it from? I couldn't read the plate correctly (maybe it's about time to get glasses). Also is this plate a real American one or a fiction made??

Appreciate the help. :cheers:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Can't think where it would be (no one seems to be using a wheat field design currently), but browse through here: http://www.15q.net/


----------



## Kanadzie

Saskatchewan plate has 3 ears of wheat, not quite a field


----------



## riiga

^^ Manitoba?


----------



## Orionol

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Can't think where it would be (no one seems to be using a wheat field design currently), but browse through here: http://www.15q.net/






Kanadzie said:


> Saskatchewan plate has 3 ears of wheat, not quite a field






riiga said:


> ^^ Manitoba?



Thanks guys, but unfortunately it's non of them and I can't find it in your link Penn. I think the plate was a fiction and non-existing.
I appreciate the help! :cheers:


----------



## italystf

One hour ago: industrial fire at the steel plant in Servola, near Trieste, along the SS202 expressway.


----------



## italystf

No, this is Athens. 








(photo taken by a friend)


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> No, this is Athens.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (photo taken by a friend)


I definitely don't envy the guy in the middle of that "sandwich" :lol: And the fly around sign is also very Greek :lol:


----------



## x-type

Orionol said:


> Could someone help me?
> 
> Today I saw an American registration plate with wheat fields on the background, here in Sweden. From which state is it from? I couldn't read the plate correctly (maybe it's about time to get glasses). Also is this plate a real American one or a fiction made??
> 
> Appreciate the help. :cheers:


perhaps this:


----------



## bogdymol

Yesterday the new 10 Euro note was released for public use. Today I already got one from the cash machine.


----------



## Fane40

Orionol said:


> Could someone help me?
> 
> Today I saw an American registration plate with wheat fields on the background, here in Sweden. From which state is it from? I couldn't read the plate correctly (maybe it's about time to get glasses). Also is this plate a real American one or a fiction made??
> 
> Appreciate the help. :cheers:


Maybe an old Kansas. Or Saskatchewan in Canada ?
Look at the link Penn's wood gave you.
And tell us the good answer !


----------



## g.spinoza

I like today's banner, I was there last week


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

italystf said:


> No, this is Athens.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (photo taken by a friend)


I haven't seen a person wearing a safety helmet in Greece for a 3 or 4 years.


----------



## nbcee

Howdy y'all from Warsaw.:cheers:


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> I definitely don't envy the guy in the middle of that "sandwich" :lol: And the fly around sign is also very Greek :lol:


The worst is you know that little motor can barely push them, so you would pass them at normal walking pace, but they are crouched down anyway to reduce aerodynamic drag to get every last 0.001 km/h possible :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

I'm on a long-term experiment trying to go as much cashless as possible (paying everything by other means like cards or transfer).

So since July 2013 I've withdrawn only € 60 from my bank account, and I still have 15 + coins.


----------



## g.spinoza

In NL or also abroad?


----------



## volodaaaa

Does anyone experiences with Waterpik oral irrigators? My dentists recommend me one, the videos looks it is a great tool, but sometimes the reviews are not very good.


----------



## cinxxx

*Graffiti Removal Guy Comes Back to Discover Image of Himself in the Same Spot*


----------



## Kanadzie

I totally approve the hello kitty graffiti, how can you remove _that_? :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Does anyone experiences with Waterpik oral irrigators? My dentists recommend me one, the videos looks it is a great tool, but sometimes the reviews are not very good.


I used one as a child, but other than that I can't help you. Don't know if it was recommended; my Mom would.


----------



## Tom 958

It's my 56th birthday today, and I look and feel like this VW I saw on I-75 yesterday. Oh, it was doing 65/70mph (100kph), and I had to chase it down to get into position to take the pic. I wish that I'd snapped it while sparks were flying out from under it. Oh, well, maybe next time. 









Will I make it another year? It's a roll of the dice.









This one came up half of snake eyes, but we don't know where the other one landed. Maybe on the new Braves stadium site. :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Happy Birthday!


----------



## italystf

Tom 958 said:


>


You can see such things only in Cuba or in "redneckland" :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^You know what they say about Atlanta: Its problem is it's surrounded by Georgia.

(Sorry. Couldn't resist. And they really do say that.)


----------



## bigic

Serbia is maybe full of old Yugos and Zastavas, but none of them is in as bad condition as the Volkswagen Beetle in the previous picture.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

bigic said:


> Serbia is maybe full of old Yugos and Zastavas, but none of them is in as bad condition as the Volkswagen Beetle in the previous picture.


It's full and you know that.I think that Beetle is rusty because owner wants to have car which looks like that.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ the "patina look" is a big thing for VW-enthusiasts even in Europe... American "muscle car" fan would never accept rust on his car, but "hot rod" types would...


----------



## bogdymol

Next week I'm going to make my longest roadtrip so far... all the way to Paris, France


----------



## bigic

But the car had sparks flying under it, as the poster said.


----------



## Road_UK

bogdymol said:


> Next week I'm going to make my longest roadtrip so far... all the way to Paris, France


I drove from Cluj-Napoca to Tours (below Paris) in two days once...


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I'll do Arad - Linz (Austria) tomorrow + Linz - Paris on Monday. And on Tuesday I'm flying to UK. Wednesday back to Paris... quite a busy schedule.


----------



## Road_UK

Will you get to see Paris at all, or straight to the airport? When I did it I left Cluj in the morning and made it to Mayrhofen in the evening. From there on via E60 all the way to Tours. This was before they upgraded certain roads in Romania and Hungary...


----------



## DanielFigFoz

bogdymol said:


> ^^ I'll do Arad - Linz (Austria) tomorrow + Linz - Paris on Monday. And on Tuesday I'm flying to UK. Wednesday back to Paris... quite a busy schedule.


If you're driving all the way to Paris why not drive to the UK?


----------



## Road_UK

If it's Central London he is going to, it's probably a good idea to leave your car behind. Although I would have taken the Eurostar train from city centre to city centre...


----------



## bogdymol

I have a meeting near Leeds, so it's better and faster to take the plane from Paris to Manchester. On Wednesday I fly back to Paris where I will spend a week+ with my wife.


----------



## italystf

Paris-London by train isn't slower than by plane if you consider the time to travel between airports and cities, check in, boarding,... From Paris to northern England plane is faster.


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> In NL or also abroad?


Anywhere. I didn't travel much ever since though for other reasons like work. 

No more than € 60 came from my bank account (though my girlfriend probably paid me a couple snacks on the fly that I'd have otherwise not bought, but nothing more than extra €30-40).


----------



## bogdymol

italystf said:


> Paris-London by train isn't slower than by plane if you consider the time to travel between airports and cities, check in, boarding,... From Paris to northern England plane is faster.


Few years ago I traveled by train from Paris to London, for a 1-day city break in London. I had to explain a little bit to the border officers why I am taking the train early in the morning and my return is late in the evening.


----------



## Fatfield

Why?


----------



## Road_UK

Because UK border agents are always asking stupid questions


----------



## bogdymol

I've got less questions while entering USA than when entering UK, France or Germany.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^They save those for the people who pay their salaries.


----------



## Angelos

bogdymol said:


> Few years ago I traveled by train from Paris to London, for a 1-day city break in London. I had to explain a little bit to the border officers why I am taking the train early in the morning and my return is late in the evening.


Had countless times the same experience wth UKBA when travelling from London to France for day trip, their reaction was priceless telling them that i just go for a cup of coffee to France and that i will return the same day. :lol:


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Florence! :cheers2:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

cinxxx said:


> Greetings from Florence! :cheers2:


If you have extra time you should make a pictures of A1 from Florence to Bologna


----------



## volodaaaa

Spent the past weekend in Trenčín (a medium-size city in western Slovakia). On my way back home, I decided to avoid D1 motorway and try the old primary 1+1 road (61). Although it was Sunday and lot of Slovaks were coming back to Bratislava, I was really surprised how empty the road was. Everyone is just rushing and speeding on motorway, and those former highways running along stay empty. 

And by the way, the city government has approved the one-way street I had proposed as the road in front of my house had been becoming unbearably busy. Almost 20 drivers in one hour had not noticed the change and just entered to the wrong way without slowing down. Was really angry and prepared to call the police, but the cop was already there in half of hour.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

In Serbia many people are avoiding the old highways,because many of them are not in best condition.Also,they have opened a new road very close to my house which lenght is 8.6km.


----------



## x-type

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> In Serbia many people are avoiding the old highways,because many of them are not in best condition.Also,they have opened a new road very close to my house which lenght is 8.6km.


with toll price of 0,03€/km it would be insane not to use motorways instead of state roads.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

x-type said:


> with toll price of 0,03€/km it would be insane not to use motorways instead of state roads.


Yes.The toll is not expensive,so many people can afford to use motorways and overall quality of motorways is not so bad,but it's worser then in Croatia which has an great motorway network.


----------



## cinxxx

Ciao da Roma! :cheers2:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Hello from Paris


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Yes, but whose is longer?


----------



## Orionol

x-type said:


> perhaps this:


Thanks, but it ain't it. hno:




Fane40 said:


> Maybe an old Kansas. Or Saskatchewan in Canada ?
> Look at the link Penn's wood gave you.
> And tell us the good answer !


It isn't and old Kansas, nor a Saskatchewan. 
I've already looked at all the American plates of every state but couldn't find it, unfortunately. It seems to me that this plate is not even existing. :nuts:


----------



## volodaaaa

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> Yes.The toll is not expensive,so many people can afford to use motorways and overall quality of motorways is not so bad,but it's worser then in Croatia which has an great motorway network.


The quality indeed varies. Some (especially new) sections are superb, but some (those around Novi Sad) are gross. 

I just wanted to point out I have really enjoyed the primary road although it took me few minutes more.


----------



## x-type

yesterday the woman and her friend decided not to wait opening bridge to close. rumours say that after the incident they parked and went to nearby bar to have a coffee.
car is quite damaged (airbags, bumpers, probably whole suspension...)
incident happend at Tisno.


----------



## volodaaaa

People are incredible stupid


----------



## italystf

^^ That jump could have end up with much worse consequences.
They later went in a bar for a coffee... they probably had been in several bars before and not for coffee. :lol:

I crossed that bridge in 2008, when we did a boat trip around the beautiful Kornati archipelago.


----------



## Suburbanist

In your contry, which typical location/type of gas station offers lower fuel prices?

Big highway rest areas?

Stations catering mostly to trucks near/in industrial parks?

Fully automated car-only stations in residential areas?

Supermarket-branded stations?

Shopping mall attached stations?

Something else?

-------------


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^In the U.S., highway service areas (as opposed to "rest areas" with bathrooms, tourist information, picnic tables...but no commercial establishments) exist mostly on toll roads and therefore have a bit of a captive audience. I've been assuming for 30 years of driving that toll road service stations would charge a bit more than those in the surrounding areas, although that may not be as true today.

Other than that, it may be a question of brand more than anything else.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Has anyone ever dealt with this site: http://www.moretravelbooks.net/ ?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Suburbanist said:


> In your contry, which typical location/type of gas station offers lower fuel prices?
> 
> Big highway rest areas?
> 
> Stations catering mostly to trucks near/in industrial parks?
> 
> Fully automated car-only stations in residential areas?
> 
> Supermarket-branded stations?
> 
> Shopping mall attached stations?
> 
> Something else?
> 
> -------------


In Serbia the cheapest prices are outside the cities.


----------



## volodaaaa

Suburbanist said:


> In your contry, which typical location/type of gas station offers lower fuel prices?
> 
> Big highway rest areas?
> 
> Stations catering mostly to trucks near/in industrial parks?
> 
> Fully automated car-only stations in residential areas?
> 
> Supermarket-branded stations?
> 
> Shopping mall attached stations?
> 
> Something else?
> 
> -------------


It depends on location and company. Basically, the ones on motorways and highways are most expensive. On the other hand, those located on city outskirts are the cheapest. 

The subnational companies like OMV, Shell, Agip are more expensive than domestic ones.

We have several companies which are incredibly cheap: like Jurki or Batax. Once, a friend of mine has filled up more gasoline than the capacity of his fueltank was. Not suspicious at all.:lol: I have never dared to fill my tank there so far.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Last year I had a company car which I refueled from both major petrol stations in Romania and from my company's own fuel tank in the yard (which has been calibrated - I know because I organised that). If the fuel red light turned on and I refilled, at any station I could get 10 liters more than in what the tank should fit in. 

Btw... greetings from West Yorkshire, UK.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

volodaaaa said:


> It depends on location and company. Basically, the ones on motorways and highways are most expensive. On the other hand, those located on city outskirts are the cheapest.
> 
> The subnational companies like OMV, Shell, Agip are more expensive than domestic ones.
> 
> We have several companies which are incredibly cheap: like Jurki or Batax. Once, a friend of mine has filled up more gasoline than the capacity of his fueltank was. Not suspicious at all.:lol: I have never dared to fill my tank there so far.


Here in Serbia fuel on motorways is the most expensive.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> People are incredible stupid


she has obviously got her 5 minutes of international glory.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring...ar-jumps-across-rising-bridge-in-Croatia.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ing-tiny-car-bridge-opens-makes-unharmed.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-29427782


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> she has obviously got her 5 minutes of international glory.
> 
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring...ar-jumps-across-rising-bridge-in-Croatia.html
> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ing-tiny-car-bridge-opens-makes-unharmed.html
> http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-29427782


A funny story: I would switch to a scientific speech. In a world of science (I guess not only in Slovakia, but worldwide), publication of a paper in scientific journals indexed in international databases (like Current contents, SCI, etc.) with high values of impact factor is considered as a top of a scientist's career. 

Also, being cited in other author's paper published in such journal is very prestigious.

Few years ago, media has noticed that one biologist from a domestic university had suddenly gained lots of citations in the most prestigious papers (I think in Nature as well). He was (sometimes very enviously) perceived as the god of Biology until....

...until some investigators realized that his method has been only cited as the "wrong, amateurish, invalid and improper example" (thus criticized) in all those prestigious papers :lol: He also had his few minutes of glory :lol:


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> A funny story: I would switch to a scientific speech. In a world of science (I guess not only in Slovakia, but worldwide), publication of a paper in scientific journals indexed in international databases (like Current contents, SCI, etc.) with high values of impact factor is considered as a top of a scientist's career.
> 
> Also, being cited in other author's paper published in such journal is very prestigious.


It's the same everywhere. Sometimes these old professors are similar to teenage girls competing who has the most facebook friends :lol:


volodaaaa said:


> Few years ago, media has noticed that one biologist from a domestic university had suddenly gained lots of citations in the most prestigious papers (I think in Nature as well). He was (sometimes very enviously) perceived as the god of Biology until....
> 
> ...until some investigators realized that his method has been only cited as the "wrong, amateurish, invalid and improper example" (thus criticized) in all those prestigious papers :lol: He also had his few minutes of glory :lol:


:lol:

I only know of one slightly similar case: a professor was publishing articles in the subject of how many articles he himself has published so far :lol:


----------



## Attus

Is it a new feature in Google Maps, or I'm the only one that hasn't noticed it before? Now I see that expressways, too, are marked with orange, e.g. some sections of B9, B49, B50 in Western Germany.


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ Google changes its color-codes all the time.

I wish we could customize that.


----------



## Attus

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ Google changes its color-codes all the time.
> 
> I wish we could customize that.


No, I think you don't understand 
It used to be so:
Motorways: Orange
Expressways + National roads: Yellow
Now:
Motorways + Expressways: Orange
National roads: Yellow

So now expressways are marked the same way as motorways. Actually I like it, I think three different colors would be the best solution but even the current display is significantly better than the previous one.


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ You are right, they were changed indeed.

Way better than use colors for toll/non-toll roads.


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> No, I think you don't understand
> It used to be so:
> Motorways: Orange
> Expressways + National roads: Yellow
> Now:
> Motorways + Expressways: Orange
> National roads: Yellow


AFAIK it was not exactly like that, rather:

Tolled motorways: orange
Non tolled motorways + expressways: Yellow

At least in Italy.


----------



## volodaaaa

It is really messy. In Slovakia it is
Orange thick = motorways
Orange thin = expressways
Yellow = primary roads

As far as I remember, orange had been designated solely for tolled roads. Don't know when did they change it.


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> AFAIK it was not exactly like that, rather:
> 
> Tolled motorways: orange
> Non tolled motorways + expressways: Yellow
> 
> At least in Italy.


I just checked my version of Google (I use the old interface): SS3bis, FI-PI-Li, SS38, A3, racc. Salerno-Avelino are all orange! Some of them appear on a thinner line than regular orange for _autostrade. _


----------



## ChrisZwolle

volodaaaa said:


> As far as I remember, orange had been designated solely for tolled roads.


Yes, and no distinction between toll-free expressways that look like full-blown motorways and curvy mountains roads. I'm glad they reversed it after ruining the European mapping a year ago or so. It could be better though.



> Don't know when did they change it.


Around 23 September.


----------



## hofburg

wow how many motorways in Italy all the sudden!  but it's not consistent: in Slovenia H7 expressway is yellow, and roads 104 near Ljubljana and 111 near Izola are yellow although techically expressways.

also expressway south of Latisana exit in Italy is yellow.


----------



## bigic

And in Serbia the Kragujevac-Batocina expressway is marked in yellow, but Belgrade bypass (only 2 lanes) is marked in same orange as the highways.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Maybe because it's highway.


----------



## radamfi

Kanadzie said:


> I think it would be extremely difficult to acquire Hungarian nationality without language ability, but I wouldn`t worry about the UK going out of the EU either.


If the Conservatives win the election next year, they will try to negotiate Britain out of the Freedom of Movement

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/10/01/david-cameron-conference-speech_n_5912460.html

"I will not take no for an answer and when it comes to free movement – I will get what Britain needs. Anyone who thinks I can’t or won’t deliver this – judge me by my record."


----------



## volodaaaa

A suitable question after all :troll:










I bet crap.


----------



## hofburg

^it's indeed just trolling. also windows 8(.1) wasn't bad in the sense that was slow or buggy like milenium and vista were, it just lacked start menu because of which some people refused to adapt. otherwise speed-wise was good improvement over 7.


----------



## Attus

Windows 98 as good? I don't think so.


----------



## volodaaaa

XP and 7 were the best. I've tried 8 several times and was really surprised how fast it was. But I can't get used to the main menu. As far as I've seen, it looks that the "metro" will be involved in Start menu in W10, which is good.

There is only one thing I can't understand: Windows is the number one platform in enterprising. And version by version, they've been adapting the interface to teen girls.


----------



## Suburbanist

Windows 98 was the msot problematic I think. BSOD all the time on my computer, it was a weekly ocurrence.

You can easily plug a "Start" menu for programs on Windows 8. You pin the Programs folder on the Taskbar, and it is done.


----------



## Road_UK

A startmenu is added on Windows 8.1. I think all Windows 8 versions are upgradable to 8.1?


----------



## italystf

Why Win95 crap? It was quite a revolution for those days, the first "modern" Microsoft OS after the old, DOS-based, ones.


----------



## hofburg

Road_UK said:


> A startmenu is added on Windows 8.1. I think all Windows 8 versions are upgradable to 8.1?


startmenu button was added in 8.1, not actual startmenu. yes.


----------



## Jasper90

italystf said:


> Why Win95 crap? It was quite a revolution for those days, the first "modern" Microsoft OS after the old, DOS-based, ones.


Because otherwise the good-crap alternation wouldn't have worked!!


----------



## g.spinoza

hofburg said:


> ^it's indeed just trolling. also windows 8(.1) wasn't bad in the sense that was slow or buggy like milenium and vista were, it just lacked start menu because of which some people *refused to adapt*. otherwise speed-wise was good improvement over 7.


The OS should adapt to user, not viceversa. 
Windows 8 was good for touch-operated devices. Which are nice and portable, but when you have to work really hard and for long times, nothing beats mouse and actual keyboard, with which 8 basically sucked.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> The OS should adapt to user, not viceversa.


Hear, hear!

It's been a pet peeve of mine since my first computer that the software industry seems to forget that its products are working for the consumer, not the other way around.


----------



## x-type

Suburbanist said:


> Windows 98 was the msot problematic I think. BSOD all the time on my computer, it was a weekly ocurrence.
> 
> You can easily plug a "Start" menu for programs on Windows 8. You pin the Programs folder on the Taskbar, and it is done.


this is the first time that i hear that. imo it was the most stabile version beside XP. on the other hand 95 was revolution, but buggy.
8 is also kinda revolution and when you get used on using it, it is really good.


----------



## volodaaaa

Sometimes you have to work with specific software (like InDesign, Illustrator, ArcGIS, etc.) and all you need is a stable and simple version of Windows. The aero effects with photogallery miniapp on the desktop are pretty nice, but useful unless you employ computer only for entertainment purposes. The same goes for all those alternative products. To me, nothing beats MS Office so far. The only shame is the newest version is incredibly expensive.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> Sometimes you have to work with specific software (like InDesign, Illustrator, ArcGIS, etc.) and all you need is a stable and simple version of Windows. The aero effects with photogallery miniapp on the desktop are pretty nice, but useful unless you employ computer only for entertainment purposes. The same goes for all those alternative products. To me, nothing beats *MS Office* so far. The only shame is the newest version is incredibly expensive.


I just started writing a scientific paper for a journal, which offers two different templates: MS Office or LaTeX. I didn't even have to think, chose LaTeX right away


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I stopped using MS Office years ago. There are plenty of open source alternatives that are almost the same.


----------



## Suburbanist

x-type said:


> this is the first time that i hear that. imo it was the most stabile version beside XP. on the other hand 95 was revolution, but buggy.
> 8 is also kinda revolution and when you get used on using it, it is really good.


There is an explanation on how to do it here (takes 3 minutes or less), and it doesn't involve any external app or memory-hog extension.


----------



## hofburg

g.spinoza said:


> The OS should adapt to user, not viceversa.
> Windows 8 was good for touch-operated devices. Which are nice and portable, but when you have to work really hard and for long times, nothing beats mouse and actual keyboard, with which 8 basically sucked.


how so? W8 still has full blown desktop, perfectly suitable for mouse and keyboard. start menu is just a pile of shortcuts, you can put those on the start screen or actually install 3rd party start menu.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Today I have received a postcard from San Marino with one stamp from 1977 and two stamps from 1996 attached. Is it possible that these stamps in Italian lira are still valid?


----------



## g.spinoza

hofburg said:


> how so? W8 still has full blown desktop, perfectly suitable for mouse and keyboard. start menu is just a pile of shortcuts, you can put those on the start screen or actually install 3rd party start menu.


I used 8 virtualized for a while... and deleted it out of frustration.


----------



## g.spinoza

Alex_ZR said:


> Today I have received a postcard from San Marino with one stamp from 1977 and two stamps from 1996 attached. Is it possible that these stamps in Italian lira are still valid?


Stamps from 1967 onwards in lire are still valid and will always be.
http://www.radioetv.it/homepage/notizie/7869-i-francobolli-in-lire-sono-sempre-validi
http://www.mef.gov.it/ufficio-stampa/comunicati/2002/comunicato_0057.html


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> I stopped using MS Office years ago. There are plenty of open source alternatives that are almost the same.


Don't you have to use MS Office at work? I would like to stop using it (on principle) but everywhere I've ever worked uses MS Office and I make heavy use of VBA macros (mostly Excel).


----------



## Alex_ZR

g.spinoza said:


> Stamps from 1967 onwards in lire are still valid and will always be.
> http://www.radioetv.it/homepage/notizie/7869-i-francobolli-in-lire-sono-sempre-validi
> http://www.mef.gov.it/ufficio-stampa/comunicati/2002/comunicato_0057.html


Thanks, didn't know that. So, €=₤1,936.27


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> Don't you have to use MS Office at work? I would like to stop using it (on principle) but everywhere I've ever worked uses MS Office and I make heavy use of VBA macros (mostly Excel).


Yes, I still have to use it at work. Even frigging Internet Explorer 8 because the techies can't upgrade some software to a newer version. Every website I visit at work says 'you're running an unsupported browser'.

But at home, I use Open Office.


----------



## Peines

volodaaaa said:


> A suitable question after all :troll:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I bet crap.


+1

Anyway, I'm a Mac user (since 2006) and Linux (since 2005), and I only used windows 8 once and it was… _cómo decirlo, cómo expresarlo…_ :lol::lol::lol:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes, I still have to use it at work. Even frigging Internet Explorer 8 because the techies can't upgrade some software to a newer version. Every website I visit at work says 'you're running an unsupported browser'.
> 
> But at home, I use Open Office.


^^ I'm sorry but Open Office is crap. I tried it for a while but the usability is still at MS Office 2003 levels. Office 2007 was a huge improvement once you got used to it and that's still my main office program. I use it at home and most workplaces also use it so it's easy to get things done.


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## x-type

^^
I agree with you. i use Open Office at work and it suck big time. MS Office is way more serious package.


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## Suburbanist

For simple office functions, Google Docs does a good job, actually.

For more complex uses, OPen Office is seriously lacking. Its formula packages are limited, using matrix references is a PITA and also limited. Also, several third-party softwares are compatible only Office, not with other office suites.

-------------

On another note, there is a forum stalker really annoying me on SSC


----------



## Kanadzie

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes, I still have to use it at work. Even frigging Internet Explorer 8 because the techies can't upgrade some software to a newer version. Every website I visit at work says 'you're running an unsupported browser'.
> 
> But at home, I use Open Office.


Haha, we just upgraded from MS Office 2000 a few month ago :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> ^^
> I agree with you. i use Open Office at work and it suck big time. MS Office is way more serious package.


As well as Libre Office. Especially Excel, assuming you are not employing functions like SUM and AVERAGE merely, is a fantastic and unique tool. 

Several days ago, I've installed WPS Office on my Android tablet (sometimes I need to work in limited conditions, so I use tablet as a notebook (I'd even purchased the hardware keyboard with mouse)), which is perfect so far. It is, nevertheless, still good only for minor changes in my office files and I still don't dare to edit original files, but create new (in WPS Office edited) files, so I don't lose data due to compatibility failure.


----------



## JMBasquiat

MS Office is simply the best tool out there, bar none. You may be able to get away with Open Office/Libre Office/iWork for certain types of documents (iWork is especially good for presentations), but MS Office is the Photoshop of the office world. It's just much, much better and more feature complete than anything else. 

Now, if you don't need it for anything complex there's no reason to buy MS Office when alternatives can do just as well (writing a paper, for example).


----------



## x-type

btw, do you meet at your workplaces with people who use Excel for purposes that it isn't actually made for? i do and it pisses me off. making simple tables with using no functions (actually, you can use simple functions even in MS Word tables!), i have requeste every day fo that. but top of the tops was when last week one guy asked me to make some simple presentation in Excel. it should have been printable, so Powerpoint was not the best option. i have made it perfectly in Word, inserted some photos, some text boxes, looked perfectly. but no. he insisted on Excel :?
i gave up, didn't want to do it because it actually insulted my mind. he made it himself finally. it actually lookd ok, but imo it is very unprofessional. for instance, he wrote text in stretched cells, and when the cell would become too stretched, he would simply interrupt it and start writing remaining part of the sentence in the other cell :nuts:


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> btw, do you meet at your workplaces with people who use Excel for purposes that it isn't actually made for? i do and it pisses me off. making simple tables with using no functions (actually, you can use simple functions even in MS Word tables!), i have requeste every day fo that. but top of the tops was when last week one guy asked me to make some simple presentation in Excel. it should have been printable, so Powerpoint was not the best option. i have made it perfectly in Word, inserted some photos, some text boxes, looked perfectly. but no. he insisted on Excel :?
> i gave up, didn't want to do it because it actually insulted my mind. he made it himself finally. it actually lookd ok, but imo it is very unprofessional. for instance, he wrote text in stretched cells, and when the cell would become too stretched, he would simply interrupt it and start writing remaining part of the sentence in the other cell :nuts:


My uncle used to employ Excel for writing documents :nuts: He fit the A1 cell to the screen, set "wrapped text" on and that is it.


----------



## g.spinoza

At my workplace they use excel to do science... I refused, it is memory inefficient and you can't control variables. Plus, the regression lines are mathematically wrong. I moved everything to Mathematica and R


----------



## Road_UK




----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> At my workplace they use excel to do science... I refused, it is memory inefficient and you can't control variables. Plus, the regression lines are mathematically wrong. I moved everything to Mathematica and R


Do you prefer Mathematica to Matlab?

I used Mathematica during undergraduate studies, tried Maple and hated it, then I've been sticking with Matlab (and sometimes STATA) ever since.


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> Do you prefer Mathematica to Matlab?
> 
> I used Mathematica during undergraduate studies, tried Maple and hated it, then I've been sticking with Matlab (and sometimes STATA) ever since.


It's been a while since I last used Matlab, but as I recall Mathematica and Matlab do different things... I use Mathematica mostly for symbolic evaluation, don't remember Matlab doing this...

Anyway, most of the things I can do with Matlab, I do with R, free and open source... (Matlab is superior, I know, but R is ok for what I have to do)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ I'm sorry but Open Office is crap. I tried it for a while but the usability is still at MS Office 2003 levels. Office 2007 was a huge improvement once you got used to it and that's still my main office program. I use it at home and most workplaces also use it so it's easy to get things done.


I don't know what you do at home with Office, but I only use it for simple things, so Open Office is fine for that. At least better than dishing out € 119 for 1 Microsoft Office 2013 license.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't know what you do at home with Office, but I only use it for simple things, so Open Office is fine for that. At least better than dishing out € 119 for 1 Microsoft Office 2013 license.


I think 50 € would be accurate for Office.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It probably varies by country. I looked up a major internet retailer in the Netherlands and they quote € 119 for a license.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> I think 50 € would be accurate for Office.


The main issue of not having MS Office (or having a basic version of it including only Word, Excel and PowerPoint), is the impossibility of opening Access and Publisher files. There are free online PDF converters for those files, though.
Open Office can replace Word, Excel and PowerPoint, at least if you don't need advanced functions.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> It probably varies by country. I looked up a major internet retailer in the Netherlands and they quote € 119 for a license.


It is 99 € per licence. But now I've noticed it is valid for 5 computers . It is not that bad. I'm actually using 2007 my mum was given in her work as Christmas gift.

Edit: it is for 1 year... thank you very much. I confused it with 365 version

MS Office 2013 Home and Business = 269 €
MS Office 2013 Professional = 539 €
MS Office 2013 Home and Student = 139 € (incl. only Word, Excel, Powepoint and OneNote)
:-/


----------



## Penn's Woods

Is classic GMaps still available? You know, the one that actually permitted you to move along a road? Last time I was in GMaps, I got a prompt that permitted me to go to the old version. Now, it's not there.

:bash:, Google!


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> Is classic GMaps still available? You know, the one that actually permitted you to move along a road? Last time I was in GMaps, I got a prompt that permitted me to go to the old version. Now, it's not there.
> 
> :bash:, Google!


they are. just find settings button down at the right side (looks like gear wheel). there you can find option "turn back to old google maps". you will get 1000 questions "are you sure", but just press yes 
and don't forget when you turn back to the old view, at the upper part of map you will have yellow bar with option to remember your choice for next time - press yes of course.


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> btw, do you meet at your workplaces with people who use Excel for purposes that it isn't actually made for? i do and it pisses me off. making simple tables with using no functions (actually, you can use simple functions even in MS Word tables!), i have requeste every day fo that. but top of the tops was when last week one guy asked me to make some simple presentation in Excel. it should have been printable, so Powerpoint was not the best option. i have made it perfectly in Word, inserted some photos, some text boxes, looked perfectly. but no. he insisted on Excel :?
> i gave up, didn't want to do it because it actually insulted my mind. he made it himself finally. it actually lookd ok, but imo it is very unprofessional. for instance, he wrote text in stretched cells, and when the cell would become too stretched, he would simply interrupt it and start writing remaining part of the sentence in the other cell :nuts:


Excel works well to make large tables without long texts (you can manage a larger number of lines and columns more easily than in Word), but if you have to print them it's better to use Word, since pages are already sized for A4 sheets, and the table appears also on the printed paper.
BTW, Power Point presentations are easily printable if they have a good layout (i.e. no text very close to the edge, since it would fall outside the sheet), as long you don't mind having printed papers in a horizontal way.


----------



## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> they are. just find settings button down at the right side (looks like gear wheel). there you can find option "turn back to old google maps". you will get 1000 questions "are you sure", but just press yes
> and don't forget when you turn back to the old view, at the upper part of map you will have yellow bar with option to remember your choice for next time - press yes of course.


I found it. Thanks!
:cheers:


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> It probably varies by country. I looked up a major internet retailer in the Netherlands and they quote € 119 for a license.


Some people who use MS Office at work are allowed to buy a very cheap copy for use at home

http://www.microsofthup.com/hupuk/chooser.aspx?culture=en-GB

You have to type in your work email address to see if you are eligible. I am eligible so I could buy it for £8.95. But I still refuse to have it as I don't want the latest 2013 version which is so bloated it will fill up my hard drive.


----------



## Festin

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ I'm sorry but Open Office is crap. I tried it for a while but the usability is still at MS Office 2003 levels. Office 2007 was a huge improvement once you got used to it and that's still my main office program. I use it at home and most workplaces also use it so it's easy to get things done.


Well I should recommend Google Docs, It saves all your work and let you access it from anywhere. And you can export the documents to your preferences.


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## Penn's Woods

^^No! No, no, no!

Not to be rude, but I've had so much trouble with it when my work was trying to make us use it - one year, we had to use it for our annual reviews; the next year they went back. I'm sorry, but the only reason I see for switching from Microsoft to GoogleDocs is to save money.

In theory, it lets you save your work. In fact, however....

Also, they DID switch us from Outlook to GMail some years back and I still haven't forgiven them. Professionally-formatted e-mails (press releases are part of my job) are a pain in the ass, if not simply impossible.


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## ChrisZwolle

I found this interesting... Many people in eastern EU live in a house they own, and do not pay rent or mortgage for. This is an interesting perspective, because in western EU you spend a lot of your income on either rent or mortgage. I spend about 30% of my net income on rent.


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## bigic

Maybe because housing is cheaper or often inherited?


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## ChrisZwolle

Perhaps inherited, or maybe given by the former communist governments, maybe somebody from the former communist countries can shine a light on how housing was done before 1990.


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## x-type

well it was just an normal habbit to build a house on your own here. there were probably very cheap credits to do it. 
flats were given by the state, very often to people who worked in army or police. after 1990 those flats were mostly bought by people who lived there for some silly prices.

nowadays it is still very normal to buy a flat or build a house on your own, but it is not that easy nor cheap anymore.


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## x-type

forgot to mention that people living with their families in rented flat were considered, hm, poor.


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## Attus

In Hungary the situatin is complex 

- Urbanization has a much lower level than in Western Europe. The country is much sparser inhabitated than e.g. the Netherlands, there are large areas (especially in the less developed Eastern part of Hungary) where you can not find any town, or only small towns. In these regions many people live in one flat houses, many of them quite old and having a bad state of repair. In the countryside you can see lots of old one flat houses, which should be destroyed and a new house should be built there but the owner has no money for that.
- In the 70's and 80's the salaries in Hungary were low, however there was nothing in the shops you could buy for that money, so many families had an income which was significantly higher as their living costs. And for a middle class family the goal of the life was clear: having an own house. In a country where you have a passport only for 5 Easter European countries and the best place you can travel to is the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria, where you had to wait several years for a new car, etc., it was the only way to show for your friends and for yourself that you are not poor. Large neighbourhoods of one flat houses were built that time everywhere in Hungary. Those houses are now 30-40 years old, most of them has a good state and usually the original owners or their chlidren live there. 
- In the communist times town houses of multiple flats were owned by the state itself and the inhabitants could rent them. Monthly rents were very very low and since the late 70's there were enough houses in the towns so everyone could rent a flat. After 1990 those flats were sold for the people lived in for artificially low prices so all the people there, even the ones that had a small income, could have an own flat. This situation had serious results:
-- A large town house that has 120 flats has now 120 owners. There are so called 'common costs' (e.g. if the elavator breaks and must be repaired, or simply the cleaning costs if the stairway, etc.) which shall be paid by everyone but there are always flat owners that can not or do not want to pay, so the rest must pay more, and of course there are heavy discusses about it.
-- Since almost every people, even the ones that you could call as 'poor' had an own flat so if you are above 35 and have no flat, you seem extremely poor and people will think (and even you yourself will think) that you ****ed up your life. So you will save every single forint (currency of Hungary) you can save, in order to have money for an own flat. You eat less, you wear old clothes, etc., but having at least an own flat is something you must reach. 
-- There are actually no flats to rent. What is very common in Germany, that a person has a mulitple flat house and rents the flats out does not exist in Hungary. If you have no own flat the only chance you have is that someone has more then one flats in the town and rents out one of them that you can rent. However, these rents are in most cases illegal (in order not to pay tax) so the tenant has not any legal protection because on paper s/he does not even live there. 
- In 2005-10 there were cheap credits available based on Swiss Franc (Forint had interests of 30-35% that time and Franc had 2-3%). Several hundreds of thousands of people built a house or bought a flat using those credits. However, Forint exchange rate collapsed and Franc became stronger, 1 Franc was 150-160 forints that time, today the exchange rate is 255, so monthly mortgages increased dramatically and lots of people are not able to pay them which created a serious social crisis. 

I suppose it is significantl more than what you wanted to know but I was not able to write it shorter


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## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't know what you do at home with Office, but I only use it for simple things, so Open Office is fine for that. At least better than dishing out € 119 for 1 Microsoft Office 2013 license.


I use it for schoolwork. Sure, mostly it's just for papers but I also have to do some data analysis and Excel is simply the best tool for that. I have a legal copy of MS Office 2007 Home and Student and I've used it for 6 years now - it was definitely worth the money. I wouldn't be ready to pay a large sum of money for a yearly license, though.


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## cinxxx

Meanwhile in Bucharest...


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## x-type

@Attus: exactly the same in HR (and probably ex-YU). i was just too lazy to describe it in details


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## volodaaaa

In Czechoslovakia, lame urbanization had been occurring since 1945. Lots of villages or parts of small tows were demolished and replaced by apartment houses.

The situation was as follows:
When someone needed a dwelling, he or she just wrote a request, his family were checked if it is not against socialism and then was given a living (in 3 years from the request).

Sometimes you were given a choice (3 rooms, 4 rooms, floor, orientation), sometimes you were recommend to move to another city. Building of own houses was restricted, you were allowed only in special cases or in so called central municipalities - 4 or 5 of all in district.

Both my grandgrandparents were given flats as well as my parents were. My parents were given a choice to live on 4th, 5th or 7th floor, but since 5th and 7th were orientated to playground, they had chosen the 4th one.

The parents of my grandma decided to build a small house in 1965 in Bratislava-Petrzalka on they own (it costed them 100 000 korunas, which had according to today's salary value of 200 000 Eur). The construction was allowed. In 1975 the goverment decided, there would be a new 12 storey apartment house. The house were demolished and the parents of my grandma were given a 2 rooms apartment. You could't do anything against it. Last of her parents died in 16th November of 1989 a day before velvet revolution. My mum was still obliged to return the keys of the apartment, because there were no adult in our family to occupy it.

During '90s a possibility of private ownership has emerged. Everyone who had such apartment were able to buy it. The price was not definitely worth the property.

E.g. I live in flat inherited after my grandma who died in 2006 and she paid *600* Eur! The apartment is in the centre of Bratislava with the market value of 150 000 Eur.

As an owner, I pay only for facility management. We have chosen a company for that and they take care of our apartment house.

Monthly I pay for gas, electricity, water, repair fund and facility management. Facility management costs 6 Eur/monthly, repair fund were raised from 0,06 eur to 2,05 per square meter of apartment in April due to upcoming renovation. 

The repair fund is maintained by the company, but it is our decision what to do with that money. For such purpose, we have a owners meeting at least once a year where we vote about some issues.

Common issues require more than 1/2 of votes to approve, serious issues need 3/4 of votes.

The maintenance of common parts in house is paid from repair fund.


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## piotr71

Quite similar in Poland with only two exceptions: there were no middle class in communist times in Poland and people had had not their houses built to show off. There is also something interesting what happened on the beginning of nighties - extreme devaluation of Polish Zloty, which led to the sitiation in which many mortgage takers could repay their long term loan (20, 30 years) within several months. 

There is lots of other interesting factors such as inherited flats, flats for 1 zloty and inherited land. For example, my sister inherited quite a piece of land, which she divided into 4 parts. She has retained two shares for herself and sold two other shares. Sold bits let her rise money to build her own house in one year time.

If it comes to me I own several possessions (a flat, a house and lands in two nice locations) and pay not a penny to any kind of lender. Some of them are bought by myself, some were given by parents.


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## ChrisZwolle

piotr71 said:


> If it comes to me I own several possessions (a flat, a house and lands in two nice locations) and pay not a penny to any kind of lender.


That kind of wealth is unknown in western Europe except for the 1% richest or so. 

I can't even buy a house on one income in the Netherlands. You'll get about 4.5 times your gross income in mortgage. And most normal houses are over € 200.000, so you need an income of at least € 45.000 per year to buy a small decent house, which is well over the median single person income. Anything under € 200.000 is usually crap and can hardly be seen as an investment.


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## Karaya

x-type said:


> @Attus: exactly the same in HR (and probably ex-YU). i was just too lazy to describe it in details


Yes indeed. In the year 1991 state owned flat were offered to tenants. In Ljubljana in the city center, flats were sold for 15€ / square meter. Today you can get 2500€ / square meter for the same flat without a problem.

But you had to be at the right time on the right place. All the rest got nothing.

On the countryside urban planning failed in 70's. You could build almost wherever you wanted and the authorities looked away. It was their way to maintain the social peace. Of course this meant that houses were build next to the main road resulting in poor quality of today's road network.


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## Surel

^^
In Czechoslovakia.

In the kickoff of the communism, most of the big possessions were nationalized. This included the apartment houses or big villas. Another thing was that people with really big houses (villas) were often forced to accept tenants in their property, that paid rent that did not cover the expenses. After the revolution. Those properties were returned, although often in quite a poor state.

Another thing is that you had 3 million Germans leaving the country in 1945, and those left their houses in the borderland empty. Many of those houses were given to those that just signed for going to the empty borderlands. It were often people from Slovakia or people with low social status, or people that had political problems. Even though the borderland suffered quite a lot with this loss and you got many ghost villages and settlements. Some of them ceased to exist. In any case, Czechs love their second houses. I think I read that around 40 % of the people owns a second vacation property (it doesn't have to always be really a functioning house, but it can be a summer house). It is the highest number, right after the Swedes.

There were very favorable loans (in the late 70s and 80s) to the young pairs that started a family (baby boomers in the 70s). Aside from a normal loan from the government they could get a non repayable loan to build a house and if they did, they did not have to pay it back to the government. There were no mortgages. There were almost no construction companies. People did it themselves. Only the upper class could afford having it done by a construction company. For those upper class (e.g. managers in big companies, party prominent's etc) there was often a shady construction involved. They used the workers and materials used for construction elsewhere in a big investment project in their own private house construction.

The flat construction was a priority for the socialistic government. They build some 2,2 million flats between 1950 - 1990. That is some 48 000 per year on average. The quality of the available flats was dramatically improved in the process in the 70s and 80s. In a max year 1975 some 100 000 flats were constructed. After the revolution between 1990 - 2006 some 26 000 flats per year were made.

The flats were not in personal ownership. Only the family houses. The flats were either in a ownership of the municipality, state company (e.g. huge industrial company) or a co-op (higher rents to pay out for the construction). Those organizations also build those flats. And often the construction was financed by the government. The tenants got a decree for using the flat, e.g. when they moved for work, often there was a flat decree included in the employment contract. There was some sort of black market with the decrees, and there was also bribing involved to speed things up. It was often possible to get multiple decrees on different family members and keep them. E.g. a grandchild officially moving in with a grandmother (on a paper) so that when she would die, the right of tenancy would stay with the grandchild.

After the revolution. Those flats were mostly privatized, either directly to the people that occupied them (they had a first option to buy) or they were privatized in open bidding (that were rather shady most of the time in fact). Some of the big industrial companies were privatized as well including the flats. There is e.g. a case of a big mining company that was privatized, including 50 000 flats. The company should according to the agreement offer those flats to the tenants, but it did not... finding some smart legal way of course.

Still till now, there are very small property taxes, the land is cheap and people often build their family house themselves. However, the apartments construction is quite low and there is almost no housing development financed by the government. If there is anything financed by the government it is revitalization of the old apartments buildings.

The rent was fully commercialized in the Czech republic. It should be as high as it is common at the given place and time. A court should settle disagreements between the tenant and the owner. There is zero social housing construction.


----------



## piotr71

ChrisZwolle said:


> That kind of wealth is unknown in western Europe except for
> the 1% richest or so.


. I do not consider myself wealthy or even well off. Mentioned house is pretty old and in need of reconstruction, flat is small and actually only pieces of land i own make me satisfied. Their value increased about 200% in the last decade and after splitting them into several reasonable (probaly ten would be possible) pieces in futer, their value would have risen another 200% or more. However, in the area where I live it is rather avarage score.


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## Alex_ZR

In Yugoslavia, all employed people were obligated to give a small percent of their wage for "social housing", to build new apartment buildings whose flats would be given to the working class. Companies would be given a number of flats for the workers who had most reasons to get one. So, people who got flats during communism bought them for 100 DEM in 1990 and they can sold them now for 50,000 EUR for example, while the others who also payed for building new buildings for decade and didn't get them can only sell some property and buy a new flat...


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> I found this interesting... Many people in eastern EU live in a house they own, and do not pay rent or mortgage for. This is an interesting perspective, because in western EU you spend a lot of your income on either rent or mortgage. I spend about 30% of my net income on rent.


Technically, there are very few directly subsidized rental properties in Netherlands, but several million people get _huurtoeslag_, which is a subsidy that helps households earning up to ~€ 34.000/year to offset part of the cost of rental if the rent is lower than ~ € 705 (I might be slightly wrong about the thresholds). I think almost half of renters get some "huurtoeslag"


----------



## volodaaaa

I think eastern europeans have problem with the 'hotel mama' issue. E.g the average age when a young person leave the parents is very high.









Share of 25-35yrs old living with parents


----------



## Surel

^^

I am not so sure if it is actually a problem. It is a different approach. It has advantages and disadvantages. You have many families where different generations live very close each other, or even in the same house. And when the parents get old, the children are there to help them and take care for them. The grandparetns are there to help raising the grandchildren, so that the productive generation can devote their time to their work.... etc etc.

Young unmarried, uncoupled people living at their parent's house allow for lower housing costs which allows for higher savings and possibility to investing into housing without getting indebted.... etc...

It is bit different approach as to what constitutes a family and what are the priorities. The society is less individualistic in the family matters.

As you see it is more a cultural thing than economical thing. Look e.g. at Austria.


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## ChrisZwolle

I moved out at 19. It's quite uncommon in the Netherlands to still live with your parents beyond age 25.


----------



## sponge_bob

Top Gear crew chased out of Argentina by 'Thousands' of people.

They were driving the spectacular Route 40 down along the Chilean border to Patagonia and ran into a spot of bother at the end. Jeremy probably made another unfortunate racist comment...as he does. 

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/focus/article1467360.ece



> *Jeremy Clarkson reveals how he hid under a bed from an armed mob baying for his blood*


We can look forward to the christmas special this year, eh!


----------



## Suburbanist

sponge_bob said:


> Top Gear crew chased out of Argentina by 'Thousands' of people.
> 
> They were driving the spectacular Route 40 down along the Chilean border to Patagonia and ran into a spot of bother at the end. Jeremy probably made another unfortunate racist comment...as he does.
> 
> http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/focus/article1467360.ece
> 
> 
> 
> We can look forward to the christmas special this year, eh!


Apparently they had plates referring to the Falkands War...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> That kind of wealth is unknown in western Europe except for the 1% richest or so.
> 
> I can't even buy a house on one income in the Netherlands. You'll get about 4.5 times your gross income in mortgage. And most normal houses are over € 200.000, so you need an income of at least € 45.000 per year to buy a small decent house, which is well over the median single person income. Anything under € 200.000 is usually crap and can hardly be seen as an investment.


That's also the case in Estonia now. Most of the people who own real estate without any mortgage entered the labour market before the collapse of the Soviet Union (and therefore had the chance to get the flat they were living in at a symbolic price at the start of the 90s).

The younger generation has to spend a considerable amount of their income on rent or get a mortgage for several decades. I, for example, am quite worried about what kind of living arrangement I will be able to afford once I graduate from university. Currently I'm living with a couple of friends but I don't want to do that once I'm older.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> I think eastern europeans have problem with the 'hotel mama' issue. E.g the average age when a young person leave the parents is very high.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Share of 25-35yrs old living with parents


In Italy most young people who study away from home live in rented flats with mates or in student dormitories, but keep their official residence at their parents' house, where they return at weeends and holiday. I wonder how they're counted in these statistics.


----------



## Fatfield

Suburbanist said:


> Apparently they had plates referring to the Falkands War...


The registration plate was H982 FLK.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> In Italy most young people who study away from home live in rented flats with mates or in student dormitories, but keep their official residence at their parents' house, where they return at weeends and holiday. I wonder how they're counted in these statistics.


Well, our Statistical office is bunch of lazy people. I guess in case of Slovakia, they have just taken the permanent residence into account and published results. It may be the reason Slovakia ended up at first place :lol:

I left the parents at my 23 and my fiancée at 20. But I changed the residence just this year, she still have not.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I find it hard to believe it was a mistake. H982 FLK.


----------



## sponge_bob

Well the last time they went on a long drive it a) had a British Military theme and b) Jeremy insulted around a third of the worlds population near the end of the second of the 2 programmes. 

Consequently I can see why Argentina and yet another large proportion of the worlds population of the Spanish speaking sort could have been just a tad on edge waiting for the end product. I don't generally endorse mobs chasing the BBC around the shop or nuffink.

That was not a particularly memorable road trip I thought and the gratuitous and unfunny comment was perhaps because Jeremy was totally fed up by the end of it. However the producers put it in the programme....which is surely the worst aspect of it rather than Jeremy sounding off as usual. 

They did a great trip through Vietnam some years back and without insulting anyone and IIRC he managed a tour of what is nowadays ISIS country without insulting anyone either.

Disclaimer, Jeremey has never written a column for the Torygraph that I know of and has a very long standing relationship with the Sunday Times and a less profound one with its sister the Sun. I find him to be mainly entertaining.


----------



## volodaaaa

del


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Amazing!

107469289


----------



## x-type

this newly refurbished street in Zagreb (Mesnička) has raised a lot of dust in media and among Zagreb citizens due to unusual LED lightning in the floor. what do you think of it?
(it is not interferention, it really looks like on the videos)


----------



## Alex_ZR

I think that cat's eyes would be better.


----------



## [atomic]

That looks totally annoying. cat eyes would've been better indeed. But somebody sure made some money :lol:


----------



## Surel

^^
Perhaps if it would stay on all the time it would not be that bad?


----------



## volodaaaa

IMHO it contributes to visual smog. And it looks like Christmas decoration


----------



## x-type

Surel said:


> ^^
> Perhaps if it would stay on all the time it would not be that bad?


my opinion too


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

italystf said:


> In Italy most young people who study away from home live in rented flats with mates or in student dormitories, but keep their official residence at their parents' house, where they return at weeends and holiday. I wonder how they're counted in these statistics.


In Serbia many people live with their parents simply because they don't have enougt money to live by them own.


----------



## hofburg

x-type said:


> has raised a lot of dust in media


this is one funny sentence in english


----------



## volodaaaa

Apart from popular gender ideologies, after my small investigation, I've realized women are definitely worse drivers than men.

As I've told you several times, the city changed my street from multi-way to one-way. Many drivers had been driving following their minds and breaching the no entry wrong direction sign. 

The situation got better after a week of police checks. So I've been spending an hour on my window everyday (usually by washing the dishes as the sink is located below the window) and checking who would breach the sign.

Here are the stats:
The sign had been breached 3 times an hour in average.
From all the week, only one case was a man (on dirty, cheap pick-up). All other (14) were women, the majority of which were calling through phone (without using handsfree). They did not even noticed the sign or slowed down. Just passed like nothing.


----------



## g.spinoza

You wash dishes for an hour?!?


----------



## volodaaaa

It is kind of my hobby :|


----------



## Road_UK

*We fit...*


----------



## italystf

Nomen omen...


----------



## italystf

Instead of "we go the extra mile" they should have written "we go the extra foot". :lol:


----------



## hofburg

maybe if he wouldn't have been doing this sh*t, he would've fit 









http://www.overentertained.com/2009/03/10/in-depth-transporter-3/


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Instead of "we go the extra mile" they should have written "we go the extra foot". :lol:


Some people wouldn't approve of either. ;-)


----------



## keokiracer

hofburg said:


> maybe if he wouldn't have been doing this sh*t, he would've fit
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.overentertained.com/2009/03/10/in-depth-transporter-3/


Two American-styled trucks on a European road. How realistic... :bash:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Unfortunately we don't have cool trucks in Europe. Some 99% of long-haul trucks are cab-over.


----------



## keokiracer

ChrisZwolle said:


> Unfortunately we don't have cool trucks in Europe.


It might just be me, but I find American styled trucks to be incredibly ugly, I just don't like the way they look. I'll take a European Scania or Volvo over a Kenworth any day :cheers::banana:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I wonder if you can repair some engine troubles while idling with European cab-over style trucks. You need to fasten everything in the interior too, because the whole cab tilts over.


----------



## g.spinoza

keokiracer said:


> Two American-styled trucks on a European road. How realistic... :bash:


Yes, the rest of the video is much more realistic...


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder if you can repair some engine troubles while idling with European cab-over style trucks. You need to fasten everything in the interior too, because the whole cab tilts over.


Of course you can, my father has no problems with that whatsoever.


----------



## keokiracer

g.spinoza said:


> Yes, the rest of the video is much more realistic...


It's a movie with Jason Statham in it. There's usually nothing realistic about half of the movies he's in, so I focus on the details


----------



## Road_UK

I think these Renault trucks look really nice...










...and comfortable...










Daf looks really cool. And Dutch made...



















But true... you can't beat the US Freightliner...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Going here next week:



(Camden, Maine. Source: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EwnoH4dV8...Iy2Mo/s1600/Camden_ROW1785612064_20101014.jpg )


----------



## Road_UK

I hear it's beautiful there...


----------



## italystf

A problem with Google Instant is that it censores gross words, even when they have different meanings and are used in the more innocent way.
For example, apart the famous Austrian village, Google Instant, in the Italian Google, ignores the existence of the ancient city of Troy and anything related to it (like the Horse of Troy or Helen of Troy). Why? Because Troy is called Troia in Italian, that is also a very rude insult for a woman. For the same reason you can't find suggestions to the village of Troia (in Apulia) or to Sesso, a Reggio Emilia suburb who means 'sex' in Italian.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The best thing with media reports is to quote just the first 100 words or excerpts, and link to the original website. Quoting press releases is less of a problem, but press releases about road projects are often full of political blabla, so I usually omit that, unless it contains important information.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> The best thing with media reports is to quote just the first 100 words or excerpts, and link to the original website. Quoting press releases is less of a problem, but press releases about road projects are often full of political blabla, so I usually omit that, unless it contains important information.


Does this restriction apply to Skybar too? Also to news-dedicated threads like "news of the day", "weird news from the world", "news from the Middle East",...?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Quoting is quoting, it applies to all sections of SSC. News reports are nearly always copyrighted.


----------



## Jasper90

italystf said:


> I don't understand why they get crazy when one quotes an entire article. As long the forumer links the original source and the article is freely available on the net, it should be fair game IMHO. You can legally share a news article on your Facebook page or profile, why not on SSC?
> 
> Is there a list of banned words in SSC?


I guess it's because, by doing so, people read the news from SSC and don't open it on the newspaper's website. So you don't view their advertisements and they don't earn money.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> I don't understand why they get crazy when one quotes an entire article. As long the forumer links the original source and the article is freely available on the net, it should be fair game IMHO. You can legally share a news article on your Facebook page or profile, why not on SSC?


Probably because the more people read an article elsewhere than the original site, the fewer people read it on the original, the fewer "hits" that site gets...and the less it can charge advertisers. It costs money to produce journalism. It's the newspaper industry's own fault they starting giving away their product for free (and kept it up long enough for people to get used to it), but at some point they have to start charging for it or else go out of business.

EDIT: Posted before I read Jasper's.


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> A problem with Google Instant is that it censores gross words, even when they have different meanings and are used in the more innocent way.
> For example, apart the famous Austrian village, Google Instant, in the Italian Google, ignores the existence of the ancient city of Troy and anything related to it (like the Horse of Troy or Helen of Troy). Why? Because Troy is called Troia in Italian, that is also a very rude insult for a woman. For the same reason you can't find suggestions to the village of Troia (in Apulia) or to Sesso, a Reggio Emilia suburb who means 'sex' in Italian.


Here it happens with 'negro' (Which means both 'black', the color, and 'nr').


----------



## Jasper90

CNGL said:


> Here it happens with 'negro' (Which means both 'black', the color, and 'nr').


Here in Italy it's a surname, a brand of candies, half the name of a state (Montenegro) and the archaic name of the colour black

Oh, and the racial slur, of course.


----------



## italystf

Jasper90 said:


> I guess it's because, by doing so, people read the news from SSC and don't open it on the newspaper's website. So you don't view their advertisements and they don't earn money.





Penn's Woods said:


> Probably because the more people read an article elsewhere than the original site, the fewer people read it on the original, the fewer "hits" that site gets...and the less it can charge advertisers. It costs money to produce journalism. It's the newspaper industry's own fault they starting giving away their product for free (and kept it up long enough for people to get used to it), but at some point they have to start charging for it or else go out of business.
> 
> EDIT: Posted before I read Jasper's.


Yes, it's correct. Even if articles are avaiable on the net for free, the number of visits is important, both for the prestige of the journalist and the website and, expecially, for charging money for ads. Also Facebook pages links to the original website. So, they have to force people to open the original page to read an article integrally.


----------



## italystf

Jasper90 said:


> Here in Italy it's a surname, a brand of candies, half the name of a state (Montenegro) and the archaic name of the colour black
> 
> Oh, and the racial slur, of course.


And also a brand of playing cards.








Few years ago there was a diplomatic case in Canada when one gave a pack of Negro candies to an African child at Halloween.


----------



## volodaaaa

I still don't understand the craziness about the negro word. Seriously, what is wrong with it? Even in scientific speech, the "black race" is called "negroid race". The "yellow race" is "*********" and the "white race" is "europoid" or sometimes "Caucasian".

I've never found offensive when someone called me "white". And, to be honest, according to the world history, whites should be the more ashamed ones. 

Okay, if there is a slogan in Signal toothpaste advertisement "New *********** with 88 % efficiency" it sounds really suspicious  But otherwise...


----------



## g.spinoza

edit


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> I still don't understand the craziness about the negro word. Seriously, what is wrong with it? Even in scientific speech, the "black race" is called "negroid race". The "yellow race" is "*********" and the "white race" is "europoid" or sometimes "Caucasian".
> 
> I've never found offensive when someone called me "white". And, to be honest, according to the world history, whites should be the more ashamed ones.
> 
> Okay, if there is a slogan in Signal toothpaste advertisement "New *********** with 88 % efficiency" it sounds really suspicious  But otherwise...


In the U.S., I think it's more out of date than offensive. But if you use it as a brand name together with a, how to put it, caricatural picture of a black person.... (And since it's been out of fashion since about the time of the civil rights movement, using it might bring up associations from the bad old days.)

But you can't separate the strict, literal meaning of a word from the baggage it carries with it. If it's well known that black people don't want to be called "Negros," that to me is reason enough not to use it.


----------



## Road_UK

But they still call each other *****s all the time...

Edit: n i g g a s

Geez, what if I was a brotha from the hood wanting to talk jive on here with another brotha from the hood, me and my homey would be all censored up...



Godius said:


> songtekst:
> 
> [Verse 1]
> *****
> ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****, I'm 100% *****
> ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****, I'm 200% *****
> ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****, why do police hate *****s?
> ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****, they hate us cause our dicks is bigga
> ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****, why you call yourself a *****?
> ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****, cause I'm a mother ******* *****!


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> But you can't separate the strict, literal meaning of a word from the baggage it carries with it. If it's well known that black people don't want to be called "Negros," that to me is reason enough not to use it.


I completely understand. But if someone uses the word, or there is a foreign product (Italian candies) called like, it is still not enough reason to freak out. And personally, I don't think this word deserves to be banned. I don't assume to offend someone, if I refer to the Rio Negro river.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> But they still call each other *****s all the time...


Insiders' privilege.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> I completely understand. But if someone uses the word, or there is a foreign product (Italian candies) called like, it is still not enough reason to freak out. And personally, I don't think this word deserves to be banned. I don't assume to offend someone, if I referr to the Rio Negro river.


If you're complaining about automated censorship, I agree it's stupid. (And anyone who takes "Rio Negro" as anything other than the name of a river....)


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> "Negros*,"*


I hate this order.  I'd write «"Negros*",*».


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^American vs. British usage. (I'm not joking.) I agree the British one makes more sense.

http://grammartips.homestead.com/inside.html


----------



## volodaaaa

Is it considered as very unacceptable to use mixed grammar? Let's say in causal small talks...


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^American vs. British usage. (I'm not *joking.)* I agree the British one makes more sense.
> 
> http://grammartips.homestead.com/inside.html


You're not joking indeed.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Is it considered as very unacceptable to use mixed grammar? Let's say in causal small talks...


What do you mean by "mixed grammar"? :dunno:


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> I completely understand. But if someone uses the word, or there is a foreign product (Italian candies) called like, it is still not enough reason to freak out. And personally, I don't think this word deserves to be banned. I don't assume to offend someone, if I refer to the Rio Negro river.


Rio Negro means just "Black River" in Spanish. In fact, due to natural reasons, it appears much darker than the Amazon river and when the two rivers meet you can see the different color (something like the northernmost tip of Denmark, between the North Sea and the Baltic sea).


Road_UK said:


> But they still call each other *****s all the time...
> 
> Edit: n i g g a s
> 
> Geez, what if I was a brotha from the hood wanting to talk jive on here with another brotha from the hood, me and my homey would be all censored up...


Obviously it's not racist if it's used among them but it's racist when white people use it in a derogatory way like this:








http://aattp.org/20-more-insane-racist-tea-party-signs/
(credits to Tea Party, the 21th century version of KKK)


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> What do you mean by "mixed grammar"? :dunno:


I think he means BrE and AmE.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Unrelated. VRT* Radio 1 (I've been listening on line) is currently taking requests for the "meest absurde Nederlandstalige nummer".... ** (Most absurd Dutch-language song.) That's one way of learning....

*Flemish Radio and Television.
**Verso, that's 'cause it's four periods. And that end of the sentence isn't English anyway.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Rio Negro means just "Black River" in Spanish. In fact, due to natural reasons, it appears much darker than the Amazon river and when the two rivers meet you can see the different color (something like the northernmost tip of Denmark, between the North Sea and the Baltic sea).
> 
> Obviously it's not racist if it's used among them but it's racist when white people use it in a derogatory way like this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://aattp.org/20-more-insane-racist-tea-party-signs/
> (credits to Tea Party, the 21th century version of KKK)


Don't get me started. But "*****rdly" is a legitimate word, even if people are afraid to use it because of how it sounds. Means stingy. I'd just say stingy; it's safer.

EDIT: Hey, look what the site did to that legitimate word!


----------



## DanielFigFoz

italystf said:


> I think he means BrE and AmE.


It's acceptable if English isn't your first language, you might get some strange looks if it is your first language, but it isn't a capital offence.

And in causal conversation people say things that are taught as 'wrong' in school all the time.


----------



## volodaaaa

I've just spotted a car with old German licence plates without the original blue EU strip. The optional sticker were put there instead, but it was neither blue strip nor German flag, but tricolour of pre-1919 German empire  I am not sure, but does not that symbol fall within the forbidden symbols? AFAIK it had been used by Nazi regime in mid '30s before swastika flag was introduced.


----------



## italystf

I don't think it's forbidden, this flag was introduced 60 years before the nazism.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> I don't think it's forbidden, this flag was introduced 60 years before the nazism.


you can apply that attitude to swastika as well.


----------



## g.spinoza

German Imperial flag is not banned in Germany, as a matter of fact many neo-nazi groups use it as a fill-in for swastikas and nazi insignia which are forbidden.


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> German Imperial flag is not banned in Germany, as a matter of fact many neo-nazi groups use it as a fill-in for swastikas and nazi insignia which are forbidden.


Well, but it is at least suspicious to put it on licence plate :lol: But maybe I am wrong and the owner is just pre-1919 German history fan.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Well, but it is at least suspicious to put it on licence plate :lol: But maybe I am wrong and the owner is just pre-1919 German history fan.


In Italy fascist symbols and apology of fascism are forbidden too, although this is enforced less stricly than in Germany, where you cannot even have SS, SA, NS, KZ or HEIL in your plate (although Hamburg has HH code).

Said, that, the flag of the Kingdom of Italy (1861-1946) and Savoia dinasty symbols are not considered fascist symbols, even if they were in use during fascism, because they were issued well before.








Despite that, the 2nd last king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III (the last one Umbert II, reigned only for a month in 1946), was strongly involved with fascism (he could have stopped the "Marcia su Roma" in 1922 but he didn't, he signed racial laws in 1938 and flee Rome when it was occupied by nazi-fascists in 1944). So, when someone is nostalgic of the monarchy, he's probably a right-wing extremist. After people chose the republic with the 1946 referendum, the return of the monarchy is expressely forbidden by the constitution and Savoia family was exiled from Italy until 2002.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Well, but it is at least suspicious to put it on licence plate :lol: But maybe I am wrong and the owner is just pre-1919 German history fan.


I've seen Italian plates with the Lega Nord (populist, right wing and eurosceptic party) symbol sticked over either the EU stars or the I of Italy (especially in the past, that party opposed the Italian unification in favour of a Padanian state).


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Don't get me started. But "*****rdly" is a legitimate word, even if people are afraid to use it because of how it sounds. Means stingy. I'd just say stingy; it's safer.
> 
> EDIT: Hey, look what the site did to that legitimate word!


Ok, but used against Obama by a racist movement (if you look at other pics in the link you see that they insult Obama for his ethnicity), it's very suspicious...


----------



## volodaaaa

Well I understand this presenting of political opinions through stickers. I've spotted some Great Hungary stickers in Hungary. Even Hungarian PM has it on his car.










And in Macedonia









There was an opposite sticker "I will FYROM you" but I can't find it on the internet.

But having that German flag on car looks like "Hi, I am neonazi". 

Btw. Current Slovak coat of arms had been considered fascist during socialism although it was created in 19th century. The only difference is in the edges of the double-cross. While on WW2 Slovakia they were convex, they are concave now.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Ok, but used against Obama by a racist movement (if you look at other pics in the link you see that they insult Obama for his ethnicity), it's very suspicious...


True. They're at least making a bad joke.

(I wouldn't actually call the Tea Party a racist movement, although racism is certainly part of why some people join it and contributes to the nastiness of the way they say what they have to say.)


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> True. They're at least making a bad joke.
> 
> (I wouldn't actually call the Tea Party a racist movement, although racism is certainly part of why some people join it and contributes to the nastiness of the way they say what they have to say.)


Yes, their main goal is to promote the economical liberism and keep taxes low. However that party seems to attract the worst populist right wing possible, like it happens with similar parties in Europe (Lega Nord activists and even leaders often make news for their plain racist and very rude language).


----------



## Verso

From Wikipedia:


> During the late 16th and 17th centuries in France, male impotence was considered a crime


Damn! :crazy:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Sewage repair company vans:


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ MegaLOL  But it would look very weir.... interesting if a driver is used to hold the steering wheel from the bottom.


----------



## cinxxx

Question to Italians, do you watch The X Factor (UK)? 
What do you think about contestant Andrea Faustini? He made it to the live shows. 
I think he sings great 

Also, he seems to have a great shot on winning the whole thing.


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> Question to Italians, do you watch The X Factor (UK)?


Proudly tv-set-free since (at least) 2007.


----------



## Maciek_CK

Maria Wasiak* and Richard Hammond. Or Richard Hammond and Maria Wasiak. I can’t tell the difference really. 










*Polish Minister of Infrastructure and Development.


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> From Wikipedia:
> 
> Damn! :crazy:


What the freak! Only on Wikipedia you can learn about those things. I've already learned about things ranging from the Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization to some rare diseases...


----------



## g.spinoza

I learnt that there is a Raccoon township in Beaver county, Pennsylvania   Lots of animals there ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccoon_Township,_Beaver_County,_Pennsylvania


----------



## DanielFigFoz

A couple of weeks ago I had to get a new clutch, the old one gave up on a hill, and I still haven't got/gotten [mixed grammar thing from yesterday, I use both got and gotten without realising which one I'm using] used to the new one. It's really soft (it was very hard before, in comparison to other cars I've driven) and I can't really feel what I'm doing, it's very disconcerting and I keep stalling. That said I really haven't driven much since then, maybe I need to go for a couple of long drives.


----------



## keber

g.spinoza said:


> Proudly tv-set-free since (at least) 2007.


I'm considering that too. After I've moved into my new apartment this spring, I ordered IP-TV three months later and since then I've watched TV just approx. 6 hours in total - in last 3 and 1/2 months.
I see now that I have much more free time even if I do lots of other stuff, mainly various sports (6 times a week).


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> From Wikipediaamn! :crazy:


In the past centuries disabled people were seen as filthy by the Church since it was believed that disability was a punishment from God for bad sins committed by the person himself or his parents.


----------



## italystf

DanielFigFoz said:


> A couple of weeks ago I had to get a new clutch, the old one gave up on a hill, and I still haven't got/gotten [mixed grammar thing from yesterday, I use both got and gotten without realising which one I'm using] used to the new one. It's really soft (it was very hard before, in comparison to other cars I've driven) and I can't really feel what I'm doing, it's very disconcerting and I keep stalling. That said I really haven't driven much since then, maybe I need to go for a couple of long drives.


Have gotten sounds very strange to me, almost never heard or read.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Sewage repair company vans:


He's not the only one:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> Proudly tv-set-free since (at least) 2007.


I do have a TV-set, but I practically never watch regular programming. I'm just annoyed by the amount of advertising. I mostly watch DVDs or internet videos (Youtube) on my TV. 

Freewayjim's videos are amazing on a TV.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Have gotten sounds very strange to me, almost never heard or read.


I think it used to recognize between Have got (posses something) and the present perfect tense of get. 

I've got the car = I have the car.
I've gotten a car = I've received a car sometime in the past. 
I should have used a different object as man doesn't get car very frequently :lol: But replace it with whatever you want.

I've seen it several times but it sounds very strange to me. But it has some logic though.



DanielFigFoz said:


> A couple of weeks ago I had to get a new clutch, the old one gave up on a hill, and I still haven't got/gotten [mixed grammar thing from yesterday, I use both got and gotten without realising which one I'm using] used to the new one. It's really soft (it was very hard before, in comparison to other cars I've driven) and I can't really feel what I'm doing, it's very disconcerting and I keep stalling. That said I really haven't driven much since then, maybe I need to go for a couple of long drives.


Long drives? I think the journeys where you have to shift a lot could be better.


----------



## bogdymol

Greetings from Luxembourg. This is a very nice town, and the people here drive quite expensive cars.

Today I drove for the first time in Belgium. There was a Belgium police car that entered the motorway in front of me and imeddiately spotted a Hungarian truck and pulled him over. They noticed my Romanian license plates just after they signed the Hungarian truck to stop


----------



## nbcee

A trailer on M1 today 








http://index.hu/belfold/2014/10/10/mi_folyik_ma_az_m1-esen/
(The driver of the truck was not injured)


----------



## volodaaaa

nbcee said:


> A trailer on M1 today
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://index.hu/belfold/2014/10/10/mi_folyik_ma_az_m1-esen/
> (The driver of the truck was not injured)


Trailer is only material thing. Good the driver is still member of a family.


----------



## cinxxx

Meanwhile in Timisoara, Romania








https://www.facebook.com/247timisoa...7403997614303/809322145755817/?type=1&theater


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ Mit Stern alles ist erlaubt 



DanielFigFoz said:


> A couple of weeks ago I had to get a new clutch, the old one gave up on a hill, and I still haven't got/gotten [mixed grammar thing from yesterday, I use both got and gotten without realising which one I'm using] used to the new one. It's really soft (it was very hard before, in comparison to other cars I've driven) and I can't really feel what I'm doing, it's very disconcerting and I keep stalling. That said I really haven't driven much since then, maybe I need to go for a couple of long drives.


It often happens the spring (pressure plate) gets stiff over time, but never notice it over time, then you replace and, wow...


----------



## Alex_ZR

nbcee said:


> A trailer on M1 today
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://index.hu/belfold/2014/10/10/mi_folyik_ma_az_m1-esen/
> (The driver of the truck was not injured)


Serbian plates (NS=Novi Sad).


----------



## Road_UK

I was on Utah Beach a few months ago. Very impressive stuff...


----------



## volodaaaa

A women sits at gynaecologist, who starts checking her ******. Just after the start he tells for himself:
"Gosh, what a huge ******, huge ******".
The women looks at him puzzled and asks:
"Why have you repeated it?"
Doctor replies
"I have not".

EDIT: I used scientific notion for pussy.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ It's a desperate move by ssc administrators to avoid people posting bad jokes


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ It's a desperate move by ssc administrators to avoid people posting bad jokes


actually, the joke sounds dirtier in current form than it is. :lol:


----------



## Verso

I recently got an SMS from Peniscola (***** cola :lol.


----------



## CNGL

^^ No wonder its official name is the Spanish one, Peñíscola . Really nice town by the sea.


----------



## nbcee

A tram driver having a calm conversation with a guy in a Rover which is stuck on the tram tracks:









http://cink.hu/kurvaanyazast-ilyen-muveszien-kevesen-fotoztak-le-1645616242/all


----------



## volodaaaa

Have just purchased a new cell phone. After four years of using HTC Explorer I went for HTC One M8. It has very good reviews except for the camera, so I've expected the worst as It could be. Been surprised because the camera is great. The technical quality of images is not very good, but the bokeh effect (of course added digitally ex post) made the pictures looking like made by DSLR.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

This is quite interesting...and even road-related


----------



## Kanadzie

Isn't it always like that, the government cocks up something, someone figures a fix and then the government wants to shut it down 

My favorite is... "the road was closed for about 3 months and..." then they built the road in 10 days, the original road, still in works :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

It may not have been a good investment after all:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-somerset-29009420


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> Have just purchased a new cell phone. After four years of using HTC Explorer I went for HTC One M8. It has very good reviews except for the camera, so I've expected the worst as It could be. Been surprised because the camera is great. The technical quality of images is not very good, but the bokeh effect (of course added digitally ex post) made the pictures looking like made by DSLR.


I simply can't understand why so many people like smartphones that don't fit in trouser's pocket. If any producer offered a phone with Android, quad core 1.2Ghz processor and 4.3" display, I would buy it immediately.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> I simply can't understand why so many people like smartphones that don't fit in trouser's pocket. If any producer offered a phone with Android, quad core 1.2Ghz processor and 4.3" display, I would buy it immediately.


I've spent 3 years with 3,1" display which had some pros and cons too. Especially when I used it as a GPS navigation, the display was too small. Also the RAM was very weak - I had 3 basic apps installed (translator, Endomondo, Sygic) and it was constatly freezing and reporting about low memory. I do a lot of e-mailing. It is easier now. Blackberry with physical keyboard would be the best choice but I got a special offer to this phone. 

At least, the body does not bend :lol:


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> A women sits at gynaecologist, who starts checking her ******. Just after the start he tells for himself:
> "Gosh, what a huge ******, huge ******".
> The women looks at him puzzled and asks:
> "Why have you repeated it?"
> Doctor replies
> "I have not".
> 
> EDIT: I used scientific notion for pussy.


Weird censorship, it allows pussy but not the scientific v agina.


----------



## Verso

Pussy is also a young cat.


----------



## Jasper90

Verso said:


> Pussy is also a young cat.


I know, but it's the other meaning that I'm not a huge fan about :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> Pussy is also a young cat.


Small test:

A female dog is bitch

EDIT: It is crazy! I don't know why is vag ina prohibited. I've never heard nor used is as something insulting (your mum is a ******). Nevertheless, bitch and pussy are both ambiguous words and, IMHO, in internet speech used for the other meaning.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> I've spent 3 years with 3,1" display which had some pros and cons too. Especially when I used it as a GPS navigation, the display was too small. Also the RAM was very weak - I had 3 basic apps installed (translator, Endomondo, Sygic) and it was constatly freezing and reporting about low memory. I do a lot of e-mailing. It is easier now. Blackberry with physical keyboard would be the best choice but I got a special offer to this phone.
> 
> At least, the body does not bend :lol:


Yes, but there are some other possibilities between 3.1" and 5.0"  Unfortunately nowadays all smartphones that have a solid hardware, have very large screens, and thus the phone itself, too, is very large. 
I, too, use navigation (Sygic, Google Navigation, Waze), use Facebook, web browser and email client frequently. Currently I have a HTC Desire X with 4.0" display and it's OK, 4.3" would be perfect. However its hardware is no more convenient, I will buy a new smartphone in the near future.


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> Pussy is also a young cat.


And a French village. But why the freak this doesn't allow the politically correct vag¡na? I don't understand... But at least this doesn't censor Scunthorpe or dumbass .


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

volodaaaa said:


> Are we talking about extreme conditions aren't we? Btw. I've been putting the wheel chains on twice and I hated it :lol: There is nothing more annoying.


You should use winter sockets 
That would kill you


----------



## volodaaaa

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> You should use winter sockets
> That would kill you


I am stuck in the middle of a hill, it is freezing outside, my hands are red, frozen and I lost all my touch sense and the instructions (on the poor soaked paper) are pretty unclear. The mounting take me 30 mins in order to drive few tens of meters. I hate it. :lol:


----------



## Kanadzie

if your car is front wheel drive, just turn around and go backwards up the hill :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

Lol, it is 18th October and I've just seen first *Christmas commercial*. T-com as usual.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> A very warm October day in the Netherlands today. They said it was the warmest 18 October in 93 years.


:nuts: 

It has been around 2-3C during daytime in Tartu since Wednesday :bash: I had to put on a winter coat and everything :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It was even +20 after midnight. Very unusual for late October! The sun sets around 6.30 pm this time of the year.


----------



## cinxxx

^^From where I'm from you get those days also until first half of November.
In Germany, it's colder, damper, foggy...


----------



## JackFrost

volodaaaa said:


> Lol, it is 18th October and I've just seen first *Christmas commercial*. T-com as usual.


Somehow for me Christmas time begins with any random version* of this evergreen commercial :






*f.e. the German version shows the Kölner Dom in the background.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> I am stuck in the middle of a hill, it is freezing outside, my hands are red, frozen and I lost all my touch sense and the instructions (on the poor soaked paper) are pretty unclear. The mounting take me 30 mins in order to drive few tens of meters. I hate it. :lol:


oh, i had it once. i was going back from work (btw i remember that it was really tough day on work :lol: ), it was sonwing the whole day, and when i finally came to the parking lot, i realized that i had flat tyre. changed it, and then realized that spare tyre was flat too :lol: fortunately, it was good enough to come to the nearby petrol station to pump it.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

volodaaaa said:


> Lol, it is 18th October and I've just seen first *Christmas commercial*. T-com as usual.


I can't waite for New Year and Christmas.Also i can't waite for Christmas shopping.:cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

I must really compliment the police after today's experience. About 11.30 AM a strange number called me up. I answered and the police responded on the other side. A policeman asked my name and told me my car had been included in an accident. The most amusing fact is that I had parked my car below my kitchen window last night. So I stuck my head out of the window and saw a stranger and two policemen walking around my car. I put a coat on and went out.

The officer told me they had been guarding the one-way wrong-end no-entry sign and seen a guy driving in right direction smashing my rear mirror. He had not seemed to stop so they moved on to catch him, force him to return back to the place, called to the car evidence register, found my name, called to phone operator to find out my number and called me to come to the place. Then made the guilty man to plead guilty, apologize and fill in the insurance event report (the damage was under 1 300 Eur - so it was not an accident de iure) with me. 

The rear mirror was not fully damaged, only cracked. But since I know the repair garages, they will force me to change the whole part and fix of damage of 15 Euro will costs 150 Euro. I am really happy they caught the man so I did not find my rear mirror damaged without trace to guilty one.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ That one way sign causes so much trouble out there, should just take it back down :lol:


----------



## Fane40

ChrisZwolle said:


> It was even +20 after midnight. Very unusual for late October! The sun sets around 6.30 pm this time of the year.



Only 29° C. today here! Yesterday it was 31.5°C.
A very good "indian summer" after a cold and rainy summer.
Hope this will continue until Christmas.
With the opening of the eastern bypass of my city at the same time.
Delayed several times due to floods during the last two winters and political disputes.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ That one way sign causes so much trouble out there, should just take it back down :lol:


Don't be kidding me. I've spent 4 years of forcing and writing requests to local government to put it there because my street used to be used as a shortcut and drivers used to drive very fast and arrogantly here.:lol: It would *iss me off.


----------



## Verso

Umm, I've just realized that the Italian eastern Adriatic coast is longer than the Slovenian coast. Our coast is 46.6 km, coast of the Province of Trieste is 48.1 km.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

How does that make you feel?


----------



## Verso

Well, it isn't worth mentioning compared to the western Adriatic coast, but then... :lol:


So, the longest eastern Adriatic coasts by country:

1. Croatia
2. Albania
3. Montenegro
4. Italy :troll:
5. Slovenia
6. BIH


----------



## nbcee

The longest Balaton coastlines by country:

1) Hungary :banana:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Verso said:


> Umm, I've just realized that the Italian eastern Adriatic coast is longer than the Slovenian coast. Our coast is 46.6 km, coast of the Province of Trieste is 48.1 km.


You are souch a nationalist
Just kidding


----------



## ChrisZwolle

nbcee said:


> The longest Balaton coastlines by country:
> 
> 1) Hungary :banana:


The shortest Balaton coastline by country:

1) Hungary :banana:


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Umm, I've just realized that the Italian eastern Adriatic coast is longer than the Slovenian coast. Our coast is 46.6 km, coast of the Province of Trieste is 48.1 km.


at tuesday i spent a night at Slovenian coast. i had dinner with my SLovenian friends in Ankaran. while watching Koper bay, I asked if the lit place accross the bay was Izola, and the other one visible Piran. answer was roudly: "nooo, that is still Koper, Izola is far there!" 
so it isn't that small actually


----------



## italystf

There's a joke that if you lay down on the Slovenian beach, parallel to the shore, you may have your head in Italy and your feet in Croatia. :lol:
BTW, I just learned that Ankaran is a town of their own, and not a suburb of Koper like I though.


----------



## volodaaaa

Basically, Austria and Hungary have longer coastline than Slovenia and Bosnia


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

volodaaaa said:


> Basically, Austria and Hungary have longer coastline than Slovenia and Bosnia


You probably ment on Serbia.


----------



## hofburg

I think he means lakes. But in this case we can also take advantage of Bled and Bohinj lakes, and the Cerknica one, when it decides to exist


----------



## volodaaaa

And we can also take account of rogers rivers

EDIT: I was in rush and the Slovak autocorrection changed it wrong.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> The shortest Balaton coastline by country:
> 
> 1) Hungary :banana:


The shortest _non null _Balaton coastline by country:

1) Hungary :banana:[/QUOTE]


----------



## hofburg

this is filmed in Trieste and Socerb:






and this is the making of of the coming ad filmed in Ljubljana:

http://vimeo.com/108303246


----------



## Alex_ZR

Yesterday was such a hot and sunny day in Bratislava...


----------



## Suburbanist

It's been very warm in Netherlands indeed. So far, I've spent only 40% of the average kWh to heat my flat at this point of the year (Oct. 15).


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> So*č*erb














It's So*c*erb.


----------



## x-type

^^
i have just had the face as that cat has because i thought i was wrong my entire life thinking it was Socerb :lol:


----------



## cinxxx

*Meanwhile Audi tested automated race car*
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152776473314591


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> It's been very warm in Netherlands indeed. So far, I've spent only 40% of the average kWh to heat my flat at this point of the year (Oct. 15).


I still have to turn the heating on for the first time since April. Some years, I remember having had the heating on even in the last days of September!


----------



## Attus

I, in Western Germany, haven't needed the heating yet this autumn.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Suburbanist said:


> It's been very warm in Netherlands indeed. So far, I've spent only 40% of the average kWh to heat my flat at this point of the year (Oct. 15).


Since the summer i have been using heating just twice.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> I, in Western Germany, haven't needed the heating yet this autumn.


Me neither in the Netherlands. It must've been March or something when I last turned it on. I expect a big refund next year. I pay a heating cost advance of € 65 per month year-round. I got a refund of € 250 this year (over the 2012-2013 winter) so I think it could be closer to € 400 next year (over the 2013-2014 winter).


----------



## Road_UK

I'll be in Friesland next week with my German lady-friend. I hope the weather stays mild, but I hear that Autumn-weather is approaching...


----------



## Broccolli

Monaco license plates







And the sound :naughty:


----------



## volodaaaa

I've been heating since the middle of September. Almost everyday. It is cold, our house has shitty termoisolation properties (I've already cleaned the moulds three times, the renovation is postponed to next year - today was the session and it ended as worse as could) and after all, enjoying having gas by the time our lunatic eastern Slavic friends cut it off.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> A new tax will be introduced in Hungary.
> By every Gigabyte you download or upload you have to pay 150 forint (approx. 0.50 Euro).


I can't wait when Orban's Slovak twin will adopt this as well :lol:


----------



## Jasper90

Attus said:


> A new tax will be introduced in Hungary. By every Gigabyte you download or upload you have to pay 150 forint (approx. 0.50 Euro).


Is this serious?


----------



## Road_UK

hofburg said:


> @RoadUK weren't you engaged?


No. We just got married.


----------



## bigic

volodaaaa said:


> I can't wait when Orban's Slovak twin will adopt this as well :lol:


Orban's Slovak twin? Who is this?


----------



## Attus

Jasper90 said:


> Is this serious?


Absolutely, the government submitted this bill today.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Is the goal to suppress Internet use or does the government need money that badly?


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Is the goal to suppress Internet use or does the government need money that badly?


I guess both :lol:


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Is the goal to suppress Internet use or does the government need money that badly?


The main issue is that Hungary has a large tax on phone calls and SMSs (what's the plural of SMS?). But "unfortunately" people started to use internet calls (Skype, Hangouts, etc.) instead of phone and web based message services (e.g. Facebook messenger) instead of SMS so that the income from that kind of tax is much less than expected. So the govermnent said, alright, we create a new tax on internet usage.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

So they are going to monitor your data usage? Isn't there a huge outcry over this?


----------



## volodaaaa

That is ridiculous. To use hangouts or Facebook messenger, you have to have wi-fi or packet data internet on your mobile phone. To have wi-fi you have to pay monthly fees within your package. Packet data are usually charged by flat rate unless you exceed the pre-paid amount of data. It is not free at all. 

And the second question: what do mobile operators or internet providers think about that? They will surely increase the prices for services.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> So they are going to monitor your data usage?


No, they will not. Basically the tax must be paid by internet service providers, not by users. Of course all providers will let the users pay it, but the government and the tax office monitors ISPs only, and theoretically the ISP is not forced to let it pay by end users. 
(Phone tax is paid by phone service providers, not by end users, officially). 



> Isn't there a huge outcry over this?


It's a very recent propsal of the government, they initiated it this afternoon, only some hours ago. People are currently shocked, I expect huge objections tomorrow.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> And the second question: what do mobile operators or internet providers think about that? They will surely increase the prices for services.


No one knows it at present. This proposal is very new, operators had no time for responding.


----------



## Road_UK

I don't know what it's like in the rest of Europe, but we've got hurricane type storms going at the moment and the sirenes on top of the church are howling continously...


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Mayrhofen? Sneek? Bromley? Stevenage? This "we" is a bit imprecise.


----------



## Road_UK

Mayrhofen


----------



## Jasper90

50 cents per GB of internet? I'm shocked.
I guess I use from 20 to 100 GB of internet per month, I'd end up spending from 10 to 50 euro/month more than my contract. That's insane.


----------



## da_scotty

Road_UK said:


> I don't know what it's like in the rest of Europe, but we've got hurricane type storms going at the moment and the sirenes on top of the church are howling continously...


Yup in Delft as well, hit 7bft at least, next door in Hoek van Holland 9Bft was hit.
The wind burst are the worst though... The trees next to my flat didn't like it all:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Road_UK said:


> I don't know what it's like in the rest of Europe, but we've got hurricane type storms going at the moment and the sirenes on top of the church are howling continously...


Pretty windy here in Aber. Lots of trees down across the UK, a woman was killed in Knightsbridge.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Is this the remnants of that hurricane that hit Bermuda last Friday? Last I heard, it had passed Newfoundland and was heading for Scotland. (They weren't expecting it to still be a hurricane when it got there, of course.)

On the other hand, we were supposed (as of last Friday or Saturday) to have a nor'easter* today/tomorrow/Thursday and today turned out quite nice.

*a persistent, strong low-pressure system that forms off the east coast of North America and moves up it, producing a strong northeast wind and heavy rain. We really do say "nor'easter," never "northeaster."


----------



## Verso

Yay, I'm going to Belgrade next month. I've been to Australia, but I've never been to Serbia.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^As long as Serbia doesn't come to you.... :jk: :troll: :runaway:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> Is this the remnants of that hurricane that hit Bermuda last Friday? "


It is indeed.


----------



## nbcee

It's probably a communication trick. They have an international scandal boiling at the moment so they threw this as a decoy to the public. Of course the whole Hungarian speaking part of the net erupted and everyone was speaking against it from the far right to the far left. As I write this already 75k people clicked like on a fb-page that wants to organise a protest this sunday. 

And now the leader of their parliamentary fraction says that they will modify the text of the proposed law and there will be an upper limit "around 1000 Ft" (a bit more that 3 Euros). But they still haven't modified it so everyone will continue to talk about this and not other issues.


----------



## keber

Pretty rough weather here this night.
currently on A1-A2 interchange:


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Just paid another visit upstairs. Had three pieces of the arancini. Also on offer are dried figs and sugar-covered almonds.


That's all typical Italian stuff, more exactly Sicilian. It's not something originary from Balkan countries.


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> The main issue is that Hungary has a large tax on phone calls and SMSs (what's the plural of SMS?). But "unfortunately" people started to use internet calls (Skype, Hangouts, etc.) instead of phone and web based message services (e.g. Facebook messenger) instead of SMS so that the income from that kind of tax is much less than expected. So the govermnent said, alright, we create a new tax on internet usage.


I think that the EU commission can make pressure against it. In the early-to-middle 2000s, EU laws forced Italian mobile operators to issue more favourable contitions to customers, such the ability to change operator without changing number and the abolition of the fee for top-ups (before, you paid 30€ for a 25€ top up).


----------



## Attus

So, the governmental party, Fidesz, modified the internet tax, it will have a monthly lmit: 700 forint (approx. 2.30 €) for individuals and 5,000 forint (16.70 €) for companies. The phone tax has the same limits.


----------



## hofburg

that Rotterdam banner looks really cool.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> So, the governmental party, Fidesz, modified the internet tax, it will have a monthly lmit: 700 forint (approx. 2.30 €) for individuals and 5,000 forint (16.70 €) for companies. The phone tax has the same limits.


Are Hungarians satisfied with Fidesz and Orban?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

keber said:


> Pretty rough weather here this night.
> currently on A1-A2 interchange:


Is that water on the sides?
Also Verso,make some pictures of Serbia,so that forumers from all over the world can see the way Serbia looks.


----------



## JackFrost

volodaaaa said:


> Are Hungarians satisfied with Fidesz and Orban?


^^I think mostly they are, but thats not the point. The problem is that we have no opposition in Hungary since almost 5 years now. All they do is bitching around about Hungary on certain european forums, which is very counterproductive. Instead they should build a new party, which prevents Fidesz to win a 2/3 majority all the time. Because the main problem is this, not Fidesz itself.

You could send a 50 donkeys in our parliament and they could do better then the current opposition. So basically only Fidesz voters go to elections, the others either dont care, or work abroad.


----------



## volodaaaa

It is pretty interesting because here in Slovakia, we got the same situation, with no exclusions. One, let's say - huge (like to be leftwing) party (Smer) on the one side and the bunch of rightwing parties which are still breaking down into more  (It seems everyone wants to be a party president). So according to the unofficial poll, the predicted results are: Smer with 40 % and other 10 parties with 3-4 %  Unfortunately you need the 5 % to make it to the parliament .

But it is not about the strength of the leftwing party, it is about people getting tired of rightwing parties and refuse to vote in elections.


----------



## nbcee

I can agree with Jack and add some stuff to that. First of all Fidesz has a devoted fanbase of roughly 2 million people. Besides them we have around 1.5 million people who vote for the various leftist parties - which sometimes spend more time arguing with each other than arguing with Fidesz. And there's 1 million Jobbik voters who hate both sides - and the rest just don't care about politics.

The thing is that nowadays the left is only visible in big cities. The countryside has been "taken over" by Fidesz and to a lesser extent Jobbik. Fidesz has a bit more female followers while Jobbik is supported by significantly more men than women. These two graphs can give you some additional info about the voter bases of the parties:

party preferences by age groups
http://www.tarki.hu/hu/news/2013/kitekint/20131118_2.png
party preferences by various other citeria
http://www.tarki.hu/hu/news/2014/kitekint/20140107_1.png
(Some help for interpreting the second one. From left to right: the religious, the roma, those who own two cars, those with a university degree, those who own stocks, those who have mortgages, those who live in microdistricts, those who are in need)


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> It is pretty interesting because here in Slovakia, we got the same situation, with no exclusions. One, let's say - huge (like to be leftwing) party (Smer) on the one side and the bunch of rightwing parties which are still breaking down into more  (It seems everyone wants to be a party president). So according to the unofficial poll, the predicted results are: Smer with 40 % and other 10 parties with 3-4 %  Unfortunately you need the 5 % to make it to the parliament .
> 
> But it is not about the strength of the leftwing party, it is about people getting tired of rightwing parties and refuse to vote in elections.


Correct me if you see it differently but RF and OV have become similar in many ways.


----------



## bigic

Similar situation is in Serbia. A relatively strong Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and a fragmented opposition, with the main opposition party recently split in two.


----------



## volodaaaa

nbcee said:


> Correct me if you see it differently but RF and OV have become similar in many ways.


I see it alike. But I think Fidesz proclaims itself as a right-centre party, while Smer would like to be a social-democratic (with X6's and Mercedes GL's in their garages  ). 
Considering their disputes 8-6 years ago, I think they become something like friends (always smiling when together, sharing similar opinions on geopolicy, etc.). I have mixed feelings about that, on one hand I like they got over the hatred and their voters somehow followed them, on the other side I suspect they abusing their power.


----------



## nbcee

^^ I always like to say that social-democratic or conservative have different meanings in this part of the world. For example Smer making a coalition with SNS (the Slovakian one, not the Serbian  ) was pretty far from traditional leftist values. Or Fidesz implementing leftist economic policies...

However it's even more strange that there were more Slovak-Hungarian disagreements when both countries were governed by leftist parties :dunno: And now:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Dutch politics are fairly evenly split over the spectrum. There are a lot (too many) parties, but not one is even close of getting a majority. We currently have a two-party coalition (conservative-liberals & social democrats) which hold each other in balance pretty well, so there is no outspoken right wing or left wing policy. They do business with the 'constructive opposition', so all policies currently have quite a big support in parliament. 

Polling before the last elections suggested the largest party might have gotten 15-16% of the vote, but they luckily managed to get some 28% of the vote, and their opponent about 24%. So these opposite poles formed a coalition government that seems to work reasonably well, all planned reforms have been done, so they have another 1.5 years of sitting around their finished policies.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Completely irrelevantly, I just discovered an obsolete coin in my pocket: a Canadian penny.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> Are Hungarians satisfied with Fidesz and Orban?


Considering that all what my Hungarian mates wrote was right, I think there some other factors, too. 

Many people in Hungary have nationalist feelings. And Orbán uses it in a brilliant way. He protects Hungarian interests against everyone (except for Russia) and it is quite popular in Hungary. He persuaded millions of people in Hungary that EU is the greates enemy of Hungary. He is the one that can protect Hungary against the evil EU. Even for corruption has he a great excuse: it was the only way to protect Hungarian interests against foreign ones. And the people think: that's great! Even about the current USA scandal many people think US is evil and it's right that we fight against them, using corruption as weapon. 

And a very important thing: The government made the so called "household costs decreasing" ("rezsicsökkentés"). The price of gas and electricity was lowered by 20% in the recent years. For poor people it was a very very important action and of course they bless Orbán's name. 
And it is a double-success: almost all gas and electricity providers are foreign companies so this action is not only good for people but good for PR as well: we protected the interests of our people against those evil foreign providers.


----------



## Suburbanist

Couple years ago Hungary was mulling a Soviet-style law prohibiting graduates from universities from moving abroad for 10 years. Not sure what happened to that.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> Completely irrelevantly, I just discovered an obsolete coin in my pocket: a Canadian penny.


I was just gonna talk to you about Canada, I remember once a while ago I found a bilingual stop sign in Quebec on Google streetview and was quite suprised, you said they used to be standard and you thought I had seen a monolingual English one, which would've surprised you, there's at least two in Hampstead.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ the Quebec stop signs are typically always "ARRET" however some areas of Montreal island will show ARRET / STOP and some real "STOP" signs in heavily anglophone areas of the island (the STOP sign is after all still technically French as in France!)


----------



## Penn's Woods

First time I was in Quebec was in the 70s, and my memory (which could be wrong) is that they said STOP/ARRÊT. In that order. They wouldn't have to have been that old, though, to have predated Law 101. [Edited to add:] I was surprised some years later, my first time in France, to see that they only said STOP there.

I know the law on commercial signs (found unconstitutional anyway) didn't apply in majority-Anglophone municipalities (is Hampstead one?) What about government signs (street names, traffic signs, signs on public buildings)?

Kanadzie, thinking of Ottawa, by the way. Did you hear O Canada was played tonight in Pittsburgh at the Penguins/Flyers game?


----------



## Road_UK

Snoooooow! Winter has come way early this year... Just been busy clearing the driveway...


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Completely irrelevantly, I just discovered an obsolete coin in my pocket: a Canadian penny.


This summer I found a big rusty coin in a hiking trail. Initially I though I found a 2€ coin, but then I discovered it was an old SFR Yugoslavia coin.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Couple years ago Hungary was mulling a Soviet-style law prohibiting graduates from universities from moving abroad for 10 years. Not sure what happened to that.


No, it was only for students who get state benefits for their studies. But EU media volountarily omitted this detail to make the eurosceptic Hungarian government look like even worse.
Anyway, such a law would be impossible to implement, since it's clearly against EU principes of free movement. Like the Swedish proposal to require visas to Romanian and Bulgarian tourists.
Nobody has the right to prevent an EU citizen to go to another EU country.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Road_UK said:


> Snoooooow! Winter has come way early this year... Just been busy clearing the driveway...


Snoow is in Serbia too,but not much as in Mayrhofen.


----------



## italystf

Here obviously no snow, but only 13°C and rain (until a couple of days ago you were confortable in T-shirt during daytime). Yesterday evening I lighted the fireplace for the first time since early April.


----------



## Suburbanist

italystf said:


> No, it was only for students who get state benefits for their studies. But EU media volountarily omitted this detail to make the eurosceptic Hungarian government look like even worse.
> Anyway, such a law would be impossible to implement, since it's clearly against EU principes of free movement. Like the Swedish proposal to require visas to Romanian and Bulgarian tourists.
> Nobody has the right to prevent an EU citizen to go to another EU country.


I know that, but it is still very Soviet. One of the major arguments used by Eastern European communist dictatorships to ban travel to the West was that is would be extremely unfair, for instance, for West Germany to accept East German engineers, doctors and physicists as immigrants, having paid nothing for their education.

So that proposal is abhorrent. Several European countries have study financing schemes that involve loans. You still need to pay loans even if you move abroad, but you are free do to so.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> I know that, but it is still very Soviet. One of the major arguments used by Eastern European communist dictatorships to ban travel to the West was that is would be extremely unfair, for instance, for West Germany to accept East German engineers, doctors and physicists as immigrants, having paid nothing for their education.
> 
> So that proposal is abhorrent. Several European countries have study financing schemes that involve loans. You still need to pay loans even if you move abroad, but you are free do to so.


It's abhorrent and backward also because it increases the gap between the wealthy who can pay for their studies and then go abroad, and the less wealthy who depend on public benefits and would be forced to stay in their country for 10 years. In a modern, democratic and developed country, studying and career opportunities should be equal for everybody, with only merit as discriminant. Otherwise, generational social mobility would be very hard if not impossible (i.e. only sons of rich families could have a prestigious career).
Ironically, Orban is strongly anti-communism and critical of the Soviet regime.


----------



## Attus

^^ 
The main problem is that a doctor may have a ten times bigger salary in the UK than in Hungary. So a majority(!) of Hungarian medical students want to go to abroad immediately after graduated. And it is really not fair that Hungarian tax payers pay a lot of money for educating those people and then they work somewhere in England. 
So the government offered two ways:
- either you have your education paid by the Hungarian state, and you stay in Hungary for several years
- or you pay it yourself (directly or by loans, there are loans available for this purpose) and you're free to leave the country when you want to. 
But the the students protested and said that they want the state pay their education although they won't work any single day in Hungary.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

in southern spain , yesterday 38º
now in the north 10º


----------



## Road_UK

Road_UK said:


> Snoooooow! Winter has come way early this year... Just been busy clearing the driveway...


----------



## Suburbanist

Attus said:


> ^^
> The main problem is that a doctor may have a ten times bigger salary in the UK than in Hungary. So a majority(!) of Hungarian medical students want to go to abroad immediately after graduated. And it is really not fair that Hungarian tax payers pay a lot of money for educating those people and then they work somewhere in England.
> So the government offered two ways:
> - either you have your education paid by the Hungarian state, and you stay in Hungary for several years
> - or you pay it yourself (directly or by loans, there are loans available for this purpose) and you're free to leave the country when you want to.
> But the the students protested and said that they want the state pay their education although they won't work any single day in Hungary.


The government can set up a scheme where education is paid out of loans to cover its cost, and then for key professions the government can offer loan reduction for time spent working on social services.

Of course, this would open the possibility that some Hungarian students, facing large loans such as those required to provide for the high costs of instruction on fields like medicine of certain disciplines of engineering, move abroad and study abroad already. 

But at the realm of the argument is the paradigm that the State doesn't own its citizens because it provides social services to them. It is a cornerstone of democracy.

This remind me of some African governments asking EU to self-impose a moratorium on visas for health professionals coming from certain countries in Africa, to force them to work locally. That happened a couple years ago and went nowhere.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> This summer I found a big rusty coin in a hiking trail. Initially I though I found a 2€ coin, but then I discovered it was an old SFR Yugoslavia coin.


Well, Canadian and U.S. coins of the same denomination are similar enough in size that it's not that unusual to have one of the other country's coins turn up in your change. Particularly if you're in an area like Maine, near the border. (Or were recently there...My guess is this has been hanging around in my pocket since my vacation.) But Canada abolished the penny (one-cent coin) some time ago....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Snoooooow! Winter has come way early this year... Just been busy clearing the driveway...


That'll keep you out of trouble for a bit.

But no, it's not time yet.


----------



## Penn's Woods

I told you all we say "nor'easter": http://www.weather.com/news/weather...beach-erosion-northeast-mid-atlantic-20141018

It's pouring outside. Rained all day yesterday too. But we seem to be near the end of it.


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> ^^
> The main problem is that a doctor may have a ten times bigger salary in the UK than in Hungary. So a majority(!) of Hungarian medical students want to go to abroad immediately after graduated. And it is really not fair that Hungarian tax payers pay a lot of money for educating those people and then they work somewhere in England.
> So the government offered two ways:
> - either you have your education paid by the Hungarian state, and you stay in Hungary for several years
> - or you pay it yourself (directly or by loans, there are loans available for this purpose) and you're free to leave the country when you want to.
> But the the students protested and said that they want the state pay their education although they won't work any single day in Hungary.


And how do you expect to enforce that? By withdrawing their passports for 10 years? No, because they would still be able to work in other EU countries and even if they work in Hungary they may want to be able to leave EU for vacations or something. Arresting them when they return in Hungary? It would be overkilling. Punishing their relatives who remain at home? It would be really Stalinist\North Korean style! :nuts: I understand that no country likes brain drain, but if a country cannot provide decents workplaces or salaries for educated professionits, is it's own fault!



Suburbanist said:


> But at the realm of the argument is the paradigm that the State doesn't own its citizens because it provides social services to them. It is a cornerstone of democracy.


This happens in every wellfare-based modern democracy. Its morality is questionable, though.
Why do most countries mandate the use of seat belts in cars? Or helmets in motorcycles (or even bycicles, like in Australia)? Why do many countries issue "nanny state" laws, whose their only aim is to protect the individual... from his own behaviour! Simply, because the state pays for health care and has interest in reducing the number of people who get ill or injured.
Of course, these laws are presented as aimed to improve the public health and safety.


----------



## Surel

italystf said:


> And how do you expect to enforce that? By withdrawing their passports for 10 years? No, because they would still be able to work in other EU countries and even if they work in Hungary they may want to be able to leave EU for vacations or something. Arresting them when they return in Hungary? It would be overkilling. Punishing their relatives who remain at home? It would be really Stalinist\North Korean style! :nuts: I understand that no country likes brain drain, but if a country cannot provide decents workplaces or salaries for educated professionits, is it's own fault!


It would be very easy to tackle this issue. You could introduce either college payments subsidized by the state, that would be not required to be paid back if the student stayed in the country for the next x years. And you could also introduce various stipendia with the same effect.

edit: just now I see that Attus wrote just this was proposed. Hmm.... there is nothing wrong with it. And the enforcement is simple: distraint...

No, it is the fault of the student that just wants to accept social welfare but refuses to provide any in return...


----------



## cinxxx

Speaking of medical doctors, I guess the conditions in Italy are pretty good. I haven't seen Italian doctors in Germany. There are a lot of Romanians, Bulgarians, Greek, Hungarian, from former Yugoslavia, Russians.

Besides Italian, I also didn't see many Spanish or Portuguese.
There are many Spanish engineers though, still not so many Italians.

I don't think I would have left Spain, Italy or Portugal neither, just look how much sunshine you have there , even if salary is not as high, still descent enough (not the same could be said about other countries)


----------



## Surel

Suburbanist said:


> But at the realm of the argument is the paradigm that the State doesn't own its citizens because it provides social services to them. It is a cornerstone of democracy.
> 
> This remind me of some African governments asking EU to self-impose a moratorium on visas for health professionals coming from certain countries in Africa, to force them to work locally. That happened a couple years ago and went nowhere.


State doesn't own it's citizen and should not be allowed to restrict their travel. We can agree on that.

However, state is free to chose any social policy it wants. And reimbursing study costs is such a social policy. You can btw notice that various study welfare policies are social rights in the EU and are directly connected with the work condition in the EU. There is absolutely nothing contradictory to anything if Hungary would make the reimbursing of the study costs conditioned by working in Hungary...

About Africa etc... There should not be any travel ban, but again, reimbursement policy connected to the resident work at the home country would allow more resources into the system and more students from developing countries.

Btw... those communist countries had quite advanced developing aid program in education. In Czechoslovakia alone there were some 40 000 students from developing countries before the 1990. On average it was around 850 students per year on a government stipend. Now it is only around 250 students per year on a government stipend.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Restricting travel based on university studies goes against the free movement principle of the EU. 

BTW, I could easily go the Sweden, for example, and get a *free* university education there, then come back and work in Estonia (which I actually considered). The system works both ways. I know plenty of people who study in Scotland but don't plan on staying there in the long run.

From a budgetary point of view, I understand the reasoning. Lots of young Estonian doctors go and work in Finland since the pay is so much bigger. Then again, we now hire doctors from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine to compansate for the lack of workforce in this field...


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> This summer I found a big rusty coin in a hiking trail. Initially I though I found a 2€ coin, but then I discovered it was an old SFR Yugoslavia coin.


How much?


----------



## Surel

Rebasepoiss said:


> Restricting travel based on university studies goes against the free movement principle of the EU.


The point is that no one would restrict anyone's travel of course...


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> How much?


It's 5 dinara, year 1980. Those coins are common in flea markets and don't have numismatic value if worn.


----------



## cinxxx

Meanwhile...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Surel said:


> The point is that no one would restrict anyone's travel of course...


Yes but you would restrict them from working abroad...which is one of the foundations of living in the EU - than I can leave tomorrow and go and work in Germany, for example.


----------



## Surel

Rebasepoiss said:


> Yes but you would restrict them from working abroad...which is one of the foundations of living in the EU - than I can leave tomorrow and go and work in Germany, for example.


No, you would not. Everyone who would work in the home country would get this social payment (benefit) - getting his/her study costs covered. Everyone is free to go to work in any country he/she wishes, but loses the right on getting the reimbursement at the home country if working abroad.

It is actually pretty standard in the EU, that the right on social payments (benefits) is conditioned by working in the country where you get them.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> It's 5 dinara, year 1980.


That one? I remember them.


----------



## cinxxx

> *Frank Gehry Claims Today’s Architecture is (Mostly) “Pure Shit” *
> 
> 
> “Let me tell you one thing. In this world we are living in, 98 percent of everything that is built and designed today is pure shit. There’s no sense of design, no respect for humanity or for anything else. They are damn buildings and that’s it.
> 
> “Once in a while, however, there’s a small group of people who does something special. Very few. But good god, leave us alone! We are dedicated to our work. I don’t ask for work. I don’t have a publicist. I’m not waiting for anyone to call me. I work with clients who respect the art of architecture. Therefore, please don’t ask questions as stupid as that one.”
> 
> This, followed by the middle finger, was Gehry’s response to a reporter asking the 85-year-old architect how he responds to the critics claiming he practices “showy architecture.”


http://www.archdaily.com/560673/frank-gehry-claims-today-s-architecture-is-mostly-pure-shit/


----------



## Blackraven

Question:
Is a visa required for Philippine Passport Holders when entering the Aland Islands (via Mariehamn Airport)???

Also:
When travelling to Svalbard, do we need a Schengen Visa that comes from the Norwegian Embassy in addition to a Svalbard Visa?

Same question also applies for Greenland and Faroe Islands with retrospect to the Embassy of Denmark....

Thanks


----------



## Penn's Woods

Have you asked the embassies? Or checked their websites?


----------



## Road_UK

Why would he want to do that, when he can get others to do it for him?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Now, now. You once remarked "I could look it up, but I can't be bothered." I remember this because I liked it and used it as my sig for a while. He could just be looking for a topic of conversation.

But he'd get the right answers (hopefully!) from the embassies.


----------



## bogdymol

Maybe most of you don't follow regularly the Bosnian road thread. Here's a cool road video that you should see:



Alien x said:


> New Video in 3D/360° of the newest section Tarcin - Vlakovo.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This driving exam ended up in the building of the Department of Motor Vehicles in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Cedar Rapids? At least we know the gas is cheap there. :jk:


----------



## Alex_ZR

Pascal got banned last week? SSC lost its purpose of existence...


----------



## Kanadzie

ChrisZwolle said:


> This driving exam ended up in the building of the Department of Motor Vehicles in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.


probably young girl got confused and pressed accelerator instead of brake, and then, stood on it!

What I really like is how gravel has been shifted by the spinning forwards rear wheels :lol: The Lincoln in question is probably a V8 model so it must have been quite a show :lol:


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> This driving exam ended up in the building of the Department of Motor Vehicles in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.


I bet the student still passed the test.


----------



## volodaaaa

radamfi said:


> I bet the student still passed the test.


Depends on how good in BJ is :lol:


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> Depends on how good in BJ is :lol:


BJ is one of the coolest licence-plates city codes 
(I have one, do you have it too, or BA/BB on your car?)


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> BJ is one of the coolest licence-plates city codes
> (I have one, do you have it too, or BA/BB on your car?)


:lol: I have BA on my car. The BJ is introduced (BJ = Bardejov) though.

Winter is comming up...


----------



## Blackraven

ChrisZwolle said:


> This driving exam ended up in the building of the Department of Motor Vehicles in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.


Oh, bd_popeye, that's in your neck of the woods


----------



## CNGL

Greetings from a handball match


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Interesting match apparently 

I just got a new phone with 4G. Man Skyscrapercity is a data-consuming app. I opened like 7 threads and got 40 MB of data burnt. I guess I have to use SSC on a wifi connection, although I find a forum on a desktop much more convenient (especially if you want to type more than a reply of a single line).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The ad says: 'refuel with free (at least 30 liters) coffee. :cheers:


----------



## keokiracer

Damn, that's a lot of coffee


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> Interesting match apparently


Yup. But this is a league match, the best will come in late November when BM Huesca (My hometown's team) plays its first European match against a Swedish team.


ChrisZwolle said:


> I just got a new phone with 4G. Man Skyscrapercity is a data-consuming app. I opened like 7 threads and got 40 MB of data burnt. I guess I have to use SSC on a wifi connection, although I find a forum on a desktop much more convenient (especially if you want to type more than a reply of a single line).


Maybe you opened some threads with a ton of photos. I'm also on a cellphone but I only burnt a MB on SSC today


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Interesting match apparently
> 
> I just got a new phone with 4G. Man Skyscrapercity is a data-consuming app. I opened like 7 threads and got 40 MB of data burnt. I guess I have to use SSC on a wifi connection, although I find a forum on a desktop much more convenient (especially if you want to type more than a reply of a single line).


Try using taptalk... It's better than official SSC app.

I signed up for a 4G plan last June. It's a good deal, € 35,99 for 10GB data and 90min/150 SMS month.


----------



## Broccolli

Ljubljana and its surroundings last week


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> :lol: I have BA on my car. The BJ is introduced (BJ = Bardejov) though.


huh, i thought it was Bratislava Jarovce district :hmm:

btw - Bardejov is on the banner, what a coincidence!


CNGL said:


> Greetings from a handball match


i was at handball match too today  and it was women match. i expected it to be incredibly poor and went there more to laugh, but it was actually good match in the end


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> btw - Bardejov is on the banner, what a coincidence!


Someone had to hear us :gossip:... 

And no, no... Jarovce is a small and really insignificant borough. Furthermore, there is 16 other boroughs and it would be difficult to designate a code for each of them. Bratislava has BA (exhausted) and BL (currently being issued). Moreover, there are four other codes for future use (BI, BT, BD, BE)


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> i was at handball match too today  and it was women match. i expected it to be incredibly poor and went there more to laugh, but it was actually good match in the end


Podravka-Buducnost?


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> Try using taptalk... It's better than official SSC app.
> 
> I signed up for a 4G plan last June. It's a good deal, € 35,99 for 10GB data and 90min/150 SMS month.


90 min is not that much. I keep finishing my 200 minutes in three weeks...


----------



## bogdymol

In Romania I have 1GB + 1000 minutes/SMS for 5,5 Euro per month, at 3G speed.

In Austria I have the same, but with 10 Euro per month.


----------



## hofburg

it depends if you are more emai&lIM or call person. and on your job.



bogdymol said:


> In Romania I have 1GB + 1000 minutes/SMS for 5,5 Euro per month, at 3G speed.
> 
> In Austria I have the same, but with 10 Euro per month.


good prices! I hope one day EU parliament abolish completely roaming fees, that should really destroy rip off prices in some parts of western EU.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ That's the plan. I guess you know that every year the roaming prices go down a little bit. I understood that in 3-4 years they will be 0 for inter-EU calls.


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> 90 min is not that much. I keep finishing my 200 minutes in three weeks...


I rarely even use 20 minutes per month and most of my text is Whatsapp or Skype messenger. It's been 5 or 6 years since I last used more than 60min in a month


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ If you have an automatic transmission car, can you change the rpm that triggers an automatic shift change? Can you make traction control more or less responsive (might be dangerous though)? What about changing the configuration of a turbocharger control?


----------



## Kanadzie

Ah, all these things you can do!

But to change the rpm for shift change, usually better you can just invoke a shift manually (if you have that feature). Traction control responsiveness is usually a wash - better on or off. Turbo control this one can be fun, but often you'll end up limited by knocking, but perhaps you can get higher boost pressure for a short time (go beyond max limit but not provoke knock) you could also change the rise rate and some other variables of the turbo control but these are or should be designed for the physical capabilities of the components and shouldn't be touched. Also you can't go very far with it as you will reach physical limits of the turbocharger. But, of course, you can always install a bigger turbo too


----------



## Suburbanist

Interesting.

Of all aspects of driving, nothing is as annoying and boring, to me, as changing shifts.


----------



## volodaaaa

Suburbanist said:


> Interesting.
> 
> Of all aspects of driving, nothing is as annoying and boring, to me, as changing shifts.


To be honest, I like it. There is nothing better to drive than beautiful alpine pass with lot of curves through breathtaking nature with frequent need to change shifts. And the sound of accelerating engine or breaking by shifting down... great


----------



## Kanadzie

^^
Indeed, I have been driving my convertible (manual gearbox) recently before the year ends and I forgot how much I love driving with that


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> ^^
> Indeed, I have been driving my convertible (manual gearbox) recently before the year ends and I forgot how much I love driving with that


What convertible? I've drive such car once and it multiplied the joy. Sore eyes were definitely worth it :lol:


----------



## Kanadzie

Saab 900 Turbo classic model, 1991 
very similar to this:









Its still fun to drive with the roof down at 0 *C, just put heater on at the floor and wear scarf


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> Saab 900 Turbo classic model, 1991
> very similar to this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Its still fun to drive with the roof down at 0 *C, just put heater on at the floor and wear scarf


What a beauty


----------



## Surel

Shifting can be fun and joy in a strong car, in not so strong car it is just another part of the driving job which can get quite boring.


----------



## x-type

Surel said:


> Shifting can be fun and joy in a strong car, in not so strong car it is just another part of the driving job which can get quite boring.


but on the other hands, automatic transmission makes weak cars even weaker...


----------



## bogdymol

Modern automatic transmissions (with double clutch) shift very good. Plus, you can also switch it to manual.

I drive a manual car, but if I would have money I would buy a car with automatic double-clutch transmission.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Automatic transmission is historically not popular in the Netherlands due to the high taxes. Automatic transmission means more weight, means more fuel consumption, means higher car purchase tax and higher road tax. 

Automatic transmission is usually limited to higher end models in the Netherlands, but it is becoming somewhat more popular. I'm not sure of any statistics, but I think around 80% of the passenger cars in NL do not have automatic transmission.


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> Modern automatic transmissions (with double clutch) shift very good. Plus, you can also switch it to manual.
> 
> I drive a manual car, but if I would have money I would buy a car with automatic double-clutch transmission.


i admit, i still think of dual-clutch technology as world wonder, but it is today's standard. 
are there any classic automatic gearbox systemy being built in modern cars?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> Saab 900 Turbo classic model, 1991
> very similar to this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Its still fun to drive with the roof down at 0 *C, just put heater on at the floor and wear scarf


A useful skill in Montreal. Do you have winter plug-ins too?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Just back from Ikea, with three bookcases and an urge to learn Swedish.


----------



## Kanadzie

Montreal is too warm for the plug-ins, almost all cars come from dealer with them installed (except Mercedes, put the element but not the cord you need to buy ), the posts are rare. But some people use them, they're very useful for about a week. I don't have one so never bother... If it is -10 it is not worthwhile to spend the trouble to arrange the cord. If it is -20 it is worthwhile, you save gasoline and car warms faster. But - your electric cord may fall apart, it happened to me one winter (need good quality insulation!)

But if you go to Quebec City, any prairie city (especially Edmonton) or northern Quebec they are everywhere and ubiquitous 

I love my Ikea Poang chairs. The arms are open so you can... well you can use them in ways not planned in the design process


----------



## radamfi

I don't mind changing gears but I don't like constantly depressing the clutch pedal as it hurts my knee after a while. That is one of the reasons why I like Smart cars, as they are all semi-automatic. You can let the Smart change gear by itself, but it doesn't really work properly, so it is usually best to change yourself.

I can understand why fully automatic is not popular in Europe, but I don't understand why semi-automatic isn't popular in small cars, other than the Smart, given that we do a lot of urban stop-start driving in Europe.


----------



## Penn's Woods

So how is everyone in Europe enjoying Winter Time so far? We have another week before we change the clocks and it starts getting dark while we're still at work. [shudder]


----------



## Road_UK

Clocks here went back one hour last night and the snow that fell here in the valley a few days ago is gone now. Looking forward to warmer days ahead. This is a photo I took yesterday morning approaching Mayrhofen:


----------



## hofburg

nice to look at, but I wouldn't give up 10° warmer climate to be there in person


----------



## volodaaaa

A question to the native English speakers. Does this sentence have a sense:
"...Living in a city is being restored its attractiveness..."
or should I use
"Attractiveness of living in a city is being restored"?
THx and sorry for the offtopic.


Btw. News about protests in Hungary against the internet tax has leaked in our media. Is it serious?


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> Btw. News about protests in Hungary against the internet tax has leaked in our media. Is it serious?


It depends on what do you call 'serious' ;-)
Here are some pictures and videos of the demonstration last night. The building people attack (last video) is the HQ of the governmental party Fidesz.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> It depends on what do you call 'serious' ;-)
> Here are some pictures and videos of the demonstration last night. The building people attack (last video) is the HQ of the governmental party Fidesz.


I would like to see the individual who suggested that... really... How does the government defend it?

Btw. Media often hyperbolize events to attract the audience. Tabloids similar to blikk.hu refer to "Massive demonstrations against Orban!!!! Another neighbour in violence?!" (with those exclamation marks)


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> I would like to see the individual who suggested that...











Any questions?



> really... How does the government defend it?


They say nothing. All they say is that protests are organized by oppositional socialist and liberal parties together with USA in order to overthrow the government.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> Any questions?
> 
> 
> They say nothing. All they say is that protests are organized by oppositional socialist and liberal parties together with USA in order to overthrow the government.


That is not even original :lol: Orban will fall down on the face in this issue.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> A question to the native English speakers. Does this sentence have a sense:
> "...Living in a city is being restored its attractiveness..."
> or should I use
> "Attractiveness of living in a city is being restored"?
> THx and sorry for the offtopic.
> 
> 
> Btw. News about protests in Hungary against the internet tax has leaked in our media. Is it serious?


They both seem awkward, but "*The* attractiveness of living in a city is being restored" isn't actually incorrect. You need that "the," though. How about "City living is becoming attractive again"?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> They say nothing. All they say is that protests are organized by oppositional socialist and liberal parties together with USA in order to overthrow the government.


Rolleyes.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> They both seem awkward, but "*The* attractiveness of living in a city is being restored" isn't actually incorrect. You need that "the," though. How about "City living is becoming attractive again"?


Or "the attractiveness is being restored to city living," if you don't want to lose the idea of "restored."

:cheers:


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> They both seem awkward, but "*The* attractiveness of living in a city is being restored" isn't actually incorrect. You need that "the," though. How about "City living is becoming attractive again"?


Wouldn't _"living in a city is becoming attractive again"_ be better? Or rather _"living in a city becomes attractive again"_.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^There's nothing at all wrong with "living in a city," but the expression "city living" (or "city life," for that matter) does exist.

But "is becoming," not "becomes." Although there are contexts where "becomes" works. ("City life becomes attractive to some people* after years in the suburbs raising a family" yadda yadda)

*people who are not Suburbanist. :jk:


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> So how is everyone in Europe enjoying Winter Time so far? We have another week before we change the clocks and it starts getting dark while we're still at work. [shudder]


media here are writing about Benjamin Franklin being the first person with similar idea. i really had no idea about it


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It takes some getting used to... cycling to work at 7.15 a.m. while it is already light.


----------



## x-type

i am researching something about Gibraltar and i really had no idea that english pronounciation was [dʒɪˈbrɔːltə], i always thought that it was ['gibraltə] icard:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wait until you hear the Dutch pronounciation of the 'G'. You'd think people try to choke themselves.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Wait until you hear the Dutch pronounciation of the 'G'. You'd think people try to choke themselves.


met Timon a week ago. it was enough khghrling for next certain period for my ears


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Wait until you hear the Dutch pronounciation of the 'G'. You'd think people try to choke themselves.


I've been listening to the VRT lately and I've heard more different pronunciations of G than I thought possible.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes it is pronounced differently in Flanders and Southern Netherlands. It's the difference between a hard G and soft G.


----------



## Penn's Woods

There seem to be multiple variables, even among Flemings. :dunno:


----------



## cinxxx

Meanwhile... :siren:


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> met Timon a week ago. it was enough khghrling for next certain period for my ears


Big like for the word khgrling 😃


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> met Timon a week ago. it was enough khghrling for next certain period for my ears


What? He's still alive?


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> What? He's still alive?


Who are you talking about?:hmm:


----------



## Verso

A Dutch forumer that was very active here until 2010 or so.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> What? He's still alive?


well, he was alive yesterday, had a FB chat with him. i hope he is still alive since he is not very far from ISIL zone atm :nuts:

(btw he was here in HR 1 year ago, too  )


----------



## Verso

Why doesn't he post here any more?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

He's on a train trip from Amsterdam to Tehran. Via Finland and Greece


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I guess that you guys know him very good.


----------



## Verso

If he has time for FB, he could find some time for SSC as well.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> He's on a train trip from Amsterdam to Tehran. Via Finland and Greece


but route from Finland to Greece led him through Latvia, Czech Republic and Croatia :lol:


----------



## Verso

My neighbours got a dog.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Stuffed?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Verso said:


> My neighbours got a dog.


That is a toy,not a dog.


----------



## Verso

They smuggled it from Serbia.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Would anyone not related to Tito have been permitted to have such a decadent, bourgeois dog before 1989?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Yugoslavia was not tipical communist country.People had big rights and they all lived very nice.Also Yugoslavia had open borders towards all western countryes. People were allowed to travel where ever they wonna to go.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Duly noted. I forgot to say " :jk: "


----------



## aleksandar_s

^^ Even if stuff was not for sale in Yugoslavia, people just brought stuff across the border because it was legal. 

A good example was alloy wheel rims. These were rare in Yugoslavia because most cars had steel rims. There were some people who still wanted nice wheels, so they just brought them in from Austria or Italy.


----------



## italystf

aleksandar_s said:


> ^^ Even if stuff was not for sale in Yugoslavia, people just brought stuff across the border because it was legal.
> 
> A good example was alloy wheel rims. These were rare in Yugoslavia because most cars had steel rims. There were some people who still wanted nice wheels, so they just brought them in from Austria or Italy.


I've read somewhere that importing clothes in Yugoslavia was forbidden. So, Yugoslavs went to Trieste with the worst clothes they had at home, purchased new clothes, threw away the old ones and dressed the new ones before leaving Italy. Yugoslav border guards couldn't do anything, since they were wearing the clothes and not carrying them.


----------



## Attus

Budapest, right now.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

They were not forbidden,they were not popular in Yugoslavia because people had everythink they wonna to have.


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> those BUSZ lines always make me laughing. and wondering why aren't there SZTOP signes in Hungary


It is simply Štop :lol:


----------



## JackFrost

x-type said:


> those BUSZ lines always make me laughing. and wondering why aren't there SZTOP signes in Hungary


because we dont pronounce it "sztop"


----------



## Verso

"ÁLLJ" would look better on signs.


----------



## Attus

Verso said:


> "ÁLLJ" would look better on signs.


I suppose you know very well that (unlike in other continents) that sign is standarized in Europe and has "STOP" in every countries, even in the ones where this word does not exist in the local language.


----------



## Penn's Woods

'cuz people might not know what an octagonal red sign means if it had the wrong word....


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> I suppose you know very well that (unlike in other continents) that sign is standarized in Europe and has "STOP" in every countries, even in the ones where this word does not exist in the local language.


Is not in Germany "Halt"? I admit I might have seen it in a film as well.


----------



## JackFrost

Its the English STOP in Germany too. Normally you would write STOPP in German.


----------



## volodaaaa

Jack_Frost said:


> Its the English STOP in Germany too. Normally you would write STOPP in German.


Maybe I've seen it in Alarm für Kobra 11 :lol:


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> Is not in Germany "Halt"? I admit I might have seen it in a film as well.


No, it's "STOP".


----------



## x-type

How about DUR? Is it only in Asian part of Turkey?


----------



## SeanT

Because you pronounce it "shtop" in hungarian.


----------



## SeanT

SeanT said:


> Because you pronounce it "shtop" in hungarian.


Actually, shtopp, but what a hell


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

In Serbia we say STOP!


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Barcelona! :cheers2:
This is one great city.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Man, how many vacation days do you guys get?


----------



## VITORIA MAN

are we mad ??
new presidential palace in ankara ( 200.000 m2 )


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Man, how many vacation days do you guys get?


Germans never work :bash:


----------



## Penn's Woods

VITORIA MAN said:


> are we mad ??
> new presidential palace in ankara ( 200.000 m2 )


Looks very Romanian, actually.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Germans never work :bash:


Then how can they afford all this travel? :dunno:


----------



## RamizZmaj




----------



## Suburbanist

Penn Woods, this is an interesting article about the shift-schedule chaos: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

and this covers the issue of restricted covenants and non-compete clauses: When the Guy Making Your Sandwich Has a Noncompete Clause

Both are good reads.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> I had the impression he agreed with what you said.


Well, one can't actually tell....

By the way, I just tallied it up: between vacation days and paid holidays, I get 38 weekdays (Monday-Friday) paid time off in 2014. It would be 39 if Yom Kippur hadn't fallen on a Saturday this year.

Not counting time on SSC. 

EDIT: Also not counting sick days, which I have so many of accumulated that I could take over a month if I was actually sick. They'd want proof, though, for that amount of sick time taken.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's mostly a southern European thing. Nearly the entire economy comes to a standstill (except tourism of course) during August.
> 
> The Dutch school holidays are spread out over 3 regions in the summer, so much of the country keeps functioning, albeit on a lower pace, during July and August. It is common in the construction sector to shut the business down entirely for 3 weeks, but more and more businesses remain open compared to 20 years ago.
> 
> I also prefer multiple short vacations over a summer-long vacation. I did two major trips this year, to Norway and Sweden in June and to southern France in September. Usually I take 3 or 4 international multi-day trips, but had to cut down a bit this year,I bought a new car, plus the 2 trips were rather expensive in tolls. I think I paid a combined € 400 in tolls this year.



Of course, school vacations are a factor that I tend to forget about because they don't affect me.

But here they aren't standardized: a local school district needs to have classes X days per year, will have to be closed on certain holidays, but can otherwise schedule vacations when they want. Obviously, everyone will he out of school for July and most of August, probably the week from Christmas to New Year's, but spring breaks will be more spread out.


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^
> So what are you trying to say? You quote what I say, you quote a text, and then you put up a graph with a big fat zero sitting at the end of it?
> 
> There is a big, big difference between what I'm telling you is typical and what the text you quote is saying, and that zero. That zero is bullshit, at least in context (at a very minimum, they'd need to change the label on the graph, because it ISN'T a true representation of "paid annual leave and paid public holidays" that people in fact get), but it's what most Europeans retain as The Truth About America. If only because most Europeans (being human) would just look at the graph and not bother to read the text.


I am trying to say, if you read the quote, that the average holiday in US private sector is 15 days, national holiday included, which is 5 days short of most EU countries compulsory holiday days, the national holiday excluded. 

Read the article. That article is about the government sanctioned holiday. As you can see, the graph shows also just 4 weeks by most countries, while in reality the employes get often 5 or even 6 weeks holiday.

Yes, the general and truth picture is that in the US people have much less holiday, and a quarter have none. I think that you should accept this as a fact.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I "should accept it as a fact"? Who are you to say what I should and should not do?

But if we're going that route, you will please acknowledge that a graph labeled "paid annual leave and paid holidays" by country, without specifying that it's leave and holidays *required by the state*, that then shows a number zero for the U.S. is a *lie*. Even if you live in, say, France and can't conceive of anything really existing without the state ordering it to, it's a lie. Just like the France2 reporter who flatly stated on the air during the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case that "the presumption of innocence does not exist in the United States" was either a liar or an idiot, or both. Hence my remark that Europeans hear a lot of bullshit about the U.S. Because that sort of thing's breathtakingly typical.

The problem is, a typical newspaper or website would publish an article about paid leave time and include a graph like that, someone who doesn't have time to read the article would just look the graph, and draw the same conclusion CNGL did. And quite often the newspaper or website would attach a misleading headline to it. After all, it's briefer to say "Americans don't get any vacation" than "Americans don't have a legal entitlement to vacation but most get it anyway."

And we still don't know how many of that 25 percent are working part-time.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Americans are rich in money
Europeans are rich in free time


----------



## Road_UK

...and money....


----------



## x-type

Alex_ZR said:


> Interesting Honda campaign. Press the R button during watching the video.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/user/HondaVideo


so that's the famous commercial that they have filmed 3 months ago here in Rijeka 
media wrote about it, there were spy photos of Civic Type-R in the tunnel on D404, but noone knew what final shape would the commercial have


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> so that's the famous commercial that they have filmed 3 months ago here in Rijeka
> media wrote about it, there were spy photos of Civic Type-R in the tunnel on D403, but noone knew what final shape would the commercial have


You beat me for 2 minutes. Just wanted to say those were Rijeka and Ljubljana in the video.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> ...and money....


...which they then spend on fuel and tolls.

At least those of us/you who like road trips.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Taxation is generally higher in Europe than in the United States. So from apart from the higher overall income, the descretionary spending is also higher for an American. Goods and services have lower taxes. 

In the Netherlands, you can spend your money (after income tax) on goods (21% tax) or cars (65% tax) or fuel (200% tax). :nuts:
On the other hand we do get a more affordable health care in return. Which may not seem like a big deal in your 20s, but is definitely worth something when you are 60+.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ For my recent surgery, 5 days in hospital, followups, and 2 weeks of medications, I spent zero.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Health care's another issue. Although, again, it's a matter of most people being covered so how do we come up with the political will to take care of those who aren't. (My coverage is decent but there's no excuse, morally speaking, for anyone not having coverage in a "rich" society. And yes, we made a big dent in the problem during this presidency but....)

But I try (try) to stay out of politics around here.

EDIT: Arrows for Chris, but it still works.


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^I "should accept it as a fact"? Who are you to say what I should and should not do?
> 
> But if we're going that route, you will please acknowledge that a graph labeled "paid annual leave and paid holidays" by country, without specifying that it's leave and holidays *required by the state*, that then shows a number zero for the U.S. is a *lie*. Even if you live in, say, France and can't conceive of anything really existing without the state ordering it to, it's a lie. Just like the France2 reporter who flatly stated on the air during the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case that "the presumption of innocence does not exist in the United States" was either a liar or an idiot, or both. Hence my remark that Europeans hear a lot of bullshit about the U.S. Because that sort of thing's breathtakingly typical.
> 
> The problem is, a typical newspaper or website would publish an article about paid leave time and include a graph like that, someone who doesn't have time to read the article would just look the graph, and draw the same conclusion CNGL did. And quite often the newspaper or website would attach a misleading headline to it. After all, it's briefer to say "Americans don't get any vacation" than "Americans don't have a legal entitlement to vacation but most get it anyway."
> 
> And we still don't know how many of that 25 percent are working part-time.


You got a quote with it :yes: stating it. You got also the link to that *Harvard* article. I think you overdo it.

Those working part time have also the right for vacation in Europe...


----------



## keber

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ For my recent surgery, 5 days in hospital, followups, and 2 weeks of medications, I spent zero.


Look again at your paycheck to see how much you pay for health security 

As for vacation; I get 25 days. I have one two week vacation and then additional shorter ones. I have a privilege that I can use my overtime work hours as additional free days. Every few years I go to some long trip so I take at least 4 weeks - that is very hard to arrange as my work usually does not allow that.


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> Look again at your paycheck to see how much you pay for health security


I pay nothing for that. The only money they cut from my salary (10% more or less) is for the retirement pension.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

g.spinoza said:


> I pay nothing for that. The only money they cut from my salary (10% more or less) is for the retirement pension.


And you're salary is how much ?


----------



## volodaaaa

- Why does a snake have no balls?






- Because it would look exactly like a d**k.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> I pay nothing for that. The only money they cut from my salary (10% more or less) is for the retirement pension.


Health care is probably funded through the general income tax (which I assume you have to pay as well) and other general taxes. 

There is a separate health insurance in the Netherlands, which is obligatory for all citizens age 18 or over, regardless if you have paid work or not. The rates are usually around € 100 -140 per month, but lower incomes get compensated up to € 75 per month by the government. Many people consider the health insurance 'expensive', even though it covers only about 10% of the real health care cost in the Netherlands. But it managed to eliminate the long waiting lists at hospitals for non-emergency treatments.


----------



## g.spinoza

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> And you're salary is how much ?


Not much. Below average.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Health care is probably funded through the general income tax (which I assume you have to pay as well) and other general taxes.


Personally I don't have to pay any income tax (called IRPEF in Italy). My status is a bit peculiar, though: technically I'm not employed by my institution, I have a fellowship payed for by the state through my institution. It has a very low level of taxation, but several disadvantages as well: for instance the retirement pension tax goes to a separate fund, and my pension will be a lot lower than those issued by the primary fund. Moreover, not paying any IRPEF, I'm not entitled to have any refund (house rent, over-the-counter medicines, etc)


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> I pay nothing for that.


Who does then?


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Who does then?


People who got an actual real job. :bash:


----------



## keber

g.spinoza said:


> I pay nothing for that. The only money they cut from my salary (10% more or less) is for the retirement pension.


Interesting.
From my gross salary I pay approx:
20% income tax
22% retirement fund
6,5% health fund

and my employer pays over my gross salary 16% extra for social services.
So in sum I get around 50% from what my employer pays. My payment is quite above average though.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

g.spinoza said:


> Not much. Below average.


If i am not making a mistake, the average net wage in Italy is 1800 euros?


----------



## g.spinoza

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> If i am not making a mistake, the average net wage in Italy is 1800 euros?


Noooo, much lower. 
Average net wage in Italy has been 1327€ in 2013.

Then I have to say my salary is sliiiiigthly higher.


----------



## hofburg

?? it is supposed to be around 1900€ http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage


----------



## Penn's Woods

Okay, here's a topic: just saw in Le Monde that Canada has closed its borders to people from the countries most affected by Ebola. Which countries those are isn't specified (the talk here has been Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea). No requests for visas will be processed for citizens of those countries, or for people who've been in them in the last three months. Says Australia's already taken the same step.

http://abonnes.lemonde.fr/planete/a...-aux-pays-touches-par-ebola_4516423_3244.html
(Try changing the "abonnes" in that link to "www"; when I try it it just switches back)

There was a flurry of demands in the US a couple of weeks ago to stop direct flights from those countries, but apparently there aren't any and the White House, the World Health Organization and so on are concerned it would do more harm than good.

Discuss.

Verso, I didn't put this in Border Crossings because I knew you wouldn't be happy with that.


----------



## x-type

the company where i work used to collaborate with Guinea about 2-3 years ago, i remember visits of people from there in weird, but cool clothes in various colours that look like silk togas


----------



## g.spinoza

hofburg said:


> ?? it is supposed to be around 1900€ http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage


No way.
Wikipedia is not to be taken seriously. I opened the links regardin Italy but I didn't find any information, nor the 1900€ figure.

I found mine here:
http://www.repubblica.it/economia/2014/09/13/news/stipendio_medio_italiani-95640424/
and also here:
http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/201...-italiani-sotto-i-mille-euro-al-mese/1119792/


----------



## volodaaaa

hofburg said:


> ?? it is supposed to be around 1900€ http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage


I should go to work abroad... :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Nobody gets that kind of wage in Italy... not as a employee, anyway.


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Nobody gets that kind of wage in Italy... not as a employee, anyway.


I know... there are 3 grades of lying: lies, more serious lies and statistics.

I live in the 4th richest region in post 2004 EU :lol: Because of GDP of all the companies that have HQ here.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

1 November 2014: 20 °C in the Netherlands :nuts:


----------



## CNGL

We were up to almost 30ºC until a few days ago :crazy:.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> I know... there are 3 grades of lying: lies, more serious lies and statistics.
> 
> I live in the 4th richest region in post 2004 EU :lol: Because of GDP of all the companies that have HQ here.


For income statistics it should be used the median instead of the average.


----------



## volodaaaa

Media headlines need to be fascinating....


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> 1 November 2014: 20 °C in the Netherlands :nuts:





CNGL said:


> We were up to almost 30ºC until a few days ago :crazy:.


So I turn on the Weather Channel just now and the first thing I see is a meteorologist standing in what looks like a blizzard and the headline "Snow seen as far south as Columbia, South Carolina." The blizzard (not really) was at a ski resort in North Carolina which is planning, thanks to this, to open tomorrow. We then get a report from Chicago featuring 21-foot (something short of 7 meters) waves on Lake Michigan yesterday...Lake Shore Drive was flooded at one point.

Here, 47F/8C at 11 a.m.; forecast high 49/9. 15- to 25-mph (25- to 40ish? km/h) winds expected all day, and rain. I hate a cold rain more than any other weather, possibly. But I'm getting over a cold so I'm staying in. It was warm enough early this week that I had lunch outside (a friend's idea) two days running, and I'm wondering if I can blame said friend for my cold.

And we change the clocks tonight. November may be my least favorite month - I hate the dark evenings even more than cold weather, so if I had to choose between a year of Novembers and a year of Februaries, I'd take the Februaries.

Enjoy the nice weather while it lasts!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The temperature maxed out at 22 ºC :nuts: At many weather stations this was the warmest November day ever recorded.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Hence the "tropical vegetation" that appears, or used to, as a tag on the Belgium thread here!


----------



## Road_UK

Don't talk to me about tags... We used to be able to add tags as well, but this little feast is now reserved for mods only. And some of them must have been drinking heavily...


----------



## Jasper90

Alex_ZR said:


> You mean streets, right? :troll: Streets named after Tito are more common in Istria, than the rest of Croatia.


Yeah, sorry


----------



## Surel

volodaaaa said:


> Some people are unable to distinguish facts. But the most important is, there is no black&white world. Caucescu is a good example. From start he looked like wise and smart leader. He took advantages from being on East, but also maintained good relations with West. In former Czechoslovakia we often don't know how to perceive it, because of his refusal to participate in 1968 Czechoslovakia Invasion. I, personally, still think he should have been sentenced at regular court, not somewhere in the bunker with no lawyers.
> 
> On the other hand, he did not deserve to have public place named after.
> 
> Tito is the similar case. Yugoslavia was the only country to be set free by itself in WW2 under his rule. He really held the country locked together and people did not care about their nationality. For us in the East Bloc, Yugoslavia was something well developed, rich and prospering. Comparing to our stupid crazy and insane elderly leaders completely subordinated to USSR, there was no totality in SFRY at all.
> 
> The bloodshed started soon after his death.


Yeah, Tito kept it there together and he kept it rather prosperous. I would cmpare it to what is now in China, but not so progressive though. I would say that Salazar in Portugal was quite worse, but he did not endorsed the "wrong ideology" of socialism. There are many such examples around the world. A prominent one being e.g. South Africa, which was a terrible regime. Worse than the regimes in the soviet satellites.

Personally, I would not have problem with Tito's streets. That's something that the ex-Yu countries have to decide for themselves.


----------



## bogdymol

Roadtrip time tomorrow: 500 km + 220 km. First stage in Romania, Hungary and Austria. Second stage in Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (UK).


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Tito is the similar case. Yugoslavia was the only country to be set free by itself in WW2 under his rule. He really held the country locked together and people did not care about their nationality. For us in the East Bloc, Yugoslavia was something well developed, rich and prospering. Comparing to our stupid crazy and insane elderly leaders completely subordinated to USSR, there was no totality in SFRY at all.
> 
> The bloodshed started soon after his death.


It's true, but we shouldn't forget the anti-Italian ethnic cleasing committed in the aftermath of WWII. They occupied Trieste in May 1945, killed many civilians on the spot and many other in the "foibe", even buried still alive. Italians had to flee Istria by boat and lost all their properties. In August 1946 they detonated a bomb during a party on a beach near Pola, killing almost 100 Italians and forcing the survivors to return to Italy. Many Italians, including Italian communists (the pro-Moscow Italian PCI became anti-Yugoslavian after Yugoslavia broke relationship with the USSR in 1948), ended their life in Goli Otok.


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ I completely agree with you. 

Btw. Once I see a document about Goli Otok. It was really gross. The officers let prisoners carry rocks from one side of the place to the other, being told, they are going to build Kilimanjaro. After years of hard and useless work, they had been told no Kilimanjaro is actually being build, but Mount Everest, so they have to move the pile of rocks from one side to another. 
It was one of the few gulags in Yugoslavia, but one of the most deadly in World- document said.


----------



## volodaaaa

This fits to another thread, but I've just really burst out laughing


----------



## Verso

My father received a funny e-mail from his friend today:

"My 100-year-old mother-in-law has *(finally)* died." :rofl:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^:nono:


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> It's true, but we shouldn't forget the anti-Italian ethnic cleasing committed in the aftermath of WWII. They occupied Trieste in May 1945, killed many civilians on the spot and many other in the "foibe", even buried still alive. Italians had to flee Istria by boat and lost all their properties. In August 1946 they detonated a bomb during a party on a beach near Pola, killing almost 100 Italians and forcing the survivors to return to Italy. Many Italians, including Italian communists (the pro-Moscow Italian PCI became anti-Yugoslavian after Yugoslavia broke relationship with the USSR in 1948), ended their life in Goli Otok.


There's a woman who does Italian food shows here who's from Pola: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidia_Bastianich


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^:nono:


Black humor.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> It's true, but we shouldn't forget the anti-Italian ethnic cleasing committed in the aftermath of WWII. They occupied Trieste in May 1945, killed many civilians on the spot and many other in the "foibe", even buried still alive. Italians had to flee Istria by boat and lost all their properties. In August 1946 they detonated a bomb during a party on a beach near Pola, killing almost 100 Italians and forcing the survivors to return to Italy. Many Italians, including Italian communists (the pro-Moscow Italian PCI became anti-Yugoslavian after Yugoslavia broke relationship with the USSR in 1948), ended their life in Goli Otok.


ironic - after that Goli Otok was used as prison for anti-yugoslav and anti-communist people (and it was not hard to be accused as anti-communist)


----------



## Verso

http://goo.gl/maps/I97s1

I lost my car's exhaust pipe here in 2001. Don't ask me what I was doing with a Peugeot 405 on this crappy road in the middle of nowhere.


----------



## keokiracer

I was kinda expecting you to show us your exhaust pipe just laying there on Streetview


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> http://goo.gl/maps/I97s1
> 
> I lost my car's exhaust pipe here in 2001. Don't ask me what I was doing with a Peugeot 405 on this crappy road in the middle of nowhere.


:lol:
So why have you started? :lol:


----------



## Verso

Started what? :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> Started what? :lol:


to talk about it :lol:


----------



## Verso

Well, I wanted to see the road. :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

My fiancée has gotten the driver's licence today, so I take her to traffic. I am still alive...


----------



## Road_UK

Because you are driving?


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> http://goo.gl/maps/I97s1
> 
> I lost my car's exhaust pipe here in 2001. Don't ask me what I was doing with a Peugeot 405 on this crappy road in the middle of nowhere.


well, you don't have to tell us. it looks like just a normal car-dating place, so it's obvious what you've been doing there.


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> well, you don't have to tell us. it looks like just a normal car-dating place, so it's obvious what you've been doing there.


And Peugeot 405 seems to be roomy enough....


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> And Peugeot 405 seems to be roomy *spacious* enough....


Yours truly


----------



## Penn's Woods

Sad car-related news:

http://www.npr.org/2014/11/03/357428287/tom-magliozzi-popular-co-host-of-nprs-car-talk-dies-at-77


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> well, you don't have to tell us. it looks like just a normal car-dating place, so it's obvious what you've been doing there.


No, it wasn't that, keep in mind that we're roadgeeks here. :lol:


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ So on the gravel? Ouch


----------



## Alex_ZR

Interesting question for which I couldn't find answer: why do modern electronics like mobile phones, digital cameras, etc, have starting date in some distant year like 1980, even if they are being produced since 2012?


----------



## Broccolli

They say that Rakova Jelša is the most dangerous place in Ljubljana. 

Just look at this creepy volleyball court 

https://www.google.si/maps/@46.0188...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1spOGDJxlHnzQpNSv3q596xA!2e0


----------



## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> Interesting question for which I couldn't find answer: why do modern electronics like mobile phones, digital cameras, etc, have starting date in some distant year like 1980, even if they are being produced since 2012?


It is 1.1.1970. This day was set up as a starting day for all digital technologies. Because the time is measured in microseconds and every microsecond matter. 

I work with PHP and if I write "Time()" it prints the current time passed in microseconds since 1/1/1970. Actually it is not current time, but the time, when the command was processed :lol:

For all actions, you need the unique timestamp, which should be unified in all devices ;-)


----------



## Alex_ZR

volodaaaa said:


> It is 1.1.1970. This day was set up as a starting day for all digital technologies. Because the time is measured in microseconds and every microsecond matter.
> 
> I work with PHP and if I write "Time()" it prints the current time passed in microseconds since 1/1/1970. Actually it is not current time, but the time, when the command was processed :lol:
> 
> For all actions, you need the unique timestamp, which should be unified in all devices ;-)


You probably mean this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time


----------



## Verso

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ So on the gravel? Ouch


What ouch?


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> I work with PHP and if I write "Time()" it prints the current time passed in microseconds since 1/1/1970.


Actually either you don't work with PHP or you have no idea about what you're talking about. If the latter is true, I feel sorry for your boss


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ Actually I've mixed up time() function with microtime(). Is it a big deal? I do scripts for my own purposes so there is no boss to feel sorry for.


----------



## ChrisZwolle




----------



## keokiracer

But...But... What about my WTF?


----------



## volodaaaa

definitely a bad name


----------



## bigic

ChrisZwolle said:


>


Where is this anti-txt-drv sign located?


----------



## volodaaaa

Which term is more correct for British English?
urbanization or urbanisation? The latter one?


----------



## bigic

Nevermind, the LOL and OMG sign is located in Massachusetts.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Which term is more correct for British English?
> urbanization or urbanisation? The latter one?


I used to think of -ise/-isation as the British spelling in words like that (because Americans always use Z), but I think it's more complicated than that. I'll look up Fowler* when I get home. After I've voted. 

*http://www.amazon.com/Fowlers-Modern-English-Usage-Burchfield/dp/0198610211


----------



## Attus

Twenty years ago my English teacher (an American woman) always said that spelling with 's' was 'very British'


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> I used to think of -ise/-isation as the British spelling in words like that (because Americans always use Z), but I think it's more complicated than that. I'll look up Fowler* when I get home. After I've voted.
> 
> *http://www.amazon.com/Fowlers-Modern-English-Usage-Burchfield/dp/0198610211


We should ask suburbanist :lol: Thank you in advance btw.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I think Fowler recommends Z even though lots of Brits prefer S. And he was writing 90 years ago. But that's what I want to double-check.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

volodaaaa said:


> definitely a bad name


Like a goat :saaaaad and maaaaaaaaan


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^I think Fowler recommends Z even though lots of Brits prefer S. And he was writing 90 years ago. But that's what I want to double-check.


Fowler (who was writing mainly for a British audience) does recommend Z and says the Oxford and Cambridge university presses and The Times all prefer it.

Collins' English Dictionary, which is also basically a British one, says Z is "preferred," S "also acceptable."

But this is for verbs where the -ize is the one originating in Greek. "Surprise" and "advise," for example, are always spelled with S because they have nothing to do with that.

We could, of course, ask our Brits to weigh in....


----------



## volodaaaa

Thank you very much for that.

Btw. how was the vote?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Took about three minutes. No wait, and I knew how I wanted to vote.

Today it's the whole House of Representatives, a third of the Senate (no Senate seat in Pennsylvania this time); governors in most states (including Pennsylvania); state legislatures in many states (lower house in Pennsylvania). Philadelphia ballot also included amendments to the city charter and a "bond issue" - authority to the city to borrow money for particular things.

Polls close in Pennsylvania at 8 p.m. my time - 2 a.m. in most of Europe.
The most suspense nationally is in who will control the Senate; the governor's race is important here as well.


----------



## Road_UK

My friend in Kentucky invited me to vote, because even dead people can vote-- apparently.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Close Senate race there.

There is an old saying in Chicago: "vote early, vote often."

But how do you spell urbani[s/z]ation?


----------



## Road_UK

Urbanisation. My British spell checker has excepted it. Urbanization: My British spell checker likes America.

Labor, Color is contraband though.


----------



## volodaaaa

I am just curious. Do the politicians in US change their effort as the upcoming elections are getting closer? Because we have communal elections here in two weeks and politicians are elected for 4 year terms. All out of them were like sleeping for the first three years and now, whole city is under construction, there is roadwork in every street, no mention freshly purchased trams have arrived to the city. Sometimes I wish there should be shorter terms and elections annually.


----------



## Jasper90

I thought the opposite: urbanization for UK and urbanisation for US. Nice to know it's viceversa-ish


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> I am just curious. Do the politicians in US change their effort as the upcoming elections are getting closer? Because we have communal elections here in two weeks and politicians are elected for 4 year terms. All out of them were like sleeping for the first three years and now, whole city is under construction, there is roadwork in every street, no mention freshly purchased trams have arrived to the city. Sometimes I wish there should be shorter terms and elections annually.


I think politicians are politicians, no matter the country.


----------



## Road_UK

Jasper90 said:


> I thought the opposite: urbanization for UK and urbanisation for US. Nice to know it's viceversa-ish


US has "izms" as where the UK uses "isms".

US: Authorized 
UK: Authorised. 

But there are some other differences as well:

US: Trash can
UK: Rubbish bin

US: Trunk
UK: Boot

US: Color, Labor
UK: Colour, Labour

US: Hood
UK: Bonnet

US: Fries
UK: Chips

I am sure there are loads more, these were just a few out of the top of my head...


----------



## Jasper90

Road_UK said:


> US has "izms" as where the UK uses "isms".
> 
> US: Authorized
> UK: Authorised.
> 
> But there are some other differences as well:
> 
> US: Trash can
> UK: Rubbish bin
> 
> US: Trunk
> UK: Boot
> 
> US: Color, Labor
> UK: Colour, Labour
> 
> US: Hood
> UK: Bonnet
> 
> US: Fries
> UK: Chips
> 
> I am sure there are loads more, these were just a few out of the top of my head...


US: Truck
UK: Lorry

(right?)


----------



## keokiracer

Jasper90 said:


> US: Truck
> UK: Lorry
> 
> (right?)


I'd say US: Semi / 18-wheeler

Truck is usually used when talking about a pick-up truck.


----------



## Kanadzie

True but could go either way... like if you are shipping something "by truck", or a "truck driver"


----------



## volodaaaa

and double l (small L) in some derived words: travel(l)er, label(l)ed...


----------



## Road_UK

Jasper90 said:


> US: Truck
> UK: Lorry
> 
> (right?)


That's right. Lorry-driver vs truck-driver.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> US has "izms" as where the UK uses "isms".


Not true. :bash:
(Can't even take a nap around here....)


----------



## Kanadzie

isms are always isms, and there are more Brits named Izzy


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> Not true. :bash:
> (Can't even take a nap around here....)


What is not true?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Belgium may face major electricity problems this winter. Several nuclear reactors are out of service and transmission grids are not sufficient to import the electricity needed from other countries (the Netherlands has several idling / mothballed power plants). 

So it is quite likely Belgium will see rolling blackouts during the winter. They say they may even need to shut down the nationwide railroad network for the whole day in the event of a regional blackout.

So campaigns have started to get citizens to reduce electricity consumption to avoid extended blackouts.


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> Close Senate race there.
> 
> There is an old saying in Chicago: "vote early, vote often."
> 
> But how do you spell urbani[s/z]ation?


Hehe, the biggest Czech/Slovak city at the time....


----------



## bigic

Why not just increase the price? It's the free market solution! 
Seriously, Serbia also had problems with their electricity plants during the winter 2 years ago and there was a massive energy conservation campaign on the media.
Luckily, the blackouts were rare, at least in my area.


----------



## Fatfield

As someone who has worked in the print trade for 33 years now, I can categorically state that 'ism' is British & 'izm' is US. However, either are acceptable when using written English. There is no right or wrong.

Ass, color, neighbor etc are abhorrent examples of written English. Its arse, colour, neighbour etc. Get it right!


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> What is not true?


We do not spell "Communism," "organism," and the like, with a Z.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Russians do 

Коммунизм - Kommunizm


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> We do not spell "Communism," "organism," and the like, with a Z.


But I think you say communize, organize, etc... I think Road referred that,


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Russians do
> 
> Коммунизм - Kommunizm


And they know it best :lol:


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> But I think you say communize, organize, etc... I think Road referred that,


Exactly. That's what I meant...


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Revisionizm. :jk:


----------



## hofburg

gdp/capita in Europe from 1950-1990.

Showing how in 1950 differences were relatively small, and the impact of Marshall plan and free market against the USSR politics









http://dev3.cepr.org/meets/wkcn/1/1699/papers/Broadberry_Klein.pdf


----------



## bigic

It's nicely seen in the example of two neighbours, Austria and Czechoslovakia. In 1950 they had similar GDPs, but Austria's grew faster than Czechoslovakia's.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In some cases the GDP per capita declined from 1973 to 1990, notably in East Germany.


----------



## hofburg

maybe because of oil crisis in 1973. In Yugoslavia gdp also dropped more than 10% in '80-81, and again in '90-'91. Inflation in '88 was more than 200%.


----------



## Spookvlieger

ChrisZwolle said:


> Belgium may face major electricity problems this winter. Several nuclear reactors are out of service and transmission grids are not sufficient to import the electricity needed from other countries (the Netherlands has several idling / mothballed power plants).
> 
> So it is quite likely Belgium will see rolling blackouts during the winter. They say they may even need to shut down the nationwide railroad network for the whole day in the event of a regional blackout.
> 
> So campaigns have started to get citizens to reduce electricity consumption to avoid extended blackouts.


Fearmongering. I want to bet 100euro's with you there won't be even a single blackout. The thing is Dutch newsqpapers are eating the story like sugar.

There is a problem with power due to our nuclear powerplants, but it's not as dramatic as portrayed in the media. And certainly not as dramatic as portrayed in the Dutch media. It's like you guys are drooling over something like this to happen in Belgium hno:


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> In some cases the GDP per capita declined from 1973 to 1990, notably in East Germany.


East Germany and Poland. Romania had great progress.


----------



## Suburbanist

EU really needs to boost a continent-wide grid, especially if it wants to tap renewables.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've read Germany has a major problem with its grid, to get energy produced in the north to southern consumers.


----------



## AsHalt

Suburbanist said:


> EU really needs to boost a continent-wide grid, especially if it wants to tap renewables.


That's would be too fragile against any possible security slip ups like getting hacked or a power buildup plus who's going to support such a infrastructure....


----------



## Alex_ZR

Sounds unusual that Yugoslavia had lower GDP than most of the Eastern block countries, but had higher living standard. IMF loans did it...


----------



## Penn's Woods

hofburg said:


> gdp/capita in Europe from 1950-1990.
> 
> Showing how in 1950 differences were relatively small, and the impact of Marshall plan and free market against the USSR politics
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://dev3.cepr.org/meets/wkcn/1/1699/papers/Broadberry_Klein.pdf


Greetings from the outlier.


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've read Germany has a major problem with its grid, to get energy produced in the north to southern consumers.


Yeah, it frequently pushes the limits of the Polish and Czech power grid when it is windy in North Germany and Denmark. Too much of the electricity has to flow through the Czech Republic then to either South Germany or Austria which creates instability.

It is not so easy to block that energy once its flows. The Poles, I think, have already started building it, it is a sort of switch. The Czechs were not yet finished with it.

It is a special kind of transformer - a phase shifter.

The point is that Germans don't want to bear the costs of creating this instability. Poles were able to get them to some agreement, the Czechs did not have this luck, but I read that it in fact did not really work anyway. So it seems that only a real thread of closing the flow will make them do anything about it. Therefore those phase shifters need to be built. The Germans are not happy about it, but they installed the same phase shifters on its western borders... I think that the Dutch have also built similar transformers. 


The costs of those PST would be some € 100 mil for the Czechs and should be working in 2017.

Germans are currently busy with connecting their north and south networks though. It comprises some 2800 kms of power grid worth € 10 bil.

http://www.elektrina.cz/invazi-zele...-zastavi-obri-transformatory-v-cesku-i-polsku









http://ceskapozice.lidovky.cz/cesko...pb8-/tema.aspx?c=A130520_221912_pozice_127342
http://ceskapozice.lidovky.cz/nemec...-dyc-/tema.aspx?c=A121227_112903_pozice_89081


----------



## Suburbanist

AsHalt said:


> That's would be too fragile against any possible security slip ups like getting hacked or a power buildup plus who's going to support such a infrastructure....


It is the only way to rely heavily on renewables... There is a huge potential for a combination of plenty of solar plants on the Mediterranean + wind plants on Northern Europe + geothermal in Scandinavia/Iceland/Scotland, but this needs a grids to carry energy around.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> It is the only way to rely heavily on renewables... There is a huge potential for a combination of plenty of solar plants on the Mediterranean + wind plants on Northern Europe + geothermal in Scandinavia/Iceland/Scotland, but this needs a grids to carry energy around.


It will probably happen when we will runout of oil. Hopefully we will turn towards renewables instead of nuclear.


----------



## Broccolli

Electric car made by Primary school students


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Surel said:


> Yeah, it frequently pushes the limits of the Polish and Czech power grid when it is windy in North Germany and Denmark. Too much of the electricity has to flow through the Czech Republic then to either South Germany or Austria which creates instability.


Wait, so the Northern and Southern parts of the German electric grid are only connected via the Czech Republic? :nuts: Or is it that the current connections don't have enough capacity to carry the electricity to the South?


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've read Germany has a major problem with its grid, to get energy produced in the north to southern consumers.


Yes. And the Bavarian government protests agains constructing new electric wires. They close nuclear plants, do not want to have wires from the North Sea, but of course they would like to have electricity.


----------



## keber

Surel said:


> It is not so easy to block that energy once its flows. The Poles, I think, have already started building it, it is a sort of switch. The Czechs were not yet finished with it.
> 
> It is a special kind of transformer - a phase shifter.


There is one built quite recently in Slovenia for 50 million euro to help with problems because of large electricity import into Italy from SE Europe. It has positive effect on the electricity networks in whole Alpine region. It has the largest phase angle in the world - 40° - if anyone can understand that 
It was first transported over railway (heaviest load up to now - on a special railcar with 32 axles) - twice for two parts




and then on the road on that special vehicle:








Photo and movie source: http://www.vlaki.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5887
There are not many of them in Europe but their number is increasing as more electricity is traded over internal borders.


----------



## volodaaaa

An automobile catalogue of TUZEX company (providing the purchase of western European products in Czechoslovakia) from 1988.

Please note the English was pretty much rare in Czechoslovakia before 1989


----------



## Surel

Attus said:


> Yes. And the Bavarian government protests agains constructing new electric wires. They close nuclear plants, do not want to have wires from the North Sea, but of course they would like to have electricity.


Something like the Austrians :lol:.

Anyway, the nuclear filter is still there: http://www.nucleostop.de/. Well this one was a satire, but still there were people that tried to order it.


----------



## Surel

keber said:


> There is one built quite recently in Slovenia for 50 million euro to help with problems because of large electricity import into Italy from SE Europe. It has positive effect on the electricity networks in whole Alpine region. It has the largest phase angle in the world - 40° - if anyone can understand that
> It was first transported over railway (heaviest load up to now - on a special railcar with 32 axles) - twice for two parts
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Photo and movie source: http://www.vlaki.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5887
> There are not many of them in Europe but their number is increasing as more electricity is traded over internal borders.


I am trying to create a Power grids, Oil pipelines, Gas pipelines, Water management, Communication grids, section on the infrastructure forum. If it gets enough support it could get opened. If you want to support it, I started a thread about it here: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1772697

I think it is interesting topic, it is quite to the point these days (as energy discussions become more and more relevant), so worth a dedicated section in the infrastructure forum.

Anyone feeling like supporting such section? Go here: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1772697


----------



## Surel

Rebasepoiss said:


> Wait, so the Northern and Southern parts of the German electric grid are only connected via the Czech Republic? :nuts: Or is it that the current connections don't have enough capacity to carry the electricity to the South?


It doesn't have enough capacity to handle the peak times, when the photovoltaic or the wind turbines kick in.

Germany did not build the grid as a one country, so the connection between West and East Germany is not that good, which effects the current North-South connection within Germany.

The capacity between Germany and the Czech Republic on the other side is quite good, at the peak hours, almost 50 % of the additional capacity can go through CZ.

They are not sure if there can be an actual danger of black out just because of the German electricity, but in the peak times there is almost no reserve capacity left in the Czech network. So if there would be emergency in the Czech network, there is no capacity and the network could collapse in the south east.

The record was 3.5 GW flowing across Czech borders in 2012 with total flow between North Germany and Austria 7.3 GW. That is power output of the 7th world biggest power plant, or 3,5 outputs of the Hoover damn.

There are many pumped-storage damns in Austria and Switzerland, so the electricity from the wind turbines and solar panels can be stored there as potential energy of the water. But it has to get there first.


----------



## Penn's Woods

The Chelsea supporter in the office is not happy with Slovenia, or at least Slovenian clubs. I'm just sayin'.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Do you guys know what is this for:https://www.google.rs/maps/@59.130974,11.2675466,3a,65.1y,23.54h,93.19t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sdWpNrY9lM9XQyRV9WcELDw!2e0 ?


----------



## Verso

Geez, I've just had like 5 different wines, I'm so fuking drunk. The last one said "teasing wine", so I'm not surprised, OMFG... :dead:


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ Its possible to get drunk from wine?


----------



## AsHalt

Yes ,but pretty rediculous.


----------



## Verso

Wait, I've had blueberry liqueur as well. :laugh:


----------



## Kanadzie

oh, slivovice! :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> Geez, I've just had like 5 different wines, I'm so fuking drunk. The last one said "teasing wine", so I'm not surprised, OMFG...












 Once I've taken part at conference and it contained degustation of wine. It was in Czech republic in Strážnice. The owner of the wine cellar was pure Czechoslovakist so he called everyone bro and poured everyone about 7-8 samples. But the "sample" was de facto full size wine glass. He was still repeating "Come on bro, finish it bro, I have another sample bro". I got drunk in 25 minutes although he offered us scratchings, he called "Moravian Muesli"


----------



## Jasper90

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ Its possible to get drunk from wine?





AsHalt said:


> Yes ,but pretty rediculous.


Are you serious? :lol:
I've had the best drunks of my life, with only wine!! :booze:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Geez, I've just had like 5 different wines, I'm so fuking drunk. The last one said "teasing wine", so I'm not surprised, OMFG... :dead:


And what you do when drunk is hang out at SSC?

(Hmm. Maybe I should try drunk-posting.)

Well, DrunkVerso tonight will be HungoverVerso tomorrow.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> And what you do when drunk is hang out at SSC?
> 
> (Hmm. Maybe I should try drunk-posting.)
> 
> Well, DrunkVerso tonight will be HungoverVerso tomorrow.


It is the next level after ex-messaging :cheers:


----------



## Peines

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ Its possible to get drunk from wine?


HELL YES

:cheers:


----------



## g.spinoza

Was Kanadzie's a real question? To me it sounds like "does the sun shine?"


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

In Serbia many teens dring so as my friends,but i have never drink alcohol drinks. 
I am souch a geek.


----------



## keber

Maybe he's too young to know that. Next time he should ask first us more experienced :scouserd:


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> Maybe he's too young to know that. Next time he should ask first us more experienced :scouserd:


You know, last month I was in Slovenia at a conference, and they gave me a bottle of Slovenian wine for chairing a session, as a gift. Can't wait to get drunk with it (as soon as I get better from my surgery)


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> And what you do when drunk is hang out at SSC?


We just had a dinner, but it took them so long to cook it that we got drunk in the meantime.


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> You know, last month I was in Slovenia at a conference, and they gave me a bottle of Slovenian wine for chairing a session, as a gift. Can't wait to get drunk with it (as soon as I get better from my surgery)


I think there is one of the oldest winery in Slovenia in Maribor. AFAIK it is called Stara Trta. Very good wine.


----------



## Fatfield

volodaaaa said:


> I think there is one of the oldest winery in Slovenia in Maribor. AFAIK it is called Stara Trta. Very good wine.


That's probably where the Chelsea team had been before the match.


----------



## g.spinoza

This is a picture of the Slovenian wine (I don't have it with me right now):


----------



## keber

That's not a lot of wine. Are you sure you'll get drunk with that?

(although I admit, I probably can withstand quite a lot more alcohol than an average person here)


----------



## hofburg

@Autoputevikaohobi

good for you


----------



## Verso

Interesting bottle, but I can't see what it says.



volodaaaa said:


> I think there is one of the oldest winery in Slovenia in Maribor. AFAIK it is called Stara Trta. Very good wine.


The oldest in the world, over 400 years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Žametovka (check out "See also" )


----------



## Broccolli

Chelsea fan goes berserk! (at 1:55) :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

It's this one:


----------



## Broccolli

^^
That looks expensive


----------



## Verso

From the Vipava Valley, that's where H4 runs.


----------



## keokiracer

Broccolli said:


> Chelsea fan goes berserk! (at 1:55) :lol:


Reminded me of this


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> From the Vipava Valley, that's where H4 runs.


I was hoping it was more local, from around Kranj where the conference took place... but I'm gonna drink it anyway


----------



## volodaaaa

Fatfield said:


> That's probably where the Chelsea team had been before the match.


Probably one of the stops during Wineries eurotrip.


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> I was hoping it was more local, from around Kranj where the conference took place... but I'm gonna drink it anyway


There're no vineyards around Kranj.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovenian_wine#Climate_and_geography


----------



## Penn's Woods

Friend of mine tried Canadian wine near Niagara Falls a few weeks ago....


----------



## bigic

On the topic of oil smuggling between Turkey and neighbouring countries that was brought up earlier, there is an interesting article:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikegiglio/this-is-how-isis-smuggles-oil


----------



## keber

Broccolli said:


> ^^
> That looks expensive


10 € at most. Fancy bottles cost almost nothing.
Remember, it's a "quality wine" not a "premium wine" 

Don't worry g.spinoza, it is still a good wine.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> That's not a lot of wine. Are you sure you'll get drunk with that?
> 
> (although I admit, I probably can withstand quite a lot more alcohol than an average person here)


The second photo of the bottle shows that is a standard-size 0,75l.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Le Monde thinks the Yankees and Mets are "mythic" American-football teams. Mythic, indeed.


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> 10 € at most. Fancy bottles cost almost nothing.
> Remember, it's a "quality wine" not a "premium wine"
> 
> Don't worry g.spinoza, it is still a good wine.


I didn't expect a premium wine, not for just chairing a session at a conference.


----------



## CNGL

Penn's Woods said:


> Le Monde thinks the Yankees and Mets are "mythic" American-football teams. Mythic, indeed.


Then the Jets and Giants are mythic baseball teams. Oh, wait, there IS a baseball team named the Giants, they have won the World Series last week!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

American sports have little interest in the Dutch media. Although the public broadcaster did publish some very, very condensed versions of the World Series. I think most Dutch even believe Michael Jordan is still playing professional basketball. 

Out of the American sports, I think Hockey and Football receive close to no attention in the Netherlands. Basketball and Baseball sometimes receive some limited attention, mainly the World Series. We did play baseball or softball in high school though. 

American sports seem more 'family friendly' than soccer/football in Europe though. You rarely read about hooliganism. Though European hooliganism also seems to be reduced.


----------



## x-type

last week there was short report about MLB finals in the sports news. i think that most of people cared for it just as they would care for, dunno, regional figure skating competition in Kazakhstan.

NBA and, more or less, NHL though are followed. we use(d) to have live coverage in the night and even tv shows about it.


----------



## g.spinoza

Hockey is basically unknown in Italy, except maybe in Alto Adige/Sudtirol. The most followed American sport in Italy is surely basketball. Personally, I find baseball really uninteresting, while I love American football. Some 20 years ago I remember a Sunday morning show on TV, all about American football (recaps of matches, drafts, etc), and I remember watching the 49ers crush the Broncos in 1989 Superbowl. I'm not sure, but I think NFL is not broadcasted (broadcast?) anymore on Italian television.


----------



## Attus

Media can change people's interests. 10-12 years ago there was only some dozens of people in Hungary that interested in American Football. Yes, we all knew it is something with an egg shaped ball which is dominantly not kicked (just like in European Football which is called soccer in North America) but thrown, and that's all.
And then a sports TV channel called Sport 1 started boradcasting NFL games. And not only one or two but quite much of them. And suddenly lots of people followed those games although there are broadcasted late night in Hungary (i.e. broadcasting is LIVE but when the games are played, it is night in Europe). Nowadays many people know NFL teams, the best players, tactics, rules of the game, etc. 
15 years ago there were no more than one hundred people in Hungary that had any idea about what an interception was. Now several millions know it.


----------



## x-type

huh, i find even baseball more interesting than american football. i simply cannot watch the match which is being interrupted each 15 seconds, and after that interruption follows 3 minutes of setting up the tactics (by men in the funniest possible costumes in the sport world). rugby is much more interesting.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I find rugby too messy, with no discernible rules. Am football is much more rigorous and orderly.


----------



## riiga

x-type said:


> huh, i find even baseball more interesting than american football. i simply cannot watch the match which is being interrupted each 15 seconds, and after that interruption follows 3 minutes of setting up the tactics (by men in the funniest possible costumes in the sport world). rugby is much more interesting.


And don't forget the commercials interrupting. "We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors..."


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> American sports have little interest in the Dutch media. Although the public broadcaster did publish some very, very condensed versions of the World Series. I think most Dutch even believe Michael Jordan is still playing professional basketball.
> 
> Out of the American sports, I think Hockey and Football receive close to no attention in the Netherlands. Basketball and Baseball sometimes receive some limited attention, mainly the World Series. We did play baseball or softball in high school though.
> 
> American sports seem more 'family friendly' than soccer/football in Europe though. You rarely read about hooliganism. Though European hooliganism also seems to be reduced.


The French and Belgian media I mostly follow pay far more attention to the NBA than anything else. They may even publish NBA scores during the season just like they'll publish other countries' first-division soccer scores. Seen minimal coverage of the World Series and Super Bowl (and yes, "World Series" is a silly name), never anything about the NHL.

Glad to hear hooliganism is being reduced.



g.spinoza said:


> Hockey is basically unknown in Italy, except maybe in Alto Adige/Sudtirol. The most followed American sport in Italy is surely basketball. Personally, I find baseball really uninteresting, while I love American football. Some 20 years ago I remember a Sunday morning show on TV, all about American football (recaps of matches, drafts, etc), and I remember watching the 49ers crush the Broncos in 1989 Superbowl. I'm not sure, but I think NFL is not broadcasted (broadcast?) anymore on Italian television.


"Hockey" in Belgium means what we'd call "field hockey," and seems to be fairly big there. "Hockey" here, of course, is ice hockey. I've never been interested in it, perhaps because my parents weren't...as a child I was taken to baseball, (American) football, basketball, and even soccer matches, but never hockey. For soccer, this was in the days of the North American Soccer League. Pele, Beckenbauer and so on playing for the New York Cosmos.

And yes, the past of "broadcast" is "broadcast." 




g.spinoza said:


> ^^ I find rugby too messy, with no discernible rules. Am football is much more rigorous and orderly.


I've described rugby (BBC America shows the Six Nations) as "like football but more chaotic."

-----

We're getting lots more soccer on TV than we used to, just in the last few years; one channel makes a thing of the Premier League and shows several of them live every week (streams all of them on its website, I believe).

It's interesting to note differences between countries in Europe: rugby's big in France but seems to be nearly unknown in Belgium. And cricket is a British thing that didn't catch on elsewhere. Probably because it's silly. :jk:


----------



## Penn's Woods

By the way, the Mets/Yankees thing was sort of in passing. I just looked it up again. Le Monde's fashion-and-lifestyle magazine has a sort of New York theme this week and I was glancing through it, and there's an item about the phenomenon of celebrities showing up at Knicks (basketball) games. The writer sort of remarks that New York has two "mythic American-football teams" - the aforementioned Mets and Yankees - so Yankee Stadium (again, baseball actually) could have become the place for celebrities to see and be seen, but basketball's played indoors.

But I have a feeling they'd be merciless if the New York Times mistook PSG for a rugby team....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Possibly, Singapore: 90 km/h. Of the larger countries, probably Japan: 100 km/h.

Japan also has a general 60 km/h speed limit on all roads inside and outside urban areas. But nearly all roads of significance have been replaced by at least single carriageway expressways where they usually allow 70 km/h. In addition, Japanese non-expressway, non-urban roads nearly all run through mountainous terrain. Flat areas are often densely build-up.


----------



## AsHalt

Singapore?

Actually it's much lower for the lowest here. KPE : 70 kmh


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> Overheard on the way to work (re a previous topic):
> 
> Young woman talking to young man about what sports she likes.
> 
> Young man: "Well, football's not really football - it's advertising."


Actually I hate when I'm watching advertisements that are interrupted by sport.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^At least American "professional" athletes don't wear uniforms with sponsors' logos. No danger of thinking Vodafone is playing Emirates....


----------



## volodaaaa

Imagine following situation:

You have an intersection with following lanes (from left to right)
- left turning lane
- two through lanes
- one through and right turning lane in one.

You are first in the line waiting on the traffic lights wanting to turn right in the last mentioned lane. As the red turns to green you realise you basically wanted to turn left on the intersection. What would you do:

a) go on, turn right and then find a place to turn around to get back to the intersection and carry on in correct direction,

b) turn the indicator left and try to get from the rightmost lane to the leftmost one, holding up the whole traffic behind you.

Yes. Today I've seen the moron who had chosen b. They exist.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^At least American "professional" athletes don't wear uniforms with sponsors' logos. No danger of thinking Vodafone is playing Emirates....


Good for you. I am huge fan of ice hockey and really appreciate how is the ice rink of NHL clear.

The exact opposite of our national league. the ice is full of scribbles. sometimes it is even difficult to track the puck :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> b) turn the indicator left and try to get from the rightmost lane to the leftmost one, holding up the whole traffic behind you.
> 
> Yes. Today I've seen the moron who had chosen b. They exist.


Come to Turin. I see them every day at this intersection:
http://goo.gl/maps/afJCa

(this pic is old, now there are arrows painted on the asphalt). Basically left lane for turning left, two central lanes for going straight, right lane for turnin right. The rightmost lane is always full of people who want to go straight so they merge in front of you very fast, and you always have to brake.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^At least American "professional" athletes don't wear uniforms with sponsors' logos. No danger of thinking Vodafone is playing Emirates....


Or Qatar against Azerbaijan:








(_For those that are not familiar with European football/soccer: red-white is Atletico Madrid and red-blue is FC Barcelona_).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's all about the money.


----------



## cinxxx

g.spinoza said:


> Come to Turin. I see them every day at this intersection:
> http://goo.gl/maps/afJCa
> 
> (this pic is old, now there are arrows painted on the asphalt). Basically left lane for turning left, two central lanes for going straight, right lane for turnin right. The rightmost lane is always full of people who want to go straight so they merge in front of you very fast, and you always have to brake.


I think those people know exactly what they are doing. They don't want to wait in line with the others, so they use the shorter line. Romania is also full of these "experts" :bash:


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> I think those people know exactly what they are doing. They don't want to wait in line with the others, so they use the shorter line. Romania is also full of these "experts" :bash:


Of course they do. That's what annoys me most. That, and the fact that no one (police) cares.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's all about the money.


it's all about arabic money.


----------



## Broccolli

Slovenian police in new colours (they added fluorescent yellow pattern)



























http://www.rtvslo.si/slovenija/policijska-vozila-se-bodo-svetila-tudi-fluorescentno-rumeno/350811


----------



## Road_UK

Copied from the British, with their Health and Safety obsession.


----------



## Broccolli

Similar indeed, but it seems like yellow is becoming the police-color in more and more European countries...must be some EU "thing" 



Thermo said:


> French gendarmerie also going yellow
> 
> Gendarmerie by Emergency_Vehicles, on Flickr





Minato ku said:


>





Deadeye Reloaded said:


> The police of Schleswig-Holstein received the first batch of 117 new police cars.














Thermo said:


> Recently, Norway and Denmark changed their police livery to more yellow:
> 
> DK:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> NO:


----------



## VITORIA MAN

in spain , too much police : national , civil , local , regional...
Cuerpo Nacional de Policía by Xavier_15, on Flickr
Guardia Civil by Xavier_15, on Flickr
Toyota Prius Hibrid by Juanillo..., on Flickr
Ertzaintza by Xavier_15, on Flickr


----------



## Verso

I'm trying to figure out whether Trieste is actually larger than Rijeka, or not really. They both have ~200,000 inhabitants with suburbs. Let an Italian-Croatian flamewar begin. :cheers:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^You'd be in tennis-spectator mode. Looking left, then right, then left, then right....


----------



## g.spinoza

Well, city proper are Trieste~200k while Rijeka~120k. It's true that Trieste has few suburbs but I don't think Rijeka ones add up more than 80k.


----------



## Jasper90

Verso said:


> I'm trying to figure out whether Trieste is actually larger than Rijeka, or not really. They both have ~200,000 inhabitants with suburbs. Let an Italian-Croatian flamewar begin. :cheers:


When I visited them, I felt that Trieste was a bit larger. But Fiume is maybe more important, because it's the 3rd largest city in Croatia, unlike Trieste which isn't even in the Italian top 10.
They're both lovely cities, Rijeka was a big surprise to me! It has a huge potential and it seems that they've decided to begin exploiting it.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> Or Qatar against Azerbaijan:
> 
> (_For those that are not familiar with European football/soccer: red-white is Atletico Madrid and red-blue is FC Barcelona_).


It also irritates me when the company name is incorporated in club's name.

There was a volleyball team called Slávia Bratislava and they've renamed it to Slávia Kúpele Dudince Bratislava.

It sounds same ridiculous like e.g. Calgary Denver Spa Flames :lol: Or HC RI Okná Zlín.

Imagine a team called Dallas Aluminum Windows Stars.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Broccolli said:


> Slovenian police in new colours (they added fluorescent yellow pattern)


I wish Estonian police cars had a more modern look. Here we still use a simple white and blue combo. 









(Škoda land  - the second best selling car brand in Estonia)


----------



## volodaaaa

Our Leons


----------



## x-type

Trieste is larger.
Rijeka - 128.624

with metropolitan area that would be equivalent to Opicina, Basovizza, Prosecco, Muggia:
Bakar - 8.279
Kastav - 10.440
Kraljevica - 4.618
Opatija - 11.659
Čavle - 7.220
Kostrena - 4.180
Lovran - 4.101
Matulji - 11.246
Viškovo - 14.445
total - 76.188
grand total: 204.812


----------



## Broccolli

volodaaaa said:


> Our Leons


Do i see 19 inch rims? :banana: :lol:..and sidewalk becomes your worst enemy


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Possibly, Singapore: 90 km/h. Of the larger countries, probably Japan: 100 km/h.
> 
> Japan also has a general 60 km/h speed limit on all roads inside and outside urban areas. But nearly all roads of significance have been replaced by at least single carriageway expressways where they usually allow 70 km/h. In addition, Japanese non-expressway, non-urban roads nearly all run through mountainous terrain. Flat areas are often densely build-up.


The USA used to have 55mph (88kph) on all freeways until some years ago. Norway also had 100kph until they increase it to 110 recently. Iceland has very few roads that could be classificated as motorways, but since that country doesn't have a motorway designation, they have 90kph like other rural roads.


----------



## cinxxx

volodaaaa said:


> Our Leons


Leon Cupra
:smug:


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Of course they do. That's what annoys me most. That, and the fact that no one (police) cares.


You need a police car behind you to get fined for a violation like that. It's not as easy to inforce as parking or speeding violations.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> grand total: 204.812


And Trieste 204,750.


----------



## cinxxx

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=498477486858028


----------



## Broccolli

Seat Leon Cupra two types available, with 265 hp and with 280 hp.
Price: 26,000 € and up...

Cupra 2014 :cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

Broccolli said:


> Do i see 19 inch rims? :banana: :lol:..and sidewalk becomes your worst enemy


I know 19" rims looks perfect and fashionable, but I can't say a single bad word to my 15" rims. Well, okay, the car looks like cheap toy from kinder surprise, but it feels much comfortable on road. My dad have 19" rims and sometimes it feel like the car has no tires and we drive on naked discs. 

I am aware it fully depends on general road conditions. If the road is smooth 19" rims is the better choice.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^19"? Shouldn't that be, like, 47.5 cm?


----------



## Attus

I tried to make a photo about that train. It could have been a great shot but then suddenly that cathedral jumped into the sight. 
The bridge and the cathedral by Attus74, on Flickr


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^19"? Shouldn't that be, like, 47.5 cm?


No, rims are always measured in inches


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> And Trieste 204,750.


includes what? also cities that i mentioned?
i always had feeling that Trieste was larger, that it had cca 400.000 inh.


----------



## Road_UK

Holland:










Austria:


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> includes what? also cities that i mentioned?


It doesn't include Muggia, but it includes all others. I'm not sure they should be included though, they're high above Trieste. Although Kraljevica and Lovran aren't exactly Rijeka either.


----------



## g.spinoza

Italy:









But I like the old colour better:


----------



## Peines

g.spinoza said:


> Italy:



Guardia Civil Tráfico. Alfa Romeo 159 by Emergencias ZGZ, on Flickr

Spain


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> And Trieste 204,750.


Trieste urban area (the entire province): 239.972.


----------



## Penn's Woods

For more pretty pictures of police cars....:

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=477078


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> For more pretty pictures of police cars....:
> 
> http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=477078


America:


----------



## grykaerugoves

I think police cars should not be obvious from a distance. They should only be identifiable from a short distance. If you're up to no good and you see the lovely blue and yellow colors, You're unlikely to stick around.


----------



## Road_UK

grykaerugoves said:


> I think police cars should not be obvious from a distance. They should only be identifiable from a short distance. If you're up to no good and you see the lovely blue and yellow colors, You're unlikely to stick around.


There are plenty of unmarked cars about, bu generaly they do need to be visable, so they are easily spotted when they are en route to an emergency call...


----------



## Verso

Lol, Japanese tourist taking a photo of my street in suburb.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Japanese tourists take pictures of everything...and pose showing V sign.


----------



## Verso

My street is worth taking a photo though.


----------



## AsHalt

Is it the famous street on the Beatles album?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Abbey Road or Penny Lane?


----------



## g.spinoza

Ahhhhh, look at all the lonely people...


----------



## AsHalt

Abbey I think. (Not old enough to listen ,but old enough to know who they are)


g.spinoza said:


> Ahhhhh, look at all the lonely people...


Lol


----------



## cinxxx

Just witnessed how a Romanian was caught at the local Aldi while trying to steal some chocolate...


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Ahhhhh, look at all the lonely people...


Are you referring to your fellow posters?


----------



## da_scotty

Penn's Woods said:


> Are you referring to your fellow posters?


No he is stuck in his yellow submarine......


----------



## Road_UK

Give him a break, all he needs his love.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Groan.


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> Just witnessed how a Romanian was caught at the local Aldi while trying to steal some chocolate...


Was it you? :troll:


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Are you referring to your fellow posters?


Me included :nuts:


----------



## Verso

AsHalt said:


> Is it the famous street on the Beatles album?


No, it's this one. (PS: fvck Slovenian stalkers)


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> No, it's this one. (PS: fvck Slovenian stalkers)


Good for you. Once I've noticed two models with a photographer taking photos at the entrance of our apartment house. Just opened a window a little bit to hear what are they talking about. Apparently, they were looking for ruined-like background as it looks perfect when blurred as bokeh on portrait photos. They wanted to capture a contrast between beauty and ugliness.:lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Did they ask you to pose? :troll:


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Did they ask you to pose? :troll:


No, but I really enjoyed it actually :lol:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Guys i really need help.What is the name of a song which is in this video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Ph2BJWHdnAQ&list=UUOUrJNxG3gr0QtIz7J26Hew
The time when you can hear the song is 8:05


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I couldn't make it out. Sorry.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Anyone else ?


----------



## cinxxx

Verso said:


> Was it you? :troll:


No, but I did play translator with the Aldi security and the police :lol:


----------



## Attus

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> Guys i really need help.What is the name of a song which is in this video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Ph2BJWHdnAQ&list=UUOUrJNxG3gr0QtIz7J26Hew
> The time when you can hear the song is 8:05


Tanita Tikaram: Twist in my sobriety.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Attus said:


> Tanita Tikaram: Twist in my sobriety.


Thank you so much !


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Did they ask you to pose? :troll:


Sounds like a task for my English neighbor Mike. :troll:


----------



## x-type

does somebody have some ideas for office pranks? stylish, moderate, but cool.

i must revenge to my friend - i made some light pranks today and i got stupid reaction from her complaining about it to our boss  
so i promised her that i will come back with even better pranks to give her the real reason for complaining. ideas?
(stupid bitch)


----------



## g.spinoza

I hate pranks, even when I was a little kid. I see no comedy in making someone uncomfortable among others.


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> does somebody have some ideas for office pranks? stylish, moderate, but cool.
> 
> i must revenge to my friend - i made some light pranks today and i got stupid reaction from her complaining about it to our boss
> so i promised her that i will come back with even better pranks to give her the real reason for complaining. ideas?
> (stupid bitch)


I agree with g.spinoza, but I recommend you one.

If your colleague works with computer and is not just present, do following:
1) take a screen shot of her desktop
2) find the saved screen shot and set it up as a background
3) set "hide icons on desktop"
4) hide the start bar. 
5) you will see no difference but the "icons" will be the part of background image, so it won't be able to get anywhere.

Once I did this to my colleague. Worked perfectly. :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Or mirror the monitor upside down. You will have to move the mouse to the right to go left on the screen. Very confusing and counter-intuitive.


----------



## cinxxx

^^you can also kill explorer process after setting the wallpaper

Another light prank is, put some tape over the mouse sensor, so the mouse won't scroll anymore 

Or just send an E-Mail from her account if she doesn't lock her screen, inviting all colleagues to lunch or to her wedding or to dance naked


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^That last idea could get you in legal trouble here.


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> Another light prank is, put some tape over the mouse sensor, so the mouse won't scroll anymore


I've already tried this, but the victim always figured it out very soon 

Btw. If she stays logged in facebook, just change her birth date. She will get loads of congratulations that day  friend of mine was the victim of such prank and it was really funny to see how he wrote a statement it was not his birthday under every comment.  People just saw he had birthday and automatically wrote him.


----------



## cinxxx

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^That last idea could get you in legal trouble here.


^^I think here too. But people who don't lock their screens have to learn somehow to do it 
Usually it's an invitation for eating Weißwurst


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Or mirror the monitor upside down. You will have to move the mouse to the right to go left on the screen. Very confusing and counter-intuitive.


that was actually the prank that i did her today


----------



## cinxxx

^^And she got upset and complained for that? Jeez...


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> that was actually the prank that i did her today


If she overreacted like that, what do you expect her to do with another harder prank? I would get my hands off her. She might get you in trouble.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> If she overreacted like that, what do you expect her to do with another harder prank? I would get my hands off her. She might get you in trouble.


well her stupid reaction is actually the main reason why I want to do something harder now. if she reacted like "ha ha, you got me, now you turn my desktop to normal position to continue working", I would forget it immidiately. but alarming the higher level managment about it was really stupid and unexpected from her, so now I want more.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ In America she would tell boss you said you wanted to **** her and you'd get fired 



volodaaaa said:


> I agree with g.spinoza, but I recommend you one.
> 
> If your colleague works with computer and is not just present, do following:
> 1) take a screen shot of her desktop
> 2) find the saved screen shot and set it up as a background
> 3) set "hide icons on desktop"
> 4) hide the start bar.
> 5) you will see no difference but the "icons" will be the part of background image, so it won't be able to get anywhere.
> 
> Once I did this to my colleague. Worked perfectly. :lol:


I did this to high school (gymnasium) computer teacher with PhD, Windows 98... he was calling the school board central desk to find out why computer was always blocked even after restart :lol::lol:


----------



## AsHalt

*cough*DeleteSystem32*cough*


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ In America she would tell boss you said you wanted to **** her and you'd get fired


Well laws are sometimes very strange. On the other hand, I appreciate the American approach on how to deal with criminals. I think, if you kill or injure someone while defending your own property, you will stay irreproachable. In overcorrect Europe you will be sent to jail.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Well, if she *lied to* the boss in telling him you wanted to....


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> Well laws are sometimes very strange. On the other hand, I appreciate the American approach on how to deal with criminals. I think, if you kill or injure someone while defending your own property, you will stay irreproachable. In overcorrect Europe you will be sent to jail.


Those laws are recent and only in some states, it got pretty crazy, there were stupidity like burglars who would break the window and cut themselves on the broken glass and then sue the owner of the house for the injury :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> Those laws are recent and only in some states, it got pretty crazy, there were stupidity like burglars who would break the window and cut themselves on the broken glass and then sue the owner of the house for the injury :lol:


We've got similar case recently. A night line bus driver was done over by bunch of morons so he took the action and drew his fake gun. The criminals shat their pants and left. Then he called the police and dispatching because there were scared passengers. 

Result: the bus driver was fired because he breached the violation and acted unprofessionally. He should have locked himself in driver post, called the police and waited - he boss told the media. 

Lots of people got pi**ed off and the medial pressure make the transportation company to restore his employment contract.


----------



## CNGL

Greetings from the road, literally .


----------



## Road_UK

Hope you're keeping your hands on the wheel. Don't do the things I do whilst driving (SSC, WhatsApp, burgers and drinks, newspaper, YouTube, books, phoning, full sex...)


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^You're setting a bad example for the children! :nono:

Seriously, I hope you really don't do most of that stuff. Eating and drinking things you don't actually need to look away from the road for is fine in my opinion. Otherwise....


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> Hope you're keeping your hands on the wheel. Don't do the things I do whilst driving (SSC, WhatsApp, burgers and drinks, newspaper, YouTube, books, phoning, *full sex*...)


I think quick BJ on intersection while waiting for green is okay. :lol:


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> I think quick BJ on intersection while waiting for green is okay. :lol:


It's called indecent exposure. :lol:


----------



## Jasper90

volodaaaa said:


> I think quick BJ on intersection while waiting for green is okay. :lol:


Not if your girlfriend is the driver :lol:


----------



## CNGL

Road_UK said:


> Hope you're keeping your hands on the wheel. Don't do the things I do whilst driving (SSC, WhatsApp, burgers and drinks, newspaper, YouTube, books, phoning, full sex...)


Fortunately I wasn't driving. I just was lucky to catch a coach with wi-fi connection .


----------



## volodaaaa

Reminds me:
I would like to die like my father: In sleep, with no pain, with no stress. Just peacefully leave this world. Not like passengers of his coach.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^You're setting a bad example for the children! :nono:
> 
> Seriously, I hope you really don't do most of that stuff. Eating and drinking things you don't actually need to look away from the road for is fine in my opinion. Otherwise....


He is my man


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^You're setting a bad example for the children! :nono:
> 
> Seriously, I hope you really don't do most of that stuff. Eating and drinking things you don't actually need to look away from the road for is fine in my opinion. Otherwise....


No don't worry. Only the full sex, and then preferably on a German autobahn in broad daylight at high speeds. The funny looks I'm getting are hilarious, I can recommend it to anyone...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> He is my man


Don't say that sort of thing! You'll just encourage him.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Keep doing that Alex


----------



## keokiracer

volodaaaa said:


> Btw. look up for "serbian fail blog" on youtube. You'll get bunch of weekly updated dash cam videos from Russia. It says no one were injured but it is clearly a lie. Anyways, I like wathching it. Not for the reason of some kind mortal vouyerism, but because it shows me the situations that may happen. E.g. After few videos, I always do my best to avoid driving along truck or bus in tunnel.


I prefer 7CarCrashCompilation
He uploads (mostly Russian) dashcam crash videos ranging between 5-15 minutes almost everyday 

And if I want to get a seperate clip of one of the crashes I always check rusdtp.ru/video


----------



## volodaaaa

It fascinates me. Sometimes it seems like they don't want to avoid the accident. Is it profitable to crash knowing you are not the guilty one or is it just some kind of lack of self control?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I was walking down the hill here earlier with a friend of mine, when a car came out of a side road at the same time that a car turned in and they hit each other. We stopped walking but it looked like neither car was going anywhere and as it was a very slow crash everyone was alright. So we started crossing the side road behind the crash, me going first. Then suddenly the driver that was turning out of the side road started reversing, as they were blocking the road, but she evidently didn't look in her rear view mirror, because she would have seen me, and she wasn't reversing that slowly either. So I had to run away from her and I managed to get myself onto the pavement, I don't think she even noticed I was behind, even when she went past me.


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> It fascinates me. Sometimes it seems like they don't want to avoid the accident. Is it profitable to crash knowing you are not the guilty one or is it just some kind of lack of self control?


They're just crazy. Backward lifestyle.


----------



## Verso

Just remembered something funny. Back in 2000 I used (coincidentally, wasn't planned) 5 different means of transportation in the same day. First I drove by *bus* from a suburb of Bern (CH) to the main train station, then I went by *train* to Thun, then I boarded a *ship* and cruised on Lake Thun, then went by train back to Bern and on to the Zurich airport, then *plane* to the Ljubljana airport, and finally to Ljubljana by *car*. Ever done something so silly?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Were you in a Top Gear race?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Car to Newark Airport, Plane to Zaventem, train into Brussels, tram out to the Atomium and back.... No, that's only four.

Car to Kennedy, airport shuttle, plane to DeGaulle, train into the Gare du Nord, métro (lines 3 and 4) to Saint-Lazare, train to Caen, bus to university. Six in one 24-hour period. Voilà. :cheers:


----------



## Jasper90

Verso said:


> Just remembered something funny. Back in 2000 I used (coincidentally, wasn't planned) 5 different means of transportation in the same day. First I drove by *bus* from a suburb of Bern (CH) to the main train station, then I went by *train* to Thun, then I boarded a *ship* and cruised on Lake Thun, then went by train back to Bern and on to the Zurich airport, then *plane* to the Ljubljana airport, and finally to Ljubljana by *car*. Ever done something so silly?


*Waterbus *from my home to Venice bus station, *bus *to Venice airport, *plane *to Berlin, *train *to Berlin centre, *underground *bringing closer to my rented home and *tram *for a few stops.
That's *6* different means of transport in a day! :cheers:


----------



## Verso

Jasper is winning so far.  Penn's, you're missing something on water to surpass me.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Jasper90 said:


> *Waterbus *from my home to Venice bus station, *bus *to Venice airport, *plane *to Berlin, *train *to Berlin centre, *underground *bringing closer to my rented home and *tram *for a few stops.
> That's *6* different means of transport in a day! :cheers:


What, no gondola?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Jasper is winning so far.  Penn's, you're missing something on water to surpass me.


Mine's six in about 15 hours. If not technically the same day.
Next time I'm going to the Continent I'll fly to Heathrow so I can work a ferry into it.


----------



## Jasper90

Penn's Woods said:


> What, no gondola?



Too touristic, but most of all too expensive. It costs something like 80 euro for an hour! :nuts:

Better take the waterbus, which brings 250 people and costs 1.50 euro (only if you're resident, worker or student in Venice)


----------



## keber

g.spinoza said:


> According to google maps it's around 1600.


I'm currently looking Bardonecchia webcams and on 1600 m altitude there is no snow. Above picture is taken from above 2000. I was skiing there twice and I know those ski slopes still pretty well as it is not very big resort.
Here in Slovenia fresh snow begins at approximately 2300 m.


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> Jasper is winning so far.  Penn's, you're missing something on water to surpass me.


Beat that (when I was in Vietnam in 2007) - around 1000 km:
Private car to railway station (Hue), train (to Hanoi), taxi (to otherside of Hanoi), bus (to Ha Long), motobike (to the port), ship (to island Cat Ba) and another motobike (to hotel - final destination). There was also some walking included, even through caves - and all that with a broken leg.


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> I'm currently looking Bardonecchia webcams and on 1600 m altitude there is no snow. Above picture is taken from above 2000. I was skiing there twice and I know those ski slopes still pretty well as it is not very big resort.
> Here in Slovenia fresh snow begins at approximately 2300 m.


Ok. I looked at a page where the webcam was placed in a google map, apparently it was misplaced. I thought it was a little too low to have that kind of snow.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Just remembered something funny. Back in 2000 I used (coincidentally, wasn't planned) 5 different means of transportation in the same day. First I drove by *bus* from a suburb of Bern (CH) to the main train station, then I went by *train* to Thun, then I boarded a *ship* and cruised on Lake Thun, then went by train back to Bern and on to the Zurich airport, then *plane* to the Ljubljana airport, and finally to Ljubljana by *car*. Ever done something so silly?


*Bus* to Turin bus station, *bus* to airport, *plane* to Frankfurt, *plane* to Stuttgart, *S-Bahn* to Stuttgart train station, *train* to Karlsruhe, S-*Bahn* and *bus* to KIT campus. That's 8 means of transportation in one day.


----------



## keber

Good. However in my case just the train ticket was bought regular, everything else was arranged on-site with negotiations (with price drops up to 50%) and with no idea what the next type of transport will be or how many transport will be altoghether. 
I admit that all this was done in 30 hours and not 24 which was still very fast for Vietnam standards at that time.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Just remembered something funny. Back in 2000 I used (coincidentally, wasn't planned) 5 different means of transportation in the same day. First I drove by *bus* from a suburb of Bern (CH) to the main train station, then I went by *train* to Thun, then I boarded a *ship* and cruised on Lake Thun, then went by train back to Bern and on to the Zurich airport, then *plane* to the Ljubljana airport, and finally to Ljubljana by *car*. Ever done something so silly?


bus, tram, metro, train, plane (and then again bus, train, car after that). does that count? that's my usual way to reach El Prat from my friend's house in Barcelona.

or: bus, tram, metro, train, cog railway, funicular - that's the way to reach Montserrat from her house.


----------



## CNGL

My record is only four: coach (intercity bus), metro, commuter train and bus, done just started 2011.


----------



## Road_UK

I got train, underground, plane, bus, underground, ferry in one day. (UK to Sweden and ferry to Helsinki)


----------



## bogdymol

If it's unchecked news but from another source (not Twitter) then it's ok.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Especially when false news refer to someone's death.


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> I don't think there are more than 5 means of transportation, if you count trains and s-bahns and metros as one.


ship, tram, trolleybus, car, bus, train, plane, cable lift, chain lift, bike

What did I forget?


----------



## volodaaaa

Surel said:


> ship, tram, trolleybus, car, bus, train, plane, cable lift, chain lift, bike
> 
> What did I forget?


feet maybe

btw. it is not easy at all. You can perceive trams and trains as one. The same goes for lifts.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> ship, tram, trolleybus, car, bus, train, plane, cable lift, chain lift, bike
> 
> What did I forget?


Funicular.


----------



## g.spinoza

Surel said:


> ship, tram, trolleybus, car, bus, train, plane, cable lift, chain lift, bike
> 
> What did I forget?


Trolleybus and bus are the same thing (to me, also tram). As cable lift and chair lift.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Does anyone of you guys play airsoft ?


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> Trolleybus and bus are the same thing (to me, also tram). As cable lift and chair lift.


Well, trolleybus is something strange. On one hand it looks like bus, but on the other hand, it can't drive whatever you want. It also does not have to be licence plated, it has junctions, so it is more like tram (but it sounds ridiculous too). And I rather avoid mentioning trolleybuses with secondary diesel engine or full so called duobuses.


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> Funicular.


eh, that's what I meant with chain lift , but funicular is better, and what about cogway...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Spaceship then.


----------



## x-type

Surel said:


> ship, tram, trolleybus, car, bus, train, plane, cable lift, chain lift, bike
> 
> What did I forget?


this (whatever it is called, i think that metrobus is official term):


----------



## Attus

^^Oh, yes. Translohr combines the disadvantages of bus and tram


----------



## Maciek_CK

volodaaaa said:


> Well, trolleybus is something strange. On one hand it looks like bus, *but on the other hand, it can't drive whatever you want*. It also does not have to be licence plated, it has junctions, so it is more like tram (but it sounds ridiculous too). And I rather avoid mentioning trolleybuses with secondary diesel engine or full so called duobuses.


Unless you have an extra engine http://phototrans.pl/14,689722,0.html or batteries http://phototrans.pl/14,721744,0.html  .


----------



## Road_UK

In Amsterdam you have this combination of tram (street car) and a subway underground train.
Metro route 51 starts as a metro train in Amsterdam through the tunnel, using the same tracks as regular underground routes, with power coming from below, but then joins the railway tracks of a regurlar street car, and power will be fueled from overhead cables. Platforms are hightened and lowered next to each other on that stretch.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Koala time!


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Prague!
Voted for presidential elections...


----------



## g.spinoza

In Prague?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> In Amsterdam you have this combination of tram (street car) and a subway underground train.
> Metro route 51 starts as a metro train in Amsterdam through the tunnel, using the same tracks as regular underground routes, with power coming from below, but then joins the railway tracks of a regurlar street car, and power will be fueled from overhead cables. Platforms are hightened and lowered next to each other on that stretch.


Same here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEPTA_Subway–Surface_Trolley_Lines

And in Boston and San Francisco.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> In Prague?


Seriously. I thought he was a Romanian living in Germany. European integration's totally out of hand. :jk:

Next, Road_UK will be voting in, like, Portugal or Finland....


----------



## Jasper90

I think you can vote for Romanian elections anywhere, provided that you can find a voting place 
Romanian diaspora is huge, so foreign elections must be prepared very well, because they make a big difference on the final result.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Now that you mention it, there's a Romanian consulate a few blocks from me.

A couple of Sundays ago, I was passing it carrying groceries and there was a man on the steps talking in what I assume was Romanian to a couple on the sidewalk. All fairly well-dressed, so I assumed they were leaving some sort of reception. I learned later Romania was having an election that day.

I suppose they could have been watching results, though: it was late in the day, Romanian time.

EDIT: Now I get it. Second round of that is today and Cinxxx went to a consulate or embassy or something in Prague to vote. At first, I thought he was saying he'd voted in a Czech election (or more likely, had voted in Bavaria in the morning and then gone to Prague...)

Forgive me. Haven't had caffeine yet.


----------



## hofburg

I think you can vote at any embassy (if you apply before), and so goes for many countries


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Sure. I misunderstood at first. No caffeine, like I said, and I don't have Europe's electoral calendars in my head.

Now imagine this as a mug of Lavazza: :cheers:


----------



## x-type

exactly. but usually you must register voting place few days/weeks sooner if it is different from the usual one.


----------



## Penn's Woods

There really is a Romanian consulate in my neighborhood, by the way. No idea why...

https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=39....=JrNRFmqVn76AXrJhc7pFjQ&cbp=12,36.38,,0,-2.21


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ Nice street btw. I like the vintage American architecture. We have some buildings based on interwar-Chicago style and I like them.

Speaking of elections. We had a communal elections yesterday. Except one, none of candidates I ticked passed. But never mind. It looks good. Hope Bratislava will be elsewhere in four years.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Rittenhouse Square, just to the north, was the center of high society in Philadelphia for a while. It's still mostly surrounded by very expensive residential high-rises.

The housing in the block of the consulate probably dates to 1870 or thereabouts. Most of those houses are broken up into apartments. On the side streets, you can still find single-family houses with prices in the millions. Here, for example: https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=39....noid=Q_VPPx_GkZyDy4tZ7p_B3Q&cbp=12,98.27,,0,0

I think the film The Sixth Sense (well, I still haven't seen the entirety of it) was set in part in one of those. I caught it on TV once and said to myself, hey, my car's currently parked in that block.


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ You had luck  My car have not starred anywhere yet.

Btw. after two weeks of driving I've decided to buy this magnet sticker to my fiancée:










Have not expected nothing (it was just for fun), but other drivers surprisingly respect it.


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> Have not expected nothing (it was just for fun), but other drivers surprisingly respect it.


Respect it in which way?


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> ^^ You had luck  My car have not starred anywhere yet.


No, I mean my car was parked in that block at the moment I was watching TV. It's not in the film.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> Respect it in which way?


If she stops on the hill, the driver behind leaves her a wider gap for possible reversing caused by time she shifts up. Or drivers do not honk if her engine dies (I am not sure if this is a proper notion) while accelerating on the green light.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> No, I mean my car was parked in that block at the moment I was watching TV. It's not in the film.


Oh yes... Understand...


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> ^^ You had luck  My car have not starred anywhere yet.
> 
> Btw. after two weeks of driving I've decided to buy this magnet sticker to my fiancée:
> 
> https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd...._=1427274479_dc7071b282a7ee474dff5e71e3e5d1e3
> 
> Have not expected nothing (it was just for fun), but other drivers surprisingly respect it.


:lol: fabolous, i will buy it to my mother and sister!

yesterday i have picked my car from regular maintanance service and asked mechanic whether i should change my brakes soon. his response was: "k'mon, you're not a woman" :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> :lol: fabolous, i will buy it to my mother and sister!
> 
> yesterday i have picked my car from regular maintanance service and asked mechanic whether i should change my brakes soon. his response was: "k'mon, you're not a woman" :lol:


:lol: Speeding up to 80 kmh on third gear, then braking to stop with stick switched to neutral. Well known, well known...


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> :lol: Speeding up to 80 kmh on third gear, then braking to stop with stick switched to neutral. Well known, well known...


exactly. or the rule: curve means obligatory braking.


----------



## hofburg

not just women, lots of low land europeans drive like that


----------



## Road_UK

Why low-land Europeans?


----------



## Penn's Woods

opcorn:


----------



## x-type

Road_UK said:


> Why low-land Europeans?


who are these at all?


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Now imagine this as a mug of Lavazza: :cheers:


Lavazza comes in espresso cups, not mugs :cheers: :jk:

Said by one who had the phrase "There's no life before coffee" laser-engraved on his laptop's chassis.


----------



## Road_UK

x-type said:


> who are these at all?


Netherlands, Belgium, northern-France, Denmark... Basically anywhere relatively flat.


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> Netherlands, Belgium, northern-France, Denmark... Basically anywhere relatively flat.


I think this classification of drivers on the surface conditions of their country is ridiculous. I think..., no I am pretty much sure, they have something like underground garages, garage houses, or different type of ramps at interchanges at least in those countries.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> exactly. or the rule: curve means obligatory braking.


Dutch people are the worst in mountainous areas. Some step on the brake the entire way down. :nuts:


----------



## Road_UK

Of course. Probably not curves like in mountainous areas, but cars with gear sticks and brakes work as good nevertheless.


----------



## Road_UK

ChrisZwolle said:


> Dutch people are the worst in mountainous areas. Some step on the brake the entire way down. :nuts:


No, Germans are the worst, trust me. The Dutch are well better prepared when heading for Mayrhofen.


----------



## cinxxx

I'm back in Ingolstadt 

I drove to Prague because in Munich at the consulate it is horror. People are still waiting there to vote for 12 hours straight. The government in fear that diaspora will vote against their candidate didn't open all consulates for voting and provided only few cabins and stamps so that people will not succeed to vote. 

When I saw at 8am that there were already a few thousand people waiting, some even from yesterday, we decided to drive to Prague, it was the closest place to us besides Munich. We drove 3 hours to there, voted in 20 minutes, then walked some 2 hours, ate lunch, then drove another 3 hours back


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Süddeutsche Zeitung has an article about it
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/rumaenisches-generalkonsulat-riesenstau-vor-der-urne-1.2223265


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> I think this classification of drivers on the surface conditions of their country is ridiculous. I think..., no I am pretty much sure, they have something like underground garages, garage houses, or different type of ramps at interchanges at least in those countries.


Pardon me, but I don't think that a garage ramp and a 20-km-long two-way but one-laned mountain road are even remotely comparable.


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> Pardon me, but I don't think that a garage ramp and a 20-km-long two-way but one-laned mountain road are even remotely comparable.


They are. If we take account of accelerating only. If we compare whole driving, they are not. I agree.


----------



## g.spinoza

Being able to drive is never "accelerating only".


----------



## hofburg

@cinxxx that is a case for institutional court

exemplary citizen cinxxx goes on a trip to Prague just so he is able to vote, meanwhile there are lots of people complaining about their country's politics and refuse to vote


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Many Dutch would just go home if they see a line that begins outside the building. 

Bravo Cinxxx and Bogdymol!


----------



## hofburg

Road_UK said:


> I think I'm going to sleep. Just got back from he pub. Nite....


there are pubs in Mayrhofen?


----------



## Spookvlieger

There are some steep descends around Liège. I fear the most drivers that fail to keep their lane on curved descending highways.
As for steep roads in Belgium, actually Wallonia has quite a lot and I don't find the roads in the Alps to be much steeper than those. They are just a lot longer.

and as road Uk would say, the roads suck


----------



## Kanadzie

my friend, your beer is soo good, but you have too much :lol:

is no problem the road suck, look at your gas price viz. NL, haha, you can always laugh at them


----------



## italystf

Balkan folks, remember you're no longer at war, not even during football matches.


----------



## riiga

^^ Football is an eternal war.


----------



## Road_UK

hofburg said:


> there are pubs in Mayrhofen?


Of course. A village with a population of nearly 4000 but 10.000 tourists in peak periods we've got pubs, hotels, B&B's, restaurants, disco's....


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Road_UK said:


> Of course. A village with a population of nearly 4000 but 10.000 tourists in peak periods we've got pubs, hotels, B&B's, restaurants, disco's....


And what about strip club ? :banana:


----------



## Road_UK

There is one about 15 km from here in Aschau, valley-outbound. And if you can't settle with just looking at the food, there is a "club" in Schwaz, our district capital in the Inn-valley.


----------



## volodaaaa

riiga said:


> ^^ Football is an eternal war.


No. Football and soccer is an eternal war :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> And what about strip club ? :banana:


Can you even enter a strip club?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I am looking forward to come there.
Waite for me !


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

g.spinoza said:


> Can you even enter a strip club?


Well...not.
It was a joke.


----------



## volodaaaa

Presidents of Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and Germany paid tribute to communists victims today by Freedom Gate in Devin Bratislava on the day of 25th Velvet Revolution anniversary.

I've found out that our President was hosting a meeting of V4 presidents + Germany and Ukraine. As for the Ukraine, I drove by the presidential palace yesterday and heard a group of morons shouting "Fascist, fascist..." over the presidential palace fence. It turned out that Poroshenko was getting on the car that moment (the number of officers was higher than dumb protesters which is good).


----------



## g.spinoza

Apparently also here in Turin there were problems with the Romanian vote. 

http://www.lastampa.it/2014/11/17/c...da-i-seggi-kWFc8DEJuZk4yqI3YsIEqO/pagina.html

In Turin there are 50 thousand Romanians, the 8% of the whole population. Two weeks ago, only 1700 could vote; this time, 3000, because only 1 polling station was set. Many people who where queueing since 7 in the morning went back home at 9 pm without being able to cast their vote. 300 people clashed with the police trying to enter the polls after they closed.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^The law here (at least in some states, I don't know if it's Federal or derived from a Supreme Court decision...) is, if you're in line at closing time, they have to let you vote.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Maybe I'll change my sig to "Sigh, Eagles, Sigh"....

http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/20141...gameinfo|contentId:0ap3000000429388&tab=recap


----------



## g.spinoza

At least they have nothing to do with this:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Oops!


----------



## g.spinoza

When I was a kid and watched the Sunday morning NFL recap on Italian TV, and my English was bad (I mean, worse than now), I thought that fumble was spelled "fun ball", because the ball acted funny...


----------



## volodaaaa

Filthy Facebook. It wants me to install their apps on my cell phone. I hate having application for every site I like. Not even in case when one site = two apps. Thank you.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Some of us don't have Facebook.


----------



## Road_UK

But others do. Please pm me if you want to add me. I'll send you a link.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> Some of us don't have Facebook.


I don't count how many times I was decided to delete my account. But, it is the best source of most important information. Once I've decided to live without Facebook for almost two weeks. Result: missed three appointments with my friends, sudden and irregular changes in schedule in my work and the fact my colleague got married (okay, she did it very quickly the regular FB users had missed it too...):lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^However did we manage without it in the Dark Ages?! Like, 2007....


----------



## Road_UK

I was on Facebook in 2007...
By the way, please remember to use condoms.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^However did we manage without it in the Dark Ages?! Like, 2007....


We used to have other comminication channels. But we don't use them any more. We use Facebook. And actually no one will say: I published this information in Facebook, but I know my friend Attus has no Facebook account so I call him by phone to tell it him (OK, perhaps my best friend would do it, but no one else).


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> We used to have other comminication channels. But we don't use them any more. We use Facebook. And actually no one will say: I published this information in Facebook, but I know my friend Attus has no Facebook account so I call him by phone to tell it him (OK, perhaps my best friend would do it, but no one else).


MSN Messenger. Myspace. Netlog. Regular e-mail. Those were used in the internet dark age.


----------



## Attus

Live coverage from Budapest:
http://nullker.hu/tuntetes/


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> oversize load in Saskatchewan, Canada.


The trailer looks good. It does not seem articulated, so I am curious how does it handle curves.


----------



## Road_UK

We're talking Saskatchewan. There aren't any.


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> We're talking Saskatchewan. There aren't any.


You mean to tell me there are no turns on convoy's route?


----------



## Road_UK

Maybe, but no curves...


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ That effect is pretty minimal, as shown by several studies in the Netherlands. Most public transport users are not using it by choice, but out of necessity, and most new public transport infrastructure users is induced demand, not a modal shift.
> 
> Just today I noticed this blatant piece of misinformation on the MTO website that suggest one bus equals 40 cars less on the road, as if every bus passenger would have otherwise been a single occupant car, which is absolute nonsense.


I though that PT usage in the Netherlands was higher, considering the high population density and urbanization rate (and also the high environmental awareness, since they use the bycicle a lot).


----------



## Peines




----------



## Kanadzie

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ That effect is pretty minimal, as shown by several studies in the Netherlands. Most public transport users are not using it by choice, but out of necessity, and most new public transport infrastructure users is induced demand, not a modal shift.
> 
> Just today I noticed this blatant piece of misinformation on the MTO website that suggest one bus equals 40 cars less on the road, as if every bus passenger would have otherwise been a single occupant car, which is absolute nonsense.


Buses in Montreal are frequently carrying advertising signs saying "this bus is 50 cars less on the road", but the bus is the same size as the 40 in Ontario :lol: (plus... that bus maybe has 12 seats... rest standing...)


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> One could argue that those who don't actually use public transportation still benefit from it insofar as all those people on trains and buses aren't taking up space with their cars on the roads and city streets and in parking lots.


Not only. They also benefit from the fact that those people are actually able to commute or travel around.

The real trouble with taking space up would happen in the cities. Yet more, in the cities you can find also the biggest external benefits of having PT.


----------



## keokiracer

Peines said:


>


My reaction: http://i.imgur.com/OH5Rryv.gifv


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ Guys :lol::lol::lol::lol:

Btw. what a tricky day. I woke up as I was blinded by bright sun rays, realized I must have found my sun glasses and did not dress very warmly. Passed the thermometer as I was looking for my shoes and saw the outside temperature was 0°C :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Volvos are very safe cars


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I think that the damage is very low.


----------



## volodaaaa

I can't identify the silver car beneath.


----------



## Nordic20T

^^
Maybe a Renault Clio?








(pic from Wikipedia)


----------



## volodaaaa

P.s. has anyone here named Danube as Fluvium Dunarea in Google Maps?


----------



## cinxxx

^^I see at as Fluviul Dunărea...


----------



## Nordic20T

In Passau it's both, Donau and Fluviul Dunărea.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> I can't identify the silver car beneath.


It does seem to be in worse shape than the Volvo....


----------



## volodaaaa

Yes it does. And it really could be Clio or Thalia perhaps. But why do they have licence plates exposed behind windscreen? Is it due to documentation?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There were no injuries reported with this accident. 20 years ago such an accident would've resulted in fatalities. Cars have become much safer.


----------



## Penn's Woods

We could be retro and say 2-1/2....


----------



## DanielFigFoz

That's a Clio alright, same shape and colour as mine.


----------



## bigic

volodaaaa said:


> ^^
> 
> I don't know, but most of the serious scientific journals recommend particular number format in "information for authors" document. AFAIK there are at least three:
> English: 1,000,000.00
> European: 1 000 000,00
> Hybrid: 1 000 000.00


There's also the Swiss system with apostrophes. (1'000'000,00)
Послато са ZTE Blade Q Mini уз помоћ Тапатока


----------



## CNGL

Road_UK said:


> ^^ Screw the law.
> 
> 2.,5


Better yet, *2;5*. :troll:


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> Google and their things. In China they have labelled the Suzhou in Anhui (宿州 in Chinese characters) as 苏州, which is indeed Suzhou... but the one in Jiangsu near Shanghai. Same happens with Fuzhou, Jiangxi (抚州, labelled as 福州 which is the Fuzhou in Fujian). OTOH, both Taizhous and Yulins are labelled correctly.


Do you have Chinese origins or did you study Chinese language?


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> We could be retro and say 2-1/2....


Haven't you meant 2 + 1/2 ?


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ No it's typical notation in US English at least for fraction if typed. if you write by hand normally you'd make the fraction smaller physically and no dash. It won't work in MS Excel, you need to use a space (like 2 1/2)



Penn's Woods said:


> We could be retro and say 2-1/2....


The standard sizes of shafts in North America are typically in sixteenths of an inch. So, 3-7/16, 3-15/16, 4-7/16 and etc. People keep telling me numbers like 4.438 and I'm always annoyed by it :lol:


----------



## riiga

g.spinoza said:


> You learn something new every day.
> But I never saw a comma as decimal marker in scientific papers, be they European or American.


Probably because most scientific papers are published in English, and thus uses the decimal point.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Haven't you meant 2 + 1/2 ?


What Kanadzie said.

:cheers:


----------



## italystf

https://www.google.it/maps/@45.6627...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sy2IdWdQnboe3u_xZU9IFjA!2e0
:troll:


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> What Kanadzie said.
> 
> :cheers:


I know, complex numbers  "-" symbol was not supposed to be minus but dash, it confused me.


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> Do you have Chinese origins or did you study Chinese language?


I'm trying to learn (Mandarin) Chinese since I'm interested in their crazy expressway and metro plans. However there are many characters with the same transliteration and thus placenames can be duplicated, like 山西 and 陕西 provinces (Both are 'Shanxi', so is no wonder why the second calls itself Shaanxi). OTOH I'm 100% Spanish origin.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Oh, good; it was just a dream.

I dreamt that Roadside Rest had been shut down.

I'm not joking.


----------



## Road_UK

What are you doing up so early? It's not a dream, it has actually been shut down.


----------



## Penn's Woods

It's quarter to eight. Have to be at work in 45 minutes. Fortunately, it's a 12-minute walk.


----------



## Road_UK

Take a day off. I'll let ya...


----------



## Penn's Woods

I'll tell my boss you said that.
Got a busy day ahead, actually....

I hadn't determined yet, when I woke up, *why* Roadside Rest had been shut down, but it was probably your fault.


----------



## Road_UK

Of course. But you didn't think I'd stop at the RRA, did you? There's still so much forum left...


----------



## bigic

CNGL said:


> OTOH I'm 100% Spanish origin.


There is no such thing as "100% Spanish" or 100% any other ethnicity. If there is anybody, he/she probably degenerated from too much incest. I bet you have a few drops of Arabic blood in you. 
I consider myself an ethnic Serb, but my grandmother (mother's side) is an ethnic Macedonian and I probably have some Turk or Bulgarian in my family tree. 



Послато са ZTE Blade Q Mini уз помоћ Тапатока


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Big Buffalo Snow:


----------



## Road_UK

Everything to Mayrhofen please. We got nothing, just a bit on the mountains. And they wanted to open the ski lifts next week...


----------



## NordikNerd

An ATV trying to pull a truck stuck in the snow.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^How'd it turn out?


----------



## NordikNerd

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^How'd it turn out?


300cc is not enough power to pull a truck, especially not in the snow,
so this attempt failed.


----------



## volodaaaa

Was the road too slippery for truck or why was the truck stuck (what a rhyme)?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I remember this from Ice Road Truckers. They managed to pull a semi tractor-trailer out of the ditch with a Ford F-250 (or F-350?)


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I once drove a 5L Ford F-150. Man that was a big boat...


----------



## volodaaaa

Remember, what happens in Maribor, stays in Maribor

http://metro.co.uk/2014/11/20/headm...l-sex-to-maths-teacher-during-school-4955684/


----------



## hofburg

lol that story went global?


----------



## bigic

He does his best to ensure good working environment.


----------



## volodaaaa

Everyone has been satisfied with the math teacher so the director just wanted to try it out.


----------



## Verso

There are now two famous Kameniks in Slovenia (the other one being a quadruple murderer).


----------



## Penn's Woods

Embarrassing Nerd Moment of the Day:

I'm not from Ohio and didn't go to OSU, but I have to see this in person some day:

Script Ohio

Thank you for your indulgence. :cheers:


----------



## keokiracer

Amazing video from inside of the Buffalo Lake Effect.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I really like driving on the snow


----------



## volodaaaa

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I really like driving on the snow


Me to. When the snow is sticky especially. No one is rushing and you can enjoy every segment of road in your comfy heated up car. 
Have you got a driver's licence already?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

No,but my parents have driving licences


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> Me to. When the snow is sticky especially. *No one is rushing *and you can enjoy every segment of road in your comfy heated up car.
> Have you got a driver's licence already?


Don't say that one out loud.


----------



## italystf

hofburg said:


> lol that story went global?


I read it in the Italian press too.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Nobody knows for that news in Serbia


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Intriguing.... http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/...aking-Italian-restaurant-for-Rittenhouse.html
> 
> Passed it on my Sunday-afternoon shopping. Not open yet but the signage presents it as a rebirth of a famous place in L'Aquila... Do our Italians know anything about the original?


Never been to l'Aquila and never heard of this particular cafè. My guide to the best cafes in Italy doesn't mention it (in l'Aquila there are only Cafè Cavour and Cafè Muftì).


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> What are you on about? :dunno:


http://www.formula1.com/


----------



## volodaaaa

Lol, I am the real bad luck Bryan. 
While writing my PhD. thesis, I was listening mp3s in WinAmp over my headphone. It shuffled to song Southside spinners - luvstruck (klubbheads remix). I really don't know their discography and this is not my favourite song, but since I was busy creating some maps, I had not time to skip it. Unfortunately there is a section in the song, where tune fades out and a women says "I want ya, I need ya... give it to me" in a distinct manner. The tune comes back then. :lol:

At the time, I was changing my position on my office chair, span a bit and since I'd been accidentally sitting on a headphone cable, the connector fell out. So the "I want ya, I need ya... give it to me" echoed all around my room.  Having realized what I've just done, I made another mistake - plugged the connector back. My girlfriend (who thus did not hear the tune fading in) angrily came over asking me if I really watch porn instead of working :lol: Fortunately she let me explain it.


----------



## x-type

i had even more embarassing situation. my sister and I were smsing yesterday about going to a concert where our friend was singing. and made a mistake, so her sms looked like "our friend will sing. later coffee with sex? i will pick you up at 17h40." (sex was mistake (at least i hope so :lol: ), it should have been sister, only 1 letter makes change in croatian). my answer: "ok for coffee, but no sex". 
of course she didn't realize the mistake in her sms, so she thought that i was making plan to get laid with someone and mistakely sent her that sms :lol:


----------



## Verso

"Kava sa sek(s)om?" :lol:


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> "Kava sa sek(s)om?" :lol:


exactly


----------



## volodaaaa

Nice one   

It just remind me high school times. Before summer as the semester ends, we used to have a small concert where students performed numbers, skills etc. It was preceded by director's foreword. It was women in her late 50s.

In Slovak, _pani_ = Mrs. and _panna_ = virgin. Both of the pair of presenter students were shy and introduced the director by shouting to audience as "Heartily welcome virgin director".


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> Lol, I am the real bad luck Bryan.
> While writing my PhD. thesis, I was listening mp3s in WinAmp over my headphone. It shuffled to song Southside spinners - luvstruck (klubbheads remix). I really don't know their discography and this is not my favourite song, but since I was busy creating some maps, I had not time to skip it. Unfortunately there is a section in the song, where tune fades out and a women says "I want ya, I need ya... give it to me" in a distinct manner. The tune comes back then. :lol:
> 
> At the time, I was changing my position on my office chair, span a bit and since I'd been accidentally sitting on a headphone cable, the connector fell out. So the "I want ya, I need ya... give it to me" echoed all around my room.  Having realized what I've just done, I made another mistake - plugged the connector back. My girlfriend (who thus did not hear the tune fading in) angrily came over asking me if I really watch porn instead of working :lol: Fortunately she let me explain it.


let's get back from my incest issues to your porn issues 

you have reminded me on that song (I went to highschool graduation trip when it was popular in 1998 :lol: ) - interesting and on-topic scenes in the video. can somebody decipher where would those motorway scenes be?


----------



## keber

We can at least define, where it is not from - not from Asia or North America (there are Klemfixes in one scene, which I never seen them on any pictures of US or Canada motorways. It looks like as motorways from Benelux or Germany.
Also group is from Netherlands so ...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Seems like the Rotterdam area.


----------



## cinxxx

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10153263633939358


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Seems like the Rotterdam area.


i just wanted to say that. Pernis refinery, Beneluxtunnel, suits very good.

tell me, at 2:50 those hatches - is that some kind of old horizontal signalization in NL?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's called a 'verdrijvingsvlak'. You're not allowed to drive on it. It still exists widely throughout the Netherlands.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's called a 'verdrijvingsvlak'. You're not allowed to drive on it. It still exists widely throughout the Netherlands.


you mean like this?
https://maps.google.hr/maps?q=Rotte...am,+Rotterdam,+South+Holland,+Nizozemska&z=19

i know for those, but this one at the video looks more like splitting the lanes, and on such places in NL you have only the solid lanes with kind of (isosceles) triangle inside, no hatches


----------



## volodaaaa

It is funny how the centre of Europop moved from Benelux to Romania in recent years.

P.S. those hatches (or road shading) is used only in case of lane merging in Croatia? Because we use it in both cases.


----------



## x-type

no hatches here in HR. you will find only solid fillings between lines on both merging and splitting lanes. 
hatches appear rarely on the motorways, and mostly in cases like in NL - no driving here (not neccessarly splitting/merging situations). they are tough present at all state roads' intersections.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> It is funny how the centre of Europop moved from Benelux to Romania in recent years.


Are you talking about music? I didn't know Europop had a center.

I've heard some good Flemish hip-hop on the VRT, actually.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90PCKtQ2riA


----------



## volodaaaa

My bad, I've thought Eurodance music, especially in '90s, not Europop...


----------



## volodaaaa

Speaking of past music, I came across this:


----------



## volodaaaa

LOL


----------



## AsHalt

It must have been top gear and the film crews....


----------



## bigic

Good for us that we have the fourth highest tourism growth in Europe. 

Послато са ZTE Blade Q Mini уз помоћ Тапатока


----------



## makaveli6

So what happened to Slovakia?


----------



## g.spinoza

People finally realized that it isn't Slovenia... :jk:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

What is so interesting in Latvia ?
Also i am back here on SSC ,after couple of days.I had to study a lot,but now that is partly done and i got a couple of A's or 5's in Serbia.


----------



## makaveli6

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> What is so interesting in Latvia ?


I think we were a relatively unoticed country so far. We are in Schengen for 7 years and in eurozone for almost a year, I guess it's very easy to travel here now. Riga is the biggest city in Baltic region with biggest collection of Art Nouveau architecture in the world. Also half of our land is taken by forest. Apparently that's a major tourist attraction. :lol:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Green lovers


----------



## volodaaaa

makaveli6 said:


> So what happened to Slovakia?


Have no idea. But it already became an object of clashes between government and opposition :lol: 

Slovakia was placed in top 5 past years and the number of tourists is still growing (it really is hard to find an empty seat in pubs in Bratislava during summer). The drop-back is really huge so it could be a statistical failure possibly.


----------



## Surel

makaveli6 said:


> So what happened to Slovakia?


Nothing, Czech National Bank depreciated the Koruna last year, making the holiday in Slovakia 13 % more expensive. 

And the Ukrainians are busy with war right now.


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Berlin! :cheers2:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Say Hello to Angela from me.


----------



## g.spinoza

Travelers of the world!

I've never been to London and next week I'm going there for a business trip: where can I find something good to eat, say, in Soho or Charing Cross? My boss is paying so money is not (that much of) an issue. Would I want to go to a pub or a regular restaurant? What's the usual closing time of such establishments?
Thanks


----------



## Road_UK

Plenty of nice places around Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Piccadily Circus, Regent Street. Stay away from Soho. Horrible place with strip clubs where they don't mind ripping tourists off.

One of my favourite pubs is just off Trafalgar Square. I can't remember the name, but head there and I'm sure you'll find it  And you haven't been in England if you haven't eaten pub food!


----------



## Penn's Woods

At a pub, the ambience would be more authentically English, although is that part of London overrun with tourists?

EDIT/PS:


Road_UK said:


> And you haven't been in England if you haven't eaten pub food!


My point exactly. :cheers: <- that's a warm English beer.


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> At a pub, the ambience would be more authentically English, although is that part of London overrun with tourists?


Not really. Locals want to eat as well after a hard day in the City.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I'm sort of thinking of it as Times Square East.

I did eat at a pub there once, right before attending either No Sex, Please - We're British! or The Mousetrap.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> One of my favourite pubs is just off Trafalgar Square. I can't remember the name, but head there and I'm sure you'll find it


I'm sure I'll find many of them! Is that the Silver Cross? the Old Shades? The Ship and the Shovel?



> And you haven't been in England if you haven't eaten pub food!


I agree as well


----------



## Road_UK

I really don't remember. It has been ages since I last been in Central London, and I used to be there for work all the time. Now I normally stop at Bromley when going into London.


----------



## g.spinoza

Thanks ! Don't worry, I'll get by...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A Latvian car has been parked without paying for parking in my city for at least 2 months now. The municipality says they can't tow the car because it is parked in a legal spot, the owner just doesn't pay for parking. So the meter maids keep adding tickets below the wiper blades every single day.


----------



## Road_UK

If they're not going to tow it, he'll get away with it. They're not going to trace the owners address because of a parking ticket. Last month we parked our Austrian registered car at a P&R parking in Hoorn, near the train station. We paid for our ticket, but were unable to park in a designated parking bay. So we didn't and found a note on our windscreen (in Dutch) informing us to await a letter with a penalty notice. Yeah right!!!


----------



## AsHalt

Maybe it's the rebels *horror piano sound*


----------



## Penn's Woods

Spinoza, do some shopping while you're in the neighborhood:

http://www.stanfords.co.uk/

http://www.foyles.co.uk/Public/Stores/Detail.aspx?storeid=1011

Help keep legitimate mapmakers and publishers in business.

Come to think of it, is it Piotr71 or Geogregor who works at Stanford's? Maybe he can recommend a pub.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> If they're not going to tow it, he'll get away with it. They're not going to trace the owners address because of a parking ticket. Last month we parked our Austrian registered car at a P&R parking in Hoorn, near the train station. We paid for our ticket, but were unable to park in a designated parking bay. So we didn't and found a note on our windscreen (in Dutch) informing us to await a letter with a penalty notice. Yeah right!!!


Can't they boot or clamp it? (Different terms for the same thing.)

Heck, it could have been stolen and abandoned. Or the owner could have had a heart attack or something.


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> Can't they boot or clamp it? (Different terms for the same thing.)


That'd be the only reasonable option if they don't want to tow it.


----------



## g.spinoza

I'll basically have close to no time to visit the city (I'm arriving there at 5.30pm, and my hotel is at Teddington, 1h by train)... but if I manage to free up some time, I'd love to go there 





Penn's Woods said:


> Spinoza, do some shopping while you're in the neighborhood:
> 
> http://www.stanfords.co.uk/
> 
> http://www.foyles.co.uk/Public/Stores/Detail.aspx?storeid=1011
> 
> Help keep legitimate mapmakers and publishers in business.
> 
> Come to think of it, is it Piotr71 or Geogregor who works at Stanford's? Maybe he can recommend a pub.


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> I'll basically have close to no time to visit the city (I'm arriving there at 5.30pm, and my hotel is at Teddington, 1h by train)... but if I manage to free up some time, I'd love to go there


Thus it is kind of that "Schrodinger visit". You will / will not be in London :lol:


----------



## makaveli6

Penn's Woods said:


> Can't they boot or clamp it? (Different terms for the same thing.)
> 
> Heck, it could have been stolen and abandoned. Or the owner could have had a heart attack or something.


Are wheel clamps still legal? It's forbidden to use them here since 2012.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

ChrisZwolle said:


> A Latvian car has been parked without paying for parking in my city for at least 2 months now. The municipality says they can't tow the car because it is parked in a legal spot, the owner just doesn't pay for parking. So the meter maids keep adding tickets below the wiper blades every single day.


Is this today's picture?
I think that car doesn't look like this .It's probably dirty.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> Thus it is kind of that "Schrodinger visit". You will / will not be in London :lol:


Only when triggered by an atomic transition. People always forget that bit about the atomic transition. hno:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Sounds dangerous.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Sounds dangerous.


Nah, it happens all the time. Light is the result of an atomic transition.


----------



## Suburbanist

A Bulgarian car stayed parked on my street for 15 months. Since no permit or payment is required to park there, is just hogged a space for all that time. Over time, two tires got flat, and the car became very dirty. Then, one day it was gone.


----------



## italystf

Where I live there was parked a Fiat Tipo with the insurance expired in 2007 and all tyres flat. It was removed only few months ago. Currently there is a car with a temporary Slovenian plate, abandoned for more than a year. It's weird to have abandoned vehicles unnoticed for years in a small town, where everybody know someone's else businesses.


----------



## MajKeR_

volodaaaa said:


> LOL


It's a pity that they've not shown Ukraine. I guess Icelandic growth is nothing with Ukrainian. There were no such collumns of trucks coming to Iceland (or, actually, collumns of ferries with those trucks).


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Suburbanist said:


> A Bulgarian car stayed parked on my street for 15 months. Since no permit or payment is required to park there, is just hogged a space for all that time. Over time, two tires got flat, and the car became very dirty. Then, one day it was gone.


Maybe those cars were used for criminal act,and they got left on other sides of Europe,so that nobody can find them.


----------



## aubergine72

^^

Maybe but they would have taken off the plates, I imagine.


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> http://metro.co.uk/2014/11/20/headm...l-sex-to-maths-teacher-during-school-4955684/


The headmaster killed himself today.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> The headmaster killed himself today.


I feel bad for him. I guess media significantly contributed it. Students literally put him down. It should not have ended up like that. But why the hell did not they lock the door?


----------



## bigic

Because of the silly sex "scandal"?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Yes!


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> I feel bad for him. I guess media significantly contributed it. Students literally put him down. It should not have ended up like that. But why the hell did not they lock the door?


It's hard to think about locks when there is pussy in your face :lol:

Depression sucks hno:


----------



## Verso

bigic said:


> Because of the silly sex "scandal"?


Well, it probably wasn't "silly" for his wife and kids.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Well, it probably wasn't "silly" for his wife and kids.


there is an act known in modern civilized society as divorce. however, there is also a creature known as journaldzilla which is being fed with cases like situation with that poor guy.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> there is an act known in modern civilized society as divorce.


Of course, but he probably couldn't take it.


----------



## volodaaaa

He was mocked in front of the whole world. I've read the story even in India or China. It was so bizarre, everyone made fun of it. Imagine the shame he had to take. Students, professors, inhabitants. He made a huge mistake. It literally killed him.

But I still consider him as a coward. Imagine his wife, kids and math teacher as well. He ruined their lives too. The funeral is to be full of mixed feelings.

Btw. I finally starting my job at Ministry tomorrow.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Glad for you volodaaaa


----------



## Penn's Woods

That headmaster's story reminds me of an incident a couple of years ago during the Duchess of Cambridge's (Kate Middleton's) pregnancy. She was in the hospital for complications...two Australian radio DJs called the hospital pretending to be the queen and Prince Charles...the nurse who answered the phone (it was the middle of the night in London; it wasn't the nurse who'd regularly do that) took them seriously and passed them on to another nurse who gave them information about her condition....

After a few days of media hounding, the nurse who answered the phone killed herself. Leaving a husband and small children. Hard to understand, but maybe she had other things going on in her life and this was the last straw...you just don't, can't know.


----------



## volodaaaa

There is a very thin line between entertainment and insanity.


----------



## Alex_ZR

There is a very thin line between genius and lunatic, too.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Many genius's were lunatics at start,and after some time they became genius's.
People are the ones who are going to choose who is what.


----------



## Verso

The warmest December morning on the Slovenian coast ever recorded - 17-18°C.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's below average in the Netherlands, maximum temperatures of +1 degrees, where +7 would be average. In fact, the maximum temperatures over the last few days were lower than in the entire winter of 2014.


----------



## g.spinoza

In Turin it's been raining for 5 days straight.
Po is above critical threshold, it already invaded the so called "Murazzi" (concrete ***** where there are several cafes and night clubs:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Has that trip to London taken place yet?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've read Genova had like six times the monthly average precip in November.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Has that trip to London taken place yet?


Not yet, I'm leaving next Monday (bank holiday in Italy, the second time I'm on a business trip this year - I gotta ask for a raise).



ChrisZwolle said:


> I've read Genova had like six times the monthly average precip in November.


I read that in November 687 mm of rain were registered at Genova airport, while the _year_ average is a little more than 1000 mm. In October and November combined there were 1080 mm of rain.


----------



## volodaaaa

Driver of Porshe crashed into truck, stuck there and fell into unconsciousness. Truck driver noticed it after 10 minutes. 

My raction


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I don't understand how the hall that truck driver didn't notice that Porshe,even though
the other truck driver was trying to tell him.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Urgent question to British (Irish, Australian...) native speakers of English:

Does the following sentence sound idiomatic?

_Similarly, many parents who currently struggle to pay for their children’s private-school fees *would need not do* so, and those who cannot afford private education need not feel that their children are deprived._

Published here (Next-to-last paragraph)


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ My whole life is a lie.... :troll:


----------



## Blackraven

France studying proposal to ban Diesel-powered automobiles.

http://www.autonews.com/article/201...ts-to-phase-out-diesel-powered-passenger-cars

LOL good luck on that France :nuts::lol:


----------



## italystf

NordikNerd said:


> The stranded Renault Megane rental car. Those tourists wanted to drive from Reykjavik to Akureyri. They probably set their GPS to their destination,
> the gps told them to take the shortest route, so they ended up in the Icelandic Outback.
> 
> We have heard it before, motorists who end up in the strangest places and then blame their gps.


This summer I personally saw a German family attempting to drive past this point (the little black poles weren't there but the no-entry sign was). After few meters a policeman stop them and forced them to turn back. I saw that they had the GPS switched on :lol:. The GPS probably though that te famous Karluv Most was open to traffic (or the driver set his GPS with the pedestrian setting).


----------



## Road_UK

My favourite is that lorry driver from Turkey that had to go to Gibraltar (southern Spain) but had his sat-nav taking him to Gibraltar near Newcastle in the UK. It didn't even occur to him he was going the wrong way when he had to take a ferry and that people drive on the left-hand side of the road after Dover.


----------



## g.spinoza

What about the Swiss tourists I personally saw driving their car towards the Kehlsteinhaus in Berchtesgaden (Hitler's Eagle's nest)... not even on the paved road, which is also forbbiden for cars, but on a service road more or less here, screaming out of the window "it's my gps's fault!!"


----------



## Road_UK

GPS fail UK


----------



## bigic

I remember a case when a driver from Belgium or the Netherlands was directed wrongly by the GPS to Zagreb, Croatia instead of the nearer place he wanted to go.


----------



## bigic

I found that story:
http://gizmodo.com/5975787/woman-drives-for-900-miles-instead-of-90-thanks-to-gps-error


----------



## g.spinoza

They make GPS units tailored for trucks, now.


----------



## volodaaaa

bigic said:


> I remember a case when a driver from Belgium or the Netherlands was directed wrongly by the GPS to Zagreb, Croatia instead of the nearer place he wanted to go.


Well, Zagreb is something different. I've driven by eight times and accidentally ended up there eight times. :lol:

Can't explain why. Perhaps there was something wrong between steering wheel and headrest.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> ^^ My whole life is a lie.... :troll:


That's a matter for you and your conscience and any higher power you may believe in.


----------



## Verso

When I was in Split I saw a Fiat Panda with Italian plates here. I guess it isn't forbidden to drive there, but it looked really weird, especially to see a foreigner.


PS: I keep getting new posts from somewhere. I'll hit 20,000 and I won't even know it.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> When I was in Split I saw a Fiat Panda with Italian plates here. I guess it isn't forbidden to drive there, but it looked really weird, especially to see a foreigner.


If fits I sit.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> When I was in Split I saw a Fiat Panda with Italian plates here. I guess it isn't forbidden to drive there, but it looked really weird, especially to see a foreigner.


^^They could have booked a hotel room or apartment in the old town and have driven by to unload their luggage.
Talking about Croatia, when I was at Plitvice lakes, there was a couple who went to Karlovac instead of Karlobag. Again, GPS was the cause of that (they typed Karl... and clicked on the first autocomplete suggetion they got).


----------



## bigic

italystf said:


> Talking about Croatia, when I was at Plitvice lakes, there was a couple who went to Karlovac instead of Karlobag. Again, GPS was the cause of that (they typed Karl... and clicked on the first autocomplete suggetion they got).


I imagine their GPS sending them to Virovitica...


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Verso said:


> When I was in Split I saw a Fiat Panda with Italian plates here. I guess it isn't forbidden to drive there, but it looked really weird, especially to see a foreigner.
> 
> 
> PS: I keep getting new posts from somewhere. I'll hit 20,000 and I won't even know it.


I don't know how did that Google car fit there.:bash:


----------



## x-type

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I don't know how did that Google car fit there.:bash:


it's google bike.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

x-type said:


> it's google bike.


They exist ?:lol::lol::lol:


----------



## italystf

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> They exist ?:lol::lol::lol:


Yes, they're used to map pedestrian alleys, parks and anywhere where a car can't fit.


----------



## AsHalt

But how bout the places where the bike and car can't fit? Google Camera?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ Google backpack 








Image from: http://petapixel.com/2012/10/25/goo...tography-into-the-wild-with-camera-backpacks/


----------



## Penn's Woods

Now all they need is GoogleDrone. For those hard-to-see-into places like people's bedroom windows.


----------



## Kanadzie

Now that it got cold the leaves fell off my bushes, I see my neighbors in the back, so they probably see me, I wonder if they like what they see (no way I'm closing curtains, I like the sun)


----------



## italystf

How Venice was mapped:

















Unfortunately, in many cities pedestrian areas are still uncovered, as Google uses mostly cars for the mapping job.


----------



## AsHalt

Damn! that guy....
So lucky getting paid to travel Venice....(maybe not so...)


----------



## keber

Or Google Snowmobile:
https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=46....oid=o18Q7nwzj_XFkZ0gOydFoQ&cbp=12,2.2,,0,6.61


----------



## Fatfield

Road_UK said:


> My favourite is that lorry driver from Turkey that had to go to Gibraltar (southern Spain) but had his sat-nav taking him to Gibraltar near Newcastle in the UK. It didn't even occur to him he was going the wrong way when he had to take a ferry and that people drive on the left-hand side of the road after Dover.


What is even more ridiculous is there's no such place as Gibraltar in the North East. There's a New York but no Gibraltar. However there's a pub called The Gibraltar Rock in Tynemouth. It certainly isn't worth driving all the way from Fatfield never mind Turkey to go there.

The other pubs in Tynemouth are worth the journey though. :cheers:


----------



## Alex_ZR

Google *Street View* - and they map deserts and Galapagos Islands. :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ And all wifi spots, private and public


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Today is the coldest day in 2014 so far in the Netherlands. A good 5 degrees below the next coldest day back in January. It is also the first day with subzero temperatures at noon.


----------



## Skopje/Скопје




----------



## g.spinoza

Mental age in this thread is plummeting.

I don't feel very comfortable in here any more


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Oh, I don't know...Isn't it better than when we were regularly arguing about  or  or ?

(And I can't say I've really noticed a drop in maturity, but it never really had the potential to drop much....)


----------



## x-type

keber said:


> Or Google Snowmobile:


or some Google Bike's surrogates:

Google Rail 










or Google Boat


----------



## volodaaaa

And finally *google fail*
https://www.google.sk/maps/@48.7466...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sxyopF6cJ7tvthFgL3zR2Tw!2e0


----------



## Jasper90

italystf said:


> How Venice was mapped:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Unfortunately, in many cities pedestrian areas are still uncovered, as Google uses mostly cars for the mapping job.


They showed the cameras on a Gondola, but they've actually used a "topo" boat for most of the city canals 
It's a goods transport boat, the Venice equivalent of a truck 

You can clearly see it here: https://www.google.it/maps/@45.4418...!3m5!1e1!3m3!1sqmoqa3YOcbgigEfffOWTJw!2e0!3e5


----------



## Broccolli

volodaaaa said:


> And finally *google fail*
> https://www.google.sk/maps/@48.7466...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sxyopF6cJ7tvthFgL3zR2Tw!2e0


I see that Slovak roads are similar to those in Slovenia, unfortunately hno:


----------



## Road_UK

And Belgium.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> And finally *google fail*
> https://www.google.sk/maps/@48.7466...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sxyopF6cJ7tvthFgL3zR2Tw!2e0


he is blurred. our biker is not blurred 
https://maps.google.hr/maps?ll=45.8...d=XeMT8dh-nvTTEKSTj3ID8A&cbp=12,88.2,,0,12.49


----------



## Broccolli

Road_UK said:


> And Belgium.


Roads inspired by Belgian waffle.


----------



## CNGL

I wondered what would happen when Gangnam Style hit 2147483647 views on YouTube. It finally happened, and it crashed the video counter.

In other news, I'll be doing a roadtrip for a good cause . I'll be going to the far West


Spoiler



of Aragon


 .


----------



## Penn's Woods

The Far West? Santiago de Compostela?


----------



## CNGL

There's a spoiler. It's only 200 km (sorry, 125 miles) from me .


----------



## Penn's Woods

Ah. Don't get lost.


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> I wondered what would happen when Gangnam Style hit 2147483647 views on YouTube. It finally happened, and it crashed the video counter.
> 
> In other news, I'll be doing a roadtrip for a good cause . I'll be going to the far West
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> of Aragon
> 
> 
> .


Google already solved the bug:
https://plus.google.com/+youtube/posts/BUXfdWqu86Q


----------



## keber

g.spinoza said:


> Mental age in this thread is plummeting.
> I don't feel very comfortable in here any more


I also took my life more and more serious until some years ago. But now I feel much better when I make some childish stupidities. It's better for your mental health even if you don't think so.


----------



## italystf

piotr71 said:


> Have you tried Austrian (actually German, but also used in Czech Republik and in Austria) appellations (qualitatswein mit pradikat) beerenauslese, trocken beerenaslese or eisewein?
> 
> By the way, my favourite are Tokaji Aszu. Sadly, there is no very wide choice of that delicious wine in the UK. Actually, only Waitros and M&S sell them in quite high prices, relatively 23 pounds for 1/2 litre of 9 year old Aszu 5 and 27 for 13 year old Aszu4. It was also available in Morrisons until recently in really good price (17 pounds) but I think I was only person buying it, so they cut the price by 3 and sold it out.
> 
> Well, to be at least a little on topic, it's probably worth to mention that Tokaj region is divided by Slovak-Hungarian (formerly Czechoslovak - Hungarian border demarcated after treaty of Trianon) border and both sides have rights to produce Tokaj, called alsoTokajské.


The Italian region of Friuli used to produce a white wine called Tocai, that is pronunciated like the Hungarian Tokaj but it wasn't related to it. Hungary sued Italy at the European Court of Justice because the name of the Italian wine was too similar to their and it sounded like a violation of trademark :nuts: Since then, we were forced to rename the Tocai in Friulano on bottle labels. Because, according to some, a name that had been in use for centuries only because it's coincidentially similar to another, it's a serious danger for their businesses :nuts:
Meanwhile, in Canada they produce a ham called San Daniele (imitation of the famous San Daniele DOP from Italy) and we can't do nothing.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ we will see, it's been big debate in Canada because of CEUTA free-trade agreement (I hope it passes, I want to save 2.5% import duty on my next Audi A5 or BMW )

They even sell "greek yogourt" but it is made domestically. I think it is already agreed the Canadians will put some kind of modification to meet the EU protected origin rules... but still no free market for dairy products (Canada lives under communism for dairy goods )


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Free trade with a small Spanish enclave on the north coast of Africa? :dunno:

Ahem. I apologize.

----------

So I see from the e-mails I'm catching up on that the Black Friday concept (in English, yet) has spread to France and other places....


----------



## italystf

In Europe they already collected over a million of signatures against the free trade agreement with USA and Canada. The argument is that North America has less severe laws concerning food safety (i.e. they allow GMOs and wash chicken meat with bleach).


----------



## italystf

Violent fighting for a parking space in Petrozavosk, Russia.
http://www.ilmessaggero.it/PRIMOPIANO/ESTERI/rissa_tragedia_parcheggio/notizie/1017730.shtml


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> In Europe they already collected over a million of signatures against the free trade agreement with USA and Canada. The argument is that North America has less severe laws concerning food safety (i.e. they allow GMOs and wash chicken meat with bleach).


At least we can tell the difference between beef and horsemeat. :jk: (but seriously....)


----------



## volodaaaa

Filthy hypermarkets. They have been selling advent calendars since september and now, few days after advent begun, when we celebrate st. Nicolaus' day, there are none of them.


----------



## Road_UK




----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I hate when mad drivers look at you.
From some reason i think that they want to kill you


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Filthy hypermarkets. They have been selling advent calendars since september and now, few days after advent begun, when we celebrate st. Nicolaus' day, there are none of them.


I haven't had an Advent calendar since I was a wee little thing. Not sure they're that widely known here.

Think I saw some at Ikea about a month ago.


----------



## x-type

Road_UK said:


> https://scontent-a-vie.xx.fbcdn.net...=633c86da7413abffc5e86c4485e22793&oe=551E4B1D


this happens to me almost every morning with the same car. i have 3 traffic lights while traveling to work. there is black VW Golf that overtakes me (although i am already above speed limit), always drives incredibly offensive, and i catch him always if there is red on traffic lights.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> The Italian region of Friuli used to produce a white wine called Tocai, that is pronunciated like the Hungarian Tokaj but it wasn't related to it. Hungary sued Italy at the European Court of Justice because the name of the Italian wine was too similar to their and it sounded like a violation of trademark :nuts: Since then, we were forced to rename the Tocai in Friulano on bottle labels. Because, according to some, a name that had been in use for centuries only because it's coincidentially similar to another, it's a serious danger for their businesses :nuts:
> Meanwhile, in Canada they produce a ham called San Daniele (imitation of the famous San Daniele DOP from Italy) and we can't do nothing.


there was an issue with your _prosecco_ and our _prošek_  you have been complaining, but we succeeded to keep our name. furthermore, those two products are not even close to each other, one it sparkling wine, the other one is wine liqueur or dessert wine. 

on the other hand, i was astonished when after joining EU we couldn't declare as marmalade anything except citrus made _marmalade_. the other's are declared as _jam_ now, what is absolutely wrong imo.


----------



## CNGL

Penn's Woods said:


> I haven't had an Advent calendar since I was a wee little thing. Not sure they're that widely known here.
> 
> Think I saw some at Ikea about a month ago.


Guess who have an Advent calendar .


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> there was an issue with your _prosecco_ and our _prošek_  you have been complaining, but we succeeded to keep our name. furthermore, those two products are not even close to each other, one it sparkling wine, the other one is wine liqueur or dessert wine.
> 
> on the other hand, i was astonished when after joining EU we couldn't declare as marmalade anything except citrus made _marmalade_. the other's are declared as _jam_ now, what is absolutely wrong imo.


Linguistically is perfectly correct. Marmalade: citrus, jam: anything else. Also my English teacher at high school used to say that.


----------



## Verso

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmalade#International_usage_of_the_term


----------



## Surel

italystf said:


> Linguistically is perfectly correct. Marmalade: citrus, jam: anything else. Also my English teacher at high school used to say that.


There are many accounts of food changing names because of the EU rules after CZ entered.

On one side, it is understandable, those in the club set the club rules. On the other, it is all quite a nonsense.

Yet, the biggest farce is that I can see many times, that those in the club don't keep to the rules themselves.


I personally consider much more important than the name of a product the composition and the place of origin. With some basic products and product names, the composition could be set, nothing against that I guess, although it can lead to confusing and unnecessary problems, but hey, it is good enough solution and people will get used to the new names. But the place of origin protected names is one big bullshit I would say.



italystf said:


> Linguistically is perfectly correct. Marmalade: citrus, jam: anything else. Also my English teacher at high school used to say that.


In English. And English is not the only language around there in the EU.

So when I say in Czech _marmeláda _or _džem _and the difference in the meaning in the Czech language is in the consistence of the product and not in the composition of the product, it is idiotic when someone forces something else on me, because in English it is something else.


----------



## italystf

Surel said:


> On one side, it is understandable, those in the club set the club rules. On the other, it is all quite a nonsense.


EU should be more respectful towards local traditions and differences. It should limit itself to basic legislation, like concerning safety, hygiene, environmental respect,...
Changing names that are consolidated in the respective countries, who speak their respective languages and have their respecive traditions is IMHO plain wrong. It doesn't matter the name, it should matter only the quality of the product. Fighting over brand names is as stupid as the dispute between Greece and Macedonia about the name of the latter.
Some stupid regulations issued by the EU contribute to increase the anti-EU sentiment across the union.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Linguistically is perfectly correct. Marmalade: citrus, jam: anything else. Also my English teacher at high school used to say that.


I associate "marmalade" specifically with orange, in fact. How that came about, I don't know.

EDIT: But I see Verso looked it up. :cheers:


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Linguistically is perfectly correct. Marmalade: citrus, jam: anything else. Also my English teacher at high school used to say that.


but why is that so? why would orange marmalade be different than raspberry one?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^See Verso's Wiki article. Top of this page. (But basically, because "marmalade" comes from the name of one type of fruit in Portuguese....)

By the way, just to complicate matters, jam and jelly don't mean quite the same thing in British and American English.


----------



## x-type

Surel said:


> In English. And English is not the only language around there in the EU.
> 
> So when I say in Czech _marmeláda _or _džem _and the difference in the meaning in the Czech language is in the consistence of the product and not in the composition of the product, it is idiotic when someone forces something else on me, because in English it is something else.


exactly!
here in HR _marmelada_ is smooth fruit preserve without visible particles of fruit. _džem_ is fruit preserve with visible particles of fruits. there is also third thing - _pekmez_. it is usually considered as fruit preserve with miced, but visible parts of fruits (while in _džem _particles are larger, frutis are not minced)


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^See Verso's Wiki article. Top of this page. (But basically, because "marmalade" comes from the name of one type of fruit in Portuguese....)
> 
> By the way, just to complicate matters, jam and jelly don't mean quite the same thing in British and American English.


yes. and that fruit has absolutely nothing with citrus fruits :nuts: explain that, Einstein!


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I don't have to.


----------



## volodaaaa

What about _povidlo_ or _powidl_ (in Austrian German)? It is plum jam. The translator responds with "filled bubo".


----------



## Surel

italystf said:


> EU should be more respectful towards local traditions and differences. It should limit itself to basic legislation, like concerning safety, hygiene, environmental respect,...
> Changing names that are consolidated in the respective countries, who speak their respective languages and have their respecive traditions is IMHO plain wrong. It doesn't matter the name, it should matter only the quality of the product. Fighting over brand names is as stupid as the dispute between Greece and Macedonia about the name of the latter.
> *Some stupid regulations issued by the EU contribute to increase the anti-EU sentiment across the union.*


I could sign that.


----------



## Surel

volodaaaa said:


> What about _povidlo_ or _powidl_ (in Austrian German)? It is plum jam. The translator responds with "filled bubo".


I wonder when someone would register povidla in the EU. There must certainly be someone around all the countries, that makes the same stuff and calls it otherwise.... :lol: And when we speak about povidla. What about frgál. Anyway. Valašský frgál is registered already . Dunno, whether Slovaks can now call their frgál frgál .
http://www.rozhlas.cz/zpravy/region...ropska-komise-po-peti-letech-snazeni--1286122










https://www.google.nl/search?q=frgá...niv&sa=X&ei=nymCVJK2LYbjapDfgvgG&ved=0CC4QsAQ


----------



## volodaaaa

Surel said:


> I wonder when someone would register povidla in the EU. There must certainly be someone around all the countries, that makes the same stuff and calls it otherwise.... :lol:
> 
> Anyway. Valašský frgál is registered already . Dunno, whether Slovaks can now call their frgál frgál .
> http://www.rozhlas.cz/zpravy/region...ropska-komise-po-peti-letech-snazeni--1286122
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.google.nl/search?q=frgá...niv&sa=X&ei=nymCVJK2LYbjapDfgvgG&ved=0CC4QsAQ


Well, to be honest I have not thought over the difference between _frgál_ and _moravský koláčik _here (Moravian little cake). But I like it, that is the most important :lol:

There are many other products from Central Europe to be preserved. E.g. Langoš or Gugelhupf (Babovka). But now it is really hard to track the origin. It is just Austro-Hungarian legacy.


----------



## Surel

Surel said:


> I could sign that.


On the other side, don´t dare the americans sell Budweiser under this name in the EU.*


:troll:

*that pesky little island is not counted in anymore .


----------



## piotr71

Well, is it the end of 'marmolada', which I know from my childhood and which have never had anything in common with citrus fruits, then? 

By the way, I checked wikipedia for 'konfitura' (French 'confiture', Russian 'Конфитюр') and thanks to god almighty it does not translate to English and probably isn't known in Anglo-Saxon world, so I dare to presume, it is going to survive in the shape and taste as I and my predecessors know and hopefully ancestors will experience it unchanged, too.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> On the other side, don´t dare the americans sell Budweiser under this name in the EU.*
> 
> 
> :troll:
> 
> *that pesky little island is not counted in anymore .


Okay, have I correctly understood the issue here? The EU doesn't want various Eastern European countries to use words in their own languages that look like the English "marmalade" but have a different (or broader) meaning?

I agree with you all that that's ridiculous and out of line. (Being ridiculous and out of line is a bit of an EU specialty, as far as I can see...maybe they can put an AOC on it.) But I don't see how it's Americans' fault.


----------



## cinxxx

The marmalade issue is back. @Cosmin time for a status change?


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> Okay, have I correctly understood the issue here? The EU doesn't want various Eastern European countries to use words in their own languages that look like the English "marmalade" but have a different (or broader) meaning?
> 
> I agree with you all that that's ridiculous and out of line. (Being ridiculous and out of line is a bit of an EU specialty, as far as I can see...maybe they can put an AOC on it.) But I don't see how it's Americans' fault.


The EU has various policies that protect the food producers.

It is either name connected to the place of origin. E.g. Champagne, Parmesan etc. (here we talk about one concrete product, i.e. you can have multiple cheese that taste and look like Parmesan, but they will be sold as cheese of the parma type or something like that).

Or it is connected to some technique used in its making. I can't think of an example.

Or it is defined by the composition. Here we define the composition of such food labeled under this name. E.g. butter, or marmalade.

Due to the language variety and national products you can come across products that are not allowed to use that specified name because it doesn't have the specified composition. There are of course exemption but the whole process is quite vague. Yes, the countries that enter the club later can come with exemptions, but as you would guess, if you enter the club later, you can't be really expecting to be rewriting it's rules too much.

So yes, you are allowed to sell peanut butter, while using the name butter, even if it doesn't have anything to do with butter. But you are not allowed to use the word "máslo" in Czech, which means butter, for a spread product that could be translated as a butter spread that has some 40-50 years of history.

With marmelade it is around the same problem. Just a citrus based jams can be labeled marmalade, because that's what it means in English, while this is not so in other languages.

Now what does this all have to do with American and Budweiser.

The Czech brewery Budweiser has claimed the protection of origin for this beer, using the abbreviation Bud to prevent the US Budweiser to sell its beer on the EU market under this label. This means that Budw. can't use this name in the EU. However, in the UK, they have some special ruling, which I don't understand how it can the EU allow, both companies can use this name (but maybe it goes about the whole name Budweiser there, I am not sure).
http://www.law360.com/articles/93579/budweiser-not-anheuser-s-trademark-eu-court

It is actually quite complicated legal process that goes on around many countries all around the world for already maybe 100 years, so this place of origin protection is just small drop in it, but I thought it could be a nice joke on myself .


----------



## Road_UK

And here we see a wild bus drinking from the river.


----------



## CNGL

Greetings from Arizona. I said I was going to the far West, isn't it?


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> And here we see a wild bus drinking from the river.


It seems it is the back soaked in the river. Perhaps we are witnesses of territory tagging and attracting the females.


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> It seems it is the back soaked in the river. Perhaps we are witnesses of territory tagging and attracting the females.





Palance said:


> Luxembourg: Don't throw anything in the water, except buses :nuts:


:lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

So, Road_UK: did the Sint find you, and did he leave you a bunch of coal?


----------



## SeanT

Surel said:


> The EU has various policies that protect the food producers.
> 
> It is either name connected to the place of origin. E.g. Champagne, Parmesan etc. (here we talk about one concrete product, i.e. you can have multiple cheese that taste and look like Parmesan, but they will be sold as cheese of the parma type or something like that).
> 
> Or it is connected to some technique used in its making. I can't think of an example.
> 
> Or it is defined by the composition. Here we define the composition of such food labeled under this name. E.g. butter, or marmalade.
> 
> Due to the language variety and national products you can come across products that are not allowed to use that specified name because it doesn't have the specified composition. There are of course exemption but the whole process is quite vague. Yes, the countries that enter the club later can come with exemptions, but as you would guess, if you enter the club later, you can't be really expecting to be rewriting it's rules too much.
> 
> So yes, you are allowed to sell peanut butter, while using the name butter, even if it doesn't have anything to do with butter. But you are not allowed to use the word "máslo" in Czech, which means butter, for a spread product that could be translated as a butter spread that has some 40-50 years of history.
> 
> With marmelade it is around the same problem. Just a citrus based jams can be labeled marmalade, because that's what it means in English, while this is not so in other languages.
> 
> Now what does this all have to do with American and Budweiser.
> 
> The Czech brewery Budweiser has claimed the protection of origin for this beer, using the abbreviation Bud to prevent the US Budweiser to sell its beer on the EU market under this label. This means that Budw. can't use this name in the EU. However, in the UK, they have some special ruling, which I don't understand how it can the EU allow, both companies can use this name (but maybe it goes about the whole name Budweiser there, I am not sure).
> http://www.law360.com/articles/93579/budweiser-not-anheuser-s-trademark-eu-court
> 
> It is actually quite complicated legal process that goes on around many countries all around the world for already maybe 100 years, so this place of origin protection is just small drop in it, but I thought it could be a nice joke on myself .


This "Champagne" issue is very silly from a hungarian point of you. We don´t even use this word. We call it "Pezsgö" if it is orosz-francia-magyar, still pezsgö in a common everyday use. Although the price will tell you the difference, no doubt!:lol:


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> So, Road_UK: did the Sint find you, and did he leave you a bunch of coal?


Nah he didn't this year. Must have been bad, but I'm keeping my hopes on Santa...


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> Well, to be honest I have not thought over the difference between _frgál_ and _moravský koláčik _here (Moravian little cake). But I like it, that is the most important :lol:
> 
> There are many other products from Central Europe to be preserved. E.g. Langoš or Gugelhupf (Babovka). But now it is really hard to track the origin. It is just Austro-Hungarian legacy.


As a lover of the CE cuisine I agree that in most cases it's hard to track the place of origin. Take filled cabbage rolls for example  However the name of Lángos comes from Hungarian since the word _láng _means flame and _-os_ is a noun modifier. BTW it's not the hardest food in the world to create. E.g. the Central Asians, the Native Americans etc. also have their own versions of it.


----------



## x-type

SeanT said:


> This "Champagne" issue is very silly from a hungarian point of you. We don´t even use this word. We call it "Pezsgö" if it is orosz-francia-magyar, still pezsgö in a common everyday use. Although the price will tell you the difference, no doubt!:lol:


we also have our word for champagne (which is ot from Champagne). true, in every-day-speech we use champagne word, but in formal speech, tv, advertisment, no way.


----------



## Alex_ZR

nbcee said:


> As a lover of the CE cuisine I agree that in most cases it's hard to track the place of origin. Take *filled cabbage rolls* for example


You mean sarma?


----------



## piotr71

No, he meant _Gołabki_, also known as _Golumpki_ in the States


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Shudder.

Almost as bad as zimne nogi. Which I ate once in my life, and only once.

Correct spelling courtesy of this site. Enjoy! With a good Polish wodka.


----------



## piotr71

Never heard of _symanogi_ 

By the way, who knows this one:


----------



## Penn's Woods

piotr71 said:


> Never heard of _symanogi_


Fixed.

EDIT: I was stopped at a red light once on my way to Mom's when I spotted this place:
https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=40....d=JmgY2--pOaIFT6DalHGWUg&cbp=12,284.8,,2,5.37
In a town my grandmother lived in for a while, by the way.

I'll try to find a better view.

EDIT 2: What I was trying to find was the window next to this one. Same info (I assume), ale po polsku: http://foodio54.com/photos/european-deli-manville-1473361


----------



## piotr71

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Shudder.
> 
> Almost as bad as zimne nogi. Which I ate once in my life, and only once.
> 
> Correct spelling courtesy of this site. Enjoy! With a good Polish wodka.


Well, I'd say, both _gołabki_ and _zimne nogi_, are delicious  However, not necessary for foreigners


----------



## Penn's Woods

My mother's if-it's-served-to-you-you-have-to-at-least-taste-it rule has left me with an aversion to anything cabbage-related. And pickled pig's feet.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

piotr71 said:


> Never heard of _symanogi_
> 
> By the way, who knows this one:


In Serbia we have a similar traditional dish which name is "Djuvec"


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> My mother's if-it's-served-to-you-you-have-to-at-least-taste-it rule has left me with an aversion to anything cabbage-related. And pickled pig's feet.


it's not pickled, it is in aspic. i don't like it neither.


----------



## Verso

I'm thinking of where to write my 20,000th post.









Oops.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Congratulations Verso !


----------



## volodaaaa

piotr71 said:


> Never heard of _symanogi_
> 
> By the way, who knows this one:


Put there sour cream and eggs and you will get Old French Scalloped Potatoes :lol:​


nbcee said:


> As a lover of the CE cuisine I agree that in most cases it's hard to track the place of origin. Take filled cabbage rolls for example However the name of Lángos comes from Hungarian since the word láng means flame and -os is a noun modifier. BTW it's not the hardest food in the world to create. E.g. the Central Asians, the Native Americans etc. also have their own versions of it.


I know langos has origin in Hungary. But due to Austria-Hungary, especially Hungarian Kingdom it spread all around it area, so it is well known even in Slovakia, Serbia, Romania and Croatia.
You can't tell you have been in Hungary if you had not tasted langos yet.


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> it's not pickled, it is in aspic. i don't like it neither.


Aspik, the way how to do a food inedible hno:


----------



## cinxxx

^^I have eaten Langos many times, never in Hungary though


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> Aspik, the way how to do a food inedible hno:


you wanna say that pig legs would be edible without jelly?


----------



## nbcee

cinxxx said:


> ^^I have eaten Langos many times, never in Hungary though


Well then be my guest the next time you're around.:cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

LOL today's one to one... someone hack this forum?


----------



## Alex_ZR

Dubai got Street View. Very recent one, from October.


----------



## Verso

Does anyone know where I could find points of countries farthest from the border (or sea) and where countries are widest? Billions of websites out there and I can't find that. I'm trying to locate that point in Slovenia, but I'm not even sure whether it's in eastern or western Slovenia (probably eastern, but not necessarily). I'd also like to know the largest width of Slovenia and where it is. Anyone has a clue?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_Centre_of_the_Republic_of_Slovenia

:cheers:

Seriously, I got there from "geographic centers" (or "centres"), which are apparently not easy to calculate and not quite what you want....


----------



## volodaaaa

I would do it in specialist software. Freeware are these:

- google QGIS (software)
- google Geofabrik (shapefiles to software - each country on three levels)

The software has some tools to measuring.

It needs some time to get into.


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_Centre_of_the_Republic_of_Slovenia
> 
> :cheers:
> 
> Seriously, I got there from "geographic centers" (or "centres"), which are apparently not easy to calculate and not quite what you want....


You're right, that's not quite what I want.  That point is closer to Austria than Croatia, so it can't be farthest from the border.



volodaaaa said:


> I would do it in specialist software. Freeware are these:
> 
> - google QGIS (software)
> - google Geofabrik (shapefiles to software - each country on three levels)
> 
> The software has some tools to measuring.
> 
> It needs some time to get into.


Don't they already have that calculated somewhere?  Seriously, don't tell me no one has ever determined that point and where Slovenia is widest (and you don't need a Slovene to determine that). What about other countries?


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> You're right, that's not quite what I want.  That point is closer to Austria than Croatia, so it can't be farthest from the border.
> 
> Don't they already have that calculated somewhere?  Seriously, don't tell me no one has ever determined that point and where Slovenia is widest. What about other countries?


I don't know, but those things are noted in Geography textbooks for grammar schools in Slovakia :lol: I've already taught from those. There were also some fun facts, like how many times can all people from Slovakia draw a boundary if all stand side by side and hold hands. It was 4 times. Can't believe Slovenia does not have such.


----------



## nbcee

Verso said:


> Don't they already have that calculated somewhere?  Seriously, don't tell me no one has ever determined that point and where Slovenia is widest. What about other countries?


As for Hungary the biggest distance is Felsőszölnök-Tiszabecs ~ 530 km and the center is at Pusztavacs.


----------



## volodaaaa

greatest distance is not the same as longtitudial or latitudial difference. But to be clear, I 've just done a small calculation (it might be enough just for curiosity) and the greatest distance is 258 km from the seaside to the easternmost point. As for the latitudial difference, the greatest is the eastern one (it is approx 160 km)


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> Fixed.
> 
> EDIT: I was stopped at a red light once on my way to Mom's when I spotted this place:
> https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=40....d=JmgY2--pOaIFT6DalHGWUg&cbp=12,284.8,,2,5.37
> In a town my grandmother lived in for a while, by the way.
> 
> I'll try to find a better view.
> 
> EDIT 2: What I was trying to find was the window next to this one. Same info (I assume), ale po polsku: http://foodio54.com/photos/european-deli-manville-1473361


Hehe, EE deli. The sweets are from CZ and SK, from Poland the pig feets. But the question is, do they have any good ham and bacon?

Who would say that there is some CZ SK community out there in Jersey. What do you think, does Jagr drop by sometimes?


----------



## nbcee

Tiszabecs is not the easternmost village of Hungary, that award goes to Garbolc. 

The area of Felsőszölnök includes the westernmost point of HU and since the country has a "horn" (or I dunno how to call it) there, it's likely that this village will come up when you are trying to find the greatest distance - and it does.


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> I don't know, but those things are noted in Geography textbooks for grammar schools in Slovakia :lol: I've already taught from those. There were also some fun facts, like how many times can all people from Slovakia draw a boundary if all stand side by side and hold hands. It was 4 times. Can't believe Slovenia does not have such.


We have many things calculated, but I've never seen where Slovenia is widest (I can imagine, but I want precise location).



volodaaaa said:


> greatest distance is not the same as longtitudial or latitudial difference. But to be clear, I 've just done a small calculation (it might be enough just for curiosity) and the greatest distance is 258 km from the seaside to the easternmost point. As for the latitudial difference, the greatest is the eastern one (it is approx 160 km)


It says 248 km for the greatest distance on the Internet. As for width, I don't mean it as "perpendicular to length", I mean it as "shortest distance between two opposite lines". Central Slovenia is narrowest between the southernmost point of Austria and Prezid (Croatia), but where is it widest?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Moved OT....



Penn's Woods said:


> "listopad"? You use the same set of names for the months that Polish does?
> 
> I have no idea what month "listopad" is, but I've always liked the sound of it.





volodaaaa said:


> Me neither :lol: but I think it is September November. We use common month names (Január, Február, Marec...), Czechs use strange ones (Únor, Leden, Březen...). That's why we split up.





ChrisZwolle said:


> Listopad means 'November' in Polish and Czech, but 'October' in Croatia. This is due to Croatia being farther south (Listopad means 'fall of leaves'). Just like U.S. Thanksgiving is a month later than in Canada.





Penn's Woods said:


> ^^I just found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_calendar
> 
> What a mess!
> 
> And I was worried about being OT, but then I saw you here.





Penn's Woods said:


> Um, the leaves fall earlier farther north...
> At least north of the Equator.





BriedisUnIzlietne said:


> Apart from the OT but informative names of months and the history of dalnice:
> Automaģistrāle and similar come from Latin
> Autostrāde and similar come from Italian
> Šoseja and similar come from French
> 
> Continuing on the OT - I really like the slavic month names. For what I understand: the pretty month, the grass month, the falling leave month, the snow month, etc
> We also used to have those (the candle month, the leaf month, the frost month, the ghost month, etc) but we switched to the regular Jan, Feb, Mar, Mai, ...





Verso said:


> I hate Croatian months, I never remember them.
> 
> 
> Btw, the old Slovenian expression for a motorway (avtocesta) is "avtomobilska cesta". Sounds archaic, but I still remember it was used until some 20 years ago.





aubergine72 said:


> We don't have those Slavic names in Bulgarian, either. I don't think they ever existed and I certainly don't understand them.
> 
> 
> *NB Road_UK*: The only reference to them are the nick names from folklore and stories about January and February - Golyam Sechko and Malak Sechko (big and small sechko respectively).





Penn's Woods said:


> Then you'd appreciate the French revolutionary calendar. I'll look it up when I have a few minutes.


As promised, The French "Republican" Calendar. ("Republican" as opposed to revolutionary, although that's when it started.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar#Months


----------



## cinxxx

^^Romanian also has own months names. They are usually listed on Orthodox calenders along with January, February, etc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_months


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Does anyone know where I could find points of countries farthest from the border (or sea) and where countries are widest? Billions of websites out there and I can't find that. I'm trying to locate that point in Slovenia, but I'm not even sure whether it's in eastern or western Slovenia (probably eastern, but not necessarily). I'd also like to know the largest width of Slovenia and where it is. Anyone has a clue?


when you find it, then try to solve a task finding that point in our croissant :troll:

it is definitely somewhere in area where i live (my county is one of two that doesn't ahve the see nor international boundaries)


----------



## CNGL

^^ I believe it's somewhere in... Bosnia and Herzegovina .


----------



## x-type

CNGL said:


> ^^ I believe it's somewhere in... Bosnia and Herzegovina .


geometrically that would be the centroid  and we are searching for the centre of the incircle. that would be in the village Donji Lipovčani 
we are definitely the coutnry with the most f*cked up shape in Europe


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> "listopad"? You use the same set of names for the months that Polish does?
> 
> I have no idea what month "listopad" is, but I've always liked the sound of it.


I would translate it as "Leafs-fall".

It is actually interesting, because those names are not artificial and a result of the national revive in the 18-19th century as one could assume, but they originate in the oldest Slavic language.

Those names are directly related to the nature changes around the year, as the flow of time was perceived by those changes in those old times. I must say that I really like those names.

*Leden * - led = ice. _Icen_ could be nice.

*Únor * - nořit = immerse, sink, the ice on water started to crack and sink under. The meaning is however here quite lost for most native people. Can't really make up nice English alternative. Maybe _merser_?

*Březen* - bříza = birk tree, the birk trees start to green up, - březí = gravid, the animals get heavy. I would go with _birker_ or rather _birken_.

*Duben* - dub = oak, the oak trees start to green up, I like _oaker_ or _oaken_

*Květen* - květ = bloom, Could be _floweren _ or _bloomen_. Máj - May, was used quite often as well.

*Červen* - červený = red, červenat = turning red. The fruits are turning red. Here goes _redden_ nicely.

*Červenec*, around the same as above. What about _reddener_ or _redderen_

*Srpen* - sirpsti = ripen, srp = sickle, reaping hook. The harwest gets ripe and is harvested. It could go with _reapen_.

*Září* - from old zářuj = rut, The rutting season. We could go with _rutten_ or perhaps _heaten_.

*Říjen* - říje = rut, as above

*Listopad* - list = leaf, padat = to fall, that is simple. _Leafsfall_.

*Prosinec* - from old prosiněti = flashing through, sinný = grey. The sun is flashing through the grey period. We could go with _gleamen_.

There is a very nice Czech fairytale about the 12 months (pohádka o dvanácti měsíčkách). The first mention about this fairytale is from the 14th century.


----------



## bogdymol

Just a picture from London, UK:


----------



## VITORIA MAN

another one from seville
Quillo, un paseillo en coche de caballos by Pogdorica, on Flickr


----------



## BriedisUnIzlietne

Surel said:


> Those names are directly related to the nature changes around the year, as the flow of time was perceived by those changes in those old times. I must say that I really like those names


It's interesting how different cultures name months after differents phenomenons. Our, Latvian, old month names were from a more human point of view, focusing less on the nature part:

*Ziemas mēnesis* = Winter month - no need for explanation

*Sveču mēnesis* = Candle month - very dark so you need candles?

*Sērsnu mēnesis* = Frozen snow / snow crust month - due to temperature changes between below and above freezing.

*Sulu mēnesis* = Sap month - birch sap period. Even nowadays people collect birch sap for drinking; some make wine from it.

*Lapu mēnesis* = Leaf month - trees begin to grow leaves

*Ziedu mēnesis* = Flower month - bloom period

*Siena mēnesis* = Hay month - time for hay

*Rudzu mēnesis* = Rye month - time for rye. Rye bread is very popular here.

*Silu mēnesis* = Pine forest month - time to start collecting wood for winter

*Veļu mēnesis* = Ghost / soul of the dead month - time for the dead 
*
Sala mēnesis* = Frost month - first frosts

*Vilku mēnesis* = Wolf month - beware of wolves?


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> geometrically that would be the centroid  and we are searching for the centre of the incircle. that would be in the village Donji Lipovčani
> we are definitely the coutnry with the most f*cked up shape in Europe


The exact opposite of Macedonia, the largest state with almost perfect shape.


----------



## nbcee

bogdymol said:


> Just a picture from London, UK:


Looks like being in the EU *does* make the differences between the East and the West disappear. :troll:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Google Translate:

_Dąbrowa, Goose Hill, Szczodrów, Toledo East and West Baltimore on the S8 from Wroclaw to Sycowa_

Syców is translated to both Toledo and Baltimore apparently. Original text


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> geometrically that would be the centroid  and we are searching for the centre of the incircle. that would be in the village Donji Lipovčani


That's right, I'm searching for the centre of the incircle (incentre). It should be very easy to find with an appropriate program, but I don't know where to draw an expanding circle. Where did you get Donji Lipovčani? It's somewhat closer to Bosnia and Hungary than to Slovenia.


----------



## bigic

Verso said:


> That's right, I'm searching for the centre of the incircle (incentre). It should be very easy to find with an appropriate program, but I don't know where to draw an expanding circle.


www.freemaptools.com
Tool "Radius Around Point".


----------



## PovilD

BriedisUnIzlietne said:


> It's interesting how different cultures name months after differents phenomenons. Our, Latvian, old month names were from a more human point of view, focusing less on the nature part:


In Lithuania we use our own month names that was adopted for wide use in 19th century. Untill then, each region used similar or different names to that we use today.

*Sausis* (January) - dry month. When there is only ice and snow.

*Vasaris* (February) - month that name derived from the word 'vasara'
 (means 'summer'). Month when people starts to think about summer works.

*Kovas* (March) - month that means 'rook' (the bird that is similar to the crow).

*Balandis* (April) - means 'piggeon' 

*Gegužė* (May) - from word 'gegutė' (means cockoo bird ). Announce for everyone that summer is near.

*Birželis* (June) - means 'birch tree'

*Liepa* (July) - means 'linden tree'

*Rugpjūtis* (August) - means 'time to cut the rye'

*Rugsėjis* (September) - means 'time to sow the rye'

*Spalis* (October) - it is related to linen works in autumn. Spalis means the 'stem of the linen'.

*Lapkritis* (November) - listospada  Leaffall time (although all leaves are gone from trees in Lithuania)

*Gruodis* (December) - when everything freeze.


----------



## Verso

bigic said:


> www.freemaptools.com
> Tool "Radius Around Point".


Great website, thanks! So the point in Slovenia farthest from the border is indeed in western Slovenia, not eastern, near Žažar (Zsa Zsa (Gabo)r ), about 46 km from Austria, Croatia and Italy. I bet there's no monument there to mark this, which is stupid.

I'm still trying to find the largest width of Slovenia, which is much more difficult.


----------



## BriedisUnIzlietne

PovilD said:


> In Lithuania we use our own month names that was adopted for wide use in 19th century. Untill then, each region used similar or different names to that we use today.


Nice to hear that you, unlike us, still use your month names 


> *Vasaris* (February) - month that name derived from the word 'vasara' (means 'summer'). Month when people starts to think about summer works.
> *Lapkritis* (November) - listospada  Leaffall time (although all leaves are gone from trees in Lithuania)




That logic  At least now I will know that, when visiting my aunt in February, I'm just 800 meters from summer 



BTW What do you call Autumn? We use "lapkritis" as a more poetic word for Autumn. The regular word of Autumn is "rudens" - a name derived from "ruds"("gingery"), meaning "the gingery season" because all the leaves turn ginger.


----------



## Surel

BriedisUnIzlietne said:


> It's interesting how different cultures name months after differents phenomenons. Our, Latvian, old month names were from a more human point of view, focusing less on the nature part:


Are they not used anymore?


----------



## Apuokas

BriedisUnIzlietne said:


> BTW What do you call Autumn? We use "lapkritis" as a more poetic word for Autumn. The regular word of Autumn is "rudens" - a name derived from "ruds"("gingery"), meaning "the gingery season" because all the leaves turn ginger.


*English* - *Lithuanian*:
Autumn - Ruduo
Spring - Pavasaris
Summer - Vasara
Winter - Žiema


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> That's right, I'm searching for the centre of the incircle (incentre). It should be very easy to find with an appropriate program, but I don't know where to draw an expanding circle. Where did you get Donji Lipovčani? It's somewhat closer to Bosnia and Hungary than to Slovenia.


sorry, I meant Gornji Lipovčani, i have been google-earthing it. 
but now i see that actually village Mostari is the closest to the centre (62 km from each).

i was also completely wrong pointing the closest Hungarian place as Bábocsa, and closest Bosnian as Gradina Donja, while it should be Gyekenés in Hungary and Bosanska Kostajnica in BIH.


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## BriedisUnIzlietne

Surel said:


> Are they not used anymore?


Sadly no - nowadays we use the international names:
Janvāris, februāris, marts, aprīlis, maijs, jūnijs, jūlijs, augusts, septembris, oktobris, novembris, decembris

In the western part of Latvia novembris is pronounced with a slightly different 'o' sound. In Latvian it's still written as 'o' but in Lithuanian it would be written as 'uo'.



PovilD said:


> In Lithuania we use [..]
> 
> 
> *Balandis* (April) - means 'piggeon'
> *Liepa* (July) - means 'linden tree'
> *Spalis* (October) - it is related to linen works in autumn. Spalis means the 'stem of the linen'.


I just found in my Latvian dictionary that, besides the historical words I already mentioned, people used also different words. For example, we also had a Pigeon month - Baložu mēnesis! But it was March, not April!
And that July over here also could be called Liepu mēnesis!

It shows that October could also be called Zemliku mēnesis, but I don't know what are zemliki. It would translate as the-things-that-you-put-under [something]. Maybe it's something related to your Spalis?


----------



## Surel

BriedisUnIzlietne said:


> It shows that October could also be called Zemliku mēnesis, but I don't know what are zemliki. It would translate as the-things-that-you-put-under [something]. Maybe it's something related to your Spalis?


It could be potatoes? But that would rule out an origin from before 1500.


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## Road_UK

*unsubscribe*

Let me know when this thread is English only again.


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## BriedisUnIzlietne

Surel said:


> It could be potatoes? But that would rule out an origin from before 1500.


No, potatoes are called 'kartupeļi', 'bimbaļi', 'buļbas', 'tupeņi', 'pampaļi', 'zemes pupas' and similar. Zemliki or maybe zemlikas sound like they could mean the straw that was used as a pillow centuries ago. But it's only my suspicion.


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## SeanT

We in the hungarian language are not so speciale in this case. Január,Február,Március,ÁprilisMájus,Június,Július,Augusztus,Szeptember,Október,November és December. Very common.


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## g.spinoza

Just got back from London. Fish&chips + stout at the Two Chairmen was something to remember... thanks Road_UK


----------



## Surel

BriedisUnIzlietne said:


> No, potatoes are called 'kartupeļi', 'bimbaļi', 'buļbas', 'tupeņi', 'pampaļi', 'zemes pupas' and similar. Zemliki or maybe zemlikas sound like they could mean the straw that was used as a pillow centuries ago. But it's only my suspicion.


Potatoes are _ziemniaky _in Polish and _zemiaky _in Slovak. And they come from under in October .

What do you mean with our "spalis"?

'kartupeļi', the Russian/German/Polish as well
'buļbas', Belarussian


----------



## Penn's Woods

2:18 p.m. (my time): Road_UK unsubscribes from thread.
27 minutes later: Spinoza, who was thinking of leaving the thread a week earlier...comes back and thanks Road_UK for pub recommendation.

Will Road_UK see thanks, or will they be like two ships passing in the night? Stay tuned....

Seriously, you could both just not read the posts that you find uninteresting or silly.

:cheers:


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Seriously, you could both just not read the posts that you find uninteresting or silly.
> :cheers:


To know if a post is uninteresting or silly, I have to read it first. But I can't un-read it afterwards.


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> 2:18 p.m. (my time): Road_UK unsubscribes from thread.
> 27 minutes later: Spinoza, who was thinking of leaving the thread a week earlier...comes back and thanks Road_UK for pub recommendation.
> 
> Will Road_UK see thanks, or will they be like two ships passing in the night? Stay tuned....
> 
> Seriously, you could both just not read the posts that you find uninteresting or silly.
> 
> :cheers:


I only came back because you peeked.

There are only posts here that I don't find interesting at the moment. The entire Slavic population has decended on this thread in order to compare words between their neighbouring countries, leaving people who have nothing wih these languages being bored to tears. It's the same in the International Border Crossing thread, where all attention is turning east. I tried to post a pic of the odd European or American border crossing, but it swiftly moves over to the Balkans again, usually resulting in mumbo-jumbo.
Now, are we making this forum, and indeed this section together? Or is this section strictly reserved for ex-communist countries only now?


----------



## Penn's Woods

EDIT: What follows is for Spinoza (if applicable to both). Road, have a glass of Pays d'Oc. Or try a change of subject.

Well, I think Road_UK's issue is this discussion of exotic names for the months that started a day or two ago in a (currently locked) thread.

It takes much less time to see that so-and-so is still talking about names of the months in [fill in Eastern European language of your choice] and ignore the post if you're not interested in that than it does to read it carefully.


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> Just got back from London. Fish&chips + stout at the Two Chairmen was something to remember... thanks Road_UK


My pleasure, G. Glad your're back, so we can balance this section a little again


----------



## Penn's Woods

Rolleyes.

(And when did I peek?)


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> EDIT: What follows is for Spinoza (if applicable to both). Road, have a glass of Pays d'Oc. Or try a change of subject.
> 
> Well, I think Road_UK's issue is this discussion of exotic names for the months that started a day or two ago in a (currently locked) thread.
> 
> It takes much less time to see that so-and-so is still talking about names of the months in [fill in Eastern European language of your choice] and ignore the post if you're not interested in that than it does to read it carefully.


I, and ideed a lot of others, are opening threads we are subscribed to, hoping to find some interesting stuff. Click on this thread, and you get to find out the translation of the word potatoe in a zillion languages. You get my point?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Hmmm.

Reminds me of the early days of Outlook, when every time an e-mail arrived you'd get a pop-up in the middle of your screen asking if you wanted to read it now. (It was opaque, too, and wouldn't go away until you clicked yes or no....in later versions, they made it sort of fade away if you ignored it.) So everyone started automatically clicking yes. That's how my workplace got its first computer virus.

Personally, figuring out how to disable the damn thing did wonders for my sanity. (Whether said sanity has lasted is another matter.)

The moral of that is (said the Duchess), you don't have to open the thread every time you're told there's something new on it.


----------



## Road_UK

I like a clean User CP :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

I'm not subscribed to any threads here.

I look at H&A all the time and currently have Infrastructure and Mobility general developments (in case anyone stalks, I mean sees, any interesting license plates), the BECafe and KoffieshopNL minimized. I use "refresh all" so they, well, all refresh and I can see at a glance if anything's new. And so much happened on BECafe in the middle of the night my time I'm waiting until later to catch up. (You've been warned....)


----------



## Road_UK

The moment you are putting a word or two in a thread and submit, you are subscribed. Because I divide my time over this section and the Dutch section (so do you now, who knew your Dutch is that good  ) and some German and French threads as well, I stay updated through my CP, which is particularly handy for guys like me who are always on the road and use this forum through an Android app rather a lot. So I make an effort to visit the treads I am subscribed to, only to get confronted with this:



BriedisUnIzlietne said:


> No, potatoes are called 'kartupeļi', 'bimbaļi', 'buļbas', 'tupeņi', 'pampaļi', 'zemes pupas' and similar. Zemliki or maybe zemlikas sound like they could mean the straw that was used as a pillow centuries ago. But it's only my suspicion.


(no offence intended, poster)


----------



## italystf

I think it's time to stop talking about how different things are said in different languages. Let's start a new topic. For example metric vs imperial system, ethnic minorities without stable residence or place names that have funny (sexual) meanings in another language. :troll:


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> For example metric vs imperial system,


Yesterday I visited National Physics Laboratories near London. And this is what I found... 









Eh. Brits.


----------



## italystf

In 1844 we were probably still using measurement units different from city to city...


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> sorry, I meant Gornji Lipovčani, i have been google-earthing it.
> but now i see that actually village Mostari is the closest to the centre (62 km from each).
> 
> i was also completely wrong pointing the closest Hungarian place as Bábocsa, and closest Bosnian as Gradina Donja, while it should be Gyekenés in Hungary and Bosanska Kostajnica in BIH.


I know, Croatia is long, but it isn't much wider than Slovenia.  Wikipedia mentions the Austrian incentre, but there's no damn word about this point in Slovenia anywhere, and I googled all villages around it and nothing, which is outright pathetic. I'm pretty sure there's no monument there either, because there's no photo there in Panoramio or Flickr.


----------



## aubergine72

Verso said:


> I know, Croatia is long, but it isn't much wider than Slovenia.  Wikipedia mentions the Austrian incentre, but there's no damn word about this point in Slovenia anywhere, and I googled all villages around it and nothing, which is outright pathetic. I'm pretty sure there's no monument there either, because there's no photo there in Panoramio or Flickr.


Amateurs :lol:

The geographical center of Bulgaria is a place called Uzana in Stara Planina










Monument:


----------



## Verso

^^ That's the geometric centre of Bulgaria, not the farthest point from the border. We have that as well.


PS: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italia_(regione_geografica) :hm:


----------



## aubergine72

^^

You're such a xenophobe :troll:


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^1) How did Greece come into it?


Never mind. Better question is: why is Monaco included?



Penn's Woods said:


> 2) "Width" to me implies east-to-west. I would say that Illinois, which is considerably longer north and south than it is east and west, is X miles (or km if you insist) wide by measuring the distance from the eastern border to the westernmost point on the Mississippi side. I'd likewise say that Kansas is X miles wide by measuring it from east to west, even though in that case the east-west measurement is much larger than the north-south.


Oh, it's that childish definition of _width_.  It's the other way around here: east-west is length (_dolžina_), north-south is width (_širina_). Anyway, what I mean is the shortest distance from border to border (including coastline). There's no point in Slovenia where the shortest distance from border to border would be 138 km.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> If it's part of the "extended" Italian Peninsula, then it's fine with me (not sure about hofburg though :troll. Koper or Postojna OTOH...


As eastern boundary of the Italian geographical region, they chose Fusine-Predil-Triglav-just east of Ijdria, just east of Postojna-Slivnica-Sneznik-Bakar. This boundary (except in the Julian Alps), is not clearly marked by a watershed, so drawing a geographical border is difficult and controversial. Something like the Euro-Asian border within Russia. However, geographers make a decision considering different aspects and people accept it.

BTW, if you look at _Penisola Balcanica_ in the Italian Wikipedia, you'll find a map that is in clear contraddiction with the definition of Italian geographical region:








Isn't weird to think as Trieste being part of the Balkan area and Novi Sad not belonging to it?


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Isn't weird to think as Trieste being part of the Balkan area and Novi Sad not belonging to it?


It's probably because _peninsula_ is land surrounded with water on three sides, and the Danube, Isonzo and Vipacco/Vipava are also waters, not just seas are.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> It's probably because _peninsula_ is land surrounded with water on three sides, and the Danube, Isonzo and Vipacco/Vipava are also waters, not just seas are.


Yes, but the sea from Trieste to Tulcea is enough to make the Balkan area a peninsula. However, from most people: Balkan=ExYu+AL+RO+BG. Geographically it's obviously wrong, thus.


----------



## Verso

It does look like a peninsula, no?

PS: leave me out of it, I'm an islander :troll:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Everything what is southern from the Danube is on Balkan.


----------



## cinxxx

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> Everything what is southern from the Danube is on Balkan.


Since I leave South of the Danube in Ingolstadt, I must be in the Balkans too


----------



## hofburg

italystf said:


> Isn't weird to think as Trieste being part of the Balkan area and Novi Sad not belonging to it?


 this map is exclusively by geographical defition, and not political, one of key Balkans geographic elements are Dinaric alps, which start as north as, well me  , and Panonian basin (where Novi Sad lies, for exemple) isn't included in geographical Balkan (but partly in political).


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

cinxxx said:


> Since I leave South of the Danube in Ingolstadt, I must be in the Balkans too


You know what i mean


----------



## cinxxx

Is this for real?
https://www.facebook.com/RevNews/posts/421112358042332



> The ‪#‎LeyMordaza‬ (Gag Law) has been approved in ‪#‎Spain‬. With this law, the production and distribution of images such as this one can get you a 30.000€ fine.
> 
> 1. Photographing or recording police - 600 to 30.000€ fine.
> 2. Peaceful disobedience to authority - 600 to 30.000€ fine.
> 3. Occupying banks as means of protest - 600 to 30.000€ fine.
> 4. Not formalizing a protest - 600 to 30.000€ fine.
> 5. For carrying out assemblies or meetings in public spaces - 100 to 600€ fine.
> 6. For impeding or stopping an eviction - 600 to 30.000€ fine.
> 7. For presence at an occupied space (not only social centers but also houses occupied by evicted families) - 100 to 600€ fine.
> 8. Police black lists for protestors, activists and alternative press have been legalized.
> 9. Meeting or gathering in front of Congress - 600 to 30.000€ fine.
> 10. Appealing the fines in court requires the payment of judicial costs, whose amount depends on the fine.
> 11. It allows random identity checks, allowing for profiling of immigrants and minorities.
> 12. Police can now carry out raids at their discretion, without the need for "order" to have been disrupted.
> 13. External bodily searches are also now allowed at police discretion.
> 14. The government can prohibit any protest at will, if it feels "order" will be disrupted.
> 15. Any ill-defined "critical infrastructure" is now considered a forbidden zone for public gatherings if it might affect their functioning.
> 16. There are also fines for people who climb buildings and monuments without permission.


----------



## italystf

Abusive occupation of public soil and disruption of public services are already criminal offences in most countries and are normally pushed with fines.


----------



## Christophorus

Good morning fellows, idk if this is the right place, but since a few days no posted (embedded) videos show up to me, i just see plain text in the postings. Pictures show up normally. Happens in different threads, i use Firefox 34, could it be caused by the Flashblock Addon?

Any ideas and help are gladly appreciated!


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Well, what do YOU think about whether Nova Gorica can be considered part of the "Italian geographical area" (in the language of your choice)? :troll:


I will try to make it clear, but I am afraid it will be more nebulous. First of all, there are many many points of view: 

One example: Great Britain, British Isles and stuff.
Not every boundary must be sharp and obvious.'Balkan' is a very good example to clarify:
You can perceive this term in terms of geology, culture or simply aligned to countries or subregions for press purposes.

By no means there is something like Italian geographic area or space. Generally geographic area is an inconceivably complex space you can divide in multiple ways in different levels.

Sometimes, scientists (even within one country or institute) can't agree on some issues.

Examples: from geologic point of view some authors assume that certain parts of Hungary are parts of Balkan. Note this is impossible to tell in terms of culture! Serbia is generally located on Balkan peninsula but in fact, Vojvodina is outside Balkan cultural area. 

The cultural area is also tricky. Let's imagine Slovakia. Are we part of Hungarian cultural area? Of course. Are we part of German cultural area? Yes. Are we part of Slavic cultural area? Yes. Aren't we poart of North-atlantic cultural area? Yes we are. So tell me what cultural area are we members? You can't tell exactly.

Another good example is Greece. The country is located on Peloponnese peninsula. Peloponnese peninsula is part of Balkan peninsula. Thus literally, Greece lies on Balkan. But nobody refers to Greece as Balkan. Have you ever asked yourself why? Because Greece, despite the geologic point of view, is not Balkan cultural area. Furthermore Greeks themselves does not like consider as Balkans due to bloodshed there they had nothing to do with.

Sometimes experts, having Greece and the rest of Balkan in mind, refer to 'southeastern Europe'. But in geologic point of view, European part of Turkey is part thereof too.:lol:

Complicated as hell.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

marriage proposal gone wrong in the Netherlands :nuts:










The plan for the guy was to land in the backyard, but the platform tilted and crashed into the neighbor's house.


----------



## CNGL

cinxxx said:


> Is this for real?
> https://www.facebook.com/RevNews/posts/421112358042332


Sadly yes hno:. Thanks to that fascist government we have. But next year we'll throw them away .


----------



## RipleyLV

Prepare your LOL at this guy 






:rofl:


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Sounds legit


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> this map is exclusively by geographical defition, and not political, one of key Balkans geographic elements are Dinaric alps, which start as north as, well me  , and Panonian basin (where Novi Sad lies, for exemple) isn't included in geographical Balkan (but partly in political).


Karlovac lies on the Balkan Peninsula and in the Pannonian Basin at the same time.



volodaaaa said:


> By no means there is something like Italian geographic area or space.


There, it's all clear now. :troll:


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Abusive occupation of public soil and disruption of public services are already criminal offences in most countries and are normally pushed with fines.


This seems to go beyond that.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> This seems to go beyond that.


Yes, some points of that list are eccessive, but many other are already a reality everywhere.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Croatia is also member of EU


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> Are you more concerned about foreign relations than human rights?


It's what the Western world is doing since 1945!


----------



## italystf

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> Croatia is also member of EU


Yes, but its transition to democracy wasn't painless as in Slovenia, Warsaw Pact countries and the Baltics. It went through a long bloody war and the Tudman regime, who was nationalistic and authoritarian. Croatia held its first free election in 2000, a decade after most of Eastern Europe.


----------



## Road_UK

italystf said:


> It's what the Western world is doing since 1945!


Bullshit! Europe 2014 is more free than ever. Since 1945 all countries in the West have been free untill they torn the wall down in 1989 and everybody is free. And we're taking everybody in who are still oppressed.


----------



## Kanadzie

italystf said:


> Augusto Pinochet. On the other hand, Salvador Allende, who was democratically elected, was depicted as evil only because he was leftist and anti-imperialist. Even after the end of the cold war this attitude is still continuing, with the USA+EU club strongly criticizing Russia for everything and closing 100 eyes on what nationalistic and theocratic states like Israel or Saudi Arabia do.


Pinochet would torture and kill you if you didn't like him, but Allende would torture and kill you and steal your stuff too  I mean to consider "democratic", sure, he was elected, but didn't follow the laws of the country either (ignoring supreme court, etc), he was really dirty.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Delete.


----------



## italystf

Road_UK said:


> Bullshit! Europe 2014 is more free than ever. Since 1945 all countries in the West have been free untill they torn the wall down in 1989 and everybody is free. And we're taking everybody in who are still oppressed.


I mean that the West is using a double standard to consider dictatorial regimes in the third world. There are worse dictatorships (because they are politically and economically unfavourable to the West) and "more tolerable" dictatorships (because they are politically end economically friendly with the West. But both kill and oppress their own people. In this sense, the West is more concerned about international relations than human rights.
Look at the "axis of evil", invented by G.W. Bush. It includes countries that are unfavourable to the USA, while other terrible regimes like Saudi Arabia are left out.


----------



## italystf

Kanadzie said:


> Pinochet would torture and kill you if you didn't like him, but Allende would torture and kill you and steal your stuff too  I mean to consider "democratic", sure, he was elected, but didn't follow the laws of the country either (ignoring supreme court, etc), he was really dirty.


I don't know much about Chilean history but Allende government is often quoted as a rare example of "democratic socialism", in opposition with Soviet-style regimes. Obviously it's not a fact to be taken as 100% true, as there are some nostalgic commies that would even defend Kim Sung!


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> I mean that the West is using a double standard to consider dictatorial regimes in the third world. There are worse dictatorships (because they are politically and economically unfavourable to the West) and "more tolerable" dictatorships (because they are politically end economically friendly with the West. But both kill and oppress their own people. In this sense, the West is more concerned about international relations than human rights.
> Look at the "axis of evil", invented by G.W. Bush. It includes countries that are unfavourable to the USA, while other terrible regimes like Saudi Arabia are left out.


And to be honest, I am little bit scared about the crisis in Russia. Not because of me being kind of pro-Russian, but because of a dog in corner, that can seriously harm you.

In Slovakia there are many Roma settlements built illegally on someone's property. There has been a voices to radically tear them down, but someone said it would be stupid. A Gypsy without home, who has lost everything, is much more dangerous than "friendly" Gypsy in "your garden". Sad but true. And the same goes for Putin.

People in Russia love him. And all actions towards him are perceived as the attack to Russian sovereignty which increases his popularity. Believe me or not, I live in Eastern Europe and Russia is even more eastern.

Currently we have one-party government. It has been one of the strongest party in (short) Slovak history. The more had opposition attacked (sometimes they left out serious things the party could have been accused of and been pulling out pure stupidities), the better results for the party in following elections arose. Unfortunately, Slovak opposition is now in ruins and, believe me or not, the governmental party started slowly crumbling.

I don't say sanctions were bad. But kicking dead clown does not solve anything. People in Russia must be given a chance to realize who is guilty of current situation not to be part of unstable situation, where Putin (controlling all media in Russia) is the only god, the only lighthouse.


----------



## italystf

People in Russia love Putin because during his government Russia had a big economical growth, after decades of stagnation during Soviet years and the terrible economical crisis during Gorbachev\Yelstin period. Russians never experienced democracy in their history and probably don't give importance to it. If America invades a country, in America the pacifist movement will get stronger. If Russia does the same, the government will get even more popular support. However also Russian economy is shrinking in these days.


----------



## Verso

Christmas tree from plastic bottles in Krško:









http://www.rtvslo.si/lokalne-novice/v-krskem-postavili-novoletno-jelko-iz-1-500-plastenk/353772


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> People in Russia love Putin because during his government Russia had a big economical growth, after decades of stagnation during Soviet years and the terrible economical crisis during Gorbachev\Yelstin period. Russians never experienced democracy in their history and probably don't give importance to it. If America invades a country, in America the pacifist movement will get stronger. If Russia does the same, the government will get even more popular support. However also Russian economy is shrinking in these days.


Of course, there is no one alive to remember times without one strong leading man. All Russians always had the "Father of the land". We should be very careful, some actions might lead to increased coherence and the WW2 scenario is here. Now with nuclear weapons. Russia must be punished, but other way. Difficult situation for NATO. I don't know what would I do. Russian expansion must be stopped on one hand, but Russia should not be provoked on other hand. It is like walking on the thin ice.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> And to be honest, I am little bit scared about the crisis in Russia. Not because of me being kind of pro-Russian, but because of a dog in corner, that can seriously harm you.
> 
> In Slovakia there are many Roma settlements built illegally on someone's property. There has been a voices to radically tear them down, but someone said it would be stupid. A Gypsy without home, who has lost everything, is much more dangerous than "friendly" Gypsy in "your garden". Sad but true. And the same goes for Putin.
> 
> People in Russia love him. And all actions towards him are perceived as the attack to Russian sovereignty which increases his popularity. Believe me or not, I live in Eastern Europe and Russia is even more eastern.
> 
> Currently we have one-party government. It has been one of the strongest party in (short) Slovak history. The more had opposition attacked (sometimes they left out serious things the party could have been accused of and been pulling out pure stupidities), the better results for the party in following elections arose. Unfortunately, Slovak opposition is now in ruins and, believe me or not, the governmental party started slowly crumbling.
> 
> I don't say sanctions were bad. But kicking dead clown does not solve anything. People in Russia must be given a chance to realize who is guilty of current situation not to be part of unstable situation, where Putin (controlling all media in Russia) is the only god, the only lighthouse.


I'm generally trying to avoid this topic - the whole thing makes me nervous. But I have to say this assessment seems largely fair. Although I think the question of guilt for the current situation is more complicated, and it's sort of beside the point at this point anyway. No matter who created the current situation, what's important at this point is getting out of it peacefully.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Stray thought - just got a chance to look at the paper...

Obama said yesterday (unless it was other politicians and the like on TV last night...) that the policy of isolating Cuba hadn't worked. So we're isolating Russia?


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Christmas tree from plastic bottles in Krško:
> 
> http://img.rtvslo.si/_up/upload/2014/12/16/65170673_gr693897.jpg
> http://www.rtvslo.si/lokalne-novice/v-krskem-postavili-novoletno-jelko-iz-1-500-plastenk/353772


they shouldn't have plug the lights in, right? there it is lit by itself?


----------



## italystf

Students dormitory's Christmas tree: :lol:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I still didn't decorate my Christmas tree.I will probably do that with my familly some time between 25th and 30th December.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Students dormitory's Christmas tree: :lol:


Slovenian beer. :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

Yesterday in Turin, pic taken by me:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Voters?


----------



## CNGL

In Spanish, Brittany/Bretagne is Bretaña, and Great Britain is Gran Bretaña. So how would one translate just Britain into Spanish?


----------



## Penn's Woods

I guess Britain has to remain Great, then.


----------



## Kanadzie

ChrisZwolle said:


> Bretagne remains Bretagne in Dutch. Brittanny sounds weird for us, because that's the name we use for the Great Britain (Groot)-Brittannië.


In French it sounds the most weird - Bretagne contre Grande-Bretagne :lol:


----------



## piotr71

volodaaaa said:


> Guys, how do you celebrate Christmas (if do)? With who? When? Let's talk about Christmas.


Well, this year quite typically, with my family living in Britain, Great Britain (Wielka Brytaniua not Bretania*) But my favourite way of celebrating christmas is...on the road. Last year, for instance, on newly opened S8 in Poland and in Slovak West Tatra Mountains, earlier in 2013 I was driving around Belgium and the Netherlands. Year before - a trip to Berlin and so on...

* If it comes to Bretagne, there is an interesting, tasty, one of the most popular and sometimes even called national, dish in Poland. We call it "fasolka po bretońsku", which could be translated as 'Breton baked butter beans' ( not to confuse with British baked beans**, which is far less, say, sophisticated) However, as far as I know, this dish isn't known to Bretons, at all. 

** I only give an example of British relative, because if you type 'fasolka po bretonsku' in wikipedia and check an English or French version you will find baked beans as equivalent, which to me is kind of misuse of the term.


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> Guys, how do you celebrate Christmas (if do)? With who? When? Let's talk about Christmas.


Vistitin' my family and my GF's family, eating lots of stuffed cabbage and _bejgli _and praising the whole concept of the motorway.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Bejgli? 
We have that too in Banat


----------



## Attus

bogdymol said:


> There's a lot of traffic at this hour on the 'Gastarbeiter' route. In Austria on A1, S1 & A4 it's full of cars with people working abroad and going home. A lot of STAUs and slow traffic came together with this.
> 
> I managed to cross Austria on a weird route (I'll post that tomorrow), and now I'm heading to Hungary.
> 
> I understood there are already delays at HU-RO and HU-SRB border crossings.


Yesterday I drove Rheinbach - Koblenz - Franfkurt/M - Nuremberg - Passau - Vienna - Budapest. 1.130 km at all. 11 hours of driving, normally, this time it was 16 hours. Congestions everywhere. The road was full of Gastarbeiters, indeed. The German motorway A3 is probably the only place of the world where you can see lots of cars that have a French licencse plate but no one speaks French, lots of cars with British plates but no one speaks English, lots of cars of Dutch license plates but no one speaks Dutch, and lots of cars with German plates but only a minority speaks German. 
There was only approx. 300 km where I could drive relaxed, without staring the rear lights of the car in front of me, and braking when he brakes. it was crazy and very, very exhausting. 
In and around Vienna S1 and A4 was full, I lost approx. 1 hour between Vösendorf - Fischamend. But the Hungarian M1, too, was full, we drove 60-70 km/h. 
At the last Austrian gas station there was a queue of more than 100m, and at the first Hungarian gas station, too. I suppose the wating time was at least one hour. I didn't have to stop because I pre-purchased my Hungarian electronic toll sticker. 

The European road network is not ready for this christmas rush  But I'm happy, I drove 16 hours and did not cause any accident, although in the last 150-200km I was afraid of doing so.


----------



## x-type

cinxxx said:


> ^^Bejgli?
> We have that too in Banat


we have them everywhere from Germany to Turkey


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Was crazy traffic yesterday on this route, but I managed to get home safely. My wife was looking all the time on Google Maps Traffic alerts, so we saw every time how's the traffic ahead. This was route yesterday: http://goo.gl/maps/Nj1QM

We saw an accident reported after Ybbs an der Donau, so we exited there and drove on B1. While on B1 we could see the traffic stopped on the motorway, so we were happy as we took a right decision to exit the motorway there. We also noticed on the mobile app 3 accidents (and 3 STAUs) on M1 between Pöchlarn and Wien, plus another one on A21 near Wien, plus another 2 on S1 nearby Wien. That's why I took B3 and drove on it until Krems an der Donau, and then on the motorway until Wien.

At Wien Airport there was another block, so we drove from A4 (from Wien), then on S1 towards Graz and took the first exit to drive on B9. Here's the traffic on S1 direction Budapest (on the other side):










After that the A4 was full of cars, driving up to 100 km/h:



















I haven't stopped for the Hungarian vignette at the border or at the first gas station (MOL) because I thought that everyone will stop there. I stopped at the toll plaza near Mosonmagyarovar, but I was so wrong. I waited 40 minutes to buy a vignette, although 4 or 5 lanes were open.

At Gyor bypass there was another accident so I left the motorway and went through the city. After Gyor I reentered M1, but only until Tatanabya. Between Tatabanya and Budapest Google Traffic said that there were 2 or 3 accidents, so I drove on the main road 1. I haven't entered M0 because of another accident being reported there, so I drove through Budapest city. 

M5 from Budapest to Szeged (&Mako) was with a lot of traffic, but I could often go with 130 km/h. Then from Mako I went for Turnu/Battonya border crossing because I heard that at Nadlac the waiting time was very long. The road between Mako and Battonya is not the best one, but at least the border was free (so free that even the border guard wasn't there). We waited for him 1 minute to come (only the Romanian one came), checked our IDs and we had a short chat. He said that his colleagues from Nadlac are reporting massive queues, but people don't use the alternate crossing because they don't know about it.

All in all, instead of 7.5-8 hours drive, I did 12h50m (including about 1.5 hours stopping for eating and shopping).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It was a big mistake to build Austrian S1 with only 2x2 lanes. It was overwhelmed with (truck) traffic from the moment it was completed from A2 to A4.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> It was a big mistake to build Austrian S1 with only 2x2 lanes. It was overwhelmed with (truck) traffic from the moment it was completed from A2 to A4.


and when they make the link to S2, it will be real bottleneck.


----------



## bogdymol

A connection between Eisenstadt and Parndorf would be also useful.


----------



## Attus

I was much later there than Bogdy. Approx. 19h in S1, and arrived 22:30 to Budapest. The situation was similar. But the real issue was not S1, further on A4 and M1 in Hungary, too, was very bad. S1 was only congested because the congestion from A4 was so bad that it congested S1, too. 

I thought, it is very, very nice that there's no more border control between Austria and Hungary. I think with a basic border control at Hegyeshalom/Nickelsdorf, waiting time could have reached one day. 
I pre-purchased the Austrian and Hungarian Vignette in Germany so from Bavaria up to Budapest I had nothing to do but drive, and stop if the car in front of me stops.


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> A connection between Eisenstadt and Parndorf would be also useful.


why? whyat would we get with it? it would collect only traffic from S6 and Graz to direction Budapest. 
Wien only needs more connections for south-north and east-west through traffic


----------



## Penn's Woods

Random linguistic oddity:

At the Pain Quotidien (a Belgian café/bakery/restaurant chain) in Philadelphia - well, one of them; there are at least two - the "push" sign on the door is in five languages - English, French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish. I'd noticed the Dutch before (Philadelphia's not exactly full of signs with Dutch on them), but I was just there and said to myself, why not German? The salt and pepper shakers are labeled in French, Dutch and English.

I ordered a bûche de Noël there.


----------



## Kanadzie

I remember seeing a buche de Noel in my parents chest freezer in their garage. It said something like "happy 2001!"

It was 2010  I'm sure is still there...

happy winter solstice!


----------



## Verso

We needed 3.5 hours to cross the HR-SRB border on E70 on Saturday (8.30-12.00). That's the longest I've ever waited on a border. Many lanes open for cars, but only one for buses (no special EU lane). We needed 11.5 hours for 530 km, but it would've been even more if we'd crossed the main SLO-HR border checkpoint (we accidently used a local one instead, because our driver drove our bus where it was reserved for cars, so we had to turn around :lol. And I don't know whose brilliant idea it was to depart from Ljubljana at 2.30 if you wanna arrive in Belgrade early in the morning (we arrived at 14h). I've never seen such a stupid departure time from a tourist agency.


----------



## italystf

Scary accident on A-4 motorway in Spain, near Madrid. A driver ran over a Guardia Civil policeman who was standing near the police car parked in the left lane. The cop survived with several injures aften being thrown across the central barrier. Caught by CCTV.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Hence, "move-over laws" - a recent trend* in the U.S.

If you see an emergency vehicle (police car, ambulance, tow truck...) stopped on the right shoulder, you're supposed to move out of the right lane, if you can do so safely.

*This is a state-level thing, but many states have passed such laws in the last few years.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This accident doesn't have a lot to do with the 'move over' law in many U.S. states. The police car stopped in the left lane (out of three), while the crashing car came from the right lane, it seems like hydroplaning that got him to lose control and swerve over three lanes into the copper.


----------



## volodaaaa

nbcee said:


> Perhaps not in one of the richest cities of the country :dunno:


three grades of lies:
1. lies 
2. greater lies
3. stats


----------



## g.spinoza

VITORIA MAN said:


> a madrid street this christmas , where is the spanish crisis ?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://estaticos.elmundo.es/assets/multimedia/imagenes/2014/11/19/14163972702820.jpg


You don't have to pay anything just to be on the streets.


----------



## cinxxx

*Verso*, no pictures from Belgrade? Some impressions?


----------



## Pavlemadrid

volodaaaa said:


> three grades of lies:
> 1. lies
> 2. greater lies
> 3. stats


Madrid is one of the richest and most developed regions in Spain, you only have to check any kind of indicator (economic, technological, working, social, etc.). But it's obvious that it has lived (and still living its effects) a huge crisis like the rest of the country.


----------



## Penn's Woods

nbcee said:


> Perhaps not in one of the richest cities of the country :dunno:


I was in Macy's in Philadelphia a few Sundays ago and it was mobbed, so at first I thought, well, the economy must be doing all right, but then I realized it was for the Christmas light show.

How many of those people are actually shopping?


----------



## italystf

The number of people around for shopping isn't a valid indicator for the crisis. The average amount of money spent by them, instead, is.
If people have less money they will still wander around shopping centres. But instead of buying like crazy everything they like they will spend more time looking at the windows and buying only what they needed after have compared prices in different shops. But still you will see huge crowds around shopping area, that may give a false idea of prosperity.

Anyway, volodaaaa is right about statistics. The main problems with it are:
- the difficulties in collecting reliable series of data
- the comparability of series of data collected with different criteria (by different countries, in different times, by different organizations)
- the presence of extreme values that are not representative but highly influence the average (if the median isn't used instead)
- for economical statistics, the difference between nominal and real (i.e. adjusted for inflation) amount in historical series.


----------



## Surel

VITORIA MAN said:


> benches antihomeless for christmas in angouleme (france)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://cdn.rt.com/files/news/35/24/f0/00/angouleme-homeless-bench-cages.si.jpg


wtf is that?


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Anyway, volodaaaa is right about statistics. The main problems with it are:
> - the difficulties in collecting reliable series of data
> - the comparability of series of data collected with different criteria (by diffeyfrent countries, in different times, by different organizations)
> - the presence of extreme values that are not representative but highly influence the average (if the median isn't used instead)
> - for economical statistics, the difference between nominal and real (i.e. adjusted for inflation) amount in historical series.


Of course. I can relate. I live in the sixth richest region in Europe (according to nominal GDP per capita) :troll:


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> Of course. I can relate. I live in the sixth richest region in Europe (according to nominal GDP per capita) :troll:


That's a coincidence. I was just defending your city to a statement of some Belgian guy who said that you can see the difference between rich Vienna and poor Bratislava. I said that I didn't agree, that Bratislava has developed itself to a modern country with a very good infrastructure and that Vienna is somehow turning in to a bit of a slum like many Austrian city's, including Salzburg and Innsbruck.


----------



## cinxxx

I hate snow


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> *Verso*, no pictures from Belgrade? Some impressions?


I made some photos, but I'm not the kind of person to create a thread about it, I don't have that many anyway. Impressions? Very positive. Belgrade was a pleasant surprise to me. I thought it was overrated (there're many Yugonostalgics in Slovenia, and Balkan people like boasting ), but it isn't, at least not to me (it helps a lot, if you speak Serbian and read Cyrillic though). It's not as clean as Central- and Western European capitals (façades could be nicer), but it's still a beautiful city, with many impressive buildings and monuments (nicely decorated in December at night) and with a perfect location at the confluence of Sava into the Danube (it was interesting to compare Sava in Ljubljana and Belgrade ). Last, but not least, people are great. Despite being poorer than Central- and Western Europeans, they're very friendly, open and down-to-earth (and not just in conversation with you, even just observing them from afar). I particularly liked Skadarlija (old street) where we had a great dinner, and we were drinking and singing Serbian songs like in old times. :drunk:  I don't know what more to say right now, but you can ask me, if you have any questions. Ok, here is one photo of the old town from Branko's Bridge over Sava:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> Fixed.
> 
> EDIT: I was stopped at a red light once on my way to Mom's when I spotted this place:
> https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=40....d=JmgY2--pOaIFT6DalHGWUg&cbp=12,284.8,,2,5.37
> In a town my grandmother lived in for a while, by the way.
> 
> I'll try to find a better view.
> 
> EDIT 2: What I was trying to find was the window next to this one. Same info (I assume), ale po polsku: http://foodio54.com/photos/european-deli-manville-1473361


Just took Mom to check out this place. Being able to read Polish would have been helpful. They had lots of packaged food products labeled in Polish, Polish (-American) newspapers and magazines, homemade pierogi....


----------



## x-type

Surel said:


> wtf is that?


the conservative mayor of Angoulême has equipped benches around the city with those cages to prevent homeless people to occupy them during the winter


----------



## nbcee

volodaaaa said:


> three grades of lies:
> 1. lies
> 2. greater lies
> 3. stats


What I meant was that you can find a subgroup in almost any larger group that behaves in a totally different way as the others do. You can't really describe a whole country after seeing only one photo of it. To prove my point I present you two pictures. 

One from the USA:









And one from Bangladesh:









No photoshop or alteration, both represent the truth (from Detroit and from the city center of Dhaka). But these alone don't give an accurate and detailed description of the two countries.


----------



## keber

x-type said:


> the conservative mayor of Angoulême has equipped benches around the city with those cages to prevent homeless people to occupy them during the winter


So if I'm not homeless how do I use this bench if I feel tired from walking?


----------



## Surel

x-type said:


> the conservative mayor of Angoulême has equipped benches around the city with those cages to prevent homeless people to occupy them during the winter


But doesn't it mean that no one will be able to use them?


----------



## x-type

keber said:


> So if I'm not homeless how do I use this bench if I feel tired from walking?





Surel said:


> But doesn't it mean that no one will be able to use them?


i suppose that he probably hypothesizes that non-homeless people don't use benches during the winter :dunno.


----------



## Penn's Woods

The explanation: 

http://rt.com/news/217679-france-homeless-bench-cages/

(This is why God invented Google's "search by image" function. )


----------



## Kanadzie

Ah RT, our favorite source of Rossiskoye propagandskaya 

I can't even remember the last time I sat on a public bench.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Well, why would RT make that up?


----------



## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> ^^ What about _Viedenský rezeň_?
> We call it the same.


Wienerschnitzel... :naughty:
Yeah, that is right. Also Vienna Coffee.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> I figured out we use them only in terms of food names  I am a small fan of linguistics and most of people I've talked about it to had no clue the exact name of food is related to an exonym of a foreign city name.
> 
> The most notable examples are Szegedi Goulash (_Segedínsky guláš_), Linz's Cakes (_Linecké koláče _- btw. amusing that the German translation is _Mürbeteig_, so nothing to do with Linz) and Cluj's Cabbage (_Koložvárska kapusta_).
> 
> I still wonder why was the particular dish named after the certain city or country, especially if the original citizens of the certain city or country have no clue about it


In many parts of the world, spaghetti with "ragù" (minced meat) are called "spaghetti alla bolognese", although in Bologna nobody called them in that way. Instead, in Bologna, they make "tagliatelle alla bolognese", that are "tagliatelle" (a type of pasta wider than spaghetti) with ragù.
In Italy, pizza with sliced hot dogs is called "pizza viennese" (from Vienna).


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> I'm slowly starting to hate Google Maps. If you make a driving direction (A to B) and want to change the route by moving the white spot, lately it picks up every little local road instead of giving priority to motorways and main roads (unless you drop the spot directly on the motorway, but then you can't be sure it actually landed on it if you don't zoom in).


i am starting to hate them since they have given permission to too many persons to change the maps on their own, so there are unbuilt roads drawn


----------



## bigic

I live in a small town on the road between Nix and 소피아.


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile in Rome:

Two policemen fell asleep during work and when they got up the speed camera had been stolen. :lol:
http://www.motorionline.com/2014/12/17/roma-si-addormentano-in-servizio-e-gli-rubano-lautovelox/


----------



## Alex_ZR

x-type said:


> i am starting to hate them since they have given permission to too many persons to change the maps on their own, so there are unbuilt roads drawn


Unbuilt roads are visible only in satellite mode, try using map mode.


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^This is Roadside Rest. Nearly nothing's off-topic.


Ok, then I must say I find it pretty weird that river Ljubljanica is in (old) Italian called "Length" (Lunghezza). :shifty:


----------



## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> i am starting to hate them since they have given permission to too many persons to change the maps on their own, so there are unbuilt roads drawn


Oh, that's not good. I've been assuming that the information was at least accurate (possibly out of date in places but accurate when it was posted....)


----------



## aubergine72

italystf said:


> In many parts of the world, spaghetti with "ragù" (minced meat) are called "spaghetti alla bolognese", although in Bologna nobody called them in that way. Instead, in Bologna, they make "tagliatelle alla bolognese", that are "tagliatelle" (a type of pasta wider than spaghetti) with ragù.
> In Italy, pizza with sliced hot dogs is called "pizza viennese" (from Vienna).


Are the Bolognese aware of this?

http://ww2.valdosta.edu/~jjhaddoc/bologna.JPG

(pronounced as baloney).


----------



## Wilhem275

I'm trying to find a cheap way to send some luggage from NL back to Italy. I have two heavy bags, trains are expensive and carrying them on the plane is not that cheap too.

Exact pick-up date is very important, delivery time is not really relevant (I would say max 7 days).

Do you have any advice? At this point I would expect Road_UK showing up at my door...


At the moment the most interesting deal is to carry everything with Transavia, €61 flight + €75 for 50 kg of stuff (problem is: I'm not sure I'm within 50 kg total).

There is this site: https://www.ecoparcel.eu/
Which gives an estimate around €50-60 for the whole thing, but the reviews are split between "Perfect" and "It's a full scam". If they don't pick up my stuff on the right date, I'm in big trouble...


----------



## Surel

Wilhem275 said:


> I'm trying to find a cheap way to send some luggage from NL back to Italy. I have two heavy bags, trains are expensive and carrying them on the plane is not that cheap too.
> 
> Exact pick-up date is very important, delivery time is not really relevant (I would say max 7 days).
> 
> Do you have any advice? At this point I would expect Road_UK showing up at my door...
> 
> 
> At the moment the most interesting deal is to carry everything with Transavia, €61 flight + €75 for 50 kg of stuff (problem is: I'm not sure I'm within 50 kg total).
> 
> There is this site: https://www.ecoparcel.eu/
> Which gives an estimate around €50-60 for the whole thing, but the reviews are split between "Perfect" and "It's a full scam". If they don't pick up my stuff on the right date, I'm in big trouble...


If there is a bus connection you coud try that one. Some companies are even willing to deliver the luggage. Or you could try carpooling with someone.


----------



## cinxxx

I wanted to say bus connection too. But I'm not sure he will get cheaper then what he wrote by plane. For example, we receive/send packages from/to Romania by Atlassib, but a 20kg package costs 20€ and you are not allowed to have heavier ones then 20kg.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I am on winter break from today.School for me will start on 20th January.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Just calculated that my car's been round the Equator five times.


----------



## italystf

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I am on winter break from today.School for me will start on 20th January.


I know that Christian Ortodox celebrate Christmas on 7th January, but is 25th December really an ordinary workday in Serbia and other Ortodox countries?


DanielFigFoz said:


> Just calculated that my car's been round the Equator five times.


I broke the 200k line recently too, I hope it will last for another 200k.


----------



## Alex_ZR

italystf said:


> I know that Christian Ortodox celebrate Christmas on 7th January, but is 25th December really an ordinary workday in Serbia and other Ortodox countries?


It is, only those who celebrate Christmas on that day (Hungarians, Croats, Romanians, Slovaks...) have right not to come to work.


----------



## CNGL

DanielFigFoz said:


> Just calculated that my car's been round the Equator five times.


The car I drive has done so only 3.5 times. And it's 15 years old.

BTW, if I find a Paternoster lift/elevator I'll do a round trip in it .


----------



## keber

My car has already 8,5 trips round equator. On next new year eve it will have 9 full rounds.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^Nine times round the equator!

Yes I'd like to do a round trip in a paternoster lift.


----------



## italystf

Alex_ZR said:


> It is, only those who celebrate Christmas on that day (Hungarians, Croats, Romanians, Slovaks...) have right not to come to work.


So do you make an ethnic\religious census to give different rights according to the religion? In other countries that would be politically unacceptable.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Does it need to be a "census"? Why can't the employee just say, "hey, that's a religious holiday for me"? (And you don't even need to see that as a matter of "different rights" according to religion...so long as everyone has the right to take off his or her own holidays it's a matter of everyone having that same right.)


----------



## Road_UK

Mayrhofen right now. It has been snowing continiously for a few days now. This afternoon the snowing will stop and we can look forward to a few sunny days until the snowing starts again on Sunday. I'll be skiing in perfect conditions tomorrow


----------



## bgd77

italystf said:


> I know that Christian Ortodox celebrate Christmas on 7th January, but is 25th December really an ordinary workday in Serbia and other Ortodox countries?


Actually, only the Orthodox that use the old calendar celebrate Christmas on 7th January. See link. Most Romanians celebrate Christmas on 25th December.

For Easter, where there is a difference in dates between the Orthodox and the Catholics, they can take the day off depending on their rite.

For non-Christians, each recognized rite can declare 3 holidays on which 2 days can be taken (so a total of 6 days/year).


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Karlsruhe-Baden airport.
I'm waiting to board the flight to Bari, Italy.


----------



## g.spinoza

Bari? Not the most popular destination...


----------



## cinxxx

It was the only decent priced I could find, had to book pretty late.
But I will only land and sleep there, I plan to visit Lecce, Alberobello, Ostuni and Matera.


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> Bari? Not the most popular destination...


i've heard that Bari is one of the best italian cities for the shopping :dunno:


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> It was the only decent priced I could find, had to book pretty late.
> But I will only land and sleep there, I plan to visit Lecce, Alberobello, Ostuni and Matera.


I just read that the airport of Bari is closed due to snow...


----------



## Jasper90

cinxxx said:


> It was the only decent priced I could find, had to book pretty late.
> But I will only land and sleep there, I plan to visit Lecce, Alberobello, Ostuni and Matera.


Puglia is usually more of a summer destination, but the places you're visiting are amazing 
However it's funny because you'll see snow, and it usually snows once every 10-30 years in Puglia!! :lol:

I've never been to Bari but I think it's worth a visit too!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

They had snow in Palermo today.


----------



## CNGL

And no snow for me . Just cold.


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> Bari? Not the most popular destination...


It is for illegal immigrants.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Naughty.

I'd think twice about taking a ferry to Greece, though.


----------



## volodaaaa

Still safer than Asian airlines...


----------



## italystf

Matera is very unique and interesting, definitively worth visiting.


----------



## cinxxx

There were no problems, we landed without problems. Regional trains to Bari were cancelled though, so we had to wait for the bus shuttle, got safe to Bari. The people where we stay told us they never had such cold weather and snow for over 10 or 15 years. Temperatures will return to normal on 3rd, one day beforewe leave....


----------



## bogdymol

Greetings from 2015!


----------



## Kanadzie

haha, I have 6 hours, 10 minutes left 

I'm going for some Australian wine and Chinese takeaway


----------



## ChrisZwolle

'fireworks' last year in Hilversum, Netherlands. Looks more like a rocket explosion.


----------



## keokiracer

A happy and healthy 2015 to everyone!


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^So, Keoki, what's the future like?


----------



## bogdymol

Quite cold. -15 Celsius in my city right now (5 F in American language). And it's one of the warmest temperatures in Romania right now.


----------



## keokiracer

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^So, Keoki, what's the future like?


Loads and loads of fireworks 

(in the street where I live there are 2 people that - beside their usual jobs - sell fireworks to people this time of year, and a lot of stuff they don't sell they blast it into the air themselves. It was almost 2,5 hours of the most luxurious fireworks :banana: )


----------



## Suburbanist

Drove 534km today with friends. We visited several 4 locations between flood control infrastructure works, land-reclaimed beach, windmill park (ancient) and small old village. We then went to Rotterdam for the "National Firework Event" - it was underwhelming.


----------



## Attus

It's a long tradition in Hungary that in new year's eve there is a 3 hours long comedy in the radio (from 9PM to midnight). I am used to listen it every year. In the 80's it was always brilliant, in the 90's and 2000's still good. 
But last night... It was horrible. All the jokes were about how evil the current opposition is, how evil the US and EU are. The greatest "joke" was that Goodfriend* is not a good friend. Oh, well...
One of the leading Hungarian comedians spoke 15 minutes. all of his "jokes" were about Americans, how stupid and fat they all are. Another well known comedian talks about how crazy the Americans are that they think everyone is a talib, and about how he himself does not use internet, suggesting that right people don't use it so taxing internet is nice. Funny, funny, funny...
One artist tried to have some jokes about the current government but his production was officially banned.

*André Goodfriend is the current de facto US ambassador in Hungary.


----------



## PovilD

Happy New Year  And Lithuania switched to euros as Estonia did 2011 and Latvia in 2014. That means that all Baltic States are with the same currency now


----------



## g.spinoza

I spent new year's eve in bed with an aching back and fever. Happy new year 😦


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Get well soon 

How common is it in your country to have citizens lighting up their own fireworks? In the Netherlands it is very common, in my street there was a group who pooled money together (likely in excess of € 1,000) and purchased professional fireworks. They had boxes that went on for like 7 or 8 minutes. It took them 2 hours to light up all their fireworks.


----------



## AsHalt

In ASEAN countries ,other than Singapore, it's pretty common. So much so the Chinese new years and hari raya you can see the skies light up.


----------



## x-type

happy new year to everyone! 

i took part in new year's eve's comedy in local theatre here, after that little party. fireworks? my friend is mad about it, yesterday i watched midnight fireworks with him here and commented that if he had 10000€ for fireworks, he would probably suffer the heart attack (caused by happiness), and after that he would be seriously burnt by fireworks :lol:


----------



## Verso

I don't even have to go out, there're fireworks on my street every year; it was -12°C anyway.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> It's a long tradition in Hungary that in new year's eve there is a 3 hours long comedy in the radio (from 9PM to midnight). I am used to listen it every year. In the 80's it was always brilliant, in the 90's and 2000's still good.
> But last night... It was horrible. All the jokes were about how evil the current opposition is, how evil the US and EU are. The greatest "joke" was that Goodfriend* is not a good friend. Oh, well...
> One of the leading Hungarian comedians spoke 15 minutes. all of his "jokes" were about Americans, how stupid and fat they all are. Another well known comedian talks about how crazy the Americans are that they think everyone is a talib, and about how he himself does not use internet, suggesting that right people don't use it so taxing internet is nice. Funny, funny, funny...
> One artist tried to have some jokes about the current government but his production was officially banned.
> 
> *André Goodfriend is the current de facto US ambassador in Hungary.


No offense but that sounds like something you might get in China, or something you might have gotten in Hungary before 1989....


----------



## Penn's Woods

PovilD said:


> Happy New Year  And Lithuania switched to euros as Estonia did 2011 and Latvia in 2014. That means that all Baltic States are with the same currency now


Uniformity forever! :troll:


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ Get well soon
> 
> How common is it in your country to have citizens lighting up their own fireworks? In the Netherlands it is very common, in my street there was a group who pooled money together (likely in excess of € 1,000) and purchased professional fireworks. They had boxes that went on for like 7 or 8 minutes. It took them 2 hours to light up all their fireworks.


I think it's illegal in many states here. Which doesn't stop it.

And - sadly - I heard on the radio yesterday that police were warning the public of the danger of shooting guns into the air at midnight on New Year's. 

Perhaps those Hungarian comedians are right.*

On the other hand, we don't have people going around setting cars on fire.

*Or more likely, any human population, no matter where, has its share of idiots.

EDIT: For the record, I heard fewer fireworks than usual, and no guns. Haven't seen any burned-out cars yet, but I haven't been out.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> No offense but that sounds like something you might get in China, or something you might have gotten in Hungary before 1989....


I think the world is getting too black or white. We celebrate the independence day of Slovakia today and it has always been usual to play a Slovak anthem in radio as the midnight occurs. This year, the European anthem played in Bratislava leaving out Slovak one and of course it brought up numerous discussions in media.

I must sadly state, the people have been never so black or white. Half of people blindly adored it, telling the Slovak anthem is shitty and every one who did not agreed was sent to Russia while the other half has freaked out that EU is the new USSR in blue colour and that everyone is linked to White House, Mossad, Soros etc. etc. etc.

There was literally no common sense opinion. I like European anthem, I don't agree with Putin, but still think that Slovak anthem would be adequate (even followed by European one). I am not being contributed neither by US Embassy nor Putin.

Knowing that young generations listen to Justin Bieber, read tabloids and believe everything it states, we are getting in serious trouble. Oh yes, I sound like an old man and I am too pessimist considering we have the first day of new year.

So happy new year to everyone


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> No offense but that sounds like something you might get in China, or something you might have gotten in Hungary before 1989....


Absolutely. And I must say I'm very sad about it.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Uniformity forever! :troll:


I don't think each US state has an own currency...


----------



## Kanadzie

Penn's Woods said:


> Haven't seen any burned-out cars yet, but I haven't been out.


Down by 12% to only _940 _vehicles this year! :cheers:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30653784


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> I don't think each US state has an own currency...


Neither does each region or province of Italy.

When the European Union is a single nation-state, that comparison will be relevant.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> Down by 12% to only _940 _vehicles this year! :cheers:
> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30653784


L'exception française....


----------



## JackFrost




----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Neither does each region or province of Italy.
> 
> When the European Union is a single nation-state, that comparison will be relevant.


I think this is the ultimate goal. You have to start somewhere


----------



## volodaaaa

Yeah. Unfortunately, minor things are being unified while the important ones are left national. There is no need for unified gender ratio in national councils (it is not even democratic nor reasonable) while unifirm traffic rules should be compulsory.


----------



## Verso

JackFrost said:


> [MEDIA=youtube]bUT0yHLhOZM[/MEDIA]


That's the most awesome crash I've ever seen.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> I think this is the ultimate goal. You have to start somewhere


Yeah, well. None of my business but are the citizens of the countries involved on the same page about that? (Not about the euro but about the "ultimate goal"?)

Happy New Year, Spinoza. :cheers:


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Yeah, well. None of my business but are the citizens of the countries involved on the same page about that? (Not about the euro but about the "ultimate goal"?)
> 
> Happy New Year, Spinoza. :cheers:


Happy new Year to you, sir 

People can vote anti-europe parties. If they don't, I guess they're ok with it.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Europeans (except Swiss, Norwegians, Serbs...) can speak to that better than I can, but I'd think not voting for an "anti-Europe" party is a more reliable indicator of whether they're okay with where the E.U. is now than with the ultimate goal. (And in various countries you'd have the question of whether a given party counts as "anti-Europe" - the French don't vote for parties that actually want to take France out of the E.U., but give them a chance to vote in a referendum on, say, a new European constitution, they vote against it. (And are then ignored by their leaders.) But that's a whole can of worms.


----------



## g.spinoza

Well, as long as Britain and France are inside EU, there's no chance for "United States of Europe" anyway...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Would a European Union that didn't include France really be European? I mean, France actually is in Europe. Sort of like Switzerland and Norway....


----------



## Road_UK

g.spinoza said:


> Well, as long as Britain and France are inside EU, there's no chance for "United States of Europe" anyway...


Good. That is what I like to hear


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Would a European Union that didn't include France really be European? I mean, France actually is in Europe. Sort of like Switzerland and Norway....


As much as a "United States of America" without Alberta or Chihuahua is still "United States of America"...


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Fair enough (IF you subscribe to the five-continent model as opposed to one that recognizes "North America" and "South America" as separate continents.... Anyhow, people in Alberta NEVER, EVER describe themselves as "Americans" or being in "America." That's their neighbo(u)rs to the south.)

But you'd have to stop short-handing...stop saying "Europe" when you mean the E.U. Actually, you should do that already - given Switzerland and Norway - but no one asked my opinion on that.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Happy New Year guys!
I didn't had time for SSC,but in the next 17 days i will have a lot of time for motorways 
Soon i'll "celebrate" my anniversary on this great forum.I love you guys for being tolerant with me and for being support.That's alll for now !


----------



## Suburbanist

I was thinking whether EU should have a reciprocity policy towards foreigners driving in EU with non-EU licenses.

For instance, to the extent of my knowledge non-Chinese subjects are not allowed to operate motor cars on public streets in PR China with foreign driver's licenses. Period. So I couldn't go there and rent a car and drive around. Shouldn't EU apply the same restrictions for Chinese nationals, as in forbidding them from driving in EU with Chinese licenses? I was thinking the same about other private activities like real estate purchase as well.


----------



## volodaaaa

Heavy snowfall here... 

As for EU. The idea is great, current policy not. Not every critic of the EU is automatically a nationalist. I don't like the current out-of-reality tellings that European politicians provide.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Pouring here. Supposed to be quite warm tomorrow (67F/19.5C) and quite cold (highs below freezing) by mid-week.

As for the EU, that's not my problem business.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> I was thinking whether EU should have a reciprocity policy towards foreigners driving in EU with non-EU licenses.
> 
> For instance, to the extent of my knowledge non-Chinese subjects are not allowed to operate motor cars on public streets in PR China with foreign driver's licenses. Period. So I couldn't go there and rent a car and drive around. Shouldn't EU apply the same restrictions for Chinese nationals, as in forbidding them from driving in EU with Chinese licenses? I was thinking the same about other private activities like real estate purchase as well.


The principe of reciprocity in international relations was more widely applied in the past, as growing human rights attention in democratic countries pushed to giving the same rights to everyone. If every country would stricly apply the principe of reciprocity, citizens of dictatorial countries wouldn't have their rights protected in any country of the world!
In the case of Chinese driving licenses in Europe, however, the application of reciprocity wouldn't violate any basic human right, as Chinese residents could still get a driving license from the country where they reside (in Italy one can do the theory test in another language).
I remember that in Croatia, until 2008 or so, there was still a law from Tito years that explicity forbade Italian citizens (!) to purchase any real estate in Croatia! It was issued to prevent Istrian refugees (those that weren't killed in foibe or Goli Otok) to return back to their homeland. Obviously they had to abolish that law to join the EU. We didn't forbade Croats (or, before, Yugoslavs) nationals to purchase real estate in Italy, though.
I've read a ministerial circular from the 1960s that explicity forbade Rumanian and Bulgarian nationals to travel freely in Italy, as Italian citizens weren't allowed to travel freely in the two socialist republics. In those years, the only Rumanians and Bulgarians allowed to travel in Western Europe were those closely involved with the Party.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> Pouring here. Supposed to be quite warm tomorrow (67F/19.5C) and quite cold (highs below freezing) by mid-week.
> 
> As for the EU, that's not my problem. I mean business.
> (How does one do a strikethrough?)


Put 's' in braces (those cubic brackets)


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Put 's' in braces (those cubic brackets)


Got it. Thanks.


----------



## Kanadzie

Suburbanist said:


> I was thinking whether EU should have a reciprocity policy towards foreigners driving in EU with non-EU licenses.
> 
> For instance, to the extent of my knowledge non-Chinese subjects are not allowed to operate motor cars on public streets in PR China with foreign driver's licenses. Period. So I couldn't go there and rent a car and drive around. Shouldn't EU apply the same restrictions for Chinese nationals, as in forbidding them from driving in EU with Chinese licenses? I was thinking the same about other private activities like real estate purchase as well.


The Chinese policy is fundamentally wrong (as is nearly everything in that place) but we shouldn't try and re-invent the wheel, only push for the recognition of the UN Convention on Road Traffic like any other reasonable country (this implies use of an international driving permit (translation))

The EU has a better system internally with its standardised licenses (similar in spirit to the US or Canadian system), especially if you can convince the cop your name is Mr. Jazdy, but it is really only suitable for inside the EU.

As for real estate purchases, LOL good luck in that hole :lol:


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> Put 's' in braces (those cubic brackets)


[s]problem[/s]


----------



## cinxxx

Regarding drivers license, many foreign citizens are allowed to use theirs, for only 6 months after ariving, I have some colleagues from India, Mexico, Colombia. If they want to drive after that, they have to do the whole driving school, take the exam and get a German drivers license...


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> [s]problem[/s]


Haha... good try :cheers:



Code:


[PLAIN][noparse][s]problem[/s][/PLAIN][/noparse]


----------



## CNGL

The strikethrough is my most hated favorite code.


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> Regarding drivers license, many foreign citizens are allowed to use theirs, for only 6 months after ariving, I have some colleagues from India, Mexico, Colombia. If they want to drive after that, they have to do the whole driving school, take the exam and get a German drivers license...


I think it is fairly right. European countries have signed the Vienna Convention on Road traffic. It de facto guarantees that the basic and major traffic rules are alike in all parties. It is therefore reasonable that I don't need to attend a driving school when I want to drive in Austria, Portugal or elsewhere in Europe. 

Now let's move to Brazil (where EU prohibitory sign design is used for regulation signs) or US. I would need to learn all their rules and I think I still would not be enough prepared to drive their road self confidently. The same goes vice-versa.


----------



## Suburbanist

cinxxx said:


> Regarding drivers license, many foreign citizens are allowed to use theirs, for only 6 months after ariving, I have some colleagues from India, Mexico, Colombia. If they want to drive after that, they have to do the whole driving school, take the exam and get a German drivers license...


It is the same thing in the Netherlands. EU citizens can exchange their driver's license for a Dutch one. I did exchange my Italian driver's license for a Dutch one. The procedure was simple, they gave me a Dutch license (Rijbewijs) with a notation it was given in exchange for an Italian one, which the local authority retained.

Interestingly, they automatically gave me a 10-year driver's license based on the date I applied for conversion, not on the original issue date on my Italian one.

Here in Netherlands, citizens from a select list of non-EU/EEA countries can also convert their driver licenses to Dutch ones, such as Taiwan, South Korea, Israel, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan. High-skilled immigrants (those who get 30% of their income as non-taxable under Dutch law provisions) can also convert their licenses without taking exams.


----------



## Attus

Suburbanist said:


> It is the same thing in the Netherlands. EU citizens can exchange their driver's license for a Dutch one.


In Germany, too. And, I suppose, in the whole EU. My Hungarian license was almost expired (some months were left) and I asked for changing it to a German one. I got it, the procedure was very simple and my new German license will expire in 2029.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> Interestingly, they automatically gave me a 10-year driver's license based on the date I applied for conversion, not on the original issue date on my Italian one.


Renewing your driver's license in the Netherlands is basically a form of taxation. It involves nothing but paying a fee and getting a new license. No tests or exams are taken when renewing a license, making it basically a tax.

There used to be a significant variation in fees for renewing a license, depending on the municipality. It has now been capped at € 38.45 nationally, but Zwolle for example used to be more expensive (in the € 50 range).


----------



## bogdymol

Isn't that a fee for processing your application and printing the new license? In Romania you pay for that something like 15 €, but since 2-3 years ago you also have to pass a medical exam when renewing your license (every 10 years).


----------



## volodaaaa

Sorry for OT, but is here someone who knows or can recommend me a site that provides cheaper accommodation in Spain or Italy for summer vacation?

I've tried several sites incl. booking.com but it suggest me two extremes - hostels with shared rooms on one hand and expensive hotels on other.

I'd like quality "all exclusive" (  ) accommodation, e.g. studio with board excluded, no pool, no room service, but private bathroom and kitchen included.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^My last few trips (in the U.S. and Canada) I've used trivago.com. It sort of compiles prices from hotels.com, booking.com, expedia and the like so you don't have to visit them all....

Obviously this isn't specific to Spain, but I'm pretty sure I've gotten e-mails about their French version, so they do at least exist in Europe....


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^My last few trips (in the U.S. and Canada) I've used trivago.com. It sort of compiles prices from hotels.com, booking.com, expedia and the like so you don't have to visit them all....
> 
> Obviously this isn't specific to Spain, but I'm pretty sure I've gotten e-mails about their French version, so they do at least exist in Europe....


Yes, Trivago exists in Europe. I use that site often.


----------



## bogdymol

volodaaaa said:


> Sorry for OT, but is here someone who knows or can recommend me a site that provides cheaper accommodation in Spain or Italy for summer vacation?
> 
> I've tried several sites incl. booking.com but it suggest me two extremes - hostels with shared rooms on one hand and expensive hotels on other.
> 
> I'd like quality "all exclusive" (  ) accommodation, e.g. studio with board excluded, no pool, no room service, but private bathroom and kitchen included.


You can also try villas.com. It's owned by booking.com, but has other type of properties.

For work, I often have to search for self cattering accommodation in UK. For that I go on Google Maps, put the map on the region where I search and type in the search bar 'self catering accommodation nearby <town>'. The results will then be displayed as red dots on the map, and you deal directly with the owner (usually there's a phone number and website available). I always find something at a decent price. Maybe this will work also for you in Spain.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Personally, I wish whatever is going on were playing out in PMs rather than publicly. If you feel strongly enough that he's harassing you, you might take it to the mods.


----------



## cinxxx

I'm sitting at Bari airport, the flight that should have arrived at Karlsruhe-Baden airport at 21:15 has 1:35 delay, after that we have some other 3 hours something drive to Ingolstadt.

My gf also has to get to work tomorrow...


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> I'm sitting at Bari airport, the flight that should have arrived at Karlsruhe-Baden airport at 21:15 has 1:35 delay, after that we have some other 3 hours something drive to Ingolstadt.
> 
> My gf also has to get to work tomorrow...


How was your stay?


----------



## Suburbanist

I just measured my utility consumption taking a reading on the meters. They take ages to consolidate data and send me the refund I'm owed. 

This year they are changing the metering criteria for warm water, instead of paying for volume, we will pay for energy used to heat it. Water for building heating (radiators and floor) is already charged on Joules/kWh.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^In twenty years as a tenant in three different apartments, I've never paid for water.


----------



## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^In twenty years as a tenant in three different apartments, I've never paid for water.


really?


----------



## keokiracer

He just steals it from his neighbours  :angel:


----------



## Verso

I was in Bosnia and Montenegro in 1986. Many people here didn't exist yet.


----------



## CNGL

I wasn't born until 1993, so...


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> I was in Bosnia and Montenegro in 1986. Many people here didn't exist yet.


Nor Bosnia and Montenegro (as countries) did.


----------



## Broccolli

This thing is so cool, i just found (pretty recent) video of Trieste-Opicina tramway 

_On the funicular section of the line, the tramcars are pushed uphill and braked downhill by cable tractors, also known as cable dummies or, in Italian, carro scudo. These vehicles are permanently attached to the haulage cable. They are not attached to the tramcars, but the lower end of the tramcar rests against the upper end of the cable tractor._ (look at 2:15)














http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trieste–Opicina_tramway


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Nor Bosnia and Montenegro (as countries) did.


They were republics. What was I supposed to say? "I was in Yugoslavia in 1986"?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> I was in Bosnia and Montenegro in 1986. Many people here didn't exist yet.


That would explain a lot....


----------



## bigic

Verso,
As a Slovenian living in then Yugoslavia, did you feel any connection to Serbs, Croats etc. more than to people outside Yugoslavia?


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> I was in Bosnia and Montenegro in 1986. Many people here didn't exist yet.


So you've left out Herzegovina? :lol:


----------



## Verso

^^ BIH. 



bigic said:


> Verso,
> As a Slovenian living in then Yugoslavia, did you feel any connection to Serbs, Croats etc. more than to people outside Yugoslavia?


I don't know really, I was 8 in 1991. I probably felt closest to Croats, although there were many pupils from all over Yugoslavia in my school. Almost all of them spoke Slovenian, so they didn't appear that different (except for having more fights ). I hardly had any connections with Italians, Austrians or Hungarians, so I didn't feel close to them. I don't remember Austria at all, and I remember Italy as a chaotic place where I could get lost in a second. Boat trip from Portorož to Venice in 1990 was epic though.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> ^^ BIH.
> 
> I don't know really, I was 8 in 1991. I probably felt closest to Croats, although there were many pupils from all over Yugoslavia in my school. Almost all of them spoke Slovenian, so they didn't appear that different (except for having more fights ). I hardly had any connections with Italians, Austrians or Hungarians, so I didn't feel close to them. I don't remember Austria at all, and I remember* Italy as a chaotic place* where I could get lost in a second. Boat trip from Portorož to Venice in 1990 was epic though.


Is there by any chance a possibility this could be a Slavic habit? Because in Czech republic or Slovakia we usually refer an individual who always confuse things as Italian. I would not like to offend someone and still don't know where did it originate.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Because we do, maybe.


----------



## volodaaaa

Dude, you can't do and accept such generalisations. Italians are just little bit more noisy, but you are enjoying life which is okay. The same goes for Spaniards or Greeks.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Good time for a subject change. 

I'm wondering what people think of this:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...e-euthanised-in-prison-this-week-9957302.html

PS to Road_UK: my first thread in the Belgian forum.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> Dude, you can't do and accept such generalisations. Italians are just little bit more noisy, but you are enjoying life which is okay. The same goes for Spaniards or Greeks.


I hate generalisations. I'm so shy and quiet you could think I'm a Scandinavian... until you see my hair, my eyes, my height 

But sometimes they're useful


----------



## Penn's Woods

I've known tall, dark-haired Scandinavians.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Good time for a subject change.
> 
> I'm wondering what people think of this:
> 
> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...e-euthanised-in-prison-this-week-9957302.html
> 
> PS to Road_UK: my first thread in the Belgian forum.


I used to be against capital punishment, although I'm slowly reconsidering. This is a masked capital punishment indeed. Someone like him will always continue killing - as shown when he was released the first time - because he is mentally ill, so the rieducational value of prison doesn't apply and I think a death sentence would have been justified.
But for some reasons, it seems this guy took the short route, something only a hypocrite would do. HE is suffering too much and wants to be euthanized? Euthanasia is a serious thing, and it should be used for serious illnesses, not for a bored prison guy.



Penn's Woods said:


> I've known tall, dark-haired Scandinavians.


I'm not tall.


----------



## Penn's Woods

You posted a picture of yourself once, in a mountain setting, in which you seemed tall.

But if I can think of any short, dark-haired Scandinavians in my (limited) circle of Scandinavian acquaintances, I'll let you know.

My opinion of the euthanizing-prisoners thing is in formation...


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Guys,this is my newest picture.








Btw this is my sister's room.


----------



## Road_UK

Is she ok with you wearing her clothes?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

That's my T-shirt.
Why does you think that i am wearing here clothes?
This is for you my friend:


----------



## Road_UK

I like Louis Prima's version of that song. I became a fan of that song since watching that scene with Robert de Niro at a crime scene in a bar with a dead body. He's in a good mood because he had sex the night before, so he throws a coin in the juke box and plays "just a gigolo" and dances with it


----------



## cinxxx

Meanwhile...


----------



## Road_UK

From downtown Chicago to which shit hole?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Verso said:


> ^^ BIH.
> 
> I don't know really, I was 8 in 1991. I probably felt closest to Croats, although there were many pupils from all over Yugoslavia in my school. Almost all of them spoke Slovenian, so they didn't appear that different (except for having more fights ). I hardly had any connections with Italians, Austrians or Hungarians, so I didn't feel close to them. I don't remember Austria at all, and I remember Italy as a chaotic place where I could get lost in a second. Boat trip from Portorož to Venice in 1990 was epic though.


Can you speak Serbo-Croat?


----------



## Verso

Yes, I speak Serbo-Croatian fluently.


----------



## x-type

knowledge of ancient languages is sometimes welcome.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> You posted a picture of yourself once, in a mountain setting, in which you seemed tall.


Camera magic 😀

I'm 5'7".


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> knowledge of ancient languages is sometimes welcome.


Did (international) linguists recognize the existence of a Serbo-Croatian (or Czecho-Slovakian) language or it was merely a political definition?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I always saw Serbo-Croatian treated as such until Yugoslavia broke up. (Although I remember Cassells offered a "Croatian-English" dictionary.)

Check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbo-Croatian.

Here's something interesting:

"Serbo-Croatian was standardized in the mid-19th century by a joint effort of Croatian and Serbian writers and philologists, decades before a Yugoslav state was established.[8] From the very beginning, there were slightly different literary Serbian and Croatian standards, though both based on the same Shtokavian subdialect, Eastern Herzegovinian. In the 20th century, Serbo-Croatian served as the official language of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (when it was called "Serbo-Croato-Slovenian"),...."


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Did (international) linguists recognize the existence of a Serbo-Croatian (or Czecho-Slovakian) language or it was merely a political definition?


Czecho-Slovakian language is rather mere political definition. We use different words and even grammar and pronunciation is different. There are even some phonemes in each language that people from other language can't pronounce correctly (Czech ů or ř or Slovak ä or ô). 

Slovak language is younger and is rather influenced by Hungarian language while Czech language is rather influenced by German. 

There had been some people (poets, politicians) who recognized Slovakia only as significant dialect. 

I guess the difference between Slovak and Czech language is something like between Slovenian and Serb/Croatian or Macedonian language.

Btw. do Italians understand little bit or at least grammar of Romanian language?


----------



## x-type

@Penn's:
Serbian and Croatian languages have been developing parallely up to 19th century, first half of which brang reformations of both - Serbian in 1814 and Croatian in 1830.
that year 1850 was really the first official try to make "pan-south-slavic" language. however, was it successful? not at all. why? because after that all 3 implied languages continued their developments in 3 different and separate ways (Slovenian (which was also involved), Croatian and Serbian). so that agreement was actually very unsuccessful. officialy Serbo-Croatian language was approved in 1954.

UK is going to be very very upset as soon as he appears here.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Czecho-Slovakian language is rather mere political definition. We use different words and even grammar and pronunciation is different. There are even some phonemes in each language that people from other language can't pronounce correctly (Czech ů or ř or Slovak ä or ô).
> 
> Slovak language is younger and is rather influenced by Hungarian language while Czech language is rather influenced by German.
> 
> There had been some people (poets, politicians) who recognized Slovakia only as significant dialect.
> 
> I guess the difference between Slovak and Czech language is something like between Slovenian and Serb/Croatian or Macedonian language.
> 
> Btw. do Italians understand little bit or at least grammar of Romanian language?


I never knew all that about "Czecho-Slovak."


----------



## Road_UK

I think I'm going to take a break again and make myself scarce for a bit, like I did last winter. Bye folks, perhaps see you in spring...


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Seriously?


----------



## Alex_ZR

x-type said:


> UK is going to be very very upset as soon as he appears here.


Why would anyone care about that? :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^He doesn't like it when we talk about languages. Particularly Eastern European ones. :dunno:


----------



## x-type

Alex_ZR said:


> Why would anyone care about that? :lol:


well it's a pitty not to have such a forumer here. but who are we to judge him? he has free will what to do :dunno:


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Btw. do Italians understand little bit or at least grammar of Romanian language?


Romanian is probably the Neo-Latin language more different from our. Only few random words can be understood.


----------



## cinxxx

^^It should be more understandable, but I think a big problem is also when we speak fast, we have a different pronunciation, sometimes more similar to Slavic language (Serbian, Bulgarian influence). Of course we have many words of Slavic origin, but the gross is still Latin (French, Italian). For some words, we have both Latin and Slavic variants.

I think as an Italian, Spaniard, French, Portuguese, learning Romanian would not be very difficult, just live around locals for a few months and you would speak it pretty well. I know of cases.

I find Italian and Spanish (Latin American better understandable) easier to understand, then French, then Portuguese (and here, Brazilian better understandable).

I was amazed the last days that I spent in Puglia, by how much I was able to understand, also to speak very basic (with mistakes of course, but understandable)


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

It's Christmass eve here in Serbia.Also in Russia,Montenegro...


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Well, have a happy one.


----------



## ChrisZwolle




----------



## Broccolli

About slovenian language (if anyone is interested) 

1. Link: http://www.vlada.si/en/about_slovenia/slovenian/
2. Link: http://www.vlada.si/en/about_slovenia/slovenian/historical_overview/


----------



## italystf

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> It's Christmass eve here in Serbia.Also in Russia,Montenegro...


When I was your age it was a bad day here: school restarts on 7th, after 2 weeks of break. :lol:


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


>


Last week news: hippo liberated from a circus by animalists killed by a car in Macerata, Italy. The driver survived with some injures.
http://www.thelocal.it/20141229/hippo-killed-in-italy-after-circus-bid-for-freedom


----------



## DanielFigFoz

A driver somewhere in the UK died after hitting a wild boar.


----------



## italystf

DanielFigFoz said:


> A driver somewhere in the UK died after hitting a wild boar.


They are autochtons also in some hilly and mountanious areas of Northern Italy and sometimes cause serious accidents.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

italystf said:


> When I was your age it was a bad day here: school restarts on 7th, after 2 weeks of break. :lol:


School starts 20th january.I still have a lot of time for SSC


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Seriously?


Yes.


----------



## Suburbanist

I got this RT on my Twitter feed 










Apparently, on the Northern Eastern cities of US there is this widespread illegal practice of residents shoveling snow from street parking spaces, and then "claiming" the spaces as theirs as long as there is still snow around!


----------



## Penn's Woods

Parting* gift for Road_UK: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30708452

*? ;-)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> I got this RT on my Twitter feed
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Apparently, on the Northern Eastern cities of US there is this widespread illegal practice of residents shoveling snow from street parking spaces, and then "claiming" the spaces as theirs as long as there is still snow around!


So I hear. Never seen it. (But I can understand their point of view. In neighborhoods where parking's hard to come by in normal conditions, if you've spent time and effort extricating your car from a foot of snow, it'd be nice to have a place to park when you come back.)


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

In Serbia there is one very bad habbit.When there is a snow in front of store store owners throw cleaned snow from side walks to the streets.Not so long time there was a fight in my town 'cause of that habbit.


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> So I hear. Never seen it. (But I can understand their point of view. In neighborhoods where parking's hard to come by in normal conditions, if you've spent time and effort extricating your car from a foot of snow, it'd be nice to have a place to park when you come back.)


One of my neighbours tried to be a clever so & so and park in my parking bay directly outside my front door after I'd cleared it of snow a few years ago. They've not parked anywhere near me since.


----------



## Penn's Woods




----------



## Jasper90

volodaaaa said:


> Btw. do Italians understand little bit or at least grammar of Romanian language?


I've recently began learning Romanian.

In my experience before starting to learn it, Romanian could be easy or hard to understand, depending on the context:
- Formal, written Romanian (e.g. a newspaper article) is kinda easy to understand. You surely get the general sense and some of the details.
- Spoken Romanian is hard to understand, and you usually only get a few words. Probably a bit more, if the other person speaks slowly.

As far as the grammar is concerned, Romanian grammar is very similar but a bit simpler than the Italian one. Some Romanian grammatical forms exist identical in Italian too, but they're not accepted or considered uneducated. But every Italian has heard them, so this makes it easy for me to learn Romanian (and not the other way around )

I'm surely helped a lot by having studied Latin in high school, and knowing and speaking Venetian language too.

These are, in my opinion, some Latin languages ranked from the easiest to the hardest to understand for an Italian.

Catalan > Spanish > Portuguese > Occitan > French > Romanian


----------



## cinxxx

^^How come you started learning Romanian, if I may ask?


----------



## x-type

where is volodaaa? he has dissappeared after i've sent him facebook request. maybe he got afraid of it/me :dunno: am i so weird?


----------



## volodaaaa

I am here  Just have not had time to visit this forum and respond on request :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Yes, but do you find x-type weird? :troll:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I posted my picture couple days ago with hope that others would do the same,but nothing.
I am almost 1 year here and i know road uk and verso,but nobody else.


----------



## x-type

really? i was even on ssc banner once


----------



## Penn's Woods

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I posted my picture couple days ago with hope that others would do the same,but nothing.
> I am almost 1 year here and i know road uk and verso,but nobody else.


Eh, we go through a round of picture-posting every once in a while. Just dig back a bit.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

x-type said:


> really? i was even on ssc banner once


That's why voloda disappeared .He saw you're picture.


----------



## Jasper90

cinxxx said:


> ^^How come you started learning Romanian, if I may ask?


Hi! Of course you can ask! 
I chose it firstly because I like how it sounds. Then because it's kinda an unusual language to learn here, but at the same time it's easy (unlike Slavic or Nordic languages). In addition to that, we have more than 1 million Romanians and 150.000 Moldovans, so it might become useful in the future, who knows 

Last but not least: I like Romania and I'm probably gonna visit it in April or May. Of course I'll ask you guys for advice!!

---------------------------------------

Speaking of languages, I have 2 language questions for Croatians (or whoever can answer):

- What's the word for _hand towel_ in Croatian?
- Do you happen to know if there's a different word for it, in Zadar dialect?

Thank you


----------



## x-type

Jasper90 said:


> Speaking of languages, I have 2 language questions for Croatians (or whoever can answer):
> 
> - What's the word for _hand towel_ in Croatian?
> - Do you happen to know if there's a different word for it, in Zadar dialect?
> 
> Thank you


1. ručnik
2. šugaman (yes, from asciugamano)


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> 2. šugaman (yes, from asciugamano)


Are calques from Italian\Venetian common in dialects in Istria and Dalmatia? Even if very few people still speak Italian there, centuries of influence may have left something.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Are calques from Italian\Venetian common in dialects in Istria and Dalmatia? Even if very few people still speak Italian there, centuries of influence may have left something.


yes, they are common. some examples that i know: pijat (piatto), furešt (forestiero), kacavida (cacciavite), gratakaža (grattugia), šporko (sporco), ponistra (finestra), pomidor (pomodoro), kapula (cipolla)... basically, all the words that average Croat from the continent doesn't understand in their speech :lol:
however, Italian is partially spoken only in Istria, Rijeka and northern islands. 

similar thing happens with northwestern area of the country and German language.

can we continue on pm please if you have further questions?


----------



## Jasper90

x-type said:


> 1. ručnik
> 2. šugaman (yes, from asciugamano)


Thank you 
It all comes from a funny story: when I visited Zadar, we stayed in a woman's pension. She couldn't speak any English at all.
So once we were trying to explain her that we needed more towels, partly in English and partly with gestures, but she didn't understand "towel".

At a certain point she called her daughter, we told her that we needed a towel, and she told her mom "mama, šugaman!" :lol:

Had I known it was so easy!!


----------



## CNGL

You'd be surprised to see me wandering in the forums so early...


----------



## italystf

A Hungarian truck got stuck in a narrow street in San Dorligo della Valle, Italy. He set his GPS to reach Trieste port. Firefighters intervention was necessary to remove the truck. Another accident involving trucks and GPSs, nothing new.



















http://ilpiccolo.gelocal.it/trieste...stradina-di-san-dorligo-1.10623045?ref=search


----------



## ChrisZwolle

CNGL said:


> You'd be surprised to see me wandering in the forums so early...


_Today, 07:42 AM _

I already had my first coffee at work by that time :cheers:

I usually start working at 7.30 a.m, sometimes 7 a.m. if I'm up early. But I live very close to work (2.5 km - 8 minutes of cycling). I have colleagues that commute by public transport from some village 60 km away that have to leave home 1.5 hours earlier than me to arrive at the same time.


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ What about car commuters? Netherlands is one of the notable countries where having a bicycle means more than having a car.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The car share in travel in the Netherlands is 88.2%.

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/refreshTableAction.do?tab=table&plugin=1&pcode=tsdtr210&language=en


----------



## bigic

ChrisZwolle said:


> 2.5 km - 8 minutes of cycling


Many Serbians go by car for much shorter distances!
For me, the same distance means about 10-15 minutes of cycling.


----------



## g.spinoza

I live 9 km from my workplace: 45'-1h by public transport, 30-45' by car or infinity times cycling (because you will be dead hit by a car before arriving). My neighbour commutes by cycling, to a workplace near mine, but I suspect he's much more reckless and brave than I am.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm lucky with my cycling route, although I commute from a suburban apartment to a 'transit-oriented' office development, I don't have to cross any traffic lights. I pass through two bicycle tunnels, and cross only one low-volume road where I incidentally have to give right-of-way to a car. Usually I don't have to share the road with any car during my early morning commute.


----------



## cinxxx

g.spinoza said:


> I live 9 km from my workplace: 45'-1h by public transport, 30-45' by car or infinity times cycling (because you will be dead hit by a car before arriving). My neighbour commutes by cycling, to a workplace near mine, but I suspect he's much more reckless and brave than I am.


What would be the time if you would travel by scooter?


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> What would be the time if you would travel by scooter?


In Turin? Two wheels = one coffin


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> I live 9 km from my workplace: 45'-1h by public transport, 30-45' by car or infinity times cycling (because you will be dead hit by a car before arriving). My neighbour commutes by cycling, to a workplace near mine, but I suspect he's much more reckless and brave than I am.


I am working as a consultant, and therefore I often have several workplaces. The distance from my home to my homebase office is 15 km. It takes 50-75 minutes by public transport, or 20-25 minutes by car. Quite many people commute by cycling from May to September. During the winter time, the market share of cycling is perhaps 0.5% due to the climate reasons.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> I changed my eating habits heavily after moving here.
> 
> Now, I have two major daily meals: breakfast (around 8h) and late lunch (around 18h), before I go back to work again.


Very German.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I live 10 km from my school.I need 15-20 minutes by school bus to get there.


----------



## pasadia

Have you seen this:






More info here.


----------



## italystf

Nice discovery. I feel that restoring some of them will be more costly than the purchase price, though.


----------



## keber

I have 18 km to my work place using car as most of the route is motorway or expressway (it takes about 17-20 minutes). If weather (at least 10°C in the morning and dry - return can be wet) and my working schedule permit I go with a bike - 13 km through city center or about 40 minutes. With public transport it is at least 45 minutes so I use it just in very rare cases. 
I work between 8 and 16 (+/- depending of work) with half an hour break for lunch at 11 (my second and usually biggest meal of the day because of afternoon sport activities). Luckily I work in a business complex next to second largest shopping area in Ljubljana so there is no problem with parking, shopping or going to lunch.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Threat of the Day:

http://vidberg.blog.lemonde.fr/files/2015/01/020-charlie.gif

("If you don't surrender, our elite cartoonist will caricature the Prophet!")

http://vidberg.blog.lemonde.fr/2015/01/09/prise-dotage/


----------



## volodaaaa

The faculty where I teach is very close to my home. Although there is a street with no side walks and pedestrian crossing across wide 4-lane trunk road with 70 kph speed limit, which make me scared of it. I can use public transport, but the stop is either on the other side of the horrible road. I would travel just one stop to get off and walk another 15 minutes. Therefore I commute by car or by bike in summer. By car I am there in 5 minutes. By bike almost 20 in one direction (uphill) and 10 in another.

The ministry is on the other side of city, directly in city centre. There are no parking places at all (neither charged). As there is a trolley line with terminus behind my windows, I travel there by t-bus. It took me 11 minutes.


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> Threat of the Day:
> 
> http://vidberg.blog.lemonde.fr/files/2015/01/020-charlie.gif
> 
> ("If you don't surrender, our elite cartoonist will caricature the Prophet!")
> 
> http://vidberg.blog.lemonde.fr/2015/01/09/prise-dotage/


No need, the French have gone in.

Hostages freed, terrorists dead. Well done the French!

Damn it appears 4 hostages have been murdered.


----------



## Alex_ZR

I used to commute to the faculty from Zrenjanin to Novi Sad (50 km), which took 45-50 minutes by bus. Bus station is well connected with the campus, so I had to just get into city bus. For me it wasn't a problem, it's much better sleep in your own bed.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Tirol, snow cover and 21 degrees above freezing


----------



## bogdymol

It's +17 in Oberösterreich right now. Everything was covered in snow here just 2 days ago, but now all has disappeared. There are some very warm wind gusts from time to time.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Hmph.

Philadelphia, negligible visible snow and -8C.


----------



## g.spinoza

24 °C in Turin right now. Föhn is blowing


----------



## bigic

Still cold in Southeastern Serbia, but not freezing like a few days ago.


----------



## hofburg

how is that possible? we are stuck in fog at 11°C.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> 24 °C in Turin right now. Föhn is blowing


I hate you. jk:!)

Enjoy.


----------



## cinxxx

Short change of topic, have you guys had experience with renting a car in Spain? What would you recommend? I read a lot of negative reviews, also I would not like to pay a fortune for a car. While you are a lot more flexible, it's not worth it if it's much more expensive then train/bus.

I'm flying to Malaga for the last full week of March.
I was thinking to rent a car and drive around Andalusia...


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I don't know how is in Spain, but I rented a car several times in UK and Ireland (rented by my company). I think that the best would be to rent a small car (something like Peugeot 107 because you really don't need something larger for a few days of holiday, and it's the cheapest type of car to rent). You should check online the prices, as they are a lot better than just to go at the airport and rent a car after arrival. I think you can also get a good deal if you book the flight ticket+car together (I saw this on some airlines websites). You will also need a credit card with some money on it (up to 1000 Euros I think) as a guarantee that you won't scrap the car.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

bigic said:


> Still cold in Southeastern Serbia, but not freezing like a few days ago.


It's -6 here in Vladicin Han.


----------



## Road_UK

ChrisZwolle said:


> Tirol, snow cover and 21 degrees above freezing


Tell me about it. But cold again tomorrow with new snow. Drove to Munich twice today, and once you cross the border into Germany everything turns green. The strong winds were unbelievable today. We call it a "föhn" and that comes with really warm weather, Even in Munich it was around 20c today...


----------



## makaveli6

Lumia 920


----------



## Penn's Woods

Sorry for the moment of heaviness, but bios (in French) of the victims at the kosher supermarket:

http://abonnes.lemonde.fr/police-ju...ctimes-d-amedy-coulibaly_4553639_1653578.html

Je suis Hyper Cacher aussi.


----------



## cinxxx

Meanwhile in Pyong Yang, Dacia 1300 

Dacia 1300 car by Moravius, on Flickr


----------



## Verso

Having _any_ car in North Korea is a privilege.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Road_UK said:


> HTC desire.


You had Samsung Galaxy S 3.Why did you change it?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Having _any_ car in North Korea is a privilege.


Must be an apparatchik.


----------



## Suburbanist

North Korea is really I place whose social and economic order I want to see self-imploding in the most possible sudden way. Not as in some foreign military operation, but just a crumble of that vile dictatorial regime. Something that makes what happened in Albania in 1989 an orderly dismantle of communist tyranny.


----------



## volodaaaa

But car pooling seems to be well developed in PRK...


----------



## x-type

we are about to join the club of countries with female presidents


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Who is the winner?
Ivo Josipovic or that woman,i don't know here name.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Stainless said:


> Does this make Portugal the smallest country with more than one time zone?





Road_UK said:


> And the Netherlands.


Kiribati is in three time zones.


----------



## CNGL

With the Easternmost of their three being the one placed most into the future (UTC+14). So if at 10:00 UTC at any given day Kiritimati island (which is in that time zone) still exists, then is sure the world will last for at least another day :colgate:.

And I've came here only to celebrate my 5,000th post (excluding skybars)!
:dance:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Congratulations !


----------



## Penn's Woods

Comic relief:

http://www.pacifiquefm.be/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Chablis.jpg

(That's Gérard Depardieu.)


----------



## MattiG

CNGL said:


> With the Easternmost of their three being the one placed most into the future (UTC+14). So if at 10:00 UTC at any given day Kiritimati island (which is in that time zone) still exists, then is sure the world will last for at least another day.


I give classes in celestial navigation as my hobby. (Sextants, Nautical Almanac, spherical trigonometry, etc). One exercise on how to cope with the date line is to calculate the timezone difference of Hawaii (UTC-10) and Eastern Kiribati (UTC+14). The students are usually rather surprised about the answer: The difference is 24 hours, thus meaning they share the same wall clock time, but Kiribati is one day ahead.


----------



## Verso

Is there any other language where the next sentence is like in Slovenian? We can say "snow is melting" (_sneg se topi/tali_), but we can also say _sneg kopni_ (_kopno_ means "land" (opposite of sea/water, not country)), which literally means "snow is becoming land ('landing')".  How is it in Serbian and Croatian?


----------



## NordikNerd

Verso said:


> Is there any other language where the next sentence is like in Slovenian? We can say "snow is melting" (_sneg se topi/tali_),


In russian it's *Таeт снег - Tajet sneg*. Topi in slovenian is probably "warm up" which looks similar to the russian word *теплить - teplit* meaning "burn" .


----------



## John Maynard

I like _*69*_ likes :banana:


----------



## Verso

NordikNerd said:


> In russian it's *Таeт снег - Tajet sneg*. Topi in slovenian is probably "warm up" which looks similar to the russian word *теплить - teplit* meaning "burn" .


We can say "sneg se taja" as well (infinitive is "tajati se"), but you rarely hear that.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Is there any other language where the next sentence is like in Slovenian? We can say "snow is melting" (_sneg se topi/tali_), but we can also say _sneg kopni_ (_kopno_ means "land" (opposite of sea/water, not country)), which literally means "snow is becoming land ('landing')".  How is it in Serbian and Croatian?


same here, with almost the same words.
(the only difference is in the 1b example (tali) - that word is here used for melting the steel for instance, not for the snow)


----------



## Penn's Woods

That sound you hear is grumbling in Austria....


----------



## Suburbanist

MattiG said:


> I give classes in celestial navigation as my hobby. (Sextants, Nautical Almanac, spherical trigonometry, etc). One exercise on how to cope with the date line is to calculate the timezone difference of Hawaii (UTC-10) and Eastern Kiribati (UTC+14). The students are usually rather surprised about the answer: The difference is 24 hours, thus meaning they share the same wall clock time, but Kiribati is one day ahead.


I'm very against these time zones > |12|. All time zones should be between -12 till +12.

Kiribati should just scale back to UTC-10, and American Samoa to UTC-11.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

^^Why does it matter if Kiribati is +14? 

I was supposed to study today, but I looked out the window and saw snow, in the hills, so I drove out of town instead. It's sleeting in town now too.

Last winter was very unsnowy so I'm way too happy about there little amount of snow in the hills.










I got a bit blinded at one point:


----------



## Broccolli

Where were those pictures taken? It looks like Slovenia, with all that forest


----------



## DanielFigFoz

It's Wales.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> same here, with almost the same words.
> (the only difference is in the 1b example (tali) - that word is here used for melting the steel for instance, not for the snow)


You really say "snijeg kopni"?



Penn's Woods said:


> That sound you hear is grumbling in Austria....


We can talk about the German language. For example, the Slovenian variation of it.  (yes, we can actually talk about "Slovenian German", because we wilfully use many German words in our own way - apologies to the _Association for the German Language_ )


----------



## Suburbanist

DanielFigFoz said:


> ^^Why does it matter if Kiribati is +14?


Because it can create a time difference above 24 hours (from a place located at -11 or westwards).


----------



## Broccolli

DanielFigFoz said:


> It's Wales.


Nice :cheers:

I was just looking (at Wikipedia) informations about Wales- Cymru  

The modern Welsh name for themselves is Cymry, and Cymru is the Welsh name for Wales. These words (both of which are pronounced [ˈkəm.rɨ]) are descended from the Brythonic word combrogi, meaning "fellow-countrymen". The use of the word Cymry as a self-designation derives from the post-Roman Era relationship of the Welsh with the Brythonic-speaking peoples of northern England and southern Scotland, the peoples of "Yr Hen Ogledd" (English: The Old North). It emphasised a perception that the Welsh and the "Men of the North" were one people, different from other peoples. In particular, the term was not applied to the Cornish or the Breton peoples, who are of similar heritage, culture, and language to both the Welsh and the Men of the North. The word came into use as a self-description probably before the 7th century.It is attested in a praise poem to Cadwallon ap Cadfan (Moliant Cadwallon, by Afan Ferddig) c. 633. In Welsh literature, the word Cymry was used throughout the Middle Ages to describe the Welsh, though the older, more generic term Brythoniaid continued to be used to describe any of the Britonnic peoples (including the Welsh) and was the more common literary term until c. 1100. Thereafter Cymry prevailed as a reference to the Welsh. Until c. 1560 the word was spelt Kymry or Cymry, regardless of whether it referred to the people or their homeland.


_Welsh national identity emerged among the Celtic Britons after the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the 5th century, and Wales is regarded as one of the modern Celtic nations. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd's death in 1282 marked the completion of Edward I of England's conquest of Wales, though Owain Glyndŵr briefly restored independence to what was to become modern Wales, in the early 15th century. The whole of Wales was annexed by England and incorporated within the English legal system under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542. Distinctive Welsh politics developed in the 19th century. Welsh Liberalism, exemplified in the early 20th century by Lloyd George, was displaced by the growth of socialism and the Labour Party. Welsh national feeling grew over the century; Plaid Cymru was formed in 1925 and the Welsh Language Society in 1962. Established under the Government of Wales Act 1998, the National Assembly for Wales holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters_
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wales

Your history looks very similar to Slovenian (always in a struggle to survive in sense of preserving language and culture)


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I'm not actually Welsh, well not properly yet, I came here for university. But I can speak Welsh better than a lot of Welsh people in English speaking areas of Wales now :banana:. Which isn't saying much, because I can't talk for that long without running out of things I can say, 5 mins maybe, if it's with vocabulary I know.

I've shocked a few people mid-conversation when they find out I'm not Welsh, they think I'm from somewhere in South Wales and learnt a bit in school.


----------



## Suburbanist

DanielFigFoz said:


> I've shocked a few people mid-conversation when they find out I'm not Welsh, they think I'm from somewhere in South Wales and learnt a bit in school.


So you can pass as someone from Newport or Swansea then.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Suburbanist said:


> So you can pass as someone from Newport or Swansea then.


Until I speak in English.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^What do you sound like then?


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> You really say "snijeg kopni"?


yes. i mean, not me, it sounds somehow arhaic to me, but you can hear that expression quite often, nothing strange with it.

why do you ask it?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^What do you sound like then?


Like I'm from South East England. I probably had a London accent until I went to school, but I got sent to school in a middle-class neighbourhood a few tube stops away, so I can sound very Hugh Grant if I want to. My Mum is Portuguese so I talk more BBC to her (and to strangers) than to my Dad.


----------



## Road_UK

I can see where this is going. Oh deary me...


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> I'm very against these time zones > |12|. All time zones should be between -12 till +12.
> 
> Kiribati should just scale back to UTC-10, and American Samoa to UTC-11.


Independent countries can use any standard time they want. Like UTC+62:12. Or like Russia changing the time scheme every few years.

Kiribati was earlier UTC+12, UTC-11 and UTC-10. It is somewhat inconvenient if the date line cuts the country into two.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> I can see where this is going. Oh deary me...


It's already been there. Read back a bit.


----------



## Suburbanist

MattiG said:


> Independent countries can use any standard time they want. Like UTC+62:12. Or like Russia changing the time scheme every few years.
> 
> Kiribati was earlier UTC+12, UTC-11 and UTC-10. It is somewhat inconvenient if the date line cuts the country into two.


They can also opt for a hexadecimal numbering system, for Persian measurement system and for non-standard screw and nail sets...


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^And since that wouldn't affect you....

----------

Anyhow, look at the number of pages and posts on this thread, everyone.


----------



## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^And since that wouldn't affect you....


But here is the thing: we live in a connected World. The ability to communicate and trade efficiently is one of the paramount tenets of modern life on a global society. That is why standardization of many issues such as languages, measurements, scientific definitions, industrial components, data protocols (gosh!, without it the Internet wouldn't exist as we have it, period), travel documents are a key feature of which.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Granted (new page!), it would be silly to adopt a base-six numbering system or whatever, but I don't see why they should put the abstract notion of not being more than 12 hours off GMT ahead of the very real inconvenience to them of being on both sides of the date line.

(And, not to beat a dead horse, but there are some very large countries with non-conformist measurement systems that still managed to put men on the moon and invent the Internet.)


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> But here is the thing: we live in a connected World. The ability to communicate and trade efficiently is one of the paramount tenets of modern life on a global society. That is why standardization of many issues such as languages, measurements, scientific definitions, industrial components, data protocols (gosh!, without it the Internet wouldn't exist as we have it, period), travel documents are a key feature of which.


So, what is the problem you would like to solve?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Parts of Kiribati being more than 12 hours off GMT, apparently. The fact that solving that would put parts of the country nearly 24 hours off other parts of the same country is apparently unimportant.

(Very Eurocentric point of view, actually... :troll


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> yes. i mean, not me, it sounds somehow arhaic to me, but you can hear that expression quite often, nothing strange with it.
> 
> why do you ask it?


Because I've only ever heard "snijeg se topi".



Suburbanist said:


> I'm very against these time zones > |12|. All time zones should be between -12 till +12.
> 
> Kiribati should just scale back to UTC-10, and American Samoa to UTC-11.


One of rare occasions where I agree with Suburbanist. Kiribati IMO doesn't belong to our "time-measuring system" (or whatever you call it), just like Saudi Arabia (which is still in the 14th century), even though the difference is just 1 or 2 hours. They can have it if they want though. But, if we wanna know the time in Saudi Arabia, we convert it to our time, so that we don't have to think about the 14th century. Converting the time in Kiribati would be kind of silly though. It's just an exception, I guess.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Because I've only ever heard "snijeg se topi".
> 
> One of rare occasions where I agree with Suburbanist. Kiribati IMO doesn't belong to our "time-measuring system" (or whatever you call it), just like Saudi Arabia (which is still in the 14th century), even though the difference is just 1 or 2 hours. They can have it if they want though. But, if we wanna know the time in Saudi Arabia, we convert it to our time, so that we don't have to think about the 14th century. Converting the time in Kiribati would be kind of silly though. It's just an exception, I guess.


What's the issue with Saudi Arabia timezone? It's a regular UTC+3. There are many strange time zones ending in 1/2 or 3/4.
But the most absurd is this.
Large map: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/World_Time_Zones_Map.png


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> yes. i mean, not me, it sounds somehow arhaic to me, but you can hear that expression quite often, nothing strange with it.
> 
> why do you ask it?


Does not it mean "snow is piling"?

Btw. to keep the topic up: what do you think about this regular calendar?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I don't mind that new calendar.I think that this idea should work very well.


----------



## cinxxx

Срећна Нова година (Srećna Nova godina)!
С Новым Годом (S novim godom)!
Щасливого Нового Року / З Новим роком (z novym rokom)!

:cheers2:


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Does not it mean "snow is piling"?
> 
> Btw. to keep the topic up: what do you think about this regular calendar?


More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
It also included a "leap day" every 4 years between June and Sol.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
> It also included a "leap day" every 4 years between June and Sol.


:lol:
The "major disadvantage" of the system is the existence of 13 Fridays 13th :lol:
yo dawg, I heard you are superstitious


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Because I've only ever heard "snijeg se topi".
> 
> One of rare occasions where I agree with Suburbanist. Kiribati IMO doesn't belong to our "time-measuring system" (or whatever you call it), just like Saudi Arabia (which is still in the 14th century), even though the difference is just 1 or 2 hours. They can have it if they want though. But, if we wanna know the time in Saudi Arabia, we convert it to our time, so that we don't have to think about the 14th century. Converting the time in Kiribati would be kind of silly though. It's just an exception, I guess.


What should they do - move the country slightly to the left?

(Gratuitous Fawlty Towers reference there.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> What's the issue with Saudi Arabia timezone? It's a regular UTC+3. There are many strange time zones ending in 1/2 or 3/4.
> But the most absurd is this.
> Large map: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/World_Time_Zones_Map.png


Makes perfect sense: it's midway between Perth time and Adelaide time.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

cinxxx said:


> Срећна Нова година (Srećna Nova godina)!
> С Новым Годом (S novim godom)!
> Щасливого Нового Року / З Новим роком (z novym rokom)!
> 
> :cheers2:


New Year is in 17 minutes


----------



## Kanadzie

Suburbanist said:


> But here is the thing: we live in a connected World. The ability to communicate and trade efficiently is one of the paramount tenets of modern life on a global society. That is why standardization of many issues such as languages, measurements, scientific definitions, industrial components, data protocols (gosh!, without it the Internet wouldn't exist as we have it, period), travel documents are a key feature of which.


Elimination of tariff and non-tariff trade barriers is much more important. For the time, your phone will automatically adjust 



Penn's Woods said:


> (And, not to beat a dead horse, but there are some very large countries with non-conformist measurement systems that still managed to put men on the moon and invent the Internet.)


except... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Makes perfect sense: it's midway between Perth time and Adelaide time.


This time zone includes only few square kms along the Eyre Highway, in Western Australia near the border with Southern Australia. It's strange a time zone for a such small area. It would be like having a special time zone just for Haparanda or Nadlac (border between UTC+1 and UTC+2).


----------



## Suburbanist

Kiribati could just move do the other side of the International Date Line, having UTC-12, UTC-11 and UTC-10 as its time zones. Problem solved.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> except... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter


That's what comes of trying to have it both ways. If they'd just stuck to traditional measures, that wouldn't have happened.

Which somehow reminds me that the last time I was in Montreal, the soft-drink machine in my hotel was promising drinks that were "froid - 37F.'


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> This time zone includes only few square kms along the Eyre Highway, in Western Australia near the border with Southern Australia. It's strange a time zone for a such small area. It would be like having a special time zone just for Haparanda or Nadlac (border between UTC+1 and UTC+2).


I was joking. About it making perfect sense, I mean. But I assume that was the reasoning....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> Kiribati could just move do the other side of the International Date Line, having UTC-12, UTC-11 and UTC-10 as its time zones. Problem solved.


Fair enough.

Hmmm.. Is Kiribati the place that changed its time (probably moving across the Date Line in the other direction) so that it would be the first place in the world to enter the 21st century?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Talking of time zones, are Ceuta and Melilla on Spanish or Moroccan time?

EDIT: And I didn't know Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon had a time difference with Newfoundland, and even if you told me it did I'd expect them to be on Atlantic Time (UTC -4) rather than out on their own.


----------



## Verso

Suburbanist said:


> Kiribati could just move do the other side of the International Date Line, having UTC-12, UTC-11 and UTC-10 as its time zones. Problem solved.


Or UTC+12.



Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> New Year is in 17 minutes


Where? In Saudi Arabia? :troll: Speaking of which, who decided it would be in UTC+3, considering that it uses the Islamic calendar? Also, what's the time in Slovenia by the Islamic calendar?


----------



## volodaaaa

I guess, you all know this map. The difference between solar noon and local time.


----------



## riiga

^^ I'm only about 4 minutes off from solar time. :cheers:


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> I guess, you all know this map. The difference between solar noon and local time.


No it is not.

It shows the difference between the mean noon at the nearest meridian evenly divisible by 15 and the local mean time. 

The difference between the mean noon and the solar moon fluctuates about half on hour during the year according to this graph:










The difference is called Equation of Time. Due to this phenomena, the solar noon occurs at 12:00 o'clock only a few times a year.


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> Kiribati could just move do the other side of the International Date Line, having UTC-12, UTC-11 and UTC-10 as its time zones. Problem solved.


Which problem?


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> This time zone includes only few square kms along the Eyre Highway, in Western Australia near the border with Southern Australia. It's strange a time zone for a such small area. It would be like having a special time zone just for Haparanda or Nadlac (border between UTC+1 and UTC+2).


Those unofficial time zones do not count. But the whole country of Nepal officially follows the UTC+5:45 time. It is based on the local mean time in the capital Kathmandu, which is about UTC+5:41.


----------



## Nexis

No Name Street


No Name Street by smolenskylaw, on Flickr


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> I guess, you all know this map. The difference between solar noon and local time.


Never seen that, but I do know that 75 degrees west passes about five miles (if that) east of me, so I'm all right.


----------



## Verso

riiga said:


> ^^ I'm only about 4 minutes off from solar time. :cheers:





Penn's Woods said:


> Never seen that, but I do know that 75 degrees west passes about five miles (if that) east of me, so I'm all right.


We have the most accurate time.  Btw, Russia is wrong.


----------



## italystf

Nexis said:


> No Name Street
> 
> No Name Street by smolenskylaw, on Flickr


Bologna, Italy: Via Senzanome (it means No Name Street)


----------



## VITORIA MAN

http://www.jerelesgay.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/calle-sin-nombre.jpg








http://basta.metro951.com/files/2009/03/800px-carteles_de_londres.jpg


----------



## volodaaaa

We have 8 rivers called River.


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> We have 8 rivers called River.


What does "River" mean in Slovak? :troll:


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> What does "River" mean in Slovak? :troll:


Reka Reka in Slovenian :cheers:We have also river called Paris. There are so called Swamps of Paris,


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^The swamps of Paris? That would be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Marais


----------



## x-type

there is river Fiume in Italy (fiume Fiume), i saw it somewhere in Friuli, A4 or more likely A28 has bridge over it.


----------



## bigic

Article on Italian Wikipedia:
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiume_(fiume)


----------



## Verso

Does anyone know what exactly this message means?


> *Windows - System Error*
> 
> There is an IP address conflict with another system on the network


I always have to repair my Internet connection after this and it happens almost every day lately.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^That you're spending too much time on line? :troll:

Next post gets a prize....


----------



## Road_UK

Post #30.000. What did I win? I haven'tslept in 3 days, so if iI call someone something really bad you know why...


----------



## cinxxx

Verso said:


> I think he was an Albanian, not a Serb. I'd probably recognize him on a photo. The story is really as random as it can get. I was appointed to a dentist, I was already driving there when he calls me and tells me not to come, because they're installing some new equipment and it isn't finished yet. So I decide to visit a friend working in an insurance company office in a supermarket. So we chat when two guys step in and one of them wants to insure his house in Ljubljana. Then we all kind of chat with each other and one of them says he studied in Zagreb and was a vice-president of the Kosovo parliament. The other guy was also an Albanian, but he looked like a Native American (Indian). So yeah, whatever. :nuts: Then a house painter came in and I told him to paint my apartment.


Meanwhile in Kosovo


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Did your friend send you the link or the actual glitter box? &#55357;&#56832;


LOL.

The link.


----------



## Suburbanist

C'mon people, you can have opinion on the whole arms issue, but some basic statistics is due on the discussion.

No inference can be made about the correlation between gun laws and crime rates, and the effect of guns on crimes, unless you control for all variables that also affect crime.

Are the areas with though gun laws inhabited by people of the same income and education profile as areas with lax gun laws? Are unemployment rates the same? Are court and law enforcement resources the same? Are there stochastic components of crime rate that differ? Is the age pyramid similar? Is the prevalence of untreated mental health cases comparable? 

Without such controls, comparisons are not much meaningful. It is like if I draw a map of tractor accidents and then end up with the "shocking" conclusion that building houses and stores over farmland will slash the rate of tractor-operation injuries and deaths.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Not to mention the fact that New York and Philadelphia can pass all the gun-control laws they want, but that won't stop people buying them (legally) in Virginia and driving up 95.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Apparently you can access assault rifles in Europe. Just now the Belgian police shot dead two terror suspects that used AK-type rifles to shoot at the police. Underworld assassinations in the Netherlands increasingly see the use of assault rifles, sparking debate whether the police should have easier access to similar weapons.


----------



## Suburbanist

The Swiss central bank has stopped setting a 1,20 per Euro ceiling for the CHF. Yesterday, it traded as low as 0.85. Switzerland has never been so expensive therefore, I wonder if it will be cheaper to refuel in Germany and Italy for long-distance travelers should this trend keep in place.


----------



## Attus

Suburbanist said:


> The Swiss central bank has stopped setting a 1,20 per Euro ceiling for the CHF. Yesterday, it traded as low as 0.85. Switzerland has never been so expensive therefore, I wonder if it will be cheaper to refuel in Germany and Italy for long-distance travelers should this trend keep in place.


0.85 was a hysterical rate. Tonight it's 0.999. I expect the rate to become stable at the level 1 € = 1.05 Fr. But even that rate would be significantly higher than 1.20 less then 24 hours ago. 

I think the background for that is the fall of euro. This summer 1€ was 1.37 US $, tonight it's 1.16. Consequently 1Fr was 1.13 - 1.14$ in spring and summer but 0.98 this morning. This fall of franc rate had no real economical reason so there was a huge pressure on Switzerland to let the franc to be stronger again. The 1.16 rate of this night is almost the same as that of spring 2014.


----------



## lastsamurai

Verso said:


> I think *he was an Albanian*, not a Serb. I'd probably recognize him on a photo. The story is really as random as it can get. I was appointed to a dentist, I was already driving there when he calls me and tells me not to come, because they're installing some new equipment and it isn't finished yet. So I decide to visit a friend working in an insurance company office in a supermarket. So we chat when two guys step in and one of them wants to insure his house in Ljubljana. Then we all kind of chat with each other and one of them says he studied in Zagreb and was a vice-president of the Kosovo parliament. The other guy was also an Albanian, but he looked like a Native American (Indian). So yeah, whatever. :nuts: Then a house painter came in and I told him to paint my apartment.


Slobodan Petrovic?.Albanian?


----------



## lastsamurai

cinxxx said:


> Meanwhile in Kosovo
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> " frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>


----------



## cinxxx

^^exactly 2:35 hours past since another colleague from here predicted you will come and protect your land.
I think you can do better 
:smug:


----------



## lastsamurai

cinxxx said:


> ^^exactly 2:35 hours past since another colleague from here predicted you will come and protect your land.
> I think you can do better
> :smug:


You are an obsessed person and better start having an life for your good than doing the whatever knowing on others matters.


----------



## cinxxx

^^I have "a" (not "an") life, don't worry 
I work and I like to travel much, just look at my photo albums

PS You can still do better then that :troll:


----------



## lastsamurai

cinxxx said:


> ^^I have "a" (not "an") life, don't worry
> I work and I like to travel much, just look at my photo albums
> 
> PS You can still do better then that :troll:


Yep,english..a language that i dont like.

Not interested in your photos.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Whoa. What was that about?

Take a little nap and another Balkan War breaks out. :troll:


----------



## El Tiburon

g.spinoza said:


> That's true, it's not guns' fault, but people's. Guns helped immensely, though. Since people can't be banned, I'd ban guns, with a great sense of relief.


People cannot be banned but those who coomit violent personal crimes can be banished to prison without infringing upon the rights of those who don't commit such crimes and behave civilzedly. Banning guns from law-abiding citizens without banishing the violent criminals will not solve the problem..


----------



## Penn's Woods

Spinoza, would you "ban guns" completely (except from law enforcement, presumably)? Even for hunting? I'm not a hunter and that doesn't affect me personally, but I'm wondering if any country on the planet has done that. (Forgetting about North Korea and Cuba.)

A serious question.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I like guns 
One day i will become hunter 
Also i would like to live in USA just for one reason,to have AK-47 in my hands .
ps g.spinoza Don't take this as something bad


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ I think that is the saddest point that everyone seems to forget when arguing about gun laws. The one thing bans and restrictions make is to cause people who are law-abiding and reasonable, to be unable to pursue their dreams and desires, in this case, ownership of whatever firearm. We must understand that this is a tragedy.

Talking of crime is silly - if you kill someone you go jail for life, clearly some fine or short jail time for owning a particular firearm is not being considered as a factor for the person, surely.

Some little regulations for safety are reasonable and fine, maybe like for cars, they are dangerous, but you prove you can drive safely and you can do as you want. 

The US is relatively liberal but has many silly regulations that were enacted by politics (especially in the emotional wake of unfortunate events, which... we can't argue, must be avoided!) that just hurt people. I like the Czech system myself best I think... but the Czechs probably invented guns anyhow.



Penn's Woods said:


> Spinoza, would you "ban guns" completely (except from law enforcement, presumably)? Even for hunting? I'm not a hunter and that doesn't affect me personally, but I'm wondering if any country on the planet has done that. (Forgetting about North Korea and Cuba.)
> 
> A serious question.


Weimar Germany enacted an immediate seizure law with serious penalties circa 1919 as required by Treaty of Versailles. It was loosened approximately 10 years later, Hitler loosened it further but took everything from the Jews of course...


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> Spinoza, would you "ban guns" completely (except from law enforcement, presumably)? Even for hunting? I'm not a hunter and that doesn't affect me personally, but I'm wondering if any country on the planet has done that. (Forgetting about North Korea and Cuba.)
> 
> A serious question.


Why banning them completely, why not making obtaining them very difficult. E. G. Hunting weapons for those that have a track record by an hunting organisation and got some special license etc. Psychological profiling. Background checking. Regular license renewal. Etc


----------



## El Tiburon

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I like guns
> One day i will become hunter
> Also i would like to live in USA just for one reason,to have AK-47 in my hands .
> ps g.spinoza Don't take this as something bad


There is a company called IO now making AK-47's in Florida (USA) and they are selling for $499 with polymer furniture and $589 with varnished wood furniture, brand new. That's a pretty decent price (if they are good quality, of course).


----------



## cinxxx

^^I guess this map was done by men, they done differentiate to many colors :lol:


----------



## TommyLopez

Kanadzie said:


> Isn't "roboty" like Slovak word for working, maybe they mistranslated and they have 100% work experience with working :lol:


Yep, I was thinking about the same :lol: In Slovak, 'work' = 'robota'


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> When did the UK annex the Faeroes?


The Faroes should've been annexed by Egyptian pharaohs.


----------



## volodaaaa

TommyLopez said:


> Yep, I was thinking about the same :lol: In Slovak, 'work' = 'robota'


It had no sense either.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> The Faroes should've been annexed by Egyptian pharaohs.


:bash:

---------

Seriously, how can Sweden have the "most Internet users"? Must be per capita...


----------



## Surel

volodaaaa said:


> It had no sense either.


It could be true, that per capita there are the most robots used. At least in one industry, ant that is the car industry as Slovakia makes most cars per capita on the planet.


----------



## El Tiburon

TommyLopez said:


> Yep, I was thinking about the same :lol: In Slovak, 'work' = 'robota'


Robot comes from "robotnik" meaning "worker".


----------



## Hank Hodinky

El Tiburon said:


> Robot comes from "robotnik" meaning "worker".


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot#Etymology


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> :bash:
> 
> ---------
> 
> Seriously, how can Sweden have the "most Internet users"? Must be per capita...


Of course.


----------



## bogdymol

New _*bogdymobile*™_:










manufactured in 2012, first registered summer 2013
1.6 L diesel, 50000 km


----------



## x-type

welcome to the Ford club


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

@x-type What car do you drive?


----------



## Verso

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> @x-type What car do you drive?


Zastava 10. :troll:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Verso said:


> Zastava 10. :troll:


Probably not Peugeot 407,which is piece of shit :cheers:


----------



## Verso

Watch your mouth, young man.  Why is Peugeot 407 a piece of shit? It's served me just great by now.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

'Cause i said so 
EDIT: That was a joke


----------



## Surel

I ponder over a puzzle. How to get a wild driver stop his car on a motorway if he is not willing to.

Around a year ago there happened a following situation in CZ. A underage teenager stole a car from his father. The father then called police and the pursuit on the motorway began.

The police was chasing the teenager for over one hour. Finally they decided to stop the traffic on the motorway and assumed that the boy would stop in the traffic jam. Unfortunately the guy smashed his car into the jammed cars killing himself in the process and one other person was seriously injured in the accident.

I thought about what possibilities the police has in such a situation. I thought about that the best way would be to divert the traffic from the motorway and then block the exit short time before the rampage driver comes. The pursuit is faster than the rest of the cars on the motorway. Once the police pursuit gets in front of the remaining traffic, it should have completely empty motorway and it could build a block some 5 kms from the exit.

The problem is that the exit would need to have enough capacity to allow everyone leave the motorway, while not causing a traffic jam. That is highly unlikely. So far for an ideal situation.

So what are the alternatives? And what is the most secure one?


----------



## El Tiburon

Surel said:


> I ponder over a puzzle. How to get a wild driver stop his car on a motorway if he is not willing to.
> 
> Around a year ago there happened a following situation in CZ. A underage teenager stole a car from his father. The father then called police and the pursuit on the motorway began.
> 
> The police was chasing the teenager for over one hour. Finally they decided to stop the traffic on the motorway and assumed that the boy would stop in the traffic jam. Unfortunately the guy smashed his car into the jammed cars killing himself in the process and one other person was seriously injured in the accident.
> 
> I thought about what possibilities the police has in such a situation. I thought about that the best way would be to divert the traffic from the motorway and then block the exit short time before the rampage driver comes. The pursuit is faster than the rest of the cars on the motorway. Once the police pursuit gets in front of the remaining traffic, it should have completely empty motorway and it could build a block some 5 kms from the exit.
> 
> The problem is that the exit would need to have enough capacity to allow everyone leave the motorway, while not causing a traffic jam. That is highly unlikely. So far for an ideal situation.
> 
> So what are the alternatives? And what is the most secure one?


Most secure way is to stop the vehicular chase on the highway and do it with a helicopter following the car so that the interceptopn can be done in a safe area without harm to innocent drivers or bystanders.


----------



## Surel

El Tiburon said:


> Most secure way is to stop the vehicular chase on the highway and do it with a helicopter following the car so that the interceptopn can be done in a safe area without harm to innocent drivers or bystanders.


So you mean, wait till the car runs out of gas. :cheers: Good idea.


----------



## Penn's Woods

It *is* bound to happen eventually....


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Guys,this is my old thread:http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1754903&highlight=
Pictures are old,but they are still nice.My tank looks 100% more different now.Btw,do you guys have fish tank too?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Pie chart of the day:

https://twitter.com/365datafr/status/556391632355213312/photo/1


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Pie chart of the day:
> 
> https://twitter.com/365datafr/status/556391632355213312/photo/1


It's not about the quantity... it's about the quality!

Same goes for wine, of course


----------



## Broccolli

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> Guys,this is my old thread:http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1754903&highlight=
> Pictures are old,but they are still nice.My tank looks 100% more different now.Btw,do you guys have fish tank too?


I used to have fish tank but it was too time consuming and too demanding to clean...so now i have Schnapps plastic container modified into aquarium (Bottle of some sort of Schnapps was packed inside this container-gift box)  :booze:
I dont have any filter, no chemicals for chlorine neutralization etc.
I just change the water every week or so..and you will not believe i still have the first and only goldfish i bought 10 years ago for this container/aquarium. Must be some sort of Guinness record or something :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

Broccolli said:


> I used to have fish tank but it was too time consuming and too demanding to clean...so now i have Schnapps plastic container modified into aquarium (Bottle of some sort of Schnapps was packed inside this container-gift box)  :booze:
> I dont have any filter, no chemicals for chlorine neutralization etc.
> I just change the water every week or so..and you will not believe i still have the first and only goldfish i bought 10 years ago for this container/aquarium. Must be some sort of Guinness record or something :lol:


I had a goldfish which lived for 12 years.


----------



## Broccolli

g.spinoza said:


> I had a goldfish which lived for 12 years.


Inside the booze tank like mine? 
Yes you are right, i read once that goldfish can live up to 20 years or so..


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Broccolli said:


> I used to have fish tank but it was too time consuming and too demanding to clean...so now i have Schnapps plastic container modified into aquarium (Bottle of some sort of Schnapps was packed inside this container-gift box)  :booze:
> I dont have any filter, no chemicals for chlorine neutralization etc.
> I just change the water every week or so..and you will not believe i still have the first and only goldfish i bought 10 years ago for this container/aquarium. Must be some sort of Guinness record or something :lol:


Do you have a picture of that tank?


----------



## Broccolli

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> Do you have a picture of that tank?


No i don't, sorry. I will take some photos..someday


----------



## volodaaaa

I have a budgie. He can repeat three phrases: Hello, name of my gf and "I'm doing mess". He keeps repeat it in different voices and it is kinda funny. Especially if he ask himself "I'm doing mess, Am I, Am I, Am I?"  Oh and the first sound he has learnt was the cracking of my mouse scroll while scrolling sites or docs.


----------



## Road_UK

Haven't been here for a while. Fish! You're talking about fish! When will we ever talk women, beer and sex?


----------



## bogdymol

^^ We'll have to wait for those topics until _Autoputevi kao hobi_ turn 18.


----------



## Road_UK

Age of consent is 16 in most countries. That's when they usually develop an interest.


----------



## g.spinoza

Road_UK said:


> Age of consent is 16 in most countries. That's when they usually develop an interest.


14 in Italy...


----------



## Penn's Woods

CAUSE:


Road_UK said:


> Haven't been here for a while.


EFFECT:


Road_UK said:


> When will we ever talk women, beer and sex?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> Haven't been here for a while. Fish! You're talking about fish! When will we ever talk women, beer and sex?


You missed the very-short-lived language thread.


----------



## Road_UK

Thank God on my knees with tears in my eyes. Where was it, here?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Whoa. Not only was it locked, it seems to have been deleted.

The H&A Languages Thread, it was called. Don't remember who started it. Was deemed to be off-topic after the second post.

The idea was - and I'm not making this up - to bring language issues to it so that you wouldn't come after people in your van.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

@ Bigic made that thread.Anyway we can talk about sex if you guys want. 
I am looking forward to hear some good advices. 
But for now i am still a road nerd


----------



## x-type

Road_UK said:


> Haven't been here for a while. Fish! You're talking about fish! When will we ever talk women, beer and sex?


lager or ale?


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> lager or ale?



You've started in wrong order. I think he would like to be asked which one he likes more to stare to, boobs or bums.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

It has been raining for 2 days and this is what is happening right now:https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=986718011357906&set=vb.100000591508608&type=2&theater
This is small river in my town.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Deflated balls...

You might have to follow American sports to get this, but:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...-brady-gisele-bundchen-and-deflated-ball-puns


----------



## Road_UK

I like trains.


----------



## Suburbanist

I'm a bit at odds with the Dutch tax bureaucracy.

I got a letter two weeks ago saying that the central income registration (don't know a proper translation, it is a consolidated database that matches incomes with addresses and other gov't related financial payments/credits) found almost € 80.000 in unreported income for year 2012. That is because they considered the previous tenants of my residence as part of my household. 

Netherlands has a quite tight system of civic registration so that everybody legally resident here has an official place they are assigned to.

Problem is: these two former tenants moved out... in 2011. I don't even know them other than by names of misplaced letters I got for a while from various senders.

So no I complained about the situation officially, and they are requiring documents I just don't have, because me and this couple never lived together in the same house to begin with.

The government wants me to return almost € 4000 euros in undue credits received (had the former tenants been part of my household, which they were not).

So now I'm gathering other documents to prove I've always lived alone.


----------



## cinxxx

^^That sucks


----------



## Verso

Where is Pascal20a? Anyone misses him?


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Where is Pascal20a? Anyone misses him?


maybe he has collected all the information that he looked for.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> Where is Pascal20a? Anyone misses him?


Perhaps he is programmed to contribute to every topic he is mentioned in. We should not call him by his name.

Btw. I've fallen in love with chess. It had never attracted me until I find out how perfect game it is.


----------



## Road_UK

I love chess. I'll invite you to an online competition soon.


----------



## italystf

Traffic calming in Venice:
https://www.google.it/maps/@45.4316...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1slMF2nPyycEXJZsKP6dAYJw!2e0


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> I like trains.


Um, okay....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Autoputevi Kan Hobi -

I had occasion to pass through Love Park today. Looks the same as it always has....


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Penn's Woods said:


> Autoputevi Kan Hobi -
> 
> I had occasion to pass through Love Park today. Looks the same as it always has....


I heard that reconstruction is going to take place this year.
The town meeting about it was 2 days ago.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

@ Road Uk 








ahhahahahahaha
Anyway where you guys work,for what company?
Many of you know that i am still a student ,but once when i finish college i will have my own pharmacy.


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> Autoputevi Kan Hobi


_Autoputevi ka*o* hobi_ means "Motorways as a hobby" in Serbian. We call a hobby either "hobi", or "konjiček", which means a small horse. :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> _Autoputevi ka*o* hobi_ means "Motorways as a hobby" in Serbian. We call a hobby either "hobi", or "konjiček", which means a small horse. :lol:


Slavic languages topic alert!:nuts:

Btw. I love trains too. Yesterday I was taking photos of train because we needed a cover image on our promotional material. It was a nice day.


----------



## cinxxx

^^So you both love trains, chess, what's next?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Vans maybe ?


----------



## Kanadzie

I always wanted to have a van, like old Dodge Tradesman, with a racy mural on the side and live in it


----------



## El Tiburon

italystf said:


> Traffic calming in Venice:
> https://www.google.it/maps/@45.4316...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1slMF2nPyycEXJZsKP6dAYJw!2e0


Traffic "calming" is an euphemism for the obstruction of free trafic flow and the creation of artificial road hazards and dangerous conditions in the name of "safety".


----------



## El Tiburon

cinxxx said:


> http://www.wort.lu/en/panorama/dues...up-says-german-court-54c1f58a0c88b46a8ce52031





> "Someone who still practises this previously dominant custom..."


It is not the 'previously dominant" custom. It is THE dominant custom.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ the judge is trying to make a joke  I mean what is the German word... "sitzspinkler"? LOL


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

What happened to Top Gear?
I heard that they have stopped with filming .


----------



## bogdymol

The Christmas special edition just got out. The new season will start in the next few weeks.


----------



## Penn's Woods

We had a two-part Patagonia Special on here in the last few weeks. (I haven't watched it yet...just recorded it.) Is that the Christmas one?

We generally get new episodes about a week after the UK.

PS: What channels do you all get it on on the Continent? Just out of curiosity. ("Channels," plural, because I assume it varies from country to country.) I suppose this may be a very retro question (getting TV shows on actual TV channels...)


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> We had a two-part Patagonia Special on here in the last few weeks. (I haven't watched it yet...just recorded it.) Is that the Christmas one?
> 
> We generally get new episodes about a week after the UK.
> 
> PS: What channels do you all get it on on the Continent? Just out of curiosity. ("Channels," plural, because I assume it varies from country to country.) I suppose this may be a very retro question (getting TV shows on actual TV channels...)


It vary depending on provider. I have satellite TV, so I get Slovak channels, Czech channels, multilingual (I can switch the audio) documentary (NG, Viasat, etc.) and sports channel (Eurosport), "reality" channels (CBS, TLC), different news channels (Sky TV, Al Jazeera, CNN, CCTV), music channels and then loads of Romanian and Moldavian channels :lol: Broadcasting especially folk music. And one Macedonian.


----------



## Nexis

Look at the realistic modeling at 15:38...impressive to say the least....


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> It vary depending on provider. I have satellite TV, so I get Slovak channels, Czech channels, multilingual (I can switch the audio) documentary (NG, Viasat, etc.) and sports channel (Eurosport), "reality" channels (CBS, TLC), different news channels (Sky TV, Al Jazeera, CNN, CCTV), music channels and then loads of Romanian and Moldavian channels :lol: Broadcasting especially folk music. And one Macedonian.


Goodness!

Actually, I was wondering specifically about Top Gear (and not necessarily specifically, just whether you get some version of the BBC or it's carried on local channels), but that's interesting.

:cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> Goodness!
> 
> Actually, I was wondering specifically about Top Gear (and not necessarily specifically, just whether you get some version of the BBC or it's carried on local channels), but that's interesting.
> 
> :cheers:


Oh sorry... :lol: No, AFAIK no, it was not broadcasted.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Penn's Woods said:


> We had a two-part Patagonia Special on here in the last few weeks. (I haven't watched it yet...just recorded it.) Is that the Christmas one?
> 
> We generally get new episodes about a week after the UK.
> 
> PS: What channels do you all get it on on the Continent? Just out of curiosity. ("Channels," plural, because I assume it varies from country to country.) I suppose this may be a very retro question (getting TV shows on actual TV channels...)


I have cable TV and somewhere about 70 channels.
In Serbia we have "Pink" network."Pink" has 30 to 35 channels.Some of them are playing music,some of them are movie channels with different genre...
I have TLC,my favourite channel,Fox channels,Nat Geo ,Discovery Channel...
Also Al Jazeera is one of my favourite channels because i like watching news and their documentaries.
Also i have 10 to 15 serbian channels.


----------



## x-type

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I have TLC,my favourite channel,Fox channels,Nat Geo ,Discovery Channel...


TLC or Fox is your favourite?


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> TLC or Fox is your favourite?


When I was ill, I sacrificed two hours to watch TLC. I think my IQ decreased irreversibly.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> When I was ill, I sacrificed two hours to watch TLC. I think my IQ decreased irreversibly.


that's why i ask that. the answer might make some things clear :gossip:

when i am alone, i admit that sometimes i take a look of it. it is like the car accident: ugly thing to see, but you must stare at it, you cannot turn your head on the other side.


----------



## Verso

Luckily I've never heard of TLC.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Luckily I've never heard of TLC.


better for you. i asked my provider for the sport package, but got that thing hidden among the other programs.


----------



## Verso

Speaking of TV, I've just seen on a Slovenian channel an announcement of movies in the next hours. There's a movie at 1.10 am, but they wrote 25.10 instead. :nuts::nuts:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Luckily I've never heard of TLC.


The Learning Channel. Which apparently has about as much to do with learning as the History Channel (at least here) has to do with history. As for how the National Geographic - a very respectable, serious magazine - managed to get associated with what the National Geographic channel has become....


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

x-type said:


> TLC or Fox is your favourite?


TLC.
I really like extreme couponing.That show is very interesting.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> The Learning Channel. *Which apparently has about as much to do with learning as the History Channel (at least here) has to do with history*. As for how the National Geographic - a very respectable, serious magazine - managed to get associated with what the National Geographic channel has become....


Or MTV to music :lol: I also like the jingle or insertion on VH1 when it says "On VH1 we give you more" and then appears Rihanna singing a verse "Not really sure how to feel about it..."


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^When MTV started, probably before you were born, it really was all music videos all the time....


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^When MTV started, probably before you were born, it really was all music videos all the time....


Oh, yes. That time "video killed the radio star". But, several decades later, Youtube killed music television as well.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^When MTV started, probably before you were born, it really was all music videos all the time....


I remember those times. I was 5 years old and my parents were just equipping their apartment. There was literally nothing in our living room but small colour TV placed on a floor. MTV was one of the few foreign channels we had. I remember top 20, songs by Paul McCartney, Ace of Base, Duran Duran, etc. Afterwards the provider ceased to provide MTV channel and offered German VIVA instead. But it was good as well. The "reality shows" and talk shows killed it after 2004. I have managed to receive MTV broadcasting since 2009. But it has been rubbish since.


----------



## Kanadzie

I always think of this only https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwDDswGsJ60 about MTV...


----------



## Fatfield

I have a motorised set-up and can get all the major sats from 42°E - 0.8°W. There's a few providers carry BBC channels such as BBC Entertainment & BBC Knowledge as well as BBC News. I'm not sure if these channels show Top Gear as only the news channel is available in Blighty.

Anyway, series 22 starts tonight on BBC2.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> I always think of this only https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwDDswGsJ60 about MTV...


Is MTV still banned up there to protect MuchMusic/Musique Plus? Canadian Content, eh?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Fatfield said:


> I have a motorised set-up and can get all the major sats from 42°E - 0.8°W. There's a few providers carry BBC channels such as BBC Entertainment & BBC Knowledge as well as BBC News. I'm not sure if these channels show Top Gear as only the news channel is available in Blighty.
> 
> Anyway, series 22 starts tonight on BBC2.


Tomorrow here: http://www.bbcamerica.com/top-gear/

(Lots of good stuff coming back - Broadchurch, Luther, Ripper Street - according to their homepage.)

:cheers:


----------



## Penn's Woods

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

"Blizzard warning" just issued for New York and Boston (for tomorrow and Tuesday); 6-12 inches (15-30 cm) expected here.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Penn's Woods said:


> The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
> 
> "Blizzard warning" just issued for New York and Boston (for tomorrow and Tuesday); 6-12 inches (15-30 cm) expected here.


What ? :nuts::nuts::nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The National Weather Service is talking about 20 - 30 inches for the New York City area now. They already call it an historic blizzard.


----------



## g.spinoza

I thought NYC was much more subject to heavy snowstorms.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^You can go years without storms that big in the big cities on the Eastern Seaboard. Although, frankly, they seem much more frequent over the last decade or so.

Heavy snow's more common a bit inland and in the Midwest. It also doesn't get as cold here - thank God - as it does inland at this latitude. The Appalachians protect us a bit. But this storm, once it gets over the mountains, is supposed to (a) take in a lot of moisture from the ocean and (b) stall so that it takes its time getting out of here.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
> 
> "Blizzard warning" just issued for New York and Boston (for tomorrow and Tuesday); 6-12 inches (15-30 cm) expected here.


Nothing compared to Buffalo some weeks before Christmas.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The National Weather Service is talking about 20 - 30 inches for the New York City area now. They already call it an historic blizzard.


Weather Channel a few hours ago was saying 18 to 24 in New York City, the immediate vicinity, and farther north and east. 24 or more in eastern New England (including Boston). 12 to 18 in much of New Jersey (including my mother's area, 20 miles or so west of the city), 6 to 12 here. Blizzard warnings for eastern New Jersey, New York and on north; not here.

But snowstorms are notoriously prone to not doing what they're predicted to.


----------



## Kanadzie

italystf said:


> Nothing compared to Buffalo some weeks before Christmas.


But Buffalo NY always has snow and lots of it, New York, NY usually doesn't


----------



## Penn's Woods

Watched weather forecasts on four Philadelphia stations and the Weather Channel. We're getting anywhere from 5 to 15 inches depending on who you believe, or who's guessed right. (One of the local stations said the "confidence index" - a term that's new to me - on this forecast is low...too many variables.)


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

@ Penn's Woods Do you know BVvsGF personally?
They live in Philadelphia,this is their newest video:


----------



## italystf

1831 cartoon featuring "the traffic of the future" with steam-powered vehicles:










In reality, the use of steam power remained exclusive for rail trasport, while steam-powered road vehicles never went beyond the experimental stage.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> @ Penn's Woods Do you know BVvsGF personally?


Never heard of them.

But it's quite a large city, you know.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Weather geeks may be interested to know that the Weather Channel's live-streaming. Don't know if it works outside the U.S., though.

http://www.weather.com/tv/the-weath...-weather-channel-live?pl=pl-winter-storm-juno


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> Weather geeks may be interested to know that the Weather Channel's live-streaming. Don't know if it works outside the U.S., though.
> 
> http://www.weather.com/tv/the-weath...-weather-channel-live?pl=pl-winter-storm-juno


Works fine in Blighty, cheers.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The NAM model forecasts up to 54 inches (137 cm) of snow on Long Island. Traffic will be completely paralyzed with such amounts. I also read about possible 10 feet snow drifts near Boston.


----------



## Penn's Woods

An hour or so ago, the roofs I can see from my office were covered with snow. Now it's gone.

Wouldn't surprise me if this is a dud, at least here.


----------



## Broccolli

I have never seen Ljubljana from this perspective...


----------



## Penn's Woods

4:15 p.m. in Philadelphia and still no accumulation....


----------



## DanielFigFoz

alserrod said:


> Yes it is. And I would state that it is the first signal related to a welcome I see only in Portuguese (neither French, neither English, neither Arabic)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> off-topic... In Spain we have "official language schools" which are a type of language high school to get up to C1 degree of some languages.
> 
> Each school decides which languages offers (all of them offer English and French, almost all German and... there is one with 23 languages...)
> But half of Portuguese students are in Extremadura.
> You will not find many in Galicia due to languages are closed together (they would prefer to learn another one) and other areas have few population near the border


23 languages! That's impressive alright! In the UK I had French in primary school, then in Portugal I had English in middle school and English and French in ssecondary school, then French again back in the UK in secondary school and Sixth-Form (last two years). The school did have Spanish as well but I have it, and the Sixth-Form had German too.










I did pink, purple, beige, light green. My secondary school had recently started doing Sixth-Form but I went to a college because I wanted to do a French A-level.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I'll try to understand that when the caffeine's kicked in.

----------

Greetings from my office. I'm the only one in in my department and one of very few in, period.

We have a "grace period for late arrivals until 10:30" - standard policy - which everyone except my boss just takes as meaning come in at 10:30. Since I live four blocks away, don't have to shovel, don't have to clean a car off and don't have to wait for the street to be plowed, and my boss knows it (and remarked to that effect one snow day when she got in before me...), I shoot for my normal time. Surprised she's not in, actually. So I'll play with SSC while the caffeine kicks in. 

Oh. We got a whole inch. :eek2:


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## volodaaaa

I am not a smart man. I had an appointment with one responsible person in shopping mall and unfortunately came too early (I came by public transport). As I was wasting my time, I decided to visit an electro shop and buy my girlfriend earphones she once wished for.

I was lurking around the store for a while until I found the best ones. But since I had no bag, the earphones were pink and I did not like to go to appointment with the pink earphones in my hand, a best idea has struck my mind: to conceal it in my jacket (in pocket in particular). To ensure the package would not too big to fit my pocket (and I would eventually end up holding it in my hand after purchase), I had decided to try it immediately as the idea emerged and put it into my pocket. Then I realized what I had done  The shop assistant did not look persuaded when I explained what was going on, but the package fitted and I finally bought it.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

edit


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> I am not a smart man. I had an appointment with one responsible person in shopping mall and unfortunately came too early (I came by public transport). As I was wasting my time, I decided to visit an electro shop and buy my girlfriend earphones she once wished for.
> 
> I was lurking around the store for a while until I found the best ones. But since I had no bag, the earphones were pink and I did not like to go to appointment with the pink earphones in my hand, a best idea has struck my mind: to conceal it in my jacket (in pocket in particular). To ensure the package would not too big to fit my pocket (and I would eventually end up holding it in my hand after purchase), I had decided to try it immediately as the idea emerged and put it into my pocket. Then I realized what I had done  The shop assistant did not look persuaded when I explained what was going on, but the package fitted and I finally bought it.


was it in AU Park? (I ask beacuse 3 years ago in AU Park I bought - guess what - earphones!)


----------



## volodaaaa

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> Picture from today :
> 
> Usually i don't wear white shirts(because white is boring),but i had to wear it today because of reasons...


Dude, are you sure you have not misspelled twitter.com in the address toolbar? :nuts:



x-type said:


> was it in AU Park? (I ask beacuse 3 years ago in AU Park I bought - guess what - earphones!)


 No it was not. But Aupark is my favourite.  We must have had a very special offer for you if it was worth coming here


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

volodaaaa said:


> Dude, are you sure you have not misspelled twitter.com in the address toolbar? :nuts:/QUOTE]
> No.I just like to post my pictures here.
> What's weird with that ?
> Don't be offended.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's a discussion forum, not social media


----------



## italystf

I'm surprised about how outdated the Italian Wikipedia sometimes is. For example, while reading about a motorway in a foreign country, you may read "it should open by 2011". :nuts: It's amazing that nobody cared to change it in several years.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's a discussion forum, not social media


Heck, I don't even know what y'all are talking about.


----------



## x-type

i somehow feel that Wikipedia has reached its top and now it is going down


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Well, that's the weakness inherent in its model, I suppose. Once the volunteer contributors begin to get bored....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I mostly use the English Wikipedia. The Dutch Wikipedia has a very high quantity of articles, but it is of poor quality, a very large amount of articles are produced by bots or are stubs. In addition, it is often outdated and there is a severe lack of quality control. Just yesterday I found an article called 'economy of the Netherlands' that listed the GDP in euros while the figure was dollars. That's a $ 200 billion error. I've read that the Netherlands has the highest proportion of non-native English speakers that primarely use the English Wikipedia. 

In my experience, non-English Wikipedias are most useful when looking for local information. For example the German Wikipedia with articles about something German.


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've read that the Netherlands has the highest proportion of non-native English speakers that primarely use the English Wikipedia.


I really doubt that. It must be some small nation with almost nothing on Wikipedia in its language. There are many more articles in Dutch than in Slovenian, f.e. I rarely have benefit from Slovenian articles, so I usually start with English.

PS: there're way too many one-sentence articles in Slovak (which I often click, thinking it's Slovenian).


----------



## x-type

I use nonenglish wiki articles mostly as a dictionary when I am looking for good translation of certain words which are in headlines. It is really helpful for that. Otherwise English wiki is no1 definitely.


----------



## italystf

DanielFigFoz said:


> Taking into account the fuel just for the trip, not including general maintenance and such, going by car is much cheaper.


You have to pay general maintenace also if you commute to work with PT, because the average adult also need a car for shopping, leisure activities, social life, etc... It doens't mean that one should always move by car, many times PT, cycling and walking are more convenient (let alone eco-fiendly), but not having a car available (at least one per household) is a strong limitation to the individual freedom: it means the impossibility to travel at night when PT is scarce, to go to isolated places in the countryside, to carry bulky and heavy items,... Not having a car is also a strong limitation to access the job market.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ But the travel time will become much more unfavorable if your destination and/or origin isn't near a railway station. I have colleagues who commute 70 kilometers by public transport. The first 5 km from home to the railway station by bus takes 30 minutes, while the next 65 km station-to-station travel time is about 45 minutes.
> 
> That is also why public transport is not competitive with driving. Over 90% of driving are trips where the travel time difference with public transport is very large. In the Netherlands the share of car trips, where the travel time with public transport is not more than 1.5 times longer, is only 2-3%.


Public transport has good chances in two travel categories:
- Intercity travel, i.w. travelling between city centers. E.g. Amsterdam city center -> Utrecht city center. Comfortable, you can read a book or a newspaper, competitive in travel time. That's why there is a service in every 15 minutes(!) between Amsterdam Centraal and Utrecht Centraal, using double decker trans. 
- Suburban commuting. It has quite a low share in the Netherlands because many workplaces are in city skirts instead of city centers. But in and around cities like Frankfurt, Munich, and especially such giant cities like London or Paris, a very great amount of people take public transport for daily commuting. Frankfurt, for example, would collapse without an effective public transport.
In every other traffic segments, public transport will never have a shar over 2%.


----------



## Attus

^^ And actually that's why I can not understand people that say "Car is better" or "Public transport is better". I can not accept any of these opinions. 
Both of them have their own roles. I would never suggest to drive from Cologne center to Frankfurt center, but I would never suggest to take the train from Bad Münstereifel to Bad Neuenahr.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

italystf said:


> You have to pay general maintenace also if you commute to work with PT, because the average adult also need a car for shopping, leisure activities, social life, etc... It doens't mean that one should always move by car, many times PT, cycling and walking are more convenient (let alone eco-fiendly), but not having a car available (at least one per household) is a strong limitation to the individual freedom: it means the impossibility to travel at night when PT is scarce, to go to isolated places in the countryside, to carry bulky and heavy items,... Not having a car is also a strong limitation to access the job market.


Yeah, I am aware of all that, I'm talking about the trip that I take quite a lot that I mentioned earlier (from home to university).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The share of travel to and from city centers out of all is often overestimated. Despite massive public transport usage in large British and German cities, the car share of all travel is still 85% in those countries. Of course, this is very different locally, but overall driving is a significant majority in European countries. 

I also believe public transport has its own audience that uses it well, but it is often used as a tool in politics to suggest it will help reduce congestion. Case studies in the Netherlands found out that nearly all travelers on new rail infrastructure are either shifting from other public transport, or are new travelers. They attract almost no car drivers. The same goes for 'transit-oriented development'. The study found that only 5% of public transport travelers to transit-oriented developments were former car drivers.

An example: the zuidtak near Amsterdam attracted large numbers of travelers, but only 3% of them formerly used a car.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Of course, this is very different locally, but overall driving is a significant majority in European countries.


I have currently no time for searching for statistical data, but as far as I can remember Hungary has the lowest share of driving in the EU, and even there is it over 70%. 
Of course it has financial reasons, too, many people in Eastern Europe use the public transport because it is cheap (it is heavily subsidized).


----------



## cinxxx

^^I like not having to drive to work. 

It's a little cold for biking for me now, but I take the train to Gaimersheim.
I live only few minutes walking from the Ingolstadt train station, and from there, the train does 10 minutes to Gaimersheim.
From there I have to walk 2 km, around 25 minutes. So around 40 minutes in total from my front door. A single ticket costs 2,20€.

Using buses, I would need at least 50 minutes. A single ticket costs 2,20€.
By car it depends, can be 15 minutes, can be 30 minutes, or more...


----------



## g.spinoza

DanielFigFoz said:


> Taking into account the fuel just for the trip, not including general maintenance and such, going by car is much cheaper.


Are you talking in general or in your case? Because I spend 1.5€ per day to go to work by public transport... I can't quantify but I doubt I would spend less by car, 20 km per day through the city, full of traffic lights and stops...


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> I am quite disappointed how railway transport in Europe is expensive. Still considering a weekend long trip in Maribor, but trains cost way too much.
> 
> Example: Vienna - Maribor by EC train for two adults adds up to 104 €
> Vienna - Maribor by car is 47 € including Austrian weekly vignette.


Have you visited Ljubljana already? Anyway, Austria is terrible. Going there by train from Slovenia is cheap only until Graz, Klagenfurt and Villach (and not because it's closer, but because it's a special offer). Going to Vienna or Salzburg is very expensive.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

At current fuel prices, it costs about € 0.07 per kilometer to drive my car. Of course, there is road tax, insurance and maintenance. But most people still own a car, since commuting to work is only about 30% of all personal travel. 

I bike to work. It's close by (2.5 km) and driving would require waiting for several traffic signals, so it's not really faster either. And they charge € 4 per day for parking, so unless it is very bad weather, I bike to work. I think I used my car only 3 or 4 times last year. 

In fact, my employer also has a kilometer allowance for biking. I get about € 10 per month.


----------



## [atomic]

Just wanted to leave this here:
GE Pro seems to be free from now on, used to be something like $400.
Link with more information
It doesn't offer much for the standard user, but a few things are definitely nice:

measure tool: measuring the circumference and surface of a polygon; drawing a circle gives you the radius and surface
HD screenshots, up to 4k, independent of the window size and your computers resolution
that's all :cheers:


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Have you visited Ljubljana already? Anyway, Austria is terrible. Going there by train from Slovenia is cheap only until Graz, Klagenfurt and Villach (and not because it's closer, but because it's a special offer). Going to Vienna or Salzburg is very expensive.


don't you have those sparschiene offers? i remember them as kinda affordable.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> don't you have those sparschiene offers? i remember them as kinda affordable.


Yeah, but there's a limited number of them. And it exists only for Vienna, but not for Salzburg. Return trip Ljubljana-Salzburg-Ljubljana costs €110. :nuts:


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Yeah, but there's a limited number of them. And it exists only for Vienna, but not for Salzburg. Return trip Ljubljana-Salzburg-Ljubljana costs €110. :nuts:


you can buy sparschiene for München for 29€ per direction and simply exit at Salzburg :dunno:


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> you can buy sparschiene for München for 29€ per direction and simply exit at Salzburg :dunno:


You're right, I didn't think of that. The SŽ website doesn't mention it, only by Munich (and it's actually called Smart, not SparSchiene).


----------



## John Maynard

I usually drive to work/studies. I rarely now take the public transports. I had very bad experience with them when commuting everyday standing for 45 minutes on the train, and for another similar duration like in a sardine box on the buses in Switzerland. In turn, in Warsaw, walking on deep snow and waiting several minutes on blazing cold, the "fully filled" buses with others connections in the same condition didn't helped me to like them either. After that, how can we promote such "nauseous" mean of transport so much :wallbash:?
On the other extreme, I prefer by far being stuck on traffic jams and have "my vital and private space" listening to the music very loudly, and make "detours" after work .

When I was in elementary school I did ride often my bike. After, in high school, I had a scooter, very funny to drive though . Now, I do ride a bike or walk when the weather is nice, but I mostly drive. Like the large streets of Warsaw, even though they are often congested . I hate being "dependent" of some schedules or connections :bash:. I like to ride on my own: foot, bike, motorcycle, car, etc. Even if a do like sometime to have a train ride, or take the plane.


----------



## Peines

^^ Same as I


----------



## DanielFigFoz

g.spinoza said:


> Are you talking in general or in your case? Because I spend 1.5€ per day to go to work by public transport... I can't quantify but I doubt I would spend less by car, 20 km per day through the city, full of traffic lights and stops...


Just my case. I am talking about a long trip that I might go a couple of months without doing, then I might do it several times in a month. The fuel for the trip is about £35-40, it's more like £80 by train, and twice as long.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> I don't know. I don't think they want to keep it a secret (there's no reason, also because road numbers appear on signs), probably they just didn't bother to put the list online, thinking nobody would read it. I think one can try to write an e-mail to the provincial administration.


Or whichever clerk was supposed to put it on line has twice as much to do as he or she has time for.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> How do you measure depth in an article?





ChrisZwolle said:


> You can find it here:
> 
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_article_depth


It's starting to remind me of measuring whether your country has too many motorways.


----------



## g.spinoza

In Italy I think it's this one on A8:

http://goo.gl/maps/15Hbv

about 19 km.

In Italy we also have the longest urban straight road in Europe: Corso Francia, between Turin, Collegno and Rivoli, at 11,7 km:

http://goo.gl/maps/qgiXw


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> In Italy I think it's this one on A8:
> 
> http://goo.gl/maps/15Hbv
> 
> about 19 km.


hm. i'd go for A4 Settimo Torinese - Rondissone, or A21 just south of Brescia.

also, old A4 allignment Mestre - Padova was one of the longest.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

It's not a motorway:https://www.google.rs/maps/dir/43.1283411,22.6137694/43.0605755,22.6839133/@43.0942368,22.6387623,12z?hl=sr


----------



## bigic

It may be the longest straight motorway in Serbia (depending on your definition of straight):
https://goo.gl/maps/RVHjc
This stretch is located near Leskovac.
As for non-motorway main roads, I think somewhere in Vojvodina.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

^^That is one very boring stretch.The only think you see there are fields.


----------



## bigic

It is boring, but when you enter the Grdelica gorge...
But is it straight?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Yeah,the big costrast happens when you leave the motorway.Anyway i'm so excited for this year,we are going to have all those new motorways...


----------



## Coccodrillo

ChrisZwolle said:


> (Imageshack ruins older threads like these...)


And TinyPic is/was banned...


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Imgur is still ok.


----------



## volodaaaa

bigic said:


> It may be the longest straight motorway in Serbia (depending on your definition of straight):
> https://goo.gl/maps/RVHjc
> This stretch is located near Leskovac.
> As for non-motorway main roads, I think somewhere in Vojvodina.


I like this stretch, but it somehow tire my eyes before the difficult non-motorway section ahead (while driving southward). I usually pass this section at twilight.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

volodaaaa said:


> I like this stretch, but it somehow tire my eyes before the difficult non-motorway section ahead (while driving southward). I usually pass this section at twilight.






I always found this stretch dangerous.I use this road couple times per week.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The whole Downtown Connector (I-75/85) in Atlanta has been shut down due to a suspicious package.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> The whole Downtown Connector (I-75/85) in Atlanta has been shut down due to a suspicious package.


What lane is the rightmost?


----------



## keokiracer

volodaaaa said:


> What lane is the rightmost?


If you're referring to the text, it says 'LANE ENDS 1000 FEET'


----------



## Broccolli

New Ford Focus RS (320 HP, 4WD). :cheers:

































http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/ford/focus/89077/new-ford-focus-rs-unleashed-with-4wd-and-over-318bhp


----------



## Suburbanist

I'm going on a trip to USA with my girlfriend this next summer 

Details are being finalized, since she likes the outdoors and I like driving it will likely be a trip starting in Denver and ending in Los Angeles, going mostly through National Parks (Rockies, Mesa Verde, Canyonlands, Arches, Zion, Death Valley and Mojave)


----------



## bogdymol

I have driven over 1100 km in the past 2 days in Ireland (both Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland). Here's the map. Quite a long drive for driving on the "wrong" side of the road.

At one automatic toll booths in Republic of Ireland, on M4 motorway, I was charged 4,60 Euros instead of 2,90 Euros. The sensors though I was driving a lorry, not a VW Golf.


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> At one automatic toll booths in Republic of Ireland, on M4 motorway, I was charged 4,60 Euros instead of 2,90 Euros. The sensors though I was driving a lorry, not a VW Golf.


Just an extra tax for bloody foreigners.


----------



## CNGL

Guess where that white stuff is falling now :colgate:.


----------



## riiga

^^ It's been falling here for the past five days or so. :cheers:


----------



## Suburbanist

CNGL said:


> Guess where that white stuff is falling now :colgate:.


I thought Zaragoza was immune to snow...


----------



## bogdymol

> TransAsia flight ‪#‎GE235‬ with 58 passengers from Taipei to Kinmen crashed into a river less than 3 minutes after departure from Taipei. Flight was flown by an ATR 72-600 with registration B-22816. Construction number 1141. Delivered date 15. Apr 2014.
> Maximum speed for flight #GE235 was 116 kts directly after take off. Maximum altitude was 1350 feet.
> Latest media reports say that 16 people has been saved from the crashed aircraft.
> Playback: http://www.flightradar24.com/data/airplanes/b-22816/#56f633b
> Aircraft picture: http://www.planespotters.net/Aviation_Photos/photo.show…
> Crazy close up video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6GxRpNox7c


flightradar24.com


----------



## CNGL

Suburbanist said:


> I thought Zaragoza was immune to snow...


Except that I'm still in Huesca :colgate:. Here no snow remains , but down in Zaragoza...


----------



## volodaaaa

Btw. Is cheek kissing at greetings common in your country? Day ago I came across a tourist guide about Slovakia and at the very introduction, there was a conspicuous frame with highlighted text that cheek kissing at greeting is not an act of sexual harassment. Just being curious.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> flightradar24.com


Gosh, it barely missed the building....hno:


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Btw. Is cheek kissing at greetings common in your country? Day ago I came across a tourist guide about Slovakia and at the very introduction, there was a conspicuous frame with highlighted text that cheek kissing at greeting is not an act of sexual harassment. Just being curious.


Not that common among people who aren't related, at least in my age cohort (50ish); never, ever among heterosexual men, even if they're related.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> Btw. Is cheek kissing at greetings common in your country?


Of course, even between unrelated men, although with various degrees of spread across the country (more common in the South). It is seldom used when you introduce yourself but only in very unformal occasions, and almost never between men.


----------



## Surel

volodaaaa said:


> Btw. Is cheek kissing at greetings common in your country? Day ago I came across a tourist guide about Slovakia and at the very introduction, there was a conspicuous frame with highlighted text that cheek kissing at greeting is not an act of sexual harassment. Just being curious.


It is quite frequent in the Netherlands. I just never got really used to it. Not the kissing, kissing is ok, but here it has to happen *three times* . It is common for related people and acquaintances. Not so common for the unrelated people.


----------



## Road_UK

The French kiss all the time. And in factories and offices nobody starts work before all hands are shaken and female co-workers are kissed.


----------



## keber

Tomorrow and after tomorrow there will be show chaos here and in neighbourhood. All truck traffic is banned on all motorways for the next two days.
I think I'll get stuck again in afternoon traffic&snow chaos like yesterday. opcorn:


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> The French kiss all the time. And in factories and offices nobody starts work before all hands are shaken and female co-workers are kissed.


Well the first sentence sounds ambiguous


----------



## cinxxx

volodaaaa said:


> Btw. Is cheek kissing at greetings common in your country? Day ago I came across a tourist guide about Slovakia and at the very introduction, there was a conspicuous frame with highlighted text that cheek kissing at greeting is not an act of sexual harassment. Just being curious.


It's very common in Romania, between women, women and men.
Rarely between men, usually close relatives.

In Germany it is mostly uncommon, here men shake hands, and women have a special type of hug, somehow from the side, either with women, or with men.
This mostly only applies to acquaintances, with more stranger people they shake hands.

For example, in Romania, if a work colleague, has birthday, you kiss her on the cheek. In Germany you shake her hand.


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ Strange. In my country, if a man offer woman a handshake, it is usually considered ridiculous (I had done that several times, and the women was surprised and kind of disappointed). I kissed cheeks even when was introduced to my boss (woman). Fortunately, we do it only twice (kiss per cheek). But movement implying other kind of kiss would be considered as harassment.


----------



## cinxxx

^^I wasn't specific enough, in Romania people kiss also twice, once for each cheek


----------



## x-type

in Spain they love kissing. when I was meeting new people there, everyone wanted to kiss (female - male meetings). i have adopted it fast, but there was one thig that i hardly got used to: they kiss in wrong order - first right, and then left cheek. here we do it left - right.


----------



## John Maynard

*Posting in the Russian road thread*

Apparently, criticism and debate is not accepted neither in Russia, nor in Skyscrapercity. As it's impossible to have a sane discussion and disputation on the road related issues ongoing in Russia without having its posts deleted and "censorship" hno:.

Joke that made my day, on the Russian road thread: "We should ban all Poles from all Russian related forums" even though I'm not a Pole :lol:.


----------



## Verso

^^ You were just trolling there, so all those posts were deleted. We don't need this here.


----------



## John Maynard

Well, that wasn't my intentions at all. Maybe, by putting too much negative facts in a single post did make to consider me as such :dunno:. If that's the case, I'm really sorry. But, on the other side, I do have many legitimate question on Russian roads related issues. So, I will expose some of them in an anticipated and reformulated way. Do you think it will be acceptable to ask these questions and have a discussion on the following matters without being considered as a "troll"?:

1) Why does Russian motorways and structures are so expensive - for a quite low GPD per capita country?

2) Russia build now many impressive "state-of-the-art" bridges and short motorways that beats records of expenses (like for the Sochi games). Isn't it more urgent to focus spending on the bad roads that access and surround them, as well as the national main road network that is in a poor condition, instead? Maybe, by building less impressive bridges and motorways?

3) Problem with extremely violent and reckless drivers (you see many impressive videos on youtube, medias, and all over the internet). Also, you may risk you life not only after a crash, but also from acts violence that follows them or even not, just for a minor incident. Furthermore, Russia has very bad road related deaths and serious injuries records: Does Russian authorities and politics are taking this problem seriously, and are they intending to act and how to overcome this in the near future?

4) Many said on this forum that "bureaucracy", environmental laws, oppositions, funding are not an issue in Russia, "unlike the West". So may I ask why Russia do have such a bad road network and very few motorways/expressways?

These where some of the questions I wanted to post earlier. Would there be receivable on the Russian road thread?


----------



## volodaaaa

Well the first two questions were unnecessary. It's like asking the deaf man what does he think about the new song from whoever interpret. I guess every one knows the corruption is on a very high level in Russia which obviously bring such consequences (8 lane motorways in PRK, etc.). Pretending you don't know that fact might really sounds provocative, although I agree it is crucial challenge for admins to handle it.

As for the third question - a fact that an on board camcorder is almost mandatory for all cars should be taken account of and thus the chance of an accident being caught on camera is much higher than in other countries (there are even plenty of accidents recorded from more vehicles and thus perspectives). But you really can see on that videos Russians are not good drivers as 70 % of accidents could have been avoided.

The last question might be tricky. If you don't have "bureaucracy" - thus regulations - you don't have to fulfil the requirements. And it might lead to bad quality infrastructure. I still remember when we joined EU - we had some motorways without merging or turning lanes! On some sections, the curves are too sharp because it was built in '80s.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> I still remember when we joined EU - we had some motorways without merging or turning lanes! On some sections, the curves are too sharp because it was built in '80s.


I think those features are common everywhere on old motorways. In Italy some mountanious motorways built in the 1960s\70s are worse than these.
The most dangerous was probably the A3 Naples - Salerno, completed in 1961 with many improbable exits with very short ramps carved between houses and no accelertion\deceleration ramps, with on-ramps merging on the motorway with a stop sign!
https://www.google.it/maps/@40.7331...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sz-HvIvvJDj3ahD6tRugaoA!2e0
https://www.google.it/maps/@40.7338...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sRJ6ZPdyy2NjbT0wrkZ3Jsw!2e0
https://www.google.it/maps/@40.7374...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1spML5PtRyjMFmuUOhewvtTw!2e0
https://www.google.it/maps/@40.7384...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1ss5Z6FhVelHCYvaNdj_-qeA!2e0
https://www.google.it/maps/@40.6752...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sYCbzgkNkEG6gCoH2qGBr_w!2e0
https://www.google.it/maps/@40.6760...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sZvDT7VAuKsxbhy_JuAKslA!2e0
https://www.google.it/maps/@40.6845...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1saJerUH1TldYNb4VrEyNU4Q!2e0
https://www.google.it/maps/@40.6848...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sXW-IPyyF7z2d-2uuHrQ_PA!2e0
https://www.google.it/maps/@40.6847...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s3NAu9Ifmwfe8aQ7PuArG9w!2e0
And the best...
https://www.google.it/maps/@40.6853...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s165-VrfHVAgQy6j1OE4kjg!2e0


----------



## John Maynard

Surel said:


> The Czech Republic interior minister experienced first hand Police stopping a car intervention. It was just an exercise, though .
> 
> http://usti.idnes.cz/zastavovaci-pa...-zpravy.aspx?c=A150205_154424_usti-zpravy_alh
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, he is the man on the ground. There are more photos and a video inside the article.


They look like combating soldiers on a front line more than traffic police :nuts:.
With combat knifes, assault riffles, tactical handguns and shotguns, heavy armored bullet proof vest, it is being dangerous those days to being stop for a traffic control, even more in Europe than in USA :nuts::nuts::nuts:.

Remains me the old time, where in Texas, many Law enforcement officers didn't even wear guns on them for routine service :lol:.


----------



## John Maynard

...In contrast, citizens must be armed to the teethes (as all governments allows them to) and extremely well militarily trained to accept just a slice of this, especially in Europe :lol:.


----------



## Surel

^^
It is not the regular traffic police equipment I guess. These guys are deployed when the driver doesn't react and doesn't stop.

So no, you won't be having a traffic control done by these guys.


----------



## Surel

But you could meet her :










or them :/


----------



## John Maynard

Surel said:


> ^^
> It is not the regular traffic police equipment I guess. These guys are deployed when the driver *doesn't react and doesn't stop*.
> 
> So no, you won't be having a traffic control done by these guys.


So what? Even in the "crazy" USA you won't see a guy overarmed like this during a pursuit. IMHO, is by far excessive, and another spit on the taxpayers money, for no benefit on security at all, but an open way for burrs :nuts:.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> But you could meet her :


I take it this exercise didn't happen today, or are you having abnormally warm weather?


----------



## Surel

^^
No that photo is just googled. A Christmas magic land standard road police stock .

The exercise and the very first photo, in which the interior minister was being pacified is from today (yesterday).


----------



## Penn's Woods

Nearly 2:30 a.m. in Mayrhofen.... :troll:


----------



## Surel

John Maynard said:


> So what? Even in the "crazy" USA you won't see a guy overarmed like this during a pursuit. IMHO, is by far excessive, and another spit on the taxpayers money, for no benefit on security at all, but an open way for burrs :nuts:.


Overarmed? I did not see a rifle on them. And when stopping a car that refuses to stop I would say that a handgun is useful.

Anyways, two famous videos of the Czech police action on the road. First a very professional arrest of car thieves... I guess that the owner of this stolen car must have been very happy with their perfect work. . Maybe they should add a demolition set to their equipment. But you see, that is not a normal traffic police. It is rather a criminal police.






And to get the adrenalin down. I present you another famous video. The traffic police at work. Nice relaxed work I would say, no guns needed, tennis rackets should come handy though.


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> As for the third question - a fact that an on board camcorder is almost mandatory for all cars should be taken account of and thus the chance of an accident being caught on camera is much higher than in other countries (there are even plenty of accidents recorded from more vehicles and thus perspectives). But you really can see on that videos Russians are not good drivers as 70 % of accidents could have been avoided.


It is an interesting question - everyone has camera, so all crashes are recorded. But why everyone has cameras? Because so many crashes! :nuts:


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> Nearly 2:30 a.m. in Mayrhofen.... :troll:


Yeah I'm back. I had 2 choices: either piss off ChrisZwolle or knock somebody down on the street who was pissing me and my friends off. 

Nite folks... ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz


----------



## Alex_ZR

Meanwhile at the outer border of Schengen area, Kosovo Albanians invading Hungarian border:

http://www.origo.hu/itthon/20150204-gyori-akcio-ezert-csapott-le-a-rendorseg.html

http://www.blic.rs/Vesti/Drustvo/532564/SEOBA-ALBANACA-Ovo-madjarsko-selo-je-prvo-na-udaru-imigranata-s-Kosova


----------



## John Maynard

Surel said:


> Overarmed? I did not see a rifle on them. And when stopping a car that refuses to stop I would say that a handgun is useful.


Wait! Look under, they came back directly from Irak :lol:.
A handgun to stop a car? What for? They already got the spike stripes, which is far more efficient. 
I know many police officers that would not agree with you . 
Actually, in the UK they manage to stop efficiently a "runaway" car without even having a firearm :lol:.
Moreover, guns aren't needed for routine police work in most of EU, as they've already done quite efficiently the job of "disarming" their law-abiding citizens. Therefore, majority of LE officers in the EU should only have a pepper spray, baton and a taser instead, and it will be as much efficient, minus the "blur" potential.



Surel said:


> Anyways, two famous videos of the Czech police action on the road. First a very professional arrest of car thieves... I guess that the owner of this stolen car must have been very happy with their perfect work. . Maybe they should add a demolition set to their equipment. But you see, that is not a normal traffic police. It is rather a criminal police.


Hence, so much brutality for nothing, and it come from the Czech "elite" of the police hno:. Seemingly today, a car thief is a very dangerous and violent criminal in liberty, that anti-terrorist SWAT-like special teams are needed all instances, no matter what . 
And when thinking they could just have blocked his car with 2 "normal" officers arresting him without even withdrawing their guns, would have done this very same job without all this fuss :nuts:.


----------



## pasadia

Alex_ZR said:


> Meanwhile at the outer border of Schengen area, Kosovo Albanians invading Hungarian border:



Why Hungary? I mean, why not Greece? Or Turkey, or Italy?


----------



## cinxxx

^^On their way to Germany


----------



## Alex_ZR

pasadia said:


> Why Hungary? I mean, why not Greece? Or Turkey, or Italy?


Are you serious about Turkey? They want asylum at some EU country (Germany, France, Sweden) and Hungary is in Schengen area. After they reach it, they are on board.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Road_UK said:


> Yeah I'm back. I had 2 choices: either piss off ChrisZwolle or knock somebody down on the street who was pissing me and my friends off.
> 
> Nite folks... ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz


So.. what have you done ?


----------



## Road_UK

I punched some Swedish asshole who kept on trying to get into our taxi.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Road_UK said:


> I punched some Swedish asshole who kept on trying to get into our taxi.


You're dangerous :bash::bash:


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> I punched some Swedish asshole who kept on trying to get into our taxi.


Did not you realize it was driver then?:lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

American girl tasting traditional Slovak products... How come every third thing is "boozy"?


----------



## Verso

pasadia said:


> Why Hungary? I mean, why not Greece? Or Turkey, or Italy?


I have no idea where you got those three countries. None of them borders Kosovo or Serbia, and as for endpoint, only Italy makes sense, going to Turkey or Greece doesn't make any sense. Anyway, Hungary is the only country in the Schengen Area that borders Serbia (while Kosovo doesn't border any).


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> I have no idea where you got those three countries. None of them borders Kosovo or Serbia, and as for endpoint, only Italy makes sense, going to Turkey or Greece doesn't make any sense. Anyway, Hungary is the only country in the Schengen Area that borders Serbia (while Kosovo doesn't border any).


Are there passport checks between Italy and Greece? It do have sense if not.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Are there passport checks between Italy and Greece? It do have sense if not.


No, but they can do random checks on the ferry.


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> No, but they can do random checks on the ferry.


In principle, random checks by authorities are not allowed on the intra-Schengen traffic. Instead, random-looking checks based on a risk analysis are allowed. Any action taken by authorities can be considered a risk analysis.

In addition, the Schengen agreement does not prevent the ferry companies from introducing any terms and conditions they wish. Showing the passport or the ID card to the ferry staff may be a prerequisite for boarding.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

volodaaaa said:


> American girl tasting traditional Slovak products... How come every third thing is "boozy"?


OMG she is so ugly...


----------



## CNGL

volodaaaa said:


> American girl tasting traditional Slovak products... How come every third thing is "boozy"?


American? She appears to be Japanese. Anyway, here is a video where she eats Spanish snacks:





I ate a ton of Phoskitos cakes as a kid! Also, Lacasitos exists as a standalone snack, not only in chocolate bar.


----------



## volodaaaa

CNGL said:


> American? She appears to be Japanese. Anyway, here is a video where she eats Spanish snacks:
> 
> I ate a ton of Phoskitos cakes as a kid! Also, Lacasitos exists as a standalone snack, not only in chocolate bar.


Pajitas is quite common here


----------



## Penn's Woods

MattiG said:


> In principle, random checks by authorities are not allowed on the intra-Schengen traffic. Instead, random-looking checks based on a risk analysis are allowed. Any action taken by authorities can be considered a risk analysis.
> 
> In addition, the Schengen agreement does not prevent the ferry companies from introducing any terms and conditions they wish. Showing the passport or the ID card to the ferry staff may be a prerequisite for boarding.


New thread title: Roadside Rest Area and International Border Crossings.


----------



## pasadia

Verso said:


> I have no idea where you got those three countries. None of them borders Kosovo or Serbia, and as for endpoint, only Italy makes sense, going to Turkey or Greece doesn't make any sense. Anyway, Hungary is the only country in the Schengen Area that borders Serbia (while Kosovo doesn't border any).


Well, actually I didn't thought at all that the main reason was Schengen area. Which still seems to me as a useless wish, but probably don't get their reasons.

My logic was that: albanese fleeing Kosovo (for whatever reason). First choice should be Albania, right? Second choice, if not leaving for ethnical reason, should be Serbia or another country from ex-Yugoslavia (FYROM, Muntenegro, BIH, or whatever). Third choice, if you get to that, should be a near-country where albanese used to flea in the past, such as Italy (if not Greece, but I admit that this was a silly choice). Fourth choice I thought it should be Turkey for cultural and religious reasons. 

So Hungary was not on my list at all and Schengen Area wasn't a potential reason from my point of view.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> New thread title: Roadside Rest Area and International Border Crossings.


We should do Road_UK a favour: so let's add "and Slavic linguistics" to the end. :troll:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^His head might explode. But you're closer to Mayrhofen than I am, so if you think it's safe....


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ Nothing to worry about as long as he keeps up fighting drivers. It is still not enough close to be worth walking.


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> Are there passport checks between Italy and Greece? It do have sense if not.


Neither Kosovo nor Serbia border Greece, so why would you risk crossing two borders?



pasadia said:


> Well, actually I didn't thought at all that the main reason was Schengen area. Which still seems to me as a useless wish, but probably don't get their reasons.
> 
> My logic was that: albanese fleeing Kosovo (for whatever reason). First choice should be Albania, right? Second choice, if not leaving for ethnical reason, should be Serbia or another country from ex-Yugoslavia (FYROM, Muntenegro, BIH, or whatever). Third choice, if you get to that, should be a near-country where albanese used to flea in the past, such as Italy (if not Greece, but I admit that this was a silly choice). Fourth choice I thought it should be Turkey for cultural and religious reasons.
> 
> So Hungary was not on my list at all and Schengen Area wasn't a potential reason from my point of view.


They're fleeing Kosovo because of poverty, so only Italy makes any sense there (and Hungary as a transit country).


----------



## keber

Road_UK said:


> I punched some Swedish asshole who kept on trying to get into our taxi.


Why punching?
Tackling on snow is more fun


----------



## Road_UK

Well, after he put his head in the snow he ran a mile...


----------



## Road_UK

volodaaaa said:


> ^^ Nothing to worry about as long as he keeps up fighting drivers. It is still not enough close to be worth walking.


I was at Schwechat this morning - driving. It's only 30 mins over the road from you. So be afraid. Be very afraid


----------



## x-type

that Emmy girl makes incredible faces when tasting the candies or whatsoever she eats there


----------



## volodaaaa

Road_UK said:


> I was at Schwechat this morning - driving. It's only 30 mins over the road from you. So be afraid. Be very afraid


*heavily swallowing*



x-type said:


> that Emmy girl makes incredible faces when tasting the candies or whatsoever she eats there


I've decided to watch more of her videos, but it is impossible to see her tasting various treats from different countrys followed by "mmmm", "yammy" "mmm... very tasty" without getting hungry.:lol:


----------



## italystf

In the past we had in the international border crossing thread discussions that belonged to the roadside rest area. Now, we have in the roadside rest area discussions that belong to the (former) international border crossing thread. :nuts:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Because the European Freaking Union's deciding* it would be nice to have the Ukraine as a sort-of-member had nothing to do with it. 

I'll leave it to Europeans to decide whether you speak for most of them. But if you think the average American or even most American policy-makers could give a f--- about who controls Donetsk or any other Eastern European hellhole, you've got a typically Eurocentric exaggerated sense of your own importance.

But we've had this conversation before. I'm over it. If you idiots do start another "World" (European) War, please leave us out of it this time.

(See, Road? This is what I was talking about.)

*subsidized by the U.S. insofar as we're paying way more than our share for NATO and I don't see what the hell we get out of it. Other than risking our lives for things that don't affect us.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^...European Freaking Union's deciding


This should be in grammar textbooks as the typical example of oxymoron :lol:


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## DanielFigFoz

volodaaaa said:


> This should be in grammar textbooks as the typical example of oxymoron :lol:


Perhaps, but I don't think 'freaking' should be capitalised though. :lol:


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Because the European Freaking Union's deciding* it would be nice to have the Ukraine as a sort-of-member had nothing to do with it.
> 
> I'll leave it to Europeans to decide whether you speak for most of them. But if you think the average American or even most American policy-makers could give a f--- about who controls Donetsk or any other Eastern European hellhole, you've got a typically Eurocentric exaggerated sense of your own importance.
> 
> But we've had this conversation before. I'm over it. If you idiots do start another "World" (European) War, please leave us out of it this time.
> 
> (See, Road? This is what I was talking about.)
> 
> *subsidized by the U.S. insofar as we're paying way more than our share for NATO and I don't see what the hell we get out of it. Other than risking our lives for things that don't affect us.


Sorry man, the US has much more to do with what happened in Ukraine than any European country excluding Ukraine and Russia. So as much about talking about starting a war...

So please if the Americans want a war with Russia. Please have it in America and Asia and leave Europe out of it.

Anyway, it was CNN who put it there, so you should direct your anger there if you don't agree with what is says.


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> If you idiots do start another "World" (European) War, please leave us out of it this time.


An American pointing at others for starting wars. :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Only a European who thinks the history of the world began in 1946 could say that.

(Particularly one from that nice, peaceful corner of Europe between Vienna and Istanbul. Seriously. Hypocrisy much? In fact, 1946 is way too early for you.)


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Only a European who thinks the history of the world began in 1946 could say that.


It's kind of more important what's happening in the present than what happened 70 years ago.



Penn's Woods said:


> (Particularly one from that nice, peaceful corner of Europe between Vienna and Istanbul. Seriously. Hypocrisy much? In fact, 1946 is way too early for you.)


Care to elaborate? Who have we attacked since 1946?


----------



## keber

In 3 ... 2 ... 1 ....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law


----------



## Road_UK

Surel said:


> Sorry man, the US has much more to do with what happened in Ukraine than any European country excluding Ukraine and Russia. So as much about talking about starting a war...
> 
> So please if the Americans want a war with Russia. Please have it in America and Asia and leave Europe out of it.
> 
> Anyway, it was CNN who put it there, so you should direct your anger there if you don't agree with what is says.


I'm with Penn's on this. Most of us are just ordinary citizens anyway who have no impact on what is happening in countries far away, apart from you perhaps: a Czech immigrant living in Holland and spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda all over the place as if there was no tomorrow.


----------



## Road_UK

Verso said:


> It's kind of more important what's happening in the present than what happened 70 years ago.
> 
> Care to elaborate? Who have we attacked since 1946?


Stop talking we. You are just a citizen as well, and you know full well that your region has disrupted peace and stabilty in Europe back in the 90's. But it's not your fault personally.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> Sorry man, the US has much more to do with what happened in Ukraine than any European country excluding Ukraine and Russia. So as much about talking about starting a war...
> 
> So please if the Americans want a war with Russia. Please have it in America and Asia and leave Europe out of it.
> 
> Anyway, it was CNN who put it there, so you should direct your anger there if you don't agree with what is says.


I've already said what I think of CNN. And *you* said you agreed with them and that most Europeans did, so don't tell me to direct my response away from you. But, as succinctly as possible, describing the forces in question as "pro-U.S.," even if it were true, disregards that they are primarily forces defending the democratically elected government of their own country on its own soil.

Obama has ruled out time and time again a war with Russia, even a "military confrontation" with Russia or a "proxy war" with Russia. And to all appearances, Russia/the Ukraine is less important to the administration than the Middle East. If you or anyone else says "the Americans" want a war with Russia you're either not paying attention, lying, or assuming he's lying. You'd also be assuming he's insane, because a war with Russia would be insane. (By the way, what's getting attention here today is ISIS and domestic stories.) And as far as leaving Europe out of a war with Russia - forgive me for going back in time again, but we wouldn't be in a position of rivalry with Russia if we hadn't had to come in and help the British clean up the last European mess.

And if you don't think the Ukraine's rapprochement with the EU (which led, in the space of about three months, to Putin threatening them, the Ukraine backing off, *Merkel et al.* yelling at them, Maidan protesters waving *THE EU'S *flag, then that mess in Kiev, the president fleeing to Russia and finally Putin playing with troops) indicates that western Europe (that "any European country" of yours is cute...) has a major share of responsibility for this, then you're - again - not paying attention, or lying.

I'm glad, though, you recognize that Russia has something to do with this. I wasn't clear you grasped that....


----------



## volodaaaa

Let's go back to Slavic languages. This discussion leads nowhere. We can't change anything. Sad but true.


----------



## Attus

Saying that the US has the responsibility for the crisis in Ukraine, and saying no word about the responsibility of Germany, is simply crazy.


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> Saying that the US has the responsibility for the crisis in Ukraine, and saying no word about the responsibility of Germany, is simply crazy.


Is Germany a synecdoche (= a part for all, like England for UK) for EU in this context? :troll:


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> It's kind of more important what's happening in the present than what happened 70 years ago.


It's the same argument used in the struggle between the West and the Muslim world. Some people argue that present-day Muslim terrorism and _jihad_ is comparable to the Cruisades in the 13th century. However, it's a really forced comparison, because after 800 years Europe reached civilization, while other parts of the world are still stuck in the Dark Age.
We all agree that Hitler, Stalin and Mao were the most terrible dictators ever, in terms of people killed, but, again, this doesn't excuse present-day third world dictators, that even if they killed way less people, they remain dictators.
If Europeans murdered each other in 1914-1918, 1939-1945 and, in a corner of the continent, also in 1991-1999, it's not an excuse for Arabs, Russians, Americans or any other to support conflicts.


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> And if you don't think the Ukraine's rapprochement with the EU has a major share of responsibility for this, then you're - again - not paying attention, or lying.


Nope, I am just thiking about how the US has "brokered" power transition in Ukraine in which it has "fu..cked" the EU. Using the exact words of US administraition.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## CNGL

After reviewing the France road atlas I bought yesterday, it seems French Guiana is now independent (Along with Martinique, Guadeloupe, Reunion and Mayotte) as no overseas department appears in it. OTOH, the Channel Islands (Jersey, Guernesey and Aurigny a.k.a. Alderney) are included in the atlas so they are now French .


----------



## Verso

Road_UK said:


> Stop talking we. You are just a citizen as well, and you know full well that your region has disrupted peace and stabilty in Europe back in the 90's. But it's not your fault personally.


Well, Penn's Woods said "you idiots", so... And I don't live between Vienna and Istanbul.


----------



## Road_UK




----------



## Verso

Well, Mayrhofen and Philadelphia are between Vienna (USA) and Istanbul as well. :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

CNGL said:


> After reviewing the France road atlas I bought yesterday, it seems French Guiana is now independent (Along with Martinique, Guadeloupe, Reunion and Mayotte) as no overseas department appears in it. OTOH, the Channel Islands (Jersey, Guernesey and Aurigny a.k.a. Alderney) are included in the atlas so they are now French .


Which one did you get?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Well, Penn's Woods said "you idiots", so... And I don't live between Vienna and Istanbul.


I apologize. I don't respond well to posts like Surel's and this whole thing has me on edge. Which is exactly why I was saying yesterday let's please not talk about it. (In fact, I couldn't get to sleep until about 6 a.m., worrying, which is why I'm home taking a sick day.) Anyhow, Peace Plan 3.0 was apparently reached overnight, so maybe it'll be a few months before the next round of drama. (The most depressing thing I read yesterday, at the end of a New York Times piece, I think, was some analyst saying "this conflict won't be resolved this month, or this year." Depressing but probably accurate. But if everyone keeps their cool and doesn't do anything stupid, we'll be looking back on this some day.)

But you do.


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ I've just though of you this morning. I am accustomed to watch English news channels in morning between I get up and get ready to go to work to improve my English and this morning, I focused on CNN. You were goddamn right... there really were three different breaking news in a half of hour, mostly completely useless stories. That is what I call breaking-news inflation 

But nothing can compare with this one  I watch it sometimes just for the presenter's remarks.


----------



## bigic

cinxxx said:


>


This photo is taken in Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the Srbac-Derventa road. I saw it in the Serbian forum with the same caption, but in Serbian.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

At least it's paved


----------



## Alex_ZR

It's not the same:


----------



## CNGL

Penn's Woods said:


> Which one did you get?


A Michelin one with 350+ pages of maps and lots of details. Incidentally, if I hadn't other things to do, this weekend would have seen me getting barely into France.


----------



## Suburbanist

I wish I had a math keyboard with greek letter easily accessible and commons symbols available without the need for ALT+(code)


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Somewhere in Word, there's a "Symbols" key that opens up a sort of table, with, among many other things, capital and lower-case Greek and Cyrillic letters (in alphabetical order, too, and including letters used only in, say, Belarussian or Serbian); the euro symbol and I assume other currency symbols...you can click on the ones you want and they'll appear in your text. You even have some choice of fonts. (You may already know this; I just happened on it the other day. Not sure I could find it again, actually....) This would actually be useful to me if I knew any language that used Cyrillic, but it's nice to know it's there.


----------



## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Somewhere in Word, there's a "Symbols" key that opens up a sort of table, with, among many other things, capital and lower-case Greek and Cyrillic letters (in alphabetical order, too, and including letters used only in, say, Belarussian or Serbian); the euro symbol and I assume other currency symbols...you can click on the ones you want and they'll appear in your text. You even have some choice of fonts. (You may already know this; I just happened on it the other day. Not sure I could find it again, actually....) This would actually be useful to me if I knew any language that used Cyrillic, but it's nice to know it's there.


Sure there is, but it is not practical at all for writing texts with plenty of math content that isn't using LaTex.


----------



## Surel

If you are using word, try out MathType


----------



## Penn's Woods

I see our usually silent Wisconsin contingent is having fun with the banner....


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Somewhere in Word, there's a "Symbols" key that opens up a sort of table, with, among many other things, capital and lower-case Greek and Cyrillic letters (in alphabetical order, too, and including letters used only in, say, Belarussian or Serbian); the euro symbol and I assume other currency symbols...


€ = Alt Gr + E on my keyboard
$ = Shift + 4


----------



## bigic

I can't count signs I have seen in Greece and Montenegro where instead of the Euro sign (€) is written only ordinary E.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> € = Alt Gr + E on my keyboard
> $ = Shift + 4


American keyboards have the dollar sign on shift 4...pounds or euros or yen, I'd need to do some other way. Now that I know about the symbols area....


----------



## CNGL

Verso said:


> € = Alt Gr + E on my keyboard
> $ = Shift + 4


€ also Alt Gr + 5 on my keyboard, which has has ñ and ¡¿ keys .


----------



## ChrisZwolle

CTR+ALT+5 = € with my keyboard. Alt Gr + E = é 

I remember keyboards in the Netherlands used to have the pound sign, but they don't anymore. 

A nice combination to remember is CTRL+ALT+2 or +3 which gives ² and ³.

My keyboard uses the US - international setting. It's also a QWERTY.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> CTR+ALT+5 = € with my keyboard. Alt Gr + E = é
> 
> I remember keyboards in the Netherlands used to have the pound sign, but they don't anymore.
> 
> A nice combination to remember is CTRL+ALT+2 or +3 which gives ² and ³.
> 
> My keyboard uses the US - international setting. It's also a QWERTY.


In my Italian keyboard € is AltGr+E. £ is shift+3, it was used before 2002 also as symbol for the Italian Lira. $ is shift+4, beside being a currency symbol is also used in programming.


----------



## Kanadzie

SIII IIITALLIAAA!


----------



## volodaaaa

A small English language issue:
Who do you love?
and
Whom you love? 
are equal?

Btw. today is a native language day. We should celebrate by spamming language issues over all the topics, hurray


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^The distinction between "who" and "whom" is pretty much dead in everyday informal usage. We learn it in school, and then go home and annoy our parents by "correcting" their grammar (at least I went through that phase...and my parents were perfectly well educated people). And people often get them wrong in more formal writing - using "whom" where "who" would be correct... - because they don't come naturally.

But you need the "do" in a question:

Who do you love? - informal but acceptable
Whom do you love? - formal

the woman who(m) you love - is the sort of situation where you leave the "do" out.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^The distinction between "who" and "whom" is pretty much dead in everyday informal usage. We learn it in school, and then go home and annoy our parents by "correcting" their grammar (at least I went through that phase...and my parents were perfectly well educated people). And people often get them wrong in more formal writing - using "whom" where "who" would be correct... - because they don't come naturally.
> 
> But you need the "do" in a question:
> 
> Who do you love? - informal but acceptable
> Whom do you love? - formal
> 
> the woman who(m) you love - is the sort of situation where you leave the "do" out.


Thanks. I thought I can drop the "do" if I use "whom" as well as it is in nominative of "who".


----------



## Penn's Woods

Um, did anyone else just (or recently) click on the Highways & Autobahns home page or any other page and get bounced to a year-and-a-half-old "Must Read" thread from Jan about "inappropriate content"??

Maybe I clicked on something by mistake, but I can't imagine what.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Being good and responding off topic to this over here:



ChrisZwolle said:


> Some motorways were closed in the French Alps. There is an incredible traffic chaos, people have been stranded in stationary traffic for almost the entire day.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The entire road network became clogged between Lyon and Albertville. There was over 1,000 kilometers of traffic jams in this view of TomTom Traffic.


We're having snow too. This storm is officially and appropriately named Pandora. This one is actually supposed to do something here as opposed to just north of us. AND my cable went dysfunctional yesterday evening (some channels don't work, no on demand, no recordings....). All in all, a good day for wasting time on SSC.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Today in place where i live ,in 1pm temperature was 10 C.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^The distinction between "who" and "whom" is pretty much dead in everyday informal usage. We learn it in school, and then go home and annoy our parents by "correcting" their grammar (at least I went through that phase...and my parents were perfectly well educated people). And people often get them wrong in more formal writing - using "whom" where "who" would be correct... - because they don't come naturally.
> 
> But you need the "do" in a question:
> 
> Who do you love? - informal but acceptable
> Whom do you love? - formal
> 
> the woman who(m) you love - is the sort of situation where you leave the "do" out.


I do rarely use whom and even my Mum, who doesn't speak English natively, takes the piss out of me for it. I couldn't explain which one is correct and why though. Reading about it now.



> Mrs. Dimwit consulted an astrologer whom she met in Seattle. (She met him in Seattle.)
> 
> Jones is the man whom I went fishing with last spring. (I went fishing with him.)
> 
> Joyce is the girl who got the job. (She got the job.)
> 
> Whom can we turn to in a time of crisis? (Can we turn to her?)
> 
> The delegates differed as to who they thought might win. (Not whom. Here the entire clause is the object of the preposition. Substitution is particularly helpful in cases such as this. They thought he might win.)
> 
> Who is that masked man? (subject)
> 
> The men, four of whom are ill, were indicted for fraud. (object)


I think I'd use 'who' for all but the last, where I would use 'whom'.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^The men who four of are ill? :troll:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^The men who four of are ill? :troll:


The first time I read that it sounded strange, but now that I've read it a few times it sounds perfectly normal to me. Strange how the brain works, innit.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^The men who four of are ill? :troll:


This sounds perfectly, but it would never struck me :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Seriously, I think I'd say "the men of whom four are ill."


----------



## DanielFigFoz

So would I.


----------



## italystf

Last night at around 1 a.m. I was driving in downtown Udine, when I saw an accident involving a police car and another police car nearby, all in the middle of a busy crossroad.
Today's news: The police was chasing a gypsy guy, researched for many thefts, that refused to stop. So, he decided to deliberately crash against the police car, injuring the two occupants. hno: He had his 13 y.o. kid in the car with him. The car was full of tools used to break locks. The car was also uninsured.
http://messaggeroveneto.gelocal.it/...ai-carabinieri-arrestato-un-nomade-1.10914346


----------



## Verso

Mario Levacovich :troll:


----------



## Kanadzie




----------



## Suburbanist

I wonder which other EU countries have a law enforcement force akin to the Carabinieri, with similar provisions about geographical dispersion, legal competence etc.


----------



## [atomic]

^^ the french Gendarmerie and Guardia civil in spain come to mind.
I believe this is to prevent one organisation/ministry from becoming too powerful (especially in a centralized state).


----------



## italystf




----------



## Kanadzie

No, forget countries

people are free to use units 

degrees Reaumur for all!


----------



## italystf

Kanadzie said:


> No, forget countries
> 
> people are free to use units
> 
> degrees Reaumur for all!


Interesting, I've never heard of this scale before. Aparently, it was widely used in Europe till the mid-1800, when it began being replaced by Celsius.
According to Wikipedia


> Its only modern use is in the measuring of milk temperature in cheese production. It is used in some Italian dairies making Parmigiano-Reggiano and Grana Padano cheeses and in Swiss Alp cheeses. In the Netherlands the Réaumur thermometer is used when cooking sugar syrup for desserts and sweets.


----------



## Kanadzie

Celsius is still dumb though... you make a scale where the actual zero is minus 273 degrees... it is nonsense.


----------



## italystf

Kanadzie said:


> Celsius is still dumb though... you make a scale where the actual zero is minus 273 degrees... it is nonsense.


It's probably because the system was intended to be used for everyday temperatures, rather for extremely low ones that exist only in physics. And I'm not even sure if the idea of "absolute zero" already existed when the Celsius scale was introduced. In fact, Kelvin scale is usually adopted in today's scientific speech.


----------



## CNGL

I'm sure there's a part of 'rest of the world' which writes dates on an inverted pyramid (Year-month-day) style .


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> It's probably because the system was intended to be used for everyday temperatures, rather for extremely low ones that exist only in physics. And I'm not even sure if the idea of "absolute zero" already existed when the Celsius scale was introduced. In fact, Kelvin scale is usually adopted in today's scientific speech.


The Celcius scale has been in use since 1744. Lord Kelvin published his paper proposing an absolute temperature scale in 1848. The Kelvin scale uses one degree Celcius as an increment. Thus, the Kelvin scale is based on the Celcius scale, not vice versa.


----------



## Surel

Kanadzie said:


> Celsius is still dumb though... you make a scale where the actual zero is minus 273 degrees... it is nonsense.


I see, you have been already given the explanation for it.

We are still quite anthropocentric in our perception of the world and I don't think that it is all that wrong actually as long as it stays mathematically simple and practical. I am not so sure that it would be that handy to have different apparatus for the science world and for the daily use when you can use the same while keeping it efficient.

It makes perfect sense making the most important point on the scale the point when water turns into ice and scale the measure towards the point when water turns into vapor given the atmospheric pressure. As our bodies are more than 70 % water those are rather critical temperatures for us.

The time follows quite similar pattern here. Years, days, months, are both quite geocentric and anthropocentric measures.

With other measures we were able to go into more abstraction and we thus left the pounds and yards, feet and inches. Notice also that the seconds are split in 10ths and 100ths etc as they are rather abstract concepts and they make computations easier.


----------



## x-type

American dates make perfect sense to me. Try to name few documents and name them after dates when they've been done. American way will arrange them in alphanumerical order: 150118, 150130, 150218, 150222. European way will arrange it messy: 180115, 180215, 220215, 300115.

Also about temperature - Kelvin system seems to be the most logical one imo.


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> American dates make perfect sense to me. Try to name few documents and name them after dates when they've been done. American way will arrange them in alphanumerical order: 150118, 150130, 150218, 150222. European way will arrange it messy: 180115, 180215, 220215, 300115.


AFAIK American style is month/day/year, which completely lacks logic. However, despite logic in EU style, it is completely useless and needs to be backed up. The best format would be year/month/day.


----------



## Surel

x-type said:


> American dates make perfect sense to me. Try to name few documents and name them after dates when they've been done. American way will arrange them in alphanumerical order: 150118, 150130, 150218, 150222. European way will arrange it messy: 180115, 180215, 220215, 300115.
> 
> Also about temperature - Kelvin system seems to be the most logical one imo.


Hmm? US MMDDYYYY dates:

01102011
02102011
02122011
30102011

It doesn't bring any advantage compared with DDMMYYYY. If you want to name documents to be sorted by time, you need to begin with the year, then month and then days. It is quite standard to use YYYY-MM-DD.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Hungarians use year/month/day format, so if the date is written in European way, they put a note "day/month/year", especially at food package.


----------



## PovilD

Alex_ZR said:


> Hungarians use year/month/day format, so if the date is written in European way, they put a note "day/month/year", especially at food package.


Lithuania, along with Hungary, are the only countries in Europe that use such format.

World map of the countries with the different formats


----------



## Road_UK

italystf said:


>


How come this post who started it hasn't been deleted but everything else has?


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> AFAIK American style is month/day/year, which completely lacks logic. However, despite logic in EU style, it is completely useless and needs to be backed up. The best format would be year/month/day.





Surel said:


> Hmm? US MMDDYYYY dates:
> 
> 01102011
> 02102011
> 02122011
> 30102011
> 
> It doesn't bring any advantage compared with DDMMYYYY. If you want to name documents to be sorted by time, you need to begin with the year, then month and then days. It is quite standard to use YYYY-MM-DD.


oh, crap. in that case - Penn's, I'm really sorry


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> How come this post who started it hasn't been deleted but everything else has?


Apparently this sort of crap* is more acceptable than saying it's stupid is. Duly noted.

*I mean, of course, the original post.


----------



## Suburbanist

I'm going to the USA this summer, and I'm now in the process of booking a rental car. It is tricky the tradeoff between larger cars and the extra fuel they will use. There is a special sale for hybrid cars but I think hybrids are not that economical for long road drives.


----------



## Dalla contea

Road_UK said:


> How come this post who started it hasn't been deleted but everything else has?


do you need an explanation?


----------



## volodaaaa

Can we go back to the off-topic, please?


----------



## Road_UK

Dalla contea said:


> do you need an explanation?


Yes.


----------



## bogdymol

Explanations on private. Whoever continues this here gets a brig.

Back on topic please (how much on topic this thread can be...).


----------



## bogdymol

Aaaaaaand next, clean, page...


----------



## volodaaaa

I've just realized my apprentice (a girl, I am thesis supervisor to) is my next problem. I've given her tons of literature, given her lot of time to compose a single chapter and.... she finally sent me one... terrible... She thinks suburbanization was not developed in Slovakia during commie times due to high prices on real estate market... :nuts: It has one flaw - there was no market at all :lol:


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Nordic20T

^^
For how many Euros was this question? Seems pretty easy...


----------



## cinxxx

^^I didn't watch it, but a friend from Facebook did.
She said it was not on the beginning, there was some money in play, 32k or 64k.

Ad the guy didn't know the answer and wanted to say Bayern.
In the end he took the joker "Ask a spectator" and got the correct answer...


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

https://www.google.rs/maps/@44.8103034,20.4161836,3968m/data=!3m1!1e3
New Belgrade
It looks so American


----------



## volodaaaa

Indeed... You'll see people holding firearms and hamburgers if you zoom in.


----------



## Kanadzie

Suburbanist said:


> I'm going to the USA this summer, and I'm now in the process of booking a rental car. It is tricky the tradeoff between larger cars and the extra fuel they will use. There is a special sale for hybrid cars but I think hybrids are not that economical for long road drives.


I don't think you would have a considerable difference in fuel cost if you drive even 5000 km :lol: Remember, US fuel prices also.


----------



## keber

Nordic20T said:


> ^^
> For how many Euros was this question? Seems pretty easy...


As I don't watch political news I would say only that D is not correct - everything else is for me plausible


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

volodaaaa said:


> Indeed... You'll see people holding firearms and hamburgers if you zoom in.


That's something what you'll probably see in Zemun


----------



## Verso

You'll also see King Kong in Zemun.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> You'll also see King Kong in Zemun.


and Titanic.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Okay, we've done "retarded" measurement systems, firearms and hamburgers.... Next cliché?


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> Okay, we've done "retarded" measurement systems, firearms and hamburgers.... Next cliché?


V8 engines with 6-7000 ccm (sorry, 370-430 cu in :troll: ), barely 200 hp, consumption doesn't matter


----------



## Verso

I saw a Cadillac Escalade the other day and I thought 'wtf'. Then I looked at the license plate and it was American.


----------



## Road_UK

Penn's Woods said:


> Okay, we've done "retarded" measurement systems, firearms and hamburgers.... Next cliché?













There's actually a glitch to this photo. What is it?


----------



## g.spinoza

Hugh Laurie is a Brit


----------



## keokiracer

It's Hugh Laurie twice. Who is British. 

edit: ^^ yeah, what he said ^^


----------



## Surel

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31608932












> A gunman has opened fire at a restaurant in the Czech Republic, killing at least eight people before shooting himself dead, officials say.


----------



## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> V8 engines with 6-7000 ccm (sorry, 370-430 cu in :troll: ), barely 200 hp, consumption doesn't matter


Back in the dim and distant past of my childhood, I used to memorize that sort of thing. My mother had a 1968 Plymouth Fury with 383 whatever.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road_UK said:


> There's actually a glitch to this photo. What is it?





g.spinoza said:


> Hugh Laurie is a Brit





keokiracer said:


> It's Hugh Laurie twice. Who is British.
> 
> edit: ^^ yeah, what he said ^^


I was going to say they're both the same actor.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> There is no such plan from the European Central Bank:
> 
> https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/banknotes/europa/html/index.en.html


Aparently the cash=money laundering paranoia is unknown outside Italy, if the ECB doesn't take it into consideration.



Penn's Woods said:


> They had that before, and with exchange rates. There could be some degree of standardization (so that, say, blue always means 5 euros, red 10...) and the notes could be usable anywhere. Don't the coins work that way now?
> 
> Just a stray thought...none of my business.


 Yes, each of the Euro countries (including San Marino, Vatican, Monaco and Andorra) mints its coin with his own design, that are of course valid in the whole Eurozone. Additionally, every country issues its 2€ commemorative coins, usually to celebrate an anniversary of something. The side with the value is the same in every country (including commeoratives), although coins issued after 2007 have a different map that includes new EU countries.
Notes are aparently (*) the same in every country. I'm not sure why, but I can suppose it's because it would be more difficult to spot fake notes if there were different designs. And vending machines would need to be programmed to recognize all designs.
(*) one can know from what country is a note by its serial number.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## g.spinoza

Kanadzie said:


> 500 EUR max note is just OK,


No, it's not. They're useless: nobody uses them and many shops refuse to accept them.


----------



## Attus

Kanadzie said:


> US largest note in circulation is 100 USD
> 
> Previously were larger notes but were officially discontinued and withdrawn... but they are still legal tender and some exist, but oh, oh so rare :lol:
> 
> But especially with inflation I think 100 USD -level value is too low. 500 EUR max note is just OK, or 1000 USD is a good mark.


I have been living for more than two years in Germany. Since then I have only once had some 100€ notes, and I have literally never seen any 200 or 500€ note.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

here in spain many 500 eur notes are seen..black money i suppose


----------



## cinxxx

When I bought my first car in Germany, I went to the bank to get cash, and I was asked if I want big notes, I said yes.
I mostly got 500€ and 200€ bills. When I then sold it I also got 500€ notes. But I think these were the only times I have seen them


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


>


*Artist*


----------



## Surel

x-type said:


>


In Norway those are sold without the active ingredients and under the name Repsils.


----------



## Suburbanist

Here in the Netherlands, it is virtually impossible to use denominations above € 100 on shops and stores. 

Actually, I had a colleague who came from abroad, brought some couple thousand Euro on high denomination bills, and the only way she could manage to use her money was wait till her account was opened and she deposited the money. Before that, she had to go to the bank and beg them to change 4x € 500 bills into € 50 ones.

------------------

I keep going on my cashless experiment I'm part of. Last 28 months, I withdrew less than € 200 from my account. I paid everything else with cards, transfers etc.


----------



## John Maynard

The 1000 Swiss francs note popularity is in grow, as they they share now 60% of the entire value of all Swiss banknotes in circulation.
Cash payment is quite popular in Switzerland, and it's not unusual to see people paying their bills with 1000 CHF notes in the post office, or withdrawing them from an ATM, or buying expensive stuff with them, though they are not accepted everywhere, especially in kiosks, small shops, and small retailers (well, if you buy cheap things). Otherwise, you can generally pay with them on nationwide general stores (like Migros or Coop) or bigger shops and malls.
Anyway, the 200 CHF note is definitely more popular on a daily basis, and you often see them around, even in kiosks (but the saleswoman often growls :lol:


----------



## keber

An offtopic question:
I'm considering buying a new used car with a more powerful gasoline motor (like 200 HP). As there is a substantially lower mileage with bigger engines I'm planning to modify engine with LPG installation as I make around 20.000 km per year. Anyone here has any experience? How is with that in your country?

I don't want a car with diesel engine if anybody asks.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My dad drives a 2002 BMW 5-series 3.0 L with 226 horsepower that runs on LPG. He says it drives very smooth and no noticable loss of power, and fuel consumption is only slightly higher than petrol. The only downside is the fact that you will have to refuel more often.


----------



## volodaaaa

I am just curious: What body (ministry, institution) is responsible for traffic law proposals in your country?


----------



## g.spinoza

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Infrastructure_and_Transport_(Italy)


----------



## Nordic20T

keber said:


> An offtopic question:
> Anyone here has any experience?


You can take a look on the Spritmonitor.de database for information about the fuel consumption of many different car models.


----------



## bogdymol

keber said:


> An offtopic question:
> I'm considering buying a new used car with a more powerful gasoline motor (like 200 HP). As there is a substantially lower mileage with bigger engines I'm planning to modify engine with LPG installation as I make around 20.000 km per year. Anyone here has any experience? How is with that in your country?
> 
> I don't want a car with diesel engine if anybody asks.


I used to drive a 1.4 L (94 hp) Chevrolet Aveo, bought brand new. At 30k km I mounted LPG on it and drove up to 100k km just on LPG with no problems at all (just the regular service done on time). I drove it on LPG from Romania to Austria (Firenze) or even to France (Rennes). The conversion pays of pretty quickly. The drawback is that you have to refill more often and that's quite annoying on longer trips as you also have to search for a station that has LPG (not all of them have).

A useful link for you with (probably) all LPG stations in Europe: http://www.mylpg.eu/stations/

In December I bought a diesel Ford Focus, but the Chevy is still in the family (driven by my father).


----------



## CNGL

volodaaaa said:


> I am just curious: What body (ministry, institution) is responsible for traffic law proposals in your country?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Public_Works_and_Transport_(Spain)


----------



## Suburbanist

bogdymol said:


> I used to drive a 1.4 L (94 hp) Chevrolet Aveo, bought brand new. At 30k km I mounted LPG on it and drove up to 100k km just on LPG with no problems at all (just the regular service done on time). I drove it on LPG from Romania to Austria (Firenze) or even to France (Rennes). The conversion pays of pretty quickly. The drawback is that you have to refill more often and that's quite annoying on longer trips as you also have to search for a station that has LPG (not all of them have).
> 
> 
> In December I bought a diesel Ford Focus, but the Chevy is still in the family (driven by my father).


I don't know about all countries, but in some of them it is common to have restrictions on underground car parking for LPG cars, imposed by garage owners/operators, isn't it?


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Yes, there are some restrictions at underground or multi-story parking garages. To be honest with you, I just switched my car on running on petrol before I entered such a garage and I never had problems. Nobody could tell that my car has a LPG installation as you couldn't see anything from the outside


----------



## Suburbanist

Isn't there another problem with the intake valves, which differ between countries?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Dlaczego nie?

My ancestry's 100% Polish (so I grew up occasionally hearing older relatives speak it), my university offered Polish during my senior year, so I thought what the heck....

After a month all the words started to look alike, but I retained a few basic things.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ is pronounced as this:







volodaaaa said:


> I've just drunk three bottles of wine but.... Are my eyes right? Do I see Penn's speaking in Slavic language? :lol::lol:


tak bylo :lol:

Road_UK's going to love it :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ You made my day  But this is also a good fusion of Polish with English


----------



## ChrisZwolle

West, east or couch


----------



## x-type

:lol:
i have very similar designed one in my apartment :lol:


----------



## bigic

A map of supposed "satisfied customers" who have bought an anti-snoring device:








Interesting geographic distribution of customers... And does that company operate in Kosovo?


----------



## xrtn2

Trucker protests across Brazil against Diesel prices :

:rock:


















diariocatarinense








clicrbs








clicrbs



























patreia amada brasil facebook








patreia amada brasil facebook








patreia amada brasil facebook








patreia amada brasil facebook








patreia amada brasil facebook

For Dilma impeachment:


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ yeeesh hanging effigies, they must really hate the diesel price :lol:



ChrisZwolle said:


> West, east or couch


Ha I have passed under that sign so many times... this forum is amazing 

Once in Montreal on St Denis St (rte 335), I was following a small saloon car with a large CRT-type TV in the trunk, like a 27 or 32 incher. It didn't fit, so the trunk lid was open and the TV just sitting there. I thought this was insecure... 

A few km later, when a red light turned green, the car accelerated and the TV just rolled out and landed on the asphalt, "crash!" :lol: The TV landed with the glass part on the asphalt and skidded a short distance, I just changed lanes and hit the gas :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

xrtn2 said:


> Trucker protests across Brazil against Diesel prices :
> 
> :rock:


If you have to protest, do it in a place as pretty as Brazil.

(We're having sleet, ice, freezing rain and the like today.)


----------



## cinxxx

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...319.1073741880.100000874170198&type=1&theater


----------



## bogdymol

^^ At least they are using the red triangle.


----------



## keokiracer

^^ Their magic flying carpet broke down?


----------



## Penn's Woods

No, it was their non-magical flying carpet.


----------



## MattiG

keokiracer said:


> ^^ Their magic flying carpet broke down?


It run out of the fuel and they are refueling it. See the green hose.


----------



## Verso

When I see such stuff, I can't help myself but think that Gypsies fell from Mars or sth. :crazy:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^If you're going to wash a carpet, I suppose a lightly traveled road is as good an outdoor, clean(ish), flat surface as any....


----------



## Fatfield

re: Brazil lorry protests - what's the price of a litre of diesel in Brazil? I only ask as I was in Berlin the other weekend and noticed it was €1.14 whereas in Britain its £1.14 or more. BTW €1.14 is approx £0.90.


----------



## hofburg

around 0.80-0.90€.


----------



## volodaaaa

hofburg said:


> around 0.80-0.90€.


If I had those prices (and was not nature-friendly) I would drive my car to take out garbage can. :lol:


----------



## hofburg

red triagle is probably part of gypsy starter kit


----------



## cinxxx

^^and here is the location 
https://goo.gl/maps/Nj9ma


----------



## x-type

this is better than all those western craps caught by Google camera (murders, burglars, monsters etc.)
romanian gypsies rule!


----------



## volodaaaa




----------



## bogdymol

Idiot on Hungarian motorway:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1a4_1425234779

I don't speak Hungarian, but I understood "kurwa" and "bozmeg".


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> Idiot on Hungarian motorway:
> 
> http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1a4_1425234779
> 
> I don't speak Hungarian, but I understood "kurwa" and "bozmeg".


I seriously hope the driver who took the video had learned a lesson for his tailgating. The same goes for the white Octavia driver. The only one who was thinking on behalf of others was the brown Volvo driver who let the Octavia and the driver dodge the wrong moron.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^If you're going to wash a carpet, I suppose a lightly traveled road is as good an outdoor, clean(ish), flat surface as any....


I would have hanged my carpet over the fence and then washed it with the hose. It's cleaner than the asphalt, that it obviously has some dust.


----------



## Nordic20T

volodaaaa said:


> The only one who was thinking on behalf of others was the brown Volvo driver who let the Octavia and the driver dodge the wrong moron.


That's how _we_ Volvo-drivers do... :yes:


----------



## Surel

cinxxx said:


> ^^and here is the location
> https://goo.gl/maps/Nj9ma


Actually, they are doing quite well if you look. They are taking care of their property. Next time, they could be having a cleaning spot in their own yard.

So much better than this:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slipped on the ice on my way home.
Came down hard on my left wrist.
Hurts like hell but I don't think it's broken.
Typing with one hand.
Ouch.


----------



## Verso

Is that a poem? :troll:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Free verse, perhaps.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Wrist *is* broken.


----------



## Road_UK

Sorry to hear that mate. Hope you get better soon !


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Slipped on the ice on my way home.
> Came down hard on my left wrist.
> Hurts like hell but I don't think it's broken.
> Typing with one hand.
> Ouch.





Penn's Woods said:


> Wrist *is* broken.


When I read your first post I was about to write, urging you to go to the doctor because I had a similar adventure with my thumb ("ah, it's not broken"), but in the end it was, it healed wrong and now I can't do almost anything with that finger.
I'm glad you went to the doctor fast.

I have now a problem with another finger: trapped in a car door, it's not broken but it still feels numb after three weeks. I suspect nerve is lesioned.


----------



## MajKeR_

Penn's Woods said:


> Wrist *is* broken.


I've read last week that Russians caused that harsh winter that is currently in US and CIA spent ~500 000 $ for scientific research about that. Truth?


----------



## bigic

Pavement carpet washing is also not uncommon in Serbia, and I've even seen a poor rural Serb family doing this.


----------



## volodaaaa

I wash on pavement only my car mats. I usually borrow a high pressure hose, spread my four mats in front of my car and turn it on. The mats looks like from brand new car. I don't wash carpet since I have none (except small ones I put in washing mashine)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Interesting News Item of the Day:

Google "5.16 inches" and see what you, um, come up to. I mean come up with.


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> I wash on pavement only my car mats. I usually borrow a high pressure hose, spread my four mats in front of my car and turn it on. The mats looks like from brand new car. I don't wash carpet since I have none (except small ones I put in washing mashine)


I always put the mats on my outside patio deck fence, and then spray, this way the dirty water drains out easily, I think it cleans better and dries faster than having them flat.


----------



## Penn's Woods

:eek2: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/member.php?u=865668


----------



## Kanadzie

Attus said:


> About road signs: there is a very important aspect here. Inside the EU driving licenses valid without any resctrictions (at least those of category B, which means car). My Hungarian license was even changed to a German one without any further question.
> For such a regulation it is obviously very important that road signs and traffic rules must be the same or at least very similar in every countries. Imagine that Germany had significantly different rules, in this case I could have a German license so that no one ever asked if I ever heard about traffic rules!
> That's the reason why I can't understand how can those diamond shaped Irish signs be accepted.
> Slight differences, different font faces, minor graphical differences are OK. If you come from Slovakia and you have never in your life seen yellow road signs but you drive to Poland and you see a yellow and red yield, you wll understand immediately what it means. If a sign abroad has slightliy different graphics, you will recognize them even so. It's alright for me and I can't see any reason for unify them. And there are usually large signs at border stations about specific rules (although at lot of sencodary crossings which were opened after the Schengen treaty, you won't find them) so that you can drive safely all across the EU.
> Except for Ireland...


But if you moved to the USA, probably they would exchange your license in the same way (not necessarily but typically EU-country are allowed)

But really, the signs, even USA-signs vs European signs are clear and distinct to an uneducated driver... maybe American would need to know that red circle with number is speed limit and red circle with nothing is no entry, but the rest is pretty obvious. (arrows mean go that way, red is stop green is go, etc)

I mean, people are not _THAT _stupid :lol:


----------



## riiga

No problem driving in Ireland really, they follow the Vienna Convention for the most part. And as I pointed out a fews ago in another threads here, the Vienna Convention allows for quite a bit of variation. For example:


----------



## Kanadzie

Does any country still use the old continental European style "STOP" sign in a triangle? I know Zimbabwe still has the old British style STOP sign in a circle, but I thought everyone else adopted the American style (well kind of combination - old American style was yellow, they took American shape and European colour for the new one )


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> Does any country still use the old continental European style "STOP" sign in a triangle? I know Zimbabwe still has the old British style STOP sign in a circle, but I thought everyone else adopted the American style (well kind of combination - old American style was yellow, they took American shape and European colour for the new one )


The Irish signs are tricky and it seems the Vienna Convetion is not perfect.

For example - the unusual shape of priority signs (diamond, upside down triangle, octagon) has its reason: namely - you can clearly recognise the sign from different direction. It might by useful in cases where priority sign (usually "main road") is not posted and you are not sure whether you have to give priority to the right. Everything is clear when you notice the shape of the sign posted on a minor road. (this is one of the many examples).

But there are also diamond warning signs possible according to VC which is partially in conflict with the justification above.

Another thing I can't stand are the white-background-red-stroke-black-arrow regulation signs. White background with red stroke always indicate prohibition, not regulation (I know those are used in former Portugal and Spanish colonies). But this could be the root of cross out on some prohibitory signs (turning prohibited) which is quite illogical (other prohibitory signs does not need the additional line)

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_European_road_signs (Ires really are weird  )


----------



## riiga

Kanadzie said:


> Does any country still use the old continental European style "STOP" sign in a triangle?


I wish we still did...


----------



## MattiG

riiga said:


> No problem driving in Ireland really, they follow the Vienna Convention for the most part. And as I pointed out a fews ago in another threads here, the Vienna Convention allows for quite a bit of variation. For example:


However, the signs

















are not the same sign. Neither are these:


----------



## MattiG

Attus said:


> About road signs: there is a very important aspect here. Inside the EU driving licenses valid without any resctrictions (at least those of category B, which means car). My Hungarian license was even changed to a German one without any further question.
> For such a regulation it is obviously very important that road signs and traffic rules must be the same or at least very similar in every countries. Imagine that Germany had significantly different rules, in this case I could have a German license so that no one ever asked if I ever heard about traffic rules!


Note: Your driving license entitles you to drive into a foreign country. But it does exempt you from making yourself familiar with the legislation in that country, including the traffic signs and rules.

This is the same principle which is in use on the seas: The captain is responsible to find out about all the relevant local legislation, rules and regulations anywhere he or she is sailing.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> The Irish signs are tricky and it seems the Vienna Convetion is not perfect.


Of course, it is not perfect. It is an international convention, and they tend to target an acceptable solution by making trade-off across conflicting opinions. It would be a mission impossible to create a uniform global scheme of traffic signals based on completely on the European heritage and just ignoring the American one, or vice versa.

The value of the VC is that we have only two systems in place. Without it, we might have a chaos of 20 systems.

(Something similar has taken place on the seas. There is an organization called International Association of Lighthouse Authorities (IALA), having 80+ countries as members. It implemented the "IALA Maritime Buoyage System", which replaced 30 buoyage system with two. Europe and Americas could not agree on the lateral marks. Therefore, there are two systems, called IALA A and IALA B.)


----------



## bigic

About college fraternities, there is an opinion piece on why they should be banned:
http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...llege-fraternities-university-oklahoma-racist


----------



## italystf

bigic said:


> About college fraternities, there is an opinion piece on why they should be banned:
> http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...llege-fraternities-university-oklahoma-racist


I don't see why in a democratic country a free association estabilished by a group of people should be banned by law.
I mean, one is free to like or dislike an association, and then choose wether joining it or not. Of course members of associations can be prosecuted if they break a law (in that case, hate speech law) and eventually, the entire association be made illegal (if it's a crime-aimed association), but... advocating for *abolition *of *all *associations of a kind? It's what they did in fascist and commie countries, where all associations not related with the party were outlawed.
But I can't figure why student associations in the USA should be gender-segregated in the XXI century. I mean, nowadays the academic environment is made by both boys and girls, who do the same things and share many interests and activities,...


----------



## volodaaaa

Very accurate... yesterday was the day in March  I got my bike ready for today... Heard there will be cold windy and rainy weather for next two weeks


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I bought a used bicycle yesterday for € 300. It replaced my 15 year old bicycle which is falling apart (everything was worn out except for the frame). The new bicycle was a higher-end model that probably cost over € 1000 originally. 8 speed, suspension at the front wheel, automatic lights, etc. A pretty good deal and it rides like a new bike compared to my old wreck.


----------



## cinxxx

^^picture?


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> I bought a used bicycle yesterday for € 300. It replaced my 15 year old bicycle which is falling apart (everything was worn out except for the frame). The new bicycle was a higher-end model that probably cost over € 1000 originally. 8 speed, suspension at the front wheel, automatic lights, etc. A pretty good deal and it rides like a new bike compared to my old wreck.


I got my bike for my 13th birthday (it was little larger than necessary) in 2000. It was neglected for about 10 years, full of moulds (from exterior garage), rusty, broken down derailleurs (I used to joke about it as automatic transmission, because it spontaneously gradually changed the gears from light one to hard ones :lol: ). Was decided to buy a new bike, but the prices were gross. So I take it to repair shop to do a complete rehabilitation. Costed me 70 €. I don't do any MTB, just riding on asphalt. Can't imagine how could it be better. Bikes are extremely expensive comparing to scooters.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

On the other hand, you don't have to put gasoline in a bicycle


----------



## volodaaaa

It runs on fat


----------



## keokiracer

ChrisZwolle said:


> I bought a used bicycle yesterday for € 300. It replaced my 15 year old bicycle which is falling apart (everything was worn out except for the frame). The new bicycle was a higher-end model that probably cost over € 1000 originally. 8 speed, suspension at the front wheel, automatic lights, etc. A pretty good deal and it rides like a new bike compared to my old wreck.


Can you post some sort of picture of it? Sounds like the bike I have. Mine cost €700 new, though part of that was extra cost because I don't have a standard size model. I'm too short for that...


----------



## riiga

MattiG said:


> However, the signs
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> are not the same sign. Neither are these:


I grouped some of them together.


----------



## keber

I'm waiting for warmer temperatures as I go to work with bicycle (12 km one way) when there is at least 10°C in the morning. I use 3 years old MTB with front suspension, it is really useful on many bumps that Ljubljana cycle ways have. A full suspension bike would be even better.
Now I'm planning to buy a loud bike horn (I said horn, not a bell ) for all those pedestrians that are sleeping on cycle ways and blind car drivers. Anyone has it or knows one that has it?


----------



## Verso




----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Time to organize a SC session :lol:


I've never been to Vienna; farthest east I've gotten is Salzburg.


----------



## Kanadzie

AnOldBlackMarble said:


> What kind of drugs do you think this guy was on? :nuts: :bash: hno:


Anaheim :lol:

But WTF with the lady in the Scion? The drugged out guy was probably trying to protect the public from such a crazy driver :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Someone ordered a yacht.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Chris parked his yacht in the front of his house. It didn't fit in the garage.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes, I got my SSC paycheck


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

Kanadzie said:


> Anaheim :lol:
> 
> But WTF with the lady in the Scion? The drugged out guy was probably trying to protect the public from such a crazy driver :lol:


I assume she was scared out of her mind. I mean if you had a naked guy dive bomb into a car with that kind of force, and then covered in blood-again on top of your windshield, you might panic a little too. She did panic a lot though. I'm still waiting on an explanation to see what the fuk was up with this dude. :nuts:


----------



## volodaaaa

It is anniversary of puppet Nazi Slovak state establishment today. Group of neonazis met in Bratislava as well as group of extreme leftists. But things got better, there were only 200 of them overall.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> It is anniversary of puppet Nazi Slovak state establishment today. Group of neonazis met in Bratislava as well as group of extreme leftists. But things got better, there were only 200 of them overall.


how long did it exist?


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> how long did it exist?


Until the end of war. We were enemies to Hungary, but both allied with Germany :nuts:


----------



## Alex_ZR

^^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak%E2%80%93Hungarian_War


----------



## Suburbanist

Google is no longer allowing me to switch back to classical Google Maps! I'm generally an early adopter of new features, once they are on a reliable beta stage, but I don't really like the new interface because it is too slow, miss some features and it is hard to manage.


----------



## xrtn2

Suburbanist said:


> Google is no longer allowing me to switch back to classical Google Maps! I'm generally an early adopter of new features, once they are on a reliable beta stage, but I don't really like the new interface because it is too slow, miss some features and it is hard to manage.


Try this:

https://maps.google.com/maps?output=classic&dg=opt


----------



## volodaaaa

I don't like that service and the way it works. A post office was opened last month next to my house, so I put the point on the map to depict it. The amendment was refused by some amigo from Chile, because 'there were no proofs it had been opened'. Fortunately, he was soon defeated.


----------



## keokiracer

Rotterdam police plays bumper cars with drunk driver (starts at 3:00)


----------



## bogdymol

Today was a (partial) solar eclipse, mostly visible from northern Europe. Here's a picture of it:










Oh, sorry. I meant posting this picture:


----------



## keokiracer

The top picture is as close as I've seen it all day (I did the same thing as a joke on my dad ).
It has been foggy/clouded all day


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It was a total bust in the Netherlands. I went up to the roof with some colleagues but the clouds were so dense you couldn't even see where the sun would be anyway. It did become slightly darker though.

I experienced the 1999 full eclipse in southern Germany. It's something you'll never forget.


----------



## bogdymol

I was at work today, but took 3 minutes break to go outside and see it. One colleague had some special glasses so we could look at the sun directly and I've seen it partially covered. For a few minutes it wasn't so bright outside as usual, even though no clouds were on the sky. You could feel that the light was less "powerfull".

I remember the eclipse back in 1999. I went on a field nearby my town where there were cows. When it went dark outside, all the cows sat down, trying to sleep.


----------



## CNGL

Even though is cloudy right now here it wasn't so this morning, allowing the eclipse to be watched. I didn't do so because I had no suitable equipment, but my father got some special crystal so he and several others watched the eclipse through it. He still remembers the 1999 eclipse (I was a kid back then, and I don't remember that), even though it wasn't full here it was dark enough to get colder. OTOH I remember the October 2005 eclipse, an anullar one which crossed Spain (not my hometown, though). Anyway I can't wait to the full eclipse of 2026, which will be seen from my hometown as such!


bogdymol said:


> Today was a (partial) solar eclipse, mostly visible from northern Europe.


It was a full one. But it only was visible from the Faroe and Svalbard islands.


----------



## Attus

Several thousands of people travelled to Faroe Islands because there was a total eclipse to see. Actually, there would have been, if the sky hadn't been covered with clouds. So I, staying at home, have seen more of the eclipse just watching it from our living room than those people who paid a lot of money for travelling to Faroe.


----------



## keber

Believe me, this is one of the less stupid movies about shark attacks.
Check for example Sharknado, Shark avalanche or Twoheaded shark attack.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ah, we have shark aficionados here


----------



## keber

No, I just watched trailers. I wouldn't dare to watch complete such stupid as that would be an unforgiving loss of time.


----------



## x-type

omg, that Sharknado - i saw a trailer somewhere. i thought that was some animal horror movie from 70es :lol:
(btw, if the movie itself is not lame enough, Ian Ziering makes it the lamest possible :lol: )


----------



## keokiracer

I saw a scene from Sharknado on Youtube, somthing like 5 minutes of it. It's one of those movies that's _so_ bad it becomes hilarious :lol:


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> omg, that Sharknado - i saw a trailer somewhere. i thought that was some animal horror movie from 70es :lol:


They usually play such crappy movies on Universal Channel.


----------



## bogdymol

Next week I'll have to drive from London Gatwick airport to nearby Cambridge. Which route should I take? M25 (London Orbital), or to drive through the city?

The journey will be at around 18-19 in the afternoon/evening, so congestion charge doesn't apply anymore at that time. The only thing I'm concerned is the very bad traffic in London at that hour.


----------



## Fatfield

bogdymol said:


> Next week I'll have to drive from London Gatwick airport to nearby Cambridge. Which route should I take? M25 (London Orbital), or to drive through the city?
> 
> The journey will be at around 18-19 in the afternoon/evening, so congestion charge doesn't apply anymore at that time. The only thing I'm concerned is the very bad traffic in London at that hour.


M25-M11 will be quicker than going through central London. Generally the worst of the traffic will be in the opposite direction between the M3 & M1 junctions.


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Malaga airport. People here were sunbathing today, wonderful weather. In Germany I see there is usual shit weather...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Current traffic (Sunday midday) indicates an average speed of 25 km/h through London from M23 to M11. (1 hour 45 minutes to drive 44 kilometers). I suppose it's not better on a workday just at the end of rush hour.


----------



## italystf

Gotta love some journalists. :lol: TV show about tax evasion: "British protectorates like Cayman Islands and Channel Islands". Protectorates? You probably mean overseas territories and crown dependencies. British protectorates haven't been in existence for decades.
And while they were talking about Germany they showed the shape of Germany coloured with German flag colours. Little problem: it had pre-1990 borders. :lol:
I know that most people don't care about these things, but I think journalists should prepare themselves more carefully.


----------



## Alex_ZR

But term "crown dependencies" and their status is so complicated and archaic...and nobody gives a shit.


----------



## cinxxx

After a tiring drive from Frankfurt Hahn, on heavy winds and rain, I arrived in Ingolstadt.
Plane landing was also very bumpy, saw lots of worried faces during descent, many were very relived when we got down safely


----------



## solchante




----------



## VITORIA MAN

elantxobe (E) bus stop


----------



## volodaaaa

I don't know, the story about the sick Germaniawings pilot is getting more and more strange to me. First the wrong photography, then the improbable record from black box (lightly breathing), the small debris, girlfriend Maria, now Sabrine, few days ago she was fly attendant, now teacher and finally the stories about him watching gay porn and all the weird freaky stuff.

Sounds like attempts to change the focus of an attention. There is nothing easier than blame the dead man.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

cinxxx said:


> After a tiring drive from Frankfurt Hahn, on heavy winds and rain, I arrived in Ingolstadt.


That's quite a distant airport for you. Over 400 km away.


----------



## AsHalt

volodaaaa said:


> I don't know, the story about the sick Germaniawings pilot is getting more and more strange to me. First the wrong photography, then the improbable record from black box (lightly breathing), the small debris, girlfriend Maria, now Sabrine, few days ago she was fly attendant, now teacher and finally the stories about him watching gay porn and all the weird freaky stuff.
> 
> Sounds like attempts to change the focus of an attention. There is nothing easier than blame the dead man.


Well that's how's the media does nowadays...


----------



## cinxxx

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's quite a distant airport for you. Over 400 km away.


I haven't found anything better. Nürnberg and Memmingen began their flights to Malaga only when I wanted to get back, Vueling didn't have anything for the dates I wanted. 

I was constrained to the last week of March, so this was the only way.
In the end, the long drive was worth it, Andalucia was wonderful, maybe the best place I have ever visited until now. Highly recommended


----------



## bogdymol

What car have you rented there?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Some parts of mainland Antarctica are as far from the south pole as Trondheim is from the north pole.


----------



## CNGL

Specifically the Antarctic peninsula goes that far above the Antarctic circle.

And I rectify myself earlier after being hit by reality and strong Northwest wind (we call it 'cierzo'), I thought it already ceased to blow.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Meanwhile 17.5°C in Antarctica. :troll:


More or less like today here at around noon. :troll: We have had one of the warmest day of 2015 so far.


----------



## bogdymol

I arrived safely on London Gatwick airport. It was quite a bumpy ride at take off and landing. 

In the next 5 minutes I'll cross an international border (right now I'm waiting at the very longue queue for passport control).


----------



## x-type

keber said:


> Experienced hand sensor, at least on above video


no way. i guess he can only change between solid and dashed line, but it is not compeltely manually definitely. also, how to align the machine to make perfectly straight lines?


----------



## Verso

CNGL said:


> Specifically the Antarctic peninsula goes that far above the Antarctic circle.


I wonder when we'll see permanent human population there.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> I wonder when we'll see permanent human population there.


There's already, although very little.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanza_Base
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Las_Estrellas


----------



## keber

x-type said:


> no way. i guess he can only change between solid and dashed line, but it is not compeltely manually definitely. also, how to align the machine to make perfectly straight lines?


They are not perfectly straight on that video - far from perfect. Vehicle has a crosshair to aid alignment. Ofcourse there exist much more sophisticated machinery for painting lines but that on video is not much sophiszticated. You wouldn't believe how some workers can be skilled at operating machinery. Even the best asphalt finishers are commanded manually (with the aid of computers of course) and the straightness of new motorway pavements is mostly in hand of just one person which is operating that finisher.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> There's already, although very little.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanza_Base
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Las_Estrellas


Here it says "*There are no permanent human residents*, but anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 people reside throughout the year at the research stations scattered across the continent."


----------



## hofburg

you get a total of 1 montly sunshine hour in June there


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Here it says "*There are no permanent human residents*, but anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 people reside throughout the year at the research stations scattered across the continent."


No permanent population, meaning that these 1000 or 5000 people change regularly and no one of them lives there permanently.


----------



## Verso

That's what I'm saying.


----------



## volodaaaa

An hour ago  There could not be better weather for 1st of April. Today has been sunny, windy, rainy and finally snowing (but it was rather kind of melted hail).


----------



## Verso

We had sleet here today, and then sun. :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

So have you seen any good April Fool's jokes?

Big Foot spotted on a highway camera in British Columbia:









A Komodo Dragon spotted on an ecoduct in Belgium:


----------



## volodaaaa

A small grammar issue. 

I've recently received a review on my paper and the reviewer criticized a word order of one of my sentence.

Let's imagine there is a method (on whatever) I need to employ. And to employ the method, I need to disaggregate the functional regions into several subregions.

I'd tried to fit this complex thought into one sentence with this coming out:
"Some authors have employed this method, the disaggregation of functional regions into several subregions was required for."

Is that sentence really unclear and grammatically incorrect?

Sorry for bothering you.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

volodaaaa said:


> A small grammar issue.
> 
> I've recently received a review on my paper and the reviewer criticized a word order of one of my sentence.
> 
> Let's imagine there is a method (on whatever) I need to employ. And to employ the method, I need to disaggregate the functional regions into several subregions.
> 
> I'd tried to fit this complex thought into one sentence with this coming out:
> "Some authors have employed this method, the disaggregation of functional regions into several subregions was required for."
> 
> Is that sentence really unclear and grammatically incorrect?
> 
> Sorry for bothering you.


I don't think it's grammatically incorrect, but it is unclear, and I had to read it a few times to get what you're trying to say. 

Actually I'd say the 'for' at the end is incorrect, you could either say:

'Some authors have employed this method, for which the disaggregation of functional regions into several subregions was required.'

or

'Some authors have employed this method, which required the disaggregation of functional regions into several subregions'.

Of these two, I'd use the latter. I don't think the several is necessary but it isn't wrong and honestly I'm still not sure what you're getting at really, because I don't know what you mean by functional regions, but I suppose that would become clear in the context. 

In factual text in English I think it's always best to write in the simplest way possible (maybe I should say clearest, don't go writing 'sum autors used da method, which meant day ad to split apart da regions into + regions'), the written styles of many other languages are often considered to be long-winded, but that does make written English a bit less, I don't know, characterful sometimes.


----------



## italystf

Lithuanian trucker in England "forgets" that in the UK they drive on the left:


----------



## volodaaaa

DanielFigFoz said:


> I don't think it's grammatically incorrect, but it is unclear, and I had to read it a few times to get what you're trying to say.
> 
> Actually I'd say the 'for' at the end is incorrect, you could either say:
> 
> 'Some authors have employed this method, for which the disaggregation of functional regions into several subregions was required.'
> 
> or
> 
> 'Some authors have employed this method, which required the disaggregation of functional regions into several subregions'.
> 
> Of these two, I'd use the latter. I don't think the several is necessary but it isn't wrong and honestly I'm still not sure what you're getting at really, because I don't know what you mean by functional regions, but I suppose that would become clear in the context.
> 
> In factual text in English I think it's always best to write in the simplest way possible (maybe I should say clearest, don't go writing 'sum autors used da method, which meant day ad to split apart da regions into + regions'), the written styles of many other languages are often considered to be long-winded, but that does make written English a bit less, I don't know, characterful sometimes.


Thank you very much. Yet one last question. The sentence:
"She made a justification of the criterion, she replaced the original one by."

(explanation: there was the original criterion and certain author created and justified the new one to replace the original one).

This is my last grammar question for next 10 years :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Lithuanian trucker in England "forgets" that in the UK they drive on the left:


You are not professional driver if you overlook the one-way-traffic sign


----------



## cinxxx

Good morning!


----------



## Verso

I was wondering something: is any other country as stupid as Slovenia, where, if you wanna study transport, you have to go to Portorož? icard: It's even more ironic that that faculty (Faculty of Maritime Studies and Transport) belongs to the University of Ljubljana.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Being a student in a Mediterranean coastal town. I can imagine worse places to study


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> I was wondering something: is any other country as stupid as Slovenia, where, if you wanna study transport, you have to go to Portorož? icard: It's even more ironic that that faculty (Faculty of Maritime Studies and Transport) belongs to the University of Ljubljana.


i don't find it stupid, but nice way of decentralization.
in Croatia you can study IT technologies only in Varaždin, tourism related studies are at the coast (I know for Opatija for instance, I don't know is there anywhere else) etc.

why would everything be placed in the capital?


----------



## Verso

I wouldn't mind if there were transport faculties in Ljubljana _and_ Portorož, but if there's just one, it should be in Ljubljana IMO. Maritime studies can stay in Portorož (Koper would be better though IMO).


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> i don't find it stupid, but nice way of decentralization.
> in Croatia you can study IT technologies only in Varaždin, tourism related studies are at the coast (I know for Opatija for instance, I don't know is there anywhere else) etc.
> 
> why would everything be placed in the capital?


Decentralization of university faculties in small towns is common in Italy. I don't like this arrangement, though, as it would be more economically efficient to group all faculties in a main regional city (even better in an unique big campus in the immediate outskirt of the city, with good PT service to the city centre). This allows buildings and facilities (libraries, laboratories, rooms,...) to be shared among different faculties\departments, with a minimization of costs. Moreover, many students (that usaully don't own a car in the place where they study) don't like to live alone in a small town, where few services and socializing opportunities for young people exist.
In North East Italy there are universities in Padova, Venice, Trento, Bolzano, Verona, Trieste and Udine, but decentralized faculties in places like Vicenza, Treviso, Belluno, Conegliano (!), Portogruaro (!), Pordenone, Gemona del Friuli (!), Gorizia and probably other places.


ChrisZwolle said:


> Being a student in a Mediterranean coastal town. I can imagine worse places to study


And what you would do in Portoroz all the time during winter without a car?


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> i don't find it stupid, but nice way of decentralization.
> in Croatia you can study IT technologies only in Varaždin, tourism related studies are at the coast (I know for Opatija for instance, I don't know is there anywhere else) etc.
> 
> why would everything be placed in the capital?


That's stupid, because if you need to have only a single IT faculty in the whole country, it would be logical to have it in Zagreb, that is big and in the centre of the country, in opposition at Varazdin, smaller and on the edge of the country.



Verso said:


> I wouldn't mind if there were transport faculties in Ljubljana _and_ Portorož, but if there's just one, it should be in Ljubljana IMO. Maritime studies can stay in Portorož (Koper would be better though IMO).


Probably they wanted to keep the faculty together, and since it includes maritime studies, it had to be by the sea (in Italy naval engineering is in Trieste, Genoa and Naples). The political science department in Trieste is split between Trieste (administration studies) and Gorizia (international relations studies). This is what I call stupid and useless.


----------



## Suburbanist

italystf said:


> Decentralization of university faculties in small towns is common in Italy. I don't like this arrangement, though, as it would be more economically efficient to group all faculties in a main regional city (even better in an unique big campus in the immediate outskirt of the city, with good PT service to the city centre). This allows buildings and facilities (libraries, laboratories, rooms,...) to be shared among different faculties\departments, with a minimization of costs. Moreover, many students (that usaully don't own a car in the place where they study) don't like to live alone in a small town, where few services and socializing opportunities for young people exist.
> In North East Italy there are universities in Padova, Venice, Trento, Bolzano, Verona, Trieste and Udine, but decentralized faculties in places like Vicenza, Treviso, Belluno, Conegliano (!), Portogruaro (!), Pordenone, Gemona del Friuli (!), Gorizia and probably other places.


I agree with you.

This will never gonna happen, but Italian universities (I'm not talking about the technical schools) would be way better with a wave of consolidation, and building new campuses. Since many occupy prime real estate in cities, they could even probably finance the move by selling out many buildings, especially those are particularly non-descriptive post-WW2 acquisitions for expansion. 

I agree, again, with the idea of building greenfield campuses with train access.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Canadian flag flies over my city today. It was liberated by the Canadian army 70 years ago. It is seen on the tallest church tower in this photo, but the Maple Leaf also flies at several government buildings. The Canadian flag flies 365 days a year on a farm on the edge of the city.


----------



## Verso

Nice. We also have an anniversary today. It's 120 years since a destructive earthquake in Ljubljana. It was even felt in Vienna, Florence and Split.









http://www.rtvslo.si/okolje/120-let-od-nepopisno-strasnega-trenutka-ki-je-spremenil-belo-ljubljano/362779


----------



## volodaaaa

There is no anniversary related to my city today, but it has been exactly 8 years since I was at first date with my gf


----------



## volodaaaa

Btw. 45° images was terminated at google?


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> There is no anniversary related to my city today, but it has been exactly 8 years since I was at first date with my gf


Cheesy.


----------



## volodaaaa

Perhaps, I should have posted it in IBC topic, but...

http://liberland.org/en/main/

a Czech guy has established a free state of Liberland between Croatia and Serbia, on the territory neither of countries have been interested in. He would like to create a taxless country. I just wish he would not get a heart attack and would not have to end up in a hospital subsidized by the filthy taxes


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> Perhaps, I should have posted it in IBC topic, but...
> 
> http://liberland.org/en/main/
> 
> a Czech guy has established a free state of Liberland between Croatia and Serbia, on the territory neither of countries have been interested in. He would like to create a taxless country. I just wish he would not get a heart attack and would not have to end up in a hospital subsidized by the filthy taxes


now you've remembered me what i dreamt last night: a weird Czech store (?) opened in my city. i entered there curiously with my sister, there were some things that should have been Czech souvenirs, and a girl who worked there spoke some weird language. my sister couldn't understand it, but i did (it sounded like Croatian dialect, but that is spoken nowhere) :nuts:


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Perhaps, I should have posted it in IBC topic, but...
> 
> http://liberland.org/en/main/
> 
> a Czech guy has established a free state of Liberland between Croatia and Serbia, on the territory neither of countries have been interested in. He would like to create a taxless country. I just wish he would not get a heart attack and would not have to end up in a hospital subsidized by the filthy taxes


An American did the same last year in Bir Tawil.

The principe that originated the unclaimed land is the same: there is a territorial dispute between to countries (Croatia and Serbia or Egypt and Sudan) and each of them recognizes a different boundary line. The two different lines intersect each other, leaving parcels of land unclaimed by two countries. Those are rare cases but they may happen.


----------



## volodaaaa

Yeah. But perhaps, the most notable is Sealand between UK and France.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Yeah. But perhaps, the most notable is Sealand between UK and France.


Sealand is different, though, since it wasn't estabilished on an unclaimed land, but on a man-made structure in international water. It probably would never have been eligible to statehood according to international law, since it lacks a real territory, that, together with government and population is one of the three fundamental elements for a state. Similar to Sealand, was the Republic of Rose Island.


----------



## CNGL

Last night, Spanish cuisine got its version of Ecce **** . Now introducing: 'Lion eats prawn' (_León come gamba_)!









This was made in the Spanish edition of MasterChef. Obviously, the contestant got eliminated.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

jokes about it in internet...








http://i.embed.ly/1/display/resize?...ttp://pbs.twimg.com/media/CClm-5aW4AEP_6B.jpg








http://www.mujerhoy.com/pic.aspx?w=651&img=leoncomegamba_5567285473.jpg


----------



## Verso

So? Are people using public transport worth more than people driving their own cars?


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> So? Are people using public transport worth more than people driving their own cars?


No, in fact they have only one lane dedicated while the other two are for private cars.


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> A bike lane in Timisoara, Romania, just 35 cm wide:


LOL, notice the bicycle symbols painted on the asphalt parallel to the lane, instead of perpendicular to it like it's usual.  Obviously perpendicular won't fit.


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> No, in fact they have only one lane dedicated while the other two are for private cars.


You mean taxis can't use the other two lanes? That's ridiculous.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> So? Are people using public transport worth more than people driving their own cars?


Yes, they are.











Verso said:


> Same here, but I don't see why taxis would be eligible to use bus lanes. You can't put any more people in a taxi cab than in any other personal car, and taxi drivers often drive around alone anyway.


It is very disputable, but taxis (no matter how much I hate taxi drivers for being ultra-rude) are compromise between individual driving and PT. 

Why? Here are some reason (I have had a small talk with an transport planner here in Bratislava)

1) During a day, a certain taxi transports much more passengers than private car. Private car is usually driven by single person, parked for whole day on a parking lot and then driven by the same single person back home. Taxi moves around the city and travels tens of people who opted for not use their cars and therefore do not contribute to congestions.

2) Taxi drivers have dedicated parking places and don't park anywhere for a long time period. They literally mutually fluctuate. It is kind of luxury PT. Needless to say that unlike individual private cars, taxi drivers drive much less alone. There was a survey in Bratislava concluding only one of six cars are occupied by two or more passengers. Sad.

Therefore, for city and its congestions it is still better to have you using taxi than private car.


----------



## Suburbanist

That pic is deceptive, notice how just 1/4 of the building façades shown on the blue snippet appear on the car snippet


----------



## Suburbanist

I was wondering why is that railways have ultra detailed historical registers of dates of opening of lines, stations and even junctions or control posts, whereas there is much less historical information about highways and roads, in general.

That happens in Europe, in North America, in Oceania... 

Sources about opening dates are often sparse and imprecise. Railway events have a lot of sources referencing them, such as newspapers etc.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Taxis are far too expensive to use on a daily basis for most people, unless the bill is paid by a third party. They are only interesting if you live in a downtown area and don't need to get around much. That's a really small percentage of the metropolitan population. 

Also, that comparison between cars, bus and bicycles is sweet, but meaningless because these modes are used by different users and cover a different geographic area. Few car trips are short enough to be replaced by a bicycle unless you are really lazy. The share of trips that can be done by bus (or another form of public transport) in the same time as by car is very small (a few percent in the Netherlands). Most car travel are trips with a very large door-to-door travel time difference compared to public transport (NL: 90% of the car trips are on routes that take at least twice as much time with public transport)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> Sources about opening dates are often sparse and imprecise.


I have opening dates / years for the majority of motorways in the world. Only a few areas are poorly documented.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Taxis are far too expensive to use on a daily basis for most people, unless the bill is paid by a third party. They are only interesting if you live in a downtown area and don't need to get around much. That's a really small percentage of the metropolitan population.
> 
> Also, that comparison between cars, bus and bicycles is sweet, but meaningless because these modes are used by different users and cover a different geographic area. Few car trips are short enough to be replaced by a bicycle unless you are really lazy. The share of trips that can be done by bus (or another form of public transport) in the same time as by car is very small (a few percent in the Netherlands). Most car travel are trips with a very large door-to-door travel time difference compared to public transport (NL: 90% of the car trips are on routes that take at least twice as much time with public transport)


We have a 5 € taxi that takes you wherever within the city. If you are in group of 4 people, it could be comparable to PT.

The transport modes are obviously different, but the image shows the truth. Car drivers (especially those who drive alone) demands much more space than bus passengers, needless to mention the parking place demand. I use car and PT transport equally so I know that there are sometimes relations or circumstances when you need to use car. 

Netherlands is perceived as a conscious country here - with rational usage of different transport modes. But the enlightenment is necessary here as the car is perceived as a family member. Of course I also pet my vectra, especially after the long journey and compliment her for being reliable, but car is not a part of my image nor life style.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

volodaaaa said:


> but car is not a part of my image nor life style.


Not for me either, otherwise I wouldn't be driving a Hyundai i10 :lol: It's efficient, cheap and reliable, but not much else.

I actually cycle a lot, if I don't make a weekend trip I cycle more kilometers than I drive my car in a week. But there's not a single trip I've made in the past _years_ where public transport would be an interesting alternative. I have a business card for public transport provided by my employer, but I have never used it, even though I can actually travel all non-train public transport for free and unlimited.


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> Yes, they are.


Are those taxi cabs on the left? :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

castillo2008 said:


> From eurostat:
> 
> *Motorway density (km1000km2)*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *Regions with the most significant motorway expansion between 2000 and 2012*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Six Spanish regions :nuts:
> 
> *Regions with the highest motorway density in 2012*


corss posting


----------



## keokiracer

I reckon most of Western-Germany would be pretty high on that list as well.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Accident of the Day:

http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/2015/04/17/semi-overturns-bees-i5/25925049/

By the way, if anyone's wondering why I haven't been around much, it's because I'm far busier than usual at work, and trying to behave myself so that that turns into a promotion or at least a nice raise.


----------



## Suburbanist

Some zebras on the loose in Belgium (Bruxelles)









.








Source: BBC


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I've JUST - like within the last two minutes - been looking for reasonable airfares to Brussels in June....


----------



## Kanadzie

I know they say many Africans in Brussels but finally I understand :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Motorway density isn't everything. Motorway capacity is also an indicator. 

Madrid is underreported by the way. They probably don't count all autovías. The real figure is closer to 950 km, shooting Madrid to #4 on the density list. However, Madrid has by far the largest area of any region listed in the top 20, which makes it more impressive.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Most car travel are trips with a very large door-to-door travel time difference compared to public transport (NL: 90% of the car trips are on routes that take at least twice as much time with public transport)


1. Netherlands, having a quite unusual allocation of working places is very peculiar. It's a matter of course that transport modal share is there is very different from that of, for Example, Frankfurt am Main or Paris. 
2. The question of demand for place is absolutely not important in rural areas where there are plenty of free surfaces and the roads are not overloaded even if every one drives a car. It has more importance in city outskirts, and is important as hell in densely built areas (especially, but not exclusively, city centers). And (what a surprise) that 10% trips are located in that areas. Daily commuting from outskirts to city centers, travelling inside a city, and secondarily, inter city travels. And that's why we have dedicated public transport infrastructure (subway, railways, tram, or dedicated public transport lane) there, and have usually nothing like this* in rural areas. 
The one that speaks about public transport in general, with no differences between various kinds of areas, is a fool and knows nothing about traffic. Either is he a railroad geek or a road enthusiast, does not matter. 

* There are lots of railways in rural areas, too, but they were usually built 100-150 years ago and actually they hurt no one, the surface they take up is not needed for other goals.


----------



## TrojaA

I think the most important of electric vehicles is the recharging way and time it consumes. I would say that 200km at motorway speed would be enough for many people, if they could recharge the car within 2-5min. (Like they can do with petrol/gas powered cars)
But this isn't possible at the moment. There're some physical limits due to the battery and the power grid (see Tesla's supercharger), so I don't think that we'll have fast recharging in the future.

Charging at home is for a lot of people no option - e.g. because they live in a flat and have no garage. (Charging stations at the road are rare and to place millions of them would also be expensive (you nearly need a 1:1 relation in cities))
So what are the alternatives?

Battery swaping: The problem is, that there's no norm how an electric vehicle should be build. So the compromise would be that only a partial swap is done. But that wouldn't add as much range as a real recharge.

Hybrid/Range extender: Would be an option, but you have to carry to systems. For city traffic the electric drive is perfect, but on motorways and country roads non hybrids are often as efficient as hybrids. Although e.g. a Prius is a good car, it's no car for people who don't drive much in city traffic where the recuperation of the electric motor makes braking more efficient. Else the ED is just extra weight.
(Did you ever tried to do a fuel saving ride? It's absolutly no fun, but you'll reach a consumption near that which was measured with the NEDC.)

Other alternatives like natural gas etc.: They are alternatives and some of them burn fuel cleaner. You can refuel fast, but their efficiency is nearly as bad as the efficiency of petrol powered cars. But what's more a problem: For many we don't have a mass working way to gain them through regenerative techniques.

So for some people the current EVs for sell are good, but for many others that's not what they need or want. Subsidies like in Norway (or (tax) incentives as a euphemism) push EVs onto the market, because the cheap price balances out the disadvantages. But for long-terms it's no real option.
Today a German article was published where the taxi office of Stuttgart says that currently electric vehicles doesn't make sense for them to go live. (Because of all these points above http://www.heise.de/autos/artikel/S...Elektrotaxis-noch-nicht-rentabel-2616302.html (German)) And I always thought that taxis would be the optimal place for EVs.

If there's a certain amount of EVs, then one will have to pay as much taxes as we do now for petrol powered cars. As if the government could absorb the tax losses. (Old boy's club already warns that self-driving cars will hurt cities much, because speed cameras won't generate revenue anymore. ;-))
All in all I don't see currently a mass market for EVs, because we have the comfortable petrol with a good infrastructure and cheap prices. (But could change if we reach peak oil in a few decades)


----------



## pasadia

volodaaaa said:


> How fast did he drive? Enough to take off?


How about this one:






5 our ago, near my town. Rumors say that the BMW had 180 km/h on a road 2+2 which turns into an 1+1 as you exit the town. More picture here.


----------



## winnipeg

italystf said:


> Unfortunately I think that electric and hydrogen vehicles will become mainstream only when oil will become too scarce. Opposition of oil lobbies is currently too strong. However there are exceptions, for example in Norway they are relatively popular due to government incentives (discounts on taxes and tolls).
> When they will be widespread across the world, environmentalist\NIMBY protests against new highways will probably decrease.


For now the main problem with electrical cars is the polution and the environmental disaster they are causing now. It might seems "clean" for the final user, but an electric car needs much rare earths (like neodyme, lithium, etc...) that are available in very low quantities and the extraction needs huge quantities of energy, it polute the local environment and are not yet corectly recycled for most of them... :/

But yes, as long as tere is still petrol to sell at gold price (and not only money for petrolum companies but also for countries with all the taxes...), we won't see a real alternative to petrol cars... hno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

If the fuel taxes in western Europe were as low as in North America, we could easily afford to drive a car with oil at $ 250 per barrel.


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ But it is not very sustainable.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Big schemes to subsidize alternative energy sources aren't financially sustainable either. Electric cars would be much less popular if there weren't as many tax breaks and financial incentives to use them. 

The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV basically killed the other electric cars in the Netherlands (Opel Ampera / Chevy Volt), thanks to government subsidies and tax breaks. Practically no private owner buys a hybrid or electric car in the Netherlands, they are all lease car owners who have to pay much less tax on company cars. Private owners don't qualify for such tax breaks, so there is no incentive to buy an electric car.


----------



## volodaaaa

I understand and I am sure that electric cars will be popular at certain point in future. But I think the overall average engine power will decrease.

There are some studies, especially in west Europe pointing out the fact, that young people in age of 18 are no more interested in ownership of a car - they need to utilize their time during travelling and driving is just waste of time. They are looking for good-equipped and reliable PT with wi-fi connection.

I can't consider the credibility of these studies as here goes: the greater power you have, the higher class you belong


----------



## ChrisZwolle

volodaaaa said:


> There are some studies, especially in west Europe pointing out the fact, that young people in age of 18 are no more interested in ownership of a car


These studies coincided with the worst recession in over 70 years, particularly affecting young adults. In many European countries the unemployment rate for people under 25 is in the double digits, in quite a number of countries even over 20% unemployment, in addition to less well tracked underemployment. 

The amount of new driver's licenses in the Netherlands for the 17-20 age group also dropped in 2009, but grew strongly since 2010. 

Economic conditions such as the great recession of 2008 and prolonged stagnation afterwards are not representative for long-term trends. 

The recession and consequent stagnation also resulted in other (temporary?) lifestyle changes among young adults, such as record school attendance, postponed family formation (getting children) and postponed homeownership. It remains to be seen how much this persists once the economy really starts to pick up again. There are already indications that birth rates start to increase again, now that the worst of the recession is over.


----------



## keber

volodaaaa said:


> they need to utilize their time during travelling and driving is just waste of time. They are looking for good-equipped and reliable PT with wi-fi connection.


Those 18-year old will grow older, no worry. Studies are just studies. And real world is still a real world so they will eventually try to experience it fully. And therefore they will need to have a car.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> These studies coincided with the worst recession in over 70 years, particularly affecting young adults. In many European countries the unemployment rate for people under 25 is in the double digits, in quite a number of countries even over 20% unemployment, in addition to less well tracked underemployment.
> 
> The amount of new driver's licenses in the Netherlands for the 17-20 age group also dropped in 2009, but grew strongly since 2010.
> 
> Economic conditions such as the great recession of 2008 and prolonged stagnation afterwards are not representative for long-term trends.
> 
> The recession and consequent stagnation also resulted in other (temporary?) lifestyle changes among young adults, such as record school attendance, postponed family formation (getting children) and postponed homeownership. It remains to be seen how much this persists once the economy really starts to pick up again. There are already indications that birth rates start to increase again, now that the worst of the recession is over.


Yes, that is true and the hypothesis has been already accepted. I have not found a single study in English (I am sure there are some), but we calll it "demographic law of war". The generation in reproductive age during WWI had less children than generation before (you know, no time for having sex... just kidding... bad conditions to raise children, high number of casualities, etc.). The children from this generation (born during 1914 - 1918) grew up to reproductive age just during WWII (they were in age of 21 - 31). Basically, the weak (in number comparing with the previous one) generation had even less children. In contrary to this weak generation, children born during pre-war period (in early 1900s) created a strong generation, members of which had children in interwar period. It went on, the weak generation give birth to the next weak generation and the strong generation give birth to the next strong generations. You can see it on age pyramids for EU population with typical two maximums.








(the people around the age of 60 were born after WW2 to parents mostly born in interwar period. In contrary, people in the age of 40-50 were born to parents born during WW2)

As the time goes, the boundaries between those two types of generations are fading away. But another anomaly arises - the rapid drop of birth rates. The explanation is quite easy - a strong generation (my peers) is in reproductive age, but... the average age of pregnant mothers is rapidly growing up due to factors you have mentioned (more free lifestyle, etc.). And it has seemingly resulted in this. People don't need cars so far.

But I still see diferences - e.g. people in West are more conscious. If a young graduate doesn't need car, they don't purchase it. Unlike that, here a young 18 years old graduate buy car as early as it is possible. Especially used cars are incredibly cheap here. It might be the different mind-set and surely the fact, public transport operators fail to keep the young (most potential) passengers.



keber said:


> Those 18-year old will grow older, no worry. Studies are just studies. And real world is still a real world so they will eventually try to experience it fully. And therefore they will need to have a car.


I agree. But there is a huge difference between *car possession* and *car usage*. Everybody needs a car in today's world. Needless to say that I do love driving


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> There are some studies, especially in west Europe pointing out the fact, that young people in age of 18 are no more interested in ownership of a car - they need to utilize their time during travelling and driving is just waste of time. They are looking for good-equipped and reliable PT with wi-fi connection.


It may be true in cities (Paris, London, Frankfurt, Madrid, etc.) where there is a very decent local public transport, and good railway connections other cities, good airline connections to cities far away.
But it is surely not true for the majority. 
Any, yes, in 18 you are free. You are a student, have little money but many time, no responsibility, "shopping" means new clothes or smartphone, not food for a week and 4 persons. And if you need, you can borrow your father's car. 

I'm no more so young, but even so, if I lived in Cologne (the nearest city to my town), I'm not sure I had a car. Especially if there were an S-Bahn (local railway) or subway station nearby. But here, although it is not a rural area where I live, life without a car is quite hard.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> The explanation is quite easy - a strong generation (my peers) is in reproductive age, but... the average age of pregnant mothers is rapidly growing up due to factors you have mentioned (more free lifestyle, etc.).


I basically agree but you missed an important factor. Up from the 60's abortion is free or almost free in many European nations. In the 70's and 80's there were more abortions in Hungary than births! Contraception is available from the 70's, condoms are available all over Europe. So now, theoretically, if you don't want to have a child, you can make sex ten times a day, you won't have any. 
For our generations it is actually evident, that making sex does not mean getting a child. The generation of my parents had significantly less possibilities, and their parents had almost nothing. Without condoms, contraception and a strictly restricted possibility of abortion would be the child birth rate nowadays much higher as it actually is.


----------



## volodaaaa

Rural areas (especially suburban) are perfect car passengers generators. The sparse population density and sometimes irregular spatial pattern leads to situation when it is impossible to offer a quality public transport with reasonable departure intervals. The customer (I mean body responsible for transport service procurement - e.g. region) would bankrupt if it subsidized services in public interest having the lines with 5 minute departure interval from group of villas with population of 500. On the other hand nobody from these people would use PT if it offered one departure in a hour (reasonable for body, unattractive for passengers). With the PT, I consider Budapest to be the very attractive city. When I was there for the last time, I realized I would not need a car for intra-urban transport if I lived there. The subway connections together with the trams were perfect. In Bratislava, the situation is different. My example: I need to take a 10 minutes walk on street without sidewalks, then I need to overcome a pedestrian crossing through 4 lanes (with speed limit of 70 kph), then wait for a bus with 12 minutes departure interval, take two stops, and walk for 10 minutes uphill to get to my office. Takes me 20 minutes in best constellation by PT and 3 minutes by car (parking included)


----------



## keber

volodaaaa said:


> I agree. But there is a huge difference between *car possession* and *car usage*.


Is it really? (at least in numbers?)


----------



## volodaaaa

keber said:


> Is it really? (at least in numbers?)


I meant in context  Having a car does not mean using it every day.


----------



## keber

Of course not. I won't use my car for approximately next 14 days starting tomorrow afternoon. Yet I'm dependent on owning a car despite living in a capital with good public transport.


----------



## italystf

In Italy most young people purchase their first car only when they start to work. It's not only a matter of money, as used cars can be purchased for cheap, but of usefulness. When they are at home with their parents, they borrow their car(s), and when (if) the stay away from home for studying, they commute by PT and foot (university students usually live in cities, so they have good PT available and many services within walking distance).
Even if everybody above 18 is legally an adult, one starts a real "adult life" only when (s)he moves away from his\her family, usually with the partner and children. Before you still rely a lot on your parents and you have many less things to d compared to a father or mother.
When you have a family you have a lot of different responsibilities: going to work, bringing kids to school and back, sport, shopping (including carrying bulky items), free time, holidays, going to officies for bureaucratic things, going to the doctor,... and you need to be in different places within a short time, so having a car allows you to be more flexible. You will still use PT when it's more convenient than driving, but owning a car allows you to choose each time.


----------



## Surel

volodaaaa said:


> But I still see diferences - e.g. people in West are more conscious. If a young graduate doesn't need car, they don't purchase it. Unlike that, here a young 18 years old graduate buy car as early as it is possible. Especially used cars are incredibly cheap here. It might be the different mind-set and surely the fact, public transport operators fail to keep the young (most potential) passengers.


It is quite certainly the difference in costs of having a car and driving license that is the reason for this.


----------



## Surel

volodaaaa said:


> I understand and I am sure that electric cars will be popular at certain point in future. But I think the overall average engine power will decrease.
> 
> There are some studies, especially in west Europe pointing out the fact, that young people in age of 18 are no more interested in ownership of a car - they need to utilize their time during travelling and driving is just waste of time. They are looking for good-equipped and reliable PT with wi-fi connection.
> 
> I can't consider the credibility of these studies as here goes: the greater power you have, the higher class you belong


The computer driven car (i.e. automatic car) will change the car ownership statistics and the whole car landscape in general much more than anything else. There will be also huge synergies with the electric vehicle. Together this will also change the public transport landscape dramatically.

I got this funny idea now about the long distance travelling. E.g. you could easily create sort of switching rest areas around the electric car infrastructure. The automatic car brings you to the rest area, you got the time to rest, and in the meantime another fresh car will take the place of the old car to take you further, the old car then powers up and waits for another customer. Of course baggage would be a hassle. But with less demand for the car ownership due to the existence of the automatic cars, this could be quite feasible solution for the electric cars long distance travelling.

Automatic car means not only a car that drives without a human driver. It also means a car that is constantly connected to the network, adjusting routes, times, connections, sharing, availability, etc online to just move you from point A to point B.


----------



## Verso

hofburg said:


> Tesla spotted  (A1 Slo)


I don't recognize anything in this tiny pic.


----------



## winnipeg

volodaaaa said:


> Meanwhile in Bratislava


And... he says "kill the routine, not yourself" at the end of the video?


----------



## volodaaaa

indeed  attention wh0re at its best.


----------



## winnipeg

Suburbanist said:


> The problem with the new Google Maps is that is hogs a lot of graphics card memory and doesn't work that well with some devices. that is what slows it down for many users. They conceived it as a "mobile-first" platform and it is not really optimized for desktop viewing yet. It works beautifully on my smartphone and quite badly on my laptop (6GB RAM, Intel Core i7 2.0GHz).


I have a configuration not so far from yours : 8Gb of ram and a mobile [email protected] with the graphic chipset going with it... But on Windows 8.1 and I'm using Chrome (perhaps it's linked to the browser? Some have poor performances...)

Yes I haven't thinked about this as long as it works for me, since I'm using it, I adopted it as it is and I haven't seen that some of the features are not well adapted to desktop use... But you right it's not perfect...



ChrisZwolle said:


> People are reporting widely fluctuating performance with the new Google Maps, and it doesn't seem to be related to system specs.
> 
> I dislike the new general layout and especially the way planned routes are mapped. I like the simplicity of simple A to B markers with a blue line. I don't want to see alternative routes unless I select them. Not to mention ridiculous transit alternatives.


Ok, I see, it can explain what Suburbanist is experiencing, even with a good configuration and internet access...  They need to fix all these problems.


I personaly also use Here Maps (witch is wonderfull on an Android smartphone, with absolutly free offline maps and navigation  ) and OpenStreetsMap with is also very great because the comunity fix and update the maps much faster than maps companies on other platforms, also the maps are much detailed for example here in Romania!


----------



## Nexis

54°26′S 3°24′E;123470051 said:


> Not sure what you mean with passing areas. In the glimpses I saw, the warning lines were used :
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (yellow version)
> They mean that passing normally is not advisable. In areas where passing is possible, shorter lines are used:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In either case, passing is of course illegal if it cannot be done in a safe manner and without affecting other vehicles, and speed limits apply. Solid center lines are used less in Norway, mainly in some high traffic roads, tunnels, and in intersections:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> These lines you are of course not allowed to cross, and you always have to keep to the right of the yellow ones. Having these all over the place in Norway would be unpractical.


Oh... Still abit Strange to have the first set of broken lines...instead of a solid line.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*Google Maps*

I don't like the fact that the new Google Maps insists to show alternative routes, even if they don't make any sense at all. For instance, a route from Pharr to George West in Texas. It doesn't make any sense to deviate from US 281 and take a 50 minute detour for no reason.


----------



## CNGL

Now that you mention silly alternate routes, it appears that my way back from the forests of Northwestern Soria province wasn't silly at all. According to Google Maps, bumping down to Ariza only costs 10 minutes more compared to the most common routes via N-232 and its no overtaking zone or via N-234. Actually the route I chosen on my way out was a couple minutes longer than my way back despite being 60 km shorter (and with far less motorways). Of course, this is assuming you go in one shot, I stopped in Tarazona in the way out and in Ariza and a rest area near Epila in the way back.


----------



## Surel

Nice blog about the autonomous cars future: 
http://zackkanter.com/2015/01/23/how-ubers-autonomous-cars-will-destroy-10-million-jobs-by-2025/



> The transition is already beginning to happen. Elon Musk, Tesla Motor’s CEO, says that their *2015 models will be able to self-drive 90 percent of the time*.1 And the major automakers aren’t far behind – according to Bloomberg News, GM’s 2017 models will feature “technology that takes control of steering, acceleration and braking at highway speeds of 70 miles per hour or in stop-and-go congested traffic.”2 Both Google3 and Tesla4 predict that fully-autonomous cars – what Musk describes as “true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car, go to sleep and wake up at your destination” – will be available to the public by 2020.
> 
> ...
> 
> Morgan Stanley’s research shows that *cars are driven just 4% of the time*,5 which is an astonishing waste considering that the average cost of car ownership is nearly $9,000 per year.6 Next to a house, an automobile is the second most expensive asset that most people will ever buy – it is no surprise that ride sharing services like Uber and car sharing services like Zipcar are quickly gaining popularity as an alternative to car ownership. It is now more economical to use a ride sharing service if you live in a city and drive less than 10,000 miles per year.
> 
> ...
> 
> A full 60% of US adults surveyed stated that they would ride in an autonomous car9 , and nearly *32% said they would not continue to drive once an autonomous car was available* instead.10 But no one is more excited than Uber – drivers take home at least 75% of every fare.11 It came as no surprise when CEO Travis Kalanick recently stated that *Uber will eventually replace all of its drivers with self-driving cars*.1
> 
> ...
> 
> A Columbia University study suggested that with a *fleet of just 9,000 autonomous cars, Uber could replace every taxi cab in New York City*13 – passengers would wait an average of 36 seconds for a ride that costs about $0.50 per mile
> 
> ...
> 
> The effects of the autonomous car movement will be staggering. PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that *the number of vehicles on the road will be reduced by 99%*, estimating that the fleet will fall from 245 million to just 2.4 million vehicles.
> 
> etc. read the blog post


This is also interesting read: https://www.lloyds.com/~/media/lloyds/reports/emerging risk reports/autonomous vehicles final.pdf


----------



## Verso

Looks like GMaps has changed _Dunărea_ (Danube in Romanian) into _Donava_ (Slovenian).


----------



## CNGL

^^ It has changed into _Danubio_ (Spanish) for me , even though that river doesn't flow anywhere near Spain. The Yangtze is still rendered as 长江, though.


----------



## cinxxx

LOL at the people in the car at min. 2 and the girls face :lol:


----------



## Verso

I've just watched the movie _I Love You to Death_ for like the fifth time. So funny. He's from Italy and she's from Yugoslavia.


----------



## bogdymol

Tomorrow until Thursday morning I will do a quick tour of UK: London Luton Airport to Exeter (south of England) to Edinburgh Airport (Scotland), with a few more stopovers on the way (map). Quite a roadtrip


----------



## radamfi

Do you have a paper counterpart to your driving licence in your country, detailing your driving offences? They are phasing them out in the UK on 8 June. British licence holders trying to hire a car abroad might be asked for the counterpart according to BBC News and could have a problem.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

As long as you don't move I'd just keep the counterpart.

I've never rented a car myself, but been witnessed people renting cars on many occasions and I've never seen anyone abroad ask to see the counterpart.


----------



## bogdymol

No, I don't have that. I have just the small plastic driving licence (credit card size). Nobody asked for anything else.


----------



## radamfi

DanielFigFoz said:


> As long as you don't move I'd just keep the counterpart.
> 
> I've never rented a car myself, but been witnessed people renting cars on many occasions and I've never seen anyone abroad ask to see the counterpart.


The government is recommending people to destroy the counterpart.

When hiring in the UK I'm always asked. I haven't hired anywhere else in Europe. In the US I'm never asked.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Nexis said:


> Oh... Still abit Strange to have the first set of broken lines...instead of a solid line.


In a rugged country like Norway, winding roads are the norm, hence good opportunities for passing other cars can be far between. Still, it can often be safe to pass slow vehicles like tractors. Hence, broken long lines are more common than solid lines. Still, you will be heavily fined if the passing is reckless.


----------



## Kanadzie

radamfi said:


> The government is recommending people to destroy the counterpart.
> 
> When hiring in the UK I'm always asked. I haven't hired anywhere else in Europe. In the US I'm never asked.


You have to carry a "scarlet letter" with all your offenses all the time? :lol:
I never even heard of that, surely Americans could never imagine it :lol:


----------



## MattiG

radamfi said:


> Do you have a paper counterpart to your driving licence in your country, detailing your driving offences? They are phasing them out in the UK on 8 June. British licence holders trying to hire a car abroad might be asked for the counterpart according to BBC News and could have a problem.


Never heard about such a thing.


----------



## radamfi

Kanadzie said:


> You have to carry a "scarlet letter" with all your offenses all the time? :lol:
> I never even heard of that, surely Americans could never imagine it :lol:


It is not compulsory to carry your licence when driving in the UK, even the photo. If you are stopped by the police, you are allowed up to 7 days to present the licence at a police station. Then (I think) you need to present both the photo card and the paper counterpart. Also, as mentioned above, always when hiring a car in the UK.

Photo licences were only introduced in the UK in 1998. Before that, the licence was on paper, including the list of your offences. If you haven't moved house since 1998, then you still only have a paper licence, and that won't change on 8 June.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Everything is bigger in Texas. Especially the 10+ centimeter hail stones.


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile in Italy:
https://www.facebook.com/431562743654492/videos/648472775296820/


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> People are reporting widely fluctuating performance with the new Google Maps, and it doesn't seem to be related to system specs.
> 
> I dislike the new general layout and especially the way planned routes are mapped. I like the simplicity of simple A to B markers with a blue line. *I don't want to see alternative routes unless I select them. *Not to mention ridiculous transit alternatives.


That's the only gripe I have with the new Google Maps and I've used the new version for a year. I have no performance issues whatsoever but then again, I am running a fairly powerful desktop computer on a fast internet connection.


----------



## JMBasquiat

I've not used Google Maps in a while, but its frequent inability to give voice directions on iOS makes it next to useless for me.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I wonder what's it like to be hit by lightning in a car.


----------



## RipleyLV

^^ Bad after effects, I expected the car to explode.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Nothing much would happen. Being in a car is like being in a Faraday cage. The charge jumps to the car and then to the ground. Everybody is free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Edit:


----------



## Suburbanist

I'm considering whether to buy a used car from a relative. She's offering me a "first option" on her car, it has low mileage and that I know for a fact she and her husband are extremely careful maintaining it, and it comes with a family discount :dead:

I'm trying to work out the bureaucracy of importing it into Netherlands from Italy and how much tax will I have to pay if I go through.


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> Everything is bigger in Texas. Especially the 10+ centimeter hail stones.


I really doubt public transport is bigger in Texas. So that's not everything .


----------



## keber

Hello from Minsk, Belarus, a buerocratic paradise.
Just to get and top-up an OBU for motorway toll payment for a passenger car took about half hour, ten papers and cca 20 signatures.
But this is nothing compared to entry at road border crossing 
It is nice country with very friendly people, however.


----------



## Suburbanist

keber said:


> Hello from Minsk, Belarus, a buerocratic paradise.
> Just to get and top-up an OBU for motorway toll payment for a passenger car took about half hour, ten papers and cca 20 signatures.
> But this is nothing compared to entry at road border crossing
> It is nice country with very friendly people, however.


That is a territory I'd not drive in/into.


----------



## keber

It's not easy, that is true. But it's nothing dangerous, if you obey the rules. And order is here with a big O. Interesting to see and experience all this.


----------



## italystf

I think the only really dangerous areas in Europe currently are Eastern Ukraine, some districts of Southern Russia (Chechnya, Dagestan,...) and Transnistria.
Visiting Russia and Belarus as independent tourist is challenging from a beaurocratic point of view, but not particularily dangerous in terms of violent crime. You should better don't talk of politics with strangers, anybody can be an undercover agent or something.
My father has visited Romania and Czechoslovakia with his car in 1977 and 1985 respectively, it was quite challenging but not dangerous.


----------



## Suburbanist

Reasons I'd avoid visiting Belarus, Ukraine or Russia with a car is that there are some horror stories about corrupt cops or car theft mafias colluding with cops, and some reports that, should you get involved in an accident, even if not at fault, you might be forced/extorted-in-practice to pay a lot of costs.


----------



## Suburbanist

Back to the car I'm considering buying... I already hate how expensive diesel car taxes are here in Netherlands. And I'm afraid it will only get worse as countries target diesel cars for their particulate polution, even if gasoline cars are less fuel efficient and burn more CO2 (I know, not immediately comparable). I love the idea of having automatic transmission though.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The CO2 tax on a diesel car in the Netherlands is about € 4,000 - 5,000 more than on a gasoline car, when both cars emit the same amount of CO2 per kilometer.

Combined with a triple road tax, that's why there are few private users of diesel cars in the Netherlands.

It's also a reason why automatic transmission is not as popular over here. They are heavier and consume more fuel (especially with smaller cars), resulting in a high CO2 tax. Unfortunately many car importers only import entrance-level engines. Many car models are not available with larger engines like in Germany, Belgium or France. For instance, the new Hyundai i10 is only offered with a 1.0 66 HP engine. Which is not enough for my liking, so my next car won't be the new generation i10 (I currently have a 1.2 L 85 HP Hyundai i10).


----------



## bogdymol

Greetings from Scotland (half way between Glasgow and Edinburgh)! I drove over 1400 km in UK in the last 3 days.

@keber: cool trip you are doing. Maybe you'll share more with us when you have time.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> The CO2 tax on a diesel car in the Netherlands is about € 4,000 - 5,000 more than on a gasoline car, when both cars emit the same amount of CO2 per kilometer.
> 
> Combined with a triple road tax, that's why there are few private users of diesel cars in the Netherlands.
> 
> It's also a reason why automatic transmission is not as popular over here. They are heavier and consume more fuel (especially with smaller cars), resulting in a high CO2 tax. Unfortunately many car importers only import entrance-level engines. Many car models are not available with larger engines like in Germany, Belgium or France. For instance, the new Hyundai i10 is only offered with a 1.0 66 HP engine. Which is not enough for my liking, so my next car won't be the new generation i10 (I currently have a 1.2 L 85 HP Hyundai i10).


I'm doing the math there with info a friend knowledgeable sent me. 

The car in question is a Meriva Diesel with automatic transmission. It was originally bought in another country, later registered in Italy and if I buy it I'll register it here. The problem is that the annual tax will be above what I'd expect to pay. It is a great car with a nice driving position for those who like to drive with legs flexed at a smaller angle. This one has only 14.000km driven so it's a good one.


----------



## Verso

End of old GMaps for me.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Verso said:


> End of old GMaps for me.


It ended for me yesterday...


----------



## keokiracer

Working link for old Google Maps >> https://maps.google.nl/lochp:banana:


----------



## riiga

Verso said:


> End of old GMaps for me.


Same


----------



## Verso

keokiracer said:


> Working link for old Google Maps >> https://maps.google.nl/lochp:banana:


Thanks, where do you get all these links?


----------



## Kanadzie

Suburbanist said:


> I'm doing the math there with info a friend knowledgeable sent me.
> 
> The car in question is a Meriva Diesel with automatic transmission. It was originally bought in another country, later registered in Italy and if I buy it I'll register it here. The problem is that the annual tax will be above what I'd expect to pay. It is a great car with a nice driving position for those who like to drive with legs flexed at a smaller angle. This one has only 14.000km driven so it's a good one.


Diesel automatic, just ride a bicycle is faster :lol::nuts:

can you just keep Italian plates on it? grow a moustache and nobody will question you


----------



## keokiracer

Verso said:


> Thanks, where do you get all these links?


Dutch road forum, just passing on the links :lol:

The other link I posted a couple of days ago I also got through someone from the Dutch road forum


----------



## metasmurf

Nothing like a huge slip lane on a two lane road, with priority over left turning traffic.










Location: http://goo.gl/maps/AqIMK


----------



## keokiracer

metasmurf said:


> Nothing like a huge slip lane on a two lane road, with priority over left turning traffic.


At least they seem to Löved.

Badum tss


----------



## cinxxx

Good morning from Koper, Slovenia ☺


----------



## keber

And good evening from Lutsk, Ukraine.


----------



## Verso

Damn travellers.  I was in Kranj today and I saw many foreigners going to sea. Weather isn't that great though.


----------



## x-type

me an cinxxx were only 9km far from each other today. unfortunately, we failed to meet because of obviously tight schedules...


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Damn travellers.  I was in Kranj today and I saw many foreigners going to sea. Weather isn't that great though.


Today we had rain almost the whole day. We had warmer days in middle March this year.
In 2013 I took a short swim in the Adriatic sea on the 1st May. Temperature outside was probably around 26-27°C, but the water was still too cold.


----------



## cinxxx

x-type said:


> me an cinxxx were only 9km far from each other today. unfortunately, we failed to meet because of obviously tight schedules...


Next time 
And good morning from Rovinj :cheers:


----------



## g.spinoza

1000 km for me tomorrow... Turin-Bruxelles for a conference... :O


----------



## cinxxx

Back in Slovenia until tomorrow.

Today I've visited the smallest town in the world


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> 1000 km for me tomorrow... Turin-Bruxelles for a conference... :O


Not a bad drive on a Sunday. Almost no truck traffic, no holiday traffic yet.


----------



## Suburbanist

Torino-Bruxelles is quite a nice ride. 

I'd do it this way









EDIT: does anyone know how to make the New Google Maps show the travel data on the upper left corner instead of mashed with the route display?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I hate the new Google Maps. It's not only slow, it sometimes doesn't work properly, especially with dragging routes, or changing the starting or ending point. When you zoom out, drop it on a point on a motorway, it often doesn't snap to the nearest visible road at that scale, but to a local street nearby you can't possibly see at that zoom level.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Not a bad drive on a Sunday. Almost no truck traffic, no holiday traffic yet.


This is less relevant for France than in Germany, right?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Trucks are banned from driving on Sundays in Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary according to research I did a while ago.


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> Back in Slovenia until tomorrow.
> 
> Today I've visited the smallest town in the world


Motovun?


----------



## keber

Tomorrow another 1200 km and we're back at home. A road trip that at least 99,99 % of people will never experience.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Motovun?


Hum. they are fighting with some Belgian "city" to be the smallest in the world.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I went to the UK's smallest city today.


----------



## keber

My trip in last 10 days:
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Lju...6e8e95f!2m2!1d22.5684463!2d51.2464536!1m0!3e0
4500 km (2/3 of that motorways), 3 soviet-style border crossings (I didn't think that driving into ex-Soviet countries is still so complicated)
Of course, Netherlands tourists are in Belarus too


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's a cool trip.

And yes, the Dutch are everywhere. We have the wanderlust, due to the small size of the country no doubt.


----------



## keber

Dutch weren't with their own car though. Our car with Slovenian register plates was quite interesting for by-passers as very rare occurrence. On the border you de-facto import your car temporarily, this means a lot of paperwork and without basic Russian knowledge or at least good knowledge of any other Slavic language you'll have a lot of difficulties.
But driving there is quite safe and pedestrians have an absolute priority on zebra crossings as every driver immediately stops his/her vehicle when a pedestrian plans to cross a road, even on wide avenues. I've never seen that elsewhere. Electronic toll system for cars is freeflow system (similar to those for trucks in Austria) and works really well, just with a lot of paperwork before setting OBU first time.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Nice report keber 

This was shared by a FB friend today


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> But driving there is quite safe and pedestrians have an absolute priority on zebra crossings as every driver immediately stops his/her vehicle when a pedestrian plans to cross a road, even on wide avenues. I've never seen that elsewhere.


Are you talking about Belarus? That's surprising, especially if you compare it with Russia. You usually see that in Switzerland.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Not a bad drive on a Sunday. Almost no truck traffic, no holiday traffic yet.


But 45 minutes queue on the A4/E411 due to a looooong construction site.

BTW, greetings from Bruxelles


----------



## volodaaaa

Slovak speaker of National Council being nicely booed after ice hockey play (95 % of crowd were Slovaks).  It is not good to be unpopular.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> Dutch weren't with their own car though. Our car with Slovenian register plates was quite interesting for by-passers as very rare occurrence. On the border you de-facto import your car temporarily, this means a lot of paperwork and without basic Russian knowledge or at least good knowledge of any other Slavic language you'll have a lot of difficulties.
> But driving there is quite safe and pedestrians have an absolute priority on zebra crossings as every driver immediately stops his/her vehicle when a pedestrian plans to cross a road, even on wide avenues. I've never seen that elsewhere. Electronic toll system for cars is freeflow system (similar to those for trucks in Austria) and works really well, just with a lot of paperwork before setting OBU first time.


Apart for time-consuming beaurocratic procedures, what feeling did you have towards authorities (road police, border crossing staff,...)? Do you think they were doing their job properly or they had try to cheat you and to extort your money? Do locals feel as "strange" the presence of a foreigner in their country? Does Minsk look like a modern and cosmopolitan metropolis or it was like a trip back in the Soviet day?
Sorry for many questions, but it's interesting to hear stories from one of the less known countries in Europe. I'm also surprised to read that they have good driving discipline, I though they had Russia-like chaotic traffic.


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> buerocratic





italystf said:


> beaurocratic


It's actually _bureaucratic_.


----------



## Kanadzie

ChrisZwolle said:


> And yes, the Dutch are everywhere. We have the wanderlust, due to the small size of the country no doubt.


It makes no sense though. The Dutch have the only country that consistently increases in size :lol:


----------



## keber

italystf said:


> Apart for time-consuming beaurocratic procedures, what feeling did you have towards authorities (road police, border crossing staff,...)? Do you think they were doing their job properly or they had try to cheat you and to extort your money? Do locals feel as "strange" the presence of a foreigner in their country? Does Minsk look like a modern and cosmopolitan metropolis or it was like a trip back in the Soviet day?


Authorities were very professional, strict but still polite. We were treated no different like others (mostly Belarus). There were no money transfers on those borders just "Papers, please!"

Belarus are very friendly and as GPS navigation does not work there and we've had no city maps, we had to rely on asking locals for directions to find correct addresses as they are not always logical and they have their own soviet style logic. Locals were always very friendly and we were no "strangers" to them probably also because we tried to speak local language as much as possible.

Minsk is modern city but with soviet style blocks as Minsk was completely destroyed in second world war. They still have a lot of parks, modern buses and really effective subway (trains go in 1'40'' intervals even with large crowds). Cars on the roads are almost as if I would check here through my window except you can still find some Ladas and especially small and loud Russian trucks. 

Trip back to soviet state is going through Lithuania or Latvia and especially Ukraine.
[/QUOTE]


----------



## italystf

^^ So, you mean that Latvia and Lithuania look like more Soviet than Belarus? I wouldn't have expected that?
In which sense GPS doesn't work in Belarus? Your GPS has no maps of that country or the GPS signal is switched off because nobody can use a GPS there? And if one uses his smartphone as GPS, based on Google Maps is blocked too?

When I bought my Garmin GPS unit back in 2007, it had detailed maps only of EU-15, plus Switzerland and Norway and almost nothing outside it. In Slovenia there was only Ljubljana and the main highways leading to it, in Croatia only Zagreb, Split and the main highways, Bosnia was totally blank,... It was quite an issue during my trip around Croatia in summer 2008.
Eventually, I never updated it, as it costed some money and, since around 2010, I started using my smartphone as GPS, that uses Google Maps and so it's costantly updated and covers all countries.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Lots of thunderstorms today in the Netherlands. It's the first strike of severe weather of 2015 for us.










With some serious hail


----------



## keber

I use newest version of Sygic, which has very detailed maps all around Belarus, but only most important roads inside country. One year old car software had similar maps. As I read in some articles, Belarus government doesn't let western mapping software companies to map their country.

About Lithuania and Latvia, it is visually quite a difference when you cross the border with Poland, I didn't expect that. Cities are similar but smaller villages look worse, with lot of unpaved side roads and many houses in non maintained condition.


----------



## volodaaaa

Czech driver stuck in national park on a foothill of highest Czech mountain. On footpath solely designated for hikers. With car. He wanted to take a nice picture


----------



## PovilD

keber said:


> I use newest version of Sygic, which has very detailed maps all around Belarus, but only most important roads inside country. One year old car software had similar maps. As I read in some articles, Belarus government doesn't let western mapping software companies to map their country.
> 
> About Lithuania and Latvia, it is visually quite a difference when you cross the border with Poland, I didn't expect that. Cities are similar but smaller villages look worse, with lot of unpaved side roads and many houses in non maintained condition.


Visual difference between Poland and Lithuania is caused by mass meloration: many houses were destroyed or left unmaintained. Many people moved to artificially built (or expanded) settlements instead. Currently, in the countryside, there are barely no jobs, very little of bussiness, problems of alcoholism, low culture generally, etc.

I think that's a main problem why social situation in the Baltics is far one of the worse in EU. Poland looks somewhat more happy place to me


----------



## hofburg

More precisely, it is focal lenght. greater the focal lenght, photo is more compressed (distance from subject to background appears smaller). That looks like 300mm +.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Surel said:


> Of course it is zoom, who would think else?


A lot of media apparently. I've seen headlines like 'not for the faint of heart' or 'scary bridge'. A while ago it was even claimed that small engined cars could not climb the bridge.


----------



## cinxxx

Meet Zappa, The Sid Lookalike Dog With A Floppy Tongue[/B]
more pictures in the article :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

hofburg said:


> More precisely, it is focal lenght. greater the focal lenght, photo is more compressed (distance from subject to background appears smaller). That looks like 300mm +.


It is called dolly zoom.


----------



## Verso

I've just bought Egyptian potato. I have no idea how a 95-% desert country with 90 million people can export potato.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Do tell if they taste well


----------



## Verso

I had it as salad, so it wasn't very representative (but the taste was fine).


----------



## cinxxx

Meanwhile "ram vs car"
https://www.facebook.com/xendanweb/videos/10152688447571795/


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> I've just bought Egyptian potato. I have no idea how a 95-% desert country with 90 million people can export potato.


once i saw chestnuts with origin North Korea. i don't know if someboday has been joking with it or it was really true (i doubt thay employees would joke with origins beside strict inspections)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ugh, I cannot work with the new Google Maps. It's total rubbish. When you're zoomed out to view a country, and drag a different route, it often doesn't snap to the motorway, but some local road nearby which you can't see at that zoom level. Or it snaps to the carriageway in the other direction, giving you two U-turns at the nearest exits.

Example. A route from Tours to Reims. When I drag the route to A19 instead of through Paris, it seems alright.









Except when you zoom in, it shows what Google Maps really does to your route:


----------



## keber

Yeah, it's rubbish for me too. Slow and unresponsive, missing some important features like measure tool. Alternative routing is often meaningless.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

keber said:


> Alternative routing is often meaningless.


Yep, sometimes outright ridiculous. Take a look at this... A 2 hour detour that makes no sense at all.


----------



## keber

Alternative routing is absurd when normal route is really shortest and quite direct. For example take a look at proposed routes between Ljubljana and Zagreb, which are connected by direct motorway.









Which sane person would choose second variant?


----------



## Verso

Use the old version while you still can.


----------



## keber

And then when it dissapears?

It's better to get used to new version, old version is already too hidden and doesn't allow logging to my google account.


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> And then when it dissapears?


Then we mourn.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My Maps feels very bulky. It's much slower than the regular Google Maps. But the presentation of routes is better than Google Maps (for videos for example).

Google has a history of introducing new formats and projects while they are not finished. Gmail had a beta tag for years. The new Google Maps has had the function to return to classic for a very long time, indicating that perhaps Google wasn't happy with it either. 

I'm not really a fan of the 'one size fits all' approach much of the internet applications are today. Some websites are terribly designed for desktop users with a lot of unnecessary scrolling, in particular large headers that take up almost the entire first page.


----------



## keokiracer

keber said:


> It's better to get used to new version, old version is already too hidden and doesn't allow logging to my google account.


I'm logged in on Google whilst using the old version of Maps :dunno:


----------



## TrojaA

keber said:


> Alternative routing is absurd when normal route is really shortest and quite direct.


Yes, but this is due to the way the algorithm works. (I assume that Google prioritises higher class roads for route calculating)
That's why it's lookes like nonsense and I think they could remove this feature again.

It's the same with congestions. Google Maps suggests to use the motorway with the congestion, apart from the case, that the alternative route is much faster.
If you use Google Maps Navigation on your mobile phone, then Maps will recalculate the route before the congestions and will say: Hey there's a nice local road which saves you tens of minutes.

So I wonder why they don't implement some markers for alternative routes when displaying the route on your computer.
I often don't use Maps on my mobile phone, because I know the route, but I'm 100% sure, that I don't know the best ways to avoid traffic jams. So Google could display those, that would be a more useful feature than alternative routes with +100km and +1h travel time.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Instead of showing an alternate route around Paris, or an alternate route that isn't much slower but avoids some tolls, it shows a long alternate route that makes no sense at all.

Do they test their products at all?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In the Netherlands you will have to buy a bundle for a week or a month for all EU countries + Switzerland / Norway. Dutch operator KPN charges € 5 for 100 mb/week or € 10 for 200 mb/month. Quite expensive, though not as bad as a few years ago. However, if you don't pick a bundle / data plan they charge € 0.25/mb.

I'm planning a trip next month and I have selected a number of campsites, and they often offer free wifi. That way I don't have to use as much roaming data.


----------



## MichiH

You cannot edit Google Maps at the moment because an Android robot was peeing on an Apple logo in Google Maps........

 source: CNN.


----------



## winnipeg

g.spinoza said:


> As long as you like, you only pay for days when roaming is activated in your phone. If you don't want to pay the three euro, you just have to deactivate roaming in your phone before midnight.
> It is called "Vodafone Smart Passport":
> 
> http://www.vodafone.it/portal/Privati/Tariffe-e-Prodotti/Tariffe/Estero/Europa-SMART-Passport
> 
> PS: Better yet, Internet is limitless! After 500 MB they just reduce speed to 32 kbps.


32 kbps, limitless?  But I guess that it's still good to get some necesary informations instead of being disconnected...

In France some operators limit the speed at 128kbps once you've reached your fair use, that 4 times faster! 




cinxxx said:


> ^^
> Have to buy a smartphone, I have never had one
> We have a tablet and usually use that, but I see for tablets it's 6€ per day.
> 
> Are there no flat-rates for a week, month or such?


You never had a smartphone ? :shocked: :shocked: :shocked:

It's so great to have everything in this small object in your hands : internet access (when you need informations in a place that you don't know and where there nobody...), GPS navigation even with offline maps, the ability to make good photos/videos without having to carry a big camera, to have all your favorite music everywhere, to have some great games, also some nice applications that provide you usefull informations (ex : news, weather,...), etc...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

kbps is a kilobit. That's not the same as a kilobyte. You can't download 32 kilobyte per second at a 32 kbps download. There's a factor 8 difference. 32 kbps means 4 kilobytes per second. Or 1 mp3 song every half hour. Viva la 1990s. 

My cable internet has a 120 mbps download speed. But that's 15 megabyte per second, not 120 as many people think.


----------



## winnipeg

To limit the confusion, you should use "octet" (1 octet = 8 bits) witch is correct in english.

In french we use the octet in usual language, it's easier to make the difference !


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> kbps is a kilobit. That's not the same as a kilobyte. You can't download 32 kilobyte per second at a 32 kbps download. There's a factor 8 difference. 32 kbps means 4 kilobytes per second. Or 1 mp3 song every half hour. Viva la 1990s.


I fail to see the need to download a song on your smartphone while abroad.


----------



## keokiracer

g.spinoza said:


> I fail to see the need to download a song on your smartphone while abroad.


It was probably just a way to show what 32kbps actually is in the way of download speed.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yep. Just open one forum page with such speed. It will take ages. You can't do much with such speed today, with all the heavy internet pages and applications.


----------



## x-type

cinxxx said:


> ^^
> Have to buy a smartphone, I have never had one


you know, i was suspecting that 10 days ago when you prefered calling me instead of typing messages


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> kbps is a kilobit. That's not the same as a kilobyte. You can't download 32 kilobyte per second at a 32 kbps download. There's a factor 8 difference.


For the payload, the factor typically is close to 10 rather than being exactly 8. That is because the payload is packaged into "a digital envelope" containing transmission protocol data such as addresses and checksums. Thus, if you need to transmit 1 megabyte of data in a second, about 10 megabits per second of bandwidth is required.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Interesting note, there haven't been any recorded motorway openings between 22 April and 12 May. That's three weeks. I haven't recorded such a lull in motorway openings in 5 years.

Of course, there could be something I missed, particularly in Brazil or Russia. On the other hand most Brazilian dual carriageways are not full-standard motorways.


----------



## winnipeg

You follow the construction of all of them?  Huge work!!!


----------



## keokiracer

winnipeg said:


> You follow the construction of all of them?  Huge work!!!


Yes, Chris follows all of them for the Dutch road Wiki (click) and for the SSC motorway openings thread (click).

Really massive props to him for doing so. There's no way I'd be able to keep up with all of that for such a long period of time (the Dutch Road wiki data starts in february of 2010!)


----------



## winnipeg

keokiracer said:


> Yes, Chris follows all of them for the Dutch road Wiki (click) and for the SSC motorway openings thread (click).
> 
> Really massive props to him for doing so. There's no way I'd be able to keep up with all of that for such a long period of time (the Dutch Road wiki data starts in february of 2010!)


I see, thanks for the links!

I'm really impressed, it's a huge work!!


----------



## Kanadzie

winnipeg said:


> Exact, network operators ! It's just a bad translation, I thought that it was the correct translation...
> 
> "Cell phone providers" could be correct too?


In Canada people say "cellphone provider" all the time. But most people (90%?) buy the phone and service from the same company at the same time.


----------



## winnipeg

Okay, thanks for these informations!


----------



## x-type

winnipeg said:


> Okay, thanks for these informations!


one more tip: _information_ doesn't have plural form


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yep. Just open one forum page with such speed. It will take ages. You can't do much with such speed today, with all the heavy internet pages and applications.


Agreed. But then you have 500 MB at full speed before that. I guess the 32 kbps limitation is useful to receive emails and the important stuff.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

hofburg said:


> Either way googlemaps is useless for international trips as gps navigation. because it is online only. just for trip planning, there are also other alternatives even better *(viamichelin...). *
> I use it exclusively for streetview.


Viamichelin route planning:









...because apparently going through Russia on your way to Western Europe is a wise idea.

-------
I agree that there are faults with the new Google Maps: mainly the stupid alternatives and the snapping to smaller roads when zoomed out but other than that it's fine. I tried the old Google Maps for fun and it's slower and much clunkier than the new one, at least for me.


----------



## winnipeg

x-type said:


> one more tip: _information_ doesn't have plural form


I see, thanks! 

(In french we put a "s" for the plural of the word "information", that's the origin of my mistake !  )


----------



## volodaaaa

Btw. Kaliningrad seems to be an interesting destination for road trip, isn't it?


----------



## italystf

Rebasepoiss said:


> Viamichelin route planning:
> 
> 
> ...because apparently going through Russia on your way to Western Europe is a wise idea.
> 
> -------
> I agree that there are faults with the new Google Maps: mainly the stupid alternatives and the snapping to smaller roads when zoomed out but other than that it's fine. I tried the old Google Maps for fun and it's slower and much clunkier than the new one, at least for me.


Viamichelin is also terribly outdated: motoways opened as early as 2012 are still missing. If you zoom to a greater map, also motorways opened in 2009 aren't showed.
It was very popular around 8-10 years ago. Now, it probably lost the competition against Google, that provides additional services like satellite images, street view, traffic info, public transport,... I'm not surprised if Viamichelin developers have abandoned the project already a couple of years ago and just left the site accessible online.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Btw. Kaliningrad seems to be an interesting destination for road trip, isn't it?


If you go through all formalites to get a visa for Russia you probably want to visit Moscow and\or Saint Petersburg instead. Kaliningrad is not very interesting, as the old historical German city of Königsberg was entirely bombed during WWII and later rebuilt with Soviet standards (ugly commieblocks). I think it was one of the worst crimes against historical heritage ever committed in modern times. Unfortunately, in communist countries these things were the norm rather than the exception.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Viamichelin paper atlases are still my preferred way in France. They have much more detail than an online or digital map in terms of planning around. You can easily identify scenic routes, toll roads, terrain, scenic overlooks, points of interest, etc. It also offers much more detail on the roads by line width and colors.


----------



## x-type

winnipeg said:


> I see, thanks!
> 
> (In french we put a "s" for the plural of the word "information", that's the origin of my mistake !  )


don't worry, neither I would know it, but miraculously I didn't sleep at that lesson when we learned that


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I can't believe how many people in Aber don't know where Corsica is or have never even heard of it.


----------



## Kanadzie

Today I was buying food in grocery store here in suburbs of Toronto (Oakville)

I see that strange bottles of water Europeans love, and sure enough, Product of Slovenia!
Radomsko? I don't know. 1.5 L for $1.50. Probably in Slovenia 1.50 Euro :lol: Next door they sell gasoline (petrol) for $1.10 for 1 L.
Europeans are so weird 
I wonder how many people in that store could find Slovenia on a map?


----------



## winnipeg

x-type said:


> don't worry, neither I would know it, but miraculously I didn't sleep at that lesson when we learned that


:lol: :lol: :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

Kanadzie said:


> Today I was buying food in grocery store here in suburbs of Toronto (Oakville)
> 
> I see that strange bottles of water Europeans love, and sure enough, Product of Slovenia!
> Radomsko? I don't know. 1.5 L for $1.50. Probably in Slovenia 1.50 Euro :lol: Next door they sell gasoline (petrol) for $1.10 for 1 L.
> Europeans are so weird
> I wonder how many people in that store could find Slovenia on a map?


1.5 l of water cost as low as 0.2€, in Italy


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I pay € 0.72 per m³ for drinking water. That's € 0.0007 per liter.


----------



## MichiH

^^ Of course, tap water is much cheaper than bottled water.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> I wonder how many people in that store could find Slovenia on a map?


I would never make fun of Americans for not knowing that. Sure, the level of general knowledge might be lower, but we, Europeans, don't know the location of every city in US either. 

The shame is only if Americans do not know their own country, or if a well educated guy from Denmark respond to mention of Slovakia by saying: "I am pretty sure you thought Czechoslovakia".


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> I would never make fun of Americans for not knowing that. Sure, the level of general knowledge might be lower, but we, Europeans, don't know the location of every city in US either.


Everyone pointing the finger at someone should take the following easy test: Select any five European countries except the microstates and list their five biggest cities by population.


----------



## winnipeg

ChrisZwolle said:


> I pay € 0.72 per m³ for drinking water. That's € 0.0007 per liter.


You're lucky if you can drink your tap water, in our over-developed countries with irresponsible agriculture and the use of pesticides and fertilizers it became too rare ! hno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Dutch tap water is of very high quality, most Dutch don't like to drink tap water in southern Europe because it tastes bad. Some Dutch restaurants just serve tap water if you order a water, because people won't notice the difference.

Bottled water sales are very low in the Netherlands for that reason. Nobody needs to buy that.


----------



## winnipeg

MattiG said:


> Everyone pointing the finger at someone should take the following easy test: Select any five European countries except the microstates and list their five biggest cities by population.


I agree, but some Americans still believe that Europe is a single country, or just look at what sometimes some "profesionnals" from news channels like Fox News are showing maps of Europe with countries and cities misplaced on their maps... :/

But yes, at the opposite, whe have here on Europe some peoples who don't even know in witch country there are living or even what language they are talking and much more (we can see the videos on Youtube...) hno:


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Dutch tap water is of very high quality, most Dutch don't like to drink tap water in southern Europe because it tastes bad. Some Dutch restaurants just serve tap water if you order a water, because people won't notice the difference.
> 
> Bottled water sales are very low in the Netherlands for that reason. Nobody needs to buy that.


I can confirm it's pretty similar also in Austria. Most people drink tap water as it's good. Bottled water sales are low.


----------



## winnipeg

ChrisZwolle said:


> Dutch tap water is of very high quality, most Dutch don't like to drink tap water in southern Europe because it tastes bad. Some Dutch restaurants just serve tap water if you order a water, because people won't notice the difference.
> 
> Bottled water sales are very low in the Netherlands for that reason. Nobody needs to buy that.


They try to do the same in France, they even "sold" it as a brand water (ex : "La bisontine" in Besançon, etc...) and they push everyone to drink it. It is probably true that this water is better than many others but it's still a "river water" and they use chlorine in it... and there is residues from human activities like pesticides, fertilizer and nitrates... Even in low quantities, we don't really know what is the "cocktail effect" that all these chemicals together can do... hno:

I personnaly prefer to drink a bottled spring water witch I'm sure is better than most of tap water even if it's not perfect when it's bottled in a plastic bottle...


----------



## cinxxx

ChrisZwolle said:


> Dutch tap water is of very high quality, most Dutch don't like to drink tap water in southern Europe because it tastes bad. Some Dutch restaurants just serve tap water if you order a water, because people won't notice the difference.
> 
> Bottled water sales are very low in the Netherlands for that reason. Nobody needs to buy that.


Tap water in Germany is also very high quality.
But for example here in Bavaria for example it contains much "Kalk" (is that lime on English?). So on the long term I don't think it's very good for your kidneys. You have to buy a water filter and drink that water, tap water is also very bad for coffee machines, washing machines, etc.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Tap water is perfectly safe to drink pretty much everywhere in Estonia and taste is also fine since it's largely groundwater.
Tallinn is different since it gets most of it's tap water from a lake so it has a different taste which most people think is worse than ground water.

Most of the bottled water sold in Estonia is either flavoured (and carbonated) water or a salty mineral water. Plain drinking water is not very popular.


----------



## volodaaaa

We have also a very good quality tap water here in Bratislava with sources on Panonian Basin. But the quality of pipe network should be taken into account too. In case of my house, the pipes are 51 years old. We are about to renew it this or next year. So I prefer bottled water for the time being.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Kanadzie said:


> Today I was buying food in grocery store here in suburbs of Toronto (Oakville)
> 
> I see that strange bottles of water Europeans love, and sure enough, Product of Slovenia!
> *Radomsko?* I don't know. 1.5 L for $1.50. Probably in Slovenia 1.50 Euro :lol: Next door they sell gasoline (petrol) for $1.10 for 1 L.
> Europeans are so weird
> I wonder how many people in that store could find Slovenia on a map?


You mean *Radenska?*


----------



## g.spinoza

g.spinoza said:


> 1.5 l of water cost as low as 0.2€, in Italy





ChrisZwolle said:


> I pay € 0.72 per m³ for drinking water. That's € 0.0007 per liter.


Apples and oranges. No matter how much they say it's good, I'll never drink tap water. It tasted awful in every city I lived in.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ It's considered very strange in the Netherlands if one doesn't drink the tap water. 

Restaurants even serve it because it tastes the same as bottled water.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> Restaurants even serve it because it tastes the same as bottled water.


The same in Sweden and many other countries.



cinxxx said:


> Tap water in Germany is also very high quality.
> But for example here in Bavaria for example it contains much "Kalk" (is that lime on English?). So on the long term I don't think it's very good for your kidneys. You have to buy a water filter and drink that water, tap water is also very bad for coffee machines, washing machines, etc.


I live in Bavaria too. My tap water is without "Kalk" but just on the other side of the river, people have a big problem with "Kalk". As you wrote, it's even bad for washing machines etc.

I usually don't drink tap water. I buy bottled water (~0.50 €/liter).


----------



## keokiracer

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ It's considered very strange in the Netherlands if one doesn't drink the tap water.
> 
> Restaurants even serve it because it tastes the same as bottled water.


I've read that bottled water produced here in NL is from the same kind of 'wells' as the Dutch tap water is.
I only have bottles because I drink a LOT. Like, a LOT of water every day. So I have a glass of water and then a bottle of water. I fill the glass and the bottle and then when my glass is empty I don't have to walk again and can just refill. When both are empty I fill both of them up (with tap water) and start all over. At the end of the week I get a new bottle and the story repeats :lol:


----------



## SeanT

I came home from Turkey last sunday and we were told not to drink water, so we didn't. What about those icecubes in the poolbar? We had them...Nothing happened.


----------



## SeanT

Bottled water especially carbonated is very popular in Hungary. We have a long tradition with "soda" water. If I'm not mistaken it was a hungarian dude who invented or put it into massproduction I don't remember.(I made some research) No it is not entirely true. Ányos Jedlik back in 1826 made it possible to massproduce sodawater cheap.


----------



## bigic

In Serbia there is a variety of bottled water brands, both carbonated and non-carbonated. The water in our area tastes okay, but it does have lots of lime (bad for water heaters) and it sometimes becomes contaminated, mostly after a serious rain. As for bottled water, there are two brands that I can't stand, because of their bitter taste: Rosa and Prolom Voda.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Very hot already in southern Spain, with temperatures up to 38 °C. The record high for Sevilla in May is 39 °C.


----------



## volodaaaa

SeanT said:


> I came home from Turkey last sunday and we were told not to drink water, so we didn't. What about those icecubes in the poolbar? We had them...Nothing happened.


Have a shot of spirit every day while you are on vacation and you'll be okay. I've been practising it since the age of 7 (first, my mum pour it to coffee spoon, then tea spoon and after the age of 18 to shot) and never had gastronomical problems.

There is no chance to avoid drinking local water completely: as you mentioned the ice cubes or brushing teeth, etc.


----------



## keber

When I was in Africa I brushed my teeth with bottled water. It was too unsafe. But otherwise I drink tap water all over Europe. The worst water is only in south Italy and Greece. Even in Turkey in Istanbul was better.
About lime (Kalk): all tap water in Slovenia is hard to very hard but none has kidney problems because of that.


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> Apples and oranges. No matter how much they say it's good, I'll never drink tap water. It tasted awful in every city I lived in.


In Italy or abroad?


----------



## winnipeg

volodaaaa said:


> There is no chance to avoid drinking local water completely: as you mentioned the ice cubes or brushing teeth, etc.


If you don't have gingival problems and if you don't drink the water you used to brush your teeth (I suppose that nobody does this), I think that there is almost no risk by using it this way...

But in ice cubes, the water stay the same, it could be a risk...

The same with non-botled sodas from fast foods, etc...


----------



## g.spinoza

Surel said:


> In Italy or abroad?


I only lived abroad in Munich, but I didn't drink tap water there, too.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Small water bottles sell well in the UK, for people that are out and about, but the big ones that people take home aren't even sold here I don't think. The only place I've ever been where I didn't like the tap water was Donegal in Ireland but I drank it anyway, I don't think brining home water to drink would really occur to me unless it was unsafe. 

In Portugal some people buy big bottles from the supermarket and take them home, but most people drink tap water.


----------



## italystf

winnipeg said:


> But in ice cubes, the water stay the same, it could be a risk...


Doesn't the freezing process kill bacteria? However I think that in developing countries not only bacteria are a concern, but also chemical pollutants, as factories there don't have to fulfill strict environmental controls like in Europe.

Here the tap water tastes quite normal if drank directly from the tap. However, if put in a bottle and drank later, it gets a bad taste. I don't know why, maybe too much chlorine, but I prefer to avoid drinking it unless I've no bottled water. In the Alps, instead, no need to purchase bottled water as tap water is perfect.


----------



## Alex_ZR

I don't drink tap water because in my hometown it's banned for drinking for 11 years because of heavy metals in water.


----------



## Verso

Alex_ZR said:


> You mean *Radenska?*


It's Czech now. hno:


----------



## Kanadzie

Alex_ZR said:


> You mean *Radenska?*


Exactly this bottle on the right side of picture
What does it cost locally? If more than $1.50 I can send you bottles or an europallet of it and you can send me back slivovica :lol: (the government taxes it so much here )

I had never drank bottled water in my life before I went to Europe, I was like, you're at home, so tap is there, water no good? 
Answer: yes no good! :lol:



italystf said:


> Doesn't the freezing process kill bacteria? However I think that in developing countries not only bacteria are a concern, but also chemical pollutants, as factories there don't have to fulfill strict environmental controls like in Europe.


Boiling will kill bacteria (almost all), but freezing will only "freeze" bacteria and stop their activity. When it becomes liquid again the bacteria reactivate. Kind of like the cabin in the winter where the flies look dead but once the fire gets hot they start flying around until the fire goes out and next week they are lying around again :lol:

I am not so sure of strict environmental controls in Europe, for one, the tap water sucks :lol:


----------



## x-type

riiga said:


> ^^ It's not easy running a country you know :lol:


btw, this guy is real liberal: he is always in the media, trying to run his state, trying to make something happening in it... the Polish guy from the other one at the west (the "kingdom" one) is real king: i doubt if he ever visits his kindgom :lol: he has just left it to exist. there probably will be a plebiscite in year or two when people will oust the king and establish the republic. if there will be any citizens.


----------



## cinxxx

My roadtrip this weekend 
http://goo.gl/maps/3s5Ra


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> I agree, LGBT people can do whatever they want in every field of life (job, studying, sport, leisure, travel,...), exactly like straight people. The only obstacles they encounter are cultural (intolerance from homophobe people), not practical.
> Moreover, in the overly-corrected modern Europe, if you say things like "marriage is one man and one woman", they say that you are an intolerant, homophobe, racist, nazi, fascist,... If a member of the LGBT community badly insults the religion practiced by most citizens of that country, then it's good satire. So, religious-based intolerance seems more acceptable than sex-orientation-based intolerance.


Because the Bible can be quite intolerant and insulting in the first place.


----------



## Attus

Verso said:


> Because the Bible can be quite intolerant and insulting in the first place.


The Bible is intolerant. In the very first sentence you can read: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth", instead of "In the beginning the heavens and the earth began somehow to exist, and you are free to think about it what you want".


----------



## Verso

That book would be called _Astronomy for beginners_, not _Bible_.


----------



## winnipeg

Verso said:


> Because the Bible can be quite intolerant and insulting in the first place.


The Bible is too much depending on how people read it, some can understand that you should kill somebody that is different and who don't follow the same religion than you, and other can see in it a message of peace! hno:


----------



## winnipeg

Also about religions and homosexuals, it's interresting to notice that French protestant church has decided yesterday to authorise same-sex marriage! 

http://www.english.rfi.fr/france/20150517-french-protestant-church-authoriese-gay-marriages

(I personaly believe that this is a great step foward for accepting which is, after all, just love!  )


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't think Highways & Autobahns is the best place to discuss such things


----------



## volodaaaa

I think the discussion goes in very polite manner.

To me: I think homosexuals are basically discriminated in two ways:
They can't inherit without will and they have no access to health condition of their partner. All countries should change it. However it is not only the matter of homosexuals, but heterosexuals too. I live with my GF for 5 years and basically are discriminated that way too. On the other hand we can plan a wedding.

If a homosexual feels offended by a picture of family or heterosexual couple, he is on the level of feminazi. This is not the right way how to make society respect them.


----------



## CNGL

cinxxx said:


> My roadtrip this weekend
> http://goo.gl/maps/3s5Ra


And have you calculated your fuel cosumption? I did with the roadtrip I made in mid-April, and came up with 5.6 liters per 100 km, or 42 miles per gallon.


----------



## cinxxx

CNGL said:


> And have you calculated your fuel cosumption? I did with the roadtrip I made in mid-April, and came up with 5.6 liters per 100 km, or 42 miles per gallon.


We drove with my gf's Fiat 500. Average was around 6L/100 km


----------



## Bzyq_74

I'd like to know about roadside rest areas:
Romania - motorway A1 (Pecica) -  here 
or
Hungary - motorway M43 -  here 
I'll be going in August and I'll plan my rest in that area.
Are there some bars to eat dinner, etc.?


----------



## cinxxx

Does any of you have experience with car rental in BiH?

I booked a flight to Tuzla for a weekend in July (Wizzair has promotion today) and I want to drive to Sarajevo.
It's either a 3 hour bus ride which seems to cost around 10€ per person (so would be around 40-50€ for both of us roundtrip), or just rent a car and drive there.

I tried sixt and Europcar, but 120-150€ seems kind of expensive. There are other companies listed on the website of Tuzla airport, but I have no idea about them  (Perfect, Intercar, Autobravo, JetSet, Nipex)


----------



## winnipeg

Bzyq_74 said:


> I'd like to know about roadside rest areas:
> Romania - motorway A1 (Pecica) -  here
> or
> Hungary - motorway M43 -  here
> I'll be going in August and I'll plan my rest in that area.
> Are there some bars to eat dinner, etc.?


This rest area on M43 is empty, it's basicly just parking with free toilets, nothing else. 

And on A1 the rest area near Pecica is still in construction (it was the case last month) and I believe that it will be the same kind of area. And there is also the same kind of area on A1 between Arad and Timisoara.

Please note that when the highway should be fully open (this summer, they announced for july), there will be not gas station or bars/eat dinners from Szeged until the end of the highway in Timisoara.... hno:

I hope that they will soon build something on the highway...


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> A lady crashed Lamborghini yesterday on D1 motorway near Brno, CZ. "Honey, your favourite dinner is done and I am finally ready for [insert whatever] sex." :cheers:


what is he inserting? :lol::lol::lol:


----------



## Bzyq_74

winnipeg said:


> This rest area on M43 is empty, it's basicly just parking with free toilets, nothing else.
> 
> And on A1 the rest area near Pecica is still in construction (it was the case last month) and I believe that it will be the same kind of area. And there is also the same kind of area on A1 between Arad and Timisoara.
> 
> Please note that when the highway should be fully open (this summer, they announced for july), there will be not gas station or bars/eat dinners from Szeged until the end of the highway in Timisoara.... hno:
> 
> I hope that they will soon build something on the highway...


Thanks for the quick reply


----------



## Verso

I've just seen a scooter in Ljubljana with a license plate of the Dominican Republic! :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I ordered a new dashcam, the Mini 0806. It is much smaller than my current 'Scott'. It allows 2 x 32 GB memory cards, which is more convenient on long trips (32 GB means just over 4 hours of footage at 1080p).

I got the 'Scott' dashcam in early 2013, so it served me for over two years. Back in 2012-2013 they weren't as common in western Europe.

I take a netbook with me on long trips, so I can load the footage onto a hard drive instead of having to buy a dozen memory cards. The problem is that the netbook has only a USB 2 port, which means transferring 32 GB takes over an hour. But I don't feel like spending € 1000 or more on a laptop I will only use a few weeks a year. The netbook was only € 300. Last year I got over 400 GB of footage. And I only film interesting stretches (some people do loop recording, I don't care about that).


----------



## winnipeg

I personaly use a small Mobius as dashcam. It is basicly a cheap sport cam without screen, but it works very very well as a dashcam and it is very very discreet and I palced it behind the rearview mirror so I completly forget it when I drive! 

I put inside a 128GB Sandisk memory card (which cost me around 60€, more than the camera itself (50€)!  ) and it works pretty well, it can record in 1080p during 16 hours without interruption! 

The true strength of this small camera is his comunity which is very active and continue to update it even if the camera is getting old. And the software (for PC) comming with it is excellent and have many parameters usefull for a dashcam use, like for example auto-start recording when the camera is connected to an external power, auto-stop, it can delete the old videos when the SD is full so even with a small SD you can record without stop and only stopping when you have recorded something interesting... 

And also the video quality is good (way better than many dashcam sold at a more expensive price!  (example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJPDQNwMJ7g )

And there is also plenty of moddings for this camera, like you can disassemble the lens from the camera so you can have an "unvisible" camera like this for example : https://forum.dashcamtalk.com/threads/mobius-lens-extension.3224/#post-72433


----------



## keokiracer

ChrisZwolle said:


> I ordered a new dashcam, the Mini 0806. It is much smaller than my current 'Scott'. It allows 2 x 32 GB memory cards, which is more convenient on long trips (32 GB means just over 4 hours of footage at 1080p).


Good luck with it, I've read of a lot of bugs in the software and such on the 0806. Apparently they were common enough for some providers to just stop selling them, because they were too unreliable. 
That was about a month ago, maybe they've had some new software updates.


Also, Chris, just so you know. Those 2x 32GB. You can even fit 2x 128 GB in there :cheers:


edit: apparently it's still very unstable. They've apparently decided to soon put the 0807 on the market, which is basically the 0806 with some bugs-removal. They want to ditch the 0806 because it has bad reputation. At least, that's what an importer of the cams is telling me.



winnipeg said:


> And also the video quality is good (way better than many dashcam sold at a more expensive price!


The Mobius does not have GPS, unlike many of its competitors. So you can't really 1-on-1 compare them price-wise.
But it's certainly a good cheap cam


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> Iit is Europe. And especially Eastern Europe where bribing policemen was some years ago quite usual, and in some countries it is usual even now. In Hungary in the 90's bribing a policemen was, I can say, a matter of course. I myself bribed policemen (it's alredy barred ).
> So if the police stops you and let you go without paying a fine, the main reason for that is bribe. That's why is it in some European nations compulsory for police officers to charge every one who broke the rule, without the possibility of measuring whether it was really dangerous or not.
> Additionally, in Europe it is quite usual that the police has an amount of money which they are orderd to get from fines, any way. So they must get the money, doesn't matter whether you drove too fast or not. Sometimes they put a very new speed limit sign somewhere and then charge every drivers who drive there every day and are driving with the usual speed without noticing the new sign.


Completely agreed. I would like just add that police often measure speeds at spots where it is useless (I talk about on-purpose set up speed traps) and refuse to check drivers at spots, where it would significantly contribute to calming of traffic and increasing of the level of street safety and security.


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

Attus said:


> Iit is Europe. And especially Eastern Europe where bribing policemen was some years ago quite usual, and in some countries it is usual even now. In Hungary in the 90's bribing a policemen was, I can say, a matter of course. I myself bribed policemen (it's alredy barred ).
> So if the police stops you and let you go without paying a fine, the main reason for that is bribe. That's why is it in some European nations compulsory for police officers to charge every one who broke the rule, without the possibility of measuring whether it was really dangerous or not.
> Additionally, in Europe it is quite usual that the police has an amount of money which they are orderd to get from fines, any way. So they must get the money, doesn't matter whether you drove too fast or not. *Sometimes they put a very new speed limit sign somewhere and then charge every drivers who drive there every day and are driving with the usual speed without noticing the new sign.*


That's terrible. In this case parts of Europe are worse than the US. I've heard of similar things done here, but it has never happened to me, or anyone I know, so it's probably not that common.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

volodaaaa said:


> it is not contradictory with Italy  I think to Sarti at Sidonia peninsula, but I don't know the exact date so far. It depends on my PhD. defending term and my fiancée's graduation event date. We don't know any of them by now.


I'll go to Neos Marmaras on 14th July. Hope we will meet 
Also guys i'll make a photo report. :cheers:


----------



## winnipeg

AnOldBlackMarble said:


> That's terrible. In this case parts of Europe are worse than the US. I've heard of similar things done here, but it has never happened to me, or anyone I know, so it's probably not that common.


And now in western Europe (France especially), cops are just a way to bring cash to the state, with their hidden automatic radars, you don't even know that you made a infraction, you will just receive a letter at home few days after... The interest for safety is much lower than cops giving you a fine on the spot (more psychological impact and you know that you made an infraction...). hno:


----------



## pasadia

SOURCE

A freak accident involving a drunk driver and a roundabout


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> Interesting note, there haven't been any recorded motorway openings between 22 April and 12 May. That's three weeks. I haven't recorded such a lull in motorway openings in 5 years.
> 
> Of course, there could be something I missed, particularly in Brazil or Russia. On the other hand most Brazilian dual carriageways are not full-standard motorways.


I'm now compilating Chinese openings in May (as you missed all two of them ) and discovered that a section opened on 9 May. So this reduces the lull to two weeks, taking into account that Italian motorway section that opened on 27 April.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*España*

I'm back from a 6,577 kilometer road trip / vacation through Belgium, France, Spain and a small part of Portugal. I drove all the way to Tarifa, where I spotted the coast of Africa. 

I had to cut my trip short by two days, as the weather in northern Spain was just terrible. I wanted to stay two days in the Picos de Europa region, but it was pouring rain all the way from Oviedo to San Sebastian and there were very low clouds, you couldn't even see the surrounding scenery, so there was no point of staying there, considering the forecast was poor as well. 

The hottest was 37°C in Alentejo region in Portugal. I wanted to stay there for two nights, but it was so damn hot and there was very little shade (just some small olive trees) so I decided to go to Peña de Francia, a mountain range in Salamanca province, where the weather was more tolerable. 

Road highlights:

* A75 in France, just marvellous. It wasn't exactly my first time, but it is very nice.
* A-7 in the Alcoi area. Quite nice, very little traffic compared to near Valencia.
* roads in de Cabo de Gata region. The greenhouse areas are awful though.
* A-92 through the Tabernas Desert. The only place in Europe that looks like Arizona.
* A-92 east of Granada. Very nice scenery and the Sierra Nevada still had snow on it.
* A-44 from Granada to Motril.
* A-66 various mountain areas, north of Sevilla, north of Plasencia and in particular north of León. 
* AP-66 León - Oviedo. There was a 4 km tunnel. One side was sunny, warm and not a cloud in the sky. The Asturias side had low-hanging clouds and was much cooler. Scenery-wise it's like you're suddenly in Ireland or something. Very green.
* A-8 along the north coast, unfortunately it rained almost the entire way. I didn't see much great scenery due to the low-hanging clouds.


----------



## CNGL

^^ And you didn't even came close to Huesca! You missed the world's capital (As said by a song) and meeting me.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm back from a 6,577 kilometer road trip / vacation through Belgium, France, Spain and a small part of Portugal. I drove all the way to Tarifa, where I spotted the coast of Africa.


did you avoid AP roads and tended to use only A roads, or you didn't care about it?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It did avoid some tolls in France (especially on routes I already drove several times), but I took toll roads in Spain (AP-7 to Valencia, AP-7 around the coastal cities south of Málaga, AP-4 to Sevilla, AP-66 to Gijón, AP-8 from Bilbao to San Sebastian).

The route:


----------



## Suburbanist

Did you go to Gibraltar?


----------



## Highway89

I hope you enjoyed your trip 

It can be quite rainy in the southern tip of the Iberian peninsula too (about 1,350 mm in the hilly area between Algeciras and Tarifa, and up to 2,000 near Grazalema), but rain falls mostly between October and May. The N-340 around Tarifa is probably worth highlighting too -at least for me. Sometimes it reminds me a bit of the CA-1 at Big Sur, California 




ChrisZwolle said:


> * AP-66 León - Oviedo. There was a 4 km tunnel. One side was sunny, warm and not a cloud in the sky. The Asturias side had low-hanging clouds and was much cooler. Scenery-wise it's like you're suddenly in Ireland or something. Very green.
> * A-8 along the north coast, unfortunately it rained almost the entire way. I didn't see much great scenery due to the low-hanging clouds.


So typical. Wet clouds are blocked by the mountains and stay there pouring rain for days. I've even experienced the same when crossing the Piqueras Tunnel (N-111) between Soria and Logroño, but it's not as common.

In such cases it could be better to go back to the southern side of the mountains and take the CL-626 or even the A-231. Something like this: https://goo.gl/maps/3x0Ln Or this: https://goo.gl/maps/pjw3P


----------



## volodaaaa

winnipeg said:


> And now in western Europe (France especially), cops are just a way to bring cash to the state, with their hidden automatic radars, you don't even know that you made a infraction, you will just receive a letter at home few days after... The interest for safety is much lower than cops giving you a fine on the spot (more psychological impact and you know that you made an infraction...). hno:


Sorry but I think that attitude is somehow right. You have to obey traffic rules.


----------



## winnipeg

volodaaaa said:


> Sorry but I think that attitude is somehow right. You have to obey traffic rules.


But it don't works, if peoples don't even know on the moment that they didn't respected the traffic rules, how they should "learn from their mistakes"? hno:

And sadly by the same time, even with an law enforcement higher than never, there was more people killed on roads last year than the year before, and they observed that people are less cautious on the road and obey less to trafic rules.

In my opinion this is the proof taht this "automatic" law enforcement based on hidden cops is not good, the only interest is to bring money back to the state, but it won't help to make roads safetier... hno: hno:


----------



## Festin

winnipeg said:


> But it don't works, if peoples don't even know on the moment that they didn't respected the traffic rules, how they should "learn from their mistakes"? hno:
> 
> And sadly by the same time, even with an law enforcement higher than never, there was more people killed on roads last year than the year before, and they observed that people are less cautious on the road and obey less to trafic rules.
> 
> In my opinion this is the proof taht this "automatic" law enforcement based on hidden cops is not good, the only interest is to bring money back to the state, but it won't help to make roads safetier... hno: hno:


I can give you an example from Sweden.
In many of the country roads you have the so called radars. But not everyone are activated. But in any case you get warned about the radars before getting there so you have chance to lower your speed. 

And therefor not many gets caught there even though everyone maybe drives faster before and after. But the main reason for the radars are to lower the speed on that area because it could be near a village, traffic junction or any other reason to prevent an accident.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ But they could easily and more cheaply have the same solution by putting speed limit sign with the correct speed in those areas
And areas where the normal speed is much higher than the limit, then just raise or abolish the limit


----------



## winnipeg

Festin said:


> I can give you an example from Sweden.
> In many of the country roads you have the so called radars. But not everyone are activated. But in any case you get warned about the radars before getting there so you have chance to lower your speed.
> 
> And therefor not many gets caught there even though everyone maybe drives faster before and after. But the main reason for the radars are to lower the speed on that area because it could be near a village, traffic junction or any other reason to prevent an accident.


I'm not talking about these radars. These radars are good because it has been proven that they reduce the speed in the areas where they are installed whitch are in most of the case, dangerous areas (but not in all the cases, in France they also love to put some in perfectly safe places... hno: ).

But I was talking more specificaly about the "mobile-mobile radars" like we have in France (example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnZJSMQlEWU ) and the state bought hundreds of these cars because it brings easily money as you can't see and can't know where the radar is and you don't even notice on the moment that you've commited an infraction, you will just receive a letter... hno:

I'm not convinced of their effectiveness, especially after a number of deaths on the roads as bad as we've got last year, when they started to massively use this system of radars...


----------



## Festin

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ But they could easily and more cheaply have the same solution by putting speed limit sign with the correct speed in those areas
> And areas where the normal speed is much higher than the limit, then just raise or abolish the limit


I think people would still drive faster then the speed limit, make it 30 they(we) drive in 40, or 130 and you will be driving at 140 just to take an example. 



winnipeg said:


> I'm not talking about these radars. These radars are good because it has been proven that they reduce the speed in the areas where they are installed whitch are in most of the case, dangerous areas (but not in all the cases, in France they also love to put some in perfectly safe places... hno: ).
> 
> But I was talking more specificaly about the "mobile-mobile radars" like we have in France (example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnZJSMQlEWU ) and the state bought hundreds of these cars because it brings easily money as you can't see and can't know where the radar is and you don't even notice on the moment that you've commited an infraction, you will just receive a letter... hno:
> 
> I'm not convinced of their effectiveness, especially after a number of deaths on the roads as bad as we've got last year, when they started to massively use this system of radars...


I maybe was not clear in my post.
I tried to give an example on the difference between trying to lower the accident rate versus just getting more money from people driving to fast with those hidden cameras.



> In my opinion this is the proof taht this "automatic" law enforcement based on hidden cops is not good, the only interest is to bring money back to the state, but it won't help to make roads safetier...


----------



## Alex_ZR

Any new links for classic Google Maps?


----------



## Verso

^ https://www.google.com/maps/mms


----------



## MichiH

^^ Yep, but it's a dead end: > click <.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> between Hotel Palace Bellevue and Hotel Mozart. why?


Oh, it's there, thanks. Nothing, I was just looking at it in street view. I realized I've actually never been to Opatija, I just drove on the bypass once. I've been like a hundred times to Portorož, but never to Opatija.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Kanadzie

CNGL said:


> I can't see why 'Fuсking 35' or 'Fuсking 41' :colgate:.


True, better ******* 18 :lol::lol::lol:




MichiH said:


> Yep, but it's a dead end: > click <.


Natürlich. To 69 you need to turn around :lol:


----------



## winnipeg

cinxxx said:


>


Interresting, but it's not a vertical takeoff like they said on the internet, in fact the camera in the air was filming the "nose" of the flight and has an angle of 45° which can be misleading...

And this is only possible with the flight completly empty, it could not be reproduced in "normal use" conditions (with passengers).


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> I can't see why 'Fuсking 35' or 'Fuсking 41' :colgate:.


How did you manage to bypass SSC censorship? *******


----------



## keokiracer

italystf said:


> How did you manage to bypass SSC censorship? *******


It's easy. Fucking.


----------



## Suburbanist

keokiracer, have you stopped making cycling videos?


----------



## Penn's Woods

keokiracer said:


> It's easy. Fucking.


Which SSC censor did you....?

:troll:


----------



## volodaaaa

Greetings from Trieste. My first driving experience in Italy. I am the one who is trying to obey traffic rules and thus I am the one who looks like poor chaotic driver.


----------



## NordikNerd

*Convoy of hearses*


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> How did you manage to bypass SSC censorship? Fuсking


Jan has granted me an exemption as a reward for not swearing at all .

:troll:

Now seriously, I've thrown a cyrillic letter which looks exactly like a latin one so the whole word doesn't get censored. Others include throwing an inverted exclamation mark ¡.

PS: Strange, keokiracer's post gets censored in the SSC app but not in the web. :crazy:


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> Greetings from Trieste. My first driving experience in Italy. I am the one who is trying to obey traffic rules and thus I am the one who looks like poor chaotic driver.


Abandon all rules, all ye who enter.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Are you talking about Italy or SSC?


----------



## Penn's Woods

This was a serious request, by the way....





Penn's Woods said:


> NOW while I'm here - new post 'cause it's a different subject - yours truly will be in Europe during the first half of July. Netherlands/Belgium/France. And renting a car. (You've been warned!)
> 
> Where can I get a quick but reasonably comprehensive refresher on signs I'll need to know? You do have some strange ones. (It can be in French; my Dutch is sketchier although I'm willing to try.)


----------



## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> This was a serious request, by the way....


This Wikipedia page is a good start.

Major concerns regarding North American driving and signs compared to Europe are:

- the principle of blank speed limits withing official urban areas (marked with a city/town name when you enter, and the same crossed diagonally when you exit)

- no right turn on red light

- transit (bus, bus+ taxi) only lanes - they are always marked but it can be tricky

- the fact prohibition signs (on a white circle with red border) don't have a cross over it (like a left arrow sign on such circle means no left turn)

- "Speed Zones" marked when you enter them (like Zone 30 in cities or Zone 60 in back country roads) and when you exit them

- beware of paid parking, even in small cities: instead of meters near each spot, you often need to find a nearby ticket machine, get a receipt after you pay, and put it visible from your windshield.

As you probably know, European traffic signaling rely much more on pictures then text, so you should be fine.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Thank you! :cheers:

Even a place where I could read up briefly on the rules of the road. Is whatever basic driving rules guide is issued for learner drivers available on line? Because I don't know what I don't know, as the saying goes.


----------



## riiga

^^ Priority signs (the yellow diamond sign) is not a warning sign like American black and yellow diamond signs, but tells you that you are on a road where you have priority and entering traffic yields. In other cases, priority to the right applies (rural intersections, etc). 

Round blue signs indicate mandatory movements and tells you which direction(s) you may go. In America the approach is usually the other way around, with non-allowed directions posted as prohibited instead.


----------



## riiga

https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation/driving-europe-tips perhaps?


----------



## Penn's Woods

I knew that site (Rick Steves does good TV travel shows, focusing on Europe, from the consumer's point of view) and was actually browsing through it the other night for info on things like phones. But I hadn't looked at the driving page yet.

So thanks. :cheers:

I still have the rest of June to figure it all out; driving rules are today's obsession; tomorrow it'll be something else.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Sunset tonight in Amsterdam at 22:03. (I've now got A'dam, Brussels and Paris set iny weather app.). I'm jealous of northern Europe this time of year. Latest sunset we get is about 20:35.


----------



## Eulanthe

Alex_ZR said:


> He was driving 150 km/h on a motorway where 120 km/h is allowed.


Wow, and the fine was only 2500 dinars?

I was fined 3000 for driving without lights on 4 years ago, but a spot of "negotiation" got that down to 10 Euro without any questions. It did involve being absolutely cheeky and explaining in Polish that it was better for both of us for him to take the money and go away rather than waste his and my time with the paperwork. 

Montenegro on the other hand was much more straightforward - "here's 10 Euro, is everything ok?". 

Can't stand people complaining when they actually have done something wrong though. That guy was just a typical American ass - fair enough, he couldn't read the paperwork, but once it was explained in English - why moan?


----------



## riiga

Penn's Woods said:


> Sunset tonight in Amsterdam at 22:03. (I've now got A'dam, Brussels and Paris set iny weather app.). I'm jealous of northern Europe this time of year. Latest sunset we get is about 20:35.


Quite the difference indeed. Here it doesn't get properly dark, but at least the sun sets unlike in the far north.









(from here)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Eulanthe said:


> Can't stand people complaining when they actually have done something wrong though. That guy was just a typical American ass - fair enough, he couldn't read the paperwork, but once it was explained in English - why moan?


Perhaps he was just typical of asses, American or otherwise....


----------



## Verso

Suburbanist said:


> Major concerns regarding North American driving and signs compared to Europe are:
> 
> - the fact prohibition signs (on a white circle with red border) don't have a cross over it *(like a left arrow sign on such circle means no left turn)*


Bad example, arrows are actually crossed out.


----------



## bigic

> - beware of paid parking, even in small cities: instead of meters near each spot, you often need to find a nearby ticket machine, get a receipt after you pay, and put it visible from your windshield.


In Serbia you can also pay by SMS, but you need a Serbian phone number, and, of course, enough credit. Parking tickets are purchased at kiosks.


----------



## keokiracer

^^ Same is also possible in The Netherlands in most cities.


Suburbanist said:


> - beware of paid parking, even in small cities: instead of meters near each spot, you often need to find a nearby ticket machine, get a receipt after you pay, and put it visible from your windshield.


Fun fact: in The Netherlands - when you follow the law to the letter - you actually need a receipt from the ticket machine _before_ you park your car in a paid parking spot.
It's not enforced at all though so you can happily park your car and then get the receipt and then put it behind your windshield.


----------



## x-type

Suburbanist said:


> This Wikipedia page is a good start.
> 
> Major concerns regarding North American driving and signs compared to Europe are:
> 
> - the principle of blank speed limits withing official urban areas (marked with a city/town name when you enter, and the same crossed diagonally when you exit)
> 
> - no right turn on red light
> 
> - transit (bus, bus+ taxi) only lanes - they are always marked but it can be tricky
> 
> - the fact prohibition signs (on a white circle with red border) don't have a cross over it (like a left arrow sign on such circle means no left turn)
> 
> - "Speed Zones" marked when you enter them (like Zone 30 in cities or Zone 60 in back country roads) and when you exit them
> 
> - beware of paid parking, even in small cities: instead of meters near each spot, you often need to find a nearby ticket machine, get a receipt after you pay, and put it visible from your windshield.
> 
> As you probably know, European traffic signaling rely much more on pictures then text, so you should be fine.


-manual transmission :troll:


----------



## MichiH

^^ Many rental cars have automatic transmission. You can usually select your preference. In addition, the share of automatic transmissions is increasing in Europe.


----------



## Verso

After I bought Egyptian potatoes last month, this time I bought Egyptian grapes. Man, it's the best grapes I've ever had.


----------



## x-type

yesterday i was driving along A3 during the sunset around 21h. obviously it's the time when those bastards go to feed themselves, or mate, or whatever. but there were zillions of them. i stopped each 80km to wash my windshield manually, and other drivers had the same problems too.


----------



## Verso

BJ? :troll:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I had the same problem in Spain, my car looked like that as well. Especially when crossing the Ebro delta, it was like driving through rain. The wiper washer fluid is useless, this time of the year they immediately burn into the windshield on impact. So you have to pull over and clean it manually.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> BJ? :troll:


we have the coolest plate city code ever  (together with that Slovakian BJ)


----------



## MichiH

My car regularly looks like that. The same auto brand and color but different model btw...


----------



## Broccolli

I had the same problem yesterday. I drove my car to a Car-wash, for the same bug related reasons - i was not able to clean my windshield any more . But when i came home ,the car was again all covered with those bugs, mosquitoes, wasps..you name it..what a waste of money that was..


----------



## x-type

the bad thing is when you leave those dead bugs to be roasted on the sun. then you cannot wash them easily. this went down more or less okay because i went to carwash immidiately in the morning.

btw, interesting thing to me about it is when i am driving, killing the bugs, and then when i drive beside flowering rapeseed field, bugs intestinals are yellow


----------



## hofburg

i think the light attracts them in the night.


----------



## hofburg

those insects, you would expect them to evolve over all those years of artificial lights, but no they remain dumb.

www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/why-are-bugs-attracted-light


----------



## MichiH

hofburg said:


> i think the light attracts them in the night.


I usually catch them in broad daylight!


----------



## italystf

Here it's the map of motorways that has TUTOR currently:
https://www.autostrade.it/controllo-della-velocita/tutor
Probably around half of the network has it.
However this map is very poorly made and some motorways are missing and it's not clear if they have TUTOR or not.
EDIT: It was just installed on A16. http://www.ilmattino.it/AVELLINO/a1...della-morte-in-campania/notizie/1409112.shtml


----------



## Kanadzie

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Ubiquitous? In Autostrade per l'Italia stretches, maybe. Try A7, or A21 near Brescia: they're racetracks.


As they should be. It's _ITALY _:lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

TUTOR is a good safety enforcement technology. Much better than static speed traps on highways.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

MichiH said:


> No, it's "Otto-Normalverbraucher" (Otto common consumer). "average Joe" would be "durchschnittlicher Josef" or "durchschnittlicher Sepp". "Sepp" sounds similar to "Depp" which means "fool", "dork", "moron", "shmoe", "douchebag",... which would be suitable too
> 
> Sorry for OT.





Kanadzie said:


> ^^ do they say ,,durschnittser Hans" in D? :lol:
> 
> But surely this can be easy-fix, just don't let them use certain social services (e.g. anything that pays money) until, say been established in country for 24, 48 or 60 months
> 
> heck I would be surprised if they even let these people claim such money, don't they have no paperworks? I think if you jumped the fence into USA and then asked for welfare and gave Mexican passport, they would deport you :lol:





ElviS77 said:


> ^^
> 
> Sorry, more OT: In Sweden he's still called Medel-Svensson (Average Svensson). In Norway, he's Ola Nordmann, which I find marginally more interesting. "Ola" is, of course, a traditional Norwegian name, and "Nordmann" means Norwegian. However, Norman is also a fairly common surname...


He's called Zé Povinho in Portugal, more of a personification of Portugal though.


----------



## italystf

In Italian we use "Mario Rossi", as Mario is a very common Italian male first name, and Rossi a very common surname.


----------



## MichiH

DanielFigFoz said:


> He's called Zé Povinho in Portugal, more of a personification of Portugal though.


I don't think so. There are two different kind:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_Joe, e.g. Average Joe (US), Otto Normalverbraucher (DE), Mario Rossi (IT) or Manuel Dos Santos (PT)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_personification, e.g. Uncle Sam (US), Deutscher Michel (DE), Italia Turrita (IT) or Zé Povinho (PT)


----------



## volodaaaa

The best article I've ever seen on wikipedia  I've never known that Average Joe has so many friends/identities.


----------



## Suburbanist

Once a friend of many mistook Uncle Tom for Uncle Sam and some American classmates were not happy about that at all.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

MichiH said:


> I don't think so. There are two different kind:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_Joe, e.g. Average Joe (US), Otto Normalverbraucher (DE), Mario Rossi (IT) or Manuel Dos Santos (PT)
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_personification, e.g. Uncle Sam (US), Deutscher Michel (DE), Italia Turrita (IT) or Zé Povinho (PT)


Zé Povinho is used in that way too I think, I have heard people call other people Zé Povinho in the sense that they think the person is too average and mediocre.


----------



## volodaaaa

They were even offering licence plates with red band and German font :lol:


----------



## italystf

^^ It happened at least of couple of times that someone got arrested after showing an, obviously fake, "Free Territory of Trieste" ID to police officers. :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

I would not like to bring up some politics, but Europe is pretty much screwed up these days:
- Hungry Putin with new weapons,
- US with weapons in Eastern EU
- Brexit
- Grexit
- Immigrants and (possibly) the collapse of Schengen
- Unrest in Macedonia

Best time to look up some plan B in New Zealand or Australia.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Let's go to Canada. They have plenty of space.


----------



## winnipeg

volodaaaa said:


> I would not like to bring up some politics, but Europe is pretty much screwed up these days:
> - Hungry Putin with new weapons,
> - US with weapons in Eastern EU
> - Brexit
> - Grexit
> - Immigrants and (possibly) the collapse of Schengen
> - Unrest in Macedonia
> 
> Best time to look up some plan B in New Zealand or Australia.


The weapons of US in estern Europe are nothing. The biggest threat from US is TAFTA, then Europe will be completly destroyed and will serve the only interest of US, we will have to forget many of our laws who protects us like in food, agriculture for example... hno:

But this brings us to the most important point about Europe. It doesn't meant to enhance life of the UE citizens, EU was only about business and created for the need of big corporations (even Schengen)... so TAFTA is just the step foward....

Despite some improvments dues to Europe, peoples in Europe (especially in western Europe) probably can't see in what Europe belongs to them and think now that they could be in a better situation without Euro or even further, without Europe! 


I personaly consider that Europe brings me some opportunities (maybe even more), but I understand the peoples who stayed in their countries and haven't see in what they are supposed to live better... also I feel sad to see that big corporations own our countries through Europe and almost dictate their own laws... hno:


----------



## winnipeg

ChrisZwolle said:


> Let's go to Canada. They have plenty of space.


Québec is a great place to live!


----------



## Kanadzie

winnipeg said:


> The weapons of US in estern Europe are nothing. The biggest threat from US is TAFTA, then Europe will be completly destroyed and will serve the only interest of US, we will have to forget many of our laws who protects us like in food, agriculture for example... hno:
> 
> But this brings us to the most important point about Europe. It doesn't meant to enhance life of the UE citizens, EU was only about business and created for the need of big corporations (even Schengen)... so TAFTA is just the step foward....
> 
> Despite some improvments dues to Europe, peoples in Europe (especially in western Europe) probably can't see in what Europe belongs to them and think now that they could be in a better situation without Euro or even further, without Europe!
> 
> 
> I personaly consider that Europe brings me some opportunities (maybe even more), but I understand the peoples who stayed in their countries and haven't see in what they are supposed to live better... also I feel sad to see that big corporations own our countries through Europe and almost dictate their own laws... hno:


I always wonder these nationalistic urges for trivial things like regulations

Example, food-safety laws US vs EU
There are many people in USA and they all eat food, and there is no problem
There are many people in EU and they all eat food, and there are no problems.

or automobile safety standards, there are differences. But...
In EU people drive cars to ECE standard and there are no issues
in USA people drive cars to FMVSS standards and there are no issues

Except - if you are from Europe and want to move to USA, can you take your car? Illegal, doesn't meet regulations !

Clearly both regulatory regimes are preventing danger to public and are reasonably effective. It isn't like we are saying, replace EU regulations with Ugandan regulations :lol:

In short, it seems Europeans all complaining about TTIP because evil American corporations will steal all the jobs and poison the food supply with Coca-Cola
And Americans are all complaining about TTIP because evil European corporations will steal all the jobs and poison the food supply with menacing materials like French wine :bash: (I ignore Austrian wine that is poison )

It seems, to take a broad view of the situation that both arguments are political and essentially BS and we can sleep well instead


----------



## volodaaaa

I think EU is perfect project, but... the current politicians are bad. We always hear things like: "be transparent!", "be democratic!", "be politically correct". But the fun fact is, the EU itselft is neither transparent nor democratic.

Look at the arrangement. Most of power is held by representatives who are not directly elected. I think there should be employed a referendum in some questions. It is not, or if yes, the circumstances are really disputable (referendums repeating until the "right" answer is not achieved). I also don't like the overly political correctness. 

In US: If a burglar is killed by owner of a house he intended to robe, the owner is considered brave.

In EU: the owner is being sued and given even higher punishment than the burglar would have been given. And we are not talking about the possibility the burglar was different race, nationality or religiosity.

These are things I hate. Why is not EU as much simplier as it could be? EU elections seems to be extremely unpopular and in the last elections, only radical losers made it to parliament. Why not to join EU elections with national (e.g. portion of national government will take over EU PM competences)? It is extremely stupid to have different forces in EU and on national level. It has nothing to do with democracy, it is just undesirable consequence of low turnout.

It is shame. Sometimes I have feeling the responsible politicians do everything to make Europe a worse place.


----------



## winnipeg

Kanadzie said:


> I always wonder these nationalistic urges for trivial things like regulations
> 
> Example, food-safety laws US vs EU
> There are many people in USA and they all eat food, and there is no problem
> There are many people in EU and they all eat food, and there are no problems.


And whe are all living "_in the best of possible worlds_" 

There is no problems because you choose to not see them. hno:

For example GMOs like they are everywhere in the US are a big safety problem for us, this is why most of our countries are still prohibit them from been cultivated in Europe, which I believe is great as long as we still don't know what are the long term effect of these GMOs on our organism and on the biodiversity. But whe know that most of these GMOs are resistant to weedkiller and increases their use.... hno:

Same concern about hormone raised beef and chicken treated with chlorine which could be harmfull for us and forbiden for this reason, at the opposite of the US who allow the food industrials companies to do such things without beeing sure of their real impact... hno:

And when you see the weight of such companies like Monsanto and all the US chemical, agricultural or food companies, I don't see how a standardization of the rules could go in our European point of view, they will surely allow companies to do almost whatever they want! This is the same about majors topics such pesticides, they will change our regulations on this topic too, so we could use more of them...

So no, I don't share your point of view on this point!





Kanadzie said:


> or automobile safety standards, there are differences. But...
> In EU people drive cars to ECE standard and there are no issues
> in USA people drive cars to FMVSS standards and there are no issues
> 
> Except - if you are from Europe and want to move to USA, can you take your car? Illegal, doesn't meet regulations !
> 
> Clearly both regulatory regimes are preventing danger to public and are reasonably effective. It isn't like we are saying, replace EU regulations with Ugandan regulations :lol:
> 
> In short, it seems Europeans all complaining about TTIP because evil American corporations will steal all the jobs and poison the food supply with Coca-Cola
> And Americans are all complaining about TTIP because evil European corporations will steal all the jobs and poison the food supply with menacing materials like French wine :bash: (I ignore Austrian wine that is poison )
> 
> It seems, to take a broad view of the situation that both arguments are political and essentially BS and we can sleep well instead


For car safety, I don't know this precise topic, so I have nothing to say about it...

But about car, in the last years, EU put much pressure on car manufacturers to lower the CO2 emissions of their cars so we could drive more environmental-friendly cars as we must make efforts against global warming. Obviously most of the US states don't share this point of view...

So in this situation what choice they could make?


You're right, there is no need to be feared on such point like jobs.... 


And one last point. If TAFTA is such a good thing for every people of our countries, why all the talks EU and US are having now are totaly secret and all the documents about TAFTA are well kept in secured places and nobody is allowed to take notes about them. Not a great example of transparency, right?

But I'm still thinking that you have a very candid point of view, for example, I consider (due to the history and news) that politics don't always takes the best solution for their peoples, sometimes they have bigger considerations like what big companies what to do to make more money/to increase their power... This is not a fiction, it's just reality as it is when we choose to not close our eyes...


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ Haha, I love Voltaire, even though I'm from the few arpents of snow 

I think GMO issue is overblown in Europe, there isn't any logic behind. Anyhow, we know the long-term effects, in America we've been eating that 20 - 30 years already and no problem 
If there was some scientific logic behind the fear, e.g. a particular GMO which causes the vegetable to have large quantity of chemical X and chemical X is carcinogenic, ah it makes sense.
But most GMO is just adding some anti-bug feature from another edible plant to some other edible plant, so that the farmer doesn't need to spray so much pesticide. 

US states actually have been very aggressive on car emissions. Especially on exhaust pollution (generally always much stricter than Europe, but now very similar) and they control CO2 also (via fuel-economy rules). But the US norm for CO2 isn't so hard as the European (less crazy IMO )


----------



## hofburg

I don't know why there should even exist GMO in the first place. people have been eating normal plants for years and there were no problems with that.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ Same in the Netherlands today. 14 degrees and rainy.
> 
> On the other hand, the last time when it was 30 degrees early June people complained a lot due to the humidity.


I went to visit my parents. Put on my shorts, shirts and sandals. Looked like crazy summer-fool when I was returning back home. 16°C and heavy rain.


----------



## cinxxx

keokiracer said:


> I never complain about cold weather


You cold people, I bet even you're heart is cold! 
Anyway, I can handle 15°C, but please at least give me some sun. I hate November style weather...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This spring was also quite windy. I like to cycle, but the fun is off once it gets over 3 beaufort (20 km/h). I had many days where the headwind part of the trip was annoying. It's a good workout, but I prefer to cycle fast in low winds than cycle slow into a strong headwind.


----------



## keokiracer

cinxxx said:


> You cold people, I bet even you're heart is cold!
> Anyway, I can handle 15°C, but please at least give me some sun. I hate November style weather...


I'm fine with weather as long as it's not above 25-30 degrees (Celsius of course). 

Basically as long as its not raining an awful lot I don't mind. Which is something Mother Nature is giving me since we're having one of the dryest years ever,so Mother Nature might have gone a bit overboard with that


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> Map of Asia according to "The Guardian"
> Notice the Iranian city of Doha :lol:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...unnel-under-mount-everest-state-media-reports


:rofl: BTW part of that proposed extension is already built as the railroad now extends to Shigatse.


ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ Same in the Netherlands today. 14 degrees and rainy.
> 
> On the other hand, the last time when it was 30 degrees early June people complained a lot due to the humidity.


Not here . However, we had a unusual 1 1/2 weeks where the weather was quite stormy.


ChrisZwolle said:


> This spring was also quite windy. I like to cycle, but the fun is off once it gets over 3 beaufort (20 km/h). I had many days where the headwind part of the trip was annoying. It's a good workout, but I prefer to cycle fast in low winds than cycle slow into a strong headwind.


In the past week I went 12 Beaufort (hurricane-force!) off the Mexican coast . The NHC named a hurricane after me, and as I like to track those systems I did so.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> I always wonder these nationalistic urges for trivial things like regulations
> 
> Example, food-safety laws US vs EU
> There are many people in USA and they all eat food, and there is no problem
> There are many people in EU and they all eat food, and there are no problems.
> 
> or automobile safety standards, there are differences. But...
> In EU people drive cars to ECE standard and there are no issues
> in USA people drive cars to FMVSS standards and there are no issues
> 
> Except - if you are from Europe and want to move to USA, can you take your car? Illegal, doesn't meet regulations !
> 
> Clearly both regulatory regimes are preventing danger to public and are reasonably effective. It isn't like we are saying, replace EU regulations with Ugandan regulations :lol:
> 
> In short, it seems Europeans all complaining about TTIP because evil American corporations will steal all the jobs and poison the food supply with Coca-Cola
> And Americans are all complaining about TTIP because evil European corporations will steal all the jobs and poison the food supply with menacing materials like French wine :bash: (I ignore Austrian wine that is poison )
> 
> It seems, to take a broad view of the situation that both arguments are political and essentially BS and we can sleep well instead


Personally, I'm all for banning European meat in North America until they can tell the difference over there between cows and horses.... (I'm joking, but seriously: assuming that American food is by definition bad and European food is by definition good is demonstrably erroneous and therefore stupid.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

winnipeg said:


> And whe are all living "_in the best of possible worlds_"
> 
> There is no problems because you choose to not see them. hno:
> 
> For example GMOs like they are everywhere in the US are a big safety problem for us, this is why most of our countries are still prohibit them from been cultivated in Europe, which I believe is great as long as we still don't know what are the long term effect of these GMOs on our organism and on the biodiversity. But whe know that most of these GMOs are resistant to weedkiller and increases their use.... hno:
> 
> Same concern about hormone raised beef and chicken treated with chlorine which could be harmfull for us and forbiden for this reason, at the opposite of the US who allow the food industrials companies to do such things without beeing sure of their real impact... hno:


Like I said, horsemeat labeled as beef. We didn't do that to you.




winnipeg said:


> And whe are all living "_in the best of possible worlds_"
> 
> For car safety, I don't know this precise topic, so I have nothing to say about it...
> 
> But about car, in the last years, EU put much pressure on car manufacturers to lower the CO2 emissions of their cars so we could drive more environmental-friendly cars as we must make efforts against global warming. Obviously most of the US states don't share this point of view...
> 
> So in this situation what choice they could make?


We adopted unleaded years before you did, and we don't spend every weekend in July pumping diesel fumes into the air above the Rhône valley.

The notion that Europe is green is ridiculous. To a lot of us, it looks overcrowded and dirty. I don't think a lot of Americans go to Europe to enjoy nature. We've got enough of it here. It's laudable that Europe is trying hard to be green, but you'd fallen so far you need it.


----------



## cinxxx

keokiracer said:


> I'm fine with weather as long as it's not above 25-30 degrees (Celsius of course).
> 
> Basically as long as its not raining an awful lot I don't mind. Which is something Mother Nature is giving me since we're having one of the dryest years ever,so Mother Nature might have gone a bit overboard with that


I'm fine with weather as long as it is above 25°C and sunny :lol:


----------



## Kanadzie

Penn's Woods said:


> Personally, I'm all for banning European meat in North America until they can tell the difference over there between cows and horses.... (I'm joking, but seriously: assuming that American food is by definition bad and European food is by definition good is demonstrably erroneous and therefore stupid.)


In Quebec horsemeat is expensive and a delicacy, served only in the finest / avantgarde restaurants, I was always wondering why people in Europe were so up in arms, I would have stayed quiet and bought as much as possible :lol::lol:


----------



## keokiracer

Penn's Woods said:


> We adopted unleaded years before you did, and we don't spend every weekend in July pumping diesel fumes into the air above the Rhône valley.


You do that every day of the year with those gas-guzzling pick-up trucks and SUVs.

If there's one thing US cars/trucks are not it's efficient.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ in fuel consumption sure, but you don't see cars blowing smoke in the US like in Europe...


----------



## keokiracer

I don't know what cars blowing smoke you're talking about cause you only see that stuff in really old cars or when it's really fvcking cold.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ exactly
In America you never even see that on old cars 
But it is real that US has always had much stricter regulation of automobile pollution (HC, CO, NOx, particulates) in strict (grams/km) than Europe, even that they had such rules well before. Example catalyst became common in West Europe in early 1990's, in US it was _1975_ :lol: Fuel injection became common in the US well in advance of Europe, even on European-made cars that still had carburettor in home market.
Only now the EURO V / EURO VI standards have become broadly similar to the US Tier II / Tier III levels...


----------



## italystf

Kanadzie said:


> In Quebec horsemeat is expensive and a delicacy, served only in the finest / avantgarde restaurants, I was always wondering why people in Europe were so up in arms, I would have stayed quiet and bought as much as possible :lol::lol:


In Europe, except UK, consumption of horsemeat is socially acceptable, and it's commonly available on the market.
However it's fair that a product is labelled for what is it. It's not just a matter of horse meat, also selling pork labelled as beef or Greek wine labelled as Italian would be cheating.


Kanadzie said:


> in fuel consumption sure, but you don't see cars blowing smoke in the US like in Europe...


I don't think fuel consumtion is the biggest issue for Americans, considering their very low fuel prices, for a country with high living standards.


----------



## x-type

Kanadzie said:


> In Quebec horsemeat is expensive and a delicacy, served only in the finest / avantgarde restaurants, I was always wondering why people in Europe were so up in arms, I would have stayed quiet and bought as much as possible :lol::lol:


i just wanted to say the same 


italystf said:


> It's not just a matter of horse meat, also selling pork labelled as beef or Greek wine labelled as Italian would be cheating.


it actually happens. european market is flooded with Southafrican and Australian wines produced in France.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A Dutch labor union is going to sue a Dutch transport company for paying foreign drivers far too low salaries. According to the union, they pay Lithuanian and Romanian drivers € 220 per month.

What Lithuanian driver wants to have such a job? According to Statistics Lithuania the average monthly earning in the country is near € 700 in the private sector. And truckers often have a relatively high income compared to workers with similar education, because they work longer hours. Why work for a Dutch company that pays 70% lower salaries than in Lithuania?


----------



## bogdymol

Maybe 220 E is just the basic salary, but they get more money every month from bonuses or black money. The drivers are happy when at the end of the month the total money they get is a decent amount, and they don't care how they are recorded on paper.


----------



## winnipeg

Penn's Woods said:


> Like I said, horsemeat labeled as beef. We didn't do that to you.


You should show me where I said that the european food safety model is ideal without problems, I didn't said that, and it's clearly not the case. You're right, it's a shame. But I truely think that this is maybe what happens when we sadly follow what americans do, transforming the food industry into a massive business where anyone could trade food as if it would be a simple raw material like steal and other.... and like the sh*tty products (sorry but it is the case) who have used this horse meat in their products (ready meals and abominations like this that we got too much in ours supermarkets now hno: ), I think that this kind of aliments "ready to eat" who use the cheapest products available on the market appeared firstly in US and it is invading Europe now... hno:

And US is the master of cheap industrial food with plenty of additives and artificial coupounds, most of the safety food problems we've got now are coming from the fact that industrials (most of them are US corporations) want to sell the same king of products in Europe. This is why I truely believe that with TAFTA, US industrials will got the possibility to go further and the situation of food safety in Europe will be way way worst than now... hno: hno:





Penn's Woods said:


> We adopted unleaded years before you did, and we don't spend every weekend in July pumping diesel fumes into the air above the Rhône valley.
> 
> The notion that Europe is green is ridiculous. To a lot of us, it looks overcrowded and dirty. I don't think a lot of Americans go to Europe to enjoy nature. We've got enough of it here. It's laudable that Europe is trying hard to be green, but you'd fallen so far you need it.


Yes, you're right, during decades whe choosed fuel economies instead of safety/a cleaner air, and it's a big error who is corrected since 2010' with particle filters who are mandatory on new cars, and many European governments are now stopping to give lower taxes on diesel (because it was considered cleaner due of it's lower consumption...).

I can say the same of big US cities, I have bad memories about NY or LA for example who are not really a great example of cleaness, just like our European capitals... But just like in the US, if you go outside these big cities, there is not realy such pollution....

Oh that's another discussion here !  In US you have some wonderfull parks, but there is many things that are way better in Europe, and you should change your mind about the nature in Europe : we have some wonderfull mountains like Alps or Pyrénées for example, we have some great coast like soutern France (eg : the Corse island is a pearl of nature, a must do!!) or Spain or Italy or even Croatia, Croatia who got some magnificient parks who are equivalent or exceed US parks, in the northern Europe you can find the wonderful Fjords in Norway, etc......


----------



## winnipeg

italystf said:


> In Europe, except UK, consumption of horsemeat is socially acceptable, and it's commonly available on the market.
> However it's fair that a product is labelled for what is it. It's not just a matter of horse meat, also selling pork labelled as beef or Greek wine labelled as Italian would be cheating.


The fact is that this horsemeat was coming from estern Europe where horses are used for their work/to travel. Some of them has been treated with medications who forbidden them to be used for human consumption because these drugs stay in the horse meat and are pottentialy dangerous for us... hno:



italystf said:


> I don't think fuel consumtion is the biggest issue for Americans, considering their very low fuel prices, for a country with high living standards.


As long as US stay dependant to gas as they are now (and whe are too), it will push them to doo some poor choices with big environmental problems like shal gas (or oilsands for Canada), probably that the only good idea for them is to have the cheapest possible energy, without thinking about the consequencies... hno:

I think that the fact that we have more expensive energy in Europe push us to make more economies in the way we use them, and after all this is certainly the simpliest solution to reduce pollution in a short term view.


----------



## MichiH

winnipeg said:


> I think that the fact that we have more *expensive energy in Europe* push us to make more economies in the way we use them, and after all this is certainly the *simpliest solution to reduce pollution* in a short term view.


What kind of "energy" are you talking about, nuclear power, wind power, solar energy, tidal energy, coal, gas,...?


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> Germany and Italy are all anti-nuclear, but very happy to buy peak loads or even continuous supplies from France, which relies heavily on nuclear energy.


At least if accidents occur, they're not in our territory...


----------



## Verso

winnipeg said:


> Yes.  Oh really nice!
> 
> So this region has no secret to you!


The biggest secret was how to get to Ronchamp (no GPS back then). We were driving in and around Belfort like crazy. :lol:

And we went to Saut du Doubs by boat and there was a lady yodeling on the way there. 

Oh, and once I drove here at night and almost drove straight on the railway tracks, because I thought those signs/signals in the back were standing on the road.


----------



## winnipeg

Verso said:


> The biggest secret was how to get to Ronchamp (no GPS back then). We were driving in and around Belfort like crazy. :lol:
> 
> And we went to Saut du Doubs by boat and there was a lady yodeling on the way there.
> 
> Oh, and once I drove here at night and almost drove straight on the railway tracks, because I thought those signs/signals in the back were standing on the road.


Nice! :lol: :lol:

Yes and it's a bit less funny now with GPS, there no more adventure, no more asking to locals, etc... 

I see! :lol:


----------



## Verso

It can be funny if GPS takes you somewhere you didn't plan to go. :lol:


----------



## Kanadzie

x-type said:


> now you opened nice idea to think about - what was the oldest car that you drove? i'll go with 1977 Renault 4


I'm surprised how much difficulty I have to answer this question :lol:
I think... it would be my 1976 Pontiac Firebird (6.55 litre engine :cheers
I hope to drive it again when its even older (it's sitting in a field now)

I sort-of had a 1972 Jeepster Commando when I was a kid but I don't think I ever drove it...


----------



## DanielFigFoz

My cousin's Corsa/Nova that I'm driving here is from 1991.


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> At least if accidents occur, they're not in our territory...


But here is the thing - the alternative to nuclear is often burning coal, or gas, and that guarantees pollution and a marginal increase on a sleuth of health problems. 

Nuclear accidents can be catastrophic, but their statistical probability per MHw produced is very small.

The largest civilian accident in Italy was even on a green energy facility (a hydro power dam)...

Italy could do well with a handful of nuclear power plants. Just put them not extremely close to major cities and use all the latest seismic protection available.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> But here is the thing - the alternative to nuclear is often burning coal, or gas, and that guarantees pollution and a marginal increase on a sleuth of health problems.
> 
> Nuclear accidents can be catastrophic, but their statistical probability per MHw produced is very small.
> 
> The largest civilian accident in Italy was even on a green energy facility (a hydro power dam)...
> 
> Italy could do well with a handful of nuclear power plants. Just put them not extremely close to major cities and use all the latest seismic protection available.


You seem to forget the problem of radioactive waste (used nuclear fuel). It remains radioactive for millennia and there's no known technology to destroy it or make it harmless. The only way is to bury radioactive waste in sealed containers, but there's always a risk of leakage.
Considering mafia's role in illegal waste disposal, I wouldn't feel safe with nuclear plants in Italy (I'm not very safe anyway, with Krsko at 200km).


----------



## Suburbanist

italystf said:


> You seem to forget the problem of radioactive waste (used nuclear fuel). It remains radioactive for millennia and there's no known technology to destroy it or make it harmless. The only way is to bury radioactive waste in sealed containers, but there's always a risk of leakage.
> Considering mafia's role in illegal waste disposal, I wouldn't feel safe with nuclear plants in Italy (I'm not very safe anyway, with Krsko at 200km).


Coal extraction leaves gigantic scars on the territory. One single open-pit coal mine can accommodate the entire nuclear waste of Europe generated over a century with 10x more reactros than now. 

Scandinavia and Iceland have plenty of uninhabited land and I'm sure they would be able to spare some islands for an European Nuclear Storage Facility.

Italy could build a nuclear facility in one of the islands, what about Pantelleria for instance?


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ yes but dumping the waste in a coal mine would let water leach out the minerals and become environmental disaster.
But the plans for storing the material in hard rock formations look sound (Yucca mountain (failed), or Finland etc)

To be honest we should use EU integration to advantage and ship all nuclear waste to Finland for storage, and then the Finns can put water pipes around the waste to keep the saunas warm 



italystf said:


> You seem to forget the problem of radioactive waste (used nuclear fuel). It remains radioactive for millennia and there's no known technology to destroy it or make it harmless. The only way is to bury radioactive waste in sealed containers, but there's always a risk of leakage.
> Considering mafia's role in illegal waste disposal, I wouldn't feel safe with nuclear plants in Italy (I'm not very safe anyway, with Krsko at 200km).


This is actually pretty fixable, you can just run the reactor in a "breeding" mode that puts out more fuel than it consumes
The worry is that it produces lots of plutonium that can be used for bombs by corrupt regimes
Then again I think France is doing something similar in reprocessing spent fuel.

In any event the radioactive waste is quite small. I think virtually all that has been created is still staying inside the power plant where it was generated, so far. It isn't a large volume of material.


----------



## MichiH

winnipeg said:


> In France I come from Franche-comté, the region where Peugeot was born. My dad worked few years in a Peugeot factory, and in my family I had an engineer who worked at Peugeot, and has participated to the development of diesel engines (which is kind of funny when you see what we talked about right before on this topic  )


I work at the world's largest supplier of automotive components, mainly (diesel) engines .


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Scandinavia and Iceland have plenty of uninhabited land and I'm sure they would be able to spare some islands for an European Nuclear Storage Facility.
> 
> Italy could build a nuclear facility in one of the islands, what about Pantelleria for instance?


And they would accept our toxic waste for sure...:nuts:
If a area in unhabitated, it doesn't mean that it hasn't an environmental value. And an accidental radioactive leakage can contaminate the environment for over 1000km (like Chernobyl), not to mention if radioactive stuff flows into the sea (like it may happens in an island).


----------



## Suburbanist

A funny 1940s Dutch video about enforcing traffic laws in an urban environment


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ oh la-la meneer :lol:


----------



## winnipeg

Kanadzie said:


> This is actually pretty fixable, you can just run the reactor in a "breeding" mode that puts out more fuel than it consumes
> The worry is that it produces lots of plutonium that can be used for bombs by corrupt regimes
> Then again I think France is doing something similar in reprocessing spent fuel.
> 
> In any event the radioactive waste is quite small. I think virtually all that has been created is still staying inside the power plant where it was generated, so far. It isn't a large volume of material.


Yes, I think that it's MOX : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOX_fuel


----------



## winnipeg

MichiH said:


> I work at the world's largest supplier of automotive components, mainly (diesel) engines .


Nice !


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> Italy could build a nuclear facility in one of the islands, what about Pantelleria for instance?


You serious? Italy's main business is tourism, and Pantelleria is a major summer holiday destination... 

In Italy we already have 4 decommisioned nuclear plants. To me, fission nuclear energy problems are far larger than its advantages...


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I went to the city pool today,was my first time in this year ,and i ended up with painfull burns...


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

x-type said:


> now you opened nice idea to think about - what was the oldest car that you drove? i'll go with 1977 Renault 4


When i was 4 years old by grandpa still had his 1988 Aleko.That car is actually very conformable.Now my grandpa drives Opel Astra H and when i compare them Aleko is still better. :lol:
:banana:


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ A fake French car will still be more comfortable than a real German


----------



## Kanadzie

I don't know... I feel the handicapped parking spaces are not efficiently utilised
There are so many, it is like we just fought WW II and lost :lol:

If someone who needs the space can't use because someone who doesn't need it used it, it is _very _bad. But if someone uses the space for a few minutes when otherwise would be empty, I can't see the problem...


----------



## winnipeg

But with this kind of "logic", peoples with no morale will use these spaces like a "normal" parking and there will be no more space for disabled people who needs it...

For me these places are fine, and as a non-disabled person, I consider that I can walk few meters more, this will not be too dificult for me... hno:


----------



## italystf

Disabled parking spaces should be scattered around the territory, in a way that a disabled would always have one close to his destination. Having 3 or 4 of them next each other makes no sense.
And of course, misuse of disable spaces is not justifiable. Doen't matter if nobody is using it at the moment, but it needs to be available as soon as someone needs it. Same for bus stops and spaces reserved to taxis, public official or emergency vehicles.


----------



## volodaaaa

winnipeg said:


> But with this kind of "logic", peoples with no morale will use these spaces like a "normal" parking and there will be no more space for disabled people who needs it...
> 
> For me these places are fine, and as a non-disabled person, I consider that I can walk few meters more, this will not be too dificult for me... hno:


Several times I have seen non-disabled drivers at parking spot designated for disabled people. Despite no marking, the driver indeed looked disabled - mentally.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I got another fine from France. € 45 for driving 91 in a 90 zone on a motorway...


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> I got another fine from France. € 45 for driving 91 in a 90 zone on a motorway...


The 3 % +- rule does not apply here?


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

kasiasmr said:


> Hi All,
> 
> I am doing project about new motorways, expressway sections and local roads/ bridges/ roundabouts in some countries, in :
> - Italy,
> - France,
> - Switzerland,
> - Austria,
> - Russia
> - Turkey.
> 
> I am searching for informations about roads which have been open to traffic since 2013 to present and new roads with “under construction” status which will be open in future.
> I don’t know any official web-pages about infrastructure in those countries so I would like to ask about your help to complete information about new roads with source link of project, pictures, approximate opening date to traffic and maps if it is possible to locate it. Any known information will be helpful.
> 
> Thanks in advance!


We have this thread:http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=110041814&postcount=1

It can help you little bit.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

volodaaaa said:


> The 3 % +- rule does not apply here?


They do calibrate their measurement for measurement errors, but they also send out fines from 1 km/h over the speed limit. The uncalibrated measured speed was 96 km/h. The minimum fine is € 45, whether you drive 1 km/h or 19 km/h over the speed limit.


----------



## Kanadzie

clearly, you should drive 18 km/h faster


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ And get 30 instead of 2 fines?  No thanks.

The amount of speed cameras along French roads is quite high. The Netherlands has reduced the amount of fixed speed cameras significantly (I don't think there's even one remaining on the motorway network), but they do have a lot of mobile checks.


----------



## cinxxx

ChrisZwolle said:


> I got another fine from France. € 45 for driving 91 in a 90 zone on a motorway...


I've never got a speeding ticket in Germany and I don't really obey the speed limit, usually i drive +10...20. But about France I heard from many people...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ I also haven't gotten a speeding ticket in the Netherlands for years. But 3 in France so far... Always for only 1 - 5 km/h over the limit.


----------



## winnipeg

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ And get 30 instead of 2 fines?  No thanks.
> 
> The amount of speed cameras along French roads is quite high. The Netherlands has reduced the amount of fixed speed cameras significantly (I don't think there's even one remaining on the motorway network), but they do have a lot of mobile checks.


And you should think that you also have the mobile mobile radars in France in addition to that : normal cars with cops inside who are inside the traffic and can catch you if you go over it too fast or even if you are coming too fast in face of that car... hno:

They looks like that : 



(The infrared flash (that you can't see) is hidden behind the plate of the car  )

We certainly have the highest level of repression in all over Europe and it gives us the real feeling that this is more to bring cash for our state than fight killing on the road (and the last statistics sadly seems to go in that way as the number of killed on road in France has been higher in the last months despite all this... hno: )


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> I got another fine from France. € 45 for driving 91 in a 90 zone on a motorway...





ChrisZwolle said:


> The amount of speed cameras along French roads is quite high. The Netherlands has reduced the amount of fixed speed cameras significantly (I don't think there's even one remaining on the motorway network), but they do have a lot of mobile checks.





ChrisZwolle said:


> I also haven't gotten a speeding ticket in the Netherlands for years. But 3 in France so far... Always for only 1 - 5 km/h over the limit.


Hm, I haven't seen many speed cameras in France. I think almost none at all. How long does it took until you got the fine? I drove there > 4 weeks ago, do you think I'm safe now? (I heard that it can take almost one year when it happened abroad, e.g. Italy). Well, I "sometimes" drove 10..20 over the limit...


----------



## bogdymol

I usually drive up to +10 km/h. I was in France in last year with my Romanian-registered car and I tried not to exceed the speed limit +5 km/h, as I saw there were a lot of speed cameras. Until now I haven't received anything at home.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ I got the last 3 fines (September & June) within 2 weeks. But perhaps there's no agreement with the German department of motor vehicles yet.

Most speed cameras are on state-owned roads and motorways. These tend to be randomly signed in advanced or not at all. Speed cameras on toll motorways are fewer in number and usually signposted in advance.


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> 4 nuclear plants:
> 
> 1- Latina (near Rome)
> 2- Garigliano (near Naples)
> 3- Trino Vercellese (near Turin)
> 4- Caorso (near Milan)


Germany decommissioned 28 reactors(!), 1 reactor will be closed by the end of June**. 8 are still in operation. 4 reactors are already demolished (2 of them in Lower Franconia which were experimental nuclear power stations only).

** also in Lower Franconia, estimated demolision costs: 1.2 billion €.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> Speed cameras on toll motorways are fewer in number and usually signposted in advance.


Ah, I almost exclusively drove on toll motorways. Hmmmmm, so I already paid


----------



## winnipeg

bogdymol said:


> I usually drive up to +10 km/h. I was in France in last year with my Romanian-registered car and I tried not to exceed the speed limit +5 km/h, as I saw there were a lot of speed cameras. Until now I haven't received anything at home.


Maybe it's harder for them to find you as romanians who are overspeeding in France should be very little (the most important are certainly the spanish an german drivers I think...) 

But the only europeans who are really "protected" against these radars are the dansih, english and irish (no collaboration with other europeans countries).


----------



## winnipeg

MichiH said:


> Ah, I almost exclusively drove on toll motorways. Hmmmmm, so I already paid


Yes you paid the private companies who own them and who stole our motorways! (France has lost 9 billion Euros by privitising the motorways due to our corrupted politicians... this is such a scandal. And now we are paying a very high price to use these motorways and the private companies who own it makes huge profit, bigger and bigger every year... hno: hno: )


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ I got the last 3 fines (September & June) within 2 weeks. But perhaps there's no agreement with the German department of motor vehicles yet.
> 
> Most speed cameras are on state-owned roads and motorways. These tend to be randomly signed in advanced or not at all. Speed cameras on toll motorways are fewer in number and usually signposted in advance.


Perhaps they like to target the yellow plates (GB, NL)


----------



## italystf

winnipeg said:


> But the only europeans who are really "protected" against these radars are the dansih, english and irish (no collaboration with other europeans countries).


How can it be legal? I though that a sort of cooperation between police forces was mandatory bu EU laws.
However, Garda Síochána (Irish police) used to send traffic fines abroad, especially to Poland. Or, at least, they tried to do that: :lol:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7899171.stm


----------



## winnipeg

italystf said:


> How can it be legal? I though that a sort of cooperation between police forces was mandatory bu EU laws.
> However, Garda Síochána (Irish police) used to send traffic fines abroad, especially to Poland. Or, at least, they tried to do that: :lol:
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7899171.stm


I don't know if it's really mandatory (UK has a big influence on UE and they can choose to not applying some measures like this I guess...). But for sure UK don't cooperate with other police forces (eg : an UK car in France won't receive fines from automatic radars  ).

:lol: :lol: Nice story!


----------



## Suburbanist

I don't know about you all, but cars I've driven with a GPS onboard almost always have a 5-10 km/h difference between speed shown on speedometer (even digital ones that display a speed) and actual speed measured by GPS (which is quite precise with 4 or more satellites locked in).

The car I found the most outrageous differences was an Alfa Romeo: needle exactly over 130km/h actually meant a real speed of 116-7km/h. I checked that on several occasions, different highways, and even different GPS devices. 

There are some differences on the odometer, but differences are rather low (less than 1%). 



winnipeg said:


> Yes you paid the private companies who own them and who stole our motorways! (France has lost 9 billion Euros by privitising the motorways due to our corrupted politicians... this is such a scandal. And now we are paying a very high price to use these motorways and the private companies who own it makes huge profit, bigger and bigger every year... hno: hno: )


How long are French concessions?

I find it extremely stupid to give out concessions in exchange of upfront money, it is always better to give them out for the lowest toll fare proposed.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I must say I'm really liking the 91 Corsa/Nova I'm driving, I like it's simplicity. I think I may well buy something like this to run around in in the year I'll spend in Corsica.


----------



## Kanadzie

Suburbanist said:


> I don't know about you all, but cars I've driven with a GPS onboard almost always have a 5-10 km/h difference between speed shown on speedometer (even digital ones that display a speed) and actual speed measured by GPS (which is quite precise with 4 or more satellites locked in).
> 
> The car I found the most outrageous differences was an Alfa Romeo: needle exactly over 130km/h actually meant a real speed of 116-7km/h. I checked that on several occasions, different highways, and even different GPS devices.
> 
> There are some differences on the odometer, but differences are rather low (less than 1%).
> .


If the difference in odometer is small and difference in speedometer is large, it means, the car is purposely designed to lie to you :lol:

I've driven many American cars that were spot on (well, +/- 1km/h, but that might be looking at 147,4 read by needle vs. 147,6 read by GPS)

European cars are really bad about this. I think because ECE norm requires speed to be displayed something like +10 % and -0%.


----------



## winnipeg

Suburbanist said:


> How long are French concessions?
> 
> I find it extremely stupid to give out concessions in exchange of upfront money, it is always better to give them out for the lowest toll fare proposed.


Concessions are for 50 to 60-70 years depending of the portion.

Yes, this is a very stupid choice and as only one man has pushed this privatisation (the guy who was prime minister 10 years ago) and he makes this more for the interest of friends/those private companies who own it now. And some recent serious reports has shown that worst of all, the government sold it too cheap, making a generous "gift" by selling them 9 billion Euros below the real price.... 



And now the price of toll increase even more than inflation, and the companies who manage the motorways are making up to 51% of margins... hno: Such a cash machine... hno:

Now the government is putting pressure to invest more in motorways... but this is certainly just words, nothing really concrete as they can't really do anything now... hno:


----------



## Suburbanist

50 years is too long. Ideally, concessions should ran for a maximum of 20-30 years.


----------



## MichiH

*Mapped travels*



CNGL said:


> By the way, the Clinched Highways thing is being resurrected from the AARoads forums. A sneak peak _(sic.)_: It may use travelmapping dot net as domain.


Hey, Rome wasn't built in a day! There's a prototype of the database on a different server but it seems that I've clinched almost 90% of the German Autobahn network meanwhile .

It's a layer on google maps with zoom feature. One can combine systems and regions, e.g.: http://www.teresco.org/~terescoj/tr...,DEU,ESP,FRA,HUN,ITA,LUX,NLD,POL,ROU&u=michih (please switch to satellite view, I think it looks better).
It's just a prototype of the database/map but the website itself is not yet implemented (the implementation of a prototype has recently been started: http://travelmapping.sammdot.ca/).

The total length of the network is incorrect because concurrent highways are not yet accounted for the calculation and many features are still missing (browser, stats, reporting,...).
You could contribute with programming skills. Please refer to aaroads.com/forum for more info.

Some users have already provided their data so that Jim Teresco can test his database code: http://www.teresco.org/~terescoj/travelmapping/logs/.
Up to now, Jim only wants to get list files of existing users with experience. He's willing to upload their log files (e.g. from bogdymol, Chris, cinx, spinoza,...) "_if they'd like to check it out._" "_Anything that doesn't look right is worth reporting._"

You can login on aaroads forum and sent a PM to Jim or sent a SSC PM to me. You'll get Jim's email address for sending your list file or to allow Jim using your list file from the existing cmap.m-plex.com data base.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I think it looks much better now, with the clinched highways drawn over Google Maps. The best thing is that you can see entire Europe and can zoom in and out as you wish.

My file from _cmap.m-plex.com_ data base is very outdated, but Jim can use it without problems for testing. You can PM me his e-mail address so I can send it to him.

I really wish this new database will work.


----------



## cinxxx

I will share my map too. Please provide me with his E-Mail


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Somebody is having a bad day  (today at a shopping mall parking lot near Tallinn):








Source:http://www.delfi.ee/news/paevauudis...d-uueks-koduks-meekarva-soiduauto?id=71788595


----------



## RipleyLV

WTF! Where did they came from?


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Bolzano/Bozen, Italy :cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

A dog's feeling has been always mystery to me. My fiancée was given her dog when she was 11. When she (the dog) was 5, the mother of my fiancée got pregnant and left to maternity leave for 4 years. When the maternity leave ended, me and my fiancée moved to our new apartment. The dog was 9 and was not used to be alone in apartment. It meant a problem for us as she was barking whole day when we was at school/work. Sometimes (when we knew we would be in school/work until late night) we take her (dog) to my parents and she completely fell in love with the cloth their sofa was made of.

Meanwhile our dog suffered from separation anxiety and she always moved to the room where we stayed. If we moved to the kitchen, the dog run fast to the kitchen. 

So, we have decided to buy her a lair made of the same material as my parents' sofa. I can believe it, but she stays in that lair with calm expression all day since. She is like "I don't care where you are, I am in my cosy den".


----------



## CNGL

cinxxx said:


> Greetings from Bolzano/Bozen, Italy :cheers:


Bolzano/Bozen/Bulsan/Bocen/Boceno/Bolzan/Bauzanum/Bocenas/Bulsaun/Bolzanu/Buzzanu :troll:. One of the lamest edit wars on Wikipedia involved this city.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

After 4 months with a lack of good summer / spring weather, people are ready for summer. But this? The record high in the Netherlands is 38,6°C. 

Forecast for 4 July:


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> But this?


Are Dutch like Germans? Always complaining about everything...........


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yep  Most Dutch are Germans if you go back long enough


----------



## keokiracer

I don't have to go far back to see I'm partially Belgian 

If you're new to The Netherlands: complaining is what we like to do, particularly about the weather. For me: <25 degrees and not rain and I'm good with it. Couldn't carre if it's 5 or 25 degrees. I really dislike hot weather so next week is gonna be a lot of 'fun'... :|


----------



## Verso

Shit, if it will be 38°C in NL, how much will be here? :dead:


----------



## MichiH

I compared Zwolle, Ljubljana and the location where I should be that day.

*Saturday 4th July*
Zwolle: maximum 36°C
Ljubljana: maximum 29°C
@my location: maximum 25°C

*Monday 6th July*
Zwolle: maximum 21°C
Ljubljana: maximum 35°C
@my location: maximum 31°C

*Sunday 12th July*
Zwolle: maximum 37°C
Ljubljana: maximum 31°C
@my location: maximum 33°C


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> Shit, if it will be 38°C in NL, how much will be here? :dead:


Nothing is granted :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Did you follow the European Games in Baku?

In the Netherlands it seemed like footnote news. They did report some, but always way down on the news sites. It hardly ever reached up to the header at the NOS (national broadcasting) site. 

Nobody ever discussed the games at my work.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ this seems to be similar to the interest in the Pan American games in Toronto
Except nobody cares even _in _Toronto :lol:


----------



## Verso

Yes, they actually reported it in Slovenia. It's kind of funny though that the _first_ European Games were held in Asia.


----------



## Attus

In Hungary it was only reported, if a Hungarian athlete won a competition. In Germany I can't remember reading anything about the games.


----------



## volodaaaa

I don't know what are you talking about  That is my answer about the media coverage in Slovakia. Shame.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ this seems to be similar to the interest in the Pan American games in Toronto
> Except nobody cares even _in _Toronto :lol:


From what I've seen in the media, the Pan Am Games seems more like a nuisance than an asset with all those traffic restrictions.


----------



## italystf

I only knew that Baku European Games exist, nothing more. There's no interest at all, for most people.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Yes, they actually reported it in Slovenia. It's kind of funny though that the _first_ European Games were held in Asia.


Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Cyprus, Turkey and even Israel are all included in Europe regarding sport competitions.


----------



## x-type

no interest in that thing here neither. i actually never heard of it till it's been going on already.


----------



## Verso

To me Europe is west of Russia, although obviously a city like Ufa isn't in Asia, let alone St. Petersburg or Smolensk, and Moscow isn't that far away either. The only part of Russia that is drawn on all maps of Europe is obviously the Kaliningrad Oblast. But whatever is behind Russia isn't seen as Europe in my eyes, simply too far away and Russia inbetween. I see Georgia and Armenia as some kind of European "exclaves", something like Australia, but closer. Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have small parts in Europe, but they are Turkic/Asiatic nations and Kazakhstan extends to China anyway. Turkey is an Asiatic nation too, but at least the European and Asian parts are geographically clearly separated (and Istanbul is close to Bulgaria and Greece). Any comment?


----------



## cinxxx

Drove the Passo di Pénnes/Penser Joch Pass today, a nice road 
Highest elevation 2211 m.


----------



## italystf

The red boundary is the most universally accepted among present days geographers.
Yellow lines are other definitions, mostly adopted in the past.








There are even Europe\Asia signs on Ural mountains and on bridges over Ural river (that is weird, as often the same town results split by the border).
Istanbul is widely known as the only city located in two continents, but this is not correct, considering Russian and Kazakh cities crossed by the Ural river.


----------



## Kanadzie

Verso said:


> To me Europe is west of Russia, although obviously a city like Ufa isn't in Asia, let alone St. Petersburg or Smolensk, and Moscow isn't that far away either. The only part of Russia that is drawn on all maps of Europe is obviously the Kaliningrad Oblast. But whatever is behind Russia isn't seen as Europe in my eyes, simply too far away and Russia inbetween. I see Georgia and Armenia as some kind of European "exclaves", something like Australia, but closer. Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have small parts in Europe, but they are Turkic/Asiatic nations and Kazakhstan extends to China anyway. Turkey is an Asiatic nation too, but at least the European and Asian parts are geographically clearly separated (and Istanbul is close to Bulgaria and Greece). Any comment?


Anything east of Ural Mountains and west of Japan, "here be dragons" :lol:


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> There are even Europe\Asia signs on Ural mountains and on bridges over Ural river


Exactly, there are signs on the Ural River in Russia. I don't know when or why they extended Europe all the way to that corner on the Kazakh border. None of those lines in your image actually follows the Ural River in Russia, only in Kazakhstan.


----------



## Pansori

Greetings from Vilnius. Taken by me


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I saw a car from Ljubljana in Figueira the other day.


----------



## Verso

^ 2,500 km away. Like from Ljubljana to Syria.


----------



## Fatfield

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> 60 euros i think.
> When will you go to Greece and where?
> Sarti or Neos Marmaras ?


The 60€ limit is only for Greek citizens. Tourists can withdraw however much their card will let them. Assuming there's enough money in the ATM to start with.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Many tourists who go to Greece reside in all-inclusive resorts, which are paid for in advance. So you don't need to pay much during your vacation. I suppose the biggest inconvenience would be public unrest or strikes. They've blocked the supply of fuel before.


----------



## italystf

Bad aspects of OpenStreetMap:
1) Inconsistent use of colours: for example green in some countries is used only for expressways, in other for all main roads.
2) Lack of Latin transliteration for non-Latin names: for westerners it's virtually impossible to use OSM for China, Japan, Israel or Arab countries, and quite difficult for Greece, Russia, Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria.


----------



## cinxxx

Best Save in history !!! Finishing the race on his knees !!! WHAAAT !!??
https://www.facebook.com/renaudmargry/videos/1146566468691707/?__mref=message_bubble


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Scorched earth! 41 °C in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

Meteorologists have a hard time translating the model data to an actual forecast, because such extreme temperatures have never been recorded before in the Dutch oceanic climate. They have no reference data.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ Light-bulb factory will need to switch to making air conditioners 



volodaaaa said:


> The only problem is an amount of money in atms. I can't wait to go there.


I know, people are cash-crazy, maybe you can get a super deal on something, like a late-model Skoda or a island for 5000 EUR or the like :lol:


----------



## Verso

^^
^^ Let's wait until Saturday. Meanwhile 47°C in Córdoba, Spain. :nuts:


----------



## Fatfield

Absolutely chucking it down in not so sunny Sunderland. Thunder & lightning too.


----------



## volodaaaa

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> 60 euros i think.
> When will you go to Greece and where?
> Sarti or Neos Marmaras ?


No, the problem is there is not enough cash in ATMs. You can theoretically withdraw the amount allowed by your bank (200 € in my case), but you actually can't as there is nothing to go out of ATM 
I go last week of July to Sarti. The plan is to refuel my car on last petrol station in Macedonia, park it and don't move until the end of my stay. I will rather rent a scooter in serious case although it is more expensive solution.



Kanadzie said:


> I know, people are cash-crazy, maybe you can get a super deal on something, like a late-model Skoda or a island for 5000 EUR or the like


It is happening. On some islands, tourists refuse to buy souvenirs, only basic stuff and vendors were forced to drop the prices. I would prefer a boat or something


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> Scorched earth! 41 °C in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
> 
> Meteorologists have a hard time translating the model data to an actual forecast, because such extreme temperatures have never been recorded before in the Dutch oceanic climate. They have no reference data.


What the hell! (And never better said :lol Meanwhile the forecast for Huesca on the same day is 'only' 37ºC.



Verso said:


> ^^
> ^^ Let's wait until Saturday. Meanwhile 47°C in Córdoba, Spain. :nuts:


They were nowhere near that value today (36ºC). On Sunday, they had 44ºC :nuts:


----------



## piotr71

I am currently learning Serbo-Croatian (my second attempt ), mainly because I will be visiting several ex-Yugoslav countries soon. Language is rather easy to learn, maybe because I am able to communicate in some other Slavic languages on more or less advanced level, not to mention my mother tongue, of course. However, because of a kind of added value to Serbo-Croatian (we all know the recent history of Balkan states) there is probably a need to treat some dialectical differences with utmost delicacy. Therefore, the question to our Balkan colleagues is coming out: would it have been a 'faux pas' if I, for example, will have used a term " željeznički kolodvor" in Serbia, and otherwise, "železnička stanica" in Croatia? There is many tiny (for me) differences in all Serbo-Croatian dialects, or if you prefer languages emerged from Serbo-Croatian, but I am a little afraid they are tiny for me only, not for the autochthons.

Molim Vas, možete li mi pomoći?


----------



## volodaaaa

piotr71 said:


> I am currently learning Serbo-Croatian (my second attempt ), mainly because I will be visiting several ex-Yugoslav countries soon. Language is rather easy to learn, maybe because I am able to communicate in some other Slavic languages on more or less advanced level, not to mention my mother tongue, of course. However, because of a kind of added value to Serbo-Croatian (we all know the recent history of Balkan states) there is probably a need to treat some dialectical differences with utmost delicacy. Therefore, the question to our Balkan colleagues is coming out: would it have been a 'faux pas' if I, for example, will have used a term " željeznički kolodvor" in Serbia, and otherwise, "železnička stanica" in Croatia? There is many tiny (for me) differences in all Serbo-Croatian dialects, or if you prefer languages emerged from Serbo-Croatian, but I am a little afraid they are tiny for me only, not for the autochthons.
> 
> Molim Vas, možete li mi pomoći?


sorry for cutting in, but "kolodvor" looks derived from Hungarian "pályaudvar". I was also surprised about words "Hiša" in Slovenia (similar with Hungarian Háza) and word "Cona" which is very similar to German Zone.


----------



## x-type

piotr71 said:


> I am currently learning Serbo-Croatian (my second attempt ), mainly because I will be visiting several ex-Yugoslav countries soon. Language is rather easy to learn, maybe because I am able to communicate in some other Slavic languages on more or less advanced level, not to mention my mother tongue, of course. However, because of a kind of added value to Serbo-Croatian (we all know the recent history of Balkan states) there is probably a need to treat some dialectical differences with utmost delicacy. Therefore, the question to our Balkan colleagues is coming out: would it have been a 'faux pas' if I, for example, will have used a term " željeznički kolodvor" in Serbia, and otherwise, "železnička stanica" in Croatia? There is many tiny (for me) differences in all Serbo-Croatian dialects, or if you prefer languages emerged from Serbo-Croatian, but I am a little afraid they are tiny for me only, not for the autochthons.
> 
> Molim Vas, možete li mi pomoći?


there is word "stanica" in croatian language. it means "stop" (like bus stop, railway stop, tram stop). kolodvor is that what you in western russo-polish language call dworzec.


----------



## keber

Many words in Balkan Slavic countries are, because of historical reason,s borrowed from Italian, Hungarian and Turkish language. Not from German though, which is pretty interesting except for many words that are present in everyday speech but not in formal languages.


----------



## piotr71

*@ x-type*

No need to be offended, the term Serbo-Croatian is still in use. Linguists consider post Serbo-Croatian languages also as dialects of the above. I asked the question for one particular reason: not to offend or annoy Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and Montenegrins using inappropriate vocabulary in their country. And it was the polite question on contrary to your answer  

Regarding _kolodvor_ and _stanica_ in my phrase book, which is a Croatian phrasebook, they only use the first. And also in some internet comparison of the languagues I found _kolodvor_ used in Croatian and _stanica_ in Serbian. Obviously, there is more such differences.

By the way, here is my first phrase book i bought about 30 years ago:









You have already cut this polo-russian stuff off. Thanks


----------



## italystf

^^If Road_UK still reads this thread, he's probably happy to be banned now. :lol:


----------



## x-type

there was also czechoslovakian language in the history, and nobody mentions it anymore. wikipedia actually nicely defines such artificial languages: political sociolinguistic concept. so, i didn't want to be rude at all.

you will not have any problems speaking serbian in Croatia nor probably croatian in Serbia. both nations got used on Slovenians who are speaking some mixture of both 
(of course, don't be surprised if you ask for "parče hleba" or "pantalone boje šargarepe" in Croatia and people look at you weird because not everyone would understand it)


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Many tourists who go to Greece reside in all-inclusive resorts, which are paid for in advance. So you don't need to pay much during your vacation. I suppose the biggest inconvenience would be public unrest or strikes. They've blocked the supply of fuel before.


I really doubt that there will be strikes.It's summer and they earn a lot of money because of a tourists.In my 7 years old experience i have never seen that someone who is from Serbia was stopped by police on motorway or on 2 way road. Also i don't think that me or anyone else will have problems in Greece because they know what will happen if the number of tourists drops significantly.


----------



## piotr71

Yesterday I was sending money abroad using Western Union. A member of staff, prior to to fill in the form, politely informed me that there is no transfering service for Greece any more.


----------



## volodaaaa

Autoputevi kao hobi said:


> I really doubt that there will be strikes.It's summer and they earn a lot of money because of a tourists.In my 7 years old experience i have never seen that someone who is from Serbia was stopped by police on motorway or on 2 way road. Also i don't think that me or anyone else will have problems in Greece because they know what will happen if the number of tourists drops significantly.


I don't know how the reforms goes in Greece, but since 2010 I've got receipt on beach after paying for sunbed, umbrella, drink or whatever :lol: Earlier, the "waiter" just took money :lol:
Also, the police is more active. I've even seen some speed cameras. Particularly officers resting in shadow with assembled tripod with something aiming at heading traffic.


----------



## x-type

one for volodaaaa, seen recently in Zagreb:


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ My Mercedes looks the same, except the part that is shiny, is actually rust :lol:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

volodaaaa said:


> I don't know how the reforms goes in Greece, but since 2010 I've got receipt on beach after paying for sunbed, umbrella, drink or whatever :lol: Earlier, the "waiter" just took money :lol:
> Also, the police is more active. I've even seen some speed cameras. Particularly officers resting in shadow with assembled tripod with something aiming at heading traffic.


Speed cameras can be seen on A1,A2 and on so called "motorway" between Thessaloniki and Evzoni. :cheers:


----------



## keokiracer

x-type said:


> one for volodaaaa, seen recently in Zagreb:


I once spotted this one in Prague. I wasn't quick enough with my camera, but someone else luckily was


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ tacky.


----------



## cinxxx

My clinched map on the new site


----------



## Fatfield

volodaaaa said:


> No, the problem is there is not enough cash in ATMs. You can theoretically withdraw the amount allowed by your bank (200 € in my case), but you actually can't as there is nothing to go out of ATM


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-01/why-are-greeks-lining-up-outside-atms-banks-crisis/6586770


----------



## ChrisZwolle

18.6 at the coast and 36.5 degrees inland...


----------



## volodaaaa




----------



## Fatfield

We had a massive storm in NE England last night. Houses & cars damaged, and reports of ducks & lambs killed by hailstones.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-33359066

The forecast is for more of the same tonight.


----------



## Verso

I'm holding 1 Romanian leu. Looks plastic.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Your parents returned from Romania?
What impressions did they tell?


----------



## Verso

Gorgeous country, with many renovated buildings, not falling apart like in Ceaușescu times. They also visited the Bran Castle, of course. They watched Bram Stoker's Dracula on the way there.  They said they could've been a little longer in Bucharest though (just from 6 pm to 1 pm next day). They also visited Arad, but sadly not Timișoara. They liked both, cities and nature.  They just complained about roads a bit.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Unfortunately tourism advertising by Romania is horrible to non existent...


----------



## Suburbanist

Apparently Romania is making a lot of improvements regarding its infrastructure (not only roads) and economic policies, so it should stop being at the last spot of EU soon on those rankings.


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> ^^Unfortunately tourism advertising by Romania is horrible to non existent...


I think Romania's problem is more like relative "isolation" from Western Europe; it's not so close (especially if you take into account lack of motorways).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> Apparently Romania is making a lot of improvements regarding its infrastructure (not only roads) and economic policies, so it should stop being at the last spot of EU soon on those rankings.


There will always be a country in the 'last spot', no matter how well it is performing. Romania and Bulgaria will likely be ranking last in many EU statistics for a very long period of time, despite massive improvements in many indicators.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> There will always be a country in the 'last spot', no matter how well it is performing. Romania and Bulgaria will likely be ranking last in many EU statistics for a very long period of time, despite massive improvements in many indicators.


I think they can overtake Greece and Romania can overtake Bulgaria.


----------



## Verso

If you don't count Greece. 

EDIT: didn't see Suburbanist


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> I'm holding 1 Romanian leu. Looks plastic.


I don't now why they don't use plastic for Euro notes too, they would last longer.


cinxxx said:


> ^^Unfortunately tourism advertising by Romania is horrible to non existent...


There's also the problem of media influence in western countries. Most people perceive it as a very poor and dangerous country, only because some of its citizens commit crimes here.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> The economic advantage of coins is that they last pratically forever


But they're much costlier than notes, especially with regards to their face value... some coins are worth more in pure metal and production costs than their face value...


----------



## Verso

CNGL said:


> ^^ Wow, that's even less valued than the 50 peseta cents coin I have somewhere (nominally €0.003, but since Spain got rid of peseta cents by the 80s, I think its value today would be close to that).


0.10 and 0.20 SIT coins were never in circulation though. They minted them, but immediately decided not to put them in circulation. 0.50 SIT coins (0.002 EUR) were in circulation for a few years though. Then they fell out of use, but I still had a ton of them at home (they accumulated because I was never using them). One day I trolled a saleswoman at a nearby store with one of them. Something cost (for example) 150.74 SIT (I have no idea why they used decimals). She said "151 SIT, please" (as they always would). I gave her 150.50 SIT. She looked at it and said "Is this still valid?" I replied "Sure, why not?" Then she said "ok, but it's 151 SIT, not 150.50". I replied "150.50 is closer to 150.74 than 151 is". She gave me an angry look and accepted it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm always annoyed by the € 0.01 and € 0.02 coins I get as change on vacation. I never use them, they just hog your wallet.


----------



## Suburbanist

I save coins below € 0,50 until I have enough to make couple Euro, then I go to the supermarket and annoy the cashier dumping the stack of coins on a small grocery purchase. 

I have a coin organizer for that though.


----------



## cinxxx

I have a big vase at home filled with these coins.
I have to count them someday, I think there is some value there :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

Solar Impulse is about to complete a 5-day long crossing between Japan and Hawaii, using only solar energy and batteries :cheers:


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> I have a big vase at home filled with these coins.
> I have to count them someday, I think there is some value there :lol:


I used to do this as well, but it's really unnecessary. Just use them every time you can and they won't accumulate. Cashiers will be happy too. :cheers:


----------



## winnipeg

Suburbanist said:


> I save coins below € 0,50 until I have enough to make couple Euro, then I go to the supermarket and annoy the cashier dumping the stack of coins on a small grocery purchase.
> 
> I have a coin organizer for that though.


In my french bank they have a very nice and usefull machine : you just trow your coins and the machine count them and it will be credited on your account. No need to calculate how much you have and how you can use them... :yes:

Also in France the law is telling that you can't pay with more than 20 coins, so it's harder to use the small coins except for everyday purchases (like baguette  )...


----------



## winnipeg

Verso said:


> I used to do this as well, but it's really unnecessary. Just use them every time you can and they won't accumulate. Cashiers will be happy too. :cheers:


Everytime I can, I use my credit card, so I don't get my pockets full of them, and it works! :cheers:

And thankfully to the contactless payment who is curently being deployed (even in Romania  ), this is even easier! :yes:


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> But they're much costlier than notes, especially with regards to their face value... some coins are worth more in pure metal and production costs than their face value...


Only 0,01€ and 0,02€ cost more than their face value, and we could stop minting them or make them with cheaper material.


Verso said:


> 0.10 and 0.20 SIT coins were never in circulation though. They minted them, but immediately decided not to put them in circulation.


I have these two in my collection of foreign coins (all cheap stuff purchased years ago in a lot at a flea market). Maybe they are a rarity as they were never put in circulation.


winnipeg said:


> Also in France the law is telling that you can't pay with more than 20 coins, so it's harder to use the small coins except for everyday purchases (like baguette )...


I think it's 50 coins (it's an European law).


----------



## Fatfield

winnipeg said:


> In my french bank they have a very nice and usefull machine : you just trow your coins and the machine count them and it will be credited on your account. No need to calculate how much you have and how you can use them... :yes:


We have them in Blighty too. Banks have their own machines but you find Coinstar machines in supermarkets. Mind, in true British rip-off style, they charge you 9% commission on the amount you change.

If you have an account with the bank who's machine your using, you don't get charged and have the option of cash or depositing it into your account.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> Only 0,01€ and 0,02€ cost more than their face value, and we could stop minting them or make them with cheaper material.


Fives also, they cost somewhere near 0.57€


----------



## winnipeg

italystf said:


> I think it's 50 coins (it's an European law).


You're right! :yes:


----------



## hofburg

I don't get these costs of money manufacturing. I don't think it is (should be) related to how much particular coin or banknote is actually worth. Producing it is simply one of the costs that the bank (ECB?) has. So what if making 0,05 € coin costs more than it is worth, making a banknote of 500 € doesn't nearly cost 500€, coins also last longer.

whole money printing and putting it into system is a mystery to me  one must also consider that with every cent printed/made, euro is worth less because there are more euros out there than the economy is actually worth.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Shark,shark !! :lol::lol:


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> I have these two in my collection of foreign coins (all cheap stuff purchased years ago in a lot at a flea market). Maybe they are a rarity as they were never put in circulation.


I had to buy the 0.10 SIT coin too, but once I got the 0.20 SIT coin somewhere in early '90s (but I don't know where, I only noticed it at home). I've had it for over 20 years now. Most Slovenes probably weren't even aware of their existence.


----------



## Verso

How 'bout this? 









http://www.leftovercurrency.com/banknotes/slovenia/slovenian-tolars2.php

It was never in circulation though.


----------



## Suburbanist

When Yugoslavia disintegrated, what was the sequence of new currency introductions? The same as the sequence of countries leaving Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro?)


----------



## Nexis




----------



## Kanadzie

italystf said:


> When they were working for the adoption of the euro, back in the late 90s, Italian government proposed 1€ and 2€ notes instead of coins. In Italy the biggest coin was worth 0,52€ (1000 ITL).
> However, most developed countries today use high-value coins: 2€, 2£ in UK, 2$ in Canada, 500 Yen in Japan, 5 CHF in Switzerland. The USA is an exception, as they like to keep the 1$ bill, but they have the 1$ coin too.
> The economic advantage of coins is that they last pratically forever (until the country changes currency or type of coins), while notes need to be replaced when they are worn (and vending machines won't read them).


In Canada they replaced $1 bill with $1 coin (loonie) in 1987
They replaced $2 bill with $2 coin in 1996
I remember the change and nobody was happy with it, but eventually accepted it.

US has a kind of democratic sensibility that stops it from forcing things like this on a population that doesn't want it (same thing as like happened viz. metrication in US) I can't say it's a bad thing.

If you drive in Chicago area there are a lot of toll motorways that accept only coins, and are mechanical (no person) and the toll is always like $1.50 so you need these ******* dollar coins. But nobody has them, and I never even saw one before I ended up there
Ended up I just didn't pay the toll and hit the gas to drive away :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

Is this that tomato-throwing party or the bull-running party?


----------



## VITORIA MAN

it was during the beginning of the bull-running party in pamplona


----------



## VITORIA MAN

the tomato party is in buñol (valencia )


----------



## CNGL

Suburbanist said:


> Is this that tomato-throwing party or the bull-running party?


The bull runnings are now. I like when someone gets 'horned' by a bull (There has been only one injury by bull horn so far this year). I watch them on TV, and I enjoyed today's run as one bull was faster than the rest and created some dangerous situations.

A fact about the bull-running track: It has a brief, wrong-way overlap with the St. James way. Both run through Calle Mercaderes.


----------



## ajch

Hi, could somebody advice me about a good online map that difference between tolled motorways and free motorways. Old google maps did that but now i can find one that does it. i'm interested in France and italy networks


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> It is. Physics we know can describe (almost) everything up to the event horizon. What lies inside is, by definition, impossible to observe but we have a pretty clear idea of it. Singularity is something we can't describe at all, though.


We can't... for the time being. But it don't have to be contradictory to current physics. It is even fascinating that nobody has ever seen black hole, but current physics can easily explain how it should work and everything complies therewith so far.


----------



## keokiracer

Meanwhile on the A4 between Venice and Padova


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ wow 

Strange weather in the Netherlands. Last week had record high minimum temperatures at 24 °C. Last night there was frost.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Belated greetings from Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brussels and Lille; current greetings from Caen.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> We can't... for the time being. But it don't have to be contradictory to current physics. It is even fascinating that nobody has ever seen black hole, but current physics can easily explain how it should work and everything complies therewith so far.


Not really. The singularity is contradictory to current physics. Our physics state that it must be an adimensional point where some properties diverge (mass, density, gravitational pull). Basically our physics predicts something it can't describe.


----------



## g.spinoza

keokiracer said:


> Meanwhile on the A4 between Venice and Padova


One of the famous Venetian ancient villas, Villa Fini near Dolo (built in 17th century) was completely destroyed:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

'Only in America'. Oh wait...


----------



## italystf

It's not the first time it happens, although the last one is probably the worst in recent times.
Here a tornado in Venice in 2012:





The worst ever happened in 1970 and killed 21 people. hno:


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ The worst one was a F5, in 1930.


----------



## bigic

Meanwhile, in my town the weather is a bit cr*p.


----------



## riiga

Penn's Woods said:


> Belated greetings from Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brussels and Lille; current greetings from Caen.


How's the driving coming along? Been stuck behind Dutch caravans? Driven 50 mph on a 50 km/h road?


----------



## Fatfield

riiga said:


> How's the driving coming along? Been stuck behind Dutch caravans? Driven 50 mph on a 50 km/h road?


Give him a break man! He's still trying to figure out how to change from neutral to 1st gear. ;-)


----------



## Penn's Woods

This is why God made automatics.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> 'Only in America'. Oh wait...


It happens because America has arrived to Europe :lol: ^^


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> Not really. The singularity is contradictory to current physics. Our physics state that it must be an adimensional point where some properties diverge (mass, density, gravitational pull). Basically our physics predicts something it can't describe.


We don't have to go that far. I might be wrong but point similar to singularity could be even in the middle of Earth. And we do not know what would happen if Earth was hollow in the middle and someone fell there. Would he be floating or ripped off?
*
*


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> We don't have to go that far. I might be wrong but point similar to singularity could be even in the middle of Earth.


I'm sorry, but you are wrong 
We can calculate pretty well what's inside the center of the Earth, and there is nothing like a singularity. The internal nucleus has a density of ~15 g/cm^3, while a singularity is, by definition, infinite. So the difference between infinite and 15 is still infinite. 
The conditions inside the Earth are not even that extreme to call quantum mechanics in. We can perfectly describe Earth using classical "Newtonian" mechanics.



> And we do not know what would happen if Earth was hollow in the middle and someone fell there. Would he be floating or ripped off?
> *
> *


Of course we know that. Calculations like those were made back in 17th century and are part of Physics 101, every university freshman can do that.


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> Of course we know that. Calculations like those were made back in 17th century and are part of Physics 101, every university freshman can do that.


So what will happen?


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> So what will happen?


It depends on the mass distribution of the upper crust layers, but if we consider that homogeneous, you will fall initially accelerating like _g_, progressively reducing the acceleration until you will reach maximum speed and minimum acceleration (zero) at the very center. If we assume no friction due to atmosphere, passing the centre you will reduce your speed because the downward acceleration will begin growing again, until you emerge on the other side of Earth with maximum downward acceleration (_g_) and minimum speed (zero).

(Of course assuming Earth not-rotating, it will be a bit more complicated if we consider the rotation of Earth)


----------



## MichiH

New official all-time temperature record for Germany:

5th July 2015: Kitzingen, Lower Franconia (*40.3 °C*; 104.5 °F)

http://www.dwd.de/bvbw/appmanager/b...&switchLang=en&_pageLabel=dwdwww_klima_umwelt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records


----------



## Rebasepoiss

g.spinoza said:


> It depends on the mass distribution of the upper crust layers, but if we consider that homogeneous, you will fall initially accelerating like _g_, progressively reducing the acceleration until you will reach maximum speed and minimum acceleration (zero) at the very center. If we assume no friction due to atmosphere, passing the centre you will reduce your speed because the downward acceleration will begin growing again, until you emerge on the other side of Earth with maximum downward acceleration (_g_) and minimum speed (zero).
> 
> (Of course assuming Earth not-rotating, it will be a bit more complicated if we consider the rotation of Earth)


There's a good video about it:


----------



## volodaaaa

My next journey starting in few days (map). 

You can call it tour de almost ex-Yugoslavia  Despite immigrants, diplomatic troubles between Serbia - BiH, Unrest in Macedonia and ongoing Greek crisis I can't wait.


----------



## hofburg

^have fun 

venus and jupiter from Trieste (no edit)

048 by hofburgh4, on Flickr


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Just drove a Renault Scenic, it's the first time I've driven anything bigger than my Clio, it was very strange.


----------



## MichiH

I drove a small Dacia for 10 days. Back in Germany I drove a small Seat. Both cars were brand-new rental cars but there was a huge difference!

Driving 130km/h with the Dacia on the motorway was a bad feeling. The engine was damn loud! It was hard to start moving the car. I usually had to drive slam on throttle. But the car lost so much speed at every little inclination. 

The first use of the throttle in the Seat ended with a little shock for me. What a reaction of the engine! Driving >200km/h with the Seat on the motorway was just relaxing and felt quite safe...

In addition, I think I drove a Peugeot for the first time on my way to the airport when starting the trip. It's much better than the damn Renault rental cars I drove years ago. The only worse rental cars where the Dacia and an US Ford Focus in 2007.....


----------



## volodaaaa

Dacias are generally loud. I've been thinking of buying me a Duster and the loudness was one of the most serious weaknesses in reviews.


----------



## winnipeg

MichiH said:


> I drove a small Dacia for 10 days. Back in Germany I drove a small Seat. Both cars were brand-new rental cars but there was a huge difference!
> 
> Driving 130km/h with the Dacia on the motorway was a bad feeling. The engine was damn loud! It was hard to start moving the car. I usually had to drive slam on throttle. But the car lost so much speed at every little inclination.
> 
> The first use of the throttle in the Seat ended with a little shock for me. What a reaction of the engine! Driving >200km/h with the Seat on the motorway was just relaxing and felt quite safe...
> 
> In addition, I think I drove a Peugeot for the first time on my way to the airport when starting the trip. It's much better than the damn Renault rental cars I drove years ago. The only worse rental cars where the Dacia and an US Ford Focus in 2007.....


With a Logan you have basicly what Renault has made maybe 15 years ago, poor car in term of materials and building construction, it goes well with his price and his segment (lowcost). Seat is way better, as now it's Volkswagen behind it, it's basicly just cheaper VW cars with a bit of lowcost, but not so much, especially on higher models! (You can ask to Cinxxx what he's thinking of his nice Ibiza! :cheers: ).


----------



## cinxxx

^^Hey man, Leon not Ibiza 
Logan is very loud, I know because I have driven them a while, horrible on motorway.


----------



## winnipeg

Wow sorry, my bad!  I still have in my mind the beautifull photos of your car you posted, and I knew it was a Leon, not a Ibiza (smaller) but it's not what I writed...


----------



## MichiH

^^ Cars I've driven during the past two weeks:

- Peugeot 2008 Diesel 
- Dacia Logan Petrol 
- Seat Leon 1.6 Petrol 

- Ford Focus 2.0 Diesel


----------



## Attus

Dacia may be loud, etc., but even so can be a good choose for people like e.g. my mother. She drives 4-5,000 km a year, the majority of them inside the town she lives in (a town of 14,000 inhabitants). She's 62 years old and does not have a lot of money.


----------



## cinxxx

^^It can be a great cheap city car.
Of course you can drive it outside too, it's really just a car, nothing else.

But it's no where near for example Renault Clio...


----------



## Suburbanist

Once I traveled to Italy (by air) and rented a category C car Diesel (think Peugeot 308). The rental office at Fiumicino airport was out of cars, they offered me instead an Alfa Romeo Giulietta. Quite nice car, I shall say. Very comfortable seats. 

In other occasion they were also out of C cat. cars and gave me a Ford C-Max diesel instead. It has a nice driving position and, as others minivans, is spacious (for 4 passengers, not using the extra seat). Felt a bit under powered for climbing the Etna roads, though I think the 2.0 version would do the job nicely. 

Reason for such upgrades is that some categories are almost always sold out and they will upgrade you if your flight arrives early enough before they had time to take returned cars and clean them up. 

I just wished there were less "gotchas" around the whole rental car business though. I'm a bit paranoid so I take pics and videos of the car before and after, since deductibles are quite high in Italy (€ 2000 for instance).


----------



## winnipeg

Attus said:


> Dacia may be loud, etc., but even so can be a good choose for people like e.g. my mother. She drives 4-5,000 km a year, the majority of them inside the town she lives in (a town of 14,000 inhabitants). She's 62 years old and does not have a lot of money.


Yes, true. For example my grand-parents are driving a Logan (since 2008), for them it's a great little car even if there is some issues with it... 

But they are not too demanding because before the Logan, they were still driving a good old Renault 19 from 1992 who was a great car...


----------



## MichiH

cinxxx said:


> Have to buy a smartphone, I have never had one





cinxxx said:


> Still everybody owns a smartphone


You have bought one meanwhile?


----------



## cinxxx

^^I will buy one in the upcoming weeks, enough is enough 
I'm thinking about the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge, but it costs a lot :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

The car is itself an anti-thief system


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> The car is itself an anti-thief system


kalispera


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That is probably the ugliest car produced in recent history. At least in the European market.

It may be a practical car though. Some say Fiat is an underrated brand, it has a bit of an image of an unreliable car brand, though others counter that. I've never owned or driven a Fiat. 

I've owned a Toyota, Peugeot, Renault & Hyundai. I find German cars overpriced. When shopping for my current car I found out a fully equipped Hyundai or Renault would cost the same as a no frills no luxury Volkswagen. And people complain about the high cost for maintenance / repairs / services at VW dealers. I have no experience there though. Official dealers are always more expensive than a general garage.


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> kalispera


Hvala  



ChrisZwolle said:


> That is probably the ugliest car produced in recent history. At least in the European market.
> 
> It may be a practical car though. Some say Fiat is an underrated brand, it has a bit of an image of an unreliable car brand, though others counter that. I've never owned or driven a Fiat.
> 
> I've owned a Toyota, Peugeot, Renault & Hyundai. I find German cars overpriced. When shopping for my current car I found out a fully equipped Hyundai or Renault would cost the same as a no frills no luxury Volkswagen. And people complain about the high cost for maintenance / repairs / services at VW dealers. I have no experience there though. Official dealers are always more expensive than a general garage.


I can relate. The maintainance costs of my Opel are considerably higher than it was in case of my previous Suzuki.
E.g. annual check are 90 € vs. 300 €. The Suzuki was smaller but the differrence is noticeable anyways


----------



## winnipeg

If it's too expensive, you should think about doing it by yourself, it's a good alternative and it's not that hard! :yes:


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> That is probably the ugliest car produced in recent history. At least in the European market.


i'd say that Americans and Koreans still hold the ugly record in recent history:


----------



## winnipeg

Germans can do great things too 

Like the BMW i3


----------



## [atomic]

^^ wow the back is even worse than the front.. :nuts:


----------



## piotr71

Kanadzie said:


> Italians pride themselves on their excellent aesthetic tastes but on that one... I have no idea what happened :lol:


Well, that's art! Multipla is among 10 modern non-sport cars, which will become classics very soon, according to specialists, much sooner than currently produced family Mercs, Beamers, Opels, VW's and so on. Multipla is one of its kind and I would not compare it to truly ugly cars such as mentioned Ssang Yong. I'd rather said that it would had been drawn with passion by an extraordinary creative team of designers, just about as creative as Picasso was. And, well, I am obviously, proud member of 2 Fiat Multipla's clubs, as, at the same time, among couple of other cars, I own Multipla  I treat her as if she was a pet


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> i'd say that Americans and Koreans still hold the ugly record in recent history:
> 
> ]


The second one, at least, could be popular among funeral services though.:lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

Greetings from Monticello, Utah.

I have never seen any other natural landscape that impressed so much as the rock formations of Canyonlands, it's absolutely surreal over here.


----------



## Kanadzie

piotr71 said:


> Well, that's art! Multipla is among 10 modern non-sport cars, which will become classics very soon, according to specialists, much sooner than currently produced family Mercs, Beamers, Opels, VW's and so on. Multipla is one of its kind and I would not compare it to truly ugly cars such as mentioned Ssang Yong. I'd rather said that it would had been drawn with passion by an extraordinary creative team of designers, just about as creative as Picasso was. And, well, I am obviously, proud member of 2 Fiat Multipla's clubs, as, at the same time, among couple of other cars, I own Multipla I treat her as if she was a pet


I would say, you're crazy, but I always have had Saab cars, and normal people say they are ugly but I think they are nice... so I know exactly where you come from


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Kanadzie said:


> Italians pride themselves on their excellent aesthetic tastes but on that one... I have no idea what happened :lol:


Too much pizza and pasta :lol: :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Uhhh. okay.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/t...elling-75mph-busy-motorway-near-Marbella.html


----------



## CNGL

Leaving for France tomorrow. I'll be greeting if I find some Wi-Fi connection .


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Found a picture of the day GTAV came out and I went to buy a copy and the road was blocked by a tree.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ are the cars just waiting there at the tree? Nobody had an axe in the trunk to fix? :lol:


----------



## keokiracer

Try explaining driving around with an axe in your car when you get pulled over by the police


----------



## Verso

Once I had to bypass a tree over a corn field. Later on I lost the exhaust pipe. :lol:


----------



## Kanadzie

keokiracer said:


> Try explaining driving around with an axe in your car when you get pulled over by the police


I'm Canadian I always have an axe, you never know when you might need to chop a tree down :lol:

really police would ask question about axe? :nuts:


----------



## Kanadzie

sponge_bob said:


> Then its America *.* from position 3 - 473 really. The Fiat Multipla mark 1 could sneak in at position 474 but I'd love to have one...it will be a design classic that one and the Chrysler PT Cruiser is only a netch behind.


Really? American cars IMO range from excellent to bland, but ugly is hard to find, aside from the infamous Aztek. I can see and understand the PT Cruiser but I can't think of something else offhand as being particularly offensive. But, being close to America I see all the American cars all the time. What do you see in NL, maybe the Dutch have no taste in American cars 

Remember the Subaru B9 Tribeca? That one surely deserves merit LOL, maybe even worse than the Aztek, which at least had a certain coherent philosophy of chaos.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

sponge_bob said:


> 1. Ssangyong, a company that went bankrupt on ugly. Specialised in pure ugly with pseudo Mercedes fronts and real Mercedes engines bought in.


Ssangyong is still going and their models don't look that bad anymore.




winnipeg said:


> I really liked the Vel Satis in his time, a very interesting car that I found beautiful! :yes:
> 
> But from Renault, there is more people who literally hate the Avantime
> 
> I personally LOVE it and when I was younger, I promised myself that I would buy it when I it will be possible, and I still want to do it!! :heart:


I also love the Avantime. It's just a very very cool car! BTW, it's one of the few cars all three top gear presenters loved as well.


----------



## winnipeg

Rebasepoiss said:


> I also love the Avantime. It's just a very very cool car! BTW, it's one of the few cars all three top gear presenters loved as well.


:yes:

Oh I didn't knew that, that's cool!


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

You have an episode dedicated to Avantime.


----------



## CNGL

About ugly cars, there is a Fiat Multipla which I see about every day parked in my street. :dead:

In other news, I forgot to say last week I found a €1 coin with king Felipe VI of Spain in the reverse. This makes up for the lack of commemorative €2 coins I had lately.


----------



## Alex_ZR

In my oppinion, back side of previous Renault Megane is ugly:


----------



## winnipeg

Maybe it's because I'm used to french cars, but I personaly find it original and quite "normal" now, not ugly... :yes:


----------



## Kanadzie

Yeah the back of the Megane is the best part of the whole car!
Otherwise it would just be another eurobox :lol:

Anyone remember the Toyota Previa? That was a pretty strange vehicle. I haven't seen one in some time, aside from a neighbor who had three broken ones in his driveway for years.


----------



## alejand2o

*End of urban area sign!*

Hi, guys ..have a question, I'm doing a report for my class so I need to know if this kind of signs are exist in Japan *"the end of urban area" *or *"end of town"*, I cant upload some images but its that sign with a red band or line over the name of the town or urban area

thanks for your help!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:City_limit_signs_in_Japan


----------



## Ni3lS

So I realize that I asked this a few months back as well. Any news on the clinched highway mapping site? Are there any alternatives? Thanks!


----------



## volodaaaa

Yesterday I spent night in Slavonski Brod. Cosy town, very lively. I know this topic is still very sensitive, but I hope all subjected members are calm enough, but one thing caught my attention. The landlady has hung orthodox icons on the wall so first I though she is Serb. But then I noticed the framed prize with photo of Franjo Tudzman, Croatian coat of arms and something about Domovinovski Rat 1991-1992. Is not it quite rare? Orthodox Croat?


----------



## italystf

^^
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Croatia
4.4% of Croatian population is Orthodox.


----------



## cinxxx

^^
Actually this is a better link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodoxy_in_Croatia


159,530 Orthodox Serbs
16,647 Orthodox Croats
2,401 Orthodox Macedonians
2,187 Orthodox by nationality
2,084 Orthodox believers of undeclared nationality
1,822 Orthodox Montenegrins
816 Orthodox believers of other nationalities
729 Orthodox Russians
341 Orthodox Ukrainians
293 Orthodox Bosniaks
158 Orthodox Bulgarians
157 Orthodox believers of unknown nationality
147 Orthodox Romanians
124 Orthodox believers of regional affiliation
other individual ethnicities (under 100 people each)


----------



## MichiH

*Traveled maps*



Ni3lS said:


> So I realize that I asked this a few months back as well. Any news on the clinched highway mapping site? Are there any alternatives? Thanks!


^^



MichiH said:


> CNGL said:
> 
> 
> 
> By the way, the Clinched Highways thing is being resurrected from the AARoads forums. A sneak peak _(sic.)_: It may use travelmapping dot net as domain.
> 
> 
> 
> Hey, Rome wasn't built in a day! There's a prototype of the database on a different server but it seems that I've clinched almost 90% of the German Autobahn network meanwhile .
> 
> It's a layer on google maps with zoom feature. One can combine systems and regions, e.g.: http://www.teresco.org/~terescoj/travelmapping/hbtest/mapview.php?rg=AUT,BEL,CHE,CZE,DEU,ESP,FRA,HUN,ITA,LUX,NLD,POL,ROU&u=michih (please switch to satellite view, I think it looks better).
> It's just a prototype of the database/map but the website itself is not yet implemented (the implementation of a prototype has recently been started: http://travelmapping.sammdot.ca/).
> 
> The total length of the network is incorrect because concurrent highways are not yet accounted for the calculation and many features are still missing (browser, stats, reporting,...).
> You could contribute with programming skills. Please refer to aaroads.com/forum for more info.
> 
> Some users have already provided their data so that Jim Teresco can test his database code: http://www.teresco.org/~terescoj/travelmapping/logs/.
> Up to now, Jim only wants to get list files of existing users with experience. He's willing to upload their log files (e.g. from bogdymol, Chris, cinx, spinoza,...) "_if they'd like to check it out._" "_Anything that doesn't look right is worth reporting._"
> 
> You can login on aaroads forum and sent a PM to Jim or sent a SSC PM to me. You'll get Jim's email address for sending your list file or to allow Jim using your list file from the existing cmap.m-plex.com data base.
Click to expand...

Stats are outputted in the log file. I clinched about 97% of the German Autobahn network now and 30,000km in total (my today's data from E68.ro is not yet uploaded though)


----------



## Ni3lS

MichiH said:


> ^^
> 
> 
> 
> Stats are outputted in the log file. I clinched about 97% of the German Autobahn network now and 30,000km in total (my today's data from E68.ro is not yet uploaded though)


Thanks. So how should I format my current list file or could someone else do it for me?


----------



## cinxxx

^^Format of the file is the same as the old site


----------



## Ni3lS

OK. So I can just send it over? To.. ?


----------



## sponge_bob

Rebasepoiss said:


> I also love the Avantime. It's just a very very cool car!


The Avantime is far nicer, the Espace Mark 2 is quite thematically similar. But the Vel Satis is a horrible lump.

I own a _minor_ classic 1980s French car, the Matra Murena, so I should know. It cost me €60 and very little since bar petrol of course. (picture below not my one which needs some work)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Somebody was busy...


----------



## keokiracer

Yeah I've had streams of likes coming in from him as well :nuts:


----------



## volodaaaa

Perhaps he is a stalker.


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> ^^
> Actually this is a better link
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodoxy_in_Croatia
> 
> 
> 159,530 Orthodox Serbs
> 16,647 Orthodox Croats
> 2,401 Orthodox Macedonians
> 2,187 Orthodox by nationality
> 2,084 Orthodox believers of undeclared nationality
> 1,822 Orthodox Montenegrins
> 816 Orthodox believers of other nationalities
> 729 Orthodox Russians
> 341 Orthodox Ukrainians
> 293 Orthodox Bosniaks
> 158 Orthodox Bulgarians
> 157 Orthodox believers of unknown nationality
> 147 Orthodox Romanians
> 124 Orthodox believers of regional affiliation
> other individual ethnicities (under 100 people each)


Thank you and italystf. I just wonder how were these people treated during domovinovski rat.


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> Somebody was busy...





keokiracer said:


> Yeah I've had streams of likes coming in from him as well :nuts:





volodaaaa said:


> Perhaps he is a stalker.


I only got 2 likes from that troll-like (and never better said).


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

I got just one.


----------



## Suburbanist

Hi there 

Greetings from Hurricane.


----------



## CNGL

^^ Are you OK? It must be hard to be inside a hurricane...

Now that I think, hurricane Hilda is in the middle of nowhere, while Soudelor is between Taiwan and China, but that is a typhoon, not a hurricane.

:troll:

I suppose you are in Hurricane, UT. I hope tomorrow you'll be in Typhoon .


----------



## Suburbanist

CNGL said:


> ^^ Are you OK? It must be hard to be inside a hurricane...
> 
> Now that I think, hurricane Hilda is in the middle of nowhere, while Soudelor is between Taiwan and China, but that is a typhoon, not a hurricane.
> 
> :troll:
> 
> I suppose you are in Hurricane, UT. I hope tomorrow you'll be in Typhoon .


lol

Today we will just drive all the way to Bishop, California. I'm actually curious to search out what is the largest human settlement in our route ahead of Cedar City.


----------



## MichiH

Ni3lS said:


> OK. So I can just send it over? To.. ?


Check your private messages...


----------



## bogdymol

Roadpic: my bus driver had to give way to this _flying bus_ on Tuesday:


----------



## MichiH

*Traveled maps*



Ni3lS said:


> So I realize that I asked this a few months back as well. Any news on the clinched highway mapping site? Are there any alternatives? Thanks!


The front end implementation is still in an early stage but the first highway data update is online now: http://www.teresco.org/~terescoj/travelmapping/devel/updates.php.

Croatia, Bulgaria, The Netherlands, France, Romania, UK, Serbia, Hungary, Belgium, Czech Republic, Ireland, Norway, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, USA, Turkey, Albania,...


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> Roadpic: my bus driver had to give way to this _flying bus_ on Tuesday:


Isn't it obvious? The vehicle was approaching from the right


----------



## Mirror's Edge

MattiG said:


> Had a holiday in Denmark, in the South Juthland near Ringkøping. Made an interesting observation: While driving in the evening (after about 2100) through rural villages, nobody were seen. Most of the windows were black: lights were on in a few houses only.
> 
> Do Danes really go sleep early in the evening, is it immoral to stay awake after 9 pm, or what is this about?


South Scandinvia has many so called Gatehus or street houses with no barrier to the street, in these homes ppl tend to live more in the back of the house, with less used rooms facing the street.
At least that's how it is in Scanian small towns, ppl shy the street side.

Blinds down on the street side


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

Suburbanist said:


> lol
> 
> Today we will just drive all the way to Bishop, California. I'm actually curious to search out what is the largest human settlement in our route ahead of Cedar City.


Welcome to LA, when you get here that is. :cheers:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

WTF !?
Who gave this guy a licence?


----------



## winnipeg

Incredibely idiot!

Also you should know that in France most of the people hate taxis, they are expensive, they are very few, they are unpleasant, they acts like a mafia (they wanted the number of taxis to be limitated, so they wouldn't have concurrence and so they could pay an expensive licence (200.000€) and even make profit on it when they take their retirement...), few month ago, they made march and blocked roads against UberPop (a service where people can drive other peoples with the app Uber and without needing a licence), and they even atacked some UberPop drivers, like in those videos : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W1wXLIoJPY and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCsveBaUQV8 hno:

And the only answer from the french government has been to ban UberPop, they have done nothing against the taxis like ending their mafious system our increasing their number to improve the service for people who want to use taxis.... hno:

So if anyone could do anything against this particular idiot on the video, it would be really really great!! :yes:


----------



## volodaaaa

What do you guys think about Windows 10? I have read that the system violates common user's privacy. What is worse, user usually agree with that by submitting the EULA.


----------



## winnipeg

It's great but to most of users, Windows 10 brings nothing really usefull...

Also by using US services and an US operating system, you should pretty much already know what they do with your asking for privacy...







The only difference in Windows 10 is that they tell it now...

Also you could use this guide to help keeping your privacy (or believe that this is the case, at least...  ) : https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3f38ed/guide_how_to_disable_data_logging_in_w10


----------



## CNGL

Eulanthe said:


> Latest report
> 
> I went hunting for the best place to see the meteor shower tonight, and went to the Užljebic (HR) – Ripac (BiH) border crossing.


I was also set to see the meteor shower last night, but a thunderstorm showed up instead .


----------



## italystf

winnipeg said:


> Incredibely idiot!
> 
> Also you should know that in France most of the people hate taxis, they are expensive, they are very few, they are unpleasant, they acts like a mafia (they wanted the number of taxis to be limitated, so they wouldn't have concurrence and so they could pay an expensive licence (200.000€) and even make profit on it when they take their retirement...), few month ago, they made march and blocked roads against UberPop (a service where people can drive other peoples with the app Uber and without needing a licence), and they even atacked some UberPop drivers, like in those videos : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W1wXLIoJPY and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCsveBaUQV8 hno:
> 
> And the only answer from the french government has been to ban UberPop, they have done nothing against the taxis like ending their mafious system our increasing their number to improve the service for people who want to use taxis.... hno:
> 
> So if anyone could do anything against this particular idiot on the video, it would be really really great!! :yes:


You can safely replace France with Italy in this post. hno:


----------



## keber

volodaaaa said:


> What do you guys think about Windows 10? I have read that the system violates common user's privacy. What is worse, user usually agree with that by submitting the EULA.


I have them already installed. Currently nothing exceptionally (upgrade went very smooth) but I also don't see any problems. About user privacies etc. I don't give a damn about it. And in the process of installing you need to agree to EULA.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Windows 10 is basically a blatant violation of privacy and user data protection. Especially for the personal assistant Cortana the amount of personal data analyzed is creepy. Everything is sent to Microsoft to be 'analyzed'. 

However, you can switch off most of these features. I have them all disabled. 

There is no such thing as a 'free' upgrade. You pay for it with personal data, much like it pays for Facebook or Youtube.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Windows 10 is basically a blatant violation of privacy and user data protection. Especially for the personal assistant Cortana the amount of personal data analyzed is creepy. Everything is sent to Microsoft to be 'analyzed'.
> 
> However, you can switch off most of these features. I have them all disabled.
> 
> There is no such thing as a 'free' upgrade. You pay for it with personal data, much like it pays for Facebook or Youtube.


I agree, but according to IT bloggers I've read, the PC keeps sending your data despite turning Cortana off.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's correct, some options cannot be disabled or will be turned back on by default.

Microsoft also creates a worldwide P2P network for Windows Update. Instead of downloading an update from Microsoft serves, it can download from other users, and other users can download from your PC. You can turn this feature off.

However, you cannot turn Windows Update off, it will install all updates, even if you don't want them. So theoretically they can install updates that change some of your settings. So it is possible that some features which you can turn off now, will be updated without an option to turn them off in the future. For example Cortana or Windows Update P2P.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> However, you cannot turn Windows Update off, it will install all updates, even if you don't want them.


I think it's possible to disable it. Just don't connect to any network......


----------



## bogdymol

Thing is that all this programs (Windows, Google, Youtube etc.) are optional. If you don't like their terms and conditions, nobody forces you to use them.

(I know that you don't have many alternatives and that they also know that. You have to use them. Thing is to limit the information you give.).


----------



## bigic

Or block Windows Update servers?


----------



## Suburbanist

Greetings from the scorching Mojave Desert, early morning walk and sightseeing is done, now we're back to drink some water, buy more water (plenty of it) and take the road to visit the Mojave Preserve and end our day in Twenty Nine Palms. The desert here is beautiful though, after couple days you get used to the different tones and watching sunrise is always interesting (which we've done most of our days here).

Fuel is still inexpensive by my usual Netherlands standards, but I surely lament the higher prices here than in Utah and Colorado.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

bogdymol said:


> Thing is that all this programs (Windows, Google, Youtube etc.) are optional. If you don't like their terms and conditions, nobody forces you to use them.
> 
> (I know that you don't have many alternatives and that they also know that. You have to use them. Thing is to limit the information you give.).


That's true, but at one time or the other they tend to take over competitors. Major websites or applications like Youtube, Google Earth or Flickr were originally stand-alone companies that were taken over by Google and Yahoo. 

The monopolies tech and software companies have is absurd. The media would go mad if such monopolies existed in the banking or the energy sector, yet it's somehow accepted with the tech oligarchy.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> The monopolies tech and software companies have is absurd. The media would go mad if such monopolies existed in the banking or the energy sector, yet it's somehow accepted with the tech oligarchy.


A very quick comment: what make some monopolies or dominant positions bad are not only their market share but also entry barriers and systemic risks.

Opening a new video hosting service is not costly at all, there are dozens of wannabe alternatives there and some well established (Vimeo, vidme and many others). Creating a new searching engine is more tricky, but it can be done, it some have tried, the setup costs are rather low for anything online. You can rent and quickly scale up serves and bandwidth as needed. 

Before Facebook became dominant several other social networks existed, such as MySpace, Friendster, Hi5, Hyves...

OS and Internet browsers are more difficult. 

Now energy sector is an entirely different manner, you need several billion $/€ before you can even think of being a minor firm very exposed to risks on your assets. It takes years or maybe a decade before new plants, let alone mining/extraction operations, are approved. The electrical grid is infinitely more regulated than the Internet traffic infrastructure.


----------



## italystf

Google, Youtube, Facebook are de facto monopolies, since their success depends by the huge number of people using them. Few people would use a social network where none of his friends is into, a search engine that gives poor results compared to Google, an automatic translation system that has a poor vocabulary, a video hosting system that has few video, etc... So, bigger IT companies gets the largest share of users, although it may change in the future if another big brand will emerge. For example Facebook virtually killed the, once very widespread, MySpace, MSN Messenger, Netlog and others. More and more people are using OS software like OpenOffice or LibreOffice instead of costly MS products. Encyclopedia Encarta was made obsolete by Wikipedia.
IT products are very volatile and subjected to technological and cultural changes. Most consumer goods (food, clothes, non-electronic tools,...) we purchase every day don't differ much than those we purchased 10 or 20 years ago, while today's internet and mobile phone world and the 2005 one are like day and night. Even 10 y.o. cars are almost like new cars, if compared with consumer electronics and software.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Google, Youtube, Facebook are de facto monopolies,


Youtube is Google. so it's even more - we practically have some king od oligopol where only several complanies rule the Internet.


----------



## CNGL

After reading that about Windows 10, I guess it's better to remain in what one has got up to now. I only want to remove the admin requirements on a computer that has Windows 8.1...


----------



## keokiracer

Holy crap, how lucky can a person be?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Whoops.






In Saudi Arabia


----------



## cinxxx

I wrote here that I was looking to buy a smartphone. 
So I bought a Samsung Galaxy S6 (with 64GB memory) around a month ago.

How could I have lived so many years without one? :lol:


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Edge or regular one ?


----------



## cinxxx

Regular one. Didn't want to pay extra 100€ only for a curved screen.


----------



## winnipeg

cinxxx said:


> I wrote here that I was looking to buy a smartphone.
> So I bought a Samsung Galaxy S6 (with 64GB memory) around a month ago.
> 
> How could I have lived so many years without one? :lol:


Now I think that you are better understanding my reaction when you said that you never got one...  :yes:


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Whoops.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In Saudi Arabia


The guy in white pick-up is incredibly stupid or, at least blind.


----------



## Suburbanist

My American adventure is almost over now. We shall soon return to the Netherlands this Friday.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Hahahahaha


----------



## msayle

radi6404 said:


> *EDIT CHRIS:
> 
> This thread is now the official roadside rest area, a place where you can discuss miscellaneous topics*
> 
> 
> Guys, here´s my shiny balcony which some of you wanted see, by now the balcony is even shinier because I used a technology which makes the color painted smooth.


I want to see the balcony - was the image removed?


----------



## MichiH

^^ The crazy guy was removed too .


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

MichiH said:


> ^^ The crazy guy was removed too .


radi6404?
Why?


----------



## bigic

Because the moderators are jelaous of his shiny fence?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Radi wasn't banned. He left on his own. I haven't seen him posting here in years.


----------



## x-type

maybe Struma started to show the aging symptoms...


----------



## bogdymol

Next week I'll be in Scotland for 2 days. I was searching for a hotel or bed& breakfast accommodation, but I found this :nuts:


----------



## volodaaaa

you know... lake view


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

@bogdymol
Are you going to visit Loch Ness?
Beware of monsters,they can creep in to he tent


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Lisbon, Portugal! :cheers2:
Our honeymoon trip has begun


----------



## winnipeg

Have a nice trip!!!


----------



## Verso

cinxxx said:


> Greetings from Lisbon, Portugal! :cheers2:
> Our honeymoon trip has begun


And you're hanging on SSC? icard:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I skipped 2 days from my honeymoon as I had to go on a construction site, to sort out some things for work. I was to Paris (honeymoon), and I flew directly from there to Manchester, and the next day I returned to Paris for the rest of the honeymoon.


----------



## Verso

My grandma (my mum's mother) ended my parents' honeymoon by pretending she was seriously ill. :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

My Mum almost did not allow me to go to proposal weekend with my girlfriend. It was 5 years ago, she was the owner of the car and it had been raining for two weeks. The location of our stay was affected by severe floods. Everything was prepared  But it finally end up well.


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Can't wait for my honeymoon


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Step 1: find a girl that likes you.


----------



## MichiH

^^ Step 0: Prepare yourself so that any girl could like you.


----------



## sponge_bob

*Fame at Last*

Yeah. Sponge Bob gets a massive statue in Istanbul. More of this please! :lol:

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/hi...ation.aspx?pageID=238&nID=87529&NewsCatID=341

"Historic castle in Istanbul turns into ‘SpongeBob’ after restoration"


----------



## winnipeg

And worst, now it doesn't look like it's an historic castle... 

I don't realy understand why they didn't let it like how it was....


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ it doesn't matter, Isil will explode it soon :lol:


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> @x-type will only drive by train from now on.


maybe you're right. i took the train on that route some 2 years ago. it's always exhausting because of uncomfortable trains.


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> maybe you're right. i took the train on that route some 2 years ago. it's always exhausting because of uncomfortable trains.


Train comfort is always important. If the train is not overcrowded and the ride is smooth - it is pleasure to travel. It feels like you are flying.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> Train comfort is always important. If the train is not overcrowded and the ride is smooth - it is pleasure to travel. It feels like you are flying.


i agree, but here in my city we have only local railroad, and short distance trains. however, ride to Zagreb lasts more than 1,5 h and it is not pleasure anymore.


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> i agree, but here in my city we have only local railroad, and short distance trains. however, ride to Zagreb lasts more than 1,5 h and it is not pleasure anymore.


How much does it take to Zagreb by car? Does a lot of people work in Zagreb from Bjelovar? It seems to be in its catchment araa.

We have similar situation in Slovakia in connection between Bratislava and Nitra (sixth city by population). It is connected by motorway, but the main railway tracks goes outside the city. You can make it in 60 minutes by car, but it is horrible by train. Besides it is not connected directly, it is served by old local trains (see picture). The seats are uncomfortable, the train is noisy, it stops at every stop, the track is in bad condition. I've tried it several times and it took 2 hours.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I haven't traveled by train or bus for years, but I cycle to work every day as it is less than 3 km away with no traffic lights. 

Dutch trains are fast and with high frequency even on minor lines, but the overall travel time is just uncompetitive compared to driving. Overall travel times go up dramatically if your destination or origin isn't near a train station. About 90% of the trips in the Netherlands are on a route with a large difference in travel time between a car and public transport. In fact in many cities cycling is faster and more convenient than using the bus or tram system. Dutch cities are generally quite compact so distances within cities tend to be short and cycleable (is that a word?)


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> How much does it take to Zagreb by car? Does a lot of people work in Zagreb from Bjelovar? It seems to be in its catchment araa.
> 
> We have similar situation in Slovakia in connection between Bratislava and Nitra (sixth city by population). It is connected by motorway, but the main railway tracks goes outside the city. You can make it in 60 minutes by car, but it is horrible by train. Besides it is not connected directly, it is served by old local trains (see picture). The seats are uncomfortable, the train is noisy, it stops at every stop, the track is in bad condition. I've tried it several times and it took 2 hours.
> 
> https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2735/4353369357_75929fde2f.jpg


by car 1h to the eastern suburb. 8 trains per day to Zagreb, fastest take 1h26, slowest 1h49. actually, it is not that bad considering the time, but it is uncomfortable and annoying as hell. the rolling stock is similar shit as that one in Nitra:










there are quite some people working in Zagreb, that's probably the main reason why new railroad is going to be built. (the fastest trains are those that arrive to Zagreb early in the morning, and leave afternoon, so called "work trains".)

however, the rolling stock for local and regional trains is being modernized, so i really hope that we will get this new train when new railroad will be finished, because that crap taht we have now isn't worth of new railroad.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I haven't traveled by train or bus for years, but I cycle to work every day as it is less than 3 km away with no traffic lights.
> 
> Dutch trains are fast and with high frequency even on minor lines, but the overall travel time is just uncompetitive compared to driving.


Travel time is not everything. It takes me 40 min-1h by train /bus to get to work, and only 30 min by car, but I still prefer local public transport. It's cheaper, less dangerous and I can relax and read a book instead of yelling constantly at other drivers. 
Cycling in this case is hardly an option: it's too far (9 km), too dangerous (no cycle path) and I don't won't to arrive at work all sweaty.


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> Travel time is not everything. It takes me 40 min-1h by train /bus to get to work, and only 30 min by car, but I still prefer local public transport. It's cheaper, less dangerous and I can relax and read a book instead of yelling constantly at other drivers.
> Cycling in this case is hardly an option: it's too far (9 km), too dangerous (no cycle path) and I don't won't to arrive at work all sweaty.


Also, if you compare not only travel time, but include time taken by looking for free parking places, individual transport is more comparable to public one.

According to timetable it took me 11 minutes of travel by trolleybus. It is approximately half by car. Once I tried to go to work by car. Did six rounds around the neighbourhood of my office looking for a free parking place and then decided to park on the nearest free-of-charge parking lot. Realized it was the parking lot beside my house :lol: It took me circa 35 minutes and I had to take the whole trolleybus route (+11 minutes) anyway.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> Also, if you compare not only travel time, but include time taken by looking for free parking places, individual transport is more comparable to public one.
> 
> According to timetable it took me 11 minutes of travel by trolleybus. It is approximately half by car. Once I tried to go to work by car. Did six rounds around the neighbourhood of my office looking for a free parking place and then decided to park on the nearest free-of-charge parking lot. Realized it was the parking lot beside my house :lol: It took me circa 35 minutes and I had to take the whole trolleybus route (+11 minutes) anyway.


:lol:

Any way, a typical, and very usual city problem. However, a vast majority of all travels nation-wide have nothing to do with city centers. And Chris is from a country where a large part of working places are located in the outskirts of cities, unlike in Bratislava, and many European cities where they are located in city centers. 
And that's why the modal share of public transport on a national level is in every European nations under 20%, in most of them under 10%.
Public transport in the countryside has no chances. Children, elderly people (unable to drive a car) and some very poor people will take it, but no one else. And although we talk about heavy urbanization in Europe (and nowadays suburbanization which is even worse) the majority of population travel only occasionally to city centers. 
The modal share of public transport is quite high in big cities, in Paris, London, Frankfurt/M or even Madrid public transport has a higher modal share than car. But it's only a minor part of Europe.


----------



## Kanadzie

g.spinoza said:


> Travel time is not everything. It takes me 40 min-1h by train /bus to get to work, and only 30 min by car, but I still prefer local public transport. It's cheaper, less dangerous and I can relax and read a book *instead of yelling constantly at other drivers. *


Italian drivers :lol:


----------



## MichiH

^^ I thought exactly the same


----------



## CNGL

This afternoon I've driven (barely) into France. Now I can say I've driven outside Spain .


----------



## bogdymol

*:siren: thread premiere :siren:
/on-topic​*
First picture of a motorway _*roadside rest area*_ taken from the heights of a mountain:










More pictures you can find on the Austrian roads thread.


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> Travel time is not everything. It takes me 40 min-1h by train /bus to get to work, and only 30 min by car, but I still prefer local public transport. It's cheaper, less dangerous and I can relax and read a book instead of yelling constantly at other drivers.
> Cycling in this case is hardly an option: it's too far (9 km), too dangerous (no cycle path) and I don't won't to arrive at work all sweaty.


I would guess that in most cases the decision making case is more complex than optimizing the travel time only.

This is my daily framework to optimize:

- Two adults, one car
- Distances to work 10 and 18 kilometers
- No end-to-end public transport connections
- Poor bus-to-train connections at the key hub
- Time of first and last meeting of the day
- Any out-of-office meetings during the day?
- No grocery shop close to home
- Evening activities
- Leaving for or returning from countryside home
- etc

Earlier, the framework was more complex due to moving kids between home, day care, school and their activities. Nowadays they are self-moving.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Who uses the Skyscrapercity app? I can't load the Highways & Autobahns forum via the app. It keeps loading until a server error pops up. I tried to uninstall and reinstall it, but it doesn't help. I can open other sub forums without any problems.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ I have the exact same issue. All the other sub-forums work just fine but Highways & Autobahns always fails to load.


----------



## g.spinoza

I uninstalled the app long ago for this reason. I use the Web-based version also from mobile


----------



## John Maynard

- edit


----------



## radamfi

I thought most advertising for prostitution was done online these days? So no need to stand by the road in the cold and rain, or work in a brothel, even legal ones like in Germany. Just stay in your own flat or rent a hotel room.


----------



## volodaaaa

You are talking about escort. It is premium leauge of prostitues. The job includes knowledge in certain domain, knowledge of foreign language and ability to look good. If a healthy (and powerful) man needs a gal to be accompanied with at the social events with additional services afterwards, he visit (e.g. a facebook) site providing escort services. Escort girls are usually beautiful, relatively well-educated and motivated by finding a rich man that would buy them car, house as an exchange for potential descent. The ugly (I know this is not correct), bad-educated and lacking-hygiene ladies desperately waiting for sweating truck drivers is something else.


----------



## volodaaaa




----------



## John Maynard

radamfi said:


> I thought most advertising for prostitution was done online these days? So no need to stand by the road in the cold and rain, or work in a brothel, even legal ones like in Germany. Just stay in your own flat or rent a hotel room.


I believe so. Apparently the "tirowki" have there own clientèle too. Making a tour on a Polish "sociable advertisements" website, I can tell that many of these "escorts" are not really expensive - starting from 80 PLN, but can go up to 800 PLN for an hour. Usually, you go to them - they "work" in a flat, you phone them, they give you an address, you come there, arrange the price, take a shower, and see the girl. Some can also come to you as well, it's usually more expensive though. I prefer by far this "discret" approach of "hustling", than to see impressive numbers of almost naked and vulgar girls waving at me in the shoulder of main artery between major towns, with crazy dudes stopping in the middle of the road :bash:. Saying that, I am not a "consumer" myself.


----------



## KøbenhavnK

You guys sure seem to know a lot about a subject you take no interest in.... 

Despite the border control does Die Kaiserin's Germany take in all immigrants or are some of them rejected? 

Just wondering. A mere 9000 have entered Denmark in 10 days thanks to her insanity and the border police are unable to do anything about it....


----------



## MichiH

> Corvinus here
> 
> The "Hungarian camera woman kicking and tripping migrants" story made big news in the biased, migrant-abetting mainstream press (while no word about savage migrants throwing stones at local population for example).
> 
> Shortly afterward, the Tunisian news portal arabesque.tn has identified the migrant "tripped" by the camera woman as Osama el-Abd el-Mohsen, a Sunnite islamist and vivid supporter of the Islamic State terror group. In a 2013 facebook entry, he praised the IS murderers and terrorists as "warriors fighting a holy war".
> 
> The poor refugee has safely arrived to Munich with his children:
> He is now said to threaten to sue the camera woman since due to her action, police (whom he was fleeing from) caught him again and took his fingerprints, which will reduce his chances of remaining in Germany.


Not true. Osama Abdel-Muhsen Al-Ghadab was a football coach in Syria. He got a job in Spain now. Source (and many others).


----------



## Autoputevi kao hobi

Macedonia trip
https://www.google.rs/maps/dir/42.7062943,22.0614754/%D0%9E%D0%BF%D1%88%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0+%D0%92%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B5%D1%81,+%D0%9C%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0+%28%D0%91%D0%88%D0%A0%D0%9C%29/%D0%9E%D1%85%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B4,+%D0%9C%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0+%28%D0%91%D0%88%D0%A0%D0%9C%29/%D0%A1%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D1%99%D0%B5,+%D0%9C%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0+%28%D0%91%D0%88%D0%A0%D0%9C%29/42.7063249,22.0616098/@41.9955489,21.4039816,8z/data=!4m22!4m21!1m0!1m5!1m1!1s0x13542bc1d2b9c535:0xe4cd993f2bdee535!2m2!1d21.7722966!2d41.7164563!1m5!1m1!1s0x1350db6587ea6657:0xc46cfc65390bc9d3!2m2!1d20.8016481!2d41.1230977!1m5!1m1!1s0x135415a58c9aa2a5:0xb2ed88c260872020!2m2!1d21.4279956!2d41.9973462!1m0!3e0?hl=sr
I'll go on a trip to Macedonia with my school on monday.


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## MichiH

*Travel mapping*

A little update about the "travel mapping" project which replaces the old clinched highway project.



> Travel Mapping is still very much in development, but we welcome users, both those who previously used CHM (the now defunct Clinched Highway Mapping project) and new users, to submit their travels for inclusion in the system.
> 
> To use the system, build a ".list" file showing the segments you've traveled on the highways we've included in the project. This process is substantially the same as it was in CHM. CHM's process is described at http://cmap.m-plex.com/docs/getstarted.php.
> 
> [...]
> 
> more: *http://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=16397*


A highway browser and an official email address for sending list files are established now. Stats are still outputted in the user log file because a proper front end is not yet implemented.

 Highway data updates are in progress. Europe is already updated except Poland, Sweden and Portugal. Austria, Germany, Hungary and Norway are up-to-date since yesterday .


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## John Maynard

KøbenhavnK said:


> You guys sure seem to know a lot about a subject you take no interest in....


mg:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Thought I'd share this. There are even examples from Zwolle. Enjoy!

http://www.urb-i.com/#!before-after/ceh8


----------



## MattiG

MichiH said:


> A little update about the "travel mapping" project which replaces the old clinched highway project.
> 
> A highway browser and an official email address for sending list files are established now. Stats are still outputted in the user log file because a proper front end is not yet implemented.
> 
> Highway data updates are in progress. Europe is already updated except Poland, Sweden and Portugal. Austria, Germany, Hungary and Norway are up-to-date since yesterday .


What is the mission of this exercise?


----------



## NordikNerd

MattiG said:


> What is the mission of this exercise?


A few years ao I actually did send my info to join this map-project, but I never received an answer.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You can log your traveled highways there. The original website owner left without a notice and nothing was ever heard of him again. So they restarted the project at AA Roads.


----------



## MichiH

*Travel mapping*



MattiG said:


> What is the mission of this exercise?


The original project was called "clinched highway mapping". That means, you could mark highway sections which you've traveled. If you've traveled the whole road (e.g. the German A7), you've CLINCHED the highway. There was a stats about the number of clinched highways etc. Here's mine: http://cmap.m-plex.com/stat/travsummary.php?u=michih&du=km&sort=dd#t.

I'm used to study road maps since I was 6 years old. I sometimes drove little detours just that I had driven the road. I remember that I tried to persuade my parents driving on Slovenian A2 when I was 11 or 12 years old but they didn't agree . Yes, it's crazy, but that's me .

I joint CHM project two years ago and mapped all my travels of my life. When I was not sure if I drove there, I didn't mark it. But there were so many gaps... So I tried to get there just to clinch that damn road.... I've traveled more than 30,000km of these roads (mostly first category road of each country plus E roads) meanwhile .

The website is not updated since one year now but some enthusiasts started a discussion on aaroads forum and finally started a new project. An associate professor of computer science hijacked the data and implemented a new database. He traveled more than 120,000km (mostly American highways), he must be really crazy . Other contributors just update "highway data". That means, they check if a new section was opened, rerouted, closed etcetera.

The new project is still in development but there are some nice features compared to the old project, e.g. you're traveled maps are shown on a Google Maps layer and you can combine it: example .

It's currently on a temporary server but they want to move it to a different one with a suitable address: travelmapping.net (could happen "soon"). The new website still lacks a proper front end but it's in development.



NordikNerd said:


> A few years ao I actually did send my info to join this map-project, but I never received an answer.


The same happened to me. The file was in a wrong format and Tim (the owner of the old website) didn't response. Jim (the programmer of the new website) is totally different. He always answers when I've sent him an updated file. Minimum "Got it".

btw: I've traveled 96.9% of the German Autobahn network related on the length and I'm dreaming of 100%


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## sponge_bob

You can upload your highway GPS traces in a .gpx format to Openstreetmap you know.


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## MichiH

^^ I have no GPS traces . That's something different, e.g. I think there's no stats how many km of a road I've traveled etc.


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## CNGL

My short-term goal is to travel every damn national and first order regional road in Aragon. This includes this section of road that barely enters the region, but is even recognized in the log (And hopefully I'll be driving this on late October). It will be hard to achieve this, especially the roads in Teruel province. At least I've tortured myself driven the Carinena-Fuendetodos section of A-220.


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## Suburbanist

^^ CNGL, do you intend to clinch all national autovias and autopistas in the medium-term future? What % of those routes, roughly, have you clinched already?


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## cinxxx

I'm thinking about a mini trip around the last weekend of November.
I managed to find decent priced flights from Munich to either Alicante (which I would combine with Valencia in a trip) or Athens. Both are direct flights.

What do you think? I know both are nice destinations.
But which has better cards in terms of weather?


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## piotr71

volodaaaa said:


> That is true, but on the other hand, mandatory headlights is good to distinguish whether the car is moving or not. Something like in railways, when rolling stock acting like train has three headlights, locomotive doing shunting two headlights and occupied locomotive standing on track one headlight.


Good example! 

Cars with switched headlamps on can be better seen for any driver, when heading towards low sun in early morning and late afternoon. It is also much easier to spot a vehicle with lights on in the mirrors among fast moving cars (without lights on) on motorway. In particular, it makes live easier for the drivers of large trucks and coaches. So, mind that you, a driver of a car, are far better seen in their side mirrors, when using day/head lights even in perfect weather conditions.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> A common argument against headlights 24/7 in the summer is that motorcyclists and cyclists are less visible between all the lights.


But that is not true. The motorcyclists use headlights, too, and cyclists are less visible anyway.


----------



## MattiG

x-type said:


> i use them through the whole year and i think that obligation would be really good (here we had it for maybe 2 years, and now we have them mandatory only in winter period (this year between 25.10. and 27.03.). however, i like using Osram Nightbreaker Unlimited, and using the day lights means changing the bulbs twice a year. and they are not cheap at all.


I am more concerned about the effort to change the bulb than about the price of bulb.

For years ago, I had a Citroën C5. Changing the front left bulb implied dismantling and reinstalling many parts, including the accumulator. It is not a task for ordinary people. Fortunately, it was a company car and changing the bulbs at garage was included.

(Man is an odd creature. Man can send a person to Moon and get him back, but making an easily changeable car light bulb seems to be a mission impossible.)

My experience about H7 bulbs says that they might last driving up to 20000 km in my driving style. Driving a lot on gravel roads or on other uneven roads shortens the life because of vibration.

The daytime LEDs help a lot. I have now driven my current car for about 35000 km without changing bulbs.


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> I am more concerned about the effort to change the bulb than about the price of bulb.
> 
> For years ago, I had a Citroën C5. Changing the front left bulb implied dismantling and reinstalling many parts, including the accumulator. It is not a task for ordinary people. Fortunately, it was a company car and changing the bulbs at garage was included.
> 
> (Man is an odd creature. Man can send a person to Moon and get him back, but making an easily changeable car light bulb seems to be a mission impossible.)
> 
> My experience about H7 bulbs says that they might last driving up to 20000 km in my driving style. Driving a lot on gravel roads or on other uneven roads shortens the life because of vibration.
> 
> The daytime LEDs help a lot. I have now driven my current car for about 35000 km without changing bulbs.


That is true. :lol: To change the light bulbs in rear ligths in my Ignis I had to remove the upholstery.


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## cinxxx

*Adults Need 7 or More Hours of Sleep Every Night*



> [...]
> 
> The panel found that sleeping less than seven hours per night is associated with increased rates of adverse health outcomes, including weight gain, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, depression, and an increased risk of early death. Averaging less than seven hours of sleep per night also may impair immune function, increase pain, hinder daytime concentration and performance, and boost errors and accidents.
> 
> Although the panel did not recommend an upper limit for nightly sleep, the experts did note that young adults, people recovering from a sleep debt, and people who are ill may need more than nine hours of sleep per night.
> 
> [...]


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MattiG said:


> But that is not true. The motorcyclists use headlights, too, and cyclists are less visible anyway.


Yes, that is actually the argument. Motorcyclists get attention because they use headlights. This means they stand out more. If everyone has headlights on, this advantage disappears.



cinxxx said:


> *Adults Need 7 or More Hours of Sleep Every Night*


Getting 7 hours of sleep a night shouldn't be too hard, for example between 11 pm and 6 am. I have colleagues who complain being tired while having coffee at 9 pm and going to bed at midnight. No surprise...

9 hours is more difficult to achieve if you have to be up early for work. Getting up at 6 or 7 am means going to bed (and sleep quickly) at 9 or 10 pm. I usually go to bed at 10 - 10.30 pm and get up at 6 - 6.30 a.m.


----------



## cinxxx

^^not really so simple.
(and the article says at least 7 hours, they actually recommend more)

Not everybody can go to sleep so early, I for one can't.
If I go, I will only move from one side to the other for a long time and even if I fall asleep earlier then normal, I would sleep bad and wake up tired, even if I wake up at the same hour as I would when going to sleep late.

I have this problem from gymnasium, it was a nightmare to get up and arrive at 7:30 to school. Many times got late and first 2 hours were almost useless for me.
It only got worse in high school, I fell asleep during courses from 8am, so I ended up skipping them.

But where I work now, people understand that I am a night owl, I get to work always after 9, stay later then almost anyone else. And that's ok.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

From what I've read, staying up late behind a monitor and especially cell phone and tablet screens makes it more difficult to get to sleep. Another factor is coffee. I usually have one cup of coffee in the evening, around 7.30 pm. I notice that when I get a coffee around or after 8 I can't sleep as quickly. 

When I was in school I found classes at 8.30 extremely early. But teenagers need more sleep than adults. Ever since I started working I usually start at 7.30 am. But it helps that I do not have to travel very far (max 10 minute bike ride).


----------



## MichiH

piotr71 said:


> Cars with switched headlamps on can be better seen for any driver, when heading towards low sun in early morning and late afternoon. It is also much easier to spot a vehicle with lights on in the mirrors among fast moving cars (without lights on) on motorway. In particular, it makes live easier for the drivers of large trucks and coaches. So, mind that you, a driver of a car, are far better seen in their side mirrors, when using day/head lights even in perfect weather conditions.


Exactly! That's why I ALWAYS have headlamps on! Traveling to work, I use a road with slight curves and trees or even some forest next to the road. Driving behind a truck it's often hard to recognize if the car I see "in front" of the truck is driving in the same direction (so that I could easily pass the truck) or is opposing traffic (so that I cannot pass the truck). That's why many drivers don't try to pass trucks at all there and that's why other drivers risk passing queues..... AADT is about 8,000..10,000 vehicles/day, simple 2-laned road, ~20km.


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## MichiH

cinxxx said:


> But where I work now, people understand that I am a night owl, I get to work always after 9, stay later then almost anyone else. And that's ok.


I can officially arrive in office from 6 to 9AM but no one would care if I would occasionally arrive later... I know a guy of my company who's officially allowed to start at 11..12AM and staying longer in the evening (longer than the official 8PM deadline because afterwards you usually get night shift premium; "Nachtzuschlag"). I'm an "early bird" though .


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes, that is actually the argument. Motorcyclists get attention because they use headlights. This means they stand out more. If everyone has headlights on, this advantage disappears.
> 
> 
> 
> Getting 7 hours of sleep a night shouldn't be too hard, for example between 11 pm and 6 am. I have colleagues who complain being tired while having coffee at 9 pm and going to bed at midnight. No surprise...


This happens because, oddly enough, the human circadian rhythm is actually longer than the day. So you may sleep your good 7 hours, wake up at 6 am and still not be sleepy at 11 pm.
There was a series of experiments on circadian rhythm, about 20 years ago, culminating in a man voluntarily locking himself inside a cave for more than a year, without clocks, which proved that human circadian rhythm is 36 hours, rather than 24.

Article in Italian


----------



## cinxxx

ChrisZwolle said:


> From what I've read, staying up late behind a monitor and especially cell phone and tablet screens makes it more difficult to get to sleep. Another factor is coffee. I usually have one cup of coffee in the evening, around 7.30 pm. I notice that when I get a coffee around or after 8 I can't sleep as quickly.
> 
> When I was in school I found classes at 8.30 extremely early. But teenagers need more sleep than adults. Ever since I started working I usually start at 7.30 am. But it helps that I do not have to travel very far (max 10 minute bike ride).


I don't drink any coffee 

But I heard it from many colleagues that it's very hard to reaccommodate to their working schedule after weekend or vacation, when they can "ausschlafen", and they couldn't without coffee. Why shouldn't a person "ausschlafen" everyday and why do it in the weekend if you don't need it?


----------



## MichiH

cinxxx said:


> I don't drink any coffee


Me neither 



cinxxx said:


> they couldn't without coffee.


Because they are addicted to caffeine.

I'm used to drink Coke every day for 20 years now. Once, I didn't drink it for 2-3 days and I really felt bad.



cinxxx said:


> Why shouldn't a person "ausschlafen" everyday and why do it in the weekend if you don't need it?


I think it's just a different rhythm at the weekend compared to on weekdays. Late jet leg...


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## ChrisZwolle

I drink coffee almost every day, though I can live without it, for example I never have a coffee on vacation, even when I get up early for a trip. I don't need coffee to wake up. I don't make coffee at home before going to work. I usually have my first coffee around 8 a.m. 

I like coffee, but I'm not an aficionado. I usually drink a medium black coffee with no milk and sugar, no espressos or cappucinos

I once lost 10 kg when I stopped drinking soft drinks every day. There's so much sugar in it.


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## MichiH

^^ Diet Coke doesn't contain sugar at all


----------



## x-type

MattiG said:


> I am more concerned about the effort to change the bulb than about the price of bulb.
> 
> For years ago, I had a Citroën C5. Changing the front left bulb implied dismantling and reinstalling many parts, including the accumulator. It is not a task for ordinary people. Fortunately, it was a company car and changing the bulbs at garage was included.
> 
> (Man is an odd creature. Man can send a person to Moon and get him back, but making an easily changeable car light bulb seems to be a mission impossible.)
> 
> My experience about H7 bulbs says that they might last driving up to 20000 km in my driving style. Driving a lot on gravel roads or on other uneven roads shortens the life because of vibration.
> 
> The daytime LEDs help a lot. I have now driven my current car for about 35000 km without changing bulbs.


oh, that. true. on my Punto changing the bulbs was a piece of cake. left one little bit harder, but accessible. 2 minutes per bulb.
Focus requires screwdriver, but after that everything is easy (although you actually must dismantle whole headlamp, but it is not complicated at all. 5 minutes per bulb.
on the other hand: my friends with Zafira and Megane experience huge problems. if they don't want to dismantle half of engine space, they have an option to change it using the hole somewhere under the fender at inner wheel area (to reach that hole you must turn the wheel completely right or left and then start to make surgery)


----------



## winnipeg

ChrisZwolle said:


> A common argument against headlights 24/7 in the summer is that motorcyclists and cyclists are less visible between all the lights.
> 
> I usually drive with headlights off during the summer and on during the darker 6 months of the year.


This argument is strange because in my case, it hasn't changed anything about how I see the motorcyclists and how respectfull I am to them, it has just improved the visibility of cars. (This is so so helpful for example during summer in Romania when it's very hot and you don't see so much on the road because of the sun, etc...) 

I will try to put DRL LED on my car (Peugeot 207) but it's hard because good models like Philips DRL are too big to fit easily on my car (I have to remove all the front bumper of the car and it will take me hours...) or to put some cheap chinese DRL LED but they seems to be very fragile and I can't say if they will last with time and rain, etc... hno: ).


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## winnipeg

MattiG said:


> My experience about H7 bulbs says that they might last driving up to 20000 km in my driving style. Driving a lot on gravel roads or on other uneven roads shortens the life because of vibration.
> 
> The daytime LEDs help a lot. I have now driven my current car for about 35000 km without changing bulbs.


And I would add that buying expensive bulbs from famous brands like Philips or Osram,... is useless. Since 2 years, now I'm using chinese H7 bulb (at a price <1€ when you buy them by 10 or 20...) and they are working fine, with an everyday use (everytime I start my car, I now have the reflex to put on the lights  ), they last around 6 month and sometimes more (it mades a lot of hours of use since I use them everytime I take my car during day...  ).


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## DanielFigFoz

I moved to Corsica last Sunday for my year abroad, so I've given my first car to my Dad after owning it for just under three years, I never changed it's bulbs. I think that people in the UK are generally more reluctant to use headlights than in the rest of Northern Europe.


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## ChrisZwolle

Few people in France drive with headlights on during the day as well. Daytime running lights are becoming more common though. 

Another fading fad in France is the use of the left turn signal during the entire overtaking procedure on the motorway. I see fewer and fewer people doing that. Instead, they only use turn signals when changing lanes, like most of Europe.


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## Fatfield

Edit - video taken down.


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## Kanadzie

ChrisZwolle said:


> http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/student-commutes-1000-miles-poland-6521028
> * Student commutes 1,000 miles from POLAND to London because it SAVES him money *
> 
> Jonathan Davey moved to Gdansk in Poland because it’s cheaper for him to live there and fly back for lectures in London.​:lol:


I thought my new house, 60 km from work and 90 km from city centrum was bad :lol:


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## CNGL

Now that the 'Timelapse road videos' has been closed, I realized I've managed to do an 'In before lock' thing more than a year ago . Normally I don't manage to do that, but I've done it a few times.


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## volodaaaa

Spot one difference


















Hint:


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## bogdymol

^^ I've been there skiing 3 winters. The slope nearby that hotel is just too easy, even for beginners. I also ate once in the restaurant of that hotel (really nice hotel if I remember well).


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## volodaaaa

It cought fire at 3:30 AM with 130 guests sleeping inside. One person died, 8 were injured. What a luck.


----------



## sponge_bob

Facebook bring in a Not=Like button but only in Ireland and Spain so far. I must get well fckin busy. 

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-humber-34491753



> *A mother has been jailed for five years after her toddler son drowned in a garden pond while she chatted on Facebook.*
> 
> Passing sentence, Judge Jeremy Richardson QC said Barnett's "lamentably appalling parenting led to fatal consequences".
> He added: "If you should have any further children, they will almost certainly be removed from you.
> "*You pose very serious risks to any child for whom you have responsibility.*"


----------



## x-type

i dreamt of this thread tonight. i had about 20 unread pages, and on the first unread page bogdymol mentioned me with my surname, and Verso followed naming me with my name. and then on the following pages each while somebody would name me with my name or surname. i was not pissed off, but confused and quit reading after 4-5 pages. :?


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## CNGL

^^ I was part of that dream? :shifty: Don't worry, I wouldn't never refer you with your real name even if I knew it.


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## CNGL

In another forum I'm in someone created a pretty hilarious thread where plural rules are applied to every word. Some examples:
One house, two hice (due to mouse, mice).
One Toys-Я-Us, two Toys-Я-I (Now that is a paradox).
One 3dus, two 3di (So two 3 digit US routes become a 3 digit Interstate?).

And we even gone the way slavic languages, with things like those:
One taxi, two taxis, three taxes.
One explosion, two explosia, three explosiæ.

And we've done it the other way round. Like I did with one of my metro systems, compare this with this (Search for line 11), where I changed Alfamen (ugliest town ever) to Alfaman .


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## cinxxx

Good morning from Trápani :cheers2:


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## winnipeg

Be carreful with the all new french "roadwork radars"

https://www.facebook.com/terence31/videos/10206830740599102/

They are hidden, not indicated and with a very very high capacity (up to 7500 vehicules per hour), only in this short video, it has flashed around 50 vehicules... hno:

It's hard to believe that this kind of hidden installation will have any effect on road safety, it is even worse because cars are braking in front of it (and for example on the video we can see a car almost been hit by the truck behind it...), it's such an excellent way to make easy and fast cash for the state... hno:


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## Festin

Not sure if this is real or if it has been posted before but police controlling the traffic with drones in russia:


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## Rebasepoiss

winnipeg said:


> Be carreful with the all new french "roadwork radars"
> 
> https://www.facebook.com/terence31/videos/10206830740599102/
> 
> They are hidden, not indicated and with a very very high capacity (up to 7500 vehicules per hour), only in this short video, it has flashed around 50 vehicules... hno:
> 
> It's hard to believe that this kind of hidden installation will have any effect on road safety, it is even worse because cars are braking in front of it (and for example on the video we can see a car almost been hit by the truck behind it...), it's such an excellent way to make easy and fast cash for the state... hno:


Indeed, if they really wanted to increase safety they would implement average speed control and put up huge signs to let the drivers know.


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## ChrisZwolle

On the other hand, French workzone speed limits are not that low. For example this bridge renovation on A49 near Romans-sur-Isère has a speed limit of 90 km/h. In the Netherlands such a speed limit is only allowed on motorways if there is a solid barrier between driving directions. Not to mention all the 60 km/h _Baustellen_ in Germany.

What's more annoying about France is that they immediately slap a € 45 minimum fine for 1 km/h over the speed limit on you. 


A49-16 by European Roads, on Flickr


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## cinxxx

Well, hopefully they didn't flash me. 
I survived Palermo, but I have to say it wasn't really bad, nothing really impressive besides my other experiences in Italy


----------



## winnipeg

Rebasepoiss said:


> Indeed, if they really wanted to increase safety they would implement average speed control and put up huge signs to let the drivers know.


Exactly! hno:



ChrisZwolle said:


> On the other hand, French workzone speed limits are not that low. For example this bridge renovation on A49 near Romans-sur-Isère has a speed limit of 90 km/h. In the Netherlands such a speed limit is only allowed on motorways if there is a solid barrier between driving directions. Not to mention all the 60 km/h _Baustellen_ in Germany.
> 
> What's more annoying about France is that they immediately slap a € 45 minimum fine for 1 km/h over the speed limit on you.
> 
> 
> A49-16 by European Roads, on Flickr


You've just picked the wrong example because 90km/h is the maximum speed for this kind of 2 ways roads in France, so this roadsign is at best "useless".

No, in most of the roadworks in France, the limitations are low and not really justified like for example in the video it has been limitated to 70km/h on a 3 ways motorway and without any work and workers on place (this is why almost no one respect this very low limitation for this type of road...). hno:

And this is not the only one, by driving a lot in France this summer, this is something very usual...

But yes, Germany don't makes better, even if the low limitations on motorways works are more justified (most of the time the space for vehicules is small)... and yes I hate Germany for that, due to the lack of works on their motorways in the past, there is such roadworks everywhere and sometimes it is very very dangerous (I had a big fear one time, when the traffic goes from 130km/h to complete stop without any information or limitation before, this was due to a damn roadwork... hno: )


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## x-type

i think that generally speed limits in working zones are too low. here in HR you will hardly find more than 60 too (sometimes it happens 80, but very rare). there are even 40 km/h zones if construction site is short (of course, nobody drive 40 there, it is just insane)


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## ChrisZwolle

In the Netherlands, motorway work zones usually have a 90 km/h speed limit. 70 km/h is only used for short-term night works or when there are only cones separating traffic from workers. The A12 widening east of Arnhem had mostly a 100 km/h speed limit, despite the near-complete reconstruction of the motorway. 

Generally speaking, the Dutch _Rijkswaterstaat_ does a very good job eliminating impact of road works on traffic. Most regular maintenance (paving) works are done during the night or weekends, and long-term work zones are few in number and have little impact on traffic. Under 5% of traffic congestion in the Netherlands is caused by road works.


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## cinxxx

Good evening from Malta! :cheers2:


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## volodaaaa

My fianceé has accidentally invented a perfect way how to peel a boiled egg. She forget she had been preparing it


----------



## Kanadzie

ChrisZwolle said:


> In the Netherlands, motorway work zones usually have a 90 km/h speed limit. 70 km/h is only used for short-term night works or when there are only cones separating traffic from workers. The A12 widening east of Arnhem had mostly a 100 km/h speed limit, despite the near-complete reconstruction of the motorway.
> 
> Generally speaking, the Dutch _Rijkswaterstaat_ does a very good job eliminating impact of road works on traffic. Most regular maintenance (paving) works are done during the night or weekends, and long-term work zones are few in number and have little impact on traffic. Under 5% of traffic congestion in the Netherlands is caused by road works.


I was always amused by the road works on urban motorways in Montreal (for example). Normal speed limit - 70 km/h. But in very complex / narrow/winding lanes work zone... speed limit 70
Only thing is, normally you can go 120 and now in the work zone, only maybe 80 or 90...


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Generally speaking, the Dutch _Rijkswaterstaat_ does a very good job eliminating impact of road works on traffic. Most regular maintenance (paving) works are done during the night or weekends, and long-term work zones are few in number and have little impact on traffic. Under 5% of traffic congestion in the Netherlands is caused by road works.


Something similar is happening in Finland. For example, the contractors might pay a rent for closed lanes: For each hour they close lanes at the construction sites, they lose money. The paving at the main corridors around Helsinki takes place in July when the traffic volumes are lowest. The paving of the motorway ramps often takes during the night closing one ramp at a time. 

Of course, at the big construction sites, the congestion is unavoidable.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A house located between two motorways and a high-speed rail 









Near Cambrils, Spain


----------



## italystf

There's a house in the UK located in the wide median of a motorway, with a private underpass to access it. I can't find the pic, though.


----------



## bogdymol

I think I saw a house between the motorway carriages somewhere between Manchester and Leeds. 

In Slovenia or Germany for example exists an entire village between the 2 carriageways.


----------



## Fane40

volodaaaa said:


> My fianceé has accidentally invented a perfect way how to peel a boiled egg. She forget she had been preparing it


fianc*é*e.
Why used a french word instead the english one "darling" ?
But it's so romantic


----------



## winnipeg

Fane40 said:


> fianc*é*e.
> Why used a french word instead the english one "darling" ?
> But it's so romantic


Because it is also an english name ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fiancée ) even if (of course) it comes from french! :yes:

Et oui c'est romantique d'utiliser le français !


----------



## MattiG

Fane40 said:


> fianc*é*e.
> Why used a french word instead the english one "darling" ?
> But it's so romantic


But is the meaning of the words exactly the same? For example, my darling is not my fiancée. She is my wife.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

An early winterly blast has affected Europe. Snow fell into lower elevations, I've read that Kraków (Poland) had its earliest snow in decades. Snow depths were substantial at higher elevations of Central and Eastern Europe, with snow plows in full force at Slovak D1. 

The first wet snow has also fallen in far southern Netherlands, missing the record of earliest snowfall by just one day.


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> But is the meaning of the words exactly the same? For example, my darling is not my fiancée. She is my wife.


I guess the "fiancée" means wife-in-future.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> I guess the "fiancée" means wife-in-future.


It is my understanding, too. That is not always the same concept as "darling".


----------



## g.spinoza

The English word, a little retro-sounding, is "bethroted".


----------



## RipleyLV

ChrisZwolle said:


> A house located between two motorways and a high-speed rail
> 
> http://i.imgur.com/SwdqvLl.jpg
> Near Cambrils, Spain


A presume a member(s) of the SSC community live(s) there..


----------



## DanielFigFoz

g.spinoza said:


> The English word, a little retro-sounding, is "bethroted".


Just a little retro. :lol:


----------



## Fane40

winnipeg said:


> Because it is also an english name ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fiancée ) even if (of course) it comes from french! :yes:
> 
> Et oui c'est romantique d'utiliser le français !


Ah, ok !
I didn't know this word is also used in english.
Never had an english fiancée .
I will be less idiot before entering in my bed tonight !


----------



## winnipeg

Fane40 said:


> Ah, ok !
> I didn't know this word is also used in english.
> Never had an english fiancée .
> I will be less idiot before entering in my bed tonight !


:yes:

Also a better translation for the french expression "je me coucherai moins bête ce soir" could be : "I'll go to bed a wiser man tonight" 

(Je suis français aussi !  Au passage on ne voit pas beaucoup de français sur ce topic habituellement...)

_(For those who are curious, I'm only telling him that I'm also french and that we are very few on this topic... )_


----------



## ariskop

italystf said:


> There's a house in the UK located in the wide median of a motorway, with a private underpass to access it. I can't find the pic, though.


You probably are referring to the famous Stott Hall Farm on M62 between Manchester and Leeds. 

Google Maps


----------



## CNGL

Damnit, Twitter is down :bleep:.

I had to complain somewhere, like most people do.


----------



## Fane40

winnipeg said:


> :yes:
> 
> Also a better translation for the french expression "je me coucherai moins bête ce soir" could be : "I'll go to bed a wiser man tonight"
> 
> (Je suis français aussi !  Au passage on ne voit pas beaucoup de français sur ce topic habituellement...)
> 
> _(For those who are curious, I'm only telling him that I'm also french and that we are very few on this topic... )_


I'm not very good in english, that's why I don't write often on SSC.
You know french are bad in foreign languages.
All corrections are welcome due to my bad grammar.
English lessons at school are far back in the past. More than 22 years.
And translations by websites are not often right.
But because I am frequently on the road ,especially in F, E and P, rarely elsewhere, I like to come here.
And yes, I read a few weeks ago you come from eastern France.
But, it's curious to see a french in Romania. Your job certainly.
Keep up your good contribution here.
Same thing to others.:cheers:


----------



## Surel

www.mapy.cz has unveiled tourist maps and routes for the whole world. This is great upgrade. Hopefully the quality will one day reach that one of the Czech and Slovak tourist maps that www.mapy.cz provides.

http://mapy.cz/turisticka?x=12.8834116&y=47.6029820&z=13

:cheers:


----------



## Surel

Anzob tunnel, Tajikistan


----------



## Megasky

Surel said:


> Anzob tunnel, Tajikistan


Looks preety dark there, is there any lights in the tunnel?


----------



## Alex_ZR

Curved pedestrian crossing in Zrenjanin:


----------



## Brenda goats

Some of you may be interested in this special exhibition at the London design museum, to commemorate 50 years of British Road signs.

In the UK we use the standard European model of sign, using triangles and circles.

See these novelty redesigned signs.


----------



## JackFrost

Bucharest. Whats the story behind this picture? No traffic lights here?










(picture mirror-inverted)


----------



## Exethalion

I was on a bus going through the Judge Pregerson Interchange in Los Angeles the other day. Stunningly huge piece of infrastructure.

No good photos because my camera would only focus on the dirt on the bus windows, but here's something from wikipedia:


----------



## Blackraven

I know Wroclaw is pronounced as "Vrotswav".....but personally I still like saying "ROWCLAW"


----------



## cinxxx

^^Or Breslau  :troll:


----------



## italystf

Can you be more stupid than him?


----------



## CNGL

Blackraven said:


> I know Wroclaw is pronounced as "Vrotswav".....but personally I still like saying "ROWCLAW"


I think Woodge, errrrr, Łódź is better. Totally unexpected pronunciation.


----------



## Surel

cinxxx said:


> ^^Or Breslau  :troll:


Vratislav is ok...


----------



## bigic

CNGL said:


> I think Woodge, errrrr, Łódź is better. Totally unexpected pronunciation.


I thought it's pronounced "lodge". At least, that's how we pronounce it in Serbian.


----------



## Kanadzie

^ I heard once that Ł at one time sounded like North American would pronounce regular L in English today.

Rowclaw just sounds horrible, at least Breslau is something


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Can you be more stupid than him?


:lol:
I definitely understand him. Would you bother to close you door, if you can do it automatically by hitting another car?  Pure effectiveness.


----------



## piotr71

Kanadzie said:


> ^ I heard once that Ł at one time sounded like North American would pronounce regular L in English today.
> 
> Rowclaw just sounds horrible, at least Breslau is something


You still can hear such "Ł" going out of mouth of older ladies from Warsaw. In many cases they have aristocratic roots. That "Ł" sounds pretty much like Serbian or Croatian "L".


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ It's really curious
I thought when trying to learn the language, I would make it easy and just say such archaic and aristocratic (and familiar!) way 
But then the "normal" Ł ended up for me being entirely natural and I say it properly (unlike most things )

The evolution of the language is interesting. When my grandfather goes people ask, "where are you from?", "here!" :lol:


----------



## hofburg

http://9gag.com/gag/aYwBG4VV


----------



## ChrisZwolle

True, I've driven behind the same vehicle for hundreds of kilometers in France. Eventually you'll come up to somebody driving the same speed you want to drive.


----------



## winnipeg

hofburg said:


> http://9gag.com/gag/aYwBG4VV


Right, so I'm not the only one that feels that? 

Usualy when I do the road Romania-France, most of the time I find somebody that is going at the same speed than me (or a bit higher) and I follow him (not too close!!), I found that this is easier, and when it is a local (for example in Austria), I consider that if a local is going at that speed I could follow him without trouble (for exemple 140km/h in Austria, etc...)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The amount of edits doesn't necessarily say something about quality. Some people write a huge essay in just one edit, while others add little sections and corrections in many edits.

Having many people editing an article doesn't necessarily makes it better. It's difficult to keep track of all edits and make sure they are correct, and it increases the chance of strange prose / wording and inconsistent layout. 

What you'll see with many articles about persons who are in the media often (especially musicians and actors) is that a section with prose evolves into a list with the latest updates. This happens especially with the second-tier articles (just below the top importance articles). 

Wikipedia also suffers from recentism, in that a disproportionate amount of the article is about recent events. This is quite natural, as Wikipedia often gets updated if something makes the news, but older stuff would require much more time-consuming research. In terms of roads, it could mean that every little change on a motorway in the last 5 years is logged, while major expansion projects in the 1970s or 1980s gets just one sentence or is not mentioned at all.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> In terms of roads, it could mean that every little change on a motorway in the last 5 years is logged, while major expansion projects in the 1970s or 1980s gets just one sentence or is not mentioned at all.


Agree. On the other hand, I think that most people are more interested in the current progress and future plans.......


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> The amount of edits doesn't necessarily say something about quality.


Several years ago there was a football (for American readers: soccer) game where the referee made a huge mistake which actually decided the game.
There was an article about that referee in Wikipedia. The fans of the team which hast lost corrected it like instead of "X.Y. is a football referee" writing "is a cheater". It was restored but was changed again like "is a football referee that should f*** his mother" (using the insulting word instead of asterisks), and so on. 
The article was changed about one hundred times in no more than 12 hours.


----------



## ukraroad

Well I got your opinion, I guess we should not rely yet on it, as well that there are some b***hy people editing the right into wrong. I will try, even though I have a five-hour-a-week access to computer. I use a lot of Skyscrapercity . Btw, the word in asterixes is no swear word according to Oxford dictionary, advanced, 9th edition, but "rather disapproving and inoffensive unless in very official cases"


----------



## Fargo Wolf

Neat historical vid about ferry service between Tilbury (near London, England) and Antwerp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlyX7h_SCQU


----------



## volodaaaa

I've just seen the Back to the Future film. What an original plot. I really enjoyed that


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I went to the movies to see Spectre yesterday. I liked the film and action sequences, though the storyline dragged on for too long at certain times. The pre-title sequence in particular was quite spectacular. 

Apparently the critical reception in the UK and Europe is much better than in North America.


----------



## da_scotty

Thats because there's a deeper storyline and less action.. that's hard to follow across the pond


----------



## Highway89

A truck carrying oranges from Murcia, Spain to Riga, Latvia was found last Sunday morning in a forest track near Ezcaray, La Rioja. The weirdest thing is that the place where the truck was found is located 350 km / 217 mi far from the fastest road route between Murcia and Riga (Spanish AP-7 or N-340).

Probably the Ukrainian truck driver got lost because of the extremely confusing Spanish signage and when he tried to use the GPS system, things got even worse 

Source (and picture):

Spanish: http://www.larioja.com/comarcas/201511/17/letonia-ezcaray-20151117003839-v.html

Google-translated English: https://translate.google.es/transla...aray-20151117003839-v.html&edit-text=&act=url


----------



## MattiG

Highway89 said:


> A truck carrying oranges from Murcia, Spain to Riga, Latvia was found last Sunday morning in a forest track near Ezcaray, La Rioja. The weirdest thing is that the place where the truck was found is located 350 km / 217 mi far from the fastest road route between Murcia and Riga (Spanish AP-7 or N-340).
> 
> Probably the Ukrainian truck driver got lost because of the extremely confusing Spanish signage and when he tried to use the GPS system, things got even worse
> 
> Source (and picture):
> 
> Spanish: http://www.larioja.com/comarcas/201511/17/letonia-ezcaray-20151117003839-v.html
> 
> Google-translated English: https://translate.google.es/transla...aray-20151117003839-v.html&edit-text=&act=url


Not the first time such a thing happens. A Swedish couple drove to Carpi in Italy instead of Capri. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...nd-of-Italy-after-Capri-spelling-mistake.html


----------



## DanielFigFoz

As some of you know I temporarily moved to Ajaccio in Corsica in September and I'm staying here till May. A I bought a car a few weeks ago to get a chance of seeing as much of the island as possible. 










It cost me €900 and drives acceptably, it gets me where I want to go. The radio doesn't work though, and the hazard light button seems to be missing(?!), which I didn't check when I bought it.


----------



## winnipeg

Nice little car, even if you paid it a bit too expensive in my opinion... but if it goes well on the road it's okay! :yes:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

€ 900 is not that bad if it is in good condition. But this model is nearly 20 years old (it was produced until 1996, when it was facelifted).

I like the Peugeot styling of this era. One of my neighbors drives a Peugeot 405 sedan, it still looks good today.


----------



## Suburbanist

The early 1990s marked a period of very cheap entry-level cars that weren't crappy. Technology advancements had increased reliability of cheap cars (contrary to some examples of the late 1970s/early 1980s with cheap cars that degraded quickly and broke down often), but tough environmental and safety laws hadn't yet kicked in requiring expensive implementations of devices and design changes that dispoportionally affected the lower-end of the market (cost of airbargs / cost of everything else ratio is higher for a cheap than for a big sedan).


----------



## winnipeg

ChrisZwolle said:


> € 900 is not that bad if it is in good condition. But this model is nearly 20 years old (it was produced until 1996, when it was facelifted).
> 
> I like the Peugeot styling of this era. One of my neighbors drives a Peugeot 405 sedan, it still looks good today.


I don't know about the price in other countries, but in France those olds cars are usualy even more afortable in a good condition, if you look at the selling between individuals, at this price you could have for example a 106 but in phase 2 (a bit newer) or a 306, all in good conditions... :yes:

I'm completly agree with that, and I still have the example in my family, we keept an old Renault 19 from 1992 (mostly for sentimental reason) but it's still working great and it's also fun to drive...


----------



## winnipeg

Suburbanist said:


> The early 1990s marked a period of very cheap entry-level cars that weren't crappy. Technology advancements had increased reliability of cheap cars (contrary to some examples of the late 1970s/early 1980s with cheap cars that degraded quickly and broke down often), but tough environmental and safety laws hadn't yet kicked in requiring expensive implementations of devices and design changes that dispoportionally affected the lower-end of the market (cost of airbargs / cost of everything else ratio is higher for a cheap than for a big sedan).


Absolutly, I wasn't talking about the quality of the car, I was only talking about the price. Those cars are nice.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

If you drive on the French countryside, there's still a lot of cars in the 25 - 35 year old range driving around. They last pretty long, especially the diesels.


----------



## winnipeg

ChrisZwolle said:


> If you drive on the French countryside, there's still a lot of cars in the 25 - 35 year old range driving around. They last pretty long, especially the diesels.


It's true even if those cars are certainly a disaster (old diesels are emitting a too big quantity of particules... :bash: ), but true! :yes:


----------



## Kanadzie

It's amusing since French cars in North America vapourized so quickly that they last so long in France...
Still on occasion you can see an old beret-wearing diehard rolling an old 505 or 504 even but never a 405...


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if cars are more expensive here than elsewhere, most things are. There were a couple of cars for sale here at about €900, then there were a load that weren't much younger going for €2,500. 

I had heard that registering cars in under the French system was quite a long process but it wasn't that bad. It's more complicated than in the UK where you just fill in a short form and send it off in the post, no other documents needed. Here I needed proof of residence and a copy of my passport and to go to the council offices. That said, I didn't spend more than two minutes in the office, probably less, nothing like the horror stories I read. 

Getting car insurance was harder because the date I received my licence was incompatible with the computer programme as I was under 18 at the time, so the insurance lady made something up for me to able to use my 3 years no claims bonus which was nice and she also said that my accent almost disappeared when I said my phone number.


----------



## Suburbanist

Is Corsican French significantly different than mainland French and/or Provençal French?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Not sure to be honest, Corsican itself is of course though. Sometimes I don't understand what people say to me but that happens everywhere in France. People have told me to expect to be thrown off by Corsican words but I don't know if what I don't understand is Corsican or just French words I don't know. I find written Corsican fairly easy to understand though, it reminds me of Portuguese quite a lot, the is 'a' and 'u' as well. Male 'the' is 'o' in Portuguese but that's pronounced as a 'u' as Surburbanist well knows.


----------



## Suburbanist

DanielFigFoz said:


> Not sure to be honest, Corsican itself is of course though. Sometimes I don't understand what people say to me but that happens everywhere in France. People have told me to expect to be thrown off by Corsican words but I don't know if what I don't understand is Corsican or just French words I don't know. I find written Corsican fairly easy to understand though, it reminds me of Portuguese quite a lot, the is 'a' and 'u' as well. Male 'the' is 'o' in Portuguese but that's pronounced as a 'u' as Surburbanist well knows.


I have a Dutch colleague taking Portuguese lessons (in a formal course with university-trained language teachers offered by a university; for some reason he's very bored with Europe and wants to go live in Brazil with his Brazilian girlfriend), and he's having a hard time, not only because of the gender flexion (something most Anglo-German-Saxon language natives struggle in general when learning Romance languages) but also because of the mess about vowel sounds in spoken Portuguese. This makes it particularly hard for people who learn to speak, as adults, as if they were children training phonetics, because then they associate the name (sound) of vowels with the wrong pronunciation when they are incorporated in non-stressed syllables.

I was taking a look at his study materials, they are using, predictably, European Portuguese materials, which is fine of course, though I've seen Brazilian Portuguese materials that omit the 2nd person flexion of verb conjugations as it is only used in extremely formal contexts out there.


----------



## Kanadzie

Portuguese sounds like a drunk Russian trying to speak Spanish


----------



## xrtn2

Kanadzie said:


> Portuguese sounds like a drunk Russian trying to speak Spanish


----------



## x-type

what engine do you have in 106? if it is 1.4 diesel, you will probably forget visiting gas stations (in the early 90es it was known as far the most fuel economic engine).

(btw if i was at your place, i would think of something like 2CV, R4 or similar, to be real French  )


----------



## g.spinoza

Corsican as a language itself is much more similar to Italian than French.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A huge pack of snow fell in Roskilde, Denmark. Reports are indicating 40 - 60 centimeters.


----------



## SeanT

That is correct. Here in Køge- region is the same.

Sendt fra min LG-D802 med Tapatalk


----------



## SeanT

Sendt fra min LG-D802 med Tapatalk


----------



## MichiH

SeanT said:


> Sendt fra min LG-D802 med Tapatalk


Sounds like an English / German mix 

Send from my ... by using ...
Gesendet von meinem ... mit ...


----------



## winnipeg

ChrisZwolle said:


> A huge pack of snow fell in Roskilde, Denmark. Reports are indicating 40 - 60 centimeters.


Wonderfull!!!   :yes:

I wish that I could have all this snow!!! (Yes I really like snow!!  )


----------



## KøbenhavnK

First migrants moved into a new tent camp in Western Denmark yesterday- they also got a lot of snow over there.

Seeking asylum they are told that their stay is temporary and that they cannot apply for reunification with their families for three years.

Guess things are a bit stretched in Germany and Sweden when they think that's better....

Good news for all the migrants sleeping in the streets of Malmö yesterday: They were allowed to spend the night in local mosques and churches.... No reports of neither flowers nor teddy bears.


----------



## Kanadzie

x-type said:


> what engine do you have in 106? *if it is 1.4 diesel, you will probably forget visiting gas stations (in the early 90es it was known as far the most fuel economic engine).*
> 
> (btw if i was at your place, i would think of something like 2CV, R4 or similar, to be real French  )


Yes because litres per 100 km was very low
But also km per hour was very low too
so several months between gas stations :lol:


----------



## TrojaA

MichiH said:


> Sounds like an English / German mix
> 
> Send from my ... by using ...
> Gesendet von meinem ... mit ...


(Holstein Low German: Sennt vun mienen … mit …)

Low German influenced Danish a lot (and of course other Continental Scandinavian languages as well), so reading is often not a big deal, but understanding spoken Danish is really a mess.
It was hard in school classes to get good grades in oral tests. ;-)

The Danish even make fun of the fact, that they sometimes can't catch the other's meaning due to the variety of dialects https://youtu.be/s-mOy8VUEBk


----------



## bigic

This is a *Norwegian* comedy sketch making fun of Danes!


----------



## italystf

I was wondering how an uneven coverage the Italian Wikipedia has. While it has many articles about things that are very local or otherwise of a dubious encyclopedic relevance, it lacks some important pages about international current event, such the current civil war in Yemen, the Ankara massacre, the Odessa massacre in 2014 and the recent Bamako hotel attack.
For topics that aren't specifically related to Italy, I use the English version.


----------



## KøbenhavnK

TrojaA said:


> (Holstein Low German: Sennt vun mienen … mit …)
> 
> Low German influenced Danish a lot (and of course other Continental Scandinavian languages as well), so reading is often not a big deal, but understanding spoken Danish is really a mess.
> It was hard in school classes to get good grades in oral tests. ;-)
> 
> The Danish even make fun of the fact, that they sometimes can't catch the other's meaning due to the variety of dialects https://youtu.be/s-mOy8VUEBk


Yes. The Danish language is a perversion of German (For the better, says the Dane). But: Please don't pervert your argument by dragging Iron Maiden into it...... Don't study history. You're not going to have any. Your future lies in understanding Arabic & Farsi. And God Bless you for it. or not


----------



## x-type

hm, i think that Arabic and Farsi native speakers don't like each other too much.


----------



## grykaerugoves

Portugese in a very odd way sounds somewhat similar to Albanian.


----------



## cinxxx

^^For us Portuguese sounds very Slavic.
We get by more or less with Italian, Spanish, French (being also Romance languages), but we didn't understand almost a thing of it in Portugal.
Brazilian Portuguese is easier to understand though, they seem to speak slower and more clearly...


----------



## volodaaaa

Sorry to bother you but...
how is this called correctly?










Is this *paprika* or *pepper*? Becuase when I google *pepper* the results are similar than the picture above, but it also displays spice.


----------



## winnipeg

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sweet_pepper

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/paprika


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Polish motorway joke:









cork on a piece of A4 size paper.

or...

traffic jam on A4


----------



## CNGL

I really like puns. Some time ago I made a pun with lindane, as there were several towns with a ban on tap water due to that pollutant and then another town got an unrelated ban due to a herbicide. Of course, the pun is only understandable in Spanish (_Lindano_ vs _Lind... ah, no_, which was what I wrote).


----------



## italystf

In Italy _coda_ means both "tail" and "queue\traffic jam".


----------



## volodaaaa

What does a fish say when hits wall? Dam!


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Damn, Google Earth updates the imagery in and around Tallinn surprisingly often. The latest image available today is from October 24, 2015 with previous images being from September, August, June and March this year. :nuts:

In comparison, the latest satellite imagery available for Stockholm is from July 7, 2012.


----------



## Suburbanist

I drove a Tesla (not mine) for 240km today, back-and-forth to Schiphol airport.


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> Sorry to bother you but...
> how is this called correctly?
> 
> 
> 
> Is this *paprika* or *pepper*? Becuase when I google *pepper* the results are similar than the picture above, but it also displays spice.


In North America is a "bell pepper" and never a paprika (which is red spice)
But I think in Dutch it becomes paprika...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ In Estonian it's also paprika.


----------



## x-type

question for Hungarians: can somebody recommend me some cheap sim card with pay-as-you-go (prepaid) bundle which i would use only for smaller amounts of mobile internet from time to time? dunno, not more than 200 mb, but without any obligations of monthly payment?


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Athens, Greece! :cheers2:
Nice mild weather here


----------



## g.spinoza

Kanadzie said:


> In North America is a "bell pepper" and never a paprika (which is red spice)
> But I think in Dutch it becomes paprika...


In Italian they're called "peperoni", generating the English false friend "pepperoni", which is a sausage instead.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Suburbanist said:


> I drove a Tesla (not mine) for 240km today, back-and-forth to Schiphol airport.


What did you think?


----------



## Suburbanist

DanielFigFoz said:


> What did you think?


It's awesome. It not only accelerates very quickly, but it gives an extremely smooth ride (over near-perfect Dutch pavement) - no vibrations at all. It is also silent almost like a bike at lower speeds.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I wish there would be smaller / more affordable cars with the range that Tesla offers. Even a less powerful acceleration would still be acceptable to most people. 

I spotted a BMW i8 yesterday. There are only 139 in the Netherlands. It's even significantly more expensive than Tesla, but still needs a conventional engine to get such specification. Tesla's way ahead of the competition, which is quite rare in the automotive industry.


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> In Italian they're called "peperoni", generating the English false friend "pepperoni", which is a sausage instead.


so another magazzino - magazine thing


----------



## italystf

Preservative in English: chemical to preserve food
Preservativo in Italian: condom

Pollution in English: environmental problem
Polluzione in Italian: wet dream

:rofl:


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Preservative in English: chemical to preserve food
> Preservativo in Italian: condom
> 
> Pollution in English: environmental problem
> Polluzione in Italian: wet dream
> 
> :rofl:


The same in my language. Perhaps English is wrong  pepperoni is small red very spicy paprika.


----------



## Surel

MichiH said:


> It's the first time I read that a German driver license for cars can expire. Does it expire because you are Romanian? :?
> 
> I checked my driver license. "4b. -" That means, no expire date!
> 
> It's only required that Germans change their old document to the new plastic card till 18th January 2033.
> 
> Medical check is only required for truck driver license. It expires when you are 50 years old and must be renewed each 5 years again.


All these rules are same all across the EU, or at least they should be. But of course it is a directive, so the actual wording is different in every country.

All newly issued documents should be the same as well. Basically its all here. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32006L0126&from=EN

As about the validity:


> (e)
> 
> 
> who have their normal residence in the territory of the Member State issuing the licence, or can produce evidence that they have been studying there for at least six months.
> 
> 2.
> 
> 
> (a)
> 
> 
> As from 19 January 2013, licences issued by Member States for categories AM, A1, A2, A, B, B1 and BE shall have an administrative validity of 10 years.
> 
> A Member State may choose to issue such licences with an administrative validity of up to 15 years;
> 
> (b)
> 
> 
> As from 19 January 2013, licences issued by Member States for categories C, CE, C1, C1E, D, DE, D1, D1E shall have an administrative validity of 5 years;
> 
> (c)
> 
> 
> The renewal of a driving licence may trigger a new administrative validity period for another category or categories the licence holder is entitled to drive, insofar as this is in conformity with the conditions laid down in this Directive;
> 
> (d)
> 
> 
> The presence of a microchip pursuant to Article 1 shall not be a prerequisite for the validity of a driving licence. The loss or unreadability of the microchip, or any other damage thereto, shall not affect the validity of the document.


----------



## MichiH

Surel said:


> All these rules are same all across the EU, or at least they should be. But of course it is a directive, so the actual wording is different in every country.
> 
> All newly issued documents should be the same as well. Basically its all here. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32006L0126&from=EN
> 
> As about the validity:


The German interpretation is that you have to renew driver licenses which were issued on 18th January 2013 or later. *Particularly to update name and pic* on the card.



> Seit dem 19.01.2013 ausgestellte Führerscheine sind nach den Vorgaben der sog. 3. EG-Führerscheinrichtlinie - unabhängig von der zugrundeliegenden Fahrerlaubnis - auf 15 Jahre befristet. Nach Ablauf dieser Gültigkeit muss ein neuer Führerschein ausgestellt werden. Diese Regelung *dient insbesondere der Aktualisierung von Namen sowie des Lichtbildes*.
> 
> http://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/DE/Artikel/LA/fuehrerschein-2013.html


I already changed my driver license earlier than 2013. That means I do not have to renew my card each 15 years. It will never expire.


Validity of foreign driving licences in the Federal Republic of Germany


----------



## Surel

^^
That is the correct interpretation up until 2033, because the directive did not apply before 2013. But I think you will have to do it by 2033 though to ensure that the license complies to the directive.


----------



## MichiH

^^ No, I already have the new "plastic" one.


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> It's the first time I read that a German driver license for cars can expire. Does it expire because you are Romanian? :?


No, but because it was issued in 2015. My license, too will expire in 2029 (it was issued in 2014). 

Interesting, when I applied for a German driver license (I had had a Hungarian one since 1995) I had to have a medical check but only sight check, nothing more. Perhaps because I have glasses, I don't know.


----------



## cinxxx

Afaik the German drivers license is not "for life" as it used to be.
Even the owners of such document have to change it to the plastic one until 2033. After that it will a validity date on it (so it should be renewed after it's expiration).


----------



## MichiH

^^ The card is not "for life" (because pic and name should be updated each 15 years) but the license is "for life" (except truck license)! That's what I found in official sources. I already have a plastic one without expiration date (on the card)! I changed my old pink paper document (which was hardly readable because it got wet) in 2005. I think it looks exactly like the official card everyone need by 2033.

I think I do not have to change my card by 2033 or anytime later. Maybe I'm wrong though.... :dunno:

Nevertheless, German driver licenses never expire. If my card would be invalid after 2033 I just had to pay a fine and I would have to go to the authority, give them an actual pic and I'll get a new card. The same applies if one will not change one's old pink or grey paper document by 2033. That's what I read in official statements yesterday.

Edit: My mother also changed her grey document to a "plastic card" in 2005. Her name in the old document was still her name of birth which was changed when she married in 1979. That means, her name on the document was wrong for more than 25 years. From 2033, the name is allowed to be outdated for maximum 15 years.


----------



## x-type

i still have my old-fashioned licence, and i don't intend to change it because new ones are valid 10 years after issuing, while my old one valids till the year 2046


----------



## volodaaaa

MichiH said:


> ^^ The card is not "for life" (because pic and name should be updated each 15 years) but the license is "for life" (except truck license)! That's what I found in official sources. I already have a plastic one without expiration date (on the card)! I changed my old pink paper document (which was hardly readable because it got wet) in 2005. I think it looks exactly like the official card everyone need by 2033.
> 
> I think I do not have to change my card by 2033 or anytime later. Maybe I'm wrong though.... :dunno:
> 
> Nevertheless, German driver licenses never expire. If my card would be invalid after 2033 I just had to pay a fine and I would have to go to the authority, give them an actual pic and I'll get a new card. The same applies if one will not change one's old pink or grey paper document by 2033. That's what I read in official statements yesterday.
> 
> Edit: My mother also changed her grey document to a "plastic card" in 2005. Her name in the old document was still her name of birth which was changed when she married in 1979. That means, her name on the document was wrong for more than 25 years. From 2033, the name is allowed to be outdated for maximum 15 years.


I think a new EU directive entered into force 2-3 years ago. But it only limit the validity of a card, not licence as you have mentioned. I have had my licence since 2005 (EU card) and no validity is mentioned there. My gf has had the one since 2014 and it indeed had a validity.


----------



## Tenjac

x-type said:


> i still have my old-fashioned licence, and i don't intend to change it because new ones are valid 10 years after issuing, while my old one valids till the year 2046


In fact, it is valid until January 19th 2033. (http://www.mup.hr/main.aspx?id=147523)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A freight train was blown off a bridge onto Loop 287 in Lufkin, Texas.


----------



## Penn's Woods

I'm back. :hi: Selectively.

Re driver's licenses, we have to renew ours every few years (four years in Pennsylvania but I imagine that varies by state), but there's no retesting (at least in Pennsylvania). But, Surel, what I was wondering is does a Czech citizen living in the Netherlands have the option of getting a license in either country, or does he or she have to get a Dutch one?

PS: Road_UK sends his regards.


----------



## cinxxx

If you are an EU citizen you can reside in any EU country and use a drivers license issued by any EU country.
(I think as long as it is in the EU unified plastic form, if not you should change to it, whatever EU country).


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> I'm back. :hi: Selectively.
> 
> Re driver's licenses, we have to renew ours every few years (four years in Pennsylvania but I imagine that varies by state), but there's no retesting (at least in Pennsylvania). But, Surel, what I was wondering is does a Czech citizen living in the Netherlands have the option of getting a license in either country, or does he or she have to get a Dutch one?
> 
> PS: Road_UK sends his regards.


it depends of citizenship. if that Czech has Dutch citizenship, then he has Dutch licence. if he is still citizen of Czech Republic, then he has Czech one.


----------



## x-type

cinxxx said:


> If you are an EU citizen you can reside in any EU country and use a drivers license issued by any EU country.
> (I think as long as it is in the EU unified plastic form, if not you should change to it, whatever EU country).


ups, really? then i gave wrong info. it really doesn't have anything with citizenship?


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ Do EU people change citizenship commonly these days ? My understanding is a Czech living in NL can do anything like a NL citizen and so maybe not really any reason to pursue it. But maybe for EU citizens the process is easier too?


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> I'm back. :hi: Selectively.
> 
> Re driver's licenses, we have to renew ours every few years (four years in Pennsylvania but I imagine that varies by state), but there's no retesting (at least in Pennsylvania). But, Surel, what I was wondering is does a Czech citizen living in the Netherlands have the option of getting a license in either country, or does he or she have to get a Dutch one?
> 
> PS: Road_UK sends his regards.


I have that option, I am not sure, whether the Dutch living in CZ have that option, but I guess yes.

Any EU citizen registered in any EU country can apply for the renewal of the license in the country where he's registered. So if you register with the Dutch municipality, you are allowed that. The same holds in the Czech republic for other EU countries citizens. Once they register with the authorities there, they can apply for renewal and thus Czech driving license.

Now what you ask is bit different if I understand it. You want to know whether a EU citizen living in a different country can always go to apply for the renewal in the original home country. I think that in general as long as you stay a citizen of that country, it would have to take care of you, although it might show more complicated in some cases and you would perhaps need to go some non standard ways.

I can for sure get a Czech license if I go to the Czech authorities. I am not sure if any country has some residents only restrictions. I.e. if someone who is a resident in another EU country would not be able to renew his license in his original country because of not having the residence there anymore.

In the Czech republic, there's a concept of permanent residence such that even if you live abroad, you can be still a "permanent resident" of the Czech Republic (and in my case anyway, as I keep my Czech address as well, but aside from that, you can state your address to be a city hall in any case), unless you denounce it, but there's no requirement to denounce it. Maybe for the Dutch it would be different if they leave the Netherlands. As they would be required to de-register from the municipality. I am not sure what the Dutch authorities do when a Dutch person living abroad would come back to the Netherlands applying for the driving license. I don't think they could just walk in any city hall to make a claim, but I think, there must be ways in which they could do it. If anything, at least through an embassy.


----------



## Surel

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ Do EU people change citizenship commonly these days ? My understanding is a Czech living in NL can do anything like a NL citizen and so maybe not really any reason to pursue it. But maybe for EU citizens the process is easier too?


Changing citizenship, or acquiring a new one, is not like changing your socks, so no, its not really a common thing to do. It is not easy, there can be drawbacks, special conditions, every country having different rules, etc etc...

In theory, the EU citizenship grants you a non discrimination compared to the citizens of the country in which you reside. In reality you might face problems now and there, but all in all, it works pretty well and there are ways how you can push it through. There are several exceptions especially in the social security area, and then there are political rights of course (active and passive right in the national elections), and there might be exceptions for employment positions by the state. (however this again depends on how any country sees it fit).

Yes, EU citizens have it mostly easier and with less drawbacks to acquire a different EU citizenship in a different EU country.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Do you vote in the Czech Republic, the Netherlands or both? (Is "both" even an option?)

I'm guessing it still takes some time and effort, maybe years of residence, for an EU citizen who intends to stay permanently in another EU country to actually establish citizenship? A U.S. citizen is automatically a citizen of the state he lives in (per one of the "[post-] Civil War Amendments" to the Constitution); when I moved to Pennsylvania a month before an election, I was able to vote. I think the Pennsylvania rule on establishing residency for voting purposes is four weeks. And really, the term "citizenship" doesn't come up at the state level, but that's the language the Constitution uses; the point is that a state can't make people moving in from out of state wait too long before they're treated the same as people born there. The term "residency" is more usual.

But a student attending a university away from home, for example, has the right to maintain his "residency," for purposes such as voting, in his home state. (Since I live in a rental apartment, so that if I moved away permanently, it would no longer be "mine" in the way a house I owned would, I've wondered what I'd use as an exact address if I moved out of the country for an extended period. Because the exact address would affect things like who your representative is at Federal, state and local levels.... I'm told that I'd use my last U.S. address even if it's one I no longer have a right to occupy...i.e. my last rental now occupied by someone else.) EDIT 2: But that hypothetical student can't vote BOTH at the university and back home, because that would give him or her two votes in Federal elections.

EDIT: Surel, I started writing all that before your post of 18:53 CET, which I haven't read yet but will read now.


----------



## Surel

x-type said:


> it depends of citizenship. if that Czech has Dutch citizenship, then he has Dutch licence. if he is still citizen of Czech Republic, then he has Czech one.





x-type said:


> ups, really? then i gave wrong info. it really doesn't have anything with citizenship?


You get the version of the country that you asked it in. So if you renew it in NL, you get the NL version. If you do it in Germany, you get a German one.

There are conditions which allow you to apply for renewal in that given country. It's not like that you can go on holiday to France and ask a French driving license while you´re at it.

The common EU requirement for a residence is a stay longer than 3 months. After that you sort of automatically get a residence in that given country and thus can ask for renewal, you may be required to register, but that should not be a condition for granting of the residence. That should come automatically.


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> I'm told that I'd use my last U.S. address even if it's one I no longer have a right to occupy...i.e. my last rental now occupied by someone else.)


I know a US guy who lives in Germany for 14 years now. He's still US citizen (and he would never change it). His last US address was in Ohio, so his vote for the presidental election counts for Ohio. IIRC correct, it's also because his driver license was issued in Ohio or there's his Ohio address on the driver license card!?


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> ups, really? then i gave wrong info. it really doesn't have anything with citizenship?


No. I am a citizen of Hungary and have a German license. You can apply for a license in the member state you live in and you may not be restricted to do it any way (some minor restrictions are possible, e.g. you must live for at least 90 days in that country). 
And any EU drivers license is valid with no restrictions in every EU member nations.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> I know a US guy who lives in Germany for 14 years now. He's still US citizen (and he would never change it). His last US address was in Ohio, so his vote for the presidental election counts for Ohio. IIRC correct, it's also because his driver license was issued in Ohio or there's his Ohio address on the driver license card!?


It depends on the last address, is my understanding. But not only does his Presidential vote count in Ohio, he'd vote for Ohio's Senators, he'd vote for the House as if he still lived in that district, he'd vote for the Ohio legislature.... Everything he could vote for if he lived at that address, he still can. I guess he gets an "absentee ballot" - which you fill out and mail in - from the voter-registration authorities in that county.


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> EDIT 2: But that hypothetical student can't vote BOTH at the university and back home, because that would give him or her two votes in Federal elections.


If you have the citizenship of multiple EU countries, you have full rights as far as national politics is concerned in every country you are a citizen of.

The residency in an EU country gives you right to vote and run in the EU elections in that given EU country. So I could chose whether I want to vote in the NL or CZ. You are not allowed to vote twice in the EU elections (although the countries have different ways how to treat the non residents nationals and resident non nationals, which creates loopholes).

The residency should give you possibility to vote and run in the local elections.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> I'm guessing it still takes some time and effort, maybe years of residence, for an EU citizen who intends to stay permanently in another EU country to actually establish citizenship?


EU does not have general rules about national citizenships, so all member states are free to have their own ones, wich in fact differ heavily. 
Some nations (e.g. Slovakia) definitely forbid to have another citizenship, so if a Slovak citizen want to apply for citizenship in any other country, s/he must lay down the Slovak one. Other nations (e.g. Hungary or Germany) have no limitations about having multiple citizenships (I mean that of EU member states). 
The preconditions of applying for citizenship, too, are very different in EU member states. Here in Germany 8 years of residence and fluent (but not necesserily flawless) German is needed beside of some other terms. 

However having a citizenship is not needed at all. Citizens of other member states may not be discriminated in any way except for national elections. We can even participate in local elections in the town we are resident in. I, a native Hungarian, have been living in Germany for three years, I rent a flat (and will rent another one in January), have a car, and I did not have any difficulties of not having the local citizenship. The only restrcition was that I could not participate in national elections. 

In eastern part of the EU it causes sometimes heavy debates. For example in Hungary public transport is free for everyone in an age of 65 or more. This law was made for subsidizing Hungarian old people that have a very low income of course, but is (and must be) automatically valid for Swedish and Danish tourist, too, if they are at least 65 years old so Hungarian tax payers subsidize Swedish tourists that have 5 times more income than they.


----------



## Surel

Just an info for Penn's to make things more complicated.

In almost all EU countries (I think aside from UK), there's the ID card. You can't get national citizen ID card from another different EU country.

You can however get an different ID card after you comply with the requirements for the permanent resident (under all the different national definitions), mostly after 5 years of uninterrupted residence.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

How romantic. A marriage proposal on a Houston freeway. :nuts:


----------



## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Do you vote in the Czech Republic, the Netherlands or both? (Is "both" even an option?)


EU citizens can vote in local elections if they live in a foreign country. Implementation varies a lot, here in the Netherlands, where all population is officially registered to a specific address, they automatically send voting materials for EU citizens like me. In other countries, registration is a messier affair and voting as EU citizens has some extra hurdles.

There is no national voting right for EU-foreigners, and for a variety of reasons, it is extremely unlikely EU would ever approve that (think of the effect in places like Luxembourg or the Baltic countries). 

Each country has its own regulations concerning voting of absent-citizens. For some countries, voting from abroad is easier, for others, difficult (requires travel back to the country), and another group of EU countries outright do not allow non-resident citizens to keep voting in national elections after they've been away for a while.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> EU citizens can vote in local elections if they live in a foreign country. Implementation varies a lot, here in the Netherlands, where all population is officially registered to a specific address, they automatically send voting materials for EU citizens like me. In other countries, registration is a messier affair and voting as EU citizens has some extra hurdles.
> 
> There is no national voting right for EU-foreigners, and for a variety of reasons, it is extremely unlikely EU would ever approve that (think of the effect in places like Luxembourg or the Baltic countries).
> 
> Each country has its own regulations concerning voting of absent-citizens. For some countries, voting from abroad is easier, for others, difficult (requires travel back to the country), and another group of EU countries outright do not allow non-resident citizens to keep voting in national elections after they've been away for a while.


Baltic countries are a case of their own, since they have a sizeable percentage of residents that doesn't have the citizenship despite being living there for decades, just for ethnical\linguistic issues. The Russian minority in those countries is large enough to make them bilingual, like Belgium, but it wouldn't happen for obvious political reasons. EU usually condemns discriminations, but when the ethnicity that is discriminated is the Russians, it close an eye.
In the rest of EU, instead, non-citizen residents are almost all recent immigrants.


----------



## Suburbanist

In Juazeiro, Brazil (from Facebook feed, source unknown)


----------



## Alex_ZR

UK don't issue identity cards anymore? Which document British people use for travelling to the Continent?


----------



## volodaaaa

Suburbanist said:


> In Juazeiro, Brazil (from Facebook feed, source unknown)


ROFL :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

italystf said:


> Baltic countries are a case of their own, since they have a sizeable percentage of residents that doesn't have the citizenship despite being living there for decades, just for ethnical\linguistic issues. The Russian minority in those countries is large enough to make them bilingual, like Belgium, but it wouldn't happen for obvious political reasons. EU usually condemns discriminations, but when the ethnicity that is discriminated is the Russians, it close an eye.
> In the rest of EU, instead, non-citizen residents are almost all recent immigrants.


Russians who didn't go back to Russia after 1989 are not EU citizens... Even if there were voting rights for non-citizen EU residents in national elections, they would not be affected. The status of Russian settles in Baltic countries is a complicated issue, they were not some generations-old population that had lived there for a long time, but politically (Kremlin)-friendly settlers brought there with explicit goal of changing local demographic balances, while local intellectuals and else were deported en masse to Far East Russia. Best solution would be for some other EU countries, far away from the region, to grant them some stateless refugee status and let them move there (France, UK, Italy... somewhere never occupied by Russia) if they want to. 

I compare their situation to that of Turkish settlers in Northern Cyprus, brought there in large numbers so that in the event of any reunification, there would be a new demographic reality. 

I'd also be very weary of granting Russian language an official status in the Baltic states (especially Lithuania and Latvia) because it would open the door for some other claims for the now weak political movement to grant Arabic, Hindi and Sawhali official status as minority languages in EU because there are a lot of people (recent immigrants) that speak them, something I definitively don't want to see happening on principle (recent immigration groups making their home native languages official in EU because there are too many of them living in Europe). I've read more than once some activists claiming that it is unfair Estonian is an official EU language but Arabic isn't when there are 10-20x as much Arabic speakers in EU than Estonians.


----------



## Fatfield

Alex_ZR said:


> UK don't issue identity cards anymore? Which document British people use for travelling to the Continent?



Passport. Which, unlike an ID card, we don't have to carry about with us when in Britain.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

We often need to show our passports when getting a job though (or our birth certificate with another proof of address or something). 

One time I went to re-register for my job (the place I worked then closed for a few months in the winter) and I realised I had forgotten my passport, but I then realised I had my Portuguese ID card in my wallet, that was a relief.



Penn's Woods said:


> It depends on the last address, is my understanding. But not only does his Presidential vote count in Ohio, he'd vote for Ohio's Senators, he'd vote for the House as if he still lived in that district, he'd vote for the Ohio legislature.... Everything he could vote for if he lived at that address, he still can. I guess he gets an "absentee ballot" - which you fill out and mail in - from the voter-registration authorities in that county.


I once knew someone who was an American citizen (dual with British) because his father had an American citizen of after emigrating there (from Australia I think!) as a youngster. Anyway, his father's last address was in Ohio as well, and he also voted in the last presidential election as if he lived in Ohio, despite never actually living there.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

italystf said:


> Baltic countries are a case of their own, since they have a sizeable percentage of residents that *doesn't have the citizenship despite being living there for decades*, just for ethnical\linguistic issues. The Russian minority in those countries is large enough to make them bilingual, like Belgium, but it wouldn't happen for obvious political reasons. EU usually condemns discriminations, but when the ethnicity that is discriminated is the Russians, it close an eye.
> In the rest of EU, instead, non-citizen residents are almost all recent immigrants.


If I moved to Germany and lived there for 30 years, nobody would just give me a German citizenship. I would have to meet the required conditions and apply for citizenship. I'm pretty sure knowing the language is part of those conditions.


----------



## Surel

Rebasepoiss said:


> If I *moved to Germany* and lived there for 30 years, nobody would just give me a German citizenship. I would have to meet the required conditions and apply for citizenship. I'm pretty sure knowing the language is part of those conditions.


However, those people did not leave their country...


----------



## Surel

Suburbanist said:


> Russians who didn't go back to Russia after 1989 are not EU citizens... Even if there were voting rights for non-citizen EU residents in national elections, they would not be affected. The status of Russian settles in Baltic countries is a complicated issue, they were not some generations-old population that had lived there for a long time, but politically (Kremlin)-friendly settlers brought there with explicit goal of changing local demographic balances, while local intellectuals and else were deported en masse to Far East Russia. Best solution would be for some other EU countries, far away from the region, to grant them some stateless refugee status and let them move there (France, UK, Italy... somewhere never occupied by Russia) if they want to.
> 
> I compare their situation to that of Turkish settlers in Northern Cyprus, brought there in large numbers so that in the event of any reunification, there would be a new demographic reality.
> 
> I'd also be very weary of granting Russian language an official status in the Baltic states (especially Lithuania and Latvia) because it would open the door for some other claims for the now weak political movement to grant Arabic, Hindi and Sawhali official status as minority languages in EU because there are a lot of people (recent immigrants) that speak them, something I definitively don't want to see happening on principle (recent immigration groups making their home native languages official in EU because there are too many of them living in Europe). I've read more than once some activists claiming that it is unfair Estonian is an official EU language but Arabic isn't when there are 10-20x as much Arabic speakers in EU than Estonians.


Russians are natives and Russian language is native in the Baltic countries.


----------



## g.spinoza

Rebasepoiss said:


> If I moved to Germany and lived there for 30 years, nobody would just give me a German citizenship. I would have to meet the required conditions and apply for citizenship. I'm pretty sure knowing the language is part of those conditions.


Italy doesn't have conditions on the knowledge of Italian language for foreign residents who want to apply.


----------



## Surel

Surel said:


> Penn's Woods said:
> 
> 
> 
> I'm back. :hi: Selectively.
> 
> Re driver's licenses, we have to renew ours every few years (four years in Pennsylvania but I imagine that varies by state), but there's no retesting (at least in Pennsylvania). But, Surel, what I was wondering is does a Czech citizen living in the Netherlands have the option of getting a license in either country, or does he or she have to get a Dutch one?
> 
> PS: Road_UK sends his regards.
> 
> 
> 
> I have that option, I am not sure, whether the Dutch living in CZ have that option, but I guess yes.
> 
> Any EU citizen registered in any EU country can apply for the renewal of the license in the country where he's registered. So if you register with the Dutch municipality, you are allowed that. The same holds in the Czech republic for other EU countries citizens. Once they register with the authorities there, they can apply for renewal and thus Czech driving license.
> 
> Now what you ask is bit different if I understand it. You want to know whether a EU citizen living in a different country can always go to apply for the renewal in the original home country. I think that in general as long as you stay a citizen of that country, it would have to take care of you, although it might show more complicated in some cases and you would perhaps need to go some non standard ways.
> 
> I can for sure get a Czech license if I go to the Czech authorities. I am not sure if any country has some residents only restrictions. I.e. if someone who is a resident in another EU country would not be able to renew his license in his original country because of not having the residence there anymore.
> 
> In the Czech republic, there's a concept of permanent residence such that even if you live abroad, you can be still a "permanent resident" of the Czech Republic (and in my case anyway, as I keep my Czech address as well, but aside from that, you can state your address to be a city hall in any case), unless you denounce it, but there's no requirement to denounce it. Maybe for the Dutch it would be different if they leave the Netherlands. As they would be required to de-register from the municipality. I am not sure what the Dutch authorities do when a Dutch person living abroad would come back to the Netherlands applying for the driving license. I don't think they could just walk in any city hall to make a claim, but I think, there must be ways in which they could do it. If anything, at least through an embassy.
Click to expand...

Strange enough, the DUTCH authority RDW does not provide that option to the Dutch living abroad inside the EU. At least that's what I read.
https://www.rdw.nl/Particulier/Paginas/Ik-woon-in-de-Europese-Unie.aspx


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Surel said:


> However, those people did not leave their country...


Actually yes, they did. 



Surel said:


> Russians are natives and Russian language is native in the Baltic countries.


Well, not really. Estonia had a small native Russian population, much less than 10%. A large part of them lived in Petseri region which isn't even a part of Estonia anymore.

Besides, everybody who (or whose parents-grandparents etc) were born in Estonia before the Soviet occupation are eligible for an Estonian citizenship without any further conditions. So if you really are a 'native Russian' in Estonia you could get a citizenship anyway. 



g.spinoza said:


> Italy doesn't have conditions on the knowledge of Italian language for foreign residents who want to apply.


Yeah, it depends on the country but it is required in many places e.g. Russia.


----------



## Surel

Rebasepoiss said:


> Actually yes, they did.


No, they did not. No one moved out of his country, when moving within USSR. Then one day Estonia stripped them of their rights.



Rebasepoiss said:


> Well, not really. Estonia had a small native Russian population, much less than 10%. A large part of them lived in Petseri region which isn't even a part of Estonia anymore.


Estonia did not exist before the end of the WWI, Russia did.
And Russians lived in Russia. They were the natives there and they have been living there as an ethnicity, the same as the Estonians, as long as the Estonians up till now. With their culture, language, etc...
The Russian culture and language is native to Estonia, whether you like it or not.



Rebasepoiss said:


> Besides, everybody who (or whose parents-grandparents etc) were born in Estonia before the Soviet occupation are eligible for an Estonian citizenship without any further conditions. So if you really are a 'native Russian' in Estonia you could get a citizenship anyway.


Every Soviet living in Estonia at the moment of the USSR breakup and keeping on living there is a native to Estonia. Also those of the Russian ethnicity that Estonia stripped of their rights.


----------



## Kanadzie

It is essentially true
Soviet system screwed around with people, more in the sense of deportations out of Baltics than more or less voluntary immigration of ethnic Russians
But already 20 years that shit is over, and the people are generally born on the land, they have a right to it.
It's not healthy for a country to be populated by non-citizens - the Baltics really need to do all possible to avoid any "Donetsk-faktor". I think generally just by people getting paid in hard currency, solves 90% of the problem. But... not all of it...


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> It is essentially true
> Soviet system screwed around with people, more in the sense of deportations out of Baltics than more or less voluntary immigration of ethnic Russians
> But already 20 years that shit is over, and the people are generally born on the land, they have a right to it.
> It's not healthy for a country to be populated by non-citizens - the Baltics really need to do all possible to avoid any "Donetsk-faktor". I think generally just by people getting paid in hard currency, solves 90% of the problem. But... not all of it...


I am the only one who thinks that well-handled Russians (replace with whatever minority nation in whatever country) are less dangerous than bad-handled Russians (the same as noted in previous parentheses)?

Ukraine is a good example. Donbass started in a moment, when strong anti-Russian government took power.

I remember one of the previous government in Slovakia consisting of Anti-Hungarian parties. It made strong political national tenses and voices calling for separatism from Hungarian representatives became stronger and stronger at the same time. It was creepy. Once the government has changed, situation went better and it seems Hungarians accept more to be citizens of Slovakia. The same goes for every minority (not only for Russians or Hungarians). Making these people foreigners is bad. Especially if we (Europe) are pretending everyone from Asia and Africa is welcome here. Sounds like a injustice to me. You know, people that were born here, have families, have friends are treated as foreigners while people who are culturally completely different are treated as future citizens.


----------



## bogdymol

Today is the last Saturday before Christmas. Many companies in Europe have now closed for the winter holidays. In many countries from western Europe work immigrants from eastern Europe, so as almost everyone got holiday starting today, almost everyone is driving at the same time from western Europe to eastern Europe.

Last year I drove from Austria to Romania on the same day (last Saturday before Christmas). Instead of the usual 7-7.5 hours, I did about 12.5 hours (incl. 1-1.5 hours break). This was because of the huge amount of traffic on the motorway, everyone going from west to east. There were several accidents, long queues, sometimes I drove on smaller roads nearby the motorway etc. This year I chosed not to drive on this day, but I will try my chances tomorrow.

Here's how the traffic looks like in Austria and Hungary right now:










During an usual Saturday, the motorways here are usually free, so the entire map should be green. You can see that most problems are on the route from Germany (Passau) to Budapest, only in the direction going east.


----------



## winnipeg

The best is driving by night. Few days ago I went from Arad to France without making any real break because it was going very well the only slow part I've got was at the romanian border (15 minutes of waiting for customs) and at the AT/DE border where there was a checkpoint where they were checking some cars (I waited around 5 minutes... but during the day, the wait would probably be much much more...).


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Surel said:


> No, they did not. No one moved out of his country, when moving within USSR. Then one day Estonia stripped them of their rights.


They moved to Soviet occupied Estonia.



Surel said:


> Estonia did not exist before the end of the WWI, Russia did.
> And Russians lived in Russia. They were the natives there and they have been living there as an ethnicity, the same as the Estonians, as long as the Estonians up till now. With their culture, language, etc...


Finland also didn't exist before WWI. Are you saying all Russians should have the right to a Finnish citizenship? It's historic Russian territory after all, right? 

Yes, Russians lived in Estonia before WWI but very few of them and next to lake Peipus. They are Old Believers who escaped Russia from religious persecution. 



Surel said:


> The Russian culture and language is native to Estonia, whether you like it or not.


Russian culture is native to Estonia but German and Swedish cultures are also native to Estonia. Estonia was under the rule of many different countries and and all of those cultures have had an affect.



Surel said:


> Every Soviet living in Estonia at the moment of the USSR breakup and keeping on living there is a native to Estonia. Also those of the Russian ethnicity that Estonia stripped of their rights.


Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union so everybody who moved here during the occupation is considered an immigrant. Everybody had the right to move back to their home country after Estonia regained independence and a lot of Russians did that. Estonia didn't strip anybody of their rights, that is just nonsense. 
---------------------------
But that's that, I'm done with this topic. I don't usually argue about politics on the internet and I don't intend to change that, especially since you don't even seem to understand the USSR was an occupation in Estonia....


----------



## Surel

Rebasepoiss said:


> They moved to Soviet occupied Estonia.


They moved within the Soviet Union and they stayed in Estonia after the Soviet Union broke up.



Rebasepoiss said:


> Finland also didn't exist before WWI. Are you saying all Russians should have the right to a Finnish citizenship? It's historic Russian territory after all, right?


Those Russians living in Finland since Finland stopped being Russian territory, yes of course.



Rebasepoiss said:


> Yes, Russians lived in Estonia before WWI but very few of them and next to lake Peipus. They are Old Believers who escaped Russia from religious persecution.


In 1897 there's been about 5 % of Russian speaking in the province of Estonia according the the Russian census. In 1922 and 1934 there's been around 8 % of Russians in Estonia according to the Estonian census. Now there's about 25 % of Russian speaking.



Rebasepoiss said:


> Russian culture is native to Estonia but German and Swedish cultures are also native to Estonia. Estonia was under the rule of many different countries and and all of those cultures have had an affect.


There were 1.7 % Germans in Estonia and 0.7 % Swedes in Estonia in 1922. There were less then 0.6 % of Germans in the last 70 years in Estonia, and no Swedes and it was less then 0.3 % in the last 40 years. Their presence has been not continuous for more then 70 years and there is no presence as of now. I don't think that you can call them native to Estonia any-more. While the Russian population thrived in Estonia.



Rebasepoiss said:


> Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union so everybody who moved here during the occupation is considered an immigrant. Everybody had the right to move back to their home country after Estonia regained independence and a lot of Russians did that. Estonia didn't strip anybody of their rights, that is just nonsense.
> ---------------------------
> But that's that, I'm done with this topic. I don't usually argue about politics on the internet and I don't intend to change that, especially since you don't even seem to understand the USSR was an occupation in Estonia....


I don't argue about what Estonia considered of considers to be immigrant. It is actually the whole point that Estonia considers those people's to be immigrants that is problematic.... I am talking about facts.


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Komarno. Made an over night break here on my way home to Romania. Crazy traffic, accidents, fog. I drove for sure at least half of the way on national roads to avoid those huge traffic jams, Google maps helped with that. Still needed around 2.5 hours more than usual. I crossed at Braunau into Austria there were no controls and little traffic. Into Hungary I crossed through Nickelsdorf village and won some time. The first 2 rest stations into Hungary were completely paralysed.


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## bogdymol

Greetings from Gyor, Hungary. 

In order to avoid the high traffic values around Wien right now, I drove in Austria on S6, and then into Hungary at Sopron.


----------



## grykaerugoves

anyone know what happened to the " guess the highway " thread?


----------



## keokiracer

Here it is: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=572319&page=400


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## Suburbanist

My apartment complex had a fire today. One of the apartments had been used as an indoor marijuana grower "facility". Whomever was running it disabled and bypassed (illegally) some stuff on the service box, which then caught fire. Second fire in this building in 2 years.


----------



## g.spinoza

I was headed this morning to the largest shopping centre in Turin area, "Le Gru". I arrived there at 10.30 and there was already no parking and so many people trying to get in, that I immediately made a U turn ad went to another shopping centre.

At 13:00 "Le Gru" was closed and evacuated for a (false) bomb threat. I can't even begin to imagine how they evacuated all those people.
The "Mole Antonelliana", the symbol of Turin, was also closed and evacuated for another bomb threat...


----------



## Highway89

This post could probably fit in either the Unusual road signs or the Mileage signs: long distances, but I think it's too irrelevant for those threads.

A sign indicating the distance to Paris (955 km) in a narrow country lane in Valle de Mena (Castilla y León, Spain): https://goo.gl/maps/1H4NYuEnJKs

The sign is not official (Arial, "Km") and was placed somewhere between 2010 and 2014.


----------



## John Maynard

volodaaaa said:


> The same goes for every minority (not only for Russians or Hungarians). Making these people foreigners is bad. Especially if we (Europe) are pretending everyone from Asia and Africa is welcome here. Sounds like a injustice to me. You know, people that were born here, have families, have friends are treated as foreigners while people who are culturally completely different are treated as future citizens.


^^ Today's Europe (and at a larger extent the world) is completely going upside down hno:. When local citizens have less rights than newly arrived immigrants, mostly illegaly. When these "refugees" are less "persecuted" than inhabitants that are here for centuries. When these people with a totally different cultural-religous-social backgroung receive a lot of welfare benefits and a housing, while the native homeless are sleeping on the streets hno:... 

Sadly, it's only a question of time and number, when all these new "citizens" will claim their democratic right for "self-determination" to impose their undemocratic and barbarian rule and law over the land. Then it will be the end of Europe, or the start of a civil war hno:.

Unfortunately, it's becoming really hard to understand today's situation in Europe - nothing is pragmatic, sensitive, thoughtful, and reasonable hno:.


----------



## bigic

Has anyone tried these?








In Serbia they are often sold at gas stations and kiosks, in pharmacies etc.
I like them because of their unique intensive sour taste.


----------



## Attus

cinxxx said:


> Greetings from Komarno. Made an over night break here on my way home to Romania. Crazy traffic, accidents, fog. I drove for sure at least half of the way on national roads to avoid those huge traffic jams, Google maps helped with that. Still needed around 2.5 hours more than usual.





bogdymol said:


> Greetings from Gyor, Hungary.
> In order to avoid the high traffic values around Wien right now, I drove in Austria on S6, and then into Hungary at Sopron.


In order to avoid that crazy traffic this year I decided to fly. And it has even been much cheaper. I have luck* that Eurowings/Germanwings have direct flights Cologne - Budapest for quite a low price. 

* Actually it was not a luck, it was important for me three years ago when I moved to Germany, I refused some job offers because ogf the lack of airline connections. However I know if your parents live in a town far away of any airports, you have no chance for such an airline connection so actually I'm lucky having the family nearby Budapest.


----------



## bogdymol

If I would fly the only option would be this one:
Driving to München airport: 2h45m
Check-in, waiting for the flight: 2h
Flying München - Timisoara with Lufthansa: 2h
Driving to Arad: 1h

Total: 7h45m with a cost of over 250 Euro x2 just for the flight tickets (plus fuel to/from airport, plus airport parking charge). 

If I drive, it takes me about 7h with usual traffic, and about 110 Euro both ways in fuel costs. Plus that I am flexible, I can go and return whenever I want, and carry what I want in the car. And usually I am going with my wife and 2 other friends, so sharing the car on such a trip is a very cost effective way of getting from Austria to Romania.


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## cinxxx

^^It's been 2 years since we last drove home. Since Wizzair opened the connection from Memmingen to Timisoara, we always took that flight. But this time we had also some more baggage and we thought to change it up a little, stop somewhere new on the way, make a little roadtrip.


----------



## x-type

ukraroad said:


> Sweden?


no, Zimbabwe.


----------



## volodaaaa

keber said:


> Oh, two weeks, what is that
> Here there can be fog for straight two or even three months, but it is not very dense.
> 
> It is much better than in the past as coal burning in houses has practicaly dissapeared. In 70ies and 80ies there was often persisent dense to very dense, fog for months.


The dense is quite dense here. It showed up how drivers can't use fog lights correctly. Coal or wood heating is problem in valleys. I remember last year when we drove on road 18 running through valley with small separated village. It was not fog, it was smog.


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## General Maximus

Bonjour! New here. After looking at the pictures for a while and reading the information I decided to join and be a part of it.


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## volodaaaa

Welcome...


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## General Maximus

Thank you, Volodaaa


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## winnipeg

Bienvenu à toi !


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## General Maximus

Merci, Winnipeg


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## ChrisZwolle

You now need an account to see delays at the TomTom site. They also changed it from Livetraffic to Mydrive. 










I guess I won't be using this service anymore. It's also very slow and starts in Westminster, London every time instead of at the last visited location like the previous layout had. It's amazing how these large internet companies always manage to destroy their own services.


----------



## x-type

TomTom was the best navigation system. was. unfortunately.
i started using it after seeing that Chris used it and I was actually amazed how good system it was comparing to Garmin for instance. but when i bought new phone and installed Android version (the last updated), it went to hell


----------



## winnipeg

Hum I don't agree. I tried the Android TomTom app 2 years ago, and yes, it was a total piece of crap (sorry for my bad language), it was so bugged even on one of the most sold smartphone (Galaxy S4 in that time...), and it was comprehensible because with their poor policy to stupidly stay away from Android, they took so much late compared to all other greats apps such Sygic, Copilot or even Here Maps (free!!).

But 2 weeks ago I found an "unlocked" version of the app and I thought that I should give a try.... :yes:

And yes, they made some enormous progress, and the first thing that I noticed is that the app is very beautifull and smooth, also the interface is very simple (during the past I lost myself too much time in all the menus on others apps such Copilot...).

Also the app is working very very well on my phone, and this time I don't have a so popular phone in Europe (I have a Xiaomi Redmi Note 2, a wonderfull phone for it's price (150€), but for now only available in China), and I was surprised to see that there is no crashes for example... 

About the maps. They are EXCELLENT!! First of all they are offline, the app can be used fully offline, as I used it to go from Romania to France 2 weeks ago! :yes: But the map is always up to date. For example, few days ago in Romania, they opened a portion of the A1 highway, the Timisoara-Lugoj portion, and it is already showed in the TomTom app, I'm impressed as usualy offline navigation maps takes months to get the maps update, and even more for some of them...

About the navigation, everything is clear, the turns are clear, even by following only the voice instructions, on my way to France (1600km), the app never put me on the wrong way... :yes: But unfortunatly when I came back to France I didn't had any sim card with Internet on the road, so I couldn't use live traffic... (but in few days, when I will go back to Romania, I will have one, french sim card @3,99€/month with 3Go of roaming included into every european country and even more!! :yes: ). But during the last week, in France I used a bit the app and the live traffic helped me to avoid some congestion, so for now it seems to works!! :yes:


Maybe the only bad point I thought with this app comes from the menus, maybe it could be a little more easier to find how you can calculate the time/distance between 2 cities, but not using your GPS position in the moment you use the app as the starting point (from where you leave).... I found that you have to show the map and select a point on it as starting point by letting your finger on it... I would prefer a system like Google Maps where you can simply tell from where you want to leave, and to which destination so you can know how much time it takes... 


But anyway, I really like what they've done with the TomTom Android app, and now that I used it for free, I'm ready to pay for it, 15€/year with included live traffic sound like a fair price for me! :yes: (For example on Sygic you pay 10€/year for live traffic plus the price for maps (around 30€ for Europe) that aren't as "fresh" as TomTom maps are...  ).


----------



## x-type

i will give it another try. i had it on my iPhone (older version, didn't want to update it), it was working perfectly, and the best thing was the interface which was perfectly simple. also, it calculated the routes perfectly (for instance, in my firm car i use(d) Garmin and Mio, which often suggested me some idiotic routes (especialy Garmin)). 
i must admit that i didn't use new TomTom on Android too much (i have 1+, again something really good from China as your device  ), so i must give it a better look.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> You now need an account to see delays at the TomTom site. They also changed it from Livetraffic to Mydrive.
> 
> I guess I won't be using this service anymore. It's also very slow and starts in Westminster, London every time instead of at the last visited location like the previous layout had. It's amazing how these large internet companies always manage to destroy their own services.


According to the best common practices of the IT industry, the version 2.0 always delivers more bells and whistles and less usability than the version 1.0. Been there, seen that.

Have you managed to define the route start point at Mydrive by using the mouse instead of writing the address in the search box? If yes then please tell us.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Like the new, totally unimproved Google Maps. :bash:


----------



## MattiG

winnipeg said:


> But 2 weeks ago I found an "unlocked" version of the app and I thought that I should give a try.... :yes:


I installed the renewed Android version 6+ months ago, and I am rather happy. TomTom is the leading brand what comes to the correctness of the routing. The company has laid off people, and seems to suffer from inability to do product development properly. The Android version gets a new release about every 2 months, but the improvements seen this far have been rather minimal and irrelevant compared to the list of requirements. One notable thing is that the navigation needs a lot of power. All the power from my 2.1A charger is used when I use TomTom.

I hope that car makers will have success with Here. Nokia did not put much effort on its development. Its navigation engine lags rather badly behind TomTom.

But one of the lousiest navigator ever seen is fixed into my car's dashboard. Citroën says they buy the maps from Here. But the navigation engine and the user interface are extremely horrible. It fails at many turning restriction spots at least in Helsinki, thus making it about useless. I usually attach my Android tablet on the dashboard and navigate using TomTom instead of the piece of xxxx from Citroën.


----------



## riiga

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Like the new, totally unimproved Google Maps. :bash:


Thankfully there's still what's close to an old version around.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I remember that they charged people upward to € 1000 for installing an in-car GPS system. After that you got horribly outdated maps, a poorly designed interface and extremely expensive map updates.


----------



## volodaaaa

winnipeg said:


> Hum I don't agree. I tried the Android TomTom app 2 years ago, and yes, it was a total piece of crap (sorry for my bad language), it was so bugged even on one of the most sold smartphone (Galaxy S4 in that time...), and it was comprehensible because with their poor policy to stupidly stay away from Android, they took so much late compared to all other greats apps such Sygic, Copilot or even Here Maps (free!!).
> 
> But 2 weeks ago I found an "unlocked" version of the app and I thought that I should give a try.... :yes:
> 
> And yes, they made some enormous progress, and the first thing that I noticed is that the app is very beautifull and smooth, also the interface is very simple (during the past I lost myself too much time in all the menus on others apps such Copilot...).
> 
> Also the app is working very very well on my phone, and this time I don't have a so popular phone in Europe (I have a Xiaomi Redmi Note 2, a wonderfull phone for it's price (150€), but for now only available in China), and I was surprised to see that there is no crashes for example...
> 
> About the maps. They are EXCELLENT!! First of all they are offline, the app can be used fully offline, as I used it to go from Romania to France 2 weeks ago! :yes: But the map is always up to date. For example, few days ago in Romania, they opened a portion of the A1 highway, the Timisoara-Lugoj portion, and it is already showed in the TomTom app, I'm impressed as usualy offline navigation maps takes months to get the maps update, and even more for some of them...
> 
> About the navigation, everything is clear, the turns are clear, even by following only the voice instructions, on my way to France (1600km), the app never put me on the wrong way... :yes: But unfortunatly when I came back to France I didn't had any sim card with Internet on the road, so I couldn't use live traffic... (but in few days, when I will go back to Romania, I will have one, french sim card @3,99€/month with 3Go of roaming included into every european country and even more!! :yes: ). But during the last week, in France I used a bit the app and the live traffic helped me to avoid some congestion, so for now it seems to works!! :yes:
> 
> 
> Maybe the only bad point I thought with this app comes from the menus, maybe it could be a little more easier to find how you can calculate the time/distance between 2 cities, but not using your GPS position in the moment you use the app as the starting point (from where you leave).... I found that you have to show the map and select a point on it as starting point by letting your finger on it... I would prefer a system like Google Maps where you can simply tell from where you want to leave, and to which destination so you can know how much time it takes...
> 
> 
> But anyway, I really like what they've done with the TomTom Android app, and now that I used it for free, I'm ready to pay for it, 15€/year with included live traffic sound like a fair price for me! :yes: (For example on Sygic you pay 10€/year for live traffic plus the price for maps (around 30€ for Europe) that aren't as "fresh" as TomTom maps are...  ).


I've purchased Sygic three years ago, installed it into my cell phone and I am fully satisfied. Unfortunately, it has about half an year delay in updating, but it is ok for me considering it costed me 25 €. The navi is not perfect, but can guide you from A point to B point.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> I remember that they charged people upward to € 1000 for installing an in-car GPS system. After that you got horribly outdated maps, a poorly designed interface and extremely expensive map updates.


A funny implementation of a similar concept was the early Neverlost device available to the rental cars of Hertz in the US. The more complex interchange you were driving in, the more probably it told: "Recalculating the route, please wait".

I called if Everlost or Nervelost.


----------



## Penn's Woods

When I was in Europe in July, GPSs/SatNav, whatever you want to call it, would have added about 20 euros a day to the cost of the rental. Personally, I'm old enough to know how to read real maps. I've never used SatNav here.

(It might have been worthwhile in cities, although the only place I really had trouble was Antwerp.)


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> When I was in Europe in July, GPSs/SatNav, whatever you want to call it, would have added about 20 euros a day to the cost of the rental. Personally, I'm old enough to know how to read real maps. I've never used SatNav here.
> 
> (It might have been worthwhile in cities, although the only place I really had trouble was Antwerp.)


Considering the costs of rental company, 20 € / day is a pure rip-off. SatNavs are basically very useful, but you should avoid falling into the phase, when you can't drive without it. You should not rely on it. 

It does provide some useful features comparing to paper maps like counting down the overall distance or location of nearest petrol station.


----------



## MattiG

Penn's Woods said:


> When I was in Europe in July, GPSs/SatNav, whatever you want to call it, would have added about 20 euros a day to the cost of the rental. Personally, I'm old enough to know how to read real maps. I've never used SatNav here.
> 
> (It might have been worthwhile in cities, although the only place I really had trouble was Antwerp.)


A good navigator with good maps and good services delivers much more information than a map only. Often, the information about the estimated time of arrival is useful. I know very well the route to my office. Still, I am regularly using the navigator: not to find the route but to receive real time traffic information.

I do not see maps and navigators as exclusive choices. The map is good for route planning, and the navigator helps to follow the route, and leads back to the route if lost for any reason.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Considering the costs of rental company, 20 € / day is a pure rip-off. SatNavs are basically very useful, but you should avoid falling into the phase, when you can't drive without it. You should not rely on it.
> 
> It does provide some useful features comparing to paper maps like counting down the overall distance or location of nearest petrol station.


I don't know if it was actually 20 euros a day; it's six months ago that I was looking at prices. It was certainly in the "extra expense that's not worth the benefit" category.



MattiG said:


> A good navigator with good maps and good services delivers much more information than a map only. Often, the information about the estimated time of arrival is useful. I know very well the route to my office. Still, I am regularly using the navigator: not to find the route but to receive real time traffic information.
> 
> I do not see maps and navigators as exclusive choices. The map is good for route planning, and the navigator helps to follow the route, and leads back to the route if lost for any reason.


Valid point, although traffic information is available on the radio and more and more on variable-message signs, if you understand the language where you are.

What I'd find useful is real-time weather. If you're about to hit heavy rain, for example.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> Personally, I'm old enough to know how to read real maps.


I too  
I use GPS navigation for two reasons:
- Google Maps Navigation knows all the congestions (which are not displayed in printed maps ;-)) and suggests always the quickest route. That's why I often use GPS Navi even when I know the routes perfectly even without map/navigation. 
- My smartphone (which I use for navigation) has better memory than I do. I may forget whether I shall turn left or right in some road crossing in the middle of nowhere, it won't. And I don't want to stop in the road shoulder, look in the map and then drive on. I did it a lot of times whan I was younger and I did not have GPS navigation. I hated it  (1999, Serbia, total lack of signs, I even checked the stars in order to find the right direction. I suppose young people nowadays had no clue how to find North in the middle of nowhere in the night )


----------



## bigic

Attus said:


> (1999, Serbia, total lack of signs, I even checked the stars in order to find the right direction. I suppose young people nowadays had no clue how to find North in the middle of nowhere in the night )


Did you fear to be hit by a NATO bomb?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I've never felt the need to use Satnav in Europe though I probably would if I was driving in Japan, which I may have reason to do in a couple of years.


----------



## winnipeg

About Japan, why all the most famous offline GPS in all over the world are not available in Japan (I checked and I have seen no Japan maps in TomTom, Here, Copilot, Sygic, etc...)...

(I checked this because I will be in Tokyo for 1 week in february, thanks to an error-fare flight (240€ the flight from Budapest with return on Turkish Airlines  ) and even if I don't travel by foot, I like to have at least one offline GPS app on my phone... I think that I will have no other choice than using OSMAnd+, an Android app that use the free OSM maps...  )


----------



## bogdymol

winnipeg said:


> thanks to an error-fare flight (240€ the flight from Budapest with return on Turkish Airlines  ) ...  )



I also found that error-fare for Tokyo, but I did not book it. Instead I booked for Hong Kong and Singapore


----------



## winnipeg

bogdymol said:


> I also found that error-fare for Tokyo, but I did not book it. Instead I booked for Hong Kong and Singapore


Very nice! 

(And hopefuly for those cities/countries, there is offline maps apps available  :yes: )


----------



## bogdymol

winnipeg said:


> (And hopefuly for those cities/countries, there is offline maps apps available  :yes: )


Hopefully there is.

A cool fact: in Hong Kong I have booked a hotel which gives you, included in the room rate, a smartphone with unlimited local calls and unlimited 3G internet access. So basically I will have non-stop internet access while I am there with the hotel's smartphone.


----------



## Suburbanist

For me, the greatest advantage of a GPS app is that it has zoomable maps. That is what had always bothered me when I was a teen following family trips and dealing with printed maps (I had become the family navigator for road trips at age 12). Atlases would have some snippets of areas with too many roads, but if you wanted detailed info about an area, you'd have to buy a "city map", and those were clumsy to open (the other option would be those comprehensive street maps in the format of books, which you had to flip pages back-and-forth as you changed pages.

Now you can fit all maps of, say, the whole of Western Europe in a mere 6GB allocated spaced on a SD card of a smartphone, and zoom to the largest scale with your fingers. If someone told me, when I was 10, that in 15 years I'd have that at cheap prices I'd not have believed it. 

In my parents' house there are probably some 150-200 maps/atlases/maplets/street map books that I amassed between ages 8-20. I would often get maps and atlases as birthday presents from some relatives that knew me better. 

I also remember when I first discovered satellite free online mapping services. I was blown away by having those (now clumsy) satellite photos, would cringe at some spots with cloud cover, and then get into the habit of waiting 2-3 minutes until a new static screen opened when you manually pressed buttons to move up or down. This was at the dial-up age...


----------



## winnipeg

bogdymol said:


> Hopefully there is.
> 
> A cool fact: in Hong Kong I have booked a hotel which gives you, included in the room rate, a smartphone with unlimited local calls and unlimited 3G internet access. So basically I will have non-stop internet access while I am there with the hotel's smartphone.


Nice! :yes:

In Japan I just saw that I will probably don't need any offline GPS as most of AirBnb host are providing a free 3G/4G wifi hotspot with unlimited data that you can bring with you. This is so nice...! 

And the prices for apartments seems to be cheaper than what I tought, for example it will cost me around 300€ for 6 nights for a full equiped apartment close to underground + wifi hotspot, a great price for me!


----------



## winnipeg

Suburbanist said:


> For me, the greatest advantage of a GPS app is that it has zoomable maps. That is what had always bothered me when I was a teen following family trips and dealing with printed maps (I had become the family navigator for road trips at age 12). Atlases would have some snippets of areas with too many roads, but if you wanted detailed info about an area, you'd have to buy a "city map", and those were clumsy to open (the other option would be those comprehensive street maps in the format of books, which you had to flip pages back-and-forth as you changed pages.
> 
> Now you can fit all maps of, say, the whole of Western Europe in a mere 6GB allocated spaced on a SD card of a smartphone, and zoom to the largest scale with your fingers. If someone told me, when I was 10, that in 15 years I'd have that at cheap prices I'd not have believed it.
> 
> In my parents' house there are probably some 150-200 maps/atlases/maplets/street map books that I amassed between ages 8-20. I would often get maps and atlases as birthday presents from some relatives that knew me better.
> 
> I also remember when I first discovered satellite free online mapping services. I was blown away by having those (now clumsy) satellite photos, would cringe at some spots with cloud cover, and then get into the habit of waiting 2-3 minutes until a new static screen opened when you manually pressed buttons to move up or down. This was at the dial-up age...


We could say the same about a lot of things on smartphones like for example the phone and SMS function, having to make great photos and videos, to see/show thing without needing a computer/TV, and so much more !! :yes:

About GPS apps, exactly! And maybe it helped (in a way) to increase the safety on roads because people are less stressed about directions than without it in a place that you don't know!  (At least it is the case for me, I make so many more mistakes and I'm so much stressed without it....  ).

Right, I remember that time too! :yes:


----------



## bogdymol

On the other side, as navigation systems are so widely used, people tend to use their brains less and less. That's why you see people driving the wrong way or on a closed road or towards a wrong destination "because the navigation said so".


----------



## winnipeg

bogdymol said:


> On the other side, as navigation systems are so widely used, people tend to use their brains less and less. That's why you see people driving the wrong way or on a closed road or towards a wrong destination "because the navigation said so".


True!  You need to pay attention at your road anyway... 

Next years will be funny when our roads will be full of automatic cars! :cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

winnipeg said:


> True!  You need to pay attention at your road anyway...
> 
> Next years will be funny when our roads will be full of automatic cars! :cheers:


Speaking about automatic cars, I think it will be more safer. I know it might be offtopic, but we got a robovac for Christmas and it is fascinating how intelligent and gentle towards furniture it is. It does its job and is careful at the same time. If the automatic cars will work on similar basis, the chance the White paper statements will be fulfilled is really high.


----------



## winnipeg

Yes, a car is not a vaccum cleaner  But yes, of course, travelling by car will be so much safetier because the most important death factor on road is of course the human (essentially : alcohol, overspeeding, lack of sleep, etc...)... But hopefully I hope that it will bring some funny error like going in the wrong destination or things like that..  (Life is so much funnier when things are not perfect!! :yes: )


----------



## Suburbanist

Collapse of a road bridge in Brazil due to El Nino floods


----------



## ChrisZwolle

They seem to be happy to be without road access for a year or so...


----------



## volodaaaa

Ouch...


----------



## General Maximus

bogdymol said:


> On the other side, as navigation systems are so widely used, people tend to use their brains less and less. That's why you see people driving the wrong way or on a closed road or towards a wrong destination "because the navigation said so".


On the other hand it is brilliant for warnings of any congestion's and the ability to find an alternative route for you to minimize your delays as much as possible.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Collapse of a road bridge in Brazil due to El Nino floods


This video looks suspicious. It starts when the bridge is still standing (though unconnected on one end, so already unusable) and it suddenly collapses. What are the odds to have someone filming it in the right moment? It looks like more a controlled demolition.



ChrisZwolle said:


> They seem to be happy to be without road access for a year or so...


Maybe they didn't have to use this bridge for their travels, who knows. It actually looks like a temporary wooden bridge, rather than a regular road bridge.


----------



## Suburbanist

italystf said:


> This video looks suspicious. It starts when the bridge is still standing (though unconnected on one end, so already unusable) and it suddenly collapses. What are the odds to have someone filming it in the right moment? It looks like more a controlled demolition.


The region has been severely affected by floods (200-year floods), and some people gathered to see what could be an imminent collapse, which indeed happen. It is summer down there, and a very low-activity week in Brazil (it is like the week before Ferragosto in Italy) so probably some students dismissed from class or closed business just gathered there.

Location of the bridge


> Maybe they didn't have to use this bridge for their travels, who knows. It actually looks like a temporary wooden bridge, rather than a regular road bridge.


The bridge had been built 4 years ago with a narrow sub-par configuration, much to aggravation of locals. They are kinda celebrating government will build something new and wider probably.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Bon....

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35210572


----------



## ChrisZwolle

They are very common in the Netherlands. There are a couple in my street as well. They are pretty deceiving from behind, they look like an ordinary small car, if you approach one at the speed limit you sometimes don't see it's only driving 45 km/h unless you're very close. 

Last year I was driving in France on a country road with a 90 km/h speed limit, through hilly terrain. I saw this car in front of me from some distance, but suddenly beyond the next hill he was very close due to the speed difference. 

I can only imagine how bad it must be for such a 'car' to be slammed in from behind at 90 km/h. It will probably become airborne, at twice the speed and two to three times the weight. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorised_quadricycle

A new trend in the Netherlands was to convert large SUVs into such a 45 km/h car. So you're driving and see a full-size SUV in front of you, only to realize it's only going 45 km/h. Quite dangerous on higher speed roads.


----------



## winnipeg

Yep, the article is right, our roads are full of those shit*y "cars" that are a nightmare for every driver and an enormous danger.... I already got myself "surprised" many times on road with such "cars" in front of me...

(For me, the real problem behind this is that in France you can loose your driving licence too easily, you only have to do some mistakes like using your phone on wheel or cross a white line or go on a red light and your driving licence is gone, due to our system of point with driving licence, at each infraction you loose them..., and at the end people are driving those dangerous little cars or they drive without driving licence, which doesn't solve any problem! (I'm not saying that doing infractions on road is a good thing. Obviously, no, I'm only saying that sanctions are a bit too severe in my opinion! --I'm not talking about alcohol or drugs, take back the driving licence from people who use those and drive is normal--)).

Also about those little cars, in France we call them "pot de yaourt" (yogurt container) due to the first models that where looking like a yogurt container! :yes:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The northeast of the Netherlands had its first little winter blast of the season, with light snow, but substantial ice accumulation. Ice also accumulated on power lines, resulting in voltage sags because the power lines started to 'dance' in the wind. Apparently this phenomenon is quite rare in the Netherlands. You can see the lights flicker, even though you don't have a real power outage. My PC keeps running as usual despite the lights flickering.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ Decent power supplies are able to 'iron out' small drops (or peaks) in voltage to prevent damage to the components.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Lots of ice in northeastern Netherlands. People are ice skating in the streets.


----------



## winnipeg

Some orthopedic surgeons will enjoy that ice too, many broken bones to come... :bash:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes, that's sort of a given in the Netherlands every time you can ice skate, whether in the street or on lakes and canals


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Lots of ice in northeastern Netherlands. People are ice skating in the streets.


After one of the warmest December in the last 100 years in Finland, the temperature suddenly dropped on the New Year's day. The forecast shows very cold for the next few days.


----------



## x-type

ice rain here. we had -5°C during the day, and now temperature has risen to 0°C and it began to rain. of course, it becomes ice when it touches anything because everything is cold because of the low day temperature.
i have just spent 15 minutes to remove ice from my windshield to come home. i have that anti-ice spray in my car, but it is useless with real ice, it helps only with frozen fog.

i am wondering if this really works with thick ice


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ I can't imagine it would be faster than just scraping with the plastic scraper, if thick ice, with the "ripper" side instead of the blade side... the alcohol has to dissolve the ice via water.


----------



## Festin

Could that really be called ice? I mean it is maximum 30 sec with scrapper in that situation.

It may help you scrape the windshield on real ice but I doubt it will do the hole job. Glycol/Ethanediol with or without water could also be an helpful method.


----------



## x-type

Festin said:


> Could that really be called ice? I mean it is maximum 30 sec with scrapper in that situation.
> 
> It may help you scrape the windshield on real ice but I doubt it will do the hole job. Glycol/Ethanediol with or without water could also be an helpful method.


30 sec? i spend at 2-3 min to remove thin layer of frozen fog from all glass surfaces on my car, you cannot do anything in 30 sec.


----------



## Festin

x-type said:


> 30 sec? i spend at 2-3 min to remove thin layer of frozen fog from all glass surfaces on my car, you cannot do anything in 30 sec.


I meant only the windshield with frost like in the clip. 
But I also start the engine first and put maximum heat on windows before starting to scrape even though cold air at start.


----------



## MattiG

Festin said:


> I meant only the windshield with frost like in the clip.
> But I also start the engine first and put maximum heat on windows before starting to scrape even though cold air at start.


 Getting rid of frost is usually easy, but freezing rain is just mission impossible. It is like an extra layer of steel.


----------



## keber

True.
I cannot imagine to get into a car and drive with such ice layer








_(Slovenia two years ago)_


----------



## TrojaA

It works also great with thicker ice, but it shouldn't be much thicker than 0,75mm (else you will have to scrape, too). Nevertheless I usually combine this with scraping. So I use the liquid to unfreeze the wipers and mirrors and most of the rest I scrape. (So I don't have to refill/buy a new bottle every week day)

However if it's frozen rain like MattiG mentioned, then just spraying will be way faster.

The advantage of commercial defroster is, that they contain additives which prevent the freezing of the windshield between half and one day. (These mixtures cost between 2€/l and 8€/l here in Northern Germany. You can buy them at drug stores and gas stations)


----------



## winnipeg

But they also have a certain environmental impact?

I personnaly prefer the "old way", with a good old scraper and a brush, works well, even if I have some frozen rain this morning! :yes:


----------



## winnipeg

On my side, I'm still extremely satisfied by the latest TomTom Android app, I traveled back to Romania from France with it last saturday and the traffic service worked very well, it helped me to avoid a big traffic jam due to a car crash and suggested me to exit the highway to avoid it, and it helped a lot as when I took the exist I saw all the cars stopped on the highway further... :yes:

Also as this time I've got data in Europe with my mobile phone plan, I've got the traffic service on all Europe, and when I was near Munich, I've got warned that it was snow on the road in front of me, and it was true (hopefuly I've got my winter tires :yes: )


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wikipedia


----------



## italystf

^^The story is real, it's supported by several international sources.
However, the writing style is not encyclopedic at all.

This story is stunning, if compared to Europe, where many small rail stations and even whole local rail lines had been shut down in the past decades due to poor ridership and high maintenance costs.


----------



## EasySeven

If it was any other article I would go and fix the style myself. But with this one ... I just can't. It's just too touching.


----------



## keokiracer

It has already been fixed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.ph...&type=revision&diff=698979861&oldid=698976795


----------



## g.spinoza

The Japanese are inexplicably... I wouldn't say romantic, let's say "sentimental" about this kind of things... When I was there I remember going to see the statue of Hachiko, the famous dog which went to wait for his master at the station for ten years after the man's death.
The statue is in front of Shibuya station, one of the largest in Tokyo, in a very central position. Such a story would hit the news for 10 seconds in Europe, while in Japan is still heartfelt after 80 years.


----------



## winnipeg

italystf said:


> This story is stunning, if compared to Europe, where many small rail stations and even whole local rail lines had been shut down in the past decades due to poor ridership and high maintenance costs.


Because we seems to act more logical since in our countries most of the people who live outside big cities (where smaller lines where closed) own a car...

This story might be comic and touching.... but really? A train for one girl? With the money put on it, they could make other lines better for 100 maybe 1000 persons, I don't know...hno:


----------



## MichiH

^^ It's just one (A44) out of many stations of the Sekihoku Main Line.

I don't know the story but I guess there was no train stop at station A44 except the two stops for the girl........


----------



## italystf

winnipeg said:


> Because we seems to act more logical since in our countries most of the people who live outside big cities (where smaller lines where closed) own a car...
> 
> This story might be comic and touching.... but really? A train for one girl? With the money put on it, they could make other lines better for 100 maybe 1000 persons, I don't know...hno:


They should rather provide a free taxi for the girl. She would receive the transportation service and it would be far cheaper.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> The Japanese are inexplicably... I wouldn't say romantic, let's say "sentimental" about this kind of things... When I was there I remember going to see the statue of Hachiko, the famous dog which went to wait for his master at the station for ten years after the man's death.
> The statue is in front of Shibuya station, one of the largest in Tokyo, in a very central position. Such a story would hit the news for 10 seconds in Europe, while in Japan is still heartfelt after 80 years.


If it was in North America or Australia, most European people would say: "OK, they have only 250 years of history, so they need put that kitch stuff just to have something to be noticed."
But in Japan they have an ancient history like in Europe. Maybe they care about these stuff because of their culture, I don't know.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Still if you look at their cities, everything is so modern


----------



## Kanadzie

italystf said:


> They should rather provide a free taxi for the girl. She would receive the transportation service and it would be far cheaper.


They could have provided free helicopter ride :lol:
How much diesel fuel did it cost, 1000 Euro each time? :nuts:
And they wonder why economic growth is poor...


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> They could have provided free helicopter ride :lol:
> How much diesel fuel did it cost, 1000 Euro each time? :nuts:
> And they wonder why economic growth is poor...


A fresh information. Currently, a train kilometre in Slovakia (1 km passed by single train) costs 11,43 €. This information is global for diesel and electric trains together. I think the diesel ones are more expensive.

Edit: I had a look on map and noticed the track is connecting two cities. Is the train really empty except the school girl or does the whole article goes only for the station?

Edit 2: so the whole article is about the station, not about the track. The track is quite frequent. The article is only about the stopping at the station. Only one pair of trains stops there. They should have made the station on request instead.


----------



## MichiH

^^


> "Every day only two trains stop at the Kami-Shirataki station with a unique timetable depending on when the girl needs to go to school and back."


http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/ea...ays-open-for-one-high-school-girl-perhaps-not


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> ^^ It's just one (A44) out of many stations of the Sekihoku Main Line.
> 
> I don't know the story but I guess there was no train stop at station A44 except the two stops for the girl........


So trains are passing that point anyway?

American passenger railroads (such as they are...) have such a thing as a "flag stop." Flag stops show up in timetables with a note that trains only stop if there's someone actually wanting to use them. (If you want to board there, stand in a prominent place; if you want to get off, notify the conductor in advance.)

I'd almost call this a regularly scheduled flag stop.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> If it was in North America or Australia, most European people would say: "OK, they have only 250 years of history, so they need put that kitch stuff just to have something to be noticed."
> But in Japan they have an ancient history like in Europe. Maybe they care about these stuff because of their culture, I don't know.


Europeans say lots of things. :troll:


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> They should have made the station on request instead.


Here in Italy the "stop on request" thing doesn't exist in rail transit. Rarely-used rail stations simply get closed. I don't know about other countries.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Here in Italy the "stop on request" thing doesn't exist in rail transit. Rarely-used rail stations simply get closed. I don't know about other countries.


We have two kinds of stops:
- stations
- stops.

stations usually include more tracks than one and usually are equipped by dispatcher with control panel, so he can designate the train routes in a section controlled by station. The control panel is placed in a special room called "transport office".









stops are just places where local trains stop. The signalling is controlled by transport office in a nearest station. Stops are usually located on a plain track (with no junctions). 

The whole rail network is divided into sections. Some are very simple (no junctions) so they don't have to be controlled by transport office. The trains are given way automatically, therefore we called them automatic blocks (sections).

If a station lost its importance, it is usually downgraded to stop. We used to have request stops but now we have stops served by selected trains. I have such stop in my neighbourhood and it is operated solely by local trains... every fourth in particular.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I have never used a request train stop in the UK but I believe that there are a few.


----------



## bigic

Vučić is the Serbian PM and Nikolić is the Serbian president.


----------



## italystf

In Italian: comportarsi come un elefante in una cristalleria (to behave like an elephant in a crystalware shop).


----------



## ukraroad

^^Well females aren't smaller, but what you tell is true.


----------



## Alex_ZR

sr: Као слон у стаклари. (Like an elephant in a glass shop)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

nl: Geert Wilders


----------



## MichiH

^^ Maybe he is one but I think the nl variant is

als een olifant door de porseleinkast

That's what google says but I don't know if it's just a translation or if it's really used to describe people like.... Geert Wilders :dunno:.


----------



## x-type

ukraroad said:


> Bull's not elephant:nuts:, but both big and relatively blind.


male elephant is called the bull too.


----------



## MattiG

MichiH said:


> ^^ ru: как слон в посудной лавке
> fr: se comporter comme un éléphant dans un magasin de porcelaine
> sv: bete sig som en elefant i en porslinsaffär
> cs: chovat se jako slon v porcelánu
> de: sich wie ein Elefant im Porzellanladen benehmen
> en: behave like a bull in a china shop


fi: kuin elefantti posliinikaupassa

Nice to know that a same idiom is in use in several languages.


----------



## x-type

my car has lost his virginity today evening


----------



## bogdymol

Ford Focus?


----------



## x-type

yes


----------



## ukraroad

I saw a stupid advertisement of the alcohol bar in Krakow yesterday: "Kup u nas wodke, a nie kielbase, z wesela nadmiar - zwracamy kase."(Buy vodka at us, not the sausage,...) and what they meant if they had anything left from alcohol after marriage, they return money, but that prefix "z" means they gonna uke: the cash... Which will certainly smell of alcohol:fart: :yuck: ! Another series was the one you can see on Krakow buses, the main motto of which was "The monarchial republic":wtfthe Roleski advert campaign, can't link the photos)


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> ^^ Maybe he is one but I think the nl variant is
> 
> als een olifant door de porseleinkast
> 
> That's what google says but I don't know if it's just a translation or if it's really used to describe people like.... Geert Wilders :dunno:.


Has anyone over there noticed how much Wilders resembles Donald Trump?


----------



## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> my car has lost his virginity today evening


It's harder in miles. 

(Here comes Spinoza.... :runaway


----------



## italystf

^^ Mine has already broken the 100,000 line in both units. In km also the 200,000 line is gone. hno:


----------



## volodaaaa

My MILF is approaching 200 000 km too.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I switched from older cars to newer cars with very little maintenance cost. I'm going to trade in my 2011 Hyundai i10 for a 2015 model. As Hyundai has 5 years warranty, I won't have to deal with unexpected repairs until 2020, and by then I will probably have moved up to a new car. This last two years I had almost no maintenance cost. Just one service and inspection. They replaced two ABS sensors under warranty (I think somebody bumped into my car at one time). It saved me € 700.


----------



## italystf

https://www.google.it/maps/dir/Borm...66b2f09faa2!2m2!1d10.5081459!2d46.5504094!3e0

Aparently Google Maps now knows which mountain passes are closed in winter.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Thanks for that! :cheers2:
I was wondering why Maps routes slower, for example here and here


----------



## MichiH

^^ Your One of your summer trips?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't like it. You can't plan routes for the summer season now.

edit: it seems that it is possible to plan routes across mountain passes with season closure, if you force it to route across.


----------



## bogdymol

Snow over the week-end:










Road to work today:


----------



## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> Which car do you drive? My car engine oil temperature indicator doesn't show degrees.


Opel Vectra C. Sorry for misinformation, I meant the coolant temperature.


----------



## Kanadzie

DanielFigFoz said:


> Very nice, I'm sure you've mentioned it before but I had forgotten. What year is it?


1991








it looks similar to this one (colours, wheels), except mine needs to be washed, however it is -10 C here and I don't want to flood my garage :lol:


----------



## winnipeg

Do you have any canadian car maker company?


----------



## Kanadzie

There aren't any that are commonly thought of as such in Canada, but technically the Canadian and Ontario governments owned some shares of GM and Chrysler because of the bail-out (in process of selling)

The Toronto region is a major auto-producing area, there are several factories of Toyota, Honda, GM, Chrysler and Ford within 125 km radius, and not far away to the west are more car factories (GM, Ford, Chrysler) in the Windsor, ON area (across river from Detroit). Volvo had a factory in Nova Scotia from the 1960's to late 1990's, that supplied much of the Volvos seen on the road in Canada and the USA of that period. And of course many car components factories.

Of course on top of that there have been and are multiple small carmakers making specialized vehicles (buses notably, or somewhat absurd sports-car schemes like the Manic GT (from Quebec with Renault parts) or the Bricklin (from New-Brunswick with AMC or Ford parts), both of the 1970's.

There was also a weird / pointless government-subsidized factory (Société de Montage Automobile (Soma)) near Montreal that produced Peugeots and Renaults from kits from around 1964 to 1974, very few of those cars still exist :lol:


----------



## winnipeg

I see, interesting! :yes:

That's why it's funny/interesting to know that you drive a swedish car... 

Why should it be pointless? Isn't what are making all asian car makers?

Also Peugeot have continued to do this in other places, like in Russia, until 2014, car parts were shipped by a daily train that was leaving from near my french home (Vesoul) to a factory near Moscow making a 3000km travel, it was very interesting and a great idea I think... :yes: 

Unfortunatly in 2013/2014, there has been a huge drop of new cars sales in Russia so doing this was no more possible as it costed a lot more with the drop of the sales, and other companies have reduced/stopped their production at this time....

But having a car factory in you country isn't the same than having a national car brand I guess even if car factories are huge and have power indeed (like in France, for example Ford won a lot of contracts with the government to provide new cars to cops and Gendarmerie..... while they were puting pressure to close a plant in France if they didn't won the contract... :no: )....


----------



## Suburbanist

what do you think of skoda?


----------



## winnipeg

Suburbanist said:


> what do you think of skoda?


Are you talking about the brand or about the fact that they are also assembling cars in Kaluga (Russia) like Peugeot have done?

About the brand, it's a great car brand that has a lot of fans, and the value of their cars for the price is good... but I personaly think that it's damagable that they have not so much freedom inside VW AG and their style and shape are a bit too modeled on VW cars...


----------



## MattiG

winnipeg said:


> Are you talking about the brand or about the fact that they are also assembling cars in Kaluga (Russia) like Peugeot have done?
> 
> About the brand, it's a great car brand that has a lot of fans, and the value of their cars for the price is good... but I personaly think that it's damagable that they have not so much freedom inside VW AG and their style and shape are a bit too modeled on VW cars...


My previous car a Skoda Yeti, and I drove it 100+ thousand kilometers. I don't care a penny whether the VW brand is visible in details or not. I feel I got a good value for the price. The basic reason to buy something different was the lack of room: The luggage store is barely large enough for two persons' weekend bags. There were many reasons why this was not enough.

It is often said that the cars designed in the Central Europe do not survive well in the arctic winter conditions of the Nordic countries. I had no winter-specific problems with Yeti.


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## Rebasepoiss

Well, nowadays there isn't really much of a difference between Volkswagen and Škoda. The former has more options available and costs a bit more but since cars of comparable class (Škoda Superb and VW Passat, for example) are built on the same platform with mostly the same engines and gearboxes, they're more or less the same car underneath. 

In 2015 Škoda Octavia was the 2nd best selling car in Estonia and Škoda Fabia the 6th best selling car so they are rather popular in Estonia.


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## ChrisZwolle

I've researched Volkswagen every time I bought another car, but I always found them too expensive for what you get, compared to competitors. I'm going to pick up my new Hyundai i10 tomorrow. It is € 2000 cheaper than a similarly equipped Volkswagen Up! but has 5 years warranty instead of only 2 years. And it is considered the best car in its class by both the Dutch and British motoring press.


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## Suburbanist

Are you buying it new or used?


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## ChrisZwolle

It's a 2015 model with 11,000 km. So not entirely new, but warranty until mid-2020. It comes with climate control and cruise control. It's my first car with cruise control, I absolutely loved it during the test drive. 

I also got a good trade-in with my 2011 Hyundai i10. The depreciation was only € 500 per year. It's my 5th car. 

So far I've owned;

2006: a 1994 Toyota Corolla (totaled in France)
2006: a 1995 Peugeot 306
2008: a 2004 Renault Kangoo (commercial van)
2014: a 2011 Hyundai i10
2016: a 2015 Hyundai i10

So it's the first time I've purchased a car of the same brand. The 2011 i10 was very practical and economical, but noise insulation wasn't too good at highway speed. The new i10 is a definite upgrade in terms of comfort and handling, and it's surprisingly quiet. The motoring press often commented that 'it feels like driving a larger class'. The 5 year warranty is a big draw for me, because there won't be any surprise repairs for the next few years.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> So far I've owned;
> 
> 2006: a 1994 Toyota Corolla (totaled in France)
> 2006: a 1995 Peugeot 306
> 2008: a 2004 Renault Kangoo (commercial van)
> 2014: a 2011 Hyundai i10
> 2016: a 2015 Hyundai i10


Nice.

So each vehicle change you buy a newer one (purchase year - model year). It looks a good deal, low mileage and the previous owner has chewed the "out of lot" depreciation already.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Planning to buy a Skoda rapid here. 19.000 euro and fully equiped with everything you can possibly wish. Wich car brand can tip that?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Belgian cars are much cheaper than in the Netherlands. Especially with mid-size diesel cars the cost difference can be over € 5000. 

There was somewhat of an 'uproar' at the Dutch _AutoWeek_ magazine where they do test rides with an upscale equipped Volkswagen Touran, which is priced at a staggering € 49260. People were upset over the price of nearly € 50000 for a 'van'.


----------



## g.spinoza

Just substitute Kia with Skoda


----------



## x-type

Rebasepoiss said:


> In 2015 Škoda Octavia was the 2nd best selling car in Estonia and Škoda Fabia the 6th best selling car so they are rather popular in Estonia.


number 1 brand in Estonia is Honda, right? i think that i read an article about it. how come that Honda is top selling brand there, when it is probably not in top10 in any other European country?

here in HR Honda is expensive as hell due to bad distributor.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Honda's market share has tanked since the mid-1990s in the Netherlands. It's currently an abysmal 0.29% of all car sales. The Netherlands has quite a varied market share of new car sales. Volkswagen leads with 12.5%.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

x-type said:


> number 1 brand in Estonia is Honda, right? i think that i read an article about it. how come that Honda is top selling brand there, when it is probably not in top10 in any other European country?
> 
> here in HR Honda is expensive as hell due to bad distributor.


Nope, it's Toyota, at least it was for the first 11 months of 2015 (I don't have data for the entire year. There are some discrepancies between different datasets since some cars are re-exported to Russia etc). In 2nd place was Škoda. Honda is #6.

Edit: The most popular specific car model sold was Nissan Qashqai.


----------



## Ingenioren

Hamburgsund, Sweden.

A car ferry with a 130 meters long crossing, do you know of any shorter than this?


----------



## ukraroad

^^ Hahaha... They haven't got even 3€ mln for construction.:wtf::hm: Faster to swim yourself:bash:


----------



## riiga

Ingenioren said:


> A car ferry with a 130 meters long crossing, do you know of any shorter than this?


Yes, the 75 meter crossing Högsäterleden in the county of Värmland. It's the shortest public ferry crossing in Sweden.









More info [Swedish]


----------



## Suburbanist

Netherlands has some really short ferry crossings. Reason is that channels must be kept open to navigation with some specified clearance so bridges must be tall or movable (= expensive)

Examples: 1 (82m) and 2 (114m). Actually, the second one is a rather serious gap that needs a tunnel ASAP.


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## MichiH

^^ Germany: About 80m, about 92m, about 67km, about 90m,...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Alex_ZR said:


> Do Baltic states have motorways or are they considered as highways?


Lithuania has motorways, Estonia and Latvia only have dual carriageways.


----------



## Surel

Váh, Slovakia, in Strečno 105 m.


----------



## Surel

Berounka, Czech Republic, in Nadryby, 61 m.










It is a punt actually, but it can take a car as well and and there are around 10 cars daily.


----------



## MattiG

*Cool*

Difference in indoor and outdoor temperature 54.4 degrees this morning.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ Why is your room temperature so high?


----------



## keokiracer

^^ Yeah, I'm getting sweaty just looking at that. Anything over 20 is too hot for me


----------



## winnipeg

OMG almost 26°C.... :shocked: :shocked:

In my appartment I adjusted the heating so it will only start when it's under 15°C,for example this night, it only went to 17°C and I didn't used it... :yes: (In my room I use a big confortable duvet and I sleep fine  ).

The main advantage of a low heating is the difference with outside is much lower (compred to 25°C, 15°C is 10°C of difference that you won't feel when you go outside!  )


----------



## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ Why is your room temperature so high?


It was the mid-room temperature in a room where walls were cold because of no heating for several weeks. The starting inside temperature on Wednesday was -17. The remote controlled heating capacity was able to raise the temperature to +10 only. Therefore, I turned on 4 kW extra heating fans yesterday evening. Now, I have dropped the temp to the normal +22, because the walls are now warm. Warming up a freezing cold house needs this kind of a shock wave approach.


----------



## winnipeg

Be careful, fan heaters are really the worse : their heating efficiency is very poor, all the heat is going on the top of the appartment/house (it cost a lot for a poor result) and it makes the air becoming very dry...

The best is to look at something that keeps the heat inside (like oil bath heaters and the others much better that we make now), but convectors/fan heaters are really the worse kind of heating...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

MattiG said:


> It was the mid-room temperature in a room where walls were cold because of no heating for several weeks. The starting inside temperature on Wednesday was -17. The remote controlled heating capacity was able to raise the temperature to +10 only. Therefore, I turned on 4 kW extra heating fans yesterday evening. Now, I have dropped the temp to the normal +22, because the walls are now warm. Warming up a freezing cold house needs this kind of a shock wave approach.


I assume that's your _mökki_ (holiday cottage) then?


----------



## MattiG

winnipeg said:


> Be careful, fan heaters are really the worse : their heating efficiency is very poor, all the heat is going on the top of the appartment/house (it cost a lot for a poor result) and it makes the air becoming very dry...
> 
> The best is to look at something that keeps the heat inside (like oil bath heaters and the others much better that we make now), but convectors/fan heaters are really the worse kind of heating...


Don't worry. At these latitudes, we know rather well how to heat the houses and how to keep the warmth inside.


----------



## italystf

Short ferry crossings in Italy:

Adda river near Imbersago: circa 80m
https://www.google.it/maps/@45.7080011,9.458207,18z

Mouth of Livenza river between Caorle and Porto Santa Margherita (active only in summer): circa 140m
https://www.google.it/maps/@45.5904234,12.8627023,18z

Ravenna harbour canal: circa 140m
https://www.google.it/maps/@44.492369,12.2801274,18z


----------



## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> I assume that's your _mökki_ (holiday cottage) then?


True. The chimney sweeper visited in the morning (mandatory every 3rd year by law), and I traveled here yesterday for preparations. Usually, we do not stay here if the temperature drops under -20. According to the weather forecasts, the temperature will soon raise a lot, and the weekend will be nice -5...-2 degrees.


----------



## italystf

Has anyone used regularly OSM as route planner? What do you think about its reliability? Does it usually suggest the most logical route or leads you through small and slow local roads?


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> Has anyone used regularly OSM as route planner? What do you think about its reliability? Does it usually suggest the most logical route or leads you through small and slow local roads?


I wouldn't recommend it. Its reliability is strongly influenced by the density of road mapped, which in turn is strongly dependent on how many good mappers are in a determined area...


----------



## piotr71

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch green card has almost no crossed boxes anymore. You can take it to Iran or Israel or Tunisia. I doubt if people actually do that, but it is possible. I think only Kosovo is still an issue.


As far as I know, Kosovo isn't included in green card area, therefore there is need to buy "border insurance", anyway. There are some exception for citizens of Serbia.



x-type said:


> i had similar situation at BIH border. but i managed to pay 30€ for 3 day insurance. they already have office at border crossing that issues such things. the funniest thing was that guy in insurance was fullfilling some form (that should have be insurance policy, i guess), everything in cyrillic, and when he had to write model of my car, it was quite complicated because i was driving Mitsubishi in that time :troll: so he wrote something like Micuši because original name was too complicated for him


I paid 50 marks for 3 days, which is about 25 euros, in the last year. It all depends of agent. Prices can vary.

Don't Serbs transcript foreign names phonetically? Exactly as their pronounce them?


----------



## Alex_ZR

piotr71 said:


> Don't Serbs transcript foreign names phonetically? Exactly as their pronounce them?


Yes, we do.


----------



## cinxxx

^^I wanted to look too, but I'm also to lazy to go to the car to get the paper.
I know I drove with it to Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia without any problems. I know Kosovo is not included, I think Russia too. Maybe I will take a picture of it later.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> About 2-3 years ago my parents wanted to drive to Greece for holidays, through Serbia and Macedonia. We had 2 cars in the family at that time. They wanted to go with the "newer car" (long trip = take the better car ... that was the policy in my family), but they discovered that the Green Card for that car had all possible countries included, but not Macedonia. The other car, insured at the same company, had Macedonia included. After discussing with the insurance company, we found out that, due to making the insurance on different dates, only one of them had the "offer" to include Macedonia. Nevertheless, as we are using the same insurance for many years, they gave my parents a free Green Card valid for Macedonia.
> 
> At the border, while entering Macedonia from Serbia, the border police asked for the Green Card. My dad, gave them, on purpose, the old one (with valid date), but where Macedonia was not included :naughty:. The police officer noticed that and told him that he does not have a valid Green Card for MK, so either he pays (quite a lot) for one to be issued at the border, or he has to turn back. Then my father showed him the second Green Card, and everything was ok.
> 
> My car's Green Card is valid everywhere around Europe. The only countries that is not valid in are Ukraine (I guess due to the recent issues there), Iran, Tunisia, Kosovo and maybe also Albania, Russia and Belarus (the paper is in the car... too lazy to go and take a look).



I am lazy too, but I think it include entire Europe (except Kosovo). Will have look on it tonight. The fun fact is that I even use it in Slovakia. 

We have two basic forms of car insurance - obligatory (for other drivers if I am the guilty one or for me if I am the one who bear the damage) and the additional (for me if I am the guilty one, otherwise I have to pay the full price for repair). With the obligatory one you are given the "white card". Green card is an extension. You can prove you have contracted the insurance by green card too.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ They're usually termed 'liability coverage' and 'full coverage'. In the Netherlands they're talking about 'all-risk' but that term doesn't seem to be used in the English-speaking world for a full coverage insurance. The Dutch tend to make up English terms for things that don't exist or are used differently in the actual English-speaking world.


----------



## x-type

piotr71 said:


> Don't Serbs transcript foreign names phonetically? Exactly as their pronounce them?


they do. but he even couldn't do that, but he wrote false name (Mitsubishi, or Мицубиши) was way to complicated for him to write


----------



## DanielFigFoz

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ They're usually termed 'liability coverage' and 'full coverage'. In the Netherlands they're talking about 'all-risk' but that term doesn't seem to be used in the English-speaking world for a full coverage insurance. The Dutch tend to make up English terms for things that don't exist or are used differently in the actual English-speaking world.


They're called 'third party' and 'comprehensive' in the UK.


----------



## General Maximus

The Germans do too. Mobile phone in the UK, cellphone in the US but it's a handy in the German speaking world...


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^In French, a facelift is called a "lifting."

No, I haven't and am not planning to.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Or 'parking' in France.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

How are lanes counted in your country? In some countries, you'll see them referred to as a total of both directions (i.e. six lanes), whereas in other countries people may refer to the number of lanes in one direction (i.e. three lanes). Some countries also use the 'x', for example, 2x2 of 2x3 lanes (like in France).

In addition, most people tend to number lanes from right to left (in a country that drives on the right), while the official lane count may be from left to right. So the first lane may be the leftmost lane, while people at least in the Netherlands would consider that the rightmost lane (even if the official definition in NL would also make it the left / inside lane).


----------



## Penn's Woods

Weather-related road item of the day: People stranded on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in the 30-mile (50-km) exit-free stretch between Bedford and Somerset.

Don't know why they didn't just close it.


----------



## bogdymol

In Romania is so:
- standard roads (1 lane per direction): _1 lane road_
- standard road with 2 lanes per direction: _2 lanes per direction or 4-lane road_
- lane counting: right-most lane is first lane, overtaking lane is second lane. Parking lane (for urban streets) does not count.


----------



## General Maximus

ChrisZwolle said:


> How are lanes counted in your country? In some countries, you'll see them referred to as a total of both directions (i.e. six lanes), whereas in other countries people may refer to the number of lanes in one direction (i.e. three lanes). Some countries also use the 'x', for example, 2x2 of 2x3 lanes (like in France).
> 
> In addition, most people tend to number lanes from right to left (in a country that drives on the right), while the official lane count may be from left to right. So the first lane may be the leftmost lane, while people at least in the Netherlands would consider that the rightmost lane (even if the official definition in NL would also make it the left / inside lane).


I think in continental Europe it's pretty much the same everywhere. In the UK lanes are actually numbered, and especially in law enforcement they are addressed as lane 1, 2 and 3. The inside lane is the lane you enter on, the outside lane is the outer overtaking lane. A lot of people like to think of it as slow and fast lanes, which of course is wrong. All lanes have the same limits, and all lanes other than lane one (main carriageway) are overtaking lanes only.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> How are lanes counted in your country? In some countries, you'll see them referred to as a total of both directions (i.e. six lanes), whereas in other countries people may refer to the number of lanes in one direction (i.e. three lanes). Some countries also use the 'x', for example, 2x2 of 2x3 lanes (like in France).
> 
> In addition, most people tend to number lanes from right to left (in a country that drives on the right), while the official lane count may be from left to right. So the first lane may be the leftmost lane, while people at least in the Netherlands would consider that the rightmost lane (even if the official definition in NL would also make it the left / inside lane).


I think most non-roadgeek Americans would call a road with two lanes each direction a four-lane road rather than a two-by-two. And I'd avoid numbering them, or talking about inside and outside lanes. "Left lane" is clear.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> I am lazy too, but I think it include entire Europe (except Kosovo). Will have look on it tonight. The fun fact is that I even use it in Slovakia.
> 
> We have two basic forms of car insurance - obligatory (for other drivers if I am the guilty one or for me if I am the one who bear the damage) and the additional (for me if I am the guilty one, otherwise I have to pay the full price for repair). With the obligatory one you are given the "white card". Green card is an extension. You can prove you have contracted the insurance by green card too.


Are you sure about that coloring? The international Green Card system is to certify that the car is insured by the national compulsory motor insurance. So it represents the minimum level.


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## DanielFigFoz

In the UK people call a road with two lanes in each direction a two lane road and so forth. So people would say that most motorways in the UK are three lane roads.

And yes, as our friend from Limoges correctly states, the lanes are normally called slow lane, middle lane and fast lane. In fact I would say that's universal in the UK. I would say that the middle and fast lanes are for overtaking and that the slow lane is for when you're not overtaking, even though that is as he quite rightly points out, wrong. Nevertheless it's what I'd say.


----------



## italystf

I've just checked my green card. It isn't valid in Albania and Morocco. Its validity in Serbia is restricted to areas actually controlled by Serbian government (i.e. no Kosovo) and its validity in Cyprus is restricted to areas actually controlled by the Republic of Cyprus (i.e. no Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus).
I am actually surprised by its invalidity in Albania, since we EU citizen can visit it with ID only and driving from Italy to Greece via Albania won't be uncommon at all (the chance for an Italian car to be in Albania is far much higher than in Iran or Russia or Israel).


----------



## MichiH

Generally, Germans are used to mistaken carriageway and lane.

Germans usually call a road with one lane per direction "1-laned". A 2x3 Autobahn is usually called "3-laned". Official documents usually use "6-laned".

It's the first time I heard about lane numbering. Is it really common in other countries? We called them "right" and "left" lane. If it's a 2x3 road, the lane in-between is called "middle lane". If it's 2x4... Maybe "2. von links" (2nd from the left) or "2. von rechts" (2nd from the right) or middle lane*s*.

2x3 is not common in German, we call it 3+3 (on Autobahn-online.de). Official documents - e.g. press releases about construction sites (Baustelle) - use "4+0-Verkehrsführung" (traffic routing) to indicate that 2 lanes per direction are available on one carriageway while the other carriageway is closed. If one lane remains on the carriageway under construction, it's called "3+1".


----------



## Penn's Woods

keokiracer said:


> ^^ Yeah, I'm getting sweaty just looking at that. Anything over 20 is too hot for me


Seriously. I set mine to 72 (22C-ish) when I'm home and out of bed, 68 (20) overnight and when I'm out.


----------



## winnipeg

Penn's Woods said:


> I still don't know how to produce a proper "oe" (as in "oeuf" or "oeuvre") unless I'm using my phone. The French Canadian layout - which is basically QWERTY with accents - at least makes it easier to capitalize accented characters (Ç, È, É...*); but I'm more used to the French and French-Belgian layouts when I'm writing in French. (They're both AZERTY, with some differences in where certain punctuation marks and the like can be found.)
> 
> When you're in Word or Excel, auto-correct fixes some of these, but not in a web browser like I am right now.
> 
> *I just switched my language setting to Canadian French to produce those, but I had to hunt for them. And switched back to English when I was done.


On internet the "œ" is not really necessary (I also don't know how to have it on keyboard  ), by writing "oeuf" instead of "œuf", it doesn' really change anything, anyone understand what is the word :yes:

And about accented characters, they are also useless because in french it is gramaticaly correct to not put an accented character if the capital letter is on the first word on the begining of a sentence... So I also never used it, and probably I will never have to... 

Yes, I know the differences...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Though a lot of urban autoroute sections in France are actually very substandard, some even lower than many voie express. In fact there are even a few bridges along autoroutes with only one lane in each direction.


----------



## Penn's Woods

winnipeg said:


> Yes, usualy in France an "autoroute" is a motorway (2x2 or more), most of the time with tolls, and most of the times limited to 130km/h on normal day (110km/h when it is raining and around junctions and cities...) while a "voie express" is a 2x2 highway, but with lower safety equipment and/or a more sinuous path, it is limited at 110km/h and they are usualy free (the state made no motorway concession on it)... at least they are like that in eastern France... :yes:


But even a "voie express" is usually limited-access, isn't it? I mean no intersections at grade, no private driveways opening onto it? Is there a term that covers both autoroute and voie express? (The legend to the latest IGN road atlas refers to "voies à caractère autoroutier".)


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Question: In France, is there any physical difference between "autoroute" and "voie express," or is a "voie express" just a freeway that's not numbered as part of the autoroute class? Either one is essentially a freeway/motorway, right? (And I don't think I've ever seen the term "voie express" used in francophone Belgium. Or Quebec for that matter.)
> 
> As for the Aston, how's it numbered? Does that lack of separation between the carriageways disqualify it from being a motorway or Ax(M)?


An undivided road like the Aston Expressway can never be a motorway in Europe. In some countries, the median barrier is required for 2nd class roads too (like Strada Extraurbana Principale, Voie Expresse, Hitra Cesta, High Quality Dual Carriaggeway, Autoweg), that have the same features and traffic restrictions of motorways but lower technical requirement (width, curve radius) and generally lower speed limit than motorways. Those roads are usually called expressways in English.
The only ambiguous case is Switzerland, where the A prefix, usually reserved to motorways (autobahn, autoroute, autostrada), is assigned to some 1+1 grade-separated roads too. However, despite the number, those roads aren't signed as motorways, but as "motor-vehicles only roads".
In Austria is the other way round. While the A prefix is generally used for motorways (autobahn) and the S prefix for expressways (schnellstrasse, that can be either 2+2 divided, 2+2 undivided or 1+1 undivided), there are some full standard motorways (usually the most recent ones), that have the S prefix. They are signed as motorways, have 130 speed limit unless different posted, but they're numbered as Sxy.
This can generate some mistakes on certain low-quality maps. I've seen 1+1 Swiss A roads drawed as motorways and 2+2 Austrian S motorways drawed as regular roads.


----------



## winnipeg

Penn's Woods said:


> But even a "voie express" is usually limited-access, isn't it? I mean no intersections at grade, no private driveways opening onto it? Is there a term that covers both autoroute and voie express? (The legend to the latest IGN road atlas refers to "voies à caractère autoroutier".)


Yes, exactly, this is a "road for cars" which means no tractors, bike, small motorbikes..., and yes, no intersections and no private driveway (it looks like an "autoroute" for this)... :yes:

Probably, I never heard it like this (I never use any IGN maps, with Google Maps and smartphones GPS they became useless... except maybe for hiking...), but it describes exactly what it is! :yes:


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Though a lot of urban autoroute sections in France are actually very substandard, some even lower than many voie express. In fact there are even a few bridges along autoroutes with only one lane in each direction.


Some pre-1980s motorways in Italy, especially in mountanious areas (A10, A12, A7, A6, old A1, pre-reconstruction A3, and many _raccordi autostradali_), have lower standards than present-day expressways. However they remain motorways because they were built as such.


----------



## Kanadzie

Penn's Woods said:


> I thought of the Gardiner after I posted. Thing is, both of those cities are also served by the Macdonald-Cartier *Freeway*. Was there a reason both terms were used in the same area?


Montreal has the Decarie Expressway, Bonaventure Expessway and Ville-Marie Expressway, all of which are freeway 
Even the federal government signs it as such  https://www.google.pl/maps/@45.4751...97Y3bQIA-D2EQwwkTw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1

But it's only the Metropolitan Boulevard :nuts:

Thinking about it I can't imagine "expressway" referring to a real freeway that isn't inside a central part of a city...


----------



## g.spinoza

I've modified my Italian keyboard to accommodate for some letters which are impossible to write with the standard one. For instance, it's impossible to capitalize accented letters, which is not a problem unless for "è" ("is"), since it can go at the beginning of a sentence: "È buono" ("It's good"). I think the Italian keyboard should be modified: it makes no sense having "ç" and "§" in it, which is not used in Italian, and not being able to capitalize "è". ‰ serves no purpose, you can just use %.


----------



## italystf

The lack of È is the worst aspect of the Italian keyboard. Many people replace it with E', but it isn't correct.


----------



## cinxxx

^^In Romanian we have şţăâî ŞŢĂÂÎ and they are all very easy to write using Romanian keyboard. I don't really use them though in casual writing, native speakers understand everything without those accents. Also I almost always use the English keyboard, I also bought one for work, had to buy it from Romania, since you almost can't find any in Germany, and those you find are way to expensive. If I need Romanian or German special characters I just switch and I know where to find them on the English layout...


----------



## CNGL

Ç is also present in the Spanish keyboard. At first glance it appears to be useless... but then there's Catalan language, which uses it.


----------



## winnipeg

cinxxx said:


> ^^In Romanian we have şţăâî ŞŢĂÂÎ and they are all very easy to write using Romanian keyboard. I don't really use them though in casual writing, native speakers understand everything without those accents. Also I almost always use the English keyboard, I also bought one for work, had to buy it from Romania, since you almost can't find any in Germany, and those you find are way to expensive. If I need Romanian or German special characters I just switch and I know where to find them on the English layout...


Yes, I noticed that! Kind of strange to me as in french we don't care about capital letters... :yes:

Not only native speakers! I also understand most of the romanian that I read on internet without such special caracters...


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ It is strange
in Canada definitely need to make your accents on the _lettres majuscules_ 
Otherwise teacher will hit you with a stick, now 1 m instead of 1 yd. :lol:


----------



## cinxxx

winnipeg said:


> Not only native speakers! I also understand most of the romanian that I read on internet without such special caracters...


It's not really hard to understand it actually.
And Romanian is not a hard language to learn, especially for Latin language speakers. I think only Portuguese have all of our sounds, others would struggle pronouncing some things, but you can still communicate without problems. Still sounds funny though


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> Ç is also present in the Spanish keyboard. At first glance it appears to be useless... but then there's Catalan language, which uses it.


Ç exists in Friulian language too, although it doesn't in Italian. However Friulian, like other local languages and dialects, is mostly used in everyday speech, rather than in written form.


----------



## winnipeg

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ It is strange
> in Canada definitely need to make your accents on the _lettres majuscules_
> Otherwise teacher will hit you with a stick, now 1 m instead of 1 yd. :lol:


In fact it applies to machine/computer writing essentialy, it comes from our past lazy printers when they were printing characters individualy and after it was certainly to make some economy with ink... 

But Quebecois are using a french that sometimes appears to be quite strange to us, the french people, as you are still using some french word that we no longer use in french (from France) everyday language, that we have replaced with the most common english words... (Like "chips" (potato chip) that you are still calling "croustille", and lot of others that I don't remember, but when I went to Quebec, it was quite funny to hear all those words that we no longer use in France...  )... but in the same time, Quebecois are also using plenty of english words in everyday speaking...


----------



## winnipeg

cinxxx said:


> It's not really hard to understand it actually.
> And Romanian is not a hard language to learn, especially for Latin language speakers. I think only Portuguese have all of our sounds, others would struggle pronouncing some things, but you can still communicate without problems. Still sounds funny though


For the vocabular, yes, it's pretty easy, during the firsts days that I were in Romania, I started to instantly recognize a good part of the vocabular that is coming from latin... but not everything, some words seems to have other origins and are more difficult to learn...

But also Romanian grammar is a bit hard, but the shi*iest thing about learning romanian is certainly the lack of course materials, this has been the biggest problem for me... even if it's understandable as the number of french people that actualy wanted to learn romanian is probably very very low... (and also I did have very very poor romanian teachers in university... hno: )...


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> I've modified my Italian keyboard to accommodate for some letters which are impossible to write with the standard one. For instance, it's impossible to capitalize accented letters, which is not a problem unless for "è" ("is"), since it can go at the beginning of a sentence: "È buono" ("It's good"). I think the Italian keyboard should be modified: it makes no sense having "ç" and "§" in it, which is not used in Italian, and not being able to capitalize "è". ‰ serves no purpose, you can just use %.


Will È at least auto-correct? (Had to switch to Canadian French again to do that...)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ It is strange
> in Canada definitely need to make your accents on the _lettres majuscules_
> Otherwise teacher will hit you with a stick, now 1 m instead of 1 yd. :lol:


Les Québécois have higher standards than the Français de France. :jk:


----------



## Jasper90

Penn's Woods said:


> Will È at least auto-correct? (Had to switch to Canadian French again to do that...)


E and è have two different meanings: 
e = and
è = is

With iPhone it does autocorrect sometimes, but it's terribly annoying: it changes the meaning from "A and B" to "A is B" :nuts: however, keyboards on phones have easy access to capitalised È.

On the computer, the only way to type È is to copy and paste, or use some weird combination like Alt + 12345 or something like that :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

What I meant was, in the French-French or Belgian-French keyboard layouts, at least in Microsoft Word, if you type a ç or a è (for example) in a position where it ought to be capitalized (such as at the beginning of a sentence), it will automatically capitalize.


----------



## Kanadzie

I know MS Word, in French at least, change a (has) to à (to) where it is necessary to make the sentence logical.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Will È at least auto-correct? (Had to switch to Canadian French again to do that...)


In Word, possibly (I don't use it very often).


----------



## DanielFigFoz

winnipeg said:


> That looks so dangerous... hno:


The speed limit is only 40 or 50mph (don't remember which) and it's a rather short motorway, a couple of miles at most.

The Aston Expressway is the A38(M).

I don't have any trouble writing Portuguese or French accents in capitals or not on a Portuguese keyboard. I have a British keyboard but if I want to write in French or Portuguese I change the keyboard setting to Portuguese, as I know where all the accents are. A Welsh keyboard would be helpful though.


----------



## piotr71

winnipeg said:


> Quite strange... hno:
> 
> Here is mine :
> 
> 
> 
> All the Balkans are included (except Kosovo, which is damage... hno: ) and even Turkey and Ukraine :cheers: :yes:
> 
> The only countries crossed are Ireland (why?) and Russia (I understand better for this one...  ) and also northern Chypre


My wife's 









(link)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My insurance card has no crossed boxes at all:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ So you can travel with your car from Marrakesh to Vladivostok.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

First time I've seen a British green card!

I have a white sheet of paper that states:

To whom it may concern etc.

A)Any member state of the European Union
B ) EFTA (it actually lists the countries) + micro states + Serbia.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> The lack of È is the worst aspect of the Italian keyboard. Many people replace it with E', but it isn't correct.


when i write italian, i always use e' and E'  because i am not patient enough to change HR - I keyboards (after all, i saw Italians using that e' thing, it's not my invention  ). of course, when i write some official document, i use proper letters. omitting capital È confused me - i thought that you use E' as official 



cinxxx said:


> ^^In Romanian we have şţăâî ŞŢĂÂÎ and they are all very easy to write using Romanian keyboard. I don't really use them though in casual writing, native speakers understand everything without those accents. Also I almost always use the English keyboard, I also bought one for work, had to buy it from Romania, since you almost can't find any in Germany, and those you find are way to expensive. If I need Romanian or German special characters I just switch and I know where to find them on the English layout...


i've noticed that Romanian language is the one that is probably the most often written with english alphabet on the internet


----------



## italystf

Jasper90 said:


> E and è have two different meanings:
> e = and
> è = is
> 
> With iPhone it does autocorrect sometimes, but it's terribly annoying: it changes the meaning from "A and B" to "A is B" :nuts: however, keyboards on phones have easy access to capitalised È.
> 
> On the computer, the only way to type È is to copy and paste, or use some weird combination like Alt + 12345 or something like that :lol:


Word automatically capitalizes letters after a full stop, so è turns automatically into È.


----------



## Alex_ZR

I don't have a Green card, because it's not needed for travelling to EU countries. We do need it for Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia, but they aren't on my way. And yes, here you don't get it automatically from your insurance company. We have to pay additionally and it expires when your insurance expires (less than a year)...


----------



## ukraroad

italystf said:


> Word automatically capitalizes letters after a full stop, so è turns automatically into È.


LibreOffice does it even if you don't want it, as after eg.


----------



## Highway89

Highway89 said:


> A truck carrying oranges from Murcia, Spain to Riga, Latvia was found last Sunday morning in a forest track near Ezcaray, La Rioja. The weirdest thing is that the place where the truck was found is located 350 km / 217 mi far from the fastest road route between Murcia and Riga (Spanish AP-7 or N-340).
> 
> Probably the Ukrainian truck driver got lost because of the extremely confusing Spanish signage and when he tried to use the GPS system, things got even worse





Highway89 said:


> Two months later, it has happened again!
> 
> Same company, same truck, but this time it's been a Russian (not Ukrainian) driver carrying oranges to Sweden (not Latvia):
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://translate.google.es/transla...istado-20160114075926.html&edit-text=&act=url


Mystery solved!

This time a group of villagers stopped the truck driver in the village of Ezcaray before he got into the forest track. They saw a white truck with a Russian (?) license plate so they decided to make him stop before things got worse. I can't but laugh trying to imagine the situation: A Russian truck driver in the middle of a mountain village in Spain trying to understand why those people are telling him to stop.

It seems that the transport company reached an agreement with a petrol company in order that they could refuel at a lower price. One of those petrol stations is located in a place called Turza in Poland, but the company GPS devices mistook that place for this _other_ Turza in La Rioja, Spain. 











Source: https://translate.google.es/transla...25004437-v.html&edit-text=&act=url&authuser=0


----------



## MattiG

Highway89 said:


> It seems that the transport company reached an agreement with a petrol company in order that they could refuel at a lower price. One of those petrol stations is located in a place called Turza in Poland, but the company GPS devices mistook that place for Turza in La Rioja, Spain[/URL].


Owning a GPS device and unwillingness to use common sense is rather a dangerous combination.


----------



## winnipeg

WTF, I wasn't expecting such stoy!! :lol::lol:

Those truckers are really stupid, how can you confound Poland with Spain... :bash:


----------



## MattiG

winnipeg said:


> WTF, I wasn't expecting such stoy!! :lol::lol:
> 
> Those truckers are really stupid, how can you confound Poland with Spain... :bash:


The transport company had uploaded the list of gas stations to use in the navigator? And the poor driver just navigates to the nearest station.


----------



## piotr71

ChrisZwolle said:


> My insurance card has no crossed boxes at all:


Nice!  I've got one of my cars insured in Poland and the insurer issued green card automatically, with no crossed boxes, as well. But, because it is "youngtimer", I do not drive her much. Actually, have not visited foreign countries since 2008 with her.


----------



## piotr71

DanielFigFoz said:


> *First time I've seen* a British green card!
> 
> I have a white sheet of paper that states:
> 
> To whom it may concern etc.
> 
> A)Any member state of the European Union
> B ) EFTA (it actually lists the countries) + micro states + Serbia.


So have I. As far as I am aware, Axa is an only agent in the UK, which bothers in issuing green cards.


----------



## CNGL

Highway89 said:


> Mystery solved!
> 
> This time a group of villagers stopped the truck driver in the village of Ezcaray before he got into the forest track. They saw a white truck with a Russian (?) license plate so they decided to make him stop before things got worse. I can't but laugh trying to imagine the situation: A Russian truck driver in the middle of a mountain village in Spain trying to understand why those people are telling him to stop.
> 
> It seems that the transport company reached an agreement with a petrol company in order that they could refuel at a lower price. One of those petrol stations is located in a place called Turza in Poland, but the company GPS devices mistook that place for this _other_ Turza in La Rioja, Spain.


I was going to post that! Anyway, I believe the Polish location is Turza Slaska, not far from the Czech border.


----------



## italystf

winnipeg said:


> WTF, I wasn't expecting such stoy!! :lol::lol:
> 
> Those truckers are really stupid, how can you confound Poland with Spain... :bash:


A Turkish truck driver had to deliver something in Gibraltar but ended up in Gibraltar.


----------



## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> The same sort of standards that we're trying to impose on other countries' passports?
> 
> Why don't they? :bash:


IT's all explained here: http://www.dhs.gov/real-id-enforcement-brief



> Secure driver's licenses and identification documents are a vital component of our national security framework. The REAL ID Act, passed by Congress in 2005, enacted the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation that the Federal Government “set standards for the issuance of sources of identification, such as driver's licenses.” The Act established minimum security standards for license issuance and production and prohibits Federal agencies from accepting for certain purposes driver’s licenses and identification cards from states not meeting the Act’s minimum standards. The purposes covered by the Act are: accessing Federal facilities, entering nuclear power plants, and, no sooner than 2016, boarding federally regulated commercial aircraft.
> 
> States and other jurisdictions have made significant progress in enhancing the security of their licenses over the last number of years. As a result, approximately 90% of all U.S. drivers hold licenses from jurisdictions: (1) determined to meet the Act’s standards; or (2) that have received extensions. Individuals holding driver’s licenses or identification cards from these jurisdiction may continue to use them as before.


----------



## winnipeg

Suburbanist said:


> They still don't match "Real ID" provisions, e.g., the latest security standards that (theoretically) greatly reduce chances of fraud.


Very very much teoretically because in the facts for example biometry is still very very vulnerable... hno:


----------



## piotr71

Since "linguistic issues" thread is closed, I have decided to post it here, as it seems to be quite interesting, worth to mention stuff. Here is a Czech village in Banat, Romania. 










There is still present about 300 inhabitants in Tisove Udoli, who declare themselves as Czechs. They use pretty archaic and not very sophisticated Czech language, unsurprisingly, with vocabulary largely influenced by Romanian.

Source.


----------



## MichiH

^^ There's a German name on the sign though.


----------



## piotr71

Well, and that's proper linguistic issue, then


----------



## x-type

we have several villages with bilingual Czech and Croatian names around city Daruvar. 
https://www.google.hr/maps/@45.6297...4!1sMp3gzR-S6q-zkQ4rZ-wmWg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
in that area live significant Czech minority, and they also speak some weird language which sounds horrible - something like Croatian with Czech pronuonciation :lol:
i have several friends in that area and most of them refuse speaking Czech language when they visit Czech Republic because they know it is not proper Czech.


----------



## volodaaaa

I have a friend from Vojvodina. His Slovak language sounds like he just have stepped out of time machine. It concerns vocabulary and dialect as well. But I can't imagine archaic Czech language.


----------



## Alex_ZR

There's also a tiny village in Serbian Banat, near Romanian border, called Češko Selo ("Czech Village" in Serbian) with population of 40 people:


----------



## piotr71

volodaaaa said:


> I have a friend from Vojvodina. His Slovak language sounds like he just have stepped out of time machine. It concerns vocabulary and dialect as well. *But I can't imagine archaic Czech language.*


I dare to presume, it might be quite similar to the archaic Slovak


----------



## cinxxx

Croat (Karashovan) village in Romanian Banat
https://goo.gl/maps/2APsZCKUqJs



piotr71 said:


> Well, and that's proper linguistic issue, then


Eibenthal is the official Romanian name.
Czech: Eibentál, Tisové Údolí or Jeventál
Hungarian: Tiszafa


----------



## Kanadzie

x-type said:


> we have several villages with bilingual Czech and Croatian names around city Daruvar.
> https://www.google.hr/maps/@45.6297...4!1sMp3gzR-S6q-zkQ4rZ-wmWg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
> in that area live significant Czech minority, and* they also speak some weird language which sounds horrible *- something like Croatian with Czech pronuonciation :lol:
> i have several friends in that area and most of them refuse speaking Czech language when they visit Czech Republic because they know it is not proper Czech.


:lol:


----------



## Attus

cinxxx said:


> Eibenthal is the official Romanian name.


Since you are a Romanian currently living in Germany (and I suppose you speak German) you surely see that Eibenthal may be an official Romanian name but the word itself is German


----------



## cinxxx

^^Of course I speak German, I grew up bilingual :lol:
I also didn't say the word wasn't German .


We have other localities like that which names stayed German, like Lenauheim (literaly the home of Nikolaus Lenau) or Charlottenburg


----------



## MichiH

cinxxx said:


> ^^Of course I speak German, I grew up bilingual :lol:


Des g'freidt mi .



cinxxx said:


> Charlottenburg


I guess that the name on the sign is wrong though!?

Charlottenburg.

The name of the neighboring village Altringen is German too.

btw: Romanian DN roads are available in preview status on Travel Mapping now.


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> Des g'freidt mi .


This is not German. At all. :lol:


----------



## MichiH

^^ Maybe it's something like Franconian.


----------



## italystf

Comparison of the 10 largest motorway networks in the world










http://freegeo.org/2015/05/02/it-to...completely-leapfrog-the-us-interstate-system/


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's an interesting map.

However they always go wrong with Canada and Russia, they count all four-lane divided highways, even those that do not have freeway standards.

Turkey, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and possibly India would also rank in the top 10 if one would count all divided highways. These countries have over 10,000 kilometers of such roads, though I'm not too sure about India.


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile, in the case of Italy, they included only official motorways, and not expressways that also are 2+2, divided and fully grade-separated. Italy has around 10,000km of motorways and expressways together.
This map is from May 2015, so, especially for China, is a little bit outdated.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> However they always go wrong with Canada and Russia, they count all four-lane divided highways, even those that do not have freeway standards.


Exactly. They compare apples and oranges.



italystf said:


> Meanwhile, in the case of Italy, they included only official motorways, and not expressways that also are 2+2, divided and fully grade-separated. Italy has around 10,000km of motorways and expressways together.


It's exactly the same with Germany.



italystf said:


> This map is from May 2015, so, especially for China, is a little bit outdated.


Hm, just a little bit .


----------



## Penn's Woods

Going back to the language issue, how did those sort of stray communities - Czechs in Serbia and so on - get there?


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> Going back to the language issue, how did those sort of stray communities - Czechs in Serbia and so on - get there?


I would simplify it for you: Turks were expanding and the southern parts of (Great) Hungary were occupied. This parts were called Lowerland. Fights were going on there and finally around 18th century the Turks were defeated. However the Lowerland remained unoccupied and devastated, though there was very fertile soil. Some members of nations from later Austria-Hungary decided to start a new life there. Therefore we can see that mix of nations. Later on Lowerland became a part of Vojvodina. Nevertheless, the migration was not overwhelming and since it was back in 300 years ago, some groups have been declining, escalated by yugoslav wars and subsequent poverty (emigration). Slovaks from Vojvodina are actually declining, because kids go to study to Slovakia and stay here after graduation.

The result:


----------



## piotr71

Just movement of people within one country, sometimes forced by rulers. For instance, there are still Poles living near Gradiska in Bosnia.


----------



## italystf

piotr71 said:


> Just movement of people within one country, sometimes forced by rulers. For instance, there are still Poles living near Gradiska in Bosnia.


It's the same that happened in the Soviet Union, with Russians being now a sizeable minority in every post-Soviet republic and with strangely-located minorities like Ukrainians in Kazakhstan.


----------



## bigic

Before WWII there was even a large German community in Vojvodina. They were forced out by the communists and replaced by colonists from Bosnia, Croatia and Montenegro.


----------



## x-type

piotr71 said:


> Just movement of people within one country, sometimes forced by rulers. For instance, there are still Poles living near Gradiska in Bosnia.


are you sure they are living there for a long time? i know one family of Poles from Gradiška, but they came there in last 15 years, maybe 20 (they are actually from Śląsk area)


----------



## piotr71

^^









https://pl-pl.facebook.com/Udruženje-Poljaka-i-prijatelja-Mak-Opština-Gradiška-173657052653931/


----------



## Alex_ZR

Poles also settled in today's Ostojićevo in Vojvodina in 1838, but they lost their national identity.


----------



## g.spinoza

Another question, also for Americans: do you know of any rent-a-car company that does not require a credit card?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Sorry...it's been a long time since I rented a car on this side of the Atlantic.
But isn't requiring a credit card fairly standard even in Europe?...a way for the rental companies to make sure they're covered if there's an accident or something? I remember I had to use a card for my European rental last summer that had enough "room" on it to cover a certain amount of liability.

You may be able to provide a credit card number when you reserve but not have it actually be charged, then pay cash when you return the car....


----------



## DanielFigFoz

In some European countries, such as France I believe that credit cards are inaccessible to lots if not most people. They certainly don't hand them out easily.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I had to rent a car in France in 2006 after an accident. It was absolutely impossible to rent one without a credit card, according to the ANWB assistance I had at the time. As I did not have a credit card, the only option was to take a taxi to the train station and then a train back home.


----------



## bogdymol

I rent cars quite often from one of the major car rental companies, but I do not need a credit card as my company has a corporate account. The company I work for makes the booking, then I can pick-up the car with just my driver's licence.

I will hire a car soon for holidays and from what I've seen, all major car rental companies require a credit card, on the name of the driver, with which the car rental shall be paid + a certain amount to be "blocked" on the card until the car is returned. What I found strange is that, I will hire a car from a small, local company, with full-all-risk-insurance (even if the car is stolen or totaled, doesn't matter), with no other extra charges or "guaranties", I still have to pay them with a credit card (they say specifically that cash or debit cards are not accepted).


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I dare say if I ever get a credit card it'll to be able to rent a car.


----------



## cinxxx

DanielFigFoz said:


> I dare say if I ever get a credit card it'll to be able to rent a car.


I actually did exactly that


----------



## bogdymol

I have 2 credit cards issues by my Romanian bank. Taxes are quite low there for credit cards (compared to western standards).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Me too. Although it's also convenient to pay tolls.

Many more payment terminals accept V PAY these days. I only used my credit card for tolls on my trips to Spain and France last year. I could pay with debit card everywhere else (shops, gas stations, restaurants, etc.) which wasn't too common earlier (even when I had Maestro). I remember having trouble to pay with Maestro at some gas stations with pay-at-the-pump terminals before.

My credit card doesn't charge interest. It's just debited from my account at the end of the month. The spending limit is quite low, but sufficient for rental cars or tolls.


----------



## cinxxx

ChrisZwolle said:


> *My credit card doesn't charge interest. It's just debited from my account at the end of the month.* The spending limit is quite low, but sufficient for rental cars or tolls.


Same for me...


----------



## g.spinoza

I read on an Italian blog that some minor rental companies in Europe do not require credit card. I'm asking because I tried to get one from my bank but they said I can't because I have a temporary job and they give cards only to those with a permanent job. I replied "so you're telling me you basically give credit cards to no one?" 

I'll have to find another way to travel in the US, I'm afraid...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's strict. I got my Mastercard when I was 18 and just working part-time with fluctuating income besides the study. The spending limit at the time was higher than my salary.

What you describe in Italy is more common with mortgages in the Netherlands. They are very strict handing them out to people without a permanent position.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> My 12 years old printer just died today... I did my best to make it come alive, but no chance. Then I realised I have had it since times, when there were no cellphones with colour displays and households were full of CRT TVs and monitors. Perhaps it is time to move on.


Come on, now a multi-function printer doesn't cost that much.
But a set of 4 ink cartridges does cost like half of the price of the printer. :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I never had the need for a printer at home. How much do you really need to print these days? If I have to print something I use the printer at work, which I usually need only 1 or 2 times per year.


----------



## piotr71

Apart from work/business related prints and scans, I also print googlemaps' directions to the hotels in foreign destination, reservations, camps' locations, points of interest and sometimes basic phrase-books.


----------



## Kanadzie

piotr71 said:


> Apart from work/business related prints and scans, I also print googlemaps' directions to the hotels in foreign destination, reservations, camps' locations, points of interest and *sometimes basic phrase-books.*


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Come on, now a multi-function printer doesn't cost that much.
> But a set of 4 ink cartridges does cost like half of the price of the printer. :lol:


I am already enjoying my new printer right now :lol: Definitely got over the old one.



ChrisZwolle said:


> I never had the need for a printer at home. How much do you really need to print these days? If I have to print something I use the printer at work, which I usually need only 1 or 2 times per year.


I print a lot. I am so-called "Delegate of flat owners" in out apartment house and I need to print announcements, reports of sessions, etc. Last thing I printed were concert tickets (I am lazy to order them and pick them up somewhere or wait for them to come via post office).


----------



## x-type

i used to have printer. when i would have to print something, i would realize that ink got dried. so i went to the shop, bought ne cartridge, and printed those few sheets. 
after 6 months the sam story because i used it 2-3 times per year. no more printer to me.


----------



## cinxxx

^^I wanted to buy one too, but it wasn't worth it.
When I need something, I just use the printer at work.

I did buy a scanner though, but it was really cheap.


----------



## italystf

It's reccomended to print a colour paper at least every couple of weeks, even if you don't need it, to prevent ink cartridges to dry.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Don't think you need to do that for a Laser printer


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ Yeah just buy cheap laser (well now with LED) printer, no more problem with ink costing more than 200-year old French wine :lol:

I wanted to say something about my cheap new laser printer
then I realized I bought it in 2006 :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

I'm still mystified as to why most of the world wants to learn this completely bizarre language:

http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2016/02/17/english-pronunciation-poem/

...and full of admiration for how good some people are at it. :cheers:

(I had a boss once who grew up in Odessa. Came to the U.S. as a teenager. Apart from a bit of an accent, you couldn't tell English wasn't his first language. He had his faults, but that amazed me.)


----------



## volodaaaa

Yesterday I was in theatre, on musical (something like Slovak version of Grease). Despite I am a frequent visitor of cultural events, it was for the first time I have been sitting in the very first row. My fault. It was too inconvenient to look at the faces (as the first row was below the stage and it was causing the pain in my back after a while) so more than faces I remember only the colour of undies  But music, at least, was very nice.


----------



## g.spinoza

I hate theatres. I always find myself waiting for one of the players to forget his lines...


----------



## Suburbanist

I only like theaters for music. I don't have anything against theater as a form of art, but it just don't entice me at all (same for poetry readings or stand-up comedy).


----------



## volodaaaa

Stand-up comedies do not interests me at all. But small theatres and modern adaptation of some plays supplemented with music is ok. I like them.


----------



## Highway89

Does anybody know if there's a thread about road surfaces? I remember having read something about the different kinds of surfaces but I can't remember exactly where, maybe it was some "national" thread.

Anyway, I was wondering which the pros and cons of chipseal are and where it is used. Many roads administrations in Spain (national and regional) have decided not to use it anymore, though my region's uses it a lot, and so do apparently some DOTs in the US.


----------



## cinxxx

Meanwhile in Romania :lol:
https://www.facebook.com/mirceabravo/videos/567579093419026/


----------



## Eulanthe

Just to go back to the credit card issue : it was (at least under the old government, the stupid bank tax here might have killed this off) normal to be offered credit cards by all sorts of random businesses. 

I went to Spain last year, and we needed a credit card to hire a car. I went to the bank, but because my contract at work was expiring in 6 months, they refused to give me one. OK, my wife is self employed, but then they wanted extra documents because of that. 

One phone call to my mobile phone operator, and I had a nice card come through the post with exactly what I requested - a credit card with a 100 Euro limit just to cover the cost of the car hire for a couple of days. I also found out that I could take a credit card from IKEA, or plenty of random other businesses.

Went to Spain, went to pick up the car and got asked "how will you pay?". I looked at the guy as if something was wrong with him, and he said "You've taken our super all-inclusive mega insurance package, so you can pay with cash or card. We don't need a deposit or a credit card.". Bah. 

Anyway, I got home, and discovered that the credit card had a 14 day cancellation period upon receipt of the card, as long as you paid off the entire bill and cancelled online. Cancelled it immediately and paid nothing for the card in the end.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ wait, you would have had to pay for credit card? 

My credit card pays _me _to have it! (specifically, 1,5 % in cash return of total purchases in a year) :lol:


----------



## cinxxx

Yes, you have to pay for it. For me it's 20 euros per year.


----------



## Edward Archer

italystf said:


> Come on, now a multi-function printer doesn't cost that much.
> But a set of 4 ink cartridges does cost like half of the price of the printer. :lol:


Buy cheap and high quality printer ink cartridges from Pictech, Amazon UK market


----------



## bogdymol

I also pay for mine. I think it is 15 Euro per year plus 0.50 Euro per month.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Highway89 said:


> Anyway, I was wondering which the pros and cons of chipseal are and where it is used. Many roads administrations in Spain (national and regional) have decided not to use it anymore, though my region's uses it a lot, and so do apparently some DOTs in the US.


Estonia uses it a lot, mostly on roads with a relatively low AADT. We don't have enough money to repave as many kms of roads as we need so it's the only solution to keep many roads from deterioating further. 

The pros and cons are pretty much as Wikipedia says:
The pros are that it's cheap and it postpones the need to change the top asphalt layer of the road. The cons are that it raises the noise level significantly, it's less comfortable to drive on due to the roughness of the chipseal surface and it wears tyres out more quickly.

In Estonia chipseal is also used on gravel roads to make them dust-free. A road like that will look pretty much like an asphalt road although underneath it's still technically a gravel road.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Those who read Dutch, or even those who don't, may appreciate this:

http://stubru.be/music/returndecember10songtekstendiejeookaltijdverkeerdbegrijpt

The title is "Return, December: Lyrics You Always Misunderstand."

The first example is someone who heard "Return to Sender" as "Return, December."

The rest, you can figure out
("Wat je hoort" = What you hear)
("Wat het wel is" = What it really is)


----------



## Highway89

Rebasepoiss said:


> Estonia uses it a lot, mostly on roads with a relatively low AADT. We don't have enough money to repave as many kms of roads as we need so it's the only solution to keep many roads from deterioating further.
> 
> The pros and cons are pretty much as Wikipedia says:
> The pros are that it's cheap and it postpones the need to change the top asphalt layer of the road. The cons are that it raises the noise level significantly, it's less comfortable to drive on due to the roughness of the chipseal surface and it wears tyres out more quickly.
> 
> In Estonia chipseal is also used on gravel roads to make them dust-free. A road like that will look pretty much like an asphalt road although underneath it's still technically a gravel road.


Good to know . Until yesterday I thought France and Spain were the only countries to use it. 

In Spain, I think my region is the only one that uses chipseal to pave even new or widened/refurbished roads with low AADT. In the rest of the country chipseal is regarded as an outdated material and engineers seem loath to use it. Most repaves/refurbishments are done with asphalt concrete, even on 4-metre wide rural roads.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Those who read Dutch, or even those who don't, may appreciate this:
> 
> http://stubru.be/music/returndecember10songtekstendiejeookaltijdverkeerdbegrijpt
> 
> The title is "Return, December: Lyrics You Always Misunderstand."
> 
> The first example is someone who heard "Return to Sender" as "Return, December."
> 
> The rest, you can figure out
> ("Wat je hoort" = What you hear)
> ("Wat het wel is" = What it really is)


A friend of mine used to have a blog in Italian, collecting misunderstood lyrics from users. 
I contributed myself: in Michael Jackson's "beat it" I always heard "showing how f**king strong is your fight" instead of "funky and strong"...


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> A friend of mine used to have a blog in Italian, collecting misunderstood lyrics from users.
> I contributed myself: in Michael Jackson's "beat it" I always heard "showing how f**king strong is your fight" instead of "funky and strong"...


I'd always heard "bidet" when I was young. Also in Bee Gee's Stay alive I heard "we can try the one night stand" instead of "we can try to understand" :nuts:


----------



## bogdymol




----------



## MattiG

Highway89 said:


> Good to know . Until yesterday I thought France and Spain were the only countries to use it.
> 
> In Spain, I think my region is the only one that uses chipseal to pave even new or widened/refurbished roads with low AADT. In the rest of the country chipseal is regarded as an outdated material and engineers seem loath to use it. Most repaves/refurbishments are done with asphalt concrete, even on 4-metre wide rural roads.


It is in use in Finland, too. There are two variants: SIP (chipseal on old asphalt) and SOP (chipseal on gravel). SIP is in use on low-AADT roads and streets or when a cheap colored surface is needed. (Note: Paint would not last more than one year due to studded winter tires.)

SOP was earlier a common method to upgrade rural gravel roads. The experiences were rather bad, and the method is only seldom used nowadays. It is almost impossible to repair SOP-surfaced roads. Quite many SOP-paved roads have been converted back to gravel roads.


----------



## Suburbanist

I will work at another location for 4 months this summer. This means a daily train commute (which the partnered company pays for).


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


>


Then the Costa Rica flight goes down and in their final moments everyone thinks "why didn't I choose Turks and Caicos?" :lol:

I hate forced entertainment like this... at least in touristic villages you can go outside and not participate... you can't open the door and exit the plane...



Suburbanist said:


> I will work at another location for 4 months this summer. This means a daily train commute (which the partnered company pays for).


How long is going to be your commute?


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Then the Costa Rica flight goes down and in their final moments everyone thinks "why didn't I choose Turks and Caicos?" :lol:
> 
> *I hate forced entertainment like this... *at least in touristic villages you can go outside and not participate... you can't open the door and exit the plane...
> 
> 
> 
> How long is going to be your commute?


Hear, hear!

About 15 years ago, it was trendy in American supermarkets to have TVs on at the checkout lines. Usually tuned to CNN or something. I guess to entertain customers while they waited. God forbid you should be able to hear yourself think in public.

Thankfully, that seems to have gone away.

Back in the days when airlines used to show a movie on a big screen (rather than the personal seat-back "entertainment systems"), so your only choice was getting the headphones and watching it or, not getting them and ignoring it, I used to be the one person on the plane with a window half-open, actually looking out at the country.


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> Then the Costa Rica flight goes down and in their final moments everyone thinks "why didn't I choose Turks and Caicos?" :lol:
> 
> I hate forced entertainment like this... at least in touristic villages you can go outside and not participate... you can't open the door and exit the plane...


I'll be honest with you. For a free flight to somewhere, I would play too, like they did. It's not that I have something else to do or be somewhere else. All of them had a good time playing and they were rewarded with something. Win-win situation.

Speaking of flying, tomorrow I am flying to Hong Kong. I'll be mostly offline the next 2 weeks.


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> How long is going to be your commute?


51 minutes (local stopping train + national train) + walking. I live 400m from the station, the place I'll commute to is just across the boulevard from the other station. Moreover, the transfer station had most of its renovation works completed and now is a rather nice place compared to the previous state.


----------



## CNGL

Penn's Woods said:


> Those who read Dutch, or even those who don't, may appreciate this:
> 
> http://stubru.be/music/returndecember10songtekstendiejeookaltijdverkeerdbegrijpt
> 
> The title is "Return, December: Lyrics You Always Misunderstand."
> 
> The first example is someone who heard "Return to Sender" as "Return, December."
> 
> The rest, you can figure out
> ("Wat je hoort" = What you hear)
> ("Wat het wel is" = What it really is)


Here we have something similar, but only with songs written in any language besides Spanish. At times one can heard something as if it was sung in Spanish. We call them 'Momentos teniente', from the saying 'estar teniente', which refers to someone who is a bit deaf (In Argentina they call them 'Canciones locas', i.e. crazy songs). A famous example is in the Paulina Rubio's song 'Boys will be boys', which has a strongly suggestive moment. Others include the Champions League anthem stating the FC Barcelona is going to clinch it, and the FC Barcelona anthem, which appears to say 'Hala Madrid'.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> I'll be honest with you. For a free flight to somewhere, I would play too, like they did. It's not that I have something else to do or be somewhere else. All of them had a good time playing and they were rewarded with something. Win-win situation.
> 
> Speaking of flying, tomorrow I am flying to Hong Kong. I'll be mostly offline the next 2 weeks.


I don't know, I think I just would have said "either destination is fine, just don't bother me". I can't help looking at that video and seeing a bunch of trained monkeys...


----------



## CNGL

Greetings from a military zone . Don't ask me how I did got it.

BTW, it has started to snow in my hometown! Too bad I'm not there currently .


----------



## Suburbanist

CNGL said:


> Greetings from a military zone . Don't ask me how I did got it.
> 
> BTW, it has started to snow in my hometown! Too bad I'm not there currently .


Don't you live in Zaragoza any longer?

Unrelated note... I had forgotten this is a leap year and scheduled conflicting important-ish meetings on that basis (mixing up Thursday with March 4 :facepalm


----------



## CNGL

I've never left Huesca, actually, even during the years I attempted to get a degree.

BTW, about this year being a leap one, I'm already tired of correcting Rare Disease Day is on the last day of February, and thus this year is on 29th instead of 28th. And the way to put a facepalm in this forum is :picard: icard:.


----------



## g.spinoza

CNGL said:


> I've never left Huesca, actually, even during the years I attempted to get a degree.


This means you gave it up?


----------



## Surel

Hehe, now I see I messed the country code. I had to write AT, AU is for Australia and not Austria. That would be indeed a pretty good visibility . Right through the core lol.


----------



## CNGL

I've climbed several times to Pico del Águila (a peak near Huesca) and I've seen some ridges located in Teruel province from there, 170 km away.

Anyway, I've searched the internet, and if one climbs Monte Cimone (in Italy) with the right conditions he (or she) would see the entire lenght of the Alps!!!


bogdymol said:


> Pleasure. I wanted to go on holiday somewhere different.


If you wanted something different you should have gone to North Korea. :troll:


----------



## g.spinoza

CNGL said:


> Anyway, I've searched the internet, and if one climbs Monte Cimone (in Italy) with the right conditions he (or she) would see the entire lenght of the Alps!!!


Already posted  :


italystf said:


> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AlpsLargestPicture.jpg
> 
> It's a collage picture of the Alps. It's made up by 185 pictures taken from La Guardia, near Bologna, on 30th December 2000, during an exceptional clear sky day.
> Some peaks are around 250-300km from the observation point.
> Pics were taken through a telescope, though, and that explains their poor resolution, together with the early digital photo technology available back then.


----------



## volodaaaa

Surel said:


> Hehe, now I see I messed the country code. I had to write AT, AU is for Australia and not Austria. That would be indeed a pretty good visibility . Right through the core lol.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Awesome 

On geography; I wonder how many Europeans can point out major states like Pennsylvania, Ohio or Missouri on a blank U.S. map though. We like to make fun of the American lack of geographical knowledge, but in Europe it's not much better. Many people can't even point out on a map where they are on vacation.


----------



## CNGL

g.spinoza said:


> Already posted  :


But that is from La Guardia. I meant Monte Cimone, about 50 km to the WSW. This would be the view in ideal conditions. Between W and NW the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines block the view, but then it's an uninterrupted view from Matterhorn/Cervino all the way to Triglav!


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Awesome
> 
> On geography; I wonder how many Europeans can point out major states like Pennsylvania, Ohio or Missouri on a blank U.S. map though. We like to make fun of the American lack of geographical knowledge, but in Europe it's not much better. Many people can't even point out on a map where they are on vacation.


By "liking" that post, I was making fun of CNN. 

But I have something along those lines in Dutch if I can find it.

Voilà :

http://www.humo.be/tv-en-film/36042...nderzoekt-of-de-aarde-plat-of-rond-is-filmpje

("'The Ideal World' asks people whether the Earth is flat or round")


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Awesome
> 
> On geography; I wonder how many Europeans can point out major states like Pennsylvania, Ohio or Missouri on a blank U.S. map though. We like to make fun of the American lack of geographical knowledge, but in Europe it's not much better. Many people can't even point out on a map where they are on vacation.


One could argue that European states and US states are two different administrative levels. A better comparison would be between US states and, say, German Bundesländer or Italian Regioni.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^True, but on the other hand I find that when Europeans criticize Americans for not being "well-traveled" enough, they really mean we don't spend enough time *in Europe*. Not taking into account that it's more time-consuming and expensive for us to get to, say, Austria than it is for you.

(Hey, if I were independently wealthy, I'd just go park myself in Europe for a few years and explore as much of it as possible. I'm serious.)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> One could argue that European states and US states are two different administrative levels. A better comparison would be between US states and, say, German Bundesländer or Italian Regioni.


True, but states are sometimes larger than European countries. You can't really blame Americans for mixing up Slovenia and Slovakia or the Netherlands and Denmark. They are really small.

They say that Texas is as big as France. However, that includes French Guiana. Texas is substantially larger than Metropolitan France, in fact, Texas is approximately twice the size of Germany.


----------



## CNGL

Heck, I know not only the US states, but also French and Italian regions (the French ones are pre-merger, though), and Chinese provinces (even I can tell Shanxi and Shaanxi apart in spoken language). In the case of France and Italy I even know their departments and provinces (101 and 110 respectively).


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> True, but states are sometimes larger than European countries. You can't really blame Americans for mixing up Slovenia and Slovakia or the Netherlands and Denmark. They are really small.
> 
> They say that Texas is as big as France. However, that includes French Guiana. Texas is substantially larger than Metropolitan France, in fact, Texas is approximately twice the size of Germany.


I've been addicted to maps since childhood and I'd never confuse Slovenia and Slovakia, let alone the Netherlands and Denmark. But expecting us to know which one is SLO is, or which countries are in Schengen (which most Americans have never heard of) is a bit much.

Nor does it seem reasonable to criticize Americans for not knowing where, say, Tilburg is if you can't find Tulsa (which is, after all, much larger). :cheers:

(I'm not picking on anyone from Tilburg. Or Tulsa. I was just looking for a pair of cities that alliterated.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

CNGL said:


> Heck, I know not only the US states, but also French and Italian regions (the French ones are pre-merger, though), and Chinese provinces (even I can tell Shanxi and Shaanxi apart in spoken language). In the case of France and Italy I even know their departments and provinces (101 and 110 respectively).


Départements, yes. Old and new French regions, yes. Spanish regions and provinces, yes. Italian regions, yes (although I may get a bit vague along the Adriatic); provinces no.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> I've been addicted to maps since childhood and I'd never confuse Slovenia and Slovakia


It's really great considering that none of them existed in your childhood ;-)
(Well, of course I know that both Slovenia and Slovakia existed as parts of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, respectively).


----------



## volodaaaa

I know lot of Slovaks who do not know the difference between Latvia and Lithuania. So putting blame on Americans is not very reasonable here. The other fact is that when I work in media, it should be my highest priority to check the correctness of information I broadcast. CNN deserves to be put in blame.


----------



## KøbenhavnK

I don't know how often Americans mess up the Netherlands and Denmark but my guess would be that only a handful of them know the difference between Dutch and Danish.

Which is perfectly OK with me. I for instance have no idea what someone from North Dakota is called.... Anyone?

But even a junior producer at CNN should know that Australia is a continent with strange animals and strange greetings (mate) that's in the Southern hemisphere.

Leading to the next question about the American approach to geography.

Why are they always talking about The Western hemisphere?

Has anyone ever heard ANYBODY talking about The Eastern hemisphere... ?


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Awesome
> 
> On geography; I wonder how many Europeans can point out major states like Pennsylvania, Ohio or Missouri on a blank U.S. map though. We like to make fun of the American lack of geographical knowledge, but in Europe it's not much better. Many people can't even point out on a map where they are on vacation.





g.spinoza said:


> One could argue that European states and US states are two different administrative levels. A better comparison would be between US states and, say, German Bundesländer or Italian Regioni.


Exactly. Also many US states have a quite "square-ish" shape and are thus less remarkable on a blank map than most European countries, that are often made up by islands, peninsulae, etc...
Moreover, European countries are more peculiar and different each other in terms of language, culture, history and landmarks. While anyone can associate New York with the Statue of Liberty, California with Death Valley, or Nevada with Las Vegas, it's more difficult for someone who isn't familiar with American geography and culture to associate, let's say, Delaware, Oregon or Kentucky with something particular. Many US states, Canadian provinces, Australian states, Russian oblasts or Chinese provinces can be very large, larger than many European countries, but they are less known because they haven't a distinct identity, being part of a larger country with its own identity.
I don't find that weird for an oversea average-educated guy, mix on a blank map, let's say, Latvia or Lithuania or Kosovo and Macedonia, but Austria and Australia...


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> Heck, I know not only the US states, but also French and Italian regions (the French ones are pre-merger, though), and Chinese provinces (even I can tell Shanxi and Shaanxi apart in spoken language). In the case of France and Italy I even know their departments and *provinces* (101 and *110* respectively).


Since last year it got more complicate:
90 provinces
14 metropolitan cities
5 free inter-municipal consortiums (in Sicily)
1 autonomous region (Aosta Valley)
total: 110 sub-regional subdivisions


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


>


This is a popular souvenir sold in Austria:


----------



## Suburbanist

I don't know, I feel getting all worked up because of clearly innocent mistakes on fast-paced live news broadcasts is something so _raging-hormones-at-17_.

Don't take me the wrong way, I'm not saying y'all shouldn't have written about this, or that it doesn't belong on this thread, it is just that I don't understand how some ppl become so caught up and sometimes super defensive with benign things like a TV technician messing up some labels on a map shown a few seconds, and then don't let the argument go when suddenly it becomes a jab at whole countries "xyz-ers are this/that".

If the mishaps were funny, there is no need to use them for these passive-aggressive reactions so common in the Highways and Autobahns section, or to make broad generalizations of other people. We are all better than that.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^









I prefer the old black plates from 1968 and earlier. And also how California doesn't force you to replace them if you don't need to, so you still see cars wearing them 









^^^ you mean the ones with water on them? 

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/c...om-u-s-side-could-be-boon-to-canadian-tourism


----------



## italystf

Also in Europe many countries switched from black to white plates, as they are reflective at night. Italy made the change in 1985, and today only Liechtenstein still issues black plates.


----------



## MattiG

Penn's Woods said:


> Actually, I was sort of joking. Liberty Island, Ellis Island...all islands in New York Harbor on the New Jersey side of the line are in fact enclaves of New York State (and New York City) but it's a sore point with New Jerseyans.


Actually, if Google Maps is right, only a part of Ellis Island is an enclave of NY in NJ:

https://www.google.fi/maps/@40.6985028,-74.0399729,17z


----------



## Surel

We discussed Uber and the French or Belgian chauffeurs strike in here some time ago. Now Estonia shows how it should be done:


Same clear simple rules for everyone instead of protests protecting the cartel.

Estonia Embraces Uber and Taxify As First European Country To Legalize And Regulate Ride-Sharing
http://www.forbes.com/sites/montymu...alize-and-regulate-ride-sharing/#145fb29b6968


> The process is well-advanced. Last week a meeting was held at the Estonian Parliament to initiate amendments to the country’s transport act. If approved, the amendment will be the first of a kind in Europe, with ratification of the amendment expected in weeks, rather than months.
> 
> The proposed amendments confirmed that private individuals can provide transportation services as long as certain conditions are met. These include provisions that all bookings are done electronically and service clients can estimate their trip price before the trip.
> 
> This will be great news to local company Taxify, that since its launch in the summer of 2013 has seen the company become the biggest ride-booking app in Estonia and the surrounding Baltic States of Latvia and Lithuania.


----------



## Suburbanist

I think FHWA should issue a single national format for all road vehicle license plates in US (the rear ones, which are also the "official" ones). VIN is already managed on a national database, it would be difficult to standardize license plates all over US (shape, alphanumeric system, security features etc).


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Google Maps has been absolute rubbish in Estonia lately. There are several interchanges that haven't been drawn, are incomplete or have been drawn completely wrong on the map even 6 months after they've been finished.

I tried fixing some of the spots on Google Map Maker myself but it's so unfathomably complicated and inconvenient to use that I quit after 30 minutes of trying...and I drew maps as a job for a while :nuts:


----------



## volodaaaa

Rebasepoiss said:


> Google Maps has been absolute rubbish in Estonia lately. There are several interchanges that haven't been drawn, are incomplete or have been drawn completely wrong on the map even 6 months after they've been finished.
> 
> I tried fixing some of the spots on Google Map Maker myself but it's so unfathomably complicated and inconvenient to use that I quit after 30 minutes of trying...and I drew maps as a job for a while :nuts:


I did that too. Somehow I'd managed to make our local government to change the traffic in front of my house from bidirectional to onedirectional. They made the change but I was still witness of many drivers driving in wrong way. Apparently, they were foreigners and non-Bratislava citizens. Since it was still bidirectional street according to google, I decided to edit it as I assumed that most of navis builds on GM. You would be surprised how the things has changed in few weeks. The interface is really not user-friendly, but once you get used to it, you can easily add some new intersections or roads.

The only thing I hate is the strange review system. Once I placed a locality from the park nearby that bears indeed a strange name: "signposts". It is marked even at the educational panes at the entrances. The placement were finally refused by some Spanish freaks who asked for the evidence. I took my bike, took a photo of it (though it is familiar and well spread name in my city) and they refused it anyway.


----------



## Kanadzie

Suburbanist said:


> I think FHWA should issue a single national format for all road vehicle license plates in US (the rear ones, which are also the "official" ones). VIN is already managed on a national database, it would be difficult to standardize license plates all over US (shape, alphanumeric system, security features etc).


They didn't, but essentially its the case already
US plates are more standardized than EU ones, for example, size of plate is always 6x12 inch (except some that are 150x300 mm, but nobody will notice)

standardizing on numeral format would be very hard just because of vast number of cars. California already has too much trouble (see their code combination now) and that only with them :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

MattiG said:


> Actually, if Google Maps is right, only a part of Ellis Island is an enclave of NY in NJ:
> 
> https://www.google.fi/maps/@40.6985028,-74.0399729,17z


Huh! I think that's the original shoreline. I know that there were people involved in the case who argued that if New York got anything, it should only be the area within the original shoreline, but I honestly don't know if that's the argument that won....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> I think FHWA should issue a single national format for all road vehicle license plates in US (the rear ones, which are also the "official" ones). VIN is already managed on a national database, it would be difficult to standardize license plates all over US (shape, alphanumeric system, security features etc).


Um, why?


----------



## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> Um, why?


Standardization.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ but that costs a lot of money, and would it bring any desirable result to the country?
Police, etc usually seem to have no issue at all working with the present system.

Except that poor guy who has a vanity plate with code "NO PLATE" and keeps getting parking tickets around the state for cars that had no license plate on them :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

I've never found "standardization" and "uniformity" to be persuasive arguments for doing anything.

Don't just say "standardization," period, as if that's self-evidently a good thing; explain why it's a good thing. And in fact why it's not just a good thing, but sufficiently better than the current system to justify the cost (in money, time and effort) of changing it.


----------



## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> I've never found "standardization" and "uniformity" to be persuasive arguments for doing anything.
> 
> Don't just say "standardization," period, as if that's self-evidently a good thing; explain why it's a good thing. And in fact why it's not just a good thing, but sufficiently better than the current system to justify the cost (in money, time and effort) of changing it.


Standardization goes back to early 19th century, when engineers soon realized they would face pandemonium if each factory, machine etc. had its own screw sizes, requiring custom-made tools etc. From there, the reasoning expanded to virtual all industrial systems, pushed coalescence around the metric system (I'm *not* restarting this discussion here, just mentioning), and many "standard boards" for everything from computer data ports to microbiology and marine radar navigation systems. Standardization is also why US has just 6 times zones excluding minor pacific territories, instead of the hundreds of local-set times that existed before. It is also the reason for which computers can "talk" (sic) to each other through the Internet regardless of the provider you use, instead of each Internet provider having its own funky data protocol system.

Objectively, having one national standard for plates would make OCR more precise, would avoid certain database mishaps, and make things like plate-recognition booth-free tolling easier. 

As I said, the US fleet designation is already standardized in the VIN scheme. So I'm not proposing something revolutionary. When (it is just a matter of when, not if) some sort of mandatory RFID embedded identifier becomes mandatory on all cars, plates will be moot anyway.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> Standardization goes back to early 19th century, when engineers soon realized they would face pandemonium if each factory, machine etc. had its own screw sizes, requiring custom-made tools etc. From there, the reasoning expanded to virtual all industrial systems, pushed coalescence around the metric system (I'm *not* restarting this discussion here, just mentioning), and many "standard boards" for everything from computer data ports to microbiology and marine radar navigation systems. Standardization is also why US has just 6 times zones excluding minor pacific territories, instead of the hundreds of local-set times that existed before. It is also the reason for which computers can "talk" (sic) to each other through the Internet regardless of the provider you use, instead of each Internet provider having its own funky data protocol system.
> 
> Objectively, having one national standard for plates would make OCR more precise, would avoid certain database mishaps, and make things like plate-recognition booth-free tolling easier.
> 
> As I said, the US fleet designation is already standardized in the VIN scheme. So I'm not proposing something revolutionary. When (it is just a matter of when, not if) some sort of mandatory RFID embedded identifier becomes mandatory on all cars, plates will be moot anyway.


1) Fair enough. I don't necessarily agree with you on every point, but that's a fair explanation of reasons for standardization.

2) What's OCR?

3) Don't some mishaps become more likely? There have been stories in the license-plate threads of people in Sweden getting parking tickets meant for Lithuanians (for example) who were visiting Sweden, because the two had the same number and the two countries' plates look the same (except for the Euroband). Of course, one could avoid that by just not permitting duplicate numbers, but the number of vehicles in North America must be well into nine figures. I'm not sure eight- or nine-character plates are an improvement.


----------



## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> 2) What's OCR?


optical character recognition, e.g., what a speed trap that automatically reads a camera, or - for instance - a software that scans an image and extract text - does.




> 3) Don't some mishaps become more likely? There have been stories in the license-plate threads of people in Sweden getting parking tickets meant for Lithuanians (for example) who were visiting Sweden, because the two had the same number and the two countries' plates look the same (except for the Euroband). Of course, one could avoid that by just not permitting duplicate numbers, but the number of vehicles in North America must be well into nine figures. I'm not sure eight- or nine-character plates are an improvement.


8 alphanumeric characters in US would give ~2.8 billion combinatiuons


----------



## g.spinoza

Without standardization there is no point in talking about global warming, for instance. Every Automatic Weather Station in the world should (in principle) measure the same thing, with the same sensors, calibrated in the same way. 
Unfortunately, everyone's doing it in his own way, so who knows what "temperature of the Earth" means...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Which has what to do with license plates?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

g.spinoza said:


> Without standardization there is no point in talking about global warming, for instance. Every Automatic Weather Station in the world should (in principle) measure the same thing, with the same sensors, calibrated in the same way.
> Unfortunately, everyone's doing it in his own way, so who knows what "temperature of the Earth" means...


There are still certain requirements (standards) for synoptic weather stations. You don't have to use exactly the same sensors to have comparable data, that has nothing to do with standardization.


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> 8 alphanumeric characters in US would give ~2.8 billion combinatiuons


Trillions in American English.

Such schemes still are not in use, because nobody would memorize arbitrary strings of eight characters

The ABCD-1234 plus 1234-ABCD schemes would provide with about 9000 million combinations in total. In the real life, the usable number space is smaller than the theoretical maximum, because bad words have to be dropped.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> It's not silly: is uniformity any more necessary in license plates than it is in clothing, haircuts...or European directional signage? You still haven't answered that. Kanadzie and I ask why is this necessary, what's the benefit...point out that the current system doesn't seem to bother anyone.... You didn't want to hear it. Forgive the hell out of me for questioning Your Knowledgableness.
> 
> YOU said always. That didn't admit of any exceptions. Any silliness here is in THAT argument; all I did was point it out.


I thought smart guys knew how to read the word "always" without absolutizing. I guess I was wrong.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> One more thing. I'm less allergic to communism (although...) than I am to being told what to do by know-it-alls six time zones away who are apparently obsessed with making the whole world do everything exactly the way it's done in western Europe. Do you have issues with our electrical outlets and voltage? Our clothes sizing?


I never said I don't like what Americans do. Maybe your electrical outlets are better than Italians. So if they're better, I'm in favor of them being used in Europe and all over the world.
I just had to buy a converter for my upcoming trip to the US... I'd rather have not.



> One solution to your problem would be, of course, to never leave Italy....


Why are you so negative about this matter? Uniformity is not evil. You won't give up sovereignity, you will not count less in the world. There is very little to be lost.
I don't think that is the issue here, otherwise you would favour each Us state having its own currency, units of measurement and so on. I think you are just afraid of changes.


----------



## Kanadzie

Penn's Woods said:


> One more thing. I'm less allergic to communism (although...) than I am to being told what to do by know-it-alls six time zones away who are apparently obsessed with making the whole world do everything exactly the way it's done in western Europe. Do you have issues with our electrical outlets and voltage? Our clothes sizing?
> 
> One solution to your problem would be, of course, to never leave Italy....


^^ that's pretty much what Communism is though, except they are in your local time zone, because they set the time where you live six hours off what its supposed to (e.g. PRC) so you have to wake up in the dark :lol:


----------



## MattiG

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ that's pretty much what Communism is though, except they are in your local time zone, because they set the time where you live six hours off what its supposed to (e.g. PRC) so you have to wake up in the dark :lol:


 It is not six hours in China, but three. China is not that large.

China follows the UTC+8 time. The meridian 120E is the reference meridian of that time zone. The longitude of the westernmost point of China is about 74E. That makes a difference of 3 hours and 4 minutes.

According to that criteria, Spain is at least a half-communist country. The westernmost most point lies 1:40 hours west of the reference meridian 15E. During the daylight savings time, the difference is 2:40 hours, thus almost as much as in China.


----------



## italystf

MattiG said:


> It is not six hours in China, but three. China is not that large.
> 
> China follows the UTC+8 time. The meridian 120E is the reference meridian of that time zone. The longitude of the westernmost point of China is about 74E. That makes a difference of 3 hours and 4 minutes.
> 
> According to that criteria, Spain is at least a half-communist country. The westernmost most point lies 1:40 hours west of the reference meridian 15E. During the daylight savings time, the difference is 2:40 hours, thus almost as much as in China.


I've read that local people in Western China adopt an unofficial time zone for their daily activities, different to the official Chinese timezone. Otherwise in winter they would have dark until 10 a.m.
Spain belongs to the "wrong" timezone because Franco in the 1930s wanted to align his country with the ideologically similar Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> I've read that local people in Western China adopt an unofficial time zone for their daily activities, different to the official Chinese timezone. Otherwise in winter they would have dark until 10 a.m.
> Spain belongs to the "wrong" timezone because Franco in the 1930s wanted to align his country with the ideologically similar Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.


 The sharpest time zone difference at land borders is at the China-Afghanistan border of 92 km in length: 3.5 hours.

Three zones meet at the Norway-Finland-Russia tripoint.


----------



## CNGL

I've actually adopted Eastern (USA) time when in AARoads forum. I find weird waking up at 2:00 and going to sleep at 18:00 like I say there. Fortunately here I stick to Central Europe time, the one I have (and one hour ahead of what it should be).


----------



## Suburbanist

CNGL said:


> I've actually adopted Eastern (USA) time when in AARoads forum. I find weird waking up at 2:00 and going to sleep at 18:00 like I say there. Fortunately here I stick to Central Europe time, the one I have (and one hour ahead of what it should be).


Do you work online or something like that?


----------



## bogdymol

Greetings from 10.000 m up in the air, in an Airbus A380 ️


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ six mile high club?


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> I've read that local people in Western China adopt an unofficial time zone for their daily activities, different to the official Chinese timezone. Otherwise in winter they would have dark until 10 a.m.
> Spain belongs to the "wrong" timezone because Franco in the 1930s wanted to align his country with the ideologically similar Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.


So it's not Communism, but totalitarianism.


----------



## CNGL

Suburbanist said:


> Do you work online or something like that?


Hopefully! Now I'm trying to become a programmer.

BTW, your mothers no longer like my posts... But there's something physically unexplainable...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Enjoying watching the Paris-Nice (bike race)...or the last hour of each stage, which is all they're giving us on TV. It's surprisingly easy to follow on Google Maps exactly where they are.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Why are the Greens so popular in Baden-Württemberg? Even by German standards a 32% vote share is exceptional.


----------



## MichiH

^^ The voters say it's because of the MP, Mr. Kretschmann. The new Anti-Immigrants/Anti-Euro/Anti-Everything party AfD has got a huge share in all state's where we had state's elections today (Baden-Württemberg 14%, Rheinland-Pfalz 11% and Sachsen-Anhalt 24%). The Greens lost many voters in RP and ST which is contrary to BW where they won voters compared to 2011 when we had Fukushima and Stuttgart21 (rail station project) effect. Merkel's CDU party lost about 3% in RP and ST but 12% in BaWü. It's not (only) because of Merkel but the CDU front-runner in BW is not very popular. SPD lost a lot of voters in BW and ST, each about 10%, but won 1% in RP.


----------



## volodaaaa

We had general elections week ago. Slovak Green Party ended up with 0,67 %. On the other hand we have fascists in Parliament.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> We had general elections week ago. Slovak Green Party ended up with 0,67 %. On the other hand we have fascists in Parliament.


Baden-Württemberg was governed by the Greens in the last years as well. Greens in Germany and especially in Baden-Württemberg are not an environmentalist-extremist party like green parties in several other European countries. Greens in Ba-Wü are a pro-car party (which is very important in the land of Mercedes and Porsche).


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> ^^ The voters say it's because of the MP, Mr. Kretschmann. (...) the CDU front-runner in BW is not very popular.


Popularity of the Green leader Kretschmann and the CDU (Merkel's party) leader Wolf in Baden-Württemberg. Even CDU-voters like Kretschmann more than their own candidate.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> Greens in Germany and especially in Baden-Württemberg are not an environmentalist-extremist party like green parties in several other European countries. Greens in Ba-Wü are a pro-car party (which is very important in the land of Mercedes and Porsche).


I noticed that as well, the plans submitted to the _Bundesverkehrswegeplan_ by the state of Baden-Württemberg was rather ambitious, they wanted to widen nearly every Autobahn.

And the recent federal policy of _Energiewende_ seems like it was taken right out of the Greens political script. 

In the Netherlands the Greens have mostly been a fringe party. They call themselves GreenLeft, putting an emphasis on left-wing politics, but they are not really that different from Labour. Labour often pursues a GreenLeft-like policy to avoid losing voters to that party. GreenLeft has always been somewhat of a fringe party in the Netherlands, currently with 4 out of 150 seats, but they hardly ever poll higher than 10-12 seats. They never participated in a national government, but are more competitive in municipal elections. 

I'd classify the Dutch GreenLeft as pragmatic (economy and social-wise) but like Labour, they are in love with symbolic politics and tend to go overboard with environmental politics, pursuing unrealistic deadlines and goals.


----------



## MichiH

Attus said:


> Baden-Württemberg was governed by the Greens in the last years as well.


For 5 years. It was governed by CDU/FDP from 1952 to 2011.



Attus said:


> Greens in Ba-Wü are a pro-car party (which is very important in the land of Mercedes and Porsche).


I don't agree! They are pragmatic but not pro-car!



Attus said:


> Popularity of the Green leader Kretschmann and the CDU (Merkel's party) leader Wolf in Baden-Württemberg. Even CDU-voters like Kretschmann more than their own candidate.


Kretschmann supports Merkel's immigrants policy (THE current main topic in Germany), Wolf does not support it. Rheinland-Pfalz MP Dreyer (SPD; who "won" the yesterday's RP election) supports Merkel's immigrants policy, Klöckner (CDU) does not. Sachsen-Anhalt CDU MP Haseloff also supports Merkel's immigrants policy and "won" yesterday's election.



ChrisZwolle said:


> I noticed that as well, the plans submitted to the _Bundesverkehrswegeplan_ by the state of Baden-Württemberg was rather ambitious, they wanted to widen nearly every Autobahn.


Correct. They want to widen all EXISTING Autobahns but they don't want to upgrade congested B roads to expressways, build new Autobahns or build bypasses of villages et cetera.



ChrisZwolle said:


> And the recent federal policy of _Energiewende_ seems like it was taken right out of the Greens political script.


The Energiewende law was already passed years ago (after Fukushima).



ChrisZwolle said:


> I'd classify the Dutch GreenLeft as pragmatic (economy and social-wise) but like Labour, they are in love with symbolic politics and tend to go overboard with environmental politics, pursuing unrealistic deadlines and goals.


Baden-Württemberg MP Kretschmann is also classified as pragmatic.

I think the Green party won in BaWü because of Kretschmann's popularity, the incompetence of the previous CDU governments (Mappus, Oettinger) and the characterless front-runners of CDU and SPD party.

On the other hand, the BaWü Greens have also symbolic environmental goals like 120 speed limit study, particulate matter alarm (Feinstaubalarm) or plans for wind power plants (BaWü has less wind compared to other states) in nature protection areas or close to housing areas.


----------



## cinxxx

Happy Easter!
And greetings from Timisoara, Romania! 
:cheers2:


----------



## CNGL

As I write this I'm tasting the original Pilsner Urquell beer . Next time I'll try the Budejovicky, the actual Budweiser and not that American poo of the same name.


----------



## x-type

CNGL said:


> As I write this I'm tasting the original Pilsner Urquell beer . Next time I'll try the Budejovicky, the actual Budweiser and not that American poo of the same name.


like. although Samson is even better beer from Česke Budějovice


----------



## volodaaaa

:cheers1: Good topic finally


----------



## ChrisZwolle

2015 traffic fatalities per 1 million people in the European Union. The official release date by Eurostat is this week.









By _Die Welt_.


----------



## timeandspace

please consider posting the link to the source also as this allows us to read the linked background article as well.


----------



## MichiH

^^ http://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/...oten-in-Europa-erstmals-wieder-gestiegen.html

It's reported that the number of traffic deaths increased in the EU for the first time since 2001. 2001: 54,000; 2014: 25,700; 2016: 26,000. The official presentation will be on Wednesday.

http://news.newsdirectory2.com/number-of-fatalities-increases-daily-71-victims-in-europe/


----------



## volodaaaa

The answer is: traffic calming. Lots of drivers complain about that, but this is the real driver of more safe transport. I am just negatively surprised about Belgium.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

volodaaaa said:


> I am just negatively surprised about Belgium.


There is a significant split in Belgium regarding traffic safety. Flanders is safer than Wallonia.

For 2015, the Wallonia rate is 81 fatalities per 1 million people, which would put it among the unsafest places in Europe to drive in. 

In 2015, the amount of traffic fatalities in Wallonia increased by 15% and the number is large enough (from 254 to 291 fatalities) that it's not a case where just a few fatal accidents make a large difference percentage-wise. At the same time, Flanders saw a decline from 328 to 315 fatalities (a rate of 49 per 1 million people).


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> For 2015, the Wallonia rate is 81 fatalities per 1 million people, which would put it among the unsafest places in Europe to drive in.


One can always pick out bad regions...

Brandenburg had 65 fatalities/million inhabitants in 2015 (worst German state) while Berlin in the middle of Brandenburg had only 13 (best German state)... 

http://www.welt.de/motor/article152628881/Wo-Autofahren-in-Deutschland-am-gefaehrlichsten-ist.html


----------



## italystf

MichiH said:


> One can always pick out bad regions...
> 
> Brandenburg had 65 fatalities/million inhabitants in 2015 (worst German state) while Berlin in the middle of Brandenburg had only 13 (best German state)...
> 
> http://www.welt.de/motor/article152628881/Wo-Autofahren-in-Deutschland-am-gefaehrlichsten-ist.html


Urban areas usually have a lower accodent-related death rate, because people drive at lower speed in cities than on long rural highways. That's why Malta has the best score in Europe.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Well, Wallonia is large enough to compare to countries, it has a larger population than the Baltic countries and Slovenia, almost approaching the population of Croatia. It also has a good urban/suburban/rural mix to factor out those potential differences. 

Belgium consistently has the worst traffic safety in western Europe for quite some time now. A large factor in the poor ranking of Belgium is Wallonia. Luxembourg also has a poor rate compared to other countries, but the country is very small with a high percentage of foreign traffic, so the fatality rate per 1 million is a less useful measurement in that case.


----------



## italystf

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2...st-traffic-europe-brussels-antwerp-congestion


----------



## Attus

You needn't speak Hungarian to understand it:


----------



## italystf




----------



## bigic

From Croatia


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> 2015 traffic fatalities per 1 million people in the European Union. The official release date by Eurostat is this week.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> By _Die Welt_.


The situation in Estonia is actually not as good as it seems from this map. Since we have less than 100 traffic fatalities a year in total the number is largely influenced by the occurrence (or lack of) big accidents. Although the number of deaths was low last year (67), the number of accidents and people injured has stayed on the same level since 2012.

Red - deaths. Dark blue - accidents (where people were injured). Light blue - injuries.


----------



## cinxxx

Airbus A320 in transit blocked French road for more than FOUR HOURS


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Rebasepoiss said:


> Although the number of deaths was low last year (67), the number of accidents and people injured has stayed on the same level since 2012.


This trend has been observed in a fairly large number of countries, where the decline of traffic fatalities appears to be leveling off. 

I think a major part is due to the fact that a substantial share of the automobile fleet are now relatively safe cars, so there isn't that much development on passive safety options any more. The next step would be the introduction of active safety accessories, such as automatic emergency braking, but these accessories are mostly limited to high-end models for now. 

What you'll see in the Netherlands is that the fatality rate among car occupants continues to drop, but the fatality rate among cyclists is stalling or even increasing. A major factor there are senior bicyclists, who are even more vulnerable. 

There is also a reversal between age groups. For a long time, young people (18-29) have had high fatality rates. In the Netherlands, the fatality rate of that group declined by almost 70% between 2000 and 2014, while the fatality rate of seniors went up. People over 60 years account for almost half of all fatalities today.


----------



## Coccodrillo

What was the point of transporting this airplane?


----------



## Suburbanist

Coccodrillo said:


> What was the point of transporting this airplane?


I think it might be a detour of the regular rather complicate routes that Airbus use to deliver parts to its facilities?

I know assemble some stuff in Hamburg, get it by boat to France, then use canals and some side roads to bring them to the Toulouse plant. Regular closures at night are frequent, maybe they were using a different route this time for some reason?

There are big parts coming from UK as well.


----------



## VITORIA MAN




----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> I think it might be a detour of the regular rather complicate routes that Airbus use to deliver parts to its facilities?
> 
> I know assemble some stuff in Hamburg, get it by boat to France, then use canals and some side roads to bring them to the Toulouse plant. Regular closures at night are frequent, maybe they were using a different route this time for some reason?
> 
> There are big parts coming from UK as well.


The aircraft was being transported to an airport nearby. The airport is operated by a company providing with hangar facilities and long-term storage space for aircrafts out of use. 

The standard operating procedure of Airbus is to move the fuselage sections by air. The carrying aircraft is Airbus A300-600ST Beluga. The fuselage arrives at the final assembly line in two parts. Thus, the transport most probably was not related to the production of Airbus but to service or reparation. 

Perhaps the transport team wanted the navigator device to find the shortest road?


----------



## MattiG

MattiG said:


> The aircraft was being transported to an airport nearby. The airport is operated by a company providing with hangar facilities and long-term storage space for aircrafts out of use.
> 
> The standard operating procedure of Airbus is to move the fuselage sections by air. The carrying aircraft is Airbus A300-600ST Beluga. The fuselage arrives at the final assembly line in two parts. Thus, the transport most probably was not related to the production of Airbus but to service or reparation.
> 
> Perhaps the transport team wanted the navigator device to find the shortest road?


Some more information collected from local papers: The fuselage was on its last trip to be dismantled. The motorway could not be used because of tight toll booth gates. The convoy had faced similar problems in the the town of Auch previous day. The root cause is underestimated space needed at turning points. Thus, an amateurish planning of a special transport.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You'd think they have some experience with that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itinéraire_à_Grand_Gabarit


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> You'd think they have some experience with that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itinéraire_à_Grand_Gabarit


 I do not believe this case has anything to do with the Airbus company. More probably, some leasing or insurance company has sold the wreck to a scrapyard operator, and that one has accepted the cheapest transport bid.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ for scrap, why not break down the fuselage into easier transport parts on-site? (like would be for... a building or bridge)


----------



## MattiG

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ for scrap, why not break down the fuselage into easier transport parts on-site? (like would be for... a building or bridge)


The fuselage is full of valuable spare parts to resell. The lifecycle of the components is not equal to the lifecycle of the aircraft.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ sure, but not the fuselage itself

somewhat how like those high-volume Japanese auto "dismantlers" just cut the car in half after the dashboard and sell the whole front instead of taking out the engine and selling it seperately...


----------



## MattiG

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ sure, but not the fuselage itself
> 
> somewhat how like those high-volume Japanese auto "dismantlers" just cut the car in half after the dashboard and sell the whole front instead of taking out the engine and selling it seperately...


A car is not an aircraft. The key thing in the aircracft industry is the traceability of parts. Basically, the history of every bolt and nut must be known. This is achieved by taking service and dismantling actions in hangars part by part, not destroying the parts by cutting the fuselage by a chainsaw under open skies. 

This schematic drawing about the head of the A350 perhaps tells that the walls of an aircraft are full of wires, pipes and devices. Do you really think it would be wise to destroy all this technology for the sake of easier transport?


----------



## g.spinoza

Greetings from Gruyères, Switzerland


----------



## CNGL

It's all hole-filled like Gruyere cheese?


----------



## g.spinoza

I don't know, but fondue was awesome.

I liked very much the HR Giger museum... I'd like to buy an Alien statue at the shop but the cheapest was 2900 CHF... :O


----------



## nastyaheyyo

But what is that special technology ? A paint from local store ?


----------



## CNGL

Have you wondered what happened to certain painting an old woman 'restored' back in 2012 with funny results? Don't worry, last Sunday returning from the forests of Soria province I decided to check it out. Now prepare for...

*The return of Ecce ****!*









Its Wikipedia article got nominated for deletion a few days ago (on April fools' day) because 'it is better whited out'. I feel it was the wrong day for that, it should have got nominated on 28 December instead.


----------



## g.spinoza

Greetings from Madrid


----------



## Suburbanist

so they really left the botched restoration work in place? I thought they'd have employed proper restoration technicians to fix the issue.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Okay, guys; this is satire:

http://www.theonion.com/article/department-transportation-introduces-padded-bumper-52699


----------



## Coccodrillo

CNGL said:


> It's all hole-filled like Gruyere cheese?


Swiss Gruyère cheese doesn't have holes: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruyère_suisse

The French one have them: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruyère_français

The Swiss cheese with holes is the Emmentaler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmental_cheese (and its clones: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmental_(homonymie))

Also in Italian something with holes is compared to the gruyère cheese, although the original one doesn't have holes.


----------



## CNGL

As promised, I've returned to the bar where I drank a bottle of Pilsner Urquell and ordered one of Budejovicky a.k.a. Budweiser, the real one and not that American piss (a better descriptive word for that).


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> ^^ What's the German version of the Czech government, Tschechien?


Exactly.


----------



## g.spinoza

In Italian it would be "Cechia". The most famous sports commentator in Italy uses it commonly, it sounds weird, though.


----------



## Kanadzie

Verso said:


> Czechs can only determine the Czech name, but who is competent for the English name?


We'll just call them Bohemia and Moravia like for past 1000 years :lol:

I kind of liked the "old" French name République tchèque. It always reminded me of money (well, cheques )

I think they should have just gone more simply... like they had Czechoslovakia, just call it Czecho now.


----------



## bogdymol

Greetings from 'the rock', Gibraltar!


----------



## Alex_ZR

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ It has to be slowly implemented in English usage. Usually name changes are not picked up overnight, but far more radical name changes have been adopted in the past (Rhodesia > Zimbabwe, Siam > Thailand, *Yugoslavia > Serbia*, Leningrad > St. Petersburg etc.) while others have not been successful (Côte d'Ivoire in English usage or the Myanmar / Burma dispute).


Yugoslavia and Serbia are not the same terms. Serbia was part of Yugoslavia.


----------



## italystf

Kanadzie said:


> We'll just call them Bohemia and Moravia like for past 1000 years :lol:


Like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Saint Vincent and Grenadine, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, Sao Tome and Principe, and, formerly, Serbia and Montenegro.


----------



## italystf

Alex_ZR said:


> Yugoslavia and Serbia are not the same terms. Serbia was part of Yugoslavia.


Serbia and Montenegro (2003-2006) was the same territory of (Federal Repubblic of) Yugoslavia (1992-2002).


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Saint Vincent and Grenadine, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, Sao Tome and Principe, and, formerly, Serbia and Montenegro.


The fun fact is, that Bosnia and Herzegovina does not consists of entities named neither Bosnia nor Herzegovina 

Btw. I don't like the Czechia name. It sounds very artificial.


----------



## italystf

Bosnia and Herzegovina are two geographical regions. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Serbian Republic of Bosnia (Sprska) are two political subdivisions issued with Dayton Agreement following 1995 ceasefire line.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wouldn't worry too much about people confusing it with Chechnya. You can't account for all ignorant people. There are many more countries with similar names (i.e. Niger/Nigeria, Zambia/Gambia, Mali/Malawi, Iraq/Iran, India/Indonesia etc.)


but the queens of confusions are Georgia and Georgia 



g.spinoza said:


> In Italian it would be "Cechia". The most famous sports commentator in Italy uses it commonly, it sounds weird, though.


i see on Wikipedia that they mention that Cechia is official, but i have never heard it from Italians who i know - they always say Repubblica Ceca.

btw, i see that in Finnish and Estonian it is Tšekki / Tšehhi. since when they have "š" in their alphabet??


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Bosnia and Herzegovina are two geographical regions. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the *Serbian Republic of Bosnia (Sprska)* are two political subdivisions issued with Dayton Agreement following 1995 ceasefire line.


It's called "Republika S*rp*ska" (or "Republic of Srpska"), sometimes just "Srpska" (which means "Serbian" in Serbian).


----------



## Surel

Verso said:


> Czechs can only determine the Czech name, but who is competent for the English name?


The Czech name is "_Česko_". There exists also "_Čechie_" in the Czech language. It is the latinized version of the national "spirit" and you may say nation in the same sense as the Germans made "_Germanie_"

I would not mind if the English short version of Czech Republic would simply become Czech. And in fact I like the long version Czech Republic.

Yeah, Czech is not a noun in English when talking about the country, but it could become one quite easily. It has been used like that already on some sport jerseys anyway.

Czechlands would not be that bad either. It would give some historical continuity to it.


----------



## Alex_ZR

I never understood why English language took Polish "cz" for "č" in the case of Czech Repulic...


----------



## Surel

Alex_ZR said:


> I never understood why English language took Polish "cz" for "č" in the case of Czech Repulic...


It has been also a Czech _cz_, or rather _cž_. After the introduction of diacritics in the Czech language in the 15th century, there's been an orthographic reform in the 18-19th century.

So from _cz_ it went to _cž_ and then to _č_.


e.g.: 

Knijžka w Cžeském a Německém Jazyku složená, kterakby Cžech Německý a Němec Cžeský čijsti, psáti, y mluwiti, včiti se měl : Ein Büchlein in Behemischer vnd Deutscher Sprach, wie ein Behem Deutsch, dessgleichen ein Deutscher Behemisch lesen, schreiben vnd reden, lernen sol 
1578.
https://books.google.nl/books/about...eckém_jazyku.html?id=NCZWNAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y


----------



## Verso

Should be called Cheque Republic.


----------



## MattiG

Surel said:


> The Czech name is "_Česko_". There exists also "_Čechie_" in the Czech language. It is the latinized version of the national "spirit" and you may say nation in the same sense as the Germans made "_Germanie_"
> 
> I would not mind if the English short version of Czech Republic would simply become Czech. And in fact I like the long version Czech Republic.
> 
> Yeah, Czech is not a noun in English when talking about the country, but it could become one quite easily. It has been used like that already on some sport jerseys anyway.
> 
> Czechlands would not be that bad either. It would give some historical continuity to it.


Complicated. Anything containing "cz" or similar is annoying. The name is *Tsekki *in Finnish. Simple is that.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> I guess the Czech thread should be renamed soon, shouldn't it: Czechs agree to be '*Czechia*' as catchy alternative ; Czech Republic’s leaders settle on *official short name* for country and await cabinet and United Nations approval?
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_the_Czech_Republic#Adoption_of_Czechia


Who gave the UN jurisdiction over how English-speakers (or anyone else) speaks their own language?


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Who gave the UN jurisdiction over how English-speakers (or anyone else) speaks their own language?


Ivory Coast demands that the name of the country would be "Cote d'Ivoire" in all languages. So you can keep calling it Ivory Coast, but in formal contexts it has to be Cote d'Ivoire.


----------



## Suburbanist

Why do people get so worked up as if an UN white-hat army would descend to enforce official names?

Countries can choose the name they are going to be referred to in multi-lateral agencies like UN. For practical reasons, and to avoid all sorts of controversies, many other international bodies or private organizations follow suit. 

It bothers me (and increasingly so) how some people, many people, think that the attempt to fix or work out some sort of official convention or practice necessarily means some draconian authoritarian power imposing them at any costs. Chill out, everyone.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Ivory Coast demands that the name of the country would be "Cote d'Ivoire" in all languages. So you can keep calling it Ivory Coast, but in formal contexts it has to be Cote d'Ivoire.


Why, though? If Germany insisted that everyone call it "Deutschland" in all languages, would you accept that?


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> Ivory Coast demands that the name of the country would be "Cote d'Ivoire" in all languages. So you can keep calling it Ivory Coast, but in formal contexts it has to be Cote d'Ivoire.


The Netherlands (Nederland) is also translated in many languages. I wonder if they like "Nizozemska". :lol: Anyway, I'd consider "Ivory Coast" and "Côte d'Ivoire" both correct in English (and they are).

Foreigners don't have many problems with English, it's just a few things that annoys us, like "the police are" instead of "the police is" like in other languages. I'd consider both forms correct.


----------



## 8166UY

Well, as long as you don't call it Holland, it's fine. That's invented by Amsterdam advertising companies but is very offensive for a large part of the Netherlands. A bit like saying a Scott that he lives in England.


----------



## Verso

I won't call you Holland if you don't call us Slovakia. :lol:


----------



## Kanadzie

I really admire the above debate. There are so many totally hilarious comments by you guys. It's great, you're all awesome :lol::lol:



Attus said:


> Georgia, not the US state but the country in Caucasus also claimed that its name shall be Georgia in every languages. However in Hungarian it's called Grúzia (pronounce like Grooseeah) which is the Russian name of that country. They don't like it, I think. The Hungarian authorities have been discussing about it for ten years, some call it Georgia (but pronouncing it very different from the English pronounciation, like gheorgheeah), some Grúzia.


Ukranians really seem to hate when Anglophones refer to "Kiev" which was the standard name... more or less after Ukrainian independence, started talking of Kyiv, it seems to have become standard now (but it is so hard to say across an anglo palate compared to easy and memorable Kiev...) Even right now my computer says Kyiv is a spelling mistake and Kiev OK :lol: Similarly Breslau now seems to only refer to the town in Canada and never Wroclaw...



Penn's Woods said:


> Of course, I still say "Burma" and "Peking," so.... (And why are francophones allowed to say "Birmanie" and "Pékin" while we "have to" say "Myanmar" and "Beijing"?)


Well it depends. I still say Burma but I think the resistance to "Myanmar" was more because the government who came up with it was judged illegitimate by the West (certainly France, UK and US) and so continued to use Burma and its translations.
But now they have done some elections and Suu Kyi is doing something, so maybe now we are supposed to take it?
Regardless, french papers in Montreal have talked about Myanmar for decades and I still say Burma when I want to get shaving cream :lol:

Pekin (and Tientsin vs. Tianjin, etc) comes from an older romanization of Chinese language, while Mao forced everyone to use pinyin style which comes up with Beijing. If an anglophone says either of these words, actual Chinese people will have no idea what you are talking about as neither sounds remotely similar to what that city is actually called. Which, is of no importance, as we all know Shanghai is much better.



8166UY said:


> Well, as long as you don't call it Holland, it's fine. That's invented by Amsterdam advertising companies but is very offensive for a large part of the Netherlands. A bit like saying a Scott that he lives in England.


Scott is English, he won't mind. Now a Scot though :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> I really admire the above debate. There are so many totally hilarious comments by you guys. It's great, you're all awesome :lol::lol:


:cheers:


----------



## MattiG

8166UY said:


> Well, as long as you don't call it Holland, it's fine. That's invented by Amsterdam advertising companies but is very offensive for a large part of the Netherlands. A bit like saying a Scott that he lives in England.


By default, the foreigners are not usually aware of those local parochial disputes related to words and place names. Therefore, using a "wrong" name seldom is offensive.

In Finnish, for example, the "official" translation of the Netherlands is used rather rarely, and the name "Hollanti" is most often used. It does not contain anything offensive.

The four neighboring countries of Finland (Sweden, Norway, Russia, Estonia; Sverige, Norge, Rossija, Eesti in the local languages) carry the names Ruotsi, Norja, Venäjä and Viro in Finnish. The Finnish names of Sweden and Estonia refer to a single province of those countries: Roslagen and Virumaa. I am rather confident that the Swedes and Estonians do not see these names offensive.


----------



## Attus

^^ In Hungarian:
Holland = Dutch (adjective)
Hollandia = Netherlands (name of the country).
And I am sure that less than 0.1% of Hungarian people have ever heard about the 'Holland' issue, they simply call that nation and country so because they learned it so in the school.


----------



## Verso

Estonia is called "Viro" in Finnish? That's interesting since Finnish and Estonian are very close to each other.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Holland is somewhat of a brand. Even trucks from companies not located in one of the two Holland provinces will say 'Holland'. 

However in Dutch, people will rarely ever refer to the country as 'Holland', it's always 'Nederland', except maybe for football/soccer events.

English-language media seems to have adopted 'Netherlands' though. 

But the whole situation in somewhat weird. We're from the Netherlands, but the country is often called Holland and we speak Dutch. Browsing through Wikipedia, English appears to be the only language where they use 'Dutch' instead of a word closer to Netherlands or Hollandish.


----------



## g.spinoza

I think Dutch comes from the same root as Deutsch... maybe ancient Brits thought the two languages were the same...


----------



## keokiracer

The Pennsylviana Dutch are actually German


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Verso said:


> Estonia is called "Viro" in Finnish? That's interesting since Finnish and Estonian are very close to each other.


Matti mentioned the reason in his post:



MattiG said:


> *The Finnish names of Sweden and Estonia refer to a single province of those countries: Roslagen and Virumaa.* I am rather confident that the Swedes and Estonians do not see these names offensive.


Calling Estonia "Viro" is essentially the same as calling the Netherlands "Holland".


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> Holland is somewhat of a brand. Even trucks from companies not located in one of the two Holland provinces will say 'Holland'.
> 
> However in Dutch, people will rarely ever refer to the country as 'Holland', it's always 'Nederland', except maybe for football/soccer events.
> 
> English-language media seems to have adopted 'Netherlands' though.
> 
> But the whole situation in somewhat weird. We're from the Netherlands, but the country is often called Holland and we speak Dutch. Browsing through Wikipedia, English appears to be the only language where they use 'Dutch' instead of a word closer to Netherlands or Hollandish.


The Dutch also sometimes refer to themselves as Hollanders.


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> I think Dutch comes from the same root as Deutsch... maybe ancient Brits thought the two languages were the same...


They actually were more or less the same at least in some parts of The Netherlands. I am talking especially about Niederdeutsch or Nederduits (Low German).

The Dutch language could be considered a merge of three language groups in fact, Old Low Franconian, Old Frisian and Old Saxon or Low German.

But those West Germanic languages were more or less a language continuum with different dialects.

The Dutch word for Germany is Duitsland and the Germans are called Duitsers, German is Duits.

Dutch <=> Duits. Quite apparent.

In fact I think that English used the term Dutch and its variants also for various German peoples in the middle ages. The term Germany stems obviously from Latin and comes mainly with the process of unification of Germany in the 19th century. The term Germans was at first meant for all Germanic peoples but was reduced to Germany only. Not by mistake as it were Germans who used this term in the middle ages. E.g. they referred to Holy Roman Empire as to Germania.


----------



## General Maximus

My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.

Of course I don't speak a word of Latin or Italian. Sometimes I'm called The Spaniard, but I don't speak a word of Spanish. I refer to Rome as Rome because that's the English word for Rome. I'm referring to Spain as Spain because that's the English word for Spain as stated by the Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries. Non-native English speakers can challenge the language all they want... But I'll die with honor to protect local languages without interference from people who think they have command of a language but go a very peculiar way about it.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Gosh!

So there.


----------



## Verso

Rebasepoiss said:


> Matti mentioned the reason in his post:
> 
> 
> Calling Estonia "Viro" is essentially the same as calling the Netherlands "Holland".


Why isn't Estonia called "Virumaa" in Finnish?


----------



## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> Calling Estonia "Viro" is essentially the same as calling the Netherlands "Holland".


The history of the names are rather evident: The provinces mentioned are the ones closest the coastline of Finland, and therefore the endpoints of the most sailing trips. Not an offense.

Sweden is "Rootsi" in Estonian. Thus, the etymology is the same as the name in Finnish. Calling Sweden "Rootsi" is essentially the same as calling the Netherlands "Holland". 

BTW, there south-west area of the mainland Finland carries the official name "True Finland" (Varsinais-Suomi). This name dates back for centuries, too.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ Oh no, don't get me wrong, I'm not offended by the name at all  I was just saying that it's not uncommon that a country is called after a single province in another language.



Verso said:


> Why isn't Estonia called "Virumaa" in Finnish?


"Virumaa" is actually a composite word. "Maa" is land in Estonian and is also part of the colloquial names of Estonian counties: Harju county or Harjumaa, Tartu county or Tartumaa etc.

Virumaa has had many different name forms in different languages in the past: Virland, Kreis Wierland, Vironia, Vyronia.


----------



## Verso

^^ So Finns call Estonia "Viro", but for Virumaa itself they just use the Estonian name?


----------



## NordikNerd

Interesting that Germany has so many different names in other languages and those names are not even remotely similar.

It's Germany, Allemagne, Nemecko, Tyskland, Deutschland.

Some languages choose to use the word similar to the french Allemagne like the turkish Almanya and others prefer a word similar to Germany like the italian and russian Germania. 

Some slavic languages use the word Nemecko for Germany. Hungarians name Germany as the somewhat similar Németorszag. The german language in russian is "nemetskij" which reminds a little of the czech Nemecko word for Germany


France is a country that has similar name in all countries, it starts with Fran-something.


----------



## Verso

NordikNerd said:


> France is a country that has similar name in all countries, it starts with Fran-something.


We call it "Francija", but "France" is also a Slovenian name.


----------



## CNGL

Heck, I have a €2 coin with both France and _Slovenija_ written in it (Slovenian regular coin AFAIK). I got it in Italy back in 2010.


----------



## Surel

NordikNerd said:


> Interesting that Germany has so many different names in other languages and those names are not even remotely similar.
> 
> It's Germany, Allemagne, Nemecko, Tyskland, Deutschland.
> 
> Some languages choose to use the word similar to the french Allemagne like the turkish Almanya and others prefer a word similar to Germany like the italian and russian Germania.
> 
> Some slavic languages use the word Nemecko for Germany. Hungarians name Germany as the somewhat similar Németorszag. The german language in russian is "nemetskij" which reminds a little of the czech Nemecko word for Germany
> 
> 
> France is a country that has similar name in all countries, it starts with Fran-something.


Slavic languages use the word _Německo _etc because of its meaning. It is actually quite logical and mostly follows some meaning, sometimes that meaning is quite lost on us after so many years.

English word _Germany _etc stems from Latin word _germanus _and stems from the meaning "of the same parents" = of the same birth, tribe, brothers.

German word _Deutsch _stems from Germanic word _diutisc _for "similar" or "of the same people"

French word _Allemagne _comes from the name of the Alemanni tribe.

Czech word _Německo _, and other Slavic variants, comes from the Protoslavic _němьcь_ which means mute. In Czech _němý _means mute and _Německo _is Germany, but the meaning is lost for the most people. The Slavic people differentiated the people on those that they could understand - thus Slavs, e.g. in Czech "Slované" stems from Old Church Slavonic _slověnin_ which means someone who understands. E.g. in Czech _slovo_ means word and _Slované _are Slavs.

Although this theory gets not so much support as of lately it seems to me quite logical. Those that could be understood were speaking the same word - _slovo_ - Slované, and those that could not speak those words, i.e. their languages, were considered mute - _němý _- _Němci_.


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> Heck, I have a €2 coin with both France and _Slovenija_ written in it (Slovenian regular coin AFAIK). I got it in Italy back in 2010.











France it's not related to the country, but it's the first name of France Prešeren.


----------



## italystf

A funny story: years ago I started collecting eurocoins from different countries, so I asked friends and relatives to keep the different ones. I got a text: "Hey, I found 5 cent from Slovenia." It was this one: :lol:









I still have to find a coin from Latvia or Lithuania.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

NordikNerd said:


> Interesting that Germany has so many different names in other languages and those names are not even remotely similar.


There's a good video about it:


----------



## NordikNerd

Surel said:


> Slavic languages use the word _Německo _etc because of its meaning. It is actually quite logical and mostly follows some meaning, sometimes that meaning is quite lost on us after so many years.


Russian, Bulgarian, Byelorussian, Makedonian are slavic languages that use the word Germania (in cyrillic) although all slavic languages call the german language nemetskij or somewhat similar.(except in makedonian-where they say germanskij)

Interesting that in slavic languages, mute ням-niemy also means dumb. Maybe they didnt like the germans ?

Also italians call german "tedesco" why not germano or alemano ?


----------



## keokiracer

NordikNerd said:


> Interesting that in slavic languages, mute ням-niemy also means dumb. Maybe they didnt like the germans ?


You liked the post with the video above but I feel like you didn't watch it.


----------



## MattiG

NordikNerd said:


> Interesting that Germany has so many different names in other languages and those names are not even remotely similar.
> 
> It's Germany, Allemagne, Nemecko, Tyskland, Deutschland


It is Saksa in Finnish. We have a proverb translating as: "The beloved child has many names". Perhaps it is applicable here. 



> France is a country that has similar name in all countries, it starts with Fran-something.


Well... It is Ranska in Finnish. Of course, also this name is derived from the name France. The history has dropped the letter F and changed the C to S, because F and C are not included in the Finnish alphabet.


----------



## NordikNerd

keokiracer said:


> You liked the post with the video above but I feel like you didn't watch it.


Well my friend I actually watched it, but the clip was posted while I wrote my message so I noticed it first_ after_ I had posted that message. (which often happends on internet forums)


----------



## Surel

NordikNerd said:


> Russian, Bulgarian, Byelorussian, Makedonian are slavic languages that use the word Germania (in cyrillic) although all slavic languages call the german language nemetskij or somewhat similar.(except in makedonian-where they say germanskij)
> 
> Interesting that in slavic languages, mute ням-niemy also means dumb. Maybe they didnt like the germans ?
> 
> Also italians call german "tedesco" why not germano or alemano ?


They went with Germania versions in the time. But also in Russian you can find _Неметчина_. 

Undoubtedly they were considered also dumb as they did not speak the same language . Btw, dumb and mute in English also share a meaning.


----------



## Kanadzie

I'm really always amused at the etymology of Niemcy and the similar names
"those incomprehensible barbarians" :lol:


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


>


Could be mistaken for a French coin if looked at briefly. :lol:



MattiG said:


> Well... It is Ranska in Finnish. Of course, also this name is derived from the name France. The history has dropped the letter F and changed the C to S, because F and C are not included in the Finnish alphabet.


So it should be "Francka"? Another (obsolete) Slovenian name. :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

NordikNerd said:


> Russian, Bulgarian, Byelorussian, Makedonian are slavic languages that use the word Germania (in cyrillic) although all slavic languages call the german language nemetskij or somewhat similar.(except in makedonian-where they say germanskij)
> 
> Interesting that in slavic languages, mute ням-niemy also means dumb. Maybe they didnt like the germans ?
> 
> Also italians call german "tedesco" why not germano or alemano ?


I don't know why, it just happened. The ancient local name of the German language was theodiscus, meaning "people language", as opposed to Latin which was the language of the learned. From theodiscus came tedesco and also deutsch. 
Germano in Italian retains the meaning "brother", but is rarely used because it is seen as an old word. Sometimes we use "germanico", never for the language, though.


----------



## keber

Something off-topic:
My incoming roadtrip to Russia
Visa is still in progress hopefully it arrives tomorrow or we'll have some problems ...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ That's a huge trip  Carefully avoiding the tolls of Belarus...


----------



## keber

Not Belarus tolls, but additional bureaucracies involving transiting Belarus border and therefore avoiding need for going twice to Vienna embassy to get Belarus transit visa. First plan was going through Romania, Moldavia and Ukraine to make the trip even more "colorful". However we decided not to risk possible complications when crossing the Ukraine-Russia border because of difficult political situation as our entry into Russia could be denied for no reason at all (which could still happen).
Getting Russian visa for automobile tourism (official name for roadtrip tourism) is pretty complicated thing, which involves getting a letter of guarantee and this involves booking and paying for all the hotels on the way for every single day staying in Russia and then waiting for vouchers.


----------



## MichiH

^^ 7,000km... How many days?


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> Getting Russian visa for automobile tourism (official name for roadtrip tourism) is pretty complicated thing, which involves getting a letter of guarantee and this involves booking and paying for all the hotels on the way for every single day staying in Russia and then waiting for vouchers.


I wonder how it's possible for overland expedition (such Europe to Mongolia, Europe to China, Europe to Vladivostok), to cope with such regulations. When one plans to drive 10,000km in three weeks, it isn't easy to plan where he will sleep each day.

It was the same in communist Romania and maybe in other communist countries. In 1977, my father and two mates of him travelled by car all the way from Italy to the Black Sea coast, via Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade, Iron Gates, Timisoara, and Bucharest. At the border between Yugoslavia and Romania, border guards asked for a detailed plan of their tour and inspected everything in the car. Actually, during their trip, nobody bothered where they went, but if one were to be found, for example, in Constanta, while he declared he only was going to Timisoara, he may have gotten into troubles.
They had to ask for the visa well in advance, and the visa also included info about the vehicle, not just the identity of occupants.


----------



## italystf

MichiH said:


> ^^ 7,000km... How many days?


Italy - North Cape and back, that is done by relatively many people (especially RV owners), is much longer than that. People usually take 3-4 weeks.


----------



## MichiH

^^ I drove more than 7,000km in 7 days last year _(and more than 5,000km during the "last" 5 days)_ but I didn't ask what's possible, I just asked how long his trip will last! Just out of curiosity .


----------



## keber

We'll travel for 15 days. There are mostly good roads on the way and many of them were travelled last year on our trip to Belarus. The first and the last day (Slovenia <-> Poland) will be together 35% of whole distance travelled (luckily most of them motorways) that is also the same distance as the whole Russian part.

This trip will be significantly faster in about three years as many important motorways will be finished in Poland, Finland and in Russia.

When we applied for visa, there was also necessary to give information about ownership of the car and who will drive it. On the border you temporary import your own car into Russia (the same is also with Belarus and Ukraine).



> I wonder how it's possible for overland expedition (such Europe to Mongolia, Europe to China, Europe to Vladivostok), to cope with such regulations. When one plans to drive 10,000km in three weeks, it isn't easy to plan where he will sleep each day.


It is possible, it just costs more time and money to arrange letter of guarantee without fixed accommodations. We use the cheapest and simplest possibility.


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> First plan was going through Romania, Moldavia and Ukraine to make the trip even more "colorful". However we decided not to risk possible complications when crossing the Ukraine-Russia border because of difficult political situation as our entry into Russia could be denied for no reason at all (which could still happen).


Why not drive from Russia into Ukraine (exit Russia)?


----------



## keber

As we know the political situation there, crossing this border would take many hours and there is a significant probability that we could be rejected (probably without reason). As turning back and going on different border crossing is complicated because of Belarus between we decided to do easier route.


----------



## Verso

Hmm, it would be very weird to be rejected entry into Ukraine since we don't need visa for it.


----------



## keber

Going into that direction involves crossing Transnistria republic into direction of Moldova -> another complication.


----------



## italystf

I'm surprised that crossing the Russian-Ukrainian border is possible at all in these days, considering the huge problems between the two countries.
In many cases, when there are such conflicts, borders are closed entirely, like Armenia-Azerbaijan, Morocco-Algeria, Israel-Syria and Lebanon.


----------



## g.spinoza

I'm leaving tonight for Denver. Got a rental car reserved and will drive mostly across the mountains.
Stay tuned!


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> I'm leaving tonight for Denver. Got a rental car reserved and will drive mostly across the mountains.
> Stay tuned!


Are you going to Mt. Evans or Pike's Peak? On a clear day, the trip to Mt. Evans is totally worth it.


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> Going into that direction involves crossing Transnistria republic into direction of Moldova -> another complication.


Transnistria doesn't even have border checkpoints.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Transnistria doesn't even have border checkpoints.


I think I've seen photos of checkpoints between Moldova and Transnistria.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Transnistria doesn't even have border checkpoints.


who told you so? they have. at least they had in 2010. you also have to fullfill some kind of immigration document while entering that country or area or whatever it is.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> who told you so?


Wiki. :dunno:


PS: that weird moment when you see your neighbor talk about menstruation on national TV :shifty:


----------



## Kanadzie

x-type said:


> who told you so? they have. at least they had in 2010. you also have to fullfill some kind of immigration document while entering that country or area or whatever it is.


They really need to work hard to make sure there are no illegal immigration into such worker's paradise as that :nuts::lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> Are you going to Mt. Evans or Pike's Peak? On a clear day, the trip to Mt. Evans is totally worth it.


Greetings from Boulder, CO! 

Mt Evans road is closed until 27th May, while Pikes Peak should be open year-round, so...


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ I would be amused with a rental car Pikes Peak run :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

Pike's Peak ascent road has been fully paved for some years.


----------



## winnipeg

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ I would be amused with a rental car Pikes Peak run :lol:
> 
> http://www.visitcos.com/sites/default/files/PPIHGB0597.jpg


French cars are way better than this fat thing at Pikes Peak...  in 2013 Sebastien Loeb and his Peugeot 208 T16 exploded the record by 1 minute and half... :cheers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh2Tv4xOcdI

The testings in France : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9eJ0HuH_Hc

(Peugeot already won it in 1988/89 with 405 T16, so it was very interesting for them!  ).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Late April, but we have snow in the lowlands.


----------



## italystf

Also here very bad weather, currently 8 degrees and rain. In the Alps is snowing too.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ +18 *C and not a cloud in the sky here in "frozen" Canada


----------



## italystf

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ +18 *C and not a cloud in the sky here in "frozen" Canada


Like here until a couple of days ago. It's annoying as tomorrow is a civil holiday in Italy and it will rain too, while last week I had to stay indoor to fulfil my duties despite the good weather.


----------



## MichiH

^^ I was in south-eastern France and north-western Italy last week. Maximum was 26°C.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

My drive across the Alps next weekend'll hopefully be pretty!


----------



## Fatfield

ChrisZwolle said:


> Late April, but we have snow in the lowlands.


I was in Rotterdam at the weekend and couldn't believe how bad the weather was. Sunny one minute, lashing down the next and then hail. On Monday the rain was torrential (didn't stop the celebrations though).

Hope it clears up for all you Dutch tomorrow though. :cheers:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Parts of the Netherlands had solid snowfall up to 5 cm this morning. And to think that most of the Netherlands had basically no snowfall during the entire winter.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

My Dad messaged me from Kensington in London earlier saying that it was snowing very lightly. I can't ever remember snow in April in London.


----------



## Verso

Wait a few days, maybe it will snow in May.


----------



## bogdymol

Last week on Tuesday I was in Granada, southern Spain. There were 7-8 degrees outside and it rained for a couple of hours really heavy. The next day I could see snow on top of Sierra Nevada mountains. Not the weather I was expecting in southern Spain...

Yesterday I was in Austria, nearby Wels, and it snowed like you thought that Christmas is comming. Big snowflakes like in a fairytale.

Today I was just north of London and it snowed a little bit. Not much, it didn't stay on the ground, but enough to notice it. 

(yes, I travel a lot... going back to Austria tomorrow, and driving to Romania on Friday)


----------



## pasadia

Hopefully you won't bring snow over here. I mean, we have spring time since february, we don't need winter coming back.


----------



## volodaaaa

Leaving for Trieste tomorrow and have already changed my tyres today. I am curious if I will experience snowfall in Alps.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A2 Villach - Klagenfurt looked like this today:


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Leaving for Trieste tomorrow and have already changed my tyres today. I am curious if I will experience snowfall in Alps.


Today Slovenian A1 between junctions of H4 and A3 was closed in direction Koper









This was near Postojna









I'm currently in Trieste, there are 7°C outside. We are allowed to keep heating running, that in this area is usually legally restricted from October 15 to April 15. Weather forecasts will be better for tomorrow, still chilly, but at least no rain.
In Friulian Alps today snow falled as low as 700 meters.

It's highly reccomended to have winter equipment, either you'll drive via Spielfield - Ljubljana or via Klagenfurt - Tarvisio.


----------



## volodaaaa

Damn, I was just joking


----------



## italystf

Someone has some sense of humour


----------



## volodaaaa

Finally I made it with the summer tires. The temperature did not drop below 2,5 °C and nowhere was the snow covering the carriageway. On the other hand, heavy snowfall occurred during our journey.


----------



## cinxxx

^^The way back should be much better since it seems the weather is getting better


----------



## italystf

cinxxx said:


> ^^The way back should be much better since it seems the weather is getting better


Yes, today in Trieste sun and 18°C.


----------



## cinxxx

italystf said:


> Yes, today in Trieste sun and 18°C.


It was the same here too


----------



## Verso

Ridiculous topic, but it reminded me when I went to Bratislava by bus (just young people with a tourist agency). Some guys were drinking a bit too much beer, so we had to stop somewhere along a country road. There was also a railway very close to the road, and just as they started peeing right beside it, a passenger train came from somewhere. :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

I now work half of my workload in an office in Rotterdam with an impressive view, 22nd floor. I've never worked, or lived for that matter, so high up (I lived at 12th floor before years ago but that was it). I have a wide view all the way to Den Haag and, on a clear day, Leiden. It's possible to see Kleinpolderlplein knoopunt partially, and get a sideway view of planes landing and taking off Rotterdam International Airport.


----------



## volodaaaa

Time to change the topic and trains are good to start with 

Last week I was on my way to business trip and as I did not wanted to spend my whole journey in an overcrowded compartment, I had decided to go to the very last passenger railcar that was old and dirty but empty. I was there alone but I realized the window is so dirty I could not see anything through. Then I found out the railcar is enough old to has a window that can be fully opened (so I can pop my head out). I was looking through the window for the whole journey and in one section of track I found a funny thing: Speed camera by the road at the beginning of built-up area that runs along the railway track. The speed camera caught the train, displayed flashing speed of 120 kph and the caption "SLOW DOWN!!!"  

I hope nobody is scared while evaluating the data from the speed camera after having realized that every two hours there is a vehicle that hurtling through the village more than twice faster than speed limit 

STREETVIEW


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> Time to change the topic and trains are good to start with
> 
> Last week I was on my way to business trip and as I did not wanted to spend my whole journey in an overcrowded compartment, I had decided to go to the very last passenger railcar that was old and dirty but empty. I was there alone but I realized the window is so dirty I could not see anything through. Then I found out the railcar is enough old to has a window that can be fully opened (so I can pop my head out). I was looking through the window for the whole journey and in one section of track I found a funny thing: Speed camera by the road at the beginning of built-up area that runs along the railway track. The speed camera caught the train, displayed flashing speed of 120 kph and the caption "SLOW DOWN!!!"
> 
> I hope nobody is scared while evaluating the data from the speed camera after having realized that every two hours there is a vehicle that hurtling through the village more than twice faster than speed limit
> 
> STREETVIEW


This is a picture from January from the speed camera of local police some 40 kilometers north of Helsinki. The picture raised a discussion about the reliability of the speed camera traps.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've worked with traffic counting radars (temporary setups). It required very precise mounting and adjusting the angle, otherwise you would get very strange results, especially with vehicle classification, but also speed. 

Back then, a rubber tube counter was much more reliable and easy to set up than a radar. They could very precisely record speed up to 180 km/h, whereas rubber tube counters are typically mostly used on low-volume secondary roads (those without permanent counting stations). I never used them on roads with a speed limit over 80 km/h, and even traffic counting on 80 km/h roads was rare, as those roads tend to have permanent counters.

Temporary mobile speed traps tend to be less reliable, this is one reason why several countries use a greater margin or 'tolerance' than with fixed speed cameras. Ideally you would verify the mobile speed trap with a laser gun, to make sure you're not getting incorrect results. Even when the equipment is reliable and accurate, the setup may not be as accurate.


----------



## italystf

Yesterday, in the centre of Milan, in front of the famous theater "La Scala", a police car tried to overtake a tram, but another tram came in the opposite direction and it didn't end well:










http://milano.repubblica.it/cronaca...za_scala_tram_volante-138992696/1/?ref=fbpr#1


----------



## volodaaaa

Instant karma.


----------



## MichiH

volodaaaa said:


> You are lucky guys. I replaced the current one less than year ago.


It happened twice this year. Once, the windshield had to be replaced, last time it could be repaired. It happened in early 2014 and early 2015 too and the windshield had to be replaced. Previously, it didn't happen for 15 years (since I have my driving license)! I don't understand why it happened so many times in just 2 years... hno:

I had to pay 150 € for replacing the windshield. The rest was paid by insurance.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ are all those prices at "reputable" garages ?

In Canada you can typically get Chinese windshield for most cars installed for less than $200 CAD / 125 EUR or so, but you have to say you are paying yourself, or you get "insurance price"...
I had a quote to have the windshield on my Mercedes for like $160 (110 EUR)...


----------



## g.spinoza

g.spinoza said:


> Greetings from somewhere in the Rockies... I'm climbing a 4400 m high mountain in a few day.


And when I promise, I deliver:










Greetings from the top of Mount Elbert


----------



## MichiH

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ are all those prices at "reputable" garages ?


Yes. In addition, my windshield has defroster.


----------



## MattiG

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ are all those prices at "reputable" garages ?
> 
> In Canada you can typically get Chinese windshield for most cars installed for less than $200 CAD / 125 EUR or so, but you have to say you are paying yourself, or you get "insurance price"...
> I had a quote to have the windshield on my Mercedes for like $160 (110 EUR)...


The windscreen is a significant component of the chassis structure in most modern cars. It much more than just a piece of glass. I would never enter a business with a less reputed garage selling windscreens from unknown sources.


----------



## bogdymol

I also had a crack in my windscreen, but since it was on the passenger side I drove with it like that for about an year. After the crack started "moving" to the driver's side, I changed it.

I have a Ford Focus from 2013. It has rain/light sensors, as well as 2 or 3 cameras that check the road and warn me if the speed limit changes, if overtaking is allowed or forbidden or if I leave the lane with signal. It also has heating, so during winter I don't have to scratch the windscreen. Pretty nice features overall, but so many sensors make the windscreen more expensive.

I asked at the official Ford workshop for a price, and they said it was around 800 Euro for an original one. As I did not have insurance for it and the car is already out of warranty, I changed it somewhere else for 325 Euro (it is not the same brand as the original one, but this workshop does only this... changes car's windscreens and windows). The new one is installed since January and everything is ok... just like the original one.


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> Greetings from the top of Mount Elbert


This is the highest point of the Rocky Mountains? I had no idea, I just knew about Denali (Mount McKinley) and Mount Whitney.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Rocky Mountains are much smaller in geographic area than most people think they are. They do not extend into Alaska or the westernmost states. Mount Elbert is the highest point of the Rocky Mountains. People often think of the Rocky Mountains as all mountains west of the Great Plains, extending to the Pacific, but in reality they cover a much smaller area along the Continental Divide.

Mount Whitney is located in the Sierra Nevada. It is the highest peak in the lower 48 states (the difference with Mt. Elbert is only 20 meters though).


----------



## Verso

And Denali is apparently in the Alaska Range.


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> Mount Whitney is located in the Sierra Nevada. It is the highest peak in the lower 48 states (the difference with Mt. Elbert is only 20 meters though).


I thought the highest peak in Sierra Nevada was Mulhacén, which is also the highest peak in mainland Spain, standing 74 meters higher than Aneto, the runner-up.

:troll:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You're so funny :cheers:


----------



## Suburbanist

An interesting feature of the Rockies is how easy it is to climb most of its peaks, compared to other North America's mountain ranges. No massive rock walls or things like that. The mountains are big to the natural eye, very massive, yet looks like erosion did a longer job there. 

Which is why these mountains are good for skiing combined with the drier snow that commonly falls there.

I also think many people are completely oblivious to the geographical features of anything between the Rockies and the West Coast except the Southern deserts or the Colorado River canyons. The Great Basin is a big unknown.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Last week we had snow, now we have summer; up to nearly 28 °C today in the Netherlands. Benelux was reportedly the warmest area of Europe, which is not common at all. The normal maximum temperature this time of the year is 16 °C.


----------



## g.spinoza

Since the new president of my Institute is a Dutchman, a couple of days ago me and my colleagues tested our knowledge in Dutch matters.

Some of my mates thought that Holland was the country and the Netherlands a sort of confederation between it and Belgium. When we started naming its provinces, we only figured out Holland (but missed that there are two of them), Zeeland, Flevoland, Utrecht, Limburg and Friesland. Moreover, we couldn't agree on which city is the actual capital.


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> Since the new president of my Institute is a Dutchman, a couple of days ago me and my colleagues tested our knowledge in Dutch matters.
> 
> Some of my mates thought that Holland was the country and the Netherlands a sort of confederation between it and Belgium. When we started naming its provinces, we only figured out Holland (but missed that there are two of them), Zeeland, Flevoland, Utrecht, Limburg and Friesland. Moreover, we couldn't agree on which city is the actual capital.


The Dutch are reasonably knowledgeable about Italian borders (I mean, my work colleagues), though Italy is naturally easy to figure out due to Alps. Once I mentioned there is a French-speaking autonomous region and they didn't have a clue though. Maybe Aosta is too small to matter?

So you know work on nanoparticles instead of looking at the outer space? Quite a change in scale :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

Since this is the *Roadside rest area* thread, I post some pics from a CNN series on pretty/unusual US roadside stops (full series)









Valley of Fire Highway, NV









I-35, MO









Badlands Ntl. Park, SD









I-10, TX









I-80, WY









I-55, MS


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> The Dutch are reasonably knowledgeable about Italian borders (I mean, my work colleagues), though Italy is naturally easy to figure out due to Alps. Once I mentioned there is a French-speaking autonomous region and they didn't have a clue though. Maybe Aosta is too small to matter?


It matters, but it's a quite different thing from Alto Adige. In Aosta Valley almost nobody speaks French as a first language. Most of them are Italian mother tongue, and many of them speak a French dialect they call patois in their houses. The only reason they still have lessons in schools in French and French names in their villages is because they got paid a lot for that by the Italian state. 


> So you know work on nanoparticles instead of looking at the outer space? Quite a change in scale :lol:


He does nanoparticles, not me. We do a lot of different stuff in my Institute. I work with thermometers.


----------



## volodaaaa

Can, by any chance, some native or very advanced English speaker explain, how it is called when I use the following word order:

Should the packet be late, I will call you.

It is not an inversion, is it?


----------



## TrojaA

Yep that's an inversion of the subject and the auxiliary verb. It's a remnant of the verb-second word order.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

volodaaaa said:


> Can, by any chance, some native or very advanced English speaker explain, how it is called when I use the following word order:
> 
> Should the packet be late, I will call you.
> 
> It is not an inversion, is it?


I doubt very many native English speakers would know what that's called, I certainly don't.


----------



## Verso

Yes, but then again, you use the terrible word 'Slovakian'.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Meanwhile in Belgrade:


----------



## volodaaaa

My dog would be a lawyer if she was able to speak.

I tell her - "stay in your basket", she put three of her four legs out and still pretends to accept my orders.

I tell her - "go to your basket" pointing out the bedroom, she chooses the closest one in the room where I stay.

I return home from my work and few dumps are all around the hall, including one on her pissing mat. I can't ask her "why haven't you sh*t on the mat" because she has.

I forbid her barking, she has started howling.


----------



## Verso

^^ How old is your dog?


----------



## volodaaaa

She is 15, thus very old


----------



## Verso

I thought it was a cub since there were dumps all around the hall.


----------



## volodaaaa

Her biological age is approximately 90 years. Also humans experience this problem in such age


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Much of Scandinavia has higher temperatures than much of France:



















Temperatures in Scandinavia have been in the 20s deep into Lapland over the past few days.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Much of Scandinavia has higher temperatures than much of France:
> 
> Temperatures in Scandinavia have been in the 20s deep into Lapland over the past few days.


A change in weather is coming here. Today, there has been thunder and lightning, and those typically tell about cold weather coming. A 7-8 degrees drop in temperatures are expected after tomorrow, and even more in the North.

The temperature in Helsinki dropped today afternoon from 23 degrees to 15 in one hour. It is expected to raise back to 22-23 in the evening.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands has had a week of severe thunderstorms from the northeast, Dutch weather enthusiasts often use the German term 'Ostgewitter'. This is fairly unusual, there may be years without any thunderstorms moving in from the east. Usually weather patterns with thunderstorms move from the south to the northeast.

Especially southeastern Netherlands has locally seen extreme high rainfall rates with recurring flooding. Several motorways and provincial roads in this area have problems with embankments and slides.

The town of Boxmeer today:


----------



## bogdymol

Austria is a beautiful country. View from my window few minutes ago:


----------



## Verso

^^ Where is that?


----------



## SeanT

It is now 21:50 and the temperature is still 21 C° here in Bjæverskov,DK


----------



## Attus

The weather here is nice. 
But I saw a guy that started to build an ark.


----------



## volodaaaa

Time to change my car. During the past four months I've spent approximately 1 500 € on repairs. Yesterday it broke down again. Two weeks after the last repair.


----------



## Verso

^^ How old is your dog car?


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> Time to change my car. During the past four months I've spent approximately 1 500 € on repairs. Yesterday it broke down again. Two weeks after the last repair.


Time to change your car repair shop.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> ^^ How old is your dog car?


10 years



g.spinoza said:


> Time to change your car repair shop.


Yes, too. But the point is, the car is not reliable. It is like collecting the achievements in a computer game. I am just curious, which failure indicators on my dashboard I haven't seen lit so far.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I drive a Hyundai. They come with a 5 year warranty. So even if you buy it second-hand, there could be warranty. And Hyundai warranty has no mileage / accessories limitations like Kia has.


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> Yes, too. But the point is, the car is not reliable. It is like collecting the achievements in a computer game. I am just curious, which failure indicators on my dashboard I haven't seen lit so far.


simply wait for the light bulbs to burn out, then car will be fixed again! :cheers:


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> 10 years


So it's younger than your dog.  I still occasionally drive my sister's 24-year-old Peugeot 405.


----------



## Suburbanist

I quite like working on the 23rd floor of an office building, with a window desk. I had never worked so high up there, and I'm lucky in that I can glance at plenty of trains, road traffic and airplanes in the background. All my previous working places were no higher than 11th floor, and that was just one case part-time, all others had been ground-2nd floor.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ interesting
I've never had an office above... ground floor :lol:
But at least, parking space is always provided


----------



## Verso

10 years on SSC. :dizzy:


----------



## winnipeg

France-Romania tonight  I think it will be interesting as a french who live in Romania...


----------



## volodaaaa

What do you think of this one?


----------



## bogdymol

13


----------



## Attus

21.


----------



## MichiH

1 + 10 x 2 = 21


----------



## QalzimCity

21


----------



## cinxxx

42


----------



## keokiracer

^^ That's what I thought too initially, but it's only one horseshoe and not 2 in the final formula so it's not 4 but 2 (4/2=2)


----------



## bogdymol

I've seen the last "x" as a "+" :silly:

I have previously seen this:


----------



## Verso

Surel said:


> Tbh I hate socks free shoes of any type


For those with ugly feet it's indeed better to wear socks. :lol: My feet are nice, btw.


----------



## Surel

Verso said:


> For those with ugly feet it's indeed better to wear socks. :lol: My feet are nice, btw.


I have gorgeous feet :yes: I just cant stand having no socks on them in normal circumstances.


----------



## cinxxx

I was at a terrace in the neighborhood yesterday evening and 4 older people came, 3 of them wearing sandals with socks


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> ^^ Traditional food is probably good, but we all got twice about a ton of dry rice with hardly any sauce. Try eating that at ~35°C. :lol: Ok, twice it was really tasty, so all in all it wasn't that bad.


ok, eating rice in Czechia is like eating knedliky in China (which would proably be like stones). i hope it was not a la carte, so you had no choice.


----------



## x-type

about sandals: there is one even more trashy thing than wearing them with socks - sandals with special place for thumb


----------



## Suburbanist

x-type said:


> about sandals: there is one even more trashy thing than wearing them with socks - sandals with special place for thumb


Who comes up with these designs???


----------



## bogdymol

x-type said:


> about sandals: there is one even more trashy thing than wearing them with socks - sandals with special place for thumb


^^ Those sandals + socks =


----------



## italystf

Wearing sandals in formal situation isn't classy, of course, but sandals without socks are still more socially acceptable than sandals with socks. :lol:

An old joke:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't see why adult men would want to wear sandals...


----------



## keber

If it is hot, why not?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Flip-flops on the beach on in the garden, I can understand. But sandals in an everyday situation like work or shopping? It seems unusual do to that, you don't see many men wearing them in the Netherlands, except for the type that wears them with socks


----------



## keber

In summer I wear flip flops almost always when not going to work and Tewa sandals for rough terrain. I wear shoes just on important occasions and casual sneakers to/from work.
I even drive barefoot if I'm on longer motorway journeys (my car has big aluminium pedals with automatic transmission).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Office workers in the Netherlands usually don't dress formal (suit, tie) unless they have a higher managerial position. But men wearing shorts is usually not appreciated in the office.


----------



## keber

Shorts are not appreciated here too however they could be tolerated in some companies for lower position workers. In our firm they are tolerated, but not for all and not always.


----------



## volodaaaa

I wear sandals (without socks of course :-D) in my leisure time. I do not have to spend my precious socks and it is very pleasant to go out without socks.

Something else is at work. I have to be dressed semi-formal (no a suit, but jeans/trousers with shirt without tie). Shorts with shirt is tolerated for lower position workers during Fridays.


----------



## Suburbanist

One of my workplaces had a bunch of new hires, there is a notably "dress down" movement out there (less cotton pants, more sport-casual attire).


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> Flip-flops on the beach on in the garden, I can understand. But sandals in an everyday situation like work or shopping? It seems unusual do to that, you don't see many men wearing them in the Netherlands, except for the type that wears them with socks


To be honest, in the Netherlands they would be quite unusable most of the time. There´s nothing as comfortable as quality outdoor shoes.

Clearly, southern Europe has something with sandals. But I don't blame them. It's hot in there. 

One more thing. I noticed that people that don´t wear socks or even walk barefoot have terrible feet. They look completely destroyed, hard skinned, and worn out. I could not stand that.


----------



## Verso

I don't get why flip-flops are sometimes associated only with the beach. I walk with these in Ljubljana all summer:









https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/ceneje/www/images/products/mother/1024/9/9937-0.jpg


----------



## cinxxx

^^They are not really used in central and northern Europe 
(not like in the South and East, former Yugoslavia included)


----------



## Verso

^ Northern European summers are too short? :lol:


----------



## VITORIA MAN

tourists from northern europe in spain


----------



## Kanadzie

Happy Canada Day 









My favorite part was the hockey stick 

Seen on the QEW direction Hamilton, around Dorval Dr (km 116)


----------



## cinxxx

Verso said:


> ^ Northern European summers are too short? :lol:


or maybe more like spring or autumn in the south


----------



## Verso

VITORIA MAN said:


> http://static1.funidelia.es/7459-f4_large/disfraz-de-turista-guiri.jpg
> tourists from northern europe in spain


Socks missing. :lol:



cinxxx said:


> or maybe more like spring or autumn in the south


Although they've become quite hot due to global warming. I laugh at those ex-Yugoslavs who still think that Slovenian summers aren't hot. :lol:


----------



## Verso

Two Italian jet fighters broke the sound barrier over SE Slovenia today. The only time I heard it was in 1991 during the war when a Yugoslav fighter broke it over Ljubljana. It was deafening.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ how do you know they're Italian? From the sound they made?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It occurs from time to time in the Netherlands, they have F-16s on standby 24/7 to respond to any calls, often to intercept aircraft which do not respond to air traffic control. 

It usually makes the news as breaking the sound barrier in a densely populated country is noticed by large numbers of people.


----------



## Gyorgy

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ how do you know they're Italian? From the sound they made?


Was in the news, they were from Grosseto air base.


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ how do you know they're Italian? From the sound they made?


The sonic boom wasn't heard in Ljubljana (at least I didn't hear it). It says here: _... Po končani nalogi spremljanja sumljivega letala sta se lovca s podzvočno hitrostjo vrnila v matično bazo v *Italiji* ..._
Also in English (but without mentioning where the fighters were from).


----------



## Gyorgy

^^

It's mentioned in the video on this RTV site, heh


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*Facebook photos*

Hi guys, a heads up about *Facebook* photo linking.

Facebook uses temporary photo URLs which expire within days, weeks or months. 

So if you embed a photo with an URL from Facebook, it becomes invisible after a while, in particular those long URLs with a question mark in it. I've noticed many posts lacking photos and the culprit is almost always a Facebook URL.


----------



## CNGL

I don't have Facebook, so it doesn't affect me. Sometimes I have linked photos from Twitter, and AFAIK those have a permanent URL. For example a couple photos where I compared Alfamen (the ugliest town in Aragon) to the back of a fridge are still showing up, and I tweeted those back in March.


----------



## Festin

Open question, how does the latest fuel price look in your countries guys? 
Have it been going up or is it stable?


----------



## Kanadzie

more or less stable here in southwestern Ontario, Canada
about 0,96 CAD/L (0,67 EUR/L)

It was increasing though for past couple months as temperatures got warmer. In wintertime was common to see 79 cents and was usually low 80's.

I remember back in 2012 winter paying $1.35 

Toronto is actually a bit better than normal at about $1/L.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

today is the initiation of the San Fermín festival with the chupinazo in pamplona


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Bergen, Norway. It rains and it rains and it rains... at max 16C...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

German police arrested a Turkish truck driver near Osnabrück today. The trucker was driving from Izmir to the Netherlands without a break. According to the tachograph, the trucker was driving for 42 hours without a break. He came under suspicion after swerving across the road. It was not the first time he was arrested for exceeding driving hours. He got a fine of € 5,000 and the trucking company got a fine of € 19,000.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The latest Pokémon Go craze prompted a lot of DOTs to warn about not to play it while driving. This is in Arizona.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Summer weather in the Netherlands is total crap so far - loads of rain and low temperatures (today it's 16 C). But I'm glad I'm not in Córdoba, Spain:


----------



## italystf

Temperature ranges of almost 20°C within the same day are quite unusual in Europe. They occur more often in desert areas.


----------



## keber

Here is ideal for bike commuting, 15 in the morning and 22 in the afternoon.


----------



## Highway89

italystf said:


> Temperature ranges of almost 20°C within the same day are quite unusual in Europe. They occur more often in desert areas.


Some places in inner Spain with little influence from the ocean have such broad temperature ranges. 

City / Average max in July (ºC) / Average min in July / Temperature range:
Teruel: 31.3 / 13.0 (18.3)
Granada: 34.8 / 15.7 (19.1)
Molina de Aragón: 29.7 / 10.6 (19.1)

See the contrast with some coastal cities:
Tarifa: 23.9 / 19.4 (4.5)
Cádiz: 27.7 / 21.4 (6.3)
Hondarribia: 25.1 / 16.9 (8.2)


----------



## Verso

I hate night temperatures above 18°C.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> I hate night temperatures above 18°C.


I hate every temperature above 18 °C


----------



## ChrisZwolle

County yourself lucky that you don't live in Kuwait then...


----------



## Verso

Nights in the Mediterranean are usually very warm in summer, often not dropping below 25°C, probably because of the sea.


----------



## cinxxx

I hate temperatures below 20C...


----------



## Attus

Rheinbach Classics 2016

Rheinbach_Classics_2016_31 by Attila Németh, on Flickr
Rheinbach_Classics_2016_53 by Attila Németh, on Flickr

And many more...


----------



## radamfi

Are there still Hungarians on this thread? About a couple of years ago I briefly discussed getting Hungarian nationality with some people on here. Now with the Brexit vote I could really do with advice on getting dual citizenship.


----------



## JackFrost

Try this:

https://www.justlanded.com/english/Hungary/Hungary-Guide/Visas-Permits/Citizenship

Or if you are rich, you can buy it.


----------



## Verso

Geez, I hear a plane, a helicopter and an ambulance at the same time. :lol:


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Tromsø, in the Polar circle.
Unfortunately the weather is crap...


----------



## radamfi

JackFrost said:


> Try this:
> 
> https://www.justlanded.com/english/Hungary/Hungary-Guide/Visas-Permits/Citizenship
> 
> Or if you are rich, you can buy it.


That conflicts with other sources I have seen. I thought that if your parent is Hungarian then you are automatically Hungarian, and so you don't need to learn the language. I basically need someone who can help me do the application and can find the necessary birth certificates etc.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*Pokémon on the highway*

Barcelona police on Saturday had to rescue two Japanese tourists who had walked into a busy road tunnel in search of Pokémon.

At first police thought the pair were lost because they were staring intently at a tablet and mobile phone as if looking for a way out of the Rovira tunnel, a 1,270 metre-long tunnel in which pedestrians and cyclists are forbidden.

But when police stopped the two tourists at around 11am, they discovered they were in fact “hunting Pokémon” on the new game Pokémon Go, police sources told Spanish news agency, Efe.​
http://www.thelocal.es/20160718/tourists-playing-pokemon-go-rescued-from-barcelona-tunnel


----------



## Verso

Isn't this kind of a dumb game?


----------



## keokiracer

I wouldn't know, I don't play it...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't play games on my phone either, but it's very popular, I'm just back from a little cycling tour and I saw people everywhere playing it, often in small groups.


----------



## x-type

i play Ingress, also from Niantic. Pokemon is much more childish, i installed it before it was officially in Google Store, and uninstalled it after 3 days.


----------



## Verso

keokiracer said:


> I wouldn't know, I don't play it...


I'm asking those who know.


----------



## Fatfield

Some gormless spanner rang 999 to report a 'stolen Pokemon'. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-36825934


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's quite hot in France, up to 40 °C. The highest ever recorded in France is 44.1 °C.


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from the plane, flying to Oslo .


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Looks like Svartisen


----------



## Verso

I thought you were going to Nordkapp.


----------



## MichiH

I've clinched the German Autobahn Network last Sunday. That means, I drove on all German Autobahns from the beginning to the end, please refer to my cumulative travel tracking: http://tm.teresco.org/user/system.php?u=michih&sys=deua .

btw: Many systems recently got "active" (Andorra Carreteras Generales, Cyprus B Roads, Estonia Põhimaanteed, Luxembourg Nationalstroossen, Malta Arterial Roads, Romania Drumuri Naţionales,...) or "preview" (Germany Bundesstraßen, Hungary Főútjai, Poland Drogi Krajowa, Serbia Državni Put, Slovakia First Class Roads,...) status on Travel Mapping, see update list or highway browser.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I should move my clinched highways to that new site as well. Haven't updated it in 2 years... But I have 'clinched' 87.71% of the German Autobahn system (map). Most work is left in Bavaria.


----------



## x-type

i was just thinking if somewhere at the Internet has appeared similar web since cmap.m-plex isn't updated anymore. submitting immidiately!


----------



## MichiH

x-type said:


> i was just thinking if somewhere at the Internet has appeared similar web since cmap.m-plex isn't updated anymore. submitting immidiately!





ChrisZwolle said:


> I should move my clinched highways to that new site as well. Haven't updated it in 2 years...


You're welcomed both .

It's still the same format for list files but you can add comments with #.
For instance, I've added country headline to by list file. The list file must be sent to [email protected]. The site is usually updated once per day.



ChrisZwolle said:


> But I have 'clinched' 87.71% of the German Autobahn system (map). Most work is left in Bavaria.


My last section was A94 Malching bypass in Bavaria. I've clinched it Sunday morning .

I've clinched 79.05% of Dutch motorways and I'll add my first Norwegian routes next week .


----------



## x-type

MichiH said:


> You're welcomed both .
> 
> It's still the same list file but you can add comment with #.
> For instance, I've added country headline to by list file. The list file must be sent to [email protected]. The site is usually updated once per day.
> 
> 
> 
> My last section was A94 Malching bypass in Bavaria. I've clinched it Sunday morning .


tell me, i see that point numbers differ from old m-plex. will it accept list with m-plex point names, or i must change them on my list onto new names? for instance, Austrian A1, intersection with A10 near Salzburg used to be point A10 on m-plex, and now it is 298. must i change it to be accepted?


----------



## MichiH

x-type said:


> tell me, i see that point numbers differ from old m-plex. will it accept list with m-plex point names, or i must change them on my list onto new names? for instance, Austrian A1, intersection with A10 near Salzburg used to be point A10 on m-plex, and now it is 298. must i change it to be accepted?


Si has revised many systems (waypoint names are according to the rules now, for instance numbered exits have just the exit number now) but he should have kept used waypoint names as alternative names.

I'm not sure if it'll work for all of your lines. I recommend to send your list file and check the log file when the site will be updated. you'll get notes at the beginning of the log file like bogdymol.

A10 works for A1 waypoint 298 because it is an alternative name:



Code:


298 +A10 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=47.772142&lon=12.978415


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Anyone booked a vacation along the Persian Gulf? Nice tanning at 53 ºC / 127 ºF. This is in Basrah, Iraq.


----------



## x-type

I have just given you like from mobile app which are now available, it's not that I like idea of holidays in Basrah.


----------



## Verso

I still don't like that app for some reason.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I started using it again, it's improved somewhat compared to a year ago. I use it at work if there is a downtime in workload. The number of photos quickly consume a lot of bandwidth at 4G though.

Still, nothing beats typing a post with an actual keyboard and ways to quickly switch between windows.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> I started using it again, it's improved somewhat compared to a year ago. I use it at work if there is a downtime in workload. The number of photos quickly consume a lot of bandwidth at 4G though.
> 
> Still, nothing beats typing a post with an actual keyboard and ways to quickly switch between windows.


My operator unilaterally bumped by data bandwidth use to 20GB month (for 35 Euro


----------



## ChrisZwolle

On my PC I usually consume 100 GB per month - without downloading movies or games, just Youtube and Google Earth 

I have a lousy 750 MB/month data plan for my phone. I'm going to upgrade soon, but I don't like paying tens of euros per month for data I don't use as I'm often on wifi. I'm not that addicted to my phone. No Pokémon Go for me


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> On my PC I usually consume 100 GB per month - without downloading movies or games, just Youtube and Google Earth
> 
> I have a lousy 750 MB/month data plan for my phone. I'm going to upgrade soon, but I don't like paying tens of euros per month for data I don't use as I'm often on wifi. I'm not that addicted to my phone. No Pokémon Go for me


T-Mobile is offering 20GB for €21 on a Sim Only plan. They also include 250MB of EU data. 

Normally I use 12-15GB month on mobile and around 1TB on fiber home connection. I don't have a TV and I watch all my video stuff online and I like it on HD.


----------



## g.spinoza

Why suddenly my Skyscrapercity is in Spanish!??


----------



## MichiH

^^ You can select forum language in your user options. ES and EN is possible.

Enclaces --> Editar Opciones --> Lenguaje del Foro

Select EN and press "Guardar Cambios".


----------



## g.spinoza

It is already set to EN, but I see the forum in Spanish anyway.

EDIT: now it's back to English... WTF...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ That has been around since the beginning, see restrictions on geographic data in China on Wikipedia.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Yes, and the main square in the center of Ljubljana is written in Arabic.


lol
and i have found several Rastplatz things on Croatian motorways


----------



## MichiH

volodaaaa said:


> Awkward and strange times we are living in now. I open newspapers and see the tittle: "The German attacker was a psychopath" and I do not know if the article deal with the one from today or from Friday.


Sunday afternoon or sunday evening?

Friday but you forgot Monday :nuts:

Würzburg, München, Reutlingen, Ansbach. "Close" to me...



Attus said:


> But ... I drove in lots of similar congestions in Germany, and never overtook a car the queue driving on the shoulder. Not any. In Hungary a lot of cars did it.


Well, I don't drive much in NRW but I think it's quite common in Germany to use hard shoulder illegally in case of congestion... Maybe less compared to other countries...



g.spinoza said:


> It was less than 500 m from my exit, so it is legal to drive on the shoulder until the exit (at least in Italy, but I'm pretty sure in Germany too).


It's generally NOT allowed to use hard shoulders except of an emergency to stop your car there. It's often reported that it's not allowed to drive there in case of a congestion.

I've seen many times that cars or trucks block the hard shoulder.


I arrived in Norway today. Drove on motorway when the left lane was closed due to construction works. I'm used to merge late because it's mentatory in Germany (and makes sense!) but was (almost) blocked far away from the end of the lane by a car driving slowly to the left. I passed him though. When merging, the caravan in front of and a truck behind of me on the right tried me to not merge. I've managed it though . I'm happy that most of stupid German drivers have learned how to merge but I was really boggled today... hno:

btw: Finally sunset here .


----------



## Verso

I also merge as late as possible (ALAP ). If I won't, then someone else will. Besides, what's the point of creating one long line instead of two shorter lines?


----------



## Kanadzie

MichiH said:


> I'm used to merge late because it's mentatory in Germany (and makes sense!) but was (almost) blocked far away from the end of the lane by a car driving slowly to the left..


Where I live people always merge early and then get mad about people merging at the proper time.
In the morning commute there is a ramp where two lanes exist, and the right lane merges. The left lane always blocked and the right, typically free. 
A few times people swerve out of the left into the right to block me but I zip on the shoulder and wave a single finger :banana:


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> I arrived in Norway today. Drove on motorway when the left lane was closed due to construction works. I'm used to merge late because it's mentatory in Germany (and makes sense!) but was (almost) blocked far away from the end of the lane by a car driving slowly to the left. I passed him though. When merging, the caravan in front of and a truck behind of me on the right tried me to not merge. I've managed it though . I'm happy that most of stupid German drivers have learned how to merge but I was really boggled today... hno:
> 
> btw: Finally sunset here .


Merging late is mandatory in Germany?! I always thought of this as the most stupid and annoying habit of German drivers. I've seen drivers ignoring the possibility to easily merge in order to reach the end of the lane... And then get stuck. I was thinking "what's wrong with these guys"? In Italy we merge when there's space, and there is generally less delay in merging zones than in Germany.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> Merging late is mandatory in Germany?!


There are many "Reißverschluss erst in 600m" signs, i.e. "No merging before 600m" (of course any other number is possible). 
On the other side you may be sure that each car in the lane which goes on will let one car from the closing lane in. You shall not even check whether they let you in. Reißverschluss means literally "zip" and this zip-merging is mandatory both in Germany and in Austria.


----------



## g.spinoza

From my point of view, it's utter madness.


----------



## Attus

^^It's proven the fastest way if the traffic is heavy.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Zipper merges also apply in the Netherlands. They seem to work reasonably well, though it also seems to be frowned upon if you merge at the very last moment.

On the other hand, we don't have lane closures on busy motorways like in Germany, so there's almost no congestion due to road works (less than 3%). Lane or motorway closures are only at night or occassionaly on weekends.

A situation like last weekend with a busy Autobahn like A3 or A7 going to a single lane on one of the busiest holiday exodus days of the year would be unthinkable in the Netherlands.


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> ^^It's proven the fastest way if the traffic is heavy.


Maybe, but my experience is quite the opposite.


----------



## cinxxx

^^That's because in Italy driving is done differently


----------



## g.spinoza

I simply don't see the point in waiting up to the last moment to merge when you can do it before, provided there's enough space and you don't make anyone brake or slow down...


----------



## cinxxx

^^Not sure on motorways, but I encountered this in the city, and merging before and creating a long queue resulted in having a long empty lane and getting stuck on a green light or blocking other intersections on the way...


----------



## ukraroad

Google maps have changed designs so that expressways can be now distinguished from motorways at the first glance(I'll show the map of the Lodz voivodership: https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6283699,19.5527494,8z.. Unfortunately, not without flaws:bash:, such as with the M03 in Ukraine between Kyiv and Boryspil


----------



## jdb.2

g.spinoza said:


> I simply don't see the point in waiting up to the last moment to merge when you can do it before, provided there's enough space and you don't make anyone brake or slow down...


It's a shame to see everyone moving from lane 2 > 1 when seeing the merge sign 2 km before, keeping that 2 km of precious space unused.
If everyone goes from 2>1 too early, the queue might become too long and disturb traffic on intersections further behind, especially in heavily congested countries like NL & B. So it makes sense to utilize all available asphalt. In Belgium this behaviour is also mandatory. I always drive until the end of the lane, but I make sure the speed difference with the other lane is not too big, otherwise other people will think this is asocial behavior.

Unless of course you are talking about a situation where there is no congestion, then you are right.


----------



## Verso

If the main line is moving reasonably fast, then it's indeed better to merge ASAP, otherwise late merging will create unnecessary congestion.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ That's exactly my point. What I was saying is that, that kind of signals forces you to wait to the end of the lane to merge, even when you can do that earlier with less problems - and that's exactly what I saw in my little experience in Germany.


----------



## volodaaaa

I completely agree with cinxxx. There is almost no difference between merging at the end of a lane and merging at the very start of the congestion. You still need to find a gap between two cars. You are, furthermore, unable to prevent the situation from drivers using the closing lane.

The best scenario is to merge just before an obstacle. If all drivers kept the distance between car, it would really resemble a zip.


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> There is almost no difference between merging at the end of a lane and merging at the very start of the congestion. You still need to find a gap between two cars.


I wasn't actually talking about merging and finding a gap between cars at the beginning, just placing yourself as the last car in line (but only if there's no congestion, otherwise I proceed to the end).


----------



## riiga

Florida had these for a while in the late 80s. Pic is from a 1987 travel programme, but I don't know where in Flordia this short mention of "some places in Florida putting up familiar road signs for Europeans" was filmed though.


----------



## jdb.2

How many cars could there be in the USA with metric speedometers?
I imagine even less than in the UK, so this looks a solution for a non-existent problem.

Are imported cars with metric speedometers legal to drive in the USA?


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ It is very typical for US cars to have dual-reading speedometers with a secondary km/h scale, probably over 90% of cars are set up in such a way
Import rules for foreign cars are hard but tourists don't have to do anything


----------



## Verso

I've just talked to a family from South Korea staying here in Ljubljana for a couple of days and man, these people are like from the Moon.  Smiling all the time and extremely shy. Daughters were looking down in the floor and almost didn't shake hands with me, lol. I would understand if they were from North Korea. :lol:


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ go bring them soju then will talk more :lol:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

jdb.2 said:


> How many cars could there be in the USA with metric speedometers?
> I imagine even less than in the UK, so this looks a solution for a non-existent problem.
> 
> Are imported cars with metric speedometers legal to drive in the USA?


Speedometers on new cars in the UK have had to show kilometres since 1984. Apparently un some cars you can switch between kilometres and miles but normally speedometers are dual-reading.


----------



## jdb.2

Cars with digital dashboard can be switched between km/h and mph, although this setting is not user-accessible on cars I have seen.


----------



## italystf

Some areas in Italy have already Street View imagery from June 2016. That's a pretty fast upload.
https://www.google.it/maps/@45.6702...4!1sHzNP3qTjCRnqYtIZU82X6w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656


----------



## CNGL

I was surprised they updated a suburb of Madrid to that same date a few days ago. That was fast.


----------



## CNGL

Don't come to Huesca in the next few days, we've got mad. Also, this is a no rape zone, but not to the point of signing that at the entrance like Pamplona did.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Comparison of old and new Google Maps mapping for Denver, Colorado.

old:









new:









:down:


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from London :cheers2:


----------



## bogdymol

I have also been to UK 2 times in the past 2 weeks... And 25 different times in the past 2 years... :lol:


----------



## MichiH

cinxxx said:


> Greetings from London :cheers2:





> Been to *A, AL, BiH, CH, CZ, D, DK, E, F, EST, FL, GBZ, GR, HR, H, I, L, LT, M, MNE, MK, N, P, PL, RO, RSM, S, SK, SLO, SRB* (GB to follow)


I don't believe


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> I've just talked to a family from South Korea staying here in Ljubljana for a couple of days and man, these people are like from the Moon.  Smiling all the time and extremely shy. Daughters were looking down in the floor and almost didn't shake hands with me, lol. I would understand if they were from North Korea. :lol:


maybe shaking hands is something with their cultural habbits :dunno:
last year we had some exhibition of photography from Iran in my city, some culture attaché from Iranian embassy came there, and we have lots of women in our city council. it was little bit funny but also uncomfortable to see him avoiding shaking hands with women (he was taking a bow instead  )


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> maybe shaking hands is something with their cultural habbits :dunno:
> last year we had some exhibition of photography from Iran in my city, some culture attaché from Iranian embassy came there, and we have lots of women in our city council. it was little bit funny but also uncomfortable to see him avoiding shaking hands with women (he was taking a bow instead  )


Shaking hands is seen as a rude thing among certain cultures, certainly it is in the Muslim world.
Some years ago Berlusconi almost created a diplomatic incident when he tried to shake hands with a Muslim woman, ignoring that it wasn't acceptable in her culture.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ But clearly Berlusconi was trying hard to do the acceptable thing for her culture
If he was following Berlusconi-culture he would have been not shaking her hand, but something altogether different :lol:


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Shaking hands is seen as a rude thing among certain cultures, certainly it is in the Muslim world.
> Some years ago Berlusconi almost created a diplomatic incident when he tried to shake hands with a Muslim woman, ignoring that it wasn't acceptable in her culture.


It is obviously rude to shake hands only on intersexual basis. Men's handshake is acceptable there.

Frankly, in this described situation I find Iranian behaviour rude because it was happening in the country where shaking hands with women is normal thing.


----------



## bogdymol

My car turned older today...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

When I bought my first car in 2005, a 1994 Toyota Corolla, it was recommended not to buy a car from the early 1990s with much more than 100,000 kms on it if you wanted a reliable car. 

I'm not sure how it is today. I bought a nearly new car in January (show model with only 12,000 kms on it) so I don't have to worry about mileage for a while. But some people say that today's downsized engines don't last very long due to the high load. 

If you said 15 years ago that you would buy a large family car with a 1.4 L engine, people would say you're crazy. Even MPV's like Opel Zafira have entry-level engines starting with 1.4 L. A Ford C-Max even starts with a 1.0 L three-cylinder engine.


----------



## Alex_ZR

bogdymol said:


> My car turned older today...


I expect that my car would reach that mileage in...2024.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> If you said 15 years ago that you would buy a large family car with a 1.4 L engine, people would say you're crazy. Even MPV's like Opel Zafira have entry-level engines starting with 1.4 L. A Ford C-Max even starts with a 1.0 L three-cylinder engine.


they put it even in Mondeo 
but that is ok, technology has gone far enough to hold it reliable (unfortunately, we will hardly have cars making 600.000 km anymore, even Mazda 3 with giant 2,2 diesel - no way).

i find it ok. if modern diesel must have turbo boost, why petrol engines wouldn't have it too? look at Talisman - only 1,6 litres diesel engines are available. 6-7 years ago the bottom was 2,0, so similar trend is with diesels, although we will hardly see 1,0 TDI in Passat


----------



## Blackraven

Personally, I'm not convinced about having a three cylinder engine on a compact car (C-segment vehicle).

As for executive mid-size (e.g. D-segment), 2000cc and above is the bare minimum...........and which is why for the Peugeot 508, it's best to go with the GT variant (and its 2.2 liter diesel engine)


----------



## Festin

ChrisZwolle said:


> If you said 15 years ago that you would buy a large family car with a 1.4 L engine, people would say you're crazy. Even MPV's like Opel Zafira have entry-level engines starting with 1.4 L. A Ford C-Max even starts with a 1.0 L three-cylinder engine.


Those cars doesnt last long. A family car with anything less than 2.0 is not recommended if you are thinking long term or buying used one. 
But also it depends on how you use it. Are just going to drive kids to school and training in the local area I doubt it is any problem. But are you going on long car trips, no way. 
I personally always try to go for the topmodell from the manufactor. I would never buy a V50 from volvo but would try to get the same class from Skoda Octavia instead. But v70 is not a problem since that it is the main car. (Just for example, not sure if v50 are still produced and v70 are going to get replaced by a bigger v90)


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> When I bought my first car in 2005, a 1994 Toyota Corolla, it was recommended not to buy a car from the early 1990s with much more than 100,000 kms on it if you wanted a reliable car.
> 
> I'm not sure how it is today. I bought a nearly new car in January (show model with only 12,000 kms on it) so I don't have to worry about mileage for a while. But some people say that today's downsized engines don't last very long due to the high load.
> 
> If you said 15 years ago that you would buy a large family car with a 1.4 L engine, people would say you're crazy. Even MPV's like Opel Zafira have entry-level engines starting with 1.4 L. A Ford C-Max even starts with a 1.0 L three-cylinder engine.


I am not sure. We were used to have cheaper but new cars in our family. We usually sell them once they reached 140 000 kms or 5-6 years. You can still get enough money back if you had taken care of it.

Now my car is 9 years old and slightly below 200 000 kms. This year, I spent about 2 500 € on repairs. Almost everything got broken and I am still afraid what will be the next one. However the car was still reliable in 2015.

I am to buy Kia Ceed SW in next 3 months, once my trial period is over (want to use leasing service).


----------



## x-type

Blackraven said:


> Personally, I'm not convinced about having a three cylinder engine on a compact car (C-segment vehicle).
> 
> As for executive mid-size (e.g. D-segment), 2000cc and above is the bare minimum...........and which is why for the Peugeot 508, it's best to go with the GT variant (and its 2.2 liter diesel engine)


you see, it is out of fashion. outdated i'd say. 508 is already quite old model, and i think it is being sold only with 1,6 and 2,0 HDi diesels (and 1,6 turbo petrol). i bet that new model will be based on 1,6 engines, both petrol and diesel.

or Volvo S/V90. only 2,0 litres (bi)turbo engines, diesel and petrol. 5 years ago such car would demand 6 cylinder engines, at leat 2,5 or 3,0 litres.

i think that Mazda is the only manufacturer who still doesn't have small turbo engines to offer.


----------



## Surel

x-type said:


> they put it even in Mondeo
> but that is ok, technology has gone far enough to hold it reliable (unfortunately, we will hardly have cars making 600.000 km anymore, even Mazda 3 with giant 2,2 diesel - no way).
> 
> i find it ok. if modern diesel must have turbo boost, why petrol engines wouldn't have it too? look at Talisman - only 1,6 litres diesel engines are available. 6-7 years ago the bottom was 2,0, so similar trend is with diesels, although we will hardly see 1,0 TDI in Passat


Diesel and petrol... those are quite different pressures, temperatures and rpms.

All those have substantial effect on the motor wear. Not mentioning that all those additional parts are having their own problems.

On the other side, the production quality and quality control are tremendously improved over the years.


----------



## x-type

Surel said:


> Diesel and petrol... those are quite different pressures, temperatures and rpms.


Of course, but the trends are the same. Could you have imagined 1,6 litres diesel in D-segment 10 years ago?  the same as 1,2 petrol.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Even MPV's like Opel Zafira have entry-level engines starting with 1.4 L. A Ford C-Max even starts with a 1.0 L three-cylinder engine.


My previous car was Skoda Yeti with a 1.2 litre engine and a 7-speed DSG gearbox. I was quite amazed how powerful it was. There has been some noise around the durability of that box. Anyway, in my driving style the first 100,000 km were without any problems.


----------



## bogdymol

x-type said:


> i think that Mazda is the only manufacturer who still doesn't have small turbo engines to offer.


My parents have bought a Mazda CX-3, 2.0 L petrol engine, 120 hp, 2 weeks ago. I found it slightly under-powered for a 2.0 L engine, but on the other side it might be more reliable on the long run (they intend to keep the car for many years).

This is the first photo, from when they picked it up from the dealer:


----------



## Suburbanist

What are your opinion on (now bankrupt) SAAB cars?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A nice car if you're over 50 

Seriously, most SAAB drivers seem to be gray, middle-aged men.


----------



## g.spinoza

I just hit the 170,000 km mark with 7-years-old 1.4 l diesel Peugeot 207. The engine is seriously too weak for the car (it doesn't reach 70 hp) but I had no major problems. I only changed the cam belt at around 140,000 km...


----------



## keber

My previous Honda accord reached 350.000 km and another 100.000 could be done easily but new owner was not paying attention to sudden strange noise from the machine. In a few weeks cam broke and destroyed the engine.
I bought current one (2010 model, 2.4 l 200 hp, automatic) with 79.000 km and now has 125.000 km in just a year and a half. Before I was very much against automatic transmission but now I can't live without it. Also I like bigger engines, as they have more torque and are more durable as the don't need very expensive electronics and turbines. It eats a bit more oil than smaller engines but that is easy to handle.


----------



## italystf

Funny thread title in Aaroads forum
http://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=17301.0
Austria (without kangourous) and Slovenia (never been with the Czechs)
:lol:


----------



## CNGL

There are some crazy titles out there . One of them was 'a modest proposal' for renumbering every interstate to a split route of the Western I-86. IIRC I-95 in Maine became I-86 followed by 31 directional suffixes. In words of formulanone (edit: not one of the admins as I previously thought), 'What has been SEEN cannot be WNSEEN'.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> A Ford C-Max even starts with a 1.0 L three-cylinder engine.


I drove a Ford Focus with 1.0 L turbo engine last September (125hp). It was quite comfortable to drive and easy to reach 180km/h but my 10 years old 2.0 L diesel turbo Ford Focus was a little bit faster. My new Ford Focus has a 2.0 L gasoline turbo engine though... 

It's turning 5 months tomorrow and it has 25,000km. It's currently in a car repair shop because of defect tire sensors.......... They've changed them today but an online test is required. Their internet was damn slow and they couldn't make the test...... Modern techniques....


----------



## Blackraven

x-type said:


> you see, it is out of fashion. outdated i'd say. 508 is already quite old model, and i think it is being sold only with 1,6 and 2,0 HDi diesels (and 1,6 turbo petrol). i bet that new model will be based on 1,6 engines, both petrol and diesel.


The 508 already had its MMC facelift...........so probably, a Full Model Change would be coming in 2-3 years time.

Now as for your comment, only 1.6 and 2.0 liter displacement engines are being sold in the EU (or any market that requires Euro 5-6).

For markets that only require Euro 2-4, then the 2.2 engine is being sold...........and the Philippines is one of the 'dumping grounds' that Peugeot can use to sell their 508 GT with their existing 2.2 liter diesel.




> or Volvo S/V90. only 2,0 litres (bi)turbo engines, diesel and petrol. 5 years ago such car would demand 6 cylinder engines, at leat 2,5 or 3,0 litres.


Volvo is now mostly going with the four-banger approach (as they don't have rights with Yamaha to sell the 4.4 liter V8 anymore  )



> i think that Mazda is the only manufacturer who still doesn't have small turbo engines to offer.


Mazda has a put a turbo on their 2.5 liter petrol/gasoline engine for the CX9..........but I don't think it will be sold in Europe afaik.

P.S.
Anyways, my dream car is still the 


BMW M5 F10










One day you will be mine


----------



## g.spinoza

Bad earthquake in Central Italy this morning, it destroyed almost completely three little towns (Accumoli, Amatrice, Pescara del Tronto). Some pictures:

































13 reported dead in the first hours. Unfortunately, it seems that many more are to come.

Amatrice is known for being the birthplace of famous "amatriciana" sauce for pasta.

EDIT: Transport-wise, it seems that 2 viaducts on SS 4 near Accumoli moved 15 cm. The road is still open to allow operation of search and rescue and hospitalization of those in need. Another bridge near Amatrice, on SS 260, is about to collapse.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's bad. Is there significant damage in the larger cities in the region? Terni, Foligno and Ascoli Piceno are only 30 - 40 kilometers away from the epicenter. Not to mention L'Aquila...


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's bad. Is there significant damage in the larger cities in the region? Terni, Foligno and Ascoli Piceno are only 30 - 40 kilometers away from the epicenter. Not to mention L'Aquila...


It seems that destruction is localized to few towns around the Accumoli epicenter. Some damage also at Norcia and Castelluccio di Norcia, but no consequences on larger cities. 
It has been reported that it was felt in Rome, Naples, Florence and all the way north up to Rimini.


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> It has been reported that it was felt in Rome, Naples, Florence and all the way north up to Rimini.


I didn't feel it, but it was felt in higher buildings in Ljubljana and even Maribor. So terrible.


----------



## g.spinoza

An image of SS 4 Salaria road damaged by the quake. Unfortunately death toll has risen to a dreadful figure of 120.










http://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/20...ssestate_dal_sisma-146552639/1/?ref=HRESS-2#1


----------



## Verso

Apparently these old houses in Italy are not suitable for living any more. Is it possible to adjust them for earthquakes or not?


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Apparently these old houses in Italy are not suitable for living any more. Is it possible to adjust them for earthquakes or not?


Newspapers are now pointing out the fact that it would need 100 billion euro to adjust these old buildings to be earthquake-proof. A friend of mine, an engineer, told me that in the vast majority of cases you can't patch them up to be compliant with today's requirement and it would be cheaper and safer to tear them down and rebuild them.


----------



## Verso

^ I thought so. It would be a pity to just bulldoze all those charming old towns, but living there is becoming Russian roulette.


----------



## italystf

Hopefully they will rebuild these villages like before but with modern safety standards. I hope they won't do like in L'Aquila, where they put people in poorly built apartment blocks built where there used to be countryside and left much of the old city in ruin. hno:
A good example of reconstruction is Norcia, that was damaged by earthquakes twice, in 1979 and in 1997. Since it was rebuilt with modern standards, it didn't receive serious damages this time, despite being quite close to the epicentre.


----------



## Blackraven

From my understanding, Italy is the place in Europe that has the highest-level of seismic activity. As such, building codes in Italy have been made stricter so that there would be higher levels of earthquake resistance (and I believe that Italy has also integrated provisions of Eurocode 8 which detail EU-wide standards for earthquake-resistant structures)

Unfortunately, for those old ancient houses and buildings that have existed for decades, centuries..........or even thousands of years, they did not stand a chance at all in this earthquake (compared to 21st century structures).

Thankfully, with the recent seismic data that was captured from this recent earthquake, it will definitely provide more academic info for seismic studies and it will encourage everyone to invest in earthquake retrofitting......and to build houses & structures with greater seismic resistance.


----------



## MattiG

Blackraven said:


> From my understanding, Italy is the place in Europe that has the highest-level of seismic activity. As such, building codes in Italy have been made stricter so that there would be higher levels of earthquake resistance (and I believe that Italy has also integrated provisions of Eurocode 8 which detail EU-wide standards for earthquake-resistant structures)


This chart shows a statistical model of the seismic risks in Europe. Italy, Balkan and Iceland are located on the most risky areas. (Sorry about the size of the image. Cannot reduce without losing readability.)


----------



## Verso

I'm eating some grapes and there are spiders in them.  The grapes are really good, but I'll avoid this type in the future, because I hate spiders.


----------



## winnipeg

Verso said:


> I'm eating some grapes and there are spiders in them.  The grapes are really good, but I'll avoid this type in the future, because I hate spiders.


Oh, common, like we say to kids, the small beast don't eat the bigger one... 

At least you can say that those grapes were not so much chemicaly treated with pesticides or others things like that who will hurt you much more than this poor little spider !!


----------



## Verso

^^ Three spiders, not just one.  It pissed me off because I rinsed the grapes for really long, so I thought they were clean... and then I almost eat a spider. The grapes were very close to each other, I guess spiders were stuck.  But you're right, it's all bio.


----------



## winnipeg

Just saw this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns30XeulhHo a compilation of crashes inside Slovak tunnels made by the national motorway company.... with a special music


----------



## CNGL

Greetings from (barely inside) France


----------



## Kanadzie

Verso said:


> I'm eating some grapes and there are spiders in them.  The grapes are really good, but I'll avoid this type in the future, because I hate spiders.


I love to eat grapes 
Well I drink them at least  no chance of spider :banana:


----------



## bogdymol

Milky Way photographed by me half an hour ago in the back yard of the house where I live:


----------



## winnipeg

bogdymol said:


> Milky Way photographed by me half an hour ago in the back yard of the house where I live:
> 
> http://i.imgur.com/gtFZrND.jpg
> 
> http://i.imgur.com/VJNdJRZ.jpg


Oh very nice, you must live in a remote area to have that less light polution, you must be lucky in that way! 

I also took some stars photos 3 weeks ago when I traveled in Austria, I managed to be inside austrian alps (one of the part of Europe with the less light polution), during night when it was the perseids time (lots of shooting stars), I was completly alone in the full dark at 1800m (and 2°C outside), it was a bit scary  but my eyes enjoyed the show I saw the most impressive sky and the most impressive shooting stars that I never saw before...  Unfortunatly the photos I made are not really representative of what I saw, it was my first stars photography ever and I probably choose the wrong lens to bring with me, but it's okay...

(Those photos are only a bit color edited with Lightroom, I don't have the skills to use Photoshop  )

 

 

And before that I also photographed a good looking Austrian cow on the road to the top


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Since Google Maps doesn't fully work in South Korea due to legal issues, the roads are still displayed in the old GMaps colour scheme. Note the difference between North and South Korea:









Or between South Korea and Japan if you prefer:









Sorry if this has already been mentioned here.


----------



## Verso

I've just encountered a Geisterfahrer! Some hundred-year-old grandpa is driving in wrong direction on Celovška cesta in Ljubljana (speed limit 70 km/h). :lol: And there's a car from Turkey ahead of me, lol.


----------



## g.spinoza

It's amazing how German language has a specific word for this


----------



## winnipeg

Verso said:


> ^^ Wooden ware and pottery fair and handicraft festival in Ribnica (~35 km SSE of Ljubljana). It says in the article there were tens of thousands of visitors. :nuts: When I went for a lunch, about ten gypsies sat next to me and one of them had a machete with him, so it was a bit uncomfortable.


Ok, interesting!  A machete... :nuts:


----------



## CNGL

I've appeared several times on the local newspaper. Last time I did so while wearing a T-shirt I worship .


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> ^^ Wooden ware and pottery fair and handicraft festival in Ribnica (~35 km SSE of Ljubljana). It says in the article there were tens of thousands of visitors. :nuts: When I went for a lunch, about ten gypsies sat next to me and one of them had a machete with him, so it was a bit uncomfortable.


I would have left and called police immediatly.


----------



## italystf

Today in Muggia, Italy. This military vehicle had a handbrake failure.
Ironically, it says '_operazione strade sicure_' (operation safe roads).









http://www.triesteprima.it/cronaca/furgone-esercito-in-mare-guasto-6-settembre-2016.html


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> I would have left and called police immediatly.


He bought it on the fair, because it was still packed in transparent foil.  I wanted to leave, but stupid waitress forgot to bring me a sausage - twice! It took her so long that the gypsies left sooner than me.  Btw, among guests was also mayor of Ribnica's Italian twin town Arcevia.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Yesterday after the rain, near Zrenjanin:










(not my photo)


----------



## x-type

at sunday i saw really rare thing - car with old Czech plates. at first I couldn't recognize it, but is was so familiar from somewhere, it took me few secondes before I realized that i saw thousands of them in 1990es. how often they are in CZ?

also, weird thing is that it was Citroën BX in perfect condition, as it was bought 1 hour ago. and it was in some crazy yellow colour, like this one (I don't remember was it GTi or not; mayboe it was the one at the photo - check the plates  )


----------



## volodaaaa

I think you have misspelled 'czechoslovak' :-D


----------



## Tenjac

Alex_ZR said:


> Yesterday after the rain, near Zrenjanin:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (not my photo)


Nice, indeed. We can see that the second rainbow has reversed order of colours.


----------



## MattiG

Tenjac said:


> Nice, indeed. We can see that the second rainbow has reversed order of colours.


That is true. The primary rainbow consist of the rays making a turn of about 138 degrees in a water drop because of total internal reflection. Thus, the primary rainbow is located 42 degrees from the antisolar point. If the elevation of the Sun exceeds 42 degrees, there is no rainbow.

The secondary rainbow is the collection of rays making two turns inside a water drop, and turning about 231 degrees. Therefore it is visible at 51 degrees from the antisolar point. It is dimmer than the primary one because of longer path inside the drop.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> I think you have misspelled 'czechoslovak' :-D


no, it was Czech indeed because it had registration stickers on. now i see according to that it has ben issued in period 1996-2000 (i though that stickers were present also in early 1990es but i was obviously wrong)


----------



## Verso

I have a question: is 41% closer to one half (1/2) or to one third (1/3)?


----------



## keber

1/3
Use math, not forum.


----------



## MattiG

keber said:


> 1/3
> Use math, not forum.


The correct answer is subject to the definition of "closer". 

The arithmetic midpoint of the two figures is 0.4167 and the geometric one is 0.4082.

Thus, the question is ambiguous. A surprise?


----------



## italystf

Of course matematically it's closer to 1/3: (41-~33.33=~7.67)<(50-41=9)

However, according to the context, it may be more appropriate to say "more than a third" or "less than half", depend if you want that figure to appear high or low:
"More than a third of partecipants agreed": quite a lot of people agreed.
"Less than half of partecipants agreed": not enough people agreed.


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> 1/3
> Use math, not forum.


Are you sure? 



MattiG said:


> The correct answer is subject to the definition of "closer".
> 
> The arithmetic midpoint of the two figures is 0.4167 and the geometric one is 0.4082.
> 
> Thus, the question is ambiguous. A surprise?


What about 40.5%?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I took a 6134 kilometer vacation / road trip over the past 12 days. The main destination was the Spanish side of the Pyreneees. I've been to Catalunya, Aragón, Navarra and Basque Country. 

The map is rough, I've driven much more roads in the Pyrenees (otherwise I wouldn't have driven 6000+ kms) and I've also been to Zaragoza and Vitoria. 










An interesting observation is that western Catalonia looks much poorer than Aragón, Navarra or Basque Country. The buildings are ugly, poorly maintained and the general ambiance was lacking, both in villages and larger towns like Balaguer. It didn't seem attractive. Villages and towns in Aragón, Navarra and Basque Country look much more attractive / livable. Some valleys in Basque Country smell like fish though. Lots of processing industry.


----------



## CNGL

^^ As I've already said, how you dare to pass through my hometown and don't meet me?


Verso said:


> I have a question: is 41% closer to one half (1/2) or to one third (1/3)?


Regardless of arithmetically or geometrically, 41% is closer to my avatar :troll:.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

An interesting observation is that western Catalonia looks much poorer than Aragón, Navarra or Basque Country. The buildings are ugly, poorly maintained and the general ambiance was lacking, both in villages and larger towns like Balaguer. It didn't seem attractive. Villages and towns in Aragón, Navarra and Basque Country look much more attractive / livable. Some valleys in Basque Country smell like fish though. Lots of processing industry.[/QUOTE]

in spain , we should improve the maintaince of many buildings


----------



## keber

MattiG said:


> Thus, the question is ambiguous. A surprise?


I'm an engineer so I think with numbers and numbers only as they have to be correct. I knew that it is a tricky question for some but for me it is just math.


----------



## winnipeg

A small question for those who knows : which Balkan country has the cheapest diesel prices? (Between Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo)


----------



## Highway89

ChrisZwolle said:


> I took a 6134 kilometer vacation / road trip over the past 12 days. The main destination was the Spanish side of the Pyreneees. I've been to Catalunya, Aragón, Navarra and Basque Country.
> 
> The map is rough, I've driven much more roads in the Pyrenees (otherwise I wouldn't have driven 6000+ kms) and I've also been to Zaragoza and Vitoria.


Wow, how many km have you driven so far over the year? 20,000? 

Did you drive the Etzegarate pass (N-I)? And, if so, north- or southbound? Also, how did you like L'Occitane (A20)? I've heard it's quite scenic in some parts.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I bought this car in January, I've driven 18,000 kms with it, of which 14,000 km was driven outside the Netherlands 

The fuel mileage is quite good, I usually get 19 to 20 km per liter (around 5 L/100 km). Mountain driving actually gets me the best mileage, despite consuming 10-12L/100 km on long inclines, it's of course 0L/100 km going down (only idling and A/C, the car indicates 0L/100 km for that). 

I did drive the Etzegarate / Extegarate Pass, it's quite nice. 

In Spain I drove the following motorways;

* AP-7 La Jonquera - Girona
* A-2 near Girona (short stretch)
* C-25 the entire route from Girona to Cervera (scenic!)
* A-2 from Cevera to Lleida
* A-14 near Lleida
* AP-2 Lleida - Zaragoza
* Z-40 around Zaragoza
* A-23 Zaragoza - Monrepos Pass
* A-22 Huesca - Lleida
* C-13 in Lleida
* A-23 Sabiñánigo - Jaca
* A-21 Asso-Veral - Pamplona
* PA-30 around Pamplona
* A-15 / AP-15 Pamplona - San Sebastian
* A-10 Irurtzun - Altsasu
* A-1 Vitoria - Altsasu
* A-1/N-1 Altsasu - San Sebastián
* GI-20 through San Sebastián
* GI-632 Beasain - Antzuola
* N-636 Elorrio - Durango

And a large number of roads in the Pyrenees, including 3 mountain passes on the French border (Pierre St. Matin, Portalet, Larrau) and Port de la Bonaigua, the highest one I've driven. 

Regarding A20 in France, it's scenic mostly from La Souterraine to Montauban, with the most scenic area being around Cahors (i.e. the Dordogne area). It's no match for A75, however.


----------



## Highway89

ChrisZwolle said:


> I did drive the Etzegarate / Extegarate Pass, it's quite nice.
> * A-1/N-1 Altsasu - San Sebastián


Oh, so you drove the newest carriageway, you didn't get the chance to _enjoy _the hairpins :lol: 
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.9549105,-2.2332599,601m/data=!3m1!1e3

Anyway, you drove some pretty scenic routes  I agree that the C-25 through the Guilleries mountains is amazing. Did you drive the short stretch of the A-14 _on purpose_? From what I've heard, it actually takes more time than the old N-230.

Larrau is one of my favourite mountain passes. It has a very high-mountain feeling and it even features a corkscrew on the Spanish side: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.9636322,-0.7731732,592m/data=!3m1!1e3


----------



## Suburbanist

Zaragoza-Pamplona through the route you picked is quite a fun drive. It can very extremely windy at some points.


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> Of course matematically it's closer to 1/3: (41-~33.33=~7.67)<(50-41=9)


There are quite few "of course" things in the world.

In the arithmetic sequence y(x+1) = y(x)+1/6; y(0) = 1/3, 0.41 is closer to 1/3 because y(0.5) = 5/12 = 0.41667 > 0.41

In the geometric sequence y(x+1) = y(x)*3/2; y(0) = 1/3, 0.41 is closer to 1/2 because y(0.5) = sqrt(1/6) = 0.4082 < 0.41

In the harmonic sequence y(x) = 1/(3-x); y(0) = 1/3; 0.41 is closer to 1/2 because y(0.5) = 1/((2+3)/2) = 0.40 < 0.41

In the octal notation (base 8), 0.41 = 4/8+1/64 = 33/64 > 1/2, thus closer to 1/2.

Etc


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Highway89 said:


> Larrau is one of my favourite mountain passes. It has a very high-mountain feeling and it even features a corkscrew on the Spanish side: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.9636322,-0.7731732,592m/data=!3m1!1e3


That's the Pierre St Martin Pass (I don't know if it has a name in Spanish, it is not posted there). Larrau is one pass to the west, which is also quite nice, I took a hike there. 

Some of the landscape in the area looks very similar to the Sierra Nevada in California, especially the exposed rocks with pine trees around Pierre St Martin Pass and Garganta del Escalar. Then again some of those 'congosts' in western Catalunya look similar to Arizona or Utah.


----------



## bogdymol

I am now on a cruise ship between Sweden and Finland. This ship makes a quick stop on Aaland islands for the sole purpose of beeing allowed to sell tax free items. There's a big shop here and the locals buy dozens of alcohol bottles and cigarettes.


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's the Pierre St Martin Pass (I don't know if it has a name in Spanish, it is not posted there). Larrau is one pass to the west, which is also quite nice, I took a hike there.
> 
> Some of the landscape in the area looks very similar to the Sierra Nevada in California, especially the exposed rocks with pine trees around Pierre St Martin Pass and Garganta del Escalar. Then again some of those 'congosts' in western Catalunya look similar to Arizona or Utah.


In Spanish it's Piedra de San Martín. Also, have you driven the Ventamillo gorge? That is both scenic and damn challenging.


ChrisZwolle said:


> I bought this car in January, I've driven 18,000 kms with it, of which 14,000 km was driven outside the Netherlands
> 
> The fuel mileage is quite good, I usually get 19 to 20 km per liter (around 5 L/100 km). Mountain driving actually gets me the best mileage, despite consuming 10-12L/100 km on long inclines, it's of course 0L/100 km going down (only idling and A/C, the car indicates 0L/100 km for that).
> 
> I did drive the Etzegarate / Extegarate Pass, it's quite nice.
> 
> In Spain I drove the following motorways;
> 
> * AP-7 La Jonquera - Girona
> * A-2 near Girona (short stretch)
> * C-25 the entire route from Girona to Cervera (scenic!)
> * A-2 from Cevera to Lleida
> * A-14 near Lleida
> * AP-2 Lleida - Zaragoza
> * Z-40 around Zaragoza
> * A-23 Zaragoza - Monrepos Pass
> * A-22 Huesca - Lleida
> * C-13 in Lleida
> * A-23 Sabiñánigo - Jaca
> * A-21 Asso-Veral - Pamplona
> * PA-30 around Pamplona
> * A-15 / AP-15 Pamplona - San Sebastian
> * A-10 Irurtzun - Altsasu
> * A-1 Vitoria - Altsasu
> * A-1/N-1 Altsasu - San Sebastián
> * GI-20 through San Sebastián
> * GI-632 Beasain - Antzuola
> * N-636 Elorrio - Durango
> 
> And a large number of roads in the Pyrenees, including 3 mountain passes on the French border (Pierre St. Matin, Portalet, Larrau) and Port de la Bonaigua, the highest one I've driven.
> 
> Regarding A20 in France, it's scenic mostly from La Souterraine to Montauban, with the most scenic area being around Cahors (i.e. the Dordogne area). It's no match for A75, however.


There are two sections you cannot have done: A-23 Isuela gorge-Arguis (U/C, and also Nueno-Isuela gorge as due to a rockslide all traffic has to use Southbound lanes) and A-21 Tiermas-Sigües (not even yet U/C). Also, you haven't driven A-23 near Sabiñanigo (The section bypassing part of it from South to East, not the one to Jaca)? It's not on your list.

I realized we both clinched the latest section of A-21 (Sigües to A-1601) on the same day.


----------



## Verso

MattiG said:


> In the harmonic sequence y(x) = 1/(3-x); y(0) = 1/3; 0.41 is closer to 1/2 because y(0.5) = 1/((2+3)/2) = 0.40 < 0.41


Ignoring the official formula, we can see that 100% ÷ 41% = 2.4, which is closer to 2 than to 3. Also, 1 ÷ 2.5 = 0.4 = 40%.


----------



## Kanadzie

Highway89 said:


> Wow, how many km have you driven so far over the year? 20,000?


Crazy Europeans and their small countries :lol:

I made maybe 40 000 km in past 12 months

I am just driving to work and home mostly, not even a good vacation :nuts:


----------



## keokiracer

Small country has nothing to do with that, my neighbour drives over 70k per year...

Chris also cycles to work, so that makes the amount of kms travelled/year a lot smaller. You just live (relatively) far away from where you work...


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> I am now on a cruise ship between Sweden and Finland. This ship makes a quick stop on Aaland islands for the sole purpose of beeing allowed to sell tax free items. There's a big shop here and the locals buy dozens of alcohol bottles and cigarettes.


This is not the most balanced view to what happens there.

In fact, they are not cruise ships but big car and passenger ferries equipped with a large restaurant and shopping area. They carry a big fraction of the import/export to and from Finland, as well as of the passenger traffic. As the map shows, Finland is virtually an island.

I shall take a ferry today evening to make a business trip to Stockholm. First a dinner in the fish restaurant then a good sleep before the ferry arrives in Stockholm in the early morning. (Sweden is one hour behind Finland every day. That makes 365 hours a year.)

Calling on Åland Island is not only for making it possible to buy cheaper booze. The ferries are vital to those 30000 people living on the island and their businesses as well as tourists. Of course, the night time departures from Långnäs are not very popular.

There are four daily departures on the Helsinki-Stockholm route and eight ones on the Turku-Stockholm route. Thus, the daily capacity of the routes is about 30000 passengers and 12 lane kilometers of vehicles.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kanadzie said:


> Crazy Europeans and their small countries :lol:
> 
> I made maybe 40 000 km in past 12 months
> 
> I am just driving to work and home mostly, not even a good vacation :nuts:





keokiracer said:


> Small country has nothing to do with that, my neighbour drives over 70k per year...
> 
> Chris also cycles to work, so that makes the amount of kms travelled/year a lot smaller. You just live (relatively) far away from where you work...


I think 12,000 km/year is about the average for a car. But many households have a second car that is used only for shopping and short trips, so 20,000 - 30,000 kilometers per year is quite common for people who commute to work by car. And many drive much more than that. 

But the Dutch generally take few long trips per year. For most people, driving more than 2 hours in one direction is limited to vacation trips 2 or 3 times per year. 

I don't drive that much within the Netherlands, as I live close to work, it's less than 10 minutes on the bicycle. So most of my car trips are social / recreational in nature, not counting the 4 km trips to the supermarkt every week. 

And I drive much less during the winter. And this is the first time I took two 6,000+ kilometer trips in a year. Most of my colleagues think I'm crazy driving that much. But what am I supposed to do on vacation, sit in a chair all day on a campsite? I'm bored within 2 hours. So I take a several hour trip every day, to go sightseeing or hiking, or both.


----------



## volodaaaa

winnipeg said:


> A small question for those who knows : which Balkan country has the cheapest diesel prices? (Between Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo)


If you are ready to take a detour, Macedonia then


----------



## winnipeg

volodaaaa said:


> If you are ready to take a detour, Macedonia then


Okay, thanks, this is coherent with what on saw on some website who claim to compare the price of oil between countries (but which I didn't believed)... 

Also, no, no detour through Macedonia, because for me Macedonia is a place easily reachable for me by the Serbian highway, so I would certainly go to Skopje for a full week-end, someday...


----------



## Highway89

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's the Pierre St Martin Pass (I don't know if it has a name in Spanish, it is not posted there). Larrau is one pass to the west, which is also quite nice, I took a hike there.
> 
> Some of the landscape in the area looks very similar to the Sierra Nevada in California, especially the exposed rocks with pine trees around Pierre St Martin Pass and Garganta del Escalar. Then again some of those 'congosts' in western Catalunya look similar to Arizona or Utah.


Oh, right, I was referring to Pierre St Martin, I mistook them :nuts:

The southern side of the Pyrinees can indeed be quite different from the northern side. It is much drier and the landscapes look more 'chaotic'.



Kanadzie said:


> Crazy Europeans and their small countries :lol:
> 
> I made maybe 40 000 km in past 12 months
> 
> I am just driving to work and home mostly, not even a good vacation :nuts:


Wow. IIRC, the year I drove the most I made even less than 10,000 km :nuts: But then again, I don't use the car for long trips on holidays, and Spanish cities are quite dense, which makes cars less convenient as a means of transport.


----------



## volodaaaa

Accidents in Slovak tunnels:


----------



## winnipeg

volodaaaa said:


> Accidents in Slovak tunnels:



Burned, already posted 2 weeks ago 



winnipeg said:


> Just saw this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns30XeulhHo a compilation of crashes inside Slovak tunnels made by the national motorway company.... with a special music


----------



## g.spinoza

g.spinoza said:


> Greetings from Sardinia.
> 
> On my way from Brescia to Malpensa airport, yesterday, one of my tires broke so I pulled over on an emergency bay and changed it. Unfortunately I left my emergency blinkers and headlights on, so when I tried to start the engine, nothing happened: the battery was drained
> I had to use the sos phones and get assistance...


Bad luck continues... 4 days ago I went for a swim in Sardinian sea and I forgot I had the cell phone in my pocket... I tried to revive it, no luck, I had to buy a new one.
2 days ago, I was driving to Cala Gonone, and we had to stop mid-road to let a huge bus pass on a tight curve. The lady in the car in front of me panicked and engaged the reverse without looking and bumped me in my rental car.
In the end she offered to pay for repairs and now the car is good as new, but let me tell you, this is a stressful vacation...


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> 2 days ago, I was driving to Cala Gonone, and we had to stop mid-road to let a huge bus pass on a tight curve. The lady in the car in front of me panicked and engaged the reverse without looking and bumped me in my rental car.
> In the end she offered to pay for repairs and now the car is good as new, but let me tell you, this is a stressful vacation...


oh crap! i am so stressed while driving rental car not to have accident. if not a problem, can you explain the procedure what happens in that case?


----------



## Verso

I almost hit a kangaroo in Australia. That would've been a nightmare.


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> oh crap! i am so stressed while driving rental car not to have accident. if not a problem, can you explain the procedure what happens in that case?


No idea. I guess I would have to fill out a form, signed by me and the other party, stating that it was the other party's fault and the rental company would have to ask them for compensation and not me.


----------



## cinxxx

^^afaik you always have to call the rental company before just signing something and going on your way. Also you may be required to have proof from the police.


----------



## winnipeg

g.spinoza said:


> Bad luck continues... 4 days ago I went for a swim in Sardinian sea and I forgot I had the cell phone in my pocket... I tried to revive it, no luck, I had to buy a new one.
> 2 days ago, I was driving to Cala Gonone, and we had to stop mid-road to let a huge bus pass on a tight curve. The lady in the car in front of me panicked and engaged the reverse without looking and bumped me in my rental car.
> In the end she offered to pay for repairs and now the car is good as new, but let me tell you, this is a stressful vacation...


So bad for you! 

For a rental car, I personaly wouldn't try to fix it myself, I would have done an incident report to the car rental company by also taking the data of the other car insurance...


----------



## winnipeg

g.spinoza said:


> No idea. I guess I would have to fill out a form, signed by me and the other party, stating that it was the other party's fault and the rental company would have to ask them for compensation and not me.


In France we have those incident reports : https://www.smeno.com/fileadmin/user_upload/constat_amiable_auto.pdf

And visibly it's also for the rest of Europe as it's named "European Incident Statement"


----------



## x-type

winnipeg said:


> In France we have those incident reports : https://www.smeno.com/fileadmin/user_upload/constat_amiable_auto.pdf
> 
> And visibly it's also for the rest of Europe as it's named "European Incident Statement"


that exists in each EU country (maybe even European). but this is only for minor accidents. however, i really don't know how to act with rental car anyway. i think that i would call rental agency first to check what documents they accept.


----------



## volodaaaa

winnipeg said:


> In France we have those incident reports : https://www.smeno.com/fileadmin/user_upload/constat_amiable_auto.pdf
> 
> And visibly it's also for the rest of Europe as it's named "European Incident Statement"


We have the same, usually the first three pages are in Slovak, the fourth is in English, the fifth in German and the sixth in French. Papers are copyable so if you write to first page it also fills in the others.

I think it is not only for minor accidents but for all if drivers can agree on who is the guilty one.


----------



## Suburbanist

I wonder how much does this cost


----------



## volodaaaa

This sign is used to prevent vehicles carrying water pollutants from crossing a bridge.

For a long time I have had a stupid question: *where could vehicles carrying water pollutants cross a river then? * :lol:


----------



## italystf

^^ This sign is something used on some bridges that have no drains to collect rain, and thus any accidental spill of liquid.
The section of A27 in Italy between Vittorio Veneto nord and Belluno is closed to trucks carrying dangerous goods also for this reason (the other reason are long tunnels). Trucks carrying dangerous goods have to use the SS51, that has no tunnels and viaducts.


----------



## volodaaaa

Btw. some insights from my journey:


The map ( click here )
Romanian motorway (A1) in very good condition ( https://goo.gl/maps/WyxAWBDuerC2 )
The same goes for A6 motorway (though it was rather expresway) ( https://goo.gl/maps/U5gKsVzTJ6L2 )
Calafat signposted at A6 ( https://goo.gl/maps/RZi8t5tRYQw )
Sadly, Calafat is not signposted at DN6 ( https://goo.gl/maps/1ft3niseP5w )
Road marking in perfect condition (traffic signs, psychological barriers, etc.) ( https://goo.gl/maps/oUSKHdhULhx ).
Built-up area signs are pure perfection ( https://goo.gl/maps/YRPEWqvzeNz )
Must-see Iron Gates gorge ( https://goo.gl/maps/zg93jthtses )
The road along Danube provided some nice views too ( https://goo.gl/maps/yhSVuJv2fmH2 )
However, road to Calafat was boringly flat ( https://goo.gl/maps/BCtrtCJpHjR2 )
I almost crashed here ( https://goo.gl/maps/tf63otzJwtu ). It is not a good idea to end a lane by turn-off without a sign. The lorries were ignoring the lane (I supposed it was a slow-vehicles lane) so I (I know it was wrong) decided to undertake them.
This road had brand new surface except some sections that were currently U/C ( https://goo.gl/maps/2YTRDzEGGTU2 )
Bypass of Vraca with railway crossing ( https://goo.gl/maps/rYCZCTGLH6z )
A2 motorway seemed to be quite old ( https://goo.gl/maps/bSeRjVv8HkT2 )
The worst city bypass I have ever driven on ( https://goo.gl/maps/MYCX5SUMdXv )
A3 motorway was superb on the other hand ( https://goo.gl/maps/xmuGNGoC3442 )
But there were almost no petrol station at all. I had to use this one ( https://goo.gl/maps/gUKpjZMNmSN2 ). The guy did not speak any foreign language, so I tried Slovak with wannabe Serbian dialect - it worked :lol:
Greeks also did a great job: except some short section, Bulgaria - Thessaloniki is 2+2 ( https://goo.gl/maps/bwvbNqET3L82 ).
The road in motorway corridor in T-shaped intersection. You have to give priority to the cars leaving beach - Greek style ( https://goo.gl/maps/znp7ehsJRMq ).
Serbs put new signposts to alternative SRB-H border crossings - great job. However, we passed Horgos in 30 minutes! (at 22.00)


----------



## g.spinoza

winnipeg said:


> So bad for you!
> 
> For a rental car, I personaly wouldn't try to fix it myself, I would have done an incident report to the car rental company by also taking the data of the other car insurance...










cinxxx said:


> ^^afaik you always have to call the rental company before just signing something and going on your way. Also you may be required to have proof from the police.


I agree, but the damage was really small (a scratch and a little dent) so I preferred to avoid calling the company. The girl paid for reparation and now nothing shows on the front of the car. Besides, the girl wouldn't want to sign the form, so I would have to call the police...


----------



## cinxxx

I always try to get full insurance for my rentals. If any scratches or small dents, I don't have to worry. 
I only become member of the German Automobile Club, because you can rent cars from their website, they have partnerships with all 4 major rental companies. 
(You don't have to be a member actually, just live in Germany, but they have some special offers which apply only to members).
When you rent, it's always full coverage without deductible and one extra driver included.
And it's not more expensive, you kind of actually get the same price you would have gotten directly from the rental company, but with deductible and no extra driver.

When I rented in Trapani the girl at the counter even told me "so if you scratch the car or stuff like that, you can tell us or if you don't want to, that's also fine, you have full coverage anyway" :lol:

BTW, Austrians get the absolute same prices if the rent from ÖAMTC, looks like the two clubs from Germany and Austria have the same deals...


----------



## volodaaaa

Never give up if your insurance company does not want to prepaid you all the repairs you have to carry out after an accident. This has happened to me:

My car was involved in an accident (it was parked). I was not the guilty one. The car was drivable, but as my bumper was hanging on one side, it required an instant repair, so I drive to my repair service. We also filled in all necessary documents and reports.

We have two types of insurance in Slovakia:
Mandatory one (for damaged parties of accident),
"Additional/Accident" one (for the guilty one) - but you have to pay so called participation fee which is 5 % of the calculated damage but not less than 165 €.

I went to a repair garage and the inspector asked me about the insurance company of the guilty driver. As he was not contracted to do a check-up for her company, but was contracted to do it for mine, I opted for possibility to resolve the insurance event by my additional insurance with agreement that I will pay the participation fee that will be later reimbursed by insurance company of the guilty one.

Following things has happened:
- The overall damage was 1500 € and therefore the participation fee was 165 € (because 5 % would be only 75 €). My insurance company paid for the repair and I paid the participation fee.

- The insurance company of the guilty lady paid 1335 € to my insurance company but it refused to pay me the 165 € as my car supposedly "gained additional value (because it got new bumper)".

I don't need 165 € but the principle has got me pissed off. So I wrote the insurance company a very sharp letter and sent the copy to PR department. I stated that I had some additional expenses caused by the accident (calling rates, fuel I consumed by driving to a repair garage, etc.) and I told them I will submit the case to a court if they do not send me the money to my bank account within 30 day after receiving my letter.

On 8th day after submitting the letter, I received the money.


----------



## g.spinoza

I have to see if Italian automobile club has similar deals. In case, I will consider becoming a member


----------



## winnipeg

winnipeg said:


> I also planed to do a "Balkan tour" during september, a tour that I planed for 2015 but I didn't had time to make it... so I will make it this month (before that I leave Romania in mid-2017, because when I will be back in France, it will be obviously much far from Balkans than I am now....  ).
> 
> I planned to see essentialy Sarajevo, Mostar, Dubrovnik, Budva and Montenegro then Bar and after probably Albania then Macedonia and Skopje, then certainly Kosovo and Pristina (I'm too curious to see Kosovo even if I need to pay an extra insurrance...  ) and after, back to home probably by travelling via Calafat and then Iron gates...


So, so far my Balkan trip of 1 week is a huge fail, I planned (took me days), booked everything, I started to drive through Serbia to Sarajevo this morning at 6:00... but unfortunatly at Novi Sad the motor of my car (a 2010 Peugeot 207 1.6 HDI) started to make a metallic noise when I was accelerating... So after checking myself and seing nothing (I have bad mechanical skills  ) and only hearing the metallic noise also at stop, I decided to go to the Peugeot garage of Novi Sad where they saw that the turbo was broken but they told me that it could take them 6 days to repair it... 

After that I decided to go back to Arad because I don't speak a single word of serbian and even if they do their best to speak english, it's only way harder for everyone than if I was in Romania (and even if Novi Sad is a great city I wouldn't stay for one week in there waiting for the repair of my car..). They told me that it could be okay if I go slow on the road...

So I went back to Arad using the smaller Serbian roads via Zrenjanin (they have an great little shopping mall) and Kikinda and then the border crossing of Nakovo (the chillest border crossing I ever seen, they took 10 minutes for 2 cars and the female border cop looked so young and inexperienced by it was the most smiling border cop I ever seen  )... anyway, the road was okay and I tried to do my best to go slow... And I finaly made it to Arad. :banana:

Now I have to wait monday to go to the local garage.... and f*ck, I should be visiting Sarajevo by now and in Dubrovnik tomorrow... so bad !! :bash: hno:

In exchange I will only have a 600-1000€ bill to repair the broken turbo... hno:

Here is how the turbine inside the turbo looks like :


----------



## volodaaaa

And the photo of the border cop is where?


----------



## winnipeg

volodaaaa said:


> And the photo of the border cop is where?


----------



## Verso

winnipeg said:


> So, so far my Balkan trip of 1 week is a huge fail ...


Is it ok to like that post?


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Maybe it was sent to Slovakia.


He can calm down then. I could arrive within next 10 years :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

When I was in Greece, I saw a map on wall with Macedonia covered by some papers. I uncovered the papers and found this 



Btw. there is a lot of new traffic signs in Greece with direction to Macedonian cities. The white oval beside is blank 

Here
and here

I know about the name dispute. I just wonder how does it reflect to common life.


----------



## winnipeg

bogdymol said:


> Shouldn't there be an EU-wide document to act as both ID card and drivers licence? Most of the data written on them is identical anyway.


This is the kind of ideas who looks great when you look at it from a positive point of view.... but who actualy is a "usine à gaz" (a french expression to say that it is oversized compared to his task - it should be translated by "labyrinthine system"  ), certainly too complicated and expensive for now to have a centralised ID service and certainly too complicated in the point of view of each country who will have their own requirements on it, etc... hno:


----------



## MichiH

bogdymol said:


> Shouldn't there be an EU-wide document to act as both ID card and drivers licence? Most of the data written on them is identical anyway.


Have you ever heard about the German "Entziehung der Fahrerlaubnis" or Austria "Abnahme des Führerscheines und Entzug der Lenkberechtigung"?

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entzi...er_Fahrerlaubnis#Entziehung_der_Fahrerlaubnis

If you got penalized for misbehavior in road traffic**, e.g. speeding, you can "loose your driver license" temporarily, e.g. for 1 month or 3 months. You must give your document to a police station for that time. If there's just one document, you couldn't leave your country...

**It's even discussed in Germany to revoke one's driver license temporarily for criminal incidents beyond road traffic!


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> Have you ever heard about the German "Entziehung der Fahrerlaubnis" or Austria "Abnahme des Führerscheines und Entzug der Lenkberechtigung"?
> 
> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entzi...er_Fahrerlaubnis#Entziehung_der_Fahrerlaubnis
> 
> If you got penalized for misbehavior in road traffic**, e.g. speeding, you can "loose your driver license" temporarily, e.g. for 1 month or 3 months. You must give your document to a police station for that time. If there's just one document, you couldn't leave your country...
> 
> **It's even discussed in Germany to revoke one's driver license temporarily for criminal incidents beyond road traffic!


It's not that difficult: they issue a card with a chip, where all you personal data are stored, and so is your driving license status. When your license is revoked, an officer only needs to check your ID with the database...


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> I'm still waiting form my peronal IDs to arrive with the post form Italy. We forgot them in the camping reception in Sorrento but we found out that only after arriving home. I called them and they confirmed that they found them. I gave them address and since them I'm still waiting their post to arrive. A postcard from Sicily also didn't arrive yet - after 6 weeks. Is this normal for Italian post?


A few months ago my friend sent me a postcard from northern Italy and I never got it.


----------



## italystf

I once sent an envelope with few coins (taped within two pieces of cardboard so one wouldn't tell there were coins) and it never arrived to destination.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Maybe it was sent to Slovakia.


There's a legend, not sure if true or not, that Slovenian and Slovak diplomats, meet regularly to exchange wrongly-addressed mail.


----------



## Kanadzie

g.spinoza said:


> It's not that difficult: they issue a card with a chip, where all you personal data are stored, and so is your driving license status. When your license is revoked, an officer only needs to check your ID with the database...


Is there even need for a chip?
I'm sure police in Germany are checking your information on computer anyway...


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> There's a legend, not sure if true or not, that Slovenian and Slovak diplomats, meet regularly to exchange wrongly-addressed mail.


The same could go for Lithuanian and Latvian ones


----------



## winnipeg

Kanadzie said:


> Is there even need for a chip?
> I'm sure police in Germany are checking your information on computer anyway...


It's the same in France because most of the fines are automatic now in France (with speed radars, red lights radars and so....) and for each infractions you loose a certain amount of points on the 12 points you have on your driver licence...., but if you didn't received the notification/fine by mail, you might be using your car without a valid driver licence and only the cops can tell by checking their computers... hno:

(For example if you are flashed by going into a traffic light, its -4 points even if the traffic light is only at "orange", you will got the fine and loose the points (that's why some people are braking brutaly on orange traffic lights in France, so dangerous...hno: ), and for using a phone in your car (even stopped at a traffic light for example) it's -3 points, etc....)

The result of this stupid repression is that there is an estimated number of people who actualy drive without a valid driving licence in France between 500.000 and 2,5 millions according different estimations (but this number cannot be checked...). Another reason for this high number is that in France in some places you have to wait months and months to pass the test to have your driver licence, and it can cost up to 1400€ (because of the mandatory hours of driving you have to take with a school car instructor), such crazy situation... :nuts:

Sorry if I went a bit off topic


----------



## winnipeg

So I let my car to the garage and it will cost me 750€ to fix the turbo of my car, what a great Balkan trip...


----------



## bogdymol

I hope you guys like today's banner


----------



## Verso

All I've seen of Singapore is the airport, which had the cleanest toilet I've ever seen.


----------



## volodaaaa

Very nice photo, looking like alien invasion though


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's unseasonably hot in the Netherlands. The 30°C mark has never been crossed before so late in the season. The latest date in recorded history when the temperature exceeded 30°C was on 6 September.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's unseasonably hot in the Netherlands. The 30°C mark has never been crossed before so late in the season. The latest date in recorded history when the temperature exceeded 30°C was on 6 September.


Not very cold in the North either. +15 currently at the Arctic Circle.


----------



## CNGL

Following the mock-ups of the World Cup and the March Madness, as well as several matches of the Spanish La Liga (involving ADPI Rivas, UD Ariza and Rosales CF replacing Barça, Atlético and Real Madrid respectively, the first two are actual teams playing at regional level, the other is fictional), I decided to make one of the UEFA Champions League, with teams from all over Europe like Arminia Ausfahrt, Ecce ****, SC Fail, Scunthorpe United (another existing team) or Asperger (yes, there's a town named Asperg North of Stuttgart and obviously all its inhabitants are _asperger_ but don't necessarily have Asperger's). And this couldn't have started worse, as the match between the last two has been suspended due to rain (to top that, today is Tuesday the 13th, considered an unlucky day in Spain). PEC Zwolle (yet another real team) is also in, and in fact today has been visited, and beaten, by UD Ariza.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Uh, what?


----------



## MichiH

CNGL said:


> Asperger (yes, there's a town named Asperg North of Stuttgart and obviously all its inhabitants are _asperger_ but don't necessarily have Asperger's).


There's also a village north of Stuttgart which is called Großaspach. There's a football club, 3rd division: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SG_Sonnenhof_Großaspach.

I prefer Asbach though


----------



## italystf

This year here we switched from summer to fall quite suddenly. Until September 15 we had summer-like temperatures (with daytime up to 30-32°C, much higher than the average for that period), then we had a lot of rain and temperatures dropped of about 8-10°C (max 23-24°C during daytime and as low as 13-14°C at night).


----------



## Verso

^ Same here. Last week almost 30°C, this week just 20.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

We had 32°C last week, this morning it was 4°C.


----------



## bogdymol

Today I am flying for the 100th time (yes, I am counting): Billund (DK) to London Stansted (UK).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You went to Legoland?


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> Today I am flying for the 100th time (yes, I am counting): Billund (DK) to London Stansted (UK).


Congratulations :lol: I have not flown yet. To be honest, I have fear for flying.:cripes:


----------



## cinxxx

I am at 64 flights only 
I'm also always afraid, but I overcome it by thinking about the vacation trip that will come after landing


----------



## italystf

Statistically flying isn't more dangerous than other means of transportation. However, plane crashes make big news that impress people because they kill a lot of people at once.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> You went to Legoland?



No, I am on a business trip. 

However, as I arrived early at the airport I made a tour with the car around Legoland as I am first time here.


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> Today I am flying for the 100th time


So much pollution. hno:


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> So much pollution. hno:


is the plane polluting the air more than 100 passenger cars at same distance?


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> Statistically flying isn't more dangerous than other means of transportation. However, plane crashes make big news that impress people because they kill a lot of people at once.


The most dangerous part of flying is the ride to or from the airport.


----------



## MattiG

x-type said:


> is the plane polluting the air more than 100 passenger cars at same distance?


Typically yes and no. However it is better to compare apples to apples.

The footprint calculations may turn complex but there is s rule of thumb that a jet makes 70-80 grams of CO2 emissions per passenger kilometer in average. A small passenger car often makes 120-130 grams per kilometer and a SUV often 200+ grams. 

The result from the comparison varies by parameter. There is no absolute truth.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> Today I am flying for the 100th time (yes, I am counting): Billund (DK) to London Stansted (UK).


Do you count a three-leg flight as three flights or just one?


----------



## bogdymol

Each take-off + landing counts as one flight. 

For example on Monday I flew from Munich to Aalborg with a plane change in Copenhagen. This means 2 flights. 

I have an account on flightdiary.net where I record each flight. It's something like clinched highways system but for flying.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> Each take-off + landing counts as one flight.
> 
> For example on Monday I flew from Munich to Aalborg with a plane change in Copenhagen. This means 2 flights.
> 
> I have an account on flightdiary.net where I record each flight. It's something like clinched highways system but for flying.


I have one as well. According to that I did 20 flights. The last two (to Sardinia) are the only ones I paid myself, the others were all paid by my boss.


----------



## Attus

I live in Western Germany (NRW), my parents, some of my friends and my favorite handball team (FTC Budapest) in Hungary. By car 1.140 km, at least 11 hours but rather 14 if I only stop once for refilling and a couple of times for WC.
I have never counted but I guess I took a Cologne/Bonn - Budapest and return flight some 35-40 times in the last four years. The next time will be the next weekend and then three weeks later again. In the summer season there are flights Saturday CGN 6:05 -> BUD 7:45 and Sunday BUD 21:30 -> CGN 23:20; in the winter season there is unfortunately no flight on Saturday so I can take the Friday evening one: CGN 18:25 -> BUD 20:05 and return Sunday BUD 20:40 -> CGN 22:30. 

But it's actually nothing. Several years ago there was a man in TV who was a great fan of Arsenal (a famous football/soccer club in London) and visited every single home game of the team. It does not seem to be extreme if you don't know that he lived in Chicago. Yes, Chicago, IL, USA.


----------



## g.spinoza

Next Saturday I'm leaving for a conference in Madrid. By car. 
The less I fly, the better I feel.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Tomorrow I drive to Italy for a birthday 

We considered flying, but weekend flights are fairly expensive. The return trip by car cost the same as a single ticket, and we're going with 3 persons.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Tomorrow I drive to Italy for a birthday
> 
> We considered flying, but weekend flights are fairly expensive. The return trip by car cost the same as a single ticket, and we're going with 3 persons.


Buon viaggio!!!


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Tomorrow I drive to Italy for a birthday
> .


Where to, if you don't mind my asking?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Lake Garda region. It's approximately an 1,100 kilometer drive. We chose to drive via France and Switzerland to avoid the construction mess in Germany, the toll bill on the return trip is only slightly higher than via Austria.

I don't like driving through Germany as much as I used to. There is so much construction, accidents and traffic congestion. On top of the long-term construction sites, there are also many _Tagesbaustellen_ (short-term construction zones) that cause a lot of congestion. The German Autobahn is way too busy to close lanes during the day for small repairs / maintenance. They should do that during the night, during the day it results almost guaranteed in unnecessary traffic congestion.

On another forum someone reported A96 from München tot Memmingen has 11 construction zones on a 100 km stretch of Autobahn yesterday... Including 4 long-term construction zones and no less than 7 _Tagesbaustellen_.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> is the plane polluting the air more than 100 passenger cars at same distance?


Plane pollutes more than staying home.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Lake Garda region. It's approximately an 1,100 kilometer drive. We chose to drive via France and Switzerland to avoid the construction mess in Germany, the toll bill on the return trip is only slightly higher than via Austria.
> 
> I don't like driving through Germany as much as I used to. There is so much construction, accidents and traffic congestion. On top of the long-term construction sites, there are also many _Tagesbaustellen_ (short-term construction zones) that cause a lot of congestion. The German Autobahn is way too busy to close lanes during the day for small repairs / maintenance. They should do that during the night, during the day it results almost guaranteed in unnecessary traffic congestion.
> 
> On another forum someone reported A96 from München tot Memmingen has 11 construction zones on a 100 km stretch of Autobahn yesterday... Including 4 long-term construction zones and no less than 7 _Tagesbaustellen_.


hm, i must say that I travel quite a lot in Italy, andi don't remember when i saw some short-term construction site there, only those widening to 2x3.
especially it is amazing when i consider my recent 2 trips to Milano (so almost whole A4) and there was 0 construcion sites. there was one just after Milano west toll station, and something near Novara. in Germany such motorway section would have in average 4-5 construction sites.

oh, there was one more thing - that etarnal construction site near Vicenza. what is happening there? it is present for years already.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ The construction site in Novara is there for almost 15 years...


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ The construction site in Novara is there for almost 15 years...


no, i don't think MI-TO, it's finished there, but there was minor closure anyway for some reason.


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> oh, there was one more thing - that etarnal construction site near Vicenza. what is happening there? it is present for years already.


It's since 2011. There's an issue with some toxic industrial waste used as filling material when the 3rd lane was built. Aparently that was normal practice back then (1989-90), but of course now it isn't allowed anymore. So, they demolished the rightmost lane and deviated the traffic through 3 narrow lanes without shoulders.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> It's since 2011. There's an issue with some toxic industrial waste used as filling material when the 3rd lane was built. Aparently that was normal practice back then (1989-90), but of course now it isn't allowed anymore. So, they demolished the rightmost lane and deviated the traffic through 3 narrow lanes without shoulders.


it was only on that short part on whole A4?


----------



## volodaaaa

Seeing a group of confused people in a front of a pair of escalators running in opposite direction made me investigate human behaviour a little and I realized that pedestrians (wherever they are) tend to keep the right side of pavement, corridor, etc. The oncoming people are always on our left hand.

It has made me ask a question: Is that because of traffic direction? Do walking people in Britain take the left side?


----------



## Verso

I also mostly walk on the right.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Me too. Even on a sidewalk that is on the left side of the road. I work in a business district and at lunchtime many people take a 30 minute walk, most people do walk on the right side.


----------



## volodaaaa

:hmm: Sometimes... I enforce the priority to the right in our Tesco local store. Especially if I am pushing a cart.


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> it was only on that short part on whole A4?


I don't know, maybe they found it there.
I think there was the same issue on A4 somewhere around Brescia, not to mention A31 Vicenza-Rovigo (maybe the entire 50km lenght, and this one is recent, so it was a big scandal).


----------



## winnipeg

volodaaaa said:


> Seeing a group of confused people in a front of a pair of escalators running in opposite direction made me investigate human behaviour a little and I realized that pedestrians (wherever they are) tend to keep the right side of pavement, corridor, etc. The oncoming people are always on our left hand.
> 
> It has made me ask a question: Is that because of traffic direction? Do walking people in Britain take the left side?


In Tokyo, people are staying at the left of escalators ! 

And I assume that this comes mostly from what children learn from their parents like "always stay at the right" on most other situations like on the road... :yes:

Also it's a think that (in my opinion) show pretty well the level of civism and education of the people in a city... for example in Tokyo I remember that everyone or so was respecting this easy everyday life rule.... it's not the case in every countries so far...


----------



## Fatfield

volodaaaa said:


> Seeing a group of confused people in a front of a pair of escalators running in opposite direction made me investigate human behaviour a little and I realized that pedestrians (wherever they are) tend to keep the right side of pavement, corridor, etc. The oncoming people are always on our left hand.
> 
> It has made me ask a question: Is that because of traffic direction? Do walking people in Britain take the left side?


No we don't, we walk on the right. Although I'll always move to the left. Just to be awkward. ;-)

I was in Monaco once and was walking up the bank to the tunnel underneath the Fairmont Hotel. Coming the other way were a couple of Italian couples. I moved to the left and as I passed the first couple the lad muttered 'bloody British!'. It seems that some people think that because we drive on the correct side of the road, we automatically walk on the left.

Another piece of pedestrian etiquette in the UK is that if the path isn't wide enough to accommodate two or more people passing each other, the person facing towards the oncoming traffic 'gives way' and steps onto the road. Providing there's no traffic of course. Does this happen elsewhere?


----------



## Verso

^ Yes, it makes sense.

Interesting, it's been sunny for the whole week, but only 22°C max.


----------



## volodaaaa

This is exactly the weather when you are most prone to get ill.


----------



## g.spinoza

Fatfield said:


> No we don't, we walk on the right. Although I'll always move to the left. Just to be awkward. ;-)
> 
> I was in Monaco once and was walking up the bank to the tunnel underneath the Fairmont Hotel. Coming the other way were a couple of Italian couples. I moved to the left and as I passed the first couple the lad muttered 'bloody British!'. It seems that some people think that *because we drive on the correct side of the road*, we automatically walk on the left.
> 
> Another piece of pedestrian etiquette in the UK is that if the path isn't wide enough to accommodate two or more people passing each other, the person facing towards the oncoming traffic 'gives way' and steps onto the road. Providing there's no traffic of course. Does this happen elsewhere?


hno::lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

He is right.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> He is right.


No, he is left.


----------



## Suburbanist

An unusual elevator in Italy


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't see why people should be upset about government surveillance when corporate surveillance (Google, Facebook, etc.) is just as or even more intrusive.
> 
> Yesterday I went to a household appliance store called 'Blokker'. An hour later on Facebook I get a Blokker ad for the first time. My GPS was off, but the Facebook app probably sent data over the wifi connection, linking my visit to Blokker to Facebook advertising.


This kind of corporate surveillance is what allows companies like Google and Facebook to remain on the market without charging users for services they provide. Businesses pay a lot of money to Facebook and Google for their customized ads that show to users.
Moreover, corporate surveillance, unlike regime surveillance, is only interested in commercial interests of users, not in their political or religious backgrounds, that are much more sensitive things in many parts of the world, and that many authoritarian and corrupt regimes try to control.
In democracies, government surveillance may actually protect honest people, as it helps to fight crime, although there's always some risk of abuse of power and corruption.


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> Better the departure port time.


There are several strategies in place to cope with that issue. All have their pros and cons, and none of them are clearly better than the others.

My favorite strategy is to display all opening and event times in both Finnish and Swedish time, and having twin-time clocks:


----------



## CNGL

I'm thinking of making a clock with only the minute hand . But then, it would be impractical in all those countries with an x:30 offset from UTC (Including North Korea) as well as Nepal and its crazy UTC+5:45 offset.


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> Google Maps algorithms already route drivers through major/rural roads, instead of minor/urban ones, even if the latters are slighty shorter. I've no much experience with other route planning software, but I think they work pretty much the same.


The basics of the route optimization is easy: For each leg and node, there is a delay involved. The route finding engine tries to predict that delay as accurately as possible. The final choice is the route having smallest sum of delays (or meters to travel if finding the shortest route). The route finding algorithm itself is quite simple in its basic form.

The prediction is the sexy part of the game leading to differentiation. It is more or less about heuristics (in plain English: guessing). Left turns cause more delay than right turns, a priority road is faster than a no-priority one, etc. Small differences in guesses may cause big differences in the route calculation. That delay-based calculation automatically leads to favoring main roads, if the road data is accurate enough.

The basic problem is that the traffic flow is usually unpredictable, and a function of time and weekday. The more there is unpredictability, the higher the risk for bad routing is.

TomTom is a pioneer in better prediction. Several years ago, the company announced a feature called IQroutes. It basically is about using the real delay data which millions of devices collect and send to TomTom. The travel time estimation of TomTom is amazingly accurate. During a 500 km ride, the error might be less than 10 minutes.


----------



## italystf

MattiG said:


> The basics of the route optimization is easy: For each leg and node, there is a delay involved. The route finding engine tries to predict that delay as accurately as possible. The final choice is the route having smallest sum of delays (or meters to travel if finding the shortest route). The route finding algorithm itself is quite simple in its basic form.
> 
> The prediction is the sexy part of the game leading to differentiation. It is more or less about heuristics (in plain English: guessing). *Left turns cause more delay than right turns, a priority road is faster than a no-priority one, etc. Small differences in guesses may cause big differences in the route calculation.* That delay-based calculation automatically leads to favoring main roads, if the road data is accurate enough.
> 
> The basic problem is that the traffic flow is usually unpredictable, and a function of time and weekday. The more there is unpredictability, the higher the risk for bad routing is.
> 
> TomTom is a pioneer in better prediction. Several years ago, the company announced a feature called IQroutes. It basically is about using the real delay data which millions of devices collect and send to TomTom. The travel time estimation of TomTom is amazingly accurate. During a 500 km ride, the error might be less than 10 minutes.


That explains some weird cases, where A>B route suggested by the software differs from B>A route, even in absence of one-way streets or forbidden turns.


----------



## italystf

Look at this picture and guess:










a) the (approximate) distance between the photographer and the metal cabin
b) the (approximate) distance between the metal cabin and the bell tower and other buildings


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> Are you driving back same way or through the "Northern route" (San Sebastian, Bordeaux, Clemont-Ferrand, Lyon, Modane/Frejus)?


It's 100+ km longer, so I don't think that's gonna happen.


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> That explains some weird cases, where A>B route suggested by the software differs from B>A route, even in absence of one-way streets or forbidden turns.


The length of the route from A to B can also differ from the route in the opposite direction. If there is a turn in a large cloverleaf junction or similar, the route via the loop ramp might be a kilometer longer.

In longer routes, the routing may turn quite surprising. One acid test in my test case box is the route between the cities of Turku and Oulu in Finland. There are two main choices of almost equal length: The road 8/E8 via Vaasa 649 km and 9/E63+4/E74 via Jyväskylä 651 km. The latter one is about 20 minutes faster due to more motorway legs. In the east-west direction, these routes are 200+ kilometers apart, even if they are almost equal.

The driving time estimates vary a lot. Five routing applications gave the following driving times via Jyväskylä:

- TomTom 7:51 hours
- Google Maps 7:17 
- Here 8:06
- Fonecta 8:14
- ViaMichelin 9:21

Thus, ViaMichelin seems to not know the characteristics on the Finnish roads quite well. The TomTom's estimate is the baseline because of the real data. Google tends to favor speeding.

Fonecta was the only one to fail to find the fastest route. Instead, it found a route which it says to be six minutes faster. However, in the real life that route is 60-90 minutes slower than the fastest one. I know it by experience. That route uses main roads, too, but lower grade ones. Thus, Fonecta is not aware of the real characteristics of the roads but relies on the official classification.


----------



## Suburbanist

ViaMichelin used to be _really_ good for directions in Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany. 8 years ago, Google Maps was still rather unreliable. I also liked their online cartographic style. Pity it seems they completely abandoned any updates.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> ViaMichelin used to be _really_ good for directions in Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany. 8 years ago, Google Maps was still rather unreliable. I also liked their online cartographic style. Pity it seems they completely abandoned any updates.


I've just opened Viamichelin for the first time in several years, and I see that it shows some recently-opened roads in Italy, so updates aren't abandoned. Also Italian motorway tolls are updated as of 2016.
However, it's still a very basic route planner, as it lacks advanced options. You cannot change route manually with drag and drop like in Google, you don't have live traffic info, satellite images, street view, location of businesses and other point of interests.
While it could be competitive with Google in the 2000s, obviously it's not anymore.

As mapping quality (not as route planner), I now like OSM the best (it used to be crap until not so long ago). It includes many non-driving-related details, such as cycleways, hiking trails, agricultural paths, PT stops, municipal borders, power lines, small streams and agricultural canals, all sort of point of interests, etc...
When I virtually explore an area I often have two browser tabs open, one with GM (for satellite, street view and driving directions) and another with OSM (for detailed maps).


----------



## Suburbanist

italystf said:


> I've just opened Viamichelin for the first time in several years, and I see that it shows some recently-opened roads in Italy, so updates aren't abandoned. Also Italian motorway tolls are updated as of 2016.
> However, it's still a very basic route planner, as it lacks advanced options. You cannot change route manually with drag and drop like in Google, you don't have live traffic info, satellite images, street view, location of businesses and other point of interests.
> While it could be competitive with Google in the 2000s, obviously it's not anymore.
> 
> As mapping quality (not as route planner), I now like OSM the best (it used to be crap until not so long ago). It includes many non-driving-related details, such as cycleways, hiking trails, agricultural paths, PT stops, municipal borders, power lines, small streams and agricultural canals, all sort of point of interests, etc...
> When I virtually explore an area I often have two browser tabs open, one with GM (for satellite, street view and driving directions) and another with OSM (for detailed maps).


I'm not referring to the main map interface, but to the detailed and neat version (click on the map icon and then, bottom right, on 'Michelin Map' right next to the robot icon.


----------



## Verso

Ha, I walked "on the banner" a few hours ago.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't see why people should be upset about government surveillance when corporate surveillance (Google, Facebook, etc.) is just as or even more intrusive.


Corporate data collection is there just to make money. They have automated systems in place and don't really care who you are or what you do, as long as they can earn money by selling that data. 

Government surveillace is there because 'everybody is a potential criminal/terrorist'. I think that's not a very good relationship to have between the government and the people. If the government doesn't trust its people then why should the people trust the government? 

What's more, you will be put on 'the list' if you internet behaviour isn't 100% normal. This means you become a suspect before anyone has even commited a crime. Minority Report isn't far off from here.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Google Maps tends to take the speed limit as the average speed you can drive on motorways, which in reality is unrealistic due to passing trucks, left lane slowdowns, etc. 

I did some testing with 120 km long routes in Belgium and the Netherlands. It pretty much takes exactly one hour to drive such a distance which in reality may only be possible at night.


----------



## makaveli6

From my experience, the best ETA in a navigation app is in Waze, though it depends on how many users are using it in each country. It usually calculates my ETA almost spot on even in rush hour, when the traffic is unpredictable.


----------



## keokiracer

ChrisZwolle said:


> Google Maps tends to take the speed limit as the average speed you can drive on motorways, which in reality is unrealistic due to passing trucks, left lane slowdowns, etc.
> 
> I did some testing with 120 km long routes in Belgium and the Netherlands. It pretty much takes exactly one hour to drive such a distance which in reality may only be possible at night.


That's very weird, that's the opposite of what my experience is with Google Maps. A 120km stretch of A7 for example now takes 1 hour and 7 minutes at an 130km/h limit (106-107 km/h average). And it's not the only example I've seen.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ You're referring to 'now'. I was referring to the 'without traffic' scenario by Google. The latter is used by people who want to plan a route in advance.


----------



## keokiracer

ChrisZwolle said:


> The latter is used by people who want to plan a route in advance.


Well, not me. I always use current traffic and just ignore the traffic part, mainly because I can't be arsed to turn the traffic-tab off.

But especially for you I turned it off and checked again. 111 km in 1 hour on the same stretch with a 130km/h limit. Sorry, still not seeing it.


----------



## keokiracer

edit


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes, this option:









Long routes with Google Maps are particularly unreliable. For example Monday I was driving from Italy to the Netherlands. It took us exactly 13 hours and we only briefly stopped for fuel three times. 

According to Google Maps, the route we took can be driven in 10h50min. Even with a half hour delay in Milan and another half hour for the refueling stops, it still took an hour more than Google Maps says, even when driving 140-160 km/h in Germany where possible. (Google Maps seems to use 126 km/h as an average on the German Autobahn).


----------



## keokiracer

Placing this on the new page as we pretty much posted at the same second and you might miss it:


I just realized what you meant Chris, I never ever use that grey number because I know it's unrealistic as hell as it tends to be very optimistic. Being honest, after years of ignoring that grey time I have to admit I completely forgot about it 
Having said that, the real-time traffic one seems to be very pessimistic as everytime I use it I take shorter than it said I would've, even in busy (non-traffic jam) traffic. Especially in free-flow it's surprisingly pessimistic.


----------



## x-type

makaveli6 said:


> From my experience, the best ETA in a navigation app is in Waze, though it depends on how many users are using it in each country. It usually calculates my ETA almost spot on even in rush hour, when the traffic is unpredictable.


Waze is absolute disaster for traffic safety. it requires typing on your cell phone while you're driving because it allows only GPS location, you cannot jump to loaction later to add the point with incidence. i have uninstalled it soon after trying it.


----------



## makaveli6

x-type said:


> Waze is absolute disaster for traffic safety. it requires typing on your cell phone while you're driving because it allows only GPS location, you cannot jump to loaction later to add the point with incidence. i have uninstalled it soon after trying it.


How does Waze require more typing than any other navgiation app? You can search by addresses, locations, save favorites and other stuff. It varies by your country though - in Latvia we have a very active community, even Latvian State Road administration and major city road departaments are working with them. For example, if a specific street or road is closed, they send the information to Waze and they instantly update the map, so the app reroutes you instantly too.
It also works very well in rush hours, I've had times when Waze found some unusual routes that save me 20-40 minutes. But this too relies on how many users are using it in your country, I know that driving with Waze in Poland was an absolute nightmare, because the user base is very small compared to Latvia's.


----------



## Attus

Traffic bases estimation may have some serious issues. For example last year there was a long time construction site at the intersection Köln Nord (A1×A57) in Germany. A57 to Nijmegen was heavily congested, the end of the queue was 2 km back in A1 (Euskirchen -> Dortmund). Google collected traffic data, realized that there was a congestion and predicted 12 minutes for that section of 2 km. 
I however drove straight forward and stayed on A1, directed to Leverkusen. The left lane was free so despite of driving slow and careful I absolved 2 km in 2 minutes and arrived in Leverkusen ten minutes earlier then estimated. 
Was the prediction wrong? Not necesserily, actually there WAS a congestion on the motorway. 
And I had luck: Google could have suggested leaving the motorway in order to avoid that congestion or taking some alternate route, e.g. bypassing Cologne in the east side (A3).


----------



## MattiG

Attus said:


> Was the prediction wrong? Not necesserily, actually there WAS a congestion on the motorway.


That is why they are called predictions. There is always space for human thinking: If the road is right now blocked by an accident 100 kilometers ahead, should I take an alternative route or not. There is no single answer to that question.


----------



## x-type

makaveli6 said:


> How does Waze require more typing than any other navgiation app? You can search by addresses, locations, save favorites and other stuff. It varies by your country though - in Latvia we have a very active community, even Latvian State Road administration and major city road departaments are working with them. For example, if a specific street or road is closed, they send the information to Waze and they instantly update the map, so the app reroutes you instantly too.
> It also works very well in rush hours, I've had times when Waze found some unusual routes that save me 20-40 minutes. But this too relies on how many users are using it in your country, I know that driving with Waze in Poland was an absolute nightmare, because the user base is very small compared to Latvia's.


because Waze makes you to report all accidents, road closures, police patrols etc while driving.


----------



## CNGL

makaveli6 said:


> From my experience, the best ETA in a navigation app is in Waze, though it depends on how many users are using it in each country. It usually calculates my ETA almost spot on even in rush hour, when the traffic is unpredictable.


How can Waze have the best terrorist group? I can't get it...

Or worse, I only can parse ETA as _Euskadi Ta Askatasuna_. I have to find a better acronym for Estimated Time of Arrival. There's a reason why I now know the Egyptian goddess of health, wisdom and marriage as Ivette instead of its original name.


----------



## Verso

CNGL said:


> How can Waze have the best terrorist group? I can't get it...
> 
> Or worse, I only can parse ETA as _Euskadi Ta Askatasuna_. I have to find a better acronym for Estimated Time of Arrival. There's a reason why I now know the Egyptian goddess of health, wisdom and marriage as Ivette instead of its original name.


:wtf: :lurker:


----------



## makaveli6

x-type said:


> because Waze makes you to report all accidents, road closures, police patrols etc while driving.


Oh, now I get it.'You can the tap the report button while driving and it will remember where you were at the time. When you have finished your drive you can finish reporting it. But since you don't have to report congestions, these reports are that necessary, atleast for me. I usually don't use this function.


----------



## volodaaaa

:banana2: I drove a train today. It was cool


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Drove or rode?


----------



## Verso

I've heard that some train derailed in Bratislava.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suicidal bus driver changing a tire, while laying on the merging lane of a busy motorway in the Netherlands.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Drove or rode?


I drove  but only in depot area.


----------



## x-type

i envy you  what kind of train that was, which class?

my top achievment till now was ride in locomotion of freight train (and it was on route of some 70 km actually; i don't count short rides on station in locomotion)


----------



## volodaaaa

it was just small diesel unit. Exactly this type:









I drove at 10 kph because the speed limit in depot was 10 kph. But the throttle lever was very sensitive so I exceeded the limit a little bit.

It was cool, the unit was renewed and the whole speed control was resembling a cruise control. You just set the speed the train was supposed to drive at (the speed control was divisible by 5). I fortunately and accidentally set 15 kph


----------



## bogdymol

I flew an Antonov AN-2 plane in mid air at approx. 1000 m altitude when I was just 8 years old. Beat that!

:smug:

(The co-pilot left me in his seat and I had the chance to make a few turns with the plane. Those ones of you who have me on facebook can see a video of that on my fb profile)


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> I flew an Antonov AN-2 plane in mid air at approx. 1000 m altitude when I was just 8 years old. Beat that!
> 
> :smug:
> 
> (The co-pilot left me in his seat and I had the chance to make a few turns with the plane. Those ones of you who have me on facebook can see a video of that on my fb profile)


:eek2:


----------



## Verso

Little kids flying planes... When you thought you'd seen everything on the Internet...


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Little kids flying planes... When you thought you'd seen everything on the Internet...


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Dubroff


----------



## Verso

wtf


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> it was just small diesel unit. Exactly this type:


Vagónka Studenka


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> wtf


America hno:


----------



## Verso

And that was 20 years ago.


----------



## italystf

How to carry a large fridge across the streets of Naples:
http://video.repubblica.it/edizione...frigorifero-in-scooter/253938/254142?ref=fbpr
Well, at least they wear helmets. :lol:


----------



## CNGL

This morning I did a walkover .


----------



## Rebasepoiss

makaveli6 said:


> in Latvia we have a very active community, even Latvian State Road administration and major city road departaments are working with them. For example, if a specific street or road is closed, they send the information to Waze and they instantly update the map, so the app reroutes you instantly too.


All of this can be said about Estonia as well. AFAIK Google even shares some of the traffic density data they gather with Estonian Road Administration. I find it interesting that Waze is not used as much elsewhere.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ Both Ontario and Quebec ministries of transport use the Google traffic data on their official websites, and overlay it with their own alerts (eg construction zone)

eg http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/traveller/trip/map.shtml?ll=43.696424,-79.459648&z=10
and http://www.quebec511.info/fr/Carte/Default.aspx

I don't think many people use them though :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

Meanwhile in Bratislava


----------



## Verso

I've just seen a car from Udmurtia (18) in Piran.


----------



## ChrisZwolle




----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> I've just seen a car from Udmurtia (18) in Piran.


I see a relatively high number of Russian cars in northern Italy, but mostly during summer. Most are from Moscow, but I've seen some form more distant, like Tatarstan, Ekaterinburg, Celjabinsk,... Considering all vehicles, the most distant was a truck from Novosibirsk on A4 Venice-Trieste, that's probably the most distant licence plate I spotted (not counting USA, Canada and Japan, that are more distant but they didn't came there overland).
And I spottes a car from Transnistria on a rest area of A1 Vienna-Salzburg.


----------



## Verso

I've never seen a license plate from Siberia.


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> I see a relatively high number of Russian cars in northern Italy, but mostly during summer. Most are from Moscow, but I've seen some form more distant, like Tatarstan, Ekaterinburg, Celjabinsk,... Considering all vehicles, the most distant was a truck from Novosibirsk on A4 Venice-Trieste, that's probably the most distant licence plate I spotted (not counting USA, Canada and Japan, that are more distant but they didn't came there overland).
> And I spottes a car from Transnistria on a rest area of A1 Vienna-Salzburg.


I once read about someone that rode his motorbike all the way to Russian far East, and then took a couple ferries to South Korea and Japan, so the Japanese car could have gone overland almost all the way.

And how in Earth the Transnistria car did reach Austria? I thought they would be forced to switch to 'valid' Moldovan plates.


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> I've just seen a car from Udmurtia (18) in Piran.


It is still inside Europe.
That is just 800 km more (a day of driving) than I've been this year (Nizhny Novgorod). We though to go at to Kazan too, but it would add 2 days of driving with additional hotel cost. Russia is REALLY BIG.


----------



## Suburbanist

keber said:


> It is still inside Europe.
> That is just 800 km more (a day of driving) than I've been this year (Nizhny Novgorod). We though to go at to Kazan too, but it would add 2 days of driving with additional hotel cost. Russia is REALLY BIG.


What are the conditions of roads past the URals?


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> It is still inside Europe.


But ~3,500 km from Piran.



Suburbanist said:


> What are the conditions of roads past the URals?


How would he know? He didn't cross them. :dunno:


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> But ~3,500 km from Piran.


When we were in Nizhny Novgorod (which is at the same longitude as Badghad, Iraq) we were 3500 km from Ljubljana (because we made return over Latvia). From Russian point of view, this is still just at the beginning of Russia. :lol:
From there to Magadan, which is the furthest point you can get over road in Russia, there is another 10,000 km that is at least 2 weeks of driving and probably some car service.
@Suburbanist: as I know, main road to Vladivostok is now fully paved and generally in good condition. There are road videos of the whole trip on Youtube.
My party had an idea to go to Vladivostok and return over China and Kazakhstan (about one month trip). However driving with your own car through China is still not allowed.


----------



## Suburbanist

keber said:


> @Suburbanist: as I know, main road to Vladivostok is now fully paved and generally in good condition. There are road videos of the whole trip on Youtube.
> My party had an idea to go to Vladivostok and return over China and Kazakhstan (about one month trip). However driving with your own car through China is still not allowed.


I think EU should retaliate against China w.r.t these driving rules, and also other countries that do not allow foreign cars or foreign-licensed drivers to drive cars within their territory. So if people cannot take their cars, or their driver's licenses, to temporarily drive cars in other country, drivers from such country should face the same restrictions in Europe.


----------



## g.spinoza

I hate the whole idea and concept of tipping.


----------



## bogdymol

I think tipping is ok, but only if you do that little extra so that you deserve it. If you do just what you are paid for, you shouldn't get a tip. 

However, I have never imagined that they are waiting for a tip even at the check-in counter at the airport.


----------



## italystf

In the US people do tip because they don't pay, or pay less, for certain services that in other counties have fixed, mandatory, prices.
For example in Italy, most restaurants charge 1-2€ for '_coperto_', to pay the service. This is included in the final bill and you must pay it. In US they don't, so people tip.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Yeah, but those are restaurants.
In the USA you have to tip for almost everything. A colleague went there for vacation and told that they payed only for tipping many hundred dollars.


----------



## italystf

^^ What about 'tipping' to border crossing officials in Balkans countries? :troll:


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> ^^Yeah, but those are restaurants.
> In the USA you have to tip for almost everything. A colleague went there for vacation and told that they payed only for tipping many hundred dollars.


Exactly. In principle, if they don't get decent wages, it's not my problem. They should strike or join a union and demand that employers pay them better.


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> I hate the whole idea and concept of tipping.


Agree. The price of a product or a service should be visible at the price tag.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Tipping is very uncommon in the Netherlands, except perhaps at restaurants, but I don't think it will be frowned upon if you don't tip. 

But in some societies, you can't make a living with certain service jobs without tips. 

Last year I was in Spain and there was a guy filling up my tank. Was I supposed to tip the guy? I'm not used to be being served at fuel stations.


----------



## cinxxx

italystf said:


> ^^ What about 'tipping' to border crossing officials in Balkans countries? :troll:


Never did and never had to do that. They always wanted to get rid of me quickly.
I think I annoyed them when i asked them to get a stamp in passport 

About tipping at restaurants, I usually do it, if I find the service good, and usually it is.
I also leave them 1-2€ when I go to the barber, those guys have bad salaries. But nobody here complains if you don't tip.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Last year I was in Spain and there was a guy filling up my tank. Was I supposed to tip the guy? I'm not used to be being served at fuel stations.


At least in Italy there are pump stations with manned and unmanned hoses, and the manned one are already more expensive, to cover for personnel costs, so I don't think you have to tip.


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> Never did and never had to do that. They always wanted to get rid of me quickly.
> I think I annoyed them when i asked them to get a stamp in passport
> 
> About tipping at restaurants, I usually do it, if I find the service good, and usually it is.
> I also leave them 1-2€ when I go to the barber, those guys have bad salaries. But nobody here complains if you don't tip.


I remember when I was in Germany to have used the "stimmt so" rule of thumb, just to get rid of change.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What do you guys pay for a simple haircut?

In the Netherlands you'll pay as much as € 25 - 30 for a basic men's haircut, but there are barbers who don't have a shop, but come to your house. They are cheaper, my barber cost € 15 for a haircut at home.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> What do you guys pay for a simple haircut?
> 
> In the Netherlands you'll pay as much as € 25 - 30 for a basic men's haircut, but there are barbers who don't have a shop, but come to your house. They are cheaper, my barber cost € 15 for a haircut at home.


In Italy anything from 10 to 20 euro for a men's haircut.


----------



## cinxxx

In the NL seems like services are more expensive than here. You pay more for fuel, car tax, etc.
Last I was at the barber, it cost 16, gave him 18. It's not a "premium" barber, but it does the job for me, it's close to my home...


----------



## Alex_ZR

In Serbia men's haircut costs about 2 €... :troll:


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> What do you guys pay for a simple haircut?
> 
> In the Netherlands you'll pay as much as € 25 - 30 for a basic men's haircut, but there are barbers who don't have a shop, but come to your house. They are cheaper, my barber cost € 15 for a haircut at home.


It depends...

In the bigger cities, the rates are pretty high because of high rental fees, typically 25-30 euro, even more if the place is "in". In the provinces and countryside, the price halves.

My favorite place to go is located in a Ruoholahti shopping center close to an ex-Nokia campus in the western Helsinki. Easily accessible (motorway, huge parking space, bus, metro, tram) and usually no need to book in advance (almost 10 seats). The easy logistics has more weight for me than the price of 29 eur.


----------



## keokiracer

ChrisZwolle said:


> What do you guys pay for a simple haircut?
> 
> In the Netherlands you'll pay as much as € 25 - 30 for a basic men's haircut, but there are barbers who don't have a shop, but come to your house. They are cheaper, my barber cost € 15 for a haircut at home.


€9 for a haircut at home here.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's probably moonlighting (i.e. not paying taxes on it). My barber is a freelancer who pays income tax and insurances, all legal and above-board.


----------



## CNGL

I usually pay €10 for a haircut here.


bogdymol said:


> When refueling the car, you have to pay in before (good luck if you want to fill up the tank).


Some time ago I decided to quit the gas station of a well-known brand I used to go in favor of an unmanned station a local company has set up in an industrial zone, which is much cheaper (Up to €0.10/l, with an additional €0.03/l if one has a client card) and basically does the same if paying with cash.


----------



## Suburbanist

I pay € 17 for haircuts at a hair shop. I used to pay substantially more when I first arrived and had longer (neck-length) hair that required extra care like straightening every other month.


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's a difficult situation;
> * continue driving at speed: risk plowing into a vehicle in front of you
> * braking hard: risk having other people plow into you


Every driver is responsible for driving safely and adapting the driving to the conditions of the road and environment.

=>

If there's low visibility, every driver has to adapt the speed to a safety margin for such visibility.

A driver is not there to think, what if someone else won't adapt his/her speed.


----------



## Kanadzie

x-type said:


> it's usually not about bulbs, but electrical or mechanical failure.


I understand, but I really can't imagine such a failure existing for more than maybe 24 h at most... what is happening with the railway company :nuts:

Maybe they haven't been sued enough after accidents happen...


----------



## Surel

italystf said:


> Railway crossings without barriers are extremely dangerous.


I looked into this a bit and its not completely straightforward. Really, the human factor is the biggest problem. Even the gated crossings show very high number of accidents.



Surel said:


> ^^
> I found this presentation from 2015 with some more up to date data.
> 
> There's been 8001 railway crossings under the management of SŽDC as of 2014, 4252 were just with a sign, 2180 with lights and 1172 with electronic gates, 359 with mechanical gates.
> 
> SŽDC fitted 22 gated railway crossings and scrapped 40 railway crossings in 2014.
> 
> There were 36 % of all the deaths on the gated railway crossings in 2014, while only 9 % on the railway crossings with signs only. There were 55 % of all the deaths on the railway crossings with lights.
> 
> From those graphs on page 27 seems that, accident wise, it doesn't make much sense to improve the sign only railway crossings, but it seems sensible to equip railway crossings that have lights also with gates as they show more than proportional number both of accidents and deaths (in the year 2014).
> 
> All in all however the biggest problem is the drivers' recklessness.


----------



## g.spinoza

Surel said:


> A driver is not there to think, what if someone else won't adapt his/her speed.


That's a recipe for disaster


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> That's a recipe for disaster


Indeed. I would not say that being careful for others has saved my life, but as for me, it has, at least, saved my car for countless times.



Kanadzie said:


> I understand, but I really can't imagine such a failure existing for more than maybe 24 h at most... what is happening with the railway company :nuts:
> 
> Maybe they haven't been sued enough after accidents happen...


Sometimes it is done on purpose - e. g. there is a reconstruction of signalling. But there is also vandalism and accident factor - railway company usually act immediately, but it can't prevent some trains to pass. Needless to say, that train drivers are professionals and passing a "stop" signal or exceeding a speed limit is punished severely.


----------



## volodaaaa

Greetings from train that is 150 minutes late...


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> That's a recipe for disaster


The social optimal behaviour in such a situation is to follow the rules, everyone should behave like that. The rules says that you should adapt the speed to the condition of the road. Once people will start to count with the fact that other's don't obey the rules, and therefore also don't obey the rules, the whole system will fall apart.


----------



## g.spinoza

Surel said:


> The social optimal behaviour in such a situation is to follow the rules, everyone should behave like that. The rules says that you should adapt the speed to the condition of the road. Once people will start to count with the fact that other's don't obey the rules, and therefore also don't obey the rules, the whole system will fall apart.


The system is already fallen apart, so I don't see what is the purpose of following the rules to the letter and happily smashing your nose into the truck ahead.


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> The system is already fallen apart, so I don't see what is the purpose of following the rules to the letter and happily smashing your nose into the truck ahead.


Are we talking about the same case of a fog wall?

The rules require you to slow down and adjust the speed to the conditions of the road because of the minimum visibility. That's what everyone should do, if following the rules.

If you decide to not follow the rules and keep high speed, because you expect all the other drivers behind you are not following the rules and you are scared that they will smash into you. Just then you will smash into the truck ahead that did follow the rules and slowed down.

That's the reason why there are the rules at all in fact. So that people don't have to use their judgement all the time, and as a result you would have half the people taking different decision than the other half which would case enormous trouble.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I agree with you, that would work in a perfect world. Since I know that such a world doesn't exist, I brake looking carefully ahead and behind me.


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> I brake looking carefully ahead and behind me.


Exactly. That's what Chris originally wrote.



ChrisZwolle said:


> That's a difficult situation;
> * continue driving at speed: risk plowing into a vehicle in front of you
> * braking hard: risk having other people plow into you


If you have a car with perfect brakes, other people with worse brakes or just driving faster behind you could hit you if you brake to hard...


----------



## italystf

In this parking lot they put a steel bar to make it inacessible by trucks, however this trucker was smarter:



















http://www.triesteprima.it/cronaca/...da-segnale-divieto-silos-24-ottobre-2016.html


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> In this parking lot they put a steel bar to make it inacessible by trucks, however this trucker was smarter:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.triesteprima.it/cronaca/...da-segnale-divieto-silos-24-ottobre-2016.html


"Stronger" would be more suitable :lol:


----------



## Verso

I've bought some Serbian cookies that I haven't eaten since 1980s. They still have the same taste.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Verso said:


> I've bought some Serbian cookies that I haven't eaten since 1980s. They still have the same taste.


Jaffa cakes?


----------



## Verso

^^ No, Plazma from Bambi.


----------



## Suburbanist

During the communist dictatorship in Yugoslavia, did it import any industrialized food from the West?


----------



## keber

Coca cola for example. It was locally produced from imported syrup (this is usual more or less all over the world) but still it was a "capitalist drink". Cigarettes and spirits were imported too, but were much more expensive than local ones. Lewis pants were accessible too.
Of course this was happening more in 70ies and 80ies, before that foreign goods were almost nonexistent


----------



## volodaaaa

Yeah, my parents often recall their first Coca-cola experience in Yugoslavia


----------



## Verso

The worst drink ever.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

may be its because the roads are made by italians , i'd say


----------



## winnipeg

Is this story seems real? 

https://vimeo.com/191724569

(An american who traveled from Greece to Macedonia got ripped of his drone by macedonian customs who seems to use their power to steal such object and sell it after....)

If it's true, I'm finaly happy that my car broke down in Serbia in september when I was doing my Balkan trip..., if I reached Macedonia maybe they would have steal my drone as well... :no: :no:


----------



## italystf

winnipeg said:


> Is this story seems real?
> 
> (An american who traveled from Greece to Macedonia got ripped of his drone by macedonian customs who seems to use their power to steal such object and sell it after....)
> 
> If it's true, I'm finaly happy that my car broke down in Serbia in september when I was doing my Balkan trip..., if I reached Macedonia maybe they would have steal my drone as well... :no: :no:


I would have turned back and crossed through another border crossing.


----------



## Suburbanist

This is why my willingness to visit third-world countries with long record of corruption diminishes everyday.


----------



## x-type

customs officers and customs police are dickheads all around the world. i have really rarely met some of them who are cool and normal.


----------



## winnipeg

italystf said:


> I would have turned back and crossed through another border crossing.


I don't think that it could work that way, I don't know the laws but I don't think that this is that simple, they probably won't let you go back...


----------



## winnipeg

x-type said:


> customs officers and customs police are dickheads all around the world. i have really rarely met some of them who are cool and normal.


Actualy the one that I see at the romanian/hungarian border and at the romanian/serbian border are okay, some of them are even making joke/trying to speak my mother tongue (I'm from France) and some are even smiling.... and so far none of them have tried to take something from me (money or objects)... :yes:


----------



## Skopje/Скопје

winnipeg said:


> Is this story seems real?


Real shame for the experience of this guy, but here is an article where the police says that the drones were confiscated (the article is in Macedonian). 

http://kurir.mk/makedonija/vesti/dronovi-droga-parfemi-pari-shto-i-kako-zapleni-makedonskata-tsarina-foto/



> – 3 дронови, откриени во два одвоени случаи на граничниот премин Меџитлија, при контрола на два автомобили пријавени за влез во државата.
> 
> Во првиот случај, во пластични кутии сместени во багажникот на француски автомобил, управуван од американски државјанин, биле пронајдени 2 дронови.
> 
> Во вториот случај, во багажникот на грчки автомобил, управуван од грчки државјанин бил пронајден 1 дрон.


Quick translation:



> 3 drones were found in two separate cases on the border crossing Medzitlija.
> 
> In the first case, in plastic boxes in a french car, operated by American citizen, were found 2 drones.
> 
> In the second case, in a Greek car operated by Greek citizen was found one drone.


I'm not saying that the officers are not corrupted, but it seems to me that this guy is dramatizing too much. In the last year due to several incidents with drones, the authorities are more strict considering the drones.

If they wanted to sell the drones, why would they reported them to the media? It doesn't make sense to me.


----------



## winnipeg

Interesting, thanks for the article! :yes:

Okay, so I guess that there is a law in Macedonia that is telling that caring a drone is prohibited...? (I never heard of such laws anywhere in the world).

At least it's a good point that it don't seems to look that much like a corruption case...


----------



## volodaaaa

Today I have undergone tooth root canal treatment. Have not experienced such pain....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I had root canal work done 3 times now... All completely painless, it's just annoying that it takes an hour or even two.


----------



## cinxxx

volodaaaa said:


> Today I have undergone tooth root canal treatment. Have not experienced such pain....


You didn't get anesthesia? Or maybe it was not good?
Because you shouldn't feel much if it's done proper.

I know because I went through both cases


----------



## volodaaaa

It was generally painless, but once the file reached one point in canal, I felt such a pain I could track the nerves from my tooth to my brain. But now it is okay. I had a terrible toothache beforehand. Now I feel relief.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The ultimate merge: 4 lanes merging at the same point! :nuts:

The Tema Motorway in Accra, Ghana.


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> Today I have undergone tooth root canal treatment. Have not experienced such pain....


We both suffered yesterday. I had colonoscopy for the third time. Parts of my bowel were sent by plane to Amsterdam.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ explosive diarrhoea :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

In almost 40 years I've never had a single tooth cavity...


----------



## keber

winnipeg said:


> Okay, so I guess that there is a law in Macedonia that is telling that caring a drone is prohibited...? (I never heard of such laws anywhere in the world).


I'm pretty sure that transporting drones over most world borders is not something that would be trivial with respective border police or customs. People, that have visited just EU countries usually don't have a clue, that crossing borders with a car is still a complicated thing in most cases.

Next year I plan to go to USA so I'm already wondering if Russian and Belarusian visas in my passport won't cause problems on US border. In theory that shouldn't be a problem but I've heard so many "interesting" stories about US border police so I'm not completely without worry.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Maybe you should make a new passport just to be sure 
Although it will be more interesting for us to hear your experience if you keep it


----------



## VITORIA MAN

bienvenue en France !!!








http://scd.rfi.fr/sites/filesrfi/im...-Frontière-France--Allemagne-Strasbourg_0.jpg









http://images.sudouest.fr/images/20...-assures-7-jours-sur_3423393_1000x500.jpg?v=1









http://img.aws.la-croix.com/2015/12...-proche-frontiere-franco-belge_0_1400_400.jpg


----------



## winnipeg

DVDs are from the past century, you should have tried it on Steam (completly dematerialized).... of course unless if your internet is that bad... hno:

As you know here in Romania, such dematerialized content is not a problem even if it weights tens of Gb... :cheers: (Probably the best thing I enjoy about beeing in Romania...).

About the game, it's a great game but it's getting old, already 3 years old... now everybody is waiting for GTA VI who will be even more better... :cheers:


But as an "infrastructure enthusiast", you should check the game "Cities : Skyline", it's a game like Simcity but with so much more possibilities and so much better in any way... the best part is that anyone can make mods for the game and you add the mods from Steam, so you can add maps or buildings or even mods that are allowing the player to play the game with more possibilities/differents rules/different IA, etc...

You can build beautifull and clean roads...... or crazy roads like I id in one of my cities... 

 

Incredible game, according to the stats of the game, I already played for 173 hours in maybe 1 year...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Many laptops don't even come with a DVD player anymore. I have a PC, but have never used the CD/DVD player...

I've read a lot of negative comments about Apple's Macbook Pro not having various ports anymore. They don't have standard USB ports, no SD card readers, no HDMI. I read photographers and video makers being upset by that. They need a bunch of adapters / dongles to work with the new Macbook Pro.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Many laptops don't even come with a DVD player anymore. I have a PC, but have never used the CD/DVD player...
> 
> I've read a lot of negative comments about Apple's Macbook Pro not having various ports anymore. They don't have standard USB ports, no SD card readers, no HDMI. I read photographers and video makers being upset by that. They need a bunch of adapters / dongles to work with the new Macbook Pro.


Apple is usually the first IT brand to discontinue obsolete devices: they removed 3.5 inches floppy drives in 1998 and jacks of IPhones in 2016.
No doubt they won the war against BlackBerry years ago! 
Floppy disks became obsolete more than a decade ago, then CD and DVD are following. Maybe standard USB ports will become obsolete too, replaced probably by Micro USB.


----------



## x-type

i don't see the purpose of changing USB jacks with microusb or something third. i only see it utile if they were changed with wireless connection.


----------



## bogdymol

They are also replacing standard USB 2.0 slots in new laptop with 3.0 and 3.1 which give a lot higher data transfer capacity.


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> I haven't played any game in the last few years, so I decided to get one. So I have purchased GTA5 as I have enjoyed this game maybe 10 years ago when I have played last time.
> 
> Yesterday I said I should install it on my laptop. I opened the package and I noticed that it came on 7 DVDs. I put the first one inside, started to install it, and then I started to do some house cleaning so that the time passes during installation. Meanwhile I have read on the package that after installation it will need to make some updated hno:
> 
> 2.5 hours later all the DVDs were installed :banana: But then the game said it needs an 8 GB update that it will download from the servers. Estimated download time (with Austrian internet): 2-3 hours hno: Luckily it went quicker than that.
> 
> After that it requested another update, about 500 MB in size :bash: Once this was finished, I could see the "play" button :banana: :banana: :banana:
> 
> I pressed the "play" button, but it requested another 70 MB update :crazy: I said ok, and in the few minutes it downloaded this I brought close to me something to eat and something to drink while I will finally enjoy the game, plus I took myself a comfortable position on the sofa. I could finally enjoy the game... :smug:
> 
> After that update was finished, it has started another one, 3 GB in size... :troll: :screwit: :madwife: :wallbash:
> 
> After that one was completed, it still needed something about 600 MB in size. :dead:
> 
> After 5 or 6 hours from the time I have started the installation, I have finally managed to play the game :grandpa: But just for a few minutes, as I had to leave the house and visit some friends with my wife...


That's a lot of smilies.


----------



## winnipeg

italystf said:


> Apple is usually the first IT brand to discontinue obsolete devices: they removed 3.5 inches floppy drives in 1998 and jacks of IPhones in 2016.
> No doubt they won the war against BlackBerry years ago!
> Floppy disks became obsolete more than a decade ago, then CD and DVD are following. Maybe standard USB ports will become obsolete too, replaced *probably by Micro USB*.


Thanks god, no, the standard who will be replacing USB type-A is USB type-C (much better than micro USB) like we already find on some 2016 smartphones and on the new Macbook Pro, which is great... even if they went one more time too far by removing the jack 3.5mm for audio and the SD/microSD card player.... at least they will sold a lot of adapters (at 30$ or more, each) :bash:


----------



## JMBasquiat

I wouldn't call the audio-jack obsolete. 

When they dropped the floppy disk, there was a better alternative in the form of CDs. 

Bluetooth audio is in no way better than the 3.5mm audio-jack; there is a noticeable quality drop, it is more expensive, your headphones need to be charged frequently, etc.


----------



## winnipeg

Yes, certainly the biggest mistake from Apple, way way too early. Hopefully all the other manufacturers seems to not follow Apple on this... they even make jokes about it in their ads...  Like Google with the Pixels featuring a "not new" jack 3.5... https://youtu.be/Rykmwn0SMWU?t=44


----------



## volodaaaa

but the game is worth it


----------



## Verso

I dreamed that I was in flooded Milan (flooded by sea!) and I even posted it here. 


PS: I drove to Milan with a Yugo :rofl:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> Public support for the EU would increase in Western Europe if they would fund more than just some marginal planning cost which may be 1 or 2% of the project cost. Right now it just transfers all road funding to the east.


This was getting way off-topic in the Croatian motorways thread so I'll address this here.

There are discrepancies the other way round as well. Agricultural subsidies in Western Europe are 4 times as high per hectare as they are in the East...and yet everybody has to compete in the same marketplace. Agriculture is very technology-dependent nowadays and a combine costs the same in Latvia than it does in the Netherlands...so why such a huge difference in subsidies?


----------



## bogdymol

These 2 videos showing Thanksgiving traffic on I-405 interstate in Los Angeles are quite popular these days:











I drove in LA about 3-4 weeks ago and I can confirm that there was always a lot of traffic. Only on a Sunday early in the morning there was less traffic, but nonetheless, the same I-405 from the videos above looked like this on a Sunday at around 12 noon:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Los Angeles is the densest urban area in the U.S. There is a fairly high density throughout the metropolitan area, unlike the older cities of the northeast which have dense cores, but very low density suburbs. 

Capacity on L.A. freeways has only been minimally expanded since 1980, while the metropolitan population has grown by over 7 million people since. Imagine adding all traffic of metropolitan Atlanta or Washington to an already congested urban area.

Los Angeles is often seen as a 'freeway walhalla' while in reality the amount of lane miles per capita is one of the lowest among U.S. cities. Los Angeles usually ranks at the top of the most congested metropolitan areas in the U.S.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

I guess the problem with LA is that the cost of increasing the capacity of existing highways would be very high any way you look at it.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> I dreamed that I was in flooded Milan (flooded by sea!) and I even posted it here.


You could have been if you were in Turin today:


----------



## italystf

Weird weather these days, walking across the town with 17°C, but Christmas ornaments already all around. :nuts:


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> You could have been if you were in Turin today


Actually it might have been Turin, I'm not sure. It was Milan or Turin.


----------



## bogdymol

italystf said:


> Weird weather these days, walking across the town with 17°C, but Christmas ornaments already all around. :nuts:



Where I live in the morning were -9 C outside and , and 2 days later there were +21 C so I rode the bike :nuts:


----------



## winnipeg

italystf said:


> Weird weather these days, walking across the town with 17°C, but Christmas ornaments already all around. :nuts:


Hopefuly during the next week, it will be much cooler... :cheers:



This is a comparison between tomorrow (26 nov) and tueday (29 nov) showing the temperature anomaly compared to the normal medium temperature at this period of the year... now ith much warmer and during the next week it will be muc cooler, thanks to a massive arctic cold airmass... :yes:

An we will even have snow at low altitude here in Romania! :cheers:


----------



## Suburbanist

keber said:


> Depends, if you want large cities in driving range, then Bergen is not for you. But 250.000 large city is still not "nothing to do" city.
> Tell me what advantages a 1+ million pop. city could have compared to quarter of a million pop. city for an average citizen.


I was not referring to regular facilities like doctors or supermarkets. Not even the odd item shopping which is done online today. I was more keen on culture-related programming and the like. Within 2h of my house in Tilburg, I have plenty of museums, galleries, TED talks, symposiums outside my field and the like to keep me intellectually entertained. I'm sure Bergen is no fox hole but I might exhaust options there.

With a higher wage it is possible to travel often by plane, but that is not something as easy as waking up Saturday and choosing between several interesting stuff within a 2h-travel (no hotel required etc).

Anyway, I'll visit Bergen early next year. The position is only starting during summer.


----------



## italystf

Another disadvantage of a place like Bergen is that it's very expensive and time-consuming to travel abroad from there. If you like travelling by car, you'll need a full day just to get out of Norway, while in Central Europe you have several countries within half-day driving distance.


----------



## winnipeg

italystf said:


> Another disadvantage of a place like Bergen is that it's very expensive and time-consuming to travel abroad from there. If you like travelling by car, you'll need a full day just to get out of Norway, while in Central Europe you have several countries within half-day driving distance.


By car, of course, roads are too difficult and oil is too expensive, you can't live in Bergen or in northern Norway and expect to trval by your own car in Europe....

But by air, Norway is great, especially with companies like Norwegian which is one of the first and one of the best lowcost long haul companies (because of the new Boeing 787 and Airbus A350, they can make long haul flight with a very low consumption and on a big distance without stopping...)....

For example, in february a flight from Bergen to New-York (with transit in Oslo) is only 186€ for one way...and they have plenty of cheap flights like this despite the high costs of this country... :yes:

If you add to that your higher incomes that comes with working in Bergen, then you are way more able to fly where you want from Norway than in some other countries...


----------



## winnipeg

ChrisZwolle said:


> A flight is not really comparable if you're used to having multiple larger cities within an hour of driving / train. I believe Suburbanist lives in Tilburg. There are some 20 cities with a population over 100,000 within a 100 km radius, including Brussels and Amsterdam.


But hopefully all the world didn't have such crazy high population density like you have in benelux.... Compared to that, western Norway seems empty, and it's great!!


----------



## Suburbanist

I'm still hoping I get a good new contract here, I'm almost fully settled (personally) in the Netherlands, and if I can sort career-related issues, I will then take some measures to make my stay permanent, such as buying a house, back-paying for past years since age 15 for the state pension fund etc.


----------



## SeanT

New images on M7 in Hungary

















Photo: MTI


----------



## winnipeg

Very nice, EV are the future! :yes:


----------



## italystf

This is not a thread about rest areas. :lol:
This is the off topic thread for non-road-related discussions.


----------



## winnipeg

italystf said:


> This is not a thread about rest areas. :lol:
> This is the off topic thread for non-road-related discussions.


Ah ah it's funny if he really thought that....


----------



## bogdymol

You are all wrong. This topic is just for "roadside rest areas". Only difference compared to other threads is that off-topic is allowed in here 

So go ahead, be on-topic, and post pictures with interesting rest areas.


----------



## ChrisZwolle




----------



## SeanT

This is a "Pihenöhely" too...😉


----------



## winnipeg

I don't know if it's interresting but in june 2016, I made some drone photos of a rest area between Timisoara and Arad on Romanian highway A1 (I was making some photos of a beautiful sunset), but it was left on one of my hard drives and I never thought I would post it somewhere oneday...  



Actualy some interesting things to see on it are the temporary mobile gas station that will probably stay many years because they don't seems to want to build real ones... and we can see all the road repairs that already had to be done only few years after opening... (something that happens often on new romanian higways sometime due to the poor road construction, sometimes because of the poor feasibility studies...).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Have you ever noticed that Wikipedia (the English one) has a systemic bias to public transport / rail? Most articles about large cities usually have extensive coverage on its public transport system, but only limited coverage on its roads and motorways, in some cases there is no information at all. For example the article about Guangzhou has no information at all about road transport despite it being located in one of the largest metropolitan expressway networks in the world. Many other articles only contain a list of highways running through the city, with no background information. Even the more in-depth articles often lack substance, for example Transport in São Paulo or Transport in Iran.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Have you ever noticed that Wikipedia (the English one) has a systemic bias to public transport / rail? Most articles about large cities usually have extensive coverage on its public transport system, but only limited coverage on its roads and motorways, in some cases there is no information at all. For example the article about Guangzhou has no information at all about road transport despite it being located in one of the largest metropolitan expressway networks in the world. Many other articles only contain a list of highways running through the city, with no background information. Even the more in-depth articles often lack substance, for example Transport in São Paulo or Transport in Iran.


I can say the same about history of transportation. You can always find exact historical dates of opening of railways, rail stations, metro lines, even those from the 19th century. it's more difficult to find opening dates of highways, even if they are only 20 or 30 yeats old.
I guess that there are more people interested in railways and PT rather than roads, so there's more demand and supply of information on the net.


----------



## Suburbanist

italystf said:


> I can say the same about history of transportation. You can always find exact historical dates of opening of railways, rail stations, metro lines, even those from the 19th century. it's more difficult to find opening dates of highways, even if they are only 20 or 30 yeats old.
> I guess that there are more people interested in railways and PT rather than roads, so there's more demand and supply of information on the net.


In regard of old history of roads, I think there is something else: railways used to be very inward-looking companies that ran every aspect of operation, and as such developed some 'loyal' groups around it. Road transport, in a broad sense, has always been more fragmented, there has never been something like a national truck company that operated all trucks in all roads, for instance... The automotive manufacturing business has been separate from road building/operation business.

To make things more complicated, cars could run on former ancient horse-drawn carriage ROWs, whereas trains needed specific brand-new 19th Century infrastructure...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

italystf said:


> Another disadvantage of a place like Bergen is that it's very expensive and time-consuming to travel abroad from there. If you like travelling by car, you'll need a full day just to get out of Norway, while in Central Europe you have several countries within half-day driving distance.


I really feel that when living in Tallinn or Estonia in general. It's nearly 700km or 8 hours of driving just to get to the Polish border. France is basically just as far away as Kazakhstan, yet I have no wish to drive to the latter.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A city like Munich or Frankfurt would be ideal. There is a huge amount of destinations, cities and countries you can get to within 10 hours of driving.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Have you ever noticed that Wikipedia (the English one) has a systemic bias to public transport / rail?


I see three reasons for that:
1., Public transport is a much more complex system than road network. It's not only an infrastructure but vehicles, stations as well. Ther are lots of people that are enthusiasts of locos, or trams or metro trains, other people of metro stations, etc. 
2., There are lots of roads anywhere in the world. There is one in front of your house as well. A motorway or an urban expressway is a bit different road, but these are roads as well. Railways/trams are something specific. 
3., Motorways look the same all about the world. Tarmac, white lines, crash barrier. Railways are different everywhere (wich is actually a huge problem if you want develop your network...), some use 1.5kV DC, some 15kV AC, some use overhead wires, other ones use third rails, some are not electrified at all. Some use low platforms, some high ones.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ While those are certainly valid arguments for extensive coverage on public transport systems, a road system is also much more than just some asphalt with painted lines. 

Whole books have been written about freeway systems in Houston or Dallas. There is a gigantic amount of literature and handbooks regarding roads and traffic. There are plenty of websites with extensive coverage about roads (i.e. Wikisara, Wegenwiki, Autobahn-online, wegen-routes, New York roads, Boston roads, Autobahnen.ch) not to mention internet forums about the subject. It's not that much of a niche subject, though I surely believe that transit has more fervent aficionados. 

Perhaps most people interested in roads are more leaning towards cars and trucks instead of the infrastructure that carries them.


----------



## SeanT

.....you see, it is everything but rest areas.....!


----------



## SeanT

It is Road Side, it means a rest area from highways/expressways, everything else OFF topic issues.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The police advises people who use covers against ice on the windshield, to be used on the outside, not inside of the car :lol:


----------



## winnipeg

How is that possible....


----------



## italystf

It's not very reassuring to think that people with the IQ of a stone are actually driving their cars around.


----------



## volodaaaa

Reminds me my cousin  Once she put snow chains onto wheels that were not on driving axle


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ The steering wheel? The spare tire?


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ ^^

Is there joke to be made of the Belgian police taking picture of car, but blanking the numberplate in _yellow_?


----------



## Surel

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ ^^
> 
> Is there joke to be made of the Belgian police taking picture of car, but blanking the numberplate in _yellow_?


Its the Dutch Police (Oost Brabant), Dutch license plates are yellow/orange.

If it had been the Belgian police, then it could have been a joke on the Dutch though .


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ Haha, sorry, I saw Brabant Politie and thought immediately of..._ Vlaams-Brabant_ 

I guess consequently half the comments to the original post are probably saying the car in the photo probably had a (B) symbol on the back...


----------



## italystf




----------



## volodaaaa

Nice one  btw. I like *DY*brand of computers. Really good. Works like rocket. I mean the noise and the temperature it produces.


----------



## bogdymol

I had once a dy laptop. The processor actually melted because of the temperature.


----------



## volodaaaa

I also had a dy printer. It had a secret feature - once you put a paper into a feeder it produced a unique origami.


----------



## winnipeg

I didn't knew that fixing a tire was so hard... :shocked:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYHhfaIqRzs


----------



## riiga

My current laptop is by the famous SNSV brand.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ better than ANUS :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

In October this year I have made a road-trip across some parts of the USA. I started in Florida, drove to the southernmost point of USA, Key West, and then I flew on the West Coast, where I drove on the Pacific Highway from Los Angeles to San Francisco, with a few stops on the way. Then I flew to Las Vegas and made a round-trip of some National Parks in Arizona and Utah, before returning back to LA. I total I drove about 5.000 km (3.100 miles) in about 15 days.

I have taken some pictures of the roads I drove on, but until then, you can see below a short video with some of the most interesting highways that I drove on:


----------



## g.spinoza

I just got back from a 4-day trip to Provence. Drove approx 1500 km on motorways, routes nationales and departementales, including the Gorges du Verdon road. No pictures of the road, unfortunately...

On another note, the new Skyscrapercity android app is out, solving the issue of new messages not being loaded. The app is completely redesigned: now it heavily relies on tapatalk (of which I don't like the layout), so it is completely useless: why having an app that reads one forum when you can have an identical one that reads all of them?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*traffic safety in Europe*

It seems that the decline of traffic fatalities have stalled for a prolonged period. Traffic fatalities bottomed out in 2013 and has remained stable since. For many countries, 2016 seems to be another flat or even increasing year for traffic fatalities. A similar trend is observed in the United States. 










I think there are a couple of factors coming into play. The end of the traffic fatality decline is most pronounced in countries with a developed motorway system. The motorways have the least fatalities and carries a large share of traffic mileage, so the fatality rate per 1 billion vehicle-kilometers is extremely low compared to other road types. However the new motorway mileage is increasing very slow in most western EU countries. 

Also, the past decade underwent a significant change in the vehicle fleet. Most vehicles are now equipped with recent generation passive safety options (for example air bags, stability control, ABS, high Euro NCAP ratings, etc.) This appears to have been a major influence on the decline of traffic fatalities among car occupants since 2000. 

Another factor may be distracted driving. It is estimated that some 20-30% of traffic accidents and fatalities are the result of distracted driving (such as texting while driving). It is quickly becoming the leading cause of traffic accidents. Once fast mobile internet and high smartphone penetration became available, the decline of traffic fatalities stalled.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Casey Neistat did it again. It looks like Finland.






This video gained almost half a million views in the first hour of release.

Neistat is one of the most famous Youtubers. He recently quit daily vlogging to concentrate on more complex videos like these. His vlogs were considered one of the best, with top of the line equipment and editing, without having a corporate, 'produced' feeling.


----------



## winnipeg

True, he's amazing! But, if his vlogs where good (I watched them everyday), it was getting so boring, finally he was only showing boring stuff like when he was always eating the same brand of vegetable juices, always showing his family the same way, always the sames stuff in most of his last vlogs... :no: It was not as funny as in the beginning and I even started to not like what he was doing, and those boring stuff showed his bad face, the face of a poor guy who was sometimes rude with other peoples.... :no: And also when he publicly endorsed Clinton while before that he was telling everyone that he won't talk about politics because it always divide peoples, maybe at this moment he already knew what would happen to his company...

Hopefully he stopped to do more serious stuff like this one, that's great....... But its also half of the story, the true story is that his company (Beme), a "social media wannabe" but who failed has been purchased by CNN for 25 millions $ (a lot for an almost empty shell), and now he will do stuff for CNN, probably videos, even if he haven't already told what it would be... :yes:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

I started watching Casey's vlogs when he was at roughly 200,000 subscribers. Especially in 2016 his growth was quite spectacular. Now that he has such a large following he is pretty much guaranteed to get at least a couple million views in every video. This also means that companies like Samsung are quite happy to sponsor some of the content he produces.

And yes, that's Finland.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Youtube has a higher penetration rate with certain demographics than television today, so big Youtubers are very interesting for advertisers, as well as the general platform that is Youtube. 

Though I don't get why Pewdiepie is so popular (fifty million subscribers!). Crazy Russian Hacker is funny at times, though eventually it tends to be much of the same. I also like the Slow Mo Guys. 

Daily vlogging is quite a challenge. You need to get interesting video out every single day, it's much harder than it looks. Many people try it, but only a small group is really successful. The club that consistently gets 100,000+ views on each video is fairly small.


----------



## g.spinoza

I have no interest whatsoever in vlogs and guys publishing videos. I must admit, I can't understand why someone should want to watch a random guy say random things in a video, unless it's a thematic channel (I watched some science related shows on YouTube).
I have troubles with videos: I thing written words convey much more information in less time.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Casey Neistat did it again. It looks like Finland.


Yes. The place is the Levi ski resort about 150 km north of the Arctic Circle.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I have a question for members from the Eastern EU (i.e. post-communist countries). The average monthly salaries are reported to be € 700 - 1100. That sounds low by Dutch standards, but of course the cost of living is lower. 

But what do you generally pay for rent or mortgage? I've read that in some countries a considerable share of the population lives in a house with no outstanding mortgage or rent. In that case, the purchasing power of a € 1000/month salary may be more comparable to € 1500 - 1800 in western Europe. 

In the Netherlands the general rental cost for social housing is between € 400 - 700 per month (excluding utilities). But in the unregulated market, rents over € 1000/month are more common. 

It's interesting to get some better insight into the cost of living differences, some of which you may not experience as a brief visitor or tourist. Especially since housing is by far the largest component in the cost of living for most people, which you do not see as a tourist.


----------



## Fatfield

Meanwhile in Dawlish, England......

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-38384483


----------



## cinxxx

ChrisZwolle said:


> I have a question for members from the Eastern EU (i.e. post-communist countries). The average monthly salaries are reported to be € 700 - 1100. That sounds low by Dutch standards, but of course the cost of living is lower.
> 
> But what do you generally pay for rent or mortgage? I've read that in some countries a considerable share of the population lives in a house with no outstanding mortgage or rent. In that case, the purchasing power of a € 1000/month salary may be more comparable to € 1500 - 1800 in western Europe.
> 
> In the Netherlands the general rental cost for social housing is between € 400 - 700 per month (excluding utilities). But in the unregulated market, rents over € 1000/month are more common.
> 
> It's interesting to get some better insight into the cost of living differences, some of which you may not experience as a brief visitor or tourist. Especially since housing is by far the largest component in the cost of living for most people, which you do not see as a tourist.


Most Romanians live in their own house/apartment. Affording one is not easy, but somehow everybody manages it. Either with help from parents, doing much of the construction/renovation work themselves or with friends/family members/black market. 

There is also no shame in living with the parents. So living costs are not so high.

On the other hand if you buy food, clothes or electronics, they cost the same or even more than in WEurope. Some people don't afford new clothes, so they get second hand or "fake" things.

Labour is payed 3-4 times less than in Germany for example. I haven't seen a car washing place where workers actually wash your car in Germany, in Romania is the norm 

But tbh I have no idea how some people manage, they are constantly in debt to several people. Somehow they do 
Young people in WEurope send money home to help their family.


----------



## bogdymol

I can confirm what cinxxx wrote above. I would add some more:

During communism all apartment blocks belonged to the state. After the communism fell in 1989 the state sold those apartments to the people living in them, and this turned to be very profitable for the people: they established a price (let's say 100.000 Romanian lei which was at that time worth 50.000 USD) which was divided into monthly payments over a few years (let's say 1.000 Romanian lei per month which was 500 USD per month). Next few years the inflation was very high and the Romanian leu was worth a lot less, so in the end they still had to pay the same 1.000 per month, but now that was worth 10 times lower. Therefore, most of the apartments were purchased at a very low price.

While I lived in Romania, as almost all my young friends and relatives, I stayed together with my parents, so there were 0 costs for housing for me.

Depending a lot on city, location, size, furniture, recently renovated etc., I think the rent for a small decent apartment varies between 200 and 400 Euro per month, plus the utilities (add 70 to 150 Euro per month).

Regarding the prices, there are some differences, sometimes is more expensive in Western EU and sometimes in Romania. 

However, in Romania there are always cheaper: internet, telephone, car related costs (insurance, tax, service etc.), restaurants, hotels. 

If you look for gadgets (electronics like photo cameras, laptops etc.) you will almost always find them cheaper in Western EU. 

Clothes for example are at a similar price in both locations, however when I have been in Spain I have noticed that a brand that is considered as premium in Romania was about 50% cheaper in Spain (without any special discount), and another brand that I could not even think about in Romania (because of very high prices) was extremely cheap in USA (this time with a season's sale).

Other items vary...


----------



## Attus

In Budapest and basically everywhere in Hungary there are not flats to rent. Every one live in their own house or flat. Most people inherited it or built it themselves, many family houses were built in the 70's and 80's. 
In cities all flats were owned by the state in the communist times and they were sold extreme cheap to people that lived in them after 1990. 
Because it's very difficult to find a flat to rent (it is only possible in the black market but even so there are very few of them) and youg people usually have no money for buy an own flat, it is quite usual to live in parents's flat even with 30. 
So yes, a vast majority of Hungarian people pay neither rent nor mortgage. 
However, the mentioned 700-1,100€ is overestimated. A net salary of 700€ monthly is pretty good in Hungary, 550-600 is much more typical, and in Eastern and Southeastern Hungary 4-500 is OK.


----------



## Sentilj

Just my experience for Bratislava, Slovakia - for purchasing price 123.000 € we got 3,5 rooms - 75m2 flat from 1984 (reconstructed of course). 30 yrs mortgage with 1,49% interest is on almost 400 €/month + utilities ca 180-220/month €, which are by far one of the highest utility expenses for post communist countries in the world. Good crowd source comparison can be found on www.numbeo.com

For solely living person total expenses 600 € for mortgage + utilities per month are unaffordable, but for pair with typical income for Bratislava 800 - 1000 € is reasonable.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's very different from the Netherlands, very few people live in a house that's paid off. Mortgages where you only pay the interest were very popular in the 1990s and early 2000s as housing prices appreciated very fast. 

I could not live on € 700 per month. Rent, health insurance and utilities already exceed that, not to mention transportation, food, clothing, furniture, leisure, etc.

It is common for low income households to get rental allowance and health care allowance, which combined can be around € 300 a month if you make less than € 20,000 annually (gross income). So people earning the minimum wage (which is € 1550/month) pay no net income tax. It is basically understood that you cannot make a living on a minimum wage without government subsidies in the Netherlands.


----------



## g.spinoza

In Italy I pay 430 € /month as a rent for a 40/50 m^2 apartment in semi-central Turin, plus utilities (more or less 500-550 in total, depending on months).
I am paying 200k to buy an apartment in the outskirts of Brescia, 85 m^2, 2 bedrooms 2 bathrooms. But it is a kind of social housing, free market is almost 30% more.

I'm not sure there is a minimum salary in Italy (don't think so), but anyways mine is lower than the Dutch minimum, and it is not bad by Italian standards. Of course there are a lot of differences between cities and rural and between North and South. If you are a civil servant, like me, you also get meal vouchers, summing up to 140€/month, that you can spend tax free in restaurants and supermarkets.
All in all, after taxes and housing expenses, I live with 800 €/month, which isn't that bad but of course I do not swim in luxury.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

its cheap your rent in turino , here in Vitoria (E) the standard is about 800-900 euros


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Holy cow.... Surgut, Russia.


----------



## CNGL

The liquid in that thermometer is definitely not mercury, as that would have frozen at around -37ºC.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> I'm not sure there is a minimum salary in Italy (don't think so)


In Hungary there is one, it's 127,500 forint in 2017 (approx. € 410). If completed secondary school is a must for the job, the minimum salary is 161,500 forint (approx. € 520). However in Hungary the minimum wage is not tax free, so if your gross salary is 161,500 and you have no children, you get a net of 107,400 forint (€ 350).


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Holy cow.... Surgut, Russia.


Ivan in Moscow saw in the TV that it's very cold in Omsk. He has a friend in Omsk so calls him by phone and asks:
- Hello, Sergei, is it really so cold in Omsk?
- Hello, yes, it's about -5 degrees.
- -5? Relly? No colder?
- No, -5, sometimes, erly morning, possibly -8. 
- Hmmm, in TV News was said it was -35 there outside.
- O, Ivan, you mean outside?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The boiling water trick. I wonder how much it cools off just by walking it outside for a moment.


----------



## g.spinoza

CNGL said:


> The liquid in that thermometer is definitely not mercury, as that would have frozen at around -37ºC.


In colder climates the usually use alcohol, which solidifies at -113 °C. Bet being in Russia, I'm surprised they didn't drink it out.


----------



## cinxxx

^^The number of people in Russia who have died as a result of drinking bath oil has risen from 49 to at least 58, local media has reported.


----------



## MattiG

cinxxx said:


> ^^The number of people in Russia who have died as a result of drinking bath oil has risen from 49 to at least 58, local media has reported.


I just wonder why in heck they put alcohol into bath oil. Ok, a silly question. It is Russia.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> I have a question for members from the Eastern EU (i.e. post-communist countries). The average monthly salaries are reported to be € 700 - 1100. That sounds low by Dutch standards, but of course the cost of living is lower.
> 
> But what do you generally pay for rent or mortgage? I've read that in some countries a considerable share of the population lives in a house with no outstanding mortgage or rent. In that case, the purchasing power of a € 1000/month salary may be more comparable to € 1500 - 1800 in western Europe.
> 
> In the Netherlands the general rental cost for social housing is between € 400 - 700 per month (excluding utilities). But in the unregulated market, rents over € 1000/month are more common.
> 
> It's interesting to get some better insight into the cost of living differences, some of which you may not experience as a brief visitor or tourist. Especially since housing is by far the largest component in the cost of living for most people, which you do not see as a tourist.


The reason home ownership is so high in Estonia is because during the Soviet occupation you didn't have to pay for housing, you were just given a flat. When the Soviet occupation ended you could by that flat for very little so everybody did. This is different to East Germany, for example, where the municipality remained the owner of these buildings even after unification and people living in those flats had to pay rent. In Estonia all those people became home owners. 

However, the latest generation doesn't have this privilige so more and more people are renting, at least until they can afford to take a mortgage (it's not easy saving 20% for a downpayment). The renting market consists only of people renting out the flats they own, there is very limited municipal housing and not a single privately owned apartment building that's meant for renting, as far as I know. 

Average salary in Tallinn is roughly €1,000 after taxes. A single bedroom flat in the city centre is €400-€600 a month and in the outskirts €270-€450. This does not include utilities (heating, water, electricity, garbage collection, internet, cable TV etc.). 

The average price for a m2 of flat is roughly €1,700 and people usually pay 20% as their downpayment for a mortgage. The m2 price varies hugely between city districts though. 

If you pay €100,000 for a single bedroom flat in the city centre and take a mortgage for 30 years with 20% downpayment you are looking at roughly €300 as a monthly payment with current interest rates. 

Buying a similar apartment in the commieblock suburbs would cost you €65,000. At 20% downpayment that would be roughly €200 a month.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> I have a question for members from the Eastern EU (i.e. post-communist countries). The average monthly salaries are reported to be € 700 - 1100. That sounds low by Dutch standards, but of course the cost of living is lower.
> 
> But what do you generally pay for rent or mortgage? I've read that in some countries a considerable share of the population lives in a house with no outstanding mortgage or rent. In that case, the purchasing power of a € 1000/month salary may be more comparable to € 1500 - 1800 in western Europe.
> 
> In the Netherlands the general rental cost for social housing is between € 400 - 700 per month (excluding utilities). But in the unregulated market, rents over € 1000/month are more common.
> 
> It's interesting to get some better insight into the cost of living differences, some of which you may not experience as a brief visitor or tourist. Especially since housing is by far the largest component in the cost of living for most people, which you do not see as a tourist.


I can confirm what my Eastern Europe peers said. We somehow love to own things and rental living is only temporary.

I inherited my flat after my grandma so I am rather a lucky one, but the monthly costs are quite high. We pay approximately:
160 € for facility management (repairs, reconstruction loan, etc),
100 € for electricity
100 € for gas
===========
360 € monthly

Bratislava is very expensive compared to other regions in Slovakia. To get some basic knowledge:
An average new 3 rooms flat costs approximately 160 000 € in Bratislava, in some poor Slovak regions (e. g. with unemployment rate higher than 20 % ) you can get the same for 30 000 €. It is obviously reflected in rent fees that are about 700 € per 3 rooms flat monthly in BA. The mortgage fees are the same. That is why people tend to buy their own flats rather than being tenants.

Generally, if you have a couple, the whole salary of one member goes to living costs. It is sad, but true.

Goods cost are usually the same as well as in Western Europe, but I think we have cheaper restaurants. Also, transport is not very expensive: especially trains that are for free for students and pensioners and rather cheap for working class (for example Bratislava - Košice = 445 km = 18 €).

The most essential problem are loans. People tend to take them without deeper consideration.


----------



## volodaaaa

Yesterday I saw The Shear Madness play for the first time. It was very cool although very suggestive. I think the audience always votes for the same character every night and I doubt the actors are ready to play all possible scenarios  My GF saw it three times and she told me the ending was always the same.


----------



## cinxxx

So former "East block" countries are very similar in this aspect


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> I can confirm what my Eastern Europe peers said. We somehow love to own things and rental living is only temporary.


Bah in Canada we think the same, maybe because so many of us trace back to Eastern Europe :lol:

I pay about 1400 EUR in mortgage monthly and am so happy since value of home has increased like 20-25% in past year :nuts:
In this region (Toronto-ish) there was a presentation saying average house has earned more money (via appreciation) in 2016 than the owner of the house at his job :nuts:

On a side note the mentions above of movable objects being cheaper in West EU than eastern EU is really interesting. In Canada vs USA there is a similar situation (USA has cheaper televisions, automobiles, etc typically), but the EU is common market without customs barriers and often, with same currency (though most east EU countries have not gone to EUR yet). It's interesting that "grey-market" importing hasn't brought prices in both sides to parity yet, especially with internet (e.g. buy from amazon.de and ship-to Romania)


----------



## hofburg

In Yugoslavia it was very easy to get a flat. Most people got the flat from the employer they worked for (mostly from municipalities, state owned banks and companies). The rent for the flat was very small, like 1/8 of the salary (by absolute numbers it would be like 20€ for normal size flat). Yugoslavia especially in the 80s had like 1000% inflation, so many peole took a credit for a new house they built and never really paid for. In the 90s when independence occured state needed liquid money and people were offered to buy their existing rented flats for like 1/10 of market price. So the result today is many people own real estate, and actually got rich on the account of the country.

But it is all different for today young generation (including myself), average salary is half the one of WE, and the rents and real estate prices are on pair with WE. I don't see myself buying real estate, the concept of fixing yourself to one place I find stupid.


----------



## Tenjac

CNGL said:


> The liquid in that thermometer is definitely not mercury, as that would have frozen at around -37ºC.


And it is red.

Coloured liquids in thermometers are ethanol with various dyes.


----------



## g.spinoza

hofburg said:


> I don't see myself buying real estate, the concept of fixing yourself to one place I find stupid.


One may argue that it's stupid to pay money every month and have nothing to leave behind to your children. It's basically tossing money down the drain.

Besides, you are not really "fixed" in one place if you buy a house. You can always sell it, you know.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> The boiling water trick. I wonder how much it cools off just by walking it outside for a moment.


If just for a few seconds, not very much (assuming you are using a regular pan or some receptacle like that, not a serpentine mesh or something like that). It takes a lot of energy to change the temperature of water, and the surface:volume ratio in a normal container is low. 

A large chunk of ice will take a lot of time to melt even on a hot day, if kept away from radiation (sunlight) more so.


----------



## hofburg

g.spinoza said:


> One may argue that it's stupid to pay money every month and have nothing to leave behind to your children. It's basically tossing money down the drain.
> 
> Besides, you are not really "fixed" in one place if you buy a house. You can always sell it, you know.


From financial standpoint it is probably worse, yes.


----------



## Attus

Kanadzie said:


> On a side note the mentions above of movable objects being cheaper in West EU than eastern EU is really interesting. In Canada vs USA there is a similar situation (USA has cheaper televisions, automobiles, etc typically), but the EU is common market without customs barriers and often, with same currency


Yes, but taxes may be very different. E.g. VAT is 19% in Germany, 27% in Hungary. This solely may cause a 6-7% difference in the retail price. 



> (though most east EU countries have not gone to EUR yet).


And basically they don't want to. The 2000's when all wanted to have it, are gone.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

vat 27 % in H , my god !!!!
is this the country with the highest one ?


----------



## MichiH

VITORIA MAN said:


> vat 27 % in H , my god !!!!
> is this the country with the highest one ?


In EU, yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_value_added_tax#VAT_rates.

Luxembourg has 17% only.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ This is going out of hand. 
I really cannot see why I have to pay a quarter of everything to the State. It seems unreasonably (but of course reasons are very well known) high.


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> A large chunk of ice will take a lot of time to melt even on a hot day, if kept away from radiation (sunlight) more so.


Making zero-degree water from zero-degree ice requires about the same amount of energy as making 80-degree water from zero-degree water.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> I inherited my flat after my grandma so I am rather a lucky one, but the monthly costs are quite high. We pay approximately:
> 160 € for facility management (repairs, reconstruction loan, etc),
> 100 € for electricity
> 100 € for gas
> ===========
> 360 € monthly
> 
> Brati


Jesus ******* Christ!! :uh::uh:


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> Jesus ******* Christ!! :uh::uh:


The facility management is usually about 20 - 30 €, but we are awaiting the reconstruction to decrease the monthly payment for gas :lol: So basically we take money from one pile and put it on another one


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ This is going out of hand.
> I really cannot see why I have to pay a quarter of everything to the State. It seems unreasonably (but of course reasons are very well known) high.


Perhaps if we saw the "added value"? :lol:


----------



## winnipeg

g.spinoza said:


> I have no interest whatsoever in vlogs and guys publishing videos. I must admit, I can't understand why someone should want to watch a random guy say random things in a video, unless it's a thematic channel (I watched some science related shows on YouTube).
> I have troubles with videos: I thing written words convey much more information in less time.


Why people would want to watch some entertainment show on the TV that are way worse than that? Same question...

I watch a lot Youtube myself (and never TV) because you can choose to watch what you want, and for example you can choose to look at those daily vlogs, even if sometimes I find them boring (mostly before he choosed to stop), before that it was great and entertaining because he was doing interesting stuffs, that a great way to think at something else after a day of work or to escape from a boring life in a (very) boring city such mine... :lol:

On Youtube you watch what you want, I personaly watch a lot of videos from Youtubers inmy native language and there's a lot of exceptional content and not only the one that are boringly playing videogames on video or praks or stuffs like that, for example what I really like on Youtube are also science-related videos, in my native language there's a lot of famous Youtubers about natural science, physics, maths, history, etc.... but also about travels, exploring some scary abandoned places, etc... That's in most possible ways, much better than TV! :yes:


----------



## winnipeg

About houses, even in France, the situation has changed a lot in the last decades... 25 years ago, my parents were able to build there own house (a very large and decent house) with only one salary (my mother wasn't working, and my father didn't had a "highly paying" job at this time)... 

Now it's much much harder, not only because having a stable job is harder, but also because all costs have crazily increased, for example all the materials needed to build it are costing a lot more (if you want to build a house who last on time), and now with the banks it's way much difficult to get a loan for a house building, they want the lower possible risk now, so they offer loans only to "best candidates", not those with difficult situation who are the most in need... :no:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I haven't watched regular TV programming for almost 10 years now. I deeply dislike all the advertising and the need to change your schedule to the TV programming schedule. Now I just watch whenever I feel like watching something, without being interrupted with advertising every 15 minutes. 

It blows my mind that an archaic application like teletext is still widely used in the Netherlands. There is even a teletext app that is used by some 600,000 people every day. 

On the other hand I don't consider myself an 'early adopter' of new technologies either. I'm more like wait and see.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> The facility management is usually about 20 - 30 €, but we are awaiting the reconstruction to decrease the monthly payment for gas :lol: So basically we take money from one pile and put it on another one


all 3 things are really expensive. 
160€ for facility managment?? what does it include, 2 full body massages twice per week?
100€ for gas - if you have gas heating, i can understand it in winter months, although again quite expensive. when i lived in Zagreb, we had gas heating and paid cca 90€ in winter months for 55 sqm, and it was one of the most expensive heating fees for that size of apartment in whole city, mostly people paid 40, maybe 50€. when we had gas heating in house, we paid in winter months up to 250€ tough. 
100€ electricity?! I pay 50€ for 150 sqm house. do you own Tesla and recharge it every day?


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ teletext  I have not tried it for a very long time  BTW we have a monthly plan with set-top box. The greatest advantage it has is that you can simply record the movie/show/etc. and then forward the advertisement. It is a huge problem here in Slovakia as advertisements are incredibly long. For example Titanic film takes 5 hours which adds up to 2 hours of ads.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> For example Titanic film takes 5 hours which adds up to 2 hours of ads.



















I hope she also watches Bud Spencer movies with you.


----------



## g.spinoza

I don't even own a TV.
I watch movies and TV series on my PC, only after careful evaluation and after reading a lot of reviews.
I have far too little time to spend going on youtube and hoping that the next video will be interesting. There are no reviews for youtube (number of visualization do not count - usually the more a video is watched, the stupider it is).



winnipeg said:


> Why people would want to watch some entertainment show on the TV that are way worse than that? Same question...
> 
> I watch a lot Youtube myself (and never TV) because you can choose to watch what you want, and for example you can choose to look at those daily vlogs, even if sometimes I find them boring (mostly before he choosed to stop), before that it was great and entertaining because he was doing interesting stuffs, that a great way to think at something else after a day of work or to escape from a boring life in a (very) boring city such mine... :lol:
> 
> On Youtube you watch what you want, I personaly watch a lot of videos from Youtubers inmy native language and there's a lot of exceptional content and not only the one that are boringly playing videogames on video or praks or stuffs like that, for example what I really like on Youtube are also science-related videos, in my native language there's a lot of famous Youtubers about natural science, physics, maths, history, etc.... but also about travels, exploring some scary abandoned places, etc... That's in most possible ways, much better than TV! :yes:


----------



## winnipeg

g.spinoza said:


> I don't even own a TV.
> I watch movies and TV series on my PC, only after careful evaluation and after reading a lot of reviews.
> I have far too little time to spend going on youtube and hoping that the next video will be interesting. There are no reviews for youtube (number of visualization do not count - usually the more a video is watched, the stupider it is).


That's why you suscribe only to the channels that produce the content that please you the most, you are your own critic, you don't need anyone to tell you what you have to watch, how great is that? :yes:

If you look only by the number of views, then you are looking at Youtube the wrong way... hno:


----------



## winnipeg

ChrisZwolle said:


> I haven't watched regular TV programming for almost 10 years now. I deeply dislike all the advertising and the need to change your schedule to the TV programming schedule. Now I just watch whenever I feel like watching something, without being interrupted with advertising every 15 minutes.
> 
> It blows my mind that an archaic application like teletext is still widely used in the Netherlands. There is even a teletext app that is used by some 600,000 people every day.
> 
> On the other hand I don't consider myself an 'early adopter' of new technologies either. I'm more like wait and see.



Seriously, teletext? That's the useless thing I used to look on the TV of my grand parents when I was bored maybe 15 years ago.... :lol: :nuts:

This is so useless...


----------



## volodaaaa

Some tv channels had even games built in teletext. Or dating chat.


----------



## winnipeg

volodaaaa said:


> Some tv channels had even games built in teletext. Or dating chat.


So it's more evolved that the teletext we know here, which is basicly only informations about the channel and the programs and some other useless things... (but it was obviously only in "one-way" as it was working with the TV signal....


----------



## g.spinoza

winnipeg said:


> That's why you suscribe only to the channels that produce the content that please you the most, you are your own critic, you don't need anyone to tell you what you have to watch, how great is that? :yes:


Maybe, I don't know.
But I like video content to be made professionally. I don't like amateur wannabes.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Well, many people go to Youtube for entertainment. And they feel amateur / semi-professional videos are more 'real' than corporate overproduced TV series. 

Casey Neistat is a professional filmmaker. His productions are more complex than sometimes meets the eye, there are numerous vides on Youtube detailing the skills he puts into his daily vlogs compared to others who just point a gopro or phone on themselves. The snowboarding/drone video required 5 days of filming and a crew of 30 for a 4 minute video.

Of course, with daily vlogs, you need to edit the entire vlog on the same day, whereas a professional studio may take weeks or months to produce a number of episodes.


----------



## winnipeg

g.spinoza said:


> Maybe, I don't know.
> But I like video content to be made professionally. I don't like amateur wannabes.


So you're lucky :yes: , there's plenty of amateurs and professionals on Youtube that are making both creative and professional content, at least in french and english.... for other languages I don't know...


----------



## winnipeg

Not an example of what I just said, but a great video about christmas in Norway : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6plKMU0tTTk&t=0s


----------



## g.spinoza

winnipeg said:


> So you're lucky :yes: , there's plenty of amateurs and professionals on Youtube that are making both creative and professional content, at least in french and english.... for other languages I don't know...


That's hardly a problem, I rarely watch videos in Italian... usually, English, Spanish or German.


----------



## winnipeg

An example of what I call "great" content (in french)...

-Animal exploration : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvbaVEqFZcs (with english subs)
-Biological sciences : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGL_LJosToY (with english subs)
-A guy who explorate abandoned buildings/places : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SmBEcWhc7g
-We even have internet shows that are produced by TV companies but only for internet with peoples who comes from internet (the presenter has his own Youtube channel) and for example this one is forbidden at TV but perfectly legal on internet (they drink alcohol while cooking, stupid but funny  ) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCWFRnyF0wI
-A guy who talks about curious things (but with quality) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhoZzh-Fkss (with english subs)
-Some science "popularization" channels : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82jOF4Q6gBU or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G5SiVJnJM4 
Etc...

In english there are plenty of similar great channel who are even more successfull as their public is way larger because they speak in english, for example today I saw this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348 and there's plenty of such channels...

Maybe you should check what italians Youtubers are doing, maybe there's also plenty of quality content you haven't seen yet! :yes:


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> I rarely watch videos in Italian... usually, English, Spanish or German.


Hmm, I can't remember when I watched my last German movie, film or show on TV or anywhere else. I was used to watch some series but I need my TV for watching sports only meanwhile. I only watch anything on youtube when it's about road construction or music (more listening than watching). My radio is always on though.


----------



## volodaaaa

winnipeg said:


> So it's more evolved that the teletext we know here, which is basicly only informations about the channel and the programs and some other useless things... (but it was obviously only in "one-way" as it was working with the TV signal....


No, no.... it is the same kind of teletext here. The game was just kind of "maze" and the dating worked through text messages (which were obviously charged) :lol:


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Oh gosh, can't I just hate old cars? I'm not trying to convince you but you are trying to convince me. To me, old cars are shit and everybody who sits on the sit used by someone else in years is disgusting. To you it's different? Good for you.


Hygiene is not the biggest concern, you can clean and sanitize seats with chemicals or hot vapor. Your own car will get dirty too, as you sit on it after sitting on buses, trains, bars, restaurants, benches, and you probably give lifts to other people sometimes.
The biggest issues are repairs. An old car is like a surprise box, you don't know if it has/had some issues, if it has been properly repaired/maintained, if it had been involved in accidents, if it was fitted with non-original spare parts, if the odometer has been taken back, etc... A modern car is made by thousands of mechanical and electronic components, each of them can have some faults, that often aren't easy to detect soon.
A first-hand car can give problems too, of course, but if you know what issues has, repair it properly, and keep it regularly controlled, chances for unexpected problems are lower.


----------



## g.spinoza

keokiracer said:


> If that's what you think then good for you, but stop projecting. I really don't understand why you think that people sitting on a seat that other people used to sit on are disgusting. I take it you never take public transport either? because those chairs don't have one person sitting on them for years, they have thousands of asses on them in their lifetime.
> You know you can clean those seats, right?


I take public transport regularly, but I don't sit too often and sanitize my hands thoroughly afterwards.
Besides, it's not MY bus. My things must be different.
Hygiene is not my first concern with cars, as a matter of fact. First one is repairs, then, I like new things, third is hygiene. Fourth is probably that I can decide exactly what to have in it and not just settle for what I find on sale. Lastly, I don't have time, nor will, to look at a lot of ads and go personally visit every potential car and have a test drive. I have a life.


----------



## keokiracer

g.spinoza said:


> I take public transport regularly, but I don't sit too often and sanitize my hands thoroughly afterwards.


Alright, so sanitize your car chair(s) afterwards and you have the same result.


g.spinoza said:


> Fourth is probably that I can decide exactly what to have in it and not just settle for what I find on sale.


Things might be different in Italy, but there is so much being offered here in NL that that's not an issue unless you have very weird and specific requests (for example some people who lease decide to not get AC in the car but do get CruiseControl). And if you live near the border like me you can always look abroad as well (though that comes with importing-paperwork)


g.spinoza said:


> Lastly, I don't have time, nor will, to look at a lot of ads and go personally visit every potential car and have a test drive. I have a life.


lol, it's so clear that you've never ever searched for a second-hand car. The previous car my parents got was the first one they visited, the current one as well, for the neighbours on my left is was the 2nd car they visited and for the neighbours on the right it was the first car they visited.
By looking critically at the ad and the pictures in the ads you can very quickly see what is a pile of crap and what is worth coming over for. Common sense and critical thinking gets you far. Other than that, websites that allow you to sell cars (like marktplaats, or autoscout and many many more) have a massive amount of criteria you can enter to make the searching easier. You barely do the searching, the internet does it for you. 
But tapping into what you said about not having the time or will to look at cars, does this mean that you just willy-nilly pick a new car without test-driving it? Cause that's pretty dumb imo. Whether it's a new or a tenth-hand car, always test-drive.


----------



## volodaaaa

I also prefer new cars. I can even renounce some equipment just to make it affordable. It might not be very economical, but whatever.

I remember that pretty much always when we were selling our car, it was due to failures that were not worth repairing. The same now. My car has 200.000 km and 10 years. Last year, I spent 2.300 € to repairs. Every month some stupid failure indicator started shining or flashing or beeping and there was not a single repair below 100 €. It is not sustainable and I can't wait to get rid of this car. But, imagine there will be someone who buy this kinder surprise and will be supposed to pay for these repairs instead of me.


----------



## Tenjac

keokiracer said:


> That's good for you, but not everyone is you and most people don't drive their cars until they break down. If everyone thought like you then every second-hand car would be a piece of shit, but that is simply not the case.


Almost every second-hand car driven previously in Italy can be considered a piece of shit.


----------



## keokiracer

Tenjac said:


> Almost every second-hand car driven previously in Italy can be considered a piece of shit.


Ah, well I guess that explains a lot, since spinoza is looking at this from an Italian perspective of 'all second-hand cars are shit' and I'm looking at this from Dutch perspective where that is certainly not the case. My neighbours (on the left) bought their car for 250 euros (1998 Seat Ibiza) and haven't had any issues in a year and a half.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I feel that all used cars are grouped here into one pile of 'unreliable junk'. There's so much different flavors of used cars and one should have their expectations accordingly. 

Not every used car is a 10 year old one with 200,000 km on its odometer. You can expect to find wear and tear on a car that will cost you € 1,000 or 2,000, but at the same time there are many perfectly fine cars available for € 10,000. The possibilities are almost as endless as ordering a new one from the factory. 

I do see the appeal of driving a brand new model with all the latest equipment. But it's not like a 3-5 year old used car is automatically a clunker.


----------



## MichiH

My previous car was a rental car. It was in use for 2 months only, 17,000km. I had to pay 2/3 compared to a brand-new car. I never had any problem with this 2nd hand car, just ordinary replacements like tires and brakes. 10 years later, I had a puncture. It happened while driving 200km/h in a curve. On Autobahn. Afterwards, I always heard noise everywhere in this damn car and didn't feel good while driving anymore**. I even hated driving.

Then, I drove a rental car on a 300km trip. It was the same model like my own car but the next generation. I liked driving the car. Even some nice features. I selected online my prefered features and decided to buy a 2.0l engine instead of 1.0l like the rental car. There was even a 3,000 € sales discount. I went to my car dealer and asked about the price for that car. Got a little more discount and 1,800 € for my old car ("Car is done. We cannot sell it in Germany but to Poland"). I went there again one week later and ordered the car. I love driving again, 40,000km in 6 months just for leisure 


Edit: **The car was still safe but it was old. And expensive repairs were pending...


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Not every used car is a 10 year old one with 200,000 km on its odometer.


Sure. In many of them the odometer was tracked back. Even her in Germany. All experts in Hungary agree that at least 50 percent of used cars in Hungary has ad odometer which was tracked back, and at least 80 percent of imported used cars have one.


----------



## bogdymol

The last 3 cars that my parents bought before I turned 18 were all brand new, event through they were a lower class car (Dacia SuperNova, Renault Clio, Chevrolet Aveo). They haven't had any major issues with them during the time they have owned them. Therefore, it got also into my head that a new car is better, as you avoid some issues that usually come with a second hand one.

After I moved to Austria I needed to buy myself a good, reliable car, which I would use a lot on the motorway (I drive between Austria and Romania every month + many roadtrips). Therefore, I needed something larger than the Chevrolet Aveo that I have rented for a limited time from my parents. I didn't have the budget for a larger, but new car, so I went for a second hand one. I have bought a 1.5 years old Ford Focus, with 50.000 km, which I still drive today. The car was almost 10.000 Euro cheaper like that compared to a new one. Now, after 58.000 km driven just by me, the car runs great and I am very happy with the decision.

In about 1 or 2 years' time I will need to change it (when it reaches somewhere around 150-200.000 km). I have still not decided if I should invest in a new car, which I should keep longer, or if I should search for a second hand car, not older than 2 years and under 50.000 km, which is actually almost as good as a new one. Both options come with pros and cons and there is no straightforward answer on which is better. It's not black or white, but a very gray area, and each person has to decide for himself what is it better for him, depending on his particular needs and preferences. In the end, if there wouldn't be people in both categories there would be a big issue for the people in the other category (if you buy a new car you cannot re-sell it, or if you want a second-hand one you cannot find one).

@Spinoza: you wrote in a previous post that your next car will be a suv/crossover (like Hyundai Tucson, Ford Kuga or similar). Why are you considering this type of car?

My parents have recently bought a brand new Mazda CX-3. It's a small sized city crossover. It runs very good (like a new car) and also looks very good (it's the only car I have ever driven where I notice people staring at the car on the street). However, for the same amount of money I would have bought either a better-equipped hatchback (like Mazda 3) or a more entry-level larger car (like a Mazda 6). They just said that they always wanted a crossover for the higher driving position and this was a very good option for them.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> Sure. In many of them the odometer was tracked back. Even her in Germany. All experts in Hungary agree that at least 50 percent of used cars in Hungary has ad odometer which was tracked back, and at least 80 percent of imported used cars have one.


Well that's why you need a good registration of odometers. Otherwise it's wide open to fraud.

The Netherlands has mandated all certificated garages to log odometer kilometrage every time a car enters a garage for repair, maintenance, recall, etc - since 1991. 

So the number of cars with rewound odometers is very small, you can easily check if the kilometrage is logical. If it is not available, the car has likely not entered a certificated garage, so one should steer clear of it.

It is estimated that nowadays only 2% of the cars have rewound odometers / fabricated odometer kilometrage.


----------



## Kpc21

When you drive on the motorway from Berlin towards Warsaw, shortly after entering Poland, you can even see billboards advertising "odometer correction" services...

The official explanation why such a service is offered is to set the proper value on the odometer when you replace it because of its failure.

In 2014 the odometer indications started to be registered in Poland during technical checkups, and these data are accessible online after entering the basic car data (license plate number, VIN and the date of the first registration). So, at least, it cannot be "corrected" when someone sells the car within the country.

The problem is that a vast majority of cars in Poland is imported from Germany as second-hand and if the odometer gets corrected after it leaves Germany, but before it gets registered in Poland, nobody will see it.

Do you mean "certificated garages" as official garages of the car companies (like Ford, Opel etc.) or do you have a national certification system in the country? If it's the first thing - in Poland people service their cars in such garages usually only in the warranty period, because they are expensive in comparison with independent garages and their quality of service often isn't actually good. If it's the second thing - maybe it would work if the number of garages with the official certification was high and the prices were low (it would be a good idea anyway, helping to eradicate garages that have no registered company and pay no taxes - using legal garages would be much more advantageous than now). But since even now there are companies that are specialized exactly in "correcting" odometers - those companies would just go underground and there would be a black market.

Registering the odometer indication at a yearly technical checkup was actually the best idea one could come up with. Now it has to be extended to the EU scale, let it be so that when a car gets unregistered in one country, a certificate with the kilometrage is issued and only with this certificate it is possible to register it in another country. In such a case, if the system in Germany has no weak points, there will be no way to do anything with the odometer indication.


----------



## bogdymol

The fake odometers is a big issue also in Romania, especially with the cars that are bought from Germany and re-sold on the Romanian market. The chances are very big that the odometer will be fake. The dealers importing cars (most of them private individuals) have gone so far as faking the entire service records of the cars so that, at least on their papers, the car looks clean.

What Europe needs is a EU-widespread system of recording the car's odometer every time it enters a garage (like Chris said it is in NL) + every time you make the annual car inspection + every time the car had an accident (accident details and damages to be included) etc. All this data should be stored in a single location which should be available online at any time to be checked by a potential car buyer. This way it would be nearly impossible to fake a car's history, which means that the EU second-hand car market would be a correct one.


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## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands has mandated all certificated garages to log odometer kilometrage every time a car enters a garage for repair, maintenance, recall, etc - since 1991.


Hungary has had a similar low, but only since 2011. However many used cars are imported from Western Europe, they are of course not logged in Hungary.


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## ChrisZwolle

Well, it's interesting to see this discussion point out the potential problems - or not - of used cars. Evidently there are large differences between European countries. 

In the Netherlands it's pretty safe to buy a recent model used car, with very tight regulations and registration of odometer reads, well-maintained cars coming from the company car market, so it's not a scam like in Italy where by g.spinoza's account, a used car must have something wrong with it, or in eastern EU where odometer rewind is daily business for imported cars.


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## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> They just said that they always wanted a crossover for the higher driving position and this was a very good option for them.


A good choice. I prefer entering a car to crawling into it.

Modern sedans are peculiarly low, and crawling into them is kind of an acrobatics show. 

Last year, my Citroën Grand C4 Picasso was hit by a lady driving behind me. During the reparation works, I drove a Mercedes-Benz A200, the latest model. I did not understand that car at all. It is 143 cm tall, one centimeter taller than Fiat Uno from 1980's. If the seat was in a comfortable position, my legs did not reach the pedals. When I moved the seat ahead to reach the pedals, the steering wheel was almost in my mouth. The driving position was utterly uncomfortable. Picasso is 20 cm taller, and that makes a big difference.


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## bogdymol

I like my low driving position in my Focus. My dad tried it few days ago and said that he felt like 'his ass was touching the asphalt'.

This is too a personal preference and varies from person to person (it also depends on the person's size... if you are tall or short).


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## italystf

MichiH said:


> My previous car was a rental car. It was in use for 2 months only, 17,000km. I had to pay 2/3 compared to a brand-new car. I never had any problem with this 2nd hand car, just ordinary replacements like tires and brakes. 10 years later, I had a puncture. It happened while driving 200km/h in a curve. On Autobahn. Afterwards, I always heard noise everywhere in this damn car and didn't feel good while driving anymore**. I even hated driving.
> 
> Then, I drove a rental car on a 300km trip. It was the same model like my own car but the next generation. I liked driving the car. Even some nice features. I selected online my prefered features and decided to buy a 2.0l engine instead of 1.0l like the rental car. There was even a 3,000 € sales discount. I went to my car dealer and asked about the price for that car. Got a little more discount and 1,800 € for my old car ("Car is done. We cannot sell it in Germany but to Poland"). I went there again one week later and ordered the car. I love driving again, 40,000km in 6 months just for leisure
> 
> 
> Edit: **The car was still safe but it was old. And expensive repairs were pending...


2 months and 17k km is a _de facto_ new car. For 2/3 of the price it seems a good deal. It's not like 5 y.o. cars that Chris was talking about, that while they may not be old wretches, they aren't new either.


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## italystf

Aparently, 40% of second-hand cars sold in Italy have the odometer tracked back.
http://www.6sicuro.it/auto/auto-usate-contachilometri-manomessi


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## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> Do you mean "certificated garages" as official garages of the car companies (like Ford, Opel etc.) or do you have a national certification system in the country? If it's the first thing - in Poland people service their cars in such garages usually only in the warranty period, because they are expensive in comparison with independent garages and their quality of service often isn't actually good. If it's the second thing - maybe it would work if the number of garages with the official certification was high and the prices were low (it would be a good idea anyway, helping to eradicate garages that have no registered company and pay no taxes - using legal garages would be much more advantageous than now).


Certificated garages in the Netherlands can be anything, from official dealerships to independent garages to repair shops. They are certificated by the department of motor vehicles and/or an organization called 'BOVAG'. In addition to being certificated, used cars over € 4,500 come with a six month warranty, regardless of age or if the original warranty has expired. 

So if you're in the market for a used car in the Netherlands, these certificated garages are the place to go to. These are generally reputable businesses, though it is known that official dealerships are generally more expensive. 

Of course you can buy cars at more shady businesses or directly from another person, but there are less guarantees. Most car sales in those circles are old cars with low value, I wouldn't recommend it if you're looking for a recent model.


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## ChrisZwolle

Snow on the beach in Torrevieja, Spain. Normally this area has very mild winters, the average January high is 16°C.


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## g.spinoza

A series of three M>5 earthquakes struck this morning Central Italy, the villages already hit by the quakes of August and October. A quarter of Abruzzo region population, more than 300,000 people has no electricity: the majority of them is already facing extreme cold and heavy snow fall (some villages had 1.5 m of snow in just few days).

The symbol picture is the one that shows the church tower of Amatrice, collapsed this morning after withstanding the previous quakes.


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## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> Snow on the beach in Torrevieja, Spain. Normally this area has very mild winters, the average January high is 16°C.


Meanwhile no snow here, just cold :bash:. Benasque has hit a low of -17°C.


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## Suburbanist

I have some good friends in Camerino, they are quite exhausted from this active earthquake cycle. None has been injured, but the whole thing is scary. At least they live in a modern house with much better seismic resistance. The buildings they work are at very old though.


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## Attus

It's crazy how many earthquakes there are in Italy recently. I could no more sleep relaxed in that region. :-/


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## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Snow on the beach in Torrevieja, Spain. Normally this area has very mild winters, the average January high is 16°C.


Our local supermarket displayed today a warning about a potential reduced availability of vegetables because of the weather in Spain and Italy.


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## g.spinoza

MattiG said:


> Our local supermarket displayed today a warning about a potential reduced availability of vegetables because of the weather in Spain and Italy.


Even here, zucchini reached an all time high of 6 €/kg... it's five times the prices of 2 months ago


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## ChrisZwolle

Supermarkets in the Netherlands are also running out of spinach due to the poor harvest in Spain, they say.

Spanish greenhouses are different from those found in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, these are glass frame greenhouses, in Spain they are often just plastic with incomplete coverage to create a real indoor greenhouse environment. This leaves it more exposed to weather. 

The infamous 'Mar de plástico' (sea of plastic) west of Almería. It measures 30 kilometers across.










Glass sea (Westland), Netherlands.


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## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> Even here, zucchini reached an all time high of 6 €/kg... it's five times the prices of 2 months ago


christ, does somebody buy them with that price? there is no zucchini that i would overpay that much nor there is such meal that would require zuccchini that much to overpay them so.


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## Suburbanist

@chriszwolle: the Atlas of Urban expansion picked Zwolle as one of its 200 global representative cities. There is a lot of data there, for instance, that the % of new roads having width <4m exploded since 2000.

http://www.atlasofurbanexpansion.org/cities/view/Zwolle


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## keber

x-type said:


> christ, does somebody buy them with that price? there is no zucchini that i would overpay that much nor there is such meal that would require zuccchini that much to overpay them so.


Sometime in autumn I bought lemons for 7 €/kg (I've noticed that only later at the cashier)
About a week ago I noticed zuchhini selling for 4 €/kg. And I see that vegetables section in my supermarket is missing some usual products, like romaine lettuce.


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## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> christ, does somebody buy them with that price? there is no zucchini that i would overpay that much nor there is such meal that would require zuccchini that much to overpay them so.


Not me for sure... I ended up leaving with just half a leek :lol:


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## x-type

keber said:


> Sometime in autumn I bought lemons for 7 €/kg (I've noticed that only later at the cashier)
> About a week ago I noticed zuchhini selling for 4 €/kg. And I see that vegetables section in my supermarket is missing some usual products, like romaine lettuce.


yeah, lemons are really extremly variable. in the highest season you can find them for 1€ for kilo, and in autumn they are 6-7 times more expensive.


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## ChrisZwolle

Zucchini, I had to look up what it meant  We call it a Courgette. I had a salad with Courgette for dinner just now.


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## italystf

Zucchini has Italian origin (is called zucchina in Italian), courgette has French origin. Apartently, in English there's no native word for it, so both words are used.


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## Suburbanist

A hotel near a town I've visit couple years ago in central Italy has been hit by a severe avalanche and around 30 guests and staff are dead or missing hno:

So eery looking at the pics of the town nearby.









source: La Repubblica


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## VITORIA MAN

*calabacín* in spanish


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## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Zucchini, I had to look up what it meant  We call it a Courgette. I had a salad with Courgette for dinner just now.





italystf said:


> Zucchini has Italian origin (is called zucchina in Italian), courgette has French origin. Apartently, in English there's no native word for it, so both words are used.


I never heard the word "courgette": during my studies of English (and watching movies and TV shows) I always encountered zucchini, so I thought it was the only word used in English. 

There are a lot of Italian words passed onto English regarding food. I always was fascinated by the fact that some of them changed their meaning in the process. For instance, "pepperoni" comes from Italian "peperone", but it means "pepper"; "confetti" in Italian is a kind of sugared almond; "latte" in Italian is simply "milk".


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## ChrisZwolle

According to Wikipedia:

_In the United States, Australia and Germany, the plant is commonly called a zucchini 

The name courgette is a French loan word, the diminutive of courge, "gourd, marrow", and is commonly used in France, Belgium and other Francophone areas, and in the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, the Netherlands and South Africa._

The Dutch language has a large number of French loanwords.


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## CNGL

As already stated by vitoriaman, zucchini/courgette is called _calabacín_ in Spanish (I didn't remember if it was that or _berenjena_, which is aubergine or eggplant), literally "little pumpkin", and indeed it is the same species as pumpkins.


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## Suburbanist

This idea of relying only on local ingredients is arbitrary and luddist. It negates 150 years of agricultural and transportation progress. If anyone really wants to make the embedded energy argument to determine diets, fine, but go vegetarian then, as the embedded energy on meat dwarfs anything remotely close to greenhouses growing avocados in central Sweden.


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## winnipeg

Kpc21 said:


> I don't think you are right... The apples which are not damaged in any way e.g. by insects, not rotten and which have no bruises, can be stored for winter in a standard home cellar.


Of course you can store them for many months, my family (who live in rural France) store their apples the same way.... But not that long, they only last a few months and their appearance is not the same, they look old, tired (which is perfectly normal) unlike those who received the treatment... And at the end we mainly use them for compote/marmelade because they are no longer very good to eat fresh... 

You can't keep those organic apples more than a few months which is normal and natural...


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## winnipeg

Suburbanist said:


> This idea of relying only on local ingredients is arbitrary and luddist. It negates 150 years of agricultural and transportation progress. If anyone really wants to make the embedded energy argument to determine diets, fine, but go vegetarian then, as the embedded energy on meat dwarfs anything remotely close to greenhouses growing avocados in central Sweden.


There is no real "physiological" need to eat such products off season, they don't really provide you more nutriments than the one you can find in seasonal fruits and vegetables, and they are more treated than seasonal products and less riche in nutrients, so it's a bad calcul... 

Of course we shouldn't eat so much meat, it wasn't the subjet but yes meat is terrible (I personally don't eat meat more than once or twice a week and I'm perfectly fine  )

Yes, there's always many ways to look at such thing... Where you see progress, I see a massive waste for nothing (like most of what we are currently doing)... But that’s only my own point of view... :yes:


----------



## Kpc21

But what seasonal fruits and vegetables do you find in winter?


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## winnipeg

Kpc21 said:


> But what seasonal fruits and vegetables do you find in winter?


For example : www.cooksmarts.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/VeggiesByMonth_Draft3-01.png (for the US but it should be very similar for Europe). 

Of course there is much less products than in summer but you can still find some cheap and seasonal products like carots, cabbages, etc...

With fruits :

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/03/cb/45/03cb453bb06449375d6d685d068c0a5f.jpg


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## Suburbanist

Eating local would me Europeans foregoing tropical fruits altogether, for instance.


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## winnipeg

Suburbanist said:


> Eating local would me Europeans foregoing tropical fruits altogether, for instance.


It depends which. Bananas and avocado are growing relatively easily and can be shipped worldwide by boat and being matured localy before being sold without effort, that’s why bananas (and now avocados) are so cheap... But some others true tropical fruits are very sensitive and are shipped by air and in that case, yes, the environmental impact is terrible. For example now in Romanian supermarkets I see some south-american blueberries, that’s terrible... :no:


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ I think the impact of transport is being overstated, after all, look at the price you are paying... if it is not a lot of money, the resources consumed to make the product must be very small, and so, the impact must be very little. Much like you note of bananas, they grow with such little effort in tropical lands (not much energy), the energy to transport them on a ship is not much either...

as for meat, must also not forget your health


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## Attus

If 16 young people die in a bus accident (details in the Italian thread), there are thousands of people who knew at least one of them. And possibly a million, who know at least one of those thousands. 
Two of my friends lost a friend this morning. 
Hungary has a deep grief.


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## Kpc21

winnipeg said:


> Of course there is much less products than in summer but you can still find some cheap and seasonal products like carots, cabbages, etc...


Well, rather not in the areas with temperatures below 0 Celsius in winter.


----------



## MattiG

winnipeg said:


> For example : www.cooksmarts.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/VeggiesByMonth_Draft3-01.png (for the US but it should be very similar for Europe).
> 
> Of course there is much less products than in summer but you can still find some cheap and seasonal products like carots, cabbages, etc...
> 
> With fruits :
> 
> https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/03/cb/45/03cb453bb06449375d6d685d068c0a5f.jpg


Sigh...

Big variations in the annual length of growing season exist both in the US and Europe:



















Even if vegetables and fruit grow year-round in some areas of the US, they do not grow everywhere. Thus, there is need for intra-US transportation. Transporting a truckful of tomatoes from Louisiana to Montana is not more ecological than a similar truck on its way from Spain to Sweden.

As you see, most of the Nordics to the north of the Oslo-Stockholm-Helsinki line lie on very challenging area. The growing season in the south Finland is about 6 months and in the north about 3.5 months. In the off-season time, nothing grows, except in glasshouses with huge energy consumption.


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## Suburbanist

I wonder how much weather variation I will experience if I move to Bergen and travel on daily road trips to the hinterland.


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## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> I wonder how much weather variation I will experience if I move to Bergen and travel on daily road trips to the hinterland.


You will. The weather at the Northern Atlantic is unstable and may change quickly. The variations in the length of the growing season are more or less about altitude. At the ocean-facing seaside, the climate is mild (and wet) year around. The more you go inlands, the more continental the climate gets, even at the fjord ends. The tree line lies at about 500 meters at the seaside and about 1000 m inlands. There is a lot of snow at mountains. Thus better to get familiar with winter driving.


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## MichiH

MattiG said:


> The tree line lies at about 500 meters at the seaside and about 1000 m inlands.


Sure?


----------



## MattiG

MichiH said:


> Sure?


Why not?


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## ChrisZwolle

Yep, mountains are mostly treeless over 500 meters near Bergen, but at Hardangervidda they grow up to 1000 m. Farther north the treeline is even lower (and I don't necessarily mean Nordland or Troms, but also near Ålesund). In Møre og Romsdal or Sogn og Fjordane, 1500 meter high mountains look similar to 3500+ m in the Alps.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yep, mountains are mostly treeless over 500 meters near Bergen, but at Hardangervidda they grow up to 1000 m. Farther north the treeline is even lower (and I don't necessarily mean Nordland or Troms, but also near Ålesund). In Møre og Romsdal or Sogn og Fjordane, 1500 meter high mountains look similar to 3500+ m in the Alps.


Bergen lies at the latitude 60, thus being located relatively south. The tree line drops gradually to about 500 meters at the latitude of Troms, and approaches zero at the coast of Arctic Ocean. Again, at the coast side it is lower because of windy conditions. That tree limit refers to birch. The tree line of pine and spruce is lower.

Some of the last spruces at 21/E8 in Muonio, Finland. Altitude 250 meters:

https://www.google.com/maps/@68.078...4!1skOBCmM50jb74m3OfG_9PDQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656


----------



## Rebasepoiss

MattiG said:


> As you see, most of the Nordics to the north of the Oslo-Stockholm-Helsinki line lie on very challenging area. The growing season in the south Finland is about 6 months and in the north about 3.5 months. *In the off-season time, nothing grows, except in glasshouses with huge energy consumption.*


I used to live in Tartu quite close to a bunch of greenhouses where they grow vegetables all year round. Those cucumbers cost €5/kg at the moment whereas cucumbers that have been transported 4,000 km from Spain cost € 2,5/kg. :lol: 

The light pollution at those greenhouses is insane and there aren't even that many of them, 6 hectares in total. The energy consumption at full power is 10 MW. In comparison, the electricity consumption of the whole country rarely exceeds 1,500 MW.








My photo


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## ChrisZwolle

Nighttime sky in western Netherlands due to greenhouses:


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Nighttime sky in western Netherlands due to greenhouses:


There is a concentration of glasshouse farming in Närpiö in Finland. The population of the area is about 9500. In the global light pollution map, we can see that Närpiö is a better landmark to the air traffic than the city of Vaasa 70 km to the north, population 68,000.


----------



## italystf

Wildfire caught by Google Car on SS73/E78 in Tuscany, Italy
https://www.google.it/maps/@43.4457...4!1sn-rsano9GWe_1IJsqnCp0Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656


----------



## volodaaaa

What time do you consider the best to buy a new car to get a most reduced price? I think in terms of marketing strategy? Except the end of year.

I was about to buy a car - a 2016 model - over the last weeks, which price was ridiculously reduced because the car importer wanted to get rid of "old" cars. The car manufacturer was also supplying 2017 models which were more expensive than 2016 models (even without price reductions) - I guess because they want to force you to buy and help them to get rid of "old" models. 

Now the 2016 models are over and only expensive 2017 models remained. We tried to negotiate some reductions but the seller was strict. But a friend of mine told me that during the spring the car producers usually put first special offers for new cars. What are your experiences?


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## ChrisZwolle

Probably around the time that a new facelift or next generation model is introduced. People will consider the outgoing model 'old', so their value drops. Some models also sell less than anticipated, perhaps dealers will try to get rid of any excess stock.


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## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> What time do you consider the best to buy a new car to get a most reduced price? I think in terms of marketing strategy? Except the end of year.


The word "best" is extremely ambiguous, and the market dynamics vary by country. There is no answer to your question, only opinions.

Here, where the polar bears walk on streets (according to Dutch sources), there are quite many factors: The car price, financing terms and conditions, campaigns, the value of your old car, accessories, winter tires, maintenance agreement, my priorities, my wife's priorities, etc. I evaluate the whole package, not the price tag of the car only.


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## winnipeg

ChrisZwolle said:


> Probably around the time that a new facelift or next generation model is introduced. People will consider the outgoing model 'old', so their value drops. Some models also sell less than anticipated, perhaps dealers will try to get rid of any excess stock.


This is especially true when the facelift is very light and most of the people won't notice it... (ie : Volkswagen typicaly)... But it is more difficult when the company has radicaly changed their style (for example Peugeot with the newest 3008, the old one appears imediatly very old...) and it depends olso of how old was the model (if it has been already facelifted) and how actual is this design, some cars seems to have a timeless design. For example the small electric car Renault Zoé is 4-5 years old and still have a very actual design...

But if you are someone who love cars or drive a lot, you should avoid lowcost cars like most of Dacias or even some japanese/korean low cost cars (ie the Suzuki "Celery" like they called it on TGT : https://youtu.be/9Iccsa39dPE )


----------



## MichiH

volodaaaa said:


> What time do you consider the best to buy a new car to get a most reduced price?


Winter season usually was the best time of year (delivery date). However, I recently read that it has been changed in Germany. There is no best time any more. It's very dynamically now. IIRC, it was a report about 2016 discounts compared to the past.


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## volodaaaa

Thank you for your experiences. It is all very tricky  There is also a huge difference between facelift (usually announced and covered by media) and "facelift" - e. g. small, almost unnoticeable changes between two vehicles of the same model produced in different years.


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## volodaaaa

Imagine a street with an intersection at the end. No turning allowed, just through ride. You have just spotted there is a red light on the signal ahead so you release a throttle and slowly roll to the intersection. And then imagine a guy significantly accelerating, doing some overtaking, splashing the sleet over the close pedestrians and ending up braking&slipping. 

What is the sense in that?


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## g.spinoza

What is the sense in 80% of what people do?


----------



## Alex_ZR

volodaaaa said:


> ^^ Thank you very much Alex!!! I owe you at least one beer :lol: My parents have made it through Tompa-Kelebija and waited only for 30 minutes!


I'm still waiting for my beer(s)... :troll:


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## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> What is the sense in that?


It may make sense in a city, when there are other drivers behind you, so that you don't make some of them stay before the previous intersection with traffic lights when they could be already behind it if you drove faster.

Although, I think, your strategy is better anyway, even in such a situation, because you make the traffic more fluent. There are fewer drivers totally stopping and starting again, which always takes time.

When there is a longer queue before the traffic lights, it's very often so that when the lights turn to green, the drivers start so slowly that some of them manage to do it only when the lights turn back to red.

And then there is a funny "traffic phenomenon". Drivers starting to drive when the lights in front of them turn from green to red. When this happens, you can definitely call this traffic situation a traffic jam.


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## ChrisZwolle

UAE snowman:









On Jabal Jais (1911 m), the highest point of the United Arab Emirates.


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## italystf

A couple of winters ago there was a snowfall in Saudi Arabia and local authorities forbade snowmen because such representations of human figures are considered un-islamic. :lol:


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## italystf

:rofl:


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## Verso

Guess who submitted the banner.


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## Attus

Some funny facts:


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## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> Some funny facts:


Well done. But I think it would not survive, unless it was some alliance of sovereing states. It is very close to V4+.


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## italystf

I can't think of any modern country with a similar ethnic composition than Austria - Hungary.
Modern multi-national countries have either a dominant majority (Spain, Switzerland, Russia, Ukraine), or are made by two highly-autonomous confederate states (Belgium, BiH).
Austria-Hungary, instead, had no a predominant ethnicity, but was a mix of minorities from Germanic, Latin, Slavic and Ugro-finnic linguistic groups.


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## Kpc21

Too multinational, it wouldn't be able to survive. Look at Yugoslavia, which was also multinational and has also fallen apart.

Or if Austrians and Hungarians were keeping the country tightly together - it would be bad for all the other nations living in the country. It would likely end up with forcing the others to use the German or Hungarian language and destroying the ethnic identities of the minorities.

And why do you want to grab a piece of Poland (including Cracow, our former capital!) and just take it to the modern Austria-Hungary? 

If such a country was supposed to appear now, it would have to be a union of existing countries, so it would be impossible to recreate the old borders.


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## italystf

Ethnic composition of some areas has changed a lot since 1918, with Germans almost disappeared from Sudetenland, Hungary and Transylvania and Italians from Istria.
Interestingly, Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks were considered a single ethnicity back then.


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## italystf

Most of Austria-Hungary is now part of EU, with the exceptions of Bosnia, Vojvodina, and Ruthenia.


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## x-type

italystf said:


> Most of Austria-Hungary is now part of EU, with the exceptions of Bosnia, Vojvodina, and Ruthenia.


and north Montenegrin coast


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## volodaaaa

Maybe it is good that the AH dissolved in times we did not know anything about genocide or something. Of course there were some cases of oppression against some nations, but it was rather political than physical. And for what I've read, it was more struggle between different societal classes than nations or religions. 

For example, I do not think that Slovaks hated Hungarians because they were Hungarians, but because they were representatives of intelligence, townsmen and had the real political power. 

But if the state had survived WW1 I think the whole knowledge level would have risen anyway and it could have ended even worse. Yugoslavia is a good example and it was in terms of lingual structure more homogeneous country after all.

The country would have been too heterogeneous even regarding the economical power (rich west would have felt to subsidize the poor east and the poor east would envy the west for the richness) or educational background (the educational level and literacy in The Cisleithania was not comparable with The Transleithania). In the time of Czechoslovakia sovereignty, the literacy rate in Ruthenia was 5 %. It would led to bringing up a lot of topics concerning different nations feeling aggrieved.

Not good at all. As I said, despite the cultural homogeneity (there are different distinct similar traditions in current countries the AH was made up by) the country would have been much more heterogeneous than Yugoslavia and we all saw how it ended up.


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## italystf

Italian population under Austrian rule fought for self-determination since the 1820s, when Austria also controlled Lombardy (lost to Sardinia Kingdom in 1859) and Veneto and Friuli (lost to Italy in 1866). In 1866, 99.99% of voters (only male 21 y.o. and older had the right to vote) from Veneto and Friuli voted to join Italy.
However, in Trentino, Trieste and Istria, part of ethnically-Italian population, supported Austrian rule until WWI.


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## ChrisZwolle

So much of 19th and 20th century European history is not or only very briefly taught in Dutch schools. As World War I did not directly affect the Netherlands, coverage of it in history class was quite limited. I think the Austro-Hungarian Empire was mentioned once or twice. The Ottoman Empire was also very briefly touched upon, but not much more than Ottoman Empire = Turkey while in fact the Ottoman Empire was much larger than present-day Turkey.


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## volodaaaa

It is pity because I think it was one of the most interesting units at all. De facto the prototype of European Union in times when people did not (have enough experiences to) appreciate the idea. Also the country was very weak, I think there was very limited pride or determination for the country. Hence it was sometimes called (at least in Slovakia or Czech republic) "The prison of nations".


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## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> It is pity because I think it was one of the most interesting units at all. De facto the prototype of European Union in times when people did not (have enough experiences to) appreciate the idea. Also the country was very weak, I think there was very limited pride or determination for the country. Hence it was sometimes called (at least in Slovakia or Czech republic) "The prison of nations".


The difference with the European Union is that EU is a sort confederation of sovereign countries, where each of them has its own representatives in EU institutions (although bigger and richer countries have still more decisional weight).
A-H, instead, was ruled by two dominants ethnic groups (one before 1867), with other groups (that, together, were the majority) not being represented in istitutions and not being granted any self-rule.


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## Kpc21

Well. For us, Poles, Austria-Hungary was one of the three occupants, next to Germany and Russia, but the one which gave us most liberty of all of them. Germans and Russians were doing everything to kill the Polish national identity and the language, while in the Austro-Hungarian part, our culture could develop more or less freely.


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## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> So much of 19th and 20th century European history is not or only very briefly taught in Dutch schools. As World War I did not directly affect the Netherlands, coverage of it in history class was quite limited. I think the Austro-Hungarian Empire was mentioned once or twice. The Ottoman Empire was also very briefly touched upon, but not much more than Ottoman Empire = Turkey while in fact the Ottoman Empire was much larger than present-day Turkey.


There are many aspects that are only briefly mentioned in history classes here.
WWI is mostly centered to Italian history, followed by the Western Front, with only vague mentions to the Eastern Front.
WWII is mostly European-centered, with only vague mentions to the Pacific theatre (except Pearl Harbour and Hiroshima/Nagasaki). Also some WWII events in Europe (like those involving Northern or Eastern Europe) are only briefly introduced.
Another problem is that in many schools there's no time to teach contemporary history all the way to the 2000s, so they end at WWII or at its immediate afterward (like peace treaties, Marshall plan, beginning of Cold War, decolonization, and establishment of Italian republic). So, kids often don't learn the most recent history, that is essential to understand present-day geopolitical events.


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## ChrisZwolle

I agree, when I was in high school in the early 2000s, the only post-World War II subjects were the Marshall Plan, women emancipation and Dutch politics, but generally nothing beyond 1960. 

Important western subjects like the American Civil War or racial segregration in the U.S. were omitted entirely. Colonial history was also confined to the Netherlands' most recent colonies (nothing on Brazil or Taiwan for example).

But of course, time is limited and there are countless subjects to teach. They have to make a selection. I've learned more about history through Wikipedia than during high school.


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## x-type

Kpc21 said:


> Well. For us, Poles, Austria-Hungary was one of the three occupants, next to Germany and Russia, but the one which gave us most liberty of all of them. Germans and Russians were doing everything to kill the Polish national identity and the language, while in the Austro-Hungarian part, our culture could develop more or less freely.


that was the case for all nations inside of AH Empire with exception of Austrians and Hungarians themselves because they ruled, and all other nations felt like being oppressed, used and depreciated, although both culture and economy were growing more than in case of self-independencies.


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## Kpc21

italystf said:


> Another problem is that in many schools there's no time to teach contemporary history all the way to the 2000s, so they end at WWII or at its immediate afterward (like peace treaties, Marshall plan, beginning of Cold War, decolonization, and establishment of Italian republic). So, kids often don't learn the most recent history, that is essential to understand present-day geopolitical events.


Same in Poland.

Fortunately, in my case, the teacher found the time to cover the period after the WW2 (actually two teachers, because the course of history was actually repeated three times in our school system when I was at school, each time with more detail and with focus on other aspects) - but I often read that they usually have not enough time for that. Maybe now it's better, once they reduced it to the course of history repeated only two times.

Our school system looks like:
1. primary school - 6 years
2. gymnasium (being kind of an extension of primary school) - 3 years
3. than the student has choice between 3 kinds of school, they can last from 2 to 4 years (I went to lyceum/high school which was 3 years)
now it's gonna be converted to:
1. primary school - 8 years
2. choice between 3 kinds of school - from 3 to 5 years, if I am not mistaken

When I was at school, we had the course of history in primary school (in the years from 4 to 6), then repeated in gymnasium, then repeated in lyceum. A few years ago they changed it so that it's two times: in primary school, and then in gymnasium, if I remember well, to the beginning of the WW2, and then contiuned one year in lyceum (or another school one goes to).

But, it seems for me (maybe I am wrong) that in our case, as a post-communist country, there were more historically important events after the WW2 than in case of the western-European countries. All the changes in different communist "eras" - before and after the death of Stalin, under the rule of different communist leaders in Poland, as well as all the anti-communist strikes and actions of the anti-communist opposition (and the governmental oppression against them) and finally the creation of free government in 1989. The changes in the other post-communist countries were also discussed, but in much less detail.

Talking about the western countries after 1989, actually, not much was said.



x-type said:


> that was the case for all nations inside of AH Empire with exception of Austrians and Hungarians themselves because they ruled, and all other nations felt like being oppressed, used and depreciated, although both culture and economy were growing more than in case of self-independencies.


Not in the Polish part. As we were divided between Austria (later Austro-Hungary), Prussia (later Germany) and Russia, we had more freedom and little oppression in Austro-Hungary, but economically, it was the poorest part. The industry developed mostly in the part ruled by Russia, the agriculture in the German part, while in the Austro-Hungarian part, there was no much development.


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## Attus

I was born and grew up in Hungary. No surprise we learned a lot about the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy* and World War I. On the other side we hardly learned anything about the Netherlands and Belgium. OK, the history of them is complicated enough 

I'm a bit older than Chris (I was in high school between 1988-92), for us history lessions ended in 1956. 
A small notice: the Austro-Hungarian state was fonded in 1867. After the so called Compromise of the Austrian emperor and several Hungarian leaders the Emperor was crowned as king of Hungary and Hungary got an own government, having Gyula Andrássy as prime minister. 
Francis Joseph got the title "by Grace of God Emperor of Austria and Apostolic King of Hungary". 

* Austria was ruled by an emperor, Hungary by a king. Actually the very same person, but two different titles. That's why everything was "imperial and royal", i.e. "kaiserlich und königlich", "k.u.k.". The only single word wich described that country was "monarchy". In German it was called "Österreischisch-ungarische Monarchie", in Hungarian "Osztrák-magyar monarchia" both mean literally "Austro-Hungarian Monarchy". For Hungary and Hungarians it was important that our nation was not ruled by the Austrian Emperor any more but we had a Hungarian King (the same person, but even so, an evidence of Hungarian self-reliance). 
In English it is often called as Austro-Hungarian Empire, however such a name is not acceptable in Hungary. Funny, but since there is not any other "monarchy", every other country is either an empire, or a kingdom or a duchy, etc., the word "monarchia" describes in Hungarian almost exclusively the Austro-Hungarian one, even though most people know that this word has a general meaning.


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## Kpc21

Well, I remember that we had one history lesson about how the Habsburgs monarchy was created and about it's early times, maybe because some of our kings had some family relations with Habsburgs and some Habsburgs were candidates for our throne when we were an elective monarchy (I might have messed something up, I am not good in history, but from what I remember, it was so) - but we didn't say much about just the Austro-Hungarian country.

For us, in Polish, monarchy (monarchia) is just another word for a kingdom (królestwo), maybe used more as a name for a way of ruling a country rather than specifically in a name of a country.


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## MattiG

Attus said:


> In English it is often called as Austro-Hungarian Empire, however such a name is not acceptable in Hungary.


Such things around national pride may be extremely important to insiders, and just impossible to understand to others.

The Finnish history writing typically just ignores the form of constitution. In textbooks, the name of the country simply translates to "Austria-Hungary". However, the synonym "Double Monarchy" is widely in use, too. From a distance, the details have less importance. 

BTW, I happened to be in Vienna in April 1989, and I had an opportunity to see the cortege of the last empress of Austria and queen of Hungary. Empress Zita died at the age of 96. Standing at the street in Vienna and looking at the three-hour public ceremony, I felt witnessing something very important.


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## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> Such things around national pride may be extremely important to insiders, and just impossible to understand to others.
> 
> The Finnish history writing typically just ignores the form of constitution. In textbooks, the name of the country simply translates to "Austria-Hungary". However, the synonym "Double Monarchy" is widely in use, too. From a distance, the details have less importance.


In Polish, we usually call it just Austro-Węgry. But talking about double monarchies, we used to be one too - creating a single country together with Lithuania (which was much bigger in those times, covering also much areas of the current Belarus and Ukraine).

And we have two words for a republic. One is "republika" - and it refers to just any republic (for example Republika Francuska - the Republic of France) or to the way of ruling a country (you can say "Polska jest republiką" - "Poland is a republic"), the other one - "rzeczpospolita" - is used only in the full name of Poland (Rzeczpospolita Polska - the Republic of Poland). The origin of the word is the same - from the Latin "res publica", "a common thing", just one is a direct loan word, the second word is a loan word created by translating the parts of the original word ("rzecz pospolita" = "a common thing").

Interestingly, the title "rzeczpospolita" was used for Poland (or Poland-Lithuania) already when we were still a monarchy. The Polish-Lithuanian country is often referred to as Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów - the Republic (or Commonwealth?) of Both Nations.

But, unlike Austro-Hugary, we had a single king.


Changing the topic, how is it with the rights of pedestrians in your countries?

In Poland, it's illegal to cross the street out of a zebra crossing or streets intersection unless it's more than 100 m to the closest one. It's also illegal if there is a tunnel or bridge for the pedestrians across the street, if the street has two carriegeways or there are tram tracks which are not a part of the carriageway.

The police from Łódź boasts about that they gave pedestrians 900 fines for illegal crossing the street in January: http://www.expressilustrowany.pl/lodz/a/900-mandatow-dla-pieszych,11760421/

And an example is given of a 62-year women, who was crossing the street in a relatively safe place (more or less here: https://goo.gl/maps/VqXSa5y2r292 - it's a big street, but the traffic is not high here, you can easily give way to the cars on each carriageway and safely cross them). The police caught her when she was in the middle, between the carriageways, fined her and told her to go along the lawn to the nearest zebra crossing (at a 40 meter distance; take into account that this lawn between the carriageways is currently covered with snow).

The fines aren't high - for crossing the street illegally, it's 50 zł (+- 11 EUR), for crossing the street on a red light, it's 100 zł (+- 23 EUR). But, for example, from what I know, in Germany, it's not illegal to cross the street out of a zebra crossing - you just have to give way to all the cars. In some other countries it's even not illegal to cross the street at the red light.

What do you think about this? Should pedestrians be fined for crossing the street illegally when they don't do it in a dangerous way?


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## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland, it's illegal to cross the street out of a zebra crossing or streets intersection unless it's more than 100 m to the closest one/QUOTE]
> 
> Same in Italy, but I guess it's very rarely enforced.


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## Kpc21

In Poland, when a police sees you doing it, you are most likely fined. I don't think it's good. People get scared of police.

And I am not talking about running in front of an approaching car, which should be fined much higher than it is.


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## MajKeR_

volodaaaa said:


> Well done. But I think it would not survive, unless it was some alliance of sovereing states. It is very close to V4+.


Just teritorially  But due to getting up from knees doing by those morons from the party currently ruling Poland it would not work with any compromise anymore, at least in next few years. They get up from knees by falling into knees to do... some French kind of love for Orban and simply no one consciously thinking would not plan any interests with them.

But apart from that, not the whole teritory of current Poland had been a part of AH, so it's not as true. And some part of current Ukraine also should be counted: Lwów with its neighbourhood.


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## Suburbanist

I read that the government in place in Poland thinks high-school students spend too much time on math and science, and that they need to double the amount of hours devoted to Polish history with emphasis on key national events and heroes and civics. They also want to push voluntary religious education in schools, I read. This is sparking a backlash.

In one line, in my opinion, this is what happens when groups with ideological dark intentions are let run amok because the population becomes too cynical to care about electoral politics.


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## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> I read that the government in place in Poland thinks high-school students spend too much time on math and science, and that they need to double the amount of hours devoted to Polish history with emphasis on key national events and heroes and civics. They also want to push voluntary religious education in schools, I read. This is sparking a backlash.


Kind of. Talking about the religious education, there are already voluntary religion lessons in Poland - from 1990.

Usually it used to look so that the students were signed up for the religion classes "by default" and the parents might sign a paper that they don't want their child to attend those classes - but such a system was against the law, against the religious freedom. It started to change only recently, and now most schools organize it in such a way that all the parents must sign a declaration whether they want their child to attend the religion classes or not.

From my experience - in the primary school and gymnasium, 99% of students attended the religion classes, but in the high school (a maths and science oriented one), it was something around 60%. Maybe 70%. The primary school and gymnasium were in a small town, the high school - in a big city.

Those religion classes are in 99% school in the Christian-Catholic religion. There is very few schools offering religion classes for other religions - usually in the areas where other religions are dominant. In a town near me, there is a school where apart from the Christian-Catholic religion classes, also the Mariavite-Catholic religion classes are offered - because there is a mariavite church in this town (apart from the catholic one) and many dwellers are mariavites. But it's a rarity.

Those religion classes are two hours a week.

And yes, they want to introduce more history classes instead of maths and science ones. And they are pushing through an unnecessary educational reform (I told about a few posts before), which will disorganize the operation of schools.



> In one line, in my opinion, this is what happens when groups with ideological dark intentions are let run amok because the population becomes too cynical to care about electoral politics.


You are right.

But I wouldn't say they have dark intentions. They believe they are right and they are doing good things.


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## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


>


And I've thought our laws are too strict toward pedestrians in SK

So, it is legal to cross a road everywhere. The only provision on this is that if it is possible a pedestrian must use a crossing, an overpass or an underpass. But generally, there is no provision regarding to fine pedestrians by. However, once a pedestrian is ran over outside a pedestrian crossing they are the guilty one. Furthermore, there is no buffer zone at all. Should it be one meter after, the guilty one is a pedestrian. The only line the pedestrians are explicitly expelled from is a railway line, except level crossings (does not apply for trams). We have a special branch of police called the railway police and it is very often to see them at some spots fining the pedestrians serving and protecting.

As for a pedestrian crossing our rules are crazy. A pedestrian has right of way in case they are standing at a pedestrian crossing on a carriageway. To follow this rule a mother with a stroller is supposed to push the stroller to the middle of the nearest lane or walk back :nuts:. As a driver I always let pedestrians go and sometimes I try to teach other drivers about the existence of a certain crossing :lol: I am in a warm car and the pedestrians are waiting on a curb in winter, rain or coldness - the easiest thing I can do for them is to release my throttle and flash my lights.

Anyway, we are, at the ministry, striving for the law amendment to redefine the provision giving the drivers a rule to stop their car in front of a pedestrian crossing in case the pedestrians are standing on the adjacent edge of a road and have clear intention to pass the crossing. There is only one group of people I hate regarding this: so called zebra chatters (and once I tried to give a way to a hooker, she almost took advance of) :lol::lol::lol:


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## Suburbanist

I usually save my opinions for myself in the matter, especially as I'm a transplant and not native here, but this whole issue of monarchies and hereditary dinasties are annoying and outdated, and it has severed any course it might have run in the past.

Some countries took the aftermath of major crises/wars to abolish their monarchies (Italy, Austria), others went back bringing monarchs out of the limbo (Spain). 

It just feel instinctively wrong. I think modern/contemporary monarchs kinda know it, as they don't live in the same social bubbles as before, and the whole pageantry surrounding them is just out of place in 2017. Meanwhile, this 'modern attitude' of certain European royals might actually stall the demise of remaining monarchies (I mean, in a peaceful and orderly way that replace kings and queens with elected presidents and separates public holdings of crowns from private property of the families) for the time being.


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## MajKeR_

Suburbanist said:


> I read that the government in place in Poland thinks high-school students spend too much time on math and science, and that they need to double the amount of hours devoted to Polish history with emphasis on key national events and heroes and civics. They also want to push voluntary religious education in schools, I read. This is sparking a backlash.
> 
> In one line, in my opinion, this is what happens when groups with ideological dark intentions are let run amok because the population becomes too cynical to care about electoral politics.


It's a bright example of what happen while some groups of people, living with belief about their exclusion, discover their subjectivity.

It's not any accident, it's real vox populi, expressed by disappoint from politics of former pro-European ruling party, that perhaps cared more about general condition of the country and its connections with others than about those so-called excluded people. The truth is that if someone doesn't care about his/her position, then he/she shouldn't expect anything from the state, whatever actually happens in some richer, Western countries. But there is some huge group of people around here who actually do. And the "law and justice" party won, because promised (and what's more terrifying - did!) some further benefits for them, without saying what it would cause for economical state of the country.

So what the one who actually got up from knees would care? Economy? Global politics? Science, especially maths? Just for discover what such a social and particular politics will surely cause? No! The glory for some heroes, wars and another so-called national successes is just a natural path for them; then whatever happens, they might name theirselves as real patriots and wonder about foreign influence into our glorious economy that cause its collapse.

Each one from the outside, being suprised about every single stupid step of current Polish goverment, should take care about one thing: Poland is a very divided country, especially for two parts - people who do care about their own future, their future as both Poles and Europeans and future of the country, as a member of EU, NATO etc. and people who do care just for their so-called pride, not clearly formulated and who expect something from some imagined "them", rather than from theirselves. While some Western nations are rather compatible about future and condition of their countries, Poles are not. Then they should not be seen in categories being used in case of Western nations.


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## ChrisZwolle

The monarchy in the Netherlands is almost entirely ceremonial. The popularity of the royalty has seen its ups and downs, but attempts to abolish the monarchy have never gained much traction. 

In recent years, the monarchy has been used as a way to open doors for businesses in foreign countries. There is usually a trade delegation traveling with an official visit to a foreign state. They tend to be more succesful than a trade delegation traveling with a minister.


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## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> I usually save my opinions for myself in the matter, especially as I'm a transplant and not native here, but this whole issue of monarchies and hereditary dinasties are annoying and outdated, and it has severed any course it might have run in the past.
> 
> Some countries took the aftermath of major crises/wars to abolish their monarchies (Italy, Austria), others went back bringing monarchs out of the limbo (Spain).
> 
> It just feel instinctively wrong. I think modern/contemporary monarchs kinda know it, as they don't live in the same social bubbles as before, and the whole pageantry surrounding them is just out of place in 2017. Meanwhile, this 'modern attitude' of certain European royals might actually stall the demise of remaining monarchies (I mean, in a peaceful and orderly way that replace kings and queens with elected presidents and separates public holdings of crowns from private property of the families) for the time being.


If the monarchy allows democracy and human rights and the monarch is merely a figurehead (like all European monarchies now), what's the problem?
Countries like NL, DK, S, and N rank among the better positions in all statistics concerning human rights, freedom of information, corruption, etc...
In Italy the monarchy had serious responsabilities for having allowed the fascist regime, that's why Italians voted for the republic in 1946.


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## Kanadzie

^^ I think the problem is - where did the monarchy get its wealth from? How can it represent the country and yet be unaccountable to the people?


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## italystf

As for high school programs: I think they should include more hours of subjects that are more useful in the modern society and job market.
For example, they should teach more IT, foreign languages, and basics of law and economy, that are useful for everybody, and reduce the number of hours of subjects like Latin or philosophy, that are useful only for those wishing continuing their studies in these fields.
In Italy, if someone get a diploma at a scientific/classic/linguistic high school and then enroll a university faculty other than jurisprudence/economics/political science, s/he will arrive at the age of 25 without ever have studied anything related to law or economy.
How can one be a model citizen/worker without an, at least, basic knowledge, of law and economics?


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## Suburbanist

italystf said:


> If the monarchy allows democracy and human rights and the monarch is merely a figurehead (like all European monarchies now), what's the problem?
> Countries like NL, DK, S, and N rank among the better positions in all statistics concerning human rights, freedom of information, corruption, etc...
> In Italy the monarchy had serious responsabilities for having allowed the fascist regime, that's why Italians voted for the republic in 1946.


I don't think monarchies are objectively making countries economically worse or more corrupt in Europe (Thailand, Swaziland or Buthan would be a different discussion). 

Finland, Iceland and Ireland have low corruption, a good provision of human rights, freedom of information etc. - they are republics. 

The issue is more about principle. I am against hereditary political power.


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## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> The only line the pedestrians are explicitly expelled from is a railway line, except level crossings (does not apply for trams). We have a special branch of police called the railway police and it is very often to see them at some spots fining the pedestrians serving and protecting.


Well, we have Straż Ochrony Kolei, doing exactly the same 

But they are not a part of the police, it's just a separate institution.

No matter if you have 100 m or 2 km to the closest level crossing, they will always fine you for crossing the tracks, even if you maintain all the safety measures possible.

It doesn't mean they don't do anything else, but it seems the security in trains gets improved when the train operator employs an external security company, so they are not helping in that 

They are also supposed to fight with people stealing coal from freight wagons or stealing the catenary.



> As for a pedestrian crossing our rules are crazy. A pedestrian has right of way in case they are standing at a pedestrian crossing on a carriageway. To follow this rule a mother with a stroller is supposed to push the stroller to the middle of the nearest lane or walk back :nuts:.


Our law says that the driver has to give way to a pedestrian who IS on the crossing and the pedestrian is not allowed to enter it in front of an approaching vehicle.

They were trying to change this law (to better for pedestrians) in the previous year or 2 years ago, they were very advanced with that, but it didn't manage to pass through the upper house of our parliament.

From the pedestrian perspective - the way to force the drivers to stop I have worked out is to enter, even with a single foot, just the verge of the carriageway. Nobody will drive you over, but they will have to stop.

Just don't do it in front of a fast approaching car - not to cause an accident because of a car suddenly braking.



italystf said:


> For example, they should teach more IT, foreign languages, and basics of law and economy, that are useful for everybody, and reduce the number of hours of subjects like Latin or philosophy, that are useful only for those wishing continuing their studies in these fields.


Actually, they want to introduce more IT classes too, which were vastly limited by the previous reform.

But the level of IT education in primary schools in Poland was anyway very low, it was often limited to teaching how to draw something (or get a shaded text) in MS Paint and how to make a presentation in PowerPoint which will be full of showy visual and sound effects.

Although, on the other hand, my teacher in the junior high school (gymnasium - as I have said, it's more an extension of primary school) was trying to introduce basics of programming (if I remember well - in Turbo Pascal - a little bit old-fashioned, but it's not bad at all as an introduction to programming) in our class and it didn't meet much interest from the students.

The reason is that if someone is good at IT, he won't work as a teacher, by he will find a much better paid job, so IT at schools was usually taught by teachers having degrees in other fields (like mathematics) and postgraduate courses in IT.

We have also basics of law and economics in high school, but the quality of those classes is often not very high and there is very few classes. When I was in high school, it was one hour a week for only a year for fundamentals of economics (or entrepreneurship, as it was called) and the same for social studies, which included some basics (of the basics) of law.


----------



## bogdymol

Maybe some of you don't know, but here's how almost 300.000 people protesting peacefully together look like:










The picture was taken about 2 hours ago in Bucharest.


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## italystf

Congratulation to people from Romania that are fighting against the corrupt politicians!
I've read news about these events, and the law that those protesters are criticizing reminds me a lot some laws that Berlusconi passed when he was the PM of Italy, to protect himself and his friends from prosecutions for crimes like corruption, tax evasion, and false accounting. However we never had such protests, we were (and still are...) able only to get angry behind a keyboard. hno:


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## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> I don't think monarchies are objectively making countries economically worse or more corrupt in Europe (Thailand, Swaziland or Buthan would be a different discussion).
> 
> Finland, Iceland and *Ireland *have low corruption, a good provision of human rights, freedom of information etc. - they are republics.
> 
> The issue is more about principle. I am against hereditary political power.


Ireland is impressive. As recently as the 1980s it was among the poorest countries of Europe, now it's a fully developed country, that ranks very good in many fields. Although it was hit quite hard by 2008 financial crisis, it recovered much faster than southern Europe countries.


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## MajKeR_

Expect such a protest in Warsaw in spring.


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## Kpc21

We will see. I think, we have too many people strictly believing in everything the leader of our ruling party says.

And, you may disagree with me, but it seems that apart from the disregard to the fundamental rules of democracy, their way of ruling doesn't seem to be really bad.

Not so bad that it would cause so big protests. Big enough.

But I don't know (nobody knows), we will see how it will be.

In my opinion, what is most likely to destroy this party are internal disputes.


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## Suburbanist

@Chris_Zwolle: some 3 years ago you told me that when major highway works in Italy were finished (Variante di Valico, BreBeMi, A3), you would seriously consider a summer trip there. Is that in your plans now


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## MajKeR_

Kpc21 said:


> We will see. I think, we have too many people strictly believing in everything the leader of our ruling party says.
> 
> And, you may disagree with me, but it seems that apart from the disregard to the fundamental rules of democracy, their way of ruling doesn't seem to be really bad.
> 
> Not so bad that it would cause so big protests. Big enough.
> 
> But I don't know (nobody knows), we will see how it will be.
> 
> In my opinion, what is most likely to destroy this party are internal disputes.


Formerly we would say that each ruling party had its own method of politics: some point of view, outlook possible to describe pretty clearly, ideas for cooperations with other nations and so. Currently everything is subordinate under their particular interests and each one with another outlook is immediately described as not-Pole, traitor and enemy of the whole glorious Poland.

Simply: domestic antagonisms and cheeky movements are now as strong as they had not be in last 27 years. And they should be blamed at all, by their rhetoric from the campany till today.

It's unundestable how I hate each single one who blamed this, but it really happens with no advantages of that state.


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## Kpc21

It doesn't happen only in Poland. Look at the protests against Trump in the USA. But in Poland, the strength of those antagonisms is exceptional. Which is sad.

And who is to blame? Nobody is to blame.

I have said:


Kpc21 said:


> In my opinion, what is most likely to destroy this party are internal disputes.


There is one more option. If the rule of PiS will cause an economic collapse of the country. But it doesn't look like that. They will make same savings on infrastructural investments and cover with that the increased spendings on the social benefits for big families (so called 500+) or increased retirement age. Is it bad? Is it good? On this forum, we consider it bad because we like infrastructural investments here. But as infrastructural investments bring certain advantages to the country (more investors will want to invest here when the infrastructure is better), the social benefits also bring advantages (more children being born - at least, assuming that it will work, but we will see). Only the increase of the retirement age was a stupid, populist decision. But our generation will have no pensions (or almost no pensions) anyway.

Although in my opinion, they should get somehow punished (by the fate, not by some guys from the EU, because otherwise, it will result in more and more anti-EU views in the society, which is the last thing we need) for what they are doing with the democracy.

The previous ruling party, PO, also wasn't innocent in those terms (the surveillance-gate, tapegate, or however you call the afera podsłuchowa in English, or, actually, what they did with the magazine which published those tapes). And, as a result, they lost the elections. But the support for PiS is still so high that they would become the ruling party now, even though they do what they do...


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> Finland, Iceland and Ireland have low corruption, a good provision of human rights, freedom of information etc. - they are republics.


And the kingdoms of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden do not have?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Kpc21 said:


> Changing the topic, how is it with the rights of pedestrians in your countries?
> 
> In Poland, it's illegal to cross the street out of a zebra crossing or streets intersection unless it's more than 100 m to the closest one. It's also illegal if there is a tunnel or bridge for the pedestrians across the street, if the street has two carriegeways or there are tram tracks which are not a part of the carriageway.


In Estonia it's basically the same and it is enforced as well. You are most likely given a warning the first time and even the fines aren't that big but it's a matter of principle IMO.

I think this can actually be counter-productive when it comes to the safety of pedestrians. Most of the accidents with pedestrians in the city happen on zebra crossings. I think lots of pedestrians have this false sense of safety when it comes to zebra crossings so they don't pay much attention to traffic whereas if you are crossing the street at a random place you are more likely to be rather careful.

This has also to do with the fact that the vast majority of drivers over here stops in front of the zebra crossing for pedestrians so you aren't perhaps ready as a pedestrian for that tiny minority that doesn't.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> The Swiss system of decentralized direct voting does a lot of things right, but also some pretty unsavory stuff. Women were only granted national voting rights in 1971, and one of its cantons forbade road vehicles altogether until 1934. Apparently, it was not even a matter of Swiss men hating on women, but a sort of token vote against societal modernization (which was otherwise unstoppable), and a resentment towards the shifting power structures that came with urbanization and loss of importance of agriculture/rural life. Yet, an absolute shame that women could not vote in the whole of Switzerland until 1971!


Ironically, the fact of CH not allowing women to vote until 1971 is the consequence of their love for direct democracy (that it's something that I generally like, although it may have some unintended consequences, like partially-informed people voting for what they think it's better, instead for what is really better).
In fact, extending political rights to women, would have been only possible through a referendum. However, at a such referendum, only men would be allowed to vote. So, Swiss men voted few times against female political rights. Only in 1971, the majority of Swiss men voted to extend political rights to women.
In Italy women were given political rights for the first time in 1945. There was no referendum for that, simply the new post-war government though it was the right thing to do for a 20th century democracy.

However, the fact of CH not allowing women to vote and being elected as late as 1971 has no influence on the quality of Swiss democracy today. In other European countries, nobody was allowed to vote freely until 1974/75 or 1989/90. This doesn't make them less democratic nowadays, and if they are, it's not because they got democracy later.


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## italystf

Surel said:


> Do not fall for a fallacy that elitism (enlightened ruling elite ruling for the greater good, morals, values, etc...) would do better. It would not. Power corrupts. Uncontrolled, unchecked, power is then a perfect corruption environment. You might be lucky and get some years of enlightened ruling, but without the public control, it will sooner or later take very unfavourable course for the majority of the society.


I agree. Enlightened authoritarism doesn't exist in practice. When someone has an unlimited power, he will get corrupt and authoritarian, he will put his own interests before of people's interests. When someone's power is limited (for example by constitution or other laws, by independent judiciary, or by the fear of not being elected again), he'll has less interest in becoming corrupt or authoritarian, as he's accountable for his own actions.


----------



## italystf

Surel said:


> Indeed, so far nothing better than democracy. But democracy is not a given. It requires certain kind of behaviour of its actors.
> 
> You could e.g. promise the tenants that you will install a new heating system without increasing the monthly contributions they make. Then you would go to the bank, take a mortgage on their flats and install the system. After few years the savings would be gone, the building forfeit to the bank... In such a case you are either stupid, or a fraud.
> 
> What I want to say. The politics that are promised to the public and go through election should at least be reasonable and the public should be informed about the consequences of these plans. A politician might not know the consequences, or he might know them, but decide not to act on them and lie about his policies. I could imagine calling him a populist.
> 
> In our example you could simply let the people chose from increasing their contribution to the budget or informing them that they might lose their flat as a consequence of this risky investment.
> 
> In any case, the public receives exactly what it deserves. If it is not able to see through the stupidity or the swindles it won't get any better from the politicians. Politicians truly are the representation of their people. That is the beauty of a democracy.


In Italy, between 1973 and 1995 there was in force an outrageous law that allowed workers of the public sector to retire after only 15, 20 or 25 (according to categories) years of work.
That means that some people could retire as young as 35. If they lived until 80, it means that they paid contributes for 15 years and got retirement wage for 45!

You don't need to be an economist to realize that a such measure would be economically unsustainable in the long term. Needless to say, it created a huge waste of public money, that later required though tax increases and budget cuts in important fields like health care and education. hno:

It also encouraged illegal work, as it was plenty of adults in labour age with nothing to do.

However, at that time, this law was popular, because people think more about they personal benefits "how cool, I'll retire soon", rather than about the macroeconomic consequence of a policy.


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## Kanadzie

italystf said:


> I agree. Enlightened authoritarism doesn't exist in practice. When someone has an unlimited power, he will get corrupt and authoritarian, he will put his own interests before of people's interests. When someone's power is limited (for example by constitution or other laws, by independent judiciary, or by the fear of not being elected again), he'll has less interest in becoming corrupt or authoritarian, as he's accountable for his own actions.


There's an English language saying about this... "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"


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## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> I agree. Enlightened authoritarism doesn't exist in practice. When someone has an unlimited power, he will get corrupt and authoritarian, he will put his own interests before of people's interests. When someone's power is limited (for example by constitution or other laws, by independent judiciary, or by the fear of not being elected again), he'll has less interest in becoming corrupt or authoritarian, as he's accountable for his own actions.


I am not the poor white man who votes against everything. But what really makes me angry is how elites sometimes preach about democracy with really stupid ideas like there should be an IQ/economic test before every election, or that the election law should be guaranteed only for well educated people or people who pay taxes.

There is same ratio in such ideas indeed, but for me it is more like latent autocracy. Like we will eliminate all our enemies and then we will win.

Come on, it is democracy. No democracy works in system where minority decides. On the other hand, the quality of democracy can be measured by the respect for minorities (e.g. even if a conservative party rules, the government does not ban or punish LGBT; but also LGBT must accept their problems are not a priority for other people).

Once there are restrictions, it is not democracy.


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## cinxxx

^^There is no democracy actually in West of Europe.
Just look at all the censor and restrictions of free speech (to not offend different groups of people, usually minorities).


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## volodaaaa

It slowly happens here too. The voters in SK were usually divided into leftists (people prone to praise the socialism) and rightists (people who wanted to see SK in EU, NATO, etc.).

But as the migrant crisis emerged and corruption was on the top, they fell for fascists and unfortunately they made it to parliament. To prevent the situation from being worse (as it turned out it is not working) a group of formerly hostile parties has formed a government (against fascists). People became immediately disappointed and lost their taste to vote for anything (the group of non-voters has raised radically). 

Now the fascist are a subject of arguing e.g. if coalition wants to discredit the opposition, they usually say "you voted with fascists" and vice-versa. It makes people tired of politics. 

It also (but also in Europe and Western world) caused so called inflation of "fascists" notion. It is not as offensive word as it used to be in past. Now it became defacto an alternative to liberal leftists ideology which scares me. But also, the "fascists" usually call liberal leftists "fascists" because some are to breach the general human rights in favour of human rights of some people.


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## cinxxx

Imho, the real fascists really are the leftists. They want to ban freedom of speech, prosecute people who speak "wrongly", want to implement identity politics, label everything.
But what they also do, is label everyone who is to the right of them (and this is also often the case with centrist view) as nazi, fascist. 
It just become the ultimate way to discredit and shut someone up...


----------



## winnipeg

cinxxx said:


> Imho, the real fascists really are the leftists. They want to ban freedom of speech, prosecute people who speak "wrongly", want to implement identity politics, label everything.
> But what they also do, is label everyone who is to the right of them (and this is also often the case with centrist view) as nazi, fascist.
> It just become the ultimate way to discredit and shut someone up...


I personaly have the feeling that your view can totaly flip depending of what sources of information you are looking at... if you look at far right information sources, you will see the left as a big threat hno: , and it's the same if you look at far left information sources, they will learn you how to hate the opponents...

I believe that we need everything to make a world and we should stop to see in every other people that doesn't share our point of view, a threat... :yes:


----------



## winnipeg

cinxxx said:


> ^^There is no democracy actually in West of Europe.
> Just look at all the censor and restrictions of free speech (to not offend different groups of people, usually minorities).


I don't know if by "west" you include France, but I absolutly don't agree with this assumption that everything is censored... hno:

Maybe it's the goal of some people/groups to make you believe that your free spech is endangered or that people that are diferent than you are a threat,... some of those groups are playing with your deep fears...


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## cinxxx

^^I include Germany


----------



## Suburbanist

I think there is an important difference between some sort of speech being illegal, or just being something that is socially rejected and detrimental to those who engage on it.

I do not want people who want to entertain eugenics arguments of the 1910s to be legally censored, I do want them to be socially ostracized when they babble on the Internet about how Europe is going downhill because of "mixed babies" - for instance. Ditto for people who think European governments should roll back secularism and become state defenders of specific strands of faith in some global religious war fantasy.

Most of the complaints about censorship in Europe are not actually about laws that stifle free speech (I am a strong defender of the right to free speech myself), but how certain ideas receive immediate backlash and risk people's jobs or social status in certain professions. In other words, some people want to conflate the right to say something with the right to say something outrageous and be treated nicely and in a welcome manner by everyone still. It is a plight for discourse without societal repercussions. 

No sub-group is a better example of that than most of these "men right's activists", who, among some legitimate arguments (few), delve into a wave of "let's us go back to the day when a male with a good job was assured the right to have a financially dependent women who'd care for him and have sex with him ".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What do you guys pay for car insurance?

My 2015 Hyundai i10 insurance is only € 33 per month for full coverage (the most expensive insurance you can choose). The cheapest one (liability only) would be € 22.50 per month.

They say the Dutch car insurances are one of the cheapest in at least Western Europe. You get additional discount if you don't claim any damages (I haven't claimed anything since an accident in 2006).


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> What do you guys pay for car insurance?
> 
> My 2015 Hyundai i10 insurance is only € 33 per month for full coverage (the most expensive insurance you can choose). The cheapest one (liability only) would be € 22.50 per month.
> 
> They say the Dutch car insurances are one of the cheapest in at least Western Europe. You get additional discount if you don't claim any damages (I haven't claimed anything since an accident in 2006).


2007 Opel Vectra C: 
mandatory insurance (for the one I cause a damage to): 40 € / trimonthly
additional insurance (for me in any case): 289* € / year

overall: ~37 € / month

*in case of an insurance event, the insurance company will pay 95 % of repairs given that the remaining 5 % does not add up to less than 165 €. In such case I pay 165 €. If an accident occurs and I am not the guilty one, my repairs are fully covered by the mandatory insurance of the guilty one.


----------



## volodaaaa

Suburbanist said:


> I think there is an important difference between some sort of speech being illegal, or just being something that is socially rejected and detrimental to those who engage on it.
> 
> I do not want people who want to entertain eugenics arguments of the 1910s to be legally censored, I do want them to be socially ostracized when they babble on the Internet about how Europe is going downhill because of "mixed babies" - for instance. Ditto for people who think European governments should roll back secularism and become state defenders of specific strands of faith in some global religious war fantasy.
> 
> Most of the complaints about censorship in Europe are not actually about laws that stifle free speech (I am a strong defender of the right to free speech myself), but how certain ideas receive immediate backlash and risk people's jobs or social status in certain professions. In other words, some people want to conflate the right to say something with the right to say something outrageous and be treated nicely and in a welcome manner by everyone still. It is a plight for discourse without societal repercussions.
> 
> *No sub-group is a better example of that than most of these "men right's activists", who, among some legitimate arguments (few), delve into a wave of "let's us go back to the day when a male with a good job was assured the right to have a financially dependent women who'd care for him and have sex with him "*.


I agree, but the opposite example is a proud Muslim woman that was brought up in Western Europe fighting for women's right.... in Western Europe (which I consider little bit... ehrm... ridiculous). And I fairly agree with cinxxx that because of this post, I would be, within some groups, automatically marked a racist or fascist or at least a masculine terrorist and obviously a Muslim hater - surely a Trump's fan. None of this is true though I still think that such woman acts ridiculously.


----------



## cinxxx

> No sub-group is a better example of that than most of these "men right's activists", who, among some legitimate arguments (few), delve into a wave of "let's us go back to the day when a male with a good job was assured the right to have a financially dependent women who'd care for him and have sex with him ".


Yeah, let's bring the Middle East here


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> What do you guys pay for car insurance?


Honda Accord 2.4 y2010 - 740 € per year for complete insurance with road assistance included (that is 62 €/month) - that is actually very cheap as prices almost explode with more powerful engines.


----------



## Suburbanist

cinxxx said:


> Yeah, let's bring the Middle East here


Why do you assume I am in favor of immigration of low-skilled people from outside the EU?

I really dislike these ways to view the world in a binary way.


----------



## cinxxx

^^I didn't assume anything, just gave a good example of "patriarchal society" you suggested, as it really happens in Europe (Germnay, Sweden) right now...


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> What do you guys pay for car insurance?


Romania: Ford Focus 2013, 1.6 L diesel, 115 hp, registered on my father's name (he has a discount since he's retired): 585 RON (130 Euro) for 1 year.

This is just the basic insurance (so in case I damage my car, I have to repair it myself). The full insurance would cost an additional 700 Euro per year (insane!).



keber said:


> Honda Accord 2.4 y2010


Nice car


----------



## winnipeg

Suburbanist said:


> The police could simply use thermal scanners (which are rather cheap these days) while driving around neighborhoods, and do the same on any cold winter night without snow.


But to get what? Push people to buy weed from well organised criminals networks instead of growing their own? 

For me the whole "weed-fighting" is a non sens the best example is France where everything linked to weed is totaly illegal but we are still the first European country in term of consumption, and you can find weed everywhere some places are even considered as a "drive", you come with your car ans you get the weed in few seconds...


----------



## GROBIN

ChrisZwolle said:


> Snow is the police's best friend to locate illegal cannabis growing. They are the only houses with no snow on it :lol:
> 
> Usually these people grow cannabis on a larger scale, consuming a large amount of illegally tapped electricity.
> 
> Last year I had a ceiling leakage and the police came immediately because it is often a sign of illegal cannabis growing in the apartment above (there was none though).


This is also the best way to know whether your roof is well insulated, which doesn't seem to be the case here  
I wonder how does real estate insulation look like in the Netherlands? Is it as bad as in France or the UK?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It strongly depends on the age of the building. Recent buildings are very well insulated (to the point that indoor air quality becomes poor due to lack of ventilation & fresh air), while older buildings are poorly insulated. I remember a 1950s house where you could just look through the roof tiles in the attic. The inside of the windows even ice over in winter.


----------



## Suburbanist

winnipeg said:


> But to get what? Push people to buy weed from well organised criminals networks instead of growing their own?
> 
> For me the whole "weed-fighting" is a non sens the best example is France where everything linked to weed is totaly illegal but we are still the first European country in term of consumption, and you can find weed everywhere some places are even considered as a "drive", you come with your car ans you get the weed in few seconds...


I am in favor of legalization of most drugs including all softer ones (marijuana, ecstasy, LSD etc). I am think they are products best avoided like tobacco or sugary soda.

This being said, it is very dangerous to have homemade greenhouses growing weed with illegal power supply. It is an enormous fire hazard. For that reason these operations should be prosecuted by police. It is like storing liquid fuel or fireworks in your row house.


----------



## GROBIN

^^
In France new buildings are also very well insulated. Before they allow people to live in there, they make the "blowing door" (in French "porte soufflante"). If too much air escapes the building, it must be corrected ASAP and the client doesn't have to pay.
But buildings up to 2010 are usually very badly insulated, if at all.

Here in Lithuania, they've started insulating old buildings very late comparing to Central Europe (PL, CZ, SK, H ...). Nevertheless, from my experience, the worst commieblocks are not the ones from the Khrushchov times but the ones from the end of the 1980s in terms of insulation!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

GROBIN said:


> 3 identical OUB's for 3 different countries' tolls: ViaToll (Poland), BelToll (Belarus), Télépéage (France). Good luck in finding any differences!


I believe the future is in sticker transponders. They do not require batteries. This SunPass in Florida can be purchased for $ 4.99 but I've also seen toll road agencies handing them out for free.


----------



## italystf

winnipeg said:


> But to get what? Push people to buy weed from well organised criminals networks instead of growing their own?
> 
> For me the whole "weed-fighting" is a non sens the best example is France where everything linked to weed is totaly illegal but we are still the first European country in term of consumption, and you can find weed everywhere some places are even considered as a "drive", you come with your car ans you get the weed in few seconds...


People who grow dozen of plants at home with heating/lighting facilities working with stolen electricity are suppliers of well organised criminals networks. Those who grow their own weed at home have one or two plants at most.


----------



## Kpc21

Talking about the car insurances.

Poland. Opel Corsa B from 1993. 1200 ccm. Only the obligatory insurance (for the cases when I damage someone's car in an accident).

The insurance for the following year, paid 2 weeks ago, cost 588 zł (140 euro).
For the previous year, it was 370 zł (85 euro).

The car insurance prices in Poland have risen very much within the last year. In my case - 60% increase.

The insurance companies claim that it's because there was no price rise for a very long time.



Tenjac said:


> - luxury tax (paid for cars less than 10 years old) 250 kn


Wow. Our government wants to introduce extra taxes on old cars and you have a totally opposite situation 

The reason is environment protection and air pollution. Our air is the worst in the EU, and this is supposed to be a way of fighting with this problem. Even though, the main reason for that is that coal is still dominant in heating here. And there is also many people using things they shouldn't use for that as a fuel for heating.

But the topic, unnoticed by most people in the past, became very popular this year (the air pollution goes extreme this winter because there is almost no wind) and it's likely the government will finally do something with it. There are already cities and regions planning to ban using coal for heating.

How is it with the heating systems in your countries (I am especially talking about countries having "proper" winters with temperatures below 0 degrees or, at least, below 10 degrees)? When someone lives in a single-family house, which fuel is the most popular? Coal, oil, LPG gas/natural gas? How many small towns and suburbs have natural gas networks?


----------



## Suburbanist

Kpc21 said:


> How is it with the heating systems in your countries (I am especially talking about countries having "proper" winters with temperatures below 0 degrees or, at least, below 10 degrees)? When someone lives in a single-family house, which fuel is the most popular? Coal, oil, LPG gas/natural gas? How many small towns and suburbs have natural gas networks?


Gas is the most common heating fuel in the Netherlands. Most Dutch single-detached houses are connected to the gas networks, there are pipelines all over the country.

There are long-term plans to change heating to electricity or district heating, as gas reserves in the North Sea dwindle (they are expected to be commercially exhausted at prevailing prices by 2055 give or take). New houses are no longer obliged to be connected to the gas networks.

District heating is an interesting solution when there is a thermal power plant nearby, especially in a country that relies on heating for roughly 4/5 of the year. Laying steam pipes is expensive, nonetheless. 

An important point to consider is that newer Dutch buildings are very well insulated. They could be even better, if not for indoor air quality issues. My flat (completed in 2009) probably uses 80% less energy for heating than similar flats in the area built before the latest standards. This past year I did not use any heating (other than couple days with heavy windstorms that cooled the building) from early April until mid October, and internal temperature never went below 20 oC. However, I live alone and don't have many visitors, if I did, I'd have to turn the air pump flow higher or the air becomes stifled.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Dutch natural gas is mostly extracted from the Slochteren gas field in Groningen province, not primarily from the North Sea. It contained 2700 billion cubic meters of natural gas. It is getting depleted and earthquake issues have caused a considerable reduction of extraction of natural gas. 

The Slochteren gas field has produced € 211 billion in tax revenues over a period of 50 years. That is 80% of all natural gas revenue in the Netherlands.


----------



## Kpc21

There are devices available that allow recuperating heat from the air leaving the house through a ventilation system. A requirement for that is to have mechanical ventilation, but I think, it's a standard in modern houses.

Here, in Poland, older houses are usually not insulated well, but many new ones are also built as almost-passives.

In Poland, district heating is popular in big cities, although usually only the downtowns and big residential areas with apartment blocks have access to it. Although in Łódź, it's not so good with that in the downtown. There are still some tenement houses having even no running water and sewer, not to mention central heating. So people use this type of stoves in rooms:










which are for coal, of course. There is not many such houses, but there are still some remaining - even with no toilet inside the building.

But when they are renovated, they are usually either connected to the district heating, or to the gas network and central heating is installed.

Actually, in one tenement house, I have once seen quite an unusual heating system. The gas pipes deliver gas to each room, where there are gas heaters below the windowsills instead of standard central heating radiators.

According to this presentation: http://gazoprojekt.pl/p/gazyfikacja_gmin.pdf - the percentage of "gasified" municipalities (having gas networks) in the regions looks as follows:










So it will be approximately 50%. In Poland it must be much more difficult than in the Netherlands, because the country is much less urbanized, and unlike for example in Germany, the villages are not tightly built-up and condensed in small areas, but a single village in the countryside can span many kilometers along a single road.

Anyway, even if someone has access to the gas network, many people decide for coal. On the Internet, I meet contradictory opinions about which heating system is cheaper. Gas seems to be slightly more expensive, but it is much less problematic in usage. In coal, even if you have a modern central heating stove, where you just insert the coal to a big container and then it automatically doses it and controls the burning process, there is still much dirty work with refilling the coal, removing the ash and cleaning the stove and the chimney periodically. But if someone has an old, poorly isolated house, the extra cost in case of gas may be anyway high.

Around 10-20 years ago, also oil began to gain popularity, but when truck drivers started to use heating oil instead of car oil ("diesel" fuel) as a fuel for their trucks (it is very similar and it turned out, a diesel engine can use it without much problem), because it was much cheaper, even though using it for cars is illegal (as there is an extra tax for the oil for cars), the prices went up.

Electric heating is not popular - it is used mostly in tenement houses without central heating, where the stoves in rooms couldn't be used any more because of bad condition of chimneys. Companies, especially offices, often use air conditioning systems for heating (although they must be special air conditioning systems, capable of heating even in the temperatures of -10 deg. C and less). In the detached houses, heat pumps and solar heating systems are slowly gaining popularity, especially thanks to state subsidizing, but the investment prices are anyway so high that not so many people decide for them.

Or, in a detached house having no access to the gas network, you can use LPG gas, but you must either invest much money in the pressure vessel for the gas (then, the gas prices are comparable with natural gas), or rent the vessel from a company which will deliver the gas based on a long-term contract (but then, the gas prices are high).

And the problem with natural gas in Poland is that it comes from Russia - and we have own coal mines. So using coal is much better for political reasons. With gas, we are dependent on a country with which we have not so good relations. And extraction of our coal is quite expensive, which makes it not so easy to export it - even on the local market, Czech and Russian coal is gaining popularity. So it seems to be the best idea to sell it within the country. Not to mention that the coal miners are a meaningful lobby in our country.

Not a long time ago, shale gas was also found in Poland, and since Americans have recently invented an affordable technology of extracting it, we had some hopes with it. But it seems that the extraction of our shale gas is not so feasible economically anyway, at least now. Maybe it will change in the future.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Coal / oil / wood stoves are pretty bad for air quality, particularly during the winter when there is inversion which traps all pollutants near the ground. 

They say that 2 hours of burning a wood stove emits the same amount of particles as driving 1000 kilometers. 

The Dutch gas network is relatively clean, but gas reserves are being depleted and there is less political will to extract gas at the previous rates due to the earthquake concerns in Groningen province. They started building new subdivisions without gas supply in recent years.


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## Kpc21

So what do they use there? Just electric heating, or some modern technologies, like heat pumps?


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## Attus

In Hungary gas network was rapidly built in the 90's, many houses are connected to it, approx. 2/3 of heating is based on gas. In large house residential areas built in the 60's-90's (often called as commie blocks here, this name is in Hungary absolutely unknown) have district heating. The rest is based on convential heating fuels, oil, coal, and, especially in villages, wood. 
As a consequence in cold and depressed days mountain villages may have havier smog than Budapest. 

I grew up in a small town near to Budapest. When I was a little child we had coal, later (early 80's) on we changed to oil. In the 90's our house, too, was connected to gas network.


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## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> So what do they use there? Just electric heating, or some modern technologies, like heat pumps?


The most common non-gas heating is geothermal / heat pumps. But a complete shift from natural gas to other heating options is estimated to cost € 200 billion between 2020 and 2040. 

Most people are in favor of an energy shift to renewables, but not so much with the cost. Today over half of the electricity bill is composed of taxes and that will only increase. At some point it's not even worth getting energy saving appliances because it hardly makes a dent on the overall utility bill. 

I've shifted to LED for most of my lights in the house. But they are more expensive, a single LED bulb cost like € 7/8 and it takes some time to earn the investment back through electricity savings. 

The biggest bang was when I replaced the triple halogen light spot at the ceiling with LED. The lights are on most of the time when I'm home due to the lack of direct sunlight through the windows, so they consumed quite a bit of electricity.


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## Kpc21

Attus said:


> In large house residential areas built in the 60's-90's (often called as commie blocks here, this name is in Hungary absolutely unknown)


In Poland, we call them just blocks or "living blocks" (where "living" is like German "wohnen", not like German "leben"). German has a better, literate equivalent: Wohnblock.

They are present in West Germany too, so I believe it's nothing very specific for the former Eastern Bloc - but we have much more of them, they are often much taller (in cities, you meet such blocks with over 10 floors) and we developed specific technologies of building them (from prefabricated concrete elements), I don't think Westeners have ever used, or, at least, not on a large scale.

In towns without district heating, they usually have a separate building with quite a tall chimney for a boiler room, from which the heat is distributed to the whole area of those "commie blocks".

Look, for example, here: https://goo.gl/maps/qGYyo4fM5qD2

For those blocks, there are, actually, two boiler room buildings:
- https://goo.gl/maps/nR7nGsv8E4w (in this one, just accidentaly, they also sell gas cylinders to use with gas cookers - since there is no gas network here)
- https://goo.gl/maps/1MNs9nTNypA2 (you can see a fresh coal delivery)

By the way, for the Polish "commie blocks", it's typical that they have extra thermal insulation (installed, usually, between 2000 and 2010) and they are colorfully painted.



> I grew up in a small town near to Budapest. When I was a little child we had coal, later (early 80's) on we changed to oil. In the 90's our house, too, was connected to gas network.


I also live in a small town and we still have coal. The state gas company has had plans to extend the gas network to our town for years, but they have never realized them. But it seems, currently a private company with Italian capital (Sime), which is also building gas network, is interested in "gasifying" our town and it will probably happen in the next few years. So we will finally have natural gas.



ChrisZwolle said:


> I've shifted to LED for most of my lights in the house. But they are more expensive, a single LED bulb cost like € 7/8 and it takes some time to earn the investment back through electricity savings.
> 
> The biggest bang was when I replaced the triple halogen light spot at the ceiling with LED. The lights are on most of the time when I'm home due to the lack of direct sunlight through the windows, so they consumed quite a bit of electricity.


In case of the lighting, not everyone notices that the energy which is "wasted" by a traditional light bulb is actually emitted as heat, so in winter you don't waste anything  Except for the money for your electricity bill, as you could obtain the same amount of heat in a cheaper (although not necessarily more ecological) way.

Interestingly, from the moment when the sale of traditional light bulbs got forbidden in the EU, there is still no problem with buying them in Poland. They are just labelled that they are only for professional use and they shouldn't be used for home lighting - and marked as "vibration-resistant".

But when I was in Germany the previous year and I wanted to buy a traditional light bulb, it was more difficult. I found it, finally, in a Woolworth store, but it was... imported from Poland.


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## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I believe the future is in sticker transponders. They do not require batteries. This SunPass in Florida can be purchased for $ 4.99 but I've also seen toll road agencies handing them out for free.
> 
> http://i.imgur.com/TVhlaRl.jpg


is that thing also present in Turkey, as one of their two types of contactless toll devices?
i was already wondering how such type is implemented so poorly because usual toll devices look so outdated. i am also wondering how much would our thieves charge it (i have recently bought new toll device because battery ran out at old one, and paid it 16€, what is non sense for Chinese plasitc toy from e-bay; of course batteries are not replacable)


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## italystf

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland, we call them just blocks or "living blocks" (where "living" is like German "wohnen", not like German "leben"). German has a better, literate equivalent: Wohnblock.
> 
> They are present in West Germany too, so I believe it's nothing very specific for the former Eastern Bloc - but we have much more of them, they are often much taller (in cities, you meet such blocks with over 10 floors) and we developed specific technologies of building them (from prefabricated concrete elements), I don't think Westeners have ever used, or, at least, not on a large scale.
> 
> In towns without district heating, they usually have a separate building with quite a tall chimney for a boiler room, from which the heat is distributed to the whole area of those "commie blocks".
> 
> Look, for example, here: https://goo.gl/maps/qGYyo4fM5qD2
> 
> For those blocks, there are, actually, two boiler room buildings:
> - https://goo.gl/maps/nR7nGsv8E4w (in this one, just accidentaly, they also sell gas cylinders to use with gas cookers - since there is no gas network here)
> - https://goo.gl/maps/1MNs9nTNypA2 (you can see a fresh coal delivery)
> 
> By the way, for the Polish "commie blocks", it's typical that they have extra thermal insulation (installed, usually, between 2000 and 2010) and they are colorfully painted.
> 
> 
> I also live in a small town and we still have coal. The state gas company has had plans to extend the gas network to our town for years, but they have never realized them. But it seems, currently a private company with Italian capital (Sime), which is also building gas network, is interested in "gasifying" our town and it will probably happen in the next few years. So we will finally have natural gas.
> 
> 
> In case of the lighting, not everyone notices that the energy which is "wasted" by a traditional light bulb is actually emitted as heat, so in winter you don't waste anything  Except for the money for your electricity bill, as you could obtain the same amount of heat in a cheaper (although not necessarily more ecological) way.
> 
> Interestingly, from the moment when the sale of traditional light bulbs got forbidden in the EU, there is still no problem with buying them in Poland. They are just labelled that they are only for professional use and they shouldn't be used for home lighting - and marked as "vibration-resistant".
> 
> But when I was in Germany the previous year and I wanted to buy a traditional light bulb, it was more difficult. I found it, finally, in a Woolworth store, but it was... imported from Poland.


The term commieblock was invented in some SSC subforum around 2005.

As for incandescent light bulbs, until 2018, they are still allowed to sell the most modern ones, that have a small halogen bulb inside the big glass bulb, instead of the old tungsten filament, that was used until around 2010. They are slighty more energy-efficient than the old incandescent bulbs, but nothing compared to CFLs or, even better, LEDs.
I wonder if one day we'll ban CFLs too, in favour of LEDs, that are more efficient, long-lasting and do not contain the toxic mercury.


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## Kpc21

Well, they contain other toxic substances, maybe not dangerous for human in direct contact, but dangerous for the environment anyway.

With the LEDs, the problem is that they provide very narrow, "focused" beam of light, which is not really natural for human.

And LED-based street lighting may be actually dangerous. While sodium lamps (or, still met in some places, mercury lamps), used in street lighting up to now, provide dispersed light, which is emitted in all directions and lightens also the neighborhood of the road, so that you can see, for example, a potential robber or another criminal, in case of LEDs, the neighbourhood is dark, so it's possible for him to hide.

And while sodium lights lightening the carriageway provided also enough light for the sidewalk, in case of LEDs, it's necessary to install additional lamps for the sidewalk.

I believe, the LED lighting technology is already quite well developed, but I am anyway a fan of incandescent light bulbs. They light is just "most natural". Maybe it doesn't work like sun (whose light comes from thermonuclear reactions), it comes from a heated up object, this is the way the human lighting worked since human learnt how to use fire.

Maybe the key why it is so, why the bulb light is "more natural" than the light from LED or fluorescent, is the spectrum... 

Although... it seems that not:










I thought the spectrum of LED will consist of narrow bands since LEDs emit lights of specific frequencies, related, if I remember well from the studies, to the band gap of the semiconductor - but it seems, its spectrum is quite similar to the incandescent light, maybe it misses only the highest, almost-UV frequencies. And UV is not good for human anyway... Definitely not more than we get from the sun.


About the street lighting - I have noticed that Germans often used fluorescent lamps for street lighting - which is absolutely not present in Poland. We usually have sodium lamps (well recognizable because they give yellow light), there are some remnants of mercury lamps (with "deadly white", slightly greenish light) and LEDs start to appear.


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## Surel

As of 2011 around 38 % of households in Czechia were centrally heated (district heated as you say), 38 % relied on gas, the rest were coal/wood/electricity/other.


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## Kpc21

As "centrally heated", do you mean district heating, a city central heating system?

Because central heating is any system, even in a single house, where you have a central stove heating - usually - water, which flows through radiators in the room.


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## Surel

^^

I added district heatimg before I read your post.

These systems are rather called central heating than district heating in Czech and another term is used for the pipes and radiators inside the flat instead of CH. Sorry for the confusion.

I would say that around 85 % houses are with the actual central heating with radiators and around 70 % are connected to gas. You can see that more than 20 % dont use gas for heating.

Btw. Those district heating systems provide hot drinking water as well.


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## Kpc21

Surel said:


> These systems are rather called central heating than district heating in Czech and another term is used for the pipes and radiators inside the flat instead of CH. Sorry for the confusion.


Well... those differences between the Polish and Czech language...

For us in Polish, a system with pipes and radiators in a house is called "centralne ogrzewanie" (central heating - same as in English). For the district heating, there is no popular term. People call it "ciepło miejskie" (city heat), "ogrzewanie miejskie" (city heating), "sieć ciepłownicza" (heating network), while the operators often use the term "ciepło systemowe" (system heat).

Meanwhile, German has, as usual, a simple and easily understandable term for that - Fernwärme ("remote heat", but it doesn't sound so obvious in English, at least not to me).



> Btw. Those district heating systems provide hot drinking water as well.


Any central heating system does it. At least usually it is so (it doesn't have to, but it's just a matter of connecting a hot drinking water tank with a spiral pipe inside to the system).


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## Suburbanist

I spoke of district heating in the sense of a network of steam (or, more rarely, hot water) that is managed by a city, distributing it through different buildings. It is implemented as a way to capture the byproduct (inert steam) of thermal-based power plants.

Denmark apparently uses that system quite a lot.


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## AsHalt

ChrisZwolle said:


> Snow is the police's best friend to locate illegal cannabis growing. They are the only houses with no snow on it
> 
> Usually these people grow cannabis on a larger scale, consuming a large amount of illegally tapped electricity.
> 
> Last year I had a ceiling leakage and the police came immediately because it is often a sign of illegal cannabis growing in the apartment above (there was none though).


Busted by nature... The irony is High


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## Surel

Suburbanist said:


> I spoke of district heating in the sense of a network of steam (or, more rarely, hot water) that is managed by a city, distributing it through different buildings. It is implemented as a way to capture the byproduct (inert steam) of thermal-based power plants.
> 
> Denmark apparently uses that system quite a lot.


Yes. Thats how is 38 % houses heated in CZ. Its the most efficient way of producing heat, centrally, rather than locally. All those commie housing developements were designed the way they were designed for a purpose.


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## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> How is it with the heating systems in your countries (I am especially talking about countries having "proper" winters with temperatures below 0 degrees or, at least, below 10 degrees)? When someone lives in a single-family house, which fuel is the most popular? Coal, oil, LPG gas/natural gas? How many small towns and suburbs have natural gas networks?


In Finland, the situation is quite mixed. The statistics from 2014, "Net effective heating energy of residential, commercial and public buildings" shows the following distribution by energy used (not by number of homes):

Small scale wood 13%
Peat negligble (less than 0.1%)
Coal negligible
Heavy fuel oil 1%
Light fuel oil 8%
Natural gas 1%
Heat pumps 14%
District heat 46%
Electricity 17%

The heat pumps are not enough during the coldest days. Therefore they typically are a secondary heat source.

The share of heating is about 25% of the total energy consumption.

The mix of the energy sources is the following (2015):

Wood 26%
Oil 23%
Nuclear 18%
Coal 9%
Natural gas 7%
Import of electricity 5%
Hydro 5%
Peat 5%
Wind 1%
Others 4%

(Rounding errors, the sum is 103%) The mix varies across years.


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## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> In case of the lighting, not everyone notices that the energy which is "wasted" by a traditional light bulb is actually emitted as heat, so in winter you don't waste anything  Except for the money for your electricity bill, as you could obtain the same amount of heat in a cheaper (although not necessarily more ecological) way.


It is not that straightforward. As the heat goes upwards, a bulb at the ceiling without reflectors creates about zero amount of useful heating energy. 

The radiators are not by accicent put close to the floor.


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## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> I spoke of district heating in the sense of a network of steam (or, more rarely, hot water) that is managed by a city, distributing it through different buildings. It is implemented as a way to capture the byproduct (inert steam) of thermal-based power plants.
> 
> Denmark apparently uses that system quite a lot.


Italy too. The vast majority of houses in Brescia and Turin, for instance, are heated this way.


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## Attus

The Hungarian word for district heating, "távfűtés" does literally mean "remote heating". This word is very common in Hungary. Approx. 15% of flats in Hungary are heated by district heating, basically the "commie blocks", wich are by the way called "panelház" = "panel house" in Hungarian because they are built of prefabricated concrete panels. 
District heating is very unpopular in Hungary because it is often controlled centrally. In a sunny day in February you see that west side windows are all open because the flats are heavily heated and temperature is near to 30 degrees Celsius - on the other side in cold May days people wear a coat even in the flat. District heating was widely modernized in the 2000s and '10s so that those issues are much less common than 20-30 years ago but did not completely disappear.


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## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> The Hungarian word for district heating, "távfűtés" does literally mean "remote heating". This word is very common in Hungary. Approx. 15% of flats in Hungary are heated by district heating, basically the "commie blocks", wich are by the way called "panelház" = "panel house" in Hungarian because they are built of prefabricated concrete panels.
> District heating is very unpopular in Hungary because it is often controlled centrally. In a sunny day in February you see that west side windows are all open because the flats are heavily heated and temperature is near to 30 degrees Celsius - on the other side in cold May days people wear a coat even in the flat. District heating was widely modernized in the 2000s and '10s so that those issues are much less common than 20-30 years ago but did not completely disappear.


Same here. The district heating system distributes a hot tap water too. But sometimes it turns off from 22.00 to 5.00.


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## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> The district heating system distributes a hot tap water too.


Really?

I do not know how the system work elsewhere, but in the Finnish system, the district heating does not distribute water at all, energy only: The water from the power plant to houses and back runs in a closed circuit. In the houses, the water is fed through a heat exchanger. The heat exchanger warms up the water in the radiators (again a closed circuit), and the cold drinking water coming from the water supplier. Thus, the heat water does not touch the tap water:


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## Suburbanist

I have learned that Norway, contrary to all other European countries with persistent seasonal cold weather, relies very heavily on electric-feed heaters to irradiate heat. That is quite unusual elsewhere (except in places like Malta where heavy cold is rare).


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## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> I have learned that Norway, contrary to all other European countries with persistent seasonal cold weather, relies very heavily on electric-feed heaters to irradiate heat.


The reason is simple: Almost unlimited supply of hydroelectric power.


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## Rebasepoiss

In Estonia around 60% of households have district heating but apparently in Denmark it's even higher at 65%.


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## cinxxx

In Romania you usually either:
- get it directly from the state
- have your own Gas Condensing Boiler in your household
- use wood if there is no gas available (mostly only in villages)


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## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> I do not know how the system work elsewhere, but in the Finnish system, the district heating does not distribute water at all, energy only: The water from the power plant to houses and back runs in a closed circuit. In the houses, the water is fed through a heat exchanger. The heat exchanger warms up the water in the radiators (again a closed circuit), and the cold drinking water coming from the water supplier. Thus, the heat water does not touch the tap water:


Same in Poland. By the way, similar heat exchangers are used practically everywhere where tap water is heated by means of central heating (even talking about local central heating, not district heating), so that the central heating water is not mixed with the tap water. The central heating water is used in a closed circuit - either actually closed one, which is under pressure (typical for gas heating), or open in the meaning of that in cases when the water starts to boil, it will not cause an explosion, but just overflow to the sewer (typical for solid fuel/coal heating - because it is less controllable).



Suburbanist said:


> I have learned that Norway, contrary to all other European countries with persistent seasonal cold weather, relies very heavily on electric-feed heaters to irradiate heat. That is quite unusual elsewhere (except in places like Malta where heavy cold is rare).


Is electricity so cheap compared to energy from other fuels in Norway that people no bother with any other heating systems?

I understand that people in Norway are basically rich compared to other Europeans, so they would spend a smaller proportion of their incomes on their electricity bills assuming the prices are similar to other European countries, but it doesn't mean they wouldn't want to save money anyway...


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## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> Really?
> 
> I do not know how the system work elsewhere, but in the Finnish system, the district heating does not distribute water at all, energy only: The water from the power plant to houses and back runs in a closed circuit. In the houses, the water is fed through a heat exchanger. The heat exchanger warms up the water in the radiators (again a closed circuit), and the cold drinking water coming from the water supplier. Thus, the heat water does not touch the tap water:


The situation here is slightly different. You can either heat by district heating, local heating or solid fuel.

The district heating produce a hot water in a separate building called heating plant. The hot water is then distributed to blocks of flats and then to separate flats in form of hot tap water and hot heating water. I don't know if there are separate pipes but I guess yes because heating water can get easily contaminated. This is very typical for commie blocks of flats.

The local heating is similar, but the hot water is made in your flat. You have a gas boiler with a heat exchanger that is able to turn cold water into hot one. I have one that is fully automated. There is a thermostat in the coldest room of my flat (a corridor) with a control panel with two temperature pre-sets. It warms up cold tap water (I do not have a reservoir, so it takes a short time to start) but also has an isolated cycle of heating water. By using a special tap, you can easily increase the pressure of heating water as the cycle is connected with cold tap water.

In contrary to district heating it has several pros and cons. The good thing is you have heat whenever you need it (and you save gas when you don't need it), the bad thing the maintenance costs something. It is also not very aesthetic, however we concealed it inside our kitchen counter.

The older version are so called gas heaters (not my flat) that are quite dangerous (the gas is burned directly in each room - you have to have a gas network all around your flat) and also old water heaters (the same, but especially dangerous in humid bathrooms, where they produces CO if the burning is not perfect).

And then you can use also electricity, coal or wood.


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## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> The district heating produce a hot water in a separate building called heating plant. The hot water is then distributed to blocks of flats and then to separate flats in form of hot tap water and hot heating water.


Sounds a risky business. It might be difficult to keep the temperature at 51 degrees or higher. Delivering water colder than that equals to saying welcome to the Legionella bacteria.



> The local heating is similar, but the hot water is made in your flat. You have a gas boiler with a heat exchanger that is able to turn cold water into hot one. I have one that is fully automated.


Here, detached and semi-detached houses outside the coverage of the district energy are often equipped with a hot water heater. It is kind of a heat battery. There are several variants by purpose and by energy source. Typically there are models of 150-300 litres for making hot water, and 1000-2000 litres for heating the house, too. Usually, they are heated at night when the electricity is cheaper. Many models are for multi-sources: In addition to electricity, they may be connected to a heat pump, and a wood stove, for instance. Such devices are uncommon in blocks of flats.

At my countryside secondary home, the water is taken from the lake during the summer season (May-October), except the drinking water. The warm water is done in a boiler of 30 liters, taking 2 kW of electricity. That amount is usually enough, especially after implementing certain water-saving arrangements in the bathroom. (The drinking water is carried from the local supermarket in bottles of 5 liters, enough for a weekend. Cheaper than setting up a filter system.)


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## Kpc21

I don't think the hot water actually comes directly from the heating plants in Slovakia, I suppose it is done with the heat exchangers, as MattiG has shown. Although anyway, the hot water from the district heating must be hot enough to heat up the tap water to such a temperature that it will kill Legionella.

From what I know, on larger distances, steam is distributed instead of water. Sometimes you can see such pipes in the city: https://goo.gl/maps/n7fuUqeM3wt and from what I guess, they actually carry not water but steam (when there is a hole and a small leakage, you can see steam coming from it).

Or here, you can see the pipes just coming from the plant (it produces heat and electricity):










This steam used to be used by production companies for production processes to, but it is not delivered to them any more, and if they need steam for production, they had to install local boilers.


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## Surel

Kpc21 said:


> I don't think the hot water actually comes directly from the heating plants in Slovakia, I suppose it is done with the heat exchangers, as MattiG has shown. Although anyway, the hot water from the district heating must be hot enough to heat up the tap water to such a temperature that it will kill Legionella.


There are heat exchanges indeed. However, the scale can differ. There might be bigger heating exchanges that provide heat and warm water to several housing blocks, or there can be heat exchangers for a single block, in fact you could even install a private heating exchanger in a suitable locality.

In fact there might be several exchanges in the system. The system first uses high pressure steam, then low pressure steam and finally hot tap and heating water. Very nice clickable scheme with photos (in the box) here: http://www.tscr.cz/schema/?ids=10&h=550&idp=5

It might be difficult to find an fair way how to bill individual flats for the heat in housing blocks, although some of the problems arise also with individual heating system (e.g. gas).

Some of the combine electricity + heat production systems can work with 90 - 97 % efficiency of energy conversion (40 % electricity, 50 % heat).

There are more than 10 000 kms of heat pipelines in the Czech republic. The heating is obviously also used on the industrial scale and for industrial purposes (Industrial consumption is twice the total consumption of the households). Another nice scheme here: http://www.teplarna-cb.cz/files/teplarna-cb/uploads/files/schema.gif

One of the biggest systems is the heating system provided by the Mělník power plant to Prague. Two 1.2 m diameter pipes connect the power plant with some 250 000 households some 35 km down in Prague. This heatpipe uses water as a medium at 90 - 140 degrees C. The maximum heat output can reach some 650 MW. This is a map of Prague's distance heating system: http://docplayer.cz/docs-images/41/3669294/images/8-0.jpg


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## Kpc21

Surel said:


> It might be difficult to find an fair way how to bill individual flats for the heat in housing blocks, although some of the problems arise also with individual heating system (e.g. gas).


What is normally used in housing blocks for billing the heat, are "heat dividers" installed on the radiators:










They work in such a way, that they have a liquid, an amount of which evaporates in an amount which depends on the amount of heat delivered by the radiator.

But there are controversies about them. For example, when someone lives in the middle of the block, the apartment is heated by the neighboring apartments, and his apartment will often be warm even if the radiator is turned off (the valve is closed) all the time, or almost all the time. But his neighbors pay for this heat.


----------



## Kanadzie

Suburbanist said:


> I have learned that Norway, contrary to all other European countries with persistent seasonal cold weather, relies very heavily on electric-feed heaters to irradiate heat. That is quite unusual elsewhere (except in places like Malta where heavy cold is rare).


Quebec, Canada is same due to inexpensive hydroelectricity. Wood though is commonly used in Canada for heating, especially as an auxiliary use (either fireplace or stove, but to supplement other fuel)

Neighboring and typically warmer Ontario, Canada has now electric prices over 4x as much as Quebec (in past, was approximately equal). We all have natural-gas fired forced-air furnaces generally. In the past, "heating oil" (diesel fuel dyed red) was very common, but since oil price shock since 2003, it is rare.

Coal is plentiful and inexpensive in North America but people haven't used that in private homes since before Second World War. It was interesting to me to learn people used this still in Europe :nuts: The ubiquity of hydronic heating in Europe is curious too. Residential construction in North America is almost entirely forced-air for decades now (furnace direct to air, no boiler or water). Large buildings especially apartment blocks have hydronic systems typically though, where heat is billed as a general fee (not per use) or included in rent.

Insulation and technology is very interesting. I lately changed my detached house of 1968 with "mid" efficiency natural gas forced-air heating with natural ventilation (flue) (circa 1995), albeit upgraded with efficient windows, to a house built in 2012 (more living area) with the high efficiency natural gas forced-air furnace (condensing-type). I'm in a marginally warmer climate paying similar gas prices (somewhat more expensive per m^3 gazu), but my $250 - $275 winter monthly gas bills are now like $75 :cheers:


----------



## MattiG

Surel said:


> It might be difficult to find an fair way how to bill individual flats for the heat in housing blocks, although some of the problems arise also with individual heating system (e.g. gas).


In the Finnish system, one or more houses typically are organized into a housing company. The company buys the district heating and water. Typically, there are two drivers to allocate the cost to the individual flats: The water fee per number of residents, and the running fee per square meters (or number of shares). It is quite a simple way, and widely accepted.

(The number of shares as the driver is commonly used in blocks of flats having lifts. A 100 sqm flat at the first floor might have 200 shares while a similar flat at the 10th floor might have 220 ones. Thus, those ones gaining more benefit from the lift pay a little more to cover the maintenance cost of the lift.)


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland, there are two systems of managing multi-family houses, like blocks or tenement houses, if the apartments are owned by individuals rather than rented from the owner. It may be a housing cooperative (spółdzielnia mieszkaniowa) or a housing community (wspólnota mieszkaniowa).

Housing communities are simpler. They work in such a way that the owner of an apartment has a share in the community corresponding to the metrage of the apartment. All the decisions are taken on meetings of members (so, all the apartment owners) by voting and the power of the votes depends on the share.

A housing cooperative works more like a company or a corporation. It has a board of directors, it is usually big, and the owners of apartments have little influence on all the decisions. A few years ago, we had a situation in Łódź with a big housing cooperative going bankrupt.

A community is by definition a single building (or, actually, a single plot of ground), a cooperative usually manages a group of many buildings.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland, there are two systems of managing multi-family houses, like blocks or tenement houses, if the apartments are owned by individuals rather than rented from the owner. It may be a housing cooperative (spółdzielnia mieszkaniowa) or a housing community (wspólnota mieszkaniowa).
> 
> Housing communities are simpler. They work in such a way that the owner of an apartment has a share in the community corresponding to the metrage of the apartment. All the decisions are taken on meetings of members (so, all the apartment owners) by voting and the power of the votes depends on the share.
> 
> A housing cooperative works more like a company or a corporation. It has a board of directors, it is usually big, and the owners of apartments have little influence on all the decisions. A few years ago, we had a situation in Łódź with a big housing cooperative going bankrupt.
> 
> A community is by definition a single building (or, actually, a single plot of ground), a cooperative usually manages a group of many buildings.


It is exactly the same. We can have either hosing community (it is more like a company, you even get the ID number). It has an executive board. But you have to have reliable neighbours as everything is on you and your neighbours.

The services of the facility management company are more expensive, but the company does a lot of stuff instead of you. The quality depends on communication. For such reason a function of so called house delegate is adopted. That's our case. We pay 6 €/flat/month which is okay.


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## Capt.Vimes

How much do you pay for maintenance of the building, electricity in the staircase and so on?


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## ChrisZwolle

I pay € 28 per month for all services (sewage unclogging, electricity, cleaning of shared spaces, glass insurance, housekeeping and repairs).


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## winnipeg

I pay 10€/month for everything of shared spaces (including the lift) + my water consumption. The price is acceptable.


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## volodaaaa

152 / month

But don't get scared, there is a mortgage for building renovation. Out of it, 27 € are the maintenance cost you have mentioned. There are 6 flats and since some costs are fix, it is cheaper for bigger buildings with more owners


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## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> 152 / month
> 
> But don't get scared, there is a mortgage for building renovation. Out of it, 27 € are the maintenance cost you have mentioned. There are 6 flats and since some costs are fix, it is cheaper for bigger buildings with more owners


The budget proporal for our housing company shows the total cost of about 150,000 eur. 25 flats, average about 100 sqm, makes about 500 eur per flat per month in avegare. It includes everything but home electricity and internet. The biggest chunk is the basics: heat, water in, water out, waste and company electricity (outside lights, car heating etc), almost 45%.


----------



## Verso

What is the oldest continuously inhabited city in your country? In Slovenia it's Ptuj, first written mention in year 69 (although the place was inhabited already around 1,800 BC). It had over 100,000 inhabitants in Roman times (Poetovio), now it has just 18,000.


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## Suburbanist

Here in the Netherlands I think it should be Maastricht, settled at Roman times and, to the extent of my knowledge, never abandoned.


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## Kpc21

In Poland it's said to be Kalisz - it appeared in some ancient Roman documents.

It seems it appeared in a Ptolemy's work in 158 C.E.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calisia

I am not sure, but from what I know, the next times when Polish cities were mentioned in any documents were in the Middle Ages, after 966 C.E. (Poland's baptism - the moment when we converted to Christianity as a country, or actually, our duke did).


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## winnipeg

In France, it seems that it is Béziers, which has been built by some athenians 600 years BC. Marseille has been built only few years after that, and Paris and Lyon have been built by romans during the century BC, and they were based on some older Gallic villages (for Paris traces have been found of inhabitants in the area from around 4.000 BC, and traces of hunters/pickers from around 8.000 BC).


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## Verso

^^ Wikipedia says that Marseille is slightly older than Béziers.


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## x-type

officialy it is Stari Grad on island Hvar (in antique times known as Pharos), dates from 384 b.C.
Pula is also ancient, old Castello dates from around 1000 year b.C. but the oldest written prove (that only can be official and credible) says 177 b.C.
third story is about Vinkovci (Cibalae), cca 8000 years old, but no written proves of course, only archaeological reliquiae.


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## winnipeg

Verso said:


> ^^ Wikipedia says that Marseille is slightly older than Béziers.


The english version is incomplete. In the french versions they are telling it, not "slightly older" but built during the same century, with an actual advantage to Béziers according to the architectural discoveries made since 1980... But like all history it is subject to interpretation depending of the historians/archeologists.... :yes:


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## ChrisZwolle

Why not take a bicycle trip on a motorway in your underwear? :nuts:






The police wants to press charges against this vlogger.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> officialy it is Stari Grad on island Hvar (in antique times known as Pharos), dates from 384 b.C.
> Pula is also ancient, old Castello dates from around 1000 year b.C. but the oldest written prove (that only can be official and credible) says 177 b.C.
> third story is about Vinkovci (Cibalae), cca 8000 years old, but no written proves of course, only archaeological reliquiae.


I've heard of Stari Grad, but what about Zadar? Isn't it very old as well?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It depends on what you're used to and how often you are exposed to such a language. French names are also considerably different in pronounciation than text. Bordeaux or Grenoble being good examples. 

Danish written language looks quite familiar if you know Dutch, German and English, but I can't understand anything when spoken.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> It depends on what you're used to and how often you are exposed to such a language. French names are also considerably different in pronounciation than text. Bordeaux or Grenoble being good examples.
> 
> Danish written language looks quite familiar if you know Dutch, German and English, but I can't understand anything when spoken.


The same goes for Dutch. Looks like German with typos, but the pronunciation is absolutely different.


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> For Romance-languages speaking people who think Dutch city names are right next to Finnish and Basque in the list of strange ones


Except that B, C, F, Q, W, X and Z are not a part of the Finnish alphabet. But the long wovels are very common: Espoo, Vantaa, Sipoo, Uusikaarlepyy, Hyvinkää, Akaa, Vaasa, Porvoo, Loviisa, Kajaani, Kuusamo, Kyyjärvi, Viitasaari, Laukaa, Hämeenkyrö, Kitee, etc. And Ii, of course.


----------



## cinxxx

italystf said:


> There is another Pula in Sardinia.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pula,_Sardinia
> 
> BTW, I wonder if Romanian tourists do buy these souvenirs...


I actually bought a T-shirt from the Pula souvenir shop, but not one with "I heart Pula" obviously. Yet, I remember the shop lady recommending us souvenirs with "I heart Pula" :lol:


----------



## winnipeg

ChrisZwolle said:


> It depends on what you're used to and how often you are exposed to such a language. French names are also considerably different in pronounciation than text. *Bordeaux or Grenoble *being good examples.
> 
> Danish written language looks quite familiar if you know Dutch, German and English, but I can't understand anything when spoken.


How they are different? Those two names are pronunced exactly how they should be...


----------



## g.spinoza

winnipeg said:


> How they are different? Those two names are pronunced exactly how they should be...


:lol::lol::lol:


----------



## MattiG

*Forest Machine Rodeo*

Finnish madness.


----------



## bogdymol

winnipeg said:


> How they are different? Those two names are pronunced exactly how they should be...


An Austrian colleague of mine once said: German is the easiest language in the world, because you pronounce the words exactly how they are written.

:lol:


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> An Austrian colleague of mine once said: German is the easiest language in the world, because you pronounce the words exactly how they are written.
> :lol:


Well... That is not quite true. The mapping of the written language to the pronunciation is unambiguous. The applies to French, too, but not to English. There is no ghoti effect in German.

The rules of French are quite simple. Anyone knowing the basics of the language, knows how to pronounce Bordeaux, Montreux, or Colombey les Deux Eglises.


----------



## winnipeg

bogdymol said:


> An Austrian colleague of mine once said: German is the easiest language in the world, because you pronounce the words exactly how they are written.
> 
> :lol:


Okay 

But I don't understand, that's just french pronounciation, for the two examples you told, you pronounce them exactly how the french pronounciation rules are, so you are telling those two cities names like you would say any french word with the same building...

I mean it's not tricky at a level that even french people sometimes don't know how to pronounce it.

I have a great example for that, a french city close from where I was born and lived : Dole, I don't know how to explain it, but the city name is pronounced with a "flat" "o" but most of the time, those who don't know the city pronounce it with a "ô" giving a big intonation to the ô which change completly the pronouciation. It's funny when it happens to some parisian TV presenters who talk about the city but don't actualy know how to pronounce it correctly... :lol:

A better example is maybe "Laon", it is actualy pronounced like the word "lent", but lots of frenchs are mistakenly pronouncing it like "la-on". 
I'm remembering it very well because one time I was in a supermarket in this city while traveling, when I called someone and told on the phone that I was at "la-on" and I got immediatly corrected by a stranger that was near me...


----------



## g.spinoza

MattiG said:


> Well... That is not quite true. The mapping of the written language to the pronunciation is unambiguous. The applies to French, too, but not to English. There is no ghoti effect in German.
> 
> The rules of French are quite simple. Anyone knowing the basics of the language, knows how to pronounce Bordeaux, Montreux, or Colombey les Deux Eglises.


Italian and German and, to a lesser extent, Spanish are unambiguous in writing. Should an Italian encounter a word he never saw written, he would know how to pronounce it, and vice versa (he can write down an unkown word spoken out loud). That's simply not true in English or French. Paris and pastis should rhyme, but they don't.


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> Italian and German and, to a lesser extent, Spanish are unambiguous in writing. Should an Italian encounter a word he never saw written, he would know how to pronounce it, and vice versa (he can write down an unkown word spoken out loud).


The same applies to Finnish. In fact, Finnish is unambigous in both directions at the character level, with some exceptions: One phoneme maps to one written letter. The words "tuli", "tulin", "tuuli", "tulli" all have a different meaning. The pronunciation can be derived from the written text and vice versa.


----------



## MattiG

winnipeg said:


> But I don't understand, that's just french pronounciation, for the two examples you told, you pronounce them exactly how the french pronounciation rules are, so you are telling those two cities names like you would say any french word with the same building...


Once upon a time, the wine culture in Finland was ...hmm... narrow. One popular product was a bulk white wine named simply Bordeaux Blanc. It got a widely known nickname Porvoon Lankku because of the similarity of the pronunciation of two Finnish words: Porvoo is a town east of Helsinki and "lankku" is a wooden plank.


----------



## winnipeg

MattiG said:


> Once upon a time, the wine culture in Finland was ...hmm... narrow. One popular product was a bulk white wine named simply Bordeaux Blanc. It got a widely known nickname Porvoon Lankku because of the similarity of the pronunciation of two Finnish words: Porvoo is a town east of Helsinki and "lankku" is a wooden plank.


Funny!!


----------



## Suburbanist

They say you are reasonably fluent in English if you know the pronunciation, meaning and uses of _though, trough, thorough, tough, through, throughout and throughput_... Or so said one of my English teachers.


----------



## Suburbanist

In semi-related news, it is almost official now that I will move to Bergen, Norway in August. I'm excited about the move somehow, yet I'd really like to have been able to find the right work opportunity in Netherlands, but there weren't just attractive positions/openings at the moment at the right places, and a 220% bigger after-tax salary sealed the deal. I think I will like Norway, yet I really like the way life goes around in the Netherlands and would still like to move back after my 5-year contract in Bergen. I got used having so many things that interest me to do in a 250km radius. Let's see how it goes. I can't really complain when some of my cousins or friends are having much harder times on the job ladder.

When you move past age 30, things are not so simple any longer :S


----------



## Suburbanist

Spanish and Italian are indeed unambiguous, and Spanish even have the inverted exclamation and question marks, helping you to definitively know how to read aloud. I think all Romance languages should have that feature, actually. 

The thing about Spanish are the very different accents. Italian* has more standardized pronunciation, Ticino purists aside. 

*I'm not referring to regional ill-defined regional dialects. I actually think too much language variety with somehow restricted academic standardization in the Italian peninsula in early 18th Century gave standardized Italian the push it needed to be a well organized grammatical canon, comparing to the more contentious process of standardizing castillian over other Iberian languages, or the French take-over on Occitan.


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## ChrisZwolle

winnipeg said:


> How they are different? Those two names are pronunced exactly how they should be...


The point being that you need to know how they are pronounced. For example the pronounciation of Bordeaux is bɔʁdo, which is quite different from how it is spelled (in particular the -eaux). Grenoble is mentioned on the French-English 107.7 FM traffic information and is pronounced very different from what the French call it. 

French is indeed fairly consistent. Most Dutch who know some basic French can pronounce French names fairly accurate (apart from accent of course).


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> I think Polish, Hungarian, and Welsh names are the most difficult in Europe to spell and pronounce.


Hungarian is not difficult to pronounce at all. it has very clear rules or pronounciation and accenting, i'd say the clearest in the Europe. 
problems with Hungarian are:
1. words can be very long (what makes it very similar to German)
2. concept of the language is completely different from most other European languages. no genders, no prepostitions, 20+ cases, weird rules in composing the sentences... to average European learning Hungarian is like learning Japanese, just in Latin alphabet


----------



## SeanT

That is the point. When you understand the grammer, everything becoms obvius and logical


----------



## keokiracer

Except with Dutch, as we have exceptions to every rule.

There's a reason the saying 'de uitzondering bevestigt de regel' (the exception confirms the rule) exists in Dutch language


----------



## winnipeg

ChrisZwolle said:


> The point being that you need to know how they are pronounced. For example the pronounciation of Bordeaux is bɔʁdo, which is quite different from how it is spelled (in particular the -eaux). Grenoble is mentioned on the French-English 107.7 FM traffic information and is pronounced very different from what the French call it.
> 
> French is indeed fairly consistent. Most Dutch who know some basic French can pronounce French names fairly accurate (apart from accent of course).


But it's simply french rules. For Bordeaux it's the same than pronouncing "cadeaux", "châteaux", etc... Nothing surprising...  

Probably, I don't know, my only others references are romanian (a roman language also) and english....


----------



## Jasper90

winnipeg said:


> But it's simply french rules. For Bordeaux it's the same than pronouncing "cadeaux", "châteaux", etc... Nothing surprising...
> 
> 
> 
> Probably, I don't know, my only others references are romanian (a roman language also) and english....


The thing about French is that the rules only work one way.
I can easily know how to pronounce verre, but if I pronounce it I don't know which one of the following I'm pronouncing:

Ver
Vers
Verre
Verres
Vert
Verts

Also, French has many pronunciation exceptions (femme and fils come to my mind) and, in general, there is an abundance of ways to write the same sounds, and lots of silent letters.


----------



## Verso

I agree with winnipeg, French rules are consistent and Bordeaux is pronounced just like any other similar French word. And why are we even talking about Grenoble? But anyway, I have great difficulties understanding spoken French (even if spoken slowly and literarily).

EDIT: what Jasper90 says


----------



## kreden

italystf said:


> Funny thing, a Slovak expat I meet here was surprised when he came here and found out Italians don't like pasta with ketchup.


We visited Prague as part of a student trip years ago and I still remember the reaction when we were served pasta with ketchup at a canteen. I have to admit, it didn't leave the best impression. Then again, the city more than made up for it. 

Still though, why would anyone put ketchup on plain pasta? It's not nearly as tasty as using tomatoes or at least passata.


----------



## volodaaaa

There is no need to refuse something based on one experience. I have had several disgusting spaghetti with ketchup in my school canteen. They used the cheapest ketchup and overcooked the pasta.

But we also serve this food (spaghetti and pasta) at home. Usually we put some minced meat in and it taste very delicious. Sometime we use wholegrain pasta. Looks more like this:









Best with parmesan.


----------



## CNGL

About French pronounciation, I remember some years ago during a Tour stage the hosts had fun with the pronounciation of 'L'Yonne', as it is close to that of Lyon (Which is South of Yonne department).


keokiracer said:


> Except with Dutch, as we have exceptions to every rule.
> 
> There's a reason the saying 'de uitzondering bevestigt de regel' (the exception confirms the rule) exists in Dutch language


We also have that saying in Spanish (_La excepción que confirma la regla_).


----------



## x-type

there is one thing that I will never understand in French.

"Dis oui!" (Say yes!) is pronounced "di wi".
"Vous etes." (You are.) is pronounced "vuzet".

why is "s" in "dis" not connected to the beginning vowel in following word, and in "vous" it is connected and pronounced?


----------



## winnipeg

x-type said:


> there is one thing that I will never understand in French.
> 
> "Dis oui!" (Say yes!) is pronounced "di wi".
> "Vous etes." (You are.) is pronounced "vuzet".
> 
> why is "s" in "dis" not connected to the beginning vowel in following word, and in "vous" it is connected and pronounced?


It's called liaisons ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liaison_(French) ) and yes, it's very tricky 

But yeah nothing new here, french is not a very easy language if you want to speak it very well... :yes:


----------



## MattiG

x-type said:


> there is one thing that I will never understand in French.
> 
> "Dis oui!" (Say yes!) is pronounced "di wi".
> "Vous etes." (You are.) is pronounced "vuzet".
> 
> why is "s" in "dis" not connected to the beginning vowel in following word, and in "vous" it is connected and pronounced?


Correct me if I am wrong. The liaison is forbidden before the words starting with a quiet "h". The word "oui" is a member to this category, even if the initial letter has disappeared during the centuries.

BTW, "Vous êtes."


----------



## Verso

"Dix-huit" (18) is pronounced [dizwit], so no.


----------



## Kpc21

italystf said:


> I think Polish, Hungarian, and Welsh names are the most difficult in Europe to spell and pronounce.


If you don't know even the basics of French, you will have problems with pronouncing the French names properly.

Same for English, actually. But English is very popular and most people know at least basics of it, French - not so much.

Like: Mulhouse in the past, I thought it should be pronounced as in English. And I was wondering why the Polish name of this city is Miluza. Now I know that the Polish name shows, more or less, how to pronounce it correctly in French (in the English transcription, it's something like meelouse - or let someone French correct me if I am wrong).

Hungarian has crazy-sounding names (like the border railway station Bihareresztes, or Bihakerestesz, I always mix sz an s up, because in Polish sz means the sh sound and s the s sound, and in Hungarian it's exactly opposite: sz is the s sound and s is the sh sound) - but they are not so difficult in guessing how to pronounce them correctly. Generally, most European languages using the Latin alphabet have very similar pronunciations of all the letters, with the notable exceptions of English and French. There are minor differences, like LL pronounced as Y in Spanish, or Y being just Y (such a vowel - similar to the English short I) or English Y spelled as J (German and Polish do it, for example).

But anyway, French is actually much more logical with that than English. In French, as in each "normal" language, a letter or a sequence of letters is equivalent to a single sound (with more or less exceptions). Sometimes to a lack of a sound, but there are simple rules for that, which work in most cases. In English - after years of learning English, I have no problem with properly guessing how to pronounce a word I haven't seen before. But when somebody is new to English, it becomes difficult (luckily, the ubiquity of English e.g. in songs simplifies it much).

Maybe I am not a good person to judge, but I wouldn't say Polish is difficult to pronounce.



CNGL said:


> to the point I think the Polish city named Lodz should be called "Woodge" in English to match its local pronounciation.


You chose the one which is probably most difficult to pronounce for foreigners from all the Polish towns and cities...

Seeing Warszawa, Kraków or Poznań, I think, you will have not much problem with pronouncing them. Even if you replace ó with o and ń with n, simply, not much changes in the word anyway.

The problem with Łódź is that this name contains ONLY sounds represented as Polish-specific letters. So if you write Lodz instead of Łódź, the pronunciation changes totally.

Ł - pronounced like English W (I guess, it evolved from U in English and from L in Polish, and that's why the letters are totally different, although the sound is the same)
Ó - it's basically another spelling of the U sound known from most European languages (like English OO, OU, short U, not the one sounding like "you"); we have 2 letters for that because apart from the normal U, we have one which evolved from O, it behaves differently in declensions so we are still keeping it to preserve the logic in the language
DŹ - let's start with a question: is ts in English or tz in German a single sound or two separate sounds?
In Polish, we consider it a single sound and we normally write using the letter c. But then, as you have p and b, k and g, t and d, if you have tz, you can create dz. For unknown reasons, tz is written in Polish not as tz, but using a single letter c (which makes sense when we consider it to be a single sound), but for dz we have two letters representing a single sound. Probably, there was just not enough letters in the Latin alphabet.
So the issue with the D is solved. Anyway, the foreigners usually have no problem catching how this part works.
Then Ź. English does not really distinguish between so called "soft" and "hard" consonants, so it is tricky to explain. And I don't know any example of a language to give you an example with...
Just google the pronunciations of: sz and ś, ż and ź, c and ć, dz and dź, n and ń, you will hear the difference. In English, you usually hear the "hard" equivalent (sz - sh, ż - e.g. s in pleasure, c - well, I think this sound doesn't exist in English, dż - j in jungle), although it's not so "hard" as in Polish. Sometimes I hear it pronounce once softer, once harder in the same word, pronounced e.g. by two different persons... Polish men speaking English will tend to pronounce them "harder" than they should because while learning English, we normally associate them with the Polish hard consonants (sz, ż, dż). German, meanwhile, pronounces all of them (sz - sch, ż - perhaps not existing in German, c - tz, dż - dsch in Dschungel) in the "hard" way. Very "hard" way. Maybe it's one of the reason why it sounds to many as it sounds...

All of which is more or less the same problem as with Mulhouse in France. Just a big bigger problem because you chose an extreme word. Which turns out to be one of the biggest Polish cities and my city, by the way...

Although in case of Łódź, locals will understand it anyway. When you give a website address, it has the Polish-specific characters replaced with the Latin ones, so you say "lodz" instead of "Łódź". So since the advent of the Internet, people got used to this pronunciation too 



ChrisZwolle said:


> Danish written language looks quite familiar if you know Dutch, German and English, but I can't understand anything when spoken.


Same for me 

I know English in German.

Written Dutch looks like German with very weird spelling. Sometimes I can even understand quite much, maybe even more than from other Slavic languages being Polish. Spoken Dutch - sounds kind of English.

The Scandinavian languages - I still understand something, but much less in general. Pronounced - well, they are specific, not similar to anything. You hear really many consonants and "umlauts".

Finnish - extremely easy pronunciation, you pronounce exactly as you see. Only the language is very weird and you understand totally nothing (because it's not even Indo-European). By the way, same with Hungarian (although... they have a few loan words from Polish or other Slavic languages, like the names of the days of the week, or their word for a street - utca - which is almost like ulica, and ulica is street in probably all the Slavic languages).



bogdymol said:


> An Austrian colleague of mine once said: German is the easiest language in the world, because you pronounce the words exactly how they are written.


Because it is so 

On one of our first German lessons (6th grade of primary school), the teacher gave us a list of German letters and letter combinations and how they are all pronounced. And it's the whole German pronunciation. Almost the whole - sometimes the pronunciation depends on the position of the sound in the word. E.g. when you pronounce s as s and when as sh. Plus a tendency to maintain the original pronunciation of loan words (look at the German pronunciation of the word "restaurant" - in English you pronounce it exactly as you see it, Germans pronounce it the French way, "restorą" in the Polish transcription - the English one would not work, there is no way to spell a nasal vowel in English). 

By the way. The Strasburg city. In German you pronounce it Shtrasboorg. In French - strasbour (underlined the stressed syllables). In which language it's easier to pronounce?


Ok, most of the thinks I wrote about here, while browsing through the thread, were already told... But not all of them.



g.spinoza said:


> Italian and German and, to a lesser extent, Spanish are unambiguous in writing. Should an Italian encounter a word he never saw written, he would know how to pronounce it, and vice versa (he can write down an unkown word spoken out loud).


And Polish the same  And you write Polish has difficult pronunciation.

There is an ambiguity in the opposite direction. You hear a word and sometimes there is more than one way to write it. Sometimes you have to ask if you write it with ó or u (I already wrote about this issue), or with h or ch. And the children in primary schools sometimes do have hard time learning the proper spelling of the words (although there are rules for that, the spelling usually depends on how the word changes in declension, there are also exceptions, but there is not so many; and there is no rule for h/ch, so you must just remember which words have h, since ch is more used).

But when you see a word, in 99% cases you know how to read it. The other 1% are some loan words and cases like when rz does not mean a ż sound (I talk about earlier - it's like s in measure, it can be expressed using ż or rz and the difference is usually seen when you change the word to another part of speech, ż will often change to g and rz to r), but just r and z. 



MattiG said:


> The same applies to Finnish. In fact, Finnish is unambigous in both directions at the character level, with some exceptions: One phoneme maps to one written letter. The words "tuli", "tulin", "tuuli", "tulli" all have a different meaning. The pronunciation can be derived from the written text and vice versa.


What does the number of repeated letters mean in Finnish? Are you supposed to pronounce the U in tuuli longer than in tuli?

Btw, "tuli" means "he hugs" in Polish  



keokiracer said:


> There's a reason the saying 'de uitzondering bevestigt de regel' (the exception confirms the rule) exists in Dutch language


I think it's international. We have it in Polish too, and I know it exists in Swedish.



Verso said:


> "Dix-huit" (18) is pronounced [dizwit], so no.


Maybe it just confirms the rule


----------



## winnipeg

Hungarian is crazy, I already traveled a lot/visited Hungary but each time that I try to read hungarian, it's NOPE...  

In a way, it's sad for the country (without talking about immigration issues), it means that their language has a way lower chance to be learned by people from other countries compared to other languages and especialy latin ones... In my own situation, if the language would'nt have been such an issue, maybe I would have been studying in Hungary instead of Romania, it maybe would have been better for me (I love Hungary, I love how respectfull hungarians are behaving and I love their love for bikes  )... but anyway...


----------



## Attus

Hungarian pronounciation is actually very easy. You think it's difficult because it differs heavily from what you're accustomed to and you've never learned how to pronounce it correctly. 
But Hungarian has simple rules and very few exceptions. Exceptions are basically words with foreign origin, but even many of them is transscripted to Hungarian. Example: "garázs". It means garage (i.e. not a car repair shop but a building where you store your car) and must be pronounced more or less like garage in French (garaazh). 

The main issue for foreigners in Hungarian are double letters which sign a single syllable. Examples:
"cs": like "ch" in English, "č" in many slav languages. 
"ny": like "ñ" in Spanish, "nj" in German. 
etc.
That "y" is the most misleading one: it makes the previous consonant softer and must not be pronounced like an "i" in "it" - actually it must not be pronounced at all.

Several months ago I saw an ad of a Hungarian language school* where a foreigner tried to pronounce the name "Csíksomlyó". (This place is now in Romania, the Romanian name is Șumuleu Ciuc. Funny, the Romanian name show almost clearly the proper Hungarian pronounciation). 
They said like "Kseeksomleeo" which is very wrong. The proper pronounciation is like "Cheekshomyo" ("Čikšomjo" if you're Serb/Croat/Czech/Slovak, "Czikszoml'o" if you're Polish, "Tschiekschomjoh", if you're German ).

* Actually that school is in Romania in a dominantly ethnically Hungarian region.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> Like: Mulhouse in the past, I thought it should be pronounced as in English. And I was wondering why the Polish name of this city is Miluza. Now I know that the Polish name shows, more or less, how to pronounce it correctly in French (in the English transcription, it's something like meelouse - or let someone French correct me if I am wrong).


Mulhouse and other cities in the Alsace-Lorraine area are not the best possible examples. Mulhouse/Mülhausen has been a French, a Swiss and a German town in the history. There are zillions of German-originated names around, and applying the French pronunciation rules to them might be somewhat challenging.



> What does the number of repeated letters mean in Finnish? Are you supposed to pronounce the U in tuuli longer than in tuli?


Yes, it is their purpose. The length of the letter is significant: "Kisa" and "kissa" are different words, as well as "takka" and "taakka". The diacritics are significant, too: the letter "a" and "o" are not the same as "ä" and "ö". "Pelata" and "pelätä" are two verbs having a different meaning.


----------



## winnipeg

Attus said:


> Hungarian pronounciation is actually very easy. You think it's difficult because it differs heavily from what you're accustomed to and you've never learned how to pronounce it correctly.
> But Hungarian has simple rules and very few exceptions. Exceptions are basically words with foreign origin, but even many of them is transscripted to Hungarian. Example: "garázs". It means garage (i.e. not a car repair shop but a buildung where you store your car) and must be pronounced more or less like garage in French (garaazh).
> 
> The main issue for foreigners in Hungarian are double letters which sign a single syllable. Examples:
> "cs": like "ch" in English, "č" in many slav languages.
> "ny": like "ñ" in Spanish, "nj" in German.
> etc.
> Thay "y" is the most misleading one: it makes the previous consonant softer and must not be pronounced like an "i" in "it" - actually it must not be pronounced at all.
> 
> Several months ago I saw an ad of a Hungarian language school* where a foreigner tried to pronounce the name "Csíksomlyó". (This place is now in Romania, the Romanian name is Șumuleu Ciuc. Funny, the Romanian name show almost clearly the proper Hungarian pronounciation).
> They said like "Kseeksomleeo" which is very wrong. The proper pronounciation is like "Cheekshomyo" ("Čikšomjo" if you're Serb/Croat/Czech/Slovak, "Cziksoml'o" if you're Polish, "Tschiekschomjoh", if you're German ).
> 
> * Actually that school is in Romania in a dominantly ethnically Hungarian region.


Okay, thanks for the explanation, it's very interesting! :yes:

But except from pronunciation, I read that hungarian is one of the hardest language because it has almost no links with other languages (which join what you said)...


----------



## Nimróad

winnipeg said:


> Okay, thanks for the explanation, it's very interesting! :yes:
> 
> But except from pronunciation, I read that hungarian is one of the hardest language because it has almost no links with other languages (which join what you said)...


Right, but if you know the hungarian letters, you can read easy. ( True, that's not so much understanding to you, but your pronounce would be perfect  )

Vowels have short and long version. 
'Sz' is english S, 'S' is english Sh.
'Ty' is croatian ć or slovak t'.
'Gy' is D in the During word or slavic Đ, d'
'Ly' is same as the hungarian J or english Y


----------



## Verso

^^ "Gy" is even softer than "Đ". "Magyar" is not pronounced the same as "Mađar".


----------



## winnipeg

Just saw this on Reddit :yes:

(*Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe*)










Hungarian is definitly very far from others...  


Another one more detailed and complex : https://alternativetransport.files....mong-the-languages-of-europe-2-1-mid-size.png


----------



## g.spinoza

Ukrainian and Russian are that different?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

From what I understand Ukrainian is closer to Polish than Russian. I've read some Ukrainian on Wikipedia and I noticed similarities with Polish, even though my knowledge of both languages is limited.


----------



## Verso

Slovenian and Albanian are closer to each other than Russian and Polish?


----------



## g.spinoza

I also seriously doubt Slovak is spoken by less than 300,000 people...


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> I also seriously doubt Slovak is spoken by less than 300,000 people...


Slovak (SVK) appears to be in the 300,000-3,000,000 range.
There is a SR near Czech spoken by less than 300,000, but I don't know which language is, maybe a Czech dialect?

EDIT: According to Wikipedia, Slovak is spoken by 5,500,000 people, so it's wrong anyway.


----------



## italystf

Experience told me that too many times, graphs, thematic maps from non-scientific, non-professional websites or social media, are highly approximated and full of mistakes.
Same for 90% articles starting with: '10 reasons why...', '10 best...', '10 worst...', etc... they're usually full of highly stereotypized information, copy-pasted from website to website without any sort of fact-checking.


----------



## winnipeg

italystf said:


> Slovak (SVK) appears to be in the 300,000-3,000,000 range.
> There is a SR near Czech spoken by less than 300,000, but I don't know which language is, maybe a Czech dialect?
> 
> EDIT: According to Wikipedia, Slovak is spoken by 5,500,000 people, so it's wrong anyway.


Yes, so the second map I linked is probably more accurate on this exact point (but it's too big to be posted here directly) : https://alternativetransport.files....mong-the-languages-of-europe-2-1-mid-size.png


----------



## Attus

italystf said:


> There is a SR near Czech spoken by less than 300,000, but I don't know which language is, maybe a Czech dialect?


It must be Sorbian. Sorbs are a slav minority in Eastern Germany. Stanislaw Tillich, the current prime minister of Saxony is a sorb.


----------



## Suburbanist

When I lived in other countries/places, I often made the mistake of not visiting "nearby" attractions, because they were always there to be seen another time. I am not repeating this mistake with interesting things to see in the Netherlands, especially in what concerns landscapes, infrastructure, history and art.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I have never been to Keukenhof. Or Kinderdijk. Or Anne Frank House. Or palaces and castles. Or Kröller-Müller Museum. Or basically any other famous museum  (except the Railroad Museum).


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> I have never been to Keukenhof. Or Kinderdijk. Or Anne Frank House. Or palaces and castles. Or Kröller-Müller Museum. Or basically any other famous museum  (except the Railroad Museum).


I get why Kinderdijk might not be that popular with Dutch natives, since the landscape and the windmills are not that unique for those used to the country. 

The Kröller-Muller is very impressive, though, both the collection and the massive sculpture/open-air art garden. 

I have a Museum card that allows unlimited visits to most museums and monuments in the country for a mere € 60/year. I have probably used it for entrance fees worth well above € 800 over last 12 months.

Curiously, Zwolle has very few of such attractions, there are noteworthy museums in Kempen and Assen though.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm more appealed by spectacular scenery than a museum or Dutch landscapes and architecture. Hence, I spend my vacations in places like Norway, the Alps or the Pyrenees. Though I occassionally do a city trip (last year I went to Schwerin and San Sebastián).


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> The main issue for foreigners in Hungarian are double letters which sign a single syllable. Examples:
> "cs": like "ch" in English, "č" in many slav languages.
> "ny": like "ñ" in Spanish, "nj" in German.


CZ and Ń in Polish 

By the way, does the "zs" means the sound of the "s" in measure, pleasure, leisure (Polish "ż" or "rz")? It was a strange connection I never knew how to pronounce.



> That "y" is the most misleading one: it makes the previous consonant softer and must not be pronounced like an "i" in "it" - actually it must not be pronounced at all.


So it would be equivalent to the Polish dash above the Ń, Ć, DŹ, Ś, Ź, I told about in my last post.

By the way, in Polish, this dash is not written when there is "i" after the consonant. Then, the "i" already indicates that the consonant is soft and there is no need for dash. There is very few exceptions being foreign loan words, when the 'i" does not soften the consonant.



> They said like "Kseeksomleeo" which is very wrong. The proper pronounciation is like "Cheekshomyo" ("Čikšomjo" if you're Serb/Croat/Czech/Slovak, "Czikszoml'o" if you're Polish, "Tschiekschomjoh", if you're German ).


Does the L in the word mean anything? Why do you write L in Polish, when the Polish equivalent of German J (English Y) or, I believe, also the J from the other Slavic languages, is also J? L in Polish is same as L in English, German etc. ... It's pronounced the same way (or almost the same, sometimes it goes towards the Polish Ł or English W) in probably all the languages using Latin alphabet.

In Portuguese, when L is at the end of the word, it's pronounced as Polish Ł or English W. I was on a Portuguese course in Germany (only one semester) and the teacher was explaining that it should be pronounced as U  Because German has no Ł/W sound and U is, in this situation, closest.



MattiG said:


> Yes, it is their purpose. The length of the letter is significant: "Kisa" and "kissa" are different words, as well as "takka" and "taakka". The diacritics are significant, too: the letter "a" and "o" are not the same as "ä" and "ö". "Pelata" and "pelätä" are two verbs having a different meaning.


In Polish we do not distinguish the sounds by their length, but Hungarians... denote the length by diacritics.

By the way, not many languages have diacritics for the nasal vowels. I know that Portuguese has them, apart from Polish (although they look differently in Portuguese - in Polish we have a "tail" added to the letter, in Portuguese there is a wave above it).



Nimróad said:


> 'Gy' is D in the During word or slavic Đ, d'


I have always pronounced "during" with just a normal D... Maybe I did it wrong. Actually, there is "y" sound after the "d" in "during", it must kind of soften it...

Because from what I understand, it's equivalent to the Polish DŹ.

The question here is, is it a softened D or a softened DZ or DŻ (I am talking about the Polish spelling of the sounds, for lack of English or German equivalents - ok, German has DSCH for our DŻ).



Verso said:


> ^^ "Gy" is even softer than "Đ". "Magyar" is not pronounced the same as "Mađar".


Yeah... so it will be equivalent to DŹ. A sometimes used slang word for Hungarians in Polish is "madziar", exactly the same as the Hungarian word for Hungarian.

By the way... you Hungarians call us Poles Lengyels  Not many languages use this name.

The name Polska, Poland, Polish comes from a tribe called in Polish Polanie (Polans?). Which probably comes from "polana" - a forest meadow.

Lengyel - from a tribe called in Polish Lędzianie (a nasal vowel and a soft consonant - no way to express it in English spelling... something like Lengyans if you use the Hungarian spelling and approximate the nasal "ę" by "en"). From what it comes - I am not sure. My guess is from "ląd" - which has a meaning similar to "land". But let's ask auntie Wikipedia... Polish one, why not, let the other Slavs check what they are able to understand  I will translate it below.



> Lędzianie (*lęd-jan-inъ) pochodzi z prasłowiańskiego oraz staropolskiego słowa "lęda" oznaczającego obszar, równinę, pole nieuprawne przeznaczone lub nadające się pod uprawę roli[5][6]. W dzisiejszej polszczyźnie od tego słowa wywodzi się słowo "ląd" oznaczające "ziemię". Nazwa plemienia wywodzi się bezpośrednio z gospodarki żarowo wypaleniskowej polegającej na wycinaniu i wypalaniu lasów w celu przygotowania terenu pod pola uprawne[6]. Zgodnie z tym znaczeniem Lędzianin oznaczał rolnika, "wypalacza lasów"[7].





> Lędzianie (*lęd-jan-inъ) comes from the proto-Slavic and old-Polish word "lęda", meaning an area, a non-farming field good for farming. In modern Polish, the word "ląd" meaning "land" derives from it. The name of the tribe comes directly from a kind of economy based on cutting trees and burning forests in order to prepare the fields for farming. According to this, Lędzianin (singular of Lędzianie in Polish) means a farmer, a "fire burner".





Attus said:


> It must be Sorbian. Sorbs are a slav minority in Eastern Germany. Stanislaw Tillich, the current prime minister of Saxony is a sorb.


This is the language which is closest to Polish in general. Although... almost nobody in Poland knows about its existence  It was a surprise to me when I discovered it.


----------



## SeanT

Greek seems to be very lonely aswell


----------



## g.spinoza

Oh cool, one of those endless discussions about languages... I kinda miss them.


----------



## volodaaaa

SeanT said:


> Greek seems to be very lonely aswell


That's why we say "it is all Greek to me"


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> That's why we say "it is all Greek to me"


We say 'it's Arabic to me'.


----------



## winnipeg

That's funny, in french we say "c'est du chinois" = "it's chinese"  ( https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/être_du_chinois )


----------



## keokiracer

^^ Same in Dutch.


----------



## CNGL

And in Spanish. In Chinese they say it's a celestial language.


----------



## Verso

We say "it's a Spanish village to me", even though it has nothing to do with any village.


----------



## Nimróad

Kpc21 said:


> CZ and Ń in Polish
> 
> By the way, does the "zs" means the sound of the "s" in measure, pleasure, leisure (Polish "ż" or "rz")? It was a strange connection I never knew how to pronounce.
> 
> 
> So it would be equivalent to the Polish dash above the Ń, Ć, DŹ, Ś, Ź, I told about in my last post.
> 
> By the way, in Polish, this dash is not written when there is "i" after the consonant. Then, the "i" already indicates that the consonant is soft and there is no need for dash. There is very few exceptions being foreign loan words, when the 'i" does not soften the consonant.
> 
> 
> Does the L in the word mean anything? Why do you write L in Polish, when the Polish equivalent of German J (English Y) or, I believe, also the J from the other Slavic languages, is also J? L in Polish is same as L in English, German etc. ... It's pronounced the same way (or almost the same, sometimes it goes towards the Polish Ł or English W) in probably all the languages using Latin alphabet.
> 
> In Portuguese, when L is at the end of the word, it's pronounced as Polish Ł or English W. I was on a Portuguese course in Germany (only one semester) and the teacher was explaining that it should be pronounced as U  Because German has no Ł/W sound and U is, in this situation, closest.
> 
> 
> In Polish we do not distinguish the sounds by their length, but Hungarians... denote the length by diacritics.
> 
> By the way, not many languages have diacritics for the nasal vowels. I know that Portuguese has them, apart from Polish (although they look differently in Portuguese - in Polish we have a "tail" added to the letter, in Portuguese there is a wave above it).
> 
> 
> I have always pronounced "during" with just a normal D... Maybe I did it wrong. Actually, there is "y" sound after the "d" in "during", it must kind of soften it...
> 
> Because from what I understand, it's equivalent to the Polish DŹ.
> 
> The question here is, is it a softened D or a softened DZ or DŻ (I am talking about the Polish spelling of the sounds, for lack of English or German equivalents - ok, German has DSCH for our DŻ).
> 
> 
> Yeah... so it will be equivalent to DŹ. A sometimes used slang word for Hungarians in Polish is "madziar", exactly the same as the Hungarian word for Hungarian.
> 
> By the way... you Hungarians call us Poles Lengyels  Not many languages use this name.
> 
> The name Polska, Poland, Polish comes from a tribe called in Polish Polanie (Polans?). Which probably comes from "polana" - a forest meadow.
> 
> Lengyel - from a tribe called in Polish Lędzianie (a nasal vowel and a soft consonant - no way to express it in English spelling... something like Lengyans if you use the Hungarian spelling and approximate the nasal "ę" by "en"). From what it comes - I am not sure. My guess is from "ląd" - which has a meaning similar to "land". But let's ask auntie Wikipedia... Polish one, why not, let the other Slavs check what they are able to understand  I will translate it below.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is the language which is closest to Polish in general. Although... almost nobody in Poland knows about its existence  It was a surprise to me when I discovered it.


Ly = J. We have two of J (english Y) letter. 'Y' is non-existant letter in Hungarian (when put it alone), just like 'X' ; 'W' or 'Q'. Only found in foreign words.

Zs = Zh, ž, Ж.

Hungarian language doesn't have softening mark, but different letters.


----------



## Kpc21

By the way... just watching a video in German on YouTube and heard... the word Arrangement said the French way.

They really like leaving the loan word pronounced the same way as in the original  And really sounding as in the original, so that it absolutely doesn't suit the melody of German (if German has melody, some people may have doubts about it).

Same with Engagement or Restaurant. And many others, e.g. Niveau.

Although there are opposite examples too.

Does the word die Tasse/une tasse (here, the spelling is the same, but they are pronounced totally differently) actually come from French or from German?

In Polish - we sometimes modify the loan words so that they fit our language, sometimes they stay in the original form - but even then, nobody pronounces them really like in the original. Nobody will say here Batman or Superman pronouncing a as the "between a and e" sound as in English. But I believe, Germans will do. Even though they normally never pronounce "a" like that in their language.

Actually, in Batman (for us Poles, of course), the "a" in "man" is pronounced as "a", in Superman - as "e". We say "Supermen" actually.

By the way - a very random thing is in Polish the declension of the loan words. The official rule is that if it's possible to decline the word, we should do it. So even though the Ikea company (or, at least, their division in Poland) says you shouldn't decline their name, actually you should do it according to the rules of the Polish language.

So not "Kupiłem ten stół w Ikea", but "Kupiłem ten stół w Ikei" (I bought this table in Ikea).

So, it applies to car brands too. But... you say:
"Jadę peugeotem" (I drive a Peugeot)
but
"Jadę renault" (I drive a Renault).

By the way, concerning the pronunciation, we pronounce those names kind of like in French (so neglecting the consonant at the end), but definitely not as thoroughly as Germans would do. Just using the French way of pronouncing it, but definitely the Polish sounds. Using the Polish spelling, one would write Peugeot as "peżo" (you should be already familiar with what ż is), Renault as "reno". That's the top of what we can do pronouncing loan words. We never pronounce it really with the sounds from the original language which aren't present in Polish, there is always kind of an adaptation.

And we even use the kind-of French rules for declension. When I say "jadę peugeotem", I don't omit the "t" any more. It's pronounced (using Polish transcription, English is too random to use it for that, sorry) as "jadę peżotem".

Ok, not really the French rules, we don't pronounce this "t" when the next word begins with a vowel - but we pronounce it when we add a declension suffix, which normally begins in Polish with a vowel.

So Peugeot is declined, but Renault not. Maybe because one would not really know how to do it' "jadę renoltem", "jadę renotem"? We say just "jadę reno" and that's all.

Wow, we are back on-topic  Cars, so not far away to roads


----------



## Verso

Nimróad said:


> Ly = J. We have two of J (english Y) letter.


If I'm not mistaken, "lj" is also pronounced [j], at least in "Sátoraljaújhely" (but hopefully not in "Ljubljana" :lol.


----------



## Kpc21

Do you actually pronounce L and J in Ljubljana - so that using English spelling, it would be Lyublyana?

Because some people in Poland write it just as Lublana.

By the way, Budapest.

In English, pronounced with S.

In Hungarian with SH (as S in Hungarian is generally pronounced as SH).

In Polish, we spell it Budapeszt (where SZ means the SH sound, it works the exactly opposite way with respect to Hungarian).

So English speakers pronounce it wrong, and we do it correctly 

Not sure how Germans pronounce it. With S or with SH. Sometimes the S in German is pronounced as SH - but it's usually at the beginning of a word, which is not the case here.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ I wonder about this one... what counts as "real" English pronounciation of the foreign names?

E.g. I think a typical anglophone would say "buda-pest" if they read it
But anyone who actually talks to you about Budapest would say "budapesht" like a Magyar would.
Then again, the people who would talk about Budapest are probably Hungarian or other well-educated Central European types


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> We say "it's a Spanish village to me", even though it has nothing to do with any village.


Literally the same here  Greek related phrase is English :lol: 

And if someone acts crazy and has not got something at the same tame we usually ask them "are you an Italian?" I dunno why.  Usually young mums talk that to their children when are reluctant


----------



## Nimróad

Verso said:


> If I'm not mistaken, "lj" is also pronounced [j], at least in "Sátoraljaújhely" (but hopefully not in "Ljubljana" :lol.


LY is one letter, but LJ not.

What you heard, it's unmarked assimilation:
Sátoraljaújhely - Sátora[*j*]jaújhely


----------



## keber

Verso said:


> Slovenian and Albanian are closer to each other than Russian and Polish?


I doubt that too: Albanian language is completely incomprehensible to all Slavic speakers, but I had no major problem to understand any of the Slavic languages. Basic conversation with Russians in Russia was no problem to me. Above presentation may be generally correct but it has some obvious flaws in my opinion.


----------



## volodaaaa

There are three completely separated languages in Europe: Greek, Albanian and Basque. Albanians in Kosovo and Slovenians were just allies during the Yugoslav crisis.


----------



## CNGL

Basque may be unrelated to any other current language, but it is pretty straightforward to read as, much like German and Italian, is unambiguous in writting. Another thing is understanding it.

And then there's literal Chinese (Not literary Chinese, but literal Chinese, the language itself) and its many characters. Even with its four tones there are many characters with the same reading, that explains why I like to call Shenzhen a town :colgate:. Then there are the two provinces that only differ in tone and would be spelt the same in latin alphabet without the markers (Shanxi), so the Western one started calling itself Shaanxi.


----------



## winnipeg

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ I wonder about this one... what counts as "real" English pronounciation of the foreign names?
> 
> E.g. I think a typical anglophone would say "buda-pest" if they read it
> But anyone who actually talks to you about Budapest would say "budapesht" like a Magyar would.
> Then again, the people who would talk about Budapest are probably Hungarian or other well-educated Central European types


Or like me, you simply say "Buda" and no more problems...


----------



## Kpc21

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ I wonder about this one... what counts as "real" English pronounciation of the foreign names?
> 
> E.g. I think a typical anglophone would say "buda-pest" if they read it
> But anyone who actually talks to you about Budapest would say "budapesht" like a Magyar would.
> Then again, the people who would talk about Budapest are probably Hungarian or other well-educated Central European types


Well... when I am talking to a foreigner, in English, I don't call Warsaw Warszawa, I just say Warsaw.

Although it has already happened to me that a foreigner I talk to knew the city as Warszawa and not Warsaw, so he didn't understand Warsaw and asked me if I am talking about Warszawa  He was from a Slavic-language country.

Even talking about Łódź, personally, I hate calling it Lodz while talking in a foreign language, but foreigners usually know it pronounced as Lodz and not as Łódź... But with Warsaw and Cracow it's different, those cities have English versions of their names, not as in Łódź, which is just misspelled (which I can forgive, typing foreign diacritics is often a pain, especially if you don't know them at all) and mispronounced (which cannot be explained by lack of proper keys on the keyboard).

When I was in Budapest, even Hungarians, while talking in English, were calling it Budapest, with S and not SH in pronunciation.

By the way, why is it in English so:
- pron*u*nciation, but
- to pron*ou*nce?
And in both cases, I hear the "a" from most European languages...



CNGL said:


> And then there's literal Chinese (Not literary Chinese, but literal Chinese, the language itself) and its many characters. Even with its four tones there are many characters with the same reading, that explains why I like to call Shenzhen a town :colgate:. Then there are the two provinces that only differ in tone and would be spelt the same in latin alphabet without the markers (Shanxi), so the Western one started calling itself Shaanxi.


Americans have two Washingtons... One being a state and one being a "district", so also something like a state (only missing its representation in the Congress).

In Europe it's also nothing unusual to have two towns/cities with same name.

Look at Germany and Frankfurt. They have Frankfurt am Main and Frankfurt an der Oder (in Polish we say Frankfurt nad Menem, Frankfurt nad Odrą - but from what I see, English speakers don't bother translating those river disambiguations and leave them in German). One being a huge city, one - I don't know if it's still a city or just a town (neither in German, nor in Polish, it is distinguished between towns and cities; we and Germans have single words for both) - but it's definitely much smaller.

Łódź also has its smaller sister. Actually, even two of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Łódź,_Poznań_County
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Łódź,_Gostyń_County''

We have also pairs of cities or towns with similar names, like Lublin and Lubin. Sometimes people mistake them with each other. Or, we have Stargard Szczeciński and Starogard Gdański (distinguished by just one letter, and a nearby bigger city added to the name) - but just a year ago, Stargard Szczeciński changed its name to Stargard only.

It's common especially for small villages that many of them, in totally different parts of the country, have same names. Sometimes there are even a few ones with the same name in a single neighborhood...



winnipeg said:


> Or like me, you simply say "Buda" and no more problems...


Unless you are just talking about something located in the Pest part


----------



## Alex_ZR

Why does Polish only have W for [v] and not "ordinary" V?


----------



## Kpc21

German has too. "v" in German is the "f" sound.

It must trace back to Latin. Latin had a single letter for the "v" ("w") sound and for the "u" sound. Spelled as "V" (if I am not mistaken, there were no lowercase letters in those times). And it evolved to the letters: "u", "v" and "w". The evolution could look different in different languages. So in English "w" and "u" mean similar sounds (just one is a consonant, one is a vowel), "v" a different sound, in German "u" means one sound and "w" and "v" other similar ones (one is voiced, the other one not). In Polish we totally got rid of "v", leaving "w" only.

Interesting are the names of the "w" letter in different languages. In English it's "double u", in French "double v", in Polish... "wu", or "vu" if spelled using "v".

By the way, it's interesting about Polish, that something like 150 years ago, "y" was actually used to write the "j" sound (I mean, "y" from English). "X" was also in use, but then someone decisive came to an idea: why do we use one letter to write two sounds one after another? It should be one sound = one letter (although we still sometimes use a sequence of a few letters to spell a single sound). I am not sure about "v".


----------



## winnipeg

Kpc21 said:


> Unless you are just talking about something located in the Pest part


But for foreigners it's the same, some don't even know that the city is composed from Buda and Pest. Buda is simply a better simplification.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> By the way, why is it in English so:
> - pron*u*nciation, but
> - to pron*ou*nce?


I advise you by giving an advice: Never ask why if you want to know something about the vocabulary, grammar or pronunciation of the English language. There is no answer to that question.


----------



## Jasper90

Verso said:


> Slovenian and Albanian are closer to each other than Russian and Polish?





keber said:


> I doubt that too: Albanian language is completely incomprehensible to all Slavic speakers, but I had no major problem to understand any of the Slavic languages. Basic conversation with Russians in Russia was no problem to me. Above presentation may be generally correct but it has some obvious flaws in my opinion.


As a caption I read "*Lexical *distance among the languages of Europe".
So my guess is that Albanian and Slovenian, despite being completely different and unrelated languages, might share a big number of words with the same root. And these words could even be unrecognisable at first sight, they may have mutated so much through time that a Slovenian wouldn't recognise it.

On the other hand, Russian and Polish could be languages that look similar but use different words for the same concepts, or something like that. A word in Polish could have an equivalent in Russian which sounds obsolete and old-fashioned, or things like that.

This is just my guess, since I don't know anything about Albanian and Slovenian  I just wanted to draw the attention on the fact that we're talking about *vocabulary *closeness, and not about grammar, structure, phonetics, and so on


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> I advise you by giving an advice: Never ask why if you want to know something about the vocabulary, grammar or pronunciation of the English language. There is no answer to that question.


I have been attending a face to face english class with a native speaker since the last year. Furthermore, he is a professional English teacher. I keep asking him such questions about grammar and exceptions. He always turns white, sweaty and conclude he will find it out.

So the first rule of English is - don't look for deep rules *and you'll be on the cloud nine*.


----------



## Junkie

keber said:


> I doubt that too: Albanian language is completely incomprehensible to all Slavic speakers, *but I had no major problem to understand any of the Slavic languages*. Basic conversation with Russians in Russia was no problem to me. Above presentation may be generally correct but it has some obvious flaws in my opinion.


I am eager to know if you can read and pronounce Makedonski or Bulgarian or Russian language? Since this is not a language thread, I apologize but I really doubt that you actually can understand them.


----------



## g.spinoza

:deadthrea


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## bogdymol

Today's Google logo is funny:


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> :deadthrea


Let's bring up something less scientific. Do you like wine? What kind in particular?

I like the moldavian semi sweet. It tastes terrifically, costs nothing and always has a beautiful bottle.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> Today's Google logo is funny:


Now let's hope there is no hostile civilization.


----------



## italystf

Most media made sensational clickbaiting headlines like '7 new planets suitable to living discovered'.
Little detail: they're 39 years-light away. Even if they'll ever discover a technology able to move an human at light speed (that probably would never happen), one would spend half of his life travelling there (eating what? receiving medical care by whom?). If one reads the first 5-6 lines, he'll realize that 'livable' is intended only with a theoretical meaning.
The only place outside Earth that we have a slim chance to set feet on within this century is probably Mars.


----------



## keokiracer

^^ On top of that 'only' 3 of the discovered exoplanets are actually within the habitable zone.
And even on top of that the habitable zone is with a lot of guessing because the technology to 100%-certainly determine that the planet is habitable simply does not exist (yet).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

News is increasingly clickbaity, including most of the mainstream media. It's nothing new either, already 10 years ago the biggest online news site of the Netherlands (nu.nl) used clickbaity headlines for many of their stories, mostly consisting of quotes rather than factual information. 

For example a major newspaper _Algemeen Dagblad_ (AD) came with the headline 'congestion in Zwolle is increasing'. However in reality the city of Zwolle scored 213 out of 215 of the most congested cities in Europe. Of course the 'it's getting worse' narrative generates more clicks than 'nothing to report'. 

I personally found it more newsworthy that Zwolle is one of the least congested cities across Europe than that, objectively, congestion increased marginally from a very low base.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Most media made sensational clickbaiting headlines like '7 new planets suitable to living discovered'.
> Little detail: they're 39 years-light away. Even if they'll ever discover a technology able to move an human at light speed (that probably would never happen), one would spend half of his life travelling there (eating what? receiving medical care by whom?). If one reads the first 5-6 lines, he'll realize that 'livable' is intended only with a theoretical meaning.
> The only place outside Earth that we have a slim chance to set feet on within this century is probably Mars.


Let me calculate:

- the fastest capsule carrying a human can reach 40.000 kph,
- the speed of light is 1.080.000.000 kph
- the distance is 40 light years.

We can attempt to convert the distance into kilometres. If I am not mistaken it should be
40*365*24*1.080.000.000 = *378.432.000.000.000 km

*Now let's calculate the time it could take:
t=s/v thus
t=378.432.000.000.000/40.000 = 9.460.800.000 hours = 394.200.000 days = *1.080.000 years

*So, If we set off tomorrow, we would reach the new stellar system in the year *1.082.017*. Furthermore, If we assume that one human generation takes 70 years and omit the possibility of developing an immortality medicine or at least significant life-extenders, our grangrangran...(repat 15428 times) children could land on the new Earth. Cool. Thanks God they can return because the sun would be still in a stable phase (not in a stage of red giant).

:lol:


----------



## bogdymol

Imagine how many times would the kids say "are we there yet?" during this trip.


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> Imagine how many times would the kids say "are we there yet?" during this trip.


I wonder if there happens to be an "entry prohibited" sign at the destination, would that be in English.


----------



## italystf

The best are certain social media comments like: "we should send our politicians/criminals/illegal immigrants/whatever undesidered human category there." :lol:


----------



## Verso

Kpc21 said:


> Do you actually pronounce L and J in Ljubljana - so that using English spelling, it would be Lyublyana?
> 
> Because some people in Poland write it just as Lublana.


Most people just say [lublana], but it's officially [ljubljana], pronounced like in "million".


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> Let's bring up something less scientific. Do you like wine? What kind in particular?
> 
> I like the moldavian semi sweet. It tastes terrifically, costs nothing and always has a beautiful bottle.


I enjoy wine a lot.
I like the cheap red wine that comes in a box :cheers:
I am a bit spoiled, I live in the Canadian wine country now, there are a dozen wineries within 15 minutes driving of my home I can visit... but I still drink plonk :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

I started to enjoy Chilean wines, some of those are actually pretty good. My favorites are Italian whites, though, for instance the Passerina and Pecorino from central Italy. 
In my hometown an excellent dessert wine is produced, called Visciolino: they take grape must and let it mellow with sour cherries. Since it's impossible to find it anywhere else, every time I visit my parents I get some bottles to take with me.


----------



## winnipeg

French wines are the best!   

Romanian wine is okay but not always cheap. For others, Chili is way too far, the transportation environmental cost is too high....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Holy crap the Los Angeles Times website has become an ad-infested circus. 

I was reading this article: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-2016-metro-ridership-decline-20170209-story.html

First they ask you to disable ad-blockers. But then I got full-screen pop-up advertisements, several autoplaying advertising videos with sound and it is so severe that the browser becomes sluggish and slow, almost becoming non-responsive.

Ghostery detects a staggering 137 trackers on that article. 

And then they're upset that people browse with ad-blocking features...


----------



## keokiracer

^^ Same goes for Forbes. Something like 16-20 ads per page. Ridiculous.

Toptip: if you disable AdBlocker and go to the page you want to see, you can re-enable your AdBlock and F5, you wont get the don't-use-adblock-message then and the page won't be extremely sluggish.


----------



## winnipeg

ChrisZwolle said:


> Holy crap the Los Angeles Times website has become an ad-infested circus.
> 
> I was reading this article: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-2016-metro-ridership-decline-20170209-story.html
> 
> First they ask you to disable ad-blockers. But then I got full-screen pop-up advertisements, several autoplaying advertising videos with sound and it is so severe that the browser becomes sluggish and slow, almost becoming non-responsive.
> 
> Ghostery detects a staggering 137 trackers on that article.
> 
> And then they're upset that people browse with ad-blocking features...


I avoid such websites. First of all if it asks to remove addblocks then it doesn't worth being visited by me... :yes:


----------



## bogdymol

I have disabled adblock on just a few sites, which I can see that have a minor amount of normal advertising plus they are run by normal people and not click-baits. SSC is one of those sites.

Speaking of wines, I have just bought a rosé Zinfandel from California. Delicious.


----------



## Attus

While most of Southern people prefer red wines, I prefer white dry ones. One of my favorite wine regions is Somló, north of Balaton in Hungary, they make tasty dry white wines. And I like wine of the region where I currently live, wine from Rhine's affluents, Ahr and Mosel, especially dry Riesling.


----------



## g.spinoza

winnipeg said:


> French wines are the best!


hno:

:cheers:


----------



## Suburbanist

- edit


----------



## Kanadzie

It means nothing, it is just local entrepreneurs wishing to supply market needs 

I've been propositioned to buy drugs walking on the streets of all kinds of cities where such things are prohibited for whatever reasons...


----------



## Suburbanist

So I'm looking at these language courses offered at my new job in Norway. We don't need to learn Norwegian but it obviously is of immense help, and prevents social isolation outside the job.

Then, I realize there are two Norwegian languages, and that I need to pick up one of them to learn. I knew there were some minimally spoken sami-related languages in the north, but I will live in Bergen, I hadn't imagined they had two official versions of Norwegian.


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> So I'm looking at these language courses offered at my new job in Norway. We don't need to learn Norwegian but it obviously is of immense help, and prevents social isolation outside the job.
> 
> Then, I realize there are two Norwegian languages, and that I need to pick up one of them to learn. I knew there were some minimally spoken sami-related languages in the north, but I will live in Bergen, I hadn't imagined they had two official versions of Norwegian.


It is all about the history and the national pride. Questions based on those are difficult to solve.

Norway was under the Danish rule for centuries, and the written language was based on Danish. The upper class looked down on the Norwegian dialects. In 1814, Sweden took over Norway, and the nationalism begun to raise in Norway. People wanted to get rid of the trail of the old ruler, but not, of course, to adopt Swedish, because Sweden was seen an intruder, too. In such a political and cultural climate, two competing versions of the written language arised: Riksmål, which was based on the Danish ortography, and Landsmål based on the western dialects. 

The name of Landsmål reflects its origin. It got its current name Nynorsk in 1929, and Riksmål was renamed to Bokmål.

It is up to the municipality to decide on which variant is in use as the primary one. A number of municipalities have declared neutral. Even if the 'market share' of Nynorsk is high in the western provinces, it still is a minority language in the context of the whole Norway. Like in Belgium, the language question might turn a hot spot among the locals, although being inexplicable to the foreigners. Be careful.


----------



## g.spinoza

To what extent are they mutually intelligible?


----------



## italystf

Langauge map of Norway:










Bergen appears to be within Nynorsk majority area.


----------



## Verso

Suburbanist said:


> So I'm looking at these language courses offered at my new job in Norway. We don't need to learn Norwegian but it obviously is of immense help, and prevents social isolation outside the job.
> 
> Then, I realize there are two Norwegian languages, and that I need to pick up one of them to learn. I knew there were some minimally spoken sami-related languages in the north, but I will live in Bergen, I hadn't imagined they had two official versions of Norwegian.


You've never noticed "Norsk bokmål" and "Norsk nynorsk" in Wikipedia (on the left side among languages)? I wonder if you've noticed "Slovenčina" (Slovak) and "Sloven*š*čina" (Slovene).


----------



## Kpc21

It's equally easy to notice as that there is Chinese Traditional and Chinese Simplified 

Not only Wikipedia, also online translators and dictionaries.

By the way, for me it's quite exotic that people in different parts of the country, speaking officially one language, speak it differently and the differences increase with increasing distance. Because, from what I understand, it is so in Scandinavia (and in the former Yugoslavia countries too).

In Poland we theoretically have different dialects, but - maybe with some minor exceptions - nobody really uses them to communicate. Maybe among elder people in the countryside, and in Upper Silesia too. In most cases people speak just "normally" in Polish, in the same Polish as spoken on TV. There are words for some things used specifically in some areas, but speaking dialect is something like wearing a folk costume. Nobody does it except for folk festivals and other events like that. There are exceptions, but there are also exceptions concerning folk costumes. I know that in Łowicz, for example, kids going to their first communion (which is quite an important event here, involving having a family party and getting presents - no idea how about other countries and about the Christian religions other than Catholicism) can choose between wearing a standard alb and a folk costume.


----------



## Verso

Kpc21 said:


> By the way, for me it's quite exotic that people in different parts of the country, speaking officially one language, speak it differently and the differences increase with increasing distance. Because, from what I understand, it is so in Scandinavia (and in the former Yugoslavia countries too).


Well, small Slovenia is very diverse in dialects. I hardly understand people in some parts, especially in the northeast.


----------



## Kpc21

It's probably why people from those countries are so good in foreign languages 

They just have guessing what someone else is saying in their blood.

Anyway, even in Poland, I notice that people living close to the Czech or Slovak border (to the eastern border too) can more or less communicate with people from those countries, and for me - I am from central Poland - it's quite difficult to get any understanding of what Czechs/Slovaks/Ukrainians/Belarussians are saying.


----------



## Kanadzie

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland we theoretically have different dialects, but - maybe with some minor exceptions - nobody really uses them to communicate. Maybe among elder people in the countryside, and in Upper Silesia too. In most cases people speak just "normally" in Polish, in the same Polish as spoken on TV. There are words for some things used specifically in some areas, but speaking dialect is something like wearing a folk costume. Nobody does it except for folk festivals and other events like that. There are exceptions, but there are also exceptions concerning folk costumes. I know that in Łowicz, for example, kids going to their first communion (which is quite an important event here, involving having a family party and getting presents - no idea how about other countries and about the Christian religions other than Catholicism) can choose between wearing a standard alb and a folk costume.


I wonder how much of this is due to 20th century history of Poland with some very large population shifts (from east to west)
I did my part to keep them going, I asked for directions to the "autobana" in Chojnow once 

In France many dialects existed at one point, but there was various efforts from the government against them. In Canada, the dialects (of French) never really existed because the colonists came from various regions of France and couldn't understand each other, so followed "royal" French. I am told a lot of the pronounciation of Canadian French (like the moé and toé) is closer to what the king of France would say than the standard Parisian "moi et toi":lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

You would be surprised on how much differently people in various parts of Italy speak, setting aside dialects which are real languages.

I was watching an episode of Masterchef Italy, there is a girl from Siciliy that nobody can understand (me neither) even though she speaks Italian and not Sicilian... it's the way vowels are pronounced, mostly.




Kpc21 said:


> It's equally easy to notice as that there is Chinese Traditional and Chinese Simplified
> 
> Not only Wikipedia, also online translators and dictionaries.
> 
> By the way, for me it's quite exotic that people in different parts of the country, speaking officially one language, speak it differently and the differences increase with increasing distance. Because, from what I understand, it is so in Scandinavia (and in the former Yugoslavia countries too).
> 
> In Poland we theoretically have different dialects, but - maybe with some minor exceptions - nobody really uses them to communicate. Maybe among elder people in the countryside, and in Upper Silesia too. In most cases people speak just "normally" in Polish, in the same Polish as spoken on TV. There are words for some things used specifically in some areas, but speaking dialect is something like wearing a folk costume. Nobody does it except for folk festivals and other events like that. There are exceptions, but there are also exceptions concerning folk costumes. I know that in Łowicz, for example, kids going to their first communion (which is quite an important event here, involving having a family party and getting presents - no idea how about other countries and about the Christian religions other than Catholicism) can choose between wearing a standard alb and a folk costume.


----------



## winnipeg

It's the same with northern France (Hauts de France region) some of them have a very strong accent that make them hard to understand... 

And its also the case of southern France, some also have a big accent with strange sounding like for example they sometimes spell consonants at the end of some words where it don't actually exist... 

But we do understand each others. We have also regional languages but they are very insignificant compared to french, if some are speaking those regional languages, they also speaks normal french....


----------



## Junkie

Kpc21 said:


> By the way, for me it's quite exotic that people in different parts of the country, speaking officially one language, speak it differently and the differences increase with increasing distance. Because, from what I understand, it is so in Scandinavia (*and in the former Yugoslavia countries too).*


That's so called dialect continuum and all South Slavic languages form a dialect continuum and it goes from West to East. For example person from my country can easily understand Serbian or Bulgarian standard language, but not Slovene or some Croatian dialects.


----------



## CNGL

It appears there are less dialectal differences in Spanish, as we don't have a ton of vowels, just the five. However those differences still exist: For example in Andalusia they pronounce s and z the same way, while here in Northern Spain we pronounce them differently.


winnipeg said:


> It's the same with northern France (Hauts de France region) some of them have a very strong accent that make them hard to understand...


I like how that region is called "Upper France" despite being nowhere near the Alps (The true "upper" metropolitan France, although far from historical France). I don't recognize that region, however, I still go with Picardie for the Southern part of it and Nord-Pas de Calais for the Northern part. Same with others except Normandie.


----------



## Kpc21

Some minor differences are also in Polish, but someone speaking the dialect is usually considered uneducated or coming from the countryside.

And there are things for which there are different words used in different parts of the country. The most recognizable is probably the word for a kind of bread made of wheat flour only (normally, the bread in Poland is made of two kinds of flour together: wheat and rye). For me it's angielka (which is just a feminine noun for "English", e.g. a woman from England is also Angielka), but in other regions it's called "bułka paryska" (Paris bread roll) or in many different other ways.


----------



## x-type

we have huge differences in dialects. extremes would be if 2 people, one from Krapina, another one from some Dalmatian island (or even Split) would talk in dialects, they woudn't understand each other at all. dunno, some Hungarian guy could join them so there would be 3 people not understanding each other at all.


----------



## winnipeg

CNGL said:


> I like how that region is called "Upper France" despite being nowhere near the Alps (The true "upper" metropolitan France, although far from historical France). I don't recognize that region, however, I still go with Picardie for the Southern part of it and Nord-Pas de Calais for the Northern part. Same with others except Normandie.


Not for us, we do have a lot of departments with such names like (Hauts-de-Seine, Haute-Saône, Haute-Marne, Haute-Corse, etc...) even if some are totaly flat departments, but I understand that it could be funny seen in that way! 

The name itself (Hauts-de-France) has been very criticized when it was choosed last year and I personaly find it very weird at first.... but finaly it replaced easily in my mind. Even on internet, when we make jokes about frenchs from the north, the old "Nord-Pas de Calais" has been (for most of it) replaced by "Hauts-de-France") even if now the people from Picardy are being also mocked in those jokes without reason...


----------



## winnipeg

x-type said:


> we have huge differences in dialects. extremes would be if 2 people, one from Krapina, another one from some Dalmatian island (or even Split) would talk in dialects, they woudn't understand each other at all. dunno, some Hungarian guy could join them so there would be 3 people not understanding each other at all.


People even from very diferent cultures are still humans, they find a way to understand summarily each other... :yes:

One of the best example I know is a french TV show we have in France "J'irai dormir chez vous" (="I will sleep at you house") where the guy go in foreign countries and visit peoples and tries to eat with them or to sleep in their houses, he meets awesome people and sometimes they are not even understanding a single word from each other...

In Romania for example he made some nice meets even if they don't understand much each other, this shot in Romania was funny (and weird at the end where he tought he was invited to eat with them but ended eating alone...  ) : https://youtu.be/9QqPRfy3oXc?t=444

(Also for example, Cambodge : https://youtu.be/rDg1fhXD8F8?t=2346 )


----------



## Kpc21

By the way, changing the topic.

(it's good if you understand some German)

It's how Germans see the Polish construction workers working in Germany, as compared with German workers:






But... The Polish construction workers in Poland are exactly like the German worker described there  Assuming that they exist - with which there are problems because they all have emigrated to the UK, Germany, Netherlands or to Scandinavia years ago.

How is it in other countries?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Jump a freeway with a dirtbike :nuts:


----------



## Kpc21

What languages do the radio stations in your countries play songs in? I am talking especially about those most popular stations, playing pop, not niche ones, specialized, for example, in rock or other genres.

In Poland, they play mostly English and Polish songs (talking about languages, not about the countries of origin). Rarely French and Spanish. Sometimes Polish pop performers have songs in languages other than Polish or English, like this one, supposedly in Ukrainian, but it's rather rare - then Polish radios will also play them.

Today, I heard a German pop hit (this one) on a Polish radio station, and I was really happy like that, I like German songs and you don't hear them at all in Poland. Although it wasn't a commercial station, it was a public regional (though state-funded) radio. The speaker/presenter/moderator/host (however you call him in English, I have no idea) admitted that German may sound melodic too 

Previously, I heard a few times a song in German on a rock-oriented station, but it's different.

I don't know. Even Germans claim that German is not really a good language to sing in, you hear more English songs than German ones on German radio stations - but I actually like the songs in German. I don't know why.


----------



## cinxxx

In Romania besides Romanian you will hear songs in English of course, but also Spanish, Italian, French


----------



## ChrisZwolle

They play mostly English-language music in the Netherlands, some radio stations almost exclusively. Of course many stations also play Dutch-language music. 

Other languages are pretty rare. French chansons are popular among some of the older public but is rarely - if ever - played on mainstream stations. German schlager can sometimes be heard on regional radio stations in the east but it is a niche.

Evidently this song was voted as the most popular German-language song. It's fairly well-known in the Netherlands (not so much among people younger than 40). It reached #1 in the Netherlands in 1990.


----------



## Kpc21

Nice song, I like it. Although I hear it for the first time.

In Poland you hear Spanish, French, Italian songs, but it's rather rare. It's more or less 50% Polish and 50% English. There is also a station playing only Polish songs.

But what I notice in Germany is that their radio stations usually don't have any music background for the news. The most popular one in Poland tells the news with a very characteristic background tune:






This one is short because it's a special edition due to the terrorist attack in Munich (it's easier to find such a special one than a normal one), but they always try to keep it possibly short anyway.

Another example from a popular station (news starts at 5:45):






But the public stations keep a more traditional form - the First Channel of our state radio (news starts at 2:35):






You can here samples of news on different radio stations in Poland here:






It's typical that the commercial stations have a background tune for the news and the public ones do not (except for the shortcut of all the news at the beginning).


----------



## keokiracer

ChrisZwolle said:


> Other languages are pretty rare. French chansons are popular among some of the older public but is rarely - if ever - played on mainstream stations.


Someone like Stromae or Maitre Gims could get played on Dutch mainstream radio. I know they played expecially Stromae a lot in the past, don't know if they still do though.


I mainly listen to Russian EDM internet radio (Radio Record Megamix) where I've heard a whole range of languages including English, Russian, French, German and Spanish. But it's not exactly (understatement) mainstream.


----------



## italystf

In Italy, besides Italian and English, Spanish is the third most popular language of broadcasted songs (Alvaro Soler, Enrique Iglesias,..).
Highly-popular songs in other languages are rather rare, with some notable exceptions like Maitre Gims (French), Ai se eu te pego! (Portuguese) and Dragostea din tei (Romanian).
I can't think of any very popular song there in a non-English Germanic language or Slavic language.


----------



## Kpc21

italystf said:


> ]Dragostea din tei (Romanian).]


Yeah, it was popular once in Poland too.

From other mainstream songs in "weird" languages, which were ones among the top songs in Poland:

- in German (really rare case in Poland):






- in Russian:


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> I can't think of any very popular song there in a non-English Germanic language or Slavic language.


----------



## x-type

Kpc21 said:


> What languages do the radio stations in your countries play songs in? I am talking especially about those most popular stations, playing pop, not niche ones, specialized, for example, in rock or other genres.
> 
> In Poland, they play mostly English and Polish songs (talking about languages, not about the countries of origin). Rarely French and Spanish. Sometimes Polish pop performers have songs in languages other than Polish or English, like this one, supposedly in Ukrainian, but it's rather rare - then Polish radios will also play them.
> 
> Today, I heard a German pop hit (this one) on a Polish radio station, and I was really happy like that, I like German songs and you don't hear them at all in Poland. Although it wasn't a commercial station, it was a public regional (though state-funded) radio. The speaker/presenter/moderator/host (however you call him in English, I have no idea) admitted that German may sound melodic too
> 
> Previously, I heard a few times a song in German on a rock-oriented station, but it's different.
> 
> I don't know. Even Germans claim that German is not really a good language to sing in, you hear more English songs than German ones on German radio stations - but I actually like the songs in German. I don't know why.


Croatian, English, Italian, occasionaly Spanish and French.

a month or two ago i noticed Polish song on one Croatian radio, but in English (Margaret is singer)


----------



## Ices77

In Slovakia besides Slovak and Czech music, both contemoprary and past, is English without any doubt the pop and rock music language number one in radios here as well. 
Occasionally can be heard hits in French, Russian, Italian and German, but it is more like exception.

Btw, something from my list, Aleš Brychta, Lidi jsou lidi (People are people):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zehOLBoF350


----------



## Kpc21

We had two entries on the Eurovision Song Contest (by the same band) with multilingual songs. In the first of them, the main language was... German:











They weren't really successful - the first one with the 7th place (second best for as though until now), the second one the 11th in the semi-final, failed to qualify to the final.

The best one (2nd place, our first entry ever) was sung in Polish:






The third best one (from the previous year) was in English:






Margaret was trying to qualify to the ESC the previous year, but she failed with Michał Szpak. And I don't mind - she is too commercial and she wouldn't probably bring us such a good result.


----------



## CNGL

In Spain it's mostly Spanish and English, other languages are rare, but I remember several Portuguese songs and at least a French one. Oh, and Dragostea Din Tei (Romanian) and Gangnam Style (Korean ).


----------



## Kpc21

I don't really remember Gangnam Style on the radio, it was more of an Internet hit.

But the popularity of Dragostea Din Dai came in the before-Internet times.

Some of our radio stations (not the most popular ones) play also sometimes a Polish-specific genre of pop/disco music called disco polo. A sample of it, which was actually quite good as it got even to the most popular stations, is this song:






Although the disco polo songs are usually considered really unambitious (although actually English pop songs sometimes have less ambitious lyrics, or two German ones mentioned by me earlier in this thread too) and typical rather for village weddings.

This music was especially popular in the 90's but recently one can see a kind of renaissance of this genre. It's not so mainstream as before, it's considered rather a shame to listen to something like that, but actually quite many people listen to that, we have even a music TV station playing such music.

One of the most popular disco polo songs from the 90's:


----------



## Verso

Yesterday I stopped at a rest area on the Slovenian A4 motorway and they played Turkish music. :nuts: On top of that, the rest area was full of the Japanese, and I accidently went into the female toilet.


----------



## Suburbanist

I love when people who don't know about my multiple citizenships and the places I've lived before make all sorts of assumptions about myself (food I should like, weather I must enjoy), only to be amused when they eventually realize I fit neither the stereotypes nor the categories they had mentally assigned me to


----------



## Kanadzie

I was listening to an "independent" radio station driving home, they play music from Japan for about 1 hour at that time.

They played this 






Generally in Canada there are English stations playing English music and French stations playing mostly french music with some English and occasionally other languages (especially the state broadcaster who aims for more "refined" listeners)
I much enjoy to listen to other languages, the variety makes life more pleasant


----------



## volodaaaa

CNGL said:


> In Spain it's mostly Spanish and English, other languages are rare, but I remember several Portuguese songs and at least a French one. Oh, and Dragostea Din Tei (Romanian) and Gangnam Style (Korean ).


AFAIK O-zone were Moldavians :lol:


----------



## keokiracer

^^ But they sang the song in Romanian.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> AFAIK O-zone were Moldavians :lol:


True, but the language is the same and he wrote about languages, not nations.


----------



## bogdymol

I have a small laptop with touch screen. Yesterday I have noticed that I cannot scroll down with my finger on the screen, like on every other website.

edit: now it works :dunno:


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Typical Suburbanist statement. Who cares about global warming as long as we can drive over mountain passes. :lol:


A couple of days warmer than usual don't necessarly imply global warming.
To define global warming, is necessary to analize and compare statistical data collected in a long time.
I'm not denying that the problem of GM exists, of course, but I made a precisation.


----------



## Verso

Global warming is a fact, not something I made up in the last few warmer days.


----------



## Suburbanist

Geez, I just said this season road passes will open sooner. I made no statement on global warming or on the folly of taking one single season climatology as proof or counterproof of anything.


----------



## Verso

Relax, it was just a joke.


----------



## Kpc21

By the way, how do your countries react to the last political events in the EU, that means, reelection of Donald Tusk as the president of European Council?

Polish state TV reacted in a very funny way:










"The choice of Donald Tusk to be a success of Germany"


----------



## CrazySerb

Like the appointment of Soviet apparatchiks. THat's what Europan Union increasingly resembles.


----------



## Suburbanist

Donald Tusk was voted in by 27 EU country delegations, which are established, each one, by their own democratic government. Poland voted against. It did so entirely for domestic policy reasons.


----------



## Kanadzie

it's such an odd situation

But I'm not sure if it is more strange that Poland opposes Tusk, or that the "convention" is for a country to always support their countryman in a nationalistic way, instead of being truly "European".

but the whole thing is such cheap politics


----------



## g.spinoza

European institutions have so little power that it won't matter at all


----------



## volodaaaa

EU needs a reconstruction. Without fascists, xenophobes, radicals, but without current left-welcomers either. People, who want to build a reasonable alliance of sovereign, well-developed countries.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> By the way, how do your countries react to the last political events in the EU, that means, reelection of Donald Tusk as the president of European Council?
> 
> Polish state TV reacted in a very funny way:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "The choice of Donald Tusk to be a success of Germany"


There has been some discussion about how much it would cost to send Poland back to the other side of the Iron curtain or to sell it to Kazakstan. Thus, some degree of irritation.


----------



## Suburbanist

The greatest achievements of EU are on the economic front, and keeping its members from severely damaging each other while greater dangers and threats and challenges lurk outside (Russia, China, Middle East etc).

I am moving to Norway this summer, and I realized online shopping throughout EU will be much more cumbersome. Need to get a VAT invoice, then pay a 110NOK processing fee, pay Norwegian VAT and request reimbursement of EU-VAT to Norwegian customs. At least all of that can be done online. I rely heavily on online shopping and EU-wide competition means prices in a relatively small country like Netherlands are kept in check by everpresent threat of retailers from Germany or UK.


----------



## Kpc21

Kanadzie said:


> But I'm not sure if it is more strange that Poland opposes Tusk, or that the "convention" is for a country to always support their countryman in a nationalistic way, instead of being truly "European".


If all the EU members but Poland voted for a Polish candidate, they actually were truly "European".

And... if it was actually so that each country would support their countryman, then - I don't know if all the votes are equal or they have weights, but in the first situation, nobody would be chosen.

It's sad that our government maintains such "low-level" thinking and is not able to go beyond the internal divisions and disputes... But what can we do about that? Now, I just feel ashamed of the government of my country.



Suburbanist said:


> The greatest achievements of EU are on the economic front, and keeping its members from severely damaging each other while greater dangers and threats and challenges lurk outside (Russia, China, Middle East etc).


I fully agree.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> The greatest achievements of EU are on the economic front, and keeping its members from severely damaging each other while greater dangers and threats and challenges lurk outside (Russia, China, Middle East etc).
> 
> I am moving to Norway this summer, and I realized online shopping throughout EU will be much more cumbersome. Need to get a VAT invoice, then pay a 110NOK processing fee, pay Norwegian VAT and request reimbursement of EU-VAT to Norwegian customs. At least all of that can be done online. I rely heavily on online shopping and EU-wide competition means prices in a relatively small country like Netherlands are kept in check by everpresent threat of retailers from Germany or UK.


I think that also EU legislations aimed to improve food safety, environmental standards, free market competition, consumer's rights, and transparency in public administration, were great achievements of EU.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> I think that also EU legislations aimed to improve food safety, environmental standards, free market competition, consumer's rights, and transparency in public administration, were great achievements of EU.


From an Italian point of view, EU food regulations are not that good. They made us change the name of a centuries old wine (Tocai) because there is another, completely different, with a vaguely similar name in Hungary; they forbade production and selling of traditional cheese like casu marzu for unspecified health hazards; they constantly rejected proposals for controlling the origin of ingredients, with the result that I can buy a "made in Italy" olive oil bottle with olives coming from Spain or Tunisia.
I am proud of being European, but I really hope that this Union falls apart. It is a failure in every possible way.


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> I think that also EU legislations aimed to improve food safety, environmental standards, free market competition, consumer's rights, and transparency in public administration, were great achievements of EU.


True. Still the EU has taken an exaggerated number of actions to regulate things that do not need Europe-wide regulation. This irritates people more and more. That makes the brexit a logical move. Unfortunately, the people in the ivory tower in Brussels do not want to look at the mirror but try to make UK evil, and preferably to punish it.

I am sure that 80 per cent of the existing regulations and directives could be canceled without any harm and we still had a working EU bringing benefits to the citizens. I am sure this will not happen, and that is why I am sure there will be no EU after 50 years. During the history, all oversize complacent organizations have collapsed after reaching the point were the value is less than the price. Examples: Ancient Egypt, Roman Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, League of Nations, Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, the Ottoman Empire.


----------



## volodaaaa

Like everything else, the EU has its timeline with the rises and falls too. For me, the fall of the EU started with unfortunate Irish referendum in 2008 concerning the Lisbon Treaty. It means, the EU was at its bests in 2007.

I partially work with the EU funds now, not on the site of beneficiaries but on the side of managing authority and I see how many useless regulations and limitation the EU makes up.

It is really like in the joke about different establishments compared to breeding cows. AFAIK EU democracy was described like having a pair of cows, the one will be hand over to other country with senseless subsidies and the other was milked till its death and its milk was then spilled into a river.

All of this under the cover of an overly false and hypocritical political correctness pretending to be the United states of Europe. I wish the old (pre-2008) could be brought back.


----------



## italystf

I like the idea of EU, but not a shift towards something like the 'United States of Europe'.
I think EU integration should stop somewhen, before getting too intrusive in internal matters.

There are some ideals EU should actively pursue: human rights, civil liberties, transparency, free competition, health, and environmental preservation.
Any field that is not related to these, should better be left to national states, instead of EU, to prevent EU being seen as too overkill, thus increasing euroscepticism.
It's better to have an EU limited to regulate the basics, but widely accepted by its population, rather than an EU who regulates everything, but perceived as an enemy by large parts of population. In the first case, it will probably survive forever, in the latter, countries will likely vote to get out, cancelling also positive sides of EU.

Moreover, EU should not harm national or local traditions, but preserve them instead, unless they are plain violations of basic principles like human rights, civil liberties, transparency, free competition, health, and environmental preservation.

For example, forcing countries to change well-established historical brands, because they are too similar with other brands in other countries is ridiculous and overkill.
Forcing countries to respect health, hygiene, and labelling standards in food production is acceptable, instead.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> From an Italian point of view, EU food regulations are not that good. They made us change the name of a centuries old wine (Tocai) because there is another, completely different, with a vaguely similar name in Hungary; they forbade production and selling of traditional cheese like casu marzu for unspecified health hazards; they constantly rejected proposals for controlling the origin of ingredients, with the result that I can buy a "made in Italy" olive oil bottle with olives coming from Spain or Tunisia.


That's because Italy had already very advanced laws in food matters. It wasn't probably the case in other countries.

In other fields, like market competition, environment, and transparency, Italian legislation improved a lot since the 1980s, due to the obligation of adopting EU directives and regulations.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> If you want to see what happens in absence of that, take a look at vehicles exempt from these rules, such as express van delivery services.


Until a couple of years ago we had a forumer (now banned) who knew that thing well.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland, apart from the police, which is centrally managed and subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a city or a municipality may introduce so called "city guard" or "municipal guard", which is also a kind of police (although not officially called police). They are things the police is allowed to do and the city guard is not, their purpose is rather dealing with little offences, like illegal parking, littering or drinking alcohol in public places. Their permissions are limited with respect to those of the police. And they are subordinate to the municipality, not to the state.

Up to not a long time ago - the beginning of 2016, from, if I am not mistaken, 2003 - the municipal guards could control the speed of the drivers by means of speed cameras. And it was frequently abused. Many municipalities were creating municipal guards... only in order to bring extra income to the municipal budget, by means of installing a speed camera. Very often not in a place were speeding would actually cause a danger, for example, for pedestrians, but in the places where there was actually no real reason for a speed limit or for a built-up area, where nobody would expect it, so that they could gather much money from the fines.

Fortunately, someone has finally noticed that and gave it an end. Apart from that, a law was introduced that all the speed cameras must be painted yellow so that they are well visible and no dummy speed cameras are allowed. While I can understand the regulation that the cameras should be visible - then the focus is about making the drivers actually slow down and increasing safety instead of catching as many of them as possible speeding to bring money from speeding tickets - I don't understand the ban on dummy cameras. It was sometimes so that a local police division had a single speed camera devices which was being moved between a few different enclosures installed in different places - and it worked well. Now, it's not allowed.

Concerning the tolerance, for speed cameras it's 10 km/h. For manual devices - from what I know, there is no tolerance. Which is not so good since the radar speed meters used by the police are not always very precise. I some models, it is possible to measure... the speed of the cooler fan instead of the speed of the car by using it improperly. Especially one model of radar meter used by Polish police is known for that - Iskra 1, by a Russian company Simicon. There have already been court cases won by the drivers accused of speeding, when the speeding was detected using this unreliable device - most popular one in the Polish police.

The tickets are as follows:
- exceeding the allowed speed by 6 to 10 km/h: 50 zł and 1 penalty point
- 11 to 20 km/h: 50 zł to 100 zł and 2 penalty points
- 21 to 30 km/h: 100 zł to 200 zł and 4 penalty points
- 31 to 40 km/h: 200 zł to 300 zł and 6 penalty points
- 41 to 50 km/h: 300 zł to 400 zł and 8 penalty points
- from 51 km/h: 400 zł to 500 zł and 10 penalty points + losing the driving license for 3 months (only in built-up area)

1 euro is about 4,3 zł.

The maximum number of penalty points is 24. After exceeding it, the driver is directed to a re-education course, which has to be done within 6 weeks after receiving a notification. If it's done, the penalty points are zeroed, if not, he loses the driving license. If 24 points are reached again within 5 years, he also loses the driving license.

To the end of 2016, the penalty points were disappearing after a year, reaching 24 points meant a lose of the license, by it was possible to cancel some points by doing an extra driving safety course.

The penalty points are, of course, not only for speeding. For example, you get 6 points for causing a car crash, 10 points for drinking and driving, 10 points for overpassing a car which stopped in front of a zebra crossing, 6 points for ignoring a red light, 4 points for not wearing a helmet on a motorbike or seat belts in a car (the driver gets points also for the passengers).


----------



## GROBIN

LANE DISCIPLINE!
And the idiot of the month is ... (source) 


> *Driver gives WA Police bad excuse for driving in right-hand lane*
> 
> IT is a thought that surely must run through the mind of every Perth driver caught behind a right-hand lane hog: Where are the police when you need them?
> 
> Well, the boys and girls in blue have shown they are willing to act and weed out those who stubbornly refuse to move over for passing traffic.
> 
> Just don’t expect the offenders to fully grasp the traffic flow ramification of their inertia.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A post to WA Police Traffic on Twitter showed the driver of a Holden sedan was caught on Tonkin Highway last week.
> 
> They copped a $50 fine and their licence was docked two demerit points, but not before giving police their excuse: “I was driving in the lane I always do.”


I know several guys in France that would give this kind of excuse. Lane indiscipline issues are much worse in France than in Poland, Lithuania; the U.K. .... Especially when you drive around the Paris or Lille areas!


----------



## MajKeR_

God bless the Netherlands! :cheers:


----------



## Fatfield

The lorry driver did nothing wrong. In Britain lorries can overtake another lorry in the outside lane if there's only two lanes. If there are three or more lanes then lorries aren't permitted to use the outside lane but can use the others for overtaking. The max speed limit for HGVs is now 60mph which does make a noticable difference.

The moron in the Civic should be banned from driving for at least one year.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think people commented on the duration of the overtaking (2 minutes), not the overtaking movement per se.


----------



## Kpc21

Was it actually a truck? I can't read the car model on the ticket, but it seems it was issued just for using the left right lane although the right left (it's Australia, they drive on the left) one was free.


----------



## keber

What about drivers that drive on motorway so slowly (usually on a busy motorway) that buses and even truck have to overtake them? I often see those. In my opinion car drivers should drive at least as fast as trucks (that is 90 km/h) except if motorway has difficult alignment or in bad weather. If this is too fast for them they should use parallel road.


----------



## Kpc21

Trucks are allowed to drive no more than 80 km/h. At least in Poland. So driving 80 should be OK.

Driving much slower is just dangerous.


----------



## keokiracer

Trucks are allowed to drive 80 in pretty much all of Europe (UK as the most notable exception) but the limiter can't be higher than 90km/h. So trucks will usually drive into the limiter unless the company they drive for sets a lower speed limit for their drivers (not actually limited, but will get reprimanded if they exceed the limit often).


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ UK is the only country in Europe where trucks (or lorries, as they say) are allowed to drive faster than 90 km/h (96 km/h or 60 mph in their case). 

Most European countries don't allow for more than 80 km/h for trucks on any road, some allow 90 km/h on motorways (France). 

I think Estonia and Slovakia are the only countries where trucks are allowed 90 km/h even on single carriageways but correct me if I'm wrong.


----------



## Kpc21

True, but theoretically if you drive 80 in a truck, nobody should be angry at you. And theoretically (probably in some countries also practically) you can be fined for driving 90.

Both issues are rather not the case in Poland. It's not uncommon to drive even 90 (for any cars) in places like this: https://goo.gl/maps/ehay7Zw4PqK2 (it's inside a built-up area, even though exactly here it may not look like that - but it's not without reason, this area is actually built up, although not very densly, and sometimes you meet pedestrians walking to reach the bus stops), although 50 is allowed there, unless there is a police control ahead.

I drive there maybe not 90 km/h, but normally more then 50, together with the whole column of cars on the road. Although when I happen to have someone driving 50 in front of me - it's OK, I accept that and I have respect to that someone actually obeys the regulations; I do not overpass him.


----------



## g.spinoza

Greetings from Sarajevo!


----------



## volodaaaa

Rebasepoiss said:


> I think Estonia and Slovakia are the only countries where trucks are allowed 90 km/h even on single carriageways but correct me if I'm wrong.


Right. The intention was to prevent all vehicles from overtaking. Like if a lorry drives at 90 kph and the passenger car too, there is no reason to overtake.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

In England and Wales, 'the national speed limits for HGVs over 7.5 tonnes, travelling on a single carriageway increased from 40mph to 50mph.' I've found it quite annoying to be honest, especially here in Wales where the roads are bendy and the overtaking opportunities few and far between. I now find myself slown down as before in the bendy bits, but now it's harder to overtake where it's possible.


----------



## Kanadzie

Differential truck speed limits are interesting. In North America they were once common but have _generally _been abolished as pointless or negative.


----------



## Kpc21

What do you mean as _differential_ limits? You mean a different limit for trucks and buses and a different one for personal cars?


----------



## riiga

Rebasepoiss said:


> I think Estonia and Slovakia are the only countries where trucks are allowed 90 km/h even on single carriageways but correct me if I'm wrong.


Sweden allows 90 km/h on some single carriageways (and all motorways).


----------



## Kanadzie

Kpc21 said:


> What do you mean as _differential_ limits? You mean a different limit for trucks and buses and a different one for personal cars?


That's right, in Canada for example I think all such differences have been eliminated, and in the US, it is relatively rare but some exceptions, like Michigan.

That said, the best motorway in Canada would have a speed limit of 100, 110 or one exception, 120 km/h so it is more holding everyone back instead of letting the trucks run fast :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The German truck speed limit is 60 km/h unless it's a four-lane divided highway. In France it's also 60 km/h but it doesn't appear to be enforced much.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland it's 70 on single carriageways and 80 on all other roads. With an exception for buses fulfilling extra technical requirements, for which the limit is 100.

And when the allowed speed in a built-up area is increased from the standard 50 to 60 or 70 with a road sign, then it doesn't apply to trucks and buses.

And we have one of the highest speed limits on motorways - 140 km/h. I think only in Germany it's higher.

By the way - it's quite interesting that it's legal to produce and sell cars allowing to move with speeds like 200 km/h easily and they are permitted to be used on public roads, although there is probably only one country in the world where driving with such speeds is legal on some roads.









(yes, this sign is overinformative, they should limit the amount of information on it)

By the way - when there are four lanes on the road, two in each direction, but they are not divided with a physical barrier (or a lane of ground/grass/whatever), the road counts as a single carriageway.


----------



## Fatfield

^^^^

Slubice. I spent a rather drunken afternoon there in January this year. The amount of tobacco shops put Adinkerke to shame. Never seen someone fishing through ice with a swan in attendance before either.


----------



## italystf

Funny moment. Let's post what could we imagine being a H&A post in the year 2050.

For example: "Discussions about the Messina strait fixed link. Bridge or tunnel?"


----------



## bogdymol

"Today the last section of the motorway linking Bucharest with the European motorway network has been opened to traffic. 

Works on Bucharest motorway ring road have started. 

Romania and Bulgaria have finally joined Schengen area. 

German A8 east of Munich has been completely expanded to 3 lanes per direction. "

etc...


----------



## CNGL

I guess no Dutch motorway discussions since the Netherlands would be mostly underwater :troll:.

Now more seriously: "Final motorway link in Western Kazakhstan opens to traffic. One can now drive from Lisbon to Beijing only on motorways".

We had a similar thread over on AARoads a few years ago.


----------



## winnipeg

bogdymol said:


> "Today the last section of the motorway linking Bucharest with the European motorway network has been opened to traffic.
> 
> Works on Bucharest motorway ring road have started.
> 
> Romania and Bulgaria have finally joined Schengen area.
> 
> German A8 east of Munich has been completely expanded to 3 lanes per direction. "
> 
> etc...


Bucharest will be linked to occidental Europe in 2030 with all the current corruption and delays... :lol: hno:

I believed them when they promised that in 2016/2017 we would be able to travel from Hungary to Sibiu/Cluj/Oradea... hno:


----------



## volodaaaa

My new car


----------



## keber

Kpc21 said:


>


It is strange to see higher speed limit in urban area in the night. Probably only case in the world.


----------



## Kpc21

Originally, it was 60 km/h. It was changed to 50 km/h during the day from 1 May 2004.

Originally - meaning from 1997, when the current road laws were introduced. I will try to check how it was in the previous versions.

So... in the original version of the previous road laws, introduced in 1983, the allowed speeds were:
- 60 km/h in urban areas
- 90 km/h for cars and motorcycles out of urban areas
- 70 km/h for trucks and buses out of urban areas
- 110 km/h for cars on motorways
- 90 km/h for buses on motorways

I will try to go back further...

So the next "Act on the safety and order of traffic on public roads" dates back to 1961. It doesn't mention any speed limits, but there are resolutions (executive acts) to it - so the speeds weren't decided about by the parliament (it was so from 1983), but by the government.

So, the proper resolution was issued in 1962. The limits were:
- 50 km/h in urban areas
- 70 km/h for buses and trucks
I cannot see any speed limit for cars out of urban areas.

There are also some interesting entries:
- 40 km/h for vehicles pulling more than one trailer (for a car pulling a single trailer, the same speed as for trucks applies, and it valid until now, but pulling more than one trailer is no longer allowed - maybe there is an exception for tractors, I am not sure)
- motor vehicles with full rubber tires - 25 km/h in urban areas and 40 km/h out of them

So I will try to look for when the speed limit for cars out of urban areas and on motorways was introduced.

So... the last resolution to the act from 1961, dating for 1979, introduces the following limits out of urban areas:
- 90 km/h for cars
- 70 km/h for motorcycles

No special speed limit for motorways. I guess the condition of the only motorways we had in those times (from the German border to Szczecin and to Wrocław, built by Nazi Germany) was not really good. And the first really Polish motorway (from Kraków to Upper Silesia - a part of the current A4) was still under construction (opened in 1983). It's not weird that only the law issued in 1983 establishes an increased speed limit on motorways 

Let's look for even earlier versions of the Polish highway code.

So... before the act from 1961, the law from... 1921 was still valid. It was organized in a similar way as now. The parliament act was very short and almost all the rules were established by the ministry. The first resolution to this act, which established the speed limits, was from 1922.

The speed limits in Poland in those early times of cars were:
- 25 km/h for trucks (a border between a car and a truck was 3 t, 500 km less than now) out of urban areas
- 25 km/h for cars in urban areas
- 15 km/h for trucks in urban areas

And some curiosities:
- 10 km/h on roads intersections, curves, during fog and glaze and on steep or slippery roads
- 6 km/h on wooden bridges longer then 20 m

When did those limits become more civilized? I will try to find.

The resolution from 1928.

For a truck (the threshold weight becomes 3500 kg, same as now):
- on metal wheels without tires: 15 km/h
- on full rubber tires: 25 km/h
- on "hollowed" rubber tires (whatever it means - I am not sure if it's about pneumatic tires or something else): 40 km/h

For a truck in urban areas:
- on metal wheels without tires: 10 km/h
- on full rubber tires: 15 km/h
- on "hollowed" rubber tires: 20 km/h

For a car in urban areas: 40 km/h

On bridges with a warning sign:
- for a truck: 10 km/h
- for a car: 20 km/h

So.... concerning cars, we are close to the current situation!

The resolution from 1933.

Buses:
- with full rubber tires: 40 km/h
- with pneumatic tires: 60 km/h

Trucks:
- without tires: 10 km/h
- with full rubber and semi-pneumatic tires: 40 km/h [20 km/h in urban areas] (does anyone know what the semi-pneumatic tires were?)
- with pneumatic tires: 50 km/h

Cars in urban areas: 40 km/h

On bridges with a warning sign:
- for a truck: 10 km/h
- for a car: 20 km/h

The automotive industry must have been developing very fast in those times, so that the law had to be changed so frequently to catch up!

Year 1937. The limits - basically the same, just slightly reorganized in editing. The last road traffic resolution before the WW2.

In urban areas:
- vehicles on full rubber or semi-pneumatic tires: 20 km/h
- vehicles on pneumatic tires: 40 km/h

Out of urban areas:
- trucks on full rubber or semi-pneumatic tires: 40 km/h
- trucks on pneumatic tires and buses: 60 km/h

Motor vehicles without tires: 10 km/h.

Those limits were valid quite long - until 1960. Then, a changing resolution was issued, and the speed limits were established as follows:

In urban areas: 50 km/h

Out of urban areas:
- buses and trucks above 2,5 t: 70 km/h

So... they are not different from the limits valid from 1961, with the new road traffic act.

What I can also check is what was before 1921 - but I suppose, there was nothing. The Polish country was just recreated 3 years before. Probably, if any road law was applied before, this was the law of the country which was occupying the specific area of Poland in the years 1795-1918 - for lack of any other law concerning this topic.


----------



## winnipeg

volodaaaa said:


> https://s12.postimg.org/rien7tffh/20170321_1340181_01_01.png
> 
> My new car


Auris 2015? Nice one! :cheers: 

(Even if in my opinion the whole car is a bit "boring", the design is getting old and it is lacking a clear ligh signature with LEDs.... and the interior is not so good, it's getting old... but that's only my opinion... :yes: )


----------



## volodaaaa

winnipeg said:


> Auris 2015? Nice one! :cheers:
> 
> (Even if in my opinion the whole car is a bit "boring", the design is getting old and it is lacking a clear ligh signature with LEDs.... and the interior is not so good, it's getting old... but that's only my opinion... :yes: )


The car is obviously not flawless and you nailed it regarding the leds. It resembles old cars getting their daytime lights installed additionally. Too close to each other and just boring rectangles. On the other hands I like the interior. Indeed I have seen numerous complains about the interior, but I don't consider it ugly. Yeah it is not made up by white leather, but I can survive.😊


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> Now more seriously: "Final motorway link in Western Kazakhstan opens to traffic. One can now drive from Lisbon to Beijing only on motorways".


But PRC will still refuse foreign driving license :lol:


----------



## italystf

winnipeg said:


> Bucharest will be linked to occidental Europe in 2030 with all the current corruption and delays... :lol: hno:


I guess that building a motorway across the Carpathian range won't be an easy and cheap task...


----------



## x-type

nice colour @volodaaa


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I like the Auris. A second-hand 2015 model with a station wagon configuration sells from € 16,000 in the Netherlands. Is it a hybrid? 

I drove a 2016 Kia Rio this week as a rental car due to some 3rd party damage repairs on my own car. I did not quite like it, the center console has an annoying edge where your knee rests on while driving. The dashboard reflection in sunny weather is also ridiculous, to the point you're going to miss details along the road around you.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> due to some 3rd party damage repairs on my own car.


What happened?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A neighbor opened his car door a bit too quickly, putting a substantial dent in my car door. Insurance took care of it


----------



## winnipeg

volodaaaa said:


> The car is obviously not flawless and you nailed it regarding the leds. It resembles old cars getting their daytime lights installed additionally. Too close to each other and just boring rectangles. On the other hands I like the interior. Indeed I have seen numerous complains about the interior, but I don't consider it ugly. Yeah it is not made up by white leather, but I can survive.😊



:yes:

What matters the most is that you were aware of this when buying the car, and if it's fine for you then it's fine for everyone, most people won't even know/notice you car... 

About the interior, since Peugeot launched the 3008 with the "iCockpit", every other interior looks old and boring...


----------



## winnipeg

italystf said:


> I guess that building a motorway across the Carpathian range won't be an easy and cheap task...


The task is difficult but what is even more difficult is the corrupted politics, the corrupted or bad companies selected for contracts because they lied about the price of the contract and built a highway of lower quality than what was asked (that's why a part of the romanian A1 had to be closed and demolished only few month after the initial opening...) and not mentioning the other parts that had to be repaired also very soon after opening....

And I don't mention how bad most of national roads are curently... No, I'm very pessimistic with what is going on with romanian infrastructures... of they build a decent network that is still working by 2025-2030 it would be a miracle... hno:


----------



## Suburbanist

Today I was in Assen (here in the Netherlands). People there have a strong accent, but that accent is actually easier to catch as a a non-native in Germanic languages.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> I like the Auris. A second-hand 2015 model with a station wagon configuration sells from € 16,000 in the Netherlands. Is it a hybrid?
> 
> I drove a 2016 Kia Rio this week as a rental car due to some 3rd party damage repairs on my own car. I did not quite like it, the center console has an annoying edge where your knee rests on while driving. The dashboard reflection in sunny weather is also ridiculous, to the point you're going to miss details along the road around you.


I don't know, but it could be. A brand new full equipment hybrid costs here approximately 23.000 €. I've got a 1,6 petrol engine and there was a special offer at the end of 2016 for brand new 2016 models that (with middle equipment and a 1,6 petrol engine) costed 16.000 €. Hybrids are generally 5.000 € more expensive.


----------



## MajKeR_

^^ Why have you blurred some part of license plate? I guess you would not be met and recognized by any of us.


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> But PRC will still refuse foreign driving license :lol:


Well, anything can happen in the next 33 years.

Also, over at AARoads forum we have a thread about threads one will never see there. It contains things ranging from construction threads about cancelled motorways freeways to just plain nonsense ("Egyptian goddess changes name due to Islamic State"). It also contains several ones that have since come true, like "Chicago Cubs wins World Series" (Posted in 2013, they managed to do so last year after more than a century). I once went so far, I'm still amazed I didn't get banned.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*AdBlue*

A new diesel scandal is emerging across Europe, the manipulation of AdBlue / Diesel Exhaust Fluid.

AdBlue is a fluid that is inserted into the exhaust of diesel engines, mostly trucks, but also some passenger cars. It cleans the exhaust so it can conform to the latest Euro emission standards. Without AdBlue, it would be as dirty as a 1990s truck. 

However AdBlue cost money, reportedly the operating cost is around € 1000 - 2000 per year per truck. Eastern European trucks increasingly use devices that manipulate the engine management system, so it thinks the system is operating as it should, while in reality no AdBlue is consumed. This means they pay a lower toll rate in some countries than they should, and of course they pollute more.

The German ZDF reported on it earlier this year. The Polish police is aware of it and also checks trucks for AdBlue manipulation. The Norwegian police also checks foreign trucks for manipulation when entering the country, and they detect an increasing amount of AdBlue manipulation.

The device looks like this:


----------



## winnipeg

The whole car/trucks industry is a fraud, let's hope it will push forward Tesla and their cars (and future trucks)...


----------



## Verso

Welcome to Switzerland Gypsytown.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ That is light compared to what you can sometimes find in Romania. 

Greetings from the smallest country in the European Union.


----------



## MichiH

The European Commissioner for Transport, Mrs. Bulc from Slovenia, was interviewed by a German national newspaper. She said that that it's planned to introduce an EU toll system. A legislative proposal should be published in May. *Goal: "Driver should be able to drive all European roads without stopping"* ("Autofahrer sollten künftig alle Straßen in Europa nutzen können, ohne anhalten zu müssen"). No sticker, no toll booth but a single electronic toll system. Toll rates should depend on pollutant emission and mileage driven. She hopes it could be effective by 2030.

Source in German: https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/arti...ant-einheitliches-Mautsystem-fuer-Europa.html (published 8:05AM CET, I guess it will be available in other languages "soon").


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Welcome to Switzerland Gypsytown.


Renault Megane? no, not happenning here. Mercedes is must have with such property.


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> The European Commissioner for Transport, Mrs. Bulc from Slovenia, was interviewed by a German national newspaper. She said that that it's planned to introduce an EU toll system. (...) She hopes it could be effective by 2030.


So in 13 years. Very optimistic, I shall say. Will EU exist in 2030? Will all the member states agree about such an idea?


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> That is light compared to what you can sometimes find in Romania.


If you mean tacky Disneyland-like houses (or mansions), it's not the same. That house actually has style and looks like straight from Switzerland with all those flowers. Of course the rest of the village doesn't look that well (although it's not so terrible either).


----------



## Kanadzie

Attus said:


> So in 13 years. Very optimistic, I shall say. Will EU exist in 2030? Will all the member states agree about such an idea?


The USA basically accomplished that (well, in large part) in perhaps less than 13 years (EZ-Pass) and the tolls were all managed by their state-level governments... it's definitely the kind of initiative the EU should be working at, facilitating interstate commerce and simplifying people's lives. And as seen here, many EU toll systems are working with the same equipment already so costs should be small.


----------



## Jeroen669

ChrisZwolle said:


> A new diesel scandal is emerging across Europe, the manipulation of AdBlue / Diesel Exhaust Fluid.
> 
> AdBlue is a fluid that is inserted into the exhaust of diesel engines, mostly trucks, but also some passenger cars. It cleans the exhaust so it can conform to the latest Euro emission standards. Without AdBlue, it would be as dirty as a 1990s truck.
> 
> However AdBlue cost money, reportedly the operating cost is around € 1000 - 2000 per year per truck. Eastern European trucks increasingly use devices that manipulate the engine management system, so it thinks the system is operating as it should, while in reality no AdBlue is consumed. This means they pay a lower toll rate in some countries than they should, and of course they pollute more.
> 
> The German ZDF reported on it earlier this year. The Polish police is aware of it and also checks trucks for AdBlue manipulation. The Norwegian police also checks foreign trucks for manipulation when entering the country, and they detect an increasing amount of AdBlue manipulation.
> 
> The device looks like this:


It's a matter of time before all police officers throughout europe know where to look at for this device. I expect this fraud to be over in just a couple of years. The economical benefit of not using adblue is simply too small to risk high fines, unlike for instance red diesel fraud (although the latter is a more well-known problem).


----------



## Kpc21

Opel Corsa B from 1993. Today, I had to exchange the headlight bulb. H4. An old car, so apparently it should be easy. A German one, in addition, so you can expect that they made it so that it's practical. But actually, to exchange the bulb, I had to remove a part hiding the access to the bulb (it was simple), but then... I had a lot of problems with installing the bulb in its place. It is kept there with a special spring, which I had much difficulty fitting. There is so little room over there that I could operate with one hand only and I couldn't see almost anything...

In an old German car.

A few months ago I was doing the same in Ford Fiesta MK7 from 2011. And I think it was simpler here... I had to disassemble the whole lamps, then disconnect a cable, which was not easy at all (the connector had a very strong latch - and I didn't want to break it), finally untighten two screws keeping the bulb in its place and remove the bulb. More steps to do and a tool (screwdriver) needed - but, actually, it wasn't so problematic as in Opel from 1993 - the access was considerably better.

And then... what when the police catches you not having one of the headlights? You have to exchange the bulb on site. If you haven't done it before, you will spend a lot of time with the police waiting until you finish...


----------



## makaveli6

Kpc21 said:


> And then... what when the police catches you not having one of the headlights? You have to exchange the bulb on site. If you haven't done it before, you will spend a lot of time with the police waiting until you finish...


Is it mandatory to change to bulb on spot in Poland? In Latvia you can continue driving to the nearest parking or car mechanic with your hazard lights on, if only one headlight is out.


----------



## Kpc21

Driving with hazard lights on? How do you indicate that you turn left or light then?

Yes, you must either change the bulb on the spot, or you get a fine and the police confiscates the registration certificate, you get a few days to exchange the bulb and then you can get the certificate back from the car registration authority.

In some countries, like Slovakia, if I am not mistaken, it's even obligatory to have a set of spare light bulbs with you. In Poland not, but if you are caught with no light, you must fix it.

And the lights are obligatory 24/7, so they can catch you for that even on a sunny day 

By the way, what I often notice is that some drivers have indicators with white glass in their cars - which means they should use orange light bulbs for them - but they use standard, transparent light bulbs, so their indicators do not blink orange, but yellowish-white... It's weird and sometimes annoying.


----------



## makaveli6

Kpc21 said:


> Driving with hazard lights on? How do you indicate that you turn left or light then?
> 
> Yes, you must either change the bulb on the spot, or you get a fine and the police confiscates the registration certificate, you get a few days to exchange the bulb and then you can get the certificate back from the car registration authority.
> 
> In some countries, like Slovakia, if I am not mistaken, it's even obligatory to have a set of spare light bulbs with you. In Poland not, but if you are caught with no light, you must fix it.
> 
> And the lights are obligatory 24/7, so they can catch you for that even on a sunny day
> 
> By the way, what I often notice is that some drivers have indicators with white glass in their cars - which means they should use orange light bulbs for them - but they use standard, transparent light bulbs, so their indicators do not blink orange, but yellowish-white... It's weird and sometimes annoying.


Apperantly you have to turn them off and use the indicator when turning, then turning the hazard lights back on, after the turn. But that's only in the dark. As you pointed out, we also have obligatory lights 24/7, so during the day you can use your front fog lights instead of the regular headlights, if something goes wrong with them. Quite a diffrence to Poland, where driving with front fog lights is practically forbidden.

This reminds me of older US imports on our roads (very few though), which sometimes have red glass instead of the orange one in the rear for indicators. So you see a red light blinking, that's quite confusing and made some dangerous situations on road.


----------



## Kpc21

I have heard about this red indicators problem too. In Poland it's not allowed to use red indicators, you must change them to orange ones.

Another problem with American cars are symmetric headlights. In Europe, they are required to be asymmetric.

And yet another problem is that the Polish law doesn't provide license plates in the American format. Some people do custom ones, but it's illegal. Others use ones in the square format (designed mostly for offroad cars and trucks, but they were once quite popular on Fiat 126p too) and bend them so that the plate protrudes from its place on the car down. So:


----------



## Suburbanist

New LED lamps are far more durable than old ones, right?

The only downside is that they produce little heat when on and don't melt any snow.


----------



## Verso

The Slovenian sea has just avoided an ecological disaster. A tanker with 200 t of oil got stranded between Koper and Trieste, but luckily rocks didn't break the ship's bottom (bilge). After it was stranded the whole night, they towed it to Koper and forbade it further sailing.

http://www.rtvslo.si/news-in-englis...aground-barely-avoids-a-major-disaster/418379


----------



## volodaaaa

I think this happen everywhere, not only in the Netherlands.

We have a tunnel on a bypass that especially during morning rush hour becomes severely congested. That obviously leads to a tunnel closure because of exhausts cummulating in enclosed places. Therefore the tunnel get often closed which is indicated by lane speed reduction and closure. I have stopped my car several times and almost got hit. Everytime I heard tires screeching.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ if its been closed for air quality more than once, why don't they improve the ventilation system already? :nuts:


----------



## Suburbanist

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ if its been closed for air quality more than once, why don't they improve the ventilation system already? :nuts:


All tunnels of short and medium length rely heavily on the piston effect of vehicles entering and exiting the tunnel. Improving ventilation systems would mean making such tunnels as sophisticated and expensive as longer tunnels.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ which is fine. If the tunnel is being closed regularly there is some problem, it's not designed properly and should be remedied.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ which is fine. If the tunnel is being closed regularly there is some problem, it's not designed properly and should be remedied.


Yep, not the first time the planners did something wrong. :cheers:


----------



## Fatfield

We've started getting a public information video on TV from the Highways Agency about ignoring a red cross. Not sure how much the fine is mind you.


----------



## volodaaaa

Fatfield said:


> We've started getting a public information video on TV from the Highways Agency about ignoring a red cross. Not sure how much the fine is mind you.


In Slovakia it is the same as passing the red light on the traffic light - i. e. the most severe violation. 

On the other hand I have never seen police enforcing it. :bash:


----------



## Surel

Slovakian Aeromobil to unveil new flying car model available for preorder this year.
http://www.designboom.com/technology/aeromobile-3-0-commercially-available-04-11-2017/

Apparently they are starting the serial production. But I am not sure how is it with their homologation.


----------



## Ices77

Surel said:


> Apparently they are starting the serial production. But I am not sure how is it with their homologation.


According to Slovak media, it is certified. New investor, Patrick Hessel is also a good stimul for the new generation Aeromobil 4.0. They want to start serial production in 2018/2019, but even if, I am afraid, that the price will be enormously high for the normal, or average paid person .


----------



## Verso

Yesterday I saw the "new" Kosovo (RKS) license plate in Ljubljana for the first time. I can't believe it took me over 6 years to spot one.


----------



## keokiracer

How to use a traffic signalled pedestrian crossing to your advantage as a car driver


----------



## g.spinoza

In Italy they are just cosmetic, don't really do anything.


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> In Italy they are just cosmetic, don't really do anything.


Some people don't know, but always check the lights of the pedestrian crossing running along your thru lane. It can indicate both turning to red light and turning to green light in advance. The same goes for the pedestrian crossing running across your road. As long as the pedestrians have green light ahead you can remain calm.


----------



## g.spinoza

I know, everybody in my city do that: pedestrian lights change before, so they can start earlier than the other cars.
I was talking about the pedestrian button for calling the green light: you can push it again and again, they just won't work.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Interesting, in the Netherlands they always work, because virtually all traffic signals are demand-based systems, not fixed phasing. So if there are no pedestrians or cyclists wanting to cross, it doesn't go green for them.


----------



## bogdymol

What if a button or sensor is broken? Will that traffic light show endless red for a certain direction?


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> In Italy they are just cosmetic, don't really do anything.


Maybe they are only intended for blind people, not to reduce waiting time for green light?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There aren't a lot of pedestrian crossings with traffic lights in the Netherlands, most are integrated within an intersection, and they usually will go green if there is no conflict or traffic coming, so that those who happen to be arriving can go without having to stop. 

For example if the main road gets a green and there is no right turning traffic, the parallel bike path gets a green light too, even if there are no cyclists detected.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> What if a button or sensor is broken? Will that traffic light show endless red for a certain direction?


These semaphores are usually connected with others to ensure the line coordination of traffic signals (so it also provides a "natural" green light). By pushing the button you just insert a new phase into a signal plan. This is how it works here.


----------



## Junkie

Verso said:


> Yesterday I saw the "new" Kosovo (RKS) license plate in Ljubljana for the first time. I can't believe it took me over 6 years to spot one.


As I know they changed them recently. But there are no obligations to change the old ones prior to the continued registration. I see old and new ones every day.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A large amount of snow in Southern Poland. I think it's quite unusual to see this much snow in late April in the lowlands.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

An iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland creates a spectacular view. There is reportedly a lot of congestion on the road to Ferryland, where this iceberg is located. It's quite far south, 47 N, on a similar latitude as Switzerland. Though icebergs do get farther south than this.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> A large amount of snow in Southern Poland. I think it's quite unusual to see this much snow in late April in the lowlands.


And in the central Poland... no snow at all.

Although the media say that some parts of my voivodeship suffer power outages due to excessive amounts of snow which overloads the wires on the lines between villages (mechanically).

Quite unusual - but in April still possible here.


----------



## italystf

Also last year Central Europe (including Northern Italy above 500 meters) had snow in late April.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> An iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland creates a spectacular view. There is reportedly a lot of congestion on the road to Ferryland, where this iceberg is located. It's quite far south, 47 N, on a similar latitude as Switzerland. Though icebergs do get farther south than this.


That's not far away from where Titanic sunk 105 years ago, and it was in the same period of the year too.
North America's winters are usually colder than European ones, at the same latitude, because North America doesn't get Gulf Stream.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Also last year Central Europe (including Northern Italy above 500 meters) had snow in late April.


I remember. Was on my way to trst.


----------



## Innsertnamehere

italystf said:


> That's not far away from where Titanic sunk 105 years ago, and it was in the same period of the year too.
> North America's winters are usually colder than European ones, at the same latitude, because North America doesn't get Gulf Stream.


Yup. New York is further south than both Naples and Barcelona. New York is far, far colder than those two.

Newfoundland actually has quite moderate temperatures for its latitude in North America, if it were inland it would be at the same latitude as the freezing cold North Dakota.


----------



## CNGL

N Hitler St :shifty:

Actually it is named after one of the original settlers of the area. There is more people surnamed Hitler.


----------



## g.spinoza

I ordered yesterday my new car, a Peugeot 3008.

Delivery time: 7 months


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> I ordered yesterday my new car, a Peugeot 3008.
> 
> Delivery time: 7 months


What? That long? Did you order it at a regular seller? What are the specs (something unusually customized)?


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> What? That long? Did you order it at a regular seller? What are the specs (something unusually customized)?


It is a certified Peugeot dealer in Turin. The car is not particularly customized: it is a GT-Line (the next-to-top trimming) with some options. The dealer showed me a brochure they regularly receive from the manufacturer which states the ETA for each trimming: others were shorter, the GT-Line was 210-240 days... :bash:


----------



## bogdymol

Peugeot 3008 is an interesting car. I'll be honest and say loud that the front is ugly (in my opinion), the back is nice, but the interior... the interior is one of the best you can currently find on the market. It looks like the cockpit from a Star Trek shuttle:










Wish you all the best and many km without any incidents!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Some auto journalists criticized the small steering wheel that Peugeot uses, but liked it in the 3008 because it's not in the way due to the higher seating.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> Peugeot 3008 is an interesting car. I'll be honest and say loud that the front is ugly (in my opinion), the back is nice, but the interior... the interior is one of the best you can currently find on the market. It looks like the cockpit from a Star Trek shuttle:
> 
> Wish you all the best and many km without any incidents!


Thank you very much!
I am not a fan of the back of this car but I appreciate the front and I think the side is very nice. Of course the interior is impressive.
I think the best looking car in this category is the Hyundai Tucson, but I test-drove it and wasn't impressed.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Some auto journalists criticized the small steering wheel that Peugeot uses, but liked it in the 3008 because it's not in the way due to the higher seating.


I did a test drive before buying and I did not have problems with the steering wheel at all: I think it is an improvement over my current 207's because this always stands between my eyes and the dashboard. To see the instruments I currently have to set the wheel too high for my arms. I had little problems with the shift stick, it is a little too high: but I think it is something you get used to eventually.


----------



## Fatfield

ChrisZwolle said:


> Some auto journalists criticized the small steering wheel that Peugeot uses, but liked it in the 3008 because it's not in the way due to the higher seating.


My 308 has this and it didn't take me long to get used to it. In fact, there's no real difference to a normal steering wheel except the top of it is below the dash. The idea was that you would sit in a position whereby you could look at the dials with minimum eye movement from looking at the road ahead. Doesn't make any difference to me as I'm 6'2" (189cm) so I still have to tilt my head slightly to see the dials.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Peugeot 3008 GT Line is priced in the Netherlands: from € 35,360 (1.2 Puretech petrol), € 39,890 (1.6 e-THP petrol) or € 49,650 (2.0 HDI diesel). Those are the base prices, without any options.


----------



## MajKeR_

g.spinoza said:


> I ordered yesterday my new car, a Peugeot 3008.
> 
> Delivery time: 7 months


Don't you have enough decent cars being manufactured in Italy? :troll:

I guess I'll must look for something for my mum this year. If only the price is reliable, it would be nice preposition  She would prefer something taller, so as for now, VW Golf Sportsvan and Citroen C4 Picasso look the best. Currently she has a 2005 VW New Beetle with very nice setup and the plan is that I'll get it if becomes unuseful for her. :troll:


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Peugeot 3008 GT Line is priced in the Netherlands: from € 35,360 (1.2 Puretech petrol), € 39,890 (1.6 e-THP petrol) or € 49,650 (2.0 HDI diesel). Those are the base prices, without any options.


Wow, that's expensive.
Basic 2.0 HDi diesel, in Italy, is priced at 33,900 €. I got mine, with 2,500 € worth of optionals and giving back my 207, for 31k.



MajKeR_ said:


> Don't you have enough decent cars being manufactured in Italy? :troll:


I was very interested in the new Jeep Compass (I know it's American, but owned by Fiat and I think it is produced in Italy as the Renegade is), but the dealer told me that the Opening Edition (with a lot of optionals and very decently priced) was out of stock and didn't know when or if it would be available again.


----------



## Kanadzie

30 000 something Euro for car with an engine that is small for a motorcycle?!


----------



## bogdymol

2.0 is not small by European standards, but this is seen different in North America...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

How to pronounce 'Kosciuszko Bridge' in New York City.

https://www.facebook.com/ny1news/videos/1237766716322191/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED

The I-278 bridge is named after Tadeusz Kościuszko, a Polish general in the American Revolutionary War. 

The Polish guy pronounced it correctly, but the confusion about the name is understandable given that these letters are pronounced differently in English and in Polish.

Just like 'Berlin' or 'Paris' may be spelled the same in German/French and English, but are pronounced quite differently in German and French.


----------



## MajKeR_

Kpc21 said:


> We don't have a road tax (paid explicitly), but the engine capacity influences highly the insurance price.


Didn't realize this while paying for Fiat 126p (650 cc) and VW NB (1900 cc) :troll:


----------



## Kpc21

There is Kościuszko Mountain in Australia (the tallest mountain of the continent, by the way). Australians pronounce it in a definitely non-Polish way.


----------



## MattiG

Wind 8 m/s from NE. Temperature +1 centigrade, feels like - 5 because of the wind. Heavy snowfall. Visibility 50 meters. Summer is coming!


----------



## Suburbanist

We had an unusually warm month of March. Then, around April 4, temperatures dropped and we even had some days nearing zero.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

April had a lower average temperature than March. But the first week of April was above average while the last three weeks of April were frequently 6-7 degrees below average. 

It seems to be a trend, with unseasonal warm weather in early spring followed by a cold spring and early summer.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Park and ride!


----------



## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> We had an unusually warm month of March. Then, around April 4, temperatures dropped and we even had some days nearing zero.


Same in Poland.


----------



## g.spinoza

80 cm of snow in the mountains around Turin


----------



## Alex_ZR

Few days ago in Vrbas, Serbia, old Zastava 101 was split in two after being hit by BMW. Luckily, passengers got only light injuries.


----------



## bogdymol

Yesterday morning there were -3 degrees where I live in Austria. I also had to clean the car of 5-10 cm fresh snow in the morning. My parents are now in Tyrol, where it was -15 degrees and approx. 50 cm of fresh snow in one night. So long 1st of May week-end brought snow and chilly temperatures in the area I live. 

Therefore today I flew to Portugal, where is warmer. Greetings from Faro. :cheers:


----------



## Kpc21

It is starting getting warmer in Poland.

Friday was a totally rainy day, which... resulted in much increased traffic jams in the city (many people chose cars instead of public transport because of the rain). There were also moments with snow (snow and rain, actually). But today, it was already quite warm and with only very minor showers, difficult even to feel.

Some parts of Poland - not only in the mountains - had heavy snowfalls within the last week. Fortunately, not my area.


----------



## Suburbanist

European new car registrations march 2017 x march 2016 (from The Economist).










I wonder how much of this growth is recovery from crisis in a more stable manner, and how much is just delayed purchases (new car sales in Europe dropped significantly during 2008-11 crisis, people started holding longer into vehicles that became more durable and were driven less, but there is only so many years you can still cling to an old car before maintenance costs or new environmental regulations makes it impractical). 

Another factoid: new car registrations in Europe surpassed those in the US for the first time ever.


----------



## Suburbanist

I have another question: have Smart cars been a fad in your country, already out of the way? I think they were killed by cheap and reliable small cars like Citroën C1 or Toyota Aygo, which are more fuel efficient, substantially quieter and more spacious than the Smart ForTwo. I was living in Italy in 2008-9 and, by then, they were selling really well and being parked perpendicularly all over the place. Some regulations against that were later passed, enforcement appeared to be spotty yet. Here in the Netherlands, there were not many Smart FourTwo, and over time they became even rarer.


----------



## volodaaaa

Suburbanist said:


> I have another question: have Smart cars been a fad in your country, already out of the way? I think they were killed by cheap and reliable small cars like Citroën C1 or Toyota Aygo, which are more fuel efficient, substantially quieter and more spacious than the Smart ForTwo. I was living in Italy in 2008-9 and, by then, they were selling really well and being parked perpendicularly all over the place. Some regulations against that were later passed, enforcement appeared to be spotty yet. Here in the Netherlands, there were not many Smart FourTwo, and over time they became even rarer.


Yes. There is a significant drop of Smart cars on our roads. After having read your post, I immediately visited the site of the Smart importer and checked the prices. It got cheaper. The used cars (10yo) are not more expensive than 2500 €.


----------



## g.spinoza

Next Sunday I will leave for a week of work in the (very northern) Svalbard Islands. I will try and document the roads there, or lack thereof, for you.
Temperatures are expected to be in the -20s °C, so maybe there won't be many pictures outdoor, after all.


----------



## Attus

What do you mean, what is your opinion?
It's Germany, or any other country where inbound roads don't cancel speed limits. A dynamic overhead sign shows 100 km/h speed limit (the usual sign, 100 in a red circle). Approx. one kilometer away the next similar overhead sign is dark (i.e. empty, it does not show anything), the one after is dark as well. The way on, several (20-30) kilometers long there is not any speed limit related sign. 
It sounds crazy but it's quite typical in A1-A61 in Western Germany. It happened to me at least ten times in the las six months.

Edit: Wow, exactly 2,500 posts.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> I have another question: have Smart cars been a fad in your country, already out of the way? I think they were killed by cheap and reliable small cars like Citroën C1 or Toyota Aygo, which are more fuel efficient, substantially quieter and more spacious than the Smart ForTwo. I was living in Italy in 2008-9 and, by then, they were selling really well and being parked perpendicularly all over the place. Some regulations against that were later passed, enforcement appeared to be spotty yet. Here in the Netherlands, there were not many Smart FourTwo, and over time they became even rarer.


The C1 / 107 / Aygo killed the Smart I think. These small city cars are extremely popular in the Netherlands and affordable, whereas Smart is expensive and for a lifestyle city car, people rather buy the Mini.



g.spinoza said:


> Next Sunday I will leave for a week of work in the (very northern) Svalbard Islands. I will try and document the roads there, or lack thereof, for you.
> Temperatures are expected to be in the -20s °C, so maybe there won't be many pictures outdoor, after all.


That's a cool trip, not many people go up there. You'll probably have a great time there. 

Are you going here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault ?


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's a cool trip, not many people go up there. You'll probably have a great time there.
> 
> Are you going here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault ?


No, I'm no botanist.

I'm going here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirigibile_Italia_Arctic_Station

we will install a permanent calibration facility for permafrost and air temperature sensors.


----------



## italystf

^^ Ny-Ålesund (not to be confused with Ålesund) is the northernmost inhabitated settlement in the world, known for the Airship Italia disaster of 1928.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> ^^ Ny-Ålesund (not to be confused with Ålesund) is the northernmost inhabitated settlement in the world, known for the Airship Italia disaster of 1928.


This is disputed. Some say that Alert, Nunavut is. Ny-Ålesund is located 78° N, Alert is at 82 °N.


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> ^^ Ny-Ålesund (not to be confused with Ålesund) is the northernmost inhabitated settlement in the world, known for the Airship Italia disaster of 1928.


In fact Ny-Alesund means "New Alesund", so they are related.


g.spinoza said:


> This is disputed. Some say that Alert, Nunavut is. Ny-Ålesund is located 78° N, Alert is at 82 °N.


Station Nord in Greenland is also further North than Ny-Alesund. Oh, and how I could miss Camp Barneo somewhere in the ice cap near the North Pole :colgate:. Anyway, the northernmost true town, i.e. settlement with permanent population, is Longyearbyen, not far from Ny-Alesund.


----------



## bogdymol

I just spotted a car registered in Moscow (777 Oblast) in Cascais, west of Lisbon, Portugal. That'a a long drive...


----------



## keber

Russians get everywhere, even more than Dutch. 1000 km is nothing for them. Few days ago I was around Lake Garda and Russian plates were as common as in Helsinki if not even more.
I also saw GBG plate for the first time (do you find out which country is it without Google?)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's Guernsey, right? GB + G. Gibraltar is GBZ if I'm not mistaken.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's Guernsey, right? GB + G. Gibraltar is GBZ if I'm not mistaken.


Yes, it is.
GBZ: Gribraltar
GBG: Guernsey
GBJ: Jersey
GBM: Man
I've never spotted any of them, though.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> Russians get everywhere, even more than Dutch. 1000 km is nothing for them. Few days ago I was around Lake Garda and Russian plates were as common as in Helsinki if not even more.
> I also saw GBG plate for the first time (do you find out which country is it without Google?)


I confirm, there's quite a lot Russian plates here in summer, mostly on expensive cars and with Moscow codes (I always google them to see if I find something more exotic like Vladivostok or something else very eastern).


----------



## cinxxx

^^I've seen RU car somewhere on a motorway between Manchester and York. I also see from time to time BY (not Bavaria :lol around Munich.

GBZ I've seen of course in Gibraltar


----------



## CNGL

I only got St. Petersburg in Central Spain back in 2011. And I remember seeing a car from Guernsey once.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In 2015 I was strolling through the dunes near Tarifa, which is the southernmost point of mainland Spain. There was a car parked with a GBG plate. First I thought, O.K., no big deal because Gibraltar is nearby. Then I realized GBG is not Gibraltar but Guernsey.


----------



## x-type

Russians are coming with cars here in Croatia in the summer too. probably it is more aadventure than flying for them.

I am now thinking about European plates that are probably the rarest here in HR, it is definitely Finland. I saw it maybe 2 or 3 times. ok, excluding Iceland which I saw once, maybe twice.


----------



## g.spinoza

I remember a huge SUV (don't remember the model) with Russian plates struggling its way through the very narrow streets of Sirmione, on lake Garda...

A waitress at an ice cream shop in the old town was outraged and told me that she, not resident there (only employed) cannot enter the town with her teeny tiny car, and has to park - paying - very far away, while rich Russians come with their giant cars and can roam around the town paying nothing...


----------



## italystf

I've never seen Iceland, Malta, Kosovo, all British territories, Aland.
Seen only once: Faer-Oer, Transnistria (in Austria)
Very rarely seen: Andorra, Ireland, Estonia, Liechtenstein, Turkey (on cars, trucks are common)

Non-European plates spotted: USA (cars from Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Kansas, California, Virginia), Canada (two cars from Ontario), Japan (a motorcycle in Budapest), Iraq (a truck), Iran (a few trucks), Georgia (a few trucks), Tunisia (a truck), Algeria (a car), Russia (truck from Novosibirsk and cars from Ekaterinburg/Celjabinsk).


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> I remember a huge SUV (don't remember the model) with Russian plates struggling its way through the very narrow streets of Sirmione, on lake Garda...
> 
> A waitress at an ice cream shop in the old town was outraged and told me that she, not resident there (only employed) cannot enter the town with her teeny tiny car, and has to park - paying - very far away, while rich Russians come with their giant cars and can roam around the town paying nothing...


It's not that he was allowed to do so, he just did it risking to being fined (because he didn't know it was forbidden or just didn't care).


----------



## Kpc21

Maybe they are just so rich that paying a fine is nothing for them.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> I've never seen Iceland, Malta, Kosovo, all British territories, Aland.
> Seen only once: Faer-Oer, Transnistria (in Austria)
> Very rarely seen: Andorra, Ireland, Estonia, Liechtenstein, Turkey (on cars, trucks are common)
> 
> Non-European plates spotted: USA (cars from Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Kansas, California, Virginia), Canada (two cars from Ontario), Japan (a motorcycle in Budapest), Iraq (a truck), Iran (a few trucks), Georgia (a few trucks), Tunisia (a truck), Algeria (a car), Russia (truck from Novosibirsk and cars from Ekaterinburg/Celjabinsk).


It is because you are not located on the gastarbeiter commuting route :lol: Just visit Hungarian M1 motorway and you are very likely to see all European plates 

Very common exotic plates here are Greek, Macedonian, Turkish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Russian.

Few times I've seen Iranian and Irish plates.

I have never seen Malta here, but saw Cyprus once. 

From the strangest observations I've ever seen the top was the black Belarusian Cadillac GMT K2XL Escalade with all limo-dimmed windows and the licence plate 1111-AA-11 overtaking me on the Bratislava bypass at 140 kph. First I thought Lukashenko had arrived :lol:


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> I've never seen Iceland, Malta, Kosovo, all British territories, Aland.
> Seen only once: Faer-Oer, Transnistria (in Austria)
> Very rarely seen: Andorra, Ireland, Estonia, Liechtenstein, Turkey (on cars, trucks are common)
> .


ok, i didn't think of those displaced teritorries. 
you are right for Andorra and Turkey on cars, I saw Andorra only in Spain. the same stands for Monaco, very rarely seen, although i saw it. for instance, Liechenstein and San Marino are much more often. Ireland and Estonia I also see quite often during the summer. but Finland - no way.


----------



## Junkie

Just before the summer starts I see a lot of foreign (european) plates transiting on the way to Greece. I see Romanian, Hungarian, Slovak, Polish cars and buses, and I've just spotted Moldavian plate starting with the letter "C", so probably that's their capital city code.


----------



## cinxxx

I've only seen RKS plates once at the border between MNE and AL


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> It's not that he was allowed to do so, he just did it risking to being fined (because he didn't know it was forbidden or just didn't care).


No, tourist lodging in one of the town's hotel are allowed to do so.


----------



## MajKeR_

x-type said:


> Does somebody know if there are police checks at A-D borders nowadays?


What kind of stuff would you like to carry?  I guess if you drive a normal, passenger car you should not be afraid about any control - simply they would not be interested in stopping you


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm guessing he wants to know if there are any delays to be expected at border crossings.


----------



## Suburbanist

I imagine how long delays would be if Belgium decides to impose border controls on inbound traffic from the Netherlands for whatever reason.


----------



## bogdymol

x-type said:


> Does somebody know if there are police checks at A-D borders nowadays?


In the past year I crossed A-D border every month, at Passau and Salzburg. In 90% of the cases there were random controls, but the lost time was no longer than 10 minutes. You just have to drive slowly through the check point, and they just wave you through...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Temperatures took quite a jump in the Netherlands. The past 5 weeks had more or less cool to cold spring weather significantly below normal, many days hardly cracked 10 - 13 °C. But today there were summer-like temperatures.

The average July high is 22 °C. Though 30 °C is pretty common every summer, but usually not weeks on end. Today reached 28 °C which is 10 °C above average. Tomorrow may be even a few degrees warmer, it would be interesting to see if it can crack the 30 °C mark (which is considered 'tropical' in Dutch climatology).


----------



## Suburbanist

Ameland seems te place to be!


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm guessing he wants to know if there are any delays to be expected at border crossings.


exactly


bogdymol said:


> In the past year I crossed A-D border every month, at Passau and Salzburg. In 90% of the cases there were random controls, but the lost time was no longer than 10 minutes. You just have to drive slowly through the check point, and they just wave you through...


thanks.

one more thing - i will have to enter to Köln with my car, and I have never been entering to (larger) cities in Germany by car. i guess I need Umweltplakette. can I buy it at any gas station or similar?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The internet says you can buy the sticker at major gas stations. You can also order it online.


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> exactly
> 
> thanks.
> 
> one more thing - i will have to enter to Köln with my car, and I have never been entering to (larger) cities in Germany by car. i guess I need Umweltplakette. can I buy it at any gas station or similar?


Yes, you need an Umweltplakette, almost the whole area of Cologne is environmental area (Umweltzone). Only green stickers are allowed.
You can't buy it in any gas station, but in many ones.


----------



## MajKeR_

I would prefer to visit some car service or ADAC point to buy the Umweltplakette. There you might be sure that you can buy it and it would not cost more than €5. To be honest, I have never heard about buing the Umweltplakette at any gas station, while checked it well before one travel to Berlin. Any car dealership is a proper destination


----------



## g.spinoza

I don't think you can buy Umweltplakette at gas stations. I had to buy mine at TÜV, and they wanted my car registration papers. I don't think a pump guy is qualified


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ They'll just have to match the vehicle emission type on the registration papers with the type of environmental sticker. I'm guessing they can feed the type approval into a system that says which sticker they are eligible for.

I've never got one at a fuel station, but websites point out it is possible at major fuel stations. 

France also introduced a 'Crit Air' vignette this year. You need it in Paris, Lyon and Grenoble so far, but it is expected to be rolled out in many more cities. I ordered the Crit Air vignette on the government website, it cost like € 4 and it was mailed to my home address. I needed to upload a photo of my registration certificate.

https://www.certificat-air.gouv.fr/


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kind of weird to see the Netherlands in a list of hottest cities in Europe today...


----------



## MajKeR_

ChrisZwolle said:


> France also introduced a 'Crit Air' vignette this year. You need it in Paris, Lyon and Grenoble so far, but it is expected to be rolled out in many more cities. I ordered the Crit Air vignette on the government website, it cost like € 4 and it was mailed to my home address. I needed to upload a photo of my registration certificate.
> 
> https://www.certificat-air.gouv.fr/


Because it would be too mainstream to ask the Germans about using their kind of sticker. :bash:


----------



## Kanadzie

How stringent are checks for such sticker? Could I take just green circle and tape to window instead? 
This stupid thing really should be resisted more forcefully... even if just by some EU-directive that cars meeting a certain emissions class get a particular sticker on the number plate, in all EU countries.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> The internet says you can buy the sticker at major gas stations. You can also order it online.


I ordered my sticker yesterday. Let us see what happens.

Quite a clumsy way to prove your car is manufactured no earlier than 2003. But so German: the more bureaucracy the better.


----------



## Suburbanist

As I said before, the EU should pass a measure to stop all this non-sense. Create a EU-wide "environmental sticker" based on EURO standards. Disallow any other classification of vehicles other than by their weight, size, fuel and EURO standard. Introduce a standard EURO traffic sign to make clear who can and cannot operate a vehicle (like the ones they have for weight and size...)


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> As I said before, the EU should pass a measure to stop all this non-sense. Create a EU-wide "environmental sticker" based on EURO standards. Disallow any other classification of vehicles other than by their weight, size, fuel and EURO standard. Introduce a standard EURO traffic sign to make clear who can and cannot operate a vehicle (like the ones they have for weight and size...)


I agree. These are the things EU should really pursue: these little things that make actually our life easier and make us feel like we're living in one big nation.
For instance, during my trip to Norway and Svalbard Islands I used for the first time free roaming cell phone connection, and it was incredibly helpful in many situations.


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> I agree. These are the things EU should really pursue: these little things that make actually our life easier and make us feel like we're living in one big nation.
> For instance, during my trip to Norway and Svalbard Islands I used for the first time free roaming cell phone connection, and it was incredibly helpful in many situations.


June 15th is really a big day for telecommunication in Europe, with introduction of free roaming also for data. It means I can get only single data plan and never bother again with pesky unsecured WiFi, or data caps. 

Something I think EU did a while ago and is really helpful is the European Health Insurance Card scheme.


----------



## Tenjac

x-type said:


> exactly
> 
> thanks.
> 
> one more thing - i will have to enter to Köln with my car, and I have never been entering to (larger) cities in Germany by car. i guess I need Umweltplakette. can I buy it at any gas station or similar?


You can buy this stickers in Croatia. HAK is selling them.
http://www.hak.hr/ino/eko-zone/


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> June 15th is really a big day for telecommunication in Europe, with introduction of free roaming also for data. It means I can get only single data plan and never bother again with pesky unsecured WiFi, or data caps.
> 
> Something I think EU did a while ago and is really helpful is the European Health Insurance Card scheme.


Fortunately my provider (Wind Italia) voluntarily implemented free data roaming before the deadline and I was able to use it already...


----------



## Attus

Suburbanist said:


> As I said before, the EU should pass a measure to stop all this non-sense. Create a EU-wide "environmental sticker" based on EURO standards. Disallow any other classification of vehicles other than by their weight, size, fuel and EURO standard. Introduce a standard EURO traffic sign to make clear who can and cannot operate a vehicle (like the ones they have for weight and size...)


 Germany would never agree that. And they can actually block any initiative about it.


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> Fortunately my provider (Wind Italia) voluntarily implemented free data roaming before the deadline and I was able to use it already...


A Romanian mobile provider said the same: they offer free roaming 2 months before it becomes mandatory*.

There was also an asterix* at the end, which nobody read, until it was too late. This promotion was valid only for new clients, existing contract clients who extend their contract with minimum 2 years or pre-paid numbers only if you top it with a certain amount.

After June 15 we will be able to use Waze or Google Maps for navigation within Europe without having to worry.


----------



## maxredaktor

Good for you. In Poland we have 4 big telecom companies. Only one of them (Orange) have decided to make roaming fees disappear for good


----------



## MajKeR_

^^ In Poland they managed to do the ordinary stuff. After the whole euphoria about further abolition of roaming fees around the EU they have shown their non-roaming price lists and, seemingly, we'll stay with similar fees to previous ones. :lol: Reason? High operating costs compared with low prices of services at all. But as I've read yesterday, officials of European Commision said that "our agreement was not like that" and operators might be forced to change their price lists into proper ones and pay fines for current ones. :lol:


----------



## Kpc21

Our telecommunications authority (UKE) also says they will do everything to enforce the new rules on the operators.

From what I have heard, even Orange (the Polish branch, of course) wants to introduce the "roam-like-at-home" model only in the subscription-based offers, not in the pre-paid ones. So they are breaking the new rules too.

I may understand the operators - in Poland, we have probably the cheapest mobile phone services in the EU. I use a pre-paid offer from one of our main operators (Play Mobile) and I pay 9 gr (about 2 eurocents) for an SMS, 29 gr (about 7 eurocents) for a minute of a voice connection. I don't use a data package, but I can get, for example, a 600 MB one for 5 zł (more or less 1 euro), a 6 GB one for 20 zł (more or less 4 euro). For 25 zł/month (5 euro), I can get an offer with unlimited voice calls and text messages and 6 GB of Internet. A low quality data service (with a separate SIM card, with no voice or text capabilities, only for Internet) is available totally for free. Who in Europe pays less?

When I was in Germany, it was sometimes cheaper to use a Polish SIM card in international roaming then a German local SIM card while making a phone call to a German number.

It's a total bargain now in Poland, and the operators will probably have to increase the prices to afford roam-like-at-home. But, anyway, if that's a regulation, they should follow it instead of breaking it in a weird way...


----------



## Verso

I've just seen a car from the Chelyabinsk Oblast (174) in Ljubljana. This is the first time I see a license plate from Siberia.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Suburbanist said:


> June 15th is really a big day for telecommunication in Europe, with introduction of free roaming also for data. It means I can get only single data plan and never bother again with pesky unsecured WiFi, or data caps.


For Estonians data will become cheaper but it won't become free, unless you choose a data plan which includes some free data within EU. The issue is that data is around 3.5 times cheaper in Estonia than the wholesale price that the EU agreed on. This means that a mobile service provider in Spain is allowed to charge the Estonian provider a lot more for data than the Estonian provider charges its customers at the moment. The Estonian provider is allowed (according to the EU regulation) to charge the customer for this difference in price or they can choose to take it out of their profits.

AFAIK the situation is similar in other Northern European countries as well. This is the results of serious lobbying by mobile service providers in Southern Europe (mostly).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I have a 10 GB/month data plan which I can use at no additional charge throughout the EU. The price is € 30 / month for the data and € 15 / month to pay off my Samsung Galaxy S6 under a two-year contract. So € 45 / month in total.

Some Dutch cell phone providers recently started with unlimited plans throughout the EU for € 25 / month. Until recently data bundles were rather limited and expensive compared to other countries. The first thing Dutch people do at a restaurant or campsite is asking for the wifi code. Last year I paid € 10 for a 500 MB EU bundle (valid 1 month).


----------



## SeanT

I have a 20 Hrs + 20 GB (6 GB EU) for DKK 119/month
€ 15.87/month
Free SMS/MMS
...but from the first of June or July ( I don´t remember ) is going to be 
DKK 139/month
€ 18,53/month
It is because of the new deal with the roaming.
Actually, the EU made som critisism about these changings across the providers in Denmark.


----------



## g.spinoza

My plan is 5 GB and 500 minutes (no SMS) for 10 €/month


----------



## Suburbanist

I pay € 35/month for 20GB, 120 SMS, 120 minutes.


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> I pay € 35/month for 20GB, 120 SMS, 120 minutes.


I have a set of 7 SIMs, each contributing 6 eur/month and 4 GB/month to the shared data and cost pool. Thus 28 GB/month for 42 eur/month. Calls 5,5 cents/min and SMSs 5,5 cents each. 

The operator has not yet made an announcement for the pricing valid from June 15th.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I used to have a 1 GB/month plan. That's only sufficient for Whatsapp and internet browsing, if you want to use traffic services or watch video you need more. 

With 10 GB/month I don't have to connect to wifi to watch video or update apps. Especially public wifi is either unsecure or overloaded. If you're at a campsite you see all visitors gang up around the reception with their tablets and phones to enjoy very slow internet. 

I'm glad these high cost data bundles for EU roaming are a thing of the past, it should've been gone years ago... The next step would be affordable unlimited data plans throughout the EU (if not the world). Data plans for outside Europe are ridiculously expensive still. My provider charges € 40 / 100 MB for the most-visited countries outside the EU and € 55 for 100 MB in 'world other' countries.


----------



## Suburbanist

@ChrisZwolle, which countries are you visiting/filming this summer?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Probably the southern half of Europe. I'm thinking about going to the Dolomites in June and maybe combine it with other areas, depending on the weather. 

I'm planning to take two two-week vacations, one in June and one in September. The one in September will likely be France + Spain again (maybe Portugal as well). But I'm very flexible, I've haven't had a vacation with any significant rain for the past 10 years. I just follow the good weather.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Probably the southern half of Europe. I'm thinking about going to the Dolomites in June and maybe combine it with other areas, depending on the weather.
> 
> I'm planning to take two two-week vacations, one in June and one in September. The one in September will likely be France + Spain again (maybe Portugal as well). But I'm very flexible, I've haven't had a vacation with any significant rain for the past 10 years. I just follow the good weather.


I see.

You should travel to South Italy, then. Weather in Calabria and Sicilia is often very good in June and good in September, unless there is a low-pressure system stationed there (but those week-long cloudy/rainy spells in September are easy to avoid with 10-day advance forecast). July and first half of August can be quite crowded with tourists but June and September are shoulder season. 

I think you will like the landscapes and complex roads with plenty of viaducts and embankments and what else.


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## CNGL

I currently have a 5 GB/month plan. My provider doesn't charge any roaming fees in the EU... and USA.


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## volodaaaa

I have unlimited mms and sms, 5000 min to my operator and 1gb data for 9 € / month. Last time, upon my contract expiration, I opted for not taking a new cell phone, so I have kept the last one (HTC, which I am currently not satisfied with).

I also got another sim card for my travel internet. I have to buy credit in advance and than I can buy the 1 gb for 1 eur.


----------



## Kpc21

Rebasepoiss said:


> For Estonians data will become cheaper but it won't become free,


Well. The EU agreed that the data plans will not be valid in the whole EU like in the original country of the SIM cards, and it's valid everywhere, but only for a few years.

And does any of your operators do what most Polish ones does, that means, they limit the number of the "roam-like-at-home" minutes and SMS-es?

Concerning the roaming packages in the EU, in my operator, it looks like this:
- 25 MB - 9 zł - 2 euro
- 100 MB - 19 zł - 4 euro
- 300 MB - 49 zł - 11 euro
- 500 MB - 69 zł - 15 euro
in a pre-paid offer.

If I pay 69 zł for the Internet package to use within Poland, I get over 12 GB (6 GB / 20 zł - 20 times cheaper than in the roaming package, within the EU).

So the data transfer in the roaming is still expensive as compared to in the country.

The case with the Internet is interesting, because when you go abroad, you can always buy a SIM card for Internet from a local operator. It's not like with phone calls and SMS-es, where you still have to be available under the phone number from your country. For the Internet, it doesn't matter (unless you are in a country with censored Internet, although I am not sure, how it works and whether the censorship covers foreign SIM cards too).

But, actually, the Polish prices of mobile services are total bargain, so if you buy a local SIM card somewhere abroad, you will not pay much less, and maybe even more.

Concerning the data roaming prices without any packages...
Within the country: 12 gr/100 kB (= less then 3 eurocents)
In the EU: 1 zł/1 MB (= 10 gr/100 kB, so kind of a little bit cheaper than within the country!)
Zone 1: 1,81 zł/100 kB (= 8 euro)
Zone 2: 2,72 zł/100 kB (= 12 euro)
Zone 3: 4,54 zł/100 kB (= 20 euro)

So even here it's cheap, as compared with the Netherlands, for example!

By the way, the EU means also some external territories like French Guyana.

Zone 1 - Albania, Andorra, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Canada, Macedonia (FYROM), Moldova, Kosovo, Russia, Serbia, USA, Turkey and Ukraine.
So not necessarily most visited countries, just European countries and some other European ones.

Zone 2 - the rest of the world.

Zone 3 - satellite networks.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Water explosion in Kyiv:


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Starting 1 June, I have a 10 GB/month package. I won't be using slow public wifi then... Though I noticed that 4G coverage in France, Spain, etc. is more spotty compared to the Netherlands where there is almost 100% 4G coverage. Last week I was in the Vosges and there were quite a number of areas with no 4G or even no signal at all.


Is there any other so densely populated country in Europe as the Netherlands? I don't think so. So it's not weird that it was affordable for your operators to provide whole-country 4G coverage.

Although from what I know, it's very good with LTE in Poland too. There is even quite many people, who resigned with low-quality ADSL connections for LTE. Even if someone is not in LTE-covered area, it often makes sense for home use just to install a roof antenna to pick up the signal from a distant base station.

I am staying with ADSL, even though its performance is quite low where I live (6 Mb/s is the maximum of what I can have), because, in my opinion, cable is cable and no wireless can replace it. Cable is stable and insusceptible to external interference. With cable, it will never be so, that one time suddenly many users connect to my base station and the quality of the connection jumps down very much. Or that I install the connection in the autumn or winter, and then in spring the trees start to grow leaves and interrupt my LTE signal.


About Kiev, how did it happen? I understand that the water in the water supply pipes is under pressure, but not under so high pressure that could make such an explosion... And probably, if the pressure gets higher, the taps in people's houses would start leaking or just getting open sooner than an underground pipe blows up...

By the way, talking about water supply systems... In some countries, like Hungary or Slovakia, you can see towers with water vessels on their tops in each neighborhood, which regulate the water pressure in the system. Especially in village area. But, for example, in Poland such towers are practically unmet. There are just pump stations which pump the water (usually pumped first from under the ground) directly to the system, without placing it first in a tower. What does it depend on?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My home internet connection is 150 MB/s on cable. It's very stable, you're guaranteed to get that speed, as opposed to ADSL where the speed decreases further from the hub. My brother lives nearby and has ADSL with only 20-40 MB/s in practice. 

Fiber-optic internet rollout has stalled significantly in the Netherlands. Cable is currently fast enough for almost any household (you can watch Netflix in HD on 4 accounts simultaneously), so there is not an incentive to build expensive fiber-optic internet cable to every house. It's not really future-proof (at some point they will run into the physical limitations of cable).


----------



## keber

EU traffic commissioner Violeta Bulc unveiled a plan for abolishing vignettes until 2023 (it is still a proposal). Then kilometer based tolling will have to be used (such infrastructure is already available in most countries with vignettes for cars). No new vignette systems should be allowed after end of 2017. New tolling should be interoperable.


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## g.spinoza

keber said:


> EU traffic commissioner Violeta Bulc unveiled a plan for abolishing vignettes until 2023 (it is still a proposal). Then kilometer based tolling will have to be used (such infrastructure is already available in most countries with vignettes for cars). No new vignette systems should be allowed after end of 2017. New tolling should be interoperable.


Really? But why?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

To tax the crap out of motorists and make long-distance travel prohibitively expensive.


----------



## keber

In some parts of Europe such travel already is expensive (France, Italy). Problem will be not long distance travel but commuting. Currently I drive between about 300-500 km per week on motorways (which is somehow average). At previous toll prices (in 2008) that would cost me between 20 and 30 € per week or 1000-1500 per year and now it costs me 110 € per year for a vignette.
For inter-EU travel this would be very useful as it is new mobile data regulative. I presume this is also a preparation for additional taxing of EV that don't pay fuel tax.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

I think countries will still be able to decide if and which roads to tax. At the moment there are several EU countries that have no road tax and no tolls either.


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## ChrisZwolle

It is bad for the European unification they strife to seek. It's a barrier to international travel, what if you have to pay € 250 in tolls for a 1000 kilometer trip to Lake Garda and back?


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> It is bad for the European unification they strife to seek. It's a barrier to international travel


The same could be said for ridiculous tolls on Alpine tunnels, Danish straits bridges, etc... or for vignettes that must be purchased at full prices even if you drive 10 km (Bregenz? Koper?).


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## italystf

What is outrageous is that, at least in Italy, tolls often increases really A LOT, in such amounts not justifiable with inflaction. Latisana-Trieste was 2.50€ in 2005 and now it's 4.50€. Living cost hasn't increased in that proportion in this 12-years period. This really harms commuters and encourages the usage of parallel roads, that's really bad for local communities.


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## keokiracer

^^ That's exactly why I'm against a system like this, because it's way too easy to just double to price of it.


----------



## italystf

I think countries should be let free to chose the way to charge tolls, or not charge tolls at all.
EU should just impose maximum prices to avoid ripping off travellers, thus limiting the freedom of movement always supported by EU. For example, 1 km of motorway mustn't cost more than X in a flat area or Y in a mountain area, a weekly vignette can't cost more than Z, a yearly one not more than W, and so on. Or they forbid to charge tolls within 20 km from international borders, to avoid harming local cross-border travellers.


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## keber

I think that will happen later so to prevent operators to charge ridiculous prices for driving (like in Frejus or Mont Blanc tunnels)
However I like the idea of getting rid of various windscreen stickers, OBU units and toll stations.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

keber said:


> However I like the idea of getting rid of various windscreen stickers, OBU units and toll stations.


Me too, but you don't need a EU-wide kilometer tax to raplace it. Digital vignettes and open road tolling are proven concepts that are in use worldwide for over 20 years now.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This sounds like a nice idea, a hotel for the weekend stayover....










But where are these truckers going to park their truck near a hotel? The far majority of rest areas do not have a hotel and most hotels don't have truck parking. 

Furthermore, how is this going to be enforced? Sorry, you can't drive because you're out of hours, so walk 20 kilometers to the nearest hotel? 

Or: the driver is responsible for the load, but can't stay with it because he needs to be put in a hotel?

It seems like typical bureaucrat proposals without regard for the real world conditions.


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## x-type

i don't like it at all. the prices of road transport will go to the skies with that.


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## keber

Sure we have open tolling and electronic vignettes but when you see an average long distance truck windshield, you always notice a bunch of incompatible​ OBU units. Also official proposal does not seem to insist to introduce toll in countries, that don't have tolls yet.


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## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> My home internet connection is 150 MB/s on cable. It's very stable, you're guaranteed to get that speed, as opposed to ADSL where the speed decreases further from the hub. My brother lives nearby and has ADSL with only 20-40 MB/s in practice.


20-40 MB or Mb (megabytes or megabits)? Because it makes quite a difference. 20 MB/s equals 160 Mb/s. And internet connection speed is usually expressed in Mb/s, not MB/s (MB/GB/TB is most often used for drive capacity).

I live in a detached house and cable TV connection is usually available only in apartments, so I have no choice.

In Poland, much is invested in fiber optic connections now. Many local ISPs do it with EU funding. Big operators also do some investments in the FTTH (Fiber To The Home) technology - although from what I can see, there is very much advertisement but they do little.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Megabits, sorry for the confusion. 150 Mbit/s = 18.75 megabyte/s download. But with cable the upload speed is much slower (in my case 15 Mbit/s = 1.875 megabyte/s). On the other hand I frequently upload large files to Youtube and it doesn't take extremely long. A 1 GB video takes about 8-9 minutes to upload.


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## bogdymol

Next Monday is a holiday in Austria, so I was considering to drive to south of France (Nice) as I have never been there until now. The hotels that I found were pretty espensive, but when I calculated and got to 160+ Euros just for the motorway tolls for a weekend break, I canceled my plans. That's insainely expensive 

Regarding internet connection: yesterday I have seen in Ireland many advertisments on the side of the road offering "high speed cable internet" at 70 Mb/s. Meanwhile in Romania you can get 1 Gbps at 10 Euros per month.


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## Suburbanist

Eastern European countries have the best internet access offers in the World outside South Korea. They were a bit late to the game, and at the time Internet became popular for the masses, telecoms over there leapfrogged older implementations and as a result Internet in Romania, Hungary, Czechia and in the Baltic States is very fast. It is cheaper because of local market conditions (fixed Internet access in dense urban areas is a cash-cow for telecoms) that won't accept higher prices commonly see in Western Europe.


----------



## scrooge.

x-type said:


> i don't like it at all. the prices of road transport will go to the skies with that.


That's true. It doesn't pay off to drive in long run and to travel long distances on European highways. Some countries, as some of the forum members have already mentioned, have non reasonable high tools like Slovenia. You pay the same amount of money if you drive one day or 10 days. You can't get a transit toll. Instead you must pay full price like you will be driving there for a month.

It is cheaper and more relaxing to travel with low cost airlines. Still you don't have that freedom when you use the car...


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## volodaaaa

I consider it reasonable. Passenger car, occupied solely by a driver is one of the most polluting transport mode at all. 

We have been recently discussing the mobile network plans. Likewise, you pay for something you would never ever use (5000 free minutes, etc.).

Slovenia is an extreme, indeed. But I don't see a reason for one day vignette. The process of procurement and technical arrangement would be much more costly than the profit from the vignette.


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## scrooge.

> But I don't see a reason for one day vignette.


They want to earn as much as they can. Slovenes know that they are the shortest link between Hungary and Italy, and also between countries on the east such as Serbia, Romania, Turkey, Russia etc. and they are exploiting that. A lots of Italians travel on the other side of Adriatic in Croatia.


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## volodaaaa

scrooge. said:


> They want to earn as much as they can. Slovenes know that they are the shortest link between Hungary and Italy, and also between countries on the east such as Serbia, Romania, Turkey, Russia etc. and they are exploiting that. A lots of Italians travel on the other side of Adriatic in Croatia.


Yeah, I am not saying that Slovenian rate is fair considering the fact that there is much tourist transport through. But generally the concept of a 1-day vignette is a nonsense.


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## Verso

I don't think €15 is expensive to get from Hungary to Italy. As for the Koper stretch, just use the old road, it's not even 10 km, there's way too much drama around this.


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## ChrisZwolle

With vignettes there are always some routes where motorists have to pay a steep toll for a short stretch. 

But on the other hand, an Austrian 10-day vignette will cost you the same as less than an hour of driving on the French or Spanish toll road. 

Well, who believes motoring tax reforms will actually benefit drivers? Taxation only goes up except for some botched environmental incentive schemes. You could drive the large Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV almost for free in the Netherlands, while in practice most drivers consume 10-12L/100 km because they never or rarely charge the vehicle. Electric car incentives only benefit the wealthiest segment of the population. If you're used to buy a car for around € 10,000, you're not going to buy an almost tax-free € 90,000 Tesla. It's welfare for the rich.


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## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> With vignettes there are always some routes where motorists have to pay a steep toll for a short stretch.
> 
> But on the other hand, an Austrian 10-day vignette will cost you the same as less than an hour of driving on the French or Spanish toll road.
> 
> Well, who believes motoring tax reforms will actually benefit drivers? Taxation only goes up except for some botched environmental incentive schemes. You could drive the large Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV almost for free in the Netherlands, while in practice most drivers consume 10-12L/100 km because they never or rarely charge the vehicle. Electric car incentives only benefit the wealthiest segment of the population. If you're used to buy a car for around € 10,000, you're not going to buy an almost tax-free € 90,000 Tesla. It's welfare for the rich.


We have generous subsidies for electric cars in Slovakia. But it does not concern hybrids, which are 5.000 - 7.000 € more expensive, but purely electric cars that starts at 40.000 €. 

Ordinary people are not motivated to buy such cars (though I think they do not resolve the problems with congestions) - it is just a toy for upper social class who anyway prefers SUVs like BMW or Mercedes.


----------



## MattiG

Temperature +5, NW wind 9 m/s, feels like -1 degrees. Warning for heavy wind, up to 20 m/s in gusts. Summer is a wonderful thing.


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## italystf

MattiG said:


> Temperature +5, NW wind 9 m/s, feels like -1 degrees. Warning for heavy wind, up to 20 m/s in gusts. Summer is a wonderful thing.


Photo taken on May 31 in Murmansk, Russia :nuts:









http://www.meteogiornale.it/notizia...temporali-grandine-tornado-neve-estate-24-ore


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## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> I consider it reasonable. Passenger car, occupied solely by a driver is one of the most polluting transport mode at all.


Aeroplanes are even more polluting.

The pressure should be put on train transport, which is ecological. Something should be done to simplify the international train travels. Nowadays, for example, it's much more expensive to cross the Polish-Czech or Polish-Slovak border on the train (at least in the "official" way, there are some tricks know by few, allowing to make it cheaper), then to travel the same distance internally. And the state of the trans-border train connections is not so good at all.

In the EU they are discussing about introducing free InterRail for the youth... which won't solve any actual problems. A more needed thing is, for example, a common ticket sale system (or development of the one which already exists, but has quite limited functionality). Now, I can buy in Poland a ticket for a local train, let's say, in France - but it will be in the international fare, which, actually, just in this case, may be even slightly cheaper than the local one - but it definitely won't be so when someone buys in France a ticket for a local train in Poland. Anyway, no local special offers will be recognized, nothing like that. And this could be changed.



> Slovenia is an extreme, indeed.


You can find tutorials on YouTube how to cross Slovenia, for example, on the way from Poland to Croatia, using only standard roads, without toll motorways. It's not a big problem to use a normal road instead of motorway for less than 100 km, and it allows to save much money.

No sign of cold in Poland. The last days have been quite hot actually.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> The pressure should be put on train transport, which is ecological.


Some experts argue that nearly all passenger train services would end with the widespread adoption of self-driving cars, except for a limited amount of high-potential corridors. 

Self-driving cars could offer transportation to anyone who can't or don't want to drive, while also offering much more efficient A to B travel (even today with all the congestion the average car trip requires less than half the travel time a similar trip on public transport would require).

Passenger trains are expensive to operate relative to usage compared to other modes of transportation. Many jurisdictions spend 50-60% of their transportation budget on trains which carry 10-15% of passenger kilometers. 

However there is quite some debate about how quickly level 5 autonomous vehicles would be adopted. Predictions about events years or decades into the future often turn out to be highly unreliable.


----------



## Kpc21

The question is the congestion when all the public transport passengers switch to those autonomous cars. It's already too high in the cities, and when it will be even more cars - it's hard to believe what may be the effects. 

On the other hand - it is said that self-driving cars *only* do not need traffic lights at all, they can adjust the speed to the road conditions by means of some smart algorithms which will keep the traffic fluent. So maybe it will solve this problem.

And I don't think all the people will switch from public transport to self-driving cars. Maybe except for the biggest capitals, it is so, that there is very few people who use public transport just because that is more convenient to them. Even though maybe it's no more so in some more civilized countries and cities, in Poland, for example, it's usually faster to travel by car than by city public transport even in the traffic jams, even though trams have separate tracks and buses have bus lanes. Because: you must wait for the vehicle, often you must change and wait again, you must walk to the stop, the route is often not optimal for you, stopping at the stops also takes time. Most people who use the public transport do it for the financial reasons. So unless a huge overturn of the car prices happens with the popularization of electric and autonomous cars, so that everyone can afford one, people will still be using the public transport.

Although car sharing may be a danger for the public transport. But it will be anyway more expensive than the collective public transport by means of the matter.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Aeroplanes are even more polluting.
> 
> The pressure should be put on train transport, which is ecological. Something should be done to simplify the international train travels. Nowadays, for example, it's much more expensive to cross the Polish-Czech or Polish-Slovak border on the train (at least in the "official" way, there are some tricks know by few, allowing to make it cheaper), then to travel the same distance internally. And the state of the trans-border train connections is not so good at all.
> 
> In the EU they are discussing about introducing free InterRail for the youth... which won't solve any actual problems. A more needed thing is, for example, a common ticket sale system (or development of the one which already exists, but has quite limited functionality). Now, I can buy in Poland a ticket for a local train, let's say, in France - but it will be in the international fare, which, actually, just in this case, may be even slightly cheaper than the local one - but it definitely won't be so when someone buys in France a ticket for a local train in Poland. Anyway, no local special offers will be recognized, nothing like that. And this could be changed.
> 
> 
> You can find tutorials on YouTube how to cross Slovenia, for example, on the way from Poland to Croatia, using only standard roads, without toll motorways. It's not a big problem to use a normal road instead of motorway for less than 100 km, and it allows to save much money.
> 
> No sign of cold in Poland. The last days have been quite hot actually.


If you compare pollution/passenger/distance, maybe it is more favourable for aircraft.


What you've mentioned about rail transport: Indeed, it is too expensive (especially international trains in Europe) due to incompatibility. But now, the EU pushes to implement the so called 4th railway package and adopt so called interoperability. Now you have different countries with different rail transport rules, systems, etc. This all should be united and you should be literally able to drive a locomotive with any restrictions through whole Europe. It is not possible now.

Furthermore, trains are more expensive due to fixed expenses - fuel or electricity are often just a small portion of all. Imagine a train operating a small municipality twice a day. The crew (train driver, inspectors, dispatcher) must be paid even if the train is stopped somewhere in a field. In winter, the train must have running engine due to heating. 

On the other hand, it is very convenient transport mode - you can have a walk if you are tired, go to dining car, you have wi-fi which brings you unlimited activities.

Unlimited will surely not resolve the congestion problem. But anyway, the most essential disadvantage of car ownership is, that average car is 98 % of its lifespan parked somewhere. It has been estimated, that 30 % of cars are drivers looking for their parking spot cruising around the same block. Autonomous cars would be active much more time than conventional cars. One car would not transport one family (or single driver) during a rush our, but several. It may be a perfect combo together with sufficient support for public transport.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Autonomous cars would also significantly reduce the number of parking spaces, especially in areas with little space. Even if there would still be car ownership (as opposed to a transportation service), the car could park itself elsewhere outside a congested area, so there doesn't need to be much if any parking at destinations. 

However, as with all new future / planned technologies there is optimism bias with such developments. It may or may not be implemented as fast as some boosters say.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> The question is the congestion when all the public transport passengers switch to those autonomous cars. It's already too high in the cities, and when it will be even more cars - it's hard to believe what may be the effects.


Yes, in cities, especially in city center related traffic, public transport may be *much *more effective than any type of cars. No road network could bear if the passengers of S- and U-Bahn (suburban and urban railways) of Munich or Frankfurt would change to car (even if it's a self-driving car which does not need parking place in the city). 
However a vast majority of traffic has nothing to do with cities or stays in the outskirts where public transport can not be effective. Metros, intercity railways and suburban railways may have a bright future even beside autonomous cars. But anyithing else? Hardly.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The idea is that autonomous vehicles could get a much higher throughput on roads. However these are just theories and nobody really knows how it's going to play out exactly. In particular the design of roads for autonomous vehicles in urban centers. Some say it could drastically reduce footprint, others say it would need a whole new generation of segregated infrastructure for autonomous vehicles.

For example equipping the entire road system with sensors and connected vehicle infrastructure seems unlikely given the fact that many jurisdictions hardly spend money to upgrade traffic signal timing. How are they going to fund a much more demanding task such as connecting their whole road system with vehicles? (the V2I concept - Vehicle to Infrastructure).


----------



## Suburbanist

I don't think high capacity subways, or heavy trafficked railways, are under such risk from autonomous vehicles because of pure geometry.

Autonomous vehicles will mostly compete with low-ridership buses, low-performance trams that mix with traffic, and some twice-a-day train lines out there.


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> The idea is that autonomous vehicles could get a much higher throughput on roads. However these are just theories and nobody really knows how it's going to play out exactly. In particular the design of roads for autonomous vehicles in urban centers. Some say it could drastically reduce footprint, others say it would need a whole new generation of segregated infrastructure for autonomous vehicles.
> 
> For example equipping the entire road system with sensors and connected vehicle infrastructure seems unlikely given the fact that many jurisdictions hardly spend money to upgrade traffic signal timing. How are they going to fund a much more demanding task such as connecting their whole road system with vehicles? (the V2I concept - Vehicle to Infrastructure).


The biggest change would not be the autonomous vehicle on its own. But the autonomous vehicle working in a grid. Sure, some people would not like to share the vehicle with anyone else, but others would not mind that.

You need to look at the autonomous vehicle grid as a public transport system with one purpose only and that is to optimize the transport of all the given people at the given moment from all their points A to all their points B with given constraints (size of the vehicles, number of vehicles, number of people, entry exit points en route, etc etc).

I am quite sure that the congestion would, in fact, drop with such a system.

Some mass transport as metro, trams, trains would still be needed though, it would need to be implemented into this system as well.


----------



## g.spinoza

"sometimes they come back"


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> Well, we call the Croatian capital 'Zagrep'. :lol:


And the Austrian capital 'the Danube' :lol:


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> And the Austrian capital 'the Danube' :lol:


no, they have different word. poor river is female in Slovenia, while c
city is still male.


----------



## volodaaaa

Perfect match though


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> And the Austrian capital 'the Danube' :lol:


Or you call the Danube _Vienna_. Up yours. :lol:


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> no, they have different word. poor river is female in Slovenia, while c
> city is still male.


Time for this sign. :lol:


----------



## hammersklavier

Kpc21 said:


> For us, it's Zagrzeb. With rz, pronounced as ż (that means, as s in pleasure - English has this sound, even though it doesn't have any standard way of representing it; when an originally cyrylic name is represented in English, then it's spelled as zh).
> 
> I had an interesting situation, when I was talking with someone Slavic (but not Polish; Bulgarian, if I remember well) in English, I mentioned Warsaw and the person could not understand what city it is. I had to explain that I meant the Polish capital. And then... he got that I meant "Warszawa"
> 
> It's interesting how this English name was created. In German, it's Warschau, so the pronunciation is more similar to the Polish one, the word looks like a step between Polish and English. Actually, the shape of the word is as in English, but the original sounds of W (V) and SH are maintained. In English changed to the English W and to S.
> 
> But it's the opposite in case of Cracow. The English spelling is halfway between the Polish (Kraków) and the German (Krakau) one.


Cracow? That's ... uh ... not it. We write "Krakow" for that city.

Most Polish place names used in English nowadays have Polish roots. That's why we use "Wroclaw" (looks like roke-claw to me) and Szczecin (dafuq?!?) instead of e.g. Breslau or Stettin nowadays.


> Anyway, there are more crazy city names. The capital of China used to be spelled in English as Peking, now it's spelled as Beijing. But in many languages it's still Peking-like, for example it's Pekin in Polish.


Mandarin is actually pretty crazy. It makes an aspiration distinction, not a voicing one, so /b d g/ are technically not correct. But it's probably closer than the old Wade-Gilles romanization, which is where "Peking" comes from.


> In case of the capital of North Korea - it's Polish spelling has recently changed. It used to be spelled Phenian, which came from the cyrylic representation, which was something like Пхенян. The problem was, when it was converted to the Latin alphabet, many Poles were trying to pronounce "ph" at the beginning as "f", like in English, plus the "nia" connection was palatalized by the people pronouncing this name, which was supposedly also wrong. Now, the official spelling is Pjongjang, reflecting the English name Pyongyang.
> 
> Although it's also a bit wrong. The "ng" connection represents a specific n-like sound in English, and Poles will typically pronounce it just as two consonants: n and g. Which will be incorrect.


Isn't Hangul an alphabetic script anyway? Why not just use a direct transliteration from 평양?


----------



## Kpc21

And what is the direct transliteration from 평양?

Krakow or Cracow? It's all the same when an English native speaker tries to pronounce it. Anyway, the German name of the city (Krakau) must have been inspired by it.

I was always taught it's Cracow in English. It's difficult to check which version is more common in English because typing "Krakow" into Google will also find all the entries in Polish texts (as Kraków). But, for example, also a local engineering university calls itself in English: Cracow University of Technology.

It's (and it has always been) Cracovia in Latin, so it's nothing wrong with the spelling with C in English.



> Most Polish place names used in English nowadays have Polish roots.


Actually, probably all of them, unless they have non-Polish roots in Polish. But even then, they came to English through Polish.

Anyway, thinking about it, probably only two cities in Poland have distinct English names: Warsaw and Cracow. For all others, the Polish names are used in English. Unlike German - not only many cities in Poland, but even numerous small Polish towns have distinct German names. Usually because they used to be located in Germany or other German-speaking country (like the Teutonic Order country).

Also many of the Polish regions have English names (Mazovia, Silesia, Pomerania) and the Vistula river. Those names, as I believe, come from Latin. The Polish names are a little bit different (Mazowsze, Śląsk, Pomorze; river: Wisła). We have also regions called Wielkopolska and Małopolska, the names of which can be a little bit awkwardly translated as Greater Poland and Lesser Poland. And, I forgot, the Tatras mountain range (Polish: Tatry).

But it's more of a problem when I want to talk in English about the river on the Polish-German border or the mountains on the Polish-Czech border. In Polish, the river is Odra, the mountains - Sudety. In German, the river is Oder, the mountains Sudeten. I don't know about Czech, but probably something very similar to the Polish name. And then I want to mention the name in English, and sometimes I just mention both because I have no idea whether someone will know them by the Polish or by the German name.

Actually, the name Wrocław should be pronounced as "vrots-wav". About Szczecin... probably many have troubles pronouncing it, because they use the phonetic transcription in the city logo:










Although in English it should be simple - it will be something like "shchechin". The first "ch" not palatalized, the second one palatalized (English doesn't have this distinction, the English "ch" is something in between, usually more towards the not palatalized version).

Poznań - should be simple ("poznan" with the second "n" palatalized), "Gdańsk" the same... Łódź - well, this one few foreigners can pronounce correctly, but it's because of the diacritics, they interpret it just as Lodz, which makes quite a difference in pronunciation ("lotz" vs. "wooch" with palatalized "ch"). When someone abroad asks me about my city, when I say Łódź, I must explain that he probably knows the city as Lodz.

Kielce - shouldn't be a problem at all (just "kieltse", "kieltze" - remember that "ts", "tz" or however you write it phonetically in English, makes a single consonant in Polish, hence it's just a single letter "c" in the Polish spelling). Rzeszów - this one may be difficult. It is "zheshoof" where "zh" is like "j" in French or "s" in words like pleasure, measure etc.


----------



## hammersklavier

Kpc21 said:


> And what is the direct transliteration from 평양?


p-yeo-ng ø-ya-ng, when I looked it up. C'mon, those are your palatal Slavic vowels, those should be _easy_ for you.
[/quote]
Krakow or Cracow? It's all the same when an English native speaker tries to pronounce it. Anyway, the German name of the city (Krakau) must have been inspired by it.

I was always taught it's Cracow in English. It's difficult to check which version is more common in English because typing "Krakow" into Google will also find all the entries in Polish texts (as Kraków). But, for example, also a local engineering university calls itself in English: Cracow University of Technology.[/quote]
It would be pronounced the same, but "Cracow" looks super archaic. It communicates that the speaker still calls Gdansk Danzig and Kaliningrad Konigsberg, actually.


> But it's more of a problem when I want to talk in English about the river on the Polish-German border or the mountains on the Polish-Czech border. In Polish, the river is Odra, the mountains - Sudety. In German, the river is Oder, the mountains Sudeten. I don't know about Czech, but probably something very similar to the Polish name. And then I want to mention the name in English, and sometimes I just mention both because I have no idea whether someone will know them by the Polish or by the German name.


So that's where "Sudentenland" comes from!

I recognize Oder mainly as the river flowing through Berlin.


> Actually, the name Wrocław should be pronounced as "vrots-wav".


That's probably the biggest problem with just transcribing letters. The German name Breslau comes much closer to the Polish pronunciation than what an English speaker reads when they see that name.


> About Szczecin... probably many have troubles pronouncing it, because they use the phonetic transcription in the city logo:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Although in English it should be simple - it will be something like "shchechin". The first "ch" not palatalized, the second one palatalized (English doesn't have this distinction, the English "ch" is something in between, usually more towards the not palatalized version).


The problem is that English speakers have a very hard time pronouncing that szcz cluster. The closest I can get to the Polish pronunciation is actually saying Stetson while very drunk.


> Poznań - should be simple ("poznan" with the second "n" palatalized), "Gdańsk" the same... Łódź - well, this one few foreigners can pronounce correctly, but it's because of the diacritics, they interpret it just as Lodz, which makes quite a difference in pronunciation ("lotz" vs. "wooch" with palatalized "ch"). When someone abroad asks me about my city, when I say Łódź, I must explain that he probably knows the city as Lodz.


Wootch actually sounds like an awesome city name IMO.


----------



## Verso

Kpc21 said:


> Rzeszów - this one may be difficult. It is "zheshoof" where "zh" is like "j" in French or "s" in words like pleasure, measure etc.


"ʒ"


----------



## Kpc21

hammersklavier said:


> It would be pronounced the same, but "Cracow" looks super archaic. It communicates that the speaker still calls Gdansk Danzig and Kaliningrad Konigsberg, actually.


Interesting 

But while Gdańsk or Kaliningrad used to be German/Prussian/Teutonic/whatever, Kraków has basically always been Polish (Austro-Hungarian in the 123 years when Poland didn't exist as a country, but as I have said, in German it's spelled Krakau). It's like Warsaw. And here, I don't think the English native speakers call it more commonly Warszawa than Warsaw...



> I recognize Oder mainly as the river flowing through Berlin.


Wrong  Oder flows through Szczecin and Wrocław. The river through Berlin is Spree (which should be pronounced "shpre" and not "spri", by the way).



> The problem is that English speakers have a very hard time pronouncing that szcz cluster. The closest I can get to the Polish pronunciation is actually saying Stetson while very drunk.


I have already seen an authentic Australian trying to say "chrząszcz" /hshonshch/ (beetle). It didn't work, he always missed either sz or cz  And ch was also not really audible.



> Wootch actually sounds like an awesome city name IMO.


Nice to hear it 

It actually means a boat in Polish.

By the way... "Łódź" is /wootch/, but when you say "in Łódź", it will be "w Łodzi", to pronounce as /v wodchee/. ó (oo) changes into o (also in spelling), t changes into d (in spelling it was already d, but it was impossible to pronounce as d at the end of the word).

Actually, we have a few pairs of symbols (letters, digraphs) that reflect same sounds in modern times:
- ó vs. u (/oo/ in English)
- ch vs. h (already discussed it, let's say, /h/ is most similar or the same in English)
- rz vs. ż (sound without its own letter in English, mostly spelled as /s/, like in measure)
And some children in early years of primary school have hard time learning when to use which one.

But it's usually (not always) visible very well when you change the form of the word. Like "Ł*ó*dź" -> "w Ł*o*dzi". And "u" wouldn't change into "o", it would stay "u". So having noun cases in your language helps learning the correct spelling too  Similarly, for example, "morze" (see) - if you create an adjective from it, it's "morski" (maritime), "rz" changes into "r". But from "może" (maybe, or [he, she, it] may/can), the adjective is "możliwy" (possible), there is no change.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ probably the hardest for an anglophone are those "prz" words like "przepraszam"... I usually just ignore the "pr" entirely :lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

Call the place Stettin and problems are solved :shifty:


----------



## aubergine72

Pyongyang in Bulgarian is Пхенян (Pkhenyan). In general, Korean names have strange transliterations. Kim Il Sung is Kim Ir Sen, Kim Jong Il is Kim Chen Ir, Kim Jong Un is Kim Chen Un.

I think it's some Russian influence but it makes no sense.


----------



## Kpc21

I think, in Polish, I hear the name Kim Ir Sen more often than Kim Il Sung. But Kim Jong Il definitely more often than Kim Chen Ir, as well as Kim Jong Un more often then Kim Chen Un.

Generally, the Polish transliteration of the North Korean names is a total mess.

As I wrote, until a few years ago, also in Polish the transliteration Phenian was used (it comes from Russian) - but while it works well in the Cyrylic alphabet, people seeing "ph" connection in the Latin alphabet always want to pronounce it as "f", because it works so in English and some other languages. Which is wrong in this case.


----------



## hammersklavier

I'm not even sure where the H comes from? The word doesn't show aspiration in Korean...

Korean definitely makes a voicing distinction on its affricates, too, which Cyrillic is not well-equipped to handle. It might be why you're seeing the substitution.

Korean R and L are actually the same phoneme, so that _would_ be understandable if you're actually transliterating and not making Scheisse up as you go, Russia.


----------



## Attus

The transliteration Kim Ir Sen comes from Russian (Ким Ир Сен). It was strongly recommended to use it this way in Eastern European countries before 1990.


----------



## Verso

What's closer to [kim.il.s͈ʌŋ]? "Kim Il-sung" or "Kim Ir Sen"?


----------



## CNGL

I feel Kim Il-sung (or Il-sung Kim in Western name order) is closer to the pronounciation.


----------



## Kpc21

Verso said:


> What's closer to [kim.il.s͈ʌŋ]? "Kim Il-sung" or "Kim Ir Sen"?


It depends on the language 

The -ng ending will never be close to it in any Slavic language. But in English - yes.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've never used Photobucket, but relied heavily on imgur for sketches, maps, random photos, etc. For my own photos I use Flickr.

I would suggest not to hotlink Facebook photos as Facebook image URLs deprecate after some time (could be weeks or months). Twitter doesn't have this problem.


----------



## webeagle12

bogdymol said:


> ^^ Like you did in the Netherlands?


:lol::lol::lol:


----------



## Kpc21

Imageshack used to be good, although slow, but one time they deleted all the old photos.

A local competitor of Imageshack in Poland was fotosik.pl, but the same as with Imageshack happened with it already earlier.

Currently, the number one is imgur.com. Or, I should say, the number two for me. The number one is an image hosting run by a local forum about electronics, intended mainly for the forum users, but accessible publicly.


----------



## Suburbanist

The economics of free photo/video sharing by stand-alone services that don't have a monetization/ad plan are pretty dire. I think many such services will just collapse in the following 2-3 years, same year the many smaller free video hosting services did.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I wonder how imgur makes money to cover their cost. Their service is pretty popular, especially with many other image hosting services ceasing to exist.

Imageshack had a similar fate, with yellow frogs appearing everywhere. Tinypic recycles URLs so photos may show something completely different than when originally posted, including adult content.


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> The economics of free photo/video sharing by stand-alone services that don't have a monetization/ad plan are pretty dire. I think many such services will just collapse in the following 2-3 years, same year the many smaller free video hosting services did.


That is why I never trust any free cloud service. They can disappear at any moment. I share everything important on my own website via my own domain. No sudden surprises.


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> That is why I never trust any free cloud service. They can disappear at any moment. I share everything important on my own website via my own domain. No sudden surprises.


I think there are some steady. The Google drive is note very bound to be terminated.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> I think there are some steady. The Google drive is note very bound to be terminated.


Google is known for regularly killing its free services with a short notice.


----------



## Verso

What a disaster, all my pics are gone. hno:


----------



## CNGL

When I say Dutchmen are everywhere, is not without a reason. This electric bus with Dutch plates has been around Zaragoza for some days now:









This image is hosted on Twitter, as I felt I had to tweet such a catch. Otherwise I use Imgur.

PS: This is my 666th post in this thread :devil:.


----------



## 8166UY

We'll else get claustrophobic if we stay in this tiny country all the time. 

But to be more serious, for some reason Dutch seem (as a group) to be very curious people when I compare it to a lot of other nationalities. Also, the relative large amount of free days which you can plan yourself do help with going abroad.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I often go camping and in my experience there is hardly a campsite with not at least 1 or 2 other Dutch. Some campsites are complete Dutch enclaves and they don't care it's 1200 or 1600 kilometers of driving (one way, that is).

Last month I went to Spain, and stayed mostly in less touristy areas (i.e. not the Catalan coast or Madrid). But there are always Dutch, but no Belgians, no Germans, even the French are not as common. 

I think a factor is the wealth of older people. In some countries you hear about meager pensions and elderly having to work part time to supplement their low state provided income. In the Netherlands the retired are the most wealthy segment of the population, so they can afford to buy a € 70,000 RV and travel around.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Photos that I hosted on Photobucket are still visible on SSC. :dunno:


----------



## Suburbanist

I don't think Google Drive will disappear in the near or medium-term because it is Google foothold into the retail cloud market and tightly associated now with Gmail, Photos and other Google "suites". They will not just let Microsoft win with One Drive, or Amazon. 

Google do kill features, but often they are stand-alone-ish applications or those who are languishing in the limbo like Picasa or Panoramio.


----------



## x-type

CNGL said:


> When I say Dutchmen are everywhere, is not without a reason. This electric bus with Dutch plates has been around Zaragoza for some days now:
> https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DDfDRVAXYAEI_Ar.jpg


must be test drive. happens often with trams.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The city of Utrecht procured several trams at CAF in Zaragoza. They were driven by truck from Zaragoza to Utrecht

Here in France:


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> must be test drive. happens often with trams.


Or maybe a promotion rental. We have long-term one here in Bratislava with Czech licence plates.

Since all PT vehicles in Bratislava are red and black - this particular one was given a nickname "Snow-white" 
https://imhd.sk/ba/media/gn/00155071/1859-na-vylukovej-trase-linky-39.jpg?1498943469


----------



## bogdymol

I have just updated my clinched highways stats. I have now driven on 100% of the Slovenian motorways, first country where I manage to drive on all motorways.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've updated them too, in some countries I've driven quite a lot. The result of going to different destinations every summer.

Percentage driven of the motorway system;
* Netherlands: 99.78% (should be 100%)
* Denmark: 98.85%
* Luxembourg: 97.61%
* Belgium: 91.12%
* Germany: 89.12%
* Switzerland: 79.26%
* France: 78.12%
* Slovenia: 57.02%
* Czechia: 50.20%
* Austria: 46.29%
* Spain: 35.51%

:nuts:


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> I often go camping


What does "camping" mean for you? I mean, you surely don't pull a caravan, so do you have a tent? Or is there some other way?
When I was a child (80's, early 90's) we spent our holidays with my parents usually in campsites, even abroad. We had a large tent, it was nice. 
Later on I, too, went camping. But in the 2000's sometimes my tent was the only one among a lot of caravans and it was a little bit weird.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Terribly. :cheers:


----------



## Verso

So how are things in USA going?


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Rather a broad question....


----------



## Verso

You know, Trump and stuff.


----------



## MichiH

italystf said:


> A-7 La Jonquera - Algeciras, Spain, 1,300km.


German A7 from Denmark to Austria has a length of 962km (only).


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> You know, Trump and stuff.


See sig.

And I find it better for my peace of mind not to follow the news too closely.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

italystf said:


> A-7 La Jonquera - Algeciras, Spain, 1,300km.


A-7 is not continuous. Although the route can be driven entirely on motorway, it alternates between A-7, AP-7 and both running parallel to each other.

The longest uninterrupted stretch of A-7 runs from Estepona to Elche and is 570 kilometers long. All sections of A-7 combined are 931 kilometers long.

I think German A7 is still the longest uninterrupted motorway in Europe.

Italy would've won this 'contest' if they renumbered A3 to A1 instead of A2. That would be some 1240 kilometers from Milano to Reggio Calabria.


----------



## bogdymol

Speaking of motorway numbering, is there a reason why in Austria:
- A10 is re-numbered A11 at Villach
- A8 is re-numbered A9 nearby Wels
- A2 is re-numbered A23 just south of Vienna
?


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> See sig.
> 
> And I find it better for my peace of mind not to follow the news too closely.


What about his wife? :troll:


----------



## volodaaaa

Something strange must have been in the air today. I've seen severely looking accidents on places where it is impossible to crash severely and several drivers have acted conspicuously strange.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> Speaking of motorway numbering, is there a reason why in Austria:
> - A10 is re-numbered A11 at Villach
> - A8 is re-numbered A9 nearby Wels
> - A2 is re-numbered A23 just south of Vienna
> ?


Perhaps there is nothing else to do at the Austrian ministry of transport this Summer :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> Something strange must have been in the air today. I've seen severely looking accidents on places where it is impossible to crash severely and several drivers have acted conspicuously strange.


You say?

http://torino.repubblica.it/cronaca...ato-170393681/?ref=RHPPLF-BH-I0-C8-P1-S1.8-T1

making the headlines, a road rage accident near Turin where a van driver, after a spirited discussion with a motorcycle driver about traffic, found nothing better to do than crush him and his gf against a guardrail. She died, the bf is in critical conditions.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> What about his wife? :troll:


I know you're a fan....


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> You say?
> 
> http://torino.repubblica.it/cronaca...ato-170393681/?ref=RHPPLF-BH-I0-C8-P1-S1.8-T1
> 
> making the headlines, a road rage accident near Turin where a van driver, after a spirited discussion with a motorcycle driver about traffic, found nothing better to do than crush him and his gf against a guardrail. She died, the bf is in critical conditions.


Hope he is eventually satisfied of what he did.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> You say?
> 
> http://torino.repubblica.it/cronaca...ato-170393681/?ref=RHPPLF-BH-I0-C8-P1-S1.8-T1
> 
> making the headlines, a road rage accident near Turin where a van driver, after a spirited discussion with a motorcycle driver about traffic, found nothing better to do than crush him and his gf against a guardrail. She died, the bf is in critical conditions.


The guy appeared to have been very drunk when he committed that crime. It did something similar 7 years ago, when he attacked two policemen after having provoked an accident due to his drunkeness.


----------



## Surel

Two girls streaming live on Facebook from their VW Beetle, boasting over speeding, breaking the rules, etc etc...

It was not their first video, but it was the last one for one of them. The phone kept filming throughout the accident.

This should be a compulsory video for anyone that is getting the driving license I guess.


----------



## CrazySerb

Kpc21 said:


> Their language is closer to Polish than any other.


What you call "Polish" is just archaic Serbian


----------



## cinxxx

Surel said:


> Two girls streaming live on Facebook from their VW Beetle, boasting over speeding, breaking the rules, etc etc...
> 
> It was not their first video, but it was the last one for one of them. The phone kept filming throughout the accident.
> 
> This should be a compulsory video for anyone that is getting the driving license I guess.


Full video here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVqXBeIQJYY


----------



## volodaaaa

Guys, will you help me?

I have accidentally put too much wax on my car. First it looked perfect, but now it get like stained after some rain. It is not easy to get rid of it. Only after I rub it off hard would it get clean. But only until the next rain.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

An extreme temperature difference in Spain is forecast for Thursday: 16°C in Asturias and 46°C in Extremadura and Andalusia.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> Guys, will you help me?
> 
> I have accidentally put too much wax on my car. First it looked perfect, but now it get like stained after some rain. It is not easy to get rid of it. Only after I rub it off hard would it get clean. But only until the next rain.


Quick detail spray.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> An extreme temperature difference in Spain is forecast for Thursday: 16°C in Asturias and 46°C in Extremadura and Andalusia.


46?! Sh--!

I think the hottest I've ever experienced would be 39. And the coldest about -18. They've been getting that sort of thing in places like Phoenix and Las Vegas lately....

(Celsius to Fahrenheit, and vice versa, is easy.  )


----------



## keber

volodaaaa said:


> I have accidentally put too much wax on my car. First it looked perfect, but now it get like stained after some rain. It is not easy to get rid of it. Only after I rub it off hard would it get clean. But only until the next rain.


That is easy. Last week someone sprayed polyurethane spray foam (pur foam) on my car and I really don't know how to remove it from car polish.


----------



## italystf

Today in Turin










And near Trieste: handbrake was forgotten


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Córdoba hit 46.8 °C at 1700 hours, a new record for that city according to Wikipedia. The Spanish all-time high is 47.1 °C. I wonder if it is possible to crack that.

At the same time, Oviedo in Northern Spain recorded a cool 17.4 °C.


----------



## CNGL

And my hometown reported 36.2 °C at the same time. Surprisingly that was hotter than Zaragoza (34.2 °C in Valdespartera, 34.6 °C at the airport), usually it is the other way round.

PS: Cordoba (also spelt Cordova in English) was still over 40 °C at 21:00 :nuts:. However the temperature there is rapidly falling.


----------



## Suburbanist

*Traffic fines in Europe*

source: NOS

red and blue are comparisons with the baseline values of Netherlands.


----------



## g.spinoza

Italy is right but there is an error on the "less or equal" sign, it should be "greater or equal": fine for 20 km/h over the limit speeding is not less or equal to 170 €, actually is higher: between 169 and 680 €. Also running a red light is not less or equal to 170, but it can go from 163 (running a red during the day) to 200 (during nighttime).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Childish NOS 'news'. They try too hard to be hip, this again shows that they think their main audience are teens and young millennials. A seat belt is not called a 'riem', but an 'autogordel' or 'gordel' for short. Only pre-teen children call it a 'riem'. The dimunitive of 'mobieltje' - though frequently used - is also not exactly professional.

NOS is tax-funded, public broadcasting unworthy, especially their website and mobile app. Many articles don't have a clear distinction between news and opinion, with an increasing amount of 'explanatory news' á la Vox. Just notice how many of their headlines are quotes or have a question mark. They also started a 'good news' section right after Trump got elected.

They are also obsessed with climate, sending staff to Svalbard to create a multi-day string of news about climate if there isn't anything real to report on. There is hardly not a day without climate 'news' on their website. Also, the latest development of Facebook features is not headline-worthy. They want to create a constant flow of new articles which results in a lot of non-news and clickbait, undermining the status of NOS as a professional news organization. It's not a race to publish the most articles possible.

Regional media are even worse though. Half of their news feed are rewritten Tweets. How can a journalist be proud of his work as an editor of Twitter content? Any intern can do that.


----------



## Verso

And now Slovenia:

- 20 km/h too fast = 80-300 €
- running through red = 300 €
- wrong parking = 40-120 €
- no seatbelt = 120 €
- cell phone = 120 €


----------



## Penn's Woods

What I was looking at as I looked through that was whether they had their priorities right. Using the phone...well, I don't know why anyone would ever think texting while driving is a good idea. It's insane. That and running red lights - behaviors that endanger others, not just yourself - ought to be fined higher than parking violations.

I myself have incurred very few fines in 35 years of driving, and gotten out of half of them.  Parking violations in Philadelphia start at $36. Going through an E-ZPass lane in New Jersey without a valid transponder (I'd changed my ATM card number and it hadn't occurred to me to give them the new one*) is $50. Those are the ones I remember.

*I got out of that one. It was my first violation of that so they "forgave" it automatically "as a courtesy"; I didn't even have to use my "it was an honest oversight" shtick.


----------



## Attus

Not the very best conditions for making photos, but you may ejoy them even so. Rheinbach Classics, Day 1.
DSCF1425 by Attila Németh, on Flickr
DSCF1411 by Attila Németh, on Flickr

MORE PHOTOS


----------



## italystf

This photos show the danger of wooden crashbarriers. They can break even with the impact of a small car (it was a Fiat Panda) and penetrate the body of the car.



















http://ilpiccolo.gelocal.it/trieste...rail-in-costi8era-ferita-1.15616872?ref=fbfpi

It happened yesterday on SR14 near Trieste. The driver fortunately survived with only minor injures, but she could have been killed if the wooden plank had hit her. I think the highway agency can be liable.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ It can happen also with metal barrier:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kubica


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ It can happen also with metal barrier:


Yes. However, Kubice drove surely much faster than normal cars... (and even he survived).


----------



## Attus

Rheinbach Classics, Day 2:
DSCF1459 by Attila Németh, on Flickr
DSCF1488 by Attila Németh, on Flickr
DSCF1530 by Attila Németh, on Flickr
DSCF1572 by Attila Németh, on Flickr

Dozens of photos in the album.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> This photos show the danger of wooden crashbarriers. They can break even with the impact of a small car (it was a Fiat Panda) and penetrate the body of the car.
> 
> 
> It happened yesterday on SR14 near Trieste. The driver fortunately survived with only minor injures, but she could have been killed if the wooden plank had hit her. I think the highway agency can be liable.


Italy is actually the only country where I have seen wooden barriers.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wooden crash barriers are also used in the Netherlands on an increasingly extensive scale since about 2010.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Wooden crash barriers are also used in the Netherlands on an increasingly extensive scale since about 2010.




Has anyone studied whether they're safer, or less safe, than metal? Because honestly, in a crash, I'm visualizing splinters of wood flying all over the place....


----------



## keokiracer

^^ I'm sorry, but do you honestly think they just place those things down before doing research into them?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

They don't exactly use plywood from the local hardware store.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keokiracer said:


> ^^ I'm sorry, but do you honestly think they just place those things down before doing research into them?




Sigh.

Fair point.
I was thinking out loud. No need to be rude.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Okay, phrased better: It seems, intuitively, that wood would be more likely to shatter. I guess I'm wondering why that's not the case, or what disadvantage to metal I'm missing.


----------



## keokiracer

^^ Most likely a cost thing. 
Though I'm reading that at least some of the Dutch ones are mainly steel with a wooden layer on top for aesthetics.


----------



## volodaaaa

If you plan to buy an HTC phone - don't do it. It is a piece of crap. First it started to do a reckless updates (just deleted all my wallpaper shortcuts), then it changed my ringtones (without my permission) and now, it keeps changing things (predominantly to make it worse).

What made me feel bad most is this: A flash-screen keeps on showing at times to inform me, that the operational system needs to have access to my contacts, etc. and I am supposed to confirm it. When I do it, it just inform me about some failure and after few minutes it all goes on and on.

Never buy it.


----------



## Suburbanist

I have bought a OnePlus 5 one month ago and so far I've been very happy with it. I like that it almost doesn't have bloatware while making Android more flexible to allow useful customization of stuff like double tapping capacitive buttons and gestures.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ringtones? Is that still a thing? I rarely make an actual phone call these days, I didn't even bother to set the ringtone to anything other than the default it came with. Everybody uses text messages nowadays. I only use Whatsapp though, not Facebook Messenger or other platforms. Whatsapp has an extremely high penetration rate in the Netherlands, virtually everybody uses it.


----------



## CNGL

I also don't make phone calls anymore, I just use WhatsApp (which I hispanicize to _Guasap_, like I do with other things).


----------



## italystf

When you think that using the hard shoulder to escape a traffic jam isn't [email protected] enough. :nuts:


----------



## Verso

I still make phone calls. :dunno:


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Ringtones? Is that still a thing? I rarely make an actual phone call these days, I didn't even bother to set the ringtone to anything other than the default it came with. Everybody uses text messages nowadays. I only use Whatsapp though, not Facebook Messenger or other platforms. Whatsapp has an extremely high penetration rate in the Netherlands, virtually everybody uses it.


I do make phone calls. And even though I do not insist on having a customized ringtone like some crazy teen, I am really accustomed to have a default one. And it is pretty annoying when you hear some phone ringing convinced that it is not yours and after an awkward time you realized it is your mobile that suddenly opted for a different ringtone. :lol:

It has happened to me three times.


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> Everybody uses text messages nowadays.


People still mostly call other people these days. I have a custom ring tone and tons of calls every day - mostly for work, but still ...
Usually you can't be efficient enough without real conversation.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Dungeness, Washington.


----------



## x-type

Suburbanist said:


> I have bought a OnePlus 5 one month ago and so far I've been very happy with it. I like that it almost doesn't have bloatware while making Android more flexible to allow useful customization of stuff like double tapping capacitive buttons and gestures.


i am observing it very much to buy it, although my OP1 still works perfectly.


----------



## keber

This was yesterday on our main commercial TV news - report about incoming heatwave:








rough translation
-----------
How not to forget your child in the car
Advices from National institute for public health

- put an object on the seat beside a child which you will need at first when you arrive at your destination
- set up a reminder on your telephone that you need to leave your child at child care
- before you leave your car, open the back door and check if a child is in in the car
----------
Idiocracy at its best :nuts:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

How popular is WhatsApp in your country? In the Netherlands it is considerably more popular than Facebook;

Population: 17 million
* 12.1 million people have WhatsApp installed
** 11 million people use it at least once per week
** 9.6 million people use it at least once per day
* 7.1 million people have Facebook installed

So over half of the population uses it daily and the amount of people using WhatsApp on their phone is 70% higher than those who have Facebook installed. 

Facebook also uses its MAU metric - monthly active users. These are people who use it at least once per month. But it doesn't say much about the actual usage of an app. Most Dutch people I have on Facebook are not active at all, with many posting less than once per month. 

Engagement on Facebook seems extremely low, for example the Dutch public broadcaster NOS has 675,000 likes on Facebook but posts generally get only a few thousand likes at best, with many staying under 500 likes even after a few hours. That's extremely low compared to the amount of people following that page, not to mention compared to the amount of people who use Facebook.

Maybe the same rule applies as on internet forums; a small percentage of users is responsible for a large percentage of content and engagement.


----------



## bogdymol

I mostly use Facebook Messenger. This is because it has the advantage of audio and video calling (I sometimes video call with my family in Romania) and I can always start a conversation on the phone and later continue it on the computer (text, audio and video). Plus that I have teached my parents and also my wife's parents how to use it to keep in touch with me and my wife.

I have installed also WhatsApp as some of my work colleagues (including 2 of my bosses) are using it and sometimes I need to be in touch with them.


----------



## cinxxx

^^I think WhatsApp also has video call.
It even has a computer web version. But it won't work if you don't have your phone on (you also have to start the app on it from time to time).

I grew up with Mirc and Yahoo Messenger, both on the PC, I'm not a fac of smartphone chatting. I aviod it as often as I can and use the PC. If not I prefer calling the person and discussing what there is to discuss to writing hundreds of words on the smartphone


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I use WhatsApp Web a lot. I'm not a huge fan of typing a lot on my phone. Typing is slow and multitasking is cumbersome. 

I think the popularity of the smart phone has a downside; content quality goes down a lot. Apart from the vertical video syndrome, people also don't bother to put much effort in messages typed on a phone, whether in a chat or on an internet forum. It's extremely cumbersome to type up a well-researched forum post with links and images. Not to mention the resolution problem. Phone print screens are ugly on a computer screen.


----------



## g.spinoza

I use Whatsapp but I find it to be somewhat cumbersome, especially in backupping and restoring conversations, or using on different devices.
I prefer Telegram, it has the same features, it is a lot faster and has no problems running on different devices at the same time.

I think you cannot compare Whatsapp and Facebook, their purpose is a lot different.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> I think you cannot compare Whatsapp and Facebook, their purpose is a lot different.


Well, yes and no. Facebook is indeed a different kind of platform, but the WhatsApp group chats moves some content from Facebook groups (and also internet forums) to WhatsApp. 

Not everyone likes the fact that posting in a public group becomes visible to everyones feed, including those not involved in that group. 

The downside of WhatsApp group chats is that they can become hyper active and filled with nonsense chat. You can't easily browse through that. 

Also popular in the Netherlands, residents of neighborhoods keeping an eye out on suspicious behavior using WhatsApp. Many neighborhoods have put up signs as a deterrent for burglars.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keber said:


> This was yesterday on our main commercial TV news - report about incoming heatwave:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> rough translation
> -----------
> How not to forget your child in the car
> Advices from National institute for public health
> 
> - put an object on the seat beside a child which you will need at first when you arrive at your destination
> - set up a reminder on your telephone that you need to leave your child at child care
> - before you leave your car, open the back door and check if a child is in in the car
> ----------
> Idiocracy at its best :nuts:


This does seem like idiocracy, but on the other hand, there have been too many stories of young children dying in cars in hot weather. I wonder, though, whether the issue isn't so much "forgetting" as not realizing how fast a closed car in hot weather heats up, so people think they're okay for ten minutes. (There were numbers on the Weather Channel here a couple of weeks ago. Along the lines of a closed car in 35C weather for half an hour heating up to 55 or 60. Or something like that...they were given in Fahrenheit and I don't remember the exact numbers anyway.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> How popular is WhatsApp in your country? In the Netherlands it is considerably more popular than Facebook;
> 
> Population: 17 million
> * 12.1 million people have WhatsApp installed
> ** 11 million people use it at least once per week
> ** 9.6 million people use it at least once per day
> * 7.1 million people have Facebook installed
> 
> So over half of the population uses it daily and the amount of people using WhatsApp on their phone is 70% higher than those who have Facebook installed.
> 
> Facebook also uses its MAU metric - monthly active users. These are people who use it at least once per month. But it doesn't say much about the actual usage of an app. Most Dutch people I have on Facebook are not active at all, with many posting less than once per month.
> 
> Engagement on Facebook seems extremely low, for example the Dutch public broadcaster NOS has 675,000 likes on Facebook but posts generally get only a few thousand likes at best, with many staying under 500 likes even after a few hours. That's extremely low compared to the amount of people following that page, not to mention compared to the amount of people who use Facebook.
> 
> Maybe the same rule applies as on internet forums; a small percentage of users is responsible for a large percentage of content and engagement.


Heck, *I* follow the NOS (and not only them), for practice reading Dutch. On the other hand, I haven't looked at anything of theirs in probably over a week.... My activity on Facebook changes. Sometimes I'm on top of my newsfeed; at others, I'm too busy and just stay on top of my groups and some friends.

I don't use WhatsApp much at all; I look at Facebook several times a day. I was a late adopter (2015) of both, though. But I'm not one of those people with thousands of Facebook friends; I limit it (mostly) to people I actually know and like.


----------



## Attus

I have no statistics. On the other hand I see that the vast majority of my Hungarian friends have not even heard of Whatsapp (no idea about very young people however, the vast majority of my friends are between 35-50 years), even those that actively use FB Messenger and other social media (Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, etc.) have never ever used Whatsapp. 
Many of my German friends don't use any, some of them use both and I know only one single person that uses Whatsapp, but doesn't use FB Messenger. 
So I have Whatsapp installed in my smartphone but I use it very rarely, I use Facebook Messenger quite oft.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

WhatsApp has 37 million users in Germany, according to this website.


----------



## MichiH

^^ Germany, WhatsApp is used by almost everyone I know except elder people over 60, except of my mother 
It's used for private and business purpose.

It's definitely much more used than Facebook here...

btw: Of course, phone calls are still VERY common (minimum for business)...


----------



## Penn's Woods

What *I* need to get a handle on is LinkedIn.... Applying for a job and can't remember where on it I put my writing samples.


----------



## x-type

i use WhatsApp only for private purposes, and it is probably the most widespread messenger in country. 
for some rebels I have Viber installed.
at work I use Skype.
for gaming I use Telegram.

so yes, I use on daily basis each of the most popular 4.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I use Facebook messenger much more than Whatsapp, I barely ever use the latter.


----------



## Suburbanist

I think Facebook, which owns WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, will ultimately allow integration of both while keeping WhatsApp bare-bones available as well. That is has somehow spun FB Messenger for the FB social network is already an indication of that. 

WhatsApp is more prominent in markets where SMS and especially MMS were quite expensive back when WhatsApp was introduced. In US, for instance, zero-marginal cost SMS had already been a feature of phone plans, so there was less of an incentive to adopt WhatsApp. In Netherlands, Germany and some other places, SMS were quite rationed and outrageously expensive above their monthly cap around 2009-11, so WhatsApp quickly gained popularity as a way for people to communicate as much as they wanted, through then prevailing 3G networks.

Actually, I think all the major messaging apps have some glaring shortcomings. WhatsApp makes it hard to track older chats and has a clumsy contact list system based only on phone numbers (which on the other hand is an advantage). Facebook Messenger is sleek but handles video not so well. Skype is great for video chatting but completely dropped the ball on making for easier/better text messaging. None of them advanced in terms of integration with cloud services properly (Dropbox, Google Drive etc).

Google itself dropped the ball, it had GTalk but never made a push on mobile and GTalk became irrelevant. Then there was MSN (Messenger), forced to fold onto Skype with loss of some critical functionality.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Well, yes and no. Facebook is indeed a different kind of platform, but the WhatsApp group chats moves some content from Facebook groups (and also internet forums) to WhatsApp.
> 
> *Not everyone likes the fact that posting in a public group becomes visible to everyones feed, including those not involved in that group. *


That is extremely easy to configure. The group itself can be set as private or even secret and, in both cases, content in the group cannot be seen by anyone who is not part of the group, nor posts from the group can be shared outside the group either. 

Actually, to Facebook's defense, since 2014 privacy settings became much more intuitive and easy to use. It is really easy to spend 10 minutes and configure who can see what, now.


----------



## italystf

Whatsapp is extremely popular in Italy, virtually everybody uses it on daily base and mostly replaces SMSs (the only SMSs I get nowadays are those from my mobile operator and other services). Most people would probably feel cut off from the outside world without it, as it's a very popular way to keep in touch (both with private and group chats).

Telegram is technically superior to Whatsapp. It allows to create group chats with more than 256 partecipants, it stores data on cloud instead on your phone memory and includes some functions not included in Whatsapp (bots, database of GIFs,...). However, it's still not popular and most people don't use it.

Facebook Messenger is very popular too, but mostly used to contact people you don't have their phone numbers (usually distant acquiatances or even strangers, for example to get information about sth) or to send material you find online or you have stored in your computer (it's more practical if you don't have Whatsapp web).


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Actually, to Facebook's defense, since 2014 privacy settings became much more intuitive and easy to use. It is really easy to spend 10 minutes and configure who can see what, now.


Still, you'll often meet people that are too ignorant/lazy to find it out, and then complain that someone has seen some private content that s/he wasn't supposed to see... talking about idiocracy.


----------



## italystf




----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Oy. Joy Reid's not stupid, though. Before everyone starts piling on about stupid Americans just because not everyone over here knows central Europe like the back of their hands.... (This is what comes of the 24-hour news cycle; Tweeting without fact-checking.)

EDIT: Or was it the person responding to Joy Reid? I don't use Twitter (getting back to social media....)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I had to look up who that is. A television host and correspondent for MSNBC. 

Well, a tweet like that doesn't look so smart but how many Europeans can point out Missouri or Alberta on a map? The topographic knowledge of the average person is quite poor.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I had to look up who that is. A television host and correspondent for MSNBC.
> 
> Well, a tweet like that doesn't look so smart but how many Europeans can point out Missouri or Alberta on a map? The topographic knowledge of the average person is quite poor.


although i will use the opportunity and say that i am intensively learning US capitals and locations, i don't like this comparison. proper comparison would be to make Americans know French or Italian regions, German states, Spanish communities, Russian states etc.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Oy. Joy Reid's not stupid, though. Before everyone starts piling on about stupid Americans just because not everyone over here knows central Europe like the back of their hands.... (This is what comes of the 24-hour news cycle; Tweeting without fact-checking.)
> 
> EDIT: Or was it the person responding to Joy Reid? I don't use Twitter (getting back to social media....)


I'm sorry, but in the era of Wikipedia and information at your fingertips, writing a stupid thing like this Joy Reid did is not excusable anymore. I have no idea if Wyoming and Idaho border, but before I make a statement about this I just spend 10 seconds on Google.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slovenia or Slovakia have a smaller population and area than Missouri. Where Americans tend to think of Europe as one country, Europeans tend to underestimate the diversity of the United States. In some ways U.S. states have more jurisdiction than countries in the European Union. 

For example with road planning, U.S. states can use their own environmental approval process if no federal funding is involved. But European countries all have their environmental approval process based on EU directives.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> I'm sorry, but in the era of Wikipedia and information at your fingertips, writing a stupid thing like this Joy Reid did is not excusable anymore. I have no idea if Wyoming and Idaho border, but before I make a statement about this I just spend 10 seconds on Google.




Agreed. As I said. (Although was it her or someone responding to her?) I'm just anticipating an inevitable and predictable round of Europeans displaying their intelligence by generalizing from one person's mistake to an entire population of 300 million's intelligence.


----------



## Penn's Woods

In other news, I currently have a Facebook friend (or friend of a friend), a German citizen born in Scotland, "correcting" me for saying Alsace is French. Whatever....
Annoying prick.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's an alternative fact, right?


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> I'm just anticipating an inevitable and predictable round of Europeans displaying their intelligence by generalizing from one person's mistake to an entire population of 300 million's intelligence.


No, I think she is above average. Most "American" had not known anything about Yugoslavia and history...

:jk:


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> No, I think she is above average. Most "American" had not known anything about Yugoslavia and history...
> 
> :jk:




Maybe she was subconsciously trying to avoid an argument about what to call the other component of the ex-Czechoslovakia. :jk:


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Slovenia or Slovakia have a smaller population and area than Missouri. Where Americans tend to think of Europe as one country, Europeans tend to underestimate the diversity of the United States. In some ways U.S. states have more jurisdiction than countries in the European Union.
> 
> For example with road planning, U.S. states can use their own environmental approval process if no federal funding is involved. But European countries all have their environmental approval process based on EU directives.


I don't think that's relevant when you consider the following:

1. She made a statement (if you don't know, check it out or be quiet and there will be no outrage),
2. We live in the era of the Internet where it's easy to find anything quickly,
3. She's a political commentator with a Harvard degree.

But that tweet wasn't even that bad, this is much worse:










On top of that she has this written in her Tweeter profile:

“Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” - James Baldwin

icard:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Well, why can't you choose more distinctive names for your new countries?! :jk:

Anyhow, a Slovene won a stage in the Tour de France the other day. Whereas a Slovak (unfairly in my opinion) was disqualified a couple of weeks ago.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What about Slavonia then?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Seriously, I just did about five minutes' research (because I hadn't heard of this until italystf posted it): The biggest problem with that tweet may be that - well, I'm being careful here - some people seem to be taking it as if she's trying to imply that Trump's marriages to two "Soviet" women confirms suspicions of his collusion with Russia. If so, there's a lot wrong with that....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is no such thing as 'Soviet Yugoslavia'. Yugoslavia was never part of the Soviet Union and cut ties with the Soviet Union in 1948, the so-called Tito-Stalin Split 

In addition, Ivana was not from the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia, but from Zlín, in present-day Czechia (or Czech Republic if you will).


----------



## Penn's Woods

President Gerald Ford got in trouble for saying Poland was "not under Soviet domination." It may have lost him the 1976 election.

I wouldn't say (in a pre-1989 context) "Soviet Poland," though. "Communist," "Soviet-dominated".... One of my biggest peeves with Democrats lately (and I'm a Democrat myself) is that so many of them think today's Russia is ideologically equivalent to the Soviet Union....

And I despise Trump, but I don't care about his personal life, and don't criticize members of his family just for being members of his family. And Ivana Trump (wife number 1 or 2) is no more responsible for 1970s Czechoslovak politics than Martina Navratilova is.

Okay, I'm done now. For now.


----------



## italystf

Here in the West many people still associate Eastern Europe countries with Russia, not realizing that most of those countries are now politically aligned with the West (EU, NATO, multi-party elections,...) and hate Russia much more than us westerners.


----------



## volodaaaa

The thing is that "soviet" an "socialist" is not the same though sometimes interchanged. Soviet is usually referred to the Soviet Union while socialist is referred to the Eastern bloc (if spoken in terms of Europe). As has already been told, Yugoslavia or Albania were socialist countries though completely refused the "soviet model".

I would say, the notion of "soviet" is an adjective for Soviet Union the same way the "American" is sometimes an adjective for the USA.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> What about Slavonia then?


or even better - adverb _Slavonic _as reffering to Slavs, not to Slavonia icard:
English is sometims really annoying


----------



## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> ....English is sometims really annoying




That's how we keep people on their toes.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Seriously, though, I think I've only seen "Slavonic" in historical-linguistic contexts...the "Old Church Slavonic" language that was (still is?) used in the Orthodox Church and so on....


----------



## degen2

Hi guys!
Where can I find pictures of Karawanke tunnel during Yugoslav civil war in the 90's?
I read on Wikipedia that custom and toll houses were destroyed,but I couldn't find any pictures.


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> Well, why can't you choose more distinctive names for your new countries?! :jk:


New? Oh please, grandpa.  Anyway, we should've blocked Slovakia from joining the eurozone for using such a similar name. It should be called the former Czechoslovak Republic of Slovakia.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> New? Oh please, grandpa.  Anyway, we should've blocked Slovakia from joining the eurozone for using such a similar name. It should be called the former Czechoslovak Republic of Slovakia.




FCROS. Pronounced "EFF-cross."
Has a ring to it.
Better than FCROTCR (Former Czechoslovak Republic of the Czech Republic)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Is it true that for BOTH of them, the adjective is Slovenski or something like that?


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> FCROS. Pronounced "EFF-cross."
> Has a ring to it.
> Better than FCROTCR (Former Czechoslovak Republic of the Czech Republic)


Former Czechoslovak Republic of Czechia - FCROC (ef-croc(odile)).



Penn's Woods said:


> Is it true that for BOTH of them, the adjective is Slovenski or something like that?


In Slovenian it's "slovenski", while in Slovak it's "slovenský" (nominative, singular, masculine). Slovenian and Slovak woman is both called "Slovenka" in respective languages.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> I bought myself a pair of polarised glasses which I use mostly for driving. I don't see any reflection in my windshield, plus it reduces the sun glare from other cars or water. It works so good that I bought also a polarised filter for my photo camera.


I have a pair, too. 

Funny thing is, with them on I barely can see the screen of my smartphone, and I can't see anything on gas pump's LED displays.


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> I have a pair, too.
> 
> Funny thing is, with them on I barely can see the screen of my smartphone, and I can't see anything on gas pump's LED displays.


:lol: Me too


----------



## CNGL

About car crashes, my long lived car ended its life when my brother encountered someone going too fast on an unpaved road. He managed to avoid a frontal collision, but the left side was badly damaged. So, from now I'll be travelling in a van, a Citroën Berlingo to be exact. It has been registered as a car, so I won't lose 12 minutes every 120 km on a motorway as I was afraid initially.


----------



## Kpc21

MichiH said:


> :lol: Me too


What if you rotate the smartphone by 90 degrees, so that it's oriented horizontally?


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ probably the screen is also polarized the other way 
I've had that several times... even on cars (e.g. head's up displays)


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> I've thought that non-polarized sunglasses are only good to spoil your vision.


Polarized sunglasses and LCD displays are an impossible combination. That is why I use non-polarized ones while driving a car or a boat.


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> Polarized sunglasses and LCD displays are an impossible combination. That is why I use non-polarized ones while driving a car or a boat.


True. However LCD displays in my cars are fully visible in my sunglasses. I have problem with my cell phone, especially if I am outside and the sunshine is strong.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> True. However LCD displays in my cars are fully visible in my sunglasses. I have problem with my cell phone, especially if I am outside and the sunshine is strong.


I depends on the design of the screen. The sunclasses are vertically polarized. They filter all the light from horizontally polarized screens. However, some screens are polarized at 45 degrees, thus supporting both landscape and portrait mode but not at the brightest.


----------



## Highway89

An accident on the A-6 in Spain caused by a tyre puncture. There are still many stretches of motorway in Spain that lack a crash barrier in the median, something which seems uncommon in the rest of Europe. Fortunately not even the truck driver was injured, according to the video description.





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3SjpiHzqvc


----------



## volodaaaa

Highway89 said:


> An accident on the A-6 in Spain caused by a tyre puncture. There are still many stretches of motorway in Spain that lack a crash barrier in the median, something which seems uncommon in the rest of Europe. Fortunately not even the truck driver was injured, according to the video description.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3SjpiHzqvc


Good the driver did not slow down. That increased the chance to hit something and successfully pass thru.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I doubt if a standard class crash barrier would've stopped that truck. Even a jersey barrier could fail (there are many crossover examples on German and Belgian motorways with jersey barriers). An earth-filled double jersey barrier can stop almost anything but even then there are examples of trucks crashing over them.


----------



## Kpc21

I hope the truck driver had his seatbelts fastened...

And it shows it's always worth fastening them, even on a bus (which could have a similar accident), which many people unfortunately don't do...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A fire in the ExxonMobile refinery in Rotterdam:









via: https://twitter.com/marcelwout72/status/899721621778427904


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Smoke from wildfires in British Columbia has reached Europe, with plumes of smoke spanning across Europe from the North Sea into the Balkans.

I'm currently looking at a hazy sunset in the Netherlands. There are no clouds in the sky but the horizon is hazy yellow.

Satellite loop: https://www.facebook.com/severeweatherEU/videos/2068757793347311/

NASA also noticed it: https://ozonea*****fc.nasa.gov/blogs/science/2017/08/canadian-smoke-moves-northward-and-eastward

2017 has been the most active wildfire season in B.C. history with nearly 9,000 km² burned since early July. It is the largest in total area burnt, number of evacuations and largest single fire at 4700 km². To compare, the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire in Alberta was a nearly 6000 km² fire. 

August 2nd satellite image of the wildfires:


----------



## keokiracer

ChrisZwolle said:


> NASA also noticed it: https://ozonea*****fc.nasa.gov/blogs/science/2017/08/canadian-smoke-moves-northward-and-eastward


What link was this and why does SSC block it?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

SSC has blocked some domains so they don't end up with litigation over stock photos being posted on the forums. Apparently the NASA website uses part of the same name as some stock photo company.

The missing part is QdotGS


----------



## ufonut

Last week a massive weather front came through central and northern Poland causing huge devastation everywhere. The loss of fauna and flora may take up to 30 years to recover.










One of the members of the Polish forum who has been very active especially in drawing various road maps over the years failed to update some maps on the forums. People started asking questions - what happened ?, where the hell are the new maps ? ! It so happens that the forumer's computer fried during the weather storm. What are we to do ? People on the forum got together, opened a bank account, announced a forum-wide collection and began reporting on how much has been donated for the new equipment. So far over 2000 PLN (500 Euros). 

Reminds me the time when Polish forumers got together and donated money to construct a drone to take better pictures of highways and expressways. It worked very well - tons of money was donated, the drone was built and started making highway movies


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Beach-bound congestion in southern Netherlands and Belgium. Today may be the best day of the whole summer which has been very low-key thus far.










The temperatures in the Netherlands have exceeded 25°C on only a few days in July. May-June actually had better summer weather than the traditional summer months of July-August. 

25°C or over is considered a 'summer day' in the Netherlands. The average July-August high is 23°C, though temperatures of 25-30°C are normal in the Dutch summer, but not for weeks on end, which results in a lower 30-year average of 23°C. However the summer of 2017 hasn't had a lot of 'summer days'. Including today likely only 6 for July-August with none over 30°C, which is significantly below average.

The weather is not terrible, but it's just not stable, 22°C, scattered clouds and a strong wind is not considered real summer weather for many people. August had only 1 day with more than 2/3rds of possible daily sunshine.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ With temperatures as low as 25 °C, my girlfriend would put a light jacket on...


----------



## Suburbanist

The 3 month accumulated precipitation at the nearby meteo station in Bergen has surpassed 850mm

Every crack on the rock cliffs is seeping water


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Europeans who do not speak English natively often think highway exclusively means freeway / autobahn / autopista, etc. But the term highway can mean any type of road, for example state highway or provincial highway, and not only in the US.


----------



## italystf

I've seen in many Italian texts (translated from English) the word 'autostrada' (motorway in Italian) referred to a normal road. Aparently, some translators translate automatically highway with autostrada, even when is referred to a non-motorway road and 'strada' (road) should have been used instead.
So you can find phrases such as 'Autostrada Transamazzonica' (Trans-Amazonian highway) or 'Autostrada del Karakorum' (Karakorum highway). They should instead write 'Strada Transamazzonica' and 'Strada del Karakorum' respectively.


----------



## Attus

M7 in Hungary is 3+2 in approx. 48 km.
Km 64.
Km 17.


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> M7 in Hungary is 3+2 in approx. 48 km.
> Km 64.
> Km 17.


Any reason for that?


----------



## italystf

If we count also emergency lane, Croatian A9 has it only southbound for its entire lenght (78 km, minus two half-profile viaducts).
This is because the southbound carriaggeway is older than the northbound one, that was built with modern standards.


----------



## Attus

italystf said:


> Any reason for that?


M7 connects Budapest to lake Balaton and to the Croatian coast. Traffic to Balaton and Croatia spreads from Friday afternoon to Saturday noon, traffic back to Budapest is much denser in Sunday evening/night.


----------



## keber

I've just returned from a three-week road trip from USA, about 5500 miles or 9000 km in about 125 hours of driving. Approximate route, add additional here-and-there trips, mostly around national parks:
https://goo.gl/maps/UoopX74qWNz

I must say it was really satisfying trip albeit pretty tiring. Interesting experience from European point of view, especially driving wide rural highways with 65 or even 70 mph speed limit (110 km/h). Wide roads are actually everywhere and this I miss in EU.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Awesome! (What's in Merced, worth of such a detour?  )


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Only Spain seems to build many wide two lane roads. And those are not even as wide as some North American two laners.


----------



## Suburbanist

On the other hand, "super-two" and other designs with 2 lanes (one per direction) and physical separation of lanes are very uncommon in US.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Europeans who do not speak English natively often think highway exclusively means freeway / autobahn / autopista, etc. But the term highway can mean any type of road, for example state highway or provincial highway, and not only in the US.


I wouldn't use it for minor roads in rural areas, or for city streets.

EDIT: Let's refine that a little. Any freeway/autobahn/motorway/expressway, urban or rural, is a highway. Major roads...let's say anything with a U.S. or state number...in rural or suburban areas are highways. City streets, even main ones (Broad Street in Philadelphia for example), aren't highways (but a freeway/motorway... in an urban area is). Can't put a finger on why...maybe it's got to feel as if it's leading some place else.

I'm sure in some legal contexts, "highway" can mean any public road.

That's just me, but I'd guess most Americans use these terms the same way. Any input from Canadians, Brits, Aussies, etc.?


----------



## Penn's Woods

keber said:


> I've just returned from a three-week road trip from USA, about 5500 miles or 9000 km in about 125 hours of driving. Approximate route, add additional here-and-there trips, mostly around national parks:
> https://goo.gl/maps/UoopX74qWNz
> 
> I must say it was really satisfying trip albeit pretty tiring. Interesting experience from European point of view, especially driving wide rural highways with 65 or even 70 mph speed limit (110 km/h). Wide roads are actually everywhere and this I miss in EU.


What was your favorite area?


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> On the other hand, "super-two" and other designs with 2 lanes (one per direction) and physical separation of lanes are very uncommon in US.


Are 1+1 roads with physical separation common elsewhere?
For example in Italy there are many "super-two", but almost none I know is divided. I think they have some road like that in Denmark.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> I'm sure in some legal contexts, "highway" can mean any public road.


In English (BrE? AmE? both?) there is the expression "highway code", that refers to rules valid in any kind of road, from pedestrian alleys to ten-lanes freeways.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Any freeway/autobahn/motorway/expressway, urban or rural, is a highway.


I wonder if there could be some freeway/autobahn/motorway/expressway that can't be called highways.
Maybe some short stretches in the middle of nowhere, part of uncompleted bigger projects, unconnected to the network and used only by local traffic.
In Italy A21racc, A31, A33, A59 and A60 come to my mind.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> In English (BrE? AmE? both?) there is the expression "highway code", that refers to rules valid in any kind of road, from pedestrian alleys to ten-lanes freeways.


That's what I was thinking of by "legal contexts."


----------



## Penn's Woods

Talking terminology: I just heard someone on the Weather Channel (round-the-clock coverage of hurricane aftermath in Texas) talk about "water up to the Jersey rails on Interstate 45." The speaker was identified as a Weather Channel employee, but wasn't one of their regular on-air people and seemed to be a local.

"Jersey barrier" - because they were supposedly first used in New Jersey - is used for concrete dividers in the middle of a highway, but I've never heard "Jersey rails"....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've heard of the term 'K rails' as well. Appears to be a west coast thing. I've also heard about the 'no post'.


----------



## keber

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Awesome! (What's in Merced, worth of such a detour?  )


A cheap motel. :lol: 
Absolutely nothing is worth seeing in Merced. But all reasonable priced accommodation around Yosemite national park was full already in the beginning of this year and Merced was closest affordable on our route. August in most known US national parks is like ferragosto weekends on Italian roads.
Original idea of this trip however was to observe total solar eclipse and when you are already there ... :cheers:
If I limit my thoughts about USA to road issues and what I miss here - 
- cheaaaap gasoline
- wide roads, even country ones
- long on- and offramps from freeways
- turning right on reds
- good speed limit on most highways, up to 70 mph, nothing illogical
- special speed limits (like at schools) are clearly marked and valid only when yellow light is flashing or when children are actually present
- signs on interstates, which food, gas and accommodation companies await you at the next exit (there are no such rest areas as in Europe)
- a lot of large organized parkings on important viewpoints

What I won't miss:
- average pavement quality, often bad (depends of state)
- often confusing traffic lights in intersections
- too much words on signs (with some really funny warnings like "don't pass when incoming traffic")
- in average low speed limit on freeways (75 or 80 mph speed limit is mostly a rarity)


----------



## keber

Penn's Woods said:


> What was your favorite area?


That is difficult to say, everywhere was nice. But I was most surprised in Utah with astonishing nature.


----------



## CNGL

I like how you went through rarely travelled (by foreigners) areas of the USA such as Nebraska.


----------



## bogdymol

@keber: I see that you have been to Page, Arizona (Antelope Canyon) and Navajo Monument Valley. These 2 were my favorite parts of my modest 4000 km roadtrip that I took last year in USA.


----------



## keber

Rarely travelled by foreigners, but not forgotten - there are quite some with rented cars and RVs but much much less of them than in western national parks. Actually there I thought that half of Europe arrived into USA.
Nebraska with good weather statistics was destination for seeing solar eclipse. And Nashville was one of the must-see cities.
Eclipse moment with diamond ring with my rather average camera:


----------



## bogdymol

keber said:


> Rarely travelled by foreigners, but not forgotten - there are quite some with rented cars and RVs but much much less of them than in western national parks. Actually there I thought that half of Europe arrived into USA


I heard a lot of people speaking german on the west coast. Funny thing was that I was speaking Romanian with my wife, and they didn't knew that I can understand what they were talking (after 3 years of living in Austria I learned it, although I'm still not quite fluent) :naughty:


----------



## keber

bogdymol said:


> @keber: I see that you have been to Page, Arizona (Antelope Canyon) and Navajo Monument Valley. These 2 were my favorite parts of my modest 4000 km roadtrip that I took last year in USA.


Antelope Canyon was fully booked already some weeks in advance, so we visited just Horseshoe curve of Colorado River. Monument Valley was spectacular, I agree. Yellowstone park is also very nice, but for me nothing more than alpine style altitude forest with spruces, rivers and lakes all over like in many countries in Europe, just with added geysers.
If you don't plan too much, you can visit or experience some side marvels, like we did with Ogden Airforce museum (they have Blackbird ), local country dance party or rodeo, or amazing sunsets over Grand Canyon valley, Capitol Reef canyons and plains of Nebraska, when you're very late with particular day journey.
As for cost, rental cars and accommodation are about twice more expensive than in other months.


----------



## bogdymol

keber said:


> Antelope Canyon was fully booked already some weeks in advance, so we visited just Horseshoe curve of Colorado River. Monument Valley was spectacular, I agree.




We didn't book before, but we searched locally for a guide. As it was October, we found it quite easy.



Horseshoe bend and Monument Valley are spectacular indeed... Also Capital Reef is cool (we walked down into it, although it was quite scarry as rocks might fall down at any time). I have never experienced such amazing (extraterestial I would say) sceneries before.


Due to time constraints we had to cut something off the list, so we didn't go to Yellowstone as from the pictures and reviews we found it quite similar to what we can find in the Austrian Alps, as you also mentioned. 




keber said:


> As for cost, rental cars and accommodation are about twice more expensive than in other months.




As I said, we were there in October, so the costs were affordable. Also the weather was really nice.


----------



## bogdymol

Maybe some of other forumers don't understand exactly what we're talking about (Monument Valley, Horseshoe bend, Capital Reef... what's that???). I think I should share some pictures with the most important attractions:

Horseshoe bend:










Monument Valley:



















Arches National Park:










Capital Reef:


















^^ I walked down there. Pretty scarry to be honest.

My wife will have to write about these experiences on day on her blog...


----------



## keber

Last two are from Bryce NP. Capitol Reef is quite different.


----------



## bogdymol

Yes, you are right. My mistake.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keber said:


> Antelope Canyon was fully booked already some weeks in advance, so we visited just Horseshoe curve of Colorado River. Monument Valley was spectacular, I agree. Yellowstone park is also very nice, but for me nothing more than alpine style altitude forest with spruces, rivers and lakes all over like in many countries in Europe, just with added geysers.
> If you don't plan too much, you can visit or experience some side marvels, like we did with Ogden Airforce museum (they have Blackbird ), local country dance party or rodeo, or amazing sunsets over Grand Canyon valley, Capitol Reef canyons and plains of Nebraska, when you're very late with particular day journey.
> As for cost, rental cars and accommodation are about twice more expensive than in other months.


What I think a lot of people go to Yellowstone for, besides weird natural things like the geysers, is wildlife. Bison, bears and so on.

Where did you see the eclipse? (We got 79% coverage in Philadelphia - I just went to a nearby park to watch - but a cloud parked over it; it was sunny half an hour earlier.)


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


>


This photo was on the cover of a copybook I had years ago.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> - signs on interstates, which food, gas and accommodation companies await you at the next exit (there are no such rest areas as in Europe)


I've read that there is an old law (maybe even from Eisenhower years) that, for some reasons I don't know, forbids rest areas along non-tolled interstates.

However, leaving and re-entering an untolled motorway at an exit is not a big deal, not more than using a bi-directional rest area like they have in Austria.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^When Congress was considering funding the Interstate system, some members were concerned about its effects on businesses in small towns with a lot of tourist traffic. So they did in fact prohibit businesses in the right of way, so that people have to get off for gas or food. But this hasn't led to protecting those towns, really, just to clusters of gas stations and the like at exits.


----------



## keber

italystf said:


> This photo was on the cover of a copybook I had years ago.


We couldn't find where this photo was taken. Surely it was not around Monument valley entrance.
Also l was surprised at equipment of new cars. They all have automatic transmission, satellite radio and really large space for baggage, but no LED lights, no park, rain or light sensors not even automatic air conditioning, all of this are features in almost all new EU economy cars.


----------



## rudiwien

bogdymol said:


> Monument Valley:





keber said:


> We couldn't find where this photo was taken. Surely it was not around Monument valley entrance.



This is approaching from the Utah side, somewhere around here: https://www.google.at/maps/@37.1013...Y7fiXPbgGJ0AWXaAv68vA!2e0!7i3328!8i1664?hl=de


----------



## bogdymol

keber said:


> We couldn't find where this photo was taken. Surely it was not around Monument valley entrance.



We googled quite a lot before the trip until we managed to get this exact location. I saved the GPS coordinates and we drove there just for that picture.


----------



## keber

We didn't google, we thought it is quite obvius but apparently it wasn't now I see we should drive just about 5 miles further of our furthest point and we would see it. But central Monument Valley is so much better that we didn't even want to search a lot.
As for Capitol Reef NP, it is this:








You can even drive into canyons where many western movies were shot.


----------



## Verso

I'm bathing in the Italian sea for the first time (Sistiana). Not much difference though since half the people speak Slovenian.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Are you sure it's not Croatian? They seem to want it whole


----------



## Suburbanist

So Via Michelin revamped its map engine a bit. It now has an updated cartographic base that shows mostly fine on small-ish-scale zoom (think 200km across a screen). They at least show the road hierarchies in a nice and distinctive way, something Google Maps or Bing don't. I noticed some zoom levels still show main roads in old alignments (in cases where old alignments became a secondary route after some new bypass shown as the secondary one). Probably a bug they are ironing out.

It's great to see they have not given up completely on cartography.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm currently in France, half the sights I've seen I found through the Michelin road atlas. So much more detail and information than Google Maps. Google Maps is only good if you know in advance where you want to go to. I found great passes, gorges and viewpoints and scenic routes with Michelin. Google maps has no such information...


----------



## bogdymol

Longest possible drive on Google Maps


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm currently in France, half the sights I've seen I found through the Michelin road atlas. So much more detail and information than Google Maps. Google Maps is only good if you know in advance where you want to go to. I found great passes, gorges and viewpoints and scenic routes with Michelin. Google maps has no such information...


My greatest use of Michelin maps is exactly to find scenic drives and, years ago, less known attraction. Now TripAdvisor often takes care of attractions, yet Michelin scenic drives are usually quite good picks (in Europe, that is). They also have these 2D terrain projections that give you an idea of what and where are you driving, whether a road is a modern alignment or some interesting valley drive. They also used to show the opening and closing dates of mountain passes in older editions.


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> Longest possible drive on Google Maps


Wrong.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Cit...e7e19c065b!2m2!1d150.8301413!2d59.5611525!3e0


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Are you sure it's not Croatian? They seem to want it whole


oh really?










we wanted only those 3 squids from Piran. that's not that greedy.


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm currently in France, half the sights I've seen I found through the Michelin road atlas. So much more detail and information than Google Maps. Google Maps is only good if you know in advance where you want to go to. I found great passes, gorges and viewpoints and scenic routes with Michelin. Google maps has no such information...


I also own one, and I found the Dune of Pilat near Bordeaux using the same method.


italystf said:


> Wrong.
> https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Cit...e7e19c065b!2m2!1d150.8301413!2d59.5611525!3e0


But that includes a ferry. It could be actually possible to do it totally overland if Israel wasn't in the middle.


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> But that includes a ferry. It could be actually possible to do it totally overland if Israel wasn't in the middle.


The borders between Israel and Egypt/Jordan can be crossed. The problem is that many other Muslim countries reject passports with Israeli stamps or Egyptian/Jordanian stamps issued at Israeli borders. So, you need two passports to do that.
Another problem is that some countries are totally off-limits for driving. You can't go to Syria and Iraq due to wars and it's not possible for foreigners to travel independly in Saudi Arabia. So these three countries block any possible route between Africa and Asia.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm currently in France, half the sights I've seen I found through the Michelin road atlas. So much more detail and information than Google Maps. Google Maps is only good if you know in advance where you want to go to. I found great passes, gorges and viewpoints and scenic routes with Michelin. Google maps has no such information...


I hope paper maps never disappear. (For one thing, can you imagine, 20 or 30 years after they did, trying to track the history of development and roads in a given area?) I did find GPS in my rental car on my second European trip helpful, not for directions, but to confirm where I was (approaching a confusing intersection or after a point of confusion); otherwise I've never used it.


----------



## Kpc21

Wouldn't it be longer to go through Scandinavia to Russia, not to mention taking longer roads and making different zig-zags through Europe and Asia?


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> it's not possible for foreigners to travel independly in Saudi Arabia.


Not entirely true. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benka_Pulko


----------



## Kanadzie

italystf said:


> The borders between Israel and Egypt/Jordan can be crossed. The problem is that many other Muslim countries reject passports with Israeli stamps or Egyptian/Jordanian stamps issued at Israeli borders. So, you need two passports to do that.
> Another problem is that some countries are totally off-limits for driving. You can't go to Syria and Iraq due to wars and it's not possible for foreigners to travel independly in Saudi Arabia. So these three countries block any possible route between Africa and Asia.


Israel does not stamp passports unless requested for this reason, instead visa is given on a discrete piece of paper.
(Yiddishe kop!) :cheers:


----------



## italystf

Kanadzie said:


> Israel does not stamp passports unless requested for this reason, instead visa is given on a discrete piece of paper.
> (Yiddishe kop!) :cheers:


It may work if you enter by plane. If you enter by road, you'll still have Egyptian or Jordan border stamp as evidence to your visit in Israel.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> I hope paper maps never disappear. (For one thing, can you imagine, 20 or 30 years after they did, trying to track the history of development and roads in a given area?)


Google Earth works fine for that purpose, it allows to see older satellite imagery.


----------



## italystf

Kpc21 said:


> Wouldn't it be longer to go through Scandinavia to Russia, not to mention taking longer roads and making different zig-zags through Europe and Asia?


It doesn't count as it isn't a logical route.


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> oh really?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> we wanted only those 3 squids from Piran. that's not that greedy.


Nobody from Italy wants Istria and Rjieka back, except for a very marginal political party. The government of Croatia does not want some squids, but to close access to international waters to Slovenia.

I'm not serious here, this is a joke post, in case the mood wasn't clear


----------



## Suburbanist

I am sure there are some Sanmarinese longing for Rimini to become part of their Republic :shifty:


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> Nobody from Italy wants Istria and Rjieka back, except for a very marginal political party. The government of Croatia does not want some squids, but to close access to international waters to Slovenia.
> 
> I'm not serious here, this is a joke post, in case the mood wasn't clear


and you really think that people here give the **** about Piran? 

(my post was also in ironic mode, don't worry)


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Google Earth works fine for that purpose, it allows to see older satellite imagery.


Where is the link for that? A few days ago, someone on TV was showing how the area around the Houston reservoirs has developed since they were built; there was a Google Earth or Google Maps credit on the screen, but I can't find how to turn that on.

But still, I hope paper maps don't disappear any time soon.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Where is the link for that? A few days ago, someone on TV was showing how the area around the Houston reservoirs has developed since they were built; there was a Google Earth or Google Maps credit on the screen, but I can't find how to turn that on.
> 
> But still, I hope paper maps don't disappear any time soon.


You need to download Google Earth software, it can't be done on the browser.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> and you really think that people here give the **** about Piran?


Then why do you fight endlessly for that little piece of sea? :nuts:


----------



## Verso

Junkie said:


> That 'little piece of sea' belongs to Croatia.


No, it doesn't. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague assigned it to Slovenia, so it's ours.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Can Slovenians understand Croatian (if they haven't studied it), and vice versa?


----------



## Junkie

Verso said:


> No, it doesn't. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague assigned it to Slovenia, so it's ours.


My personal understanding is that those areas are purely Croatian. Because the borders were defined decades ago or if we go back in time since 1945 and then in the 70's. Also I think that the arbitration was not correct and maybe there was bribing or something, but anyway I stand with the Croatian side on this.


----------



## italystf

Junkie said:


> My personal understanding is that those areas are purely Croatian. Because the borders were defined decades ago or if we go back in time since 1945 and then in the 70's. Also I think that the arbitration was not correct and maybe there was bribing or something, but anyway I stand with the Croatian side on this.


What was the point in defining sea borders when it was a single country?


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Can Slovenians understand Croatian (if they haven't studied it), and vice versa?


According to some Croatian friends, some it's intelligible, but not perfectly. Instead, Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian are almost the same language.


----------



## Tenjac

italystf said:


> Instead, Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian are almost the same language.


"Almost" in that sentence is only from political not from linguistic point of view.


----------



## Tenjac

Verso said:


> No, it doesn't. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague assigned it to Slovenia, so it's ours.


I think that the best solution for this problem would be reunification of Slovenia and Croatia.


----------



## volodaaaa

Junkie said:


> My personal understanding is that those areas are purely Croatian. Because the borders were defined decades ago or if we go back in time since 1945 and then in the 70's. Also I think that the arbitration was not correct and maybe there was bribing or something, but anyway I stand with the Croatian side on this.


How you doing in the FYROM? :lol: (just kidding)


----------



## Junkie

volodaaaa said:


> How you doing in the FYROM? :lol: (just kidding)


It could be much better. And we don't have sea border s to worry about.


----------



## g.spinoza

Junkie said:


> Croatia.


So objective.


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> Can Slovenians understand Croatian (if they haven't studied it), and vice versa?


Yeah, more or less. I speak Croatian fluently.



Junkie said:


> My personal understanding is that those areas are purely Croatian. Because the borders were defined decades ago or if we go back in time since 1945 and then in the 70's. Also I think that the arbitration was not correct and maybe there was bribing or something, but anyway I stand with the Croatian side on this.


Maritime borders weren't defined in Yugoslavia. The Gulf of Piran was almost entirely controlled by SR Slovenia, so the court assigned it to us. If you're interested why exactly it was given to us, you can read it here (chapters V and VI).


----------



## italystf

Tenjac said:


> "Almost" in that sentence is only from political not from linguistic point of view.


I don't know any of these languages. But motorway is autocesta in Croatian and Autoput in Serbian, so I though there were some differences.
Are they comparable with BrE and AmE, that apart few words (motorway/freeway, lift/elevator, colour/color, fizzy drink/soda, lorry/truck, ect...) are the same language?


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> I don't know any of these languages. But motorway is autocesta in Croatian and Autoput in Serbian, so I though there were some differences.
> Are they comparable with BrE and AmE, that apart few words (motorway/freeway, lift/elevator, colour/color, fizzy drink/soda, lorry/truck, ect...) are the same language?


I guess yes. Saying autocesta instead of autoput does not make you a foreigner.

AFAIK Macedonian and Slovenian language are noticeably different from Croatian or Serbian language, but the latter ones are almost the same. There is perhaps a difference in pronunciation of the question word "What"?


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> I don't know any of these languages. But motorway is autocesta in Croatian and Autoput in Serbian, so I though there were some differences.
> Are they comparable with BrE and AmE, that apart few words (motorway/freeway, lift/elevator, colour/color, fizzy drink/soda, lorry/truck, ect...) are the same language?


Re American and British English, I wouldn't even say "apart from a few words": They are the same language, with multiple standards. Linguists call it a "pluricentric language" and there are lots of them in the world....

Ahem. [End soapbox mode]

Now, if Italy just took the whole Istrian penisula back, that would save everyone some trouble. :runaway:


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Now, if Italy just took the whole Istrian penisula back, that would save everyone some trouble. :runaway:


Nah, the future is the Free Territory of Trieste 2.0 from the Timavo to the Mirna. :troll:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Their main export will be Hausbrandt?


----------



## Junkie

italystf said:


> I don't know any of these languages. But motorway is autocesta in Croatian and Autoput in Serbian, so I though there were some differences.
> Are they comparable with BrE and AmE, that apart few words (motorway/freeway, lift/elevator, colour/color, fizzy drink/soda, lorry/truck, ect...) are the same language?


We have been talking language issues on this thread very far back as I remember well... Those four language (BCSM) in the Balkans are based on a same dialect. That dialect has mainly two variants one is the 'western' and the other would be the 'eastern' variant. The eastern is used as a standard in Serbia only but on the same dialect as the western variant. 
So technically there are different words and different pronunciation, but the languages are more or less based on a same ground.
If there were no borders or war times, those languages could be codified as one language.


----------



## volodaaaa

Just wait for the Austria-Hungarian resurrection, guys.


----------



## Gyorgy

italystf said:


> I don't know any of these languages. But motorway is autocesta in Croatian and Autoput in Serbian, so I though there were some differences.
> Are they comparable with BrE and AmE, that apart few words (motorway/freeway, lift/elevator, colour/color, fizzy drink/soda, lorry/truck, ect...) are the same language?


Yes, some casual mistakes when Slovenians in Croatia actualy speak Serbo-Croatian and use Serbian words instead of Croatian. And most of them made such mistakes with Serbian because they don't know it's the same in Slovenian and Croatian.

Autoput, kola, pare, voz, zemljotres and so on...


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Their main export will be Hausbrandt?


Also Illy coffee, Terrano and Malvasia wines and salt from Sicciole.
But the main economic activities will be the finacial ones, as it will become a tax heaven like Liechtenstein or the Caymans. :troll:


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Just wait for the Austria-Hungarian resurrection, guys.


Are you allowed to say that sort of thing in Slovakia?!


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Are you allowed to say that sort of thing in Slovakia?!


Preßburg will become a suburb of the capital Vienna, then. :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> Are you allowed to say that sort of thing in Slovakia?!


Are you kiddin? Such ideas are very welcomed within the V4 separatism moods :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Maybe we could bring this back while we're at it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polis...uanian_Commonwealth_at_its_maximum_extent.svg


----------



## Verso

Gyorgy said:


> Yes, some casual mistakes when Slovenians in Croatia actualy speak Serbo-Croatian and use Serbian words instead of Croatian. And most of them made such mistakes with Serbian because they don't know it's the same in Slovenian and Croatian.
> 
> Autoput, kola, pare, voz, zemljotres and so on...


My hair stand on end when I see Slovenian tourist agencies advertise trips to Belgrade by mentioning the Serbian movie "Ko to tamo p*j*eva". icard:


----------



## tfd543

Is Slovenian or Macedonian the least similar language compared to Serbian/Croatian ? Also, does anyone know anybody being naturalized in all ex-yugoslavian countries... doesnt seem that impossible to possess all the passports Lol...


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> Maybe we could bring this back while we're at it:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polis...uanian_Commonwealth_at_its_maximum_extent.svg


I am not against, but those from Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine wouldn't be very happy 

Even though I heard from some Ukrainians on emigration in Poland that it's much better for them in Poland than in Ukraine.

By the way, it's interesting to notice that even just Lithuania, without Poland, was then one of the biggest countries in Europe, and now it is... one of the smallest ones.


----------



## Junkie

Verso said:


> My hair stand on end when I see Slovenian tourist agencies advertise trips to Belgrade by mentioning the Serbian movie "Ko to tamo p*j*eva". icard:


Serbs in Bosnia use ijekavica as a standard and their kids learn it in school. So it is nothing wrong.



tfd543 said:


> Is Slovenian or Macedonian the least similar language compared to Serbian/Croatian ? Also, does anyone know anybody being naturalized in all ex-yugoslavian countries... doesnt seem that impossible to possess all the passports Lol...


Macedonian is not mutual with BCSM (Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian-Montenegrin) or shares low mutuality, I don't know exactly but something like 20-30%. All four BCSM between languages are mutual by 90+% and they are standardized on a same dialect (Štokavski dijalekt).

About the second question, no I don't know any such example.
For example I was born in SFRY in Skopje, and in that time I had two citizenships, Yugoslav and SR Macedonian the latter was not state citizenship, but it was like that because my origin of my parents and grandparents is from this territory of the now dissolved SFRY.
So I could not get Bosnian or Serbian citizenship because I was not listed in their citizen books.
All of the six republics had their books of citizens and it was based on the fact of our origin. It was like that because SFRY was confederation and had separate republican organs and even borders although not physical.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Maritime borders weren't defined in Yugoslavia. The Gulf of Piran was almost entirely controlled by SR Slovenia, so the court assigned it to us. If you're interested why exactly it was given to us, you can read it here (chapters V and VI).


if it was so obvious, why did Slovenian member of arbitrage council have to influence secretly the independent members of the council in July 2015?


----------



## italystf

5MB hard disk in 1956


----------



## Verso

Junkie said:


> Serbs in Bosnia use ijekavica as a standard and their kids learn it in school. So it is nothing wrong.


Maybe, but the title of the movie is "Ko to tamo peva". Bosnian Serbs can "translate" it to their variant of Serbian, but I don't know why Slovenes would do that.



x-type said:


> if it was so obvious, why did Slovenian member of arbitrage council have to influence secretly the independent members of the council in July 2015?


Because the judges probably had no idea on the matter.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Because the judges probably had no idea on the matter.


but secretly?


----------



## g.spinoza

Greetings from rainy Dublin!


----------



## VITORIA MAN

http://foros.embalses.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=14603&d=1424617423
bring the rain to spain


----------



## MichiH

castermaild55 said:


> Michi-no-Eki means “Roadside Station” in Japanese.


And "Michi" means "road"  I slowly begin understanding me.... :lol:


----------



## Kpc21

italystf said:


> 5MB hard disk in 1956


A bit more modern one (anyway huge for the current standards) in a closer look:


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> 5MB hard disk in 1956


The size of the storage and the price per unit have gone down dramatically.

Some time ago, I found an interesting document in my archive. In 1994, I held a position of kind of joint development, production and service manager at a governmental data center. In that year, I had placed an order to Hewlett-Packard for a 2 GB disk system with an enclosure. The price was about FIM 45,000, equalling to a present value of EUR 10,500. The box was quite small to the era, about half of a small fridge.

Thus, the cost of the disk space was 5.25 million EUR per a terabyte.

Currently, the retail price of a terabyte is about 45 EUR for consumer-class devices. Thus, the price per unit has improved by a factor of 116,000 within 23 years.


----------



## jdb.2

I remember my first Win 95 PC came with 1GB hard drive.
After a few year the HDD failed and replaced it with 10 GB.
Then by 2002 we bought a new Win XP machine, that came with 80 GB.
We asked the seller if 80 GB was enough.
He replied that that 80 GB is more than enough, saying that his own PC had only 20 GB, and he didn't manage to even fill half that space.

The machine also was my first with a DVD drive, so logically the first thing to do is rip DVD's. Then i discovered the hard way how much 80 GB really is. :lol:


----------



## italystf

MattiG said:


> The size of the storage and the price per unit have gone down dramatically.
> 
> Some time ago, I found an interesting document in my archive. In 1994, I held a position of kind of joint development, production and service manager at a governmental data center. In that year, I had placed an order to Hewlett-Packard for a 2 GB disk system with an enclosure. The price was about FIM 45,000, equalling to a present value of EUR 10,500. The box was quite small to the era, about half of a small fridge.
> 
> Thus, the cost of the disk space was 5.25 million EUR per a terabyte.
> 
> Currently, the retail price of a terabyte is about 45 EUR for consumer-class devices. Thus, the price per unit has improved by a factor of 116,000 within 23 years.


My first PC fom 2000 had 10GB. It was a normal-size HD mounted inside the case. Still a huge improvement from the 2GB fridge-sized HD from just 6 years before.


----------



## cinxxx

My first PC was in 1996, a Pentium 120 MHz, 1.2 GB HDD, 8 MB RAM, 1 MB S3 Trio graphic card, no sound card (bought that a year later). Over the years we did a lot of upgrades


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I briefly used ICQ then switched to MSN Messenger. It was then replaced by Skype but with the rise of WhatsApp fewer people used Skype. Over the past 3 years I only used Skype for 3 frequent contacts, but now all switched to WhatsApp. I do not use Facebook Messenger on my phone. I don't really like Facebook. Too intrusive. I really did not like the fact that Facebook took over WhatsApp. Google and Facebook eliminate all competition that way, they have too much power over the internet.

On my PC I run the WhatsApp web client. It continuously synchronizes with the phone app so you need a data connection on your phone to be active. I found wifi to be unusuable with WhatsApp as it would frequently go into hibernation mode and get messages like 20 minutes after they were sent. I don't have such problem with 4G. With a 10 GB/month data plan I hardly ever use wifi anymore.


----------



## CNGL

I was also a user of MSN Messenger. And like many others I now use Whatsapp (which I hispanize to _Guasap_). I've also fled away from WiFi connection once I got the 5 GB/month plan I currently have.


----------



## Kpc21

WhatsApp is not popular in Poland, so if I use it, then it's for communication with people abroad.

What I usually use now is Facebook Messenger.

The problem with WhatsApp is that when used on computer, it connects with the servers through your smartphone, so:
1) your smartphone must be online (which quickly drains battery, especially with wifi),
2) it never works well, for example when the smartphone locks and dims the screen, it enables some kind of energy saving feature, which disconnects the WhatsApp on PC.


----------



## volodaaaa

At first my generation used site called pokec.sk* (pokec = chat in Slovak). It was more like chat forum than face2face communicator, but there was a possibility to write so called "quick message" tom someone. Generally, it had became the first free on-line dating service in Slovakia.

I guess many relationships were made there  It was the first dating service I upload my photo to get to know someone. Indeed, I was on several dates with girls after chatting there.

Then, I think in 2004 - 2005 the ICQ became popular. Almost everyone has an ICQ number. I knew mine very well.

As for me, Facebook messenger ruined the ICQ and now most of the people use this. There is some Skype minority or some people use WhatsApp. But Facebook messenger is the top.

Btw. I never liked MS Messenger. No one to text to and it was very slow.

* it still exists, cheaply impersonating the Facebook, though 70 % of profiles are fake. No one serious uses it any more.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> The problem with WhatsApp is that when used on computer, it connects with the servers through your smartphone, so:
> 1) your smartphone must be online (which quickly drains battery, especially with wifi),
> 2) it never works well, for example when the smartphone locks and dims the screen, it enables some kind of energy saving feature, which disconnects the WhatsApp on PC.


For 2: this problem doesn't exist when you are on a cellular network (4G). But you need to have a data plan that is sufficient for extensive WhatsApp web usage. 

Though WhatsApp data usage is not really that huge unless you have a large amount of hyper active chats. Photos are drastically compressed.


----------



## Kpc21

There is one more thing, which was popular in Poland quite shortly just before Facebook.

nasza-klasa.pl ("our class").

The idea of the portal was to connect old school friends with each other. You could add yourself to your class from school and then upload your class photos or talk on a class forum. Many old school classes made meetings "after years" thanks to that.

Of course, it was also commonly used by contemporary school classes as a platform of exchanging information. We were using it in such a way  Now it's typical to use a Facebook group for that (or a WhatsApp chat, but rarely in Poland).

But the portal started to copy more and more features from Facebook, in addition, making them always more childish, so finally people just switched to Facebook.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> For 2: this problem doesn't exist when you are on a cellular network (4G). But you need to have a data plan that is sufficient for extensive WhatsApp web usage.
> 
> Though WhatsApp data usage is not really that huge unless you have a large amount of hyper active chats. *Photos are drastically compressed*.


This has a downside: photos send via whatsapp looks bad on a PC.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

italystf said:


> This has a downside: photos send via whatsapp looks bad on a PC.


I think the widespread usage of internet on cell phones has drastically degraded the content on internet forums and social media. Typing long posts is cumbersome on a phone so forums many move from researched posts with links and photos, to one-line chats. 

Also, it's difficult to see the real quality of a photo on a cell phone. I sometimes post a photo on a forum that looks reasonable on a phone but turns out terrible on a desktop environment. Social media apps mostly compress photos drastically to reduce bandwidth. Facebook uploads significantly compressed photos by default, you have to switch HD on manually which evidently not many people do. 

It's just cringey what kind of poor quality photos are posted on internet forums or social media in this time and age of everything being HD and cell phones being capable of taking better quality photos than late 2000s pocket cameras.


----------



## volodaaaa

My wedding car


----------



## CNGL

So thanks to my new car (van, actually) I found the only reason I want a GPS: To keep track of the municipalities I pass through . I have some "special" towns, and as such things like "A-21 (Noain (Valle de Elorz))" or "A-2 (Ariza)" have already stuck in my head.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Hurricane-Aftermath Highlight of the Day, Roads category:

A reporter on the Weather Channel, standing at an intersection in Clearwater, Florida, remarked that apparently three-quarters of the people he's seen driving through are unaware that an intersection where the traffic lights aren't working (due to power outages) is to be treated as uncontrolled. People are "just blowing through."

:bash:


----------



## Kpc21

In Europe, in such a situation you just follow the vertical signage, which usually indicates which road has priority and which one must yield.

If one of the roads at an intersection is definitely a more important one, then it will have priority in case the traffic lights are down.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Isn't Pinellas County one of the most dangerous places to drive in the United States? I've read some stories about that, there many multi-lane urban arterials but few freeways. Lots of high-speed collisions at traffic signals.


----------



## Penn's Woods

So, I was reading about pluricentric languages on Wikipedia, which led me to Canadian English, where I found this:

Transportation[edit]
....
The terms highway (for example, Trans-Canada Highway), expressway (Central Canada, as in the Gardiner Expressway) and freeway (Sherwood Park Freeway, Edmonton) are often used to describe various high speed roads with varying levels of access control. Generally, but not exclusively, highway refers to any provincially funded road regardless of its access control. Often such roads will be numbered. Similar to the US, the terms expressway and freeway are often used interchangeably to refer to controlled-access highways, that is, divided highways with access only at grade-separated interchanges (for example, a 400-Series Highway in Ontario).
However, expressway may also refer to a limited-access road that has control of access but has at-grade junctions, railway crossings (for example, the Harbour Expressway in Thunder Bay.) Sometimes the term Parkway is also used (for example, the Hanlon Parkway in Guelph). In Saskatchewan, the term 'grid road' is used to refer to minor highways or rural roads, usually gravel, referring to the 'grid' upon which they were originally designed. In Quebec, freeways and expressways are called autoroutes.

In Alberta, the generic Trail is often used to describe a freeway, expressway or major urban street (for example, Deerfoot Trail, Macleod Trail or Crowchild Trail in Calgary, Yellowhead Trail in Edmonton). The British term motorway is not used. The American terms turnpike and tollway for a toll road are not common. The term throughway or thruway was used for first tolled limited-access highways (for example, the Deas Island Throughway, now Highway 99, from Vancouver, BC, to Blaine, Washington, USA or the Saint John Throughway (Highway 1) in Saint John, NB), but this term is not common anymore. In everyday speech, when a particular roadway is not being specified, the term highway is generally or exclusively used.


----------



## italystf

I'm the only one who sees dating websites ads on SSC? And I didn't even google such things recently. :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You don't need to 'Google' such things. They can create a complete profile of you due to trackers and beacons being installed on extremely large amounts of websites, basically everything with Google AdSense installed, which almost any website. Even when you're not using google.com / google.it, they can still track everything you do on the web. The same accounts for Facebook, many websites have Facebook plugins installed (share, like buttons) so they are linked to your Facebook account even with Facebook not actively running. 

But that is just the web browing side of it. Facebook also knows which physical shops you visit. Most shops nowadays employ wifi trackers to keep track of movement of shoppers through the store, but they also know which shoppers do not enter the store. In fact, it even works with wifi turned off because the phone still sends the MAC address, which they can track. 

There are also accusations that Facebook listens in on conversations around the phone. Which are then used to show ads relevant to that conversation. There doesn't appear to be hard proof but more than once I've seen ads on Facebook about things I discussed with colleagues just before. So even when you're not browsing the internet they can still create a profile. It's scary.

There is no privacy anymore. Nothing on the internet is free, you buy it by disclosing all your personal information. You are the product.


----------



## italystf

Snow in the Alps as low as 1,200m today:

https://www.3bmeteo.com/giornale-me...no--neve-sin-verso-i-1300-1500m--foto--161188


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> You don't need to 'Google' such things. They can create a complete profile of you due to trackers and beacons being installed on extremely large amounts of websites, basically everything with Google AdSense installed, which almost any website. Even when you're not using google.com / google.it, they can still track everything you do on the web. The same accounts for Facebook, many websites have Facebook plugins installed (share, like buttons) so they are linked to your Facebook account even with Facebook not actively running.
> 
> But that is just the web browing side of it. Facebook also knows which physical shops you visit. Most shops nowadays employ wifi trackers to keep track of movement of shoppers through the store, but they also know which shoppers do not enter the store. In fact, it even works with wifi turned off because the phone still sends the MAC address, which they can track.
> 
> There are also accusations that Facebook listens in on conversations around the phone. Which are then used to show ads relevant to that conversation. There doesn't appear to be hard proof but more than once I've seen ads on Facebook about things I discussed with colleagues just before. So even when you're not browsing the internet they can still create a profile. It's scary.
> 
> There is no privacy anymore. Nothing on the internet is free, you buy it by disclosing all your personal information. You are the product.


I once ordered a pizza - by phone, pre smartphones - and the next ad I saw on my computer was for Domino's.
I assumed it was a coincidence....


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Snow in the Alps as low as 1,200m today:
> 
> https://www.3bmeteo.com/giornale-me...no--neve-sin-verso-i-1300-1500m--foto--161188


It's too soon!


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> I once ordered a pizza - by phone, pre smartphones - and the next ad I saw on my computer was for Domino's.
> I assumed it was a coincidence....


In the pre-smartphone era it was probably a coincidence. Now, it wouldn't be.


----------



## Penn's Woods

I'm also finding SSC is often slow to open the last few days. Not having that problem with any other site. Usually it's the ads (if you just hit the stop-loading command, it'll stop and everything except the ads will be there. But sometimes it's pages that are full of videos.


----------



## bogdymol

I was in an electronics store last week and I opened on my phone exactly one link for a product sold there (I opened it on facebook messenger browser as the link was sent by someone to me through facebook private message). Guess what facebook ads shows me daily since then...


----------



## Penn's Woods

The Weather Channel's reporting live from I don't know what freeway (It'd have to be I-75 or 85, I'd think) in Henry County, Georgia. (Because Irma was still a tropical storm when its effects reached the Atlanta area yesterday.) You'll be happy to know that the lane the reporter's van is in is nearly stopped, the lane to its left is moving slowly, and the lane to ITS left is much faster.
:cheers:


----------



## Suburbanist

Facebook doesn't listen to conversations, that is a conspiracy. Super cookies and MAC address collection is the real deal though.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> I was in an electronics store last week and I opened on my phone exactly one link for a product sold there (I opened it on facebook messenger browser as the link was sent by someone to me through facebook private message). Guess what facebook ads shows me daily since then...


Be happy. I accidentally kicked my sofa and lost my foot thumbnail :lol: It did not hurt, but I suspected some problems so I googled it. Now almost every site I visit offers me some medication for nail fungi diseases with photos I need throw up after looking at :lol::nuts:


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I always like to point out the sheer number of people who'd need to spend time listening to a lot of really uninteresting conversations. (Listening mechanically is another matter, but that doesn't really bother me. What would bother me is an actual human being listening to my conversations or reading my email. Ads for things I'm interested in don't really bother me either.)

EDIT: Arrows for Suburbanist.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Okay, here's a general European road question:

Someone in I forget which thread mentioned a route from some place to some place else involving route 93/Exx in Finland and route 93 in Norway. The connection of two route 93s jumped out at me....

It's quite common in North America for neighboring states to coordinate state-route numbering. In New England, or between New England and New York, a state route that reaches a state border and continues as a state route in the next state* will have the same number in both states. I know of only one exception to that, where N.Y. 7 becomes Vt. 9.

And you can find American routes continuing with the same number in Canada...Manitoba highways 59 and 75 connect to the U.S. routes with the same numbers.

I've noticed that that sort of coordination almost never happens in Europe. It existed between East and West Germany because (I assume) they'd inherited the prewar numbering. I haven't looked at maps to see whether it happens between pieces of the ex-Yugoslavia, between Slovakia and the Czech Republic, between pieces of the ex-Soviet Union; but it doesn't happen along, well, long-standing national borders - Belgium/the Netherlands, for example.

Don't know where I'm going with this, just an observation. Those two route 93s connecting in northern Scandinavia is unusual for Europe.

*Sorry for all those "state"s.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A main reason is the fact that road numbers are generally not as important as they are in North America. Many countries didn't introduce numbering for motorways until the 1960s or 1970s. As the road system is less of a grid, cardinal directions were less common to use in navigation. People would navigate via city names (Paris to Bordeaux), not route numbers + cardinal directions (for example highway 10 south).


----------



## italystf

There are some:

A1 (UK) - N1 (IRL)
A4 (D) - A4 (PL)
M1 (BY) - M1 (RUS)
D2 (CZ) - D2 (SK)
D1 (CZ) - A1 (PL)
A3 (HR) - A3 (SRB)
A1 (SRB) - M1 (MK) - A1 (GR)

I think that only A4 in D/PL and A1 in Greece are random, other were once part of the same country.

Moreover, N, S, FIN and DK don't use national numbers for E-roads, so those roads keep the same number when they cross a border.


----------



## MichiH

italystf said:


> There are some:
> 
> I think that only *A4 in D/PL* and A1 in Greece are random, other were *once part of the same country*.


A4 in D and PL was also located in the same country when it was built... But it wasn't called A4 that time...

Greatings from UK, my first time left-hand driving...


----------



## italystf

Also the one between CZ and PL is probably random, unless it was coordinated between them.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> I think that only A4 in D/PL and A1 in Greece are random, other were once part of the same country.
> .


nope. HR A3 was introduced in 2000. SRB A3 was introduced in 2016. 
till 2000 HR A3 was called D4. till 2016 SRB A3 was called 1.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> A1 (UK) - N1 (IRL)
> A4 (D) - A4 (PL)
> M1 (BY) - M1 (RUS)
> *D2 (CZ) - D2 (SK)*
> D1 (CZ) - A1 (PL)
> A3 (HR) - A3 (SRB)


It is inherited. It is the first and only completed motorway in Czechoslovakia. Its first purpose was to connect Brno with Bratislava which was done in 90s yet within Czechoslovakia. Furthermore the motorway was extended to Hungarian borders in 1998 and the last missing section (a tunnel) was opened in 2007 (I live in walking distance to one portal of the tunnel).

By the way, it does not concern only motorways. We still have a lot of continual first class roads with CZ. Moreover it reflects mostly to numbering of II. class roads that generally range from 425 to 595. Smaller numbers are "reserved" for the Czech Republic. The same goes for I. class roads that are not connecting Slovak cities with Czech ones. These range from 40 to 80, although some II. class roads have been reclassified and given smaller numbers. 

Even some milestones are counted from Prague 

edit: even ZIP codes respect Czechoslovakia  This division is still valid:








Current map


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> A main reason is the fact that road numbers are generally not as important as they are in North America. Many countries didn't introduce numbering for motorways until the 1960s or 1970s. As the road system is less of a grid, cardinal directions were less common to use in navigation. People would navigate via city names (Paris to Bordeaux), not route numbers + cardinal directions (for example highway 10 south).


I would have guessed it's because a lot of systems are self-contained, if you know what I mean. Roads in the province of Antwerp that aren't important enough to be single digits or multiples of 10 have numbers beginning with 1, and if that doesn't line up with what the Dutch are doing in Noord-Brabant...


----------



## Fatfield

italystf said:


> There are some:
> 
> *A1 (NI) - N1 (IRL)*
> A4 (D) - A4 (PL)
> M1 (BY) - M1 (RUS)
> D2 (CZ) - D2 (SK)
> D1 (CZ) - A1 (PL)
> A3 (HR) - A3 (SRB)
> A1 (SRB) - M1 (MK) - A1 (GR)
> 
> I think that only A4 in D/PL and A1 in Greece are random, other were once part of the same country.
> 
> Moreover, N, S, FIN and DK don't use national numbers for E-roads, so those roads keep the same number when they cross a border.


Tidied. Just being pedantic as there's an A1 in England & Scotland that runs from Edinburgh to London down the east side of the country. There are some parts that are motorway (A1M) but not from Edinburgh to Gateshead (Eng).


----------



## TrojaA

ChrisZwolle said:


> People would navigate via city names (Paris to Bordeaux), not route numbers + cardinal directions (for example highway 10 south).


I wouldn't say that road numbers aren't important, but it depends on the circumstances. At least in my experience.
Let's say someone asks in a conversation for a vague route from Hamburg to Amsterdam. One would then probably say "follow the motorway until you reach Osnabrück. Amsterdam will be signed from there on."
However if someone asks for directions one will probably give a more accurate route like "A1 til Osnabrück, then follow A30 to the border and thereafter you follow the Dutch A1".

In terms of navigating non-motorways it's quite popular in Germany to use the numbering of highways (but then again not of local roads), because people usually don't know significant towns along the way. So if one would advise someone for a route to Meppen from Hamburg, one will probably say that the other person should leave the A1 at Cloppenburg and that he has to follow the B213 and later the B402, because nobody really knows Haselünne as a control-town.


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## ChrisZwolle

TrojaA said:


> However if someone asks for directions one will probably give a more accurate route like "A1 til Osnabrück, then follow A30 to the border and thereafter you follow the Dutch A1".


That's true, but people generally won't say 'follow A1 south to A30 west which turns into Dutch A1 west'.

While people are not totally oblivious to cardinal directions in Europe, it's generally not used much in navigation on the road system.


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## ChrisZwolle

On the other hand, using cardinal directions for exits is quite common in some European countries whereas names of exits are never indicated as such in North America. 

For example if a motorway passes a city from west to east, the exit naming sequence would be 'Townsville-West', Townsville-Center', 'Townsville-East'.


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## Penn's Woods

^^Not quite "never"; some toll roads (such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike) have official names for their exits.

The "Downingtown" in all caps on this sign is the name of the exit. And - to bring us back to directions - there are a "Harrisburg East" and "Harrisburg West." That's just off the top of my head; there may be others.

http://www.aaroads.com/northeast/pennsylvania075/i-076_wb_exit_312_02.jpg

P.S.: Philadelphia traffic reports usually refer to Turnpike interchanges by name.


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## MattiG

TrojaA said:


> In terms of navigating non-motorways it's quite popular in Germany to use the numbering of highways (but then again not of local roads), because people usually don't know significant towns along the way. So if one would advise someone for a route to Meppen from Hamburg, one will probably say that the other person should leave the A1 at Cloppenburg and that he has to follow the B213 and later the B402, because nobody really knows Haselünne as a control-town.


People do not use navigators in Germany? Just enter the destination and let the navigator choose the route.


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## ChrisZwolle

That's when you'll end up in Putgarten if you want to take the ferry to Rødbyhavn  Or a village in the Pyrenees instead of the Alps. True GPS stories 

There's nothing wrong with a little planning before a long trip instead of just entering a name in the GPS.


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## CNGL

I always plan my trips beforehand. But now that I have a GPS (which came with the van I now drive) I only use it to keep track of the municipalities I pass. Now I know from Huesca to Pamplona via the shortest route (old N-240, part of it now A-132) one passes through the following municipalities: Alerre, La Sotonera, Loscorrales, Ayerbe, Murillo de Gallego, Las Peñas de Riglos, Bailo, Puente la Reina de Jaca, Canal de Berdun, Sigües, Yesa, Liedena, Lumbier, Urraul Bajo (i.e. Lower Urraul), Ibargoiti, Monreal and Noain (Valle de Elorz, i.e. Elortz Valley).


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## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's when you'll end up in Putgarten if you want to take the ferry to Rødbyhavn  Or a village in the Pyrenees instead of the Alps. True GPS stories
> 
> There's nothing wrong with a little planning before a long trip instead of just entering a name in the GPS.


Or tourists lost in Karlovac, Croatia, asking where's the beach (they booked a hotel in Karlobag, near Zadar). :lol:


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## x-type

italystf said:


> Or tourists lost in Karlovac, Croatia, asking where's the beach (they booked a hotel in Karlobag, near Zadar). :lol:


there is beach in Karlovac  on river, tough.


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## Kpc21

Truly speaking, GPS is quite useful while navigating in an unknown city. Or on village roads which usually aren't signed well (and by town names only, without any numbers). But on highways and national roads it's not really necessary. And the road numbers are quite useful, because it sometimes happens that there is no consequence in the directional town and it suddenly changes e.g. because someone else manages the road or the sign was put in different time.

There are people, like me, who just enjoy route planning. I use automatic route planners - but as a helping tool, not as a magic box where I put the target town and I strictly follow what it says. I don't have a GPS device and I rarely use the sat nav function in Android Google Maps (more often I just look at the map and at the traffic congestion on it) - but if I were using it then I would introduce the route planned by myself into it instead of relying of its automatics.

The municipalities are in Poland indicated by road signs. Except for motorways.


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## Penn's Woods

The only time I've used GPS was on my trip to Europe last year, when my rental car had it. (Normally you have to pay extra for it, and I wouldn't do that, but it was there. I got a better car than I'd reserved.) It was helpful in cities when you already had an idea of the layout and where you needed to turn, and it was helpful outsides sort of to confirm where I was at any given time. I mean if you basically know you're trying to follow the N-whatever, but you've just passed through a complicated intersection and want to confirm you took the right turn.

I've occasionally thought it would be helpful to have a display showing weather (on an analogy with traffic conditions); if you're driving around on a day when there are scattered thunderstorms, it's nice to know you're about to hit a heavy one, or how long it's likely to last.


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## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's when you'll end up in Putgarten if you want to take the ferry to Rødbyhavn  Or a village in the Pyrenees instead of the Alps. True GPS stories


Such indicents can be avoided by applying a minimal degree of common sense. A navigator and common sense are not mutually exclusive.



> There's nothing wrong with a little planning before a long trip instead of just entering a name in the GPS.


That was not the question at all. The question was whether it is reasonable to navigate by memorizing road numbers, by control cities or assisted by a navigator.

A navigator is quite a nice assistant even when making ad hoc trips. If you find something interesting en route, and want to take a detour, the navigator is tireless to recalculate a route to the final destination.


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## Kpc21

Nobody says "navigator" for a navigation device in English  Navigator is a person who holds a traditional map (an online one e.g. on a tablet would also do it) and tells you to turn left/right etc. But not his automatic version 

I am not sure about the most popular English terms, but I think people say "GPS navigation" (which is not really precise as those devices may also use other GPS-like systems, I know that some smartphones, for example, make use of the Russian GLONASS in addition to the American GPS; China and EU also have such systems) or "satellite navigation", often shorted to "sat nav".

Modern navigation devices or apps on smartphones, which have a connection to the Internet and can get live information on the traffic situation, may be also useful in that they will detect a congestion on the road and send you on a detour.


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## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> Nobody says "navigator" for a navigation device in English


You need to tell that to Garmin, which uses an incorrect term "navigator" in their English website, and express your deepest condemnation.


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## italystf

Interesting photo showing 6 out of 7 islands of the Aeolian archipelago taken from Lamezia Terme (Calabria), in a particular light condition at dusk (date 30-03-04).
Filicudi, the most distant island, is around 170 km away.









https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CataudoLameziaVedutaEolieDaLameziaIllustrata.jpg


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## ChrisZwolle

*QR*

A QR code forest near Baoding, China

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.71508,115.44257,717m/data=!3m1!1e3









Via: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-09/14/c_136609499.htm


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## CNGL

italystf said:


> Interesting photo showing 6 out of 7 islands of the Aeolian archipelago taken from Lamezia Terme (Calabria), in a particular light condition at dusk (date 30-03-04).
> Filicudi, the most distant island, is around 170 km away.


That's too close. They have photographed the Barre des Ecrins from... Spain :colgate:. OK, actually from the Finestrelles peak which lies at the Spain/France border, no less than 440 km away from the Ecrins: https://beyondhorizons.eu/2016/08/03/pic-de-finestrelles-pic-gaspard-ecrins-443-km/


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## italystf

Are they considering to reopen the 'International border crossings' thread?
I know that it has the periodic problem of nationalistic crap, but it's also full of intresting photos and discussions.


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## Junkie

^^
I agree. We should keep that thread clean if they decide to open it, and make sure we are on topic. There are unlimited discussions which are very interesting there... Recently we also talked about visa issues, passports and traveling things that are very closely related to the thread topic name. But we also talked off-topic so we must behave next time


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## Penn's Woods

^^[blatant suck-up mode on]Our moderators are very patient.[blatant suck-up mode off]
Sometimes they even participate in the off-topics. :troll:


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## g.spinoza

During my July vacation in Sütirol/Alto Adige, I overtook a car on a straight road with 50 km/h limit, but during the process, I reached and surpassed 90 km/h. While I was completing the process, I saw a speed camera and thought "ok, I'm toast". More than 40 km/h difference means a fine between 500 and 2000 euro, 6 points taken from the license, and license suspended up to 6 months.

So when I found in my mailbox a green mail (it is the color of the envelopes of "atti giudiziari", so tickets, notices of investigation, every communication in connection with justice) I was more than sure it was that. When the postman delivered it I wasn't home, so I had to retrieve it from the post office.

There was something off, though. In Italy there is a webpage called "Il Portale dell'Automobilista" (Driver's gate), connected to Ministry of Transportation, where you can check the status of your license in real-time. When I checked, all my license points were still there (26 in total).

So when today I went to the post office, I found the ticket. It was issued by a municipality in Südtirol/Alto Adige, but not the one where I thought I made the offense. The ticket was for doing 37 km/h on a 30 km/h zone, which, considering the rounding and the tolerance, became 32 km/h. 
Fine for doing 2 irrelevant km/h more than the limit, at such low speed? 56,40 €.


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## bogdymol

One of the stongest storms (or maybe the strongest storm in history) was yesterday in the western area of Romania, including in Arad (city where I come from). Here's a video from a main road, during mid-day:






A lot of trees fell on cars, roofs of many buildings were blown away, I've seen pictures of church towers beeing collapsed, power supply is still off in many regions (my grandmother doesn't have electricity since yesterday), mobile networks are also off in many regions, and 8 people have died.

My parents for example were enjoying their Sunday visiting the ruins of an old fortress and walking through a forest when the storm started. At the fortress the weather was nice, mostly sunny, but while walking through the forest the storm started, and they had nowhere to hide. Luckily everything was ok, but many trees in the forest were broken. Picture taken by my father during the storm:










It was a very extreme weather condition. The storm only lasted for 10-15 minutes, but the issue was that nobody announced the population that it will come, so the people were completely unprepared for that. It formed suddenly.


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## keokiracer

Holy crap, that looks like a fullblown microburst.


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## Kpc21

We had such one in Poland a month ago. Whole forests got dig out with the roots.

By the way, were the wipers not working in the car from the video? Or did he not turned them on fearing they can get blown off by the wind? I know that in such a weather there would by no visibility anyway (I remember such a storm in a car, of course, not so strong as this one, I was a passenger - so strong that we had to stop because the wipers were not enough), but they would still give some improvement e.g. before he stopped.

Actually, the one from Poland from before a month - at least in the form seen from my house - was very strong but also not SO strong as this one. Directly next to my house - maybe not, but 500 meters away, a few big trees in front of a culture centre got fallen. Or here: https://goo.gl/maps/7ghQKgGJjEt I could still see some roots of a fallen tree on the ground a week ago. Those electric and telecom wires were, of course, on the ground.











And it doesn't look very strong here though:











But it did much damage.

Other parts of Poland had a similar storm about which it was said much more (so it probably brought more damage) 2 days later.


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## ChrisZwolle

Such events are often declared to be tornadoes by the media, but they are usually a downburst. Those can be very damaging. Tornadoes do occur in Europe (including stronger 'American type' tornadoes) but stronger tornadoes are fairly rare. Apart from waterspouts and short-lived tornadoes, they only occur infrequently, for example in France, Northern Italy, Germany, Poland and Russia.


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## cinxxx

Meanwhile in my hometown, one cross fell of the Orthodox cathedral


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## Kpc21

3,5 years ago a cross has fallen off from an evangelic church. Because it's next to one of the more important streets and main tram route in the city, they had to close the traffic on it that time, because the cross was hanging off from the church and the firefighters couldn't remove it because of strong wind.


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## Kanadzie

TrojaA said:


> In terms of navigating non-motorways it's quite popular in Germany to use the numbering of highways (but then again not of local roads), because people usually don't know significant towns along the way. So if one would advise someone for a route to Meppen from Hamburg, one will probably say that the other person should leave the A1 at Cloppenburg and that he has to follow the B213 and later the B402, because nobody really knows Haselünne as a control-town.


Just tell them to make a left turn at Bielefeld :lol:


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## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> Meanwhile in my hometown, one cross fell of the Orthodox cathedral


Lidl strikes again


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## Attus

A great question from the TV show Who wants to be a millionaire in Germany ("Wer wird Millionär?"). I try to translate it 

Should the star of Fast and Furious movies in real life be fined for speeding, could we have
A: Electromobility
B: Enviromental zones in cities
C: Lower emission rates
D: Ban for Diesel


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## Penn's Woods

^^That brings to mind something I've been meaning to ask: with more and more local requirements in Europe relating to car use, or even prohibitions on certain cars (Umweltplaketten, bans on older models, toll vignettes...), I think there is a risk of unknowingly violating some rule or other for visitors driving rentals, especially internationally. (I remember trying to find a breathalyzer in Flanders when I was about to cross into France. Had no idea what to call it in Dutch of course. I never did find one and ended up spending a week in France without one, not that I was ever stopped...) I expect a rental company to supply everything you'd need of that sort for the country you're renting the car in - whether it's breathalyzers in France or Umweltplaketten in Germany or toll vignettes in countries that have those - but not necessarily for the country next door you're planning to take the car to. So I'm imagining getting into trouble driving a Dutch-plated rental into the Umweltplakette zone of a German city, that sort of thing.
Europeans driving their own cars into other countries will have the same sort of issues, I imagine.
Thoughts?


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## cinxxx

^^My parents visited me this summer and they had to buy the Umweltplakette. Since they were arriving Saturday afternoon where not many places would have been open to buy it, they had to get it at an ÖAMTC place in Austria, paying double the price of course...

I drove to France few months ago. Totally forgot about the breathalyzer thing and just drove there without. Wasn't stopped. Only realized about the issue the next day :lol:


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## Penn's Woods

The starting point, it seems to me, is knowing what things of that sort you'll need. Is there one site you can find all the rules? (And if a rental company rents you a car that you won't be able to use in some places, although I'd guess that doesn't happen much....)


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## cinxxx

^^Actually, in Europe, there are many cases where renting a car will not allow you to drive to some other countries. Or you would have to pay more for that. In other cases you won't have to pay anything. It can be really different depending on the country


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## Kanadzie

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^That brings to mind something I've been meaning to ask: with more and more local requirements in Europe relating to car use, or even prohibitions on certain cars (Umweltplaketten, bans on older models, toll vignettes...), I think there is a risk of unknowingly violating some rule or other for visitors driving rentals, especially internationally. (I remember trying to find a breathalyzer in Flanders when I was about to cross into France. Had no idea what to call it in Dutch of course. I never did find one and ended up spending a week in France without one, not that I was ever stopped...) I expect a rental company to supply everything you'd need of that sort for the country you're renting the car in - whether it's breathalyzers in France or Umweltplaketten in Germany or toll vignettes in countries that have those - but not necessarily for the country next door you're planning to take the car to. So I'm imagining getting into trouble driving a Dutch-plated rental into the Umweltplakette zone of a German city, that sort of thing.
> Europeans driving their own cars into other countries will have the same sort of issues, I imagine.
> Thoughts?


It's really unusual how these regulations are being applied particularly considering the existence of the EU and its willingness to "force" common treatment even going so far as to eliminate cellular phone roaming fees for example. In North America by example, the equipment of your car only needs to meet the requirements of the place where it is registered, someone with an Ontario or Texas (or German!)-registered car can drive in the winter on summer tyres in Quebec where a winter tyre law is in effect (or likewise, Quebecers can use their studded tyres in Ontario where they are banned), and certainly any "unweltplakette" style regulation would only apply to the particular residents... Like you say, it makes travel for business or pleasure in other jurisdictions unnecessarily hard and an opportunity for revenue generation.


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## Kpc21

What's a point of having a breathalyzer in your car? Those for home use are anyway not certified and may lie, then the police checks you with their one and you have a problem.

I have heard about cases when someone drove (!) to a police station and asked for a breathalyzer check to know if he can drive... Which would be a good idea if he didn't drive there  But, at least in one such case, the person lost his driving license.


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## keokiracer

Kpc21 said:


> What's a point of having a breathalyzer in your car?


For when you're so drunk that you can't remember how many drinks you've had :cheers:


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## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> What's a point of having a breathalyzer in your car? Those for home use are anyway not certified and may lie, then the police checks you with their one and you have a problem.
> 
> I have heard about cases when someone drove (!) to a police station and asked for a breathalyzer check to know if he can drive... Which would be a good idea if he didn't drive there  But, at least in one such case, the person lost his driving license.


Jeremy Clarkson - and this is how I heard of it - believed it was the French trying to annoy British people.


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## Penn's Woods

cinxxx said:


> ^^Actually, in Europe, there are many cases where renting a car will not allow you to drive to some other countries. Or you would have to pay more for that. In other cases you won't have to pay anything. It can be really different depending on the country


If memory serves, I had to tell the renter, when I picked the car up, what countries I was planning to drive in.


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## cinxxx

Penn's Woods said:


> If memory serves, I had to tell the renter, when I picked the car up, what countries I was planning to drive in.


Where did you rent it from?
I always check the renting conditions before doing the reservation and there is always a list of allowed countries, list not allowed, if you have to tell the renter, etc.


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## ChrisZwolle

I've driven probably 10,000+ kilometers in France in the last three years. I never bothered about the breathalyzer.

Unlike the U.S., European police doesn't really pull people over on the highway unless there is some obvious and blatant violation like Moroccans having their roof overloaded with junk. The chances of getting a ticket for missing equipment is extremely low, unless you maybe cross an active border check. 

I doubt if they really crack down on the German environmental sticker if you're just passing through or park in an underground parking structure. It seems to me the biggest chance for getting a ticket for not having the 'Umweltplakette' is if you're parked on the street where it stands out you do not have a sticker.


----------



## cinxxx

Penn's Woods said:


> If memory serves, I had to tell the renter, when I picked the car up, what countries I was planning to drive in.


Where did you rent it from?
I always check the renting conditions before doing the reservation and there is always a list of allowed countries, list not allowed, if you have to tell the renter, etc.


----------



## jdb.2

Kpc21 said:


> What's a point of having a breathalyzer in your car?


There is no point, it's a typical case of symptom control instead of tackling the origin of the problem, to spare the mighty French alcohol lobby.


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## g.spinoza

In Italy there is no obligation to have first-aid kit in your car, while in Austria there is... so I bought one - overpriced - on a rest station near the border.

I agree with Chris that very rarely people are pulled over just for checks, and it is unlikely to be fined for not having some equipment if you come from another country, but I like to be tidy and in order so I got one.
I must admit, though, that I totally forgot about the breathalyzer when I drove in France last time. I just checked on the internet and it seems that the law imposing the breathalyzer in your car was implemented in 2012 and lifted in 2013, so now there is no imposition any more.


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## cinxxx

In Romania having a fire extinguisher is compulsory, not in Germany...
Also the number of reflectory vests or triangles differs from country to country.


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## jdb.2

In Spain: sunglasses


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## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Unlike the U.S., European police doesn't really pull people over on the highway unless there is some obvious and blatant violation like Moroccans having their roof overloaded with junk. The chances of getting a ticket for missing equipment is extremely low, unless you maybe cross an active border check.


Well, it happens quite frequent to Polish drivers driving southwards. If I remember well, e.g. in Czech Republic you need a reflective vest inside the passenger compartment, wheel chains in winter and some other widgets. Like spare light bulbs (even if exchanging them in your car demands a visit in the service). There are countries which demand some specific equipment in the first aid kit. In Poland you don't even have to have a first aid kit in your car (although people normally have it). Stopping drivers for random control is a normal thing, and it's performed not only by the police, but also by the border guard. One of the reasons of it is Schengen.

We were once stopped in southern Poland for a random control by the Polish border guard - even though our car had Polish license plates. It's common. Maybe not on motorways, but on normal roads - yes.

Although I was once taking a Germany-Poland bus and we were stopped by the German police. Also for a random control (they were checking the documents of all the passengers, but probably also the obligatory equipment).


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## g.spinoza

I thought that Vienna Convention on Road Traffic stated that only national requirements for car dotation are needed even when travelling in a foreign nation, but I couldn't find such an Article.

But on another note, while browsing the document I found this:



Article 8 said:


> 1. Every moving vehicle or combination of vehicles shall have a driver.


So much for autonomous driving!


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> It's really unusual how these regulations are being applied particularly considering the existence of the EU and its willingness to "force" common treatment even going so far as to eliminate cellular phone roaming fees for example. In North America by example, the equipment of your car only needs to meet the requirements of the place where it is registered, someone with an Ontario or Texas (or German!)-registered car can drive in the winter on summer tyres in Quebec where a winter tyre law is in effect (or likewise, Quebecers can use their studded tyres in Ontario where they are banned), and certainly any "unweltplakette" style regulation would only apply to the particular residents... Like you say, it makes travel for business or pleasure in other jurisdictions unnecessarily hard and an opportunity for revenue generation.


In the U.S., the states have a constitutional obligation to recognize legal documents and decisions from other states (unless they blatantly violate the recognizing state's own "public policy" in some way...) and to make it as easy as possible for people from other states to settle in their own state (that's called the right to travel). Not sure how that applies in this context. But it would certainly make a driver's license or car registration from one state valid anywhere, at a minimum.


----------



## Penn's Woods

cinxxx said:


> Where did you rent it from?
> I always check the renting conditions before doing the reservation and there is always a list of allowed countries, list not allowed, if you have to tell the renter, etc.


On both occasions - summer 2015 and summer 2016 - I rented through a company called AutoEurope. They're based over here and specialize in handling European rentals for Americans, just like Trivago or Orbitz or whoever does with hotels and flights. You go on the site, tell them you want to pick up a car in Amsterdam on Saturday morning, July whatever, and return it in Paris the afternoon of the following Saturday, and they come up with a bunch of quotes, from different rental companies. You choose, say, Hertz because the pick-up point is convenient and the price is right or whatever, you pay AutoEurope using a card (in dollars), and they contact Hertz Nederland during European business hours while you're going about your life (or sleeping) and arrange the details. It was when I showed up AT Hertz in Amsterdam to pick up the car that I was asked where I'd be taking it.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've driven probably 10,000+ kilometers in France in the last three years. I never bothered about the breathalyzer.
> 
> Unlike the U.S., European police doesn't really pull people over on the highway unless there is some obvious and blatant violation like Moroccans having their roof overloaded with junk. The chances of getting a ticket for missing equipment is extremely low, unless you maybe cross an active border check.
> 
> I doubt if they really crack down on the German environmental sticker if you're just passing through or park in an underground parking structure. It seems to me the biggest chance for getting a ticket for not having the 'Umweltplakette' is if you're parked on the street where it stands out you do not have a sticker.


Yeah, the breathalyzer was on my to-do list before I crossed the border; once I was in France without one I forgot about it.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> In the U.S., the states have a constitutional obligation to recognize legal documents and decisions from other states (unless they blatantly violate the recognizing state's own "public policy" in some way...)


What does that mean? Can you give some example?


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> In Italy there is no obligation to have first-aid kit in your car, while in Austria there is... so I bought one - overpriced - on a rest station near the border.
> 
> I agree with Chris that very rarely people are pulled over just for checks, and it is unlikely to be fined for not having some equipment if you come from another country, but I like to be tidy and in order so I got one.
> I must admit, though, that I totally forgot about the breathalyzer when I drove in France last time. I just checked on the internet and it seems that the law imposing the breathalyzer in your car was implemented in 2012 and lifted in 2013, so now there is no imposition any more.


That's the thing. I did at least know about the breathalyzer rule (I didn't know until I read your post that it had been repealed, and maybe that's why I couldn't find one), and didn't mind respecting the law of the country I'd be driving in. But the last gas station on the E17 didn't actually have them (or I couldn't find them there), so what are you supposed to do?


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## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> What does that mean? Can you give some example?


Of the public policy exception? I would imagine that back when some states prohibited interracial marriage bash they didn't have to recognize such marriages performed elsewhere. That sort of thing. The "public policy" rule is in the Supreme Court jurisprudence surrounding the Constitutional requirement; the Constitution itself just says the states shall give "full faith and credit" to the judicial decisions of other states.

The right to travel (coupled with a post-Civil War amendment that says an American citizen is also a citizen of the state he or she lives in) means that, for example, when I moved to Pennsylvania a month before an election I was allowed to vote. There was a 30-day registration deadline (and if I'd moved here a week later, I would have missed it, but I would have just been able to vote absentee in New Jersey), but they can't say "no, you can't vote here until you've lived here for two years" or "you can't get the citizens' share of Alaska oil revenues until you've lived here five years." Those deadlines are far too long. They pretty much need to treat new residents (assuming they're U.S. citizens) as citizens as soon as they've established the intent to stay there.

EDIT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Faith_and_Credit_Clause

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_under_United_States_law
Particularly:


> Implications
> 
> The Court's establishment of a strong constitutional right to freedom of movement has also had far-reaching and unintended effects. For example, the Supreme Court overturned state prohibitions on welfare payments to individuals who had not resided within the jurisdiction for at least one year as an impermissible burden on the right to travel (Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969)). The Court has also struck down one-year residency requirements for voting in state elections (Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330 (1972)), one-year waiting periods before receiving state-provided medical care (Memorial Hospital v. Maricopa County, 415 U.S. 250 (1974)), civil service preferences for state veterans (Attorney Gen. of New York v. Soto-Lopez, 476 U.S. 898 (1986)), but upheld higher fishing and hunting license fees for out-of-state residents (Baldwin v. Fish and Game Commission of Montana, 436 U.S. 371 (1978)).[11][12][13]


----------



## Penn's Woods

Now, I wouldn't object to needing breathalyzers or Umweltplaketten or the like, as long as it's easy to find out about that sort of rule. (It would be nice, for example, if telling Hertz Germany you're going to France would prompt them to say, hey, you'll need to do such-and-such before you cross the border, just as a matter of good customer service.)
I would be pissed if I found out I couldn't drive my Dutch or German rental into Paris or Milan because it was too polluting or something. I know it would be a headache for rental companies to keep track of this sort of thing, but that's their job, so....


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Of the public policy exception? [...]


Thanks for your answer.
I asked because the «unless they blatantly violate the recognizing state's own "public policy"» seems a bit vague. It seems like a state must recognize other states' laws unless it doesn't want to.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Thanks for your answer.
> I asked because the «unless they blatantly violate the recognizing state's own "public policy"» seems a bit vague. It seems like a state must recognize other states' laws unless it doesn't want to.


It is vague. The way it would have worked is: A and B (a same-sex couple) move to a state that doesn't recognize same-sex marriage*, file a state tax return as a married couple (because the rates would be better); state refuses to let them do that; A and B go to court and say, hey, we got married in the state we used to live in and you need to treat us as married here. Court decides the new state does not need to treat them as married, states "public policy" rule as rationale. Future cases refine this (because the courts can only deal with actual real-life situations before them) on a case-by-case basis....

*Which they all have to now; I just can't think of an example that works in 2017. Maybe gun laws, God help us. Maybe you have a permit to carry a gun in public from Texas and want to use it to carry a gun on the street in Manhattan. I could certainly see a court saying "New York's policy is not to permit open carry on city streets; Texas gun permit doesn't override that here." I could totally get behind the court in that instance.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I see. 
To me it's just weird that such important matters like marriages are managed by states and not by central government.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^When the thirteen colonies declared independence, there really wasn't a new central government waiting in the wings (just the Continental Congress, which was created by the colonies specifically to coordinate the fight against Britain...at first to address grievances, then it evolved into a war effort), so the "sovereignty" - the right to legislate - passed from the British parliament to the state legislatures. (And Articles of Confederation created a confederation with limited powers...) A decade later, the states were feeling the need for a central government to address certain matters, so they called for a convention to revise the Articles of Confederation, which sort of went rogue and came up with a new constitution. But, the way the constitution was written, authority in specific areas was transferred to (or to be shared with) the new federal government; everything else remained with the states. For whatever reason, no one thought marriage, divorce, and so on couldn't continue to be handled at the state level. Maybe because people didn't move around that easily.

Never really thought about it; perhaps because we're used to it. I suppose you could say that the federal government of the 1780s (and even more so the government under the Articles of Confederation that preceded it) was in a role like that of the E.U. No one - correct me if I'm wrong - suggests that marriage law should be identical from one end of the E.U. to the other; if any member state is actively violating the rights of some people, the E.C.H.R. will step in....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> To me it's just weird that such important matters like marriages are managed by states and not by central government.


Yes, this is often misunderstood in Europe, the U.S. has a very decentralized government. The states have their own senate, house of representatives, supreme court, etc. The power of the states is much greater than national subdivisions in most of Europe. Maybe Germany has a model that comes closest to that of the U.S., with Spain also being very decentralized, but varies by region. 

In most of the United States, counties are also more important in everyday governance than similar third-level divisions in most of Europe. They can levy taxes, have a courthouse, a sheriff, develop infrastructure, etc. The exact powers of a county vary by state. 

Another interesting feature in the U.S. is that not all land is incorporated into a municipality, quite a bit of land - including dense urban areas - are not part of a municipality but are governed by a county, in some metropolitan areas this includes hundreds of thousands of people. I don't even think the concept of an 'unincorporated area' similar to the U.S. really exists in Europe (though maybe it does, I don't know the specifics of every single country).

For example it is projected that by 2020, more people in Harris County (4.6 million) will live in unincorporated areas than in the city of Houston (2.3 million).









Via: https://communityimpact.com/houston...w-in-unincorporated-harris-county-jack-cagle/


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## Penn's Woods

^^All true, although the local-government structure is another thing that varies by state. There are states (most Northeastern and Midwestern ones) where every square inch of land does fall into some municipality.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Another interesting feature in the U.S. is that not all land is incorporated into a municipality, quite a bit of land - including dense urban areas - are not part of a municipality but are governed by a county, in some metropolitan areas this includes hundreds of thousands of people. I don't even think the concept of an 'unincorporated area' similar to the U.S. really exists in Europe (though maybe it does, I don't know the specifics of every single country).
> 
> For example it is projected that by 2020, more people in Harris County (4.6 million) will live in unincorporated areas than in the city of Houston (2.3 million).


Speaking of that, I recommend you watching this video:






I thought that I have been in Las Vegas, but when I returned from there I watched this video and I discovered that I've never been into the city of Las Vegas. The good part is that I've been in Paradise


----------



## Penn's Woods

bogdymol said:


> Speaking of that, I recommend you watching this video:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I thought that I have been in Las Vegas, but when I returned from there I watched this video and I discovered that I've never been into the city of Las Vegas. The good part is that I've been in Paradise


You've been to Paradise, but have you ever been to you?

(Sorry. Couldn't resist. https://youtu.be/SZgIk2b68gQ)

ANYhoo.
What photo-hosting service are we using these days?


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## CNGL

So it appears that F*cking village isn't alone, there's also Oberf*cking and Unterf*cking. It seems that neither over-f*cking nor under-f*cking is good, and may result in the name being bchanged to Fugging.


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## Penn's Woods

CNGL said:


> So it appears that F*cking village isn't alone, there's also Oberf*cking and Unterf*cking. It seems that neither over-f*cking nor under-f*cking is good, and may result in the name being bchanged to Fugging.


This is so much more elegant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercourse,_Pennsylvania


----------



## Tenjac

g.spinoza said:


> I thought that Vienna Convention on Road Traffic stated that only national requirements for car dotation are needed even when travelling in a foreign nation, but I couldn't find such an Article.
> 
> But on another note, while browsing the document I found this:
> 1. Every moving vehicle or combination of vehicles shall have a driver.
> 
> 
> So much for autonomous driving!


Is the driver defined as a human being?


----------



## Kpc21

I think the thing about Vienna Convention stating that is a myth. Although very popular in Poland.

Vienna Convention states somewhere that a car allowed to be used in one country is also allowed to be used in any other country that signed the Convention. But for me, extending it to the obligatory equipment is overinterpretation.


----------



## Suburbanist

C'mon, CNGL, you are not 16 years old anymore, unless you are time traveling. Few things irk me on the transportation section of SSC, this "OMG word in one language reads so funny in another language" seems so unnecessary...


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> I thought that Vienna Convention on Road Traffic stated that only national requirements for car dotation are needed even when travelling in a foreign nation, but I couldn't find such an Article.


The Vienna convention is kind of a paper tiger. Most of its technical chapters are superseded by the EU-level legislation, and every member country has power to submit a bunch of reservations.

What is surprising is that the EU has not barred those country-specific mandatory equipment. I my opinion, most of them are against the principle of free travel.

I can understand safety-related exceptions to the "Cassis de Dijon" principle, such as mandatory winter tyres in the North and in the high mountains. But I have some difficulties to accept the need for covering the windscreen with triljards of country-specific stickers for various purposes.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Every country thinks their regulations are the best. 

EU emission standards have been introduced over 40 years ago, so every car sold across the EU has to conform to the same standards. Yet every country implements environmental zones based on different criteria. It's ridiculous that there is no harmonization on this issue.


----------



## MichiH

CNGL said:


> It seems that neither over-f*cking nor under-f*cking


The common translation would be upper f* and lower f* though. Like "Lower Franconia" (Unterfranken) 


The Bavarian Ministry of Science published an English homepage some years ago to promote the Bavarian universities. They also presented the 7 regions (Bezirke) Lower Franconia, Middle Franconia, Upper Franconia, Upper Palatinate, Swabia, Upper Bavaria and Lower Bavaria.

Afterwards, they've translated it to German. Lower Bavaria was translated to Niederbayern (correct) but Lower Franconia was translated to Niederfranken instead of Unterfranken 

http://www.nordbayern.de/region/die-mar-von-niederfranken-ministerium-blamiert-sich-1.2840425


----------



## CNGL

^^ I'm aware of that, I just had to do a joke.


Suburbanist said:


> C'mon, CNGL, you are not 16 years old anymore, unless you are time traveling. Few things irk me on the transportation section of SSC, this "OMG word in one language reads so funny in another language" seems so unnecessary...


I was just pointing out that famous Austrian village is not the only one to have that name, and I just had to make a pun (BTW, Fugging also used to be named F*cking, it was run as an April Fools' hook in the Did You Know section of Wikipedia).

Recently I rediscovered Furcia/Furkel pass in Bolzano/Bozen/Bulsan province in Northern Italy, its Italian name happens to mean "slut" in Spanish (albeit with a different pronounciation). Of course I won't be saying this everywhere.


----------



## Verso

Suburbanist said:


> C'mon, CNGL, you are not 16 years old anymore


He isn't?


----------



## Attus

I will have holidays in October. I booked a flight from Cologne to Madrid (Oct 8), another one from Barcelona to Cologne a few days later, I booked hotel rooms and a train ticket from Madrid to Barcelona. 
And now I see Catalonians want to have a referendum on Oct 1, the central government prohibited it, the police attacked demonstrants in Barcelona, several Catalonian politicians were arrested. 
What do you think, will Spain mid October be safe? Will trains run between Madrid and Barcelona?


----------



## g.spinoza

CNGL said:


> ^^ I'm aware of that, I just had to do a joke.


Believe me, you hadn't.


----------



## NordikNerd

*Longest continuous road ?*

I have found out the longest continuous direct driving route. Meaning the longest route you can drive without having to take a ferry.

With only 2 customs checkpoints and no ferries you can drive 14221km from the west of Europe to the east of Asia.

You start in Sagres, Portugal and drive to Khasan, Russia (at the north korean border) 

It takes 160 hours. 










I actually tried destinations as Singapore and Hong Kong, but google maps can not create a connection between those cities and Sagres, Portugal.

Google does not like to route plan through Afganistan and Pakistan, also it's not possible to get route directions for China in google maps. Why so ?

Google suggests that it is possible to drive from Sagres, Portugal to Magadan, Russia which is 15229km, but the road to Magadan is more expedition like road not open all year round. 









Google suggests this "road" to Magadan.


----------



## Pavlemadrid

Attus said:


> I will have holidays in October. I booked a flight from Cologne to Madrid (Oct 8), another one from Barcelona to Cologne a few days later, I booked hotel rooms and a train ticket from Madrid to Barcelona.
> And now I see Catalonians want to have a referendum on Oct 1, the central government prohibited it, the police attacked demonstrants in Barcelona, several Catalonian politicians were arrested.
> What do you think, will Spain mid October be safe? Will trains run between Madrid and Barcelona?


Of course. No matter what, the conflict will continue but there is not going to be a war.


----------



## Peines

Attus said:


> I will have holidays in October. I booked a flight from Cologne to Madrid (Oct 8), another one from Barcelona to Cologne a few days later, I booked hotel rooms and a train ticket from Madrid to Barcelona.
> And now I see Catalonians want to have a referendum on Oct 1, the central government prohibited it, the police attacked demonstrants in Barcelona, several Catalonian politicians were arrested.
> What do you think, will Spain mid October be safe? Will trains run between Madrid and Barcelona?


*The police didn’t attacked*.

It was demonstrators impeding a judicial inquiry, attacking judicial and police officials.

It’s true that they were arresting Politicians in Catalonia: but it’s for *corruption* (construction, money laundering, *public funds*…) and *fraudulent use of personal and private data* (_violación de la privacidad de datos _).

*And all of this for a illegal secessionist referendum*, that Spanish constitution didn’t allow as same as another’s constitution laws of Europe, like the Portuguese, French, Italian and German will do.

Also, Catalan separatists do a hate and violence speech against Spanish Language and anything about Spain including Spaniards, attacking institutions or people that don’t think as they do in Catalonia.

Referring to your ask, yes: You will be safe in all Spain. *Violent people are a minority’s that make a lot of sound*, and they started a marketing strategy for make people in another country’s think that they are victims, and that’s all about.


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## g.spinoza

No please... no political matters here, I beg you...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Listening to Theresa May's speech...I've never been clear what the "single market" is. (In the speech, it sounds as if she's given up on staying in it.) Can someone explain what that is? As unpolemically as possible, please...just trying to understand.


----------



## kreden

It's not a political issue, it's a technical term. A single or common market is a trade bloc between countries where most trade barriers (tariff and non-tariff) have been removed with all participatory countries effectively becoming one market with harmonised legislation. This doesn't apply just to goods, but to all factors of production (labour and capital, too). It's essentially a significant upgrade to a free-trade zone (such as NAFTA), which usually has a more limited scope. The European Union is a single market, although there are some restrictions on cross-border services.


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## Penn's Woods

^^Thanks. If memory serves, there was talk of Britain's leaving the E.U. but remaining in the single market. I wasn't clear (am still not clear, I guess) how that would work or even if it made sense. But maybe by ruling that out, May herself has reached that realization.


----------



## Verso

^^ This is the European Single Market. Besides the EU it also includes Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland.


----------



## kreden

Verso said:


> ^^ This is the European Single Market. Besides the EU it also includes Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland.


You're right, although the non-EU members have negotiated some additional exceptions. As I understood May, the UK wants to go from being a full-fledged EU member to having a status akin to Norway or Switzerland for the two-year period. I wouldn't be surprised if this transitional period were prolonged indefinitely, though. 

The reason why this sort of status has been unacceptable for the Brits so far is that they would normally still have to contribute to the EU budget for the privilege of access, accept some freedom of movement of labour and be subject to ECJ jurisdiction (the court is basically a sort of referee on the single market), all red lines for the UK government. So if this transitional period came to fruition, it would be kinda ironic. There have been constant complaints that the UK is at the mercy of the EU, yet as a member state it does, in fact, have a say in the matters. Now, as a participant in the single market but outside of the EU, it would still be subject to a large chunk of the legislation, but would lose all voting power.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ I usually fall more to the side of the generally very responsible and reasonable British when it comes to EU issues but the whole Brexit negotiation is pretty silly, they are requesting to have full access to export goods to the continental EU but have no access of the people to come to the UK :nuts:

Maybe if we are lucky they'll keep negotiating for 5 years and eventually forget about the whole thing 

The whole Brexit is tremendously tragic if only for one reason - proving De Gaulle right about something


----------



## rudiwien

bogdymol said:


> In Portugal I got a transponder in the car, from the car rental company. While passing at each toll point, my co-pilot (wife) noted down the amount that was written, as we wanted to see how much will it add up. There were about 60 or 70 Euros as we traveled from the south coast up to Porto, with some detours. Surprisingly, the car rental company only invoiced us for about 60% the total amount we though we will have to pay. I have no idea why, but I haven't complained
> I'll have to test it again on a new continent in about a month...



Normally you pay a daily fee for these transponders, though. So while it is a nice service, it also isn't free.

In any case, i can report similar things from Portugal, they are notoriously slow in analysing and billing the tolls. I once had also the case that I was really charged too little, though other times, I was simply charged around 8 (!) months later. That's while they have for most of their toll services written that within 48 hours, you see the toll appear, and you can actually pay for it in a tobacco shop. Well, sometimes, especially on the A22 in southern Portugal, it can take 2 weeks for the tolls to appear.. And it might be that then someone else (like the next renter) pays them for you...

One crappy thing in Portugal with the tolls is that you can pay them online, but normally you need a Portuguese phone number to do so. So I normally have to ask friends that are from Portugal to help me out..


----------



## Verso

When I was in Australia I accidentally drove over a tolled bridge in Brisbane without a transponder. However, it wasn't a big deal since I could've paid it at a gas station.


----------



## Penn's Woods

rudiwien said:


> I actually know some people that were involved in building the tolling system for that bridge. It is part of a greater scheme, where they doubled the bridge close to the city (on i65), and built a new bridge on i265.
> 
> Generally I also dislike tolls that can only be paid with these transponders, that makes it unnecessarily hard for the occasional user. And online payment when putting in the license plate works in some places, is relatively easy, so there is no reason to not offer that solution...





bogdymol said:


> I have a different, positive for me, experience with road tolls with rented cars.
> 
> When I rented a car in USA, I drove on the famous San Francisco Bay Bridge, which is tolled. I paid it online, based on car registration, and it was ok.
> 
> I also drove in Miami area on some tolled highways, and the only reasonable option was to let it go through the car rental company. One year later, they still haven't asked for any money for that.
> 
> In Portugal I got a transponder in the car, from the car rental company. While passing at each toll point, my co-pilot (wife) noted down the amount that was written, as we wanted to see how much will it add up. There were about 60 or 70 Euros as we traveled from the south coast up to Porto, with some detours. Surprisingly, the car rental company only invoiced us for about 60% the total amount we though we will have to pay. I have no idea why, but I haven't complained
> 
> I'll have to test it again on a new continent in about a month...


I'm guessing the number of drivers who pass through these North American transponder-only tolls that aren't from North America is proportionally tiny, and they're pretty much all using North American rentals. And it's up to your renter how they want to handle it. Maybe they can get your authorization in advance to charge things like tolls to whatever card you used to pay; maybe they can bill you; maybe they can decide it's not worth the trouble and just eat the cost themselves.

Also, tolling agencies that want to have a transponder-only toll should at least not treat non-transponder users as if they've done something wrong. Bill them the normal rate, no penalty and no administrative fee. If you're too cheap to staff a tollbooth that's your problem.


----------



## Penn's Woods

rudiwien said:


> Normally you pay a daily fee for these transponders, though. So while it is a nice service, it also isn't free.
> 
> In any case, i can report similar things from Portugal, they are notoriously slow in analysing and billing the tolls. I once had also the case that I was really charged too little, though other times, I was simply charged around 8 (!) months later. That's while they have for most of their toll services written that within 48 hours, you see the toll appear, and you can actually pay for it in a tobacco shop. Well, sometimes, especially on the A22 in southern Portugal, it can take 2 weeks for the tolls to appear.. And it might be that then someone else (like the next renter) pays them for you...
> 
> One crappy thing in Portugal with the tolls is that you can pay them online, but normally you need a Portuguese phone number to do so. So I normally have to ask friends that are from Portugal to help me out..


You shouldn't (in my opinion) have to go to a shop to pay your tolls (like you have nothing else to do), and - given Schengen and all - you shouldn't have to have a phone number in the country. Not that anyone asked me.

- end soapbox mode -


----------



## Kanadzie

Attus said:


> Of course I can understand that you, living far away and hardly using your own car in Europe, think primarily about rental cars.
> However, I think it's an important issue for European drivers as well. From my home I can drive in less than two hours to four different countries: the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. I drive not very much abroad but sometimes I simply have no idea whether I'm right or I am not.
> I speak neither French nor Dutch (OK, written Dutch is often clear for people who speak English and German).
> And it's not only about environmental restrictions, although those may be very tricky, but tolls as well. In the Netherlands motorways are basically not tolled but there are some short tolled tunnels and bridges where you not always can pay the toll there in cash or by credit card but you must register yourself previuosly at I don't know which organization...
> And open borders make the situation even more complicated. You must carefully plan your route, you may not follow the instructions of navigation because it may suggest you a route partially abroad when you simply try to avoid a congestion or looking for the shortest way.
> I drove from Antwerp to Germany. I followed the signs "Aken / Aachen". And, fully unexpected, staying on the same motorway, I saw the sign "Nederlands". So suddenly I was in another country, absolutely unintended. OK, this time it was OK but there could be some environmental regulation or unavoidable toll which you can not pay at the location...



I had something like this in Chicago area.
In (99% of) the USA, people use 1 USD paper bills (George Washington). Coins are only for 0,25 / 0,10 / 0,05 and 0,01 USD.

In Chicago there are many toll booths at the exit ramp of the motorway without people to take the money, or a credit card machine, only a basket into which you throw coins. The price, something like 1,00 or 2,00 USD but only $1 coins accepted !
I never even saw one of these coins in my life... I think most Americans outside of that region either. Surely a bank would have no idea.
So I just hit the gas and drove through the toll booth  
But there is a camera watching you!

It seems Illinois will pursue you (since my license plates were foreign) if they catch three pictures of you. So I did it once when going to my hotel by accident. And second time, leaving the hotel, on purpose :lol::lol:


----------



## Kpc21

Can't you use just four 25 cents coins for a 1 dollar fee?

It's weird to have the same value of money existing simultaneously in both a note and a coin.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> I had something like this in Chicago area.
> In (99% of) the USA, people use 1 USD paper bills (George Washington). Coins are only for 0,25 / 0,10 / 0,05 and 0,01 USD.
> 
> In Chicago there are many toll booths at the exit ramp of the motorway without people to take the money, or a credit card machine, only a basket into which you throw coins. The price, something like 1,00 or 2,00 USD but only $1 coins accepted !
> I never even saw one of these coins in my life... I think most Americans outside of that region either. Surely a bank would have no idea.
> So I just hit the gas and drove through the toll booth
> But there is a camera watching you!
> 
> It seems Illinois will pursue you (since my license plates were foreign) if they catch three pictures of you. So I did it once when going to my hotel by accident. And second time, leaving the hotel, on purpose :lol::lol:


Ah, the dollar-coin idiocy.

Yes, the U.S. Mint has made several attempts over the years to introduce $1 coins...but they never bite the bullet and abolish the dollar bill. Which is a lot more convenient (My pockets get significantly heavier after a day of spending cash in Canada or Europe than they do here, just because of all those $1 (Cdn.) and $2 or 1- and 2-euro coins), and people are used to it. As a result, dollar coins pile up in banks while the public goes on spending paper. SO periodically some transit agency comes up with the bright idea of stocking their vending machines with dollar coins and giving them out in change (buy a $1.50 subway fare with a $5 bill, get back three $1 coins and two quarters, that sort of thing). ONLY accepting those is just one step farther (and I question whether it's legal to reject other denominations of U.S. currency). I'd never heard of Illinois doing this at the Tollways; since I have E-ZPass, I would be using that. But it doesn't surprise me.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> Can't you use just four 25 cents coins for a 1 dollar fee?
> 
> It's weird to have the same value of money existing simultaneously in both a note and a coin.


You should be able to use whatever coins add up to what you have to pay. I'm sure I've paid tolls, before I had E-ZPass, where I tossed a bunch of coins into the basket; it would take a couple of seconds to count and make sure you'd put in the right amount, then the arm would raise and let you go.

See my previous post for why we still have $1 coins and $1 bills. (Honestly, I'm not sure what the current $1 coin is, they're so rare....)

My father, who was...quirky...used to (when he was retired and had free time) go to the bank once in a while and get a bunch of dollar coins and spend them. To the bemusement of the bank tellers and the annoyance of shopkeepers, I'm sure. He always said he was doing his part to help get them into circulation. When I get a dollar coin - say in change from one of those transit agencies that does that - I'll spend it as soon as possible. I figure the newsstands or food places in a station where you'll be getting dollar coins in change will be used to seeing them....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Is the U.S. an exception with a bill for money with a low value like $ 1? The lowest Euro bill is € 5. The downside of bills for low denominations is that they wear out very fast and have to be replaced all the time. Coins last almost forever, but are indeed bulky.

I almost never carry cash with me. I have a phone case with my debit card + driver's license + vehicle registration, so I don't usually have an actual wallet on me anymore, except on international trips where I need to have my credit card and some cash.


----------



## Suburbanist

Here in Norway you don't need cash, every minor street food stand has a portable chip card sales terminal (connected through their smartphones via bank apps). I have never had any use for cash kroner here so far.


----------



## bogdymol

I remember when I was in Stockholm that I paid for a hot-dog with my credit card. I have no idea how Swedish money look like as I didn't have to use cash at all while I was there.


----------



## MichiH

I signed up for the "easy toll" system in Portgual. There are machines at some motorway border crossings to Spain. Your license plate is scanned and you just have to insert your credit card. Some toll was charged automatically, sometimes I had to pay with my credit card at toll booths.

I drove on a tolled section in Vancouver, Canada in 2013. It should have been paid online but I didn't. I got a bill from the rental car agency sent home. It was about 5..10 €/$...


----------



## MichiH

bogdymol said:


> I remember when I was in Stockholm that I paid for a hot-dog with my credit card. I have no idea how Swedish money look like as I didn't have to use cash at all while I was there.


I wanted to pay a drink at a vendor machine in 2008. It was at a costumer's plant. I had no cash but the customer gave me money. I draw some Swedish krona afterwards and kept 5kr to be prepared if I ever arrive in Sweden again without having the chance to draw money first but... I was there 3 times again and never ever used cash anymore. I always paid by credit card. Even for ice cream in the streets. Once, the booth didn't accept creadit cards but I could pay with Euro (I didn't remember that I have 5kr in my wallet).


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> The figure of 760 million cars in the world is grossly underestimated. In 2014 (one year after that article) there were 1.2 billion cars estimated in the world.


Sure. I just wanna point out that the car emmissions discussion is... *popular*. Just popular. On the other hand, there are a lot of emmission procuder no one cares... There are also coal power plants...

The discussion is not rational but simplified and ideological.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> Some of the commenters to the article I posted were pointing out that a decade ago their politicians were encouraging diesel. If that's true (I don't know because I'm not there...), I can see how it would be annoying to have bought a diesel then and now be treated as if you did something wrong.


Politicians in Germany encouraged diesel even in 2017.


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> Sure. I just wanna point out that the car emmissions discussion is... *popular*. Just popular. On the other hand, there are a lot of emmission procuder no one cares... There are also coal power plants...
> 
> The discussion is not rational but simplified and ideological.


I disagree - at least partially. About CO2 and global warming you're right, I think. However by NOx, PM10, PM2.5, and partially even CO2, it's really an important difference whether they are emissioned somewhere in the middle of nowhere or direct in city centers, let millions of people inhalating them almost directly.


----------



## MichiH

Attus said:


> Politicians in Germany encouraged diesel even in 2017.


Yes, buy new Diesel to get rid off old Diesel engines... And I absolutely agree but don't think so just because I work for THE Diesel company no.1 (I'm not involved in development of these components) but because I see no better alternative engines for trucks and - again - I think there are more critical emission producer no one cares...


----------



## MichiH

Attus said:


> I disagree - at least partially. About CO2 and global warming you're right, I think. However by NOx, PM10, PM2.5, and partially even CO2, it's really an important difference whether they are emissioned somewhere in the middle of nowhere or direct in city centers, let millions of people inhalating them almost directly.


True. But modern Diesel engines are quite clean...


----------



## MichiH

btw: If combustion engines would be totally replaced by electric engines, the next problem will be tire wear...


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Often you'll read about how real-world emissions are x times higher than the limit. While this sounds serious, the limits are now extremely low compared to the first 3 euro emission standards.


I have been reading your posts in this forum for more than seven years. And it's the very first case when I absolutely disagree. 
I try to explain why.
Emssions in street traffic are higher than in the test. It is well known and it's OK, the whole system was designed so. Test enviroments are near to perfect - street traffic enviroments are not. No surprise. 
However, it is a real surprise that the real, street traffic NOx emission of Euro 5 diesels are usually significantly higher than the street traffic emission of Euro 4 diesels. NOx limit for Euro4 was 250 mg/km, for Euro5 180mg/km. But real world emission was not decreased but, on the contrary, increased. 
Simply because car manufacturers started to cheat with AdBlue. They made an illegal agreement about having no more than 8l tanks of AdBlue (16l in he US) and in order not to force motorists to reload it more often than once a year, cheated by adding AdBlue (it has some other name in North America, but the same substance). They built in some sensors and added the expected amount of AdBlue only in the test, but not on the street. 
Even some Euro6 diesel cars have NOx emissions above 500 mg/km which is more than the limit for a bus, and a lot of Euro5 have emissions above 900 mg/km which is about two times higher than the Euro VI limit for a bus and much higher than the Euro3 limit for a car. 

(I could explain it even more detailed, but I think no one is interested )


----------



## Alex_ZR

Kpc21 said:


> It's weird to have the same value of money existing simultaneously in both a note and a coin.





















:troll:

Same goes for 20, but I would say that rate is 80%-20% in favour of banknotes. National bank claims that it's cheaper to print banknotes, even the face value is pretty low (0.08 EUR and 0.17 EUR).


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> I have been reading your posts in this forum for more than seven years. And it's the very first case when I absolutely disagree.
> I try to explain why.
> Emssions in street traffic are higher than in the test. It is well known and it's OK, the whole system was designed so. Test enviroments are near to perfect - street traffic enviroments are not. No surprise.
> However, it is a real surprise that the real, street traffic NOx emission of Euro 5 diesels are usually significantly higher than the street traffic emission of Euro 4 diesels. NOx limit for Euro4 was 250 mg/km, for Euro5 180mg/km. But real world emission was not decreased but, on the contrary, increased.
> Simply because car manufacturers started to cheat with AdBlue. They made an illegal agreement about having no more than 8l tanks of AdBlue (16l in he US) and in order not to force motorists to reload it more often than once a year, cheated by adding AdBlue (it has some other name in North America, but the same substance). They built in some sensors and added the expected amount of AdBlue only in the test, but not on the street.
> Even some Euro6 diesel cars have NOx emissions above 500 mg/km which is more than the limit for a bus, and a lot of Euro5 have emissions above 900 mg/km which is about two times higher than the Euro VI limit for a bus and much higher than the Euro3 limit for a car.
> 
> (I could explain it even more detailed, but I think no one is interested )


I don't understand. If the AdBlue tank of my car is depleted, the car won't start. What difference does the size of AdBlue tank make?


----------



## keber

MichiH said:


> True. But modern Diesel engines are quite clean...


only if they work correctly - I'm experiencing daily almost new diesel cars (mostly German of all types few years old) that smoke considerably like some 1980's diesel van. I don't see that with gasoline cars.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Is the U.S. an exception with a bill for money with a low value like $ 1? The lowest Euro bill is € 5. The downside of bills for low denominations is that they wear out very fast and have to be replaced all the time. Coins last almost forever, but are indeed bulky.


No. Romania has even lower bills - 1 RON which is more or less 4 times less than 1 EUR.

Poland has 10 PLN, which is something like 2-3 EUR.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> I don't understand. If the AdBlue tank of my car is depleted, the car won't start. What difference does the size of AdBlue tank make?


A typical, average 2.0 Diesel car needs approx. 4-7l of AdBlue pro 1,000 km to fulfill Euro 6 standards for NOx. Having a tank of 8l, you should refill it at least once in 2,000 km, i.e. for you 12-14 times a year. Even a larger, 20l tank shoud be refilled at least 5 times a year. 
The idea was to create a system where motorists need not refill it at all, but it can be refilled once a year in a garage, when oil is changed, etc., i.e. the usual yearly inspection. To achieve that goal you shall either have a 100l tank for AdBlue or the car must use significantly less AdBlue - and let NOx uncleaned in the air. 
Several car manufacturers choose the second way.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Is the U.S. an exception with a bill for money with a low value like $ 1? The lowest Euro bill is € 5. The downside of bills for low denominations is that they wear out very fast and have to be replaced all the time. Coins last almost forever, but are indeed bulky.
> 
> I almost never carry cash with me. I have a phone case with my debit card + driver's license + vehicle registration, so I don't usually have an actual wallet on me anymore, except on international trips where I need to have my credit card and some cash.





Suburbanist said:


> Here in Norway you don't need cash, every minor street food stand has a portable chip card sales terminal (connected through their smartphones via bank apps). I have never had any use for cash kroner here so far.





bogdymol said:


> I remember when I was in Stockholm that I paid for a hot-dog with my credit card. I have no idea how Swedish money look like as I didn't have to use cash at all while I was there.


Canada replaced its dollar bill by a dollar coin around 1990; the 2-dollar bill by a 2-dollar coin a few years later. (Our 2-dollar bill is so rarely used, for some reason, that for years I could say the last one I'd had in my hands was one I'd gotten at Gatwick in 1986, changing money to come home.)

Re doing everything by card, I'm obsessive-compulsive, or cautious (depending on your point of view), enough that I'd feel the need to keep a receipt for every transaction and compare them to my online bank statement and make sure they all went through. If you don't do that, how do you know the account balance they give you is accurate? So it's much less trouble to withdraw cash and spend it - only one transaction to record.


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## italystf

As for the same denomination in both coin and note, before euro we had both 1000 lire note and 1000 lire coin.


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## DanielFigFoz

I drove an automatic for the first time for a couple of hours last night. I have read online that automatic gearboxes work well for powerful cars but less well for less powerful ones. I reckon that is probably true, I drove a pretty new Renault Clio and the gearbox was ok in town and on the motorway but a bit infuriating on country roads, especially when accelerating after bends, it would take a good few seconds to change down. 

Other than that it was pretty nice, amazing to see how much better it was technologically than my 2003 Clio that I scrapped just before moving to Switzerland. That said, given the choice between the two to drive on country lanes or over mountain passes I'd still choose the 2003 manual any day.


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## cougar1989

At Germany before the Euro, we had 5DM coins and bills. Most of the people used the 5DM coins. 5DM bills were less to find.
But I would it found better, if we would have 1€ and 2€-notes.
I pay nearly everything in cash, also fuel.
The last thing what I paid with credit card were the tools at Italy, but at Trieste (I) the tool booth after much trys didn't want to read my card. So I paid with cash at the end.
God thanks that we have the Euro. In the last years I drove in one week trough much countries, when I would think about it that I need to carry much currencies with me.
I live near the Czech border, but all in all it is rare that I need Czech money. At the gas stations and Duty Free Shops the are much German costumers.
At Switzerland at a gas station near the Italian border, I paid with cash in Euro and I had a very good exchange rate, I was better than paying with credit card (in foreign currencies I must pay a 1,5% fee from the price to the bank).
At my bank I could get foreign currenies too, US-Dollar, British Pounds and Swiss Franc. Other currenices they must order and for Eastern Europeans and much other currencies the exchange rate is too low. So it is better to change it in the country.


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## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> Re doing everything by card, I'm obsessive-compulsive, or cautious (depending on your point of view), enough that I'd feel the need to keep a receipt for every transaction and compare them to my online bank statement and make sure they all went through. If you don't do that, how do you know the account balance they give you is accurate? So it's much less trouble to withdraw cash and spend it - only one transaction to record.


In my case, I set up a (free) alert system. My credit card app makes a chime whenever a transaction is registered and puts a notification alert. It takes just a few seconds so I got used to hear the chime after using my card (same goes for debit card, different chime though). So if I ever get an alert and a screen notification when I am not using the card, I know there will be problems. But, then, I never had any credit card problem related to fraud, just some issues concerning overcharging (by a hotel once, by an exam board another time).


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## ChrisZwolle

cougar1989 said:


> I pay nearly everything in cash, also fuel.


For us in the Netherlands it's strange to observe how Germany is clinging to cash so much. But not only the Netherlands, debit / credit card usage is widespread in many European countries, also for smaller amounts of money. I've seen many people in France using their card for payments under € 10 in the supermarket.

In the Netherlands many company cafeterias, vending machines and parking meters do not accept cash anymore. 

Contactless payment in particular is helpful, it greatly reduces the amount of waiting time, but I've noticed that the transaction requires more time in some other countries. I used contactless payment on the Sanifair system on a German rest area and it took about 7-8 seconds to process the payment. In the Netherlands, contactless payment is instantly. 

Contactless payment is also safer, nobody can peek at your PIN and you don't need to touch any unsanitary typepads that everyone uses.


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## volodaaaa

Rarely do I have cash in my wallet. I have already paid chewing gums adding up to 0,70 € with with my card.


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## x-type

Alex_ZR said:


> http://www.banknotenews.com/files/p...coin/0/310/310269-2/serbia-10-dinara-2006.jpg
> 
> :troll:
> 
> Same goes for 20, but I would say that rate is 80%-20% in favour of banknotes. National bank claims that it's cheaper to print banknotes, even the face value is pretty low (0.08 EUR and 0.17 EUR).




















although this paper one became very obsolete. I am not sure if it is valid anymore, I haven't seen it for years.


btw, we had interesting situation with 10 kn bill - it changed the colour. originally it was pink, but they said that it was too similar to 10 DEM, so they have changed it into brown after few years.


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## ChrisZwolle

Looking for summer? Northern Norway was warmer than Crete today!


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## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> For us in the Netherlands it's strange to observe how Germany is clinging to cash so much. But not only the Netherlands, debit / credit card usage is widespread in many European countries, also for smaller amounts of money. I've seen many people in France using their card for payments under € 10 in the supermarket.
> 
> In the Netherlands many company cafeterias, vending machines and parking meters do not accept cash anymore.
> 
> Contactless payment in particular is helpful, it greatly reduces the amount of waiting time, but I've noticed that the transaction requires more time in some other countries. I used contactless payment on the Sanifair system on a German rest area and it took about 7-8 seconds to process the payment. In the Netherlands, contactless payment is instantly.
> .


Sanifair contactless terminals on Dutch railway stations also take longer than at supermarkets or food stores. These terminals also accept credit cards.

The Netherlands had a historical quirk that put it at the cutting edge of contactless payment systems. For many years, there was an offline system for micro-payments stored on chip cards, called Chipknip. These were cards (could even be your own bank card) with a chip that stored up to € 250. It had to be loaded a terminals. It worked just by pressing a button after insertion (no password). It was very convenient for vending machines, parking meters etc. I think other countries had similar plans for such systems but they got bogged down and few national-wide schemes were implemented. 

Because chipknip was widely used, there was a delay in introducing contactless solutions and cheaper terminals for smaller transactions (think below € 10). When they got rid of chipknip, they could upgrade their system to the latest specifications.

There are some differences between countries, the payment system that process debit cards in the Netherlands is separated from the one that process credit card transactions. The latter is much cheaper for merchants, which helps explain why supermarkets, public transportation agencies, fast food stores are still reluctant to take credit cards. 

Here in Norway they use a singular system, domestic debit cards are actually credit cards with instant withdrawing from account and no credit limit, from a technical transaction-management standpoint. 

I am not sure how these things work in Germany, I know I am midly annoyed for having to withdraw Euro to use there (during my last 3 years living in Tilburg, I used less than € 100 in cash altogether within Netherlands).


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## volodaaaa

Guys have you ever seen a 200€ banknote? Except a picture of it. I always get 100 or 500 € dispersed from atm.


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## ChrisZwolle

I was working in a supermarket in the early 2000s while on high school. Banknotes over € 50 were very uncommon to get, € 200 and 500 was not accepted and almost nobody paid with € 100. 

Personally I almost never draw money from an ATM. Only when I go on a long international trip I will get around € 70 in cash just to be safe. I usually spend some of that money at restaurants or bars. I try to pay as much as possible by card, so I can avoid having a stockpile of coins, including 1 cent and 2 cent coins which are not used in the Netherlands (though they are legal tender).


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## CNGL

I always donate all 1 and 2 cent coins, as I don't think they have any value anymore. My charity of choice has already received over a full euro that way.


volodaaaa said:


> Guys have you ever seen a 200€ banknote? Except a picture of it. I always get 100 or 500 € dispersed from atm.


I've seen some 200€ notes. They do exist.


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## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> The Netherlands had a historical quirk that put it at the cutting edge of contactless payment systems. For many years, there was an offline system for micro-payments stored on chip cards, called Chipknip. These were cards (could even be your own bank card) with a chip that stored up to € 250. It had to be loaded a terminals. It worked just by pressing a button after insertion (no password). It was very convenient for vending machines, parking meters etc. I think other countries had similar plans for such systems but they got bogged down and few national-wide schemes were implemented.


Germany had GeldKarte.



> There are some differences between countries, the payment system that process debit cards in the Netherlands is separated from the one that process credit card transactions. The latter is much cheaper for merchants, which helps explain why supermarkets, public transportation agencies, fast food stores are still reluctant to take credit cards.


In Germany, the transactions with their debit cards (EC-Karten) in many points are conducted not as card transactions, but as so called direct debit (Lastschrift). While normal card transactions in Europe are normally authorized with a PIN number, I have never met a situation when a signature was used for that, although I often read about card transactions authorized by a signature in the USA. And in Germany the card transactions - with either their EC cards, or with any other cards - are almost always authorized by PIN number, but if it's a Lastschrift, then you must sign on a print-out from the terminal that you agree that they charge your account with the specified amount of money.

Because direct debit is, generally, allowing someone taking specific amount (or amounts - on regular basis) of money from your account. In Germany it's also popular for paying different kinds of bills, especially if the amount to pay changes every month (otherwise you could use a standing order - Dauerauftrag - which is much safer). In Poland, the popularity of direct debit is very low, even though when it was first introduced (somehow about 2000-2005, I think), it was widely advertised by telecommunication companies, as a comfortable way of paying telephone bills. My family has bad experience with direct debit, as we once signed a contract for an Internet connection and cancelled it after a few months (the operator allowed it in this offer) and the money was still being charged from the account afterwards for many months before we realized that. After we managed to cancel it, we didn't have to pay the telephone bills for many months because of this overpayment, we were getting invoices with the amount of 0 PLN 



> Here in Norway they use a singular system, domestic debit cards are actually credit cards with instant withdrawing from account and no credit limit, from a technical transaction-management standpoint.


In Poland it's, I think, the same. In the past it was different, the banks were usually issuing "flat" cards, like Maestro, which didn't allow e.g. Internet payments (yet earlier, there were cards that allowed withdrawing money from ATM's only), now they usually give the new customers MaterCard or Visa debit cards, which seem to work exactly the same as credit cards. When you ask someone in Germany about one of those cards, he would tell it's a credit card, because in their minds it's impossible that a MasterCard or Visa card can be a debit card. And their card payment systems will accept it as credit cards. If you are paying over the Internet in Germany (e.g. on the Deutsche Bahn website) and it says that only credit cards are accepted - a modern Polish debit card will also work.



ChrisZwolle said:


> I was working in a supermarket in the early 2000s while on high school. Banknotes over € 50 were very uncommon to get, € 200 and 500 was not accepted and almost nobody paid with € 100.


In Poland it's very rare to see a 200 PLN note (which is more or less 50 EUR). Probably because the ATM's usually don't have those notes, so people get them practically only if they withdraw money manually at the counter in the bank. So if you see someone paying with such a note, it's usually an elderly person.

They recently introduced 500 PLN notes, and they are even more rare.



ChrisZwolle said:


> I try to pay as much as possible by card, so I can avoid having a stockpile of coins, including 1 cent and 2 cent coins which are not used in the Netherlands (though they are legal tender).


I can imagine that your supermarkets do not have prices of products ending with .99 but rather with .95 instead - but what if you buy products with prices per kg or per 100 g, or e.g. if you are paying at a gas station? Do they always round the price to the accuracy of 0.05 EUR, even though it's possible to pay exactly if you have those 1/2 cents coins? What if the price is, let's say, 1.98 EUR, you are able to pay exactly so much with coins, but they round the price up to 2 EUR? Are you forced to pay 2 EUR or can you pay exactly 1.98 EUR?

Concerning this stockpiling of coins, I don't have this problem. It sometimes happens that the wallet gets a bit more heavy when I have many coins - but I normally deal with that in such a way that I always try to pay the exact amount with the coins I have instead of relying on getting change. And e.g. if I need a coin of 10 groszes (1 grosz = 0.01 PLN) but I see that I can get the same amount with the smaller coins already gathered in my wallet (e.g. 5 groszes + 2 groszes + 3x1 grosz), I will use those smaller ones.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

volodaaaa said:


> Guys have you ever seen a 200€ banknote? Except a picture of it. I always get 100 or 500 € dispersed from atm.


I'm not sure, but I have never had a £50 note in my hands.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The severe restrictions on trucking in Switzerland has also pushed some north-south traffic to the Brenner. Tirol responded with higher tolls and more restrictions as well, but the problem simply is that Austria and Switzerland are sandwiched between two large countries; Germany with 81 million people, and Italy with 60 million people. Considering those figures, the amount of truck traffic across the Alps isn't even that high.


----------



## bogdymol

Those 81+60 milion people living in Germany and Italy need the good produced in the other country. For environmentalists is simple to say "trucks are bad, ban them", but they don't realize that those trucks are carrying everything that they and their families need, from food to electronics, clothes or furniture. Having so many restrictions on this vital north-south link is somehow against the "free movement of people and goods" policy that the EU is strongly supporting. Plus it artificially increases the prices for any good transported on this route, making them less competitive.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Some years ago Beppe Grillo, now a politician and founder of Movimento 5 Stelle party in Italy, was a stand-up comedian.
I remember watching a show where he said "America exports to Europe tot million tons of cookies. Europe exports to America the same tot million tons of cookies. These travels are expensive and polluting. Why don't everybody eat their own cookies?"
I laughed at the time. Now I see how short-sighted such a statement is.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Let's all close our countries and consume only what can be locally produced, with local raw materials.


----------



## rudiwien

bogdymol said:


> Those 81+60 milion people living in Germany and Italy need the good produced in the other country. For environmentalists is simple to say "trucks are bad, ban them", but they don't realize that those trucks are carrying everything that they and their families need, from food to electronics, clothes or furniture. Having so many restrictions on this vital north-south link is somehow against the "free movement of people and goods" policy that the EU is strongly supporting. Plus it artificially increases the prices for any good transported on this route, making them less competitive.



Well, but for the people in Tyrol, such an argument doesn't explain anything - only a fraction of the trucks passing by daily is actually delivering goods for them. That even if you'd add in transit traffic that transports raw materials that might end up as final products in Tyrol.

So, to call on their understanding for the enormous amounts of trucks based on this argument seems asking a "bit" too much...




bogdymol said:


> ^^ After the Brenner Base Tunnel (the one posted by MichiH) will be completed, it would be interesting to have, for example, hourly RoLa trains though the tunnel, and to somehow encourage truck drivers to use it instead of driving across the Brenner motorway.


 
During the day, you actually have almost hourly services from Wörgl (close to the border to Germany) to just before the border on Brenner to Italy. To Trento, connections are much worse, so I think that indeed, there is room for improvement, and maybe not even much need to buy more rolling stock, it can't take (much) longer through the tunnel than it takes now up to the pass... If there is not enough capacity in the tunnel, at least there should then be enough capacity for slower but more frequent services over the pass.

But I still think that you need to make the road much more expensive (and not just the section in Tyrol, but also in Italy, which is not that expensive today, and a reason why Brenner is much cheaper than Switzerland), money seems still the best incentive..


If RoLa can be cheaper, AND offer a similar speed, than it might actually have a chance, also because it would allow truck drivers to take their obligatory break time during the transfer.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

rudiwien said:


> But I still think that you need to make the road much more expensive (and not just the section in Tyrol, but also in Italy, which is not that expensive today, and a reason why Brenner is much cheaper than Switzerland), money seems still the best incentive..


Well, that would initiate a race to the top, and not in a positive way. If Tirol would significantly raise tolls on trucks, Switzerland will have to follow suit and maybe France-Italy as well for those tunnels. Where would that end? It's already a € 300 toll bill to travel through Switzerland.


----------



## rudiwien

^^

Don't worry, Austria can't raise the toll much more anyway atm with the current EU regulations. Only Italy could, but likely they have a strong trucking lobby..


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Some years ago Beppe Grillo, now a politician and founder of Movimento 5 Stelle party in Italy, was a stand-up comedian.
> I remember watching a show where he said "America exports to Europe tot million tons of cookies. Europe exports to America the same tot million tons of cookies. These travels are expensive and polluting. Why don't everybody eat their own cookies?"
> I laughed at the time. Now I see how short-sighted such a statement is.





bogdymol said:


> ^^ Let's all close our countries and consume only what can be locally produced, with local raw materials.


There are some goods that are so highly fungible and readily available anywhere that are indeed nonsense to be transported for thousands of kilometers. For example mineral water: since almost all Europe has good drinking water sources, what's the reason to drink bottled water from 1,000 km away?
However, it's not a thing that can be regulated by governments (in a liberal environment like EU): if many people in Finalnd think that French mineral water is of a superior quality and are willing to pay for it, it will be imported, despite being not eco-friendly.


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> Those 81+60 milion people living in Germany and Italy need the good produced in the other country. For environmentalists is simple to say "trucks are bad, ban them", but they don't realize that those trucks are carrying everything that they and their families need, from food to electronics, clothes or furniture. Having so many restrictions on this vital north-south link is somehow against the "free movement of people and goods" policy that the EU is strongly supporting. Plus it artificially increases the prices for any good transported on this route, making them less competitive.


A well developed rail system may reduce the number of trucks on the roads, but not eliminate them.


----------



## Kpc21

italystf said:


> There are some goods that are so highly fungible and readily available anywhere that are indeed nonsense to be transported for thousands of kilometers. For example mineral water: since almost all Europe has good drinking water sources, what's the reason to drink bottled water from 1,000 km away?
> However, it's not a thing that can be regulated by governments (in a liberal environment like EU): if many people in Finalnd think that French mineral water is of a superior quality and are willing to pay for it, it will be imported, despite being not eco-friendly.


Because it's a thing that is naturally regulated by the market 

Once, the Coca-Cola company wanted to introduce in Poland their bottled water - Bonaqua. And it quickly disappeared, no-one wanted to buy it, people preferred the local waters.

So Coca-Cola changed its brand to Kropla Beskidu (Beskid's Drop, Beskids is a mountain range in Poland). People started buying it, because many customers just think it's a Polish brand, not realizing it's actually one of Coca-Cola 

But even if they were still selling Bonaqua in Poland, they wouldn't definitely import the water from abroad, rather just sell the local one under this brand. In the same way as they don't distribute ready Coca-Cola bottles around the world - they produce Coca-Cola locally.

A similar situation is on the market of fuels. The fuel sold on practically all the gas stations in Poland, regardless of the brand, whether it's a local one, BP, Statoil or Lukoil, comes from two Polish producers and the fuel companies (also the foreign ones) just resell it. Adding some stuff in case of the premium fuels.

Another situation is with big consumer electronics and household appliances. Almost all the TV sets sold in Europe come from Poland, Czech Republic or Hungary. LG produces their TVs in Poland, Panasonic in Czech Republic, Samsung in Hungary, Sony in Slovakia. But smartphones... they are much easier to transport, so it's not a problem to produce them in the Far East, in countries like China. Clothes... their production is much less demanding (especially in places where you can pay very little and ignore the safety regulations), so they usually come from countries like Bangladesh.

Of course, "production" means here assembly from parts produced in many different parts of the world.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ I wonder what the deal is with eastern EU TV sets
In North America, always "made in China" and usually South Korean brands now.
Sometimes Mexico in the end of the "tube" style but now...

I still like my car, Saab. Made in Sweden. But engine, Australia, transmission, Japan, wheels, radiator and many parts Made in Poland, lights, Germany, windshield, Colombia (!)
Global trade is important to reduce costs, but the social aspect I think is highly underlooked - making customers, making suppliers around the world creates friendships and understandings across borders and cultures. The racist insanity of say WWII era becomes impossible if the people actually know people on "the other side".


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland South Korean brands dominate too, but they manufacture in the Central Europe.

The number one is Samsung, then probably LG, then Panasonic I would say, and Sony. Two last ones are Japanese, but the Koreans dominate the market.

Then you have Philips, Thomson and other brands like Funai or our local Manta. Also other world-known TV brands, like Sharp or Toshiba, but now they are rather the minority. Most people buy Samsungs, probably because they have best promotion. Maybe also because they have best multimedia ("smart TV") functionality. Although just the quality of products seems to be a bit better in case of Panasonic. The low-end Samsung TVs have quite blurry picture in case of poor quality signal (with huge amount of compression) and a bit weird colors; for Panasonics from the same price shelf (apart from that Panasonic is generally a little bit more expensive) it looks much better. But the higher models of Samsung are OK.

Also Panasonic seems to have most comfortable remotes and, generally, the user interface (OSD). I have two Panasonic TVs and one Samsung at home, so I can compare it. The remote of the Samsung is of much poorer quality and the interface is more inconvenient to use, even though this Samsung is much a higher model than those Panasonics (although the plus of the Samsung is that it has an extra "smart" remote and that one is good; the ordinary one - not really).


----------



## Balkanada

italystf said:


> However, it's not a thing that can be regulated by governments (in a liberal environment like EU): if many people in Finalnd think that French mineral water is of a superior quality and are willing to pay for it, it will be imported, despite being not eco-friendly.


Bottled water is the biggest scam in the history of mankind because there's absolutely no difference other than marketing, but I digress. If someone in Finland isn't happy about what's on the market as far as bottled water goes then they should chase the business opportunity to create their own brand


----------



## italystf

Kanadzie said:


> Global trade is important to reduce costs, but the social aspect I think is highly underlooked - making customers, making suppliers around the world creates friendships and understandings across borders and cultures. The racist insanity of say WWII era becomes impossible if the people actually know people on "the other side".


I'm not sure about that. Let's see some Arabic countries, that are very integrated in the global market and trade, but on the other hand are extremely backward and brutal regards human rights and very hostile towards other cultures and religions.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> I'm not sure about that. Let's see some Arabic countries, that are very integrated in the global market and trade, but on the other hand are extremely backward and brutal regards human rights and very hostile towards other cultures and religions.


But this globalism, at least, is fun in some aspects. I am in a work group with some citizens of different European countries and we are currently preparing some internal rules for procedures. And yes, the stereotypes are very accurate sometimes: Germans are punctual as hell, French just reply with "okay" (I have never got a reply different than "okay"), my colleagues from the V4 do not respond at all or agree with everything (no creativity indeed).


----------



## MattiG

Balkanada said:


> Bottled water is the biggest scam in the history of mankind because there's absolutely no difference other than marketing, but I digress. If someone in Finland isn't happy about what's on the market as far as bottled water goes then they should chase the business opportunity to create their own brand


How about importing dirty salt from India and selling it as Himalayan salt at astronomical prices?

A human being is irrational in many senses. This observation was worth of the Nobel in Economy this week. A less polite statement tells us that there is no limit how much a consumer can be underrated. Anything can be sold to human beings if the product can be made attractive to them

What comes to French or Italian mineral water exported to countries like Finland where there is no lack of water, it is about feelings, marketing and brand names. Like transporting bulk wines from Chile, Australia and US to Europe. Or like thinking that a cardboard-tasting cognac is automatically better than any quality brandy just because it is cognac. Unlimited number of examples exist.

If there is demand for something, there always is a vendor.

Do you know that Finland exports a lot of reindeer food to the Central Europe, especially to Germany? It is sold as decoration material at ridiculous prices.










Importing water is not a big deal in Finland. A few years ago, it was cool for teenagers to walk on the streets with a bottle of Evian in the hand. That fashion lasted for about one summer, but peeked the sales. My advice was then to read the Evian label through the bottle. Quite many refilled their Evian bottle with tap water.

The world would be quite lousy if locally made products only would be available.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland many people are still afraid of drinking tap water, as its quality was still not that good not such a long time ago.

And even now, many people, especially in rural areas, have own wells if there is no public water supply system. And there, the quality of the water may vary too.


----------



## Junkie

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland many people are still afraid of drinking tap water, as its quality was still not that good not such a long time ago.
> 
> And even now, many people, especially in rural areas, have own wells if there is no public water supply system. And there, the quality of the water may vary too.


About tap water... I never drink bottled water when going somewhere. For example when I was in Krakow (that was my only visit in Poland so far) I found the water very good for my stomach. Also in other countries and in home I always drink tap water only. But in some places the tap water can be more soft like....


----------



## g.spinoza

Bottled waters can be very different one another. I'm no sommelier, but I can tell, say, Uliveto and San Benedetto waters apart. So it's perfectly fine to seek for a bottled water that can meet your tastes. I tend to buy local, but only if I like the water: when I'm in Turin I buy "Pian della Mussa" - less than 50 km away, so good that it's the water that astronauts on the ISS drink, when I'm in Brescia I drink Maniva (70 km away).


----------



## Kpc21

There are different types of bottled water. There is what we call in Poland "natural water from source" and "mineral water". The first one is not really much different from tap water, actually the tap water may have more minerals from it. Mineral water contains a higher amount of minerals, so it might be beneficial for health. Some special types of mineral water ("curing water") are even drunk for medical reasons in spa resorts, as a kind of therapy.

Apart from that, you rather won't get carbonated tap water and it might be difficult to get it carbonated at home. Although, supposedly, tools for that used to be popular in the past:


----------



## Verso

I hate carbonated water.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Thank God somone else who hates carbonated water. I felt like the only one up untill know.


----------



## volodaaaa

Where can I sign up into the club? I hate carbonated water. The best water is tap water.


----------



## volodaaaa

https://www.slavorum.org/lost-polis...ation-on-hill-starts-huge-fire-in-montenegro/

not sure if funny or not


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Bottled water is not a big thing in the Netherlands. Supermarkets do sell it, but far less than in France or Spain. Tap water is of high quality in the Netherlands and has been that way for decades. 

I remember some stories from the late 1990s that you shouldn't drink tap water in southern France, but evidently that has faded somewhat.


----------



## keokiracer

joshsam said:


> Thank God somone else who hates carbonated water. I felt like the only one up untill know.


+1
I'll drink it if i _have_ to, but I prefer tap water by a long shot.


----------



## Suburbanist

We have a SodaStream machine in our office. I drink it every now and then.

Bottled water occupies a minute part of supermarket shelves here in Norway. Water in Bergen is great. Water in the Netherlands is very safe and clean (they did those tests showing tap water is better than most common bottled waters sold there), but it has a lot of chalk dissolved on it, at least in Brabant. It does not pose any risk for human or animal consumption, but it does leave some crusty dust in taps, metal pieces in the shower, and it makes washing hair and clothes less efficient. It may interefere with certain types of cooking that use warm but not boiled water. Of course, using bottled water is useless for cooking as an improvement because it has even more dissolves minerals.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

volodaaaa said:


> Where can I sign up into the club? I hate carbonated water. The best water is tap water.


Totally agree, sparking water is neither nice nor worth being paid for. I don't like fizzy drinks in general, including and maybe especially carbonated water.


----------



## Spookvlieger

In Belgium it depends. Here in Limburg tap water is rich in calcium and tastes pretty good. Some other regions have tap water that doesn't taste so good. I didn't like the tap water in the city of Tienen. 

Test-Aankoop also tested tap water in 44 locations in Belgium and found that nearly all of them where of better quality than regular bottled water. Some scored less because of nitrates in the water due to industrialised agriculture.

Most soruces of bottled water are actually the same as the tap water but with added minirals. You can buy an expensive SPA botlle yes, but why won't a natural source near you be as healthy?
------------------------

I want to add to that, tap water in Morroco, and all of the Balkan countries I have visited tasted and smelled heavely of chlorine. Would not recommend to drink any tap water there. It might be safe but the chlorine taste is auwfull.


----------



## Junkie

joshsam said:


> ...........and all of the Balkan countries I have visited tasted and smelled heavely of chlorine. Would not recommend to drink any tap water there. It might be safe but the chlorine taste is auwfull.


Chlorine is present in the Balkan. But we are not Africa and our environment is generally clean. In my country the tap water is safe to drink and it's super healthy. It has to do with the mountains and the terrain overall. That way is rich with minerals. In cities chlorine is present, but you can only wait for couple of seconds to dissolve and you can drink it. :cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

DanielFigFoz said:


> Totally agree, sparking water is neither nice nor worth being paid for. I don't like fizzy drinks in general, including and maybe especially carbonated water.


Well, Coca-cola is sometimes good when I have an headache or need to stay up for a long time but yes.

When I see racks full of mineral water packages in supermarket it fells like they are selling packed air. Yes, it is something different when you are a foreigner and you are not used to our bacteria in our tap water. But for locals?


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Bottled water is not a big thing in the Netherlands. Supermarkets do sell it, but far less than in France or Spain. Tap water is of high quality in the Netherlands and has been that way for decades.
> 
> I remember some stories from the late 1990s that you shouldn't drink tap water in southern France, but evidently that has faded somewhat.


The parameters of the tap water in Poland are being monitored, and in case something that shouldn't be there is detected in it, the local (and sometimes even central) media inform about it - e.g. that it must be boiled before drinking, that it can be used for washing only, or that even washing in it can be dangerous and it shouldn't be used for anything but flushing the toilet (although in such a case, they would probably just turn it off for safety reasons). But it's a rarity and normally, the tap water is safe.

However, if someone has water from own well, then its parameters may vary - it's not always of a good quality and then people often install filters.

The water supply company of Łódź had even a campaign under the slogan "The Łódź Water is the Best":










The poster compares the parameters of a typical bottled water with the city water.

And they installed dispensers with tap water in some places like offices:










Concerning the bad effect of the minerals in water on the efficiency of washing, as well as on the state of devices like washing machines, an agent which you can add to the washing powder to protect your washing machine is advertised very much in TV commercials. Although I have also seen opinions that actually using it makes you spend more money than if you bought a new washing machine every few years once the old one gets damaged by the lime... And you sometimes have to exchange the machine anyway.

But washing machines anyway last long. We recently exchanged our one. The previous one (Bosch) was used for something like 15 years. The one before (Polar PS 663 Bio - a Polish model from 1970s and 1980s, an interesting solution in it was that the container for washing powder wasn't in form of a drawer, but there was a door on the top of the machine for that - see here this was a good washing machine, the whole Poland was doing laundry in them) was also very durable, even though no water-softening agents were used in that times.


----------



## Tenjac

volodaaaa said:


> Well, Coca-cola is sometimes good when I have an headache ...


That's because of caffeine.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> When I see racks full of mineral water packages in supermarket it fells like they are selling packed air. Yes, it is something different when you are a foreigner and you are not used to our bacteria in our tap water. But for locals?


Is tap water available everywhere?

In Finland, most of the rural areas are without public water pipes. Instead, wells are the primary sources of drinking water. The quality of water in wells varies a lot.

The well at my second home at the countryside is in a questionable condition. Repairing it would cost quite a lot of money, and it is not sure if that would make any help. Typically, I buy a 5-litre bottle of water at the local supermarket when travelling there. It is more than enough for two persons for a weekend. I do not feel guilty or dumb.

Oh, sometimes I buy two such bottles. The second one is for the ice cube machine.

We have quite a good variety of sparkling mineral waters available. The bubbles taste good!


----------



## Verso

A friend of mine from Ljubljana moved permanently to Bolivia yesterday.  I wonder, if he'll stay there for the rest of his life.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Back in the 70s, when bottled water was first becoming “a thing” in the U.S., Consumer Reports - a non-profit magazine that specializes in evaluating products for safety, value and so on - ran a test of several brands of water...and New York City tap water. The tap water won.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Well, at least we’ll be spared the quadrennial World Cup-triggered round of “What’s wrong with Americans (that they don’t like soccer like normal people)?”


----------



## MattiG

Penn's Woods said:


> Back in the 70s, when bottled water was first becoming “a thing” in the U.S., Consumer Reports - a non-profit magazine that specializes in evaluating products for safety, value and so on - ran a test of several brands of water...and New York City tap water. The tap water won.


The question about tap water and bottled mineral water is like comparing tenderloin to sausage.

Tenderloin is pure high-quality meat but tastes nothing as such. Sausage is some meats added with various guts and spices. Like on water, the impurities carry the taste.


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> Is tap water available everywhere?
> 
> In Finland, most of the rural areas are without public water pipes. Instead, wells are the primary sources of drinking water. The quality of water in wells varies a lot.
> 
> The well at my second home at the countryside is in a questionable condition. Repairing it would cost quite a lot of money, and it is not sure if that would make any help. Typically, I buy a 5-litre bottle of water at the local supermarket when travelling there. It is more than enough for two persons for a weekend. I do not feel guilty or dumb.
> 
> Oh, sometimes I buy two such bottles. The second one is for the ice cube machine.
> 
> We have quite a good variety of sparkling mineral waters available. The bubbles taste good!


I would say the overwhelming majority of people has connection to tap water. Few rely on their own wells plus there are some people who are connected to tap water and have wells as well. However, these wells are subject of strict hygienic inspections.

Most of people around me like the new healthy lifestyle and drink only water. Unfortunately most of them prefer bottled water which makes an incredibly huge amount of waste. We have the largest river island in Europe which is very rich in quality underground water that is drought to Slovak pipelines (at least in the western Slovakia). It is shame.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> I would say the overwhelming majority of people has connection to tap water. Few rely on their own wells plus there are some people who are connected to tap water and have wells as well. However, these wells are subject of strict hygienic inspections.
> 
> Most of people around me like the new healthy lifestyle and drink only water. Unfortunately most of them prefer bottled water which makes an incredibly huge amount of waste. We have the largest river island in Europe which is very rich in quality underground water that is drought to Slovak pipelines (at least in the western Slovakia). It is shame.


Bottles make minor amounts of waste only, if there is a working recycling process. So, if the waste is the problem, then the root cause is not the bottled water itself, but the lack of infrastructure.


----------



## Kpc21

Such situations are not so uncommon in different tests... You must put yourself in the place of the person who designed the test and think what he could mean.

By the way, you won't rather call a place with 5000 inhabitants a city 

So if they talk about the *city* centre, you should rather think New York and not a small town or village...

But even in a big city, the "near the city centre" term would be relative. For some 800 m will be near, for some it will be far...

Anyway, I believe he considered it near. It's a walking distance.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> ....
> By the way, you won't rather call a place with 5000 inhabitants a city
> ...


That's true. Still, strange test question. I hope the test didn't count for anything important.


----------



## Verso

MajKeR_ said:


> We 'always' had both, sometimes more than one of each. They were friends, so I thought that talking about them as greatest enemies is a bullshit. Till now. The current cat behaves like that the current dog does nothing *more* that trying to end his life. :lol:


You mean nothing less. :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Such situations are not so uncommon in different tests... You must put yourself in the place of the person who designed the test and think what he could mean.
> 
> By the way, you won't rather call a place with 5000 inhabitants a city
> 
> So if they talk about the *city* centre, you should rather think New York and not a small town or village...
> 
> But even in a big city, the "near the city centre" term would be relative. For some 800 m will be near, for some it will be far...
> 
> Anyway, I believe he considered it near. It's a walking distance.


I know, maybe a bad example. But still, the question is very nebulous. I have done some English testing and I know what is the main principle of such tests. There is e.g. common phrase, phrasal verb, or more advanced description of some situation and the candidate is supposed to make it out and it is possible only if they have enhanced knowledge. In the end, the answer is clear (for a native speaker)

But this question is (at least I suppose) unclear for a native speaker as well. Maybe if there was a an additional option (true/false/do not know). 

I am a geographer and sometimes, vicinity is measured by different means. You may say: I live close to the city centre in terms of diagonal distance, but I live far from a city centre in terms of the Manhattan distance and in terms of public transport service. I know, speculation, but...

The same goes for another question:
Sentence: There is a large bookcase in the living room.

Question: There is a lot of books in the house. True/False?

Bloody hell, the size of a bookcase does not tell anything about the quantity of books in the house. :lol::lol: Indeed if we made a regression analysis with two variables it may result in high correlation, but still, the house might include a lot of books even though there is no bookshelf, but at the same time, the large bookshelf could be empty.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Hurricane Ophelia is approaching Europe. It will make landfall in Southwest Ireland as a post-tropical storm, potentially with hurricane-force winds.










It also pushes hot air across Western Europe. Temperatures 10 degrees above average are measured from southern Spain into the Benelux.


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> I know, maybe a bad example. But still, the question is very nebulous. I have done some English testing and I know what is the main principle of such tests. There is e.g. common phrase, phrasal verb, or more advanced description of some situation and the candidate is supposed to make it out and it is possible only if they have enhanced knowledge. In the end, the answer is clear (for a native speaker)
> 
> But this question is (at least I suppose) unclear for a native speaker as well. Maybe if there was a an additional option (true/false/do not know).


I did many mock tests for the Cambridge English exams (those like FCE, CAE, CPE) - and such questions, where the answer could not be clear even for a native speaker, could be met quite frequently.

Not to mention e.g. the Polish driving licence tests, where you often have to consider what the question designer meant.


----------



## Suburbanist

35 degrees in Sevilla mid-October :crazy:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Smog in Northern Italy? There is a strong anti-cyclone over Europe. Between the anti-cyclone and hurricane Ophelia, hot air is carried north along the west side of Europe. Temperatures are forecast to reach 26 °C in the Netherlands tomorrow, which is absolutely ridiculous for mid-October.


----------



## Kpc21

As for now, Poland has normal autumn temperatures. It could be colder, there hasn't been the first frost yet - but it's not far from the norm.


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> Smog in Northern Italy?


Actually just usual autumn fog (visible also around Ljubljana and Zagreb). Winds from that cyclone did not pass over Alps.


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> Actually just usual autumn fog (visible also around Ljubljana and Zagreb). Winds from that cyclone did not pass over Alps.


Really actually, it IS smog. Milan overcame pollution limits 5 days in a row and starting tomorrow it will implement a ban on older, more polluting vehicles. Turin could follow soon.


----------



## Verso

Yeah, the Po Plain is grey, not white.


----------



## volodaaaa

Guys, 

especially Hungarian-speakers, I have a question for you.

From the first construction in 19th century to the end of the WW2, my street was named _Antonia's lane_ (_Antónia út_ in Hungarian, _Cesta Antónie_ in Slovak).

There is currently no street or road related to Antonia in Slovakia, but there are several streets or roads named after some Antonia in Hungarian towns. I would like to know: who is that street name after? Who is that Antonia?

There are several websites in Slovakia explaining the street names in Slovak cities. I guess something similar must be in Hungary too. But I have not been very successful in looking it up.


----------



## flusispieler

I'm not Hungarion or Hungarian-speaking, but a quick google search came up with Marie Antoinette, Princess of Hungary. Her actual name was Maria Antonia, so I suppose that's where it comes from.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> I would like to know: who is that street name after? Who is that Antonia?


I have no idea and have not found anything. I suppose she could be some princess in the Austro-Hungarian imperial-royal family.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wildfires in Portugal and Spain plus Sahara dust creates a layer of ash, dust and smoke in the skies over Benelux and Germany. There are no clouds in the sky, but the sun doesn't get through the hazy airmass. Air quality is actually not that bad, the aerosols are higher up in the atmosphere.










This photo was taken at noon, not sunset.


----------



## Penn's Woods

flusispieler said:


> I'm not Hungarion or Hungarian-speaking, but a quick google search came up with Marie Antoinette, Princess of Hungary. Her actual name was Maria Antonia, so I suppose that's where it comes from.




Is that THE Marie-Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI of France, executed during the French Revolution?


----------



## Junkie

Sahara dust usually covers the Balkans also but during the summer months we get free sand from Libya


----------



## Alex_ZR

Penn's Woods said:


> Is that THE Marie-Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI of France, executed during the French Revolution?


Yup, she was the daughter of Maria Theresa.


----------



## Kpc21

By the way, the summer has reached Poland too.

We don't have 27 degrees in Łódź - but about 20-21 - yes. In the TV weather forecast I watched today, they said, Wrocław (usually the warmest city in Poland) had 25 degrees today.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Alex_ZR said:


> Yup, she was the daughter of Maria Theresa.




I knew she was Maria Theresa’s daughter; just didn’t know whether there was another Marie-Antoinette....


----------



## x-type

Alex_ZR said:


> Yup, she was the daughter of Maria Theresa.


who wasn't? :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

Okay, here is the procedure of my investigation:
1) I have found out that the streets or public places named after Antonia occur currently in Hungary only. Slovakia was a part of Hungary that time, so it is a good evidence, that Antonia is somehow related to the Hungarian history.

2) The person must have been very famous which was known by everybody, otherwise she would be noted with a surname. Inventor, poet or other important people would be noted with surnames.

3) Who was famous in that time? Saints or monarchs. I have looked up for monarchs in Hungarian history and the only popular one was aforementioned Marie-Antoinette. Though I think she is too little related to Hungarians. I have found several saints called Antonia, but most of them were absolutely unknown nuns. 

Marie-Antoinette was a strong public enemy in 16th century and I doubt her position changed less than two centuries later. Therefore I don't think that these streets are named after her.


----------



## ChrisZwolle




----------



## volodaaaa

When you have to drop off your children to holiday on monday and defend Amsterdam on Tuesday...


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Okay, here is the procedure of my investigation:
> ...
> Marie-Antoinette was a strong public enemy in 16th century and I doubt her position changed less than two centuries later. Therefore I don't think that these streets are named after her.


Was she a public enemy in the Austrian Empire? She was a daughter of Maria Theresa who was executed by anti-monarchist revolutionaries. In the eyes of the people who were naming streets back then, she might have been a martyr.


----------



## Verso

^^ And apparently she never said _Let them eat cake_ (that's new for me).


----------



## volodaaaa

Basically, I am no expert in the French history, but I thought she had always been considered someone to be despised. But after short googling I have realized that it is not fully clear. Moreover some sources implies she was a martyr (after she was exhumed at the dawn of the 19th century). It would be a good precondition to become someone to have public places named after. Given the fact that my street was finished 50 years later, it could be related. The only mystery is why only in Hungary 

Btw. it interests me because my street is a branch of longer street and people trying to reach me (couriers for instance) are wandering because they do not know, that my street is still a part of the larger street. Therefore I proposed the city council an idea of renaming this short branch and the only name that came to my mind was the former name probably after her.


----------



## x-type

now i see that it is the former name of your street. do you know what is the former name of my street? 4th July Street :lol:

of course, it was not named after famous American 4th July, but some Yugoslav holiday in relation with partisans.


----------



## flusispieler

Here's another (Maria) Antonia, that is also related to Austria, Slovakia and Hungary. Again no confirmation, just another guess:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Antonia_Koháry_de_Csábrág


----------



## g.spinoza

It finally arrived!!!!










Me happy


----------



## bogdymol

^^ :redx: Don't use Google Photos for uploading images on the forum, as the picture cannot be seen (at least here). Use imgur instead.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I can't believe that after all those years, hotlinking photos from Google STILL doesn't work properly. This is an issue that goes 10+ years back.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> ^^ :redx: Don't use Google Photos for uploading images on the forum, as the picture cannot be seen (at least here). Use imgur instead.


Someone can see them (I guess, because that post received at least 1 like) someone can't... I can't understand why.

Anyways, this was it:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Congrats!

I always had the impression that you have ordered a Hyunday Tucson...

I am not a big fan of the exterior design (actually frontal design, the back is ok) of this Peugeot, but the interior is just WOW (maybe you share also a picture from inside with us).


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> ^^ Congrats!
> 
> I always had the impression that you have ordered a Hyunday Tucson...


That was my first choice, but after test-driving it... meh.



> I am not a big fan of the exterior design (actually frontal design, the back is ok) of this Peugeot, but the interior is just WOW (maybe you share also a picture from inside with us).


Exterior-wise the Tucson is more elegant, I agree. About the 3008, my impression is vice-versa - I like the front, not so much the back.

For the interior, it is fantastic: I will post more pictures but I have to wait. Unfortunately I'm leaving to Germany for a week, and since I still do not have a private box for the car, I had to park it at work (the place is guarded 24/7). Only drawback: nobody is allowed in during weekends.
So basically I got the car from the salon, drove it to work and left it there... and I have to wait one week to drive it again... hno:


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> It finally arrived!!!!


Has the family already "arrived" too?



g.spinoza said:


> Unfortunately I'm leaving to Germany for a week


OMG! Unfortunately in Germany? I'm also on the road. I'll be very careful.... :cheers:


----------



## Suburbanist

I miss Dutch food prices in general. Eating out at mid range restaurants is very expensive in Norway. Same meat-based (except fish) quality /size dish costs 2.5 - 3x more than in Rotterdam or Eindhoven.
Selection of certain product categories is quite limited even at large supermarkets, but it seems locals are not bothered. EU based online stores also don't sell non refrigerated food for delivery here (think specialty pasta or certain exotic cereals). I kinda miss living in the EU sometimes.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Does anyone have a clue where I could find traffic sign law of Hungary with graphic images?


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> Has the family already "arrived" too?


planning to...



> OMG! Unfortunately in Germany? I'm also on the road. I'll be very careful.... :cheers:


 you know I love Germany... the "unfortunately" is just for the car bad timing...


----------



## riiga

Suburbanist said:


> Selection of certain product categories is quite limited even at large supermarkets, but it seems locals are not bothered. EU based online stores also don't sell non refrigerated food for delivery here (think specialty pasta or certain exotic cereals). I kinda miss living in the EU sometimes.


Do as a true norwegian and take a trip to the Swedish border and buy what you need.


----------



## Balkanada

^^ Sweden is an 8 hour drive from Bergen so it's not worth it at all


----------



## CNGL

So I went online expecting no to two likes at most, but instead got this:









*275 likes* :nuts:. They all came from the same user cliking the thumbs up on all my posts in a single thread over time. I jumped from 1424 to 1699 received likes overnight.

Additional forumers who liked this post: _*bogdymol*_


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ this deserves a like...

Greeting from Offenbach am Main...


----------



## Alex_ZR

CNGL said:


> *275 likes* :nuts:. They all came from the same user cliking the thumbs up on all my posts in a single thread over time. I jumped from 1424 to 1699 received likes overnight.


Stalker?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Suburbanist said:


> I miss Dutch food prices in general. Eating out at mid range restaurants is very expensive in Norway. Same meat-based (except fish) quality /size dish costs 2.5 - 3x more than in Rotterdam or Eindhoven.
> Selection of certain product categories is quite limited even at large supermarkets, but it seems locals are not bothered. EU based online stores also don't sell non refrigerated food for delivery here (think specialty pasta or certain exotic cereals). I kinda miss living in the EU sometimes.


Did you often order food online?


----------



## Suburbanist

DanielFigFoz said:


> Did you often order food online?


Non-perishables items, yes, often. 2-3x/month.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Suburbanist said:


> Non-perishables items, yes, often. 2-3x/month.


I know some people who do most of their food shopping online. I've never tried it, and I don't suppose I will while in Switzerland, I don't really have room where at home for big shops.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ this deserves a like...
> 
> Greeting from Offenbach am Main...




I’ve stayed with friends in O’bach....


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> I’ve stayed with friends in O’bach....


It's a nice town. Unfortunately hotel prices are sky-high and I had too book a room in the next town (Heusenstamm) and commute to the conference venue by S-Bahn...


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> It's a nice town. Unfortunately hotel prices are sky-high and I had too book a room in the next town (Heusenstamm) and commute to the conference venue by S-Bahn...


Did you bear all cost of the conference on your own or was it reimbursed by your employer. What are the acceptable accommodation cost for your employer when doing a business trip?


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> Did you bear all cost of the conference on your own or was it reimbursed by your employer. What are the acceptable accommodation cost for your employer when doing a business trip?


I get full reimbursement, some of the most expensive things (plane, hotel) can be payed directly by my employer. This time my Institute payed for plane only, because I wanted to find a less expensive alternative than the hotel suggested by the conference.
As a matter of fact I think my Institute would have payed for the hotel in Offenbach (~ 250 € per night) but I didn't want it to become a precedent and something for them to have leverage over me with, so the hotel I booked was a lot less expensive (~ 250 € for 4 nights), with the only addition of 5,20 € per day for the S-Bahn. In this way I made them pay a lot less and they cannot "blackmail" me in future :bash:

I try never to exceed 100 € per night for the accomodation but sometimes it's just not possible (for instance in Norway, or in Dublin). Anyways you have to present a detailed estimate of the costs before traveling, and they can approve the budget or not. Up to now, I was never rejected a budget for conferences.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

O/T: it is 'paid' not 'payed'  I've seen that error often. 

Meanwhile in Norway:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I've seen an identical picture on facebook today. The tyre belonged to a Romanian police car.


----------



## CNGL

CNGL said:


> So I went online expecting no to two likes at most, but instead got this:
> 
> *275 likes* :nuts:. They all came from the same user cliking the thumbs up on all my posts in a single thread over time. I jumped from 1424 to 1699 received likes overnight.


And today another 87 likes. However one came from "1 others" in the quoted post. I revealed who because now there's no way to know all forumers who liked a certain post when more than 5 have done so.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> O/T: it is 'paid' not 'payed'  I've seen that error often.


Gosh, sorry about that. It's not like I didn't know that... I just missed it. Typing through cellphone does not help.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> It's a nice town. Unfortunately hotel prices are sky-high and I had too book a room in the next town (Heusenstamm) and commute to the conference venue by S-Bahn...




I didn’t see much of it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

bogdymol said:


> ^^ I've seen an identical picture on facebook today. The tyre belonged to a Romanian police car.


According to the Norwegian Public Roads Authority, it was caught on riksvei 4 near Vestre Toten: https://twitter.com/VegvesenOst/status/923200008224149504


----------



## Verso

There are some strange temporary traffic lights in Slovenia between Maribor and Dravograd. The red and yellow lights need like 15 seconds before turning green. :nuts:


----------



## bogdymol

¡ɐᴉlɐɹʇsn∀ ɥʇnoS ɯoɹɟ sƃuᴉʇǝǝɹפ


----------



## x-type

Kpc21 said:


> By the way, is it possible in your countries to deregister your car for some period if you want, to avoid paying insurance for the period when you don't use it?


it is here in HR. afaik you must come to desk at ministry of interior, you just give back the plates and vehicle registration certificate. no fees apply. insurance company will pay you back the unused period of insurance.

when you decide to re-registrate it again, you need to pay some small fee, but procedure is quite simple. you will get new plates and new registration certificate.

important thing is if your vehicle registration expires in regular time, and you decide not to registrate it again, you must report it at ministry of interior in 15 days (maybe it is 30 now) from expiry date, otherwise you are in deep trouble.

if i understood you well, in PL you cannot own a car if it is not registered?


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> How much would a new 18-year old driver pay, roughly, for insurance of a new small car (think a Citroen C1/Toyota Aygo or something similar - the cheapest non-fancy small ICE car) for which the teen is the sole driver/operator?
> 
> A colleague's son, who lives in Rome, alone, has to pay almost € 3500/year for insurance of his small brand-new (parent's gift) car which is parked overnight in an external indoor garage. He is 18 and his parents now live outside Italy (so registering at their house is just not an option).


I believe that varies a lot. Car insurance policies are not harmonized across countries.

Finland: I calculated a list price for a reasonable full-coverage insurance plan to a new Citroën C1 where the owner lives in the Helsinki region. The annual price at a major insurance company is about 1850 euro. In the countryside, the price is about 300 euro lower. 

However, this is not the whole truth. Quite often, the financing company offers an insurance to an attractive price, if the car is financed by a loan. The price may be half of the list price, but the excess is higher and there is no bonus model.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Netherlands: A 2017 Citroën C1, mid-level trim, for an 18 year old driver, would start at € 800 per year for a liability only insurance and € 1650 per year for full coverage.

You frequently read about how Dutch car insurances make a loss to insurers, they are too cheap. I pay only € 35 per month for full coverage on my 2015 Hyundai i10.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland it's expensive for a young driver, but not SO expensive.

Although maybe if you take into account that you earn in euro in Italy (although it still depends on the region of Italy, I believe that in the south, the salaries do not differ much from Poland), the difference is not so big.

And usually a young driver cannot afford a new car, but let's say he has rich parents who buy it for him...

I will use an online insurance price calculation tool to check it.

www.rankomat.pl - if someone wants to check it. Polish language only, but I believe someone from a Slavic language country will understand it, maybe with a little help of an online dictionary...

The data I put into it:
- Car produced in: 2017
- Car brand: Toyota
- Car model: Aygo
- Fuel: gasoline
- Engine volume: 998 ccm (the only one available for this car)
- Doors: 3
- Version: Sprint
- Model: there is only one
- Version: Sprint
- Insurance from: 1.11.2017
- Insurance range: OC (odpowiedzialność cywilna = civil liability)

--- compare offers ---

How do you use the car: exclusively privately
Car registered for a company/a leasing company/a single-person business/as a freight car: no
Color: silver
Mileage: 1000 km (almost a new car)
How much you will drive in the next 12 months: let's say someone uses it to drive to school/work every day - 20 km/day - approximately 20 days/month - 12 months -> 4800 km /less than 5000 km/
The current owner is which one from when it was bought new: first
Country of first registration: Poland
Date of first registration: 30.10.2017 (I cannot select a future date, but you must insure a brand new car on the day of buying)
Licence plate number: let's say one from the city of Lodz... EL12345
Anti-theft protection: immobilizer
Damages: no damages
Parked at night in: an individual garage
How long will the car be used abroad: it won't be used abroad
How frequent children will be carried: never
Phone number: a fake one

--- next ---

Owner birth date: say, 1.10.1998 (so a typical candidate for a driving license)
Will the owner drive the car: yes, he will be the main driver
When did he obtain the B category driving licence: September 2017
Postal code and town of the owner: I put 91-022 Łódź
Sex of the owner: Male
Martial status: Single
Job of the owner: Student
How many children has the owner: no children
How many co-owners has the car (they mean other co-owners, I believe): 0
Additional young drivers: 0

--- next ---

For how long the owner has been buying insurance policies for his car: never
Is the car tuned: no
Do you also want an offer of real estate insurance: no

--- show offers ---

After so much answering to weird questions, I finally get the offers...

The cheapest one costs 2644 zł (about 615 euro). Very expensive as for the Polish conditions. My parents have civil liability + autocasco for half of that price.









OC - civil liability
ASS - assistance
NNW - consequences of unfortunate accidents
AC - auto casco (you get money for your car when you caused the accident, the person who caused it is not known or when it was caused by external forces like weather - e.g. a tree fallen on the roof of your car)

Actually, many young car owners register the car with one of their parents as a co-owner. Thanks to that, they can make use of their discounts for having the driving license for a long time, which are, seemingly, very big.

Probably another factor which made the price of the insurance so high was that I chose a brand new car. Maybe for, let's say, Fiat Seicento or Daewoo Matiz from 2007, this would be cheaper. Although... I don't know. For a new car, there is a lower likelihood of an accident because of bad technical state of the car, and it has much more various safety systems.


I am shocked that even in many central-eastern Europe countries, you can temporarily deregister a car... And in Poland not.



x-type said:


> if i understood you well, in PL you cannot own a car if it is not registered?


If I am not mistaken, you can if it's brand new or brought from abroad. And you can deregister the car only if you sell it abroad. Or if you are a registered company who processes the cars into crap.

A car brought from abroad must be registered within 30 days.


----------



## Alex_ZR

So, age of the car owner plays a role in a car insurance rate? Not in my country. :lol:


----------



## Kpc21

Young drivers more often cause accidents, and based on that, the insurance rates are established.

It seems that in Poland, even the color of the car plays a role in the insurance rate... Which also make sense (not in case of the civil liability insurance, but yes for some other types) as some colors are more prone to be stolen.


----------



## volodaaaa

I am not sure if an age determines a chance of accident. I would rather say that the time the policyholder has possessed the licence for does. Indeed, young drivers may have less sense of fear.


----------



## cinxxx

So just register the car on a parent and give full rights to it to the child 
I know even people who do it here because the parent has better rating and will pay less insurance.


----------



## Spookvlieger

In Belgium you cannot be the main driver of a vehicule if you have one on your parents name. If they find out you'll have to pay heavy fines. For that reason and because I drive around 40.000km on a yearly base and take my car with me on vacation. I payed my own insurance on my name since I was 21. It did cost a lot.


----------



## cinxxx

^^And how would they know who is the main driver? It's not like you would tell them


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> ^^And how would they know who is the main driver? It's not like you would tell them


If you have an accident, they'll know...


----------



## cinxxx

I had a work colleague who commuted 160 km everyday, his car is registered on his father. he even had an accident, hit a deer on the road and almost totaled the car.
Didn't have any problem repairing it. It's also common here afaik to transfer insurance score to someone else (like from parents to child).


----------



## Spookvlieger

That's fine, untill you go and live on your own... You cannot drive around in a car all the time that is not registered on your name and adress, insurance will start to get shifty. I did this for a while, from my late 17 untill I was 21, I drove a car registered on my mothers name while I was still registered on the same adress. However, I had never the courage to drive outside BE with it because if you happen to have an accident, insurance wil surely not pay for the costs.


----------



## cinxxx

joshsam said:


> That's fine, untill you go and live on your own... You cannot drive around in a car all the time that is not registered on your name and adress, insurance will start to get shifty. I did this for a while, from my late 17 untill I was 21, I drove a car registered on my mothers name while I was still registered on the same adress. However, I had never the courage to drive outside BE with it because if you happen to have an accident, insurance wil surely not pay for the costs.


Well, in Germany you can insure the car on the whole family, even if the car is on your name. That means, partner and children (it may depend on the company, but it can be done). That's also the case of my colleague. So no danger there about being insured... but, apparently if the child is young, it will cost more.


----------



## MichiH

cinxxx said:


> Well, in Germany you can insure the car on the whole family, even if the car is on your name.


I know a guy from town A living in town B who had registered his car on his brother living in town C. A is 30km from C, B more than 200km from A/C.

The only issue was with paying taxes. B is in Baden-Württemberg (A/C in Bavaria) and if you work and live in BaWü, your first residence must be there too so that you pay taxes (including car taxes) in BaWü. It wasn't enforced for a while but for that reason, he had to register in B for his first residence and he even had to register his car on his own when he was about 40 years old.


----------



## MattiG

MichiH said:


> I know a guy from town A living in town B who had registered his car on his brother living in town C. A is 30km from C, B more than 200km from A/C.
> 
> The only issue was with paying taxes. B is in Baden-Württemberg (A/C in Bavaria) and if you work and live in BaWü, your first residence must be there too so that you pay taxes (including car taxes) in BaWü. It wasn't enforced for a while but for that reason, he had to register in B for his first residence and he even had to register his car on his own when he was about 40 years old.


Fee Fie Foe Foo. I have been thinking that the Finnish vehicle insurance system is complicated, but I seem be wrong.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

When I was 17 I paid £1,700 in Outer London for car insurance on a ten year old 1.2 Clio for a year and that was with a blackbox that recorded how fast I drove and so forth. I also added my father and grandparents as named drivers, partially in case they needed to drive it, but it also made it cheaper. The next year I moved to Wales for university and my insurance was £700 without a black box. With young drivers in the UK it is surprisingly often cheaper to insure a new car, I suppose the insurance companies think you'll take better care of a new car.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That 'black box' device that records your driving style and gives you a discount on the car insurance is also becoming a thing in the Netherlands. It records acceleration, speed, G-forces, etc. So people drive like a granny and annoy other drivers to save a few euros....


----------



## x-type

Alex_ZR said:


> So, age of the car owner plays a role in a car insurance rate? Not in my country. :lol:


how come? you have the same bonus/malus policy as Croatia, or at least similar. so as a young driver you start from 0% that makes you 100% more expensive insurance rate than with 10 years of experience, when you have 50% bonus if you had no accidents.


----------



## Attus

cinxxx said:


> Well, in Germany you can insure the car on the whole family, even if the car is on your name. That means, partner and children (it may depend on the company, but it can be done). That's also the case of my colleague. So no danger there about being insured... but, apparently if the child is young, it will cost more.


The daughter of my workmate (Germany) turned 18 and got her driver license. My collegue extended his insurance, allowing her daughter, too, to drive the car. Insurance fee became almost twice as high as before.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Yet, still it's cheaper than to have insured a car on her name alone...


----------



## Kpc21

cinxxx said:


> So just register the car on a parent and give full rights to it to the child
> I know even people who do it here because the parent has better rating and will pay less insurance.


Many people do it in Poland. Or, as I said, two owners of the car: the parent and the child. If I am not wrong, it doesn't matter what is the share of each of them, it can even be so that the parent possesses 1% of the car and the child 99%, they are just treated as co-owners and while the child gets some price increase (with respect to the basic fare) because of the young age and lack of experience, it can also use the discounts of the parent (for the experience behind the wheel, and, if possible, for collision-less driving).



g.spinoza said:


> If you have an accident, they'll know...


Then you can say you just borrowed the car...

In Poland, the insurance policies often have a point telling whether the car will be used by a young driver or not. If you tell not - by law it's not forbidden that a young driver uses such a car, but in case of an accident caused by him, there might be problems.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Winter has arrived in the north. Down to -25 in northern Finland.


----------



## Kpc21

And I have contact with some people in Sweden and Norway who are telling it's 10 degrees there


----------



## riiga

Yeah, today was 10 degress, quite comfy. Yesterday was 1-2 degrees and windy, frost on the car in the morning, etc.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> And I have contact with some people in Sweden and Norway who are telling it's 10 degrees there


The coming night is cold but a warm period is approaching. Forecast for South Finland shows +7-8 degrees in the weekend. Above average in November.


----------



## Kpc21

riiga said:


> Yeah, today was 10 degress, quite comfy. Yesterday was 1-2 degrees and windy, frost on the car in the morning, etc.


Ah, so just same as in Poland.

Although after a longer time spent on a graveyard (I wonder if this - graveyards on 1st November full of people putting candles and flowers on family graves, meeting relatives there, sometimes praying for the souls of the dead - is really a Poland-specific thing, or is it a thing in other countries too) it was quite cold to me. Even though I wore a winter jacket.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> (I wonder if this - graveyards on 1st November full of people putting candles and flowers on family graves, meeting relatives there, sometimes praying for the souls of the dead - is really a Poland-specific thing, or* is it a thing in other countries too*)


yep, in Catholic regions of Germany like southern Germany. We had a holiday for this reason today.


----------



## volodaaaa

Same here...


----------



## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> Ah, so just same as in Poland.
> 
> Although after a longer time spent on a graveyard (I wonder if this - graveyards on 1st November full of people putting candles and flowers on family graves, meeting relatives there, sometimes praying for the souls of the dead - is really a Poland-specific thing, or is it a thing in other countries too) it was quite cold to me. Even though I wore a winter jacket.


Same in Italy, especially among elderly people.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland it's whole families, no matter whether elderly or young 

Then in the evening...


















(probably a military grave)










But during the day:



















Plus traffic jams, parking problems and changes of the traffic organization (closed or temporarily one-way streets next to graveyards because of a big number of people, temporary extra parking places and sidewalks blocked by stands selling flowers and candles).


----------



## tfd543

How old are people usually when they move out from home with their parents in different countries ? In Scandinavia its as young as 18 years. Here its seen very natural and a duty in life but in Southern Europe its regarded almost insane and raising eye brows. Why is it like that if we exclude family relations and economy.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland it really can vary. Some leave home when they start their studies (e.g. if they are gonna study in another city), or even high school, some stay in the same home as parents forever (either dividing the house into parts, or extending it by adding a new wing or a new level).

I have noticed that in Germany, almost all the students live in dormitories or shared flats, even if their family home is not so far away from the university. In Poland it's not the case. If someone lives 20-30 km from school or closer, he usually stays there for the period of studies.


----------



## volodaaaa

Slovak youth uses the "Mama" hotel longest among other European countries.










However I left my home in 23, my wife was 20.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> Slovak youth uses the "Mama" hotel longest among other European countries.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> However I left my home in 23, my wife was 20.


I was 19, so was my gf. Being economically independent, however, is another story. I was 27 when I could afford to pay for my own apartment.


----------



## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> How old are people usually when they move out from home with their parents in different countries ? In Scandinavia its as young as 18 years. Here its seen very natural and a duty in life but in Southern Europe its regarded almost insane and raising eye brows. Why is it like that if we exclude family relations and economy.


If I remember correctly, in Scandinavia you got paid by the government if you leave your home when attending university. Nothing of the sort is happening in Southern Europe, combined with the fact that there is no job for young people (unemployment for people less than 24 is at 35% in Italy, in some regions in the south as high as 60%). It's not just "I want to be with mama because I'm lazy"...


----------



## cinxxx

We moved together when we were 25 and 24. But the apartment we lived in, was property of my parents. Then 2 years later we moved to Germany.


----------



## tfd543

g.spinoza said:


> If I remember correctly, in Scandinavia you got paid by the government if you leave your home when attending university. Nothing of the sort is happening in Southern Europe, combined with the fact that there is no job for young people (unemployment for people less than 24 is at 35% in Italy, in some regions in the south as high as 60%). It's not just "I want to be with mama because I'm lazy"...


Thats true. It is actually one of the biggest decisions to take apart from mariage and profession 

What about other places outside Europe ? Anyone residing there ?


----------



## Spookvlieger

Me and my girlfriend were 24 when we left home and had to take care of everything ourselves. Lot of my friends did it earlier at 21 or 22. Next step is to build a home. We are currently renting a two room appartment. Getting a 250.000 or 300.000euro loan isnt nothing though so we'll have to think about that carefully.


----------



## Kpc21

g.spinoza said:


> If I remember correctly, in Scandinavia you got paid by the government if you leave your home when attending university. Nothing of the sort is happening in Southern Europe, combined with the fact that there is no job for young people (unemployment for people less than 24 is at 35% in Italy, in some regions in the south as high as 60%). It's not just "I want to be with mama because I'm lazy"...


Same in Poland.

Another, also finance-related thing is, in Germany the students in dormitories or shared flats usually live in individual rooms. Here, most of them share the room.

So at the family home you usually are able to have an individual room, in a dormitory or a shared flat - not.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Oil is still used in Germany.
The building where I lived in Inoglstadt, did.
They only switched to gas 2 years ago...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You can see the difference between Belgium and the Netherlands. In Belgium they use oil for heating (they call it 'mazout') and Belgium suffers much more from winter smog than the Netherlands.


----------



## Suburbanist

Netherlands is the ideal country to get more 'district heating'


----------



## Kpc21

Oil started becoming popular in Poland in the late 1990s, but it quickly became very expensive and this killed its popularity. Many people (and even public institutions) converted their heating systems back to coal after that.

Throughout the whole period after the WW2 till the 1980s, the coal was considered a "national treasure" of Poland, the thing we have a lot of and which was supposed to bring a lot of money.

Interestingly, nowadays, many of the coal mines in Poland do not even bring any profit. The state is forced to maintain them because otherwise many people would get unemployed and this would result with social problems.

And one of the reasons why it's no longer so profitable is that the coal imported from Czech Republic, Russia or even Australia is cheaper (although in practice, the Czech one is of much worse quality, in case of the Russian one it's quite random - it can be very good but it can also be bad). 

We have natural resources of coal, we don't have (except for some small amounts) resources of oil. We import oil (and natural gas) from Russia, but which country wants to be energetically dependent on Russia?

The West isn't helping us in that terms too. Germans were building a gas pipeline from Russia a few years ago, and... they neglected Poland by building it on the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

I have read about many cases from the towns and villages with gas networks, where everyone was using natural gas for heating in the communist times, but after 1989 they switched to coal due to increasing gas prices. Nowadays, the natural gas is not so much more expensive than coal (considering also that the technology of gas boilers has vastly improved in the last years and now they are more energy-efficient than before), but still there is this belief in the society that coal is much cheaper than other fuels.

Not to mention those idiots burning things other than wood and coal. Even though someone calculated that they don't really earn much doing it, the energy content in the things like household trash is very low.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

Bilbao , the best european city 2018 ( The urbanism Awards 2018 )








http://albacus.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Bilbao-Panorama.jpg

Bilbao Jardín 2011 ( nº 15 ) by Eduardo Arostegui, en Flickr

Plaza Indautxu by Aitor Vilchez, en Flickr

ES_Bilbo_04_17_C_342 by Tai Pan of HK, en Flickr


----------



## Kpc21

It could be good for a general railway thread, but I can't find one, so I post it here.

Passengers of a diesel train in Kvasy, Ukraine had to push it to help start the engines:



Hipolit said:


>


It seems the condition of batteries was so bad.


----------



## CrazySerb

Ukraine hno:


----------



## volodaaaa

Speaking of gas heating (and Russia)


----------



## Kpc21

We had two big gas explosions in Łódź in 1980s. In the same neighborhood. The main reason was recognized as wrong design of the delivery system. It was a high pressure system, which meant that even a small leakage causes a big amount of gas leaked and a very likely explosion from any small spark. There were 10 persons killed, so little probably only thanks to the fact that most people living there were at work at the moment of the explosions. The first explosion was probably because of corroded gas pipes, the second one because of a gas pipe broken by an excavator.

The building had district heating, the gas was delivered for cooking.

Currently, most gas explosions that happen in Poland are in the buildings not connected to the gas network, where people use individual gas cylinders for gas cookers.

Also from gas heaters used for heating where there is no central heating and no electric power:


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> You can see the difference between Belgium and the Netherlands. In Belgium they use oil for heating (they call it 'mazout') and Belgium suffers much more from winter smog than the Netherlands.


The emissions of oil heating are not very different from the other sources, if the equipment is in a good condition. A modern oil burner runs at the efficiency rate of 95 per cent, and does not create smog.


----------



## Kpc21

And this is how it normally looks in Poland:










This is a photo from... April 2010 (taken in the city of Bielsko-Biała, with Sony Ericsson K800i which was still quite a popular model at those times - how this time passes!), but now it isn't different.

It's sad and I really hope it will finally change.


----------



## Spookvlieger

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands has used natural gas for heating since they discovered a huge gas field in the 1960s. The entire country was connected to gas pipes so things like oil or coal to heat houses has been extremely uncommon since, in contrast to Belgium where oil is still commonly used in rural areas.


Not only in rural area's. Heating oil is widespread in cities as well. The appartment block I live in has 37 appartments and are heated by a central giant mazout bruner. I say that of all homes that use conventional heating the rate is 50/50 between heating oil and gas. My parents had heating oil in their old home in the city and they have heating oil now that they live in a village outside the city.

What is also more prevelant in Belgium compaired to the Netherlands is wood burning stoves. A lot of homes have a modern stove for wood burning and people do actively warm their living room with it during cold days.It creates a lot of smog on wind still days.

The little cold snap last week promptly made PM2.5 levels surge to above 100micrograms in many places. Yesterday bad air quality was reported between Gent and Kortrijk, PM2?5 levels surged to above 150micrograms for several hours. Today for instance some places also have readings between 70 and 80 micrograms (athough most are below 40). Wich is bad for european standards.








[/url]PM levels by Joshua Radoes, on Flickr[/IMG]


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## ChrisZwolle

joshsam said:


> The little cold snap last week promptly made PM2.5 levels surge to above 100micrograms in many places. Yesterday bad air quality was reported between Gent and Kortrijk, PM2?5 levels surged to above 150micrograms for several hours. Today for instance some places also have readings between 70 and 80 micrograms (athough most are below 40). Wich is bad for european standards.


To compare the Dutch readings:

1. A station in Ossendrecht, close to the Belgian border. Highest peak was around 60 yesterday (when you measured 150)









2. A station in Hilversum, central Netherlands, readings spike around 30.









Quite a difference.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Kpc21 said:


> Interestingly, nowadays, many of the coal mines in Poland do not even bring any profit. The state is forced to maintain them because otherwise many people would get unemployed and this would result with social problems.
> 
> And one of the reasons why it's no longer so profitable is that the coal imported from Czech Republic, Russia or even Australia is cheaper (although in practice, the Czech one is of much worse quality, in case of the Russian one it's quite random - it can be very good but it can also be bad).


How interesting, the decline of the coal mining industry in the UK and all the unresolved social problems that accompanied it is often blamed partly of 'cheap Polish coal' (placing blame on the relevant authorities for importing it, not on Polish miners for extracting it). I wonder if the same will happen in Poland eventually, will the government support the mines forever?


----------



## Attus

Perhaps it is not clear for every one, what AQI means. It is not the concentration of anything in the air, but a converted index. AQI below 50 means good, 50-100 high but OK, 100-200 bad, etc.


----------



## Kpc21

What are the websites with smog data you take the information from?

DanielFigFoz, you are talking about the UK, right?

Then it's interesting  In Poland, some people are blaming the cheap Russian/Czech coal for the problems, you blame our coal for them 

From what I read, Germany is gonna end their black coal mining next year. They mine also brown coal, but it's not used by individuals, as it must be burned as soon as it's possible once it's excavated (otherwise it loses its properties and you can no longer gain so much energy from it), so it's typically burnt in power plants directly next to the mines.

And I have recently jumped into websites of some German manufacturers/distributors of coal stoves, specially claiming that the fuel will still be available after 2018 

Probably imported from Poland.



DanielFigFoz said:


> I wonder if the same will happen in Poland eventually, will the government support the mines forever?


Probably yes. But now, the miners are seemingly a too big part of the electorate to try doing any harm to them.

Concerning the brown coal, the biggest producer of it is Germany. And the biggest coal power plant in Europe (second biggest in the world - the biggest one is in Taiwan), which is supplied by a nearby lying brown coal mine, is in Bełchatów, Poland.

In terms of electricity production, there is no alternative for coal in Poland. We have no nuclear power plants (one started being built, but the construction was stopped just after the Chernobyl disaster), and not enough natural resources of other fuels. And wind energy is also not a solution because it's too unstable.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Yes, sorry, I thought I had written 'in the UK', but I guess I must have forgotten. Rectified now. 

I guess what you say about the electorate is the difference then, the British government of the 1980s had no fear of losing the miners' votes, they never would have had them in the first place. 

What sort of wages do Polish miners earn?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> Perhaps it is not clear for every one, what AQI means. It is not the concentration of anything in the air, but a converted index. AQI below 50 means good, 50-100 high but OK, 100-200 bad, etc.


Different AQI's exists. I found out that Josham's source uses the U.S. AQI, which is different from the EU AQI. 

But even on that map you can see a substantial difference in air quality between the Netherlands. Southern Netherlands AQI readings are - as of this post - all under 20, while in Belgium it is in the 40-70 range.


----------



## Kpc21

DanielFigFoz said:


> What sort of wages do Polish miners earn?


No idea actually. Maybe someone else will know.

Some data are here: http://slaskie.naszemiasto.pl/artyk...a-zarobki-na-kopalni,3938506,art,t,id,tm.html - no idea how accurate those data are - the media have a tendency to tell that people earn much than they do in fact.

The amounts are gross.

2500 zł (580 euro) - a junior miner
3400 zł (800 euro) + 1156 zł (270 euro) bonus + 36 zł (8,4 euro)/day guaranteed bonus + physically 8 tonnes of coal or 550 zł (130 euro) paid monthly for 8 months as another bonus - a miner who has worked for 18 years
3542 zł (820 euro) - mine electrician who has worked for 3 years + some bonuses
Those are lowest, they can range up to over 5000 zł (1150 euro) for a miner with a few years of experience, probably dependent on the specific mine.
Specialists like electricians, machine operators, ironworkers, as well as people on higher posts will earn more. Some more important people can earn even up to 10 000 zł (2300 euro).

Now let's look at the comments to check how accurate those data are.

A user who is a miner, is 30 years old, has worked 7 years 957 m under the ground, earned about 2000 zł (450 euro) monthly. When he worked for 2 weekends, he earned 2300 zł (530 euro). Now he moved to another mine and earns 3000 zł - 3500 zł (700 - 800 euro) net.

Someone else says he earns 1600 zł (370 euro) net, he is an electrician and has 4 years of experience.

So it can be really variable. Some people complain in the comments that the amounts from the article are much higher than in reality, but they seem to forget that the article shows the gross amounts. While in fact, a salary of 5000 zł gross means a salary of 3500 zł net.

So the wages can differ from very small to maybe not big, but reasonable. I have, for example, an experienced high school teacher in my school, and what she earns is, let's say, 2500-3000 zł net.

The miners' profession was very respected in the communist times. They earned kind of more, were getting some free coal as a bonus (some still do, but not all of them), in some period they had also special shops, which were much better supplied than those available for normal people. They still retire after only 25 years of work. But this is also due to difficult and unhealthy conditions in the mines.


----------



## volodaaaa

volodaaaa said:


> Speaking of gas heating (and Russia)


After all, it is believed that the gas explosion was not caused by a leakage, but it was deliberated action by a resident who had some troubles with others.


----------



## Kpc21

Kanadzie said:


> I'm always amused when traffic is stopped for some few cm of snow, it's so hilarious :lol:
> is it just crazy people or complete lack of salt? I think not even...


The countries where snow is a rare phenomenon (e.g. once a few years, or even on single days in a year) do not prepare for winter because this - maintaining all the snow removing equipment, buying and storing sand and salt, would be more costly then the loses because of the transportation problems on those rare days when the snow appears.



Penn's Woods said:


> Colloquially, English-speaking people pretty much use the 12-hour clock exclusively: that 0012 would be 12:12 a.m.


Poland uses both systems. The 24-hour clock seems to be getting more popular nowadays, when there are digital clocks everywhere.



MichiH said:


> Translating the German "1998" back to English, it's "nineteen hundred eight and ninety" though


Still it's not as crazy as in French, where e.g. 92 is spelled and pronounced as "eighty twelve", as they have no single word for ninety.

Luckily, in Polish it's as simple as in English. 

But sometimes people make errors while reading dates. Say, today is 14.11.2017 (in the notation used in Poland, also in Germany and some other European countries - in Poland we write it in such a way, or as 14 XI 2017, but now, in the era of computers, the notation with Roman numerals is losing its popularity). In English it's read as "the fourteenth of November 2017", and in the same way, in Polish we say "czternasty październik*a* 2017", where this ending -a indicates the genitive case, equivalent to the English "of ...". But some people say it incorrectly as "czternasty październik", which literally would actually mean something like "the fourteenth November".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> Still it's not as crazy as in French, where e.g. 92 is spelled and pronounced as "eighty twelve", as they have no single word for ninety.


Nonante in Belgium and Switzerland. But it is not used in France and Canada. They say quatre-vingt-dix (4x20+10).


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## Highway89

Yesterday I watched again the 12th stage of the 2017 Giro d'Italia, which was partly routed along the "abandoned" stretch of the A1 through the Valico Apenninico. I had missed that part when the stage was originally broadcast. If you like Italian mountain motorways and have the chance to watch it (Eurosport player or similar), I highly recommend it.


----------



## x-type

Polish van making circus driving under ban on strong wind at A7. must see if you don't think that wind is dangerous thing.

(only facebook video unfortunately)

https://www.facebook.com/danijel.draca.7/videos/1707906209243088/


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## ChrisZwolle

ATMs are in steep decline in the Netherlands. Some 800 have been removed over the past 5 years and some other 2000 will disappear as well. By 2020, all ATMs are bank-neutral. Already for a long time you can get cash at any ATM with any bank card in the Netherlands, free of charge. 

ATMs are removed for safety in a lot of areas. They have long been targets of explosive robbery, and the robbers often use extremely powerful explosives that blow out the entire facade of the building the ATM is mounted in, which is a considerable danger for local residents and passerby's. 

Also, the Netherlands is increasingly cashless. You can use a debit card at virtually all shops, at parking meters, vending machines, cafeterias, even on the market it is common. Payment terminals are now cheaper to operate for shop owners than cash. 

The only problem for foreigners: credit cards are not commonly accepted in all shops, especially outside of the main tourists destinations. Due to the early introduction of debit cards, much Dutch don't use their credit card in the Netherlands. 

Here's the decline of ATMs of the 4 largest banks in the Netherlands:


----------



## Kpc21

x-type said:


> Polish van making circus driving under ban on strong wind at A7. must see if you don't think that wind is dangerous thing.
> 
> (only facebook video unfortunately)
> 
> https://www.facebook.com/danijel.draca.7/videos/1707906209243088/


Maybe overloaded, or the goods inside are placed in such a way that the vehicle is not weighed correctly.



ChrisZwolle said:


> ATMs are in steep decline in the Netherlands. Some 800 have been removed over the past 5 years and some other 2000 will disappear as well. By 2020, all ATMs are bank-neutral. Already for a long time you can get cash at any ATM with any bank card in the Netherlands, free of charge.


Well. It was crazy in Germany that I could withdraw money from my Polish account (the currency of which is euro!) free of charge from any ATM in this country, but when I opened a German account, I had to select only the ATMs of the bank I have an account in (or a few banks which are in an association for sharing their ATMs free of charge - but the biggest one - Sparkasse/Volksbank - is not in this association), and the fees for withdrawing in a "fremd" ATM were extremely high.

While in Poland, it depends on the bank offer and the account you choose from it - but having free withdrawals from any ATMs (sometimes not only in Poland but even everywhere all over the world) is nothing uncommon. Sometimes you have free withdrawals from the ATMs of your bank and of one of the bank-neutral ATM networks, like Euronet.

But the ATMs are common and it's not difficult to find one. Most Biedronka discount stores have bank-neutral ATMs inside too.

In many places you can also find "deposit-o-mats" ("wpłatomat", ATM is called "bankomat" in Poland) which allow you not only withdraw the money from your account, but also deposit some money in form of cash on it, without going to a bank counter.

I haven't notice any decrease of their number. ATM robberies sometimes happen, and if so, they are usually quite spectacular, with the robbers blowing the ATM up or pulling it with a car  But it's very rare.


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## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> ATMs are in steep decline in the Netherlands. Some 800 have been removed over the past 5 years and some other 2000 will disappear as well. By 2020, all ATMs are bank-neutral. Already for a long time you can get cash at any ATM with any bank card in the Netherlands, free of charge.
> 
> ATMs are removed for safety in a lot of areas. They have long been targets of explosive robbery, and the robbers often use extremely powerful explosives that blow out the entire facade of the building the ATM is mounted in, which is a considerable danger for local residents and passerby's.
> 
> Also, the Netherlands is increasingly cashless. You can use a debit card at virtually all shops, at parking meters, vending machines, cafeterias, even on the market it is common. Payment terminals are now cheaper to operate for shop owners than cash.
> 
> The only problem for foreigners: credit cards are not commonly accepted in all shops, especially outside of the main tourists destinations. Due to the early introduction of debit cards, much Dutch don't use their credit card in the Netherlands.
> 
> Here's the decline of ATMs of the 4 largest banks in the Netherlands:




On my first day driving in Europe, in July 2015, I was unable to pay for parking in Groningen, because the machines would not accept any of my cards. Fortunately, I wasn’t ticketed (or if Hertz was, they never told me).

More generally, it’s always hit-or-miss which card’s going to work where over there. And they’ve all got chips at this point. (And here, retailers are still getting up to speed; I’ve never had a card rejected, but sometimes the chip won’t be read and I have to swipe and sign.)


----------



## Kanadzie

Kpc21 said:


> The countries where snow is a rare phenomenon (e.g. once a few years, or even on single days in a year) do not prepare for winter because this - maintaining all the snow removing equipment, buying and storing sand and salt, would be more costly then the loses because of the transportation problems on those rare days when the snow appears.


But even for me in Canada, say, I drive through snow worse than seen in that picture every year at least a few times, and nobody has a real issue or even slows much down :lol:
The roads ministry hires a company to clear the snow, salt, etc, but when the snow starts falling quickly, the road is covered before they are there...
The only one I can think of was last year in the Montreal area, where Autoroute 13 became closed in heavy blizzard. But it was because two idiots in TIR tried to pass each other and couldn't make traction up an incline... but that, that was some snow!


----------



## MattiG

Kanadzie said:


> But even for me in Canada, say, I drive through snow worse than seen in that picture every year at least a few times, and nobody has a real issue or even slows much down :lol:
> The roads ministry hires a company to clear the snow, salt, etc, but when the snow starts falling quickly, the road is covered before they are there...


You cannot recognize the logic? Often snow - much preparation. Sometimes snow - some preparation. Seldom snow - less or no preparation.


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## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> The only problem for foreigners: credit cards are not commonly accepted in all shops, especially outside of the main tourists destinations. Due to the early introduction of debit cards, much Dutch don't use their credit card in the Netherlands.


But foreigners may have cash and pay by cash. As far as I know cash is accepted everywhere in the Netherlands (except for some parking meters or vending machines, but they usually accept credit cards). And all (continental) neighbors use the same currency.


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## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> But foreigners may have cash and pay by cash. As far as I know cash is accepted everywhere in the Netherlands (except for some parking meters or vending machines, but they usually accept credit cards). And all (continental) neighbors use the same currency.


When travelling, usually it's not wise to carry large amounts of money. Nor it is practical to run to the ATM every other day...


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## ChrisZwolle

When I take trips through Europe I usually do not carry more than some € 60-70 in cash with me. Most of that ends up being spend in a bar, only in Germany I am prepared to pay the campsite in cash. A payment terminal is not a given on German campsites, despite the high frequency of € 100+ campsite bills. On the other hand in Sweden the guy came to my tent where I could pay by card - wireless. Two modern countries, yet so different.


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## CNGL

Kpc21 said:


> Still it's not as crazy as in French, where e.g. 92 is spelled and pronounced as "eighty twelve", as they have no single word for ninety.


Even worse: It's something like "four-twenties-twelve", as they don't have a word for eighty either :colgate:.


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## volodaaaa

CNGL said:


> Even worse: It's something like "four-twenties-twelve", as they don't have a word for eighty either :colgate:.


Gosh, the binary system is easier .&#55357;&#56833;


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## cougar1989

On trips I pay nearly everything in cash. I am not so friend of card payments. Only cash is True.
In the last years I had some situations where the card payment does not work and I was happy that I had cash with me.
Also at Albert Heijn a Dutch Supermarket they did not accept my credit or maestro card some years ago, because the cards are German.
That summer near Trieste to pay the toll to leave Italy direction to Slovenia. The machine did not want to read my visa card. I tryed it very much. All in all I paid at the machine in cash, so the problem was solve.
At that summer the toll in Italy was only paid with card, rest like fuel, hotel, food and so on in cash


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## Attus

I had been living in Hungary up to 2012 when I was 38 years old. Then I moved to Germany and was surprised, how mush more people pay by cash, than in Hungary, although Hungary as well uses pretty much cash. 
In the retail shop nearby it is now possible to pay by a contact less card. In Hungary it has been very common for 7-8 years. 
I don't like cash and pay by card any time it's possible. Unfortunately, because of the lack of contact less cards* I must use more cash than in Hungary, especially by payments under ten euro. 
I have a German EC card which is a special German thing and a Mastercard Gold and a Hungarian "normal" Mastercard. The EC card and the Hungarian card may be used contact less as well. 

* Paying by a card, pushing it in the reader, typing PIN code, waiting, etc. is too complicated if you buy a newspaper and pay 4.90. Most retailers do not even have a terminal, or definitely forbid to pay by card under 10 euro.


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## ChrisZwolle

Alex_ZR said:


> Meanwhile in Norway:





Attus said:


> I don't know. Thie first moment the driver could see the kid is this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Two seconds and approx. 25 meters later he stopped:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It seems to be impossible for me.
> OK, some people write that kind of truck has sensors and automatic brakes, so the driver's reaction time does not matter at all - he could have been sleeping, the truck had stopped any way. Even so, it's like a wonder.


Evidently this truck was not equipped with emergency brakes. It was the quick reaction of the truck driver alone which prevented the accident. It was a truck from a Latvian transportation company.

https://www.nrk.no/buskerud/rapport...inn---sjaforen-hindret-pakjorselen-1.13779646


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## g.spinoza

cougar1989 said:


> Only cash is True.


And that's, my friends, why Germany is so fond of cash.:lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

Just a small tip (commercial, but I have no affiliation to it): for people who live in EU countries with more lackluster payment systems, you could easily open an account in one of the many "online-only" banks that are trading in the EU. They are app-based and don't offer things like mortgages or personal credit or insurance, just transactions and sometimes credit-cards with instant withdraw (meaning no rolling credit). Several offer NFC debit products as well.

They are, for all legal purposes, financial institutions regulated by national bank authorities and able to do business in other countries. They all have English interfaces and custome service even when based outside UK/Ireland. They will mostly use scan of documents and digital signature instead of sending docs by mail. 

Examples:
BUNQ - https://www.bunq.com/
LEUPAY - https://www.leupay.eu/
N26 - https://next.n26.com/en-eu/

And there are some other new players. The idea is not exactly new, but in the past they were not banks, just transaction services with less protection and questionable customer service. That is no longer the case.


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> Just a small tip (commercial, but I have no affiliation to it): for people who live in EU countries with more lackluster payment systems, you could easily open an account in one of the many "online-only" banks that are trading in the EU. They are app-based and don't offer things like mortgages or personal credit or insurance, just transactions and sometimes credit-cards with instant withdraw (meaning no rolling credit). Several offer NFC debit products as well.
> 
> They are, for all legal purposes, financial institutions regulated by national bank authorities and able to do business in other countries. They all have English interfaces and custome service even when based outside UK/Ireland. They will mostly use scan of documents and digital signature instead of sending docs by mail.
> 
> Examples:
> BUNQ - https://www.bunq.com/
> LEUPAY - https://www.leupay.eu/
> N26 - https://next.n26.com/en-eu/
> 
> And there are some other new players. The idea is not exactly new, but in the past they were not banks, just transaction services with less protection and questionable customer service. That is no longer the case.


Hold your horses for a few months. The revised EU Payment Services Directive PSD2 should be in effect in the EU countries by Jan 1st, 2018. That forces the banks to open their account and payment interfaces to third parties. New innovations related to transaction services are expected to raise.


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> In New Zealand for example it is forbidden to park the car on the other side of the road (on the right, as they drive on the left), exceptbin one way streets where the signs indicate that you should do so. This means that every driver has to find a parking spot in their directon of travel, and not cross on the other side of the road if a spot is free over there.


It's the same in Italy, a friend of mine got a fine because of that. However it's not a big deal, if you find a free spot on the other side you simply make an U-turn.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> This is well described in the Vienna convention on road signs and signals:


How would you decode this cryptography into Plain English: 'sign shall be repeated *in accordance with provisions in domestic legislation*'?

- The domestic legislation must enforce the repetition?
- The domestic legislation may ignore this statement?
- Something else?

(I am not very good in Lawyerspeak.)


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland it's forbidden on streets with heavy traffic, which is usually interpreted as that there is a continuous flow of cars. And the idea is that parking on the left or starting driving from this parking spot could interrupt this traffic flow quite much. But on the streets with not a lot of traffic, it's perfectly legal to park on the left.

On one-way streets on the left, of course, too.

Unless specifically signposted, but, as I wrote, parking ban on the left on a two-way street doesn't have to be signposted from the perspective of someone who would park on the left. It sometimes is, but it doesn't have to.

And the "no parking" and "no stopping" signs are valid also on the sidewalks, which was different before, and it was changed somehow in the late 1990s/early 2000s.



MattiG said:


> How would you decode this cryptography into Plain English: 'sign shall be repeated *in accordance with provisions in domestic legislation*'?


By the way... isn't the literal meaning of "shall" basically the same as "will", and isn't it so that in not such a distant past, in some grammatical persons, "shall" was the only correct word and in some persons, only "will" was correct (like "I will do it" but "He shall do it", or vice versa, I don't remember)? The English teacher explained to us such a thing once, if I remember well, but it was so long ago that I am not sure. Now, of course, "shall" is rarely used (except for making proposals, and in rules of law), and "will" is used frequently in all persons.

But then, how can this "shall" used in many rules of law mean obligation, while it's the same as "will", and "will" means more or less that someone has a will to do something, decided to do it, or even promised to do it, but not in any way (unless specifically pointed out) that he is obliged to do it?


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## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> Same here though I have never seen police enforcing it:lol:


In my old city, was illegal, and very rare to see. Once I saw a car parked the "wrong" way, and, on the windshield, ticket.
But where I live now, also illegal, but everyone does it. It is almost like 40% of cars parked the "wrong" way :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> How would you decode this cryptography into Plain English: 'sign shall be repeated *in accordance with provisions in domestic legislation*'?
> 
> - The domestic legislation must enforce the repetition?
> - The domestic legislation may ignore this statement?
> - Something else?
> 
> (I am not very good in Lawyerspeak.)


Sorry, I am not a lawyer. :lol: Never wanted to be. But maybe it concerns the thing I mentioned. Previously the sign (except a zonal sign) was cancelled at the start of the intersection (e.g. if there was a local speed limit reduced to 70 kph, driver was allowed to pass the intersection at generic speed limit for example 90 kph) in my country. After the general highway code amendment in 2009, a sign is now canceled after an intersection so that is still valid while passing an intersection.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> Sorry, I am not a lawyer. :lol: Never wanted to be. But maybe it concerns the thing I mentioned. Previously the sign (except a zonal sign) was cancelled at the start of the intersection (e.g. if there was a local speed limit reduced to 70 kph, driver was allowed to pass the intersection at generic speed limit for example 90 kph) in my country. After the general highway code amendment in 2009, a sign is now canceled after an intersection so that is still valid while passing an intersection.


The Finnish road code tells us that the speed limit continues on "the same road" until another speed limit is introduced. Thus, an intersection does not cancel it. I am wondering whether this is in conflict with the VC text or not. I wonder because Finland tends to implement all kind of EU directives and other international conventions pretty literally (except those related to car or alcohol taxes).

I tried to find some hints it that article of the VC were updated since the amendments of 2003, but I found nothing. Instead, I read the presentations of the UNECE Expert Group for Road Signs and Signals. Some of those are pretty interesting:

http://www.unece.org/trans/roadsafe/eg_road_signs_signals_13.html


----------



## OnTheNorthRoad

MattiG said:


> How would you decode this cryptography into Plain English: 'sign shall be repeated *in accordance with provisions in domestic legislation*'?
> 
> - The domestic legislation must enforce the repetition?
> - The domestic legislation may ignore this statement?
> - Something else?
> 
> (I am not very good in Lawyerspeak.)


My interpretation: 

The convention says that the sign must be repeated, but how it's repeated will depend on provisions on signing in the domestic legislation and is not specified by the convention, such as how long after the intersection and whether it will have to be repeated before in addition to after the intersection.


----------



## Kpc21

According to the article: http://www.gazetawroclawska.pl/motofakty/a/unia-chce-nowych-ograniczen-predkosci-w-polsce,12727666/ - the EU wants us (Poland) to limit the speed limit in built-up areas at night from 60 km/h to 50 km/h and on motorways from 140 km/h to 120 km/h.

While I agree concerning the built-up areas (driving at night is more dangerous, it's more difficult to see a pedestrian), I don't understand the thing with the motorways. An accident at the speed of 140 km/h won't be more deadly than one at 120 km/h, both will probably end up in the same tragic way. And while we have one of the highest speed limits on motorways, most of the EU has 130 km/h, which is still more than 120 km/h and we have Germans, who have no general limit on motorways at all. While this is acceptable (so if you are a skilled driver and have a good car, and there is no specifically signposted speed limit, you can drive 200 km/h fully legally), why our 140 km/h shouldn't be?


----------



## keber

I believe that this thing with motorway speeds is a bullshit. There are no serious tendencies in EU to make an uniform speed limit for motorway speeds and it is possible that it is just a newspaper fake-news. But in Poland there is really strange law that speed limit in built-up areas is higher in the night. That really doesn't help to more safety.


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## g.spinoza

I agree with keber, this smells like fake news.


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## ChrisZwolle

Don't underestimate the number of 'working groups' that publish stuff in the name of the EU or EC. A headline like 'the EU wants this' is often only the opinion of some working group and may not become official policy.


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> I agree with keber, this smells like fake news.


True. EU has not shown interest in regulating the traffic rules. I believe this is mainly because the UNECE works as the standardization body at the same playground, but with a wider scope.

If I recall, some similar case has been discussed early. In that case, too, the fake information was spreading in Poland. Perhaps the Polish have a need to refer to some Higher Power (or the Flying Dutchman) in their internal politics.


----------



## Kpc21

So, reading the article, those are *recommendations* (only recommendations, nothing more) from the European Transport Safety Council. But it's in the content. The title and the introduction say different things. It's not fake news, it's just manipulation.

But such articles in the media result later in comments and opinions among the public: "remove the EU!", "those ... want to regulate everything here, we are no longer an independent country!", "nobody will be telling us that bulls... that a snail is a fish!", "they regulate everything including the banana curvature!".


----------



## Attus

bogdymol said:


> In New Zealand for example it is forbidden to park the car on the other side of the road (on the right, as they drive on the left), exceptbin one way streets where the signs indicate that you should do so. This means that every driver has to find a parking spot in their directon of travel, and not cross on the other side of the road if a spot is free over there.


In Germany, too, is it forbidden, parking on the opposite side. I were once, approx. twenty years ago, warned by police (my car back then was registered in Hungary). The policeman told me had fined me if I were German.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Don't underestimate the number of 'working groups' that publish stuff in the name of the EU or EC. A headline like 'the EU wants this' is often only the opinion of some working group and may not become official policy.


True.
On the other side some governments (especially, but not exclusively, Poland and Hungary) like to interpret those working group ideas as "that evil EU want to restrict our national self-determination again, in such a silly way".


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Don't underestimate the number of 'working groups' that publish stuff in the name of the EU or EC. A headline like 'the EU wants this' is often only the opinion of some working group and may not become official policy.


That's exactly the point, working groups shouldn't publish stuff for EU. They should work on an idea and, when and if approved, they can release it.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> True.
> On the other side some governments (especially, but not exclusively, Poland and Hungary) like to interpret those working group ideas as "that evil EU want to restrict our national self-determination again, in such a silly way".


It's more about the media.

Although... that article was published on a local portal owned by a German publishing house


----------



## bogdymol

After the latest Google Maps update, the motorways and the main roads look almost identical. Look at Milano area for example:


----------



## Kpc21

It depends on the zoom level. If you unzoom, there is a big difference between motorways and normal roads.


----------



## Kanadzie

Kpc21 said:


> According to the article: http://www.gazetawroclawska.pl/motofakty/a/unia-chce-nowych-ograniczen-predkosci-w-polsce,12727666/ - the EU wants us (Poland) to limit the speed limit in built-up areas at night from 60 km/h to 50 km/h and on motorways from 140 km/h to 120 km/h.
> 
> While I agree concerning the built-up areas (driving at night is more dangerous, it's more difficult to see a pedestrian), I don't understand the thing with the motorways. An accident at the speed of 140 km/h won't be more deadly than one at 120 km/h, both will probably end up in the same tragic way. And while we have one of the highest speed limits on motorways, most of the EU has 130 km/h, which is still more than 120 km/h and we have Germans, who have no general limit on motorways at all. While this is acceptable (so if you are a skilled driver and have a good car, and there is no specifically signposted speed limit, you can drive 200 km/h fully legally), why our 140 km/h shouldn't be?


I really like the Polish "60 at night" law. Pedestrians are rare at such times and relatively distinctive, and traffic is normally running at this speed or more (e.g. 70...). The law should at least recognize reasonable driving by reasonable people (I mean, it's 60 km/h...)


----------



## CrazySerb

Small Yugoslav border town in the 1970's...wonder what it looked like to someone peering in from behind the so-called Iron Curtain?

Vrsac, today Serbia, just a few km from RO border....


----------



## MichiH

Kanadzie said:


> I really like the Polish "60 at night" law. Pedestrians are rare at such times and relatively distinctive, and traffic is normally running at this speed or more (e.g. 70...). The law should at least recognize reasonable driving by reasonable people (I mean, it's 60 km/h...)


Germany discusses about reducing the speed limit on main streets in build-up areas to 30km/h all day... Not generally but to allow authorities to introduce 30km/h if they think it would be nice...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In the Netherlands the de-facto urban speed limit is 30 km/h. Almost entire cities are a 'zone 30' except for major arterials which are usually 50 km/h (and sometimes 70 but that's not as common). 

If you count urban street kilometrage, the vast majority is 30, though higher volume arterials are usually 50 km/h. 

But there is also a gray area with streets being in a 30 zone but are wider, asphalted instead of bricks, carrying bus routes and traffic usually going around 40-45. 

As a general rule;
* 30 km/h: cyclists on the road / street
* 50 km/h: cyclists on a separate lane or detached path
* 70 km/h: cyclists entirely detached (often no at-grade crossings either).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The European tour of Texas:


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Now consider the size of Texas. That tour is 1700 km long!


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> The European tour of Texas:


"R*h*ome" is a bit of a stretch.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> In the Netherlands the de-facto urban speed limit is 30 km/h. Almost entire cities are a 'zone 30' except for major arterials which are usually 50 km/h (and sometimes 70 but that's not as common).


But do those streets, with 30 km/h, or even 50 km/h, look so:










?

There is 50 km/h speed limit here. Nobody follows it, unless there is a police patrol controlling the speed. Sometimes people even exceed 100 km/h, I don't support that, but for me, 70 km/h is still a reasonable speed here.

Is increasing the allowed speed to 60 km/h at night a bad idea?


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> "R*h*ome" is a bit of a stretch.


Neat. 

Though i like the relationship tour in at/de beter.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Neat.
> 
> Though i like the relationship tour in at/de beter.


What?


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> What?


----------



## volodaaaa

Meanwhile in Slovakia (sorry for the typo, but I am not the author)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Or:


----------



## keokiracer

Kpc21 said:


> But do those streets, with 30 km/h, or even 50 km/h, look so:


30:
https://www.google.nl/maps/@51.4830...5&pitch=0&thumbfov=100!7i13312!8i6656!5m1!1e1
50:
https://www.google.nl/maps/@51.4874...mKIHKmU2NEMjJ9Iedw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!5m1!1e1


----------



## Kpc21

They seem to have narrower lanes. And are narrower in general.

Compare with: https://goo.gl/maps/nbjNMfeTHZy

Or, in the city: https://goo.gl/maps/6nSHKBsHx9H2 (speed increased to 60 km/h - which makes sense here)
Although now those broad lanes got narrowed, they painted bicycle lanes.


----------



## keokiracer

The lanes are standard Dutch width.

btw the last one I posted you get pushed by other drivers whilst doing 70km/h :lol:


----------



## Kpc21

keokiracer said:


> btw the last one I posted you get pushed by other drivers whilst doing 70km/h :lol:


By the way... Bikes and mopeds are forbidden there. Bikes - I can understand it, but why mopeds?

I can't really see a reason why pedestrian would use it, so why is it only 50 km/h?


----------



## keokiracer

Mopeds are supposed to take the cyclepath along the _Boulevard_ because within built-up area (city limits), in this case pedestrians are meant to use the same cyclepath. 
I dunno why it's 50 either... And pretty much everyone except for learner drivers ignores the limit, except when police is around of course


----------



## Junkie

CrazySerb said:


> Small Yugoslav border town in the 1970's...wonder what it looked like to someone peering in from behind the so-called Iron Curtain?
> 
> Vrsac, today Serbia, just a few km from RO border....


What is this all about? ROmania's still poor even today...


----------



## Skopje/Скопје

Interesting video - *Traffic flow measured on 30 different 4-way junctions*


----------



## Suburbanist

Rain all the way here in Bergen









It has been raining far above average here for more than 1 year. The final annual precipitation for 2017 is likely to be 3400mm


----------



## volodaaaa

What I do not understand is this: 

Numeric part of a keyboard
7 8 9
4 5 6
1 2 3

Mobile keyboard:
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9

Though I am used to both cases, I certainly do not understand the difference


----------



## Suburbanist

That is to blame on AT&T


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> What I do not understand is this:
> 
> Numeric part of a keyboard
> 7 8 9
> 4 5 6
> 1 2 3
> 
> Mobile keyboard:
> 1 2 3
> 4 5 6
> 7 8 9
> 
> Though I am used to both cases, I certainly do not understand the difference


It's the same with ATMs and POS's. Many years ago I had memorized my PIN not by number but with the gestures I had to do at ATMs. Once I had to pay in a Supermarket and their POS had the keypad reversed. I just couldn't understand why it was not working :lol:


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> What I do not understand is this:
> 
> Numeric part of a keyboard
> 7 8 9
> 4 5 6
> 1 2 3
> 
> Mobile keyboard:
> 1 2 3
> 4 5 6
> 7 8 9
> 
> Though I am used to both cases, I certainly do not understand the difference


Things happen. Why do people in some countries drive on left while the others drive on right? Why does the northern wind flow from north to south while the northern ocean current flows from south to north? Why do the clocks move clockwise in Australia while the Sun moves anti-clockwise?

The phone keypad layout standard is based on the usability research work done in the Bell Labs in 1950's. Calculators follow the principle of ancient cash registers: larger numbers on top. Combining two completely different worlds just cause these things to happen.


----------



## MMM1983

*This is located on the side road not on highway*



MMM1983 said:


> Old well and resting place in one of the old cities of Asia.




This is located on the side road not on highway


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Snow significantly impacts traffic in the Benelux and Western Germany. Right now Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Eindhoven, Antwerp, Brussels, Gent and the Rhine-Ruhr area are jammed up significantly. The other orange lines is just slower than usual traffic. 

The Netherlands started off with a brief and very early rush hour in the morning, a large amount of people stayed at home this morning, resulting in almost no congestion around 9 a.m. Flanders has been impacted all day long with jammed traffic throughout the day. The Netherlands has seen more impact during the afternoon. The Ruhr Area also had bad traffic for most of the day.

Roads, rail and air are all significantly impacted.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A more detailed look at western Flanders.


----------



## italystf

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-42181263


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> The phone keypad layout standard is based on the usability research work done in the Bell Labs in 1950's.


Those are the designs they considered:












> In the end, though, Numberphile's Sarah Wiseman notes, things came down to a run-off between the traditional calculator layout and the telephone layout we know today. And the victory -- the triumph of IV-A -- was a matter of efficiency. "They did compare the telephone layout and the calculator layout," Wiseman says, "and they found the calculator layout was slower."


https://www.theatlantic.com/technol...d-for-the-layout-of-telephone-buttons/279237/
/Numberphile is a YouTube channel about mathematics and numbers, they have quite interesting videos/


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Sure, why not...


----------



## Kpc21

Until now, the waste recycling in my municipality looked so that the household had to choose whether it will sort the waste or not. If you decided to sort, you paid something like 5 PLN (1.2 EUR) less monthly fee for each person in the household. And what you only had to do was to sort the waste between the recyclables and non-recyclables.

Now, the government changed the law, and all the municipalities are obliged to require from those who declare sorting the waste to sort the recyclables between glass, plastic and paper. And so it becomes also in my municipality. They have sent separate bags for all those fractions of waste and - as we are supposed to use them to sort the recyclables.

For me personally, it doesn't matter, but my family is not really happy because of that and they will probably change the declaration, and they will no longer sort the trash but rather pay more for not sorting them. Sorting just between the recyclables and non-recyclables was OK for them, but when it becomes also necessary to sort the recyclables into different kinds of them, it becomes more cumbersome and, supposedly, demands too much room in the kitchen for separate bins  (which you also have to buy, which costs money). And the fee for not sorting is not so much higher. In the new year, it is something like (I'm repeating it from my memory, so there might be a small error):
- 12.80 PLN (3 EUR) for a person for month if you are sorting,
- 17.80 PLN (4,2 EUR) for a person for month if you are not sorting.

This governmental policy is supposedly because too little waste in Poland is being sorted and recycled. But... if you demand not only sorting the waste between recyclables and non-recyclables, but also sorting the recyclables between glass, paper and plastic, it will end up with many people just resigning from sorting...

And, by the way, I am talking about a detached house here. But, for example, in housing associations, it's practically impossible to control if, assuming that the association declared sorting, the specific dweller sorts his waste or not...


----------



## keber

You will get used that over years. Probably sorting waste will become mandatory later. Here we are now used to sort everything, it works pretty good even in large blocks. 
Except I still don't know where packaging styrofoam belongs


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> Except I still don't know where packaging styrofoam belongs


Here in Italy (at least where I live), it belongs to plastic.


----------



## italystf

Kpc21 said:


> Until now, the waste recycling in my municipality looked so that the household had to choose whether it will sort the waste or not. If you decided to sort, you paid something like 5 PLN (1.2 EUR) less monthly fee for each person in the household. And what you only had to do was to sort the waste between the recyclables and non-recyclables.
> 
> Now, the government changed the law, and all the municipalities are obliged to require from those who declare sorting the waste to sort the recyclables between glass, plastic and paper. And so it becomes also in my municipality. They have sent separate bags for all those fractions of waste and - as we are supposed to use them to sort the recyclables.
> 
> For me personally, it doesn't matter, but my family is not really happy because of that and they will probably change the declaration, and they will no longer sort the trash but rather pay more for not sorting them. Sorting just between the recyclables and non-recyclables was OK for them, but when it becomes also necessary to sort the recyclables into different kinds of them, it becomes more cumbersome and, supposedly, demands too much room in the kitchen for separate bins  (which you also have to buy, which costs money). And the fee for not sorting is not so much higher. In the new year, it is something like (I'm repeating it from my memory, so there might be a small error):
> - 12.80 PLN (3 EUR) for a person for month if you are sorting,
> - 17.80 PLN (4,2 EUR) for a person for month if you are not sorting.
> 
> This governmental policy is supposedly because too little waste in Poland is being sorted and recycled. But... if you demand not only sorting the waste between recyclables and non-recyclables, but also sorting the recyclables between glass, paper and plastic, it will end up with many people just resigning from sorting...
> 
> And, by the way, I am talking about a detached house here. But, for example, in housing associations, it's practically impossible to control if, assuming that the association declared sorting, the specific dweller sorts his waste or not...


Here we have to sort between 5 categories (paper, plastic, glass+aluminium, organic waste and non-recyclable waste), plus some particular waste like batteries, prescription drugs, furniture, appliances, etc... must be taken in an autorized collection centre. We are doing it since the 1990s and most people think it's natural and make no problem about it.
Recycling is not just to save a few euros on waste tax, but it's important for the environment. Earth's resources aren't unlimited, neither it is the space to bury unsorted waste. Global population is constantly increasing years after years, so the amount of consumed resources and waste generated. It's sad that in 2017 people still don't realize that!


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> Here we have to sort between 5 categories (paper, plastic, glass+aluminium, organic waste and non-recyclable waste), plus some particular waste like batteries, prescription drugs, furniture, appliances, etc... must be taken in an autorized collection centre. We are doing it since the 1990s and most people think it's natural and make no problem about it.
> Recycling is not just to save a few euros on waste tax, but it's important for the environment. Earth's resources aren't unlimited, neither it is the space to bury unsorted waste. Global population is constantly increasing years after years, so the amount of consumed resources and waste generated. It's sad that in 2017 people still don't realize that!


Don't make it all so simple... in Brescia this started only last year and in many neighborhoods of Turin it hasn't even started yet...
Especially in rural regions, people prefer to go to the fields and burn their waste instead of separating it.

And each municipality does that differently. For instance, some cities put Tetrapack in plastic, some others in paper...


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Don't make it all so simple... in Brescia this started only last year and in many neighborhoods of Turin it hasn't even started yet...
> Especially in rural regions, people prefer to go to the fields and burn their waste instead of separating it.
> 
> And each municipality does that differently. For instance, some cities put Tetrapack in plastic, some others in paper...


Really? I looked at a random street in Brescia and there seems to be separate containers, even in 2010 street view.
https://www.google.it/maps/@45.5323...4!1sCKlQ8DX0ulvgtJ39wJyqFQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
If some people don't sort it's their own fault, but it's not that the service doesn't exist. I think that offering a recycling service is mandatory for municipalities.


----------



## bogdymol

When I lived in Romania I wasn't sorting anything. There was just one trash container. Now they started to put separate paper and plastic containers, but I heard that in some places the garbage truck just empties them and mixes them inside (no, there are no garbage trucks in Romania with differente storage areas).

Once I moved to Austria, I had to start sorting everything (bio, paper, plastic, glass and others). You get used with it, but it occupies more room in the kitchen.

Last year I traveled to USA with an Austrian work colleague. At the hotel where we stayed the breakfast was served on single use dishes, tableware (spoon, fork etc), glasses etc. We were just a few persons at the breakfast, but a huge container was filled just with our waste. My Austrian colleague was shocked about that and did not understand how can you produce so much waste by just having a breakfast.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> Really? I looked at a random street in Brescia and there seems to be separate containers, even in 2010 street view.
> https://www.google.it/maps/@45.5323...4!1sCKlQ8DX0ulvgtJ39wJyqFQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
> If some people don't sort it's their own fault, but it's not that the service doesn't exist. I think that offering a recycling service is mandatory for municipalities.


Yes there were, but it wasn't mandatory to use them. 
Now, in Brescia, plastic and glass/metal are taken door to door, while organic waste and non-recyclable materials have their own container, which is operated electronically using a smart card, and it's mandatory to separate. Since everything is tracked, you can be fined if you use the service improperly.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Yes there were, but it wasn't mandatory to use them.
> Now, in Brescia, plastic and glass/metal are taken door to door, while organic waste and non-recyclable materials have their own container, which is operated electronically using a smart card, and it's mandatory to separate. Since everything is tracked, you can be fined if you use the service improperly.


If you talk about door to door collection, it was introduced in my municipality only a couple of months ago. However, separated dumpster for different kinds of waste have been existing for 20+ years, and for civic-minded people it was common to sort their waste (it's mandatory now, maybe it was mandatory even before but impossible to enforce).


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> Once I moved to Austria, I had to start sorting everything (bio, paper, plastic, glass and others). You get used with it, but it occupies more room in the kitchen.


In Germany, you need four trash bins to recycle a teabag: The bag into bio, the rope into others, the tag into paper, and the staple into metal.


----------



## MattiG

Junkie said:


> .
> Julian calendar was 11 minutes late per month so Gregorian calendar was invented in the 1500's in Rome.... .


The drift was 10 day is in the 16th century when it was invented. The protestant areas did not adopt the new calendar before the 18th century, when the drift was 12 days. During the 20th and 21th century, it is 13 days, and increases three days for every 400 years.

(Sweden tried to adopt the new calendar in 1700 in a controversial way, and reverted in 1712 by having two leap days, February 29th and 30th. The final adoption took place in 1753.)

The length of the tropical, "real", year between the spring equinoxes is 365.2422 days. Both the Julian and Gregorian calendars aim to match that length: The length of the Julian year is 365.2500 days in average over a period of 100 years. There is no big difference to the Gregorian one: 365.2425 days over 400 years. The accuracy of the Jewish calendar falls in between those: It is a lunisolar calendar having seven leap months within the period of 19 years. The average length is 365.2468 days.

The error of about 0.0003 days per year will lead to a drift of one day every 3300+ years for the Gregorian calendar. Not a big trouble today. The date January 1st, 5350 will be November 24th, 5349 in the Julian Calendar.

Anyway, the winter solstice occurs on this Thursday, at 16:28 UTC.


----------



## Capt.Vimes

Junkie said:


> As I said previously not only in Greece but also in Bulgaria they celebrate Christmas on 25th December but they are Orthodox.
> This is because of political interests.



Romania also celebrates on 25.12.


----------



## Suburbanist

Russia only adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1918, right?


----------



## Attus

Suburbanist said:


> Russia only adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1918, right?


Yes. That's why the October Revolution is celebrated in November


----------



## Alex_ZR

Orthodox churches of Constantinople, Albania, Alexandria, Antioch, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Poland, and Romania adopted Revised Julian calendar, developed by Serbian mathematician Milutin Milanković in 1923. Ironically, calendar wasn't adopted by Serbian church.


----------



## aubergine72

The Armenian church celebrates Christmas on Jan 6th which is when all churches used to celebrate it before changing to a pagan holiday in order to make it more inclusive to heathens. Thus now most celebrate it on Dec 25th/Jan 7th.


----------



## Junkie

Suburbanist said:


> Russia only adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1918, right?


This is different, all of our countries have adopted it because of political reasons and we want to celebrate New Year on 31. December :lol:

But the Orthodox churches have not adopted and they will most probably never adopt it.
Russia is the biggest Orthodox and Julian calendar or revised Julian is used there same as in my country and all eastern european..... Also in the Orthodox Balkan traditionally or paganly there is a New Year on 13th January.


----------



## Kpc21

An aid for Polish policemen from the communist times to help communicating in foreign languages:

(click to magnify)


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ I like how the English version is so much more eloquent than the French
"blow into this balloon" vs. "the reagent has changed colour" :lol:


----------



## Kpc21

You compare different sentences  In French it's also "il a change' du jaune ou vert".

The difference is the name of the tool used by them to verify the alcohol content in the blown-out air:
- "probierz" in Polish (this is not use any more for the modern breathalyzers, but seemingly it was for those early ones with a balloon),
- "apparatus" in English (so a very general word),
- "le ballon" in French (the common name of this measurement procedure in Polish was also "blowing the balloon"),
- "der Probierer" in German (so equivalent to the Polish "probierz"),
- "krityeriy" in Russian (it must have something to do with the word "criterion").

And the indicator, the thing that changes the color:
- "wskaźnik" in Polish (literally indicator),
- "the reagent" in English,
- "il" ("it") referring to "le ballon" in French,
- "pokazatyel" in Russian (it must mean something like "shower", or, as you normally say in English, "indicator", from the word which is "pokazywać" - "to show", "to indicate" in Polish, in Russian there must be a slight difference in the word).

Some photos of such a balloon breathalyzer (unfortunately, without the balloon) are here: http://blmotors.blog.pl/tag/alkomat/

But there are also some photos of complete sets:


----------



## LtBk

I find it interesting that most countries that used to be part of British Empire like India and Singapore call their controlled-access divided highways expressways instead of motorways. I wonder why.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> An aid for Polish policemen from the communist times to help communicating in foreign languages:


Poor German!

Ich wünsche Ihnen gute Reise --> Ich wünsche Ihnen eine gute Reise.
Wir machen eine Nüchterkeitskontrolle --> Alkoholkontrolle / _Nüchternheitskontrolle_
Bitte Ihre Dokumente zur Kontrolle
um eine Blutkontrolle zur Untersuchung des Alkoholinhalts zu machen
etc.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

LtBk said:


> I find it interesting that most countries that used to be part of British Empire like India and Singapore call their controlled-access divided highways expressways instead of motorways. I wonder why.


The usage of the term 'motorway' is relatively limited. Only a small number of countries outside of the UK and Ireland use that term consistently. Australia uses motorway, expressway, freeway and highway interchangeably. Interestingly, India uses the term expressway while Pakistan uses the term motorway. Iran seems to use the term freeway in English publications, maybe it is a pre-1979 adoption of U.S. terminology. 

In Europe the term 'motorway' is sometimes adopted for English usage, though more often you'll see the more generic term 'highway', in a sense that people think 'highway' exclusively means a controlled-access highway (freeway/motorway) and not other types of major highways. You even see 'highway' and 'non-highway' being used by some users on Skyscrapercity.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Well 'highway' is what is uses in American movies/series so we adapted to that. 

In Flanders people Also use highway for motorway, but even in the native language we have 3 works, autosnelweg, autoweg and expressweg and people use them wrongly. This is Also because definitions in Belgium are sketchy. Sometimes a non Standard road is labelled as autosnelweg while a full Standard road is only labelled as autoweg or expressweg.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've frequently seen Dutch subtitles using 'snelweg' when the term highway is used in a movie, even though the road in question is clearly not a controlled-access highway (i.e. not a freeway, motorway). Dutch TV has been subtitled since forever so people became used to that.


----------



## volodaaaa

I avoid using the term *highway*, because it does not have a clear meaning. In Slovakia, this is used by English beginners only.

Generally *motorway* and *expressway* are the terms used for controlled-access roads, while the latter one has more loosen standards.

There is also the *parkway* I have seen to be used for some motorways in the USA, but as a person preferring the British English I avoid that term as well.

Btw. I have recently started to learn German. Sweet English.

The best word I have come across so far: der Eisenbahnverkehrsorganisierung. I heard that such word-linking is very recent in the German language.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ highway could be used for 'cesta' I suppose. But Slovak people may think you mean a diaľnica.

There are state highways and U.S. Highways, which form the U.S. road system. The vast majority of these highways are not freeways / motorways.

The term 'freeway' is often associated as a non-toll road (free to drive on). So the term freeway is generally not used for toll roads, even though they are designed as freeways.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> There is also the *parkway* I have seen to be used for some motorways in the USA, but as a person preferring the British English I avoid that term as well.


Americans drive on parkways and park on driveways.



> The best word I have come across so far: der Eisenbahnverkehrsorganisierung. I heard that such word-linking is very recent in the German language.


The same technique is in use in Finnish, too. We often make fun of those:

An official name of a household electricity meter is "kolmivaihekilowattituntimittari". There are six words combined: kolmi-vaihe-kilo-watti-tunti-mittari. A three-phase kilowatt-hour meter.

A humorous extension is "kaksitariffikolmivaihevaihtovirtakilowattituntimittariasentajakoulutus". A dual-tariff three-phase alternating current kilowatt-hour meter technician training.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> The usage of the term 'motorway' is relatively limited. Only a small number of countries outside of the UK and Ireland use that term consistently. Australia uses motorway, expressway, freeway and highway interchangeably. Interestingly, India uses the term expressway while Pakistan uses the term motorway. Iran seems to use the term freeway in English publications, maybe it is a pre-1979 adoption of U.S. terminology.
> 
> In Europe the term 'motorway' is sometimes adopted for English usage, though more often you'll see the more generic term 'highway', in a sense that people think 'highway' exclusively means a controlled-access highway (freeway/motorway) and not other types of major highways. You even see 'highway' and 'non-highway' being used by some users on Skyscrapercity.


The Finnish word "moottoritie" translates literally to "motorway". 

For some reason, the Ministry of Transport does not categorize all technically eligible dual-carriage roads as motorways. Sometimes, there are political reasons to that. 

The 1+1 or 2+1 roads signed by E, 6 ("Road for motor vehicles" according to the Vienna Convention) are called "moottoriliikennetie", "motor traffic way". No new such roads will be built, and some of the remaining ones have been upgraded to motorways.


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## MichiH

volodaaaa said:


> Eisenbahnverkehrsorganisierung


"Organisierung" is not a German word but "Organisation". However, I think you talk about the Eisenbahn-Verkehrs*ordnung*.


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## ChrisZwolle

Google Maps doesn't care about input of users anymore. You can send feedback (bottom of the page), but this is usually not accepted until they verify it with Street View.


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## Alex_ZR

Then all the data will be frozen in time... On the other hand, a standard junction has been converted into roundabout, which is visible from satellite image. But Google doesn't care...


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## [atomic]

^^ on the bottom right klick on 'give feedback' right next to the scale (it is really small)


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## Kpc21

In Poland, they are doing it, but only for roads and with some delay.

Now some streets in Łódź will be renamed due to weird "anti-communist" governmental policy, e.g. we have the Victory Square, which will become... Kaczyński Square, because Victory Square was a communism-related name. We will see how long it will take for Google to implement those changes.


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## volodaaaa

I remember map creator. When a street in my neighbourhood was switch to one way mode I just edited the map and the map then received son likes. The more likes the sooner was the change accepted. Took approximately 3days. Now another street was switched to one way mode. I used this feedback option. For a month nothing has changed in the official version. Needless to say that most of gps systems draw their data on Google so foreign drivers are still being navigated into a wrong way.


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## Suburbanist

In a partial defense of Google, it started its more harsh policy after a sting of blunders or organized covert action: in some neighborhoods, or some beach communities in US, people organized with the help of some tech-savvy persons to edit and give likes to non-factual map edits. The goal was to prevent Google routing traffic through their streets and, in a high-is (relatively) profile case, keep a "secret" beach access secret for the locals only. There was also a case of cyclists mobilizing to put rogue edits on Google Maps to create "impromptu" calmed streets, through allocation of a non-factual speed limit there.

BTW, I read a while ago that some small towns in Austria wanted some form of "right not be routed through", to no avail of course - essentially, towns wanted to demand routing vendors purposefully re-routed traffic to higher-specs highways and did not send traffic there when nearby wider roads were congested. I am not sure this case in Austria actually happens or was just a hoax, would like to know more.


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## ChrisZwolle

Well, there is a reason why road authorities sometimes sign directions via a longer, but better suited route. Sometimes it is politically motivated, but the less mileage driven through unsuitable streets, the better, as long as the alternative is reasonable. 

For example, a route from Madrid to Valladolid. The recommended route takes almost 80 kilometers of two-lane road while the motorway alternative via A-6/A-62 is only 2 minutes longer, but isn't even presented as an alternative. The two alternatives that they do show are longer than A-6/A-62. The algorithm route is not always the best.


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## Suburbanist

Travel time accuracy on Google has improved quite a bit. The problem is that it ignores the volatility of travel time, and that it doesn't consider much "comfort of driving" - most people would agree spending 10min more (on a 90 min trip) on a full-fledged highway to be far less stressful than negotiating 2-lane roads full of intersections, low speeds while crossing towns etc. ViaMichelin had a great routing algorithm, although it became unreliable due to the virtual shutdown of their mapping services, kept alive as a skeleton more than as a current service.

TomTom has better traffic routing algorithms (probably because they sell a lot of routing solutions for truckers, which need reliable information on driving restrictions).


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## x-type

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland, they are doing it, but only for roads and with some delay.
> 
> Now some streets in Łódź will be renamed due to weird "anti-communist" governmental policy, e.g. we have the Victory Square, which will become... Kaczyński Square, because Victory Square was a communism-related name. We will see how long it will take for Google to implement those changes.


oh, you have those things too. here are almost all Republic Squares banned because it was the name of the main square in Zagreb in communist time. (ironic, they have left Tito Square, and there are still polemics about it; I think it's been renamed this year)


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## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> Rain all the way here in Bergen
> 
> It has been raining far above average here for more than 1 year. The final annual precipitation for 2017 is likely to be 3400mm


You've got more coming:


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## Kpc21

Well, it's the invention of our new government. Before, it was normal.

And for me, Victory Square is totally OK. After all, this was a victory. Against the nazi Germany.

What's even more interesting, while in other cities, in the acts giving name to their Victory Squares, it was explained that it refers to the victory of the allied countries and especially the Soviet Union, in case of Łódź, the Soviet Union wasn't mentioned there separately.

Meanwhile, they leave the Franklin Delano Roosevelt street, even though we don't really much reason to be thankful to him for anything, as he was one of the Big Three who were deciding together about the post-war shape of Europe and also decided that Poland will be a Soviet Union satellite country. Maybe he had no other choice but to agree with that and let Stalin do it - but still, there is really no more reason to give him a street than to name a square for the victory against the nazism.

To add something to the discussion about the date of the Orthodox Christmas - there is one good reason why their date makes much sense. They have snow for Christmas. All the English-language Christmas songs talk about winter, about snow, about sleighs etc., but it's already really a few years since I recently could see snow for Christmas. It's rather a rare situation, at least in Poland. The "real winter" usually starts around the New Year. For the last few years, it was more common to see snow for Easter rather than for Christmas! And with the Orthodox Christmas time, this is not a problem as it's in the time when there is usually already some snow.


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## Junkie

Kpc21 said:


> Well, it's the invention of our new government. Before, it was normal.
> 
> And for me, Victory Square is totally OK. After all, this was a victory. Against the nazi Germany.
> 
> What's even more interesting, while in other cities, in the acts giving name to their Victory Squares, it was explained that it refers to the victory of the allied countries and especially the Soviet Union, in case of Łódź, the Soviet Union wasn't mentioned there separately.
> 
> Meanwhile, they leave the Franklin Delano Roosevelt street, even though we don't really much reason to be thankful to him for anything, as he was one of the Big Three who were deciding together about the post-war shape of Europe and also decided that Poland will be a Soviet Union satellite country. Maybe he had no other choice but to agree with that and let Stalin do it - but still, there is really no more reason to give him a street than to name a square for the victory against the nazism.
> 
> To add something to the discussion about the date of the Orthodox Christmas - there is one good reason why their date makes much sense. They have snow for Christmas. All the English-language Christmas songs talk about winter, about snow, about sleighs etc., but it's already really a few years since I recently could see snow for Christmas. It's rather a rare situation, at least in Poland. The "real winter" usually starts around the New Year. For the last few years, it was more common to see snow for Easter rather than for Christmas! And with the Orthodox Christmas time, this is not a problem as it's in the time when there is usually already some snow.


I agree about Nazi Germany. In the western world, fascism is forgotten and its not mentioned at all, only former-communist states remember it. It is really shame to speak about only one part of the history and erasing the rest. Why are more people concerned about the communists and not about the fascists?

About Christmas, last here I had a snowy Christmas on 7th January. Even here in Macedonia we have big snow in January, last year we had around 20 days of snow and freeze in the capital and temperatures bellow -15 C....
I think now we will have white Christmas. It is unique. The Julian calendar was the first to exist so it is more traditional but astronomically is not correct.


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## Kpc21

Junkie said:


> I agree about Nazi Germany. In the western world, fascism is forgotten and its not mentioned at all, only former-communist states remember it. It is really shame to speak about only one part of the history and erasing the rest. Why are more people concerned about the communists and not about the fascists?


In Poland the government is concerned about the nazism too, as, for example, they are now trying to get some compensations from Germany for the Polish loses in the WW2. It's a fact that they just robbed many goods during the war, and even now, there are e.g. many pieces of art formerly possessed by Poles, now in German hands. And, supposedly, they have never paid any compensations to us and they did to the western countries - concerning that, I don't know if they are right. Anyway, our current government is, in general, quite anti-German and anti-Russian.

If the fascism is actually forgotten and not mentioned in the western world (which I don't really believe), it might be because Germans, maybe, did not so much damage to them as they did to Poland. Again, I am not sure if I am right, maybe e.g. France actually suffered very much in similar way too, for example in other cities - but Paris still has all the historical buildings in the city, while Warsaw was totally destroyed during the war, also the whole historical center was lost and it was rebuilt after the war. Warsaw in 1944 was just a total ruin, everything demolished.

Germans suffered much too, e.g. in Dresden in 1945, so maybe this is why they are also very concerned about that. Apart, of course, from the fact that actually they were the cause of everything.


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## Junkie

I think is called war reparations and West Germany paid big loads of money to the Brits, France and the Soviets in the 50's but I should search, I am not sure. If this is correct than Germany should pay to many other countries the damage they did.


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## Kpc21

Yes, this is called reparations.


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## Suburbanist

Junkie said:


> I think is called war reparations and West Germany paid big loads of money to the Brits, France and the Soviets in the 50's but I should search, I am not sure. If this is correct than Germany should pay to many other countries the damage they did.


West Germany signed settlement agreements in the 1950s to solve these issues. Before that, war reparation agreements had been signed and put in place, but the Russians indirectly looted Poland as well. Substantial parts of whatever was left from the industrial infrastructure in Germany were dismantled and send east (mostly).

Poland got a decent size of land where historically Polish-origin inhabitants had never been a majority, which also entailed the removal of around 2.7 million inhabitants of German-ancestry people in the aftermath of WW2.

The East German government was not a part of these agreements that normalized West Germany back into normal international relations. Poland and some other Warsaw-pact countries did not want to undermine the puppet regime of the DDR and wouldn't fathom a "normalized" West Germany. All under pressure of the Soviets.

So blame the Soviet masters that ruled Poland from Moscow for the situation, not the German government.

Further agreements were reached in the 1960s and a final diplomatic agreement with Poland was reached in the early 1990s after the fall of the communist bloc.

It is too late to try to revive the question, almost all people who were adults in WW2 are already or are soon going to be dead. 

Trying to ask for reparations like Greece or Poland did is a cheap unnecessary political stunt aimed at internal audiences and resentment that Germany is substantially more prosperous nowadays, but it is past time to ask Germany to keep paying compensation for WW2.


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## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> Poland got a decent size of land where historically Polish-origin inhabitants had never been a majority, which also entailed the removal of around 2.7 million inhabitants of German-ancestry people in the aftermath of WW2.


And no other country benefited so much from the before-war German lands. This can also be considered a reparation.

Someone may here raise the issue that Poland did not become bigger as a result of that. We gained a lot of land on the west, but lost a lot of land on the east.

But the thing that we lost the land on the east is not a problem of Germans. It's not them who invaded us from the east.


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## MichiH

Junkie said:


> In the western world, fascism is forgotten and its not mentioned at all, only former-communist states remember it. It is really shame to speak about only one part of the history and erasing the rest. Why are more people concerned about the communists and not about the fascists?


I don't know what's your definition of "the western world" but it's totally different in (former Western) Germany.


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## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> TomTom has better traffic routing algorithms (probably because they sell a lot of routing solutions for truckers, which need reliable information on driving restrictions).


The TomTom's superiority to rivals is not about the algorithms only but about the crowdsourced real data. The devices measure the real driving time for each leg, and send the results to TomTom. That data is processed to be merged as metadata into the maps. As the devices know the variation by time and weekday, the estimates are amazingly accurate.

TomTom's congestion index is based on the same data.


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## g.spinoza

MattiG said:


> The TomTom's superiority to rivals is not about the algorithms only but about the crowdsourced real data. The devices measure the real driving time for each leg, and send the results to TomTom. That data is processed to be merged as metadata into the maps. As the devices know the variation by time and weekday, the estimates are amazingly accurate.
> 
> TomTom's congestion index is based on the same data.


I have to agree on this.
My new car is equipped with an in dash Tom Tom navigation system, and during my yesterday's travel from northern to central Italy it notified me of every queue and slowdown, almost split-second.
My old Garmin was much cruder in that respect, although it improved considerably over the year.


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## ChrisZwolle

MattiG said:


> As the devices know the variation by time and weekday, the estimates are amazingly accurate.


That's right, but with a few exceptions: summer holiday congestion in Central Europe.

Long queues at the Gotthard Tunnel or several other Alpine tunnels, occur only a few times per year, on slightly different dates. Historical data doesn't take this into account sufficiently. In addition, delays at Google Maps especially get 'saturated'. It rarely shows delays over 80 minutes even though waiting times can get over 2 - 3 hours. TomTom appears to be better at this. 

Also, the construction-related congestion, in particular in Germany. These seasonal construction zones cause significant traffic congestion but most of it occurs only during 4-6 months a year, and every year on a different location. So using historical data isn't taking that into account properly. 

That's why you see Google Maps sending users into massive traffic jams, only to detour them via secondary roads at the very last exit. So the user thinks: 'wow, Google Maps is great, I'm avoiding that traffic jam', while in reality if that user would've taken an alternate motorway earlier, the overall travel time may have been shorter. The reason: based on historical data, Google thinks that traffic jam will disappear before you get there. This is true for regular rush hour congestion, but not with construction-related congestion.


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## MichiH

I drove with a colleague to Frankfurt Trade Fair this year. He drives a Mercedes C class from 2016. The route option was "dynamically". We arrived Frankfurt at about 9AM. Rush hour. We were routed from A3 to the north parallel to A661. Back on A661 just to leave it at the next exit again and go left to B43. My colleague got a phone call (handsfree system of course). At a red lights the route was re-calculated and we should enter A661 again. I disagreed and said he should just follow B43 as suggested before because cars stood on A661. We entered B43 and suddenly we should turn left. I was confused because of the stupid map view style and too slow to stop my colleague turning left. We should just drive straight to the south! We couldn't follow as suggested because of a (permanent) construction site. I instructed my colleague driving back to B43 and turning left. Back there, the navigation system had the old route again. We drove on (empty) city streets but with a lot of (red) traffic lights. We lost more than 30 minutes compared to the estimated arriving time displayed when leaving A3.

https://www.google.de/maps/dir/50.0...0x47bd09560201d859:0x5a1e23850b1b239d!1m0!3e0

I'm not sure which navigation software is used, I think it's Garmin!? My colleague changed the settings from "dynamically" to "fastest route" when we arrvied because things like that often happened to him.

My mobile navigation system (Becker with Here Maps) loves to use parallel carriageways through large interchanges instead of using the main carriageway. It also happens at normal interchanges where the off-ramp turns into the on-ramp again after the junction with the secondary road. Not because anything is congested but even if you drive 120km/h on an empty motorway...


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## Junkie

Suburbanist said:


> Trying to ask for reparations like Greece or Poland did is a cheap unnecessary political stunt aimed at internal audiences and resentment that Germany is substantially more prosperous nowadays, but it is past time to ask Germany to keep paying compensation for WW2.


I cannot agree with you but let's not ruin this thread with political discussions. What I can say is that all European countries should receive billions of cash from Germany about the damage that was done in WW2. 
Communists are often blamed because many generations still remember the communist ruling hand and the memories are fresh, unlike the fascist one where most who lived through WW2 are already dead. Nazi Germany's impact is still remembered throughout the former communist bloc and that is what I personally respect.


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## ChrisZwolle




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## Kpc21

MichiH said:


> I don't know what's your definition of "the western world" but it's totally different in (former Western) Germany.


Germany lays in Central Europe  At least Germans claim so, from what I know (and I asked some Germans about that).

Poland, according to us, Poles - too. Although Germans, not to mention those more to the west, may claim we are the East. After all, we are located east of them, so it's not so that it makes no sense.

Best wishes for Christmas!


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## Kpc21

By the way. Does any other country have a similar tradition of Christmas carols (that means songs talking about the Biblical events, about what was going on in Bethlehem when Jesus was born - like Silent Night, NOT the Christmas commercial songs like Last Christmas or Jingle Bells) as we in Poland?

Because in Poland, they are present not only in churches - but it's a tradition for many families to sing, or, at least, listen to (if someone is less talented for music) the carols during the Christmas eve dinner, also most radio stations are just now playing the Christmas carols, and there are concerts of Christmas carols transmitted on TV, also with participation of our pop stars. They are an extremely important part of Christmas for us. And those carols we know, sing and listen to are usually very old, traditional songs. New ones also exist, but the traditional ones are most liked and most popular. Silent Night (in the Polish translation) also belongs to them, but there are many original Polish ones.

Here is a sample:





(don't ask why with a cat, maybe someone assumed there is no good YouTube video without a sweet cat - it suits here anyway  )






I don't think any country, at least in western Europe, has anything like that... But maybe some of those south or east of Poland?


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## Junkie

We have carols they are very very old date from Byzantine.

This is similar, but take in mind that we don't sing them in home or on the radio. They are just carols and this is the most famous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQPUOdDyMZI


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## x-type

Kpc21 said:


> By the way. Does any other country have a similar tradition of Christmas carols (that means songs talking about the Biblical events, about what was going on in Bethlehem when Jesus was born - like Silent Night, NOT the Christmas commercial songs like Last Christmas or Jingle Bells) as we in Poland?
> 
> Because in Poland, they are present not only in churches - but it's a tradition for many families to sing, or, at least, listen to (if someone is less talented for music) the carols during the Christmas eve dinner, also most radio stations are just now playing the Christmas carols, and there are concerts of Christmas carols transmitted on TV, also with participation of our pop stars. They are an extremely important part of Christmas for us. And those carols we know, sing and listen to are usually very old, traditional songs. New ones also exist, but the traditional ones are most liked and most popular. Silent Night (in the Polish translation) also belongs to them, but there are many original Polish ones.
> 
> 
> 
> I don't think any country, at least in western Europe, has anything like that... But maybe some of those south or east of Poland?


We do in Croatia of course, a plenty of them. 
In Czechia and Hungary they have them, too.
Why do you thing that western Europe doesn't have it?


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## Kpc21

Well, you have even the Junkie's post above where he says they have carols (as probably all or almost all the countries celebrating Christmas), but they have no tradition of singing them at home or on the radio.

And I think the same might be the case in most western European countries. I checked some German radio stations (and Germans also celebrate the Christmas Eve) and what I only heard were the English-language songs about Christmas.

Maybe I am wrong, but then I will be happy to learn that


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## ChrisZwolle

Most Christmas songs played on FM radio in the Netherlands are just the standard 15-20 'classic' songs you hear every year. (Wham, Mariah Carey, Chris Rea, Band Aid, John Lennon, etc.) I can't stand them. Streaming music (Spotify, etc.) has more recent Christmas songs that are popular. I don't listen to Christmas music generally, I find it tacky. 

Of course you can expect to see Home Alone 1 & 2 and Die Hard movies on TV around these days. I grew up with Home Alone, it shaped my view of the United States when I was a kid. I remember I was quite intrigued with New York City in Home Alone 2.


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## Spookvlieger

ChrisZwolle said:


> Most Christmas songs played on FM radio in the Netherlands are just the standard 15-20 'classic' songs you hear every year. (Wham, Mariah Carey, Chris Rea, Band Aid, John Lennon, etc.) I can't stand them. Streaming music (Spotify, etc.) has more recent Christmas songs that are popular. I don't listen to Christmas music generally, I find it tacky.
> 
> Of course you can expect to see Home Alone 1 & 2 and Die Hard movies on TV around these days. I grew up with Home Alone, it shaped my view of the United States when I was a kid. I remember I was quite intrigued with New York City in Home Alone 2.


And mister Bean + Jeff Dunham Christmass special. Also don't forget the sound of music


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## Kpc21

By the way... talking about Home Alone and Die Hard, there is this funny thing with the translations of movie titles, which are not always literal. In Polish they are not literal for neither of those films.

Home Alone was translated as Kevin Alone at Home. The action of Home Alone 2 takes place on the streets of New York. So it was easy to invent a Polish name for this second part, which would be even more suitable than the original - in Poland, we call this movie Kevin Alone in New York.

But with Die Hard the situation was opposite. Die Hard was "translated" as... Glass Trap. Indeed, the action took place in a skyscraper made of steel and glass, so the title made sense. However, Die Hard 2 and the following parts did not take place in a skyscraper any more. But what could the Polish translators do? They just named the sequels Glass Trap 2, Glass Trap 3 and so on.

Meanwhile, the German title of Die Hard is... Die Slowly. Well, at least the name is not unsuitable for the sequels.

Another interesting case is Terminator. Now, the commonly used name in Poland for this film, shown e.g. on TV listings, is just Terminator. But the original translation from 1980s was... Electronic Murderer. Which sounds quite awkward and maybe funny. But the problem was, the word terminator already had a meaning in Polish that had nothing to do with terminating anything (and especially lives) which meant a kind of apprentice. Maybe it wasn't a very widely known word - but it existed, and still exists. At least, this decision was explained in such a way. So they translated the title into Electronic Murderer...

I have also noticed that many countries do not translate Star Wars (BTW, have you already seen The Last Jedi? but please, no spoilers, or at least mark them if you can't avoid them, I reserved seats at the cinema for Wednesday). In Poland, the series is commonly known as Gwiezdne Wojny - which is, luckily, a literal translation.

Although... I looked at the German and French subtitles and this was already a spoiler for me  Because the English and the Polish names don't indicate whether there is only one last Jedi in the movie or many of them. In English, "the" is used for both singular and plural, in Polish we have a case system, but it so happens, that the Polish word for "last" has the same form for the singular masculine nominative and the plural masculine-personal nominative. And, same as in English, the plural of Jedi is also Jedi. But in German, both the article and the case clearly indicate if there is one last Jedi or many, same in French (no case system, but the singular and plural articles are different).

As I see on Wikipedia (at the article for the newest movie), the languages: Catalan, Czech, Danish, German, Spanish, Basque, French, Gaelic, Indonesian, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Scots, Slovenian, Serbian, Finnish, Swedish, Chinese - do not translate the Star Wars title. Some of them translate the subtitle (here: The Last Jedi), some not.


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## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands generally doesn't translate movie titles. Movies and TV series are subtitled, not dubbed, except when it is aimed at young children. Even then, the titles aren't always translated, for example the _The Lion King_ was dubbed in Dutch but the title remained English. Though other Disney films geared towards children were usually translated with a Dutch title.


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## Kpc21

Well, I believe that the thing that the movies are subtitled doesn't automatically mean the titles can't be translated 

In Poland, the movies in cinemas are either subtitled or dubbed (usually there are two versions available), on DVD you also have choice - there is the original and the dubbed soundtrack available and you can turn on the subtitles as well. Meanwhile, on TV, they usually make an overvoice (read all the time by the same man, and, by the way, all the time the same one on the given TV station), but I think we have already discussed this topic.

By the way, in the countries where you don't do dubbing or overvoice but subtitles on TV... Do you also have subtitles in TV news, e.g. when they show what someone from another country said? 


Here in Poland they sometimes leave the original title of the movie, or they add a subtitle with something close to a translation but still leaving the original title before it - but it's rather rare and it happens when the title is difficult to translate and they don't want to invent a different Polish one.

But in case of movies for children, they usually try to invent something else if the title is difficult to translate. E.g. Frozen was translated as Kraina lodu - The Land of Ice. The Incredibles were translated as Iniemamocni - which is a pun in Polish, referring also to a title of a Polish comedy from 1970s (which is, again, an idiom). The comedy has nothing to do with superheros, it's a sequel of a comedy from 1960s about a quarrel between two neighbors in the countryside. But the literal meaning of its title is something like "there is no strong ones" and as in idiom, it means there is nobody who could solve the problem.

But also from the children movies, e.g. High School Musical was left untranslated. Or Shrek... it is a name, so there was no reason to translate it. The sequel was Shrek 2 and it was left so in Polish. Then there was Shrek The Third, which resembles a name of a king with his number, and so was it translated to Polish (Shrek Trzeci). However, the name of the next part was not translated. But... it was changed from Shrek Forever After to Shrek Forever. Probably because the expression "forever after" is not so well known among non-native English speakers (especially in Poland where the knowledge of English in the society is on rather low level). Actually, for me neither - but it seems it means the same as just "forever".

If we talk about Shrek... in such movies and books too, where the authors place the characters in a different world, there are usually some names specific only to them. And translating them is often a challenge... In Shrek, there was a town of Far Far Away. To Polish it was translated as Zasiedmiogórogród - literally something like: Behind-Seven-Hills-Town. Why? Because the traditional way of beginning a fairytale in Polish is something like: "Long, long time ago, behind seven hills, behind seven rivers, behind seven forests..." (there are different variations). And the literal translation of Far Far Away - "Bardzo Bardzo Daleko" would not carry this fairytale connotation.


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## Spookvlieger

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands generally doesn't translate movie titles. Movies and TV series are subtitled, not dubbed, except when it is aimed at young children. Even then, the titles aren't always translated, for example the _The Lion King_ was dubbed in Dutch but the title remained English. Though other Disney films geared towards children were usually translated with a Dutch title.


In Flanders, the Flemish dubbed children and Disney or pixar animated movies, the titles are translated. 'Leeuwenkoning' is on the front. There is ofthen a big difference in lines as well througout the movies. I don't know why they do this. Offcourse none of the other movies are dubbed.


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## Kpc21

In lines, that means in the literal words of movies?

Translating a thing like a movie, book, computer game is different from translating technical stuff, not to mention translating official documents (which is a totally opposite thing). Keeping original words is not so important as keeping not only the sense of the original content but also the level of how something is funny, or not funny, in general, such kind of things. Sometimes you encounter puns or cultural references which you can't translate literally, because they will either lose their sense, or become not understandable for the viewers, not knowing e.g. the American cultural context.

Of all the children movies, this thing is especially present in the Shrek series. I must once watch Shrek in original for comparison, but I don't think that the original can even compare with the Polish dubbing for a Polish person, the Polish dubbing simply seems to be very good. Maybe because it has many Polish cultural references.


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## DanielFigFoz

In Portugal foreign films and television programmes etc. are almost always subtitled unless for small children but the film titles are still changed. As with the Polish examples, the film titles often change completely.


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## Kpc21

The thing which is almost always dubbed in Poland are the documentaries, especially those about nature.

Because dubbing of a documentary is much simpler than of a fabular movie - you usually need only one actor.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> Home Alone was translated as Kevin Alone at Home. The action of Home Alone 2 takes place on the streets of New York. So it was easy to invent a Polish name for this second part, which would be even more suitable than the original - in Poland, we call this movie Kevin Alone in New York.


Germans just copied the Polish names:

Kevin – Allein zu Haus
Kevin – Allein in New York


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## volodaaaa

Nothing compares to Slovenian translation of voldemort from Harry potter movie.


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## ChrisZwolle

I usually watch movies and TV series at home with English subtitles. That way you'll learn something and the wordplays and jokes don't get lost in translation.


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## bogdymol

When I was a kid all cartoons in Romania were “imported” from English speaking countries (mostly USA) without doubling or translation. That’s how my generation learned the basics of English language. Now all cartoons are dubbed in Romanian...


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## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> Most Christmas songs played on FM radio in the Netherlands are just the standard 15-20 'classic' songs you hear every year. (Wham, Mariah Carey, Chris Rea, Band Aid, John Lennon, etc.)


The same for German radio stations but you forget AC/DC and there famous Christmas song 'Mistress for Christmas'. For instance, it was played on the most popular German radio station yesterday afternoon. I guess they can play it because most Germans don't understand the lyrics...

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/acdc/mistressforchristmas.html


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## Attus

Home alone is in the TV in Hungary as well, of course. However, the original English title is almost unknown, the Hungarian title means literally "You shall tremble, burglars!". In the 90's and 2000's ever year was some movie about Jesus in the TV as well, but no more. 
Religious Christmas carols are less and less popular in Hungary. "Christmas music" means the well known American songs like Last Christmas or Dreaming of a white christmas. Nothing about Jesus.

Hungarian society, just like almost all European nations, gets far from christian religion.


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## Alex_ZR

Polish dubbing is mostly one person who reads text for all caracters while you can hear original speach in the background...


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## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's right, but with a few exceptions: summer holiday congestion in Central Europe.
> 
> Long queues at the Gotthard Tunnel or several other Alpine tunnels, occur only a few times per year, on slightly different dates. Historical data doesn't take this into account sufficiently. In addition, delays at Google Maps especially get 'saturated'. It rarely shows delays over 80 minutes even though waiting times can get over 2 - 3 hours. TomTom appears to be better at this.


There are two quite different approaches here: The historical static data enables the optimation engine to find the most probable best route to match with the optimization criteria. Traffic announcements and data as dynamic information enable the navigator to make adjustment to the default route. These techniques are not exclusive but supplementrary.

My experience about driving in the congested Central Europe tells that TomTom can perform very well in the difficult traffic situations as well. The dynamic data, of course, cannot be realtime to one minute accuracy. It is based on devices submitting messages about detecting exceptional speed, and a jam takes while to accumulate.

TomTom seems to constantly fail in sparsely populated areas where a big part of the road network is gravel roads, an where the traffic volumes are too low to collect the statistical data. The company is quite arrogant in its operations, and fails to fix even the most miserable routing failures.

I have some experience about creating route finding applications during last few decades. The basic route calculation code is quite simple. After that has been programmed, about 98% of the work is ahead: implementing turning restrictions, default speed limits by road class, penalties from turning left and right, traffic lights, spot speed limits, map updates, exceptions, text-to-speech, etc.


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## MattiG

MichiH said:


> My mobile navigation system (Becker with Here Maps) loves to use parallel carriageways through large interchanges instead of using the main carriageway. It also happens at normal interchanges where the off-ramp turns into the on-ramp again after the junction with the secondary road. Not because anything is congested but even if you drive 120km/h on an empty motorway...


This is quite a trivial error, which can be avoided easily in many ways. 

For some reason, Here seems not to put enough effort for developing its routing engine, at least the one available in consumer products. It sometimes makes quite odd routes. In addition, it is not always consistent. If we have two routes A-X-Y and B-X-Y arriving at Y at the same moment, the routing from X to Y might not be same.


----------



## Junkie

Kpc21 said:


> The thing which is almost always dubbed in Poland are the documentaries, especially those about nature.
> 
> Because dubbing of a documentary is much simpler than of a fabular movie - you usually need only one actor.


I really don't like 'dubbing'. I grew up with SerboCroatian subtitle language watching cartoons and documentaries. But always with the original tone of the series. However there were few reportages where there was interpreter of the documentary but not dubbing. 
I also learned English as a kid. Then the Internet was brought up and everything is changed.

Also many people learned Spanish language because of TV series. I know like 20 people that can have conversation in Spanish because they watched series for like a year or more....


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## x-type

Attus said:


> Hungarian society, just like almost all European nations, gets far from christian religion.


How come your prime minister had quite deep religious Christmas message in Magyar Idok this year?


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> Nothing compares to Slovenian translation of voldemort from Harry potter movie.


Was it different from the one in the book?

In the Polish translations, the movie translators kept all the original translations from the book, so readers don't get confused.

And Voldemort is just Voldemort, it's not changed. This name has Latin origins, so it's understood more or less the same in all European languages. "Mort" must have something to do with death. And it makes sense as its a name which he invented for himself.

There was more room for inventions for the translators in case of his real name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. I remember, in the book there was a case where the young Riddle was telling Harry Potter who he really is, so he conjured with his wand the words "Tom Marvolo Riddle" and changed the order of letters so that it created a text "I am Lord Voldemort". If I remember well (it's long time since I read the Polish version, the last time I was reading it in English), in the Polish translation it was just left unchanged.

But e.g. in the Goblet of Fire book, there was this sphinx's riddle in the last task - and there, there was again place for invention for the translator - the text of the riddle had to be changed to keep its sense. In the Polish version, it looked really well.



bogdymol said:


> When I was a kid all cartoons in Romania were “imported” from English speaking countries (mostly USA) without doubling or translation. That’s how my generation learned the basics of English language. Now all cartoons are dubbed in Romanian...


In Poland, many cable TV networks ("networks" - their area of operation often did not exceed one city district or a housing estate... there still exist some so small cable TV networks, but most of them got overtaken by big countrywide ones) had some foreign TV channels, especially in the times before specialized TV channels, also ones for children, appeared in Polish versions. So who had cable TV, often could e.g. watch Cartoon Network in the English version, before the Polish one even appeared.

But I wasn't that lucky.



Alex_ZR said:


> Polish dubbing is mostly one person who reads text for all caracters while you can hear original speach in the background...


Well, I don't call it dubbing


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## ChrisZwolle

Chongqing on Google Maps.

* extremely small difference between expressways and other two-lane roads
* no way to tell what is urban and what is not
* the city name marker of Chongqing is placed outside of the city.
* the color scheme is a pain to the eyes if you try to 'read' the map, it's all bright.

I can't understand how those Google map makers think this is an improvement over the previous color scheme. It's terrible.


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## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> There was more room for inventions for the translators in case of his real name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. I remember, in the book there was a case where the young Riddle was telling Harry Potter who he really is, so he conjured with his wand the words "Tom Marvolo Riddle" and changed the order of letters so that it created a text "I am Lord Voldemort". If I remember well (it's long time since I read the Polish version, the last time I was reading it in English), in the Polish translation it was just left unchanged.


In Italian it was translated as "Tom Orvoloson Riddle" in order to anagram it as "Son io Lord Voldemort" (I am Lord Voldemort).

Many other names in the book and later in the movie were changed. Dumbledore was renamed "Silente" (Silent), McGonagall becomes McGranitt, Severus Snape is Severus Piton.


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> How come your prime minister had quite deep religious Christmas message in Magyar Idok this year?


He wrote: "Christianity is a culture and a civilization. No matter if people go to the church, no matter if they pray, culture is how we live". For me it's everything but religious.


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## CNGL

Kpc21 said:


> .
> There was more room for inventions for the translators in case of his real name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. I remember, in the book there was a case where the young Riddle was telling Harry Potter who he really is, so he conjured with his wand the words "Tom Marvolo Riddle" and changed the order of letters so that it created a text "I am Lord Voldemort". If I remember well (it's long time since I read the Polish version, the last time I was reading it in English), in the Polish translation it was just left unchanged.





g.spinoza said:


> In Italian it was translated as "Tom Orvoloson Riddle" in order to anagram it as "Son io Lord Voldemort" (I am Lord Voldemort).


In Spanish he was named "Tom Sorvolo Ryddle" so it could be anagrammed to _Soy Lord Voldemort_, which is what "I am Lord Voldemort" translates to.


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## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Chongqing on Google Maps.
> 
> * extremely small difference between expressways and other two-lane roads
> * no way to tell what is urban and what is not
> * the city name marker of Chongqing is placed outside of the city.
> * the color scheme is a pain to the eyes if you try to 'read' the map, it's all bright.
> 
> I can't understand how those Google map makers think this is an improvement over the previous color scheme. It's terrible.


A similar issue applies to many other digital maps: Openstreetmap pre-rendered tiles, Here wego, TomTom Android: The contrast of the rendered map is far too weak to be used in a car during a sunny day. The rendering approach of Viamichelin is quite good. (But ViaMichelin renders most of the Finnish street numbers at the wrong side of the street.)

I have made a custom color scheme for the TomTom Go Android application: Stronger colors of roads, and a more visible classification. Still some fine-tuning to go to make more distinction between residential streets and pedestrsian/bicycle only paths.


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## volodaaaa

We have Tom Marvoloso Riddle thus Som Lord Voldemort - I am Lord voldemort. But slovenes have something like Mrlakenstein :-D


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## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> We have Tom Marvoloso Riddle thus Som Lord Voldemort - I am Lord voldemort. But slovenes have something like Mrlakenstein :-D


Where is the "i" of Riddle in "Som Lord Voldemort"?


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## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> Where is the "i" of Riddle in "Som Lord Voldemort"?


Good point. I replayed the scene and it was "a som i lord Voldemort " meaning "and i am the Lord voldemort at the same time". Though grammatically correct, it sounds like from 18th century. Nobody would say that this way.

Sorry for misleading.


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## Kpc21

g.spinoza said:


> Many other names in the book and later in the movie were changed. Dumbledore was renamed "Silente" (Silent), McGonagall becomes McGranitt, Severus Snape is Severus Piton.


In the Polish name - I think the only human character whose name was changed (really changed, I am not talking about replacing first names with things being basically the same but sounding better in Polish) was Cornelius Fudge. In Polish it's Korneliusz Knot. Korneliusz - just a small modification so that it sounds better in Polish, there is many of them, with Hermiona for Hermione in the first place.

Knot means in Polish a candle wick. But it sounds similar to "knuć" which can be translated as "to fudge" or "knocić" (which is a derivative of "knot") meaning something like mess up with something and break it as a result.

When something sounds like from 18th century in Harry Potter, then it's good, it should be so 

In the English original, instead of the word snake, very often the word serpent (also meaning snake) was used. It's an old word for a snake in English, and it's used for example in the Biblical story about Adam and Eve.

But I don't think there is such a special word for a mythical snake in most languages, so this had to be lost in translation.

The names of non-human creatures are all translated, or rather the translator invented Polish equivalents. Same as with the names of all the species of magical creatures. Some of them actually exist in different mythologies or in the earlier fantasy literature, so they could be simply translated, but others were J.K. Rowling inventions and then, there was a problem.

The same was with different items and artifacts. And concerning them... I don't consider the Polish translation very good, but translating such a thing is in general a very difficult task. One of the worst translation is the Golden Snitch. In Polish it's złoty znicz. And the only what the Polish name has in common with the English original is how it sounds. Znicz in Polish is a kind of ceremonial light, e.g. the lights you put on graves of your relatives are called so, or this huge torch that is fired at the start of the olympic games - it's also znicz (znicz olimpijski) in Polish. What this has to do with a small sneaky flying ball - no idea.

A good thing which was done in the Polish translation and which was not present in the English original is related to the Hogwarts houses. Hogwarts was in the Polish version changed to Hogwart (Hogwarts with the "s" at the end would be difficult to decline in Polish, in the same way, when the name McDonald's is used in Polish, the last "s" is usually omitted in pronunciation and then it's declined without it: "I go to McDonald's" - "idę do McDonaldu", "there are 11 McDonald's restaurants in Łódź" - " w Łodzi jest 11 McDonaldów"). But in Hogwarts you had houses: Griffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw. In the Polish translation, their names are not changed in any way. In the original, the members of those houses were called: Griffindors, Slytherins and so on. The translator changed the names of the members of the houses, so that they sound like slang names invented by the Hogwarts students: Griffindors are "Gryfoni" (from "gryf" - a griffin), Slytherins are "Ślizgoni" (from "śliski" - slippery, probably because the symbol of Slytherin was a snake, or a serpent, and it has slippery skin), Hufflepuffs are "Puchoni" (from "puch" - fluff, probably because the name of the house ends with "puff"), Ravenclaws are "Krukoni" (from "kruk" - a raven). Without this change, it would be difficult to use the names of houses also as the names of their members in Polish, so it would be probably have to be replaced with "the students from Griffindor" and so on. With it, it not only makes sense, but even looks better than in the original.

But I can see that in the Dutch version really many names were changed! And even for secondary characters.


----------



## x-type

Attus said:


> He wrote: "Christianity is a culture and a civilization. No matter if people go to the church, no matter if they pray, culture is how we live". For me it's everything but religious.


But he is still strongly refering to Christian heritage, which is, after all, the only right option for historical European identity. (Let's not forget that major part of European culture that we know today went out of Christian heritage)


----------



## Junkie

MichiH said:


> I think about 5 million Muslims live in Germany today.


So these Muslims can move freely in other countries because they are Europeans by political and social rights. Then I don't understand why Hungary and Poland being in the union and got every rights for their own citizen, act that 'all Muslims' should suddenly stop coming to their lands. Is this deprivation of rights?


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## MichiH

^^ I also don't understand many politicians. I was in Romania with a Muslim and he had no problem at all. It was during Ramadan and he even managed getting his breakfast at midnight...


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## bogdymol

You guys do realise that I asked about Santa’s presents to stop this religious / eastern europe debate, right?


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## g.spinoza

^^ Mission miserably failed


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## tfd543

Lets take this one: Why did you create an account in Skyscrapercity ? are you only using it for reading about road building and maintenance ? What else do you read about in this huge forum ??


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## volodaaaa

Junkie said:


> So these Muslims can move freely in other countries because they are Europeans by political and social rights. Then I don't understand why Hungary and Poland being in the union and got every rights for their own citizen, act that 'all Muslims' should suddenly stop coming to their lands. Is this deprivation of rights?


Thankfully, there are no laws allowing to ban Muslims. All this issue is about illegal immigrants that are mostly Muslims. Populist politicians often unify those two different issues, but it is not the same.


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## Kpc21

Junkie said:


> Hungary, Poland and Slovakia obviously hate Muslims because of communist reasons


What does communism have to do with hating Muslims?

Communism was generally anti-religious.



> Because you are part of the civilized world I really can't understand why you don't agree with legal Muslim migration, since those have rights to settle to your country.


The question is, which part of this migration is actually legal.



Junkie said:


> LOL
> What has been built is already done and you think nothing will constantly change and mature. For example how would you explain the big percentages of atheism in the Netherlands?


But those atheists are still e.g. celebrating Christmas, aren't they?

And even if you get rid of the religious aspects of Christmas - you still follow some traditions, like even gift giving, or others, whatever Christmas traditions you have in your country, that have religious origin.

Maybe they will even be old pagan customs adapted later by the Christianity, but they exist.

And all the concern is actually not about the religion, but about the culture. You can rule out the religion, it will still be present. They say so, at least. I don't really see that.



MichiH said:


> A cousin of mine is a teacher. She told me that it was not allowed this year to call her school's Christmas party "Christmas party" but it had to be called "year-end party"...


And this is the problem. It goes too far.

By the way, I also don't have any problems with Balkans.



italystf said:


> We shouldn't remove Christian symbols or halt public celebrations because someone who came from far away may be offended. If they want, they are free to show their own symbols or to make their own celebrations. We shoud allow other cultures and religions until the point that they don't conflict with our laws (for example, religion-motivated terrorism, family violence, child marriages, or female genital mutilations are serious crimes and must be punished as such).


Yes, this is exactly the thing we are pointing out.



Junkie said:


> So these Muslims can move freely in other countries because they are Europeans by political and social rights. Then I don't understand why Hungary and Poland being in the union and got every rights for their own citizen, act that 'all Muslims' should suddenly stop coming to their lands. Is this deprivation of rights?


Who says so? Even though I don't support the current Polish government (the previous one neither), the only thing my government opposes is agreeing to admit groups of illegal immigrants of unknown origin, claiming to be refugees, but not being able to present any documents that could confirm that. It has absolutely nothing to do with native-European Muslims from the Balkans that have always lived there and are already a part of the European society.



tfd543 said:


> Lets take this one: Why did you create an account in Skyscrapercity ? are you only using it for reading about road building and maintenance ? What else do you read about in this huge forum ??


Not only roads  This forum is theoretically about skyscrapers. In my city there are no skyscrapers - the tallest office building has 22 levels, the tallest residential one has 26 levels. Actually, the only thread in the SSC division of my city in which it is allowed to discuss about skyscrapers is the one whether we should have skyscrapers in the city at all. Because there are some good reasons why not to build them.

But, for example, a big part of the SSC apart from roads, is also the public transportation. And I like following the public transport threads even more than the ones about roads. Even though roads are important, and also used by the public transport, the public transport in a big city is just necessary.


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## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> You guys do realise that I asked about Santa’s presents to stop this religious / eastern europe debate, right?


I have got two sweaters (o. k. one sweater and one pullover, to be correct :lol and of course a few crazy socks (the ones I like most have the pattern of fried eggs :lol: ). 

And we are toying with the idea of buying a roof box for our car, but due to a bad health condition of our dog we are not very likely to travel anywhere. So the "purchase project" is postponed for the time being. It was supposed to be a Christmas gift.


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## ChrisZwolle

tfd543 said:


> Lets take this one: Why did you create an account in Skyscrapercity ? are you only using it for reading about road building and maintenance ? What else do you read about in this huge forum ??


I became a member in 2006 because of skyscraper project in my city and it was interesting to see supertall project updates from Dubai and other cities. 

Around that time (2006), Skyscrapercity was one of the best websites to get project updates of any kind of construction project, anywhere in the world. Not only skyscrapers but also infrastructure. Back then, social media wasn't a thing yet. 

Right now I largely focus on the Highways & Autobahns section and am a reader in many other subforums. Skyscrapercity is still a great place to get project updates from faraway countries I will likely never visit.


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## Suburbanist

It is strange to visit a place where you used to live as a visitor. People at hotel or other places see my foregin bank cards and/or ID and never guess I speak Dutch lol. Nevertheless I am shopping quite a bit here in Amsterdam, prices for things like apparel are 40% cheaper than in Norway and I qualify to buy with VAT refund because I now live outside the EU. I also bought some 80kg of specialized superfoods and nutrition supplements and sent them by post, it is quite a niche thijng that costs 400% more in Norway. So even paying import fees and packaging costs it is still 2000 Euro savings. I


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## Attus

tfd543 said:


> Lets take this one: Why did you create an account in Skyscrapercity ? are you only using it for reading about road building and maintenance ? What else do you read about in this huge forum ??


I have interest in any kind of traffic/transport (in my language it's the same word). For me traffic is a giant, very complex system, where all participants, cars, trains, buses, trucks, airplanes, etc. are not enemies but every one has its role. I follow a lot of public transport threads as well. 
I have never visited any thread outside the "Infrastructure and mobility" section.


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## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Lets take this one: Why did you create an account in Skyscrapercity ? are you only using it for reading about road building and maintenance ? What else do you read about in this huge forum ??


To begin with architecture and construction are not my hobby. So I avoided this page as much as possible. But in 2013 we were about to sell our apartment and move elsewhere. As I was browsing and looking for some projects I bumped into a Slovak topic related to buying an apartment - what to care about, what to watch out for, etc. So I gave it a shot and became familiar with this single topic. One day I was bored to hell, checked the topic tree and found this mobility subforum. 

It is a perfect source of information I am able to utilize even in my work. Furthermore this forum is quite a good way to practice written English on almost everyday base.


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## Junkie

There is a lot to answer to you about the previous discussion but I will skip it.
Just to note that my ancestry from both sides is Christian all of my grand grand parents were Orthodox. I really respect their desire and will that they struggled to save their tradition and religion. This was underlined in the previous discussion and I agree with you all


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## DanielFigFoz

For Christmas I got winter socks and jumpers. I love this time of year, mostly because I love wearing winter clothing, especially jumpers and scarves. 

As for why I became a member of SSC, I suppose it was because it was the only place I could talk about nerdy things (though I beg you not to look back at my posts from a decade ago...) like road signs and railway extensions. It also gave me an opportunity to write in English as I didn't really have any other reason to do so at the time, as I had left the UK when I was 8 my written English was far from perfect.


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## Suburbanist

Scarves are useless where I live now. Never touched mine.


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## volodaaaa

Suburbanist said:


> Scarves are useless where I live now. Never touched mine.


You live on the Equator? :lol:


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## Suburbanist

volodaaaa said:


> You live on the Equator?


No. But it rains so much in Bergen that scarves are just sponges for cold water .


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## Kpc21

Have you tried using the scarf under your jacket?


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## DanielFigFoz

Carry an umbrella, they are lovely too.


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## Suburbanist

Guys rain in Bergen is not the kind of rain you offset with umbrellas. It often comes accompanied by wind and it is also often pouring dense rain. I am adapting to lightweight waterproof jackets with GoreTex.


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## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> I think the problem is, the policemen would have to memorize all the car brands, models and versions and what Euro emission norms they satisfy.


The Polish policemen cannot read? The restrictions are based of the vehicle registration certificate, which has been regulated by the EU since 1999.


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## Kpc21

Where exactly?


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## Kpc21

From June 4th, there will be new rules for the young drivers in Poland.

A person who gets a driving licence, in the first 8 months, will have to apply to lower speed limits:
- 50 km/h (instead of 50/60 km/h or up to 80 km/h if increased by road signs) in the built-up area,
- 80 km/h (instead of 90/100 km/h) out of the built-up area,
- 100 km/h (instead of 120/140 km/h) on expressways and motorways.

Converted to mph:
- 30 mph (instead of 30/37 mph or up to 50 mph if increased by road signs) in the built-up area,
- 50 mph (instead of 55/62 mph) out of the built-up area,
- 62 mph (instead of 75/87 mph) on expressways and motorways.

He will not be allowed to work as a driver (even in jobs like pizza delivery) during those 8 months.

Between the 4th and 8th month after getting the driving licence, the driver will have to undergo an additional training in safe driving techniques: 2 hours of theory and 1 hour of practice on a track.

Furthermore, if someone is caught breaking the traffic law in any way during the first two years of having the licence, he will have to undergo another additional training and visit a psychologist. The trial period will be extended to the next two years (four years in total). If he breaks the law for the third time, he will lose the driving licence.

What do you think about that? Do you have so strict rules for new drivers in your countries?


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## ChrisZwolle

That is stupid. It only encourages more dangerous passing on two-lane roads. And driving 100 km/h where 140 is the speed limit can be deceptive because most people don't expect passenger cars to go that slow, especially at night. With a truck, you know it doesn't go fast.


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## Suburbanist

It is incredibly dangerous to force new drivers to go way below the speed limit on the safest of all road infrastructure - controlled-access highways.

Driving on highways requires the driver only to pay attention on other cars. It is something relatively easy to learn once you practice it at daylight. It is certainly less cognitively demanding than driving on city streets.

If anything, restricting driving to daylight hours during the first months would make much more sense. There is also some evidence that banning new teenage drivers from transporting other teenage friends with them also reduce accident rates.


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## Kpc21

Recently, I got to know that accidents on the Polish motorways and expressways are more frequent on motorways than on other road. It's on the contrary to the popular belief that motorways are the safest kind of road. The reason is, in most cases, not keeping the proper distance by the drivers.

In the city, keeping the distance is often impossible, because if you leave a gap ahead of you, it's quickly filled by someone else, and as a result, many drivers would overpass you and your journey gets longer as you are caught by red lights you wouldn't otherwise. But on the motorway, it's not such a problem. You are overtaken by many drivers anyway because while you e.g. want to drive 120 km/h, there are others willing to drive e.g. 140 km/h, because they have better cars with bigger engines, so it doesn't cost them much more fuel and/or are in hurry. And a motorway always has multiple (at least 2) lanes for a direction, so maintaining different speeds by different drivers is, in general, possible.

Although still, if the motorway is busy and e.g. with only two lanes for a direction, there is usually a column of trucks on the right lane (driving about 90-100 km/h), and the left lane is used very much. So driving at the speed of an order of 120 km/h, or even 140 km/h is difficult and you must often change the speed: you must overtake the trucks, but at the same time, you often have to return to the right lane to let those who want to drive faster than you go.

But it has nothing to do with keeping the distance. Being overtaken by others is just an inherent part of driving on a motorway, so keeping the distance is not a problem. It's different in the city, where you usually really don't want to be overtaken, because then you waste much time. Because most of our motorways are new, maybe the drivers try to follow the customs from the city, not realizing that on motorways, with the motorway speeds, keeping the distance is much more crucial than in the city.

Returning to the topic - while normally, the young drivers (except for those really fresh) would just exceed those limits special for them and do not cause so much problem on the roads, when there is a situation when you lose the right to drive with three fines in four years (and with two of them, it's already costly for you), they may be more afraid of that and do as the law says.

Although in practice, it's not so easy to get caught for speeding. I am still quite a fresh driver and luckily, I never got caught, although it happens to me to exceed the limit. But it's usually so that when the speed of drivers is being checked, everyone drives according to the rules, so you are warned.

Other rules that I happened to break are, for example, overtaking on a zebra crossing on a street with multiple lanes in one direction (and once, there was even a pedestrian that started walking through it, luckily not yet on my lane - it's really dangerous, but also undermined by many drivers) - now I am trying to control myself in such cases. Thinking about overtaking people usually mean changing the lane, passing next to another vehicle driving in the same direction and returning to your lane, and it usually looks so on roads with one lane in each direction. But on a road with multiple lanes in a single direction, especially one in a city, overtaking may occur even if you don't change your lane at all (you may not even be aware of that you are overtaking someone - or, at least, it happens so to me), and it's probably even more dangerous on pedestrian crossings than the classical overtaking as I described before.

And in Poland we also have that rule that if turning right on red is allowed, you are still obliged to stop on red and only after the stopping, you can start driving again. I have never ever seen a car that would follow this rule, other than learner's or driving exam car. And I also don't really follow it. That means, of course, I slow down and let the pedestrians pass (if there are any), but anyway, in Poland it usually works so that the green arrow allowing to turn right on red appears some seconds after the green light for the pedestrians, so that when it appears, the pedestrians are most likely already on the lane.

Another thing, and a point of endless discussion on the Polish SSC section (they had to forbid this topic on the forum, because it always ended with proponents of various theories on that topic) is using the indicators on roundabouts. In Germany, it's forbidden to use the left indicator on a roundabout at all. In the UK, it's recommended that you turn on the left indicator before entering the roundabout if you are going to leave the roundabout with the exit on your left. And how is it in Poland? The problem is that the rules of our law are very unclear concerning this topic.

Generally, there is no notion of roundabout in our traffic code. A kind of place that is commonly known as a roundabout is called "an intersection with circular traffic". And this is practically all what our traffic law says about the roundabouts (there are one or two places in the code where they are mentioned, but it has nothing to do with using the indicators). From that comes the conclusion that a roundabout should be treated in the same way as each other intersection. What the code says about using the indicators on intersections? That you should indicate the intention of changing the lane or the direction of movement. And the term of "direction of movement" from the traffic code is commonly interpreted as the specific road on which you are driving, because it's obvious that you won't use the indicator on just a curve. From that comes the conclusion that if you turn left (you enter a road on the left), you should blink the left indicator, if you turn right, the right one.

But the circumference of a roundabout is not considered to be a road (if I am not mistaken, it's different in Germany, where it's considered to be a road), it's just a part of an intersection, or, one could say, just a common part of multiple roads. So... from that it seems that one should conclude, that, simply, when you enter the roundabout and you want to turn left, you should indicate turning left, when you want to turn right, you should indicate turning right, when you want to drive forward, you shouldn't indicate at all. But it would be stupid, because on practically all roundabouts, the traffic is organised so that the drivers entering the roundabout must give way to those driving along its circumference. So the most useful information for the other drivers is whether you are leaving the roundabout just now, or not yet. So the interpretation I wrote about is totally impractical. Everybody indicates that he wants to leave the roundabout, it's considered the only correct way in practice by the driving examination centers and by the police. Most drivers also start indicating that they will turn left (leave the roundabout with the first exit) even before entering it and it doesn't seem to be against any law, it's fully OK with the law and it's even practical.

But there is still a dispute whether a driver entering the roundabout has to indicate that he wants to turn left or not, or maybe (according to some) he shouldn't do it at all. Of course, if he does it, it's rather clear to everyone that he shouldn't do it all the time while on the roundabout. If I follow this version, I do it so that I turn off the left indicator when I'm passing the "to the right" exit and I turn on the right indicator when I'm passing the "forward" exit. Of course, it's about a totally symmetric four-exit roundabout - for a more weird one, the scheme would have to be adjusted.

And I was also taught to do so on my driving course. But in practice, very few drivers do that and most indicate only just the exit. And some time ago I also started doing so, after I read comments of some users, or people, that using the left indicator has no sense and may distract other drivers.

This is definitely a thing that should be normalized by the Vienna convention, and it seems it isn't if in Germany and in the UK, they have totally different rules, and in Poland... we pretend we have rules, but in practice, we don't have them.

Anyway, it happens to me to break the rules, sometimes by accident like with overtaking on zebras (although I really regret that as I see how dangerous it may be), probably due to lack of experience, sometimes kind of deliberately (driving faster than allowed - still, I am trying to do no more than those 70 km/h on allowed 50), it also happens to me to drive through an intersection in the last moment of the yellow light when it's about to change to red (and changes in the meantime) or even has just changed to red, and it seems you must be really unlucky to be fined for such things.

So, maybe, the young drivers will not be so strict in following those new rules, as they also aren't with the normal rules now.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> Another thing [...] is using the indicators on roundabouts. In Germany, it's forbidden to use the left indicator on a roundabout at all. In the UK, it's recommended that you turn on the left indicator before entering the roundabout if you are going to leave the roundabout with the exit on your left.


I think the latter is not only used in UK but also in France and/or Benelux? I don't remember exactly.....

I saw it and understood the advantage. However, I think it would be useless in Germany because most of the roundabouts have islands and these do usually have a little hill so that you don't see cars entering the roundabout from the opposite site.

It's mandatory in Germany to use indicators on leaving the roundabout but..... It's usually not done....


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## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> What do you think about that? Do you have so strict rules for new drivers in your countries?


Motorway may be OK, I think. 100 km/h is not extremely slow, and cars driving 100 km/h may be overtaken easily. However, it does not make any sense for me. 
The other ones may be dangerous: more cars will overtake him, even if it's not safe. 

I could accept or even support limitations like young/enexperienced drivers may only drive having an older/more experienced person in the car as well.


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## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> Recently, I got to know that accidents on the Polish motorways and expressways are more frequent on motorways than on other road. It's on the contrary to the popular belief that motorways are the safest kind of road.


Motorways carry the highest volume of traffic, so accidents are more common, but they tend to be less severe. 

Because traffic is moving in the same direction, with oncoming traffic divided by barriers and cross-streets with overpasses and interchanges, the fatality rate on motorways is usually the lowest of any road type.


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## ChrisZwolle

Happy new year!


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## CNGL

Fact: US 18 and US 20 are concurrent between Orin and Lusk, Wyoming. However US 18 starts in Orin, and is concurrent with other US routes (US 20 and US 85) to Mule Creek Junction, IMO they should truncate it there (US 18 ended there until around 1970).


Kpc21 said:


> What do you think about that? Do you have so strict rules for new drivers in your countries?


Spain used to have a 80 km/h limit for new drivers, but was abolished in 2011.


Kpc21 said:


> Recently, I got to know that accidents on the Polish motorways and expressways are more frequent on motorways than on other road. It's on the contrary to the popular belief that motorways are the safest kind of road. The reason is, in most cases, not keeping the proper distance by the drivers.


They may be the safest, but I find them boring (except in a montainous terrain), so it doesn't suprise me (kind of).


Kpc21 said:


> In Germany, it's forbidden to use the left indicator on a roundabout at all. In the UK, it's recommended that you turn on the left indicator before entering the roundabout if you are going to leave the roundabout with the exit on your left.


This is like comparing apples to oranges, as Germany drives on the right and the UK drives on the left. Replacing "left" with "right" on the UK rule, both make sense for me, as it's simply impossible to turn left (right in left-handed traffic countries) when entering a roundabout, and I always turn the indicator on when leaving one (even as I'm entering if I take the first exit).


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## volodaaaa

I work in the field of sustainable mobility and traffic calming and the most essential rule is this: the most dangerous driver is the one who is not paying attention. It works both for cities and highways.

When you are on motorway, you set the cruise control turn on the lane departure alert and literally make yourself a passenger slightly steering a wheel and turning on the indicators. Compare this with driving on a snow covered mountain pass and imagine a rabbit crossing the road. What could end up worse?


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## ChrisZwolle

That's why anything less than level 5 autonomous driving is dangerous. You can't expect people not having to do anything in 98% of the time, but at the same time be alert to react in a moment's notice. Humans are bad at semi-automated processes, because they become complacent.


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## MichiH

^^ I fully agree! Semi-automated driving is a nice but dangerous gimmick only...


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## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> Another thing [...] is using the indicators on roundabouts. In Germany, it's forbidden to use the left indicator on a roundabout at all. In the UK, it's recommended that you turn on the left indicator before entering the roundabout if you are going to leave the roundabout with the exit on your left.


I think you've mistaken left/right. :?

Germany: Don't indicate on entering at all, indicate right at the exit you leave.

What I've seen in other countries: Indicate on entering the roundabout if you wanna leave at the 3rd exit*. That means if you wanna turn left when right-hand driving you indicate left or turn right when left-hand driving you have to indicate right.
*out of 4 exits to simplify the description.

Or have I got you wrong?


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## volodaaaa

MichiH said:


> I think you've mistaken left/right. :?
> 
> Germany: Don't indicate on entering at all, indicate right at the exit you leave.
> 
> What I've seen in other countries: Indicate on entering the roundabout if you wanna leave at the 3rd exit*. That means if you wanna turn left when right-hand driving you indicate left or turn right when left-hand driving you have to indicate right.
> *out of 4 exits to simplify the description.
> 
> Or have I got you wrong?


In Slovakia 
Legislation: right indicator for exit, left indicator never.
Practice: no indicator for exit, sometimes left for unclear reasons


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## Kpc21

CNGL said:


> This is like comparing apples to oranges, as Germany drives on the right and the UK drives on the left. Replacing "left" with "right" on the UK rule, both make sense for me, as it's simply impossible to turn left (right in left-handed traffic countries) when entering a roundabout, and I always turn the indicator on when leaving one (even as I'm entering if I take the first exit).


Well, I forgot about that fact. Of course, for the UK, left is replaced with right and vice versa. The UK recommends using the right indicator while entering onto the roundabout if you wanna use the exit "to the right". Because using the left indicator even before entering the roundabout if you are turning left (using the first exit) is quite obvious, as you don't have to turn it off or change to the other one at all.



MichiH said:


> What I've seen in other countries: Indicate on entering the roundabout if you wanna leave at the 3rd exit*. That means if you wanna turn left when right-hand driving you indicate left or turn right when left-hand driving you have to indicate right.
> *out of 4 exits to simplify the description.
> 
> Or have I got you wrong?


Yes. So in Poland:
- legislation: says nothing apart from treating a roundabout just like any intersection,
- how they taught me on the course: indicate on entering the roundabout if you wanna leave at the 3rd exit (the one to your left - personally, I wouldn't do it if the third exit is forward and there is no exit to the left) + use the right indicator at the exit,
- practice (most drivers do so): only use the right indicator at the exit.

And in practice, it often happens that the exit from the roundabout is so far from a right angle that the indicator doesn't turn off automatically after leaving it and you have to do it manually.

A different thing are also the "square" roundabouts converted from a normal intersection, like this one:










Here, indicating like on a normal intersection makes quite a lot of sense.

But they recently modernized this intersection to a normal roundabout (or even to a turbo one, I am not sure), because such a configuration was dangerous, there were many drivers not noticing it's a roundabout and causing accidents.

See here how it looked like from the perspective of a driver: https://goo.gl/maps/Rw4EQV7ctGP2

1 km to the north, there is another intersection, which also had such a shape and was a roundabout. There, they converted it to a normal intersection with traffic lights.

Another thing that is also not really clear in our legislation, and actually sometimes leads to dangerous situation, is on multi-lane roundabouts. Can you leave the roundabout from the left (internal) lane?

It's rather obvious that regardless whether you can do it or not, it's rather not recommended, and if you do it, you have to give way to those on the right (external) lane. But not everyone follows that and then, there are accidents.

Concerning the motorways, the accidents on motorways may be more dangerous than on other roads because of much higher speeds.

In Poland, there is 5 times more accidents and their victims on motorways than on other roads. For 1 km of the road, of course, because this is the only sensible way of comparing that. In total, the number of accidents on motorways is much lower than on other roads, but only because there is much less motorways than other roads in Poland.


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## MichiH

volodaaaa said:


> In Slovakia
> Legislation: right indicator for exit, left indicator never.
> Practice: no indicator for exit, sometimes left for unclear reasons


Ok, Slovakia is very similar to Germany about that. I think minimum 2 out 3 don't use the indicators at roundabout exits at all in Germany. At busy roundabouts you have to wait for entering which ends up in queues... It's better at normal junctions but most drivers trigger it after slowing down or even braking which is far too late... The same for changing lanes on Autobahns.... Step 1: Turn steering wheel, step 2: indicators on, step 3: have a look into the mirror.... hno: 



Kpc21 said:


> - practice (most drivers do so): only use the right indicator at the exit.


A dream... Really!


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## riiga

Always use right indicator when exiting a roundabout. I also use the left one when entering if I'm going to any exit after "straight through".


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## Kpc21

But is it common/obligatory in Sweden to do so?


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## riiga

Kpc21 said:


> But is it common/obligatory in Sweden to do so?


Yes, a roundabout is considered a oneway road, so exiting it is the same as turning right, and when turning you must indicate. Most people do, but I've never heard of anyone getting a fine for forgetting it. The fine is only 50 €, compared to 200-300 € for ignoring stop signs/running a red light/speeding, etc.


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## ChrisZwolle

Impact of fireworks on air quality at a measuring station in The Hague:


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## ChrisZwolle

I've looked at the motorway length for some countries in Europe and Spain, France and Germany are very close to each other if you count the expressways too.

Spain: 15,506 km
France: 15,476 km
Germany: 15,396 km

This includes 2414 km of expressways in Germany and 3809 km of expressways in France. 

I can't say with any certainty that the expressway figures for Germany and France are 100% accurate. They are based on older assessments + openings since. Calculations like that could be off by a few tens of kilometers, but they paint a general picture. But that general picture may not be sufficient considering France and Spain are only 40 kilometers apart in total motorway/expressway length.


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## bogdymol

Although it is a good assessment, you have to take into acount also the size of the country, the population as well as the amount of transit trafic (which Germany has a a lot, but Spain not so much).

Nevertheless, all these 3 countries have a substantially good road network. Some improvements are still needed, but all major routes are well covered.


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## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Impact of fireworks on air quality at a measuring station in The Hague:


I didn't know they are so polluting. Usually most anti-fireworks arguments are "they can injure people" and "they can be harmful to animals, especially dogs". The air quality issue isn't often considered.


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## Kpc21

But the air quality quickly returned to the normal state, when the fireworks stopped exploding.


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## ChrisZwolle

Yes, thanks to the windy weather. 

About 10 years ago there was a New Year's with stagnant air and some fog which developed into ridiculously dense fog after midnight due to the fireworks. They even had to close down motorways because you coulnd't see more than 3 meters. 

I was driving across town. It was pretty weird, the fog was so dense that you could see only one lane marking at a time. I proceeded with 15 km/h on a major arterial, you could not see the traffic light unless you were directly underneath it. It was bizarre. It took me an hour to drive 10 km even though there was almost no traffic.


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## ChrisZwolle

A windstorm is affecting the Netherlands, most storm surge barriers are activated. 

This is the Ramspol storm surge barrier. It's an inflatable barrier.


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## ChrisZwolle

*Motorway length of Europe*

I calculated the total length of the European motorway network. 1893 kilometers of new motorway opened to traffic in 2017, so by 2020, Europe could reach 100,000 kilometers of motorway.

Motorway is defined as motorway + expressways with motorway characteristics. In some cases, expressways are not clearly defined. 

The list includes four lane expressways, for example the _voie express_ in France, _Autobahnähnliche Straße_ in Germany, four-lane _Schnellstraße_ in Austria, _superstrada_ in Italy and four lane expressways in Hungary. 

This list excludes expressways that have only a single carriageway. It also excludes class GP roads in Poland, non-motorway four lane roads in Belgium, _autowegen_ in the Netherlands and _motortrafikkveier_ in Norway.

Some countries do not have reliable data, for example European Turkey only includes the _otoyol_, not other four lane roads, even if they have interchanges. Russia and Belarus are also a judgement call and data may be incomplete. UK dual carriageways is also a bit of a judgement call. Dual carriageways with roundabouts are not included. Hybrid dual carriageways may or may not be included.

The mileage is chiefly based on 2016 data + openings in 2017. This method may be slightly inaccurate. UK dual carriageway is based on a 2013 assessment + openings from MichiH's list.


Europe motorway length by European Roads, on Flickr


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## CrazySerb

So ex-Yugoslavia has roughly as many kilometers of motorway as Poland or UK...not bad, considering how much easier it is to build through
more or less flat terrain.



> Croatia - 1275
> Serbia - 928
> Slovenia - 612
> Bosnia & Herz. -192
> Montenegro - 0
> Macedonia - 247
> 
> *Total: 3,252*


----------



## Suburbanist

I moved into a new house, they use a wood stove for heating (ideally) but I think I will stick with electric heaters. I don't know how to operate a fireplace, and I worry it would make the air too dirty. If I decided to use it I will buy a carbon monoxide alarm first.

Electricity is dirty cheap in Norway. 68% cheaper than in the Netherlands.


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## Kpc21

The most crucial thing in order not to get poisoned with carbon monoxide while using a solid fuel stove is to have a clean chimney. Have it checked and cleaned every year and you are, basically, safe.

How to use a fireplace - well, it's just a thing to learn.

In Poland, heating with electricity is just too expensive for most households. It makes sense only in modern passive or almost passive houses.

Or as a heat pump - it's also a form of electric heating. Then, the heating can be of the price comparable with coal, but, unfortunately, the investment costs are still very high.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> The most crucial thing in order not to get poisoned with carbon monoxide while using a solid fuel stove is to have a clean chimney. Have it checked and cleaned every year and you are, basically, safe.


No, you are not. Uh.

Shutting the chimney valve before all the flames have gone is quite a sure way to die, regardless if the chimney is clean or not. 

The cleaning basically prevents the material stuck onto the inner surface of the chimney from catching fire. Catching fire could damage the chimney itself, and burn down the house.

The technique of putting and managing the fire depends substantially on the case: Is the fireplace for heating or decoration, are there valves in the chimneys or not, do the valves have safety holes for carbon monoxide, is there a fan on top of the chimney or not, etc. Anyway, the carbon monoxide alarm is a good purchase.


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## x-type

Don't forget that gas is not less dangerous, I'd say even more. Closing the chimney valve doesn't make too much sense, so it is usually open. On the other side, gas boiler + bathroom makes often bad combination.


----------



## Capt.Vimes

We are having an arguement in the Bulgarian section about where the next bridge between Romania and Bulgaria should be. So, I was wondering, what is the cpacity of a 2x1 bridge like the Ruse-Giurgu one. Let's say there's no border (we join Schengen), at what kind of traffic level should the authorities consider a new bridge as a must.


----------



## bogdymol

Capt.Vimes said:


> We are having an arguement in the Bulgarian section about where the next bridge between Romania and Bulgaria should be. So, I was wondering, what is the cpacity of a 2x1 bridge like the Ruse-Giurgu one. Let's say there's no border (we join Schengen), at what kind of traffic level should the authorities consider a new bridge as a must.


If I remember correctly, a one lane per direction road can withstand a traffic up to 16.000 standard vehicles per day (standard vehicles means that a lorry counts for 4 or 5 small cars). Beeing a bridge (narrower, no overtaking etc.), the capacity might be even lower.


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## volodaaaa

Just another cliche question to bring something up: what is the name and etymology of the name of your neighbourhood?

For example I live in locality called *Patrónka* which is literally _Patroness_. But it is quite tricky, because the word is a homonym and this particular means archaic colloquial name for a shell factory (patrón = archaic translation for a shell) located nearby during the interwar period. Previously the location was called West, Westend or Westende.  It could monitor the city development because now it is more the inner city than a west part.

A traffic sign on a motorway

But the whole locality is called *the Mill Vale* (Slovak: Mlynská dolina, German: Mühlthal) because of an formerly important river (or creek) and a set of approximately 15 watermills. Sadly, only few buildings were preserved and only one is in operation (but as a tourist attraction). The intersection leading to my neighbourhood is named after this:

A traffic sign

In the city the river now runs underground. But on the upper stream within the forests contributes to a nice leisure time area.


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## Highway89

My hometown's name, (Logroño, Spain) is supposed to be derived from "illo gronnio" which apparently means "the ford".


BTW, temperatures are going :nuts: around here these days. Yesterday we had 17.6 / 11.8 ºC. For comparison, on the 1st of July 2017 (the coldest day in both July and August 2017) we had a maximum of 17.8 and a minimum of 12.1.


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## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> No, you are not. Uh.
> 
> Shutting the chimney valve before all the flames have gone is quite a sure way to die, regardless if the chimney is clean or not.


Generally, the fumes must have the possibility to escape through the chimney. If they have, they will do it. At least when you have the fire. Starting it always produces some smoke that not necessarily wants to go to the chimney as it doesn't have proper draft yet before it gets hot.

There is also one other important thing - delivering enough air for the process of burning. The room with the stove must be well ventilated and this must be natural, not mechanical ventilation.


----------



## Capt.Vimes

volodaaaa said:


> Just another cliche question to bring something up: what is the name and etymology of the name of your neighbourhood?


Primorski, which means "by the sea". Here's the rest of the neighbourhoods in the city:
Odesos - that's the ancient name of the city. Covers the city centre.
Asparuhovo - named after Aparuh, who established The First Bulgarian Empire. There is a remnant of a defensive structure from his time in the neighbourhood.
Mladost - Youth. Yep, that's a name from the commie times.
Vladislav Varnenchik - Władysław Warneńczyk, Władysław of Varna. Named after Władysław III Jagiełło, King of Poland, who fought and died in a battle against the Ottoman Empire near Varna in 1444.


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## Junkie

Tomorrow is Orthodox Christmas according to the old Julian calendar. In Monday everything is closed. I wish all Orthodox here happiness and peace, prosperity and good beliefs.
I will personally spent my time at home as many Orthodox did.

Only for good wishes, not for a religious debate kay:


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## DanielFigFoz

Someone covered my car in some pink powder once.

Merry Christmas then btw!


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## Kpc21

Best wishes!


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## Kanadzie

tfd543 said:


> The rubber itself is very cheap in ebay. Its a set of 8 rubber pieces.


I bought the pair of rubbers for like 2 USD including shipping on aliexpress
it costs more for me to mail a letter down the street :lol:


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## Attus

Extreme cold in American east coast. While Europe doesn't understand the spring in January and the Rhine floods, in North America the temperature is under -30 degrees, Celsius. Several transatlantic flights turned back, because New York JFK is not able to receive them.


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## ChrisZwolle

You mean the east cost ;-)

Temperatures are now rapidly increasing over western North America. The Canadian prairies went from -35°C to -5°C.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> You mean the east cost ;-)


Corrected


----------



## tfd543

Kanadzie said:


> I bought the pair of rubbers for like 2 USD including shipping on aliexpress
> it costs more for me to mail a letter down the street :lol:


I know pal. I dont understand how people over there can afford it. How was the quality ?


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## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> You mean the east cost ;-)
> 
> Temperatures are now rapidly increasing over western North America. The Canadian prairies went from -35°C to -5°C.


You mean the east coAst


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## ChrisZwolle

East Costa


----------



## niskogradnja

Every now and then I drive through Italy. and it is never a pleasure. I am very stressed with driving in Italy as the traffic is almost always dense and the culture of driving is special. What makes me most problems is off course lane discipline. It works when there are only two lanes, but as soon as there are three lanes, nobody wants to use the rightmost lane. If there are four or five lanes nobody uses the two rightmost lanes except trucks and some fiat pandas. It arrived to me that Iwas driving for a kilometer or more in the rightmost lane and I overtook by that way dozens of cars. On a five-lane road near Milano a car drives in the middle lane only 120km/h but the two rightmost lanes are EMPTY!!! What is wrong with Italian people?


----------



## g.spinoza

niskogradnja said:


> Every now and then I drive through Italy. and it is never a pleasure. I am very stressed with driving in Italy as the traffic is almost always dense and the culture of driving is special. What makes me most problems is off course lane discipline. It works when there are only two lanes, but as soon as there are three lanes, nobody wants to use the rightmost lane. If there are four or five lanes nobody uses the two rightmost lanes except trucks and some fiat pandas. It arrived to me that Iwas driving for a kilometer or more in the rightmost lane and I overtook by that way dozens of cars. On a five-lane road near Milano a car drives in the middle lane only 120km/h but the two rightmost lanes are EMPTY!!! What is wrong with Italian people?


I ask myself the same.
Keep in mind that, until very recently, well into the 2000s, it was taught in schools that the righmost lanes were for "slow vehicles only". It was changed, and now it's labeled "normal cruise lanes", but older drivers don't know that. Young drivers may know that, but they ignore it anyways because "everybody's doing that" and because it's never enforced.

It is stressful for me also, especially when I drive abroad and come back.


----------



## Balkanada

Speaking of driving in Italy, I was very surprised to recently find out that according to this, there are more cars per capita in Italy than in Canada. To me it seems the average Italian barely has space for one car, let alone 2-3 per household as is very commonly the case in Canada. Surely it's inaccurate


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland we have no such problems as we had almost no multi-lane roads for long distance traffic before the 2000s 



Balkanada said:


> Speaking of driving in Italy, I was very surprised to recently find out that according to this, there are more cars per capita in Italy than in Canada. To me it seems the average Italian barely has space for one car, let alone 2-3 per household as is very commonly the case in Canada. Surely it's inaccurate


Maybe the cars that are no longer used or are crapped often do not get unregistered?


----------



## Neungz

pin


----------



## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland we have no such problems as we had almost no multi-lane roads for long distance traffic before the 2000s
> 
> 
> Maybe the cars that are no longer used or are crapped often do not get unregistered?


It's not like that. 
My only guess is that cars still act as a status: riding a bus is seen as for poor people and nobody wants to look poor. Majority of people on buses are the elderly, immigrants or young students.
Italians are also very lazy, that's part of the picture.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> It's not like that.
> My only guess is that cars still act as a status: riding a bus is seen as for poor people and nobody wants to look poor. Majority of people on buses are the elderly, immigrants or young students.
> Italians are also very lazy, that's part of the picture.


It's not just for status symbol, in most cases, outside historic centres, door-o-door travel time is longer via PT.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> It's not just for status symbol, in most cases, outside historic centres, door-o-door travel time is longer via PT.


Yes but it's the same in every other European country.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> It's not just for status symbol, in most cases, outside historic centres, door-o-door travel time is longer via PT.


It depends on time a lot.

I live almost in the city centre. There is a trolleybus line connecting my home (the terminus is in front of my house) with my work (requires a 5 minute long walk). 90 % of the trolleybus route runs in dedicated traffic lane. The travel time is 11 minutes according the schedule. During the most severe traffic jams in Bratislava (accidents on motorways on Friday afternoon) the travel time is 13 minutes.

Yep, during a weekend you make this route in 5 minutes by car and it is very unpractical by PT, because it leaves every 30 minutes during weekends. But on a weekday it takes much more time by a car + the find a legal parking place challenge. :lol:

The same goes for suburb residents. I feel sorry for those who opted for a municipality without trains. Trains are absolutely top here. Suburban residents spend 2 hours and 30 minutes in their cars every day. The train is incredibly faster and cheaper.

When I was dating with my wife I commuted a lot to place of her residence (a small city located 20 km away from Bratislava). When I used suburban bus it takes almost 1:20 minutes (because all embarking people had to buy a ticket (tell the driver where are travelling) + afternoon jams). Meanwhile she moved to my place, but sometimes she still visits her parents. As I work at the ministry I told her to use trains. First she refused because the train station is located far of her parents' house. But then she tried train + kick scooter combo and now nothing can beat it. Whole travel D2D travel time is 40 minutes.

Since 2015 trains are integrated so the travel card for Bratislava is also valid for trains in Bratislava and you have to pay only the remaining section of the route.

I would not say PT is ineffective. Imagine how effective it would be if cities created dedicated lanes and those people who do not need to travel bu car would use it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> Maybe the cars that are no longer used or are crapped often do not get unregistered?


I wondered about that as well, but if that was the case, the rate of cars per 1000 people would continue to increase, to a point that there are more registered cars than inhabitants. 

Or maybe it includes motorbikes or certain types of mopeds?


----------



## MichiH

^^ In Germany, it is allowed to everyone on 31st December. Municipalities can forbid it though. If you wanna do on another day, you have to ask local authorities.


----------



## volodaaaa

Nope. No limitations.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands allows firework sales 29-31 December. Lighting them is only allowed on 31 December, between 6 pm and 2 am (used to be 10 am - 2 am). Fireworks are massive here, some 60 - 70 million euros worth of legal fireworks are bought each New Year's. If you're in a city, fireworks will go off non-stop on 31 December and the days before. 

A major problem is illegal fireworks, often from Italy or Poland. They are very powerful and they are often considered on par with hand grenades. The bomb disposal team have their busiest days of the year in late December. There is also large-scale vandalism of public property in late December, leading politicians to call for _a ban on illegal fireworks_...


----------



## MichiH

^^ Firework sales for 31st December in Germany from 2000 to 2017:

https://de.statista.com/statistik/d...satz-der-deutschen-pyrotechnischen-industrie/

More than 100 million € per year!


----------



## italystf

Today several Italian cities broke the historical temperature record for January.









http://ilpiccolo.gelocal.it/trieste...-citta-bollenti-d-italia-1.16330280?ref=fbfpi


----------



## Kanadzie

Kpc21 said:


> Well, children in Europe don't drive cars as you must be 18 to be able to obtain a driving licence. And, by the way, in Poland it's so that if a young driver possesses a car, he is usually a co-owner only with one of the parents, because the civil liability insurance is much more expensive for the young drivers. And in such a way, they can at least make use of their parents' discounts for driving without causing accidents for a long time.
> 
> I believe, you meant the students over 18.


It is similar in Canada, but what I mean is children (like babies, 12 years old etc) can't drive, but are a greater percentage of population in Canada than Italy. I think if you compared the number of cars per 1000 population "of driving age" (say, 18-80 yr) the numbers would converge.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

italystf said:


> Today several Italian cities broke the historical temperature record for January.


At the same time there is an absurd amount of snowfall in the Western Alps and Northwest Italy, with some areas recording 2 - 3 meters in 48 hours.

Bonneval-sur-Arc, on the Italian border:


----------



## Suburbanist

Bonneval-sur-Arc is one of the most interesting Alpine villages I've visited. It is really remote as Alpine villages go. I found the valley narrowing up to town a very interesting drive, more so than the Col d'Iseran pass itself.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The 'dig out your car from under 3 meters of snow' challenge in Cervinia, Italy.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ The Olympic Village in Sestriere, used for the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics:


----------



## Kpc21

And how do the roofs of the buildings withstand that?

In Poland, in case of bigger snowfalls, the public institutions like schools etc. remove snow from their roofs.

Some years ago there was a big accident, in which a roof of an expo hall in Katowice collapsed because of too much snow on it. While the fairs were taking place inside.


----------



## Attus

A certain Hungarian village needed a new bus stop. However, subvention from the government was only available for look-out tower.








(Source).


----------



## Kpc21

Why do the buses and trams in Germany (I'm talking about the non-air-conditioned ones) have only such little inclining parts of the windows instead of big sliding ones that take half of the height of the whole window?

This is the biggest problems in the German second-hand rolling stock being imported to Poland - too small openable parts of the windows.

Even the Ikarus 260 and 280 buses used in the DDR had much smaller windows than those that could be seen e.g. in Poland.

Why is that? The climate is not really different, and with so small windows it often gets hot and stuffy inside in summer.

I rode once a tram-train in the neighborhood of Karlsruhe, which was not air-conditioned, and it was inside like in an oven.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> Even the Ikarus 260 and 280 buses used in the DDR had much smaller windows than those that could be seen e.g. in Poland.


What if installing small windows in the DDR was an action of humanity?


----------



## Kpc21

What do you mean?


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> The 'dig out your car from under 3 meters of snow' challenge in Cervinia, Italy.


That amount of snow can really harm your car to total damage, especially if it was compacted by wind.
In two day I'll go to east France to ski, for the next week again large amount of new snow is forecast again.


----------



## Kpc21

And in central Poland we haven't had practically any snow this winter yet...

Maybe 1 cm layer on one evening which was gone the next day.


----------



## Kanadzie

Kpc21 said:


> What do you mean?


To not see the bad life of DDR?
Or to prevent _Republikflucht _via autodefenestration?


----------



## Kpc21

I don't get it. Did the bus lines in the DDR go through the West Germany/West Berlin and if so, were the East Germans allowed to use them, so that such a protection would be needed?

And this issue holds also for the former West Germany, although there, they rather didn't have to protect their people being fed up with "rotten capitalism" and desiring the wonderful communism 

So this can't be the reason for the small windows in buses and trams.


----------



## volodaaaa

This guy     







> Argh!
> *a scene with a bath half-filled of water*
> This is going to waste too much water. Let's do it differently.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*Tumbleweed*

Tumbleweed in Big Spring, Texas.

Do we have any of this in Europe?


----------



## Highway89

^^ We do have them in Spain.

I once had to stop in order to remove one of them from the front grill of my car because it was making an annoying rattle.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Last year I was driving on Route 66 in USA and the scenery was like you see on TV. Then a few tumbleweed rolls (2-3 pieces, not more) rolled in front of us, on the road. Like in the movies. I found it quite cool.

But to answer your question, no, I haven't seen anything like that in Europe.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> ^^ Last year I was driving on Route 66 in USA and the scenery was like you see on TV. Then a few tumbleweed rolls (2-3 pieces, not more) rolled in front of us, on the road. Like in the movies. I found it quite cool.
> 
> But to answer your question, no, I haven't seen anything like that in Europe.


*insert enrico moricone's music*


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> *insert enrico moricone's music*


You mean Ennio Morricone


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Was not aware of him, but his music fits quite well in the scenery I've seen there:


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> You mean Ennio Morricone


Yep, I wrote it on Slovak keyboard and concentrated too much on correct spelling of "Insert" :lol:

I meant this song in particular:


----------



## Highway89

^^ Ha, that movie was partially filmed not far from my hometown . Every year fans of the movie meet at the Sad Hill cemetery to recreate some of the scenes and watch the movie.


----------



## kato2k8

Highway89 said:


> ^^ We do have them in Spain.


Tumbleweed in Spain:


----------



## Highway89

kato2k8 said:


> Tumbleweed in Spain:


FIFY. For embedding YouTube videos, you only need to write [MEDIA=youtube]J-Shbh-l4Pg[/MEDIA]


----------



## Suburbanist

Tumbleweed looks an imminent fire hazard to me.


----------



## CNGL

kato2k8 said:


> Tumbleweed in Spain:


This is on N-122 near its terminus at N-232/A-127, exactly around here. I quickly identified the mountain in the background, the 2,313 meter high Moncayo.


----------



## zeeron

*Rest area on Southern Expressway in Sri Lanka*

*Rest area on Southern Expressway in Sri Lanka *










Photo by Dineth Mallikarachchy
@dinethmallikar1
18 Jul 2017
imagine this land, without this road..
southern expressway penetrating the western belt of wet zone Sri Lanka
https://twitter.com/search?f=images&q=expressway sri lanka&src=typd


----------



## tfd543

seing too many people idling the car in the mornings while removing ice from the wind shield. Its bad for the engine oil but most importantly its actually illegal. Do you idle the car while doing the pesky job ? I think its 1-3 minutes that is being allowed before getting fined but not so many people know it and/or care about it


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> seing too many people idling the car in the mornings while removing ice from the wind shield. Its bad for the engine oil but most importantly its actually illegal. Do you idle the car while doing the pesky job ? I think its 1-3 minutes that is being allowed before getting fined but not so many people know it and/or care about it


It is illegal here to leave your engine running with no reason which also includes removing ice from a wind shield. Lot of people do that though. I do it sometimes when the ice is too thick.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think it's a necessary evil. If I don't run idle and crank the A/C, the windows will fog up. Which means I can't drive legally / safely. 

Almost everyone does it. I tried it a few times, scrape the windows first and start the engine after. But then I still have to wait and idle before the windows get defogged, so it makes no difference.


----------



## bogdymol

I always turn on the car, then clean the ice/snow, and then drive away. As Chris said, there's no point in cleaning the snow with engine off, and then wait in the car for the A/C to do its thing.

I don't think it's healthy for the engine to turn it on and 5 seconds later drive away, especially after a cold night. On the other side, I also don't think it's ok to leave it on for too long (>10 min) before actually driving away.


----------



## g.spinoza

I bet nobody, at least in Italy, has ever been fined for this.


----------



## volodaaaa

My neighbour, for instance, leave the flat little bit earlier to "warm up" his car for his wife. So he start the engine, remove ice, light up a cigarette and wait for approximately 10 minutes for her. Engine is kept running


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> As Chris said, there's no point in cleaning the snow with engine off, and then wait in the car for the A/C to do its thing.


Sure there is a point. If you turn the engine on while the air input channels are covered by snow, after some milliseconds the cockpit will be full of humid air, which will stuck into the windshield and freeze.

Thus:

1) Clean the windshield and the air channels from snow
2) Get in. Clean your shoes to avoid snow to get in.
3) Start engine, turn fans to full speed to blow on the windscreen
4) Get out.
5) Clean windows from ice, roof and bonnet from snow
6) Get in. Again, clean the shoes.
7) When the windows remain open from ice, allow passengers to enter.

If the car is equipped with an extra remote-controlled heater, such as Webasto (like often in the North), the procedure is simpler:

1) Turn the Webasto on.
2) Have your breakfast
3) Enter the car and go.


----------



## Kpc21

MichiH said:


> :nuts: No. It was "Tschechische Republik" since 1993. "Tschechien" is officially used since spring 2017 but it was unofficially used since - I think - 1993. Even in media. The "old" name was "Tschech*ei*" which is similar to "Slowak*ei*". "Tscheschen" is not a German word
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_the_Czech_Republic#German
> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tschechien#Im_Deutschen


OK, this Tscheschen with double sch looked weird for me, especially without the i in the last part, but I believed the dictionary in my web browser (as I never know how is this name spelled in German). Which seemingly was wrong.

On the German class I was taught that this country is Tschechien - but without indicating whether it's an official or informal name. Does it really matter? In German, everyone (in unofficial situations) called the country Tschechien, same as in Polish, everyone calls it Czechy. Only in English (and maybe also in Romance languages) it was so that there was practically no such informal short name. And I still prefer Czech Republic, because it's natural that we oppose such enforced changes.

By the way, how was the Czech part of Czechoslovakia called before 1993? It rather couldn't be called Czech Republic as the whole Czechoslovakia was a republic.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Kpc21 said:


> OK, this Tscheschen with double sch looked weird for me, especially without the i in the last part, but I believed the dictionary in my web browser (as I never know how is this name spelled in German). Which seemingly was wrong.
> 
> On the German class I was taught that this country is Tschechien - but without indicating whether it's an official or informal name. Does it really matter? In German, everyone (in unofficial situations) called the country Tschechien, same as in Polish, everyone calls it Czechy. Only in English (and maybe also in Romance languages) it was so that there was practically no such informal short name. And I still prefer Czech Republic, because it's natural that we oppose such enforced changes.
> 
> By the way, how was the Czech part of Czechoslovakia called before 1993? It rather couldn't be called Czech Republic as the whole Czechoslovakia was a republic.


I believe that it was officially called the Czech Socialist Republic and Slovakia was the Slovak Socialist Republic and together they formed the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.


----------



## volodaaaa

DanielFigFoz said:


> I believe that it was officially called the Czech Socialist Republic and Slovakia was the Slovak Socialist Republic and together they formed the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.


You are absolutely right.


----------



## italystf

I think historically Bohemia and Moravia were currently use to refer to the territory that now is part of CZ.


----------



## cinxxx

Kpc21 said:


> Only in English (and maybe also in Romance languages) it was so that there was practically no such informal short name. And I still prefer Czech Republic, because it's natural that we oppose such enforced changes.


I don't think I ever heard someone say "Republica Cehă", it was always Cehia


----------



## Kpc21

Wow, republics constituting a republic. USSR was officially a union of republics (so... officially, it was a federation, although I believe their republics had less autonomy than e.g. now Catalonia or Basque Country in Spain, which is considered to be a unitary country), which made more sense.

With Poland we don't have a problem because from the end of the WW1, we are a unitary country.


----------



## tfd543

Saw "the commuter" today. Jesus, it was amazing and a very good plot. However it left me with some questions for you that have seen it. Is it really authentic How the culture in the American trains is ? Like you talk with pretty much anyone and complain about anything and Yes even date if you get the chance. Lol. Next something else took my mind off. The sniper troops have ir sensors that can sense where people are behind the Metallic enclosure of the train. They could even differentiate between the negotiator and the villain. Last time i Saw that was in an old James Bond movie where he had sunglasses that go see through peoples clothes.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Wow, republics constituting a republic. USSR was officially a union of republics (so... officially, it was a federation, although I believe their republics had less autonomy than e.g. now Catalonia or Basque Country in Spain, which is considered to be a unitary country), which made more sense.
> 
> With Poland we don't have a problem because from the end of the WW1, we are a unitary country.


Czechoslovakia was a federation. Federation made up by two republics - Czech republic (made up by two historical lands: Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia) and Slovakia. Even the public administration was divided. Slovakia had its own parliament within Slovakia - it was similar to Yugoslavia except for we had a stable president.

For example, our ministry of transport (it changed the name several times) was founded in 1991 during Czechoslovakia in times when the dissolution (1993) had not been even planned. It worked along the federal ministry of transport.


----------



## italystf

Kpc21 said:


> Wow, republics constituting a republic. USSR was officially a union of republics (so... officially, it was a federation, although I believe their republics had less autonomy than e.g. now Catalonia or Basque Country in Spain, which is considered to be a unitary country), which made more sense.
> 
> With Poland we don't have a problem because from the end of the WW1, we are a unitary country.


Still today some federal subjects of Russian Federation have the official title of Republic.
There's also the Republic of Srpska, part of Bosnia and Hercegovina.


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> It depends.
> 
> My business card displays the letters DI (equaling to "Dipl.-Ing") for commercial reasons. That degree is high-valued in Finland, and it may attract some potential customers.


I have two titles. Regional one (RNDr.) before my name and international PhD. after my name. Both means "doctor".

My business card is both-sided: a Slovak one and an English one. The Slovak one include both my titles, the English only PhD. 

It may help you to get some more serious contact and increase your credibility (however there is no correlation imho). The same goes for business e-mail: in communication within the company I do not use my tittles in my signature at all, external communication includes both titles (except English one). In private I do not use my titles. Neither on my letterbox. 

I do not insist on calling me "doctor". But I know some people with lower titles mentioning the title in their signatures. Ridiculous. 

I have been a supervisor for a short time. I established the informal communication within our organizational unit. Hard to explain in English (in German it means using Du instead of Sie) - we just start to call each other by first names instead of Mr Surname. The atmosphere was much better.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

cinxxx said:


> I don't think I ever heard someone say "Republica Cehă", it was always Cehia


I have never heard someone say Czechia or variants in the languages I speak, always 'the Czech Republic', but this may well change, things do. 

I have heard Slovakia being referred to as the Slovak Republic a couple of times in casual speech but very rarely.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> I have been a supervisor for a short time. I established the informal communication within our organizational unit. Hard to explain in English (in German it means using Du instead of Sie) - we just start to call each other by first names instead of Mr Surname. The atmosphere was much better.


This is something that makes people quite amused on this side of the Baltic Sea. The office code in the North is much more relaxed than areas in and close to Germany. Expressions like "Sir", "Madam", "Mr Somebody", "Herr Doktor-Doktor" etc are never used. The languages support the "Du/Sie" distinction, but "Du" is the right choice.

Some expats from Germany have been shocked by the fact that colleagues do not shake hands every morning in Finland, and salute each other by "Schönen guten Morgen, Frau Doktor-Doktor Mettwurst von und zu Lagerbier". Hands are shaken once: when the new colleague is met the first time.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I think that terms like 'Mr' are not so slowly falling out of use in the UK unless you are dealing with a customer.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MattiG said:


> This is something that makes people quite amused on this side of the Baltic Sea. The office code in the North is much more relaxed than areas in and close to Germany. Expressions like "Sir", "Madam", "Mr Somebody", "Herr Doktor-Doktor" etc are never used. The languages support the "Du/Sie" distinction, but "Du" is the right choice.
> 
> Some expats from Germany have been shocked by the fact that colleagues do not shake hands every morning in Finland, and salute each other by "Schönen guten Morgen, Frau Doktor-Doktor Mettwurst von und zu Lagerbier". Hands are shaken once: when the new colleague is met the first time.


Sounds similar to the Netherlands. I would address my manager with the Dutch version of 'Du', not 'Sie'. The Dutch workplace is not very formal generally. Wearing a suit / tie to work is uncommon except for some higher managerial positions.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> In German, everyone (in unofficial situations) called the country Tschechien


Again, I remember that it was called "Tschechische Republik" on German TV and in German newspapers in the 1990s for awhile. Dunno, maybe from 1993 to 1995.
Most people called it "Tschechei" even in the 1990s. E.g. my grandma who was born there.



MattiG said:


> Some expats from Germany have been shocked by the fact that colleagues do not shake hands every morning in Finland


I think it's also not very common in Germany to shake hands at work. I usually shake hands with customers or when I meet colleagues I only see once in a while. When I meet colleagues on business trips, I also shake hands.

However, I know a lot of people who always shake hands when they meet colleagues or friends. These are usually foreign nationals (from eastern/southern Europe or Arabs), less native Germans. Especially low-class.


----------



## bogdymol

MattiG said:


> Some expats from Germany have been shocked by the fact that colleagues do not shake hands every morning in Finland, and salute each other by "Schönen guten Morgen, Frau Doktor-Doktor Mettwurst von und zu Lagerbier". Hands are shaken once: when the new colleague is met the first time.


When I was working in Romania, I remember that every morning there was an entire ritual as everybody had to shake hands with everybody. Useless IMO, as you see those people every day for 8+ hours. In Austria at my workplace there are no unnecessary hands shaken.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Sounds similar to the Netherlands. I would address my manager with the Dutch version of 'Du', not 'Sie'. The Dutch workplace is not very formal generally.


At my current workplace, with about 500 employees, we all use "du" form and call us usually by the first name. The only exception are 2 ladies at the accounting department (almost everybody use "Sie" with them as they are older), and the director.


----------



## Attus

When I moved to Germany, five years ago, it was the most difficult issue for me, to learn correct, very formal speech (I spoke German so that I didn't have daily problems with the language). In Hungary, leaving the office at the end of work, you simplay say "bye" (in Hungarian, of course), or something similar, and that's is. Here it's Tschüss Frau/Herr Xxx, schönen Abend! Danke, gleichfalls! Danke! (Good bye, Mr/Ms. Xxx, have a nice evening! Thank you, also for you! Thank you!).


----------



## Attus

In Hungary at people who are not close friends, but work together, there is another form, pretty difficult to translate to English. It's what is called "Hamburger Sie" in German: using the first name, but the formal form of the verb (something like "Hans, was meinen Sie?" in German).


----------



## cinxxx

^^
The most hilarious thing I noticed, is how they translate in books "Ich liebe Sie"
:rofl:


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> In Hungary at people who are not close friends, but work together, there is another form, pretty difficult to translate to English. It's what is called "Hamburger Sie" in German: using the first name, but the formal form of the verb (something like "Hans, was meinen Sie?" in German).


I know exactly what you mean. However according to my experiences this work only one-directional.

I had this relationships with two people only - my thesis supervisor - a well recognized professor in Slovakia and my boss. My boss is a looking-down-on-me moron, but I would not feel comfortable to establish the "Du" level with the professor.

I address them with "Mr. professor, Sie sollen" while they address me with "Vladi, Sie sollen".



bogdymol said:


> When I was working in Romania, I remember that every morning there was an entire ritual as everybody had to shake hands with everybody. Useless IMO, as you see those people every day for 8+ hours. In Austria at my workplace there are no unnecessary hands shaken.
> 
> At my current workplace, with about 500 employees, we all use "du" form and call us usually by the first name. The only exception are 2 ladies at the accounting department (almost everybody use "Sie" with them as they are older), and the director.


I work for the same-sized company, but the rules differ from unit to unit. For example on my previous unit we worked only on the "du" level. Now railway specialists feel more like high-class caste - they generally insist on "Sie" level, except the colleagues I asked to do the "du" thing during my work in the teamleader position.

About the handshake, here is the following standard:
- with direct colleagues (within a company) we usually do no handshake except first introduction; no cheek kisses are given to women.
- with indirect colleagues (from partner companies) we meet regularly (like several times per week) it is the same.
- with indirect colleagues (from partner companies) we meet irregularly (lets say less frequent than biweekly) we shake hands; no cheek kisses are given to women unless being a personal friend (it is rare to have such friend, but sometimes it happens). Kissing a colleague is very unprofessional.

- friends met frequently we do not greet neither by handshake nor kiss (I mean the ones I meet in a gym or language courses),
- friends met less frequently we greet by handshake and furthermore women by double cheek kiss.

That is the science, folks :lol:


----------



## Junkie

Kpc21 said:


> it seems like they want to avoid a naming conflict like with Macedonia vs. Greece, but still leaving the name in the original language


Because of this issue, whole Balkans is shaking really badly. Just that you mention this dispute I have to inform that today in Thessaloniki which is the capital city of Greek Macedonia there were mass protests of around 200.000 people against the negotiations that are on going.

Our country is know as Former. Yugoslav. Republic of Macedonia since we had issue becoming part of UN 23 years ago, and after some negotiations were done we were granted membership in 1995 under this provisional name. But Greece is not letting our country become part of western organizations under this name.
But what is more silly is that Greece is blocking this country since the summit of Bucharest ten years ago when we had invitation to become NATO full member state, but we granted VETO.
We also didn't start negotiations with European Commission and they should have been started at least 6 years ago. 
So we are stuck but this is all politics more than any history.

The name 'Macedonia' is really messy name and unfortunately there are sayings that Greece doesn't even want this name to be included in the new name. Some of the proporsals are 'New Macedonia' and 'North Macedonia'.

Now about the languages it is really messy that the dispute is over the international and 'English' version of the name, since on both languages we have different 'names' as many countries in Europe.

Example is Croatia is called Hrvatska.

This is just today of the mass protests in Greece for the negotiations to be halted which will be really bad for the future of the poor Balkans.


----------



## volodaaaa

Junkie said:


> Because of this issue, whole Balkans is shaking really badly. Just that you mention this dispute I have to inform that today in Thessaloniki which is the capital city of Greek Macedonia there were mass protests of around 200.000 people against the negotiations that are on going.
> 
> Our country is know as Former. Yugoslav. Republic of Macedonia since we had issue becoming part of UN 23 years ago, and after some negotiations were done we were granted membership in 1995.
> But what is more silly is that Greece is blocking this country since the summit of Bucharest ten years ago when we had invitation to become NATO full member state, but we weren't granted.
> We also didn't start negotiations with European Commission and they should have been started at least 6 years ago.
> So we are stuck but this is all politics more than any history.
> 
> The name 'Macedonia' is really messy name and unfortunately there are sayings that Greece doesn't even want this name to be included in the new name. Some of the proporsals are 'New Macedonia' and 'North Macedonia'.
> 
> Now about the languages it is really messy that the dispute is over the international and 'English' version of the name, since on both languages we have different 'names' as many countries in Europe.
> 
> Example is Croatia is called Hrvatska.
> 
> This is just today of the mass protests in Greece for the negotiations to be halted which will be really bad for the future of the poor Balkans.


I may be mistaken but I have read recently, that current PM is not against the new name including "Macodenia", but his coalition partner refuses that and threatens to quit the government, which would ultimately lead to new general elections. AFAIK the Greek PM still has not made an official claim.


About the other countries, English is poor in this concept. For example Georgia in US is called Georgia (in Slovak) while Georgia in Asia is called Gruzínsko. The same goes for Macedonia, FYROM is Macedónsko (the closest literal translation is something like Macedonland) while Macedonia is Macedónia. It is amusing because Czech, despite being the closest language, does not have such distinction - both are called Makedonie.


----------



## cinxxx

bogdymol said:


> I live in Austria for almost 4 years. I have never heard anybody in my area using _Guten Tag + Auf Wiedersehen_, but instead only _Grüss Gott / Griaß Dich + Pfiat Di_.
> 
> It's strange when I talk with someone who is from Germany or from Vienna, as they use the more formal words, and I have to quickly adapt my answers to their language. Plus that many Germans say at the end of a conversation "_Tschuss_" which is funny (my Austrian colleagues hate that; there was a colleague who talked on the phone with a German guy, which at the end of the conversation said "Tschuss"; my colleague hanged up and started immitating him... "Tschusssy :nuts: :gaah:").


In Bavaria, people usually finish the discussion on the phone with "wiederhören", and a face to face talk with "(auf)wiederschaun" or "aufwiedersehen" or even "ciao", you still here "tschüss" but it's not the norm.


----------



## Penn's Woods

DanielFigFoz said:


> Yes it is, no doubt about that.
> 
> Yes, it is a good article, I read it a few times a while back. I don't think that Wikipedia deserves its bad name, you can usually spot the false information from a mile off and whilst I wouldn't bet my life on information from there or quote it, it is an amazing resource for casual learning.




You probably missed my question about Portuguese...I edited my previous post while you were responding to it, I’d guess.

(We need a tag function here.)


----------



## CrazySerb

Junkie said:


> Because of this issue, whole Balkans is shaking really badly. Just that you mention this dispute I have to inform that today in Thessaloniki which is the capital city of Greek Macedonia there were mass protests of around 200.000 people against the negotiations that are on going.
> 
> Our country is know as Former. Yugoslav. Republic of Macedonia since we had issue becoming part of UN 23 years ago, and after some negotiations were done we were granted membership in 1995 under this provisional name. But Greece is not letting our country become part of western organizations under this name.
> But what is more silly is that Greece is blocking this country since the summit of Bucharest ten years ago when we had invitation to become NATO full member state, but we granted VETO.
> We also didn't start negotiations with European Commission and they should have been started at least 6 years ago.
> So we are stuck but this is all politics more than any history.
> 
> The name 'Macedonia' is really messy name and unfortunately there are sayings that Greece doesn't even want this name to be included in the new name. Some of the proporsals are 'New Macedonia' and 'North Macedonia'.
> 
> Now about the languages it is really messy that the dispute is over the international and 'English' version of the name, since on both languages we have different 'names' as many countries in Europe.
> 
> Example is Croatia is called Hrvatska.
> 
> This is just today of the mass protests in Greece for the negotiations to be halted which will be really bad for the future of the poor Balkans.



Time to go back to the old name .... Old Serbia (Stara Srbija)


----------



## Kpc21

I think the name Macedonia for the Slavic country will finally become official, Greece should stop those protests. And they will probably do it one time. There is simply no better name for that country. Should they invent a totally new one from scratch? Nonsense. Greece will have to accept that.

Or, if not just Macedonia, then North Macedonia, or something like that. But still including the word Macedonia.

It's already so that around the whole world, except the situations when Greece blocks that or it's avoided for diplomatic reasons, the country is called Macedonia. For lack of any better option.

Many countries recognize Macedonia as the official name of the former Yugoslav republic.

It's like Orlean in France or York in England protesting against naming New Orlean and New York in the US New Orlean and New York. I would be just stupid. Someone named those cities so, same as someone named the Yugoslav republic Macedonia, not without any reasons.

It's stupid that such a trivial thing as a name spoils so much in the international politics.

There exists, after all, a country of Macedonia (meaning the FYROM) and the nation of Macedonians (who are Slavs), and it must be called somehow. In the Greek version, we have something like a nation without a name.

Concerning the family, in Poland we address the parents and grandparents as "tu"/"du", or whatever you call this person in your language ("ty" in Polish, but it is usually omitted since the form of the verb already indicates the person). To an uncle or aunt - well, there is a problem as sometimes "du" (ty) seems to be too colloquial and informal for a person I talk to rather rarely, so I usually try to avoid it, but "Pan" ("Sie"/"vous") sounds much, much worse and disrespectful - I would treat a family member as a stranger, so it's definitely not the proper choice. Some people use just the noun "uncle"/"aunt" and do the same while addressing grandparents. I don't have in-laws yet, but from what I know, it's common to call them just "mother" and "father", and therefore, to treat them as own family members, so I think also "tu"/"du" (ty) is the proper version.

By the way - the "official" names of the parents in Polish are ojciec (father) and matka (mother), but using them talking to other members of the family would sound rather offensive. Within the family, practically always the diminutives (tata - father and mama - mother) are in use. The words ojciec/matka are used if you talk about some other family or they can be used if you talk about your family to some other people (although it is up to you and depends about your relationships with your family). I definitely wouldn't want my mother hear me naming her "matka", even while I am talking to a stranger.

Of course (as Polish really likes diminutives, it's possible to create at least one, or even more, from practically any noun, and they are used frequently), there are also diminutives of higher level, like "mamusia", "tatuś", but they would are used rather only while talking to little kids, otherwise they would also sound offensive.

For example - I mentioned computer mouse before - in everyday language it's practically always named in diminutive: "myszka" instead of "mysz". In documents, user manuals, Windows control panel, it's called mysz - but people call it myszka.

By the way, mysz is one of the very few feminine nouns in Polish that do not end with -a, but with a consonant.

There is also very few masculine nouns ending with -a, the most common are probably: satelita (satellite) and Kuba (diminutive of the name Jakub - Jacob).

Talking about Kuba, there is a group of names that can be used in diminutive practically always while talking to or about specific person and they wouldn't be recognized as if you treated the person as a kid. Kuba belongs to them. If you want to make it sound like a little kid's name, you create a higher order diminutive: Kubuś.

But Kuba as a country name (Cuba) is feminine.

By the way, with those names, it's not really different in English, you have name diminutives like Kate, Mike and so on (some even quite weird like Bill) and you can normally use it to name friends or colleagues.

Returning to "mysz" or "myszka" - as it is feminine - there is a problem with Mickey Mouse. It's translated to Polish as Myszka Miki. Mouse (myszka) is feminine, Miki doesn't have an ending that would clearly indicate the gender - so I am probably not the only person that thought as a kid that Mickey is a girl, and for whom getting to know about Minnie was quite confusing 

If I am not mistaken, Germans, in case of Donald, do not translate the word Duck to Ente and leave it as Donald Duck, so that it looks a little bit as if Duck was his family name. In the Polish version, it's translated to Kaczor Donald. In this case, luckily, even though the word meaning duck (kaczka) is feminine, there is also a very popular word for a male duck - kaczor, so there wasn't a problem. I don't know if there exists a word for a male mouse in Polish, I don't think so, but even if there is such a word, it's used only in science.

If we are in the topic of cartoons... there is that quite an old already cartoon series, about little blue creatures called Smurfs in English. The Polish version translates it phonetically from English as Smerfy. But in other languages it's often not so... In German they are Schlumpfe, if I am not mistaken, and in French it's also something weird unless I am wrong.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^The Smurfs originated in Belgium, didn’t they? They’re Schtroumpfs, or something like that, in French; Smurfen I believe in Dutch.


----------



## Attus

cinxxx said:


> In Bavaria, people usually finish the discussion on the phone with "wiederhören", and a face to face talk with "(auf)wiederschaun" or "aufwiedersehen" or even "ciao", you still here "tschüss" but it's not the norm.


German language is quite widespread. It's spoken by the most people in Europe as first language. And it has many differences. Nowadays Standard German ("Hochdeutsch") is used almost everywhere, at least as second language, but if a guy from Vienna and another one from Cologne both speak their local dialects, none of them will have any idea of what the other one talks about (and in the countryside it can be worse ).
But even in Standard German there are differences. A Hungarian friend of mine tried to be funny, and greeted me in German, when we met. He said "Grüß Gott", which is a typical greeting in Southern Germany and Austria, but is literally never used in Rhine Region where I live.


----------



## bogdymol

Attus said:


> but if a guy from Vienna and another one from Cologne both speak their local dialects, none of them will have any idea of what the other one talks about (and in the countryside it can be worse ).


After I started living in Austria, I took some german language classes. My teacher (100% Austrian from Wels region) told us that she was in Voralberg for the week-end and she could barely understand what the people over there were speaking. She had to ask often to repeat what they were saying. 

At work I have a colleague who, if hr wants to be funny, sometimes he speaks with me (and other Romanian colleagues we have) in dialekt. We can barely understand what is he talking about. 

I also have a young colleague who is writing on facebook in german dialekt. You cannot understand a thing, and google translate is no good in this case.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Returning to "mysz" or "myszka" - as it is feminine - there is a problem with Mickey Mouse. It's translated to Polish as Myszka Miki. Mouse (myszka) is feminine, Miki doesn't have an ending that would clearly indicate the gender - so I am probably not the only person that thought as a kid that Mickey is a girl, and for whom getting to know about Minnie was quite confusing
> 
> If I am not mistaken, Germans, in case of Donald, do not translate the word Duck to Ente and leave it as Donald Duck, so that it looks a little bit as if Duck was his family name. In the Polish version, it's translated to Kaczor Donald. In this case, luckily, even though the word meaning duck (kaczka) is feminine, there is also a very popular word for a male duck - kaczor, so there wasn't a problem. I don't know if there exists a word for a male mouse in Polish, I don't think so, but even if there is such a word, it's used only in science.
> 
> If we are in the topic of cartoons... there is that quite an old already cartoon series, about little blue creatures called Smurfs in English. The Polish version translates it phonetically from English as Smerfy. But in other languages it's often not so... In German they are Schlumpfe, if I am not mistaken, and in French it's also something weird unless I am wrong.


I really don't see a problem here. You are similar language and we have a colloquial name for male mouse - myšiak. Male duck - drake - has even an official translation - káčer.

The notable problem happened only in case of Harry Potter: a parallel world with parallel things, especially being partially unfinished at the time when the very basic characters were introduced and translated.

The same goes for the Games of Thrones in terms of Hodor character. It is unveiled even in sixth season that he had different name beforehand but after having a severe seizure caused by a future vision where he saw whitewalkers chasing him, he starts to scream "hold the door" gradually shortened to "Hodor".

I saw the episode in advance, but I was really curious how they translated it into Czech language that was used in subtitles for episodes broadcast here.

They opted for Hodor = Hor se do hor (Let's run into the hills). :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> They opted for Hodor = Hor se do hor (Let's run into the hills). :lol:


:lol:

In Italian they translated as "Trova un modo" (Find a way) :bash:


----------



## volodaaaa

How does it form Hodor? :lol:

Anyway, the very first thing I think of after this scene was: Some translators will definitely have a long sleepless night :lol:


----------



## x-type

cinxxx said:


> In Bavaria, people usually finish the discussion on the phone with "wiederhören", and a face to face talk with "(auf)wiederschaun" or "aufwiedersehen" or even "ciao", you still here "tschüss" but it's not the norm.


How about "Bis bald"? I hear it often in Austria, and it wouldn't be strange to hear it in Bavaria, too.


----------



## CNGL

Somehow I think _tschüss_ is a snooze.


----------



## cinxxx

x-type said:


> How about "Bis bald"? I hear it often in Austria, and it wouldn't be strange to hear it in Bavaria, too.


can't say i heard it often...


----------



## MichiH

x-type said:


> How about "Bis bald"?


Yes but "Bis dann" is more common.

Again, it is quite different all over the German speaking region. Just an example:



cinxxx said:


> In Bavaria, people usually finish the discussion on the phone with "wiederhören", and a face to face talk with "(auf)wiederschaun" or "aufwiedersehen" or even "ciao", you still here "tschüss" but it's not the norm.


No, not at all  In my part of Bavaria - Lower Franconia, not Upper Bavaria - "tschüss" is the norm. "wiederhör'n" (w/o "e") is formal and quite old-fashioned. "Auf Wiedersehen" is also formal but more common. Again, in my region, Lower Franconia :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I was reading up on paychecks and found this: https://www.paycheckcity.com/pages/article.php?page=All-About-Pay-Schedules

_Semi-monthly is one of the most common pay schedules. Employees are paid two times per month, or 24 times per year, usually on either the 1st and the 15th of every month, or the 15th and the last day of the month.

Biweekly is the other most common pay schedule. When employees are paid biweekly, they are paid every other week, usually on a Friday. This means there are usually 26 pay periods in a year, but sometimes 27 depending on how many Fridays there are that year. _​
I assume this refers to the U.S. situation. In the Netherlands this is considered odd, most jobs pay 1 x per month (12 x per year) or 1 x per 4 weeks (13 x per year) though weekly is reportedly somewhat more common in low-skilled professions. 

What is your situation? I get paid once per month. In my opinion this makes sense since most fixed payments (rent, mortgage, subscriptions, insurances, etc.) are also due each month.


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## g.spinoza

I never heard of paychecks being issued other than monthly, except in American movies ("I make six hundred bucks a week..")


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> I assume this refers to the U.S. situation. In the Netherlands this is considered odd, most jobs pay 1 x per month (12 x per year) or 1 x per 4 weeks (13 x per year) though weekly is reportedly somewhat more common in low-skilled professions.
> 
> What is your situation? I get paid once per month. In my opinion this makes sense since most fixed payments (rent, mortgage, subscriptions, insurances, etc.) are also due each month.


The Finnish system is quite straightforward, in principle: The monthly-salaried (most white-collar workers) are paid monthly, and hourly-salaried (blue-collar workers) biweekly or twice a month. Special cases are treated in a different way. 

This default approach can be overridden by agreements, but the payment periods cannot be extended. The hourly-salaried might be paid weekly, and the white-collar people may have separate payment dates for the fixed salary and the overtime compensation, etc.


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## bogdymol

Where I currently work in Austria I am paid once per month. It was the same also when I worked in Romania and I think in both Austria & Romania this is pretty much the standard.

My mother, who is a highschool teacher, is also getting paid once per month. What's weird is that, when there is school holiday (in summer), she gets the entire payment for those months in advance (=a large payment in June, but then no more money until September when the school times resumes).

My wife's father is getting paid twice a month, every 5th and 20th of the month. I found that strange when I heard.

If I understood correctly, in UK the norm is weekly paychecks.


----------



## volodaaaa

"And everything went from wrong to right
And the stars came out to fill up the sky
The music you were playin' really blew my mind
It was love at first sight"

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-42803471 :lol::lol::lol:


----------



## Junkie

Today is the Holocaust Remembrance day of the victims of the Nazy Germany. Is there some commemorations ongoing in your countries?


----------



## CrazySerb

Yeah, Serbia organized a Holocaust exhibition at UN HQ in New York about the Jasenovac concentration camp where 700,000 mostly Serbs, but also Jews & Roma were exterminated....Croatians complained right away hno:


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...over-holocaust-memorial-exhibit-idUSKBN1FF1O9


----------



## Kpc21

One of the lecturers with whom we had classes at the university in Łódź commutes between Toronto (the one in Canada) and Łódź every few weeks.


----------



## g.spinoza

Junkie said:


> Today is the Holocaust Remembrance day of the victims of the Nazy Germany. Is there some commemorations ongoing in your countries?


Of course there is.
Among other things, President of the Italian Republic Mattarella nominated one Holocaust survivor, Liliana Segre, as Senator for life.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's not a thing in the Netherlands, I think that most people aren't even aware of this remembrance day, the major Dutch online news portals have not mentioned it today. The Dutch national remembrance day is on May 4, the day before liberation day. 

May 1 (Labor Day) is also not really a thing in the Netherlands. It's not a holiday and apart from socialist parties it's not really observed by the general population.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's not a thing in the Netherlands, I think that most people aren't even aware of this remembrance day, the major Dutch online news portals have not mentioned it today. The Dutch national remembrance day is on May 4, the day before liberation day.
> 
> May 1 (Labor Day) is also not really a thing in the Netherlands. It's not a holiday and apart from socialist parties it's not really observed by the general population.


Absolutely same here.

Even online portals that consider anything beyond their opinion fascist have not done a simple note about it.

But the 8th of the May is the day of celebrations. We also like 1st of May as it is a holiday. Thank god both day does not end up in weekends this year :lol:


----------



## Balkanada

Kpc21 said:


> One of the lecturers with whom we had classes at the university in Łódź commutes between Toronto (the one in Canada) and Łódź every few weeks.


Now that's not something I heard of before. I sure hope that "commute" is not paid for by the university, it's not fair for students and taxpayers to foot the bill for some egotistical university professor to move back and forth between Canada and Poland hno:


----------



## Kpc21

From what I know (and what he told about on his lecture), he works /or used to work/ for an energy supply company in their R&D, doing some engineering planning and also project management. Generally, it looks like he might earn so much that he can afford such commuting.

Still, it looks quite weird that what he earns from giving lectures in Poland would be enough to cover, at least, the costs of travel between Canada in Poland.

But maybe it's still worth for the university to employ such a person taking into account his position, his research history and so on. Even if they have to pay more to him. I believe that apart from giving lectures, he does some research work, same as most academic teachers (or maybe even much more as he is quite a successful researcher).

It's this man, actually: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/george-anders-234714125

And it looks like he runs now a consulting company in Canada.

I wouldn't be afraid about the money from my taxes because the university department in Łódź that employs him is still one of the most profitable if not the most profitable one in the whole university. In the faculty, they are the only department that has its own building and they bring a lot of money from various research projects. So they definitely know what they do employing him.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's not a thing in the Netherlands, I think that most people aren't even aware of this remembrance day





volodaaaa said:


> Absolutely same here.


+1

I had to google to confirm that it's right. Minimum, I found an online news article...


----------



## Grotlaufen

Motorway map of Europe as seen from reddit:










Not 100% accurate but still a quite good overview of the continental motorway system. All roads lead to Ruhr and Benelux!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There do seems to be some kind of Holocaust remembrance event in the Netherlands, the public broadcaster reports on it now. Evidently it's not the 27th but the last Sunday of January. 

But as far as I know it's not an event your average citizen knows about in advance, unlike May 4th which basically everyone knows.


----------



## MichiH

Grotlaufen said:


> Motorway map of Europe as seen from reddit:
> Not 100% accurate but still a quite good overview of the continental motorway system. All roads lead to Ruhr and Benelux!


For instance, German A14 south of A24 is missing (opened 2015-2017) and there are a lot of missing sections in Poland.


----------



## volodaaaa

MichiH said:


> For instance, German A14 south of A24 is missing (opened 2015-2017) and there are a lot of missing sections in Poland.


On the other hand, there are some sections that are half-profiles e.g. R2 in Slovakia or some sections of E65 or E75.

It seems like made of shapefiles from OSM. This shapefiles have detailed metadata and the output can be filtered accordingly. AFAIK there is also the "full-profile" field. Author should have specified the SQL query.


----------



## MichiH

volodaaaa said:


> It seems like made of shapefiles from OSM.


I don't think so. It's too inaccurate.

A71 is not yet completed (opened in 2015) and A72 north of Chemnitz is also missing (opened in 2006). Both are correctly indicated on OSM.


----------



## volodaaaa

MichiH said:


> I don't think so. It's too inaccurate.
> 
> A71 is not yet completed (opened in 2015) and A72 north of Chemnitz is also missing (opened in 2006). Both are correctly indicated on OSM.


Maybe older or free version. If you have a pertinent software you can download it here:
https://www.geofabrik.de/data/download.html


----------



## Junkie

Montenegro and Moldavia are the single countries without a 1 km of proper highway. I don't know about Estonia and Latvia but in Montenegro there is the 40 km of Bar-Boljare section which is u/c and should be finished in the second half of the next year.


----------



## Kpc21

What about Iceland?


----------



## Junkie

But is Iceland part of geographical Europe? If so we may say that even Georgia and Armenia don't have any highways according to that map.


----------



## Tenjac

CrazySerb said:


> Yeah, Serbia organized a Holocaust exhibition at UN HQ in New York about the Jasenovac concentration camp where 700,000 mostly Serbs, but also Jews & Roma were exterminated....Croatians complained right away hno:
> 
> 
> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...over-holocaust-memorial-exhibit-idUSKBN1FF1O9


There are two problems here. Firstly, holocaust is about extermination of Jews, not Serbs, Romas and leftist Croats (which were all victims of Jasenovac) and secondly, the number that you cite is highly exaggerated.

The proper way here would be for Croatia to have the exhibition about holocaust under ustashe rule and for Serbia to have exhibition about holocaust in Nedić's and Ljotić's Serbia. Although, that would be very cynical since prime concern of both sides at this moment is rehabilitation of fascist collaborators (for example Nedić, Mihailović and Stepinac).


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Here Jasenovac is credited for having killed 50 thousand Serbs, not 700 thousand.


----------



## Attus

Ironically almost no word about Holocaust Remembrance Day in Germany. You find some secondary news but only if you look for it. 
Ih Hungary there was some debate about it but only because the catholic church planned to celebrate Miklós Horthy, leader of Hungary (1920-44) today, which would have been a very unfortunate coincidence. This celebration was cancelled. Not any news about Holocaust remembrance today.


----------



## Festin

Same in Sweden. But "Kristallnacht" is remembered and highlighted. Maybe Holocaust Remembrance day is a regional thing connected the countries own history?


----------



## MichiH

^^ Yep, same in Germany. 9th November is usually a big thing in media.


----------



## CrazySerb

I guess the only really important date that matters is May 9th - Victory day.


----------



## Kpc21

About the victory of the end of the 2nd World War - I think I told here about it some time ago that in December, the name of the Victory Square in Łódź was forcibly changed by the government to Kaczyński Square.

Well - on 5th January the city council changed the name back to Victory Square, but changing the explanation of this name to that it was named for the Polish victory over Russia in 1920, not for the end of the WW2  Because the government claims that the end of the WW2 was not a victory and this is their explanation why they forcibly changed that name.

Now, the issue is in the court and waits for a court session 

Our government knows well how to start a fight about something totally unimportant.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> +1
> 
> I had to google to confirm that it's right. Minimum, I found an online news article...


Are you saying it's not observed in Germany, of all places?!


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> There do seems to be some kind of Holocaust remembrance event in the Netherlands, the public broadcaster reports on it now. Evidently it's not the 27th but the last Sunday of January.
> 
> But as far as I know it's not an event your average citizen knows about in advance, unlike May 4th which basically everyone knows.


The last time I was in Amsterdam, the hotel I booked turned out to be in the old Jewish quarter. (It was in Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, I think, around the corner from the Hermitage museum.) There were brass plates on many of the houses on the street, including the hotel, commemorating the people who'd been taken from those houses, plaques set in the curb alongside the canal opposite the houses also listing names, a monument at the end of the block commemorating Dutch people who'd helped Jews. Also the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue and Jodenbreestraat right around the corner.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Junkie said:


> But is Iceland part of geographical Europe? If so we may say that even Georgia and Armenia don't have any highways according to that map.


I'd say all of those were European. Greenland too, if only because it's part of Denmark.
For what my opinion's worth.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Festin said:


> Same in Sweden. But "Kristallnacht" is remembered and highlighted. Maybe Holocaust Remembrance day is a regional thing connected the countries own history?


I worked at a Jewish fundraising and charitable organization in the U.S. for 17 years. This late-January observance is always referred to there as "International Holocaust Memorial Day" (or something like that..."International" is the key word), and I always assumed until I was reading this thread that it was observed...well, throughout Europe anyway. (My comment about how is it not observed in Germany a few posts up should be read in that light.) That said, our organization always held a public observance in Philadelphia (where there's a statue/monument to the Jewish victims) as close as we could get to the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Day, which was usually in April.

If I'm not mistaken, the January date is the liberation of Auschwitz.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Tenjac said:


> There are two problems here. Firstly, holocaust is about extermination of Jews, not Serbs, Romas and leftist Croats (which were all victims of Jasenovac) and secondly, the number that you cite is highly exaggerated.
> 
> The proper way here would be for Croatia to have the exhibition about holocaust under ustashe rule and for Serbia to have exhibition about holocaust in Nedić's and Ljotić's Serbia. Although, that would be very cynical since prime concern of both sides at this moment is rehabilitation of fascist collaborators (for example Nedić, Mihailović and Stepinac).


The idea that the Holocaust (usually capitalized in English, by the way, I guess because it's the name of a particular event) was only about Jews seems to be controversial. I know (because I was looking it up last night) the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum recognizes non-Jewish victims in Poland; I assume they recognize non-Jewish victims elsewhere, as well as gays and Roma.

On the other hand, at the Jewish organization where I worked (in marketing), our official guide to terminology said "Holocaust" should be limited to the attempt to exterminate Jews.

As a Polish-American, I can't say I agree with my former employer on that. Although I suppose what we call it wouldn't really matter to the people who were killed....


----------



## Junkie

Kpc21 said:


> Our government knows well how to start a fight about something totally unimportant.


Your government seem not aligned with the European norms and standards but at the same time is attacking Russia. The closest situation, I think it's in Hungary 

So is your government saying that the Red Army didn't liberated Poland from the Nazis?


----------



## volodaaaa

Junkie said:


> Your government seem not aligned with the European norms and standards but at the same time is attacking Russia. The closest situation, I think it's in Hungary
> 
> So is your government saying that the Red Army didn't liberated Poland from the Nazis?


I would not like to skip into your debate. But this picture is worth thousand of words describing the situation in the Central Europe:


----------



## Kpc21

Junkie said:


> Your government seem not aligned with the European norms and standards but at the same time is attacking Russia. The closest situation, I think it's in Hungary


Unfortunately.



> So is your government saying that the Red Army didn't liberated Poland from the Nazis?


Well - ask them, not me


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> Are you saying it's not observed in Germany, of all places?!





MichiH said:


> ^^ Yep, same in Germany. 9th November is usually a big thing in media.


^^


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^See, I start reading where I left off, and respond to comments as I come to them. And you still haven't responded to my question about Portuguese T-V forms from about a week ago.


----------



## SeanT

...Liberated would do just fine bur they stayed


----------



## SeanT

..too long.


----------



## Junkie

I think this forum lost 11 days of posts and debates. I don't know why.


----------



## g.spinoza

It seems a lot of posts have disappeared....


----------



## Junkie

I don't want to bring politics in here but I will just add the recent news regarding Czech president elections and the debate we had here about immigration earlier.

So Milos Zeman won his second term and he is 75 years old.

I will quote this text. And its really funny what is happening in a 'European' country 


> He’s a septuagenarian who dislikes Muslims, the media and migrants and loves Vladimir Putin.
> .....and has proposed a referendum on the Czech Republic leaving the EU.


https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo...-czech-president-milos-zeman-wins-second-term


----------



## bogdymol

Junkie said:


> I think this forum lost 11 days of posts and debates. I don't know why.





g.spinoza said:


> It seems a lot of posts have disappeared....


There were some issues with the forum, but it looks like it is back to normal now. The forum administrators are aware of this issue.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Okay, here’s a question: what languages do you all speak, read write....

I suppose I should start:
Native speaker of American English; read, understand, speak and write French at near-native level; decent Dutch; rusty German.

Took a course in Polish in college but after about a month all the words started to look alike. If you put a text in front of me, I could pronounce it properly (I was told my accent was good) but wouldn’t understand what I was saying.

Have dabbled enough in other Romance and Germanic languages (except Romanian) to get the gist of written text.


----------



## Fatfield

Native speaker of real English. I can speak a little bit of French & German but can order a beer & suss out a menu in just about all western European languages. I'm also fluent in Double Dutch & Swahili*

Whilst I'm a great advocate of "when in Rome do as the Romans" I'm finding that most Europeans are quite happy to speak English to me instead of their native language. The younger the person the more this happens.

* Where I live Double Dutch is used to describe a baby speaking incoherently and Swahili is what people speak when they've had too much alcohol.


----------



## Attus

- I'm a native Hungarian speaker. 
- I started to learn German in primary school in the early 80's, and I've been living in Germany for five years, so I speak a decent German, however grammatically not error free. My accent is very good, even native German speakers don't realize I'm a foreigner as long as I don't have some grammatical errors, or use der/die/das wrong (which happens sometimes but much less than earlier). I understand Standard German perfectly, but have serious difficulties by understanding dialects.
- I started to learn Russian in the primary school as well. It was mandatory in Hungary back then. I learned Russian 9 years long, at least three classes weekly and had always good notes. However I hardly understand anything spoken and no more than half of written texts. I can't speak or write Russian. 
- You can check my written English here in the forum, I've been a forum member for several years  It's far from perfect but I think it's OK (native English speakers may have another opinion ;-)). My spoken accent is unfortunately horrible. I understand quite much from spoken text and can read newspapers and books in English with no difficulties. However, sometimes I realize using English words with German grammar. I try to avoid it.
- I learned a little bit Italian. I understand surprisingly much of it, written or spoken. I can say, I understand Italian much better than Russian, although I learned it much less. But I can hardly speak.
- In the 90's I had biblical studies and learned basic Latin, ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew. All of them only in very basic level and I forgot almost everything. But I can read Greek and Hebrew letters. 
- Although I've never learned Dutch, speaking English and German I understand almost everything from written Dutch, and even something from spoken language.
- Learning Russian, Italian, Latin, German and English makes you to be able understand at least a basic level of many European languages, even if you've never ever learned them.


----------



## Suburbanist

After reading the description, I think I will pass tonic wine. Seems awful.


----------



## g.spinoza

-Native Italian speaker. I can understand various Italian dialects which are only vaguely related to Italian (Neapolitan for instance, or Gallo-Italic of Northern Italy), and which are classified as proper languages. I'm also native speaker of Central Italian, which is more closely related to Standard Italian despite having some profound differences, but I won't call it a "language".
-Took my 5 year classes of Latin, so I can read it with no major problems.
-Speak, write, understand English to various extents. I can understand everything spoken (unless with strong accents), sustain a conversation, write although with some inevitable errors. American accent is easier for me than British, maybe because its vowel system is simpler and more similar to the Italian one.
-Speak, understand Spanish with a certain degree of confidence. Never had a lesson in my life. Italian and Spanish are so similar, and Spanish is even more similar to my native Italian dialect. Never tried to write in Spanish, so I have no info on my eventual fluency.
-Speak and understand basic German. Cannot follow conversations, or long sentences, but I can manage low-level.
-At some time in the past, I could understand basic written Danish.


----------



## volodaaaa

- Native Slovak, can understand 100 % of Czech,
- Since 1995 I have been learning German, but it was just few months ago when I finally got the article declination (just kidding). I was stupid and did not find German necessary. Now I learn it seriously. I can understand 60 % of text, but spoken German does not exist for me.
- I learn English since 2000. I was forced by parents and did not take it seriously in similar way as German. Fortunately I needed it during my PhD. study. After my supervisor had told me my master's thesis was absolutely perfect, but the summary written in English was piece of junk, I decided to learn English hard. I started to read English books and watch movies - in 2012 I got my B2 certificate, in 2016 I ended up with 7.5 IELTS band score which is something between C1/C2. I still take native speaker face2face courses and English become my hobby. I know that sometimes I do typos here, but I do typos even in Slovak language. I do not suffer disgraphia, but I am always very distracted. My bad 
- As I have Hungarian descent I tried to learn Hungarian, but it is just too difficult. But I can recognize some signs or captions.
- I also took few semesters of Russian language. At least I can read Cyrillic which is very useful in most Slavic countries. We understand each other except some words. For example Russian word for sunrise is the same as toilette in Slovak 

Now I am looking forward to take another IELTS test as the last will expire in May and I definitely would like to hit higher score. And I would like to make my German work or perhaps do some certificate - at least B1 or B2.


----------



## italystf

Junkie said:


> I don't want to bring politics in here but I will just add the recent news regarding Czech president elections and the debate we had here about immigration earlier.
> 
> So Milos Zeman won his second term and he is 75 years old.
> 
> I will quote this text. And its really funny what is happening in a 'European' country
> 
> 
> https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo...-czech-president-milos-zeman-wins-second-term


Czexit?


----------



## PovilD

volodaaaa said:


> - I also took few semesters of Russian language. At least I can read Cyrillic which is very useful in most Slavic countries. We understand each other except some words. For example Russian word for sunrise is the same as toilette in Slovak


"Pozor - deti" sign in Russian would mean "Shame - kids" or something  While true meaning is "Caution - children".

Never knew this, and learned this word in such way  When I was told that true pozor meaning while driving through Slovakia  I know that pozor means the same in Czech


----------



## PovilD

My languages:
-Lithuanian - native
-English - C1 level. Grammar is not polished enough 
-Russian -basic level. Know some words, very little grammar. No conversation.
-German - willing


----------



## volodaaaa

PovilD said:


> "Pozor - deti" sign in Russian would mean "Shame - kids" or something  While true meaning is "Caution - children".
> 
> Never knew this, and learned this word in such way  When I was told that true pozor meaning while driving through Slovakia  I know that pozor means the same in Czech


Yeah. I remember the toilette thing. And besides:
Automat = vending machine (Slovak) = rifle (Russian):
Moriak = turkey (Slovak) = sailorman (Russian):
Banka = bank (Slovak) = bottle (Russian)

and so on. Unfortunately it was not Slovak language with Russian accent. I tried it but I never get away.


----------



## Junkie

^^
There are a lot of false friend words in Slavic languages, and we have been talking about languages on this thread at least 100 times 

-As for me I am native Macedonian speaker. It is Slavic language written in the Cyrillic alphabet which was developed in this area. 
-I learned 'SerboCroatian' since I was a kid and understand, write and speak it nearly perfectly since it was not only taught for long decades in my country and mandatory, but still today we are influenced with music and the TV. channels 
So that means four more languages, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin which are all mutual and as a standard they are based on a same dialect.
-I also understand Bulgarian almost completely but I never learnt it, so I can speak not that good, but I definitely understand it since its close to my native.
-English is the language I was exposed since I was young, which it wasn't that standard in my country but I was lucky because of this. Later when the computer era in the 2000's started to boost I nearly improved it much being on the Internet. I also done one English school abroad but I never passed the internationally recognized certificate.


----------



## PovilD

volodaaaa said:


> Yeah. I remember the toilette thing. And besides:
> Automat = vending machine (Slovak) = rifle (Russian):
> Moriak = turkey (Slovak) = sailorman (Russian):
> Banka = bank (Slovak) = bottle (Russian)
> 
> and so on. Unfortunately it was not Slovak language with Russian accent. I tried it but I never get away.


In Russian, automat means both riffle and vending machine, as far as I know  Same in Lithuanian, except we transformed this word to automatas (-as is ending of nominative case).


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> - I'm a native Hungarian speaker.
> 
> - I started to learn German in primary school in the early 80's, and I've been living in Germany for five years, so I speak a decent German, however grammatically not error free. My accent is very good, even native German speakers don't realize I'm a foreigner as long as I don't have some grammatical errors, or use der/die/das wrong (which happens sometimes but much less than earlier). I understand Standard German perfectly, but have serious difficulties by understanding dialects.
> 
> - I started to learn Russian in the primary school as well. It was mandatory in Hungary back then. I learned Russian 9 years long, at least three classes weekly and had always good notes. However I hardly understand anything spoken and no more than half of written texts. I can't speak or write Russian.
> 
> - You can check my written English here in the forum, I've been a forum member for several years  It's far from perfect but I think it's OK (native English speakers may have another opinion ;-)). My spoken accent is unfortunately horrible. I understand quite much from spoken text and can read newspapers and books in English with no difficulties. However, sometimes I realize using English words with German grammar. I try to avoid it.
> 
> - I learned a little bit Italian. I understand surprisingly much of it, written or spoken. I can say, I understand Italian much better than Russian, although I learned it much less. But I can hardly speak.
> 
> - In the 90's I had biblical studies and learned basic Latin, ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew. All of them only in very basic level and I forgot almost everything. But I can read Greek and Hebrew letters.
> 
> - Although I've never learned Dutch, speaking English and German I understand almost everything from written Dutch, and even something from spoken language.
> 
> - Learning Russian, Italian, Latin, German and English makes you to be able understand at least a basic level of many European languages, even if you've never ever learned them.




That’s a lot! Impressive.


----------



## volodaaaa

By the way. Which form of English do you use/like? American or British?


----------



## riiga

Swedish: native
English: near-native (C2 level)
French: studied for 5 years in school, can pronounce very well, but can't understand that much 
Norwegian: can understand 90-95 % when spoken, no problems reading
Danish: can understand ~70 % when spoken, no problems reading


----------



## hammersklavier

I've tried learning German several times but it has a bad habit of rebuffing my efforts. I think part of the problem is one of sound and semantic shifts: it is not immediately obvious that words like _Tier_ and _deer_ are cognates, for example, or _Vogel_ and _fowl_.

OTOH because Dutch doesn't have as many sound shifts relative to English as Hochdeutsch, I actually find learning Dutch vocab significantly easier ... although of the three, Dutch seems to have the most conservative syntax, retaining V2 SOV word order where German trends towards V2 SVO and English dispensed with that whole V2 nonsense and went straight SVO Romance-style.


----------



## CNGL

volodaaaa said:


> By the way. Which form of English do you use/like? American or British?


Mixed. I sometimes favo(u)r one and others the other, and at times I even utilise/ize both at the same time .


----------



## bogdymol

I found this on Facebook:


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> I found this on Facebook:


This seems a nice idea!


----------



## volodaaaa

For a long time I have been wondered why there is not a simple device in new cars that would able to recognize the wailing of siren and thus turn down your music or warn you with some light indicator.

It already happened to me once that I was driving my car, having fun and listening music really loud when suddenly I spotted an ambulance behind my rear. Since that moment I have never had music so loud in my car. But it would be useful for some drivers that keep doing that.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> For a long time I have been wondered why there is not a simple device in new cars that would able to recognize the wailing of siren and thus turn down your music or warn you with some light indicator.
> 
> It already happened to me once that I was driving my car, having fun and listening music really loud when suddenly I spotted an ambulance behind my rear. Since that moment I have never had music so loud in my car. But it would be useful for some drivers that keep doing that.


I've never been able to understand the direction of a siren. It would be nice if such a device indicates where the siren is coming from...


----------



## MichiH

I'm a native German speaker but do not understand all dialects. Sometimes it's even hard to understand people from neighboring villages. Swiss German is hard to understand, Luxembourgish is easier.

I learned English in school. I think I was talented (especially grammar) but damn lazy (didn't learn vocabulary at all). I left grammar school ("Gymnasium") after 2 years because of English. German marks are 1 to 6. 1 is "very good", 2 "good", 6 "very bad". I had "5" which is "bad". I went to secondary school ("Realschule") and was best pupil in English  After one year, my teacher was very upset "you are so lazy", "you spiral downward"... I had a "2" but "1" in all tests before that year. Hell, I was still best pupil but... well, she was absolutely right  I was even close to fail my graduation 2..3 years later because I was so bad in English (and only slightly better in some other subjects). I had no chance to get a job because we had to apply one year in advance with the certificate of 9th grade. The graduation at the end of 10th grade was a little bit better. I had "3" in English at the end.

Well, but no job. So I went to school for another 2 years. A technical college ("Fachoberschule"). I didn't graduate because of Chemistry and English. I had "5" in both subjects but 1x "5" is the limit for graduation.

I never talked English in school. Most of training was writing only. I was not interested in writing useless stories but only liked to fill texts with correct grammar. When we had to speak, I just refused doing it. And I've never been anywhere I had a chance to speak English.

I finally got a job ("Ausbildung") when I was almost 19. Not because of good marks but because I was very good in a screening test, a kind of intelligence test.

I got a good programmer job and wrote some documentation in English. It was double-checked by an Irish colleague and he usually said that everything is fine. I suddenly got a phone call from an US colleague. I stuttered anything stupid... He visited Germany some weeks later... Well, he was Polish and a colleague of mine was Polish too. He translated German to Polish 

Nine years after leaving school, I had to go to US for 2 weeks to commission a test machine. It was not a big issue because many US colleagues speak German. It's a German company. However, there was a sales forum in German and all German speaking collegues went to Germany the day I arrived. The forum lasted two weeks... I don't know why but it worked somehow. I've survived!

Another 5 years later I had to write a lot of technical documentation. Hundreds of pages. In German and it had to be translated to English. The translation was done by professional translaters but the technical translation was so damn bad that I decided to translate it by myself. An US colleage double-checked it. He didn't had to correct much and it got better and better. After about 500 pages he only found technical issues which were also wrong in German. He complained that my translation is good enough for our customers. I decided that I wanna read and write English more frequently and registered to SSC 

I've traveled through Europe in the past years, for business trips and for leisure and... I don't know why but it works. Even business meetings in English... No big problem! I write technical English texts almost as fluency as in German now. Sure, I make some typos but it's the same when writing German 

Lazy but talented


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I can speak English natively, Portuguese and French well, C2 and C1 or so, respectively. though my written French isn't as good as it ought to be, it looks a lot more mechanical than I sound. I understand everything though

I started learning Welsh when I moved there for university and I will be going back there soon. My Welsh is still a bit below my French though I reckon it will catch up and probably overtake it soon, from next summer for at least a year I will speak Welsh everyday and sometimes all day everyday, latter of which is more than I can say for my French.

I have just started learning standard German, I got my A1.1 certificate the other day. Wohin fährt der Zug? I hear Swiss German everyday (but more French= so I have picked up some words and expressions but I couldn't hold a conversation in it.


----------



## Kpc21

Native Polish speaker. Just the standard Polish - as I told many times in this thread, dialects are not really a thing in Poland and almost all the Poles speak the standard Polish, maybe with some tiny regional differences in the vocabulary. There is also the eastern ("Kresy") accent, which differs a little bit in pronunciation of some sounds, so it also sounds quite different, but very few people speak that (e.g. the school psychologist in my high school did), at least in the central Poland. There are some regional dialects, but they are rather a diminishing thing, spoken mostly by older people in the countryside, maybe with an exception of Upper Silesia, which is a typically urban area with a very specific dialect.

English - theoretically C2 level (with a certificate). I can understand written text, the speech usually as well (although it's often difficult for me to hear the lyrics of songs, also while watching a movie in English without English subtitles, I miss quite a lot). And I can speak so that I am understood, although others say I have quite a lot of Polish accent.

I can't really distinguish between the British and American accent in other people speaking.

German - I spent a year in Germany on the Erasmus program, and, supposedly, I am on the C1 level (certified by a university in Germany). Germans say I speak German very well, but my vocabulary is quite limited and this is the main problem when I am writing something in German or reading a German text.

And I can understand German, apart from the bus drivers and the Hausmeisters at student dormitories who always speak the dialect 

French - I've been learning French for 1,5 year and I am supposed to be at the A2 level just now. I wouldn't say I can communicate in this language, but e.g. when I was recently looking for some information on the tram rolling stock in Saint-Etienne for the Polish SSC section, I could more or less understand the test e.g. on the French Wikipedia, with some aid of a dictionary/translator.

Russian - I had it as a subject in primary school for 2 years. Which results in that I know some very basic vocabulary and I also can read the alphabet (maybe not so easily as the Latin one, but it's not impossible for me and I don't need any external reference for that).

I also attended a Portuguese course for a semester 2 years ago, so theoretically I have some basics of Portuguese.



MichiH said:


> I never talked English in school. Most of training was writing only. I was not interested in writing useless stories but only liked to fill texts with correct grammar. When we had to speak, I just refused doing it. And I've never been anywhere I had a chance to speak English.


Well, it's typical for the language classes at schools in Poland too. There is usually quite a lot of grammar (which is also good), some reading and learning new vocabulary, but usually quite a small amount of speaking.

Now I am attending a French course at the university, and practically from the beginning, the teacher talks to us in French whenever we are (or should be) able to understand it. Which is, actually, practically all the time, because it's usually all the time the same words and expressions. I have never before had language classes conducted in such a way, with the teacher speaking so much in the language which we are learning, but it's a good thing, because we learn to understand what we hear. And she also made us practice pronunciation quite a lot, even in such a way that after a reading exercise, we are supposed to interchangeably read the text loudly - and this is also good, but it's probably also because the pronunciation in French is quite tricky and there is a need for such training.

But the pronunciation is also often quite a neglected part of learning the language on the school language classes, the result of which is that many Poles are able to read and understand some basic English - but they fail in proper pronunciation. There are some common errors frequently made even by English teachers on some lower level, like pronouncing "mustn't" with Z ("maznt") instead of S ("masnt") - they teach with errors, so then people make errors.

I never had bad notes in foreign languages at schools, it was always 4 or 5, and I think I even happened to get a 6 (where 6 is the best grade and means "beyond the curriculum", 5 means the full knowledge from the curriculum, the lower grades down to 1 mean only partial or total lack of knowledge of the curriculum; with 1 you don't pass).



DanielFigFoz said:


> I have just started learning standard German, I got my A1.1 certificate the other day. Wohin fährt der Zug? I hear Swiss German everyday (but more French= so I have picked up some words and expressions but I couldn't hold a conversation in it.


Well... this moment, at my level of French comprehension, I am not really able to ask such a question in French, which I am supposed to know at the A2 level. What I miss is remembering all the question words and the conjugation of "aller" - "to go" - "gehen"/"fahren".

Although...

Won't it be: Ou va le tren?

By the way - the distinction between "gehen" and "fahren" (which exists also in Polish) is what I often miss in English. Or even - in the context of public transport, which often appears on this forum, there is also a verb "verkehren" in German, which has an equivalent in Polish: "kursować". Like: "Die Straßenbahnen verkehren heute nicht". Or "Wegen einer Störung verkehren die Bahnen nur zwischen Aaaa und Bbbb". And now... how to translate it to English without that verb "verkehren", which doesn't seem to exist in English (or I don't know the equivalent)? What is left for me is either "to go" (but it often looks a bit weird and unclear) or "to operate", "to service", but I am also not really sure when they are proper to use and when they aren't.

Should I say just "The trams don't go today"? Of course, I can replace it with "The tram service is suspended today" or something like that, but let's assume I want to translate it possibly literally.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I would say 'there are no trams today'. I work in education (sort of like a half-teachet atm) and there has been a not so gradual shift lately towards focusing more on the spoken word. In Switzerland at school in my experience the English teachers always speak English to the students, even when talking about admin matters, though I work in a place where all the students are 16 to 20, I am sure it's not the same in primary school, though I suppose little children don't have do admin. Everywhere else where I have been, on either side of the teacher's desk, everything has been in the local language except what is being taught. On a scale of almost everything in the local language to everything in the language being taught: the UK > Portugal > France > Switzerland. No surprises at who comes first and last.


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> I've never been able to understand the direction of a siren. It would be nice if such a device indicates where the siren is coming from...


True. The sound spectrum of sirens is quite an interesting research topic, combining acoustics and physiology. One approach is to add some lower-frequency noise, which would help to sense the direction of the sound. The problem is that those lower-pitch sounds cannot be heard from distance.

The analogue approach might lead to a multi-microphone device with some clever signal processing. The reliability in the cities is somewhat problematic because of the high-frequency signal bouncing at walls causing multipath interference.

Instead, I believe in the world of networked cars. An ambulance could broadcast its speed and route to be listened by the vehicles in the proximity: Something like what the marine traffic does nowadays over AIS.

I was driving in Helsinki yesterday, and the streets were quite slippery, leading to longer stopping distances. During that 30-minute trip, an ambulance appeared three times. Most drivers reacted too late, and their behavior was quite random. In one of the cases, a collision of three cars was very close. A warning system would have been useful.


----------



## tfd543

MattiG said:


> True. The sound spectrum of sirens is quite an interesting research topic, combining acoustics and physiology. One approach is to add some lower-frequency noise, which would help to sense the direction of the sound. The problem is that those lower-pitch sounds cannot be heard from distance.
> 
> The analogue approach might lead to a multi-microphone device with some clever signal processing. The reliability in the cities is somewhat problematic because of the high-frequency signal bouncing at walls causing multipath interference.
> 
> Instead, I believe in the world of networked cars. An ambulance could broadcast its speed and route to be listened by the vehicles in the proximity: Something like what the marine traffic does nowadays over AIS.
> 
> I was driving in Helsinki yesterday, and the streets were quite slippery, leading to longer stopping distances. During that 30-minute trip, an ambulance appeared three times. Most drivers reacted too late, and their behavior was quite random. In one of the cases, a collision of three cars was very close. A warning system would have been useful.


Thats just the doppler effect of sirens. Nothing else.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Should I say just "The trams don't go today"? Of course, I can replace it with "The tram service is suspended today" or something like that, but let's assume I want to translate it possibly literally.


What about "trams don't run today?". Anyway should not it be formally like "Don't the trams run today, do they?"?


----------



## MattiG

tfd543 said:


> Thats just the doppler effect of sirens. Nothing else.


No it is not, really. The human beings' sensitivity to the direction of high-frequency sounds is quite limited.


----------



## tfd543

MattiG said:


> No it is not, really. The human beings' sensitivity to the direction of high-frequency sounds is quite limited.


thats true with the high f sounds but to put it very simple it is still the doppler effect that takes place when you wanna sense the sirens.
Btw, it would be very scary if we could hear those sounds.:nuts:


----------



## MattiG

tfd543 said:


> thats true with the high f sounds but to put it very simple it is still the doppler effect that takes place when you wanna sense the sirens.
> Btw, it would be very scary if we could hear those sounds.:nuts:


The inability to sense the direction of a siren occurs even when the siren and the listener are stationary. Thus, no doppler effect involved.


----------



## tfd543

MattiG said:


> The inability to sense the direction of a siren occurs even when the siren and the listener are stationary. Thus, no doppler effect involved.


indeed. I was alluding to the sirens from the vehicles e.g. Police and ambulances.


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> What about "trams don't run today?". Anyway should not it be formally like "Don't the trams run today, do they?"?


I have never understood when it is correct to use the verb "to run" in the meaning other than the most basic one, like e.g. running in a marathon or running to the tram stop because the tram is just about to leave and you are afraid of missing it.

Because e.g. in MS Windows you also have a "run" option, which means "to start a program".

Can "to run" mean just to move fast, not necessarily on foot?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Run can be an action that moves forwards, I wouldn't even say it has to be quick. 'The train runs at only 5mph'. You can also say 'the trains run from 6am to 11pm Monday to Friday'.

But like I said, for the tram example I would say 'there are no trams today', 'are there any trams today?'. 'There are no trams Sundays'


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## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> What about "trams don't run today?". Anyway should not it be formally like "Don't the trams run today, do they?"?




“Don’t” with “today” sounds wrong. Can’t put my finger on why. Probably because you’d use the “do/don’t” forms for habitual, recurring, etc., actions - “The trams* don’t run on Sundays,” for example - but that “today” is a one-time restriction.

*”Tram,” by the way, is not used in North America. “Trolley” or (old-fashioned) “streetcar.”

EDIT: Also, in your “Don’t the trams...” example, you’d need a different word order:
“The trams don’t run on Sundays, do they?”
BUT
“Don’t the trams run on Sundays?” is correct.

Not trying to be an ass here, but to help.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> “Don’t” with “today” sounds wrong. Can’t put my finger on why. Probably because you’d use the “do/don’t” forms for habitual, recurring, etc., actions - “The trams* don’t run on Sundays,” for example - but that “today” is a one-time restriction.
> 
> *”Tram,” by the way, is not used in North America. “Trolley” or (old-fashioned) “streetcar.”
> 
> EDIT: Also, in your “Don’t the trams...” example, you’d need a different word order:
> “The trams don’t run on Sundays, do they?”
> BUT
> “Don’t the trams run on Sundays?” is correct.
> 
> Not trying to be an ass here, but to help.


I will begin with the last sentence! Blimey, you certainly are not. It is always good to know the real situation because some of here do not always have a luck to speak to a native speakers. I only bump into Slovaks attempting to speak English, who barely know things like singular "they" and argue that my grammar is shite, or Brussel English "ruined" by mostly Germans and French, but also by other nation including mine. So it always help even if it was a tactless critics.

And this is the case. I used do/don't because I was taught that regular services always (future tense included) take a form of present simple. "Tram will leave" would be rookish except I am talking about some irregular historic tram that is dispatched after spending ten years in a depot.

Tram/trolley distinction is not a mistake. I strive for British English and here it is definitely a tram(way). Furthermore I have been waking up from my dream when ever since I heard how you call a trolleybus in US - trackless tram. Damn I just knotted my tongue. :lol:


----------



## Junkie

I prefer American English and accent over British because of the actions movies. Brits are boring


----------



## DanielFigFoz

volodaaaa said:


> when ever since I heard how you call a trolleybus in US - trackless tram. Damn I just knotted my tongue. :lol:


A trackless tram?! Amazing!



Junkie said:


> I prefer American English and accent over British because of the actions movies. Brits are boring


I am most offended by your sentiment, dear sir.

Good day!


Nahh, I'm joking.Everyone has their favourite accents, there are some on both sides of the Atlantic and elsewhere across the world that I like more than others. I think my accent is a bit boring but most people don't like the sound of their own voice.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> By the way, another situation in which you use "the" before the name of a country is if you use the full name of the country, which includes the word like "republic" or "kingdom". Even if it is singular. That's why it's the UK and not just UK - because it's *the* United Kingdom. Or you say *the* French Republic. *The* Republic of Poland.


It is a standard form the something of something. Also names that include a general noun goes with the except lakes mountains and islands. There might be some exceptions. The Hague is the only exception among cities.


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## Kpc21

Also if you name motorways, it's e.g. the A2, the M1, the S14 and so on.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> It is a standard form the something of something. Also names that include a general noun goes with the except lakes mountains and islands. There might be some exceptions. The Hague is the only exception among cities.


The Dalles, Oregon. :colgate:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> Well, there is one more interesting thing. The names of cities normally go in English without an article. With an exception of the Hague. Isn't it the only city name in English that goes with "the"?
> 
> And the English teacher explained to us that it is so because also in Dutch it is "den Haag".
> 
> By the way, as I can see, in German it is... also called "den Haag", even though in this language, it's not only unusual that it has an article (you don't normally say der Berlin or die Karlsruhe), but what's more, it has... a wrong article  "Den" in German doesn't go with nouns in nominative.
> 
> I wonder how they decline it
> 
> And it looks like many languages, in which articles exist, use the article before the name of the Hague, even if they don't do it before the names of the other cities.
> 
> By the way. I sometimes see the word "before" used in the meaning "in front of" - so not for the position in time, but for the position in space. Is it obsolete?
> 
> And did I use it correctly (and not in an obsolete way) in the sentence above?
> 
> By the way, another situation in which you use "the" before the name of a country is if you use the full name of the country, which includes the word like "republic" or "kingdom". Even if it is singular. That's why it's the UK and not just UK - because it's *the* United Kingdom. Or you say *the* French Republic. *The* Republic of Poland.



"article before the name...." is fine.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> It is a standard form the something of something. Also names that include a general noun goes with the except lakes mountains and islands. There might be some exceptions. The Hague is the only exception among cities.


I would not put much effort in findind logic from the grammar of English. Things are how they are, for some unknown historical reason.


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## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> Also if you name motorways, it's e.g. the A2, the M1, the S14 and so on.


In much of the U.S., that's not true. "I-95." "495." I remember hearing a TV character who'd supposedly spent all her life in Connecticut say "the 95" once; that's just wrong. (It would work in California, where most of the TV writers live.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

MattiG said:


> I would not put much effort in findind logic from the grammar of English. Things are how they are, for some unknown historical reason.


I'm thinking* that's true in most languages.

*See? There it is again! (I forget who was talking about "I'm thinking" yesterday....)


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> In much of the U.S., that's not true. "I-95." "495" I remember hearing a TV character who'd supposedly spent all her life in Connecticut say "the 95" once; that's just wrong. (It would work in California, where most of the TV writers live.)


Maybe a British thing. Our textbook was based on British English. And I remember that there was there the rule mentioned that before the motorway numbers, we put "the".

Or maybe just because "I" is longer in pronunciation than the "European" motorway prefixes like M or A.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> ....
> Or maybe just because "I" is longer in pronunciation than the "European" motorway prefixes like M or A.


That can't be... I grew up a block off U.S. 22, and we always called it "22"; no "the," no "U.S.," just the number. I think in most of the Northeast it's usual to refer to routes by the number alone.


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## ChrisZwolle

It is my understanding that most Americans use 'I-95' or '95', without an article, except for California. And Ontario? The 401 (Four-oh-One, not four hundred one).

It may be another difference between the U.S and Europe, three-digit road numbers. In the U.S. you would say 'two-ten', in Europe it would be 'two hundred ten'. Or am I incorrect there?


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> It is my understanding that most Americans use 'I-95' or '95', without an article, except for California. And Ontario? The 401 (Four-oh-One, not four hundred one).
> 
> It may be another difference between the U.S and Europe, three-digit road numbers. In the U.S. you would say 'two-ten', in Europe it would be 'two hundred ten'. Or am I incorrect there?


Depends on what you mean by "Europe": British expression or other expressions translated to English.

Because in my country it varies a lot. Three digit roads are tertiary roads so I cannot imagine a sane opportunity to translate it to English, except some EU fund project with the JASPERS visit, but people here do it variously: e.g. 572 is sometimes five hundred seventy two, sometimes five seventy two and sometimes five seven two.


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## Kpc21

The bus numbers in Łódź are often read digit by digit by locals. Like the bus 57, which is usually called "fifty seven" ("pięćdziesiąt siedem" - it's much longer in Polish) by non-locals, is called "five-seven" ("pięć-siedem") by the locals.

And when the number consists of two the same digits, then the locals call it e.g. "the nines" ("dziewiątki") for 99.


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## andken

ChrisZwolle said:


> It may be another difference between the U.S and Europe, three-digit road numbers. In the U.S. you would say 'two-ten', in Europe it would be 'two hundred ten'. Or am I incorrect there?


In the United States the most important highways are the Two digit Interstates, specially the ones that are divisible by five. Relatively very few people refer to most three digits interstates by their number, specially because there are several of them with the same number. I-495 can be the Washington Beltway, the access to Long Island and the partial beltway of Boston.

In Europe highways are generally numbered from 1 to 99, and several highways are single digit numbers. That may account for the difference.


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## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> It is my understanding that most Americans use 'I-95' or '95', without an article, except for California. And Ontario? The 401 (Four-oh-One, not four hundred one).
> 
> It may be another difference between the U.S and Europe, three-digit road numbers. In the U.S. you would say 'two-ten', in Europe it would be 'two hundred ten'. Or am I incorrect there?




Brits handle long numbers differently than Americans. 
Us: four-ninety-five
Brits: four-nine-five
No one I know of: four hundred ninety-five*

“The” with route numbers is not limited to California. I’ve heard it on traffic reports in Buffalo (“the 190”). Canadian influence perhaps?

*This is for route numbers, building numbers, and the like. You WOULD say “four hundred and ninety-five businesses increased hiring last month,” or whatever. Although I had a math teacher who would have vetoed that “and.” Also, “four hundred and one” sounds more natural than “four hundred one.” Even my math teacher, for some reason, considered “and” correct when there was a “one” after it.

There’s an episode of Top Gear where someone says something like “the B-six-double-one-three.” The first time I heard that I had to stop to think about it and translate it in my head into “sixty-one-thirteen.”


----------



## Penn's Woods

andken said:


> In the United States the most important highways are the Two digit Interstates, specially the ones that are divisible by five. Relatively very few people refer to most three digits interstates by their number, specially because there are several of them with the same number. I-495 can be the Washington Beltway, the access to Long Island and the partial beltway of Boston.
> 
> 
> 
> In Europe highways are generally numbered from 1 to 99, and several highways are single digit numbers. That may account for the difference.




I don’t agree about people not referring to three-digit Interstates by number. It happens all the time. Even when a number is duplicated, you know when you’re in the Philadelphia area (for example) and you hear “295” in a traffic report, that they’re not talking about the one in Florida or Maine.


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## Junkie

I have a question, does any of your flats in your countries have bomb shelters? For example all of the flats that were built here after the 60's, and until the early 90's all of them have bomb shelters. It was socialism back then and all of the plans for the flats included basements in which every apartment owner has their own small basement. The connection goes through the basement.
For example in my flat which is 8 floors high there is a bomb shelter that is accessed through the basement but its in awful condition. 
There is a space for the people and access to air from outside. It has steel doors and also there is an extra exit leading out to the parking lot which is around 300 meters from the entrance to the flat. It is connected with other two entrances, because this flat has three units.
All of the old flats are like this, some are connected to the underground garages as well.
But the new buildings have no basements and no shelters since 2000's. They may only have underground parking garage.


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## Penn's Woods

Well, there’s a cheerful topic!
I don’t think anyone in the U.S. has taken bomb shelters seriously since the 60s. The general feeling is that they’re pointless. I have seen stories in recent years about celebrities and rich people discreetly building bunkers under their houses....


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## SeanT

In hungarian: person/language; Holland
Country; Hollandia
and the City og Hauge; Hága


----------



## PovilD

In Lithuanian:
People: olandai, alternative almost unused official name: *nyderlandiečiai* (I found it on Lithuanian Wikipedia  )
Country: unofficial name - Olandija, officialy - Nyderlandai.

We don't use H for the name Holland as it's used in multiple languages


----------



## Grotlaufen

Junkie said:


> I have a question, does any of your flats in your countries have bomb shelters? For example all of the flats that were built here after the 60's, and until the early 90's all of them have bomb shelters. It was socialism back then and all of the plans for the flats included basements in which every apartment owner has their own small basement. The connection goes through the basement.
> For example in my flat which is 8 floors high there is a bomb shelter that is accessed through the basement but its in awful condition.
> There is a space for the people and access to air from outside. It has steel doors and also there is an extra exit leading out to the parking lot which is around 300 meters from the entrance to the flat. It is connected with other two entrances, because this flat has three units.
> All of the old flats are like this, some are connected to the underground garages as well.
> But the new buildings have no basements and no shelters since 2000's. They may only have underground parking garage.



Sweden had a similar shelter programme during the Cold War. All new residential areas (including detatched housing) in cities had to include shelter space (either inside the house or nearby). Since ~2000 it hasn't been a requirement for new housing though.

This is a map of where to find shelter in case of SHTF:

https://msbgis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=7bf1f3f83a374312b1b873637fbfbe1e


And this is how a shelter in a suburban setting (built in the 1990's) looks like - A garage that has been built with thicker concrete walls, extra reinforced ceiling, no windows and water pipes inside for fresh water (connected to the municipal water supply). 50 persons can be sheltered here in case of SHTF:
https://goo.gl/maps/cQJudZDr11B2


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## MichiH

^^ "Hutablage" (hat shelf) in German.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Junkie said:


> Recently there was a controversy in Europe about the Holocaust law that happened in Poland. But this time I must say I really think it is right law.
> I have come along American propaganda on the web that the law is a real controversy, although the Germans don't react much.




As a Polish-American, I absolutely understand Poland’s point of view on this. I was shocked the first time I came across the term “Polish death camps.” Anything that implies that the Polish nation as a whole, or the Polish state (which did not after all exist during the war) has any responsibility for the Holocaust remotely comparable to that of the Nazis is factually untrue, is offensive, and ignores the millions of non-Jewish Poles who were victims of the Nazis and the thousands who helped Jews to the extent they could.

As an American, I very strongly believe in free speech. The First Amendment may be the thing I’m proudest of as an American. So I would oppose the Polish legislation on that ground (if my opinion mattered). If a government finds that things people are saying about the country (or about anything, really) are wrong, the remedy is not to prosecute the offenders but to show loudly, clearly and convincingly that they’re wrong. (And how they think they’re going to enforce this law on speech and writing that happens outside Poland by non-Poles...that’s just absurd.)


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> As a Polish-American, I absolutely understand Poland’s point of view on this. I was shocked the first time I came across the term “Polish death camps.” Anything that implies that the Polish nation as a whole, or the Polish state (which did not after all exist during the war) has any responsibility for the Holocaust remotely comparable to that of the Nazis is factually untrue, is offensive, and ignores the millions of non-Jewish Poles who were victims of the Nazis and the thousands who helped Jews to the extent they could.
> 
> As an American, I very strongly believe in free speech. The First Amendment may be the thing I’m proudest of as an American. So I would oppose the Polish legislation on that ground (if my opinion mattered). If a government finds that things people are saying about the country (or about anything, really) are wrong, the remedy is not to prosecute the offenders but to show loudly, clearly and convincingly that they’re wrong. (And how they think they’re going to enforce this law on speech and writing that happens outside Poland by non-Poles...that’s just absurd.)


We're having a similar debate here in Italy. Due to the recent event of a neonazi who wounded with gunshots 6 black people in Macerata, some people are arguing whether far-right politicians who openly speak against immigration have some moral responsibility over such violent acts or not, and whether hate speech and extremist political views should be banned in social media or if it should be tolerated because of freedom of speech.


----------



## cinxxx

*We also say pickup for that car type.
*Videoclip.
*I find the word for diesel very interesting, "motorina", apparently from German "Motorin", which I have never heard here.


----------



## Junkie

Penn's Woods said:


> ........has any responsibility for the Holocaust remotely comparable to that of the Nazis is factually untrue, is offensive, and ignores the millions of non-Jewish Poles who were victims of the Nazis and the thousands who helped Jews to the extent they could.


According to my understandings Poland did the right thing on this. But I think it is orientated to Germany because of the migrant crisis and the fact that they are not accepting the immigration quotas.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I was sure the government had some ulterior motive in doing this (and is not popular in Brussels), but I’m not familiar with those issues or Polish politics generally. So I just addressed the substance of the law.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^I was sure the government had some ulterior motive in doing this (and is not popular in Brussels), but I’m not familiar with those issues or Polish politics generally. So I just addressed the substance of the law.


Current Polish government is populist, conservative, and eurosceptic, so automatically none of its acts would be popular in Brussels anyway. :lol:

(I personally don't like far-right populism, but I also think it's intellectually dishonest that some 'progressive' sources put Poland and Hungary in the list of dictatorial countries together with countries such as Turkey, Iran, China, etc... doesn't matter if you don't like, but they're still multi-party democracies.)


----------



## DanielFigFoz

MichiH said:


> ^^ "Hutablage" (hat shelf) in German.


Parcel shelf in English, at least in the UK. 

And a funeral car (for transporting the dead person to their funeral) is called a hearse, but a van used for transporting dead bodies, to the undertakers for example, is called a private ambulance.


----------



## Kpc21

I am not familiar with the topic in fact, so it will be the typical Polish "I don't know anything about it, but I will tell what I think about that anyway". But for me it looks like that: German public TV sometimes happens to call the death camps like Auschwitz "Polish death camps" in the meaning that they were located on the Polish land. Which is kind of a diplomatic faux pas since they had nothing to do with Poland (the lands were occupied by Germany) and actually also Poles were their victims. But it's obvious for everyone that they were German, so it doesn't need any precising. So - it's improper, but it has nothing to do with falsifying the history. And the current government, with Kaczyński being the most important person, is making a big thing from that, calls it falsifying the history and so on. They are populists, they need to show that they are doing something, in addition, they are right-wing - so you can see the results. 

I don't like that the current government is trying to consider any other country an enemy. But an important thing is that they are actually still living the Smolensk disaster (in which, after all, died the president being the twin brother of the current leader, together with many other important people from the government and from PiS). Which is, for sure, one of the factors behind not-so-good relationships with Russia at the moment (there is quite a popular conspiracy theory behind that disaster, you probably know what one). They are also not really satisfied about the quality of the investigation that took place after the disaster, especially because Russians participated a lot in that (it was so because of international regulations about flight disasters), so e.g. they started a new investigation after they became the ruling party (it's pity that it is for the taxpayers' money).

But... Russia is for them an enemy, Germany is an enemy, as well as the EU (because they want us to admit immigrants from outside the EU whom we don't want + they have objections about the not really democratic ways of how PiS rules the country), this is definitely not good.

Still, they are populist (in addition, they do a lot of propaganda; if you watch the main news on the public TV or the public TV news channel, there is more propaganda in it than in the TV news in the communist times, they just tell you how to think), and this way, they gain more and more support in the society.

Let's see, the headlines from the opening of the today's news:
1. "This is the defense of dignity but also a matter of the defense of our elementary interests, of our future" (said by Kaczyński) - Poland will not resign from fighting about the historical truth. "It's absolutely unimaginable for me for the victims to be considered as originators" (another politician, no idea what one).
2. "It can be seen that it is a consequent acting against our country" - Ryszard Czarnecki removed from the post of the vice-president of European Parliament. "I think it's a big satisfaction is felt by those who tell on Poland" (said by a politician).
3. One about sports (our successes in ski jumping and good hopes for the Winter Olympics), doesn't matter.

When you watch those news, it starts to seem to you that everyone in the Europe (and the biggest opposition party) is against Poland and wants to weaken or destroy it.

Two days ago:
1. Sports - preparations to Winter Olympics.
2. "The project of the new law about the National Memory Institute isn't aimed at censoring our sad history" (a politician on the international forum) - the Poland-Israel dialog about the past. "The camps were German, not only Nazi but simply German" (an old lady, one of the former prisoners of the camp).
3. "The worst quality coal waste will not be allowed to be sold for households" - more money for the fight against smog. "Sometimes it's difficult to breathe in the city center" (a citizen).
Ok, here only one nationalistic headline. One about a neutral topic and one about an important social problem.

Five days ago - Friday the 2nd:
1. "Poland as a country, as a nation - wasn't co-responsible for the Holocaust" - a lesson of history for the foreign journalists. "For me it seems OK that Poland wants the world to get to know more about its history".
2. "If seven persons for ten dies for circulatory system diseases and for tumor, those domains must be helped out financially" - the Minister of Health announces creating a national oncology institute. "The medication is expensive and complex, usually based on multiple drugs".
3. About the K2 mountaineers who had some problems and had to be evacuated.

Two days earlier:
1. "Nobody from the Israel embassy mentioned that there is a problem with the new law about the National Memory Institute" - the Senate committees supported the new law without amendments. "I am a proponent of passing this law".
2. "Our politics stands on two pillars: the economy and the society" - the budget deficit over half lower than planned. "The PiS government is the most pro-social government in the whole 3rd Polish Republic history".
3. About the yearly music festival that is prepared by the public TV.

Maybe I exaggerated a little bit about the amount of propaganda in the news - but there is something in that. Those headlines don't look unbiased.

For comparison, the news of one of the commercial stations (I wanted to show the one considered to be most anti-government: Fakty by TVN, but unfortunately after listening of 90 seconds of commercials, nothing plays, so it will be from Wydarzenia by Polsat - a more neutral one) - the episode from 2 days ago, because the today's one is not yet available:
1. The government looks for a way to end the dispute with Israel. "To our national interest belongs fighting about the truth" (the prime minister). "I think not everything is lost yet" (someone interviewed by a radio station).
2. Children got defective vaccines. "Those vaccines shouldn't be dangerous" (the Minister of Health - probably, I'm not sure). "We don't know how the immunity of our child will react to that" (a mother).
3. A group of teenagers shot a women and attacked a shop. "One of them took out something looking like a pistol, he threatened the employees" (the police representative). "It's Cracow, everywhere everyone attacks someone" (a citizen).
4. Sports.
For justice: a report about the faulty vaccines was in the public TV news too, just a day later.

Friday, 2nd (the afternoon edition since there is no recording from the evening one):
1. An answer to an attack: "We will never limit the freedom of the debate about Holocaust" (the prime minister). "We recommend Poland to reanalyze this law" (a politician from the US).
2. About the mountaineers at the K2.
3. No longer a child, not yet an adult. "She cannot accept him here because he is too big" (a mother). "I felt like an item. Simply taken to the side" (someone a day before his 18th birthday who wasn't accepted by the hospital department for adults, but had also problems with the department for children since he was too old).

Two days earlier (the evening edition):
1. Speeding economy. "We are one of the fastest developing economies in Europe" (an expert). "All the young people fled from here and work abroad" (a citizen).
2. A revolt of the judges against the new director. "For the last 30 years, there was no such a situation". "It's impossible to reform the court system with people or institutions who didn't want that reform".
3. About the mountaineers.
4. Tatras National Park vs. the cable car to Kasprowy Wierch. "We want to use our standard rights" (the National Park employee). "Proposing such arguments as removing the cable car is unfair" (a representative of the cable car).

The headlines are definitely much less biased.

But if you looked at the TVN headlines... those would be probably biased in the other direction.

Of course we are democratic, and existence of different TV stations with news programs that are more biased or less biased in one direction or another only confirms that.


----------



## volodaaaa

The cycle of trains and railcars is very interesting in Europe.

For example here is a Hungarian locomotive pulling Slovak regional train that has no stops abroad. 

https://imhd.sk/ba/media/gO/00165745/imhd-sk-165745.jpg

And here, for example, is the EuroCity train Wien (A) - Záhony (H) consisting purely of Slovak cars pulled by Austrian Locomotive
http://www.vagonweb.cz/razeni/vlak....EC&cislo=147&nazev=Hortobágy&rok=2018&lang=en


----------



## Suburbanist

I am entirely against any sort of restriction on speech on the basis it might offend other people. Especially the type of "history-making through lawmaking" types.

I also reject, altogether and in its entirety, the idea of protecting by law the "honor of the nation" or things like that. 

Of course being a country that had around 1/4 of its population killed by war 80 years ago creates certain collective trauma, but that is no excuse to legislate against stupid speech.

Let the idiots speak, unimpeded.


----------



## Junkie

Kpc21 said:


> But... Russia is for them an enemy, Germany is an enemy, as well as the EU (because they want us to admit immigrants from outside the EU whom we don't want + they have objections about the not really democratic ways of how PiS rules the country), this is definitely not good.


My personal opinion is that Poland should be more respected in Europe because its a key player in stability between Russia and Europe (not speaking about southeastern Europe's Balkan region), but Eastern Europe here.

About the tragedy, I remember that and it was a disaster, I cannot believe in conspiracy but I think that it was a coincidence and just an accident and my personal opinion is that Russia didn't killed the president along with the many important figures in the plane crash in the foggy day in Smolensk airport.

So I really didn't think that Russia intentionally 'executed' the former president.


----------



## Kpc21

Well, I am sorry for the government of my country. But what can we do? Let's hope it will be better in the future.

To change the topic - too much politics here is not good.

Polish Railways sometimes borrow locomotives and carriages from the Czech Railways, especially for summer, when more trains are needed due to the holiday season. So, you can see "Czech" trains on the Polish tracks, on domestic routes in Poland, with Polish staff inside.

I am not sure if it is still so, but at least until recently it was so that some InterCity connections on the Berlin-Dresden route were serviced by the German Railways using Polish carriages from the Warsaw-Berlin train. I have read many forum posts of Germans praising the Polish train cafeteria ("Wars"), where you still can get fresh food instead of one reheated in a microwave, which is a standard in the German onboard cafeterias ("Bordbistro").

A Polish train in Poland (you can see an EN57 train unit in the background confirming that), pulled by a Polish locomotive, built up of Czech carriages:










An interesting article about travelling by train between Germany and Poland (and the difficulties regarding that): https://www.welt.de/politik/deutsch...schwer-geworden-das-Bahnfahren-zu-lieben.html

Luckily, it is, at least partially, no longer up to date, since the connections between Dresden and Wrocław are back. Already for 2 years. And many Polish local trains also enter Görlitz. Unfortunately, there are still no trains on the Wrocław-Berlin route, apart from touristic "culture trains" on weekends, organized so that they are intended for the Germans only.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Hmm, I found out that the travel mapping project has split Germany and Spain up into regions. So all data for those countries are broken and show up as 0. 

It's a lot of work to restore that data by state. It took me an hour and 75 lines just to restore the first 5 states. 

Maybe they should've let it run as a legacy code. Now people have to redo all of their Autobahn travels. A7 for example was 1 line of code if driven end-to-end, now it is 20 lines... Even code for Autobahnen that do not cross state lines have to be re-done.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> The cycle of trains and railcars is very interesting in Europe.
> 
> For example here is a Hungarian locomotive pulling Slovak regional train that has no stops abroad.
> 
> https://imhd.sk/ba/media/gO/00165745/imhd-sk-165745.jpg
> 
> And here, for example, is the EuroCity train Wien (A) - Záhony (H) consisting purely of Slovak cars pulled by Austrian Locomotive
> http://www.vagonweb.cz/razeni/vlak....EC&cislo=147&nazev=Hortobágy&rok=2018&lang=en


No photo visible with MÁV locomotive.

Here we have only ÖBB locomotives pulling the freight trains (I think they all are rented by RCA-RCC).


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Hmm, I found out that the travel mapping project has split Germany and Spain up into regions. So all data for those countries are broken and show up as 0.
> 
> It's a lot of work to restore that data by state. It took me an hour and 75 lines just to restore the first 5 states.
> 
> Maybe they should've let it run as a legacy code. Now people have to redo all of their Autobahn travels. A7 for example was 1 line of code if driven end-to-end, now it is 20 lines... Even code for Autobahnen that do not cross state lines have to be re-done.


Omg, really, Germany and SPain have dissappeared  Spain is especially hard for mapping due to complicated road numbering.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Spain has been re-done for some users: http://tm.teresco.org/forum/index.php?topic=2230.0


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ Spain has been re-done for some users: http://tm.teresco.org/forum/index.php?topic=2230.0


Yes, and I realized that only after I re-did everything by myself.

I'm not sure I like the new direction the database has taken. It's easier to manage, considering also local roads they are beginning to implement, but for national roads and motorways it makes little sense. You cannot even visualize the entire motorway network of Germany or Spain in a single map.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I agree, I'm not sure if this level of detailed mapping (all those secondary roads) is needed for all users or only for the hard-core mappers. I'm not sure if I'm going to map all secondary roads I've driven. Some are too long ago to remember precisely.


----------



## NShoaib

Road Side Service Area in Pakistan, Beautiful service area in a 3rd world country with fast food chains like Subway, KFC and Mc Donald etc.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> I am entirely against any sort of restriction on speech on the basis it might offend other people. Especially the type of "history-making through lawmaking" types.
> 
> I also reject, altogether and in its entirety, the idea of protecting by law the "honor of the nation" or things like that.
> 
> Of course being a country that had around 1/4 of its population killed by war 80 years ago creates certain collective trauma, but that is no excuse to legislate against stupid speech.
> 
> Let the idiots speak, unimpeded.


Academic/historical debate should be 100% free. History shouldn't re-written by any law. It's called negationism.

On the other hand, a line for free speech must be drawn somewhere. We shouldn't allow a Neonazi party to openly speak in favour of killing blacks, Jews, or LGBTs. And we neither should allow an Islamic leader to make proselytism for ISIS in Europe.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Academic/historical debate should be 100% free. History shouldn't re-written by any law. It's called negationism.
> 
> On the other hand, a line for free speech must be drawn somewhere. We shouldn't allow a Neonazi party to openly speak in favour of killing blacks, Jews, or LGBTs. And we neither should allow an Islamic leader to make proselytism for ISIS in Europe.


Unfortunately. Being nacist now means "to have a different point of view on certain topic". Today I read an article about how are teens offended by the Friends series. It is reportedly homophobic, xenophobic, supporting stereotypes and single-culture related. Fortunately the sample group was quite small - few teenagers on instagram Twitter, but the fact someone is looking at the World with such optics makes me goosebumps. 

EDIT: source: https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/5...-in-friends-they-wouldnt-get-away-with-today/
Someday, there will be people even offended by the sunrise. Believe me.

Our political scene is a very good example. I would call it the inflation of the term of "nacist" and its derivation. And the only people who are satisfied are real nacists. Sadly.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Unfortunately. Being nacist now means "to have a different point of view on certain topic". Today I read an article about how are teens offended by the Friends series. It is reportedly homophobic, xenophobic, supporting stereotypes and single-culture related. Fortunately the sample group was quite small - few teenagers on instagram, but the fact someone is looking at the World with such optics makes me goosebumps.
> 
> Our political scene is a very good example. I would call it the inflation of the term of "nacist" and its derivation. And the only people who are satisfied are real nacists. Sadly.


Of course the 'Friends' thing and other such example of extreme of political correctness are just plain ridiculous.
I don't want a world where we are constantly censored if we don't fit strict standards (I personally don't like jokes who attack 'disvantaged' cayegories of people, but as long as they're satyrical jokes, let's let them around). But I don't want either a world where people who seriously push others to commit crimes or hate who is 'different' are given legitimacy.


----------



## italystf

Just yesterday, there was a news about some prestigious Italian high schools that, in their ads, claims to be better than other schools because they are "virtually free of foreigners, disabled, and socially disvandaged students".
Well, I think that those ads from a public institution should be outlawed, as they legitimate the idea that foreigners, disabledm and socially disvantaged students are a burden to society, instead of people needing care.
But if a movie set in the 1960s shows blacks, women, or LGTBs treated in a politically incorrect way it's OK, because it shows what was the reality back them and it isn't aimed to discriminate against some people.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Of course the 'Friends' thing and other such example of extreme of political correctness are just plain ridiculous.
> I don't want a world where we are constantly censored if we don't fit strict standards (I personally don't like jokes who attack 'disvantaged' cayegories of people, but as long as they're satyrical jokes, let's let them around). But I don't want either a world where people who seriously push others to commit crimes or hate who is 'different' are given legitimacy.


Me neither. But being blonde or police officer (police jokes are very popular here) does not mean disadvantages. 

I do not know what is the goal of current society: Somewhere on the horizon I sense a monotonous boring world with same cities, same nationalities, same languages, same styles, same religions, absolute equal divisions between different population structures (gender, age, religious, whatever), same homour (if any) and of course correctness police who would count people you just have offended by your sentence or activity.

This does not sound very liberal or multicultural, does it? People are different. Italians are Italians, Germans are Germans, women are women, men are men. There always will be differences - ever been - it is natural. And the differences have always been the subject of humour. Fat people making jokes of bony people - Slim people making humour of fat peole.

I know a lot of blondes. All of them are capable of making fun of themselves. Thank god.

I do make fun of myself sometimes too. I have a high education but I am completely impractical in my household. My wife and family started to call me "a doctor" whenever I screw something - it is always referred to as "a doctor thing". Now I make fun of myself. I am also half-Hungarian and I have never felt offended by Hungarian stereotypes applied on me. 

People have enough intelligence (I hope) to clearly distinguish a joke from offensive.



italystf said:


> Just yesterday, there was a news about some prestigious Italian high schools that, in their ads, claims to be better than other schools because they are "virtually free of foreigners, disabled, and socially disvandaged students".
> Well, I think that those ads from a public institution should be outlawed, as they legitimate the idea that foreigners, disabledm and socially disvantaged students are a burden to society, instead of people needing care.
> But if a movie set in the 1960s shows blacks, women, or LGTBs treated in a politically incorrect way it's OK, because it shows what was the reality back them and it isn't aimed to discriminate against some people.


Whenever someone criticize a film because "the positive characters are solely white" or whenever someone assess a political party by their men:women ration and complains about it, I automatically suppose they are racists/sexists (btw. I do use singular they whenever it is necessary). Because that is the only thing they care about (not the quality of the film nor political programme of the party).


----------



## italystf

I agree, jokes are jokes, and average intelligent people are able to distinguish between them and reality. I may laught at a joke about black people or police officers, and at the same time thinking that there are many intelligent black people or that police plays an important role in my country.

The problem are people who truly believe that certain categories are inferior to others, and thus legitimate bullying or harassement against them. Being, for example, black or gay, isn't a disvantage in an ideal world. But in a world where a sizeable percentage of people is racist/homofobic, being black/gay would give you additional problems that whites/straights don't face: for example being denied a job or being insulted on the street.
I think education about tolerance is much better than censorship, although extremely offensive and intolerant ideas must still be censored, especially if they come from public bodies.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Some people are offended by just about anything. Even by the term 'mankind' or the name of a province like Manitoba. These people are a vocal minority but they dominate public discourse in the media. 

A while ago I've read about talkshows in the Netherlands. They are dominated by progressive, higher than average educated women from the inner cities which account for maybe 1% of the population but totally dominate talkshows and the media. I think this only feeds into people's distrust of traditional media. 

In the Netherlands, the public broadcaster (NOS) reports on racism, climate change or social justice every single day. Sure some of it is newsworthy but the reporting so overkill you can qualify it as indoctrination. It's no wonder that people's trust in the mainstream media is at all-time lows. But there is no reliable alternative either, "alternative media" are usually even more biased.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> I think education about tolerance is much better than censorship, although extremely offensive and intolerant ideas must still be censored, especially if they come from public bodies.


It is essential to bring your children up by applying a simple rule: *everyone deserves respect because we are humans*. Some people deserves more respect, some less. But not because they are members of some groups (racial, religious, whatever). The black guy standing with his daughter beside at the platform is not worth respect because he is black, or disrespect because he is black or man. He deserves it because he is behaving good, taking care of his child and is polite.





ChrisZwolle said:


> In the Netherlands, the public broadcaster (NOS) reports on racism, climate change or social justice every single day. Sure some of it is newsworthy but the reporting so overkill you can qualify it as indoctrination. It's no wonder that people's trust in the mainstream media is at all-time lows. But there is no reliable alternative either, "alternative media" are usually even more biased.


That is absolutely right. The problem also lies in understating and exaggeration of some "news".


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Some people are offended by just about anything. Even by the term 'mankind' or the name of a province like Manitoba. These people are a vocal minority but they dominate public discourse in the media.
> 
> A while ago I've read about talkshows in the Netherlands. They are dominated by progressive, higher than average educated women from the inner cities which account for maybe 1% of the population but totally dominate talkshows and the media. I think this only feeds into people's distrust of traditional media.
> 
> In the Netherlands, the public broadcaster (NOS) reports on racism, climate change or social justice every single day. Sure some of it is newsworthy but the reporting so overkill you can qualify it as indoctrination. It's no wonder that people's trust in the mainstream media is at all-time lows. But there is no reliable alternative either, "alternative media" are usually even more biased.


Same here. For example feminism. I support women who complain about real discriminations, who claim they should have the same job opportunities of men, etc... But some feminist claims are plain ridiculous, for example those seeking to ban ads with female models, as they think they represent the "exploitation of women". No woman get exploited for posing as a model, as they freely choose to do that and get money for it.
I agree that men and women, whites and blacks, straights and LGBTs, should have the same opportunities if they have the same merit. But it's not that between a man and a woman, or between a white and a black, or between a straight and a LGBT, we should always choose the woman, the black, or the LGBT to be inclusive. We should choose the most competent and the most honest.


----------



## Kpc21

Concerning the racism, there was recently such an incident in Poland: https://wroclaw.onet.pl/rasistowski-incydent-w-legnickim-autobusie/q8tnzgx

A women passenger felt afraid of another women passenger, who was wearing a burka (just because that woman was Muslim). She asked the driver to ask that women in burka to leave the bus explaining she feared her. It was nonsense, I may understand that a woman may be afraid of a Muslim-looking man, but of a women? The driver, of course, didn't do what the passenger asked for, so she left the bus on the next stop. The driver reported the incident to his boss and it ended up with the director of the public transport company apologizing the Muslim woman for the behavior of the Polish woman.

But such situations sometimes happen. People simply fear the unknown. And a Catholic priest is OK. Because people are accustomed to them.



italystf said:


> But some feminist claims are plain ridiculous, for example those seeking to ban ads with female models


THIS would be a discrimination


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I agree, I'm not sure if this level of detailed mapping (all those secondary roads) is needed for all users or only for the hard-core mappers. I'm not sure if I'm going to map all secondary roads I've driven. Some are too long ago to remember precisely.


It's not about the secondary roads mapping per se, I appreciate it and I'm going to use this to the best of my memories 
It's about the main networks being fractioned into regions: Germany's A7, for instance, is divided into a lot of stretches because it crossed the border between Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg many times... it makes no sense.


----------



## Kpc21

How do such things happen in Germany?

In Poland, the cows taken to the fields in summer for feeding are normally attached on a chain (long enough so that the cow may move around and eat grass from different points) to a pole hammered into the ground:




























So how it is possible that a cow walks freely and specifically enters the railway tracks?


----------



## Junkie

Kpc21 said:


> Concerning the racism, there was recently such an incident in Poland: https://wroclaw.onet.pl/rasistowski-incydent-w-legnickim-autobusie/q8tnzgx
> 
> A women passenger felt afraid of another women passenger, who was wearing a burka (just because that woman was Muslim). She asked the driver to ask that women in burka to leave the bus explaining she feared her. It was nonsense, I may understand that a woman may be afraid of a Muslim-looking man, but of a women? The driver, of course, didn't do what the passenger asked for, so she left the bus on the next stop. The driver reported the incident to his boss and it ended up with the director of the public transport company apologizing the Muslim woman for the behavior of the Polish woman.
> 
> But such situations sometimes happen. People simply fear the unknown. And a Catholic priest is OK. Because people are accustomed to them.
> 
> 
> THIS would be a discrimination


I don't think that a woman wearing burka have been spotted in Poland. You probably mean 'Dupatta' which is covering the head only and the face is clearly visible. This is common everywhere in the Balkans by the native Muslim women who didn't came as immigrants from the Middle East. 

Real Burka in the Balkan is almost impossible to spot, but Dupattas are everywhere.

So aside this even if what you say is true if this women is European citizen how common can Poland forbid these people to walk the streets?

If the European community (in which Poland is a full member of all zones) is happy because its citizens can work or travel abroad without any restrictions, then how come Muslim Europeans cannot do the same in Poland?

I want to ask the same question for Slovakia and Hungary since these countries are the loudest, shouting that Muslims should be banned and at the same time want to enjoy all the rights their citizens have, but denying others.


----------



## Kpc21

Junkie said:


> So aside this even if what you say is true if this women is European citizen how common can Poland forbid these people to walk the streets?


It can't and it shouldn't.

I don't know if it was a real burka (that one which hides everything except for eyes) or its more "liberal" equivalent - but why does it matter?

This is an incident which happened but it shouldn't.

It also shouldn't be forbidden for women to wear traditional clothing. Even at work (except for safety reasons).

But it should be forbidden for their husbands to force them to do it - as it happens in some Muslim countries. Because it's against the foundations of the European law.

It should be up to the specific person what he or she will wear.


----------



## Junkie

Kpc21 said:


> Because it's against the foundations of the European law.


How is wearing burka or equivalent to that one 'against the European law'.

As far as I know every country can independently decide just like a normal law that is different in many countries no matter your 'union'.

In Europe only France, Belgium and the Netherlands have appropriate laws. Poland doesn't have it so its legal.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I was listening to an interview on Dutch radio about car scrapping, or better, recycling. I wasn't aware so much of a car can be recycled today. They say that in the Netherlands, 98.7% of a car is recycled. According to Wikipedia, the 'current' recycling rate is 75%, so that would mean the Netherlands is far ahead of other countries?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Junkie said:


> I don't think that a woman wearing burka have been spotted in Poland. You probably mean 'Dupatta' which is covering the head only and the face is clearly visible. This is common everywhere in the Balkans by the native Muslim women who didn't came as immigrants from the Middle East.
> 
> Real Burka in the Balkan is almost impossible to spot, but Dupattas are everywhere.
> 
> So aside this even if what you say is true if this women is European citizen how common can Poland forbid these people to walk the streets?
> 
> If the European community (in which Poland is a full member of all zones) is happy because its citizens can work or travel abroad without any restrictions, then how come Muslim Europeans cannot do the same in Poland?
> 
> I want to ask the same question for Slovakia and Hungary since these countries are the loudest, shouting that Muslims should be banned and at the same time want to enjoy all the rights their citizens have, but denying others.




Quebec, of all places, recently passed a law requiring people to have their faces uncovered when “receiving public services.” Including riding city buses.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Junkie said:


> How is wearing burka or equivalent to that one 'against the European law'.
> 
> As far as I know every country can independently decide just like a normal law that is different in many countries no matter your 'union'.
> 
> In Europe only France, Belgium and the Netherlands have appropriate laws. Poland doesn't have it so its legal.




He’s saying (I think) that for a husband or father to force a woman to wear it is against European law.


----------



## italystf

Junkie said:


> How is wearing burka or equivalent to that one 'against the European law'.
> 
> As far as I know every country can independently decide just like a normal law that is different in many countries no matter your 'union'.
> 
> In Europe only France, Belgium and the Netherlands have appropriate laws. Poland doesn't have it so its legal.


In Italy is illegal to be in public places with your face covered. Chador, that covers hair only, is legal, while burqa and niqab aren't.


----------



## Penn's Woods

So, apparently the European Parliament wants to end summer time? Those 10 p.m. (or later) sunsets in July in the Benelux and northern France are one of the best things about summer in Europe....


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> I was listening to an interview on Dutch radio about car scrapping, or better, recycling. I wasn't aware so much of a car can be recycled today. They say that in the Netherlands, 98.7% of a car is recycled. According to Wikipedia, the 'current' recycling rate is 75%, so that would mean the Netherlands is far ahead of other countries?


Many still usable parts aren't recycled at all, they are simply resold as spare parts. I don't know how they are counted.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I agree, it would be better to stay in summer time all year long. I rather have the clock switch than 9 p.m. sunsets in the summer. (which means 7:30 in late August, it's just stupid).

The long daylight after dinner is one of the best things about summer. It would be detrimental for tourism as well, because in most countries the entire summer vacation is after the summer solstice. It would kill tourism in early September, with sunsets at 7 and accompanying chilly evenings.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^The latest sunsets we get in Philadelphia are at about 8:35.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The farther north, the later the sunsets in the summer. In the Netherlands, the latest sunsets are after 10. It gets completely dark here, but in Southern Norway the sun does set but the sky remains light. You can read a book at 2 a.m. without needing to turn the lights on.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Right. I’m just below (like about three miles below) 40° North.


----------



## Suburbanist

I lived through my first >60 ° winter. I think only the 20 days before and after solstice really bothered me as too short. Days off feel kinda useless when it also rains. Now the daylight is enough, and the sun is no longer at too low of an angle anymore.

I'm happy to live in a house with sun exposition from the SE and SW side (the former a little useless because of mountains) and a corner bedroom. 

It's been snowing way above average though. All peaks around the city are snowcapped ( 300-680m high).


----------



## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> So, apparently the European Parliament wants to end summer time? Those 10 p.m. (or later) sunsets in July in the Benelux and northern France are one of the best things about summer in Europe....


The most likely outcome would be shifting France and everything east currnetlt in GMT+1 to GMT+2. Which is the time zone where we stay during 30 weeks per year already. 

Spain has long been out of synch and might stay on GMT+1 where Portugal, Ireland and UK should also shift to.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Right now in early February it's already getting light around 7:30 a.m. If we moved into summer time year-round, that would be 8:30 a.m. Only around the winter solstice it would stay dark until mid-morning. I'd say that's an easy trade-off for having long summer evenings. There aren't a lot of outdoor activities in early winter mornings anyway. 

Personally I don't have a big issue with switching the clock two times per year, but staying in winter time year-round would be my least favorable option.


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> He’s saying (I think) that for a husband or father to force a woman to wear it is against European law.


Exactly.



italystf said:


> In Italy is illegal to be in public places with your face covered. Chador, that covers hair only, is legal, while burqa and niqab aren't.


It makes some sense. Someone does something illegal, say, steals something in a shop and cannot be recognized because of the hidden face.

Now, the criminals hide their faces only if they are doing something really serious, like, say, a bank robbery. If it becomes more common to hide one's face - then it becomes much easier for a criminal to hide.

Hiding the face is simply not compatible with the European legal systems.



Penn's Woods said:


> So, apparently the European Parliament wants to end summer time? Those 10 p.m. (or later) sunsets in July in the Benelux and northern France are one of the best things about summer in Europe....


Poland started discussing about that already a few months ago. And, apparently, most politicians, of various political options, were for that.

Although it would be rather ending the winter time and staying in the summer time forever. Or in other words, ending the summer time, but with shifting to another time zone.


----------



## Junkie

italystf said:


> In Italy is illegal to be in public places with your face covered. Chador, that covers hair only, is legal, while burqa and niqab aren't.


I think this what you say is not true, or at least it is misspelled from you. There is no burka ban law in Italy as a nationwide law. Maybe some province or something, regarding the burka exactly in Italy its legal.

About the Chador I can tell you that in many countries in the region for example in Macedonia and the neigbouring countries, many old Christian woman wear covering of the head, it is like traditional clothing.


----------



## Kpc21

Junkie said:


> About the Chador I can tell you that in many countries in the region for example in Macedonia and the neigbouring countries, many old Christian woman wear covering of the head, it is like traditional clothing.


The head but not the face.


----------



## italystf

Junkie said:


> I think this what you say is not true, or at least it is misspelled from you. There is no burka ban law in Italy as a nationwide law. Maybe some province or something, regarding the burka exactly in Italy its legal.
> 
> About the Chador I can tell you that in many countries in the region for example in Macedonia and the neigbouring countries, many old Christian woman wear covering of the head, it is like traditional clothing.


I did some research. The law n. 152 of 1975 forbids to stay in public with your face covered without valid reasons. Valid reasons may be helmets while riding motorbikes, facial protections for some types of works or sports. Now judges consider religion to be a valid reason, so burqas and niqabs are tolerated. Neverthless, they aren't common either, most muslim women just cover their hair. In some regions or cities burqas and niqabs are banned.


----------



## Kpc21

How do the financing of the regional and "inter-village" bus connections look like in your countries?

I know it's developed very well in the countries like Germany, Czech Republic or Slovakia. When I was on Crete, the public transport there was also organized very well. Some, I believe, don't have such bus lines at all, like e.g. the USA.

How it looks like in Poland - I described a few times in the public transport section, recently - yesterday, while posting an article about the bad situation of such transport in Poland. And the planned legislation that is supposed to help organize financing of such connections:



Kpc21 said:


> An interesting article about the problems of the regional and local bus transport in Poland. I translated it for you.
> 
> Short introduction to present the background. Most of the suburban, regional and inter-city bus connections in the communist times were operated by a single state-owned enterprise, called PKS. Afer 1989, the PKS (actually, its bus section, as the company was also responsible for the freight transport in trucks) got divided into over 100 smaller or bigger transportation companies created from each of their local departments.
> 
> Those companies, still called PKS, but with the name of the town or city where they are located, are being successively privatized - and this process is almost finished, but there is still just a few PKS'es in Poland which still belong to the state.
> 
> Whether privatized or not, the PKS'es after the change of political systems had and still have a lot of problems. One side of it is that they operated the connections on different routes. Some of them were affordable, some not. And some became unaffordable when the competition of private cars as well as of small private bus operators, which appeared on the market in the new economic reality (and often carried people faster, more frequently and for lower prices - using minibuses) emerged.
> 
> In "normal" western countries, the bus connections which are important for the local societies but unaffordable for the operators are subsidized. In Poland, in the communist times, there was no such a problem at all since everything was state-owned, so covering the loses of the company from the state budget was a natural thing. Furthermore, the PKS'es usually managed to cover the costs of unaffordable routes with the incomes from the affordable ones. And it shouldn't be also forgotten that in the times when only the chosen ones had private cars and, in some period, the gasoline was subject to rationing, the buses were, simply, practically always full, even in the countryside, and often people wanting to get somewhere had problems simply not being taken by an overcrowded bus.
> 
> Another side is that the management in the PKS companies was often still thinking in the ways which had been effective in the previous system but were no longer in the free-market economy. They continued providing transportation services even on unaffordable and not subsidized routes. Often, in course of the privatization, they were getting overtaken by the employees. Who were interested mainly in keeping their workplaces (taking into account high levels of unemployment in Poland in the 1990s and still in the 2000s), without thinking about the financial condition of their employers. Stealing fuel or not printing tickets and taking the money paid by the passenger to the own pocket by the drivers also wasn't uncommon and it wasn't really controlled in many of the PKS'es. Which had to lead to an economical fall-down of most of those companies.
> 
> Throughout the years, the PKS companies were slowly closing next connections and also next ones were simply going bankrupt, or getting taken over by developers who were interesting e.g. in building a shopping mall in an attractive place in the city center, in which there was a bus terminal. Recently, this phenomenon has sped up a lot. Partially due to improvements of the railway, partially because there is not enough drivers, partially just because of the time, because of the progressing taking the market over by other bus carriers and increasing popularity of private cars.
> 
> http://wyborcza.pl/7,155287,22938730,pks-y-staczaja-sie-a-coraz-wiecej-pasazerow-jest-odcietych.html
> 
> 
> 
> *PKS'es are rolling down and more and more passengers are cut off from the public transport. The postponed legislation will regulate the market?*
> Edyta Bryła, February 2nd, 2018
> 
> The PKS'es are cutting their connections in an avalanche speed and the white spots on the transport map of Poland grow. The government is thinking about how to persuade the carriers to operate on the unaffordable routes without subsidizing the bus connections.
> 
> The previous year, from the bus timetables disappeared hundreds of regional and long-distance connections. The loudest was the exit of the British Arriva from Bieszczady mountains, depriving this area of public transport just before the beginning of the last year's holidays. "It is difficult. The small villages not located on the main transportation routes are totally deprived of public transport. There is no service on weekends and on week days, the offer is residual", says Igor Wójciak, an inhabitant of Rzepedzia (Rzepedź?), a village in the Komańcza municipality.
> 
> But also other Arriva connections disappeared, for example from Mielec in the sub-Carpathian region or two pairs of buses on the Chełmno - Toruń route. The Kołobrzeg - Łódź connection is also suspended.
> 
> *Excluded from the transport*
> 
> Other companies are also cutting, altogether, hundreds of connections. Dozens of them were cancelled in autumn by PKS Częstochowa, a state-owned company; it also resigned from long-distance routes. "We were cancelling the connection quicker than we informed the passengers about that", admits the president of the company, Artur Piekacz.
> 
> The PKS Ostrołęka, owned by Mobilis Group, resigned from over a dozen connections. "Not all the people have cars and not everyone has a driving licence. They are often old and sick people. Closing such, maybe less affordable, lines, we simply exclude those people. We exclude the elderly and those who live in the countryside", said a county council member Bogdan Bagiński, fighting for restoring the connections in Ostrołęka, to "Tygodnik Ostrołęcki" (a local weekly newspaper or magazine).
> 
> Also PKS Mława and PKS Ciechanów belonging to the Mobilis Group closed a few dozens of connections each. The private PKS Pszczyna cancelled the buses on the routes Wadowice - Bielsko-Biała and Wadowice - Katowice, which was used mainly by the students studying in the Upper Silesia. The voivodeship-owned PKS Nova suspended over 10 connections between Białystok and Siemiatycze. The private Feniks (formerly PKS Żary) closed two connections from Żary to Poznań and back. PKS Kalisz cancelled all the connections to Wrocław, Sieradz, Ostrów Wielkopolski and Konin and one to Poznań. PKS Konin also suspended over 30 connections in Turek county and a few of them were shortened.
> 
> *The difficult marked*
> 
> There was for sure much more such cancellations, because the companies have to deal with various problems. Many are missing drivers, in PKS Częstochowa even 80 of them. The reason are the financial problems caused by the decrease of the number of customers. This is a vicious circle: the decreases cause the next loses and cut-downs, because of which the passengers resign from the transport.
> 
> Andrzej Padziński, the operational director of the state-owned bus carrier PKS Polonus, told us in December that the PKS operators lose their share in the transport especially in the eastern Poland. The small minibus private operators happen to be a problem. They often do not guarantee regular services and operate, for example, only when it is affordable for them, riding just before the PKS bus. Also, they take the customers from the regular carriers on big parts of long routes, pushing them out from the market. "Biting the bus companies by small operators is a challenge even for a big player, who wants to fight for the market, and the effect is white transportation spots, because the weakened long lines disappear and tiny carriers eat the cream on short sections", claims Padziński.
> 
> *The law on collective public transport*
> 
> Hope is in the constantly changed law on public transport. Theoretically, it started being valid 7 years ago, but the time when it actually does, was postponed already 2 times. According to the recent decisions, it will be valid from December 2019. It is supposed to regulate the bus market and help removing the transportation white spots - the places without any public transport. How?
> 
> All the local governments will have to prepare transportation plans - currently, it is obligatory only for the bigger ones [and they usually focus in them on railway only - my remark] - and based on them, to contract the public transport on their area to the carriers. They will be probably being chosen in tenders.
> 
> One thing will not change - the state is still not going to subsidize the bus transport, as it is in case of railway [my remark: the state subsidizes only the long-distance train connections, the regional ones are subsidized by the voivodeship governments]. It's exceptional in the European scale that those services are not subsidized and the carriers operate only commercially. As an effect, they service only the main, most affordable routes and neglect the others.
> 
> There is an idea how to solve the problem. According to the new proposals of the legislation, the local governments will have to contract servicing routes of various popularity, to balance out the loses. "In the packages, there will be both the popular routes and departure times, as well those with less passengers. Before the tender, the carriers competing for the packages will be able to assess if such a package is affordable for them. However, there is a risk that in many regions, they will be weak lines only", says Michał Wolański, an expert from Main Trade School in Warsaw, who was in the team preparing the new legislation until the last summer.
> 
> *The discounts don't help the transport*
> 
> But the new law doesn't solve many problems. "The transport will be organized separately by municipalities, voivodeships and counties and many of them will have to divide the networks between many carriers, each of which will sell its own tickets", says Wolański.
> 
> To his disappointment, the law maintains subsidizing by the state the discounts for the students and for the disabled. According to him, they are a source of pathology. It's easy for the carriers to do frauds on compensations - they are of the amount of 650 mln PLN yearly! - because there is no control of how many tickets with discounts are registered by them on the cash registers.
> 
> Secondly, although theoretically, the money for the transport flow, they have no influence on its quality or range of the connections grid. By the matter of thing, most people using the discounts will be in the places where there is most passengers in general, so on the most popular routes. "Paradoxically, the state pays more for the routes which are most popular instead of those with less passengers", explains Jakub Majewski from the ProKolej charity.
> 
> Michał Wolański claims that it would be better to spend the money from the discounts for the local governments for contracting the carriage. "Then, the local governments would really feel competent to organize the transport", he says. Of course, it doesn't mean that those entitled to the discounts would lose them. "They would still be granted, but the carriers applying for the subsidized connections would have to calculate them in, like it is in the city transport", explains Wolański.
> 
> *Transporting people in junk buses?*
> 
> A problem might be also the five-year contracts - too short for investments that would have to be taken by the carriers, especially if they wanted to apply for EU co-funding of new buses, also because of the five-year duration of the EU projects.
> 
> In the works on the new legislation participate also the representatives of the small minibus operators. They have already won that the age of the vehicles will not be taken into account in the choice of the operators. This may mean allowing the service with old buses and minibuses.
> 
> According to the statement sent by the government of the Lesser Poland (Małopolskie) voivodeship, we read, such criteria destroy the fight of the officials with the air pollution. "The improvement of the air quality and elimination of its pollution, or at least its limitation, is directly related to the technical condition of the vehicles".
Click to expand...

Basically, the biggest problem with such transport in Poland is that even if it exists, it's totally unorganized. There is many such bus lines that don't have timetables at the stops, neither in the Internet, and they are often operated by small operators: just the owner, literally a few drivers and a few minibuses. Therefore, they often depart not from the bus stations, but from random stops, or even private parking lots in the town or city. Or by the remnants of the former communist PKS, with still the communist mentality, in which the service wasn't for the client, but the client was for the service.

What is the situation with the local bus lines in your countries?


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Basically, the biggest problem with such transport in Poland is that even if it exists, it's totally unorganized. There is many such bus lines that don't have timetables at the stops, neither in the Internet, and they are often operated by small operators: just the owner, literally a few drivers and a few minibuses. Therefore, they often depart not from the bus stations, but from random stops, or even private parking lots in the town or city. Or by the remnants of the former communist PKS, with still the communist mentality, in which the service wasn't for the client, but the client was for the service.
> 
> What is the situation with the local bus lines in your countries?


Apparently you made a bachelor study on this issue :lol:

Long story short:
Public passenger transport consists of three parts:


infrastructure,
operation and
organization.
and thus can be divided accordingly.


By infrastructure we have two types:


road transport (buses) and
rail transport.
Unfortunately English language does not know correct terms and therefore German comes in handy.


There are some types of rail transport (ein Bahnwerkehr):
trolleybus transport (Oberleitungsbusen), tram transport (ein Stressenbahnen), rail transport (ein Eisenbahnverkehr), ropeways (Seilbahnen) nad special rail transport (former mine railways, forest railways, isolated systems).


By operation we distinguish two types:


commercial transport and,
public service obligation transport.
The second type is more frequent and is commissioned by public administration body to provide the basic transport services (as the possession of car is limited). PSO is provided in times and areas where it would be unprofitable for commercial operators, but yet necessary. Public administration decides the operator to serve the certain lines and pay the operator the loss. From 2019 the PSO operators must be the subject of competition (public procurement).



The first type is for operators who think they can add some value on existing line. They just apply for a licence at responsible public administration body and when there is no competition with PSO lines and no conflict with the momentary capacity of the lines, the body issues a licence. The operator is borne all risks and hazards.


By organization there are three types:


urban transport (trams, trolleybuses, buses) - the responsibility is borne by cities who reimburse the loss,
regional transport (coaches) - the responsibility is borne by regional bodies,
rail transport (trains) - the responsibility is borne by the ministry of transport.
The most user-friendly is urban transport in most cities. It has regular intervals of departure, perfectly memorable times of departure (e.g. the bus leaves every 15th, 30th, 45th and 00th minute of an hour), clear routes (with least exceptions). In every hour the interval is always the same (we call it literally the "beat transport"). Of course the intervals differ in rush our and between (we call this time "a saddle", because when you plot a line chart of number of departures per hour, it resembles a saddle). But the gaps between departures are retained.



Trains are basically the same but the departures are not that frequent. Although there are some illogical exceptions (all trains on the same route have the same gap between departures and stop at same stops except one who left out certain stop).


The worse is regional transport. No same gaps between departures. One departure e.g. is 6:53, the other 7:14 and next 7:36. A million of exceptions. Most of routes copy train lines and are rather competitive than complementary. Then we have so called clean-up routes that has millions of stops and incredible quantity of exceptions. Moreover you can enter only through front door and you have to buy a ticket from a driver which makes the stop accommodation too long and increase the travel time. No bus lanes ever.

Here is a graphical plan of the regional transport of Bratislava region made by me. Look at the route no. 250 on the left part of the plan. It has 8 departures a day but its own "network". Pure mess. Last year we had a regional elections. Hope things will get better.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In my province they spend € 35 million per year on the provincial road network and € 90 million on public transport. But here's the catch, while two-thirds of funding goes to public transport, it accounts for only 2% of trips in the province.

Though that mainly says something about the lack of investment in the provincial road network. My province (Overijssel) has not done any capital project over the past 10 years, only maintenance.


----------



## MichiH

volodaaaa said:


> Unfortunately English language does not know correct terms and therefore German comes in handy.
> 
> There are some types of rail transport (ein Bahnwerkehr):
> trolleybus transport (Oberleitungs*busen*), tram transport (ein Stressenbahnen), rail transport (ein Eisenbahnverkehr), ropeways (Seilbahnen) nad special rail transport (former mine railways, forest railways, isolated systems).


There are some types of rail transport (Bahnverkehr):
trolleybus transport (Oberleitungsbusse), tram transport (Straßenbahnen), rail transport (Eisenbahnen), ropeways (Seilbahnen) nad special rail transport (former mine railways, forest railways, isolated systems).

Never use "ein" ("a") here!

And please don't write so much about your thoughts... "Busen" are boobs...


----------



## volodaaaa

MichiH said:


> And please don't write so much about your thoughts... "Busen" are boobs...


Damn. You've caught me red handed   btw. Thanks.


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> Apparently you made a bachelor study on this issue :lol:


Well, it's just interesting for me 

So in what Poland is different or similar:

- only actual trains (no trams) and metro systems (we have one, in Warsaw), also the separated ones (we also have one, the WKD in Warsaw + maybe you can also count the SKM in the Tri-City: Gdańsk, Sopot, Gdynia which also has own tracks on some sections) are classified as the railway; the trams are not and they operate according to the road traffic regulations

- we also have division between commercial and public service transport - but the problem is, the public bus service transport exists almost only in urban areas (cities, some towns); for railway it's different as almost all the railway connections, also many long-distance ones, are public service; the places with public service bus transport in the countryside are rather exceptions

- the new regulations are supposed to make it obligatory for the local authorities to organize local public service bus transport - the problem is, however, how to force them to do it

Short explanation: the idea which was present in the first version of the law, introduced yet by the PO a few years before the moment when it would become valid, was to limit the official price discounts for the students and the disabled only to public service connections. But it didn't work, most local authorities did not plan regional or local public service bus connections anyway (only railway ones), or did not introduce transportation plans at all although they were obliged to do it. So there was a situation in which the discounts would just disappear from the bus connections, which was not acceptable (especially taking into account that it started to be quite loud about that and it was just before the elections to the parliament), so the moment of this law coming into force was postponed to the next year.

Because that solution did not work, the new government started working on this law and trying to improve it. The current idea is that there will be no commercial bus connections within the voivodeships at all, everything will be public service, only the connections crossing voivodeships borders (or international ones) will be allowed to be commercial. So the regions and the local authorities will have no choice but to organize bus transport by themselves. The operators will be chosen in tenders (unless the administration division unit has its own operator which belongs to it - it is usually so in big cities and also some voivodeships and counties have overtaken former PKS companies) and the idea is that the current operators (both the former PKS local departments and the new private ones) will take part in those tenders and win some bus connections for themselves. As a result, there should be more bus connections, so both operators and passengers should be happy. The lines will be admitted to the operators in packages containing similar amount of affordable and non-affordable connections.

Some people argue that the current system, with the bus connections functioning only on commercial rules, is good. But it isn't as the operators provide the services only on the affordable routes, which leads to social problems (people who can't drive or own cars are kind of excluded from the society) and to increased car traffic, which results in traffic jams in cities (the commuters must use cars to get to the city to work) and air pollution.

Another problem is the quality of the current commercial bus transport. The old (former PKS) operators usually use used-up rolling stock in form of Autosan H9 (this was really a successful and very good bus model for its times, initially in the 1960s/1970s also very modern one, but for the current standards, it's just obsolete) or second-hand already quite old buses imported from the western Europe, usually from Germany, the technical condition of which is often not good. The new private operators sometimes even invest in new rolling stock (but some also use old and used-up vehicles), but the problem is that they almost always use minibuses only, which are too small for the routes they operate on.

On the best routes, they even often very frequent departures, like every 15 minutes, but the problem is that they usually don't follow any timetables or they often change them without publishing the changes to the passengers - which doesn't matter in the rush hours, but is problematic in the evenings or on weekends when the departures are rare.

The problem is also that on the routes with several such private operators, they fight with each other by departing not according to the timetable but just before the competitor's departure, so that they collect all the passengers that should be taken by the competitor, while the competitor stays with no passengers and no money from tickets. This is also one of the reason of the fall-down of the former PKS companies - they wanted to do it according to law and they didn't do such things to other operators, but the other operators did that to them. So they just got thrown out of the market.

Another problem is that there is practically no ticketing systems integration. Each of those carriers issues own tickets and e.g. if there is a few companies on a route, if you buy a monthly ticket, you become limited to only one of the companies. And you have to buy separate tickets e.g. for the bus that takes you to the city and for the public transport in the city (the latter is a public service, but the former isn't).

This was supposed to be a short explanation... and I ended up with 7 paragraphs. It really starts looking like a BSc thesis... Let's continue with the comparison.

- the urban transport is in Poland a separate category with some special laws concerning it - for example, there are different rules concerning the obligatory discounts

- concerning the rail transport, the government itself is responsible only for the long-distance connections, tying the big cities in different voivodeships; for the regional connections, the specific voivodeships are responsible - which, again, results with lack of ticketing system integration, you have to buy separate tickets for the regional train and for the long-distance train - although the current government is trying to do something with that and if they succeed, there will be integration at least in the railway field,

- here also the public transport in the cities is most friendly (although there are also urban lines that depart e.g. every hour); in the railway transport, the railway infrastructure manager (PKP PLK) makes it impossible to introduce the same departure times in each hour, some railway operators are trying to introduce such a thing - but the PKP PLK always destroys that by shifting each departure a few minutes back or forward; furthermore, the railway timetable is changed every 3 or 4 months - the PLK explains that it is so because of too many modernization and renovation works on the tracks, but it is so already for quite a few years and it doesn't seem to be going to change.

An interesting case are also the long-distance bus connections. Until recently, the long-distance buses were quite slow as they were stopping in most towns and there was no motorways. Still, many people chose them since the state of the railway infrastructure wasn't better, people were afraid of trains as the opinion about them was that they are dirty, slow, often have delays, you can get stuck in the middle of nowhere for a long time for unknown reasons or that you will have to stand all the time during a 10-hour train journey because the train is overcrowded. Then, two factors combined revolutionized the long-distance bus travels in Poland.

A British businessman Brian Souter, which already owned some bus companies in different parts of the world, created a company in Poland, named PolskiBus.com. The business model of this operator was totally different than of the operators already present on the Polish market. They sold the tickets only online, using a dynamic sales system similarly to the low-cost airlines (with the cheapest tickets for the price of 1 PLN = 0,20~0,25 EUR - of course, it was difficult to get such a ticket, but this was good for the marketing and the tickets were anyway very cheap) and connected the biggest cities only, limiting the number of intermediate stops as much as possible, often taking advantage of the new motorways (which are the second factor here).

Quickly, they become the market leader in Poland in the long-distance bus lines. Later, they also started integrating the services of other bus operators under their brand. Now they are during the process of joining FlixBus - so there will be no more those red coaches which revolutionized the market on the Polish roads, now they are becoming green. In the meanwhile, the railway, which had to compete with this bus operator, also improved its services very much, invested a lot in the rolling stock, so as a result, Souter's entering Poland turned out to quite positive for the public transport in the country.

Why do I always have to write so long posts on such topics?


----------



## Kpc21

MichiH said:


> There are some types of rail transport (Bahnverkehr):
> trolleybus transport (Oberleitungsbusse), tram transport (Straßenbahnen), rail transport (Eisenbahnen), ropeways (Seilbahnen) nad special rail transport (former mine railways, forest railways, isolated systems).
> 
> Never use "ein" ("a") here!
> 
> And please don't write so much about your thoughts... "Busen" are boobs...


Well, I always had problem with creating the plural from der Bus, and I had to look it up. Is it Buse, Busse, Büse, Büsse?

Even not knowing that trap


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## CNGL

MichiH said:


> And please don't write so much about your thoughts... "Busen" are boobs...


:lol: This reminds me when I was creating one of my fictional metros, I named one of the stations "Sarasa", which is a surname somewhat common around my area, without knowing it actually means "faggοt". Of course the surname has a different etimology.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> The Netherlands only once qualified to the world championships - in 1961. And didn't even leave the group phase. The Europe championships are being organized since 1994 and the Netherlands never qualified to them.
> 
> So low media coverage in your country is not weird - usually, the media report the sports in which the country national team (or local sports clubs) has some successes.


Sorry, but you're absolutely wrong. What we talk about is a women's game. The Dutch team reached the semifinals in the four recent tournaments:
- Silver in WCh 2015
- 4th in the Olympics in 2016
- Silver in ECh 2016
- Bronze in WCh 2017. 
However, all, but literally all national players play for foreign clubs. Some of them in Hungary, some in Denmark, some in Germany. Dutch clubs are weak, at the level of the second Hungarian or Danish leagues. So women's handball on the top level is very rare to see in the Netherlands, only at the home games of the national team, just like this European Championships qualifiers against Hungary in March.


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## ChrisZwolle

There is a meme that the Netherlands won more medals at the Winter Olympics in 1 hour than Belgium in the past 94 years.


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## Junkie

..


----------



## Junkie

keber said:


> Yup, also short/mid term outlooks confirm that - cold well into March
> http://wxmaps.org/pix2/temp4


Why are SFRY, Czechoslovakia and USSR shown on this map?


----------



## CNGL

However for some odd reason they have Germany as one and not as two different countries.


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## Penn's Woods

So it was accurate for a few months in 1990 and 91.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> Sorry, but you're absolutely wrong. What we talk about is a women's game


Well, I checked the men's game, not the women's one.

Regarding the fact that Poland had recently some success in men's handball not in women's and compared the Netherlands.

But if you had successes in women's handball, then it should get at least some media coverage, I think.

Handball, similarly as football (in any version), is quite a brutal and not contactless sport, maybe this is why its women's version is not so popular, unlike e.g. in case of volleyball or tennis.



Attus said:


> However, all, but literally all national players play for foreign clubs. Some of them in Hungary, some in Denmark, some in Germany. Dutch clubs are weak, at the level of the second Hungarian or Danish leagues. So women's handball on the top level is very rare to see in the Netherlands, only at the home games of the national team, just like this European Championships qualifiers against Hungary in March.


We have the same situation with football (soccer) in Poland - quite a few very good players, with Lewandowski in the first place, most of them playing for foreign clubs.


----------



## keber

Junkie said:


> Why are SFRY, Czechoslovakia and USSR shown on this map?


Old map, it happens. 
It doesn't bother me, colors are the main point of interest


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## ChrisZwolle

*Wikipedia*

I've been looking at photos of Interstate Highways at Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons. I checked nearly every category, and I noticed how few good photos of Interstate Highways there actually are. 

Many photos are simply old / low resolution, with most photos being taken between 2006 and 2011. Many have excessive glare / reflection or are very grainy. Framing is usually poor, with signs either too far away or too close. Some Interstate Highways have hundreds of low-quality photos on Wikimedia Commons. 

The Wikipedia roads project also seems to have become stale. Coverage and quality also varies significantly between roads, even within one system. I guess there are plenty of people to do cleanup / minor edits, but fewer go out and take photos or substantially update the articles with more background. History sections are also often excessively focused on route numbering history rather than construction history.


----------



## volodaaaa

Has anyone managed to get to the last post in a thread in one click in this new mobile version of the forum? It is kinda annoying to click on the thread name, then to the last page link and even scroll the last page to reach the last post.


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## Penn's Woods

^^It usually works for me (or more precisely, it goes to the last post I haven’t read). The problem I have is it’s not consistent in refreshing. If I open the forum a few hours after my previous visit, it may not update the time stamps, push recently updated threads to the top, and so on.
Really, there are just a handful of threads I look at on my phone; my serious sessions wait until I’m on the computer and have time. (Which means there are threads I haven’t looked at in months, but that’s a separate issue.)


----------



## NShoaib

Beautiful and Complete Resting Area in Pakistan

Tus6zPkVbQE


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> Really, there are just a handful of threads I look at on my phone; my serious sessions wait until I’m on the computer and have time.


Me too. A phone is good for swiping and browsing through content, but to actually engage in discussion is painful on a phone. Composing a post with images and some researched data / facts is really cumbersome. Phones are bad at multitasking. On a PC I switch between windows continuously, select and paste text, etc. It doesn't work nearly as well on a phone. Not to mention more demanding tasks like browsing Google Earth, editing a photo or video. For me the phone has surely not replaced the computer.

I also think that smartphones have contributed to a decline of content quality on the internet. I often see people comment "nice photo" on a social media network while I see a grainy / out of focus / overexposed photo. I guess they like the person in the photo rather than the photo quality... Also, because typing longer posts on a phone is very cumbersome, you see people typing 1 line posts.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Me too. A phone is good for swiping and browsing through content, but to actually engage in discussion is painful on a phone. Composing a post with images and some researched data / facts is really cumbersome. Phones are bad at multitasking. On a PC I switch between windows continuously, select and paste text, etc. It doesn't work nearly as well on a phone. Not to mention more demanding tasks like browsing Google Earth, editing a photo or video. For me the phone has surely not replaced the computer.
> 
> I also think that smartphones have contributed to a decline of content quality on the internet. I often see people comment "nice photo" on a social media network while I see a grainy / out of focus / overexposed photo. I guess they like the person in the photo rather than the photo quality... Also, because typing longer posts on a phone is very cumbersome, you see people typing 1 line posts.


That is true. 5 years ago I bought a tablet, because I am sort of a geek and Android was something new. The shop full of applications, especially mobile versions of boardgames to waste time on journeys for example was indeed attractive. I solved the problem with touch-typing (I hate it) by buying a case with physical keyboard. It was cool until I realized it is very unpractical for working.

Working with the Office software was cumbersome, especially if I opened the file on PC afterwards.

Last year I saved more money and bought an 12" ultrabook. The HDD is poor (350 GB gross size), but the computer is incredibly handy. I go a lot to business trips that includes a train journey. My work in train is now perfectly effective and time-saving.


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## Suburbanist

@voolodaaa seems you need a Microsoft Surface


----------



## Kpc21

Someone in my family has recently bought a refurbished (looking like brand new) Dell Latitude 11 3180 ultrabook for 1300 PLN ~= 300 EUR. It's a basic unit with a poor Pentium CPU and 128 GB SSD drive (for something like 200 or 300 PLN an upgrade to 250 GB was available), far from powerful, but it's sufficient for basic office work and web browsing.


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## DanielFigFoz

This lovely house in the far North of England was drawn to my attention on a British road forum, anyone fancy living there?

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.9484038,-2.9753276,3a,60y,52.71h,88.91t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJwLDvdoFksaAc_2QRbJVjw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> Has anyone managed to get to the last post in a thread in one click in this new mobile version of the forum? It is kinda annoying to click on the thread name, then to the last page link and even scroll the last page to reach the last post.


I have seen a zero number of mobile version of any website being anything else but lousy.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> That is true. 5 years ago I bought a tablet, because I am sort of a geek and Android was something new. The shop full of applications, especially mobile versions of boardgames to waste time on journeys for example was indeed attractive. I solved the problem with touch-typing (I hate it) by buying a case with physical keyboard. It was cool until I realized it is very unpractical for working.
> 
> Working with the Office software was cumbersome, especially if I opened the file on PC afterwards.
> 
> Last year I saved more money and bought an 12" ultrabook. The HDD is poor (350 GB gross size), but the computer is incredibly handy. I go a lot to business trips that includes a train journey. My work in train is now perfectly effective and time-saving.


I follow the fit-for-purpose principle what comes to tools:

- A decent home desktop for video and photo editing, programming, databases etc
- Another home desktop in the living room for internet TV and sofa surfing. It hosts the home storage server, too.
- The most powerful (and heaviest) laptop in the company catalogue for office use. Windows is sensitive to heavy memory workloads. Ultrabooks and other downscaled stuff just do not fit into my multitasking usage profile.
- A semi-lousy private laptop (inherited), mainly for weekends at the second home and other travel
- An Android tablet for bed and travel surfing.
- A Windows 10 tablet for those navigation applications having no Android version.
- A company-owned Lumia 950 phone
- A low-end Android phone for private use


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I used to have very heavy laptops, the heaviest being a 17" Dell. It was amazing but it weighed 7 kg.
Now I prefer to do heavy stuff using desktops and carry along very light laptops for everything else - although just these days I had to do some intense calculations and had to bring along my personal laptop (a 15" 2011 Sony) because it has more RAM than any desktop PC here at work...


----------



## VITORIA MAN

last week in north spain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu2_E_MdguM


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Feinstaubalarm in Stuttgart  (Stuttgart is known for frequently issuing air quality alarms).


----------



## volodaaaa

I need some Captain Obvious here


----------



## bogdymol

That picture was taken today in the morning in Indonesia, when a volcano errupted. Therefore, there is a lot of dust in the atmosphere. 

In Stuttgart they have some monitoring system for air quality and (I am not sure of this second part) they issue traffic restrictions in the city if air quality is too bad.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Stuttgart's "alarms" are a bit hysterical and exaggerated. Values were over the 50 µg/m³ limit, but only slightly (highest was 57 µg/m³ at one measuring station last week). 

http://mnz.lubw.baden-wuerttemberg.de/messwerte/s-an/s-an.htm


----------



## volodaaaa

Thanks I have not read news today. Now it makes sense.


----------



## MichiH

bogdymol said:


> In Stuttgart they have some monitoring system for air quality and (I am not sure of this second part) *they issue traffic restrictions in the city if air quality is too bad*.


They recommend using public transportation (which is cheper / for free?) on "Feinstaubalarm" days instead of driving by car with engine and they recommend not using fire places not used as the primary supply of energy.

TOGETHER FOR CLEANER AIR: STUTTGART IS TACKLING IT!

Another "Feinstaubalarm" began today. I'll drive to Stuttgart later this week and I'm quite sure that there is just as much traffic as always - with or without voluntary Feinstaubalarm.


----------



## volodaaaa

MichiH said:


> They recommend using public transportation (which is cheper / for free?) on "Feinstaubalarm" days instead of driving by car with engine and they recommend not using fire places not used as the primary supply of energy.
> 
> TOGETHER FOR CLEANER AIR: STUTTGART IS TACKLING IT!
> 
> Another "Feinstaubalarm" began today. I'll drive to Stuttgart later this week and I'm quite sure that there is just as much traffic as always - with or without voluntary Feinstaubalarm.


At least the decision makers do something. I have already come to conclusion that my employer has a wrong name - it should be called the ministry for motorways and expressways. Incredible motorway-eagerness is going on here. Not a single thing is given to PT.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Is public transport in Bratislava managed by the ministry or the municipality?


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Is public transport in Bratislava managed by the ministry or the municipality?


Municipality, but the responsibilities are limited by the pertinent legal background overseen by the ministry. Ministry also prepares the technical standards. All of this is quite obsolete and there is a zero will to facilitate it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Maybe they should transfer some of that to the municipality. In the Netherlands, urban transport is a responsibility of the municipality, regional public transport of the provinces and only national railroads (mostly intercity services) are a responsibility of the ministry. Though the ministry can fund urban or regional public transport with grants.


----------



## Kpc21

Poland:

- urban transit belongs to the municipalities (which often causes problems with the transport from the satellite towns of big cities, by the way - as they are separate municipalities and they, basically, organize their public transport on their own)

- there are national, voivodeship, county, municipal and internal roads:
-> in the CITIES (as city, I mean a town that is a separate country - they are mostly the cities which were voivodeship capitals from 1975 to 1998, when Poland was divided into 49 voivodeships without counties, from 1999 we have 16 voivodeships each divided into counties) all the roads except expressways and motorways (and, of course, internal roads being private property - there exist also internal roads being municipal property) are within the responsibility of the city
-> out of those CITIES (so in smaller towns and in the countryside) each road belongs to the specific unit, so the state manages the national roads (including expressways and motorways), the voivodeship manages the voivodeship roads, the county manages the county roads, the municipality manages the municipal roads
The national and voivodeship roads have numbers which are indicated on the road signs and on the maps. Other roads are also numbered, but those enumeration is used only for management purposes, they are not indicated on the signs and maps.

But concerning the dust alarms, if the German standards were valid in Poland, the alarm would be practically all the time. With this being the major reason:



Polopiryn said:


>


When I walk from home to the bus stop, practically each time I pass a few places where I am forced to smell what someone had an idea to use as a fuel in his central heating system instead of coal or wood...

And in most cases, even if someone actually uses coal, the result is not different from the one seen in the photo above. Because people don't know how to do it the clean way in their boilers. Even though it's not impossible even in the most old-fashioned ones.

The most popular style of using them is starting the fire in the boiler and then loading pieces of coal and wood (often, unfortunately, also trash) onto it. This style demands frequent visits in the boiler room to add some coal and causes the water in the central heating reach high temperatures, it often results even with this water actually boiling. The air supply is normally regulated by opening the ash tray door more or less, or in newer systems (although actually not better at all) by using an electronically controlled fan to supply the air.

It is also possible to do it - in the old-fashioned boilers - in a more civilized way, by loading first the boiler fully with coal and then igniting the fire on the top of it. Then, the air supply should be regulated automatically, but a solution much better from a fan is a thermo-mechanical regulator opening or closing a flap in the ash tray door (which were typically installed in the boilers of this type before the fans became popular). However, this method is more difficult to use and most people don't know it at all.

What is tried to fight with that: in some voivodeships it is already forbidden to sell such old fashioned central heating boilers. From July 2018, it will be forbidden in the whole country. Only the Class 5 standard boilers will be allowed to be sold and concerning the central heating boilers, those requirements are fulfilled only by a part of the modern "stoker"-style units, which have a container to which you load the coal and they burn it automatically. Personally, I have such a boiler at my home, although it is already something like 10 years old and it doesn't fulfill the Class 5 demands. Still, I never see such clouds of smoke like from a steam engine coming out of my chimney. The disadvantage of this type of boilers is that they demand a special type of fine coal, called "eco-peas", which is a bit more expensive than standard coal in big chunks.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> But concerning the dust alarms, if the German standards were valid in Poland, the alarm would be practically all the time.


It is *NOT* a German standard, it's EU standard!

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEX-18-523_en.htm



> *Air Quality Ministerial Summit: Member States have until end of next week to complete their national submissions [updated on 30/01/2018 at 12:22]*
> 
> Ministers from 9 Member States convened today in Brussels upon the invite of Commissioner for Environment Karmenu Vella, in a final effort to find solutions to address the serious problem of air pollution in the European Union. The 9 Member States, namely the *Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and the United Kingdom*, face infringement procedures for exceeding agreed air pollution limits. At the meeting, Commissioner Vella called on Member States to finalise their submissions *by end of next week* on how they intend to comply with EU law on air quality or else face legal action. Following the meeting, Commissioner Vella gave the following statement: _"This Commission has consistently said that it wishes to be 'big on the big things'. And it doesn't get bigger than the loss of life due to air pollution__[…] As much as protecting our citizens is a key priority for President Juncker and the entire College of Commissioners, in Member States this need to become a key priority of the entire governments, of all Ministers concerned: be it Ministers for transport, energy, industry, agriculture or finance. Our shared credibility depends on it."_


However, I couldn't find any additional info about this issue from when the deadline was reached.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Maybe they should transfer some of that to the municipality. In the Netherlands, urban transport is a responsibility of the municipality, regional public transport of the provinces and only national railroads (mostly intercity services) are a responsibility of the ministry. Though the ministry can fund urban or regional public transport with grants.


It is exactly the same here regarding commissioning or licencing of transport. But legal background and technical standards are nation-wide. These are old. And the decision makers on the regional or municipal level are sometimes not aware of some environmental measures either. The minority that is is on the other hand limited by obsolete legislation.

Moreover, trains are somehow the backbone of public transport and therefore must be managed perfectly, which is not.

The special stakeholder is police. They do not care about anything but imposing fines. Last month there was a severe winter snow in Bratislava with about 40 trolleybuses stuck on a certain urban trunk road blocking some intersections that needed a police assistance. Some officers were pulled over few intersections before this place overseeing if drivers obey stopping at red signal :lol:


----------



## Kpc21

From what I read on the website of a Polish action fighting with the smog, the levels at which a smog alert is issued are not unified in the EU, each country can choose them freely or even do not introduce them.

At least for the PM10 dusts. Maybe for other types it's different.

They refer to the 2008/50/EC directive (by the way, mistakenly because they use its English number even though the website is in Polish - in Polish it should be called 2008/50/WE, for example in German it is 2008/50/EG) - saying that it sets the informing and alerting levels for SO2, NO2 and ozone and not for the dusts.

In Poland the informing level is 200 ug/m^3, the alerting level is 300 ug/m^3. Which is, supposedly, the highest value in the EU. The WHO guidelines are that the daily maximum is 50 ug/m^3.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> In the Netherlands, urban transport is a responsibility of the municipality.


In Hungary, too. However, municipalities have no financial sources to pay for it so they usually beg for the government to cofinance it. Whether the government gives money or not, depends on political issues.


----------



## Kanadzie

Kpc21 said:


> What is tried to fight with that: in some voivodeships it is already forbidden to sell such old fashioned central heating boilers. From July 2018, it will be forbidden in the whole country. Only the Class 5 standard boilers will be allowed to be sold and concerning the central heating boilers, those requirements are fulfilled only by a part of the modern "stoker"-style units, which have a container to which you load the coal and they burn it automatically. Personally, I have such a boiler at my home, although it is already something like 10 years old and it doesn't fulfill the Class 5 demands. Still, I never see such clouds of smoke like from a steam engine coming out of my chimney. The disadvantage of this type of boilers is that they demand a special type of fine coal, called "eco-peas", which is a bit more expensive than standard coal in big chunks.


I wonder if with rising prosperity in Poland that you'll see a market-driven response to just get rid of coal boiler for gas ones, just due to the headache of dealing with coal...


----------



## italystf

Kanadzie said:


> I wonder if with rising prosperity in Poland that you'll see a market-driven response to just get rid of coal boiler for gas ones, just due to the headache of dealing with coal...


When costs of maintaining and operating old coal boilers will outweigh costs to replace them with gas boilers people will change them.


----------



## Kpc21

But for that, coal as a fuel must become more expensive than gas. Which doesn't seem likely when Poland excavates its own coal while the natural gas has to be imported.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands has one of the highest 4G coverages in the world, at 90%. The 4G speeds are the second-highest in the world at 42 Mbps average.

Source: https://opensignal.com/reports/2018/02/state-of-lte

However in cities you can get 4G+ which is considerably faster. I got 144 Mbps download speed (18 megabytes per second). Which is insanely fast, at that rate you'll consume a 10 GB monthly data plan within 10 minutes. Quite frankly such high-speed internet is not what 99.9% of users will require. You don't need internet that fast even for 1080p streaming.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^They say all sorts of weird things, like “Decarie Autoroute.” Pronounced, of course, “duh-carry.”


----------



## keber

Today I've seen a BMW car from Sharyah, UAE. Driven by European (by look), accompanied by (probably) an Arab.
I wonder how complicated is to drive a car from UAE to Europe, especially with all the war zones on the way and all complicated bureaucratic procedures involved in transiting various Arab countries. Or maybe it is easier to drive through Iran?


----------



## bogdymol

^^ If the car was registered in UAE, most probably it flew to Europe, or it took a ship.

I've also seen some cars registered there when I was in Paris and in London.

However, I once saw on the motorway in Hungary a car registered in Iraq. That one looked like it drove it's entire way.


----------



## keber

That one looked that too. About 10 years old BMW and slow driving on Zagreb-Ljubljana motorway - general direction from Istanbul and beyond.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Back in the 1990s it wasn't uncommon for Dutch transport companies to truck freight to Eastern Turkey or even Iraq. It was considered the heyday of Dutch trucking dominance in Europe. 

Common destinations in Iraq included Mosul and Erbil. Traffic to Mosul was cut off when ISIS captured it in 2014, but Erbil remained relatively quiet and saw significant economic development post-2003. 

Before the Syrian Civil War broke out, there were some more adventurous people who drove their RV to Syria from Western Europe. Nowadays people like that drive to Morocco or even into Mauritania / Senegal.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Back in the 1990s it wasn't uncommon for Dutch transport companies to truck freight to Eastern Turkey or even Iraq. It was considered the heyday of Dutch trucking dominance in Europe.
> 
> Common destinations in Iraq included Mosul and Erbil. Traffic to Mosul was cut off when ISIS captured it in 2014, but Erbil remained relatively quiet and saw significant economic development post-2003.
> 
> Before the Syrian Civil War broke out, there were some more adventurous people who drove their RV to Syria from Western Europe. Nowadays people like that drive to Morocco or even into Mauritania / Senegal.


Iraq yes, also recently, just as Kazkhstan, Uzbekistan and similar destinations. But it seems that it's not that popular among carriers nowadays anymore, at least here in HR.


----------



## italystf

I've read a report of a couple driving a RV from Italy to Iran and then taking a ferry to Dubai. So it's possible.


----------



## keber

I've read about that ferry too - it is actually amazing, that for western citizens (except those from USA) it is easier to get with own car through Iran than through Saudi Arabia.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> I've read about that ferry too - it is actually amazing, that for western citizens (except those from USA) it is easier to get with own car through Iran than through Saudi Arabia.


Saudi Arabia doesn't release touristic visas and foreigners aren't allowed to travel independently across the country. Most foreigners in Saudi Arabia are workers or religious visitors, and are strictly controlled by the government anyway (they usually stay in gated villages reserved to foreigners and their contatcts with locals are limited). Some options to visit the country as a foreigner do exist, but they are extremely complicated and require to follow your guide all the time. Even North Korea is probably easier to visit than Saudi Arabia, as they release touristic visa to foreigners and, as long as you stricly follow your guide, you should't have problems.

However, even if you were able to drive across Saudi Arabia, you would first need to cross either Syria or Iraq to go to Dubai from Europe, and this isn't possible at the moment because of conflicts.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Are there still ferries from Greece and Italy to Alexandria?


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Are there still ferries from Greece and Italy to Alexandria?


Ferries between Italy and Egypt and Syria have been discontinued since 2011.
http://www.cemar.it/dest/traghetti_egitto.htm

I've read of the existence of a ferry between Turkey and Egypt, although I don't know if its still current and regularily available.


----------



## Kpc21

Concerning travelling in the Middle East, you should watch some videos of this vlog: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8uYStXS2ElBFLZVfuYzIxg (turn on CC subtitles) - this is a Polish hitchhiking traveler and he crossed some countries in the Middle East two, he was in those areas even twice.

From what I know now, certainly there is a part of Iraq without a conflict, but I am not sure about travelling further north.

It is also not impossible to travel through Iran.

Concerning the lack of possibility of travelling to Saudi Arabia... if it is so, then what about the Muslims that want to visit Mekka for religious reasons? According to the map, Mekka is currently located in Saudi Arabia. italystf wrote about some special conditions and villages - are they related to it?


----------



## Kanadzie

respecting the Hajj pilgrimage:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_Saudi_Arabia#Hajj_visas
https://www.saudia.com/TRAVEL-INFORMATION/About-Saudi-Arabia/Hajj-and-Umrah/Hajj-Visa
https://travel.state.gov/content/tr...s-with-special-considerations/hajj-umrah.html


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> Saudi Arabia doesn't release touristic visas and foreigners aren't allowed to travel independently across the country. Most foreigners in Saudi Arabia are workers or *religious visitors*, and are strictly controlled by the government anyway (they usually stay in gated villages reserved to foreigners and their contatcts with locals are limited).





Kpc21 said:


> Concerning the lack of possibility of travelling to Saudi Arabia... if it is so, then what about the Muslims that want to visit Mekka for religious reasons? According to the map, Mekka is currently located in Saudi Arabia. italystf wrote about some special conditions and villages - are they related to it?


:cheers::cheers:


----------



## Attus

In Germany an intersection was rebuilt. it's the intersection of B303 and A73 near to Coburg (MAP). In thie Google Maps satellite photo you can clearly see the old alignament, in view mode "Map" the new one. Coming from B303 from East (from right, in this view), to the motorway northbound, formerly you had to turn left and make a 180 degree turn right, now you have to turn right and drive directly to the motorway. 
However, in many navigation systems the map has not been updated, and navigation suggests turning left. If you do so, you drive in the wrong direction, southbund, in the northbound carriageway. After several accidents the authorities put a new sign there: Don't follow the navigation!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Many older TomTom devices do not get updates anymore. Perhaps this applies to other brands as well. 

Still, you can use Google Maps or Waze for navigation, which is generally more up-to-date than most in-car navigation systems. 

Or you can just look at the road signs. 15 or 20 years ago we all managed to travel across Europe using just that.


----------



## Kpc21

Not everyone likes using navigation on a smartphone instead of a separate device.

And maybe this is no longer such a problem with the current roaming regulations in the EU (even though some Polish operators managed to fight out some exemptions for them), but for example when someone comes from out of the EU, using online navigation might be costly for him.


----------



## x-type

I think that navigation devices are old fashioned and probably will be part of history soon. I actually never owned one, i have been using TomTom mobile application for years, and still use it. I pay it when I need it, so I always have updated version for reasonable cost.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Many older TomTom devices do not get updates anymore. Perhaps this applies to other brands as well.
> 
> Still, you can use Google Maps or Waze for navigation, which is generally more up-to-date than most in-car navigation systems.
> 
> *Or you can just look at the road signs. *15 or 20 years ago we all managed to travel across Europe using just that.


This. :cheers:


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> I think that navigation devices are old fashioned and probably will be part of history soon. I actually never owned one, i have been using TomTom mobile application for years, and still use it. I pay it when I need it, so I always have updated version for reasonable cost.


It's better to have dedicated things for dedicated use: think of 4-season tires, which are ok for most uses but good at none.

If you rely too much on one device to do it all, the moment it stops working you are left with no navigation, no music, no communication, no nothing.


----------



## volodaaaa

Black ice in Bratislava:


----------



## SeanT

ChrisZwolle said:


> I assume those are windchill temperatures?


Could be night temp. Last night the temp. was -20 just outside of Székesfehérvár and in downtown -16°C


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A blizzard in Ireland. This is in Maynooth, near Dublin.


----------



## x-type

SeanT said:


> Could be night temp. Last night the temp. was -20 just outside of Székesfehérvár and in downtown -16°C


Exactly. I live near southern Somogy county, and we had similar temperatures during the wed/thu night.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Temperatures will go up almost 20°C in two days in the Netherlands. From -10°C to +10°C, with windchills going up by 30°C, from -20 to +10.

Yesterday I biked to work with windchills in the -16 to -20 range. That's quite unusual for the Netherlands, I don't recall having cycled in such temperatures over the past 6 years.


----------



## Kpc21

From March 1st they re-opened the bike sharing system in Lodz after the winter break. After I cycled from the train station to the university, my thighs were just frozen.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I was reading up on the 5G rollout for mobile phones. Evidently this technology won't become usable until 2019 or 2020 at the earliest. 

It does seem though, that there isn't a huge advantage to consumers - yet. If properly available, 4G is already much faster than what consumers require. In the Netherlands you can get 4G+ at 100 - 200 mbit, that is really much more than any app will require on your phone, including HD streaming. Netflix and Youtube will work with HD with speeds around 15 mbit or even lower. 

Then there's the question if you really need 1080p on a phone. The screen is so small that you can't see that much difference between 720p and 1080p, not to mention 4K. Even 480p has good quality on my Samsung Galaxy S6.

4G has also significantly reduced the lag that 3G had. The main advantage of 5G to consumers at this point appears to be the bandwidth at very high volume locations, such as festivals with tens of thousands of people. 4G speeds will drop off if no additional cell towers are placed.


----------



## tfd543

Also have 4g/lte phone call transmission in the netherlands? Its crystal clear.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ would 5G improve performance in degraded areas though?

The other day I was talking (using phone as phone!) in my living room and I couldn't manage the conversation - always breaking up. I had to walk upstairs and then I had good call quality. "4G" icon showing on my display (or was it LTE...)


----------



## 8166UY

ChrisZwolle said:


> Then there's the question if you really need 1080p on a phone. The screen is so small that you can't see that much difference between 720p and 1080p, not to mention 4K. Even 480p has good quality on my Samsung Galaxy S6.


Kinda depends on the "ghosting" effect of the pixels of the screen. More modern screens have very little (especially with the emerging 200hz ones), so a better resolution really looks sharper. On higher than 1080p the compression on at least YouTube and Netflix becomes a bit of a bummer and I doubt you will see that difference. Yet again, HDR material also needs more bandwidth and that difference in quality is also a big one.

But yeah, for now the biggest improvement is indeed the better performance with large crowds.

In the Netherlands it might take a bit longer than 2020 if the politics don't intervene. The secret services have the exclusive rights on the highest frequencies used by 5G protocol (and thus the fastest bandwidth ones, which thus are essential for those large crowd handling) until 2023.


----------



## Kpc21

From what I have heard, 5G is supposed to bring some improvements concerning the IoT devices. How should it work, will we be putting SIM cards into washing machines, fridges and microwaves - I don't know. For me, a home Ethernet or WiFi LAN is enough for such things.

BTW did someone recently write about 50 ug/m^3 limit of PM dusts in Stuttgart?

In a residential area of commie blocks:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My feeling with the "internet of things" is that it's offered just because it can. I understand some IoT applications, but why should my fridge be on the internet? In addition, current IoT appliances are ridiculously poorly secured. 

I wonder though, would a fridge or other home appliances really need so much bandwidth to require a 5G network? Or is it just the sheer number of items connected to the internet? 

On a side note, there has been some anecdotal evidence that Facebook is supposedly listening to conversations near the phone, and then serves ads that are based on the topics discussed. I tried it out, and it seemed to work. At work we discussed some things I have never researched on the internet (so Facebook has no prior knowledge of those topics being of interest for me), and it immediately served ads with those topics. But a few months ago I removed the Facebook app from my phone and I have since not seen ads or suggested pages based on conversation topics...

I don't like that the tech giants (Google, Facebook) are tracking so much of my data, so I use both adblockers and Ghostery. I think this acquiring and selling of personal data has gone too far.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> From what I have heard, 5G is supposed to bring some improvements concerning the IoT devices. How should it work, will we be putting SIM cards into washing machines, fridges and microwaves - I don't know.


I recently read that SIM cards may drop out for mobile phones in the future.



Kpc21 said:


> For me, a home Ethernet or WiFi LAN is enough for such things.





ChrisZwolle said:


> My feeling with the "internet of things" is that it's offered just because it can. I understand some IoT applications, but why should my fridge be on the internet? In addition, current IoT appliances are ridiculously poorly secured.
> 
> I wonder though, would a fridge or other home appliances really need so much bandwidth to require a 5G network? Or is it just the sheer number of items connected to the internet?


"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers"


I work for a big company deeply involved with IoT or "Industry 4.0". I never liked the hype because I think it's only marketing. If you look into the (industrial) applications they talk about... Well, what they call "new" is technology from the 1990s or even 1980s  For instance, RFID which was great 10..20 years ago but is the bootleneck now.

However, the marketing show enables getting in contact with customers you would never get in touch. Dunno if really more sales is reached (well, my team has recently won a customer because we talked about these things...).

The focus of IoT is on autonomous vehicles now. Media is reporting extensive......


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> My feeling with the "internet of things" is that it's offered just because it can. I understand some IoT applications, but why should my fridge be on the internet? In addition, current IoT appliances are ridiculously poorly secured.


IoT is not about your fridge but about industrial class and number of sensors etc. 5G is not only about bandwidth but short latency times allowing near-real-time control. Stepping out of the box helps understanding the new opportunities.

The usage range will be much wider than what the current wireless systems provide: From rural connections on the 300 MHz band to micro cells of 300 GHz. So, you can put a micro cell inside your fridge. Because the wavelength limits the visibility of the cell, the sensor at the butter box is not leaking the information to outsiders.

A Case: A team in my company delivers IT systems to the shipping business. One of the risks in that business is losing containers overboard. The number of containers lying in the bottom of the oceans increase by about 2000 every year.










The innovation consists of a high number of vibration sensors to measure the state of the container stacks. The data is analyzed constantly, and if there is a risk for falling stacks, the officers at the command bridge receive an alert. Thus, they have time to slow down or change the course of the vessel. Networking those sensors wireless is much more effective than cabling.


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> A Case: A team in my company delivers IT systems to the shipping business. One of the risks in that business is losing containers overboard. The number of containers lying in the bottom of the oceans increase by about 2000 every year.


Hm. And I keep wondering why my cheap-camera-lens ordered from AliExpress still have not been delivered. hno:


----------



## MattiG

MichiH said:


> I recently read that SIM cards may drop out for mobile phones in the future.


The eSIM specification has been agreed, and the products are coming. The deployment timescale depends heavily on the operators' provisioning systems capability to deliver such services.

https://www.gsma.com/esim/2017/04/12/remote-sim-provisioning-works/


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> Hm. And I keep wondering why my cheap-camera-lens ordered from AliExpress still have not been delivered. hno:




Their products are normally flown.

BTW What have you bought there before and How was the quality. I took some led bulbs and they work with No flickering. Theyre nice for the price.


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Their products are normally flown.
> 
> BTW What have you bought there before and How was the quality. I took some led bulbs and they work with No flickering. Theyre nice for the price.


Nope, that is my premiere. The camera lens costs 14 € :lol: Actually, it is not a lens but an extension. But people rated the product very well. I has already been shipped.


----------



## tfd543

Worth the try-out man.


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Worth the try-out man.


That is what I thought. I wanted a lens with low focal length (10mm) - a fisheye. But it starts at 300 €. This is an extension that divide the focal length by two. My zoom lens has a 18 - 55mm range, so with the extension it could make 9 mm.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Temperatures will go up almost 20°C in two days in the Netherlands. From -10°C to +10°C, with windchills going up by 30°C, from -20 to +10.
> 
> Yesterday I biked to work with windchills in the -16 to -20 range. That's quite unusual for the Netherlands, I don't recall having cycled in such temperatures over the past 6 years.


The Siberian freeze chock is gradually disappearing. A nice winter weather of a few minus degrees of daytime temperature is expected in the south Finland for the coming 10 days. The weather is turning cloudy, which means that the night temperatures of -20 are gone after this night. (In the bright days of March, a 15 degree difference between the day and night temperature is not unusual.)


----------



## Suburbanist

I was expecting some minor fjords to freeze around here but none did... at most a thin layer of ice.


----------



## Kpc21

It's supposed to be positive temperature in Poland tomorrow.


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> I was expecting some minor fjords to freeze around here but none did... at most a thin layer of ice.


The Gulf Stream keeps the temperature low in the summer and high in the winter. In addition, the seawater in the oceans freeze at -2 degrees centigrade. At the end of the long fjords, the climate is more continental and the water salinity is lower.


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> Hm. And I keep wondering why my cheap-camera-lens ordered from AliExpress still have not been delivered. hno:


In my experience usually it gets stuck in your country's customs inspection
probably in a very large pile
I have some things from November still not arrived (!)
but sometimes I get things in 3 weeks...


----------



## Kpc21

How thoroughly do they tax those orders from Chinese shops in your countries?

Because in Poland they should theoretically charge the VAT tax from them (there is no customs but there is VAT). In practice... it's something like 50% likelihood that if the item is ordered by the ordinary post, not by a courier service, it will be passed without any tax. Probably the customs office has simply not enough workforce to be able to do the work for all the parcels.

Although on the other hand, one of the customs offices - for the south-east Poland - makes problems with things which should not matter in case of private import, like the EU declaration of conformity (and the CE marking) or the user manual in Polish. Those things are demanded by law if you want to resell those items in Poland but not if you order them for your own private use.


----------



## Attus

In Rhine Vally the tempereatures are today 12 degrees centigrade higher than 5 days ago. Additionally, the sun shines, while 5 days ago the sky was cloudy and there was a strong wind, so 12 degrees difference feel like 20.


----------



## Attus

Friday I wanted to fly from Cologne to Budapest. Eurowings flight 788 was scheduled to 18:25. When I arrived to the airport, it had already been rescheduled to 18:55. Later on it was rescheduled five times. 
Boarding started about 19:05, but was stopped later, half of passangers still waiting in the queue. Boarding was suspended for almost two hours long. 
After a long wait I could entry the plane at 21:05. When boarding was completed, a passenger decided not to fly. He left the plane (waiting for a bus...). De-icing, other preparations, we started at 21:30. 
The captain informed us, that our plane had come from Rome, and had a significant delay because of weather in Rome. The delay was so big that pilots were not allowed to fly on, so a new crew was needed and getting a new crew took such a long time. 
After half an hour flight the captain informed us that the airport of Budapest had been closed because of icy rain so we had to return to Cologne. 
The flight was officially cancelled, no way to get to Budapest.

So I stayed home, I mean, in Germany. I spent 8 hours in the airport and in the air, in order to stay home. It was my very first flight that started and landed at the very same airport. And after all a crew was got just in order to take us from Cologne to Cologne.


----------



## MattiG

Attus said:


> Friday I wanted to fly from Cologne to Budapest. Eurowings flight 788 was scheduled to 18:25. When I arrived to the airport, it had already been rescheduled to 18:55. Later on it was rescheduled five times.
> Boarding started about 19:05, but was stopped later, half of passangers still waiting in the queue. Boarding was suspended for almost two hours long.
> After a long wait I could entry the plane at 21:05. When boarding was completed, a passenger decided not to fly. He left the plane (waiting for a bus...). De-icing, other preparations, we started at 21:30.
> The captain informed us, that our plane had come from Rome, and had a significant delay because of weather in Rome. The delay was so big that pilots were not allowed to fly on, so a new crew was needed and getting a new crew took such a long time.
> After half an hour flight the captain informed us that the airport of Budapest had been closed because of icy rain so we had to return to Cologne.
> The flight was officially cancelled, no way to get to Budapest.
> 
> So I stayed home, I mean, in Germany. I spent 8 hours in the airport and in the air, in order to stay home. It was my very first flight that started and landed at the very same airport. And after all a crew was got just in order to take us from Cologne to Cologne.


That happens in the airline business. An issue easily leads to another one. Still it is better to fly back to the departure airport than trying to land on an airport where the winter management capacity does not meet the weather conditions.

For many years ago, I was supposed to have a a few hours meeting in Linköping. Almost everything failed. The flight Helsinki-Stockholm was delayed for one hour because of snowfall. That is why I missed the flight to Linköping. Fortunately, the flight to Norrköping was about to depart. There is about 40 km taxi ride between the cities, and I was only two hours late.

On the way home, I had to stay at the Linköping airport for several hours. The aircraft from Stockholm made two landing attempts but it finally went around and returned to Stockholm, and the flight got canceled. I had to stay overnight, and the hotels were full booked. Hopefully, there was room in a tiny inn. Next day, the flights to Stockholm then Helsinki were ok. My business trip was extended from a few hours to 30+ hours.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> After half an hour flight the captain informed us that the airport of Budapest had been closed because of icy rain so we had to return to Cologne.
> The flight was officially cancelled, no way to get to Budapest.


Couldn't they land somewhere closer to Budapest (e.g. at another airport in Hungary - it seems there is one in Gyor, or maybe in Bratislava) instead of returning to Cologne?

People would reach Budapest anyway in something like 3 hours from there.


----------



## bogdymol

I also had a flight booked for last Thursday from London Heathrow to Düsseldorf and then on to Vienna. The first leg was canceled, so I quickly booked another ticket directly to Vienna. The only downside was that I had to wait 5 hours or so in London, and then book a hotel near Vienna airport instead of driving directly home (it was passed midnight when I got out of Vienna Airport and had another 2.5 hours of driving, so sleeping at the hotel on the company's expense was the best option).


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> In Rhine Vally the tempereatures are today 12 *degrees centigrade* higher than 5 days ago. Additionally, the sun shines, while 5 days ago the sky was cloudy and there was a strong wind, so 12 degrees difference feel like 20.




They're called Celsius. The use of the word "centrigrade" is deprecated.

PS: Yes, I know. It's like someone is pointing at the moon and I'm looking at the finger. But for a temperature metrologist things like this are important


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Couldn't they land somewhere closer to Budapest (e.g. at another airport in Hungary - it seems there is one in Gyor, or maybe in Bratislava) instead of returning to Cologne?
> 
> People would reach Budapest anyway in something like 3 hours from there.


Indeed, Gyor and Bratislava have quite a good rail connection to Budapest, but there was icy rain in Bratislava (and I guess Gyor as well) back then too.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> I also had a flight booked for last Thursday from London Heathrow to Düsseldorf and then on to Vienna. The first leg was canceled, so I quickly booked another ticket directly to Vienna. The only downside was that I had to wait 5 hours or so in London, and then book a hotel near Vienna airport instead of driving directly home (it was passed midnight when I got out of Vienna Airport and had another 2.5 hours of driving, so sleeping at the hotel on the company's expense was the best option).


Last Friday I took a high-speed train from Turin to Brescia in order to be able to vote for the general elections. A 1h30' journey lasted more than 4h. In Milan I had a glimpse at the timetable, there was no train with a delay less than an hour, one of them had already 240' of delay.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Last Friday I took a high-speed train from Turin to Brescia in order to be able to vote for the general elections. A 1h30' journey lasted more than 4h. In Milan I had a glimpse at the timetable, there was no train with a delay less than an hour, one of them had already 240' of delay.


Why you haven't moved your official residence in Turin?


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> Why you haven't moved your official residence in Turin?


1- my job is temporary: unless I get a permanent position, I don't want to change now and possibly have to revert to the old residence in few months.
2- I bought a residents-only flat in Brescia.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Do they permit absentee voting? (In the U.S., if you know in advance of an election that you won’t be in the place you vote in...say you’re a college student or you’ll be on a trip...you apply in advance for an “absentee ballot,” which they mail to you and you fill it out and mail back. Actually, many states are making it easier than that...offering in-person voting before the actual day, or absentee ballots you don’t actually need a reason for. What I described is still the system in Pennsylvania.)


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Do they permit absentee voting? (In the U.S., if you know in advance of an election that you won’t be in the place you vote in...say you’re a college student or you’ll be on a trip...you apply in advance for an “absentee ballot,” which they mail to you and you fill it out and mail back. Actually, many states are making it easier than that...offering in-person voting before the actual day, or absentee ballots you don’t actually need a reason for. What I described is still the system in Pennsylvania.)


For the Italian elections, the only absentee voting allowed are for people living abroad (regularly registered to a special association), people in hospital, military, people in service in planes or ships.

Every other "fuorisede" (someone living in a place where they don't reside legally) must reach their legal residence. There are discounts for such travelers, trains are discounted 60-70% with respect to the regular fare. This is the only reason why I traveled by train, I usually drive and car-share home.


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> They're called Celsius. The use of the word "centrigrade" is deprecated.
> 
> PS: Yes, I know. It's like someone is pointing at the moon and I'm looking at the finger. But for a temperature metrologist things like this are important


I believe that the Americans do not know mr Celsius while they know mr Centigrade. That is why I tend to use the term "centigrade". There is always a trade-off between clarity and purity.

I have come to a conclusion that average people cannot understand delicate scientific terms. Therefore, I do not care when people mix basic things like mass and weight or speed and velocity.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Aluminum vs Aluminium


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> AFAIK, daylights savings time was tailored for the needs of factories, not humans.


There are conflicting stories about the history. Anyway, the purpose is to find a better match with the official time and the human lifestyle.


----------



## MichiH

The first German DST law from 1916 was for economical reason ("zu wirtschaftlichen Maßnahmen"):


https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Deutsches_Reichsgesetzblatt_1916_067_0243.png


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## volodaaaa

My first aliexpress item has arrived - the lens extender reducing the focal length by 0,45x. 18mm is now 8mm which means fish-eye effect.

This is the very first photography:









The fish-eye effect is barely recognizable, but thanks to he focal length I was able to capture the whole dome and as much road as possible - this would be impossible without the extender. The image has noticeably decreased technical quality but the extender is a neat toy. 14 € is value for money - I do not regret it. The product was professionally wrapped. No cheap smell.


----------



## Fatfield

The world is a poorer place today.

RIP Prof Stephen Hawking.


----------



## Richard Sultanov

*Rest areas in Europe*

Having driven across Europe, I would say that Italy and Switzerland have the best rest infrastructure. Good facilities, clean, come up often. In other countries, it was a different story. Was surprised that there is not much "on the highway" rest infrastructure in Germany and other European countries. At least I did not see it while driving throughout.


----------



## g.spinoza

Richard Sultanov said:


> Having driven across Europe, I would say that *Italy* and Switzerland have the best rest infrastructure. Good facilities, clean, come up often. In other countries, it was a different story. Was surprised that there is not much "on the highway" rest infrastructure in Germany and other European countries. At least I did not see it while driving throughout.


?? 
Italy has some of the worst rest areas in Europe.
Of the places I've driven in, France is the best regarding rest areas.


----------



## Richard Sultanov

*Around Tuscany on major toll roads they are good*

I think it really depends where you go. If we are talking about major toll roads then I did not have difficulty fueling, having a nice meal and a break. Always clean and in good condition, the ones I encountered. But could really be a perception issue. And location matters a lot. Don't know how it is in other areas. France is good, I agree, And in Switzerland, the ones I have seen were amazing. In Germany I actually expected something more advanced, but the ones I saw were old places from the 1970s, with just benches and restrooms.



g.spinoza said:


> ??
> Italy has some of the worst rest areas in Europe.
> Of the places I've driven in, France is the best regarding rest areas.


----------



## volodaaaa

I suppose it could not be evaluated objectively and generally. I have seen a lot of roadside rest areas around different countries and while some looked like a wild landfill, others looked perfectly. It even depends on the environment and weather. Even dirty roadside rest area by the sea with beautiful outlook in summer looks good, while perfectly clean rest area somewhere in the middle of a brownfield during a foggy, smoggy, rainy, windy autumn day feels horribly.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> I suppose it could not be evaluated objectively and generally. I have seen a lot of roadside rest areas around different countries and while some looked like a wild landfill, others looked perfectly. It even depends on the environment and weather. Even dirty roadside rest area by the sea with beautiful outlook in summer looks good, while perfectly clean rest area somewhere in the middle of a brownfield during a foggy, smoggy, rainy, windy autumn day feels horribly.


I think we are much smarter than that. A dirty lavatory is a dirty lavatory even if you are on a seaside outlook.


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## MichiH

The quality of rest areas depends on regions within each country and there is a huge difference if you are talking about transit routes, (urban) motorways, rural roads, city streets etc. I think that the distance between rest areas is quite important. And what do you expect there: gas station, rest rooms, restaurant, fast food restaurant, supermarket, nice panoramic view, modern buildings,....

A quick ranking about rest areas according to my experience and my needs:

Good:
1. France
2. Finland
3. Germany
4. Denmark
5. Austria

Medium:
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Hungary
Belgium
Switzerland
Portugal
Spain
Poland
Norway

Bad:
Sweden
Italy
Romania


----------



## x-type

Italy has very good food and delicatessen departments in the stores at rest areas. And here the story stops. Everything else is quite confusing and dirty, especially bar desks and toilets.
Germany has the cleanest toilets. Their system with coffee coupons for toilets works perfectly. Unfortunately, food if usually horrible, mostly junk.
Austria has all good things, but their rest areas are expensive as hell. I eat in Oldtimer and Landzeit only when I get good wage for business trip. But food is perfect there.
France probably has the best ratio of all good stuff combined, although I haven't been there for a while.


----------



## Kpc21

g.spinoza said:


> ??
> Italy has some of the worst rest areas in Europe.
> Of the places I've driven in, France is the best regarding rest areas.


It doesn't seem so good that the rest areas in Italy are dominated by one company (Autogrill).

But a good thing in it is that at least it's not McDonald's or KFC.



x-type said:


> Germany has the cleanest toilets.


Not necessarily at the not staffed rest areas, those having a parking lot and a bathroom only.

And those metal toilets without toilet seats...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In the Netherlands there is a policy to phase out rest areas without services. 

Rest areas without a gas station usually do not have any kind of bathroom facilities, just a parking strip with a few benches and garbage cans. Some of them have been closed after unwanted activities taking place on or around rest areas. 

Dutch areas are of low quality, most of them are old, not materially updated over the past 30 years and maintenance levels are much lower than in France where they are neatly kept and landscaped. There is not much long-distance traffic in the Netherlands (for many, 100 kilometers is a "very long" distance), so rest areas are not really designed to cater to stops longer than a fuel-up or bathroom break. 

It is also official policy that motorway service areas are not meant for overnight parking (including semi trucks). However there are only a limited amount of truck stops so in practice all rest areas are used for overnight parking. The official policy stipulates that motorway service areas are only meant for short-term parking (45 minute break). However it is not enforced due to a lack of alternatives, though privately operated truck stops near exits are slowly becoming more common.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Wait, Slovenia AND Slovakia both lost their prime ministers on Thursday? (Articles about both on the same page of the New York Times.) Is it any wonder Americans get confused?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> It doesn't seem so good that the rest areas in Italy are dominated by one company (Autogrill).
> 
> 
> 
> But a good thing in it is that at least it's not McDonald's or KFC.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Not necessarily at the not staffed rest areas, those having a parking lot and a bathroom only.
> 
> 
> 
> And those metal toilets without toilet seats...




I was about to mention the toilets without seats, in France. And paying to use a bathroom (even if the toilet does have a seat)? What is that?


----------



## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> It doesn't seem so good that the rest areas in Italy are dominated by one company (Autogrill).
> .


I have no official data, but I am under the impression that this is no longer so true. Autogrill dominated in the past, but now there are many more operators in the market, the most important being Sarni and Chef Express.


----------



## italystf

Italian motorway rest areas are not bad by design. The main issues are: high prices (of gas and food, compared to locations outside motorways) and untidyness/dirtyness (dirty toilets and parking lot).


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> I was about to mention the toilets without seats, in France. And paying to use a bathroom (even if the toilet does have a seat)? What is that?


German system of paying the toilets works in the way that you pay 0,7€ (or 0,8, I don't remember) to enter and use the toilet, and with each entrance you get the 0,50€ voucher that you can use at any facility (shop, bar) where Sanifair operates. (Sanifair is concessionaire on that service). Sanifair, on the other hand, keep toilets extremely well equipped and clean.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are some debates whether Sanifair toilettes are really clean. German media has reported that they are not as clean as they look.


----------



## Kpc21

Probably most "clean" public toilets are not as clean as they look.

By the way, a similar system with paying for the toilet and getting a voucher for shopping is present at the train stations in Germany.

Concerning the rest areas, not all the toilets belong to Sanifair. I also seen one that didn't belong to it and the payment was collected looked in such a way that you were theoretically supposed to pay, but there was no person or machine that would collect the payment and let you in, but just a plate on which you might put the money or you might also not do it.

This system is also used by one of the companies managing quite many shopping malls in Europe (or, at least, I saw malls managed by them both in Poland - here they are usually named Galeria ..., e.g. Galeria Łódzka in Łódź, Galeria Krakowska in Cracow, Galeria Dominikańska in Wrocław - and in Germany). Although there, it's clearly stated that the payment is voluntary.


----------



## Kpc21

In Germany, the bank owned by the post (Postbank) is one of the most dominant ones on the market.

In Poland, the post also owns a bank (and an insurance company), but it's not really popular. And its marketing is targeted at the elderly.

The post is a public service, it doesn't have to earn money.

Still, the Polish Post is trying to do it as much as it can. The result looks so (source: http://warszawa.wyborcza.pl/warszawa/51,150427,21478790.html?i=0):














































And in Germany it doesn't look very different, maybe it's more focused on stationery stuff.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> In the Netherlands it is common that in case of absence, the parcel is delivered to a neighbor and the delivery guy will put a receipt in the mailbox.


This is cool! I am usually of the home when they try to deliver something, so they call me. I always try to convince the courier to leave the package at the hidden terrace in my backyard, I describe them exact place where to leave it. With DHL and GLS there are never problems. Overseas and UPS don't want to do it, but they bring it to my workplace. HP (Croatian Post) doesn't want to hear about leaving it somewhere. They also ask if there is a dog in backyard (there actually is my Pekingese and they always think that there is Pitbull when I answer that there is a dog  )


----------



## Kpc21

Well, it's quite common, I think everywhere in the world, that dogs don't really like postmen and they always try to bite them 

By the way, how is it with mail vs post?

I thought that "post" is a British word and "mail" is American. But... the post of the UK is called Royal *Mail*, while the post of the US is called United States *Post*al Service...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In Canada it is called "Canada Post" but evidently it was known as Royal Mail Canada in the past.

What's interesting about Canada is that car insurance is only supplied by the province. That's the only place you can get car insurance and there is no competition at all. I found such a "socialist" government-owned insurance model weird.


----------



## Kpc21

In many countries, the health and the pension insurance are only supplied by the state. And I don't think most people would call it a very "socialist" model.


----------



## Junkie

Kpc21 said:


> Well, it's quite common, I think everywhere in the world, that dogs don't really like postmen and they always try to bite them


I want to add something regarding this, although its not connected with the discussion.
There are postmen from the courts that bring letters for trials. And many people specially those that are convinced in the past refuse to get the letter and they own dogs that bark and try to scare the delivery man. Because if they get the letter they must show on the trial.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland, as I wrote before, it's realized just by the post, although for 2 years a private postal company, which won a tender, was responsible for that.

But still even if you don't receive the letter, if a notification about the letter waiting for you at the post office was left in your postal box for two times (it's done again after a week, if I am not mistaken), you are considered notified and you can be fined for not coming to the hearing (assuming that it's obligatory for you).


----------



## bogdymol

In Austria there is a very fair-play of online shopping payment methods. Not all online shops have this, but a few do (and some are used by my wife to order clothes online). You order, they send the package, and then, in 14 days after delivery, you either pay for it (by online transfer), or you return (free of charge) th products. It also works to keep few items and return only a part - then you pay only for what you keep.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland the online sellers are legally obliged to accept a return of the bought thing within 14 days. And they must return the price payed by the buyer.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> Well, it's quite common, I think everywhere in the world, that dogs don't really like postmen and they always try to bite them
> 
> By the way, how is it with mail vs post?
> 
> I thought that "post" is a British word and "mail" is American. But... the post of the UK is called Royal *Mail*, while the post of the US is called United States *Post*al Service...




I generally call it “the mail”; on the other hand, there’s the “post office.” The person who delivers it is a “mailman,” “mail carrier” or “postal worker”; a “postal worker” can also be someone who works at a counter in a post office....


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> If someone deletes e-mails immediately for privacy reason... why do they have an e-mail address at all?


I know German companies where exactly this happens because it is not allowed for "normal" worker to receive emails from a non-company email address because this would be private emails and you might do private stuff during working time.

It's totally different in my company though... Well, let's explain...

About two years ago our "IT security officer" (there is a specific name for this important job but for any reason I forget it...) told us in a meeting that private desktop background pictures are not allowed. It's just because you have to do an illegal action to bring the picture to your company notebook. Everyone was astonished and he explained the reason: It is not allowed to connect an USB flash drive to your PC (note: minimum 90% (if not all) of our department employees have a special permission to do it though) and the only way is via "forbidden" websites (internet is not allowed to be used for private reason; note: there is a special agreement.... but not yet valid for our location / department) or sending emails from a private account!
There is only one exception for the latter: Students (what? Only exception for temporary workers? Do we trust these guys more than longtime employees?). Students write their thesis on the company PC (of course, it's not allowed to bring your private one) but they also continue at home and have to exchange the latest version by sending emails to a private account!
After 2..3 seconds of silence I was the one who asked: "I get emails from customers who doesn't have an email account from our company. Is it allowed that customers send us emails?" I didn't get an answer 

I work in a sales/service department and everyone is in contact with external companies.


----------



## cinxxx

^^What kind of robot culture is that where at your job you must only work and not allowed to do any private stuff?
That would be my queue to quit, seriously.
Thank God the company I work here is not like that, probably because there are many foreigners .

I did had a different experience at the first job I had in Germany, didn't last more than 5 months and got really depressed...


----------



## MichiH

^^ There's a huge difference between what's officially legal and what's done 

For instance, even virtually all managers use WhatsApp on their company mobile phones while it is officially not allowed...

And I really don't think it's about the origin of the employees. I also have a lot of colleagues from all around the world. Our homepage claims that we have employees from more than 150 nationalities. And plants/offices in about 60 countries.


----------



## MattiG

*New Tools*

The Finnish police has new tools: An Italian man was rescued by a police-operated drone in the Friday-Saturday night. He was photographing northern lights in the wilderness highlands of the south Lapland and got separated from the rest of the group. The temperature was -16, and the man did not know his location. The policemen got a contact to him by phone and asked him to be as visible as possible to help the drone to find him. The drone found him in a few minutes. The man was asked to follow lights of the drone. After a kilometer walk, he and the policemen with snowscooters met, and the man got a ride out of the forest. The operation took about three hours and it was over at 4 o'clock in the morning.

Such cases are always taken as high-priority ones. Local people usually have skills and clothing to survive overnight at low temperatures, but for foreigners such conditons are a danger of life.


----------



## Kpc21

MichiH said:


> I know German companies where exactly this happens because it is not allowed for "normal" worker to receive emails from a non-company email address because this would be private emails and you might do private stuff during working time.


Yeah, but still there must be some people in the company responsible for the contact with "external world", who answer telephones to the company, or also the e-mails...

If a company doesn't have such a thing, it doesn't exist on the market.

It's totally different in my company though... Well, let's explain...



> About two years ago our "IT security officer" (there is a specific name for this important job but for any reason I forget it...) told us in a meeting that private desktop background pictures are not allowed. It's just because you have to do an illegal action to bring the picture to your company notebook. Everyone was astonished and he explained the reason: It is not allowed to connect an USB flash drive to your PC (note: minimum 90% (if not all) of our department employees have a special permission to do it though) and the only way is via "forbidden" websites (internet is not allowed to be used for private reason; note: there is a special agreement.... but not yet valid for our location / department) or sending emails from a private account!


It would be the best idea from the security perspective (the general recommendation is to separate the private life from the professional one regarding computers), but it's utopia. And what if someone works remotely and do not have a business laptop? E.g. for a school teacher it's a standard that he does a lot of his work (which also includes contact with other teachers) at home.

But... finding a picture for a wallpaper on the Internet and downloading it is a job-related and not private thing


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> If a company doesn't have such a thing, it doesn't exist on the market.


I was talking about a bank here. There is a standard [email protected] de mail address but the normal cashier at the desk is not allowed to receive emails from outside which are automatically blocked. Of course, there's an "online service department" which works on the business emails from outside but these are different persons! They can forward email to the cashier if necessary. The reason is quite simple: Customers know the cashier and that's why they wanna write emails to them but their job is to serve the people standing in the queue in front of them.



Kpc21 said:


> And what if someone works remotely and do not have a business laptop?


In this case I talked about a company with more than 400,000 employees. Of course, everyone who needs a notebook has a notebook. I have a smart phone and a notebook with both having remote access to emails.



Kpc21 said:


> But... finding a picture for a wallpaper on the Internet and downloading it is a job-related and not private thing


People who need to download things like that are allowed to do so. There's a general rule like "only things required for your job". It's not ruled or even monitored in general but the problem is that people take advantage of things they seem to be allowed to. E.g. reading and posting on online forums for private reason during work  Many websites are blocked in my company, e.g. internet services for email or (private) forums or local newspaper.

About picture for a wallpaper... Is that legal? Not from a companies' point of view but in general? Copyright? For instance, it's not allowed to download picture/pictogram/icon and use it for a presentation. My company has an "image pool" for that reason, own images to be used in presentations.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MichiH said:


> Many websites are blocked in my company, e.g. internet services for email or (private) forums or local newspaper.


I don't know about Germany, but in the Netherlands everyone just browse on social media, forums or news on their phone - during work hours. No PC ban is going to avoid that. 

Everyone is so addicted to their social media feed and phone that it's just kind of accepted. On the other hand, some people smoke. A lot. I mean 7 - 8 times per (work) day. 10 - 15 minutes per smoke. :grass:


----------



## Kpc21

MichiH said:


> About picture for a wallpaper... Is that legal? Not from a companies' point of view but in general? Copyright? For instance, it's not allowed to download picture/pictogram/icon and use it for a presentation.


It's allowed to download them. It's not allowed to earn money using them. And when you distribute them, they should always come together with the author's name.

Thinking about that, if you use them for job-related purposes... it's about earning money. So you indeed shouldn't do it at work.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Everyone is so addicted to their social media feed and phone that it's just kind of accepted. On the other hand, some people smoke. A lot. I mean 7 - 8 times per (work) day. 10 - 15 minutes per smoke. :grass:


But outside, not in the building, I think...

By the way - if you have a shop, a restaurant, a hairdresser point, anything like that - and you play music for your clients, you should pay licence fees. If the music is played only for the employees, it's not needed (it's interpreted so that the music has no influence on the company's income). So what they sometimes do is:









"Music can be listened to only by the shop employees"









"The clients using our services are asked *not to listen to the radio*. The music is for staff only!"









"Listening to music for own purposes! Please don't listen!"


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't know about Germany, but in the Netherlands everyone just browse on social media, forums or news on their phone - during work hours. No PC ban is going to avoid that.


I don't think that it's about countries but companies.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Everyone is so addicted to their social media feed and phone that it's just kind of accepted.


Which is really bad. Very bad IMO.



ChrisZwolle said:


> On the other hand, some people smoke. A lot. I mean 7 - 8 times per (work) day. 10 - 15 minutes per smoke. :grass:


If you go out for smoking and back at your desk you start playing with your phone. How big is the slot for doing your job? I don't think that this is a good way... A very bad future.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In my experience it's definitely not just the younger generation that is addicted to their phone. 40/50-ish people are just as bad.


----------



## MichiH

There's a German wordplay with modified emphasis about electric current:

5A --> 5 Ampere --> 5 am pere --> 5 am bär --> 5 at beaver ...


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> What about the word for a female dog?


bitch please


----------



## Kpc21

It works


----------



## riiga

I bought a new car today, a 2014 Mazda 3 with 35 000 km to replace my old Volvo (in the background). So far I like it a lot! (Though I would've picked red instead of black if I had the choice). 

Over the past few weeks I've looked at the Volvo V40 and the Audi A3, but both were quite expensive and hard to find with petrol, it seems like 9 out of 10 were diesel. I also looked at the Seat Leon, but the seller at Seat seemed quite busy talking on the phone for 15 mins and overall quite uninterested. The Seat also didn't come with winter tyres, so that would be extra :nuts:. A friend suggested I'd look at Mazda when I said I hadn't considered any Japanese cars yet.


----------



## bogdymol

Nice choice!

I would also consider a Mazda 3 as my next car, but unfortunately it doesn’t have an estate version, plus the 2.2 L diesel engine is slightly too large (in Romania after 2.0 L the taxes and insurance rise quite a lot).

My parents are currently driving a 2016 CX-3, 2.0 petrol, and they are very happy with it. I also drive in from time to time and I must say that it is quite good.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm also looking for a new car. I'd like to get a car with automatic transmission but low fuel cost. The road tax in the Netherlands is according to weight, so I don't want (and frankly don't need) a larger car. A 1400 kg petrol car would cost me € 65 per month in road taxes, that's just too much. If it was a diesel, it would cost me even € 125 per month (!) so few people in the Netherlands drive a diesel car.

So, a smaller car with automatic transmission but low fuel consumption. That means a Toyota hybrid is an interesting option. I've looked at Yaris and Auris. The Auris is a bit bigger than I need and also 220 kg heavier, so the Yaris is a more likely candidate. The hybrid Yaris consumes a quarter less fuel than the non-hybrid, so that's quite a significant cost saving.


----------



## Kpc21

I don't know if buying a black car is a good idea. After one or two rides, you already need to visit a car wash, or otherwise you drive a car which looks really dirty.


----------



## Nordic20T

riiga said:


> I bought a new car today, a 2014 Mazda 3 with 35 000 km to replace my old Volvo (in the background). So far I like it a lot! (Though I would've picked red instead of black if I had the choice).
> 
> Over the past few weeks I've looked at the Volvo V40 and the Audi A3, but both were quite expensive and hard to find with petrol, it seems like 9 out of 10 were diesel. I also looked at the Seat Leon, but the seller at Seat seemed quite busy talking on the phone for 15 mins and overall quite uninterested. The Seat also didn't come with winter tyres, so that would be extra :nuts:. A friend suggested I'd look at Mazda when I said I hadn't considered any Japanese cars yet.


Congratulations for your new car! :cheers: I didn't have the opportunity to drive the Mazda 3, only the Mazda 6. I didn't like it at all, but the 3 feels a lot better already when just taking a seat. 

At the moment I drive a 2004 Volvo V40 2.0T and I don't plan to sell it yet. It has only 362'000km at the moment, so no reason to worry yet...  As it looks at the moment, rust will divide us one day. hno:

Have a safe trip and a lot of fun with your new ride!


----------



## riiga

ChrisZwolle said:


> A 1400 kg petrol car would cost me € 65 per month in road taxes, that's just too much. If it was a diesel, it would cost me even € 125 per month (!) so few people in the Netherlands drive a diesel car.


That's some insane taxes. hno:

My Volvo costs me 195 € in road tax per year (taxed by weight). The Mazda costs 53 € in taxes per year (taxed by emissions).



Kpc21 said:


> I don't know if buying a black car is a good idea. After one or two rides, you already need to visit a car wash, or otherwise you drive a car which looks really dirty.


As I've said, if I had the choice I would've picked a different colour, but I'm not very picky when it comes to second hand cars, even if it's a recent one.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> What about the word for a female dog?




Same issue. But there’s really no problem calling a dog a dog no matter what its sex is.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> I don't know if buying a black car is a good idea. After one or two rides, you already need to visit a car wash, or otherwise you drive a car which looks really dirty.


That applies to any color.

Even to this:


----------



## Kpc21

Not so much with the others as with black.


----------



## volodaaaa

The new President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies is Roberto Fico. The previous prime minister of Slovakia that resigned on 15th of March was Robert Fico. The Slovenian prime minister resigned the same day. Btw. the current Slovak PM is Peter Pellegrini, which is pure Italian name. 

:troll: :troll:


----------



## Junkie

And Miroslav Cerar is a pure Slovak name. Only his wife's name, Mojca sounds more Slovenian.


----------



## g.spinoza

riiga said:


> That's some insane taxes. hno:
> 
> My Volvo costs me 195 € in road tax per year (taxed by weight). The Mazda costs 53 € in taxes per year (taxed by emissions).
> 
> 
> 
> As I've said, if I had the choice I would've picked a different colour, but I'm not very picky when it comes to second hand cars, even if it's a recent one.


Congrats on the new car, @riiga!

My best friend got one and it's very nice.

Regarding road taxes, in Italy it's a regional thing: each region applies a different rate, it depends on where you have your legal residence. Differences are not so large, though.

Since I'm registered in Lombardy, I pay 300 € per year for my new 2.0 l, 150 HP diesel Peugeot 3008. Differently from other regions, though, Lombardy gives you a 10% discount if you agree to have your tax directly taken from the bank account, so I paid 270 €.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ In the Netherlands that car would cost € 1636 per year in road tax. The price is probably much higher too due to the CO2 punitive taxation (especially diesel).

That explains why few people outside of company car leases drive a diesel car. It's just too expensive. You only break even at a very high annual kilometrage.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm also looking for a new car. I'd like to get a car with automatic transmission but low fuel cost. The road tax in the Netherlands is according to weight, so I don't want (and frankly don't need) a larger car. A 1400 kg petrol car would cost me € 65 per month in road taxes, that's just too much. If it was a diesel, it would cost me even € 125 per month (!) so few people in the Netherlands drive a diesel car.
> 
> So, a smaller car with automatic transmission but low fuel consumption. That means a Toyota hybrid is an interesting option. I've looked at Yaris and Auris. The Auris is a bit bigger than I need and also 220 kg heavier, so the Yaris is a more likely candidate. The hybrid Yaris consumes a quarter less fuel than the non-hybrid, so that's quite a significant cost saving.


Toyota's are very different one to the other.

When I was in New Zealand, I had a Toyota Corolla as a rental car. It was fine for a few days drive, but I wouldn't buy something like that. On the inside was full of cheap plastic - comparable to my first car, a Dacia Supernova.

Few weeks after that trip, I went to England for my work where I also rented a Toyota, but a hybrid C-HR this time. That had a very nice interior, with good quality materials. Plus, the hybrid system seemed to work very smooth. I really liked that car, although it isn't the correct type of car for my personal preferences (I wouldn't buy one).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The 2014 facelift of the Toyota Yaris was developed in Europe, for better handling, less noise and improved interior according to European standards. I should make a test drive in one. 

A facelift can be very minor, or almost making it a new generation, with new engines, exterior styling, interior, etc.


----------



## MichiH

bogdymol said:


> Toyota's are very different one to the other.


I guess it's different by market, isn't it?

I drove a Ford Focus in US ten years ago. It was like driving a Dacia Logan (with automatic transmission though)... My European Focus was very different and much better.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^
But USA Focus (basis-model) cost about the same as a Logan, while EU Focus cost like 10 000 EUR more :lol:



Kpc21 said:


> Not so much with the others as with black.


It's true, with my silver cars I never bothered to wash, always looked okay
black, always looks kind of dirty

But, when the black is just washed... it is amazing:cheers:


----------



## Kpc21

Silver is probably the best color in terms of keeping the car looking reasonably clean. Maybe next to grey.

Red also doesn't look bad when it's a little bit dirty.

Black is definitely the worst.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> Dacia Supernova.


Is it called like that after its tendency to explode uproariously? :lol:


----------



## italystf

How can I find an old post within a thread? Aparently the "search this thread" function doesn't work anymore.


----------



## Spookvlieger

I bought a Skoda Rapid 1.6 TDI two years ago and up untill this day, I'm very pleased with it. It offers a ver decent ride for the money, a ford focus is more expensive...


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> How can I find an old post within a thread? Aparently the "search this thread" function doesn't work anymore.


I used that function yesterday and it worked normally.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> The 2014 facelift of the Toyota Yaris was developed in Europe, for better handling, less noise and improved interior according to European standards. I should make a test drive in one.
> 
> A facelift can be very minor, or almost making it a new generation, with new engines, exterior styling, interior, etc.


European Toyotas underwent facelift in 2015 if I am not mistaken. Now new generation is to be introduced starting with new facelift of Yaris in 2017 and announced facelift of Auris in 2019. 

Btw. I have owned my Auris for one year and few days and I think it is a good car. I only regret I did not opt for hybrid. Seemed expensive and I did not trust it. But having my car on mortgages I would have made a great difference.

Great car though.


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> Is it called like that after its tendency to explode uproariously? :lol:


:lol:

There was Dacia Nova, the first new (=_nova_) model for Dacia after about 30 years. Then Renault bought them, installed their Renault engine on it, and called it SuperNova (like an upgrade).

My parents bought that one brand new in 2002. They used it up to about 55.000 km, and then sold it to my father's sister. She drove about 10.000 since then. So, as it currently stands, it is a functioning 2002 car with only 65.000 km on board.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Has everyone heard the (possibly apocryphal) story of why the Chevrolet Nova had trouble selling in Latin America (other than Brazil)? Nova -> "no va" -> doesn't go.


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> Has everyone heard the (possibly apocryphal) story of why the Chevrolet Nova had trouble selling in Latin America (other than Brazil)? Nova -> "no va" -> doesn't go.


Yes.

However, we don't have problems here with Ford Kuga (plague) or Toyota Carina (pronounced better not to translate it)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Imagine the trouble that carmakers must go through to find names that are pronounceable and suitable in so many languages.

Peugeot's numbering scheme may not be so bad after all  Unless, of course, it is an unlucky number in some cultures.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Imagine the trouble that carmakers must go through to find names that are pronounceable and suitable in so many languages.
> 
> Peugeot's numbering scheme may not be so bad after all  Unless, of course, it is an unlucky number in some cultures.


Mitsubishi Pajero is sold as Montero in Spanish-speaking countries because Pajero means... one who masturbate.
In the 70s Fiat Ritmo was sold with another name in the USA because Ritmo was a condom brand.


----------



## CNGL

x-type said:


> Yes.
> 
> However, we don't have problems here with Ford Kuga (plague) or Toyota Carina (pronounced better not to translate it)


The Mitsubishi Pajero was sold in Spain as Mitsubishi Montero because _pajero_ means "wanker" (Wow, that does pass the censorship! :lol. Another unfortunate car name is Mazda Laputa, which sounds like _la puta_ (the slut).


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> Yes.
> 
> However, we don't have problems here with Ford Kuga (plague) or Toyota Carina (pronounced better not to translate it)


What Carina?


----------



## italystf

And don't forget the Microsoft app called Inkulator that in Italian sounds as "one who sodomize".


----------



## Alex_ZR

italystf said:


> What Carina?


Not carina, karina.


----------



## riiga

Rumour has it that Honda originally intended to call the Honda Fit "Honda Fitta". Fitta means "cu nt" in Swedish. In Europe they decided to market it as Honda Jazz instead.


----------



## MichiH

italystf said:


> How can I find an old post within a thread? Aparently the "search this thread" function doesn't work anymore.


It also didn't work for me some weeks ago.

There are quite often different kind of (temporary) issues here........


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Has everyone heard the (possibly apocryphal) story of why the Chevrolet Nova had trouble selling in Latin America (other than Brazil)? Nova -> "no va" -> doesn't go.


I heard of this, but I don't think it's true.

Here in Italy I read sometimes that Fiat Ritmo, back in the 80s, was renamed Fiat Strada in the US because Ritmo ("rhythm") is intended as something related to menstrual cycle, but I don't think it's true, either. Is it?

For instance, Qashqai in Italian is pronounced ad the word for "I fell down" but I don't think anyone cares ...


----------



## Kpc21

italystf said:


> And don't forget the Microsoft app called Inkulator that in Italian sounds as "one who sodomize".


Well, in Polish it's a medical machine in which the too early born children are placed, which isolates them from the external conditions.

So it's nothing rude... but anyway doesn't seem to be a good, fancy name for a car.

A Turkish bus producer Karsan has two bus models, named Atak and Jest. Both of them have meanings in Polish: Atak means, as you may guess, attack, jest means is.

Quite a weird situation happened in the Polish SSC section in a thread about trams some time ago. One user mentioned a name of a Siemens (if I remember well) tram model. Another member corrected him saying that this is a name of a MRI machine by Siemens and mentioned the name with which the first user probably mistook it. But it finally turned out that Siemens really named their tram and their MRI machine with the same model name


----------



## DanielFigFoz

g.spinoza said:


> For instance, Qashqai in Italian is pronounced ad the word for "I fell down" but I don't think anyone cares ...


Apparently the Qashqai is called something else in Australia because they thought people would start calling it the 'cash cow' (something that makes a company a lot of money, possibly without much effort, is slightly derogatory). They kept the name in the UK and indeed I have heard it being called the 'cash cow' in the UK, where it has indeed proved a massive hit.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Imagine the trouble that carmakers must go through to find names that are pronounceable and suitable in so many languages.


The same applies to any business operating internationally. Quite a big part of the launch is to find a good name. A name, a shape, a symbol, a color may be dangenous in some culture, and slogans might have a non-intended meaning.

One of the most notable mistakes was the Swedish vacuum manufacturer Electrolux using the following in an American campaign: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."

A Finnish bisquit maker created a new product, and planned to export it under the name Rape ("rapea" in Finnish, "crispy"). Plans were canceled after receiving some advise.

Some 25 years ago, ICL and Bell Atlantic created a joint venture Sorbus. Against all warnings, the Finnish subsidiary was named to Sorbus Finland. With such a name, the company lost all its credibility: Sorbus was a very well-known low-grade fortified wine popular among drunkards.


----------



## Kpc21

The problems with threads not working correctly started again...


----------



## volodaaaa

There is a medication in Slavakia called "urinal"


----------



## italystf

Boarding a ferry with strong waves.


----------



## Attus

MattiG said:


> One of the most notable mistakes was the Swedish vacuum manufacturer Electrolux using the following in an American campaign: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."


What is the only Microsoft product you don't suck with? 
Microsoft Vacuum Cleaner.


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> There is a medication in Slavakia called "urinal"


And what's the Slovak word for a urinal? The same as in Polish: pisuar?

This Polish word for it is quite funny, in fact. I don't know what is its actual origin, but it sounds as if it was created from "to piss" with a "French" ending added, as if it was spelled: pissoir in French.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^That probably IS the origin: They are called "pissoirs" in French.

EDIT: On further research, the French Wikipedia article on "urinoirs" says the word "pissoir" is no longer used in French* but was adopted by and is still used in German; and that Eastern European languages picked it up from there.

*I sort of figured "pissoir" was slang; if I actually needed one in France I'd ask for a "toilette."


----------



## Kanadzie

MattiG said:


> One of the most notable mistakes was the Swedish vacuum manufacturer Electrolux using the following in an American campaign: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."


Definitely no mistake - they used that for decades, they wanted the double-entendre and it made sure that it was very well-known in any person.

Anyway, Szkoda is Nr. 1 selling car in Poland:lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

I don’t remember that Electrolux slogan. But it justthismoment struck me that besides the triple*-entendre, it rhymes. Their ad agency must have been very proud of themselves.
*”sucks” can also mean it’s crap, of course.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> And what's the Slovak word for a urinal? The same as in Polish: pisuar?
> 
> This Polish word for it is quite funny, in fact. I don't know what is its actual origin, but it sounds as if it was created from "to piss" with a "French" ending added, as if it was spelled: pissoir in French.


it is pisoár.

In 2013 I was in Greece on summer holidays with my wife. She had some problems with a bladder as it was little bit cold outside (or perhaps it was caused by A/C) and she needed the medication (In Slovakia she would have asked for Urinal). We came to a pharmacy and asked for Urinal ("We would like Urinal"). The lady behind the counter just raised her eyebrows :nuts: :lol: Fortunately there is a lot of people of Serbian origin in summer resorts (afaik the medication is sold in Serbia as well) in the northern Greece - so her colleague reacted immediately and told us that medication was not sold in Greece giving us the alternative.


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> I sort of figured "pissoir" was slang; if I actually needed one in France I'd ask for a "toilette."


Let's say you are in a DYI supermarket (like Castorama, Leroy Merlin, Obi, Bauhaus, or whatever brands you have in your country; those are European ones) and you need to buy a urinal.

And if you say, you want to buy a toilet, they will sell you a toilet:










not a urinal:










If you need to use one, you can usually use a normal toilet equally well, so you don't care.



Kanadzie said:


> Anyway, Szkoda is Nr. 1 selling car in Poland:lol:


Well, we normally pronounce it with S and not Sz (Sh), as it theoretically should be pronounced  And they also pronounce it with S in the Polish
advertisement.


----------



## Fatfield

Picked up my new car yesterday. :banana:


----------



## g.spinoza

Fatfield said:


> Picked up my new car yesterday. :banana:


Fellow 3008 driver!

Engine?


----------



## Fatfield

1.6. I thought it would be a bit sluggish but it isn't. Been doing 30mph in 4th no problem whereas my 308 would struggle. Very impressed with it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

:hmm:


----------



## CNGL

At least that French village escapes the Scunthorpe problem here thanks to the alternate meaning of pussy, unlike a certain Austrian village.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The last work day before Easter.

Paris: hno:









Netherlands: hno:









London: hno:









Madrid: :cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

CNGL said:


> At least that French village escapes the Scunthorpe problem here thanks to the alternate meaning of pussy, unlike a certain Austrian village.


Old, but accurate. But Pussy should be somewhere in between :lol:










In my case it took 10 years, not 9 hours


----------



## volodaaaa

- What does a Russian say, if there is no Internet? 
- "Inter-нет"


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> The last work day before Easter.


Not in most of Spain , here it was yesterday. That explains this:


ChrisZwolle said:


> Paris: hno:
> 
> Netherlands: hno:
> 
> London: hno:
> 
> Madrid: :cheers:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Germany has vacation. They spend it on the Autobahn. There is still quite some congestion even well after 9 p.m.


----------



## bogdymol

In Austria tomorrow (Friday) is normal working day. Only on Monday will be free. However, more than half of my office collagues, me included, will not come in the office (one day taken from standard leave for this).


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> Germany has vacation. They spend it on the Autobahn. There is still quite some congestion even well after 9 p.m.


I drove 700km through Germany today and had no traffic jam at all. I think Autobahns were very empty compared to what I'm used to. I saw a short congestion caused by a construction side and another short one caused by an accident each on the opposite direction. Back home I heard on the radio that there are some congestions on my A3 but that's quite normal (the red one between Frankfurt and Nuremberg).


----------



## bogdymol

Drove today from Wels (Austria) to Munich (Germany) via Passau. 

Traffic in my direction was incredibly low. On the other direction, from Deggendorf to Passau and then to Wels there were traffic jams due to the high amount of Easter holiday traffic. At the entrance in Austria there was a big jam, and people waiting in a 50m long queue to buy the Austria vignette. As it looked like, was minimum 1h waiting time for vignette purchasing.


----------



## MichiH

^^ It's possible to buy the Austria vignette online now. No sticker required anymore!

https://shop.asfinag.at/en/


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Only if you order it at least 18 days in advance...

If you're thinking, "next week I'll drive through Austria, we have to get a vignette", you cannot use the digital vignette. Because it's only valid 18 days after purchase.


----------



## MichiH

^^ I guess that most of the (East European) drivers had planned their Easter trip more than 3 weeks ago... I also guess that most German tourists had planned their vacation more than 3 weeks ago... Maybe they don't know the new possibility.


----------



## bogdymol

The new possibility is stupidly implemented. You need to buy the Austrian vignette online 3 weeks in advance due to some European directive that you can cancel any online purchase within a few days. Therefore, the Austrians sell you online vignettes if the vignette start date is 3+ weeks. This is often not practical. 

On the other side, in Hungary, Romania or Slovakia, also EU members, where same rules regarding online purchasing apply, you can buy an online vignette with start date from today if you want.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I would try to purchase a vignette at a gas station in southern Germany. If you wait until the last moment, a queue is a high probability. 

Meanwhile, Europe goes on Easter vacation:


----------



## Kpc21

bogdymol said:


> The new possibility is stupidly implemented. You need to buy the Austrian vignette online 3 weeks in advance due to some European directive that you can cancel any online purchase within a few days. Therefore, the Austrians sell you online vignettes if the vignette start date is 3+ weeks. This is often not practical.


The telecom operators with buying the top-ups online do it so that there appears a question: "do you want us to start providing the service immediately?". If you say yes (tick this option), an exception from this law comes to play.

So maybe it would be also possible to do it with vignettes - but then, they would also have to be valid just from the moment of purchase.

This law is needed in general, thanks to it you can buy something online and return it if you don't like it. With normal shopping you can normally test the thing in the store, with online shopping you don't have this possibility and hence this law was introduced.


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## bogdymol

The free return policy for online purchases is obviously a good thing. However, for online vignettes it’s stupid to be applied so drastically. It would be fair to say something like “if you don’t cancel it before 00:01 midnight the day it becomes valid, you cannot cancel it anymore. You thick that you agree with this, and that’s it. Otherwise it’s unpractical and the possibility of buying it online not used to its full potential.


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## Suburbanist

There must be a legal workaround for services with immediate use such as prepaid online phone credit, digital movies, online vouchers for parking lots... Asfag is lazy or uninformed.

I read the German police is again clamping down on EU residents leasing long term luxury vehicles in Switzerland and driving them over the borders with intent to use them in Germany. This is not allowed as per EU regulations and its treaties with the Confederation.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> The free return policy for online purchases is obviously a good thing. However, for online vignettes it’s stupid to be applied so drastically. It would be fair to say something like “if you don’t cancel it before 00:01 midnight the day it becomes valid, you cannot cancel it anymore. You thick that you agree with this, and that’s it. Otherwise it’s unpractical and the possibility of buying it online not used to its full potential.


I understand this principle of having the service fail-safe. But this is too much. Why would someone return a motorway sticker? If a customer has an opportunity to buy it day prior their need, there is only a faint possibility for them to see a situation when they need to return it.

On the other hand, buying a sticker three weeks before you need it is very inconvenient and risky. Two weeks ago I went ski to Austrian Alps. The decision was made two days beforehand - thus an electronic vignette was completely useless. 

I reckon the main advantage of having an electronic vignette rests on flexibility - I need the sticker now and I am going to buy it over the internet now. Limiting this advantage equals challenging the existence of the e-vignette.


----------



## rudiwien

There was also a bit of discussion in Austrian media about this, but unfortunately, not enough uproar to pile on pressure to change it.
It is a pity especially for the short-time vignettes, which you normally don't plan so easily almost 3 weeks ahead. For yearly, that is not that much an issue, and maybe that is why there weren't more complaints... Not even the ÖAMTC seemed to bother too much.

The way they implemented it is just utterly stupid, it really defies the purpose of buying online. I would accept such an approach if Austria was the first country to implement the online sale of digital vignettes, but there are plenty of others that have done it successfully before, and there seems to be no legal issues in those countries; so there's no excuse..

Having a tick-box where you explicitly forfeit your right for withdrawing from the contract would do the trick.
ÖBB (the railway) manages to do sell their "Vorteilscard" (i.e. the yearly reduction card) online, valid from day 0 on - so it is not that in the Austrian transport sector, there wouldn't be any knowledge or precedence for it either...


----------



## MichiH

volodaaaa said:


> On the other hand, buying a sticker three weeks before you need it is very inconvenient and risky. Two weeks ago I went ski to Austrian Alps. The decision was made two days beforehand - thus an electronic vignette was completely useless.


I don't think that the e-vignette is completely useless. For instance, if you need a 12-month-vignette you don't have to put this stupid sticker on your windshield. And if you go on vacation with a family (e.g. with pupils), you usually don't decide to go skiing just 2 days earlier.

And again, most of the Easter holiday trips are planned some weeks in advance. This traffic is causing the recent congestions and that's just ridiculous. In addition, as Chris mentioned before, you can also buy the sticker at a rest area in the neighboring country.


----------



## bogdymol

I arrived in Moscow today. First impressions after a few hours:
- it took me exactly 2h from the moment the plane touched the ground at the airport until I was in Red Square (using only public transport). Not bad. 
- there are A LOT of black expensive cars and SUVs. Many of them also have a single blue emergency light on the roof to pass the red lights. I have never seen in any other city so many vehicles with blue lights on them
- there are security controls everywhere: airport building entrance, train station, every metro station, shopping mall, Mc’Donalds etc.


----------



## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> There must be a legal workaround for services with immediate use such as prepaid online phone credit, digital movies, online vouchers for parking lots...


Yes, it is, I wrote about it.

But a vignette is still something you don't necessarily want to use immediately. You may want to buy it in advance, not being valid just from now.

Still, however, you could be able to return it e.g. before the start of its validity.

And I think it's more about adjusting the local law rather than about the general EU rules.


----------



## MichiH

^^ https://www.asfinag.at/toll/vignette/digital-vignette/consumer-rights/



> *Consumer rights are important to us*
> 
> According to the European directive for consumer protection, customers can withdraw from the *online purchase* of a product or service within *14 days* – this will also apply to the digital vignette. The day of purchase does not count as one of these 14 days. Plus: Since withdrawing from the purchase is also possible by post (not just email), the withdrawal notification can arrive at ASFINAG up to *three days* later.
> 
> The digital vignette is thus *valid from the 18th day after the purchase*; only then does it become valid for use on Austria’s motorways and expressways.
> 
> In other words: If you buy a digital vignette on 1 February 2018 through the ASFINAG web shop or the app, then the toll not valid until 19 February 2018.
> 
> This is to prevent drivers from purchasing the digital vignette online, using the motorway network and then getting their money back for the toll.
> 
> 
> From mid-2018 the Digital Vignette is also available from the distribution partners
> 
> From summer 2018 the Digital Vignette will also be available from tobacconists, petrol stations and motorist clubs. When you buy a *Digital Vignette from one of our sales partners*, the consumer protection period of 17 days does not apply: *it will be valid immediately*.


----------



## Junkie

bogdymol said:


> .
> - there are A LOT of black expensive cars and SUVs. Many of them also have a single blue emergency light on the roof to pass the red lights.


Are they from the secret police of Russia or just ordinary cars?
This must be because of the big congestion. But this is illegal in other countries if you are not official.

These can be bought on the Internet for a funny prices


----------



## Skopje/Скопје

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> NEXT PAGE >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


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## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> Probably this exception isn't implemented in the Austrian law because they... didn't have vignettes until now.
> 
> So it's not valid in Austria.


Very unlikely. I do not believe that vignettes are the only goods in Austria to be delivered electronically and to be used immediately.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^What about (electronic) tickets to football matches, concerts...air and rail travel...?


----------



## bogdymol

My wife’s Austrian phone has a rechargeable SIM card, which I pay for online and is used immediately. These 2-3 weeks of waiting time like for the vignette do not apply.


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> We pour water, but only on women. We also whip them. They in return give us decorated eggs or chocolate eggs.


OMG I am moving to Slovakia :cheers:


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> Very unlikely. I do not believe that vignettes are the only goods in Austria to be delivered electronically and to be used immediately.


I mean, maybe they have the exception for all the other "immediate" goods implemented in their law, but not for the vignettes?

There are also other exemptions from this right to return, like you can't return a CD or DVD you have already unpacked. Because in such a situation most people would just be buying CDs, making a copy (which isn't illegal just for your own private use) and returning it.

Another exception are goods bought on auction (also on online ones).


----------



## CNGL

Junkie said:


> Also just a few years ago we had Orthodox Easter on May the 1st (Which is the labor national day)


... which is impossibily late for the western Easter, in which the latest date Easter can be is 25 April (This will happen in 2038). It is always the Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring equinox... well, this is not true for next year, when the first full moon after the equinox is just a few hours after, and thus Easter should be on 24 March, yet due to the way the date is calculated it will be on 21 April instead.


----------



## Junkie

CNGL said:


> ... which is impossibily late for the western Easter, in which the latest date Easter can be is 25 April (This will happen in 2038). It is always the Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring equinox... well, this is not true for next year, when the first full moon after the equinox is just a few hours after, and thus Easter should be on 24 March, yet due to the way the date is calculated it will be on 21 April instead.


5th May is the farthest Orthodox Easter Sunday date. It was so in 2013. Remember that the Orthodox is more traditional than the western calendar, which is more technically correct.


----------



## Kpc21

The Polish list of exceptions - directly from our Consumer Rights Act - looks like this:



> Art. 38. Prawo odstąpienia od umowy zawartej poza lokalem przedsiębiorstwa lub na odległość nie przysługuje konsumentowi
> w odniesieniu do umów:
> 
> _The right to resign from a contract concluded outside of the enterprise's premises or remotely is not granted to the consumer with respect to the contracts:_
> 
> 1) o świadczenie usług, jeżeli przedsiębiorca wykonał w pełni usługę za wyraźną zgodą konsumenta, który został poinformowany
> przed rozpoczęciem świadczenia, że po spełnieniu świadczenia przez przedsiębiorcę utraci prawo odstą-
> pienia od umowy;
> 
> _for providing services if the entrepreneur has provided the service fully, with a clear consent of the consumer, who was informed before the start of providing the service that after its finish, he will lose his right to resign from the contract_
> 
> 2) w której cena lub wynagrodzenie zależy od wahań na rynku finansowym, nad którymi przedsiębiorca nie sprawuje
> kontroli, i które mogą wystąpić przed upływem terminu do odstąpienia od umowy;
> 
> _in which the price or remuneration depends on the oscillations on the financial market, over which the entrepreneur has no control and which can occur before the deadline for resigning from the contract_
> 
> 3) w której przedmiotem świadczenia jest rzecz nieprefabrykowana, wyprodukowana według specyfikacji konsumenta
> lub służąca zaspokojeniu jego zindywidualizowanych potrzeb;
> 
> _in which the subject of the contract is not a prefabricated thing, it is made according to the consumer's specification or it serves to satisfy his individual needs_
> 
> 4) w której przedmiotem świadczenia jest rzecz ulegająca szybkiemu zepsuciu lub mająca krótki termin przydatności do
> użycia;
> 
> _in which the subject of the contract is a thing subject to quick damage (breaking down, rottening) or having a short expiry date_
> 
> 5) w której przedmiotem świadczenia jest rzecz dostarczana w zapieczętowanym opakowaniu, której po otwarciu opakowania
> nie można zwrócić ze względu na ochronę zdrowia lub ze względów higienicznych, jeżeli opakowanie zostało
> otwarte po dostarczeniu;
> 
> _in which the subject of the contract is a thing provided in a closed package, which cannot be returned after its opening due to health protection or for hygienic reasons, if the package was opened after the delivery_
> 
> 6) w której przedmiotem świadczenia są rzeczy, które po dostarczeniu, ze względu na swój charakter, zostają nierozłącznie
> połączone z innymi rzeczami;
> 
> _in which the subject of the contract are things which after the delivery, due to their character, become inseparably connected with other things_
> 
> 7) w której przedmiotem świadczenia są napoje alkoholowe, których cena została uzgodniona przy zawarciu umowy
> sprzedaży, a których dostarczenie może nastąpić dopiero po upływie 30 dni i których wartość zależy od wahań na
> rynku, nad którymi przedsiębiorca nie ma kontroli;
> 
> _in which the subject of the contract are alcohol beverages, whose price was agreed at the moment of concluding the sales contract and the delivery of which can occur only after at least 30 days and the value of which depends on the oscillations on the market over which the entrepreneur has no control_
> 
> 8) w której konsument wyraźnie żądał, aby przedsiębiorca do niego przyjechał w celu dokonania pilnej naprawy lub
> konserwacji; jeżeli przedsiębiorca świadczy dodatkowo inne usługi niż te, których wykonania konsument żądał, lub
> dostarcza rzeczy inne niż części zamienne niezbędne do wykonania naprawy lub konserwacji, prawo odstąpienia od
> umowy przysługuje konsumentowi w odniesieniu do dodatkowych usług lub rzeczy;
> 
> _in which the consumer clearly demanded that the entrepreneur comes to him to make an urgent repair or maintenance; if the entrepreneur provides also additional services apart from the demanded ones or provides other things than the spare parts needed for the repair or maintenance, the right to resign from the contract is valid with respect to those additional services or things_
> 
> 9) w której przedmiotem świadczenia są nagrania dźwiękowe lub wizualne albo programy komputerowe dostarczane
> w zapieczętowanym opakowaniu, jeżeli opakowanie zostało otwarte po dostarczeniu;
> 
> _in which the subject of the contract are audio or video recordings or computer programs provided in closed package if the package was opened after the delivery_
> 
> 10) o dostarczanie dzienników, periodyków lub czasopism, z wyjątkiem umowy o prenumeratę;
> 
> _for delivery of daily or periodical newspapers or magazines, except for subscriptions_
> 
> 11) zawartej w drodze aukcji publicznej;
> 
> _concluded by means of public auction_
> 
> 12) o świadczenie usług w zakresie zakwaterowania, innych niż do celów mieszkalnych, przewozu rzeczy, najmu samochodów,
> gastronomii, usług związanych z wypoczynkiem, wydarzeniami rozrywkowymi, sportowymi lub kulturalnymi,
> jeżeli w umowie oznaczono dzień lub okres świadczenia usługi;
> 
> _for providing accommodation services other than for residential purposes, carriage of things, car rental, gastronomy, touristic services, entertainment, sports or cultural events if in the contract the day or period of providing the service was defined_
> 
> 13) o dostarczanie treści cyfrowych, które nie są zapisane na nośniku materialnym, jeżeli spełnianie świadczenia rozpoczęło
> się za wyraźną zgodą konsumenta przed upływem terminu do odstąpienia od umowy i po poinformowaniu go
> przez przedsiębiorcę o utracie prawa odstąpienia od umowy.
> 
> _for providing digital content, which is not registered on material medium, if providing the service began with a clear consent of the consumer before the deadline for resigning from the contract and after informing him by the entrepreneur about the right to resign from the contract_


However:


> Art. 3. 1. Przepisów ustawy nie stosuje się do umów:
> 
> _The regulations of this act are not applied to the contracts:_
> 
> 1) dotyczących usług socjalnych, mieszkań socjalnych, opieki nad dziećmi, wsparcia dla rodzin i osób znajdujących się
> stale lub czasowo w potrzebie, w tym opieki długoterminowej;
> 
> _regarding social services, social apartments, care of children, support for families and people being permanently or temporarily in a need, including a need for long-term care_
> 
> 2) dotyczących gier hazardowych;
> 
> _regarding gambling games_
> 
> 3) zawieranych z przedsiębiorcą dokonującym częstych i regularnych objazdów, podczas których przedsiębiorca dostarcza
> środki spożywcze, napoje i inne artykuły, przeznaczone do bieżącego spożycia w gospodarstwach domowych, do
> miejsca zamieszkania, pobytu lub pracy konsumenta;
> 
> _concluded with an entrepreneur making frequent and regular rides during which he delivers grocery articles, beverages and other articles intended for consumption in a household, to the place of residence, stay or work of the consumer_
> 
> 4) dotyczących przewozu osób, z wyjątkiem art. 10 i art. 17;
> 
> _regarding carriage of people, except articles 10 and 17_
> 
> 5) zawieranych za pomocą automatów sprzedających lub zautomatyzowanych punktów sprzedaży;
> 
> _concluded by means of automated vending machines or automated sales points_
> 
> 6) zawieranych z dostawcą usług, o którym mowa w art. 2 pkt 27 lit. a ustawy z dnia 16 lipca 2004 r. – Prawo telekomunikacyjne
> (Dz. U. z 2014 r. poz. 243 i 827) za pomocą aparatu publicznego w celu skorzystania z takiego aparatu lub
> zawieranych w celu wykonania jednorazowego połączenia telefonicznego, internetowego lub faksowego przez konsumenta;
> 
> _concluded with a provider of telecom services by means of a public pay phone in order to use such a telephone or concluded in order to make a single telephone, internet or fax connection by the consumer_
> 
> 7) dotyczących usług zdrowotnych świadczonych przez pracowników służby zdrowia pacjentom w celu oceny, utrzymania
> lub poprawy ich stanu zdrowia, łącznie z przepisywaniem, wydawaniem i udostępnianiem produktów leczniczych
> oraz wyrobów medycznych, bez względu na to, czy są one oferowane za pośrednictwem placówek opieki zdrowotnej;
> 
> _regarding health services provided by the health care employees to the patients in order to evaluate, maintain or improve their state of health, including prescribing, delivering and providing medical products, regardless of whether they are offered by means of health care institutions_
> 
> 8) o imprezę turystyczną, o których mowa w ustawie z dnia 29 sierpnia 1997 r. o usługach turystycznych (Dz. U. z 2014 r.
> poz. 196);
> 
> _for a touristic event_
> 
> 9) o których mowa w art. 1 ust. 1 ustawy z dnia 16 września 2011 r. o timeshare (Dz. U. Nr 230, poz. 1370);
> 
> _for timeshare (vacation ownership)_
> 
> 10) zawieranych poza lokalem przedsiębiorstwa, jeżeli konsument jest zobowiązany do zapłaty kwoty nieprzekraczającej
> pięćdziesięciu złotych.
> 
> _concluded outside of the premises of the enterprise if the consumer is obliged to pay less than 50 PLN [a contract concluded outside enterprise's premises is NOT a contract concluded on the Internet, this belongs to another category - contracts concluded remotely]_


So it looks like either I missed something, or things like cinema tickets bought online actually can be returned. Of course, before the end of providing the service. And if someone leaves the cinema in the middle of a movie he can get back half of the ticket price... No, it would be too ridiculous, I must have missed something.

Because for things like bus/train/plane tickets, there is an exception.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> I mean, maybe they have the exception for all the other "immediate" goods implemented in their law, but not for the vignettes?
> 
> There are also other exemptions from this right to return, like you can't return a CD or DVD you have already unpacked. Because in such a situation most people would just be buying CDs, making a copy (which isn't illegal just for your own private use) and returning it.
> 
> Another exception are goods bought on auction (also on online ones).


Just irrelevant. All the member states were obliged to implement the whole consumer directive by June 13, 2014. I am about 110% sure that there are articles in the Austrian law to permit electronic sales of vignettes in a reasonable way.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What is going on in Italy? There is a lot of traffic congestion, whereas the rest of Europe doesn't have much congestion (yet). This afternoon it will be very busy though.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Easter Fires are a tradition in northwestern Germany and eastern Netherlands. Over the years, they have become more extravagant, with fires up to 20 meters high. 

The large number of fires have resulted in a very poor air quality with PM10 values over 120 µg/m³, which is worse than smog in the Netherlands. You can smell a strong smoke scent outside. 

There are calls to ban the easter fires out of environmental reasons. It's unlikely to happen, but the over-the-top fires result in people calling the fire department on the other side of the country due to the smoke smell.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> OMG I am moving to Slovakia :cheers:


"A greatest tribute to wet t-shirt contests is held today.... in every Slovak household", summed up a radio reporter few minutes ago :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

April 2d, and New York has had five inches of snow so far in the last few hours.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Northeastern Germany even had a foot of snow (35 cm) this weekend. It's fairly uncommon to get such amounts of snow so late in the season. 

In the Netherlands we had only one snowy day the entire winter (in early December). February was much colder than normal, but had almost no snow.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Weather Channel says this is New York’s second largest April snowfall on record, after a storm I remember well on April 6, 1982; I’d just turned 18 and there were local elections scheduled that day, so it would have been the first time I voted, but the elections were postponed because of the snow.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> April 2d, and New York has had five inches of snow so far in the last few hours.




That’s 12.5 centimeters.
Or maybe 12, since the exact figure in inches was 4.8.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This GFS run looks pretty good though


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> the over-the-top fires result in people calling the fire department on the other side of the country due to the smoke smell.


It reminds me of my first contact with police for than 20 years ago... Hell, I was just sitting next to a traditional fire...



ChrisZwolle said:


> Northeastern Germany even had a foot of snow (35 cm) this weekend. It's fairly uncommon to get such amounts of snow so late in the season.


Yes, and it's predicted to have up to 20°C in (Southern) Germany on Tuesday or Wednesday. Northereastern Germany will get about 15°C only...


----------



## Suburbanist

Snow is melting here in Bergen and water is seeping through the smallest of cracks on the rock walls. These glacial-pressed rock formations are very different from what I'm used to when it comes to mountain rocks. They are full of stress lines, and cracks, but they do not appear fragile or eroded (like rocks in the pre-Alpine regions). 

I noticed that here in Bergen there are many private streets on official maps. They are easily noticeable because post boxes are concentrated at their entrance - they are often 'shortcuts' or 'cul-de-sacs' serving a dozen buildings or so. I am not sure if this is common in the rest of Norway. Private streets*, with several buildings abutting it, are almost unheard of in the Netherlands.

*I am not referring merely to a street where only local residents can drive.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is also concern in Norway about flooding over the next two months. There is considerably more snowpack than usual, which could lead to flooding, especially in eastern Norway (Glomma River system) and the south. Especially if temperatures were to rise rapidly.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> Same here: + 3kph is considered a measure error, + 6 kph is just "giving a lecture about safe driving" (I bet it has never happened) and after this value a real financial fine starts progressively up to 800 €.


The Finnish system is mainly about collecting money.

There is 3 km/h deduction for measurement errors, and 6 km/h tolerance. After that, the curve is steep:

7-15 km/h: 170 EUR if speed limit is 60 less, otherwise 140 EUR
16-20 km/h: 200 EUR
21-36 km/h: Fine based on income
36-: Fine based on income + withdrawal of license

There is no limit for the income-based fines. The record ticket is 100.000+ EUR.

The system has a built-in pitfall: When the summer-time speed limits change to the winter-ones, most 100 km/h roads change to 80 km/h ones. This takes place by calendar not by weather. If you drive 105 km/h one day legally, the same speed on the next day may lead to fine of several hundreds or thousands euros.


----------



## Junkie

About the fines, in Italy they have cameras on some one way streets and they will issue the fine overseas wherever you are, based on your car plates. If its rent a car they will find you. Well at least this happened to people I know. They were unfortunately not aware of the one way sign before proceeding. 

One thing I cannot understand is if there are fines from the police that differ in price, for example if you are not citizen of that country. In the Balkan this might be considered a bribe which is very often accepted without any problems, because you have to go to the nearest post office or bank to pay the amount. And the police officer might see you are 'lazy' and will ask you to pay some advance. But of course it will not issue the fine.

In Macedonia we have driver's books that you can collect points from some traffic offences like speeding and if you are caught you might be interested to be stamped points instead of paying. When you collect certain amount of points your driver's licence will be revoked.
But this must go to the court for traffic offences as stated in the law. Otherwise without court decision, police cannot revoke licences.


----------



## Kpc21

bogdymol said:


> Except for Romania. Here you are generally pulled over and given a fine. There aren’t many fixed speed camera in Romania. There were more in the past, but not anymore.


In Poland we had a problem with municipal police units (not actually called police but with similar rights) which in some municipalities were often created even with the only purpose of installing a speed camera in a place which is not dangerous but the camera would be difficult to notice and earn money to the municipal budget on the speeding drivers.

So some time ago those municipal "police" units lost the right to use speed cameras and many of the speed cameras in Poland were removed.



Junkie said:


> In Macedonia we have driver's books that you can collect points from some traffic offences like speeding and if you are caught you might be interested to be stamped points instead of paying. When you collect certain amount of points your driver's licence will be revoked.


In Poland we also have penalty points, but they are just an addition to the fines, you usually get both the fine and the points for an infringement.

The fine is usually specified as a range and the policeman decides about the exact amount to pay, the numbers of penalty points are fixed.

If you disagree with the police, you can also go to court, also I am not sure how it works with foreign drivers. I have seen information that they arrest you in such case and the court trial is organized as fast as I can, although it looks weird for me, because in this situation a driver with respect to which the police was wrong and wanted him to pay a fine even though he didn't do anything illegal is practically forced to pay it.

The court is not restricted to those specified ranges and penalty points, it can e.g. give a lower fine in case of bad financial situation of the driver. However, the penalty points are cancelled only in case the policeman was wrong and the driver did not do any infringement.



> But this must go to the court for traffic offences as stated in the law. Otherwise without court decision, police cannot revoke licences.


In Poland the police cannot revoke a driving licence but it can confiscate it and leave the decision to the court or to the county.

They can confiscate it in the following cases:
- when the driver is drunk,
- if the licence is damaged (then it goes to the county),
- if they think it's counterfeited (then it goes to the county),
- if it's overdated (then it goes to the county),
- if there is a court decision about revoking the driving licence from the driver (and he didn't return it but still drives with it),
- in case of speeding by more than 50 km/h in built-up area,
- in case of carrying more passengers than stated in the registration certificate of the vehicle - if the limit is exceeded by more than 2 persons,
- if the driver should have it revoked because of the penalty points,
- if the driver caused an accident and left the place, not giving the first aid to the victims.

In most cases (apart from those with the county), the court decides then about the time for which the licence is revoked. If it's revoked for longer than a year, it is necessary to retake the test before getting it back.

In the last case, as well as if the driver is for the second time caught drinking and driving or if he caused an accident being drunk, the court may revoke the driving licence permanently.


----------



## Junkie

Well, here the police cannot confiscate or totally revoke driving licence. It must pass thru the court even if the actual police report of the offence states that it is up to be confiscate, again only court decision and then it goes to the police to find the person and confiscate it. On the court you can bring support to claim for you and you might get lower charges.

Also there is an electronic system where the confiscations are listed and the negative points also.
About the negative points, the law is clear, it is up only for a compensation and for certain offences, not for criminal traffic offence for an example. For instance if there are victims or big damage of some accident it is obvious you cannot ask for negative points. This is only for the so called ;misdemeanor procedure; not for criminal procedures.

Also about the drink and drive, here the law is clear, you can drink small amount it is 0.5 milliliters which is allowed. I am not sure how is it in other European countries.

If its from 0.5 to 1 milliliters your driving license is confiscated for up to 3 months and you will be charged 275 euros.

If its from 1 to 1,5 milliliters your driving licence is confiscated for up to 9 months and you will be charged 325 euros.

If its at 2 milliliters or anything above the driving licence is confiscated for up to a year and you will be charged 375 euros.

If you refuse to be tested at the stopping point you will be charged a total of 500 euros and automatic revoking of the licence for a year. 
Then you will have to do another licence.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Getting "pulled over" is generally not a thing in Europe. There isn't much highway patrol. The vast majority of speeding tickets are issued by mobile and fixed speed cameras.


That's good to know. It's been my understanding (probably read in a guidebook some time back in the 80s) that foreigners can be required to pay on the spot. So on my European road trips in the last few years I've driven very by-the-book; don't need that sort of added expense.


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## Penn's Woods

bogdymol said:


> Except for Romania. Here you are generally pulled over and given a fine. There aren’t many fixed speed camera in Romania. There were more in the past, but not anymore.
> 
> The only speeding ticket that I got was in Romania few years ago from a fixed camera. I was driving on a 4-lane major road, behind my father’s car, trying to keep up his pace. It was in a rural area, but outside of the built up area, or so I thought. The camera got me from behind, break lights on can be seen in the picture, with 97,7 km/h in a 50 km/h area (over 100 you loose your license). Weirdly, my father, who was driving in front of me (and the reason why I was driving so fast - I was just driving behind him at HIS speed), didn’t get any ticket. His car can be seen in the picture of my ticket.


Did your Dad pay the ticket for you? :lol:


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## bogdymol

Actually yes, he sorted it out :lol:

The car was registered in his name, so he got the letter...


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## AnOldBlackMarble

Are there any apps in European countries that have lots of speed cameras showing where they are in real time on your phone's GPS so you can slow down as you get near them?


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## ChrisZwolle

Waze


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## CNGL

Greetings from Malaga


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## Kanadzie

I got a letter in the mail yesterday from the city of Toronto (I don't live in Toronto)

apparently they want me to pay a parking ticket of 40 $ plus 10 $ "address search fee" for them to find me, since I did not pay the ticket quickly enough.

Apparently I was parked at 03:00 in the morning, in an area I had never heard of, at least 100 km away from me, while my car with the license plate number marked on the letter was inside my garage with a partially dismantled engine (!)

Monday will have some phone calls I guarantee...


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## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Waze


In Poland we have Yanosik, which is also a platform used by drivers to warn against mobile police patrols and about traffic disruptions. And a navigation app, although not very good.

But it's only for Poland.


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## Suburbanist

In your countries, is it legal for car owners to replace the car's original wheels and tires by something with different measures (wider wheels and thinner tires, for instance)


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## Spookvlieger

Generally there is a limit set to each car by the manufactor. If you stay within these limits you're not doing anything illegal. In Belgium if you have to make changes to your car to fit certain rims you will have to go to state vehicule inspection or you"ll be driving around illegal. They handle differend norms and most tuned cars don't make those so they drive around illegally because when they go to vehicule inspection they will fit other rims and suspension so they can pass inspection....


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## Spookvlieger

Kanadzie said:


> I got a letter in the mail yesterday from the city of Toronto (I don't live in Toronto)
> 
> apparently they want me to pay a parking ticket of 40 $ plus 10 $ "address search fee" for them to find me, since I did not pay the ticket quickly enough.
> 
> Apparently I was parked at 03:00 in the morning, in an area I had never heard of, at least 100 km away from me, while my car with the license plate number marked on the letter was inside my garage with a partially dismantled engine (!)
> 
> Monday will have some phone calls I guarantee...


I had the same last year. I got a 80 euro speeding ticket in Louvain-La-Neuve. Never been in that city. Turns out the automatic camera software misjudged one letter because the person who was speeding had such dirty plates:nuts:


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## AnOldBlackMarble

So when I'm in Europe just throw a lot of mud on the plates and I'm good.


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## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Waze


Afaik you as a driver are mostly the only person in your car. Do you use Waze? I find it horrible for attention, especially unsuitable for single drivers without codrivers. What is your experience?


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## ChrisZwolle

I don't use a GPS all the time, I know my way around on the European motorway system, even in regions far away.

It's a must in areas with a lot of congestion / unpredictable traffic (Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, large cities, etc.)

I'm not a fan of all those Waze reports about stopped vehicles on the shoulder. 80% of the time there is no one stopped. In some areas you get such reports every few minutes.


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## TrojaA

In Germany *blitzer.de* is quite popular as a speed camera warning app. Due to its popularity you'll find most mobile cameras, too, with minimal delay after their installation.
However I rarely use it although I travel a lot. Imho if you keep an eye on those damn things, you'll spot nearly all of the fixed speed cameras right away and most mobile ones, too. If not, it's bad luck.

That said I usually make use of the grey area in the law. So in Germany you won't get a speeding ticket for speeding less than 6km/h over the limit (and if so, then it will not withstand any challenges).
In general it seems like I got some luck on limited autobahns and highways so far, because from time to time I drive +10 to +20km/h in a restricted zone and never got a ticket for that. ;-)
The only three speeding tickets I got so far in life were on single-lane streets within city limits, but they didn't hurt that much due to cheap tickets, although prices stepped up in the last years - at least by German standards.


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## ChrisZwolle

^^ It helps that German speed cameras flash you from the front. In many countries they flash you from behind, making it easier to hide it behind bushes, signs or noise barriers.


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## Suburbanist

Section control is often far more effective at actually curbing speeding. Section control has my full support and I wish Germany and France used it as extensively as Italy.


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## ChrisZwolle

Section control is used in the Netherlands mainly to enforce speed limits that are widely considered to be too low (80 or 100 km/h on motorways), so it has a strongly negative connotation. The vast majority of speeding tickets from those systems are for less than 10 km/h over the limit. It's seen as a fine revenue maximation system. 

I don't think France really needs section control on their motorways. There is hardly any speeding, very few people drive over 140 km/h. Most people speed in zones with reduced speed limits, France has metropolitan 110 km/h speed limits on motorways that are rural in character.


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## TrojaA

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ It helps that German speed cameras flash you from the front. In many countries they flash you from behind, making it easier to hide it behind bushes, signs or noise barriers.


Yeah I remember driving through France and having a hard time to spot them on autoroutes as they were sometimes installed right behind bridges etc.

But so far I've never got a ticket abroad. Not even in the Netherlands where I guess, I maxed out the +3km/h tolerance of the Trajectcontroles quite hard. It's very annoying driving 100km/h on an almost empty road with better design standards than most German autobahns...


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## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> In your countries, is it legal for car owners to replace the car's original wheels and tires by something with different measures (wider wheels and thinner tires, for instance)


Yes, but the measures have to be approved by the manufacturer and written in the car's documents.


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## Suburbanist

Other than aesthetics, what is the impact of replacing whatever comes with the car with wider wheels and thinned tires?


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## Kanadzie

^^ you generally increase sidewall stiffness which gives a sharper feel in cornering
generally wide tyre is thought to grip the road better but it is somewhat debatable, though high-performance tyres will grip significantly better.

in winter conditions usually the opposite is desirable (narrow tyres) to increase contact pressure and facilitate expulsion of snow

IMO ridiculous to control tyre size to manufacturer specification, you can vary so significantly. Here all is OK unless it rubs something...

There are a lot of other reasons e.g. cost issues. For example you may have winter tyres from your old car that are only 10mm different from your new one, it is generally ridiculous to not use them (assuming they fit)



Suburbanist said:


> Section control is often far more effective at actually curbing speeding. Section control has my full support and I wish Germany and France used it as extensively as Italy.


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## Kpc21

In Poland the section control is a novelty.

According to the media, there is 30 locations with it:


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## Suburbanist

Fitting smaller tires that combined with wheel give a smaller radius is problematic, it interferes with speedometer and odometer. I'm not sure how easy it is to adjust that on software.


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## MichiH

Germany:

Speeding cameras are (officially) used for deterrent effect (Abschreckung). However, it is not forbidden to hide speeding cameras which are only used for rip-off.

It was announced in November 2014 that the first section control test will be started in early 2015. However, it is still missing the technical approval. Source.

Sometimes even the slow German planning produres are good :lol:


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## Spookvlieger

Got front flashed today on roadworks near Kaiserslautern on the A6 on the Lautertalbrucke. 60km/h on wide lanes with minimal works? Seriously? :bash: I've done 500km today on German highways and these roadworks have way to low speeds. Ofthen 60 or 80km/h for miles on end. It's bad.


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## g.spinoza

joshsam said:


> Got front flashed today on roadworks near Kaiserslautern on the A6 on the Lautertalbrucke. 60km/h on wide lanes with minimal works? Seriously? :bash: I've done 500km today on German highways and these roadworks have way to low speeds. Ofthen 60 or 80km/h for miles on end. It's bad.


I've done 800 km on German highways today and I quote every word. 
We may have run into each other... my route was Schaffhausen - Stuttgart - Wuerzburg - Erfurt - Halle - Potsdam...

PS: I also complain about the stupid, stupid, stupid 80 km/h tunnels...



Suburbanist said:


> Section control is often far more effective at actually curbing speeding. Section control has my full support and I wish Germany and France used it as extensively as Italy.


It was all over the news very recently: a court of law found Autostrade guilty of stealing the patent for Tutor from a small Italian company, and forced Autostrade to remove all of them. Autostrade has already stated they are going to replace them with another version with no copyright infringement issues...


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## tfd543

Hi guys. Any native Hungarian that propose me a hotel with a scenic view in area near Gyor and not further towards Budapest ? I have stayed in Hegyeshalom while transiting from CZ to SRB. The quality of the hotel is not important but the view is. Thanks lads.


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## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> PS: I also complain about the stupid, stupid, stupid 80 km/h tunnels...


Yes, A71 Thüringer Wald Autobahn is really pain in the ass!

A70-A9 takes almost the same time as A71-A4-A9 from Würzburg to Berlin. Sure, A71-A4-A9 (or even A71-A38-A9) gives you more credit on Travel Mapping.


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## ChrisZwolle

Does A71 have the longest 80 km/h speed limit in all of Germany? A71 is a nice ride, much more view on the scenery than on most Autobahns, but the long 80 km/h section is annoying. This leads to trucks passing cars or cars passing trucks with 1 km/h difference.


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## ChrisZwolle

I've got a question for Spanish speakers.

How do you know if the "V" is pronounced like a V or B? 

Last year I was in a town called Viver. The local campsite owner called it "Biver". It is my understanding that Valencia is pronounced with a B, but Valladolid with a V. The same question is for Sevilla, is it pronounced "Se-bi-ya" or "Se-vi-ya"?

The same with the "j". I've heard Rajoy being pronounced as Ra-choy (hard G) and Ra-hoy.


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## CNGL

In Spanish B and V represent the same sound: /b/. The pronounciation of the J varies among dialects, I pronounce it as /x/ (hard G). And for the record, Y and LL represent different sounds, although there is a group of speakers (called _yeístas_) who pronounce both as /j/ (what Y represents when not at the end of a word or alone).


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## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> Does A71 have the longest 80 km/h speed limit in all of Germany? A71 is a nice ride, much more view on the scenery than on most Autobahns, but the long 80 km/h section is annoying. This leads to trucks passing cars or cars passing trucks with 1 km/h difference.


80km/h is mostly between Gräfenroda and AD Suhl. 12km tunnel length on 20.5km stretch. I think overtaking is generally forbidden for trucks in tunnels.


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## Highway89

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've got a question for Spanish speakers.
> 
> How do you know if the "V" is pronounced like a V or B?
> 
> Last year I was in a town called Viver. The local campsite owner called it "Biver". It is my understanding that Valencia is pronounced with a B, but Valladolid with a V. The same question is for Sevilla, is it pronounced "Se-bi-ya" or "Se-vi-ya"?
> 
> The same with the "j". I've heard Rajoy being pronounced as Ra-choy (hard G) and Ra-hoy.


Both "B" and "V" are pronounced the same, however, we make a stronger sound when they are at the beginning of a word or after a consonant. The hard sound is represented as * and the softer sound is [β]. For instance, BABA, BAVA, VABA and VAVA are all pronounced [baβa]. However, BAMBA is [bamba] - we make a stronger sound because it is after a consonant.

The soft b is not the same as the "V" in English (valve). In Spanish, pronouncing V as [v] is very uncommon.

The same happens with the D: DEDO is [deðo]. [ð] is the same as the English th in this. However, DONDE is [donde] - again a strong D because it is after a consonant.

The J depends on the dialect, as CNGL said. The further south you go, the softest. A person from Santander or Valladolid would say Ra-choy, and someone from Seville or Tenerife would say Ra-hoy.

LL should be pronounced as the Portuguese LH or the Italian GLI (approximately like the English million), however, as CNGL said, many people pronounce it like "Y".

You may find this useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Spanish*


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## Kpc21

It MUST be in a way related to that in the Russian (and Cyrylic in general) alphabet their V is written as B. B in Cyrylic represents the V sound, V in Spanish represents the B sound...

I suppose they had to be very similar sounds in Greek. And, by the way, we know that V and U were the same letter in Latin. And now we have W in some languages (e.g. English) representing a sound similar to U, in some languages (e.g. German, Polish) representing the V sound. So we have actually four letters (in the "modern Latin" alphabet - I mean the stem of all the western European alphabets): B, V, W and U which are related to each other.

Although wait... we have also F - V in German often represents the F sound... But this must be a more recent change as it is, as it seems to me, a thing very specific for German.

And when we go to Greek... if I am not mistaken, they don't really distinguish B and P.


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## Highway89

It's called betacism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacism



> In historical linguistics, betacism (UK: /ˈbiːtəsɪzəm/, US: /ˈbeɪ-/) is a sound change in which * (the voiced bilabial plosive, as in bane) and [v] (the voiced labiodental fricative [v], as in vane) are confused. The final result of the process can be both /b/ > [v] or /v/ > . Betacism is a fairly common phenomenon; it has taken place in Greek, Hebrew and some Iberian Romances, such as Spanish.
> 
> Perhaps the best known example of betacism is in the Romance languages. The first traces of betacism in Latin can be found in the third century C.E.[3] The results of the shift are most widespread in the Western Romance languages, especially in Spanish, where the letters <b> and <v> are now both pronounced [β] (the voiced bilabial fricative) except phrase-initially and after [m] when they are pronounced ; the two sounds ([β] and ) are now allophones. Betacism is one of the main features in which Galician and northern Portuguese diverge from southern Portuguese; in Catalan betacism features in many dialects, though not in central and southern Valencian or in the Balearic dialect. Other Iberian languages with betacism are Astur-Leonese and Aragonese (in fact, fort the latter there is a pronounciantion-based orthography changing all <v> into <b>).*


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## ChrisZwolle

How fast do web shops deliver parcels in your country?

In the Netherlands it is usually delivered next day (if in stock) and some even deliver the next day if you order before 23:59 hours.


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## Spookvlieger

In Belgium the big web shops, wich are all Dutch webshops to be honest, deliver the next day. Purely Belgian webshops like Collishop (from the Colruyt brand) usually deliver next day but more than with de Dutch webshops it might take 2 or even 3 days.


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## Junkie

Depends from where the parcel come. If the customs must be paid it will stay for days until you pay it. Also vat must be declared. But this is for international orders. If its local order usually it will take up to 2 days here. They also prefer for you to go to their place and collect it yourself. Usually much of the local web shops use external posting service so additional fee must be paid.
My last order from Macedonian web shop was for a hard disk drive and I went to collect it from their office.


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## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> How fast do web shops deliver parcels in your country?
> 
> In the Netherlands it is usually delivered next day (if in stock) and some even deliver the next day if you order before 23:59 hours.


If you order in the afternoon - they send it on the next day. If you order in the morning - they send it on the same day.

Of course assuming it's in stock.

And when they send it, the delivery is on the next day if sent by courier service. By post it may take a few days, it depends on if you take an economy or priority (more expensive) parcel. The priority parcels are delivered in 1-2 days.

Still I prefer the post because I don't have to be at home when the package comes, I may receive it later at the local post office.

Or the parcel machine, they allow receiving the package 24/7. But the advantage of the post (and courier) is that you can order the thing in such a way that you pay the price to the postman/courier while receiving the package, so it's safer - you pay only if you see it has come and it isn't damaged.

Some bigger web stores (or ones owned by brands of conventional shops) also offer reception in their offices or shops. In such a case, it might be even possible to receive the thing in a few minutes, if they have it currently in the shop.


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## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> How fast do web shops deliver parcels in your country?
> 
> In the Netherlands it is usually delivered next day (if in stock) and some even deliver the next day if you order before 23:59 hours.


Finland: The domestic ones most usually deliver over mail or Matkahuolto, and the delivery time is usually 2-4 days. (Matkahuolto is the logistics company owned by the bus operators.)

There are some premium 4-hour services available in the Helsinki region, but they are exceptional.

The parcels are nowaways most often delivered to the local foodstores or kiosks, or into parcel automats. Their opening hours are much more convenient than they were at those Post Offices which do not exist any more.









_Parcel automat at a supermarket. They are two-way: You can send and receive_

For big and heavy goods, it depends. A few years ago, I ordered two new beds to our northern holiday house. It happens to be on an island connected by a ferry, and the last meters are quite loose sand not very suitable for trucks. The Finland Post used a school for truck drivers as a subcontractor. They called me, and we agreed on a delivery time. Two lads came, and they carried the beds the last 150 meters to the door on a very warm day. A very good service.

The foreign web shops usually deliver over DHL or UPS. The logistics of those companies is tuned for the B2B business, and the B2C customer experience is sometimes a disaster. DHL has improved recently. They have an option to deliver to the Post parcel automat.

The business case of the delivery in Finland differs quite a lot from the Dutch one, because of the area or the country, and much sparser population.


----------



## Attus

"Bridge days" are official in Hungary. I.e. tomorrow, April the 30th will be an official holiday. However, as a compensation, last Saturday, April the 21st, was a working day. Any time an official holiday is on a tuesday or thursday, the days will be swapped the same way.


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## Kpc21

This is how a parcel machine looks like in Poland:










They are operated by a private postal company InPost and they are quite popular now.

They are usually located outdoors, so it's possible to receive the parcel even in the night.

For heavy goods, the stores usually use their own transport.

If you don't have post offices in Finland any more, does it mean that if you want to send a registered letter, you do it in a supermarket?

There is also an issue which is quite up to date in Poland now. Tax return forms. If you are an employee, you are obliged to file one (called here PIT - for "personal income tax") and the deadline for that in Poland is the end of April of the next year. There is a fine for not doing that on time. And as people tend to do everything at the last possible moment, it always results with queues at tax offices on 30th April.

And the rescue for those who don't manage it on time is... the 24/7 post office, because the form can also be sent by post and what is counted as the date of filing the form is the date when it was sent.

Nowadays it isn't so important as it still was a few years ago, because now it's also possible to do it online without having a qualified electronic signature. To 2009, it wasn't possible, so most taxpayers had to go to a tax office or send the form by post.


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## bogdymol

Aloha from Maui, Hawaii.


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## Junkie

Kpc21 said:


> This is how a parcel machine looks like in Poland:


I never seen something like this. Can you say how is this working?


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## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> If you don't have post offices in Finland any more, does it mean that if you want to send a registered letter, you do it in a supermarket?


In a supermarket, a kiosk, a gas station, a sports equipment shop, whoever runs a post service point. Especially at the countryside, the same shopkeeper may run several service points, for Posti, Matkahuolto, the alcohol monopoly, etc.


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## Kpc21

Actually, postal "service points" also exist in Poland, and from some time when I receive a registered letter, I must go to an insurance agency in a place difficult to find, at a dirt road, instead of the post office in the town center  Although the parcels are still operated by the post office.



Junkie said:


> I never seen something like this. Can you say how is this working?


I haven't used it in person yet but from what I know it looks like you get a code by e-mail or by SMS, you enter it into the machine and it opens the door behind which your parcel is located.

By the way. In a response to our new regulations forbidding opening shops on Sundays, a branch of convenience stores decided to... declare their shops as postal points. Because they cooperate with the post and with DHL so that it is possible to send a parcel that can be received in their store. And post offices are allowed to open on Sundays.


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## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> How fast do web shops deliver parcels in your country?
> 
> In the Netherlands it is usually delivered next day (if in stock) and some even deliver the next day if you order before 23:59 hours.


I had once a computer delivered the same day in the Czech republic. The web-shop had same day delivery policy for in stock products within certain distance. They have their own delivery service though.


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## MichiH

DHL operates "Packstation" in Germany which is quite similar to the Polish system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packstation


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## Surel

MichiH said:


> DHL operates "Packstation" in Germany which is quite similar to the Polish system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packstation


In the CZ the most usual way of paying for the web-shop orders is paying at the delivery. I guess that's the same in PL, SK, etc.









These machines had a difficult start around 2013, but now they seem to get a bit more share on the market, at least in the big cities. They allow paying at delivery as well.

There are several of post-machines in the NL as well as of 2017. They allow to send the post as well. Nice feature!


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## ChrisZwolle

In the Netherlands you usually pay when ordering, but the largest e-commerce retailer bol.com allows payment after delivery.

Paying at delivery is relatively uncommon. Those package delivery stations are also uncommon. Perhaps they exist, but I don't know any in my area. They do have supermarkets and other stores that function as pick up points if you prefer that. But most parcels are sent to the home address.


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## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> In the Netherlands you usually pay when ordering, but the largest e-commerce retailer bol.com allows payment after delivery.
> 
> Paying at delivery is relatively uncommon. Those package delivery stations are also uncommon. Perhaps they exist, but I don't know any in my area. They do have supermarkets and other stores that function as pick up points if you prefer that. But most parcels are sent to the home address.


The payment on delivery is what made internet business in CZ to be able to take off. Also, there's no iDeal. The postal services in CZ have been always interlinked with the financial services, whereas in NL most of the financial services were scrapped from the post. Talking on a car forum though. I love the 10 minutes it takes to sell or buy a secondhand car in the Netherlands. All you have to do is to meet with the buyer/seller at the post office, they will arrange the registration. Then only one call to the insurance company, and its done. Compare this to the CZ and you will want to "Burn them all" bureaucrats. 

On the ptt page is that there are 3 in NL right now. They plan to add more.

I don't think that the pickup delivery at these automatic machines is that popular in the CZ. The service came from Poland, but I could not find recent information about that private company. The Czech Post installed around 20 as well but, I am not sure if they are a big success.

All in all, I think that the postal delivery is faster in the Netherlands (the next day guarantee) than in the CZ. I am not sure how it is with international shipping though, and on which side is the problem. The letters from CZ addressed to NL come faster (3-4 days) than the letters from NL to CZ (more than a week).


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## Kpc21

From Poland to Germany it sometimes takes a month by priority mail... Or at least a week.

The postal services hadn't been interlinked with financial services in Poland, the Polish Post has its own bank, but it has never gained a lot of popularity (unlike in Germany, whose Postbank seems to be quite popular there). It is marketed as a bank for the elderly and they are probably the largest group of their customers. Although there is also still plenty of elderly people who do not have bank accounts at all - their pensions are sent to them by post.

But the post has always offered (so far in the past as I remember) some financial services:
- sending money to an address (this is what the social security uses to deliver the pensions to the pensioners without bank accounts),
- sending money to a bank account.

And both options are interlinked with the parcel sending, so you can declare an amount of money you want the recipient to pay before he obtains the package - and it will be sent to your address or to your bank account.

The option of sending money to a bank account is also commonly used by people (especially those without bank accounts) for paying bills like for the electricity or for telephone. The companies send pre-filled postal forms, so that you can give it to the lady at the post office, she scans it and it's automatically read into the computer, you don't have to fill in the form on your own. Younger people typically do it via online banking because in such a case there is no surcharge, older people, who are often not familiar with computers or not as familiar as younger people, either go to a post office or to their bank to pay the bills.

So, there are often queues at post offices because of elderly people paying their bills.

By the way, an interesting thing is that in Poland, if you want to send a registered letter, you must fill in on your own a form which will document the fact that you have sent that letter. Then the postal officer stamps it with a postmark and puts on it a sticker with the tracking code. And if you want to get a delivery confirmation (with a signature of the recipient), you fill in an additional form. In Germany, you don't have the first form (which is a confirmation for you that you have sent the letter), it is printed by the postal officer and is shaped like a receipt from a shop. Actually, I haven't seen a postmark in use (neither heard the so typical sound of stamping the letters and postal forms) at German post offices at all.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> By the way, an interesting thing is that in Poland, if you want to send a registered letter, you must fill in on your own a form which will document the fact that you have sent that letter. Then the postal officer stamps it with a postmark and puts on it a sticker with the tracking code. And if you want to get a delivery confirmation (with a signature of the recipient), you fill in an additional form. In Germany, you don't have the first form (which is a confirmation for you that you have sent the letter), it is printed by the postal officer and is shaped like a receipt from a shop. Actually, I haven't seen a postmark in use (neither heard the so typical sound of stamping the letters and postal forms) at German post offices at all.


This discussion about registered letters is interesting. I have not sent such a letter for perhaps 20 years. Received, yes, but seldom. Some credit card operator sent the new cards are registered.


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## Junkie

I have a question about 'Republika Srpska' thread, this thread is obviously pretentious political thread. 
As we know RS is only entity its not autonomous nor its partially recognized, but its a part of a sovereign country.
We also know that Skyscrapercity is not a political body nor its obligated to follow up any directions but I think this thread should be closed.

If no then it would be fair for me to open a FBiH motorways thread for the other entity of the same country.


----------



## CNGL

^^ There's also a Texas thread buried somewhere. However, I agree the Balkans are overpolitized, and I believe the only solution is a Yugoslavian reunification (or whipe the entire region from the map completely, but that would be over the top). I think that's why the Serbian thread is closed right now (or it's an error, who knows).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The only ones working on Labor Day are the Dutch :lol:


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## volodaaaa

AT communication

Tower: Flight XX, turn left heading 195 descent to 3.500.
Tower: Flight XX, did you hear my last transmission?
Tower: Flight XX, do you read me?
Tower: Flight XX, do you copy?
Tower: Flight XX, what is happening.
Flight XX: Nothing.

Just kidding. Hats of to the pilots. Crazy runway and they landed like world champions. I played this video to my wife who is absolutely sure that she would never be able to drive. It was indeed very motivating.


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## g.spinoza

Colle delle Finestre (2178 m) road being prepped for next Giro d'Italia:


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## Attus

Google Navigation went crazy and forgot how to speak German. 
Road numbers used to be said correctly but since the last update the digits are simple said one after another. For example A61 is "sechs eins", i.e. "six one". it's quite annoying. 
But at least A555 ("fünf, fünf, fünf") is funny.


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## Kpc21

For the numbers above 20 it's advantageous in such a way that it's, let's say, faster to say two-three rather than twenty-three (or zwei-drei instead of dreiundzwanzig). But for below 20 there is no advantage.

I was driving yesterday from Łódź (actually, the neighborhood of Łódź) to Poznań. And there were really not many cars on the road. There were moments when I had an empty road ahead. When I was going back about 21 - sometimes they were very long "moments".

But on the section from Konin to Kostrzyn I took a detour via the old road (DK92) - because the toll on this section of the motorway is really a rip-off. 40 zł (about 10 euro) for 100 km of the road. For so much I can buy a vignette for a week of driving on all the motorways in Hungary or for 10 days in Slovakia. To compare, the other 100 km section: from Łódź to Konin costs 9.90 zł, which is a sensible price.

And the traffic on this section of DK92 was high. By the way, I don't recommend this detour. Many towns, built-up areas, roundabouts, speed cameras - especially between Konin and Września, because the further section to Poznań is a comfortable double-carriageway road. If I happen to do this route for the next time, I am gonna try out DW442, DW466 and DW467 - I assume that as voivodeship roads, they shouldn't be so congested.


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## Alex_ZR

Serbian names started to appear recently at Google Maps on Serbian version. Unfortunately, some names are written wrong. Most significant would be Egypt, which is Египат in Serbian, but on Google Maps is Биљајвка, which appeared to be some town in Ukraine in Odessa oblast. :nuts:


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## CrazySerb

Bloody hell....this morning, powerfull winds (what we call Bura) pushed a massive cruise ship from its berth to within barely a few meters from my home town. Luckily, a tragedy was averted.

Italians we are not.


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## Kanadzie

Attus said:


> Google Navigation went crazy and forgot how to speak German.
> Road numbers used to be said correctly but since the last update the digits are simple said one after another. For example A61 is "sechs eins", i.e. "six one". it's quite annoying.
> But at least A555 ("fünf, fünf, fünf") is funny.


Crazy Californians always trying to get onto the "four oh five" and the "one ten" :lol:


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## italystf

Google Maps tend to read the same thing it's written on signs, even if there are abbreviations.
For example the town of Ariano nel Polesine is written as "Ariano Pol." on some road signs, so the satnav reads "Ariano Pol".
If a street is called "Via J. F. Kennedy", it reads (in Italian) "Via i lunga effe Kennedy" (i lunga and effe are the Italian names for letters J and F).
Other times the pronunciation is completely wrong, for example the town of Porcia is pronunciated as Porcìa, but the satnav reads it as Pòrcia.


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## Kpc21

I was once riding a BlaBlaCar from Poland to Germany and the driver had a sat nav. Of course, the device was reading out the German names phonetically in Polish


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## x-type

italystf said:


> Google Maps tend to read the same thing it's written on signs, even if there are abbreviations.
> For example the town of Ariano nel Polesine is written as "Ariano Pol." on some road signs, so the satnav reads "Ariano Pol".
> If a street is called "Via J. F. Kennedy", it reads (in Italian) "Via i lunga effe Kennedy" (i lunga and effe are the Italian names for letters J and F).
> Other times the pronunciation is completely wrong, for example the town of Porcia is pronunciated as Porcìa, but the satnav reads it as Pòrcia.


Wow, I have never realized that it actually is Porcía 

Many Italian cities surprise me with accents. For istance, I was also surprised when I herd the accentation of Pavia


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## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> I was once riding a BlaBlaCar from Poland to Germany and the driver had a sat nav. Of course, the device was reading out the German names phonetically in Polish


The Finnish text-to-speech function of the TomTom Android navigator can speak the German names in quite an understandable way. The exception is the Eszett character, which is just ignored. It took me for a while to understand what is a "strae": Berliner Strae, Hamburger Strae, Husumer Strae, etc.


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## Kpc21

Well, Polish pronunciation is also understandable (probably even more understandable for someone who speaks no German than the German one, this is what the driver pointed out when I noticed it that time), it is just weird. Polish pronunciation is generally very logical and predictable. The Finnish one, by the way, too - at least according to what I got from my very limited experience with this language.

How are the mobile networks from your countries dealing with the EU roaming regulations?

I have a phone at one of the Polish operators, Play. On holidays a year ago I just bought a data package for something like 20 zł (5 euro) and I got a corresponding amount of GB according to the regulations (323 MB / 5 zł - it is probably actually established as 300 MB / 1 euro). In all the biggest networks it worked totally the same way and the prices were practically equal, as this is an officially established price.

However, now Play got a permission from our regulatory body to introduce extra surcharges. And now apart from the official amount of GB for the EU roaming admitted within each data package, there are also surcharges in the amount of about 0,12 zł for each downloaded MB (which results in 12,58 zł = about 3 euro for a GB), as a result, the prices of data in roaming at this network are about twice higher.

There are also extra surcharges for the calls and text messages, as well as you are charged for incoming calls. They are very low and change almost nothing (especially taking into account that Play has anyway quite low prices of the calls and messages), but they exist.

Also another network, Plus, got such a permission, however they haven't decide to make use of it yet. The remaining two big networks: Orange and T-Mobile also applied for it, but they haven't obtained those permissions yet (and it is possible that they won't get it as they operate in multiple countries - so it's much easier for them with the roaming, they can use their own network in other countries and they don't have to buy the roaming from other networks).

Some small MVNOs found out various tricks. One operator gives customers a bonus for not using the international roaming (and the advertised price is the price with this bonus). Another one (actually, it's a sub-brand of Play - named Red Bull Mobile) has an offer which doesn't support international roaming at all.


By the way, a trick (unrelated to the roaming) used by some operators is also that to pay the price as advertised, you must agree that they will send you marketing information (or, let's say, call you with advertisements).

This is, by the way, a plague in case of fixed line telephones. As the phone numbers of all the subscribers with their addresses used to be published in so called "phone books", some companies use the data from those old phone books and annoyingly call people, often inviting them to presentations of things like sets of expensive cooking pots (which will be, of course, marketed on the presentation in such a way that an elderly person will buy it even though they are overpriced really a lot). And there is practically no way of stopping them - other than changing the phone number or having a smart enough telephone (with a blacklist) and blacklisting them (but then still there might be calls from other phone numbers).


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## ChrisZwolle

I pay € 30 per month for 10 GB of data and unlimited text / phone calls, with no limitations for usage across the EU. It's a bit pricey, but 4G coverage is one of the best and roaming abroad generally allows the best networks. Budget cell phone providers in the Netherlands often only allow access to poor quality providers in other countries, so you're stuk with 3G or even worse. I never use wifi anymore.

Home internet is expensive in the Netherlands. I pay € 51.50 per month for 200 mbit cable internet (no data cap). Fiber internet rollout has stagnated in the Netherlands, ISPs prefer to upgrade copper and coax cables to allow speeds up to 500 mbit. If I want cable internet, there is only one ISP that offers it, so there is no real competition. Fiber-to-the-home is relatively rare in the Netherlands.


----------



## Kpc21

One operator is planning to build an FTTH network in my area and my home is on their map. If they finally build it, I will probably switch.

Just now I have an ADSL connection which cannot go faster than about 6-7 Mb/s, even though I pay for 10 Mb/s. I pay 45 zł / month (about 10 euro). Meanwhile, the prices of the operator that wants to install FTTH in my area are:









(you have to sign a 24 month contract to get these prices)

Generally, the ISPs in Poland get some EU money for investing in FTTH.

My neighbor resigned from ADSL (and from the fixed line phone in general) and installed LTE internet for home. He even installed a roof antenna to improve the signal. One operator in Poland - T-Mobile - offers unlimited LTE (some others have nearly unlimited offers, that means, after exceeding the limit, the speed drops to 1 Mb/s, so the connection remains usable, it is just slower). He says it is faster than ADSL. But I am afraid of LTE since the speeds and, generally, how well the connection works depends a lot on how many people are connected to the base station.

Concerning the competition, originally there was only one operator offering ADSL connections (the countrywide telecom company, owned by France Telecom, which later changed the brand to Orange), but later the regulatory body forced them to allow other operators offer internet connections on their infrastructure.

In FTTH, such possibility is also supposed to be introduced, from what I know. The FTTH networks with the EU funding I mentioned are developed by various operators, who won the contest for the given area - very often small local companies.

Toya, which wants to invest in FTTH in my town, is a big cable TV network operating mainly in Łódź.


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## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> I pay € 30 per month for 10 GB of data and unlimited text / phone calls, with no limitations for usage across the EU. It's a bit pricey, but 4G coverage is one of the best and roaming abroad generally allows the best networks. Budget cell phone providers in the Netherlands often only allow access to poor quality providers in other countries, so you're stuk with 3G or even worse. I never use wifi anymore.
> 
> Home internet is expensive in the Netherlands. I pay € 51.50 per month for 200 mbit cable internet (no data cap). Fiber internet rollout has stagnated in the Netherlands, ISPs prefer to upgrade copper and coax cables to allow speeds up to 500 mbit. If I want cable internet, there is only one ISP that offers it, so there is no real competition. Fiber-to-the-home is relatively rare in the Netherlands.


I am customer to the MOI mobile operator providing with a shared data plan across several subscriptions: 6 EUR per month per SIM and that contributes 4 GB/month per SIM. As I have eight SIMs in my private use, I pay 48 EUR/month and get 32 GB of data. Calls and SMSs are charged separately, but flat rate unlimited packages are available.

My home connection is FTTC with the last hundred meters VDSL over copper. The 50 mbit/s plan (some 25 EUR/month) is upgradeable to 100 mbit/s.

In many areas in the countryside, fixed lines are not any more available, but 4G is delivered instead.


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## Kpc21

I don't think the fixed lines has been removed anywhere in Poland. 

However, the FTTH operators (as well as cable TV networks and local Ethernet-based ISPs) offer VoIP telephone service (with a possibility of connecting an old analog telephone to the modem) and it is possible to migrate an old fixed line telephone number to this service.

Some mobile operators also offer something like "mobile fixed line phone", in which the old fixed line telephone number is migrated to cell phone, but this cell phone can be used only in the coverage of one base station, with the intention of using it at home only.

Those services are in much better prices than the fixed line services.

The fixed line users in Poland are generally three groups:
- people who keep them because they didn't think about the migration or who don't know about such a possibility, often the elderly,
- people who keep it because of ADSL internet (they usually suspend the telephone if they don't use their fixed line phone number, in such a case the telephone monthly fee is lower),
- the companies and public institutions (although they seem to move to VoIP more and more frequently, also small businesses often use cell phones only).

Concerning the mobile phone offers, all the major operators in Poland offer unlimited pre-paid packages including unlimited calls and SMSes (sometimes but not always also MMSes) and usually up to 10 GB of data for a monthly fee of 25 zł (about 5 euro). Apart from the Play network, everything is free also in EU roaming (only the data is limited to the amount corresponding to the price of the whole package according to the EU regulations).

Because of a big number of guest workers from Ukraine present in Poland from something like 2016, most operators offer also packages for cheaper calls to Ukraine (which is normally very expensive).

But Poland seems to have the lowest prices in the EU for all of those services.

Concerning the fiber optics in the Netherlands, as I already wrote in an earlier discussion, I believe that it might be not so affordable to implement it in a country which is so compact and so densely populated. The efficiency of copper decreases a lot with the distance and it's when the fibers show their power at most. However, the fibers will win anyway because of their much higher capacity. Still, the last mile might long stay in copper.

By the way - what is the most typical word for an optical cable/fiber in your languages?

Because in Polish it's totally different as compared with English. The most typical name for it is światłowód - literally meaning something like "light conductor" or "lightguide". The words like "włókno" (fiber) belong rather to the slang of the technicians. Although it's also worth noticing that the word "światłowód" is practically never used for Toslink cables, which are also optical.


----------



## SeanT

I pay DKK 119/ € 16 for 20GB (6GB EU) og data, 15hrs phone calls and free SMS/MMS /month on 4G Network


----------



## bogdymol

I am currently on the Big Island of Hawai'i. Today the volcano erupted... while I was hiking inside the crater of a dead volcano. This was my view:










About one hour later I was on driving on a road relatively close to the volcanos. I stopped in a parking lot for the incredible view, and while I was out to take a few pictures, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck, with the epicenter about 5 km away from my location. This was the first earthquake I ever felt. Not funny.


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## ChrisZwolle

^^ Wow, I was just thinking of you when I read the news this morning. 

Actually, I got a notification. I'm kind of interested in natural phenomenon, so I subscribed to the USGS email notification service. I get an email when a 6M+ earthquake is recorded anywhere in the world. 

An earthquake of that magnitude is quite rare for Hawaii.


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## italystf

BJ while driving, damages 4 cars

http://www.udinetoday.it/cronaca/in...coppia-giovani-danneggiamento-auto-udine.html

:rofl:


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## Kanadzie

Penn's Woods said:


> About 2000, 2001, if you walked passed a cell-phone shop, you'd see a map showing the provider's roaming area. At first it might be fairly limited (in Philadelphia, you'd get a large piece of Pennsylvania, most of New Jersey, Delaware, maybe eastern Maryland...), but over the years they expanded them; I guess that was one area in which they were competing. By 2003, I wasn't roaming so long as I was anywhere between New England and the Washington area. Soon after that, they stopped charging for roaming at all (so the maps disappeared). Long-distance charges (for which the geography was different) also went away about the same time, but even before that, what counted as long-distance was much more generous for cell phones than for land lines.


There is a newer, 'discount' phone company in most of Canada, formerly called "wind" but now "freedom" and they have this system. If you call on their tower, it is included, but if you are out of their area, you pay extra fees.

I was in their shop and everything seemed fine, they have a high density of coverage especially in the Toronto area. But then he shows the big map on the wall, and I notice that at the very corner of the coverage area, a few millimetres lower, is approximately the location of my house. bye! :lol: Guy kept trying to keep me inside and interested but I was like, phone won't work when I'm at _home _hno:


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## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> About 20 Western Hemisphere countries, including the U.S. and Canada, recently agreed to abolish roaming between them. :cheers:


But... actually abolish roaming, not like in EU, where "abolishing the roaming" is only slogan, and in fact it's just special conditions for the roaming within the EU?



Penn's Woods said:


> As long as I can remember this stuff (so, back to about 1980), in most of the U.S. a "local call" from your own phone (as opposed to a pay phone) cost nothing. The provider (which would have had a monopoly in those days) decided what was "local" for your area. When I went to college in Washington, most of the metropolitan area was local; outermost suburbs and anything beyond were long distance, and those calls would be billed by the minute (and distance, I guess) and appear individually on your bill.


In Poland "local" was inside your numbering zone, so the area sharing the same regional prefix.

The division to those zones was close to the division of the country into voivodeships from the years 1975-1998:

Numbering zones:









Voivodeships:










Current voivodeships:


----------



## Surel

Kpc21 said:


> A temporary roundabout, but it is - at least partially - a turbo roundabout, not a roundabout with just two circular lanes. Those roundabouts with two circular lanes which are not turbo are quite dangerous.
> 
> Most of this episode shows dangerous situations on a single roundabout with two circular lanes:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't know any sensible way to translate the commentary to English, even by myself - but you still see the pictures.
> 
> By the way, concerning your photos... The cars on the right lane (for going forward) of the road from the left have a line consisting of triangles, which normally mean "give way" even though... their lane directly passes to a new lane of the roundabout. Does it mean they have to give way to the drivers who are already on the roundabout and want to change lane to that new one?


It doesn't really look like overtaking though. Did the driver change lanes or did he just pass in a faster lane?

In Czech Republic it makes a difference on multi-lanes roads.

a) In a city, you can use any lane and passing slowly riding cars is not classified as overtaking.
b) Outside of a city if one lane is full and slow you can pass the cars in the other lane if you are already driving in the other lane.

The key is that you are not changing the lanes in order to pass the slowly riding cars.
Overtaking on a cross walk is forbidden, but I would say that if you are passing and thus not overtaking, it doesn't apply, which seems to be the case here.

I also don't understand why he complains about the cars that enter the roundabout from the left lane, keep on the left lane on the roundabout and then exit the round about on the left lane. I don't see what is wrong with that.


----------



## Kpc21

I am not sure to which moment do you refer concerning the overtaking. But generally passing next to another car (driving, not standing) is considered overtaking too in Poland. Hence it is forbidden to do on zebra crossing. Maybe the case in the video is exaggerated, but there are moments when such overtaking actually might be dangerous. It's especially dangerous when one car stops to give way to a pedestrian on the crossing and another ignores that and "overtakes" him - although it's then no longer overtaking in the legal meaning (it's then called passing by and not overtaking) and another rule of law applies (but it's anyway violated).

Overtaking on the left is almost always allowed, except for special cases (like the zebra crossings, intersections with no traffic lights) and when it's explicitly forbidden. With overtaking on the right it's more difficult:
- it is always allowed on a one-way carriageway (e.g. being a part of a double-carriageway road, or just a one-way city street) provided it has marked lanes,
- on two-directional carriageways (without physical separation between the parts for both directions) it is allowed only if it has at least two marked lanes in one direction in the city or three out of the city.
An important rule is also that a tram can be only overtaken on the right there are also special rules concerning overtaking bikes.

What if you have a car on your left which is slowing down because it will soon be turning left - can you overtake it? If there is no separation between the carriageways, theoretically you can't, you can only do it after it stops. Although I don't really see any sense in this rule and in distinguishing the cases with separation of the carriageways and without it.


Entering the roundabout from the left lane is OK, he is complaining about leaving it from the left lane in a place where there is a continuous line separating the lanes. It is not visible well on the video because this line is rubbed off by the cars ignoring it and leaving the roundabout from the left lane.

It's difficult to say if it's allowed in Poland when there is no continuous line in such a place. It depends on the interpretation of the regulations and really different people have different opinions on that. There are even cases in which behaving in a specific way on a roundabout you will pass the driving exam in one city but fail in another.

But in this case, there is a continuous line, so it should be obvious to everyone that he can't leave the roundabout from the left (internal) lane.


----------



## g.spinoza

Cogne (100 km North of Turin), 1800 m asl, covered by 20 cm of fresh snow:


----------



## x-type

Little bit too rainy conditions on A3 near Kutina some 70 km east of Zagreb today afternoon...










Whole article:
https://www.24sata.hr/news/to-je-bio-biblijski-potop-nista-se-nije-vidjelo-od-kise-i-leda-573470

Video:
https://www.facebook.com/HR.Vrijeme/videos/1016260975204117/


----------



## volodaaaa

Guys,

this may belong to the Border crossing thread, but it somehow concerns this topic too. Hope it would not be distracting. The topic is indeed crazy 

My parents travel a lot by car accompanied by their small dog. The dog is chipped and has its own EU Pet Passport. Some officers at non-EU border crossings (e.g. Macedonia-Serbia) wants to see the passport every time they hear the dog barking at them. I am not sure if they monitor whether a dog entered/left the respective country or if they just want to look it over.

Anyway, the dog is now senior and there is always a slight possibility for him to pass away during their stay abroad. My question might sound indeed bizarre, but what is an owner supposed to do when their dog dies abroad?

My parents love their dog. Me and my wife recently lost our dog (which was the mother of the dog of my parents) and we had to put her down. We really refused to bury her down to the cold ground so we opted for individual cremation and a pet urn. My parents would opt for this as well and to do this, they need to transport the dead body home. And this is the fundamental question: Would the borders officers be nosy if they realize there is a dead dog's body in the car? Do you think they would know there is a missing dog - do they monitor the movement of pets? Is there any official procedure for that (I have not found anything) except to cremate the pet abroad?

Do you have any experiences in this?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> But... actually abolish roaming, not like in EU, where "abolishing the roaming" is only slogan, and in fact it's just special conditions for the roaming within the EU?
> 
> 
> In Poland "local" was inside your numbering zone, so the area sharing the same regional prefix.
> 
> The division to those zones was close to the division of the country into voivodeships from the years 1975-1998:
> 
> Numbering zones:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Voivodeships:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Current voivodeships:


I don't know the answer to your question about really abolishing roaming charges.

And I believe my family (on my father's side) originated in the wojewodstwo of Płock.


----------



## Kpc21

Which does not exist any longer, now it's partially województwo mazowieckie and partially województwo łódzkie...

But if they still lived there and had a fixed line phone, their phone number would still begin with 24.

In Europe, the "abolished roaming" looks like that:

- in case of calling anyone from your country, absolutely nothing changes, so if you make a call to a number from another EU country, you pay an international call fare,

- if you are abroad within the EU, then calling any number within the EU costs you as much as a domestic call when you are in your country,

- this rule is valid only in case of temporary stays abroad; if you are abusing the EU roaming by using your e.g. Polish phone in Germany for a long time, a moment will come when the EU roaming will end for you and you will be normally charged for international calls,

- if you have extra packages of minutes, SMS'es or data bought, or you have some amount of them included in your subscription, in theory those minutes and SMS'es should be also valid abroad, in case of data there are some extra limits (for example, in a package you buy you have 5 GB of data, but only 1,87 GB of that can be used in the EU - just picking some random numbers to show how it works) which will subsequently change to less strict ones in the next years (although it's still not certain because the operators are protesting against that),

- in practice, some operators fought out kind of exemptions and they got allowed to charge some extra fees for the EU roaming, however, those fees are not very high.

Something like "just abolishing the roaming" is not possible because each country has its own mobile networks. Even if they belong to the same company (there are some operating in several countries, like T-Mobile or Orange), they are physically separate. Without roaming, you wouldn't be able to use your cell phone in another country at all.


----------



## CrazySerb

Traffic chaos in the city today (Belgrade) ... to make matters worse, the musical fountain was playing this year's Eurovision winner


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> Guys,
> 
> this may belong to the Border crossing thread, but it somehow concerns this topic too. Hope it would not be distracting. The topic is indeed crazy
> 
> My parents travel a lot by car accompanied by their small dog. The dog is chipped and has its own EU Pet Passport. Some officers at non-EU border crossings (e.g. Macedonia-Serbia) wants to see the passport every time they hear the dog barking at them. I am not sure if they monitor whether a dog entered/left the respective country or if they just want to look it over.
> 
> Anyway, the dog is now senior and there is always a slight possibility for him to pass away during their stay abroad. My question might sound indeed bizarre, but what is an owner supposed to do when their dog dies abroad?
> 
> My parents love their dog. Me and my wife recently lost our dog (which was the mother of the dog of my parents) and we had to put her down. We really refused to bury her down to the cold ground so we opted for individual cremation and a pet urn. My parents would opt for this as well and to do this, they need to transport the dead body home. And this is the fundamental question: Would the borders officers be nosy if they realize there is a dead dog's body in the car? Do you think they would know there is a missing dog - do they monitor the movement of pets? Is there any official procedure for that (I have not found anything) except to cremate the pet abroad?
> 
> Do you have any experiences in this?


Would it not be possible to do cremation locally?
I feel like long road trip in summer with dead animal inside car would be rather horrible


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> ....
> Something like "just abolishing the roaming" is not possible because each country has its own mobile networks. Even if they belong to the same company (there are some operating in several countries, like T-Mobile or Orange), they are physically separate. Without roaming, you wouldn't be able to use your cell phone in another country at all.



I should have said “abolishing roaming charges.”


----------



## Penn's Woods

CrazySerb said:


> Traffic chaos in the city today (Belgrade) ... to make matters worse, the musical fountain was playing this year's Eurovision winner




Talking of Eurovision (something we’re spared here. :colgate: ), I saw a cartoon involving Israel hosting it next year. Does that actually happen...does the winning country host the next one? Or was that a joke?


----------



## CrazySerb

Of course, that's the main prize of winning the competition - hosting it next year.

Spared? You guys have American Idol - as bad as Eurovision gets, it's never that bad


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^But I've never watched it. :cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> Would it not be possible to do cremation locally?
> I feel like long road trip in summer with dead animal inside car would be rather horrible


There is still a travel refrigerator :lol:


----------



## volodaaaa

CrazySerb said:


> Of course, that's the main prize of winning the competition - hosting it next year.
> 
> Spared? You guys have American Idol - as bad as Eurovision gets, it's never that bad


Well I am not utterly sure about that :lol: Eurovision is enough bad to beat any Idol.


----------



## Attus

ESC is called "song contest" but basically its main goal is to produce the very same television show everywhere in Europe at the very same time. It was created in 1956, when there was no Champions League, no football European Championships, and World Championships only once in four years so that ESC had the role of having something in television for every one in Europe simultanously. 
And even now, sixty years later, it's the only one apart from top sport events.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't watch the Eurovision Song Contest. It's a bunch of garbage "music", by far most artists don't advance their career by taking part in the ESC. In the Netherlands we have those talent shows too, most winners don't manage to establish a sustainable music career. It's entertainment, not much more.


----------



## Highway89

A cyclist on a Spanish _autovía_. As _autovías_ were originally just dualled roads with no alternative route, the law says that bicycles are allowed unless there's a specific sign banning them.


P6062652 by J GM, en Flickr


The photo was taken here on the northbound carriageway of the A-1, which has no non-motorway alternative. From the next exit bicycles are banned again: https://www.google.es/maps/place/A-...4447f3feec1e21a!8m2!3d42.7146856!4d-2.8695349




A typical entrance to a modern _autovía_:

P6063033 by J GM, en Flickr


P6062692 by J GM, en Flickr


----------



## g.spinoza

Highway89 said:


> A cyclist on a Spanish _autovía_. As _autovías_ were originally just dualled roads with no alternative route, the law says that bicycles are allowed unless there's a specific sign banning them.


Ok... but I wouldn't cycle there anyway...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm driving around in Norway this week. I noticed there are a lot of electric cars in the larger cities, but almost none outside urban areas. Once you're over 40 km from Kristiansand there is only the odd Tesla, but not very frequently. EVs still appear to be an urban thing, likely due to them being exempt from tolls (for now).


----------



## bogdymol

Well, EV are not really known for their extended range, nor for the short refueling times. They are not ideal for long distance trips, so you won't see them outside urban areas.


----------



## Suburbanist

What's urgently needed is a single standard for fast-charging.


----------



## Junkie

Norway is not part of the EU so it must have its own regulations? Btw is there a common regulation about electric vehicles inside EU?


----------



## Kpc21

There is already a few standards, which differ mainly in the speed of charging.

And actually, they almost all are described in one standard document: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_62196 - which doesn't come from the EU but from a worldwide organization.

Apart from that you have standard single-phase or three-phase power outlets (also defined in international worldwide standards - although also occurring in many types and variations) and the proprietary Tesla supercharger standard - being the fastest one if I am not mistaken, but also working only with Tesla cars.

I think it would be quite beneficial if an open standard allowing a similar speed of charging as Tesla's superchargers was introduced.


----------



## keber

Currently, as we speak, in Slovenia:


----------



## Spookvlieger

The first pic might be from Slovenia but the second is a dead giveaway. Why would a Slovene take a pic with a one dollar bill to compaire size. Most Europeans don't even know the size of a one dollar bill (it's big). Second pic is clearly from the USA.


----------



## keber

^^
Link from national televison site (forgot to add before):
https://www.rtvslo.si/okolje/novice...estila-toca-v-velikosti-teniskih-zogic/457401

EDIT: from another news site:








https://www.24ur.com/novice/sloveni...z-mocnim-vetrom-nalivi-in-debelejso-toco.html


----------



## Spookvlieger

I ddin't say the first pic was fake, but the second in your iniial post is. It's impressive hail none the less.


----------



## Gyorgy

^^ Oh my, like there are no 1 $ bills outside US. Probably someone decided not to wet the euros he uses but instead put some useless $ bill on the floor.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The weather community is very U.S. oriented due to the severe weather there. I believe the popular Facebook page severe weather europe is run from Slovenia.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Yes I fellow severe weather europe as well. They have the supercells in slovenia today well covered


----------



## MattiG

joshsam said:


> The first pic might be from Slovenia but the second is a dead giveaway. Why would a Slovene take a pic with a one dollar bill to compaire size. Most Europeans don't even know the size of a one dollar bill (it's big). Second pic is clearly from the USA.


I am quite sure that such an evidence would be quite weak in the court.


----------



## italystf

joshsam said:


> The first pic might be from Slovenia but the second is a dead giveaway. Why would a Slovene take a pic with a one dollar bill to compaire size. Most Europeans don't even know the size of a one dollar bill (it's big). Second pic is clearly from the USA.


A banknote can be around 10-15 cm long, not 1cm or 50cm, so anyone has a clue about its approximate size.


----------



## Junkie

Croatia:










This might be dangerous if someone got hit.

And I guess no insurance for this one:


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ I cannot see any picture.


----------



## keber

That was the same storm as I posted (just few tens of kilometers south)
If you have insurance for hail, it covers all this damage (many people do have that, including me)
In storm in NE Slovenia yesterday there was about 50 mm of rain in just 30 minutes. Drainages are not built for that kind of rain usually.


----------



## piotr71

"Linguistic issues" thread still closed, so let me post this one here. English in Cyrillic  Zlatibor county, Serbia.


----------



## Alex_ZR

^^ :ancient:

https://www.blic.rs/vesti/drustvo/ispravljen-engleski-putokaz-na-zlatiboru-napisan-cirilicom/g4573jq

2015


----------



## Junkie

Cyrillic script is widespread nowadays and differs from country to country and from continent to continent. Although it was derived on the territories of present Macedonia&Bulgaria by the Byzantine and Orthodox Christian theologians Saints Cyril and Methodius its used as far as in present Mongolia.
In the South Slavic languages for example, there are different letters that are not present in other Slavic languages. But only the eastern Slavs use Cyrillic as official script. There are some bi-countries like Serbia and BiH where Latin is also official.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Junkie said:


> In the South Slavic languages for example, there are different letters that are not present in other Slavic languages. *But only the eastern Slavs use Cyrillic as official script.* There are some bi-countries like Serbia and BiH where Latin is also official.


So Bulgaria is eastern Slavic country? hno:


----------



## Junkie

Yes it is because its Orthodox. Same as Macedonia, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus where only the Cyrillic is official. We don't have Latin script as official in our constitution.

Western Slavs like Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia and Czechia used the Cyrillic centuries ago, but they shifted because they were assimilated by the western influence and the Latin script became official.


----------



## piotr71

Alex_ZR said:


> ^^ :ancient:
> 
> https://www.blic.rs/vesti/drustvo/ispravljen-engleski-putokaz-na-zlatiboru-napisan-cirilicom/g4573jq
> 
> 2015


Maybe, but I have not seen it before.


----------



## piotr71

Junkie said:


> Yes it is because its Orthodox. Same as Macedonia, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus where only the Cyrillic is official. We don't have Latin script as official in our constitution.
> 
> Western Slavs like Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia and Czechia used the Cyrillic centuries ago, but they shifted because they were assimilated by the western influence and the Latin script became official.


Looks like right time to verify your knowledge and then come back fresh and re-educated.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ re-educated


----------



## piotr71

co-rrected


----------



## Kpc21

Junkie said:


> Western Slavs like Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia and Czechia used the Cyrillic centuries ago, but they shifted because they were assimilated by the western influence and the Latin script became official.


Poland never has. The first known written text in Polish is in the Latin script.

Meanwhile... about the GDPR from a Polish social website:












> A story with the GDPR in the background. Heard from my friend.
> 
> Emergency service, a few persons in a queue including my friend. The doctor goes out and shouts to the whole corridor:
> Doc: Mr Paweł (Paul)!!!
> Person1: Here I am
> Person2: But which f-ing Paweł, I am also Paweł and I've been waiting for over an hour
> Doc: The one with a knee [some knee problems, no idea how understandable it is in English]
> Person1: It's me
> Person2: I am too with a knee
> Doc: Wait a moment
> He returns to his office, returns afer 2 minutes and tells:
> Doc: The left one (the left knee, not the left Paweł)
> Person2: Finally!


Note that while the customs regarding that are different in different countries, in Poland unknown persons aren't normally referred to by their first name.

But the GDPR gives no other choice  Other than using numbers but the patients often forget their numbers.


----------



## volodaaaa

Junkie said:


> Yes it is because its Orthodox. Same as Macedonia, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus where only the Cyrillic is official. We don't have Latin script as official in our constitution.
> 
> Western Slavs like Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia and Czechia used the Cyrillic centuries ago, but they shifted because they were assimilated by the western influence and the Latin script became official.[/QUOT
> 
> 
> The Slovak language and the cyrillic has never met. Slovakia and the Slovak language did not exists in times when cyrrilic (or hlaholika) was used in the central Europe. Unless you claim that Slovakia correspons with the Samo´s empire. But that something even Slovak ultraultraultranationalists does not claim to be true.:cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

I have flown for the first time with the jet airliner past two weeks including a 10 minutes long flight. Basically, it were three flights over all.

All flying disasters struck my mind anyway as I had seen several documentaries on the youtube about it, but most of them were concerned problems that should not repeat. Despite being a little bit scared (having known that most of the crashes occured during the take-off and landing) it was easy to get into the groove as the aircraft reached the flight level


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I already have flown 187 times, plus a 7000+ km flight scheduled for tomorrow. Flying is great!


----------



## volodaaaa

Indeed. Now I am looking where to fly next.

It was Boeing 737-800 deployed on 7 hour long journey. Some told me that it was quite a difficult combo for the first flight. But I liked it a lot.


----------



## Surel

volodaaaa said:


> Junkie said:
> 
> 
> 
> Yes it is because its Orthodox. Same as Macedonia, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus where only the Cyrillic is official. We don't have Latin script as official in our constitution.
> 
> Western Slavs like Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia and Czechia used the Cyrillic centuries ago, but they shifted because they were assimilated by the western influence and the Latin script became official.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Slovak language and the cyrillic has never met. Slovakia and the Slovak language did not exists in times when cyrrilic (or hlaholika) was used in the central Europe. Unless you claim that Slovakia correspons with the Samo´s empire. But that something even Slovak ultraultraultranationalists does not claim to be true.:cheers:
Click to expand...

Those are two scripts. Glagolitic script was developed by brothers Cyril and Methodius when they were preparing for their mission to Great Moravia in the 9th century. They needed to translate the christian texts to the Slavic population and they needed a script that would correspond to their language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_script

This script was used on both territories of Czechia and Slovakia, that is the territories under the management of Great Moravia at that time. It survived several centuries as Old Church Slavonic. It was in fact the third official liturgical language just after Greek and Latin.

Cyrillic script was developed afterwards as a augmenting of Glagolitic script and Greek alphabet and has been used by the Eastern Slavs. It never really had a widespread use in the territory of Great Moravia or Bohemia as the pupils of Cyril and Methodius that developed the script had to flee from the territory as the latin clergy coming mostly from Germany (Frankish Empire) gained more influence and took the upper hand in the fight for control. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script

The Old Church Slavonic was used up to the 11th century in the Sazava monastery in Czechia. Interestingly enough Old Church Slavonic and Cyrillic script managed to also get to West Europe in e.g. Reims Gospel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reims_Gospel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sázava_Monastery

btw. Samo's empire precede Great Moravia by two centuries.

Great Moravia in the highest extent of its territory.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Moravia-slk.png









Glagolitical script used on the island of Krk in Croatia in the 10th century.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bascanska_ploca.jpg


----------



## Attus

bogdymol said:


> Flying is great!


I hate flying. But neither do I like driving a thousand kilometer in a day. So I prefer flying even if I hate it.


----------



## volodaaaa

Surel said:


> Those are two scripts. Glagolitic script was developed by brothers Cyril and Methodius when they were preparing for their mission to Great Moravia in the 9th century. They needed to translate the christian texts to the Slavic population and they needed a script that would correspond to their language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_script
> 
> This script was used on both territories of Czechia and Slovakia, that is the territories under the management of Great Moravia at that time. It survived several centuries as Old Church Slavonic. It was in fact the third official liturgical language just after Greek and Latin.
> 
> Cyrillic script was developed afterwards as a augmenting of Glagolitic script and Greek alphabet and has been used by the Eastern Slavs. It never really had a widespread use in the territory of Great Moravia or Bohemia as the pupils of Cyril and Methodius that developed the script had to flee from the territory as the latin clergy coming mostly from Germany (Frankish Empire) gained more influence and took the upper hand in the fight for control. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script
> 
> The Old Church Slavonic was used up to the 11th century in the Sazava monastery in Czechia. Interestingly enough Old Church Slavonic and Cyrillic script managed to also get to West Europe in e.g. Reims Gospel.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reims_Gospel
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sázava_Monastery
> 
> btw. Samo's empire precede Great Moravia by two centuries.
> 
> Great Moravia in the highest extent of its territory.
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Moravia-slk.png
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Glagolitical script used on the island of Krk in Croatia in the 10th century.
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bascanska_ploca.jpg



Nice explanation in a nutshell. Anyway I was just exaggerating. The Slovak Language was codified in 1848 and never used other but the Latin Script.


----------



## ufonut

Pop quiz: 

Where was this photo taken ?










Answer:

A) Border of San Diego and Tijuana 
B) Central Poland
C) Gaza Strip
D) Golan Heights


----------



## Junkie

volodaaaa said:


> The Slovak language and the cyrillic has never met.


That must be because the modern Slovak territory was part of the (Western) Roman Empire.

While the Byzantine or the Eastern Roman Empire was mainly Slavic and Greek.

Slavs and Greeks as Orthodox in the Byzantine, but Slavs in the Balkans later got their own script which was called Cyrillic script and its derived from Ohrid and Preslav.

About the Glagolitic script this is one of the oldest text from Ohrid, present Macedonia.












> The Ohrid Literary School used the Glagolitic alphabet from its establishment until the 12th century and Cyrillic from the end of the 9th century onwards. used the Glagolitic alphabet from its establishment until the 12th century and Cyrillic from the end of the 9th century onwards.





Surel said:


> Those are two scripts. Glagolitic script was developed by brothers Cyril and Methodius when they were preparing for their mission to Great Moravia in the 9th century.


It is know that their main mission from the Balkans was to spread Christianity to Central Europe. They spread it with the Glagolitic alphabet which was used in present Macedonia and Bulgaria before their journey.


The Balkans was always on the eastern side. Orthodox and Cyrillic but also Greek is what defined the Balkans.


----------



## Surel

Junkie said:


> That must be because the modern Slovak territory was part of the (Western) Roman Empire.
> 
> While the Byzantine or the Eastern Roman Empire was mainly Slavic and Greek.
> 
> Slavs and Greeks as Orthodox in the Byzantine, but Slavs in the Balkans later got their own script which was called Cyrillic script and its derived from Ohrid and Preslav.
> 
> About the Glagolitic script this is one of the oldest text from Ohrid, present Macedonia.
> 
> It is know that their main mission from the Balkans was to spread Christianity to Central Europe. They spread it with the Glagolitic alphabet which was used in present Macedonia and Bulgaria before their journey.
> 
> The Balkans was always on the eastern side. Orthodox and Cyrillic but also Greek is what defined the Balkans.


Afaik, there was no script before they designed the Glagolitic script. They just used the local Slavic dialects to design their script as they assumed that the language would be very similar. The Greek and Latin alphabet misses letters for the phonemes used in the Slavic languages. That is why e.g. Polish uses so many letters for one sound (digraph) and e.g. Czech uses diacritics that replaced the digraphs. They saw that if they would use Latin or Greek alphabet for translation of Latin or Greek texts into Slavic languages they would run into numerous problems as they would not be able to represent the sounds in a simple and efficient manner.

Cyrillic was developed later as a simplified version of Glagolitic script that took over a lot from the Greek alphabet. It's named Cyrillic because it was developed by the pupils of Cyril. The Ohrid School and other schools were established by their pupils that had to flee from Great Moravia.


----------



## Junkie

What is interesting is that the Old Church Slavonic is closer to Czechia and Slovakia and its even far closer to the real Cyrillic script but Czechia and Slovakia got westernized because of the influence they were assimilated completely in the Western Roman Empire after the Great Schism happened. They were cut out of the Cyrillic but also became Catholics.

This is the point I was talking about.


> In 885, the use of Old Church Slavonic in Great Moravia was prohibited by Pope Stephen V in favour of Latin


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> can anyone explain me these illogical prefixes?
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_registration_prefixes
> 
> ^^ #metoo I was on an overpass and counting cyclists.


All of those?


----------



## keber

x-type said:


> I will be on Google Street View


Maybe me too, but I don't know because google car was waiting red light and was not moving therefore probably not taking pictures.


----------



## volodaaaa

No, but why they do not use ovals and use codes like "B" for China instead. Why Slovakia is not SK (that is not used) but is OM instead.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> No, but why they do not use ovals and use codes like "B" for China instead. Why Slovakia is not SK (that is not used) but is OM instead.


History talks.

https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certif...n/aircraft_registry/aircraft_nnumber_history/


----------



## ChrisZwolle

https://www.skyscrapercity.com/thanks.php?do=statistics

There is some dude on SSC that has given nearly 1.5 million likes. How does one manage to do that? You must wait 10 or 15 seconds between a like, and the like feature has not been around for most of SSC's existence.


----------



## x-type

No single word about FIFA World Cup here. Is that because we have Dutch, Slovenian, American and Italians heading the top posting people here?


----------



## Junkie

^^
Croatia is planning to go to the final this year? Maybe Croatia vs Brazil will be the final match in Moscow....


----------



## Kpc21

I would like Croatia or Sweden go as far in this tournament as possible.

We as Poland lost our chances already by failing in two games. So it ends up as always in the Mundial (as we call it). Opening game, game of everything, honor game. 2 years ago the Polish team seemed to be quite strong qualifying to the quarter-finals of the Euro, now we are likely to end it with 0 points.

An interesting (and comforting) fact is that Germany also failed to leave the group.


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> No single word about FIFA World Cup here. Is that because we have Dutch, Slovenian, American and Italians heading the top posting people here?


I have no interest in football whatsoever.

Except for a "fantasy football" tournament I'm participating in, open to physicists and scientists.
You basically choose 10 team shares (you can also choose two, three or four shares of the same team), each share gives you points for each win and move to the next round, modified by a multiplier given by FIFA ranking of the team.

Who gets the most points, wins 

http://plato.tp.ph.ic.ac.uk/akraja/wc2018/scores.html

I'm sad because I had shares of Germany, Nigeria and Peru... hno:


----------



## keber

I don't care - even if Slovenia was on WC. Football is not interesting to me already for long time. I rather do sports than watching it. If I watch anything is that a rugby match.


----------



## tfd543

The greatest game is so far Switzerland-Serbia. A lot of Balkan drama  Yet, thank God Croatia didn't end in the same group as Serbia... omg.


----------



## CNGL

I don't care about World Cup that much. I was going with Iceland, but they are out. Anyway, much like 4 years ago I'm doing my own version of the World Cup, which is identical to the real except that the teams are... ones from March Madness , thus doing the other way of what I did back then (replacing basketball teams with football ones and vice-versa).


ChrisZwolle said:


> https://www.skyscrapercity.com/thanks.php?do=statistics
> 
> There is some dude on SSC that has given nearly 1.5 million likes. How does one manage to do that? You must wait 10 or 15 seconds between a like, and the like feature has not been around for most of SSC's existence.


I remember posting here how I had received 275 notifications overnight, all being likes from that same dude.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> https://www.skyscrapercity.com/thanks.php?do=statistics
> 
> There is some dude on SSC that has given nearly 1.5 million likes. How does one manage to do that? You must wait 10 or 15 seconds between a like, and the like feature has not been around for most of SSC's existence.


That guy has been a member since January 24th, 2015, i.e. for 1251 days, approx. 1.8 mn minutes. So he liked approx. one post per minute. 24/7.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Why go to Southern France if you can go to Norway?


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ For the food?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Norway is not exactly a country where you would go to for the food. It's insanely expensive to dine in a restaurant. There aren't a lot of bars like you would see in Southern Europe.


----------



## MichiH

Attus said:


> That guy has been a member since January 24th, 2015, i.e. for 1251 days, approx. 1.8 mn minutes. So he liked approx. one post per minute. 24/7.



You have to wait 15s between two likes. That means, the guy has spent 20% of his time just for clicking the like button here...........

1,500,000 / 4 / 60 / 24 = 260 days out of 1251 days (24/7)!


btw: And you have to wait 30s between two posts


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> Norway is not exactly a country where you would go to for the food.



But France!


----------



## Kpc21

MichiH said:


> You have to wait 15s between two likes. That means, the guy has spent 20% of his time just for clicking the like button here...........


Isn't it so that if you open a new thread page, you don't have to wait?

Maybe this protection is implemented client-side and he is doing it with a script or something like that?


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Norway is not exactly a country where you would go to for the food. It's insanely expensive to dine in a restaurant. There aren't a lot of bars like you would see in Southern Europe.


A man entered a small restaurant in the coastal Norway. He looked at the menu:

- Boiled cod
- Fried cod
- Owen cod
- Grilled cod
- Marinated cod
- Dried cod
- Fermented cod
...
- Cod pizza

He gave a laugh, "Cod pizza". "Yes", the waiter responded, "we have Italian weeks now".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It all started with _shiny crashbarriers_...


----------



## bogdymol

On Struma motorway are the shiniest crashbarriers in the entire word!


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> It all started with _shiny crashbarriers_...


No. Shiny balcony, not crashbarriers!



radi6404 said:


> Guys, here´s my shiny balcony which some of you wanted see, by now the balcony is even shinier because I used a technology which makes the color painted smooth.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yep, but before that, the guy was obsessed with shiny crash barriers along the Struma Motorway in Bulgaria  There were endless debates about it, but it was 10 years ago. Long-time members will sure remember it.


----------



## italystf

Firefighter accident during an exercise near Milan


----------



## bogdymol

^^ At least the firefighters arrived without delay at the accident :troll:


----------



## SeanT

Radi, I think?


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

volodaaaa said:


> Guys, this will be very hypothetical physics-related post, but I know some of you are very good in this subject, so let's discuss it a little.
> 
> To begin with, I was never good in physics and I hated this subject at all levels of my school - because I was stupid youngster and the subject was boring (only stupid equations with no relation to the real life). Recently I have started to watch youtube videos and learned several things about chemistry, aerodynamics or electricity (which were topics I hated because we had no teacher to explain it correctly).
> 
> Here is a question: could a passenger falling from an aircraft flying at the altitude 30.000 ft over the ocean survive in certain conditions? Yesterday I watched a documentary about Flight 811 which suffered an explosive decompression after faulty cargo door resulting in sucking of 9 passengers out of the aircraft. The parents of one passengers wonder if they son was still alive while falling.
> 
> I think it could be possible, there were some cases, most notably Vesna Vulović, the only question is how to survive the ocean impact.
> 
> I may be wrong, but I think the speed of the falling object is constant (except for some drag generated by your posture or clothes, which could make you fall little bit slower) and it is not decisive if the object is flying for 5 minutes or 10 seconds. So provided that the passenger did not suffocate and was conscious, they really can survive if doing a proper dive (like by the pool) into the ocean. Of course the ocean must be deep enough and there must be a random ship nearby (yep, this would be a real coincidence).
> 
> What do you think?


I think you would have a better shot of survival falling on land, in thick but bushy vegetation, or one a steep sandy or bush covered slope. Lots of broken bones but you might survive like Vulovic. Falling on water is instant death. It's like hitting concrete. You can even do an experiment yourself. In a tub of water gently place your palm on the water surface, and slowly push in. No resistance. Then, lift your hand in the air and slap the water as hard as you can. Warring, it will hurt, besides the wet splash.

The faster you hit water the more "solid" it is because the molecules don't have time to get out of the way, so you are in fact hitting a "solid object" for the first microsecond. So your best bet of surviving such a fall is on land, especially if it is a sandy slope or covered in vegetation. There are many examples actually of base jumpers and sky divers surviving falls. In fact, a family friend of my parents had such an incident and lived. He was skydiving from 10000feet and his parachute did not open. He lived, but is now paralyzed from the waist down, but alive and with family and still working.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Oh my God the Struma motorway, that was so long ago! I drew a really bad drawing at the time remember? It said that the Struma was a really long bitch or something ridiculous I wouldn't say now.

And the time someone got angry at how off topic the thread was, that must have been five years ago and all :lol:


----------



## Attus

I travel between West Germany where I live and Budapest where my parents do (and where I grew up) several times a year. Usually I fly: it's cheaper (one person with no big luggage), faster and more comfortable. Once or twice a year I drive. 
Yesterday I drove, and it was like a miracle: 1,136 km with not any single congestion. (D: A61 - A48 - A3, A: A8 - A25 - A1 - A21 - S1 - A4, H: M1).


----------



## volodaaaa

AnOldBlackMarble said:


> I think you would have a better shot of survival falling on land, in thick but bushy vegetation, or one a steep sandy or bush covered slope. Lots of broken bones but you might survive like Vulovic. Falling on water is instant death. It's like hitting concrete. You can even do an experiment yourself. In a tub of water gently place your palm on the water surface, and slowly push in. No resistance. Then, lift your hand in the air and slap the water as hard as you can. Warring, it will hurt, besides the wet splash.
> 
> The faster you hit water the more "solid" it is because the molecules don't have time to get out of the way, so you are in fact hitting a "solid object" for the first microsecond. So your best bet of surviving such a fall is on land, especially if it is a sandy slope or covered in vegetation. There are many examples actually of base jumpers and sky divers surviving falls. In fact, a family friend of my parents had such an incident and lived. He was skydiving from 10000feet and his parachute did not open. He lived, but is now paralyzed from the waist down, but alive and with family and still working.



So creating drag by spreading legs and arms and then, let's say 10 metres above the sea level, forming a body into the diving position (heading directly to the sea while hands stretched) would not save the day, would it? 


Of course we have completely omitted the possible death by explosion, low oxygen density and the fact that even if our medium would live, they would probably end somewhere in the middle of the deep cold ocean.


Btw. Yesterday was the anniversary of the Uberlingen mid-air collision disaster. I was 15 and really did not catch the news that time. But afaik it was one of the deadliest mid-air collisions in Europe especially after the murder of the wannabe responsible person.


----------



## Spookvlieger

bogdymol said:


> ^^ At least the firefighters arrived without delay at the accident :troll:


If the driver had just turned the wheels straight again and slammed the brakes he wouldn't have tipped over :bash:


----------



## italystf

A little known fact, many people lost at sea die due to hypothermia rather than to drowning.
In winter most people can survive some minutes in cold water before their body temperature will drop below a critical point. In summer, of course they can last for many hours, maybe even half of a day, but after a certain point, even 'warm' (around 20°C) water temperatures can bring the human body below the critical temperature of 35°C.


----------



## Kpc21

https://www.money.pl/gospodarka/wia...atyczna-swinoujscie-ahlbeck,73,0,2410313.html

In short: Poles who cross the Polish-German border from Świnoujście to Ahlbeck just walking along the Baltic Sea beach are charged by Germans... a climate fee of 2.5 euro. The article describes a case of a pair who crossed the border and got caught by a German-only speaking guard (they tried talking to him in English, he didn't understand) who finally took 30 PLN (which is actually about 7 euro - for two of them) from them as they didn't have euro.

Is it normal in your opinion? I know such fees are charged in many places in the world being touristic resorts, at least in Europe, in Poland too (if I am not mistaken, those being spa towns are allowed to that - Ahlbeck in Germany is also one) - but everywhere where I were they were charged by a hotel or any other form of accommodation and not just by a guard on the beach.


----------



## Skopje/Скопје

Apparently, new proposed Trans European Corridor (Scandinavian-Mediterranean Corridor)

_source_


----------



## Kanadzie

Kpc21 said:


> https://www.money.pl/gospodarka/wia...atyczna-swinoujscie-ahlbeck,73,0,2410313.html
> 
> In short: Poles who cross the Polish-German border from Świnoujście to Ahlbeck just walking along the Baltic Sea beach are charged by Germans... a climate fee of 2.5 euro.


ridiculous
you cost the tourists 2,50 EUR each and the taxpayer even more
surely the guard is paid more than the money he is collecting...


----------



## volodaaaa

Skopje/Скопје;150096539 said:


> Apparently, new proposed Trans European Corridor (Scandinavian-Mediterranean Corridor)
> 
> _source_



Soon, there will be more corridors than roads actually. :nuts: :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

I've got a funny error on SSC:


----------



## g.spinoza

I smell bot


----------



## MichiH

Please vote: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/2018-summertime-arrangements


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> But I don't think anyone in Germany names it Meisterliga or anything like that, they call it just Champions League.


Champions League but sometimes Königsklasse (king class/group)


----------



## Junkie

Kpc21 said:


> It is also interesting that two international tournaments in the near future - Euro 2020 and World Cup 2026 - will be organized all around a continent. Euro 2020 will take place in various countries of Europe, WC 2026 - in basically all the countries of North America.
> 
> We participate in the FIFA World Cups since 1938. Our first two tournaments took place in France and in Brasil. But our national football association (PZPN) exists since 1919 (a year after we regained the independence) and our biggest sports newspaper exists since 1921, so it's quite likely that the two first World Cups were also commented in Poland.
> 
> Actually, as I read, in *the first World Cup (1930) only a few European countries did participate* (France, Yugoslavia, Romania and Belgium) because of the long and costly journey of the players to South America, while in case of the next one (1934), we simply did not qualify by losing the qualification game with Czechoslovakia.
> 
> So the Polish name for the FIFA World Cup - Mundial - must date back to 1930.
> 
> Those times were different from today mostly in that it wasn't possible to watch the games on TV because there was simply no TV yet. Although there probably were already radio transmissions from the games.


What is interesting about the first World Cup and I know about the Kingdom of Yugoslavia that participated there, was that all of the European countries that participated departed for South America with ships! Their journey lasted for a month.

There was no airline that would make a flight from Europe to South America in the 30's. 
Later Yugoslav Team started to travel with plane after the Second World War. 

What is also interesting is that the championship wasn't abandoned during the World War unlike the Olympic games.
Also about the TV the radio transmission started from the 40's.


----------



## Attus

Junkie said:


> What is also interesting is that the championship wasn't abandoned during the World War unlike the Olympic games.


Yet, it was. After the World Cup in France, 1938, the next one was organized in 1950 in Brazil.


----------



## Kpc21

One of the very first trans-oceanic TV transmissions were the 1964 Olympic Games. They took place in Tokyo. And while in the US they could be transmitted constantly, the link from North America to Europe used an older satellite, which was not yet geostationary, so the transmission could take place only in short windows when the satellite was flying over the Atlantic.

Anyway, those were the very beginnings of the intercontinental TV transmissions and intercontinental satellite transmissions in general. I suppose the radio had less problems with that because they could use, for example, short wave transmissions (and it was probably done so - the only option available was radio communications, the first transatlantic telephone cable was laid in 1956), but it doesn't provide enough bandwidth for the TV, so the TV had to wait for the advent of satellite connectivity in 1960s.

The first Olympic Games transmitted by TV were the ones in 1936 in Berlin, in Nazi Germany.

But in Poland the TV started after the WW2 - before the war, there were only some test transmissions. The first regular TV broadcasts started in 1952.


The 1960 Olympics which took place in Rome were also broadcast in America but it wasn't a live broadcast - they were recorded on video tapes and sent to the US on planes.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> 1936 in Berlin, in Nazi Germany.
> But in Poland the TV started after the WW2


hno:

1936 in Berlin, in Nazi Germany.
But in Poland the TV started after the WW2

*OR*

1936 in Berlin, in Nazi Germany.
But in communistic Poland the TV started after the WW2


----------



## volodaaaa

Guys,

I am sorry for OT, but I do a small survey about exact procedures of transport planning and traffic signs posting in different countries. But I think it is quite interesting for our hobby  How does it go in your country? Does police have a right of veto?

If you do not understand what I mean I can give you an example:

1. Imagine that you are a city mayor.

2 You have won communal elections because you had promised some sane measures. 

3. Creating traffic-calmed zones is among your promises and it is well supported by the citizens, even by those who have not voted for you. This measure rests on creating safety islands, chicanes, roundabouts and posting of the "zone 30" traffic sings. We do not talk about construction of brand new road (that should be preceded by EIA, etc.) but just traffic signs and some minor construction works (new curbs, safety islands, etc.). You do not need a building permit for that.

In Slovakia, you have to do following things:

4. As a head of municipal office you have to ask your closest employee - a director of transport department of the municipality. 

5. The director gives a task to his employees and they either prepare a construction project or contract a company that prepare the project according to the particular terms of reference instead. It takes some time according to the complexity of the measures.

6. Once the project is completed it shall be (according to certain national law) approved by the transport department and by the police as well. 

7. The body representing police depends on the category of road affected:
- if minor municipal street = approval is given by the "district transport inspectorate"
- if tertiary (4-digit) or secondary (3-digit) road = approval is given by the "regional transport inspectorate"
- if primary (2 or 1-digit) road of mtwy/expwy = approval is given by the ministry of interior affairs (not transport as you would expect)

8. Once the vital statements are given and the project is approved, a municipality uses its internal resources or contracted company to place the traffic sings and do the minor construction changes.

If police does not agree with a project, no approval is given and the project must be done over. The problem is the police in Slovakia usurps the transport planning despite their lacking expertise and gives a stop to projects that follow all laws and respective technical standards. They refuse to create a 30-zone even though a mayor and citizens want it because "nobody has died on this road so far, why? refused". I think it quite against democracy.

What is the sequence from point 4 onward in your country?


----------



## Junkie

I don't know if that name "Nazi Germany" is an insult or not for the Germans but its a commonly used English name for the country that existed under the dictatorship.

Maybe Kpc wanted to point out to the Third Reich which at least I guess is more easier that the word "Nazi" itself.

On the other hand, communist is not an insult, as we know Poland was called People's Republic of Poland but its just history anyway of the same country under different political and social systems.


----------



## Kpc21

MichiH said:


> hno:
> 
> 1936 in Berlin, in Nazi Germany.
> But in Poland the TV started after the WW2
> 
> *OR*
> 
> 1936 in Berlin, in Nazi Germany.
> But in communistic Poland the TV started after the WW2


Thanks for the remark 

Maybe the reason why I wrote it so is that in those times, the German flag was different then before that and after that, so when I see the flag of the Third Reich I immediately think "Nazi Germany". The communist Poland used exactly the same flag (with a slight difference in the shade of red but it's a detail nobody normally cares about) as the current Poland - and the coat of arms was different from the current one only in that the eagle had no crown (although proposals of removing the crown were present also before the WW2 in the purely democratic Poland). Nazi Germany looks, at least for me, like a different country than the Germany which was before and after that, although most likely I am wrong.

But you are right, I shouldn't have mentioned the political system naming one country and avoiding it naming the other.

Anyway, does it mean that totalitarian systems were so much more successful in introducing TV? It may look like it but I don't think it was so. 

So I also shouldn't have related the introduction of TV to the political system.

Actually, at least in Poland, in the first years of the TV, it wasn't used so much as a tool of propaganda as the newspapers and the radio were, simply because the TV wasn't so popular, few people had TV sets.



volodaaaa said:


> 3. Creating traffic-calmed zones is among your promises and it is well supported by the citizens, even by those who have not voted for you. This measure rests on creating safety islands, chicanes, roundabouts and posting of the "zone 30" traffic sings.


It wouldn't happen in Poland  People here like cars and driving too much. There are always people who simply want to drive fast and they don't care about such things, claiming that they make it difficult to move around the city and cause traffic jams (even if it's exactly opposite in reality).



volodaaaa said:


> If police does not agree with a project, no approval is given and the project must be done over. The problem is the police in Slovakia usurps the transport planning despite their lacking expertise and gives a stop to projects that follow all laws and respective technical standards. They refuse to create a 30-zone even though a mayor and citizens want it because "nobody has died on this road so far, why? refused". I think it quite against democracy.


We have the same problems in Poland, at least in Łódź 

Here, the roads management unit of the city council may disagree with the police and do the things in a way they want. The police has no decisive power, they only issue an opinion about the changes. But the people responsible for that are usually anyway afraid of doing things against the opinion of the police because later, in case of some accidents, they could get accused of designing dangerous infrastructure.

Here, the police isn't maybe against Tempo-30 zones (it's usually the activists representing the drivers), but they, for example, want to install traffic lights everywhere where it's just possible, at any possible intersection or zebra crossing, not thinking about that it impedes a lot the traffic in the city. It's often so that after the street with tram tracks get renovated, the point-to-point travel time doesn't become shorter at all - simply because, even though the tracks are now in a good condition, there are some new traffic lights which force the trams (and cars, pedestrians and cyclists too) simply to wait.

Traffic lights are treated as a recipe for any road safety problems - which is maybe partially true, but it also makes travelling through the city much more painful and there are also other measures of improving the safety which don't cause the problems. And there is also a risk that pedestrians annoyed by the long waiting will often cross the street on the red light, which is actually more dangerous than lack of the traffic lights.

Under the pressure of the public transport/pedestrian/cyclist-oriented activists, the city recently decided to disable some of the traffic lights - and there are no accidents there. The same thing went even further in Cracow and it actually helped calm down the traffic in the city centre.

Although... there was recently a case of an intersection in Łódź, which was the biggest intersection in the city with no traffic lights at all - and, by the way, an intersection with no priority for any of the streets (on which the right hand rule applies). It is being renovated just now (you can even see the photos of the works in the thread about the public transport in Łódź in a neighboring forum category - photos of other SSC users, but posted by my there) and equipping the intersection with traffic lights is designed. And... guess what? This time, the police assessed it in such a way that they said the current type of the intersection is good in calming down the traffic and they don't recommend installing traffic lights there.

But the roads management anyway decided to continue with the traffic lights there, claiming that after the modifications regarding e.g. the locations of the tram stops which are introduced by the design, the traffic lights are necessary.

But apart from the roads management and the police, we have one more unit in the city council which blocks many good ideas for improving the transport in Łódź. It is called "Office of the City Engineer" - and I don't really understand what they are responsible for - but they often make many problems with things which are compliant with the law, aren't dangerous and would make the traffic more fluent. Like, for example, programming the traffic lights in such a way that the trams could trigger green lights for them almost immediately instead of waiting the whole cycle of the lights.



Junkie said:


> On the other hand, communist is not an insult, as we know Poland was called People's Republic of Poland but its just history anyway of the same country under different political and social systems.


Those communist names (with "People's Republic of...") are actually quite funny, because they imply the democratic character of the country - and as we know, the communist countries weren't really democratic. Even though this system was officially called "people's democracy" (which is, by the way, redundant because just "democracy" means that the people rule).

Actually, I think the biggest problem was not the system (it's one of the political systems possible, with its advantages and drawbacks - and implemented correctly it is still a form of democracy) - but that we weren't actually a free country but a satellite country of Russia. Our government, even having good intentions about the country, couldn't do anything against the Moscow will.


----------



## Tenjac

Kpc21 said:


> (although proposals of removing the crown were present also before the WW2 in the purely democratic Poland)


By which definition of the term "democracy" Poland can be considered democratic before World War II?


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> It wouldn't happen in Poland  People here like cars and driving too much. There are always people who simply want to drive fast and they don't care about such things, claiming that they make it difficult to move around the city and cause traffic jams (even if it's exactly opposite in reality).
> 
> 
> We have the same problems in Poland, at least in Łódź
> 
> Here, the roads management unit of the city council may disagree with the police and do the things in a way they want. The police has no decisive power, they only issue an opinion about the changes. But the people responsible for that are usually anyway afraid of doing things against the opinion of the police because later, in case of some accidents, they could get accused of designing dangerous infrastructure.
> 
> Here, the police isn't maybe against Tempo-30 zones (it's usually the activists representing the drivers), but they, for example, want to install traffic lights everywhere where it's just possible, at any possible intersection or zebra crossing, not thinking about that it impedes a lot the traffic in the city. It's often so that after the street with tram tracks get renovated, the point-to-point travel time doesn't become shorter at all - simply because, even though the tracks are now in a good condition, there are some new traffic lights which force the trams (and cars, pedestrians and cyclists too) simply to wait.
> 
> Traffic lights are treated as a recipe for any road safety problems - which is maybe partially true, but it also makes travelling through the city much more painful and there are also other measures of improving the safety which don't cause the problems. And there is also a risk that pedestrians annoyed by the long waiting will often cross the street on the red light, which is actually more dangerous than lack of the traffic lights.
> 
> Under the pressure of the public transport/pedestrian/cyclist-oriented activists, the city recently decided to disable some of the traffic lights - and there are no accidents there. The same thing went even further in Cracow and it actually helped calm down the traffic in the city centre.
> 
> Although... there was recently a case of an intersection in Łódź, which was the biggest intersection in the city with no traffic lights at all - and, by the way, an intersection with no priority for any of the streets (on which the right hand rule applies). It is being renovated just now (you can even see the photos of the works in the thread about the public transport in Łódź in a neighboring forum category - photos of other SSC users, but posted by my there) and equipping the intersection with traffic lights is designed. And... guess what? This time, the police assessed it in such a way that they said the current type of the intersection is good in calming down the traffic and they don't recommend installing traffic lights there.
> 
> But the roads management anyway decided to continue with the traffic lights there, claiming that after the modifications regarding e.g. the locations of the tram stops which are introduced by the design, the traffic lights are necessary.
> 
> But apart from the roads management and the police, we have one more unit in the city council which blocks many good ideas for improving the transport in Łódź. It is called "Office of the City Engineer" - and I don't really understand what they are responsible for - but they often make many problems with things which are compliant with the law, aren't dangerous and would make the traffic more fluent. Like, for example, programming the traffic lights in such a way that the trams could trigger green lights for them almost immediately instead of waiting the whole cycle of the lights.


Thank you very much for precious exhausting answer. The traffic-lights insanity is present here as well.  Things seems similar. But anyway, it is a great improvement that city council is able to do independent activities despite the threat.

Our cities has a pile of perfect projects inspired by German, Austrian or French cities the citizens ask for. But police is against. They even refused to measure speed in 30-zone because: "nobody has driven according to the law, so we resigned". :nuts:


----------



## Kpc21

As someone recently mentioned in one thread in the Polish section, it might be related to the policemen who simply also don't obey the speed limits why driving privately (same as most drivers) - so punishing drivers for doing the same is kinda against their morality.

Although the Slovak police is known in Poland for being much more strict when it comes to giving fines for speeding than the Polish police.

And, by the way, in your country you normally have a right to disagree with the punishment given to you by the police and let the court assess the situation. While driving in a different country it's usually not possible - or possible in theory but it would stop you there for at least few hours, or even few days.



Tenjac said:


> By which definition of the term "democracy" Poland can be considered democratic before World War II?


The parliament was chosen by means of elections (which, I believe, weren't falsified - although I don't know if it can be confirmed - did anyone do exit polls in those times?) and multiple political parties could freely operate and compete with each other.

We had a coup (made by Piłsudski) in 1926 and the government after that is considered authoritarian rather than democratic - and when I read about it, it turns out it was becoming actually less and less democratic in time. The Piłsudski's party was getting more and more places in the parliament.

But I don't actually know how it really looked like.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

30°C pretty much at the North Cape this morning!


----------



## bogdymol

^^ While at the same time there are 10°C in south-west Norway. Crazy weather!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ It was 8:30 in the morning. Which makes the measurements even crazier.


----------



## MichiH

^^ There is no sunset in the north. That means, temperature should be about the same all day long. There is simply no "morning".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That is true, but these temperatures are wildly above average. In July the average high in Kirkenes is 16 °C. This is pretty much near record levels.


----------



## Kanadzie

Kpc21 said:


> As someone recently mentioned in one thread in the Polish section, it might be related to the policemen who simply also don't obey the speed limits why driving privately (same as most drivers) - so punishing drivers for doing the same is kinda against their morality.



Not even that... police don't exist to enforce laws that are morally wrong or unfair, laws that are ignored by majority or even large minority. Police won't bother you for having little marijuana either, it is not possible or right to harass these people.



Kpc21 said:


> We had a coup (made by Piłsudski) in 1926 and the government after that is considered authoritarian rather than democratic - and when I read about it, it turns out it was becoming actually less and less democratic in time. The Piłsudski's party was getting more and more places in the parliament.
> 
> But I don't actually know how it really looked like.


The Sanacja period of II RP is genuinely unique and interesting because of the strong multicultural / tolerant attitude of the Pilsudski regime particularly in an environment of rabidly racist, nationalist and fascistic regimes in the neighboring countries and globally in general, as well as the similar bent of the opposition "National Democracy" party in the country. Of course, history made the multicultural nature of the Second Republic moot by killing those people and pushing borders around, but I think the era remains very remarkable. Germany was in a similar situation with a new, unstable, republican democracy, but went off the rails, in a similar way, but in a very different direction.

Looking at the world it doesn't seem to have ever happened such a bad thing that was so good :lol: I mean you have small support of minorities for dictators, e.g. Syria, but it isn't like the regime is friendly to those minorities, just that they are less inclined to chop their heads off.


----------



## Attus

So, Pilsudski was mentioned. Let's talk about Horthy as well! The history was not funny, but at the and I'll have a funny story. 

Hungary lost World War I. Hungary became independent but lost 72% of its territory to its neighbors, including all sea coasts. There was a short communist rule (which was called "133 days of glory" when I was a kid in the 80's), which was suppressed and later on a K.u.K. admiral, Miklós Horthy, took over the nation. Hungary became under his rule (1920-44) a "Kingdom with no king", ruled by a governor, Horthy. 
The main goal of his politics was to get back as many territories as possible, no matter how. The German Chancellor, Hitler, knew it was a chance for him: he promised Horthy to give back territory to Hungary if Hungary supports him but at the same time he promised Romania not to give back that area to Hungary if Romania supports him. So both Hungary and Romania supported Germany and were so allied although they were mutually the greatest enemies. 

According to a story which most probably did not happen at all but surely not this way the Hungarian ambassador in Washington visited president F.D. Roosevelt in order to declare war against the US in 1941. Roosevelt was not familiar with small European nations so he asked:
- Er, I am sorry, which nation are you actually?
- We are the Kingdom of Hungary.
- So you have a king then?
- No, we don't, we have an admiral. 
- So you have seas then?
- No, we don't. 
- So what do you have actually?
- We have territorial claims.
- Against the USA?
- No, against Romania.
- So why don't you declare war against Romania then?
- Because we're allied with them.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> That is true, but these temperatures are wildly above average. In July the average high in Kirkenes is 16 °C. This is pretty much near record levels.


Please read again:



ChrisZwolle said:


> 30°C pretty much at the North Cape this morning!





bogdymol said:


> ^^ While at the same time there are 10°C in south-west Norway. *Crazy* weather!





ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ It was *8:30 in the morning.* Which makes the measurements *even crazier.*





MichiH said:


> ^^ There is no sunset in the north. That means, temperature should be about the same all day long. *There is simply no "morning"*.


Yes, it's warmer than usual but it's not surprising that it is already very warm "early in the morning".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Okay, point taken. I find it uninteresting to discuss that kind of side-tracked multi-quote stuff to the detail, my main point was the exceptionally high temperature...


----------



## MattiG

MichiH said:


> ^^ There is no sunset in the north. That means, temperature should be about the same all day long. There is simply no "morning".


Hahaa...

The next topic to reseach is to think about the the correlation between the altitude of the Sun and the temperature.

The "sunrise" and the "morning" are two different things. The sunrise is a scientifically defined phenomen and the morning is a loosely defined culture-specific timespan around the time when people wake up.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Europe is going on vacation:


----------



## Tonik1

140 firefighters and 44 trucks from Poland to help Sweden with wildfires.


----------



## Attus

My ptohos of this year's Rheinbach Classics oldtimer festival:

(Several photos in the linked page)


----------



## CrazySerb

Meanwhile, in Serbia...


----------



## keber

Few days ago I was pictured (probably) with Here street car. I thought that only Google records street views.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The drought in the Netherlands persists. Some stations have seen no rain for 45 days. 

This drought map is a combination of lack of rain + evaporation, which is now exceeding that of record year 1976.










NRK (Norwegian public broadcasting) also reported that the village of Gulsvik (northwest of Oslo) has seen 26 days of temperatures hitting 30 °C this year. The previous record was set in Oslo in 1955, when 18 days hit 30 °C in a year. This illustrates how long-lasting the heat in the north of Europe is. Many Norwegian reservoirs are also at very low levels, reducing electricity production and driving up electricity prices.


----------



## Kpc21

keber said:


> Few days ago I was pictured (probably) with Here street car. I thought that only Google records street views.


TomTom also does, but they might use those photos for purposes other than publishing them as StreetView.

But Google is not the only one, in the former USSR countries much better coverage has the StreetView of www.yandex.ru.


----------



## Zsolt_Tolnai

It is still very hot in Denmark.


----------



## keokiracer

Welcome to the club


----------



## Fatfield

Bloody typical! All this lovely weather we're having in northern Europe and then on the weekend of the biggest free airshow in Europe at Sunderland, the forecast is for thunder storms and heavy showers for Friday & Saturday.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

38,2°C (101°F) in Arcen, Netherlands. That is only 0.4 °C from the all-time Dutch temperature record, set in 1944.


----------



## Junkie

In the Balkan(MKD) the temperature barely reached 30+ degrees C this month. Currently I enjoy 24 degrees with cold showers for the whole week to come. It is one of the "coldest" summers ever. 

And this time no A/C for me for a first time in the summers.

Btw the record temperature here was 45.7 °C measured in 2007, on 24th July.


----------



## Attus

37 degrees in Rhineland, and a drought this region has not seen for decades.
Dürre by Attila Németh, on Flickr
Dürre by Attila Németh, on Flickr


----------



## SeanT

Denmark is getting brown


----------



## SeanT

It is trully brown everywhere


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Another hot day in the Netherlands, 38.1°C in Westdorpe and widespread temperatures around 35°C. The national record was not broken though, but it was evidently the first time of back-to-back 38°C days. 

Tomorrow will be substantially less hot. Airconditioned houses are very uncommon in the Netherlands, many people report indoor temperatures over 30°C. It's 27 °C in my house, with all the windows shut and the curtains closed.


----------



## x-type

I don't remember such lousy summer. We barely had 30°C for less than 10 days till now (half of which were in May). Summer got lost this year


----------



## volodaaaa

Faith in humanity lost 

Yesterday, due to the lunar eclipse, I had prepared my tripod, camera, set up a time-lapse sequence, focused on the moon and sit next to my wife beside my gear watching the moon slowly disappearing in the shadow of the Earth, when a several groups of semi-drunk (were able to form a solid sentence) young people dropped by and asked "sir, can you tell us where is the moon, we see you have the camera focused on something". "the moon is over there, my camera is indeed focused on it. If you squint and pay enough attention you can still see it well", I replied. "But where, we want to see the eclipse. How come we do not see it, is it cloudy, or there is a fog or what", groups intended. "It is eclipse - you do not see the moon because it is in the shade of the Earth", I tried to teach them something. "Oh-huh, I see" told one of them seeing very unconvinced. "It is boring, let's go elsewhere" told other one as they were getting further away from me.


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> I don't remember such lousy summer. We barely had 30°C for less than 10 days till now (half of which were in May). Summer got lost this year


Usually I talk to my Hungarian friends about Rhine Summer which is 10 degrees cooler and much more wet than in Hungary. And now... the other way around. It was 31 degrees in my flat last night and I haven't seen any rain for more than a month.


----------



## Suburbanist

Here in Western Norway, the harvest of berries has been happening much earlier than usual. There are also quite a lot of wild strawberries in the valleys opposing the coast, I was told.


----------



## MichiH

It's also more than 30 degrees here but I saw some rain last Wednesday. Not much though. When it's raining, it's only in a very small region and a lot of rain at once. For instance, there was heavy rain two weeks ago, basements run full of water. But no drop of rain where I live - just 10km away.


----------



## cinxxx

I had a cool week in Iceland. Waiting for my return flight at the airport now. 
This country is so beautiful, wow!


----------



## Junkie

Tonik1 said:


> 140 firefighters and 44 trucks from Poland to help Sweden with wildfires.


The wildfire in Greece killed 86 persons as of today. I think it is the most devastated fire ever happened in Europe. Also this summer is one of the coolest and it is really unbeleavable what has happened there. There are some rumors that a gas caused the fire to boost in an unimaginable and unseen way....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Greek wildfires reportedly occured during gale-force winds, that's why it spread so incredibly fast and led to the high fatality count. 

The Netherlands had over a thousand wildfires over the past two weeks but they are very quickly contained: every location in the Netherlands has a coordinated route for emergency services and distances are short so fires are contained before they get out of hand. 1 - 4 hectares is already reported as a "large" wildfire as if it is similar to a 20,000 hectare fire abroad...


----------



## Junkie

No I don't think so. Reporters and officials have said that there is suspicion of a criminal acts and setting small fires and a possible gas leakage prior to the tragedy.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> Faith in humanity lost
> 
> Yesterday, due to the lunar eclipse, I had prepared my tripod, camera, set up a time-lapse sequence, focused on the moon and sit next to my wife beside my gear watching the moon slowly disappearing in the shadow of the Earth, when a several groups of semi-drunk (were able to form a solid sentence) young people dropped by and asked "sir, can you tell us where is the moon, we see you have the camera focused on something". "the moon is over there, my camera is indeed focused on it. If you squint and pay enough attention you can still see it well", I replied. "But where, we want to see the eclipse. How come we do not see it, is it cloudy, or there is a fog or what", groups intended. "It is eclipse - you do not see the moon because it is in the shade of the Earth", I tried to teach them something. "Oh-huh, I see" told one of them seeing very unconvinced. "It is boring, let's go elsewhere" told other one as they were getting further away from me.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Somebody lost something...


N50-3 by European Roads, on Flickr


----------



## Kanadzie

A bra is a novelty but I regularly see shoes on the side of the motorway, I have no idea why...


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands had over a thousand wildfires over the past two weeks but they are very quickly contained: every location in the Netherlands has a coordinated route for emergency services and distances are short so fires are contained before they get out of hand. 1 - 4 hectares is already reported as a "large" wildfire as if it is similar to a 20,000 hectare fire abroad...


The road access might be the major differentiating factor between Finland and Sweden. The weather has been similar this summer and the forests are similar at the same latitudes. Still, there has been one major wildfire of 100 hectares in Finland, while the situation in Sweden seems to be more or less out of the control.

Finland is full of small forest roads for timber collection, and the wildfire is usually pretty easy to be reached by fire trucks. Such roads are more rare in Sweden, because building them have been criticized for ecological reasons. Well, a fire is the most ecological and the most natural way for a forest to renew.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Interesting observation. Access seem to be key to combat wildfires. Some areas are naturally inaccessible (mountainous terrain) but others are flatter, but undeveloped. 

I remember the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, it covered almost 600,000 hectares, most of that in inaccessible terrain. The boreal forest in Canada has seen incredibly large fires in the past, in the millions of hectares, but they usually did not supress them as there was no danger to communities in such remote areas. The Canadian boreal forest is only partially exploited by the logging industry.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Interesting observation. Access seem to be key to combat wildfires. Some areas are naturally inaccessible (mountainous terrain) but others are flatter, but undeveloped.
> 
> I remember the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, it covered almost 600,000 hectares, most of that in inaccessible terrain. The boreal forest in Canada has seen incredibly large fires in the past, in the millions of hectares, but they usually did not supress them as there was no danger to communities in such remote areas. The Canadian boreal forest is only partially exploited by the logging industry.


The biggest post-war wildfire in Finland occurred in 1960 in the Tuntsa wilderness area at the Soviet border. About 20,000 hectares were lost in Finland and 100,000 in the Soviet Union. The area was tens of kilometers off the roads, and the 500 firefighters were able to limit the expansion of the fire only. The fire ceased when the rain started after weeks. In the Finnish side, there was a massive timber collection project until 1967. About 300,000 cubic meters of dead trees were collected. Thus, the bottom line damage was not substantial.

Currently, wildfires are pretty frequent in the dry summers, but the average impacted area is very small: 0.4 hectares only. It is an indication of working detection and firefighting procedures.

BTW, I have once firefighted a wildfire quite many years ago. About 50 square meters of forest was in fire close to my home, and I emptied a 6 kg fire extinguisher onto it, and managed to control the fire until the fire brigade arrived.


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


>



:lol::lol::lol:

A lot of people shared that on Facebook, but I think it is completely wrong. The theory of flat Earth is that much spotty that no lunar eclipse should happen. Just browse how they explain day-night cycle. :nuts::nuts::nuts:


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> :lol::lol::lol:
> 
> A lot of people shared that on Facebook, but I think it is completely wrong. The theory of flat Earth is that much spotty that no lunar eclipse should happen. Just browse how they explain day-night cycle. :nuts::nuts::nuts:


Well... The lunar eclipse would be non-existent only of the line from the center of the Sun to the center of the Moon lies on the plane of the flat Earth, i.e. the tilt angle of the Earth to that line is zero. If the tilt angle is nonzero, then the projection of the pancake is an ellipse.


----------



## g.spinoza

Hi all,

here's a map of my 6000-km, 14-day vacation trip across southern France and northern Spain. Some parts are missing (Turin-Gap, for example).


----------



## cinxxx

^^Image is not visible, not even if I copy the link into another browser window


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> ^^Image is not visible, not even if I copy the link into another browser window


I hate google photos wholeheartedly.

Better now? This is with imgur.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes it works!  That's a great route. Galicia is on my wishlist. But so are many other places


----------



## Don Alessandro

This I'll be starting the second longest trip in my life going from poland thru czech republic, austria, slovenia, croatia, montenegro to albania, and on the way home thru Sarajevo.

Last time it was 2013 when I was in this part of europe. Im excited what has changed since this time.

Altough...

https://me.me/i/ships-and-aircrafts-have-dissapeared-ships-and-atrcrafts-have-dissapeared-16991525

:troll:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ It is common for Poles to go to the Balkans for vacation? I don't see Poles often in France or Spain.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*Portugal heat*

GFS calculates a maximum temperature of 52 °C in Portugal next Saturday.

This would be incredible. The current record high in Portugal is 47.4 °C, recorded in 2003. The European record high is 48 °C in Athens in 1977. So 52 °C would dwarf that record.

GFS is known to exaggerate sometimes, though 50 °C has been supported for several days now.


----------



## Don Alessandro

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ It is common for Poles to go to the Balkans for vacation? I don't see Poles often in France or Spain.


It is sure cheaper than in France or Spain.

Altough many poles travel to this countrys by plane, many decide to go to Italy or the Dalmatian Coast by car, because of the distance.

During the summer time you can notice a true wave of polish (Czech and also Slovak) cars that move towards Croatia.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> GFS calculates a maximum temperature of 52 °C in Portugal next Saturday.
> 
> This would be incredible. The current record high in Portugal is 47.4 °C, recorded in 2003. The European record high is 48 °C in Athens in 1977. So 52 °C would dwarf that record.
> 
> GFS is known to exaggerate sometimes, though 50 °C has been supported for several days now.


That would be interesting.
I'm in contact with WMO on these matters, we recently validated two all-time temperature records in Asia, so maybe I will have first hand info on this.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> It is common for Poles to go to the Balkans for vacation? I don't see Poles often in France or Spain.


Yes, along with Czechs, Slovaks and Hungarians.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Croatia must be getting overcrowded, receiving so many tourists from both the northwest and east of the EU. It's a drivable distance for a very large portion of EU residents.


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> GFS calculates a maximum temperature of 52 °C in Portugal next Saturday.
> 
> This would be incredible. The current record high in Portugal is 47.4 °C, recorded in 2003. The European record high is 48 °C in Athens in 1977. So 52 °C would dwarf that record.
> 
> GFS is known to exaggerate sometimes, though 50 °C has been supported for several days now.


43°C in Galicia? No way it could happen. My area is expected to hit 40°C late this week, that crazy GFS prediction has 37°C. It's the first heat wave we have this summer.


----------



## Junkie

Mati fire in Athens has took 91 victims as of today. There are still 25 bodies disappearing says Greek officials. It is the worst fire catastrophe in the documented history after the fire in Belgium in 1900 which took lives of 200+ people.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

CNGL said:


> 43°C in Galicia? No way it could happen.


The interior of southern Galicia gets hotter than its green temperate image suggests. The record high in Ourense is 42.6°C. 

GFS is known to come up with crazy scenarios in the longer term (7-10 days), but this forecast of widespread 45 - 50 °C temperatures is for Friday and Saturday, which is in the generally reliable range, though breaking records is always a relatively small chance. 

It's interesting that Portugal gets so extremely hot, since it's surrounded by ocean on the west and south and these extremely high temperatures are forecast in areas relatively close to the sea. And southeast of Lisbon isn't exactly a desert either.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Croatia must be getting overcrowded, receiving so many tourists from both the northwest and east of the EU. It's a drivable distance for a very large portion of EU residents.



The Croatian coast is slightly losing its popularity in Slovakia. Indeed, the driveable distance is an advantage, but the accommodation prices are too high and the weather is too unstable. Most of Slovaks switched to Greece that is cheap if you travel by car and the distance is comparable to some regions in Croatia (+ waiting times at toll booths).


Also, cheap holidays are achievable by air travel, especially Turkey, Greece and Egypt. The Cape Verde islands with direct flight from Bratislava I spent my holiday to have reasonable price too.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

If you follow Severe Weather Europe on Facebook or Twitter, you get an image that is often not portrayed in our media: Italy and Croatia frequently have severe thunderstorms with damaging hail and flash floods. It seems like there is some mudflow in Italy every other day. Of course these are very localized phenomenons.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Croatia must be getting overcrowded, receiving so many tourists from both the northwest and east of the EU. It's a drivable distance for a very large portion of EU residents.


Actually, some new guys are starting to take larger part. Far East, Spaniards, Brits, Aussies and Americans are leaders (if we don't consider standard eas, central and NW EU and Italy)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Interesting article about land use in the U.S.: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Car + caravan loses control on Dutch motorway: https://twitter.com/RJSlotema/status/1024739779261411329?s=19


----------



## Junkie

volodaaaa said:


> The Croatian coast is slightly losing its popularity in Slovakia. Indeed, the driveable distance is an advantage, but the accommodation prices are too high and the weather is too unstable. Most of Slovaks switched to Greece that is cheap if you travel by car and the distance is comparable to some regions in Croatia (+ waiting times at toll booths).


Northern Greece is cheaper e.g Halkidiki and Thessaloniki region compared to the south it is true what you say. That's why many Balkan people travel to Greece and bring their own raw food for cooking


----------



## Suburbanist

I was a victim of road rage today here in Bergen. As a pedestrian. 

I was on my way to work, on a neighborhood road (just a 1+1 wide-ish urban road that gives access to a whole section of town), and the first car coming downhill stopped, as usual. However, the service van right behind it slammed into its brakes (it was going too fast) and almost hit the car (loud breaking, burned tires and all). The driver then got out, and came into my direction shouting something in a mix of broken Norwegian and English that I should wait car traffic pass, that people need to work and 'we' are always ##### up that street.

The issue is not a really large volume of people, but really a trickle from several streets up the mountains that end up in a single 'chokepoint' for people going to work or study, or catch a bus as the major stop there. So there isn't enough of a 'gap' for more than 1 or 2 cars to cross before the next pedestrian comes. Location: https://goo.gl/maps/SMwianAduNv

There is indeed an issue which makes cars back up a bit on the highway offramp. Then the car driver got out and intervened, she starting complaining to the van driver about aggressive driving and took her cell phone out, starting to film him, which quickly intimidated him back into his van.


----------



## g.spinoza

I don't understand. Were you crossing the road? On a zebra crossing?


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> I don't understand. Were you crossing the road? On a zebra crossing?


Yes. The van driver was completely in the wrong. It is a clearly signed crossing with a speed bump. He wanted me to wait as to give traffic an opportunity to move on (because a large group of school teens was soon approaching the crossing on the sidewalk behind me, they were going to keep it blocked for a good 60-90 seconds while crossing and the van driver was mad I didn't wait a bit).


----------



## bogdymol

I am in USA now. I went to Walmart supermarket today with a colleague. He is around 40 years old, I am 29. When we went to pay, we went together, but each one with his own items. My colleague also bought a pack of beer. The lady at the counter asked ME to show my ID to prove that I am not underage and that my colleague was not purchasing that beer for me. This was a bit too much, especially that I don’t even look that young. It would have been interesting to see if she wouldn’t have allowed my colleague to purchase HIS beer if I would have not shown my ID.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> I am in USA now. I went to Walmart supermarket today with a colleague. He is around 40 years old, I am 29. When we went to pay, we went together, but each one with his own items. My colleague also bought a pack of beer. The lady at the counter asked ME to show my ID to prove that I am not underage and that my colleague was not purchasing that beer for me. This was a bit too much, especially that I don’t even look that young. It would have been interesting to see if she wouldn’t have allowed my colleague to purchase HIS beer if I would have not shown my ID.


When I was in Colorado a couple of years ago, the lady at the counter at Safeway's asked me for ID. Me, aged (then) 37. I snorted and just tell her my birthdate, without showing the ID... apparently she was fine with that.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The age limit for alcohol sales in the Netherlands was raised from 16 to 18 in 2014. I never had to show an ID when buying alcohol, even when I was 16 or 17. Nowadays I don't drink alcohol anymore.


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> I am in USA now. I went to Walmart supermarket today with a colleague. He is around 40 years old, I am 29. When we went to pay, we went together, but each one with his own items. My colleague also bought a pack of beer. The lady at the counter asked ME to show my ID to prove that I am not underage and that my colleague was not purchasing that beer for me. This was a bit too much, especially that I don’t even look that young. It would have been interesting to see if she wouldn’t have allowed my colleague to purchase HIS beer if I would have not shown my ID.


Similar things may happen in Finland. Welcome.


----------



## bogdymol

In Romania I never had to show ID when buying alcohol or cigarettes (for someone else, I don't smoke), not even when I was under 18 years old.

In Austria a friend of mine, who is about 25 years old, was asked if she is 18 when she bought a lottery ticket. She didn't have to show ID, as it was enough just a verbal confirmation.

But here in the US it was strange. I wasn't even buying any alcohol, my work colleague was. The lady at the counter still wanted to see my ID, even though we purchased separately our items.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Talking about smoking: how common is it in your country? It has been estimated that some 24% of Dutch adults smoke. 

Looking around, it appears to me that smoking is very dependent on social class and age. Lower educated people tend to smoke more often, though among middle- and higher educated people, smoking is still common among the older generation (40+) but far less among the younger people. At my work virtually all the smokers are over 40.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Talking about smoking: how common is it in your country? It has been estimated that some 24% of Dutch adults smoke.
> 
> Looking around, it appears to me that smoking is very dependent on social class and age. Lower educated people tend to smoke more often, though among middle- and higher educated people, smoking is still common among the older generation (40+) but far less among the younger people. At my work virtually all the smokers are over 40.


In Finland, smoking among men has decreased radically. Nowadays, about 17% of the adult men smoke. However, the women's trend has stayed pretty flat, 14%. Smoking has turned socially non-favored after the major restrictions at restaurants, public buildings and workplaces were put effective in 1990's.


----------



## Suburbanist

In Norway, snus is more popular than cigarette. Both are filthy. At least there are no second-hand effects from being near someone using snus and there is very little cigarette butt litter on busy sidewalks or parks.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Cafes, bars and restaurants with outdoor seating have exploded in popularity in the Netherlands since smoking was banned in restaurants and bars. I've seen almost none of that in Norway.


----------



## Junkie

In Macedonia smoking is banned indoors since 2008 and the law is generally respected everywhere except in some rural small and local restaurants.
But many restaurants introduced outdoor places during the winter where they are covered with some plastic shields so that the air can still circulate and this is considered outdoor, separated from the indoor which is more or less crowded also.

But in Serbia and BiH smoking is allowed indoor and it is really annoying going to eat in Serbia in a restaurant. The problem is huge because those that not smoke are generally not used to the air and when you go into a restaurant you will experience nasty condition trying to eat indoor.


----------



## Ices77

^^I was in Serbia this year few weeks ago, had a dinner in restaurant in a center of Niš and ate few times in the motorway rest areas restaurants and didn´t experienced any indoor smoking.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Talking about smoking: how common is it in your country? It has been estimated that some 24% of Dutch adults smoke.
> 
> Looking around, it appears to me that smoking is very dependent on social class and age. Lower educated people tend to smoke more often, though among middle- and higher educated people, smoking is still common among the older generation (40+) but far less among the younger people. At my work virtually all the smokers are over 40.


I guess figures for Italy are easy to find on the net (10.5 million out of 60 million, so 17.5%)... at work, we are 20 people, only one is a heavy smoker while other 4 or 5 are casual smokers.


----------



## Fatfield

Anyone else missing the navigation bar at the top of the page? Its not just on this thread but everywhere on the site. Might be a problem at my end as the Thread Tools & Search drop down menus don't work either.


----------



## x-type

Fatfield said:


> Anyone else missing the navigation bar at the top of the page? Its not just on this thread but everywhere on the site. Might be a problem at my end as the Thread Tools & Search drop down menus don't work either.


Yep, it's gone. Probably only temporarly, there was obviously some update so somebody has messed something up


----------



## Junkie

Ices77 said:


> ^^I was in Serbia this year few weeks ago, had a dinner in restaurant in a center of Niš and ate few times in the motorway rest areas restaurants and didn´t experienced any indoor smoking.


If you read carefully I stated that the smoking is not prohibited in restaurants and cafes the rest was my personal experience, and I have been there hundreds of times, so I know the restaurants are in a heavy smoke.


----------



## riiga

Suburbanist said:


> In Norway, snus is more popular than cigarette. Both are filthy. At least there are no second-hand effects from being near someone using snus and there is very little cigarette butt litter on busy sidewalks or parks.


Same in Sweden. 

Men are more likely to use snus and women more likely to smoke. Still I think both Norway and Sweden have one of the lowest rates of tobacco use in Europe, at least when it comes to smoking.

At work, I don't know a single person (out of 50 or so) that smokes, but a few that use snus (all male).


----------



## Highway89

It seems that we'll have a crazy rollercoaster of temperatures this week in this area of Spain: From 39ºC (102ºF) -orange alert- tomorrow to 20ºC (68ºF) and possible snowfall on the region's highest peaks on Thursday and Friday :nuts:


----------



## Ices77

Junkie said:


> If you read carefully I stated that the smoking is not prohibited in restaurants and cafes the rest was my personal experience, and I have been there hundreds of times, so I know the restaurants are in a heavy smoke.


I don t think you get the point, my focus was on the fact, that you fingerpointed on your neighbour in front of the community, possibly trying to state, we are somethig better, than others. Sorry, but I don´t think the discussion is worth with you in this matter so I end it up. 
Here is official statistics for Europe, it´s easily searchabe on the net.


----------



## bogdymol

Today I went to Pizza Hut in USA and ordered a pizza and a beer. The waiter's answer was _"Today is Sunday. Sorry, but we don't sell beer on Sundays"_

My colleague and I were curious if you can't get beer at all on Sunday's, so we went to a Walmart and bought some. No issues this time. So you can get beer on Sunday, just not at Pizza Hut.

While we were walking along the aisles in Walmart, we found that they even sell rifles. In a supermarket. See my picture here. And you only have to be 18 years old to buy one. To buy beer you need to be 21. So it's actually easier to buy a rifle at the supermarket, than a beer. Crazy!


----------



## volodaaaa

https://www.novinky.cz/ekonomika/47...adla-travel-service-uvazli-na-kapverdach.html



> *Passengers of the Travel Service aeroplane stuck in the Cape Verde islands due to technical failure*
> ...
> "the aeroplane is ready and will departure prior to the noon local time" told the spokeswoman of the Travel Service company. Finally the aeroplane took off at 12:37 local time.
> 
> She claimed no engine failure occured. "One of the company's newest Boeing 737 MAX had a lift flaps probe failure" she told. No spare part was available at the islands, *thus a technician had to bring it in a small Cessna directly from Prague*.
> 
> ...


LOOOL  It must have been a journey. :lol::lol::lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

I had my first flight in a helicopter a couple of days ago, three colleagues and I went to repair a weather monitoring station at ~3000 m near Monte Rosa.

The outward journey was nice, perfect weather and it felt almost as riding an aerial tramway.

For the return journey we had to wait 3 hours for the weather to get better (low clouds, we were in a witheout for a long part of it), then when the helicopter was able to get us it had to fly avoiding the clouds... at a certain point it made a 270° turn that sent my eyeballs in my mouth 

Anyways, helicopter pilots are amazing. How can they touchdown on a snowy slope of 2 m x 2 m with transverse winds and low visibility is absolutely beyond me.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

bogdymol said:


> While we were walking along the aisles in Walmart, we found that they even sell rifles. In a supermarket. See my picture here. And you only have to be 18 years old to buy one. To buy beer you need to be 21. So it's actually easier to buy a rifle at the supermarket, than a beer. Crazy!


That's a BB gun, a "kiddie rifle" by U.S. standards.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wow! There is nothing left of the cab... Polish A2 at Poznań.


----------



## Attus

Unbelievable. A miracle.




I cried, tears of joy.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Another hot day in the Netherlands, widespread 35-36°C. It seems to be the last day of a heat wave that lasted almost a month. More normal summer temperatures are forecasted for the next few days (22-27°C).


It's very hot also in Alabama. 99°F (that's 37,2°C). Plus relatively high moisture. And I have to stay outside in the sun most of the day.


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> Unbelievable. A miracle.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I cried, tears of joy.


It's the third most embarrassing music video I've ever seen, the first being obviously "Dancing in the streets" and the second "I said what what".

God, it's a train wreck.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> It's the third most embarrassing music video


The video was only an illustration of my feelings ;-) I've never been so happy about rain.


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> The video was only an illustration of my feelings ;-) I've never been so happy about rain.


Yeah, I got it.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Another hot day in the Netherlands, widespread 35-36°C. It seems to be the last day of a heat wave that lasted almost a month. More normal summer temperatures are forecasted for the next few days (22-27°C).
> 
> I spent the afternoon at the movie theater watching Mission: Impossible - Fallout after finishing work early.


The extremely hot days ended at Sunday in Finland, but they are returning for Thursday and Friday. Today, I spent a few hours for boating on lakes. Quite a nice weather, about 24 degrees and a light wind from the south.


----------



## keber

bogdymol said:


> It's very hot also in Alabama. 99°F (that's 37,2°C). Plus relatively high moisture. And I have to stay outside in the sun most of the day.


In those weeks I work outside on the sun (on railway) without any shade except hat - humidity is also high. Temperatures in nearby dense forest are cooling 34°C - we don't measure temperature on workplace.


----------



## Suburbanist

MattiG said:


> The extremely hot days ended at Sunday in Finland, but they are returning for Thursday and Friday. Today, I spent a few hours for boating on lakes. Quite a nice weather, about 24 degrees and a light wind from the south.


Hopefully, the weather is nice next week when I visit Helsinki for work. But not too warm so that the 1.5km walk between the hotel and the working place is pleasant.


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## g.spinoza

Crazy bike lane in Berlin:


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## Kpc21

Common in Poland. Cycle ways with such "curves", ending with no exit onto the road, built only on one side of the road (you can't legally get by bike to any building on the other side) etc. Unfortunately.


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## MichiH

Temperature has changed this afternoon from 35°C to 20°C in just a few minutes.

Frankfurt Airport was closed for 30 minutes due to thunderstorm. A3 east of Frankfurt was closed because of fallen trees.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Common in Poland. Cycle ways with such "curves", ending with no exit onto the road, built only on one side of the road (you can't legally get by bike to any building on the other side) etc. Unfortunately.



I don't know about Poland, but in Slovakia politicians always confuse about cyclotourist paths and urban cycling lanes. They always think of cycling lanes as motorways - they have to be segregated and because there is no other space in streets left, paths are just not built.


Another problem are very strict technical standards in Slovakia. In Hungary and the cycling path in the video from Berlin looks also like that, the technical standards are much loose. You can literally draw two lines on whatever piece of a road or a footpath and you have a cycling lane.


This is good. In Slovakia we build luxurious expensive cycling paths (because of the technical standards) with dead ends, because there is no space left in cities.


But politicians still have not understood that nobody would commute 15 km on bicycle from suburban area, but people do use bikes within cities.


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## Kpc21

In Poland they often treat them not as a way of helping the cyclists but of getting rid of the cyclists from the roadway to help the drivers. And then they build them in city centers or in villages even though those are places where the cyclists should be present on the roadway (but otherwise the drivers can't so easily exceed the speed limit... and the politicians usually use cars and therefore like to exceed the speed limits). Or of obtaining the EU money for the road infrastructure more easily because cycling facilities look nice in the applications for EU money.

The technical standards usually are low, that means they are often built from concrete bricks instead of asphalt (even though asphalt isn't more expensive) which is less comfortable for the cyclists. And it's not infrequent that the cycle way from time to time changes the side of the road which delays the cyclists even more. Priority of the cyclists on the crossings with the street also isn't obvious, even though it's stated in the highway code, the road traffic organizers find ways for the cyclists to force them to give way even though it's not really legal.

But the biggest problem is when the cycling ways end with sidewalks or pedestrian crossings, so that the cyclist can't actually continue riding the bike. Or it ends with a cycle path crossing with the street with traffic lights, on the right side of an intersection of roads, but then... on the other side of the road, the cycle way ends. How to turn left on a bike in such a place without standing in the way of the other road users?

In bigger cities with many cycling activists like Łódź some technical standards for the cycle ways, such as asphalt surface, got fought out, but the biggest problem is in smaller cities and towns or even villages.


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## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> I don't know about Poland, but in Slovakia politicians always confuse about cyclotourist paths and urban cycling lanes. They always think of cycling lanes as motorways - they have to be segregated and because there is no other space in streets left, paths are just not built.
> 
> 
> Another problem are very strict technical standards in Slovakia. In Hungary and the cycling path in the video from Berlin looks also like that, the technical standards are much loose. You can literally draw two lines on whatever piece of a road or a footpath and you have a cycling lane.
> 
> 
> This is good. In Slovakia we build luxurious expensive cycling paths (because of the technical standards) with dead ends, because there is no space left in cities.
> 
> 
> But politicians still have not understood that nobody would commute 15 km on bicycle from suburban area, but people do use bikes within cities.


I don't think this is a good thing.
Bike lanes are a serious thing, the one in the video is not. It's a joke, as if someone is mocking the cyclists.
In Turin there are also bike lanes, the majority of which are ridiculous like that. The result is that nobody is using them, so cyclists use the normal roads: more danger for them - and for car drivers - and municipality money down the drain.


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## ChrisZwolle

The European Congestion Belt:


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## Verso

I've just seen a car from the Novosibirsk Oblast (54) in Pula (HR). Now that's really far away, isn't it?


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## italystf

Verso said:


> I've just seen a car from the Novosibirsk Oblast (54) in Pula (HR). Now that's really far away, isn't it?


Years ago, I've seen a truck from the same oblast on A4 near Venice.


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## x-type

Verso said:


> I've just seen a car from the Novosibirsk Oblast (54) in Pula (HR). Now that's really far away, isn't it?


Russians are crazy, they are somehow tired of planes so are coming with their cars to Adriatic more and more each year.

Btw I hope you are spending enough money in Pula :guns1:


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## Verso

I am. I drank a glass of juice.


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## MichiH

x-type said:


> Russians are crazy, they are somehow tired of planes so are coming with their cars to Adriatic more and more each year.


I also see much more Russian cars and trucks in Germany. I think it was quite rare just 2 years ago but now I often see them.


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## bogdymol

Early May I was in Hawaii, visiting the Volcano National Park on the Big Island. I was there exactly on the day when the volcano erupted. At the time when the 6.9 earthquake struck, I was on Chain of Craters road. This is how that road looked through my camera lenses:




























This is how the same road looks now (picture from a recent article regarding the volcano):


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## Kpc21

So how did it happen that it didn't collapse under your wheels when you was driving on it if it was exactly when the volcano erupted?


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## bogdymol

I was somewhere around the middle of that road, heading to the sea. After the earthquake struck, I immediately drove back, towards the island and the main road, where I knew it was safe. 

All pictures are from the same road, however I do not know the exact location of the last one. Maybe it was closer to the sea, where I haven’t been. Don’t know. 

However, there were more than 40 other relatively large aftershocks in the area since then, so it can also be that the road has been damaged after my visit. 

In any case, I am glad that I drove back. I was afraid that there might be cracks in the road or some might appear later on.


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## Kpc21

The Polish railway infrastructure manager carries out an action on safety on the level crossing. They installed special yellow stickers on all the level crossings with a number which allows quick identification by the emergency services and quickly informing the railway staff about an obstacle on the crossing.










In case of failure or danger on the crossing, see what we have behind
- Barrier and St. Andrew Cross
#YellowStickerPLK










1. On 14 thousand of crossings the PLK placed unique stickers.
2. You can see them on the internal side of the barrier or the St. Andrew cross.
3. In case of emergency leave the vehicle as soon as possible together with the passengers.
4. Use the information from the sticker.
5. Call 112 as soon as possible and give the intersection number to the operator.
6. A quick reaction increases the chance of stopping the fast running train in a safe distance.










What data does the sticker contain?

Number of intersection: 003 299 660 <- Individual Identification Number
In case of accident or danger please call: 112
In case of failure: +48 012 345 678, +48 01 23 45 678 <- number to the dispatcher

The sticker is reflective and yellow.
The data, except for the 112 number, are proper for the specific crossing. The phone numbers are exemplary.



















It is a response to a few accidents that happened recently with vehicles that got stuck on level crossings and then got hit by trains.


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## volodaaaa

In 99,99999999 % of cases, the biggest failure is the brain of the responsible driver. I can't remember an accident that was caused by a technical failure of a level crossing device or a car. Almost all accident happens when a driver thinks they have bought a physical laws with their car.


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## ChrisZwolle

^^ True. In the Netherlands they want to paint the level crossings yellow to improve attention. But there is a whole circus of signs, lights and booms, if you don't notice that, what will? 

There are some videos circulating on Youtube where a train crosses a level crossing without the barriers being down in Poland or the Czech Republic.


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## g.spinoza

^^ Few days ago a mom and two kids were hit by a train in Southern Italy because they wanted to get to the beach faster than with the underpass. Both kids died and the mother was seriously injured.
Some newspapers reported that, even after this news was of public domain, people continued to cross illegally in that spot.

You cannot - and should not - fix stupidity. I feel more sorry for the people on the train, who probably arrived very late, than for that stupid stupid mom.


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## volodaaaa

would you feel sorry?


----------



## bogdymol

Great idea from Poland!

Speaking of driving illegally over railroad crossings, here's a video of mine few years ago. Karma worked very fast in this case, and nobody was injured:





If anyone asks, the lights were working (were red), but the barriers were not as this section of railway was under reconstruction at that time (the barriers might have not been connected yet to the system).


----------



## italystf




----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> There are some videos circulating on Youtube where a train crosses a level crossing without the barriers being down in Poland or the Czech Republic.


There was one or a few systems of automatic level crossing barriers, still used in Poland, that failed to detect some very light diesel trains, or draisines.

Now they are obliged to reduce the speed to 20 km/h on those crossings.

Although in my opinion they should simply be decommissioned because it's a more dangerous situation than without any barriers and signals. But maybe if such a crossing is normally used by heavy trains and a draisine crosses it, let's say, once a month...

Although most such cases must be connected with the manually operated crossings and the guards who fell asleep or were drunk.

With the people crossing the tracks on foot illegally, there is another problem. If the legal way is 1 km or 2 km longer and the railway is not a high speed railway, then it makes more sense to risk, cross the tracks carefully, watching if there is no trains approaching - rather than to walk those 2 km extra. And such situations really aren't uncommon in Poland. It often happens that the station has exit on only one side and not on the other side even though some people also live there. An example here: https://goo.gl/maps/13qkiVMgRNU2 - the legal alternative is to walk 700 m extra, with a level difference. 10 minutes of walking instead of 2 minutes of walking. Everyone will choose the faster option and it won't even be really dangerous even though they risk being fined for that. Because our railway police likes fining people crossing the tracks in illegal places but does nothing about the drivers breaking the law on level crossings.

By the way - people should know that if the barriers close with their car in between it's better to just hit the barrier with a car (it is lightweight and probably won't do any damage to the car - although the driver will be charged some money for the repair of the barriers and will definitely get a fine for ignoring the closing barriers) rather than to leave the car there and risk it being hit by train (then the driver will likely not only lose the car but will be charged some enormous amounts of money for the repairs of the train, if it's a modern high-speed train, then it will probably exceed his civil liability insurance and he will have to cover it from his own wallet).

This is the case in this situation (and this was a bus driver - so a professional!):






What makes it even more of an absurd is that this was a shuttle bus of a railway company, connecting the train station with the airport.

Or here a combine harvester - whose operator was really lucky (and finally he hit the barrier - he could without problems continue driving backwards to remove himself from the track totally):






But there was also a case, in which a driver actually got stuck on the level crossing. There were two reasons of that: one - he ignored a sign prohibiting trucks entering the road, and the second one - the level crossing was improperly designed, in the official report after the accident it was noted that the locals were saying that also funeral cars (which are allowed there) were getting stuck on that crossing - luckily a funeral is a situation where there is a lot of people and the cars were just pushed through the crossing by people. The issue is that longer cars were hitting the surface of the crossing with their undersides.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> In 99,99999999 % of cases, the biggest failure is the brain of the responsible driver. I can't remember an accident that was caused by a technical failure of a level crossing device or a car. Almost all accident happens when a driver thinks they have bought a physical laws with their car.


Perhaps we can agree on dropping some nines. In the areas where snow and ice have an impact to the road conditions, accidents caused by the vehicle being stuck at the crossing sometimes happen. Some of them result from pure stupidity, but some of them are pure accidents by bad luck.


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## Kpc21

And their number increases with... decreasing number of manned crossings and increasing number of unmanned ones.

Because on an unmanned crossing, the guard will simply stop closing the crossing for a moment when he sees such a situation, or he will even alert the proper people by himself and this way he will stop the trains.

On unmanned crossings, which are increasingly common, it's not so simple.


----------



## Kanadzie

I think a lot of the issue is with excess time alloted to trains tempting people to go ahead.

I know one near my office, it closes maybe 500 m before the train arrives. When it is express train, it's reasonable. But sometimes its commuter train arriving to the station at 10 km/h. You sit there waiting looking at the train for like 2 full minutes before it crosses the road. 

If the barrier always closed at a, e.g. 15 seconds before train passes, it would be prima facie more dangerous, but everyone that saw the barrier down would know train is arriving and that you* don't *have enough time to pass ahead.

I would even suggest to add a small electronic panel in case of two or more trains going to pass under the lowered barrier, instead of the fixed sign of multiple tracks...


----------



## Suburbanist

In the Netherlands, the usual delay the first sign (gates flashing and then a horn) and a train crossing is often around 20 seconds. Once gates are down it takes just some 10 seconds for the train to cross. It also clears some 10 seconds after it crosses. It is forbidden to have level crossings there on railways with more than 2 tracks.


----------



## MattiG

Kanadzie said:


> I think a lot of the issue is with excess time alloted to trains tempting people to go ahead.
> 
> I know one near my office, it closes maybe 500 m before the train arrives. When it is express train, it's reasonable. But sometimes its commuter train arriving to the station at 10 km/h. You sit there waiting looking at the train for like 2 full minutes before it crosses the road.
> 
> If the barrier always closed at a, e.g. 15 seconds before train passes, it would be prima facie more dangerous, but everyone that saw the barrier down would know train is arriving and that you* don't *have enough time to pass ahead.
> 
> I would even suggest to add a small electronic panel in case of two or more trains going to pass under the lowered barrier, instead of the fixed sign of multiple tracks...


The former DDR was very efficient in its inefficiency. It seemed to me that the barriers were lowered according to the timetable of the train. If the train was 20 minutes late then everyone had to wait 20 minutes.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> This is the case in this situation (and this was a bus driver - so a professional!):


This driver was indeed a professional. A professional idiot. He blew the red lights with barriers, hazarded with lives of the poor passengers by not breaking through barriers and finally getting off the bus like he was in a slow-mo replay, waving at the train like it was someone on a bicycle. It is miracle he was given an ID. 



MattiG said:


> Perhaps we can agree on dropping some nines. In the areas where snow and ice have an impact to the road conditions, accidents caused by the vehicle being stuck at the crossing sometimes happen. Some of them result from pure stupidity, but some of them are pure accidents by bad luck.


Yeah, but the likelihood is extremely small. At least in EU the system is incredibly fail-safe. If we had had no stupid people, the level crossing accident rate would have been 1 casualty in 20 years. 




Suburbanist said:


> In the Netherlands, the usual delay the first sign (gates flashing and then a horn) and a train crossing is often around 20 seconds. Once gates are down it takes just some 10 seconds for the train to cross. It also clears some 10 seconds after it crosses. It is forbidden to have level crossings there on railways with more than 2 tracks.


In Slovakia it depends on the type of crossing:

Some are within stations, directly under light signal survillance
Some are at inter-stationary sections

If a crossing is within a station (and/or) under light signal surveillance, then the crossing is deactivated unless a *train-route is set* (this mean to have all necessary switches set up into the position for a certain train to ensure continuous train journey - a dispatcher has to set-up a new train-route for the next train even if the switches remain in the same position). Once the train-route is set up, the train is given a green light. 

If the train route is not set up at any track across the certain level crossing a white light flashes:









If a train accidentally approached this intersection (but it had to blow a red signal first), there would be a strong likelihood for derailment because except one direction the switches would not be set up in a proper position.
*A car can pass this crossing at 50 kph when flashing white.*

If there is a train-route set up at at least one track, the white light is off and the *road traffic speed limit is 30 kph*. But the red light do not have to be flashing. It just mean that a train has a green light. If the train approaches a certain point (let's call it the "activation point") of a track close to the crossing red lights start to flash alternating.









If there are barriers, they remain open for some time (depends on four variables: the maximal speed on the track, the speed of the slowest vehicle on road (a horse carriage), the width of the crossing and the braking distance of the heaviest train) and close afterwards.

In case of a small station and a long-distance train the situation is clear. A dispatcher sees a train approaching the station on the display in his office so he sets up the train-route which leaves the white light on the adjacent level crossing off. Once the train passes the activation point the red lights start to flash, barriers are down and once the train hurtles through the station, barriers go up, white lights on and drivers are free to pass. They did not spend more than 2 minutes.

But in case of a small station and local train, the situation is different. Imagine the level crossing follows the station in terms of the train route. The dispatcher can opt for "long-distance train scenario" which means setting the train-route in advance and the train passing the activation point (red lights on, barriers down). Then the train decelerates to stop at the station, load/unload the passengers and set off for another stop. It may take 5 or 8 minutes for train from passing the activation point to passing the level crossing, which makes drivers crazy. 

The other option is to set up the train-route only to the station and set up the remaining route after or during the loading/unloading passengers. When train passes the activation point in this case, nothing happens. But once the train has been past the activation point and the route is set up afterwards, the level crossing lights turns from white-flashing-light to red-flashing lights immediately. But even if all switches for the train are set, the train signals still indicate a red light because all necessary time for road traffic to clear the level crossing must be granted. Green light follows afterwards. This makes train passengers angry. Therefore dispatchers often opt for the first option.

If the level crossing is located at inter-stationary section it usually is not equipped by the white light and the signals are based on the activation points.

*Long story short: *
- if there is a level crossing outside the station and the Vmax of the train is the same as the Vmax of the track, the train passes the crossing in 4 seconds after barriers have been down. 
- if there is a level crossing outside the station and the Vmax of the train is e. g. 70 kph while the Vmax of the track is 160 kph the train passes some seconds or maybe even minute after the barriers have been down. The system does not recognize the speed of the train.
- if there is a level crossing inside the station and there is a local train calling at this station, the barriers may be down even during the load/unload process and it may take several minutes.

And I am not speaking about cases when two trains occur, each from other direction.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Can't you just drive right through the barriers if you're stuck on a level crossing? I mean, destroying the barriers is surely the lesser evil of having a train crash.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Can't you just drive right through the barriers if you're stuck on a level crossing? I mean, destroying the barriers is surely the lesser evil of having a train crash.


yes. you can even do it without any damage neither to your car nor to barriers.

0:40


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Can't you just drive right through the barriers if you're stuck on a level crossing? I mean, destroying the barriers is surely the lesser evil of having a train crash.


Those barriers are generally made of plastic. You can drive through them with only minor damages to your car.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> I exaggerated a little bit. But in 90s when we travelled a lot around Italy with my parents, the toll was incredible expensive. Still, if you compare the toll in Italy with e. g. Austria, Italian roads are very expensive. One round trip across Italy costs you the same amount of money like an annual vignette sticker in Austria. And, frankly said, I do not fell the gap in quality.


This is of course true. But I don't see how a toll sticker costing less then 500 euro can be implemented in Italy. Stickers only work for smaller countries.
Someone proposed a sticker for "northern Italy" or macro-areas, but it would still not be cheap.


----------



## Peloso

rudiwien said:


> A billion per year is still maybe a bit low.
> 
> For comparison, in Austria, ASFINAG invested last year 1,1 billion in total, out of which 500 million are for maintenance (the other part is for expansion and twinning tunnels, which is a big aspect since the major accidents in the early 2000s).
> 
> 
> Income from tolls by ASFINAG is ~2 billion euro per year.
> Austria has approximately 2200 km of motorways (including Schnellstraße, which is legally the same), Autostrade almost 3000km (according to Wikipedia), but still invested a bit less ...
> 
> And Austria doesn't have that many really old motorways as Italy has, not much of our infrastructure was built in the 60s already (except the Brennerautobahn, and parts of the A1 Westautobahn, which has been completely rebuilt anyhow and doesn't go through difficult terrain either), so there is much less need for maintenance.
> 
> So, in comparison, Autostrade is still spending too little, even if it is 1 billion € per year....


I'll be more clear: unlike in Austria, an unfathomable share of this yearly billion, until today, went to feed half-illegal subcontractor companies (mafia) that provided no actual service, and local and national administrators (illegal lobbying). This is why this supposed billion euro became DRAMATICALLY insufficient.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Italian tolls vary quite a bit by motorway, especially the mountain autostrade in the north are expensive, but the older long-distance motorways aren't as expensive, for example a trip from Milan to Taranto cost € 69.30 in tolls. That is a substantial amount, but comes down to € 0.07 per kilometer. Most French or Spanish toll roads charge some € 0.09 - 0.10 per kilometer on the older "paid off" long-distance motorways.


----------



## Mercos

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Italian tolls vary quite a bit by motorway, especially the mountain autostrade in the north are expensive, but the older long-distance motorways aren't as expensive, for example a trip from Milan to Taranto cost € 69.30 in tolls. That is a substantial amount, but comes down to € 0.07 per kilometer. Most French or Spanish toll roads charge some € 0.09 - 0.10 per kilometer on the older "paid off" long-distance motorways.


 Don't forget that Italian motorways are usually bellow French one in term of standards and quality.


Introducing a vignette instead of the very expensive tolls collected by incompetent corrupted companies, would certainly be a good idea.
I don't think that such system would cost to the user hundreds of euros more than the Austrian vignette, as Italy is inhabited seven times more than Austria, which can be correlated to 7 or 8 times mores cars, so the same multiplicator in terms of vignette incomes.


As seen above, Italy is spending half less on its private motorways than Austria benefits from the vignette system, annually.



Btw., Europeans are the most taxed people in the world, I don't see why I have to give away more than half of my salary to the state, and over it I have to pay a lot of money for every trip I make with my car on tolls. Aren't they already taking road taxes, and tax the fuel the hell out?


----------



## italystf

Mercos said:


> Btw., Europeans are the most taxed people in the world, I don't see why I have to give away more than half of my salary to the state, and over it I have to pay a lot of money for every trip I make with my car on tolls. Aren't they already taking road taxes, and tax the fuel the hell out?


It makes absolutely no sense to compare taxation in different countries without taking into account the services that their residents can enjoy for free or subsidized by the goverment.
For a citizen's perspective, it makes no difference to purchase a service from the public or the private sector, only the overall amount of money spent is relevant.
Saying that a country A has lower taxes than country B doesn't automatically mean that people from country A has more disposable income, if they have to spend a lot of money for example for education or health care.


----------



## Peloso

italystf said:


> (...)
> Saying that a country A has lower taxes than country B doesn't automatically mean that people from country A has more disposable income, if they have to spend a lot of money for example for education or health care.


This is all true as a theory, except... Even if Mercos knows little about Italy, he happens to be absolutely right.


----------



## Mercos

italystf said:


> It makes absolutely no sense to compare taxation in different countries without taking into account the services that their residents can enjoy for free or subsidized by the goverment.
> For a citizen's perspective, it makes no difference to purchase a service from the public or the private sector, only the overall amount of money spent is relevant.
> Saying that a country A has lower taxes than country B doesn't automatically mean that people from country A has more disposable income, if they have to spend a lot of money for example for education or health care.


Yes, but with what results? Massive unemployment, mountains of debt, illegal immigration, terrorist attacks, high corruption, etc.
If you think about it, hard working people are essentially trapped into heavily subsidising a system that they get none or very little benefit. But, its mostly rich people and corporations, like Autostrade per l'Italia, dodging tax through loopholes whilst the poor and middle class pay their fair share.


----------



## xzmattzx

What's the most number of traffic lights you've seen in a row? In other words, how many traffic lights have you seen at one particular entry to an intersection?

I came across an intersection in Virginia last week with 7 traffic lights in a row for one direction reaching the intersection.


----------



## Tenjac

Mercos said:


> Yes, but with what results? Massive unemployment, mountains of debt, illegal immigration, terrorist attacks, high corruption, etc.
> If you think about it, hard working people are essentially trapped into heavily subsidising a system that they get none or very little benefit. But, its mostly rich people and corporations, like Autostrade per l'Italia, dodging tax through loopholes whilst the poor and middle class pay their fair share.


There are two very different problems that you've mentioned here.

The first is tax level which should be as progressive as possible.
The second is tax evasion which should be punished by nationalisation of company. Additionally, major corruption should be punished by death penalty as it is in PRC.


----------



## Peloso

Tenjac said:


> Additionally, major corruption should be punished by death penalty as it is in PRC.


:lol: I see you're not much into Italian affairs. In Italy, even murder is punished with 8-15 years at best. Major corruption, instead, is a welcome addition to any manager or politician's CV.


----------



## Kpc21

Tenjac said:


> The first is tax level which should be as progressive as possible.


Too high taxes for the rich result in not being affordable to be rich and local people avoiding doing businesses and developing companies. And those people (or their companies) moving abroad, especially to countries with low taxes.



Peloso said:


> :lol: I see you're not much into Italian affairs. In Italy, even murder is punished with 8-15 years at best. Mayor corruption, instead, is a welcome addition to any manager or politician's CV.


Well, he says "should be" and not "is". In politics, "should be" is usually very different from "is".


----------



## Kpc21

Del


----------



## italystf

Tenjac said:


> There are two very different problems that you've mentioned here.
> 
> The first is tax level which should be as progressive as possible.
> The second is tax evasion which should be punished by nationalisation of company. Additionally, major corruption should be punished by death penalty as it is in PRC.


In Italy tax level is already progressive, although the Lega party that is in the government majority wants to end it.
There's no need to apply death penalty, just to enforce prison penalty, that is often too short in Italy. And people convicted for corruption must be banned from public offices for life.


----------



## Mercos

Kpc21 said:


> Too high taxes for the rich result in not being affordable to be rich and local people avoiding doing businesses and developing companies. And those people (or their companies) moving abroad, especially to countries with low taxes.


When it comes to the economic success of high-taxation countries, I have a lot of arguments, against, these theses. Denmark is a successful country, Italy is not.


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## volodaaaa

The worst scenario is a high-taxation country with poor public services so that you have to use more expensive private services to get at least some of standards.


----------



## Tenjac

volodaaaa said:


> The worst scenario is a high-taxation country with poor public services so that you have to use more expensive private services to get at least some of standards.


This certainly is bad scenario. But the worst scenario is anything close to libertarian society.

The ideal country, in my opinion, is country with high taxes, excellent public services and non-existent corruption and tax evasion.


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> The worst scenario is a high-taxation country with poor public services so that you have to use more expensive private services to get at least some of standards.


Like the Central-Eastern Europe


----------



## Junkie

^^
Much of the CEE EU countries are not democratic anyway. I don't want to point examples but the former communist countries of Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania cannot be considered as democratic.
Hungary should be in the list of hybrid regimes, but is marked as flawed democracy. All of the Balkan non-eu countries are hybrid regimes also.


----------



## volodaaaa

Tenjac said:


> This certainly is bad scenario. But the worst scenario is anything close to libertarian society.
> 
> The ideal country, in my opinion, is country with high taxes, excellent public services and non-existent corruption and tax evasion.



You mean liberal society or libtard society? :lol:


I fairly agree. People think of liberality as of something that can resolve all possible problems. Mostly because it is the exact opposite of what communism was about.


For example in Slovakia a very recent issue is "the liberalization of rail transport". It concerns so called public service obligation.


Some politicians even perceive "liberalization" as a goal. When we have some meetings with politicians I often ask them "why is liberalization a goal? Should not it be a way? And should not a goal be the comfort of passengers?" They are often surprised. Austria, one of the pioneers of rail transport in the world indeed has few different transport operators different from the state-owned one. But these are all region/land-owned. And they have one of the best public transport in the world. But yes, liberalization would resolve everything here.


In Slovakia we have few private operators. Some of them perceive this as a game. There are train routes that are beneficial only during rush hours but due to regular interval of departures (for the comfort of the passengers) they have to be be operated even outside of rush hour. A private operator that operates commercially usually get a permission to operate the same route and his departures are few minutes prior the non-commercial making them ending in loss.


----------



## volodaaaa

Junkie said:


> ^^
> Much of the CEE EU countries are not democratic anyway. I don't want to point examples but the former communist countries of Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania cannot be considered as democratic.
> Hungary should be in the list of hybrid regimes, but is marked as flawed democracy. All of the Balkan non-eu countries are hybrid regimes also.



How has you come to this conclusion?


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> In Slovakia we have few private operators. Some of them perceive this as a game. There are train routes that are beneficial only during rush hours but due to regular interval of departures (for the comfort of the passengers) they have to be be operated even outside of rush hour. A private operator that operates commercially usually get a permission to operate the same route and his departures are few minutes prior the non-commercial making them ending in loss.


Meanwhile in Italy, we have probably the only railway system in Europe (not sure about the world) with a real high speed private train operator. And this system works. CEE countries don't really have high speed railway, so it's difficult to expect such a situation here.

But... a form of liberalization is always an incentive for the government-owned operator to increase the standards and decrease the prices.

When in Poland, a Scottish businessman started a bus operator operating using the low-cost airlines model (prices depending on the demand of passengers, stops only in the biggest cities and using motorways whenever possible to shorten the travel time - which was in many cases shorter than by train), our national train operator was forced to increase the standards, a (very limited) form of dynamically changing ticket prices was also introduced. Also the traditional bus operators suffered and had to increase the standards and modernize the fleets.

Now we have the Czech Leo Express who entered the Polish railway market - and the PKP will have to improve it especially concerning the international connections. Even until now, many passengers weren't considering the railway for traveling internationally across the border, because the cross-border train connections have sensible ticket prices only in special offers that have limited number of tickets to sell (the fixed prices are incredibly high) and it isn't even possible to check online if the cheaper tickets are still available (except for the route to Berlin and, for a few months, also to Vienna), buying the ticket also makes it necessary to visit a train station (which often means travelling dozens of kilometers just to buy a ticket) while with the bus operators, with BlaBlaCar, or now also with Leo Express, everything can be done online.

It is similar in case of cities which passed a part of the city bus services to a private operator (tickets are still issued and timetables established by the city) - which was done by Warsaw and by Cracow - it improved the services of the city operators in those cities.

Liberalizing the market fully is not good, but maintaining some share of private services is good because it introduces some competition.


----------



## Kpc21

Beach in Władysławowo, Poland on 2 August this year:










Author: https://www.fly4free.pl/forum/download/file.php?id=135093
From: interia.pl


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't see what's the fun of that...


----------



## Kpc21

A court sentence fining a city bus driver in Gdansk for keeping the engine on while waiting for the departure at the terminal stop:










The situation took place... during the New Year's Eve. A local complained to the police about the bus with the engine left on, they fined the driver, the driver didn't accept the fine but the court anyway fined him not finding any legal way not to do it.

The driver, of course, was keeping the engine on for the heating to work, so that when the bus starts it service on a line, it is warm inside. He wanted to be good for the passengers.

Now, in summer, there are similar situations concerning the air conditioning. Passenger complains about that it's hot in the vehicles, drivers are afraid of keeping the aircon working while waiting for the departure from the terminal because it is illegal.


----------



## aubergine72

volodaaaa said:


> How has you come to this conclusion?


It's just his flawed yugoslavian mind. I bet you he considers Croatia the beacon of democracy and prosperity.:nuts:


----------



## Junkie

volodaaaa said:


> How has you come to this conclusion?


Because these countries became part of the eu because of political reasons to counter the Russian sphere of interests. They were never ready. The West had the interest to influence these markets. Much of the citizens of BG&RO today live in an absolute poverty never seen even in much lower developed countries.

Poland, Slovakia and Hungary cannot be considered democratic countries in no way.


----------



## Kanadzie

Tenjac said:


> There are two very different problems that you've mentioned here.
> 
> The first is tax level which should be as progressive as possible.
> The second is tax evasion which should be punished by nationalisation of company. Additionally, major corruption should be punished by death penalty as it is in PRC.


But PRC in particular is extremely corrupt despite massive nationalisation and penalties. And falling road bridges!


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> Some politicians even perceive "liberalization" as a goal. When we have some meetings with politicians I often ask them "why is liberalization a goal? Should not it be a way? And should not a goal be the comfort of passengers?" They are often surprised.


Well not entirely, since any public service consumes public resources that have been created by forcibly diverting private resources. A money-losing rail service is wasting public resources that could be used more beneficially by society, either by the people themselves (i.e. lower taxes) or by the public sector in something more valuable (e.g. reduce wait times in hospitals by hiring extra doctors, etc)

especially for something like passenger rail transport when alternatives are very common and generally preferred by people (cars, planes, carsharing, buses...) where a complete abandonment of it by the public sector would not be very painful for anyone.


----------



## volodaaaa

Junkie said:


> Because these countries became part of the eu because of political reasons to counter the Russian sphere of interests. They were never ready. The West had the interest to influence these markets. Much of the citizens of BG&RO today live in an absolute poverty never seen even in much lower developed countries.
> 
> Poland, Slovakia and Hungary cannot be considered democratic countries in no way.



I can vote (sometimes my "favourite" even wins), I can travel, I can set up a business, I have healthcare, education, transport. What way is my country not democratic in?

The decay in political system is, sadly, a recent *global* trend. See the US as a good example.


----------



## MichiH

volodaaaa said:


> The decay in political system is, sadly, a recent *global* trend. See the US as a good example.


Germany!


----------



## Kpc21

Junkie said:


> Because these countries became part of the eu because of political reasons to counter the Russian sphere of interests. They were never ready. The West had the interest to influence these markets. Much of the citizens of BG&RO today live in an absolute poverty never seen even in much lower developed countries.
> 
> Poland, Slovakia and Hungary cannot be considered democratic countries in no way.


I am not sure how the poverty can relate to democracy. A country being democratic doesn't automatically mean lack of poverty there. Paradoxically, poverty is less likely to happen in communist countries because of the high amount of social benefits and because in communist countries it's obligatory to work, so everyone earns some money (there is no official unemployment).

The EU is democratic by itself, so being part of it doesn't make the country undemocratic. Maybe it makes the country less sovereign - but not less democratic.



volodaaaa said:


> I can vote (sometimes my "favourite" even wins), I can travel, I can set up a business, I have healthcare, education, transport. What way is my country not democratic in?


Exactly, although public healthcare, public education and public transport doesn't really relate to democracy. A democracy might not have those facilities if the society decides so and their presence actually slightly shifts the system towards communism (services equally available to everyone). Although in CEE countries such services aren't always of very high quality (like the public healthcare system in Poland, in which the level of the services is high by itself, the doctors are very skilled and hospitals are equipped on the western-European level, but the waiting times are extremely long, e.g. you may wait even 3 years for a cataract surgery and you can't even pay extra for a better lens) and if you want a better service, you can go to a private clinic and pay the full price - in a communist country it wouldn't be possible and your only choice would be the service of the government. Although on the other hand, the public universities in Poland are considered much better than the private higher education institutions. Because in the private ones you pay for the education - so the school will be less likely to fail you even if you haven't learnt everything you should have.

The problem in modern democracies, probably much more in the CEE countries than in the Western Europe, are politicians making many decisions for their own benefit and not to the benefit of the society. Or for the benefit of those who have much money (which might be good for the whole society e.g. in case of those with much money who are likely to employ many citizens - but it is often not so).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> The EU is democratic by itself, so being part of it doesn't make the country undemocratic. Maybe it makes the country less sovereign - but not less democratic.


Although you can vote for the EU parliament, I do believe the EU is inherently undemocratic due to their structure.

EU regulations and directives become national law. However, the vast majority of that has no public debate before implementation. The recent copyright and link tax proposal was one of the very few instances where an EU proposal received significant public debate. Usually, EU laws are implemented without any national or international debate, or only after it is already implemented.


----------



## Kpc21

But why is it so? Lack of interest of the people? Lack of interest of the media?

Take into account that many national laws are also passed without any debate. But you are right that it happens much more often in case of the EU laws.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> The problem in modern democracies, probably much more in the CEE countries than in the Western Europe, are politicians making many decisions for their own benefit and not to the benefit of the society. Or for the benefit of those who have much money (which might be good for the whole society e.g. in case of those with much money who are likely to employ many citizens - but it is often not so).


I do not think this is the problem. Rarely do politicians do something for people. Their own interest has always been their priority number one. "I want to be a politician and I want to make the world a better place" said no one ever.

The problem in Slovakia, in other EEC countries, but also all around the world is, that being a politician has been given an extremely bad reputation.

I do not know how is the situation in Poland, but a Slovak minister earns 3 grand which is IMHO extremely low given the responsibility and the fact that whatever you do, you are always under fire of media. Moreover there is certainly a majority of citizens, who just hate you. It is not worth it unless you have a side business which is illegal. 

What I want to say is that these positions attract dishonest people and in addition completely repel smart and wise people who, instead of being in the position of a politician, opt for setting up their own business and earn much money more legally.

In Slovakia we have three options: 

- current extremely corrupted government that actually made Slovakia their private property,
- opposition with unreal ideas and complete lack of expertise, who behave like a bunch of clowns + poor libtards,
- neonazis made up by people who did not made it to a university and their confusion in history is noteworthy ("Russia is the great successor of the heaven on Earth, great USSR, but wait a second, now it is time to adore Adolf Hitler for a while and let's talk positively about the president of the Slovak puppet state. But let's call Soviets our brothers and liberators, because they kicked Hitler's ass")

A lose-lose-lose combo.


And, given to my small knowledge about situation in the Europe, it is basically the same pattern. So, hold onto our hats.


----------



## Junkie

Kpc21 said:


> I am not sure how the poverty can relate to democracy. A country being democratic doesn't automatically mean lack of poverty there. Paradoxically, poverty is less likely to happen in communist countries because of the high amount of social benefits and because in communist countries it's obligatory to work, so everyone earns some money (there is no official unemployment).


I said some of those eu members have striking high poverty levels and very low pensions or so. It seems that after so many years of brought democracy something is wrong there.
In the socialism more people were on the back of the state because it was planned economy. They produced 1 million shoes for 1 million people to wear them. It was like this in the university books, planned economy.

What was good from the socialism was the so low crime. There was literally no crime. No guns and no need for guns. In 30 years there was no real bank robbery, I remember in the street at my grandparents there was no one to steal there and all people let the doors literally open. Today the crime has gone striking. But also other psycho problems in the society. There is a saying that its the western disease of the capitalism. 
What was also good from the socialism was the so called free public health system. Today it is like disaster, although for example here, it is still technically free. And yes, people wait up to year for a session at the doctor, in a country of 2 million people.....


----------



## Kpc21

Junkie said:


> In the socialism more people were on the back of the state because it was planned economy. They produced 1 million shoes for 1 million people to wear them.


Well, why then to buy those shoes one had to hunt for ANY boots in different shops and wait for them in kilometers of queues?

Because - I don't remember those times - but those are the descriptions by people who lived in this system in Poland.



> What was good from the socialism was the so low crime. There was literally no crime. No guns and no need for guns.


Here I don't know what to say about it because some people who lived then in Poland say that there was no crime (everyone had to work, so there was even no time for crime), others say that *officially* there was no crime but actually it was simply hidden, the state-owned media (which were the only ones available) just weren't talking about it to make it look like there is no crime.



> What was also good from the socialism was the so called free public health system. Today it is like disaster, although for example here, it is still technically free. And yes, people wait up to year for a session at the doctor, in a country of 2 million people.....


This is also what I hear concerning Poland. One didn't have to wait for a visit at the doctor, even though actually everyone went to a doctor even with a minor infection to get a sick leave - which isn't now the case, people with a minor infection usually go to work anyway. Sometimes even people with fever do it, either feeling obliged to do something at work which can't be done by others, or just afraid of losing the job.

I wonder how it is with the public healthcare in the western-European countries. Do you also wait weeks or months (or sometimes even years) for a visit at a specialist? And e.g. for planned surgeries?

In Poland, supposedly, there are even places (especially in bigger cities) where - in the periods of the year when many people catch infections - one have to even wait some days for a visit at a GP.


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## Kanadzie

^^ that's interesting
I live in one of the wealthiest metropolitan regions in the world, in Canada, I wouldn't expect to see a GP in same day. Sometimes, mine, I can catch a visit at 18h or whatever but I typically ask an appointment some days in advance (and then see doctor 1 hour late...)


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## Attus

In Germany, in urgent cases, you can get an appointment at a doctor (a specialist, when needed) in the same day, or the next day if you call him in the afternoon. In not urgent cases a waiting time of several months is pretty common.


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## MichiH

^^ Same in Germany. You sometimes have to wait many months for an appointment. However, you have to wait less if you have a private insurance ("Privatpatient").


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> ^^ Same in Germany. You sometimes have to wait many months for an appointment. However, you have to wait less if you have a private insurance ("Privatpatient").


Which if I remember correctly is quite common.

When I was working in Munich I had versicherung from Technischer Krankenkasse... when I needed MRI for my knee I was able to book a visit (at 10 euro cost) in 2 days.

In Italy, if you choose public, you have to wait many months. But misteriously, if you pay for a private visit, you get an appointment with the same doctor, at the same clinic, in 2 or 3 days...


----------



## Kpc21

Kanadzie said:


> (and then see doctor 1 hour late...)


So this tradition is as common around the world as the totally illegible style of writing of the doctors... Or, at least, it looks so.

The introduction of computers to the medical offices should progress faster (in Poland, bigger clinics usually have computers nowadays, smaller, often one-doctor offices usually not), with that one is finally able to read a prescription or a referral by himself - when it is printed from a computer and not written by pen on a form.

Although I also met one situation when a local clinic had technical problems with the computer system and they couldn't issue prescriptions and referrals at all for some time, the patients had to come for them a few hours later... In my opinion, they should have been prepared for such a situation ahead and have the paper forms also prepared just in case - but seemingly, they weren't.

In Poland the problem is that you cannot pay a partial price of a private visit at the doctor for the rest be financed by the insurance.

A recent case - a member of my family had a cataract surgery. This surgery works in such a way that they remove the natural lens from your eye (which has lost its transparency and for this reason, you have problems with seeing things) and replace it with an artificial one. The natural lens normally changes its focal point (I hope I am not messing up the English physics terminology) depending on the distance at which you are looking, so you can focus your sight at different points in different distances from you as you wish, the artificial one of course doesn't do that. But there are more expensive types of those replacement lenses which have multiple focal points, working in the same way as the "progressive" glasses - exploiting the fact that when you look up, you usually look far away, when you look down, you usually look somewhere close to you.

And if you go for this surgery financed by the public healthcare system, not only you must wait even a few years (and when you don't do this surgery on time, the cataract progresses and you finally become almost blind, and the surgery becomes more difficult for the doctors - luckily, in this case, the cataract was diagnosed ahead enough, so that a few years of waiting weren't really a problem), but also you are forced to use those cheapest lenses with a single focal point, the surgery must happen totally for free for you, you can't pay extra for the better lens.

If you want the better lens, you must do everything in a private clinic and pay the whole price of the surgery and the lens.

Or... you can exploit the fact that we belong to the EU, pay and do it abroad (e.g. in Slovakia or Czech Republic) and then turn to our public healthcare to refund the price of the surgery. This is a workaround to omit the long waiting times and pay only the difference in the prices of the lenses to get the better lens. Which results in weird cases of medical tourism and Polish cataract clinics opening in countries like Czech Republic and Slovakia.


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## Kpc21

The thread broke down...


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## ChrisZwolle

In the Netherlands private health insurance is required by law for all people over 18. Premiums usually start at € 75 / month for the most basic package but if you want to include dental and some other necessities, the premiums usually start around € 130 per month. 

Of course this private health insurance covers only a fraction of the total health expenditures in the Netherlands. Most of it is covered through taxes. A problem is the ballooning cost of health care, which becomes financially unsustainable, potentially dwarfing all other government expenditures. For example, the annual cost increase in health care expenditures is similar to the entire road budget. In 2017 the health care expenditure amounted to € 97.5 billion, compared to just € 2 billion for roads.


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## Alex_ZR

Looks like photos hosted at Photobucket are visible again.


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## Kpc21

But the forum, since yestarday evening, is very slow and constantly throws out errors instead of opening its pages.


----------



## Junkie

Kpc21 said:


> Well, why then to buy those shoes one had to hunt for ANY boots in different shops and wait for them in kilometers of queues?
> 
> Because - I don't remember those times - but those are the descriptions by people who lived in this system in Poland.
> 
> 
> Here I don't know what to say about it because some people who lived then in Poland say that there was no crime (everyone had to work, so there was even no time for crime), others say that *officially* there was no crime but actually it was simply hidden, the state-owned media (which were the only ones available) just weren't talking about it to make it look like there is no crime.
> 
> 
> This is also what I hear concerning Poland. One didn't have to wait for a visit at the doctor, even though actually everyone went to a doctor even with a minor infection to get a sick leave - which isn't now the case, people with a minor infection usually go to work anyway. Sometimes even people with fever do it, either feeling obliged to do something at work which can't be done by others, or just afraid of losing the job.
> 
> I wonder how it is with the public healthcare in the western-European countries. Do you also wait weeks or months (or sometimes even years) for a visit at a specialist? And e.g. for planned surgeries?
> 
> In Poland, supposedly, there are even places (especially in bigger cities) where - in the periods of the year when many people catch infections - one have to even wait some days for a visit at a GP.


In Macedonia you go to visit a general doctor and he will make appointment in the system for a specialist visit for example if you need to do some scan of your organs or so. It will take around 3-6 months but in some cases up to a year. 
The biggest queues are for scans. The problem is also that not all small cities have equmpent and usually people are shifted to the capital hospital. There is a city hospital in which only those who have address in the city can be accommodated. The additional problem, however is that, people who have relatives in the hospitals use them to get advantage and taking money for any kind of surgeries.
But if you want to pay money, you can just go to a private clinic and pay the full amount and have the screen the same day.

Additional problem is that the government collects small amounts of money for the healthcare system, as the separating percentage from the employees is really very low. With low budget you dont have much options....


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## ChrisZwolle

The upper course of the Doubs River ran completely dry at the France-Switzerland border (Saut du Doubs).


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## xzmattzx

What's the most number of traffic lights you've seen for a road entering an intersection? I drove through this intersection in Virginia a few times two weeks ago that has 7 traffic lights facing coming traffic.

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.500...qr9Dv6fNcZzt4vqkvuFw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en


(I thought I posted this last week, but I may have forgotton to hit the Submit button.)


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## Kpc21

I have seen your post, not sure if here.

In my case, it might be 6 semaphores, including the one next to the road: https://goo.gl/maps/mDtJqVu4nbq

Note that this place looks differently now, you can find the current view on StreetView too.

Although... here are seven (and it is still so), also including the ones next to the road: https://goo.gl/maps/wzeDfwPQEcr

But not seven ones for seven different lanes, I just don't know any place where the road would have seven lanes.


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## MichiH

I think 7 traffic lights are quite common. Here are 7,5 : https://www.google.com/maps/@48.819...7XQcM0FXi6JI_4kScC5Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en


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## ChrisZwolle

Denmark places double or even triple traffic signals on major intersections.

Here are 10 for one branch: https://goo.gl/maps/BgBBwKNXyQA2


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## Spookvlieger

5 (2lane roads, 2 on top for two throughout traffic lanes, two on the side and one for the left turning lane), 7, 8 and 9 (for 3 lane roads with double or triple turning lanes) is common in Belgium. Mostly 5 on top; 2 on the sides and one or two just afther the crossing.


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## ChrisZwolle

Meanwhile on the San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge:


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## Attus

Last night in German TV show Wer wird Millionär (Who wants to be a millionair) there was a question:
Which of these languages is an official language of the European Union?
A: Maltese
B: Belgian
C: Cypriot
D: Austrian
In this show there is always only one correct answer.
The player, a young girl, thought it was Belgian but she was not sure so she called a teacher. The teacher told her, it was Austrian and that he was 100% sure about it.

There are people in Germany, even a teacher, who think there is such a thing as an Austrian language. It shocked me.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Obama even said it


----------



## [atomic]

Austrian is kind of a half Language of the EU. Documents are obviously translated in all the official Languages (English, French, Polish and so on)but (some) the German language Documents going to Austria have a few differences. Basically they replace some terms that are not used in Austria with the Austrian counterpart.
source: my EU Law professor.


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## Kpc21

Attus said:


> Wer wird Millionär (Who wants to be a millionair)


In Poland they really wanted to make things uncomplicated because the title of the Polish version of this show is just "Milionaires" (translated to Polish).










It was originally broadcast in Poland from 1999 to 2003, then they restored it in 2008 to end it in 2010, and they again restored it in 2017.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Who wants to be a millionaire, Venezuela edition.


----------



## Junkie

Today is 50 years marking day of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. On the twitter profile Carl Bildt says it threatened the survival of the socialist system. And the first invasion of German (DDR) troops after the second WW.


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## Kpc21

They have one actually 

The original main prize from 2000 to 2006 was 100 million bolivars, in 2007 increased to 200 million bolivars.

In 2008 they made a redenomination and replaced the previously used bolivars with so called strong bolivars, 1 strong bolivar = 1000 old bolivars. 

So those prizes were actually 100 000 new bolivars and 200 000 new bolivars.

And at the moment of denomination, the main prize just got converted to the strong bolivars, so it was 200 000 new bolivars.

In 2010, they moved the show to another TV station and increased the main prize to 250 000 new bolivars.

In the next years they had to successively increase it to follow the inflation and in 2017 it was 2 million "new" bolivars.

Now they have yet new, so called sovereign bolivars and 1 sovereign bolivar = 100 000 strong bolivars = 100 million pre-2008 bolivars. But this redenomination took place this year and they ended broadcasting the show in Venezuela in April 2017.

The last main prize (2 milion strong bolivars) converted is 20 new (soveregin) bolivars.

See here: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/¿Quién_quiere_ser_millonario?_(Venezuela)#Premio

How it converts to "normal" currencies?

In June 2017, the black market exchange rate was 10 000 strong bolivars for 1 US dollar (the official exchange rate generally has problems with following how many bolivars the actual citizens of Venezuela are willing to pay for 1 USD). So the main prize was equal to about 200 USD.

In 2014, it was 100 strong bolivars for 1 USD, so the main prize, which was then 300 000 strong bolivars, was about 3000 USD.

The exchange rate to dollars shows nothing about how much you can buy in Venezuela for the specified amount of money. But the main prize in "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" has to be an amount of money that seems to be enormous for the citizens of the given country where the show is transmitted, normally possessed only by the richest people in the country (or by companies who employ many people).

Now, the exchange rate is about 6 million bolivars for 1 USD. So this hyperinflation seems to be faster and faster, and it makes sense, because in such a situation there is a very high demand for a "hard" currency in the country, people buying it weaken the local currency and it ends up with snowball effect.


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## Kpc21

Junkie said:


> Today is 50 years marking day of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. On the twitter profile Carl Bildt says it threatened the survival of the socialist system. And the first invasion of German (DDR) troops after the second WW.


Wasn't it rather so that this military invasion was a result of a threat for the system? Czechoslovakia wanted to go too liberal and hence such a reaction of the Soviets (forcibly accompanied also by the Polish army)?


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Only Romanians behaved like real alliance fellows. Thanks.


Romanian communist regime was known for being very diplomatic and peaceful in international matters (it even had normal relations with the USA), but extremely brutal and repressive towards its own citizens, much worse than Soviet Union itself after the death of Stalin.


----------



## italystf

Junkie said:


> Today is 50 years marking day of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. On the twitter profile Carl Bildt says it threatened the survival of the socialist system. And the first invasion of German (DDR) troops after the second WW.


The invasion of Czechoslovakia ended the support of the Soviet Union by Western communist parties. 
Even the leftist 1968 protesters supported the pro-democracy Czechoslovak activists.
Something similar in a smaller scale happened after the invasion of Hungary in 1956.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What do you do if your car breaks down?

* try to limp it to a gas station: NO
* try to repair it: NO
* call a tow truck: NO
* smash it up: YES :bash:




























It ocurred today along A50 in the Netherlands (link to tweet)


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Romanian communist regime was known for being very diplomatic and peaceful in international matters (it even had normal relations with the USA), but extremely brutal and repressive towards its own citizens, much worse than Soviet Union itself after the death of Stalin.



In some aspects Romania resembled Yugoslavia. Though the country was much more liberal, Yugoslav regime was brutal as well.


I heard about Goli Otok where supposedly political prisoners were treated with exceptional brutality. It may be an urban legend, but the prisoners of the island were supposedly commanded to move stones from one place and pile them up in other place to "build Kilimanjaro". After stacking a great number of stones they were allegedly told "sorry guys, we were mistaken, you have to build Mount Everest" and had to move the piled up stack of stones to other corner of the prison and vice-versa.


----------



## Junkie

volodaaaa said:


> Only Romanians behaved like real alliance fellows. Thanks.


Czechoslovakian government led by Dubček was actually supported not only by Romania but also by Yugoslavia and Albania. Taking in mind that YU and Albania cut ties with the Soviets.....
I have knowing this fact long time ago as in the old books there was a saying that Tito was strongly opposing any Soviet direct intervention. 

Yugoslavia was actually Soviet-free since 1948, when Tito turned the back..... It has to do much with the WW2, because the YU communists and antifascists led by Tito freed the country without any Russian military personell ever landing here.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Junkie said:


> Yugoslavia was actually Soviet-free since 1948, when Tito turned the back..... It has to do much with the WW2, because the* YU communists and antifascists led by Tito freed the country without any Russian military personell ever landing here*.


Not 100% true, Red army liberated Belgrade in October 1944 for example.


----------



## Junkie

^^
Please dont lie and post false info. Russians never liberated nothing in YU it was the YU partisans. They only partially entered the territory and left immediately, and YU never was in the hand of the Russians.


----------



## MichiH

^^ You should carefully read your own post again (the one quoted).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgrade_Offensive


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*GDPR*

Every day I browse through Google News for road news. It has become clear that regional media in the U.S. have blocked EU visitors on a very large scale due to the GDPR. Almost every smaller news site and regional newspaper I visit has an EU block now. 

You can bypass them with a free VPN extension in the browser, but it is annoying how the internet disintegrates into sections which you cannot freely visit. 

It typically looks like this:


----------



## Suburbanist

Pay for a good VPN service (I use VyprVPN from Golden Frog; there are many others), and your connection will be much better than through free browser extensions (these can always be kinda dangerous sometimes).


----------



## Kpc21

I noticed that in Germany, much more YouTube videos say that "they are not available in your country" in comparison with Poland.

It scares how the governments of even western-European countries introduce legislation that allows blocking (within the country) some websites selected by the governments.

In Poland we already have "anti-terrorism" and "anti-gambling" laws that allow for that.

In my opinion this is bad because:
- those who actually need access to such websites just will use foreign VPN's and nothing will block those people from doing it,
- this is simply against the nature of the Internet, if the access somewhere gets blocked directly, there is always a way around (although it will often be slower and more costly),
- it leads to censorship such as we can see in Turkey or in China.

So even now, trying to enter any website listed here: https://hazard.mf.gov.pl (anti-gambling law) from Poland, you are redirected to: http://www.finanse.mf.gov.pl/inne-podatki/podatek-od-gier-gry-hazardowe/komunikat

Seemingly, they did not yet enforce the censorship right given to them by the anti-terrorism law.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The terrorism, or "hate speech" censorship is a slippery slope. Of course you don't want genuine terrorist content but for some people the slightest things are offensive. Just recently I looked up the Blackhawk Down soundtrack on Youtube. It has a warning:

_The following content has been identified by the YouTube community as inappropriate or offensive to some audiences._

The only thing you see is a photo of a soldier with an M16. 

This is clearly going in the wrong direction. 

In the Netherlands, the phrase "ladies and gentlemen" was deemed too offensive to some people to be used in trains. So now they use "dear travelers". Some people are deeply offended by the most mundane everyday things.


----------



## Kpc21

Luckily in Polish this phrase (translated as "Panie i Panowie") it's just kinda thought of as related to high society and not used very often, unless for comic purposes.

Maybe it could be used as an introduction even in a TV show - but not on a train.

Normally something like "Proszę Państwa", "Drodzy Państwo", "Szanowni Państwo" is used. Where "Państwo" is just a collective equivalent of "Ladies and Gentlemen", "Sir", "Madam", like "Dear Sir" in an official letter would be translated as "Szanowny Panie", "Dear Madam" as "Szanowna Pani" and "Dear Sir or Madam" as "Szanowni Państwo".

Or even in addressing letters to people it was used in abbreviation as "Sz.P." before the name of the addressee - which could mean all three options. It was - because who still sends traditional letters to other people?

Here: https://youtu.be/vpMFLAhnqjQ?t=109 they make an announcement on the train using just "Szanowni Państwo".



> Szanowni Państwo! We just reached the speed of 200 km/h. PKP Intercity is the first carrier in the Central Europe area whose trains run at such speed. We wish you (again "Państwo") a pleasant journey on the board of Express Intercity Premium.


As if 200 km/h on the train was something to be proud of, but still it's a step up from the previously highest 160 km/h.


I have an interesting example concerning Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and money redenomination. From Poland.

We had a redenomination in 1995. 1 new złoty (PLN) is equal to 10 000 old złotys (PLZ).

In Poland, this TV show appeared in 1999.

Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G6XvxrpdiI&feature=youtu.be&t=154 is a Polish TV spot from 1999, inviting people to take part in "Millionaires".



> Dial the highest number of your life!
> 
> Take part in Who Wants To Be A Milionaire - the quiz with the highest prizes in Poland!
> 
> Take the telephone and dial: 0 700 74 888!
> 
> Answer to a question and *10 milliard old złotys* can be yours!
> 
> Everyone has equal chances.
> 
> "Millionaires" - from September in TVN!


I was born in 1994, I remember a little bit of 1999 and I don't really remember anyone using the old złotys as a currency or even talking about amounts of money in the old złotys in that year. I don't remember the old currency at all.

But most people in 1999 definitely still remembered that. Actually, the new money was introduced at the beginning of 1995 and the old money was no longer accepted from the beginning of 1997 - so there was a two-year transition period in which both currencies were used (and all the prices were given in both of them).

So it was a good idea to give the amount you can win in this show in the old currency as it sounded even more enormously high.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> The terrorism, or "hate speech" censorship is a slippery slope. Of course you don't want genuine terrorist content but for some people the slightest things are offensive. Just recently I looked up the Blackhawk Down soundtrack on Youtube. It has a warning:
> 
> _The following content has been identified by the YouTube community as inappropriate or offensive to some audiences._
> 
> The only thing you see is a photo of a soldier with an M16.
> 
> This is clearly going in the wrong direction.
> 
> In the Netherlands, the phrase "ladies and gentlemen" was deemed too offensive to some people to be used in trains. So now they use "dear travelers". Some people are deeply offended by the most mundane everyday things.


We are having a communal elections in two months. There is a woman who candidates and all her programme is based on the fact she is a woman. No specific steps, no particular points.

All her FB campaign rests on "I am a woman" and "No woman has been elected a mayor in Bratislava so far". Period.

And yes, there are still comments below her statuses about how strong she is and that she must kick other male candidates' asses.

Maybe I am oldschool but:
- I would vote for a women if she had the best programme from all portfolio of candidates (I actually did once, but she was not elected),
- I do not see any wisdom in voting a candidate whose only quality is her gender. Sorry.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Normally something like "Proszę Państwa", "Drodzy Państwo", "Szanowni Państwo" is used. Where "Państwo" is just a collective equivalent of "Ladies and Gentlemen", "Sir", "Madam", like "Dear Sir" in an official letter would be translated as "Szanowny Panie", "Dear Madam" as "Szanowna Pani" and "Dear Sir or Madam" as "Szanowni Państwo".



We have:
pán - mister,
pani - mistress and
slečna - miss.


Miss is unmarried and Mistress is for married women. If you do not know, usually miss is used unless the lade is not old enough.


I mean, my Slovak language teacher was and old miss, but nobody referred to her as "miss", she was "mistress".


No such thing like Ms occurs in my language. You always have to guess


----------



## Kpc21

During one of the last elections in Poland, there was a meme:










Vote for a washing machine. It has, at least, a programme.


In Polish we used to use the term Panna for Miss, but it's rather not used any more. Unless you have a women who just wants to say that she is not yet married, then she can say she is a "panna", the equivalent for a man is "kawaler" (bachelor). There is also a term "Panna Młoda" (Young "Panna") which means a bride. This term is a bit weird because if she is a bride then she actually stops being a "panna".

By the way - if you have a consonant doubled, in Polish you actually pronounce it two times - unlike in English and in many other languages where it's still pronounced once but maybe a bit longer.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's not just Mrs., Ms., or Mr., but evidently people are offended if no consideration is taken that they may not fit in either category "nonbinary", or that gender is assumed. This is stuff most people don't think about but for some people it is all that matters, and they had enough influence to change that in the Netherlands. It did open a debate though, about how normal everyday things such as "ladies and gentlemen" are suddenly considered taboo.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland there are names of professions that have both male and female versions. But there are also ones which normally are used in the male version, and while its female version can be created, it just sounds really unprofessional and even the people using it in vast majority of cases even being women prefer the male version.

E.g. dyrektor - dyrektorka.

Even a women usually wants to be called "dyrektor" (usually it is "Pani dyrektor" - something like "Mrs. director") and not "dyrektorka", the word "dyrektorka" is indeed used, but only colloquially, when e.g. two friends, mates or colleagues talk to each other (about a director of one of them or just any other director).

A similar one is "nauczyciel" (teacher), although in case of this one, the female form is much more accepted as professional. Maybe because teachers, especially in primary schools at lower grades, are much more often women than men.


There are also some others and more interesting - let me give an example.

A judge or referee is in Polish "sędzia" (and even though it ends with -a, it is a masculine noun, it's one of the few masculine nouns in Polish ending with -a, most of which are names of professions or other similar words to describe people).

Judges in legal courts quite often happen to be women.

There exists a word "sędzina". But actually it used to mean not a judge being a women but a wife of a judge.

Currently people very often use this word for a women being a judge.

And looking it up, the dictionary explains the meaning of this word as: 1) colloquially, the female form from "sędzia", 2) in the past, a wife of a judge.


This word "sędzina" actually comes from the old, no longer used endings to name someone's members of family.

Let's say someone's family name is Nowak (a name ending with a consonant).

In such a case, his wife was called Nowakowa and his daughter was called Nowakówna.

And let's say someone's family name is Sikora (a name ending with a vowel, but not having an adjective form like Kowalski - such ones are much less common).

Then, his wife would be Sikorzyna and his daughter Sikorzanka.

Or, the same case, Duda (the family name of our current president).

His wife would be Dudzina and his daughter Dudzianka.

The same rule applied to "sędzia" (judge) - which was commonly done especially in the times when there were no family names yet - names his wife "sędzina".


While the rule for the family names ending with a consonant is still sometimes used, especially for naming the wife (although only unofficially) - the one for the family names ending with a vowel has practically disappeared, probably because such family names are considerably less common.

There are also family names having an adjective form - and those are very popular. They include, for example, the one which is usually considered the most popular family name in Poland (although actually it's currently the second one after Nowak). Kowalski.

His wife is called Kowalska - and this will be her official name, present in all the documents, even in a passport.

I am not sure how it would work for a daughter in the past - now the daughter is also Kowalska (and this is official).


When you read the credits after Hollywood movies, you often see some family names of Polish origin there. And then it looks really funny when you see a feminine first name but with a family name like "Kowalski" or "Kowalsky" instead of "Kowalska".


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's not just Mrs., Ms., or Mr., but evidently people are offended if no consideration is taken that they may not fit in either category "nonbinary", or that gender is assumed. This is stuff most people don't think about but for some people it is all that matters, and they had enough influence to change that in the Netherlands. It did open a debate though, about how normal everyday things such as "ladies and gentlemen" are suddenly considered taboo.


There are cultural differences, too. The salutation "ladies and gentlemen" is quite old-fashioned in the modern Finnish language. It is usually used in formal situations only. 

The same applies to prefixes Mr, Mrs, Ms, Doctor, Professor, etc. They are very seldom in use. The other way round, the expression "Good morning Mr Dipl.ing Virtanen" most probably has a sarcastic tone.


----------



## g.spinoza

Crazy August weather in Italian Dolomites. Mountains around Cortina d'Ampezzo, above 1800 m asl, were covered by snow las night:


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> Crazy August weather in Italian Dolomites. Mountains around Cortina d'Ampezzo, above 1800 m asl, were covered by snow las night:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> .


Brace yourselves, the winter is coming.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Großglockner also had a snow dump. It's not extremely unusual in August, but it's a sign that summer is coming to an end.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I noticed today snow on a peak (~2.000 m) that I can see from where I live. I was a bit surprised, but temperatures dropped from 30+ during the day (early this week), to less than 15°C this week-end, plus we had rain. At that elevation it did snow.


----------



## g.spinoza

Western Alps on the contrary are dead dry. Today the sky was so clear I could see aa large part of the Alps from my home. Our professional weather station at work recorded 18% humidity.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Southern Norway also had its first snow of the season on somewhat lower elevations, such as here on Sognefjellshytta.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> Brace yourselves, the winter is coming.





ChrisZwolle said:


> Großglockner also had a snow dump. It's not extremely unusual in August, but it's a sign that summer is coming to an end.


Well, not unusual but definitely not common. I'm used to hike at those altitudes and more well into October without any snow event.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Just spend a weekend in NW England and SW Scotland, certainly didn't feel like summer up there.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland there is also no more summer temperatures. Today it was no more than something like 23 degrees. The night temperatures drop below 10 degrees.


----------



## Kanadzie

Canada, today, 36 and heavy humidity...


----------



## volodaaaa

It is noticeably getting colder and colder. But there are still extremely hot days in Slovakia followed by extremely cold days. For instance the Monday morning was 11°C while yesterday's evening was 33°C.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Today I have received an email from Google in which they thank me for uploading images on Maps...which are actually images I have uploaded to Panoramio 10 years ago! :nuts:


----------



## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> Today I have received an email from Google in which they thank me for uploading images on Maps...which are actually images I have uploaded to Panoramio 10 years ago! :nuts:



Google has recently got crazy. Especially the maps. They somehow decided to replace original city names with exonyms in Slovak version. Now I have specialities such as:


Viedenské Nové Mesto instad of Wiener Neustad,
Stoličný Belehrad instead of Székesfehérvár,
Vacov instead of Vác,
Štutgart instead of Stuttgart,
Boloňa instead of Bolognia or

Remeš insteaf of Reims.


But it seems to be working only for Europe. Fortunately, there is no Filadelfia.:lol:


----------



## bogdymol

Same here. They translated everything in Romanian. For example the following Hungarian towns are now:
Szeged is now Seghedin
Mako is now Macău
Bekescsaba is now Bichișciaba
Gyula is now Giula

All of these are within 100 km of my hometown Arad, in Romania, and all have strong connections with Romania as they are right across the border. However, me and all my friends who talk about any of these towns, we use the Hungarian name. The "Romanian" ones just sound funny and are not used on a daily basis.

The only foreign city names that I can now thing of that are used with their "Romanian" name are:
London is Londra
Budapest is Budapesta
Moscow is Moscova
Firenze is Florența
Venice is Veneția
Warsaw is Varșovia
and probably about 5 more...

edit: now I see that Košice in Slovakia appears as Cașovia. I never heard this name before :nuts:


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> Same here. They translated everything in Romanian. For example the following Hungarian towns are now:
> Szeged is now Seghedin
> Mako is now Macău
> Bekescsaba is now Bichișciaba
> Gyula is now Giula
> 
> All of these are within 100 km of my hometown Arad, in Romania, and all have strong connections with Romania as they are right across the border. However, me and all my friends who talk about any of these towns, we use the Hungarian name. The "Romanian" ones just sound funny and are not used on a daily basis.
> 
> The only foreign city names that I can now thing of that are used with their "Romanian" name are:
> London is Londra
> Budapest is Budapesta
> Moscow is Moscova
> Firenze is Florența
> Venice is Veneția
> Warsaw is Varșovia
> and probably about 5 more...
> 
> edit: now I see that Košice in Slovakia appears as Cașovia. I never heard this name before :nuts:



Cassovia originates in Latin language :lol: But anyway, most of the exonyms, except the capitals or the most populated (or famous) cities are not used in this form any more today.


It is so artificial like having Iron City instead of Eisenstadt or Brother and Glory instead of Bratislava.


----------



## CNGL

Also in Spanish. I was surprised to see 's-Hertogenbosch as _Bolduque_.


----------



## MichiH

German GM shows Hermannstadt (Sibiu), Mühlbach (Sebes), Karlsburg (Alba Iulia) but Brașov (not Kronburg).
Prag (Praha), Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary), Brüx (Most) but Hradec Králové (not Königgrätz).
Warschau (Warszawa), Posen (Poznań), Danzig (Gdansk), Stettin (Szczecin), Krakau (Kraków) but Wrocław (not Breslau) and Katowice (not Kattowitz).
Italian cities do all show the German name.

:nuts:


----------



## Kanadzie

volodaaaa said:


> But it seems to be working only for Europe. Fortunately, there is no Filadelfia.:lol:


https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Filadelfia :cheers:


----------



## Kpc21

In the Polish version they did it a few years ago.

Many towns in Slovakia have their names translated to Polish.

And translating names such as Bratislava (Bratysława) or Zilina (Żylina) is OK. Or Kosice (Koszyce) - this city even plays an important role in the Polish history. But not of all those small villages, many of which also gets translated in Google.

By the way, when I was small and I was watching those cartoons with Rumcajs on TV:










they always mentioned the town of Jicin in them and I always wondered, first, if there is really such a town (and it turns out... it is! - in Czech Republic, there is even New Jicin and Old Jicin), but at most I wondered how to spell it (I thought it will be something like Iczyn).

Now, thanks to Google, I even know that in Polish it's spelled Jiczyn.

And this is a CZECH name, so don't say it's Polish with the difficult to pronounce consonant combinations 

By the way - the Ukrainian city of Dniepropietrowsk changed, or rather shorted its name some time ago, just to Dnipro. In some Polish translations I see it named just... Dniepr, although for me it's a bad name because it's already a name of a river. But Google still translates it to Dniepropietrowsk, even though giving the Ukrainian Cyrylic name below that (as it usually does with names that are originally in other alphabets) correctly as Dnipro.

The name of the capital of North Korea it shows as Pyongyang. Even though already for some time, the official Polish spelling of this name is Pjongjang - and before that, for a very long time, the Polish name was Phenian. It was, however, unfortunate, because many people mistakenly pronounced it beginning it with the "F" sound assuming it is borrowed from a language spelling this sound as "ph", like for example English. Actually, it's a loan from Russian where it is spelled Пхенян and in Cyrylic it's obvious that P (П) and H (х) must be pronounced separately.

So, so it looks like in the Polish version, full of exonymes, already for a few years - I think:



















Many of those exonymes are commonly used - but there are also some which aren't.

And I assume... when I use Google navigation on a smartphone, it gives me the local names, not the exonymes in my language, I hope? Because otherwise, such navigation would be useless while driving abroad.

By the way - Italian cities are probably the ones with the most different exonymes in various languages.

Italian - Venezia.
English - Venice.
German - Venedig.
Polish - Wenecja (so close to the Italian original).

But on the other hand...
Italian - Milano.
English - Milan.
Polish - Mediolan.

But with Milan there are even more weird things.
In Poland, we say A.C. Milan. But Inter Mediolan.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> In the Polish version they did it a few years ago.
> 
> Many towns in Slovakia have their names translated to Polish.
> 
> And translating names such as Bratislava (Bratysława) or Zilina (Żylina) is OK. Or Kosice (Koszyce) - this city even plays an important role in the Polish history. But not of all those small villages, many of which also gets translated in Google.
> 
> By the way, when I was small and I was watching those cartoons with Rumcajs on TV:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> they always mentioned the town of Jicin in them and I always wondered, first, if there is really such a town (and it turns out... it is! - in Czech Republic, there is even New Jicin and Old Jicin), but at most I wondered how to spell it (I thought it will be something like Iczyn).
> 
> Now, thanks to Google, I even know that in Polish it's spelled Jiczyn.
> 
> And this is a CZECH name, so don't say it's Polish with the difficult to pronounce consonant combinations
> 
> By the way - the Ukrainian city of Dniepropietrowsk changed, or rather shorted its name some time ago, just to Dnipro. In some Polish translations I see it named just... Dniepr, although for me it's a bad name because it's already a name of a river. But Google still translates it to Dniepropietrowsk, even though giving the Ukrainian Cyrylic name below that (as it usually does with names that are originally in other alphabets) correctly as Dnipro.
> 
> The name of the capital of North Korea it shows as Pyongyang. Even though already for some time, the official Polish spelling of this name is Pjongjang - and before that, for a very long time, the Polish name was Phenian. It was, however, unfortunate, because many people mistakenly pronounced it beginning it with the "F" sound assuming it is borrowed from a language spelling this sound as "ph", like for example English. Actually, it's a loan from Russian where it is spelled Пхенян and in Cyrylic it's obvious that P (П) and H (х) must be pronounced separately.
> 
> So, so it looks like in the Polish version, full of exonymes, already for a few years - I think:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Many of those exonymes are commonly used - but there are also some which aren't.
> 
> And I assume... when I use Google navigation on a smartphone, it gives me the local names, not the exonymes in my language, I hope? Because otherwise, such navigation would be useless while driving abroad.
> 
> By the way - Italian cities are probably the ones with the most different exonymes in various languages.
> 
> Italian - Venezia.
> English - Venice.
> German - Venedig.
> Polish - Wenecja (so close to the Italian original).
> 
> But on the other hand...
> Italian - Milano.
> English - Milan.
> Polish - Mediolan.
> 
> But with Milan there are even more weird things.
> In Poland, we say A.C. Milan. But Inter Mediolan.



Stambul, Saloniki....


Cause ya like to shorten 'em all.:lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes it's sluggish from time to time.

The mobile app is also not functioning properly for me (can't open any links in the notifications menu). In addition, the mobile website is overloaded with ads and it opens random pages instead of the last one. So I use the desktop version on my phone, which isn't very convenient either. 

Though I normally post from my computer at home, I'm not a big fan of doing things on my phone beyond browsing through news or using it for music and navigation. Sometimes I wait to reply to a chat until I'm home and can fire up WhatsApp web and use a keyboard. I don't find phones very convenient for anything longer than one sentence.


----------



## Kpc21

Meanwhile... Switzerland ends terrestrial TV broadcasting via DVB-T with the end of 2019.

It seems that only 2% of homes receive TV in this country this way. Only the national broadcaster's programmes are transmitted in this system.

It's interesting. I know that watching TV is less and less popular among the young people, but older people still watch it a lot. Cable TV, at least here in Poland, is available mostly only in multi-family buildings (like commie blocks and tenement houses), so most households rely either on terrestrial reception, or on satellite to receive TV. I am not sure what is now more popular: satellite or terrestrial but most likely terrestrial.

Before the terrestrial TV switched from analog PAL to digital DVB-T, one could receive at most 7 channels (and in many places only 2 or 3 ones), often at least some of them were with noises, "ants" and "ghosts" and this is one of the reasons why people were choosing satellite TV. When terrestrial got digital, many people switched back from satellite to terrestrial, simply because terrestrial TV is free of charge and for satellite, you always 
(except for just a few channels of low quality) have to pay a subscription fee to the operator which gives you a receiver and a decryption card for it (don't mistake it with the so called TV subscription for the public broadcaster, which is obligatory for all those who have TVs in Poland, it is actually a kind of tax - even though it isn't actually enforced and most people don't pay it).

So, for example, with analog, I could receive 7 channels, now with DVB-T I have something about 30 channels, including 8 of the public broadcaster. Now, satellite TV is rather only subscribed by those who want to pay to get some premium content (like HBO channels or premium sports) or simply live in areas with poor coverage of terrestrial TV.

The Swiss situation is therefore weird for me. Do everyone there have cable? Or do everyone use satellite TV?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't have a TV subscription anymore, I haven't watched TV for the last 10 years. Too much advertising, annoying presenters, archaic programming schedules, etc. I get my content on the internet. I used to have Netflix but canceled that too after realizing I only watched one show in 6 months. 

I don't watch much news either, I have reduced the intake of mainstream news, there is so much bias and - about topics I know a lot about - too many factual errors, I assume it's not better for the rest. I consume some news online but less than in the past. Everything is so politicized / sunk in social justice nonsense these days. Though I do like some "deepdive" media about topics that I find interesting. I don't care about the next #metoo scandal or the 137th news report about gender neutral bathrooms.... Journalists are so out of touch with reality.


----------



## Kpc21

Junkie said:


> We cannot estimate in what form the eu will be for about 30-40 years, it is possible that it will develop to a superstate and in that scenario I also can't see Russia part of it, as Russia is a very obvious counterweight.
> But if eu never become superstate it might partner Russia in a close alliance, especially considering that the relations with the USA are deteoriating for the eu itself.


Well, I can't see Poland agreeing for EU superstate. If it will happen, Poland will probably exit the EU and maybe become something like an associate country. Unfortunately, because I can see that we are benefiting from being a member. But for historic reasons, Poland will simply never give up independence voluntarily. There is too many EU sceptics already in the country (most of them forget that we also have decisive power in the EU and they argue that we don't rule the country but Germans tell us what to do - still, they exist and go to elections, so they have to be taken into account by the politicians) and if we were to give up independence - definitely almost all of the country wouldn't go for it, our history and the fact that we once, after being independent for hundreds of years, lost it for 123 years (when being parts of Germany and Russia we were treated as a subordinate nation - it was much better in already multi-national Austria/Austro-Hungary, but there, on the other hand, the economic situation was very poor) and regained it with much difficulty only 100 years ago, tells us to appreciate it. And it's probably not only Poland.



Concerning the problems with forum, I don't get any situation with only the header being loaded. Even though I use Vivaldi as a browser and Vivaldi uses the same browsing engine as Chrome. But I am doing it on Linux, maybe it matters.

But I am getting database errors. I pressed Quote button at your post (with the middle mouse button to open it in a new tab, so I can quote your post here easily) and whenever I refresh it...











And I also agree regarding the TV - there is too much advertising and too much bias in the news - but it doesn't change the fact that really many people watch it.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't have a TV subscription anymore, I haven't watched TV for the last 10 years. Too much advertising, annoying presenters, archaic programming schedules, etc. I get my content on the internet. I used to have Netflix but canceled that too after realizing I only watched one show in 6 months.
> 
> I don't watch much news either, I have reduced the intake of mainstream news, there is so much bias and - about topics I know a lot about - too many factual errors, I assume it's not better for the rest. I consume some news online but less than in the past. Everything is so politicized / sunk in social justice nonsense these days. Though I do like some "deepdive" media about topics that I find interesting. I don't care about the next #metoo scandal or the 137th news report about gender neutral bathrooms.... Journalists are so out of touch with reality.


Here we are terrorized by inspections. If you don't own TV, they will charge you for radio. If you don't have radio, they will charge you for radio in your car or mobile phone, which is capable to broadcast radiostations.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Well, I can't see Poland agreeing for EU superstate. If it will happen, Poland will probably exit the EU and maybe become something like an associate country. Unfortunately, because I can see that we are benefiting from being a member. But for historic reasons, Poland will simply never give up independence voluntarily. There is too many EU sceptics already in the country (most of them forget that we also have decisive power in the EU and they argue that we don't rule the country but Germans tell us what to do - still, they exist and go to elections, so they have to be taken into account by the politicians) and if we were to give up independence - definitely almost all of the country wouldn't go for it, our history and the fact that we once, after being independent for hundreds of years, lost it for 123 years (when being parts of Germany and Russia we were treated as a subordinate nation - it was much better in already multi-national Austria/Austro-Hungary, but there, on the other hand, the economic situation was very poor) and regained it with much difficulty only 100 years ago, tells us to appreciate it. And it's probably not only Poland.


Maybe smaller states could benefit from being part of EU superstate. Bigger nations with stronger nationalism, like Poland, would not be part of it. Unless EU would split up into few big associated superstates where small nations would be dominated somewhat by larger nations or united by similar cultural background.


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## Kanadzie

Kpc21 said:


> The Swiss situation is therefore weird for me. Do everyone there have cable? Or do everyone use satellite TV?


My TV is connected to internet. Mostly watch Netflix but have some IPTV channels also  I can even watch TV from Poland :lol:


----------



## Kpc21

I once met a Polish family in Germany. They had a laptop computer connected to TV and they were watching Polish TV by (pirate, by the way) online services. And this didn't work well at all with the Internet connection (working via a cable TV network) available in that house. It was often freezing and watching was therefore far from being comfortable.

The IPTV delivered directly by your Internet provider (there are such integrated services and they are getting more and more popular, now one company wants to sell you: power, natural gas, telephone and Internet services together, only water and heat are missing here) is a different thing, it has a special treatment in their network and by the way, if I am not mistaken, it usually uses multicast IP packets, which is not possible over the Internet.

In their case, the best option would be to bring a satellite receiver and encryption card of one of the sat TV operators from Poland (the dish might be bought locally), in theory the terms of the operators don't allow for that - but nobody really cares (those terms are because the TV broadcasters buy licences for some shows and for sports transmissions for the area of a specific country) and the Hot Bird satellite used by them has even better coverage in Germany then in Europe.

Of course, it wouldn't be an option in Canada, the broadcasting satellites used by European operators usually cover Europe and maybe also Middle East and northern edges of Africa.

The offer of Netflix in Poland is limited in comparison to most western-European countries. In addition - they weren't available in Poland at all before 2016. So the people who wanted to watch the series available on Netflix in Poland either had to pirate them, or use Netflix via VPN, which is in fact also piracy. People got used to that, several popular websites offering pirate films got developed (they even have premium accounts!) and... it remained so. And even people who would like to watch those things legally often complain that it is simply not possible in Poland (or sometimes, if it is possible, it's overpriced).


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## ChrisZwolle

*Google Maps*

Google Maps went insane with placename translation. This almost feels like a rewriting of reality.

All of Slovakia in Hungarian









All of Romania in Hungarian.









All of Romania in Polish


----------



## Attus

^^I suppose you opened Google Maps in Hungarian, It's OK, actually all Slovakian towns and villages have a Hungarian name, the complete current Slovakia was part of Hungary up to 1920. The same for the Northeastern side of the Carpatheans in Romania. They are not "translations", they are simply the traditional Hungarian names which are in many cases much older than the Slovak/Romanian ones.


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## ChrisZwolle

But are they still widely used today? Google Maps is used a lot for navigation so it would make sense for most places to be as they are on the signs.


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## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> But are they still widely used today? Google Maps is used a lot for navigation so it would make sense for most places to be as they are on the signs.


I don't agree.

I could not even know how to write properly "Toulouse" or "München", so what's the problem in searching for "Tolosa" or "Monaco"? I would never find such italianizations on signs abroad.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> ^^I suppose you opened Google Maps in Hungarian, It's OK, actually all Slovakian towns and villages have a Hungarian name, the complete current Slovakia was part of Hungary up to 1920. The same for the Northeastern side of the Carpatheans in Romania. They are not "translations", they are simply the traditional Hungarian names which are in many cases much older than the Slovak/Romanian ones.


That is true. There are German and Hungarian names for every Slovak village. I am not sure if the German ones are really used, but Hungarian ones are very frequent even among some Slovaks in northern Slovakia. There are some tows that were renamed during socialism and the citizens still have not accepted the new name and use the old one in spoken language in stead.

I think the same partially goes for Romania. 

This also goes for small geographical names like boroughs and neigbourhoods. For example my grandma lives in a vicinity of railway classification yard. Her neigbourhood were settled in 1939 by immigrants from formerly Slovak lands occupied by Hungary. Despite fleeing from Hungary they gave the neigbourhood a Hungarian name Rendezö (I think it means something like classification yard in Hungarian). Later the citizens distorted the name to Slovak name "Rendez". After the WW2 when pre-war borders got restored the communists named this borough officially as "East railway station" (Východná stanica), in 1960s officially renamed to Eastend (Východné). The borough has this name ever since but every inhabitant call it Rendez although no Hungarian lives there


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> I don't agree.
> 
> I could not even know how to write properly "Toulouse" or "München", so what's the problem in searching for "Tolosa" or "Monaco"? I would never find such italianizations on signs abroad.


GM accepts both inputs. Either you put Mníchov or Munchen the algorithm works with the same point.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> GM accepts both inputs. Either you put Mníchov or Munchen the algorithm works with the same point.


I know. But I think that the map should show names in my language. I am not supposed to know what "Den Haag" is, all I know is I want to go to "L'Aia".


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## ChrisZwolle

But every road sign will point to "Den Haag". Sooner or later drivers will be confronted with reality instead of their own language bubble that Google creates for its users.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> But every road sign will point to "Den Haag".


So what? As long as I have my gps I don't even need to look at signs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not like that, I am trying to put myself in other people's shoes.

Also, I am trying to generalize. "Den Haag" or "London" is easy, buy what if I am driving in a country with another alphabet? Am I supposed to learn Greek just to drive to Athens or Sofia?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It never hurts to know the real name of a city.

A while ago on another forum a Dutch guy asked for experiences with the route via "Laibach". He used that name because he saw it on Google Maps, which is an error, Ljubljana doesn't have an exonym in Dutch, Laibach is German.* But it shows how much people rely on what Google Maps says.

* The Dutch Google Maps had for quite some time (over a year) many erroneous German names for places in the Baltics, Poland and elsewhere like Memel, Marienburg and Laibach. These exonyms have never been used in Dutch, it has since been corrected.


----------



## jdb.2

Well some people still rely on signs.
I once encountered a German who took an exit on the E19 near Antwerp, direction Brussels.
He couldn't speak English very well and showed me a piece of paper with Liège.
He probably came from the Ring Antwerp, where Liège is signed as Luik. He was probably heading for Aachen and took the E19 to Brussels because it was the only recognizable city for him

Actually when you follow Brussel you could still get back on track to Liège, so no big deal in this case.
Recently signs to Aken/Aachen were added on the Ring Antwerp, probably for all those Germans who get lost because they don't know what Luik is. :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Signage is still a complement to GPS navigation: it's confirmation, even if drivers don't primarily rely on it.


----------



## jdb.2

In Belgium it is illegal for regional governments to communicate in other languages.
For signs, (in the case of Flanders) this means a city may not be written in any other language than Dutch, unless the city has no alternate name in Dutch, like Charleroi.
Apperantly this rule doesn't count for foreign cities.
So you get workarounds like adding a foreign city like Aken (Aachen) for the same direction, instead of simply adding Liège between brackets for clarification.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I wonder if Charleroi is signed anywhere in Flanders.


----------



## keokiracer

^^ https://www.google.nl/maps/@50.7165...DZHOn_eOcty_S3hXmg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!5m1!1e1


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## ChrisZwolle

*sh*t happens*

Guess what this truck is transporting...


A61 Garzweiler-1 by European Roads, on Flickr


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Guess what this truck is transporting...
> 
> 
> A61 Garzweiler-1 by European Roads, on Flickr



Political promises :lol:


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> But are they still widely used today?


In Hungary and among ethnically Hungarian people in Slovakia, yes, definitely. You will never hear someone speaking Hungarian but using the Slovak/Romanian names.


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> I could not even know how to write properly "Toulouse" or "München", so what's the problem in searching for "Tolosa" or "Monaco"? I would never find such italianizations on signs abroad.


Good luck setting your GPS to Monaco! You might end up in a very rich and small country by the Mediterranean sea, instead of Bavaria. 



g.spinoza said:


> Am I supposed to learn Greek just to drive to Athens or Sofia?


That's actually good for you! When I was 16 I traveled in Greece alone by bus, and the only way of knowing in which town to get off was to look at the signs, which were all in Greek. That was the day I learned the Greek alphabet, which prooved very useful in highschool and later on during engineering classes at the university.


At work I switched to Google Maps in English, as it just didn't look proper with all the place names in Romanian, many of which aren't even used during conversation.


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## volodaaaa

Ehm... lame question. But how do you change the language of GM? I have tried maps.google.hu and ended up with Slovak names anyway.


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## ChrisZwolle

Changing the domain doesn't change the language anymore. You need to access the menu on the left and change the language there. I have it set to English as it has the least exonyms.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Changing the domain doesn't change the language anymore. You need to access the menu on the left and change the language there. I have it set to English as it has the least exonyms.



Thanks a lot. It used to work 

Edit: Holy cow - even boroughs are translated


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## volodaaaa

Just for fun. Me landing B737 at Samos airport :lol: a simulator of course. I put the English subtitles there.


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> Just for fun. Me landing B737 at Samos airport :lol: a simulator of course. I put the English subtitles there.


Looks fab. How much does it cost over there ? 100 euros ?


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> Changing the domain doesn't change the language anymore. You need to access the menu on the left and change the language there. I have it set to English as it has the least exonyms.


Or change the "hl=xx" part, where xx is the language code, at the end of the URL. Try for example https://www.google.es/maps?hl=en&tab=wl, which is the Spanish Google Maps but in English . I delete that part when linking, which causes Google Maps to open in the default language of each user.


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Looks fab. How much does it cost over there ? 100 euros ?



Depend on a programme. I had 2 hours of flying to "dangerous airports" which added up to 160 €. It was a birthday gift so definitely not something you do weekly  But although it was static (without any hydraulics to simulate real cockpit movement), it was indeed realistic and was worth the price.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> All of Romania in Polish


Polish is OK, those names are used.

And this is already for a few years in the Polish version.



g.spinoza said:


> So what? As long as I have my gps I don't even need to look at signs.


And then you turn into a wrong exit if they are close to each other. Sometimes looking at the signs is necessary.



volodaaaa said:


> GM accepts both inputs. Either you put Mníchov or Munchen the algorithm works with the same point.


For a long time in Google Maps it worked so that you had to put both the first name and family name of the street's patron (and sometimes even titles like "president", "marshall" etc.) for the search engine to find the street. When Google Map Maker opened, many of them got corrected by the community, the short names including the family name were added. Now there is no Map Maker any more (and for a long time before they closed this service, locals had to fight with Google employees from India who often "knew better" and didn't accept changes added by locals even if something on the map was incorrect or something just changed in the reality and the StreetView photos were not up to date) and the remaining errors of this type are impossible to fix. 

When you had to type (or, at least, start typing): "aleja marszałka Edwarda Śmigłego-Rydza" instead of just "Śmigłego-Rydza", it was really annoying. 



jdb.2 said:


> Well some people still rely on signs.
> I once encountered a German who took an exit on the E19 near Antwerp, direction Brussels.
> He couldn't speak English very well and showed me a piece of paper with Liège.
> He probably came from the Ring Antwerp, where Liège is signed as Luik. He was probably heading for Aachen and took the E19 to Brussels because it was the only recognizable city for him
> 
> Actually when you follow Brussel you could still get back on track to Liège, so no big deal in this case.
> Recently signs to Aken/Aachen were added on the Ring Antwerp, probably for all those Germans who get lost because they don't know what Luik is. :lol:


This is why I am for spelling the foreign town names on road signs in the language of that town and not in the local language of the sign.

This is what Vienna convention recommends and this is how it is done in Poland now (although the current government wants to change it), but unfortunately not every country follows this recommendation.



bogdymol said:


> That's actually good for you! When I was 16 I traveled in Greece alone by bus, and the only way of knowing in which town to get off was to look at the signs, which were all in Greek.


I was twice in Greece, both times on islands: once on Crete and once on Corfu. In both situations, all the road signs (with maybe one exception) had a Latin transcription under the name in the Greek alphabet. The Greek letters were yellow and the Latin ones white. The directions other than names of towns (e.g. "beach", "hospital", "port" etc.) were all translated to English. With one exception - on Crete, I saw a sign directing to German soldiers' graveyard, on which the text in Latin alphabet was: "Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof".

The only problem was that on Corfu, there was much inconsistency in the name of the capital of the island (whose name is the same as the name of the island). You could see: Corfu, Korfu and Kerkyra. The last one is the direct transcription of the Greek name of the city and the island, two first ones are English/international exonymes.


----------



## Kpc21

A traffic lights failure in Warsaw's main business district (so called Mordor):


----------



## Spookvlieger

Typical selflessness driving.


----------



## bogdymol

Kpc21 said:


> A traffic lights failure in Warsaw's main business district (so called Mordor):
> 
> http://bi.gazeta.pl/im/4e/c3/16/z23867982V,Tetris-na-Ochocie--Korek-na-skrzyzowaniu-Grojeckie.jpg


That reminds me of a picture from Bucharest:









picture from zoso.ro


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## General Maximus

... or Stockholm when they were switching from keeping left to right...


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## MichiH

Road_UK said:


> I thought the A14 west of Huntington was something like the A45 coming from Coventry...



:nuts: :nuts: :wtf:


----------



## Kpc21

Road_UK said:


> Dagen H (H day), today usually called "Högertrafikomläggningen" ("The right-hand traffic diversion"), was the day on 3 September 1967, in which the traffic in Sweden switched from driving on the left-hand side of the road to the right.


But from what I know, it took place at night and there was something like a few hours (or an hour) transition time when it was forbidden to drive in the whole country... Even now, the traffic isn't normally so high in cities in the middle of night as in this photo, so it seems weird that such a situation actually took place. But maybe some people deliberately decided to drive at that moment (even though it wasn't allowed) in order to take place in this really exceptional event...




joshsam said:


> Typical selflessness driving.


The problem is, at such a big intersection at rush hour, if the traffic lights do not work, there is simply no way to enter the intersection from the street without priority without forcing this priority.


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## jdb.2

Is this a pun on yesterday's elections? :lol:


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## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> But from what I know, it took place at night and there was something like a few hours (or an hour) transition time when it was forbidden to drive in the whole country... Even now, the traffic isn't normally so high in cities in the middle of night as in this photo, so it seems weird that such a situation actually took place. But maybe some people deliberately decided to drive at that moment (even though it wasn't allowed) in order to take place in this really exceptional event...
> 
> 
> 
> The problem is, at such a big intersection at rush hour, if the traffic lights do not work, there is simply no way to enter the intersection from the street without priority without forcing this priority.



If I am not mistaken, there was a short transition period during which the global 30 kph speed limit was valid all around the country.


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## bogdymol

Today (10th of September) you could already buy Christmas items in a random Tesco in England. Isn’t it a bit too early?


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## volodaaaa

We have the so called St. Nicolaus day (6th of December) when kids are given some sweets, mostly chocolate figures resembling him. When they appear in stores, it is the official start of commercial Christmas season  They are later accompanied by Christmas decoration an so on.

Last year it was the 1st of October. 

But here is the typical seasons of the classic commercial year in Slovakia.

January - Christmas sales + hearts for the upcoming Valentine's day.
February - hearts, chocolate boxes, flowers, teddy bears - because of the upcoming Valentine's day. It remains in some form even afterwards - the international women's day at the very start of March is still a sound tradition in Slovakia.
March - Chicks, eggs, tulips and other stuff in green and yellow colour - the Easter is coming
April - Easter, but also the international mother's day at the beginning of May.
May - Summer preparations, gardening tools. least aggressive season,
June - End of the school term, students' results (did your child have a good results - buy 'em a new tablet).
July - almost like May,
August - back to school (paper notebooks, pencil cases, colour-boxes, etc.) 1st of August (note: the school term starts on the 3rd of September),
September - candles! Autumn is there, which means the All saints day in November,
October - candles + St. Nicolaus day + Christmas
November - Christmas, Christmas, Christmas,
December - Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, even more Christmas + fireworks and fizzy drinks (New year's eve)


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## DanielFigFoz

bogdymol said:


> Today (10th of September) you could already buy Christmas items in a random Tesco in England. Isn’t it a bit too early?


It will be the 10th August next year no doubt.


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## keber

I've just seen Chinese motorists on Greek A2 (Chinese plate). I have a picture, but can't upload it from here. And some call me nuts going to vacation with my car 1500 km away.


----------



## Verso

Once I saw four Chinese cars in Ljubljana, they were on some rally.


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## bogdymol

I once read that you are not allowed to drive in China unless you get a local drivers license (EU or International Drivers License not accepted). Is that still the case? And are Chinese people allowed to drive in Europe with their license?


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> I once read that you are not allowed to drive in China unless you get a local drivers license (EU or International Drivers License not accepted). Is that still the case? And are Chinese people allowed to drive in Europe with their license?


Yes, with the International Driving Permit.


----------



## italystf

I didn't post it there, but somewhen in August I spotted a black SUV from Novosibirsk oblast in Lignano Sabbiadoro. Maybe was it the same that Verso spotted in Pula?


----------



## Verso

^^ IIRC, it was indeed a black SUV. It was a good car.


----------



## volodaaaa

^^
You'll no longer exist  (sorry I had to  )


----------



## MichiH

bogdymol said:


> Today (10th of September) you could already buy Christmas items in a random Tesco in England. Isn’t it a bit too early?


It started in Germany two or three weeks ago.....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands also celebrates St. Nicholas on December 5th, which puts a brake on the early Christmas items in supermarkets. The general mindset is "first Sinterklaas, then Christmas". So St Nicholas items are sold from late August, but Christmas items generally not until late fall.


----------



## Kpc21

bogdymol said:


> I once read that you are not allowed to drive in China unless you get a local drivers license (EU or International Drivers License not accepted). Is that still the case? And are Chinese people allowed to drive in Europe with their license?





italystf said:


> Yes, with the International Driving Permit.


A similar asymmetry is between Europe and the US. In Europe (at least in Poland but it's the kind of thing which should be consistent between the countries) you are not allowed to drive a car with manual transmission if you took the driving exam on an automatic car. In fact, 99% of exams are passed on manuals and if you want to do it on automatic (who does it? usually the people who are totally talentless about driving or the disabled people who can't use manual transmission because of their disability), you would probably bump onto some problems, like having to find a driving school which has an automatic car and getting a permission from the exam center to take the exam using a school's car since they also normally don't have automatic ones (although the law has recently changed and now you are always allowed to take the exam in a school's car - but they still have to mark it in a specific way, equip it with video cameras and so on).

In the US, as most people there drive automatic cars, it's totally normal to take the exam in an automatic one and probably there is very few candidates who do it with manual transmission. But there, it does not prohibit you from driving manual cars. And this is still valid in Europe.

So an American who took the exam in an automatic car can drive manual in Europe but an European who did the same cannot.



ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands also celebrates St. Nicholas on December 5th, which puts a brake on the early Christmas items in supermarkets. The general mindset is "first Sinterklaas, then Christmas". So St Nicholas items are sold from late August, but Christmas items generally not until late fall.


How is the December 6th stuff different from the Christmas one?

In Poland it's all the same. Chocolate Santa Clauses and a whole variety of stuff (mostly toys for kids) sold for gifts. The only difference is that there are some artifacts appropriate for Christmas but not for the Santa Claus day - like Christmas trees, for example. So they start being sold later.

And a typical moment where the whole Christmas thing starts is after All Saints - so from November 2nd. There is more and more Christmas decorations in shops, more and more Christmas songs on the radio and so on.


----------



## General Maximus

It's not really different. Presents are the same, but with different gift wrappings, and it's advertised differently. But in the period leading up to St Nicolas, Black Pete breaks into houses and puts chocolate and other candy stuff in childerens shoes.

Black Pete has, however, become a controversial subject. Never mind Syria, refugees, Russia, Trump or Brexit - the unity of a whole nation is at stake because of the issue whether Black Pete is seen as racist or not, and it's dividing up the whole nation. Protests from both camps are due to start any moment now, now that the summer is over - and in the Dutch Skybars of this forum, they'll have plenty to talk about again.


----------



## volodaaaa

General Maximus said:


> It's not really different. Presents are the same, but with different gift wrappings, and it's advertised differently. But in the period leading up to St Nicolas, Black Pete breaks into houses and puts chocolate and other candy stuff in childerens shoes.
> 
> Black Pete has, however, become a controversial subject. Never mind Syria, refugees, Russia, Trump or Brexit - the unity of a whole nation is at stake because of the issue whether Black Pete is seen as racist or not, and it's dividing up the whole nation. Protests from both camps are due to start any moment now, now that the summer is over - and in the Dutch Skybars of this forum, they'll have plenty to talk about again.


Well this is the reason why you can't take liberals seriously. 

We used to have (its been a while and thankfully it seems to be over now) problems with typical Slovak junk food called _Cigánska pečienka_ or just _Cigánska_ which is literally A Gypsy's liver (or just Gypsy's). It is something like traditional Slovak kebab and it has always been called like this. The food is especially popular in Summer by lakes and open-air swimming pools. Moreover it is a typical food at Slovak Christmas fairs.

No officials from the Roma minority have ever complained about that. But some liberals thought a few years ago they were born to safe the world and decided to start a campaign against this name.


The same goes for Slovak feminists. During the history of sovereign Slovakia (which is not a long time on the other hand :lol: ) they cared for two topics:
- to change the anthem because is too masculine,
- to quit celebrating the Easter in traditional Slovak way (men whipping women and pouring water on them*).


* Men always do that only symbolically. However in rural areas (except suburbs) the process of water pouring could be more drastic. But still a woman can lock herself up home and be in slippers all day long.


Feminists has never cared about (for would be also suitable) young mothers with their funny income or something. Never have they intended to create any educational centre for young mothers from marginal social group to teach them how to bring their children up so that the children would not suffer from social class gap. They were complete silent during the series of group rapes in India. But they thoroughly watch the politicians if they use the correct pronouns :lol: Most of the Slovak words regarding professions are masculine. So it is incredibly easy to make them mad :nuts::lol:


----------



## General Maximus

I don't really want to turn this into a political discussion. I'm liberal-leaning myself, but that's not really the point. I was just explaining something about the St Nicolas fest, and the hassle that it brings these days...


----------



## volodaaaa

Sorry, I did not mean all liberals. I am one too in some aspects


----------



## bogdymol

True, but where I live all my post correspondence and of some other people having a flat rented there, we all receive our post at the owners, who distribute it to us later during the day. They never opened anything, but I find it higher chance for them looking inside my post than my e-mail being hijacked. 

On that paper that I requested there isn’t any sensitive data, but just something like: bogdymol visited our dentist office today between hour X and hour Y. That’s all. Nothing is written about why I was there. 

Speaking of the safety of e-mail communication, today I e-mailed an ~500k € contract to a client of us. There is no original of that, but just each party signed it and sent a copy per e-mail... It works also over e-mail if both parties agree with this.


----------



## Kpc21

But according to the GDPR, it will be *their* fault if they process (send) the data the insecure way and due to this fact, something happens...

The "sensitive" type of correspondence, sent by traditional mail, is usually sent as registered letters - so that you (or a member of your family) must sign that it's you (or one of them) who actually gets the letter to your hand.


----------



## volodaaaa

I was in my car repair service after the gdpr implementation and along with invoices and reports I was forced to sing a gdpr declaration that they are allowed to use my name and address. But according to some rules the gdpr declaration must include a birth date too. The would not have normally needed it. So thanks to gdpr they received even more personal data than necessary.


----------



## TrueBulgarian

volodaaaa said:


> I was in my car repair service after the gdpr implementation and along with invoices and reports I was forced to sing a gdpr declaration that they are allowed to use my name and address. But according to some rules the gdpr declaration must include a birth date too. The would not have normally needed it. So thanks to gdpr they received even more personal data than necessary.


One of the cornerstones of GDPR is privacy by design and by default (Article 25 of GDPR https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679). Essentially, privacy by default means that as little personal data needs to be collected and processed as possible. 

There are two options as to why your car repair service required your birth date: 
1) Some national laws require the birth date to be obtained when providing the services of car repair. 
2) They were ill-advised by some poorly informed adviser. 

Generally speaking, even large companies in some Member States have difficulties understanding the rules, mainly in the East. The reason being that privacy is still a foreign subject to the societies in the East, mainly due to communism. However, it is very unfortunate that there are so many legal and general GDPR advisers, who have not even read the Regulation itself, which is actually quite clear, as it was written in the modern era of EU law.


----------



## Kpc21

TrueBulgarian said:


> 1) Some national laws require the birth date to be obtained when providing the services of car repair.


Maybe issuing an invoice to a private person (unless it was issued to a company) requires giving the birth date.

In Poland, such invoices require the national identification number which anyway contains the birth date (as well as gender).



> Regulation itself, which is actually quite clear, as it was written in the modern era of EU law.


It is quite clear but it is also very general. On one hand it's good because it's flexible and can be well adjusted to the situation, on the other hand... it gives very much room for various interpretations. I even met interpretations that processing IP addresses for the purpose of displaying a website is data processing according to the GDPR and requires a consent of the user. Which is a nonsense because you anyway have to process the IP address to display a notification to the user and let him agree for that or not. Which kinda makes the whole Internet illegal. But if you read and start analyzing the GDPR, this is actually what is written in this act.

And there are companies that display a GDPR notification upon entering the website for the first time by someone (just because of that). Which is as close to obeying this interpretation as it could be. But then... if you want not to display this on someone's screen each time he opens it, you must save a cookie on his computer, and to do that, you also need his consent based on another law...

Of course, there are also good sides of GDPR. Two months ago I was in a shop of a telephone operator to move the fixed line phone to them (grandparents are still using it and all the family knows our fixed line number, so we are keeping it even though it is quite expensive compared with cell phone services). Yesterday someone from this new operator called us and it turned out that for some unknown reasons the old operator did not want to release our line and the contract sign then became invalid, we must sign it again. One of the steps was that the operator read something like 5 or 7 privacy consents and we had to say "yes" or "no" to them. Most of them were about allowing them to spam our telephone, e-mail or traditional mail addresses (separately for each  ) and it was clearly understandable from the content of what she was reading - so that every reasonable person would answer "no" to them. In some offers, there are bonuses for agreeing to some of them - but not in this one.

It was kinda annoying, but at least, it is clear that we agree or not agree for advertising. Which was often not the case before.


----------



## TrueBulgarian

Kpc21 said:


> Maybe issuing an invoice to a private person (unless it was issued to a company) requires giving the birth date.
> 
> In Poland, such invoices require the national identification number which anyway contains the birth date (as well as gender).


That's what I was thinking of, yes.



Kpc21 said:


> It is quite clear but it is also very general. On one hand it's good because it's flexible and can be well adjusted to the situation, on the other hand... it gives very much room for various interpretations. I even met interpretations that processing IP addresses for the purpose of displaying a website is data processing according to the GDPR and requires a consent of the user. Which is a nonsense because you anyway have to process the IP address to display a notification to the user and let him agree for that or not. Which kinda makes the whole Internet illegal. But if you read and start analyzing the GDPR, this is actually what is written in this act.
> 
> And there are companies that display a GDPR notification upon entering the website for the first time by someone (just because of that). Which is as close to obeying this interpretation as it could be. But then... if you want not to display this on someone's screen each time he opens it, you must save a cookie on his computer, and to do that, you also need his consent based on another law...


I fully agree. To make things further complicated, the way Internet works with data passing in transit at certain points, whereupon it can be obtained by unauthorized third parties is likely not compatible with GDPR. Too bad that the legislator didn't think of these issues, however I trust that this will be resolved in the next few years either by the ECJ and/or by GDPR2. 



Kpc21 said:


> Of course, there are also good sides of GDPR. Two months ago I was in a shop of a telephone operator to move the fixed line phone to them (grandparents are still using it and all the family knows our fixed line number, so we are keeping it even though it is quite expensive compared with cell phone services). Yesterday someone from this new operator called us and it turned out that for some unknown reasons the old operator did not want to release our line and the contract sign then became invalid, we must sign it again. One of the steps was that the operator read something like 5 or 7 privacy consents and we had to say "yes" or "no" to them. Most of them were about allowing them to spam our telephone, e-mail or traditional mail addresses (separately for each  ) and it was clearly understandable from the content of what she was reading - so that every reasonable person would answer "no" to them. In some offers, there are bonuses for agreeing to some of them - but not in this one.
> 
> It was kinda annoying, but at least, it is clear that we agree or not agree for advertising. Which was often not the case before.


Indeed, previously I had issues with Bulgarian telecom operators spamming me with offers all the time, despite the fact that I had let them know on numerous occasions that I don't want to receive unsolicited offers. After GDPR somehow these offers stopped...


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> I was in my car repair service after the gdpr implementation and along with invoices and reports I was forced to sing a gdpr declaration that they are allowed to use my name and address. But according to some rules the gdpr declaration must include a birth date too. The would not have normally needed it. So thanks to gdpr they received even more personal data than necessary.


Such an interpretation is pure bullshit.

A concent-based authorization (GDPR 6.1.(a)) is neither needed nor valid in such cases. The applicable statement is GDPR 6.1.(b): "Processing shall be lawful only if ... processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract".

That approach is quite evident: If you want make a contract to receive some service, you must give the information needed to deliver that service, but no more.

Thus, if you carry your car to be repaired, the carage can store your vital and necessary personal data, without your explicit concent. Still the other responsibilities remain place, like giving information on how the data is used, your right to get a copy of all your data, and your right to be forgotten after the case gets completed. For storing the birth date, there must be a valid reason. 

The relevant EU body WP29 has published interpretation guidelines on concent: http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/document.cfm?action=display&doc_id=51030

The text is available in other EU languages at http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/document.cfm?action=display&doc_id=53343

As the text shows, the scope of the concent-based authorization is much narrower that it is commonly thought. Therefore most of the pop-up windows "Press OK to give your concent if you like to use our web site" were and are based on a misunderstanding.


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> As the text shows, the scope of the concent-based authorization is much narrower that it is commonly thought. Therefore most of the pop-up windows "Press OK to give your concent if you like to use our web site" were and are based on a misunderstanding.


But there is still this obligation to give information how the data are processed and so on.

You have the article 13:


> Where personal data relating to a data subject are collected from the data subject, the controller shall, *at the time when personal data are obtained*, provide the data subject with all of the following information


So at the moment of getting the personal data from someone, the administrator is obliged to provide this person with quite a lot of information.

From that come all those pop-ups.

Plus most websites, especially commercial ones, gather various data either for statistical purposes, or e.g. to be able to display you profiled advertisement. This isn't anything *necessary* to provide a service of displaying a website - so for that, they need your consent. And they are obliged to make sure you know what you are agreeing for.

Another issue is that those information pop-ups or sheets are very often entitled, at least in Poland, something like "GDPR informational clause", which tells totally nothing to someone who doesn't know what GDPR is and is against the Article 12.1.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> But there is still this obligation to give information how the data are processed and so on.


Yes, as written. But a concent is (a) not needed (b) not valid.


----------



## volodaaaa

Well, I always go to the same authorised Toyota repair service. They have never wanted my birth date from me. No birthday has ever been written in my invoice, just name, address, licence plate and vin. If they need to verify the ownership, they ask you to show the registration certificate.

But the new form due to gdpr includes also the birth date field. I have already made jokes about that with the technician. He told me it must be so even though they do not need it.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> But the new form due to gdpr includes also the birth date field.


Anything dumb can, of course, be justified by GDPR, even if GDPR has nothing to do with it. The whole GDPR deployment was a disaster, because insufficient guidelines and massive amounts of disinformation made people to take panic actions with no reason.

We have how lived 3+ months the GDPR time, and the sky has not yet dropped down.


----------



## General Maximus

*Speeding foreigners in France*

List of people from other countries who have been caught speeding by a fixed radar system in France in 2017:

- Belgium: 493,092 
- Spain: 452,191
- Germany: 378,780
- Italy: 364,388
- The Netherlands: 345,129
- Switzerland: 249,236
- Romania: 117,921
- Poland: 117,053
- Luxembourg: 66,662
- Czech Republic: 48,824
- Hungary: 31,469
- Slovakia: 20,548
- Austria: 19,375

Source: https://www.ledauphine.com/france-monde/2018/09/14/qui-sont-les-etrangers-les-plus-flashes-en-france


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Those are some big numbers. 

The high number of Belgian offenses is notable, it amounts to almost 10% of the entire Belgian car fleet (of course some people get multiple fines). 

Also, in my experience you see much more Dutch cars than Belgian, Spanish, German or Italian ones, especially farther from border regions. France is the most popular tourist destination for the Dutch and most people drive to France. For example on A7 you will see Dutch vehicles all the time, despite it being 1000 kilometers away for them.


----------



## General Maximus

True, although the Belgians and Spanish cruise around a lot in their border regions. And the A1 from Belgium to Paris is full of everybody, really. I miss the British in this list, but that's probably due to the fact that the Brits have a carte blance when driving in France and indeed the whole of Europe. The DVLA does not issue registration details to foreign countries, so people get away with fixed speed traps. I know I did in the early days...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch were one of the first to receive fines from France, I know I did in 2014, so maybe the Dutch have gotten so many fines that people are paying more attention. It's easy to get an inadvertent speeding ticket for <10 km/h over the limit. It's not like they are all driving like maniacs.

The high share of foreign offenses is not really that surprising. Local drivers (i.e. the French) likely know most speed cameras and the vast majority of trips of French drivers in France are on roads they are familiar with, while the vast majority of trips of foreign drivers in France are on roads they are not familiar with, so it's not so strange foreign drivers are getting a high share of fines. 

My city's ring road has several speed cameras. I have never ever gotten a fine there despite driving there many hundred times, because I know each speed camera. But foreigners don't and may get a fine.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

General Maximus said:


> True, although the Belgians and Spanish cruise around a lot in their border regions. And the A1 from Belgium to Paris is full of everybody, really. I miss the British in this list, but that's probably due to the fact that the Brits have a carte blance when driving in France and indeed the whole of Europe. The DVLA does not issue registration details to foreign countries, so people get away with fixed speed traps. I know I did in the early days...


A British forumer who is mostly active on the Skybar got a German speeding ticket through the post the other day. I think they might have started sharing details at some point very recently, I remember it being discussed at least. 

Or perhaps it wasn't a fixed speed trap.


----------



## General Maximus

^^ I got one from the Germans when I was still living in the UK, but this wasn't through a fixed speed trap, but from the BAG. (in Britain comparable with the VOSA - the law enforcement agency that oversees commercial traffic)

When driving a freight van in Germany, you're supposed to keep a log book with your driving hours on it. The Germans call it a "Lügebuch" (lying book), because you can basically write what you want on it. And I didn't have one. So, upon a BAG road check, they've issued me with a penalty, and sent it to my home address in the UK.


----------



## MichiH

^^ You are driving a freight van? Like the forumer who has recently appeared again - he seems to live anywhere in Alsace too.


----------



## General Maximus

^^ You mean Road_UK? Great guy, I know him very well 

I'm afraid he won't be with us anymore, but fear not - I'm here.


----------



## MichiH

^^ The recent posts were deleted again. I guess I was just dreaming - _must have been a nightmare _ The other guy was more amusing though


----------



## General Maximus

^^ I'm really nice too. We're practically twins.


----------



## MichiH

^^ We'll see


----------



## DanielFigFoz

General Maximus said:


> ^^ I got one from the Germans when I was still living in the UK, but this wasn't through a fixed speed trap, but from the BAG. (in Britain comparable with the VOSA - the law enforcement agency that oversees commercial traffic)
> 
> When driving a freight van in Germany, you're supposed to keep a log book with your driving hours on it. The Germans call it a "Lügebuch" (lying book), because you can basically write what you want on it. And I didn't have one. So, upon a BAG road check, they've issued me with a penalty, and sent it to my home address in the UK.


Interesting, it was probably something like that then. 

Talking about the DVLA (the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency), I am having a bit of a saga with them right now.

I bought my car in July. As some of you will no doubt know, and General Maximus here certainly does, in the UK when you buy a car you get a torn out part of the vehicle registration for you to keep to prove that you are responsible for taxing and insuring the car. The rest of the document gets sent out to the DVLA in Swansea for them to update their details. Within four weeks, but usually less, you should get a new registration document through the post and if you don't get anything in six weeks you should contact them.

I bought the car in mid-July but by last week I still hadn't got anything. So I phoned the DVLA Welsh language phone number, you can often get these things sorted quicker through Welsh-language services because there's less of a queue. Anyway, I phoned them and a message came up saying that the DVLA was experiencing technical issues and they couldn't access their records and that I should phone back another time. So I phoned them back the next day and I got to the part where they say 'press 1 for x, press 2 for y'. I pressed the relevant number and got a message saying that they were going to transfer me to the English language service. -I eventually got through to someone and he told me to go to the post office, fill in a form and send in the the little part of the registration document that I had received. So that's what I did. I posted it at the very same post office and I thought that would be that. 

But no, the next day, the postman returned the letter, which I had posted at the post office, unpostmarked, opened and in a little plastic bag. So I had to send it again.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

:runaway:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1042107642368479232


----------



## Fane40

General Maximus said:


> ^^ You mean Road_UK? Great guy, I know him very well
> 
> I'm afraid he won't be with us anymore, but fear not - I'm here.





Always on european roads ?


----------



## Kpc21

https://www.sciencealert.com/this-a...washed-up-in-new-zealand-and-it-s-mesmerising



> if you do see any lion's mane jellyfish on your local beach, we recommend not touching them. Although their stingers are not going to cause serious damage, they can still cause some pain.


So it seems that even though it's so big, a contact with it may be painful but it won't kill you (at least if you aren't allergic to it or anything like that).


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> https://www.sciencealert.com/this-a...washed-up-in-new-zealand-and-it-s-mesmerising
> 
> 
> 
> So it seems that even though it's so big, a contact with it may be painful but it won't kill you (at least if you aren't allergic to it or anything like that).



There is surely every likelihood that you spot it before you touch it. This is the main difference between lion's mane and box jellyfishes which are lethal, but extremely unnoticeable because of their size.


----------



## MichiH

*The list has been updated*

*NEW* SK
SLO --> SLO
*NEW* HR
*NEW* BIH
*NEW* RSM


----------



## Kanadzie

DanielFigFoz said:


> A British forumer who is mostly active on the Skybar got a German speeding ticket through the post the other day. I think they might have started sharing details at some point very recently, I remember it being discussed at least. .


No wonder they voted for Brexit :lol:


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Kanadzie said:


> No wonder they voted for Brexit :lol:


We ain't paying no European speeding tickets mate.


----------



## General Maximus

Fane40 said:


> Always on european roads ?


Yes sir 

What about you?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> Zwolle made the headlines today in Italy:
> 
> https://www.repubblica.it/ambiente/...ta-207352572/?ref=RHPPBT-VA-I0-C4-P12-S1.4-T1
> 
> about some bike path made out of recycled plastic.


Yes it was opened recently. The whole 30 meters of it. :lol:

It makes you wonder though, if this is really a feasible solution, if you need 218,000 plastic cups for 30 meters of bike path. There are tens of thousands of kilometers of bike paths like this in the Netherlands.


----------



## bogdymol

The questions is... when will you make a road video about it?


----------



## General Maximus

Seems legit....


----------



## VITORIA MAN

Parking in lisbon








https://ep01.epimg.net/elpais/image...834412_1537790168_noticia_normal_recorte1.jpg


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Don't you know that traffic laws don't apply to BMW, Audi, VW Golf, etc...?


----------



## Fatfield

That looks like my street on a weekend. 25 houses, 15 parking bays and about 40 cars/vans. Oh, and 10 garages that no-one uses for vehicles.


----------



## keokiracer

ChrisZwolle said:


> Don't you know that traffic laws don't apply to BMW, Audi, VW Golf, etc...?


You forgot Range Rover Chris


----------



## g.spinoza

The French government is introducing a new system for calculating road taxes for vehicles; it will be introduced next January and will be based on CO2 emissions, regardless of fuel.

Basically, if a car emits more than 185 g/km its owner will have to pay *10.5 thousand euro per year*. Cars below 117 g/km will pay nothing, and everything in between will pay proportionally.

https://www.repubblica.it/motori/se..._g_km-207524453/?ref=RHRS-BH-I0-C6-P2-S1.6-T1 (in Italian)


My question: are they nuts?
No, seriously. Are they freaking nuts?

Do you think it will push people towards low emission cars or, as it happened in Italy, towards registering cars in Romania where such madness is unheard of?


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Don't you know that traffic laws don't apply to BMW, Audi, VW Golf, etc...?



Definitely a good guy. He left a corridor for pedestrians. Hats off. :lol:


----------



## Kpc21

Junkie said:


> I read on the news new attacks are happening in east Ukraine. Is this the last ongoing war happening on the European continent?


Do you mean the last one ever?

Because before Russia attacking Ukraine, there was no war in Europe for quite a few years, after the one in former Yugoslavia came to an end. Not so far away, before, was the one with Russia attacking Georgia.


----------



## pasadia

^ Hungary?


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Do you mean the last one ever?
> 
> Because before Russia attacking Ukraine, there was no war in Europe for quite a few years, after the one in former Yugoslavia came to an end. Not so far away, before, was the one with Russia attacking Georgia.



It may be just a stupid newspeak, but I think these were not wars but conflicts. I do not have any knowledge that any of the sides involved declared a war.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> It may be just a stupid newspeak, but I think these were not wars but conflicts. I do not have any knowledge that any of the sides involved declared a war.


I dissagree. Nobody is officially declaring the war anymore. It was popular in some ancient times. Especially after founding the United Nations no countries would take that risk to be a bad guy who decided to declar war on some other country. So modern wars come out of conflicts. Donetsk definitely looks liek city that was the war zone.


----------



## Kpc21

Whether the war was declared or not, there is some military action and massive fights with use of weapons, with an aim to take over the power over specific territory - and this is what people normally consider to be a war.

Regardless of what a war is considered to be formally.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Whether the war was declared or not, there is some military action and massive fights with use of weapons, with an aim to take over the power over specific territory - and this is what people normally consider to be a war.
> 
> Regardless of what a war is considered to be formally.


Yeah, but the line between war and conflict is very blurred then. The Turkish coup d'etat attempt in 2016 would be de facto a war too. Euromaidan in Kiev in 2014 was an armed conflict too.


----------



## jdb.2

VITORIA MAN said:


> Parking in lisbon
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://ep01.epimg.net/elpais/image...834412_1537790168_noticia_normal_recorte1.jpg


Ad campaign by Nissan in Belgian and Dutch cities to promote their automated parking system.
https://www.autoblog.nl/nieuws/nissan-belaagt-foutparkeerders-in-nieuwe-campagne-115319


----------



## g.spinoza

Greetings from Amsterdam!

So are mopeds allowed on bike paths, no need for helmet?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You don't need a helmet if they are limited to 25 km/h, but many if not most of those mopeds are tampered with so that they can drive faster. They are just regular mopeds with a speed limiter that is easily removed.

There is growing concern about the large increase of nonstandard bicycles / vehicles on bike paths in the Netherlands, especially in the larger cities where bike paths are the most crowded. Normally they were for bikes, but now you have e-bikes, even faster speed-pedelecs, 25 km/h mopeds, bakfietsen / cargo bikes, stints, beer bikes, etc.


----------



## Don Alessandro

I heard that there is a discussion about banning electro cargo bikes, after a bike crash in which four children died.


----------



## g.spinoza

It scares the hell out of me to cross the road here in Amsterdam. Those bike rides are crazy.


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> It scares the hell out of me to cross the road here in Amsterdam. Those bike rides are crazy.


Interesting. Last year in Amsterdam, I felt that the bike traffic there is very calm and disciplined compared to the anarchy in Helsinki.


----------



## Kpc21

What do you think about riding bikes on sidewalks?

Here in Poland, many old people do so because they feel safer this way in comparison with on the roadway.

Currently, it is allowed to ride a bike on a sidewalk only in special cases:
- while taking care of a child up to 10 years (such a child riding a bike is considered a pedestrian),
- if bad weather makes it dangerous to ride on the roadway,
- if the allowed speed on the roadway exceed 50 km/h, the sidewalk is at least 2 metres wide and there is no separate cycling lane or way
on condition that one gives way to all the pedestrians.

In most other situations, it is illegal.

But I can't see anything evil if one cycles onto the sidewalk e.g. in order to omit a queue to traffic lights – of course if he takes care about the pedestrians. Or if someone – as many old people – cycles on the sidewalk because he feels unsafe on the roadway. Especially if it's a big road, on which drivers often exceed the allowed speed. Or in order to access a property on the left hand side of a double-carriageway road without riding up to the first place where it is possible to make a U-turn. 

On the other hand – there are also places where it's forbidden for the cyclists to ride on the roadway and they are forced to use the sidewalk, still giving way to the pedestrians. Such a road sign is used in those cases, on the entry on such a sidewalk obligatory for the cyclists:










This is also not good because there are cyclists, often on race-like bikes, who prefer a lot driving on the roadway. They are fast, so they don't impede the drivers – and their safety is their problem. They anyway tend to ignore such signs.


----------



## General Maximus

ICYMI: You'll all know SOMEONE who complains about speed enforcement and how Police earn bonuses (yawn) by persecuting the poor, speeding motorist...

Every year hundreds get caught in police speed controls for driving too fast — with a great many caught by automatic speed cameras.

But did you know there’s a way to avoid the hefty fines that come along with speeding?

It’s absolutely brilliant. Best of all, the method works internationally, in every country in the world!

1. Look closely at the signs on the road and how they show you the speed limit. The number indicated is the maximum speed you can travel. Whether you’re on foot, on a bike or in a car.

2. Try to locate your car’s speedometer. You normally find it somewhere in front of the driver’s seat, on the dashboard. It has an arrow pointing to the number that reflects the car’s speed. On newer cars, the speed is sometimes displayed digitally, with numbers.

3. This last point is also the hardest. Adjust your speed according to the number shown on the road sign. The Police cannot fine you if you do not drive over this number.

Strangely, there seem to be surprisingly too few who are aware of this simple yet genius trick. Best of all, if you stick to it, you’ll never have to pay a speeding fine EVER again! Even better — the road will become much safer for everyone!


----------



## g.spinoza

MattiG said:


> Interesting. Last year in Amsterdam, I felt that the bike traffic there is very calm and disciplined compared to the anarchy in Helsinki.


I've never been to Helsinki.
It seems here that bicycles have to yield to nobody (cars, other bikes, pedestrians). Only traffic lights seem to do the trick.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Inner cities are the only place in the Netherlands where cyclists mix with other traffic on a large scale. In the newer residential areas and suburbs the bicycle infrastructure is mostly separate from general traffic. 

Separate bicycle facilities became commonplace by the 1970s and a large proportion of the Dutch urban areas were built after 1970, the Netherlands has seen a much larger post-war population growth than Belgium or Germany.

Population growth 1950-present;

* Belgium: +31%
* Germany: +21%
* Netherlands: +69%


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> I've never been to Helsinki.
> It seems here that bicycles have to yield to nobody (cars, other bikes, pedestrians). Only traffic lights seem to do the trick.


Those pantyhose knights (a common term directly translated) accept those traffic rules only, which provide them with some rights. They just ignore the obligations. In addition, they expect that others obey non-existent rules they believe to exist. 

Driving on the sidewalks has raised quite a vivid debate getting darker tones every year.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> What do you think about riding bikes on sidewalks?
> 
> Here in Poland, many old people do so because they feel safer this way in comparison with on the roadway.
> 
> Currently, it is allowed to ride a bike on a sidewalk only in special cases:
> - while taking care of a child up to 10 years (such a child riding a bike is considered a pedestrian),
> - if bad weather makes it dangerous to ride on the roadway,
> - if the allowed speed on the roadway exceed 50 km/h, the sidewalk is at least 2 metres wide and there is no separate cycling lane or way
> on condition that one gives way to all the pedestrians.
> 
> In most other situations, it is illegal.
> 
> But I can't see anything evil if one cycles onto the sidewalk e.g. in order to omit a queue to traffic lights – of course if he takes care about the pedestrians. Or if someone – as many old people – cycles on the sidewalk because he feels unsafe on the roadway. Especially if it's a big road, on which drivers often exceed the allowed speed. Or in order to access a property on the left hand side of a double-carriageway road without riding up to the first place where it is possible to make a U-turn.
> 
> On the other hand – there are also places where it's forbidden for the cyclists to ride on the roadway and they are forced to use the sidewalk, still giving way to the pedestrians. Such a road sign is used in those cases, on the entry on such a sidewalk obligatory for the cyclists:
> 
> This is also not good because there are cyclists, often on race-like bikes, who prefer a lot driving on the roadway. They are fast, so they don't impede the drivers – and their safety is their problem. They anyway tend to ignore such signs.


I am responsible for this topic at the ministry and here is the "ideal" policy:
- cyclists on sidewalks are reality that is not fully desired. It basically makes representatives of two sustainable and important transport modes feel hostile to each other. Pedestrians sometimes ignore even each other (a group of slowly walking people does not let a faster walking person pass, etc.) and cyclists often acts rude.

- it is a non-sense and sci-fi to have cycling paths all around towns. Frankly said: no space, no money, no will. Therefore it is necessary to establish a system of streets with their functions with two types:
1 trunk streets - with separated cycling paths along them and
2 residential streets - traffic calmed (30 kph) streets where cyclists can cycle safely on roads without threatening of pedestrians.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Do you put your car in neutral when you park?

Today there was yet another story of a woman being run over by her own car when she forgot to put on the hand brake.

But I don't understand why people park in neutral. If you put it in gear you don't have to apply the hand brake. In the Netherlands you read about cars rolling into the water all the time.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Do you put your car in neutral when you park?


Never. I put it always in 1st gear. 
In steep hills I additionally apply the hand break as well, and steer the wheels as right as possible (so that if the car runs away, it will turn right, i.e. to the road edge and will not roll hunderds of meters downhill, possibly killing someone).


----------



## Kpc21

Buy a car – yes. But do they always use them? Or only for special purposes like bigger shopping, need to visit many places in a short time or a trip to another city?

What here appears is a car culture, like in the US. But US has big areas, sprawling towns and suburbs. Only the centers of big cities have congestion problems (and have, therefore, decent public transportation too). In Europe it's a little bit different and such car culture like in the US is not a good phenomenon.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ is it so true? E.g. like you mention smaller towns and regional areas with poor public transit, there certainly isn't any congestion problem. Only overloaded, very old DK roads but that is already mostly fixed by GDDKiA...

if anything Poland is better suited to cars everywhere than the USA. Even big Polish cities are relatively small of population and the country is relatively spread-out, while being small enough to be practical to drive across. USA you need to fly across the middle and cities like New York are so dense and physically large getting across by car is impossible...


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> Buy a car – yes. But do they always use them? Or only for special purposes like bigger shopping, need to visit many places in a short time or a trip to another city?


1., You wrote about why the Polish _buy _a car, and not why they _drive_.
2., According to EU statistics the modal share of car is in Poland 85%, in the Netherlands 88%, in Germany 85%. No significant difference and the Dutch data is not lower but higher than the Polish one.


----------



## volodaaaa

The crucial question is which methodology was used to calculate the modal split. Because these numbers are incredibly high. Was it calculated as a share of passenger kilometres travelled or number of journeys performed? Or something else?

Indeed, Slovakia has almost the same modal split than Austria and the transport in Austria, but the transport in Austria is apparently better. And the story behind is that the share of cars in the modal split in Austria is decreasing while in Slovakia is rocketing. 

There was recently a survey made by one private TV company and they have come to conclusion that out of 100 cars entering Bratislava during the rush hour, 88 were occupied by driver only. Crazy.

Maybe another story: I travelled to my high school by bus from a municipality with the population of 20k to Bratislava in the period between 2002 and 2006. In the rush hour the bus route left every 5 minutes albeit being always overcrowded. Often did I stuck between doors and the first stair leaning on the door. Very often I was just unable to get on, because there was no place left for a thin student with a schoolbag. I just let it go and waited another 5 minutes for another one.

Because my wife is pregnant and our block of flats is being reconstructed (noise, dirt, etc.), we temporarily moved to my parents to the municipality this week and I travel to work with the same bus route between the same stops as I used to while commuting to school. I have looked at the timetable and literally nothing changed. The bus leaves every 5 minutes during the rush hour. I anticipated overcrowded buses, but they are not anymore. Today I left 7:21, which was "my school bus" and I was able to sit for the whole route. Moreover there were unoccupied seats left. What I noticed was that there were no students anymore. 

Maybe this has something to do with the recent issue called mamataxi we currently struggle with.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Eurostat data uses % of traveled distance (passenger kilometersr). Car usage is mostly in the 80-90% range across Europe. 

The Netherlands has a bit lower car share if you include cycling (which in most countries has only 1 or 2% share in traveled distance, but more in the Netherlands).

There is a common misconception that Americans rely on cars and Europeans use mostly public transport. That may be true for travel to city centers but anywhere else the share of public transport is very low. Central Paris or Central London is not representative for the entire country. These are outliers, not the norm.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Eurostat data uses % of traveled distance (passenger kilometersr). Car usage is mostly in the 80-90% range across Europe.
> 
> The Netherlands has a bit lower car share if you include cycling (which in most countries has only 1 or 2% share in traveled distance, but more in the Netherlands).
> 
> There is a common misconception that Americans rely on cars and Europeans use mostly public transport. That may be true for travel to city centers but anywhere else the share of public transport is very low. Central Paris or Central London is not representative for the entire country. These are outliers, not the norm.


The domestic statistics in Finland go one step deeper, and they include walking and cycling. The average share of passenger cars (by passenger kilometers) is about 80% while in the Helsinki metropolitan area it is 70%. In most rural areas, the share of public transport is close to zero just because there is virtually no public transport available. 

There are big seasonal variations. The "market share" of cycling is far below 1% in the winter.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Very high temperatures in the Netherlands today. Up to 28°C in mid-October is unheard of. The average high this time of the year is some 15°C.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland we have beautiful "golden autumn" with temperatures about 20 centigrades.


----------



## Attus

28 degrees mid October in this part of Europe ist everything but beautiful. This summer ist the hottest, driest, and by far the longest I've ever seen. It's crazy and will surely have serious consequences in the nature.


----------



## MichiH

^^ 2003 summer was warmer on average in Germany. 2018 is "only" no. 2 since 1881. However, there's only insufficient or even no data at all about the past.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Very high temperatures in the Netherlands today. Up to 28°C in mid-October is unheard of. The average high this time of the year is some 15°C.


I spent the week in Amsterdam at WMO conference with a lot of guys from KNMI. They were surprised about the weather but they told me it wasn't so extraordinary.

By the way, last IPCC document was just released. It is a very interesting reading, focused on the 1.5 degrees average increase in temperature we are actually facing.


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> ^^ 2003 summer was warmer on average in Germany. 2018 is "only" no. 2 since 1881. However, there's only insufficient or even no data at all about the past.


That's not entirely true, data are quite reliable (even though with much larger uncertainties) for 100 years, even 150 for some outstanding stations (called "centennial stations" by WMO and subject to aparticular conservation program).


----------



## MichiH

^^ I talked about pre-1881...


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> The domestic statistics in Finland go one step deeper, and they include walking and cycling. The average share of passenger cars (by passenger kilometers) is about 80% while in the Helsinki metropolitan area it is 70%. In most rural areas, the share of public transport is close to zero just because there is virtually no public transport available.
> 
> There are big seasonal variations. The "market share" of cycling is far below 1% in the winter.



Funny. In Slovakia it is just the opposite. Rural areas have a larger share of cycling and walking while bigger cities have larger share of cars. The same goes for car occupancy - cars in rural areas are more occupied per journey while cities struggle with cars occupied solely by a driver. 



The catastrophe happens in suburban areas where every adult member of a family possesses and uses a car.


Bratislava still have not invented either any effective transport policy nor traffic reduction.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> Funny. In Slovakia it is just the opposite. Rural areas have a larger share of cycling and walking while bigger cities have larger share of cars. The same goes for car occupancy - cars in rural areas are more occupied per journey while cities struggle with cars occupied solely by a driver.
> 
> 
> 
> The catastrophe happens in suburban areas where every adult member of a family possesses and uses a car.
> 
> 
> Bratislava still have not invented either any effective transport policy nor traffic reduction.


The demographics of Slovakia and Finland are pretty different. The average population density in Slovakia is about seven times higher than in Finland. The degree of urbanization in Finland is 85% while it slightly exceeds 50% in Slovakia. Most of the rural areas in Finland are sparsely populated large areas where no services are accessible in a reasonable distance of cycling.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ 40.000 posts on this thread.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

And it all began with a shiny balcony...


----------



## CNGL

This would mark the start of the 3rd thread in the Spanish forums, where there is a policy of keeping big threads to 20,000 posts for some odd reason.


----------



## MichiH

^^ A multi-family house with three balconies....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

volodaaaa said:


> Bratislava still have not invented either any effective transport policy nor traffic reduction.


Develop a policy where large traffic generating facilities move outside of the historic core to areas better suited to handle large traffic volumes.

In the Netherlands most jobs and retail have shifted to more suburban locations, but still well accessible by bicycle and public transport. This has benefited the urban core: less traffic needs to be there, it is more lively, with a larger focus on hospitality (recreation, bars, restaurants) instead of large-scale retail. 

There are massive 10 lane motorways going to Amsterdam but only a fraction of that traffic ends up in the urban core.


----------



## Junkie

tfd543 said:


> Cheers with a Skopsko beer:cheers::cheers::cheers:
> What a miracle man...


Well, it is a big miracle, after all we have witnessed in the Balkans. Hopefully integration into the Western alliances in the next 10 years, 2030 at the latest, again hopefully.


----------



## Tenjac

Attus said:


> OK, but who should define the categories? I can't imagine the German government let someone else deciding about it.


In Croatia, there is a sticker for vehicle registration certificate which also denotes emission standard. I think that this is quite good solution for the problem.


----------



## x-type

Tenjac said:


> In Croatia, there is a sticker for vehicle registration certificate which also denotes emission standard. I think that this is quite good solution for the problem.


Each country has a sort of that. But I don't see how could it solve the problem because paying the congestion (or as it is modern to say ecological) tax for certain city musn't be a condition for vehicles' registration.


----------



## italystf

Kanadzie said:


> What I can't understand is... do these measures actually effect the local air pollution? Surely considering... wind and everything, a dozen or thousand cars even smoking diesel ones is meaningless. You're getting more PM10 from people walking down the street with their cigarettes...
> 
> it brings noteworthy attention that, say, Los Angeles imposes no restriction on foreign registered cars driving around and that old cars are not restricted either (but California registered cars must meet their original standard...)


How many foreign cars drive every day in Los Angeles? Canada is very far away, Mexico is closer, but AFAIK is not easy to cross the US-Mexican border with private vehicles.
If you mean cars from other US states... I don't know whether US laws allow discriminations between Americans from different states.


----------



## General Maximus

Every time in Germany


----------



## Surel

Tenjac said:


> In Croatia, there is a sticker for vehicle registration certificate which also denotes emission standard. I think that this is quite good solution for the problem.


But those environmental stickers are on top of that.


----------



## Kanadzie

italystf said:


> How many foreign cars drive every day in Los Angeles? Canada is very far away, Mexico is closer, but AFAIK is not easy to cross the US-Mexican border with private vehicles.
> If you mean cars from other US states... I don't know whether US laws allow discriminations between Americans from different states.


Private MX vehicles cross easily, you see them regularly in that area (even though border is like 250 km away). Their license plates are remarkable from a distance by having an odd "XX-XX-XX" format as opposed to the XABCXXX of California or the various 123-ABC's of most states.
it's commercial vehicles (e.g. TIR) that are very restricted 

But I mostly mean other US states... and indeed probably there is a federal restriction against blocking other Americans from entering any state. But - that is exactly the kind of thing that was the impetus for creating the EU in the first place (freedom of movement) and so is quite a logical need...


----------



## Tenjac

x-type said:


> Each country has a sort of that. But I don't see how could it solve the problem because paying the congestion (or as it is modern to say ecological) tax for certain city musn't be a condition for vehicles' registration.


I have understood that the problem is where to place the sticker not how to pay the tax.

If you have registration certificate sticker with the info about emission standard on your windshield, then it would be very easy to replace the congestion sticker with the simple invoice (paper or digital). Finance ministry or city administration or whoever imposes taxation can see whether the fee corresponds to the emission standard or not. The same is with entering congestion zones. Everyone can see does the vehicle comply with the regulation without need for a separate sticker.


----------



## g.spinoza

A very violent hailstorm hit Rome yesterday. Videos show a somewhat "arctic" view of the city:


----------



## italystf

Kanadzie said:


> But I mostly mean other US states... and indeed probably there is a federal restriction against blocking other Americans from entering any state. But - that is exactly the kind of thing that was the impetus for creating the EU in the first place (freedom of movement) and so is quite a logical need...


However, restriction against old diesel cars in some European cities go against the free movement. I'm all for environmental preservation, but I think it's more fair to subsidize old vehicles replacement rather than banning them. Banning old vehicles harms mostly the poorest people, that are less likely to change car often and may even be prevented to drive to work in their own city. The problem of polluting old vehicles is slowly being solved naturally, as the circulating fleets get cleaner and cleaner every year, as long as old vehicles are replaced.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The fleet replacement is slow though, in France you can still spot (and smell) many 1980s diesel cars on the road. 

You can buy a compliant vehicle for almost no money. Most restrictions are for diesel and restrictions on petrol cars are much more relaxed, if you have € 1000 or 1500 to spend, you have abundant choice to buy a petrol car of any type and size that is not older than 15 years. 

Right now there are over 800 petrol cars for sale in the Netherlands that are less than 15 years old and cost less than € 1500.


----------



## Attus

italystf said:


> However, restriction against old diesel cars in some European cities go against the free movement. I'm all for environmental preservation, but I think it's more fair to subsidize old vehicles replacement rather than banning them. Banning old vehicles harms mostly the poorest people, that are less likely to change car often and may even be prevented to drive to work in their own city. The problem of polluting old vehicles is slowly being solved naturally, as the circulating fleets get cleaner and cleaner every year, as long as old vehicles are replaced.


Im some German cities Euro 5 Diesel cars are banned. They may be no more than 3 years old, some of them being quite expensive. A 4-5 years old Audi Q7 is typically not the car of poor people, and, on the other hand, may stay in traffic for 15 years.


----------



## General Maximus

Greetings from Budapest, Hungary. A great place to be. And I got to try that new 140 km/h limit in Austria. The only problem was, that I was driving at night when it doesn't apply, but I did 140 anyway


----------



## volodaaaa

Budapest is a beautiful city. I would go there, but I came down with a cold  Autumn weather.

Btw. my wife always makes fun of me, because she feels I adopt to the role of a patient very easily. 

There is a thing call "a man flu". Some studies indicate that it may be a real thing.

How do you call it in your language?

We call it "soplik" meaning "a tiny snot". It developed from early jokes about the made up crossword clue "the lethal men's disease in six letters".


----------



## General Maximus

All my past girlfriends used to moan at me for being completely unbearable when I caught something. They simply do not understand that this is our little moment that we have every year. Imagine the crap we have to put up with when they have it every month...


----------



## g.spinoza

I usually feel much worse with a little fever than with more important diseases.

When I was sick with appendicitis and peritonitis, with a fever close to 40 °C, I went to the hospital by myself using public transport 
but with 37.5 °C I cannot stand up...


----------



## General Maximus

That reminds me of this man, who gets hit by a bus, gets up and walks into a pub. I wonder what he's like when he has the flu...


----------



## Kanadzie

italystf said:


> However, restriction against old diesel cars in some European cities go against the free movement. I'm all for environmental preservation, but I think it's more fair to subsidize old vehicles replacement rather than banning them. Banning old vehicles harms mostly the poorest people, that are less likely to change car often and may even be prevented to drive to work in their own city. The problem of polluting old vehicles is slowly being solved naturally, as the circulating fleets get cleaner and cleaner every year, as long as old vehicles are replaced.


For sure. And clean environment is important. But like you say, polluting old vehicles are basically solving themselves by the typical lifecycle. Every day, the situation is better. And the few that remain are typically not used much. Do 10 or 100 old diesel Fiats running around a city make any _measurable _impact on the air quality? It seems crazy to interfere with people's movement, with people's daily lives in a very significant way for a public effect that is most likely zero. New vehicle emissions standards have a case for enforcement, because you are affecting millions of vehicles being put on the road. But these bans affect only a handful. Most people, won't have any inconvenience, but some will be basically banned from a certain area. How the hell is that acceptable?


----------



## g.spinoza

Kanadzie said:


> For sure. And clean environment is important. But like you say, polluting old vehicles are basically solving themselves by the typical lifecycle. Every day, the situation is better. And the few that remain are typically not used much. Do 10 or 100 old diesel Fiats running around a city make any _measurable _impact on the air quality? It seems crazy to interfere with people's movement, with people's daily lives in a very significant way for a public effect that is most likely zero. New vehicle emissions standards have a case for enforcement, because you are affecting millions of vehicles being put on the road. But these bans affect only a handful. Most people, won't have any inconvenience, but some will be basically banned from a certain area. How the hell is that acceptable?


Air quality in cities gets worse during winters, and no diesel ban was ever able to solve things... only rain does. This is a proof that cars have very little to do with air pollution...


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> cars have very little to do with air pollution...


Such simplifications are wrong, no doubt.
What is air pollution? Smog (i.e. PMxx)? NOx? SOx? CO2?
I totally agree: cars (no matter if diesel or gasoline) have very little to do with smog and air quality. So car bans in case of smog are useless.
However, inhaling Nitrogen Oxides is unhealthy, in certain circumstances it may be fatal. Nitrogen Oxides in city streets are mainly (80-90%) caused (i.e. exhausted) by diesel vehicles. Concentration of NOx in the air is multiple times higher at dense streets than a hundred meters away and it's depending of traffic density and almost completely independent of weather. 
So banning diesel cars in case of high NOx concentration makes sense. Concentration limits or diesel categories (Euro 1 ... 6) may be discussed, right, but basically such a ban makes sense for sure.


----------



## Kanadzie

Alex_ZR said:


> Many people in Serbia who drive used cars imported from Germany still keep Umweltplakette with the former German license number on their windscreen. :weird:


One of my cars still wears an old Pennsylvania inspection sticker from like 2002 :lol:


----------



## cinxxx

I've been to Venice this year in the middle of August. The only real crowded places were Piazza San Marco, the promenade from the square along the big canal for maybe less 1 km, Rialto bridge, Accademia bridge and the main street to the train station. I've wondered on many random streets alone without any tourists. The locals still have many places for themselves.

Burano is another story, full of Asians, really crowded, the island is very small, only shortly before sunset the hordes return to Venice.


----------



## volodaaaa

Speaking of Asians, there was a huge Asian market in the middle of the second largest city of the Sal island in Cape Verde. The city population was roughly 10k and in the middle: Asian market


----------



## cinxxx

g.spinoza said:


> You cannot judge how crowded a place is if you have been there only for a day or so


I've already been 4 times to Venice.
The only time I found it very crowded was during carnival and only on the weekend. 

You just can't have it both ways, high income from tourists and no low number of tourists. Enforcing existing laws should be done though.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

*cruz gallastegui "BARCODE" street ( pontevedra) E*
https://pontevedraviva.com/uploads/fotos/foto/f56/5ae4326db6-img-20180427-wa0051.jpg









https://www.diariodepontevedra.es/media/diariodepontevedra/images/2018/04/28/2018042812223850199.jpg


----------



## volodaaaa

VITORIA MAN said:


> *cruz gallastegui "BARCODE" street ( pontevedra) E*
> https://pontevedraviva.com/uploads/fotos/foto/f56/5ae4326db6-img-20180427-wa0051.jpg
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.diariodepontevedra.es/media/diariodepontevedra/images/2018/04/28/2018042812223850199.jpg



What is that supposed to be? Some kind of a traffic calming measure?


----------



## bogdymol

Isn’t the road more slippery in combination of wet + excessive road markings?


----------



## Spookvlieger

Try starting on a zebradpath when it's pooring... car stays in the same place.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

it is a traffic calming measure


----------



## piotr71

This is quite interesting (do not know how to paste FB movies)
https://www.facebook.com/truckdrivers24/videos/1486197784857775/UzpfSTIyNTQwNzYyMDgxMDg2NjoyMTYwNzUyMTUzOTQzMDYw/


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Suburbanist said:


> They also run on the dirtiest of petroleum derivates.
> 
> Ocean ships and barges are good candidates for a replacement with liquid hydrogen fuel.


Why not LNG? Sure, it's still a fossil fuel which emits CO2 but other types of pollutants are basically non-existent compared to heavy oil or even diesel. Tallink's newest ferry which sails between Tallinn and Helsinki uses LNG (MS Megastar). So does MS Viking Grace which sails between Turku and Stockhom. Tallink has recently announced plans to build another LNG ferry for Tallinn - Helsinki route.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Happy 100th Anniversary, Czechoslovakia!


----------



## MichiH

^^ ? It doesn't exist anymore...


----------



## Junkie

I am interested to see statistics about particular EU countries about number of victims in road accidents. 
Maybe someone of you here, might share statistics from your own country, as the language barrier is a little problem for some countries.

For example I recently read an article that there were around 25.000 victims in road accidents in all of the 28 EU member states in 2016. 
It is a small city being totally squashed every year.

Also in Macedonia which is a small country of around 2. million inhabitants in 2017 there were 155 victims and there is a downgrade in recent years.

I have data for Serbia, stands at 607 died in 2017, but a country with population of 7 million.
Croatia stants at 289 died in 2017 with population of 4 million.

Some countries are more isolated, while others are corridors and some countries have less and some more population so we have to calculate proportionately.


----------



## MichiH

Junkie said:


> I am interested to see statistics about particular EU countries about number of victims in road accidents.


http://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/specialist/statistics/map-viewer/




Junkie said:


> For example I recently read an article that there were around 25.000 victims in road accidents in all of the 28 EU member states in 2016.


https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/EDN-20171119-1


----------



## Kanadzie

Rebasepoiss said:


> Why not LNG? Sure, it's still a fossil fuel which emits CO2 but other types of pollutants are basically non-existent compared to heavy oil or even diesel. Tallink's newest ferry which sails between Tallinn and Helsinki uses LNG (MS Megastar). So does MS Viking Grace which sails between Turku and Stockhom. Tallink has recently announced plans to build another LNG ferry for Tallinn - Helsinki route.


LNG has very little CO2 compared to basically all other fossil fuels.
But... cost is very large, especially to convert old ship to it... and conversion probably would use the fuel wastefully.


----------



## Junkie

MichiH said:


> http://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/specialist/statistics/map-viewer/
> 
> https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/EDN-20171119-1


Thanks. I see that for 20 years the percentage has downgraded 57%


----------



## Alex_ZR

MichiH said:


> ^^ ? It doesn't exist anymore...


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-czech-anniversary/czechs-celebrate-centenary-with-largest-military-parade-since-communist-era-idUSKCN1N20IX


----------



## MichiH

^^ I think they celebrate the independency from the Austrian-Hungarian empire.


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> ^^ I think they celebrate the independency from the Austrian-Hungarian empire.


That's odd, a country celebrating something about the state that was its predecessor... it's like if Italy celebrates something about Kingdom of Sardinia...


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> Bald tires and chains is a useful combination on driving occasionally on mountain roads. But not on driving hundreds of kilometers of more or less slippery roads. Thus, they drive on bald tires on snow and ice, and block the uphills.


Truck and bus owners don't usually use winter tyres – for two reasons. Firstly – they are expensive, secondly – the vehicles are heavy, so it's easier with the traction anyway.



MattiG said:


> German truckers are quite rare in Finland. The east European drivers are more numerous and therefore more visible.


Well, it's not very different even in Germany. Really many trucks on their roads are central- or eastern-European (if we consider Germany a western-European country).


----------



## Balkanada

g.spinoza said:


> I don't get it. Shouldn't that make prices on the free market lower?


Not necessarily. Market housing is pricey due to the lack of housing stock, the fact that a large part of the housing stock in the Netherlands is social makes it physically restrictive to build more and ultimately there is a supply shortage


----------



## General Maximus

How New York City dealt with its first snow this year:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apartments in the east may be bigger than most apartment in the Netherlands. I live in a 2-bedroom apartment, I think it's approximately 45 - 50 m². The rent is nearly € 500 per month excluding utilities* and that is even in the "social housing" sector.** Free-market prices are much higher (€ 800 and up, excluding utilities).


That is really cheap... My girlfriend and I pay €400+utilities for a single bedroom apartment in Tallinn (45 m2), around 3 km away from city centre.

Buying and paying a mortgage is way cheaper but you'd first need the ~10-20% for a down payment. For an apartment similar to ours that would be a minimum of €8,000. The average net salary is around €1150 a month in Tallinn so you can figure out yourself how long it would take to save that kind of money


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> Truck and bus owners don't usually use winter tyres – for two reasons. Firstly – they are expensive, secondly – the vehicles are heavy, so it's easier with the traction anyway.


In winter conditions, it is best to use tires for winter conditions.


----------



## Kpc21

Of course, but it's not so necessary for trucks and especially buses (which have the drive axle well loaded with the engine located at the back) as for personal cars.

I have read that in quite many European countries winter tyres are necessary also for trucks and buses but in Poland most of them use all-season ones.


----------



## g.spinoza

Rebasepoiss said:


> That is really cheap... My girlfriend and I pay €400+utilities for a single bedroom apartment in Tallinn (45 m2), around 3 km away from city centre.
> 
> Buying and paying a mortgage is way cheaper but you'd first need the ~10-20% for a down payment. For an apartment similar to ours that would be a minimum of €8,000. The average net salary is around €1150 a month in Tallinn so you can figure out yourself how long it would take to save that kind of money


That's basically what I pay in Turin for a similar apartment similarly located with respect to the city center. I don't know about average salary in Turin but I guess it's higher.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> Nankang are still fairly good comparing to fleet of cheap Chinese tires like Sailun, Tomket, Goodride, Sunny, Linglong etc and cost half or even a third of a known brand tire. As new are still acceptable for careful driving but after a season or two they are mostly slippery round stones.


I would never, ever think of saving money in something very vital safety-wise like tires (or brakes). I'd rather choose a cheaper car or not to fix minor damages like paint scratches, if I really have to save money.


----------



## Junkie

Kpc21 said:


> I have read that in quite many European countries winter tyres are necessary also for trucks and buses but in Poland most of them use all-season ones.


The season for winter tyres for vehichles up to 5 tons has already started here. It is mandatory from 15 November till March. But not for trucks and buses. The fee for not having winter equipment is 45 euros.


----------



## x-type

Here in HR people ocnsider winter tyres obligation very seriously. It lasts in period 15.11.-15.04. 
I don't drive much less in winter season compared to summer, so I started to buy premium winter tyres too (I have Continental atm).


----------



## tfd543

x-type said:


> Here in HR people ocnsider winter tyres obligation very seriously. It lasts in period 15.11.-15.04.
> I don't drive much less in winter season compared to summer, so I started to buy premium winter tyres too (I have Continental atm).


Or just all-season tyres. It used to be crap but Michelin's Crossclimate+ are very nice... unless of course there is a blizzard.

I got too tired of loading my car with heavy tyres giving me pain in my back and drive to the dealer so I decided to go for all-season since some years ago.

And yes I have considered to buy an air compressed wrench but its too bulky and expensive. Anyone that do the change with a torque wrench ? takes forever.hno:


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland using winter tyres is not mandatory but most drivers (I talk about personal cars, not about trucks) exchange them anyway.

And it's not necessary to go to the dealer, you can go to any local garage... Some of them even specialize in servicing tyres and do only that.

Some people do it differently – they have two sets of rims, one with summer and one with winter tyres on it. Then it's easy to exchange them at home, without a need of going to a service garage, waiting in a queue and paying for the service.


----------



## Suburbanist

Are nitrogen-filled tires available in your country?


----------



## keber

Here it is quite popular to leave unused tires for a season at tire mechanic as it can be very cheap and without hassles. I pay just 7 euro per season for all 4 tires.


----------



## Suburbanist

keber said:


> Here it is quite popular to leave unused tires for a season at tire mechanic as it can be very cheap and without hassles. I pay just 7 euro per season for all 4 tires.


Do tire mechanics even have so much storage space? Aren't there regulations concerning fire/chemical hazards of storing that many used tires?


----------



## x-type

tfd543 said:


> Or just all-season tyres. It used to be crap but Michelin's Crossclimate+ are very nice... unless of course there is a blizzard.
> 
> I got too tired of loading my car with heavy tyres giving me pain in my back and drive to the dealer so I decided to go for all-season since some years ago.
> 
> And yes I have considered to buy an air compressed wrench but its too bulky and expensive. Anyone that do the change with a torque wrench ? takes forever.hno:


No way to use that. The same goes for those Eco models.


----------



## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> Are nitrogen-filled tires available in your country?


Yes, I have seen a banner on one of local garages (and an inspection station) that they pump wheels with nitrogen.



keber said:


> Here it is quite popular to leave unused tires for a season at tire mechanic as it can be very cheap and without hassles. I pay just 7 euro per season for all 4 tires.


Here it's also possible but I never do it, so I have no idea about prices. So... let me google it.

http://www.gumocar.pl/cennik.html – one of tyre services in Warsaw.

It seems that they take 100 PLN for storing 4 tyres, as I guess, for a whole season.

It's maybe not 7 euro but it's also not much and it's a very good choice for those who live in apartments and have no storage space for the tyres.


By the way, from the beginning of October or September (I don't remember) it's no longer necessary in Poland to always have with you while driving the registration certificate of your car and a paper from the insurance company that your car is insured. Of course, this privilege is only for the cars registered in Poland, as the computer systems of various countries are not interconnected.


----------



## volodaaaa

Suburbanist said:


> Are nitrogen-filled tires available in your country?


I have ones. The service garage put red caps on my wheels.


----------



## tfd543

x-type said:


> No way to use that. The same goes for those Eco models.


I am using the climate+ model i have no problems. Sure its a bit more noisy but I can live with that.


----------



## Kanadzie

Suburbanist said:


> Are nitrogen-filled tires available in your country?


It seems like such a nonsense since atmosphere is already 78% N2 and the little device fitted to the air compressor isn't giving "laboratory-grade" nitrogen output either :lol:


----------



## x-type

Don Alessandro said:


> GW shows that most parts of A1 in Croatia are closed, is this something serious?


Wind gusts and snow.

If you think on this indication south of tunnel Sveti Rok, it is wrong. Only half of the motorway is closed due to road works, and traffic is running on southbound half bidirectionaly.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*VMS*

The Arizona Department of Creative Transportation with Thanksgiving messages on their VMSs


----------



## volodaaaa

:lol: "Mash potatoes, not your head"


----------



## CNGL

Too bad Big Rig Steve doesn't go through Arizona often, and when it does so he goes through the Northwestern corner on I-15 which doesn't have good cellphone coverage. But once he was headed to California the signal held a bit into Arizona, and got to see the following VMS:


Code:


CRAZY IN LOVE
WITH DRIVERS WHO
USE TURN SIGNALS

As I said in the AARoads forum, that means that ADOT is crazy in love with me (as I use turn signals almost always) even though I've never been nohere Arizona.

Arizona has the most absurd VMSs in the USA (and probably the whole world), and it also gives me headaches when DST is in force elsewhere. When I have to quote a time in the AARoads forum, I use the time zone where Big Rig Steve is at that moment (as of this post it is Central, 7 hours behind mine), however using European DST rules as opposed to American ones (so for four weeks a year I end up one hour behind him, I could also end one up ahead but with current rules it's never the case). However Arizona doesn't observe DST, and when DST is in force elsewhere and Big Rig Steve is in Arizona then my AARoads forum time is "Theoretically Mountain but actually using Pacific to account that Arizona doesn't observe DST".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ :nuts:


----------



## bogdymol

Take a look on a map with time zones in that area. There are indian reservations in Arizona that have different time zone rules than the rest of the state. Is a mess as the time zone can change several times during a short drive. 

When I visited Monument Valley* in Arizona and I arrived at my hotel, I asked at the reception what time is it as I had no ideea what time zone am I in. 

* I you have the opportunity to visit that part of USA, do it!


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> Take a look on a map with time zones in that area. There are indian reservations in Arizona that have different time zone rules than the rest of the state. Is a mess as the time zone can change several times during a short drive.
> 
> When I visited Monument Valley* in Arizona and I arrived at my hotel, I asked at the reception what time is it as I had no ideea what time zone am I in.
> 
> * I you have the opportunity to visit that part of USA, do it!


Well... This could be a starting point to explore routes maximizing the number of timezone border crossing on a shortest route. The route should, I think, be a fastest route found by a well-known routing application or service.

I open the game with the route from Karesuando in Sweden to the Russian side of the N/RUS border station on E105. The TomTom MyDrive Route Planner tells the distance being 546 kilometers, which is a tiny hop in the Far North. The route E45-92(N)-92(FIN)-92(N)-E6-E105 crosses the timezone border five times: Once at the S/FIN border, three times at the N/FIN border, and at the N/RUS border. The time difference is two hours at the last border.


----------



## Kpc21

Some here argued that using the Daylight Saving time is beneficial in terms of that you get up and leave home to work more or less at the time when it's already bright.

But it's not true. For two days I had to be in the city at 8 – and at both times, I had to wake up when it was still dark and it was still quite dark when I was driving out from home.

So, maybe it is helpful for those living close to the workplace or for those who start work at 9 – but, at least here, 8 is a more "classical" time for starting work and even getting to job within the city oftentimes takes something like an hour, especially if someone uses public transport and not a car.


----------



## g.spinoza

Technically, daylight savings time is the summer one and at least at mid latitudes, during summer, the sun rises much earlier than 8.


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> Technically, daylight savings time is the summer one and at least at mid latitudes, during summer, the sun rises much earlier than 8.


I guess that post was related to the question about whether the standard time or the summer time would be better as the permanent time if the DST system will be abandoned by the EU.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

How are things in your respective country in terms of Black Friday sales? They are quietly being introduced in Estonia as well but usually the offers aren't better than the usual -20...-30%.

However, yesterday I was able to buy ferry tickets to Helsinki for €1 :nuts: So my girlfriend and I are going to take a trip to Finland for €4.


----------



## keber

Black friday sales are announced everywhere here around and few years ago no one knew about them. But ... I'm in the process of buying a tumble dryer and ofcourse there is no black friday for larger things, maybe for some discounted products that are energy inneficient or pretty old models


----------



## volodaaaa

Yeah, I have noticed the same here. Doubt if it is even good. 

We are now currently looking for an induction hob and a new refrigerator. When it comes to serious brands and energy effective products there are almost no special offers.


----------



## General Maximus

Mainland Europe is simply too cold at the moment. Therefore, greetings from Lanzarote...


----------



## Kpc21

Rebasepoiss said:


> How are things in your respective country in terms of Black Friday sales? They are quietly being introduced in Estonia as well but usually the offers aren't better than the usual -20...-30%.


Black Friday got popular in Poland just a few years ago. It normally looks so that the shops increase prices some time before, to make sales today which are actually return to normal prices.


----------



## keber

A colleague is buying a new laptop. At big retail shop he noticed that a model that cost XY euro just 4 days ago, the same model has today exactly the same price with added big sticker "Black Friday discount".


----------



## Spookvlieger

In Belgium they raise prices, sometimes even +30% in the course over two or 3 weeks. Then on black friday they give a 'discount'. If you want to get ripped off, buy on black friday.


----------



## volodaaaa

The new year's eve is something very similar. Five years ago we celebrated an anniversary with my wife on 20th of November and thus we bought a bottle of sparkling wine for 4 €. Later on, on 31st of December we set off to the Tesco hypermarket and saw bottles of the sparkling wine being sold at 8 € each bottle with "special offer label"


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are always concerns that the discounts are just fake, and they raise prices shortly before, or use "advisory prices" that in practice you wouldn't pay, so these offers aren't as great as they sound.

Though some investigations by websites that track prices of products in the Netherlands shown no notable price increases prior to Black Friday. 

Black Friday is a relatively new phenomenon in most European countries, just like Cyber Monday or Singles Day.


----------



## bogdymol

Similar issues are also in Romania, with price increases in the days before the big discounts.

When I want to buy something relatively expensive, I usually check that product's price on multiple websites. I then know how much should cost, and then I wait until there's a real discount for that product. Usually I don't have to wait more than a few weeks, but I also don't check daily, but only when I remember.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Though some investigations by websites that track prices of products in the Netherlands shown no notable price increases prior to Black Friday.


I think it's simpler than that. I followed the price of a specific smartphone. It changed day by day but was always between 290 - 305 Euro. On Black Friday it was advertised for 299€ 369€. 369€ is a price this product never had. OK, it may have had this price two or three months ago but in the recent six weeks it has never been more that 305€.


----------



## Attus

A Black Friday photo of Hungary. 
Black Friday: Original Price 219.997, reduced price: 139.993. 220.000 HUF, approx. 680€ is an extreme price for a Samsung Galaxy S8, and under the Black Friday label you can see the original price which is, what a surrise, 139.993 (approx. 440 €). 









And a vacuum cleaner. "Original" price: 3.4M HUF, more than 10,000 Euro.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In Breda, Netherlands they created a handicapped parking spot in a driving lane. :nuts:









Photo by Etienne.


----------



## bogdymol

That lane finishes anyway 20 m forward, so it isn't such a big loss.

However, I see that the spot has been made especially for this car (see the registration plate number on the sign).


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> That lane finishes anyway 20 m forward, so it isn't such a big loss.
> 
> However, I see that the spot has been made especially for this car (see the registration plate number on the sign).


I've seen many "personal" handicapped spots in Amsterdam.


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> I've seen many "personal" handicapped spots in Amsterdam.


That, on itself, is common.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes, they have guaranteed parking spaces as close as possible to their house and/or work. Other people cannot park there.


----------



## Suburbanist

tfd543 said:


> So guys i just submitted my PhD thesis yesterday in nanoscience developing a microfluidic device for biosensing. Anyone here into science ? Is it really stupid to do a post doc these days? What are your suggestions.


It is hard to have an opinion, it depends on specifics of the labor market of your science field.


----------



## bogdymol

tfd543 said:


> So guys i just submitted my PhD thesis yesterday in nanoscience developing a microfluidic device for biosensing. Anyone here into science ? Is it really stupid to do a post doc these days? What are your suggestions.


I also considered a PhD, but when I graduated my Master's degree I had already moved to a different country and had a good job. I thought that a total of 18 years of study is enough for me, as I was more interested to get into the practical field of my degree and not so much into the theory. Therefore I haven't pursued forward with the PhD.

I'm curious of g.spinoza's answer on this one.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've read about a movement in North America that discredit the idea of going to college / university, as there are apparently a growing number of worthless degrees while being loaded with student debt. There is the stereotypical "gender studies" degrees that no employer is looking for. 

So they say you can better go to trade school, learn a skill and earn a decent living without being loaded with student debt that cripples purchasing power and prevents you from buying a home. 

Of course there are numerous degrees well worth going to college / university for, though there are annual lists of master degrees in the Netherlands which show that a substantial amount of fields hardly pay more than work that requires only a high school diploma. The worst one mentioned this year is archeology (virtually no job opportunities) and social sciences and arts (very low / unstable pay). Most of them also have a negative long-term outlook.

I know some people that dropped out of college and are now truck drivers and earn € 40,000 per year with 4-day work weeks.


----------



## bogdymol

In Romania there is a trend in recent years that everyone must have a degree (and I mean university degree). Young people are simply no longer interested in doing a simple trade school, as everyone wants to be "manager" or something like that. The "smart" politicians also liked this trend, so all trade schools in Romania have been abolished. That was a really bad decision IMO.

Having a trade job isn't something to be ashamed of. For a normal society to work, it needs it fair share of people in all working classes. You need car mechanics, construction workers, truck drivers and blue collar management personnel, otherwise you will have a major gap in that field and things won't run properly overall. And the payment difference, if you are good in what you are doing, is not that high.

At the company I work for, the best construction workers we have are often paid much more than the office staff, even if there is a clear basic education vs. higher education situation. I also have a cousin who is a truck driver in Sweden and he earns really well. If you are good in what you do, you can earn a decent living.


----------



## tfd543

Suburbanist said:


> It is hard to have an opinion, it depends on specifics of the labor market of your science field.


So I did it in Denmark and I know data scientist and project manager positions are quite hot these days but I want to do more hands-on. 
I don't want sit in front of a laptop the whole day so I want to go for a researcher position.

I applied for 2 engineering post-docs just to continue doing experiments, optimizing and developing new methodology. I love science but not that much that I want to be a professor that is too stressful.

I have never had a real job in my life so I am wondering how big the transition will be to leave university and be hired by a company. Obviously the biggest difference is money. Whereas it is okay to fail at university, its like paramount for company to perform well and this is what I am reflecting on 

All in all, Im having two routes to either take a post-doc or apply for a job and hope its gonna be interesting. The problem with a job is that it will become boring eventually after 5 years since you can't choose and direct the project as you want but thats how life is, right ?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The base monthly pay for a truck driver in the Netherlands ranges from € 2100 - 2650, depending on experience and tenure. However you can earn substantially more if you are willing to work overtime / on Saturdays and Sundays. For example, if you work a 13 hour day on Sunday, you can make up to € 400 in a single day. That means, you can earn the minimum wage just by working 4 Sundays per month.


----------



## tfd543

ChrisZwolle said:


> The base monthly pay for a truck driver in the Netherlands ranges from € 2100 - 2650, depending on experience and tenure. However you can earn substantially more if you are willing to work overtime / on Saturdays and Sundays. For example, if you work a 13 hour day on Sunday, you can make up to € 400 in a single day. That means, you can earn the minimum wage just by working 4 Sundays per month.


edited my post because I did not read the last sentence.

Had a thought about it but it didn't really make sense.


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> In Romania there is a trend in recent years that everyone must have a degree (and I mean university degree). Young people are simply no longer interested in doing a simple trade school, as everyone wants to be "manager" or something like that. The "smart" politicians also liked this trend, so all trade schools in Romania have been abolished. That was a really bad decision IMO.


It was some 25 years ago when the Finnish politicians invented that 70% of people should have a higher education degree. This includes universities and the "universities of applied sciences" which are not called universities in Finland.

But because the Gaussian curve cannot be altered by political decisions, this have lead to a decrease in the average level of students. There is also more visible segregation across universities than earlier.

The result is that there will be more blue-collar B.Sc's than earlier. I am not sure if this is optimal use of resources.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> In Romania there is a trend in recent years that everyone must have a degree (and I mean university degree). Young people are simply no longer interested in doing a simple trade school, as everyone wants to be "manager" or something like that. The "smart" politicians also liked this trend, so all trade schools in Romania have been abolished. That was a really bad decision IMO.
> 
> Having a trade job isn't something to be ashamed of. For a normal society to work, it needs it fair share of people in all working classes. You need car mechanics, construction workers, truck drivers and blue collar management personnel, otherwise you will have a major gap in that field and things won't run properly overall. And the payment difference, if you are good in what you are doing, is not that high.
> 
> At the company I work for, the best construction workers we have are often paid much more than the office staff, even if there is a clear basic education vs. higher education situation. I also have a cousin who is a truck driver in Sweden and he earns really well. If you are good in what you do, you can earn a decent living.


I got my PhD 10 years ago in astronomy, and that's exactly one of these jobs you mention where you sit all the time at the computer. I worked as an astronomer for a couple of years and didn't like at all.
Now I work as a metrologist and that's very different: I still work big time at the PC, but I also have time to spend on the lab and even doing in-field research.
The downside is that in astronomy you publish relatively easily on high-IF journals; in metrology journals have lower IF but, in my opinion, publish is a little more difficult.
I have a higher h-index than, I would say, 95% of my colleagues, even at higher levels, because of my days as an astronomer.

In bad times I use to think "if I'm born again, I would go straight to work, not to university! It's not worth all the trouble"... truth is, science is all I know: I am really interested in doing nothing else...


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> I also considered a PhD, but when I graduated my Master's degree I had already moved to a different country and had a good job.


I made some 'business case' calculations after graduated my M.Sc. I was not very interested in a researcher's career. Thus I had no obligation to target the D.Sc.(Tech) degree. Quite soon I ended up to a conclusion that spending 4-5 extra years in studies would have a negative return value of the investment.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MattiG said:


> It was some 25 years ago when the Finnish politicians invented that 70% of people should have a higher education degree. This includes universities and the "universities of applied sciences" which are not called universities in Finland.


That's the same in the Netherlands. There are many more "universities of applied sciences" than traditional academic universities. Applied sciences prepare students for a specific profession, while traditional university is more geared towards research. Fewer people attend academic university than universities for applied sciences, but both will leave you with a substantial student debt that has a significant impact on your ability to get a mortgage.



MattiG said:


> But because the Gaussian curve cannot be altered by political decisions, this have lead to a decrease in the average level of students. There is also more visible segregation across universities than earlier.
> 
> The result is that there will be more blue-collar B.Sc's than earlier. I am not sure if this is optimal use of resources.


The value of a university degree also diminishes in many fields simply because there are more workers with such degrees. If you attended university in the 1960s and 1970s, you were almost guaranteed a high-paying job, since only a small percentage of population had degrees at that time. A well-paying job is still possible today, but it's not a guarantee anymore, due to increased competition in the job market and degrees that have no real job opportunities.


----------



## Kpc21

The very problem you are describing exists, of course, also here in Poland.

Blamed for that are also parents. Something like 30 years ago, a person with any higher education had practically guaranteed good career. But it was also very difficult to get to a higher education institution. So it's obvious that most people did not have any higher education.

We had and still have two "levels" of vocational education in Poland: vocational school and technical school (now the naming is being changed but apart from that, everything stays the same). Vocational schools provide basic level of education in the selected industry as well as little of the general knowledge. Technical school education takes more time but it also provides more knowledge of both kinds. The general knowledge is equal to one after a high school, so one can then take the national exam after graduating from school and be admitted to higher studies.

In this situation, persons after technical schools, even without higher studies, were OK to work at some higher, management positions in companies.

More or less from 1990s, when private higher schools appeared, it started to look so that it was, practically, enough to pay the tuition and easily get a diploma. Since everyone's experience was that someone with higher education has much easier, the natural tendency was obvious. Everyone took higher education and only those who were really inadequate for higher studies took vocational schools.

So, the level of education in vocational and technical schools had to fall down. Nowadays, a finished vocational school means practically nothing in most fields. Technical school is a little bit better but anyway also not very meaningful and whoever is able to, goes for higher studies.

But now it seems to start changing in the opposite direction. People start noticing the phenomenon of "unemployed MA's/MSc's" (in Polish, the word is the same for both – although those unemployed probably much more commonly will be MA's), that some study programmes give practically no job opportunities and on the other hand, as a specialized technician e.g. in the construction-related fields, even without higher education, one may earn more and more money. And there is now practically a constant shortage of e.g. construction workers or professional drivers on the market.

Concerning MA and MSc, the division in Polish is different. We have "magister" and "magister inżynier". "Magister inżynier" will practically always translate as MSc and MA will rather always translate as "magister" – but e.g. MSc in Physics (in something which is a field of science but not of engineering) will normally be just "magister" and not "magister inżynier". There are some requirements from the universities and also from just the study programmes making them be possible to be considered as "engineering" ones.


----------



## Junkie

^^
Partially it has to do with the system as in the former communist countries whole generations over many decades had public/state job and they had only to show that they had education and will keep the job for whole life after being selected.


----------



## Kpc21

But you can see that same problem exists in countries which never had a communist government. I once read an article about it occurring in the UK, now, here, I am reading about it in the Netherlands or in Belgium.


----------



## Suburbanist

The "anti-degree" movement in the US often tangles itself with the "anti-intellectualism" crowd, which contaminates the former with its experiantialist vodoo ("I know what I feel", "who are you to tell me what to think" etc) and outright stances of opposition to scientific knowledge. 

There are degrees with some negative/marginal utilities in many countries. That doesn't mean university per se is useless. I do feel bad for students who, not having relatively wealthy parents, end up taking studies in 'cool' subjects with dim employment prospects (media, general social sciences, sociology, sports sciences, museology etc).

Better advice is needed before high-school graduates heed to higher education. 

However, good university degrees give lifetime income boosts and really helps people even when they switch careers. There is also plenty of self-selection, people with higher intellectual/analytical skills tend to flock to certain paths of education, and these days they also tend to date and ultimate partner more with people of similar profiles. 

As for the trades, there is certainly not wrong about working on them. The problems are (1) they are unstable, (2) experience often doesn't translate into career-shift opportunities.

Truckers are being paid quite well these days in Northern Europe, there is a shortage of domestic truckers (not much long-haul, which is filled by Eastern European workforce mostly), licenses are expensive and increasingly hard to obtain (entry barriers), and the job is not the most glamorous in terms of hours, exposure to weather elements etc. So far, so good - but only 10 years ago there was widespread unemployment of truckers during the financial crisis.

Another good example for Northern Europe are construction trade professions. Since wages are generally high, construction around here uses lots of automation (compared to other parts of the World). Average pay right now is good, but then again it is a sector very exposed to short-term economic fluctuations.

Finally, certain trades are physically demanding in a way that office/clerical/technical jobs are not. These are jobs that are the hardest on the body on the long haul sometimes, prompting many early retirements with huge financial losses. 

This is not to say, again, that trades are bad, but that the trade-off of more education/more income right after high-school is not exactly easy.

In the US, things are worse because your health care often depends on your job, and the situation is pretty gloomy for independent contractors in the long run.


----------



## tfd543

g.spinoza said:


> In bad times I use to think "if I'm born again, I would go straight to work, not to university! It's not worth all the trouble"... truth is, science is all I know: I am really interested in doing nothing else...


I totally feel you with this. I knew beforehand that the PhD would probably be the biggest challenge I would ever face. This is exactly why I did it. Its part of my attitude to do what is most difficult since the rate of motivation is at the highest.
But thats just me, hating to be in the comfort zone that is my enemy no 1 for sure.

I also wanted to quit after 2 years simply because my failture rate was peaking. It was like insane so after sometime I thought it was waste of my life. 
After voicing my opinion to my supervisor, I simply changed project and had much more luck with that.


----------



## Kanadzie

It's really odd. When I was in university (engineering) I knew people in social studies fields who already knew their degree was pointless and they had no good future prospects :nuts:


----------



## Junkie

Breaking news as Russia shoots to Ukraine in a possible direct war in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov.
Ukrainian reports claim the government ready to introduce martial law and mobilize all men in order to interfere Russia in a direct clash.

Very recently I was claiming here, the wars on the European soil will probably continue ongoing.


----------



## g.spinoza

Kanadzie said:


> It's really odd. When I was in university (engineering) I knew people in social studies fields who already knew their degree was pointless and they had no good future prospects :nuts:


You know, I already knew that, by choosing astronomy as the subject of my degree, my job prospects were very limited too. My father tried to talk me out of it, but I told him that if I had to go to the university, I wanted to do something that I really liked, so I would graduate sooner. Had I chosen engineering, or chemistry, as he did, I'm sure I would have dropped out.


----------



## volodaaaa

Junkie said:


> Breaking news as Russia shoots to Ukraine in a possible direct war in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov.
> Ukrainian reports claim the government ready to introduce martial law and mobilize all men in order to interfere Russia in a direct clash.
> 
> Very recently I was claiming here, the wars on the European soil will probably continue ongoing.


Will you accept my wish to have your autograph?


----------



## Don Alessandro

The first truck transport by truck was realised two weeks ago.

Dutch company Alblas organized this transport from Khorgos to Poland. total distance was 7000km, made in 13 days. The company itself claims that transports in 10 days are possible. More transports will follow. 

The transport itself was possible because of the TIR Carnet, and a special agreement that allows to realize transports from China.

Article in dutch:

https://bigtruck.nl/nieuws/item/alblas-rijdt-van-china-naar-europa-in-13-dagen


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## keber

^^ Countries involved on "Silk route" should ease border formalities and then there would be no need for fanfares and big press releases as everything would flow much better and even here we would have much more interesting road trip reports.

But until I have to import _my own car_ already on EU borders into Russia, Belarus or Ukraine just for purpose of short tourist visit, not to mention formalities needed in countries further east I don't see any point in such press releases.


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## italystf

^^ Not to mention the requirement of getting a temporary Chinese driving license to drive in China.


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## Kpc21

I discovered that this great Czechoslovak (now Czech) cartoon, generally being a silent one (with music only), also silent in Poland, was dubbed in the Netherlands.

For me, it seems to be totally improper to dub such a type of cartoon. After all, the picture tells everything here. Can you imagine, for example, Tom and Jerry dubbed? The original cartoons but with voices added afterwards? It's like they additionally tell about everything already being told by the picture, which is just redundant.

So, a question to the Dutch users (if you e.g. used to watch it in the childhood, or even sometimes watch it now): what do you feel about this dubbing? Is it really good? Does it give a lot of added value to this show?

Two interesting facts:
– its new episodes are still being produced,
– originally it was intended to be a cartoon for the adults – but it turned out to be mostly liked by the children,
– there were even three full-time movies produced based on this cartoon.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I have no idea what that is...

Dubbing in the Netherlands is generally only done in case of cartoons and animated series for children, but not always (Tom & Jerry was not dubbed). I've never seen a movie dubbed in Dutch, though the title of television series is sometimes translated, for example, Keeping Up Appearances was named "Schone Schijn", but it was not dubbed. Film names are generally not translated. For example, Licence to Kill retains that name in the Netherlands, and is not changed like they did in some countries, such as _Med rett til å drepe_ (Norwegian) or _Permis de tuer_ (French).


----------



## Kpc21

This is an example of a Dutch dubbed episode:






While the original Czech(oslovak) version is like this – without any voices, only music:






In Tom and Jerry in Poland, only texts appearing on the screen (I mean, things like road signs, names of shops etc. – meaningful for the plot) were simply translated by being read out. And it is so typically in all the western cartoons. Of course, if they weren't silent, there was also normal dubbing. Or sometimes (especially in the early and mid-1990s on commercial channels) there was no dubbing but they were voiced over (one man was simply reading out all the dialogues, with the same voice and without any emotions, while the original voice could be heard in the background – it's still the most typical form of translation to Polish for the standard movies with actors on TV but practically not used any more on anything targeted to children).

An interesting case is Dragon Ball, which was shown with French dubbing and Polish over-voice.






Also interesting thing is this:










If I am not mistaken, this is a co-production of some European public broadcasters from different countries. There were several Polish dubbings of this (and this was actually dubbed, not voiced over), but in the version that was broadcast on Polish public TV, they saved on translating the opening song, which was left in... French.


----------



## Kanadzie

Kpc21 said:


> Or sometimes (especially in the early and mid-1990s on commercial channels) there was no dubbing but they were voiced over (one man was simply reading out all the dialogues, with the same voice and without any emotions, while the original voice could be heard in the background – it's still the most typical form of translation to Polish for the standard movies with actors on TV but practically not used any more on anything targeted to children).


I once stayed a night in a Warsaw hotel. I turned on TV and there was an American pornographic film playing with this single Polish man doing the translations for the man and woman. I just laughed :lol:


----------



## Kpc21

For us here it's just a normal thing that nearly all the movies on TV are like that.

It has an advantage – you hear the voices of the original actors.

Conventional dubbing has in Poland rather bad opinion, maybe because it's often of bad quality here.

An exception are the animations, especially those like Shrek and others of a similar style (another very good example are Penguins of Madagascar). The man who is usually the director of their dubbing (I mean Bartosz Wierzbięta) is very good in it, he very keenly replaces different cultural references which would be not understood in Poland with references to Polish popular culture, which is really good and often gives more fun than the original.

Same with puns. Some disappear because they don't work in Polish, some others are added.


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## General Maximus

I prefer subtitles in any movie. So much gets lost, when stuff gets dubbed, and it doesn't give any credit to the actors who play these roles.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I agree, acting is more than just being a face on a screen. It's how you deliver the lines and jokes as well.


----------



## MattiG

General Maximus said:


> I prefer subtitles in any movie. So much gets lost, when stuff gets dubbed, and it doesn't give any credit to the actors who play these roles.


The non-existence of dubbing is one of the advantages of living in a small country where people speak a unique language. The movies and tv programs fod kids are dubbed here, nothing else. Some minor exceptions exist, like the pan-Nordic Sami news: A person speaking Finnish may be dubbed into Sami and then subtitled in Finnish.


----------



## g.spinoza

Is the "weird license plates" thread still there? I can't find it.
Anyways, a Mercedes AMG (GTr if I'm not mistaken) with Saudi license plates spotted by me in central Milan.


----------



## General Maximus

^^ https://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=783448&page=204


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> Well, as I have mentioned it beforehand, I did not do it on purpose. I bought the e-sticker over the mobile application and did a typo while I was inserting my licence plate number (I exchanged O for 0). As a consequence of this, my car was considered to use Hungarian motorways illegally even though I had previously paid for it.
> 
> The fine would be 80 € if paid within 60 days and 280 € if paid later. I submitted an objection (according to the letter I got) that I made the typo and I can be given a pardon if I send them the scan copy of my Registration certificate and a PDF file with the sticker copy including the typo.
> 
> The administration fee is 5 € and drivers who exchange O for 0 are an exempted from it completely.


I see. omg. that sucks. But are having an iPhone ? its kinda idiot-proof in the IOS keyboard because you have to navigate to the numbers section to type one so it can't be a mistake from the position of your finger, right ?


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> I see. omg. that sucks. But are having an iPhone ? its kinda idiot-proof in the IOS keyboard because you have to navigate to the numbers section to type one so it can't be a mistake from the position of your finger, right ?



To be honest I dunno. I use Android with the Swift Keyboard application and when I start typing the licence plate number it automatically offers me the correct one but with the wrong sign. Maybe I had saved it sometime in the past accidentally and relied on it in time I was filling up the form for the purchase.


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> The administration fee is 5 € and drivers who exchange O for 0 are an exempted from it completely.


Why do they make such an issue out of that instead of simply converting all the typed in O's into 0's?

I am not sure about other countries but in Poland a licence plate simply cannot contain the letter O because it's too similar to the digit 0 and it could end up with mistakes.

Or maybe at least do it automatically for the countries of registration, for which O on a licence plate is impossible.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Why do they make such an issue out of that instead of simply converting all the typed in O's into 0's?
> 
> I am not sure about other countries but in Poland a licence plate simply cannot contain the letter O because it's too similar to the digit 0 and it could end up with mistakes.
> 
> Or maybe at least do it automatically for the countries of registration, for which O on a licence plate is impossible.


It must be something new. I remember my journey through Hungary back in 2014 when I bought the e-matrica at the border check booth and the employee typed in wrong licence plate number - he exchanged an I for a 1. I made a claim and he replied that it did not matter - system was not set up to recognise the difference. 

AFAIK in Slovakia the 0s and Os are considered the same. The chance of abusing the system is at the level of the statistical deviation and if it happens the lost money would represent much less amount than money spent to make the system completely flawless.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This type of things may depend on each country. For example in the Netherlands there is no O (except for truck trailers), but there are 0's on license plates. 

There are numerous countries in Europe so there are bound to be differences between the license plates. In the Netherlands they don't contain vowels, but in other countries they may.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> This type of things may depend on each country. For example in the Netherlands there is no O (except for truck trailers), but there are 0's on license plates.
> 
> There are numerous countries in Europe so there are bound to be differences between the license plates. In the Netherlands they don't contain vowels, but in other countries they may.


Italian plates contain all the letters except I, O, Q, U. Some combinations are also not used for normal plates (EE, CD, CC).


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> Italian plates contain all the letters except I, O, Q, U. Some combinations are also not used for normal plates (EE, CD, CC).


Almost no restrictions in Slovakia. This sometimes results in strange outcomes. For example in 1997 - 2009 vehicles with special permissions were given special licence plates in format:

cc-X nnn where cc was a district code and nnn was a serial number.

Licence plates for vehicles with special permissions in the Senica district (SE) looked as follows :nuts: :


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> This type of things may depend on each country. For example in the Netherlands there is no O (except for truck trailers), but there are 0's on license plates.
> 
> There are numerous countries in Europe so there are bound to be differences between the license plates. In the Netherlands they don't contain vowels, but in other countries they may.


Still, it would be a feasible approach to handle O (letter) and 0 (number) equal as well I and 1. People just make mistakes. I would not want explain to my mother that O and 0 are two completely different things though they look similar, and you cannot use them interchangeably. It was challenging enough for her to undestand that her bank account number begins with FI, not F1.

Finland earlier banned many letters because of a potential confusion. The number of cars grew so big that the number space approached an exhaustion. The number format was kept intact, and every letter is now allowed.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> Almost no restrictions in Slovakia. This sometimes results in strange outcomes. For example in 1997 - 2009 vehicles with special permissions were given special licence plates in format:


While in Germany, I often use to look for German licence plate forming a Finnish word.









Piru, the Devil

The regions on Pinneberg and Kiel, for instance, are good for this, because there are many Finnish words beginning with PI or KI. The German system bans S-EX, AFAIK, but it cannot ban all questionable foreign meanings.


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## ChrisZwolle

I've seen SE-XY-111.


----------



## g.spinoza

In Austria, I saw an Innsbruck plate "I (coat of arms) SEX." The coat of arms, from a distance, may resemble a heart...


----------



## bogdymol

In Sweden, for a relatively high fee, you can get a personalised license plate custom-made as you wish. One Romanian guy living there got such a plate:










It means, in Romanian, "f**k PSD", where PSD is the political party currently governing Romania*. Last summer he toured Romania with this car for about 2 weeks, and everybody was taking pictures of his car and was talking about him (he was superstar in the press). Police also stopped him several times, but could not do anything about it. About 2 weeks later, they found a very old law, which afterwards was proven to be no longer valid, which stated that a license plate must have both letters AND numbers, so they took the plates away from him. Also the Swedish licensing board withdrew the plate to avoid this to escalate. Nevertheless, this plate identical still exist in other countries like Belgium or USA, where Romanian natives managed to get it.

* The message may be considered offensive, but actually many people backed him. PSD is an extremely corrupt party, whose only purpose in the last 2 years since they are in power is to get people out of jail, help corrupt officials with their cases and make life hard for anti-corruption prosecutors - all this by changing the laws. Even the party ruler has been convicted for forging the elections a couple of years ago, and now has a second case in court which doesn't look good for him. There have been numerous massive protests because of this, largest one involving, some say, up to 500.000 people.


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## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> I would not want explain to my mother that O and 0 are two completely different things though they look similar, and you cannot use them interchangeably. It was challenging enough for her to undestand that her bank account number begins with FI, not F1.


One of tax return forms used in Poland is named PIT/O. Where O stands for "odliczenie" – tax deduction. You use it if you are entitled to deduct some expenses from the income tax or from the income, from which the tax is calculated.

But most people call it "PIT zero"... Maybe because some other forms have numbers there, e.g. PIT-37 (this is the one which is obligatory to fill in every year for people with normal full-time jobs).




One of the counties in Poland (the county with the capital in the town Ślesin, P stands for Poznań, which is the voivodeship capital) is marked as PSL on the licence plates. Meanwhile, PSL is also a name of a big and well-known political party.


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## MattiG

*Santa Claus Taxation*

It is not any more arguable whether Santa Claus exists or not. The Finnish Tax Administration has published the instructions on how the services delivered by Santa Claus are subject to taxation.

https://www.vero.fi/tietoa-verohall...tely/uutiset/uutiset/2018/joulupukin-verotus/

In Finnish, but Google translates it pretty well.


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## piotr71

One of the many available types of license plates in Kosovo:


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## g.spinoza

Yesterday I was driving from Turin to Brescia, on the A21 near Piacenza, and I noticed on my left a bright line coming almost vertically from the sky... in the end it dissolved in a flash of greenish light. I immediately thought of a meteor, and in fact:

https://www.inmeteo.net/blog/2018/1...-tante-segnalazioni-soprattutto-dal-nord-est/

(the picture in the link is not the actual one, I think it's a stock image)

but I was surprised that this is the only mention of it I found on the web: it was so low that I didn't even have to look up, it was so low I though it could have reached ground.

Have you ever seen such a bright meteor?


----------



## Suburbanist

I have never seer a meteor that bright.


----------



## bogdymol

I've never seen such a meteor, but reminds me of the 2013 meteor in Russia:







Until now, the most "shocking" moment I ever lived was the Kilauea volcano eruption in Hawaii followed by a 6.9 earthquake (I was just 2-3 km away from the volcano and the earthquake epicenter). Such things you tend to never forget...


----------



## tfd543

My most shocking moment was when i Saw somebody got shot while I was eating in a restaurant. Completely Crazy.


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> Yesterday I was driving from Turin to Brescia, on the A21 near Piacenza, and I noticed on my left a bright line coming almost vertically from the sky... in the end it dissolved in a flash of greenish light. I immediately thought of a meteor, and in fact:
> 
> https://www.inmeteo.net/blog/2018/1...-tante-segnalazioni-soprattutto-dal-nord-est/
> 
> (the picture in the link is not the actual one, I think it's a stock image)
> 
> but I was surprised that this is the only mention of it I found on the web: it was so low that I didn't even have to look up, it was so low I though it could have reached ground.
> 
> Have you ever seen such a bright meteor?


Once. Long time ago, around 1997 I'd say.It was very low and bright that much that it clearly turned night into the day. Also, it left the trail on the sky that lasted around 15 seconds.


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## General Maximus

I still have safe houses all over Europe I can call home. Right now I'm at my London home celebrating my birthday (thank you  ) - I also have keys of houses and apartments in Mayrhofen Austria, Sneek Netherlands, Pineda de Mar Spain (my private car has Spanish registration, but it's been parked up in Sneek for over a month now and it won't start) - and Gladbeck Germany.

But the place I really call home is now Huningue, France. I'll be there again next weekend, tomorrow I'm driving from London to Salamanca in Spain.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> Suburbanist is living and working in a lot of places, but you (General Maximum) just drive around all the time for work. Still travel, but slightly different.
> 
> I also travel a lot, for both pleasure and for work, and I feel that last year was a record travelling one. Last year I have been to 16 countries: Romania, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, UK, Ireland, Turkey, Russia, Israel, Canada and also 6 times to USA.
> 
> 55 flights, 137.000 km
> almost 30.000 km with personal car + many more with company car and rented cars
> 
> What about you guys?


I am boring as hell.
I live in the downtown of Bratislava, where I also work. :lol: 11 minutes to work by trolleybus, 4 minutes to work by car (provided that I'll find a vacant park place immediately) and 40 minutes of walking.

When it comes to business trips I travel a lot by trains solely. Working at the ministry means that I have a free 2nd class travel card for trains in Slovakia and Czech republic. I have almost travelled all the active train lines in Slovakia and lot of them in the Czech Republic. Vienna is also a very frequent destination as we have a very close cooperation with Austria. Since my work agenda concerns Slovak transport sector, there are only few reasons to travel abroad. 

Because I used to suffer from aero-phobics, I have not flown a lot. Therefore I did leisure travelling abroad solely by cars or buses. Almost 12 times I have been to Greece by car via different routes (through Hungary, Austria, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria or Macedonia). I was in Sicily, Korfu, Spain by bus as well. 

Fortunately I was given a perfect birthday gift from my parents for my 30th birthday - it was called "the trial pilot". I was supposed to get on a small aircraft (Cessna 172) with a professional pilot. The pro took off and handed off the controls to me. I controlled the yoke for 2 hours flying above Bratislava. The weather was not very nice: clear sky but severe wind gusts. I liked it though. We did a touch and go at one small non-paved-surface airport during the flight and then we returned to the Bratislava airport. I definitely started to like flying. Last year I flew to Cape Verde (8 hour long flight). It included a short leg between two islands taking 7 minutes in the altitude of 2.000 ft. I definitely like flying now and I am waiting for new opportunities. However, my wife is pregnant so we have a travel-break so far


----------



## MichiH

bogdymol said:


> Last year I have been to 16 countries: Romania, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, UK, Ireland, Turkey, Russia, Israel, Canada and also 6 times to USA.
> almost 30.000 km with personal car + many more with company car and rented cars
> What about you guys?


I've beent to Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czechia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland and UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) in 2018.

More than 20,000km for business trips and more than 30,000km for leisure.


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> I also travel a lot, for both pleasure and for work, and I feel that last year was a record travelling one. Last year I have been to 16 countries: Romania, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, UK, Ireland, Turkey, Russia, Israel, Canada and also 6 times to USA.
> 
> 55 flights, 137.000 km
> almost 30.000 km with personal car + many more with company car and rented cars
> 
> What about you guys?


In my earlier life, I had a job which included a lot of travel. For years, I saw a number of meeting rooms, airport lounges, delayed flights, unpleasant airport staff, etc. A request to fly somewhere often came in a few hours' warning. After some hundreds of thousands of flight miles, I felt quite boring, and seeked for a new job with less travel.

Currently, about zero international business travel. Own car about 35000 km annually. About 10000 km for commuting and business travel, the rest for the leisure time travel.


----------



## bogdymol

MattiG said:


> In my earlier life, I had a job which included a lot of travel. For years, I saw a number of meeting rooms, airport lounges, delayed flights, unpleasant airport staff, etc. A request to fly somewhere often came in a few hours' warning. After some hundreds of thousands of flight miles, I felt quite boring, and seeked for a new job with less travel.


I can understand you. I am still young, travel is one of my hobbies, so I actually enjoy it. What is slightly boring is the amount of traveling to the same place over and over again (in the last 4-5 years I traveled on average 10 times each year to UK - I went to all parts of UK from Inverness in north Scotland until close to the southernmost point of UK). However, I got also to some countries or places which possibly I wouldn't have otherwise, like Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Luxembourg, and more recently USA (south-east) or Israel last month. I might not be doing this when I will be 50 years old, but right now it's nice to get out from the office every month.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There was a security threat on a train in my city today. Tactical teams responded, something you don't regularly see in the Netherlands (full gear, assault rifles, snipers).


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> I can understand you. I am still young, travel is one of my hobbies, so I actually enjoy it. What is slightly boring is the amount of traveling to the same place over and over again (in the last 4-5 years I traveled on average 10 times each year to UK - I went to all parts of UK from Inverness in north Scotland until close to the southernmost point of UK). However, I got also to some countries or places which possibly I wouldn't have otherwise, like Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Luxembourg, and more recently USA (south-east) or Israel last month. I might not be doing this when I will be 50 years old, but right now it's nice to get out from the office every month.


I enjoy travelling, too. Especially, I enjoy travelling to destinations I can decide on, and according to the schedule I can decide on.


----------



## Attus

As I'm getting older (I'm 44), I like driving less and less. Funny, because I can drive more and more without getting tired. When I was younger I liked it but got tired - now I dont' get tired but do not really enjoy it. 
Living alone I chose a flat which is near to my office, so I can walk to the office. I like it! Sometimes I don't drive two weeks. Since my car is parked in the garage, I usually don't see it a week or even longer  For longer trips I chose flight or train, I drive only it there's no acceptable air/rail connection. For example in three weeks I will visit Nordhausen, Thuringen. A seven hours trip by public transport: at least 3 changes by train (Bonn, Frankfurt, Kassel), then tram and another tram in the town. I'll drive. 
So I never drive more than 15,000 kms a year. 

Last year I've been to the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Hungary and Slovakia. Quite a short list, especially that NL, B, L and F are available from my home in no more than two hours of driving and Hungary is the country I was born. I like travelling but for me it does not necesserily mean to visit some far country.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't drive to work either, I live only 2.5 km from the office so I almost always cycle if I'm not working from home. 

However I do drive some 20,000 km per year, over half of that is for vacation / road trips. I usually take two trips over the summer that are between 4,000 and 6,000 kilometers long, and a third trip in the spring if the weather is good. My longest trip so far is 6,700 kilometers in two weeks when I drove around Spain in 2015.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> Suburbanist is living and working in a lot of places, but you (General Maximum) just drive around all the time for work. Still travel, but slightly different.
> 
> I also travel a lot, for both pleasure and for work, and I feel that last year was a record travelling one. Last year I have been to 16 countries: Romania, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, UK, Ireland, Turkey, Russia, Israel, Canada and also 6 times to USA.
> 
> 55 flights, 137.000 km
> almost 30.000 km with personal car + many more with company car and rented cars
> 
> What about you guys?


Not much travel for me last year, I visited just 5 countries (Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands). But I am about to relocate temporarily to Paris...


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't drive to work either, I live only 2.5 km from the office so I almost always cycle if I'm not working from home.
> 
> However I do drive some 20,000 km per year, over half of that is for vacation / road trips. I usually take two trips over the summer that are between 4,000 and 6,000 kilometers long, and a third trip in the spring if the weather is good. My longest trip so far is 6,700 kilometers in two weeks when I drove around Spain in 2015.


My vacation trips to abroad are always subject to planning, because of long distances: 1150 km one-way from Helsinki to Hamburg via Turku. The mode of travel varies: Usually, it is makes sense to fly to Düsseldorf, Frankfurt or Munich and to rent a car there. However, that puts a limit to the things to buy. 

Therefore, quite many trips to the south of the Baltic Sea have been made by the own car. The first and last whole day is for quick driving through Sweden. Outwards: Leave home at 1700 latest to catch the night ferry at Turku. Arrival at 0610 in Stockholm, and a full day available to reach Denmark or the south Sweden. Inwards: Sleepover in the south Sweden, then catch the 1930 ferry in Stockholm, at 0700 in Turku, and arrive home at 0900.

It is a long way to the North, too. The shortest trip from Helsinki to the coast of the Arctic sea is about 1500 km one way. Thus, the trip to the northern Norway is easily 5000 km or more. However, such a trip does not need a lot of planning, because the schedule is not constrained by the time table and availability of the ferries between Finland and Sweden.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands is relatively central in terms of what you can reach in a day's drive: southern France, northern Italy, much of Central Europe, southern Scandinavia.

I usually don't drive more than 1100 - 1200 km in a day. I find the far south of France a bit too much for one day so I usually split it up in a 900 + 500 km day.


----------



## General Maximus

^^ I'm on the boat now, docking in Calais in an hour. I aim to get past Bordeaux today and be in Salamanca by tomorrow afternoon. Wish me luck


----------



## volodaaaa

General Maximus said:


> I'm on the boat now, docking in Calais in an hour. I aim to get past Bordeaux today and be in Salamanca by tomorrow afternoon. Wish me luck


Are you attempting to make it to Europe? 😁


----------



## Kpc21

An article about our problems with the condition of the air in Poland, the government plans how to fight with it and the EU reaction:



> *Government promised subsidies for heating systems but the EU says "no". Will the "Clean Air" programme go up in smoke?*
> 
> The flagship of the government, the "Clean Air" programme which assumed fighting with the smog mainly for the EU money, is collapsing. It turns out that its main assumption – the replacement of obsolete heating systems with modern ones – is not appreciated by the European Comission and is against the EU politics.
> 
> "During the intermediary talks we got a clean answer from the Comission that in the following financial perspective, the Union is not going to finance and subsidize replacement of the household boilers with ones using fossil fuels, including both coal and gas – Piotr Woźny, the representative of the prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki for the "Clean Air" programme, admits in the talk with Gazeta Wyborcza.
> 
> *Who will finance the heating systems replacement?*
> 
> It may make the programme go up with smoke because the 103 billion złoty, which were going to be spent on fighting with smog, were mainly going to come from the EU funds, as the Monday's GW says. Other sources of funds, such as the National Environment Protection Fund (NFOŚ) or the incomes from emissions trade or the fuel tax may not be enough to cover the 10-year programme.
> 
> The recruitment began in September and at the end of 2018 there was already 23.5 thousand volunteers for the subsidy for installation of modern coal, gas and oil boilers, electric heating or heat pumps.
> 
> Now, the recruitment got suspended but there is a chance that those who managed to apply will get the subsidy – if money from the NFOŚ and the voivodeship funds and that one manages to move money to fight with smog from other non-realized EU-financed investments.
> 
> *There is still a chance*
> 
> However, in the state budget, one cannot really see the money for the programme realization. "Unofficially, from the officials, we hear that <<103 billion zł was more of a political declaration>> without any actual financial coverage", we read in GW.
> 
> Regardless of the unwillignness for subsidising modern coal boilers in Poland, the EU still wants to support the "Clean Air" programme. There are several conditions: that the actions within the programme must follow the EU politics which wants to fully resign from the fossil fuels and the EU directive about energy efficiency which assumes that until 2050 no house in EU will use energy from them.
> 
> It's still not all. In the view of those findings, there are doubts concerning the EU support for gas boilers. As the journalist managed to find out, the EC may finaly agree for those subsidies but it will promote financing more environment-friendly heating sources, e.g. heat pumps.


https://innpoland.pl/149223,nie-bed...lciUVpYKBwK6jf51E6hqGUNzlpxrGEoZXZVOW_0-1hNRo

As you may know, we have big problems with air pollution in Poland, especially in winter. The main reason – households using coal for heating. There are, of course, many cases in which the coal gets replaced with household waste, but also burning coal in modern "stoker" boilers (I think this is how they're called in English, at least in the US, not sure about the UK naming) makes it possible to reduce it a lot.

And the EU seems not to like that talking about utopias of no fossil fuels heating already in 2050... What advantage will it bring if most electricity here anyway comes from coal and until 2050 its share will probably be reduced – but it will still be big and rather not disappear for the next 100 years (or for longer, as long as there are still coal resources – as it's for us the matter of energy independence)?

But the non-fossil-fuels heating sources are simply not appropriate for old, poorly isolated houses. With electric heating such a household would go bankrupt, heat pumps are expensive and demand low-temperature heating systems, at best – underfloor heating. And who will install underfloor heating in an old house? In many cases it's just impossible because one has to live in the house and installing underfloor heating demands leaving that level in the building for some time.


----------



## volodaaaa

Heavy snowfall in Bratislava now. I think the one of the most severe over the last 10 years and the prospects are far from being favourable. It should last for the next 24 hours with the temperature at -3° at maximum.

The last snowfall at this level of severity took place on the New year's eve between 2005/2006 when 6 people died in an extensive chain multiple-car accident on the motorway leading to the city. The one before the last snowfall took place in 1987.


----------



## Junkie

^^
The mass is heading southeast and it will hit my place in around 12 hours from now. There is a yellow warning for snow/ice for Skopje on accuweather with temperatures down to -12 from Friday on, when the snow mass pass.


----------



## Attus

^^ They had luck.


----------



## General Maximus

Just left Braga, Portugal on my way to Calais and England...


----------



## bogdymol

So, last evening I had a flight booked. Went to the airport, check-in, everything ok... then boarding delayed by 1 hour. This happen sometimes, so after almost 1h30m everyone boarded the plane. 

Plane leaves the terminal, goes towards the runway, then stops for about 30 minutes. Then the pilot makes an announcement that our flight was canceled. So back to the terminal after staying about 1h30m in the plane without flying.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands has also not seen much winter weather. The nights with temperatures below freezing can probably be counted on one hand. There was one morning with a thin snow cover in early December, but most of the past 6 weeks have seen temperatures between 5 and 10°C. 

There is talk about a 'sudden stratospheric warming' which is supposed to bring much colder weather than usual into Europe. Long-term forecasts are trending down for the Netherlands, but no deep winter scenarios have been forecasted. -3°C is not deep winter, but normal winter weather for our region...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> -3°C is not deep winter, but normal winter weather for our region...


Is it, though? According to a quick Google search the long term average temperature for the Netherlands in January (the coldest month) seems to be somewhere between +2C and +3C. Sure, a couple of days or a week at -3C wouldn't be anything special but a whole month's average of -3C would be significantly colder than usual. In comparison, -3,5C is the long term average for Estonia in January and we are further North and have a more continental climate.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Having an oceanic climate means that the averages are temperate, but extremes are normal as well. For example, the average high in the summer is 22°C but temperatures exceeding 30°C are completely normal for our climate, but they don't last all summer long. 

The temperature records in the Netherlands are between -27 and +38°C while the averages are between 0 and 22°C. So -10°C is not uncommon in our winter but don't typically last for weeks.


----------



## Junkie

volodaaaa said:


> The "NMK" abbreviation is official? I do not understand you guys. There is so many two-letter combinations and you ex-Yugoslavs literally still stick to illegible three letters. SLO, BIH, SRB, MNE, NMK.


It is official, it will demand changing of vehicle plates as well. And please update your signature


----------



## bogdymol

Junkie said:


> I want to ask moderators to change the name of the threads from "Macedonia" and "MK" into North Macedonia (Republic of) and "NMK".


Don't worry, we will change the thread's name once all parties involved recognize the new name.



sponge_bob said:


> That is some dump of snow in MittelEuropa right now. It has not gone below 0c yet where I live in all of 2019 and I have not seen any snow all winter.


You can buy "fresh snow" from Austria if you want. There's an ad on a local website where locals sell all kind of items.


----------



## Ni3lS

MichiH said:


> You must live or work south of Stuttgart.


Yes, I am on a project 3 days a week in Fasanenhof, next to the airport. I live in the North East though. No issues first 25 minutes, until I drove by the Fernsehturm. 

For those who are interested: went to a tire specialist today here in a local town in the Netherlands. They were very kind and did a thorough check. So apparently the left-rear tire is at 3.5 mm, the right-rear at 4.5 mm and the front 2 at 4.5 mm as well. New tires would easily be €400. Of course I am willing to spend money on my safety, but the context is the following. The car is brand new (July 2018) but I only have it for a year. In July this year I have to get a new one and I'm not sure if I want the same model range. I already spent €500 on the winterwheels knowing that I only have the car for a year. I don't want to spend another €400 on new tires for those rare occasions that such weather occurs. I think I'll take public transport in the future on those days and hope that winter passes by quickly.. The guy did fill the tires with air again after I let air out myself. He said that more air was safer, although I am sure that if you put too much it can't fully use the tire profile. He now put in 2.8 bar at the rear and 2.5 at the front. At the time I had the problem on Wednesday there was 2.55 all around. I brought it back down to 1.95 and 2.05 at the rear and 2.2 at the front in order to gain traction..


----------



## Suburbanist

I finally got all forms I need from Norway to apply for health insurance exemption in Switzerland. Since I still earn money and pay taxes in Norway, I am insured there and Swiss health insurance cost a non trivial amount of CHF 400 or so per month with deductibles


----------



## MattiG

Ni3lS said:


> Yes, I am on a project 3 days a week in Fasanenhof, next to the airport. I live in the North East though. No issues first 25 minutes, until I drove by the Fernsehturm.
> 
> For those who are interested: went to a tire specialist today here in a local town in the Netherlands. They were very kind and did a thorough check. So apparently the left-rear tire is at 3.5 mm, the right-rear at 4.5 mm and the front 2 at 4.5 mm as well. New tires would easily be €400. Of course I am willing to spend money on my safety, but the context is the following. The car is brand new (July 2018) but I only have it for a year. In July this year I have to get a new one and I'm not sure if I want the same model range. I already spent €500 on the winterwheels knowing that I only have the car for a year. I don't want to spend another €400 on new tires for those rare occasions that such weather occurs. I think I'll take public transport in the future on those days and hope that winter passes by quickly.. The guy did fill the tires with air again after I let air out myself. He said that more air was safer, although I am sure that if you put too much it can't fully use the tire profile. He now put in 2.8 bar at the rear and 2.5 at the front. At the time I had the problem on Wednesday there was 2.55 all around. I brought it back down to 1.95 and 2.05 at the rear and 2.2 at the front in order to gain traction..


Scary. 3 mm is quite widely seen as the minimum safe groove depth.


----------



## General Maximus

Suburbanist said:


> I finally got all forms I need from Norway to apply for health insurance exemption in Switzerland. Since I still earn money and pay taxes in Norway, I am insured there and Swiss health insurance cost a non trivial amount of CHF 400 or so per month with deductibles


I'm looking for work in Basel. Once I've done that, I can choose whether I want to have my health insurance in Switzerland or France where I live. I'd be a _"frontalier"_ or _"Grenzgänger"_, so I'd pay my taxes in France.


----------



## bogdymol

General Maximus said:


> I'm looking for work in Basel. Once I've done that, I can choose whether I want to have my health insurance in Switzerland or France where I live. I'd be a _"frontalier"_ or _"Grenzgänger"_, so I'd pay my taxes in France.


That's a pretty neat thing one can do in Europe. Work in an expensive country, get a high income from there, but live in a cheaper country (=lower expenses on housing, food etc.).


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## General Maximus

Exactly that!

Although taxes are a lot higher in France, it still works out better for me. And it's all being done automatically in the border area through an agreement with the French departements of 67 and 68, Baden-Würtemberg in Germany and the Swiss cantons of Basel-Stadt and Basel-Land.


----------



## MichiH

General Maximus said:


> Baden-Würtemberg


Baden-Wür*tt*emberg


----------



## General Maximus

Yes, them as well :lol:


----------



## MichiH

^^ You need to respect your neighbors although they are mostly not car-friendly


----------



## g.spinoza

General Maximus said:


> I'm looking for work in Basel. Once I've done that, I can choose whether I want to have my health insurance in Switzerland or France where I live. I'd be a _"frontalier"_ or _"Grenzgänger"_, so I'd pay my taxes in France.


Frontaliers are easy to target, though, during this era of xenophoby.

The Italian ones (living in provinces of Como or Varese and working in Ticino) were the target of a fierce battle few years ago, when they were called "rats" by a Swiss party:


----------



## General Maximus

I hope (and think) that's not the case in the Basel region. A lot of Swiss themselves live in the St Louis/Huningue area, as well as a high amount of American and British expats working in the pharmaceutical industry in Basel...


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Basel has a reputation of being quite pro-Europe, the two Basels were the only majority German-speaking cantons to vote to join the EU in 1992 (every majority French-speaking canton did so). 
Ticino on the other hand has a reputation of being quite anti-EU.


----------



## bogdymol

Basel has to be pro-Europe. Just look on the map: its suburbs sprawl into 2 other countries, its airport is in France etc. It is too well connected to France and Germany to be anti-Europe.


----------



## italystf

DanielFigFoz said:


> Ticino on the other hand has a reputation of being quite anti-EU.


Ticino has strong bounds with Italy/Lombardy, included the xenophobic/eurosceptic Lega party. They see their southern neighbours as foreign immigrants, even if they speak the same language and dialect.


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> Basel has to be pro-Europe. Just look on the map: its suburbs sprawl into 2 other countries, its airport is in France etc. It is too well connected to France and Germany to be anti-Europe.


So does Geneve, isn't it?


----------



## Suburbanist

Kanadzie said:


> That's interesting. In Canada / US major metropolitan areas, taxi permits were strictly regulated in number. Their value became very large, 200 - 250 000 EUR was common in major cities (e.g. New York or Montreal). Uber came along and was cheap, in few years these permits are worth as much as Blockbuster franchises :lol:


New York City medallions peaked in 2006 at US$ 1.1 million. That is insane. The number of medallions had barely changed between 1949 and then (like just a 15% increase or so). Now there are many cases in the media of families, often immigrants families, where several people that pooled resources to buy a medallion (often shares by 2 or 3 drivers, all relatives) only to see their investment of sorts lose most of its value. Several taxi drivers of this background committed suicide after becoming drown in debt. But the culprit was not Uber per se but this absurd system of artificial rationing coupled with transferrable and mortgageable operating licenses.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Uber was outlawed in Italy. Only UberBlack is allowed.


Stupid populist government that fights the free market and the free competition to protect existing monopolies. I think the medallion system must be abolished too. Everyone should be able to start an economical activity, providing s/he has the requirements to do said activity (in case of taxi driver: roadworty car, valid driving license, and clean criminal record) and pays taxes. Competition will decrease prices. I hope EU will force us to change by sanctioning Italy.


----------



## volodaaaa

- Dear Master.
- Yes, my friend?
- You are extremely old, tell me, what is the recipe for a long and healthy life?
- There is one thing you need to follow: never argue with idiots.
- What? That is baloney!
- You are right!
:lol:


----------



## Suburbanist

italystf said:


> Stupid populist government that fights the free market and the free competition to protect existing monopolies. I think the medallion system must be abolished too. Everyone should be able to start an economical activity, providing s/he has the requirements to do said activity (in case of taxi driver: roadworty car, valid driving license, and clean criminal record) and pays taxes. Competition will decrease prices. I hope EU will force us to change by sanctioning Italy.


At least Italy has cab hailing apps that work nice, like MyTaxi.


----------



## General Maximus

Greetings from Reims, France. I've got to drive back to Lyon in this, and the roads in the area are very slow.


----------



## Surel

Suburbanist said:


> This is cheaper than having a dedicated fleet for disabled or medically impaired passengers (who cannot walk much but don't require an ambulance...). Norway does the same, the health services contract out medical transport and reduce the number of ambulance rides needed just for transportation.


I am not quite sure this is the case. First of all you need a PT that provides free transport to disadvantaged passengers, elderly, children and so on. For the more disabled people, that are already clients of social services as they need assistance anyway, it only makes sense that those organisations are able to provide transport. Otherwise you are paying twice. You pay the personnel of those social services and on top of that you pay for the transport. Another way is to subsidize the care that the family is providing to such persons, i.e. providing subsidies for acquiring suitable vehicles and providing subsidies for the travel costs. 

As about medical organisations, it depends. If a patient is able to use a taxi, even a specialized taxi, it doesn't really need this service to be provided by the medical facility itself. Also if you have urgent patients it doesn't make sense to delay the transportation by employing a third person, and if the transport is not urgent, you can easily organize it in a such a way that it will be clearly cheaper and better to provide it in house.


----------



## Kanadzie

General Maximus said:


> Greetings from Reims, France. I've got to drive back to Lyon in this, and the roads in the area are very slow.


2 flakes of snow, why anyone even slow down? :lol:


----------



## General Maximus

Well... Damn


----------



## DanielFigFoz

General Maximus said:


> Well... Damn


Did you make it?

I mean, well, the map shows you did, but how was it?


----------



## General Maximus

Wasn't too bad in the end. Now between Lausanne and Bern on my way home to Huningue. It's getting greener every mile


----------



## DanielFigFoz

General Maximus said:


> Wasn't too bad in the end. Now between Lausanne and Bern on my way home to Huningue. It's getting greener every mile


An area I know very well, that!

Sent from my SM-G920F using SkyscraperCity Forums mobile app


----------



## Junkie

My current passport is expiring on 27. May and I need at least three months to allow for valid traveling so is expiring on 27. February. I will be renewing it probably with the new name of my country which will be insciption Republic of North Macedonia, starting from tomorrow as scheduled the ratification should be completed. The new passports should start to be issued in February. It is quite awkward for people now.


----------



## tfd543

Have a source that the new passports are already issued in february ? Thats very fast. Remember UN also have to complete some paperwork after the greek parliament ratifies it. 

Mine is expiring in august and i am waiting for the new passport as well. I will renew the passport and national ID card at the same time. 

Junkie boy, you also need to get a new birth certificate to renew and get the new passport. Thats the only document you need.

Whats about the license plates ? Will we have NMK as label on the left side?


----------



## General Maximus

DanielFigFoz said:


> An area I know very well, that!
> 
> Sent from my SM-G920F using SkyscraperCity Forums mobile app


Lausanne/Bern or Hunningue?


----------



## Junkie

tfd543 said:


> Have a source that the new passports are already issued in february ? Thats very fast. Remember UN also have to complete some paperwork after the greek parliament ratifies it.
> 
> Mine is expiring in august and i am waiting for the new passport as well. I will renew the passport and national ID card at the same time.
> 
> Junkie boy, you also need to get a new birth certificate to renew and get the new passport. Thats the only document you need.
> 
> Whats about the license plates ? Will we have NMK as label on the left side?


It is unofficial news from the PM stating that he will be the first to change his passport after the Greek parliament ratifies it. The constitutional changes get into force once both sides ratifies it, so its from this Friday on, no UN here.

You cannot into Greece with the old passport. You will still need the separate visa and stamps paper. 
With the new passports you can into Greece without additional papers.

In the agreement both sides agreed that all national and travel documents of future NMK will have to be changed in the next 5 years thats until February 2024.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

General Maximus said:


> Lausanne/Bern or Hunningue?


Lausanne/Bern.

Sent from my SM-G920F using SkyscraperCity Forums mobile app


----------



## General Maximus

Live scenes as 1 mm of snow hits the UK.


----------



## Suburbanist

Got my Swiss residence permit finally (Libretto per stranieri).


----------



## Verso

delete


----------



## ntom

Are you trying to pwn SSC or you just messing around with SQL injection . Joking aside, I didn't know Cloudflare could protect from SQL injections. Seems new.

BTW, you have exposed your IP there in the footer. You might want to hide that.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> The Republic of Macedonia has officially been approved by the Greek national council. Congratulations on finishing the one of the most useless conflicts ever


I guess anyone from (North) Macedonia will pronounce the new name as if "North" was between parentheses, just like I wrote.


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> The Republic of Macedonia has officially been approved by the Greek national council. Congratulations on finishing the one of the most useless conflicts ever


You mean Republic of *North* Macedonia. Great news anyway!



ntom said:


> Yeah, you've got a point there and sometimes these little features may not make it but they can surely break it.
> 
> 
> You can copy the direct link to an image through Edge. It's just a two-step operation. Right click and "Ask Cortana about this picture" and on the opened pane click "See full-size image". It's actully three steps, because you have to now select and copy the address. Nuts :nuts:.


Right click on the picture? I don't get any "Ask Cortana about this picture" option, all I get is "Save Picture as, Share Picture, Choose all, Copy, and Block element with ABP".


----------



## ntom

Verso said:


> Right click on the picture? I don't get any "Ask Cortana about this picture" option, all I get is "Save Picture as, Share Picture, Choose all, Copy, and Block element with ABP".


It may say "Ask Bing..." if you haven't enabled Cortana in Edge. If not, I'm afraid you haven't updated your W10 in more than a year.


----------



## Junkie

Greek parliament with a green light for Prespes agreement approves the name of North Macedonia (Republic of).

In our language it is called (Republika) Severna Makedonija.

The accord enters into force as of today 25.01.2019. The shortcut MK now becomes NMK.

I urge moderators to change the name of all threads without any further delays.

PS. I have updated my signature as I am from the North now. Coincidentally it is snowing in the North today too!


----------



## g.spinoza

"King in the North!"


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> "King in the North!"o


I'll be careful with that knowing his fate. I meant, the previous one, of course


----------



## Verso

ntom said:


> It may say "Ask Bing..." if you haven't enabled Cortana in Edge. If not, I'm afraid you haven't updated your W10 in more than a year.


It doesn't say "Ask Bing..." and I have Cortana enabled (on my PC, don't know about Edge). I updated my W10 last week.


----------



## ntom

Verso said:


> It doesn't say "Ask Bing..." and I have Cortana enabled (on my PC, don't know about Edge). I updated my W10 last week.


It may be (it's not clear) that this feature is not present on all regions. I have my Windows region set to UK. If you need it, check out this discussion:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...e/e8559db1-84d7-4d4d-a8fa-846de442c25e?page=4


----------



## Verso

It's weird.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Or:
> New Zealand: Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu


I went only to this place. Very interesting, by the way. A local lady pronounced it a couple of times without issues, and also tried to learn us also how to pronounce it.


----------



## bogdymol

Lane discipline in USA. I took this pictures today on I-85 in North Carolina:


----------



## volodaaaa




----------



## ChrisZwolle

So true. The internet has become less fun compared to 10 years ago. Yes they added cookies without your consent 10 years ago, but at that time the tracking capabilities of large internet companies were less advanced and intrusive as well. 

I understand that they need some kind of earnings model to run a website but they have gone way too far with the collection of personal data. Facebook and Google post gigantic net income figures, they really don't need to collect that much data to be profitable. 

The CEO of DuckDuckGo says they don't need to collect any personal data to have a profitable business model.

But if they don't collect so much personal data, someone else will. They will always push the boundaries of intrusion and tracking.


----------



## Suburbanist

It was not that rosy.
We had much more vulnerabilities 10 years ago on the web.
Flash scripts. Unsafe Java. Most websites were not https. 2step verification was a thing only for certain financial services. Banner ads with porn and shady medicines. P2P clients with backdoors. SQL injections.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think you're describing the problems of the early 2000s more than 10 years ago (2009). It was mostly a problem for the less tech savvy, the same people who now think a few social media apps constitutes the entire internet. 

I don't use social media much. There are far too many ignorant and outright dumb people ruining every interesting public discussion. Comment threads on Facebook aren't even worth reading for the most part, the whole structure of Facebook is to let people scroll endlessly though an ad-loaded feed instead of really taking the time for some interesting discussion. 

I turned off nearly all notifications on my phone as well, even for WhatsApp. I read it when I have the time, I don't want my phone to run my life.


----------



## volodaaaa

I was 15 when I started to code websites. I learned HTML and then PHP. It ware early 2000s, 2003 in particular. There were several trends how to code a website with a simple goal:

a website had to be as quick as possible to load, as smallests as possible in terms of data consumption and had to be original regarding design. It was rather a tough goal.

images, java scripts, animations, unnecessary graphics, etc. all were undesirable. Website templates were on the verge of being banned because it was impossible to fulfil these aforementioned requirements therewith. They were no-go. I ended up with few websites while the most important was the website for my classmates. 

After a 5 year break I was asked to code a website for the university department I worked for. I employed all my previous knowledge and created a website. My former classmate who had just graduated from an IT-technology university raised his eyebrows seeing me employing methods from 2003. I did my best to write the code as sparse and compact as possible and still to produce a watchable design. Somehow I had a strange feeling that I do a lot of unnecessary work - like I was inventing a wheel or a water heater.

Last year I was asked to code a new website. I turned to bootstrap.com and realised the trends are much more different than in 2003. Now the websites are screen-width-responsive and overloaded with animations, java scripts, etc. The no-go things from the early 2000s are now assets. 

Currently, it is much more easier to have a website. There is no need to do fully-fledged bottom-up made websites. It is impossible to produce an original design because there is plenty of free or cheaply-charged templates and templates are now cool 

I produced a super-professional website. All I had to do was to register hosting and domain and to adapt the website to the desired content.

Worse part of this is, I will never be "the lord of my code" any more.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> Worse part of this is, I will never be "the lord of my code" any more.


I'm a professional web developer, it's my job. I guess in a typical web site I develop less than 5% of the code is mine.


----------



## MichiH

^^ I have a project with developers using web technology but not for web sites. The software technology is totally different today compared to what was called "web technology" 10 years ago... and I "love" talking to the designers, it's.... awkward funny :lol:


----------



## Verso

ntom said:


> It may be (it's not clear) that this feature is not present on all regions. I have my Windows region set to UK. If you need it, check out this discussion:
> 
> https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...e/e8559db1-84d7-4d4d-a8fa-846de442c25e?page=4


Indeed, Cortana doesn't work in Slovenia/Slovenian.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Extremely cold weather is happening in the northern Midwest and adjacent areas of Canada. Fort Frances reports -43°C, which is only 2 °C from their record low. Some parts of the Midwest may see their coldest weather since the 1990s.


----------



## Kpc21

italystf said:


> ^^ They probably changed the name of Stargard Szczeciński because it was impossible to spell and pronounce :lol:


For us it's just a normal name, nothing difficult 

And don't say we Poles are weird because Russians do even have a special letter for "szcz" (or "shch" spelled in English, "schtsch" spelled in German – BTW, one letter in Russian equals seven letters in German  ).

Chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie w Szczebrzeszynie, a Szczebrzeszyn z tego słynie.

This most popular Polish tongue breaker includes the town name Szczebrzeszyn. This is a little bit more difficult, but nothing difficult for us!

The population of Szczebrzeszyn is slightly over 5000, of Stargard (formerly Stargard Szczeciński) – over 70,000. But Szczebrzeszyn is definitely much more famous 



volodaaaa said:


> Given the recent web-site issues topic. What do you think about the current performance of the Facebook and Messenger app? I am not sure, but I think it is slowly deteriorating. Both the Facebook and the Messenger app are extremely troublesome on all devices I have it installed on. Slowly loading, delayed responses and the white screen of death happen to me many times a day. What are your experiences? Sometimes I think my devices are insufficient.


I use the official Lite versions of those apps. Their standard versions got unusable on my smartphone, which is from December 2014.


----------



## Junkie

Kpc21 said:


> Does it really matter? No....... Should really the forum involve in such political disputes?
> 
> Macedonia, North Macedonia, FYROM, whatever... That country below Serbia and above Greece. Enough.
> 
> Yes, the names in threads should be changed, but making a big issue out of that is just stupid. It would be enough to signalise it in a technical thread or post a PM to a mod. Or use the "report post" button and type in a short message that the country has changed its name and therefore the thread title needs an update.


The name hasnt been change yet, so no need to change it here for now. First of all the current president is not signing the decree of the law which was passed by 2/3 of parliament majority for the constitutional changes. 

The current president which is in his second term and this is his last 10th year serving as a president declared that he will never sign it. Eventually the new president at the next elections will sign this.

Also we as North Macedonia are scheduled to become the 30th member of NATO military block after all of the 29th member palriaments ratifies the protocol. 
Greece is scheduled to ratify it first in February. 
Regarding the UN our government will send a letter to the UN general secretary informing them that the agreement is reached and at the beginning of the next period the name in the UN should be changed in a meeting consisted by the disputed sides and the general secretary himself signing the decree.

There is irony in all of this mess that has lasted for 30 years, because we might be recognized by North Macedonia from the world but we will remain with the old constitutional name for domestic use because the president is not signing this. And it is violating the agreement, because we have made the constitutional changes to use the new name domestically also.


----------



## Verso

Junkie said:


> Reminds of the current progress in Brexit. If it didnt happen then they just fall apart, who cares.


Who falls apart?


----------



## Spookvlieger

volodaaaa said:


> Given the recent web-site issues topic. What do you think about the current performance of the Facebook and Messenger app? I am not sure, but I think it is slowly deteriorating. Both the Facebook and the Messenger app are extremely troublesome on all devices I have it installed on. Slowly loading, delayed responses and the white screen of death happen to me many times a day. What are your experiences? Sometimes I think my devices are insufficient.


Even on the high end devices the facebook app is a bitch. I bought a new device last month (not a high end because I refuse to spend more than 300euro's on a phone; moto G6+ ) and it is still loading slowly, crashing, not loading comments from time to time and it has absolutely nothing to do with the connection. Before I had Galaxy A3 2016 and the facebook app wasn't working correctly most of the time for at least more than a year allready. I even reinstalled phone software but it didn't make any difference.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> For us it's just a normal name, nothing difficult


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> Given the recent web-site issues topic. What do you think about the current performance of the Facebook and Messenger app?


Facebook has 2 billion users worldwide. It is quite a lot. 
It is really a challenge to get and keep such a system working. Facebook web site and app are served by several ten thousands of servers. I'm really fascinated to see it working. Yes, sometimes they fail. Who does never?


----------



## g.spinoza

joshsam said:


> Even on the high end devices the facebook app is a bitch. I bought a new device last month (not a high end because I refuse to spend more than 300euro's on a phone; moto G6+ ) and it is still loading slowly, crashing, not loading comments from time to time and it has absolutely nothing to do with the connection. Before I had Galaxy A3 2016 and the facebook app wasn't working correctly most of the time for at least more than a year allready. I even reinstalled phone software but it didn't make any difference.


I installed the lite version on the same device (g6 Amazon version). Since I use FB very rarely, it is more than enough.


----------



## Suburbanist

Overall, there is a shift coming for mobile web services, from apps (an app for everything) to well-optimized mobile-websites that can run on different browsers. 

According to people in the industry and some tech blogs, there are is an "app bubble" as businesses and developers rushed to create an app for everything under the sun. In early smartphone era, that was somehow necessary because mobile browsers were just bad, then stopped being bad but used too much resources for phones at the time. Now, adaptative design is well developed enough, and all major browsers (including Safari, which had to relent) now work fairly well with different devices.

Furthermore, browsers themselves now have more fine-tuned controls for local website storage.

So the number of apps should decrease a lot. Google itself seems to be focusing more on mobile payment technology than cuts to app fees on Play store. It is also a preemptive strike on any attempt by major phone manufacturers to ever attempt something more with their own app stores.


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> Overall, there is a shift coming for mobile web services, from apps (an app for everything) to well-optimized mobile-websites that can run on different browsers.
> 
> According to people in the industry and some tech blogs, there are is an "app bubble" as businesses and developers rushed to create an app for everything under the sun. In early smartphone era, that was somehow necessary because mobile browsers were just bad, then stopped being bad but used too much resources for phones at the time. Now, adaptative design is well developed enough, and all major browsers (including Safari, which had to relent) now work fairly well with different devices.
> 
> Furthermore, browsers themselves now have more fine-tuned controls for local website storage.
> 
> So the number of apps should decrease a lot. Google itself seems to be focusing more on mobile payment technology than cuts to app fees on Play store. It is also a preemptive strike on any attempt by major phone manufacturers to ever attempt something more with their own app stores.


There are two key usability problems for the mobile usage:

1) The assumption that being mobile equals to a small screen and low bandwidth. This assumption was correct 10-15 years ago, but nowadays it is false.

2) The "mobile-friendly" versions of the services are often lousy in navigation and quality and of limited functionality.

I do not understand why the key Android browsers always default to "mobile" even if the screen resolution is Full HD and the network carrier is 4G or WiFi. The screen size should matter, not the connection.

Pushing apps instead of browser interfaces is an attractive approach, because it makes secret spying much easier.


----------



## volodaaaa

Suburbanist said:


> Overall, there is a shift coming for mobile web services, from apps (an app for everything) to well-optimized mobile-websites that can run on different browsers.
> 
> According to people in the industry and some tech blogs, there are is an "app bubble" as businesses and developers rushed to create an app for everything under the sun. In early smartphone era, that was somehow necessary because mobile browsers were just bad, then stopped being bad but used too much resources for phones at the time. Now, adaptative design is well developed enough, and all major browsers (including Safari, which had to relent) now work fairly well with different devices.
> 
> Furthermore, browsers themselves now have more fine-tuned controls for local website storage.
> 
> So the number of apps should decrease a lot. Google itself seems to be focusing more on mobile payment technology than cuts to app fees on Play store. It is also a preemptive strike on any attempt by major phone manufacturers to ever attempt something more with their own app stores.


IMHO I think apps have sense. So far, I have always experienced apps faster than web-browser alternatives. Except recent experiences with Facebook and Messenger.


----------



## Verso

Attus said:


> [MEDIA=youtube]t-fcrn1Edik[/MEDIA]


Grzegorz What? 😲


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> 1) The assumption that being mobile equals to a small screen and low bandwidth. This assumption was correct 10-15 years ago, but nowadays it is false.


It is still often true.

1. Not everyone uses tablets, some people use smartphones. Even more, there is more smartphone users than tablet users. So small screens are still a lot in use.

2. The visitor doesn't always have access to high bandwidth connection. While travelling, the connection is often slow.



> 2) The "mobile-friendly" versions of the services are often lousy in navigation and quality and of limited functionality.


It's true.



Verso said:


> Grzegorz What? 😲


Brzęczyszczykiewicz.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> It is still often true.


Still, the implication is false. I remind of the truth table of the implication operator in the elementary logic.  

Even the reverse statement is false: "If you have a laptop, the non-mobile mode is always valid". A laptop may be connected over a slow connection, too.

Thus, better not to assume anything but let the user to choose.


----------



## Verso

Kpc21 said:


> Brzęczyszczykiewicz.


MUND HALTEN! :screwit:


----------



## Junkie

Chicago at -55 degrees C, located at 41.50 North latitude is at the exactly same latitude Skopje is located but with crazy unreal temperatures.


----------



## Spookvlieger

-55C is the *windchill*. The lowest temp ever recorded in Chicago is -27°F/-32,7°C in 1985.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Chicago had a low of -23 F, which is -30 C, not -55 C.


----------



## Junkie

joshsam said:


> -55C is the *windchill*. The lowest temp ever recorded in Chicago is -27°F/-32,7°C in 1985.


Yes it is the windchill temperature of exactly -55C.


----------



## volodaaaa

Junkie said:


> Chicago at -55 degrees C, located at 41.50 North latitude is at the exactly same latitude Skopje is located but with crazy unreal temperatures.



What if I told you that latitude is not the only factor affecting the weather? :yes:


----------



## Junkie

^^
Of course it is not. First thing I have in my mind is that Southern Europe is impacted from the Mediraterannean and Sahara wind know as Sirocco or in Slavic lang.is called Yugo (Jugo).

BTW, Chicago Tribune not accessible from my location



> Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.


https://www.tribpub.com/gdpr/chicagotribune.com/


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Yugo (and Lada) cars are (were) often the subject of jokes involving cars of bad quality.
> "How can you double the value of a Yugo/Lada?" "Fill the tank."
> "Why Yugo/Lada have heated rear bumper?" "To keep your hands warm when you push it."
> In Italy, the same jokes often involve the 1980s Fiat Duna.


Was Duna produced only in Turkey, or in Italy too?


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ AFAIK the Duna was only produced in Brasil.


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> Was Duna produced only in Turkey, or in Italy too?


It was first created for South American market in 1985, but it was also imported in Europe in 1987-91.


----------



## Kanadzie

There was really a boom in very cheap cars in latter 1980's... mostly Communist-made looking for hard currency but also Hyundai Pony and some more. In Canada they were even selling Dacia 1310 and a South African-made old Mazda sold in England...

today doesn't seem anything like that happening, aside maybe the current Dacia Logan, and again only in EU... I wonder why nobody is trying to sell stuff like Chery QQ in the US/EU. Maybe crash-test / emissions / tarriff compliance has become too expensive to justify.


----------



## g.spinoza

Kanadzie said:


> There was really a boom in very cheap cars in latter 1980's... mostly Communist-made looking for hard currency but also Hyundai Pony and some more. In Canada they were even selling Dacia 1310 and a South African-made old Mazda sold in England...
> 
> today doesn't seem anything like that happening, aside maybe the current Dacia Logan, and again only in EU... I wonder why nobody is trying to sell stuff like Chery QQ in the US/EU. Maybe crash-test / emissions / tarriff compliance has become too expensive to justify.


In Italy a local carmaker, DR, 10 years ago started importing Chery cars rebranding them. Now it started producing their own cars. It started out of nowhere and now it is not so unusual to see DR cars in Italian cities.
Last time I went to visit my parents, I was most surprised to see a DR dealership there: in a God-forgotten Central Italy town of 3000!


----------



## Junkie

I read today in news that one of Dutch former "Anti-Muslim" politicians from far right PVV party has converted to Islam. It is not uncommon but seems there are deep reasons in this.
https://www.politico.eu/article/for...itician-converts-to-islam-joram-van-klaveren/


----------



## g.spinoza

This, for me, is something totally incomprehensible.


----------



## General Maximus

Why? People are entitled to change their minds...


----------



## g.spinoza

General Maximus said:


> Why? People are entitled to change their minds...


Yes.
For the better.


----------



## General Maximus

He turned Muslim. Not a jihadist. There's a difference.


----------



## g.spinoza

General Maximus said:


> He turned Muslim. Not a jihadist. There's a difference.


Mmm I beg to differ. I read the Quran, and it is cristal clear about that. If you are not a jihadist, you are not a real Muslim.

I am not against Islam. I am against all religions. If that guy was a critic of Christians, than turned Christian, I would have been disgusted as well.


----------



## sophia061

What about the entertainment on the road or near the road. In Philippines everybody is addicted to social media and internet and love to watch serials... What do you think about that


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Mmm I beg to differ. I read the QuranBible, and it is cristal clear about that. If you are not a jihadistfundamentalist, you are not a real MuslimChristian.


All of those holy books were written in an era when things like equality and human rights were unheard of. Of course modern believers in their right mind know that they can't be followed blindly.


----------



## Attus

> I read the Bible, and it is cristal clear about that. If you are not a fundamentalist, you are not a real Christian.


True. However Jesus has never said that christians shall force other people to follow christian rules. On the contrary. 
Being a true christian you must be a fundamentalist but you _must not_ say that non christians shall follow your rules as well. 
And it's a very important difference between Islam and Christianity, even if many (a vast majority of) christian leaders in the history and several christian leaders in the present did not understand the main principles of their own religion.


----------



## g.spinoza

Western world has learnt since long to deal with that, and nobody really believes that the world was created in 6 days or Metusaleah lived a thousand years.
Muslim world still didn't.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Do you guys really want to discuss religion? That almost never ends well...


----------



## cinxxx

^^Discussion is important for progress 
Problem with Quaran is, it's mostly based on teachings from the Old Testament (which is really barbaric), not the New Testament which was a great reform for those times. So it's actually a regress.


----------



## g.spinoza

Yeah, I was just in the mood.

No more replies from me on that subject.


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> No more replies from me on that subject.


What if you get provoked? You're known for replying then.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Western world has learnt since long to deal with that, and nobody really believes that the world was created in 6 days or Metusaleah lived a thousand years.
> Muslim world still didn't.


This is because the Western world has secularized in the past 250 years or so (Enlinghtment, French and American revolutions, and everything consequent), while most of the Muslim world has not secularized yet.


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> For a long time I thought that Columbus was Spanish...


He wasn't?


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> In Italy often schools stop the history program at WWII or just later (the instauration of the Italian Republic and the beginning of the Cold War), because there is no enough time to terminate the program. I think it's sad, as recent history is much more important to know, compared to some less relevant details about the Ancient Egypt, the Maya, or the Holy Roman Empire.


I believe that reasons are somewhat similar to those in Finland: The times after the WW II were pretty chaotic in terms of politics, and is it difficult to take a neutral approach to the near history.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Another interesting development which I didn't know much about high school is how religious entities or all kinds of kingdoms, duchies, principalities, etc. evolved into countries as we know them today. The Holy Roman Empire is pretty much unknown I'd say, I think most people would associate it with antiquity (Caesar) instead of the early modern period.


The basic reason is, I believe, that the youngsters are not mature enough to make analysis. It it easier that just to deliver facts. That was something annoying to me in that age, because I have always been more interested in asking "why" rather than "what".

What comes to the Holy Roman Empire, it was quite an abstract entity in the Finnish schools, too. Perhaps its history raises too many "why" questions, and therefore better to ignore it.

In the Finnish history books, the Holy Roman Empire is called Holy German-Roman Empire. The cynics comment that it was not holy, not German, not Roman and not an empire.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Well, when it was added "German" to the name, after the Diet of Cologne in 1512, it was dominated by German-speaking countries, so it may not be wrong after all.


----------



## tfd543

Surel said:


> One of the more interesting books I read in the last five years. Eliezer Yudkowsky - Three Worlds Collide. Enjoy.
> 
> https://robinhanson.typepad.com/files/three-worlds-collide.pdf


Thnx. will look at it. ^^


----------



## italystf

MattiG said:


> I believe that reasons are somewhat similar to those in Finland: The times after the WW II were pretty chaotic in terms of politics, and is it difficult to take a neutral approach to the near history.


No, history schoolbooks include everything till present days. But teachers stop earlier because they have no time. One can teach historical events by telling facts without taking any side.


----------



## italystf

For the first time in history, an EU country (Hungary) became classificated as "partly free" by Freedom House.

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2019/map


----------



## SeanT

"partly independent" freedomhouse


----------



## Verso

We're more free than Austria? Who knew!

Btw, we learnt almost nothing of history outside Europe.


----------



## italystf

https://www.facebook.com/david.danieli.5/videos/2095467750541949/

A guy stopped by police in Trieste for a traffic violation speaks in Slovenian to cops and refuses to communicate in Italian (although he lives and works in Italy, and thus knows Italian), claiming that he has the right to have cops speaking in Slovenian to him. Finally, he was taken to the police station. 
Could someone who knows Slovenian write what was he saying to police?


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Well, when it was added "German" to the name, after the Diet of Cologne in 1512, it was dominated by German-speaking countries, so it may not be wrong after all.


It's not precise. The empire itself was not called German. 
Heiliges Römisches Rheich Deutscher Nation
Sacrum Romanum Imperium Nationis Germanicae
i.e. Holy Roman Empire of German Nation.

---

In Hungary that historic empire is called German-Roman Empire (Német-Római Birodalom) in its whole history. I've literally never heard the expression Szent Római Birodalom (Holy Roman Empire) in Hungarian. It's similar like what Matti wrote from Finnland, however in Hungarian it is not called Holy. 
I don't know why.


----------



## Attus

MattiG said:


> The basic reason is, I believe, that the youngsters are not mature enough to make analysis.


My history teacher in the High School (1988-92) taught us this way, he always told learning facts is not so important because you can always look for them in a book (Wikipedia hasn't existed back then ), but you must understand why things happened in the way they happened. 
In our very first history class he asked us to write two sentences in our notices and learn them:
- History is life's teacher (Cicero)
- Nations and governments learned nothing from history (Hegel).

He made me like history.


----------



## MattiG

Attus said:


> My history teacher in the High School (1988-92) taught us this way, he always told learning facts is not so important because you can always look for them in a book (Wikipedia hasn't existed back then ), but you must understand why things happened in the way they happened.
> In our very first history class he asked us to write two sentences in our notices and learn them:
> - History is life's teacher (Cicero)
> - Nations and governments learned nothing from history (Hegel).
> 
> He made me like history.


A wise teacher!

I remember having asked if the end of the The Hundred Years' War and the fall of Constantinople had something to do with each other, because the both happened in the same year 1453. The teacher responded, after a silence of 15 seconds, that they did not. But he paid more time on wondering how somebody had found such a connection.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> https://www.facebook.com/david.danieli.5/videos/2095467750541949/
> 
> A guy stopped by police in Trieste for a traffic violation speaks in Slovenian to cops and refuses to communicate in Italian (although he lives and works in Italy, and thus knows Italian), claiming that he has the right to have cops speaking in Slovenian to him. Finally, he was taken to the police station.
> Could someone who knows Slovenian write what was he saying to police?


Slovenian with Italian accent, so funny. :lol: Yeah, he just keeps repeating the same, that they have to speak to him in Slovenian or find a translator (I doubt they even understand him). One of the cops tries something in Croatian.


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> It's not precise. The empire itself was not called German.
> Heiliges Römisches Rheich Deutscher Nation
> Sacrum Romanum Imperium Nationis Germanicae
> i.e. Holy Roman Empire of German Nation.


Excuse me, what's the difference?


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> ^^ Well, when it was added "German" to the name, after the Diet of Cologne in 1512, it was dominated by German-speaking countries, so it may not be wrong after all.


While Prague was the biggest city in the empire for some 350 years (1300 - 1650) and Czech crown lands were the biggest part of the empire.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It sounds weird in this age of upgrades, but I've decided to _downgrade_ my home internet connection.

I currently have a 200 mbit cable connection, at € 54 per month. 200 mbit = 25 MB/s, I have absolutely no use for that internet speed.

I decided to switch to an ADSL subscription, 100 mbit for € 31 per month. That saves me € 23 per month, or € 276 per year. 

Fiber optic internet is relatively rare in the Netherlands, even in larger cities. There is no competition on cable, there is only one operator. There is a lot more competition on ADSL connections. ADSL maxes out at 100 mbit. Cable offers up to 400 mbit, you need fiber optic for higher speeds, but this is only sparsely available.


----------



## g.spinoza

Well it's not strange at all.
For instance I don't see the need for the future 5G mobile connection. I'm not watching Netflix over the phone (and for that I suspect 4G is enough).


----------



## Fatfield

Just seen a Kuwaiti registered Porsche in Sunderland.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Well it's not strange at all.
> For instance I don't see the need for the future 5G mobile connection. I'm not watching Netflix over the phone (and for that I suspect 4G is enough).


Wait until 10-20% of the most used websites will get so heavy of multimedial content that they will download so slowly without 5G.


----------



## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> There is no biweekly vignette, so if you stay on holidays 7 days and return on the 8th day, you must buy a monthly one. Or two weekly ones, but this makes no sense.
> 
> Which results in thousands of Polish and Czech drivers going to Croatia detouring the Slovenian motorway network with normal roads.


If Slovenia is happy with thousands of foreigners cloggin up its secondary streets, fine with me.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Or € 40 is not a realistic fee for unlimited usage of a motorway system for a whole year. In the Netherlands many people pay that per month.


It may not be realistic but, well, it's real.

I know there are plans of raising its price to 100 Chf, but it was rejected by referendum so it sticks (no pun intended) at 40.


----------



## tfd543

Slovenian secondary roads have seen better times right ? 
My 2 cents is just to pay for the highway journey if you are deciding to drive opposed to flying. Its already a lot cheaper to do the former so why not just pay the little extra amount to get more safety. I hate secondary roads at night in a foreign country. But i see the point for reaching secondary border crossings to save time


----------



## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> Slovenian secondary roads have seen better times right ?
> My 2 cents is just to pay for the highway journey if you are deciding to drive opposed to flying. Its already a lot cheaper to do the former so why not just pay the little extra amount to get more safety. I hate secondary roads at night in a foreign country. But i see the point for reaching secondary border crossings to save time


It depends. I'm not going to pay full vignette only for few km between borders.


----------



## Suburbanist

The best tolls are time-based and distance-based. I think all cars in the EU should be fit with trackers on protocols that can have a single set of compatible radio readers. Ideally tolls should be higher on busy weekends, lower off-peak etc. Tolls should not be lower at night however, since night driving is inherently riskier.


----------



## General Maximus

How is driving at night riskier?


----------



## g.spinoza

General Maximus said:


> How is driving at night riskier?


Of falling asleep.


----------



## General Maximus

You can fall asleep in the daytime...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> The best tolls are time-based and distance-based.


This would punish the part of the population that already pays the most taxes (commuters going to work) and doesn't have realistic alternatives. 

A proposal for such a tolling system has been floated in the Netherlands for years which is heavily promoted by most of the media but isn't very popular among the populace. The media portrays wildly inaccurate effects of such a tolling system, such as 'solving the traffic jams' and 'free-flow to work at 8 a.m.', while claiming it wouldn't cost more than today's car taxes. Reporting on it is extremely one-sided. 

There is some support for a flat rate 'per km' tolling system that would replace the car taxes but support drops once more details are worked out. For example, people may think 5 ct/km is not expensive while at the same time bitch about 5 or 10 cents higher fuel costs. 5 ct/km is comparable to raising the fuel price to € 2.50 per liter. And 5 ct/km is a low price scenario, congestion-based tolling would be substantially more expensive. For example 15 ct/km would equate to raising the fuel to almost € 4 per liter. ($ 17 per gallon). This would have significant effects on the purchasing power of the working and middle classes.

Such a tolling system would also become so complicated that almost nobody can make an informed decision about how much it would cost them, if current taxation models based on fuel type, weight and CO2 emissions would be transformed into a price per kilometer, with congestion or timed-based tolling added on top of it.


----------



## g.spinoza

General Maximus said:


> You can fall asleep in the daytime...


But since, statistically, more people are used to sleep at night, I guess it is safe to say that more people could fall asleep driving at night.

It doesn't seem to me so far fetched.


----------



## General Maximus

I agree with it being more dangerous at night with drunk drivers, although the chance of colliding with one on a quiet tolled motorway seems to be rather remote...


----------



## g.spinoza

General Maximus said:


> I agree with it being more dangerous at night with drunk drivers, although the chance of colliding with one on a quiet tolled motorway seems to be rather remote...


Do you seriously think that the danger of falling asleep at night is because you can collide with _someone else _who's fallen asleep?


----------



## General Maximus

No, I'm talking about drunk drivers now.


----------



## Verso

Kpc21 said:


> There is no biweekly vignette, so if you stay on holidays 7 days and return on the 8th day, you must buy a monthly one. Or two weekly ones, but this makes no sense.
> 
> Which results in thousands of Polish and Czech drivers going to Croatia detouring the Slovenian motorway network with normal roads.


I have to admire their willingness to drive a thousand kilometers or more and search for local roads just to save 15 euros per direction. :nuts:


----------



## Attus

Suburbanist said:


> The best tolls are time-based and distance-based.


In very rich countries, perhaps. In Eastern Europe it would cause motorists take secondary roads which are not tolled. Actually if the toll would be more than 10-15 euro monthly, even German commuters would rather take the primary and secondary roads and lose 2-3 hours daily by congestions - and vote for any party which promises to cancel tolls. 
I suppose not any government want to have their own yellow vest movements...


----------



## Attus

Verso said:


> I have to admire their willingness to drive a thousand kilometers or more and search for local roads just to save 15 euros per direction. :nuts:


It's no more than seventy kilometers through Slovenia per direction.


----------



## MichiH

^^ The journey is about 1,000km from Poland / Czechia to Croatia and it costs much more than 15 € (per direction). Everyone can decide whether saving 30 € in total is it worth driving on more risky secondary roads and losing time. But you can also save time if the border crossings on secondary roads are less congested.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Such a tolling system would also become so complicated that almost nobody can make an informed decision about how much it would cost them, if current taxation models based on fuel type, weight and CO2 emissions would be transformed into a price per kilometer, with congestion or timed-based tolling added on top of it.


They said the same about the OV Chipkaart and all doom and gloom surrounding the new system never materialized.


----------



## riiga

Suburbanist said:


> The best tolls are time-based and distance-based.


The best tolls are non-existent.


----------



## General Maximus

Not always. Parallel toll roads like the M6 Toll or several motorways around Madrid are a God's gift to avoid major delays on original motorways.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> He belongs to the same party of Berlusconi. So, what is diplomacy? :lol: :bash:


There is a good joke on this:

A couple is sitting in a luxurious restaurant. A man is eating his dish with his hands. A woman, presumably his wife, notices that, stands up and gives him a hard slap while shouting:
"good manners, you fc__ker, good manners".

Somehow this joke struck my mind as you mentioned Berlusconi. :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*Fog*

Fog has become much less common over the past 30 years. Research has shown that the amount of days with fog has halved since the 1980s. This pattern is visible in most of Europe. 

The lesser amount of fog is correlated with an improvement of air quality, fog or haze is more common with poor air quality. Observations from Potsdam showed that the amount of days with less than 5 km of visibility has dropped from 150 days to 60 days per year between 1988 and 1995, this correlated with the closure of polluting factories in East Germany. 

Less fog also means higher daytime temperatures, by 1 - 2ºC. Fog blocks sunlight from reaching the earth. 

A much slower decline of fog days is forecasted for the future, since a main contributor (poor air quality) has been reduced significantly and won't decline as quickly as it has over the past 30 years.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> Fog has become much less common over the past 30 years.


I haven't read anything about it but I really thought about the issue in the past 2 weeks. I really realized and wondered that there is less dense fog in my region. I drive through a river valley to work for 20 years now and there was quite often dense fog in the morning during fall, winter and spring.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Less fog also means higher daytime temperatures, by 1 - 2ºC. Fog blocks sunlight from reaching the earth.


Just thinking about climate change. The goal is to limit the temperature increase to 2°C. If we still had fog, would the temperature issue not been an issue? Is the "climate change" just caused by less fog?

Sure, it makes no sense but..... just thinking... Okay, I guess the fog effect is not global but local only....

Or is Chris report just (partially) based on fake news (no source indicated)...


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> Just thinking about climate change. The goal is to limit the temperature increase to 2°C. If we still had fog, would the temperature issue not been an issue? Is the "climate change" just caused by less fog?


Global warming is about +2°C globally, day and night, summer and winter. What Chris wrote is +2°C daytime, in foggy days, locally.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MichiH said:


> Or is Chris report just (partially) based on fake news (no source indicated)...


I got it from the Dutch meteorological organization KNMI, but the article is entirely in Dutch so that's why I didn't post it.

https://www.knmi.nl/kennis-en-datac...vel-zijn-de-afgelopen-30-jaar-sterk-afgenomen


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> Global warming is about +2°C globally, day and night, summer and winter. What Chris wrote is +2°C daytime, in foggy days, locally.


Not really. You make it sound as if it was a constant. +2 °C is an average, so locally it may present large deviations.


----------



## Verso

More CO2 heats the air, but "bad air" (more particles in the air) cools the air, because it partially blocks the sun. In recent years we release more and more "clean CO2" in the air, which is better for our lungs, but accelerates global warming.


----------



## Verso

Interesting, I've heard of many Polish cities and towns, but only now I discovered Krośniewice. I never realized the town used to be the crossroads of DK1, DK2, E30, and E75.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> Not really. You make it sound as if it was a constant. +2 °C is an average, so locally it may present large deviations.


Yeah, I know, but I did not want to write a long article here so I only emphasized the difference to Michi


----------



## Kpc21

Verso said:


> Interesting, I've heard of many Polish cities and towns, but only now I discovered Krośniewice. I never realized the town used to be the crossroads of DK1, DK2, E30, and E75.


Which was just an intersection with traffic lights 

And still is, although no national roads cross there.

This is the thread on the construction of the Krośniewice bypass road: https://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=725220

Opened in 2009.


----------



## Verso

^^ They built a 4-lane bypass for just a few years? When did Krośniewice cease to be the crossroads? I can find the date of opening of the A1×A2 junction, but that's not necessarily the same date.


----------



## Kpc21

For now, it's kinda too much. Even then, 1x2 with junctions would be just enough, maybe except for the section which joined DK1 and DK2 (west-north).

Concerning the junction near Stryków...
– the A2 from the west to Stryków was opened in June 2006,
– the A2 from Stryków eastwards was opened just for the Euro 2012, during the tournament it wasn't completed but it was already open – it was in June 2012,
– the A1 from the north to Stryków was opened in November 2012,
– the A1 from Stryków southwards was opened on 1 July 2016.

So actually, at the moment of constructing this bypass road, at least some traffic was already bypassing Krośniewice with the A2.

I live at DK14 between Stryków and Łowicz, use DK14 to get to Łódź and I remember those multiple-km traffic jams when the A2 from Poznań was finishing in Stryków. The traffic went then via DK14 to Łowicz and then via DK2 (currently DK92) to Warsaw. There were moments when there was a traffic jam that started in Bratoszewice (or even earlier) and ended in Głowno. Now, DK14 from Łowicz to Stryków is a very calm road.

In addition, when the A2 to Stryków opened, the whole traffic from the motorway started to go through the very center of the town of Stryków. Well, in Krośniewice, they lived with the same problem for many, many years. But as the people living in Stryków got angry, in a short time, the signage got changed so that the drivers from Poznań to Warsaw were directed, if I remember well, onto DK1 (now DK91) at the Emilia interchange, then via DK60 to Kutno and back onto the old DK2 (now DK92). The next thing was in 2008 when they quickly constructed the piece of A2 from the junction with DK14 in Stryków to the current A1/A2 interchange, one of the arcs of this interchange and a single carriageway of the A1 from this interchange to DK14. This is how it looked like:










The temporary junction north of Stryków looked like this (check if the time is set to 2011): https://goo.gl/maps/M9b3VtmEQ8T2
Interestingly... you ARE on DK14, going forward you continue along DK14, turning left you also continue along DK14 

So this bypass of Krośniewice was actually useful... for just 3.5 years. When a part of the traffic was already anyway bypassing the town.

And talking about Stryków... regardless of all the motorways and bypass roads, there are moments during the day when the town is anyway a single big traffic jam.


----------



## Verso

^^ Interesting story. So Krośniewice stopped being the crossroads already in 2006, but they still built a 4-lane bypass 3 years later.


----------



## Kpc21

It's like you have good plans but at some moment they get not really up to date.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A1 and A2 are so far away that regional traffic would still benefit from a bypass.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nice temperatures for mid-February:


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> A1 and A2 are so far away that regional traffic would still benefit from a bypass.


Of course, but I guess 2 lanes would be enough. I've just discovered this railway crossing on the bypass, so funny.


----------



## Kpc21

It's with a narrow gauge railway which had its last regular trains in 2008. But there were still hopes for its reactivation.

https://get.google.com/albumarchive...DKmpEa2zLkmprWbCrKftIlFeXhZl2vrEfU?source=pwa 

And there are still people trying to rescue it.

You can see this level crossing being used here: https://youtu.be/zoal6mhoSjo?t=3663


----------



## Verso

^ By some very important trains.


----------



## Kpc21

Actually, if not those "trains", this network of narrow-gauge lines would probably no longer exist now... I mean the tracks because there is no services there already for quite many years.

And with this state of tracks and much more sense for servicing such areas with buses I actually can't see it as a regular train service... but maybe as some heritage trains for tourists? Why not. In those early 2000s there still were some cargo customers for those trains but they switched to trucks and aren't likely to return to railway now.


----------



## General Maximus

I spotted a minor pothole in the Netherlands a few days ago, on the A4 southbound near Schiphol Airport on lane 1. I was going to report it, but I didn't bother. They'll soon figure it out and repair it....


----------



## volodaaaa

Well I am like without money if I accidentally do not have a possibility to pay by my card. I also use an NFC payments as well. Furthermore my bank has a very good service - to create an alias virtual card. You just open the app, click on the button and a temporary (time-bound or valid for a single use) credentials are generated. 

I used it many times for services I had not believed, yet I had needed to pay e. g. in advance. Also there are some apps or internet services for free for some period, but you have to enter a bank card credentials to be charged after the trial period. With this service I have never been afraid and I have indeed received some e-mails warning me, that my (virtual) card is not valid any more (which was just what I had wanted).


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apparently even younger people in Germany dislike paying by card, though to a lesser degree than older people.
> 
> Contactless payment is quickly becoming the norm in the Netherlands, over half of all payments is now contactless and it is increasing rapidly.
> 
> There was an item on the Dutch news that showed that many young Germans didn't know what this symbol is for:


In Italy paying with card is getting more and more common, and most people are not paranoid with privacy like in Germany (and I have never heard of anti-Street View protests there).
On the other hand, contactless payiment is not common at all, except at motorway toll booths for obvious time reason. The only time I paid contactless in a shop I was in Slovenia.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> In Italy paying with card is getting more and more common, and most people are not paranoid with privacy like in Germany (and I have never heard of anti-Street View protests there).
> On the other hand, contactless payiment is not common at all, except at motorway toll booths for obvious time reason. The only time I paid contactless in a shop I was in Slovenia.



Really? Seldom do I pay other than contactless. I even use my mobile NFC to pay without any need of bank card. But sometimes it does not work and the terminal ask me (or the shop assistant to tell me the) to use regular chip based payment.


----------



## Junkie

g.spinoza said:


> I don't like contactless payment. There were reports of guys inside buses or in a crowd that force payments of 20-25 € (so with no PIN request) out of unaware people just by rubbing a mobile POS on trousers or jackets, where is more likely that someone stores his wallet.


I think the bank is generally making the quota how much cash can be withdrawn without pin. For example I have contactless card which can run up to 700 denars which is around 11 euros without a pin.
Other problem that happens around here is that pensioners are usually robbed because the man will set higher total at the pos terminal than the bill says and they generally dont enter the pin themselfes but telling the pin for the man to enter it without even seeing the total.


----------



## g.spinoza

Junkie said:


> I think the bank is generally making the quota how much cash can be withdrawn without pin. For example I have contactless card which can run up to 700 denars which is around 11 euros without a pin.


That's why I specified 20-25 €, that's the usual limit for contactless no-PIN payments.

Chris may be right, but with electronic and computerized stuff I would never say "it can't happen". There is a shortcut for everything and every rule can be broken, if you know how to do it.


----------



## bogdymol

I also use contactless payments very often. Actually, I use the card for most payments I do, as it is more convenient. I pay always the exact amount, and I don't end up with 1 kg of coins in my wallet.

While we are talking about contactless payments, or even NFC payments, in the US this is (almost) unheard of. I have been there 6 times last year and I used my card for all the payments I had to do, and about 50% of the times I had to use the chip, and 50% of the times I had to swipe the magnetic strip through the machine. There were also a couple of times when the card was just swiped and no PIN was requested, even though the amount was over $100. I find it quite unsafe how the Americans use the credit cards... At least unsafer compared to Europe.


----------



## Suburbanist

The American banking and payment systems at retail levels are 20 yrs behind Northern Europe. They still mail checks to pay Bill's and use cashier's checks for things like real estate transactions


----------



## Suburbanist

I have enrolled in an accelerated German class. I miss my accelerated Dutch classes. With Dutch pronunciation was the main issue (all the vowel-vowel combinations especially). German is much more complicated.


----------



## volodaaaa

Junkie said:


> I think the bank is generally making the quota how much cash can be withdrawn without pin. For example I have contactless card which can run up to 700 denars which is around 11 euros without a pin.
> Other problem that happens around here is that pensioners are usually robbed because the man will set higher total at the pos terminal than the bill says and they generally dont enter the pin themselfes but telling the pin for the man to enter it without even seeing the total.



You can also do a contactless payment with PIN. It works like common contactless payment, but after placing the card you are asked to type in PIN. It is still faster than inserting the card because chip initialisation is quite time-consuming.


In my bank I have to PIN-authorise all contactless payment over 20,00 €. Also if I have done two contactless payments without PIN in a row (because the amount was lower than 20,00 €) I am asked to type in PIN regardless of amount.


----------



## volodaaaa

Suburbanist said:


> I have enrolled in an accelerated German class. I miss my accelerated Dutch classes. With Dutch pronunciation was the main issue (all the vowel-vowel combinations especially). German is much more complicated.



Deutsch is eine schwere Sprache. Ich habe ganze Duolingo app bestehen und ich kann barely say a flawless sentence. :lol:


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> 2) people who fuel up, move their car and then pay. By the time they'll pay, another vehicle is pumping fuel at that pump, maybe messing up the system.


On the other hand, you have people who DON'T move their car after fueling even though they not only pay for the fuel but also buy some food, order hot-dogs and so on, which takes so much time. Blocking the pump. And you have to wait.



joshsam said:


> Don't understand the German concept either. Just put a damn payment terminal on the pumpingstation. It's twice as fast and easier. You validate your card , pump number and fuel type and the amount will dissapear from your account in a day or 2.


But how can then the station earn money on you? What the stations earn from most is not the fuel but the whole shopping and food at the station. This usually have quite high margin.



g.spinoza said:


> I don't like contactless payment. There were reports of guys inside buses or in a crowd that force payments of 20-25 € (so with no PIN request) out of unaware people just by rubbing a mobile POS on trousers or jackets, where is more likely that someone stores his wallet.





ChrisZwolle said:


> I think that is a typical urban legend that may have happened 1 or 2 times in reality and is then presented as a real danger in everyday life. These stories are also recurring in the Netherlands, but according to the central bank there is no evidence it really happened.


What IT security experts here say is that it's technically possible but it makes no sense for the thief since when someone reports the false payment to the bank and the whole situation becomes detected, he will probably never see the stolen money. The risk is too high for them, there are many much easier and safer ways of stealing money.

In Poland, now it is being planned to increase the quota for the contactless payments – from the current 50 PLN (about 11 EUR) to 100 PLN (twice more).

For me, 50 PLN seems to be just fine and I can't see any point in increasing that. 



g.spinoza said:


> Chris may be right, but with electronic and computerized stuff I would never say "it can't happen". There is a shortcut for everything and every rule can be broken, if you know how to do it.


Yes, it actually is so. Some rare types of payments (e.g. offline ones, like on airplanes) don't obey those quotas.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Kpc21 said:


> But how can then the station earn money on you? What the stations earn from most is not the fuel but the whole shopping and food at the station. This usually have quite high margin.
> .


Because no station sells their fuel without profit. And unmanned stations ofthen have cheaper fuel prices as well.


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> Deutsch is eine schwere Sprache. Ich habe ganze Duolingo app bestehen und ich kann barely say a flawless sentence. :lol:


I'd expect better from someone living next to Austria. :lol:


----------



## italystf

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland, now it is being planned to increase the quota for the contactless payments – from the current 50 PLN (about 11 EUR) to 100 PLN (twice more).
> 
> For me, 50 PLN seems to be just fine and I can't see any point in increasing that.


Is this quota really something that has to be decided by the central government? Shouldn't customers be let free to negotiate that quota with their bank?


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> I'd expect better from someone living next to Austria. :lol:



I lived 20 km from the Hungarian border for 20+ years, and I barely know 10 Hungarian words...


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> Is this quota really something that has to be decided by the central government? Shouldn't customers be let free to negotiate that quota with their bank?


I cannot see any statement saying that the central government is involved in this.

In Finland, the 25 EUR limit will increase to 50 EUR in April, according to what the banks tell. The limit is non-negotiatable but it set by the banks, and the major card operators MasterCard and Visa.


----------



## Verso

bogdymol said:


> I lived 20 km from the Hungarian border for 20+ years, and I barely know 10 Hungarian words...


Ok, but German is more important and easier.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I know. moved to Austria about 5 years ago without knowing any German. Not easy...


----------



## Verso

^ Still better than moving to Switzerland. Swiss German... :cripes:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's so touristy they expect you to speak English in some establishments. 

Amsterdam is an outlier, though in some areas like Friesland or the coast people will assume you speak German. 

But when it comes to office jobs, there is a much greater need to speak fluent Dutch. Only a smaller segment of the market is very internationally oriented (i.e. people from across the world working in the same office).


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Language is a real barrier for immigrants to succeed in a new country. You really need a good command of the language of the country you're working in to get a decent paying job. Even if you have good qualifications but don't speak a language well, it's difficult to succeed to anything beyond entry-level jobs. The number of companies that hire people that speak only English is fairly limited in the Netherlands, unless you don't need communication skills (i.e. picking strawberries or in a meat-packing plant).


There is a reasonable amount of bilingual or even English-first offices in the Netherlands in the fields of IT, medical/pharma research, finance, aerospatial and marine engjneering and also most scientific research departments on Dutch research unis.

I agree these are still a fraction of total jobs in the economy.

Of course lack of Dutch speaking abilities is a major hindrance on almost all customer-face job.
But leaning the language is not that difficult for people who already had some good education back home. What is 
troublesome is for people who didn't have enough education back on their home countries or are just semi literate in their home languages to learn Dutch. It was only in the mid 1970s that Dutch law stopped allowing Netehrlands based companies recruiting factory and agricultural workers directly through agencies in areas of certain countries where average schooling was 5 or 6 years only...


----------



## General Maximus

Amsterdam attracts a lot of waiting staff from abroad, and they're not required to speak any Dutch.

Even loads of offices in big cities around Europe have English-speaking staff only. Especially in Amsterdam. Ernst & Young for example and likewise companies. Computer engineers can pretty much get by all over the world using English only. 

Pre-Brexit preparations sees major financial companies from the City of London moving to locations like Amsterdam, Paris and Frankfurt, and they're packing their staff as well, without the need of any of them needing to learn the local language for work purposes. I remember years ago dealing with a lot of the office staff of the Royal Bank of Scotland in Frankfurt, all British with very little command of the German language.

And if you wish to do seasonal work in ski- or beach-resorts, there's always something for somebody. 

Suburbanist and G. Spinoza are out and about, and they're managing?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

These things are the topics of research from time to time.

For example among Polish migrants, only 2% held an office job in the Netherlands. Among Bulgarians, this is 0%. The vast majority work at entry-level jobs that require almost no skills other than a good work ethic. Some are supervisors, some 9% of Polish workers in the Netherlands were supervisors. They often lead a team of migrants in industry, agriculture or construction.

Source: SCP


----------



## MichiH

volodaaaa said:


> In German language I have problem with Sie. I mean "plural" you.


Plural of "Du" is "sie", not "Sie" what you are talking about.
"Sie" means "you" and is the formal second person (singular and plural) according to this list.
"sie" is "she" or "they".


----------



## Verso

MichiH said:


> Plural of "Du" is "sie", not "Sie"


Plural of "du" is "ihr", not "sie".


----------



## volodaaaa

This discussion really reach strange realms :lol:


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> In German language I have problem with Sie. I mean "plural" you.
> 
> 
> 
> In Slovak language we use you in singular to address known (usually friendly) person (in English it would be "Hey Mike, what are you doing),
> 
> 
> and you in plural to address
> 
> 
> 
> more than one person (In English it would be "Students, you should sit during the lesson")
> or one person we do not know and is of certain age (usually above 15) (In English it would be "Mr. Smith, what are you doing).


They do the same in Russian and in... French.

In Polish, for the second type of "you", we use words: Pan, Pani, Państwo.

So such sentence would look like:

Panie Kowalski, co Pan robi?

literally translating:

Mr. Smith, what is Mr. doing?

So I know for ways of expressing this kind of "you":
– "Mr." in Polish,
– plural "you" in Russian and French,
– capitalized "they" in German,
– just normal "you" in English.

And I have never had any problems with using those three forms in foreign languages.

I believe, it must be much more difficult for those who don't have this special "respectful" version of "you" in their native languages at all, e.g. for native English speakers. They have to wonder whether they should say, e.g. in German, just "you" or "Sie" not to show disrespect to someone but also not to be too polite when it's not necessary.


----------



## g.spinoza

General Maximus said:


> Suburbanist and G. Spinoza are out and about, and they're managing?


As a matter of fact I'm not putting that much effort in learning French, because I'm staying for few months and everybody at work speaks - more or less - English, plus I have no intention on relocating here permanently, I have a heavy workload that gives me no time and frankly, I don't like the language.

Reading French for an Italian is not so hard, the only difficulty is understanding when they speak fast.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> They do the same in Russian and in... French.
> 
> In Polish, for the second type of "you", we use words: Pan, Pani, Państwo.
> 
> So such sentence would look like:
> 
> Panie Kowalski, co Pan robi?
> 
> literally translating:
> 
> Mr. Smith, what is Mr. doing?
> 
> So I know for ways of expressing this kind of "you":
> – "Mr." in Polish,
> – plural "you" in Russian and French,
> – capitalized "they" in German,
> – just normal "you" in English.
> 
> And I have never had any problems with using those three forms in foreign languages.
> 
> I believe, it must be much more difficult for those who don't have this special "respectful" version of "you" in their native languages at all, e.g. for native English speakers. They have to wonder whether they should say, e.g. in German, just "you" or "Sie" not to show disrespect to someone but also not to be too polite when it's not necessary.



Btw. English does have _singular _*you*. It is *thou* which is very similar to German *du*  I do not know anything about thou except it is used in some archaic and religious texts.


----------



## Kpc21

But it doesn't really seem to have much to do with the "politeness you" seen in many languages in various forms, as I mentioned.


----------



## General Maximus

You can be polite or impolite in any form. If I was to talk German to you, I'd be going all du, dir and dich on you and still be polite. 

Very posh British people (the ones almost non-existent but they behave ever so badly on Midsomer Murders) can be so polite to you that you'd rather feel offended....


----------



## Kpc21

Yeah, but not using this form of "you" to some specific people in some languages would be definitely impolite


----------



## Kanadzie

Rebasepoiss said:


> They look a bit weird because they are the same height as euro-plates but narrower.
> 
> The US-style number plates in Estonia are 302x152 mm. These are only for cars where the manufacturer intended the number plate to be in the "US" size i.e. mostly cars imported from the US. However, number plates can be transferred to other cars later so sometimes you see European models with US number plates. In total there are roughly 18,500 US-style number plates in Estonia.
> 
> 
> Source
> 
> 
> Source
> 
> The different types of number plates used in Estonia can be seen in this document. The US-style number plate is on page 2, type A3.


It is a very good thing that they are offering "true" US-size plate option for people with those kind of cars. So much better than the "square" European plate that people have had to use before, that seems to fit absolutely no vehicle at all aside from an old Land Rover.

It's curious that the Estonians went "hard" on the dimensions to get the 12x6 inch US-plate. I think many if not all the Canadian license plates, maybe even some of the US manufacturers are dimensionally 300 mm x 150 mm exact now.


----------



## Kpc21

Meanwhile here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npMKIUTa3uI someone has a Trabant brought to the USA from Hungary. And he... keeps the Hungarian plates and installed the American ones in some weird places.

Although those Hungarian plates look more or less new – they have an Euroband (not yet with an EU flag and not yet blue though) and are installed in frames.

Still, I checked and it seems that they had been using this style of licence plates... already since 1990.

They were quite innovative with that.

In Poland, we introduced the Euroband and changed the color to white not earlier than in 2000.

Before, we had black ones:



















Without any bands, without any stickers, and it wasn't common to use frames at all, the plates were just directly screwed to the car.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Kpc21 said:


> Meanwhile here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npMKIUTa3uI someone has a Trabant brought to the USA from Hungary. And he... keeps the Hungarian plates and installed the American ones in some weird places.
> 
> Although those Hungarian plates look more or less new – they have an Euroband (not yet with an EU flag and not yet blue though) and are installed in frames.
> 
> Still, I checked and it seems that they had been using this style of licence plates... already since 1990.


License plates on that Trabant are Hungarian export plates (letter Z) isued in 2015 (number 15 on the right side). Export plates are always issued without EU band for some reason.


----------



## Fatfield

volodaaaa said:


> Btw. English does have _singular _*you*. It is *thou* which is very similar to German *du*  I do not know anything about thou except it is used in some archaic and religious texts.


Thou, thee, thy, thine & ye are all still in use where I live in NE England. Especially around the old coal mining areas of Co. Durham & Northumberland. The dialect is know as "Pitmatic" because of this.


----------



## Fatfield

Today is the warmest ever recorded in the UK during February and the first time over 20ºC during winter. 20.3ºC in Trawsgoed, Ceredigion, Wales.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Also very warm temperatures in the Netherlands. There are possibilities for 20+ in the next two days.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Also very warm temperatures in the Netherlands. There are possibilities for 20+ in the next two days.


Few days ago the meteo station at our Institute in Turin recorded the all-time max temperature of February: 22.2 °C :nuts:


----------



## Attus

I don't know wheter the nature and agriculture can stand this wheather. If apple, cherry, etc. trees get flowers and than we'll have freezing whether early march, it could be a disaster.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Totally. My region is a agricultural fruit region that relies on apples, pears, cherries and to a lesser extent strawberries and droves. These warm temps right now will probably en in disaster as freezing temperatures into mid March are a real possibility. Last year I remember the farmers burnt so much fuel in their fields when something similar happened the smog lasted for 3 days straight.


----------



## General Maximus

We might get a bit of frost here and there, but I've got the feeling winter is over.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are no signs pointing to winter in the Netherlands until at least mid-March. Temperatures may drop to near freezing at night, but that's pretty much it. Winter could well be over before it really started... We've had like one week of snow and that's it... The past 11 days all had highs over 10°C.


----------



## CNGL

Meanwhile down here temperatures are even crazier, with highs over 20°C but lows also just above freezing. Last year we had a big snowstorm on the last day of February...

Edit: I've now see the forecast, it calls for 24°C in my area tomorrow! :crazy:


----------



## tfd543

Close to 20 deg in Madrid. Gotta love global warming.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands almost hit 20°C today. 

There is also a 20 °C temperature variation between night and day, most of the country observed 0 - -3°C this morning. And one station observed a humidity of 15% which is apparently a record for the winter season since observations began.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Usually commercial hygrometers aren't very reliable below 20 %, but it is indeed an interesting value.


----------



## Fatfield

New record high in the UK. 20.8ºC in Porthmadog, Wales and 20.7ºC in that there London.

This time last year we were in the middle of the Beast From The East with up to 15cm of snow in some places.


----------



## Highway89

I've just read a story about a 200-year-old pine tree that survived the construction of a motorway in Spain (location).


















Source: https://www.elnortedecastilla.es/valladolid/movimiento-ciudadano-salavo-20190224135524-nt.html


I remember a similar situation in Italy, also a _Pinus pinea_ in the middle of a motorway. Does anyone know the exact location?


----------



## Autobahn-mann

^^ It's here: https://www.google.it/maps/@45.4244...h=100&yaw=66.57435&pitch=0&thumbfov=100?hl=it and here: https://www.google.it/maps/@45.4284...339&pitch=0&thumbfov=100!7i13312!8i6656?hl=it
On A4 motorway between Padua and Venice.
Them not only survived motorway construction in 1930-33, but also duplication in 1950ies and other expansion in 1991.


----------



## italystf

^^ Are those trees really older than 1930?


----------



## g.spinoza

Interesting, much more so because pine trees are famous for their superficial roots... lots of city streets in Italy are deformed because of pine tree roots. Do anyone know if they ever caused problems on the A4?


----------



## keber

I don't remember any bumpiness around them for the last 15 years or so.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A local weather station in the dunes at Schoorl on the Dutch coastline dropped from 20.0°C to freezing in just 3 hours. That's how you know it's not April yet... This weather station is in a microclimate though, the rest of the country is well above freezing.


----------



## keber

The most that bothers me is really dry air in these days - there is awfully lot of static electricity in my apartment and my skin is really itching. Luckily more humid air is coming.


----------



## Verso

Now I know why my skin is so itchy these days. :lol:


----------



## Autobahn-mann

italystf said:


> ^^ Are those trees really older than 1930?


I'm not too much certain… but in 50ies-60ies photos them are already there.
(Maybe when I'm a little bit of free time I can source them. I've some historical photos from my University thesis).



g.spinoza said:


> Interesting, much more so because pine trees are famous for their superficial roots... lots of city streets in Italy are deformed because of pine tree roots. Do anyone know if they ever caused problems on the A4?





keber said:


> I don't remember any bumpiness around them for the last 15 years or so.


Neither me. AFAIRemember


----------



## Autobahn-mann

^^ Here the photo: it's not in the exactly same place, but on the same stretches. It's taken in 1961, unfortunately not in good resolution.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> A local weather station in the dunes at Schoorl on the Dutch coastline dropped from 20.0°C to freezing in just 3 hours. That's how you know it's not April yet... This weather station is in a microclimate though, the rest of the country is well above freezing.


These huge daily temperature variations must be very unusual in Central Europe. They're more common in continental dry climates, like North Africa, the interior of Spain, or some places in the USA. Also here, on the Adriatic coast of Italy, daily ranges of more than 15°C are very rare in any season.


----------



## bogdymol

Today in the morning there were -2°C where I live. I had to scrape the car's windows as they were full of ice.

Now at 12 my car's thermometer says there are 23°C. On the internet is written only 13°C. Feels hotter than 13, but maybe not yet 23. Anyway, feels like spring.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> Today in the morning there were -2°C where I live. I had to scrape the car's windows as they were full of ice.
> 
> Now at 12 my car's thermometer says there are 23°C. On the internet is written only 13°C. Feels hotter than 13, but maybe not yet 23. Anyway, feels like spring.


Same here. I also scrapped my windows. Put on a scarf and regretted forgotten gloves. Now I am sitting in my office in a shirt with all windows open and am toying with the idea to turn on the A/C. :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> Today in the morning there were -2°C where I live. I had to scrape the car's windows as they were full of ice.
> 
> Now at 12 my car's thermometer says there are 23°C. On the internet is written only 13°C. Feels hotter than 13, but maybe not yet 23. Anyway, feels like spring.


Car termomether's reliability is VERY low. They are painted black, not far from the engine and the rest of the chassis, so overestimations of 10, even 20 °C are not unusual, especially if the car's stopped in the sun for some time.


----------



## keber

In the morning it was 0°C but no scraping was needed as it is so dry that mist, ice or dew do not form which is rare even in summer - now it is close to 20°C.


----------



## CNGL

g.spinoza said:


> Car termomether's reliability is VERY low. They are painted black, not far from the engine and the rest of the chassis, so overestimations of 10, even 20 °C are not unusual, especially if the car's stopped in the sun for some time.


Yep. I've seen up to 45°C in a car. However the termomether in my van appears not to overstimate that much (I've seen it going over 40°C only once), and yesterday while driving to Zaragoza it peaked at 23°C, so the real temperature was not far from that.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My car thermometer seems fairly accurate except when it is parked.

Another day with a very large temperature variation, from -2.2 this morning to +19.1 this afternoon.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Same here. It usually drops a few degrees when driving and that is about the accurate temperature. It was parked in the sun this afthernoon and said 23c drove 7 km and it said 20,5c. The nearest station records 20,1c


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## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> Same here. I also scrapped my windows.


I did not. I pressed the button of the preheater remote controller 30 minutes before the time to leave. We have such nice gadgets to make the winter living easier.

The temperature at the Helsinki area has raised to +6 during the last few days, and most of the snow has gone. Not very usual in February. The winter seems to make a comeback next week.


----------



## g.spinoza

Today's temperature at my Institute in (the outskirts of) Turin. It is entirely possible that in the city center the temperature's higher:










Low: +0.95 °C
High: +23.6 °C


----------



## Verso

Very pleasant temperatures overall, but not for February.


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## volodaaaa

Well, I think I could definitely go without winter


----------



## bogdymol

volodaaaa said:


> Well, I think I could definitely go without winter


I had a business meeting in Israel a while ago. I was telling those guys we have even -15°C in winter, plus snow. One of the guys I was talking with said something like "_brrrrrrrrr... I don't understand how you guys can live there_". He has seen snow for the first time when he was over 20 years old.


----------



## keber

volodaaaa said:


> Well, I think I could definitely go without winter


 Today a listener on the radio said:
"Hypocrisy is when journalists praise very warm weather in February, but at the same time they hate president Trump because his actions lead to more global warming."


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> Well, I think I could definitely go without winter


Actually I, too. However, for that we need another nature, another agriculture, etc. 20 degrees in February does not simly mean, we don't need winter coat.


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## ChrisZwolle

28°C in Le Teich, near Bordeaux, today.


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## bogdymol

Last 2 weeks were really warm, with temperatures very high above the average this time of the year. Until yesterday it was perfect early spring weather.

Today, 1st day of spring according to the calendar, it is relatively cold and rains non stop outside. The forecast shows this will be the weather for the next week or so. 

Meanwhile, a colleague just sent me this. This is exactly how the weather is right now:









Days when you are at work vs. days when you are off-work


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## Verso

bogdymol said:


> Today, 1st day of spring according to the calendar


First day of the meteorological spring. Calendar spring starts on 21st March (± 1 day).


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## bogdymol

^^ That's the astronomical spring.

When I was a kid in primary school, I remember that they learned us that spring is March to May. That's why I said that today is the first calendar day of spring.


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## volodaaaa

It used to be a start of a year previously.

September seventh month, 
October eighth month, 
November ninth month, 
December tenth month


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## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> Last 2 weeks were really warm, with temperatures very high above the average this time of the year. Until yesterday it was perfect early spring weather.
> 
> Today, 1st day of spring according to the calendar, it is relatively cold and rains non stop outside. The forecast shows this will be the weather for the next week or so.


Something similar happened here except no rain. Today was a nice sunny winter day. It is now -6.

Our binary thermometer told about cold weather on Thursday evening: The sounds of aircraft could be heard.

Explanation: Our house is located about 20 kilometers directly to the southwest of the runway 04R/22L of the Helsinki International airport. The runways 04R and 04L are used for landing at northerly winds bringing cold weather. We live close to the waypoint where the approaching aircrafts join the ILS glide path at the altitude of about 1000 meters. The approaching aircrafts can be heard, but not the climbing ones. Thus: aircraft sound implies northerly wind which implies cold weather.


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## MichiH

^^ Sure. Or if you wanna control temperature (positions, speed,...). E.g. command value: 30.0°C, actual value 29.8°C.


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## General Maximus

Where is that "degrees Celsius" sign on my keyboard, Michael? I use a German keyboard, just like you.


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## g.spinoza

Troll mode on:

international metrology rules state that the unit must be written after the number and a space. So the correct way is 13 °C, not 13°C.

troll mode off.


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## General Maximus

But how do I get the unit on on meiner kleiner deutsche Laptop?


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## g.spinoza

^^ Don't you have it on the key left to the "1"?


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## General Maximus

°°°°°°°°°

So I have! It's a miracle!

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°


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## General Maximus

Interesting keyboard you have there by the way, G. You can switch easily between US and German mode...


----------



## g.spinoza

General Maximus said:


> Interesting keyboard you have there by the way, G. You can switch easily between US and German mode...


I entirely remapped mine to have the most useful characters at hand, without having to switch.

The standard Italian keyboard has many flaws. For instance, we make heavy use of è and é, but we don't have on our keyboard the respective capitals È and É. By contrast, we have a space on our keyboard the the useless ç, which is not used in Italian.
So I remapped it in order to have all of these Italian letters which are not on the keyboard (Ì Ò À), plus some other useful ones (ø œ æ ö ä ß and so on)


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


>


What's the point of all those double letters and numbers? What a mess.


----------



## General Maximus

I've opted for a German one, because I do write a lot in German, and the English and Dutch languages are so basic, you don't need much anyway. 

So I've got everything I need. And with me living in France, but so close to the Swiss and German borders, I mainly use German in my area as well... I hardly write in French.


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## g.spinoza

General Maximus said:


> I've opted for a German one, because I do write a lot in German, and the English and Dutch languages are so basic, you don't need much anyway.
> 
> So I've got everything I need. And with me living in France, but so close to the Swiss and German borders, I mainly use German in my area as well... I hardly write in French.


Besides, French AZERTY is absolute evil.


----------



## CNGL

The Spanish keyboard doesn't have all the accented vowels (á é í ó ú, and not least, ý ) nor the ü, however it's not hard to type them and their capital versions. It does have a separate key for ñ. It also includes a separate key for ç, which is not used in Spanish but is in Catalan. However, a major flaw is that it doesn't have a key for degree symbol, °, and we use instead the ordinal indicator instead, º. So we write things line 13ºC (13th C?) instead of 13°C.

And there was one time, when I used a French keyboard (AZERTY) on my cellphone in order not to read the surname of an infamous minister (Q_WERT_Y).


----------



## g.spinoza

General Maximus said:


> Interesting keyboard you have there by the way, G. You can switch easily between US and German mode...


Uh, the one in the picture is not mine, I just found it on the internet...


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## General Maximus

Ah ok. I figured it could have been yours, with your excellent command of English, and you having lived in Germany...


----------



## g.spinoza

General Maximus said:


> Ah ok. I figured it could have been yours, with your excellent command of English, and you having lived in Germany...


I don't own a desktop PC since, I guess, early 2000s. My life is mobile, so is my computer.

I got an Asus Zenbook Pro very recently... my old Sony Vaio is still working, but it's 10 years old now and Sony doesn't even have a computer division anymore, so drivers and assistance are unavailable.

EDIT: By the way, thank you for your comment about the "excellent command of English", even though I don't think I have it.

Few days ago I was out with colleagues for dinner: one French, one Slovak, one Chinese, two Americans and myself.
The Slovak guy speaks excellent English - he travels a lot more than I do and he has lived in London for more than a year. The American guy said that he had no Eastern European accent, while I do have a pretty heavy Italian accent, but he also said that I am more fluent (maybe also because the Slovak guy stutters a bit) and have a larger vocabulary. I think at a certain point I said "social stigma" and that must have impressed him.
I said I don't really try to improve my accent, I prefer just to be able to express my thoughts better.


----------



## General Maximus

With the way you choose your words here, I find it hard to imagine that you actually have a accent anything other than Oxford or Cambridge.

My accents are all over the place.

My English is British south-eastern middle-class. I (partly) grew up that way.
My German is hochdeutsch, although I speak Zillertal-dialect as well. Especially when I'm drunk. Slight Dutch accent, though.
My Dutch is a bit of a weird one. It contains lots of German words, and I have traces of a German accent as well, so I have been told.


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> Troll mode on:
> 
> international metrology rules state that the unit must be written after the number and a space. So the correct way is 13 °C, not 13°C.
> 
> troll mode off.


Sure. And German Autobahns should be written "A 1", not "A1" but I really don't care about all that sh**. I write w/o blank because forum and browser search algorithms work better this way.


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> Sure. And German Autobahns should be written "A 1", not "A1" but I really don't care about all that sh**. I write w/o blank because forum and browser search algorithms work better this way.


This isn't a scientific environment so I don't care. I wrote that just for fun.

I had tried to fight that battle even against a scientific journal, whose editor stated "writing units attached to the number is journal policy". "Well, it may be journal policy, but it's wrong", I replied.

I don't think I will ever try to publish there anymore.


----------



## MichiH

General Maximus said:


> With the way you choose your words here, I find it hard to imagine that you actually have a accent anything other than Oxford or Cambridge.


What does "accent" mean here?

There are two German meanings:
- "Wortwahl" which means "selection of words"
- "Akzent" which means how it sounds, e.g. "slight foreign"

I guess you mean the former.


btw: If you can really figure this out by reading our posts, what do you think about mine? _(just out of curiosity)_

btw 2: "an accent" rather than "a accent"


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> This isn't a scientific environment so I don't care. I wrote that just for fun.


yes, we're in the rest area, everything is fun here :lol:

I know that you are right but I just wrote why I ignore the rule. And in general, rules are there to be broken! Everything is developing and changing. Even science (but not math).


----------



## MichiH

I never cared about burglars but they've opened my garage door last year. I've heard them but were too slowly to see (or even catch) them. They also broke in other houses and garages in my neighborhood that night. Police was there but... They just said "it was most likely a Romanian gang... and there's virtually no chance to catch them".

I really don't understand how police can assume and tell us(!) the nationality. That was the worst about the situation for me hno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MichiH said:


> I really don't understand how police can assume and tell us(!) the nationality. That was the worst about the situation for me hno:


It's probably from daily experience. Police officers probably know a lot more about the background of suspects / criminals than is reported in the media. This is politically sensitive information that is sometimes outright supressed by higher up the hierarchy. 

A while back there was a report in a city nearby where the police chief said he couldn't speak freely about the suspects due to political ramifications: three-quarters of shoplifting in that city was by criminal asylum seekers from safe countries who evade deportation.


----------



## bogdymol

It's the same also in Romania, with the Romanian police. 

I have a couple of very good friends who are policemen, and sometimes we chat also about their work. In Romania many infractions, especially small ones which are very annoying (like burglary) are made by a certain minority living in our country. However, due to political-correctness, this is most of the times not reported.


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> I really don't understand how police can assume and tell us(!) the nationality. That was the worst about the situation for me hno:


I agree with Chris. Often is a matter of modus operandi. The "Bulgarian key" was not named after Bulgaria by chance.


----------



## MichiH

^^ If there's evidence, it should be reported in media. If there's no evidence, police should not spread rumor.

Poles were the bad guy in 2000s. "Come to Poland, your car is already there".
Italians were the bad guys before. "Be very careful when going on vacation to Italy, your car might be stolen".

It sounds like all people from these countries are bad guys! (even a Polish colleague said to me in Mid 2000s that he fears driving home to Poland with his new car...)


----------



## MichiH

Just thinking loud: I've recently complaint in general about German politicians, authorities and media, haven't I? :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> ^^ If there's evidence, it should be reported in media. If there's no evidence, police should not spread rumor.
> 
> Poles were the bad guy in 2000s. "Come to Poland, your car is already there".
> Italians were the bad guys before. "Be very careful when going on vacation to Italy, your car might be stolen".
> 
> It sounds like all people from these countries are bad guys! (even a Polish colleague said to me in Mid 2000s that he fears driving home to Poland with his new car...)


As per Italy, you're right. If I were a foreigner, I'd never go vacationing in Italy knowing what I know about my fellow Italians.


----------



## Junkie

g.spinoza said:


> There are a number of youtube videos that show how easy is to open a security door using a Bulgarian key:


Well is there a lock that cannot be open by this so called "Bulgarian key" ? I heard some kind of "wax" was used to open the door but I'm again not convinced. Many people left keys at work or completely lost them or give to "friends" which can make copies.

Anyway this kind of robbery is not very attractive like stealing cars I guess, but it happens more and more over here.


----------



## g.spinoza

Junkie said:


> Well is there a lock that cannot be open by this so called "Bulgarian key" ? I heard some kind of "wax" was used to open the door but I'm again not convinced. Many people left keys at work or completely lost them or give to "friends" which can make copies.


Maybe normal Yale locks cannot be opened by Bulgarian keys, I don't know. But Yales can be easily opened with other methods.

EDIT: I'm not sure about the English translation, but the so called "serratura a cilindro europeo" (European cylinder lock?) cannot be opened by means of a Bulgarian key.


----------



## cinxxx

g.spinoza said:


> As per Italy, you're right. If I were a foreigner, I'd never go vacationing in Italy knowing what I know about my fellow Italians.


Italy is wonderful. Great food, beautiful landscapes, old towns, nice weather.
The chaos and language make me feel like home (Romania).
Since I moved to Germany, I visited Italy every year and I will continue to do so.
Great place to have a break from Germany


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> Italy is wonderful. Great food, beautiful landscapes, old towns, nice weather.
> The chaos and language make me feel like home (Romania).
> Since I moved to Germany, I visited Italy every year and I will continue to do so.
> Great place to have a break from Germany


If you have an Italian friend, he will be your friend forever. 
Italians who are not your friends, will try to screw you (especially in the tourism business), and later brag about that with their friends.

This is just my opinion.


----------



## Junkie

Yes I think this is the safest option for front metal door. Cylinder lock which has inside lock also.


----------



## cinxxx

g.spinoza said:


> If you have an Italian friend, he will be your friend forever.
> Italians who are not your friends, will try to screw you (especially in the tourism business), and later brag about that with their friends.
> 
> This is just my opinion.


That kind of attitude in tourism is common in many other places too.
Italy is heaven compared to places like Egypt or India for example.
As a tourist you don't have to be ignorant and stupid 
I have been to almost all regions of Italy (missed only Calabria and Sardegna).
Every time I had a great time.

Italy or Spain would be placees I would move to, unfortunately I doubt I would find a decent job there...

An interesting thing an Italian lady told my wife who is a psychiatrist: in Italy you don't need to go to the psychiatrist, you have family, friends and neighbors to talk to


----------



## tfd543

Depends. Nothern Italy more aligned with North European mentality while it changes in South Italy. This is What people in Albania told me. Right spinoza ?


----------



## MichiH

Maybe I'll change my mind once I will have made bad experience. However, I hope I'll never make it. Counting down for my next trip to the south... 75 days to go...


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> That kind of attitude in tourism is common in many other places too.
> Italy is heaven compared to places like Egypt or India for example.
> As a tourist you don't have to be ignorant and stupid
> I have been to almost all regions of Italy (missed only Calabria and Sardegna).
> Every time I had a great time.
> 
> Italy or Spain would be placees I would move to, unfortunately I doubt I would find a decent job there...
> 
> An interesting thing an Italian lady told my wife who is a psychiatrist: in Italy you don't need to go to the psychiatrist, you have family, friends and neighbors to talk to


All those Woody Allen movies are nice, but in Italy they're considered something short of science fiction. I mean, we have psychiatrists, but I don't know anyone who is a psychiatrist or who has ever been to one. Maybe for very strong traumas, but not for chit-chatting like they (seem to) do in the US.



tfd543 said:


> Depends. Nothern Italy more aligned with North European mentality while it changes in South Italy. This is What people in Albania told me. Right spinoza ?


Maybe. But keep in mind that Northern Italy is full of people from the South, so the difference is now not so sharp.
There was a movie many years ago, titled "We want to thank region Apulia for providing Milanese people"...


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> Maybe I'll change my mind once I will have made bad experience. However, I hope I'll never make it. Counting down for my next trip to the south... 75 days to go...


Where to?


----------



## italystf

MichiH said:


> ^^ If there's evidence, it should be reported in media. If there's no evidence, police should not spread rumor.
> 
> Poles were the bad guy in 2000s. "Come to Poland, your car is already there".
> Italians were the bad guys before. "Be very careful when going on vacation to Italy, your car might be stolen".
> 
> It sounds like all people from these countries are bad guys! (even a Polish colleague said to me in Mid 2000s that he fears driving home to Poland with his new car...)


Police often don't spread rumors not only for political correctness (not insulting minorities), but also not to undermine ongoing investigations. Criminals would behave more smartly is they know police are already chasing them.

In Northern Italy, it was the following:
1980s: Southern Italians
1990s: Albanians
2000s: Romanians
2010s: Africans and Middle Easterns


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> All those Woody Allen movies are nice, but in Italy they're considered something short of science fiction. I mean, we have psychiatrists, but I don't know anyone who is a psychiatrist or who has ever been to one. Maybe for very strong traumas, but not for chit-chatting like they (seem to) do in the US.


Psychologists are more for chit-chatting, psychiatrists are for more serious issues, and they can prescribe medicaments, while psychologists can't.


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> Where to?


 All over Italy  I need to catch some TM mileage :lol: I have not yet planned in detail but I wanna drive "one week to the south", by ferry to Greece, staying one week, back by ferry (Brindisi), staying some days near Roma, and back via Switzerland.

I thought about Sicily before but since A18 won't be opened this March


----------



## General Maximus

Yes, but I want to hear it from a local.


----------



## keber

^^ I can confirm some of those. Although not all are really written like this. I have relatives in Sweden and can understand quite some words.


----------



## volodaaaa

I know it belongs somewhere else, but the UK banned flights operated with Boeing 737 8 MAX to land, take off and fly through the its airspace.

Quite serious huh? 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47536502


----------



## General Maximus

Hmmm. I think the UK has other and bigger problems right now. Today we'll know how big exactly.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> I know it belongs somewhere else, but the UK banned flights operated with Boeing 737 8 MAX to land, take off and fly through the its airspace.
> 
> Quite serious huh?
> 
> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47536502


A lot of other nations did it as well.


----------



## volodaaaa

I don't think that this is exactly an UK problem. Rather a problem of the brother over the Pond.


----------



## riiga

General Maximus said:


> On a different note, can anyone confirm this?


Can confirm.


----------



## Attus

737 Max 8 is now banned in whole Europe. 
It means a critical situation for Boeing.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> 737 Max 8 is now banned in whole Europe.
> It means a critical situation for Boeing.


Two conspiracies. The severity of a design flaw is either much higher than presented in press or this whole action is European revenge for VW. Otherwise I do not understand the frantic reactions such as diverting the flight on a decent phase back to the origin airport (e g flight from Istanbul to Berlin was diverted back to Istanbul even though was descending somewhere around Prague)


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Trump on that matter:



> Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT. I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Split second decisions are needed, and the complexity creates danger. All of this for great cost yet very little gain. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot. I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of a plane!


----------



## x-type

Don't you remember that all Dreamliners were grounded for several months, even when there weren't any accidents occured, but only pre-cautionally.


----------



## Kpc21

TakiSobie said:


> :hilarious


Translation:



> Dear colleagues,
> Some of us have old, no longer needed bicycles in our cellars.
> If you don't know what to do with one, donate it to a postman.
> We have difficulties with candidates for the job of a postman. There are some volunteers without own bikes. In this cases, granting them this means of transport would facilitate us getting a new employee.
> I ask you for help, both for the specific persons as well as for our company.
> The potential postman will get a necessary tool and your bike will get a new life.
> Clean cellar and a bicycle for a postman.
> *If any of you or your collaborators is able to support our initiative, please contact the manager of the Operations Coordination Department, Kamila Pawłowska, tel. 519 034 705.*


I don't have any idea if it's true or fake. But it's definitely true that:
– postman is one of the worst paid jobs here in Poland,
– there is not enough postmen and they are overworked,
– the Polish Post simply can't afford anything more.


----------



## g.spinoza

So postmen in Poland use their own bike?

I worked briefly as a postman in Italy and the scooter was theirs, as well as the equipment. At the end of my contract, I was able to keep shoes and helmet.


----------



## Kpc21

Well, it seems so. If you are a courier working for DHL, DPD or a similar company, from what I know, you also need to have your own van...

A random job offer from the Polish Post: https://skk.erecruiter.pl//Offer.as...112&ejoId=188195&ejorId=159750&comId=18799200



> Skontaktuj się z nami, jeśli:
> 
> – chętnie się uczysz - nie wymagamy doświadczenia,
> – jesteś samodzielny/a i cenisz sobie swobodę działania,
> – jesteś osobą sumienną i odpowiedzialną oraz lubisz pracę z ludźmi,
> – jesteś osobą sprawną fizycznie,
> – posiadasz rower.





> Contact us if you:
> – like learning – we don't need experience,
> – you are independent and you like freedom,
> – you are conscientious, responsible and like working with people,
> – you are fit,
> – you own a bicycle.


The job offers for the postmen who are supposed to drive also demand having own car 

Here: https://skk.erecruiter.pl//Offer.as...728&ejoId=183788&ejorId=156313&comId=18799200 is a job offer for a postman who drives a moped and you are also supposed to have your own moped.


----------



## bogdymol

In Romania there are also some couriers working with their own cars. However, the payment for using your car is very low, so you often see them using some very old cars which should be taken off the road. This is if they find anyone willing to use their own car, as there aren’t many people who accept such a job.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

x-type said:


> Don't you remember that all Dreamliners were grounded for several months, even when there weren't any accidents occured, but only pre-cautionally.


^^ It had several thermal runaway events (i.e. fires) with its batteries so even though there were no casualties it was still a serious case to be examined.


----------



## volodaaaa

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ It had several thermal runaway events (i.e. fires) with its batteries so even though there were no casualties it was still a serious case to be examined.



But it was not such vast. 



Except two wandering Czech MAXs (scheduled to Prague) there are no other MAXs in Europe at all.


I do not know where will the Czech ones eventually land (Malta and Istanbul maybe). But it must be quite tough for people onboard to fly on an aircraft with spoiled reputation and doing holding patterns above sea for hours.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Many, if not most parcel delivery guys and girls in the Netherlands were working as subcontractors to the postal service. So they had to provide their own van. This was recently judged to be illegal, as the subcontracting was basically a way to get around regular employee contracts. In most cases the pay was too low to provide for pension plans and insurances.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> But it was not such vast.
> 
> 
> 
> Except two wandering Czech MAXs (scheduled to Prague) there are no other MAXs in Europe at all.
> 
> 
> I do not know where will the Czech ones eventually land (Malta and Istanbul maybe). But it must be quite tough for people onboard to fly on an aircraft with spoiled reputation and doing holding patterns above sea for hours.


It will be interesting to see what will FlyDubai do tomorrow. There is one atm departed from OTP, so interesting how it got permission to fly in EU airspace.
Also, LOT will be hendicaped a lot.


----------



## bogdymol

The one departed from OTP is a ferry flight. Empty aircraft, just the pilots in, flying back home. That is allowed, as long as there are no passengers.


----------



## Surel

volodaaaa said:


> Two conspiracies. The severity of a design flaw is either much higher than presented in press or this whole action is European revenge for VW. Otherwise I do not understand the frantic reactions such as diverting the flight on a decent phase back to the origin airport (e g flight from Istanbul to Berlin was diverted back to Istanbul even though was descending somewhere around Prague)


The response is bit frantic (with respect to returning the flights), but seeing two the same aircraft falling with the same problem and reading reports of US pilot complaining about the issue anonymously by the US regulators, those planes should be grounded until solution is found.

Well, there's certainly something gone wrong with that plane, but it should not be that hard to repair it. Even if deinstalling the feature.

However, if the problem goes deeper than some failing electronic feature, than Boeing is in real trouble.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Many, if not most parcel delivery guys and girls in the Netherlands were working as subcontractors to the postal service. So they had to provide their own van. This was recently judged to be illegal, as the subcontracting was basically a way to get around regular employee contracts. In most cases the pay was too low to provide for pension plans and insurances.


In Poland, still many people work based on "service"-type civil law based contracts instead of standard employment contracts. I mean, this is the same type of contract as if you privately provide any service for someone else (I don't know, you cut your neighbor's grass) and he pays you for that. There are actually two types of them, one focused on doing ordered things throughout the prescribed time and another focused on the "product" that has to be made. 

They are very beneficial e.g. for students, e.g. the student internship are usually based on them, but also in many poorly paid jobs they are used instead of standard employment contracts just to cut costs. Which isn't really legal... But it happens.

The so called B2B model (so having a single-person business and working as a subcontractor for a company which "employs" you) also happens to be abused in a similar way.


----------



## General Maximus

I wouldn't work this way, unless I was to start my own business. My benefits (insurance, rights etc) are too important.


----------



## Kpc21

Most people who do it don't really have any other choice.


----------



## Suburbanist

I felt sorry for guys who delivered parcel sometimes when I lived in the Netherlands. Some of them were clearly using their own vehicles (unmarked and all), and it was clear they were very tired when delivering late, beyond what would be normally delivery hours, because they had more packages than it was feasible to deliver in one day. Some were older persons, looking like 60-and-many years. At least the city I lived was dense enough that it was possible to deliver many packages without driving a lot. But after a while many of these independent delivery persons working for obscure transportation companies were replaced by DHL and GSS (I guess that is the name), which owned their own vehicles and had different crews doing evening deliveries.

(I lived in a building complex with more than 600 apartments in 3 buildings, many young professionals and international researchers, thus plenty of online shopping. They would stop their vans, call all apartments with deliveries and hang out for some 15min until everybody had taken their packages from the parked van)

Then, later, I started using a delivery locker they installed nearby. Best thing ever. No more missed deliveries, runs to the nearby collection point etc.


----------



## Attus

General Maximus said:


> I wouldn't work this way, unless I was to start my own business. My benefits (insurance, rights etc) are too important.


Yes. But you're not very young, you're not an immigrant from Africa or Eastern Europe, etc. In Germany a vast majority of delivery guys are immigrants, and not form Denmark nor from the Netherlands. Many of them speak no more German than "Guten Tag" and "Bitte".


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> Yes. But you're not very young, you're not an immigrant from Africa or Eastern Europe, etc. In Germany a vast majority of delivery guys are immigrants, and not form Denmark nor from the Netherlands. Many of them speak no more German than "Guten Tag" and "Bitte".


That's no reason to harass them with these type of contracts.
I hope I'm not wrong, but in Italy using your own vehicle for delivery is not a thing.
There are some companies who hire students with their own bicycles to deliver home food from restaurants (Foodora, Deliveroo, Just Eat and so on), but the judge recently stated that they have to be treated as employees, with pensions, and health insurance and so on.


----------



## General Maximus

Attus said:


> Yes. But you're not very young, you're not an immigrant from Africa or Eastern Europe, etc. In Germany a vast majority of delivery guys are immigrants, and not form Denmark nor from the Netherlands. Many of them speak no more German than "Guten Tag" and "Bitte".


Ich nix verstehen :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A historic cyclone has formed over the central United States, resulting in a massive blizzard in the northern Great Plains, high winds in the southern plains and tornadoes in Illinois.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1105962278590050304


----------



## Autobahn-mann

x-type said:


> In Italy they have them too, but no men, only naked mechanism with flag going up and down


Never seen that!


----------



## x-type

Autobahn-mann said:


> Never seen that!


I saw them even with rotten fabric, so only flag holder was moving up and down 

Here is example from some testing site:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr9-R0c48Ms


----------



## Kpc21

I just read some comments of Facebook under an article about the recent terrorist attacks in New Zeeland. Posted by one of the Polish biggest Internet portals.

And I couldn't believe. Most commenters DID actually SUPPORT the attacker... A person who killed over 40 (if I am not mistaken, I don't thoroughly follow those news) innocent people who were just praying. And some write they are proud of that there is some Polish accent in it (Polish texts on the attacker's gun or something).

Really, I start being afraid of random people. How can anyone support a murderer? A terrorist?

And those people (being so dumb and narrow-minded, there is no other logical explanation to that) have right to vote...


----------



## General Maximus

A combination of hatred, social problems, sheer stupidity and extremism that is sweeping across the world. Not just in Poland, but in the whole of Europe and America. Look at Brexit and Trump, and the rise of populist parties.


----------



## bogdymol

General Maximus said:


> Look at Brexit and Trump, and the rise of populist parties.


When I read this, there was a song that came into my mind...


----------



## italystf

Kpc21 said:


> I just read some comments of Facebook under an article about the recent terrorist attacks in New Zeeland. Posted by one of the Polish biggest Internet portals.
> 
> And I couldn't believe. Most commenters DID actually SUPPORT the attacker... A person who killed over 40 (if I am not mistaken, I don't thoroughly follow those news) innocent people who were just praying. And some write they are proud of that there is some Polish accent in it (Polish texts on the attacker's gun or something).
> 
> Really, I start being afraid of random people. How can anyone support a murderer? A terrorist?
> 
> And those people (being so dumb and narrow-minded, there is no other logical explanation to that) have right to vote...


I've read similar comments on some Italian social media: "people are tired by the Muslim invasion", "eh, but Muslims had killed many Christians all over the world", and so on... You can read such comments everytime a boat full of immigrants sink in the Mediterranean hno:
Social media gave the voice to the most idiot people of the planet.


----------



## General Maximus

bogdymol said:


> When I read this, there was a song that came into my mind...


Yes, but perhaps now it's time to take their chances away. It's not new, it happened before and look where it got us. 

I do believe we need to have a clear frontier between free speech and calls for violence. The latter ought to be heavy criminalised.


----------



## General Maximus

My week ahead, starting on Monday. Starting point is London, Regensburg is my final destination, Mayrhofen is where I will rest and ski. It's all a part of moving pharmaceutical production out of the UK and to Ireland and the rest of the EU ahead of Brexit. We're very busy with that. Last week I went to Ireland twice.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

italystf said:


> Social media gave the voice to the most idiot people of the planet.


Social media is also dominated by such people. Most people who keep their opinions to themselves or are not motivated to sound off on Facebook or other social media are thus not present in such 'discussions'.

It's interesting though, information has never been as easily accessible as it is today, yet the sheer amount of idiocy and ignorance seems to be only increasing. 

Though social media is a reason why platforms like internet forums are still viable. You can get away from the noise and clutter. Who's going to read a post with 1800 comments on Facebook? It's just pointless commenting that leads to nothing.


----------



## cinxxx

On the other hand after so many terrorist attacks, mass shootings, we have been desensibilized, it's more or less the normal way of life.


----------



## Kpc21

What is the likelihood of dying in a terrorist attack? They are "popular" in media, similarly as e.g. airplane disasters, but actually much more people die e.g. in car accidents, or maybe even naturally than in plane crashes or in those attacks.

And there have also always been murderers, although such mass murders, except for war periods, were very rare things.

I am more afraid of those people who claim the terrorist attack was a good thing rather than of the terrorists.

By the way... if there is lots of Christians claiming that a terrorist attack aimed at Muslims was a good thing... then isn't there maybe also many (dumb of course) Muslims claiming that the earlier terrorist attacks aimed mostly at Christians (or non-believers) were a good thing? Probably there are... Those are similar people, after all.

Great, tolerant world... Will this ever change?


----------



## italystf

Junkie said:


> Its not a coincidence because Tajani just very recently said that Mussolini was a big leader. And Tajani is one of the highest politician with a function in the eu parliament.


I find extremely shameful that such a moron became the president of the European Parliament. Although the EU Parliament is a democratic institution, that allows different ideas and different points of view, his ideas are openly against the values of EU.
He said that Istria and Dalmatia should be Italian, now he praises the former Italian dictator, saying he did good things. Then, he said he will attend the "International Meeting of Families" in Verona, that is a meeting of far-right extremists and bigots from all over the world, that think that non-eterosexual people are evil and against nature, and that women's place should be the kitchen.
His party, Force Italy, is generally considered a moderate and pro-EU right-wing party. Yet, many of its members are very backward and populist. There is almost no such thing as "liberal right-wing" in Italy, only populist and xenofobic right.


----------



## Kpc21

In Lodz, we have such a weird street:










Previously, the section from the north to more or less half the northern section (as the northern section I mean the one from the north to the big east-west street – Wojska Polskiego, or Polish Army street) was called Zagajnikowa. From a word meaning a small, young piece of a forest (in English coppice or copse?).

The section further to the south was called Sporna – Dispute Street. At one moment the street forks but both parts: to the west and to the east were named Sporna.

In 2007, someone decided to rename of a part of this street so that it would be named after a Catholic monk who founded a monastery and school which is located in this street. He did it in 1930s and later died in a German death camp.

But they renamed only the section from Wojska Polskiego/Polish Army Street to the south and the fork to the east. Both the northern section as well as the southern fork to the west are still named Sporna/Dispute Street.

So Sporna/Dispute Street is divided. I guess that with the northern section, they didn't want to change the name because there are apartment blocks there where many people live and it would generate really a lot of costs of issuing new documents. The southern section – there are also some apartment blocks there, although less of them and only five-storey ones.

And what is in this section which got renamed? Only this monastery and... a hospital for children. The hospital is officially named after Maria Konopnicka, famous writer, also known for books and poems for children. But really nobody in the city and around uses this name and knows the hospital by this name. The hospital is simply known as the hospital in the Sporna street.

And for some years after the street renaming, the hospital refused to change the address, so they kept an address of a street in which they weren't located. Arguing that it costs a lot to change the address of such a big institution as a hospital and they prefer to spend those money on the treatment of children.

But finally they changed the address. Which didn't change the fact that everyone knows this hospital as the hospital in Sporna.


----------



## italystf

General Maximus said:


> He never said that.
> 
> 
> 
> To the one who always screams to get facts right: get your bloody facts right.


Well, he said that before the alliance with Hitler in 1938, and with the exception of the murder of Matteotti in 1924, Mussolini did good things.
That's not correct, as between 1922 and 1938 fascism committed many crimes and violated all basic human rights, and it wasn't just for the murder of Matteotti.
Yes, during the fascism they build many infrastructure, like they did before and after fascism. All regimes in the world, from the most liberal to the most totalitarian have built something. Yet, we don't praise Hitler for Autobahns, or Stalin for some railway lines in Siberia.


----------



## General Maximus

Yes, but he never said that Mussolini was a big leader. I know it was bad what he said, but there's a big difference.


----------



## volodaaaa

There is one thing we definitely should be beware of. Opinions on people who lived in past should never be evaluated from the contemporary point of view. This has recently been happening in Slovakia.

For example, there was a famous nationalist in Slovakia called Ludovit Stur in the 19th century, who made his best to make the Slovak language be codified. Unlike nowadays, nationalism played a natural role in those times.

He lived ascetic life with no woman and was fully focused on Slovak national rights. Also criticized Slovaks for being alcoholics. He wrote some novels, was a member of the Hungarian parliament and graduated from the Halle University in Germany. He was indeed an intellectual among other Slovaks who were just drunk farmers and undereducated peasants. He travelled a lot and was considered extremely open-minded.

For a long time, he was considered one of the most important and yet popular Slovak ever. No one ever disputed his position until the recent months.

It was turned out he was an antisemite. Not pure antisemite, but he kind of was not fond of Jews. Never did he write nor imply anything about the "final solution" or extermination or something like that. He just called the Jews cunning. Period.

Young people in Slovakia have started to compare his opinions with the opinions of the representatives of the WWII Slovak puppet state. They also criticized him for being a nationalist. 

I do not know the answer to the question of his flaws. But I am certainly sure that due to technical development and the overall development of society, we should not use the same optics as his level of knowledge was certainly different from ours. He had no chance to know about future death camps and what antisemites did to Jews. He would be a loser now. But during his times he certainly lived a good and just life.


----------



## Kpc21

It's happening all the time.


----------



## Junkie

italystf said:


> I find extremely shameful that such a moron became the president of the European Parliament. Although the EU Parliament is a democratic institution, that allows different ideas and different points of view, his ideas are openly against the values of EU.
> He said that Istria and Dalmatia should be Italian, now he praises the former Italian dictator, saying he did good things. Then, he said he will attend the "International Meeting of Families" in Verona, that is a meeting of far-right extremists and bigots from all over the world, that think that non-eterosexual people are evil and against nature, and that women's place should be the kitchen.
> His party, Force Italy, is generally considered a moderate and pro-EU right-wing party. Yet, many of its members are very backward and populist. There is almost no such thing as "liberal right-wing" in Italy, only populist and xenofobic right.


Recently another hit for far right politics happened in Croatia when the church of Austrian province where Bleiburg manifestations were held by Croats that support the ustase (which were hand to the fascists in NDH), was banned by the Catholic church of the province itself. They (the movement) actually never tought that the Church will ban their commemoration, because far rights are generally very bond to the Church, and so was this movement.
Later some politicians in Croatia even blamed the "leftists" and liberals lobbying for the ban.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> There is one thing we definitely should be beware of. Opinions on people who lived in past should never be evaluated from the contemporary point of view. This has recently been happening in Slovakia.
> 
> For example, there was a famous nationalist in Slovakia called Ludovit Stur in the 19th century, who made his best to make the Slovak language be codified. Unlike nowadays, nationalism played a natural role in those times.
> 
> He lived ascetic life with no woman and was fully focused on Slovak national rights. Also criticized Slovaks for being alcoholics. He wrote some novels, was a member of the Hungarian parliament and graduated from the Halle University in Germany. He was indeed an intellectual among other Slovaks who were just drunk farmers and undereducated peasants. He travelled a lot and was considered extremely open-minded.
> 
> For a long time, he was considered one of the most important and yet popular Slovak ever. No one ever disputed his position until the recent months.
> 
> It was turned out he was an antisemite. Not pure antisemite, but he kind of was not fond of Jews. Never did he write nor imply anything about the "final solution" or extermination or something like that. He just called the Jews cunning. Period.
> 
> Young people in Slovakia have started to compare his opinions with the opinions of the representatives of the WWII Slovak puppet state. They also criticized him for being a nationalist.
> 
> I do not know the answer to the question of his flaws. But I am certainly sure that due to technical development and the overall development of society, we should not use the same optics as his level of knowledge was certainly different from ours. He had no chance to know about future death camps and what antisemites did to Jews. He would be a loser now. But during his times he certainly lived a good and just life.


It's like Americans destroying Colombus monuments. Like it was Columbus itself to plan the genocide of the natives...


----------



## italystf

Junkie said:


> Recently another hit for far right politics happened in Croatia when the church of Austrian province where Bleiburg manifestations were held by Croats that support the ustase (which were hand to the fascists in NDH), was banned by the Catholic church of the province itself. They (the movement) actually never tought that the Church will ban their commemoration, because far rights are generally very bond to the Church, and so was this movement.
> Later some politicians in Croatia even blamed the "leftists" and liberals lobbying for the ban.


In the last years, especially with Pope Francis, the Church took a more progressive view in term of anti-fascism and anti-racism. That would have been untinkable until the 1980s, when the Vatican would have even supported a new Hitler, as long as he was anti-communist.
In the past the Church supported fascist dictators like Franco, Pavelic, and Tiso.


----------



## General Maximus

I don't even know where the idea that far-rights are connected to church comes from. Hitler never went to church. And far-rights these days primarily exists of beer louts who are eager to blame a foreigner because they can't sort their own shit out. And then they call themselves patriots.

I prefer the Irish, who once again demonstrate patriotism without turning it into something shit.

Happy St Patricks Day.


----------



## Kpc21

Here in Poland, the main party claiming to be right-wing (PiS) is heavily supported by church. But they are far from being far-right. E.g. in terms of social benefits etc. I would call them far-left. They are right-wing, but only slightly, e.g. they are still pro-European and accept a big number of immigrants (there has never been so many immigrants in Poland, even in small towns, in the post-WW2 history). Not from Africa and Middle East though


----------



## Suburbanist

Kpc21 said:


> Here in Poland, the main party claiming to be right-wing (PiS) is heavily supported by church. But they are far from being far-right. E.g. in terms of social benefits etc. I would call them far-left. They are right-wing, but only slightly, e.g. they are still pro-European and accept a big number of immigrants (there has never been so many immigrants in Poland, even in small towns, in the post-WW2 history). Not from Africa and Middle East though


This party has consistently worked to erode the hallmarks of Western European democracies, such as separation of powers and press freedoms. 

Their double-speak on the EU also doesn't fool anyone outside Poland. 

It is also unacceptable that Poland refuses to take its share of refugees in the EU-wide resettlement program.


----------



## Kpc21

> This party has consistently worked to erode the hallmarks of Western European democracies, such as separation of powers and press freedoms.


What they let themselves do is definitely too much. But give me an example of them breaking the press freedom.

Politicizing the state-owned media is definitely a thing which shouldn't happen but it's still far from violating the rules of freedom of media...

Still, as you can see, it doesn't have much to do with their political orientation. They are for sure partially left-wing.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> It is also unacceptable that Poland refuses to take its share of refugees in the EU-wide resettlement program.


It's hugely unpopular to force migrants onto a country, that's why Fidesz and PiS poll much higher than any western European counterpart, despite all the negative press from abroad. 


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1106688777840402434

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1103600402568753154


----------



## MichiH

Political orientation has more than just one dimension... I don't think that "right" and "left" are enough to describe it.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's hugely unpopular to force migrants onto a country, that's why Fidesz and PiS poll much higher than any western European counterpart, despite all the negative press from abroad.


Exactly. And we DO TAKE migrants anyway, just from another direction.



MichiH said:


> Political orientation has more than just one dimension... I don't think that "right" and "left" are enough to describe it.


That's the thing.


----------



## italystf

General Maximus said:


> I don't even know where the idea that far-rights are connected to church comes from. Hitler never went to church. And far-rights these days primarily exists of beer louts who are eager to blame a foreigner because they can't sort their own shit out. And then they call themselves patriots.


Because in 1917-1990 (but especially after WWII) period communism was the biggest enemy for the Church, so everyone who wasn't communist was "the lesser evil".


----------



## General Maximus

I remember a few years ago, they stopped a British colleague of mine of Jamaican origin going to Poland because of the harassment he was receiving whenever he was there.


----------



## italystf

MichiH said:


> Political orientation has more than just one dimension... I don't think that "right" and "left" are enough to describe it.


The right-left subdivision is, for example, obsolete in Italy since 2010 or so, as one of our largest parties (M5S) claims not to belong neither to the left, nor to the right.
I think that now (not just in Italy), the biggest divide is between "progressists" (pro-EU, pro multiculturalism, pro LGBT,...) and "conservatives" (populists, xenophobs, pro-traditional family, eurosceptics,...).


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's hugely unpopular to force migrants onto a country, that's why Fidesz and PiS poll much higher than any western European counterpart, despite all the negative press from abroad.


If those people do rather prefer to lose their civil liberties, instead of accepting few thousands migrants in a country of several millions, they have a problem with their education.


----------



## volodaaaa

CrazySerb said:


> If they were coming from a warzone, they would have stopped in the first safe place, not in Germany or Sweden



Let them go, where they want to go. My point was that the EU-wide resettlement programme is clearly against this principle. They want to go to Germany, they pass the process and finally, they are forced to live in e. g. Hungary.


----------



## italystf

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ so, Italy?


It depends by the definition of "safe country". In theory, countries like Tunisia, Morocco, or Turkey could be considered safe too. In practices, those countries have close to zero facilities for refugees, so anyone getting asylum there would probably end up homeless. Most of refugees want to reach Germany, Sweden, or UK, because they have plenty of job opportunities and are politically refugees friendly.
Italy is also a popular destination, but it has a much higher unemployment, and many illegal immigrants there end up enslaved by mafia-like organizations, especially in farms in the south of the country, or in prostitution business. hno:
Now, with the shameful "Security decree", issued by our populistic government it will become even worse, as it will become more difficult to legally help immigrants.


----------



## italystf

General Maximus said:


> These people come from a war zone. Family gone, children traveling alone, lost everything. And volodaaaa is whinging about legal and illegal. What the ****


Those have all the rights to apply for asylum in EU.
A different story are economic immigrants from safe developing countries. Those should get there if they have a job contract and with valid documents, not without documents or fake documents, claiming that they're from war zones and underage.
For example, there have been reported cases of Bangladeshi citizens making all the way to Lybia with a series of flights, and then jumping in a boat to Italy mixing with African refugees. This is not an acceptable practice IMHO.
Fake refugees damage real ones.


----------



## General Maximus

To clear something up: I'm not against Eastern European immigration. In fact, I look forward meeting my Romanian friend later today on my travels. I just don't think that they have the right to complain about immigration when so many are immigrants themselves all over the world for all sorts of reasons.


----------



## Suburbanist

Junkie said:


> Poland, Hungary and former Czechoslovakia are more traditional societies than open border societies, despite they are in a common market with the so called "old West". Those political parties that have conservative support it is due to the fact that these countries were long influenced by communist ideology and closed society. Hungary and Poland are very vocal about any immigrants, also Czechia a country which made thousand of donations in Balkan countries police and military forces just to stop the migrant flow back in 2015-16. And yes, Miloš Zeman won the elections over the migrant crisis.


It would serve these countries well to remember what happened in the 1980s and early 1990s people fleeing late/post wasteland were received in "the old West". Or the millions of people from those countries that immigrated to Western Europe before they joined the EU.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ Exactly. Most far-right supporters in Estonia also completely forget that around 10% of the Estonian population fled during WW2 and found permanent refuge in Western Countries. These refugees played a huge role in keeping the Estonian spirit and culture alive outside of the Soviet Union. The former two-term Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves is the son of one of those refugees.

If those people had been sent back to the USSR from Western countries they would've been shot or sent to Siberia.


----------



## italystf

^^ Or the Hungarian refugees in 1956.


----------



## Verso

Yesterday it was 17°C in Ljubljana, now it's snowing. :nuts:


----------



## cinxxx

General Maximus said:


> To clear something up: I'm not against Eastern European immigration. In fact, I look forward meeting my Romanian friend later today on my travels. I just don't think that they have the right to complain about immigration when so many are immigrants themselves all over the world for all sorts of reasons.


As long as an immigrant pays all the taxes and has integrated, he has all rights to complain. Even more if he gets citizenship of his new home


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> Yesterday it was 17°C in Ljubljana, now it's snowing. :nuts:


Same here. Yesterday I went trekking on a small mountain only in t-shirt. Today in the morning I went to work with my light jacket, but I think I will exchange it now for a warmer one...


----------



## Surel

italystf said:


> Because in 1917-1990 (but especially after WWII) period communism was the biggest enemy for the Church, so everyone who wasn't communist was "the lesser evil".


Not just the church of course. Communism and socialist movement in general was dangerous to the old order, to all those that could lose wealth, influence and status with the new ideology. Combine this with geopolitics and then you come up with situation where the US government supported Italian maffia mingling with the christian democrats in the country and having a say in the government. Just to stop the socialist ideology. Religions are mostly all the way down just another ideology perfectly tailored to the needs of the ruling wealthy class anyway.


----------



## Surel

Junkie said:


> Poland, Hungary and former Czechoslovakia are more traditional societies than open border societies, despite they are in a common market with the so called "old West". Those political parties that have conservative support it is due to the fact that these countries were long influenced by communist ideology and closed society. Hungary and Poland are very vocal about any immigrants, also Czechia a country which made thousand of donations in Balkan countries police and military forces just to stop the migrant flow back in 2015-16. And yes, Miloš Zeman won the elections over the migrant crisis.


I would not say that the Czech borders are closed. Around 11 % of all the workforce in Czechia are foreigners. It's rather point of being able to have a control over those borders and over who resides within those borders. Quota's are a more general problem that touches the question of national sovereignty.

Above that. A liberal society needs protecting. Its naïeve to think that you can build very liberal society with religious ideologies, even worse so with ideologies that are incompatible with the very foundations of those societies.


----------



## Surel

volodaaaa said:


> Zero questions answered. 100 % offence provided. You seem to be very open-minded. Thank you for a fruitful discussion.


That's typical of that person. You can simply ignore list it, no information lost there.

Well lets state a few facts:

EU freedom of movement is a fundamental principle agreed upon by all contractual parties. It comes in a bigger package of all other agreements that make the EU. If a country wants to enjoy that principle, it should join the EU. If a country doesn't want it, leave (e.g. Brexit). One of the agreements in the packages is a common protected external border of the EU.

Asylum is a question of international law and the parties adhering to this law agreed to conduct according to this principle. Anyone with a good cause can receive asylum in any country that adheres to this principle, including Czechia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, etc... And those countries award asylum to refugees.

And quota distribution principle is none of the above. It is an idea of certain West European politicians that were not able to deal with both above points and needed to find a scapegoat for their problem. Therefore they tried to force redistribution of their problem to other countries, which of course can't work because it is practically nonsensical (moving people against their will into places where they are not welcome - where did we see it already, jeez) and unacceptable because of the sovereignty principles. The only what is left is the scapegoat argument for the shouting West European politicians.


----------



## Surel

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ Exactly. Most far-right supporters in Estonia also completely forget that around 10% of the Estonian population fled during WW2 and found permanent refuge in Western Countries. These refugees played a huge role in keeping the Estonian spirit and culture alive outside of the Soviet Union. The former two-term Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves is the son of one of those refugees.
> 
> If those people had been sent back to the USSR from Western countries they would've been shot or sent to Siberia.


Yes, and those refugees were subject to very tough screening, checks, waiting lists, acceptance queries, etc...

Again, anyone can ask for asylum in any Eastern European country. There's no difference to what you are talking about, it's just enormously easier for the current refugees than it was for those refugees back then.

But there's a huge difference if you compare it to a refugee quota program. Nothing like that ever existed. No country was forcing other country to take care of the refugees it took in.


----------



## General Maximus

Surel said:


> That's typical of that person. You can simply ignore list it, no information lost there.


Says the person who has put at least 80% of the Dutch SSC section on his ignore list. Reason: he has been identified as a Kremlin troll. A possible Czech immigrant to the Netherlands, he spends most of his time spreading propaganda, and his agenda persists mostly of pro-Putin, pro-Trump, anti-immigration, anti-Nato and anti-EU. He is not know on SSC as using this forum for what it's intended. 

As he turned practically the entire Dutch section against him, he has put most of them on the ignore list. This results in his propaganda messages coming out of nowhere, as he is unable to follow up on a discussion.


----------



## italystf

Surel said:


> Above that. A liberal society needs protecting. Its naïeve to think that you can build very liberal society with religious ideologies, even worse so with ideologies that are incompatible with the very foundations of those societies.


Tolerance to intolerance would lead to the end of tolerance. - Karl Popper


----------



## Surel

italystf said:


> Tolerance to intolerance would lead to the end of tolerance. - Karl Popper


Indeed. Someone asked once about influential books here. I would recommend these two. Very informative and very readable as well.


----------



## Junkie

Suburbanist said:


> It would serve these countries well to remember what happened in the 1980s and early 1990s people fleeing late/post wasteland were received in "the old West". Or the millions of people from those countries that immigrated to Western Europe before they joined the EU.


Well yes for example, DDR citizens were united with the West Germany. In a parallel world if DDR continued to exist they would not have come in contact with the West Germans anyway.
Most of the migration from Eastern Europe was to US and Canada in the 70s, I dont think that much people from the communist regimes went to Western Europe directly.

Today there are hundreds of thousands of Romanians, Bulgarians and Poles in various western countries after their integration in the eu.


----------



## Kpc21

General Maximus said:


> What right do you have to be from a part of Europe that has exported loads of immigrants


Where are those lots of immigrants exported by Poland or Slovakia (not to other EU countries, we are talking about exporting them to other parts of the world)?

Sorry but the fact that some western EU countries were colonial countries, exploiting and abusing some territories in far parts of the world doesn't mean we have anything to do with it.

From what I know, Poland had no colonies. There were only some trials to establish one in Madagascar – but it was not finalized.



General Maximus said:


> These people come from a war zone. Family gone, children traveling alone, lost everything. And volodaaaa is whinging about legal and illegal. What the ****


1. Most of them are not women with children but fit men. And most of them do not come from war zones.
2. If they come from a war zone, according to international law, they must be accepted and settle in the first country without war they enter. And not choose central Europe because they have much social benefits (for which those central European countries worked many years).



General Maximus said:


> To clear something up: I'm not against Eastern European immigration. In fact, I look forward meeting my Romanian friend later today on my travels. I just don't think that they have the right to complain about immigration when so many are immigrants themselves all over the world for all sorts of reasons.


Migration to EU countries from outside is a totally different thing than within the EU. The latter is a right given to us by the existence of the EU and by its rules. In the same way someone from Germany, Italy, Sweden, Portugal, Greece can easily migrate to Poland, he doesn't need special permissions to get a job here and so on.

And why the heck is anyone accusing Poland of not accepting immigrants while when I go to a local Biedronka /largest supermarket chain here/, I can sometimes see more immigrants than Poles in the store?


----------



## Attus

General Maximus said:


> To clear something up: I'm not against Eastern European immigration. In fact, I look forward meeting my Romanian friend later today on my travels. I just don't think that they have the right to complain about immigration when so many are immigrants themselves all over the world for all sorts of reasons.


Being born and grown up in Eastern Europe and having been living in Germany for six years, I take your post personally. 
I hat those "foreginer = foreigner", "immigrant = immigrant" generalizations. 
I, and a lot of other people, from Eastern Europe (in- and outside of the EU), and even many of North Africa, millions from Turkey, came here legally, I showed my passport to German authorities, looked for a job, learned the local language, pay tax, have never claimed any state subvention (apart from what is available for any one). 
I clearly don't want to be handled the same way like the ones that came illegally, from some North African nation, without passport, lyig that they were from Syria, registering themselves three times, by three different names, denying learning the local language or looking for a job. 

I am not against immigration. It would be fool, and it would be twice as fool, being myself an immigrant in the country where I live. 
But I'm heavily against unregulated mass immigration of people that can't or don't want to identify themselves, deny any kind of integration, etc. No matter where they actually come from.


----------



## General Maximus

I think nobody wants the kind of immigrants you've mentioned. And I have to stress again that I have nothing against Polish or Romanian immigration to "old" Europe. I work with Poles and Romanians every day, and a lot of them are close friends. In fact, they wish that their countries would welcome refugees in, give them what they need and let them work. Even if it is for a shit wage. (hence the fact that this is the reason so many Eastern Europeans have come to work in the west)


----------



## General Maximus

Kpc21 said:


> Where are those lots of immigrants exported by Poland or Slovakia (not to other EU countries, we are talking about exporting them to other parts of the world)?
> 
> Sorry but the fact that some western EU countries were colonial countries, exploiting and abusing some territories in far parts of the world doesn't mean we have anything to do with it.
> 
> From what I know, Poland had no colonies. There were only some trials to establish one in Madagascar – but it was not finalized.
> 
> 
> 1. Most of them are not women with children but fit men. And most of them do not come from war zones.
> 2. If they come from a war zone, according to international law, they must be accepted and settle in the first country without war they enter. And not choose central Europe because they have much social benefits (for which those central European countries worked many years).
> 
> 
> Migration to EU countries from outside is a totally different thing than within the EU. The latter is a right given to us by the existence of the EU and by its rules. In the same way someone from Germany, Italy, Sweden, Portugal, Greece can easily migrate to Poland, he doesn't need special permissions to get a job here and so on.
> 
> And why the heck is anyone accusing Poland of not accepting immigrants while when I go to a local Biedronka /largest supermarket chain here/, I can sometimes see more immigrants than Poles in the store?


The only thing that makes migrant from outside the EU is different to the ones within is the fact that the ones within get a free ride without any hassle. Nothing else. Everyone has to integrate and learn the local language. Once again, we're all humans and what you said is a classic example of you feeling superior to anyone else from outside the EU. Well, you're not. I'm not. Whether you're a Brit, a Pole, a Dutchman or a Somalian, when moving to another country you (we) will always be a foreigner.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Surel said:


> Yes, and those refugees were subject to very tough screening, checks, waiting lists, acceptance queries, etc...
> 
> Again, anyone can ask for asylum in any Eastern European country. There's no difference to what you are talking about, it's just enormously easier for the current refugees than it was for those refugees back then.
> 
> But there's a huge difference if you compare it to a refugee quota program. Nothing like that ever existed. No country was forcing other country to take care of the refugees it took in.


Erm...no. Most of the Estonian refugees of WW2 fled on small fishing boats to Finland and Sweden which is 80-400 km across the Baltic Sea. Roughly 6-9% of those trying to escape died on the journey. 

Practically nobody stayed in Finland, though, because there was a threat they would be sent back to USSR so from there they fled to Sweden, Canada and the US. Yes, nobody forced these countries to take in Estonian refugees but they did.

I myself have distant relatives living in both Sweden and Canada who fled during WW2.


----------



## Surel

Rebasepoiss said:


> Erm...no. Most of the Estonian refugees of WW2 fled on small fishing boats to Finland and Sweden which is 80-400 km across the Baltic Sea. Roughly 6-9% of those trying to escape died on the journey.
> 
> Practically nobody stayed in Finland, though, because there was a threat they would be sent back to USSR so from there they fled to Sweden, Canada and the US. Yes, nobody forced these countries to take in Estonian refugees but they did.
> 
> I myself have distant relatives living in both Sweden and Canada who fled during WW2.


I skimmed your post and skipped the part where you mentioned WW2, I thought that you were talking about the political refugees in the communist times, my excuses.

The WWII is a matter of completely different scale and I could go into some lengths of talking about the treatment of Eastern Europeans in that war by the very same Western European countries that now try to claim the moral high ground. I won't. I will just tell you that it is very wrong example to mention WWII in this context.


----------



## MichiH

*I just think: What would I do?*

If I would be a young man, born in Africa or Asia. In a country where I have no chance to get a good job and support a family one day? Corrupt people all around. Murderer. Maybe even a civil war for years. Being happy to have something to eat but no chance to get a job. Just hang around and... doing nothing... Like most people around. No future chance. No sign for any improvement. Seeing drunk or depressed people around me. What would I do?

I would have more than enough time to hear stories. Stories from people talking about "golden" paradise countries like Germany, US, Canada, UK, France, Netherlands, Sweden,... Stories that people have jobs, HAVE SOMETHING TO DO and no worry whether I have something to eat tonight. Would I accept my situation? Would I.... not fight?

I could go to the US embassy and ask for asylum. Unfortunately, they will refuse me. Maybe I had done it or I would know from other people that you've tried it.

And I hear the stories. Every day. "golden" countries. Where people have jobs. They have to work 8 hours on just 5 days per week and earn 1000 € per month or even more. So much money. WTF. So much money, I could even support my parents at home. And my brothers and sisters. Giving them enough to eat every day.

Sure, stories always sound much better than real life is. It's not that simple to get a job when you don't speak the local language. And for sure, it's quite hard to work "as reliable" as locals do. Because it's a different culture. I don't talk about religion or things like that (many are Christians like in Europe) but about "how to work". There are differences, even in Europe. "Siesta" is normal in Spain but in Germany or Sweden? Quite difficult even for those.

But I hear the stories. I'm a young man and wanna take the chance. I'm a fighter and never ever give up. Yeah!

I would spend all my money to get to Europe. Smugglers? So what. Walking, swiming, paddling,... Climbing walls or fences. Nothing could stop me. Is it legal? I've seen corruption all my life. Corrupt policemen. I've never learned trusting policemen or any official. You cares what's legal. I think that it's not "legal" to human rights getting no chance in my home country! And I'm in a huge group. Many people with the same dream. Going to "golden" UK, Sweden or Netherlands. Get a job and earn a lot of money in "golden" Europe. Let's go!

I've arrived in a boat. I'm thirsty, hungry, had no sleep. But I'm happy. I'm in Europe. Go on, don't stop. Rich Europe is my destination. People wanna bring me to Poland? To a refugees camp? But people told that I need to go to UK, Germany, France! What's Czechia, Hungary? I've heard that I should not be a fool. There are also no jobs and people emigrate from there. Officials wanna bring me to Slovakia? What the hell should I do there? No, I wanna go to Austria, Netherlands, Sweden! There are the jobs.

Now I'm finally in Germany. In a refugees camp in Saxony-Anhalt. Many refugees around me but... where are the jobs? They tell me that I need a document first. And I have to wait. It will minimum take some weeks. I can wait. And they tell me that I need to learn German to get a job. But there's no teacher. How can I learn the language? Why can't I just drive a van and deliver parcels. I drove a tractor home and I can learn driving a van. I need a driver license? WTF. I wanna work. In a factory, I can do the hard job. In a foundry. Yes, no problem. I'm used to warm conditions. Working 8 hours with some very restricted breaks only? I'll try it... Safety instructions? I need to understand them? But my German is too limited. There are a lot of other people with better skills. And me? I'm hanging around like home back then. A beer? Haven't had one for a long time.....


Stories and dreams are always better than reality. And people are disappointed when they get no chance. It's not good when there are too many people immigrating at a time. Chances are worse to get a job. And there are always some guys who just went to Europe for other reasons than me. They had conflicts with their parents. With police. With criminals. Or whatever. There are always some bad guys. They are not bad by nature but things taks its course...


Nevertheless, if I would be in such a situation, *I WOULD DO ANYTHING THAT MUST BE DONE TO GET A CHANCE*.


----------------------

I worked close together with colleagues from Poland, Romania, Italy, Ireland, USA, Morocco, Rwanda, Indonesia, China and Russia. Together in the same office (room) every day for many years. With Romanians and Italians only in almost daily exchange by email or on the phone and meeting them on business trips only. On occassion with guys from Austria, France, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Czechia, Hungary, China, India, Pakistan, Tunesia, South Africa, Argentina, Mexico,... to be honest, I never made any bad experience. It doesn't mean that they are all my friends and that I'd like to spend time beside the job with them.... The (white) South Africian guy is a rasist, doesn't tolerate women etc. The Morrocean guys are on the phone all day instead of focusing on work. I've sent an email to a colleague that the Morrocean is a "lazy sucker, don't expect that he'll look into the problem". Well, I've answered "to all" by accident and we had talked "in private" (_unter vier Augen_) afterwards. If one is a lazy sucker, I say it. I don't care about gender, nationality, citizenship, religion, age,... However, the guy mentioned and I got something like "friends" later on. We had a lot of fun although I never wanted to talk about religion :lol: There a bad guys everywhere. Maybe I'm bad too. For sure, I'm really a bad guy in some situations. And a "lazy sucker". Yes, I am :lol:

But diversity is great. It opens your mind and gives you so much back! I wish that everyone could make this experience. I wish that my EE friends could make this experience! :cheers:


----------



## General Maximus

:heart: :heart: :heart:


----------



## italystf

Rebasepoiss said:


> Most of the Estonian African refugees of WW2various conflicts fledflee on small fishing boats to FinlandItaly and SwedenGreece which is 80-400 km across the BalticMediterranean Sea. Roughly 6-9% of those trying to escape died on the journey.


History tends to repeat again and again. Humanity needs to learn from past events.


----------



## bogdymol

And on that bombshell, it's time to end our immigration/nationalistic debate. Thank you!


----------



## General Maximus

Greetings from Immingham where I'm about to board the ferry to the Hook of Holland. I've loaded pharmaceuticals in my van in Scotland, going to Regensburg. And with the ongoing troubles at Dover and Calais they've decided to put me on this crossing.

11 hours, own cabin and plenty of wine to go around. After the wine I'll leave a few messages here, and then check if I'm still a member in the morning :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

General Maximus said:


> Greetings from Immingham where I'm about to board the ferry to the Hook of Holland. I've loaded pharmaceuticals in my van in Scotland, going to Regensburg. And with the ongoing troubles at Dover and Calais they've decided to put me on this crossing.
> 
> 11 hours, own cabin and plenty of wine to go around. After the wine I'll leave a few messages here, and then check if I'm still a member in the morning :lol:


I hope it's not English wine...


----------



## Suburbanist

There is a small British expat community and Bergen, the old-timers lament the lack of car ferries between Scotland and Bergen and sometimes complain on the Facebook expat group about the long drives they now must take if they want to move cars between Norway and UK. 

I'm not sure how long did the ferries take, and I'd guess seas are pretty rough at 60N.


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## General Maximus

It's 26 hours from Immingham to Gothenburg. I know, because my colleague sent me a whatsapp earlier to tell me that, he's on his way.

And no, I never drink English wine. EVER!


----------



## Suburbanist

There is a small British expat community and Bergen, the old-timers lament the lack of car ferries between Scotland and Bergen and sometimes complain on the Facebook expat group about the long drives they now must take if they want to move cars between Norway and UK. 

I'm not sure how long did the ferries take, and I'd guess seas are pretty rough at 60N.


----------



## General Maximus

It's 26 hours from Immingham to Gothenburg. I know, because my colleague sent me a whatsapp earlier to tell me that, he's on his way.

And no, I never drink English wine. EVER!

Chris and Bogdy, this is going to be a new thing :lol:


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> There is a small British expat community and Bergen, the old-timers lament the lack of car ferries between Scotland and Bergen and sometimes complain on the Facebook expat group about the long drives they now must take if they want to move cars between Norway and UK.
> 
> I'm not sure how long did the ferries take, and I'd guess seas are pretty rough at 60N.


DFDS acquired the Newcastle-Stavanger-Haugesund-Bergen route from Fjord1 and soon it closed it down. There was too much competition by the cheap airlines, and the fleet did not meet the coming regulations of the sulphur emissions on the Baltic Sea and the North Sea.

The ferry departed at 18:30 time in Newcastle, and arrived in Stavanger at 15:00, Haugesund at 18:00 and Bergen at 23:00. The travel time was 19.5, 22.5 and 27.5 hours, respectively.

The latitude 60N itself is not problematic but the shallow waters of the North Sea, and the unpredictability of the weather in that area may make the crossing uncomfortable.

The last ferry on that route, m/s Queen of Scandinavia, was initially built as m/s Finlandia for the Helsinki-Stockholm route. She was the member of the first generation of those huge cruising ship plus ferry combos on that route. She is quite comfortable in harsh winds, too. 

The bow design was optimized to maximize the car lane capacity. but it made it somewhat challenging to operate the ship. In 2000, the ship was docked in Poland to remaster the bow to increase the maximum speed (and to relieve those fears related to the disaster of the m/s Estonia in 1994). The bow gate was removed, and only the rear gates remain for the car deck access. That made the port operations less efficient, and it was likely to being one element to kill the business case of the route.


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## Fatfield

^^^^

The ferries never went to Newcastle. They went to North Shields which is a completely separate town.


----------



## MattiG

Fatfield said:


> ^^^^
> 
> The ferries never went to Newcastle. They went to North Shields which is a completely separate town.


It the timetable says it is Newcastle then it is Newcastle, wherever the local administrative borders happen to be drawn, thought big. 

Similarly, the international airports near London are called London-Gatwick, London-Luton and London-Stansted, even if they are not located in London. Like Stockholm-Arlanda is not located in Stockholm, Helsinki-Vantaa not in Helsinki and Paris-CDG not in Paris.

By the way, the Paris-CDG airport spans over three departments and six municipalities: Le Mesnil-Amelot, Mauregard and Mitry-Mory in Seine-et-Marne, Tremblay-en-France in Seine-Saint-Denis, and Épiais-lès-Louvres and and Roissy-en-France in Val-d'Oise.


----------



## General Maximus

Fatfield said:


> ^^^^
> 
> The ferries never went to Newcastle. They went to North Shields which is a completely separate town.


Yes, but for the route it's classified as Newcastle. Otherwise you might as well rename airports as Crawley-Gatwick or Solihull-international or Haarlemmermeer-Schiphol...

Edit: I wrote this without reading Matti's post. So great minds think alike


----------



## Fatfield

They still don't go to Newcastle. They go to North Shields. If you said in this area you'd be politely informed of your mistake. BTW this area is Co. Durham, Tyne & Wear & Northumberland.

And another thing, Newcastle Airport is wrong too. Its known locally as Sunderland North.


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## General Maximus

Politely? Geordiess?


----------



## g.spinoza

This thread's amazing.


----------



## General Maximus

Just killing time until something spectacular is going to happen. I'm at a real Roadside Rest Area right now. At Rasthof Bruchsal near Karlsruhe waiting for my dinner. Perhaps I can talk about racist stuff or immigrants with someone.


----------



## tfd543

Whats on the menu?


----------



## volodaaaa

Another change after Severna Macedonia
https://www.ft.com/content/de1587be-4b21-11e9-bbc9-6917dce3dc62



> Kazakhstan to rename state capital Nursultan after former president


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Yeah, why not?


----------



## MattiG

Fatfield said:


> They still don't go to Newcastle. They go to North Shields. If you said in this area you'd be politely informed of your mistake. BTW this area is Co. Durham, Tyne & Wear & Northumberland.
> 
> And another thing, Newcastle Airport is wrong too. Its known locally as Sunderland North.


You still think too narrow.

Basically, nobody has insisted that the ferries went to the city of Newcastle but to the DFDS ferry port named Newcastle. Such a place happens to be situated beyond the city limits of Newcastle.

The whole name Newcastle is wrong, because the castle is old, and most of it has disappeared. Therefore, I suggest renaming the DFDS ferry port to *Newcastle-upon-Non-Newcastle-on-Non-New-Non-Castle-upon-Tyne*. Happy now?


----------



## Kpc21

Wasn't maybe the castle new (and wasn't there any old castle then) when it was built?


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> https://www.ft.com/content/de1587be-4b21-11e9-bbc9-6917dce3dc62


When I was young and learned capital cities, that of Kazakhstan was called Alma-Ata. Later on the same town was renamed to Almaty. Several years later the nation got a new capital city, Astana, which will get the new name Nursultan. 
And all of that in less then thirty years without any international affairs.


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## ChrisZwolle

Many cities in Kazakhstan have changed names in the past: List of renamed cities in Kazakhstan

Astana is one of the record-holders though:
Akmolinsk → Tselinograd (1961) → Akmola (1992) → Astana (1998) → Nursultan (2019)


----------



## General Maximus

tfd543 said:


> Whats on the menu?


Frikandel mit Bratkartoffeln.


----------



## Verso

I remember when then-Akmola became the capital of Kazakhstan in 1997. I informed my geography teacher about it.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Many cities in Kazakhstan have changed names in the past: List of renamed cities in Kazakhstan
> 
> Astana is one of the record-holders though:
> Akmolinsk → Tselinograd (1961) → Akmola (1992) → Astana (1998) → Nursultan (2019)



Kazakhstan - forcing people to learn geography since 1961 :nuts::lol:


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> Wasn't maybe the castle new (and wasn't there any old castle then) when it was built?


All castles are new when they are built. Such names are pure overhead!


----------



## MichiH

General Maximus said:


> I'm at a real Roadside Rest Area right now. At Rasthof Bruchsal near Karlsruhe waiting for my dinner.


Just 2 hours from home? For a break only or to stay the night?


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## General Maximus

Just had a break there for a few hours. I'm in Ravensburg now where I'm delivering in the morning. I was at the services just to see the rush-hour through. There had been loads of delays and crashes on the A8 towards Stuttgart.

After Ravensburg I have to drop a few things off in Stuttgart, and then onto Pfaffenhofen near Munich to load for delivery in Ireland on Monday. I was hoping to go to Mayrhofen for the weekend, but that not happening now


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> Many cities in Kazakhstan have changed names in the past: List of renamed cities in Kazakhstan
> 
> Astana is one of the record-holders though:
> Akmolinsk → Tselinograd (1961) → Akmola (1992) → Astana (1998) → Nursultan (2019)


However for me it will remain as Astana, much like I still use Burma.


----------



## g.spinoza

CNGL said:


> However for me it will remain as Astana, much like I still use Burma.


Or North... Ah, no.


----------



## Fatfield

MattiG said:


> You still think too narrow.
> 
> Basically, nobody has insisted that the ferries went to the city of Newcastle but to the DFDS ferry port named Newcastle. Such a place happens to be situated beyond the city limits of Newcastle.
> 
> The whole name Newcastle is wrong, because the castle is old, and most of it has disappeared. Therefore, I suggest renaming the DFDS ferry port to *Newcastle-upon-Non-Newcastle-on-Non-New-Non-Castle-upon-Tyne*. Happy now?


Nah. Its in North Shields. BTW the ferry terminal is called Port of Tyne International Passenger Terminal.

And as for your last bit, you're just being plain silly.


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Many cities in Kazakhstan have changed names in the past: List of renamed cities in Kazakhstan
> 
> Astana is one of the record-holders though:
> Akmolinsk → Tselinograd (1961) → Akmola (1992) → Astana (1998) → Nursultan (2019)


Akmoly → Akmolinsk (1832)

Anyway, I don't think it Will stay _Nursultan_ forever. It's a bad idea anyway.


----------



## Junkie

They have glorified the eternal president of the Republic, offering him statues and his name on the capital. But what does "sultan" actually means ? It is present in many Indoeuropean languages as I am aware it has to do with his mighty as refers to a king of some kind or a landlord that possess much wealth.... So its a double win


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ It comes from Arabic, meaning "strength, authority".


----------



## Junkie

It is a unique country, Asiatic people with Muslim ancestry, speaking Cyrillic script as official but the language is Turkic.


----------



## General Maximus

Autohof Pfaffenhofen. That's where I am and where I'm going to get wasted tonight. Pharmaceuticals to load tomorrow for Northern Ireland.

@A3: please don't **** me tomorrow.


----------



## MichiH

General Maximus said:


> After Ravensburg I have to drop a few things off in Stuttgart


If you have reached Stuttgart by B10 this morning, you've missed me by less than 300m 
I already wanted to write it this morning but the site was bitchy... Afterwards, I left my hotel and was really scared because two white GB vans parked next to my car in front of my hotel in Stuttgart :nuts:



General Maximus said:


> @A3: please don't **** me tomorrow.


Please be nice to "my A3" and wave when you'll stop in Baustellenstau "im Spessart" :cheers:


----------



## Suburbanist

Sad to see an openly xenophobic party get the highest number of Senate seats in The Netherlands today. They are also openly pro-Russia and in favor of exiting the EU. At least they have a small overall plurality and other major parties will boycott it. Mark Rutte is one of the best political leaders in Europe, he has put the country out of austerity into a growth path, fiscal sustainability, low unemployment and Amsterdam has become a boomtown.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Sad to see an openly xenophobic party get the highest number of Senate seats in The Netherlands today. They are also openly pro-Russia and in favor of exiting the EU.


Living in Italy I know that feeling. hno:


----------



## italystf

Junkie said:


> It is a unique country, Asiatic people with Muslim ancestry, speaking Cyrillic script as official but the language is Turkic.


One doesn't speak Cyrillic script, but writes in Cyrillic script. People are Asian. The language is Kazakh, that is a Turki*sh* language (TurkishTurkic languag*es* is not the same of Turkish languag*e*, that is one of the TurkishTurkic languages, with the other being Kazakh, Azeri, Uzbekh,...).


----------



## Junkie

^^
Before correct someone, test your knowledge. Its part of Turkic languages and Asiatic is same as Asian, google it please 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_languages

"Asian people or Asiatic people are people who descend from a portion of Asia's population."


----------



## italystf

^^ Sorry, I though it was spelled Turkish because in Italian it's the same.


----------



## Suburbanist

italystf said:


> Living in Italy I know that feeling. hno:


Didn't you support 5* and Beppe Grillo back in the day? Or am I mixing you with _urbis


----------



## General Maximus

MichiH said:


> If you have reached Stuttgart by B10 this morning, you've missed me by less than 300m
> I already wanted to write it this morning but the site was bitchy... Afterwards, I left my hotel and was really scared because two white GB vans parked next to my car in front of my hotel in Stuttgart :nuts:
> 
> 
> 
> Please be nice to "my A3" and wave when you'll stop in Baustellenstau "im Spessart" :cheers:


I came in on the B27. 

I'll wave as hard as I can. And honk


----------



## General Maximus

Changed my mind. I'm going A8 Karlsruhe and then cut across at Pirmasens and through to Luxembourg, Lille and Calais.
This way I avoid heavy Friday traffic on the A3 and the rush-hour at Brussels.

I also need cigarettes.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Didn't you support 5* and Beppe Grillo back in the day? Or am I mixing you with _urbis


If you mean VERY back in the days, like 2009-2011, unfortunately I did.
Then, some things changed. I became more educated in things like economics and politics, and while growing in populatity, the 5* party started also to show more and more bad sides day after day. I didn't vote for them in 2013 general elections (actually, I never voted for them as there haven't been any elections in the period I supported them).
I don't support them because:
1) they claim to be morally superior to others, although they mind their businesses only like other parties and are periodically involved in corruption scandals like everyone else
2) their economic policies are disastrous and irrealistic
3) they are skeptical towards evidence-based science
4) they have very ambiguous ideas about important themes, like immigration policies, EU membership, and LGBT marriage: they fear to take strong opinions to avoid losing votes
5) the party is structured like a private company, with decisions made by a small powerful group and no internal dissent allowed
6) they privileges "being new to politics", rather than "being competents", so many idiots end up occupying important positions.
Everything went even worse when, in 2018, they formed a cohalition with the populistic, xenophobic, homofobic, and highly conservative Lega party. The most moderate 5* politicians got emarginated, and the party moved further towards the right.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> Sad to see an openly xenophobic party get the highest number of Senate seats in The Netherlands today. They are also openly pro-Russia and in favor of exiting the EU. At least they have a small overall plurality and other major parties will boycott it. Mark Rutte is one of the best political leaders in Europe, he has put the country out of austerity into a growth path, fiscal sustainability, low unemployment and Amsterdam has become a boomtown.


It's partially a revisit to the 2002 elections, when Pim Fortuyn's party stormed into the parliament on a similar platform, despite having had a period of economic growth. 

I didn't vote for FvD but I understand the sentiment, VVD & CDA have moved to the center, potentially leaving a 30+ seat gap on the right which is filled by PVV (Geert Wilders) and now FvD. 

The climate debate is also polarizing, explaining the wins for both GreenLeft and FvD. Though the traditional left is increasingly marginalized, receiving a quarter of the vote by now. GreenLeft's growth is mostly explained by the decline of Labour and D66. In 2006 these parties received near 45% of the vote, today they receive in the low 30s (including D66). 

D66 also seems to be in an identity crisis, their traditional platform is either implemented or discarded, so they took on climate change as their primary platform, in an attempt to gain votes from GreenLeft, which has obviously failed, D66 lost vote share in every municipality.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Though the traditional left is increasingly marginalized


Socialist and social democrat parties have losed votes almost everywhere in Europe. It has several reasons, the most important origin of that is disappearing of traditional working class - and even what remains of that is filled by immigrants that don't vote (either they are not citizens of the country where they live or they don't care about politics).


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> Socialist and social democrat parties have losed votes almost everywhere in Europe. It has several reasons, the most important origin of that is disappearing of traditional working class - and even what remains of that is filled by immigrants that don't vote (either they are not citizens of the country where they live or they don't care about politics).


In many countries the working class tend to vote for populist parties nowadays. Traditional parties, including leftist ones, are perceived as "élite" by some.


----------



## Kpc21

General Maximus said:


> Changed my mind. I'm going A8 Karlsruhe


I lived there for a year. I miss Karlsruhe.


----------



## General Maximus

I've spent a wonderful hour there today.

Stuck in traffic on the B10. Because of... 

Wait for it... 

Wait for it.... 

Baustelle!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

They're replacing the bridge deck of the Rhine Bridge with a Dutch-style renovation. They're using high-tension concrete, the Netherlands has extended the life of bridges by 30+ years with this method, in Germany they often have to tear the entire bridge down. It's very cost-effective if you can postpone that for another 30 years. The big tents on the bridge were supplied by a firm from Bodegraven.


----------



## General Maximus

I've noticed that tent! It's like a big Oktoberfest party-tent! Other events en route: smooth run on the A8, apart from a slight congestion on the A8 going up the hill at Pforzheim.

E411 after Luxemburg: massive crash between lorries Luxembourg-bound. I was stuck on the other side due to onlookers. Road is still closed I think... 

E42: large amount of roadworks between Namur and Tournai. They're digging the road up everywhere. 

Now just arriving at Dover and a closed M20 to look forward to...


----------



## bogdymol

I also went through this recently. At work my old computer was booting really really slow. Every day in the morning I turned on the computer and I knew I have time to go and put my jacket on the hanger, get a tea, have a look on some papers etc., before I could work on the computer. It took almost 10 minutes to turn on and have a couple of programs opened so that I can work.

About 1 - 1.5 months ago I complained to IT about this and they exchanged the HDD for a SSD. Now instead of ~10 minutes it takes slightly longer than 30 seconds for everything.


----------



## g.spinoza

HDD for storage, SSD for OS.


----------



## bogdymol

When driving through Hungary few days ago I noticed the message on this lorry which is really good:











> Without me the motorway would be empty. Just like your fridge.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> HDD for storage, SSD for OS.


That is my setup as well, because SSD storage was pretty expensive 2 years ago. Nowadays I can find 1 TB of SSD for only € 100 - 150. According to a price tracking website they cost € 350 a year ago.


----------



## tfd543

Thats a hybrid drive. I prefer to hook up an external drive instead for simple file transfer. Bought the best Samsung evo model according to many benchmarks. Just annoyed that i had to buy a thermal sensor as well for imacs.

PCIe interface for ssd's is actually even faster than SATA. This is the future but the drawback is that it is connected directly to the motherboard. Replacement might be laborious.


----------



## Kpc21

Raben, at least its Polish division, has a series of ads on its trucks telling "without transportation/drivers there is no ... (something)".

yoghurt










shoes here ("tu" states for "here")










renovations










fruit here










cars here










The words in the Internet address www.transport-jest-potrzebny.pl translate as "transportation is needed".


----------



## Suburbanist

Yesterday I visited the Italian border town of Domodossola, which I had driven through or passed by train several times but never actually stopped by. The town center looks very pretty and I was surprised with the wide range of good restaurants and eateries there. And the Swiss, of course, in force shopping at the street market. German and Austrian towns near the Swiss border tend to suffer from 'spillover' pricing effects, so they are cheaper than CH but far more expensive than other cities a bit more inland (Brengez, Konstanz, Singel). I saw nothing like that in Domodossola. 

I also tried a dessert from Sardegna I had never tried before, and it tasted really good (saedas).


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> Yesterday I visited the Italian border town of Domodossola, which I had driven through or passed by train several times but never actually stopped by. The town center looks very pretty and I was surprised with the wide range of good restaurants and eateries there. And the Swiss, of course, in force shopping at the street market. German and Austrian towns near the Swiss border tend to suffer from 'spillover' pricing effects, so they are cheaper than CH but far more expensive than other cities a bit more inland (Brengez, Konstanz, Singel). I saw nothing like that in Domodossola.
> 
> I also tried a dessert from Sardegna I had never tried before, and it tasted really good (saedas).


It should spell "seadas". 
I don't like it very much: cheese is not a dessert for me.


----------



## General Maximus

England: main meal, dessert, cheese.
France: main meal, cheese, dessert. They have never understood why the English go from salt to sweet to salt. Neither do I, to be honest...


----------



## cinxxx

g.spinoza said:


> It should spell "seadas".
> I don't like it very much: cheese is not a dessert for me.


We have sweet cheese strudels, and it definitely is a desert


----------



## Fatfield

italystf said:


> I was talking about places by the sea, not tripoints.


On a clear day from the Mull of Galloway you can see Scotland, England, Isle of Man & Northern Ireland.

I can't find any pics but I have seen it myself when fishing up there.


----------



## Fatfield

Anyone been to Dusseldorf, Scotland? :lol:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47691478


----------



## General Maximus

Fatfield said:


> On a clear day from the Mull of Galloway you can see Scotland, England, Isle of Man & Northern Ireland.
> 
> I can't find any pics but I have seen it myself when fishing up there.


I'm on the boat now between Belfast and Cairmryan, just going through the Scottish areas. At some point you can see both Northern Ireland and Scotland. Was on the boat between Holyhead and Dublin, but nothing to see midsea...

Live now :


----------



## Fatfield

^^

The weather is perfect to see the four if you'd had time to drive down from Cairnryan.


----------



## General Maximus

Have to go to Newcastle now, unfortunately...


----------



## Fatfield

General Maximus said:


> Have to go to Newcastle now, unfortunately...


May I offer you my sincere condolences. At least there isn't a match on tonight so you won't be confronted by gravy stained football top wearing neanderthals.


----------



## General Maximus

Not staying long. Tomorrow back to London and Wednesday to Deutschland again


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Lots of database errors recently. It doesn't seem to improve much...


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Lots of database errors recently. It doesn't seem to improve much...



Missing posts in my mobile client as well.


----------



## Verso

Last time it was so bad was in... 2007.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Interesting economic approach. In the Netherlands(...)


Yes, in the Netherlands, where you can be sure about odometer, where you can be almost sure that the second hand car you buy did not have 3 crashes which have only been repaired at the visible parts, etc. 
In Eastern Europe buying a used car is a risk...


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Interesting economic approach.


Romania until ~2007 was in a weird economic situation (local currency loosing its value relatively quickly, large inflation, very high interest rates at banks, even banks going bankrupt together with the savings of many and so on). Maybe today it doesn't make sense, but back then it might have.

Anyway, my parents had an 1983 Audi 80 at that time, but they wanted a second car that was cheap to buy, cheap to run, and did not break down (or that had warranty). The SupeRNova was meeting all the criteria.

* That Audi 80 was the car that I first drove. I was 14 years old and my father learned me how to drive in a field on some agricultural dust roads.

Also interesting story how my parents bought that Audi 80: back in the '90s, there was a friend of friend, Romanian guy, but who was living and working in Germany. One summer he wanted to come to Romania to visit his friends, my father heard about this, so he asked him if he could bring a car for him. My father told him the budget (it was Deutsche Marks back then), and this guy searched for a good car within that budget. My father knew only that he will get a red Audi 80 from 1983, nothing more, until he actually saw the car (and at that moment it was his, he already paid for it). That's how things were done back then...


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> The conclusion is quite obvious. The one who imports the car and sells it in Poland is not a charity, he must somehow earn some money on this process. Buying more expensive and selling cheaper doesn't really sound like a profitable business...


There are German car buying portals which pay a quite good price. They don't earn much per car but they buy and re-sell many cars and they make their money by amount!




Junkie said:


> There are hundreds of thousands of new vehicles that are produced and bought in the western countries and by the standards of living those folks are replacing the cars very often with new ones.


https://www.acea.be/statistics/tag/category/average-vehicle-age

Average vehicle age Luxembourg: 6.3 years
Average vehicle age Belgium: 7.8 years
Average vehicle age Denmark: 8.4 years
Average vehicle age Germany: 9.1 years
Average vehicle age France: 9.2 years
Average vehicle age Netherlands: 9.8 years
Average vehicle age Poland: 17.3 years
...


----------



## Alex_ZR

MichiH said:


> https://www.acea.be/statistics/tag/category/average-vehicle-age
> 
> Average vehicle age Luxembourg: 6.3 years
> Average vehicle age Belgium: 7.8 years
> Average vehicle age Denmark: 8.4 years
> Average vehicle age Germany: 9.1 years
> Average vehicle age France: 9.2 years
> Average vehicle age Netherlands: 9.8 years
> Average vehicle age Poland: 17.3 years
> ...


Unfortunately, there isn't Bulgaria on this map. I think that they would have the highest average vehicle age.


----------



## bogdymol

The EU is discussing now a proposal to limit the speed limit of the cars to the speed limit of the road they are driving on. Basically you won't be able to drive faster than the speed limit, as the car will not let you do that.










An article regarding this can be found on BBC.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Yes but "driver can override the system by pushing the accelerator".

The system like this is useless.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've read that traffic sign recognition is not perfected, for example it misses signs obscured by trucks, or it recognizes a speed limit sign on a truck (the 70-80-90 signs you often see). 

This overreaching nanny state legislation was sneaky passed as part of a large safety package deal, as they knew such a draconic measure would not pass parliament on its own. 

It also includes a load of unnecessary electronic safety devices that would make cars thousands of euros more expensive, this equipment is currently mostly offered as an _option_ on high-end models. It goes too far to make this mandatory on every single car, as it is not essential to drive a car safely. 

It's basically the level 2-4 of autonomous driving that according to some experts, should never enter the market, as this will negatively impact safety because it is known that people quickly become complacent and will rely on imperfect technology, and become even more distracted from driving. It will also increase insurance premiums because little accidents result in much more expensive equipment damage.

You have a vote in May.


----------



## MichiH

Combination of 1 and 3 would be fine. 2 doesn't work and is useless if 1 works. 4 kills the whole system. Crap....


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> But: My mother bought a new car in 2000. Suzuki Swift 1.0 GL, the cheapest new car available in Hungary back then. The car is in the family since then, and now, 19 years later, it did not reach the 100,000 mark. And I'm sure she's not the only one.


Really was it the cheapest one?

I am not talking about Fiat 126p, still made in Poland in 2000 (the last one produced in September 2000), I guess they didn't sell them out of Poland any more. But... didn't they sell Fiat Seicento, Daewoo Tico and Daewoo Matiz in Hungary?

Those were definitely the cheapest cars available in Poland (and even made in Poland) in those times and they were therefore the vast majority of newly sold cars here in those times. The market of imported used cars wasn't so big before we entered the EU and those were the only new cars many families could afford.

And I guess the situation in Hungary must have been similar...


From the typical countries of origins of cars sold in Poland, Italy seems to be an interesting case. Southern regions of Italy aren't that rich, so the cars might actually be cheaper there (unlike the cars from Germany, Austria, Netherlands, France etc. where they are normally more expensive, only while being imported to Poland they weirdly get cheaper) – and they are warm, so the cars are likely not to be damaged by winters and salt on the roads.

I was recently watching a Mitsubishi Space Star from 2015/2016, bought in Poland. I can show it, it's actually this one: https://www.gumtree.pl/a-samochody-...ar-samochod-osobowy/1004536345960911409182009

I looked under it and it seems that even in such a 3-years-old car, the corrosion of the construction elements has already started...

And from what I can see, it's typical especially for Japanese brands. Others usually have such a rubbery protection layer, so called "sheep", on the construction elements under the car, the Japanese ones – not necessarily.

We have a Ford Fiesta in our family, bought new in 2011. And in this car, the only element with corrosion is the exhaust silencer. Even though it will be 10 years old in 2 years.

Now I am looking for an A segment car – but rather a bigger one within this segment – made in 2013-2014 or later and having a motor with at least something like 75 HP of power. And it's really difficult to find one...

The best choice for me (which isn't Japanese, so it isn't being eaten by rust yet) seems to be Hyundai i10. But the ones with 1.2 motor are really rare. Even the 1.0 ones (66 HP) are quite rare...

People just don't sell A segment cars in this age.

Today I test drove an Opel Karl. I won't probably buy that one – because I don't like the color and even though it's being sold by an authorized dealer, that car was bought imported from Italy by the previous owner and the dealer doesn't know anything about its past (they have access to an Opel EU-wide computer system but it seems the car wasn't serviced at an authorized dealer). But while there are some things I don't like in this car (the windshield is too low and the roof hides the traffic lights when I am just before an intersection, the vibrations of the three-cylinder engine can be felt when it's on but the car is stopped, the engine has direct fuel injection which might be more expensive to service in the future and makes it problematic to install autogas in the car), I really appreciate that even at the speed of 100 km/h (in the city I didn't have an opportunity to test it at a higher speed) you almost can't hear the engine! While with the Ford Fiesta I mentioned even driving at 110 km/h is uncomfortable for me because of the noise. And people review this Fiesta model as a "quite well silenced car for this segment"...

It's pity that this is a rare car on the market.

Yesterday I was at the same authorized dealer. Except for this Karl, they had, for example, a Chevy Spark from 2010. With 1.2 engine, which is also quite rare. I also thought a little bit of buying it. Some time ago I saw an ad of a similar car from a private person, for a 25% lower price. Yesterday I took a photo of the VIN of this car – the one at the dealer – to check it in a VIN decoder (whether it had any accidents in the past etc.). I started typing it in and... "what is going on?". The browser did remember this VIN being typed in by me into this decoder already before 

I entered this VIN into Google and it turned out those two cars were actually the very same car  So the margin was really high, 25% of the price was what the dealer would earn.

But it's not the most weird thing. Most weird is that... today I come to this authorized dealer, I had an arrangement for test drives for those Spark and Karl. I come in and it turns out that Chevy... is already sold! It must have been a really good business for the dealer


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> The EU is discussing now a proposal to limit the speed limit of the cars to the speed limit of the road they are driving on. Basically you won't be able to drive faster than the speed limit, as the car will not let you do that.


Such systems are easy to be tampered. A GPS jammers are cheap and it is easy to draw own traffic signs to an arbitrary speed limit. Such aspects are seldom discussed by the morons in Brussels.

Perhaps they should make a winter-time visit to the north of the Baltic sea, and see how the traffic signs look in certain weather conditions. Of course, there is a solution: mandatory heating of traffic signs.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

In Estonia the traffic law states that a speed limit is valid inside urban areas only till the next intersection (unless it's a speed limit zone). How does the system understand that :nuts: ?

Besides, there are several examples where speed limits have an added clause (e.g. valid for the next 300m or valid on workdays from 8:00-17:30). The current traffic sign recognition systems are unable to detect those subtleties.


----------



## keber

Imagine also traveling through countries that don't have well organized speed limits - especially Balkans. From my last year trips - sudden 20 or 30 km/h speed limits on long straight and wide stretches just because there is some construction nearby (with no cancellation sign), 80 or even 60 km/h speed limits over many hundred km of motorways because of light rain etc.



> Yes but "driver can override the system by pushing the accelerator".
> The system like this is useless.


Pushing actually means pushing with force if you would like to quickly overtake a slow vehicle. In normal driving you won't be able to override the system.


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> Pushing actually means pushing with force if you would like to quickly overtake a slow vehicle. In normal driving you won't be able to override the system.


I agree with that, it is a safety feature and it must work like that. But what prevents me to "push with force" all the time?


----------



## keber

A car with constant "pedal to the metal" will have enormous fuel consumption and you can't really control your driving with full gas. It goes for a short periods of time, but not for longer (for example if you would like to drive constant 160 in 130 zone).


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> A car with constant "pedal to the metal" will have enormous fuel consumption and you can't really control your driving with full gas. It goes for a short periods of time, but not for longer (for example if you would like to drive constant 160 in 130 zone).


It doesn't have to be foot down all the time. You just have to win the initial resistance and than you can cruise at higher speed, like you would do with a cruise control.


----------



## keber

You won't be able to cruise at higher speeds with this new system as it will not let you to maintain speed above speed limit without hard pressing of gas pedal.
I don't agree to this system too as it could have many flaws but there are still three years at minimum to work out potential problems. Many of us are not aware how big steps, almost leaps computational power and logic makes in automotive industry in last years.


----------



## Fatfield

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've read that traffic sign recognition is not perfected, for example it misses signs obscured by trucks, or it recognizes a speed limit sign on a truck (the 70-80-90 signs you often see).
> 
> This overreaching nanny state legislation was sneaky passed as part of a large safety package deal, as they knew such a draconic measure would not pass parliament on its own.
> 
> It also includes a load of unnecessary electronic safety devices that would make cars thousands of euros more expensive, this equipment is currently mostly offered as an _option_ on high-end models. It goes too far to make this mandatory on every single car, as it is not essential to drive a car safely.
> 
> It's basically the level 2-4 of autonomous driving that according to some experts, should never enter the market, as this will negatively impact safety because it is known that people quickly become complacent and will rely on imperfect technology, and become even more distracted from driving. It will also increase insurance premiums because little accidents result in much more expensive equipment damage.
> 
> You have a vote in May.


I have the speed recognition in my car but I've never noticed it reading speed restriction signs on lorries etc. One problem it does have though is if there's roadworks. It recognises the roadworks speed sign but if the normal repeater signs aren't covered it changes eg. 30mph at start of roadworks but changes to 70mph when it sees a national speed limit sign after even though you're still in the roadworks.


----------



## volodaaaa

Fatfield said:


> I have the speed recognition in my car but I've never noticed it reading speed restriction signs on lorries etc. One problem it does have though is if there's roadworks. It recognises the roadworks speed sign but if the normal repeater signs aren't covered it changes eg. 30mph at start of roadworks but changes to 70mph when it sees a national speed limit sign after even though you're still in the roadworks.



Mine is BS. It reads signs very well (especially speed limits and forbidden overtaking) but the problem is in the cancellation. Most of the limits are cancelled in intersections and these are not recognized by the system. Also, it does not recognize motorway/expressway-entrance and city-entrance signs. Therefore it is not that useful. And sometimes it reads numerals from advertisements


----------



## MichiH

Fatfield said:


> I have the speed recognition in my car but I've never noticed it reading speed restriction signs on lorries etc.


Mine does. And it cannot distinguish on a motorway whether the limit is for the main carriageway or just for the exit. Typical 30/40/50/60 signs. And it interprets 11t (tons) as 110. It happens to me in a village where the limit is 50. The system in my car does also not recognize town signs.

Dirty signs or signs with snow on it don't work too.


----------



## bogdymol

My old Ford Focus could also read the signs. It worked pretty well, and managed to "see" all the speed limits, but from time to time it also had errors like you guys described above.

On my Focus if there was a speed limit with an additional sign below (for example speed limit that is valid only if raining), it only showed me the speed limit with a symbol below it to warn me that there's something extra (but did not tell me what was that extra). However, my bosses Mercedes could also see that and notifies him if there is the sign is valid only if raining for example.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> Imagine also traveling through countries that don't have well organized speed limits - especially Balkans. From my last year trips - sudden 20 or 30 km/h speed limits on long straight and wide stretches just because there is some construction nearby (with no cancellation sign), 80 or even 60 km/h speed limits over many hundred km of motorways because of light rain etc.


That's the same in Italy. Moreover, here you have 50kph limits signs with below written "in case of fog" on motorways and VMSs with different speed limits for each lane.



keber said:


> Pushing actually means pushing with force if you would like to quickly overtake a slow vehicle. In normal driving you won't be able to override the system.


The possibility to override should be kept because one may need to drive above the speed limit for example to escape in case of emergency.


----------



## Kpc21

keber said:


> Imagine also traveling through countries that don't have well organized speed limits - especially Balkans. From my last year trips - sudden 20 or 30 km/h speed limits on long straight and wide stretches just because there is some construction nearby (with no cancellation sign), 80 or even 60 km/h speed limits over many hundred km of motorways because of light rain etc.


Even in Poland it's a problem on minor roads.

I know one road where you have a thing really uncommon in Poland – a speed bump of a type which allows you to drive through it with 40-50 km/h. 

Because the most common approach here is... the drivers are too fast, they don't obey the 50 km/h speed limit. So... let's install a speed bump which will limit the speed to 20 km/h. The locals will be happy listening to cars suddenly braking and then accelerating and inhaling their exhaust fumes. And introduce an extra speed limit "because of" the speed bump. Which quite often is... 30 km/h for a speed bump, on which actual safe speed (such that it doesn't cause your car make a "bang") is 10 km/h.

There, they made a speed bump designed for speeds like 40 or 50 km/h and... marked it with a 20 km/h speed limit.

"Neverending" residential areas are also not an uncommon thing.

But politicians believing the technology is smarter than it actually is is not an uncommon thing. You have the same with ACTA2... Finally, unfortunately, passed just a few days ago. So platforms like YouTube will be OBLIGED to use automatic content filters. Even though it's known they are far from being perfect and often make wrong decisions.

While it was funny to see YouTube supporting those protest (YouTube has been doing it already for many years, without any special laws that would make it obligatory – and thanks to them everyone can see how wrong such filter might be), I really cannot believe the members of the European Parliament passed that.

But it's this inherent fault of democracy. Democracy is giving the power to those who don't have appropriate knowledge, are not ready to properly use it.

But who has? There are no people who would be knowledgeable enough about all possible aspects of human life to be able to always make appropriate decisions. And if you aren't, you are susceptible to lobbying...


----------



## Kanadzie

bogdymol said:


> The EU is discussing now a proposal to limit the speed limit of the cars to the speed limit of the road they are driving on. Basically you won't be able to drive faster than the speed limit, as the car will not let you do that.
> 
> 
> 
> An article regarding this can be found on BBC.


I used to be very much in favour of the European Union but no more, thank god for Brexit

hopefully there will be Deuxit and Polxit too now :lol:


----------



## Junkie

^^But.... Brexit might actually never happen pale. It is a pity that one mighty country as the UK is, has been put to such a bad test. And what is the last exit you are referring to? Poland exiting the EU?


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Even in Poland it's a problem on minor roads.
> 
> I know one road where you have a thing really uncommon in Poland – a speed bump of a type which allows you to drive through it with 40-50 km/h.
> 
> Because the most common approach here is... the drivers are too fast, they don't obey the 50 km/h speed limit. So... let's install a speed bump which will limit the speed to 20 km/h. The locals will be happy listening to cars suddenly braking and then accelerating and inhaling their exhaust fumes. And introduce an extra speed limit "because of" the speed bump. Which quite often is... 30 km/h for a speed bump, on which actual safe speed (such that it doesn't cause your car make a "bang") is 10 km/h.
> 
> There, they made a speed bump designed for speeds like 40 or 50 km/h and... marked it with a 20 km/h speed limit.
> 
> "Neverending" residential areas are also not an uncommon thing.
> 
> But politicians believing the technology is smarter than it actually is is not an uncommon thing. You have the same with ACTA2... Finally, unfortunately, passed just a few days ago. So platforms like YouTube will be OBLIGED to use automatic content filters. Even though it's known they are far from being perfect and often make wrong decisions.
> 
> While it was funny to see YouTube supporting those protest (YouTube has been doing it already for many years, without any special laws that would make it obligatory – and thanks to them everyone can see how wrong such filter might be), I really cannot believe the members of the European Parliament passed that.
> 
> But it's this inherent fault of democracy. Democracy is giving the power to those who don't have appropriate knowledge, are not ready to properly use it.
> 
> But who has? There are no people who would be knowledgeable enough about all possible aspects of human life to be able to always make appropriate decisions. And if you aren't, you are susceptible to lobbying...



Recently I have finished a small traffic-calming study for my neighbourhood. It comprises a lot of illustrations while this is one of them (please, click to see it correctly): 








> A speed bump vs. chicane
> 
> 
> - 100 % effective in speed reduction (even for company cars and SUVs)
> - Reduces the abrasion of the carriageway
> - Causes shocks
> - Causes noise
> - complements the genius loci


----------



## Suburbanist

This argument that new safety features on cars are bad because they make repairs after crashes more expensive is bogus. Deaths and injuries on road transportation are tolerated at levels that would ground airplanes or bring trains to a halt immediately as a matter or major public scandal.

All modern safety enhancements have been criticized on the basis of cost and making cars expensive to repair. Crumbling zones, crash sensors, airbags, strengthened frames, ABS/EMS, catalytic filters... all were bashed as something making cars too expensive and too hard to repair. The days were minor dents were fixed just replacing some cheap exterior frame are long gone. It is true that the percentage of accidents resulting in total write off is going up, but that is just an acceptable cost for bringing road safety closer to the levels of rail and air safety in modern societies.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ What is more, with active safety measures the total number of crashes should go down (at least in theory) so even if the percentage of cars being written off in a crash increases, the total costs might go down instead.


----------



## keber

Kanadzie said:


> I used to be very much in favour of the European Union but no more, thank god for Brexit
> 
> hopefully there will be Deuxit and Polxit too now :lol:


Don't worry, you'll get the same safety features also outside EU, maybe just a year or two later. :tongue3:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> Deaths and injuries on road transportation are tolerated at levels that would ground airplanes or bring trains to a halt immediately as a matter or major public scandal.


The number of potential conflict points of road transportation is on a massively larger scale than any other means of transportation.

For example, there are around 100,000 commercial aircraft movements each day, worldwide. That's the same as the number of car movements in a single small city. The amount of potential conflict points of all car trips worlwide is in the many trillions per year. Just imagine how many intersections you cross, how many lane movements there are on just a 10 kilometer drive in a city. Not to mention on an annual worldwide scale, with trillions of vehicle kilometers. So a comparison with air traffic or train traffic is apples and oranges.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ What is more, with active safety measures the total number of crashes should go down (at least in theory) so even if the percentage of cars being written off in a crash increases, the total costs might go down instead.


But the problem is that they don't. Traffic deaths have stopped to decline further in many European countries this decade, despite an increasingly larger rollout of active safety equipment. The overall crash rate has declined even less than fatal crashes.

A downside of such equipment is the false sense of security and complacency among drivers. Inattentive driving / distracted driving has become the leading cause of traffic accidents today. You can't expect drivers to do nothing for prolonged periods of time, but be ready to act in a moment's notice. This is why there is opposition to market release of level 3-4 autonomous driving capabilities. AV capabilities will become under much greater scrutiny than any human driver. 

For example, Waymo and Uber's AV projects were valued at a similar level, but that single fatal crash with an Uber car in Arizona has been estimated to have cost them $ 100 billion in valuation.


----------



## Surel

Suburbanist said:


> This argument that new safety features on cars are bad because they make repairs after crashes more expensive is bogus. Deaths and injuries on road transportation are tolerated at levels that would ground airplanes or bring trains to a halt immediately as a matter or major public scandal.
> 
> All modern safety enhancements have been criticized on the basis of cost and making cars expensive to repair. Crumbling zones, crash sensors, airbags, strengthened frames, ABS/EMS, catalytic filters... all were bashed as something making cars too expensive and too hard to repair. The days were minor dents were fixed just replacing some cheap exterior frame are long gone. It is true that the percentage of accidents resulting in total write off is going up, but that is just an acceptable cost for bringing road safety closer to the levels of rail and air safety in modern societies.


I am not really sure of that. Cost efficiently it doesn't compare to many other areas (health care, healthy lifestyle, environmental hazards, workplace accidents, suicide prevention, drug abuse, etc etc) where lives are lost and when the money would make more difference in lives saved (prolonged).


----------



## x-type

Kanadzie said:


> I used to be very much in favour of the European Union but no more, thank god for Brexit
> 
> hopefully there will be Deuxit and Polxit too now :lol:


Polxit? We will see sooner independent US states than Polxit. PL is probably the last country that would ever exit EU.


----------



## Suburbanist

Surel said:


> I am not really sure of that. Cost efficiently it doesn't compare to many other areas (health care, healthy lifestyle, environmental hazards, workplace accidents, suicide prevention, drug abuse, etc etc) where lives are lost and when the money would make more difference in lives saved (prolonged).


The major problem with road transportation right now is that while injury and death rates for vehicle occupants have dropped, the rates for non road users have not come down at all in many countries over last 15 years. So while freeway traffic has generally become much safer, city traffic dangers (for pedestrians and cyclists and else) are not being reduced much and in some places (US) they have quite increased since 10 years ago.


----------



## bogdymol

Please don't forget that, although fatality numbers remained relatively constant, the amount of traffic has certainly increased. There are a lot more cars on the streets today, than there were 15 years ago. This gives a much lower fatality rate per driven km.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> But the problem is that they don't. Traffic deaths have stopped to decline further in many European countries this decade, despite an increasingly larger rollout of active safety equipment. The overall crash rate has declined even less than fatal crashes.
> 
> A downside of such equipment is the false sense of security and complacency among drivers. Inattentive driving / distracted driving has become the leading cause of traffic accidents today. You can't expect drivers to do nothing for prolonged periods of time, but be ready to act in a moment's notice. This is why there is opposition to market release of level 3-4 autonomous driving capabilities. AV capabilities will become under much greater scrutiny than any human driver.
> 
> For example, Waymo and Uber's AV projects were valued at a similar level, but that single fatal crash with an Uber car in Arizona has been estimated to have cost them $ 100 billion in valuation.


A lot of these active safety measures are still (rather expensive) optional extras and considering that the average car in the EU is from 2010 these safety measures are still relatively rare. Cars with even partial autonomous driving are rarer still. I agree that partial autonomous driving can make drivers less attentive anf even more dangerous in a sense but things like emergency braking systems only work when there is a direct threat of an accident so the driver has to pay attention regardless.


----------



## Suburbanist

Pedestrian detectors or speed limit alerts are not level 3 automation.


----------



## valkrav

Kanadzie said:


> hopefully there will be Deuxit and Polxit too now :lol:


:hmm:
May be Deu-sgang and Pol-scie ?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Some standards have made entry-level cars much more expensive in recent years. In the late 2000s you could buy an entry-level car for € 8000 or 9000, today it's difficult to find one for under € 12,000, which is a 30% price escalation in only a decade. For example in 2010 you could buy a Fiat Panda for € 7600, today the cheapest is € 11500. New car sales have dropped accordingly. 

Many of those equipment mentioned in the new safety standards are now only offered as options, mostly on higher-end models. It's unrealistic to expect them to be standard on every single car within 3 years. It would rise prices by thousands of euros. You really don't need a backup camera to be able to drive a Toyota Aygo.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Some standards have made entry-level cars much more expensive in recent years. In the late 2000s you could buy an entry-level car for € 8000 or 9000, today it's difficult to find one for under € 12,000, which is a 30% price escalation in only a decade. For example in 2010 you could buy a Fiat Panda for € 7600, today the cheapest is € 11500. New car sales have dropped accordingly.
> 
> Many of those equipment mentioned in the new safety standards are now only offered as options, mostly on higher-end models. It's unrealistic to expect them to be standard on every single car within 3 years. It would rise prices by thousands of euros. You really don't need a backup camera to be able to drive a Toyota Aygo.


If an item is already offered as an option, it means it is ready for mass production (unless you are talking of things like gold laced kitsch seats on sport cars). The price of optional items on high end models should not be taken as a reference of their cost exactly because options on high end model are the major profit center for automakers. It costs much less than that to fit the item into all cars and price-sensitive categories will not see such an increase.

A rear end camera can be twinned with a pedestrian sensor and double as parking aide J


----------



## Surel

Suburbanist said:


> The major problem with road transportation right now is that while injury and death rates for vehicle occupants have dropped, the rates for non road users have not come down at all in many countries over last 15 years. So while freeway traffic has generally become much safer, city traffic dangers (for pedestrians and cyclists and else) are not being reduced much and in some places (US) they have quite increased since 10 years ago.


That's not the point. The point is that often the additional dollar invested in road safety could have been invested somewhere else where it could have saved more lives.

The expenses on road safety measures are often not justifiable if you look at the economic side of the thing. The difference in our attention to those issues is caused by the media attention paid to the accidents compared to other issues.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Some standards have made entry-level cars much more expensive in recent years. In the late 2000s you could buy an entry-level car for € 8000 or 9000, today it's difficult to find one for under € 12,000, which is a 30% price escalation in only a decade. For example in 2010 you could buy a Fiat Panda for € 7600, today the cheapest is € 11500. New car sales have dropped accordingly.


I am just looking for an entry-level car, so I know what you are talking about.

Although I recently saw Mitsubishi Space Star – a totally bare version, in white color, with 1.0 engine, without A/C and with an ugly blind instead of the radio though – sold new in Germany for 6970 euro. It looks like a real bargain.

https://suchen.mobile.de/fahrzeuge/details.html?id=276403038

The biggest problem seems to be the lack of A/C. Because white color an 1.0 engine – you can live with that, the radio – I guess you can even easily buy a used original one from a crashed car.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Some standards have made entry-level cars much more expensive in recent years. In the late 2000s you could buy an entry-level car for € 8000 or 9000, today it's difficult to find one for under € 12,000, which is a 30% price escalation in only a decade. For example in 2010 you could buy a Fiat Panda for € 7600, today the cheapest is € 11500. New car sales have dropped accordingly.
> 
> Many of those equipment mentioned in the new safety standards are now only offered as options, mostly on higher-end models. It's unrealistic to expect them to be standard on every single car within 3 years. It would rise prices by thousands of euros. You really don't need a backup camera to be able to drive a Toyota Aygo.


Keep in mind, though, that inflation during this 10-year period is around 15%, so the real rise in price is there, but it's not that dramatic.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> If an item is already offered as an option, it means it is ready for mass production (unless you are talking of things like gold laced kitsch seats on sport cars). The price of optional items on high end models should not be taken as a reference of their cost exactly because options on high end model are the major profit center for automakers. It costs much less than that to fit the item into all cars and price-sensitive categories will not see such an increase.


I think that is naive. While I do agree that some options would likely drop in price, you're talking not about just one option that may be installed for € 300 instead of € 1000, but a whole range of new equipment that will drive up prices, as they already have in the past. 

The same goes for insurance premiums. A fender bender in the past would've required only a bumper replacement for a few hundred euros. Nowadays such a repair costs a few thousand euros due to all the electronics in the bumper. My insurance premiums have gone up by 30% over the past 3 years 'to reflect the increased cost of insurance'. 

Today's cars also have many safety features that many people don't even know how to use, according to recent news reporting. Or people turn them off for being annoying, such as lane-keeping or other warnings. Truck drivers turn automatic braking off because it overreacts in many circumstances.



g.spinoza said:


> Keep in mind, though, that inflation during this 10-year period is around 15%, so the real rise in price is there, but it's not that dramatic.


It's probably a bit lower because there were many years with almost no inflation during the recession and early recovery.

But still, during that timeframe people did not have had 30% wage increases. In many cases they remained nearly flat.


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ It is not only the electronics in the bumper that make them more expensive (sensors themselves are quite cheap, the main command controls are tucked away far from the external body surfaces), it is also the fact that the whole "bumper" design paradigm has changes do increase deformation on the whole body of the car in case of impact, even mild impact, as to reduce the G forces that occupants and to a much smaller extent external persons/animals are subject to upon impact.

That is the result of increasingly stringent crash test requirements. "Airbags everywhere" also greatly increase the cost of relatively minor impacts. Surfaces are also build more and more with much more sophisticated materials meant to deform at the slightest impact as well - which is why these days even a bicycle collision with a stationary car produces quite a damage to the car if there is direct impact on the door, for instance.

Cameras, accelerometers, and many other sensors other than those related to the inside of the engine are dirty cheap when mass-produced. Testing and validating the embedded electronic safety systems to make sure they are actuating is probably more expensive than just the costs of the sensors and wires themselves. Which is why garages more and more have computer readers and what not. A rear-end camera is really just a standard computer external webcam with wires and (for computer industry standards) run-of-the-mill LED visor - nothing sophisticated from an IT standpoint. Movement and proximity detectors are common everywhere. Gyroscopes are tiny and present in most smartphones. etc.

Of course, these are not open-code systems, so manufactures earn hefty service fees with proprietary diagnosis tools and what not.

When electronically-injected engines started to become ubiquitous on the days of Euro-0, there was plenty of complaints that these new "electronic engines" would prevent simple mechanical repairs as those on carburated cars or using only non-electronic sensors. I'm sure there had been complaints about how now special equipment was needed for what once people could do at their garages with a bit of knowledge.

It is part of technological progress 

Wage stagnation is a problem but entirely unrelated to improved safety on cars.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> The number of potential conflict points of road transportation is on a massively larger scale than any other means of transportation.
> 
> For example, there are around 100,000 commercial aircraft movements each day, worldwide. That's the same as the number of car movements in a single small city. The amount of potential conflict points of all car trips worlwide is in the many trillions per year. Just imagine how many intersections you cross, how many lane movements there are on just a 10 kilometer drive in a city. Not to mention on an annual worldwide scale, with trillions of vehicle kilometers. So a comparison with air traffic or train traffic is apples and oranges.



Even this comparison is not accurate. Cars do not have TCAS, ATC controlling, ILS, autopilots, radars and are basically driving in a single plane (I mean, single zero flight level). Mid-air crashes are extremely rare and not likely. Usually, they happen during landing or take-off phase. The only remarkable case was the Überlingen mid-air crash that happened in the FL360.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Exactly, so that shows why you can't compare airline safety with road safety. The number of potential conflict points is almost infinitively larger.


----------



## Suburbanist

volodaaaa said:


> Even this comparison is not accurate. Cars do not have TCAS, ATC controlling, ILS, autopilots, radars and are basically driving in a single plane (I mean, single zero flight level). Mid-air crashes are extremely rare and not likely. Usually, they happen during landing or take-off phase. The only remarkable case was the Überlingen mid-air crash that happened in the FL360.


Mid-air crashes of commercial airplanes are so rare that they are very well known, such a collision of Saudia and Pakistan airplanes near New Dehli in the 1990 and the Gol Flight midair collision in the Amazon jungle.


----------



## Kpc21

When I was young I used to think that the role of a bumper in a car is to be a comparatively cheap part, which will be damaged in case of a crash instead of the car body, so that only the bumper will have to be exchanged.

Now I can see how wrong I was... In addition, in case of some really minor hits (like once I hit a not fully open garage gate with the bumper, on another day I was driving backwards to leave a parking spot and another driver doing the same hit me at the back), it is also possible to repair the bumper, which is much cheaper than exchanging it.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> When I was young I used to think that the role of a bumper in a car is to be a comparatively cheap part, which will be damaged in case of a crash instead of the car body, so that only the bumper will have to be exchanged.
> 
> Now I can see how wrong I was... In addition, in case of some really minor hits (like once I hit a not fully open garage gate with the bumper, on another day I was driving backwards to leave a parking spot and another driver doing the same hit me at the back), it is also possible to repair the bumper, which is much cheaper than exchanging it.



I have had several bumper-crashes. In all cases, I was not responsible for the crash. All my repairs were paid from my insurance and the repair was always above 1.700 €  I do not think the bumper is cheap. But I used to think the same way as you as well.


----------



## Kpc21

Once it was not my fault (with this parking lot), then the bumper was exchanged or repaired from the insurance. In the second case, it was fully my fault, we paid for the repair.

I could use my insurance to cover this repair (we have full insurance for this car) – but then the insurance price for the several next years would probably go up – so it made no sense.


----------



## volodaaaa

This thread started with construction works, so let me add the recent project I am involved in.

It is almost done. 










To be finished:
- the balconies (not visible on the picture),
- the skirting,
- the stairs,
- the perimeter path,
- the ambience (especially gardening).

By the end of the project, everything except the walls will have been replaced.

I would also like to get rid of the cars from the footpath, but that is the competence of the city. I have recently sent them my proposal. 

I hope the perimeter path will be done soon because the due date of our baby is soon and I can't imagine a newborn spending the first days of his life surrounded by pneumatic drills


----------



## keokiracer

Big project, nice improvements made kay:


volodaaaa said:


> This thread started with construction works
> [...]
> To be finished:
> - the balconies


Make sure that they are shiny


----------



## Kanadzie

Kpc21 said:


> The biggest problem seems to be the lack of A/C. Because white color an 1.0 engine – you can live with that, the radio – I guess you can even easily buy a used original one from a crashed car.


you can surely find better in aftermarket 
On Aliexpress and similar sites for 50 Euro they are showing radios with bluetooth, navigation system, etc etc already :cheers:


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's probably a bit lower because there were many years with almost no inflation during the recession and early recovery.


My data come from the Italian Institute of Statistics, and are related to the Italian market. Maybe in other European countries it's a bit different.



> But still, during that timeframe people did not have had 30% wage increases. In many cases they remained nearly flat.


I have no data about that, but it may be true. 
Mine more than doubled in this period...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> Mine more than doubled in this period...


Mine too, but that's through promotions, not general wage increases. We took a look at the collective agreement and the 2010-2018 wage increase was only 7.5%, when adjusted for inflation it may have been a negative, or at least flat. You can only make more money through promotions, but for older workers this is difficult if they are already at the top of the pay scale.

It varies heavily by industry how the pay scale is formatted. In some industries there are 10 or 12 pay raises you can go through for each position, but in others there are only 5 steps before you reach maximum pay.


----------



## Kpc21

I don't know about other countries but here in Poland the salaries of people who already earned quite much didn't really increase but there was a big increase for those with the lowest wages throughout the last few years.

By the way...

"Cars cheaper than bikes" – at a cheap used cars "dealership" (for lack of a better English word):






The commentary is in Polish but it's anyway nonsense, the guy suggests it's better to buy a used car from such a "dealership" than from a private person, that those cars are thoroughly checked, that just the fact that the dealer bought such a car from the owner means it must be in a good condition, while the experience shows it's far from true and most people in the comments point it out. 20% of the "thumb's" are "down" anyway


----------



## volodaaaa

keokiracer said:


> Big project, nice improvements made kay:
> 
> Make sure that they are shiny



Thanks. I will post the photo as soon as they are mounted. :lol: But we indeed ordered shiny ones.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> Mine too, but that's through promotions, not general wage increases. We took a look at the collective agreement and the 2010-2018 wage increase was only 7.5%, when adjusted for inflation it may have been a negative, or at least flat. You can only make more money through promotions, but for older workers this is difficult if they are already at the top of the pay scale.
> 
> It varies heavily by industry how the pay scale is formatted. In some industries there are 10 or 12 pay raises you can go through for each position, but in others there are only 5 steps before you reach maximum pay.


It also varies heavily by country. In Estonia the average salary grew by 7.3% in 2018 alone (compared to 2017) or 5% when taking inflation into account. 

The average gross monthly salary has increased 65% since 2010. In the same period prices have increased by 17%. That being said, the purchasing power of the average person is still several fold lower than that of someone living in the Netherlands.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Rebasepoiss said:


> That being said, the purchasing power of the average person is still several fold lower than that of someone living in the Netherlands.


While wages in the Netherlands are high, so is the cost of living. Someone making a median wage (approximately € 36,000 per year) means that he/she can't afford 90% of the houses on the market. 

Housing is a serious problem in the Netherlands nowadays, especially for new entrants into the market. The rental market is very troubled, there are almost no mid-range houses for rent, most rentals are either social housing or very high priced rentals. The gap is in the € 700 - 1000 per month range, where there is almost nothing available.

In most cases you need a two-income household to purchase a house. But single-person households are growing the fastest - with limited opportunities for buying or renting one.

Then there is also high cost for health care, income tax is relatively high, environmental taxes are very high, transportation is expensive. So what may look like a high income from abroad may not stretch that far in the Netherlands. For example the minimum wage of € 1600 per month is considered to be insufficient to make a living on, you'll get government subsidies for rent and health care for incomes of up to € 25,000 (more than € 2000 per month).


----------



## Kpc21

Talking about the rentals... what happens if someone doesn't pay the rent or in another way breaks the rental rules but has no other house to go?

In Poland it may happen that even if you break the rental contract (which takes several months), the tenant belonging to one of some specific groups will be allowed to stay in the apartment until he gets some social housing from the town. And since the towns are at a shortage of social apartments – it sometimes takes several years to get rid of such an unwanted tenant.


----------



## Kpc21

joshsam said:


> I think steering wheel buttons are standard these days.


New A segment cars often don't have them.

Older cars often don't have them.

What if you have a button for answering a phone call on the steering wheel?


----------



## g.spinoza

Surel said:


> Btw, I wonder. The guy in the video talks about the space between the event horizon and the accretion disk (stable orbit) as a space where observer observes no light. In another video he explains that this in fact is not so for spinning black holes (most of the black holes), as the stable orbit can be up to the event horizon.
> 
> Lets say that we take a slowly spinning black hole where there is substantial space between the event horizon and stable orbit. I would say that this area should not be dark. The matter that is falling into the black hole, albeit fast, is still emitting light, that light can still escape the black hole (certainly the light that is emitted under any positive angle to the orbit line). Why is he not taking this into account? Is the amount of light (radiation) so low that it is not detectable?


I guess - but I'm not sure - this is due to relativistic effects. A distant observer will see a particle moving towards the event horizon where it freezes (not in thermal sense), while the light it emits is more and more red-shifted to the point that it will be invisible to human eye. Maybe in this sense that area is dark.



MichiH said:


> Reading the sentence and thinking of the German meaning of "BH"..... :lol:


Malice is in the eye of the beholder


----------



## volodaaaa

joshsam said:


> I think steering wheel buttons are standard these days.



What if you want to set the air conditioner temperature?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Or have a sneeze?


----------



## Spookvlieger

volodaaaa said:


> What if you want to set the air conditioner temperature?


I was just stating the obvious, I'm not saying people should not be able to do stuff while driving :dunno:


----------



## MichiH

I've googled a little bit. There are no clear rules (law) for Germany but some court decisions whether you are guilty in case of an accident.

The interpretation is that it's not allowed to program any fixed or external device while driving. It's only allowed to do it via voice control or to press just a button to select anything if you just need a *quick glance*. You are only allowed to enter a new address to your GPS, write a message on your smart phone etc. when you have parked your car. Stopped at a red traffic lights (even with start-stop system to shutdown the engine) does not allow it.


----------



## Spookvlieger

ChrisZwolle said:


> Or have a sneeze?


Life support breathing in future cars. Breathing might distract you from the road!


----------



## Kpc21

MichiH said:


> I've googled a little bit. There are no clear rules (law) for Germany but some court decisions whether you are guilty in case of an accident.
> 
> The interpretation is that it's not allowed to program any fixed or external device while driving. It's only allowed to do it via voice control or to press just a button to select anything if you just need a *quick glance*. You are only allowed to enter a new address to your GPS, write a message on your smart phone etc. when you have parked your car. Stopped at a red traffic lights (even with start-stop system to shutdown the engine) does not allow it.


Even if you place the smartphone so that it's on the windshield and you don't really have to point your sight somewhere else than onto the road?

Anyway, sometimes you need to have a look at the map and this is often displayed on that smartphone or navigation system... Which drivers most commonly place on the windshield and this also seems to be the safest option.


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> I guess - but I'm not sure - this is due to relativistic effects. A distant observer will see a particle moving towards the event horizon where it freezes (not in thermal sense), while the light it emits is more and more red-shifted to the point that it will be invisible to human eye. Maybe in this sense that area is dark.


Ok, I see. The matter falling towards the event horizon from the stable orbit moves at relativistic speeds and the shift can be enormous.

As I think of it, I guess there is more involved. I guess that most of the light emitted from the falling matter will follow very curved paths, which will make it appear to the observer as being further from the event horizon. We will see the light emitted from all the matter, not only the matter that has a stable orbit, but we will see it at a different place than where it originates from because of the curved paths. That would create that black space next to the event horizon. But anyway, then we should be able to detect the light originated at the event horizon border, light that made the curve, or multiple curves around it, escaping with every orbit and ended on a straight path to us. This light should fill this gap, right?!

The only light from the falling matter that could fill this space for the observer completely up to the event horizon would be the light that would keep straight path to the observer, it is the light directly emitted on the axis black hole - falling matter - observer.

The rest of the light will probably curve back to the black hole. That means that the closer you get to the event horizon, the higher the angle the light needs in order to escape. Ultimately only the right angle suffices. But that would mean that most of this light is passing through accretion disk as most of the matter falls to the black hole there. And it would mean that the observer is in the plane of the accretion disk as well.

But that's just not what we want to be the case. We want to observe it from the side, because we want to "see" the black hole in between.

Anyway all this light (also the curved light) would be red shifted indeed! Then it goes only about the visible spectrum indeed!


----------



## volodaaaa

Well, I am just a pure amateur that once overcame the phase of being fascinated by black holes but from what I have read I understood that an observer would never see the object falling beyond the event horizon disappear. He would see the object being both decelerated and permanently distorted. 

For what I understood the light around the black hole could be from at least three sources 
- glowing material being distorted and seized by the black hole, 
- light sources already swallowed and
- light distorted of regular stars deformed by the lens effect of the black hole. 

That's what I have read and remembered.


----------



## volodaaaa

I like the Cyrillic


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It is also a phonetic transliteration, not a literaly one. They do that in Russian too.


----------



## volodaaaa

Yes, Starbaks. When I studied Russian for a while, I was quite surprised to see "Džordž Buš" (George Bush) in newspapers.


----------



## Kpc21

Then they at least don't have problems with spelling the declined forms 

So many people make errors doing that in Polish.


----------



## Junkie

Anyone knows what is the longest uninterrupted international rail line that is operating in continental Europe? According to my knowledge and havent searched much it seems its Moscow-Berlin via Warsaw, if we count the European Russia as part of "Europe". Have you taken some long route and what is it?? Have you been in a sleeping car sometime? Me personally have been in a train only on a short distances.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> Yes, Starbaks. When I studied Russian for a while, I was quite surprised to see "Džordž Buš" (George Bush) in newspapers.


The serbs do it using the Latin alphabet


----------



## MichiH

Junkie said:


> Anyone knows what is the longest uninterrupted international *rail* line that is operating in continental Europe?


https://www.skyscrapercity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=812


----------



## Kpc21

Doesn't the Moscow-Paris line exist any more?

https://www.seat61.com/paris-moscow-express.htm – according to Seat61, longest is Moscow-Nice.


----------



## Kpc21




----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> It's not allowed (in Germany) to press any button on a cell phone, smart phone nor GPS while driving! If I'm not mistaken, it's only allowed to use voice control.
> 
> 
> I even don't like to have a phone call while driving... (it's fine if other people do it but I don't do it because I think that it's not safe. I cannot focus on two things at once)


My concerns ("objection" is too strong a word) with the Quebec rules (having reread the article), are:
(1) I don't see what practical difference, safety-wise, there is between talking on a phone held by someone in the passenger seat and talking on a phone mounted on a bracket, connected to Bluetooth.
(2) "Shuffling through music playlists" is impermissible....I get that you don't want people looking for the next song rather than looking at the road, but when you couple that with the rule that a cop who sees text messages on the screen can assume you were actively texting, if you just put a playlist on and let it play through without interacting with the phone - which is no more distracting than listening to the radio without changing stations - could a cop who sees a playlist assume you were "shuffling through" it?
(3) I don't like the bit about having the phone next to you on the passenger seat. I usually have the phone on the passenger seat while driving. Often I use that time to charge it. I turn the ringer off and ignore it....

Don't get me wrong; I think texting while driving is so idiotic it shouldn't *need* to be prohibited. Common sense and self-preservation should take care of that. And I don't make calls, even hands=free. (Even though making and taking calls at the wheel is actually legal in Pennsylvania.)

Related to this: I recently saw an item from New Jersey about a crackdown on distractions while driving. Among the offenses mentioned was eating at the wheel. I used to do that a lot. Nothing complex or messy. Fine, I don't do that any more (not because I felt unsafe, but it seems to be a healthier way to live to slow down a bit...), but I might still take what's left of my soft drink into the car after I've eaten? Is it now illegal to take a sip now and then? Even through a straw, at a red light?

It's a bit nannyish.


----------



## Penn's Woods

joshsam said:


> Most cars without a GPS system have a smartlink and mirroring system these days. It totally makes your device useless in the car and the smartlink will make your apps available for use on the car system. So you can use google maps or whatever as GPS system. Most of these systems also repeatedly ask and give warnings if you are using them while driving or even lock the screen. The only other option is usually voice controll while driving, but anyone who has tried voice controll systems knows that's not always going that well.


I'm still driving the 2002 Mitsubishi I bought from my Dad when he could no longer drive any more. (It's doing fine, at about 180,000 miles/300,000 km, so why not?) So I don't have all that stuff.  I've only used GPS in rentals.


----------



## Penn's Woods

CrazySerb said:


> First Starbucks opening in Serbia this week


Why Cyrillic up top but Latin below (I'm not talking about the Starbucks brand but the lines of text)?


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> Why Cyrillic up top but Latin below (I'm not talking about the Starbucks brand but the lines of text)?


That is Serbia. That's why I somehow like the country.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> My concerns ("objection" is too strong a word) with the Quebec rules (having reread the article), are:
> (1) I don't see what practical difference, safety-wise, there is between talking on a phone held by someone in the passenger seat and talking on a phone mounted on a bracket, connected to Bluetooth.


There is difference. If the communication interrupts, you can ask your passenger to redial. If the phone is mounted on a bracked, you'd have to do it yourself.



> Don't get me wrong; I think texting while driving is so idiotic it shouldn't *need* to be prohibited. Common sense and self-preservation should take care of that. And I don't make calls, even hands=free. (Even though making and taking calls at the wheel is actually legal in Pennsylvania.)
> 
> Related to this: I recently saw an item from New Jersey about a crackdown on distractions while driving. Among the offenses mentioned was eating at the wheel. I used to do that a lot. Nothing complex or messy. Fine, I don't do that any more (not because I felt unsafe, but it seems to be a healthier way to live to slow down a bit...), but I might still take what's left of my soft drink into the car after I've eaten? Is it now illegal to take a sip now and then? Even through a straw, at a red light?
> 
> It's a bit nannyish.


I think the American and European approaches are different for one fundamental reason.
In the US you are responsible for your health, in the sense that if you get hurt doing something stupid, it's you or your insurance who will have to pay for medical care. That's why, for instance, riding bikes without a helmet is allowed
In Europe medical cares are often paid by taxes only, so it's perfectly normal to say "I don't want my taxes to be used to pay medical care for some moron who doesn't know elementary safety rules". That's why you have compulsory helmets, no text while driving and so on.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Penn's Woods said:


> I'm still driving the 2002 Mitsubishi I bought from my Dad when he could no longer drive any more. (It's doing fine, at about 180,000 miles/300,000 km, so why not?) So I don't have all that stuff.  I've only used GPS in rentals.


I am not saying you should not use older cars anymore. I have a gps but I rarely use it. I want to find my way around without it.
When I have to be somewhere in a city I have never been before i usually drives to it without gps and only enable it if I have to find and exact street/adress.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> There is difference. If the communication interrupts, you can ask your passenger to redial. *If the phone is mounted on a bracked, you'd have to do it yourself.*


Or wait until you arrive at destination or you can stop safely to redial.
For me, answering a call with the phone mounted on a bracket is OK, doing anything more complex, including entering a number, or looking for it in the phone, is not.



g.spinoza said:


> I think the American and European approaches are different for one fundamental reason.
> In the US you are responsible for your health, in the sense that if you get hurt doing something stupid, it's you or your insurance who will have to pay for medical care. That's why, for instance, riding bikes without a helmet is allowed
> In Europe medical cares are often paid by taxes only, so it's perfectly normal to say "I don't want my taxes to be used to pay medical care for some moron who doesn't know elementary safety rules". That's why you have compulsory helmets, *no text while driving *and so on.


Texting while driving is different than lack of helmet, as it may be dangerous also to other people. A better comparison is between helmet and seat belts.

And health care in Europe vs in USA is not like black vs white. Some European countries have a partly-private health care system, and even in the USA is not 100% private.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> My concerns ("objection" is too strong a word) with the Quebec rules (having reread the article), are:
> (1) I don't see what practical difference, safety-wise, there is between talking on a phone held by someone in the passenger seat and talking on a phone mounted on a bracket, connected to Bluetooth.
> (2) "Shuffling through music playlists" is impermissible....I get that you don't want people looking for the next song rather than looking at the road, but when you couple that with the rule that *a cop who sees text messages on the screen can assume you were actively texting,* if you just put a playlist on and let it play through without interacting with the phone - which is no more distracting than listening to the radio without changing stations - *could a cop who sees a playlist assume you were "shuffling through" it*?
> (3) I don't like the bit about *having the phone next to you on the passenger seat*. I usually have the phone on the passenger seat while driving. Often I use that time to charge it. I turn the ringer off and ignore it....


I'm all in favour for heavy fines for people who use mobile phone while driving, but those in bold look like "presumption of guilt".


----------



## italystf

MichiH said:


> Stopped at a red traffic lights (even with start-stop system to shutdown the engine) does not allow it.


That's overkill. For example, where I live, I know that some red traffic lights last 2-3 minutes if you stop with orange. Using that time to write a short text message (like "OK" or "thanks") is not dangerous at all, as it's 100% sure that the light will still be red after you have finished. Yet, it's illegal, and penalty is the same for those who text while actually driving.
If you use the phone at a traffic light the worst that may happen is the driver behind you honking at you when it gets green. If you use the phone while driving, you may cause deadly crashes. I'm not saying that texting at traffic lights should be legal (as it may cause disruption to traffic and unnecessary honking in built-up areas), but that the penalty should be much lower than for texting while driving.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> That's why you have compulsory helmets


Which - perhaps surprisingly - is extremely uncommon in the Netherlands. Virtually no-one wears a helmet on a bicycle, except for racers and very young children learning to cycle. There is a joke that you can spot which cyclists are German: they are the only ones to wear a helmet.


----------



## keber

I wear helmet on bicycle almost always, even on my way to job (12 km). The problem is mostly with car drivers that don't see you when they are turning here and there. Going without helmet on longer trips is like suicide, even without cars.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Which - perhaps surprisingly - is extremely uncommon in the Netherlands. Virtually no-one wears a helmet on a bicycle, except for racers and very young children learning to cycle. There is a joke that you can spot which cyclists are German: they are the only ones to wear a helmet.


I was referring to motorbikes.
I don't think helmets on bicycles are mandatory anywhere in Europe.


----------



## Surel

g.spinoza said:


> I was referring to motorbikes.
> I don't think helmets on bicycles are mandatory anywhere in Europe.


In CZ they are mandatory for children up to the age of 18. In Austria up to the age of 12. In Slovakia they are mandatory for everyone outside of the urbanized area, inside the urbanized area only for children up to the age of 15. In Finland are they also mandatory, but I read there's no sanction for not wearing it. There are also other countries where there are mandatory helmets, at least for children.


----------



## volodaaaa

Surel said:


> In CZ they are mandatory for children up to the age of 18. In Austria up to the age of 12. *In Slovakia they are mandatory for everyone outside of the urbanized area, inside the urbanized area only for children up to the age of 15*. In Finland are they also mandatory, but I read there's no sanction for not wearing it. There are also other countries where there are mandatory helmets, at least for children.



As a member of a workgroup, this is to be amended soon. Helmets are to be mandatory only for children up o the age of 15.


We are following trends in western Europe. If you want to foster cycling transport, which is necessary, helmets may be a factor of demotivation, especially for women. At the same time, according to some psychological surveys, drivers are more tolerant towards bikers without helmets than to bikers who look like a member of commando, because they look more vulnerable.


----------



## Junkie

Penn's Woods said:


> Why Cyrillic up top but Latin below (I'm not talking about the Starbucks brand but the lines of text)?


Serbia is known for using the bilingual sign system. Although they are South Slavs and they have assimilated Latin script and together with BIH they are billingual sign countries. 

For example, North Macedonia or Bulgaria are strongly Cyrillic and we rarely use billingual signs for transliterating the Cyrillic script into Latin. But I must admit young population using social networks over here is in around 70% chatting by transliterating the Cyrillic script.

On the other hand Western Slavs for example Slovaks or Croats and Slovenes are strongly using only Latin as they have been assimilated long before,


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> There is a joke that you can spot which cyclists are German: they are the only ones to wear a helmet.


Actually, when I was in Germany, I practically didn't see any cyclists in helmets. In Poland it's seen quite often in cities, something like 20% of the city cyclists wear helmets.



Junkie said:


> For example, North Macedonia or Bulgaria are strongly Cyrillic and we rarely use billingual signs for transliterating the Cyrillic script into Latin. But I must admit young population using social networks over here is in around 70% chatting by transliterating the Cyrillic script.


Are there any sensible reasons behind that, like SMS written in Cyrylic take more "capacity" of the message?

Because it's so with Polish. With English letters, the limit for a single message is 160 characters (modern phones divide longer messages into several ones and join them back at the recipient – so one may not be aware for that, at least until he sees the bill). But when I type in a Polish-specific letter, it gets reduced to 70 characters. It seems to be using some type of encoding, which is definitely much more primitive than Unicode, or even the old "regional" encodings known from computers.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

volodaaaa said:


> We are following trends in western Europe. If you want to foster cycling transport, which is necessary, helmets may be a factor of demotivation, especially for women. At the same time, according to some psychological surveys, drivers are more tolerant towards bikers without helmets than to bikers who look like a member of commando, because they look more vulnerable.


Yes, this is a common argument in the Netherlands as well. I don't know about Slovakia but in the Netherlands many men wear hair gel, which a helmet will mess up, which will demotivate cyclists to wear a helmet.

It's also a personal responsibility thing. 15 years sounds like a fairly high age from a Dutch perspective: over here only very small children wear helmets. Almost nobody beyond the age of 6-8 wears a helmet. By age 9-10 most students cycle to elementary school without parental supervision, but this is possible due to the extensive bicycle infrastructure (not many conflicts with cars), which makes this safer than in most other countries.


----------



## Junkie

> Old Today, 06:35 PM #41776
> Kpc21
> Are there any sensible reasons behind that, like SMS written in Cyrylic take more "capacity" of the message?


No the problem is even more weird, because for example we don't have standard Latin script. If you use Windows 10 you might check there is a Serbian Latin and Serbian Cyrillic, but we are mainly using English to switch the keyboard and using wrong letters, for example "Ш" should be "Š" but young people are always writing it as "S" using English keyboard.

Also I have checked in Windows control panel there is Azerbaijani Cyrillic and Kazakh which is written in Cyrillic :nuts:


----------



## aubergine72

Junkie said:


> Serbia is known for using the bilingual sign system. Although they are South Slavs and they have assimilated Latin script and together with BIH they are billingual sign countries.
> 
> For example, North Macedonia or Bulgaria are strongly Cyrillic and we rarely use billingual signs for transliterating the Cyrillic script into Latin. But I must admit young population using social networks over here is in around 70% chatting by transliterating the Cyrillic script.
> 
> On the other hand Western Slavs for example Slovaks or Croats and Slovenes are strongly using only Latin as they have been assimilated long before,


It depends. Bulgarian sites and forums do not allow comments and posts in Latin letters. Even on facebook, you rarely see Bulgarian in Latin letters.


----------



## Junkie

What is unique about South Slavic languages is is that there is a continuum from west to east. The eastern dialects of North Macedonia (relative western from Bulgaria) bound almost completely with Bulgarian which you can easily spot on the accent. The non standard accents in North Macedonia are completely mutual with Bulgarian standard.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> There is difference. If the communication interrupts, you can ask your passenger to redial. If the phone is mounted on a bracked, you'd have to do it yourself.
> 
> 
> 
> I think the American and European approaches are different for one fundamental reason.
> In the US you are responsible for your health, in the sense that if you get hurt doing something stupid, it's you or your insurance who will have to pay for medical care. That's why, for instance, riding bikes without a helmet is allowed
> In Europe medical cares are often paid by taxes only, so it's perfectly normal to say "I don't want my taxes to be used to pay medical care for some moron who doesn't know elementary safety rules". That's why you have compulsory helmets, no text while driving and so on.




Except it was using Bluetooth that was permitted and having a passenger hold the phone that was prohibited here. The reverse of your rationale.
And texting while driving IS prohibited in most if not all North American jurisdictions. As it should be. Seat belts are also required. (I was about to say something about the state caring more about your causing harm to others than causing harm to yourself, then I realized seat-belt requirements are inconsistent with that theory....)


----------



## Penn's Woods

joshsam said:


> I am not saying you should not use older cars anymore. I have a gps but I rarely use it. I want to find my way around without it.
> When I have to be somewhere in a city I have never been before i usually drives to it without gps and only enable it if I have to find and exact street/adress.




I have found GPS helpful in that sort of situation: if I’ve already looked at the map of Antwerp and know my hotel is on Sint-Jansvliet, the map will confirm that I’m there. 
I’ve actually only rented cars twice since GPS’s became widespread, both times in Europe. GPS costs significantly more, so I didn’t request it, but the second time I got a “better” car then I’d booked and the GPS was in it and they didn’t charge me for it. So I put it on, didn’t use it to find routes, but would glance at it after roundabouts and in cities and so on to confirm I was on the right track.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> I'm all in favour for heavy fines for people who use mobile phone while driving, but those in bold look like "presumption of guilt".




Exactly!


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> I was referring to motorbikes.
> I don't think helmets on bicycles are mandatory anywhere in Europe.




I think they are mandatory on motorcycles most places in North America. (This sort of thing is generally a state matter in the U.S. - don’t know about Canada - for constitutional reasons, so even if i studied this sort of thing actively, knowing 50- or 60-odd sets of rules is a big job....)


----------



## MichiH

*Looks like shit. But saves my life.*

There's a campaign by the German Federal Ministry of Transport. It's called "Looks like shit. But saves my life."

Andy Scheuer, Federal Minister of Transport, got a shitstorm because the pics are considered to be sexist and the video to be soft porn.

https://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/DE/Pressemitteilungen/2019/021-scheuer-runter-vom-gas.html















It's reported that it varies on age whether people wear a helmet while cycling:
82% of 6-8 years old
38% of 11-16 years old
*8% of 17-30 years old
*15% of 31-40 years old
20% of 41-60 years old
23% of 60 years and older

Especially young women don't wear a helmet!


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^And they use English?!


----------



## MichiH

Taking about....

The former Parliamentary State Secretary of the Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (2014-2018), Doro Bär, was supposed to be the next Minister of Transport but Andy Scheuer made it and she's the State Minister for Digitization now.

She's been to a computer game event last week. Together with Andy Scheuer and.... look:


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^And they use English?!


sure!


----------



## Penn's Woods

In France, that would be a bigger problem than the content.


----------



## MichiH

^^ What would be a problem in France? Doro had the head lines too.

https://www.instagram.com/dorobaer/

Edit: Yes, using English words would be the bigger problem in France


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> I think they are mandatory on motorcycles most places in North America. (This sort of thing is generally a state matter in the U.S. - don’t know about Canada - for constitutional reasons, so even if i studied this sort of thing actively, knowing 50- or 60-odd sets of rules is a big job....)


https://www.dueruote.it/news/attualita/2016/03/01/follia-anticasco-negli-usa.html

First link I found (in Italian) states that out of 50 States, only in 20 the helmet is mandatory.

https://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/laws/helmetuse/mapmotorcyclehelmets

This states 19 universal laws, 28 partial laws, 3 no laws, which is basically the same (to me, having only people 17 and below to wear helmet counts as "no law")


----------



## Kpc21

Junkie said:


> No the problem is even more weird, because for example we don't have standard Latin script. If you use Windows 10 you might check there is a Serbian Latin and Serbian Cyrillic, but we are mainly using English to switch the keyboard and using wrong letters, for example "Ш" should be "Š" but young people are always writing it as "S" using English keyboard.


In Polish, people sometimes tend to avoid using Polish letters on computers, but while in places like chats it's kinda acceptable, on forums it's criticized, and on ones with more thorough moderation posts sometimes even get deleted for not using Polish characters (and for spelling mistakes). But on chats it's just laziness. Earlier in the past, on the IRC and in Usenet, it was a little bit different, because there were sometimes inconsistencies with which code page to use and there were several standards – so not using Polish characters was a method of avoiding those problems.

[Why laziness? Because they are not directly available from the keyboard, so e.g. to type in Ą, you press right Alt and A key simultaneously... Some people are too lazy to press so many keys.]

With SMS – it simply costs over twice as much to use Polish characters. Now SMS messages are cheap or even unlimited in the plan, so people don't care about it much but in the past, when they were more expensive, it did matter.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes, this is a common argument in the Netherlands as well. I don't know about Slovakia but in the Netherlands many men wear hair gel, which a helmet will mess up, which will demotivate cyclists to wear a helmet.
> 
> It's also a personal responsibility thing. 15 years sounds like a fairly high age from a Dutch perspective: over here only very small children wear helmets. Almost nobody beyond the age of 6-8 wears a helmet. By age 9-10 most students cycle to elementary school without parental supervision, but this is possible due to the extensive bicycle infrastructure (not many conflicts with cars), which makes this safer than in most other countries.



Same here basically. But I hear more complaints from women who style their hair and completely spoil them with helmets.


15 years is quite high, but, unfortunately, the police with its branches is very strong in decision-making and yet extremely old-fashioned. The result is a great success regardless of how easy it looks :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> https://www.dueruote.it/news/attualita/2016/03/01/follia-anticasco-negli-usa.html
> 
> First link I found (in Italian) states that out of 50 States, only in 20 the helmet is mandatory.
> 
> https://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/laws/helmetuse/mapmotorcyclehelmets
> 
> This states 19 universal laws, 28 partial laws, 3 no laws, which is basically the same (to me, having only people 17 and below to wear helmet counts as "no law")




Well, there you are.
I don’t actually ride a motorbike, so I don’t need to know the law. I see very few people riding without helmets.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Penn's Woods said:


> I have found GPS helpful in that sort of situation: if I’ve already looked at the map of Antwerp and know my hotel is on Sint-Jansvliet, the map will confirm that I’m there.
> I’ve actually only rented cars twice since GPS’s became widespread, both times in Europe. GPS costs significantly more, so I didn’t request it, but the second time I got a “better” car then I’d booked and the GPS was in it and they didn’t charge me for it. So I put it on, didn’t use it to find routes, but would glance at it after roundabouts and in cities and so on to confirm I was on the right track.


So when Will you be in Antwerp? Is it a business trip or leisure?


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## Penn's Woods

Three years ago. But I’ll be back as soon as I can. I was hoping to get to Brussels for the Tour de France “grand départ” this year, but it’s looking unlikely.
Ik houd van Het Stad. Maar waarom “het”?


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## bogdymol

Speaking of this part of Europe, greetings from Brugges. I will drive to Brussels and Liege later on today.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Penn's Woods said:


> Three years ago. But I’ll be back as soon as I can. I was hoping to get to Brussels for the Tour de France “grand départ” this year, but it’s looking unlikely.
> Ik houd van Het Stad. Maar waarom “het”?


It's 'De stad' in proper Dutch and ' 't stad' (pronounced 'het stad') in the Antwerp dialect. It only refers to Antwerp as 'The City' in like: the one and only city, like you can have only one capital city.

But don't get yourself into the Dutch article because 'de' and 'het' are used by feeling the language. There are no rules. One can only 'feel' wich article to use if you use the language daily. And then there is a ton of words where you can use them both. It's the most commonly mistake when you learn the language and most will never really get it 100% right. Even native Dutch speakers make mistakes against it sometimes.

Should defenatly pay the Belgian forum a visit for some advise with you next visit if you need it. There is quite a few of Antwerpenaars present


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland, there appeared a political party that is supposed to represent the interests of drivers: http://partiakierowcow.pl – Drivers' Party.

They are going to start in the elections to the European Parliament in coalition with several other minor parties, including extreme liberal and eurosceptic KORWiN (which has quite a lot of support among the young generations) and the nationalists.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland, there appeared a political party that is supposed to represent the interests of drivers: http://partiakierowcow.pl – Drivers' Party.
> 
> They are going to start in the elections to the European Parliament in coalition with several other minor parties, including extreme liberal and eurosceptic KORWiN (which has quite a lot of support among the young generations) and the nationalists.


First I thought it is some party backed up by trade unionist in road transport (I mean professional drivers such as lorry drivers, bus drivers, cabbies, etc.). But it seems no. 
Wow, that is populism at its best. Just the "constitutional law to park wherever a driver wants" and it would be everything.

I expect something similar to emerge in Bratislava as well. We are amongst the few cities in Europe without any systematic parking policy. The freshly elected mayor proposed his idea this week and it ended up in madness. 
I hadn't known until the last week that there are so many "poor" families with 3 cars in Bratislava. How could children visit their leisure activities?
The proposal is simple. Some parts of the city should be divided into several zones with different parking fee ranging from 0,5 €/hour to 2 €/hour at certain times. The fee and the times would be determined according to the peak times, the rate of demand and possible capacities. No zone would be charged 24/7.
Residents who can prove the relation between their residence and their car ownership would be given a possibility to buy a parking card for the zone of their residence. The fees are following:
49 € / year / first car
200 € / year / second car
500 € / year / every other car.

The card (presumably in a form of application) should also include:
- overall 2 h of free parking valid in other zones per day,
- 100 h of free parking per year for visits.

There are still many questions unanswered. But despite strict, to me, it sounds logical.


----------



## Kpc21

Yes, it looks like what you are saying. There must be reasons why they go to elections together with extreme liberal parties, which would keenly close all the public transportation, give everyone right to park everywhere and so on 

Concerning parking in cities in Poland, the maximum parking fares are limited by the parliament. According to law which is still valid, the fee for the first hour of parking cannot be higher than 3 zł (about 0.70 euro). For the next two hours, the hourly fee should progressively increase but not by more than 20% with respect to the previous hour. For the fourth and next hours of parking, the hourly fee cannot be higher than for the first hour. Furthermore, drivers can be charged for parking only on working days, not on Saturdays, Sundays and not on public holidays.

From September, there will be new rules. Firstly, the 3 zł value will be replaced by 0.15% of the monthly minimum wage, which is now 2250 zł. So the maximum fee for the first hour will become 3.37 zł and it will increase with the beginning of 2020 as the minimum wage will also increase.

Furthermore, apart from the current "paid parking zones", there will be also "downtown paid parking zones". Those zones will be established under some special rules – in the strict functional centers of cities with population over 100,000 persons, after a special analysis. In those zones, the drivers will be charged for parking also on weekends and holidays and the maximum fee for the first hour will be 0.45% of the monthly minimum wage – so three times as much as in the normal paid parking zones. In other words, even over 2 euro.

It is possible to introduce parking cards for the residents of those zones.


How it looks like in Łódź now?

There are two zones.

In the zone A (most central), the fees are:
– 1.50 zł (0.35 euro) for the first half an hour
– 3 zł (0.70 euro) for the first hour
– 3.50 zł (0.85 euro) for the second hour
– 4 zł (nearly 1 euro) for the third hour
– 3 zł (0.70 euro) for each next hour

In the zone B (surrounding the zone A), the fees are:
– 1 zł (0.20 euro) for the first half an hour
– 2.50 zł (0.60 euro) for the first hour
– 3 zł (0.70 euro) for the second hour
– 3.50 zł (0.85 euro) for the third hour
– 2.50 zł (0.60 euro) for each next hour

Before 8 AM and after 6 PM, on weekends and public holidays parking is free.

Yearly subscription for the zone A costs 2500 zł (600 euro).

Yearly subscription for the zone B costs 1500 zł (350 euro).

For the residents of the parking zone, the yearly subscription costs 120 zł (25 euro). It is valid for only one of five sectors. To obtain it, you must prove that you pay taxes in Łódź.

For the vehicles of public administration units, which are placed in Łódź, the yearly fee is only 50 zł (about 15 euro).

For hybrid vehicles, the yearly subscription costs 120 zł (25 euro).

For electric vehicles and for the disabled, parking is free.


Something like a month ago, I saw a Tesla in Łódź


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## keokiracer

Taa-Tuu-Taa-Tuu


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Germans have lit up the Easter bonfires. Which is very detectable in the Netherlands: PM10 (particle) levels have skyrocketed to unhealthy levels. 

This station is 70 kilometers from the German border. Bonfires are banned in most of the Netherlands due to drought. The largest ones were demolished yesterday to avoid illegal fires.


----------



## Kpc21

tfd543 said:


> Greetings from Marbella, Spain. Nice place. I love spanish taxi drivers not obeying the traffic rules. Yaaay.


In what country do they normally obey them? 



Penn's Woods said:


> Okay, Easter question:
> In the U.S., “Easter eggs” are real eggs, usually hard-boiled, that we dye and decorate. (The kids usually do that.) Was just told this week by a friend in Australia that that’s unknown there: Easter eggs are chocolate. (We have those too.) So now I’m wondering about Europe. I know about Polish pisanki....


Yeah, in Poland we do the same as in the US (dyed or painted I didn't do that, it's rather for kids). There are chocolate eggs too but it's not the traditional form. Probably even more commonly you can see a chocolate bunny rather than a chocolate egg.

Actually, the dyed eggs are called kraszanki although now most people usually call all of those decorated eggs pisanki.

Talking about chocolate eggs... a big thing for kids in Europe (not for Easter but in general) are the "surprise" eggs from the Kinder company, which have a plastic capsule inside, in which you get parts to assemble a little toy, with a picture-based manual. More and more often they are (or, at least, they were when I was a kid) just a plastic figure that doesn't require any assembly, which, of course, I didn't like. But it was a lot of fun anyway.

I read once that those Kinder eggs are not allowed in the US "for safety reasons"... Is it really true?



bogdymol said:


> ^^ The eggs from your first picture look identical to the traditional Easter eggs that we have also in Romania.


And in Poland.



ChrisZwolle said:


> The Germans have lit up the Easter bonfires. Which is very detectable in the Netherlands: PM10 (particle) levels have skyrocketed to unhealthy levels.
> 
> This station is 70 kilometers from the German border. Bonfires are banned in most of the Netherlands due to drought. The largest ones were demolished yesterday to avoid illegal fires.


In Poland, still a big problem is burning fields and grass by small farmers. It is forbidden, dangerous and it is a lot of work for the firefighters. And it's bad for the ecosystem, a lot of small animals living there die. But some of them still do it...


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## x-type

Kinder eggs have nothing with Easter. I was buying chocolate bunnies few days ago. I was avoiding branded bunnies because I don't want them in corporate colours with script Kinder and Milka. No way. I will buy them next week on 50% sales because they have delicious chocolate inside, nothing else.

(Kinder Surprise is banned in the USA indeed)


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## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> In what country do they normally obey them?
> 
> /QUOTE]
> 
> 
> Lol Yea indeed. The taxi driver at the airport saved me 20 Euros since I had 15 min to get my rental car at Delpaso which is a bit far-off the airport. I had the choice to come late with the free shuttle bus and be penalized 40 euros or take the taxi at a minimum rate of 19 euros to drive 2 km to the rental office.
> 
> Luckily he got the point and drove like 120 km/h through the airport main road and took a unlit gravel road to avoid making turns at the interchange. He earned 19 euros in 3 min. Who said taxi driving was a bad job ?


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## Kpc21

x-type said:


> Kinder eggs have nothing with Easter. I was buying chocolate bunnies few days ago. I was avoiding branded bunnies because I don't want them in corporate colours with script Kinder and Milka. No way. I will buy them next week on 50% sales because they have delicious chocolate inside, nothing else.
> 
> (Kinder Surprise is banned in the USA indeed)


The problem with those chocolate bunnies is that those cheapest ones are not chocolate but chocolate imitation. One has to carefully read the label if it's really chocolate...

And they are, at least here, empty inside 

Buying stuff like Easter chocolate bunnies after Easter has one big advantage – the supermarkets give big discounts on them


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## Kanadzie

ChrisZwolle said:


> Bonfires are banned in most of the Netherlands due to drought.


How can a country mostly underwater have drought?:nuts:


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## ChrisZwolle

Yeah.... we had a huge - near record - drought last year, we had 2.5 months with nearly no rain. And it hasn't rained in the past 18 days. Long periods with no precipitation are uncommon in the Dutch oceanic climate. 

Western Netherlands is low-lying, but the east has slightly higher elevations and lower ground water table on a more sandy soil. That's usually where the worst drought is.


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## MichiH

Kanadzie said:


> How can a country mostly underwater have drought?:nuts:


salt water is not that good...


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## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> Kinder eggs have nothing with Easter. I was buying chocolate bunnies few days ago. I was avoiding branded bunnies because I don't want them in corporate colours with script Kinder and Milka. No way. I will buy them next week on 50% sales because they have delicious chocolate inside, nothing else.
> 
> (Kinder Surprise is banned in the USA indeed)



I can't tell about the quality, but when it comes to taste, Milka or Kinder (and I am not talking about Lindt) are much better. 



I also tried many "generic" chocolate bunnies or eggs but they tasted like some unfinished product. You can easily get some 0,30 € worth chocolate bunnies here, but they are more like poison, not chocolate.


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## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> You can easily get some 0,30 € worth chocolate bunnies here, but they are more like poison, not chocolate.


Really, you should always look at the labels of those cheap generic ones and check if they are really chocolate or chocolate imitation.

Those chocolate imitation ones indeed don't taste well.


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## Attus

I was in Rotterdam yesterday (Easter Sunday) and I was very surprised seeing that many shops were open even in residential areas. Aren't here any days in the Netherlands when shops are closed (apart from specific locations, e.g. airports)?


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## ChrisZwolle

Supermarkets are open 7 days a week in most places (except for the Bible Belt). However even in some larger cities they are sometimes closed on holidays, for example in my city (Zwolle, population 130,000) most supermarkets are closed on Easter Sunday and Christmas, but open on Easter Monday and Boxing Day and all other sundays. 

Having most shops open on Sundays is mostly a trend of the past 5-10 years, except in the largest cities and tourist centers where Sunday openings were long common. 

The municipal council is responsible for setting opening hours. So it varies by municipality, but is also dependent on how religious the store owner is. There are some franchised supermarkets that don't open on Sundays despite being legally allowed to do so.


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## Kpc21

What's the reason of such central management of supermarkets and shops opening hours? Isn't it too much intervention of the state into private businesses?

Forcing them to close on Sundays and holidays might be explained by defending the workers' rights (although there are some who would actually prefer to work on Sunday and this makes it impossible for them). But to have some defined opening hours? Why?


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## Kpc21

https://www.otomoto.pl/oferta/hyund...-euro-v-klimatyzacja-ID6Aks4t.html#009bda8b89

Danish import, first owner... But... Why then does the car have Spanish licence plates?

Buying cars from Spanish import is dangerous because under Spanish law, the car may have a credit or some other debts bound to it, about which the buyer, of course, isn't informed. And this debt gets passed onto him.

And all the cars I found until now on Polish car buying websites, in which I was interested, checked at https://motorregister.skat.dk/dmr-f...rue&_pageLabel=vis_koeretoej_side&_nfls=false show "Totalskadet koretoj" (if I didn't make any spelling mistakes).

A recent case: https://www.otomoto.pl/oferta/opel-karl-999cm-benz-75km-jak-nowy-super-stan-ID6BRh8c.html

I called the driver. He told me it's Danish import and sent me the VIN via SMS: W0LDD6E7XGC510460.

In the offer: "Car imported from abroad in one piece, not crashed, 100% no accidents". The seller invites people with paint thickness sensor (a very useful gadget while buying a used car). 

In the Danish register:










No comment.

I understand that sometimes cars in western Europe get a total loss even with some really minor damages because of high costs of labour. But this is just a scam, the seller promises that car is 100% without any accidents and it's simply not true...


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## Spookvlieger

It's up to your goverment to batlle such shady practices and fine or even jail those scam sellers


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## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> most supermarkets are closed on Easter Sunday and Christmas


Most but not all. It would be beyond every imagination in Hungary for example. OK, I know, it's a very different society, in Hungary almost everyone celebrates Christmas with the family in a traditional way, even atheists. Dutch society is much less traditionalist. 
In Hungary shops are open Sundays but they must be closed in some important feast days like Eastern Sunday and Monday, Christmas first and second day and some other days. There are only a few exceptions: shops in the airport, major railway stations. Would a government try to cancel these restrictions, I think the population would revolt. 
I don't know whether there are any other nations in the christian world where shops are, or at least may be open in Eastern Sunday or Christmas.


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## Kpc21

joshsam said:


> It's up to your goverment to batlle such shady practices and fine or even jail those scam sellers


Denmark is easy because they have publicly accessible database allowing to check such facts. But what about Germany? They don't have anything like that. And they are the main source of used cars for Poland...

Partially you are right but some issues must be solved at the EU level. For a local car, I can check its mileage history. For a car from Denmark (and some other countries, e.g. Sweden) I can check if it didn't get a total loss. For a car from Germany... I can't check anything.



Attus said:


> I don't know whether there are any other nations in the christian world where shops are, or at least may be open in Eastern Sunday or Christmas.


I don't know about Easter and Christmas but in Poland, the All Saints Day is also a public holiday. Our tradition (as in some other European countries) is to visit the graves of our relatives on that day. So we visit a graveyard in a nearby village. And the local grocery store in that village is always open on that day (probably even counting on some extra income from the graveyard visitors).

There is also, of course, a lot of stands selling candles and flowers around the graveyards on that day.

The law states it's forbidden to employ people for sales on public holidays – but it is not forbidden for the shop owner (and his family) to work in his own store.


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## bogdymol

An EU-wide system for keeping a car register would be extremely useful. At each major step* involving the car, the current km's must be registered in a EU-wide system. Whenever the car is sold, the potential buyer can check this database based on the car's VIN, so he knows exactly what he is buying.

* Major step can be some of these: the yearly technical check, car servicing (oil change etc), renewing the insurance, anytime the car is involved in a crash etc. Only approved car service stations, the insurance companies or police shall be able to write in this system, but anybody shall be able to read the information from it.

This would prevent altering the car's odometer or lying about the car's past.

I changed my car's tyres today (winter tyres off, summer tyres on), and there was also a guy with an Audi A6 from 2005-2010. The car had the big 2.7 L diesel engine, but only 150.000 km. I find it almost impossible for a large car like the A6, with a big diesel engine, which is made to be driven a lot, to have such a small mileage.


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## volodaaaa

It used to be here until two years ago. The government (after some fuel provided by nationalists) then approved the law banning shops on celebration days. The rationale: shop assistants want to spend their lives with families.

Please note, that this does not apply to cafés, restaurants, train drivers, pilots, rescuers, train drivers, bus drivers, tram drivers, ship crews, flight crews, air traffic controllers, garbage collectors, medical doctors, pharmaceutists, police and... have I missed someone?

These people do not have the right to be with families. But shop assistants do.

And guess what?
During this easter, the shops were closed on Friday and then on Sunday and Monday. However, the shops were open on Saturday. Do you think the shop assistants were less stressed during this Saturday? I seriously doubt that according to the full car parks.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> I can't tell about the quality, but when it comes to taste, Milka or Kinder (and I am not talking about Lindt) are much better.
> 
> 
> 
> I also tried many "generic" chocolate bunnies or eggs but they tasted like some unfinished product. You can easily get some 0,30 € worth chocolate bunnies here, but they are more like poison, not chocolate.


Huh, 0,30 really is poison. It is made of sugar and fat, not of chocolate. And it gets that ugly metal taste because of the foil.
I was buying 2€/150g unbranded bunnies in Müller, taste really good.


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## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> It used to be here until two years ago. The government (after some fuel provided by nationalists) then approved the law banning shops on celebration days. The rationale: shop assistants want to spend their lives with families.
> 
> (...)
> 
> And guess what?
> During this easter, the shops were closed on Friday and then on Sunday and Monday. However, the shops were open on Saturday. Do you think the shop assistants were less stressed during this Saturday? I seriously doubt that according to the full car parks.


This is exactly what is happening in Poland after such a law got introduced here 

And this is because the current government (PiS) is in good terms with the biggest trade union, Solidarność – Solidarity. Which are that type of a union which usually fights not really for the rights of the workers but rather for the benefits of their members. And they don't really listen to the workers.

And they really wanted such a law because they (and PiS) are also in good terms with the church... And the church wants people, of course, to visit not supermarkets but churches on Sundays 

Does it really work? I don't think so. Even for those religious guys who visit a church every Sunday, it was convenient to go shopping on the way back home from the church.

The supermarket chains shout about doing shopping on Saturdays in the TV commercials. At the same time, small stores are struggling because people are reverting to doing bigger shopping in supermarkets to be sure to have all necessary things for the Sunday when the shops are closed.

But the biggest chain of gas stations (Orlen) is state-owned and they are definitely happy from the extra customers who come there on Sundays to buy overpriced groceries.

Shops at train stations, bus terminals and airports might be open but... in Łódź, the third biggest city in Poland, there is still no supermarket at any of those places. Although... a local bus company is building a Lidl just next to their station, on grounds that belong to them, so it will soon change 

There is also a big chain of convenience stores – Żabka (Froggy) – which marked their shops as... post offices (as they cooperate with some parcel delivery companies and it's possible to send a parcel there) to make it possible to open on weekends. There is no law for which Polish guys won't find a workaround.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> What's the reason of such central management of supermarkets and shops opening hours? Isn't it too much intervention of the state into private businesses?


It's mainly religious interest. In the past the mainstream Christian Democrats were against it, but now they say it's up to the store owner. But there are two smaller orthodox christian parties that are more staunchly opposed to Sunday shopping. But their influence is limited outside a small number of very religious municipalities.

The Netherlands has a 'Bible Belt'. This is the 2010 elections, percentage of people who voted for the Christian-Orthodox SGP. SGP holds only 3 out of 150 seats, but is influential in a string of semi-rural municipalities.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's mainly religious interest. In the past the mainstream Christian Democrats were against it, but now they say it's up to the store owner. But there are two smaller orthodox christian parties that are more staunchly opposed to Sunday shopping. But their influence is limited outside a small number of very religious municipalities.


I wasn't asking about closing shops on Sundays but about forcing the specific opening and closing hours of shops by the municipalities (and giving them such a right by the state). This doesn't seem to be related to religion and really looks like unnecessary state interference in a democratic country.

Talking about maps... 

This maps shows the percentage of people regularly attending churches in the parishes:










It's quite obvious to me that there is more of them in the east (although it turn out that most religious is actually the south-east and the south in general) but what wonders me most is that that belt that stretches from Gdańsk (central north) through the Greater Poland (the area around Poznań) to the Upper Silesia. While there is still much typically rural areas in the central Poland which aren't really religious.

And those are the results of the last parliamentary elections four years ago:









http://www.wyborynamapie.pl/sejm2015/mapa gminy sejm2015.png

The religiousness of the south-east is well reflected in the elections results, of the Cashubian region (west of Gdańsk) too but this west-central belt is not really seen.


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## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> And those are the results of the last parliamentary elections four years ago


Very easy to see the pre-war German territories. 70 years after the war.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's mainly religious interest. In the past the mainstream Christian Democrats were against it, but now they say it's up to the store owner. But there are two smaller orthodox christian parties that are more staunchly opposed to Sunday shopping. But their influence is limited outside a small number of very religious municipalities.


Being open Sundays is a thing. Being open on Easter or Christmas is another one...


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> Kpc21 said:
> 
> 
> 
> And those are the results of the last parliamentary elections four years ago
> 
> 
> 
> Very easy to see the pre-war German territories. 70 years after the war.
Click to expand...

Indeed! It's brutal.


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## Kpc21

What would you say about the map of the railroad network?










Either the pre-war German territories (so called Regained Lands) or the 18th/19th-century partitions of Poland between three occupants...


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> It used to be here until two years ago. The government (after some fuel provided by nationalists) then approved the law banning shops on celebration days. The rationale: shop assistants want to spend their lives with families.
> 
> Please note, that this does not apply to cafés, restaurants, train drivers, pilots, rescuers, train drivers, bus drivers, tram drivers, ship crews, flight crews, air traffic controllers, garbage collectors, medical doctors, pharmaceutists, police and... have I missed someone?
> 
> These people do not have the right to be with families. But shop assistants do.
> 
> And guess what?
> During this easter, the shops were closed on Friday and then on Sunday and Monday. However, the shops were open on Saturday. Do you think the shop assistants were less stressed during this Saturday? I seriously doubt that according to the full car parks.


Just an opposite took place in Finland a few years ago: All the legislation related to opening hours was ramped down, and the shops are free to keep their doors open whenever they like. The sky has not yet fallen down. Students etc have been satisfied about new part-time job opportunities. The Sunday hours are paid double.


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## italystf

MattiG said:


> Just an opposite took place in Finland a few years ago: All the legislation related to opening hours was ramped down, and the shops are free to keep their doors open whenever they like. The sky has not yet fallen down. Students etc have been satisfied about new part-time job opportunities. The Sunday hours are paid double.


Also in Italy, opening hours were liberalized by Monti government in 2012. Now, 5-Stars populists are treatening to introduce new regulation. hno:
I don't think opening hours and days should be any government's business. Laws should only regulate maximum working hours.


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## Rebasepoiss

In Estonia it's 100% up to the owner of the shop to decide when it's open. Most large supermarkets are open 365/7, although with shortened opening times on some holidays. Most supermarkets open at 8 or 9 and close at 22 or 23, a few are open 24/7.


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## volodaaaa

I think that deregulation is good here. Of course, the rights of employees should be preserved including bonuses for working during nights, weekends or holidays. But it should depend on the owner if they want to open during weekends and pay employees bonuses or not.

My wife is a medical doctor and MDs have nice bonuses during night or weekend shifts. She often tells me that it is not easy to get such a shift because there is always a fight for them.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> I think that deregulation is good here. Of course, the rights of employees should be preserved including bonuses for working during nights, weekends or holidays. But it should depend on the owner if they want to open during weekends and pay employees bonuses or not.


That's my point.


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## MichiH

^^ The bigger the company, the easier it can open longer, maybe even 24/7.
The smaller the company or shop - maybe just a family business - the harder it is. The result might be that customers prefer shopping at bigger one just because they never need to care about opening hours. Family business might have less sales and might need to close.

That's more or less what's discussed in Germany.


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## ChrisZwolle

The traditional opening hours are outdated, based on a model where the woman stayed at home and the man worked.

Many shops (not supermarkets) even today have opening hours from 9 - 17 or 8 - 18 at best. Which means that if you work full-time, your only option to visit that shop is on Saturday. So they lose a lot of business to supermarkets and large chains that are able to open much longer.


----------



## Kpc21

MichiH said:


> ^^ The bigger the company, the easier it can open longer, maybe even 24/7.
> The smaller the company or shop - maybe just a family business - the harder it is. The result might be that customers prefer shopping at bigger one just because they never need to care about opening hours. Family business might have less sales and might need to close.
> 
> That's more or less what's discussed in Germany.


But you don't have little family business grocery stores in Germany any more anyway. Maybe except some Turkish ones that sell mostly Turkish products. That's my experience from my stay in Germany.

The smallest you can find is Nahkauf, which is already a branch and not an independent store (although it's a franchise branch, so there is still quite a lot of independence, the store itself is not owned by the big company but by a local owner) and it definitely might be called a supermarket, although smaller than usual.

Meanwhile, even in the countryside, quite common are gathering of supermarkets of several competing branches in one place.

The Polish countryside still relies mostly either on local small grocery stores, or – for bigger shopping – on supermarkets in nearby towns (which have the biggest number of customers on... the market days).

Long opening hours are easier for the supermarkets – but there is another, much more important factor that draws people to supermarkets. The prices.

Small local stores are usually visited either to buy some single products or just some snacks – because a supermarket wastes you quite a lot of time.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Many shops (not supermarkets) even today have opening hours from 9 - 17 or 8 - 18 at best. Which means that if you work full-time, your only option to visit that shop is on Saturday. So they lose a lot of business to supermarkets and large chains that are able to open much longer.


Well, the shop may always open at 10, or even 12 and then close at 18 or even 20.

But the shop near my work opens already before 8, so even if I start work at 8, I manage to buy some snacks there before that.


----------



## Kanadzie

ChrisZwolle said:


> Which means that if you work full-time, your only option to visit that shop is on Saturday.


Which is stupid. I'm not doing that. Waste weekend time and gasoline to get groceries?!

That may also be why the grocery store in my town is open until 22h every day :cheers:


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Many shops (not supermarkets) even today have opening hours from 9 - 17 or 8 - 18 at best. Which means that if you work full-time, your only option to visit that shop is on Saturday. So they lose a lot of business to supermarkets and large chains that are able to open much longer.


I am now searching for various products which can be found only in specialized stores. In Austria such stores are usually open 8 to 5, Monday to Friday. As I work full-time, and also living in a rural area (so add min. 30 minutes drive time), it is quite hard to get to such a store during opening hours.

In Romania the supermarkets are usually open 7:30 - 22:00 every day of the week (sometimes with about 2h shorter schedule on Sundays), with the only days when they are completely closed being Easter, Christmas and New Year days.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> But you don't have little family business grocery stores in Germany any more anyway. Maybe except some Turkish ones that sell mostly Turkish products. That's my experience from my stay in Germany.


Bakery, butcher shop, greengrocer's shop, wine dealer, small fashion shops,...


----------



## Kpc21

But specialised stores always have shorter opening hours.

Supermarkets aren't any competition for them.

Internet is...



MichiH said:


> Bakery, butcher shop, greengrocer's shop, wine dealer, small fashion shops,...


But not grocery.

Although indeed most of those goods are available also in supermarkets (in a worse quality though).


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> I am now searching for various products which can be found only in specialized stores. In Austria, such stores are usually open 8 to 5, Monday to Friday. As I work full-time, and also living in a rural area (so add min. 30 minutes drive time), it is quite hard to get to such a store during opening hours.
> In Romania the supermarkets are usually open 7:30 - 22:00 every day of the week (sometimes with about 2h shorter schedule on Sundays), with the only days when they are completely closed being Easter, Christmas and New Year days.


This reminds me of the Slovak post office. The delivery employees usually deliver Recommandé deliveries between 9 AM and 14 AM, which means that most of the consignees are at work. 
If you are not home and you are about to receive a Recommandé delivery, you are given an announcement tag into your mailbox. If you return you have to visit the determined post office (according to your area), submit the tag and you after signature you are to receive the delivery.
To me, the delivery employees do completely useless work and are paid for nothing. Most of the people have to visit the post office personally anyway.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Chains and supermarkets have taken a lot of business from small shop owners. I can get almost anything for my household in the supermarket, both food and non-food. 

But those chains of various categories suffer a lot from internet competition, especially electronics and fashion. Many went bankrupt, while supermarkets remain. 

Supermarkets don't have that much competition from the internet. Getting groceries delivered via the internet remains a niche segment. You only need new shoes or pants every once in a while but you need food and household items every day. So the masses still go to the supermarket for that.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> Although indeed most of those goods are available also in supermarkets


Exactly! And German local politician do often want to have this kind of shops in downtown. That's why they often limit opening hours for supermarkets to keep the small shops alive.



Kpc21 said:


> (in a worse quality though).


I think that supermarket quality is quite good in Germany! Or let's say, it usually "tastes fine" (maybe with some chemistry or not healthy)
btw: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladenöffnungszeit#Geschichte

German shops were opened 7 days per week by 19th century. In 1891, it was only allowed to open 5 hours on Sunday. From 1900 opening hours were limited on weekdays from 5AM to 9PM. From 1919, shops were closed on Sunday and opening hours on weekdays was from 7AM to 7PM. Later, it was limited from 7AM to 6:30PM and Saturday from 7AM to 2PM. From 1957 it was allowed to open on first Saturday per month by 8PM ("long Saturday). From 1989 "long Thursday" was introduced and shops were allowed to be opened by 8:30PM every Thursday! I remember that time, Thursday was THE shopping day.


----------



## Kpc21

I recently needed to buy a new filling valve for the toilet cistern in my bathroom – it didn't close when the tank was full, so the water was overflowing into the toilet.










This is a typical specialised item which you won't get in any supermarket.

You need to go either to a plumbing supply store or to a specialised DIY supermarket (the ones we have in Poland are: Castorama, Leroy Merlin and Obi, in Germany they have Bauhaus). In my case, going to a DIY supermarket was the option I wanted to avoid because the one which is more or less on my route home from work is really not well accessible with public transport (I would have to walk about 1 km from the bus stop and then 1 km back). And such "small" stuff is usually very overpriced there.

So I went to a plumbing supply store located near my work, also about 1 km on foot but without any need for taking a bus. It closes at 17, so I barely managed – but I managed.

Another option was ordering this valve online. But then I would have to pay for the delivery... And the valve in the store cost more or less the price of the delivery if I ordered it online. Online it would be cheaper – but that cheaper one would be probably of lower quality.



MichiH said:


> Exactly! And German local politician do often want to have this kind of shops in downtown. That's why they often limit opening hours for supermarkets to keep the small shops alive.


But from my experience, the bakery stores in Germany usually already have all the bread sold out around the midday 



MichiH said:


> I think that supermarket quality is quite good in Germany! Or let's say, it usually "tastes fine" (maybe with some chemistry or not healthy)
> btw: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladenöffnungszeit#Geschichte


The Lidl bread is very far from the bakery bread in terms of the quality 

Of the price too, of course.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> Which is stupid. I'm not doing that. Waste weekend time and gasoline to get groceries?!
> 
> That may also be why the grocery store in my town is open until 22h every day :cheers:


10 p.m? I've grocery-shopped later than that....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> ....
> I don't know whether there are any other nations in the christian world where shops are, or at least may be open in Eastern Sunday or Christmas.


If the U.S. counts as the Christian world, there's not much regulation of shopping hours. Christmas, New Year's Day, Thanksgiving are the days you'll have the most trouble finding things open (or checking hours before you go out to get something you forgot); I think Easter's less big a deal. But you might find supermarkets open some hours in the morning on even those days, convenience stores will tend to be open as usual.... There's been controversy in recent years about opening on Thanksgiving. I'm talking about places that don't sell food...food stores seem to be looked at differently by the public...as you may know, the day after Thanksgiving is a big, big shopping day. People are off from work and can start their Christmas shopping. By, say, 2005, more and more stores were starting their Black Friday sales on the evening of Thanksgiving Day (which is always a Thursday) or even earlier in the day. Then this got a backlash from the public and other retailers - you can find retailers advertising that "we're closed on Thanksgiving Day to permit our staff to enjoy time with their families" - and the trend reversed a bit, but now it may be going back the other way....
There is regulation of how much you pay people to work on major holidays, and if someone says their religious beliefs require them not to work on certain days, you have to respect that. (Although if anyone who's more familiar with American labor and employment law than I am wants to correct or refine this, go ahead. I'm no expert.)


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## Spookvlieger

# individualism


----------



## italystf

MichiH said:


> ^^ The bigger the company, the easier it can open longer, maybe even 24/7.
> The smaller the company or shop - maybe just a family business - the harder it is. The result might be that customers prefer shopping at bigger one just because they never need to care about opening hours. Family business might have less sales and might need to close.
> 
> That's more or less what's discussed in Germany.





ChrisZwolle said:


> Chains and supermarkets have taken a lot of business from small shop owners. I can get almost anything for my household in the supermarket, both food and non-food.
> 
> But those chains of various categories suffer a lot from internet competition, especially electronics and fashion. Many went bankrupt, while supermarkets remain.
> 
> Supermarkets don't have that much competition from the internet. Getting groceries delivered via the internet remains a niche segment. You only need new shoes or pants every once in a while but you need food and household items every day. So the masses still go to the supermarket for that.





MichiH said:


> Exactly! And German local politician do often want to have this kind of shops in downtown. That's why they often limit opening hours for supermarkets to keep the small shops alive.
> 
> 
> 
> I think that supermarket quality is quite good in Germany! Or let's say, it usually "tastes fine" (maybe with some chemistry or not healthy)
> btw: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladenöffnungszeit#Geschichte
> 
> German shops were opened 7 days per week by 19th century. In 1891, it was only allowed to open 5 hours on Sunday. From 1900 opening hours were limited on weekdays from 5AM to 9PM. From 1919, shops were closed on Sunday and opening hours on weekdays was from 7AM to 7PM. Later, it was limited from 7AM to 6:30PM and Saturday from 7AM to 2PM. From 1957 it was allowed to open on first Saturday per month by 8PM ("long Saturday). From 1989 "long Thursday" was introduced and shops were allowed to be opened by 8:30PM every Thursday! I remember that time, Thursday was THE shopping day.


Big stores replacing small family-owned shops and online sales replacing physical ones are the normal output of the free-market driven technological and social progress. They're not different than motor vehicles replacing horse-drawn vehicles of computers replacing typewriters. Government regulation of those things is IMHO just stupid and inefficient. We should just accept those changes and live accordingly.
The government should only regulate (with an adequate level of flexibility) employment laws (working hours, holidays, health care, benefits for working extra hours or at night or on festivities, etc...).
Too tight regulations don't help the economy to develope well; they may have negative impacts in terms of productivity and employment.
Having small grocery shops next to your house isn't a basic human right that need to be protected by the State at the expense of others, like freedom of speech or of religion.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> This reminds me of the Slovak post office. The delivery employees usually deliver Recommandé deliveries between 9 AM and 14 AM, which means that most of the consignees are at work.
> If you are not home and you are about to receive a Recommandé delivery, you are given an announcement tag into your mailbox. If you return you have to visit the determined post office (according to your area), submit the tag and you after signature you are to receive the delivery.
> To me, the delivery employees do completely useless work and are paid for nothing. Most of the people have to visit the post office personally anyway.




14 AM? You mean 2 PM. 
AM is an abbreviation for “ante meridiem,” I think - Latin for “before midday”
PM is “post....,” or “after.”
Which is how English-speakers (and for a change, we’ve all stuck together in this) deal with a 12-hour clock.
:cheers:


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> Big stores replacing small family-owned shops and online sales replacing physical ones are the normal output of the free-market driven technological and social progress. They're not different than motor vehicles replacing horse-drawn vehicles of computers replacing typewriters. Government regulation of those things is IMHO just stupid and inefficient. We should just accept those changes and live accordingly.
> The government should only regulate (with an adequate level of flexibility) employment laws (working hours, holidays, health care, benefits for working extra hours or at night or on festivities, etc...).
> Too tight regulations don't help the economy to develope well; they may have negative impacts in terms of productivity and employment.
> Having small grocery shops next to your house isn't a basic human right that need to be protected by the State at the expense of others, like freedom of speech or of religion.


According to the experiences in Finland, the liberation has not changed the bias to hypermarkets only, but many new small food stores have been born in cities. They are easily accessible, and it does not take half an hour to stroll in the shop just to buy a liter of milk. 

People are demanding an ever increasing selection, and small shops cannot fulfill that demand. Especially in other than Kinder-Küche-Kirche countries, people have no time to daily shopping in a zillion of small nice local shops.

The bureaucracy around the regulation might be pretty ridiculous. In Finland, the system leaked in many ways: The *400 sqm rule *allowed small shops less than 400 square meters to have more flexible opening hours. The *Kiosk rule* allowed kiosks with *a desk* to be open 24/7. However, there was the *200-euro rule* to limit the maximum payment at the desk. However, the 200-euro rule did not apply to prepayments via a bank transfer. The *double-holiday rule* allowed the shops to be open four hours at the Boxing day, Easter Monday, and other such cases when there are adjacent holidays. The *densely populated area rule* gave more freedom in rural areas. There was no clear criteria to determine which one is a densely populated area. The* tourist rule* made it possible to allow more liberal rules in tourist areas for a limited period. The *Christmas rule* extended the Sunday opening for three hours in November and December. Etc.


----------



## italystf

MattiG said:


> The bureaucracy around the regulation might be pretty ridiculous. In Finland, the system leaked in many ways: The *400 sqm rule *allowed small shops less than 400 square meters to have more flexible opening hours. The *Kiosk rule* allowed kiosks with *a desk* to be open 24/7. However, there was the *200-euro rule* to limit the maximum payment at the desk. However, the 200-euro rule did not apply to prepayments via a bank transfer. The *double-holiday rule* allowed the shops to be open four hours at the Boxing day, Easter Monday, and other such cases when there are adjacent holidays. The *densely populated area rule* gave more freedom in rural areas. There was no clear criteria to determine which one is a densely populated area. The* tourist rule* made it possible to allow more liberal rules in tourist areas for a limited period. The *Christmas rule* extended the Sunday opening for three hours in November and December. Etc.


At least in Finland the public sector is supposed to be efficient.
Now try to imagine such complicate regulations in a country with inefficient burocracy and a lot of corruption. You can easily imagine the mess that will arise.


----------



## MichiH

italystf said:


> We should just accept those changes and live accordingly.


I just wrote what people discuss in Germany. Especially conservative people.

I accept changes. Change is the only constant! :cheers:



MattiG said:


> Kinder-Küche-Kirche countries


 = _children - kitchen - church countries_ which means where women don't have a job but are just "at home" while their husbands earn the money.


----------



## Junkie

Regarding the Notre Dame fire and the investigation on going, there is a proof that the workers have been smoking on site. I apologize for my comments about the eventual "set up" as it seems there are obvious proofs for the devastation of this Christian monument.


----------



## italystf

Junkie said:


> Regarding the Notre Dame fire and the investigation on going, there is a proof that the workers have been smoking on site. I apologize for my comments about the eventual "set up" as it seems there are obvious proofs for the devastation of this Christian monument.


As rule of thumb, one should learn and wait to get clear information before speaking bullshit.


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> 10 p.m? I've grocery-shopped later than that....


When the Tesco stores came to CZ they boasted with being open 24/7. I remember doing quite a big grocery shopping there around 2 a.m. It's comparable to Walmart. Now there are only three stores left that still keep that policy.

It's funny how times change. When I came to live to The Netherlands the supermarkets were mostly closed on Sundays and state holidays. Quite a contrast to CZ where supermarkets were running almost everywhere 7 days a week. These days they are open also on Sundays (aside from some Bible places) in The Netherlands and there was a public discussion and regulation passed in CZ that banned big supermarkets opening on certain state holidays.

Imho the only regulation I would use here is this:

a) Retail jobs are not a crucial infrastructure. Let the employees freely decide whether they want to be planned in the holidays and weekends based on what the employer has to offer.

b) Work in the weekend, special times, holidays would need to be paid with mandatory law defined minimum surcharges in the order of 100 to 300 % or more, depending on which days and hours we are talking about. It would be up to the retailers whether they can make it profitable to keep the shop open.

Similar arrangement seems to me to be sensible for all sectors, aside from critical sectors with non stop operation. The minimum surcharges should be appropriately higher there given the lack of freedom to refuse to work on these days.


----------



## MattiG

Surel said:


> a) Retail jobs are not a crucial infrastructure. Let the employees freely decide whether they want to be planned in the holidays and weekends based on what the employer has to offer.


The funny thing is that the big supermarkets typically are manned almost 24/7, because the shelves are usually filled during the night time. This work is not regulated but working at the cashier desk is.


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## Rebasepoiss

^^ That is exactly why a hypermarket chain in Estonia (Prisma - owned by Finns) decided to open several of its stores in Tallinn and one in Tartu 24/7. The workers are present anyway so the store might as well be open to customers. In Estonia there is no difference in the eyes of the law whether a worker is filling shelves or working at the cashier desk, the same general rules apply


----------



## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ That is exactly why a hypermarket chain in Estonia (Prisma - owned by Finns) decided to open several of its stores in Tallinn and one in Tartu 24/7. The workers are present anyway so the store might as well be open to customers. In Estonia there is no difference in the eyes of the law whether a worker is filling shelves or working at the cashier desk, the same general rules apply


The experiences from 3+ years show that the liberation has not led to a big change in smaller towns and in the rural areas, except for the regular Sunday openings.

The biggest changes have taken place in Helsinki area, where it is a standard to keep to doors open up to 2200 or 2300 daily. A few hypermarkets are open 24/7, at least three Prismas and two Citymarkets. Elsewhere, the hypermarkets are usually open 0800-2200 or 0800-2100.

It was last Saturday I was shopping at Prisma Olari, which is quite close to my home and open 24/7. It was about 23 o'clock, and there were quite many people there. I has promised to make the Easter lunch to the family, and that time it was pretty comfortable to do shopping. I had stayed a few days at our countryside house, and there was absolutely no hurry to leave the place early enough to catch a shop before it closes.


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## ChrisZwolle

I worked at a major supermarket in my teens (who didn't). We usually restocked the entire supermarket in just 1 - 1.5 hour. Two or three truckloads arrived at 6:30 - 7:00 and the supermarket was cleaned up and open by 8 a.m. 

It wasn't uncommon to have 60 or 70 people working for 1 - 1.5 hour before school. 

Nowadays early morning work has become unpopular so they restock the supermarket in the evening after closing time or even during the day.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> I worked at a major supermarket in my teens (who didn't). We usually restocked the entire supermarket in just 1 - 1.5 hour. Two or three truckloads arrived at 6:30 - 7:00 and the supermarket was cleaned up and open by 8 a.m.
> 
> It wasn't uncommon to have 60 or 70 people working for 1 - 1.5 hour before school.
> 
> Nowadays early morning work has become unpopular so they restock the supermarket in the evening after closing time or even during the day.



This is very typical for Lidl during Sunday evenings before another special offer week begins. You are usually facing aisles full of cartons and workers unboxing them together with empty racks.


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## Verso

Greetings from Orahovica.


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## Verso

Damn, I've just seen a Rolls Royce in Osijek!


----------



## DanielFigFoz

ChrisZwolle said:


> I worked at a major supermarket in my teens (who didn't). We usually restocked the entire supermarket in just 1 - 1.5 hour. Two or three truckloads arrived at 6:30 - 7:00 and the supermarket was cleaned up and open by 8 a.m.
> 
> It wasn't uncommon to have 60 or 70 people working for 1 - 1.5 hour before school.
> 
> Nowadays early morning work has become unpopular so they restock the supermarket in the evening after closing time or even during the day.


I work in one now, during my master's degree. There's a night shift that does the stocking from when the supermarket closes at 11pm until it opens at 6am, two or three people. Then there's also a couple of people who do it during the day.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> I worked at a major supermarket in my teens (who didn't).


To be honest, I don't know anyone in person who ever did (or told me that s/he did).

Edit: Sorry, I remember a guy who did it during his years of study. His next job was at Daimler.


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## ChrisZwolle

It's a very common starter job in the Netherlands for high school students. Most people worked there for 4-6 hours per week when they were 15 or 16 years old.


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## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> in the Netherlands


kay:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What kind of work do you do in Germany when you are in high school?


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## MichiH

I worked at an industry plant during summer school holidays and got 500 DM per week when I was 15..17. It would be about 700 € today. I worked 10 weeks in total over 3 years and got 5000 DM tax-free!


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## ChrisZwolle

But not outside of the summer holidays? In the Netherlands it's very common for high school students to work a couple of hours per week to earn some money to spend. Students age 17-18 also typically work on Saturdays so they can finance their junk food, hobby, transportation or partying. It's also good to learn your first job skills and communication with total strangers.


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## bogdymol

When I was in high school, during summer time I worked at a small "paperwork office".

Such offices were a thing back then, and people would visit them whenever they needed to have their ID, passports or driving licenses renewed, or when they were buying/selling a car. Such offices were preparing all their documents and filled out all the required forms, so that they had their thing resolved quickly when going at the government office. I was mostly taking pictures of these people and printing them on photo-paper, as back then for renewing the passport for example, and sometimes for the ID cards also, you needed to bring a printed pictures. Now there are much fewer such offices, as most of the things got digital and less paperwork is required.

I also took pictures at weddings for a while during those years.


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## MichiH

In 1990s, most pupils had jobs like I in the summer only. Some worked in shifts and got more money. My job was not that hard and just 7 hours/day 2 minutes from home.... Some delivered news papers once per week also outside of summer holidays.
And it's quite common that teens start working ("Ausbildung" = Dual education system) when they are 15 or 16. I started late at almost 19.


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## Spookvlieger

I also did factory work in shifts as a teenager. €2400 x 2 months untaxed during the summer holidays. That was easy money. I usually made enough in those two months to have some sort of financial freedom.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Damn, I've just seen a Rolls Royce in Osijek!


Yeah, that guy is crazy about cars. He also owns two Alfa Romeo 8C, several rare RR's, Jags, Aston Martins, Ferarris etc. Although he obviously sold some of them recently, they say to Monte Carlo. Photo approves that.


----------



## Verso

Here, my photo:










Edit: geez, why is it such a bad quality?


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## tfd543

I worked in a pharmacy when i was a teenager delivering meds to the elderly. It totally boosted my punctuality and communication skills. After some time, I didnt even do it for the money anymore because it was a cool job biking around the hood and meeting people. I will always recommend the youth to get out of the House after school and find a job.


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## Kpc21

Where do pharmacies deliver medicines directly to the elderly? 

Here it's even forbidden to sell prescription medicines online. There are some pharmacies that offer ordering them online but you must receive them physically at the pharmacy counter.

And the person selling in the pharmacy must have appropriate qualifications. There must be always at least one employee with MSc in the field of pharmacy, others must have graduated from a pharmacy secondary school.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> But not outside of the summer holidays? In the Netherlands it's very common for high school students to work a couple of hours per week to earn some money to spend. Students age 17-18 also typically work on Saturdays so they can finance their junk food, hobby, transportation or partying. It's also good to learn your first job skills and communication with total strangers.


The Estonian tax system is highly unfavourable towards part-time work of any kind. In addition, there are rather strict laws when it comes to underage workers. The mentality of employers is also such that it's full time or nothing. Therefore it's very difficult to do part time work even as a university student. Most of the students who do work (lots don't) have to do it full-time which means they often struggle in school.


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> Where do pharmacies deliver medicines directly to the elderly?
> 
> Here it's even forbidden to sell prescription medicines online. There are some pharmacies that offer ordering them online but you must receive them physically at the pharmacy counter.
> 
> And the person selling in the pharmacy must have appropriate qualifications. There must be always at least one employee with MSc in the field of pharmacy, others must have graduated from a pharmacy secondary school.


In Denmark. Sure, the staff at the pharmacy have the qualifications but as a deliverer, I didn't have to know anything about medications. Sometimes I just had to open the bottles for them as they were too tight for their poor weak hands.

Yep, this is how we do it up here.

But hey, now when we're at it, how do the elderly get the medications over there ? I mean there are some that are too old and can't walk.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> Where do pharmacies deliver medicines directly to the elderly?
> 
> Here it's even forbidden to sell prescription medicines online. There are some pharmacies that offer ordering them online but you must receive them physically at the pharmacy counter.
> 
> And the person selling in the pharmacy must have appropriate qualifications. There must be always at least one employee with MSc in the field of pharmacy, others must have graduated from a pharmacy secondary school.


The Finnish system allows the non-face-to-face delivery. Some pharmacies send the drugs by mail or even deliver them to home. A recent invention is a drug automat, similar to the parcel automats of Finnish Post. Such a device is located close to the pharmacy, and the drugs bought can be picked up when the pharmacy is closed. There may be restrictions on which drugs can be delivered into the automat. The nation-wide prescription database makes such service possible: no need to carry papers into the pharmacy.

Another extra service is the dosing at the pharmacy: Several drugs can be sorted into disposable bags displaying the time to take the drugs. Makes the things easier to those ones having a large number of drugs.


----------



## bogdymol

Rebasepoiss said:


> The Estonian tax system is highly unfavourable towards part-time work of any kind.


In Romania it is the same. It is either full-time work or no work at all. There are not really many people working part-time.

This is also due to the tax legislation. In Romania there is a minimum wage decided by the government. In case you work part-time and you earn less than the minimum wage (which happens often for part-time works), you still need to pay the your taxes and health insurance contributions as for the minimum wage. There were also reports of people having to pay more in taxes than they were actually earning (therefore working and having to pay out of their own pockets for that "privilege").


----------



## italystf

I've seen Andorran plates in Italy once or twice, I'm not sure, and I've seen 3 or 4 of them when I was in Barcelona in 2011.


----------



## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> The Netherlands and Norway use prefilled forms that you can access online and change anything as you need.


So the system which we also have starting with this year 

For the previous year, I didn't work at all, so I don't need to submit a form (although through two previous years I had to). With the start of this year I began a full-time job, so in a year, I do it again.

But I helped my parents in submitting it. I graduated from my MSc in October. In Poland we have a tax deduction for children (it seems to be about 100 zł/20 euro for a month for a child), to which one is entitled as long as your children study (they don't have to be underage) – so we had to indicate in the form that the my parents' deduction for my person is valid only for 10 months instead of the standard 12.

By the way – you probably heard that the main reason why our current government (the one for which the constitution is just a piece of paper meaning nothing... well, it's exaggeration but if they could, they would probably like to make Poland a dictatorship...) is so popular among not well educated, simple people is that they promised and gave a social benefit – 500 zł (about 120 euro) for each child /although for an underage one only/. Only if you have at least two underage kids (which they did not indicate in their election campaign).

This benefit has a form of just an amount of money, transferred to you by the social care department of your municipality. So an army of clerks must work on that...

If they wanted to introduce such a benefit, it would be much simpler and cheaper just to modify that tax deduction and increase the amount you can deduct from the tax for each child.

But it would be too difficult for the masses to understand...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Today is Labour Day. The Netherlands is one of the few European countries where it is not a public holiday and is generally not observed by the population, though there are typically some events or demonstration by socialists. 

Socialism is a niche in the Netherlands, the Labour Party has been more influential though there has never been a left-wing government in the Netherlands. Labour has delivered the prime minister several times, but always in a coalition with conservative / right-wing parties. I wonder if the Netherlands is an exception in Europe, never having had a true left-wing government, like Hollande in France or Schröder in Germany.


----------



## MichiH

*Unemployment rate Europe, 2018*










https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/stati...tle=Unemployment_statistics_at_regional_level

Edit, Ranking added:









4 out of 11 "top" regions are in Bavaria but also 4 Czech regions.


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## Kpc21

I am not complaining but just wondering. Why did they include Turkey but not countries such as Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, even no Bosnia and Herzegovina?

It's interesting that one of the biggest unemployment rates in Germany is in the... capital city.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Isn't overnight shipping amazing? I ordered a PC part from Conrad, which was sent from southern Germany. I ordered it Monday at 9.30 p.m. and 36 hours later it was delivered, 700 or 800 kilometers away. 

I wonder how this works in larger countries. In the Netherlands it's pretty common to order something before midnight and get it delivered the next afternoon (sometimes only 12 hours laters). This works because the country is small and transportation is efficient. But imagine ordering something in Northern Norway. Not all stuff is feasible for air freight.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Isn't overnight shipping amazing? I ordered a PC part from Conrad, which was sent from southern Germany. I ordered it Monday at 9.30 p.m. and 36 hours later it was delivered, 700 or 800 kilometers away.
> 
> I wonder how this works in larger countries. In the Netherlands it's pretty common to order something before midnight and get it delivered the next afternoon (sometimes only 12 hours laters). This works because the country is small and transportation is efficient. But imagine ordering something in Northern Norway. Not all stuff is feasible for air freight.


Norway online shopping is not that simple because of customs :bash:

That is what you get from being on the EEA and not the EU.

If you order something from a domestic online store, they will deliver at d+1 only near their distribution center, which is most cases is around Oslo or near the Swedish border.

Bergen, Trondheim and Stavanger get most stuff at d+2. Tromsø and Bodø are often advertised as d+3 because vendors often like to consolidate loads and do not send trucks every day up north. Certain stores shop overnight to larger cities between April and October but add one day during winter/early spring.

Lack of competition with EU retailers means Norwegian retailers often get away with this extra day. Some stuff is sent by cargo planes, then it is d+1.

Many EU-based online vendors will not ship to Norway, although the procedures are quite simple: they must send the merchandise without VAT with an exports form, and then the Norwegian shipping agent will collect Norwegian VAT.* Amazon does this automatically and already shows the price VAT-free when you put delivery address from Norway.

Another thing about Norwegian retail logistics is that there are limited services that deliver smaller parcels to your home (unless you pay a lot). The postal service sends all packages to the nearest collecting point (often a grocery store). So do most 'cheap' logistics firms. I guess that is a function of Norwegian working hours with few people at home at midday and also how cities are spread out due to geography.

Importing foodstuff is even trickier because certain things have special duty taxes (protein supplements or wheat-based biscuits) due to carve-outs on EU harmonized taxation system. 

*A harmless quirk of Norwegian VAT is that the rates are informed ex-price, contrary to EU standards. I.e. they tell MGW is 25% so a (pre-VAT) price of 10.000 becomes 12.500 with VAT. So a comparable VAT rate to EU common practice is 20%... (tax * final_price).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You can see where 'Labour Day' means showing up for work


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> I am not complaining but just wondering. Why did they include Turkey but not countries such as Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, even no Bosnia and Herzegovina?


I was also wondering. Maybe they've included EU candidates:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_enlargement_of_the_European_Union#Summary_table

Bosnia is just an "applicant" and Kosovo a "potential candidate".



Kpc21 said:


> It's interesting that one of the biggest unemployment rates in Germany is in the... capital city.


Many reasons. For instance, there's less industry.

I'm really surprised by the low figures of Czechia. Do they count "different"? Is there a common definition of "unemployment" at all? I guess there isn't.... Germany changed the definition a few years ago and figures really decreased. What a surprise... Politicians were happy... hno:


----------



## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> Another thing about Norwegian retail logistics is that there are limited services that deliver smaller parcels to your home (unless you pay a lot). The postal service sends all packages to the nearest collecting point (often a grocery store). So do most 'cheap' logistics firms. I guess that is a function of Norwegian working hours with few people at home at midday and also how cities are spread out due to geography.


In Poland it has always been a standard to get the package delivered directly to your home. The most common problem is that the delivery often takes place in the hours when you are at work. Normally you can choose between the post and one of the parcel delivery companies, like DPD, DHL, UPS etc. The post is cheaper and it has such an advantage that if you are not present at home at the moment of the delivery, you can pick up your package from your local post office (which unfortunately often involves waiting in a queue with pensioners paying their bills while the ladies at the counters work at this speed). With the parcel delivery companies, the courier appears at your door again on the next day, usually at the same time – and that's all. If you aren't present again, either the package goes back to the sender or sometimes you can pick it up at their logistics center, which is usually somewhere far away. The post is also slower.

Some time ago, one company introduced those "package machines":










and this is a great solution because they work 24/7. Of course, the delivery to one of those machines is also cheaper. One problem is that some sellers don't allow paying for the ordered package at the machine (with other sellers, you can do it just in this machine, by card) and you have to pay in advance. And I think most people don't trust paying in advance and they want to pay while receiving the package.

As a response to that, some companies introduced some other options, e.g. the post allows you to get the package delivered just to one of their post offices, without the postman taking it to your house. Another company cooperates with a branch of newspaper kiosks and you can receive the package at their kiosk.

By the way, some delivery companies let you choose the time of the delivery. But, at least for me, it usually doesn't work. I choose the time in the evening and the delivery man comes in the morning. When he calls me, he just tells that only in the morning he is in my area and in the evening he delivers packages somewhere else...

The problem with making orders abroad is nearly non-existent because there is so many local online stores with various types of goods that you usually just don't need to order them in another country. Although there are some things for which the best place to order is Amazon. Some time ago it got also somehow popular to order some Chinese stuff on AliExpress. The problem with that is, again, that in theory, you should pay the VAT for the parcels delivered from China. In practice, in something like 70% of cases (maybe even more), the customs were just letting the packages through, only some unlucky people were getting not the ordered package but a letter from the customs office telling that they must pay the VAT first before they get it (as the proof of the price, they usually require you to send a screenshot from the offer). Now it's changing and more and more parcels are VAT-ed, they even opened a new customs office for those international packages to tighten it.

If the seller sends the package in the morning it's possible to get it on the next working day (today isn't a working day, so Chris's PC part wouldn't be delivered today in Poland  ). But often they aren't that fast to send it.

Talking about the local online stores, we have two things.

1. Allegro. This is kinda our equivalent of eBay. Originally it was a place where mostly private people were selling some used stuff they don't need any more. And the offers were usually auctions, so the one of the buyers who proposed the highest bid was winning the auction and getting the product. Unless his bid did not exceed the minimum price established by the seller (which wasn't known for the bidders). But with the time, more and more offers there were offers of actual shops and now nearly all of them are ones. And they are, of course, not auctions but so called "Buy Now" offers – with a predefined price. Even the whole platform has recently become quite unfriendly for the private sellers – they aim at businesses because seemingly they get more money from them. Private sellers have moved to other platforms – but the advantage of Allegro was that it provided some level of protection for the buyer while the other platforms (the most popular one now being OLX) clearly state that buying something without meeting the seller directly is at your risk and they don't recommend that.

2. Price comparison websites. There are several ones: Ceneo, Skąpiec, Nokaut – but Ceneo, actually owned by Allegro, is the most popular one with the biggest number of shops. They collect offers of many online shops and allow people to compare them and – usually – select the cheapest one. They also allow to express opinions about the products and the shops.



MichiH said:


> Many reasons. For instance, there's less industry.


Yeah but a big city by definition offers much more options to work than, let's say, the countryside or just small towns. It always used to be so that people migrated to cities just looking for work. And indeed in Poland it is so that it's easiest to find a job in cities. And it's worst (especially if you look for a well-paid job and you want to have a sensible employer and not one who would just exploit and mob you) in towns.

It's also worse for young women because the employers are afraid she will soon get pregnant and they will stay without a worker but still having to pay her.

And for the elderly because they are protected by law from being fired shortly before becoming pensioners...


----------



## Junkie

MichiH said:


> I was also wondering. Maybe they've included EU candidates:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_enlargement_of_the_European_Union#Summary_table
> 
> Bosnia is just an "applicant" and Kosovo a "potential candidate".


Turkey has been a candidate for two decades now, since 1999 while North Macedonia since 2005 almost 15 years now........ While Bosnia might become a candidate in 2020. All might never become members of the alliance.


----------



## Kpc21

Apart from the Labour Day, today is the 15th anniversary of, if I am not mistaken, the biggest extensions of the EU when many Central European countries joined it.

For this occasion – 15 years of Poland in the EU – the Kartografia Ekstremalna profile on Facebook published a map how Poland voted in the EU accession referendum:


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## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> Yeah but a big city by definition offers much more options to work than, let's say, the countryside or just small towns. It always used to be so that people migrated to cities just looking for work. And indeed in Poland it is so that it's easiest to find a job in cities. And it's worst (especially if you look for a well-paid job and you want to have a sensible employer and not one who would just exploit and mob you) in towns.


Germany has 16 states. 2 out of 3 "city-states" do currently have the highest unemployment rates, Bremen (9.7%) and Berlin (7.7%).

https://de.statista.com/statistik/d...osenquote-in-deutschland-nach-bundeslaendern/

I've googled a bit but I'm not sure about the reasons. In general, "rich" southern Germany has much lower unemployment rates (Bavaria 2.8%, BaWü 3.1%). Northeast Germany does generally still have the highest rates (former GDR). And Berlin is just in the middle of nowhere, errr, of the GDR. Berlin is growing quick (+6.9% from 2011 to 2015) and it seems that it's quicker growing than new jobs evolve from new buisness. See report from 2016:


> In Berlin ist die Zahl der Erwerbstätigen in den letzten zehn Jahren noch stärker als in Gesamtdeutschland gewachsen. Allerdings konnte die Arbeitslosigkeit nicht überdurchschnittlich abgebaut werden, da gleichzeitig das Arbeitskräftepotential in der Stadt erheblich zugenommen hat.


Number of employees was growing above average but unemployment rate didn't decrease because the number of potential employees was growing much more.

The next sentence is also interesting:


> An Bedeutung gewonnen haben Tätigkeiten, für die eine mittlere Qualifikation benötigt wird.


Especially jobs for medium skills grew.

I think that jobs for higher skills are a good base. This kind of Germans usually don't go to Berlin but to other regions like "the south", Frankfurt, Hamburg or Cologne. People I know going to Berlin, are going to Berlin because they wanna go to the "young and hip" city of Berlin. Not because of a job but to be in Berlin. They just apply for any job and do often change their job. I have a customer in Berlin and they pay bad. Really bad. It's a startup company and they employ a lot of young and international people. Many of them are under 30 and have just finished their studies. Of course, they mostly speak English...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Employment growth in 'hip' cities is also often driven by low-paying jobs in retail, restaurants and hospitality. But the high cost of living means that such jobs may provide a very low standard of living as rent and utilities eat much of the income away. 

The United States is also infamous for this. For example the highest paying jobs are in San Francisco, but the housing market is so ridiculously expensive that a $ 60,000 income in Houston provides a better standard of living than a $ 100,000 income in San Francisco. Housing / rental prices are as much as 60-70% lower.


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## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Isn't overnight shipping amazing? I ordered a PC part from Conrad, which was sent from southern Germany. I ordered it Monday at 9.30 p.m. and 36 hours later it was delivered, 700 or 800 kilometers away.
> 
> I wonder how this works in larger countries. In the Netherlands it's pretty common to order something before midnight and get it delivered the next afternoon (sometimes only 12 hours laters). This works because the country is small and transportation is efficient. But imagine ordering something in Northern Norway. Not all stuff is feasible for air freight.


I placed an order for a German strandkorb this Monday at Amazon Germany. The expected delivery is due next week. Interesting to see when and how it arrives. It will be delivered to our countryside home, where there is no regular mail service. (Such furniture is not available here.)

The domestic delivery of Finland is not very fast. The Finnish Post is struggling about the decreasing revenues because decreasing volumes. Their response is to save money by dropping the service level. The standard delivery time for letters and parcels is three working days. No domestic air mail any more. The main competitor is Matkahuolto, the nation-wide operator for the bus cargo. Their delivery time is 1-3 days. The parcels are usually sent and picked up at the local retail shops. 

I believe these delivery times are pretty realistic in a large sparsely populated country. There are a few shops to provide with a quick near-immediate delivery, but they are exceptions. Quite expensive, and in Helsinki area only.


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## italystf

I was wondering: how many countries/territories in the world forbid foreigners to drive? P.R. China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and something else?


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## bogdymol

^^ That's a very interesting question. Are there any other such countries?

I also knew about China and was wondering a bit, as often when I go on a holiday I take a roadtrip with a rented car through that country. In China that would not be possible.

On the other side, I have seen many Chinese people renting a car in Europe while on holiday. I find this a bit unfair, and such a point might be a negotiation point for the EU. If China accepts EU driver licenses, EU should also accept Chinese ones. Right now it only works one-way...


----------



## Junkie

italystf said:


> I was wondering: how many countries/territories in the world forbid foreigners to drive? P.R. China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and something else?


Where do you read that in China its forbidden to drive a car being a non-national? I never heard of this but I have read that in Vietnam its not possible.


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## bogdymol

Junkie said:


> Where do you read that in China its forbidden to drive a car being a non-national? I never heard of this but I have read that in Vietnam its not possible.


Nope, it is not false info. In China you cannot drive with a foreign license. I have read it also before from multiple sources. I also remember seeing a TopGear / Grand Tour episode where they were also saying that they need to get a local license to drive there.

ÖAMTC is the Austrian auto-club, which has various information about anything car-related. They are always up to date and very reliable. They write about China as follows:



ÖAMTC said:


> Der Internationale Führerschein wie auch der nationale Führerschein werden in China nicht anerkannt.
> 
> Um in China ein Fahrzeug lenken zu dürfen, wird eine temporäre chinesische Fahrerlaubnis benötigt. Diese muss bei der örtlichen Polizeistation beantragt werden und ist maximal 3 Monate gültig. Für die Beantragung sind folgende Dokumente erforderlich:
> - gültiger nationaler oder Internationaler Führerschein
> - Einladungsschreiben
> - 2 Passfotos
> - ausgefülltes Antragsformular (in Chinesisch)
> 
> Der temporäre Führerschein wird nach einem zweistündigen Fahrkurs und nach Bezahlung einer Gebühr ausgestellt. Nähere Informationen zum Verfahren sind bei der chinesischen Botschaft zu erfragen (siehe Wichtige Adressen).


The national or the international drivers license is not recognized in China. Instead, you need to take a 2 hours driving lesson course, pay a tax, show your current national or international license, get some kind of invitation, 2 passport pictures as well as fill a form (only in Chinese!). If you do all of this, you will get a temporary Chinese license valid for max. 3 months.



Junkie said:


> but I have read that in Vietnam its not possible.


My neighbor has been last year in Vietnam, rented a motorcycle and drove around for a couple of days. He has a Romanian drivers license.


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## MichiH

^^ You need a Chinese driver license to drive a car in China.

A colleague of mine has a job in China now. He will be there for minimum 3 years. Sure, our company offers a (personal) driving service but I asked him whether he will try to get a Chinese license. He told me that he won't try it because "you just don't want it". "Why not"? As long as cyclists drive like crazy - at night without lights - or parents waiting at the road side with their child.... for a car passing by.... A car driver is ALWAYS guilty if there is any accident. If you kill one, you will really have a problem...


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## g.spinoza

I've spent today in Luxembourg City. I didn't expect anything particular but it is really a very nice town.


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## ChrisZwolle

Luxembourg may have the worst traffic in Europe relative to its size. Rush hour is brutal on A3/A6 and even from neighboring France and Belgium.


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## x-type

Junkie said:


> Where do you read that in China its forbidden to drive a car being a non-national? I never heard of this but I have read that in Vietnam its not possible.


Top Gear squad drove in Vietnam. I'm not sure with what kind of driving license tough.

Some North African countries (Lybia e.g.) used to require their own registration of the foreign vehicle to be eligible to drive on their roads (new license plates, too).


----------



## italystf

MichiH said:


> A car driver is ALWAYS guilty if there is any accident. If you kill one, you will really have a problem...


That's why some Chinese drivers deliberately kill pedestrians that they have accidentally injured. Once they're dead, they cannot speak in courts. hno:
An acquiatance of mine was hit by a car in China. She ended up with only minor scratches, as the car was driving very slowly in a parking lot. They said that she was lucky not only for not having been seriously injured in the accident, but also for not having been deliberately murdered by the driver (OK, maybe they are rare cases compared to the population of China, but they happen).

In other countries, driving while foreigner, while not illegal, is highly discouraged. In Cuba, for example, if a foreigner injures a Cuban while driving (that is highly possible, considering the terrible state of the Cuban roads and the presence of pedestrians, bicycles, horse carts and rundown vintage motor vehicles on main roads), he will be prevented to leave the country or even imprisoned until the case is settled in court, something that may last months or even years. No foreign diplomacy can help, as it's a written law of the Cuban state that one is supposed to know and accept before driving in the country.
It may also be not wise to self-drive in some developing countries with almost no traffic discipline/enforcement, like India or Egypt, especially in large urban areas.


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## italystf

x-type said:


> Some North African countries (Lybia e.g.) used to require their own registration of the foreign vehicle to be eligible to drive on their roads (new license plates, too).


During Gaddafi regime all foreign visitors entering Lybia needed an escort. It was possible to enter with private vehicles, but you had to travel escorted and temporarily re-register the vehicle with Lybia plate.
There are no limitation at all in driving a personal vehicle or rent one in Morocco or Tunisia. I'm not sure about Algeria or Egypt.


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## cinxxx

italystf said:


> It may also be not wise to self-drive in some developing countries with almost no traffic discipline/enforcement, like India or Egypt, especially in large urban areas.


I know Germans that would recommend the same about Italy


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## MichiH

^^ sissies


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## italystf

cinxxx said:


> I know Germans that would recommend the same about Italy


Ok, but they're absolutely not comparable. Compare traffic fatality rate of Italy with those of those countries. Or look at dascam videos from those countries.
Some people don't feel confortable to drive in some scearios, like large cities, winding mountain roads, or adverse meteo conditions. That doesn't mean that an average experienced driver can drive safely in such scenarios with just more attention.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> I was wondering: how many countries/territories in the world forbid foreigners to drive? P.R. China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and something else?


A Slovenian woman rode a motorbike across Saudi Arabia in 2002.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benka_Pulko


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## Kpc21

A few years ago there was a case of a Polish sportsman who was driving a car in Serbia and participated in an accident in which died a local well recognized doctor. According to him, it wasn't his fault, it was that doctor who caused the accident. But he was accused of everything, he didn't even really get a possibility of defending himself and therefore he had to spend some time in a Serbian jail... I can find the news on that but really I have read such an article a few years ago.

But even in Europe, in the EU, driving in another country, where you don't live, causes some risks. If the police wants to fine you but you don't agree with the fine they propose... you practically have no other choice but to accept that. In your country you can just say you want the court to judge you instead of the police and everything is OK, the police passes your case to the court and they check if the policeman was right or not. If you didn't break any law, you don't pay anything and you don't get any penalty points, if you did – you are likely to pay even more than the police wanted from you because the court doesn't work for free. But the court may also look at the case from a wider perspective, take into account that e.g. you are a professional driver and suspending your driving license leaves you without any job, that you are a very poor person and the standard fine might be just a too high punishment and give a lower one than the police normally can and so on.

But if you are abroad and you don't agree with the police's decision – what they do is they arrest you to the moment of your trial at the court. And they arrange this trial as fast as it's possible (normally you would wait months for that but in this case, the waiting time is much shorter). So if you don't want to be arrested – you just have to pay... Even if you know the law and it's clear for you that the police is wrong.




MattiG said:


> The standard delivery time for letters and parcels is three working days. No domestic air mail any more. The main competitor is Matkahuolto, the nation-wide operator for the bus cargo. Their delivery time is 1-3 days. The parcels are usually sent and picked up at the local retail shops.


What about the worldwide delivery companies like DPD, DHL etc.?

Here they really compete with the post and the shops usually offer a choice between the post and one of those companies. Sometimes only one of those companies is the only option (especially for some more expensive packages, they don't trust the post – although I don't believe their quality is much higher).

The price is also not very different here. The post is slightly cheaper but not much.


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## italystf

^^There have been some international controversies over Slovenian police, that often confiscates cars and documents of foreign drivers caught without vignette and unable to pay the fine on the spot. According to some, this punishment is not proportional with the violation.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ The thing with the punishment not proportional to the violation was also common in my home town in Romania a couple of years ago. 

The public parking spaces (on the side of the road) were “administered” by a private company in the name of the city, and they got a % of the fines for this. If you did not pay for your parking, they would come and block your car’s wheel (then you would have to pay also an extra fine). There have been reports when the car was blocked so quickly, that the driver didn’t even have time to to the next street corner to get a parking ticket from the machine.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> What about the worldwide delivery companies like DPD, DHL etc.?
> 
> Here they really compete with the post and the shops usually offer a choice between the post and one of those companies. Sometimes only one of those companies is the only option (especially for some more expensive packages, they don't trust the post – although I don't believe their quality is much higher).
> 
> The price is also not very different here. The post is slightly cheaper but not much.


Their processes are tuned for the B2B business model, and their B2C delivery has not been very successful. The last mile sucks.

The basic problem is the fact that Finland is not a Kinder-Küche-Kirche country. Therefore, the daytime home delivery usually fails. DHL has said that they have a success rate of 30 per cent for the first attempt. I have been working with industrial-grade customer-facing processes for decades, and the failure rate of 70% seems extremely inefficient to me. 

DHL has nowadays their own mail lockers, but not very many of them. In addition, they co-operate with the Finnish Post for the last-mile delivery. The parcel may be delivered to local postal pick-off point, or to a Post-owned locker. That does not improve the speed, but it reduces the unnecessary hassle.


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## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> I know Germans that would recommend the same about Italy


Road fatalities per 100k vehicles in 2015:
Italy 7.3
Germany 6.8


not that different...


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## Autobahn-mann

cinxxx said:


> I know Germans that would recommend the same about Italy


It depends from which part of Italy…
I don't think they're scared in South Tyrol...


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> ^^ The thing with the punishment not proportional to the violation was also common in my home town in Romania a couple of years ago.
> 
> The public parking spaces (on the side of the road) were “administered” by a private company in the name of the city, and they got a % of the fines for this. If you did not pay for your parking, they would come and block your car’s wheel (then you would have to pay also an extra fine). There have been reports when the car was blocked so quickly, that the driver didn’t even have time to to the next street corner to get a parking ticket from the machine.


In Italy there was a scandal few years ago when it was discovered that some traffic lights had been illegally altered to make the orange phase extremely short, thus fining more drivers for passing with red.
The company selling altered traffic lights and cameras got a percentage of traffic fines issued.


----------



## cinxxx

Autobahn-mann said:


> It depends from which part of Italy…
> I don't think they're scared in South Tyrol...


I drove with a German friend to La Spezia a few years ago. He was around 45 then and the first time ever in Italy.

Even driving on the A22 in Südtirol he noticed how for some construction works during the night there was only one guy with a litt stick warning about it, no speed limitation even. 

Driving on the local roads was often an adventure with all kinds of stuff going on, he was very surprised and a few times a little scared.
I told him that it's normal, nothing to be worried  I kind of liked it. Italy always reminds me of home in so many ways.

But besides that he was very impressed by the natural and architectural beauty to be found and next years flew to Rome and wanted to see more of Italy.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> You can see where 'Labour Day' means showing up for work


How was it today?

In Poland, the roads seemed to be almost empty. Many people took one, two or three days of vacation today (2nd May, 30th April, 29th April – primarily 2nd May, so today) which resulted in a whole free week – as 1st May and 3rd May are public holidays in Poland.

I wonder if it could be seen on the map...



MattiG said:


> The basic problem is the fact that Finland is not a Kinder-Küche-Kirche country. Therefore, the daytime home delivery usually fails.


Poland also isn't any more. In most families both parents work. In some cases there are several generations living in the same house, so in such a case it's not a problem. Although it was more popular in the past, now it's more and more rare.

Sometimes the delivery men leave the packages at the neighbor (of couse only in cases when they are already paid) – but people usually complain about that as not everyone is in good terms with his neighbor, so the neighbor could easily just steal the package.


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## Verso

We still have holiday today :cheers: (the only country in EU).


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## Kpc21

We have an almost-holiday today and a holiday tomorrow – isn't it better?


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## MichiH

More likely in November than in September?


----------



## Penn's Woods

I could swear the Skyline Drive, in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, was one way, but it's clearly not the case now, and I can't find any proof it used to be....


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## Penn's Woods

Delete - duplicate


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## g.spinoza

Uh, I forgot: the road around the Royal Palace of Stupinigi, in a rural area outside Turin, is 2-laned and one way:

https://www.google.it/maps/@44.9963...oF6gJHeWQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=it&authuser=0


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## Alex_ZR

Road that leads to Avala mountain near Belgrade is also one way, you go up from one side and go down on the other side:










https://goo.gl/maps/kZagz97HLmyV2e5h9


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## x-type

Climb to Sljeme over Zagreb is one way.
https://www.google.hr/maps/@45.8772...4!1sYHYeoAbhBE1H3Ubzm3sOOw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

https://www.google.hr/maps/@45.8587...=34.59905&pitch=0&thumbfov=100!7i13312!8i6656

Northernmost part of the road on island Pag
https://www.google.hr/maps/@44.6898...4!1sgqBGsVfk_qvtdbYZPvy2OQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

This one is interesting. Approach road to/from ferry port Jablanac
https://www.google.hr/maps/@44.7071...4!1sgDU_DzA1LEYKZTV_eS_zVg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656


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## Kpc21

MichiH said:


> More likely in November than in September?


Yeah, I am dumb.

But someone whose native language use those Latin-originated month names would never make such a mistake.


----------



## Highway89

Penn's Woods said:


> I could swear the Skyline Drive, in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, was one way, but it's clearly not the case now, and I can't find any proof it used to be....


https://www.flickr.com/photos/edge_and_corner_wear/albums/72157633041587952/


Park Ranger Station Skyline Drive VA by William Bird, en Flickr


Sky-Line Drive Shenandoah National Park VA by William Bird, en Flickr


I reckon it was wide enough to accommodate two lanes since the beginning :dunno:


----------



## Junkie

Pope Francis is on a official visit to North Macedonia tomorrow. He is scheduled to visit the Mother Theresa monument and make a commemoration in the central square, and paying special tribute to Mother Theresa which was born in Skopje in 1910 but also to commemorate the Saints Cyril and Methodius. He will also meet Orhtodox and Catholic Church officials, pay tribute to the poor people and visit migrants.


----------



## tfd543

Cool. Hope he will taste some cevapi.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Highway89 said:


> https://www.flickr.com/photos/edge_and_corner_wear/albums/72157633041587952/
> 
> 
> Park Ranger Station Skyline Drive VA by William Bird, en Flickr
> 
> 
> Sky-Line Drive Shenandoah National Park VA by William Bird, en Flickr
> 
> 
> I reckon it was wide enough to accommodate two lanes since the beginning :dunno:


I wonder if I'm thinking of something else....


----------



## Kpc21

In one of Polish towns, today a big amount of bread was found thrown away on an area of 300 square meters in a forest near a road: https://www.tvn24.pl/siemianowice-slaskie-chleb-i-bulki-wyrzucone-w-lesie,933499,s.html

A few years ago there was a case, much discussed then in the Polish media, of a baker who was donating old bread (which he wouldn't sell any more) to the poor – and because of that, he got a huge tax evasion fine – because if he was giving that bread away, he did not pay the VAT... According to some people, it was a fake news because he did actually also evade taxes not related to those donations – but it's anyway a problem.

Now I also read about a similar case that took place in Germany.

In the town mentioned in the article I am talking about now, there is one organisation that provides food to the poor. But it's not registered as a "public benefit" NGO, in which case such a donation would be free of taxes – and simply there is no such organisation in that town. The entrepreneur who threw that bread away could deliver that bread to one of the organizations in a nearby city of Katowice – but it was cheaper and simpler to risk much a lower fine for littering the forests.

What do you think about such cases?


----------



## Junkie

It's been a joy and tears to follow Pope visit today. Among the many things he said:



> May God protect North Macedonia, Your country is a bridge between East and West and a place where many cultural currents flow, where the many features of this region are united.


https://www.dw.com/mk/бог-нека-ја-чува-северна-македонија/a-48633973


----------



## g.spinoza

Junkie said:


> It's been a joy and tears to follow Pope visit today.


I had the impression that North Macedonia was predominantly Orthodox.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> I had the impression that North Macedonia was predominantly Orthodox.


As far as I know it is not forbidden to orthodox people to follow the pope's visit. ;-)


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> As far as I know it is not forbidden to orthodox people to follow the pope's visit. ;-)


Not certainly forbidden, but if I ware a Catholic I surely would not care about some Orthodox boss come visiting...


----------



## tfd543

Anyone residing in Liverpool? #whatacomeback #liverpool_in_the_final


----------



## Junkie

g.spinoza said:


> I had the impression that North Macedonia was predominantly Orthodox.


Yes, there are only 15.000 Roman Catholics which make just less than 1% of the population.
But Orthodox and Catholics are brothers from same father that split in the 11 century as you probably know very well.... And yes, I am Orthodox my ancestry is Slavic Orthodox but I respect the western Roman church.


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> I had the impression that North Macedonia was predominantly Orthodox.


Pope Francis is anyway the showmaker who is just making worthless trips around the globe (I don't think of Bulgaria and North Macedonia precisely)


----------



## cinxxx

^^while also burning tons of fuel in the process


----------



## Junkie

x-type said:


> Pope Francis is anyway the showmaker who is just making worthless trips around the globe (I don't think of Bulgaria and North Macedonia precisely)


I assume you are Catholic and saying that Pope is "showmaker making worthless trips" doesn't sound good really.


----------



## Tonik1

Polish police new livery (with reflection paint). It's tested now.


----------



## MichiH

^^ Looks quite German...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ It's almost a copy of the German design but then again, the design was very similar already before.
Polish:









VS

German:


----------



## Kpc21

They only added those yellow reflective elements. This is how it looks now:










Although not so long ago the livery looked like this:










there were some variations of that livery, e.g.:










I guess those yellow elements are now being added to improve the visibility of the police cars.

The change from blue to silver took place in 2007 but the old cars were not repainted, they remained blue until their technical death.

From what I read, the main target is to unify the police liveries in the whole EU.


----------



## Tonik1

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ It's almost a copy of the German design but then again, the design was very similar already before.
> Polish:



AFAIK that's how *standart EU police car livery should look*. Classic german colour for Police was green.


----------



## x-type

When did Germany move from green livery?


----------



## MattiG

Tonik1 said:


> AFAIK that's how *standart EU police car livery should look*.


Why?


----------



## Autobahn-mann

Kpc21 said:


> […]Although not so long ago the livery looked like this:
> there were some variations of that livery, e.g.:


That old look, remind to me the italian state police...


----------



## MichiH

x-type said:


> When did Germany move from green livery?


Hamburg started in 2000, Bavaria changed in 2015. Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorlage:Zeitleiste_Lackierung_von_Polizeifahrzeugen


----------



## Rebasepoiss

More and more countries are adding those yellow (reflective) elements to their police car designs. For example:

Finland:
Old:









New:









Estonia:
Old:









New:


----------



## Alex_ZR

^^ Poliisi or polis?


----------



## RipleyLV

Latvia is also going for a change. Two liveries, one picture.


----------



## volodaaaa

I think the same goes for the Czech Republic.


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> Why?


So that when you go to another EU country you know this is a police car and not something else 

By the way, is there a language (at least among those used in those most civilised countries) where the word POLICE would be totally different, not similar to POLICE, POLIZEI, POLICJA etc.?

Actually, an interesting case is the word "ambulance". Quite many languages have other words for that which are more popular. In Polish we have "ambulans" but it's rarely used, people rather say "karetka". In German there is "Ambulanz" but more commonly people say "Krankenwagen". I think this word AMBULANS, AMBULANCE or similar must exist in quite many languages even if it's not much used in that language.

In Germany, as I can see, it is not so. But in Poland, although the word "ambulans" is not that popular (nobody would say "muszę zadzwonić po ambulans" for "I have to call for an ambulance", they would say "muszę zadzwonić po karetkę" albo "muszę zadzwonić na pogotowie" – "I have to call the emergency service"), the ambulances actually have just this word AMBULANS written at the front:










so that the foreigners not speaking Polish also can understand it 

And it's in mirror reflection so when you look into your car side mirror, you can see this text straight, not having to read it from the end.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> By the way, is there a language (at least among those used in those most civilised countries) where the word POLICE would be totally different, not similar to POLICE, POLIZEI, POLICJA etc.?


Spain uses Guardia Civil, in Italy Carabinieri, in France Gendarmerie. Though they also have a local variant for 'police'.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland you also have "straż miejska" which is created (not obligatorily) by the towns and municipalities and it doesn't have all of the rights which the proper police has. E.g. they can't (any more) install speed cameras.










Yes, they also sometimes have "eco-patrols" that take care of pets and other animals found in the city.

They also do e.g. the parking duties. Generally they are responsible for some more minor things.



















Older livery:



















It wasn't really unified. The countrywide unification took place in 2012.


----------



## Junkie

Kpc21 said:


> So that when you go to another EU country you know this is a police car and not something else


Hmm How about the fact that one country might leave eu tomorrow. As long as I understand eu doesnt pretend to become a "superstate" not at least in near future and in this format. Take UK for example a backbone eu country which is leaving.......


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Alex_ZR said:


> ^^ Poliisi or polis?


Both, the first in Finnish, the second in Swedish.


----------



## Kpc21

Then they can change the livery to a different one, if they really want to emphasize their break with the EU 

Although this unification seems to be a good thing, so it would be anyway better not to do it. You see a car in such a livery – and you immediately know it's the actual police and not someone who fakes the police and wants to rob you.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Junkie said:


> Looking at the US police vehicles you also wonder why are they mainly black and some have black-white color. This is a proof one of the most criminal friendly countries in the world is dissimulating seeing the police cars..... It must have been a criminal records evolution, first they insisted for the cars to be seen and after some time they decided that too much criminals and gun shooting people are seeing the cars isnt it ?


Huh?


----------



## Spookvlieger

Just ignore him. 90%of what he says is nonsense. Most US police cars are white, white and black or white and blue...


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I just didn’t understand most of the post....


----------



## Junkie

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^I just didn’t understand most of the post....


I was just thinking why the US police vehicles are generally black colored and considering that in eu countries they use more brighter colors as we saw the pictures.....


----------



## Verso

I've just seen a car in Ljubljana with Russian license plates from the Republic of Crimea (82).


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> I've just seen a car in Ljubljana with Russian license plates from the Republic of Crimea (82).



How did he get there? I guess the system is the same as in Kosovo-Serbia


----------



## Kanadzie

Junkie said:


> I was just thinking why the US police vehicles are generally black colored and considering that in eu countries they use more brighter colors as we saw the pictures.....


but the typical black US police car has white doors or some other large part of the car white, the idea being to be distinctive and clear as being police... but also that colour scheme is very old, they were doing that in the 1940's even...


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> How did he get there? I guess the system is the same as in Kosovo-Serbia


Probably not via the Ukraine, but via the rest of Russia across the new Kerch strait bridge.


----------



## Verso

Are Russian license plates from Crimea even allowed to enter Ukraine? If not, then I guess he came here through Belarus. That's at least 3.500 km (from Kerch to Ljubljana). Unless he put his car on the ferry Kerch–Varna, then it's 'just' 2.200 km.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Junkie said:


> I was just thinking why the US police vehicles are generally black colored and considering that in eu countries they use more brighter colors as we saw the pictures.....




I don’t think they are, though. City of Philadelphia police are white and light blue with a bit of yellow; Pennsylvania state police mostly white and brown; New Jersey state police white, blue and yellow; New York City white and blue, just to name the ones I see most. Police cars in my mother’s town (the one I grew up in, and I’m spending most of my time there at the moment) are predominantly black since a recent redesign, but I don’t think they used to be.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> Are Russian license plates from Crimea even allowed to enter Ukraine? If not, then I guess he came here through Belarus. That's at least 3.500 km (from Kerch to Ljubljana). Unless he put his car on the ferry Kerch–Varna, then it's 'just' 2.200 km.



He could also carry two (or more) sets of licence plates like they do in Kosovo. AFAIK Kosovo bans certain codes on licence plates of Serbia, but it does not have to be the case in Ukraine. There is a slight possibility that he drove directly through Ukraine without any problems (although I bet that Ukrainian officers know exactly the "sensitive codes"). I know Russian civilians (or at least men above 16) were banned from Ukraine for some time, but I think it was during Poroshenko's martial law that has already ended. Maybe he crossed perfectly legally. On the contrary, Donbass plates are another story and I am pretty sure they are illegal in Ukraine.


----------



## General Maximus

*M20, Kent, UK*

Caution. Parts may fall off.


----------



## Verso

Verso said:


> Are Russian license plates from Crimea even allowed to enter Ukraine? If not, then I guess he came here through Belarus. That's at least 3.500 km (from Kerch to Ljubljana).


Interestingly, through Turkey it's also around 3.500 km.


----------



## italystf

In 2014 I saw a car with Transnistrian license plate on the motorway between Vienna and Salzburg, that according to some sources can only circulate in CIS countries, but some of them have been spotted in Europe.


----------



## volodaaaa

I don't think it is the same.

In one case, there is a regular and legal licence plate issued by a sovereign country that all countries in the World recognise, but with an area code of the disputable territory. We may discuss if the area codes and number logistics are purely internal affairs, but I think they are. I do not think Slovak police can give a fine to an Austrian driver with a legal licence plate with a proper and legal registration certificate issued by the respective Austrian body even if the district code does not exist. And this is exactly the case of Crimea.

Indeed, Kosovo does not recognise licence plates of Serbia with area codes from Kosovo, but I think this procedure is kinda illegal. It does not sound proper to me to recognise licence plates from a certain country with an exception of some codes.

Do you have a licence plate with a BG code officially issued by the government of Serbia? You are welcome here in Kosovo, just carry on.

Do you have a licence plate with an AB code (does not exist) officially issued by the government of Serbia? You are welcome here in Kosovo, just carry on.

Do you have a licence plate with a PZ code (Prizren in Kosovo) officially issued by the government of Serbia? Here is fine and leave the country as fast as you can.

The other case is a licence plate from a territory and issued by a government that is not recognised. It is basically the same as me designing my own licence plate in Adobe Illustrator for instance.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ Just recently Estonia denied entry into our territorial waters to a Russian sailing ship STS Sedov because on board were students from the Kerch State Marine Technology University (which is in Crimea). So yeah...


----------



## volodaaaa

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ Just recently Estonia denied entry into our territorial waters to a Russian sailing ship STS Sedov because on board were students from the Kerch State Marine Technology University (which is in Crimea). So yeah...


I guess they were not entering as individuals but as a group of representatives of the disputed University.


----------



## masala

volodaaaa said:


> I guess they were not entering as individuals but as a group of representatives of the disputed University.


This is btw is a strange motivation, if those students are still Ukrainians for Estonia, why not let them to come? or if they are all Russians, why to ban just one group?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

volodaaaa said:


> I guess they were not entering as individuals but as a group of representatives of the disputed University.


Yes, that's exactly right.



masala said:


> This is btw is a strange motivation, if those students are still Ukrainians for Estonia, why not let them to come? or if they are all Russians, why to ban just one group?


As volodaaaa pointed out, they were representing an organisation so it wasn't about them but rather about that organisation.

More info here.


----------



## italystf

Meanwhile, few years ago Silvio Berlusconi visited occupied Crimea and met Vladimir Putin there... it sounded like an unofficial recognition of the occupation so he was criticized for that.


----------



## italystf

Aparently Estonia is very strict in keeping away foreigners with pro-Putin views. Few years ago it expelled Giulietto Chiesa, for example. It's like the United States with commies during Maccartism, or Israel with pro-Palestine activists.


----------



## volodaaaa

Rebasepoiss said:


> Yes, that's exactly right.
> 
> 
> As volodaaaa pointed out, they were representing an organisation so it wasn't about them but rather about that organisation.
> 
> More info here.



By the way, the ship is beautiful.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

italystf said:


> Aparently Estonia is very strict in keeping away foreigners with pro-Putin views. Few years ago it expelled Giulietto Chiesa, for example. It's like the United States with commies during Maccartism, or Israel with pro-Palestine activists.


Just being pro-Putin isn't enough of a reason to barr anybody from entering Estonia. However, if that person is active in promoting those views in Estonia in a way which might be harmful to the security of the nation then that person might indeed be barred from entering Estonia. The exact reasoning and details are obviously confidential. Chiesa was barred from entering only for a month, however.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Oil refinery or hospital?


















Universitätsklinikum Aachen


----------



## Verso

Wow, ugly AF.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Reminds of Zrenjanin hospital, heating pipes being part of the facade.


----------



## masala

italystf said:


> Meanwhile, few years ago Silvio Berlusconi visited occupied Crimea and met Vladimir Putin there... it sounded like an unofficial recognition of the occupation so he was criticized for that.


It is not occupied territory by all means, because occupant forces don't issue own citizenship and stay there temporarily.


----------



## Spookvlieger

ChrisZwolle said:


> Universitätsklinikum Aachen



Same style as the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris) and The Lloyd's Building(London).


----------



## General Maximus

You can actually see that building in Aachen from three different countries: Germany, Netherlands and Belgium, right at that point where they come together...

It's also the highest point in the Netherlands: a whopping 321 metres. Visitors are encouraged to wear oxygen masks.


----------



## Penn's Woods

More on distracted driving. This is stunning:

“About 16 per cent of millennial parents and 10 per cent of older parents in the survey said they had been in at least one crash in the previous year.”

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/texting-while-driving-1.5134135


----------



## volodaaaa

^^ I don't know about the US, but here in Slovakia, the use of mobile phones while driving is outrageous. When I stop at the red light, especially in night hours, I can see a screen light reflection on faces of almost all drivers around me. 

It was easier in the past owing to the keypads. I bet I was not the only one who was capable of typing an SMS without looking at the screen. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible with touchscreens, needless to say, people love using emojis, stickers, gifs and stuff nowadays they could go without in the past.

The other problem is avoiding to use handsfree mode. My car is lower mid-class (nothing expensive) and the Bluetooth handsfree was pack and parcel of the basic equipment. I see 50k+ € cars in streets and drivers call with a phone on their ear. It was the first thing to do when I enter my car for the first time - to pair the Bluetooth.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> ^^ I don't know about the US, but here in Slovakia, the use of mobile phones while driving is outrageous. When I stop at the red light, especially in night hours, I can see a screen light reflection on faces of almost all drivers around me.


My phone is screen on when it is attached onto the dashboard, as the Spotify client, as the car internet connectivity provider, and as the secondary road map device. It might reflect light on my face even if no call is active. Therefore, the light itself is not a 100% strong indication of a bad behavior.


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> My phone is screen on when it is attached onto the dashboard, as the Spotify client, as the car internet connectivity provider, and as the secondary road map device. It might reflect light on my face even if no call is active. Therefore, the light itself is not a 100% strong indication of a bad behavior.


In many cases, you can relatively clearly see if the person is looking down to their hands or forward to a mobile phone attached to screen or vents.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> ^^ I don't know about the US, but here in Slovakia, the use of mobile phones while driving is outrageous. When I stop at the red light, especially in night hours, I can see a screen light reflection on faces of almost all drivers around me.
> 
> It was easier in the past owing to the keypads. I bet I was not the only one who was capable of typing an SMS without looking at the screen. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible with touchscreens, needless to say, people love using emojis, stickers, gifs and stuff nowadays they could go without in the past.
> 
> The other problem is avoiding to use handsfree mode. My car is lower mid-class (nothing expensive) and the Bluetooth handsfree was pack and parcel of the basic equipment. I see 50k+ € cars in streets and drivers call with a phone on their ear. It was the first thing to do when I enter my car for the first time - to pair the Bluetooth.


Thanks to Android Audio I can send SMS, Whatsapps and Telegrams through voice control. It works very well.


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> Thanks to Android Audio I can send SMS, Whatsapps and Telegrams through voice control. It works very well.



I use "hey, Google" assistant, but it does not recognize the Slovak language.The service is indeed perfect, almost scary.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ Obviously I wanted to write Android Auto...


----------



## Junkie

Tomorrow is a big day for Balkan as the southbound section of the Grdelica highway A1 in Serbia (the southbound section only) will be inaugurated for traffic after long years of construction. 

After 40 years the "Brotherhood and unity highway" in ex YU is completed and from tomorrow all the route via highway starting from Jesenice on the A-SLO border, thru, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade, Skopje and to the NMK-Greek border.

News and videos on the Serbian link http://mondo.rs/a1186182/Auto/Vesti/Zavrsen-autoput-Koridor-10-Grdelicka-klisura-Foto-Video.html


----------



## Verso

Junkie said:


> Tomorrow is a big day for Balkan as the southbound section of the Grdelica highway A1 in Serbia (the southbound section only) will be inaugurated for traffic after long years of construction.


Southbound? Only in direction Skopje? The article says it's finished.

PS: Karavanke Tunnel still has one tube.


----------



## tfd543

It will open on Saturday due to bad weather looming. It still Doesnt State if its gonna be full profile or half profile.


----------



## Junkie

Verso said:


> Southbound? Only in direction Skopje? The article says it's finished.
> 
> PS: Karavanke Tunnel still has one tube.


They are really messy, in one article they said southbound only in other that the inaguration is delayed until next Saturday.


----------



## tfd543

The eurovision will kick-off in a moment. Who is your favourite if you follow it? Mine is Switzerland.


----------



## Junkie

Verso said:


> PS: Karavanke Tunnel still has one tube.


Thats why I said from Jesenice.


----------



## Verso

Yeah, but the "Brotherhood & Unity Highway" includes the tunnel (the Slovenian part). It's not a big deal though, except on summer weekends.


----------



## Spookvlieger

I really hate the Karavanke tunnel. Temperatures can run up to 40°C inside the tunnel, there is always a very bad smog because of bad ventilation and don't get me started on the waiting times on the Slovenian side of the border...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The high temperatures in tunnels is due to the amount of mass on top of the tunnel. The higher the mountain, the higher the temperatures. You'll see it in the Gotthard Tunnel as well. The Gotthard Base Tunnel is said to reach 46 °C without ventilation.


----------



## Verso

There are waiting times on the Austrian side as well. :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Thanks to Android Audio I can send SMS, Whatsapps and Telegrams through voice control. It works very well.


What's a telegram?! I mean, I know what it was in the 19th century....


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> The eurovision will kick-off in a moment. Who is your favourite if you follow it? Mine is Switzerland.


We're spared that in the U.S. :colgate: Most people have never heard of it. But what's Australia doing in it?


----------



## keokiracer

Penn's Woods said:


> What's a telegram?! I mean, I know what it was in the 19th century....


It's a Whatsapp competitor 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

WhatsApp has reached almost complete saturation in the Netherlands. Almost anyone with a smartphone seems to use it (12 million users out of 17 million inhabitants).


----------



## Junkie

Verso said:


> Yeah, but the "Brotherhood & Unity Highway" includes the tunnel (the Slovenian part). It's not a big deal though, except on summer weekends.


I know I know. When will the second leg be put in service?


----------



## Verso

^^ Well, it's been better in the last years. It's terrible to think they had just 113 km of motorways until 2004. They've added ~700 km since then.



Junkie said:


> I know I know. When will the second leg be put in service?


They have to start building it first, hopefully this year.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> ^^ Well, it's been better in the last years. It's terrible to think they had just 113 km of motorways until 2004. They've added ~700 km since then.


That's because during communism almost nobody could afford cars and after the fall of communism they had more important things to care (as comparison, Italy didn't build any motorways in the first 10 years after the end of WWII).
My father visited Romania in 1977 and there were more horse carts around than cars, and obviously no motorways. On the ferry on the Danube near Braila where they're now building that huge bridge the only car was his. I believe back then the only motorway in south-east Europe was between Ljubljana and Postojna.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> WhatsApp has reached almost complete saturation in the Netherlands. Almost anyone with a smartphone seems to use it (12 million users out of 17 million inhabitants).


Also in Italy, most people never use SMSs anymore. Telegram isn't remotely as popular as Whatsapp is.


----------



## Kanadzie

Penn's Woods said:


> More on distracted driving. This is stunning:
> 
> “About 16 per cent of millennial parents and 10 per cent of older parents in the survey said they had been in at least one crash in the previous year.”
> 
> https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/texting-while-driving-1.5134135


Someone crashed into my car in May 2018 and again April 2019 :bash: First one was a crazy guy who hit my side, the second clueless who rear-ended me at a yield sign. The second one I hit my head on the B-pillar and got concussionhno: So many crashes! They say "speed kills" and I drive as fast as I want, but only I get crashed when I'm slow or stopped...


----------



## Verso

CrazySerb said:


> Belgrade had motorways before anything in Slovenia


With a speed limit of 80 km/h.  In 1977 there was a motorway Vrhnika-Postojna-Razdrto, Vrhnika-Ljubljana was opened in 1979. But there were some other motorways as well, like Bucharest-Piteşti, Zagreb-Karlovac, NE of Rijeka, a few kms in Greece, and also elsewhere.


----------



## nikicakica

In 1977 Belgrade-Umčari was opened and in 1978 Umčari-Batočina.


----------



## italystf

Kanadzie said:


> Someone crashed into my car in May 2018 and again April 2019 :bash: First one was a crazy guy who hit my side, the second clueless who rear-ended me at a yield sign. The second one I hit my head on the B-pillar and got concussionhno: So many crashes! They say "speed kills" and I drive as fast as I want, but only I get crashed when I'm slow or stopped...


Maybe because someone else was driving too fast and careless.


----------



## Junkie

Romania was under heavy Soviet influence but from the other side it has been an EU member for 12 years now, while ex SFRY countries were at war and devastated and still better connectivity today.

Brotherhood and Unity highway completition is a good sign for the future reconciliation in Balkan. And Grdelica is the biggest infrastructural highway project in Balkan without doubts. I looking forward to drive the section very soon. Amazing project for Balkan.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> With a speed limit of 80 km/h.  In 1977 there was a motorway Vrhnika-Postojna-Razdrto, Vrhnika-Ljubljana was opened in 1979. But there were some other motorways as well, like Bucharest-Piteşti, Zagreb-Karlovac, *NE of Rijeka*, a few kms in Greece, and also elsewhere.


Hallelujah! You have finally recognized Rijeka - Grobnik as a motorway, what means it was built before Vrhnika motorway :banana:


----------



## Verso

You're right, it is/was an expressway with a speed limit of boring 100 km/h.


----------



## General Maximus

Junkie said:


> Romania was under heavy Soviet influence


I don't think it was. Ceasescu hated the USSR and pretty much had his own agenda. He was also quite close to Jimmy Carter...


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> What's a telegram?! I mean, I know what it was in the 19th century....


Like Whatsapp, with the only difference that it works well.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I have no issues with WhatsApp except for its heavy compression of photos and the fact that is owned by Facebook. 

I haven't used Telegram, but I have tried Signal, the problem is that few people use it. 

Facebook seems to be downhill, at least in my bubble. The vast majority of user-generated content in my feed is from Americans, my Dutch friends and family hardly post anything. From my perspective it appears that engagement on Facebook is much lower than their 'monthly active users' figures suggest.


----------



## General Maximus

I use Facebook simply because of my contacts all over the world, especially after all the places that I've lived. Facebook seems to be the only way to keep them together and stay in touch.
Who wants to write letters these days...


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I have no issues with WhatsApp except for its heavy compression of photos and the fact that is owned by Facebook.


On my mobile, Whatsapp basically misses 4 notifications out of 5, and all inbound calls...
Another flaw is that backups are done once a week and during nights, and only if you have a third party storage (dropbox or similar). Since I turn off my mobile for the night, it basically does not do backups. If you forget to backup and your phone dies, or get stolen, you lose all un-backupped messages.

With Telegram you do nothing, and everything is always up-to-date.


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> I have no issues with WhatsApp except for its heavy compression of photos and the fact that is owned by Facebook.
> 
> I haven't used Telegram, but I have tried Signal, the problem is that few people use it.
> 
> Facebook seems to be downhill, at least in my bubble. The vast majority of user-generated content in my feed is from Americans, my Dutch friends and family hardly post anything. From my perspective it appears that engagement on Facebook is much lower than their 'monthly active users' figures suggest.


Facebook lost much of interesting content when going mainstream. E.g. some of the content that made Facebook in the start 15 years ago is posted now a days on LinkedIn. The new generations use Insta instead (or other networks) anyway. And whatsapp etc. made peer to peer and group contact management completely different as well.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Oh I never back up any chats. If they're lost, so be it. To me it's a chat, not an email archive or something. 

I actually don't use any cloud services. I have disabled them all. I have important stuff backed up on several external hard drives. But I don't actually use my phone that much for important stuff. Maybe I'm old-fashioned that way, I still prefer a desktop PC with a keyboard and mouse. Almost all of my WhatsApp activity is actually through WhatsApp Web, I hate typing on a small screen.


----------



## General Maximus




----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ that image is huge on a desktop browser 

I'm more of a power user for some applications, like video editing, photo editing, Google Earth research, lots of text input, browsing with 30 or 40 tabs open and alternating between windows quickly. I can't do that on a phone so a PC is still my main device.


----------



## General Maximus

Sorry, I should have narrowed it down a bit


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Oh I never back up any chats. If they're lost, so be it. To me it's a chat, not an email archive or something.


I backup and archive everything, digital or physical.
I am the next thing to a hoarder.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verona, Italy recorded today a minimum temperature of 3.8 °C. This is what the hills north of Verona looked like today:


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ that image is huge on a desktop browser


That's one thing I hate with phone: I don't know how large a posted image is.


----------



## General Maximus

(in reply to G) 

I got a phone call today that it's like that in Tyrol. Yesterday driving through France it was really warm and sunny, and it stayed like that until I got through the Mont Blanc tunnel. After Aosta the sky got really dark and had a minor spot of rain.
This morning in Milan it was all sunny and warm until after lunchtime, and by the time I got to Bologna it was all raining again. 
I'm now somewhere between Bologna and Padova, and it's a clear night, not too cold. Tomorrow I'll be loading somewhere south of Venice by the sea (that green bit) , and then I have to be back in London by Friday pm. Not sure yet whether I'll use Brenner or Mont Blanc. 

Yesterday I was in Strasbourg, helping to set up with the tennis tournament, and with Switzerland being in the way, unable to transit through with goods in my van without the necessary paperwork, I had to divert via Mont Blanc...


----------



## volodaaaa

Junkie said:


> Romania was under heavy Soviet influence but from the other side it has been an EU member for 12 years now, while ex SFRY countries were at war and devastated and still better connectivity today.
> 
> Brotherhood and Unity highway completition is a good sign for the future reconciliation in Balkan. And Grdelica is the biggest infrastructural highway project in Balkan without doubts. I looking forward to drive the section very soon. Amazing project for Balkan.



That "explains" his good relations with Western politicians.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Oh I never back up any chats. If they're lost, so be it. To me it's a chat, not an email archive or something.
> 
> I actually don't use any cloud services. I have disabled them all. I have important stuff backed up on several external hard drives. But I don't actually use my phone that much for important stuff. Maybe I'm old-fashioned that way, I still prefer a desktop PC with a keyboard and mouse. Almost all of my WhatsApp activity is actually through WhatsApp Web, I hate typing on a small screen.




I’ve had two external hard drives crash on me, and lose their contents.
I now use flash drives, ideally duplicated.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Oh I never back up any chats. If they're lost, so be it. To me it's a chat, not an email archive or something.
> 
> I actually don't use any cloud services. I have disabled them all. I have important stuff backed up on several external hard drives. But I don't actually use my phone that much for important stuff. Maybe I'm old-fashioned that way, I still prefer a desktop PC with a keyboard and mouse. Almost all of my WhatsApp activity is actually through WhatsApp Web, I hate typing on a small screen.


 cloud services are very cheap these days for anything concerning personal use except the volume of data for large amounts of HD video recordings (say a 24/7 feed of 3 security cameras around an office)


----------



## Attus

I learned these two lines twenty six years ago and did not read or hear them since then. Now I read something about metrical verses and these lines came into my mind, in original Greek. After 26 years. 
I googled a little bit to find if my memories are corrent. Not perfectly, but almost, I hade a mistake at one letter in the last word. Sometimes fully unnecessery things remain in your brain for a long time, sometimes you forget important ones very fast.

_Ω ΞΕΙΝ ΑΓΓΕΛΛΕΙΝ ΛΑΚΕΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΟΙΣ ΟΤΙ ΤΗΔΕ ΚΕΙΜΕΘΑ ΤΟΙΣ ΚΕΙΝΩΝ ΡΗΜΑΣΙ ΠΕΙΘΟΜΕΝΟΙ_
(It's the famous two lines written on the tombstone of 300 Spartans in Thermopylae).


----------



## x-type

Attus said:


> I learned these two lines twenty six years ago and did not read or hear them since then. Now I read something about metrical verses and these lines came into my mind, in original Greek. After 26 years.
> I googled a little bit to find if my memories are corrent. Not perfectly, but almost, I hade a mistake at one letter in the last word. *Sometimes fully unnecessery things remain in your brain for a long time,* sometimes you forget important ones very fast.
> 
> _Ω ΞΕΙΝ ΑΓΓΕΛΛΕΙΝ ΛΑΚΕΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΟΙΣ ΟΤΙ ΤΗΔΕ ΚΕΙΜΕΘΑ ΤΟΙΣ ΚΕΙΝΩΝ ΡΗΜΑΣΙ ΠΕΙΘΟΜΕΝΟΙ_
> (It's the famous two lines written on the tombstone of 300 Spartans in Thermopylae).


I can say the alphabet from the end to the beginning in 3 seconds :lol:


----------



## Junkie

volodaaaa said:


> That "explains" his good relations with Western politicians.


What do you mean by that


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> I can say the alphabet from the end to the beginning in 3 seconds :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> Sometimes fully unnecessery things remain in your brain for a long time, sometimes you forget important ones very fast.


Amen.
I remember whole chunks of Dante's Inferno since high school and can't memorize now the electrical connections of a RS232 I looked up 20 times...


----------



## volodaaaa

That is my English. I learned words such as conspicuously or begrudgingly even though I have never used them. At the same time, sometimes I fail to remember an A1 word. Last time I could not remember "chimney". I spent two hours thinking, gave in and looked it up in the dictionary.


----------



## Verso

After 20 years I still remember this German sentence we learnt at school:

_Wenn ich den genauen Ausdruck nicht weiß, suche ich einfach eine Umschreibung._

Meaning: When I don't know the exact expression I simply find a description. :lol:


----------



## General Maximus

*Day before yesterday from Strasbourg to Milan*

With goods in a van. So... Thank you for your bullshit, Switzerland...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've read that freight between Toronto and Vancouver also takes the longer route through Canada for this reason. They don't cut through the United States, which is shorter and has much more freeway mileage. 

Interestingly, Google Maps sends you to a ferry across Lake Michigan. However there are only 2 or 3 departures per day in each direction.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've read that freight between Toronto and Vancouver also takes the longer route through Canada for this reason. They don't cut through the United States, which is shorter and has much more freeway mileage.
> 
> Interestingly, Google Maps sends you to a ferry across Lake Michigan. However there are only 2 or 3 departures per day in each direction.


Once drove I-80/94 and 80/294 through the southern suburbs of Chicago (from US 41 to the 80/294 split) a bit after 5 p.m. on an October Monday.... It was jam-packed with trucks. A bit scary. I realized it was because of how much traffic on routes like Boston to Seattle was pushed south of the Great Lakes. Forgot about the ferry....


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I have no issues with WhatsApp except for its heavy compression of photos and the fact that is owned by Facebook.
> 
> I haven't used Telegram, but I have tried Signal, the problem is that few people use it.
> 
> Facebook seems to be downhill, at least in my bubble. The vast majority of user-generated content in my feed is from Americans, my Dutch friends and family hardly post anything. From my perspective it appears that engagement on Facebook is much lower than their 'monthly active users' figures suggest.


When Twitter was first a thing, I read somewhere that two-thirds of the people who opened accounts closed them within a month. Decided not to bother and never have. (And didn't have Facebook until years later, but that I enjoy. Friends from Australia to Ireland, I'm in daily touch with family I never see because we're on opposite coasts....)


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> That is my English. I learned words such as conspicuously or begrudgingly even though I have never used them. At the same time, sometimes I fail to remember an A1 word. Last time I could not remember "chimney". I spent two hours thinking, gave in and looked it up in the dictionary.


So you looked it up begrudgingly.


----------



## Kanadzie

Penn's Woods said:


> Once drove I-80/94 and 80/294 through the southern suburbs of Chicago (from US 41 to the 80/294 split) a bit after 5 p.m. on an October Monday.... It was jam-packed with trucks. A bit scary. I realized it was because of how much traffic on routes like Boston to Seattle was pushed south of the Great Lakes. Forgot about the ferry....


It's a big issue for rail traffic too. Chicago is the big hub of the Americas and it's badly congested, I think trains end up waiting forever...


----------



## Junkie

Balkan high officials of Serbia, Greece, North Macedonia and others will attend big ceremony tomorrow morning at Grdelica opening the highway section in south Serbia and finishing the corridor.

Video of this glorious project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktrm_ElyCpQ


----------



## volodaaaa

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hazelshearing/grumpy-cat-dead


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch police reported a strange story. 

They noticed there was a car on the motorway with the driver asleep at the wheel. It was trailing behind a truck, but significantly under the speed limit of 130 km/h, because it was a Tesla with autopilot engaged. When they issued a 'Follow Police' signal and slowed down, the Tesla overtook them. They had to use the siren to wake the driver up, who was also under the influence of alcohol. 

His driver's license was revoked.


----------



## g.spinoza

One more software update for Tesla...


----------



## Verso

Junkie said:


> Balkan high officials of Serbia, Greece, North Macedonia and others will attend big ceremony tomorrow morning at Grdelica opening the highway section in south Serbia and finishing the corridor.


As for the former Brotherhood and Unity Highway, it's interesting to note that there's always been much more traffic from Ljubljana to Italy than to Austrian Carinthia. It also looks more important in the wider context, if you think it connects the Balkans and Italy. On the other hand, there are several highways between the Balkans and Germany.


----------



## Kanadzie

What is point of autopilot-system if you can't drive drunk and asleep? If you are good to drive, you just would...


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> As for the former Brotherhood and Unity Highway, it's interesting to note that there's always been much more traffic from Ljubljana to Italy than to Austrian Carinthia. It also looks more important in the wider context, if you think it connects the Balkans and Italy. On the other hand, there are several highways between the Balkans and Germany.


When the B&U highway was conceived, there was more traffic towards Austria rather than Italy, because many Turks, Greeks and Yugoslavs worked in Germany and returned home for holidays.
Before 1991 there was no Karavanken tunnel and driving through Hungary and Czechoslovakia was impratical, so almost all traffic between Germany and SE Europe went via Spielfeld.


----------



## italystf

Interesting view of how was internet around 20 years ago. No more elaborate graphic content was possible due to slow 56kbs modems.
https://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/index.htm


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> When the B&U highway was conceived, there was more traffic towards Austria rather than Italy, because many Turks, Greeks and Yugoslavs worked in Germany and returned home for holidays.
> Before 1991 there was no Karavanken tunnel and driving through Hungary and Czechoslovakia was impratical, so almost all traffic between Germany and SE Europe went via Spielfeld.


Maybe, but Spielfeld/Šentilj wasn't on the B&U Highway. I'm sure there was much more traffic to Italy than to Klagenfurt and Villach.


----------



## CNGL

I really like to mix places with same or similar names up. Once in Guess the Highway Spain I played a very rural road and claimed it was just 1.5 km away from Madrid . And indeed, it was that distance away from Madrid... de las Caderechas, a little village in Northern Burgos province.

I also note when I pass through two or more places with the same name on the same month. For example last month I went past three places named Monreal ("Plain" Monreal, or _Elo_ in Basque, in Navarre; Monreal de Ariza in extreme Western Zaragoza province; and Monreal del Campo in Teruel province; the latter two both in Aragon).


----------



## tfd543

There are also 2 Pozega's, one in Croatia and one in Serbia. Lol.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

tfd543 said:


> There are also 2 Pozega's, one in Croatia and one in Serbia. Lol.


I noticed that yesterday when I typed it into Google Earth and it led me to the one in Croatia. However today it leads me to the one in Serbia... :hmm:


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've never heard it before, and I'm sure I won't play it again. Just another non-memorable, featureless song. I don't understand why this is popular.


Eurovision winning songs are rarely popular.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Eurovision winning songs are rarely popular.



They used to be. I have some in my car playlist. But since it's no longer about songs and music, your statement is quite truthful.


----------



## General Maximus

Who watches it these days. In the past it was nice and basic, then the Eastern European newcomers started voting for each other, and it went downhill ever since. Some things just go by their sell-by-date.


----------



## Alex_ZR

g.spinoza said:


> I'm sure I shared this in the past here, but one former colleague of mine had to go to a conference in *Konstanz, Switzerland*, and bought a plane ticket for Constanta, Romania... both places share the same name in Italian (Costanza)...


I thought that Konstanz is in Germany, or maybe Switzerland annexed it?


----------



## Kpc21

General Maximus said:


> Who watches it these days. In the past it was nice and basic, then the Eastern European newcomers started voting for each other, and it went downhill ever since. Some things just go by their sell-by-date.


Not only newcomers. E.g. the jury from Cyprus gave Greece 12 points, the Greek jury gave Cyprus 12 points. Which was even booed by the spectators – but this happens.


Meanwhile... https://www.polsatnews.pl/wiadomosc...zbyt-malo-za-prywatny-grunt-zajety-pod-droge/

In short. A small countryside municipality in Poland asphalted 5 years ago a local road, for which they got subsidy from the government – intended for repairing and upgrading roads damaged by flooding. They spent 400 000 PLN = something like 95 000 EUR. However, it turned out that the road is partially located on private grounds (although it has always been there). The women who was the owner went to court. The municipality wanted to pay her 40 PLN (9-10 EUR) for a square meter, they also proposed twice more – unfortunately, the woman wanted three times more (although one official in the video even says that she wanted 7 or 8 times more). Although the woman initially failed the lawsuit, she appealed and finally the court decided that the municipality... must demolish the road. Now they plan widening the road on the other side.


----------



## Junkie

Grdelica highway opened for traffic. I plan to drive there in middle June. The longest tunnel is approximately 2 km and speed limit has been put to 100 km/h it is not 120.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I noticed that yesterday when I typed it into Google Earth and it led me to the one in Croatia. However today it leads me to the one in Serbia... :hmm:


I didn't know for Požega in Serbia till few years ago :nuts:

Btw we had recently also some campers (Dutch? French?) ended in forgotten obscure village Sibenik instead of Šibenik :nuts:
https://www.google.hr/maps/dir/2200...e29bcc83261!2m2!1d17.1838026!2d45.8137461!3e0


----------



## Junkie

There are these historical names that spread in three countries that neigbour each other:

Trgovište in Serbia
Targovište in Bulgaria
Târgoviște in Romania

The root name is Slavic and has to do with "trading".


----------



## x-type

Junkie said:


> There are these historical names that spread in three countries that neigbour each other:
> 
> Trgovište in Serbia
> Targovište in Bulgaria
> Târgoviște in Romania
> 
> The root name is Slavic and has to do with "trading".


Trgovišće (and Veliko Trgovišće) in Croatia


----------



## Junkie

^^
Trnovo is also popular everywhere in Balkans. There is Trnovo in BIH, Bulgaria, Serbia, and in North Macedonia three villages with same name. But these are mainly remote and "hidden" places

Out of all of them I think Veliko Trnovo is the most popular place.


----------



## volodaaaa

It means a market doesn't it?

By the way I used to confuse Pécs with Peć.


----------



## aubergine72

General Maximus said:


> Who watches it these days. In the past it was nice and basic, then the Eastern European newcomers started voting for each other, and it went downhill ever since. Some things just go by their sell-by-date.


Yet nobody talks about the Nordic degenerates always voting for each other's crap. It's always the poor EE.


----------



## aubergine72

Junkie said:


> ^^
> Trnovo is also popular everywhere in Balkans. There is Trnovo in BIH, Bulgaria, Serbia, and in North Macedonia three villages with same name. But these are mainly remote and "hidden" places
> 
> Out of all of them I think Veliko Trnovo is the most popular place.


It's Tarnovo in Bulgarian. There's also Malko Tarnovo.


----------



## General Maximus

aubergine72 said:


> Yet nobody talks about the Nordic degenerates always voting for each other's crap. It's always the poor EE.


It was a known fact that the Songfestival was being hijacked by those countries. Just like those countries are about to hijack this thread again with stupid names that people from non-Slavic countries don't understand. Can't you build your own corner and do it there until your hearts content and leave this section global and readable? 

Sorry if I have hit a Eastern European nerve...


----------



## General Maximus

You're in Canada and you're a bit of a liar. You claim to be a Serbian warrior, then you're Russian, then you're from Montenegro, but in real life you're a provocative bullshitter in an attic in Toronto. 

The number is 360M around the world. This includes Russia, there's plenty of room there.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Just like those people flying from Europe to Sydney thinking it's normal to connect through Toronto... and end up in Sydney, Nova Scotia instead of Sydney, Australia...




Well, there’s only one letter different between “Sydney, N.S.” and “Sydney, N.S.W.”... /jk

Now that I think of it, a friend of mine recently flew from Philadelphia to Sydney; I think she connected in Dallas, of all places.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Kpc21 said:


> Eurovision winning songs are rarely popular.


Both recent Swedish winning songs, Euphoria and Heroes, were popular over here.


----------



## Attus

General Maximus said:


> Would you continue posting here using your real name?


I for sure, yes. (I've already posted my photo here once, a photo where I'm clear recognizable). 
However I'm sure many people wouldn't. Either for simple privacy reasons (very typical in Germany and Austria, among others), or for example because they post informations here what they are not allowed to (some infos thy got in their job, for example), and using the real name they would be fired immediately or even jailed.

But using a real name would mean as well, that no one could use more than one names at the same time, and not even in different times. No one could have a name here in the forum, disappear, and oonne or two years later come back again using another name. 
I'm member of anther forum, not international, Hungarian. There are "two users" there, I'm pretty sure "they" are the same person using two names. It wouldn't be possible any more. 
And one more thing: now if administrators ban a user, they can register a new name and come back. Using real names it would not be possible. Forum member, social media users, etc. would be much more careful - and administrators would have much more responsibility.


----------



## Attus

MattiG said:


> What risks you think using your real name would cause to you?


It depends on which country are you from. (And it's an answer for Michael's post before you as well). In Finnland you surely won't be arrested for something you wrote here. 
But let's check for example the Hungarian forum! Writing "I think the only reason that motorway is being built is that the responsible minister lives in that town" can have some bad consequences for you, especially if you work in a ministry or any other state office. You can lose your job the next day, and will not find any new one - at least not in Hungary. Would it be compulsory, using real names, no one would write something like that. OK, I, not living in Hungary any more, may. 
So you see this issue from one of the freest (<- does this word exist?) nations of the world. Many other forum members don't.


----------



## x-type

General Maximus said:


> It was a known fact that the Songfestival was being hijacked by those countries. Just like those countries are about to hijack this thread again with stupid names that people from non-Slavic countries don't understand. Can't you build your own corner and do it there until your hearts content and leave this section global and readable?
> 
> Sorry if I have hit a Eastern European nerve...


Oh, if you want we can discuss about western toponyms. Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch for instance. They seem to be much more understandable.


----------



## g.spinoza

Alex_ZR said:


> I thought that Konstanz is in Germany, or maybe Switzerland annexed it?


Yes, I think It was annexed  
Of course you are right, but you know what I meant.


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> Yes, I think It was annexed
> Of course you are right, but you know what I meant.


Switzerland annexing Konstanz would be kind of a surprise: Konstanz applied the membership of the Confederacy in the 15th century, but idea was rejected. The rural cantons said no, because they disliked increasing the power of city cantons.


----------



## Junkie

What is the line that separate west and east Europe discussed there. Is it the costs of living and Can we consider CZ and Slovenia eastern or maybe we can say that Greece is definitely part of the western world ?
Are we speaking about legal migration, immigrants, cost of living or the former political system of CEE?



















And who hates Muslims the most? There is a clear winner.


----------



## g.spinoza

I think it's former communist countries.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> I for sure, yes. (I've already posted my photo here once, a photo where I'm clear recognizable).
> However I'm sure many people wouldn't. Either for simple privacy reasons (very typical in Germany and Austria, among others), or for example because they post informations here what they are not allowed to (some infos thy got in their job, for example), and using the real name they would be fired immediately or even jailed.
> 
> But using a real name would mean as well, that no one could use more than one names at the same time, and not even in different times. No one could have a name here in the forum, disappear, and oonne or two years later come back again using another name.
> I'm member of anther forum, not international, Hungarian. There are "two users" there, I'm pretty sure "they" are the same person using two names. It wouldn't be possible any more.
> And one more thing: now if administrators ban a user, they can register a new name and come back. Using real names it would not be possible. Forum member, social media users, etc. would be much more careful - and administrators would have much more responsibility.





Attus said:


> It depends on which country are you from. (And it's an answer for Michael's post before you as well). In Finnland you surely won't be arrested for something you wrote here.
> But let's check for example the Hungarian forum! Writing "I think the only reason that motorway is being built is that the responsible minister lives in that town" can have some bad consequences for you, especially if you work in a ministry or any other state office. You can lose your job the next day, and will not find any new one - at least not in Hungary. Would it be compulsory, using real names, no one would write something like that. OK, I, not living in Hungary any more, may.
> So you see this issue from one of the freest (<- does this word exist?) nations of the world. Many other forum members don't.


Fair points; I wouldn't make the use of real names obligatory.


----------



## Junkie

g.spinoza said:


> I think it's former communist countries.


How about Germany? It was (partially) a communist country for almost 50 years.


----------



## General Maximus

Germans have a east-west rivalry among themselves. The east is significantly poorer than the west. But other than that I don't see much difference in the way they live or in their attitudes in life. Some of my closest friends are from Eastern Germany but living in Austria as the standards of living are higher than anywhere in Germany. 

As for Eastern Europe, I don't really look at whether they're ex communists or not, but it's more about performance, economy, behaviors etc. Some countries score higher than others. Poland considers itself a powerhouse, yet the wages are so low that a high amount of Poles still continue to look elsewhere for higher paid jobs. Slovenia and Czech Republic have made a bit more of an effort. Lots of Hungarians everywhere for the very same reason. And both Poland and Hungary are on close watch when it comes to human rights. Yet, Budapest is great and thriving. The Baltic States are close friends, but there's even a difference there. I find Estonia modern and open, but Lithuania poor with lots of gangster look-alikes on the streets. 

Transport is a source of a certain amount of xenophobia. All western countries are full of trucks from mainly Poland and Romania through western letterbox companies in the east. They hardly go back to their own countries, and they're widely being taken advantage of by western companies. They're cheap, they do the job and after that they'll leave them to rot at roadside rest areas until a new one comes along. This has turned German and Belgian service areas into major campsites for Eastern European truckers. And they make a poor and primitive impression in their scruffy clothes and sandals. I think that will change soon, when wages are starting to rise in the east.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

European average net salary, adjusted for cost of living. It's surprising that Belgium is so low for its region, some Eastern European countries are approaching it. Also interesting that Sweden and Finland are below the Netherlands, UK and Germany.










Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage


----------



## General Maximus

I'm not sure how accurate this diagram is. I know that wages in Austria are supposed to be higher than in Germany, and that French workers in border regions cross their borders everyday to work in Switzerland, Germany and Belgium. Also because of higher wages. Perhaps it's a tax thing?


----------



## Verso

Junkie said:


> What is the line that separate west and east Europe discussed there.


----------



## g.spinoza

General Maximus said:


> I'm not sure how accurate this diagram is. I know that wages in Austria are supposed to be higher than in Germany, and that French workers in border regions cross their borders everyday to work in Switzerland, Germany and Belgium. Also because of higher wages. Perhaps it's a tax thing?


It's not only the wages, they're weighted by the cost of living.

For instance: wages in Italy are 30% higher in the North than in the South, but the cost of living in the South can be 50% less, so this indicator would yield a higher number in Southern Italy than in Northern.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Verso said:


>


Churchill likes this.


----------



## Junkie

Moldavia is the poorest country by cost of living in continental Europe. Many Balkan countries have dramatically improved and are even catching Portugal, Lithuania and Latvia. But the most dramatic improvement I think has happened in Hungary, Poland and the rest CE because of their integration into the "west".


----------



## Verso

Alex_ZR said:


> Churchill likes this.


Simple geography.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Portugal is really far behind Western Europe, even its difference with neighboring Spain is enormous. 

Spain and Portugal both used to be dictatorships (Franco & Estado Novo). It seems like Spain has caught up much more with Western Europe than Portugal for some reason.


----------



## General Maximus

Probably also because of its proximity. Tucked away in a corner, nothing but warm and dry weather, and even after crossing the border, there's loads of mountains and forests to cross before entering populated areas along the coastline. Ireland used to be really poor, but has caught up. And even Britain was a poor country back in the 80s, with Brits scattered all over Europe looking for jobs with higher wages. Brits and Irish were the Poles of Europe in those days...


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Portugal is really far behind Western Europe, even its difference with neighboring Spain is enormous.
> 
> Spain and Portugal both used to be dictatorships (Franco & Estado Novo). It seems like Spain has caught up much more with Western Europe than Portugal for some reason.


Maybe it has to do with distance to so called "Blue Banana" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana

Scandinavia seems to be the biggest exception.

----
About Lithuania. I think what I hate the most about my country, is that not being poor or rich (some data says it's comparably rich, some say is poor), but worries about future. I slightly worry how people are performing in economy and how will perform in the future, if they look like gangstas they probably won't perform well in making everyone's life brighter. For my young perspective, I want more Europe (quality of cities, lifestyle, etc.) in my life and if I won't have it, I will (at least try) to reach it for myself.

Sure, you can be both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. It's intriguing and worrying how Lithuania (and at least this part of EU) will be performing in like 2030s or 2040s, maybe it will be not as bad, maybe it will be a bummer. People may say both opinions, and the scenario will occur despite which opinion is more popular today.


----------



## General Maximus

tfd543 said:


> Why not taking the plane? Im really just asking.
> 
> Whats the longest distance you have surpassed in a single day by car?
> 
> My record is around 900 km


Specialised logistics in a van. Today I've done 843 km, yesterday about the same. Two weeks ago I've done London to Milan in one go, that's about 1200 km. But the longest, I'd say would be from Barcelona to Holyhead to catch a ferry to Dublin. Left Barcelona at 4am, and had to get the 01:30am boat. Distance is a bit over 2000 km...


----------



## General Maximus

Going viral now. After a fatal accident involving a truck near Nuremberg, Germany, this police officer offers photographing motorists to come and view the dead body.
This is to make a point to people who slow down to take photos of major accident sites on motorways, and also to point out the lack of respect to those involved.


----------



## MichiH

^^ even in the opposite direction 8km congestion just because of these suckers.... hno:


----------



## Kpc21

What do you think about the Google's and ARM's ban for Huawei? Unless they come to an agreement (and they may not because those bans seem to be forced by the American government – even though ARM is not an American company), Huawei will not be able to release smartphones based on new versions of the ARM CPU platforms. About Google the situation is not so clear because Android is basically an open-source project (although contributed to mostly by Google) – but there are some components like drivers which are proprietary and all the Google apps are also proprietary and Huawei may not be able to install them on newly released smartphones sold in Europe and in the USA (on the Chinese market they are not needed because they are not available there anyway because of the censorship).

Same may happen with other popular Chinese smartphone brands: Xiaomi, HTC, ZTE, Lenovo/Motorola.

From the customer's perspective it's always better to have wider choice... And the Chinese smartphones usually have better price-to-quality ratio than those of more "mainstream" brands – from South Korea or Japan.

And about spying – who cares whether it will be done by Americans or by the Chinese?


----------



## Attus

^^ It's a war. The main weapons are not bombers and tanks but chips and softwares, which is good because dramatically less people will die. But even so it's a war.


----------



## bogdymol

Kpc21 said:


> What do you think about the Google's and ARM's ban for Huawei? ...


I bought last week, before the ban, a new Huawei phone for my wife. The phone works fine, price was good, but I don't know if this ban will affect the phone later on. I can still return it in the next 2 weeks, but I am not sure if I should do it or not...


----------



## General Maximus

Best to be on the safe side. When things between the US and China go really bad, all updates could be stopped immediately.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> I bought last week, before the ban, a new Huawei phone for my wife. The phone works fine, price was good, but I don't know if this ban will affect the phone later on. I can still return it in the next 2 weeks, but I am not sure if I should do it or not...


If you can return it, do that.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> ^^ It's a war. The main weapons are not bombers and tanks but chips and softwares, which is good because dramatically less people will die. But even so it's a war.



It is basically the same as Dieselgate or Boeing 737 MAX.


----------



## Kpc21

bogdymol said:


> I bought last week, before the ban, a new Huawei phone for my wife. The phone works fine, price was good, but I don't know if this ban will affect the phone later on. I can still return it in the next 2 weeks, but I am not sure if I should do it or not...


According to what they say, not, the models being currently on the market are safe and they will still be getting updates.



Attus said:


> ^^ It's a war. The main weapons are not bombers and tanks but chips and softwares, which is good because dramatically less people will die. But even so it's a war.


For me it seems kinda similar to the Cold War. Or at least to one of the aspects of the Cold War. During the Cold War, the US and western Europe also didn't want to share their technology with us.

Actually, not only the technology... The Iron Curtain was also a barrier e.g. for exotic fruits and people in Poland (at least according to what is said, I didn't live in those times) could get fruit such as oranges or bananas only around the Christmas period. Because the only country where they grow and from where we could import them was Cuba and they are cropped there shortly before Christmas.


----------



## keber

g.spinoza said:


> If you can return it, do that.


Why? It won't stop working. 
I'm actually considering buying it as prices will for sure go down. Huawei phones are still excellent.


----------



## Kpc21

As far as I can see, Xiaomi are not yet covered by those sanctions.


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> Why? It won't stop working.
> I'm actually considering buying it as prices will for sure go down. Huawei phones are still excellent.


Better be on the safe side. You don't know what's going to happen.


----------



## Kanadzie

Kpc21 said:


> And about spying – who cares whether it will be done by Americans or by the Chinese?


Americans are at least constrained by laws, though those laws are very weak when the subject of spying isn't an American. PRC government though almost deliberately is trying to screw everyone.

But you have to admit the whole thing is totally ingenious. For so long, spy agencies needed to make high-tech bugs and break into people's homes and offices to plant them, and later all this hacking and such. So much effort, so much work! China, just make phones and network equipment, a little cheaper than the market average, that spy automatically and _sell _them to everyone and the telecom networks. Hahaha! Instant world domination! It is like Lenin with the "capitalists will sell you the rope to hang them" :lol:


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> It is basically the same as Dieselgate or Boeing 737 MAX.


I disagree, 737Max is a real, quite serious issue.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> I disagree, 737Max is a real, quite serious issue.



I certainly would not say otherwise. Just the reaction of Great Britain, Germany, France and later the whole EASA was little bit lunatic.

In the morning of the day when the grounding in Europe started, B737M were safe. All scheduled flights took off. However, in the evening the situation changed rapidly - B737M were suddenly death cruisers and had to be stopped immediately.

One good example:

The SmartWings B737M (OK-SWA) took off from the Sal island, Cape Verde before the grounding entered into force. During the flight, the aircraft was redirected from the French and the German airspace without any clues on how to get to Prague as different countries started to close their airspaces for this type. Finally, the aircraft was sent to Tunisia with landing that was preceded by 1,5 hours long stay in a holding pattern because of the fuel. After that, the aircraft successfully landed and the passengers had to wait for other Boeing 737 (probably -800) to take them from Tunisia to Prague.

The story does not end here. The empty B737M (SWA) took off the other day to get to Prague to a hangar. How it was possible? Ferry flights were and still are possible.

This was not the only case. There were other 6 aircraft stuck in the sky and doing a holding pattern even above inhabited areas. 

I failed to understand why the grounding even applied to the en-route flights. Why this 6 aircraft could not have finished their service properly. 

If the measure (to ground the planes immediately and literally banish them from the EU) had been supposed to save the passengers in the aircraft, then letting them do a time-consuming holding pattern would not have made sense. Instead, they could have flown directly to their destination, they could have burned all fuel and landed properly (crew would have landed at the airport they had the landing charts of and pax would have been happy to be home within the schedule). 

If the measure had been supposed to be to save the people on the ground (the doomed model could have made a lethal nose-dive), then letting them do a time-consuming holding pattern together with the absolute legal ferry flight would not have made sense

Eventually, it all brought a very negative perception of the Boeing company. I mean, I don't like how they "outsmarted" system and designed a design-flaw deathly aircraft with fishy MCAS feature. But, come on, Airbus must have celebrated to the distortion that day.


----------



## Kpc21

Kanadzie said:


> Americans are at least constrained by laws, though those laws are very weak when the subject of spying isn't an American.


Their agencies like NSA seem to be kinda beyond the law anyway.



> China, just make phones and network equipment, a little cheaper than the market average, that spy automatically and _sell _them to everyone and the telecom networks. Hahaha! Instant world domination! It is like Lenin with the "capitalists will sell you the rope to hang them" :lol:


Well, Americans were first, Chinese just copied that 




volodaaaa said:


> In the morning of the day when the grounding in Europe started, B737M were safe. All scheduled flights took off. However, in the evening the situation changed rapidly - B737M were suddenly death cruisers and had to be stopped immediately.


Well, this is how the airline industry works. Even if there is even a small but known risk that the passengers may not be safe in the airplane, the flight gets cancelled. They are just so strict about those things. And this is one of the factors which made flying the safest means of transport.


----------



## volodaaaa

You did not seem to get my point. The grounding should have been applied solely to already landed aircraft.

There were an aircraft close to short final landing phase from Istanbul to Berlin. Yet was sent back to Istanbul. Ridiculous.

Irregular situations just increase the risk of failures (look up for the Teneriffe air disaster). The aircraft should have finished their flights and grounded once landed. They would have been the same amount of time eventually.


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> There were an aircraft close to short final landing phase from Istanbul to Berlin. Yet was sent back to Istanbul. Ridiculous.


Yes, it's a total absurd. They made it spend even more time in the air...


----------



## Attus

German authorities or those of some other nations may have reacted wrong. However I can understand them: may that airplane crash, plase, do it somewhere else. 
But back to your first statment, the Huawei affair is basically the same as the 737 Max story, I still disagree. Some rapid, disputable decisions about a pressing but short term situation can not even be compared to a well planned long term measure by the government of the most powerful nation of the world against a leading technical company of another raising nation.


----------



## Suburbanist

The draconian measures of ESA like described here are excessive, however they do have a 'historical background', so to speak. In the past, there was more leeway referring to such events related to airspace closures. However, some companies started to systematically game the system regarding scheduled airspace closures or airport off-hours, such as declaring they were delayed by weather and needed permission to land. Cargo airlines were also repeatedly guilty here... requesting approaches forbidden at night, alleging low-ish fuel and thus a more direct path on final approach. 

Then, there was the case of French ACT strikes where airlines elsewhere would rush to put planes on air and then say they should be allowed to land in French airports even after the 'strike' was officially on [I'm not saying I agree on such strikes, just pointing the situation]


----------



## x-type

Yesterday I was travelling home from Germany, and I have noticed a strange thing that I was never sooner thinking about: air temperature in the tunnels. It was Gleinalm tunnel. New tube of course. Outer temperature was 15-16°C. At southern half of the tunnel my display was showing 33-34°C. I think it is not quite normal, and that there was obviously some ventilation failure.

To compare - nearby in longer Plabutsch tunnel temperature didn't go over 24°C (also bidirectional due to road works). 

Do you think such temperature oscilations are normal?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This has to do with the amount of mass on top of the tunnel. The more mass, the higher the temperatures. 30 - 40 °C is not uncommon in long tunnels with over 1000 meters of mountain on top of it. The Gotthard Base Tunnel reaches 47 °C without ventilation. 

Just today a friend of mine was driving through the Gotthard Tunnel and he reported 33 °C.


----------



## MichiH

Attus said:


> German authorities or those of some other nations may have reacted wrong. However I can understand them: may that airplane crash, plase, do it somewhere else.



Why to blame German authorities? If I'm not mistaken, many other "countries" have stopped 737 MAX earlier.


----------



## volodaaaa

MichiH said:


> Why to blame German authorities? If I'm not mistaken, many other "countries" have stopped 737 MAX earlier.



It was just an example.


I found some flightradar24 maps.




















I don't want to conspire. But countries behind Airbus were quite eager to close their airspace  That's why I think there is a small cold-war against the US behind.


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> Why to blame German authorities? If I'm not mistaken, many other "countries" have stopped 737 MAX earlier.


Because Voloda mentioned them. That's why I wrote in my answer "Germans or other ones".


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> I don't want to conspire.


Then why do you? Are you forced to?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Street View only 6 weeks old.


----------



## Junkie

So you "Europeans" have a chance to vote on the european elections today. Did you cast You cast your vote? How is the voting organized in your countries is it the same as national elections? Do you go to schools and administrative buildings for voting ?
I read now that during the day today, the turnout is the highest since the elections were introduced.


----------



## Verso

European elections aren't popular in small countries. For example, Slovenia has just 8 out of 751 MEPs. Cyprus, Estonia, Luxembourg, and Malta have just 6 MEPs each. As a comparison, Germany has 96 MEPs.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ In addition, that means a major party that would dominate the national politics can get only 1 or maybe 2-3 seats in the European Parliament. So people don't feel like it's a serious election. It's fair from an EU-wide proportional perspective, but small countries feel like they don't have any influence. 

The Netherlands voted last Thursday. I went to vote at 5:30 p.m. and there was nobody else in the polling station. Turnout was somewhat higher than usual, but only half that of a parliamentary election. The Labour Party has profited from Frans Timmermans being the 'spitzenkandidat' for PES, the exit poll put them far higher than regular polls indicated.


----------



## volodaaaa

Yes. Basically, it is the same. But this time the official invitation was written both in Slovak and English language. The elections usually take place in schools.

We improved our turnout from 13 % in 2014 to 20 %. So maybe, this time we are not holding the record. But the mobilisation was a pure intranational thing. Right extremists started an intensive campaign and strong pro-Europeans reacted. So these two groups boosted each other. The major government party was second although lost a lot of seats.

The elections were a complete fiasco for opposition parties in the national council as well as for other two government parties.

But yes, people think they can change nothing and given the number of seats, they are basically right.

Needless to say, the politicians we send to the EU parliament are extremely prone to easily lost contact with reality. It usually ends up in strange situations when two politicians (one from the EP and the other from the national council) from the same party have contradictory opinions. It is like a parallel universe.


----------



## tfd543

I voted for the first time 5 min ago since i became an EU citizen 3 years ago. It feels good to vote and i got some good candy there. No queue at all.


----------



## Kpc21

Junkie said:


> So you "Europeans" have a chance to vote on the european elections today. Did you cast You cast your vote? How is the voting organized in your countries is it the same as national elections? Do you go to schools and administrative buildings for voting ?


Yes, same school as always  Although it will be no longer a school in a month – because of the educational reform introduced by the current government. Highly criticized one, which was one of the reasons of the teachers' strike which lasted three weeks (for three weeks there were no classes at schools) and ended a month ago – although the main ground of the strike was financial. The ballot box was transparent, it's a novelty introduced in the last or last but one elections (before they were always in the national colors – white and red – and usually wooden).

Nobody was giving away candies 

Voting was simple, just a single ballot in the A3 format, a number of committees each with a number of candidates. I voted for none of the major parties as I don't agree with their politics.

The campaign was, unfortunately, based more on national than on European issues. And there are things in which practically all the parties agree. Like being against building the Nord Stream 2 gas pipe or against introducing the euro in Poland (at least without some big reforms of the Eurozone).

The attendance on this year's European elections in Poland is exceptionally high. In the previous elections, the turnout was:
– 20.9% in 2004,
– 24.53% in 2009,
– 23.83% in 2014.

This year, it was 14.39% already at 12:00. There are no more up to date data yet.


----------



## MichiH

*My signature has been updated*

*NEW* AL
*NEW* BG
*NEW* GR
*NEW* MC
*NEW* NMK


----------



## tfd543

I got candy in the welcoming lobby, the voting area, and Lastly the place where i cast my vote. Our ballot was long and narrow, it clearly marked where you had to fold it. Strangely, i didnt had to show any ID, but only recite my birthday.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland it was the first elections after introducing e-IDs (in form of smartphone apps). And there are some concerns about it. The election committee did not scan QR-codes but they were confirming the app is authentic just based on some graphic features like a Polish flag changing colors...

We always have to show the ID and put a signature on the list.

Our polling stations are still open, so we wait for the (exit poll) results to 9 PM. Meanwhile, the turnout for 5 PM got published – it's 32.51% and it's already a record.

Many websites with news blocked commenting for two days: yesterday and today till the end of the elections. I also know one Polish Internet forum (about IT) which got closed for those two days.

SSC fortunately works, although not without problems (constant database errors)  

I can post photos of not mine but a polling station from a nearby town:




























It's typical appearance of a polling station in Poland – in a school, with a green table cloth  Different members of the election commission "service" people living in different groups of streets or commieblocks. Here the plates with the numbers of commieblocks are printed, in my polling station the plates with the street names were hand written with a permanent marker


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's fair from an EU-wide proportional perspective, but small countries feel like they don't have any influence.


Put together we have more influence/MEPs than Germany, but Latvian MEPs don't care about Slovenia and vice versa.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch PM has been 'coalition building' in Northern Europe and the Baltics to form a bigger counterweight to German-French dominance in EU politics. Especially after Brexit, where the Netherlands loses an important ally.

Though it's a mystery to me what the PM really wants to achieve, considering his party is liberal-conservative but is in the ALDE group. He often appears mildly eurosceptic in domestic affairs but that doesn't match with the hyper pro-European stance of many ALDE members.


----------



## Kpc21

How did the campaigns in your countries look like? Were they also (apart from mentioning some strictly national issues, totally unrelated to those elections) focused mostly on fighting in the EU for the interests of your country?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

tfd543 said:


> Thank you Sir. The Danish citizenship took me 11 months to acquire. I deliberately applied after multiple citizenship was allowed.
> 
> To open a new interesting thread, how is the naturalisation law in your country and more importantly, how long is the processing time approx ???
> 
> Anyone that has multiple citizenship ? I have two and Im very Proud of that.


I do have dual nationality, but I had the right to have them both from birth, I'm not sure how long the processing time is for either.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Back to Breša?


For the moment. I will re-move to Turin at the end of June...


----------



## MichiH

MattiG said:


> Then you press "BACK" button and retry.


It works 2 out of 3 times or 3 out of 4 times but unfortunately not always 




Penn's Woods said:


> Sometimes I “copy” posts so I can paste if they don’t work.


Me too. But sometimes I just forget it......


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The database errors are highly annoying and frankly detrimental to forum usage. They have also been persistent, unfortunately there isn't much that we can do about that for the time being. 

If you write a long post, I'd recommend copying it to be sure it isn't lost.


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> Then you press "BACK" button and retry.


Unfortunately if you use "Quick Reply", the content you have written disappears after pressing "Back". It doesn't in normal Reply mode.

But just refreshing the page usually works and the post finally gets sent. Sometimes even multiple times.

It's terrible what DragonByte is doing with this forum.

About voting abroad – until recently it was possible in Poland to vote by mail if you live abroad. This way I voted in the Polish parliamentary elections when I lived in Karlsruhe – the nearest polling station was in Strasbourg, 80 km away. I voted either in Munich, or in Cologne (where there are Polish consulates), I don't remember, and I did it by mail. But the current government cancelled this possibility and now it is available only for the disabled people.

The thing which happened in Romanian embassies definitely should not happen... It's just undemocratic that there were not enough polling stations, those who wanted to vote had to wait in long queues and even that did not guarantee the right to vote (if they had no other possibilities, they should at least have kept the polling stations open until all the persons in the queue voted). I hope the EU will do something about that.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Mike can't help us now. It's up to Vertical Scope but they are out hunting in the Canadian outback it seems.


----------



## bogdymol

MattiG said:


> Then you press "BACK" button and retry.


I did, but the long post was gone.



Penn's Woods said:


> You’re in the U.S.? Work, study, vacation?
> 
> We actually have a Romanian consulate in Philadelphia, for some reason....


Work related trip.

There are many Romanians or people of Romanian origin living in USA. There's an area in Florida where there are estimates of 200.000 people.


----------



## Kpc21

Something like 2 hours ago I thought it got OK. The forum pages were loading quite slowly – but there were almost no database errors. Now... you must be lucky to see something else than an error 

Why is VerticalScope doing it to us? Do they want to kill this forum?


----------



## Kpc21

> Did you all had to register before voting ?


No. In Poland, you have to register only if you want to vote in another polling station than the one to which you are normally assigned (according to your address).

In general, there are two ways:
– registering some time in advance that you will vote somewhere else (it can be done online),
– taking a certificate from your home municipality which entitles you to vote in any Polish polling station in Poland or abroad (then they cross you out from the list in the station to which you are assigned; if you change your mind and you want to vote there anyway, then you also have to bring that certificate with you – to ensure that you vote only once).



> Also can some of you being in foreign countries can vote in embassies of other "EU" countries or this is a case if only your country is missing embassy there.....


With the European elections it is so much better that you are always allowed to vote just together with the citizens of the country in which you are currently present.

Actual problems with voting are reported by the sailors that are currently somewhere on the sea far away from any land. Even though there are polling stations organized on all ships registered in Poland (and sailing with the Polish flag), the problem is that even Polish companies do not register their ships in Poland because of too high taxes. This problem exists already for many years and no government has done anything about that.

Voting abroad is also not possible (at all) in case of the local elections. Meanwhile, in the parliamentary and European elections, if you vote abroad, you don't vote for the candidates from your region (where you live in Poland) but always for the ones that candidate in Warsaw. It's OK if someone is abroad for a longer period – but if someone is there only for a moment, then it would be much better to make it possible to vote for the candidates from your region (on condition he will notify appropriate institutions about that early enough, so they can prepare a ballot for him).


----------



## Penn's Woods

bogdymol said:


> I did, but the long post was gone.
> 
> 
> 
> Work related trip.
> 
> There are many Romanians or people of Romanian origin living in USA. There's an area in Florida where there are estimates of 200.000 people.


There aren't lots of consulates in Philadelphia. Being right between New York and Washington, we could easily be covered by the ones in those cities. I know we've got France, Italy, Chile I think; Israel recently closed theirs.... The Romanian one is on a relatively quiet street, in what we call Center City but outside the business district strictly speaking, and there is or used to be some sort of Romanian gift shop across the street from it. I wonder if there used to be a small Romanian community in the neighborhood.


----------



## General Maximus

I'm in Amsterdam, and I'm supposed t head out to Paris now. But I think I'll wait a little while longer...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

How do you pronounce the Ķ in Latvian? Like Ķekava


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Please stop the pointless debates about Kosovo and other disputed territories. It leads to nothing. Moderation has been lenient so far, only deleting it, but know there are calls to ban users, so be warned.


----------



## RipleyLV

ChrisZwolle said:


> How do you pronounce the Ķ in Latvian? Like Ķekava


10 year throwback challenge? 

This still works: https://www.languagehelpers.com/words/latvian/alphabet.html


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> How do you pronounce the Ķ in Latvian? Like Ķekava


Like Ć.


----------



## Attus

There was a great question in German version of Who wants to be millionaire ("Wer wird Millionär?") this week.

Which of these four rivers does not have any bridges above it?
A: Nile
B: Amazonas
C: Missisippi
D: Mekong


----------



## VITORIA MAN

amazonas ( too wide )


----------



## Tenjac

VITORIA MAN said:


> amazonas ( too wide )


Answer is correct, but the explanation is most certainly wrong.


----------



## Corvinus

Embedding photos hosted on imgur does not work anymore?!


----------



## keokiracer

Corvinus said:


> Test - imgur hosted photos:


You need this between the img-tags for it to work
https://i.imgur.com/zQZISWU.jpg

Gives:


----------



## MichiH

German pollster do frequently make public-opinion polls. This time Greens are number one for the very first time!

Due to the disastrous result for SPD party and the subsequent withdrawl of their chairman, they lost six percentage points compared to the last poll in early May, and their coalition partner CDU/CSU lost three percentage points. Greens won six points and have 26% now.









https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend-1671.html


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Social-Democratic parties across Europe have difficulty to convey their message to the electorate. People flock to the political fringes because they don't like these 'grand coalitions' of center right and center left parties governing together. 

The Dutch Labor Party was almost destroyed in the last parliamentary election, capturing less than 10% of the vote. On the other hand the hard-left socialist party isn't doing well either, they don't profit from the mainstream left implosion.

An interesting fact in the last EU elections was that the Netherlands doesn't really have a mainstream center-left party anymore. They shifted so far left that another fringe party '50 Plus' for pensioner's interest was the only party on the center-left. Labor Party shifted left to regain votes from GreenLeft and the Party for Animals.

It's interesting how Forum for Democracy is often portrayed as far right or populist by the media while the so-called 'mainstream left' is similar or even further from the center than FvD.


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> I think you confuse sick days with so-called "working inability" days. Sick days are often a benefit from the company and are meant to work like "I don't feel good to go to work but yet I think I can cure myself today to be fresh tomorrow, so I stay home".
> 
> 
> What you described are "working inability" days.


Yes, those are two different things – but the purpose is the same. We call it "zwolnienie lekarskie" – "doctor's release". Or shortly L-4 which used to be the symbol of the form on which doctors were issuing those sick leave certificates very long time ago.




> Sick days and home-office days are usually employed in modern corporations here. In my institution (the ministry) these are like from the distant universe.


Well, in Poland too.


----------



## MichiH

^^ sick-days are NOT "doctor's release". You just need to call our boss and tell him that you'll stay at home.

In Germany you can usually take 2 sick days in a row. If you need 3 days in a row, you usually need a "doctor's release". It's called "Krankschreibung" = writing sick. "I'm written being sick".


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## Kpc21

Yes, I just wrote that and even originally I meant that 

Doctor's release is doctor's release and a right to not come to work if you are sick for a day or two without going to doctor is a totally different thing, being a benefit, available only from some employers (usually from corporations or modern startup companies and rather not if you work in the public sector).

How well are other countries dealing with fake "doctor's releases", "writings sick" or whatever you call it? Is also the social security just controlling people at their homes, if they are actually there and not e.g. on a trip or even working for another employer (because such cases happen here too)?


----------



## MichiH

^^ Just a recent example from Germany: https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden...egen-Studenten,uni-hohenheim-atteste-100.html

75 students had breaked off from a university test and all had a "doctor's release" from the very same doctor. It's investigated now. The maximum fine might be one year jail for each student and 2 year jail per student for the doctor (I don't get it, in total the number of students is more than 100).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't think I've ever called in sick for more than 2 or 3 days... so I don't have any first-hand experience with a doctor for work. But at all jobs I've held, you would just call your manager and tell him you're sick and unable to come. 

You do have to go to the 'company doctor' if sick leave is long-term or recurring, but generally not after only 2-3 days. It also depends on the problem, if you broke your leg or had a major accident it's more obvious you can't come than if you take a week of sick leave 'for having the flu' for the third time in a year.

The public sector tends to have a substantially higher sick leave than the private sector in the Netherlands. Maybe public employers are too lenient, I know from experience that some people manage to get away with a huge amount of seemingly dubious sick leave.


----------



## Tonik1

italystf said:


> I think euthanasia should be a right only if the patient (regardeless of age) has 0% chance of recovery.
> Can some forms of post-traumatic disorder be completely untreatable even with modern psychiatry? How can they be sure that the patient could never improve? For non-mental illnesses, like cancer, I think it's more easy to tell when the patient has no chance to recover.


Also when many "healthy" teenagers hve suicide thoughs at some point of their life.


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## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> I think euthanasia should be a right only if the patient (regardeless of age) has 0% chance of recovery.
> Can some forms of post-traumatic disorder be completely untreatable even with modern psychiatry? How can they be sure that the patient could never improve? For non-mental illnesses, like cancer, I think it's more easy to tell when the patient has no chance to recover.


I am more a conservative than a liberal person (I don't scream in rejoice for the lgbti agenda and I have recently changed my mind about abortions when I saw my son in the ultrasound monitor in 12th week of my wife's pregnancy and it was de facto a full-fledged baby),but I am pretty much sure, it does not matter if euthanasia is allowed or not once someone is already determined to commit a suicide.


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## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't think I've ever called in sick for more than 2 or 3 days... so I don't have any first-hand experience with a doctor for work. But at all jobs I've held, you would just call your manager and tell him you're sick and unable to come.
> 
> You do have to go to the 'company doctor' if sick leave is long-term or recurring, but generally not after only 2-3 days. It also depends on the problem, if you broke your leg or had a major accident it's more obvious you can't come than if you take a week of sick leave 'for having the flu' for the third time in a year.
> 
> The public sector tends to have a substantially higher sick leave than the private sector in the Netherlands. Maybe public employers are too lenient, I know from experience that some people manage to get away with a huge amount of seemingly dubious sick leave.


I had to take off a whole month when I underwent surgery... but my contract does not need doctor's releases, so I just told my boss I was in hospital and everything was fine.


----------



## Suburbanist

In Norway, your family doctor fills official paid sick leave for sick leave more than a few days.

This happens because it is the social security agency (NAV) that pays for sick leave (it refunds the employer for salary it pays to sick employee), so short (couple days) stays don't need proof usually, but longer stays do.


----------



## volodaaaa

Suburbanist said:


> In Norway, your family doctor fills official paid sick leave for sick leave more than a few days.
> 
> This happens because it is the social security agency (NAV) that pays for sick leave (it refunds the employer for salary it pays to sick employee), so short (couple days) stays don't need proof usually, but longer stays do.


We are a fascist state :nuts: You need proofs even if you just visit a doctor :lol: And if you are sick, you have to submit the papers from the doctor to your employer within 3 days. You also have to announce the address of your stay and sometimes there is an inspection to check if you are home.

The money during your "stay" is provided by so-called "Social Insurance company" which is subsidiary to the Ministry of social affairs. Each day of your sickness you are given some percentage (depends on the collective agreement) of your daily wage (60 % in my case) including weekends (thus 99% of people quits their sick-leave on Mondays).

If not, you are not home, you are given a fine and you will lose all the money earned during the sick-leave.

A sick-day is basically a benefit from (usually) a private employer (like corporations). It has much more relaxed rules.


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Why did you resign? A rude boss?


Yes. Sort of. I would not like to sound like some snowflake. It was rather a professional issue than a personal one. But another two people resigned with me without knowing about each other. He is a very mediocre manager who fails to organise his time and thus is prone to get under the pressure easily. Basically, most of my workload finished stuck at his desk. His manager is a top-level one, who is basically a political nominee and a deputy government member. She was always very angry at him, while he blamed me with my team. I was ready to leave but I had a talk with her and explained everything. She offered me the position of my boss :lol: I dunno what to do. It is close to the political level of management I would not like to be part of and the general elections are in 7 months. Moreover, it would definitely look like I conspired against him.


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> Yes. Sort of. I would not like to sound like some snowflake. It was rather a professional issue than a personal one. But another two people resigned with me without knowing about each other. He is a very mediocre manager who fails to organise his time and thus is prone to get under the pressure easily. Basically, most of my workload finished stuck at his desk. His manager is a top-level one, who is basically a political nominee and a deputy government member. She was always very angry at him, while he blamed me with my team. I was ready to leave but I had a talk with her and explained everything. She offered me the position of my boss :lol: I dunno what to do. It is close to the political level of management I would not like to be part of and the general elections are in 7 months. Moreover, it would definitely look like I conspired against him.




I see. How transparent is it to get a job in Slovakia with an above-average salary? Lets say a university degree is required.

Do you have to know someone that knows someone ?


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> I see. How transparent is it to get a job in Slovakia with an above-average salary? Lets say a university degree is required.
> 
> Do you have to know someone that knows someone ?


It depends on your preference. If you don't have special expectations you can get a job in some corporation (T-com, Orange, HP, IBM, AT&T, etc.). Expect a good salary, but usually a boring job. But the conditions to an upward draft are good. It is very transparent.

If you want to be more specialised than it is worse and you definitely need to know someone. But from the aspect of an employer. Specialised candidates are extinct in Slovakia.

For example, the job at the ministry is extremely poorly paid. Of course, it has some advantages, but when it comes to salary, I have a slightly higher salary than a local Lidl supervisor whose only agenda is to tell other store assistants, where to put a cartoon of yoghurts and where a pack of pickles.

Currently, there are four vacant positions in my department. It is really hard to find someone to work here with the salary, even though the work is creative. Of course, I ask my friends and people I know, because I believe the family-like team works better. But no one wants to work here. All four positions were given to a national call (there is a special portal in Slovakia if you want to work in public administration), in three cycles, no one applied for a job interview. hno:

If I wanted I could apply for a job in some corporation. I would earn a lot of money, but I would be effectively a junior Excel copy-paster. It would be a shame to toss all my transport knowledge and contacts.


----------



## Surel

volodaaaa said:


> We are a fascist state :nuts: You need proofs even if you just visit a doctor :lol: And if you are sick, you have to submit the papers from the doctor to your employer within 3 days. You also have to announce the address of your stay and sometimes there is an inspection to check if you are home.
> 
> The money during your "stay" is provided by so-called "Social Insurance company" which is subsidiary to the Ministry of social affairs. Each day of your sickness you are given some percentage (depends on the collective agreement) of your daily wage (60 % in my case) including weekends (thus 99% of people quits their sick-leave on Mondays).
> 
> If not, you are not home, you are given a fine and you will lose all the money earned during the sick-leave.
> 
> A sick-day is basically a benefit from (usually) a private employer (like corporations). It has much more relaxed rules.


On the other side, if parents need to take care for a sick child, they get the same papers from the doctor and the employer has to give them the paid leave.

The system actually really protects those with health problems and targets those that misuse the system. It's better than when employers simply fire you on a whim because you called sick too many times and on the other side it is better than system where employees have very high protection and can just invent health problems time after time without facing any real consequences.

There have been some political experiments with who bears the costs of sick leave in CZ in the first days, week, and you could clearly see that when you put the costs on the employer, or reduce the compensation in the first days, people are afraid or not willing to call in sick and it is detrimental to their health, health of their colleagues and work efficiency.


----------



## Surel

^^
It also makes people go to the doctor, and bring their children to the pediatrician doctor, when they are having health issues. Another quite positive and important factor.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> I happen to know three victims of rape and they all have significant psychological issues. To be raped is one of the worst things that can happen to you.


Aparently, around half of rape victims develop posttraumatic stress disorder. This rate is indeed higher than for other types of traumas.
It's probably because rape is generally committed willingly by someone that the victim knew and trusted, while accidents or natural disasters are often the consequence of being unlucky to have been in the wrong place at the wrong moment, so they may be more "acceptable". Moreover, especially in backward societies, rape victim may be shy in reporting the event and seek psychological help, because they fear stigmatization.



> Most people who have experienced a traumatic event will not develop PTSD.[2] People who experience interpersonal trauma (for example rape or child abuse) are more likely to develop PTSD, as compared to people who experience non-assault based trauma, such as accidents and natural disasters.[7] About half of people develop PTSD following rape.[2][8] Children are less likely than adults to develop PTSD after trauma, especially if they are under 10 years of age.[9] Diagnosis is based on the presence of specific symptoms following a traumatic event.[2]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posttraumatic_stress_disorder

Whether PTSD is considered enough untreatable to justify euthanasia is debateable though.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> I am more a conservative than a liberal person (I don't scream in rejoice for the lgbti agenda and I have recently changed my mind about abortions when I saw my son in the ultrasound monitor in 12th week of my wife's pregnancy and it was de facto a full-fledged baby),but I am pretty much sure, it does not matter if euthanasia is allowed or not once someone is already determined to commit a suicide.


Those are delicate topics to be discussed lightly.
Abortion may be seen as inhumane, but where abortion is illegal women die for illegal abortions performed by wannabe doctors without proper knowledge, equipment, and hygienic standards.
LGBT rights may be seen as irrelevant by non-LGBT people, but may be very important to LGBT ones. If a law can make 5% of people happy, without taking anything away from the remaining 95%, why shouldn't it came into force?


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Those are delicate topics to be discussed lightly.
> Abortion may be seen as inhumane, but where abortion is illegal women die for illegal abortions performed by wannabe doctors without proper knowledge, equipment, and hygienic standards.
> LGBT rights may be seen as irrelevant by non-LGBT people, but may be very important to LGBT ones. If a law can make 5% of people happy, without taking anything away from the remaining 95%, why shouldn't it came into force?



Yeah. These topics are susceptible and too deep to be discussed here. Anyway, I do not have an extreme opinion. On the contrary, I think individual cases are unique. However, the same goes for euthanasia.


----------



## Attus

Surel said:


> The system actually really protects those with health problems and targets those that misuse the system.


I don't know the details. But what Voloda explained does not sound to me as a system that protects me when I'm sick. Being unable to work does not mean being unable to make a half an hour walk daily or to go to the nearby shop and buy some food. But if I can be checked any time whether I'm home, it can be very frustrating.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Roundabouts cause tornadoes according to a Pennsylvania man.

>> https://www.phillyvoice.com/pennsylvania-traffic-circles-causing-tornadoes-weather-2019/

_ "We didn't have tornadoes here until we started putting in the traffic circles. Cause, on account of the -- you wanna know why? When people go round and round in circles, it causes disturbance in the atmosphere, and causes tornadoes."_


----------



## CNGL

If that was true then my hometown would have been wiped out by a EF5 tornado many years ago :nuts:.


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## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> I don't know the details. But what Voloda explained does not sound to me as a system that protects me when I'm sick. Being unable to work does not mean being unable to make a half an hour walk daily or to go to the nearby shop and buy some food. But if I can be checked any time whether I'm home, it can be very frustrating.



Yeah, the system is quite strict. But on the other hand, some women say that maternal leave is one of the best in Europe if you wish to spend your time with your child.


In Slovakia, a woman can take up to three years long maternal leave, while the first six months is paid 80 % of her salary monthly and the rest 250 €. However, during these three years, she can swap with the partner, who can start his parental leave with 80 % of his salary monthly. The maximum period for the parental leave is six months, parents can't take the leave together (unless there are more children) and it must be done within the first three years.


----------



## Surel

Attus said:


> I don't know the details. But what Voloda explained does not sound to me as a system that protects me when I'm sick. Being unable to work does not mean being unable to make a half an hour walk daily or to go to the nearby shop and buy some food. But if I can be checked any time whether I'm home, it can be very frustrating.


You can do that, you are allowed to leave your house for those matters. The law counts with whether you not being at home is reasonable or not.

Checking whether people are at home is there because of those that call in sick and then go and work somewhere else illegally or are busy with their business e.g.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> I don't know the details. But what Voloda explained does not sound to me as a system that protects me when I'm sick. Being unable to work does not mean being unable to make a half an hour walk daily or to go to the nearby shop and buy some food. But if I can be checked any time whether I'm home, it can be very frustrating.


I don't think going to a shop is treated as abusing the sick leave. After all, you may have no other choice (e.g. no family that can do shopping for you). Starving is usually not good for recovering from a disease.

In Poland, those sick leaves have two options for the doctor to choose from: the patient must lay / the patient may walk. 



ChrisZwolle said:


> _ "We didn't have tornadoes here until we started putting in the traffic circles. Cause, on account of the -- you wanna know why? When people go round and round in circles, it causes disturbance in the atmosphere, and causes tornadoes."_


If someone is so stupid that he uses a traffic circle just to drive constantly around it ("round and round"), then it's not weird that he may suggest that it causes tornadoes


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Aparently, around half of rape victims develop posttraumatic stress disorder. This rate is indeed higher than for other types of traumas.
> It's probably because rape is generally committed willingly by someone that the victim knew and trusted, while accidents or natural disasters are often the consequence of being unlucky to have been in the wrong place at the wrong moment, so they may be more "acceptable". Moreover, especially in backward societies, rape victim may be shy in reporting the event and seek psychological help, because they fear stigmatization.
> 
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posttraumatic_stress_disorder
> 
> Whether PTSD is considered enough untreatable to justify euthanasia is debateable though.


I would say after rape you don't feel powerful any more. The rapist exercised his power over you and took all power away from you. At least that's my understanding of it, we don't talk about it.


----------



## g.spinoza

Greetings from Chengdu, China!


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Greetings from Chengdu, China!




:-O


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> Greetings from Chengdu, China!



What are you doing there? Business or private? I always wanted to go to China, but looks quite inaccessible if you want to go on your own especially because of the language barrier. 

Btw, greetings from Larnaca, Cyprus. Yesterday I crossed the pedestrian border in Nicosia into Northern Cyprus (Turkish). I’ll put some pictures here once I will get home.


----------



## g.spinoza

Big conference on thermometry. I suspect language would be a major barrier here if I wanted to go by myself. The English they use on signs, even at the airport, is incomprehensible; all the roads names are written in English, too, but only transliterated, so my hotel is in Jin Guang Jy road, which for what concerns me it's just a bunch of syllables impossible to tell apart from all other roads.
What frustrates me most, though, is the Great Firewall: many sites and apps are unreachable and do not work. Only western messenger working is Skype, and Google is blocked altogheter, including my work email and environment which are based on Google Suite.


----------



## Kpc21

From what I have heard, it's therefore popular (of course not among ordinary Chinese because they simply don't feel or have such a need – but rather among foreigners or the Chinese that make some business with foreigners) to use a VPN.


----------



## tfd543

g.spinoza said:


> Big conference on thermometry. I suspect language would be a major barrier here if I wanted to go by myself. The English they use on signs, even at the airport, is incomprehensible; all the roads names are written in English, too, but only transliterated, so my hotel is in Jin Guang Jy road, which for what concerns me it's just a bunch of syllables impossible to tell apart from all other roads.
> What frustrates me most, though, is the Great Firewall: many sites and apps are unreachable and do not work. Only western messenger working is Skype, and Google is blocked altogheter, including my work email and environment which are based on Google Suite.




Business aside man, How are the beers ?


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> It depends on your preference. If you don't have special expectations you can get a job in some corporation (T-com, Orange, HP, IBM, AT&T, etc.). Expect a good salary, but usually a boring job. But the conditions to an upward draft are good. It is very transparent.
> 
> If you want to be more specialised than it is worse and you definitely need to know someone. But from the aspect of an employer. Specialised candidates are extinct in Slovakia.
> 
> For example, the job at the ministry is extremely poorly paid. Of course, it has some advantages, but when it comes to salary, I have a slightly higher salary than a local Lidl supervisor whose only agenda is to tell other store assistants, where to put a cartoon of yoghurts and where a pack of pickles.
> 
> Currently, there are four vacant positions in my department. It is really hard to find someone to work here with the salary, even though the work is creative. Of course, I ask my friends and people I know, because I believe the family-like team works better. But no one wants to work here. All four positions were given to a national call (there is a special portal in Slovakia if you want to work in public administration), in three cycles, no one applied for a job interview. hno:
> 
> If I wanted I could apply for a job in some corporation. I would earn a lot of money, but I would be effectively a junior Excel copy-paster. It would be a shame to toss all my transport knowledge and contacts.




I see. Its true, I second that. You should always do What you like because in the end of the day, Thats What you will do all the time. 

Second of all, I dont see the point of hunting a High salary if you dont have a very clear aim What you gonna spend on. Im talking with so many In their start 20-s that tells me that they just need a High salary to get a big car and a big House.


----------



## CNGL

g.spinoza said:


> What frustrates me most, though, is the Great Firewall: many sites and apps are unreachable and do not work. Only western messenger working is Skype, and Google is blocked altogheter, including my work email and environment which are based on Google Suite.


I actually thought Chrome would be unable to open Chinese websites exactly because of that. But I was wrong. I've since returned to Firefox.


----------



## Kpc21

Why should it? It's just a browser and if it was passing the websites you browse through their servers (Opera Mini worked like that but this was to compress the websites to make them faster and use less data in the times when mobile Internet was slow and expensive) without your knowledge, it would definitely mean nothing good for you.


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> What frustrates me most, though, is the Great Firewall: many sites and apps are unreachable and do not work. Only western messenger working is Skype, and Google is blocked altogheter, including my work email and environment which are based on Google Suite.


When I was in Turkey, Wikipedia didn't work. At first I thought there was something wrong with Wikipedia. 

Anyway, have a nice time! I've been to China, but only Hong Kong.


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> Greetings from Chengdu, China!



What about the flight? Where did you fly from? My colleague was in Chengdu, China too. He complained about the aircraft since he flew with China Airlines, and according to him, the seats were not suitable for Europeans.


Well, he was at least 150 kg.


----------



## Kpc21

Verso said:


> When I was in Turkey, Wikipedia didn't work. At first I thought there was something wrong with Wikipedia.


I thought it's quite well known fact Wikipedia is blocked in Turkey... There was even a moment something like a year or two ago when they were announcing this fact quite loudly in all language versions. If I am not wrong, they even closed for one day to protest.

The problem is that now even in theory civilized European countries introduce legislation that allow them to block some websites within the country. China was the first, now even the western world follows them 

On 15 July Great Britain will start blocking porn websites. Poland already blocks websites with illegal gambling. Belgium also blocks some websites. Similarly France. Also Finland seems to be blocking porn.

Not to mention Russia where they block, for example, Dailymotion or Telegram. LinkedIn was blocked for 3 months in 2016. There was also a situation when they blocked Reddit because of a single post...

You may say porn or gambling are obviously bad things and blocking them can be understood – but if a country has already introduced a law that allow to block some websites, they may easily extend it to allow for blocking some websites that they simply don't like for political reasons...


----------



## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> From what I have heard, it's therefore popular (of course not among ordinary Chinese because they simply don't feel or have such a need – but rather among foreigners or the Chinese that make some business with foreigners) to use a VPN.


I was afraid it would be illegal, but apparently tourists and foreigners are not targeted, so I got one.



tfd543 said:


> Business aside man, How are the beers ?


Terrible.
We just had lunch in a streetside small place, very un-touristic, and they had 2 Chinese beers: 2% and 3.2% alcohol volume. I piss more alcohol than that.



volodaaaa said:


> What about the flight? Where did you fly from? My colleague was in Chengdu, China too. He complained about the aircraft since he flew with China Airlines, and according to him, the seats were not suitable for Europeans.
> 
> 
> Well, he was at least 150 kg.


I flew Air China too, from Frankfurt. The flight was not that bad but not ideal either. My entertainment screen was broken, so I tried to work but it was too loud, many children screaming; the meals were awful (you cannot serve beef pasta for breakfast!!!); the personnel spoke very bad English.
I don't know about seats, I'm petite


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I recently checked some Chengdu on the Chinese Baidu Street View. Those new districts look very modern. Huge skyscrapers / office buildings. It's a megacity, the prefecture level city has a population of 14+ million.

They have massive intersections in Chengdu:










Baidu Street View:


----------



## g.spinoza

My hotel is a 36-storey skyscraper almost downtown. I'm staying at the 16th in a corner room, and this is the view...


----------



## Highway89

I've just found this webpage where you can view recent aerial satellite imagery provided by Sentinel and Landsat: https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/

The resolution is quite low, but it's useful if you want to check out the status of infrastructure under construction.

For instance, this is a stretch of the Spanish A-73, one year ago and now:


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> Big conference on thermometry. I suspect language would be a major barrier here if I wanted to go by myself. The English they use on signs, even at the airport, is incomprehensible; all the roads names are written in English, too, but only transliterated, so my hotel is in Jin Guang Jy road, which for what concerns me it's just a bunch of syllables impossible to tell apart from all other roads.
> What frustrates me most, though, is the Great Firewall: many sites and apps are unreachable and do not work. Only western messenger working is Skype, and Google is blocked altogheter, including my work email and environment which are based on Google Suite.


I have a colleague attending the same conference! He's a Ph.D in computational physics.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> They have massive intersections in Chengdu:



Those are very untypical road markings. I wonder how do they work.


----------



## tfd543

g.spinoza said:


> My hotel is a 36-storey skyscraper almost downtown. I'm staying at the 16th in a corner room, and this is the view...




What about the air quality? Is it bearable?


----------



## Kanadzie

bogdymol said:


> Those are very untypical road markings. I wonder how do they work.


Probably not good - observe the two cars near the bus on the bottom :lol:


----------



## Kpc21

Maybe they were supposed to wait before the pedestrian crossing – but now they are allowed to drive, also through those lanes?

Although I guess those were right-turn lanes. At the top, in a similar situation, the cars from analogous lanes are turning right.


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> I have a colleague attending the same conference! He's a Ph.D in computational physics.


Nice! Maybe you can give me his name in PM, I will go looking for his presentation or poster if he got one. 
Usually thermometry conferences are very narrow in scope so attendees all know each other very well, but this one is very large (I think attendees are more than 500) so it's impossible to know everybody...



tfd543 said:


> What about the air quality? Is it bearable?


I suffer from asthma, in the past air quality gave me problems (e.g. Bologna in early 2000s), but I don't seem to have problems here. Maybe it's just because I've only been here 1 day and it was not a working day.
I noticed that all roadworks zones have a lot of water sprinklers around them, in order to keep the dust to a minimum. They are making air more humid than it already is, though, and given that there are already 30+ °C...


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> My hotel is a 36-storey skyscraper almost downtown. I'm staying at the 16th in a corner room, and this is the view...


I so love those ribbed hotel beddings.

Btw the last hotel where I stayed was at the stadium of Borussia Mönchengladbach, and the rooms were equipped like locker rooms (for instance instead of wardrobe I had a bench with hangers). It was very cool tough.


----------



## italystf

Kpc21 said:


> I thought it's quite well known fact Wikipedia is blocked in Turkey... There was even a moment something like a year or two ago when they were announcing this fact quite loudly in all language versions. If I am not wrong, they even closed for one day to protest.
> 
> The problem is that now even in theory civilized European countries introduce legislation that allow them to block some websites within the country. China was the first, now even the western world follows them
> 
> On 15 July Great Britain will start blocking porn websites. Poland already blocks websites with illegal gambling. Belgium also blocks some websites. Similarly France. Also Finland seems to be blocking porn.
> 
> Not to mention Russia where they block, for example, Dailymotion or Telegram. LinkedIn was blocked for 3 months in 2016. There was also a situation when they blocked Reddit because of a single post...
> 
> You may say porn or gambling are obviously bad things and blocking them can be understood – but if a country has already introduced a law that allow to block some websites, they may easily extend it to allow for blocking some websites that they simply don't like for political reasons...


Porn won't be banned in UK. People will simply be required to log in to confirm they're 18+. Porn is already forbidden to minors, they are just enforcing an existing prohibition.
That's very different than politically-motivated censorship in China, Russia, Turkey, or Arab countries.


----------



## tfd543

Once, I stayed in a hotel in Switzerland where there was a Bible on my bedside table. Quite odd taking into account that it was in an area where people do science.


----------



## Spookvlieger

In Italy all hotel rooms have bible's as well. In Belgium you might also find a bible in the drawer of the bedside table 50% of the time.


----------



## MattiG

The winter made a comeback in the North. The view at the last midnight on the road 4/E75 in Finland, latitude 69°27'N, elevation 280 meters:










The Midnight Sun lies somewhere above the clouds. The changes in weather are quick in that area. The maximum temperature two days earlier was +28°C.


----------



## g.spinoza

joshsam said:


> In Italy all hotel rooms have bible's as well. In Belgium you might also find a bible in the drawer of the bedside table 50% of the time.


I never found a Bible in my hotel room in Italy.


----------



## Spookvlieger

I always did. There is a least one in the drawer or cabinet next to your bed. Sometimes they consist of the new testament only. My hotel in Milan and Limone sul Garda both had an English bible. The one in Rome was in Italian.


----------



## Alex_ZR

g.spinoza said:


> I never found a Bible in my hotel room in Italy.


Saw one in a hotel in Milan.


----------



## Fatfield

The Gideon Society provides bibles for every hotel room in the UK. I believe they also do the same thing in other Commonwealth countries too.


----------



## g.spinoza

joshsam said:


> I always did. There is a least one in the drawer or cabinet next to your bed. Sometimes they consist of the new testament only. My hotel in Milan and Limone sul Garda both had an English bible. The one in Rome was in Italian.


The fact that 2 out of 3 were in English means that this service is catered for foreigners.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Fatfield said:


> The Gideon Society provides bibles for every hotel room in the UK. I believe they also do the same thing in other Commonwealth countries too.




And the U.S.


----------



## x-type

I have also never noticed the Bible in Italian hotels. But I really rarely open the drawers in hotels.


----------



## Spookvlieger

g.spinoza said:


> The fact that 2 out of 3 were in English means that this service is catered for foreigners.


Never claimed otherwise.


----------



## g.spinoza

joshsam said:


> Never claimed otherwise.


You said that all hotels in Italy had Bibles.
I gave you a counter-example.


----------



## italystf

Administrative subdivion of the Province of Taranto, in red the City of Taranto. I wonder how they could ever conceive this utter madness.


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> And the U.S.


Like I said, other Commonwealth countries....


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Administrative subdivion of the Province of Taranto, in red the City of Taranto. I wonder how they could ever conceive this utter madness.




Ever seen Houston? 
Or Columbus, Ohio?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Fatfield said:


> Like I said, other Commonwealth countries....




:-O

There IS a chain of dry cleaners in Philadelphia, of all places, called “British Imperial.” The Founders are turning over in their graves.


----------



## Verso

joshsam said:


> In Italy all hotel rooms have bible's as well.





g.spinoza said:


> I never found a Bible in my hotel room in Italy.





joshsam said:


> I always did. There is a least one in the drawer or cabinet next to your bed. Sometimes they consist of the new testament only. My hotel in Milan and Limone sul Garda both had an English bible. The one in Rome was in Italian.





Alex_ZR said:


> Saw one in a hotel in Milan.





x-type said:


> I have also never noticed the Bible in Italian hotels. But I really rarely open the drawers in hotels.


Last time I stayed at a hotel in Italy was in 2001.


----------



## MichiH

Verso said:


> Last time I stayed at a hotel in Italy was in 2001.


I've been to five different Italian hotels in the last weeks. There was no bible. It's also rare in Germany nowadays but it was quite different about 10 years ago.
I remember that I saw a bible in the last 12 months but I don't remember where... I think it was on Malta....


----------



## keber

Never seen Bibles in Italy, but they were in every single hotel or motel in USA, some even visibly on tables.


----------



## x-type

I will take an Italian hotel in next 10 days. Where should I look? The drawers in the night stands, or what? 
(It's gonna be in Romagna, is it enough religious to search for it?  )


----------



## tfd543

Lol. I dont get it. Why should the Holy Bible be in a public hotel? Isnt it something you keep to your private collection of books at home? I would rather prefer to have a book about the country I am visiting. What do you think lads? 

Yea I know, religion is a sensitive topic


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Lol. I dont get it. Why should the Holy Bible be in a public hotel? Isnt it something you keep to your private collection of books at home? I would rather prefer to have a book about the country I am visiting. What do you think lads?
> 
> Yea I know, religion is a sensitive topic




The Gideons have made it their mission to proselytize. It’s not the hotels doing it, although I suppose they could just refuse them....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Street View strikes again:
https://www.inquirer.com/news/phila...philadelphia-facial-recognition-20190612.html


----------



## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> Lol. I dont get it. Why should the Holy Bible be in a public hotel? Isnt it something you keep to your private collection of books at home? I would rather prefer to have a book about the country I am visiting. What do you think lads?
> 
> Yea I know, religion is a sensitive topic


I think that Western countries are nonreligious only on paper. Just consider that Italy has no religion of State but crosses are mandatory in public buildings.


----------



## Autobahn-mann

Penn's Woods said:


> Street View strikes again:
> https://www.inquirer.com/news/phila...philadelphia-facial-recognition-20190612.html


As like when cover or blurred road signs… Also if I think that's different...


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Lol. I dont get it. Why should the Holy Bible be in a public hotel? Isnt it something you keep to your private collection of books at home? I would rather prefer to have a book about the country I am visiting. What do you think lads?
> 
> Yea I know, religion is a sensitive topic


I don't know. Though not being a frequent traveller, I came across the holy bible in a hotel only once. 

But maybe it can be kind of a tradition or habit. During the Christmas eve, we usually put the bible on the table although I have never read it. But there is some tradition behind it.


----------



## Spookvlieger

I read the bilble twice and had 6 years of bible study (from my 12 till my 18) since I was brought up with parents that went to a Baptist Protestant church (they are considered a sect in Belgium). I am still not religious. The only reason I find books like the Bible or Quran interesting is from an historical aspect since acient history and knowledge does interest me.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Highway89 said:


> I've just found this webpage where you can view recent aerial satellite imagery provided by Sentinel and Landsat: https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/
> 
> The resolution is quite low, but it's useful if you want to check out the status of infrastructure under construction.


I prefer EO Browser: https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/eo-browser/ 

This let's you search sat images by date, cloud cover etc.


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> I think that Western countries are nonreligious only on paper. Just consider that Italy has no religion of State but crosses are mandatory in public buildings.


What? I didn't know that. hno:


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> I've been there on Thursday, ridden on a bus through it




What was your impression of the underground tunnel ? Nothing but gorgeous wasn't it ?


----------



## Kpc21

A bit scary 

That artificial island where the bridge ends and tunnel starts was interesting. So much nature on it!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I came across this car from RTV Slovenia in Italy (near Bruneck / Brunico). They have personalized license plates to match.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> I am not really interested in watching that in form of a fictional TV show.
> 
> I read and watched some descriptions of how it actually looked like, I also watched some news reports from that day – including one from American ABC television, which was much more detailed and included much more information as compared to those from Russian or Polish TV (in Poland, the accident was kept secret for several days from happening) – this is quite shocking. Actually, probably the only true and sensible information apart from the one that the accident has happened was that (as some of the radioactive dust came to Poland) while it was recommend to consume some iodine (which would fill one's thyroid so that it would not take the radioactive iodine from the Chernobyl dust) – actually there was even an action in schools of making the children take some Lugol's iodine liquid – it wasn't recommend to drink iodine tincture.


I heve been interested in this disaster since the childhood. The series were indeed good and accurate. It has a kind of the American signature, but the ambience was extremely great (I mean the vogue, licence plates, cars, appliances, etc.). Great background music too.

I was born year and few months after chernobyl. No one was told anything. Moreover, the compulsory 1st May march took place while children in Austria was kept out of the playgrounds. People reported huge mushrooms that summer.

However, the impact of the disaster on people in Czechoslovakia was negligible. This is stated even by current scientists. No regular cancer or birth defects occurred due to the ill fated power plant. I guess the same goes for Germany or Austria. But the precautions somehow indicates the worth of life in different countries. Sad.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Strike! The Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> NTB


Nice ground to cloud lightning stroke. They are quite rare.


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> Nice ground to cloud lightning stroke. They are quite rare.




Thats Tesla in action.. that poor guy wants to remind us How badly he was treated by the world. Sad story.


----------



## x-type

Hello from Faenza. No Bible in hotel. I have found only 2 Russian rubles in the drawer. I will leave them 2 Croatian kunas so maybe I start with some weird habit to leave the coins in that hotel xD


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> I was born year and few months after chernobyl. No one was told anything. Moreover, the compulsory 1st May march took place while children in Austria was kept out of the playgrounds.


In Poland as well. Furthermore – what's even worse – shortly after the disaster, they organized the yearly cycling Peace Race in Kiev, which is very close to Chernobyl.

If you want to see what the Polish news report about the Chernobyl disaster looked like (the title says it's the first one but I guess they must have said something already on the day before, maybe just as a short announcement, or on the same day but in earlier news – the presenter says everything as if they have already told about it before) – this is the recording:






It's in Polish but I guess you may understand at least something.

Basically – they did not really even say what happened but... quoted the Russian news. Maybe they just didn't want to lie by themselves, so if they couldn't tell the truth, they quoted the lie.

I suppose it's from the evening edition of the news which had to be broadcast after 9 PM and they are referring to the main one from 19:30 (we still have the main news on the national TV at 19:30 and it has always been so).


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> Hello from Faenza. No Bible in hotel.


Yeah, but can we trust a Croat? :troll:


----------



## Junkie

Do you need license for driving a tank ? 

DRUNK MAN INVADES POLISH TOWN DRIVING A SOVIET TANK


----------



## bogdymol

I guess it is above 3.5 tons, so you would need a C category license to drive that. Plus you need to register and insure it somehow...


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> I guess it is above 3.5 tons, so you would need a C category license to drive that. Plus you need to register and insure it somehow...


Depends on the national regulations. 

It might be possible to register a tank as a tractor. In Finland, the T licence entitles to drive a tractor of *any weight* if the max speed of the tractor is less or equal to 60 km/h. The B license includes T. If the max speed exceeds 60 km/h, then the C license is needed (the weight of a T-55 is 36 tons). The speed of a T-55 standard model is 48 km/h. Therefore, a T or B licence would be ok.


----------



## volodaaaa

The very first question is "is a tank a road vehicle?". I don't know. But I have not ever seen a tank with a licence plate. So I think it's rather a special vehicle.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> The very first question is "is a tank a road vehicle?". I don't know. But I have not ever seen a tank with a licence plate. So I think it's rather a special vehicle.


That is most probably subject to national interpretations. I believe that a tank would never get a status of a vehicle in Finland, but it might be possible in the European Corruption Zone.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

The rules for registering vehicles are very different in Europe country by country. Pretty much none of the Top Gear modified vehicles wouldn't have been allowed on the road over here, yet somehow all of them were road legal in the UK (maybe with a special permit?). 

Anyways, a tank wouldn't be allowed on the road over here anyway because tank tracks destroy asphalt.


----------



## Kpc21

According to what I heard on the radio yesterday, now he is going to pay quite a lot for towing the tank to the police parking lot and storing it there – because they charge for the weight and this tank weighs over 10 tonnes.

He may be arrested based on two things:
– drinking and driving (up to 2 years),
– causing a danger of a disaster in road traffic (up to 8 years).

But how he will be punished, it depends on the court.

The tank had no civil liability insurance and the driver wasn't entitled to drive such vehicles


----------



## Kpc21

Do you also have this problem in your countries that most newly built apartment buildings (old commie-blocks sometimes too) are being fenced off?



tramwaj said:


> i kilka zdjęć z Tarchomin of dreams, Łodkryta Avenue :troll:


The same happens with developer-built complexes of detached or semi-detached houses (usually together with an access road).

And people buying those apartments seem to prefer those fenced off places... 

This way it sometimes gets more and more difficult to walk from A to B in the city and it happens that one has to take long detours e.g. from his own house to a bus stop or to a grocery store. Because the shortest way gets fenced through...

In Germany (Karlsruhe) I also met another case. The shortest way from my dorm (which was actually just a commie-block that belonged to the university) to the nearest tram stop went through a sidewalk just in front of another commie-block. On one day, when I was walking through there as usual, one of the inhabitants of that block came to me when I was walking through it and told me it's their private property and I am not allowed to go through there... Well, I started walking behind that block instead of in front of it – damaging the grass growing there – and it seemed to be OK. Although this way I could look at people's balconies, which, I guess, could infringe their privacy more than walking in front...

Shortly after that "instruction" one older lady (living in another commie-block nearby) came to me, asked what they wanted from me – and she confirmed that in the past they were always walking through there and it wasn't a problem at all but at one moment those problems started.

For me such areas between apartment buildings should be common, public space, available for everyone. It has always been so – and it worked well.

Detached and semi-detached houses are a different thing – the plot belonging to such a house is, of course, private land and someone's privacy should be respected there – but it should be just the house and the plot and not also the access road or even a whole network of access roads...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

^^ In Estonia this can be decided upon by the local municipality where and what type of fences are allowed. In the local government where I work at (not Tallinn) fences between apartment buildings are not allowed, neither for older buildings nor new ones. For detached houses it's allowed but the fence can't be higher than 1.5 m and has to be see-through.

In Tallinn this depends on the area. In places where historically there have been fences around apartment buildings (e.g. early 20th century wooden-house suburbs of Tallinn) they are allowed. In open-plan commieblock suburbs they are not allowed because the planning concept itself called for wide open spaces without intrusions or obstacles.


----------



## Attus

My friend installed a software. The first step was to choose language. There were the usual options like English (USA), English (UK), Italiano, Español, etc. and:
- Deutsch (Deutschland)
- Deitsch (Österreich)
- Schwizerdütsch (Schweiz)


----------



## MichiH

^^ Odd, why are Liechtenstein and Luxembourg missing?

http://www.lingoes.net/en/translator/langcode.htm

It's nothing special, it's just ISO...


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> It's nothing special, it's just ISO...


I've neither found _Deitsch _nor _Schwizerdütsch _in this list ;-)


----------



## MichiH

^^ Ok, got it


----------



## Kpc21

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ In Estonia this can be decided upon by the local municipality where and what type of fences are allowed. In the local government where I work at (not Tallinn) fences between apartment buildings are not allowed, neither for older buildings nor new ones. For detached houses it's allowed but the fence can't be higher than 1.5 m and has to be see-through.
> 
> In Tallinn this depends on the area. In places where historically there have been fences around apartment buildings (e.g. early 20th century wooden-house suburbs of Tallinn) they are allowed. In open-plan commieblock suburbs they are not allowed because the planning concept itself called for wide open spaces without intrusions or obstacles.


I guess you have the local development plans and this is where the local authorities decide about those things.

The problem in Poland is that most areas have no local development plans because all old local development plans from before 1995 got cancelled with the end of 2003 (I guess it must have something to do with the weird logic of everything communist being bad – although why 1995 and not 1989?).

Establishing new plans is often problematic because they get protested. And it's simply a lot of effort, especially for big cities, which have many areas very different from each other.

Even if there are the local development plans, e.g. in Cracow there was a case when the city banned fencing off house complexes and apartment buildings – but the administration court cancelled this law arguing that everyone has the right to protect own property.

It sometimes causes problems with the emergency services not being able to access a sick or injured person.


----------



## MichiH

Fences... As you've shown, you can climb over it...

Meanwhile in Lower Franconia: A house owner has mounted steel spikes on the staires in front of her house to avoid drunk people sitting there; City of Würzburg promted her to remove them for safety reasons. (see video)


----------



## Kpc21

A bit like those used against pigeons


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Kpc21 said:


> I guess you have the local development plans and this is where the local authorities decide about those things.
> 
> The problem in Poland is that most areas have no local development plans because all old local development plans from before 1995 got cancelled with the end of 2003 (I guess it must have something to do with the weird logic of everything communist being bad – although why 1995 and not 1989?).
> 
> Establishing new plans is often problematic because they get protested. And it's simply a lot of effort, especially for big cities, which have many areas very different from each other.
> 
> Even if there are the local development plans, e.g. in Cracow there was a case when the city banned fencing off house complexes and apartment buildings – but the administration court cancelled this law arguing that everyone has the right to protect own property.
> 
> It sometimes causes problems with the emergency services not being able to access a sick or injured person.


Yep, every local government (town or municipality) has to have a development plan or a general plan as we call it. This sets the terms for land use e.g. function, height of buildings, percentage of greenery etc. These terms are quite general so to actually apply for a construction permit you first need a detailed plan for the specific area you are developing (this applies in towns, in rural areas it's a bit more relaxed).


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland it's quite the same about the plans (here called actually local area management plans) with the difference that most country area do not have them, including even big cities. I can't find current data but in April 2017 only 30% of the country area had those plans.

Which causes quite a big urban planning mess, with e.g. areas for many years reserved for future roads or other transportation corridors being built up.

Just because of some politicians making a stupid decision in 1994 (or not realizing its consequences). Or maybe being under the lobby of some investors that wanted to built up some grounds in cities that weren't intended for that...


----------



## Nimróad

Common section of M85+M86 *expressway* at Csorna is 2x3 lane, while the overloaded M1 *motorway* remain only 2x2. 










(*Edit:* If you find inaccurate this post here, you can move it to the Hungarian motorway section.)


----------



## x-type

Better for Hungarian motorwqays because here we can only start to translate common section into various languages


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> Better for Hungarian motorwqays because here we can only start to translate common section into various languages


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrency_(road)


----------



## volodaaaa

Nimróad said:


> Common section of M85+M86 *expressway* at Csorna is 2x3 lane, while the overloaded M1 *motorway* remain only 2x2. 😄
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (*Edit:* If you find inaccurate this post here, you can move it to the Hungarian motorway section.)



When is Sopron a part of Austria since? :lol:


----------



## Nimróad

Since they are too lazy to produce larger table to put the oval below.
But it was unnecessary to show it... You go either to Körmend or Szombathely, Austria is just one step from them too.


----------



## x-type

Hello from Podčetrtek, Slovenia. Again coins in drawer in apartment. Romanian and Croatian this time. Is that some kind of habit or what?


----------



## MichiH

x-type said:


> Romanian and Croatian this time.


A Romanian must have left coins. Croatians are yours :lol:


@M85/M86 being 2x3: It's a new motorway which was built 2x3. Building just 2x2 had not saved much money. I think it's future-proof and I don't see any problem in comparsion to M1! M1 needs to be widened but it's just a different project. However, we could argue whether M1 widening should have had a higher priority than building M85/M86 motorway.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> Hello from Podčetrtek, Slovenia.


Are you going to Podsreda as well?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> Podčetrtek


:lol:

Pod-če-tr-tek?


----------



## tfd543

x-type said:


> Hello from Podčetrtek, Slovenia. Again coins in drawer in apartment. Romanian and Croatian this time. Is that some kind of habit or what?




Wtf really? Its haunting you. If youre bored, its a nice opportunity to learn to do the muscle pass !


----------



## Kpc21

Podcetrtek, Podsreda? Sub-Thursday, Sub-Wednesday?

In Poland we have villages literally named Friday and Saturday 

What's more, Friday (Piątek) is the geometric center of Poland.

They have such a monument: https://goo.gl/maps/VqXcrpAcyENVMGBr6










Sobota (Saturday) is not far away


----------



## Junkie

That word in old Proto Slavic means fifth, or "pet", one thing that confuses me I see in Russian, Friday is "piatnica". Its like adjective.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Kpc21 said:


> Sobota (Saturday) is not far away


Murska Sobota, Slovenia.


----------



## PovilD

For ensemble graphs I use wetterzentrale.de. I usually use GFS model and GFS is default model in their site, most detailed.

For weather graphs I check HIRLAM model forecast in old.meteo.lt site for my city. It shows precipitation (rain, snow, sleet), temperature (0 m and 2 m above ground) and pressure. It doesn't show cloudiness though. I usually check cloudiness with maps


----------



## sponge_bob

PovilD said:


> For weather graphs I check HIRLAM model forecast in old.meteo.lt site for my city. It shows precipitation (rain, snow, sleet), temperature (0 m and 2 m above ground) and pressure. It doesn't show cloudiness though. I usually check cloudiness with maps


Was HIRLAM not shut down on friday and replaced by a new model????

wetterzentrale is great, the charts going back to the 19th century are a great idea. the other great site is meteociel.fr 

windy looks nice but it is only the ECMWF model with slick graphics.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The amateur meteorologists (and experts) in the Netherlands use the ECMWF or GFS model for short to long-range forecasts. Several other higher resolution, short-term models are used for specific forecasts, such as thunderstorms, high wind, hail or snow.
> 
> These models have several members, each with a slightly different starting situation, so uncertainty can easily be identified in the graph. The wider the spread, the greater the uncertainty.
> 
> For example the current run shows a high confident forecast up to Wednesday, but a very uncertain forecast thereafter. Maximum temperatures are calculated to be between 20 and 40 °C on Friday, depending on which scenario plays out. 40 °C would be a record in the Netherlands, but not many members support such an extreme scenario.
> 
> The forecast goes 14 days out though anything beyond 5-7 days is usually highly unreliable and may only indicate a trend.




On my 2015 trip, I missed the hottest day ever (unless you’ve had worse since) in the Netherlands by a day. If memory serves, that was July 1st; I got to Amsterdam the evening of the 2d. (And it was still good and hot for a couple more days, particularly with no air-conditioning).
Quite pleasant here, recently; going between the mid- to upper 20s Celsius for daytime highs and mid- to upper teens for lows.  (Upper 50s to mid-60s at night, mid-70s to mid-80s during the day, in Fahrenheit.) expecting a bit of a heat wave...34C/92F...this week. But that’s not bad. Been spending as much time as I can outdoors. :cheers:


----------



## PovilD

sponge_bob said:


> Was HIRLAM not shut down on friday and replaced by a new model????
> 
> wetterzentrale is great, the charts going back to the 19th century are a great idea. the other great site is meteociel.fr
> 
> windy looks nice but it is only the ECMWF model with slick graphics.


I mostly follow old.meteo.lt for some features that new site lack, like minimalistic design (+pages load faster) and meteorologists-revised forecast tables for largest cities. They don't write at their site version which model they're using although earlier they clearly claimed that they are using HIRLAM.

I checked the new site version meteo.lt. and they write that they use HARMONE model and as I checked old.meteo.lt uses very same maps only modeled as pictures, while in new version it has posability to zoom in or drag maps (by clicking on link "Prognozių žemėlapiai" or "Forecast maps"). New site version is launched few years ago and old version is still working  New site is more interactive, but 10 day forecasts are claimed to be automatic, probably based on ECMWF model. As well is with old.meteo.lt 10 day forecasts but they're slightly edited by meteorologists (better verification). New version Meteo.lt is fine for short-term forecasts. It can make forecast table for any locality in the country. Short term hour-by-hour forecast tables are generated from HARMONE model maps.


----------



## volodaaaa

Is there anyone, who understands why:
- the least emission-producing transport mode (railway) for middle distances is not subsidised by the EU and
- the least suitable transport mode for short and middle distances (air transport) is extremely cheap?

If I took my family on a trip to Bologna:
- it would cost 92 € (23 € a person per journey) by air transport in relation Bratislava - Bologna,
- it would cost 388 € (97 € a person per journey) by rail transport in relation Bratislava - Bologna.

I think we are wasting potential here.


----------



## Surel

volodaaaa said:


> Is there anyone, who understands why:
> - the least emission-producing transport mode (railway) for middle distances is not subsidised by the EU and
> - the least suitable transport mode for short and middle distances (air transport) is extremely cheap?
> 
> If I took my family on a trip to Bologna:
> - it would cost 92 € (23 € a person per journey) by air transport in relation Bratislava - Bologna,
> - it would cost 388 € (97 € a person per journey) by rail transport in relation Bratislava - Bologna.
> 
> I think we are wasting potential here.


Because the EU has no China like high speed railway plan. Because HSL lines are not feasible on national level for most EU countries. Because HSL lines mean enormous capital investments, that is less flexible than the airport. An airport connect a city with 1000 other cities. A railway station is only worth what the whole network is worth. It is less risky for national states to invest and to have a big national airport, than to be part of EU HSL network. Another dots filling the picture is the high capacity of a train. You need many more passengers to fill a train than to fill an Airbus. Air transportation sector has also a better lobby, therefore they enjoy tax exemptions, while railway pays even heavy environmental surcharges => which doesn't make any sense.

Nevertheless I think that the EU should indeed introduce a HSL plan to connect at least all the EU capitals, plus cities above 1 million. Connecting all the smaller regional cities on the way through.

I would love to see a HSL line connecting Amsterdam with Prague one day. Either through Hamburg and Berlin or through Frankfurt and Nuremberg. Both a 4 hours ride.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are currently planning to build a brand new standard gauge railway connecting all three capitals to each other and to the European railway network, totalling 870 km. This would in large part be financed by the EU so it's not exactly true that the EU doesn't support railway development. 

These are the estimated travel times between cities:









More info here: http://www.railbaltica.org/


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The south of France is getting baked the next 2 weeks. No Tmax lower than 36 and a high (would be record) forecast of 45 in Carpentras this Friday. The record high in France is 44.1










The Arpege model even forecasts up to 46 in that area. Also scorching heat in Northern Italy and into central France. Also very hot in Spain.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> the least emission-producing transport mode (railway) for middle distances is not subsidised by the EU


All of God's money wouldn't be enough for that. 
Additionally if you subsidize middle distances, Vienna - Munich (subsidized) can be cheaper than Vienna - Linz (not sibsidized). I suppose you can imagine the result.



> the least suitable transport mode for short and middle distances (air transport) is extremely cheap?


Because it's a more or less free market (not like railways) and needs significantly less infrastructure than railways. 
And additionally: any taxation would mean that poor people could not afford to fly any more, which would mean: EU is against poor people, EU regulation is against Eastern European people, etc.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> The south of France is getting baked the next 2 weeks. No Tmax lower than 36 and a high (would be record) forecast of 45 in Carpentras this Friday. The record high in France is 44.1
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Arpege model even forecasts up to 46 in that area. Also scorching heat in Northern Italy and into central France. Also very hot in Spain.


When I see -16 and -24 in central Spain somehow I don't trust this model that much.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

its the temperature box from -24 to 46 , my friend


----------



## g.spinoza

VITORIA MAN said:


> its the temperature box from -24 to 46 , my friend


Oh, my.

Now it makes sense hno::lol:

I thought it was due to some boundary numerical effects.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Arpege is a major model employed by Météo France.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Arpege is a major model employed by Météo France.


I could tell you something about MeteoFrance...


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> Oh, my.
> 
> Now it makes sense hno::lol:
> 
> I thought it was due to some boundary numerical effects.


:lol:

Have you visited your oftalmologist recently?


----------



## General Maximus

Just took a peek here and I knew you'd be talking about the weather. I'm on my way from London to Geneva and then Monaco. In a van where the aircon is broken. Have mercy on my soul....


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> :lol:
> 
> Have you visited your oftalmologist recently?


I am color blind.
A plot like that is extremely confusing to me.



General Maximus said:


> Just took a peek here and I knew you'd be talking about the weather. I'm on my way from London to Geneva and then Monaco. In a van where the aircon is broken. Have mercy on my soul....


----------



## General Maximus

I would if I could. But I can't...


----------



## MichiH

The forcast map posted is for Friday, June 28. The forecast for Central Germany (Frankfurt/Main) is about 32°C only.

For comparsion from www.wetteronline.de:
Wed 26: 38°C
Thu 27: 34°C
Fri 28: 32°C
Sat 29: 35°C
Sun 30: 37°C

The all time record for Germany might be tomorrow (it's currently 40.3°C from 2015 in Lower Franconia). Minimum the June record should be reached tomorrow.


----------



## g.spinoza

Vercelli, Italy is forecast at 42 for Thursday...


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> It's wrong and true at the same time.
> Yes, as many people could afford a car, the modal split changed heavily and a lot of tram and train lines lost the vast majority of their passengers and got closed. Since the 90's many European countries invest again in rail transport. However, it's by far not about reopening closed lines or networks, it's usually a new development which is not even similar to the networks before the 60's.


Of course. The world changes and the infrastructure must adjust.

We even have this already in Poland. See the city (town?) of Olsztyn. They closed their tram network actually already in 1965 (to replace it with buses) – and reopened it in 2015. But now it's on totally different routes – because the needs of the town changed.










Green – old network, purple – new network.



keber said:


> It has more than one - last year I saw a running freight train north of Skhoder and a passenger train south of Durres. But it's true that Albanian railway condition is disastrous.


I meant one railway network, not one railway line 

BTW it's anyway a general off-topic thread (which should be in Skybar but somehow weirdly it's here). If we discuss here about weather, why not discuss about trains?


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> If we discuss here about weather, why not discuss about trains?


There's no specific weather sub forum but there is a specific railway board. I think that the discussion "gets lost" here (within all the general rest ara stuff)...


----------



## Kpc21

But it's anyway nothing like a really meaningful discussion, even in the railways section I think it would be considered off-topic.


----------



## volodaaaa

I don't see any sense in distinction between the off topic off topic and relevant off topic. Anything goes (except the language discussions)


----------



## MattiG

*Snowing*

People say that the weather is currently somewhat uncomfortably hot in Europe.

Not in the North. I arrived two hours ago from Kirkenes (Norway) to Tana Bru, which is located 400 kilometers to the north of the Arctic Circle. The ride turned slightly scary, because the temperature dropped to +1°C, and it was raining quite heavily. A snowstorm and summer tires are not the best possible combination. Fortunately, the rain did not turn white.

About 15 minutes after me, another car arrived, with 1-2 centimeters of snow on it. 










A forecast for Sunday is +11 and moderate wind. Not for sunbathing but easy to breathe.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

NRK reports actual snow accumulation up to 12 cm in Troms yesterday.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

heat + concrete = blowup. This is a concrete bike path in Flevoland province, Netherlands. The slabs came up despite there being a dilatation joint.


----------



## MichiH

MichiH said:


> Germany's temperature record smashed as Europe's heat wave intensifies
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *Germany recorded its highest-ever June temperature* on Wednesday, as much of continental Europe contends with a major heat wave.
> The German Weather Service said the mercury hit *38.6 degrees Celsius* (101.5 Fahrenheit) at 2:50 p.m. local time in Coschen, on the country's border with Poland.
> The previous record stood at 38.5 Celsius (101.3 Fahrenheit), which was measured in 1947 in Bühlertal, which lies close to France.
Click to expand...

Bad Kreuznach in the south-west of Germany had *38.9°C* today. The all-time record from 2015 was not reached, 40.3°C in Lower Franconia.

https://www.welt.de/newsticker/dpa_...Hitzerekord-38-9-Grad-in-Rheinland-Pfalz.html


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A massive hail storm hit Guadalajara, Mexico this morning.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

MattiG said:


> People say that the weather is currently somewhat uncomfortably hot in Europe.
> 
> Not in the North. I arrived two hours ago from Kirkenes (Norway) to Tana Bru, which is located 400 kilometers to the north of the Arctic Circle. The ride turned slightly scary, because the temperature dropped to +1°C, and it was raining quite heavily. A snowstorm and summer tires are not the best possible combination. Fortunately, the rain did not turn white.
> 
> About 15 minutes after me, another car arrived, with 1-2 centimeters of snow on it.
> 
> 
> A forecast for Sunday is +11 and moderate wind. Not for sunbathing but easy to breathe.


I saw a series of videos taken up there on YouTube the other day, looks fascinating. 

This is a video that explains the series if anyone's interested, it's about installing fast electric car chargers up there:






The YouTuber in question lives in Oslo though, and I suppose overall his videos on the trip start with this one:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ah Teslabjørn. He's a celebrity in the EV genre.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> heat + concrete = blowup. This is a concrete bike path in Flevoland province, Netherlands. The slabs came up despite there being a dilatation joint.


[Rail offtopic ] We sometimes have it happening with tram tracks (every summer there are several such rail "erections", there was even a case in which a car driving just above the jumping out rail got damaged) but not with roads...[/Rail offtopic ]

Although we had...






Even several such cases some years ago!

And see that even the towing vehicle sank in the asphalt.

Maybe it's the matter of different asphalt types. This one melts, that one expands.

The potholes after the wheels are still there (look also at earlier photos): https://goo.gl/maps/f5MhMsf7agMxnVW99


----------



## italystf

Kpc21 said:


> Someone in Poland wanted to open own business, so he registered it. And he got a "welcome" letter (a guide for those opening a new business, probably explaining how to correctly pay the social security contributions for himself and possible employees) from the social security. With links to PDF files he is supposed to click. In an ordinary (snail mail) letter
> 
> http://www.wykop.pl/artykul/5019839/zus-absurdalny-list-z-informacja-powitalna-z-klikalnymi-linkami/


The affected person should have tried to google those PDF titles in quotation marks. Maybe he could have been able to find them.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> [Rail offtopic ]
> 
> And see that even the towing vehicle sank in the asphalt.



That reminds me of a colleague of my wife. He was walking during his vacation in Egypt when suddenly found out he had trouble to take steps. His Crocks were melting on hot asphalt, effectively sticking him to the ground. :lol:


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> That reminds me of a colleague of my wife. He was walking during his vacation in Egypt when suddenly found out he had trouble to take steps. His Crocks were melting on hot asphalt, effectively sticking him to the ground. :lol:


Speaking about the Crocks, those two Swedish tourists were wearing them. They were rescued after being stuck at cliff without water.

Similar things happen almost each week. I have friends from Poland currently having vacation in Makarska, and I strictly forbade them to climb on the mountain, although it looks wonderfull and attractive.










https://www.24sata.hr/news/opet-planinarili-u-japankama-hgss-je-spasio-dvoje-sve-ana-637209


----------



## volodaaaa

Terrible. You can see cars flying in 0:40.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

ChrisZwolle said:


> Ah Teslabjørn. He's a celebrity in the EV genre.


Yeah I watch most of his videos, his and the Fully Charged ones. I actually went to Fully Charged Live a few weeks ago.


----------



## italystf

How was Europe in the 19th century

https://mapire.eu/en/map/europe-19c...,5716113.847822445&layers=here-aerial,158,164


----------



## cinxxx

*'F**k you Greta' bumper stickers appear on German roads, taking aim at youth climate activist*

Btw, you can get them here


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Climate change _mitigation_ appears to become a very divisive issue. A recent study in the Netherlands found that the group that is neutral on this is quickly shrinking with people flocking to the fringes. The group that is very sceptical about climate change mitigation is now twice as large as the group that find that the mitigation is too slow / limited.

This is not to say they are denying that climate change is happening, but rather that the government and media are in 'hysteria mode' and want to push society-altering changes at a much too fast speed. The significant increase of energy cost earlier this year has not been a positive change for many people. Forum for Democracy, which is very sceptical about the proposed energy transition, became the largest party during the latest elections this year.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Climate change _mitigation_ appears to become a very divisive issue. A recent study in the Netherlands found that the group that is neutral on this is quickly shrinking with people flocking to the fringes. The group that is very sceptical about climate change mitigation is now twice as large as the group that find that the mitigation is too slow / limited.
> 
> This is not to say they are denying that climate change is happening, but rather that the government and media are in 'hysteria mode' and want to push society-altering changes at a much too fast speed. The significant increase of energy cost earlier this year has not been a positive change for many people. Forum for Democracy, which is very sceptical about the proposed energy transition, became the largest party during the latest elections this year.


And sometimes we fight on the wrong frontiers.

Two examples:

1) During my employment at the ministry, we cooperated with the other ministry: the ministry of the environment. They had been given an infringement from the EU due to unsatisfactory fulfilled KPIs on emission reduction. Since transportation is the highest emission producer, we were invited to provide them with our statements and measures. Our policy was traffic calming. The least people travel by private cars, the least emissions are being produced. It was win-win-win for all governmental stakeholders concerned with their goals: the ministry of transport has a goal to increase the modal share of public transport, the ministry of interior to dropped the lethality rate in transport (it correlate with the traffic intensity) and the ministry of the environment to reduce the emissions. Fair enough.


Nope. Frantic environmentalists were dreaming about electric cars. That has been the ultimate cure for emissions ever since. The "genius" strategy was to subsidise e-cars sales. And according to them, the hugest problem were diesel buses in public transport.


2) Some of my friends who have children use "environmentally friendly" diapers. The old way. Baby will poo and pee in their diaper, and you change the diaper and wash it. 

Well, I have tried it as well. The "original" diaper consumption was gross and the washing machine did not stop. We spent litres of water and tonnes of detergent. The baby was angry because the "original" diapers do not have enough absorption ability. The humidity in our apartment increased, and there is no need to tell you that every second time the diaper leaked, so we had to wash the clothes too.

After that, we switched back to disposable diapers. To fulfil my conscience, we opted for eco-friendly diapers, which are told to degrade in 3 years once disposed of in nature. Some other young moms look at us like we are some murderers and cavemen.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> This is not to say they are denying that climate change is happening, but rather that the government and media are in 'hysteria mode' and want to push society-altering changes at a much too fast speed. The significant increase of energy cost earlier this year has not been a positive change for many people. Forum for Democracy, which is very sceptical about the proposed energy transition, became the largest party during the latest elections this year.


The hysteria is absolutely justified. We have known about this issue for decades but we have sat on our asses doing shit all. If we had started to act in the year 2000 it would've required a slight decrease in CO2 emissions every year to reach the desired goal. Since we haven't done anything since then, we have much less time to react and the change has to be more dramatic. 

What illustrates perfectly the moronic nature of the extreme right (at least in Estonia) is that they strictly oppose accepting any refugees but also any action against climate change, not realising that climate change will probably be the biggest driver of migration (to Europe) in the coming decades.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think the media hysteria is putting people off. In the Netherlands they are known as 'klimaatdrammers' (climate naggers). 

So far the energy transition is inefficient. Wind energy is not a reliable source, but overproduction at certain times make reliable sources unprofitable. Closing down nuclear plants and firing up more coal doesn't work either. Electric vehicles are a very cost-inefficient way to reduce CO2 since CO2 emissions from car traffic is relatively limited on the overall picture. Some very CO2 intensive industries are not included in the policy (such as aviation). Some very polluting industries (such as shipping) are tolerated while the average joe with his small car gets taxed to death for that sin. The burden falls mostly on households, because industries have the ability to move production elsewhere. This is seen as unfair.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think the media hysteria is putting people off. In the Netherlands they are known as 'klimaatdrammers' (climate naggers).
> 
> So far the energy transition is inefficient. Wind energy is not a reliable source, but overproduction at certain times make reliable sources unprofitable.


The European continental grid needs to be much expanded. Wind and solar sources have variable output, doesn't mean they are not 'reliable energy sources' in the larger context of European electricity production.


----------



## Surel

Suburbanist said:


> The European continental grid needs to be much expanded. Wind and solar sources have variable output, doesn't mean they are not 'reliable energy sources' in the larger context of European electricity production.


No, not really. Globally you could perhaps even the peaks and lows out as the whole weather system is energy neutral globally. Although that's quite impossible feat to achieve. Weather in Europe the weather is still quite positively correlated and you can't sustain a constant energy drain from it in all periods. As about the sun, there's the obvious fact of it not being accessible at you demand.

What you would need is a huge storage capacity, but that's simply not available on this scale and even if you would want to create it, you would get tremendous environmental protests against water pumping power plants replacing the tops of European mountains.

So while I agree that you need better grid, it's not really the solution to this problem. It's just one of the necessary conditions. Above that. E.g. Germany itself doesn't even have a robust enough grid to cope with it's own wind and solar production which was causing overflows to more robust Polish and Czech grids, in return those countries had to install protection transformers on the borders that limit the amount of electric current in cases of overflows in order to protect their own grids.


----------



## Suburbanist

Surel said:


> No, not really. Globally you could perhaps even the peaks and lows out as the whole weather system is energy neutral globally. Although that's quite impossible feat to achieve. Weather in Europe the weather is still quite positively correlated and you can't sustain a constant energy drain from it in all periods. As about the sun, there's the obvious fact of it not being accessible at you demand.
> 
> What you would need is a huge storage capacity, but that's simply not available on this scale and even if you would want to create it, you would get tremendous environmental protests against water pumping power plants replacing the tops of European mountains.
> 
> So while I agree that you need better grid, it's not really the solution to this problem. It's just one of the necessary conditions. Above that. E.g. Germany itself doesn't even have a robust enough grid to cope with it's own wind and solar production which was causing overflows to more robust Polish and Czech grids, in return those countries had to install protection transformers on the borders that limit the amount of electric current in cases of overflows in order to protect their own grids.


A continental grid with much higher capacity is needed so that indirect storage can be provided.


----------



## Surel

Suburbanist said:


> A continental grid with much higher capacity is needed so that indirect storage can be provided.


What do you mean by indirect storage?

The same wind peaks that happen in the Germany, happen in the whole of Europe. When there's overproduction, there's overproduction in the whole of Europe.

You can't create water pumping storage facilities for the whole of Europe without destroying the Alps and any other mountains available.

You can't utilize those peak without having huge electricity peak producing backup facilities that can be available in the order of minutes.

So even if you manage to send the North Sea wind peak electricity all the way to Southern Italy when it is available, you still need the conventional production capacity available for the rest of the time.

It is a complex question and simply making the grid more robust won't solve it.


----------



## Suburbanist

Indirect storage means using the hydro dams already existent in Norway and the Alps, and nuclear power plants. It also means, in the future, using the batteries of idle electric cars as reverse storage.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think the media hysteria is putting people off. In the Netherlands they are known as 'klimaatdrammers' (climate naggers).
> 
> So far the energy transition is inefficient. Wind energy is not a reliable source, but overproduction at certain times make reliable sources unprofitable. Closing down nuclear plants and firing up more coal doesn't work either. Electric vehicles are a very cost-inefficient way to reduce CO2 since CO2 emissions from car traffic is relatively limited on the overall picture. Some very CO2 intensive industries are not included in the policy (such as aviation). Some very polluting industries (such as shipping) are tolerated while the average joe with his small car gets taxed to death for that sin. The burden falls mostly on households, because industries have the ability to move production elsewhere. This is seen as unfair.


All are very good points and in this way I agree. There is too much focus on things that have very little effect and a very little focus on things that do matter. 

Closing down nuclear power plants because of "environmental concerns" is one of the most irrational decisions several European countries (or their governments, to be more precise) have made and its only purpose is to appeal to the emotions of the general public (and win elections). 

I don't agree in your assessment of the "climate hysteria", though. Scientists and the media have tried the soft approach for decades and it hasn't worked. Sure, hysteria will turn away some people away altogether but if it gets a critical mass really worried then things might actually change. I'm not really sure what needs to happen for the general public to realise that climate change will *actually* affect them and in a really bad way. Is it 100 million climate refugees heading to Europe? I'm not sure but by then it will be too late anyway.

What I also do agree on is that putting the responsibility for taking action on the individual is absolutely not the way to go. You can't expect people to pay several fold more for a train ticket rather than an airplane ticket just because "they should be thinking about their carbon footprint" when by EU law there is a 0% excise duty on airplane fuel, for example. Legislation is what is needed to make change happen and it has to be at least EU-wide. If not then countries that do take action will be at a disadvantage because market economy doesn't put a price on the (likely) possibility of a future climate disaster.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

An issue in the Netherlands and Germany is the oak processionary. This is a caterpillar that lives in oak trees. They have tiny hairs that are blown by the wind and cause skin irritation and in rare cases, more complicated effects.

They are present in most of Europe but they don't have natural predators at higher latitudes, making them a pest. Municipal services are overburdened with their removal. Some are removed chemically but most are removed by vacuuming them into a tank where they are incinerated. Removing them requires extensive personal protective gear and is time-consuming.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think the media hysteria is putting people off. In the Netherlands they are known as 'klimaatdrammers' (climate naggers).


We call them ecoterrorists (ekoterroryści). Or ecocranks (ekooszołomy).



> Closing down nuclear plants and firing up more coal doesn't work either.


But closing coal plants and opening nuclear ones would work and help a lot, wouldn't it?

I hope Poland will finally go for that... 

It seems to me that we are the only country in Europe of comparable size (or bigger) that has absolutely no nuclear power. One nuclear plant started to be built in 1982 but it got suspended in 1989 because of after-Chernobyl protests (if I am not mistaken, this plant was being built in the same technology as the one used in Chernobyl).



> Electric vehicles are a very cost-inefficient way to reduce CO2 since CO2 emissions from car traffic is relatively limited on the overall picture. Some very CO2 intensive industries are not included in the policy (such as aviation).


It helps solving another problem – air pollution in cities.

Although limiting the access to cities for individual cars would also help.

But, at least in Poland, we are a too car-oriented society for this to be even considered by our politicians.


----------



## Surel

Suburbanist said:


> Indirect storage means using the hydro dams already existent in Norway and the Alps, and nuclear power plants. It also means, in the future, using the batteries of idle electric cars as reverse storage.


Hydro dams are working at capacity. That's what I was telling you. Are you willing to destroy the European mountains in order to build more pumping power plants? E.g. even if you find a yet suitable valley where you could build a damn (those places are very scarce in Europe as most sites are already utilized for at least half a century) it is quite close to impossible to build any damn due to environmental protests.

https://setis.ec.europa.eu/sites/de...otential_pumped_hydropower_energy_storage.pdf

The relevant figure in bold:



> In the cases where a PHS can be built based on linking two existing reservoirs (topology 1), the European theoretical potential is 54 TWh (11.4 TWh in the EU) when a maximum distance of 20 km between reservoirs is considered. This potential is drastically reduced for lower distances: 0.83 TWh for 5 km, of which 0.71 in the EU, and 4 GWh for 1 km, mostly in Italy. When restrictions on the use of land are applied the theoretical potential is reduced to a realisable potential of 29 TWh in Europe *of which 4 TWh in the EU*.
> 
> When a PHS is built based on one existing reservoir and on a nearby, appropriately non-sloping site for a second existing reservoir, the theoretical potential at a maximum of 20 km reaches 123 TWh in Europe of which 60 TWh in the EU. The corresponding realisable potential is 80 TWh in Europe of which 33 TWh in the EU. For shorter distances between the existing dam and the best potential site the realisable potential is reduced to 10 TWh of which 4 TWh in the EU, and 180 GWh (1 km, Europe), most of which in the EU (155 GWh) (5 km, Europe) o


The realistic realizable potential is thus maybe some 4 TWh. This is the total storage capacity. Even more important than the storage capacity would be the output/input power capacity. Those data are unfortunately not mentioned for the EU as they would be crucial. We can only deduce that the total capacity lies between 2 - 40 times the production for some countries. This would be the most crucial number for the success of any such plan.



> Even when there are no official figures for storage capacity in PHS in Europe or the EU, there are figures for PHS electricity installed generation capacity: around 42.6 GW in the EU [Eurostat, 2013]. In terms of electricity generation and consumption, in total in Europe, Platts [2012] gives the figures of 40 TWh generated per year consuming 54 TWh in pumping, these from 232 operational PHS plants. The corresponding Eurostat figures for the EU in 2011 are 29 TWh generated from 38 TWh pumped.


We can calculate that those installed pumping stations would be operating some 938 hours at full capacity. That makes it some 2.5 hours a day producing energy and perhaps 3-4 hours storing energy.

Current total EU wind electricity production is yearly around 336 TWh atm, comprising some 10 % of the total consumption and there's around 170 GW installed. 

You can see that even if all the pumping stations were perfectly connected to the wind power farms, they could currently store only around 25 % of the peak times produced electricity (170 GW divided by 46,6 GW).

The peak consumption loads can reach 540 GWs in winter times, which means that the installed pumping stations would be able to provide less than 10 % of the needed power at that time.
https://docstore.entsoe.eu/Document...pe/entso-e_electricity_in_europe_2017_web.pdf

We would need to increase the total production/storage per unit of time tenfold in order to really cover the peaks of consumption. Let's optimistically assume that the 4 TWh potential has a production capacity of 400 GW.

That would mean realizing all the possible pumping power stations that were mentioned. I would be very curious about how the NIMBYs and environmentalists would react to this, seeing their beloved mountains turned into pumping power plants.


Storing electricity in the batteries of idle electric cars seems to me more and more nonsensical in fact. You either have those cars available at full capacity in order to be able to ride them or you don't. Of course that you can use the wind and solar energy to charge those batteries, but that's just substitute for the oil and it doesn't improve the electric grid storage capacity a bit.


----------



## Surel

Rebasepoiss said:


> All are very good points and in this way I agree. There is too much focus on things that have very little effect and a very little focus on things that do matter.
> 
> Closing down nuclear power plants because of "environmental concerns" is one of the most irrational decisions several European countries (or their governments, to be more precise) have made and its only purpose is to appeal to the emotions of the general public (and win elections).
> 
> I don't agree in your assessment of the "climate hysteria", though. Scientists and the media have tried the soft approach for decades and it hasn't worked. Sure, hysteria will turn away some people away altogether but if it gets a critical mass really worried then things might actually change. I'm not really sure what needs to happen for the general public to realise that climate change will *actually* affect them and in a really bad way. Is it 100 million climate refugees heading to Europe? I'm not sure but by then it will be too late anyway.
> 
> What I also do agree on is that putting the responsibility for taking action on the individual is absolutely not the way to go. You can't expect people to pay several fold more for a train ticket rather than an airplane ticket just because "they should be thinking about their carbon footprint" when by EU law there is a 0% excise duty on airplane fuel, for example. Legislation is what is needed to make change happen and it has to be at least EU-wide. If not then countries that do take action will be at a disadvantage because market economy doesn't put a price on the (likely) possibility of a future climate disaster.


Climate affected people always and people always affected climate (as well as any other organisms, heck even the very existence of life affect climate).

It's always been in the nature of people to adjust themselves to the environment, not to adjust the environment to them. Projects trying to engineer the environment often end up causing much worse situation.

As about migration. There's really nothing that will stop people trying to migrate. With or without climate change, some parts of the world are not the best place to live in, and when people live there, they have two choices, either make the best of that environment, or leave it for a better place. Those places where migration comes from fail in making best of their environment and they choose to leave for a better place, which is not so shocking, since many, many places, are better, with or without global warming. Arguing that fighting climate change will change migration is a fallacy and should be avoided.


----------



## Kpc21

> Arguing that fighting climate change will change migration is a fallacy and should be avoided.


The problem is that NOT fighting climate change may cause migration of unheard of level.


----------



## Surel

Kpc21 said:


> The problem is that NOT fighting climate change may cause migration of unheard of level.


No, not really, it would not be the climate change, it would be the economic differences in the living standards.

What you will most probably get anyway is a situation in which climate changes, migration happens anyway, enormous resources will be lost in fighting climate change with dubious returns, while with the same resources invested effectively you could increase the living standards of populations, thus reducing unwanted migration.

The migration on its own is not a problem anyway, it's the cultural clash that it causes. If you would reduce the living standard differences you would get much less of a clash in the end as the culture would tend to converge.


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## Kpc21

Surel said:


> No, not really, it would not be the climate change, it would be the economic differences in the living standards.


Well, if the area where someone lives will get flooded or so hot that living there will become simply no longer possible, it will definitely cause much bigger migration than just the economic differences.



> while with the same resources invested effectively you could increase the living standards of populations, thus reducing unwanted migration.


How, if living in the areas from which the migration would originate will anyway become simply impossible?

How to increase those living standards if e.g. farming will become impossible there and all food will have to be imported?




> The migration on its own is not a problem anyway, it's the cultural clash that it causes. If you would reduce the living standard differences you would get much less of a clash in the end as the culture would tend to converge.


The living standard differences between Europe and some countries on the Arabian Peninsula (e.g. UAE) are not high. But the cultural differences are very big. Still, there is no migration, so there is no cultural clash.

You may say those countries are also practically uninhabitable (or they would be such without the technology like air conditioning) – it's, basically, a desert.

But – if so – do you just want to pump a lot of money in those counties, so that they will modernize and their cities start to resemble Dubai?

They will learn they get money for free.

And they will want more.

And more.

And more.

For free.

This is the worst one of all possible ways here.


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## Surel

^^
Why would you give out free money? I said, people need to make the best out of their environment. Utilize the environment using technology instead of complaining about it.


----------



## Kanadzie

Rebasepoiss said:


> I don't agree in your assessment of the "climate hysteria", though. Scientists and the media have tried the soft approach for decades and it hasn't worked. Sure, hysteria will turn away some people away altogether but if it gets a critical mass really worried then things might actually change. I'm not really sure what needs to happen for the general public to realise that climate change will *actually* affect them and in a really bad way.


But is the climate change even a bad thing, and can, say, EU countries even stop it, considering the increases elsewhere? Estonia probably will be net beneficiary of climate change, even with refugees, would turn into a Netherlands, strong economy, nice weather and a few black people. That is better than today 

One major factor that we need to consider is the carbon-based energy is expensive naturally. It costs lots of money to find, extract and transport. The sun shines for free, and solar panels are made of sand (very cheap). Problem is the efficiency is low and the manufacturing is difficult, so the energy is expensive. But if the governments of the world do absolutely nothing, probably in 100 years the natural evolution of the technology will make it abundantly inexpensive, and probably in ways that are on a micro scale than a macro (e.g. a telephone that can self-charge when the screen is off...)

I had an experience on the weekend about the solar power. I have a small solar panel, about 250x500 mm made for charging car batteries (12 V). I went camping in the forest and wanted to be able to charge my wife and I's telephones, just to have communication in emergency. So I took the car charger from telephone and mounted the alligator clips of the solar panel, and on my Samsung phone, with battery-saver mode and pointed directly in the hot sun all day (excellent weather), I gained about 10% charge in about 6 hours. Not great but better than nothing. My wife's Apple phone though, noticed the charger, then rejected it summarily as "unapproved". I guess the voltage was out of specification for Apple (the voltage of the panel varies widely on the power of the sun shining).


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## Rebasepoiss

^^ The Estonian economy is very dependent on the outside world and if there is chaos and uncertainty in the world economy it will affect us as well. Having warmer winters and hotter summers won't affect our economy that much.


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## Attus

Surel said:


> No, not really, it would not be the climate change, it would be the economic differences in the living standards.


I disagree. As a direct consequence of climate change, large areas will change in a way that makes living there unaffordable or even impossible. People living there (hundreds of millions) will either voluntarily die or (likely) try to search another place to live. It is not a new thing, several mass migration events in the history were caused by climate changes.


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## ChrisZwolle

Population growth in Africa is very high in the Sahel region (Nigeria, Niger, Sudan), which has a climate that doesn't support agriculture on a large, industrialized scale, hence it cannot sustain that projected population growth. 

In Europe we only see the tip of the iceberg of the migration patterns in Sub-Saharan Africa.


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## ChrisZwolle

*4th of July*


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## tfd543

ChrisZwolle said:


> Population growth in Africa is very high in the Sahel region (Nigeria, Niger, Sudan), which has a climate that doesn't support agriculture on a large, industrialized scale, hence it cannot sustain that projected population growth.
> 
> In Europe we only see the tip of the iceberg of the migration patterns in Sub-Saharan Africa.




Africa and especially Asia has a huge market potential and will become very wealthy eventually. They will just import it in the future. My argument is based on the book Factfulness. 

The only reason why these countries have High population growth is that they are 1. Level countries, just like many European countries were 200 years ago. Many African countries are very close to advance from level 1 to level 2 which is a fundamental step towards better health Care and wealthiness. Just my 2 cents.


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## italystf

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ The Estonian economy is very dependent on the outside world and if there is chaos and uncertainty in the world economy it will affect us as well. Having warmer winters and hotter summers won't affect our economy that much.


Because you have a modern market economy. If one year you have a poorer agricultural output, you'll import more agricultural products from abroad.
In poor countries like Subsaharian Africa, where most people eat thanks to subsistence agriculture, it wouldn't be possible/easy, so a poor local agricultural production would result in famine.


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## italystf

tfd543 said:


> Africa and especially Asia has a huge market potential and will become very wealthy eventually. They will just import it in the future. My argument is based on the book Factfulness.
> 
> The only reason why these countries have High population growth is that they are 1. Level countries, just like many European countries were 200 years ago. Many African countries are very close to advance from level 1 to level 2 which is a fundamental step towards better health Care and wealthiness. Just my 2 cents.


Even if the overall living standards around the world are constantly improving year after year, some poor countries will need several decades or even centuries to become developed.
Moreover, a slight improvement in living standards in a poor country may actually _increase_ the number of people that emigrate from it.
If one is very, very poor, it may have not the means to emigrate. He may have not money or properties to sell to get a passport or pay human trafickers. He may have no access to Internet or to a phone, that are useful to find info to emigrate.
If one is poor, but not extremely poor, he may have a better chance to emigrate.


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## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Even if the overall living standards around the world are constantly improving year after year, some poor countries will need several decades or even centuries to become developed.
> Moreover, a slight improvement in living standards in a poor country may actually _increase_ the number of people that emigrate from it.
> If one is very, very poor, it may have not the means to emigrate. He may have not money or properties to sell to get a passport or pay human trafickers. He may have no access to Internet or to a phone, that are useful to find info to emigrate.
> If one is poor, but not extremely poor, he may have a better chance to emigrate.



It is the demographic transitions law. The leading indicator of improvement in society is the death rate. The one in "culture" is the "birth rate."











There is still a variety of countries that are stuck in the middle. I mean, they are rich enough to have good primary healthcare, but in terms of culture, they are not enough developed to understand controlled reproduction and the relation between the number of children and their wealth.


These are the countries most people emigrate to Europe from. With their demographic behavior, which, let us be frank, is neither functional nor sustainable.


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## tfd543

italystf said:


> Even if the overall living standards around the world are constantly improving year after year, some poor countries will need several decades or even centuries to become developed.
> Moreover, a slight improvement in living standards in a poor country may actually _increase_ the number of people that emigrate from it.
> If one is very, very poor, it may have not the means to emigrate. He may have not money or properties to sell to get a passport or pay human trafickers. He may have no access to Internet or to a phone, that are useful to find info to emigrate.
> If one is poor, but not extremely poor, he may have a better chance to emigrate.




Im not completely sure about that, but i get your point. 

What about making a scenario.. What if i told you that tomorrow you will get access to 2-3 more water Wells and maybe you will have money to buy a bike where you can transport your water buckets.. even if you could afford it, would you really emigrate from that country? You dont know whats out there. You can take the chance, but you might die.

Several countries need decades or even centuries.. yes Thats true, just like Sweden. It took Sweden something like 200 years to develop from a level 1 country to a level 4 country that we are all used to. In the course of these 200 years, it was a very unstable period in European history e.g wars and diseases.
Luckily we are more developed today with higher quality food, easier access to Education, and last but not least far better contraception. 

My point is that the duration of time from climbing from level 1 all the way to level 4 is becoming smaller.

Can all countries in the world become level 4 countries ? Thats a very good question. It Depends How selfish we are in the end of the day. The only thing that i am certain about is that very soon we wont have level 1 countries anymore in the World.


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## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> It is the demographic transitions law. The leading indicator of improvement in society is the death rate. The one in "culture" is the "birth rate."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There is still a variety of countries that are stuck in the middle. I mean, they are rich enough to have good primary healthcare, but in terms of culture, they are not enough developed to understand controlled reproduction and the relation between the number of children and their wealth.
> 
> 
> These are the countries most people emigrate to Europe from. With their demographic behavior, which, let us be frank, is neither functional nor sustainable.




Good with statistics. I like that plot. I dont get How you can put good health Care against No knowledge of contraception/ birth control ? 

My argument for un-controlled birth control is either because of no knowledge about contraception which should indicate a bad health Care system, or simply because you need the babies that will eventually grow up to help you carry more water at the wells. 

Indeed culture can have a slight influence e.g its seen more macho but i dont think its the main point.


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## Surel

Attus said:


> I disagree. As a direct consequence of climate change, large areas will change in a way that makes living there unaffordable or even impossible. People living there (hundreds of millions) will either voluntarily die or (likely) try to search another place to live. It is not a new thing, several mass migration events in the history were caused by climate changes.


I don't think that people should be living in areas that are not suitable for living. On the other side I think there are not many such areas, it's rather lack of ability to make something of those areas and stupid resources management that prevents people from making a living there.

Those climate changes will happen anyway and you can expect the migration anyway.

I'd rather support projects like forestation in those regions than some stupid green policies. In any way, the most CO2 efficient reduction comes from vegetation.

Overpopulation is much bigger problem than climate change. It is also a CO2 production problem. Thus you can see that it is compounded. And overpopulation reduces the per capita economic standard as well. Further on, it is impossible to have economic growth as of now without CO2 production increase. This problem is even more pronounced for the very poor regions. And further on, are you willing to reduce your economic standards to those of 19th century in order to reduce CO2 production? Are you willing to prevent world population from attaining higher economic standards of living in order to not increase CO2 production?

Of course that increase of economic conditions leads to a higher mobility of population. But migration or high population mobility is not something bad or a problem on its own. The problems happens when people of different behavior patterns are not able to coexists with each other and sustain progression.

One of the biggest problems of migration from e.g. MENA regions is that many behavior patters that are responsible for the bad economic situation of those regions come with the migrants and are a potential risk to the economic situation in the receiving regions.

I would say that this whole climate change prevention discussion needs much more to the fact debate about efficiency and trade offs. It needs to be more transparent and it needs to be made clear who is going to pay for it. Will it be the most rich in the rich countries? Will it be the middle class in the rich countries or the less wealthy in those countries? Will you demand the same measures from the poorer countries, will you prevent their economic growth? Etc etc...

I am really not that worried about the climate change. Humans can adapt and will adapt.


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## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> volodaaaa said:
> 
> 
> 
> It is the demographic transitions law. The leading indicator of improvement in society is the death rate. The one in "culture" is the "birth rate."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There is still a variety of countries that are stuck in the middle. I mean, they are rich enough to have good primary healthcare, but in terms of culture, they are not enough developed to understand controlled reproduction and the relation between the number of children and their wealth.
> 
> 
> These are the countries most people emigrate to Europe from. With their demographic behavior, which, let us be frank, is neither functional nor sustainable.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Good with statistics. I like that plot. I dont get How you can put good health Care against No knowledge of contraception/ birth control ?
> 
> My argument for un-controlled birth control is either because of no knowledge about contraception which should indicate a bad health Care system, or simply because you need the babies that will eventually grow up to help you carry more water at the wells.
> 
> Indeed culture can have a slight influence e.g its seen more macho but i dont think its the main point.
Click to expand...

I put it extremely simpler. But yet there is a lot of countries where infancy death rate is almost at the level of well developed countries, but the share of poor people with the lack of knowledge or just people who can not afford the contraception is high. This rockets the population growth.


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## MichiH

tfd543 said:


> My argument for un-controlled birth control is *either because of no knowledge about contraception* which should indicate a bad health Care system, or simply because you need the babies that will eventually grow up to help you carry more water at the wells.


... or because your religion leaders (e.g. pope) tells you that contraception is bad.


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## tfd543

MichiH said:


> ... or because your religion leaders (e.g. pope) tells you that contraception is bad.




True


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## Kanadzie

^^ I'm not sure if it is so much this, it is probably the cost/benefit ratio. Consider being a subsistence farmer with a small land. If you make some children, they can work for you relatively early and take care of you when you are old, and infant mortality is still high. It is same reason European families all had 10 children 100-200 years ago.



Surel said:


> I'd rather support projects like forestation in those regions than some stupid green policies. In any way, the most CO2 efficient reduction comes from vegetation.


But even then, maybe forestation could cause more problems than solving, e.g. depletion of groundwater. The Chinese efforts of a "green wall" to slow the desertification doesn't seem to be working exceptionally well and it is expensive.

The idea is kind of ineffective also. The trees absorb CO2 in their biomass only... a mature forest has basically no or little absorptive power, and could easily release all the carbon in fire. Probably a more effective "capture" solution is to use as much as possible durable wood products and keep the harvested areas growing... in this sense there has been some impressive directions in forested countries like Canada or Scandinavia, building taller buildings with engineered-wood products (I've seen 6 stories for example) instead of concrete and steel which emit considerable CO2 in production, instead of absorbing it.

But your basic point is exactly correct. The climate change is a thing with costs and benefits, and any mitigation or corrective measure has these as well. If doing something costs less and benefits more than doing nothing, we should do it, and if not, not do so. The whole argument has taken this vaguely religious and moralistic tone ("we must!) and without actual facts.


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## Surel

Kanadzie said:


> But even then, maybe forestation could cause more problems than solving, e.g. depletion of groundwater. The Chinese efforts of a "green wall" to slow the desertification doesn't seem to be working exceptionally well and it is expensive.
> 
> The idea is kind of ineffective also. The trees absorb CO2 in their biomass only... a mature forest has basically no or little absorptive power, and could easily release all the carbon in fire....


Well of course you need to bury that carbon in solid biomass instead of release it again into the environment as CO2 eventually (ps. thats also what is so funny on all the biomass burning policies nonsense). That's in fact how the fossils were created in the first place.

But right in the poorest regions the biomass (as e.g. wood used for simple cooking in many parts of rural Africa) is one of the cheapest energy sources for the ordinary population, while you could replace this completely if you e.g. utilized exactly what those areas are abundant with, the energy coming from the sun.

As about the water. You simply need to start the water cycle there, get more water from the oceans to be captured by the vegetation in the environment.

Ps, an interesting study on the forestation topic was released recently https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/76.


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## ChrisZwolle

Car blessings, I didn't know this was actually a thing in Catholic circles. Evidently they do it in southern Netherlands.


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## bogdymol

^^ This is sometimes done also in Romania. Not only cars, but I've seen also new roads, bridges or even gas pipes.


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## Kpc21

In Poland they bless everything. Especially in case of some public investments.

Blessing of servers (this seems to be actually a disk array):










Blessing of manhole covers:










https://polishpriests.tumblr.com

This is with new things of all kinds.

Blessing (old) cars also takes place – on the Saint Christopher day (who is the patron of drivers).

https://dzienniklodzki.pl/swiecenie-samochodow-w-lodzi-zdjecia/ga/12305473/zd/24801047

It's also quite popular to have a Saint Christopher picture in the car.

Blessing of gas pipes also happens  Here you can see photos from opening of a piece of natural gas network: http://www.kurier-w.pl/uroczyste-ur...obre-strachowka-jadow-lochow/nggallery/page/2 – we can't see the blessing itself but a priest is present (and it's seen that he is even given voice), so blessing definitely took place.

I found a photo of a priest blessing natural gas too: https://dzienniklodzki.pl/oficjalni...-i-brzezinski-zdjecia/ga/13564670/zd/31631338


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## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Car blessings, I didn't know this was actually a thing in Catholic circles. Evidently they do it in southern Netherlands


I knew it, however, it is usually done in St. Christopher's Day (July 24th), or the next Sunday. I don't know why it's done three weeks earlier in the Netherlands.


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## Kpc21

By the way – it's quite a common belief that motorways are the safest roads. 

Actually, according to the Polish Supreme Audit Office (a national institution), in 2016, the number of accidents and their victims for 1000 km on motorways in Poland was 5 times higher than on all the public roads in general: https://www.nik.gov.pl/aktualnosci/...h-na-autostradach-i-drogach-ekspresowych.html










The pie charts show the numbers of: accidents, dead victims of road accidents and the number of the injured in those accidents. The light green part are the motorways and expressways (most of which in Poland have a standard of motorways in western Europe).


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## nenea_hartia

Is that a toilet brush ? At least in Romania they use a paint roller :lol:.



ChrisZwolle said:


>


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## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Car blessings, I didn't know this was actually a thing in Catholic circles. Evidently they do it in southern Netherlands.



It's a thing in Italy, too.


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## Surel

Kpc21 said:


> By the way – it's quite a common belief that motorways are the safest roads.
> 
> Actually, according to the Polish Supreme Audit Office (a national institution), in 2016, the number of accidents and their victims for 1000 km on motorways in Poland was 5 times higher than on all the public roads in general.....


You need to look at the statistic per total driven kms on particular road. That is giving you the number for what is your chance of having a accident if you drive on a motorway or drive elsewhere.

E.g. a 10 km motorway section with 100K AAD with 100 deaths would have half the chance for a deadly accident on each km, and it would be 20 times more safe to drive in whole length compared to a 100 km of a highway road with 1K AAD with 20 deaths.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

volodaaaa said:


> It is the demographic transitions law. The leading indicator of improvement in society is the death rate. The one in "culture" is the "birth rate."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ]


Stage 5? Isn't that just purely theoretical at this point? What are examples of countries where the fertility rate dropped below the reproduction rate and then increased to a point where it's at or above this level (roughly 2.1 children per woman)?


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## volodaaaa

Rebasepoiss said:


> Stage 5? Isn't that just purely theoretical at this point? What are examples of countries where the fertility rate dropped below the reproduction rate and then increased to a point where it's at or above this level (roughly 2.1 children per woman)?


It is theoretical unless you include migration as the second part of the entire population growth (I am not sure if this is the case of this particular model and if this is correct considering the input variables for the other four stages.)

Even here, in Slovakia, there are discussions on the so-called demography crisis, especially population ageing. Further immigration is one of the solutions and can cause the 5th stage, especially if the migrants are from countries with higher fertility.

My country is an example. The death rate was higher than the birth rate in the period 2001 - 2003, while the latter increased again later. However, the main driver of this shift was state policy and following baby boom in the 70s (see Husak's Children for further reading)


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## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> By the way – it's quite a common belief that motorways are the safest roads.
> 
> Actually, according to the Polish Supreme Audit Office (a national institution), in 2016, the number of accidents and their victims for 1000 km on motorways in Poland was 5 times higher than on all the public roads in general: https://www.nik.gov.pl/aktualnosci/...h-na-autostradach-i-drogach-ekspresowych.html


As mentioned, length is not a good metric because they don't take the usage into account. Motorways are typically less than 2% of the public road length but may carry up to 30-50% of all distance traveled. 

What this statistic you provided is doing, is basically comparing a motorway to any country road or residential street. 

The fatality rate per trip or per distance traveled is much lower on motorways than any other roads, hence they are the safest road type for motorists.


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## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> As mentioned, length is not a good metric because they don't take the usage into account. Motorways are typically less than 2% of the public road length but may carry up to 30-50% of all distance traveled.
> 
> What this statistic you provided is doing, is basically comparing a motorway to any country road or residential street.
> 
> The fatality rate per trip or per distance traveled is much lower on motorways than any other roads, hence they are the safest road type for motorists.


It is the relative share of all infrastructure types that matters in the first place, but also the intensity of traffic on the particular motorway section as well. For what I know, the correlation between the accident rate and the intensity is not linear but exponential. 

What I want to say is that it is challenging to find an objective indicator for such a comparison. However, we can hardly see the less non-objective than the simple comparison of the accident rate.

Imagine a road between two low populated municipalities with the intensity of 15 car an hour. I bet there are thousands of kilometres of such in every country. Now compare it with the most overloaded motorway sections in the vicinity of the major population and economic centres. 



I reckon the accident rate per 1000 cars travelled in an individual section of road would be more accurate.


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## MichiH

volodaaaa said:


> I reckon the accident rate per 1000 cars travelled in an individual section of road would be more accurate.


It's as bad as the "Polish comparsion" posted. Just imagine that only 1 vehicle per hour is traveling. The chance for any critical situation (caused by any vehicle) is quite low since there's virtually no chance to meet any other vehicle. Chris' comparsion is for sure the most accurate one mentioned.


----------



## volodaaaa

MichiH said:


> It's as bad as the "Polish comparsion" posted. Just imagine that only 1 vehicle per hour is traveling. *The chance for any critical situation (caused by any vehicle) is quite low since there's virtually no chance to meet any other vehicle*. Chris' comparsion is for sure the most accurate one mentioned.


Well, let me ask you a silly question then. Does not that mean that the particular section is safe, do it? 

The fatality rate per trip is objective, though it has one little flaw: there is no way how to measure it precisely. I work with transport surveys, and once it comes to trip issues, you have to work with surveys and samples. Furthermore, a trip usually includes different road categories. If a trip ends up with an accident, you don't know where it happened. And if you do, you'll end up on the Polish way.

The fatality rate per distance travelled is the best indicator. You have the overall transport performance (vehicle kilometres) for different road types on the one hand and the number of fatalities on the other hand. Now divide the stats per one road type to 1000 vehicle kilometres, and you have almost the way I've mentioned earlier.


----------



## Skopje/Скопје

Who have banned Junkie and why? What did he do this time? 

Edit: never mind, I've read his post in the International border crossings thread.


----------



## Verso

I haven't even noticed, but good riddance.


----------



## x-type

Attus said:


> I knew it, however, it is usually done in St. Christopher's Day (July 24th), or the next Sunday. I don't know why it's done three weeks earlier in the Netherlands.


Hm, usually is St. Anthony of Padua considered as patron saint of travellers, so in modern times it obviously made him to be patron of vehicles too (in Croatia at some places they are blessing the cars on 13th June  )



nenea_hartia said:


> Is that a toilet brush ? At least in Romania they use a paint roller :lol:.


It was also my first evocation of that thing :lol: But Romanian one beats him :lol:


----------



## MichiH

volodaaaa said:


> Well, let me ask you a silly question then. Does not that mean that the particular section is safe, do it?


Sure but we talk about road categories (motorway vs. non-motorway), not road sections


----------



## Spookvlieger

Wich route should I take? Look at all those baustelle. :bash:


route2 by Joshua Radoes, on Flickr

route 1 by Joshua Radoes, on Flickr


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is much more construction in Germany than Google Maps indicates. 

I drove A3 Oberhausen - Frankfurt last month. There were speed limit reductions to 100 or less every 10 or 15 kilometers or so. Construction, damaged bridges, steep grades, etc. They add up. However there weren't any construction zones that really impacted traffic flow, so A3 to Nürnberg is not as bad as it was in recent years. The main bottleneck is A3 at Würzburg which has 2 lanes eastbound. There are no lane reductions elsewhere (wait, there is also still a construction zone near Rohrbrunn, but that has fewer traffic than at Würzburg.

I've also read about significant construction impact on Polish A4. And of course, there is the rehabilitation of D1 between Prague and Brno. 

I think A44-A38 through central Germany definitely has the least amount of traffic, but also a lot of just four lane Autobahn, whereas A3 is almost entirely six lanes from Cologne to Würzburg.


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## ChrisZwolle

90 km/h in the Craeybeckx Tunnel of E19 in Antwerp, Belgia.










Video: https://www.gva.be/cnt/dmf20190710_...beckxtunnel-auto-meegesleurd-door-vrachtwagen


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## volodaaaa

joshsam said:


> Wich route should I take? Look at all those baustelle. :bash:



What about the route through Bratislava, Vienna, Linz and Passau? That could be a detour, but you can be faster eventually.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Both my gps and Google maps says it's much longer.


----------



## italystf

Are there countries in Europe where LPG cars are subjected to some kind of restrictions? And petrol-LPG hybrid cars are classificated as LPG too even if they are driven on petrol?


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## ChrisZwolle

June ended with a heat wave in the Netherlands, but July is much cooler - even cold. We already had two nights with freezing temperatures at 10 cm, which is really uncommon in July. The forecast isn't very good either, 80-90% clouds and 20-23 °C until the end of July...

I don't need the 35 °C summer heat, but 15-20 °C and cloudy weather is not my idea of summer either. Luckily I still have a 2 week vacation planned at the end of summer.


----------



## Suburbanist

I spent 4 days in Italy (Roma) catching up with my brother and his gf. They work on IT-related business and have been living roaming around from place to place every 2-3 months, working remotely and so forth.

As always, the quality, variety and price of fine dining all improve substantially in Italy over its neighbors. 

Sadly, the city had overflowing trash problems at several places, cracked sidewalks (more than I noticed on previous visits), and several subway stations (which we used extensively while there) had entrances/stairs closed.

I also caught the end of the heat wave. Always looking for shade.

I'd say water fountains are the best-working bit of ground infrastructure there.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Are there countries in Europe where LPG cars are subjected to some kind of restrictions? And petrol-LPG hybrid cars are classificated as LPG too even if they are driven on petrol?


There is ban for LPG vehicles in most of underground garages in Croatia. I don't know why and nobody probably pays any attention on that.


----------



## Suburbanist

x-type said:


> There is ban for LPG vehicles in most of underground garages in Croatia.* I don't know why* and nobody probably pays any attention on that.


LPG tank explosions are much more dangerous than regular fires to gas or diesel fuel tanks. In case of a fire in a garage (a confined space), a LPG tank can seriously hurt or kill firefighters.


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> There is ban for LPG vehicles in most of underground garages in Croatia. I don't know why and nobody probably pays any attention on that.


I think everywhere is like this.


----------



## g.spinoza

A severe hailstorm hit the Italian town of Pescara, on the Adriatic coast. Variously described as "as big as oranges", "as big as apples", "as big as tennis balls", measured by the local meteo agency as "6 cm across", the hail injured 18 people, smashed car screens and apartments' windows.
https://www.lasicilia.it/video/vide...ossi-come-arance-fanno-18-feriti-e-danni.html


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There have been various reports of severe weather with tornadoes and hail in Northern Italy. It may be Europe's hotspot for severe weather.


----------



## Verso

We have severe weather all the time (minus tornadoes), so it's not even news for me any more. A few days ago a hail storm killed 300 birds near Ptuj.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> We have severe weather all the time (minus tornadoes), so it's not even news for me any more. A few days ago a hail storm killed 300 birds near Ptuj.




A tornado hits the Chalkidiki peninsula in Greece, killing seven people (6 tourists and one fisherman).


----------



## Surel

joshsam said:


> Wich route should I take? Look at all those baustelle. :bash:


Go through Poland. You won't have to buy the vignette. You will save on gas. Your motorway drive will be more relaxed.

And why not taking A4 in Germany?


----------



## x-type

Really nasty wreck occured today at A4 toll barrier Sveta Helena. 3 cars involved, fortunately no fatal casulties, only 4 injured. I don't know how is it possible to occur unless somebody gets heart attack or something similar.

https://www.vecernji.hr/vijesti/tes...aplatnim-kucicama-cetvero-ozlije-enih-1331677


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> A3 to Nürnberg is not as bad as it was in recent years. The main bottleneck is A3 at Würzburg which has 2 lanes eastbound. There are no lane reductions elsewhere (wait, there is also still a construction zone near Rohrbrunn, but that has fewer traffic than at Würzburg.


Well, it was still quite bad last year. I think it's a little bit better now but not much. I NEVER got stuck in any relevant traffic jam on "my A3" in the past 20 years. I think that the biggest issue was last week at the construction site east of Rohrbrunn.... A truck had a puncture. I just lost about 15 minutes but police stopped traffic directly behind me. I was the last lucky car 

And don't forget reconstruction of A3/A73 interchange Fürth/Erlangen (northwest of Nuremberg). I lost some time this morning there and it was reported that there was an accident just a few minutes later with more than 30 minutes delay. There was also ah traffic jam caused by an accident this evening when I drove westbound. The 4-laned A3 b/n Würzburg and Fürth/Erlangen is also quite annoying - widening was annouced to be started this spring (PPP project) but there was an issue with the tendering procedure....)


I'd go via A4 and Poland because this would also avoid Czech D1.


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> Really nasty wreck occured today at A4 toll barrier Sveta Helena. 3 cars involved, fortunately no fatal casulties, only 4 injured. I don't know how is it possible to occur unless somebody gets heart attack or something similar.


According to a Hungarian press release an in Croation registered BMW crashed without braking into two Hungarian cars standing at the toll station (allegedly standing in the queue). A Hungarian women and a child are havily injured. 
I, just like you, don't understand hot it could happen. The BMW driver may have been very drunk or had got some sudden health issue. Toll stations are signalized, are large, it's actually impossible not to see them.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ It does happen occasionally. It's definitely rare, but stopping in the middle of a motorway is always a risk (be it traffic jams, breakdown or a toll plaza). 

Like you said, they are impossible to miss if you are driving in normal conditions, so there may have been some medical incident or substance abuse. 

This may increase support for all-electronic tolling. Stopping in line to pay toll on a free-flow highway is archaic. Electronic tolling has existed for more than 2 decades now.


----------



## General Maximus

Samedi Noir. On my way to Madrid. Fun times... Lots of Moroccans on their way home as well with all kinds of shit packed on their roofs...


----------



## Kpc21

italystf said:


> Are there countries in Europe where LPG cars are subjected to some kind of restrictions? And petrol-LPG hybrid cars are classificated as LPG too even if they are driven on petrol?


In Poland they can't use many underground garages.

The reason – in case of any leakage, the LPG gas (propane-butane mixture), as opposed to the natural gas (methane) gathers at the bottom of the room.

In Poland, we had a week of rest from the last heat wave – with temperatures of about 20 degrees C and some rain. But now it's getting warmer again.


----------



## Attus

Video from the Croatian accident.


----------



## tfd543

Azholee if its self-inflicted


----------



## Penn's Woods

CrazySerb said:


> Just wondering, has this "Americanization" of police forces reached Europe & other countries?
> 
> After the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, a lot of unused military armored vehicles were transferred to local police forces across the U.S. - and now, it seems we're following suit, with somewhat untypical types of vehicles.
> 
> New "Despot" armored vehicle presented at last months Partner 2019 show in Belgrade... a number has now been ordered for Serb Republic's Ministry of Interior.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Meanwhile in Serbia, the local Gendarmerie has inducted these...




Honestly, I don’t see that sort of thing in the U.S. in normal circumstances. There was a visit to Philadelphia (where I live) by the Pope in 2015, and a military vehicle parked at a gas station in my neighborhood. But I can’t think of another occasion when I’ve seen one. (There were also a lot of military-dressed guys on the streets that day, so my guess is the vehicle was National Guard rather than local police.)


----------



## g.spinoza

Temperatures in Turin dropped 20 °C in less than 24 hours. Yesterday's maximum was 32 °C, current temperature is 13 °C and decreasing.
Yesterday:








Today:









EDIT: It is snowing over 2000 m on the SouthWestern Alps.


----------



## Fatfield

For once, the England national team didn't bottle it in a World Cup Final. :cheers:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*Widest motorway carriageway of Europe?*

The Dutch A2 has a brief section with 7 undivided lanes in one direction just south of Amsterdam:










I wonder if there are any motorway carriageways in Europe with more than 7 lanes in one direction? (not split up into collector / express lanes).


----------



## Kpc21

Actually, in Poland there existed (and still exist) sections of roads prepared to be used as airports for military aircrafts in case of a war.

So called DOLs – Drogowy Odcinek Lotniskowy – Airport Road Sections.

One used to be here: https://goo.gl/maps/1M4VY86XdWFnki9Z7

A smaller one: https://goo.gl/maps/2UDYwjxC5hZMypgw6

Here you can see one which is actually new: https://goo.gl/maps/Me7YG8X8RQ4qUYd77

Another old one: https://goo.gl/maps/B4vh5FZhtijFQY5b7

Here a very interesting one – quite a narrow road suddenly becomes very wide: https://goo.gl/maps/ko6uKaupYcUdPDTq5

Their characteristic features, apart from the wide lanes of asphalt without grass in the middle even in case of dual-carriageway roads, are special service places at both ends.

So airplanes landing on roads aren't such an exotic thing as it may seem.


----------



## tfd543

I didnt know that. Is it only in Poland? Paranoid Poland reminiscent of all the unused bunkers in Albania Lol.

In the end of the day, What is it to be afraid of? 
In Denmark we often debate that its futile to invest in the military because we are a very small country.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Actually, in Poland there existed (and still exist) sections of roads prepared to be used as airports for military aircrafts in case of a war.
> 
> So called DOLs – Drogowy Odcinek Lotniskowy – Airport Road Sections.
> 
> One used to be here: https://goo.gl/maps/1M4VY86XdWFnki9Z7
> 
> A smaller one: https://goo.gl/maps/2UDYwjxC5hZMypgw6
> 
> Here you can see one which is actually new: https://goo.gl/maps/Me7YG8X8RQ4qUYd77
> 
> Another old one: https://goo.gl/maps/B4vh5FZhtijFQY5b7
> 
> Here a very interesting one – quite a narrow road suddenly becomes very wide: https://goo.gl/maps/ko6uKaupYcUdPDTq5
> 
> Their characteristic features, apart from the wide lanes of asphalt without grass in the middle even in case of dual-carriageway roads, are special service places at both ends.
> 
> So airplanes landing on roads aren't such an exotic thing as it may seem.



The last one is cool. There is even a turning point for aircraft, the same as at the end of a regular runway.


This one is ours:
https://goo.gl/maps/RHhbr5kiVHKRLWnc7


The Ministry of defence still won't comment it.


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> Exactly. Regular sections between two proper exits.
> 
> 
> *[COLOR=#000000][/COLOR]
> [COLOR=#737373][/COLOR]*





volodaaaa said:


> Well. The maintenance vehicle could have the width of 2,5 m. Therefore the lane width is roughly 3 m. We have ten lanes per direction adding up to 60 m of carriageway + approximately 2 m wide divider lane. The whole motorway is thus 62 m wide. The biggest passenger aircraft have following wingspans
> 
> 
> Airbus A380: 80 m
> Boeing 747: 65 m
> Boeing 777: 60 m
> 
> 
> The most popular commercial passenger jet, Boeing 737 is 29 m wide.
> 
> 
> Thus, theoretically, two Boeing 737 jets could land this motorway at once with no problems (except for the lamps).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *[COLOR=#000000][/COLOR]
> [COLOR=#737373][/COLOR]*





volodaaaa said:


> The last one is cool. There is even a turning point for aircraft, the same as at the end of a regular runway.
> 
> 
> This one is ours:
> https://goo.gl/maps/RHhbr5kiVHKRLWnc7
> 
> 
> The Ministry of defence still won't comment it.
> 
> 
> *[COLOR=#000000][/COLOR]
> [COLOR=#737373][/COLOR]*


Do you have some color fetish or what? :nuts:


----------



## italystf

tfd543 said:


> Oh my gosh, an airplane can land there almost


That's exactly the reason why a such impressive highway was built: to be used as an airstrip in case of war.
Also other ultra-wide highways in other low-traffic countries such as Cuba, North Korea, or Turkmenistan were built for the same reason. In fact, they often have no median or flat grassy median.
For the same purpose, also some early US interstates were built with some straight sections.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> That's exactly the reason why a such impressive highway was built: to be used as an airstrip in case of war.
> 
> Also other ultra-wide highways in other low-traffic countries such as Cuba, North Korea, or Turkmenistan were built for the same reason. In fact, they often have no median or flat grassy median.
> 
> For the same purpose, also some early US interstates were built with some straight sections.




The original name of the Interstates was “National System of Interstate and Defense Highways). It was initiated at the point in time when the Soviets had nukes, but would have had to deliver them by bomber plane, so there might have been time to evacuate cities.


----------



## volodaaaa

Verso said:


> Do you have some color fetish or what? :nuts:



Honestly, I do not know why are my posts automatically added these tags. Moreover, I have noticed twice as regular line breaks as well.


----------



## g.spinoza

An Apple Maps car with Spanish plates yesterday in Turin:


----------



## Autobahn-mann

Kpc21 said:


> […]
> One used to be here: https://goo.gl/maps/1M4VY86XdWFnki9Z7[...]


The former Reichsautobahn


----------



## volodaaaa

Autobahn-mann said:


> The former Reichsautobahn



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlinka


----------



## Autobahn-mann

^^ Yeah, I know her


----------



## CNGL

I bet it would take less time to hike between these two points over Passo della Losa than to drive between those same two points. They are only 7.3 km apart, yet it is a 229 km drive :nuts:.


----------



## Suburbanist

Are the Pyrenees full of late snow this time around?


----------



## g.spinoza

CNGL said:


> I bet it would take less time to hike between these two points over Passo della Losa than to drive between those same two points. They are only 7.3 km apart, yet it is a 229 km drive :nuts:.


By trail it's almost 10 km with 900 m of ascent. I think you can do it in 5 hours.


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> An Apple Maps car with Spanish plates yesterday in Turin:


I was driving behind one in Firenze a month ago. German plates those were.


----------



## Kpc21

tfd543 said:


> I didnt know that. Is it only in Poland? Paranoid Poland reminiscent of all the unused bunkers in Albania Lol.


It seems many countries have those: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_strip



volodaaaa said:


> The last one is cool. There is even a turning point for aircraft, the same as at the end of a regular runway.


If you have a detailed look, you'll notice that all of them have such turning (and service) points


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Estonia has a couple highway landing strips. One of them (here) has been used in recent years by the US Air Force for training excercises (skip to 1:15):


----------



## bogdymol

Today a car carrying a camera for Google Street passed twice in front of my office window (which is on a very secondary street in a small Austrian village). I have clearly seen the camera, but cannot confirm if it was really from Google or from a different company.

Speaking of landing strips on motorways, I took this picture in Cyprus:



bogdymol said:


> The following pictures will be on A5 and A1, driving from Larnaca to Paphos:
> 
> On A5, right before meeting the A1, the motorway can be easily converted in a military runway strip if needed. Some runway-type markings are already there:


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> Today a car carrying a camera for Google Street passed twice in front of my office window (which is on a very secondary street in a small Austrian village). I have clearly seen the camera, but cannot confirm if it was really from Google or from a different company.
> 
> Speaking of landing strips on motorways, I took this picture in Cyprus:


Touchdown marks.


----------



## Attus

bogdymol said:


> Today a car carrying a camera for Google Street passed twice in front of my office window


They make photos again and again in Germany and Austria, too, but those photos will only be used for navigation and will not be published.


----------



## Kpc21

Verso said:


> The first version doesn't make sense; no one behind you really cares where you're going, only those trying to enter a roundabout.


Recently I had a situation when I wanted to know whether someone on the other side of the roundabout will be leaving it or not – and I couldn't see his right indicators.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Inversion and high temperatures had another unusual effect: radio waves. Some radio stations could not be received within their usual area, but had clear reception at locations far beyond their usual area. Drivers in Eastern Netherlands noticed they could listen to FM broadcasts by the BBC.


There are people whose hobby is trying to receive far radio and TV stations (they call it DXing) – they like such situations very much 

Worse reception of some local stations is also an advantage as it gives chances for receiving distant stations broadcasting at the same frequency. 

Actually, I once – quite accidentally – managed to receive BBC FM broadcast in central Poland 

There were also moments when I caught Czech TV (it was easier in the analog times rather than now with digital). Also in the central Poland.

Luckily, the radio is still analog. Norway switched off analog countrywide radio stations trying to convert to digital (only the local ones remained analog) – but from what I know, the effect is that most people just stopped listening to the radio...

A problem with the digital radio is also the quality. Technically it's not a problem at all for the digital radio to broadcast with the same sound quality as in analog (and without all the noises and interference known from receiving analog broadcasts) – but the broadcasters are trying to squeeze in as many radio stations as possible at a single frequency, which means the signal must be compressed and the audio bandwidth decreased. In analog, there was no reason for doing that (anyway, only one station could broadcast at a single frequency) – so in its case, the quality remains more acceptable.


----------



## volodaaaa

Sometimes it is pain in the buttock to live next to a beach volleyball court.

It feels very romantic now. It is almost dark, but the sky is still illuminated, my son has been fed and now is amusingly snoring in the cot, my wife is in our bed next to him browsing the internet, all the windows in our flat are open, 28°C no wind outside, sometimes the very gentle sound of calmly passing car through our street and cricket chirping from the forest by our house.

All are suddenly destroyed by sharp screams from the nearby volleyball court. Some moron says nothing but "oooooh, f***" with various accent depending on the situation in the game.

For example, it is "OOOOOH, f**k" when scores and "oh, f****************k" when loses. Annoying.


----------



## tfd543

Haha. Why dont you follow it from the balcony? Is it every night?


----------



## CNGL

Wow, my hometown has been cooler than most of Germany and Netherlands :nuts::crazy:. High has been "only" 36.2°C, and forecast high tomorrow is only 30°C. If you complain about the heat, come to Spain.


ChrisZwolle said:


> Inversion and high temperatures had another unusual effect: radio waves. Some radio stations could not be received within their usual area, but had clear reception at locations far beyond their usual area. Drivers in Eastern Netherlands noticed they could listen to FM broadcasts by the BBC.


I know that phenomenon. It's called tropospheric ducting. The record is 1700 or so km, from Scotland all the way to Poland. My personal best is quite short: 228 km.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Inversion and high temperatures had another unusual effect: radio waves. Some radio stations could not be received within their usual area, but had clear reception at locations far beyond their usual area. Drivers in Eastern Netherlands noticed they could listen to FM broadcasts by the BBC.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1154287914228039680




Back when television in North America was still analog and I used an antenna rather than cable, certain weather conditions brought in distant stations. I think my farthest was Baton Rouge, Louisiana, at my parents. 1,340 miles (2,170 km) by road.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Minimum temperatures in the Netherlands this past night. 

Dutch homes typically do not have A/C so many people have to sleep with indoor temperatures of 27 - 32 °C, sometimes higher in the attic. 

There were also stories about new houses that were insulated too well, designed to store heat in the winter. But it also stores heat in the summer, there was a news segment of a guy in a brand new house with room temperatures up to 36 °C.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Dutch homes typically do not have A/C so many people have to sleep with indoor temperatures of 27 - 32 °C


The same here. In my flat there was 31 degrees this morning. I sweated a lot in the night. The office, too, is pretty warm, 36 degrees at my desk.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My office building has a very good climate control, I wear long pants to work as it is a formal work environment, but that's not a problem with the good climate they have. It was 23 degrees inside, better than at home.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is some debate whether the Lingen weather station is representative. 

"Die Station liegt mehr oder weniger innerstädtisch", erklärt der Meteorologe. Mit 22 Metern über dem Meeresspiegel liegt sie verhältnismäßig tief, zudem noch in einer kleinen Senke, sodass kaum Wind für Luftzirkulation sorgen kann. Auf der einen Seite liegt eine kleinere Straße, auf der anderen der Dortmund-Ems-Kanal. Laut Renkosik ist ein idealer Standort für eine Wetterstation ein großes freies Feld mit ein wenig Rasen, keine Betonflächen, die für zusätzliche Hitze sorgen und auch keine Hecke oder ähnliche Hindernisse, die einen Hitzestau verursachen könnten, sollte es in der Nähe geben.​
According to NDR.

They call it an inner city station, located in a dip with limited air circulation, a street next to it. It's located in a sports park. It could create a 'heat jam' at such a location. 

Ideally a weather station should be in a large grass field with no concrete or other objects that could create such a 'heat jam'.

The observation was about 2 degrees higher than other stations in the area, but the DWD has approved it.


----------



## g.spinoza

^^ According to my (still unpublished) work, 2 °C is the kind of bias you can expect in such a location due to the road, a little less during the day than during the night.


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Haha. Why dont you follow it from the balcony? Is it every night?


It is normal in summer day. But the chattering is mostly indistinctive except for some screams and cursing. And of course, you can hear the sound of the ball being hit. But, these guys played until late night and that does not happen very often. Fortunately.

It is indeed close. The court is illuminated in the night.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Another day, another 40 °C...


----------



## g.spinoza

Italy's close:










Not sure by the colors if the highest temperatures are 39 or 40...


----------



## Highway89

Come to [not-so-] hot and sunny Spain!










To be fair, temperatures this week so far have been a nightmare...
Mon 21: 20.3/34.6
Tue 22: 20.9/37.9
Wed 23: 20.9/38.9
Thu 24: 18.9/38.5


----------



## tfd543

Enjoy the sun rays.
You gonna ask for it when its gonna be cold as shiitt.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Tour de France has been stopped due to heavy hail near Val d'Isère.


----------



## Attus

tfd543 said:


> You gonna ask for it when its gonna be cold as shiitt.


I'll never ask for the weather of the three recent days. It was near to unbearable. I'm really not the guy coplaining day and night about the weather, but these days were really terrible. 
At the moment (5PM) we have a storm, it's raining heavily, the temperature dropped 8 degrees within two hours. That heat wave is over.


----------



## Highway89

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Tour de France has been stopped due to heavy hail near Val d'Isère.


There have been some landslides as well:










Source:

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1154764343910838272


----------



## ChrisZwolle

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've read that tourist bookings in Croatia have gone down this year.





Kpc21 said:


> Throughout the last years, Croatia has become much more expensive to go for holidays than before. So people here tend to choose Montenegro or even Albania instead of Croatia.





Suburbanist said:


> The Italian Adriatic coast resorts southeast from Ravenna have suffered a lot of losses of international bookings over the last 10 years.


I've noticed on Google Maps that traffic congestion across the eastern part of the Alps seems to have been significantly less than 3 or 5 years ago.

Today there was no report of a queue at the Karawanken Tunnel to Slovenia! This is the weekend that Southern Germany goes on vacation and Fridays are often worse than Saturdays in Southern Germany. But not in Austria, with only minor congestion near Innsbruck and some medium congestion near Salzburg but almost nothing further down the road to Slovenia. 

Congestion on Italian A22 is still substantial, but also appears to be less intense than in earlier years. Gotthard waiting times have also rarely exceeded 2 hours this summer while they regularly hit 3-4 hours a few years ago. The San Bernardino route was even free-flow all the way today.

Fewer people going to Italy and Croatia? Or people travel on other days? 

Congestion on French A7 in the Rhône Valley also appears to be less extreme than previous years and has almost vanished on A9 due to the Montpellier bypass being complete.


----------



## CNGL

Highway89 said:


> Come to [not-so-] hot and sunny Spain!


Spain is different :colgate:. Not only temperatures have sharply dropped, it has even rained! Today Huesca has failed to reach 30 °C, and the maximum has been recorded at... 18:00 CEST.



Highway89 said:


> To be fair, temperatures this week so far have been a nightmare...
> Mon 21: 20.3/34.6
> Tue 22: 20.9/37.9
> Wed 23: 20.9/38.9
> Thu 24: 18.9/38.5


Check the weekdays, I think you got them off . 21 July was a Sunday.


----------



## g.spinoza

RipleyLV said:


> Meanwhile in Jelgava. A driver under the influence of alcohol flees police and crashes afterwards.


 Love the shield and the badass sound at the beginning of the video...


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> *The official German record is 42.6°C*. Wetter Online is a private company but DWD is the official authority (It is attached to the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure.)
> 
> DWD: "Wir lassen uns da jetzt nicht durch externe Kritiken beeinflussen, dass wir das jetzt infrage stellen müssen." - "Wir haben keinen Grund, jetzt an den Ergebnissen zu zweifeln.". Source.
> 
> "We don't allow us to be influenced by external criticism to doubt it." - "There is no reason to doubt the results"
> 
> 
> To be honest, I think that this measurement is much more reliable than any temperature being measuered a century ago hno:


Believe me, it's not.
Such an installation would be classified by WMO as Class 5, the most unreliable with uncertainties up to 5 °C.

I'm not sure whether national records have to be certified by WMO itself or not.


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> Such an installation would be classified by WMO as Class 5, the most unreliable with uncertainties up to 5 °C.


So what. Did the site in Israel met the standard back in 1942? Turkey in 1961? South Africa in 1918? Tunesia in 1931? Bulgaria in 1916? Iceland in 1939? Poland in 1921? Romania in 1951?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> So what. Did the site in Israel met the standard back in 1942? Turkey in 1961? South Africa in 1918? Tunesia in 1931? Bulgaria in 1916? Iceland in 1939? Poland in 1921? Romania in 1951?
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records


Some of those early records have been already disproved, like the Lybian one in 1922.
https://www.livescience.com/23156-new-world-hottest-temperature.html

And don't think that they're no good just because they're old. Standards were quite high back then, at least in developed countries. 
The 70-years-old mercury thermometer which recorded in Pakistan the 2nd highest temperature of all time was almost as good as the brand new Vaisala thermo-hygro in Kuwait which recorded the highest.
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.6132

And, even if they WERE bad, should we continue to add questionable records to the table just because in the past we did, even if we know better now?


----------



## volodaaaa

RipleyLV said:


> Meanwhile in Jelgava. A driver under the influence of alcohol flees police and crashes afterwards.
> 
> 
> 
> The drivers brain when he sees the green light:


80 knots, V1, rotate


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Duisburg-Baerl would be the highest then:









>> https://www.wetteronline.de/wettern...el-42-6-grad-rekord-unbrauchbar-2019-07-30-hi

You can see how much of an outlier the Lingen observation is. 1.4 degrees higher than the next-highest, while the rest of the top 5 is within 0.3 degrees from each other.

The DWD statements only adds fuel to the fire of climate change deniers. The Netherlands also recorded 42.7 degrees on an official weather station, but it was quickly discounted as an error / not representative.


----------



## Verso

MichiH said:


> "We don't allow us to be influenced by external criticism to doubt it." - "There is no reason to doubt the results"


In other words: Germany must beat some other countries for every price.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Environmentalists should aim their caimpagns to things that most people can easily do.
> Using PT or bicycle when they're competitive to car (especially in city centres), taking HSR instead of short flights, sorting and recycling waste properly, not littering, unplugging appliances when unused, screwing LED bulbs in your lamps, turning out the car while stopped, not using plastic dishes, cups, and cultlery, washing your car in an authorized car wash with sewage collection and not in your yard, not damaging plants and animals while visiting parks, etc... are simple things that normal peole can (and must) do to preserve the environment.
> Promoting too radical practices like "become all vegans", "live without a car", or "buy only organic products from local farmers", that are highly utopic for 99% of people, can ridiculize and give a bad opinion to the, otherwise legitimate, environmentalist movement.


Sir, you are a genius. Very well said.


----------



## Kpc21

But isn't this what actually happens?


----------



## tfd543

Yea good point. Well it depends where you are in the world.


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## Kpc21

For now, in my area, there are still people throwing away their trash into forests. Even though already for a few years we have law which forces everyone to pay a special tax spent on the trash disposal (reduced if you sort it) and the municipalities are obliged to collect all the trash.

And people still use weird arguments for not sorting, like:
– all the fractions are anyway collected by the same garbage truck (they ignore the fact that it has separated chambers inside),
– I don't have so much room in my kitchen to fit so many trash cans for various types of trash.

Or people "recycling" the trash in their central heating claiming they can't afford coal, as if burning trash actually brought any sensible amount of long-lasting heat.

Concerning light bulbs, personally I still use conventional ones – they give better, more natural light. Though I know they are extremely inefficient, especially in summer (in winter they just increase the temperature in the room, so the energy isn't wasted).

And talking about turning off the car while stopped... in a conventional car, you will probably quickly drain your battery. But there are cars which have this feature (automated) – and most people disable it...


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## volodaaaa

:lol::lol::lol:


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## tfd543

What a jealous girl lol


----------



## Penn's Woods

Highway/travel/intercontinental-geographical-knowledge satire:

https://www.thebeaverton.com/2019/0...nd-see-the-rocky-mountains-while-theyre-here/


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Highway/travel/intercontinental-geographical-knowledge satire:
> 
> https://www.thebeaverton.com/2019/0...nd-see-the-rocky-mountains-while-theyre-here/


This article is satire, but it's plenty of tourists who know barely anything of the country/area they are visiting and ask stupid questions.


----------



## italystf

How Americans see Europe









How Europeans see America (pic that can't be embedded, click on the link)
http://www.goboxus.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/how-europe-views-the-us.png

:lol::lol::lol:


----------



## Kpc21

Is it in your countries/languages also so that people who speak their local dialects and not the "pure" official language are considered "uneducated villagers"?

Because this is how it has long been in Poland – and now those local dialects are almost non-existent in most regions.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are dialects and accents. Accents are generally accepted in the Netherlands, as you can't really change that. 

Dialects are usually considered inappropriate to use if the other person doesn't speak it. The use of dialects has been reduced substantially in the Netherlands over the past 50+ years, especially because people moved criss-cross through the country. 

I had some colleagues from small towns that would speak in dialect with their husband or wife but standard Dutch with their children. My grandparents spoke dialect, but my parents didn't and I don't speak any dialect either. I also don't have a particular accent, I grew up speaking standard Dutch.


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## Spookvlieger

In Flanders it is pretty much like this: work and social meeting with people not from your region: standard Dutch or something close to it. At home or with friends from the same region: dialect.


----------



## Suburbanist

A genealogy-geek from the Italian side of my family managed to trace and document an old ancestor back to 1674. He found some old archives with some info that survived as part of what is now the Austrian administration. Of course he only inspected digitalized doc.

On the other side, which is a huge mix of Portuguese, Spanish and even a bit of Native American ancestors, we only have documented registries back to the 5th generation preceding mine, and only for one sub-branch.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> Is it in your countries/languages also so that people who speak their local dialects and not the "pure" official language are considered "uneducated villagers"?
> 
> Because this is how it has long been in Poland – and now those local dialects are almost non-existent in most regions.


Finland is a big country by area, and there is a wide variety of Finnish dialects: eastern and western ones. In radio and television, the standard Helsinki Finnish is spoken. Strong accents, especially in east and southwest, are considered a slight handicap. Unofficially, of course. 

The separation is stronger within the Swedish speaking minority, because their area is geographically divided. They divide the are into three: Gummiland ("Rubber Land", don't ask, south coast), Pampas (west coast), and Kongo (Åland Islands). The dialects in Pampas are hard to understand for others, because they are closer to ancient Norwegian than modern Swedish. The dialect in Närpes in Pampas is said to be the oldest archaic German/Scandinavian language still remaining. The differences are not about vocabulary only, but grammar, too.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is a sort of unofficial stigmatization when speaking dialect or with a strong accent, those people are more likely to be perceived as 'uneducated' or 'farmers'. National television usually don't have presenters or reporters that have a strong southern or eastern accent in the Netherlands (though things could've changed, I haven't watched television for 10 years now).


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> There is a sort of unofficial stigmatization when speaking dialect or with a strong accent, those people are more likely to be perceived as 'uneducated' or 'farmers'. National television usually don't have presenters or reporters that have a strong southern or eastern accent in the Netherlands (though things could've changed, I haven't watched television for 10 years now).




When I was first learning Dutch, I had very little opportunity to hear it spoken. The first time after I started learning it that I went to Europe, I went first to Antwerp, where I was delighted that I could understand every word of the radio news. (Understanding overheard conversations was another matter.) I had more trouble when I got to Amsterdam later. My theory - tell me if I’m wildly off base - was that the Flemish broadcasters were speaking carefully and according to the rules because standard was their second language, as it were (this was 1986), while the Nederlanders were less strict with it because it came naturally to them.


----------



## volodaaaa

My colleague has had severe troubles to understand the Irish accent of English. He told me once he realised the Irish man he met was speaking English after five minutes.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> My colleague has had severe troubles to understand the Irish accent of English. He told me once he realised the Irish man he met was speaking English after five minutes.




The only forms of English I have trouble with are some dialects of England itself.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> The only forms of English I have trouble with are some dialects of England itself.


Yeah. For me, as a non-native speaker, it is always challenging to listen to e. g. Nigel Farage, who, at least I think, often shows off his accent.


----------



## Spookvlieger

I also have difficulty understanding the drab he spews from time to time. But it has nothing to do with the accent.


----------



## volodaaaa

joshsam said:


> I also have difficulty understanding the drab he spews from time to time. But it has nothing to do with the accent.


:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:


----------



## CNGL

I've found myself using either British or American English depending on the context. Here I try to favour British English due to this being dominated by Europeans

However English is not my first language. Spanish is, and my dialect has a strong influence from Aragonese (e.g. many loanwords).


----------



## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> Is it in your countries/languages also so that people who speak their local dialects and not the "pure" official language are considered "uneducated villagers"?
> 
> Because this is how it has long been in Poland – and now those local dialects are almost non-existent in most regions.


(almost) Nobody speaks Italian as first language in Italy. Central Italian dialects are closer to standard Italian, so it is more difficult for them (us, I'm from Central Italy myself) to tell italian and dialect apart, since even school teachers tend to speak dialect.
In the North and the South things are different, since dialects are languages themselves, and it is much easier to understand the difference when you grow up.
But yes, it is considered uneducated to speak dialect in general. Almost all comedy in Italy is based on regional characterization and stereotypes.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

In Estonia the vast majority of the country speaks standard Estonian. There is one notable exception, South-East Estonia which has something bordering between a dialect and a separate language called Võru language. I'd say most people living there speak a mixture of this language/dialect and standard Estonian. However, more and more young people speak standard Estonian even amongst themselves so the dialect is slowly dying out.

Islanders in the West also have a slightly different way of speaking, the most notable difference being that people from Saaremaa island can't say the letter Õ.


----------



## Attus

In Hungary there are almost no dialects. OK, it's a small nation, especially since the Trianon Peace Treaty in 1920. There are some local accents, but it's only about pronounciation, they use the very same words and grammar like in standard Hungarian.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

About 10 years ago I organized a traffic study of truckers parking habits. We had to survey some truckers. Of course we went for trucks that had license plates of a country whose language we could speak (though it wasn't a guarantee that an NL plate actually meant it had a Dutch driver). I surveyed a GB or IRL plate, I don't remember exactly. The guy was talking with a very thick accent, I almost couldn't make out he was speaking English. Maybe it was a Welsh or Irish accent.


----------



## bogdymol

When I moved to Austria I attended some German classes, where we have been learned standard German. However, in the area where I live, in the countryside, the locals speak in local dialect, so it was hard for me to understand them. Now after 5 years I got used with their German and can mostly understand them... once somebody even told me that I spelled some words in their dialect (I did not do that on purpose, but most probably I just repeated some words as I heard them from others).

I am also in contact often with people from UK and USA. In UK I had trouble understanding some people in the rural Scotland or Ireland. In USA I had issues with some people in countryside Alabama, as they were talking with the typical ******* accent you sometimes see in the movies.



Attus said:


> In Hungary there are almost no dialects. OK, it's a small nation, especially since the Trianon Peace Treaty in 1920. There are some local accents, but it's only about pronounciation, they use the very same words and grammar like in standard Hungarian.


I understood that there is some difference between the Hungarian spoken in Hungary and the one spoken by Hungarians living in Romania. I can't speak the language so I can't know if that's true, but so I have been told by some Romanian-Hungarian friends of mine.


----------



## Attus

bogdymol said:


> I understood that there is some difference between the Hungarian spoken in Hungary and the one spoken by Hungarians living in Romania. I can't speak the language so I can't know if that's true, but so I have been told by some Romanian-Hungarian friends of mine.


Yes, there are some minor differences. I (grown up in Budapest) can recognize if someone comes from Romania (native Hungarian speakers, I mean), but we can understand each other without any difficulties. 
However, people living in the belt near to the Hungarian border (Timișoara - Arad - Oradea - Satu Mare) speak more similar to standard Hungarian than people of Transylvania/Ardeal.


----------



## MichiH

I never spoke English and never watch any film in English language. In addition, I was quite bad (and lazy) at school. Then, I had to go to Illinois for business. Two weeks. I don't know how, but it worked quite well. I only had issues to understand cashiers at McDonald's or Subway "restaurants" - black guys only.

I've been to Ireland last year. I had to get used to Irish English. It took about two days. Scotish was no issue at all. Afterwards, I've been to English Midlands and it was even hard to realize whether they speak English at all. London was crazy because I could understand every single word of people passing by even in crowded places...

Germany is very similar to what g.spinoza has reported about Italy. I'm not able to speak "standard German". I speak Franconian, p sounds like b as well as t sounds like d - we call it hard d and soft d, hard p and soft b. g also sounds like k. I think that all Germans understand "standard" German but many are not able to speak it - or it would sound quite funny when they try it.

I've been to a customer in Swabonian mountains 15 years ago. It's just about 200km to the south and I really could not understand what the hell some people are talking about. I've been there many times now and quite familar now. And, you can experience that all over Germany. Every German region has it's own dialect! Bavarian and Saxonian are the most extreme dialects. Austrian is more different and Swiss German is very hard to understand... I've been there last spring and it was even hard to follow discussions on the radio.

But why to go so far. People of neighboring villages do ofter use words I don't know at all. I even don't understand what they are talking about when they repeat it again and again. People from 5km, 10 or 20km away.

And I had to become 20 years old to understand why my Grandma calls "heads of lettuce" "heddlih". The German word is "Salatkopf" and I finally realized that people from my village really deviate it from the English word "head"...... I realized it because a person pronounced it a little bit different - like "hädlih" :lol:


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> I only had issues to understand cashiers at McDonald's or Subway "restaurants" - black guys only.


I have oft issues in McDonald's in Germany. I speak fluent German. They don't. Almost no German people working in McDonald's, and most of them can hardly say more than Danke and Hallo (Thank you and Hello, respectively) in German.
But it's a completely other issue ;-)



> Every German region has it's own dialect! Bavarian and Saxonian are the most extreme dialects.


I'm not sure if Saxonian is more extreme than Kölsch (Cologne dialect).


----------



## MichiH

Attus said:


> I'm not sure if Saxonian is more extreme than Kölsch (Cologne dialect).


I was too lazy to look up what "Kölsch" means in English  I had likely just chosen Rhinelandic regiolect (Rheinländisch). Berlin dialect is also "funny" - just like all German dialects.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I prefer to avoid McDonald's around dinner time when I'm on a trip. Too busy / noisy, once I had the guy at the McDonald's drive-through in Nordby in Sweden _throw_ my order in my car. 

McDonald's in Germany serves coffee in huge volumes, I found it difficult to chug down a coffee that large, maybe it's an 'American portion'. On the other hand coffee portions are way too small in the south, even if you order it 'Americano'. I'm not a huge fan of espresso and regular black coffee should be more than just one gulp.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Is it in your countries/languages also so that people who speak their local dialects and not the "pure" official language are considered "uneducated villagers"?
> 
> Because this is how it has long been in Poland – and now those local dialects are almost non-existent in most regions.


In spite of being a small country, there is a lot of dialects in Slovakia and so different that people speaking them cannot understand each other.

The situation is similar to Italy. Almost nobody speaks the correct language. There is the capital dialect, then western dialect (very similar to the Czech language), Trnava dialect (very hard), Middle Slovak dialect (very soft), Eastern Slovak dialect (huge group, almost identical to Polish) and Southern Slovak dialect (basically Hungarians speaking Slovak).

Except for the last group, you are considered undereducated if you use the dialect in your professional life. However, especially Eastern Slovaks tend to be proud to the dialect and use it wherever it is possible. Sometimes there are non-geography based jokes translated to Eastern Slovak dialect. Maybe some people think they are funnier then. Not me.

And just like in Italy, sometimes dialect groups are the subject of jokes. Especially Western Slovaks.

The general rule is the older and less educated you are and the farther away from the city you live, the more distinct dialect you use.

My wife is from a small village in Eastern Slovakia. I am a capital boy. I had real troubles to understand her grandma (babushka), who has never left her municipality. The frequency, tone of voice, pronunciation and the register were utterly different. Sometimes they still have to translate some sentences for me :lol:


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> (almost) Nobody speaks Italian as first language in Italy.


Almost nobody is maybe a too strong expression. Almost everyone who has parents of different origins has grown speaking standard Italian as first language.
Maybe in Central Italy is different, but here in the North many young people don't speak any dialect or local language because of their mixed origin.
I'm half Friulian and half Venetian, I can understand both of these languages (that, despite the proximity, are totally different) but I can't speak fluently any of them, because when I was growing in my family we had to talk in standard Italian.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> I prefer to avoid McDonald's around dinner time when I'm on a trip.


Fixed :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> I have oft issues in McDonald's in Germany. I speak fluent German. They don't. Almost no German people working in McDonald's, and most of them can hardly say more than Danke and Hallo (Thank you and Hello, respectively) in German.
> 
> But it's a completely other issue ;-)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm not sure if Saxonian is more extreme than Kölsch (Cologne dialect).




I stopped at a Burger King in Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof once....I remember struggling ordering and saying apologetically to the cashier (in German), “My German isn’t very good.” She responded in English “neither is mine.”


----------



## bogdymol

I stopped once at a KFC on A3 in Germany. I ordered in German, but the lady had difficulties understanding me, as she didn’t really speak German. Then I saw her name tag, so I switched to Romanian.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> Almost nobody is maybe a too strong expression. Almost everyone who has parents of different origins has grown speaking standard Italian as first language.
> Maybe in Central Italy is different, but here in the North many young people don't speak any dialect or local language because of their mixed origin.
> I'm half Friulian and half Venetian, I can understand both of these languages (that, despite the proximity, are totally different) but I can't speak fluently any of them, because when I was growing in my family we had to talk in standard Italian.


Yes, it was too hard an expression.
In the past it was more so, today more and more people grow up speaking Italian, but far from the standard one: accents are always present, even from people of mixed origin.

My girlfriend (who is 42 now) didn't speak Italian at all when she grew up in Central-Southern Italy. She learnt it in school.
I had a lot of difficulties when I moved to Bologna when I was 18: a lot of words which I thought were Italian in fact were not, and talking to people was kinda difficult sometimes.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> I stopped once at a KFC on A3 in Germany. I ordered in German, but the lady had difficulties understanding me, as she didn’t really speak German. Then I saw her name tag, so I switched to Romanian.


That happened to me in German Mcdonald as well. I tried English with no success. Attempted to use my "me Tarzan you Jane" German alas not to avail. I cursed calmly in Slovak and then "hey my friend, what do you want?" in my language.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What we already knew, but many Americans don't: Europeans are almost as likely to use a car for transportation as Americans are. 

Probably one of the most enduring myths about the differences between Europe and the United States is that Europeans travel mainly by trains and transit, while Americans cling to their cars and airplanes. This misunderstanding comes in part from what I have called "Louvre Syndrome".

Tourists, journalists and urban planners are often smitten with what might be called the "Louvre Syndrome." This occurs when Americans sit at Paris cafes in view of the Louvre and imagine why it is that the United States does not look like this. In fact, most of Paris doesn't even look like this, nor do other European urban areas.

(...)

And, of course, there are differences. But the overwhelming share of urban and intercity travel in both Europe and America depends largely on cars. According the Eurostat's 2018 edition of EU Transport in Figures, there was a less than 10 percent difference in the market share of cars between the EU and the United States. The publication reported on 2016, when 78.8 percent of passenger travel (in passenger kilometers) was by car in the United States. Residents of the EU nearly equaled that figure, at 72.4 percent, only eight percent less than in the United States. Car travel continues to increase, capturing 45 precent of the growth from 2010 to 2016, with most of the rest by domestic airline. Europe, it turns out, is more like the United States than many retro-urbanists, not to mention casual tourists, assume.

(...)

Not surprisingly, the EU rail share is much higher than in the US. In the EU, the rail market share is 6.7 percent, while in the US it is 0.5 percent. The European advantage in rail is, at 6.2 percent, approximately the same as the US advantage in auto travel.

(...)

Perhaps most surprisingly, despite aggressive high-speed rail building programs in France, Spain, Germany and elsewhere, planes are increasing their market share. Rail market shares have not budged in 20 years. In 1995 airline and rail market shares in the EU were about equal. Today, the airlines command a nearly 60 percent market share advantage over all rail and carry six times as much volume as high-speed rail. Since 2010, airlines have added passenger volumes that are more than 15 times as large that of high-speed rail. It is clear that much of the impact of high-speed rail has been to improve service for existing users, not to attract travelers from cars or planes.​
Full article:  Passenger Travel in Europe and the US: More Similar than Different


----------



## Verso

Attus said:


> In Hungary there are almost no dialects. OK, it's a small nation


Slovenia is much smaller, but we have tons of dialects.


----------



## Spookvlieger

CNGL said:


> I've found myself using either British or American English depending on the context. Here I try to favour British English due to this being dominated by Europeans
> 
> However English is not my first language. Spanish is, and my dialect has a strong influence from Aragonese (e.g. many loanwords).


I have this funny habbit when I am reading English news articles and especially English books, I make the words sound British in my head :lol: I feel it makes the reading better, more entertaining for some reason. It sounds more cheerfull. So when someone gets murdered, it happens in a cheerfull British English. 


in reality I neither have the British pronounciation (although I could force it because I was thaught this way in school) and neither the American English pronounciation.


----------



## Spookvlieger

MichiH said:


> Germany is very similar to what g.spinoza has reported about Italy. I'm not able to speak "standard German". I speak Franconian, p sounds like b as well as t sounds like d - we call it hard d and soft d, hard p and soft b. g also sounds like k. I think that all Germans understand "standard" German but many are not able to speak it - or it would sound quite funny when they try it.


Add Belgium to your list (And Netherlands as well). Still pretty much dumb****ed when some West-Flemish is spoken to me. Can't understand it. Even their standard Dutch has such a thick accent I really need to listen what the hell they are saying. But who am I, a Limburgish speaker the rest of Flanders claiming us to speak completely unintelligible. 
Thankgod for standardisation or we might not be able to talk to eachother :lol:










simplyfied map with main dialects: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Languages_Benelux.png


----------



## keber

There was a test today in otherwise quite yellowish media about systems in premium cars that recognize speed limits and brake accordingly - which can present big danger. (source)
They report sudden braking around motorway exits where exit ramps have lower speed limit and signs. Braking was done from 130 to just 40 km/h. They also report sudden braking around former toll plazas (which some have been removed last year) as map provider still didn't change speed limits in onboard navigation (after almost one year).


----------



## Spookvlieger

I can't even handle my car braking with adaptive cruise control so I always turn the adaptive off. Anoying when someone filters in the row close to your car and your car suddenly decides it needs to brake :bash:


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> It is clear that much of the impact of high-speed rail has been to improve service for existing users, not to attract travelers from cars or planes.


I agree with almost everything in thext you quoted but not this one. It's clearly wrong. In almost all line which are served by high speed railways the amount of passengers increased dramatically while the amount of flithg passangers between the same destination decreased. For example the count of rail passengers between Munich and Berlin increased by hundred percent in the first year of the service. The modal share changed dramatically in one single year: 
2017: Rail 23%, Flight: 48%
2018: Rail 46%, Flight: 30%
However, the vast majority of flight services serve routes which are not served by high speed rails at all.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's true, but these changes are very small on a European scale (transportation of 500+ million people), so you don't really see a notable effect on the overall modal share. 

It's the same story with the extensive usage of subways and passenger rail in some major cities like Madrid, London, Paris, etc. While impressive locally, in the great scheme of things they represent only a small portion of all travel. 

Another factor is that Europeans are more likely to live in smaller cities (<500,000 people) than Americans, who are more likely to live in large metropolitan areas (>3,000,000 people) than Europeans.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> That happened to me in German Mcdonald as well. I tried English with no success. Attempted to use my "me Tarzan you Jane" German alas not to avail. I cursed calmly in Slovak and then "hey my friend, what do you want?" in my language.




Did that work?


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Yes, it was too hard an expression.
> In the past it was more so, today more and more people grow up speaking Italian, but far from the standard one: accents are always present, even from people of mixed origin.
> 
> My girlfriend (who is 42 now) didn't speak Italian at all when she grew up in Central-Southern Italy. She learnt it in school.
> I had a lot of difficulties when I moved to Bologna when I was 18: a lot of words which I thought were Italian in fact were not, and talking to people was kinda difficult sometimes.


One thing is having an accent or using some local expressions while speaking Italian. Another thing is using a dialect/local language instead of Italian.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keber said:


> There was a test today in otherwise quite yellowish media about systems in premium cars that recognize speed limits and brake accordingly - which can present big danger. (source)
> They report sudden braking around motorway exits where exit ramps have lower speed limit and signs. Braking was done from 130 to just 40 km/h. They also report sudden braking around former toll plazas (which some have been removed last year) as map provider still didn't change speed limits in onboard navigation (after almost one year).




Yeah, what could go wrong?

But a minor point within this: You have lower speed limits on ramps? Mandatory ones I mean? We mostly have -recommended- speeds (yellow signs) on exit ramps. (And I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a posted limit on an entrance ramp.)


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> What we already knew, but many Americans don't: Europeans are almost as likely to use a car for transportation as Americans are.


I think the biggest difference exists between metropolitan areas and the rest of the countriy, rather than between Europe or North America.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's true, but these changes are very small on a European scale (transportation of 500+ million people), so you don't really see a notable effect on the overall modal share.


Yes. It's exactly what I said 
I'm simply again this sentence:


> much of the impact of high-speed rail has been to improve service for existing users


It's wrong.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> But a minor point within this: You have lower speed limits on ramps? Mandatory ones I mean?


It depends on what you mean by "you" 
Some European nations have a lot of them, some not at all.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> Same here. Once I got my garbage can stolen from outside the house. A day before the garbage collectors take it away i. e. it was full. There is a trolleybus balloon loop in front of my house with a trolleybus parked 50 minutes of 60, equipped with a dashcam camera facing the place where my garbage can is located.
> 
> The line is usually operated by two trolleybuses and being an employee of the ministry of transport I was capable of investigating which exact two trolleybuses were put in operation that day. The camera loop is set to 24 hours.
> 
> I called the police, we filled up the protocol, and I told them to go to the depot to ask the depot employees to play the loops of the two trolleybuses. The thief would be surely there. They smiled and told me they had to re-write the protocol at the police station and that If I wanted to get the robber or resolved the damage over the insurance company I was supposed to visit the station the other day. Long story short: they started the investigation in 4 days and, surprisingly, had not found anyone.
> 
> :nuts:
> 
> But given the car thieves, the situation was not progressing in Slovakia until before the three years ago when one guy created an application (basically it is a scanner) capable of detecting the licence plates. Once the licence plate is on the list of stolen cars a user is notified and is supposed to call the police. The app got viral and maybe the most downloaded in Slovakia.
> 
> It created a kind of herd immunity here as it is much harder to get away with car theft.
> 
> The app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=apk.dev.haka.haka&hl=sk


So all Slovaks go around with their phone cameras on to snap shots of car plates? Is it the new national sport? :nuts:


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> So all Slovaks go around with their phone cameras on to snap shots of car plates? Is it the new national sport? :nuts:


Well, sort of :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch open data car register doesn't contain personal information (only specs of the car), but you can see whether it is stolen or not. 

I sometimes check a suspicious plate in my street, if I see some 19 year old dude with an € 80,000 Audi or Mercedes. The type of car most people can't afford with honest work, not to mention someone around 20.


----------



## cinxxx

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch open data car register doesn't contain personal information (only specs of the car), but you can see whether it is stolen or not.
> 
> I sometimes check a suspicious plate in my street, if I see some 19 year old dude with an € 80,000 Audi or Mercedes. The type of car most people can't afford with honest work, not to mention someone around 20.


And did you ever find anything interesting after checking?


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> I sometimes check a suspicious plate in my street, if I see some 19 year old dude with an € 80,000 Audi or Mercedes. The type of car most people can't afford with honest work, not to mention someone around 20.


It can be their parents' car. It can have been bought used for half of that price.
And even if the car was bought with "dirty" money, it won't be listed in stolen cars database.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Same here. Once I got my garbage can stolen from outside the house. A day before the garbage collectors take it away i. e. it was full. There is a trolleybus balloon loop in front of my house with a trolleybus parked 50 minutes of 60, equipped with a dashcam camera facing the place where my garbage can is located.
> 
> The line is usually operated by two trolleybuses and being an employee of the ministry of transport I was capable of investigating which exact two trolleybuses were put in operation that day. The camera loop is set to 24 hours.
> 
> I called the police, we filled up the protocol, and I told them to go to the depot to ask the depot employees to play the loops of the two trolleybuses. The thief would be surely there. They smiled and told me they had to re-write the protocol at the police station and that If I wanted to get the robber or resolved the damage over the insurance company I was supposed to visit the station the other day. Long story short: they started the investigation in 4 days and, surprisingly, had not found anyone.
> 
> :nuts:
> 
> But given the car thieves, the situation was not progressing in Slovakia until before the three years ago when one guy created an application (basically it is a scanner) capable of detecting the licence plates. Once the licence plate is on the list of stolen cars a user is notified and is supposed to call the police. The app got viral and maybe the most downloaded in Slovakia.
> 
> It created a kind of herd immunity here as it is much harder to get away with car theft.
> 
> The app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=apk.dev.haka.haka&hl=sk


In Italy police don't make serious investigation even for bulglary in houses, let alone for the theft of a garbage can (that is usually provided for free by the city council, anyway).


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> The latest craze in the Netherlands is drivers under influence of nitrous oxide (N2O, also known as laughing gas). Many drivers are incapable of safely driving a car after inhaling. Police reports indicate 960 incidents up to July, 2.5 times as many as all of 2018 (380 incidents) and 2017 (130 incidents).
> 
> Is this a thing in your country as well?


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> First time I heard anything like this.
> I wouldn't even know where and how to get N2O...


I think it is the gas used in bars for whipped cream (which is obviously not whipped  )

I'm not sure for baloons tough. I tried to inhaling it and only my voice changed (that was my intention), I had no other side effects.


----------



## bogdymol

volodaaaa said:


> But given the car thieves, the situation was not progressing in Slovakia until before the three years ago when one guy created an application (basically it is a scanner) capable of detecting the licence plates. Once the licence plate is on the list of stolen cars a user is notified and is supposed to call the police. The app got viral and maybe the most downloaded in Slovakia.
> 
> It created a kind of herd immunity here as it is much harder to get away with car theft.
> 
> The app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=apk.dev.haka.haka&hl=sk


Such a system shall be installed on every police car across Europe. Many have dashcams, so you only need to have this connected to a laptop which has automatic number plate recognition software installed, and that scans all number plates it sees. These license numbers shall be run in real time with the stolen car database, and once a stolen car is found, to alert the police car driver. The system can run in the background, signaling only when a problematic car is seen.

Same system can be installed also onto traffic monitoring cameras (like you often find in busy intersections), which shall then alert the closest police car.

Car thefts would be highly reduced this way, as thieves would be caught within a very short time.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> Such a system shall be installed on every police car across Europe. Many have dashcams, so you only need to have this connected to a laptop which has automatic number plate recognition software installed, and that scans all number plates it sees. These license numbers shall be run in real time with the stolen car database, and once a stolen car is found, to alert the police car driver. The system can run in the background, signaling only when a problematic car is seen.
> 
> Same system can be installed also onto traffic monitoring cameras (like you often find in busy intersections), which shall then alert the closest police car.
> 
> Car thefts would be highly reduced this way, as thieves would be caught within a very short time.



You are right. Most of the thieves would give it in even before it struck their head.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

On the other hand there will probably be a lot of opposition to such a large-scale surveillance network.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> On the other hand there will probably be a lot of opposition to such a large-scale surveillance network.


I keep hearing this, but sorry, I disagree. Nobody cares, as a private person, are doing. Nobody is watching your every move, as nobody cares.

However, if you comit a crime (like stealing a car for example), then you accept the fact that you might be caught. And a system like this just catches criminals a lot faster than the police could using traditional methods. On the opposite side, if your car gets stolen, you would be very happy to have it returned back to you very quickly.

Not only car theft, but also driving an uninsured car for example could be pointed out by such a system. After people get used to it you will find out that the streets would be a safer place, as no illegal cars will be on the road.

I hear the same "surveillance" issues when discussing about pre-paid SIM cards, as this is a hot topic now in Romania. Now you can buy a SIM card with just a couple of €, and nobody asks you for any ID. On the other side, 90% of the calls to the 112 emergency number are made from such unregistered SIM cards... some people made it a habit to just call 112 when they are bored. There is almost no way of catching them, as nobody has a clue to whom does that number. Having to mandatory register your details when you buy such a card would avoid such issues (for example when I was in Australia and bought a local SIM card I had to register).


----------



## Attus

What you suggest is in Germany fobidden and court decisions, too, say, it is illegal to scan license plates, not even the police may do it. That's whay secton control, too, is disallowed in Germany. 
License plates may only be scanned if the police has a specific reason for that. It may be a simple reason, e.g. speeding, but there must be one.


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> What you suggest is in Germany fobidden and court decisions, too, say, it is illegal to scan license plates, not even the police may do it. That's whay secton control, too, is disallowed in Germany.
> License plates may only be scanned if the police has a specific reason for that. It may be a simple reason, e.g. speeding, but there must be one.


This is the exact reason of the decline of western civilization. If you take the power out of the enforcement bodies, why should people comply?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There has to be a balance. The German position may be too conservative regarding privacy, but on the other hand the surveillance state installed in Belgium or the UK may be the other extreme.


----------



## cinxxx

^^but mah humam rights? :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

There must be a balance between surveillance state and extreme privacy laws.

Such simple solutions as I suggested above only point out criminals from the many honest people. It would significantly reduce infractions, while there would be basically no change for the average person. Nobody gives a f**k what you, as a private individual, are doing on a daily basis.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ except they do, look at section control cameras for example

what about the Chinese-style system?


----------



## Spookvlieger

Flanders has many plate recognition camera's, infact is nealry all covered, more than 10.000 of them.

Federal police and local police forces had to admit they cannot check even half of the warnings the system gives about stolen cars, cars used in hit and runs ect... Because they simply don't have the manpower to do it. So they generally only check the system warnings with the highest priority, cars used in serious crimes...


----------



## bogdymol

^^ It is still an improvement nevertheless. And if police would focus itself for a couple of years to act at every alert, in 3-4 years car theft would drop to almost 0. 



Kanadzie said:


> ^^ except they do, look at section control cameras for example?



What’s wrong with section control? I find it annoying myself, as I can’t drive 5-10 km faster than the limit (if the traffic and road conditions would allow it). However, it is the most efficient way possible to prevent people from speeding.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Valet parking at Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands has made the news.
> 
> Evidently some of these parking companies abuse the cars, drive hundreds or even thousands of kilometers in them, collect speeding fines and damage the cars.
> 
> One man had his dashcam running showing the valet parking running red lights, hitting curbs, destroyed the transmission, driving with the hand brake engaged, etc. They also drove through a car wash without stopping, damaging the roof.


A similar case is reported in today's #1 newspaper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat. A family had left their car at a private car park at Helsinki Airport for internal cleaning during their holiday. When they returned, the cars was not cleaned, the GPS datalogger told that someone had driven 100+ kilometers, the car has stayed overnight somewhere in the northern Helsinki, one wheel was damaged, there was mayonnaise at the seat, and the car was full of rubbish, including a medicine injector.


----------



## MichiH

Attus said:


> That's whay secton control, too, is disallowed in Germany.


No, it isn't! Long story short: After many years of trying to start a pilot project (note: It's new technology, it must be tested by Germans first!), average speed check (_German: Section Control_) was finally activated on a section north of Hannover. But court decided in May that it's forbidden. A higher court decided in July that the pilot project is legal though.

https://www.heise.de/newsticker/mel...dar-kann-wieder-in-Betrieb-gehen-4463719.html



bogdymol said:


> What’s wrong with section control? I find it annoying myself, as I can’t drive 5-10 km faster than the limit (if the traffic and road conditions would allow it). However, it is the most efficient way possible to prevent people from speeding.


I think that standard traffic enforcement camera are stupid and should be forbidden since they mislead (stupid) people to break in front of it* and accelerate directly after the location, but I love average speed checks. They are "fair" and effective! See UK.

*For instance, if there is a speed limit of 80km/h on a German road, e.g. B10 Stuttgart-Esslingen (2x2 expressway), and there is a fixed speed trap (I think there a four per direction on a B10 stretch of about 10km), there is always minimum one German sucker who brakes in front of the speed trap and reduces his speed from 75 to 70 or even lower and cars behind have to brake more and more.
I set my cruise control to 86km/h there. If traffic is low, I can just drive without changing my speed. When on the left lane, other cars are tailgating but the distance is increasing in front of the camera. The more traffic, the higher the risk that I have to turn off cruise control to avoid tailgating myself. Afterwards, cars behind me tailgate again while cars in front of me are back doing 90+ again.


----------



## Highway89

I just watched this video filmed near my hometown and I'm seriously thinking of sending it to the traffic police. Could anybody tell me whether these licence plates are French or Italian? Both French and Italian plates use LL-NNN-LL format. I know it's hard to make it out, but any kind of help is welcome.


















































https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW_w_Gb5IZs


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## g.spinoza

I think it's French. Italian plates for motorcycles have a different format from those of cars:


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## ChrisZwolle

I was working on location today, had a orange safety vest on. A German van stopped by, asking for directions for a fuel station where they could pay 'Bar' (cash), as they didn't have a bank card :nuts: And these were people in their 30s or early 40s.

I find it kind of unbelievable that a company sends their workers abroad with no fuel card, and they evidently only had cash with them. This isn't the 1980s anymore... I wonder if they carry traveler's cheques? :lol:

Paying for fuel with cash has long gone out of style in the Netherlands. It's not a new thing. Germans must be attractive for pickpockets, as they carry huge amounts of cash around.


----------



## Verso

Some restaurants in Croatia don't accept bank cards, only cash. :nuts: I ate at a restaurant, which had an ATM. :lol:


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## ChrisZwolle

The European summer traffic congestion belt.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Some restaurants in Croatia don't accept bank cards, only cash. :nuts: I ate at a restaurant, which had an ATM. :lol:


Was it a proper restaurant or some kind of fast food? For fast foods I don't find it weird. For proper restaurants it is a sign that they are doing tax evasion (you probably didn't get a bill). I don't eat on such places.


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## keber

There is a lot of tax evasion on croatian coast, even among some camps. You just have to be a foreign tourist so you could get something that looks like a bill (predračun, dobavnica - non Slavs don't understand thosewords) or it is written by hand (which is irregular). I get regular bill maybe in half of cases.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> I was working on location today, had a orange safety vest on. A German van stopped by, asking for directions for a fuel station where they could pay 'Bar' (cash), as they didn't have a bank card :nuts: And these were people in their 30s or early 40s.
> 
> I find it kind of unbelievable that a company sends their workers abroad with no fuel card, and they evidently only had cash with them. This isn't the 1980s anymore... I wonder if they carry traveler's cheques? :lol:
> 
> Paying for fuel with cash has long gone out of style in the Netherlands. It's not a new thing. Germans must be attractive for pickpockets, as they carry huge amounts of cash around.


Are there any research available on why the Germans have stuck in cash while virtually all other countries are movíng towards a cashless world?

It is quite funny that many German fuel stations have an ATM where you can first collect cash and then bring it to the cashier desk.

The Nordic coutries seem to be moving to cashless quite quickly. The cash-only business equals to walking out of business. In June, I spent a few days in the northern Norway with my wife. I withdrew some Norwegian Crowns in an ATM in Kirkenes to cover accomodation cost for one night, to be on the safe side. After returning home, I walked into the local Forex office, and sold them every Crown I had withdrawn, because we paid everything on card.

Earlier, I had some spare euro coins in the car for parking fees. Even this is no more necessary. All parking halls accept cards, and many newer ones have a service to make direct debit by the car license number. For the street side parking, there are operators to send a monthly bill to a card account when registering by a mobile application at the beginning and and of the parking. Those operators operate in most towns: one contract is enough.


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> Was it a proper restaurant or some kind of fast food? For fast foods I don't find it weird. For proper restaurants it is a sign that they are doing tax evasion (you probably didn't get a bill). I don't eat on such places.


It was a proper restaurant and yes, it's tax evasion. I know two such restaurants, but I'm sure there're many more.

Anyway, I've bought a German lexicon (encyclopedic dictionary) from 1867 for 20 euros. There are many interesting maps in it. Austria-Hungary is still just Austria, Australia is New Holland, and Alaska is still Russian (and is called Russian America).


----------



## Attus

MattiG said:


> Are there any research available on why the Germans have stuck in cash while virtually all other countries are movíng towards a cashless world?


For privacy reasons.


----------



## MattiG

Attus said:


> For privacy reasons.


Sounds shooting in the own foot. The loss of privacy is quite minimal if the card operator gets to know that Herr Mettwurst visited the local Esso station last Tuesday even if he usually buys his fuel at Aral.

Better to wipe the fingerprints away from the banknotes before paying.


----------



## x-type

keber said:


> There is a lot of tax evasion on croatian coast, even among some camps. You just have to be a foreign tourist so you could get something that looks like a bill (predračun, dobavnica - non Slavs don't understand thosewords) or it is written by hand (which is irregular). I get regular bill maybe in half of cases.


Yep. Otpremnica (dobavnica is Slovenian - I see that you know very well that habbit). Delivery document, Lieferschein, DDT etc. A thing that should be very unknown in world of restautrants. I very argue with them when they try to do it and it's no passaran in my case because my duty is to pay only upon the bill.


----------



## Suburbanist

Attus said:


> For privacy reasons.


Anyone who uses cash for privacy while keeping a smartphone turned on while out and about is a nearly-complete fool. It is like avoiding juice to preserve the teeth and then chain-smoking the whole day.


----------



## Suburbanist

Switzerland is quite heavy on cash as well. Not much in the sense of many places not accepting cards (they have many of these new portable POS around on kiosks and small places), but in that people will often pay large bills or purchases with cash.

That includes buying used cars, paying for expensive home renovation projects, or buying annual transportation subscription (which might cost thousands of CHF). 

Which brings another common thing in Switzerland: annual plans for things like transportation or health insurace are paid in full, once. There are not that many contracts that are binding for 1-year but billable in 12 installments, with exceptions like gyms or phone plans.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't like annual payments for expensive items. Nobody gets paid by the year, so it makes sense for expensive recurring payments to be by the month as well. 

My health insurance would cost me over € 1700 if paid per year. My insurer does provide a discount if you pay the annual rate at once, but it's not that great and € 1700 is quite a large payment to make at once, the median salary in the Netherlands is € 2700 gross, which is just over € 2000 net, so you would really need to save up to make that kind of payment in January.


----------



## g.spinoza

If I don't live by the day, i.e. I have some savings in the bank, I don't see any difference in paying per month or once per year. On the contrary, I prefer paying once per year so I don't have to remember deadlines and lose time for each payment.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In the end the payment is the same (or slightly lower due to discount), but what if you would have to pay the annual rent / mortgage and insurances all at once in January? This would surely put many families into a financial crisis because they hadn't saved up enough money.

All my fixed monthly payments are automatically deducted from my bank account, there is no remembering deadlines required.


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> If I don't live by the day, i.e. I have some savings in the bank, I don't see any difference in paying per month or once per year. On the contrary, I prefer paying once per year so I don't have to remember deadlines and lose time for each payment.


Well, even if you have savings, you never know what might happen, so you can save yourself some cash. 

I also think it depends how easy or difficult it is to set up automated payments in your bank accounts. In Netherlands that is extremely easy, and if any mistake happens banks are happy to back-charge within a few days. In Switzerland it is a bit more complicated to set automated payment plans.


----------



## MichiH

@spinzoa, same here. However, I don't fear missing deadlines since it's taken automatically. For me, the advantage of paying annually is, that I see the costs at once and don't have to sum up small amounts to realize how much money I spend for it if you pay per month or quarter.

But I agree, if you just don't have much savings (for emergency investments), have to fear losing your job or other risks, it's wise to pay monthly. And I think that many people (especially here) just have a minimum wage........


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Another issue is the amount of subscriptions people take on. There was a news item in the Netherlands recently that many people spend much more than they had thought on subscriptions and why people with a median wage (€ 37,000 gross) don't have much in their savings account despite having a decent income. All those € 10 / 20 per month subcriptions add up.

Another news story reported that a median income (€ 37,000) means you can't afford 90% of the houses on the market...


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Another issue is the amount of subscriptions people take on. There was a news item in the Netherlands recently that many people spend much more than they had thought on subscriptions and why people with a median wage (€ 37,000 gross) don't have much in their savings account despite having a decent income. All those € 10 / 20 per month subcriptions add up.
> 
> *Another news story reported that a median income (€ 37,000) means you can't afford 90% of the houses on the market..*.


If I remember correctly, that was a factoid that assumed a one-income household, certainly a minority societal model these days. 

Two people with median salaries can afford most listed Dutch real estate, if they don't have other major debt. There are affordability problems in metro areas of Amsterdam and Utrecht (not so much in Rotterdam or Eindhoven though).


----------



## MichiH

DEL


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Up until the early 1990s, buying a house in a single income was the norm. Women entered the workforce en-masse in the first half of the 1990s (which also explains the huge growth in traffic during the 1990s). 

However the proportion of single person households has become larger as well, now at 40% or 3 million households. They have little chance of buying a house, especially if you have a substantial student loan debt, which reduces the maximum mortgage you are allowed by a significant amount. The high rental prices also reduce the savings capability of such households, if they want to move on to houseownership and make a downpayment.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> In the end the payment is the same (or slightly lower due to discount), but what if you would have to pay the annual rent / mortgage and insurances all at once in January? This would surely put many families into a financial crisis because they hadn't saved up enough money.


I pay my year-round bus ticket in November, the TV tax in May, the car tax in October, and so on...



Suburbanist said:


> Well, even if you have savings, you never know what might happen, so you can save yourself some cash.


Maybe, but in the end you would pay the same, and if you have some emergencies you might end up not being able to pay the last months of your yearly subscriptions


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I do also pay some subscriptions / insurances by the year, since the total amount due is not very high for those, but I think almost nobody in the Netherlands would pay their health insurance, car insurance or car tax by the year, as those typically range from € 500 - 2000 per year. 

There are a lot of people who aren't good at managing their money, who spend more than they make or don't know how much they spend in the first place. Once, in my street there was a marriage that broke up because the woman purchased very large amounts of expensive clothing and shoes and amassed a huge debt, but the husband didn't find out because she 'managed' their expenses, until it was too late and had to sell their house.

A study by the Dutch budgeting agency found out that 2.5 million households have little to no savings and are at risk of becoming defaulters if an unexpected expenditure comes up.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I do also pay some subscriptions / insurances by the year, since the total amount due is not very high for those, but I think almost nobody in the Netherlands would pay their health insurance,


This amounts at 0, in Italy



> car insurance or


~ 500/600 per year for me.



> car tax


~ 250 per year.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> It was a proper restaurant and yes, it's tax evasion. I know two such restaurants, but I'm sure there're many more.
> 
> 
> 
> Anyway, I've bought a German lexicon (encyclopedic dictionary) from 1867 for 20 euros. There are many interesting maps in it. Austria-Hungary is still just Austria, Australia is New Holland, and Alaska is still Russian (and is called Russian America).




The “New Holland” surprises me that late. Maybe they were still using it in Russian but not English. (Or maybe it was being used in English as well....)
Alaska became American that very year.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> Switzerland is quite heavy on cash as well. Not much in the sense of many places not accepting cards (they have many of these new portable POS around on kiosks and small places), but in that people will often pay large bills or purchases with cash.
> 
> That includes buying used cars, paying for expensive home renovation projects, or buying annual transportation subscription (which might cost thousands of CHF).
> 
> Which brings another common thing in Switzerland: annual plans for things like transportation or health insurace are paid in full, once. There are not that many contracts that are binding for 1-year but billable in 12 installments, with exceptions like gyms or phone plans.




A couple of decades ago, U.S. merchants often had a minimum for credit cards. If your purchase came to less than that minimum, they wouldn’t let you use a card. Because they paid fees for that. The minimum was typically $20. They don’t do that any more...I don’t think they’re allowed to. But the habit has stuck with me: Personally, I hardly ever use a card for anything under $10 (only if I don’t have much on me, really), and rarely use cash for purchases over $20 (and pretty much never over, say, $40). Also until about 20 years ago, supermarkets didn’t take cards, and for some time after that, using a card for groceries felt weird to me.

I’ve been doing most of my mother’s shopping lately, because she’s not very mobile and can’t carry much...she gives me cash for that and got me a credit card on her account to use for her stuff...her rule is to use cash for the local merchants - people that aren’t part of large chains, like her butcher - to save them the fee, and cards for chain stores like the supermarket, regardless of amount.

The other reason I don’t use cash for small purchases is I’m a bit fussy about record-keeping (at least holding on to receipts until the purchase is actually showing on my account), so not having a receipt for that $5 bagel-and-coffee purchase saves me that.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Also, some businesses are starting to refuse cash, and it’s gotten to the point where the city of Philadelphia (and we weren’t the first place to do this) has prohibited that. Retail businesses in the city have to accept cash (as an option) because not everyone has a bank account, let alone credit cards.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Up until the early 1990s, buying a house in a single income was the norm. Women entered the workforce en-masse in the first half of the 1990s (which also explains the huge growth in traffic during the 1990s).
> 
> However the proportion of single person households has become larger as well, now at 40% or 3 million households. They have little chance of buying a house, especially if you have a substantial student loan debt, which reduces the maximum mortgage you are allowed by a significant amount. The high rental prices also reduce the savings capability of such households, if they want to move on to houseownership and make a downpayment.




Not to get political, but Bernie Sanders (and not just him) keeps telling us health care and higher education in Europe (it’s always “Europe,” never more specific) are FREE. Canada too. Not true, I take it?


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Not to get political, but Bernie Sanders (and not just him) keeps telling us health care and higher education in Europe (it’s always “Europe,” never more specific) are FREE. Canada too. Not true, I take it?


In Italy health care basically is. I mean, it is financed through taxes, mainly two of them, IRAP (Tax on Enterprises) and IRPEF (Tax on people's income), but you don't pay directly to doctors and hospitals, except for some non-urgent exams.

When I was in surgery for appendicectomy, I paid nothing, zip. Nothing in the ER, nothing for the surgery, nothing for the drugs, nothing when they removed my stitches. And I didn't pay even indirectly, since my work contract is particular and I don't pay IRPEF tax.

As for higher education, I don't know about high school, but in Italy University is not free. It can cost something about 2000 € per year.


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> health care [...] in Europe (it’s always “Europe,” never more specific) are FREE. Canada too. Not true, I take it?


Not true for Germany! There are two kind of insurances:

National health insurance ("Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung")
Private insurance ("Private Krankenversicherung")

You have to be insured but you only need to pay 50%. The remaining 50% are paid by your employer. The amount is currently *7.3% of your income* and is automatically paid by the employer - your part and his part, per month. If you earn too much, it's cheaper to have a private insurance. Since the standard insurance does not pay everything, e.g. dental prosthesis, you can have a so called "private supplementary insurance" ("private Zusatzversicherung") which pays the amount you had to pay.

The private insurance has some advantages, e.g. if you need an appointment at your doctor. With private insurance you get an appointment very quick - within a few days instead of many months - and you usually don't have waiting times when you on site at the doctor's practice. Why? Because the doctor is directly paid - the doctor gets his money quicker.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Can you buy a vignette for Slovakia in Germany?


----------



## MichiH

^^ I bought last year - online!

Edit: https://eznamka.sk/selfcare/purchase


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> Not to get political, but Bernie Sanders (and not just him) keeps telling us health care and higher education in Europe (it’s always “Europe,” never more specific) are FREE. Canada too. Not true, I take it?


Nothing is 'free', you pay for it directly or indirectly. In the Netherlands the health care system is some ~90% funded through taxes. The rest is paid for by obligatory health care insurance, which for most people over 18 is some € 100 - 150 per month. 

The health care insurance was introduced in the early 2000s to eliminate inefficiency and in particular the very long waiting times in the classic public funded system. This worked, but the cost has increased due to aging, the cost of health care is increasing so rapidly that it threatens to overshadow all other expenditures. 

Higher education in the Netherlands requires a student loan. I think you can technically get around it if you're a trust fund kid, but other than that student loans are the norm. It used to be a 'gift' if you completed college / university in 10 years, but it was changed to a loan to be repaid 3-4 years ago. I was in university under the old scheme, there were way too many students who were in college / university far longer than the regular duration (4-5 years), the student loan aimed to reduce this. 

Student loan debt has a significant impact on how much mortgage you can get, it can slash € 25,000 - 50,000 from your maximum mortgage, which in most cases means the difference between buying an entry level house or no house at all.


----------



## bogdymol

I graduated 6 years Bachelor's degree and 2 years Master's degree in Romania without paying anything.

There are many University classes that are in high requirements, so the Government pays for some of the students (it's something like a scholarship paid by the state). The best X students each year get next year free (it is recalculated every year, so you can start for free but then have to pay next year if you were not in the top). 

I managed to get all my 6 years University studies for free (paid by the state). Then I worked 1 year in Romania, then I left. Not a very good deal for the state...


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> I graduated 6 years Bachelor's degree and 2 years Master's degree in Romania without paying anything.
> 
> There are many University classes that are in high requirements, so the Government pays for some of the students (it's something like a scholarship paid by the state). The best X students each year get next year free (it is recalculated every year, so you can start for free but then have to pay next year if you were not in the top).
> 
> I managed to get all my 6 years University studies for free (paid by the state). Then I worked 1 year in Romania, then I left. Not a very good deal for the state...


The universities are (almost) free in Finland. ("Almost" = mandatory student union membership plus healthcare fee about 120 eur a year.) There is some subvention for living cost, but it does not cover everything. After graduation to "good" professions (engineer, doctor, layer, etc) the income taxes rocket because of the steeply progressive taxes. The whole education cost is paid back to the state after one or two years in a well-paid work.


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> In the contrary, I prefer paying once per year so I don't have to remember deadlines and lose time for each payment.


No direct debit services available in Italy?

I have routed all my regular recurring invoices to the bank inbox. I check and approve them once a month. Nothing to remember.


----------



## volodaaaa

I believe there are at least two types of people:
1) those who have ever bought paper kitchen towels instead of toilette paper and
2) damn liars.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

bogdymol said:


> I graduated 6 years Bachelor's degree and 2 years Master's degree in Romania without paying anything.


How did you manage to make a living besides the study? In the old Dutch scheme it was common for students to work alongside the study to cover some of the housing and general living cost, but apparently this is nowadays less common, so students take out loans for € 1000 per month to cover the study and general living expenses, especially if they don't live with their parents and have to pay rent for a room or even an apartment. So they rack up a gigantic debt over the course of 4-6 years.

It's almost impossible to make a living in the Netherlands for less than € 1000 per month. Rent for a room can be € 250 - 400, then you have health insurance, € 250 for food, varying amounts for leisure, the study, etc. 

The problem is that there are quite a number of bachelor degrees that have limited job opportunities or a very low starting wage. The 'most useless degrees' and 'best paying degrees' are published every year in the media. Imagine racking up a € 40,000 debt and then start out at or below minimum wage while at the same time you're going to settle down, look for a house and maybe start a family in a few years.


----------



## Attus

bogdymol said:


> I managed to get all my 6 years University studies for free (paid by the state). Then I worked 1 year in Romania, then I left. Not a very good deal for the state...


That's why the Hungarian government tried to change the system that way, that students whose study was paid by the state must stay in Hungary for a certain time (I forgot, I think it was about five years, or something like that). It was rejected, it was politically not accepted by the people and it's clearly against EU rules which prohibit any restriction of free movement.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> That's why the Hungarian government tried to change the system that way, that students whose study was paid by the state must stay in Hungary for a certain time (I forgot, I think it was about five years, or something like that). It was rejected, it was politically not accepted by the people and it's clearly against EU rules which prohibit any restriction of free movement.


I am not here to advocate Orban, but there is indeed some logic behind. 

The same system was employed when I worked at the ministry. I was offered to attend some attractive foreign courses (a paradox, funded by the EU) at universities in Europe, Australia or the USA. There was a list of courses with their respective price. Depending on the price, I was obligated to remain employed at the ministry for a specific time or pay back the money (an aliquot amount) from my private resources otherwise.


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> The “New Holland” surprises me that late. Maybe they were still using it in Russian but not English. (Or maybe it was being used in English as well....)
> Alaska became American that very year.


Yes, the book is in German (Neu Holland). Now I see it also says Australia (Australien) over the continent and a large area of ocean east of it almost to South America.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Yes, the book is in German (Neu Holland). Now I see it also says Australia (Australien) over the continent and a large area of ocean east of it almost to South America.




As you no doubt know, there was no political entity called “Australia” until 1901, just the separate colonies. And New Zealand was sometimes considered one of them, although the combination of what we’d call “Australia” plus New Zealand was sometimes called “Australasia.” The original letters patent for New South Wales said it covered “islands adjacent in the Pacific” within a certain range of latitude, but never said what exactly “adjacent” meant, so some argued that it extended all the was across to South America. That may be what you’re seeing there.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

Spanish tourists are attacked by a restaurant owner in Albania


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's almost impossible to make a living in the Netherlands for less than € 1000 per month. Rent for a room can be € 250 - 400,* then you have health insurance*, € 250 for food, varying amounts for leisure, the study, etc.


If you are a student with zero income, you end up getting to pay only around 20 Euro per month on the cheap plans. And they also have some university-specific health insurance plans which offer extras (like sports medicine) for the regular price (since students tend to use too little regular expensive services).


----------



## Penn's Woods

Hey, Europeans, let’s discuss TIPPING!

Is the advice in this article valid? It seems over-generous based on my limited experience of eating out in Europe....

https://www.afar.com/magazine/the-u...4238242&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Hey, Europeans, let’s discuss TIPPING!


:bash::bash::bash:


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> :bash::bash::bash:




Seriously, I’m not interested in the politics or ideology of it, just in knowing what to do when I’m there.


----------



## Fatfield

Penn's Woods said:


> Hey, Europeans, let’s discuss TIPPING!
> 
> Is the advice in this article valid? It seems over-generous based on my limited experience of eating out in Europe....
> 
> https://www.afar.com/magazine/the-u...4238242&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook


When being served food at the table in a bar\restaurant\cafe i'll leave a 10% tip in Britain. If i'm just buying a beer I don't tip at all but if I get say 10p change I'll put in the charity box that most pubs have on the bar.

In mainland Europe I do the same for table service if its food but if I'm only getting a beer I'll leave 10 cent coins and/or lower value coins from my change for the person who served me.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Those darn cheese freaks!


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Seriously, I’m not interested in the politics or ideology of it, just in knowing what to do when I’m there.


I can confirm the "round up" in Germany... or at least this is what my friends there told me to do.

As for Italy, as I said in other instances, I have never tipped in my life. I guess restaurants and hotels do not expect any tip, at least not from Italians.
Many restaurants in Italy charge for service (it's under the name "coperto"): while not the same as tipping (it doesn't go directly to the waiter), I guess it serves a similar purpose.


----------



## Suburbanist

Tipping articles for Europe written for a North American audience are often cringe-worthy OR totally off-base.

Since tipping is generally not an important or even a relevant thing, the tone of such articles let alone their 'rationale' are just... bad.


----------



## Suburbanist

Changing subjects to card payments: a colleague of mine was recently traveling on US. She works in a fintech startup, though not one involving payment systems. She was shocked that most fuel pump machines in US are swipe-based. Her bank blocked one of her cards on suspicion of fraud after she used it at a convenience store justa after trying and failing at a pump.

Needless to say, swipe functions have been removed from many cards issued in the rest of the World, or they come with two-factor authentication and require special enabling. Which often leads to rejected transactions anyway. 

I was then reading that bank card fraud in US happens at rates much, much higher than any SEPA (Standard European Payment Area) country. 

Since the US finally adopted chip-based cards two years ago, I was then looking into what gives... So I found even more shocking info:

- gas stations and grocery stores have been exempt from the 2017 shifts on authentication methods (which means POVs not fit with chip = merchant (not bank) pays for frauds or is dropped from network altogether)

- this weird "chip-and-signature" system is used by many places in lieu of chip and pin. Reason: to avoid requiring PINs from credit card users. The hope is that phone-based solutions will eventually allow bypass of chip-and-pin

The US financial system is great and cutting edge in many ways. Payment methods, though, is an area where it lags substantially behind Europe and other OECD countries. They are still butting heads about an instant transfer system. In Europe, more and more banks, even in different countries, allow for 4-second instant transfers (I myself have seen that work several times with my own accounts in 2 different countries). 

And only now, in 2019, checks entered the death spiral that will lead to their extinction.

The US still lacks a national centralized money transfer infrastructure capable of handling real-time payment orders between accounts. You can do that only with special accounts mean for investments, trading and so forth. But customers are locked out of it and it is common that transfers between different banks take 3 business days to complete. 

On the other hand, retail stock and derivative trading is much smoother, cheaper and easier in US than in Europe. Broker fees are often outrageous unless you have special contracts and some nice couple hundred thousand Euros...


----------



## riiga

Penn's Woods said:


> Hey, Europeans, let’s discuss TIPPING!
> 
> Is the advice in this article valid? It seems over-generous based on my limited experience of eating out in Europe....
> 
> https://www.afar.com/magazine/the-u...4238242&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook


In Sweden the general rule is that you don't tip, ever. If you think the service at a restaurant was extraordinary, then you can tip (10-15 %). Most payments are done by card these days and you're often asked to enter the total amount before your PIN. If you want to tip then you enter a larger amount.

Some people like to round up to the nearest 10, 50 or 100 SEK when paying restaurant bills or taxi drivers, but I wouldn't, it's expensive as it is already.


----------



## bogdymol

At the company I work for I have been involved in 2 recent projects in the US. This meant also travelling to the US and sorting out various problems, including some payment-related.

Before I travel to the US I have to call my bank to activate the swipe function on my card, otherwise it works only with chip & pin.

At gas stations I only found one that accepted my card to pay directly at the pump (and even that one I had to 'trick' as it asks for the ZIP code where the card is registered, which I don't have since is a non-US card, so I entered 00000). At all other stations I had to go inside to pay at the cashier, and in many places the chip reader had a note on it that it doesn't work and that you have to swipe. I got a couple of weird looks as why I don't pay directly at the pump, as they don't realize it doesn't work with foreign cards.

The same problem with ZIP code I found if you want to book an internal flight in the US, with an US airline (I think it was American Airlines) - you can't pay with a foreign card as the ZIP code does not match. Ended up buying the same ticket from an online agency which accepted the card.

Then I had to sort out some monthly car rental payment. At one company it works by calling them once per month and giving them, on the phone, all the credit card details, so that they can manually process it.

Then I had to get some refunds, 2 of them. Both gave me a check with my name on it. In Europe I have never seen a check before. With the first one was relatively easy: I went to the bank that issued the check and got the money cash. 

The second one was tricky, as it was issued by a bank that had no branches in the state I was in, and no local bank would cash it for me unless I had an account opened with them, which I didn't. The solution was to go at a company specialized in cashing checks, which, for a small fee, gave me the money against the check.

I have asked on several occasion if they don't do bank transfers in the US, but I either got a weird look (bank transfer? What's that???), or they said they are very expensive (I heard up to $25 per transfer). At my bank in Austria that's free!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The 'instant payments' has only arrived this year in the Netherlands, in fact I got a notice in my bank app this week that it is now enabled. Prior to this, only payments between accounts of the same bank were instant, the others required several hours to a day or 2. 

The card swiping enabled mass 'skimming' of bank accounts until they switched to a chip. Payment terminals where you swipe have rapidly disappeared over the last few years, nowadays it's either contactless or insert your card to read the chip (which is longer + requires PIN). Queues at payment terminals at busy locations can be reduced significantly with contactless payment, though it depends on the equipment. I've noticed that contactless payment abroad sometimes takes much more time to process than in the Netherlands, where it is near-instant.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> The 'instant payments' has only arrived this year in the Netherlands, in fact I got a notice in my bank app this week that it is now enabled. Prior to this, only payments between accounts of the same bank were instant, the others required several hours to a day or 2.
> 
> The card swiping enabled mass 'skimming' of bank accounts until they switched to a chip. Payment terminals where you swipe have rapidly disappeared over the last few years, nowadays it's either contactless or insert your card to read the chip (which is longer + requires PIN). Queues at payment terminals at busy locations can be reduced significantly with contactless payment, though it depends on the equipment. I've noticed that contactless payment abroad sometimes takes much more time to process than in the Netherlands, where it is near-instant.


Some other European countries adopted alternative, earlier 'contactless' systems or card-independent systems. Denmark and Sweden have a tap-pay separate terminal with NFC. Switzerland has a QR-code base system.

The good thing about banking in Netherlands is that it is really easy to get nowadays a basic bank account that is web-based. I myself use BunQ as my Euro account, although I also have an ABN-Amro account for savings in Euro. This online bank (BUNQ) is also good at providing safer solutions for travel and online shopping, you can create disposable credit card numbers, or pre-paid-but-looks-post-paid-on-systems credit cards to travel to US and Canada (i.e. you need to 'fund' the card before a transaction with a simple swipe and fingerprint).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The interest rate nowadays is virtually 0%, I have a savings account but you can withdraw any amount at any time, with the same interest rate as a general account. So it makes little sense to have a separate savings account.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> The interest rate nowadays is virtually 0%, I have a savings account but you can withdraw any amount at any time, with the same interest rate as a general account. So it makes little sense to have a separate savings account.


I do have separate accounts, as not to have "all the eggs in one basket". From time to time I put money on my debit-card-that-looks-like-a-credit-card. I know the balance at all times and I have enough money on it for my daily expenses. I also use it for online payments, so I would not trust to have too much money on it, although nothing happened so far. If I need to pay for something expensive, it takes me less then a minute to transfer the money onto it from the second account.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Penn's Woods said:


> Hey, Europeans, let’s discuss TIPPING!
> 
> Is the advice in this article valid? It seems over-generous based on my limited experience of eating out in Europe....
> 
> https://www.afar.com/magazine/the-u...4238242&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook


For Estonia:
At self-serve places I never leave a tip and I don't know anybody who does. This also applies for odering drinks at bars and pubs. 

When you are being served at a table then for me it usually depends on whether I'm just grabbing a quick daily deal for lunch or whether I'm sitting down for dinner with drinks, entree/dessert etc. If it's the former I rarely tip. When it's the latter I usually tip around 10%. If the service is really crap then I might not tip at all. 

Although nobody is expected to tip per se, tips can make up a significant amount of pay for waiters, especially if they are working in higher-end restaurants that see a lot of traffic. One really big table with a generous tipper can sometimes double your daily salary.

In general, as a tourist you shouldn't worry too much about tipping over here. If you are eating out at a restaurant and feel that the waiter/waitress did a good job then leave around 10%, if not or you are not sure about it, don't leave anything. In bars don't leave anything or at most leave some change in the tip jar if you are feeling especially generous or want to lighten your wallet from all the heavy Euro coins.

As a side note: Estonian waiters and service staff in general don't fake smiles to please the customer. This is not expected of them and *is not* considered rude or bad service. Although there are plenty of actually rude waiters out there, don't hate on a waiter/waitress if they don't smile at you all the time. What is more, in the Estonian dining culture the waiter tries to keep out of the way as much as possible so that you can enjoy your lunch/dinner with whomever you are spending it with. This means that the waiter is not constrantly at your table filling your drinks and doing small talk.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> Hey, Europeans, let’s discuss TIPPING!
> 
> Is the advice in this article valid? It seems over-generous based on my limited experience of eating out in Europe....
> 
> https://www.afar.com/magazine/the-u...4238242&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook


Not rocket science here. I do not know about any official rules, but I follow principles as follows:


Under 10 € I round to whole euros or 50 cents in restaurants. If it adds up to less than 20 cents, I do it even in grocery shops
Above 10 € I round to whole Euro
Above any other multiple of 10 € I add +0,5 €
If the waiter is polite and knows the good manners (older ladies first, pouring drinks, etc.) I add more
In limited extent this applies for other services like florist's, clothing store shop assistant, accommodation, etc. Sometimes I tip even people like plumber, chimney-sweep or my boiler maintenance worker.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Those darn cheese freaks!




“Kracht” = “crashes”? Pronounced “krascht”?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Rebasepoiss said:


> For Estonia:
> At self-serve places I never leave a tip and I don't know anybody who does. This also applies for odering drinks at bars and pubs.
> 
> When you are being served at a table then for me it usually depends on whether I'm just grabbing a quick daily deal for lunch or whether I'm sitting down for dinner with drinks, entree/dessert etc. If it's the former I rarely tip. When it's the latter I usually tip around 10%. If the service is really crap then I might not tip at all.
> 
> Although nobody is expected to tip per se, tips can make up a significant amount of pay for waiters, especially if they are working in higher-end restaurants that see a lot of traffic. One really big table with a generous tipper can sometimes double your daily salary.
> 
> In general, as a tourist you shouldn't worry too much about tipping over here. If you are eating out at a restaurant and feel that the waiter/waitress did a good job then leave around 10%, if not or you are not sure about it, don't leave anything. In bars don't leave anything or at most leave some change in the tip jar if you are feeling especially generous or want to lighten your wallet from all the heavy Euro coins.
> 
> As a side note: Estonian waiters and service staff in general don't fake smiles to please the customer. This is not expected of them and *is not* considered rude or bad service. Although there are plenty of actually rude waiters out there, don't hate on a waiter/waitress if they don't smile at you all the time. What is more, in the Estonian dining culture the waiter tries to keep out of the way as much as possible so that you can enjoy your lunch/dinner with whomever you are spending it with. This means that the waiter is not constrantly at your table filling your drinks and doing small talk.




Chatty waiters annoy me too. But they’re not THAT bad, at least in the Northeast these days....


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> “Kracht” = “crashes”? Pronounced “krascht”?


KraHt


----------



## Verso

VITORIA MAN said:


> Spanish tourists are attacked by a restaurant owner in Albania


I don't know what this was all about, but it looks like 1 guy against 5 guys and a woman. Those 5 guys look like real pussies, they could easily beat the shit out of him.


----------



## volodaaaa

All six people acted extremely irrationally, which prompts me to think the whole video was staged to get viral.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

He goes crazy after Spanish tourists do not like his restaurant service!


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> The interest rate nowadays is virtually 0%, I have a savings account but you can withdraw any amount at any time, with the same interest rate as a general account. So it makes little sense to have a separate savings account.


I mean an investing platform on equities, mutual funds, ETFs


----------



## tfd543

VITORIA MAN said:


> He goes crazy after Spanish tourists do not like his restaurant service!




True shit. It happened and the prime minister has condemned the attack from this nut. This is absolutely not What you will experience in Albania whatsoever. He was just a mentally disordered idiot risking his life for a stupid restaurant bill. 

Anyway, the albanian guides did a spectacular job to save the tourist.


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> Not rocket science here. I do not know about any official rules, but I follow principles as follows:
> 
> 
> Under 10 € I round to whole euros or 50 cents in restaurants. If it adds up to less than 20 cents, I do it even in grocery shops
> Above 10 € I round to whole Euro
> Above any other multiple of 10 € I add +0,5 €
> If the waiter is polite and knows the good manners (older ladies first, pouring drinks, etc.) I add more
> In limited extent this applies for other services like florist's, clothing store shop assistant, accommodation, etc. Sometimes I tip even people like plumber, chimney-sweep or my boiler maintenance worker.




Tipping your plumber!! Omg, you dont wanna know the work hour rates that they have here in Denmark. Those azholes are not to be tipped here. I would rather pelt them with coins. On the contrary, in my village in Macedonia its totally different because we are expected to provide food to our construction workers when they get hungry. Yea its quite odd but this is How it works. Quite funny the cultural differences.


----------



## Verso

I don't give them food, but I give them sth to drink.


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Tipping your plumber!! Omg, you dont wanna know the work hour rates that they have here in Denmark. Those azholes are not to be tipped here. I would rather pelt them with coins. On the contrary, in my village in Macedonia its totally different because we are expected to provide food to our construction workers when they get hungry. Yea its quite odd but this is How it works. Quite funny the cultural differences.


I usually give them something to drink. However, I do not buy drinks specially for them in advance like I do when I invite someone I am a friend with.

I give them tips, especially if there is one who visits me regularly. The message of the tip is "I liked your attitude, and I hope next time you will be as much as good". This way saved my life some times. E. g. when my wife was to return from the maternity hospital, my boiler stopped working. Not a perspective situation, some may say, to have a newborn baby without heat and hot water. I called my boiler technician who I always tip, and he was extremely willing. He found the solution immediately and repaired my boiler before the arrival of my baby.


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> I usually give them something to drink. However, I do not buy drinks specially for them in advance like I do when I invite someone I am a friend with.
> 
> 
> 
> I give them tips, especially if there is one who visits me regularly. The message of the tip is "I liked your attitude, and I hope next time you will be as much as good". This way saved my life some times. E. g. when my wife was to return from the maternity hospital, my boiler stopped working. Not a perspective situation, some may say, to have a newborn baby without heat and hot water. I called my boiler technician who I always tip, and he was extremely willing. He found the solution immediately and repaired my boiler before the arrival of my baby.




I get you but it depends if its cash-in-hand job or the proper invoice payment method with all the taxes. There is really No way to tip a plumber if its the latter because we pay that electronically in Denmark. 

But still, i would rather tip a guy cleaning my windshield at a gas station in Croatia than tipping a rich dumb-ass.


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Tipping your plumber!! Omg, you dont wanna know the work hour rates that they have here in Denmark. Those azholes are not to be tipped here. I would rather pelt them with coins. On the contrary, in my village in Macedonia its totally different because we are expected to provide food to our construction workers when they get hungry. Yea its quite odd but this is How it works. Quite funny the cultural differences.




Also, in the U.S. one tips employees, not business owners. At least that’s the rule I picked up somewhere and it makes sense to me. I tipped the guy who cuts my hair when he worked at a larger salon, not since he went out and opened his own place.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Do they pay income tax on tips?


----------



## x-type

I was quite surprised when I saw that tipping in Poland is very expected in Amercian way (10 or 15%). I do tip, but i don't follow strict rules about amount.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Do they pay income tax on tips?




They’re supposed to.


----------



## aldomorning

tfd543 said:


> True shit. It happened and the prime minister has condemned the attack from this nut. This is absolutely not What you will experience in Albania whatsoever. He was just a mentally disordered idiot risking his life for a stupid restaurant bill.
> 
> Anyway, the albanian guides did a spectacular job to save the tourist.



He will go in jail and his restaurant located in Porto Palermo,Himarë area, was demolished today.

https://translate.google.com/transl...torantin-e-mihal-kokedhimes-ne-porto-palermo/












A very problematic person and punished according to the law.

https://twitter.com/VincentTriest/status/1162853325005455361


----------



## MattiG

tfd543 said:


> Tipping your plumber!! Omg, you dont wanna know the work hour rates that they have here in Denmark. Those azholes are not to be tipped here. I would rather pelt them with coins. On the contrary, in my village in Macedonia its totally different because we are expected to provide food to our construction workers when they get hungry. Yea its quite odd but this is How it works. Quite funny the cultural differences.


The rules of the game are crystal clear in Finland: The price tag displays the total price of the product or the service. Tipping is mandatory nowhere.

Still, for some historical reasons, the people working in the restaurants an taxis are open to receiving a tip.

Do you tip a bus driver? No.
Do you tip a tram driver? No.
Do you tip the priest in the church? No.
Do you tip the nurse in the hospital? No.
Do you tip the reception clerk in a hotel? No.
Do you tip the dentist? No.
Do you tip the judge at the court? NO!

So, what is the reason to tip a waiter or the taxi driver?


----------



## g.spinoza

To me, tipping is a gross show of wealth.
It's like saying "you're a poor old bastard, I'm rich and, since I'm also merciful, I will give you this money because I can".

Contrary to what happens in the USA, in Europe waiters are generally paid a decent wage, so tipping is not really necessary. Regarding the US, other kinds of workers got together in unions to battle for a fair salary and work conditions, so why wouldn't waiters do the same?


----------



## tfd543

Indeed but Sometimes I feel the need to tip. This can be if the waiter tells me where to eat, where you find the best hotels, where you can find a pharmacy in the middle of nowhere etc etc. When i was i marbella, i tipped the bus driver 10 euros to get on the last bus from the City center. He couldnt return my last 10 euro bill so i had No choice. At Malaga airport, i tipped the taxi driver 20euros because i had to pick up my rental car before 11 PM Otherwise a surcharge of 40 euros would be imposed. The ride was 3 min lol and we had 15 min before deadline. Of course he took a nasty dodgy road behind the airport to avoid making a U-turn.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> in Europe waiters are generally paid a decent wage, so tipping is not really necessary


It depends on. In Hungary waiters are paid very poorly, they simply need the tips. Would tips disappear, the other day you had not any waiters.


----------



## keber

Attus said:


> It depends on. In Hungary waiters are paid very poorly, they simply need the tips. Would tips disappear, the other day you had not any waiters.


And then bars would need to pay waiters more or else they will close. Tips are no different to black economy.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

g.spinoza said:


> To me, tipping is a gross show of wealth.
> It's like saying "you're a poor old bastard, I'm rich and, since I'm also merciful, I will give you this money because I can".
> 
> Contrary to what happens in the USA, in Europe waiters are generally paid a decent wage, so tipping is not really necessary. Regarding the US, other kinds of workers got together in unions to battle for a fair salary and work conditions, so why wouldn't waiters do the same?


Do most working-class Americans or Europeans in most countries have fair salaries and working conditions though? Especially since union vilification. 

I've worked all sorts of crap jobs to support my education, and in some conditions were simply not on for the 21st century, and I suspect a lot of people have it much worse. I'm lucky I have an escape (education) and now have a warm indoor job (6:30am -4:30pm) and I have weekends generally off. 

I don't miss standing earning minimum wage to stand water in leaky wellies for hours on end when it's 1C (there was some talk of unionisation there but it never happened). I don't miss working 15h cleaning but only getting paid for 12 of them. 

Not that this is directly relevant to tipping, as I certainly wasn't tipped and that would have been weird but I can easily believe that some people depend heavily on tips and that it might not be so easy to fight for better.


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> To me, tipping is a gross show of wealth.
> It's like saying "you're a poor old bastard, I'm rich and, since I'm also merciful, I will give you this money because I can".


Hmm, I don't think you've ever been tipped. Not that I have (I've never been a waiter or so), but I think almost no waiter would agree with you.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Hmm, I don't think you've ever been tipped. Not that I have (I've never been a waiter or so), but I think almost no waiter would agree with you.


Of course. _Pecunia non olet_. I'm talking from the perspective of a would-be tipper.

PS: Oh, and I worked as a postman, and I've been tipped. I felt both happy and... kinda "dirty".


----------



## Verso

To be honest, I find using Latin phrases to be much more a "gross show of knowledge". I forget them instantly, because you know, I don't live in the Vatican City.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> To be honest, I find using Latin phrases to be much more a "gross show of knowledge". I forget them instantly, because you know, I don't live in the Vatican City.


Whatever man. This is a common expression in Italian, I thought it was used in English too.

And "showing knowledge" shouldn't be bashed. "Showing ignorance, and being proud of that", should.


----------



## Verso

Well, I'm not an Italian. And I find it gross, because hardly anyone actually understands Latin beyond a few phrases.


----------



## g.spinoza

I don't understand why you are taking it so personal. You've never been a waiter, so?

I'm always glad when I have the opportunity of learning something. Apparently not everyone is like that. 
Chill out, man


----------



## Highway89

The island of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain) after/during the current forest fires hno:










https://elpais.com/politica/2019/08/21/actualidad/1566379837_000015.html


----------



## tfd543

g.spinoza said:


> I don't understand why you are taking it so personal. You've never been a waiter, so?
> 
> I'm always glad when I have the opportunity of learning something. Apparently not everyone is like that.
> Chill out, man




I understand spinoza. Always good to learn something new, but it takes two to tango lads.


----------



## RipleyLV

Highway89 said:


> The island of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain) after/during the current forest fires hno:


What's with the forest fire trend this year anyway?

There was Taiga in Siberia, and now jungle in Amazon. Like WTH?


----------



## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> I understand spinoza. Always good to learn something new, *but it takes two to tango lads*.


This is a nice expression that I didn't know, and I thank you for teaching me.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wildfires are completely normal in the northern boreal forests. It's part of the ecosystem. It's common that ~2% of the boreal forest burns down each year (50 year cycle). In case of Canada and Russia, 2% of forest surface area means very large amounts of hectares. 

Fire supression is actually detrimental as fires are part of the ecosystem and supression leads to more intense wildfires later on.

These forest fires in the Amazon and also places like Indonesia are usually started by farmers as a slash-and-burn method, or to clear forest for agricultural use. This has always happened but somehow the media finds Brazilian affairs more newsworthy now that Mr. Bolsonaro is president there. 

It's more media hysteria than anything else.


----------



## x-type

Attus said:


> It depends on. In Hungary waiters are paid very poorly, they simply need the tips. Would tips disappear, the other day you had not any waiters.


They saw it from Americans.
Here waiters also mostly earn from tipping. But not in good restarurants where they get really good wage.

Btw, do Americans tip at McDonald's too? It's a restaurant as well.


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> This is a nice expression that I didn't know, and I thank you for teaching me.


I can teach you so many Slovenian expressions and sayings (and I mean in Slovenian!) that you'll get bored to death, but somehow I doubt you want that.  And I'm totally chilled really.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Whatever man. This is a common expression in Italian, I thought it was used in English too.
> 
> And "showing knowledge" shouldn't be bashed. "Showing ignorance, and being proud of that", should.




I’ve studied Latin, but I’ve never heard that expression in English. And I don’t remember what “olet” means.

Otherwise, I’m staying out of this.
Carry on.... :cheers:


----------



## tfd543

Verso said:


> I can teach you so many Slovenian expressions and sayings (and I mean in Slovenian!) that you'll get bored to death, but somehow I doubt you want that.  And I'm totally chilled really.




I think its fairly commonplace to see Latin expressions in English text, whether we like it or not. And Yes, they can seem odd and require to look it up. Now whether it is a show off or not, i dont know. Personally i find it elegant to sum up a point in one expression. Wouldnt you agree on that Verso, you know just for curiosity's sake ??


----------



## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> They saw it from Americans.
> 
> Here waiters also mostly earn from tipping. But not in good restarurants where they get really good wage.
> 
> 
> 
> Btw, do Americans tip at McDonald's too? It's a restaurant as well.




Traditionally, we tip for table service. About 20 years ago, Starbucks employees and the like started putting cups out by the register for people to drop their extra change into, and the phenomenon spread a bit; I’ve seen them at coffee places (Starbucks and competitors), takeout-food places like pizzerias, but not fast food. (And the McDonald’s in my home town has actually started providing table service...you order and pay at the counter but they bring the food to you, but it still didn’t occur to me to tip the one time I ate there since this started.) Can’t think of any retail environment not involving food that I’ve tipped. It’s also customary to leave something for your newspaper carrier and people like that at Christmastime. When I lived in a high-rise that had a staffed front desk, I’d leave money for them in a Christmas card. Tipping your postman, or any other government employee, may actually be illegal. Well, it would be illegal for them to accept tips.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> I can teach you so many Slovenian expressions and sayings (and I mean in Slovenian!) that you'll get bored to death, but somehow I doubt you want that.  And I'm totally chilled really.


Maybe I wouldn't want that, but I won't accuse you of being gross.

Anyway, I didn't mean to showoff. I mean, foreign language expressions like "que sera sera", or "tu casa es mi casa" are commonplace in English, and I don't think it's considered rude or posh to say them.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> I’ve studied Latin, but I’ve never heard that expression in English. And I don’t remember what “olet” means.
> 
> Otherwise, I’m staying out of this.
> Carry on.... :cheers:


In any case, before posting that, I made sure it was easy to look up for those who never heard that expression. In fact, it's on English Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecunia_non_olet


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Traditionally, we tip for table service. About 20 years ago, Starbucks employees and the like started putting cups out by the register for people to drop their extra change into, and the phenomenon spread a bit; I’ve seen them at coffee places (Starbucks and competitors), takeout-food places like pizzerias, but not fast food. (And the McDonald’s in my home town has actually started providing table service...you order and pay at the counter but they bring the food to you, but it still didn’t occur to me to tip the one time i ate there since this started.) Can’t think of any retail environment not involving food that I’ve tipped. It’s also customary to leave something for your newspaper carrier and people like that at Christmastime. When I lived in a high-rise that had a staffed front desk, I’d leave money for them in a Christmas card. Tipping your postman, or any other government employee, may actually be illegal. Well, it would be illegal for them to accept tips.


Before my trip to the US few years ago I read a bit about tipping there. I read that you also tip your housekeepers at hotels, even if you never meet them: so I left some coins on the pillow, every other day, and they were taken. Again, I felt not really comfortable doing that, and I don't know if it was appropriate or not.


----------



## Verso

tfd543 said:


> Personally i find it elegant to sum up a point in one expression. Wouldnt you agree on that Verso, you know just for curiosity's sake ??


Most Latin phrases sound just fine in English. Anyway, no hard feelings to anyone. :cheers:


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> “Kracht” = “crashes”? Pronounced “krascht”?


Krachen: https://cdn.duden.de/_media_/audio/ID6287725_67686829.mp3
Just replace 'n' by 't' at the end.



Penn's Woods said:


> And the McDonald’s in my home town has actually started providing table service...you order and pay at the counter but they bring the food to you


That's quite common in Europe. I've seen it for the first time in France back in April 2016. I think that almost all European McD have been upgraded to that service meanwhile. Am I wrong?


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Most Latin phrases sound just fine in English. Anyway, no hard feelings to anyone. :cheers:


As do "que sera sera" or "mi casa es tu casa", but peope still quote them in French and Spanish.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Before my trip to the US few years ago I read a bit about tipping there. I read that you also tip your housekeepers at hotels, even if you never meet them: so I left some coins on the pillow, every other day, and they were taken. Again, I felt not really comfortable doing that, and I don't know if it was appropriate or not.




Honestly, the last time I traveled in the U.S., I forgot to do that. In a more expensive place where I was staying for two or a few nights, I’d leave $5 in the room. I don’t bother for a night, or for a cheaper place. We traveled a lot when I was a child and I don’t remember my father tipping housekeepers (not that he’d necessarily have brought my attention to it), so it’s a habit I picked up as an adult because I read it somewhere.


----------



## MichiH

Maybe you remember the Bielefeld conspiracy? There are people who don't believe that city of Bielefeld does not exist. Some crazy guys even claim that they've been to Bielefeld! Unbelievable! The conspiracy is 25 years old but now people are sick of it and if you can *proof that Bielefeld does really not exist, you might win a million €!*

https://twitter.com/hashtag/bielefeldmillion

More info about the competion (in German only)
http://www.bielefeldmillion.de/zum-wettbewerb/#teilnahme

The bad thing is that the money is offered by the city of Bielefeld itself :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:


----------



## x-type

MichiH said:


> That's quite common in Europe. I've seen it for the first time in France back in April 2016. I think that almost all European McD have been upgraded to that service meanwhile. Am I wrong?


I saw it in Czechia and Slovenia. You take that silly plastic number to identify your table. I felt kinda stupid while waiting guy to bring me my breakfast.

About tipping non food services: I do it sometimes at car wash service or at tyre repair garage. I know that they are or poorly paid, or work whole day so I'm not sorry. However, they must earn it being sympathic.


----------



## Kanadzie

I hate those tip jars at the cash register. I specifically refuse to put anything in there. I mean, they are just standing there and expecting tip. What the hell? My wife often will feel guilty and drop something there if she's paying though


----------



## General Maximus

Been busy for a while, and I see nothing has changed. Apart from talking about foreign grammar, you're now actually arguing about it. 

Booooooooooooooring.

We (as "the world") speak many languages and dialects that we call our own. They are also divided in different groups. Our Slavic friends love to to exchange their differences on here. (in a civil manner, but still very boring for all other members on here) - but now I sense a little agitation. Why?


----------



## General Maximus

MichiH said:


> Maybe you remember the Bielefeld conspiracy? There are people who don't believe that city of Bielefeld does not exist. Some crazy guys even claim that they've been to Bielefeld! Unbelievable! The conspiracy is 25 years old but now people are sick of it and if you can *proof that Bielefeld does really not exist, you might win a million €!*
> 
> https://twitter.com/hashtag/bielefeldmillion
> 
> More info about the competion (in German only)
> http://www.bielefeldmillion.de/zum-wettbewerb/#teilnahme
> 
> The bad thing is that the money is offered by the city of Bielefeld itself :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:


If Bielefeld doesn't exist, then I guess my sexual experience with this fine girl I met there by the lake doesn't exist either...


----------



## volodaaaa

General Maximus said:


> Been busy for a while, and I see nothing has changed. Apart from talking about foreign grammar, you're now actually arguing about it.
> 
> Booooooooooooooring.
> 
> We (as "the world") speak many languages and dialects that we call our own. They are also divided in different groups. Our Slavic friends love to to exchange their differences on here. (in a civil manner, but still very boring for all other members on here) - but now I sense a little agitation. Why?


Why does a mediocre van driver have the impression he is eligible to set the topic.

The grammar discussion started decades ago and faded away two days later without you, my precious Lord the Savior. 

You have brought this topic up which prompts me to think you are bored and want to start a flame war, if anything. Therefore you are the troll and, my bad, I am the one who feeds you. Sorry.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> This has always happened but somehow the media finds Brazilian affairs more newsworthy now that Mr. Bolsonaro is president there.
> 
> It's more media hysteria than anything else.


Firing the director of a scientific institute for stating the facts (that Brazil has cut down almost twice as much of the Amazon this year compared to last year) doesn't really help Bolsonaro's case...

Other than that, I agree that forest fires are a natural part of the ecosystem but this doesn't mean that completely out of control fires should be ignored.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The media is making more out of it than it really is. They quote NASA, but leave out the nuances.

For example:

It is not unusual to see fires in Brazil at this time of year due to high temperatures and low humidity. Time will tell if this year is a record breaking or just within normal limits.​
>> https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/...ilian-rainforest-creating-cross-country-smoke

As of August 16, 2019, satellite observations indicated that total fire activity in the Amazon basin was slightly below average in comparison to the past 15 years. Though activity has been above average in Amazonas and to a lesser extent in Rondônia, it has been below average in Mato Grosso and Pará, according to the Global Fire Emissions Database.​
>> https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145464/fires-in-brazil

This is quite more nuanced than the hysterical headlines you see in the media.


----------



## Penn's Woods

More on American tipping practices. (Just because it just showed up on my Facebook feed)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/trav...p-america-take-this-quiz-test-your-knowledge/


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> More on American tipping practices. (Just because it just showed up on my Facebook feed)
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/trav...p-america-take-this-quiz-test-your-knowledge/


About tipping the houskeepers:



> Pundole recommends tipping $10 per day of your visit.


This is a ridiculous amount of money for someone who already has a salary, albeit small.
After 10 rooms, at 10 $ each, they would make more money than I do per day, only with tips.


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> I am under the impression that the powers of a British PM are substantially lower than those of a US president. Maybe I'm wrong tough.


The British legislation provides with some interesting opportunities to take pretty unbelievable actions. In 2008, UK implemented their *anti-terrorist laws* to freeze 4 billion GBP of financial assets of a failing Icelandic bank. This was a quite bright message to the other countries: Do not bring your money or other assets to us because we cannot be trusted. After seeing that, it is not a big surprise that the PM of a western democracy wants to freeze the parliament to shut the mouths of the opposition.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> I am under the impression that the powers of a British PM are substantially lower than those of a US president. Maybe I'm wrong tough.




Well, the Prime Minister is the de facto head of the executive branch, but also head of the legislative branch (to put it on American terms). He’ll never have to “cohabit,” as the French say, with a parliament of a party opposed to his. As regularly does happen in the U.S. A U.S. President can’t do what Johnson just did; the houses of Congress control their own agendas and calendars. No possibility in the U.S. of a snap election.... 

Then there’s the fact that we’re a federal system and Washington has very little power over state governments (and there are matters in which only the states, not the feds, can act). Trump is currently under investigation by state prosecutors in New York and can’t do anything about it.

And the Constitution itself prohibits any level of government from doing certain things - infringing on free speech, say. I don’t think there are many citizens’ rights that would stand up against parliamentary action in the U.K., particularly once they’re out of the E.U.


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> U.S. A U.S.


What the hell. :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> What the hell. :lol:




Pronounced “...in dhuh you ess. [new sentence]. uh you ess prezid’nt....”


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> dhuh


You mean "z".


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> You mean "z".




No.


----------



## Verso

Sorry, I just tried speaking German English.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> He can start a global war.
> I think that's more than enough.





Penn's Woods said:


> I’ve never believed he was more likely to do that than any other president.
> But we’re talking about the state of the countries’ (first it was the U.K....) internal functioning. Is Johnson an autocrat; is he comparable in that respect to Trump (Or is the U.S. comparable to the U.K.)


I don't like Trump (his statements on things like environment or immigration are awful), but past presidents weren't peace-loving hippies either. Not even the Hawaiian Nobel-prize winner.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> I don’t think there are many citizens’ rights that would stand up against parliamentary action in the U.K., particularly once they’re out of the E.U.


That's one the main reasons why I do support EU. Within EU, is more difficult for a megalomaniac leader to infringe human rights and civil liberties.
Throghout the global history, many legally elected leaders have become authoritarian.


----------



## volodaaaa

The first day in my new job and I am late. Lucky me. All due to a stupid trolleybus that derailed in the middle of the frequent intersection.


----------



## g.spinoza

This morning, in Turin, 2 workers were putting up a sign at the beginning of one of the main boulevards, which read "Road used for the experimentation in self-driving cars."

If I have the chance I will try to take a picture when I go back there this evening.


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> The first day in my new job and I am late. Lucky me. All due to a stupid trolleybus that derailed in the middle of the frequent intersection.




Congratz with the new job


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> The first day in my new job and I am late. Lucky me. All due to a stupid trolleybus that derailed in the middle of the frequent intersection.


Dewired  We don't have trolleybuses in Łódź but I don't think they use rails. Although some time ago we had a tram that came out of control and travelled "autonomously" through half of the city (luckily nobody got even injured, the tram was empty and "felt freedom" during some repair works when it broke down in the city; the brakes were released, the road was inclined and so it happened) – it actually got derailed, although it was done on purpose as it was the only way to stop it 

Congratulations. Do I remember well from the forum that you worked for a ministry? Is your new job also a public office?


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Dewired  We don't have trolleybuses in Łódź but I don't think they use rails. Although some time ago we had a tram that came out of control and travelled "autonomously" through half of the city (luckily nobody got even injured, the tram was empty and "felt freedom" during some repair works when it broke down in the city; the brakes were released, the road was inclined and so it happened) – it actually got derailed, although it was done on purpose as it was the only way to stop it
> 
> Congratulations. Do I remember well from the forum that you worked for a ministry? Is your new job also a public office?



I think derail is ok too. But your language demand is more specific. Yes, I work for the local transport operator now. The one operating the dewired trolleybus in particular :lol:


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> I think derail is ok too. But your language demand is more specific. Yes, I work for the local transport operator now. The one operating the dewired trolleybus in particular :lol:


Just make a temporary transform: map the world upside down. Then, the trolleybus wiring looks exactly rails. If the bus loses it, it derails. Easy.

Is there a world 'depath'? It could be a generic word to describe a situation where a moving object loses is planning travel path. A car depathed and hit a tree. A trolleybus depathed and caused a traffic jam. A train arrived over-speed at a tight curve and depathed. A teenager lost her attention while talking at a phone and depathed into a wrong bus.


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> volodaaaa said:
> 
> 
> 
> I think derail is ok too. But your language demand is more specific.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, I work for the local transport operator now. The one operating the dewired trolleybus in particular
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Just make a temporary transform: map the world upside down. Then, the trolleybus wiring looks exactly rails. If the bus loses it, it derails. Easy.
> 
> Is there a world 'depath'? It could be a generic word to describe a situation where a moving object loses is planning travel path. A car depathed and hit a tree. A trolleybus depathed and caused a traffic jam. A train arrived over-speed at a tight curve and depathed. A teenager lost her attention while talking at a phone and depathed into a wrong bus.
Click to expand...

Does it make all subway systems overgrounds? And planes become submarines and vice versa? Ship would become... Well ships? Genius. 😁


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> Does it make all subway systems overgrounds? And planes become submarines and vice versa? Ship would become... Well ships? Genius. 😁


Just make a selective transform!

Like hunting a lion in the analytical geometry way. Sit down into a cage. Then map inside out and outside in. Result: Lion in the cage and you outside.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

In the Estonian language trolleybuses have "horns" so when they run off from the electric wires we say the horns came down


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> The first day in my new job and I am late. Lucky me. All due to a stupid trolleybus that derailed in the middle of the frequent intersection.


You need more of these trolleybuses ;-)
Nový Most by Attila Németh, on Flickr


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> Basically, all sports except football are niche sports :lol:


And except those your country is good at 

I definitely wouldn't call volleyball a niche sport in Poland (basketball is much more niche, I mean, many kids may play it at playgrounds but it's niche to follow basketball events). Other sports that many people follow here, besides football – being, interestingly, ones that a random person doesn't really have any chance of practicing – are ski jumping and Formula 1.

Volleyball maybe requires some special physical traits to be good at it... but isn't it true for any sport? Although, yes, you can train speed and agility, you can't train your height. But still not everyone is born a professional footballer. And to play volleyball with friends, as an amateur, any special height isn't needed.



Penn's Woods said:


> What sports, besides soccer, are considered major sports, if that question even makes sense?


It depends on how you define a "major sport". But if you mean the sports that make whole families, even those not really being into sports, sit on a couch and watch the main events on TV – it will be definitely football (I mean soccer) and ski jumping. Watching ski jumping is a kind of tradition for many families on winter weekend afternoons – and this ski jumping hype began with Adam Małysz successes in the early 2000s.

Some people mentioned cycling... well, when we have Tour de Pologne, the public TV is telling about it, about what's going on etc. all the time, but I don't think it really brings any major interest. There are people who are really into it – but it's rather a small group.

Formula 1 fans are also quite a closed group – but from such sports it's probably the one with the highest number of fans.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> In Europe soccer (I suppose you know it's called football in this side of the Atlantic sea) is the absolute top. Not any other kind of team sport is even comparable to it.
> In nations which are not successful in soccer/football but have success in some other sport, e.g. volleyball, basketball, water polo, ice hockey or handball, that certain kind of sport may be popular as well. But football is by far the number one everywhere in Europe.




Of course I know that it’s called “soccer” in the U.K., unlike every other significant English-speaking country, even (I’m told) Ireland, because there are other sports called “football” in those countries. 
I figure saying “soccer” and “American football” on international forums will be understood by everyone. :cheers:

My impression is that rugby is what I’d call “major” in France, rugby and cricket in the U.K....


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> - Ice hockey (WC, NHL, KHL domestic league),
> - Football (EL, domestic, WC)
> - Skiing
> - Tennis
> - Cycling




So if I narrowed my question to “team spectator sports,” you’ve got soccer and ice hockey. (Another example of internationalizing my vocabulary; “hockey” over here is always understood, including in Canadian French, as being the kind played on ice. What’s called “hockey” in the Benelux is “field hockey” here.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> In nations which are not successful in soccer/football but have success in some other sport, e.g. volleyball, basketball, water polo, ice hockey or handball, that certain kind of sport may be popular as well. But football is by far the number one everywhere in Europe.


There was a moment some years ago when Poland got successes in volleyball.

For just a few seasons – but still.

It didn't make handball popular.

Volleyball just IS quite popular because it's popular to play at schools or on playgrounds. Similarly as football.

Basketball is also popular to play – it isn't, however, popular to watch – but this is because of lack of successes.



Penn's Woods said:


> So if I narrowed my question to “team spectator sports,” you’ve got soccer and ice hockey. (Another example of internationalizing my vocabulary; “hockey” over here is always understood, including in Canadian French, as being the kind played on ice. What’s called “hockey” in the Benelux is “field hockey” here.


Well, we call both hockey. If you want to distinguish them, you have to be more precise. We say: "hokej na trawie" – "hockey on the grass", "hokej na lodzie" – "hockey on the ice".

Hockey is not popular at all in Poland.


----------



## Conte Oliver

Volleyball is indeed very popular in Poland for some reason...this was a Poland-Serbia NT game in Warsaw recently, almost 70,000 Poles attended, must have been some sort of world record for a volleyball game.

Serbia won


----------



## Verso

Kpc21 said:


> "hokej na lodzie" – "hockey on the ice"


hokej na Łódźie :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> hokej na Łódźie :lol:




Łódż = ice?


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> Łódż = ice?


Ice is 'lód' according to Wikipedia. Łódż is probably nothing. Łód*ź* is a Polish city with a famous resident Kpc21.


----------



## CNGL

And pronounced nowhere like "Lodz" :lol:. It's something like "woodge", totally counterintuitive if you ask me.


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> You mean there're less tall Italians in total than Slovenians? :lol: (or Serbians for that matter) We aren't particularly tall anyway, those are Montenegrins and the Dutch (in Europe).


In total maybe there are more tall Italians than Slovenians, but they are more spread out in the paeninsula and they never met to put up a team 

I have a lot of colleagues from Slovenia and none of them is shorter than 1.90 m


----------



## Suburbanist

_Grüzi_

My stay in Zürich will be extended through August/2020.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> Ice is 'lód' according to Wikipedia. Łódż is probably nothing. Łód*ź* is a Polish city with a famous resident Kpc21.


I think that Łódź is a boat. Like Barchetta. Or Barco.


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> In total maybe there are more tall Italians than Slovenians, but they are more spread out in the paeninsula and they never met to put up a team
> 
> I have a lot of colleagues from Slovenia and none of them is shorter than 1.90 m


I'm 178 cm. And the head coach of the Slovenia men's national volleyball team is an Italian. :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> I'm 178 cm. And the head coach of the Slovenia men's national volleyball team is an Italian. :lol:


I just looked him up on the internet, he's born a town very close to my own.:cheers:


----------



## Kpc21

Ice is lód, boat (or my city) is łódź 

Two totally different things with totally different pronunciations.

And "on the boat" is "na łodzi", not "na łodzie".

"Na łodzie!" would be an imperative: "Onto the boats!".


----------



## Verso

g.spinoza said:


> I just looked him up on the internet, he's born a town very close to my own.:cheers:


And on Christmas. :lol:


----------



## PovilD

When I heard actual Polish pronouncation of the city Łódź, first thought in my mind was:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Woodpecker
In our pretty strange Baltic language "Woody" becomes "Vudis" due to our gramatical rules, so "woodge" would become "Vudžis"  Probably "Vudžė" would be more correct, since Łódź is "Lodzė" in our language. It just can't end in consonant (at least mostly), except is "s". So Greek and Latvian names can have a luxury not to be distorted according to our grammatical rules, but sorry Texas and some other places with ending "as" (and "is", "us"...), you must be Teksasas in our language.


----------



## g.spinoza

An arch bridge collapses in Taiwan:


----------



## Spookvlieger

Looks like that truck was to heavy for that bridge, that sounds strange because it looks like a big road. It started bending when the truck was driving over.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's actually a very minor road, it spans a waterway that provides access to a fishing village and some minor processing industry. 

Location: https://www.google.com/maps/@24.5854483,121.8688653,497m/data=!3m1!1e3


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> A similar absurd you have with the *German island Corfu* and Albania. Corfu is west of Albania but it's 1 hour ahead, as Albania is Central European Time and Greece is Eastern European Time.


German island Corfu? Yes, it was back in 1940s and I read that "all occupied regions" were synchronized to Berlin. And yes, the whole "daylight saving time" shit started during World War. Germany also had a "double summer time" with +2 hours anytime in 1940s.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> That'll create more problems than it solves.... It wouldn't surprise me if any action would be pushed back, perhaps indefinitely.
> 
> The whole debate has convinced me to believe that the current system is the least worst. Opinion polls are considered unreliable because the outcome depends heavily on the time of year the opinion poll is taken, as well as the wording and explanation of the scenarios.
> 
> The Dutch government did a poll with an error, stating that during summer time, the sun would set at 8 p.m. which in reality is 10 p.m., after which they asked if people favor permanent winter time, which most people did. Despite this critical error that likely significantly influenced the outcome, they assured that the poll outcome was considered reliable.... :nuts:




But did the government promise to respect the result?


----------



## Kpc21

Surel said:


> The time system is not relevant. What is relevant for people is when do they go to bed and when do they get up. You won't solve this though, because there are various office hours and people working in shifts are anyway screwed. On top of that you would need to adjust to any period of year and latitude.


I think it wouldn't be any problem at all if we used the same time everywhere around the world. It wouldn't be compatible with sunrises and sunsets, but... does it matter? The current choice of the time system is anyway quite random. It would make more sense if 0:00 was (approximately) the time of the sunrise. But for some weird reasons it's about 5-6 AM.

And nobody says that the whole world must have the sunrise at the same time.



MichiH said:


> German island Corfu?


Really, did I write that?

I meant the Greek island Corfu  Warsaw also used to be German for a moment... but soon Germans just levelled the whole city.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> I think it wouldn't be any problem at all if we used the same time everywhere around the world. It wouldn't be compatible with sunrises and sunsets, but... does it matter? The current choice of the time system is anyway quite random. It would make more sense if 0:00 was (approximately) the time of the sunrise. But for some weird reasons it's about 5-6 AM.
> 
> And nobody says that the whole world must have the sunrise at the same time.
> 
> 
> Really, did I write that?
> 
> I meant the Greek island Corfu  Warsaw also used to be German for a moment... but soon Germans just levelled the whole city.




NOT having 0:00 at sunrise means the length of a day doesn’t change (however slightly) from one day to the next.

But don’t give the uniformity-fetishists any silly ideas!


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> Okay, so according to this article, the French people, once twice-yearly time changes are abolished, want to stay on summer time year-round. The Dutch want to stay in winter time. Which would put the Netherlands and hour behind France. Which is geographically absurd.
> 
> How likely is that to actually happen?


I suppose it won't. I expect that the governments of Germany and France will agree on having the same time, and many smaller nations nearby (among others the Netherlands) will join them, whatever they decide.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> The whole debate has convinced me to believe that the current system is the least worst.


I had always this opinion.


----------



## MichiH

I think that the natural one is the best:

E, F, B, NL, L: UTC+0
CH, CZ, D, DK, I, N, S, PL,... UTC+1

Generally normal time (or DST).

In daily life, the countries already have different "active day" times.


----------



## volodaaaa

Yesterday I enrolled for the D group licence driving school with the extension valid for trolleybuses. Pray for the people I encounter being behind the steering wheel, especially for their rear mirrors.


----------



## Verso

^^ Good luck. Luckily I don't need that, but at my new job I have to be a van driver for the first two months (like Road_UK :lol. What a shitty job when snow falls, especially if they send me all over Slovenia and into the mountains. :cripes:


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> Yesterday I enrolled for the D group licence driving school with the extension valid for trolleybuses. Pray for the people I encounter being behind the steering wheel, especially for their rear mirrors.




Why are you opting for it?


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> volodaaaa said:
> 
> 
> 
> Yesterday I enrolled for the D group licence driving school with the extension valid for trolleybuses. Pray for the people I encounter being behind the steering wheel, especially for their rear mirrors.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Why are you opting for it?
Click to expand...

Several reasons:
1) it has been my dream since the early childhood to become a bus driver. 
2) my employer organises internal driving school which is free of charge for employees. Trolleybuses are basically an extension of buses. Articulated bus with the engine in the trailer (most of current buses) count for D group only, not D+E. 
3) there is a shortage of trolleybus drivers in Bratislava causing that sometimes a service is not provided. I can help. 
4) management with the proper drivers licence often leave for a trip to pick up buses and travel them here. Last time they took a 2 days long trip from Berlin.
5) the trolleybus depot is next to my house so I can take the replacement service, which is not popular because requires a driver sitting in a vehicle waiting for the need for replacement. I can wait home and work for my administrative agenda until called on. 
6) I work as an administrative employee within middle management and I work with IT systems in vehicles including dashboard computers which show drivers they delays, stops, directions, etc. Driving is a way to understand the user's view and see how other drivers react in irregular situations. 
7. My current supervisor let me drive if my work is done and the time will be considered my working time with bonuses. 

It will be up to 15 hours a month but I still think it's a great deal and a lifetime opportunity.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's somewhat popular in the Netherlands for older office workers to get their truck or bus license and drive during the weekends, or shift to a 3-4 day workweek at the office and 1 driving day.

A former justice department minister in the Netherlands is now a consultant and part-time bus driver.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> Yesterday I enrolled for the D group licence driving school with the extension valid for trolleybuses.


Is in Slovakia a D license needed for trolleybuses? 
In Hungary it is not what I find really weird. There are people who may drive a trolleybus but not a diesel one.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> Is in Slovakia a D license needed for trolleybuses?
> In Hungary it is not what I find really weird. There are people who may drive a trolleybus but not a diesel one.


Yes, indeed. But as far as I know, Hungary is an exception. Here, a trolleybus is not considered a road vehicle, *but a rail one using roads* (as you can see, we really like to make easy things complicated :nuts. 

The highway code does not care what kind of vehicle it is, the fact the vehicle is using roads is determining. The 100 % of every route of every trolleybus in Slovakia uses roads. Thus their drivers are supposed to know the highway code. Since the vehicle is more massive than 7500 kg and carries more than eight persons added to a driver, well it is a bus. So a trolleybus driver is supposed to know the same traffic rules as a bus one.

The overhead wires administrator posts other signs that are related to the catenary and requires from the trolleybus driver to know also these signs and rules pertaining the rail.

Now we are slowly getting into trouble. There is a boom of electro buses in Slovakia, while Bratislava plans to buy new "hybrid" trolleybus (outside the track they acts like electro buses). Needless to say that we have already purchased trolleybuses that are capable of driving on diesel.

Where is the line between bus and trolleybus now?


----------



## Kpc21

I noticed that in some countries trolleybuses aren't required to use licence plates, which by the way looks weird, as visually they aren't different from buses, so they – same as buses – have those special places for licence plates, which are in those countries empty.

But it makes some sense – it's rather difficult (although not impossible, we have one private tram in Lodz) for a trolleybus to belong to someone else than the municipal public transport operator, so even without licence plates, they are easily identifiable.

However, a highway code treating trolleybuses as something different from road vehicles? What a nonsense.

In Poland, same as, I guess, also in Slovakia and in most countries, every vehicle on the road (including even trams, the only exception are trains on level crossings) is treated as a road vehicle and driving it requires appropriate permissions described in the highway code.

Yes, we have a category of "rail vehicles" in our highway code, which includes trams and also trains (even though they don't move on roads, they interfere with road traffic, e.g. driving a car you are obliged to switch from high beams to low beams also if there is a railway parallel to the road and there is a train approaching from the opposite – however, this is required even if the road is along a river or a channel and you are passing a boat) – but all the rules and required permissions considering trams (also the special signs and traffic lights for tram drivers) are still defined by the highway code.

It becomes interesting in Germany, where in some places you have tram-trains. One vehicle might be both a tram and a train, but then depending on if it's on a railway or on a road, it is subject to two different sets of regulations. There are even signs notifying the driver about the change of the valid regulations:










At the moment of crossing this sign, a tram becomes a train.

In Poland, an equivalent of driving license for trams is a so called "tram driving permit" – but the procedures related to obtaining it are just analogical to those for obtaining a driving license. Only the name and the appearance are different, but in fact it could just be considered another driving license category and nothing would change.

And the driving part of the state exam doesn't begin in the examination center, as it happens with the exams for a driving licence, but this is just because those centers don't have tram tracks. So it begins in a tram depot, and at first it includes – analogically to our driving licence exams – some basic manoeuvres, after which (after performing them correctly), the person taking the exam drives within the city judged by an official examiner, identically as on a driving licence exam.

Another similar document not being a driving licence is a "bicycle card", officially required for people above 10 and under 18 for cycling on public roads, the exams allowing to get one are organized in primary schools – but this law isn't really enforced. Until recently, you could also get a "moped card", on similar conditions – but it got converted to the AM category of the driving licence (which you are allowed to get if you are over 14). A change related to that is that previously, people over 18 could just drive a moped without any special documents, now – for people born after 18 January 1995 – an AM, any other version of A or B driving license is required.

Talking about trolleybuses, now we have trolleybuses which can travel some distances without catenary plus, of course, we have electric buses, which are powered only from batteries.


----------



## PovilD

In Lithuania, D category is not enough to drive a trolleybus. You need to go to driving school to obtain distinct T category even if you already have D category. I can't recall if this good or bad, but I would find this an obstacle if D category fits for trolleybus driving in other countries.

In our country, public transport is somewhat neglected. I'm thinking that Kaunas might became car capital of Europe because of that. There are a little bit awareness, so there are talks that in 10 years all buses, at least in Kaunas, will be not older than 5 years, while in comparision, Vilnius there are right now still have some buses from early 90s which is unacceptable in my opinion. Kaunas is better in this situation, although there buses 10 years and older. We don't have trams either, but that's another story.

I remember times when there was no license plates on trolleybuses in Kaunas. Now, all trolleybuses have their license plates.

---
Ech, Poland. You can feel proud of yourself for feeling superior to the Baltics (at least some of us)  ...and us, well, being aware about that


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland D category is enough for trolleybuses. In addition, the public transport companies make special courses for the new drivers, but they are short and I don't think they are required by the law.

A trolleybus is just a specific type of a bus.

T category in Poland is for tractors.

But in Poland only three towns have trolleybuses and they aren't that big. We have: Gdynia (pop. 246,000 – although it's a part of a bigger metropolitan area, the center of which is Gdansk), Tychy (pop. 128,211 – again a part of a bigger metropolitan area, the Silesian one) and Lublin (pop. 342,000 – not in a metropolitan area). And this is all.

In Poland the public transport in the cities is not that bad but it's often totally neglected in the rural areas. Although now, finally, on 1 September 2019, the government started a program of subsidizing it and the things are starting to change. But still those are often lines with something like two, three or four departures a day.

And the standard of suburban bus transport are usually minibuses with the seats placed too close to each other (I never understand people complaining about the distance between the seats in Ryanair planes... compared to our minibuses, they are VERY comfortable, while a Ryanair flight often doesn't take much longer than a journey by our suburban minibus), which are often overcrowded and it happens that they take over 10 standing passengers.

So don't think Poland is perfect. I believe you may be doing many things better than us in Lithuania.

Talking about the status of the public transport in Lodz – the problem is that the lobby of car drivers is stronger than the lobby of the passengers and therefore the public transport (including trams) often has to wait in traffic jams and has no priority in the traffic lights. Also the infrastructure and the rolling stock isn't maintained as it should be. A good thing is that our public transport company buys some new buses every few years – but the oldest ones are in such a bad condition that they shouldn't be allowed onto the streets.


----------



## volodaaaa

Suburban transport here is shite. In some regions, you have millions of routes with millions of exceptions serving twice or three times a day with the obligatory entrance with the front door and buying tickets at the driver. It cannot be more stupid because the travel time and the punctuality depend on the number of passengers at stops with a bizarre correlation: the more passengers, the more delays  Also it makes it impossible to share stops with urban transport where the passenger flow is faster.

As for the D category here, you need to have the C (trucks) first. However, a lot of driving schools offer to make C+D at once. To drive a trolleybus, you need the D and the extension to drive it. The extension is valid only for the city where it was issued though. If I moved to another town to drive trolleybuses, I would be obligated to apply for a trolleybus course again. But it is usually included in the qualification development of company staff and thus free of charge.


----------



## PovilD

volodaaaa said:


> As for the D category here, you need to have the C (trucks) first. However, a lot of driving schools offer to make C+D at once. To drive a trolleybus, you need the D and the extension to drive it. The extension is valid only for the city where it was issued though. If I moved to another town to drive trolleybuses, I would be obligated to apply for a trolleybus course again. But it is usually included in the qualification development of company staff and thus free of charge.


In Lithuania, you can have D category without having C category. I heard that you can have trolleybus licenses, but you can't drive a bus, since they are different categories.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland you don't need C to get D. There is also D1, which is enough for minibuses.

However, you need B to get C or D. But you don't need B to get a tram driving permit.

But C or D driving license is not enough for driving a truck/bus for a transportation company. You also need something called entry qualification, which has to be renewed every few years. With C/D driving license only you can only drive such a vehicle just privately for your own.


In Poland we have parliamentary elections today. I already voted. The results should appear at 9 PM... The turnout is likely to be a record, it'll probably be about 60%.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> The turnout is likely to be a record, it'll probably be about 60%.


That is just sad.... :hm:

The most recent Dutch election had an 81.9% turnout, and voting is not compulsory (like in Belgium).


----------



## Kpc21

I don't think it's good if someone who doesn't get a clue about politics goes voting. Then the populists win.


----------



## riiga

Wow, 60 % is really low to me given that we usually have a turnout of 85-90 % (and voting isn't compulsory).


----------



## PovilD

We usually have only 50%. Nobody say that this is good, but what can you do...

I think is applicable in Lithuania too. Bigger turnout = bigger populism (usually).

Post-totalitarian societies are just not as much into politics as Western European counterparts. Usually, many people don't have their clear political views, vote for bigger pay (pension, (minimum) wage), streets renovation and not about values: left, right, conservative, liberal, etc. So all politics end up about material stuff and well being.


----------



## volodaaaa

50 % is considered success here as well. Right now, we are in a circle of decay. The current and decreasing level of politics in Slovakia repels ordinary experts from politics and attracts only attention hoes. No serious business here.


----------



## Kpc21

We have 61%, so it's really a record.

The winner is obvious but it seems possible that they won't be able to have majority alone – and there is no-one sensible who could make a coalition with them.


----------



## Kpc21

It doesn't seem very likely that they won't have a majority. The election mathematics is so weird that with 43% of votes, when only 1% voted for parties which don't enter the parliament, they still get the majority of seats in the parliament.

Actually, they even get several seats more than 4 years ago. 

This is still exit polls, but the final results won't rather change a lot.

Quite a big change is in the opposition, as the left returns to the parliament.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The largest proportion of people are politically disengaged. They may have preferences, but don't turn to social media to showcase or debate them. They can be grouped into two camps; those who do vote (also called the 'silent majority' on many topics) and those who don't vote. Populists often try to win those who usually don't vote.


----------



## Suburbanist

A very odd Brazilian distance sign, from the 1970s 









source


----------



## Kanadzie

I think low voter turnout is good. It means people are comfortable and not worried.

I remember a referendum with like 95% turnout because everyone was scared the other side would win and destroy the world...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> I think low voter turnout is good. It means people are comfortable and not worried.
> 
> I remember a referendum with like 95% turnout because everyone was scared the other side would win and destroy the world...




I had no idea it was that high!
Don’t forget to vote Monday!


----------



## volodaaaa

Kanadzie said:


> I think low voter turnout is good. It means people are comfortable and not worried.
> 
> I remember a referendum with like 95% turnout because everyone was scared the other side would win and destroy the world...


That works unless there is an institute of the quorum for the referendum to be valid.

In some European countries, mine included, the quorum is set so high that if you intend to vote against the suggestions/provisions of the one who proposed the referendum, it is better to ignore it at all.

A brief example:
The quorum in my country is 50 % (that is exceptionally high). Imagine a political party suggesting a referendum on replacing names with numbers.

Your neighbour is all for this and goes vote.
Your other neighbour does not seem to care and as well as the other majority of your country-mates ignores the referendum.

Now you have two options:
- to ignore the referendum being sure that the pro-activists do not form a majority and together would be unable to exceed 50 % or
- to proudly attend the referendum voting for the firm NO but ultimately increasing the chance the referendum would be valid.

The stupid quorum prompts you to speculate. If there, in contrary, was no quorum, the incentives forcing you to vote would overwhelm this strategy.

A fun fact: In 2014 there were communal elections joined with a local referendum in a small town in Slovakia. The ballots were merged into one meaning that eventually the turnout was the same for the elections and the referendum.

The turnout was roughly 23 %, and while the elections were valid and the new mayor was elected, the referendum remained invalid. Common-sense voices asked questions on how is the mayor eligible if the referendum was invalid or why was the referendum invalid if the mayor was elected with the same turnout.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There has been some debate whether turnout would affect outcome at all. 

In the Netherlands it is often said that low turnout (for example due to rainy weather) benefits conservative parties, because their electorate will more reliably vote. However this has been disputed and there is little evidence for it. 

In 2017 there was a 81.9% turnout, with Wilders' PVV winning 20 seats. In 2010 there was a 75.4% turnout with Wilders' PVV winning 24 seats. So a higher turnout did not result in more seats for the populists.


----------



## Attus

Kanadzie said:


> I think low voter turnout is good. It means people are comfortable and not worried.


In several nations there is a limit for turnout. For example 50%, i.e. if the turnout is 49.95%, the voting is invalid, and the result of the voting does not matter at all. 
Just like Voloda wrote, it may be crucial. There was a plebiscit in Hungary several years ago when some parties saw that to get the majority voting against the idea was impossible but to get the voting invalid may be possible. And they made a campaign: don't go to vote! 
The result: 98% (!!!) voted for the idea but the tornout was only 44% so that the voting was invalid.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ The minimum turnout is for the validity of a referendum, but not for a general election I suppose?


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ The minimum turnout is for the validity of a referendum, but not for a general election I suppose?


In Hungary it was changed several times. Currently the minimum turnout is olny for a referendum, for general elections there is no minimum limit. Up to 2010 there used to be such a minimum turnout. However, the turnout was since 1990 always between 56-71% so that having invalid elections was theoretically possible but not realistic.


----------



## Suburbanist

The issue with low turnout is that it benefits single-issue or extremely committed voters who will show up no matter what. Think people who vote for animal rights' parties, more extreme environmental parties, religious niche parties, ultra-libertarian parties etc.


----------



## MichiH

EU fails to deliver on Albania and North Macedonia

Albania and North Macedonia had their hopes dashed after Denmark, France and the Netherlands scuppered any agreement on opening accession talks.


'A grave historic error': Juncker hits out as North Macedonia and Albania have EU bids blocked


----------



## Rebasepoiss

More power to Russia then. But hey, Macron has been flirting with Putin for some time now.


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> A fun fact: In 2014 there were communal elections joined with a local referendum in a small town in Slovakia. The ballots were merged into one meaning that eventually the turnout was the same for the elections and the referendum.
> 
> The turnout was roughly 23 %, and while the elections were valid and the new mayor was elected, the referendum remained invalid. Common-sense voices asked questions on how is the mayor eligible if the referendum was invalid or why was the referendum invalid if the mayor was elected with the same turnout.


We had such a similar case of simultaneous local referendum and local elections in my municipality – but it was separated as much as it could. If I remember well, there were even separate rooms in the polling stations for the elections and for the referendum.




ChrisZwolle said:


> In the Netherlands it is often said that low turnout (for example due to rainy weather) benefits conservative parties, because their electorate will more reliably vote. However this has been disputed and there is little evidence for it.


In Poland, in these elections, it turned out to be vice versa. Although the change wasn't that big.

But maybe simply the conservative parties in the Netherlands are different from those in Poland? Do they offer extensive social programmes, which help the poorer part of the society?

This is, I guess, one of the main reasons that motivated many to vote.




Attus said:


> In Hungary it was changed several times. Currently the minimum turnout is olny for a referendum, for general elections there is no minimum limit. Up to 2010 there used to be such a minimum turnout. However, the turnout was since 1990 always between 56-71% so that having invalid elections was theoretically possible but not realistic.


How did it work if the local elections happened to be invalid? The old authorities (mayor, the council) just remained?

Because in case of parliamentary or presidential elections, I guess, it may work so that the candidates from the specific region (with too low turnout) just don't enter the parliament at all, and the votes for the president from this region aren't counted. But I guess the elections for the municipal authorities may easily get totally invalid that way...


We don't have the turnout quorum for the elections in Poland (we have it in the referenda, like in Slovakia) – but other interesting cases, especially in the local elections, happen. There are cases when only one candidate for the mayor is registered. In the recent local elections, there were 330 such municipalities – and this seems to be quite a lot because it's 13% of all the municipalities (although I suppose those are mostly small and rural-only municipalities with not many citizens). 

Then the mayor is elected like in a referendum – people vote for or against him. To win, he must get more then 50% of the votes. If he doesn't, or if... there are no candidates at all, the mayor is elected by the municipal council.

If the council isn't able to elect the mayor within two months... for this case, there is also a backup. In such a case, the mayor gets chosen by the prime minister. But I don't think it ever happened – although the situations of public elections not taking place for the lack of candidates do happen.

A similar situation may also take place in the elections for the municipal council. In such a case, if there is less (or as many as) candidates than seats, the elections don't take place at all.


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ The minimum turnout is for the validity of a referendum, but not for a general election I suppose?


If less than 50% of voters vote, the current government stays in power. :troll:

Btw, I think I saw a car from China today in Ljubljana. The plate seemed to be blue with some 'weird' characters, and the plate's size was right, but I was too far away to be sure.


----------



## pascalwithvespa95

Verso said:


> If less than 50% of voters vote, the current government stays in power. :troll:
> 
> Btw, I think I saw a car from China today in Ljubljana. The plate seemed to be blue with some 'weird' characters, and the plate's size was right, but I was too far away to be sure.


I saw one in Salzburg last year. It even was a Chinese manufactured car, some weird brand.


----------



## keber

Chinese can drive to Europe, Europeans can't drive to them. I saw a motocycle with Chinese plates last year in Greece.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Just a day in the Netherlands...

Wezep:








https://www.omroepgelderland.nl/nieuws/2427450/Auto-ramt-winkel-in-Hattem-vrouw-raakt-zwaargewond

Brielle:








https://www.rijnmond.nl/nieuws/187465/Auto-ramt-gevel-in-Brielle 

Bergen op Zoom:








https://www.omroepbrabant.nl/nieuws...controle-over-auto-en-rijdt-kerkgebouw-binnen


----------



## Kpc21

Yesterday Polish parliament passed the law making the rules of "life corridor" and "zipper merge" (late merge) obligatory.


----------



## Penn's Woods

So what are we using for photo-sharing these days? Can I upload directly from my cloud (if I can figure out how to get into it)?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I use Flickr for my own photos and imgur for other photos like screenshots. 

But you need to resize it first. Nothing kills interest in your photo more than a 4000 pixel wide original size photo. Though resizing on your phone is not easily done because most social media platforms will auto-resize / compress photos for you. WhatsApp typically reduces photo quality by 80-90%. Facebook and Twitter usually allow original quality but have auto-resizing for app usage. This has become so common on mobile platforms that most standard photo editing apps on a phone don't have an actual resize option anymore (i.e. reduce photo size to a certain pixel width).


----------



## sponge_bob

Penn's Woods said:


> Can I upload directly from my cloud (if I can figure out how to get into it)?


Your personal Dropbox object sharing link will end "dl=0" change that to "dl=1" to embed it in a post here. 

eg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/eaq6n9mxa9i67cj/dbsac.png?dl=0

to 



Code:


[ resize=500]
[IMG]....eaq6n9mxa9i67cj/dbsac.png?dl=1[/IMG]
[ /resize]

becomes


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The resize tag is nice, but it only changes the size of the photo display, the actual filesize remains the same. So if you have like 10 photos of 5 megabytes each, it is still a 50 MB download even if you set the resize tag to 500 pixels. Which is not recommended for mobile usage. That's why WhatsApp physically resizes any photo to 100-300 kb instead of 5 MB, otherwise people would burn through their data plan or have very slow chats in areas with poor cell phone coverage.


----------



## Kpc21

For uploading extensive reports consisting of multiple photos, Polish SSC users (originally kamilost, now skejl) developed an app for automating that. Really many users in our national SSC section use it.

If I remember well, it also has an auto-resize feature. For sure it makes it possible to upload the photos to Imgur or onto own FTP server.

Here is a GitHub page for this project: https://github.com/skalee/fotorelacjonusz

Packages for Linux: https://github.com/skalee/fotorelacjonusz/releases/tag/v3.0.0-alpha3 – unfortunately, there are no packages for Windows available just now, there is just the source code which you can compile. And there are some problems with the compilation due to changes in the Qt library the app uses (the source code is written for the G++ compiler, but seemingly, compiling Qt code on Windows is now no longer possible with G++ and one has to use MS Visual C++, with which, again, the app by itself isn't compatible).

So it looks like:






I am not sure if there is any way of enabling English interface language – but there are some language files in the repository, so in theory it should be possible.

The thread in the Polish SSC section: https://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1539539&page=35


Personally, I use either Imgur, or a server of a Polish forum about electronics – in general, available only for the forum users, but I happen to have an account there.


@ChrisZwolle – sorry for writing it publicly here, but will you answer my PM from Tuesday?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Would it be better for SSC if I did it from my computer than my iPhone? (I’d have to get the photo(s) from my phone to computer. As you can tell, I never do this sort of thing. But I should.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> I use Flickr for my own photos and imgur for other photos like screenshots.
> 
> But you need to resize it first.


Why should you? Flickr does it for you. And I'm sure you know this feature.
E.g. I uploaded this picture in original size (4K). You can see a lot of details in Flickr if you want to. I post it here to the forum in size of 400×300 Pixels, file size is approx. 32kB.
Flickr provides a lot of possible file sizes you can select from in order to find the optimal size.

Der Rhein by Attila Németh, on Flickr


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> Would it be better for SSC if I did it from my computer than my iPhone? (I’d have to get the photo(s) from my phone to computer. As you can tell, I never do this sort of thing. But I should.


Flickr has an app for both iOS and Android so that you can upload photos made by your phone to Flickr. 
And Flickr provides an option to share your photo in Facebook, Twitter, etc. or to create a BB code (that is the code used by SSC) with the similar result like in my previous post. It is not necessery to have your full name displayed if you don't want to. 
Flickr has a limited free service so that you can try it without paying anything.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> Why should you? Flickr does it for you. And I'm sure you know this feature.


I know, but I was referring to image hosts that don't do that. Like imgur or even a direct Facebook photo link.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Winter is making its way into the north:


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Winter is making its way into the north:


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Winter is making its way into the north:


The chart shows how long Norway, Sweden and Finland are in the south-north direction. The temperature differences are 30 degrees between the north and the south.

The autumn in the south has been pretty mild, and the mild weather seems for continue for the next week. Usually, I switch to winter tyres this time a year, but now I plan to drive on summer ones for at least one week from today.


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> The chart shows how long Norway, Sweden and Finland are in the south-north direction. The temperature differences are 30 degrees between the north and the south.
> 
> The autumn in the south has been pretty mild, and the mild weather seems for continue for the next week. Usually, I switch to winter tyres this time a year, but now I plan to drive on summer ones for at least one week from today.


I switched them yesterday. Just to make it sure. Driving with the summer ones had started to be tough especially during the morning dew. I kept on slipping every time I stood uphill and had to accelerate no matter how much I tried to do it gently. Needless to mention fallen leaves on the surface.


----------



## MichiH

We had almost 30°C in southern Germany last Sunday. I usually change my tires in late October or early November but mild temperatures are still forcasted for the next weeks. I do already have an appointment for changing my tires. It's scheduled for November 12. But just because there will be a major inspection and it's easier to get an appointment the date you want, when you ask for it earlier.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> I switched them yesterday. Just to make it sure. Driving with the summer ones had started to be tough especially during the morning dew. I kept on slipping every time I stood uphill and had to accelerate no matter how much I tried to do it gently. Needless to mention fallen leaves on the surface.


Winter tyres in Finland are in most cases studded ones. People avoid switching to them too early in order to protect the roads (and their ears).


----------



## keber

17°C this morning right here. It feels like summer. And the whole week will be like that.


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> 17°C this morning right here. It feels like summer. And the whole week will be like that.


I think my definition of summer is rather different.:cheers:


----------



## keber

17°C in the morning is here the norm for summer only.


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> I think my definition of summer is rather different.:cheers:


Reminds me of two cases:
- Greek students studying medicine here in Bratislava who put trousers and jackets once the temperature drops below 20°C.
- a Russian neighbour of my friend we spent the last New year's eve with. It was chilling -15°C with fog and wind gusts, and she spent the whole night dressed in a miniskirt.

Ah, the weather perception. 17°C is not summer for me either. :lol:


----------



## keber

"_in the morning_" c'mon
You expect at least 25°C in summer mornings? Or rather 35?


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> "_in the morning_" c'mon
> You expect at least 25°C in summer mornings? Or rather 35?


Temperatures in the first half of August here at work in Turin (not Sicily, eh):










17 °C is reached only a couple of times...


----------



## MichiH

Is there an "official" definition of "summer day"? Germans count every day with a maximum temperature of minimum 25°C as a "summer day".


----------



## MattiG

MichiH said:


> Is there an "official" definition of "summer day"? Germans count every day with a maximum temperature of minimum 25°C as a "summer day".


Having a global criteria for such a thing would be quite meaningless.

The Finnish Meteorological Institute, the Authority, has an easy classification:


If the daily average temperature is below zero, it is thermal winter
If the daily average temperature is between 0 and 10 degrees, it is thermal spring or autumn
If the daily average temperature is over 10 degrees, it is thermal summer
The transition needs seven adjacent days to meet the criteria. Thus a sequence of winter-spring-winter-spring-summer is possible and not unusual. 

In addition, if a temperature rises to +25 degrees, it is a hot weather and that day is counted as hot. The number of hot days in 2019 varied from 26 in Hattula (south) and zero in Kilpisjärvi (north), and that is more than in average.










Anything more than +24 is too hot for me. Except sauna.


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> Is there an "official" definition of "summer day"? Germans count every day with a maximum temperature of minimum 25°C as a "summer day".


In official meteorological contexts?


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> Yesterday (Saturday) morning on I-95 southbound in Baltimore. You’re looking at the car directly in front of me. Traffic was crawling, so I didn’t risk life and limb to get this, only a ticket.
> 
> [url]http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n494/mczarphila/5DCF331F-A918-4F97-A684-8E6D195B36F3_zpssheqslsw.jpg[/URL]
> 
> P.S.: Turns out I could use Photobucket. I had an account but thought it had become a paid service. This, I was able to do for free.
> 
> Did this from my phone. I’m in a hotel with weak WiFi. No idea what it looks like on a computer.


Looks like sh.t. Also, trying to look at it at Photobucket site is impossible with AdBlock. I guess it's something about car plates on that Jetta, probably European, right? Spain?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch meteorological institute KNMI also uses 25 °C for a 'summer day'. 20+ is a warm day and 30+ is a tropical day. There is no name for 35+. Or 40+.


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> In official meteorological contexts?


I think so: https://www.dwd.de/DE/service/lexikon/Functions/glossar.html?lv2=102248&lv3=102522



> Ein Sommertag ist ein Tag, an dem das Maximum der Lufttemperatur ≥ 25 °C beträgt.
> A Summer Day is a day when the maximum air temperatuer is ≥ 25 °C.


https://www.dwd.de/DE/service/lexikon/Functions/glossar.html?nn=103346&lv2=101094&lv3=101162



> Ein Heißer Tag ist ein Tag, an dem das Maximum der Lufttemperatur ≥ 30 °C beträgt. Ein Heißer Tag wurde früher auch als Tropentag bezeichnet.
> A Hot Day is a day when the maximum air temperatuer is ≥ 30 °C. A Hot Day was formerly called Tropical Day.


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> I think so: https://www.dwd.de/DE/service/lexikon/Functions/glossar.html?lv2=102248&lv3=102522
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.dwd.de/DE/service/lexikon/Functions/glossar.html?nn=103346&lv2=101094&lv3=101162


I didn't know that.
I looked it up on the net and it appears that MeteoSuisse uses the same definition.
Obviously, no mention of anything like that on the website of Italian meteo agency, our beloved Air Force hno:

I found a definition on a document by Istat, the Italian Institute of Statistics, with data by the Air Force:



> Giorno estivo: giorno in cui la temperatura massima giornaliera è maggiore di 25 gradi centigradi.
> Giorno caldo: giorno in cui la temperatura media giornaliera è maggiore del 90° percentile del valore climatico di riferimento
> Giorno freddo: giorno in cui la temperatura media giornaliera è minore del 10° percentile del valore climatico di riferimento.
> Giorno di gelo: giorno in cui la temperatura minima giornaliera è minore di 0 gradi centigradi.
> Notte tropicale: giorno in cui la temperatura minima giornaliera è maggiore di 20 gradi centigradi
> 
> Summer day: day when daily maximum is higher than 25 °C
> Hot day: day when the daily mean is higher than 90th percentile of reference climatic value
> Cold day: day when the daily mean is lower than 10th percentile of reference climatic value
> Frost day: day when the daily minimum is lower than 0 °C
> Tropical night: day (sic!) when the daily minimum is higher than 20 °C.


It seems that the definition of hot and cold day are different than in other countries. "Valore climatico" is defined as 



> statistical elaboration on a 30-year basis, from 1961 to 1990


----------



## PovilD

MattiG said:


> Having a global criteria for such a thing would be quite meaningless.
> 
> The Finnish Meteorological Institute, the Authority, has an easy classification:
> 
> 
> If the daily average temperature is below zero, it is thermal winter
> If the daily average temperature is between 0 and 10 degrees, it is thermal spring or autumn
> If the daily average temperature is over 10 degrees, it is thermal summer


Kinda strange October here in Lithuania. There were even snowing in some places at the begining of the month (mostly Eastern Lithuania). Now we have "thermal summer" in Finnish standards having high reaching almost 20C (near record temperatures for this time of year). According to forecast, There should be no nights with less than 10C in Kaunas for upcoming 7 days. So the "summer" will continue, although there are forecasted to be colder days at the end of the week (but not nights).

It was like if you preparing for the winter and suddenly the summer pops out, jackets are not needed anymore  ...and it is strange to wear clothes outside like it is Early September - in the end of October.


----------



## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> Looks like sh.t. Also, trying to look at it at Photobucket site is impossible with AdBlock. I guess it's something about car plates on that Jetta, probably European, right? Spain?




I’ll have to play with it more. Sorry about the quality.

Yes, Spain.

I NEVER see European plates on this side of the Atlantic, forgetting about the ones that people “forget” to take off their cars so they can show us that they went to Germany to pick up their Bimmer. That’s about the fourth, in 40-odd years of paying attention.


----------



## PovilD

I found that in Lithuania, so-called meteorological summer is when daily mean is 15C
Tropical nights are when low is above 20C. They are rare in Lithuania, but becoming more and more frequent year by year. They are most frequent on the seaside since the sea makes daily highs and lows not so different, so if the daily mean is above 25C is quite likely to have low not dropping below 20C.

In the past few days we were somewhat in the middle between autumn and summer in Lithuanian standards which is rare for the end of October. I would add that most trees are completely covered in yellowish gray colors, which makes even landscape look very unusual for such weather phenomena.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PovilD said:


> Tropical nights are when low is above 20C. They are rare in Lithuania, but becoming more and more frequent year by year.


The Netherlands uses the same standards. They are more common in cities due to the 'urban heat island' effect, which may result in 3-5 degrees higher overnight temperatures than in rural areas. 

The Netherlands also has some terminology for subzero temperatures;

Below 0 °C: light frost
Below -5 °C: medium frost
Below -10 °C: strong frost
Below -15 °C: very strong frost

They also use the term 'frosty day' if the temperature drops below 0 °C (which occurs around 50 days per year) and an 'ice day' if the maximum temperature stays below 0 °C, which is relatively rare. 

Dutch winters tend to be variable due to the oceanic climate and predominantly southwest circulation from the Atlantic. 1 or 2 weeks of easterly circulation usually results in much colder weather than average.


----------



## Suburbanist

I was chatting with an engineer colleague who works on off-shore wind projects. She had some very interesting stuff regarding latest-generation very long blades (i.e. >100m).


----------



## PovilD

Winters in The Baltics are the mix between Russian winter and oceanic Western European winter. Weather is very unpredictable here. There are some pro-longed periods of winter weather when temperature doesn't stay above freezing for weeks (but usually not over a month) with occasional snow. Sometimes cold waves come from The Arctics and Siberia with highs not above -10 degrees. They sometimes last for a few days or 1-2 weeks with little precipitation. There are sometimes periods when temperatures usually stay above freezing, but only few degrees Celsius. All snow can melt in mid-winter. Mostly because from the Atlantic cyclones and south west winds which bring warmer winters to Western Europe. Temperatures above 6 degrees Celsius are rare at least in January and early February. January record is +12 degrees, recorded in 2007. I remember that quite well, although I was a kid back then, it was interesting for me  There was entire month without snow and no White Christmas. Some colder weather occured only at the end of January with February being more wintery. I think 2008 was the year without winter in Lithuanian standards, there was exclusively oceanic weather with snow cover becoming a rarity. More recent winters were not as bad.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> I was chatting with an engineer colleague who works on off-shore wind projects. She had some very interesting stuff regarding latest-generation very long blades (i.e. >100m).


Are there physical limitations in regards to wind turbines? They're planning 265 meter high wind turbines in Flevoland province in the Netherlands - on land.


----------



## masala

Verso said:


> Greetings from Saint Petersburg. This is my first time in Russia and the first time in my life I need a visa


Saint-Petersburg also offers e-visas since the beginning of the October.


----------



## Kiweh

Auckland to NYC is over 3 hours less than Sydney to NYC. They are on a similar latitude, but Auckland is much farther East. 

I flew Air New Zealand from CHC to AKL, AKL to IAH then on a United Codeshare to MCO. 
On the way back I flew with American from MCO to LAX and then American again to SYD before jumping onto Qantas (Codeshare) back to CHC.

It was far, far more exhausting on the way back and I got fined 400$ in Christchurch because I had a a tiny piece of burrito that I forgot about.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kiweh said:


> Auckland to NYC is over 3 hours less than Sydney to NYC. They are on a similar latitude, but Auckland is much farther East.


It seems very common in Europe and perhaps North America to underestimate how far New Zealand is from Australia. Many people seem to think it's 'just off the coast of Australia', while in reality Auckland is 2200 kilometers east of Sydney, a distance similar to Washington to Denver or London to Kiev.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> It seems very common in Europe and perhaps North America to underestimate how far New Zealand is from Australia. Many people seem to think it's 'just off the coast of Australia', while in reality Auckland is 2200 kilometers east of Sydney, a distance similar to Washington to Denver or London to Kiev.


And Pacific Ocean generally. I have now tried some antipodes points, I knew for my city it was somewhere in the ocean east of New Zealand. I have pointed Zwolle, it is still somewhere in the ocean east of New Zealand


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Another misconception is that Hawaii is west of California, while it is considerably farther south, about 1200 kilometers south of San Diego in latitude. 

Hawaii is also much farther out in the Pacific than people think, New York is closer to Los Angeles than Honolulu is.

You get a good idea how large the Pacific Ocean is if you turn Google Earth to that region. It almost fills up the entire sphere.


----------



## MattiG

Kiweh said:


> Auckland to NYC is over 3 hours less than Sydney to NYC. They are on a similar latitude, but Auckland is much farther East.


The great circle distance NYC-Auckland is 14190 km and NYC-Sydney 15980 km, thus making a difference of 1790 km.

Great circle math is interesting. The NYC and Perth are quite close to be antipodes: the distance is 18700 km. The great circle route between those cities goes quite north: The initial course at NYC is 315 degrees true, i.e. northwest, and the route climbs up to the south coast of Alaska before gradually turning southwest.


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> How close to France was this?


It depends whether it's Nordrhein-Westfallen or Rheinland-Pfalz but the latter is just at the border with France. And if I'm not mistaken, it even used to be French in some periods in the past.

Nordrhein-Westfallen is at the border with Belgium and the Netherlands. So closer to the origin of French fries (which are actually Belgian).



Attus said:


> Black forest. Between 0 and 60 km to the French border.


So actually Baden, isn't it? Yeah, still close to France.

Very nice landscapes!


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Another misconception is that Hawaii is west of California, while it is considerably farther south, about 1200 kilometers south of San Diego in latitude.
> 
> Hawaii is also much farther out in the Pacific than people think, New York is closer to Los Angeles than Honolulu is.
> 
> You get a good idea how large the Pacific Ocean is if you turn Google Earth to that region. It almost fills up the entire sphere.


From this distance it's virtually 50% of the entire globe. I heard there are antipodes on the same Pacific Ocean.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> It seems very common in Europe and perhaps North America to underestimate how far New Zealand is from Australia. Many people seem to think it's 'just off the coast of Australia', while in reality Auckland is 2200 kilometers east of Sydney, a distance similar to Washington to Denver or London to Kiev.




I know that, but I figured they’d be roughly comparable distances from New York.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> It depends whether it's Nordrhein-Westfallen or Rheinland-Pfalz but the latter is just at the border with France. And if I'm not mistaken, it even used to be French in some periods in the past.


Rheinland-Pfalz was under French occupation from 1945. I'm not aware of anything else. However, Saarland belonged to France several times. Last time by 31 December 1956.



Kpc21 said:


> So actually Baden, isn't it? Yeah, still close to France.


The state is called Baden-Württemberg, yes. Since he indicated Black Forest, it could be Baden or Württemberg-Hohenzollern when you look at the state names before 1952.


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> Rheinland-Pfalz was under French occupation from 1945. I'm not aware of anything else.


Napoleonic wars. Everything west of the Rhine was occupied and later annexed by France. It was quite a short period (occupied from 1792-93, annexed between 1801-14). 

Map administrative divisions of the First French Empire 1812-de
Dep-fr.svg: The original uploader was Andrei nacu at English Wikipedia.
derivative work: Ziegelbrenner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The current state of Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz) has some parts the the right (Eastern) side of the Rhine ,but most of the state is on the left (Western) side, and was occupied and annexed by France in that time.

Rhineland-Palatinate, administrative divisions - de - colored
TUBS [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons


----------



## MichiH

^^ There was a time it was the other way round. Or let's say.... Everything* was kind of Franconian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francia 

Today's France, Germany, Switzerland, Benelux,...


----------



## Verso

masala said:


> Saint-Petersburg also offers e-visas since the beginning of the October.


I know, but not Moscow where I'm also going. Speaking of it, I forgot to mention we're returning in the same stupid way: Moscow-Munich-Trieste-Ljubljana instead of taking a direct flight between Moscow and Ljubljana. :nuts:


----------



## MichiH

^^ yep, economical but not ecological. Today's preference.


----------



## CNGL

My most ridiculous trip was more ecological, as I took a train from Huesca to Madrid, then another to Alicante (which is about the same longitude than my hometown). I returned home by car, and thus on a more direct route. 


MichiH said:


> ^^ There was a time it was the other way round. Or let's say.... Everything* was kind of Franconian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francia
> 
> Today's France, Germany, Switzerland, Benelux,...


Fun fact: An article named "Francia" also exists in the Spanish Wikipedia, but it is about modern-day France. The Spanish equivalent to that article is named _Reino de los francos en la época merovingia_, lit. "Kingdom of the Franks in Merovingian epoch".


----------



## volodaaaa

During the other days, I have come across Einstein's relativity theory. I remember I learned something about it during my high-school years, but since the teachers we had could not have found an exciting way how to prompt us to imagine the things, the stupid learning of general formulas just bored me to death.

That said, I got interested in this theory, time dilatation, etc. and I will stop here. All I thought of momentarily was this forum and a question on if the person moving relatively faster to the others, which is affected less by time, lives longer. Such as lorry drivers or pilots. 

All I found is that they do, but the difference is in nanoseconds in case of drivers and maybe milliseconds in case of pilots (who travel faster most of their life) but this is negatively compensated by increased radiation, which is in some way fantastic that they die biologically younger, but most of them do not know it, because their lifespan is measured from the perspective of the ground time.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Since there is spacetime, being near a heavy object also makes you live longer (since time runs slower near heavy masses as they pull the continuum towards them) but it's all relative and in relation to what. In theory time on Venus runs slower compaired to on Earth since a)it moves faster around the sun and b) the shear mass of the Sun slows time the closer you get.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> It seems very common in Europe and perhaps North America to underestimate how far New Zealand is from Australia. Many people seem to think it's 'just off the coast of Australia', while in reality Auckland is 2200 kilometers east of Sydney, a distance similar to Washington to Denver or London to Kiev.


But it does not have to be the ignorance or lack of geography knowledge. It is called the cognitive perception of a distance.

It has several variables:
- your experience and its frequency (it feels different if exists or not or how frequent you travel is),
- the purpose (it feels different to go on holiday and commute to work),
- the means of transport (it feels different to travel the same distance on the bike or by the aircraft),
- the distance of point A and point B from your current location.

Compare the 30 km in your suburban area for daily commuting by your car on a congested road with a holiday road trip on New Zealand from north to south. 

I remember my geography professor, who is a famous person in a field at least within the V4 region who once tried to describe me the new location of his favourite PhD student who moved to live to the USA. He told me she moved to the close vicinity of Pittsburgh. She opted Kansas City which is very similar to me saying that I live nearby of Berlin :nuts:

The other thing is the perception of time (of travel):

Two years ago I had to travel frequently to the city located 200 km away by train. The first journey took like years. Now when I go to this city, it feels like a little longer commuting.

I guess I just got bored and the route became well-known to my brain:


----------



## volodaaaa

joshsam said:


> Since there is spacetime, being near a heavy object also makes you live longer (since time runs slower near heavy masses as they pull the continuum towards them) but it's all relative and in relation to what. In theory time on Venus runs slower compaired to on Earth since a)it moves faster around the sun and b) the shear mass of the Sun slows time the closer you get.


Of course, it is relative. If you had a year-long internship on a planet revolving around a supermassive black-hole you would return to Earth after 400 years of time on the Earth. But it would not mean that you would be biologically 400 years old.


----------



## Spookvlieger

The plot of the movie interstellar rests on this fact.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Another misconception is that Hawaii is west of California, while it is considerably farther south, about 1200 kilometers south of San Diego in latitude.


Apropos Hawaii.

It lies on the timezone UTC-10 hours. About 2000 km directly south, there is the island of Kiritimati, or Christmas Island. It belongs to the Republic of Kiribati, and its timezone is UTC+14 hours. Therefore, the clocks on Hawaii and Kiritimati show the same time, but Kiritimati is 24 hours ahead. So they have a different date.

Kiritimati, BTW, has four villages: Tabwakea, London, Banana, and Poland. The fifth one, Paris, has been abandoned.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MattiG said:


> Apropos Hawaii.
> 
> 
> 
> It lies on the timezone UTC-10 hours. About 2000 km directly south, there is the island of Kiritimati, or Christmas Island. It belongs to the Republic of Kiribati, and its timezone is UTC+14 hours. Therefore, the clocks on Hawaii and Kiritimati show the same time, but Kiritimati is 24 hours ahead. So they have a different date.
> 
> 
> 
> Kiritimati, BTW, has four villages: Tabwakea, London, Banana, and Poland. The fifth one, Paris, has been abandoned.




Is Kiribati the place that shifted itself across the date line in the late 1990s so it would be the first place to move into the new millennium?


----------



## MattiG

Penn's Woods said:


> Is Kiribati the place that shifted itself across the date line in the late 1990s so it would be the first place to move into the new millennium?


Kiribati made the shift on Dec 31st, 1994. Effectively, they went from 29th to 31st skipping the 30th day.

The reason was practical. As the west part of the country was at UTC+11 and the east part at UTC-10 and UTC-11, it was somewhat impractical to have different dates in the east and in the west. In such a country, there are only four days a week of common office hours. 

The millenium thing was a consequence, and it brought some number of tourists to the eastern islands. 

And then the most important thing: East Kiribati lies on the western hemisphere and West Kiribati on the eastern one.


----------



## MichiH

Germany seems to have an open mind to guys with guns in the public:

Machine guns openly displayed on a tram in Karlsruhe; Arabic-speaking men handling machine guns in a tram? Passengers simply look the other way. (Story is confirmed by German media and police)


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> Germany seems to have an open mind to guys with guns in the public:
> 
> Machine guns openly displayed on a tram in Karlsruhe; Arabic-speaking men handling machine guns in a tram? Passengers simply look the other way. (Story is confirmed by German media and police)




Oy!

(Contrary to what many outside the U.S. believe about us, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a gun in public not carried by the police. On the other hand, I’ve never been to, say, Texas.)


----------



## mgk920

Penn's Woods said:


> Oy!
> 
> (Contrary to what many outside the U.S. believe about us, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a gun in public not carried by the police. On the other hand, I’ve never been to, say, Texas.)


I've seen armed private security guards, especially ones working with armored couriers.

Also, before being abandoned by the Post Office in the 1960s, clerks working on RPOs ('Railway Post Office' cars) were required to carry holstered sidearms as part of their standard gear and be qualified in their use. There was a LOT of valuable stuff in those cars and they were often well away from help in case of criminal attack.

Mike


----------



## MichiH

mgk920 said:


> I've seen armed private security guards, especially ones working with armored couriers.


I've seen them in shopping centers. In US and Europe. But very rarely.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kiribati is evidently pronounced like 'kiri-bas'.


----------



## Suburbanist

Today I read that, in Switzerland, the severity (financial or even criminal) liability of running a red light is different depending on the length of red light at time of violation.

The standard fine is CHF 250, I believe for the typical case of "just missed the yellow phase". It can be increased (up to CHF 1500 or so IIRC) if the violation happens with >10 seconds of a red light in place. It could become a criminal infraction in the case of a high-speed non-stop running of a red light long in place.

Fines for trucks blocking public transportation lanes are also massive, this often affects foreign drivers/trucks who are oblivious to the fact that you cannot just block tram tracks for unloading even if it takes just 10-15min, unless you get special permissions for such thing. I don't know if this is a common thin in Eastern European countries where many foreign trucks (arguably also their drivers) come from (blocking shared lanes with tram tacks to unload trucks at night, assuming there are no trams running at 23.00 or midnight or so).


----------



## MichiH

Suburbanist said:


> Today I read that, in Switzerland, the severity (financial or even criminal) liability of running a red light is different depending on the length of red light at time of violation.


Isn't it standard?

German fines are as follows:

Fine for passing red light: 90 €
Fine for passing red light <1s and causing a collission: 200 €
Fine for passing red light <1s and endanger anyone: 200 €

Fine for passing red light >1s: 200 €
Fine for passing red light >1s and causing a collission: 320 €
Fine for passing red light >1s and endanger anyone: 360 €

When the lights are red for less than 1s, it's called "simple violation of red lights".
When the lights are red for more than 1s, it's called "qualified violation of red lights" - not sure how to translate "qualifiziert", dictionary also suggests "eligible", "professional" or "skilled" 

https://www.bussgeldkatalog.org/rote-ampel/


----------



## italystf

In Italy there is no such difference, even running with late orange (that turns red after the stopping line but still inside the intersection), may lead to a fine, if it's detected by a camera.


----------



## x-type

In Croatian law there is nowhere written that passing on amber light is strictly forbidden, so you can easily beat it on court.


----------



## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> Fines for trucks blocking public transportation lanes are also massive, this often affects foreign drivers/trucks who are oblivious to the fact that you cannot just block tram tracks for unloading even if it takes just 10-15min, unless you get special permissions for such thing. I don't know if this is a common thin in Eastern European countries where many foreign trucks (arguably also their drivers) come from (blocking shared lanes with tram tacks to unload trucks at night, assuming there are no trams running at 23.00 or midnight or so).


Here in Poland, it's quite common to block public transport lanes... Unfortunately.

But on the other hand, there are cases when it's difficult not to.

I mean, look here: https://goo.gl/maps/E6Eqsnn2B1gxQGsAA

You want to turn left. It's the morning rush hour, so the rightmost lane is permanently full of cars. Should you wait forever and possibly block someone who would like to turn right? I don't know but from my perspective it's much better to turn left and block the PT lane (the best option – to drive on the PT lane up to the last moment when you just have to change the lane – before the tram stop, then you block the tram less) for a short moment until someone on the right lane lets you in (which he is then much more likely to do), even though it's illegal, rather then to follow the law and wait forever, blocking the exit of this small street.


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> I've seen armed private security guards, especially ones working with armored couriers.
> 
> Also, before being abandoned by the Post Office in the 1960s, clerks working on RPOs ('Railway Post Office' cars) were required to carry holstered sidearms as part of their standard gear and be qualified in their use. There was a LOT of valuable stuff in those cars and they were often well away from help in case of criminal attack.
> 
> Mike




I guess I’d include those under police. But we don’t have constant shootouts on every corner, which apparently is the impression some people get of us.
Actually, the most intimidating display of guns I’ve ever seen was in a Paris train station on Bastille Day.


----------



## Kpc21

Meanwhile, in the last days, the problem of too low fines for breaking traffic laws finally started being publicly discussed.

Many of those amounts weren't updated since... 1997!



mlodyy1985 said:


>


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*T-Mobile*

ISP T-Mobile began to route internet traffic from Dutch subscribers through nodes in Germany (Nürnberg and Frankfurt), instead of Amsterdam. This means that T-Mobile subscribers are basically connected to the German internet. 

Subscribers have reported a significant drop in internet quality due to this. Latency has increased to 80 - 100 ms instead of 5 -10 ms and many have reported a significant degradation in fiber optic speed, some not reaching even 10% of their normal speed. 

I also have a T-Mobile subscription, if they don't improve this I will cancel it. My internet speed is still decent but connectivity (lag) is slower at times.


----------



## Kpc21

The main ISP in Poland (Orange – formerly Polish Telecom) has always had such problems...

There are moments (now it's rare but it still happens) when it's impossible to watch YouTube, unless... you connect via a proxy somewhere abroad.


----------



## g.spinoza

First ticket for improper use of electric mono-scooter in Turin.
The guy was fined 1079 € for lack of registration certificate (154), license plate (76) and insurance (849). He also didn't wear a helmet and was riding on a bicycle path, but the traffic wardens overlooked those.

https://torino.repubblica.it/cronac...ino_prima_multa_per_un_monopattino-239754090/


----------



## Verso

Today I saw a car from Armenia in St. Petersburg and even one from Abkhazia.


----------



## Kpc21

g.spinoza said:


> First ticket for improper use of electric mono-scooter in Turin.
> The guy was fined 1079 € for lack of registration certificate (154), license plate (76) and insurance (849). He also didn't wear a helmet and was riding on a bicycle path, but the traffic wardens overlooked those.
> 
> https://torino.repubblica.it/cronac...ino_prima_multa_per_un_monopattino-239754090/


So your law treats this type of scooters as mopeds?

In Poland we have two popular interpretations, they are either mopeds (without homologation – so they can't be used on public roads), or their users are pedestrians. The first one seems to be more in line with law but the latter is usually expressed by official authorities.

There are plans of introducing new law that will make it obligatory for them to ride on cycling paths, or on sidewalks if there is no cycling path, with the maximum speed of 30 km/h.


----------



## g.spinoza

Greetings from Oslo. I hope I can see Munch museum before the end of the conference...


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Greetings from Oslo. I hope I can see Munch museum before the end of the conference...




Well, if you don’t get to see it, don’t scream about it.

Sorry. Couldn’t resist.


----------



## tfd543

Is it cold spino ?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Do we have a toll-roads thread? It might be worthwhile.

Anyhow, here’s news:

https://www.fox29.com/news/pennsylvania-turnpike-plans-to-be-cashless-by-fall-2021


----------



## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> Is it cold spino ?


Around 0 °C, something less. Nothing unbearable. 

Fortunately the conference venue is the same hotel I'm in, so I don't even have to get out into the cold at all


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> Isn't it so that she is mentally ill and she actually just says what they tell her to say?


*WHAT?*

She carries a diagnosed Asperger syndrome. It is not mental but about neurology, nor it is a disease but rather an attribute. The impact varies a lot from person to another.

Its diagnosis was statistics-based: If the person meets some 20 of the 30 criteria then the diagnosis may be granted. Because of such a vague diagnosis procedure, it has been dropped from the DSM-5 taxonomy. Instead, the wording "autism spectrum" is in use.

Isaac Newton, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Albert Einstein, Alan Turing, Marie Curie, and Abraham Lincoln, for instance, have been said to have been aspies because of their behavior. No diagnosis, of course.


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> Greetings from Oslo. I hope I can see Munch museum before the end of the conference...


The Munchmuseet has (partially) closed AFAIK. It will reopen in a grand new building next year.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

ChrisZwolle said:


> What was the weather like? Autumn is tricky in that part of France, there are often severe rainfall events on the southeast side of the Cévennes (Herault, Gard, Ardèche) during October. There are often flash floods.


Yeah, there was a pretty bad storm in that area (two people died in Herault I think) as I was travelling down two weeks ago. At that point I was in the Limoges area, and arrived in Carcassonne the day after the heavy rainfall. The railways between Toulouse, Béziers and Perpignan were cut.


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> The Munchmuseet has (partially) closed AFAIK. It will reopen in a grand new building next year.


I don't think it closed, on the contrary, they have an exposition called "Everything we own", so now the whole collection is on display, just before closure and reopening in the new building.


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> *WHAT?*


It was enough to explain.

"She is not mentally ill, she has Asparger" would be enough 

It's sufficient to inform me that my previous sources were wrong.


----------



## g.spinoza

Just came back from dinner at the Italian embassy - in the city center, of course and of course, a lot of electric cars around. I am under the impression that it's mainly a city center thing, and going just a little bit outside you find the same cars you see anywhere else. When I got out of my hotel, at Fornebu, I heard the roar of a 6-cylinder BMW M3 and the explosions from its exhaust...


----------



## Kanadzie

@kpc21
I think it is interesting though, since one of the major presentations of Asperger's is a kind of intense interest or obsession on a particular subject, her attention to (and inflexible attitude towards) climate change in particular makes sense in relation to that, nobody telling her what to say, she is certainly telling everyone herself. 

We probably have more than few members here who have similar obsession of motoways though so we can't throw stones, too hard


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> ....
> 
> We probably have more than few members here who have similar obsession of motoways though so we can't throw stones, too hard



LOL!

Oh, boy, I was going to comment on my own...let’s call them interests...but I think I won’t after all.


----------



## keber

Penn's Woods said:


> Do we have a toll-roads thread? It might be worthwhile.
> 
> Anyhow, here’s news:
> 
> https://www.fox29.com/news/pennsylvania-turnpike-plans-to-be-cashless-by-fall-2021


I'm currently on Florida, having a vacation and driving on non tolled roads with my rental car. Up to now I drove maybe about 150 miles on motorways out of 800 as many tolls are unmanned and cashless which makes expensive additional cost with rental cars. Thankfully really impressive Sunshine skyway bridge across Tampa bay could be paid in cash (for just $1.50 - an amazing bargain for Europeans).

I hope someday the tolls in US will have unified systems for making easier to us tourists.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keber said:


> I'm currently on Florida, having a vacation and driving on non tolled roads with my rental car. Up to now I drove maybe about 150 miles on motorways out of 800 as many tolls are unmanned and cashless which makes expensive additional cost with rental cars. Thankfully really impressive Sunshine skyway bridge across Tampa bay could be paid in cash (for just $1.50 - an amazing bargain for Europeans).
> 
> I hope someday the tolls in US will have unified systems for making easier to us tourists.




One of the comments on one of the Facebook posts I’ve read about the Pennsylvania situation from local media was asking how they’re going to handle rentals, particularly from out-of-state.

Enjoy your trip!


----------



## CNGL

MattiG said:


> *WHAT?*


The same I say, "What?" in the largest size possible, all caps and bolded xD.


MattiG said:


> She carries a diagnosed Asperger syndrome. It is not mental but about neurology, nor it is a disease but rather an attribute. The impact varies a lot from person to another.
> 
> Its diagnosis was statistics-based: If the person meets some 20 of the 30 criteria then the diagnosis may be granted. Because of such a vague diagnosis procedure, it has been dropped from the DSM-5 taxonomy. Instead, the wording "autism spectrum" is in use.
> 
> Isaac Newton, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Albert Einstein, Alan Turing, Marie Curie, and Abraham Lincoln, for instance, have been said to have been aspies because of their behavior. No diagnosis, of course.


And so I am, and thus I can understand why she has an obsession with climate change. I decided to adopt the "autism spectrum disorder" wording not only because of the vague diagnosis procedure, but also because Hans Asperger collaborated with the Nazi regime on a disabled children extermination program, and nazi-related eponyms are frowned upon. Even though he maybe didn't have any other option. However I've read he saved children with the disorder still known after him, as he noticed they were capable of doing everthing everyone else does.

Of course, all of this hasn't stopped me from making fun of the inhabitants of Asperg, a town located just North of Stuttgart.


----------



## mgk920

CNGL said:


> The same I say, "What?" in the largest size possible, all caps and bolded xD.
> 
> 
> And so I am, and thus I can understand why she has an obsession with climate change. I decided to adopt the "autism spectrum disorder" wording not only because of the vague diagnosis procedure, but also because Hans Asperger collaborated with the Nazi regime on a disabled children extermination program, and nazi-related eponyms are frowned upon. Even though he maybe didn't have any other option. However I've read he saved children with the disorder still known after him, as he noticed they were capable of doing everthing everyone else does.
> 
> Of course, all of this hasn't stopped me from making fun of the inhabitants of Asperg, a town located just North of Stuttgart.


Ditto others like Werner von Braun (Father of NASA and the guy who made it possible for the Apollo moon missions of a half-century ago to be the successes that they were) and the fact (back on topic) that today we have these incredibly well engineered and handy highways that tie so much of the World together.

I do everything that I can to separate the politics from the infrastructure.

Mike


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> Just came back from dinner at the Italian embassy - in the city center, of course and of course, a lot of electric cars around. I am under the impression that it's mainly a city center thing, and going just a little bit outside you find the same cars you see anywhere else. When I got out of my hotel, at Fornebu, I heard the roar of a 6-cylinder BMW M3 and the explosions from its exhaust...


There are a lot of electric cars in Norway for sure, but if you go outside the urban areas their share drops, you see mostly Teslas across the mountains.

EVs have an extraordinary amount of incentives in Norway: electricity is cheap (hydropower), parking is/was often free, no tolls, sometimes you can use the bus lanes (though they are restricting that more and more) and the taxes on the car itself are very low. Though they are now gradually imposing a discounted tax in Norway, as opposed to no taxes at all. EVs are now starting to pay tolls and road taxes, though at a much lower rate than others.

I wonder how high EV penetration is among those who don't have access to a company car. In the Netherlands you can drive a Tesla Model 3 as a company car for an extraordinary low cost, but € 45000 is far beyond the reach of most private consumers who have to purchase their own car.


----------



## Penn's Woods

A conference in Oslo, eh?

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/...security-reasons-n1075946?cid=sm_npd_nn_fb_ma


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder how high EV penetration is among those who don't have access to a company car. In the Netherlands you can drive a Tesla Model 3 as a company car for an extraordinary low cost, but € 45000 is far beyond the reach of most private consumers who have to purchase their own car.


It is not that advantageous to drive a leased company-owned car. The imputed personal benefit is 30% of the car price per year (normal cars), 18% for EVs (60% reduction). This benefit becomes taxable income.

more info: https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/Rates/Car-rates---company-cars/


> The benefit of private use of a company car is set to 30% of the car's list price as new, up to NOK 308,500 and 20 per cent of the excess list price.
> 
> The basis for the calculation according to the previous paragraph is normally 100 per cent of the car’s list price as new. However, the calculation is based on just 75 percent of the car's list price as new if:
> 
> * the car is more than three years old as of 1 January of the income year, or
> * the taxpayer can substantiate more than 40,000 km of job-related driving during the income year.
> 
> In the case of electric cars the basis for the calculation is only 60 per cent of the car’s list price as new.
> 
> If the car is more than three years old as of 1 January of the income year and the taxpayer can substantiate more than 40,000 km of job-related driving during the income year, the calculation is based on 56.25 per cent of the car's list price as new.
> 
> If a car that is over three years old as of 1 January of the income year is an electric car, the calculation will be based on 45 per cent of the car's list price as new.
> 
> In cases combining an electric car and a taxpayer who can substantiate more than 40,000 km of job-related driving during the income year, the calculation will be based on 60 per cent of the car’s list price as new.
> 
> If you were a member of a company car scheme for part of the income year, the benefit taxation will be proportional to the number of months or part thereof during which the car was available to you.


----------



## g.spinoza

Thanks Penn's.
I didn't want to hijack the topic, soory about that.
I just want to offer my sympathies to Verso.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Thanks Penn's.
> I didn't want to hijack the topic, soory about that.
> I just want to offer my sympathies to Verso.




I think we should keep calling him Road_SLO


----------



## mgk920

g.spinoza said:


> Spine as in higher back?
> I've suffered from lower back pain for 20 years*. Personally I don't really remember a day in the last 10 years or so without it. Sometimes I barely feel it, but I know it's there. Sometimes I feel like a knife in me. Last times it lasted two full weeks.
> 
> * A question for Penn's or other English native speakers.
> The literal Italian translation of "I've suffered from lower back pain for 20 years" implies "but I don't anymore". Is that the same in English? Is there a way to distinguish between something that still is from something that was in the past but is no more, just by using different tenses?


In English, "I've suffered...." and "I've been suffering...." are pretty much the same, meaning that that condition has existed for the past 20 years and likely continues to exist. Adding a statement like ", but not anymore", ", but now it's gone", etc, at the end of it will clarify it to mean that that condition is in the past. Otherwise, either would likely be interpreted by the listener to mean that it is still ongoing.

IMHO, Surel's reply is the best one, though.

Mike


----------



## volodaaaa

I think the present perfect is used when you want to stress the quantity while the present perfect continuous when you want to stress duration.

I have tasted pizza for 6 times vs I have been tasting pizza over the last 15 minutes. 

Maybe not a credible example but...


----------



## Spookvlieger

You are right but sometimes it's hard to get all the nuances if your not native English speaker.
If you just say. "I've been tasting pizza." Or "I've tasted pizza" without adding a time or quantity in the sentence the difference in meaning differs only subtle. The first one means in the past you've tasted pizza, that could be just minutes ago but also a lifetime ago, that could be 1 time or 30 times -but you are still in the tasting fase, the tasting never ended. The second means that you are still tasting pizza right now as wel as in the past, implicating a long(er) ongoing process of tasting pizza. Both implicate though that you haven't settled your mind on the taste of pizza - yet.

I've tasted pizza but I don't like it. (Somewhere in the past for x times)
I've been tasting pizza but I don't like it.
(Tasting for x times over x amount of time)

But in the first sentence you can easly add time perception by adding a clause, wich is what first started this discussion.


----------



## Kpc21

mgk920 said:


> In English, "I've suffered...." and "I've been suffering...." are pretty much the same, meaning that that condition has existed for the past 20 years and likely continues to exist. Adding a statement like ", but not anymore", ", but now it's gone", etc, at the end of it will clarify it to mean that that condition is in the past. Otherwise, either would likely be interpreted by the listener to mean that it is still ongoing.
> 
> IMHO, Surel's reply is the best one, though.
> 
> Mike


Can I add "but not any more" to "I've been suffering"?


----------



## Penn's Woods

joshsam said:


> You are right but sometimes it's hard to get all the nuances if your not native English speaker.
> If you just say. "I've been tasting pizza." Or "I've tasted pizza" without adding a time or quantity in the sentence the difference in meaning differs only subtle. The first one means in the past you've tasted pizza, that could be just minutes ago but also a lifetime ago, that could be 1 time or 30 times -but you are still in the tasting fase, the tasting never ended. The second means that you are still tasting pizza right now as wel as in the past, implicating a long(er) ongoing process of tasting pizza. Both implicate though that you haven't settled your mind on the taste of pizza - yet.
> 
> I've tasted pizza but I don't like it. (Somewhere in the past for x times)
> I've been tasting pizza but I don't like it.
> (Tasting for x times over x amount of time)
> 
> But in the first sentence you can easly add time perception by adding a clause, wich is what first started this discussion.




Absolutely right!

One other difference (in the back-pain example) between “I’ve suffered...” and “I’ve been suffering...” is that it’s easier to hear the difference between “I’ve been suffering...” and “I suffered...” than between “I’ve suffered...” and “I suffered...”. If I haven’t lost you all. 

So where does this leave us?

“I suffered back pain for 20 years” implies that you don’t have it any more.

“I’ve suffered back pain” with no time reference means that it’s something you’ve experienced, whether you still do or not.

“I’ve suffered back pain for 20 years” implies that you still do.

“I’ve been suffering back pain for 20 years” means the same as the previous example, but - maybe - puts more emphasis on it. I might favor the “have been” form if it’s constant, and the other form if it’s off and on....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> Can I add "but not any more" to "I've been suffering"?




That doesn’t sound right.

Maybe “I’d suffered back pain for 20 years but then I discovered this new treatment....”. “I’d” = “I had”. I guess you’d call that (because it’s been decades since I actually needed to use this terminology) the past perfect?


----------



## Penn's Woods

This brings to mind something I’ve seen a couple of times on Facebook. Apparently English has very complex rules for arranging multiple adjectives around the same noun. Which we never learn (I’d literally never heard of this) because we just pick it up in childhood and it comes naturally....

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ectives-rule-elements-of-eloquence-dictionary


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Oh that's pretty cool, I didn't know that either.


----------



## Spookvlieger

I remebered this rule from English class but It's more or less the same in Dutch (but there is no rule it should be in that order though your sentence will sound strange otherwise) so there are no problems in most cases. It's about feeling the laguage in many cases as well.

I'm guessing latin language speakers will have more trouble with that?


----------



## MichiH

joshsam said:


> I remebered this rule from English class but It's more or less the same in Dutch so there are no problems in most cases. It's about feeling the laguage in many cases as well.


I agree. I learned in school that I should use past here but I usually write "I've learned in school that..." In German, I would never ever write nor say "Ich lernte in der Schule dass..." (past) but always "Ich habe in der Schule gelernt dass..." (present perfect). I speak and write both _as it feels_... German and English are Germanic languages, pretty much _the same_ (as my former Irish colleague told me seventeen years ago when I claimed "You count Irish a different language to English? I think it's the same, isn't it?") :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

joshsam said:


> I remebered this rule from English class but It's more or less the same in Dutch (but there is no rule it should be in that order though your sentence will sound strange otherwise) so there are no problems in most cases. It's about feeling the laguage in many cases as well.
> 
> I'm guessing latin language speakers will have more trouble with that?




In most if not all Romance languages today, most (not all) adjectives come after the noun. (That wasn’t true of Latin itself, where word order was more flexible; when late Latin lost the case forms that made it possible to distinguish subject and object by their ending alone, word order became more rigid to compensate for that). I don’t remember learning a complex rule for sequence of adjectives in French, though.

One difference I picked up (as opposed to formally learning): in English, I’d say “the other four books”; French would reverse that and say “les quatre autres livres.” Perhaps not consistently...I don’t know...but I’ve seen it enough to notice it since it looks wrong to me.


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## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> That doesn’t sound right.
> 
> Maybe “I’d suffered back pain for 20 years but then I discovered this new treatment....”. “I’d” = “I had”. I guess you’d call that (because it’s been decades since I actually needed to use this terminology) the past perfect?


Yes, we call this past perfect  And the one with "I had been suffering" is called "past perfect continuous" or "past perfect progressive".

The rule with the order of adjectives... I think we had it mentioned on one English class in the junior-high and this was all. In Polish... I heard that we don't have such strict rules, but still – "duży zielony smok" (great green dragon) sounds much better than "zielony duży smok" (green great dragon), nobody would say the latter.

Still, we have another interesting thing with adjectives. Normally the adjectives in Polish go before the noun, but if the adjective, in conjunction with the noun, defines a very specific type of a thing, like e.g. a species of an animal or plant, it goes afterwards. Unless there are two such adjectives, then usually only one of them goes afterwards, maybe except some special, specialist contexts.

E.g. telewizor kolorowy – is a color TV. Kolorowy telewizor – a colorful TV (I mean, with colorful enclosure). In this case, it's distinguishable in English too because it uses two different adjectives for those two meanings, but it must not always be so easy.

Komputer osobisty – a personal computer, a PC, a type of a computer. Osobisty komputer – it's rarely used but it would mean a computer that belongs to you or is used only by you, like "I have my own, personal PC".

Papryka słodka – sweet pepper, as opposed to spicy pepper, like e.g. chilli. Słodka papryka – just a pepper that is (probably exceptionally because otherwise it would be to obvious to talk about it) sweet.



MichiH said:


> German and English are Germanic languages, pretty much _the same_


Many Romance languages also have those types of past tenses...

But Polish doesn't (as, I guess, none of the Slavic languages) and we sometimes do have troubles with using them in English.

Still...

"I learned that in school but I already forgot it"

Would you use "Ich hab' das in der Schule gelernt" in German in this sentence?

Not "Ich lernte das in der Schule, aber ich hab' das schon vergessen"?


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## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> "I learned that in school but I already forgot it"
> 
> Would you use "Ich hab' das in der Schule gelernt" in German in this sentence?


Exactly!



Kpc21 said:


> Not "Ich lernte das in der Schule, aber ich hab' das schon vergessen"?


That's the correct form but I would never ever say it. If one talks to me like that - with accent - I would respect it. If one talks to me like that without accent, I would laugh (well, I'm nice, I would just smile).

I remember long ping-pong emails I got from a special colleague: "er schrieb aber..." :lol:


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## Surel

joshsam said:


> I remebered this rule from English class but It's more or less the same in Dutch (but there is no rule it should be in that order though your sentence will sound strange otherwise) so there are no problems in most cases. It's about feeling the laguage in many cases as well.


Indeed, in Dutch I do have to sound strange sometimes I bet. I never really paid conscious attention to it in English, but now I realize that: _"that green big old apple"_ really sounds very strange compared to _"that big old green apple"_ unless I want to put emphasis in it.

Edit: and now I realized that in Czech you can face similar trouble, e.g. indeed you would hardly put a color adjective in front of a size adjective.


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## ChrisZwolle

Interesting, 75% of card payments in the Netherlands is now contactless. This has really quickly taken over the card payment system in the Netherlands, it was introduced in 2013, but really gained ground over the past 4 years or so. 

The next step are mobile payments (paying with a wearable or phone with NFC chip), like Apple Pay which has recently been introduced in the Netherlands. 

Personally I don't use mobile payments yet, as I always have my debit card in my phone case, so mobile payment isn't really faster or more convenient. I don't carry an actual wallet anymore, I never pay with cash in the Netherlands.

There are still some people who don't trust contactless payment and have turned it off. There are some fake news stories circulating on Facebook how a thief can drain your bank account by scanning near your wallet. This has actually never happened in the Netherlands and is basically impossible.


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## g.spinoza

edit


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## ChrisZwolle

There are a couple of reasons why it is not practical for thieves;

1) you need to be registered as a point of sale. Which means ID, bank identification and a chamber of commerce registration. This alone makes it not worthwhile for thieves.
2) it only works up to € 25 at a time, a PIN is required over € 25
3) smaller amounts may accumulate to € 50, after which a PIN is also required
4) these possible frauds are insured by your bank (no payout has ever occurred)
5) the NFC chip only works at really close range (0-3 centimeters), making it difficult to perform undetected.


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## bogdymol

6) If you have more than one card with NFC in your wallet, the signal of multiple cards will overlap and none will work.


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## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> There are a couple of reasons why it is not practical for thieves;
> 
> 1) you need to be registered as a point of sale. Which means ID, bank identification and a chamber of commerce registration. This alone makes it not worthwhile for thieves.
> 2) it only works up to € 25 at a time, a PIN is required over € 25
> 3) smaller amounts may accumulate to € 50, after which a PIN is also required
> 4) these possible frauds are insured by your bank (no payout has ever occurred)
> 5) the NFC chip only works at really close range (0-3 centimeters), making it difficult to perform undetected.


The initial limit was 25 EUR in Finland, but it was quite quickly raised to 50 EUR. Several purchases in short intervals may or may not trigger a PIN verification. There is some randomness involved to make frauds more difficult.


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## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> There are a couple of reasons why it is not practical for thieves;
> 
> 1) you need to be registered as a point of sale. Which means ID, bank identification and a chamber of commerce registration. This alone makes it not worthwhile for thieves.


I don't think it's impossible to circumvent this limitation. It's electronics, therefore it's hackable.


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## ChrisZwolle

The main technical problem for thieves is not scanning the NFC chip itself, but making a payment (transfer) from one bank account to the other. 

People with sufficient know-how can probably hack a payment terminal, but actually having it making a payment from one bank account to the other is not possible without a bank contract, which requires ID and a chamber of commerce registration.


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## italystf

MattiG said:


> The initial limit was 25 EUR in Finland, but it was quite quickly raised to 50 EUR. Several purchases in short intervals may or may not trigger a PIN verification. There is some randomness involved to make frauds more difficult.


I can't understand why such a limit needs to be set by the national government.
Shouldn't it be negotiated freely between the individual and the bank?
I mean, if you're a very risk-adverse person, you should be able to set that limit very low, i.e. 5€, or even disable contactless completely.
If you're rich you should be able to agree to pay even 200€ contactless because it may be a small loss for you.


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## ChrisZwolle

The banks set this limit in the Netherlands, because they insure the payment. If fraud is detected, the bank reimburses your loss. However there are some limitations to this, for example if you lost your bank card and someone else made a payment with it. This is apparently the main form of fraud: people who lost their card but claim it was stolen. 

However paying with a stolen card is tricky for a thief, since most shops and ATMs have cameras so you will be on camera if you pay with a stolen or found card. 

A big pro of contactless payment is that you reduce the possibility of someone peering to your PIN code and then steal your card. However you do need to enter the PIN from time to time to prevent forgetting it. Much like you forget passwords if your browser always signs you in automatically.


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## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> I never pay with cash in the Netherlands.


That would be untinkable in Italy.
Many small businesses are still cash-only. Most parking meters and all food and beverage vending machines take only cash.
All restaurants and some bars accept card payiments, but most times only one card per table. If some friends want to split the bill and pay each one with their card, it's very often impossible.
Some people, especially the less young, are used to pay with cash even when a cashless payiment system is readily available. Go in any train station: cash ticket machine: 20 people in line, card ticket machine: 3 people in line.
I pay with card anytime is convenient to do so, so I don't have to go to the ATM very often. But I always keep at least 20€ in my wallet, because soner or later I will need them.


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## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> The banks set this limit in the Netherlands, because they insure the payment.


Ok, but why _all_ banks in a country need to set the _same_ limit?


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## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> The next step are mobile payments (paying with a wearable or phone with NFC chip), like Apple Pay which has recently been introduced in the Netherlands.


In Poland we have something called Blik. It's a local system that works in such a way, that the app of the bank displays you a code that you have to enter into the terminal or on the website. After that, you have to confirm the payment in the app. You can also generate a "Blik cheque", so a code made up of digits, protected with a password, that you may give to someone else who can then use your money (an amount you specified while generating the cheque) to pay for something. Blik can also be used for ATM withdrawals.



bogdymol said:


> 6) If you have more than one card with NFC in your wallet, the signal of multiple cards will overlap and none will work.


It depends, there is no guarantee that it will not catch just one of your cards.

One danger is that the limits mentioned don't work in case of offline payments. They rarely happen – but there are some rare situations when it is possible for the thief to use the card in such a way.



ChrisZwolle said:


> However there are some limitations to this, for example if you lost your bank card and someone else made a payment with it. This is apparently the main form of fraud: people who lost their card but claim it was stolen.


When you lose your card, it's quite likely that it gets stolen before you realizes that.


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## MattiG

italystf said:


> I can't understand why such a limit needs to be set by the national government.
> Shouldn't it be negotiated freely between the individual and the bank?
> I mean, if you're a very risk-adverse person, you should be able to set that limit very low, i.e. 5€, or even disable contactless completely.
> If you're rich you should be able to agree to pay even 200€ contactless because it may be a small loss for you.


How did you reach to a conclusion that the national government has something to do with that?


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## Kpc21

In Poland, MasterCard and Visa, to increase this limit from 50 PLN to 100 PLN, had to get a consent from the National Polish Bank. So I would rather ask how can anyone reach a conclusion that the national government might have nothing to do with it.


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## mgk920

The main worries that I have with card payment systems include:

- What if the power goes out or the system otherwise goes down? Where I work, if the card system goes down, we're cash only (yes, that does sometimes happen).

- With cash, it is easy to tell how much you have available to spend and not go overdrawn. Overdraft fees are a big cash cow for banks.

- If the card is lost or stolen, yes you are pretty much held harmless - BUT, you are still without it until a replacement card is issued and can be delivered to you and activated. Not a problem with cash.

Yes, if, let's say, I accidentally drop a $20 banknote, I am out that $20. OTOH, I'm out that $20 - and nothing else. No hassles, no waiting for the replacement card, nothing. It is very possible that I won't even notice it missing.

- "Here's the $5 I owe you". Easy and quick with cash.

- Anonymity - Cash usually doesn't leave a paper trail, something that is appreciated by a LOT of USAians.

I always make sure that I have enough cash on me at all times to cover at least a decent lunch and a full load of fuel for the car. Just in case.

Mike


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## mgk920

Remember that English is a very, very easy language for a non-native speaker to pick up enough to be able to function at a basic level in a primarily English-speaking area. A few weeks and you are able to confidently order lunch and do other related simple things.

OTOH, it takes a lifetime to truly master - the grammar rules are that complex and it is continually evolving. I'm still learning various detailed aspects of it.

Mike


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## Balkanada

mgk920 said:


> The main worries that I have with card payment systems include:
> 
> - What if the power goes out or the system otherwise goes down? Where I work, if the card system goes down, we're cash only (yes, that does sometimes happen).


If the power is out then you probably wouldn't be able to purchase anything even with cash. And yes, I know systems go down, which is why I always have backup cash in my pocket 



mgk920 said:


> - With cash, it is easy to tell how much you have available to spend and not go overdrawn. Overdraft fees are a big cash cow for banks.


The onus is on you to be a responsible adult and know how much money is on your account. In the digital era where you should be able to check your balance right from your smartphone, there's no excuse. You could also avoid this problem by paying with a credit card instead of a debit card, like I do



mgk920 said:


> - If the card is lost or stolen, yes you are pretty much held harmless - BUT, you are still without it until a replacement card is issued and can be delivered to you and activated. Not a problem with cash.


Other banks might be different, but mine issues new debit cards at their branches, new credit cards are mailed in though. I think it's worth the wait with all things considered. Besides, you shouldn't be relying on one card anyway.



mgk920 said:


> Yes, if, let's say, I accidentally drop a $20 banknote, I am out that $20. OTOH, I'm out that $20 - and nothing else. No hassles, no waiting for the replacement card, nothing. It is very possible that I won't even notice it missing.


I don't know why you're trying to present this as a pro. Yeah, if you lose a bunch of cash then you're SOL



mgk920 said:


> - "Here's the $5 I owe you". Easy and quick with cash.


If I owe a friend money or they owe me I prefer to send/receive it through Interac e-Transfer (Venmo is the US equivalent). Safety is the obvious advantage to this but so is convenience. If I owe a friend something like $35 I'm not likely to have that amount on me and ATMs here only spit out $20 bills

I do admit that this is a generational thing though. I'm in my early 20s and most of my peers know how to use this technology


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## Penn's Woods

The City of Philadelphia recently prohibited retail businesses in the city from refusing to accept cash. Accepting electronic payments only disadvantages poorer people who can’t get credit cards or even don’t have bank accounts.


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## Penn's Woods

Balkanada said:


> ....
> The onus is on you to be a responsible adult and know how much money is on your account. In the digital era where you should be able to check your balance right from your smartphone, there's no excuse. You could also avoid this problem by paying with a credit card instead of a debit card, like I do
> 
> ....



It’s not as simple as that.

Not all transactions show up immediately, so you can’t just assume the balance showing up on your bank account is accurate.
I went to Washington a few weeks ago; paid for parking a few times; and the meters only accept cards. 

Two of my three $4.60 parking charges still have not hit my bank account. So my balance as shown is $9.20 higher than it ought to be. Fortunately I track everything - save receipts, make notes that night - so I know this. If I didn’t...if I just assumed my balance was right...I could inadvertently spend more than I have and bounce something. Although it’s been three weeks at this point so I’m guessing it’s unlikely those charges will ever go through.

That being the case, I’d just as soon make small purchases using cash. Then I DO know exactly how much cash I have, I don’t have to worry about receipts for $5 purchases...and the District of Columbia wouldn’t be out $9.20 because of what I’d guess was a glitch. Not that that’s my problem, other than I’m generally civic-minded.


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## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> The City of Philadelphia recently prohibited retail businesses ik the city from refusing to accept cash. Accepting electronic payments only disadvantages poorer people who can’t get credit cards or even don’t have bank accounts.


What about debit cards? Aren't they widely accepted / in use? 

I have a credit card but really only use it for internet purchases and abroad. In the Netherlands I pay everything by debit card. 

Since my credit card is automatically paid off at the end of each month, I don't pay any interest as well. So I never really go into debt.

I don't understand why people are maxed out on their credit cards so often. Don't they have any savings / emergency fund? I've never been 'in the red'.


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## Spookvlieger

I only have a debit card for that exact reason. If I can't afford it on the spot, I don't buy it. Not with trivial stuff anyways, not talking about houses or cars. I usually also carry a little amount of cash. There is still places in Belgium where you can only play cash like some barber shops, cafés or restaurants or that simply Prefer cash. Many restaurants in Belgium prefer cash if you want to pay by card you ofthen have to leave your table in order to do the payment.


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## cinxxx

^^I think in the US many (at least compared to Europe) people just don't have any cards, they always use just cash, or checks?


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## g.spinoza

joshsam said:


> I only have a debit card for that exact reason. If I can't afford it on the spot, I don't buy it. Not with trivial stuff anyways, not talking about houses or cars. I usually also carry a little amount of cash. There is still places in Belgium where you can only play cash like some barber shops, cafés or restaurants or that simply Prefer cash. Many restaurants in Belgium prefer cash if you want to pay by card you ofthen have to leave your table in order to do the payment.


Credit cards are not only for paying more than you can afford. Many hotels only accept credit cards as warranty deposit; rent-a-cars as well.


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## Spookvlieger

I've never really had a problem with that. Whenever I said I didn't have a credit card they usually charge 50 or 100 euro's when checking in to be given back when everything is allright aftherwards. I know this and make sure I have it cash when I arrive to check in. There is only one hotel I wasn't able to book online once becuase I didn't have a credit card. I called the hotel and they said everything was allright, they booked the room for me and I could just pay with maestro upon leaving. Most hotels don't even ask afther a credit card anymore :dunno: or give you the choice to pay up front with maestro. Well maybe it's differend elsewhere I don't travel much outside of Europe.

Maestro is standard in Belgium with any debitcard, it's always linked. Not sure hmif anywhere else. It works somewhat like a debit card but the sum just goes of your account within days rather than within hours like with a debit card. It's not a seperate card and you just pay like with a debit card.


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## Suburbanist

MattiG said:


> Cheques in daily consumer use were phased out by cards in late 1980's and early 1990's in Finland, and the system was brought down in 1997. In B2B transactions, those were in use later.
> 
> An exception is "pankkivekseli", "a bank cheque" being used when there is a need for larger amount of cash. It is like cash, guaranteed by the issuing bank, and all banks buy it. I have a few times bought a car using that instrument. Nowadays, the card talks, of course.
> 
> An American-style paycheck is absolutely unknown in Finland. Before 1970's, salaries typically were paid in cash, and since that to the bank account.


This was arguable that largest-ever personal US check even cashed in a commercial bank.









It was written as part of a divorce settlement (source)

Lobbying by incumbents also make certain aspects of financial life in US very inefficient. For instance, in many developed countries, you get a pre-filled tax return, online, with information the government already has on you, and then you make alterations if needed, else you just confirm/do nothing.

In the US, due to heavy lobbying by tax preparation software companies, the IRS is prohibited by law from developing an "end-user" interface that would be easier and less restricted that what private companies selling tax prep software could (like Turbo Tax). 

Some nut-Any Rand-esque libertarians support the prohibitiong alleging that 'automatic' income taxation fillings is a perverse plot of governments to make it easier to raise taxes without people noticing it due to 'automatic' prefiliing features :nuts:


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'd say Dutch fluency in English is reasonably good, but the accent is pretty bad. Actual speaking skills and pronunciation in English classes in high school is substandard in my opinion. People in the Nordic countries are generally better at it.
> 
> Because foreign languages are subtitled rather than dubbed, children come into contact with English at an early age, the internet and Youtube have accelerated this as well. Most kids were already fairly proficient in English when I was in high school in the early 2000s, so the curriculum was too easy for most. The teachers could've spent more time on pronunciation.
> 
> What struck me most about native speakers is how they often confuse than / then or your / you're. These are phonetically very similar, but proficient non-native speakers may be even less likely to make these errors than native speakers.




As to “your”/“you’re” and the like. I find something similar in French. Thanks to French spelling, it’s possible for half a dozen or more forms of a given verb to sound alike.

Parler, parlé, parlée, parlés, parlées, parlez, parlai all sound the same (and my iPhone’s auto-“correct” didn’t like me doing that). And for some speakers (it’s regional), add parlais, parlait, parlaient.

I’ve noticed (and this is a blatant generalization of course) many native speakers seem to have a lot more trouble with this than I do. My theory for that is I learned to speak and write French at the same time, and at an age when I could understand grammatical concepts, so to me they’re different forms that happen to sound the same, while for a native speaker they may feel like different ways of spelling the same word. If that makes sense. Even if they get the grammar, that was something superimposed during their school years on a vocabulary they already used instinctively.


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## mgk920

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'd say Dutch fluency in English is reasonably good, but the accent is pretty bad. Actual speaking skills and pronunciation in English classes in high school is substandard in my opinion. People in the Nordic countries are generally better at it.
> 
> Because foreign languages are subtitled rather than dubbed, children come into contact with English at an early age, the internet and Youtube have accelerated this as well. Most kids were already fairly proficient in English when I was in high school in the early 2000s, so the curriculum was too easy for most. The teachers could've spent more time on pronunciation.
> 
> What struck me most about native speakers is how they often confuse than / then or your / you're. These are phonetically very similar, but proficient non-native speakers may be even less likely to make these errors than native speakers.


One of the errors that 'grinds my gears' the most as a native speaker is when people who put apostrophe's into their plural's.

:mad2:

I put most of the blame on the preponderance of these sorts of mistakes on the overall poor quality of many public schools in the USA. Many of them are truly bad.

Mike


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## Penn's Woods

So, getting back to payment methods, if it’s not an indelicate question: How do those of you who never use cash pay to use public toilets? Or do you carry some coins for such purposes?

This comes to mind because of a recent Facebook discussion arguing (idiotically) that America should do away with free public toilets. Or rather, make them no longer free.


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## ChrisZwolle

Many public toilets accept contactless payment if it isn't provided for free. Even in Germany!


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## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Many public toilets accept contactless payment if it isn't provided for free. Even in Germany!




Which is yet another transaction I’d need to keep a receipt for....


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## Kpc21

mgk920 said:


> - "Here's the $5 I owe you". Easy and quick with cash.


If you meet in person again, then yes. Otherwise, it's much easier to send a wire transfer.

Both forms of payment have their advantages and drawbacks, they complement each other. Both should exist.



Balkanada said:


> Other banks might be different, but mine issues new debit cards at their branches, new credit cards are mailed in though. I think it's worth the wait with all things considered. Besides, you shouldn't be relying on one card anyway.


No bank in Poland does it. By the way, how do they do it? I mean, the card normally has your name imprinted on it. Do they have the machine (press) to imprint your name on the newly issued card at each branch? How do they technically realize that?



ChrisZwolle said:


> Checks themselves are another thing Europeans wonder about... I'm 32 and have never seen a check used in the Netherlands, I think it was phased out by the early 1990s, I believe the last application was the traveler's cheque.
> 
> I googled an article by a Dutch newspaper from 1999, stating that virtually nobody uses a cheque anymore. And by now we are another 20 years later in time.


In Poland cheques never got popular... Until the, I think, early 1990s, it was quite uncommon to have a bank account. After that, when bank accounts got popular, electronic payments were already there.

I've read several times that when you make a complaint at Ryanair, according to the EU compensation for flight delay rules, unless you indicate that you want a wire transfer, they send you the compensation amount as a cheque. Of one of the Irish banks. Exchanging this cheque into cash in Poland is quite a difficult process – there are something like two banks here that can do it, you must open an account at them, you have to pay them quite a lot to get this cheque processed and the waiting time is also something like 2 months before you actually get the money (they probably have to send this cheque back to the Irish bank for confirmation). Sometimes it might actually be easier to fly to Ireland (probably by their plane  ) and go to the original bank that issued the cheque.



Suburbanist said:


> There is another reason: a credit-card can be subject to pre-payment authorizations


It isn't impossible with debit cards too. Today I paid with a debit card at an automatic gas station and it actually used a pre-payment authorization. 

Just now I have 300 PLN blocked on my card, but they will release this blockage and actually charge me less, according to the value of the gas I put into my car.



MattiG said:


> I do not know the legislation elsewhere, but the Finnish consumer protection act makes the credit card issuer the financing body of the services of goods. Thus, it is safest to pay credit card when buying goods on some remote shop or a holiday trip, for instance. If the seller is fraudulent or if the airline goes bankrupt, the bank sends your money back.


We don't have such a law in Poland but it's still possible to use so called chargeback procedure to regain your money in such situations.

So it's still always better to pay by card.

But in domestic online transactions people still prefer wire transfers (there are several companies operating them, they cooperate with online sellers and with banks to simplify the process and to make it faster – you select your bank name, you just get redirected to the login page of your bank, you sign in, you confirm the transaction via an SMS code or a mobile app and you are done), considering them to be safer than online card payments. 

Indeed, they are kind of safer as you don't have to send your card data, that can be always used to charge you (card number, your name, card expiry date, CVV code), over the Internet.

But with a wire transfer you lose the right to use the chargeback.



Penn's Woods said:


> Which is yet another transaction I’d need to keep a receipt for....


Why would you need to keep a receipt for a toilet?

Not to mention that the payment would probably take place in a machine (where you pay and then it unlocks the toilet door) and vending (and similar) machines in general don't usually issue receipts.

In Poland all companies that pay VAT are obliged to issue you a receipt printed from a cash register (but not a card payment receipt, this is voluntary and now they normally ask you if you want it or not – a receipt listing what you have bought for how much and how much tax the price contained), even taxi drivers are – but one of few exceptions from this rule are vending machines.


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## Spookvlieger

ChrisZwolle said:


> Many public toilets accept contactless payment if it isn't provided for free. Even in Germany!


On the motorways maybe, elsewere not at all. I have family living in Germany. Germany is an even more cash nation than Belgium. There is many places in Germany your debit/credit card is next to useless. There is seperate pumps in gas stations if you want to pay cash or cashless ffor instance. I can't name another country in Europe that has weird things like that in place. If you do out eating, or to a bar, go shopping, they always expect you to pay cash as a standard unless you say "mit karte bitte".


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## ChrisZwolle

^^ It's true, but the Sanifair toilets on German motorway service areas do accept contactless payment from what I've seen. Normally you'd pay the 'Putzfrau'.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> I’ve noticed (and this is a blatant generalization of course) many native speakers seem to have a lot more trouble with this than I do. My theory for that is I learned to speak and write French at the same time, and at an age when I could understand grammatical concepts, so to me they’re different forms that happen to sound the same, while for a native speaker they may feel like different ways of spelling the same word. If that makes sense.


The same for me in German, and I guess it's for the same reason. My German ortography is near to perfect, that of my native German workmates is usually not.


----------



## Suburbanist

In Norway, the usual way to transfer money between colleagues or acquaintances for small stuff like shared bills at a restaurant is through an app that virtually everyone has. It is basically sending money using your phone contact (not bank account number) as a handle. Money goes instantly off the sender's bank account to the receiver's bank account. The system is obviously less secure than usual bank apps so there are limits on how to use it on this simple way.

So a group is at a restaurant: "hey, I'm paying, please everybody send me NOK 330 to my Vipps". Then everybody at the table does it, problem solved.

Many banks on the Eurozone are also now on a better place, even: instant (8-sec completion time, often less than 2 though) bank transfers that are necessarily costless for Euro-to-Euro account transfers.


----------



## Spookvlieger

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ It's true, but the Sanifair toilets on German motorway service areas do accept contactless payment from what I've seen. Normally you'd pay the 'Putzfrau'.


Just cashed 16 sanifar tickets in a shop earlier today on my way home. I allways keep them for a whole year and then buy a bunch of stuff for €0. The cashier sighed at me. :lol:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

g.spinoza said:


> Credit cards are not only for paying more than you can afford. Many hotels only accept credit cards as warranty deposit; rent-a-cars as well.


I get 180 days of purchase insurance of up to €1,000 when using my credit card. This means that if I buy a €500 TV, for example, and my cat knocks it over during the first 6 months then I get my money back (minus the deductible of €30). I just transfer money from my regular account to my credit card when buying something of substantial value and use it get basically free insurance (granted, the card itself costs €2 a month).

If I opted for a slightly more expensive credit card (€5 a month) I would also get free global travel insurance for myself and family members travelling with me. I'll probably get it before my next travel. 

I've never used credit on my credit card and I dont plan on doing it either.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> Some nut-Any Rand-esque libertarians support the prohibitiong alleging that 'automatic' income taxation fillings is a perverse plot of governments to make it easier to raise taxes without people noticing it due to 'automatic' prefiliing features :nuts:


Automatic income taxation fillings is a way to simplify burocratic procedures for citizens.
People don't have to go through the troubles of going to an office or filling an online form to pay taxes (with the risk of committing mistakes), as they pay them automatically.
An income tax may be too high or too unfair, but there's not such thing as hidden taxation. Criteria for taxation are set by laws, that are public. The amount of taxes you pay can be openly read on your paycheck.
If you're too lazy or too ignorant to look at, it's your fault.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland they introduced that this year. Before, one had to fill in a 4-page long form + some extra ones if one wanted to benefit from tax deductions, which included doing some calculations and taking much care not to make an error.










A full version of the main one (I'm not sure if it's up to date – they're changed every year and you always have to use the current one): http://webapi.iform.pl/sendfile.php?file=doc_9050-0.pdf&partner=10&product=9050&product_type=F&

Those tax things are a lot overbureaucracized.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> So, getting back to payment methods, if it’s not an indelicate question: How do those of you who never use cash pay to use public toilets? Or do you carry some coins for such purposes?
> 
> This comes to mind because of a recent Facebook discussion arguing (idiotically) that America should do away with free public toilets. Or rather, make them no longer free.


Pay-for-use toilets? In Italy people would just piss in the streets.
I'd say 70% of people in emergency bays on motorways in Italy are there to piss, even though there's a service area nearby.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Pay-for-use toilets? In Italy people would just piss in the streets.
> I'd say 70% of people in emergency bays on motorways in Italy are there to piss, even though there's a service area nearby.




I haven’t been in Italy in...too long. So I don’t remember what it’s like. But in the sort of triangle from Frankfurt to Brittany to Groningen, free public toilets are almost as rare as drinking fountains. (And having been there during a heat wave and ended up spending more than I expected on bottled water (which I NEVER buy here) and iced tea, it’s an inconvenience that has stuck in my mind.
That freeway-rest-area toilet would be free here. And just as clean as any in, say, France.


----------



## Penn's Woods

By the way, and back to language: I’m saying “toilet” even though “men’s room” or “bathroom” would come more naturally to me, because I’m assuming “toilet” is the more “international” word. Canadians would say “washroom.”


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> By the way, and back to language: I’m saying “toilet” even though “men’s room” or “bathroom” would come more naturally to me, because I’m assuming “toilet” is the more “international” word. Canadians would say “washroom.”




I would only say men’s room if talking to a male. 
What if you Said lavatory in the US. What would they Think of you ?


----------



## tfd543

Suburbanist said:


> In Norway, the usual way to transfer money between colleagues or acquaintances for small stuff like shared bills at a restaurant is through an app that virtually everyone has. It is basically sending money using your phone contact (not bank account number) as a handle. Money goes instantly off the sender's bank account to the receiver's bank account. The system is obviously less secure than usual bank apps so there are limits on how to use it on this simple way.
> .



Similar in Denmark. We have mobile Pay service here, but I Think its becoming a bit awkward. Everything suddenly become numbers and the social gathering loses its value. I Can perfectly understand its simplicity when you are like a group of people, but now they are using it even for 2 persons.


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Well there are some, but its like a very small percentage.
> 
> For instance in Madrid, I couldnt spot a single in my section.




Huh!

Lots of families - father, mother, kids - at American sporting events.


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> What if you have the choice of using the pissoir or the toilet? Unless im in a hurry, I personally prefer the toilet. More personal space.




Urinal unless I need to sit down.


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> At one I regularly stop at, there’s always (except in the middle of the night I suppose) one person in a little office, who cleans regularly. Often in U.S. public toilets you see a cleaning schedule inside the door in which someone puts their initials and the time. They may do this as often as every hour. Free doesn’t always mean unattended or not cleaned.


In Poland it's also like that, especially in places like malls. I guess it's a legal obligation to have such a list.


----------



## radamfi

Suburbanist said:


> I have a BunQ account (it's a Dutch online-only bank) as my get-go for foreign small transactions, Euro-denominated transfers etc.


Is it worth paying 8 euros a month for it?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ indeed, there is a increasing argument with certain-types arguing that lavatory space allocation is sexist, if the space between male and female is equal, since women tend to spend more time inside, for some purpose or other and queues can form (so I am told, I have no idea)
> 
> 
> 
> There is an argument among American at-least BMW-people, between "beamer" and "bimmer".
> one is supposed to refer exclusively to BMW motorcycles and the other BMW passenger cars. If you use the wrong one, they will get angry.
> I have had few of both and can't remember which way it goes :/




Are you, like, the Jay Leno of Hamilton?


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-slovakia-crash/twelve-killed-in-slovakia-bus-crash-idUSKBN1XN1RX
> 
> 
> 
> Yesterday was a bad day. The suburban bus collided in high speed with an overloaded lorry on a primary road. Unfortunately, it was full of high school students (aged 15-17) returning home after school. 12 of them never returned, though  The bus was literally ripped apart. Crash site here.




Awful. So sorry. (And if my previous comments seem inappropriate, I hadn’t read this until now.)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The toilet on a campsite in Germany had a whole list of things not to do, all with an exclamation mark! :nuts:

Do Germans need such lists to live an orderly life? Most of these things are completely normal things you wouldn't need to be reminded of. 
And if you do need to be reminded that you shouldn't throw toilet paper on the floor, a list like this probably isn't going to help much :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The toilet on a campsite in Germany had a whole list of things not to do, all with an exclamation mark! :nuts:
> 
> 
> 
> Do Germans need such lists to live an orderly life? Most of these things are completely normal things you wouldn't need to be reminded of.
> 
> And if you do need to be reminded that you shouldn't throw toilet paper on the floor, a list like this probably isn't going to help much :lol:




Ja wohl!

Seriously, it may be standard to use exclamation points with imperatives in German. There are certainly people here who’d know.


----------



## Kpc21




----------



## Penn's Woods

^^


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> The toilet on a campsite in Germany had a whole list of things not to do, all with an exclamation mark! :nuts:


Quite common all over Germany. And I think that the usage of exclamation marks for the instructions is just fine.!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Perhaps it's common in German. I would say it comes across as unnecessarily aggressive from a non-native speaker point of view.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Do Germans need such lists to live an orderly life?


Ordnung muss sein!

Finns tend to laugh on the long list of the rules of Finnish saunas in Germany: No water throwing on stones, no temperature over 60, no kids, no more than eight minutes, hourglass to control those eight minutes, etc. Basically, there are no such things as written rules in the Finnish sauna culture: You can stay there as long as you wish and feel good, you can enter as many times as you want, and kids are welcome. No obligatory ceremonies. No hourglasses. Minimum temperature is 60, usually higher, and water is always to be thrown. Our kids were a few months when they first were taken into sauna. Of course, on the lowest level and for a minute or two only.

I was some 25 years old when I made my first trip in Germany (to participate in a course for mainframe operating system installation and maintenance). I was quite shaken at the escalator of the Frankfurt U-Bahn: There were signs to list 15 rules for taking the escalator. The rule 15 was: If the passenger violates any of the rules 1-14 then the rail company is exempt from any liability.


----------



## keber

MattiG said:


> It was a few months ago I bought a thermometer-wallclock combo at the local Lidl supermarket. It shows the inside and outside temperature, and it said to synchronize with the DCF77 time signal broadcasted in Frankfurt.


I have one (from Philips, not Lidl) but it is for some unknown reason always about 2 minutes behind "official" time (telephones, church bells, national radio clock, computers ...)


----------



## Kanadzie

Penn's Woods said:


> Are you, like, the Jay Leno of Hamilton?


Yes but only in ratio of 1/100
1/100 as many cars and each car worth 1/100 as much :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Street lighting is also often activated by an astro clock which works with a DCF77 receiver. Automatic dimmer switches that turn on during twilight tend be less reliable.


----------



## g.spinoza

MattiG said:


> Ordnung muss sein!
> 
> Finns tend to laugh on the long list of the rules of Finnish saunas in Germany: No water throwing on stones, no temperature over 60, no kids, no more than eight minutes, hourglass to control those eight minutes, etc. Basically, there are no such things as written rules in the Finnish sauna culture: You can stay there as long as you wish and feel good, you can enter as many times as you want, and kids are welcome. No obligatory ceremonies. No hourglasses. Minimum temperature is 60, usually higher, and water is always to be thrown. Our kids were a few months when they first were taken into sauna. Of course, on the lowest level and for a minute or two only.
> 
> I was some 25 years old when I made my first trip in Germany (to participate in a course for mainframe operating system installation and maintenance). I was quite shaken at the escalator of the Frankfurt U-Bahn: There were signs to list 15 rules for taking the escalator. The rule 15 was: If the passenger violates any of the rules 1-14 then the rail company is exempt from any liability.


Sauna is the closest to hell I can think of


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Street lighting is also often activated by an astro clock which works with a DCF77 receiver. Automatic dimmer switches that turn on during twilight tend be less reliable.


A GPS is nowadays a better and a cheaper technology for that. A price of a GPS module is minimal, and it works anywhere outside.

A dimmer switch is, however, better because a timer cannot handle the twilight time drift caused by a heavy overcast.

In my hometown, the street lights are centrally controlled and turned on gradually area by area within a few minutes. This is to avoid load peaks.

The sea fairway to Helsinki main port is marked with 20+ ice buoys, and they are synchronized to flash at the same moment. That is implemented by inserting a GPS receiver into each buoy. Each red and green buoy flashes for 0.3 seconds every third second. As the GPS clock is very accurate, simultaneous flashes are easy to be programmed to occur without any other synchronization. (The newer models tune the light intensity according to the visibility conditions, and they call home if ice have moved them.)


----------



## tfd543

Why that? I love it especially during winter time to get some heat for the flesh. Basically we have a sauna in every indoor swimmingpool.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Another interesting problem with traffic lights is that the switch to LED means they don't emit much heat, so during heavy snow the traffic lights will become full of snow while the older lamps would've melted it off. Do they have a solution for that in Finland / Nordics?


----------



## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> Why that? I love it especially during winter time to get some heat for the flesh. Basically we have a sauna in every indoor swimmingpool.


Anything over 20 °C is too much for me


----------



## tfd543

ChrisZwolle said:


> Another interesting problem with traffic lights is that the switch to LED means they don't emit much heat, so during heavy snow the traffic lights will become full of snow while the older lamps would've melted it off. Do they have a solution for that in Finland / Nordics?




The municipality next to where I live have this all over the place. I havent seen a problem with them during cold weather. I have noticed though that the protective cap is longer than usual so basically no snow Can cover the lamps.


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> A GPS is nowadays a better and a cheaper technology for that. A price of a GPS module is minimal, and it works anywhere outside.


Outside. The problem comes when you want to get time signal inside. The GPS signal inside is usually weak. And DCF77 works well in most of Europe.

Talking about time, most annoying thing are those built-in clocks in devices such as cooking stoves or microwave ovens. They tend to have no built-in frequency source and rely on the mains frequency to count time. Which is extremely reliable as this frequency is synchronized in a big part of Europe (although there was a deviation at the beginning of the previous year, which, from what I recently read, was caused by... a conflict between Serbia and Kosovo), but has one very big drawback – it works only if there is power in the mains. When the power goes off, the clock is reset.

I have quite stable power over here but anyway I'm no longer setting the time in my microwave oven and it stays at 00:00 or --:--, whatever it displays by default (I don't remember just now).



> In my hometown, the street lights are centrally controlled and turned on gradually area by area within a few minutes. This is to avoid load peaks.


In Poland it's quite random, the automation of turning on and off the street lights is realized locally at the transformer stations and sometimes a darkness sensor is used, sometimes a clock.


----------



## OnTheNorthRoad

ChrisZwolle said:


> The toilet on a campsite in Germany had a whole list of things not to do, all with an exclamation mark! :nuts:
> 
> Do Germans need such lists to live an orderly life? Most of these things are completely normal things you wouldn't need to be reminded of.
> And if you do need to be reminded that you shouldn't throw toilet paper on the floor, a list like this probably isn't going to help much :lol:


It's one of those things that make life less enjoyable. It doesn't set up a nice mood. 

It's not like it does any good. Probably the only good it did was the therapeutic effect for the guy who wrote it. 

For every person who changed their mind about throwing toilet paper all around there is probably another person who did it just in spite, huh..


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> Outside. The problem comes when you want to get time signal inside. The GPS signal inside is usually weak. And DCF77 works well in most of Europe.


I do not know how things are arranged in Poland, but in Finland the street lightning is usually placed outside, not inside.


----------



## Kpc21

Yeah, but the conversation was rather about using it for indoor clocks, weather stations and similar devices.

The darkness sensor for street lighting, when it's used instead of a clock, must be placed outdoors as well


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Another interesting problem with traffic lights is that the switch to LED means they don't emit much heat, so during heavy snow the traffic lights will become full of snow while the older lamps would've melted it off. Do they have a solution for that in Finland / Nordics?


Traffic lights normally do not cumulate snow unless the weather conditions are really harsh. But they may collect frost. 

A modern LED traffic light is quite different from a traditional one. Instead of a bulb and a colored front glass, the front "glass" (usually made of plastic) itself is the lamp. An array of leds are fixed into the glass, usually having a lens for each individual LED. As the LEDs are close to the outer surface, they radiate enough heat to keep the surface clean of frost.


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> Sauna is the closest to hell I can think of


Ever tried? It makes the body very relaxed. No need to jump into cold water or to roll in snow.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Finns are the top coffee consumers in the world, according to Wikipedia.

The top 10 (per capita):

1 Finland – 12 kilograms 
2 Norway – 9.9 kilograms 
3 Iceland – 9 kilograms
4 Denmark – 8.7 kilograms 
5 Netherlands – 8.4 kilograms
6 Sweden – 8.2 kilograms 
7 Switzerland – 7.9 kilograms 
8 Belgium – 6.8 kilograms
9 Luxembourg – 6.5 kilograms
10 Canada – 6.5 kilograms

I like coffee myself, though I typically drink much more coffee in the office than at home. They serve those small 0.15 L portions at the office, so going through 5-6 cups in 8 hours isn't uncommon for me. At home I usually drink 1 or 2 cups per day. 

When I'm talking about coffee I usually mean 'American' coffee, not a tiny espresso. In southern Europe they would probably consider this coffee-flavoured water :lol:

I drink my coffee black, no sugar and no milk. When I see the cappucino from the coffee machine at work it appears that 70% is milk and only 30% coffee. Cappucinos also contain high calories so you get fat drinking lots of it.

On the other hand I don't drink much tea. I don't drink any tea at home and usually only 1 cup per day at the office for some variation.


----------



## keber

I don't drink it at all as it has disgusting taste to me (like cigarettes are to non-smokers). However I need increasingly caffeine at work so I drink more and more coca-colas which probably is not healthy longterm so I'm considering starting drinking coffee.


----------



## tfd543

I love americano coffee, but I really cant stand italiano. Its way too strong and the volume is so low that it kinda counteracts the pleasure of spending time drinking the magical fluid.


----------



## tfd543

Just replaced my oil and changing to winter tyres (only wheel change). I was charged 80 €. What do you Think of that price. I Think its a bit expensive.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Oil is actually quite expensive, from what I've seen in the Netherlands it's € 7 - 12 per liter. 

And the hourly rate for skilled mechanics is often nearing € 100 as well. So depending on where you are, € 80 may not be as bad.

The frequent 'oil change' is still a thing in North America. There are drive-through oil change shops, whose business consist almost entirely on oil changes. In Europe it is usually part of the annual service.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Oil is actually quite expensive, from what I've seen in the Netherlands it's € 7 - 12 per liter.
> 
> And the hourly rate for skilled mechanics is often nearing € 100 as well. So depending on where you are, € 80 may not be as bad.
> 
> The frequent 'oil change' is still a thing in North America. There are drive-through oil change shops, whose business consist almost entirely on oil changes. In Europe it is usually part of the annual service.




There are inconsistent recommendations on how often you should change your oil (some say every 3,000 miles, some spring and fall...), and I’m sure I’m not living up to any of them, but my 2002 Mitsubishi with over 180,000 miles on it is treating me pretty well with my doing the oil change at the same time as my annual inspection. So once a year. :cheers:


----------



## Kpc21

From what I hear, so called long life oils – often even recommended by the manufacturers – are a total B.S. and if you want your car to live long, you should change the oil more frequently.

Once a year is OK if you don't do a lot of mileage.

I just ordered oil and an oil filter for my car online and I'll see how much my mechanic will charge me. The tyres are already replaced to winter ones, I did it 2 weeks ago because... I got a puncture, so I had to visit a tyre service anyway. If I remember well, he charged me something like 100 PLN (25 EUR) for all (summer tyre repair and replacement to winter ones) – of course, I wasn't buying new tyres.


----------



## g.spinoza

MattiG said:


> Ever tried?


Yes. That's why I don't like it. My body is much more relaxed out of it


----------



## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> I love americano coffee, but I really cant stand italiano. Its way too strong and the volume is so low that it kinda counteracts the pleasure of spending time drinking the magical fluid.


I like them both, but they're very different. You drink espressos fast, a very quick break. Americanos are more for spending time, sipping while reading or chatting with friends.
I drink espressos after meals, and americanos in all other moments of the day.


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> From what I hear, so called long life oils – often even recommended by the manufacturers – are a total B.S. and if you want your car to live long, you should change the oil more frequently.
> 
> Once a year is OK if you don't do a lot of mileage.
> 
> I just ordered oil and an oil filter for my car online and I'll see how much my mechanic will charge me. The tyres are already replaced to winter ones, I did it 2 weeks ago because... I got a puncture, so I had to visit a tyre service anyway. If I remember well, he charged me something like 100 PLN (25 EUR) for all (summer tyre repair and replacement to winter ones) – of course, I wasn't buying new tyres.




I do 30k intervals using castrol’s long life oil. What is your argument that its bs? 

Why not just believe the official recommendations from the engineers ?


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Finns are the top coffee consumers in the world, according to Wikipedia.
> 
> The top 10 (per capita):
> 
> 1 Finland – 12 kilograms
> 2 Norway – 9.9 kilograms
> 3 Iceland – 9 kilograms
> 4 Denmark – 8.7 kilograms
> 5 Netherlands – 8.4 kilograms
> 6 Sweden – 8.2 kilograms
> 7 Switzerland – 7.9 kilograms
> 8 Belgium – 6.8 kilograms
> 9 Luxembourg – 6.5 kilograms
> 10 Canada – 6.5 kilograms
> 
> I like coffee myself, though I typically drink much more coffee in the office than at home. They serve those small 0.15 L portions at the office, so going through 5-6 cups in 8 hours isn't uncommon for me. At home I usually drink 1 or 2 cups per day.
> 
> When I'm talking about coffee I usually mean 'American' coffee, not a tiny espresso. In southern Europe they would probably consider this coffee-flavoured water :lol:
> 
> I drink my coffee black, no sugar and no milk. When I see the cappucino from the coffee machine at work it appears that 70% is milk and only 30% coffee. Cappucinos also contain high calories so you get fat drinking lots of it.
> 
> On the other hand I don't drink much tea. I don't drink any tea at home and usually only 1 cup per day at the office for some variation.


I'm surprised that Italy isn't on the list.


----------



## bogdymol

tfd543 said:


> I do 30k intervals using castrol’s long life oil. What is your argument that its bs?
> 
> Why not just believe the official recommendations from the engineers ?


In the past the regular oile service was done every 10k km, at least in Romania. Now the manufacturers recommend such intervals to be higher, with 15-30k km for a personal car, or I have seen also up to 50k km for commercial vans.

In USA however, there is often the same manufacturer's requirement to change the oil every 5k miles (8k km), which I find a bit too often.


----------



## Spookvlieger

My car it says every 30.000km but I need a refil afther 15.000km. The engine takes about 1l of oil for every 10.000 km. I asked about this at the dealer and he just said: It's a VAG diesel what did you expect?



tfd543 said:


> Just replaced my oil and changing to winter tyres (only wheel change). I was charged 80 €. What do you Think of that price. I Think its a bit expensive.


If it is only a wheel change why no try it yourself? I've been doing wheel changes for 5 years now and it takes me less than an hour and you don't really need much equipment. Just a jack, torque wrench, a compressor and some anti seize compound (copper grease) if you want to make your life easier next time.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> I'm surprised that Italy isn't on the list.


Espresso requires very little amount of powder.


----------



## MichiH

joshsam said:


> My car it says every 30.000km but I need a refil afther 15.000km. The engine takes about 1l of oil for every 10.000 km. I asked about this at the dealer and he just said: It's a VAG diesel what did you expect?


I always drove a FORD and only my first car (from 1980s) lost a little bit oil. I always let it change with the annual or 20,000km inspections.



joshsam said:


> If it is only a wheel change why no try it yourself? I've been doing wheel changes for 5 years now and it takes me less than an hour and you don't really need much equipment. Just a jack, torque wrench, a compressor and some anti seize compound (copper grease) if you want to make your life easier next time.


I always changed my wheels manually with jack and torque wrench for about 20 years. It took me about 1 hour plus some time for cleaning the unmounted wheels. Then, I drove to the next gas station to check and adjust the air pressure. I sometimes had problems with screw nuts. They were damaged and I couldn't mount them. Last time it happened (two years ago?), I had no chance at all and had to mount the old wheels again, drive to the repair shop and buy new screw nuts. Now, I always let change my wheels at the repair shop to make my life easier.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Speaking of tires, nowadays most cars don't come with a spare tire anymore. Since I take trips to remote mountain areas, I purchased a rim + tire for my new car, so I can change a tire instead of waiting hours for roadside assistance in the middle of nowhere. It wasn't cheap though, I believe it was around € 200 for the whole set (rim, tire, balancing, jack).


----------



## Spookvlieger

An the jack provided these days even when you pay extra are halfly made of plastic. I don't trust those jacks for a second.

I also ordered a full spare tire with my car but it's just about the space in the trunk really. One tire on a steel rim shouldn't cost you more than €60-70, balanced. But if you don't chose the manufacturers hallucinant prices they leave no space in the trunk to hide the wheel. Bastards.


----------



## Spookvlieger

MichiH said:


> I always drove a FORD and only my first car (from 1980s) lost a little bit oil. I always let it change with the annual or 20,000km inspections.
> 
> 
> 
> I always changed my wheels manually with jack and torque wrench for about 20 years. It took me about 1 hour plus some time for cleaning the unmounted wheels. Then, I drove to the next gas station to check and adjust the air pressure. I sometimes had problems with screw nuts. They were damaged and I couldn't mount them. Last time it happened (two years ago?), I had no chance at all and had to mount the old wheels again, drive to the repair shop and buy new screw nuts. Now, I always let change my wheels at the repair shop to make my life easier.


Some of these nuts are made of some sort of alloy these days that make them wear more. I replaced mine with hardened stainless steel ones since I found them to soft. Even the wrench made their corners rounded...


----------



## MattiG

tfd543 said:


> Just replaced my oil and changing to winter tyres (only wheel change). I was charged 80 €. What do you Think of that price. I Think its a bit expensive.



Depends on if the oil, filter, and recycling are included or not. 

The price level in Finland is generally somewhat high. An oil change is usually bundled into the 30000 km or 12 months service. Bought separately, with 4-5 liters of high-end oil (e.g. Mobil1 0W-40), filter and recycling the old oil, the price tag might be around 100 euros. Cheaper with cheaper oil. The work only might be some 25-30 eur. 

The last time I got the tyres changed, the price was 35 eur. With steel wheels, it would have been 25 eur. In addition, I bought an extra service to wash the summer tyres, 20 eur.


----------



## Kpc21

tfd543 said:


> I do 30k intervals using castrol’s long life oil. What is your argument that its bs?
> 
> Why not just believe the official recommendations from the engineers ?


No independent car mechanic recommends that.


----------



## MichiH

^^ How do these independent car mechanics earn their money?


----------



## Spookvlieger

Offcourse they don't, it puts them out of work. You can see for yourself that afther 10.000 or 15.000 km the oil has become "watery" wich probably means it has lost some of its lubricating abilities. But it shoudn't be to bad since why would car manufactures want to risk claims for an bad engine because the oil was changed at their pre-scribed intervals?


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Speaking of tires, nowadays most cars don't come with a spare tire anymore. Since I take trips to remote mountain areas, I purchased a rim + tire for my new car, so I can change a tire instead of waiting hours for roadside assistance in the middle of nowhere. It wasn't cheap though, I believe it was around € 200 for the whole set (rim, tire, balancing, jack).




No spare at all, or what we call the “doughnut,” which is enough of a tire to get you to a proper tire place?

I had a bad flat...I don’t know what did it but it tore a nice big hole in the tire...on the New York State Thruway one Sunday evening a few months ago. Happened just short of the Batavia exit, and I was staying in Syracuse, a bit over 100 miles away. The AAA guy who mounted the doughnut said he wouldn’t recommend my doing that distance but I could probably make it doing it a little slowly. I didn’t have much choice, so I made it to the hotel, driving at about 60 mph, got it replaced the next morning.


----------



## MattiG

Penn's Woods said:


> No spare at all, or what we call the “doughnut,” which is enough of a tire to get you to a proper tire place?
> 
> I had a bad flat...I don’t know what did it but it tore a nice big hole in the tire...on the New York State Thruway one Sunday evening a few months ago. Happened just short of the Batavia exit, and I was staying in Syracuse, a bit over 100 miles away. The AAA guy who mounted the doughnut said he wouldn’t recommend my doing that distance but I could probably make it doing it a little slowly. I didn’t have much choice, so I made it to the hotel, driving at about 60 mph, got it replaced the next morning.


It is all about risk analysis. I have driven some 1.3+ million kilometers, and I have lost a tyre three times only. That is why I do not want to put much money on preparing for such an event.

The latest incident took place in summer 2018 close to my home. The road assistance took me and the car to a tire shop nearby, and I was back on the road after 90 minutes. The car insurance covered the road assistance work and towing.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Penn's Woods said:


> No spare at all, or what we call the “doughnut,” which is enough of a tire to get you to a proper tire place?
> 
> I had a bad flat...I don’t know what did it but it tore a nice big hole in the tire...on the New York State Thruway one Sunday evening a few months ago. Happened just short of the Batavia exit, and I was staying in Syracuse, a bit over 100 miles away. The AAA guy who mounted the doughnut said he wouldn’t recommend my doing that distance but I could probably make it doing it a little slowly. I didn’t have much choice, so I made it to the hotel, driving at about 60 mph, got it replaced the next morning.


We call it a 'thuiskomer" in Dutch (literal meaning= a homecoming(tire)). max speed is usually 50mph/80kmh. At least it gets you where you need to be if you're not hours driving from home. But a lot of cars don't even have that anymore. They put in a tire repair set if you're lucky, but most people don't even know how to use it.


----------



## MichiH

My cars had a "Notrad" (emergency wheel). It's allowed to drive 80km/h only. I had two flats in my life. Both a few hundreds of km away from home. One happened just in front of a tunnel and the other one at high speed. I changed the wheel on a rest area after the tunnel and the other one on the emergency lane of the motorway. Both were left rear.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The story goes that removing the spare tire means a slight reduction in weight, so they could manipulate the NEDC / WLTP cycle for marginally better fuel economy. Many cars, even A/B segment actually still have room for a full spare tire. 

It's the same with the stop/start system. The actual fuel savings is so small you wouldn't even notice it in real world city driving, but they can also get marginally better fuel economy in the test cycle. Idling burns very little fuel, any advantage is negated by a traffic jam, headwind or a few more red lights than anticipated.


----------



## tfd543

My audi came with sealant compound with a toylike compressor. No emergency tire and no jack.


----------



## tfd543

joshsam said:


> If it is only a wheel change why no try it yourself? I've been doing wheel changes for 5 years now and it takes me less than an hour and you don't really need much equipment. Just a jack, torque wrench, a compressor and some anti seize compound (copper grease) if you want to make your life easier next time.



Im strongly considering this. I have everything but the compressor. Can you recommend a budget type?


----------



## tfd543

MattiG said:


> Depends on if the oil, filter, and recycling are included or not.
> 
> 
> 
> The price level in Finland is generally somewhat high. An oil change is usually bundled into the 30000 km or 12 months service. Bought separately, with 4-5 liters of high-end oil (e.g. Mobil1 0W-40), filter and recycling the old oil, the price tag might be around 100 euros. Cheaper with cheaper oil. The work only might be some 25-30 eur.
> 
> 
> 
> The last time I got the tyres changed, the price was 35 eur. With steel wheels, it would have been 25 eur. In addition, I bought an extra service to wash the summer tyres, 20 eur.




The 80 € was excluding the parts and oil. I know the mechanic so I was allowed to bring my own stuff... not so many dealers let you do that


----------



## Spookvlieger

tfd543 said:


> Im strongly considering this. I have everything but the compressor. Can you recommend a budget type?


I'm not sure where you live but a small compressor only for tires doesn't cost to much. Mine is from a cheap brand called powerplus and cost me around €50. It's a small one without tank.


----------



## g.spinoza

My car came with optional spare tire. I've had flat tire only once, but it nearly ruined my holidays, so I prefer to be prepared.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes, but why continue to use an outdated unit? 6.4 on the Richter scale is not the same as 6.4 on the moment magnitude scale. The difference is not huge, but it's there.
> 
> They could just call it a '6.4 magnitude earthquake'. Just like they report that the 'temperature is 20 degrees', without using Celsius.




Actually, I think “6.4-magnitude earthquake” is what I usually hear.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes, but why continue to use an outdated unit? 6.4 on the Richter scale is not the same as 6.4 on the moment magnitude scale. The difference is not huge, but it's there.
> 
> They could just call it a '6.4 magnitude earthquake'. Just like they report that the 'temperature is 20 degrees', without using Celsius.


Why not, if the scale is well-known? Joe Average could not care less whether the figure is 6.3 or 6.4. But he typically knows that is much more than 4 but much less than 8. And Richter is an easier word than magnitude.

The same question can be posted on why to express wind speed in Beauforts, like what happens in many countries. Or why the food industry still is using calories instead of joules? Or why the press insist a liter of water weighs one kilogram, even if it actually weighs 9.81 newtons?

We live in an incomplete word.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm having a _Pasta Puttanesca_ today. I wonder how many people in the Netherlands know what it means... :lol:


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> The press uses words and terms known to the public. It does not matter which units the scientific institutes use.


Yes but here it's not simplified, it's just wrong. And the public will understand it whatever name scale the journalist will use, after all, most of the public is not accustomed at all with the earthquake scales, including the Richter one.



MattiG said:


> Or why the food industry still is using calories instead of joules?


Here, it got even more interesting – they often say calories but they mean kilocalories! It's a 1000 times difference.

If you counted your diet using actual calories and not kilocalories (in the prescribed amounts), you would probably die of starvation


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Other common usages in the media;

* using kilograms where tonnes would be more appropriate
* using football fields to indicate the size of an area
* using olympic swimming pools to indicate volume 
* using '100 thousand' instead of '100,000'.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's interesting that most of the media still speaks of the 'Richter Scale'


Dutch media?



Penn's Woods said:


> Actually, I think “6.4-magnitude earthquake” is what I usually hear.


I hear the same from German media: "Erdbeben der Stärke 6.4".


----------



## MichiH

tfd543 said:


> You need really strong buildings to withstand that michi!


It was just an example. You can blame whoever you want - even you or me - but please don't blame nature '_being unfair_'.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MichiH said:


> Dutch media?


Definitely not just the Dutch media. If you Google for 'Richter scale' on Google > news, you'll find sources from many countries that use that term.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> * using kilograms where tonnes would be more appropriate


By the way, it's interesting that a tonne has a name in the SI system – it's a megagram – but absolutely noone calls it so.



> * using football fields to indicate the size of an area
> * using olympic swimming pools to indicate volume


This is actually better than giving the area or volume in units – it's much easier to imagine how much it is when someone is using such a comparison.



> * using '100 thousand' instead of '100,000'.


This is rather because it just looks better in a written text. In a book (like a novel) you would often get it written with words: a hundred thousand. In things like articles, it's usually appropriate to pu 100 thousand.

In Polish we very often use an abbreviation: 100 tys. (where tys. stands for tysiąc – a thousand), or e.g. 20 tys., 7 tys. I don't really know how to represent it in English, is there also a similar abbreviation?

In Poland it's also popular for the media to tell the magnitude of earthquakes in the Richter scale.


----------



## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> By the way, it's interesting that a tonne has a name in the SI system – it's a megagram – but absolutely noone calls it so.


Mega never gained momentum within SI base units. It is used in some derived ones, though, like megawatts or megajoules.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> ^^ Other common usages in the media;
> 
> * using kilograms where tonnes would be more appropriate
> * using football fields to indicate the size of an area
> * using olympic swimming pools to indicate volume
> * using '100 thousand' instead of '100,000'.




I’ve heard French newscasters describe countries as being “the size of X French départements.” Because they’re so standardized that such a reference actually works.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Definitely not just the Dutch media. If you Google for 'Richter scale' on Google > news, you'll find sources from many countries that use that term.




Well then you’re missing all the media that don’t, which might be 100 times as numerous...You have no way of knowing.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> By the way, it's interesting that a tonne has a name in the SI system – it's a megagram – but absolutely noone calls it so.
> 
> 
> This is actually better than giving the area or volume in units – it's much easier to imagine how much it is when someone is using such a comparison.
> 
> 
> This is rather because it just looks better in a written text. In a book (like a novel) you would often get it written with words: a hundred thousand. In things like articles, it's usually appropriate to pu 100 thousand.
> 
> In Polish we very often use an abbreviation: 100 tys. (where tys. stands for tysiąc – a thousand), or e.g. 20 tys., 7 tys. I don't really know how to represent it in English, is there also a similar abbreviation?
> 
> In Poland it's also popular for the media to tell the magnitude of earthquakes in the Richter scale.




As an abbreviation for 100 thousand, you could say “100K.” From “kilo” I suppose.
If I had time, I’d look up whether the rule for American newspapers (as set by the Associated Press Stylebook, which I was expected to follow in a job writing and editing content for a nonprofit’s marketing department) is “100,000” or “100 thousand.” Because I suspect it’s the latter.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm having a _Pasta Puttanesca_ today. I wonder how many people in the Netherlands know what it means... :lol:


Being more or less Italian speaker in Italy I always feel kinda uncomfortable when I see it  . Fortunately, it's not my favourite pasta dish, I prefer lighter types.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> Well then you’re missing all the media that don’t, which might be 100 times as numerous...You have no way of knowing.


Perhaps, but even the English Wikipedia page on the Richter Scale states: _Because of various shortcomings of the ML scale most seismological authorities now use other scales, such as the moment magnitude scale (Mw ), to report earthquake magnitudes, but much of the news media still refers to these as "Richter" magnitudes. _

I also don't think people really have much conception of the Richter Scale (or Moment Magnitude for that matter), how many ordinary people would be aware that the Richter Scale is logarithmic, thus a 6.0 magnitude earthquake is not 2 times more powerful than a 3.0 magnitude earthquake, but 1,000 times more powerful. Each 0.2 increase is a doubling of the energy released.

I suppose the media still makes up the Richter Scale for earthquake reports because that happens to be a term that most people are familiar with, despite it being outdated.

Earthquake damage is also very dependent on depth, location, soil conditions and construction quality / seismic design. Shallow <6.0 earthquakes can do much more damage than some 500 kilometer deep >7.0 earthquake. So the Richter or Moment Magnitude Scale doesn't tell the whole story of severity or impact. 

The 2003 Bam earthquake was a 6.6 earthquake and caused over 26,000 fatalities, while a recent 8.0 earthquake in Peru caused only 2 deaths (this was the strongest earthquake of 2019 so far).


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> By the way, it's interesting that a tonne has a name in the SI system – it's a megagram – but absolutely noone calls it so.


Tonne is not a unit of the SI system. Instead, it appears on the list of accepted non-SI units. It is about practicality. It is quite evident that "1 day" is a more practical time measure than 86.4 kiloseconds, and it is easier to buy one liter of milk instead of 0.001 cubic meters. How about taking right at the next street corner, just turn about 1.5707963267948966192313216916398 radians to the right.


----------



## Kpc21

It's not about practicality because the SI unit megagram equals it, therefore it's identically practical. The only practical difference is that tonne is a shorter and an easier to pronounce name.

It's the force of habit. The same reason, for which in the US they are still using imperial units for measuring mass, length, surface area and volume – even though the metric ones are much more practical (you don't have to multiply them by a weird number to get the amount in a smaller unit, you just add or cut off zeros). This habit even crashed a space shuttle – but it still exists. Maybe after some generations, the US will finally convert to metric but it will yet take much time.

It's also quite interesting in terms of measuring pressure. Even though we have pascals, bars and atmospheres are still in use. In theory it's also the matter of practicality – and maybe it's true, because there is no SI prefix that would allow to name the unit equal to 10^5 Pa. It's 100 kPa, 0.1 MPa or the well-known 1000 hPa. Bars/atmospheres are practical because if you are pumping a wheel, the recommended pressure is always a few bars/atmospheres.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ in engineering we often talk of N/mm^2 instead of MPa also. Not sure why.

As for "k" abbreviation, in petroleum industry still (not sure if elsewhere) often Roman numeral "M" is used for "1000", and "MM" for "1 000 000". You see it referenced in e.g. 100 MMbbl/day production or the like (1 million barrels per day)


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> It's not about practicality because the SI unit megagram equals it, therefore it's identically practical.


Sure it is about practicality. It would be impractical to introduce a measure system which drops a well-known practical unit, because such a system would be widely just ignored. One litre equals to one millicubicmeter. Even if they represent an equal entity, they are not equally practical.

It is good to understand that Joe Average is not the key audience of the SI System. The target of the system is to provide with a coherent, accurate, and clear system free from multiplier constants for use in science, engineering, commerce, etc. From the beginning, its purpose was not to make an isolated island by ignoring certain well-known units.

The choice of units shall always relate to the context. Let me take an example. I give classes on celestial navigation at Helsinki Navigation Society: stars, sextants, time, spherical trigonometry, etc. For time zones, we use UTC but even if GMT is an obsolete designator, I tell that it can be tolerated, because the reason for being obsolete (not unique: 12 hours discontinuity in 1925) is not significant in this context. Then, because pascal is an impractically small unit, we routinely express the air pressure in millibars, because it is seen practical in that context. Finally, we measure the distances in nautical miles.


----------



## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> It's the force of habit. The same reason, for which in the US they are still using imperial units for measuring mass, length, surface area and volume – even though the metric ones are much more practical (you don't have to multiply them by a weird number to get the amount in a smaller unit, you just add or cut off zeros). This habit even crashed a space shuttle – but it still exists. Maybe after some generations, the US will finally convert to metric but it will yet take much time.


No shuttles were lost due to this.
It was an interplanetary unmanned probe, Mars Climate Orbiter.



x-type said:


> Being more or less Italian speaker in Italy I always feel kinda uncomfortable when I see it  . Fortunately, it's not my favourite pasta dish, I prefer lighter types.


Puttanesca is not that heavy. Tomato sauce, olives, capers and tuna.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

An apparent similar incident occurred yesterday in the Netherlands. A restaurant in the town of Coevorden exploded.


----------



## volodaaaa

Apparently, laying cables and handling stuff around gas pipes (even in exterior) should be more regulated.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Anyhow, this made my day, and it’s only 8:30 a.m. here:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-c...0-Td2HHpW7BjEee4mRee5gF5of2RGVnwSJndF1eKWmIGA

“The art reportedly comes with a certificate of authenticity, meaning owners can replace the banana.”


----------



## Spookvlieger

That's just stupid AF


----------



## Penn's Woods

joshsam said:


> That's just stupid AF




The buyers are stupid; the sellers may be evil geniuses.


----------



## masala

What do you think about this type of lightning?


----------



## MichiH

I have now clinched all dedicated motorway routes in Austria, Belgium, Czechia, France, Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Switzerland and the UK: http://travelmapping.net/user/?u=michih&units=km (please refer to 'Stats by System') :cheers:
I had clinched the Irish motorways last year but with the M11 opening this July I need to reclinch it. The same will happen to my Czech achievement when the D1 section will be opened next week.

_btw: TM has split France into regions. See this TM forum topic for more information about how you might need to update your list file if you have travels mapped in France.
The simplest way to get the French mileage back is downloading the converted list file and resubmit it._


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Travel Mapping: how to make your logging as complicated as possible... I really don't understand this seemingly pointless splitting of national systems into regions. Yeah it makes sense to have Interstates by state, but not the Autobahn system of Germany.

I'm not sure if I will continue to use it. It's becoming more user unfriendly all the time, having to redo your existing log almost every year.

What's the reasoning behind it? Sure this over-complicated system won't attract anyone but the most hard-core 'clinchers'?


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> I have now clinched all dedicated motorway routes in Austria, Belgium, Czechia, France, Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Switzerland and the UK: http://travelmapping.net/user/?u=michih&units=km (please refer to 'Stats by System') :cheers:
> 
> I had clinched the Irish motorways last year but with the M11 opening this July I need to reclinch it. The same will happen to my Czech achievement when the D1 section will be opened next week.
> 
> 
> 
> _btw: TM has split France into regions. See this TM forum topic for more information about how you might need to update your list file if you have travels mapped in France.
> 
> The simplest way to get the French mileage back is downloading the converted list file and resubmit it._




Gosh! Both directions?


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> Gosh! Both directions?


No, we just count it once.


----------



## bogdymol

I travel quite often in different countries and different places and managed to clinch quite a lot of roads (in my opinion), but I come nowhere close to you. May I ask what you do for a living? Delivery driver like our other colleague over here?


----------



## MichiH

bogdymol said:


> but I come nowhere close to you. May I ask what you do for a living? Delivery driver like our other colleague over here?


I get some mileage on business trips but it's not possible (for me) to clinch motorway systems this way. I always tried to travel roads I never drove before. I always had in mind which motorways I had already traveled. When I found the _Travel Mapping_ predecessor _Clinched Highway Mapping_ back in 2013 (after joining SSC) I was happy that I could track the routes now and seeing my clinched mileage growing.

I don't like beach holidays nor sightseeing trips. I don't like tourist stuff but I love driving and I love traveling in general. Being on the road, enjoying the landscape, being faced to unexpected (travel) events, staying in hotels, seeing different people and cultures,...

I started to plan road trips so that I get as much TM mileage as possible. I've been to places that way, I had never ever visited without the goal to clinch as many motorways as possible. I think that I'd never traveled to Serbia, Finland, Slovakia nor the Baltic States without TM.

I have to work 7h/day but I usually work about 9h/day. I have to compensate that time with off days. Together with the 30 leave days, I have about 9 weeks for traveling per year. And I really use that time in the last four years.

_I have just a simple industry job.... let's say, as a project manager _


----------



## tfd543

masala said:


> What do you think about this type of lightning?




Where is that? Its like a plane runway. Cool stuff.


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> Apparently, laying cables and handling stuff around gas pipes (even in exterior) should be more regulated.


In Poland it was, the cable laying crew had no permit for drilling, only for digging – but you can't do anything with the fact that someone may just ignore those regulations.


----------



## volodaaaa

My third day behind the steering wheel of a bus. It is vast, but I somehow got used to it. You have to stick to the left edge of a lane. Otherwise, you will destroy the right mirror. Poles, lamps, railings, parked cars, and trees cannot dodge while vehicles (regardless of their direction) on the port can.

The instructor always sends me to the downtown to pass the most winding streets with 90° sharp turnoffs. You have to occupy the lane on the opposite side and take some more space in front of you. My biggest problem is to stop at the bus stop correctly (close enough to the curb and next to the bus stop signs). I always have to correct it with more gas. 

Other drivers are terrible and don't let me in, overtake me at incredible places, etc.

But it is fun. The bus has a manual transmission and I enjoy it. I am having an 18 m long articulated bus on Wednesday.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Travel Mapping: how to make your logging as complicated as possible... I really don't understand this seemingly pointless splitting of national systems into regions. Yeah it makes sense to have Interstates by state, but not the Autobahn system of Germany.
> 
> I'm not sure if I will continue to use it. It's becoming more user unfriendly all the time, having to redo your existing log almost every year.
> 
> What's the reasoning behind it? Sure this over-complicated system won't attract anyone but the most hard-core 'clinchers'?


Sadly, I have to agree.
I'm still holding on but it's become much more complicated to use.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> The bus has a manual transmission and I enjoy it. I am having an 18 m long articulated bus on Wednesday.


Eh? An 18m articulated city bus with manual transmission? It sounds crazy. I have never seen such a vehicle.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> Eh? An 18m articulated city bus with manual transmission? It sounds crazy. I have never seen such a vehicle.


Nope, that sausage would be, thankfully, automatic. :lol: But you should have known an 18 m long articulated bus with the manual transmission - Hungary was once a famous producer of such one - Ikarus 283 with the lovely sound of the engine cut with the silence of double-clutch transmission.


----------



## bogdymol

Is it gas explosions season in Europe? This was today in Galați, Romania:










In this location was an old gas station which was closed some time ago. The old fuel tanks remained underground, and it seems that somehow gas got into one of them and blew up.

The explosion happened just on the right side of the red car, where the black car used to be parked (now with wheels up).


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> Eh? An 18m articulated city bus with manual transmission? It sounds crazy. I have never seen such a vehicle.


The last ride of a manual Ikarus 280 in Warsaw – in 2012:






Many of those were automatic, but manual ones were also present.

In Łódź, MPK (the city public transport company) used automatic ones only in the last years, manual ones stayed longest on the suburban line to Pabianice operated by the regional public transport operator (now almost non-existent any more), PKS Łódź:






Here, one having troubles with starting on slippery surface:






29 November 2010 – it was the worst day of the last decade for moving around Łódź. Because of heavy snow during the rush hours, the city got totally blocked for the whole day. Mainly because of trucks which, on the main roads, had problems similar to this bus. Now such a case is not very likely to repeat because a motorway bypass of the city got opened in 2016 and now the number of trucks in the city is much lower.

I am not sure which of those were manual (PKS had both manual and automatic Ikaruses) but really, an articulated bus with manual transmission isn't anything weird.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Biomass has been criticized a lot in the Netherlands for being a administrative trick to conform to renewable energy goals. In many cases it included trees being chopped down in Canada and then shipped to the Netherlands to be burned.


----------



## Kpc21

In a country that does not have much forests (and land for planting them), it indeed doesn't make much sense...

While criticizing cutting out forests people quite often forget what forests really are – at least those in civilized countries. A forest is, basically, an enormous farm, on which the crops are gathered many decades after planting the plants (often by a totally new generation of foresters). All the time, trees that have reached the desired age are being cut out and in their place, new trees are planted. And this process continues all the time. So the level of forestation doesn't change much.

I don't know if Canada carries out such sustainable forest economy, or it just exploits the forests, like it is done with the rainforests in South America. I guess it's rather the former as Canada looks like a civilized country.

But anyway, the transportation costs on such a distance probably kill any ecological effect.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> In a country that does not have much forests (and land for planting them), it indeed doesn't make much sense...
> 
> While criticizing cutting out forests people quite often forget what forests really are – at least those in civilized countries. A forest is, basically, an enormous farm, on which the crops are gathered many decades after planting the plants (often by a totally new generation of foresters). All the time, trees that have reached the desired age are being cut out and in their place, new trees are planted. And this process continues all the time. So the level of forestation doesn't change much.
> 
> I don't know if Canada carries out such sustainable forest economy, or it just exploits the forests, like it is done with the rainforests in South America. I guess it's rather the former as Canada looks like a civilized country.
> 
> But anyway, the transportation costs on such a distance probably kill any ecological effect.




“Canada looks like a civilized country.” :-D


----------



## Kanadzie

Canada regulates relatively strictly the forest, it is sustainable (usually they cut in a kind of checker-board pattern, the same place on approx 20 year cycle). Canada has been producing fibre for so long so much that the biggest problem is not lack of trees but demand for forest products (newsprint or US timber tariffs)

I think the only notable over-cutting issues happened around 1900 (e.g. sand dunes produced near Ottawa) but that has been remedied. Also some water pollution issues from kraft mills 50-60 years ago (e.g. mercury around Dryden) but the pollution is controlled now for a long time.

If anything probably need to cut more trees to improve environment, e.g. the trees killed by the pine beetle in western Canada (I think slowly this is turning around)


----------



## MattiG

Kanadzie said:


> Canada regulates relatively strictly the forest, it is sustainable (usually they cut in a kind of checker-board pattern, the same place on approx 20 year cycle).


Quite often, people from countries having destroyed their own forests for centuries ago, seem to be most eager ones to teach how to manage forests.

It is good to understand that natural forests do not live for eternity either. Instead the trees turn old, and lose their status as carbon sinks. One day, a forest fire destroys the entire forest, and the natural loop restarts at the beginning.

Cutting trees does not equal to destroying forests.


----------



## Suburbanist

Planted forests are like farms, yes. This is different than a regular natural forest.

Haphazard reforestation schemes can be quite damaging, such as the ill-conceived used of certain non-native plants species in Portugal that burn much easier on massive fires on inland Mediterranean summer weather.

In Brazil, there are some managed forests with chequered extraction of hardwood trees. It still causes some damage because of trails and shadow vegetation clearance but it doesn't remove the forest.


----------



## Kpc21

Kanadzie said:


> I think the only notable over-cutting issues happened around 1900 (e.g. sand dunes produced near Ottawa) but that has been remedied.


In Poland it was during the WW2.

The question is why the Netherlands imported wood from Canada having a very well-forested neighbor, Germany. Scandinavia, also being able to produce a lot of wood, is not far away as well.

The increased demand for wood products is actually good for environment because it means the need to plant more trees, maybe even to create new forests.


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> Planted forests are like farms, yes. This is different than a regular natural forest.


But the coal dioxide they eat and the oxygen they produce are the same. 

A natural forest is a rare thing at least in Europe.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Approximately 11% of the Dutch land area is forest. Many people seem to be under the impression that the Netherlands has deforestation, but there is actually a quite strong increase of forests, it grew from 260,000 hectares in the 1960s to about 375,000 hectares today. 

Forestation has been steadily increasing since the 18th century. Around 1750 it reached a low of 3% of land area, it is at 11% today. You can notice this when looking at historic photos, even from 50-60 years ago it is striking how much less trees there were at that time, many rural areas were almost entirely treeless.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland it was during the WW2.
> 
> The question is why the Netherlands imported wood from Canada having a very well-forested neighbor, Germany. Scandinavia, also being able to produce a lot of wood, is not far away as well.
> 
> The increased demand for wood products is actually good for environment because it means the need to plant more trees, maybe even to create new forests.


The business case of exporting timber for burning is a question mark to me. Typically, raw timber is not exported but value-added products like pulp, paper, board, packages, building supplies, timber houses, etc, are. Of course, low-quality and waste timber is used as an energy source, but usually locally only. A common setup in Finland in an industrial scale is a pulp and paper mill combo. Most of the timber waste and process by-products are burned to make energy to run the mill itself.


----------



## belerophon

cinxxx said:


> Climate nazis go further and further :nuts:
> 
> *Your Frequent Flyer Status Is Part of the Problem
> 
> Quote:
> If you take six or more flights a year, you're part of an elite class of people whose behavior needs to change.
> [...]*


It depends on necessity i think, doesn't it? For some numbers: 

http://world.bymap.org/AirTrafficPassengers.html

Here you can see, that even in western countries it is a small number of around 1-3 flights per person per year. Note, that those numbers are loaded on the air carriers, and its registration country. Thats why smaller countries with a lot of tourists carried by their "own" carriers are a lot of overrepresented.For example germany is counted with 115 million of flights a year, whilst numbers of 2018 counted a double amount of pessengers at german airports not mentioning the carrier. Numbers increased a bit in those 3 years... but all in all its comparable. 

Given that flights per person per year a more than six is much more than the average. But that does not say anything about necessity. For some islands a higher number is essential. Not unavoidable, but it would mean much hardship. For businessman it is also more likely to have a higher number. That does not mean improving railway or thinking about video conference is a bad thing. But if you keep this in mind it means that the average for those not in need by job or location is even lower. So of course it is just a sentence worth for headlining about those 6 flights. But doing more than 6 flights a year for vacation could be seen as a bad thing on an arguable basis of fact. You know i don't like absolut truthes... Neither saying it is stupid to fly no matter the cause nor ignoring any implications is any helpful.


----------



## Kpc21

An interesting interview with a chief police officer from Poznań... kind of explaining why Poland has so wrong stats on accidents with pedestians.

https://poznan.wyborcza.pl/poznan/7...anie-szef-drogowki-dla-nas.html#s=BoxLoPoImg2

Translated:


> Adam Kompowski: On Saturday, on a pedestrian crossing in Głogowska str., a woman was killed. On the next day, the locals organized a protest there: "Who will be the next? Głogowska kills!". During the protest, a car almost hit the next pedestrian.
> 
> Commissioner Przemysław Kusik, director of the road department of the City Police Station in Poznań: I talked to the policeman who was on the site, they didn't notice that situation. There was a lot of emotions. We are checking the CCTV, if the driver commited an infringement, he will be called to the police station and he will answer for what he did.
> 
> – What are your priorities as the head of the road traffic police department in Poznań?
> 
> – I am the director since December 2016. My priorities are different from those of my predecessor.
> 
> – About Józef Klimczewski it was told that he was only catching pedestrians in an organized way.
> 
> – The comments that the road police of Poznań only stands at the Kaponiera roundabout and punishes the pedestrians were making me really sad. I'm repeating: it's not the pedestrians who causes the road accidents. Anyway, we have the NIK (Supreme Audit Chamber) report on road safety – pedestrians are the cause of several percent of the accidents.
> Our priority is the fight with speeding near the pedestrian crossings. Forcing the right of way. And not keeping the appropriate distance. Talking about specific places – Głogowska, Dąbrowskiego, those are streets where I'm sending my patrols.
> 
> – And where on Głogowska do they stand?
> 
> – It's often impossible to safely carry out a road check due to the lack of appropriate place. We can do it e.g. at Berwińskiego. We often act proactively – the police cars stand and blink the lights. People anyway cross the double continuous line, the talk on the phone.
> In the city, it's difficult to use cars with video recorders to control the speed, there conditions required are not fulfilled.
> Furthermore – most important for us is to quickly intervene in case of accidents, so that people don't have to wait long.
> 
> – Recently, a girl was killed in Dębiec when a car entered the zebra even though it had red light. Do the drivers often ignore red lights?
> 
> – Concerning this issue, we are currently analyzing the data, so I don't want to talk about it. But it's a common infringement.
> Approaching to the intersection, we should be especially careful. If we drive at the speed of 70-80 kph because we want to manage to enter on yellow, it's an error. First of all, approaching to an intersection, we should slow down. Furthermore, yellow light is a signal to immediately stop the car.
> Today morning, at the intersection of Królowej Jadwigi and Drogi Dębińskiej streets, when I was going to work, a minibus (or van) driver passed next to me, on the neighboring lane. He speeded up when he noticed yellow light. The pedestrians on the crossing behind the intersection already had green. It could be very dangerous. At the next intersection, we met again. Why are the people in such hurry?
> 
> – Unfortunately, they don't teach that on the driving courses. It's better to drive safely and not to risk getting a 500 zł (120 euro) fine and six penalty points. At the distance of 20 km in the city, breaking the rules, one can save 4-5 minutes. Is it worth risking killing a pedestrian? Are the fines too low?
> 
> – Yes. But there are also other reasons. Vast majority of pedestrian crossings in Poznań and in the whole Poland is blocked (or hidden) by parked cars. They are almost everywhere on sidewalks. And it's not allowed to park 10 metres before the zebra. If up to half a metre before the pedestrian crossing, the sidewalks are full of parked cars, the pedestrian entering the zebra, if he doesn't take care of his safety himself, doesn't have big chances. When he goes out from behind a car, not to mention a van, he is not visible at all.
> 
> – Now, during all those street upgrades in Poznań, those sections get safety posts installed. Because signs, or anything else, don't work.
> 
> – We should start with eliminating all places which are dangerous, where the pedestrian is invisible for the driver. Parking in Poland is a drama. And the fine for incorrect parking is only 100 zł (23 euro).
> 
> – Not much.
> 
> – I will tell you a story of such a parking ticket. Of colleagues from the municipal police – but also us, from the state police road section, have a big poblem. We get a report that there are cars parked near a pedestrian crossing or on the road lane. We go there. And what can we do? We can only wait there until the driver comes.
> 
> – Can't you tow the car away?
> 
> – We can't, unless there is appropriate signage – a "no stopping" sign with a plate which displays a towing truck. Or if the car causes a danger for the traffic.
> 
> – What about if it parks next to a pedestrian crossing?
> 
> – If it's on the lane, yes, we can tow it. But on the sidewalk? In this case, the court sentences differ from each other a lot.
> We wait 10-20 minutes, the driver doesn't appear, we make a note. With the note, we go to the nearest police station. E.g. in Jeżyce (a district of Poznań). The policeman leaves the note at the duty officer. The duty officer passes the note, together with the whole duty documentation, to the commander of the station. The commanter decrees the note onto the director of the prevention department. Who decrees it on the director of the infringements section. He decrees it onto the next policeman. This policeman must call the person who left the car. All the time – I repeat – we're talking about a fine for only 100 zł!
> 
> – There is quite a lot of bureaucracy.
> 
> – And this is only the beginning. The policemen checks who is the vehicle owner. Let us assume it's Mr Smith. Mr Smith admits he drove this car but he left it there because he was in hurry to the hospital in Polna street to a wife who was just giving birth. He does not accept the fact because in his opinion, it was a situation of uttermost importance. He asks us to direct this case to the court.
> Then the policeman, who carries it out, must call the officers who reported it and hear them as well. When he finally has full documentation, he prepares an application for punishement. Then is undergoes the same way – through the infringements department, through the director to the commander, who signs this application, which then gets sent to the court. The court gets an application for punishing the driver with a 100 zł fine. The judge issues an order sentence, admitting the police was right. But the driver files an objection. Then the judge must organize a hearing. During which he must hear the driver and the policemen who made the note. And only then he issues the sentence. On the amount of 100 zł.
> 
> – The system is organized to discourage the police from giving fines.
> 
> – The courts have plenty of work with that, the police too. The cost of those cases is enormous, after all, there are dozens of such reports in Poznań in a single day.
> It's easier for the municipal police as they have wheelclamps, so they can force the driver to come to the place. We can't.
> And the situation might be even more difficult, if the car has e.g. WI licence plates (i.e. from Warsaw), which means it's probably leased. The policemen carrying out the issue must first call the bank and ask who is the user of the car. Which makes everything longer. It's a drama.
> 
> – How is it done in other European countries?
> 
> – When our colleagues from Assen, Netherlands visited us, our friend Peter Velthuis showed us how they issue fines. He drew out a smartphone, he started an app, he selected a tile, on which he introduced the data of the person to punish, it was also possible to scan the document. There appeared a question: "what has happened?". Then he selected the type of infringement and the amount of fine. And his role ends here. Such a call goes through a police structure similar to our tax offices. It's not possible to refuse accepting the fine.
> If someone doesn't agree and the circumstances and the fact of infringement make no doubts, let him immediately refuse the fine and then let him write the objection or appeal. Otherwise – we waste the time of the police officers who could otherwise be on the streets.
> 
> – In the Netherlands, in Germany there were also times of mess on the roads. How did they deal with it?
> 
> – There, the most important factor is the inevitability of punishment. And the fines are much higher than in Poland.
> 
> – What about parking? Over here, if the car is towed, it's to a depost parking. To get the vehicle back, you don't have to pay the fine immediately. In Germany, a towing truck of a licence businessman comes, it takes the car and leaves it several blocks away, were there is a free parking spot. The driver calls the police to report a theft but he gets informed that the car was towed because he parked wrong. After he pays, he gets the information where the car stands.
> 
> – If it was so in Poland, the problem would be gone.
> 
> – And one more thing – the parking should be allowed only in dedicated places. Not everywhere, on the sidewalks. If we want to have a car, we have to take into account, that the parking spot may not be for free, it may not be directly where we live.
> And that we drive 50 kph in the city, not 120. This year, the record of deadly accidents with pedestrians in Poznań got broken. It's already eight of them.
> 
> – Yes. There were two in 2014, three in 2015, again three in 2016, five in 2017, six in 2018. The reasons? In Zamenhofa, on old lady entered the pedestrian crossing on red, it was on 20 September. In Grunwaldzka, on 3 September – the driver did not grant right of way to the pedestrian. Grunwaldzka is the next street, after Głogowska, which requires a total reconstruction. Parking spots, the speed at which people drive, the U-turns through tram tracks – all of these must get changed.
> Accident in Opieńskiego, a man was killed – again not granting right of way on a zebra. There is no single reason but surely, from year to year we are dealing with increasing ignorance to the traffic laws. People are convinced that nothing threatens them. Or that the consequences are not severe.


----------



## cinxxx

^^Last 5 years I had around 35 flights/year.
Most of them are inside Europe, 1-3h flights.
Only 2 of them were for work.

I looked a few times at trains, but the prices were so high, flying was at least 2 times cheaper. The only train rides I took last few years were from Munich to Berlin, Frankfurt and Vienna.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are many pedestrian crossings on multi lane divided highways in Poland. Those are dangerous by default. One way to reduce speeding is by raising the pedestrian crossing onto a plateau which you can't comfortably drive at speeds over 50 km/h, or 30 km/h in inner city areas. 

Another problem is when one car stops, but the other in the next lane speeds ahead. But you don't want to put up traffic lights at each lightly used pedestrian crossing. 

Some consider zebra crossings a form of false security on high-speed roads or on roads where they are excessively used (every 100 m or so).


----------



## Spookvlieger

There are many pedestrian crossings on multiple lane expressways in Belgium as well but they always have individual traffic lights that only turn red when a person pushed a button. That's one way to solve the issue.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> There are many pedestrian crossings on multi lane divided highways in Poland. Those are dangerous by default.


They would be safe if the drivers obeyed the law and if hey restrained from overtaking other cars just before the zebra.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> They would be safe if the drivers obeyed the law and if hey restrained from overtaking other cars just before the zebra.


That happens all around the world. Hope and pray that drivers change their habits is not a promising way.

For instance, if drivers would always obey the law, we would not need speed limits at all.

I don't know whether there is a general rule but German law says (StVO §1):



> (1) Participation in road traffic requires constant caution and mutual respect.
> 
> (2) Anyone who takes part in traffic must behave in such a way that no other is harmed or endangered.
> 
> https://www.stvo.de/strassenverkehrsordnung/89-1-grundregeln


That would be enough to say. All other § do just specify details.


----------



## Kpc21

Polish PoRD, article three:



> 1. A participant of the traffic and any other person on the road are obliged to maintain caution, or when the law requires it – special caution, to avoid any action which could cause a threat for safety or order of the traffic, impede the traffic or disturb the public peace and order or which could cause any harm in relation with the road traffic. Ignoring is also understood as action.
> 
> 2. The (1) rule applies correspondingly also to a person located near the road if their behavior could cause the results mentioned in the rule.
> 
> 3. If a traffic participant or another person causes a threat for the road traffic safety, they are obliged to undertake the necessary measures so as to remove the threat immediately or if it is not possible, they should notify the other traffic participants about the threat.


Not as compact as the German version but it says, more or less, the same.


----------



## Attus

cinxxx said:


> ^^Last 5 years I had around 35 flights/year.
> Most of them are inside Europe, 1-3h flights.
> Only 2 of them were for work.
> 
> I looked a few times at trains, but the prices were so high, flying was at least 2 times cheaper. The only train rides I took last few years were from Munich to Berlin, Frankfurt and Vienna.


Change your behaviors does not mean to take a train instead of flying. It means to stay home, if you don't need to travel. 
And similar decisions, similar change of the way you live in many other topics. 
Yes, it means, your life will be worse than it's now, no doubt. 

What is really sad: changing the way you live does not make any sense. Since the vast majority of people won't do it, climate change will happen any way. 
I have no doubt that climate change will change the world so much like nothing since the neolithic about 12,000 years ago. The question is whether we try to stop or at least weaken it or we simply say we don't care.


----------



## MichiH

Attus said:


> It means to stay home, if you don't need to travel.


Not an option for me. It would be like being dead. Even Frieda travels around the world.... Why does she not use Skype instead? :lol:


----------



## Kpc21

Me too. The Polish word is rosomak.


----------



## mgk920

ChrisZwolle said:


> :lol:
> 
> It wouldn't surprise me if there are Europeans who think that way when planning a vacation....
> 
> I remember a story about a Dutch couple who visited relatives in New Brunswick and wanted to do a day trip to Montréal or Toronto, apparently not realizing it is 1500 kilometers away.
> 
> An interesting fact is that from Toronto, the Manitoba border (next province over) is the same distance as driving to Daytona Beach, Florida.


More than a handful of Europeans are caught off guard by how truly vast the USA is, too. No, you cannot drive from NYC to Los Angeles in one day.

Mike


----------



## g.spinoza

mgk920 said:


> More than a handful of Europeans are caught off guard by how truly vast the USA is, too. No, you cannot drive from NYC to Los Angeles in one day.
> 
> Mike


When I was in Denver I thought I could go visit Grand Canyon in one day.
As a matter of fact, I couldn't :lol:


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> When I was in Denver I thought I could go visit Grand Canyon in one day.
> As a matter of fact, I couldn't :lol:


You might take a plane. If take off is 6AM, you'll be in Las Vegas at 8AM. Take a rental car and you should arrive at the Canyon about 10:30AM. Source: Google Maps.



ChrisZwolle said:


> I remember a story about a Dutch couple who visited relatives in New Brunswick and wanted to do a day trip to Montréal or Toronto, apparently not realizing it is 1500 kilometers away.


Flight time from, let's say Saint John, MB, to Montreal is just about 90 minutes. But it's almost 3 hours to Toronto.

You criticize that the couple thought European and not Amerian but you do the very same mistake.


----------



## radamfi

Kanadzie said:


> Think of the worst case scenario, you have UK citizenship, UK is non-EU country and you want to move to NL. I am not sure of Dutch immigration laws but surely if you`re British and decent (educated, having some money) you should have little problem moving there.


Really? It is now looking very bleak.

Now what am I supposed to do?


----------



## bogdymol

mgk920 said:


> No, you cannot drive from NYC to Los Angeles in one day.


Yes you can! It's illegal, but you can do that.


----------



## tfd543

Merry Christmas guys. I had an interesting chat with a guy at a bar yesterday and we spoke about the arguments against existence of God.
What do you Think about the argument of rock and evil ?

We assume that God is almighty, merciful and can predict the future. Well, thats fair to assume.

The former is simply like this: Can God make a rock that he cannot move himself ? No matter What one answers, the outcome is that God is not almigthy.

The latter is this interesting thing: if God exists, why does horrible things happen in life e.g natural disasters, robbers, assassins, poor people, sick people, lunatic people etc. 
If he was that merciful, why didnt he prevent that from the very start where he designed the whole thing?


----------



## MichiH

tfd543 said:


> why didnt he prevent that from the very start where he designed the whole thing?


Human beings are only part of the nature. The nature regulates itself.

btw: He? How do you know? I think that "this person" is just a symbol from human beings for human beings. Described as being a human being. Why? Because it helps human beings to live their lifes.

And again, human beings are only (a very small) part of the nature


----------



## x-type

tfd543 said:


> Merry Christmas guys. I had an interesting chat with a guy at a bar yesterday and we spoke about the arguments against existence of God.
> What do you Think about the argument of rock and evil ?
> 
> We assume that God is almighty, merciful and can predict the future. Well, thats fair to assume.
> 
> The former is simply like this: Can God make a rock that he cannot move himself ? No matter What one answers, the outcome is that God is not almigthy.
> 
> The latter is this interesting thing: if God exists, why does horrible things happen in life e.g natural disasters, robbers, assassins, poor people, sick people, lunatic people etc.
> If he was that merciful, why didnt he prevent that from the very start where he designed the whole thing?


Here we go again. Let's try that childish explanation: if He would show his mercy in all its light and if the world would be so perfect, how would we know that everything actually is so good and perfect? What would we compare it with? How would we know each day that we'd be doing good things if we wouldn't know for bad?


----------



## tfd543

MichiH said:


> Human beings are only part of the nature. The nature regulates itself.
> 
> 
> 
> btw: He? How do you know? I think that "this person" is just a symbol from human beings for human beings. Described as being a human being. Why? Because it helps human beings to live their lifes.
> 
> 
> 
> And again, human beings are only (a very small) part of the nature




How come does it help? I mean Can you be more concrete? Why should it help to assume God is a human being than something ethereal?


----------



## tfd543

x-type said:


> Here we go again. Let's try that childish explanation: if He would show his mercy in all its light and if the world would be so perfect, how would we know that everything actually is so good and perfect? What would we compare it with? How would we know each day that we'd be doing good things if we wouldn't know for bad?




Well it goes against his power still and its not childish at all. Its just argumentation by logical conclusions. The only reference is the holy book, whatever that is in this situation. Am I wrong ?


----------



## g.spinoza

Religion, politics and football are all topics you want to avoid if you don't want to fight.


----------



## tfd543

g.spinoza said:


> Religion, politics and football are all topics you want to avoid if you don't want to fight.




True. Disregard it. My bad.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MichiH said:


> Flight time from, let's say Saint John, MB, to Montreal is just about 90 minutes. But it's almost 3 hours to Toronto.
> 
> You criticize that the couple thought European and not Amerian but you do the very same mistake.


I thought it was kind of obvious that they wanted to go by car. I'm sometimes amazed by having to clarify such things. :cheer:


----------



## MichiH

^^ "do a day trip" can also mean going by train, plane or ship. I'm amazed how narrow-minded some people are. That we are on the road forum doesn't mean that every word is just about road transportation.

I know people doing one-day business trips over a similar distance by plane. Also in Europe. And I'm quite sure that there are people who are doing such trips just for leisure.

And I find it disgusting to judge about people like that. "haha, they are so stupid and were not aware about the distance, haha". It's like 1990s trash TV. Just picking out the funny things.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This seems to fall on deaf ears, but again, they intended to go by car, not by plane. They were staying for a longer time and wanted to drive around the region, not realizing that the distances are way bigger than in Europe.


----------



## MichiH

tfd543 said:


> How come does it help? I mean Can you be more concrete? Why should it help to assume God is a human being than something ethereal?


Just go back when the stories were told for the first time. Thousands of years ago. It made sense to make rules how people should live together. Don't steal. Respect each other. Respect your parents. Don't f*** your neighbors wife etc.

The stories were told again and again. Over years and decades. Always adopted to the actual situation and development of the culture. And how do you tell a child that you don't wanna discuss the good old rules? Say that and old wise man has made the rules.

*However, I agree with Spinoza. We should not discuss this here.*


----------



## italystf

MichiH said:


> ^^ "do a day trip" can also mean going by train, plane or ship. I'm amazed how narrow-minded some people are. That we are on the road forum doesn't mean that every word is just about road transportation.
> 
> I know people doing one-day business trips over a similar distance by plane. Also in Europe. And I'm quite sure that there are people who are doing such trips just for leisure.
> 
> And I find it disgusting to judge about people like that. "haha, they are so stupid and were not aware about the distance, haha". It's like 1990s trash TV. Just picking out the funny things.


Maybe in North America is different, but here it isn't common to do daytrips by plane 1000 km away, despite the availability of cheap flights.


----------



## Penn's Woods

bogdymol said:


> Yes you can! It's illegal, but you can do that.




You’d need to go well over 100 mph. If you leave New York and drive 100 mph without stopping or slowing down for 24 hours, you’ll still be a few hundred miles short.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Maybe in North America is different, but here it isn't common to do daytrips by plane 1000 km away, despite the availability of cheap flights.




I don’t think it’s common here either. For a weekend, sure. I personally don’t like flying, so this is to some degree my impression of what other people do. But a weekend away is one thing; a day trip is another.

Although Expedia keeps emailing me deals for flights from Philadelphia to Atlantic City. Which is hilarious because it’s less than 60 miles away. We don’t even fly to New York or Washington; it’s easier and faster to take the train if we don’t want to drive. Which is why Philadelphia has the second highest long-distance train ridership in the country, after New York.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ Have a look at the last minute of the video. They had an average speed of slightly over 100 mph (160 km/h) over the entire journey.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Do you have problems with fireworks and injury / vandalism at the end of the year? 

In the Netherlands it is common for consumers to purchase fireworks, you can legally do that in the final 3 days of the year, though nowadays you can only legally light it on New Year's Eve. 

However there is a significant problem with people acquiring illegal fireworks. In the past this was mostly purchased in Belgium or Germany but nowadays many people order it from Italy or Poland, much of that is professional grade fireworks that can do significant damage if abused (which is usually the case). So in the final weeks of the year, there is a large amount of vandalism and injuries. 

People seem to lose their mind and blow stuff up, like garbage bins, bus stops, street signs, though sometimes into the extreme such as mixing with fuel and setting a lot of things on fire. New Years Eve is the worst due to the amount of alcohol involved, it's unfortunately 'normal' to throw illegal fireworks to medics, police offers, firemen, etc. People go completely off the rails. 

Is this a thing in your country as well?


----------



## Verso

What? That's crazy, I haven't seen it here.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Illegal fireworks in Belgium are sold under counter. But it's mainly the Dutch that buy them  Belgians do light fireworks in city Streets and garden but as extensive as in The Netherlands. They go all out.


----------



## mgk920

Here in the USA, a lot of states are pretty loose with their fireworks laws and others are pretty tight. OTOH, in even the loosest states, the 'professional' grade stuff never strays from the professionals. Federal explosives laws are rigidly enforced, including voluntarily within the professional pyrotechnicians' societies.

BTW, most consumer-grade fireworks here is shot off in early July as part of Independence Day celebrations, although professional displays are also common year round.

Mike


----------



## CNGL

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if the Netherlands becomes part of the sea again due to fireworks breaching ***** . Fireworks aren't a thing in Spain, we prefer to choke on twelve grapes to start the year.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> However there is a significant problem with people acquiring illegal fireworks. In the past this was mostly purchased in Belgium or Germany but nowadays many people order it from Italy or Poland, much of that is professional grade fireworks that can do significant damage if abused (which is usually the case). So in the final weeks of the year, there is a large amount of vandalism and injuries.
> 
> People seem to lose their mind and blow stuff up, like garbage bins, bus stops, street signs, though sometimes into the extreme such as mixing with fuel and setting a lot of things on fire. New Years Eve is the worst due to the amount of alcohol involved, it's unfortunately 'normal' to throw illegal fireworks to medics, police offers, firemen, etc. People go completely off the rails.
> 
> Is this a thing in your country as well?


Over here there are indeed injuries in a very increased amount (apart from the fireworks, another thing which goes well in pair with the New Year's Eve is alcohol; fireworks improperly used are dangerous, and it's always so that alcohol + dangerous things = injuries), the emergency services have really a lot to do, but I haven't heard about any related increased vandalism.

Most people use them responsibly, even if not according with the user manual (e.g. replacing dedicated launchers, which are expensive, with glass bottles) – but there are cases of people who start them from hand, which is definitely not a good idea.


An interesting observation from my commute to work is that yesterday, the roads were much more empty then normally, meanwhile today – in the morning, I didn't have to wait in ANY jam or queue to traffic lights (just waited for the green and I was the first or the second one before the intersection). Even though I chose the main road, which is better but I normally avoid it due to the traffic. The traffic was so low.

Officially, only 25th and 26th of December are holidays in Poland – but schools started the holidays already on Saturday, and it also seems that many people take holidays on the Christmas Eve (the employers are usually letting people out earlier on that day, also the law that forbids to open shops on Sundays obliges them to close the stores on the Christmas Eve not later than at 2 PM), as most Christmas celebrations over here take place exactly on the Christmas Eve evening. Taking extra holiday on Monday created something like a long weekend, so many employees went for that.


Merry Christmas everyone!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I went to work today, there were like 10 people working on our floor and most were gone just after midday. The train was empty, I had a whole carriage to myself...

Most of my colleagues have 2 weeks off. But I don't like wasting vacation days during the winter, I rather have more days off during the summer to travel.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I went to work today, there were like 10 people working on our floor and most were gone just after midday. The train was empty, I had a whole carriage to myself...
> 
> Most of my colleagues have 2 weeks off. But I don't like wasting vacation days during the winter, I rather have more days off during the summer to travel.


At my workplace, where usually 25 people work, only me and another guy were present today. And the cleaning lady


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> Is this a thing in your country as well?


Setting cars etc on fire is more or less a West European matter.

Talking about fireworks in The Netherlands. That's another issue. I would guess that the strict banning of fireworks make people go crazy on that one day. The more you restrict the people, the more they are inclined to overreact and abuse their freedom when they escape the cage. If New Years Eve fireworks would not be something all that special, it would not be such a big problem I guess.

But maybe I am have it wrong. Dunno, just my two cents.


----------



## Surel

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone.


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> Here in the USA, a lot of states are pretty loose with their fireworks laws and others are pretty tight. OTOH, in even the loosest states, the 'professional' grade stuff never strays from the professionals. Federal explosives laws are rigidly enforced, including voluntarily within the professional pyrotechnicians' societies.
> 
> BTW, most consumer-grade fireworks here is shot off in early July as part of Independence Day celebrations, although professional displays are also common year round.
> 
> Mike




There’s a public display on New Year’s Eve in Philadelphia; I remember watching the 1999-2000 from a friend of a friend’s roof (and that it was freakishly warm that New Year’s). But I don’t remember growing up with those; the Millennium celebration may have been the first time Philadelphia did it at New Year’s. (We do of course have them for the Fourth of July.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> Over here there are indeed injuries in a very increased amount (apart from the fireworks, another thing which goes well in pair with the New Year's Eve is alcohol; fireworks improperly used are dangerous, and it's always so that alcohol + dangerous things = injuries), the emergency services have really a lot to do, but I haven't heard about any related increased vandalism.
> 
> Most people use them responsibly, even if not according with the user manual (e.g. replacing dedicated launchers, which are expensive, with glass bottles) – but there are cases of people who start them from hand, which is definitely not a good idea.
> 
> 
> An interesting observation from my commute to work is that yesterday, the roads were much more empty then normally, meanwhile today – in the morning, I didn't have to wait in ANY jam or queue to traffic lights (just waited for the green and I was the first or the second one before the intersection). Even though I chose the main road, which is better but I normally avoid it due to the traffic. The traffic was so low.
> 
> Officially, only 25th and 26th of December are holidays in Poland – but schools started the holidays already on Saturday, and it also seems that many people take holidays on the Christmas Eve (the employers are usually letting people out earlier on that day, also the law that forbids to open shops on Sundays obliges them to close the stores on the Christmas Eve not later than at 2 PM), as most Christmas celebrations over here take place exactly on the Christmas Eve evening. Taking extra holiday on Monday created something like a long weekend, so many employees went for that.
> 
> 
> Merry Christmas everyone!




Wesołych świąt!


----------



## Penn's Woods

Merry Christmas!


----------



## AnOldBlackMarble

tfd543 said:


> Merry Christmas guys. I had an interesting chat with a guy at a bar yesterday and we spoke about the arguments against existence of God.
> What do you Think about the argument of rock and evil ?
> 
> We assume that God is almighty, merciful and can predict the future. Well, thats fair to assume.


Not really. Maybe he is lying. How would we know? And how do we know? Everything we know about God comes from people, and all we have is "trust" that they are telling us the truth. And there is no reason for him to be good or bad. 



> The former is simply like this: Can God make a rock that he cannot move himself ? No matter What one answers, the outcome is that God is not almigthy.


That's a limited question. If we go into more detail the answer is always NO. If I build a house brick by brick I can't move the house, yet I did. I moved the bricks "into the shape" of a house when I built it. And I can do the same by taking it back apart. I can't lift a house, but given enough time I tear it down, and/or build the tools to do so. Same applies to God. If he can create infinity, he can then adjust, alter, move that infinity, even if it takes an infinitely long amount of time. 



> The latter is this interesting thing: if God exists, why does horrible things happen in life e.g natural disasters, robbers, assassins, poor people, sick people, lunatic people etc.
> If he was that merciful, why didnt he prevent that from the very start where he designed the whole thing?


Again, why do we assume he is merciful? Because some guy wrote it on a piece of parchment 2000 years ago? What if we are like his chickens? He only cares enough to keep us around, to "lay souls" for him that he can make delicious omelets from. What if the more strife we experience the "tastier" or richer the flavor and nutrients? 

You asked. Meeerrry Christmas, and may you have God's blessings, you tasty omelet. :lol:


----------



## marcobruls

2 guys blew off half their faces last night in the netherlands with firework....they really need to start cracking down hard on the illegal mortars people import. The story is a scene from a horrormovie /0\


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*Waberer's*

Transport company Waberer's has again rented out a field along A67 in the Netherlands near Eersel. They park 320 trucks there for a 2 week vacation, busing their drivers to Hungary and Romania for the holidays.




































Source: Toprun


----------



## Kpc21

g.spinoza said:


> At my workplace, where usually 25 people work, only me and another guy were present today. And the cleaning lady


Meanwhile, we had quite many people at work in my department. Of course, we left earlier. But from my team, only one person (maybe two, I am not sure if he didn't work from home) was on vacation yesterday.

I don't think we would be allowed all to take vacation – but it seems most people prefer to work and not to waste vacation days that could be used in summer.



marcobruls said:


> 2 guys blew off half their faces last night in the netherlands with firework....they really need to start cracking down hard on the illegal mortars people import. The story is a scene from a horrormovie /0\


Why do people import those low quality illegal fireworks? Are the legal ones too expensive? Or are they totally banned?


----------



## mgk920

Surel said:


> Setting cars etc on fire is more or less a West European matter.
> 
> Talking about fireworks in The Netherlands. That's another issue. I would guess that the strict banning of fireworks make people go crazy on that one day. The more you restrict the people, the more they are inclined to overreact and abuse their freedom when they escape the cage. If New Years Eve fireworks would not be something all that special, it would not be such a big problem I guess.
> 
> But maybe I am have it wrong. Dunno, just my two cents.


That's the case regarding Prohibitions of any kind, like with the 18th Amendment days (1920-1933) and the more recent Drug War here in the USA. The worst beverage alcohol problems here were during that period when it was illegal.

hno:

Mike


----------



## MattiG

No big events in the newsfeed during the Christmas Day except this: A wolf named August probably has eaten a kangaroo in Belgium.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50912766

Globalization is a wonderful thing!


----------



## bogdymol

Some years ago I was working on a motorway construction site, at the asphalt laying department. Our asphalt producing plant broke down one day, so my colleagues had to source a replacement. The issue was that the specific part that broke down was a very special one. They found the manufacturer, but was not that easy to buy it. The reason: the sanctions on Iran.

Why? It seems that that special part used at asphalt producing plants could also be used in installations for uranium enrichment, which at the time was a very hot topic. Therefore, you could get such a part only after making a lot of paperwork to demonstrate exactly where you need it and why. Otherwise the producer would not sell it to you because of the sanctions.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

:runaway:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Fireworks have been on sale since Saturday in the Netherlands and of course it sounds like a war zone. There are fireworks going off non-stop (literally every second) throughout the entire day. 

The Netherlands appears to be an outlier in this tradition, with so many people buying large quantities of fireworks. There are politicians that want to ban all firework sales, the country is pretty divided on the issue. Firework sales are projected to see another record this year, and that isn't even counting the large amounts of Dutch that buy fireworks in Germany or Belgium. 

There were reports of supermarkets in Germany being unable to stock their supply as fast as the Dutch were buying them, with customers even taking it from employees before they can even put it on display. 

There was a report of an 18 year old dude from Nieuwegein who purchased € 3000 worth of fireworks, he said he worked 2 months just to save up for a couple of hours worth of fireworks. Although the Netherlands is a high-income country, € 3000 for fireworks is absolutely outrageous even by Dutch standards. :nuts:


----------



## Spookvlieger

Wait can't you just buy fireworks year round like overhere? That's stupid and adds to the hype probably.


----------



## keber

Here you can also buy fireworks just between Christmas and New year eve and only in special shops or shopping departments that exist just in those 6 days. This and other safety rules and large media campaigns resulted in substantially less private fireworks, even official public fireworks are becoming pretty rare. And most important - there are practicaly no "war zones" anymore that they used to be common cca 15 years ago.


----------



## g.spinoza

I am surprised with this love of fireworks among the Dutch. Here in Italy they're very popular too, but they're generally associated with Southern, low-educated people.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Extremely dense fog is forecasted this night, with visibility possibly under 10 meters.The conditions have rarely been so favorable and the fireworks will exacerbate the problem.

We had the same problem in 2007-2008, when extremely dense fog developed, it took me almost 2 hours to drive 12 kilometers, it was just impossible to see where to go, even on roundabouts you couldn't see where the exits were, I never experienced something like that, but it may happen again this year.


----------



## g.spinoza

joshsam said:


> Wait can't you just buy fireworks year round like overhere? That's stupid and adds to the hype probably.


I guess to prevent people from stocking them and create risks of explosion when stored not properly.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There may be riots in The Hague this new year's. 

There is a tradition to build a huge bonfire on the beach. Of course this gets out of hand with pallets stacked up tens of meters high. Last year it created large amounts of embers over the city and fire tornadoes. 






So this year the bonfire has been banned by the city. This has upset many people and there has been a lot of violent incidents over the past few weeks, with 'bombs' thrown at police, rioting, vandalism and a number of people have been arrested as a precaution.

But many fear it will get out of hand tonight.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> So this year the bonfire has been banned by the city. This has upset many people and there has been a lot of violent incidents over the past few weeks, with 'bombs' thrown at police, rioting, vandalism and a number of people have been arrested as a precaution.
> 
> But many fear it will get out of hand tonight.


There are people who riot to get rid of dictators.
Here people riot to have a bonfire.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I know, right... It's ridiculous

The media reports that improvised spike strips have been found at the entrance of a fire station in The Hague, meaning a fire truck had flat tires and couldn't deploy.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It appears that Europe has surpassed 100,000 kilometers of motorways & expressways in 2019. 

I made a count of the motorway & expressway length and came to a preliminary 100,167 kilometers. (And that includes S5 in Poland which opened today  ) 

The actual value may be somewhat higher, depending on what you count as a motorway-like expressway and not. I think it's impossible to come to a universally accepted exact figure.


----------



## Spookvlieger

ChrisZwolle said:


> Extremely dense fog is forecasted this night, with visibility possibly under 10 meters.The conditions have rarely been so favorable and the fireworks will exacerbate the problem.
> 
> We had the same problem in 2007-2008, when extremely dense fog developed, it took me almost 2 hours to drive 12 kilometers, it was just impossible to see where to go, even on roundabouts you couldn't see where the exits were, I never experienced something like that, but it may happen again this year.


There is allready fog since the afthernoon. Will create some lovely smog...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Here's a dude who has purchased € 5000 worth of fireworks. :nuts:


----------



## Kpc21

What are your plans for the New Year's Eve? Parties? Spending it at home?

Or...








> – We're asking people living in Gliwice where they're spending their New Year's Eve this year. How will you spend it?
> – At... I'll be playing a game.
> – What game?
> – Tomb Raider.
> – Ok, thank you very much.


----------



## tfd543

Gonna hit a house party with friends from elementary school. Im proud of having them still in my social circle. What about you ?


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## Kpc21

Spending at home. Not playing Tomb Raider


----------



## bogdymol

I have a 2.5 weeks vacation during the winter holidays. I did not want to spend that much time home, so I searched for the cheapest flight tickets I could find for the new years eve. 

Greetings from Stockholm, Sweden!


----------



## Doctor_Doof

Is anyone going to Times Square to see the ball drop, because that is what I'm doing.

Have a Happy New Year!


----------



## Penn's Woods

Doctor_Doof said:


> Is anyone going to Times Square to see the ball drop, because that is what I'm doing.
> 
> Have a Happy New Year!




My crowd tolerance is too low for that. And I’ve heard that once you’re through security there are no bathrooms.

But I hope you’re already there; I happen to be in North Jersey right now and was just listening to WCBS radio; they say if you’re not in already there’s no point in going there now.


----------



## marcobruls

I guess its more comparable to saying youre of hispanic blood rather than saying youre spanish. 

The only reason they emphasize he is of our "volk" blood is to state that he is one of us fighting for us. Eventually the man did give up his wealth his land his life and that of 2? of his sons for the freedom of the dutch...i mean diets...germans...germanics...hollanders...netherlanders...****!whatever!


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> National anthems are full of rethorical chauvinism and refer to very old geo-political issues. Italian one has a stanza where we want to "burn the hearts" of Austrians together with the Poles... hno:


Those stanzas are virtually unknown and never sung for example at sport events. Only the first part of the anthem is widely known.


----------



## CNGL

g.spinoza said:


> National anthems are full of rethorical chauvinism and refer to very old geo-political issues. Italian one has a stanza where we want to "burn the hearts" of Austrians together with the Poles... hno:


We don't have that problem in Spain... simply because our anthem has no lyrics. This has made me envious of all other countries, and thus I started using placeholder text. Yes, I actually sing the "Lorem ipsum" :lol:.


----------



## Kpc21

> Italian one has a stanza where we want to "burn the hearts" of Austrians together with the Poles...


It's interesting because the Polish anthem also has a reference to Italy 

Actually, it was originally a military song of the Polish Legions in Italy – Polish military units fighting together with Napoleon's army around the year 1800 with the hope for liberating Poland from the occupants.

So the chorus follows:

_March, march, Dąbrowski
From the Italian land to Poland
Following your lead
We will rejoin our nation_

Other countries mentioned there are Sweden (referring to the Swedish "flood", or attack on Poland in the 1650s) and – indirectly – France (Napoleon is mentioned as an example of how to win). There is also an unused now stanza mentioning Germany and the Moscow country (as the enemies).

Talking about the Polish anthem, at the sports events, usually only the first stanza and the chorus are performed, but all others are also widely known, and at school it's obligatory to memorize the whole anthem lyrics.

In some schools, they also teach kids the lyrics of the EU anthem (Ode to Joy) but in mine they didn't, maybe also because I was at my second or third year of the primary school when Poland joined the EU.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The national anthem in the Netherlands from March 2020:


----------



## x-type

French anthem has one of the most cruel lyrics among all anthems. They are cutting the throats there. hno:


----------



## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> French anthem has one of the most cruel lyrics among all anthems. They are cutting the throats there. hno:




Right?

“...that their impure blood soak our thresholds!”


----------



## mgk920

The first verse of the USA's national anthem (the one that is familiar to pretty much everyone) is basically a wistful poem that was written while watching a battle between USA and British forces by Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor during the War of 1812, set to the music of a fiendishly difficult to sing drinking song of the time. I'm not very familiar with the other three verses.

Mike


----------



## g.spinoza

The most famous I think is the German one : it indicates the boundaries of the Nation... which are no longer in Germany since WW2! 



> Von der Maas bis an die Memel,
> von der Etsch bis an den Belt:


The Meuse (Maas) is in France, Belgium and Netherlands, the Nemunas (Memel) in Russia, Belarus and Lithuania, the Adige (Etsch) in Italy and the Belt are in Denmark...


----------



## volodaaaa

Guys,

I have got a question for you, especially those who are truck drivers.

I have recently got an opportunity to expand my driver's license to the C group within my agenda. 

However, there is a European thing called "Driver's Certificate of Professional Competence", CPC or Qualification card for short.










And there is an urban legend spreading within my colleagues that some countries, e. g. Austria, require to have a valid Qualification card even if you are driving your very private passenger car.

According to this, it is illegal to have your driver's license valid for groups B, C, D (with all subgroups included) once you don't have an own qualification card for the C and D group.

The legal procedure on how to handle an unused driver's license group is to return your driver's license and ask the police to issue a new one only for the groups you hold your qualification card for.

If you decide to have a qualification card for the previously unused group, you should again return the driver's license and ask the police to issue a new one with the proper groups without any need to attend a driving school or tests.

It does not sound reasonable to me (the legend), because it would negate the importance of the qualification card itself. I think the driver's license is to know which kind of vehicles I am eligible to drive, and the qualification card is to determine which of these groups I actively use.

Is that true, or is the situation similar in your country? The Slovak police do not care about your qualification card if you drive a passenger car.


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> The most famous I think is the German one


Nope. You quoted the first verse of the "Lied der Deutschen" (Song of the Germans, from 1841). Only the third verse is the national anthem.


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> Nope. You quoted the first verse of the "Lied der Deutschen" (Song of the Germans, from 1841). Only the third verse is the national anthem.


It was until the fifties, then they realised it was a little extreme for current times.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> It was until the fifties, then they realised it was a little extreme for current times.


It was. It is not any more.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Which Belt do they mean in the anthem? The Great Belt, Little Belt or the Fehmarn Belt, which is actually a border area of Germany.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> And there is an urban legend spreading within my colleagues that some countries, e. g. Austria, require to have a valid Qualification card even if you are driving your very private passenger car.
> 
> According to this, it is illegal to have your driver's license valid for groups B, C, D (with all subgroups included) once you don't have an own qualification card for the C and D group.


The respective directive text is about C, D, and E classes only. Thus, it has a zero impact on the B licences and on driving a passenger car. 

As the driving license rules are pretty well harmonized across the EU, it sounds pretty odd if Austria had implemented such a rule you are telling about.

In Finland, the person can show his or her qualification by having a 95 code marking in the driving licence or by having a separate card. The qualification, of course, is needed only in when the transport is commercial *and* needing a C, D or E licence. If the 95 code expires, the driving license still is valid for passenger cars, and for CDE in a private use.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> Which Belt do they mean in the anthem? The Great Belt, Little Belt or the Fehmarn Belt, which is actually a border area of Germany.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschlandlied#Geographical

Little Belt.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Which Belt do they mean in the anthem? The Great Belt, Little Belt or the Fehmarn Belt, which is actually a border area of Germany.


It's about the Little Belt. However don't forget, when the text was written (1841), Germany did not exist at all.


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> Is that true, or is the situation similar in your country? The Slovak police do not care about your qualification card if you drive a passenger car.


In Poland, the "entry qualification" is, basically, required if you work as a driver. It's perfectly OK to have C or D driving license if you don't have the qualification certificate – but you can only use the car to carry your own things privately, or to carry things or materials used by you in your work.

I am not sure if it actually works like that, the law is unclear and it's difficult to find any sensible interpretations online, but it seems to me that if e.g. you are a construction company employee and you drive a towing truck, on which you carry an excavator you use at work (and the excavator is so big that you need a towing truck that requires a C driving license), this exception would apply and then you wouldn't need the qualification certificate.

In case of buses, I imagine that it could work so e.g. in case of a minibus owned by a school which uses it to carry students onto field trips, to competitions etc. Theoretically e.g. a teacher may get a D driving license and this should be enough. But I am not sure if the regulations are actually interpreted this way.

The whole list of exceptions telling the cases that don't require the certificate in Poland:
1) if to drive the vehicle, A1, A, B1, B or B+E driving license is required,
2) if the speed of the vehicle is limited to 45 kph,
3) used by the military,
4) of civil defense, fire brigades and other unit responsible for maintaining public safety and order,
5) development vehicles under test, tested by manufacturers, scientific institutions and higher education schools,
6) driven without people or load inside – for a repair or maintenance, or from the place of purchase,
7) used in case of danger and in rescue actions,
8) used for teaching drivers and for taking the driving exams,
9) in case of personal use in road transport of goods and people (i.e. used privately),
10) used to carry materials and devices needed by the driver for his work, on condition that driving the vehicle is not his basic job.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Afterthought to the Dutch/German thing: the “Pennsylvania Dutch” were German-speaking colonists/immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania in large numbers even before independence. They were essentially from modern Germany, not the Netherlands. The term is mostly (mis-)used today to refer to the strict religious communities - the Amish and some others - who still live a 19th-century lifestyle (old-fashioned clothing, no modern technology in the home, no cars...). If you stop at Amish farm stands in the country (or their stalls in the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia), you can still hear the family members, even the children, speaking dialect to each other; my understanding is the dialect is basically of Baden/Alsace origin.


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> The first verse of the USA's national anthem (the one that is familiar to pretty much everyone) is basically a wistful poem that was written while watching a battle between USA and British forces by Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor during the War of 1812, set to the music of a fiendishly difficult to sing drinking song of the time. I'm not very familiar with the other three verses.
> 
> Mike




“...And conquer we must
When our cause it is just
And this be our motto:
‘In God is our trust.’” :-D


----------



## Spookvlieger

It doesn't but they only changed their tandrum because public opinion didn't buy it.

If you really want good journalism in Flanders you must read 'De tijd'. You'll clearly notice political agenda's with other media outlets.


----------



## Alex_ZR

I was wondering when did the practice of putting city coat of arms on the manhole covers started. It's mostly common in German speaking countries.


----------



## Spookvlieger

I think it's an old practice thas has regained some momentum. Some of those manhole covers here are more than 100 years old Although it does seem it was abolised for quite some time in between...


----------



## cinxxx

^^One of my hobbies is finding them when I visit a new place a snap some pictures


----------



## Penn's Woods

joshsam said:


> It doesn't but they only changed their tandrum because public opinion didn't buy it.
> 
> If you really want good journalism in Flanders you must read 'De tijd'. You'll clearly notice political agenda's with other media outlets.




What do you think of De Standaard? I actually subscribe but don’t have much time for it lately. Most of the Belgian news I get lately is from La Libre Belgique.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's interesting to read comments on nu.nl, a news website in the Netherlands. It appears to be heavily censored with only political-correct statements coming through.
> 
> The media for years has promoted that there is a wide sense of 'flight shame' in society. Yet aviation is growing very rapidly, just today there was a report that flying has grown another 3% in 2019 and has now overtaken the car as the most popular way to travel abroad. Especially intercontinental flights have grown a lot. So this reality is completely different from the worldview that journalists promote. The same goes for vegan, meat consumption has actually increased but they promote the view that a ever increasing and proportion of people doesn't eat meat. These journalists must be in an enormous Twitter bubble.
> 
> But you read those approved comments, there are really a lot of people who think that train travel can readily substitute air travel in the next few years. As if they can build a Europe-wide system of high-speed rail in 5 years with ticket prices comparable to flying. I mean the lack of reality is just astounding... :lol:


It's the same the other way round. If you read conservative news and their comments, you will apprehend that global warming is a hoax invented by evil leftists and that every immigrant is a criminal wanting to kill us.
Obviously the truth is in the middle. But you can hardly find a totally neutral piece of news.
In the case of global warming, I only give credits to scientists' opinions, not politicians' or journalists'.


----------



## italystf

joshsam said:


> I think it's an old practice thas has regained some momentum. Some of those manhole covers here are more than 100 years old Although it does seem it was abolised for quite some time in between...


Last summer in Alberobello, Italy, I found some manhole covers with fascist symbols of them, that means they were installed between 1922 and 1943.
Reportedly, some manhole covers in Turin have Arabic writing on them. They were intended to be used in Libya when it was an Italian colony, but finally they were used in Turin.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Journalists are obsessed with climate change. It's a headline 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. No wonder people are now believing the world will end in a giant firestorm within the next decade.

For example, Dutch NOS has published 44 stories about climate since 1 January. That's almost 3 per day. 

If you Google 'klima site:sueddeutsche.de' and only show results from 1 January onward, it generates 342 articles. That's an average of 21 stories per day.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Police camera coverage in my hometown has doubled last year. Mind you this town only has 45.000 inhabitants. We now have 61 camera's watching central area's. source


----------



## Spookvlieger

Penn's Woods said:


> What do you think of De Standaard? I actually subscribe but don’t have much time for it lately. Most of the Belgian news I get lately is from La Libre Belgique.


Haven't read much in the standaard to be honest and like most Flemish I don't read French newspapers at all.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Journalists are obsessed with climate change. It's a headline 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. No wonder people are now believing the world will end in a giant firestorm within the next decade.
> 
> For example, Dutch NOS has published 44 stories about climate since 1 January. That's almost 3 per day.
> 
> If you Google 'klima site:sueddeutsche.de' and only show results from 1 January onward, it generates 342 articles. That's an average of 21 stories per day.


Well, it is a very serious situation, albeit a slow-moving one. 

It was also weaponized because different social actors, with different motivations, in Western countries decided to make a serious problem into a highly-charged and politicized (in the partisan way) third-rail issue, making it easy to use climate change to justify or oppose different policies decisions. For instance, in UK land-based wind turbine installations were effectively banned because of lobbying of landowners, and the idea that there are "two sides" to the debate on the need for a far different energy-generation matrix was part of the issue. Several US states are considering moratorium on solar farms because of lobbying by declining coal producers and also other farms who see some neighbors getting all the money for solar and they ending up paying higher due to reduced supply chains for farming. There, again, the idea of "both sides" equally worth of consideration on the debate of whether climate change is real and likely anthropogenic played a role.

But climate change and its impacts are going to stay with us for decades, wishful thinking or pushing it away won't do anything. 

I'd rather have a 'saturation' of media cover of a given issue than have something serious, slow-moving and critical being mostly ignored, such as the balooning of antibiotic-resistance bacteria and how this threat vast swats of modern medicine. It was an easier/cheaper problem if large amount of money had started being spent on it 25 years ago. Now, the message seems to have cut through those in control of the public purse, and virtually all countries wiht some strong presence on basic medical research community is pumping more money into it, 9-digit medical research grants and so for (the Netherlands is a leading country on this type of research and the Amsterdam Medical Center is one of the world's top facilities for new hospitalization practices given widespread resistant infections btw).


----------



## Spookvlieger

Saturation can have an adverse effect on people who get sick of hearing and reading about the same subject for to long and to much. Certainly when bringing a lot of these climate activists in the picture constantly that tell you, you must as an ordenairy man pay for the climate. I call that nonesense. It's always the little guy that must bend its back double for the big chiefs on top. And it's also those big chiefs that are pushing this 'everyone must pay' theory because they are filling their pockets with that money. All while they can take private jets daily own half the world and wipe their arse with golden stitched toilet paper. We need another French style revolution and cut the top out - worldwide. Maybe then something actually making sense will be done to battle man made climate change.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

While climate change is an important topic that deserves some attention when real newsworthy events occur, the current coverage is over the top, it's not weird that people are tuning out. Almost every weather event report has an obligatory climate change reference. It's has become an unhealthy obsession.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> While climate change is an important topic that deserves some attention when real newsworthy events occur, .


That's plain wrong. Climate change is not "some events", it's much much more than that. When extreme events occur, it's simply too late, so you must talk about it well before then.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

joshsam said:


> *That diesel engines euro 6 norm are no worse than petrol, even more the latest diesels are proven cleaner *(less dust, less CO2 and less NO2) than the latest petrol engines en they also published those numbers. They stated that because of diesel shaming in recent years engine developers achieved the near impossible to achieve; make diesel the less polluting fuel. Petrol engine developers are falling behind. Finally they started publishing the facts afther public opinion clearly didn't agree.
> .


Are they, though?



> *New diesel cars’ pollution spikes to dangerous levels yet pass tests via loophole
> 
> New diesel cars may be exposing the public to dangerous levels of particle emissions - more than 1,000 times normal levels - and still pass pollution tests due to a loophole. Independent tests on two new top-selling diesel models found that particle numbers can skyrocket when the vehicles clean their filters, which can also occur in urban areas and last for up to 15km. Studies show such exposure can instantly stress the heart of people standing close to traffic.*
> 
> The spikes in emissions happen when soot trapped in the car’s filter is burned off to prevent the exhaust from clogging. Each filter cleaning spews out hundreds of billions of harmful particles per km, and this occurs on average every two weeks. T&E estimates that more than 45 million cars carry these filters in Europe, causing a total of 1.3 billion filter cleanings a year.
> 
> [...]Anna Krajinska said: ‘Regulated particles are only half the story. The smallest ultrafine particles are thought to pose a bigger threat yet they’re ignored by official tests. The next Euro pollution standard must close the loopholes and set limits for all pollutants. The endgame is a standard that demands zero emissions from cars on our roads.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That’s not really new, every diesel car with a particulate filter burns it away from time to time. A particle filter doesn’t eliminate soot, it collects them (and burns them off periodically). You can see this when recent model diesel cars emit a big plume of black smoke. Trucks do this too, it’s called regenaration or a ‘regen’.

Despite this, particle filters do appear to be very effective to reduce PM levels (improving air quality). In the Netherlands they have gone way down since the introduction of particle filters, motorway PM levels are now barely over background levels.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> While climate change is an important topic that deserves some attention when real newsworthy events occur, the current coverage is over the top, it's not weird that people are tuning out. Almost every weather event report has an obligatory climate change reference. It's has become an unhealthy obsession.


The issue is that the time series of all major climate indicators can be tied together with global climate change.

A very different issue, and bad practice (no respectable scientist do that), is to tie specific weather phenomena, in isolation, to climate change. Such as hurricane x happen here = climate change. 

I also think people discard or ignore the issue because talks of a global average temperature increase of 1.5 oC over 100 years seems to be too little to be perceived by any single person at a single place, in isolation.


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> A very different issue, and bad practice (no respectable scientist do that), is to tie specific weather phenomena, in isolation, to climate change. Such as hurricane x happen here = climate change.


Such events have always occurred, but climate change is making them more frequent and worse.



Suburbanist said:


> I also think people discard or ignore the issue because talks of a global average temperature increase of 1.5 oC over 100 years seems to be too little to be perceived by any single person at a single place, in isolation.


Yet it's high enough to be relevant in some issues like sea level rising.


----------



## mgk920

Heck, I'm still fearfully awaiting that new global Ice Age that the Chicken Littles were crowing about when I was in school.

Mike


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ Sure, a drop of merely 10 C on global average temperatures = ice age.


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> I don't care about a flood in South America even if 1 million people had died. It doesn't affect ME.
> I don't care about a relevant economic reform in USA because I cannot change anything.
> I love Swedish guitar music. I listen to it all day long.


You are confusing what's _important to you_ with _what's important._


----------



## g.spinoza

New cycle path in Moncalieri, Italy:










:bash::bash::bash:


----------



## italystf

MichiH said:


> Thanks for _your_ definition.
> 
> 
> 
> I don't care about a flood in South America even if 1 million people had died. It doesn't affect ME.
> I don't care about a relevant economic reform in USA because I cannot change anything.
> I love Swedish guitar music. I listen to it all day long.


If you have interests in something specific you don't need to have it broadcasted by the news. You can find plenty of specific websites about it.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Online media is all about clicks. Clicks = revenue. The problem with clickbait is that it actually works. Articles or videos with titles starting with 'why' or ending with '?'.
> 
> However I think one should expect higher quality journalism from government funded broadcasting corporations. More focus on background and context, less on outrage and scandals. Actual reporting instead of rewriting Twitter or Facebook feeds (or press releases from highway construction dates with no fact-checking  ).
> 
> The media is thirsty for content to update their feed as often as possible. Consumers have grown to expect this. When a government entity tweets something it is often a headline within 20 minutes, sometimes even in under 10 minutes in the regional media. There is no fact-checking or gathering additional sources, they just state the exact same information that is in the tweet or Facebook post. It's definitely a game of quantity over quality.
> 
> I do research in historic newspapers. The way articles were written back in the 1970s or 1980s is much more factual and less sensational and far less in search of scandals or outrage.




Aren’t European “government-funded” media also funded by advertisers, and under political pressure to get as much funding from advertisers and other non-government sources, as well as to appeal to as broad an audience as possible?

You’re also dealing with the transition to digital. Fewer people buying newspapers means less revenue TO newspapers, not just in print sales but in advertising, means less money to pay good journalists or support their work; and I suppose people dropping cable TV and the like in favor of Netflix and the like means has comparable effects on broadcasters.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> Thanks for _your_ definition.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't care about a flood in South America even if 1 million people had died. It doesn't affect ME.
> 
> I don't care about a relevant economic reform in USA because I cannot change anything.
> 
> I love Swedish guitar music. I listen to it all day long.




Does that mean that a serious news source shouldn’t report that million-victim flood? 

And I’d think a flood with that many victims WOULD attract worldwide attention. Remember the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, or the 2011 one at Fukushima. The U.S. version of CNN was talking about nothing but that for days afterwards. 

I see plenty of American friends who normally never think twice about Australia talking about the bush fires.

You’re allowed not to care, but I wouldn’t assume no one else does.


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> Does that mean that a serious news source shouldn’t report that million-victim flood?


I was joking and exaggerating. I just wanted to point out that there is no general definition of "important" news. What is important to person A can be totally unimportant to person B. For instance, there are millions of Africans, Asians or Latin Americans who have to work hard to get enough to eat and not to starve. I think that their definition of "important" news is different to the definition in developed countries.

You should take what I write on the roadside rest area thread with a grain of salt


----------



## cinxxx

MichiH said:


> I was joking and exaggerating. I just wanted to point out that there is no general definition of "important" news. What is important to person A can be totally unimportant to person B. For instance, there are millions of Africans, Asians or Latin Americans who have to work hard to get enough to eat and not to starve. I think that their definition of "important" news is different to the definition in developed countries.
> 
> You should take what I write on the roadside rest area thread with a grain of salt


German humor :bash::lol::cheers:


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Aren’t European “government-funded” media also funded by advertisers, and under political pressure to get as much funding from advertisers and other non-government sources, as well as to appeal to as broad an audience as possible?
> 
> You’re also dealing with the transition to digital. Fewer people buying newspapers means less revenue TO newspapers, not just in print sales but in advertising, means less money to pay good journalists or support their work; and I suppose people dropping cable TV and the like in favor of Netflix and the like means has comparable effects on broadcasters.


Exactly!


----------



## italystf

MichiH said:


> I was joking and exaggerating. I just wanted to point out that there is no general definition of "important" news. What is important to person A can be totally unimportant to person B. For instance, there are millions of Africans, Asians or Latin Americans who have to work hard to get enough to eat and not to starve. I think that their definition of "important" news is different to the definition in developed countries.


People from those countries that are enough educated and well-off to access the internet have the same interests of us in global news.
There isn't a strict division between developed and undeveloped countries. In China, India, Latin America, and even Africa there are millions and millions of internet users. They don't all live in caves harvesting for food.
There is still a huge amount of poverty around the world, but the percentage of world population living below poverty line has never been as low as today in any moment in the past.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A car was sliced in half on Spanish A-6 outside of Madrid when it hit a gantry.



















The barrier in question is a standard jersey barrier. They are known to be prone to rollovers and in some cases like this, extreme damage. 

A step barrier is an alternative (left: jersey, right: step)


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> ....You should take what I write on the roadside rest area thread with a grain of salt




I’ll bear that in mind. :cheers:


----------



## cinxxx

cinxxx said:


> ^^my news feed on my phone is full with climate change related "news" and when I click that I#m not interested in them, I still get them under the "in case you missed it" title...





joshsam said:


> Same here. I removed the climate change news from my social media many times and even all things I like that are connected to it. Somehow it's still pushed into my newsfeed on facebook for instance.


Here's another one from today:

*'You have not seen anything yet,' climate activist Greta says ahead of Davos*



> Protesters held signs including “Wake up and Smell the Bushfires” and “It is late but it is not too late”.
> 
> “We are...an alliance that is organizing next week in 20 countries to say ‘time is up’ to the World Economic Forum in Davos. Time is up,” a Kenyan activist, Njoki Njoroge Njehu, told the crowd in Lausanne.
> 
> *“It is time to abolish billionaires. It is time to abolish billionaires, because we cannot afford them, the planet cannot afford billionaires,”* she said.


----------



## volodaaaa

cinxxx said:


> cinxxx said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> my news feed on my phone is full with climate change related "news" and when I click that I#m not interested in them, I still get them under the "in case you missed it" title...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> joshsam said:
> 
> 
> 
> Same here. I removed the climate change news from my social media many times and even all things I like that are connected to it. Somehow it's still pushed into my newsfeed on facebook for instance.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Here's another one from today:
> 
> *'You have not seen anything yet,' climate activist Greta says ahead of Davos*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Protesters held signs including “Wake up and Smell the Bushfires” and “It is late but it is not too late”.
> 
> “We are...an alliance that is organizing next week in 20 countries to say ‘time is up’ to the World Economic Forum in Davos. Time is up,” a Kenyan activist, Njoki Njoroge Njehu, told the crowd in Lausanne.
> 
> *“It is time to abolish billionaires. It is time to abolish billionaires, because we cannot afford them, the planet cannot afford billionaires,”* she said.
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...

What a confused darling. Nobody wants to hear that, but this is actually a circle hard to leave. 

The huge problem is overpopulation. To cope with this you need to tackle the birth rate. To do so, you need to have a developed society. And to achieve this state you, sadly, need the inventions she hates.

It is normal phase in demography, part of the demography transition process. In one state the natality is high due to traditions yet the infant mortality is resolved due to development. A good example is Nigeria.


----------



## RipleyLV

MichiH said:


> Is it funny when a animal is killed?


That is a tough animal though - no blood, no body parts deflected, a perfect trophy.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> However I think one should expect higher quality journalism from government funded broadcasting corporations. More focus on background and context, less on outrage and scandals. Actual reporting instead of rewriting Twitter or Facebook feeds (or press releases from highway construction dates with no fact-checking  ).


But what one can do if the government makes them nothing more than a tool of propaganda?



Penn's Woods said:


> Aren’t European “government-funded” media also funded by advertisers, and under political pressure to get as much funding from advertisers and other non-government sources, as well as to appeal to as broad an audience as possible?


Some countries have a special tax that is spent only on financing the public media. Usually you are obliged to pay it if you have a TV or a radio, but it is changing, e.g. in Germany it's now obligatory to pay for all the households (as the productions of the public media can be also watched e.g. on the Internet and nearly everyone has access to them).

But there are countries where the political pressure is NOT to increase the amount of money obtained by those media from the special tax (which is almost not enforced in practice, so it would be enough to improve its enforcement) as this way, the government would have less influence on them.


Still it's people who choose what news they will read, watch or listen to, and they tend to prefer the "easy" ones, not the quality ones.


----------



## Spookvlieger

In Belgium everyone pays taxes for VRT and RTBF and what you get is far from decent reporting or quality stories and ofthen a very left leaning view of social issues. What you get is a 3 page one sided view of what Anuna De Wever (our own Greta Thunberg) did this week in her life :bash:


----------



## Penn's Woods

joshsam said:


> In Belgium everyone pays taxes for VRT and RTBF and what you get is far from decent reporting or quality stories and ofthen a very left leaning view of social issues. What you get is a 3 page one sided view of what Anuna De Wever (our own Greta Thunberg) did this week in her life :bash:




Does everyone in the country pay for both systems? VRT and RTBF? (And BRF?)


----------



## Spookvlieger

Penn's Woods said:


> Does everyone in the country pay for both systems? VRT and RTBF? (And BRF?)


No it's payed for by the respective communities since 1998. Vlaamstalige Gemeenschap pays for VRT, Communauté Française pays for RTBF and Deutschsprachige Gemeinschaft pays for BRF. Before 1998 one organisation known in differend languages as: BRF/BRT/RTB. Since then they still operate from the same buildings (Auguste Reyerslaan 52 with the for the Belgians iconic concrete telecommunications tower) but the news outlets differ a lot these days despite that.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is a major vulnerability in Citrix, which is used in many businesses and governments to facilitate remote working. As a patch has not yet been released, the Dutch cyber security center has recommended to deactivate Citrix as the vulnerability was actively exploited. 

So they expect a busier rush hour than normal tomorrow, as people are not able to work from home.


----------



## Spookvlieger

But Citrix reciever is used for much more things than that. I can't even work without it since 2 of 3 programs I need operate through Citrix on the main servers of the company even when I am at my desk.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ ^^
> for the locked radio, you might want to just change radio, maybe even to a fancy one. I think for +/- 150 PLN you can get on aliexpress one of those Android-driven ones that has a GPS and bluetooth for your phone :lol: If the shape of your dashboard is irregular often you can get a plastic adaptor-cover too. Or cheap FM/AM radio is probably very cheap like 50 PLN or less...
> 
> a very cheap example (I have no experience or association) https://www.aliexpress.com/item/400...chweb0_0,searchweb201602_6,searchweb201603_55
> 
> I'm kind of surprised too that the "code-lock" still is around on such new cars. I have a 2007 Saab and the radio is easily removable, but "married" to the car (programmed with VIN number). You can unmarry and re-marry but only with special tool. The advantage though, even if battery removed, the radio works instantly and even remembers the radio pre-sets. My 2006 BMW is even worse, the radio presets are somehow attached to the key. If I use key nr. 1 I get different radio stations than with key nr. 2 :lol:
> 
> I really like the tyre pressure monitor that uses the existing ABS sensors (wheel diameter) and not the direct pressure sensors in the rims. Especially in a country like Canada where winter tyre changeover is common, it is a disaster (battery dies and sensor stops working, car freaks out, or doesn't recognize the winter wheels, etc). What is worse, the sensors are only on the 4 wheels and not the spare tyre which is the only one that you really need to know anyway :lol:




Tying the presets to the keys is actually a good idea for couples with different tastes.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Sometimes you wonder how it is possible that a major accident didn't result in death.

This is on A16 in Rotterdam, Netherlands. A power generator fell off a truck, onto a car. There were no injuries!


----------



## MacOlej

Suburbanist said:


> In the case of Kobe Bryant's crash, it is reported that the atmospheric conditions were so bad that Los Angeles county service helicopters (firefighters, rescue services, police) were all grounded due to unsafe flight conditions.


I've read that the pilot not only was certified for flying in bad weather conditions - he was even an instructor for other pilots training to obtain that certification. And he was supposedly given clearance to fly through the fog by the control tower on that day.

It's obviously a big tragedy but I'm curious if it leads to any changes in aviation regulations. Or at least in the way people decide on how to travel. After all, they were on their way to a junior basketball game - is this such an important and urgent matter that it justifies the risk of flying in fog? I personally doubt it.


----------



## mgk920

MacOlej said:


> I've read that the pilot not only was certified for flying in bad weather conditions - he was even an instructor for other pilots training to obtain that certification. And he was supposedly given clearance to fly through the fog by the control tower on that day.
> 
> It's obviously a big tragedy but I'm curious if it leads to any changes in aviation regulations. Or at least in the way people decide on how to travel. After all, they were on their way to a junior basketball game - is this such an important and urgent matter that it justifies the risk of flying in fog? I personally doubt it.


It sounds to me like he was flying 'VFR' ('Visual Flight Rules') instead of 'IFR' ('Instrument Flight Rules'). Commercial flights are all IFR, it allows them to fly in nearly any non-violent weather condition and in the close quarters that is the reality of flying in today's world. Had he been flying IFR, he would have been under the guidance of air traffic control at a proper assigned altitude and course that would have had him avoiding those hills. He got disoriented by the fog and flew into that hill - an inexcusable mistake for such an experienced pilot. I will be very surprised if the NTSB says anything that is essentially different from that.

Mike


----------



## Kpc21

I am helping (well, actually kind of forced to help – but never mind) one local vocational high school in Łódź with maintaining its website. The school realizes several EU-financed projects to improve its education and to get something more for the students (some extra classes, new equipment, foreign exchanges etc.). 

So quite often I have to upload some related documentation to this website. In EU-financed projects everything must be transparent, so as an effect, there is quite a lot of those documents to upload.

Among them, there are forms for the students, which one has to fill in and sign to take part.

In case of the project I am talking about, it's actually 7 different forms (what a waste of paper...):
– application form for the teachers – 2 pages,
– application form for the students – 8 pages,
– project participant statement (it's a weird document on which, if I understand it well – it's quite bureaucratically written – you sign that later, after the project finishes, you will inform the school and the EU how it help you find better job etc.) – it's 3 pages, but actually 2.5 of them is the information about how the personal data of the participants will be protected, required by the GDPR,
– GDPR consent – 1 page,
– declaration of participation (one signs that one states that one fulfills all the required criteria to take part, that one has read the rules of the project, that one agrees to be evaluated, that one understands that its illegal to lie while signing those forms and that one was informed that the project is financed by the EU) – 1 page,
– participation contract for the students below the age of 18 – 3 pages,
– participation contract for the students above the age of 18 – 3 pages.

So to take part, one student has to print out 16 pages of text. But OK, it's an EU project and it's always so that EU = a lot of bureaucracy.

This is not weird.

What is weird then?

It's still not weird (as it's quite usual for all the EU-related things) that all the forms must contain appropriate logos and flags in the header:










The ridiculous thing here is that today, I got asked to upload extra black and white versions of the same forms. Because... seemingly, forms with the color versions of those logos printed in black and white wouldn't be accepted... And not everyone has a color printer.

The only difference is the version of those logos, in the black and white versions this bar looks so:










Really, what is the difference whether the office gets the form with the color logos printed black and white or with dedicated black and white logos printed black and white?

I understand that the logos are required by the EU. I even understand why (for propaganda – so that people see that so many things take place thanks to the EU money). But in this specific case, nobody cares if the forms look professional (a deformed logo in some of them, like in the last picture, really doesn't make them look so). And someone cares whether the logo is printed in color or black and white...

Mind explodes.


----------



## Attus

Hungarian media reported about a truck driver. He was in the Netherlands and saw that the tyre on the front right wheel is damaged. He reported it the the company he worked for, but the company told him he must drive on and change the tyre in Hungary where it's cheaper. 
He did not want to drive more than thousand kilometer having a damaged tyre and refused to drive on. 
He was fired from the company.


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> Hungarian media reported about a truck driver. He was in the Netherlands and saw that the tyre on the front right wheel is damaged. He reported it the the company he worked for, but the company told him he must drive on and change the tyre in Hungary where it's cheaper.
> He did not want to drive more than thousand kilometer having a damaged tyre and refused to drive on.
> He was fired from the company.


He will appeal to to court, win the trial and its boss will be forced to reinstate him.


----------



## bogdymol

g.spinoza said:


> He will appeal to to court, win the trial and its boss will be forced to reinstate him.


That is very good!

However, in such cases when the company is forced by a court to reinstate an employee, I can only imagine that such employee will get an overall shitty treatment from his bosses. Not as shitty as to break the law, but bad enough to make such an employee quit sometime soon...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Truck safety and regulations continues to be a major issue in Europe. There are not enough truck inspections.

Norway inspected 77,734 trucks last year. 45% of those had defects or offenses. 41% of inspected truck drivers were in violation of driving time regulations. 

The Netherlands attempts to inspect trucks, mostly on driving hours. Tachograph manipulation is very advanced, I've seen reports of dealerships needing 3 days to find the exact source of the tachograph manipulation. All those hours are billed to the transport company of course. The fine for tacho manipulation is € 1,500 for the driver and over € 10,000 for the company.


----------



## g.spinoza

bogdymol said:


> That is very good!
> 
> However, in such cases when the company is forced by a court to reinstate an employee, I can only imagine that such employee will get an overall shitty treatment from his bosses.


I know.
This is mobbing, and it's regulated by law as well, but it's much more difficult to prove.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Truck safety and regulations continues to be a major issue in Europe. There are not enough truck inspections.
> 
> Norway inspected 77,734 trucks last year. 45% of those had defects or offenses. 41% of inspected truck drivers were in violation of driving time regulations.
> 
> The Netherlands attempts to inspect trucks, mostly on driving hours. Tachograph manipulation is very advanced, I've seen reports of dealerships needing 3 days to find the exact source of the tachograph manipulation. All those hours are billed to the transport company of course. The fine for tacho manipulation is € 1,500 for the driver and over € 10,000 for the company.


In Poland we have a special police-like formation that deals mostly with that.

ITD, Inspekcja Ruchu Drogowego, Road Traffic Inspection, in the drivers' slang – crocodiles, as they have green cars. Meanwhile, police are called teddy bears in the slang.










The fines for tacho manipulations, not obeying the driving time etc. are also many times higher than the fines for "normal" driving offenses like speeding, illegal overtaking etc.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> He will appeal to to court, win the trial and its boss will be forced to reinstate him.


It's Hungary. In Hungary courts are quite pro-employer.


----------



## Kpc21

Still in this case, the situation is quite obvious. Of course, the employer may lie and the court may believe the employer and not the driver... If there is no evidence, it isn't always easy to win a lawsuit even if you are right.


----------



## mgk920

There are special motor carrier details in every state police agency here in the USA, charged with enforcing those rules, too. They all have a reputation of being very strict.

It is also not unusual for other drivers to report obvious violations like that.

Mike


----------



## ChrisZwolle

North American DOTs have weigh stations along major highways. They're not always in operation, but are a good base for inspections. That is lacking in most of Europe. Norway has some of them along main roads, but you generally don't see them in most countries. 

A problem in Germany or Italy is the huge volume of trucks, you can't just send them all into an inspection point, it would create an enormous traffic jam.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> North American DOTs have weigh stations along major highways. They're not always in operation, but are a good base for inspections. That is lacking in most of Europe. Norway has some of them along main roads, but you generally don't see them in most countries.
> 
> A problem in Germany or Italy is the huge volume of trucks, you can't just send them all into an inspection point, it would create an enormous traffic jam.




Actually, I almost never see a weigh station actually operating.


----------



## Suburbanist

The lengths by which truck operators are going to fraud monitoring systems and the importance of keeping operational rules, coupled with the plummeting costs of some other systems, are making me think that all commercial vehicles should start being required to have something akin to airplanes' "cockpit data recorder", tamper-proof, encrypted, with real-time transmission to a designated operational surveillance entity.


----------



## volodaaaa

Suburbanist said:


> The lengths by which truck operators are going to fraud monitoring systems and the importance of keeping operational rules, coupled with the plummeting costs of some other systems, are making me think that all commercial vehicles should start being required to have something akin to airplanes' "cockpit data recorder", tamper-proof, encrypted, with real-time transmission to a designated operational surveillance entity.


Correct me, if I am mistaken, but is not is called a "tachograph"?


----------



## Suburbanist

volodaaaa said:


> Correct me, if I am mistaken, but is not is called a "tachograph"?


I am thinking of a system that records more than current tachographs, but you are technically correct.


----------



## CNGL

There's one weigh station on Southbound (Spanish) A-23 between Huesca and Zaragoza (more precisely, South(west) of Almudevar, at kmpost 338), but I still have to see it open.


----------



## g.spinoza

Surface temperature forecast for tomorrow in North-West Italy:










This is due to the föhn, seldom called "favonio" in Italian, a dry warm wind coming from the mountains where it loses all its humidity and comes down on the other side warmer.


----------



## Suburbanist

I feel bad for ski resorts in Piemonte. Especially those who invested heavily in the 1980s to build facilities at relatively low altitudes. They will be decimated by climate change and leave blight on mountains and on communities


----------



## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> The lengths by which truck operators are going to fraud monitoring systems and the importance of keeping operational rules, coupled with the plummeting costs of some other systems, are making me think that all commercial vehicles should start being required to have something akin to airplanes' "cockpit data recorder", tamper-proof, encrypted, with real-time transmission to a designated operational surveillance entity.


Realtime transmission would be interesting (and it's something possible only with the nowadays' technology) but... how would you prevent the drivers from jamming this transmission? I mean, theoretically you could punish them for that there are no data sent from their cars – but then they can defend themselves by claiming it's a hardware failure and not their fault.

Talking about realtime transmission of similar data, Poland is currently introducing that in the cash registers in shops. Soon all of them will be sending all the data online directly to the taxation authorities.


----------



## g.spinoza

g.spinoza said:


> Surface temperature forecast for tomorrow in North-West Italy:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is due to the föhn, seldom called "favonio" in Italian, a dry warm wind coming from the mountains where it loses all its humidity and comes down on the other side warmer.


Reality far surpassed the forecast.

The weather station here at my work currently measures 25.8 °C, while the ones owned by the regional Environmental Protection agencies range anywhere between 21 and 27 in Turin hinterland.

Stations at 2200 m measure ~ 6 °C.

https://webgis.arpa.piemonte.it/meteopiemonte/
http://rime.inrim.it/luc/meteo/index.php


----------



## Suburbanist

There are widespread avalanche alerts for high mountain locations in Switzerland. Rain (not snow) is falling as high as 2200m today.


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> There are widespread avalanche alerts for high mountain locations in Switzerland. Rain (not snow) is falling as high as 2200m today.


Yes, winds are very strong at altitude, too.
At Gastaldi hut, ~2600 m North-West of Turin, the _minimum_ wind speed measured today is 95 km/h, with gusts as high as 160 km/h.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The snow line will drop drastically this evening, according to MeteoSchweiz it will drop from 2000 to 400 meters today. The 2000 meter temperature will drop to -10 celsius.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> The snow line will drop drastically this evening, according to MeteoSchweiz it will drop from 2000 to 400 meters today. The 2000 meter temperature will drop to -10 celsius.


Yes, Italian MeteoAM poses the snow line on the southern side of the Alps for tomorrow at 500-700 m.


----------



## volodaaaa

https://www.flightradar24.com/ACA837/23be1953
+
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6M2TLL4_wc

A real-time disaster film. Let's hope it will end up with happy-end this time.

(Boeing 767 has lost its landing gear during the climb up phase and got its wing damaged. Now the plane circles above Madrid to burn its fuel to get ready to undergo an emergency landing)


----------



## Kpc21

A few years ago there was a flight by Lot Polish Airlines, in which something got wrong with the landing gear and it didn't open. The pilots managed to successfully land at the Warsaw airport without it.

It was also a Boeing 767.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOT_Polish_Airlines_Flight_16

Let's hope it will be successful here as well.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> https://www.flightradar24.com/ACA837/23be1953
> +
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6M2TLL4_wc
> 
> A real-time disaster film. Let's hope it will end up with happy-end this time.
> 
> (Boeing 767 has lost its landing gear during the climb up phase and got its wing damaged. Now the plane circles above Madrid to burn its fuel to get ready to undergo an emergency landing)


Cannot understand the noise around this case. Such a landing is quite a routine action.


----------



## Kanadzie

This kind of "landing gear not opening" happened to me once on an A320
I distinctly remember the captain explaining the situation with reasonable detail in English and the stewardess repeating in French only, "the captain says don't worry, everything will be fine" :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> This kind of "landing gear not opening" happened to me once on an A320
> I distinctly remember the captain explaining the situation with reasonable detail in English and the stewardess repeating in French only, "the captain says don't worry, everything will be fine" :lol:




Did the OQLF object? ;-)


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> Cannot understand the noise around this case. Such a landing is quite a routine action.


Yeah, after the landing and the extent of the damage I immediately realised the situation was not that serious. 

However, good they landed safely.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*Valencia summer*

Summer in Valencia: almost 30 degrees. :nuts:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1224705209773056002


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> Cannot understand the noise around this case. Such a landing is quite a routine action.


Nowadays, in aviation, almost everything is a routine action, the pilots are trained for almost everything which can happen.

Such a landing without the landing gear is quite a big action from the point of view of the airport – in the Polish case I mentioned, the airport got evacuated and the firefighters covered the runway with special foam to prevent the plane from catching fire.

But they were obviously prepared to that.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> Nowadays, in aviation, almost everything is a routine action, the pilots are trained for almost everything which can happen.
> 
> Such a landing without the landing gear is quite a big action from the point of view of the airport – in the Polish case I mentioned, the airport got evacuated and the firefighters covered the runway with special foam to prevent the plane from catching fire.
> 
> But they were obviously prepared to that.


Still it is a routine case and such events occur in a weekly basis on big airports. I do not underestimate the severity of the case, but it is hard to understand why that case of zillions of similar ones gained such a degree of publicity.


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> Still it is a routine case and such events occur in a weekly basis on big airports. I do not underestimate the severity of the case, but it is hard to understand why that case of zillions of similar ones gained such a degree of publicity.


 Well, our media released articles stating that "the aircraft lost its landing gear and one of the wings is severely damaged". It turned out to be something like a flat tire.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> Well, our media released articles stating that "the aircraft lost its landing gear and one of the wings is severely damaged". It turned out to be something like a flat tire.


If one of the wings had been severely damaged, the pilots would have attempted an immediate landing despite exceeding the maximum landing weight. (The aircraft does not crash at the overweight landing, but it may need a full-scale inspection, and additional service to be done.)

According to various sources, the Air Canada 767 fleet includes aircrafts not being equipped with the fuel dumping facility. That it why the pilots had to spend four hours at the holding pattern to reduce the weight by flying. That was the thing to make the operation exceptional - but not from the safety point of view.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Would they be allowed to dump fuel over land? Or can they only do that over the ocean?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Sometimes Dutch uses both the exonym and and the endonym for the same name.

For example, Wien (Vienna) becomes 'Wenen' in Dutch, but Wiener Neustadt has no exonym. And we speak of a Wiener schnitzel too. 

Similarly, Bayern (Bavaria) becomes 'Beieren' in Dutch, but the football club is known as Bayern München. This is the case for many football clubs from cities that would otherwise have exonyms (Paris-Saint-Germain, AS Roma). 

Also, there is a tendency to use the English or local names for foreign airports, as well as the local names for train stations abroad. For example, the intercity train to Berlin would be displayed as going to 'Berlin Hauptbahnhof' on the Dutch stations, not 'Berlijn'.


----------



## Kpc21

Polish also has no exonym for Wiener Neustadt, noboday says Nowe Miasto Wiedeńskie, even though it could theoretically be possible. And Polish Wikipedia says it is so in Czech and Slovak.

Wienerschnitzel is translated as "sznycel wiedeński", although I can't see any reason for using this name for a dish which isn't different from what we call in Polish "kotlet schabowy" and which is kind of our national dish.

Bayern München is called in Polish... Bayern Monachium. So the name of the region isn't translated, the name of the city is.

But Paris-Saint-Germain and AS Roma stay in the original language.



> Also, there is a tendency to use the English or local names for foreign airports, as well as the local names for train stations abroad. For example, the intercity train to Berlin would be displayed as going to 'Berlin Hauptbahnhof' on the Dutch stations, not 'Berlijn'.


In Poland too – but it's kind of because the railway uses names of stations, not names of cities.

So a train to Budapest will be announced as one to Budapest Keleti, not as one to Budapeszt Wschodni (Budapest East)

Or one to Moscow as one to Moskwa Belorusskaja, not to Moskwa Białoruska (Moscow Belarussian). Although from what I read, this isn't actually the formal railway name of the station but the name of the terminal, the station being Moskva-Passazhirskaya-Smolyenskaya (Moscow Passenger Smolensk), so actually, the departure boards at the stations e.g. in Warsaw are wrong...

In case of airports, actually, very often only the name of the airport is mentioned, without the name of the city (and while talking that you flew to a specific city you don't necessarily mention the name of the airport, even if it has several ones), so it's difficult for me to tell.

With Polish airports there is, however, an interesting tendency – that they have always been known by they toponymic names (like Warszawa Okęcie, from the city district in which it's located) but throughout the last 20 years, most of them got officially replaced with names celebrating some famous Poles, e.g. Okęcie is no longer Okęcie but Chopin Airport. The airport in Cracow is no longer Balice but John Paul II, the airport in Łódź no longer Lublinek but Władysław Reymont. Gdańsk has Wałęsa instead of Rębiechowo, Wrocław has Copernicus instead of Strachowice.


----------



## Verso

Attus said:


> Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night vomiting, feeling the whole world rotating about you, not feeling the directions and so being almost unable to move? If you haven't, believe me, it's quite terrible.
> And no it's not about alcohol or drugs.
> I thought it was over, that was my life, I'd die.
> Helpful ambulance and doctors in a hospital helped me. Now I'm more or less OK, slightly uncertain but able to stand and walk, and we expect the problem to be healed completely in a few days.


Geez, this sounds terrible. Does it have anything to do with balance in your ears?

---------------

Other than that, I've just discovered a Nazi compass at home (Kadlec Instrumentenfabrik Prag) and it still works. I wonder how it found its way to me. :hmm:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Alex_ZR said:


> ^^ Not sure if Serbian transliteration of US states counts as exonyms:
> 
> 
> 
> Vašington, Ajova, Ajdaho, Novi Meksiko, Teksas, Zapadna Virdžinija, Kalifornija, Juta, Tenesi, Kentaki, Misisipi, Džordžija, Njujork, Mejn, Pensilvanija, Konektikat, Nju Džerzi, Masačusets...




But why transliterate from one form of the Latin alphabet to another, unless it’s so that the Latin and Cyrillic versions line up?


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Are foreign names automatically written phonetically in some languages?
> 
> London, UK has an exonym 'Londen' in Dutch. But London, Ontario doesn't change. Dutch exonyms are based on historical usage, not an automatic rewriting of names to suit the language. Some are falling out of use and there are virtually no new ones coming into usage.
> 
> I've read on Wikipedia talk pages that there is also some debate about Spanish names, for example Corunna (A Coruña or La Coruña), Saragossa (Zaragoza) which are or aren't outdated, and in particular Majorca (Mallorca), which was claimed to be mostly a British travel bureau translation and not necessarily a widely used exonym.
> 
> The English Wikipedia isn't one particular variant of English or the other. It's de-facto also the international Wikipedia, used by many people who aren't native speakers. I've read somewhere that Dutch people tend to use English Wikipedia more than Dutch Wikipedia, despite Dutch Wikipedia having 2 million articles. But Dutch Wikipedia has always promoted quantity over quality. Even some articles about the Netherlands itself are better in the English version than the Dutch version.




“Corunna” and “Saragossa” seem very old-fashioned to me. Although my auto-“correct” doesn’t reject them. It would never occur to me to use them.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night vomiting, feeling the whole world rotating about you, not feeling the directions and so being almost unable to move? If you haven't, believe me, it's quite terrible.
> And no it's not about alcohol or drugs.
> I thought it was over, that was my life, I'd die.
> Helpful ambulance and doctors in a hospital helped me. Now I'm more or less OK, slightly uncertain but able to stand and walk, and we expect the problem to be healed completely in a few days.




Feel better!


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Sometimes Dutch uses both the exonym and and the endonym for the same name.
> 
> For example, Wien (Vienna) becomes 'Wenen' in Dutch, but Wiener Neustadt has no exonym. And we speak of a Wiener schnitzel too.
> 
> Similarly, Bayern (Bavaria) becomes 'Beieren' in Dutch, but the football club is known as Bayern München. This is the case for many football clubs from cities that would otherwise have exonyms (Paris-Saint-Germain, AS Roma).
> 
> Also, there is a tendency to use the English or local names for foreign airports, as well as the local names for train stations abroad. For example, the intercity train to Berlin would be displayed as going to 'Berlin Hauptbahnhof' on the Dutch stations, not 'Berlijn'.




Doesn’t European railway signage generally use endonyms? Even if it’s just the name of a city without the station? Except, of course, for Belgian signs referring to cities in the “other” part of Belgium....

The BBC treats Continental soccer teams the same way. They don’t come up as often in American media, although that’s started to change...I’m sure if I watched scores on ESPN long enough I’d see “Bayern Munich.”


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Sometimes Dutch uses both the exonym and and the endonym for the same name.
> 
> For example, Wien (Vienna) becomes 'Wenen' in Dutch, but Wiener Neustadt has no exonym. And we speak of a Wiener schnitzel too.
> 
> Similarly, Bayern (Bavaria) becomes 'Beieren' in Dutch, but the football club is known as Bayern München. This is the case for many football clubs from cities that would otherwise have exonyms (Paris-Saint-Germain, AS Roma).
> 
> Also, there is a tendency to use the English or local names for foreign airports, as well as the local names for train stations abroad. For example, the intercity train to Berlin would be displayed as going to 'Berlin Hauptbahnhof' on the Dutch stations, not 'Berlijn'.




What bothers me, although it’s none of my business, is non-English-speaking countries giving their airports English names. Charleroi-Brussels South, for example. They should have some respect for their own languages!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I remember there was some debate when they changed the name of Rotterdam Airport to 'Rotterdam The Hague Airport' and it was signed like that on the motorway.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Penn's Woods said:


> But why transliterate from one form of the Latin alphabet to another, unless it’s so that the Latin and Cyrillic versions line up?


That is the exact reason, Serbian uses both scripts, Cyrillic being the older.


----------



## Attus

Verso said:


> Geez, this sounds terrible. Does it have anything to do with balance in your ears?


Exactly.


----------



## volodaaaa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz9d7By2ytQ

just read the comments


----------



## Verso

Attus said:


> Exactly.


Same happened to my mum a couple of years ago. Your doctor will probably tell you how much balance you lost. As long as you have enough of it left, you should be fine, but unfortunately it isn't infinite.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Attus said:


> Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night vomiting, feeling the whole world rotating about you, not feeling the directions and so being almost unable to move? If you haven't, believe me, it's quite terrible.
> And no it's not about alcohol or drugs.
> I thought it was over, that was my life, I'd die.
> Helpful ambulance and doctors in a hospital helped me. Now I'm more or less OK, slightly uncertain but able to stand and walk, and we expect the problem to be healed completely in a few days.


I do not want to scare you but it reminded me of the following:

My nephew was in a car accident two years ago. 

A few months afther the car accident he started to feel unwell, no balance, everything turning around. This could overcome him middle of the night but also during the day, docters having no explaination what could be wrong with him but hinting at his inner ear.
Afther months of strugling they finally found a docter in the University hospital in Leuven(The largest most specialised Hospital in Belgium by far) that wanted to dig deeper in to his case where they were eventually able to take a little bit of fluid from his inner ear. Turns out because of the crash, in his left ear a lot of the balancing crystals came loose. (they could see it in the fluid) They could not tell how long it would take for his body to addapt, if and when they would grow back if any solution at all. He's on quite some heavy drugs to balance things out and make life bearable.


----------



## ChrisZwolle




----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> What bothers me, although it’s none of my business, is non-English-speaking countries giving their airports English names. Charleroi-Brussels South, for example. They should have some respect for their own languages!


The new railway station that serves Trieste airport (near the town of Ronchi dei Legionari) is officially called *Trieste Airport*. Not Trieste Areoporto, Areoporto di Trieste, or Ronchi dei Legionari.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stazione_di_Trieste_Airport


----------



## MichiH

^^ I had a look on the German Airport names. About 50% do have _Airport_ in the official name or use it for marketing issues etc.


----------



## MattiG

MichiH said:


> ^^ I had a look on the German Airport names. About 50% do have _Airport_ in the official name or use it for marketing issues etc.


It would be much more surprising if they had "Bus Station" in their names.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Talking of sports teams...I was thinking of the “Bayern Munich” example. Using the exonym for “Munich” but not “Bayern” (which would be “Bavaria”). I suppose it’s because “Bayern” is the team’s proper name.

Montreal has teams in one of the major North American sports - (ice) hockey, has one in the Canadian version of American football, used to have a baseball team.... (also a soccer team, but that’s not considered major yet), but every other team in those leagues is in the U.S. or English Canada. Which means Francophone media in Quebec are constantly having occasion - every opponent of their teams as well as both teams in every other game - to say things like “les Eagles de Philadelphie” or “les Patriots de la Nouvelle-Angleterre.” Keeping the English nickname but using the French version of the place name (or just a Frenchified pronunciation like “to-ron-TOH” or “van-cou-VAIR.”

And their hockey team is officially Le Canadien de Montréal, normally referred to in English as the Montreal Canadiens, with the French spelling of “Canadiens,” but usually pronounced like English “Canadians.”


----------



## Kpc21

MichiH said:


> ^^ I had a look on the German Airport names. About 50% do have _Airport_ in the official name or use it for marketing issues etc.


Also in German?

In Poland, most of them use the Polish name (Port Lotniczy or Lotnisko) domestically, Airport internationally.

E.g. the Warsaw airport calls themselves Lotnisko Chopina in Polish and Chopin Airport in English.

Regarding sports clubs, whose names often are formed as [some name, coming from a sponsor, region, city district, sometimes being even an acronym like FC for Football Club] [name of the city they come from], it's very often so that this first part remains intact and the name of the city gets translated.

But there are exceptions, like AC Milan. In this case, even in Italian, the club uses the English name of the city (for historic reasons), so this simply gets respected by the users of all other languages.

I wonder if there are any languages having exonym for Manchester (Polish doesn't have it) and if so, do they translate it in Manchester United. In general, "United" in the names of the English-speaking sports clubs is interesting as it, unusually, falls after and not before the name of the city.

Although after a moment of wondering... it seems that it's quite common for the English-speaking sports clubs to have the city name first. Even what we call in Polish FC Liverpool, in the original seems to be named Liverpool FC.

On the other hand, it seems that what we call in Polish Tottenham Londyn and Chelsea Londyn, doesn't contain the name of the city at all, and it's also like Tottenham FC and Chelsea FC.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A crash and police arrest on A-49 near Huelva, Spain. 


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1227297247051886594

Audis seem to be the preferred method of transportation by criminals. I see it in the Netherlands all the time, a report of some police incident with a vehicle: very often involving an Audi.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> There was a Ford Torino.




True!

And I should know that; at any time during the 70s, I could name every American car since 1960 or ‘61, with some specifications (horsepower for example), and identify them on sight. I think I had an uncle with a Torino. I lost interest in the early 80s; stopped learning the new ones and forgot the old ones.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I believe that the historic Fiat 500 is called with the number in Dutch (vijfhonderd), but the 1990s version was called the 'Fiat Cinquecento'. Probably not everyone knew that it meant 500. It was a fairly popular entry level car.
> 
> The A-segment (city car) has evolved quite a bit over the past 25 years. The Cinquecento was a 670-730 kg car with 39 horsepower. Almost all A-segment cars are now near or over 900 kg with at least 60-70 horsepower.




I’ve only heard “Fiat five hundred.”


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't think the 1990s Fiat Cinquecento is widely known in North America. It's considered a separate car from the classic and current Fiat 500. 

This is what it looks like.










It was updated with the Fiat Seicento (600).


----------



## Attus

^^ In 1998 my boss wanted to give me a Fiat Seicento company car. However I'm 1.95 (6'6", sorry corrected: 6'5"), and told him I'd rather had a bicycle.


----------



## Spookvlieger

pfffft what's that for a pathetic company car to get :lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> ^^ In 1998 my boss wanted to give me a Fiat Seicento company car. However I'm 1.95 (6'6"), and told him I'd rather had a bicycle.


Don't cheat, 1.95 translates to a little less than 6'5"


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Fiat Cinquecento & Seicento were fairly popular in the Netherlands as a second 'grocery car' or as an entry-level car for lower income people. 37,000 Seicento's were sold in the Netherlands, the last in 2006. Less than half of those are still on the road. 

Cinquecento's fate is less optimistic, only about 5% of those sold in the Netherlands are still on the road today. But it has been 22 years since sales ended.


----------



## Suburbanist

That clone car sold by Citroen, Peugeout and Hyundai (forgot the names) sold quite well in European markets. I think the names were C1, 107n and i10 respectively but I night be wrong.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ It's the Aygo / 107 / C1 triplet. The Hyundai i10 (in particular the 2015 model onward) is a substantially larger city car, the trunk of the i10 is almost twice as large as the Aygo.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Fiat Cinquecento & Seicento were fairly popular in the Netherlands as a second 'grocery car' or as an entry-level car for lower income people. 37,000 Seicento's were sold in the Netherlands, the last in 2006. Less than half of those are still on the road.
> 
> Cinquecento's fate is less optimistic, only about 5% of those sold in the Netherlands are still on the road today. But it has been 22 years since sales ended.


I learnt how to drive in my sister's Cinquecentos: first a base version (destroyed in a fire) then a Sporting version, yellow, beautiful. When my sister had children she sold it, but I think it's still circulating.

Well, the very first time I was behind the wheel it was my father's Lancia Dedra - beautiful, beautiful car - but I drove it seldom afterwards


----------



## Suburbanist

I wonder what happened to the second-hand market of SAAB cars...


----------



## Kpc21

joshsam said:


> pfffft what's that for a pathetic company car to get :lol:


In Poland we had many of those as company cars, in a "van" version which had bigger boot instead of the second row of seats.



Suburbanist said:


> I wonder what happened to the second-hand market of SAAB cars...


Maybe they are so good that when someone has one, he's unlikely to want to sell it.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Fiat Cinquecento & Seicento were fairly popular in the Netherlands as a second 'grocery car' or as an entry-level car for lower income people. 37,000 Seicento's were sold in the Netherlands, the last in 2006. Less than half of those are still on the road.
> 
> Cinquecento's fate is less optimistic, only about 5% of those sold in the Netherlands are still on the road today. But it has been 22 years since sales ended.


What about Daewoo Tico and Daewoo Matiz? Were they similarly popular to Cinquecento and Seicento?

The advantage of Tico and Matiz was that they were slightly bigger and they had four doors.


What was the western-European predecessor of Cinquecento? In Poland (and some other Eastern Bloc countries) we had the mentioned Fiat 126p, but when Cinquecento went out, it must have been too obsolete for the western market.

Interestingly, the production of Fiat 126p stopped in 2000, so two years after Cinquecento.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Think deawoo Lanos was q popular car and you can still see them today.


----------



## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland we had many of those as company cars, in a "van" version which had bigger boot instead of the second row of seats.
> 
> 
> 
> Maybe they are so good that when someone has one, he's unlikely to want to sell it.
> 
> 
> 
> What about Daewoo Tico and Daewoo Matiz? Were they similarly popular to Cinquecento and Seicento?
> 
> The advantage of Tico and Matiz was that they were slightly bigger and they had four doors.
> 
> 
> What was the western-European predecessor of Cinquecento? In Poland (and some other Eastern Bloc countries) we had the mentioned Fiat 126p, but when Cinquecento went out, it must have been too obsolete for the western market.
> 
> Interestingly, the production of Fiat 126p stopped in 2000, so two years after Cinquecento.


I guess Panda was the model between 126 and Cinquecento.


----------



## riiga

Suburbanist said:


> I wonder what happened to the second-hand market of SAAB cars...


They're still quite popular in Sweden and there are plenty of spare parts available.


----------



## Exethalion

Out of interest, what could be regarded as the "widest" stretch of highway in the world? I have seen various esitmations in the past but nothing more recent.

Including frontage and HOV lanes, I think I can just about spy a section of the newly reconstructed I-610/US-290 multiplex in Houston with 31 lanes.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Storm Dennis has produced a brief 'heat' outbreak today, with temperatures reaching a very unseasonal 18 degrees, but dropped down markedly after the cold front passed through.


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## Kpc21

Poland saw really nice weather yesterday and today.

Sunny and not very cold (several degrees Celsius).


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## valkrav

riiga said:


> They're still quite popular in Sweden and there are plenty of spare parts available.


I had it (9.3 diesel 88KW sport hatch by 2006, realy it was SW)
all mecanical spare part like opel vectra,
some problems may be with electric parts but I sure now market is full with analogs


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## ChrisZwolle

Is the 'boxing' of the landscape along motorways an issue in your country?

In the Netherlands new distribution centers and warehousing are rapidly popping up near motorways and on the edge of cities. These are typically much larger than those on older industrial areas, so they only fit on greenfield sites. 

This also seems to be a thing in Germany and I noticed that they pop up all over Poland as well, presumably elsewhere too.

Politicians always promote them for being job creators. Which they are, but mostly for foreigners, in many of these warehouses almost all of the staff is foreign, so what is the benefit to the local economy? They produce a lot of low-paid / low-skilled jobs and put even more pressure on the already overheated housing market.


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## Spookvlieger

In Belgium there is a same trend although not only next to highways but more spread out. I work in such large facility ( Building measures 1,1km by 400m) and I can say that dispite the fact that there are around 50% of people with foreign background, most have Belgian nationality and there are no seasonal workers. So yes it does benefiet local economy. Also such large storing facilities don't have that much workers. We have around 300 spread over 3 shifts and nearly 80 of those are staff and office workers.


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## Kpc21

I live nearby one of the biggest motorway interchanges in Poland, so we have many of those around. Not only warehouses, there are also some factories. And they indeed bring workplaces.

Foreigners also work there but one thing is that not every employer likes to employ foreigners, another is that employing foreigners (from outside EU) is problematic bureaucratically. 

They employ people from even 50 km far away, providing special buses from them. And one who beats all records is Amazon who provides commute buses to their places with routes of even above 100 km.

Amazon is, by the way, an interesting case, because they still don't offer their services in Poland – although they have several of their logistic centers over here, already for quite a few years.

The one near me (no Amazon here) looks like this – although this is already outdated:










https://goo.gl/maps/6nC8WQbrA7gaqhJGA

There is also a small cluster a little bit to the north with Raben and GLS warehouses and also a pharmaceutical factory (which, however, existed there even before the motorway was built).


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## Kpc21

An interesting thing happens in our coal mining. Something which would be impossible in true capitalism but which happens when the market is regulated and still to some extent state-owned.

Many power plants are buying Russian coal instead of our local one because Polish coal is more expensive. And the government maintains pressure on the energy delivery companies to keep the electricity prices, at least for private customers, as low as possible (even though according to the real prices of the generation, they should have rapidly gone up already a year ago) – this boosts this import even more, as the companies have to cut on the costs.

So... there is more coal extracted than there are customers for. Our coal is expensive, so export is also not an option.

Therefore, the mines had problems with storage space for the extracted coal, there was a danger of having to stop the extraction because of that. How did the government solve the problem? They opened a central coal storage, located in the central Poland (which is, by the way, not very effective from the logistic point of view, as the coal mines are in the southern Poland), to ensure the continuity of the mines operation.

Now the miners want a... pay rise.

And really I can't see any point in preventing them from the strike. If they stop the work for a moment, at least those hills of coal waiting for customers will shrink a little bit.


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## g.spinoza

What is the bargaining power of someone who produces something that nobody buys?


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## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> Is the 'boxing' of the landscape along motorways an issue in your country?


I don't know if it's an issue but it's definitely a phenomenon. A lot of companies have their country-wide logistics centres near Tallinn which are often situated next to highways leading out of Tallinn or next to Tallinn bypass. 

This is one of the biggest of those type of areas near Talinn at Jüri interchange between T2/E263 and T11/E265.

2002:









2019:


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## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> What is the bargaining power of someone who produces something that nobody buys?


Wise preparation for the future. Germany has brought down their nuclear power production, and their brown coal sources will exhaust within a few decades. After reaching that green nirvana, they have to buy energy from elsewhere. The most obvious source would be a chain of coal power stations in Poland.


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## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> I don't know if it's an issue but it's definitely a phenomenon. A lot of companies have their country-wide logistics centres near Tallinn which are often situated next to highways leading out of Tallinn or next to Tallinn bypass.
> 
> This is one of the biggest of those type of areas near Talinn at Jüri interchange between T2/E263 and T11/E265.


It is quite hard for me to see what the real problem is. To me, the most obvious place for logistics centers is the proximity of highways and airports.


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## Rebasepoiss

^^ I agree that it's not an issue per se but it does come with some complications. One of them is the transportation of workers. These areas often have very poor public transport connectivity so over here lots of companies actually have their own bus services set up to take people from and to work (to the most populous districts in Tallinn), which is particularly needed with 24/7 logistics centres or assembly lines where a shift might start or end during the night. If that's no option then the only solution is to commute rather large distances by car which is not an insignificant cost for the low-income workforce commonly found in these places. If you earn € 1000 a month after taxes then spending €200-300 per month on car ownership and driving is a huge junk of your income.


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## MacOlej

g.spinoza said:


> What is the bargaining power of someone who produces something that nobody buys?


Their bargaining power is mostly based on emotions instead of economical calculations and strong arguments.

Polish politicians are generally afraid of the miners. Maybe it's due to the fact that their strikes often get pretty aggressive in comparison to, say, nurses. They block roads, burn tires etc. Or maybe the politicians are simply afraid of losing votes in regions like Silesia.


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## Suburbanist

Warehouses don't create that many jobs, but depending on the local tax regime, they do create some neat tax revenue for the jurisdiction where they are located.

Warehouse automation is only going to increase.


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## Verso

I guess the biggest problem is that they take up so much land and destroy a lot of nature.


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## Spookvlieger

Verso said:


> I guess the biggest problem is that they take up so much land and destroy a lot of nature.


Nothing beats car plants, petroleum based industries and steel factories. They are so massive you loose sense of what your are looking at and aren't easily recognizable, certainly not to what scale they are. That why a few white boxes dotting the landscape can have a bigger visual effect. I have yet to see a distribution center the scale of a car assembly plant or chemical plant for instance.


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## ChrisZwolle

The biggest problem is the rapidly increasing land consumption of these large warehouses and distribution centers. They have always been around, but their scale is quickly becoming much larger so very large amounts of greenfield land is required to accommodate them, as they don't fit in older industrial zones. In some areas there have been more square meters built over just the past 10-15 years than all industrial / commercial zones that previously existed since the 1950s and 1960s. 

Their demand has become so great that developers have beginning to build them on a speculative basis (start of development before any renters or buyers have requested them).


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## Spookvlieger

Still it doesn't seem to take up as much space as other large industrial activities.
:dunno:

I just try to compare with facilities like BASF ludwigshaven or Total Antwerp or VW plant Wolfsburg


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## Kpc21

g.spinoza said:


> What is the bargaining power of someone who produces something that nobody buys?


They shout a lot and this seems to be enough.



MacOlej said:


> Polish politicians are generally afraid of the miners. Maybe it's due to the fact that their strikes often get pretty aggressive in comparison to, say, nurses. They block roads, burn tires etc. Or maybe the politicians are simply afraid of losing votes in regions like Silesia.


But anyway less and less people there work in coal mining. 



ChrisZwolle said:


> The biggest problem is the rapidly increasing land consumption of these large warehouses and distribution centers. They have always been around, but their scale is quickly becoming much larger so very large amounts of greenfield land is required to accommodate them, as they don't fit in older industrial zones. In some areas there have been more square meters built over just the past 10-15 years than all industrial / commercial zones that previously existed since the 1950s and 1960s.


In Poland it's not really a problem as we still have plenty of area. If slightly less of it happens to be used for farming in favor of warehouses, it isn't really a problem.

Over here, those warehouses are being built in zones which weren't industrial in the past, those used to be just farming fields.

1978 – just farming fields, greenery and the town of Stryków:










1996 – nothing really changed:










2004 – the first warehouse – Spedimex, also the pharmaceutical factory emerged (although, I believe, it employs much less people than those warehouses). And other two north of the town, belonging to Raben and GLS:










2007 – the A2 motorway from Poznań came. A second warehouse south of the motorway (Lidl) and another one next to it under construction (Diamond Business Park – they rent the storage space to various companies). And a new business park (Tulipan Park) north of the motorway also starts appearing. Two companies there: Azymut and Corning, the global glass corporation (currently they not only store goods here but they also produce fiberoptic cables):










2009 – they have built the bypass road of Stryków as pieces of the future A2 and A1 motorways (because of extremely heavy traffic through the town). And next buildings appeared – south of the motorway. A park of three warehouses, used by various companies:










2015 – there are already motorways in three directions. Even more warehouses. Raben and GLS also extended theirs, north of the town. What also appeared is a huge Mercedes truck dealership:










2018 – motorways in all four directions. A new business park emerged east of the motorway exit, there is also a new investment more to the west:










Many more buildings but the surroundings remain green anyway.

I wonder how long it may develop that rapidly.


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## ChrisZwolle

You are comparing industrial sites that exist only once or twice in a large region to distribution centers and warehouses that pop up around every second exit or so. And they are growing very rapidly (it appears to be much faster than actual growth of production or consumption). 

I wouldn't underestimate the effect that this has on the landscape over a longer period of time (5-10 years). I think there are legitimate concerns that the landscape becomes very boxy. 

Venlo:


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## Suburbanist

But changes in supply chain means more warehousing is needed. If not large facilities built on industrial parks, then there will be many smaller facilities with more truck traffic overall.


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## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> But changes in supply chain means more warehousing is needed. If not large facilities built on industrial parks, then there will be many smaller facilities with more truck traffic overall.


I do not know about the policy in the Netherlands, but in Finland areas close to highways are considered wasteland: for commercial centers or industrial parks but not for homes. 

Is a warehouse at a motorway more evil than a warehouse at a port? Should the Port of Rotterdam be closed because it spoils tens of square kilometers of valuable riverside and seaside?

I believe such distribution centers and efficient end-to-end logistics can reduce the delivery traffic substantially in city centers. Instead of twenty vans and small trucks daily, a medium-sized supermarket can be served by a few trucks delivering rackfulls of goods packaged in an efficient way. The era of multi-tiered warehousing (with re-packaging at each step) is more or less behind.


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## PovilD

MattiG said:


> I do not know about the policy in the Netherlands, but in Finland areas close to highways are considered wasteland: for commercial centers or industrial parks but not for homes.
> 
> Is a warehouse at a motorway more evil than a warehouse at a port? Should the Port of Rotterdam be closed because it spoils tens of square kilometers of valuable riverside and seaside?
> 
> I believe such distribution centers and efficient end-to-end logistics can reduce the delivery traffic substantially in city centers. Instead of twenty vans and small trucks daily, a medium-sized supermarket can be served by a few trucks delivering rackfulls of goods packaged in an efficient way. The era of multi-tiered warehousing (with re-packaging at each step) is more or less behind.


Similar policies here in Lithuania. Important highway A1 crosses Kaunas, but there are no new private homes near highway, only houses or housing areas that were built before highway was built in the 70s. Area is reserved for commercial use.

We usually build warehouses in Soviet industrial districts, since they make a lot of space for development, but we have to renovate/demolish old buildings that were purposed for industrial use. Some small businesses in those industrial districts may come from wild 90s transition period, I read some opinions that those small 90s style businesses should close in a period of the decade or even sooner, and possible that they will be replaced by some warehouse businesses

There are not much warehouses near our important highways though. There are some developments in free economic zones.


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## CNGL

After that f-bomb in Austria, now we can know how Shit looks like , courtesy of Ashouri at Wikimedia Commons:


And before you try to catch me, I should point out there's actually a village named Shit (or at least transcribed) in Iran. It's not the only one, however the one pictured, in Mazandaran province (Northern Iran), was the first one I found (back in my teenager years, how not ). It's not my favourite Iranian place name, that honour goes to a city in the central part of the country which strangely shares its name with a US president.


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## Suburbanist

MattiG said:


> I believe such distribution centers and efficient end-to-end logistics can reduce the delivery traffic substantially in city centers. Instead of twenty vans and small trucks daily, a medium-sized supermarket can be served by a few trucks delivering rackfulls of goods packaged in an efficient way. The era of multi-tiered warehousing (with re-packaging at each step) is more or less behind.


That is more or less the issue... Highly integrated logistics system mean retailers can dispose of expensive commercial real estate used to store stuff (even supermarkets) on non-sales floor, and also there is no expensive re-processing of bulk deliveries.

As a result, there is a new glut of commercial retail real estate, in that stores, chains etc. that are financially healthy still shed space because they hold less and less inventory on-site.


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## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> We usually build warehouses in Soviet industrial districts, since they make a lot of space for development, but we have to renovate/demolish old buildings that were purposed for industrial use. Some small businesses in those industrial districts may come from wild 90s transition period, I read some opinions that those small 90s style businesses should close in a period of the decade or even sooner, and possible that they will be replaced by some warehouse businesses


I live in a town which used to have a big military-automotive factory in the communist times but it collapsed in 1990s (it was bought by Mercedes but Mercedes kept production there only for a very short time and close it, probably to get rid of potential competitions – there were many of such evil takeovers in the 1990s in Poland). Now this area and those buildings are used by small businesses. Although much of those grounds stay empty and unused as well.

It's very similar in Łódź. There are some ex-communist factories that survived the transformation, taken over by western companies (e.g. a big electrical transformer production plant, taken over by ABB) but it's few of them. Most are either occupied by small businesses, or got replaced with shopping centers and other modern buildings.

Warehouses also happen to be located there – but it isn't like the whole industrial plant gets replaced with warehouses.


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## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> I live in a town which used to have a big military-automotive factory in the communist times but it collapsed in 1990s (it was bought by Mercedes but Mercedes kept production there only for a very short time and close it, probably to get rid of potential competitions – there were many of such evil takeovers in the 1990s in Poland). Now this area and those buildings are used by small businesses. Although much of those grounds stay empty and unused as well.
> 
> It's very similar in Łódź. There are some ex-communist factories that survived the transformation, taken over by western companies (e.g. a big electrical transformer production plant, taken over by ABB) but it's few of them. Most are either occupied by small businesses, or got replaced with shopping centers and other modern buildings.
> 
> Warehouses also happen to be located there – but it isn't like the whole industrial plant gets replaced with warehouses.


I just checked from satelite imagery nearest ex-communist industrial area from my place, and I can say there are quite miscellaneous development: few warehouses, shopping malls, sport centers, etc., of course there are small business, most often related with car repair and construction material services. When I check new construction plans in those areas, often I found these as small warehouses (sandėliai). I'm looking forward for those Soviet industrial areas that eventually they will renovate to have more modern look, since I often found them a little bit dystopian at times, especially if the area is not properly maintained (cracks or even holes on the roads, high grass, gravel shoulders, etc. (situation is getting better with that)).

There are warehouses near important highways too, but they don't make large areas. There is free economic zone area near A6 highway but I don't count them since they are built on different taxation conditions.


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## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> I'm looking forward for those Soviet industrial areas that eventually they will renovate to have more modern look, since I often found them a little bit dystopian at times, especially if the area is not properly maintained (cracks or even holes on the roads, high grass, gravel shoulders, etc. (situation is getting better with that)).


It's the same in Poland  Those are good places for people interested in urban exploration – many abandoned industrial buildings from the communist era.

In Poland it often looks like there are some modern buildings (halls like those warehouse ones) among old re-used or abandoned ones.



















The office buildings of those old industrial plants sometimes even get adopted by public offices. One in my town is now a police station. Another one is the seat of several departments of the municipal office.


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## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> It's the same in Poland  Those are good places for people interested in urban exploration – many abandoned industrial buildings from the communist era.
> 
> In Poland it often looks like there are some modern buildings (halls like those warehouse ones) among old re-used or abandoned ones.
> 
> The office buildings of those old industrial plants sometimes even get adopted by public offices. One in my town is now a police station. Another one is the seat of several departments of the municipal office.


It was quite an expierence for me, when we were bypassing traffic queues in DK1 by using GPS due to construction works, and drove through industrial or similary to industrial looking areas near Piotrkow Trybunalski. It was like going back in time for me. I generally perceived Poland as in general quite renovated country, at least in comparison to Lithuania, but Poland away from main roads still maintains some pre-10s reputation aspects, when Poland was perceived as a country with underdeveloped infrastructure. For me it reminded me one street from Eastern Kaunas.

https://goo.gl/maps/L7jqBPec4cF84kr96 (In Poland, I remember riding exactly there and turning left)

https://goo.gl/maps/6HELnFzaL2kzrKZ76 (In comparison to Kaunas. From what I know this street should be renovated sometime in few years, it's the most important street in Easternmost part of Kaunas, called Palemonas, or its Eastern side to be precise  )

When we entered the city, the street looked the way as we generally see Poland today: https://goo.gl/maps/a32T9QVy2oZNKY627

Many main streets in Kaunas already look quite different than it was in 2012. The main difference is the occurrence of road markings. They marked even minor streets with plastic, while there was only one street with such markings at beginning of 2010s. Our Google Street View probably have similar issues as Germany, even the blur of 2012 imagery is on outrageous level. I've never seen such blur levels anywhere. Germans uses immense blur too, but blur in Lithuania is automatic (kinda sucks), while in Germany the blur is made manually. For Germany and Lithuania, I use Mapilary. It's not quite good, but I don't know anything better now.


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## Penn's Woods

Just noticed Google Maps is now showing transit systems. Example:


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## Penn's Woods

^^But it’s inconsistent from one city to the next. I happened on this when I was looking for Hanau. Said, “huh!,” checked a few other cities.... They’ve got it for Cologne-Bonn, Paris, London; not for Brussels and Antwerp. So I scrolled over to North America at the same scale. They’ve got all rail - subway/elevated, streetcars (trams) and suburban rail - for Philadelphia; subways but not suburban rail for New York. Boston and Washington/Baltimore. All rail including suburban for Chicago, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area; light rail (I guess) for Portland and Seattle; all rail (I guess) for Vancouver; subways and streetcars but not suburban rail for Toronto, subway only for Montreal.


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## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> Just noticed Google Maps is now showing transit systems. Example:
> View attachment 31512


They've done it for several years. Information is received from respective transport companies or agencies so that it's usually very realiable.


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## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^But it’s inconsistent from one city to the next.


Yes, it's because Google does not collect transport data itself, it's provided by respective transport companies or agencies. When and where it is not provided, it can not be displayed as well. 
Some organizations do it public, you can e.g. download the data fro Budapest from this page. Some others send the data directly to Google.
Google developed a specific data format, it's called GTFS. Transport organizations shall provide data iin this format in order to le it be displayed in Google Maps.


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## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> They've done it for several years. Information is received from respective transport companies or agencies so that it's usually very realiable.




I’ve never seen it on the maps at that scale in default view. Not sure I’ve seen it at any scale. By default view, I mean when you just open Google Maps, maybe for the first time in days, without having it set to show traffic, without being in directions mode.... I’d always just see roads. (But this is on iPhone. I hardly ever look at it on a computer.)


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## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> https://goo.gl/maps/L7jqBPec4cF84kr96 (In Poland, I remember riding exactly there and turning left)


For me it's nothing unusual, typical Poland... Quite a lot of mess, plenty of advertising that looks quite old, old private residential buildings not always being renovated. Much of what we call in the Polish SSC section "100 years traditions of the Polish urban planning". See this thread: https://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1660101



> https://goo.gl/maps/6HELnFzaL2kzrKZ76 (In comparison to Kaunas. From what I know this street should be renovated sometime in few years, it's the most important street in Easternmost part of Kaunas, called Palemonas, or its Eastern side to be precise  )


To me, it looks very well, I wish all the streets (of similar importance) in Poland looked were like this one! All houses renovated and with the backyards taken care of (unlike those from that street view from Poland), a lot of greenery, even asphalt.



> When we entered the city, the street looked the way as we generally see Poland today: https://goo.gl/maps/a32T9QVy2oZNKY627


I don't know, I am not seeing such views in Poland very often. But maybe it's because of Łódź. Most of Łódź looks like your first link while e.g. most of Cracow or Warsaw like your third link.


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## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> For me it's nothing unusual, typical Poland... Quite a lot of mess, plenty of advertising that looks quite old, old private residential buildings not always being renovated. Much of what we call in the Polish SSC section "100 years traditions of the Polish urban planning".


When Lithuanians go to Poland, what might strengthen the more positive attitude toward Poland is that routes go through beautiful nature and resort towns, like Augustow. And after that we mainly use main roads going to Warsaw or Western Europe, and minor roads or streets are rarely seen. I experienced to myself that when leaving main road (Piotrkow Trybunalski, and near Bialystok), infrastructure look poorer at times while main roads are mostly okay, new S-roads look like a masterpiece. Latvia looks okay from main roads too, but you can expect everything from minor roads. As for urbanistics, from what I heard from some Polish people, that general situation is not bad/okay, worst situation is with Lithuanian commieblock districts since they didn't underwent proper renovations, only few houses are renovated. Smaller towns have more renovations, but this is not the case with largest cities. I think this have to do with our preferences to private housing, or even some isolated dwelling. 70% new flats are built in Vilnius, while only 30% live in Vilnius.

Another thing that Poland have better is that dual-carriegeways standards. Most prominent thing that you have longer acceleration and deceleration lanes while Soviet-built (actually, pre-2013 built due to our standard updates) sections in Lithuania are lacking that. Kaunas-Vilnius soon should not lack it anymore, while Kaunas-Klaipėda and Vilnius-Panevėžys may underwent similar reconstruction sometime later.


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## Kpc21

Yeah, a good thing about the Polish commie-blocks is that almost all of them got extra thermal insulation layers, and on that they got painted in colors – as people commonly disliked the previous standard gray.

I am not living in one but from what I read, originally, they had many faults regarding the insulation, it wasn't uncommon that there were holes at the connections of the panels through which the cold was blowing inside. After getting those apartments, the new owners (tenants) had to fix those issues on their own – but anyway it was often difficult to do it correctly.

Those extra thermal insulations, made mostly in the 2000s (some in 1990s, some in 2010s) improved really a lot.

Talking about urban planning in Poland, the problem is that in the 1990s, by a single political decision, all old spatial development plans (that dictate what can be built where) were made no longer valid. All the municipalities had to establish new plans from scratch. The consequence of that there are still plenty of areas, often even in big cities (as establishing new plans there is difficult because of conflicts of interests), which just don't have those plans, so the urban planning is out of control. And you get e.g. new housing or supermarkets built in areas for years reserved for the future roads.


----------



## Verso

Yesterday I saw a truck from Kazakhstan in Ljubljana. I don't remember having seen one before. Unfortunately I didn't look whether it was from western or eastern Kazakhstan - big difference. :lol:


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## ChrisZwolle

Uralsk - Ljubljana: 3270 km
Horgos - Ljubljana: 6250 km


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Uralsk - Ljubljana: 3270 km
> Horgos - Ljubljana: 6250 km


Interesting, large border crossing in Kazahstan has (almost) the same name as Serbian one, Horgos/Horgoš


----------



## italystf

Do international media talk a lot about the recent Covid-2019 outbreak in Northern Italy?
There are 56 people infected and 2 dead in two hospots, near Lodi and near Padova. Aparently several infected people have been hospitalized for days in precarious conditions, as their disease wasn't diagnosed until yesterday. So, they were able to infect other patients, doctors, and nurses inside hospitals. Thousands of people are under quarantine, and 10 municipalities in Lombardy and one in Veneto have been shut down. They are questioning people to find who has been in contact with who. Two hospitals have been evacuated and in involved areas all bars, shops, offices, schools, etc. are close until further notice and people are advised not to go in and out affected areas (PT is stopped, but roads are open).
Where I live life still continues as usual, as the closest infected people are about 100km from here, but everything may change in 2 hours, 1 day or a week. News channels talk about coronavirus for most of the time.
I read the latest news every hour or so and keep the finger crossed. I hope not to end 14 days in quarantine or, even worse, get ill.
I hope safety protocols in hospitals will improve after these recent cases.
Don't go near Lodi or Padova at least for the moment.


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## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Do international media talk a lot about the recent Covid-2019 outbreak in Northern Italy?
> There are 56 people infected and 2 dead in two hospots, near Lodi and near Padova. Aparently several infected people have been hospitalized for days in precarious conditions, as their disease wasn't diagnosed until yesterday. So, they were able to infect other patients, doctors, and nurses inside hospitals. Thousands of people are under quarantine, and 10 municipalities in Lombardy and one in Veneto have been shut down. They are questioning people to find who has been in contact with who. Two hospitals have been evacuated and in involved areas all bars, shops, offices, schools, etc. are close until further notice and people are advised not to go in and out affected areas (PT is stopped, but roads are open).
> Where I live life still continues as usual, as the closest infected people are about 100km from here, but everything may change in 2 hours, 1 day or a week. News channels talk about coronavirus for most of the time.
> I read the latest news every hour or so and keep the finger crossed. I hope not to end 14 days in quarantine or, even worse, get ill.
> I hope safety protocols in hospitals will improve after these recent cases.
> Don't go near Lodi or Padova at least for the moment.




I hadn’t heard anything at all about this until someone in a Facebook group on European travel asked a couple of hours ago about canceling a trip to Milan because of it. Since then, I’ve seen a couple of headlines in European sources I follow; American media are dominated by politics today, at least what I’ve seen.


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## MichiH

Germany today:
1. Political affair in Thuringia
2. Hanau attack
3. Italy coronavirus


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It was all over the Dutch media today. There were also reports that the incubation time may be as long as 4 weeks which makes the outbreak difficult to contain.

It appears to be spreading more quickly internationally now, over the past 5-6 weeks it was mainly a Chinese thing and a small number of cases abroad, but it is now spreading more quickly, in particular in South Korea.

Wikipedia has quite decent coverage about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_coronavirus_outbreak


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## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> It was all over the Dutch media today. There were also reports that the incubation time may be as long as 4 weeks which makes the outbreak difficult to contain.
> 
> It appears to be spreading more quickly internationally now, over the past 5-6 weeks it was mainly a Chinese thing and a small number of cases abroad, but it is now spreading more quickly, in particular in South Korea.
> 
> Wikipedia has quite decent coverage about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_coronavirus_outbreak




I just saw the 27-day-incubation thing in a French article.

https://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/...Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1582389110


----------



## Kpc21

I don't usually watch TV news but the main page of the one of main Polish news portals (of one news TV) doesn't mention the coronavirus at all, although it includes two of medical news: about bad condition for the mothers in the Polish children hospitals (who often have to sleep on the floor next to their children's beds) and about some series of nose drops that got withdrawn.

Most TV channels didn't have the main news yet but let's check the second channel of the state TV as they have the news, if I'm not mistaken, at 6 PM...

The headlines:
1. The presidential elections campaign (3 minutes)
2. Even more about elections – about an incident when the leader of the campaign of the president who is currently in office was attacked (and about fake news about that spread out by the left-wing media) (3.5 minutes)
3. Discussions about the EU budget for the years 2021-2027 (2.5 minutes)
4. Plans for new roads, Via Carpathia (2.5 minutes)
5. New activity center for the elderly in a village somewhere in Poland, subsidized by the government (1 minute)
6. Several police dogs killed by a central heating failure in a police building in Warsaw (30 seconds)
7. A man taken to a hospital in Zawiercie, Poland (who recently came from China), suspected of being infected with coronavirus, turns out not to have it; second person infected with coronavirus died in Italy, the WHO leader reminds that in 80% cases the coronavirus disease is not severe (15 seconds)
8. A man in Łódź tried to kidnap a child, he got arrested (15 seconds)
9. Advert of The Voice Kids finals (15 seconds)
10. Thanks to support from the Polish police, the Spanish civil guard managed to close an illegal cigarette and drug factory (30 seconds)
11. Farming expo in France (15 seconds)
12. Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle will stop using the Sussex Royal title (15 seconds)
13. Ski jumping world cup (1 minute)
14. Advert of a boxing competition this night (30 seconds)

So the situation with the coronavirus in Italy was mentioned – but very, very shortly.


----------



## piotr71

A request to the users from ex-Yugoslav countries. I am trying to find an on-line library, or any virtual place, which sells books and/or brochures related to the after war (WWII) automotive industry in the area. Preferably, written in any of BCS language. A chance to help, please?


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> Do international media talk a lot about the recent Covid-2019 outbreak in Northern Italy?
> There are 56 people infected and 2 dead in two hospots, near Lodi and near Padova. Aparently several infected people have been hospitalized for days in precarious conditions, as their disease wasn't diagnosed until yesterday. So, they were able to infect other patients, doctors, and nurses inside hospitals. Thousands of people are under quarantine, and 10 municipalities in Lombardy and one in Veneto have been shut down. They are questioning people to find who has been in contact with who. Two hospitals have been evacuated and in involved areas all bars, shops, offices, schools, etc. are close until further notice and people are advised not to go in and out affected areas (PT is stopped, but roads are open).
> Where I live life still continues as usual, as the closest infected people are about 100km from here, but everything may change in 2 hours, 1 day or a week. News channels talk about coronavirus for most of the time.
> I read the latest news every hour or so and keep the finger crossed. I hope not to end 14 days in quarantine or, even worse, get ill.
> I hope safety protocols in hospitals will improve after these recent cases.
> Don't go near Lodi or Padova at least for the moment.


Lodi and Padova? Our media wrote about Codogno. It must be Lodi then. Btw this Codogno sooo rings a bell to me, but I cannot remember why. 

Btw, news in Croatia today:
1. Filip Zupčić first in giant slalom in Japan
2. Still blabling about controversial national anthem performance at presidential inauguration this week
3. Politicians faking their properties
4. Corona virus: Croat from Diamond Princess released to quarantine
5. Corona virus: 2 dead in Italy.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I haven't watched regular TV programming - including the news - for over 10 years now. I don't have a TV subscription, I canceled it about 6 years ago after realizing I never watched linear TV anymore.


----------



## MichiH

^^ So what?

The _source_ for my German list above was not based on TV news but radio news and online media.

I also don't have a TV in my flat anymore.


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> Lodi and Padova? Our media wrote about Codogno. It must be Lodi then. Btw this Codogno sooo rings a bell to me, but I cannot remember why.
> 
> Btw, news in Croatia today:
> 1. Filip Zupčić first in giant slalom in Japan
> 2. Still blabling about controversial national anthem performance at presidential inauguration this week
> 3. Politicians faking their properties
> 4. Corona virus: Croat from Diamond Princess released to quarantine
> 5. Corona virus: 2 dead in Italy.


Codogno is in Lodi province. Lodi city isn't affected yet. Nor Padova city is, but a village near it is.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I get the news mainly through the internet. I've never had a newspaper subscription and I don't listen much to the radio either.

I don't care about current popular music at all, top 40 music is all low-grade junk to me. So that's a number of radio stations I wouldn't listen to. But the remaining stations that play classic rock or 80/90s music are overly commercial due to the Dutch system of auctioning FM frequencies. They cost so much to acquire that only the most standard / generic hits get played on the radio. There is no commercial viability for more niche / album track radio stations. I hoped this would improve with DAB+ radio, but it hasn't really.


----------



## Kpc21

It seems that there are already the news from the main opposition-supporting TV channel... So the headlines:

1. 

...

It seems the video is unavailable. I watched five commercials of various medical products (because most TV commercials in Poland nowadays are of drugs, dietary supplements and other medications – is it so as well in your countries?), one of a mouth serum for women to learn twice that the video isn't there.

You can get sick watching those commercial showing mostly sick people, and talking about unpleasant diseases.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I get the news mainly through the internet. I've never had a newspaper subscription and I don't listen much to the radio either.
> 
> I don't care about current popular music at all, top 40 music is all low-grade junk to me. So that's a number of radio stations I wouldn't listen to. But the remaining stations that play classic rock or 80/90s music are overly commercial due to the Dutch system of auctioning FM frequencies. They cost so much to acquire that only the most standard / generic hits get played on the radio. There is no commercial viability for more niche / album track radio stations. I hoped this would improve with DAB+ radio, but it hasn't really.




Stream foreign stations. I’ve got an app called TuneIn that lets me listen to stations all over the world.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> It seems that there are already the news from the main opposition-supporting TV channel... So the headlines:
> 
> 1.
> 
> ...
> 
> It seems the video is unavailable. I watched five commercials of various medical products (because most TV commercials in Poland nowadays are of drugs, dietary supplements and other medications – is it so as well in your countries?), one of a mouth serum for women to learn twice that the video isn't there.
> 
> You can get sick watching those commercial showing mostly sick people, and talking about unpleasant diseases.




Medication commercials are a trip: “Side effects include....cancer....”. Yeah, that’s some side effect.

But that’s not most of what I see. I’ll see, in no particular order: travel (hotels, cruises, flights booking sites), cars, car insurance (our car-insurance companies seem to be competing to be the most clever these days), movies (and when I’m at my mom’s, in the New York market, Broadway shows), beer, fast food and chain restaurants, charitable solicitations (for children’s hospitals or organizations that fight animal cruelty)....


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Medication commercials are a trip: “Side effects include....cancer....”. Yeah, that’s some side effect.


But maybe the chance of that side effect is something around 0,00000001%, but yet, they have to write it for legal reasons. Chance of having something bad if you _don't_ take that prescribed medication when you need is much higher.
It's the same for vaccinations. Vaccines-related damages have been actually recorded, but they're _extremely_ rare (and even rarer compared to the past). Odds for getting damaged by diseases that can be avoided with vaccines is much, much, much higher.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland medical product advertisers are not obliged to tell the side effects. Since not long ago they must, however, they must tell the contraindications (so you hear even more disease names during the commercial) and the standard formula:

Before using read the leaflet attached to the package or consult a doctor or a pharmacist because a medicine used improperly may be harmful for your life and health.

earlier it was just:

Before using read the leaflet attached to the package or consult a doctor or a pharmacist

But it's already something like 10 years since they extended it.

Some recent changes are also e.g. that actual medical doctors cannot play in those commercials, but an actor dressed up like a doctor is still perfectly OK, so it changed practically nothing. And it applies only to drugs, while much of this advertising are dietary supplements in form of pills that also promise to cure diseases. Often ones that don't actually exist.

I'll turn on TV, find a commercial block (surely there will be one on at least one of the channels) and list the commercials...

1. car (BMW)
2. beer (Żubr)
3. mobile network (Plus)
4. medication – dietary supplement for immunity (Gripovita)
5. crisps (Lay's)
6. branch of furniture stores (Agata)
7. chocolate (Lindt)
8. medication – drug, a cough sirup (Herbapect)
9. mobile network – an offer for smartphones (orange)
10. medication – dietary supplement for joints (Artresan)
11. beer (Desperados)
12. sweets (Kinder)
13. milk for babies (Bebilon)
14. mobile network (Orange)
15. medication – dietary supplement for stress (Miralo)
16. beer (Captain Jack)
17. sweets (Rafaello)


1. croissants (7-Days)
2. chocolate bar (Pawełek by Wedel)
3. bank (BNP Paribas)
4. car (Peugeot, new Peugeot 208)
5. dog food (Brit)
6. drug for sneezing (Xylogel)
7. beverage (Pepsi)
8. fast food branch (KFC)
9. coffee (Inka)
10. beverage (Coca-Cola)

1. toothbrush (Oral-B)

1. satellite TV (Cyfrowy Polsat)

1. medication – dietary supplement for stress (Miralo)
2. mobile network (T-Mobile)
3. medication – dietary supplement for immunity (Rutinacea)
4. fast food branch (KFC)
5. supermarket branch (Lidl)
6. beverage – juice for children (Kubuś)
7. movie – a Polish one (Bad Boy)
8. medication – drug for common cold (Scorbolamid)
9. fast food branch (KFC)
10. shoe shops branch (CCC)
11. bouillon cube (Winiary)

1. menstrual pads (Naturella)

Several adveriting blocks, none of them watched from the beginnig (so in case of some, I caught the last commercial only).

Medical products are definitely dominant.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Advertising is one of the main reasons why I don't watch TV anymore. 

Luckily we don't have a TV licensing tax in the Netherlands. You can own a TV without having to fund channels you don't watch. I have a TV but no subscription, only for streaming services and maybe an older DVD, I still have 200 DVDs or so.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland we have but it's practically not enforced...

Although in the company I work for we are using TV screens for displaying some live data above our desks. At it seems that the company deliberately purchased a version of those 55-inch Sony TV sets sold as monitors, with the TV tuner disabled in firmware (which were probably more expensive) not to have to pay the TV tax.

In households, in theory you are obliged to register your TV set at a... post office. Then, based on that, you pay the tax.

And the tax is enforced from those who have registered their TVs.

But the registration of TVs by itself is not enforced in any way.

This tax is, by the way, weirdly called "TV subscription", so there are, for example, people who think that they don't have to pay it because they are already paying subscription for paid cable or satellite TV.

Although actually it's not related in any way.


----------



## bogdymol

In Austria you also have to pay a tax for simply owning a TV. It's something like 20 € per month and you get absolutely nothing in return. Quite expensive. And from what I hear, they really enforce this (they can come and check if you have a TV and are not registered).

As I don't watch regular TV I bought at home a TV-like monitor which is connected to the internet (Youtube, Netflix and even some TV stations that broadcast over the internet). That works very well, plus that I don't have to pay 240 € per year just for owning it.


----------



## Attus

In Germany you have to pay TV tax, even if you don't have any TV.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland medical product advertisers are not obliged to tell the side effects. Since not long ago they must, however, they must tell the contraindications (so you hear even more disease names during the commercial) and the standard formula:
> 
> Before using read the leaflet attached to the package or consult a doctor or a pharmacist because a medicine used improperly may be harmful for your life and health.
> 
> earlier it was just:
> 
> Before using read the leaflet attached to the package or consult a doctor or a pharmacist
> 
> But it's already something like 10 years since they extended it.
> 
> Some recent changes are also e.g. that actual medical doctors cannot play in those commercials, but an actor dressed up like a doctor is still perfectly OK, so it changed practically nothing. And it applies only to drugs, while much of this advertising are dietary supplements in form of pills that also promise to cure diseases. Often ones that don't actually exist.
> 
> I'll turn on TV, find a commercial block (surely there will be one on at least one of the channels) and list the commercials...
> 
> 1. car (BMW)
> 2. beer (Żubr)
> 3. mobile network (Plus)
> 4. medication – dietary supplement for immunity (Gripovita)
> 5. crisps (Lay's)
> 6. branch of furniture stores (Agata)
> 7. chocolate (Lindt)
> 8. medication – drug, a cough sirup (Herbapect)
> 9. mobile network – an offer for smartphones (orange)
> 10. medication – dietary supplement for joints (Artresan)
> 11. beer (Desperados)
> 12. sweets (Kinder)
> 13. milk for babies (Bebilon)
> 14. mobile network (Orange)
> 15. medication – dietary supplement for stress (Miralo)
> 16. beer (Captain Jack)
> 17. sweets (Rafaello)
> 
> 
> 1. croissants (7-Days)
> 2. chocolate bar (Pawełek by Wedel)
> 3. bank (BNP Paribas)
> 4. car (Peugeot, new Peugeot 208)
> 5. dog food (Brit)
> 6. drug for sneezing (Xylogel)
> 7. beverage (Pepsi)
> 8. fast food branch (KFC)
> 9. coffee (Inka)
> 10. beverage (Coca-Cola)
> 
> 1. toothbrush (Oral-B)
> 
> 1. satellite TV (Cyfrowy Polsat)
> 
> 1. medication – dietary supplement for stress (Miralo)
> 2. mobile network (T-Mobile)
> 3. medication – dietary supplement for immunity (Rutinacea)
> 4. fast food branch (KFC)
> 5. supermarket branch (Lidl)
> 6. beverage – juice for children (Kubuś)
> 7. movie – a Polish one (Bad Boy)
> 8. medication – drug for common cold (Scorbolamid)
> 9. fast food branch (KFC)
> 10. shoe shops branch (CCC)
> 11. bouillon cube (Winiary)
> 
> 1. menstrual pads (Naturella)
> 
> Several adveriting blocks, none of them watched from the beginnig (so in case of some, I caught the last commercial only).
> 
> Medical products are definitely dominant.




Those are long blocks of commercials!


----------



## Jschmuck

I have antenna with my tv, all free (no subscription), 27 stations. 

In regards to advertisements: political ads have become year round now. When not advertising a candidate there is a superpac advertising for 'rights/beliefs' here in Wisconsin, USA. Other advertising includes a lot of lawyer services, local business advertising, a lot of financial 'help' services, and paid programing (30min shopping channel within a block of programing advertising 1 product (though these are usually late at night or midday)).

I watch a lot of local news broadcasts, keeps me informed of my community and the world.


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> Those are long blocks of commercials!


None of them was a full block.

And you usually get at least two of those in a break during the movie, interrupted by ads of other movies and shows which that station would show... You may forget what the movie was about.

Over here, political ads are mostly only in the last moths before the elections. It's really a lot of them just before the elections, some in special state-funded blocks (to give some chances also to niche parties that may not afford paid advertising).

But the local division of the state TV makes and shows quite a lot of programs and documentaries that present nothing else than various local EU-subsidized investments. It's not so visible today – but there was a time when you practically couldn't find anything else during the local broadcasts except for that (and the local news). Probably because they are on a very tight budget – and this way it was the EU who paid for these programs.

The local broadcasts of the state TV in Poland are organized in such a way that they have the third channel (TVP3), which for most of the day broadcasts the same program for the whole country, from Warsaw (although they have some programs that are made by the local divisions of TVP) – but there are a few hours when the broadcast is split between the regions and each one broadcasts some local programs and the local news.

These local news bulletins aren't, maybe, of poor quality concerning the content – but the way they realize them seems to be quite outdated.

This is from 2 years ago:


----------



## tfd543

Attus said:


> In Germany you have to pay TV tax, even if you don't have any TV.




Wtf?! Well in Denmark we pay a digital tax for having tv or devices with access to internet and Its only mandatory if you own one. They have inspectors but they have no right to enter your house.

We pay like 300 euros Per year.


----------



## Kpc21

Yes, in Germany it's a tax obligatory for everyone. And from what I've heard, they enforce it.

I heard that in the UK they have special brigades in cars with machinery that based on the colors of the light from the windows can detect whether someone is actually watching live TV and this way verify that someone should be paying the TV tax.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> None of them was a full block.
> 
> 
> 
> And you usually get at least two of those in a break during the movie, interrupted by ads of other movies and shows which that station would show... You may forget what the movie was about.
> 
> 
> 
> Over here, political ads are mostly only in the last moths before the elections. It's really a lot of them just before the elections, some in special state-funded blocks (to give some chances also to niche parties that may not afford paid advertising).
> 
> 
> 
> But the local division of the state TV makes and shows quite a lot of programs and documentaries that present nothing else than various local EU-subsidized investments. It's not so visible today – but there was a time when you practically couldn't find anything else during the local broadcasts except for that (and the local news). Probably because they are on a very tight budget – and this way it was the EU who paid for these programs.
> 
> 
> 
> The local broadcasts of the state TV in Poland are organized in such a way that they have the third channel (TVP3), which for most of the day broadcasts the same program for the whole country, from Warsaw (although they have some programs that are made by the local divisions of TVP) – but there are a few hours when the broadcast is split between the regions and each one broadcasts some local programs and the local news.
> 
> 
> 
> These local news bulletins aren't, maybe, of poor quality concerning the content – but the way they realize them seems to be quite outdated.
> 
> 
> 
> This is from 2 years ago:




I watched the first couple and the start of the third. Didn’t understand much, of course. They don’t look outdated to me....


----------



## Penn's Woods

TV tax is, or license fees, is something we don’t have.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> None of them was a full block.
> 
> 
> 
> And you usually get at least two of those in a break during the movie, interrupted by ads of other movies and shows which that station would show... You may forget what the movie was about.
> 
> 
> 
> Over here, political ads are mostly only in the last moths before the elections. It's really a lot of them just before the elections, some in special state-funded blocks (to give some chances also to niche parties that may not afford paid advertising).
> 
> 
> 
> But the local division of the state TV makes and shows quite a lot of programs and documentaries that present nothing else than various local EU-subsidized investments. It's not so visible today – but there was a time when you practically couldn't find anything else during the local broadcasts except for that (and the local news). Probably because they are on a very tight budget – and this way it was the EU who paid for these programs.
> 
> 
> 
> The local broadcasts of the state TV in Poland are organized in such a way that they have the third channel (TVP3), which for most of the day broadcasts the same program for the whole country, from Warsaw (although they have some programs that are made by the local divisions of TVP) – but there are a few hours when the broadcast is split between the regions and each one broadcasts some local programs and the local news.
> 
> 
> 
> These local news bulletins aren't, maybe, of poor quality concerning the content – but the way they realize them seems to be quite outdated.
> 
> 
> 
> This is from 2 years ago:




This is something I might have seen:


https://youtu.be/MyG1v0jIzEo


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> In Germany you have to pay TV tax, even if you don't have any TV.


Same in Italy, because also PCs, tablets and smartphones could be used to watch RAI (Italian public TV).


----------



## italystf

Due to coronavirus outbreak, 10 municipalities around Codogno (Lombardy) and the municipality of Vo' (Veneto) are fully closed for at least two weeks. Nobody can go in and out. Any attempt to violate quarantine will be punished with up to 3 months of prison. Armed forces may be employed to enforce the blockade.
The situation is really serious there, but hopefully these strict measures will prevent to have too many cases outside the "red zone" and make the problem more manageable. We'll wait and see…
The easygoing way we dealt with the epidemics until a couple of days ago is really a shame. We allowed the virus to spread freely inside hospitals, like we were in the 19th century or in an African war zone camp hospital. A guy was dismissed from the hospital because he "had just a flue". The following day returned, it became very ill, and he was diagnosed with coronavirus. He's now struggling between life and death, after having infected dozens of other people.
There are reports about nurses who have worked up to 30 hours without sleeping.
I wonder if Italy had passed through worse health emergencies since WWII ended… maybe the 1973 cholera oubreak in Naples, causated by contaminated mussels imported from Tunisia.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Due to coronavirus outbreak, 10 municipalities around Codogno (Lombardy) and the municipality of Vo' (Veneto) are fully closed for at least two weeks. Nobody can go in and out. Any attempt to violate quarantine will be punished with up to 3 months of prison. Armed forces may be employed to enforce the blockade.
> The situation is really serious there, but hopefully these strict measures will prevent to have too many cases outside the "red zone" and make the problem more manageable. We'll wait and see…
> The easygoing way we dealt with the epidemics until a couple of days ago is really a shame. We allowed the virus to spread freely inside hospitals, like we were in the 19th century or in an African war zone camp hospital. A guy was dismissed from the hospital because he "had just a flue". The following day returned, it became very ill, and he was diagnosed with coronavirus. He's now struggling between life and death, after having infected dozens of other people.
> There are reports about nurses who have worked up to 30 hours without sleeping.
> I wonder if Italy had passed through worse health emergencies since WWII ended… maybe the 1973 cholera oubreak in Naples, causated by contaminated mussels imported from Tunisia.




Wow!
What’s the source of the Italian outbreak? Someone who was in China?


----------



## Verso

So after seeing that truck from Kazakhstan the other day, yesterday I saw a car with even more exotic license plates, but unfortunately the country code on the plate had so small letters that I couldn't read them. There was a round emblem on the plate that looked similar to that of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC in French). It was quite an easily recognizable plate, but even after looking at almost all countries' license plates I can't find the right country.


----------



## bogdymol

When I was in Morocco I spotted a couple of cars with Italian and Spanish license plates (most probably Moroccans working those countries spending some time at home). But the most further away plate was a German one, on an expensive Mercedes, stopped by the police in Marrakech.


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> I watched the first couple and the start of the third. Didn’t understand much, of course. They don’t look outdated to me....


Turn on English subtitles, made by me by the way.

They changed to better in the last years, but earlier the technical quality gap between the local news and the countrywide news (where it has always been very high) was huge.

Now it became much cheaper to make high quality video graphics, maybe this is the reason.

There were a few years when the local news from Łódź looked like this:






and the national ones were like this:










(this one was actually quite poor in my opinion)

or later:






Really nice graphics. Showing several Polish cities. First Gdańsk. Then... Katowice? (this industrial landscape) Next Cracow and finally Warsaw.

The yet earlier version was also very good:






Meanwhile the main competitor's news (TVN, currently strongly supporting the governmental opposition) just copied quite a lot from Germans – with those pictures of consecutive news on the huge screen behind the host:






vs.







A sad thing is that for no commercial TV station it is affordable to produce local news. Maybe except for some very small local stations, available only through cable TV.

For several years, TVN experimented with a local channel for Warsaw – TVN Warszawa – and they also had local news. This was a very good and interesting channel with much interesting programming, I liked watching it even though I don't live in Warsaw. But they closed it because it was bringing no financial profit, what only remained is a dedicated news website for the city.


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> Yes, in Germany it's a tax obligatory for everyone. And from what I've heard, they enforce it.
> 
> I heard that in the UK they have special brigades in cars with machinery that based on the colors of the light from the windows can detect whether someone is actually watching live TV and this way verify that someone should be paying the TV tax.




You Can just use blinds and live in an apartment that is not in the ground floor. Lol.

Moreover, the thing in the UK is not fair since you might just use a tv simulator, the device for fooling thieves.


----------



## Kpc21

I guess then you can let the controllers in and just let them see you don't use a TV.

And maybe those devices are comparing what is seen from your windows with what is actually currently shown on TV? I don't know but this would make sense. Otherwise you would have similar problems watching e.g. movies on VHS or DVD (I am talking about the past, now it would rather be a streaming service like Netflix) on a monitor, without a TV tuner.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Wow!
> What’s the source of the Italian outbreak? Someone who was in China?


Apparently yes, but they still have to find it. Probably there are two separate hotspots.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands has regional broadcasters, typically per province. They produce TV, radio and internet news. It is often said that mostly the elderly watch such news. 

I follow some of those on the internet, but a large amount of the content consists of rewritten Twitter and Facebook posts, in particular from the police, fire department, politicians or 112 coverage. You can't really call that real journalism anymore.

A problem is that regular reporting has no earnings model. It needs to be sensational, hype, hysterical or outrage news, that's what generates clicks. This used to be called yellow journalism, but mainstream journalism is also moving in that direction. 

I research old newspapers, reporting from the 1970s and 1980s is so much more factual and formal. Back then you also had left-leaning and right-leaning newspapers, but it wasn't nearly as bad, opinion / editorial and reporting was much more clearly divided. Nowadays almost any news reporting seems to have an agenda.


----------



## Attus

Since there are some recent data from Italy and South Korea (i.e. more or less free nations), is clear, that Covid-19 spreads even more rapid than thought before. 
I'm rather pessimistic about the following months.


----------



## tfd543

Take it easy. Its not so healthy to prime your brain with things that can go wrong in future without necessarily happening. Its bit like a paradox cuz you take precautions to protect yourself, but giving more and more access to negative thoughts. 
Be in the present


----------



## Kpc21

When I watch Polish TV news from 1980s (a public TV historical channel was repeating them for some time in the last years), then yes, there was some communist propaganda in them – but in general they all sound much less biased than those which can be watched today.

Nowadays I am getting the news mostly from news websites and Facebook... But I am using the website of one of the TV channels, so it's not really different, and on Facebook it's even worse, the algorithms (which are programmed to propose you content which you are likely to like, so usually ones in line with your political views) are creating "news bubbles".

Concerning news about investments in new buildings, roads and railways, the best source are the threads on SSC. And it seems that the local media actually follow this forum, it's often so that something appears (noticed by one of the users, e.g. a tender) first here and then the local media repeat that. Sometimes even copying the mistakes.

When the political system in Poland changed, the main public TV news even changed the name of their news bulletin (from "TV Journal" to just "News", or it can also be translated as "Messages"), to cut off from the past. In the first episode under the new name, they even tell the legendary sentence:



> The news in our new journal will be good or bad but always true.


It doesn't seem to be true any more  I mean maybe they aren't lying but telling only a part of the true, the one which is more convenient for the government, is quite common. And the same is true for the TVN's news.

A random one – from 1984:






1. Some political news – about a gathering of the communist party and new plans (just a minute or so)
2. Entry exams at the universities – reports from several cities (something like 2 minutes)
3. Again some politics (about a gathering of another party, which was actually dependent on the main communist one) – but again very briefly
4. Preparations for the crops – a report from a huge silo for storing the cereal grains
5. Firefighter's entry about hay fires
6. Navy training
7. Visit of the UN general secretary in the Soviet Union
8. People's demonstration against the presence of american military bases in Greece + the American comments (who claimed that Greece wants to have better relationship with the Eastern Bloc countries rather than with the US and NATO)
9. A conference of the South-East Asian countries leaders in Jakarta – well, mentioning that they were saying bad things about the US politics
10. Visit of the Chinese Minister of Defence in Japan
11. End of the protests of the families of people kidnapped, imprisoned or lost in a civil war in Liban who wanted freeing them
12. Miners protests in Great Britain – and a solidarity strike of the British sailors
13. Doubled debt of the Latin America countries
14. Wildfire in California
15. Miss Universe 1984 competition in Miami, Florida
16. Low temperatures and a snowfall in Bulgarian mountains (it was in July)
17. A report showing one quite nice looking place in Hungary – more as a short documentary rather than a news report
18. Preparations to the 22nd July holiday – celebrating the 40 years of "free" Poland (as it was considered then), presenting the achievements of this period, a report about copper mining and processing (and this is true, we still extract and export quite a lot of copper)
19. A conference in Pyongyang about economic and scientific cooperation of Poland and North Korea
20. Unions in Ironworks Katowice
21. Emission of a commemorative coin
22. Production of school textbooks
23. Governmental control in the local administration in one of the regions (with mostly positive results)
24. Construction of a new hospital in Suwałki – with a delay because of faulty plumbing (which, after turning on the water, damaged quite a lot)
25. A member of parliament, an attorney, accused of helping a police deserter and releasing secret information, released from the arrest after paying a caution – the prosecutor's investigation has ended and now he will be judged by court
26. A trial about the death of a man called Grzegorz Przemyk, he was beaten by the police, heavily injured and died (it was an interesting case because who was actually accused was the ambulance staff, the policemen got accused and trialed only after the political changes of 1989)
27. Increase of the international telephone call prices
28. Polish Radio orchestra on a concert in East Germany
29. A painting exhibition in Warsaw
30. A graphic exhibition in Cracow (of an Italian author)
31. A military song festival in Kołobrzeg
Sports:
32. UEFA Cup drawings – Lech Poznań will play with Liverpool, Pogoń Szczecin with FC Köln, Widzew Łódź with AGF Aarhus, Wisła Cracow with IBV Westermeyer from Iceland – with commentaries
33. Report from national youth sports competitions with new sports: bowling and chess
34. Women's volleyball tournament in Varna, Bulgaria – Varna Summer
35. Weather forecast

Yes, there is some propaganda, especially about the domestic issues. But there is also plenty of news about the issues unrelated to the politics, also many international ones, also from the western Europe and the US.

The difference is that all the news in those 1980s bulletins were mentioned only very briefly, often without any details e.g. about the results of the talks in a conference. But there is really many of them.


----------



## Kpc21

In Warsaw, a pedestrian was fined for blocking the car traffic on... a sidewalk.

A woman driving was illegally driving onto the sidewalk through a pedestrian crossing. A pedestrian stand on the sidewalk to deliberately block her return onto the roadway. The driver hit the pedestrian with her car.

The pedestrian called the police but the police was for the driver (she was hugging the policewoman and crying). The issue ended in court. The court punished the driver with 700 zł (160 euro), the pedestrian with 200 zł (45 euro) of fine.

There is a video (and photos) in the comments here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...&set=gm.2674898225875879&type=3&theater&ifg=1

What do you think about it?

Source : https://spidersweb.pl/autoblog/mand...HFaomY3bAIArMHkXIgaG3BdPfOeWlA1Pm-ovpuigyBC6Q


----------



## Verso

Ok, my car is covered with glaze ice and I can't get in. How am I supposed to get home at this hour? Just great!


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> I am supposed to leave for Paris in a few days, for a 4-month-long research period just like I did last year.
> Today the receptionist of the dorm called me and told me it was inappropriate for them to host me given "what's happening in Italy" (her words).
> She was particularly concerned that, in the application, I wrote I'm from Brescia. I told her it's just my legal residence but I live and work in Turin which is safe (not that Brescia isn't, anyway).
> She told me she had to discuss with the dorm manager and will get back to me...
> 
> I'm afraid I will have to cancel this period of work in Paris. If I have to give up the grant money I would be sooooo pissed.




Ouch! I’m sorry to hear that. There’s no way your term can be rescheduled once you’re (hopefully) cleared?

Meanwhile, a friend in Ireland reports an upcoming Ireland/Italy rugby match in Ireland has been canceled.

———
We’re not there yet. I just went to church (Ash Wednesday) and honestly never thought about being unsafe around other people. It’s about a mile’s walk each way, and I didn’t worry about passers-by either. People were going to the theater, or out to dinner....But I got home and cable news (MSNBC) is talking about the virus...and the host has started not shaking hands with her guests (and remarking about that), which honestly seems excessive to me, at least as of now.


----------



## Penn's Woods

joshsam said:


> If you live in UK/Benelux/N-France or around the Baltics you'll hear thundersnow more ofthen. Infact this morning we had heavy wet snow and a few flashes here. Thunderstorms with low temperatures are normal as well. Just need enough cold air in the upper layers and warmer moist air to collide with it.




I don’t remember thundersnow being a thing, at least not a frequent enough thing for it to be a word, until it happened live on the (U.S.) Weather Channel about 15 years ago.

(My auto-“correct” just rejected the word “thundersnow”; changed it to “thundershower.” Then when I changed it back I got the red squiggle.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> You can tell to the landlord that you haven't been back to Italy for months. :lol:




Is it even legal to discriminate?


----------



## Verso

Verso said:


> Ok, my car is covered with glaze ice and I can't get in. How am I supposed to get home at this hour? Just great!


Eventually I managed to get in through the back door. :lol:


----------



## tfd543

Verso said:


> Eventually I managed to get in through the back door. :lol:




Oh my dear. Where in the world was that? Alaska?
Be careful not to rip off the rubber seals.

Dont say you got out again using the trunk door. Lol


----------



## g.spinoza

Verso said:


> Ok, my car is covered with glaze ice and I can't get in. How am I supposed to get home at this hour? Just great!


A nebulizer with 1/3 alcohol and 2/3 water.



Penn's Woods said:


> Ouch! I’m sorry to hear that. There’s no way your term can be rescheduled once you’re (hopefully) cleared?


I asked for a rescheduling at the end of this year or at the beginning of the next.


----------



## Verso

tfd543 said:


> Oh my dear. Where in the world was that? Alaska?
> Be careful not to rip off the rubber seals.
> 
> Dont say you got out again using the trunk door. Lol


No, that was in Ljubljana. I got out normally, through the front door.



g.spinoza said:


> A nebulizer with 1/3 alcohol and 2/3 water.


Yes, but I have it in my car, not in my pocket. :lol:


----------



## bogdymol

Verso said:


> g.spinoza said:
> 
> 
> 
> A nebulizer with 1/3 alcohol and 2/3 water
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, but I have it in my car, not in my pocket. :lol:
Click to expand...

I always keep that in the trunk of my car. That opens every time, regardless how cold is outside.

I also had issues before with getting inside the car. The former place where I used to live for 5 years had a small stream of water, and my car was parked like 5 m away from it. This stream of water always brought a lot of moisture, so during winter my car was always iced, sometime so bad that I could not open some of the doors.

Now I have a roof to park the car under, so no more snow or ice cleaning required.


----------



## italystf

Even areas with zero cases of coronavirus are losing most of foreign tourists' reservations. Not just for the present days, but they're cancelling reservations for this summer, when the epidemics may be over.
Foreign people have problems to realize that countries are big and if a certain part of a country is dangerous it doesn't mean that the entire country is. Most people won't have any problems to visit Ljubljana or Villach now, but they won't come to Trieste or Udine. All of those four cities have the same number of coronavirus cases: zero! But the ltalian ones are perceived as dangerous because they're in Italy. We are reluctant to go abroad because we fear restrictions of harassement. It's understandable that other countries fear us together with the Chinese, the Korean, or the Iranian for health reasons, but that would hurt the Italian economy.
When the epidemics will be over, most people will be and remain healthy, very few, the oldest and most ill, will be dead (but they won't have lived for long anyway. But the economy will take years to recover. Italy will be associated with infective diseases for years in common though. Like we associate South America with drug gangs, East Europe with gypsies, or East Asia with dog and cat meat. Millions of workplaces will be lost. Italian will spend less because they'll be poorer and they'll feel they'll get poorer. We'll have less immigrants but far more emigrants.
Let's wait and see, I hope it won't be that bad. But probably such an event could have worse overall effects than an earthquake with thousands of deaths.


----------



## Penn's Woods

:cheers:


----------



## PovilD

italystf said:


> Even areas with zero cases of coronavirus are losing most of foreign tourists' reservations. Not just for the present days, but they're cancelling reservations for this summer, when the epidemics may be over.
> Foreign people have problems to realize that countries are big and if a certain part of a country is dangerous it doesn't mean that the entire country is. Most people won't have any problems to visit Ljubljana or Villach now, but they won't come to Trieste or Udine. All of those four cities have the same number of coronavirus cases: zero! But the ltalian ones are perceived as dangerous because they're in Italy. We are reluctant to go abroad because we fear restrictions of harassement. It's understandable that other countries fear us together with the Chinese, the Korean, or the Iranian for health reasons, but that would hurt the Italian economy.
> When the epidemics will be over, most people will be and remain healthy, very few, the oldest and most ill, will be dead (but they won't have lived for long anyway. But the economy will take years to recover. Italy will be associated with infective diseases for years in common though. Like we associate South America with drug gangs, East Europe with gypsies, or East Asia with dog and cat meat. Millions of workplaces will be lost. Italian will spend less because they'll be poorer and they'll feel they'll get poorer. We'll have less immigrants but far more emigrants.
> Let's wait and see, I hope it won't be that bad. But probably such an event could have worse overall effects than an earthquake with thousands of deaths.


I've read claims that due to Corona virus, they're should be small recession in Italy and Germany for upcoming economic quarter. After that, everything should go back to standard trends.

Btw, I think North East Europe (maybe Poland, and especially everything East of Poland) is more associated with so-called gopniks (poor street mobs), while only Southeast Europe (The Balkans) with gypsies. Maybe preferences differ between people, since East Europe is often somewhere on the corner for Western European to make more precise associations.


----------



## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Even areas with zero cases of coronavirus are losing most of foreign tourists' reservations. Not just for the present days, but they're cancelling reservations for this summer, when the epidemics may be over.


I would not blame it. You have to get there somehow (for example through an airport) and that could be the real problem.

I indeed cancelled my business trip. Not because of any fear for the virus, but because I would not like to spend some weeks in some crazy quarantine in the middle of hysteria.


----------



## MichiH

italystf said:


> Even areas with zero cases of coronavirus are losing most of foreign tourists' reservations. Not just for the present days, but they're cancelling reservations for this summer, when the epidemics may be over.


I think it will change soon. There are many cases all over Europe now. There is even the Spanish tourist hotel in quarantine. The problem is, that the main period for booking vacations is now, and people avoid Italy now.... which is... insane - but understandable.

I listened to a report on German radio yesterday. The main message was, that everything you should do to avoid normal influenza, you should also do now. The death rate of normal influenza is similarily high, especially when considering that not every person having influenza is checked for coronavirus.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> View attachment 32186
> 
> 
> :cheers:


200,000 miles?


----------



## Attus

italystf said:


> Most people won't have any problems to visit Ljubljana or Villach now, but they won't come to Trieste or Udine. All of those four cities have the same number of coronavirus cases: zero! But the ltalian ones are perceived as dangerous because they're in Italy.


I, too, will avoid Italy in the following months. Just like Voloda wrote: I don't want to spend weeks in some quarantine. 
My friend cancelled a Milan trip two days ago, although he had no chance to get his money back. He said, he wasn't afraid of the virus, but of being closed in a quarantine for two weeks. And, yes, I think he made the right decision.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Penn's Woods said:


> :cheers:


So what car do you drive and how old is it to have that mileage?
Just passed 68000 miles on mine hoping it will do another 68000 without braking something expensive.


----------



## Verso

RTV Slovenia: Russia closes its border with Iran icard:

https://www.rtvslo.si/zdravje/novi-...ranom-prva-okuzba-v-podsaharski-afriki/515729


----------



## Penn's Woods

joshsam said:


> So what car do you drive and how old is it to have that mileage?
> Just passed 68000 miles on mine hoping it will do another 68000 without braking something expensive.




A 2002 Mitsubishi Lancer. It spent the first year of its life in a rental fleet, then my father bought it (first time in his life he’d bought used, but he figured at 78 he didn’t need a new one...), then I bought it from him in 2009 when he could no longer drive.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> RTV Slovenia: Russia closes its border with Iran icard:
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.rtvslo.si/zdravje/novi-...ranom-prva-okuzba-v-podsaharski-afriki/515729




LOL!
See, it’s not just Joy Reid!

(Who I have trouble taking seriously since the whole Slovenia/Slovakia thing. Mostly because she’s been called on it but, as far as I can tell, never took it back.)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> Meanwhile... my employer has put alcohol-based hand sanitizers in the bathrooms, apart from the standard liquid soap.


I think it's a good idea. They should also clean surfaces that are touched frequently more often. Especially around toilets, sinks, water taps, doorknobs, touchscreens / buttons, etc.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12312732
> 
> 
> 
> _ People appear to be panic buying and "stocking up for the apocalypse" following confirmation of the first coronavirus case in New Zealand.
> 
> 
> 
> Customers reported massive queues - one man claimed up to a kilometre - at many Auckland supermarkets on Friday night - water, hand sanitiser, soap and tissues were flying off the shelves._
> 
> 
> 
> :nuts:




Seriously? I grocery-shopped Tuesday. Everything was normal. (And going again in an hour or so. I’ll report back if anything’s changed.)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The first two cases were reported in the Netherlands yesterday and today. 

I went to the supermarket and everything was normal. I hope it stays that way. The media is hyping the whole issue into extremes, with liveblogs 24 hours per day, journalists staying whole night at hospitals for updates, press conferences, extra long news coverage about trivial stuff and headlines that are almost non-stop about Coronavirus. 

This is taken into far more media extremes than MERS, Swine flu or SARS in the past. Swine flu killed 60 people in the Netherlands, but coverage was nowhere near as intense as it is today about Coronavirus.


----------



## italystf

Kpc21 said:


> Meanwhile... my employer has put alcohol-based hand sanitizers in the bathrooms, apart from the standard liquid soap.


Also my employer, with the difference that he put them in the hall. Hopefully noboby will steal them, now that they have a huge demand.


----------



## italystf

It's amazing how in 2020 they have to tell adults to do banal things like washing hands. Is something we should have learned at kindergarden.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> The first two cases were reported in the Netherlands yesterday and today.
> 
> I went to the supermarket and everything was normal. I hope it stays that way. The media is hyping the whole issue into extremes, with liveblogs 24 hours per day, journalists staying whole night at hospitals for updates, press conferences, extra long news coverage about trivial stuff and headlines that are almost non-stop about Coronavirus.
> 
> This is taken into far more media extremes than MERS, Swine flu or SARS in the past. Swine flu killed 60 people in the Netherlands, but coverage was nowhere near as intense as it is today about Coronavirus.


Swine flu hadn't a hospitalization rate of 20%, but it was much lower.
SARS and MERS were highly deadly but rarer, and had very few cases in Europe.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think it's a good idea. They should also clean surfaces that are touched frequently more often. Especially around toilets, sinks, water taps, doorknobs, touchscreens / buttons, etc.


We have those contactless automatic taps, but the bench around the sinks is always soaking with water and the cleaning ladies are laying out paper towels to keep them at least partially dry...

Something was not thought of well there. 

Personally, I often make the piece of bench behind the sink and below the tap wet, when while washing the hands the water outflow stops and I have to wave my hand around the sensor to cause it to start running again.

Generally, there is something wrong with the design of those bathrooms as also most users have troubles with the urinals (ending up with some pee on the floor).

It's anyway better than in one of the newest buildings of my university, where the light likes to suddenly go off when you're in the toilet cabin (seemingly, the movement sensors don't cover their inside).

Anyway, in the Polish section, in the coronavirus thread, someone posted that when he was visiting a public transport customer service point in Warsaw, there was a strong alcohol smell there – apparently not because of the employees drinking on duty but because they were constantly disinfecting the surfaces 

In my opinion – is dying because of the coronavirus something to be afraid of? No, there are so many ways in which it's considerably more likely you may die. What bothers me more are all these quarantines in which you may suddenly find yourself.

By the way, our authorities tell that if you feel you may have the coronavirus, you shouldn't go to a doctor (because this way you would be infecting other patients and the medical staff) but to stay at home and call the national sanitary services.

But then how can you get the sick leave from work?

In general, it's told so often that people with minor common colds etc. are blocking the access to the general doctors in the cold/flu high season – or that they go to work even though they are sick and then they are infecting other employees (and the virus spreads out, the now popular open space offices only help it) – but what else can one do if one doesn't want to be fired from work disciplinarily? You can't legally stay at home and neither go to work nor go to a doctor. It's not a problem if you have an understanding employer/boss – but not everyone has this comfort.


----------



## PovilD

First case in Estonia was two day ago, when Iranian was travelling to Estonia from Riga, Latvia.

Today we have our first case here in Lithuania in fourth largest city of Šiauliai in North West Lithuania. The case was reported this morning. Not very far from Riga, btw.

Today we also had basketball match between Lithuanian Kaunas "Žalgiris" club and Italian Milano "Armani" club here in Kaunas. There were concerns that the virus will be brought through Italian fans. Termovisors were installed. Some people said, that the match should have been cancelled to stop spread the virus. Only 9405 people have arrived to event, although it was expected to have 15000 people. This means that only 60% had arrived.



Kpc21 said:


> Meanwhile... my employer has put alcohol-based hand sanitizers in the bathrooms, apart from the standard liquid soap.


Alcohol hand-sanitizers were put near the main entrances of my university faculties. At some faculties there is even written text near sanitizers that they were put due "protection from Corona virus". I already used it once when I had my project with my group mate who was recently sick  I even use household soap, since I read that it better protect from the viruses (I think my parents told me that too). I used it sometimes along with regular soap since childhood, so I can handle the smell  Due to Corona outbreak, now I mostly stick to household soap.


----------



## Kpc21

I wonder how it looks like at schools, where normally you don't even find things like soap and toilet paper (for the paper you gotta go to the cleaning ladies).


----------



## italystf

That must be a not so lucky place...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codogno_rail_crash


----------



## Kpc21

This is Highways and Autobahns forum...

So maybe you want to buy coronavirus-free tyres?
https://www.olx.pl/oferta/4x-opony-...e-od-koronawirus-CID5-IDDPRkV.html#c1b2b6c23c

A gas mask which will probably protect you from coronavirus but it costs quite a lot (about 200 euro) and it's unlikely to be comfortable to wear:
https://www.olx.pl/oferta/maska-prz...ry-koronawirus-CID628-IDx0Tjm.html#97aeb78bbf

Coronavirus in a box for sale (screenshot because I suppose they will soon delete this offer):
https://www.olx.pl/oferta/sprzedam-koronawirusa-w-pudelku-CID767-IDDwIUE.html#d616f3823b








"Ideal for your mother-in-law"

Coronavirus insurance
https://www.olx.pl/oferta/wakacje-w...d-3-5-za-dzien-CID619-IDCpEJY.html#278dee1cc0
Actually – just a standard insurance company offer

Needles and syringes for coronavirus
https://www.olx.pl/oferta/igly-i-strzykawki-koronawirus-CID619-IDDPcbY.html#0a5bed3861

Chemical protection suit, recommended for asbestos, acids and alkali – marketed for coronavirus
https://allegro.pl/oferta/kombinezon-przeciwchemiczny-northgen-koronawirus-8999910332

Coronavirus antique wardobe
https://allegro.pl/oferta/koronawirus-koreanska-rzezbiona-komoda-8995790607

Coronavirus-related Internet domains are also in demand...
koronawir.us being sold for 500 PLN (120 EUR): https://allegro.pl/oferta/koronawir-us-domena-koronawirus-pandemia-8940176727
covid-19.pl for 50,000 PLN (12,000 EUR): https://allegro.pl/oferta/covid-19-pl-domena-internetowa-koronawirus-8992422647
covid-19.eu for 200,000 PLN (45,000 EUR): https://allegro.pl/oferta/covid-19-eu-domena-internetowa-koronawirus-8996867936

Coronavirus office intercom – well, this one might be helpful
https://allegro.pl/oferta/interkom-kasowy-ochrona-wirus-bariera-koronawirus-8998519590


----------



## Verso

Still no confirmed case in Slovenia. Maybe I'll go to Milan, catch the virus, go back home and become famous. :lol:


----------



## Kpc21

There are some (very likely but requiring further tests) in Poland but still not yet confirmed officially.

Anyway, it might be so that many people actually have it – but without symptoms.

Isn't it so that not all virus infections (like common cold or flu) give any symptoms throughout the whole infections? And in some other cases the symptoms are very weak, so that you don't even bother, or take some vitamin C and rest a little bit more?

I guess there may be also many cases with common cold symptoms which also won't get tested for the coronavirus.


----------



## MichiH

^^ yep, that's what I wrote about the report on German radio yesterday.


----------



## x-type

italystf said:


> LOL, this joke has became global?


No, I just hang in Italy too much :lol:


----------



## keber

joshsam said:


> I have one question here for car enthousiasts. The instructions say that with the long life oil you only need to change every 30.000 km or once a year. Do you think it makes sense to double the oil changes at around 15.000km?


15.000 km is too fast except with 15 year old cars. Go to 25.000 km, but always use just quality oil, not cheapest oil from supermarket brands. As my mechanic said - oil quality is the most important aspect of engine durability.

Otherwise 110.000 km is nothing for modern cars, they should be like new, I usually buy used cars with that kind of mileage (kilometerage?) 

My Citroen is also 4 years old and has currently 175.000 km. Works perfectly. I expect to drive another 175.000 km without major problems (about in 6-7 years), of course with all necessary services.

People are always afraid of repairs even just few years of owning a car and then many buy new car even after just 100.000 km which is economicaly nonsense. When you buy new middle-class car, you lose about 10.000 euro of value in just two years. This is about 10 years of repairs if you do about 15.000 km per year.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

keber said:


> People are always afraid of repairs even just few years of owning a car and then many buy new car even after just 100.000 km which is economicaly nonsense. When you buy new middle-class car, you lose about 10.000 euro of value in just two years. This is about 10 years of repairs if you do about 15.000 km per year.


Private lease is becoming quite popular in the Netherlands. One of the key selling points: 'no maintenance cost'. People are really scared of having to pay for a € 1000 or € 1500 service job (which in my experience are quite rare). Instead, they rather pay € 400 or 500 per month to drive a new car with 'no maintenance cost'.


----------



## MichiH

keber said:


> People are always afraid of repairs even just few years of owning a car and then many buy new car even after just 100.000 km which is economicaly nonsense. When you buy new middle-class car, you lose about 10.000 euro of value in just two years. This is about 10 years of repairs if you do about 15.000 km per year.


Reliablity vs. money. Comfort vs. trouble. I don't wanna break down anywhere (far from home).

217,000km in four years now - I do not yet think about a new car


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Air pollution is way down in China after factories didn't restart after Chines New Year, due to Coronavirus.










https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146362/airborne-nitrogen-dioxide-plummets-over-china


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Still no confirmed case in Slovenia. Maybe I'll go to Milan, catch the virus, go back home and become famous. :lol:


Already found in Udine, Gorizia, and Trieste hno:


----------



## Kpc21

How Europe road trips looked like in 1970s and 1980s – an interesting story:



billy-the-kid said:


> Moja rodzinka wybrała się takim zestawem (Maluch z przyczepką Niewiadów z zamykaniem) do Bułgarii. Przejazd w jedną stronę trwał prawie 3 dni (z dwoma noclegami, w Rzeszowie, a następnie w ZSRR (Ukraina). To była podróż życia, jakiej się nie zapomina. W drodze powrotnej zabrakło noclegu w Rumunii, i spałem jedną noc w Maluchu, na tylnym siedzeniu.
> W pierwszą stronę, obok mnie, przy siedzeniu kierowcy wieźliśmy 2 butle z gazem (następne dwie były w przyczepce - na handel). Na Ukrainie przy wjeździe Maluch wjechał na kanał, gdzie ukraińscy celnicy (sowieccy) kłuli go od spodu specjalnymi bagnetami, w celu wykrycia groźnej kontrabandy, np. kremu Nivea do rąk, lub dolarów. Przekroczenie granicy trwało razem z kolejką ok. 5 godzin.
> Z ZSRR nie wolno było wywozić rubli, który ja, jako najmłodszy miałem oczywiście upchnięty cały zwitek w grubych skarpetach, pod sandałkami (co w lipcu, w oczywisty sposób zwróciło uwagę rosyjskiej celniczki).
> Oprócz tego, w ZSRR (Ukraina) dostaliśmy mandat za przekroczenie prędkości na szosie (jechaliśmy jakieś 80km/h), oraz reprymendę i ostrzeżenie od funkcjonariuszy GAI, za zboczenie z trasy tranzytowej (chcieliśmy wjechać do jakiegoś miasteczka po drodze).
> W Rumunii zobaczyliśmy przepiękne miasto Konstancja, gdzie na skrzyżowaniu w centrum miasta, na czerwonym świetle, naszego Malucha opadła chmara brudnych i biednie ubranych dzieci, które w ciągu kilkunastu sekund przybiegły żeby prosić o cukierki i poobrywały Maluchowi migacze oraz wszystko co się szybko dało urwać.
> Wtedy jeszcze dziwiło mnie zainteresowanie jakim w Rumunii cieszył się Biseptol, który od nas chętnie kupowano.
> Na granicy bułgarskiej, znowu ostre trzepanie przez celników. Tym razem, po znalezieniu znacznych ilości kontrabandy, celniczka bułgarska przymknęła oko, po otrzymaniu dwóch kremów Nivea do rąk.
> Maluszek spisywał się dzielnie, chociaż, gdzieś w Ukrainie, przestał wchodzić I bieg, i trzeba było go mocno przygazowywać, żeby ruszył z drugiego (przyczepka nie pomagała).
> W drodze powrotnej, gdzieś w bułgarskich górach, odmówił posłuszeństwa na drodze nad urwiskiem. Staliśmy tam ok. godziny, nie wiedząc co zrobić. Dwóch Bułgarów zatrzymało się, żeby pomóc ale ich wysiłki okazały się bezowocne. W końcu sam popchnąłem odczepione od przyczepki Malucha i ku zdumieniu wszystkich - odpalił! Po tym incydencie, jechaliśmy przez Bułgarię i Rumunię bez gaszenia silnika. W końcu jednak, trzeba było się zatrzymać i go zgasić, bo przy wysokich temperaturach, zaczął się niebezpiecznie nagrzewać (mieliśmy specjalny dynks do uchylania pokrywy silnika, ale to nie wystarczało).
> Na szczęście odpalał i ruszał z trudem z drugiego biegu.
> Po przekroczeniu granicy w Medyce, prawie całowaliśmy ziemię ze szczęścia, że udało nam się dotrzeć tą legendą motoryzacji do ojczyzny i cywilizacji.
> Teraz dzieciaki nie wiedzą co to przygoda i adrenalina. Wyższy poziom stresu przeżywają kiedy po drodze jest BurgerKing zamiast KFC, albo nie ma zasięgu LTE lub Wifi.
> Kiedyś to kurła było, kiedyś to było....


Translating:


> My family went in such a set (Fiat 126p with a Niewiadów N126 caravan) to Bulgaria. The one-way ride took almost 3 days (with two night stays, in Rzeszów and then in USSR/Ukraine). This was a journey of the lifetime, one you never forget. On the ride back we missed a night stay in Romania and I slept one night in Fiat, on the rear seat.
> 
> On the way there, next to me, by the driver's seat, we carried 2 gas bottles (two else were in the trailer – for sale). In Ukraine, at the entry, our Maluch was taken on a pit and the Soviet customs officers were stabbing the bottom with special bayonets, looking for the contraband such as Nivea hand creme or US dollars. Crossing the border, including the queue, took about 5 hours. It was not allowed to take roubles from the USSR, so me, as the youngest one, had a thick roll of them in thick socks, under sandals (which in July obviously brought the attention of the Russian female officer).
> 
> Apart from that, in USSR (Ukraine), we got our first speeding ticket (we drove at about 80 kph) and a warning from the GAI inspectors for deviating from the transit route (we wanted to visit a town somewhere on the route).
> 
> In Romania we saw the beautiful town of Constantsa, where at an intersection in the city center, our little Fiat was surrounded by dirty and poorly dressed children who within 20 seconds came to ask for sweets, tore off the indicators and everything else possible to detach quickly.
> 
> Back then what wondered me was the interest for Biseptol (Bactrim), so keenly bought from us.
> 
> At the Bulgarian border again a detailed custom check. This time, after finding vast amounts of contraband, the female officer let us through after obtaining from us two packages of Nivea creme.
> 
> The little Fiat was brave, although somewhere in Ukraine the 1st gear stopped working, so it needed much throttle to start from the 2nd gear (the trailer wasn't helpful).
> 
> On the way back, somewhere in the Bulgarian mountains, it broke down right above a cliff. We waited there about an hour, not knowing what to do. Two Bulgarians stopped to help but their efforts brought nothing. Finally, me alone, I pushed Maluch with the trailer detached – and, to everyone's amazement, it started! After this incident we drove through Bulgaria and Romania without turning off the engine. Finally, however, we had to stop and turn it off because at the high temperatures it started to heat up dangerously (we had a special widget for opening the bonnet slightly but it wasn't enough).
> 
> Hopefully, the engine started and the car too, from the 2nd gear.
> 
> After crossing the border in Medyka, we were almost kissing the ground for the luck of successfully returning to the motherland and to civilization in this automotive legend.
> 
> Now kids don't know what's adventures and adrenaline. They encounter increased level of stress when there is a Burger King and not KFC on the route or there is no LTE or WiFi coverage.


----------



## tfd543

Well thats just evolution of life. We cant regress it, but I agree with the person writing it. Im not this kind of person that laments the technological era, but I lament how nonsocial we have become.

Im trying to deduce what route they may have taken. Anyone?


----------



## italystf

^^ That was in communist Eastern Europe. In Western Europe in the 1970s/80s it was everything easier.
We had not GPSs, a smaller motorway network, border controls and money exchanges between countries, and cars were less safe and less reliable than today. But we hadn't to smuggle things or bribe police officers like on the other side of the Iron Curtain.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Already found in Udine, Gorizia, and Trieste hno:


So far, so good. :colgate:


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Air pollution is way down in China after factories didn't restart after Chines New Year, due to Coronavirus.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146362/airborne-nitrogen-dioxide-plummets-over-china




I was wondering about that.


----------



## keber

Penn's Woods said:


> I was wondering about that.


https://www.scmp.com/news/china/sci...-killing-1-million-people-and-costing-chinese

Wondering how many people in China will die because of pollution comparing to previous years?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You do notice that on videos or photos of projects in China you almost always have hazy skies, almost never blue skies and sunlight. Apparently it's now the same thing in Vietnam since a lot of factories have opened up shop there.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keber said:


> https://www.scmp.com/news/china/sci...-killing-1-million-people-and-costing-chinese
> 
> Wondering how many people in China will die because of pollution comparing to previous years?




Good question!


----------



## Kpc21

But in Europe factories (or even coal power plants) aren't the major pollutant any more. Filtering the exhausts works. China is a so well-developed country nowadays that it should be a must also there...

BTW when nowadays people travel from Poland to Bulgaria, they very rarely choose the route through Ukraine... Too much waiting at the borders and too poor roads. And from what I have read, a few years ago the Ukrainian road police (now called DAI and not GAI... but DAI sounds in Polish like "daj", which means "give") still liked to catch Polish drivers for speeding (even if they actually weren't speeding) and to demand a bribe. Now it seems to no longer be so.

Now people usually go through Slovakia, Hungary and Romania (a shorter route) or through Slovakia, Hungary and Serbia (a route with better roads).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A lot of heavy industry and factory production has been relocated to Asia. Those large industrial complexes with black or yellow smoke plumes were common in the 1960s and 1970s but have mostly disappeared or scaled down, leaving power plants and a few industrial sites as the remaining large polluters. 

This had positive consequences, air quality has improved considerably since the 1980s. In the Netherlands the air quality is now better than anyone alive has ever experienced. Polluting industry has disappeared, heating sources like coal, peat or oil have been replaced by natural gas since the 1960s and transport emissions like PM10 have been reduced dramatically. PM10 levels along major highways are nowadays hardly elevated over background stations.


----------



## Verso

Soon everything will be the same as before in China, so there will be even more dead people - because of pollution _and_ the virus.


----------



## MichiH

Verso said:


> dead people - because of pollution _and_ the virus.


The first causes more dead people than the latter..........


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The draconic measures in China do appear to have slowed down the virus considerably. Hubei remains the hotspot but the spread of the virus in other provinces has been reduced to very low levels for a good 10 days now.


----------



## aubergine72

Kpc21 said:


> BTW when nowadays people travel from Poland to Bulgaria, they very rarely choose the route through Ukraine...


I'm very surprised that they went through the USSR. There's no way that was easier than the alternatives.


----------



## Kpc21

Through Slovakia and Hungary it would be one border more, maybe this was the reason. And maybe it wasn't much easier to travel through Slovakia and Hungary rather than through USSR. All these were communist countries, after all.

Also maybe the route through USSR had less mountains and driving through mountains in a heavily loaded Fiat 126p (24 horsepower) pulling a caravan was quite challenging?


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> Soon everything will be the same as before in China, so there will be even more dead people - because of pollution _and_ the virus.


Pollution-related deaths are very hard to count. There's no a test that can tell if the patient has died because of pollution. Many times pollution isn't the sole cause of death of someone, but it may worsen existing conditions.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> The draconic measures in China do appear to have slowed down the virus considerably. Hubei remains the hotspot but the spread of the virus in other provinces has been reduced to very low levels for a good 10 days now.


These graphs give me some hope. Hopefully Italian trend will be similar in the following weeks. Italy has more or less the same population of Hubei, but it has around 1/50 of cases.
Apparently also in Italy the virus was circulating since mid-January, but only recognized on February 20th. Of course, before identification no containment was possible.


----------



## Verso

^^ The first case in Italy was identified on 31st January.


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## CNGL

"Shan1xi" and "Shan3xi" instead of Shanxi and Shaanxi. If we go that way they should be "Shan1xi1" and "Shan3xi1" :crazy:. Also "Neimenggu" (Inner Mongolia) but Tibet and not "Xizang".

Really, I'm not worried about the coronavirus itself, but at the madness that it has generated. Regarding that, I'd like to hang up this British motivational poster intended for WWII but which never really saw the light until it was rediscovered in 2000:


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## italystf

Verso said:


> ^^ The first case in Italy was identified on 31st January.


Only two Chinese tourists and an Italian researcher who had came from Wuhan. They didn't infected other people while in Italy.


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## ChrisZwolle

That's what scary. A very small percentage of the population is infected but this already stresses the health care system.

Though it is understandable from a financial point of view that the health care system isn't gigantically oversized for a possible outbreak that may happen once per decade or less. Most countries are already having problems to keep the health care system financially sustainable under normal conditions.


----------



## Kpc21

g.spinoza said:


> Yes it is true.
> Yesterday I was in Turin when the news of possible Lombardy lockdown was broadcast, and since my gf lives in Lombardy I decided to go there before the actual border closure. So now I'm under quarantine myself.
> 
> I have doubts on the effectiveness of this measure. They had problems in locking down a small territory around Codogno and Casalpusterlengo, how are they going to block a territory as vast as Lombardy?


So how does it look like e.g. on motorways? Do they use toll booths as checkpoints?



ChrisZwolle said:


> Though it is understandable from a financial point of view that the health care system isn't gigantically oversized for a possible outbreak that may happen once per decade or less.


In Poland it's undersized. Already normally, people wait sometimes even years for planned operations. The huge problem is that the country doesn't have enough doctors, especially after some of them migrated to the western Europe. And the system of financing is quite problematic.

While in case of GPs, the government pays a fixed amount of money monthly for each patient signed up to the specific clinic, in case of specialists and hospitals, they sign contracts with them that cover a specified number of visits, patients or operations. While specialists can just say they will not admit any patients more till the end of the year because they used up the contract (the patient will just wait for the visit several months more), a hospital can't refuse to admit a patient with life danger, so the hospitals often get indebted.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You can see how the media is framing up hysteria regarding coronavirus.

Today a regional news organization reported on a coronavirus patient who works at the hospital in Zwolle. However it turns out that she traveled abroad, came back home already sick and never went back to work. So the fact that she works in a hospital has no relevance at all, it could've been any job. 

But now the hospital has to clarify that there is no danger to patients and it is operating like normal.


----------



## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> So how does it look like e.g. on motorways? Do they use toll booths as checkpoints?


I have no idea. I traveled yesterday when the decree was not issued yet and the motorway was normal.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> You can see how the media is framing up hysteria regarding coronavirus.
> 
> Today a regional news organization reported on a coronavirus patient who works at the hospital in Zwolle. However it turns out that she traveled abroad, came back home already sick and never went back to work. So the fact that she works in a hospital has no relevance at all, it could've been any job.
> 
> But now the hospital has to clarify that there is no danger to patients and it is operating like normal.


The problem here is what we have already discussed in this thread recently. The quality of the media, which only look for sensation and tend to use clickbaits. Which is because of how Internet works.

So they would tend to entitle an article: "coronavirus in a hospital employee" and only explain in the content that he didn't actually work there being (possibly) infected.

Then people who haven't read the content but only look at the title may think that there was actually an employee infecting the patients with the coronavirus and spread this out as fake news.


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## keber

Google maps traffic view shows pretty standard traffic situation for a March Sunday in North Italy. Any extra barriers or closures would be visible in traffic view.


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## PovilD

For me, closed borders sounds scary, and it's the most unsettling thing about the virus, since border closures probably can become widespread across Europe. This never happened before, and I have a feel that the virus will not be stopped, maybe some of us we have corona already (or will have soon), but feel only mild to none symptoms, and closures wouldn't help, since Italy although closing its towns or probably even provinces, but the case growth is still exponential, and it doesn't seem to stop.

China has totalitarian regime, and they can force people to live in extreme isolation in their flats for months, but Europeans are more individualistic, an for bigger population and area, successful control is limited. For example like that girl from Croatia, who have corona, but go to clubs on Saturday night.


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## Kpc21

Even in a democratic country, the government can lock you at your home if it's necessary for epidemic reasons.


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## PovilD

...but overall, the biggest concern is probably how long this will last. I mean, media reports, mass quarantines and lock ups. Corona are on top headlines for two months now. It is clear that the virus will continue spreading, and it's very contagious, so I doubt that it will cease to exist.


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## Kpc21

Most likely it will soon phase out, no epidemy lasts forever.

Another possibility (less happy) is that it'll stay with us and return with increased severity every year, same as standard flu – but with time, people's immune systems will learn it and it won't be worse than just normal flu.


----------



## italystf

A vaccine is currently under developement. Maybe by the end of the year it will become commercially available.


----------



## Kpc21

Poland already has eight coronaviruses, for 1154 checked samples. None of these patients is in a life danger.

These two new cases is a Spanish woman who came to Poland by plane from Germany and a man who came by coach from Italy.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> Most likely it will soon phase out, no epidemy lasts forever.


Correct. 
However, the plague lasted for four years. Covid-19 has been lasting for less than four months.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands is also seeing an increasing rate, +77 today. 

Intercommunal spread still appears to be rather limited, the vast majority of cases are related to travel from Northern Italy or are family members of those infected. 

Statistics:
* 265 cases (+77)
* 3 deaths
* 144 cases are from travelers
* 74 cases are contacts of those travelers
* 47 cases are under investigation

The two fatalities recorded today are an 82 and 86 year old man who were already seriously ill.

The large numbers of travelers who were infected in Northern Italy suggests that the Italian infection rate could be substantially higher than is reported. The chances are not so great that you meet an infected person randomly if there are only a few thousand cases on a population of 20 or 30 million in Northern Italy. Italy had under a thousand confirmed cases by the time it started to spread abroad by travelers.


----------



## volodaaaa

Hold onto your hats.

5 cases confirmed in Slovakia, but the hysteria and panic are at the highest level. Entering in force from tomorrow, universities and high schools giving the students a break. 

I am very happy to work for a transport operator


----------



## bogdymol

A romanian truck driver has been stopped last night while transiting through Hungary for a standard documents check. When the police officers heard that he was driving from Milan, Italy, they did not want to see his papers anymore, but let him go (probably fearing they will get the virus themselves). 

Video here.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland all schools and universities still work, except form several cases where someone was suspected of having the virus.

One school is being released from quarantine next week after it's confirmed that its student wasn't coronated.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> One school is being released from quarantine next week after it's confirmed that its student wasn't coronated.


Ah, too bad. It would've been cool if the student became king or queen of Poland. :cheers:


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Ah, too bad. It would've been cool if the student became king or queen of Poland. :cheers:


Where has the stupid virus been when I was a student :lol: I did not experience even stupid flu break. hno::lol:


----------



## PovilD

volodaaaa said:


> Where has the stupid virus been when I was a student :lol: I did not experience even stupid flu break. hno::lol:


I experienced it once during swine flu pandemics. There were talks and talks about swine flu cases, and one autumn morning I come to school and I was surprised how empty the school was. At first 3/4 of school didn't attend classes, maybe many was actually sick, and some just decided not to attend school. I was surprised that I didn't got sick while many of my friends reported to be sick. From that day I didn't attend school, because there were no normal lessons, I got home after about two hours instead of regular five to six hours. After few days, school decided to close down, since already most of the schools were closed. I started attending classes again after a week as far as I remember.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> I read the new declarations of Conte. It's dramatic.


I infere it means pandemic.


----------



## tfd543

why didnt he impose a state of emergency??


----------



## Penn's Woods

Less seriously, perhaps, several members of Congress are now in self-quarantine, after attending a conference a couple of weeks ago and interacting there with someone who now has the virus. Some of them have done things since that conference like visiting the Centers for Disease Control and flying on Air Force One with Trump (today!), and going into quarantine an hour after landing.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Obviously you won't find cops in every streets, but if you are found in the street for reasons other than work, buying things, get medical care, etc... you can be prosecuted. Until 3 April at best.




I’m not sure people should be going to work at this point. I know that’s easy for ME to say....


----------



## keber

Stopping most production and services cannot be an option. Not in capitalism. Bills and mortages have to be paid, food bought.


----------



## cinxxx

A friend of mine told me a Chinese girl he knows said that almost the whole country didn't go to work for 2 months. Only yesterday was the first day to work again.


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> Stopping most production and services cannot be an option. Not in capitalism. Bills and mortages have to be paid, food bought.


Bill and mortgages have been put on hold for the time being.


----------



## Autobahn-mann

^^ I very hope so for that!
Because I've heard that only for the former "red zones", but now it's extended to all national territory or not?


----------



## PovilD

As for today, Lithuania became an visible exception on the map with only 1 case, while Latvia has 8, Estonia 12, Poland 18, Slovakia 7 This can change any time. The current situation is starting to look a little bit strange in comparison with neighbors, but it would be even more strange to stay with 1 case to the end of the end of the week. It's very likely that we will have from few to tens of cases by the end of the week.

Btw, I would forecast that the peak of this pandemic will be at the end of March/start of April.

The good news for me is that I have no plans to leave the country for any reason for following months (so no plans cancelled), but I can only hope that such events like border closures and possible economic recessions due to pandemics will be rare enough to not disrupt the life dramatically.


----------



## Capt.Vimes

According o Bulgarian traffic law (article 74) you are not allowed to drive too slow and thus hinder other traffic participants without proper reason. It sounds vague and I have never heard anyone get a ticket for something like this. I was wandering what is the practice in other countries and have you heard/seen it being applied.


----------



## g.spinoza

keber said:


> Stopping most production and services cannot be an option. Not in capitalism. Bills and mortages have to be paid, food bought.


Lombardy is thinking about closing down EVERYTHING for two weeks, except grocery stores and pharmacies (drugstores? chemist's? Never knew which term is correct). 
So no bars, no restaurants, no offices, no nothing. It's hard to believe that the regions' economy (or Italy's) can sustain something like that.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keber said:


> Stopping most production and services cannot be an option. Not in capitalism. Bills and mortages have to be paid, food bought.




Well, I guess I meant non-essential work.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Lombardy is thinking about closing down EVERYTHING for two weeks, except grocery stores and pharmacies (drugstores? chemist's? Never knew which term is correct).
> 
> So no bars, no restaurants, no offices, no nothing. It's hard to believe that the regions' economy (or Italy's) can sustain something like that.




“Drug store” in North America, “Chemist’s” in the U.K. Don’t know about elsewhere. “Pharmacy” works too, but is more precise: If I say I’m going to the drug store, I mean I’m buying toothpaste or something. If I’m going to the pharmacy (or “pharmacist”), I mean I’m picking up a prescription. A drug store should have a pharmacy within it, by which I mean a counter where pharmacists are working and filling prescriptions....


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> “Drug store” in North America, “Chemist’s” in the U.K. Don’t know about elsewhere. “Pharmacy” works too, but is more precise: If I say I’m going to the drug store, I mean I’m buying toothpaste or something. If I’m going to the pharmacy (or “pharmacist”), I mean I’m picking up a prescription. A drug store should have a pharmacy within it, by which I mean a counter where pharmacists are working and filling prescriptions....


Understood.
Here in Italy in a "farmacia" you can pick up both prescription and non-prescription drugs. Recently some "parafarmacia" appeared, where you can only get non-prescription drugs. I'm not sure whether prescription-only stores exist.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The coronavirus is also rapidly developing in Spain now. The most active clusters are Madrid and Basque Country / La Rioja. The Spanish government has banned all direct flights from Italy to Spain. 

The numbers in Spain increased from 600 Sunday to 1200 Monday and 1600 today (mid-day). 

Highest counts:

* Madrid: 782
* Basque Country: 195
* La Rioja: 144
* Catalonia: 124

La Rioja has a high frequency relative to population. They have canceled classes for the next couple of weeks.


----------



## Verso

Austria and Slovenia close their border with Italy for passengers.

https://fox28spokane.com/the-latest-slovenia-austria-close-borders-with-italy/


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> The coronavirus is also rapidly developing in Spain now. The most active clusters are Madrid and Basque Country / La Rioja. The Spanish government has banned all direct flights from Italy to Spain.
> 
> The numbers in Spain increased from 600 Sunday to 1200 Monday and 1600 today (mid-day).
> 
> Highest counts:
> 
> * Madrid: 782
> * Basque Country: 195
> * La Rioja: 144
> * Catalonia: 124
> 
> La Rioja has a high frequency relative to population. They have canceled classes for the next couple of weeks.


Classes are also canceled in Madrid and Vitoria. And they have decreed all sports events must be held behind closed doors everywhere. I'm worried about how this will affect an orienteering race I plan to attend this Sunday. And I live in one of the 9 remaining provinces without a single coronavirus case. Anyway, I believe this week will be the peak of the outbreak, but who knows.


----------



## tfd543

I cant believe that they led spectators watch Betis-Real Madrid football match two days ago. There was like 52k people in Estadio Benito Villamarín stadium. Somebody wants to make money..


----------



## MichiH

^^ Valencia seems to be a dangerous place today. Leipzig seems to be safe.


----------



## Kpc21

Capt.Vimes said:


> According o Bulgarian traffic law (article 74) you are not allowed to drive too slow and thus hinder other traffic participants without proper reason. It sounds vague and I have never heard anyone get a ticket for something like this. I was wandering what is the practice in other countries and have you heard/seen it being applied.


Isn't there such rule in traffic codes of most countries? Certainly there is one like that in Poland. There also exists a sign indicating the minimal speed of driving, although it's very rarely used (if so, it's usually on 2+1 roads and applies to the left lane on the "2" sections).

Of course this rule applies if you drive so slow for no reason related to traffic conditions. And the same is with this signage.

Driving too slow e.g. on a motorway may be similarly dangerous as driving too fast.



g.spinoza said:


> Understood.
> Here in Italy in a "farmacia" you can pick up both prescription and non-prescription drugs. Recently some "parafarmacia" appeared, where you can only get non-prescription drugs. I'm not sure whether prescription-only stores exist.


Poland:

Pharmacy is translated as apteka, and this is a place where you can buy prescription and non-prescription drugs, dietary supplements, medical products and (to much smaller extent) some specialized cosmetics. It employs a qualified pharmacist (one who has graduated from pharmaceutical studies), who in theory should also make an interview with the patient, confirm if the prescribed (or demanded) drugs are appropriate for him, if drugs prescribed by different doctors don't conflict with each other in any way. But it doesn't usually work like that, in most cases he (more often she) just sells the drugs according to the prescription or the demand of the patient and it's all.

There are also "pharmacy points" (punkt apteczny) which, if I am not mistaken, don't have to employ pharmacy graduates and have some limitations about the kinds of drugs they can sell (but they still sell most prescription drugs). These are usually in smaller villages.

In big cities there are always some pharmacies open 24/7, in smaller towns it's sometimes so that various pharmacies have night duties interchangeably.

The drugs that don't require prescription, or at least some of them (usually things like painkillers or drugs that are supposed to help in case of cold and flu, generally for common and not severe diseases) can also be sold by shops other than pharmacies, so you can find them in grocery stores, supermarkets, or even at gas stations.

The stores that sell cosmetics are called "drogeria" – and they don't sell drugs other than these OTC ones that also grocery stores can sell.

In malls, you can also find stores which are a combination of "apteka" and "drogeria" – it looks so that when you enter the shop, there is first the self-service supermarket-style "drogeria", and then behind it, there is the "apteka" section where the drugs are sold by the pharmacist, as drugs cannot be sold in the self-service mode.


Meanwhile, the city of Łódź closed, due to the coronavirus, the swimming pools, theatres, museums and the zoo. Also the largest university in the city suspends all the classes from tomorrow.

The schools in Łódź remain open – but most of them are getting closed in Poznań. Also all public events are getting cancelled (or postponed – for an unknown date as it depends on when the coronavirus will pass by).

A new play room for kids got opened in the largest mall in Łódź – but because of the situation, they declared they will be measuring the temperature of the children entering the facility.


----------



## volodaaaa

We are on the verge of the state of emergency. It should be announced at 4 PM. New cases appeared.

There is every likelihood that the low number of confirmed cases is due to a very lax attitude in testing (people with symptoms but the body temperature below 38°C are not a subject of testing).

Meanwhile, our company is about to ban the front-door entrance to public transport vehicles and separate the passengers from the driver's stand in a form to avoiding them to move to the front part of the vehicle.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands is also not aggressively testing people. They advise people to contact the doctor if you have fever AND coughing AND been in contact with a corona patient OR visited a number of high risk countries. 

However they did test personnel and patients of a number of hospitals on a large scale over the weekend and the number of new cases reached +121 today, by far the largest increase so far. So extensive testing may lead to more cases being detected.

On the other hand data from Korea shows that the vast majority - over 90% - of tested persons are negative for corona.


----------



## volodaaaa

Our pace is 500 per 3 weeks.  It is far from being aggressive. I think even "passive" is too exaggerated.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> The figures for Italy: http://www.salute.gov.it/portale/nu...iano&id=5351&area=nuovoCoronavirus&menu=vuoto


OK, my Italian is poor, but does it mean, that of ~10,000 cases ~5,000 were hospitalized, i.e. around 50%? This rate is in other European nations significantly lower.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ Almost, the 10,000 figure includes those deceased and recovered, so the hospitalization rate relative to active cases is even higher than 50%.


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> OK, my Italian is poor, but does it mean, that of ~10,000 cases ~5,000 were hospitalized, i.e. around 50%? This rate is in other European nations significantly lower.


Correct. I don't know if we are underestimating or you are overestimating the gravity of this.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Italy has identified the 'patient zero', with whom the outbreak in Italy began. It was a man who traveled from Munich to Italy on 25-26 January. He was infected by someone from Shanghai if I read it correctly.

https://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/cro...mania-il-25-26-gennaio_15995099-202002a.shtml


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Italy has identified the 'patient zero', with whom the outbreak in Italy began. It was a man who traveled from Munich to Italy on 25-26 January. He was infected by someone from Shanghai if I read it correctly.
> 
> https://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/cro...mania-il-25-26-gennaio_15995099-202002a.shtml


From that article, and more from this one, you can tell that they didn't identify the man itself, only where he/she did come in contact with the virus.
The article I linked states in the end: "Contagion came to Italy coming from Germany, brought to Lodi by an Italian who went to Bavaria and then came back, or a German who traveled to the area".


----------



## tfd543

What happens if his name Will be revealed at some point? Can he seek protection from this, otherwise he is gonna live in fear forever from being killed by some nut. Any lawyer around ?

I cant tell from the article so i dont know if its revealed already


----------



## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> What happens if his name Will be revealed at some point? Can he seek protection from this, otherwise he is gonna live in fear forever from being killed by some nut. Any lawyer around ?
> 
> I cant tell from the article so i dont know if its revealed already


In theory, privacy for medical reasons should be assured. If the name is leaked, he/she can sue for sure.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands is also not aggressively testing people. They advise people to contact the doctor if you have fever AND coughing AND been in contact with a corona patient OR visited a number of high risk countries.
> 
> However they did test personnel and patients of a number of hospitals on a large scale over the weekend and the number of new cases reached +121 today, by far the largest increase so far. So extensive testing may lead to more cases being detected.
> 
> On the other hand data from Korea shows that the vast majority - over 90% - of tested persons are negative for corona.




Is South Korea testing everyone, or just people who’ve traveled to risky areas, or just people who have symptoms...? What I’m getting at is WHAT population is 90% negative?


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> Our pace is 500 per 3 weeks.  It is far from being aggressive. I think even "passive" is too exaggerated.




There was a single case in a suburb of New York last week that has spread to more than 100 - his wife and kids, the neighbor who drove him to the hospital, people in the kids’ schools, people at their synagogue....and their neighborhood (a one-mile radius around their house) is now a “containment zone.”


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ny...ivrhzxjhl3cktb3omx4-story.html?outputType=amp


----------



## ChrisZwolle

South Korea had tested 130,000 persons by 8 March, with 7,300 cases detected overall. Which means that almost 95% of those tested did not have coronavirus. I don't know what the requirements for getting tested are though. Perhaps this is voluntary, I've seen reports of drive-thru tests.

The low death rate in Korea has puzzled scientists, other countries with significant numbers of cases have higher death rates.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> South Korea had tested 130,000 persons by 8 March, with 7,300 cases detected overall. Which means that almost 95% of those tested did not have coronavirus. I don't know what the requirements for getting tested are though. Perhaps this is voluntary, I've seen reports of drive-thru tests.
> 
> The low death rate in Korea has puzzled scientists, other countries with significant numbers of cases have higher death rates.




I’ve seen the reports of drive-through tests as well.
By the way, we have no idea what’s going on in NORTH Korea.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Another significant increase in Italy: http://www.salute.gov.it/portale/nu...iano&id=5351&area=nuovoCoronavirus&menu=vuoto

* 12,462 total cases
* 10,590 active cases
* 827 fatalities (6,6%)
* 1,045 recovered
* 3,724 in home isolation
* 5,838 in hospital (55%)
* of which 1,028 in ICU


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> By the way, we have no idea what’s going on in NORTH Korea.


Not much, I reckon. North Koreans are not known to be quite the travelers, and it's not really a holiday destination, if you get what I mean.


----------



## italystf

Surel said:


> Not much, I reckon. North Koreans are not known to be quite the travelers, and it's not really a holiday destination, if you get what I mean.


But they have a lot of exchanges with China.
Probably they don't test patients. If it's mild it's just a flu, if it's bad it's a pneunomia and that's all. If someone above 65 dies, s/he has just died for old age.


----------



## tfd543

Here we go.
Today Its official that Denmark closes all schools, universities, nursery schools, libraries, night clubs, and bars for 2 weeks. All employees in the public sector Will be sent home for 2 weeks.

Number of infected has amplified from 40 to 500 in 2-3 days!


----------



## Kemo

In Poland, all schools, universities, museums and theatres have been closed for at least 2 weeks.


----------



## Kpc21

tfd543 said:


> How about this one: that russian agents have sprayed the virus around Europe to gain power. Crazy shit.
> 
> Denmark has escalated yes. As of today, we are not allowed to use public transport during rush hour.


Why Russian and not Chinese? This second version is quite popular now, I think.

We have 31 patients with the crown.

The situation, and maybe also the panic, caused today an abnormal number of people to go shopping. Which is, by the way, just the opposite of what should be done to effectively fight with the coronavirus.

I had to go shopping today. First, I went to a large-scale supermarket in Lodz (Auchan), to one in a mall which is usually quite empty. But I resigned from shopping there seeing the queues to checkout.

So I drove to my town and I went to a small supermarket/discount store (Biedronka). Although first I looked into drugstore (I mean a shop with cosmetics, without drugs) – Rossmann. The shelves with the products for washing your hands were almost absolutely bought out. It looks as if many people weren't washing their hands at all before and they started doing it now because of the coronavirus 

In Biedronka the queues weren't really abnormal – they were like in the peak shopping time within the week. But it could be seen that most people were doing huge shopping and there were missing products – rice, some hygiene products (but not toilet paper), but also... fresh meat – most of it was bought out.

Then I went to a smaller, local private supermarket – and there, bought out were rice and one of the sizes of rectified spirit.


In Poland we still don't have many confirmed cases of the virus – but here as well all the schools and universities are closed since tomorrow (until Friday, schools work only in the "taking care of the child" mode – there are no classes and since the next week they are totally closed) and all the public events cancelled. Also places such as theatres, cinemas, community centers etc. get closed.

Also at my workplace, my department is being thrown out of the office since tomorrow. We are forced to work from our homes since now. Interestingly, we became allowed to take home with us not only the laptops (as it happens usually when one of us works remotely for a day or two) but also things such as computer monitors and keyboards.


----------



## tfd543

My country is shut down. I dont know What to do now actually. Its noon and sunny. Maybe I should take a hike in Nature. Thats a Long time ago. I dont want just to throw myself Down to the couch and watch tv. 

What do you guys do? You, that are not working.


----------



## PovilD

Politicians are at higher risks. Both due to age, and due to their more frequent travels.


----------



## PovilD

tfd543 said:


> My country is shut down. I dont know What to do now actually. Its noon and sunny. Maybe I should take a hike in Nature. Thats a Long time ago. I dont want just to throw myself Down to the couch and watch tv.
> 
> What do you guys do? You, that are not working.


Sitting at home is seems dystopian if you feel well. I think going by your own car into the nature seems to be smart idea. Make sure you don't get as much contacts with other people as possible, avoid eldery as much as possible.

Today, Vilnius (capital of Lithuania) closes all schools and other institutions similar way as Poland. I wonder if these measures will be expanded through all of Lithuania. Vilnius city municipality recommends going to nature and not sit at home.


----------



## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> My country is shut down. I dont know What to do now actually. Its noon and sunny. Maybe I should take a hike in Nature. Thats a Long time ago. I dont want just to throw myself Down to the couch and watch tv.
> 
> What do you guys do? You, that are not working.


Are you Italian?
Maybe it's not clear enough:

STAY HOME.

No travel, no cars, no nothing, unless there is a grave motivation. And feeling sad on the couch is not one of those.


----------



## PovilD

g.spinoza said:


> Are you Italian?
> Maybe it's not clear enough:
> 
> STAY HOME.
> 
> No travel, no cars, no nothing, unless there is a grave motivation. And feeling sad on the couch is not one of those.


Such measures get some much worries that it's harder for me to fall asleep :lol:

On the other hand, why not shut down Europe for few weeks, stay at home, and somewhere on April back to normal? Such chaos is probably more worrying that Post factum situations like in China and Italy... and it's still possible that lockdowns are delayed decision, and it would not effect anything if will be implemented one or two weeks later.


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> Are you Italian?
> Maybe it's not clear enough:
> 
> STAY HOME.
> 
> No travel, no cars, no nothing, unless there is a grave motivation. And feeling sad on the couch is not one of those.


Meanwhile in Slovakian mountains:
https://www.jasna.sk/hory/lyzovacka/webkamery/zahradky-ii-1028-m-nm

There was a Slovak politician once who said: Slovaks are a genetically stupid nation.

He was so damn right.


----------



## Attus

tfd543 said:


> My country is shut down.


Which country are you from? I thought you were from Denmark.


----------



## Nimróad

I did a crime. Ate an apple without washing it.

Met some pro-Russian Ukrainian factory workers who thinks Vodka is a solution. I think they are not going to work on this day...


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> There was a Slovak politician once who said: Slovaks are a genetically stupid nation.


Every nations are...


----------



## Fatfield

RoI to close schools and colleges.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-51850811

McLaren have also pulled out of this weekends F1 GP in Melbourne.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/51849163

Also strong rumours that all Premiership, Championship & EFL1 & 2 divisions in England will be played behind closed doors for the rest of the season.


----------



## tfd543

g.spinoza said:


> Are you Italian?
> 
> Maybe it's not clear enough:
> 
> 
> 
> STAY HOME.
> 
> 
> 
> No travel, no cars, no nothing, unless there is a grave motivation. And feeling sad on the couch is not one of those.




Nope Im Danish. I’ve changed my mind. Watching some boring tv now.

Im gonna stay inside. Calm down lads, Its not that the Streets are empty in my hood. For example, there are kids in the playground in the park next to my home and construction workers are mounting balconies in our apartment association (they are not from the public sector, hence they work as usual).


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Nope Im Danish. I’ve changed my mind. Watching some boring tv now.


It is very fresh information, but from today, we have applied almost the same measures as Denmark did. A lot of people are happy about it and say "finally".


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> It is very fresh information, but from today, we have applied almost the same measures as Denmark did. A lot of people are happy about it and say "finally".




Right, but look outside. There are people around the streets right? Can you see someone?


----------



## PovilD

By going to nature, I meant forested areas. It's more prominent in countries with lower population density.

Maybe it's mostly not the case with Italy, especially Northern Italy. They are really densely populated in comparison to other areas in Europe.

China is mostly similar case. China is well known for its high population density in its Eastern half of the country.

The biggest issue in countries like Baltics and Nordics (with low population density) will be possible quarantines in cities and some larger towns, but there are vast areas where there are no chance to bump into people in less than 10 m distance. If properly avoiding people, going by personal car, I think it's not that contagious.


----------



## tfd543

Sure. I get your point. Just 5 min ago it was stated that everybody is potentially infected so we have to stay at home. We take the precautionary principle now...


----------



## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> Nope Im Danish. I’ve changed my mind. Watching some boring tv now.
> 
> Im gonna stay inside. Calm down lads, Its not that the Streets are empty in my hood. For example, there are kids in the playground in the park next to my home and construction workers are mounting balconies in our apartment association (they are not from the public sector, hence they work as usual).


I get your point but... my mother would have replied: "if they're going to jump off a cliff, would you do that yourself?"


----------



## volodaaaa

g.spinoza said:


> I get your point but... my mother would have replied: "if they're going to jump off a cliff, would you do that yourself?"


Mine used that too, except for she replaced the cliff with the window. :lol:


----------



## MichiH

tfd543 said:


> My country is shut down. I dont know What to do now actually. Its noon and sunny. Maybe I should take a hike in Nature. Thats a Long time ago. I dont want just to throw myself Down to the couch and watch tv.
> 
> What do you guys do? You, that are not working.


I talked to a colleague from Copenhagen this morning. The office is closed from today and they have to work from home. She works there for some months and has a very small room only. She said that she'll be a lot outside....

I think that Germany is much more critical for the virus expansion but there are not such extreme restrictions. Or just not yet?


----------



## MichiH

volodaaaa said:


> Mine used that too, except for she replaced the cliff with the window. :lol:


Jumping of a bridge or jumping into the river (with name of the river).


----------



## g.spinoza

Queues up to 90 km long on the Italian A22 towards Brenner due to Austrian Covid-checks.

https://www.repubblica.it/economia/...4850/?ref=RHPPTP-BL-I250988111-C12-P6-S1.8-T1


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Coronavirus infections in the Netherlands have increased as well. There are now 614 cases, most of them in the south. 

Society still functions pretty normally, though many people work from home if they can. They don't want to shut down schools because children are considered the lowest risk and closing all schools would also mean that parents would need to stay home, reducing the workforce for vital functions. They say there is no need to shut down the entire economy yet.

I went to the supermarket this afternoon. There was no rush, everything was regularly available, including items with a long shelf life, toilet paper and soap. I did not see any empty shelves. I also still haven't seen anyone with a mask and I travel by train every day. It did appear that the train was less busy than a normal Thursday.


----------



## tfd543

Last rumors are that Euro 2020 could be postponed to 2021 so that national leagues around Europe get a time window to finish their seasons. 
Stadio Olimpico stadium was supposed to host matches for the Euro 2020.. i cant believe it Will happen in June/July.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Society still functions pretty normally, though many people work from home if they can. They don't want to shut down schools because children are considered the lowest risk


They are, but they get infected like everyone else, and they can spread the infection like everyone else. I don't think it's wise to keep schools open.


----------



## Nimróad

volodaaaa said:


> Mine used that too, except for she replaced the cliff with the window. :lol:


Jump into the well.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think most of Europe will go into a soft or hard lockdown over the next few days. The virus has rapid spread rates and increasingly significant numbers in an increasing list of countries. 

There could be shortages of certain products if international trade would be reduced. I think it's crucial that supermarkets remain functioning, they are vital to a functioning society in a lockdown. Not being able to sit in a bar is something you can overcome, but you need food.

I also believe the chance of an infection in a supermarket is relatively low, due to the brief and limited interactions, compared to community transmission among family members or in some workplaces with a lot of close personal contact. Some shops are asking customers not to use cash anymore.


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Last rumors are that Euro 2020 could be postponed to 2021 so that national leagues around Europe get a time window to finish their seasons.
> Stadio Olimpico stadium was supposed to host matches for the Euro 2020.. i cant believe it Will happen in June/July.




What country is Euro 2020 supposed to be in?


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think most of Europe will go into a soft or hard lockdown over the next few days.


I expect this too! But I'm not sure whether I should think it's wise or exaggerated. The problem is, that we'll know it one day - _when it will be over_. This day might be too late for many people.


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> What country is Euro 2020 supposed to be in?


this year is an exception. It's not in one country but all over Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Euro_2020


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> What country is Euro 2020 supposed to be in?




They celebrate something so this year it should be held in several european cities. Rome is one of them.

Normally one country is the host or two sharing the venues.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The economic crash will be significant if this lasts longer than a few weeks. Many companies, especially smaller ones, cannot handle weeks of no turnover while maintaining cost (salaries). They will go bankrupt.

Stock markets have plunged. The Amsterdam stock index has seen a 30% loss this week, basically eliminating all growth of the past 4 years. 

Oil prices have halved, which will have significant negative effects on regional economies, as the oil industry is capital-intensive with a large supply chain and many projects financed through debt. $ 30 oil is not profitable in many regions. Lower fuel prices will be a benefit to consumers but the overall effect may be a net negative. 

International travel will come to a significant reduction, which could introduce a large number of bankruptcies among airlines and tour operators. This is normally the time of year that many people book a trip, so this will halt the cashflow of those companies. 

This is also something that the central banks and economic stimulus cannot turn around. It doesn't look good.


----------



## tfd543

I just Got an invitation from a friend to come over on Saturday. He has bought Corona beers... people are creative, yes.


----------



## Kpc21

g.spinoza said:


> Believe me, I've seen it and it IS possible.


But... how? Did they put police in all supermarkets, in so big numbers that they can (are physically able to) control every visitor and check if he is not coming too close to another person?



ChrisZwolle said:


> Society still functions pretty normally, though many people work from home if they can. They don't want to shut down schools because children are considered the lowest risk


But they spread the disease.

They don't get sick but they infect others.

Easier than the adults.

Although the argument about the parents that need to stay home makes sense. 

In Poland the schools will still take care of children tomorrow (although there will be no classes) if the parents have to go to work and don't have anyone to leave the child with (and leaving them with the grandparents is kind of risky for the grandparents). They will be totally closed since Monday and the parents who have to stay home with them will get a special benefit from the state. Of course if someone can work from home, he is recommended to do it.

The schools in Poland already worked in this mode (only taking care of the children the parents cannot take care of because they work and have nobody to help) for about a month last year in April/May – because of the teachers' strike. Parents were recommended not to use this "taking care of the child" option because the schools had no resources for that (only a very small number of teachers who weren't on strike) and this would result with the schools involuntarily breaking the law (not providing enough teachers to take care of the children present at the school) and probable consequences for the headmasters – and most of them obeyed that.

Now it's getting slightly different because schools will be totally closed – but in general, the situation is similar.



ChrisZwolle said:


> There could be shortages of certain products if international trade would be reduced.


Luckily, most of the food is produced locally.

Although it's not always so, for example, it was quite weird for me when I was in southern Germany and I saw eggs "made" in the Netherlands (according to the stamp on the egg) sold there.

In Poland I have never seen eggs from another country in sale. And they are very often from local farms, not from ones on the other end of the country.

Concerning diary products, there are some countrywide brands, but you can usually also buy products of local companies that aren't available in other regions of the country.

Drivers, shop assistants and medical personnel are probably the most coronavirus-endangered groups now. Because they cannot work remotely (maybe except for some doctors) and they have contact with big numbers of potentially-infected people. And they cannot stop working – their work is critical for the society.


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> I just Got an invitation from a friend to come over on Saturday. He has bought Corona beers... people are creative, yes.




Satire
(Warning: this is dark)


https://local.theonion.com/i-can-t-wait-to-dress-up-as-the-coronavirus-for-hallow-1842271965


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*A Corona*

My employer has announced that all employees must work from home for the remainder of March. 

So I installed QGIS locally because it doesn't work so well via Citrix. The A Corona version. :cheers:


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland the schools will still take care of children tomorrow (although there will be no classes) if the parents have to go to work and don't have anyone to leave the child with (and leaving them with the grandparents is kind of risky for the grandparents). They will be totally closed since Monday and the parents who have to stay home with them will get a special benefit from the state. Of course if someone can work from home, he is recommended to do it.
> 
> The schools in Poland already worked in this mode (only taking care of the children the parents cannot take care of because they work and have nobody to help) for about a month last year in April/May – because of the teachers' strike. Parents were recommended not to use this "taking care of the child" option because the schools had no resources for that (only a very small number of teachers who weren't on strike) and this would result with the schools involuntarily breaking the law (not providing enough teachers to take care of the children present at the school) and probable consequences for the headmasters – and most of them obeyed that.
> 
> Now it's getting slightly different because schools will be totally closed – but in general, the situation is similar.
> 
> Luckily, most of the food is produced locally.
> 
> Although it's not always so, for example, it was quite weird for me when I was in southern Germany and I saw eggs "made" in the Netherlands (according to the stamp on the egg) sold there.
> 
> In Poland I have never seen eggs from another country in sale. And they are very often from local farms, not from ones on the other end of the country.
> 
> Concerning diary products, there are some countrywide brands, but you can usually also buy products of local companies that aren't available in other regions of the country.
> 
> Drivers, shop assistants and medical personnel are probably the most coronavirus-endangered groups now. Because they cannot work remotely (maybe except for some doctors) and they have contact with big numbers of potentially-infected people. And they cannot stop working – their work is critical for the society.


It will be exactly the same in Lithuanian schools as you mentioned. Quarantine from tomorrow.

I hope, on the worst case scenario, we will benefit from your market, although it was not the case during last crisis when you faced crisis soft, we faced hard. I heard sayings that Lithuania should not face such hard crisis in comparison to other countries like in late 00s, even if the crisis itself will be harder, although I heard sayings that health crisis like this don't create it to be long term, as it was with late 00s recession.


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> Oil prices have halved, which will have significant negative effects on regional economies, as the oil industry is capital-intensive with a large supply chain and many projects financed through debt. $ 30 oil is not profitable in many regions. Lower fuel prices will be a benefit to consumers but the overall effect may be a net negative.


Lower oil prices have mostly positive effect on the economies as it is a positive cost shock for the economy. Oil price reductions mostly have negative effect on the economy in the oil and gas exporting countries. The possible short term capital losses in other countries are not significant for their economies.

The stock exchanges are rather reacting to what the move by Saudis meant. Their price reduction is rather reaction to the situation and rather should help the economies, notice the timing, in the same time the FED significantly reduced its rates. The stock markets were inflated as well as some sectors (as e.g. real estate) and ripe for substantial correction. The corona crisis is the trigger that no one saw coming. Reducing rates, reducing oil price are measures to alleviate the economic fallout of this crisis.


----------



## Kpc21

Are the eggs sold in Lithuania all Lithuanian or can you also find some imported ones?  E.g. from Poland?

It's easy to notice because all the eggs sold in the EU have the country of production printed on them.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Are the eggs sold in Lithuania all Lithuanian or can you also find some imported ones?  E.g. from Poland?
> 
> It's easy to notice because all the eggs sold in the EU have the country of production printed on them.


There are many products imported from Poland and with Polish package.

I don't know about eggs (I would guess that eggs are mostly Lithuanian), but for example first strawberries in the season come from Poland, later then there are probably Lithuanian ones mixed with Polish. Polish are said to be cheaper products.


----------



## CNGL

And the last Italian province standing without any coronavirus cases IS... (like if you notice the pun :colgate

(Also, I noticed I did a mistake on a post a few days ago, I said South Sardinia was created from among others part of Sassari. I meant to say Cagliari)

Here in Spain it's now down to 4 provinces, and the latest to get out of contention is... mine . We have had our first case confirmed just minutes ago.


----------



## MichiH

German authorities have started checking people entering Germany from France for corona today at 5PM. They check all vehicles and measure temperature at many border crossings (not all). The border to Luxembourg will be checked from tomorrow.


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> Imagine 100,000 people having coronavirus on a population of 10 million (far greater than any country is currently experiencing). That still means that there is a 99% chance that some random person you meet in the supermarket doesn't have the virus. In reality it is likely even smaller because those people would mostly be at home, sick or in isolation.


 Actually by experience virus spreads very rapidly. Closing all public facilities will just slow down spreading so that healthcare will be able to handle ("leveling the curve" as they say). People can infect other people even two weeks before showing any symptoms of illness, especially children that mostly don't get sick but they transmit disease to their parents and grandparents which are much more vulnerable. And 5-year old kids don't know themselves how to stay far enough from each other.
Yesterday a good mathematical case was shown here: with the current rate of spreading coronavirus in Slovenia 80.000 people will get infected in just 3 weeks (about 4% of total population). If you slowdown spreading for just 20%, there will be only 5.000 people infected in three weeks. This is a huge difference between collapse of healthcare system or handling it somehow. And most epidemiologists warn that virus will be eventually caught by 50-70% of population before appropriate vaccine will be found.


----------



## marcobruls

ChrisZwolle said:


> The argument in the Netherlands is that schools (elementary schools and high schools) don't have an international character, so the risk is lower than universities.


Thats not what rutte said, he said the effect on children compared to elderly is small and its no use tying up millions of parents (incl hc workers) at home for no reason. Or having kids babysit by ...grandpa\ma.



> Jongeren zijn niet de groep met de hoogste risico's. "Wat ons ook tegenhoudt is dat de maatschappelijke gevolgen heel groot zouden zijn, omdat ouders dan ook thuis zouden moeten blijven. En die werken op plekken waar we ze heel hard nodig hebben, zoals in het ziekenhuis, bij de brandweer of de GGD."


src nos.nl


----------



## volodaaaa




----------



## ChrisZwolle

The press conference yesterday appears to have led to panic buying in the Netherlands. Many people report empty shelves for toilet paper, bread, pasta, rice, etc. It's a bit of mass hysteria because there is no reason to buy so many goods. Everything will be readily available, but it doesn't help that people buy more stuff than during Christmas. hno: 

Though many photos on Twitter show empty bread shelves from yesterday evening. This is always the case because bread can only be sold on the production day, so supermarkets usually run out by late afternoon or early evening, otherwise excess stock has to be thrown in the garbage. This has nothing to do with corona.


----------



## tfd543

Its an evolutionary effect that triggers. The reason is YOU DONT KNOW What Will happen, right. Nobody does.. If there is no food, you gonna die. Hell, even if a lung doctor told you to calm down, there Will still be people hoarding food. Its just how our brain works. We are like sheeps that follow the crowd always. If a lot of people do the same thing, it Will affect you cuz there must be something about it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

They said that panic buying has been known to recede after 2-3 days, as consumers see that supermarkets continue to receive all products. Maybe someone from Italy can elaborate.


----------



## tfd543

Btw in Denmark we are officially allowed to go hiking with our housemates (and not other friends) and take a run in the forest, but not more than that.

I still see kids in the playground and construction workers are doing their thing.

Meanwhile in Albania, ALL transport have been suspended completely. Thats crazy. No cars, no buses, and no taxis.


----------



## CNGL

Being allowed to got outside for a run sounds good. That way one wouldn't lose what is already achieved.

I've now decided to lock myself at home until at least the end of this month, and see what happens. This means the furthest I will get from my bed will be about 10 metres or so (Edit: more like 20 metres according to Google Maps :lol


----------



## Attus

The company I work for (Western Germany) does not allow home office as long as the authorities don't forbid us to come in the office. Which is hilarious itself, but if I see that in these days we have hardly anything to do and actually we sit here eight hours a day doing nothing, it's even more absurd.


----------



## PovilD

I see that Polish measures take place in Lithuania by 1 day delay. From today, bus drivers in cities don't open front doors and buying ticket from the driver is unavailable.

Everything changes so fast and almost unpredictably.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> They said that panic buying has been known to recede after 2-3 days, as consumers see that supermarkets continue to receive all products. Maybe someone from Italy can elaborate.


That's true. Panic buying (Hamsterkäufe as I've seen written in German newspapers) goes on in waves, after any major announcement, but some goods are still scarce even in off moments. For instance, last time I went to the supermarket, the store itself was very lightly attended, but flour was still scarce and hand sanitizer and lattice gloves were unavailable.
One thing I learnt, though, is that people is not panic buying because they fear the shops are going not to be refilled with goods: they do that because they think: "if I get sick, and have to be strictly quarantined at home, who's going to do groceries for me? I must stock up for few weeks".


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> That's true. Panic buying (Hamsterkäufe as I've seen written in German newspapers) goes on in waves, after any major announcement, but some goods are still scarce even in off moments. For instance, last time I went to the supermarket, the store itself was very lightly attended, but flour was still scarce and hand sanitizer and lattice gloves were unavailable.
> One thing I learnt, though, is that people is not panic buying because they fear the shops are going not to be refilled with goods: they do that because they think: "if I get sick, and have to be strictly quarantined at home, who's going to do groceries for me? I must stock up for few weeks".


The toilet paper panic tells about the absurdity of human beings. A similar panic took place in 2005 in Finland. The was a conflict at the forest industry labor market. The paper mills were brought down because of strikes and lockouts. People were crazy in buying huge volumes of toilet paper, even if such conflict virtually never lasts more than a few weeks.

The supermarket chains started to import toilet paper, and the product never exhausted. The mills were restarted after six weeks. I am sure someone still have mountains of paper rolls from that time 15 years behind.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> But at least you are able to contain the epidemy in your country and no more infection cases will be being brought from the neighboring countries.
> 
> At least in theory, because Slovakia still allows their citizens to return to the country, although it's weird that they don't make it possible by buses, trains and planes and they make it possible by cars – while passengers entering the country by public transport are easier to control. In case of car travel, you know nothing about the place from where the person is coming and you cannot verify if he or she is telling the truth or not. A public transport passenger has tickets etc.
> 
> In Poland also some open-air markets are getting closed – but supermarkets remain open. Closing them in the current situation when they are overcrowded would be a really bad idea because they (and all the remaining shops open) would get even more overcrowded.




One infected person on a bus or in a train car can spread it to other passengers. So in that sense, car travel is safer.


----------



## cinxxx

Attus said:


> The company I work for (Western Germany) does not allow home office as long as the authorities don't forbid us to come in the office. Which is hilarious itself, but if I see that in these days we have hardly anything to do and actually we sit here eight hours a day doing nothing, it's even more absurd.


Better keep up with those appearances, such a German thing.
Wörk, wörk, wörk even if there is no work


----------



## g.spinoza

I read an article on a Dutch newspaper in Italian, "+31mag.nl", which quotes the monthly magazine "HP De Tijd", written by a Dutch man who lives in Italy.

He says "Either the Netherlands is going to forbid all movements and close down gathering places, or in two weeks there will be and emergency worse than the disaster Italy is facing now.[...]
Health care in Lombardy is one of the best and most advanced in the world, far better than the Dutch one. The Netherlands doesn't have the competence Italy has, in case of epidemic".

I quoted this just because I was surprised by this comparison of health care systems quality.
"


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> Better keep up with those appearances, such a German thing.
> Wörk, wörk, wörk even if there is no work


I just spoke on the phone with a Slovak friend of mine.
He said that he and his girlfriend are working from their home in Bratislava, but the firm she works for (a German one) would want her to go to the office...


----------



## cinxxx

^^At my place it's the same, people at the office, although there is no problem working from home. Colleagues from Ingolstadt were notified they should stay home next week. Nothing here in Munich about that.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> I read an article on a Dutch newspaper in Italian, "+31mag.nl", which quotes the monthly magazine "HP De Tijd", written by a Dutch man who lives in Italy.
> 
> He says "Either the Netherlands is going to forbid all movements and close down gathering places, or in two weeks there will be and emergency worse than the disaster Italy is facing now.[...]
> Health care in Lombardy is one of the best and most advanced in the world, far better than the Dutch one. The Netherlands doesn't have the competence Italy has, in case of epidemic".
> 
> I quoted this just because I was surprised by this comparison of health care systems quality.
> "


I can't tell what to make of it. I suppose both countries haven't experienced an outbreak of this magnitude in recent years or decades.

The numbers are increasing in the Netherlands, +190 today to 804 cases. The hospitalization rate remains relatively limited though, at 14%. The number of deaths has doubled from 5 to 10. All deaths are elderly people who were already ill.

There is quite a debate whether all schools should close or not. The prime minister says he was advised that people under 20 are the least likely to transmit the virus and closing schools would result in a lot of practical problems, including withdrawing a portion of the (essential) workforce for childcare, or put childcare in the hands of grandparents.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Austria has lifted the truck driving ban during weekends to ensure supplies of goods.

Austria normally has extensive truck driving bans;

* all nights between 22h-5h
* Saturday 15h - Sunday 22h
* Saturday 7h - 15h for transit traffic between Germany and Italy.

That means that western Austria de-facto has a truck driving ban from Friday 22h to Monday 5h.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> they do that because they think: "if I get sick, and have to be strictly quarantined at home, who's going to do groceries for me? I must stock up for few weeks".


+1 for that.


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> What about Iran? I read some articles stating the Iranian official figures simply may not be true. They official have a little bit more than 10,000 cases which is high enough (Rank 3 after China and Italy), but some analysts say the actual figures must have 6 or possibly even in 7 digits.


Apparently Iran is secretely digging common graves to bury people died for coronavirus. They probably have already thousands of deads and keep them secret.


----------



## Verso

There are already 141 cases in Slovenia, but surprisingly only a few of them in Nova Gorica and elsewhere near the Italian border. Almost all cases are in Ljubljana and Metlika.


----------



## keber

CNGL said:


> Even Wuhan is expected to come out of lockdown in the next few days.


So Wuhan is still in lockdown? That can tell how much (current and incoming) lockdowns in Europe will last at least.


----------



## MichiH

Attus said:


> What about Iran? I read some articles stating the Iranian official figures simply may not be true.


The Iranian figures are as true as the Chinese, Italian, German, Hungarian,... None is entirely true.

Only cases can be counted when people are tested. Many people are not tested at all - with or without symptoms.

For instance, the first death in Germany was only counted because his wife got symptoms last Sunday. He died a few days earlier and was tested post mortem last week. Source.

I'm quite sure that there are less tests and even less people going to a doctor in Iran compared to European countries.


----------



## Surel

^^
The best data on Corona, best analyses I have read, this article: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Europe will probably go in lockdown entirely, similar to Italy and Hubei. Most countries with a substantial number of cases have around a 30% day-to-day increase of cases. 

The Norwegian foreign ministry advises against any travel abroad and says that Norwegians must return home as soon as possible, because borders will close and an increasing number of countries are banning flights from Europe, making it difficult or impossible to return. 

However essential parts of the economy must remain in operation: freight transport, industrial / food production, supermarkets, emergency services, financial services, etc.


----------



## PovilD

I estimate that it will probably take a week for me to reconcile with myself about these measures. I hope that the full picture of the outbreak will be known by the next week, especially if at least some more predictability will occur about the virus.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Bad news for the toilet Paper hoarders. This is filmed in Dutch distributer of toilet paper  these guys are literally laughing their asses off.

https://twitter.com/dopsleutel13/status/1238546244173250560?s=20

Translation: 

For all the people who hoard toilet paper and think they can't wipe their arses next week: look around, I think we have enough.

Please go and hoard toilet paper and while you're all sitting at home I'll make some extra money on extra hours.

Hey collegues! Do you think we'll run out of toilet paper - all start laughing.


----------



## PovilD

Humor is very appreciated in this whole situation


----------



## Penn's Woods

joshsam said:


> Bad news for the toilet Paper hoarders. This is filmed in Dutch distributer of toilet paper  these guys are literally laughing their asses off.
> 
> https://twitter.com/dopsleutel13/status/1238546244173250560?s=20
> 
> Translation:
> 
> For all the people who hoard toilet paper and think they can't wipe their arses next week: look around, I think we have enough.
> 
> Please go and hoard toilet paper and while you're all sitting at home I'll make some extra money on extra hours.
> 
> Hey collegues! Do you think we'll run out of toilet paper - all start laughing.




There’s a meme that says, basically, if you need 140 rolls of toilet paper to get through a 14-day quarantine, you should have seen a doctor long before COVID-19.


----------



## volodaaaa

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3506451789370507&type=3

Bratislava today. It is very good people seem to understand the situation and are very responsible.

There is a campaign #stayhome. The saying is "you can save the world sitting on your couch, wasn't that something you dreamed of beforehand?"


----------



## tonttula

joshsam said:


> Translation:
> 
> For all the people who hoard toilet paper and think they can't wipe their arses next week: look around, I think we have enough.
> 
> Please go and hoard toilet paper and while you're all sitting at home I'll make some extra money on extra hours.
> 
> Hey collegues! Do you think we'll run out of toilet paper - all start laughing.


It does boggle the mind. We are living in the heartland of the global and European paper industry, and there were news from supermarket head and UPM paper company that they have zero problems on meeting even much higher demand than now. Demand that seems to be peaking just because people are fearing there's not enough of supplies. 

Just looking at around 4 families today in a supermarket in central Helsinki having one dedicated shopping cart full of toilet and kitchen rolls. I just don't get it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Toilet paper is a voluminous product, so even with large shelves it tends to sell out quickly if there is much more demand than usual. 

Average household by now:


----------



## mgk920

Don't most Europeans have no need for that stuff, using bidets instead?

:?

:rofl:

Mike


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> However essential parts of the economy must remain in operation: freight transport, industrial / food production, supermarkets, emergency services, financial services, etc.


China has shut down most of their industrial production as well.

Of course there are some fields as the production of critical products, or production plants where the processes are continuous, stopping and restarting them would result in much damage and losses in the production machinery. These must continue.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Average household by now:


Now it looks like a real throne.

But throne means crown/corona as well...



mgk920 said:


> Don't most Europeans have no need for that stuff, using bidets instead?
> 
> :?
> 
> :rofl:
> 
> Mike


Don't you mistake Europe with Asia?


----------



## Highway89

Coronavirus: Spain set to declare national lockdown

Greetings from La Rioja, Spain :wave:


----------



## g.spinoza

mgk920 said:


> Don't most Europeans have no need for that stuff, using bidets instead?
> 
> :?
> 
> :rofl:
> 
> Mike


Bidets are not so widespread in Europe: in Italy they're extremely common, but they are much less so in Germany and, oddly enough given the fact that they invented it, in France.


----------



## tfd543

g.spinoza said:


> Bidets are not so widespread in Europe: in Italy they're extremely common, but they are much less so in Germany and, oddly enough given the fact that they invented it, in France.




Likewise in Albania. Its regarded cleaner and more healthy for your ass. They suspect a lot of chemical substances being rubbed against your skin.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Hoarding appears to be a worldwide phenomenon now. I've seen reports not just from Europe but also the United States, Canada and even Peru. 


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1238870834791559169


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1238623219659288577


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> The Iranian figures are as true as the Chinese, Italian, German, Hungarian,... None is entirely true.
> 
> Only cases can be counted when people are tested. Many people are not tested at all - with or without symptoms.


OK, it is true, of course. And the Swedes announced yesterdays to make much less tests than before, so their official figures will be significantly lower. 
However, the count of deads is more or less clear. OK, in same cases, especially if the person was old and sick, it may be disputed whether s/he died because of the virus. But it can't make a significant difference in the figures. For example Germany has at the moment 8 died persons, it is possible that the actual number is 6 or 10, but surely not 120. 
In Iran, however, I'm not sure if the actual figures are at least ten times higher than the official ones. In this case Iran had more deads than the rest of the worls altogether.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> OK, in same cases, especially if the person was old and sick, it may be disputed whether s/he died because of the virus.


Or if the person died trying to protect him-/herself from the virus, like that group of people in Iran who died from drinking methanol (which, of course, doesn't make much difference).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The German ministry of healthcare says they won't introduce great restrictions on public life as is assumed / suggested on social media.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1238780849652465664
However it wouldn't surprise me if Germany will go into lockdown over the next week or so, given how rapidly the virus is spreading in more significant numbers every day. There are now around 4,200 cases with a 37% day-to-day increase. 

Spain is going into lockdown with these numbers. Other countries have introduced various measures, including closing borders and calling on their citizens abroad to return home before travel becomes impossible. They know that more restrictive measures are increasingly likely.

Community transmission can only be stopped with social distancing and that includes putting most of the public life on hold. These measures are already ramping up across Europe and within Germany as well. I think the relatively loose restrictions in the Netherlands will become stricter as well this week. 

It has been argued that closing down schools now would essentially mean that the summer vacation starts now, as it would be difficult to roll this measure back. Wuhan did not restart to some extent until a month after the spike in new daily cases.


----------



## Attus

^^ Germany is much less centralized than most of ther European countries. For many restrictions the federal ministry, or the federal government are simply not responsible. 
It makes the fight against this epidemic, too, less effective.


----------



## x-type

We had a lack of fresh vegetables in local Interspar today :?:

Also, I read cool article about toilet paper. It is cheap, voluminous, and it is hygienic product. So why not to buy it in such situations? :nuts:


----------



## CNGL

Spain is going into lockdown starting Monday. This means a s*** life for me for at least two weeks (It will surely be longer), as save for going for groceries I won't be able to get further than about 20 metres from by bed, and I don't know what to do. Maybe Italian forumers can suggest something...

In other news, Hubei is starting to unlock. Qianjiang (west of Wuhan) has been the first city to end the quarantine, although it is surrounded by areas still locked down.


----------



## Attus

The Chinese example shows us that the lockdown works. We have similar experiences in Italy. But there are two imortant questions:
- What happens after restrictions are cancelled? Nothing like that has happened until now. Will the pandemic be over, or does some guy comr from Iran or Europe, and infects a lot of people again?
- How long lockdown is needed? 3 months? 6? A year? What happens in the economy in such a long time?


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> For many restrictions the federal ministry, or the federal government are simply not responsible.


But even in such countries, there exist (at least should exist!) procedures that would allow in such an extraordinary, crisis situation as now to make such decisions on the highest governmental level.

In the current situation (with not introducing many precautions even though the situation is already very severe there) I predict Germany will have to fight with the virus for much a longer time than Poland. Posing a threat for the safety of surrounding countries that will have already won with the epidemic (as you can't close the borders for freight transport and the trucks must be driven by someone – unless that they move everything onto the rails; but it's rather not doable).

Meanwhile, it seems that the supermarkets in Poland are still getting stormed. Similarly – pharmacies, drugstores (I mean these not selling drugs but cosmetics) and... DIY supermarkets, as many people seemingly decided to spend their extra free time on renovating their houses and apartments. 

All other shops and service points have almost no customers and many of them close down, even though it's still not obligatory (and it won't be since Monday) for those that aren't located in malls.


----------



## MichiH

Attus said:


> Will the pandemic be over


No!



Attus said:


> - How long lockdown is needed? 3 months? 6? A year?


Till vaccine is available or human beings are immune? :dunno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Some virologists expect the virus to die down substantially by late spring or early summer like most influenza viruses. However it can reappear the next winter.


----------



## g.spinoza

CNGL said:


> Spain is going into lockdown starting Monday. This means a s*** life for me for at least two weeks (It will surely be longer), as save for going for groceries I won't be able to get further than about 20 metres from by bed, and I don't know what to do. Maybe Italian forumers can suggest something...


Netflix, prime video, Disney+, books books books, Steam for videogames.


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> The Chinese example shows us that the lockdown works. We have similar experiences in Italy. But there are two imortant questions:
> - What happens after restrictions are cancelled? Nothing like that has happened until now. Will the pandemic be over, or does some guy comr from Iran or Europe, and infects a lot of people again?
> - How long lockdown is needed? 3 months? 6? A year? What happens in the economy in such a long time?


I fear that, as soon as the first data comes where the numbers of infected go down, Italian will feel liberated and reprise the old way of living, giving way to a resurgence of the infection.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> Netflix, prime video, Disney+, books books books, Steam for videogames.


Skyscrapercity :lol:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Just did a round trip from northern New Jersey to Philadelphia, to get my mail and visit my pharmacy. I’m going to be mostly at my mom’s during this, to minimize my chances of getting it and bringing it back to her. (Staying away from her isn’t an option. She needs help around the house and with errands.) Traffic normal, perhaps slightly busy, for a nice Saturday afternoon in early spring; foot traffic in Philadelphia normal, and things are open. (But non-essential businesses in two counties immediately outside the city are shut down, two more counties were added while I was in the area...). Saw two people with masks: an elderly woman on the sidewalk by my pharmacy, and a younger man at a New Jersey Turnpike service area (which was at normal levels of busy-ness). Myself, I tried to use napkins to touch things like door handles. Stopped at a smallish supermarket on my way back to Mom’s - one close to her that we use occasionally - and saw a lot of empty shelves. Needed to go somewhere else to get eggs (but had no trouble at that somewhere else, a block from the first place).


----------



## Highway89

My neighbourhood clapping in order to show support to the workers of the Health system just some minutes ago, at 10 pm 

https://voca.ro/feK1eFVAfbK

(after 0:11 all that can be heard is my own applause, but anyway)


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> Some virologists expect the virus to die down substantially by late spring or early summer like most influenza viruses. However it can reappear the next winter.


Australia doesn't agree. 
And many other virologist either because this virus is not influenza virus, but completely different kind. Currently all coronavirus properties are not known yet.


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> The Chinese example shows us that the lockdown works. We have similar experiences in Italy. But there are two imortant questions:
> - What happens after restrictions are cancelled? Nothing like that has happened until now. Will the pandemic be over, or does some guy comr from Iran or Europe, and infects a lot of people again?
> - How long lockdown is needed? 3 months? 6? A year? What happens in the economy in such a long time?





g.spinoza said:


> I fear that, as soon as the first data comes where the numbers of infected go down, Italian will feel liberated and reprise the old way of living, giving way to a resurgence of the infection.


Maybe people who willhave coronavirus-like symtoms will be tested and isolated before they could infect dozens of other people?
Italy is in this situation because it let the virus circulating undetected for around a month.
The occasional infected person is more than manageable by the health system. The problem is when there are thousands of people infected together.
Meanwhile, countries who have already defected or almost defected the virus, should ban the entry of people from still infected countries.


----------



## Verso

First death in Slovenia - an old man has died in Metlika.


----------



## cinxxx

*Meanwhile in Dublin*
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2469253533295999/permalink/2488811271340225/

*And then, this*


----------



## volodaaaa

Why? Just why?
https://nypost.com/2020/03/13/rome-...-catholics-rail-against-christ-in-quarantine/


----------



## keber

Latest news from various sources show that from Monday most of Europe will be in a complete lockdown.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> Why? Just why?
> https://nypost.com/2020/03/13/rome-...-catholics-rail-against-christ-in-quarantine/


Even if they are open, visiting them is against Italian law.


----------



## Suburbanist

Retail arbitrageurs can't sell thousands of medical supplies after online retailers block them... 

'He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them' https://nyti.ms/2TYIhuI

It is a weird story. Individual online marketplace sellers scooped up hard to find hand sanitizers by the thousands at physical stores and now can't sell them.

This is kinda of a new but burgeoning online hustle: people physically buying up scarce stuff like new special edition sneakers or toys, or special flavored or themed semi durable stuff that have collectible potential, hoarding and selling by 5-10x the price on Ebay or Amazon Marketplace. 

Pretty harmless on a societal level if it is about a specially packed chocolate bar or celebrity-endorsed commemorative lipstick. But companies cracked down on the same traders that spent dozens of thousand of dollars to buy up all hand sanitizers in a 10 mile radius aiming to sell them 10x more expensive online.


----------



## MichiH

italystf said:


> Italy is in this situation because it let the virus circulating undetected for around a month.


Germany deals with it the same way. Wait and see. Do officials think that Germany is better prepared? Better in threating patients? Or just.... stupid?



volodaaaa said:


> Why? Just why?
> https://nypost.com/2020/03/13/rome-...-catholics-rail-against-christ-in-quarantine/


For some people, going to church is as important as buying food in a shop.


----------



## MichiH

Since we are on the road infrastructure board...

Are there reports of closed construction sites due to corona impact?

Or is it the other way round like in Slovenia:



keber said:


> With such low traffic numbers Dars is making urgent pavement repairs around Ljubljana. In normal times with just one running lane it would mean 5-10, maybe even 20 km long traffic jam in this place.
> 
> It is actually quite eerie to see so empty motorway at this particular part.


I also think of the construction sites in eastern Europe contracted to Italian companies. Are works totally or partially suspended? Or no impact at all?


----------



## MichiH

There are local elections in France and in Bavaria today :nuts:


----------



## volodaaaa

MichiH said:


> There are local elections in France and in Bavaria today


Another thing that can't wait.


----------



## bogdymol

In Hungary foreign people coming from Austria or Slovenia are allowed to enter the country, but only for transit to other countries on allowed routes. Stopping for any reason (refueling, buying food) is permitted only at a couple gas stations. This is the official map:


----------



## volodaaaa

MichiH said:


> Since we are on the road infrastructure board...
> 
> Are there reports of closed construction sites due to corona impact?


I have no information on national projects, but there was a tramway track reconstruction planned since 14th of March. The rebuilding is usually managed by the city and us, transport company, are typically expected to prepare the alternative routes and timely information for passengers. We did that a week ago. Everything was fine until last Friday when there was a coronavirus alert in a particular building in Bratislava that is HQ of the company responsible for the reconstruction. 

Since the diversion routes have already been drawn, we already have been operating in disruption mode, though with no workers on the construction site :lol:


----------



## MichiH

Money.... hno:

Trump accused of trying to ‘poach’ German scientists working on coronavirus vaccine



> According to German broadsheet Die Welt, Trump is looking to have an exclusive licence rolled out in the United States.


----------



## keber

MichiH said:


> Are there reports of closed construction sites due to corona impact?


In these days many works on roads should start. But as government froze unnecessary spendings until it is necessary and with lockdowns in place, I think most constructions yards will close in few days for at least 3 weeks. 
I'm an infrastructure designer and I work in office (and I can work from home) but all meetings are canceled (even most important) so it is impossible to meet tight deadlines. I presume everything, including project deadlines will move forward.
Many foreign workers (especially from construction) have left the country, concrete and especially asphalt factories will stop without workers, customers and material suppliers.


----------



## Kemo

MichiH said:


> I also think of the construction sites in eastern Europe contracted to Italian companies. Are works totally or partially suspended?


:lol: They already suspended the works a year ago :troll:


----------



## g.spinoza

It seems that in the last two days the infection rate in Italy is decreasing, not following an exponential curve anymore:









Of course it is to soon to celebrate, but this may be a sign that lockdown is working.

By the way, only 15-20 ICU beds are available in the whole Lombardy.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> By the way, only 15-20 ICU beds are available in the whole Lombardy.


I assume they are transporting some patients to areas that are less overwhelmed? 

In the Netherlands the idea is to move patients to other parts of the country where the pressure on ICU is lower. Of course this has its limitations in the end as well.


----------



## PovilD

I had anxious thoughts about these measures, but in the following days we will see the trend.

Restrictions will probably be for months, but I hope not as strong as today.


----------



## Spookvlieger

bogdymol said:


> In Hungary foreign people coming from Austria or Slovenia are allowed to enter the country, but only for transit to other countries on allowed routes. Stopping for any reason (refueling, buying food) is permitted only at a couple gas stations. This is the official map:


Doesn't make smuch sense to have so many stations open for that. If they really wanted to do anything like that they should just open station at the border and people need to make sure they have a full tank and that should be more than sufficient to drive across the country without a refuel.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think the Netherlands will close all bars and restaurants soon. 

Universities have closed and there are now reports of mass-gatherings of students in bars. Belgians went to southern Netherlands to visit bars because everything is closed in Belgium. The optics of this are so bad that they can't get away with not closing everything down like you see in other countries.

It's very likely that all elementary schools and high schools will close down as well. The Netherlands will be in a soft lockdown from tomorrow I suppose.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I assume they are transporting some patients to areas that are less overwhelmed?


Yes they are, but there are not enough ambulances to do that efficiently.

In the town of Bergamo the situation is so bad that the local newspaper, which usually hosts 3 pages of obituaries, now expanded this section to 10-11 pages.

https://www.agi.it/cronaca/news/2020-03-14/coronavirus-bergamo-necrologi-7521509/


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think the Netherlands will close all bars and restaurants soon.
> 
> Universities have closed and there are now reports of mass-gatherings of students in bars. Belgians went to southern Netherlands to visit bars because everything is closed in Belgium. The optics of this are so bad that they can't get away with not closing everything down like you see in other countries.
> 
> It's very likely that all elementary schools and high schools will close down as well. The Netherlands will be in a soft lockdown from tomorrow I suppose.


I read that the mayor of Gorizia was pissed because, after the closure of bars and restaurants in Italy, his townsmen went to the bars in Nova Gorica, Slovenia, which were open and just 30 m across the border...


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> In the town of Bergamo the situation is so bad that the local newspaper, which usually hosts 3 pages of obituaries, now expanded this section to 10-11 pages.


Why did so many people die? Because of corona or because of the current general medical system issues?


----------



## Attus

italystf said:


> Even if they are open, visiting them is against Italian law.


It's two different things. 
For example in the catholic diocese of Cologne no holy mass will be held from today up to (at least) Eastern. But the churches, i.e. the buildings, remain open. Anyone who wants can visit them and pray alone.
Today there is only one single holy mass in the diocese of Cologne, it was at 10AM in the cathedral, closed, visited by only some technicians, broadcasting it through TV and radio.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are also concerns about the loneliness of the elderly if no family will visit them. 

Many elderly don't know how to entertain themselves. I have a grandmother, she's 87 and all she does all day is sitting on the couch, waiting for someone to enter her apartment. She doesn't watch TV, hardly listens to the radio and internet is something she's never done. It's kind of sad. I hope I don't grow old that way...


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> Why did so many people die? Because of corona or because of the current general medical system issues?


I'd guess a combination of both, but the majority would be of Covid.
In the town of Nembro, near Bergamo (11,000 inh) during the 12 days of epidemic 70 people died: during the whole 2019, there were a total of 120 deaths for various reasons.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch national public health institutes (GGD in Dutch) continues to hold the position that closing down (elementary) schools is unnecessary. 

They have calculated that the real number of infections is not 900 but 6,000, which is 0.03% of the population. 

The director says that the chance of infection on an elementary school is 0.003% and 0.0003% if people keep to the hygenic standards. And children develop only mild symptoms, he says it is known that the less the symptoms, the less likely they are to infect other people. 

The virus primarily spreads between people via respiratory droplets from coughing. So if you don't cough or sneeze into someones face and keep hygenic standards, the chance of infecting another person is very low.


----------



## cinxxx

...



Kampflamm said:


> Munich, yesterday:


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> There are also concerns about the loneliness of the elderly if no family will visit them.


Similar for my father. He's 81, can hardly walk, he likes watching sport in TV, it's his main joy in life. But there are no football games, no handball games, nothing to be broadcasted. 
And he has some other problem, too. His grandchildren (the children of my sister) live next door. He hers them, sees them every day. But they may not visit him and he may not visit them. He's very sad about it. 
I'm really not sure he will bear it several months...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

South Korea has seen its rate of daily increase drop below 1% for the first time since the outbreak started. It's interesting because Korea hasn't imposed draconian restrictions on daily life. It is said that Korea operates near normal. 

Korea also has a very high number of tested persons (over 200,000) and a case fatality rate of only 0.9%.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think the Netherlands will close all bars and restaurants soon.
> 
> Universities have closed and there are now reports of mass-gatherings of students in bars. Belgians went to southern Netherlands to visit bars because everything is closed in Belgium. The optics of this are so bad that they can't get away with not closing everything down like you see in other countries.
> 
> It's very likely that all elementary schools and high schools will close down as well. The Netherlands will be in a soft lockdown from tomorrow I suppose.


In Poland they are closing everything in the malls (except for grocery stores, pharmacies and drugstores) since tomorrow mostly because the youth (I mean, especially the younger groups) were gathering there.



Attus said:


> It's two different things.
> For example in the catholic diocese of Cologne no holy mass will be held from today up to (at least) Eastern. But the churches, i.e. the buildings, remain open. Anyone who wants can visit them and pray alone.
> Today there is only one single holy mass in the diocese of Cologne, it was at 10AM in the cathedral, closed, visited by only some technicians, broadcasting it through TV and radio.


In Poland Holy Masses are held – but often in empty churches (seemingly it makes some sense from the religious point of view, I don't know). 

If people are allowed in the churches – then the number of the people inside is limited to 50 persons.

If someone is taking the communion, it is recommended to get it to hands and not directly to the mouth, as it is customary in Poland.

Interesting things happen also in the public transport. Many commercial rides get suspended and on many suburban routes there is no alternative in form of railway or government-subsidised bus services. On the route from Łódź to my town there is public regional railway and two commercial bus carriers. All of them are cancelling some of the rides. One of the bus companies has already announced the timetable – and while normally they depart to Łódź 31 times a day (the other company – 33 times a day, the railway – 17 times a day), next week they'll be departing only 12 times a day, more or less every hour. The other company has not yet announced the timetable (they plan to do it in the afternoon), the railway will depart only 11 times a day.

But on one of the other suburban routes, the only two carriers cancelled all the rides. So those who even in these epidemic times have to go to work, and who have no cars, have no way of getting there.


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> The virus primarily spreads between people via respiratory droplets from coughing. So if you don't cough or sneeze into someones face and keep hygenic standards, the chance of infecting another person is very low.


The droplets land on surfaces, there the virus can survive several days until someone pick it ups and smears it around his face, eyes and mouth. The same way it can get onto surfaces, people touch their face and then spread the virus through touching.


----------



## Highway89

Fancy a bingo?


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1239108369207775232


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's not impossible, but if you wash your hands regularly, especially after being in a public space, that risk is low.

The media loves to instill fear by pointing out all the outlier situations, big reports about the 1 patient in ICU under 20 years of age, incubation time of maybe 14 days, that the virus can survive up to 9 days on surfaces, it can occassionally spread beyond 2 meters, etc. Yes it's all possible, but not the norm.


----------



## volodaaaa

Almost everyone wears a face mask in Slovakia. Sunday is usually the day of political duels. The presenters and their guests wear face masks. There is a government changeover during these days; all wear face masks. I think it is excellent. A face mask is not the best, but it is at least something. It encourages people to wear them.

It is taken very seriously here. Even TV presenters in News wear them.

The future prime minister with his coalition partners and the president (the blonde woman)









A current prime minister with his team









Todays talk show about coronavirus (all with masks)


----------



## x-type

Btw, do you people believe in this:

Covid-19 in:

Russia - 34 cases
Ukraine - 3 cases
Turkey - 5 cases

Gimme a break!


----------



## Name user 1

ChrisZwolle said:


> Hoarding appears to be a worldwide phenomenon now. I've seen reports not just from Europe but also the United States, Canada and even Peru.
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1238870834791559169
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1238623219659288577


Hello all pics are from London .. published by daily mail yesterday


----------



## MichiH

Once this will be over....

Do you think that the likely baby boom around the turn of the year might compensate the number of people died because of corona?


----------



## MichiH

Germany will close its borders tomorrow morning. Only freight traffic and commuting (inbound and outbound) will be allowed.

I'm not sure, I read about France, Switzerland, Austria and Denmark but I guess it's meant that all borders should be closed.


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> Almost everyone wears a face mask in Slovakia. Sunday is usually the day of political duels. The presenters and their guests wear face masks. There is a government changeover during these days; all wear face masks. I think it is excellent. A face mask is not the best, but it is at least something. It encourages people to wear them.


But wearing face masks if you don't have symptoms such as coughing or sneezing makes no sense, wearing it for a prolonged period of time without changing them every hour or so (maybe even more often) makes you more vulnerable to the viruses than without.

And they are almost impossible to buy.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Name user 1 said:


> Hello all pics are from London .. published by daily mail yesterday


London? All the signs are in Spanish.



MichiH said:


> Once this will be over....
> 
> Do you think that the likely baby boom around the turn of the year might compensate the number of people died because of corona?


Either a divorce spike in 9 weeks or a baby boom in 9 months? :lol:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

*Coffeeshop*

In the Netherlands, a coffeeshop is a place where you don't buy coffee.

You can purchase weed / marijuana / pot or how you want to call it.

The Dutch government orders all eateries, coffee shops and brothels to close by 6 p.m. tonight, until at least 6 April. So panic breaks out over not being able to get weed. :lol:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1239231097604620288

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1239230919384449031

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1239233423174250504

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1239231192383266816


----------



## italystf

MichiH said:


> Once this will be over....
> 
> Do you think that the likely baby boom around the turn of the year might compensate the number of people died because of corona?


Usually during economical crisis people make less children. At least in developed countries where most people are educated and have access to contracception.


----------



## Attus

North-Rhine-Westphalia introduces strict measurments. 
Malls must be closed (except for grocery stores in them), clubs, bars, cinemas, etc. must be closed just like swimming pools. Every kind of education, including music, language, etc. courses, must be cancelled.
Malls are closed especialle in order to avoid children and yougsters come together there.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> :-O


I'm not sure I used the correct English term. Maybe it's better "resuscitate"?


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> :-O





legolego said:


> are you serious ?!





tfd543 said:


> What the flying fukk?! What an apocalypse.





Rebasepoiss said:


> Sounds like war time triage.


In Brescia and Bergamo it IS war.
I live nearby the second largest hospital in Brescia and ambulances' sirens are almost continuous.


----------



## legolego

can i quote your previous post to the italian thread?


----------



## g.spinoza

legolego said:


> can i quote your previous post to the italian thread?


Sure you can.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> I'm not sure I used the correct English term. Maybe it's better "resuscitate"?




I understood. (“Resuscitate” is probably more precise; it’s probably what a doctor would say.)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Judging by Google Maps, Paris appears to be the only city in Europe that has commuting-related traffic congestion. Even London has an almost entirely free-flow traffic situation on the regional motorway system.

Strict border controls does lead to huge traffic jams, in particular at border crossings going into Germany.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> I understood. (“Resuscitate” is probably more precise; it’s probably what a doctor would say.)


Thanks. In Italian you'd only use "resuscitare" in the sense of "bring back from the dead". In this sense, only Jesus had ever been "resuscitato".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Spain will also close its borders to all non-citizens that don't have a very urgent reason to travel into Spain. Goods traffic will be uninterrupted. It will go into effect at midnight.

El País: https://elpais.com/espana/2020-03-1...o-residentes-salvo-causa-de-fuerza-mayor.html

It appears that almost all borders in Europe are now closed or strictly controlled in one or more directions, the only exception being Benelux with France and Germany (except Luxembourg-Germany). And I haven't read about UK - France travel restrictions.


----------



## italystf

Giving priority to younger and healtier patients (that have higher survival chances) is something that is written in normal medical regulations.
However, practically, only in case of war or major disaster there is the need to apply such rule, at least in developed countries where the health system is from good to excellent.
I wonder if that rule had been applied before in Italy during peacetime, for example after major earthquakes or the Vajont Dam.


----------



## MichiH

^^^^ What's about Finland - Sweden? Greece - Bulgaria? Romania - Bulgaria? etc. I think they are open, aren't they?

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/...-coronavirus-travel-restrictions-fco-warnings


----------



## Andre_Filipe

g.spinoza said:


> Got a message from a friend of mine who works in the hospital in Brescia. The management and doctors decided not to revive people over 75.


hno:


----------



## CNGL

Meanwhile Isernia still resists as the lone Italian province not yet hit by the coronavirus (it's also the least populated, having regained that title after Ogliastra in Sardinia was merged back with Nuoro). It may be related to the inexistence of Molise (where Isernia supposedly is).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch prime minister held a televised speech to address the nation, the first such speech in the Netherlands since the 1973 oil crisis. He said that it is likely that most of the population would eventually be infected and that 'flattening the curve' is the preferred policy approach. A complete lockdown is not anticipated at this point.


----------



## WhiteMagick

g.spinoza said:


> Got a message from a friend of mine who works in the hospital in Brescia. The management and doctors decided not to revive people over 75.


That's just depressing. hno:


----------



## WhiteMagick

> *Iran Assembly of Experts member Hashem Bathaei-Golpaygani dies of coronavirus*
> 
> Ayatollah Hashem Bathaei-Golpaygani, a member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, has died from the novel coronavirus, Iran's state news agency IRNA reported on Monday.
> 
> Bathaei-Golpaygani was receiving treatment in Qom’s Shahid Beheshti hospital, according to Iranian news agencies. He was initially admitted to the hospital on Saturday.
> 
> At least 1,400 Qom citizens have been infected with the coronavirus virus, and four have been hospitalized in Kamkar, Ferghani, Imam Reza, Ali Ibn Abitaleb and Shahid Beheshti hospitals, according to IRNA’s report.


https://english.alarabiya.net/en/Ne...m-Bathaei-Golpaygani-dies-of-coronavirus.html


----------



## WhiteMagick

> *What Goldman Told 1,500 Clients In Its Emergency Sunday Conference Call*
> 
> 
> 50% of Americans will contract the virus (150m people) as it's very communicable. This is on a par with the common cold (Rhinovirus) of which there are about 200 strains and which the majority of Americans will get 2-4 per year.
> 
> 70% of Germany will contract it (58M people). This is the next most relevant industrial economy to be effected.
> 
> Peak-virus is expected over the next eight weeks, declining thereafter.
> 
> The virus appears to be concentrated in a band between 30-50 degrees north latitude, meaning that like the common cold and flu, it prefers cold weather. The coming summer in the northern hemisphere should help. This is to *say that the virus is likely seasonal.*
> 
> Of those impacted 80% will be early-stage, 15% mid-stage and 5% critical-stage. Early-stage symptoms are like the common cold and mid-stage symptoms are like the flu; these are stay at home for two weeks and rest. 5% will be critical and highly weighted towards the elderly.
> 
> Mortality rate on average of up to 2%, heavily weight towards the elderly and immunocompromised; meaning up to 3m people (150m*.02). In the US about 3m/yr die mostly due to old age and disease, those two being highly correlated (as a percent very few from accidents). There will be significant overlap, so this does not mean 3m new deaths from the virus, it means elderly people dying sooner due to respiratory issues. This may however stress the healthcare system.
> 
> There is a debate as to how to address the virus pre-vaccine. The US is tending towards quarantine. The UK is tending towards allowing it to spread so that the population can develop a natural immunity. Quarantine is likely to be ineffective and result in significant economic damage but will slow the rate of transmission giving the healthcare system more time to deal with the case load.
> 
> China’s economy has been largely impacted which has affected raw materials and the global supply chain. It may take up to six months for it to recover.
> 
> Global GDP growth rate will be the lowest in 30 years at around 2%.
> 
> S&P 500 will see a negative growth rate of -15% to -20% for 2020 overall.
> 
> There will be economic damage from the virus itself, but the real damage is driven mostly by market psychology. Viruses have been with us forever. Stock markets should fully recover in the 2nd half of the year.
> 
> In the past week there has been a conflating of the impact of the virus with the developing oil price war between KSA and Russia. While reduced energy prices are generally good for industrial economies, the US is now a large energy exporter, so there has been a negative impact on the valuation of the domestic energy sector. This will continue for some time as the Russians are attempting to economically squeeze the American shale producers and the Saudi’s are caught in the middle and do not want to further cede market share to Russia or the US.
> 
> Technically the market generally has been looking for a reason to reset after the longest bull market in history.
> 
> There is NO systemic risk. No one is even talking about that. Governments are intervening in the markets to stabilize them, and the private banking sector is very well capitalized. It feels more like ‪9/11 than it does like 2008.


https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/h...-told-1500-clients-its-sunday-conference-call


----------



## Suburbanist

That the number or new cases might be reducing, but deaths are still increasing, is expected, since people that eventually die often get very sick for many days.


----------



## Suburbanist

WhiteMagick said:


> https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/h...-told-1500-clients-its-sunday-conference-call


I usually don't like to attack sources instad of content, but ZeroHedge has been known, for a couple years already, to engage in a very predictable pattern: mixing some credible, no-nonsense, wildly-ish known information with some very uncorroborated and borderline conspirational statements, and selling the whole package as level-headed analysis.


----------



## Highway89

My region (La Rioja, Spain) is about to reach 1,000 cases per million. Fortunately, the number of deaths seems to be relatively low.










During some days, we had one of the highest numbers in Spain in spite of being the least populated region (317k).

The first days most people who were infected were gypsies, so the cases were relatively easy to "detect", as the authorities knew who to test.

There was a funeral in Vitoria-Gasteiz, where hundreds of gypsy people attended, including a couple who had come from Italy. This is also the cause for the high numbers in the Basque province of Álava. Source (in Spanish): https://www.abc.es/sociedad/abci-es...abo-cuarentena-haro-202003101400_noticia.html


----------



## CNGL

I thought that every damn case of coronavirus so far (140K+ and counting) happened in Rioja. :troll:

(N.b.: This is a reference to a Twitter bot which last year simulated a World War between every country and territory, which went viral in Spain because that country was doing pretty good in it. So the creator set up another bot that fielded every province of Spain agaisnt each other, which was won by Rioja. Eventually Spain won the World War, and as such it was said that Rioja conquered the World).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch media reports that the average age of the coronavirus infection in Italy is 64 years and 75% of cases are over the age of 50.

However South Korea found 25% of its infections in the 20-29 age group (though none of the fatalities). 

These figures will be difficult to compare due to differences in the extent of testing.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Hundreds of citizens from the Baltic countries are stuck at the German-Polish border because Poland doesn't let anyone enter the country, even for transit purposes. There was supposed to be an official organised convoy to go through Poland to Lithuania but in the end that agreement fell through as well. Now the only option is to drive 450 km from Frankfurt am Oder to Kiel and catch one of the last ferries to Klaipeda in Lithuania. The three Baltic countries still allow transit traffic until the 19th of March.

There was also a case of a few Estonians who got stuck on the border between the Ukrainian and Polish checkpoints on their way back to Estonia through Poland. After hours and hours a day and a half of waiting in no man's land they were finally allowed to go back to Ukraine. Now they have to find a way through Russia to Estonia but Russia will also close its border on the 18th of March.

I bet there are thousands of cases like this all around Europe and the world and although I understand the reasoning behind these restrictions I belive that people going home should be let through. The virus is spreading inside all of the European countries already so a few hundred or even a couple thousand people passing through as quickly as possible (especially if in an organised manner) wouldn't increase the infection rate by any significant amount. Trucks and native citizens returning home are still let in so it's not like the countries are in complete isolation.


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> Public transport in Bratislava saw a drop to 30 % of a standard working day volume od passengers. Now we operate in "holiday" mode, but there is every likelihood to switch to the weekend mode this week and maybe Christmas mode (night lines operating every 30 min all day long). The next step would be a complete ban of PT (such as in Slovenia).
> 
> Individual transport volumes are amusing. No congestions at all.


Łódź is switching to Saturday mode in the public transport since tomorrow.

What's more, the recently introduced request stops (it's a novice over here) are operated as normal stops, except for the cases when there are no passengers inside the bus. To avoid people having to press the button.

But they anyway have to hold the handrail, so what's the difference...

Some suburban private minibus routes totally cancel connections – as I mentioned earlier. My route luckily has only limited the timetable a lot.

And the national railway suspends many connections, to accommodate the decreased number of passengers.

Interestingly, as the government announced it'd be forbidden to enter Poland except for professional drivers, cross-border workers and people returning here from abroad, the bus carriers announced they cancel all connections – because a bus through the border with no passengers allowed to cross it makes no sense. But it resulted with complaints of people returning from abroad e.g. through the Berlin airports having no way of entering Poland other then by foot (in theory they could take a train from Berlin to Küstrin-Kietz, Frankfurt Oder or Görlitz and walk through the border from there). In response, FlixBus resurrected some connections for several days.

The problem is that Poland has practically closed its airspace, except for special planes chartered by the government from the national airline Lot. Planes from other countries can only take passengers from Poland (e.g. with citizens of other countries being now in Poland and wanting to return home) but they can't bring any, even Poles, to here – these flights to Poland fly empty.

These special charter planes also fly empty from Poland to the other countries they take Poles from. So this is a total nonsense from the point of view of the environment.

The biggest problem is that the tickets for these flights are quite expensive as compared to these in the low-cost airlines (they must be paid by the passengers) and there are many places e.g. islands with no such flights. There is e.g. Polish national swimming team stuck on Tenerife, where they can't train as all swimming pools are closed (and the whole island is self-quarantined, so they can't even leave the hotel) but they also have troubles coming back to Poland as there is no such emergency flight from Canary Islands to Poland. They can fly to Berlin but there is a problem with booking 25 seats – they will probably have to be divided into three groups and then transferred by cars from Berlin to Poland.

Another group of swimmers from the national team is in Turkey. They were forced to leave the hotel as all of them got closed. And they got their flights re-booked to an earlier date – so they are flying to Istanbul to wait there for 22 hours for a flight to Stockholm. Why to Stockholm? Because their original flight was to Stockholm, as they were supposed to participate in a competition there. Which obviously won't take place. However, the problem now is getting from Sweden to Poland (I guess they may be able to catch one of these emergency Lot flights – but if not, they'll probably have to come back, again, through Berlin).


----------



## Suburbanist

The coordinated travel ban at Schengen external borders is a good measure. The haphazard border closures without provisions for the small number of genuine crossings are a sham.

Here in Switzerland, there is talk of using now-almost empty hotels in Ticino to house some of the critical health workforce that commutes from Italy, as to avoid having hospitals becoming critically understaffed if they become sick in Italy.


----------



## italystf

I think each government should organize the evacuation of their citizens trapped abroad, even with military planes if it's necessary.


----------



## Kpc21

g.spinoza said:


> Thanks. In Italian you'd only use "resuscitare" in the sense of "bring back from the dead". In this sense, only Jesus had ever been "resuscitato".


In Poland doctors and medical emergency personnel are talking about "circulatory-respiratory resuscitation" (in short RKO, for "resuscytacja krążeniowo-oddechowa"), although much a more popular term, although probably an incorrect one for the specialists, is to "reanimate" (reanimować, reanimation – reanimacja).


----------



## mgk920

g.spinoza said:


> I'm not sure I used the correct English term. Maybe it's better "resuscitate"?


Agreed, that is a better, more correct term. Think 'revive' as being a short form of it.

It is not unusual here in the USA for terminally ill people to request and file legal 'DNR' ('Do Not Resuscitate') orders for themselves, too. They are often part of what are called 'Living Wills'.

Mike


----------



## italystf

mgk920 said:


> It is not unusual here in the USA for terminally ill people to request and file legal 'DNR' ('Do Not Resuscitate') orders for themselves, too. They are often part of what are called 'Living Wills'.
> 
> Mike


In Italy this option was introduced a couple of years ago. It's called "biological testament".


----------



## Verso

It's really weird without public transport, no city buses driving around. I thought there would be more car traffic because of it, but roads are half-empty. But I see more pedestrians and cyclists.


----------



## Attus

Germany has a surprisingly low fatality rate. France and Spain have approximately the same amount of infected people (each between 6,000 - 10,000), but Spain reports approx 350 fatalities, France around 150, Germany "only" 17. 
The epidemic started in each nations approximately the same time. 

Another point of view: Germany reports 17 fatalities and more than 50 recovered people. France reports several times more fatalities than recovered, Spain reports more recovered than dead, but by far not the ~1:3 like in Germany. 

I don't believe the Germans are genetically more resistent than the French, and German medical system may be better than the Spanish one but for sure not as much better. 
So there must be some other cause why these nations have so much different figures.


----------



## italystf

Some say that Germany counts only deaths of people who had no diseases other than covid-19.


----------



## Spookvlieger

and they don't do post mortem tests. So if you're dead and weren't diagnosed, you're not in the statistics. It's called cheating.


----------



## Spookvlieger

mgk920 said:


> Agreed, that is a better, more correct term. Think 'revive' as being a short form of it.
> 
> It is not unusual here in the USA for terminally ill people to request and file legal 'DNR' ('Do Not Resuscitate') orders for themselves, too. They are often part of what are called 'Living Wills'.
> 
> Mike


In Belgium they might give you a slight overdose of morfin if you are allready dying anyway so you can go in peace while sleeping. I've seen it happen with my grandad wich was in so much pain and only could sleep with high doses of morfin, at one point they just gave him double the amount so he could 'sleep' he never woke up again.


----------



## MichiH

joshsam said:


> and they don't do post mortem tests. So if you're dead and weren't diagnosed, you're not in the statistics. It's called cheating.


Who is "they" - Germans?

The first German fatality was tested post mortem. Just because his wife was diagnosted being infected three days after he has passed.


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> Who is "they" - Germans?
> 
> The first German fatality was tested post mortem. Just because his wife was diagnosted being infected three days after he has passed.


Maybe they stopped soon after.
Their fatality rate is just not believable.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Rebasepoiss said:


> Hundreds of citizens from the Baltic countries are stuck at the German-Polish border because Poland doesn't let anyone enter the country, even for transit purposes. There was supposed to be an official organised convoy to go through Poland to Lithuania but in the end that agreement fell through as well. Now the only option is to drive 450 km from Frankfurt am Oder to Kiel and catch one of the last ferries to Klaipeda in Lithuania. The three Baltic countries still allow transit traffic until the 19th of March.
> 
> [...]


A bit of follow-up. The Estonian government is now sending a Tallink ferry from Ventspils in Latvia to Sassnitz in Germany to pick up stranded Estonians and bring them back to Latvia so they could drive back home.

There are also plans to keep this ferry operating on the Ventspils - Sassnitz - Ventspils line to allow cargo to keep moving between Western Europe and the Baltic States, bypassing Poland.


----------



## volodaaaa

Face masks are required in all public buildings (post offices, stations, malls, groceries, etc.) in Slovakia. Even my employer requires me to have one. I was given two (a fabric one and an FFP3 respirator). It is taken very seriously.

Meanwhile, I was on the night shift yesterday and was given an order to check if a 12 m long bus is capable of doing a U-turn on the Austrian border. I started with a passenger car. The officers were very polite, yet nosy  Then I picked up the bus and had troubles to get in and start it. Not because of any technical issue, but I was given a model I had not driven before , So I spent almost 45 minutes to start it 

It was successful, my very first bus drive without any other person present. The officers were happy to talk to someone. Only 1 car was passing during my exercise. They let me to do some reversing and multiple U-turning.

Here is the video from the border:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8Tv5lb4Sv8

It seems quite boring there - two police cars and a tent.


----------



## g.spinoza

A video made by CNN using a drone shows the situation of motorways around Milan


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1239491094502445056


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The criticism about face masks I've read is that it actually makes things worse. It gets warm and damp, with people are going to touch it and then touch other things, making it a very efficient spreader of the virus. It's a form of 'safety theater'. Face masks should be reserved for those actually infected or working in healthcare.

Apparently there is a bartender in Ischgl which may have been a superspreader of the virus, as a very large amount of travel infections are traced back to that bar. In particular from Scandinavia, where around a 1,000 cases are traced back to that bar.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The criticism about face masks I've read is that it actually makes things worse. It gets warm and damp, with people are going to touch it and then touch other things, making it a very efficient spreader of the virus. It's a form of 'safety theater'. Face masks should be reserved for those actually infected or working in healthcare.
> 
> Apparently there is a bartender in Ischgl which may have been a superspreader of the virus, as a very large amount of travel infections are traced back to that bar. In particular from Scandinavia, where around a 1,000 cases are traced back to that bar.




I thought that too (re the masks), but maybe Slovakia’s at this point just treating everyone as potentially infected.


----------



## MichiH

Attus said:


> Germany has a surprisingly low fatality rate. France and Spain have approximately the same amount of infected people (each between 6,000 - 10,000), but Spain reports approx 350 fatalities, France around 150, Germany "only" 17.
> The epidemic started in each nations approximately the same time.





g.spinoza said:


> Maybe they stopped soon after.
> Their fatality rate is just not believable.


I read that infected Germans are much younger than infected Italians and that might be the reason for the much higher fatality rate.

:dunno:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

^^ South Korea had 28% of all cases in the 20-29 age group. But 0% of the fatalities. 

Likewise, they had 10% of cases in the 70+ age group, but 70% of fatalities.


----------



## volodaaaa

MichiH said:


> I read that infected Germans are much younger than infected Italians and that might be the reason for the much higher fatality rate.
> 
> :dunno:


I have read that the reason is the methodology behind it. 

Usually, you don't die because of coronavirus, but because of condition/complications caused by the virus. A healthy patient does not die; the infection is very mild. Only patients with some other diseases have difficulties.

A typical example is patients with respiratory issues or asthma. Getting COVID-19 makes the situation more severe and may result in death.

In the case of Italy, the cause of death is the COVID-19, so the last catalyst. In the case of Germany, the cause of death is the primary reason (e. g. respiratory issues).

Maybe another simplification:
Imagine you have a car crash, you fall over the crash barriers, fall over the cliff, hit to water and drown.

Some countries may say you died because of a car accident. Some physical damage to your body caused by the strong impact. Some may say you drowned. 

Now replace car accident with respiratory issues or asthma and drowning with coronavirus.


----------



## CNGL

bogdymol said:


> If somebody would have said just 3 months ago how Europe would look like today and what a mess would be, everybody would have called him crazy... hno:


Just a month ago it would have been called crazy if I did what I've done today: to run 5 km at home by going back and forth through the corridor.


ChrisZwolle said:


> The situation in Italy appears to be stabilizing somewhat. The daily increase of new cases and deaths isn't increasing exponentially anymore. This effect was expected, as mentioned in that Medium article posted a while back.


Definitely Italy should be peaking now. In that video g.spinoza posted earlier today doctors at the ICU in Brescia Poliambulanza hospital said they are at the brink of saturation (n.b.: I'm a native Spanish speaker, and thus I can understand most other Romance languages like Italian), and if the number of new coronavirus cases in Italy starts decreasing now it will be a definitive proof lockdowns help to "flatten the curve".


----------



## italystf

CNGL said:


> Definitely Italy should be peaking now. In that video g.spinoza posted earlier today doctors at the ICU in Brescia Poliambulanza hospital said they are at the brink of saturation (n.b.: I'm a native Spanish speaker, and thus I can understand most other Romance languages like Italian), and if the number of new coronavirus cases in Italy starts decreasing now it will be a definitive proof lockdowns help to "flatten the curve".


In the former "red zones" in Lombardy and Veneto, where quarantine came into force in late February, new cases have already dropped to zero.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Hooray!


----------



## pikoc89

Croatian police allows transit of 60ish truck every 30 minutes, under police escort. Their tachograph information isn’t taken into consideration, so the truck drivers are basically flooring the trucks, with the police approving that. The routes are from Slovenia to Bosnia and Serbia, and the cab doors are sealed.






These measures had to be taken since Hungary found it necessary to completely close its borders for transit unless you have a medical certificate stating you do not have the virus. 
We did it in a more effective (pee in a bottle if you really have to) way.


----------



## Verso

volodaaaa said:


> I have read that the reason is the methodology behind it.
> 
> Usually, you don't die because of coronavirus, but because of condition/complications caused by the virus. A healthy patient does not die; the infection is very mild. Only patients with some other diseases have difficulties.
> 
> A typical example is patients with respiratory issues or asthma. Getting COVID-19 makes the situation more severe and may result in death.
> 
> In the case of Italy, the cause of death is the COVID-19, so the last catalyst. In the case of Germany, the cause of death is the primary reason (e. g. respiratory issues).
> 
> Maybe another simplification:
> Imagine you have a car crash, you fall over the crash barriers, fall over the cliff, hit to water and drown.
> 
> Some countries may say you died because of a car accident. Some physical damage to your body caused by the strong impact. Some may say you drowned.
> 
> Now replace car accident with respiratory issues or asthma and drowning with coronavirus.


That's a very wrong approach by Germany. No matter, which diseases you already had, contracting the new virus was almost certainly a tipping point, because of which you died. Only in patients who were about to die in a few days anyway, it doesn't really matter. No one is saying that the new virus is more lethal than cancer and other serious diseases. It doesn't really seem very harmful, I would take it over cancer any day. The point isn't, which disease you have is most harmful. They are all harmful. Many people have died because of the new virus. AND because of cancer. AND because of diabetes. Etc. The point is that we aren't talking about cancer or diabetes (we already know they're harmful). We're talking about the new virus. And many people have died _also_ because of the virus, so they should be included in the statistics.


----------



## g.spinoza

volodaaaa said:


> I have read that the reason is the methodology behind it.
> 
> Usually, you don't die because of coronavirus, but because of condition/complications caused by the virus. A healthy patient does not die; the infection is very mild. Only patients with some other diseases have difficulties.
> 
> A typical example is patients with respiratory issues or asthma. Getting COVID-19 makes the situation more severe and may result in death.
> 
> In the case of Italy, the cause of death is the COVID-19, so the last catalyst. In the case of Germany, the cause of death is the primary reason (e. g. respiratory issues).
> 
> Maybe another simplification:
> Imagine you have a car crash, you fall over the crash barriers, fall over the cliff, hit to water and drown.
> 
> Some countries may say you died because of a car accident. Some physical damage to your body caused by the strong impact. Some may say you drowned.
> 
> Now replace car accident with respiratory issues or asthma and drowning with coronavirus.


I quote you, but it's not true that in young and healthy people the situation is mild.
Patient 1 in Codogno was in his early forties (or late thirties, I don't remember exactly) and was an athlete: nonetheless, he was in the ICU, with artificial ventilation and in an induced coma, for almost three weeks. He came out of the ICU only a few days ago.


----------



## MichiH

volodaaaa said:


> I have read that the reason is the *methodology *behind it.
> 
> In the case of Italy, the cause of death is the COVID-19, so the last catalyst. In the case of Germany, the cause of death is the primary reason (e. g. respiratory issues).


Source? I didn't find anything in German.

Only some older sources in English with different theories (e.g. from a week ago):



> Of the confirmed coronavirus cases across Germany, so far most of the identified infections are said to be *mild*. This could go some way to explain why there have been *fewer fatalities* so far in Germany.


----------



## g.spinoza

That doesn't explain why in Germany the virus should attack preferentially the young. It has to be methodology.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It is likely that most people who were infected abroad were of working-age. They go skiing or sightseeing in Italy or Austria. And they first infect their immediate family or co-workers. It then moves up to the elderly, which apparently happened quickly in Italy.


----------



## MichiH

^^ Exactly. That's also my idea. It might change quickly (more and more elderly infected) but on the other hand, German health system had more time to prepare. Not sure whether they've used it... but I hope....


----------



## volodaaaa

MichiH said:


> Source? I didn't find anything in German.
> 
> Only some older sources in English with different theories (e.g. from a week ago):


I have only heard that. It might be as well a hoax. However, it makes sense :lol:


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> on the other hand, German health system had more time to prepare. Not sure whether they've used it... but I hope....


They did, I'm sure. OK, there is no perfect preparation, but I think the best what is possible was made.
However, German people do not seem to be very disciplined. Parks are full of people (we have very nice weather in Western Germany), cafés are full bakeries, having tables and chairs, are full. Just like we had no epidemic at all. 
Chancellor Merkel will speak to the nation this night.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> They did, I'm sure. OK, there is no perfect preparation, but I think the best what is possible was made.
> However, German people do not seem to be very disciplined. Parks are full of people (we have very nice weather in Western Germany), cafés are full bakeries, having tables and chairs, are full. Just like we had no epidemic at all.
> Chancellor Merkel will speak to the nation this night.


Jesus, here it looks like an apocalypse. I was at Tesco yesterday. I met 2 shop assistants and maybe 5 people. All with face masks. However, people seem to be very responsible. Even those who were supermen a week ago. Maybe politicians and celebrities who encourage them to act responsibly did their good job.

Btw. face masks are becoming a fashion thing here :nuts:hno::lol:


----------



## g.spinoza

g.spinoza said:


> Two friends of mine, who are a couple, are sick with fever and cough. She works in the hospital in Brescia, so they are pretty sure they got Covid. He was tested last Wednesday but haven't got the results yet, and in the meanwhile he started feeling better. She is going to be tested today and God knows when - if - she gets results.
> I am under the impression that infections are wildly underreported.


My friends got their results back. She was tested positive while his test was negative - although it seems a bit strange to me: they live together, they had the same symptoms. Maybe it was a case a false negative, who knows.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> That's a very wrong approach by Germany. No matter, which diseases you already had, contracting the new virus was almost certainly a tipping point, because of which you died. Only in patients who were about to die in a few days anyway, it doesn't really matter. No one is saying that the new virus is more lethal than cancer and other serious diseases. It doesn't really seem very harmful, I would take it over cancer any day. The point isn't, which disease you have is most harmful. They are all harmful. Many people have died because of the new virus. AND because of cancer. AND because of diabetes. Etc. The point is that we aren't talking about cancer or diabetes (we already know they're harmful). We're talking about the new virus. And many people have died _also_ because of the virus, so they should be included in the statistics.


That's the point. If decesead people already had other diseases, it doesn't mean that they would have died soon anyway.
Cancer patients can survive after proper treatment (surgery, chemiotherapy, radiotherapy).
People with diabetes, hearth issues, etc... can live for decades with proper treatments.
People with other illnesses doesn't automatically mean terminally ill people.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> I quote you, but it's not true that in young and healthy people the situation is mild.
> Patient 1 in Codogno was in his early forties (or late thirties, I don't remember exactly) and was an athlete: nonetheless, he was in the ICU, with artificial ventilation and in an induced coma, for almost three weeks. He came out of the ICU only a few days ago.


Doctors said that the extreme physical effort he underwent to run marathons compromised his immune system.
Usually 38 y.o. people with no other illnesses get milder symptoms from Covid-19.


----------



## italystf

Dozens of coffins in a church in Bergamo waiting to be buried or cremated. 330 people has died in Bergamo in a week. Bergamo has lost more population due to coronavirus than L'Aquila due to 2009 earthquake.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

italystf said:


> Doctors said that the extreme physical effort he underwent to run marathons compromised his immune system.
> Usually 38 y.o. people with no other illnesses get milder symptoms from Covid-19.


I like to run for fitness and recreation. Not marathon style, but a good 5 kilometer run every other evening. 

I have also read that intense workout reduces the immune system temporarily. I live alone, run in the evening and don't encounter other people during or after running, so I don't worry about it too much. But it may be a factor.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> Doctors said that the extreme physical effort he underwent to run marathons compromised his immune system.
> Usually 38 y.o. people with no other illnesses get milder symptoms from Covid-19.


I'm not a doctor, but to me this answer makes very little sense.

I will try and find casualties figures divided by age bins.


----------



## Suburbanist

Marathon-running is stressful to the body. There are many studies on that - it affects liver function, heartbeat, digestive function etc. It is an extreme activity (but so are many other sports like weightlifting, sprint running etc). It is not only one run itself but all the extreme training regime that comes to it, to condition the body to withstand running marathon/ironman etc. to begin with.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Rebasepoiss said:


> A bit of follow-up. The Estonian government is now sending a Tallink ferry from Ventspils in Latvia to Sassnitz in Germany to pick up stranded Estonians and bring them back to Latvia so they could drive back home.
> 
> There are also plans to keep this ferry operating on the Ventspils - Sassnitz - Ventspils line to allow cargo to keep moving between Western Europe and the Baltic States, bypassing Poland.


More follow-up. Due to the exceedingly long border queues (especially at the Polish checkpoints), tomorrow a new temporary ferry line will start operating between Paldiski in Estonia and Sassnitz in Germany, departing from both ports every other day (since it takes around 20h for a one-way trip). The ferry will be able to accomodate around 100 trucks with the priority being perishable goods like fresh food, and medicine. No other passengers except truck drivers will be allowed on board.


----------



## g.spinoza

https://milano.repubblica.it/cronac...7180/?ref=RHPPTP-BH-I251519435-C12-P1-S2.3-T1

Youngest casualty to date in Italy, at 32. He contracted an infection in Cuba and his immune defenses were lowered.

https://milano.repubblica.it/cronac...044/?ref=RHPPTP-BH-I251519435-C12-P1-S1.12-T1

The President of Lombardia, Attilio Fontana, showed data from cell phone companies telling that 40% of the Lombards, yesterday, didn't respect the "stay at home" order. This doesn't automatically mean that they were all out without a reason, as many people will still have to go to the pharmacy, or to the supermarket.

This morning I went to the supermarket in Brescia. Very few people around, plenty of goods on the shelves, but what impressed me was the number of ambulances with active sirens. During the 15+15 km journey, I counted 4 of them, plus one aid-car.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I like to run for fitness and recreation. Not marathon style, but a good 5 kilometer run every other evening.


I used to do that as well (4 to 8 km every third day) but I won't do that anymore, until everything has passed. I have asthma - technically a previous respiratory illness - so I'm quite scared.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You also live in the hotspot: Bergamo & Brescia have the highest number of cases of all provinces.


----------



## Attus

Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán made an extraordinary announcement today at 3PM CET. However, his video was streamed silent, so we saw his mouth moving, but no one has any idea what he said.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> I have asthma - technically a previous respiratory illness - so I'm quite scared.


:-/ Be careful!


----------



## Penn's Woods

Road-related virus item:

“The Pennsylvania Turnpike has suspended the use of cash and credit cards at interchanges, and now it is ending fast-food service and inside dining service at all 17 service plazas along its 552-mile roadway. Inside restrooms are closed, although portable toilets and hand-washing stations are available. Gas stations and convenience stores are open.”

Re that last sentence: the service plazas typically have a building with a food court, bathrooms, travel information, and so on; AND a gas station (usually Sunoco) with a convenience store (mini-mart) attached.

Per TV station NBC10 in Philadelphia.


----------



## MichiH

The first German municipality has ordered a curfew. It's Tirschenreuth at the border to the Czech republic. It has 6,500 inhabitants and there are 36 infected people.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/49.8888/12.3191

https://www.merkur.de/bayern/corona...assnahmen-restaurants-hotels-zr-13603820.html

https://www.kreis-tir.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Ausgangssperre_final.pdf - you can challenge it


----------



## tfd543

It seems that the backbone of the genetic code of the virus differs substantially from the older corona vira and that Its affinity to the membrane protein ACE-2 is tremendously high despite being unfavourable computationally... these are the arguments that the virus is based on evolution rather than being produced in a lab. If it was to be engineered, people would have chosen a backbone that is already known to be devastating. This virus is more resembling the type of virus found in bats (yes Its weird). Moreover, no one Can create such a high molecular affinity with today’s technology... 

Nature is scary!!


----------



## tfd543

^^many that still believe its man-made, hence their motivation to conduct the study... now they are thinking to play with the concentration of ACE-2, if Its lower, the chances of infections are lower as well because the spike protein of the corona cant bind in that case. They also mention inhibitors to block the binding. 

We gonna win, keep calm lads.


----------



## MichiH

Coronavirus: Germany has lower death rate than other countries


> Richard Pebody, the High Threat Pathogens Infectious Hazard Management team leader at the World Health Organisation Regional Office for Europe, said the difference could be due to *differences in counting cases or in the actual quality of treatment*.


----------



## CNGL

And the last Italian province stronghold has fallen . I was all in with Isernia, which has reported two coronavirus cases today.


----------



## italystf

A column of 70 military trucks transports coffins from Bergamo to crematoria in other cities, as the crematorium of Bergamo has reached its full capacity.









https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2...gycZs8nO75Rwmb0hJaxsq4nyCanjToLyLNr1KlfBvZo#1


----------



## Verso

The virus has finally reached Montenegro, but I think it still hasn't reached the European part of Kazakhstan.


----------



## CNGL

Meanwhile and on the same day both Isernia and Montenegro fell casualty to the coronavirus Wuhan (where it all started) reported no new cases. It is definitely possible.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> A column of 70 military trucks transports coffins from Bergamo to crematoria in other cities, as the crematorium of Bergamo has reached its full capacity.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2...gycZs8nO75Rwmb0hJaxsq4nyCanjToLyLNr1KlfBvZo#1


This picture is astounding.


----------



## legolego

^^

about 60 coffins will be transeferred to Modena , Acqui Terme, Domodossola and few other cities for cremation. After that, will return in Lombardia entrused to parents






disturbing....


----------



## keber

MichiH said:


> Option A): Maybe Germans made more tests and detected more milder cases. Italy made 165,000 tests, the number of tests in Germany is unknown. German labs might analyze up to 160,000 tests per week.
> 
> Option B): Maybe the virus arrived earlier in Italy and they are "more ahead" compared to Germany. Infected people die after about 18.5 days. Maybe the number of death people will increase in Germany soon?
> 
> Option C): The median age of infected people in Italy is 63 years. In Germany, it's 47 years. The older, the higher the risk to pass away.


Option D): A patient has some sort of lung disease (which itself is not critical) and gets coronavirus. Patient later dies because of complications. In other countries official death cause is written coronavirus. In Germany the cause is lung disease (or any other preexisting disease or condition).
I read that in quite some news.


----------



## Gyorgy

Verso said:


> Slovenia is now also in quarantine. We're only allowed to go to work or the closest grocery or pharmacy and some other essential trips. Being caught outside for leisure will cost you 70-400 euros.
> 
> :runaway:


Sorry, but there is a long list of what is still allowed... being outside for leisure included... what is prohibited actually?

https://www.gov.si/novice/2020-03-1...reditvah-in-drugih-dogodkih-na-javnih-krajih/


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Some countries want to mandate face masks. I wonder how they are going to do that practically. You need millions per week while there are shortages in the places they're most needed: hospitals. 

Face masks can only be used for a couple of hours and must then be discarded. So if you go out in public every day or every other day, you need a couple per week at least, and then multiply that number with the total (adult) population.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Slovenia is now also in quarantine. We're only allowed to go to work or the closest grocery or pharmacy and some other essential trips. Being caught outside for leisure will cost you 70-400 euros.
> 
> :runaway:




That’s not good. Fresh air is beneficial and it’s the first day of spring. (Expecting 24C here.) I haven’t heard of any jurisdiction prohibiting outdoor recreation so long as you’re not with other people. On the other hand, we’ve had escalating business closures all week. New York state just prohibited anyone working for a non-essential business to go to work. (Earlier in the week there were limits...no more than 50 percent, then no more than 25, of the workforce of a given business should be at work.) And as far as “the closest” grocery, that’s fine if they’re stocked; I visited seven stores looking for toilet paper on Wednesday and didn’t find it.


----------



## PovilD

I wonder if such level lockdowns when you can't go out (which overall is healthy) will be even effective in the long term. Such restrictions of freedom of movement can be more harmful than the virus itself in the long-term, although I can't judge. I think it's possible to handle it for two months, but likely not more. People may just lose their morale.

We will see what will happen in the following months.


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> I haven’t heard of any jurisdiction prohibiting outdoor recreation so long as you’re not with other people.


Italy and Spain.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Two parties in the Netherlands appear very eager to imprison the entire population. But there don't seem to be much appetite among the public for a hard lockdown. People already don't know what to do with children at home for a few days, let alone weeks or even months. 

My city called on people not to go to the dump as much, because there was a huge lineup of people wanting to get rid of junk from their attic or garden.


----------



## PovilD

Personally, I can handle the lockdowns as much as I can go out (excluding exceptations). I live in the commie block, so I personally consider public areas (elevators) inside the building more dangerous, than outside itself.

The virus is so contagious, that even me, well informed, think, that "slow the spread thing" is very hard thing to achieve even for intravert like me  Social distancing is handable, but touching things, probability to breath air with corona virus, it's just too hard...


----------



## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> Italy and Spain.


As a matter of fact it is not forbidden in Italy yet.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I went to the supermarket around 7 p.m. It appears that the panic buying is over or at least has receded significantly. The supermarket was well-stocked, even stuff that was out of stock earlier this week was now plentiful available.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> I went to the supermarket around 7 p.m. It appears that the panic buying is over or at least has receded significantly. The supermarket was well-stocked, even stuff that was out of stock earlier this week was now plentiful available.


I've also been to a supermarket on Monday and today. Both at 7AM when it opened. The shelves were mostly full on Monday but quite empty today.

I don't think it's wise to generalize from visiting just one supermarket in one town...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I know people that drive truck for that supermarket chain (largest in the Netherlands). They said that they had a lot of cancelled loads due to reduced demand. Some stuff is still tight though. They also gave some non-essential products a lower priority, which is why the potato chips were sold out earlier in the week. Those chips bag is a lot of volume that could be used for toilet paper or other high-demand products.


----------



## CNGL

g.spinoza said:


> As a matter of fact it is not forbidden in Italy yet.


Only Spain forbids outdoor recreation altoghether. As a result I started to run at home, through the corridor and onwards to the balcony. It takes 25 round trips just to do 1 km.


----------



## Attus

In news you always hear "Italy", "Italy". However, if you check detailed Italian figures, it's quite interesting. Round one half of the infected people and 2/3 of the fatalities are in Lombardy, approx. 1/6 of Italian population. South of the Appenines it's not exactly the Paradise but the situation is much less stressed. Rome has less fatalities since the beginning of the crisis, than Madrid in one day (these cities have approximately the same population). 
And even inside Lombardy: Bergamo and Brescia are these days like the hell, the rest of the region is a bit less terrible.


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> In news you always hear "Italy", "Italy". However, if you check detailed Italian figures, it's quite interesting. Round one half of the infected people and 2/3 of the fatalities are in Lombardy, approx. 1/6 of Italian population. South of the Appenines it's not exactly the Paradise but the situation is much less stressed. Rome has less fatalities since the beginning of the crisis, than Madrid in one day (these cities have approximately the same population).
> And even inside Lombardy: Bergamo and Brescia are these days like the hell, the rest of the region is a bit less terrible.


True, but it's easier to think in terms of countries rather than regions. Everybody knows where Italy is, while Lombardy, or Brescia, is more difficult. The average Italian doesn't know where San Sebastian, or Montpellier, or Saxony are.


----------



## MichiH

^^ German states and municipalities have introduced additional restrictions.

The strictest rules are in *Bavaria*. They've ordered a curfew "light" (_Ausgangsbeschränkung_ instead of _Ausgangssperre_), that means you can go to work, go buying food or medicine and it's still allowed to have a walk outside. Restaurants, hairdresser's shops and hardware shops must be closed from this Saturday. It is forbidden to be outside in groups. Fine up to 25,000 €.
There are also some municipalities with a full surfew.

In *Baden-Württemberg*, you can still go out but it's not allowed to be outside in groups with more than 3 persons.
However, some municipalities have stricter rules, e.g. Freiburg forbids entering parks at all.

In *Hamburg*, the limit is 6 persons. In *Hesse*, *Rhineland-Palatinate* and *Saarland* 5 persons.

In *Brandenburg*, it's not allowed to have an event with more then 1,000 persons. Events with more than 100 persons must be registered.

In *Thuringia*, events up to 50 persons are still allowed.

etc.

:nuts:


https://www.welt.de/politik/deutsch...schraenkungen-in-Bayern-und-dem-Saarland.html


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> As a matter of fact it is not forbidden in Italy yet.


It's reported that it has changed now. Italy has forbidden to go out for leisure!?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Apparently there is a 40 or 50 kilometer lineup of trucks on the Bulgarian A4 at the border crossing 'Kapitan Andreevo' with Turkey. Similar scenario as Poland and Hungary? Or are these all truckers that were released at Nickelsdorf and have now reached the Turkish border?


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> It's reported that it has changed now. Italy has forbidden to go out for leisure!?


Not completely. New decree states that it is allowed to go out for doing sport, alone and "close to home" whatever that means.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> Italy and Spain.




I meant any American jurisdiction.


----------



## volodaaaa

Well, it is not guaranteed. There is a massive wave of solidarity towards Italy here. You are basically perceived as heroes we can learn a lesson from. There may be individual insults but just ignore them.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

g.spinoza said:


> I'm worried that in the future, after this outbreak ends, Italians will be regarded as "infectors" for a long time.
> I read an article about an Italian guy from near Trieste, who is blocked in Thailand and decided to say to everyone he's Slovenian, because "Italians get beaten and spat on".


The infection was carried here by lots of locals as well who came from abroad. The first recorded case was an Iranian returning to Estonia from Iran so AFAIK there is no animosity towards Italians at this point. Rather the discussion evolves around the actions (or lack thereof) of the Estonian Health Board who apparently already in February had prepared an analysis that predicted 30,000 infected and 1,300 in hospital in 10 weeks if the government didn't do anything. This was not made public, supposedly to prevent panic. If it had been made known to the public, people would've possibly been more ready to implement measures to deal with the infection at a more early stage.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think the problem for governments was when to implement measures, as it isn't always clear when community transmission begins. Many European countries already had infections by early February, but those were travel-related from China. It didn't began to explode until large numbers of infected tourists returned from Northern Italy and Austria. 

Initially, Northern Italy appear to be the primary source, but after a while it became clear that bars in Austrian ski resorts were also a major source of infection spread in Europe. Evidently almost all of those cases were eventually traced back to Germany. 

This makes you wonder that if travel restrictions are lifted by late spring or early summer, another wave of infections will evolve due to summer holiday travel, which is considerably larger than ski trips. I suppose it depends on how much the virus transmission dies down by late April or May, considering that almost the entire world is now in some kind of lockdown.


----------



## Fatfield

g.spinoza said:


> It was the first recovery in Cremona, not the first in general.
> I read it here (in Italian):
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Coronavirus, a Cremona il primo risveglio dalla terapia intensiva: «Ricordo una paura terribile»
> 
> 
> All’ospedale di Cremona un momento di gioia tra giorni di ritmi serrati. La capo sala: «Vedere una paziente senza tubi, guardarla respirare autonomamente, è stata un’emozione indescrivibile»
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.corriere.it
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> EDIT: The patient was a woman, so maybe it's not the one you heard about.
> 
> There have been a lot of recoveries from Covid-19: in Italy I believe almost 10 thousand people have been declared as "healed".
> 
> Italian patient 1, the 38-y-o sportsman from Codogno, have recovered few days ago, after 3 weeks of artificial ventilation and medically-induced coma.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Coronavirus, dimesso il Paziente 1: “State a casa”. VIDEO
> 
> 
> Leggi su Sky TG24 l'articolo Coronavirus, dimesso il Paziente 1: “Io fortunato, state a casa”. VIDEO
> 
> 
> 
> 
> tg24.sky.it


Brilliant! Thanks for that.


----------



## x-type

Does anbody know what is the current situation in China and South Korea? 
South Korea was indicated as the most affected country afte China by the beginning of the year. Both countries today have very low number of new infections. Also, the number of death cases remained at very low level In South Korea (thank God). What is it about? In China there is probably high repression and public discipline, in South Korea high public discipline. Or is it something else?


----------



## volodaaaa

The ads impersonating posts are gross. I already hate this forum.


----------



## PovilD

g.spinoza said:


> I'm worried that in the future, after this outbreak ends, Italians will be regarded as "infectors" for a long time.
> I read an article about an Italian guy from near Trieste, who is blocked in Thailand and decided to say to everyone he's Slovenian, because "Italians get beaten and spat on".


We are all responsible for this. Italy just happened to be ahead. I think it could have happened anywhere in Europe or elsewhere than other countries would follow :/

As for me, I don't see Italy that way. I think we are all responsible, thinking that we live happily ever after, and all instant struggles are opted out indefinitely.

We, in the Baltics, were constantly fearing for Donbass like conflict, after Crimea events. Last economic crisis struck us harder than many places in Europe. We know better how instant struggles looks like, although it was mostly with international conflicts rather than epidemics.



x-type said:


> Does anbody know what is the current situation in China and South Korea?
> South Korea was indicated as the most affected country afte China by the beginning of the year. Both countries today have very low number of new infections. Also, the number of death cases remained at very low level In South Korea (thank God). What is it about? In China there is probably high repression and public discipline, in South Korea high public discipline. Or is it something else?


South Korea do a lot of testing. China is testing too, people with thermometers everywhere checking temperatures.
Developed West should invest more in testing. Lockdowns are just defense against virus. Attack against viruses are widespread testing.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> This makes you wonder that if travel restrictions are lifted by late spring or early summer, another wave of infections will evolve due to summer holiday travel, which is considerably larger than ski trips. I suppose it depends on how much the virus transmission dies down by late April or May, considering that almost the entire world is now in some kind of lockdown.


I think travel restrictions will take place for quite a while. Maybe more developed World will come out first, lifting the restrictions between countries. Travel restrictions with Developing World countries will probably take more time. I think the poorer the country, the more poorly the things will be managed, and the outbreaks will be harder.

Latvia is doing quite a good testing, there are even chances for reaching South Korean model, but Estonia and Lithuania are a little bit "relaxed" in terms of testing.


----------



## tfd543

g.spinoza said:


> I'm worried that in the future, after this outbreak ends, Italians will be regarded as "infectors" for a long time.
> I read an article about an Italian guy from near Trieste, who is blocked in Thailand and decided to say to everyone he's Slovenian, because "Italians get beaten and spat on".


There Will be some stigmatization maybe just like the Germans after ww2.

Or to put it more general, corona Will be associated with Italy either positively or negatively. I dont know, in the end of the day solidarity will prevail, hopefully.


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> There Will be some stigmatization for sure just like the Germans after ww2.


Hardly I think so.


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> Hardly I think so.


Gave it another thought and revised. 

But What about the jerkz that fled from the North before it was locked down?


----------



## Fatfield

tfd543 said:


> There Will be some stigmatization maybe just like the Germans after ww2.
> 
> Or to put it more general, corona Will be associated with Italy either positively or negatively. I dont know, in the end of the day solidarity will prevail, hopefully.


I very much doubt it. Here in Britain there is only one country getting the blame, China.


----------



## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> Gave it another thought and revised.
> 
> But What about the jerkz that fled from the North before it was locked down?


Scenes like that have been reported everywhere, from Paris to London.


----------



## tfd543

I understand, but I am still convinced that less people Will visit the country after the crisis is over. What do you Think? crowds again in Rome and Venice in June/July?


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> This makes you wonder that if travel restrictions are lifted by late spring or early summer, another wave of infections will evolve due to summer holiday travel, which is considerably larger than ski trips. I suppose it depends on how much the virus transmission dies down by late April or May, considering that almost the entire world is now in some kind of lockdown.


I think the chance of lifting international restriction by the early summer is near zero.

Even if from medical point of view it could be possible the politics will prevent it. All the governments will try to look tough and decisive and keeping "the pesky sick foreigners" out is the easiest option to sell to the masses. Especially if countries will be in different phases of the epidemic. 

Call me cynic but I think we can all forget about foreign trips this summer.

Unless of course economy start hurting really, really bad. Then some authorities might make decision that reviving economic activity is worth removing the illusion of safety due to lockdowns.


----------



## PovilD

tfd543 said:


> I understand, but I am still convinced that less people Will visit the country after the crisis is over. What do you Think? crowds again in Rome and Venice in June/July?


Now is the goal to end the epidemics. I guess, maybe next year at earliest.


----------



## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> I understand, but I am still convinced that less people Will visit the country after the crisis is over. What do you Think? crowds again in Rome and Venice in June/July?


They may hate the people, but still will come to the country.


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> Unless of course economy start hurting really, really bad. Then some authorities might make decision that reviving economic activity is worth removing the illusion of safety due to lockdowns.


Limited controlled economy probably always with the data how virus is spreading, unless we could hammer the virus like China did in two months.


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> Limited controlled economy probably always with the data how virus is spreading, unless we could hammer the virus like China did in two months.


There is no way of replicating the "Chinese solution". For one thing the virus is much more widely spread around Europe than it ever was in China. In China it was only really the Hubei province, especially the Wuhan. In Europe we have most of the major countries with virus widespread in population. Italy, Spain, France, Germany, the UK following shortly etc. 

Secondly, even with the current restrictions, European societies can't be controlled as tightly as Chinese one. Will you sign up for being constantly tracked and awarded "social points"?

Thirdly, it is over 3 months since the epidemic started and restrictions are only slowly being lifted in China.

The idea that in 2 - 3 months it will all be history and we will just go back to where we were is just not feasible. Holiday this summer might be trip around your own country. Providing the internal restrictions won't be too harsh and there will be any tourist infrastructure operating...


----------



## PovilD

Personally, I don't mind about border restrictions in current time being. Even if this take more time. Virus is more stressful than that.


----------



## x-type

PovilD said:


> We are all responsible for this. Italy just happened to be ahead. I think it could have happened anywhere in Europe or elsewhere than other countries would follow :/
> 
> As for me, I don't see Italy that way. I think we are all responsible, thinking that we live happily ever after, and all instant struggles are opted out indefinitely.
> 
> We, in the Baltics, were constantly fearing for Donbass like conflict, after Crimea events. Last economic crisis struck us harder than many places in Europe. We know better how instant struggles looks like, although it was mostly with international conflicts rather than epidemics.
> 
> 
> 
> South Korea do a lot of testing. China is testing too, people with thermometers everywhere checking temperatures.
> Developed West should invest more in testing. Lockdowns are just defense against virus. Attack against viruses are widespread testing.


Testing is not curing Covid-19 nor killing the virus. It can only indicate infected people and force them to quarantine/isolation. Europe is appealing for isolation. I don't dare to judge which model is good. If a man gets negative test, does it mean he will be negative tomorrow too without infection in the mid time? Of course not.

That leads to the topic about Italy/China reputation in the world. Here in Croatia we have divided opinions:
-one think that only repression as in China can fight against virus (I am in that group) and that Italians went too mild to the fight against it. I also know it from the first hand, my frind from Milano told me how much time passed till people becvame conscious that just one fast coffee isn't really the required isolation. Authorities were also not harsh enough here.
-others blame China and America for that. Doesn't matter which one of them, the point is that virus is made artificially, laboratories, conspiracy theories bla bla bla...


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> Personally, I don't mind about border restrictions in current time being. Even if this take more time. Virus is more stressful than that.



For you possibly yes, but for Indian poor who might soon basically starve due to unprecedented lockdown the virus might be a bit less scary than lockdown of the whole Indian economy...

I'm sure there will be whole PhDs written about our response, in due course...

Just remember that we (I mean people from fairly affluent European countries) have it relatively easy, so far. All we are asked to do is to watch more Netflix and increasingly we are being paid for that by the states. Yes, we have a high(ish) death toll but mostly among very old and already sick people. 

In less affluent countries it can be much worse.

But even here it will be interesting to see how long the states will be able to pay people for doing essentially nothing. A month? Two? Three? Year? Who will pay for it?

There are so many questions and so few answers.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> The idea that in 2 - 3 months it will all be history and we will just go back to where we were is just not feasible. Holiday this summer might be trip around your own country. Providing the internal restrictions won't be too harsh and there will be any tourist infrastructure operating...


Well, tourist infrastructure isn't really needed to travel. You can always take a tent with you. And there will always be private apartment or room rental, unless the government bans it (short-term rental is banned in Poland just now – but I guess it will be lifted after this whole situation stabilizes).

All these restrictions are being introduced quite rapidly – but their lifting will have to be slow and steady, so that the virus won't start spreading so rapidly again. This is how it was done in China out of Hubei – e.g. initially only some restaurants were allowed to open.

Europe's advantage in the fight with the epidemic is that we don't have such high population density as China. So maybe it will be easier to combat and we will manage to do it without constantly tracing people with smartphones.

But opening the borders may take longer as the countries are fighting with the virus mostly by themselves and they will be afraid of letting people in from countries where the epidemic is more spread out.



Meanwhile... Results of the survey verifying people's opinions on various public services in Poland:










The survey was conducted yet before the virus came to Poland, so it isn't affected by the epidemic.

It seems, the most trusted service in Poland of all mentioned is the police. In 1997, the actions of the Polish police were considered good by only 50% of the Polish society. Now it's 80%.

Translating the names:
1. Police – 80%
2. Local (municipal) authorities – 74%
3. Military – 72%
4. NBP (central bank) – 59%
5. President – 58%
6. Roman-Catholic Church – 57%
7. IPN (National Memory Institute – a governmental institution that is dealing with history, mostly with the one after 1945) – 54%
8. ZUS (social security) – 53%
9. RPO (citizen rights defender/commissioner) – 47%
10. CBA (central anti-corruption office) – 45%
11. NFZ (public healthcare) – 43%
12. NIK (Supreme Audit Chamber) – 40%
13. Sejm (the parliament – lower chamber) – 37%
14. KAS (the taxation authorities) – 37%
15. Senate (the parliament – upper chamber) – 35%
16. Solidarity (trade union) – 33%
17. Courts – 32%
18. Prosecutor office – 31%
19. Constitutional Court – 30%
20. OPZZ (trade union) – 19%
21. FZZ (trade union) – 14%

I wonder how it looks like in other countries. Are e.g. the trade unions so mistrusted? In Poland they are often considered to act not for the advantage of employees they are supposed to defend but for the advantage of their officials. Also the opinions on courts are low, probably because the waiting times for a trials are usually months long. 

To get the current full report I would have to pay but I found one from 2018: https://www.cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/2018/K_121_18.PDF. These are the conclusions:
– the opinions about the parliament strongly depend on the political views of the surveyed people; the current parliament is most trusted and respected by people of low incomes and involved in religious practices, meanwhile the government is least liked by people supporting the opposition, not going to churches regularly, most educated, living in big cities, with highest incomes
– it's similar in case of the president
– the actions of the constitutional court (being a very controversial institution recently, with the dispute brought even to the European Parliament) are more liked by the supporters of the current government
– in case of common courts, their actions are more liked by those who support the opposition (which makes sense as the opposition opposes the changes in the court system being pushed by the government)
– most negative opinions about the police and the military are from the youngest people, those living in big cities and those with highest incomes
– social security is most disliked by the people below the age of 55, the current pensioners seem to like it (maybe because people currently working expect that their pensions will be lower than the current ones, which are already low)
– the people most happy about the public healthcare system are these the oldest and the youngest ones, and the least educated (which is interesting, as these people usually cannot avoid using it, while those who are more educated and not so low often choose private healthcare packages to avoid using the public healthcare)
– quite obviously, the trade unions are least liked by private businessmen; they are most liked by public administration office workers; Solidarity is viewed better by those more religious and more right-wing-supporting


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Trade unions in the Netherlands are perceived to be only working in the interest of old workers approaching retirement age. Unionization among young workers is very low and decreasing among middle-aged workers as well.


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> I understand, but I am still convinced that less people Will visit the country after the crisis is over. What do you Think? crowds again in Rome and Venice in June/July?


I believe that tourism worldwide will face a challenge. Not Italy exclusively.


----------



## Spookvlieger

ChrisZwolle said:


> Trade unions in the Netherlands are perceived to be only working in the interest of old workers approaching retirement age. Unionization among young workers is very low and decreasing among middle-aged workers as well.


What a difference with Belgium. I know almost no-one wich is not a member of a union.
I'm a union partisan btw.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Trade unions in the Netherlands are perceived to be only working in the interest of old workers approaching retirement age. Unionization among young workers is very low and decreasing among middle-aged workers as well.


What is quite funny is that the young who are not unionizing at the same time are those complaining that they end up with all sort of "shitjobs". Well, maybe they should join the dots...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Unionization in the Netherlands is only 19%. Under 25 it is only 5%. Even among older workers (55-65) it is only 35%. 

The Netherlands has less of a strike mentality. There are small-scale strikes but it's nothing like France or even Germany where whole sectors or even the country goes down. Some unions in Wallonia apparently plan strikes half a year in advance, with the goal of the strike yet to be determined. 🙃


----------



## Spookvlieger

geogregor said:


> What is quite funny is that the young who are not unionizing at the same time are those complaining that they end up with all sort of "shitjobs". Well, maybe they should join the dots...


It has hardly anything to do with that but you need someone who sill stand behind your back to fight for your intrests because there is no way you are going to be able to face general management alone if you are in lower positions. They'll just shit all over you. You are replaceble. And with current developing crisis in mind this is going to be true more than ever.

That why you need workers unions to have a collective voice with the general staff of your workplace.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Unionization in the Netherlands is only 19%. Under 25 it is only 5%. Even among older workers (55-65) it is only 35%.
> 
> The Netherlands has less of a strike mentality. There are small-scale strikes but it's nothing like France or even Germany where whole sectors or even the country goes down. Some unions in Wallonia apparently plan strikes half a year in advance, with the goal of the strike yet to be determined. 🙃


Sounds like the communist union. They don't understand a thing of how companies operate and in general make things worse for the average employee. A few years ago we were going to get additional wage the unions were advocating for but it wasn't enough for the red union so they asked for more. They blew it for all the rest of us and nobdoy got anything in the end because they will never be happy unless the CEO of the company is on its knees begging. I hate them with a passion.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> Unionization in the Netherlands is only 19%.


It was 18.5% for Germany in 2018.









Gewerkschaften: Weniger als 20 Prozent der Beschäftigten sind noch in einer Gewerkschaft - WELT


Mehr als zwei Drittel halten starke Gewerkschaften aber für wichtig




www.welt.de







ChrisZwolle said:


> nothing like France or even Germany where whole sectors or even the country goes down.


True for France, and true for 20th century in Germany. It's different for present Germany though.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Trade unions in the Netherlands are perceived to be only working in the interest of old workers approaching retirement age. Unionization among young workers is very low and decreasing among middle-aged workers as well.


Same in Italy.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> I believe that tourism worldwide will face a challenge. Not Italy exclusively.


I would be happy to have freedom of movement inside Italy by the end of the spring/beginning of the summer. Borders should remain sealed until the situaltion is stabilized everywhere.


----------



## italystf

Rebasepoiss said:


> The infection was carried here by lots of locals as well who came from abroad. The first recorded case was an Iranian returning to Estonia from Iran so AFAIK there is no animosity towards Italians at this point. Rather the discussion evolves around the actions (or lack thereof) of the Estonian Health Board who apparently already in February had prepared an analysis that predicted 30,000 infected and 1,300 in hospital in 10 weeks if the government didn't do anything. *This was not made public, supposedly to prevent panic. If it had been made known to the public, people would've possibly been more ready to implement measures to deal with the infection at a more early stage.*


This is something you may expect in China or Russia, not in EU.


----------



## Kpc21

joshsam said:


> Sounds like the communist union. They don't understand a thing of how companies operate and in general make things worse for the average employee.


Well, this is exactly how Solidarity in many industries in Poland works. And, as you may know, they emerged as an anti-communist movement when Poland was communist.



italystf said:


> This is something you may expect in China or Russia, not in EU.


Well, panic is something you usually want to avoid for any cost in such extreme situations. It can be more dangerous than the virus itself.


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> I believe that tourism worldwide will face a challenge. Not Italy exclusively.


Just Got vouchers from my cancelled trip with Polish Airlines in April. Im still hoping to redeem them in July.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

PovilD said:


> Latvia is doing quite a good testing, there are even chances for reaching South Korean model, but Estonia and Lithuania are a little bit "relaxed" in terms of testing.


For the past 5 days Estonia has averaged around 500 tests a day, the theoretical maximum ability of the labs is around 1,000 tests a day. South Korea does 15-20 thousand test per day but their population is nearly 40 times bigger so per capita Estonia is actually testing roughly on the same level as South Korea. I think the difference is that South Korea acted relatively fast with implementing preventative measures.


----------



## tfd543

Im not noticing any reduction in video quality in Netflix as planned to withstand the increased number of users. It was implemented within the EU some days ago.


----------



## Verso

Kpc21 said:


> Well, panic is something you usually want to avoid for any cost in such extreme situations. It can be more dangerous than the virus itself.


I disagree. It's exactly because of this "don't panic" narrative, why we're in this mess. People understand "don't panic" as "ah, it's all fine for now, we can still do whatever we want". We actually need more "panic".


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Works like a charm in my IPhone. Try to re-install the app or restart ur phone.


I've deleted and reinstalled (and restarted the phone several times); nothing.

If I try to log in with my usual user name and password, it tells me "Login failed. It looks as if you don't have an account." If I try to create a NEW account using my usual user name and password, it tells me that account already exists. Obviously, both of those statements can't be true. If one of the mods who has nothing better to do would contact the admin or whatever? (I'm on my laptop now, but I'd rather be able to access this through the phone.)

EDIT/P.S.: Changed my password as well. Still no luck.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

italystf said:


> This is something you may expect in China or Russia, not in EU.


Some people claim that no analysis was ever produced and that the Estonian Health Board is just blatantly lying. It's a complete shitshow.


----------



## PovilD

tfd543 said:


> The death toll increased again in Italy yesterday. I Think youre right. Our freedom Will be curtailed this summer also.


Death rates are usually mirroring with new cases three weeks ago.


----------



## mgk920

ChrisZwolle said:


> Sadly this isn't the sensationalist media, but the mainstream media (like NOS or RTL News). They love to focus on the outlier situations.
> 
> I saw a press conference with the prime minister and it's astounding how journalists ask stupid questions. They are either dumb questions where everyone already knows the answer to, or they try really hard to pull out some kind of sensationalist, fearmongering or controversial statement, what we don't need in a crisis like this.


Here in the USA, the entire mainstream media ('MSM') has been totally driven by 'How can we best tar and dispose of Donald Trump?' ever since the 2016 election. This crisis is no different and as a result, precious little truly useful information is being disseminated here, either.

It is beyond sad....

Mike


----------



## Attus

tfd543 said:


> The death toll increased again in Italy yesterday. I Think youre right. Our freedom Will be curtailed this summer also.


And what's up in Denmark? a couple of weeks ago Denmark reported a dramatic increase of cases, day by day, but for approx. two weeks no news from Denmark.


----------



## italystf

PovilD said:


> Death rates are usually mirroring with new cases three weeks ago.


Peak of new infections happens before the peak of deaths.


----------



## italystf

tfd543 said:


> The death toll increased again in Italy yesterday. I Think youre right. Our freedom Will be curtailed this summer also.


Maybe not the whole summer, but the early summer very likely.
Moreover, international travels will likely be liberalized well after internal travels (because different countries will defeat the epidemic in different periods). Italy should keep borders closed for a quite long time, to prevent new infections from abroad. In China domestic infections have ended, but few infected people are caught entering every day.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> And what's up in Denmark? a couple of weeks ago Denmark reported a dramatic increase of cases, day by day, but for approx. two weeks no news from Denmark.


There are too many territories to keep track of in the media, even with the 24/7 corona news cycle. Even Spain doesn't appear to make the news the same way that Italy does.

You can find statistics here, they appear accurate and up-to-date: 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic by country and territory - Wikipedia


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> There are too many territories to keep track of in the media, even with the 24/7 corona news cycle. Even Spain doesn't appear to make the news the same way that Italy does.
> 
> You can find statistics here, they appear accurate and up-to-date: 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic by country and territory - Wikipedia


Spain isn't better than Italy currently. Italy is close to new infections' peak (if it hasn't already reached it, it isn't easy to tell by numbers), while Spain has still a longer way to the peak.
In Madrid the situation is terrible, with patients sleeping on hospital floor (!), something that I never heard happening in Italy, not even in the Bergamo/Brescia hotspot.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Interesting, in German the name for Moldova is _Moldau_. I only knew that for the German name of the Vltava River in Czechia.

In Dutch it is Moldavië (Moldavia), so apparently it has its roots in the Russian name. The same goes for Kyrgyzstan, which is Kirgizië in Dutch, from Russian Киргизия - _Kirgiziya._


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> It has some interesting history. If I remember well from what I read somewhere, it was installed there by some unknown people during the night in the early 1990s. After that, nobody had courage to decide to remove it as it could be considered as violating the religious freedoms.


Interesting. I have also seen it in lecture halls in Italy, and it was a lecture in science lol.


----------



## tfd543

Attus said:


> And what's up in Denmark? a couple of weeks ago Denmark reported a dramatic increase of cases, day by day, but for approx. two weeks no news from Denmark.


Well, What Can I say, still too many jerkz outside due to the sunny weather. Shops relatively crowded but acceptable.

I use this link Denmark Coronavirus: 2,201 Cases and 65 Deaths - Worldometer

I like it because its concise. Enough about statistics, we are still not peaking but the slope has declined slightly...

Right now, Danes are more worried about the economic consequences. I see that the news are slowly beginning to focus more on this. We are known to spend lavishly, which is stupid but yet true.


----------



## Kpc21

tfd543 said:


> lecture


In Poland most school classrooms have crucifixes.

Actually, it seems that this cross in the parliament was installed by well known members of the Solidarity party that was back then the ruling party – and this incident was recorded by the CCTV cameras.

And there were twice some appeals of left-wing parties to remove it – in 1997 just after it got installed and later in 2011 – but nobody had courage to do it, even while left wing was ruling and right wing was in the opposition. It would probably be a large scandal, many Catholics would protest it's violating their freedoms.

Being a secular country isn't easy, especially if you have a lot of religious people in the society – you have to balance between secularity and freedom of religion...


----------



## italystf

In Italy is common to see the crucifix in public places, although I think most people don't care if there is a crucifix or not.


----------



## CNGL

Breaking: From Monday Spain is shutting down every non-essential business as well. Only supermarkets, pharmacies and a few others will remain open.


----------



## MichiH

My motorway u/c thread is dead!


----------



## bogdymol

MichiH said:


> View attachment 41214
> 
> 
> My motorway u/c thread is dead!


I quoted your issue in the official new-SSC thread. Hopefully this rule will be changed.


----------



## Kpc21

I just was in a local supermarket.

There were not many customers inside but it's not weird for Saturday evening.








"Dear customer

– Please approach the checkout separately.

– Keep distance of at lest 1 m from the next customer."








"Please take out the bakery

using disposable gloves
or foil bags"

Although it was very difficult to find the gloves, except for some used ones laying on the top of the racks with bread. They were thrown into somewhere deep.








There are lines marked at the checkout to facilitate keeping the distance. And there is a plexiglass panel between the seller and the customer – although it's small and I don't think very helpful. In another store I saw the whole conveyor belt hidden behind a huge sheet of plastic foil, with only its beginning available for the customer to put the products and a small slot at the end to pay.








Soap and other hand cleaning products are easily available.








Shelves full of toilet paper and paper towels. It's even on a special offer!








So much toilet paper that it didn't fit in its place and they had to put a palette full of Regina between the beverages.








It's not visible too well here but I didn't want to violate people's privacy by taking a photo from too close... But at this checkout desk they weren't following the rules at all. By the way, as you can see, not all desks had those plexiglass panels (although all open ones had).

At the other open checkout desk (there were 2 open), the customers were following the rules. It even required asking who is last because with people standing at such distance from each other it's not that clear.








They changed the opening hours, although they are anyway longer than what the media say. According to the media, all Biedronka stores are open 8:00–20:00 but it seems it actually differs – otherwise, there would be no reason to use this kind of sheets with empty places to write in the opening hours of the specific store.

But the technical break from 13:30 to 14:30 is countrywide in all their stores, and it's introduced so that the employees from the morning shift and from the afternoon shift don't have to meet each other. This way if it happens that the whole store must get quarantined, it applies only to the employees from the specific shift.

Interestingly, the opening hours are the same all the week – from Monday to Saturday and on shopping Sundays (currently one in a month, except for April and December because of Easter and Christmas).

Through the PA system, apart from the usual music and notifications about opening and closing checkout desks, there were pre-recorded texts played reminding of the rules, that the stores remain open and thanking the employees for the work in the difficult times. There were no usual advertisements of special offers and bargains.


----------



## Attus

You have lots of soap and toilet paper. None of them is available in the shops near to my home (Western Germany).


----------



## MichiH

Attus said:


> You have lots of soap and toilet paper. None of them is available in the shops near to my home (Western Germany).


Same here in Southern Germany. Toilet paper shelves still empty.


----------



## Kpc21

Over here, this panic buying phase seems to be already behind us. Everyone who did that is so well stocked that he doesn't have to visit a supermarket for some time, for other things that fresh products. But Germany started introducing all these restrictions later than Poland, so probably also the panic buying started later and will finish later.


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> Here in the USA, the entire mainstream media ('MSM') has been totally driven by 'How can we best tar and dispose of Donald Trump?' ever since the 2016 election. This crisis is no different and as a result, precious little truly useful information is being disseminated here, either.
> 
> It is beyond sad....
> 
> Mike


I hardly think that's fair...governors and mayors of both parties - from Cuomo to DeWine - are doing their job. He needs to get out of the way and stop saying things with no scientific basis.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Maybe not the whole summer, but the early summer very likely.
> Moreover, international travels will likely be liberalized well after internal travels (because different countries will defeat the epidemic in different periods). Italy should keep borders closed for a quite long time, to prevent new infections from abroad. In China domestic infections have ended, but few infected people are caught entering every day.


Are new infections really ended in China? I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but that just seems implausible. Is it possible they've just stopped counting them?


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Well, What Can I say, still too many jerkz outside due to the sunny weather. Shops relatively crowded but acceptable.
> 
> I use this link Denmark Coronavirus: 2,201 Cases and 65 Deaths - Worldometer
> 
> I like it because its concise. Enough about statistics, we are still not peaking but the slope has declined slightly...
> 
> Right now, Danes are more worried about the economic consequences. I see that the news are slowly beginning to focus more on this. We are known to spend lavishly, which is stupid but yet true.


That worldometer link is the one I've been looking at.


----------



## Penn's Woods

CNGL said:


> Breaking: From Monday Spain is shutting down every non-essential business as well. Only supermarkets, pharmacies and a few others will remain open.


Don't take this the wrong way, but why did it take so long to do that? I thought you weren't even allowed to go outdoors for recreation. American jurisdictions have been closing non-essential businesses (although "essential" seems to be defined rather broadly in some places...) for probably two weeks now, while no one I've heard of has prohibited running, walking and so on, so long as you're not with other people (except those you live with) and maintain "social distance."


----------



## volodaaaa

Sorry guys, no Easter bunny this year :-( My first hit.


----------



## Kpc21

Poor bunny.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Are new infections really ended in China? I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but that just seems implausible. Is it possible they've just stopped counting them?


Those are official data. Of course no official data can be accurate, let alone for authoritarian countries like China.
What is certain is that there are no large numbers of new infected people every day, as purpsely-built emergency hospitals are empty now. Few not-so-serious cases may be left uncounted, but not tens of thousands of them.
Most cases in China were in Hubei province, that remained under an extemely strict lockdown for more than 2 months (Wuhan will stay in lockdown until April 8). In the rest of the country the situation was more or less under control. That's different with the current situation in Italy, Spain, and USA, where the whole country is messed up and under lockdown (although some areas, like Lombardy, Madrid, and New York are worse).


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Don't take this the wrong way, but why did it take so long to do that? I thought you weren't even allowed to go outdoors for recreation. American jurisdictions have been closing non-essential businesses (although "essential" seems to be defined rather broadly in some places...) for probably two weeks now, while no one I've heard of has prohibited running, walking and so on, so long as you're not with other people (except those you live with) and maintain "social distance."


Most governments, including the Italian one, were reluctant to introduce too strict limitations at the beginning, as they feared for economic consequences. They changed idea as long as cases were increasing dramatically and hospitals started to overflow.
In late February many politicians were saying things like: "it's not a serious thing, don't stop shoping, eating out, etc..."


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Those are official data. Of course no official data can be accurate, let alone for authoritarian countries like China.
> What is certain is that there are no large numbers of new infected people every day, as purpsely-built emergency hospitals are empty now. Few not-so-serious cases may be left uncounted, but not tens of thousands of them.
> Most cases in China were in Hubei province, that remained under an extemely strict lockdown for more than 2 months (Wuhan will stay in lockdown until April 8). In the rest of the country the situation was more or less under control. That's different with the current situation in Italy, Spain, and USA, where the whole country is messed up and under lockdown (although some areas, like Lombardy, Madrid, and New York are worse).


Fair enough.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Most governments, including the Italian one, were reluctant to introduce too strict limitations at the beginning, as they feared for economic consequences. They changed idea as long as cases were increasing dramatically and hospitals started to overflow.
> In late February many politicians were saying things like: "it's not a serious thing, don't stop shoping, eating out, etc..."


What strikes me is we closed businesses before going after outdoor recreation. That hasn't happened yet, really, although the mayor of Philadelphia half-jokingly complained the other day that the weather was too nice for social distancing outdoors. In fact, New York City's closed several streets to vehicular traffic so that people who want to walk can spread out, and in Philadelphia, there's a road through parkland along the river called Martin Luther King Drive that has a popular biking-and-jogging path along it; the Drive itself is normally closed on weekends from April through October so the recreational use can take it over; this week they announced it would be closed all week for that purpose.

While you seem to have done the reverse. Which some might argue is the opposite of what you'd expect from the respective cultures.


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> Poor bunny.


Aouch, but nice light beams.


----------



## Kpc21

Whole China was under a lockdown. Or, at least, places such as Shanghai, 850 km from Wuhan. The lockdown out of Hubei was just not so strict. But e.g. all the restaurants were also closed, people had the temperature measured everywhere, and it is still obligatory to wear face masks to enter almost all the public places or public transport vehicles.

Places comparable with Wuhan and the whole Hubei region are now Italy and Spain (Madrid seeming to be Wuhan 2.0) – but I think most of Europe is now in a state comparable to the rest of China when there was the outbreak in Wuhan. Which was also under a lockdown (now gradually getting released), although not so strict as there weren't so many severe cases there.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I must say that the performance of this forum has dramatically improved since it first went live. Everything is super fast.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> What strikes me is we closed businesses before going after outdoor recreation. That hasn't happened yet, really, although the mayor of Philadelphia half-jokingly complained the other day that the weather was too nice for social distancing outdoors. In fact, New York City's closed several streets to vehicular traffic so that people who want to walk can spread out, and in Philadelphia, there's a road through parkland along the river called Martin Luther King Drive that has a popular biking-and-jogging path along it; the Drive itself is normally closed on weekends from April through October so the recreational use can take it over; this week they announced it would be closed all week for that purpose.
> 
> While you seem to have done the reverse. Which some might argue is the opposite of what you'd expect from the respective cultures.


In Italy they banned outdoor recreation because too many people used the excuse of exercise outdoor to hang out with friends and relatives. When people are free to roam around, it's more difficult for police to control them.


----------



## Kpc21

Another thing which happens is that some outdoor recreation places get so crowded that they become no more coronavirus safe. There is no way of dealing with that (and to make people go to e.g. big forests instead of parks) other than closing them.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ In Austria you are allowed to go out for doing sport (hiking, walking, biking etc.), but only together with the people from your own house.

However, a couple of days ago they closed down 3 popular hiking areas, as there were too many people using them.

Luckily I have a forest like 5 minutes walk time from my house, where I can walk without meeting anybody.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I must say that the performance of this forum has dramatically improved since it first went live. Everything is super fast.


True.
There are still problems with the app, though. I managed to log in, and browsing, reading, replying work, but notifications don't, as well as read/unread markings.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> True.
> There are still problems with the app, though. I managed to log in, and browsing, reading, replying work, but notifications don't, as well as read/unread markings.


So I'm not the only one having trouble. Did you do anything different to log in, or did it just suddenly work? I've deleted it and reinstalled, I've changed my password; it still keeps telling me "it looks as if you don't have an account."


----------



## Penn's Woods

bogdymol said:


> ^^ In Austria you are allowed to go out for doing sport (hiking, walking, biking etc.), but only together with the people from your own house.
> 
> However, a couple of days ago they closed down 3 popular hiking areas, as there were too many people using them.
> 
> Luckily I have a forest like 5 minutes walk time from my house, where I can walk without meeting anybody.


New York City's threatening to close playgrounds if people don't behave themselves this weekend.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland it already happened.


----------



## MichiH

It's "funny" (scary) that virtually all countries do the same shit. All think that they are better prepared than all previously effected countries. And almost all countries follow the same measurea with the same delay. It seems that authorities do not trust each other and just wanna make their own experience.


----------



## x-type

MichiH said:


> It's "funny" (scary) that virtually all countries do the same shit. All think that they are better prepared than all previously effected countries. And almost all countries follow the same measurea with the same delay. It seems that authorities do not trust each other and just wanna make their own experience.


We're still waiting Sweden. It's the main occupation now here to observe situation there.


----------



## keber

I'm wondering about Nederlands too, they're also practicing "herd immunity".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands is in a medium lockdown. People are advised to stay at home and obliged to stay at home with any symptoms, tested or not. All public gatherings are banned and there are fines on exceeding norms for social distancing in public. However there is no general closure of shops (some are voluntarily) and you can still go to work if 1.5 m distance can be maintained. Traffic volumes are down by 30-40%, similar to Germany. 

Although it seems that every country does it differently, most countries are fairly similar, with only some nuances. Even countries that proclaim to be in a hard lockdown / quarantine usually allow some kind of outdoor activity. 

I've read that a quarter of Parisians have left the city for the countryside. They don't want to be locked up in an apartment.


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> We're still waiting Sweden. It's the main occupation now here to observe situation there.


And Brazil.


----------



## volodaaaa

keber said:


> I'm wondering about Nederlands too, they're also practicing "herd immunity".


According to stats, it seems like the Netherlands has just set off to Italian way. I hope it's just an illusion.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> So I'm not the only one having trouble. Did you do anything different to log in, or did it just suddenly work? I've deleted it and reinstalled, I've changed my password; it still keeps telling me "it looks as if you don't have an account."


I just deleted and reinstalled.


----------



## Attus

If the figures are correct, today was the first day after several weeks, when Italy has "only" the second place in the daily ranking of fatalities.


----------



## keber

Is then Sweden the last country in Europe having schools open?


----------



## Suburbanist

Usage of Citymapper


----------



## Verso

From tomorrow we're confined to our municipalities (which are tiny in Slovenia). But it's funny, because we're already in quarantine, so if you were supposed to stay at home, then logically you were also supposed to stay in your municipality. They came up with this just because many idiots went to the seaside yesterday when it was sunny.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

City: 'Netherlands' 🙃


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> City: 'Netherlands' 🙃


De Randstad!


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> From tomorrow we're confined to our municipalities (which are tiny in Slovenia). But it's funny, because we're already in quarantine, so if you were supposed to stay at home, then logically you were also supposed to stay in your municipality. They came up with this just because many idiots went to the seaside yesterday when it was sunny.


You are in quarantine? You may not go out of your homes?

Btw we have this municipatliy thing since this week.


----------



## Penn's Woods

There's also a problem (at least in English) with terminology. What one jurisdiction calls "shelter in place," may be another's "stay-at-home order," or a "quarantine...."

There was a little political flap here yesterday that lasted about six hours. Trump, on his way to his helicopter to visit the hospital ship at the Norfolk, Virginia, naval base that was being gotten ready to be sent to New York, said something to reporters about "considering quarantining New York, New Jersey, maybe parts of Connecticut," or something like that. The governor of New York was at that moment giving a briefing, and when a reporter asked him about it, it was news to him.... Anyhow, after a few hours of everyone wondering what this meant, Trump changed his mind (and he probably wouldn't have the authority to do that anyway....) Not bringing this up for the politics, but it was interesting to see people on European media's Facebook pages assuming that the fact that this was being discussed now meant that there were no restrictions in place at all in the New York area already, which is totally untrue. What they were talking about was requiring people leaving the New York area to basically self-isolate for two weeks when they arrived in another area. "Quarantine" MIGHT have been the right term there if it was clear one meant isolating the area from the rest of the world, but clearly it suggested something different to a lot of people....


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> You are in quarantine? You may not go out of your homes?
> 
> Btw we have this municipatliy thing since this week.


Officially we're only allowed to go out for work, to the nearest grocery, pharmacy,... essential things. In reality I still see plenty of people outside.


----------



## x-type

Essential things... I went to buy some groceries twice since the things occured. My average invoice is much larger than sooner ebcause I have max reduced going out of my house/backyard. However, those essential things are sooo weird. 
For instance, my shopping cart looks like: flour, eggs, long life milk, pecorino sardo maturo dop, soap, sparkling water... (Choose the odd one out )


----------



## Penn's Woods

Greetings from my iPhone via the app!
Mods, you may want to change the login instructions on the app. It asks for your “Forum username” and password. That still didn’t work. On a hunch, I tried my email address instead of the user name. That worked.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> Greetings from my iPhone via the app!
> Mods, you may want to change the login instructions on the app. It asks for your “Forum username” and password. That still didn’t work. On a hunch, I tried my email address instead of the user name. That worked.


It’s making me log in every visit. Which will get old.


----------



## Attus

I go shoppnig grocercies twice a week, except for the bakery which I visit three times a week. 
And I buy multiple times more food than usually, because I work from home so I eat home every day what I usually don't.


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> I go shoppnig grocercies twice a week, except for the bakery which I visit three times a week.
> And I buy multiple times more food than usually, because I work from home so I eat home every day what I usually don't.


Three times a week is a lot.
Can't you buy more bread once per week and freeze it? That's what I usually do.
Not judging, just curious.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> Three times a week is a lot.
> Can't you buy more bread once per week and freeze it? That's what I usually do.
> Not judging, just curious.


The current situation is new for me and I'm actually learning what, how much and how to buy.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I can do all my work at home. I have three monitors, with AutoCAD running on one, other work on the other and my private PC next to that. The economic impact of the corona crisis on my personal situation is zero and will likely remain zero. The worst thing is that I may have to give up one or more vacations / trips this year. I realize that is a luxury position compared to the challenges many people have.


----------



## volodaaaa

There is something about it.




__





Masks Save Lives - COVID-19







www.maskssavelives.org


----------



## bogdymol

In Austria the government announced earlier today that supermarkets can be visited only if you are using a mask. From what I read, they will try to have masks dispensers at supermarket entrances. I wonder from where will they get so many masks...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

How many masks do you need per week for the entire world? 20 billion? Where are they coming from when there aren't even enough to supply the hospitals?

I haven't seen anyone with a mask so far. I wouldn't know where to get one either. Masks are only effective / hygienic if you use it once and not longer than a few hours, so the mask consumption would be enormous.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> How many masks do you need per week for the entire world? 20 billion? Where are they coming from when there aren't even enough to supply the hospitals?
> 
> I haven't seen anyone with a mask so far. I wouldn't know where to get one either. Masks are only effective / hygienic if you use it once and not longer than a few hours, so the mask consumption would be enormous.


There is a load of people who voluntarily sew face masks made of cotton or other pieces of fabric. They may not be as effective as the valid hygienic masks, but once everyone wears them, they may slow down the spread.

There is an initiative in Slovakia called "Bike to work". Annually, they hold a campaign to promote cycling. Three years ago the main motto of the campaign sounded "1,5 m is okay to me" and was focused on individual car drivers to take care when overtaking bikers. T-shirts with the slogan were given away during the campaign.

Two weeks ago a recommendation of our government to keep social distance greater than 1,5 m was announced and few members of the abovementioned initiative did nice face masks from the t-shirts.


----------



## volodaaaa

Btw. after the first moments of changeover I think I have started to like this forum. Except for the "show full signature" message. Did anyone get the idea of how to get rid of it?


----------



## Tin_Can

volodaaaa said:


> Btw. after the first moments of changeover I think I have started to like this forum. Except for the "show full signature" message. Did anyone get the idea of how to get rid of it?


Account settings>preferences> then find and tick the box for showing full signature


----------



## volodaaaa

Tin_Can said:


> Account settings>preferences> then find and tick the box for showing full signature


Perfection. Thank you


----------



## Tin_Can

Anyways,its kinda curious how little effect (thankfully!) this crisis has had for freight traffic. About 2 weeks ago I drove section of E67 in Estonia for few days and road was clogged with trucks going both south and north. If anything,traffic seemed even heavier than usually. Must be all those cancelled flights and reduced sea shipping.


----------



## tfd543

New press conference announced today at 17:30 by our prime minister. Gonna be exciting.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch infection rate appears to be slowing down. We hit a plateau of around 1,000 - 1,100 new cases per day in the past 4 days, but today it was +884. Hospitalization is also down slightly, but ICU capacity becomes very tight. Some patients are moved to Germany. 

The Dutch fatality rate per 1 million people is relatively high. However around three-quarters of all deaths have not been in ICU, they choose to die at home. They put out an interesting observation: around 80% of those in ICU are significantly overweight.


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> Essential things... I went to buy some groceries twice since the things occured. My average invoice is much larger than sooner ebcause I have max reduced going out of my house/backyard. However, those essential things are sooo weird.
> For instance, my shopping cart looks like: flour, eggs, long life milk, pecorino sardo maturo dop, soap, sparkling water... (Choose the odd one out )


I think that buying essential and non-essential things together is OK. Problems may arise if you buy only non-essential things, although there is no a clear definition of essential.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch infection rate appears to be slowing down. We hit a plateau of around 1,000 - 1,100 new cases per day in the past 4 days, but today it was +884. Hospitalization is also down slightly, but ICU capacity becomes very tight. Some patients are moved to Germany.
> 
> The Dutch fatality rate per 1 million people is relatively high. However around three-quarters of all deaths have not been in ICU, they choose to die at home. They put out an interesting observation: around 80% of those in ICU are significantly overweight.


Germany also accepted 60 ICU patients from Lombardy.
It's not a mistery that serious overweight/obesity is a worsening condition for many diseases. Also smoking is a risk factor, as coronavirus attacks lungs, and smokers' lungs are more vulnerable.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch infection rate appears to be slowing down. We hit a plateau of around 1,000 - 1,100 new cases per day in the past 4 days, but today it was +884. Hospitalization is also down slightly, but ICU capacity becomes very tight. Some patients are moved to Germany.





italystf said:


> Germany also accepted 60 ICU patients from Lombardy.


Germany also received ICU patients from France.

Is the German health care system so much better that we are even able to help other countries?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Apparently Germany has a much higher ratio of ICU beds to population than most other countries. 

It may depend on the mindset of the population. In the Netherlands the debate whether to terminate life voluntarily or to suffer endlessly has long been an issue. Some people prefer to die instead of being kept alive while suffering or with no future quality of life. So ICUs in the Netherlands are mostly used for trauma and scheduled operations. ICU capacity is about 80% used in normal conditions, so there isn't a lot of spare ICU capacity for a virus outbreak like this. 

It has also been underestimated how long coronavirus patients require ICU, normally it's 3-10 days but in this case it is more common to be around 20 days, which reduces the available capacity.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> How many masks do you need per week for the entire world? 20 billion? Where are they coming from when there aren't even enough to supply the hospitals?
> 
> I haven't seen anyone with a mask so far. I wouldn't know where to get one either. Masks are only effective / hygienic if you use it once and not longer than a few hours, so the mask consumption would be enormous.


Of course this massive rise in the production of face masks won't happen overnight but it shouldn't be too difficult over a couple of months, especially if other similar fields see a drop in demand that frees up manufacturing capacity. 

Since eradicating the virus completely without a vaccine is basically impossible and a vaccine is 12-18 months away, for life to go back to (more-or-less) normal wearing masks has to become a very common thing in Europe and North America as well. 
This "face masks don't help if you aren't ill blah-blah" rhetoric from governments and the WHO is complete bullshit just to remedy the fact that governments aren't prepared and there isn't enough face masks in storage even for health professionals. If there were, the right thing to do would be for everybody to wear masks in public all the time.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Meanwhile a large order of surgical masks that arrived from China were declared unfit for usage...


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Meanwhile a large order of surgical masks that arrived from China were declared unfit for usage...


The same happened in Italy.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Meanwhile a large order of surgical masks that arrived from China were declared unfit for usage...


What was wrong with them?

Btw we got two A330 full of medical equipment from China too yesterday.


----------



## MichiH

x-type said:


> What was wrong with them?
> 
> Btw we got two A330 full of medical equipment from China too yesterday.











Coronavirus: Netherlands recalls 'defective' masks bought from China | DW | 29.03.2020


Hundreds of thousands of masks sent to Dutch hospitals have been recalled after tests showed they failed to protect the face or had defective filters. The Netherlands recently bought 1.3 million masks from China.




www.dw.com


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> What was wrong with them?
> 
> Btw we got two A330 full of medical equipment from China too yesterday.











Coronavirus, consegnate negli ospedali del Lazio mascherine "carta igienica". Protestano gli operatori sanitari


Dello stesso tipo di quelle pesantemente criticate dall'assessore alla Sanità della Lombardia. Tweet della Regione Lazio: "Sono arrivate nella …




roma.repubblica.it





"Toilet paper" masks. But it doesn't say whether they're from China or not.
At least we know why we can't find toilet paper any more.


----------



## keokiracer

g.spinoza said:


> "Toilet paper" masks. But it doesn't say whether they're from China or not.


Yes it does



> The Dutch government has ordered a recall of around 600,000 masks out of a shipment of 1.3 million *from China* after they failed to meet quality standards.


----------



## g.spinoza

keokiracer said:


> Yes it does


I was talking about Italian masks in that article I linked.


----------



## g.spinoza

Another weird thing of this forum is the duration of "one moment"... It looks like everything posted within 10 min or so was written "one moment ago"...


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> There is a load of people who voluntarily sew face masks made of cotton or other pieces of fabric. They may not be as effective as the valid hygienic masks, but once everyone wears them, they may slow down the spread.


The same happens in Poland. Also many 3D printer owners volunteer to print special protective visors for medical staff as well as adapters that allow connecting mechanical ventilators (those used in hospitals to help breathing) to diving masks.

In Poland these hand-made masks are now even getting accepted by hospitals, even though by law, they should use special, certified ones. But there are no certified masks, so it's still better than nothing. In general, the medical personnel – in all kinds of hospitals, not only in those special ones that only treat coronavirus patients – is suffering from shortages of personal protection measures. There are some normal, local hospitals that had to be evacuated and closed after the staff got infected with coronavirus and had to be quarantined.

And we still don't have many coronavirus cases – now we are getting about 200-250 new ones daily, the total number will probably exceed 2000 yet today.

Polish authorities consider increasing the restrictions tomorrow.

Meanwhile...

As attending churches in groups of more than 5 persons is forbidden, the church is trying to go out to the believers. They organize Ways of the Cross throughout the streets (which can't be followed by processions but people can at least participate by watching them from their gardens, windows and balconies), or at one locality, the priest organized blessing houses from a car:


















Ksiądz błogosławił przez szyberdach. Ktoś doniósł, że jeździ bez pasów


Aby trafić do jak największej liczby wiernych, księża jednej z legnickich parafii wsiedli do samochodu i zrobili rundę po mieście, błogosławiąc parafian przez szyberdach. Komuś jednak nie spodobała się taka forma duszpasterstwa.




tvn24.pl





Unfortunately, someone complained to the police that the priest did not have seat belts fastened during the blessing... Which is, of course, illegal. There are some specific situations in which it's allowed not to wear seat belts (e.g. taxi drivers don't have to do it) – but blessing isn't included in them.


----------



## CNGL

In Spain the failure to meet standards happened with fast tests.

Meanwhile and out of boredom I followed the main chain of the Alps in Google Earth, from the Cadibona pass near Savona all the way to the Leopoldsberg right over the Danube near Vienna. At some places it's difficult to find it, for example around Livigno and Mustair Valley but especially past the Lower Tauern: I spent a lot of time finding Schober Pass and then I got really lost after the Mürszteg Alps, as the highest mountains East of there aren't really part of the main chain (which turns North instead and doesn't have any prominent mountains anymore). Suprisingly the last section through the Vienna Woods was like a breeze, even though if there are no mountains anymore, just rolling hills.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland many companies, what it seems – especially from the automotive sector – are starting to cut their costs by firing many employees.

The automotive sector seems to be the one most hit just now, except from these which are forcibly closed.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> Unfortunately, someone *complained to the police that the priest did not have seat belts fastened* during the blessing... Which is, of course, illegal. There are some specific situations in which it's allowed not to wear seat belts (e.g. taxi drivers don't have to do it) – but blessing isn't included in them.


Like it. The _German _way


----------



## Kpc21

But e.g. during weddings it's nothing weird to use fake license plates (like ones on which it spells "just married"), to install decorations on newlywed's car that don't really comply with the modern safety standards, to abuse the horn, in the countryside people (like family, friends etc.) even block the road wanting the newlyweds to pay with some bottles of alcohol (such a tradition) – and it really isn't a problem for anyone.

This is the typical difference between nations. In Germany someone doing that (even if it doesn't hurt or interrupt anyone) is considered the evil one and the one who complains about it to the police – the hero, in Poland – the one who complains to the police is considered the evil one.

Unfortunately, it sometimes goes too far. In any of those two directions.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> This is the typical difference between nations. In Germany someone doing that (even if it doesn't hurt or interrupt anyone) is considered the evil one and the one who complains about it to the police – the hero, in Poland – the one who complains to the police is considered the evil one.


Nope. The one complaining to police is usually the idiot.

However, there are people who block even Autobahns with their wedding convoy..... that's something different....


btw: Authorities of the state where I live discuss whether it would be nice to force people wearing masks when shopping. The actual restrictions will minimum be valid for another three weeks. I'll go shopping tomorrow morning. Should I hoarding? Or should I try to figure out where to buy those masks and take them off from people in health care who really need them? My colleagues currently help printing masks and other stuff....... I might ask them....  Or my other colleague who participated to a hackathon two weeks ago. She helped finding solutions on how to import masks from China which did not have certificates..... 









#WirvsVirus: hacking to fight the crisis


The Federal Government's 'Hackathon' has yielded lots of suggestions for solving problems to do with the Corona crisis. This was Germany's biggest digital competition of ideas to date.




www.deutschland.de


----------



## Kpc21

MichiH said:


> Authorities of the state where I live discuss whether it would be nice to force people wearing masks when shopping.


It wouldn't be bad. It wouldn't be nice either but should now the discussion be about what is nice and what isn't? It doesn't matter at all. It must be effective against the epidemic.

There is another issue here – to ensure that everyone will be able to get a mask to be able to go shopping, and to avoid situations in which people have to reuse masks of other family members.

By the way, it seems Poland doesn't really have any production plants that make those masks. And western-European countries banned their export, even to Poland – because the capacity of their plants is also low, as most of them were imported from China. So I read that when this whole situation appeared, one businessman found a way to import them from... Mexico.

This whole situation confirms that there are some strategic sectors of the economy, in which the country just cannot rely on the import, a state must be able to provide them for itself.


----------



## Attus

_For where three gather in my name, there is the police there, and they must pay a fine of 200 Euro._
Matthew 18:20, but I'm not sure whether it's quoted literally.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> It wouldn't be bad. It wouldn't be nice either but should now the discussion be about what is nice and what isn't? It doesn't matter at all. It must be effective against the epidemic.


Yet, it would. And Michi explained exactly why.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> It wouldn't be bad. It wouldn't be nice either but should now the discussion be about what is nice and what isn't? It doesn't matter at all. It must be effective against the epidemic.


No, my point is: "_take them off from people in health care who really need them_" It's *NOT* nice to rob masks from them!



Kpc21 said:


> There is another issue here – to ensure that everyone will be able to get a mask to be able to go shopping


Exactly.



Kpc21 said:


> and to avoid situations in which people have to reuse masks of other family members.


Next issue. It was just reported on radio that most Germans are no longer infected in public but at home from people living in the same household.......


----------



## Verso

Today I went to the nearest pharmacy and ATM. I didn't see many people, but around half of them were wearing masks. I have a surgical mask, as well as a respirator. Even a scarf is much better than nothing (for those asking where to get a mask).


----------



## tfd543

So today we had a new press conference and it looks that we are peaking soon. We were told that with the given trend, Denmark Will gradually open up after Easter. Thats very surprising if u ask me. It was not explicitly mentioned What Will open up, but just that some of the restrictions Will be revoked.

Im begging our citizens to stay the fuukk home this Easter. Its gonna be paramount.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I've been trying to buy flour and paracetamol for three weeks now, still no luck.


----------



## radamfi

DanielFigFoz said:


> I've been trying to buy flour and paracetamol for three weeks now, still no luck.


Assuming you are in Britain, you might be able to find paracetamol in local independent ("corner") shops and smaller pharmacies. I wouldn't bother looking in the supermarkets or Boots.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

radamfi said:


> Assuming you are in Britain, you might be able to find paracetamol in local independent ("corner") shops and smaller pharmacies. I wouldn't bother looking in the supermarkets or Boots.


Not round here, though they have some things the big supermarkets don't have like eggs. The toilet paper situation seems to be back to normal though.


----------



## g.spinoza

DanielFigFoz said:


> Not round here, though they have some things the big supermarkets don't have like eggs. The toilet paper situation seems to be back to normal though.


Today in my supermarket in Brescia there was basically everything, including surgical gloves - which were missing for more than a month - but there was no flour. I bought the very last ”00” package.

I know flour is marketed differently in different countries. Is "00 flour" understandable abroad? Is it sold as "plain" or "all-purpose" or something similar?


----------



## tfd543

g.spinoza said:


> Today in my supermarket in Brescia there was basically everything, including surgical gloves - which were missing for more than a month - but there was no flour. I bought the very last ”00” package.
> 
> I know flour is marketed differently in different countries. Is "00 flour" understandable abroad? Is it sold as "plain" or "all-purpose" or something similar?


Perfectly understood in Dk. Its nice for pizza dough.


----------



## tfd543

Today I was also asked to log in using my iPhone app. Seems that there are some bugs here and there.


----------



## g.spinoza

It seems that ICU occupancy is slowly starting to recede in Italy. Pictures of the hospital in Parma, finally devoid of Covid-19 patients, hit the news today. The situation in Lombardy is still critical though, especially in Bergamo and Brescia.
Many doctors and staff are arriving there, from Albania, Poland, China, and while in Milan the largest ICU unit in Italy was built inside the Exhibition Hall "Fieramilano", an analogous proposal in Brescia was stopped by the government.

Yesterday the mayor of Brescia, in TV, was really really unhappy about how this emergency was managed in Lombardy. The sensation is government almost "gave up" on Brescia and Bergamo and focussed the efforts on Milan, which is by now far less affected.

EDIT: Another quirk of the forum: embedded links in the text are not apparent at all. I put three of them in this text and cannot visually find them, unless I hover the mouse on them.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The embedded links are of a slightly lighter color, but I agree it's not very well visible like blue vs black and underlined like you would see in an email for example.


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> EDIT: Another quirk of the forum: embedded links in the text are not apparent at all. I put three of them in this text and cannot visually find them, unless I hover the mouse on them.


Not a quirk but just a different ("modern") behavior.
There are two ways how to enter and how it is presented:



Code:


[url=https://www.google.de/]google[/url]

https://www.google.de/

google






Google


Search the world's information, including webpages, images, videos and more. Google has many special features to help you find exactly what you're looking for.



www.google.de





The "simple" way is presented "extraordinary", the "old" way is almost invisible.


----------



## radamfi

g.spinoza said:


> Today in my supermarket in Brescia there was basically everything, including surgical gloves - which were missing for more than a month - but there was no flour. I bought the very last ”00” package.
> 
> I know flour is marketed differently in different countries. Is "00 flour" understandable abroad? Is it sold as "plain" or "all-purpose" or something similar?


Flour - Wikipedia

has the labelling in different countries. "00 flour" is called "soft flour" in the UK and "pastry flour" in the US.

Although I've never heard of "soft flour". Most supermarkets in Britain sell plain and self-raising flour.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Today in my supermarket in Brescia there was basically everything, including surgical gloves - which were missing for more than a month - but there was no flour. I bought the very last ”00” package.
> 
> I know flour is marketed differently in different countries. Is "00 flour" understandable abroad? Is it sold as "plain" or "all-purpose" or something similar?


There is such a thing as “all-purpose flour” here. I think.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> There is such a thing as “all-purpose flour” here. I think.


Next time I’m in the kitchen, I’ll see what we have.


----------



## Penn's Woods

This is what we have in my mom’s kitchen. If it lets me post the picture. They’re both “all-purpose”; the one on the left is bleached, the one on the right is unbleached. Mom says she uses the bleached only for gravies: It has a fiber texture and is less prone to forming lumps. I’ve use the unbleached in the coating for breaded chicken.
View attachment 45410


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> If it lets me post the picture.


Just copy and paste the pic!


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland we have a totally different classification of flour – you can get "mąka tortowa" (torte/cake flour), "mąka krupczatka" (that probably refers to its density, it's difficult to translate), mąka poznańska, wrocławska (names by Polish cities but it's not based on the location of production, those are just different flour types), "mąka luksusowa" (luxury flour). All these types apply to the normal, white, wheat flour.


----------



## MichiH

The eastern German city of Jena will be the country’s first to make wearing a face mask mandatory. 



https://www.thelocal.de/20200331/first-large-german-city-makes-wearing-a-face-mask-mandatory


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> The eastern German city of Jena will be the country’s first to make wearing a face mask mandatory.
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.thelocal.de/20200331/first-large-german-city-makes-wearing-a-face-mask-mandatory


They’re starting to talk about that here.


----------



## volodaaaa

That is good.


----------



## Verso

Verso said:


> Today I went to the nearest pharmacy and ATM. I didn't see many people, but around half of them were wearing masks.


Today I went to the closest store to get some fruit and almost no one was wearing a mask outside, which was very different from yesterday. I was wearing my respirator and sunglasses, and I looked like a fly. 😁


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Today I went to the closest store to get some fruit and almost no one was wearing a mask outside, which was very different from yesterday. I was wearing my respirator and sunglasses, and I looked like a fly.


Pic, please!


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> It seems that ICU occupancy is slowly starting to recede in Italy. Pictures of the hospital in Parma, finally devoid of Covid-19 patients, hit the news today. The situation in Lombardy is still critical though, especially in Bergamo and Brescia.
> Many doctors and staff are arriving there, from Albania, Poland, China, and while in Milan the largest ICU unit in Italy was built inside the Exhibition Hall "Fieramilano", an analogous proposal in Brescia was stopped by the government.
> 
> Yesterday the mayor of Brescia, in TV, was really really unhappy about how this emergency was managed in Lombardy. The sensation is government almost "gave up" on Brescia and Bergamo and focussed the efforts on Milan, which is by now far less affected.
> 
> EDIT: Another quirk of the forum: embedded links in the text are not apparent at all. I put three of them in this text and cannot visually find them, unless I hover the mouse on them.


I think concern will now shift to Toscana, Lazio and Campania, which have had comparatively few cases so far. It is normal and expected. Nonetheless, resources freed in the most affected areas can be used to treat more patients elsewhere.


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> Pic, please!


Maybe tomorrow.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> That is good.


That's good only if there are enough masks available on the market.
I wonder what happens in China, where apparently everybody still use masks in public (is it mandatory?). I wonder how can they get so much masks for everybody.


----------



## italystf

Italian full lockdown will be extended _at least _(but it will certainly extended further) till April 18. Unofficial sources tell about a second extension to May 4. Schools won't start again until the usual beginning in mid September.
According to mathematical models, new infections in Italy will end around May 15 if strict restrictions will stay in place. That would be roughly comparable to Hubei case.
The return to normal life will be slow and gradual, with a lot of attention to prevent new infections.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

italystf said:


> That's good only if there are enough masks available on the market.


I saw a quote that the demand for masks in U.S. hospitals alone is 3.5 billion over the next few months. Only 1% of that is actually in stock.


----------



## Kpc21

Since Thursday, wearing gloves in shops will be mandatory in Poland for the customers.

Other new restrictions (most of them applicable from tomorrow) are:

the maximum number of persons present in stores and service points will be the number of checkout stands (all, not only open ones) tripled
markets and bazaars – the maximum number of persons at the market is the number of sellers tripled (anyway, many local markets have already closed down)
post offices – twice the number of counters (although at the post office in my town, where I was twice the previous week, they were letting in only as many people as the number of OPEN counters, so I don't really understand this restriction)
large-scale DIY stores will be closed on weekends
from 10:00 to 12:00 only people over-65 will be able to go to stores and buy
it will be forbidden to use hotels and rent rooms short term – except for ones rented for quarantined people, for medical personnel or for people on business trips
people living together with the quarantined person will also have to be quarantined
hairdresser, beauty, tatoo and piercing offices will be closed, doing these services will also be forbidden at customers' homes
the same applies to medical rehabilitation and massages – except for the cases when it's absolutely required because of the health state of the patient
people under-18 will be forbidden to leave homes without accompanying adults
all parks, beaches, boulevards, promenades, playgrounds, zoos and botanical gardens will be closed
automatic city bike rental services become forbidden and closed
at the workplaces (where people can't work from homes) people will have to work keeping distance of at least 1.5 m from each other
No masks.



italystf said:


> Schools won't start again until the usual beginning in mid September.


In Poland, schools officially do all the classes in form of e-learning. So the school year isn't formally suspended, even though there are no students in schools. Formally, there must be normal classes with topics put in by teachers to school registers and so on.

In practice, some teachers realize it by making actual classes through messengers like MS Teams, Discord etc. (or Zoom but this one is problematic for the lack of Polish language version, most teachers don't speak any foreign languages), some just send tasks to do via school register.

Of course it's a problem for the students who don't have computers. It's not that bad if someone has, at least, a smartphone (and there is not so few students who actually don't have computers but only smartphones), worse if someone has a dumb phone only. And although it's a small number, there are still such students, e.g. from poor families.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> (or Zoom but this one is problematic for the lack of Polish language version, most teachers don't speak any foreign languages)


Still today in 2020? I thought English language learning after 1990 was quite widespread (i.e. a significant share of teachers today would've learned at least English in school). But apparently not...


----------



## PovilD

I bet that mask wearing will be mandatory sooner or later everywhere. It would be strange (and maybe even scary) to see someone without a mask.


----------



## MichiH

Again, mandatory or not. Who will produce so many masks? Masks would be the new toilet paper - I was shopping this morning and still no toilet paper in the shelves. Only very few tissues.


----------



## Kpc21

People working in multinational corporations typically can speak English because it's a very common requirement during the recruitment process.

But few teachers are so young to have obtained their education at least in 1990s (they would have to be 20-30 years old now). And the foreign language education at public schools is typically of low quality.

In general, among people working in the public sector, really a big number has no foreign language skills.

I can say about my mother, who works as a teacher. She has been trying to learn English for so long – but at her age it's not that easy. At the moment, she is able to roughly understand (more or less but rather less than more) written text, especially if it's not sentences but just short messages, especially in form of single words (so that she doesn't have to understand the grammar) – and her pronunciation is terrible. Hearing an English word she also usually has no idea how to correctly write it down, I must say how it's spelled.


----------



## PovilD

MichiH said:


> Again, mandatory or not. Who will produce so many masks? Masks would be the new toilet paper - I was shopping this morning and still no toilet paper in the shelves. Only very few tissues.


Even cloth that covers mouth and nose can be enough or at least (way) better than nothing. I read that you can even reuse the respirator 7 days after previous use and still be effective.
I think there can be better ways than producing masks which are by default effective for only few hours.

Where I live, there are already shortage of masks, and we don't hope for now that there will be sufficient supplies.


----------



## MichiH

PovilD said:


> Even cloth that covers mouth and nose can be enough or at least (way) better than nothing


But when it's *mandatoy* to wear masks, covering the mouth with cloth would not be enough according to the decree.


----------



## PovilD

MichiH said:


> But when it's *mandatoy* to wear masks, covering the mouth with cloth would not be enough according to the decree.


If this decree for mandatory medicine masks and respirators might be impossible (too expensive, etc.), then least the decree that demands mouth and nose to be covered could have at least some effect. Of course you can't cover your mouth with whatever you want... The cloth must have some thickness, and certainly not transparent.


----------



## italystf

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland, schools officially do all the classes in form of e-learning. So the school year isn't formally suspended, even though there are no students in schools. Formally, there must be normal classes with topics put in by teachers to school registers and so on.


Same in Italy.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> That's good only if there are enough masks available on the market.
> I wonder what happens in China, where apparently everybody still use masks in public (is it mandatory?). I wonder how can they get so much masks for everybody.


Asians have been wearing masks for years, though. But we're talking about the relatively basic ones, I assume, not the sophisticated ones designed for use in hospitals (and on construction sites and so on) that filter out more stuff.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> Since Thursday, wearing gloves in shops will be mandatory in Poland for the customers.
> 
> Other new restrictions (most of them applicable from tomorrow) are:
> 
> the maximum number of persons present in stores and service points will be the number of checkout stands (all, not only open ones) tripled
> markets and bazaars – the maximum number of persons at the market is the number of sellers tripled (anyway, many local markets have already closed down)
> post offices – twice the number of counters (although at the post office in my town, where I was twice the previous week, they were letting in only as many people as the number of OPEN counters, so I don't really understand this restriction)
> large-scale DIY stores will be closed on weekends
> from 10:00 to 12:00 only people over-65 will be able to go to stores and buy
> it will be forbidden to use hotels and rent rooms short term – except for ones rented for quarantined people, for medical personnel or for people on business trips
> people living together with the quarantined person will also have to be quarantined
> hairdresser, beauty, tatoo and piercing offices will be closed, doing these services will also be forbidden at customers' homes
> the same applies to medical rehabilitation and massages – except for the cases when it's absolutely required because of the health state of the patient
> people under-18 will be forbidden to leave homes without accompanying adults
> all parks, beaches, boulevards, promenades, playgrounds, zoos and botanical gardens will be closed
> automatic city bike rental services become forbidden and closed
> at the workplaces (where people can't work from homes) people will have to work keeping distance of at least 1.5 m from each other
> No masks.
> 
> 
> In Poland, schools officially do all the classes in form of e-learning. So the school year isn't formally suspended, even though there are no students in schools. Formally, there must be normal classes with topics put in by teachers to school registers and so on.
> 
> In practice, some teachers realize it by making actual classes through messengers like MS Teams, Discord etc. (or Zoom but this one is problematic for the lack of Polish language version, most teachers don't speak any foreign languages), some just send tasks to do via school register.
> 
> Of course it's a problem for the students who don't have computers. It's not that bad if someone has, at least, a smartphone (and there is not so few students who actually don't have computers but only smartphones), worse if someone has a dumb phone only. And although it's a small number, there are still such students, e.g. from poor families.


Some school systems here - New York City and Philadelphia included - are providing laptops to students who don't have them.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> Again, mandatory or not. Who will produce so many masks? Masks would be the new toilet paper - I was shopping this morning and still no toilet paper in the shelves. Only very few tissues.


I heard this afternoon on the radio that the Centers for Disease Control is considering advising people to wear HOME-MADE cloth masks. (And I've seen instructions for making them....)


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> Again, mandatory or not. Who will produce so many masks? Masks would be the new toilet paper - I was shopping this morning and still no toilet paper in the shelves. Only very few tissues.


The toilet-paper shortage is getting ridiculous. Surely by this point the paper manufacturers and grocery stores know hoarding is going on and could have increased production....


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> I heard this afternoon on the radio that the Centers for Disease Control is considering advising people to wear HOME-MADE cloth masks. (And I've seen instructions for making them....)


Just need 2 rubber bands and some fabric right ?


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Just need 2 rubber bands and some fabric right ?


Haven’t tried it yet....


----------



## mgk920

Penn's Woods said:


> The toilet-paper shortage is getting ridiculous. Surely by this point the paper manufacturers and grocery stores know hoarding is going on and could have increased production....


The TP manufacturers here in northeastern Wisconsin are operating at full capacity. This is a major industry around here - the Appleton to Green Bay, WI area is often referred to as the 'Paper Valley'.

Mike


----------



## Jschmuck

This TP shortage is baffling. Is the thinking that 'this virus is going to give me the shits!' or is it 'I won't be able to go anywhere for awhile so I must have enough TP until the next time I can go to the store'? Or some other thinking? 

TP isn't food, wouldn't you rather run out of TP, and bulk up on non-perishable foods? There are other ways to maintain rear-end cleanliness. You won't need much TP if you run out of food first because you won't be defecating as much... The lack of logic is depressing...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's a phenomenon of herd behavior. At some point people think they are going to run out of toilet paper, so they buy excess quantities. Other people see this, and also buy toilet paper, just to be sure. Then it escalates to (social) media reporting and by then almost everyone wants to make sure to get toilet paper. 

Obviously, if you need that much toilet paper you should've seen a doctor already...


----------



## bogdymol

When I travel outside Europe, I always buy travel health insurance. There is a box I always have to tick, where I have to confirm that I do not have any medical issues (like long-term illness). 

I do it online, and without that, I cannot get insurance. Probably a broker would be able to add in some existing health problems, but that will come at extra $$$.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Isn't that covered under Medicare?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> You want it? You've got it.
> 
> photo


Nice shades....


----------



## tfd543

MacOlej said:


> I call April Fools' on that.


Could be good one, but Its true pal. Look it up.


----------



## MattiG

radamfi said:


> For those not in the EEA/EU, what do you do about your health insurance when travelling abroad if you have health conditions? There is a reciprocal health agreement between most European countries so that people can get emergency treatment when abroad and people carry the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) when travelling.


The EHIC card covers the standard emergency treatment in hospitals according to the local standards, but it does not cover related taxi cost, extra accomodation, ambulance flights to the homeland, the repatriation of the coffin, and other such costs. I have never been so wealthy that I could have afforded to travel without a travel insurance.


----------



## radamfi

MattiG said:


> The EHIC card covers the standard emergency treatment in hospitals according to the local standards, but it does not cover related taxi cost, extra accomodation, ambulance flights to the homeland, the repatriation of the coffin, and other such costs. I have never been so wealthy that I could have afforded to travel without a travel insurance.


But travel insurance can cost thousands of euros if you have serious pre-existing health conditions like cancer. Then EHIC is the only option, and you can't go outside Europe.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MichiH said:


> Some restrictions are even tightened, e.g. another state has generally forbidden visiting nursing home cares today.


This was also implemented nationwide in the Netherlands about 10 days ago.

In hindsight, this should've been one of the first measures, it becomes clear that nursing homes are severely affected by the virus and it explains the relatively high death rate per 1 million people in the Netherlands. These people didn't go skiing in Austria or sightseeing in Italy, but were infected by visitors. 

A nursing home in the town of Heerde has lost 14 of its 70 residents over the past few days due to the coronavirus. This town is outside the region of where the initial outbreak started to grow.


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> Nice shades....


I actually think I'm quite scary in that outfit, almost like Darth Vader or sth (but that's why it's so fun to go out like that 😄).


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> The EHIC card covers the standard emergency treatment in hospitals according to the local standards, but it does not cover related taxi cost, extra accomodation, ambulance flights to the homeland, the repatriation of the coffin, and other such costs.


Those are extremely rare cases of those rare cases when you actually have to use the EHIC insurance while being abroad. And while they might be high, they are just the next random unexpected spending you may always come upon. They aren't something an average person, who can afford travelling abroad, couldn't afford. In most cases, you can just get the treatment in the local hospital and it's not really necessary for you to get medical transport to your homeland, and if you are in a really severe state, then travelling hundreds km by ambulance is definitely not a good idea.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> This was also implemented nationwide in the Netherlands about 10 days ago.
> 
> In hindsight, this should've been one of the first measures, it becomes clear that nursing homes are severely affected by the virus and it explains the relatively high death rate per 1 million people in the Netherlands. These people didn't go skiing in Austria or sightseeing in Italy, but were infected by visitors.
> 
> A nursing home in the town of Heerde has lost 14 of its 70 residents over the past few days due to the coronavirus. This town is outside the region of where the initial outbreak started to grow.





Kpc21 said:


> Those are extremely rare cases of those rare cases when you actually have to use the EHIC insurance while being abroad. And while they might be high, they are just the next random unexpected spending you may always come upon. They aren't something an average person, who can afford travelling abroad, couldn't afford. In most cases, you can just get the treatment in the local hospital and it's not really necessary for you to get medical transport to your homeland, and if you are in a really severe state, then travelling hundreds km by ambulance is definitely not a good idea.


No they are not extremely rare. If anyone in a traveling family gets sick, and the trip gets interrupted, a number of extra costs are implied. My all-year travel insurance does not cost more than one night in a decent hotel. No reason to take an unmanaged risk.


----------



## MattiG

radamfi said:


> But travel insurance can cost thousands of euros if you have serious pre-existing health conditions like cancer. Then EHIC is the only option, and you can't go outside Europe.


Sounds like a health insurance rather than a travel insurance. Typically, travel insurances are for sudden incidents, and they exclude treatments of the health conditions existing at the beginning of the trip. So, they do not cover the daily treatment of the cancer but if it suddenly gets substantially worse, it might cover, accordingly to the policy. At least it covers the zinc coffin and its transportation which is thousands of euros. Such policies do not cost fortunes but are pretty affordable compared to the cost of the trip. 

Of course, there may be differences across countries.


----------



## MichiH

MattiG said:


> My all-year travel insurance does not cost more than one night in a decent hotel. No reason to take an unmanaged risk.


Mine is less than 20 €/year.


----------



## radamfi

MattiG said:


> Sounds like a health insurance rather than a travel insurance. Typically, travel insurances are for sudden incidents, and they exclude treatments of the health conditions existing at the beginning of the trip. So, they do not cover the daily treatment of the cancer but if it suddenly gets substantially worse, it might cover, accordingly to the policy. At least it covers the zinc coffin and its transportation which is thousands of euros. Such policies do not cost fortunes but are pretty affordable compared to the cost of the trip.
> 
> Of course, there may be differences across countries.


I believe we are both talking about the same travel insurance. If you are being treated for, say, cancer in your home country, you are not allowed to use the travel insurance to get treatment for cancer in another country. It can only be used for emergency treatment. If you have cancer, the insurance companies are scared that you will get ill while you are on holiday, so they either won't insure you, exclude any conditions related to cancer (so if you get a cancer related illness while on holiday you have to pay the full hospital treatment costs), or charge a very high premium. 

That is why EHIC is so important in these situations, as you get treatment regardless of your existing conditions. This is causing a lot of worry for people in the UK as there is no agreement yet with the EU for EHIC to continue beyond the end of 2020.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

The situation on Saaremaa island in Estonia has become quite serious now. The official number for infected people as of today is 316 for a population of 31,000 or a rate of *1%*.

The Estonian military has set up a temporary hospital for up to 40 patients next to Kuressaare hospital (the biggest town and only hospital on the island):








Source: https://www.delfi.ee/news/paevauudi...naviiruse-kriisi-tottu-valihaigla?id=89433655


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In regards to nursing homes, it turns out that the number of deaths in France is also much higher (potentially in the thousands) than reported. They only reported hospital deaths so far, but it turns out that there are many deaths in nursing homes as well, 570 in the Grand Est region alone.

French Region Reports 570 People Died in Nursing Homes Since Virus Outbreak 

Location of Grand Est:


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> But surely for old people, or those with health problems like cancer, the insurance will be too expensive. Maybe over 1000 euros for a trip.


Yes, their policies are probably not cheap.

But then, elderly Americans visiting Europe in groups are most likely rather affluent. This is not cheap holiday in Mexico or Caribbean...


----------



## MacOlej

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've seen the argument that Africa would be less affected because the share of old population is much smaller.


I'd also not be surprised if some African countries already had specific protocols for various epidemics because they happen more often there (e.g. ebola). Similar to Singapore and Taiwan which introduced their procedures after SARS epidemic and which helped with coronavirus.

But of course there is the counter-argument of underfunding...



tfd543 said:


> Could be good one, but Its true pal. Look it up.


Damn, you're right!
Their motto should be: Turkmenistan - country more ridiculous than your April Fools' jokes.
Or rather more precisely: Berdimuhamedow - president more ridiculous than your April Fools' jokes.


----------



## tfd543

MacOlej said:


> Damn, you're right!
> Their motto should be: Turkmenistan - country more ridiculous than your April Fools' jokes.
> Or rather more precisely: Berdimuhamedow - president more ridiculous than your April Fools' jokes.


Lol Yea indeed.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland, schools officially do all the classes in form of e-learning. So the school year isn't formally suspended, even though there are no students in schools. Formally, there must be normal classes with topics put in by teachers to school registers and so on.
> 
> In practice, some teachers realize it by making actual classes through messengers like MS Teams, Discord etc. (or Zoom but this one is problematic for the lack of Polish language version, most teachers don't speak any foreign languages), some just send tasks to do via school register.
> 
> Of course it's a problem for the students who don't have computers. It's not that bad if someone has, at least, a smartphone (and there is not so few students who actually don't have computers but only smartphones), worse if someone has a dumb phone only. And although it's a small number, there are still such students, e.g. from poor families.


I am giving my classes online. I don't have to do videos thankfully (and indeed have been told not to) but I do have to put tasks online. I would say about a quarter of my pupils are doing them, the younger ones being more likely to do it. My oldest pupils have had their exams cancelled and have little motivation to do any work, and I can't say that I blame them.

A lot of my pupils will be looking after their younger siblings I'm sure, and a lot of them are having to share one computer between 10 people, or don't have a computer at all. I suspect systems will be put in place to get more work to these pupils - at the moment the school knows which pupils don't have any computer access but not which pupils do in a normal course of events but can't feasibly spend hours online each day. I've got pupils who are 12, 13 years old and will be cooking and cleaning for 5 or 6 younger siblings right now while their parents try to work. Of course they aren't going to be doing the work that's being set.

I have had pupil sending e-mails worried that they can't do the work. I am worried that the main issue isn't that they will fall behind - we will have to start again whenever the classes re-start, but that they will feel that they are falling behind more prosperous classmates and will lose self-confidence. This is just going to accentuate inequality. If the pupils weren't really aware of the vast economic disparities that we have at the school they are now.

The schools here are staying open (including the upcoming Easter holidays) for the children of key workers and staff are going in on a rota.


----------



## g.spinoza

Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) issued a report about the increase in deaths in territories affected by Covid-19 in comparison to previous years.

In particular, in the city of Bergamo during the first three weeks of March there were 398 deaths, +337% with respect to the average of the same period 2015-2019, while in the whole province the rise was +451%. Some towns in the province were devastated: Albino had 100 deaths (+1036%), Alzano 85 (+1018%), Nembro 122 (+1286%), basically 1% of their population gone in three weeks. Brescia saw 381 deaths, +180%
In the largest cities the situation is just a little better. In Milan, in the same period there were 1075 deaths (+27%), Bologna and Genova +21%.









L'allarme: secondo Istat, più che raddoppiati i morti a Brescia


Oltra a Bergamo, dove si stima una crescita del 400%, la situazione si conferma preoccupante in tutto il Nord Italia




www.giornaledibrescia.it












I numeri veri del coronavirus: +30% dei morti in mille comuni. Nella Bergamasca decessi anche decuplicati. Ecco tutti i dati


L’Istat ha reso disponibili le cifre dei decessi fino al 21 marzo. A Milano +27,3%, a Pesaro triplicati i numeri rispetto al 2019




www.lastampa.it


----------



## Kpc21

Coronavirus warnings on the state radio in Poland (turn on subtitles):







By the way – beautiful Polish pronunciation – "wiedza naukowa" (scientific knowledge) pronounced as "vyedza na-oo-kova", not "vyedza nawkova" as people commonly pronounce it now.


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> May it depend on the fact that Northern Europe puts in practice every day a form of "social distancing" that is not common in the South? Southerners are used to keep very close distances, kiss on the cheek, shake hands, touch other people very commonly.
> Which is something I hate, by the way. I'm not used to touch other people, and sure as hell I don't want to be touched.


Not a bad analysis. Quite many Finns sees a good point in the crisis is that the being asocial and keeping a distance is now allowed. Working remotely, however, seems to a cultural chock for many, and the press is full of arcticles on that. I have 20 years of experience on remote meetings, seeing some team members once a year, and working in non-office locations. Not a problem to me, but I can undestand the pain of the beginners.

The merger of the networking divisions of Nokia and Siemens in 2007 was a big laboratory experiment for cultural clashes between the North and the South. The Germans were pretty schocked when they realized the rules of the game at the north side of the Baltic Sea: No handshaking in the morning, nobody calls you a doctor even if you were a doctor, everyone is called by first name only, everyone is "du" not "sie", no separate toilets and restaurants for the directors, you can challenge the boss, etc. And nobody ever physically touches a colleague (except for the handshaking when they meet the first time). So, no "Schönen guten Morgen Herr Doctor-Doctor von and zu Mettwurst" but "Hi, Johann".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MattiG said:


> Working remotely, however, seems to a cultural chock for many, and the press is full of arcticles on that.


Are schools in Finland closed? I've had a large number of video conferences with children yelling / running in the background. Working remotely will be much more efficient if children are in school. People have posted pictures of working on a kitchen table on a small laptop with children sitting next to them and playing around. I don't think those people are particularly productive. If you can work in a quiet spot or have no children at home I think you can be quite productive. 

I can do all my work from home, though I find the longer video meetings tiring. And the lack of interaction with colleagues will reduce social cohesion in the organization, especially those you don't directly work with. I usually have a chat during lunch, in the hall or at the coffee machine. That is now gone. I now have to train a new colleague through Skype...


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> Quite many Finns sees a good point in the crisis is that the being asocial and keeping a distance is now allowed.


Same as quite many introverts 

Are those cultural rules, like talking to colleagues by surnames and titles, still common and so strictly used in Germany? Because in Poland they are rather uncommon in corporations. At my company (the IT department of one of the leading banks) we call each other by first names. Using titles is generally uncommon except for universities where it's expected from the students. And except for fixed titles that people use while referring to people of specific professions, like doctor for a medical doctor (well, this one applies in English too), magister ("master" like in MSc, not "master" like in opposition to apprentice) for a pharmacist, professor for a high school teacher (even though it's uncommon for them to actually have the professor title), mecenas ("sponsor") for a lawyer – but then they are used alone, without the name, and only if you talk to someone of those professions e.g. as a client or in other professional situations when that person is a stranger for you.


----------



## mgk920

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's interesting how quickly many European countries have evolved into a police state with draconic fines. The Belgium-Netherlands border now looks like that of Russia or China...





Rebasepoiss said:


> You cannot trust any data that comes out of China and their handling of the virus was horrific. The virus started spreading there in November and already in December it was known to healthcare professionals in Wuhan that they have a new virus that's spreading between humans. However, these reports were suppressed by Chinese authorities and the whistleblowers silenced. One of them died of the virus itself and the other one has gone missing. Only when the first cases started popping up outside China did their authorities finally admit that the they have an outbreak at hand.
> 
> The severity of this pandemic is 100% China's fault and they should be held accountable. The lax attitude towards China by the WHO has also been abhorrent.


The USA closed its border to airline flights from many places in Asia back in January, and in response, Donald Trump was heavily derided in many circles as being a 'Xenophobic racist!"....

Mike


----------



## g.spinoza

It seems that something is changing in Sweden:









Coronavirus, anche la Svezia ora valuta misure restrittive


Il governo chiede poteri straordinari per far fronte all’epidemia




www.lastampa.it







> Sweden is the only country in Europe that mantains a softer position in terms of personal restrictions,even though the number of ill people and the deaths rise faster than in other Scandinavian countries, with more than 6400 cases and 401 dead.
> But this is about to change: yeasterday flights connections with UK have been severed, 6 days ago the ski areas in the nNorth have decided to close down, and the government passed a bill of law - unimaginable only a week ago - to give them the possibility to adopt restriction measures without parliament's approval. If the bill passes, the government lead by Stefan Löfven could apply new restrictions to fight the virus.


----------



## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> Same as quite many introverts
> 
> Are those cultural rules, like talking to colleagues by surnames and titles, still common and so strictly used in Germany?


When I moved to Germany, my landlady asked me "do you have a PhD?". "Yes I do", I replied "but why do you ask?". "Oh, it's for the name plaque at the doorbell and on the post, to know if we need to put "Dr" before the name". "It's really not important" I said. 
She looked at me as if I took a dump right in front of her eyes. "Of course it is", she replied.


----------



## Coccodrillo

In Switzerland there aren't that many restrictions. It is forbidden to gather in groups, and every shop, restaurant, sport facilities and similar is closed (except food shops etc), as are many city parks, but it is not forbidden to wander around or in the mountains. Authorities continuously say to avoid doing dangerous sports, so as to reduce accidents not related to the virus but that consume hospital's capacities.



mgk920 said:


> The USA closed its border to airline flights from many places in Asia back in January, and in response, Donald Trump was heavily derided in many circles as being a 'Xenophobic racist!"....
> 
> Mike


IIRC, Italian government did the same, and when other countries did the same with flights from Italy, the same government complained. I didn't see any of these bans as racist though.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Are schools in Finland closed? I've had a large number of video conferences with children yelling / running in the background. Working remotely will be much more efficient if children are in school. People have posted pictures of working on a kitchen table on a small laptop with children sitting next to them and playing around. I don't think those people are particularly productive. If you can work in a quiet spot or have no children at home I think you can be quite productive.


Yes and no. The grades 1-3 are open and and rest are closed up to universities, but most families have chosen to isolate the youngest ones, too.

The video conferences are of no value in my opinion. I my business world, only the voice and the presentations are shared, and 90% of the bandwidth is saved. Keeping the mic muted unless you speak is a normal etiquette minimizing the disturbance from the background noise. Having worked for globally executing companies, I am familiar to random family-related background noises. Someone is always joining at home because of the timezones, and there is not always too much room in the homes.

The bigger issue of the closed school is that the kids tend to be much more ICT-savvy than the average teachers. The teachers do not always have skills to arrange the school days in an efficient manner. Thus, this is a learning exercise, too.


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> The bigger issue of the closed school is that the kids tend to be much more ICT-savvy than the average teachers. The teachers do not always have skills to arrange the school days in an efficient manner.














> _Polish school, May 2020, online classes_
> 
> Teacher: How to turn the volume up?
> Me: Press Alt+F4
> Teacher: _disconnected_
> Me:
> (laughing)


At my company, it's already common for a lot of us (certainly for us, IT) to use audio- and videoconferencing. We rarely use video (other than the desktop sharing mode) because there is really no added value in seeing the face of the interlocutor. Even my team is distributed between two locations in two different cities, so we are forced to use conferencing tools (Skype for Business) for the weekly team meetings.

And we, as IT, are recommending people not to use video as it loads the servers and the connections an order of magnitude higher than just audio only.

By the way, Skype for Business is quite buggy. It often crashes e.g. when I'm trying to paste a website link or a picture into the chat.

The advantage of it is that it's hosted by us on our servers, not in a cloud, so we didn't have problems which Microsoft had with their Teams servers when the number of simultaneous users skyrocketed.

I recently took part in a conference via Zoom, one hosted by another company we had a talk with, and this one worked very well, even via web browser, without installing and app. Some months earlier I took part also in another hosted by the other company, they used Cisco WebEx, and that also worked well (I installed an app).

What about the conferencing software used in your companies?

By the way, unfortunately, the number of daily coronavirus cases in Poland continues the exponential growth:










4102 infected persons in total, 94 died.

Aren't you already bored by this whole coronavirus situation? I mean, I understand that we must keep all those precautions and it's OK. But what annoys me is that it's nearly like I open a fridge and a huge coronavirus warning jumps out.

I open Facebook – I see coronavirus warnings. I open YouTube – coronavirus warnings and links to WHO website everywhere. I am not even trying to turn on TV because it's certainly coronavirus everywhere over there.

I understand that the companies make every effort to bring confirmed information to the people – but at this level it's just annoying. Like commercials, or even worse because it's everywhere the same. I like to get information about coronavirus and to discuss about it exactly when I want and not all the time. Everyone already knows what to do and what to avoid. It's about a month since coronavirus appeared over here and everyone knows it will certainly stay here for some time...

I can't wait for a "CoronaBlock" browser extension that would work like AdBlock but for all the coronavirus warning pop-ups.


----------



## Attus

I have a friend. He is 54, healthy, no smoking, has no family, his parents are both dead (I mean they died long time ago). 
He is an English teacher, I mean, he's a natural born Hungarian that teaches English language in Hungary. He is, actually: he was paid after classes he had. Schools are closed, no English courses, he has no income. Nothing. 
So he lost his income and he has no one to be worried about. No surprise he's angry about governmental measures and thinks, every epidemic based restrictions must be cancelled immediately. I don't agree but I can understand him. 
But worse than that: as he now has plenty of free time, he reads several articles about the pandemic, Hungarian, English, German, and believes some crazy theories more and more. For example he believes, the vast majority of Italian population is infected, and actually no one or only a handful of people died because of Covid-19, the majority of fatalities had died any way but since they (just like almost everyone in Italy) were infected, they are counted as Covid-19 fatalities what, he thinks, is absolutely wrong. 
And it's only one of this theories...

It's crazy. And since he writes me literally day and night about it, I hate him and feel sorry for him at the same time. 

And I'm afraid he is not the only one having such problems :-/


----------



## x-type

I hate handshaking. Really hate it. Especially in private life, but I can easily live without it in business life too. 
I hate kissing and hugging in business life, but it's OK for me in private life with certain people in certain occasions.
I also hate Skype meetings and conference calls. 
And finally, I hate courtesies (we have it as speaking to somebody in plural). I actually find it more rude than polite because you are showing to somebody that he is old.


----------



## MattiG

MattiG said:


> Yes and no. The grades 1-3 are open and and rest are closed up to universities, but most families have chosen to isolate the youngest ones, too.


To clarify: School buildings are closed, but the school work continues in a remote mode.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I pulled up some statistics;

Sweden, with limited lockdown: 52 ICU admissions per 1 million people.
Netherlands, with medium lockdown: 81 ICU admissions per 1 million
France, with strictly enforced lockdown: 105 ICU admissions per 1 million
Spain, with strictly enforced lockdown: 146 ICU admissions per 1 million

You'd expect these figures to be flipped if a lockdown was the only criteria for the virus outbreak to be controlled. So there are seemingly more decivise factors than just the degree to which lockdowns are applied.

The Spanish cases almost doubled in the past 9 days while the lockdown was imposed 3 weeks ago. So even after two weeks lockdown it still spread significantly.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> He is an English teacher, I mean, he's a natural born Hungarian that teaches English language in Hungary. He is, actually: he was paid after classes he had. Schools are closed, no English courses, he has no income. Nothing.


Is he a teacher in a public school or in a private language school (one that delivers extra English classes)?

If he works in a public school it's quite weird... in Poland such teachers maybe don't earn a lot but they are all employed full-time, this is always a standard employment relationship, and in addition, special regulations apply to their employment, so that it's actually very difficult for a public school to fire a teacher.

But there is really many people in other industries that have no work and no source of income now. And some of them have credits. While practically all the banks allowed to suspend paying them off, it's at the cost of the increase of the monthly payment.



ChrisZwolle said:


> I pulled up some statistics;
> 
> Sweden, with limited lockdown: 52 ICU admissions per 1 million people.
> Netherlands, with medium lockdown: 81 ICU admissions per 1 million
> France, with strictly enforced lockdown: 105 ICU admissions per 1 million
> Spain, with strictly enforced lockdown: 146 ICU admissions per 1 million
> 
> You'd expect these figures to be flipped if a lockdown was the only criteria for the virus outbreak to be controlled. So there are seemingly more decivise factors than just the degree to which lockdowns are applied.


Or it works in the other direction. Sweden doesn't decide for any heavier lockdown because they still don't have that many CovID admissions to ICUs.


----------



## tfd543

g.spinoza said:


> May it depend on the fact that Northern Europe puts in practice every day a form of "social distancing" that is not common in the South? Southerners are used to keep very close distances, kiss on the cheek, shake hands, touch other people very commonly.
> Which is something I hate, by the way. I'm not used to touch other people, and sure as hell I don't want to be touched.
> 
> When I was working in Paris last year, I was annoyed by the fact that, in the morning, everyone shook everyone else's hand - or kissed in the cheek, if female. My Italian colleague there told me it's very important for the French, but after a while I stopped. Maybe I ended up as unpleasant or something like that but I didn't care: my personal space is too important.


Hehe, well thats How it is. Its also that Southers tend to live with their family for longer time than the Nothers.


----------



## Verso

Rebasepoiss said:


> You cannot trust any data that comes out of China and their handling of the virus was horrific. The virus started spreading there in November and already in December it was known to healthcare professionals in Wuhan that they have a new virus that's spreading between humans. However, these reports were suppressed by Chinese authorities and the whistleblowers silenced. One of them died of the virus itself and the other one has gone missing. Only when the first cases started popping up outside China did their authorities finally admit that the they have an outbreak at hand.
> 
> The severity of this pandemic is 100% China's fault and they should be held accountable. The lax attitude towards China by the WHO has also been abhorrent.


Of course I don't admire China for its initial reactions, I admire it for how they've almost eradicated the virus after they finally took actions. Maybe their numbers aren't correct, but I don't see the Chinese dying in masses or their hospitals being overcrowded any more.

And why is the severity of this pandemic exclusively China's fault (other than because the virus is from there)? Europe had all the time it needed to prevent the epidemic, but it didn't. There were still flights from China even after it became clear there's something going on there (and we had very few cases in Europe back then). If China and other east Asian countries have managed to bring the virus under control, why Europe can't?


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland it's quite common.


I didnt get that. Say it again?


----------



## Kpc21

It's not uncommon in Poland to see such cases like from that Chris' photo, with extra digits added on speed limit signs (or no entry signs "converted" to speed limits) by vandals.

I mean, I saw at least several ones over here throughout my life.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Coccodrillo said:


> In Switzerland there aren't that many restrictions. It is forbidden to gather in groups, and every shop, restaurant, sport facilities and similar is closed (except food shops etc), as are many city parks, but it is not forbidden to wander around or in the mountains. Authorities continuously say to avoid doing dangerous sports, so as to reduce accidents not related to the virus but that consume hospital's capacities.
> 
> 
> 
> IIRC, Italian government did the same, and when other countries did the same with flights from Italy, the same government complained. I didn't see any of these bans as racist though.


When the U.S. shut down flights from Europe in mid-March (it seems like it’s been so much longer!), the E.U. protested.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Watching a documentary on Bergamo right now, from Sky News in the U.K. (on MSNBC here). Heartbreaking.

Spinoza, did you say you’re there?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Officials here are starting to say it looks as if New York may be leveling off.


----------



## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> What about the conferencing software used in your companies?


Last time I used GoToMeeting: it was a 20+ people conference - audio only - and it worked like a charm. My Institute also uses WebEx, and it's not so bad either.
With skype, there is always something it doesn't work: I get audio but the others don't, and when it's fixed video stops working, and so on.



tfd543 said:


> Hehe, well thats How it is. Its also that Southers tend to live with their family for longer time than the Nothers.


That's true, but I'm unsure it is an important point. I mean, it makes the figures rise (if I catch the virus, I'm gonna spread it to my mother, father, siblings etc) but at least the contagion is "contained" within a household. What really matters in spreading the virus is social life: going out, going to work, going to the market, etc.



Penn's Woods said:


> Watching a documentary on Bergamo right now, from Sky News in the U.K. (on MSNBC here). Heartbreaking.
> 
> Spinoza, did you say you’re there?


I'm in Brescia, but Bergamo is just a 30 minute's drive away (30 miles or so). Bergamo is the most affected province in Italy, but Brescia comes in as a close second.

I did have some chats with people working in hospitals in Brescia. They told me last week the situation was way better than before. One of them told me he even something he didn't have in a long time: time to get bored.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> I pulled up some statistics;
> 
> Sweden, with limited lockdown: 52 ICU admissions per 1 million people.
> Netherlands, with medium lockdown: 81 ICU admissions per 1 million
> France, with strictly enforced lockdown: 105 ICU admissions per 1 million
> Spain, with strictly enforced lockdown: 146 ICU admissions per 1 million
> 
> You'd expect these figures to be flipped if a lockdown was the only criteria for the virus outbreak to be controlled. So there are seemingly more decivise factors than just the degree to which lockdowns are applied.
> 
> The Spanish cases almost doubled in the past 9 days while the lockdown was imposed 3 weeks ago. So even after two weeks lockdown it still spread significantly.


ICU admission criteria is not uniform across these countries. Not only in regards to covid-19, but in general. Is is very common for GPs do discuss end-of-life directives with their elderly patients who might have other conditions in Scandinavia, Netherlands, Belgium, for instance. ICU for mechanical ventilation purposes for long periods is often deadly for, let's say, a 85y.o. patient with serious heart and circulatory conditions and already frail respiratory function. The likelihood of surviving a long stay in ICU is below 50%, and of those who survive, the remaining lifespan is often short and painful due to permanent further damage to lungs, so the person might be require lifetime assistance of a portable air mask etc. Thus, many patients already fill directives not to be put into these treaetment protocols in advance. In some other countries, these discussions are considered more taboo - partners will not talk about it themselves, doctors will threat lightly on the subject unless patients bring it up, and as a result there is no predetermined course-of-action for a risky patient (and their children are often left to decide without knowing what their parent would prefer).


----------



## Suburbanist

We use Microsoft Teams and Zoom (a natio-wide license acquired by the Norwegian research council). 

Microsoft Teams is the best tool IMO, as long as everybody on the chat is on the company's network (guest accounts work terribly). 

Skype doesn't work well for multi-person chat. I don't know what Microsoft plans for Skype are. They have Skype for Business, which is been absorbed into Teams (Teams do everything Skype for Business does, and much more).

Audio-only/screen sharing remote conferencing work when (1) there are few people involved, and (2) everybody knows everybody already from working together. Else, video really helps. 

Now my pet peeve: calendar synch. I routinely get meeting invitations from 3 different institutions, Microsoft Outlook Pro works well getting all calendars on my Laptop, but their Android app is horrible for calendar planning.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The latest phenomenon is to set 5G towers on fire. Apparently some people believe it is aiding the spread of the coronavirus.


----------



## tfd543

Suburbanist said:


> We use Microsoft Teams and Zoom (a natio-wide license acquired by the Norwegian research council).
> 
> Microsoft Teams is the best tool IMO, as long as everybody on the chat is on the company's network (guest accounts work terribly).
> 
> Skype doesn't work well for multi-person chat. I don't know what Microsoft plans for Skype are. They have Skype for Business, which is been absorbed into Teams (Teams do everything Skype for Business does, and much more).
> 
> Audio-only/screen sharing remote conferencing work when (1) there are few people involved, and (2) everybody knows everybody already from working together. Else, video really helps.
> 
> Now my pet peeve: calendar synch. I routinely get meeting invitations from 3 different institutions, Microsoft Outlook Pro works well getting all calendars on my Laptop, but their Android app is horrible for calendar planning.


Now i dont recall, but in one of them you Can add annotations. Thats very handy. I had once a job interview where I had to draw chemical reactions and equations.


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> It's not uncommon in Poland to see such cases like from that Chris' photo, with extra digits added on speed limit signs (or no entry signs "converted" to speed limits) by vandals.
> 
> I mean, I saw at least several ones over here throughout my life.


Got it.


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> Officials here are starting to say it looks as if New York may be leveling off.


Good to hear


----------



## tfd543

g.spinoza said:


> That's true, but I'm unsure it is an important point. I mean, it makes the figures rise (if I catch the virus, I'm gonna spread it to my mother, father, siblings etc) but at least the contagion is "contained" within a household. What really matters in spreading the virus is social life: going out, going to work, going to the market, etc.


Indeed but it also helps the spreading since many Italians commute long distances in the Northern part. Wouldnt you Think that adds to the final result as well?


----------



## MacOlej

Kpc21 said:


> What about the number of accidents?
> 
> In Poland, regardless of the decreased traffic, it didn't change. There is less traffic but people drive faster and more dangerously.


I've read today that it's actually a bit more complicated: the number of accidents falls down but the deaths are basically on the same level. That means that the accidents that do occur are more severe, probably due to higher speeds on empty roads.



Kpc21 said:


> Those were smaller shops. I also tried to visit two Biedronka supermarkets (the biggest supermarket branch in Poland, with stores of a similar format to Lidl, although slightly smaller), unfortunately there were quite long queues at the entrances, so I resigned.


I've noticed in my local Lidl that the whole shopping procedure takes about the same time. What I lost while standing in the queue in front of the entry, I gained back by walking easily around the shop and not waiting at all at the checkout. 



g.spinoza said:


> When I moved to Germany, my landlady asked me "do you have a PhD?". "Yes I do", I replied "but why do you ask?". "Oh, it's for the name plaque at the doorbell and on the post, to know if we need to put "Dr" before the name". "It's really not important" I said.
> She looked at me as if I took a dump right in front of her eyes. "Of course it is", she replied.


Two companies ago I worked in a complaints department for DE an AT markets. We didn't care at all what our education was since every team member had a master's degree (no big deal in Poland).
Once I was working on a case where an Austrian customer didn't contact us by himself but went through a customer support organisation (not a state ombudsman, probably some kind of NGO). The guy contacting me was writing letters (not e-mails as then he could not use their official paper, sigh) in an extremely official but also a bit arrogant fashion. Signed as "Mag. X Y" (Mag. stands for Magister = Master's).
So after a few messages I got fed up with this (especially as the customer was totally in the wrong) and replied signing myself as "Mag. MacOlej".
Suddenly the guy just flipped and started treating me like some higher figure, a bishop or a president!
Me and my teammates laughed hard at this but at the same time found it discriminating - as long as I "wasn't a Mag.", the guy did not treat me as a peer.



Kpc21 said:


> By the way, Skype for Business is quite buggy. It often crashes e.g. when I'm trying to paste a website link or a picture into the chat.


My company is slowly switching towards MS Teams. Skype has been more and more messy since the outbreak, probably it's overloaded with so many people working away from the office.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> The latest phenomenon is to set 5G towers on fire. Apparently some people believe it is aiding the spread of the coronavirus.


Mast fire probe amid 5G coronavirus claims



> *Mobile phone mast fires are being investigated amid conspiracy theories claiming a link between 5G and coronavirus.*
> 
> There have been fires at masts in Birmingham, Liverpool and Melling in Merseyside.
> 
> A video, allegedly of the blaze in Aigburth, was shared on YouTube and Facebook, claiming a link between the mobile technology and Covid-19.
> 
> Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove said it was "dangerous nonsense".
> 
> The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said on Twitter "there is absolutely no credible evidence" of a link, while trade body Mobile UK said such rumours and conspiracy theories were "concerning".
> 
> Merseyside Police said an investigation is under way after the telecommunications box in Aigburth caught fire on Friday.
> 
> A video of what appears to be the incident, which happened shortly after 22:00 BST, was shared on YouTube.
> 
> Verification from the BBC's disinformation team suggests the video is authentic, however, it is unclear whether the box has anything to do with 5G technology.
> 
> Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service said it is also investigating a blaze it extinguished at a 5G mast in the village of Melling, north of Liverpool, on Friday night.
> 
> West Midlands Fire Service said the fire in Birmingham involved a 70ft tower on a telecommunications site. However, it said the cause was yet to be identified and it could not confirm the mast was 5G.
> 
> A West Midlands Police spokesman said: "We're aware of a fire involving a phone mast, but are awaiting further details on its cause."
> 
> At the government's daily coronavirus briefing earlier, Mr Gove said conspiracy theories linking 5G with Covid-19 were "just nonsense, dangerous nonsense as well."
> 
> NHS Director Stephen Powis told the press conference 5G infrastructure is critical both to the general population who are being asked to stay at home and to the healthcare response to the virus.
> 
> "I'm absolutely outraged and disgusted that people would be taking action against the infrastructure we need to tackle this emergency," he said.
> 
> Mobile UK said key workers had suffered abuse and threats from people about damaging infrastructure under the pretence of claims about 5G.
> 
> "This is not acceptable and only impacts on our ability as an industry to maintain the resilience and operational capacity of the networks to support mass home working and critical connectivity to the emergency services, vulnerable consumers and hospitals."


It is amazing how people fall for nonsense like that. I have a fried which I went to uni with. I keep in touch a bit on Facebook and amount of bullshit she shares is depressing. All the anti vaccine nonsense and some other weird stuff. It all started when she married some right wing dude. But of course stupidity is apolitical, I know lefties with weird views too...


----------



## tfd543

MacOlej said:


> Two companies ago I worked in a complaints department for DE an AT markets. We didn't care at all what our education was since every team member had a master's degree (no big deal in Poland).
> Once I was working on a case where an Austrian customer didn't contact us by himself but went through a customer support organisation (not a state ombudsman, probably some kind of NGO). The guy contacting me was writing letters (not e-mails as then he could not use their official paper, sigh) in an extremely official but also a bit arrogant fashion. Signed as "Mag. X Y" (Mag. stands for Magister = Master's).
> So after a few messages I got fed up with this (especially as the customer was totally in the wrong) and replied signing myself as "Mag. MacOlej".
> Suddenly the guy just flipped and started treating me like some higher figure, a bishop or a president!
> Me and my teammates laughed hard at this but at the same time found it discriminating - as long as I "wasn't a Mag.", the guy did not treat me as a peer.


Well you know, that is just a trait someone holds in high esteem. I have also been subject to this When I Got my car repaired near Hamburg ( the working hour rates are insane in DK, hence I drove to Hamburg).

The respect and their behavior was nothing but admirable. I cant Think of any other service where I was reasonably respected as a customer. 

Thats is definitely something we Can learn in DK. 

In the end of the day, its a code of ethics that I Can live with. No probs.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> But by travelling people spread out the virus and transmit it to the areas where it wasn't present.


Sure, but at the moment virus is quite widespread in the whole of Western Europe. Closure of national borders would make much more sense in the initial phase. Let's say you have a few cases in Italy, you close the borders. Now it is way to late for that. Also, you might have much bigger variations of virus penetration in populations between regions of the same countries than between countries. I won't change my opinion that most of the border closing is done simply because it is something easy to do and easy to sell to the panicked populations. Government can be seen doing something. Putting a few borders guards on some local road is much easier then procuring extra ventilators or organizing testing.



> Countries co-operate, e.g. regarding the repatriation flights, they allow citizens of other countries which don't organize such flights from specific region to use their flights. The Polish flights to Warsaw, made by Lot, are also used by Lithuanians or Ukrainians.


Do they cooperate? Organizing a few flights for "our people" (as opposed to "them") is far from cooperation. In fact it led to planes flying empty one way because countries couldn't cooperate response. So Polish airline flew empty to the UK to get Poles to Poland while British one could fly empty to Poland to get Brits back. Nobody thought about filling the plane on both legs.



> By "educated guess" it's quite sensible to assume that the virus will stay in Europe until May/June.


I think it is rather optimistic "guess". There will always be cases in population, mild or asymptomatic, and as soon as we lift tight restrictions (which we will have to) cases will go up again.



> It was like that in China. It started in January and now in March/April it's phasing out. Much of what was closed in China in the peak period is already open (however, they are doing it carefully, e.g. after re-opening the cinemas they had to again close them). In the region where the number of cases was the highest (Hubei), the restrictions lasted longer and the same may happen in Italy and Spain.


China could use techniques and tactics which can't be used and are not used in Europe. Like tracking every member of society 24h/7, online and in real world by face recognition. And even there it remains to be seen how successful they really will be. I would be quite careful with trusting official Chinese numbers. Officially China doesn't have concentration camps for example. In reality, well...



> If the restrictions last longer, their damage to the economy might turn out to be worse than the deaths caused by the virus themselves, so I suppose that if it lasts long enough, the restrictions will start getting released anyway. They are mostly about buying time to fight with the virus. But it's anyway spreading and at some moment so many people will get infected and so many will either die or gain immunity that further fight will not necessarily have any sense.


Precisely. At some point someone will have to bait the bullet and start reopening economies.

Oh and I agree that all the coronavirus prompts on Google, Facebook or YT are getting really annoying. I think by now all the people know the virus is with us. I definitely want a "coronavirus ad block" extension for my browser 

BTW,

How the multi-quote work on this new forum? I can't use it.


----------



## tfd543

geogregor said:


> Mast fire probe amid 5G coronavirus claims
> 
> 
> 
> It is amazing how people fall for nonsense like that. I have a fried which I went to uni with. I keep in touch a bit on Facebook and amount of bullshit she shares is depressing. All the anti vaccine nonsense and some other weird stuff. It all started when she married some right wing dude. But of course stupidity is apolitical, I know lefties with weird views too...


Stupid people that Think they’re clever than everybody else.


----------



## MacOlej

geogregor said:


> Precisely. At some point someone will have to bait the bullet and start reopening economies.


But some of them will be at a big disadvantage. I guess it's easy for Hubei to take the hit because in worst case scenario the central government in Beijing can decide to support them more.

Now let's say Central and Northern Europe opens up earlier than South - should EU support IT and ES more than the other countries? I think it should but I can't imagine all the EU leaders agreeing on that (I'm mostly looking at Orban, Kaczyński and Babis). 



geogregor said:


> How the multi-quote work on this new forum? I can't use it.


You click "+Quote" under the post you want to quote.
Then you scroll all the way down to your own post and click "Insert Quotes" on the bottom-right.


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> I think it is rather optimistic "guess". There will always be cases in population, mild or asymptomatic, and as soon as we lift tight restrictions (which we will have to) cases will go up again.


I think businesses can learn how to operate by knowing the nature how virus spread. The life will not come back to normal, we could only wish for at least more predictability and even maybe a little bit more freedom in life. I still have scary thoughts about future, if surviving in life itself would not become harder than possibility to survive the virus. I mean people are still restricted from working and start to do crime out of desperation, and state systems could not handle the order that we used to live in. I don't mean that this will happen, but gosh it was almost impossible to have such thoughts during "normal" times...


----------



## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> Indeed but it also helps the spreading since many Italians commute long distances in the Northern part. Wouldnt you Think that adds to the final result as well?


I think it is a factor, but my feeling is that it's not the most important.
According to this report by Eurostat:



> *Young people in Sweden, Luxembourg, Denmark and Finland youngest to fly the nest*
> In 2017, young people left home earliest in the three northern Member States – Sweden (18.5 years), Denmark (21.1 years) and Finland (22.0 years), as well as in Luxembourg (20.1 years). Young people also tended to leave home before the age of 25 in Estonia (22.2 years), Germany, France and the Netherlands (all 23.7 years) as well as the United Kingdom (24.7 years).
> 
> *In Croatia, Slovakia, Malta and Italy young people move out at around 30*
> At the opposite end of the scale, young adults in Croatia and Slovakia remained the longest in the parental household. They left home at an average age of 31.8 and 30.9 respectively. Young adults in Malta (30.7 years), Italy (30.1 years), Bulgaria (29.6 years), Spain (29.5 years), Greece (29.3 years) and Portugal (28.9 years) also remained with their parents for longer.


Germany France and the Netherlands have a mean age of people leaving home basically the same, but the contagion is very different for these three countries. Ditto for Croatia, Slovakia, and Italy.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands and Northwest Germany have the highest temperatures in Europe today, something you don't usually see.


----------



## italystf

geogregor said:


> Mast fire probe amid 5G coronavirus claims
> 
> 
> 
> It is amazing how people fall for nonsense like that. I have a fried which I went to uni with. I keep in touch a bit on Facebook and amount of bullshit she shares is depressing. All the anti vaccine nonsense and some other weird stuff. It all started when she married some right wing dude. But of course stupidity is apolitical, I know lefties with weird views too...


I have a stupid relative who shares stupid stuff about coronavirus being causated by 5G or vaccines. I's sad t think that those people are entitled to vote and raise children.


----------



## x-type

Entrance sign to Vid, Croatia


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> If South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau have managed to suppress the virus, then why not mainland China? They applied very strict measures, especially in Hubei.


A good question. While China did applied strict measures, it was implemented late, the virus was already identified in December but these measures didn't went into effect until late January, at that time there was already massive travel for the Chinese New Year. If you look at the spread in Europe after the ski travel, it appears unlikely that a significantly larger travel event in China somehow wouldn't've spread the virus on such a scale.


----------



## Verso

Yes, but the same large outbreak also happened in S. Korea and they somehow brought the situation under control.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There was some debate earlier about the effects of warmer weather on the spread of the virus. While the virus has spread globally, the rates do appear lower in countries with a warm climate.

An example is Australia. It is a country with significant exposure to China through travel and trade. Australia currently has some 5,900 cases with the rate of new infections declining for over a week now. The country hasn't seen the large numerical increases that much of Europe and North America have/had. This despite the fact that the Australian population is highly urbanized.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> There was some debate earlier about the effects of warmer weather on the spread of the virus. While the virus has spread globally, the rates do appear lower in countries with a warm climate.
> 
> An example is Australia. It is a country with significant exposure to China through travel and trade. Australia currently has some 5,900 cases with the rate of new infections declining for over a week now. The country hasn't seen the large numerical increases that much of Europe and North America have/had. This despite the fact that the Australian population is highly urbanized.


That does not necessarily imply that climate is a factor. In Europe as we saw it's the other way around, with warmer climates most affected.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes, but that happened during the winter. I believe Italy and Spain have not yet had a longer period of very warm spring weather so far. I guess we'll have to wait and see...


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes, but that happened during the winter. I believe Italy and Spain have not yet had a longer period of very warm spring weather so far. I guess we'll have to wait and see...


Australia (at least the most densely populated part in the Southeast) is going through winter soon.


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> There was some debate earlier about the effects of warmer weather on the spread of the virus. While the virus has spread globally, the rates do appear lower in countries with a warm climate.
> 
> An example is Australia. It is a country with significant exposure to China through travel and trade. Australia currently has some 5,900 cases with the rate of new infections declining for over a week now. The country hasn't seen the large numerical increases that much of Europe and North America have/had. This despite the fact that the Australian population is highly urbanized.


OTOH, it's more difficult to keep people at home, if it's nice and warm outside, which then contributes to spreading the virus.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes, but that happened during the winter. I believe Italy and Spain have not yet had a longer period of very warm spring weather so far. I guess we'll have to wait and see...


Well, it was one of the warmest winters on record
This is the March temperature plot for Turin:


----------



## PovilD

I think it may slow the spread in dry, sunny and hot conditions. Is hot in Ecuador, but it's moist with occasional tropical rain. On the other hand, Ecuador is mountainous and temperatures are lower, in capital city Quito, temperatures are similar to those in Italy, except it's even more moist. Lower than +20 temperatures are somewhat cool and can be perceived as moist, except maybe conditions are very dry and sunny and even then there are even less effect on spread levels. I think hot, dry and sunny conditions like +30 can help slowing (but not stopping) the spread. Such conditions are not as frequent in Northern Europe, especially in North West Europe, but can be achieved in Southern Europe. North Eastern Europe has more chances to get high temperatures due to more continental climate and no mountains in thousands of kilometers into the Southeast.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I believe the idea of warmer weather - like the effect on the seasonal flu - is more in the range of 20+ degrees for a longer period of time. While winter 2020 was very mild across Europe, it was still winter, or perhaps a 7-month autumn. 

I don't know if SARS is comparable, but that also dropped off significantly in the spring of 2003. MERS is actually still a thing, but it also levels off to near zero each summer.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands has expanded its testing capacity significantly this week, they're now talking about 17,500 tests per day, which can be upscaled to 30,000 per day in the coming time. So I suppose we can see the number of cases rise.

The number of deaths appears to have plateau'ed for some time now, but is not significantly receding yet.

Other indicators are more hopeful. The hospitalization is really receding and so is the number of ICU admissions. The number of COVID-19 patients in ICU is just over 1,200 (current capacity: 1,900 beds) and appears to be plateau'ing as well.

Patients with COVID-19 in ICU:









Since these numbers indicate a significant slowdown of the spread of the virus, there is increasing talk about opening some activities back up. The Netherlands is in an 'intelligent lockdown' until at least 28 April. The prime minister said that any decisions beyond that will be taken in the week before, so we don't expect a significant change in policy for at least the next 3-4 weeks.

They want to go back to 'track & trace' of patients and contacts, which they did at the beginning but had to let go due to sheer number of cases in early March. This time they want to use an app that will say if you've been in a location/time with an infected patient. It sounds like the same thing that South Korea did. They said that other countries like the UK and Germany are also working on this.


----------



## Kpc21

The Polish rule that forbids shopping between 10 and 12 AM to people under-65 is quite problematic. For example, what to do if a customer starts shopping shortly before 10? There were already cases of people calling the police in such situations.

A commentary under an article on one of the portals:



> Byłem w aptece o godzinie 9:30, przede mną czterech seniorów, którzy kupowali leki na receptę oraz dodatkowo kilka leków z reklam TV, ale te za drogie, a po tych mieli gazy. System rozwaliła dopiero babcia, która nie wiedziała jakiego lekarstwa potrzebuje, ale było w fioletowym opakowaniu, nie w tym, w innym (i tak przez 10 minut). Do dziury w drzwiach dostałem się o 10:05 więc usłyszałem, że zakupów nie zrobię, mam przyjść po 12:00. Na mój komentarz, że więcej seniorów już nie ma, usłyszałem, że nie bo taki jest przepis... Czy w tym kraju jest ktoś, kto używa tej szarej zawartości głowy i jest w stanie zrobić ustawę, a nie bubla prawnego?





> I was in the pharmacy at 9:30, in front of me there were four seniors buying prescription drugs and additionally several drugs advertised on TV. Some too expensive for them, after some other they had flatulence... The system was finally broken by a grandma who didn't know what medicine she wanted – but it was in purple package... not in this one, in a different one... (and so on for 10 minutes). I managed to approach the door hole at 10:05, so I heard I can't buy anything, I have to come at 12. To my comment that there are no more seniors they replied "no" because this is the rule... Is there anyone in this country who uses the gray matter in his head and is able to make a law and not a legal trash?


Also, the general rules that allow leaving home only in "necessary, vital situations" are so unclear that there are many controversial cases when people get fined by the police even in situations about which the government said they are OK. E.g. recently some people get fined for washing their cars in a car wash. Furthermore, people get fines for walking or cycling through parks just for transport and not for recreation.

Some controversial decisions are e.g. forbidding entry to all the state forests or leaving homes for youth under-18 without their parents. Because just SOME people could not behave and follow the current rules (not to meet and gather together), they punished everyone collectively by closing all the forests. And the current situation is terrible e.g. for kids that are bullied by their parents.


----------



## radamfi

I didn't realise there can be fines if buses are too full. In the south of the Netherlands, near the German border, a company transporting migrant workers by private bus was fined 399 euros per passenger. As far as I can make out, the passengers were actually fined themselves, but the company agreed to pay all the fines.









Volle bus beboet: 399 euro per persoon omdat er geen 1,5 meter afstand was


In de bus zaten arbeidsmigranten in dienst van een uitzendbureau. De eigenaar zegt alle boetes op zich te nemen.




nos.nl


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Yes, but the same large outbreak also happened in S. Korea and they somehow brought the situation under control.


I’m no epidemiologist, but would it go to no cases at all? That’s what I’m skeptical of.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> OTOH, it's more difficult to keep people at home, if it's nice and warm outside, which then contributes to spreading the virus.


I’ve heard the reason the flu disappears in the spring is that FEWER people are indoors passing it to each other. But, again, I’m no epidemiologist.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> The Polish rule that forbids shopping between 10 and 12 AM to people under-65 is quite problematic. For example, what to do if a customer starts shopping shortly before 10? There were already cases of people calling the police in such situations.
> 
> A commentary under an article on one of the portals:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Also, the general rules that allow leaving home only in "necessary, vital situations" are so unclear that there are many controversial cases when people get fined by the police even in situations about which the government said they are OK. E.g. recently some people get fined for washing their cars in a car wash. Furthermore, people get fines for walking or cycling through parks just for transport and not for recreation.
> 
> Some controversial decisions are e.g. forbidding entry to all the state forests or leaving homes for youth under-18 without their parents. Because just SOME people could not behave and follow the current rules (not to meet and gather together), they punished everyone collectively by closing all the forests. And the current situation is terrible e.g. for kids that are bullied by their parents.


If it were up to me, I’d say if you’re in the store in time you can finish your shopping. Which is the rule at American polling places. If you’re inside at poll-closing time, they have to let you vote.

The Governor of New Jersey closed state and county parks today. Too many people weren’t social-distancing. I am not pleased.

And the state of Wisconsin is going ahead with an election today. Smh


----------



## Kpc21

The Polish government wants now to make the May presidential elections in the form of postal voting.

The legal way (compliant with the constitution) to postpone the elections would be to announce an emergency state (it's, after all, an emergency situation), but they prefer not to do it and instead to introduce all the restrictions based on some provisional regulations (introduced by the Minister of Health) which aren't really in accordance with the constitution. Probably just because they don't want to postpone the elections – to make it before the economical crisis really hits.

Yesterday, our vice-prime minister resigned because of that. He could not agree not to postpone those elections. Although his proposal was also quite weird – he wanted to extend the office of the president with even 2 extra years, and to change the way of electing the president so that he would always get elected for 7 years (now it's 5 in Poland) but only once (currently the Polish president may rule for 2 terms at maximum).


----------



## geogregor

When I read news from Poland I find a lot of response to the crisis complete ludicrous. Polish police clearly enjoy all the new powers, some of them quite questionable. 

And the whole election circus is pure politics. In the time of crisis panicked population rally around "strong government". In most countries current leaders get a boost of trust, regardless how popular they were before the virus. But it won't last forever, especially as the economic problems might soon concern people more that the fear of virus.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Interesting point. What's worse, the media - which prides itself on being factcheckers - just assume all data provided by China - a communist dictatorship with a long history of censorship - is reliable...


Nothing indicates that they are not. Sure, no one thinks they are really true, but if you have nothing in your hand, you can not say, at least not officially, that Chinese figures are fake, just because. And no one (except for some secret services, but they don't publish they information) know what is the truth. OK, let's say China has no 3 thousands of fatalities, but how many actually? 10, 25, 100 thousand? We have not any information about it.
Hungarian press usually writes "... and we can not be sure if Chinese figures are correct ...", but they can not write more, because they have no idea, nothing.
And don't forget, China is surely not the only nation providing fake information.

And even in countries without censorship, data may be very unreliable. The count of infections is actually the count if positive tests - the less you test, the less infections you have, statistically. Since it's well known that (unlike at SARS in 2003) the vast majority of infected people have only mild symptoms or no symptoms at all, it must be clear that lots of infected people are never counted statistically because they are not tested. Several nations, even in Europe, make less tests in order to have less infected people in the statistics.
And what about fatalities? Are they clear? No, they are not. Who is infected and dies, do not necesserily die because of Covid-19. In some cases it is clear, just like a Hungarian guy who died because of a motorcycle accident, but in many cases it is not. But no one has the capacity of check all dead people whether they died because of Covid-19 or not. And people who didn't die in a hospital but at home, are in many cases not checked at all.
You may say: let's compare the count if deaths to the figures of previous years! Deep surprise: In March in Italy died less people than in March '19. So Covid-19 has actually positive effects? Hardly, but statistically, checking Italy as a whole nation, looks like that. In Lombardy, however, it's the contrary. In a certain town usually 25-30 people die in March. This year died 200, officially 70 because of Covid-19. What happened with the other ~100 people?

Many questions, few answers.

But one is sure. Even in Lombardy, in Alsace, in Madrid or New York, the hot spots of this epidemic, significantly less than 1 percent of the population died in February-March this year.


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> 3 banks I have account at (in Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland) use some form of token generator. The Norwegian bank uses one exactly as this photo, the other two have access cards you insert into a reader to generate codes.
> 
> I don't have to use the tokens often, but I do need them for larger transfer for new recipients, to make certain changes to my account (address for instance), or to sign/re-sign certain contracts digitally. And, of course, to activate apps that I can use on a day-to-day basis for two-factor authentication.


As I understood it, these devices were outlawed by EU regulation, but Norway and Switzerland are outside so it doesn't apply. As for Netherlands and other EU member states, I don't know, maybe it's a matter of national ratification of EU regulations.


----------



## g.spinoza

Kemo said:


> I have never seen such contraption. Maybe we are talking about completely different stuff?
> 
> Several years ago I used these cards, but now they have been completely replaced with SMS codes.


I think this is the same thing, just a decade behind in terms of technology


----------



## volodaaaa

Well, the face masks have definitely become a part of our lives, even in an advertisement.
A famous soft drink manufacturer in Czechia and Slovakia - Kofola had introduced a new advertisement campaign three weeks ago.
The original clip is here:




The main motto: #haveabiglove

A week ago, the clip was remastered with face masks.




The main motto: #coveryourmouth


----------



## MacOlej

ChrisZwolle said:


> That was my initial response as well, but apparently there is a way to track contacts with corona patients without using location data. This system uses bluetooth, it transmits a random code and stores all contact codes on your phone. When a corona patient is detected, all matching contacts get a notification.
> 
> This way you don't need GPS / location data. You know you've been in contact with a patient, but not when, where or who. And with storing it on your phone, you don't process it through a central database.
> 
> This is the system they use in Singapore:


But this would require all the citizens to:
1. Have a smartphone.
2. Install the app.
3. Have Bluetooth always on.
4. Report in the app when they get infected themselves.
Are all these steps now mandatory in Singapore and South Korea?



italystf said:


> In case of emergencies like this one, softening privacy laws (within certain limits) is IMHO acceptable.
> I prefer to be free to go around earlier, while being tracked, than be forced to stay at home for longer.


Yeah, I think I can agree with you.
However, is there any guarantee that these measures would be stopped after this pandemic? I'm afraid not, especially in democratic countries where current governments have authoritarian tendencies. Just look at the reforms Orban is currently proceeding in Hungary, he'd probably love to have all the Hungarians install such an app and would never switch it off afterwards.



Suburbanist said:


> Here in Switzerland many more people are using 'self-scanning' devices. You get a portable scan when you enter the supermarket (using an affiliate card)
> (...)
> Now I see the portable scanners used much more often than before.


Do these scanners get cleaned after every customer used them? If not, they could pose a bigger infection threat currently than traditional check-outs.
Some shops in Poland closed their self-service check-outs - I guess the idea is to stop people from touching the check-outs' screens.



Kpc21 said:


> And it has always been like that with the Polish police. In the communist times (they had a different name back then, they were called "milice" instead of police, I have no idea why they changed that, probably to make it sound more "western", as in most western-European languages the word for the police starts with "p" and not with "m") probably even worse...
> 
> This is why it looked quite weird to me when I read (I posted it here some time ago) that police was found to be the most trusted of the public services in Poland.
> 
> Of course, this doesn't apply to all the police officers in Poland, there are certainly many good and helpful ones, but for me, the general view is as I have described. I guess it might be specific for the ex-communist countries.


Same for me. My experiences with Polish police have always been unpleasant. Highly arrogant, impolite, even humiliating.

On the other hand I could not believe how polite or even friendly German and Austrian policemen were towards me in a few encounters. And one of these included convoying our car from a rest-stop to the police station and a thorough drug check of our baggage and the car itself. Especially after they realized we didn't have any drugs they started some friendly chats with me. Polish police would be twisting our wrists with handcuffs and berating us the whole way.


----------



## Attus

MacOlej said:


> But this would require all the citizens to:
> 1. Have a smartphone.
> 2. Install the app.
> 3. Have Bluetooth always on.
> 4. Report in the app when they get infected themselves.
> Are all these steps now mandatory in Singapore and South Korea?


They use another principles, with a significantly lower level of data privacy.


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> As I understood it, these devices were outlawed by EU regulation, but Norway and Switzerland are outside so it doesn't apply. As for Netherlands and other EU member states, I don't know, maybe it's a matter of national ratification of EU regulations.


Outlawed? Every Finnish bank delivers such gadgets as alternatives to a smartphone-based authentication.


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> It's basically impossible not to have a smartphone today. All banks have now replaced their one-time password generators, which used to be physical devices, with smartphone apps. And this is EU-wide, due to Regulation Eba 2018/389.


My mother (living in Hungary) has no smartphone. She does have a bank account, but has never ever transferred money, neither electronically nor personally in the bank. She has a debit card but has never used. She always pays by cash. For her paying by card or transferring money sounds like flying to the moon. True, she's not a young girl any more (I, too, am not youg any more and she's my mother...), but she's not even seventy years old.


----------



## g.spinoza

MattiG said:


> Outlawed? Every Finnish bank delivers such gadgets as alternatives to a smartphone-based authentication.


Apparently I'm wrong. Banks in Italy justified their withdrawal of physical devices on this grounds, but maybe it's not strictly necessary.


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> My mother (living in Hungary) has no smartphone. She does have a bank account, but has never ever transferred money, neither electronically nor personally in the bank. She has a debit card but has never used. She always pays by cash. For her paying by card or transferring money sounds like flying to the moon. True, she's not a young girl any more (I, too, am not youg any more and she's my mother...), but she's not even seventy years old.


I understand, my mother switched to smartphone 2 years ago but still has many problems with them (she's 70), but no offense meant, I was talking about working-age people.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MacOlej said:


> But this would require all the citizens to:
> 1. Have a smartphone.
> 2. Install the app.
> 3. Have Bluetooth always on.
> 4. Report in the app when they get infected themselves.
> Are all these steps now mandatory in Singapore and South Korea?


Perhaps a medium to high level of usage is sufficient for the system to work, I don't think it would require a 100% of usage of that app to make it work, though the more usage, the better. 

But apparently Singapore went into lockdown now because they couldn't trace enough contacts. Which means that contact tracing through an app may not be sufficient to avoid a lockdown. Though Singapore being a densely populated city-state may not make it very comparable to regular countries.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Interesting, car infotainment systems are as bad or even worse than driving under influence.









Infotainment systems are worse than cannabis or alcohol for driving performance | Traffic Technology Today


The effects of infotainment systems on driving performance is comparable to that of alcohol and cannabis, the findings of a new study have revealed. Assessing the impact of interacting with either Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, TRL in conjunction with road safety charity IAM RoadSmart, found...




www.traffictechnologytoday.com


----------



## Suburbanist

MacOlej said:


> Do these scanners get cleaned after every customer used them? If not, they could pose a bigger infection threat currently than traditional check-outs.
> Some shops in Poland closed their self-service check-outs - I guess the idea is to stop people from touching the check-outs' screens.


Yes, you return the scanner to a different wall of docking stations, and employees disinfect them between every use. You also avoid dealing with the conveyor belt at the cashier, and with shopping carts.


----------



## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> Yes, you return the scanner to a different wall of docking stations, and employees disinfect them between every use. You also avoid dealing with the conveyor belt at the cashier, and with shopping carts.


You still have to use shopping carts, even though you use personal scanners.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

At my local _Albert Heijn, _they clean both the scanners and the shopping cart after every customer. They also created a separate entrance, and you are only allowed with a shopping cart, this helps keeping distance.


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> You still have to use shopping carts, even though you use personal scanners.


My procedure: I place an order over internet to a local supermarket and pay online. At the time of the delivery, I drive to the backyard of the supermarket, send a text message, and the staff carries the goods into my car. That is repeated twice a week. 

When there is a need to visit a shop, I have a bottle of desinfection fluid and some sheets of soft paper to wipe the handles of the shopping cart. In addition, I try to use the 24h shops. Last week, I made a visit with my wife at a big store between 0430 and 0530 in the morning. Really no crowds. Quite an interesting experience to be the only clients in a store of almost 5000+ square meters.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> It's basically impossible not to have a smartphone today. All banks have now replaced their one-time password generators, which used to be physical devices, with smartphone apps. And this is EU-wide, due to Regulation Eba 2018/389.
> 
> EDIT: Ah, now I see you're London-based, so all that EU-related stuff doesn't apply to you anymore. I'm sure England banks will revert to physical devices, pronto.
> 
> The same - but this I think is for Italy only - applies to the Public Digital Identifier (SPID) which uses a two-step authentication process which involves a smartphone app.


Quite a large share of the population of the world is actually outside the EU. ;-)

But what ARE "one-time password generators"? Like when my ATM lets me "use a code" (or whatever it says, because I've never actually used this) when I've forgotten my card, but you had to have an actual device?


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Scratch cards? No, I mean these ones:


Is this the answer to my previous question? You actually had something like that from your banks?
I think they'd just text me a code.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I still have a functional token from my bank, but I almost never use it since I do banking with the app most of the time. 

'one-time password generators' were an early implementation of what is now widely known as 2-factor authentication (2FA). Banks realized early on that just a username and password isn't safe enough. You need a second way to authenticate. Just like Facebook uses when you log in from a new device.


----------



## g.spinoza

MattiG said:


> My procedure: I place an order over internet to a local supermarket and pay online. At the time of the delivery, I drive to the backyard of the supermarket, send a text message, and the staff carries the goods into my car. That is repeated twice a week..


Yes, like several million Italians, so many that the time to delivery now is more than three weeks, i.e. completely useless.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> Is this the answer to my previous question? You actually had something like that from your banks?
> I think they'd just text me a code.


 I had it till last September, when the bank announced they were not compliant any more and replaced them with an app.


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> You still have to use shopping carts, even though you use personal scanners.


Here in Switzerland, the disposable paper bags are available right next to the scanners when you pick them. If you are buying stuff you will carry walking back, then you just put your items in the bag, then there is no shopping cart involved when you pay. You are already packed to go - that is, in normal times, the main advantage do me. It is a very first-world problem, but it bothers me that soft/fragile items like pastries or yogurt on soft container are the first items out of the top of the car, and then the first onto the cashiers' conveyor belt, but shouldn't be the first on the shopping bag to take home.

If you are buying stuff in bulk, then you use a shopping cart, but you arrange your shopping bags within the cart, and then you just have to take the bags on your car/cargo bike.


----------



## geogregor

g.spinoza said:


> It's basically impossible not to have a smartphone today. All banks have now replaced their one-time password generators, which used to be physical devices, with smartphone apps. And this is EU-wide, due to Regulation Eba 2018/389.
> 
> EDIT: Ah, now I see you're London-based, so all that EU-related stuff doesn't apply to you anymore. I'm sure England banks will revert to physical devices, pronto.
> 
> The same - but this I think is for Italy only - applies to the Public Digital Identifier (SPID) which uses a two-step authentication process which involves a smartphone app.


Are you legally obliged to have a smartphone? Not as far as I know, not in the UK, not in Poland, nor, I suspect, in Italy.

And even the simplest phone can receive texts with codes 

Maybe I have spend too much time in the UK, where I don't even need an ID, but I'm highly suspicious when state wants to know too much about me. As much as I don't mind sharing a lot of stuff about myself (for example on social media) but I choose what I want to share and when. I definitely wouldn't trust the Polish state.

I suspect the phone based apps will be pushed on populations to help with tracing Covid-19. In some societies they will be more accepted than in others. But nowhere in Europe it will be as easy or universal as in China or South Korea. I might accept tracing app if it offers me clear benefits, for example possibility of travelling abroad and I suspect many people who will really want to be on the move will accept them. But not all, not by any means.


----------



## Coccodrillo

g.spinoza said:


> Yes, like several million Italians, so many that the time to delivery now is more than three weeks, i.e. completely useless.


Why? One can just order regularly what he will need in three weeks, simply planning in advance what he will need (and going to a supermarket just for last-minute purchases). Also, the biggest supermarket chains in Switzerland now also sell online, and send the food home. This could not work in big cities, but in my (small) city I always find a free slot for delivery.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland banks used to offer hardware tokens for the customers in the early years of the online banking but now it's an absolutely rare thing only owners of some old accounts may have. Or, actually, they shouldn't as they are no longer considered safe by the EU regulations (they don't allow you to verify the account number to which you are sending money).

For the same reason, the disposable code lists got outlawed.

Intercepting verification SMS messages is possible but such attacks are very rare as they must be targeted to a specific victims, it isn't possible to perform them on a mass scale.

The two verification methods supported by most banks nowadays are either via an SMS or through the app. With the app being preferable for the banks and considered safer. Although many customers prefer SMS codes, as this method was very popular for many years, even before banking smartphone apps became common. To use an app, you must have Internet access on your smartphone and still several years ago it wasn't that common.

In most banks you can choose between both, I know only one countrywide bank which charges the customers extra for sending the verification SMS messages to them (it has always done so). It's Pekao SA, but don't mistake it with PKO BP, those banks have almost identical names but they are two absolutely different and unrelated banks. Both are state-owned, although PKO BP has always been like that while Pekao SA from 1999 to 2017 belonged to the Italian UniCredit group (or UniCredito as Polish media often call it for some unknown reasons).

Interestingly, this naming weirdness dates back to 1929 when Pekao SA was created (PKO BP has existed since 1919).



Coccodrillo said:


> Why? One can just order regularly what he will need in three weeks, simply planning in advance what he will need (and going to a supermarket just for last-minute purchases). Also, the biggest supermarket chains in Switzerland now also sell online, and send the food home. This could not work in big cities, but in my (small) city I always find a free slot for delivery.


In Poland many small grocery shops reacted to the current restrictions by allowing to make telephone orders for shopping. I am not sure if they offer delivery (maybe some of them do) – but often you can make an order and receive just ready shopping at the store.

Although actually, I observe queues outside only at the stores of the largest branches (Biedronka and Lidl). At others, if there is a queue outside, it's just two or three persons.


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> Are you legally obliged to have a smartphone? Not as far as I know, not in the UK, not in Poland, nor, I suspect, in Italy.
> 
> And even the simplest phone can receive texts with codes
> 
> Maybe I have spend too much time in the UK, where I don't even need an ID, but I'm highly suspicious when state wants to know too much about me. As much as I don't mind sharing a lot of stuff about myself (for example on social media) but I choose what I want to share and when. I definitely wouldn't trust the Polish state.
> 
> I suspect the phone based apps will be pushed on populations to help with tracing Covid-19. In some societies they will be more accepted than in others. But nowhere in Europe it will be as easy or universal as in China or South Korea. I might accept tracing app if it offers me clear benefits, for example possibility of travelling abroad and I suspect many people who will really want to be on the move will accept them. But not all, not by any means.


It’s cultural. We, like you, don’t have national (or state) IDs, at least IDs issued JUST to serve as IDs (as opposed to driver’s licenses, which are often used as IDs as well, to the point some states -offer- IDs for people who don’t drive because it would be a pain in the ass not to have something). The police can’t just stop you randomly on the street (without a good reason) and ask for an ID, and these little forms French people are having to fill out every time they go out (if I’ve understood correctly) would be completely alien and we’d never comply. (It’s also not very green.)


----------



## g.spinoza

Coccodrillo said:


> Why? One can just order regularly what he will need in three weeks, simply planning in advance what he will need (and going to a supermarket just for last-minute purchases). Also, the biggest supermarket chains in Switzerland now also sell online, and send the food home. This could not work in big cities, but in my (small) city I always find a free slot for delivery.


How can one plan when you're not sure about delivery times? You'll end up with a lot of fresh stuff all together and you won't be able to consume all of it, so a large part is going in the trash.


----------



## g.spinoza

geogregor said:


> Are you legally obliged to have a smartphone? Not as far as I know, not in the UK, not in Poland, nor, I suspect, in Italy.
> 
> And even the simplest phone can receive texts with codes


You're not legally obliged, but in practice the is a lot you can't do without a smartphone.
For instance, now to prevent people going to the doctor's for non essential stuff, doctor's prescriptions can be sent digitally to the patient. Either via email, or via more sophisticated SPID (electronic identification), you will still need a smartphone. You could use a PC and a printer in principle, but it's a lot less practical.

And SMS, as Chris already said, are not secure enough.

The
In any case, the "out the government from my business"is not really my thing. On the contrary, I have nothing to hide to anybody. I think the rest is just paranoia.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> At my local _Albert Heijn, _they clean both the scanners and the shopping cart after every customer.


I never saw anyone - not staff nor customers - cleaning scanners* nor shopping carts here. REWE, Lidl and e-center markets.

*I think you mean the terminal where you pay with card - contactless or with entering a pin


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MichiH said:


> *I think you mean the terminal where you pay with card - contactless or with entering a pin


No, they have the hand scanners where you can scan all the products while shopping so you don't have to wait in line for checkout at the cashier. You just pay at a payment terminal (which can be done contactless).

It looks like this:









You can also use your own phone with an app to work as a hand scanner, but I found that to be more cumbersome than to just pick up a hand scanner and do my groceries.


----------



## Kpc21

g.spinoza said:


> For instance, now to prevent people going to the doctor's for non essential stuff, doctor's prescriptions can be sent digitally to the patient. Either via email, or via more


In Poland they avoided that. They finally introduced online prescriptions (and made them obligatory for all the doctors) at the beginning of this year (luckily for the coronavirus pandemic, it now allows many people with chronic diseases to get their drugs prescribed without the need to physically visit the doctor) – but the only what you need to got your drugs at the pharmacy is the prescription code which can be just told to you by your doctor on the phone.
If I am not mistaken, it is also possible to get it via SMS.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland they avoided that. They finally introduced online prescriptions (and made them obligatory for all the doctors) at the beginning of this year (luckily for the coronavirus pandemic, it now allows many people with chronic diseases to get their drugs prescribed without the need to physically visit the doctor) – but the only what you need to got your drugs at the pharmacy is the prescription code which can be just told to you by your doctor on the phone.
> If I am not mistaken, it is also possible to get it via SMS.


Germans have an health insurance card and your doctor(s) need to scan it once per quarter. You need to go there physically but some doctors accept when you sent the card per mail. You get or card and the prescription back by mail again. If so, and in case you need a second prescription in the same quarter, you can get your prescription per mail again. You can call your doctor, sometimes you can write an email and I also know doctors where you can fill a form online.

And you usually need to go to the pharmacy in person. Some doctors directly bring the prescriptions to a local pharmacy. Some pharmacies deliver you drugs home.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

In the UK you can quite frequently get prescriptions delivered home and doctors can certainly send the prescriptions directly to the pharmacy. I had to get a repeat prescription the other day and I had go to the pharmacy and give my name and date of birth. 
You can't go see the doctor at all now as far as I can see, the GP surgeries around here at least are shut - but you can talk to them over the phone.
We used to have NHS cards but we didn't have to use them very often and I think they've been phased out now.


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> You're not legally obliged, but in practice the is a lot you can't do without a smartphone.
> For instance, now to prevent people going to the doctor's for non essential stuff, doctor's prescriptions can be sent digitally to the patient. Either via email, or via more sophisticated SPID (electronic identification), you will still need a smartphone. You could use a PC and a printer in principle, but it's a lot less practical.
> 
> And SMS, as Chris already said, are not secure enough.
> 
> The
> In any case, the "out the government from my business"is not really my thing. On the contrary, I have nothing to hide to anybody. I think the rest is just paranoia.


Yep, there are some things that modern life simply requires us to use. Unfortunately, smartphones are becoming one of those.
Few years ago a woman in Croatia wanted to break up all relations with banks. She was a lawyer to make things more interesting. But there was simply impossible to live without bank account, which we all are paying. She even had law backup to get her sallaries in cash, but for her employer it was impossible to do for some reason. So bank account is one of the things that you must have in your life (unless you sale the drug or weapons).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> She even had law backup to get her sallaries in cash, but for her employer it was impossible to do for some reason.


I suppose it is outlawed in many EU countries to receive your salary in cash. This reduces tax evasion, uninsured work and people working below the minimum wage. 

In the Netherlands employers must pay at least the minimum wage equivalent through a bank transfer, but it's technically allowed to pay the portion over the minimum wage in cash. I'm not sure how common this is, maybe in some sectors like restaurants. 

Off-the-record work is still common in construction or cleaning. For example a construction worker making some extra money in the weekend by working for acquaintances in cash. Though this is risky because this work is not insured, especially in construction where you can get injured easily.


----------



## Kpc21

x-type said:


> Few years ago a woman in Croatia wanted to break up all relations with banks. She was a lawyer to make things more interesting. But there was simply impossible to live without bank account, which we all are paying. She even had law backup to get her sallaries in cash, but for her employer it was impossible to do for some reason. So bank account is one of the things that you must have in your life (unless you sale the drug or weapons).


What about the pensioners? Quite many of them in Poland don't have bank account, they have their pension sent by post.



ChrisZwolle said:


> In the Netherlands employers must pay at least the minimum wage equivalent through a bank transfer, but it's technically allowed to pay the portion over the minimum wage in cash. I'm not sure how common this is, maybe in some sectors like restaurants.


Do you mean the grey zone? Having the employment contract on the minimum wage and the rest paid, as we say in Poland, "under the table"?

There are some industries in which it's quite common over here.

But it's still officially legal for you to want to have it paid directly in cash instead of a bank transfer. They are people who prefer not to have a bank account e.g. because of debts. The money on an account can be easily taken over by a debt collector, money in cash – not necessarily.

Also in case of many services, as the mentioned construction, cleaning but also e.g. car garages, not to register your payment so that the company avoids the tax. E.g. when I was looking for a car, I was with one I wanted to buy on a check in a local garage, finally I had to pay for the check. I asked if I can pay by card – and I could, but then they would increase the price by 23% (the VAT value in Poland). It's also very common in case of construction/handyman services. Although in this field, it's usually better to sign a formal contract and to pay the tax as people delivering those services quite often turn out to be unreliable, and without a contract, you have no way of getting your money back.


----------



## Kemo

g.spinoza said:


> In any case, the "out the government from my business"is not really my thing. On the contrary, I have nothing to hide to anybody. I think the rest is just paranoia.


I guess that is fine as long as you have a normal, responsible government... which unfortunately is not the case in some EU countries, including Poland...


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> Yep, there are some things that modern life simply requires us to use. Unfortunately, smartphones are becoming one of those.
> Few years ago a woman in Croatia wanted to break up all relations with banks. She was a lawyer to make things more interesting. But there was simply impossible to live without bank account, which we all are paying. She even had law backup to get her sallaries in cash, but for her employer it was impossible to do for some reason. So bank account is one of the things that you must have in your life (unless you sale the drug or weapons).


Or internet. Or an e-mail address. If you're still in working age is almost impossible to live without them.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> It’s cultural. We, like you, don’t have national (or state) IDs, at least IDs issued JUST to serve as IDs (as opposed to driver’s licenses, which are often used as IDs as well, to the point some states -offer- IDs for people who don’t drive because it would be a pain in the ass not to have something). The police can’t just stop you randomly on the street (without a good reason) and ask for an ID, *and these little forms French people are having to fill out every time they go out (if I’ve understood correctly) would be completely alien and we’d never comply. (It’s also not very green.)*


We have it in Italy too. Today I was stopped by police on my way to work for the second time since quarantine started.


----------



## Kpc21

italystf said:


> Or internet. Or an e-mail address. If you're still in working age is almost impossible to live without them.


But still there are quite many young people living without a computer, with a smartphone only.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> You're not legally obliged, but in practice the is a lot you can't do without a smartphone.
> For instance, now to prevent people going to the doctor's for non essential stuff, doctor's prescriptions can be sent digitally to the patient. Either via email, or via more sophisticated SPID (electronic identification), you will still need a smartphone. You could use a PC and a printer in principle, but it's a lot less practical.
> 
> And SMS, as Chris already said, are not secure enough.
> 
> The
> In any case, the "out the government from my business"is not really my thing. On the contrary, I have nothing to hide to anybody. I think the rest is just paranoia.


My doctor sends prescriptions directly to my pharmacy. I can call his office to ask him to do that, and he can fax it over to them. No app needed. (Although there IS now an app, and it takes about 10 seconds to request a refill. But they’ll still do it the old way if you ask. Or if I’m in the office he can send them over while we talk, since he’s sitting at his computer, and the pharmacy may fill them by the time I get there afterwards. I’ve only been using their app for a few months.)


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> "Italy" is a very broad concept. It's entirely possible that provinces which border with Slovenia have a low, comparable number of cases to those in Western Slovenia.
> Very few provinces in Italy account for the majority of cases in the whole country (Bergamo, Brescia, Lodi, Piacenza, maybe others but nowhere near Slovenia.)


The situation in Friuli Venezia Giulia is problematic, but not as dramatic as in other parts of Northern Italy. The health care system is still working pretty normal there, and there have not been mass infections inside hospitals (although have happened in some retirement homes).
Western Slovenia is sparsely populated (except around Nova Gorica/Koper), so it explains the lower number of cases. Sea tourism on the Slovenian coast is obviously not a thing in February/March.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> In other news, there were just 7 newly infected people in Slovenia yesterday, lowest since epidemics was declared here. Our measures obviously work even though there're plenty of people walking outside (there's no sign of any quarantine when I look through a window or go out myself). And very few still wear masks.


If that trend remains, Slovenia and Greece will probably be among the first countries in Europe to leave the emergency phase.
Greece has very few cases because of their early full lockdown.
Another country that was spared from the worst due to a prudent early lockdown is New Zealand, although remoteness probably helped too.


----------



## italystf

Verso said:


> In other news, there were just 7 newly infected people in Slovenia yesterday, lowest since epidemics was declared here. Our measures obviously work even though there're plenty of people walking outside (there's no sign of any quarantine when I look through a window or go out myself). And very few still wear masks.


If that trend remains, Slovenia and Greece will probably be among the first countries in Europe to leave the emergency phase.
Greece has very few cases because of their early full lockdown.
Another country that was spared from the worst due to a prudent early lockdown is New Zealand, although remoteness probably helped too.


----------



## MichiH

geogregor said:


> One of London parks yesterday:
> 
> Most people are actually quite considerate and stay out of each other way. I way prefer British approach to social distancing over some strict measures from the continent where people should not leave houses at all or only with some paperwork etc.


I've been on the road today and there is much more traffic on some German tourist routes (e.g. Black Forest in the SW) and on Autobahns than on your pics.
Police even posted on facebook that it is NOT forbidden to ride a motorbike for leisure as long as you don't meet in groups without respecting the 1.5m distance.
On Autobahn digital signs indicated "_Corona - Bitte nicht reisen an Ostern_" - "_Corona - Please don't travel over Easter_".

It's totally different in Bavaria though.


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> Western Slovenia is sparsely populated (except around Nova Gorica/Koper), so it explains the lower number of cases.


Yeah, but that doesn't explain it. Western Slovenia has 11% of Slovenia's population, but only 3,4% of cases. Slovenian average is over 3 times as large as that of western SLO. People there were (and still are) much more cautious.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> I think you've got the wrong end of the stick. This is a purely theoretical argument regarding whether people dying is good for the economy or not. Taking into account economic considerations ONLY. Not including ethical considerations.
> 
> I also mentioned the fact that young people are also affected.
> 
> 
> 
> I suppose in America an 85-year old with little chance of recovery would be treated in preference to a 30-year old who had recently lost his job and so no longer had insurance.


I understood you weren’t actually arguing for that position.

We haven’t reached (as far as I’ve heard) the point where we’ve had to make such choices yet. But as far as insurance is concerned, you need to know that it’s illegal to turn anyone away from an emergency room for inability to pay. To put it bluntly, that stuff can be figured out afterwards. There are plenty of politicians saying that COVID treatment ought to be free. We’ll see what happens. In the long term, it’s absolutely true that our failure to cover everyone is a national moral failing and needs to be fixed. I’d think most Americans would agree with that statement. We’re not the barbarians it’s fashionable in Europe to think we are. And in many states, that recently fired 30-year-old would have Medicaid provided by the state.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> I'm not sure about that (we border Italy, whereas Poland is far away from it), but people near the Italian border were much more cautious about the virus than the rest of us. It's as if there was no Italy to the west:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Vsaj en primer okužbe COVID-19 potrjen v 146 občinah, več kot dva primera pa v 103 občinah
> 
> 
> V nedeljo, 12. aprila do polnoči, je bilo v Sloveniji opravljenih 35.405 testiranj*, od tega je bilo 1.223 pozitivnih testov. Po epidemioloških podatkih, ki so jih na NIJZ prejeli do sedaj, gre za 1.212 oseb. Pri nekaterih osebah je bil test opravljen večkrat, štiri osebe pa so testiranje...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.prlekija-on.net


It has nothing with vicinity of Italy, but with population density, or with number of large cities. Just next to your region with 11 infects there is Croatian region with 525 infects (Zagreb). Those 125 are Metlika case, an exception. Without it it would be on low level too. However, Croatian part of Istria has higher levels than average due to lots of people working in Italy.


----------



## Penn's Woods

The governors of the six states from Rhode Island to Delaware are currently (I mean it’s on the air right now) announcing the formation of a “working group” of health and business officials from each state to work out a “coordinated strategy for reopening the economy.” No details or dates yet.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> It has nothing with vicinity of Italy, but with population density, or with number of large cities.


The urban area of New York has more cases than any country in the world (except for the U.S. itself ofcourse). New York is also dense, a much greater proportion of the population lives in a high-density area than other U.S. cities, including denser cities like Philadelphia or San Francisco. Crowded areas are very inducive for the spread of a virus. 

_In New York City, two-thirds of the population (5.4 million people) live at densities above 15,000 per square kilometer. This is 80% of the national total.
For example the nation’s second densest large municipality (after New York City), San Francisco, only 6,200 people (0.006 million) live at densities above 15,000 per square kilometer._

And:

_A commuter from a detached house in Westchester County to a job in Lower Manhattan’s financial district is likely to experience high exposure density. The trip, for the sake of discussion, includes a walk or car to the commuter rail station, a ride on commuter rail to Grand Central Station, a walk through corridors to reach the subway station, a ride on the subway train, exiting through a subway station for a walk to the high rise work location. At this point, the commuter joins others in a crowded elevator, and exit at the 40th floor, walking to an office shared with others._

From: “Exposure Density” and the Pandemic | Newgeography.com


----------



## MichiH

It's reported that France has extended the lockdown - in force for four weeks now - by another four weeks. Afterwards, the restrictions might slowly be lowered starting with opening nurseries and schools.
German federal government and states' prime minister will discuss the situation on Wednesday after 3 1/2 weeks in lockdown. The National Academy Leopoldina has published their 3rd ad-hoc-statement and recommends a lowering of restrictions starting with opening nurseries and schools for the youngest children. It's reported that the government will likely follow the recommendations.





__





Ad-hoc-Stellungnahme Coronavirus-Pandemie


Die Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften Leopoldina berät Politik und Gesellschaft unabhängig zu wichtigen Zukunftsthemen.




www.leopoldina.org


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> It has nothing with vicinity of Italy, but with population density, or with number of large cities. Just next to your region with 11 infects there is Croatian region with 525 infects (Zagreb). Those 125 are Metlika case, an exception. Without it it would be on low level too. However, Croatian part of Istria has higher levels than average due to lots of people working in Italy.


I guess you're right, but apparently it doesn't take much for the virus to spread, if there're so many infected in Metlika and Šmarje pri Jelšah, which are small towns.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

geogregor said:


> Most people are actually quite considerate and stay out of each other way. I way prefer British approach to social distancing over some strict measures from the continent where people should not leave houses at all or only with some paperwork etc.
> 
> And Polish ban on entering forests is just a joke.


Estonia is also on a relatively soft "lockdown". You are allowed to go out in a group of up to 2 people (except for families for whom there is no limit as such) and with other people you have to keep a distance of at least 2 m. That's pretty much it. That being said, these measures are checked by the police, especially in parks, on beaches, popular hiking trails etc.

There are definitely fewer people on the streets and traffic density is down by 30-50% but it's not like the streets are completely deserted.

Oh...except Saaremaa island which is the epicenter in Estonia and special rules apply. Over there you are only allowed to go out when it's necessary but even that includes things like going for a walk near where you live so not very strict compared to France, for example.


----------



## x-type

Rebasepoiss said:


> Estonia is also on a relatively soft "lockdown". You are allowed to go out in a *group of up to 2 people* (except for families for whom there is no limit as such) and with other people you have to keep a distance of at least 2 m. That's pretty much it. That being said, these measures are checked by the police, especially in parks, on beaches, popular hiking trails etc.


Group?


----------



## CNGL

Meanwhile the number of new cases in Spain is rapidly falling down, in part thanks to the ban on outdoor recreation. So we decided to restart nonessential industry. Let's see what happens.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Rąbień, Poland


----------



## Verso

Yesterday I watched the movie _Outbreak_. I think I'll soon watch _Contagion_ too. 😄


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> Yesterday I watched the movie _Outbreak_. I think I'll soon watch _Contagion_ too.


I thought I’d reread Camus’s The Plague and maybe check out Love in the Time of Cholera.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Rąbień, Poland


You have to watch if the commentary on:





It is from ski jumping competition


----------



## Kpc21

You are not the first one thinking like that 







[I submitted English subtitles, maybe someone will accept them]


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Rąbień, Poland


This internal kerb seems badly designed.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

I think it's both a financial and a cultural thing. There's a big difference between "I live with my parents because I don't make enough money to sustain myself alone" and "I live with my parents because it makes economical sense to do so". If living with your parents after graduating from university is considered a taboo by society then you will do whatever it takes to live alone (or just live with flatmates). However, if it's culturally OK to live with your parents well into your late 20s or even early 30s then people are probably much more likely just to save more money (perhaps for a downpayment) or just live more lavishly. 

For example, after graduating my sister moved back in with my mother for a year because this enabled her to save enough money for a downpayment to buy a flat. If she had rented a flat instead it would've taken her at least 5 years to save that much.


----------



## tfd543

^^ you Can also flip it around and argue that there are some people that dont wanna live alone because of loneliness. Sure you can have a lot of friends, but it Can haunt Someone knowing that they gonna go home to an empty house.
Living with flat mates is of course a Way to mitigate it.


----------



## MacOlej

tfd543 said:


> Just to tell you, the numbers are public. I Can as well see What my former supervisor and dean of the university get. No confidentiality here.


When someone proposed that here in Poland lately, many employers responded that it would "violate their freedom of business". Just another reason why Poland is so close mentally to USA.



Kpc21 said:


> I don't get that. Why do they want to keep all of that for so long, if for the Chinese, several months were enough to reach a state in which even wearing masks becomes no longer obligatory?


Cause they don't believe the health care system could handle it? At least that's my guess.



Penn's Woods said:


> She's great!


I found the content interesting indeed but, my God, I could not stand the way she spoke and all those filtered visuals and distortions. I had to make a short break in the middle of it.
Do many vlogs look like that? I can't imagine subscribing to this and watching similar videos on a regular basis.


----------



## Suburbanist

Here in Switzerland they announced a plan for staggered re-opening of activities, kicking on April 24, May 17 and June 8. By June 8, museums, libraries, parks, everything should be re-opened, and restrictions on usual gatherings lifted. The only things still undecided are travel restrictions from abroad, and mass gatherings (festivals, sports, large religious gatherings, discos and clubs).

We never had a full-blown lockout Italy- or France-style, but they did close down almost all activities that would motivate people to get out. Including fencing off city parks and lakeside promenades, and shutting down all mountain resorts and trails.

I noticed, though, that compliance has diminished in the last days. More teens are gathering in the large grassy area in front of my building, even playing on the small football field nearby. More people are getting out for sporty stuff like cycling on sports bikes, geared up for running etc., and they take less care than before to go out of the way to avoid others on streets and sidewalks. The major thoroughfare near my place is also noticeably busier with car traffic.

So, at this point, solutions were either a more strict regime to keep people indoors, or plan for re-opening activities as to give people some framework or when it would end.

The EU task force will meet next week to decide/revise the EU-wide ban on non-EU citizens entering Schengen Area. I don't know what will they decide. Tourism and aviation are going to be much more affected than any other sector. If I'd have to guess, they will come up with a plan to allow internal EU/EEA travel for summer, with opt-out for individual members. That way, some tourist activity can resume to salvage some of the summer season in areas that depend heavily on revenues from May to September....


----------



## mgk920

Penn's Woods said:


> Yes, “a few” in this case. Not sure I can articulate the difference, actually. I’d need to think about it....
> 
> E grazie!


I also note that 'a few' can have a much more positive tone than 'few'.

An example, "We have a few options here" is an upbeat, positive statement in an otherwise dire situation. OTOH, "We have few options here" is a very bleak statement in that otherwise identically dire situation.

Mike


----------



## Kpc21

How long does it take from the moment of getting infected to the moment when the infection appears on a test for antibodies?

Those tests are cheap and can be done massively but the problem is that they show the infection quite late (much later than those costly, slow and requiring professional laboratories genetic tests).

But if it is several days, then it would be quite acceptable if after returning from holidays abroad, one would have to undergo several days of quarantine and then would get tested with this kind of test. A negative test result would mean a release from the quarantine.

I think staying several days alone would be absolutely OK for most people. But not two weeks.


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> I also note that 'a few' can have a much more positive tone than 'few'.
> 
> An example, "We have a few options here" is an upbeat, positive statement in an otherwise dire situation. OTOH, "We have few options here" is a very bleak statement in that otherwise identically dire situation.
> 
> Mike


Yes. That’s one factor, possibly the main one.


----------



## Verso

mgk920 said:


> I also note that 'a few' can have a much more positive tone than 'few'.
> 
> An example, "We have a few options here" is an upbeat, positive statement in an otherwise dire situation. OTOH, "We have few options here" is a very bleak statement in that otherwise identically dire situation.
> 
> Mike


It's interesting that you can translate "few" and "a few" with two different words in Slovenian (_malo/nekaj_) whereas in English it's the same word, just that one has an "a" added. In fact, I think German also has different expressions for them (_wenig/einige_). I would say "a few" means _some_, while "few" means _not many_. Although "a few" isn't many either, but "few" is more stressed. To make an example:

_Give me a few apples. = Give me some apples.
Give me few apples! = Don't give me many apples!_


----------



## ChrisZwolle

14 cell towers have been set on fire over the past few days in the Netherlands. 

There are 5G conspiracies on the internet. Some people have now found out their wifi router uses a 5 GHz signal and think it sends a 5G signal. ☠


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> According to Breen from the University of Guelph, “economic necessity is a key reason” why kids live with their parents for longer. “More and more families need to combine incomes in order to afford basic necessitates, including housing, food, healthcare, and access to education. Economic necessity is driving young adults to stay in (or return to) their parents’ homes and it is also an important factor in many older adults moving in with their adult children (also an important related trend).”
> 
> But yes, we're mama's boys.


Still, a cultural question, and the statement does not apply in the North. A person of 25+ years living with the parents is suspicious in Finland, and after 30 categorized a loser. Of course, exceptions exist, like when aging parents need help. At farms, there are often multi-generation arrangements. Even there, generations tend to have their own households and houses.

The North-South axis is not the only differentiating dimension. The religion makes some degree of correlation, too. The nest-leaving age tends to be lowest in the protestant areas. However, France is a problematic in this sense, because it lies at the opposite side of the chart to the most non-protestant countries.









The Eurostat figures exclude Norway and Switzerland. Norway is close to Finland, and Switzerland aligned with Austria, Belgium and the UK.


----------



## tfd543

^^Suspicious and loser are maybe too cruel words. I would say that is not true. You Can still be hold in high esteem by others and if not, you should not hang around with those friends.


----------



## Kpc21

A good debunking video was made by an Australian electronic engineering YouTuber David Jones:







Most of those "5G is OK" videos made on YT really don't explain much and after watching one you start asking even more questions. This one explained a lot.

Although still I have some... 

In general, 5G telephony/mobile internet is going to use three frequency ranges. One is the top of the band currently used by TV in Europe (the TV channels will have to shift to lower frequencies, the remaining TV band will become more crowded – this is also one of the reasons for the planned switch from the DVB-T to DVB-T2 standard – because of which, by the way, we will again need external receiver boxes for older TVs), the next one is about 3 GHz (so between two bands currently used by Wi-Fi, which are 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, the last one of course having nothing to do with the new 5G standard) and the third one in so called millimeter range (because if you convert the frequency to wavelength, it's the order of magnitude of millimeters), of about 40 GHz even up to 300 GHz.

It's difficult to have any controversies about the two first bands as they (or similar ones) are already used by older technologies (TV and Wi-Fi) and those waves are present practically everywhere. Even if you don't have a Wi-Fi router but you don't leave in a detached house, probably at least some of your neighbors have ones. In many places, the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi band is so crowded that you get multiple networks transmitting on each of 13 available channels, all interfering with each other.

So the only one that can be controversial is the millimeter band. Until now, it was used only in radars and in body scanners, those you go through e.g. at airports. Those applications can't really be compared to 5G as going through a body scanner is just a moment, you also probably don't have anything to do with radars, while 5G is going to be transmitting all the time.

But:
– those high frequencies have short coverage, so they require high density of base stations – therefore, they are going to be used only in crowded areas (where such density is anyway needed for everyone to be able to use the network at all)
– they penetrate the skin LESS than lower frequencies, on the other hand – this may mean, the wave will disperse in a smaller volume, so it may heat it up more (for the radio waves of frequencies below visible light, the only potentially harmful effects for human body are the thermal ones, only from UV up they may directly damage cells by ionization); but it's just the external layers of skin, so is it any different from just touching something warm? if it's dangerous, you feel that
– the power intensity decreases with the square of the distance

And the last thing poses a question I don't think anyone really answered to (at least not directly) in an explanation video or anything like that. If there is a higher density of base stations, they are placed lower (e.g. not on tall masts and buildings but on lamp posts), so effectively you are closer to the transmit antenna. And the closer to the antenna, the more dangerous it becomes.

I believe there are standards that define the maximum transmit power depending on the distance from any place where there are any humans and this must be the explanation to this controversy.


----------



## Kpc21

A Friday queue to a DIY store:


----------



## Rebasepoiss

A few days ago the very first "contact free" real-estate transaction was performed in Estonia and possibly the world. Everything from finding the buyer, showing the flat, signing the deal at the notary and giving over the property from the seller to the buyer was done online without the participants ever seeing each other in real life.

Selling property has been one of the few things you couldn't do online before in Estonia but this has moved online now as well. Getting married is probably the only thing you actually have to show up for now.

Just to give you an idea of how normal this is in Estonia: I took a mortgage in late Autumn last year. I never saw my mortgage broker. I only spoke to her by email or on the phone and the mortgage contract was signed digitally. I never had to go to the bank and I went to the notary once to sign the real-estate transaction. Edit: OK, this isn't actually 100% true, I had to go to the bank to transfer the 10% as downpayment to the notary account since there is a limit on the amount of money you can easily transfer online for money-laundering purposes.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> A good debunking video was made by an Australian electronic engineering YouTuber David Jones.


Everything new is evil. 

5G is evil at launch while 4G is good. 
4G was evil at launch while 3G was good. 
3G was evil at launch while 2G was good. 
2G (digital) was evil at launch while while 1G (analog) was good
Color TV was evil at launch while B&W TV was good
UHF broadcast was evil at launch while VHF broadcast was good
FM radio was evil at launch while AM radio was good

The history repeats itself. The difference is that the mankind had created more efficient technologies to spread stupidity.


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> 5G is evil at launch while 4G is good.


Well, those 5G conspiracist claim that 4G was also evil but not that evil as 5G.



MattiG said:


> FM radio was evil at launch while AM radio was good


Not to mention AM radio being evil in comparison with no radio at all.










A local newspaper from Cieszyn. 28 April 1929.



> *Hungarian peasants unhappy of the radio.*
> This year's heavy winter caused much damage to Hungarian peasants, damaging sowed seeds and grapevine. Wondering about the reasons of the frost, the Hungarian peasants came to a conclusion that everything is the fault of the radio, as radio waves, according to them, cool down the air. Some peasants claim that the antennas attract winter and this is why they started massively ripping off the antennas of radio fans in the countryside. The "anti-antenna" campaign is getting a very dangerous scale.


----------



## tfd543

Rebasepoiss said:


> A few days ago the very first "contact free" real-estate transaction was performed in Estonia and possibly the world. Everything from finding the buyer, showing the flat, signing the deal at the notary and giving over the property from the seller to the buyer was done online without the participants ever seeing each other in real life.
> 
> Selling property has been one of the few things you couldn't do online before in Estonia but this has moved online now as well. Getting married is probably the only thing you actually have to show up for now.
> 
> Just to give you an idea of how normal this is in Estonia: I took a mortgage in late Autumn last year. I never saw my mortgage broker. I only spoke to her by email or on the phone and the mortgage contract was signed digitally. I never had to go to the bank and I went to the notary once to sign the real-estate transaction. Edit: OK, this isn't actually 100% true, I had to go to the bank to transfer the 10% as downpayment to the notary account since there is a limit on the amount of money you can easily transfer online for money-laundering purposes.


Nope boy. Not in the world. I did the exact same When I bought my apartment in Copenhagen in 2018. I didnt meet with anyone except a short visit to my bank to sign the downpayment deal.

Its a co-housing flat ( many flats in an association) which I Think indeed is very unique since it originates from DK. I Got the keys from the caretaker who cleans our backyard (common for all flats).

Im hoping to get the opportunity to renew passports online one day. Its still old-school here.


----------



## italystf

MattiG said:


> Everything new is evil.
> 
> 5G is evil at launch while 4G is good.
> 4G was evil at launch while 3G was good.
> 3G was evil at launch while 2G was good.
> 2G (digital) was evil at launch while while 1G (analog) was good
> Color TV was evil at launch while B&W TV was good
> UHF broadcast was evil at launch while VHF broadcast was good
> FM radio was evil at launch while AM radio was good
> 
> The history repeats itself. The difference is that the mankind had created more efficient technologies to spread stupidity.


Italy didn't introduce color TV until 1977 (except for some private local channels and Telecapodistria that was available in the North-East) because FIAT lobbied the government against. They feared that people who had spent a lot of money for a, then expensive, color TV sets, won't have other money left for replace their car.


----------



## Kpc21

It's later than in Poland – Polish TV had its first color broadcast in 1971. Although it took long before most families managed to get color TVs.

And the most popular color TV in those times in Poland was the Soviet model Rubin, which was quite similar to some modern smartphones in that it was also prone to self-ignition


----------



## Rebasepoiss

tfd543 said:


> Nope boy. Not in the world. I did the exact same When I bought my apartment in Copenhagen in 2018. I didnt meet with anyone except a short visit to my bank to sign the downpayment deal.
> 
> Its a co-housing flat ( many flats in an association) which I Think indeed is very unique since it originates from DK. I Got the keys from the caretaker who cleans our backyard (common for all flats).
> 
> Im hoping to get the opportunity to renew passports online one day. Its still old-school here.


How did you sign the property transfer contract?


----------



## tfd543

Rebasepoiss said:


> How did you sign the property transfer contract?


Electronically. Seller, me, and the association boss signed. It only comes into force when all 3 partners have signed. We do it with our ID authorization certificate called Nem ID. I was the last to sign since I was consulting with the bank over the phone. 

Co-housing flats in Copenhagen are sold like hotcakes hence my fast approach.


----------



## Penn's Woods

The Governor of New York just announced that it will be possible (the order’s being signed later today) to get married by video. Meaning the clerk and the couple don’t need to be in the same place. No word on whether the couple themselves can be in different places, although I suppose that wouldn’t last....


----------



## Verso

Unusual sight: a traveller from Nigeria stops with his scooter in Ljubljana in 1959 (one-minute video). 









Bilo je nekoč ... ko je v Ljubljano prišel popotnik iz Afrike


"Po svetu - Kairo, Meka, Kitajska, Indija, Rusija, ZDA." To je pisalo na motorju neobičajnega gosta, ki se je daljnega leta 1959 na kratko ustavil v Ljubljani.




www.rtvslo.si


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> No word on whether the couple themselves can be in different places, although I suppose that wouldn’t last....


They can already practice for what happens to half of those marriages anway 🙃


----------



## Kpc21

A story of nurses called to work in nursing homes with coronavirus infections.









"Myślałam, że dostanę zawału. To pismo, że mam iść, że będzie kara". Historie pielęgniarek skierowanych do DPS


Nawet 10 tysięcy złotych kary nakłada wojewoda mazowiecki Konstanty Radziwiłł na pracowników ochrony zdrowia, którzy nie stawiają się na wezwanie do pracy w borykających się z zakażeniami koronawirusem domach pomocy społecznej. Ustawa o zwalczaniu epidemii daje mu takie prawo. - Musiałabym...




tvn24.pl





Translated:


> *"I thought I'd get a heart attack. That letter, that I'm supposed to go, that there will be a punishment otherwise". Stories of nurses sent to the nursin home*
> by Artur Warcholiński, TVN24
> 
> *Even 10,000 PLN of fine is put by the Mazovian voivode Konstanty Radziwiłł on the healthcare employees who don't follow the orders to work in nursing homes struggling with coronavirus infections. The Epidemic Counteract Law gives him this right. "I would have to leave my son and nobody cares with whom and how", tells one of the nurses sent to the nursing home. "I feared for my health, or even life, because I have several coexisting diseases", underlines another one. The reporter of "Black on White", Artur Warcholińki, listened to their stories and to the voivode's arguments.*
> 
> Mrs. Marzena is a nurse who got from the Mazovian voivode, Konstanty Radziwiłł, an order to leave her current patients and immediately move to the nursing home infested with coronavirus. "I was practically aware that I'm entering this hearth of coronavirus and I am not leaving", tells a nurse with 30-year-old experience who prefers to remain anonymous.
> 
> She describes the way in which the call was delivered to her in detail. She says that at 6 AM two police officers entered her apartment. "I thought I'd get a heart attack. This letter saying that I'm to go there, that there is a punishment for not doing it", the nurse enumerates and stresses out that she isn't a young person, that she has her own health problems. "It turned out that I am not fit to work any more", she claims.
> 
> This version is denied by the Mazovian voivode, Konstanty Radziwiłł. "It didn't happen that someone delivered this call at 6 AM", he persuades. "To some extent we are on a war with the virus and planning the time calmly is not possible. There is no maliciousness here, to send policemen with such a call at a time which causes terror for its recepient", he adds.
> 
> *"How can you decide what patients needs the help more?"*
> 
> Up to the moment of getting the order to work in a nursing home with 52 coronavirus infections, Mrs. Marzena was providing long-term care over patients in two medical institutions. She took care of five old, sick persons and a 10-year-old girl connected to a ventilator.
> 
> "I wonder what critera the voivode applied so that I got a call to come to a nursing home and to leave those patients", says the nurse. "How does he prioritize the patients? How can you decide which patients needs the help more: a nursing home patient with coronavirus or a 10-year-old girl breathing with the aid of a ventilator? Who needs the care more?", Mrs. Marzena asks.
> 
> The voivode admits that he selects the persons only knowing their names and addresses. "The voivode has no way of tracing the accurate situation of every person sent, what is their family situation, what is going on in their current workplace", Radziwiłł explains.
> 
> *"I would have to leave my son"*
> 
> According to the Counteracting Infections and Contagious Diseases Law, the voivode cannot select persons over 60 years old, pregnant women, those bringing up children up to 18 years old alone, bringing up children up to 14 years old or with chronic diseases. None of those criteria applies to Mrs. Marzena but the voivode gave such orders also to people who are by law obviously excluded.
> 
> One of them is Anna Kacprzak, an community support worker, bringing up her son alone. "I have a 13-year-old son. I would be delegated for a month. I would have to leave the son and nobody cares with whom and how", she stresses out.
> 
> "Of course there is a risk of choosing a person who doesn't fulfill the criteria, in such cases I cancel such orders", Konstanty Radziwiłł persuades.
> 
> *Voivode: this is not a normal job*
> 
> Mrs. Marzena did not follow the voivode's order even though she is at risk of getting a fine from 5 to 30 thousand złoty. Now she is on a sick leave. "I feel remorse. What decided is that I am afraid of my own health, or even life, because I have several coexisting diseases", she explains.
> 
> The voivode argues: "This isn't a normal job. It involves the need to provide help to people even if we are at danger".
> 
> "But this doesn't mean that I must take up any challenge just now", Mrs. Marzena answers.


----------



## Penn's Woods

@Kpc21, do you mean “nursing home”?

(And a Radziwill as voivode...it’s like the ancien régime.)


----------



## x-type

Kpc21 said:


> A story of nurses called to work in nursery homes with coronavirus infections.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "Myślałam, że dostanę zawału. To pismo, że mam iść, że będzie kara". Historie pielęgniarek skierowanych do DPS
> 
> 
> Nawet 10 tysięcy złotych kary nakłada wojewoda mazowiecki Konstanty Radziwiłł na pracowników ochrony zdrowia, którzy nie stawiają się na wezwanie do pracy w borykających się z zakażeniami koronawirusem domach pomocy społecznej. Ustawa o zwalczaniu epidemii daje mu takie prawo. - Musiałabym...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> tvn24.pl
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Translated:


She sounds at least as having to go to manually cool melting nuclear core.


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> @Kpc21, do you mean “nursing home”?
> 
> (And a Radziwill as voivode...it’s like the ancien régime.)


Yeah...

Voivode literally means something like "army leader", it's an old name of an office...

Polish regions are called voivodships. Voivodships have their local governments, the head of each is called a marshall. A voivode is the central government official responsible for the voivodeship, a prime minister's representative who mainly controls those local governments but who is also responsible for all the safety issues.

The Radziwiłł name also sounds quite ancient – this was one of the most known, richest and most influential families in the old Poland.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> The Radziwiłł name also sounds quite ancient – this was one of the most known, richest and most influential families in the old Poland.


We learn about this family in history classes. Radziwiłł (Lithuanian: plural - Radvilos, sing. - Radvila) originated in Grand Duchy of Lithuania, from ethnic Lithuanian lands and likely origin. Even there is a town in Lithuania that was named after their name - Radviliškis (old polonised form - _Radziwiliszki)_. It's on the road A9 between Šiauliai and Panevėžys.


----------



## bogdymol

Incredible skills & beautiful landscapes. Have a look:


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> We learn about this family in history classes. Radziwiłł (Lithuanian: plural - Radvilos, sing. - Radvila) originated in Grand Duchy of Lithuania, from ethnic Lithuanian lands and likely origin. Even there is a town in Lithuania that was named after their name - Radviliškis (old polonised form - _Radziwiliszki)_. It's on the road A9 between Šiauliai and Panevėžys.


There are also two villages in Poland named Radziwiłłów:








Radziwiłłów · 96-332, Poland


96-332, Poland




goo.gl












Radziwiłłów · Poland


Poland




goo.gl




and a town in Ukraine – Radiviliv (form 1939 to 1993 Chervonoarmyeysk – Red Army Town – as in communism, big property owners were the evil ones communists originally fought with, so the towns could not be named for them):








Radyvyliv · Rivne Oblast, Ukraine, 35501


Rivne Oblast, Ukraine, 35501




goo.gl





In Poland they had many palaces: Radziwiłłowie herbu Trąby – Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia – including even the current presidential seat in Warsaw.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> Yeah...
> 
> Voivode literally means something like "army leader", it's an old name of an office...
> 
> Polish regions are called voivodships. Voivodships have their local governments, the head of each is called a marshall. A voivode is the central government official responsible for the voivodeship, a prime minister's representative who mainly controls those local governments but who is also responsible for all the safety issues.
> 
> The Radziwiłł name also sounds quite ancient – this was one of the most known, richest and most influential families in the old Poland.


Jackie Kennedy’s sister married a Radziwiłł. They used to call her a princess. I’m not quite old enough to remember the Kennedy administration, but I knew the name from that context. I also know that sort of person used to get that sort of job.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

tfd543 said:


> Electronically. Seller, me, and the association boss signed. It only comes into force when all 3 partners have signed. We do it with our ID authorization certificate called Nem ID. I was the last to sign since I was consulting with the bank over the phone.
> 
> Co-housing flats in Copenhagen are sold like hotcakes hence my fast approach.


It's interesting how different countries have implemented digital signatures, although different implementations mean that they are often not compatible with each other which in turn makes international business more difficult.


----------



## Kpc21

There is one compatible solution called qualified electronic signature. The problem with it was that you had to pay quite a lot to get one, so in practice, it was used only by businesses. This is why various countries introduced various online citizen authentication methods.

In Poland we have something called Trusted Profile. Initially, to use it, one had to physically go to one of the offices supporting it (mainly taxation offices) to create an account – but now, most people don't even have to create one, because it works in combination with online banking services of the major banks. If you choose so, you can get redirected to the website of your bank and the bank authenticates you.


----------



## PovilD

What is unusual for me is that ending -łł. Double l with a stroke  I don't remember seeing two l with stroke in a row often in Polish written text.


----------



## Kpc21

Yeah, it's the only such case I know. And it's impossible to pronounce, everyone pronounces it as if it was a single ł.

It's similar to "y" spelling for the "j" sound (I mean the one normally spelled in Polish as "j", in English it's indeed usually "y") appearing in some surnames. Also a rare thing but I know at least two persons with such surnames.

But definitely much more unique.

Wait... there is one more. The king Władysław II Jagiełło who ruled Poland from 1386 to 1434. He was Lithuanian and he initiated the very long-lasting Polish-Lithuanian union.

How did he become the king of Poland? The first Polish dynasty, Piasts, ended with Kazimierz III Wielki, which is known to be a king who developed the country most for those times, but who had no sons. So he made an agreement with the Hungarian rulers from the Anjou dynasty, as the result of which the ruler whom we know as Ludwik Węgierski (Louis the Hungarian), some other nations know as Louis the Great, being the king of Hungary, took over the throne of Poland.

Unfortunately, the problem repeated, Louis did not have sons but only daughters – and back then generally only men could only be kings, at least in Poland (in Hungary it seemed not to be a huge problem). So he gave the Polish nobility a range of privileges (so called Privilege of Koszyce, announced in Košice, currently in Slovakia), so that they agreed for his daughter to become the king.

This way, a 11-year-old Jadwiga became the king of Poland (by the way, until now, the only female ruler of Poland ever) – and she ruled the country by herself until she got married, when his husband was supposed to take over the throne. Initially, she was supposed to marry Wilhelm Habsburg, an Austrian prince, she was even engaged with him. Finally, however, it was decided he is going to marry Władysław Jagiełło from Lithuania, initiating a Polish-Lithuanian union.

The union lasted from 1386 to 1795, when Poland-Lithuania finally collapsed as a country, getting taken over in parts by Prussia (a German state), Russia and Austria.

I don't know what's the view of Lithuanians on this union – after all, Poland had always been the leading power, but on the other hand, Lithuania was much larger (it also covered the area of more or less the current Belarus and Ukraine).

----

So Jagiełło is also a name of a character of Lithuanian origin – but here, at least, you can easily pronounce the double ł two times. Ja-gieł-ło.

It seems in Lithuanian it's Jogaila, pronounced as "yogaiwa".


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Yeah, it's the only such case I know. And it's impossible to pronounce, everyone pronounces it as if it was a single ł.
> 
> It's similar to "y" spelling for the "j" sound (I mean the one normally spelled in Polish as "j", in English it's indeed usually "y") appearing in some surnames. Also a rare thing but I know at least two persons with such surnames.
> 
> But definitely much more unique.
> 
> Wait... there is one more. The king Władysław II Jagiełło who ruled Poland from 1386 to 1434. He was Lithuanian and he initiated the very long-lasting Polish-Lithuanian union.
> 
> How did he become the king of Poland? The first Polish dynasty, Piasts, ended with Kazimierz III Wielki, which is known to be a king who developed the country most for those times, but who had no sons. So he made an agreement with the Hungarian rulers from the Anjou dynasty, as the result of which the ruler whom we know as Ludwik Węgierski (Louis the Hungarian), some other nations know as Louis the Great, being the king of Hungary, took over the throne of Poland.
> 
> Unfortunately, the problem repeated, Louis did not have sons but only daughters – and back then generally only men could only be kings, at least in Poland (in Hungary it seemed not to be a huge problem). So he gave the Polish nobility a range of privileges (so called Privilege of Koszyce, announced in Košice, currently in Slovakia), so that they agreed for his daughter to become the king.
> 
> This way, a 11-year-old Jadwiga became the king of Poland (by the way, until now, the only female ruler of Poland ever) – and she ruled the country by herself until she got married, when his husband was supposed to take over the throne. Initially, she was supposed to marry Wilhelm Habsburg, an Austrian prince, she was even engaged with him. Finally, however, it was decided he is going to marry Władysław Jagiełło from Lithuania, initiating a Polish-Lithuanian union.
> 
> The union lasted from 1386 to 1795, when Poland-Lithuania finally collapsed as a country, getting taken over in parts by Prussia (a German state), Russia and Austria.
> 
> I don't know what's the view of Lithuanians on this union – after all, Poland had always been the leading power, but on the other hand, Lithuania was much larger (it also covered the area of more or less the current Belarus and Ukraine).
> 
> ----
> 
> So Jagiełło is also a name of a character of Lithuanian origin – but here, at least, you can easily pronounce the double ł two times. Ja-gieł-ło.
> 
> It seems in Lithuanian it's Jogaila, pronounced as "yogaiwa".


It's interesting that Polish pronounce letters seemingly different than in written text, which is not the case in Lithuanian language as far as I know.

"l" is pronounced as "l" in English, "yogaila"  "gai" is pronounced exactly like "guy" in English.

Lithuanians are mostly proud of Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the biggest factor being that our territory was bigger  How people feel towards the union, overall, maybe neutrally, it had both positives and negatives, I think. Downsides that Lithuania seemed to be a little bit overwhelmed by Poland (Polish language) and other Slavic langauges and there was not much place for ethnic Lithuanian language, upsides that it seem to be overall better times than as being part of Tsarist Russia. During Commonwealth times there was more autonomy, more interesting heritage, and history to be proud of. After dissolution of the Commonwealth, later Russian policies were open and complete assimilation by force and no autonomy at all (unlike neighboring current EU members ). This is something that we don't proud of. Nothing much better than being USSR republic. In some aspects, it was even worse, like trying to make Lithuanians write in Cyrillic and become Orthodox which was not the case with Poland, as far as I know, they had more autonomy. For example, Tsarist Latvia and Riga was very developed at that time, they had some of an autonomy, German know-how. Maybe there was more proud moments from that time there. Latvia was clearly more developed than Lithuania until we all became USSR republics.


----------



## x-type

Anybody wants to hear something about southern history? Serbia and Croatia, Nothern Macedonia and Greece, and other stuff? Do you have popcorn prepared?


----------



## PovilD

x-type said:


> Anybody wants to hear something about southern history? Serbia and Croatia, Nothern Macedonia and Greece, and other stuff? Do you have popcorn prepared?


Let's go!


----------



## Suburbanist

In Norway, they have something called "BankID". It is an identity verification system, tied to your bank account, relying on app or tokens. You can use it to sign most official documents, to electronically sign contracts and house purchases etc.


----------



## tfd543

x-type said:


> Anybody wants to hear something about southern history? Serbia and Croatia, Nothern Macedonia and Greece, and other stuff? Do you have popcorn prepared?


Haha. Here we go again. It all started with the clash in Maksimir stadium, May 1990


----------



## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> Anybody wants to hear something about southern history? Serbia and Croatia, Nothern Macedonia and Greece, and other stuff? Do you have popcorn prepared?


Southern history is the Nullification Crisis, the burning of Atlanta, the Montgomery bus boycott....That sort of thing.


----------



## riiga

Suburbanist said:


> In Norway, they have something called "BankID". It is an identity verification system, tied to your bank account, relying on app or tokens. You can use it to sign most official documents, to electronically sign contracts and house purchases etc.


Same thing in Sweden too. Pretty much all people who has a smartphone these days has the mobile BankID app. And Swish (Vipps in Norway) for easy money transfer between people.


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> Southern history is the Nullification Crisis, the burning of Atlanta, the Montgomery bus boycott....That sort of thing.


I have accidentaly missed Europe after southern


----------



## Verso

x-type said:


> Anybody wants to hear something about southern history?


We already know that the South Pole was conquered in 1911.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> I have accidentaly missed Europe after southern


_Europa Australis_


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> It's interesting that Polish pronounce letters seemingly different than in written text, which is not the case in Lithuanian language as far as I know.


But what is different, apart from Radziwiłł pronounced as Radziwił because there is just no way to pronounce double Ł at the end of the word?

Polish basically pronounces everything as it's spelled – almost. To most people it seems to be so but actually in some declined/conjugated forms of words e.g. D might be pronounced as T, B as P etc. Nobody really thinks of that while reading, it's very subtle.

In addition, things like ci, zi, si are pronounced as if they were ći, źi, śi – this "i" kind of makes the stroke unnecessary and actually if someone uses it (nobody does, although I once found it in a text in Polish written by a foreigner – it had some more spelling mistakes too), it's considered incorrect.

And we have those sequences of letters representing a single sound, like "sh", "ch" etc. in English. Consequences of adopting the Latin alphabet to a language which is something else than Latin.



riiga said:


> And Swish (Vipps in Norway) for easy money transfer between people.


In Poland we have Blik. It can even be used for withdrawals in some ATMs, instead of the card. Maybe not very popular for payments at shops (by card it's just more convenient), more popular online and for direct transfers.



> Anybody wants to hear something about southern history? Serbia and Croatia, Nothern Macedonia and Greece, and other stuff? Do you have popcorn prepared


For quite long, quite a large part of south-eastern Europe was conquered by Turkey, wasn't it?


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> But what is different, apart from Radziwiłł pronounced as Radziwił because there is just no way to pronounce double Ł at the end of the word?


I didn't mentioned that there are only some Polish letters, and not all of them 

There are few letters which seems to be having unexpected pronouncation and the best example I think is Łódź. When I hear foreign pronouncations, it's pronounced like Lodz without any modifications. L and not W, "ó" it's unexpected too, why not just "u" or "u with a stroke". Maybe it's not that strange with ź which has similar somewhat softer version of "ž" used in most languages that neighbors Polish language.

Ci, zi, si are also interesting. When I hear Polish language it feels it has lots of "sh", "zh" sounds (in which Polish language seems to be famous for, as far as I understand) but in written text there seems to be fewer of those letters that would clearly make those sounds.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> L and not W


Ł used to be pronounced closer to L, more or less like the Russian Л (but not Ль, which is just the same as English L – Л is said to be between the Polish L and Ł). You can hear this pronunciation in black-and-white movies as back then it was still considered the most correct one and it was taught to actors. But it just shifted with time towards something closer to U, in other words to the same sound as the English W. Just several generations backwards it was different...



PovilD said:


> "ó" it's unexpected too, why not just "u" or "u with a stroke"


Equally well you may ask the English why they sometimes spell the "u" sound as "oo" and not (let's say it's long) as "uu" or anything like that... Those will be, again, historic reasons. Which still have consequences. In some inflected forms of the words "u" remains the same, while "ó" turns into "o". So there is still a ver big difference between those two.

You mentioned Łódź. But "of Łódź" would be "Łodzi". Or the plural of that (Łódź is a city but łódź also means a boat) – łodzie. I'm going to Łódź – Jadę do Łodzi.

Stół (table) – plural: stoły, of a table – stołu, under the table – pod stołem.

móc (can): he could – on mógł, she could – ona mogła, I can – ja mogę.

But...

psuć (spoil): he spoiled – on popsuł, she spoiled – ona popsuła, I spoil – ja psuję.

But (shoe) – plural: buty, of a shoe – buta, under the shoe – pod butem. Not boty, bota, botem. Those are the forms of the word "bot", an IT term.



PovilD said:


> Maybe it's not that strange with ź which has similar somewhat softer version of "ž" used in most languages that neighbors Polish language.


We also have ż, which is the equivalent of ž.

But Łódź does not include ź but dź. And as in the example I mentioned before, to Łódź – do Łodzi, "i" cancels the stroke. However, the previous sound is still pronounced as the soft form, so not as "dz" but as "dź", even though it's spelled dz (it's sometimes considered a trigraph "dzi").

"dz" is the same for "c" as "z" is for "s", "d" is for "t", "g" is for "k", "b" is for "p", "w" ("v" in English) is for "f". I'm not sure if it can be found in English, already the "c" sound (I mean the Polish "c") is rare in English and found rather only in loaned words, the "z" in "pizza" is a good example. For the Polish "dz"... maybe the "z" in "nazism"? Although I'm not sure if it isn't the "c" like "z" in "pizza" either.

Then, Polish distinguishes "soft" versions of some of those consonants, e.g.
c -> ć (we also have cz being the "hard" equivalent)
z -> ź (we also have the "hard" ż)
s -> ś (we also have the "hard" sz)
n -> ń
For dz we have the "hard" dż, which is well-known in English (jungle, jeopardy, jam, general, magic) but also the soft version "dź".

Actually, the English "ch", "sh", "g"/"j" are kind of between the Polish "cz" and "ć", "sz" and "ś", "dż" and "dź" – but it really depends on who pronounces them. Still, they are closer to the Polish "hard" versions ("cz", "sz", "dż"), so when the English pronunciations is explained to us on English classes, it's usually told that just "ch" is "cz", "sh" is "sz" and "j" or "g" is "dż". Even though it's not exactly true (I don't think it ever happens that "the same" sounds in two languages are actually the same – there are always some slight differences, even in case of consonants, not to mention the vowels, in case of which the differences are obvious, and "r", which happens to be very different even in various English dialects, not to mention other languages).



PovilD said:


> Ci, zi, si are also interesting. When I hear Polish language it feels it has lots of "sh", "zh" sounds (in which Polish language seems to be famous for, as far as I understand) but in written text there seems to be fewer of those letters that would clearly make those sounds.


Indeed many foreigners tell that. Maybe not necessarily "sh" and "zh" ("sz" and "ż") – but it seems that Polish actually uses quite many consonants (absolutely opposite to e.g. Italian), especially those "hard" ones like "r" (which in Polish is hard and strong), "k"/"g", "p"/"b" as well as we have quite many consonant clusters, sometimes impossible to pronounce for foreigners. I remember when, with some friends, we were trying to teach an Australian to pronounce the word "źdźbło" (meaning this thing: Culm (botany) - Wikipedia – although we translated it, less accurately, as "blade" like in "blade of grass"). He failed. He was saying "źbło", "dźbło", but not "źdźbło".


----------



## Verso

I find this new SSC layout quite annoying, especially lack of a fixed "to the top" button as it was before. Now you have to scroll up or down for the button to appear.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The 'home' button also works if you're on a PC or laptop with keyboard.


----------



## Verso

Yeah, but that means moving your hand from the mouse to the keyboard and back (or using the other hand). Then I prefer scrolling. It's not a problem on a phone, but on a PC it's annoying.

EDIT: I've only just realized you have to scroll up a bit, not down, and the button appears instantly. Problem solved. 😁


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands will ease the lockdown restrictions slightly in the coming period. The easing is mainly aimed at children, as many studies from both the Netherlands and other countries have found both the infection rate and spread of the virus among children to be significantly lower than the general population. In the Netherlands they make up 22% of the population, but only 0.7% of cases. And if they do become infected, the symptoms are very mild in the vast majority of cases. They also found through mapping that the virus spreads mainly from parents to children, not the other way around. So the risk for the health care system is judged to be very low.

The elementary schools will reopen by 11 May. Children are also allowed to play sports again, though no official competitions will be allowed. Large-scale events are banned until 1 September, and that includes assocation football. 

The Netherlands has not banned the operation of businesses, as long as social distancing can be maintained. This is different from other countries where all non-essential businesses are or were shut down. This never happened in the Netherlands. So what is seen as a lifting of restrictions in some countries remains unchanged in the Netherlands.


----------



## Kpc21

Can adults in the Netherlands already play sports or will it be only allowed for children?

In Poland gatherings of more than 2 persons in the public space (and keeping a 2 meter distance) are forbidden, which makes it impossible to play sports other than, maybe, tennis.


----------



## MichiH

More and more German states tighten restrictions to people. 10 out of 16 states already introduced the obligation or announced the introduction for the obligation of wearing mouth-and-nose-protection in shops and public transport. Wearing masks is not mandatory but anything (even handmade) must be worn to cover mouth and nose, e.g. scarf.


----------



## Kpc21

It's not that strong – in Poland it's obligatory in all public spaces except forests and private cars unless you have a passenger who doesn't live together with you. There are also some other exemptions, e.g. for the children up to 4 years or for the people who can't wear the masks for health reasons (e.g. asthmatics, or disabled people who aren't able to put the mask on and remove it). In Poland it's also not necessarily masks, you can use masks, tissues etc.


----------



## bogdymol

Austria is also easing the measures, as the number of new infections dropped significantly (from max 1300 in one day to only 46 new cases yesterday; also number of active cases dropped from max. 9300 to 3700 today).

Last week some stores opened (like DIY), as well as drive-through fast foods (there were issues with very long car queues at McDonald's for example)
From May 1st all shops will reopen
From May 15th schools will reopen as well as restaurants (all employees must wear masks)
It is also compulsory to wear a mask in all shops or public transport (scarfs or other similar items are also ok).


----------



## MichiH

bogdymol said:


> It is also compulsory to wear a mask in all shops or public transport (*scarfs or other similar items are also ok*).


That's the point! Masks are not mandatory!

German authoritites have realized today that it's difficult to make mouth-and-nose-protection compulsory for children. Bavaria arranged to have it mandatory for chidren 7+ only, other states said that they must think about it first.



Kpc21 said:


> It's not that strong


It's stronger than before. That's why I wrote "tighten restrictions to people". On the other hand, more shops are allowed to be opened again etc.
The problem is, that the 16 states do their own rules and where I live, it was less restricted. For me, it's tighter now. Restrictions are lowered for people from other states though.


----------



## Kpc21

bogdymol said:


> From May 15th schools will reopen as well as restaurants (all employees must wear masks)


Guests don't have to?


----------



## Coccodrillo

bogdymol said:


> Austria is also easing the measures [...] as well as drive-through fast foods (there were issues with very long car queues at McDonald's for example)


Curiously McDonald's in Switzerland closed completely, even if they were allowed to sell in drive-through or with delivery at home. On the other hand many conventional restaurant I usually go to quickly reacted and started to sell take away food. I would have expected the inverse, it is strange that the take away restaurant "by definition" was closed, and conventional restaurants were not.

(McDonald's will reopen -still only drive-through or delivery- next Monday, while other restaurants will keep being closed, except those in industries, hospitals, retirement homes, etc but only for those who work or live there)


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> When I was at university, after a night out I would always go to a place - open only at nights - which baked croissants and krapfens


What’s a krapfen?

And if I were looking for food at 3 a.m., I’d find an all-night diner.


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> motel in what looked like an office park on the edge of the next town, and there were a McDonald’s and a Buffalo Grill across the parking lot.


I love this kind of small hotels in France and I usually go to Buffalo Grill for dinner. Love it  _(I guess that I won't go there this year... unfortunately.. damn pandemie...)_


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> What’s a krapfen?


Siedegebäck – Wikipedia pic on the right, the food next to the pretzels


----------



## g.spinoza

x-type said:


> I have already told you several times: Italian


Quoting Giorgio Gaber, one of the greatest Italian singer-writer: "I don't feel Italian, but luckily - or unfortunately - I am".



MichiH said:


> Siedegebäck – Wikipedia pic on the right, the food next to the pretzels


So isn't krapfen even a German word? 
It is widely used in Italy, although the Italian equivalent "bombolone" (big bomb) is more widespread.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Okay, this fricking app has made me log on at least four times in the last hour....


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> A study of 'transmission paths' by the Dutch RIVM shows that children generally do not infect each other and also hardly infect older people. This is a strong argument to reopen schools. Another major factor is that the school closure has led to no measurable effect in the number of infected children. These were very low and remained very low after school closures. If schools would've played a role in transmission, you'd expect a decline after the school closures. This didn't happen, so the school closure was unnecessary.
> 
> This graph shows the age groups who infect each other. You can see that it is mainly people within their own age group that infect each other, while children are hardly infecting other people.



Interesting! But if, say, people on their 40s are more likely to be infected by other people in their 40s, is that because of something about the disease or external factors such as people of that age being around other people of that age more than they are around others?


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> I love this kind of small hotels in France and I usually go to Buffalo Grill for dinner. Love it  _(I guess that I won't go there this year... unfortunately.. damn pandemie...)_


It was here. The thing north of the Buffalo Grill with the brown roof was the motel. It’s not labeled so I can’t tell what chain it was. (Maybe it’s closed? Lot’s empty too.) The town is Caudry


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Quoting Giorgio Gaber, one of the greatest Italian singer-writer: "I don't feel Italian, but luckily - or unfortunately - I am".
> 
> 
> 
> So isn't krapfen even a German word?
> It is widely used in Italy, although the Italian equivalent "bombolone" (big bomb) is more widespread.


So it’s any fried baked good?


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> So isn't krapfen even a German word?


Yes, it's German.
I think that the French _croissants_ is also used worldwide.
Or the Italian pizza.

btw: I never ate krapfen, I never ate pizza but I love croissants


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> Interesting! But if, say, people on their 40s are more likely to be infected by other people in their 40s, is that because of something about the disease or external factors such as people of that age being around other people of that age more than they are around others?


The most important factor is that they are around each other. The most common transmission is among adult household members, which tend to be around the same age. The same also applies to work environments and nursing homes.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> So it’s any fried baked good?


I beg your pardon?



MichiH said:


> Yes, it's German.


I think it could be more Austrian or Boarisch...



> I think that the French _croissants_ is also used worldwide.


It is, but in Italy _cornetto (_little horn_) _is more used


> Or the Italian pizza.
> 
> btw: I never ate krapfen,* I never ate pizza *but I love croissants


Really?


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> I beg your pardon?
> 
> 
> 
> I think it could be more Austrian or Boarisch...
> 
> 
> 
> It is, but in Italy _cornetto (_little horn_) _is more used
> 
> 
> Really?


By “any fried baked good” (I was trying to understand that German Wikipedia entry), I meant, well, any baked item that’s fried in oil. Doughnuts, fritters, funnel cake.... As opposed to one specific item. “Fried baked goods” are to doughnuts as pasta is to fettuccine.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> By “any fried baked good” (I was trying to understand that German Wikipedia entry), I meant, well, any baked item that’s fried in oil. Doughnuts, fritters, funnel cake.... As opposed to one specific item. “Fried baked goods” are to doughnuts as pasta is to fettuccine.


Sorry, I read "good" as an adjective, not a noun, so it seemed you were asking if anything baked or fried is good...
I think "Siedegebäck" means pastry fried in oil, yes, and the one I called "krapfen", which is how they call it in German-speaking Tirol and also in Munich, is "Berliner Pfannkuchen" in correct German...


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> I think it could be more Austrian or Boarisch...


Yep, indicated on wikipedia being Austrian or Bavarian , go for "Krapfen".



g.spinoza said:


> Really?


I think I'm the only person in the western world but... yes, really!



g.spinoza said:


> I think "Siedegebäck" means pastry fried in oil, yes, and the one I called "krapfen", which is how they call it in German-speaking Tirol and also in Munich, is "Berliner Pfannkuchen" in correct German...


I also found the wikipedia article but I never ever heard "Berliner Pfannkuchen". It's also misleading since Pfannkuchen is pancake


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> It is, but in Italy _cornetto (_little horn_) _is more used


How about brioche?


----------



## radamfi

I used to really like the McDonald's "Big Breakfast" but they stopped selling it in the UK in 2016. This was because it was too much hassle to produce the scrambled egg. So whenever I visit Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg or Italy, I make sure I have the scrambled egg. They don't have scrambled egg in the Netherlands or France.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> I used to really like the McDonald's "Big Breakfast" but they stopped selling it in the UK in 2016. This was because it was too much hassle to produce the scrambled egg. So whenever I visit Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg or Italy, I make sure I have the scrambled egg. They don't have scrambled egg in the Netherlands or France.


Even in Egg McMuffins? :-O


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Sorry, I read "good" as an adjective, not a noun, so it seemed you were asking if anything baked or fried is good...
> I think "Siedegebäck" means pastry fried in oil, yes, and the one I called "krapfen", which is how they call it in German-speaking Tirol and also in Munich, is "Berliner Pfannkuchen" in correct German...


If that filling is jelly (or jam), I’d call it a jelly doughnut.


----------



## bogdymol

I try to avoid eating fast food, but sometimes its unavoidable or other times (rarely) I really feel I would get some.

I travel used to travel a lot for work, like for 5 years flying almost every month somewhere abroad (usually UK), and I also travel used to travel a lot for leisure on vacation or a monthly visit to my family in Romania. Often I get to some places at late hours, or I don't have time to search for a proper restaurant, wait for the food to be cooked etc. In such situations I grab something quick from a fast food, often McDonald's.

A fast food that I particularly like is KFC. Their fried chicken is very tasty, but I found huge differences between KFC in different countries. In Romania and Czech Republic I found it to be very good, in Hungary or Germany is meh... ok, in Austria is very... oily, in UK is below average and in USA is, excuse me, total crap. I found this surprising, as McDonald's is more or less constant regardless the country you are in, but at KFC there are major differences depending on the country.


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> Even in Egg McMuffins? :-O


Egg McMuffins are poached egg, so those and also Sausage/Bacon and Egg McMuffins are still sold in the UK.


----------



## geogregor

MichiH said:


> Maybe not at health care limits but a *very high death rate compared to other countries.*
> 
> Official deaths/million inhabitants (source):
> 
> 1179 San Marino
> 576 Belgium
> 482 Spain
> 479 Andorra
> 423 Italy
> 335 France
> 276 UK
> *250 Netherlands*


Not very high comparing with countries with the most draconian lockdowns, especially Spain, France and Italy.

Was it true that kids in Spain couldn't leave homes for 6 weeks? This is just cruel.

The problem with all these strict measures (and suffering economies) is that it will be the young people and the next generations which will pay the price (including rise in suicides, domestic violence, mental health, poverty, debt etc.)

I find it especially ironic that in countries like Spain and Italy the old folks have generous pensions, job security, properties etc. while the young already live precarious and insecure lives. The current crisis (and severity of lockdowns) will skew things even less in favor of the young Spaniards or Italians...

Now, is extending lives of the oldest members of society worth it all?


----------



## Suburbanist

"Generous pensions" in Italy and Spain?


----------



## cinxxx

Meanwhile...








Why the mafia are taking care of everyone's business


Organised crime is already giving food parcels to the poor in Italy and Mexico. For the cartels and syndicates, this crisis is an opportunity




www.theguardian.com





... but hey, they didn't get coronavirus


----------



## Verso

Every country is different, so every country needs different measures in fighting the virus. If northern Europeans don't hug and kiss each other even in normal times, then they obviously don't need as strict measures as southern Europeans. We've all seen how bad it was in southern Europe before the lockdowns. But I agree, lockdown can't last forever.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What can you do with tulips?


----------



## Kpc21

MacOlej said:


> I think that the governments and local authorities can and should do a lot in this area. But they have to use their minds properly


Even after everything comes back to normal, there may be big issues with the public transport, at least over, here, if the government doesn't do anything.

I mean, most of the public transport out of big cities (the one that still exists) is now suspended – as it was used mostly by pupils commuting to primary schools; now there are no schools and no passengers. Many local lines existed only because the municipalities were buying monthly tickets for those students.

Even more municipalities were organizing the commute to schools by ordering closed bus rides only for the pupils. They are also cancelled now.

So really many bus carriers may now go bankrupt.


----------



## Kpc21

Poland starts opening up sports.

On 4 May, the government opens open-air sports areas, but they will be allowed to be used by at max 6 persons at a time. Also the professional athletes can start individual trainings.

In the next stage (without a specified date), they will open the sports halls for amateurs, while professionals will be allowed to train in teams.

Next, they will open the establishments such as gyms, fitness clubs, dancing schools etc. and allow sports events for 50 persons at max in open air.

At the end of May, the football and speedway highest leagues start again. Of course, without fans at the stadiums.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

PovilD said:


> I don't know about The Netherlands, but I heard Latvia even allows restaurants to operate, except most of them went under construction.


Restaurants were never forced to close in Estonia either, although most of them closed on their own due to a lack of customers. Many restaurants that did close are now starting to open their doors again.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> Australia appears to be pretty effective in curbing the coronavirus.


... but Austria was also pretty effective in spreading Corona to Northern Europe. For a while in March, there were more verified Covid-19 cases in Norway that were traced back to Austria, than total verified Austrian cases in Austria. Of course, the average Norwegian ski tourist in Austria is probably "slightly" more social than the average Austrian, which partly explains how this could be so, in addition to possible differences in testing intensity of the two countries.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Austria. The 'other' Australia


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands is getting some rain in the next few days. In some parts of the Netherlands this is the first notable rainfall in 45 days. Long droughts are generally uncommon in an oceanic climate. 

The grass is turning brown already, normally we don't see that until mid to late summer and some summers it doesn't occur at all.


A35 Ecoduct Oudste Grond 03 by European Roads, on Flickr


----------



## Suburbanist

Here in Switzerland they say it is a good thing that relaxation of some restrictions are also coming with bad weather, so people don't go out much for leisure in parks etc


----------



## PovilD

Suburbanist said:


> Here in Switzerland they say it is a good thing that relaxation of some restrictions are also coming with bad weather, so people don't go out much for leisure in parks etc


I read that chance of catching the virus outdoors in normal circumstances is quite low (1 in 10,000), there are more chance to catch it from indoor environments like shops.

On the other hand, if people don't maintain social distancing and form crowds, chances are increasingly higher. UV light during warm days likely helps to slow the spread. I have my own hypothesis that spread in beaches are probably slower than in most places outdoors. Sun UV light kills the virus on the sand in 2 minutes and there is good ventiliation of air outside. If you want to take a swim on the lake or sea, chances are also slim, because "water is huge". Proper social distancing would be enough.

---
We let restaurants and cafes to operate outdoors from this week. From polls, only 16% have waited for reopening. About 50% would still be afraid to go. The rest were unsure (12%) or "avoids restaurants and cafes in normal circumstances" (about 20%).

My favorite dining places closest to my home were still closed yesterday, one is closed completely, another one (McD) are still allowing only take-aways. I took Big Mac, fries and orange juice, and found remote spot to eat in the nearby park, where no one's looking. One woman passed by and was still looking at me from distance, maybe just out of curiosity, hope nothing more  Park was not completely devoid of people after all.

Lithuania and Estonia seems to have the most widespread testing among larger countries not only in Europe, but the World along with few oil-rich Gulf countries.

There are talks about careful steps of resuming international travel to safer countries in mid-May. From current standpoint, I would see Estonia, Latvia, Faroe Islands, Norway, and Iceland as safest places, along with some East Asian nations. From immediate neighborhood in Lithuania, only Baltic States seems to be safe. Land borders between Baltic States only hopefully won't do much harm to our health systems.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What I don't understand though... the first day something is opened again, there are hordes of people. McDonald's open? A big traffic jam at midnight. IKEA opening? Huge queues. I mean is that really the first thing you want to do?









McDonald’s addicts queue from MIDNIGHT as New Zealand lifts lockdown


MCDONALD’S addicts in New Zealand got their much-missed fix of fries and burgers as they queued for miles from midnight after Covid-19 rules were eased. Delighted restaurant staff said on Facebook:…




www.thesun.co.uk


----------



## bogdymol

In Austria shopping centers and stores can reopen from the 1st of May. 

However, 1st of May is a holiday in Austria, when generally all stores are closed. So they can open from the 2nd of May. 2nd of May is a Saturday, which is a shopping-day for many Austrians, as Monday to Friday they are working and on Sundays all stores are generally closed.

This means that this Saturday there will be huge queues at all stores in Austria, as people will most likely use the combination of first day of opening + weekend to rush to the stores.

To avoid this, I would have allowed them to open only from Monday, 4th of May, as that would have reduced the number of people rushing to the stores at once.

I am planning to make my weekly groceries shopping this week on Thursday, and not on Friday (shops closed) or Saturday (shops crowded) as I usually do.


----------



## Kpc21

Because of the drought, almost 6000 ha of forests got burned in the Biebrza National Park in Poland.

I am allergic to grass pollen, and I think normally I should already have at least some symptoms but I have none. I suppose it's also because of the drought – the grass doesn't grow, it doesn't get flowers, so it doesn't emit pollens either.

Maybe it will rain on Thursday...












ChrisZwolle said:


> What I don't understand though... the first day something is opened again, there are hordes of people. McDonald's open? A big traffic jam at midnight. IKEA opening? Huge queues. I mean is that really the first thing you want to do?


Several months ago, when there was an opening of a Xiaomi store in Warsaw, there came so many people to the opening that it got dangerous and they had to close down.

See videos: Nowy sklep Xiaomi. Warszawa: Gigantyczna kolejka w Galerii Mokotów, promocje przyciągnęły tłumy na otwarcie salonu [WIDEO]

Several persons were injured. Finally the shop closed down till the end of the day.

The worst such case (even though it wasn't even an opening) in Poland was probably a night sale in Media Markt in Łódź which took place in 2004. See: Media Markt słynna promocja, która zakończyła się awanturą, przepychankami, rannymi i zdemolowanym sklepem ZDJĘCIA - Expressilustrowany.pl (unfortunately some photos repeat, even several times).










There were some lucky buyers too:



















But some shops in the mall got damaged:










And 12 persons got injured. Police had to intervene and use force.

Meanwhile... as an answer to the Covid restrictions, someone is opening a drive-in cinema in Warsaw: Auto Kino Warszawa • Wielkie Otwarcie

I am not sure about the other countries, maybe in the US it's more popular, but over here in Poland, drive-in cinemas are a rare thing and the only place where most people have seen one is The Flinstones intro. Sometimes some open in summer but it's more of a curiosity rather than a common thing. Now it seems such cinemas open in several cities in Poland, and the public authorities rent out space for them e.g. on airfields.


----------



## bogdymol

Kpc21 said:


> I am not sure about the other countries, maybe in the US it's more popular, but over here in Poland, drive-in cinemas are a rare thing and the only place where most people have seen one is The Flinstones intro. Sometimes some open in summer but it's more of a curiosity rather than a common thing. Now it seems such cinemas open in several cities in Poland, and the public authorities rent out space for them e.g. on airfields.


I think they are a rare sight overall in Europe. I do not know about any such drive-in cinema anywhere in Romania or Austria.

However, one summer a shopping center in my hometown in Romania made such a cinema in their parking lot. That was the one and only time I have seen a movie in my car. But that was 10+ years ago...


----------



## MichiH

According to wikipedia, 23 new drive-in theaters have been or will be opened in Germany due to the corona situation. One will be opened this Thursday in the town where _Attus_ lives. I also read that one will be opened in Vienna this May.





__





Autokino Wien







autokino.at


----------



## Penn's Woods

They’re nearly dead here, although sometimes community organizations of various sorts will hold public screenings in parks and the like during the summer.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Drive-ins have popped up also in Norway now. Classical drive-ins are actually only feasible in the south, as it otherwise does not get dark at all, or only very late, during summer. However, modern LED-screens are bright enough also for northern "white" nights or even daylight.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> Austria. The 'other' Australia


Ha ha, they say fast readers only take into account the first and last syllabus in a word ;-P


----------



## tfd543

U prolly need to clean ur windshield before going there. Lol. Idk how comfy it is to be seated in a car to watch a movie for about 2 hrs. You cant even open the window or door if the temp is too low at night..

Speaking of car wash, how is it typically done in ur countries?

In dk, we have automatic car wash for as low as 4 euros. Hand car wash by private companies have appeared since some years ago, but I Think Its too overpiced (approx. 100 euros).

In Albania, they only have hand car wash which cost about 2 euros for the wash and interior cleaning.


----------



## Suburbanist

I think re-opening a lot of businesses at once makes more sense to avoid people flocking to the one or two type of stores they can suddenly go

---------------------------

An aerial view of tankers stuck near Los Angeles / Long Beach port, with no buyers for their cargo


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> I think re-opening a lot of businesses at once makes more sense to avoid people flocking to the one or two type of stores they can suddenly go


I think that opening up the travel and tourism sector should also be coordinated in Europe. Also, the longer you wait with opening up, the larger the wave of tourists will be, especially if they don't open up until July or August. 

You know, for me tourism is something like this:

Col Agnel-10 by European Roads, on Flickr

But for the governments of those countries, they think in these terms (and they're not wrong by that):


----------



## italystf

In Italy drive in cinemas have never been popular.


----------



## italystf

PovilD said:


> There are talks about careful steps of resuming international travel to safer countries in mid-May. From current standpoint, I would see Estonia, Latvia, Faroe Islands, Norway, and Iceland as safest places, along with some East Asian nations. From immediate neighborhood in Lithuania, only Baltic States seems to be safe. Land borders between Baltic States only hopefully won't do much harm to our health systems.


In Europe Greece, Slovenia, and Croatia seem scarcely affected too. And, outside Europe, New Zealand.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think that opening up the travel and tourism sector should also be coordinated in Europe. Also, the longer you wait with opening up, the larger the wave of tourists will be, especially if they don't open up until July or August.


In Italy beaches will be open to tourists this summer, but they plan to enfoce social distancing by placing umbrellas more apart each other. In practice, I don't know how can they practically prevent people to gather together in the streets or other public places when the freedom of movement will be restored.
I only hope that we will have few cases in the summer, so the chance of meet an infected people in the street will be slim.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

The weather in April has been awful over here. Temperatures have been low and it has snowed a few times as well. Last night it dropped down to -5C in some parts of the country, for example.

This morning looked like this...


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

PovilD said:


> There are talks about careful steps of resuming international travel to safer countries in mid-May. From current standpoint, I would see Estonia, Latvia, Faroe Islands, Norway, and Iceland as safest places, along with some East Asian nations. From immediate neighborhood in Lithuania, only Baltic States seems to be safe. Land borders between Baltic States only hopefully won't do much harm to our health systems.





italystf said:


> In Europe Greece, Slovenia, and Croatia seem scarcely affected too. And, outside Europe, New Zealand.


The question is whether these countries will open up their borders. That is for most of them highly unlikely by May, at least.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

tfd543 said:


> U prolly need to clean ur windshield before going there. Lol. Idk how comfy it is to be seated in a car to watch a movie for about 2 hrs. You cant even open the window or door if the temp is too low at night..


You certainly need to open up your window if it is cold, otherwise your windscreen will be covered by dew. That is why drive-ins historically have been most relevant for countries with warm climate and dark nights.


----------



## Attus

Rebasepoiss said:


> The weather in April has been awful over here. Temperatures have been low and it has snowed a few times as well. Last night it dropped down to -5C in some parts of the country, for example.


The contrary here. April was extreme warm and dry.


----------



## MacOlej

PovilD said:


> Lithuania and Estonia seems to have the most widespread testing among larger countries not only in Europe, but the World along with few oil-rich Gulf countries.


Lithuania and Estonia are large countries for you?  I don't even consider Poland to be large honestly.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

While browsing through Google Earth I noticed there is some text written on top of a building in the infamous Luník IX subdivision in Košice, Slovakia.

According to Google Translate, the text reads: _who wants to live with wolves must howl with wolves _










The building looks like this by the way


----------



## tfd543

What the flying fuk. Has it been always like that? What a shame.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

I had a look around the area on Google Street View...that is beyond insane.. Who do these buildings belong to?


----------



## PovilD

MacOlej said:


> Lithuania and Estonia are large countries for you?  I don't even consider Poland to be large honestly.


I meant countries above 1m people that are not considered micro nations like Monaco or San Marino. Iceland has almost micro nation levels of population, but the country itself is comparably large.

I consider country as "large" if its land area is higher than that in Belarus  Poland, Germany, France are large, while USA, Mexico, Algeria, Mongolia, China are "the largest".

Maybe "medium-sized countries" would fit better  Small countries are those considered micro nations.


----------



## mgk920

ChrisZwolle said:


> While browsing through Google Earth I noticed there is some text written on top of a building in the infamous Luník IX subdivision in Košice, Slovakia.
> 
> According to Google Translate, the text reads: _who wants to live with wolves must howl with wolves _
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The building looks like this by the way


Some of the streetview images of that area are from 2012 and some from 2019. The 2019 images show far fewer buildings and the ones that survive in the 2019 images make the worst of the infamous 20th century public housing 'commieblocks' here in the USA look palatial before they were demoed.

From what I can tell, it is all part of a sad situation that may well be insoluble.

Mike


----------



## geogregor

Attus said:


> The contrary here. April was extreme warm and dry.



Same in the UK (untill yesterday when weather got crap).

The good weather was both, bad and good thing, in the time of lockdown. Bad because it really is tempting to travel and good because I could do long walks along the various green spaces (which London has a lot of) which let me explore swaths of south London.

Luckily lockdown enforcement here is nowhere near as strict as in Italy, Spain or France.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

PovilD said:


> Lithuania and Estonia seems to have the most widespread testing among larger countries not only in Europe, but the World along with few oil-rich Gulf countries.
> 
> There are talks about careful steps of resuming international travel to safer countries in mid-May. From current standpoint, I would see Estonia, Latvia, Faroe Islands, Norway, and Iceland as safest places, along with some East Asian nations. From immediate neighborhood in Lithuania, only Baltic States seems to be safe. Land borders between Baltic States only hopefully won't do much harm to our health systems.


So far the consequences in Norway from Corona has been mainly social and economical, with the death total rates actually being significantly lower than normal, and the number of Covid-19 deaths at 207 at the moment. This has been possible despite relatively mild measures compared with many other countries, e.g. without curfew and shops and restaurants being allowed to be open (although many of the latter have closed voluntarily due low business and social distancing rules). Key to the success has been active tracing and isolation of cases and a high and targeted testing rate, especially in the beginning. In total 170 000 tests have been taken of a population of 5 million. Now that society is opened more up, with kindergartens, schools for the younger, and e.g. hair dressers already operating, testing is ramped up drastically, while a voluntary app is supposed to further aid the tracing of the virus. From next week, the capacity will be 100 000 per week, essentially allowing all with mild symptoms to be tested. This has been possible due to new Norwegian technology using magnetic nano-particles to separate the RNA, making us less dependent on imported chemicals high in global demand.
















Norway to start broad-based testing by month's end using NTNU test kits


Norway's Ministry of Health and Care Services confirmed Friday that it will roll out coronavirus test kits developed by researchers from NTNU and St Olavs Hospital by the last week of April/early May. The kits will more than triple Norway's testing capacity during the rollout.




norwegianscitechnews.com












From thousands of tiny magnetic balls to 150,000 COVID-19 tests per week


Two weeks ago, doctors at St. Olavs Hospital in Trondheim were running out of reagents needed to do COVID-19 tests. They asked colleagues at NTNU to develop a backup solution. Now, Norway is gearing up to use the new approach to test 150,000 people a week after Easter.




norwegianscitechnews.com


----------



## tfd543

^^ PCR again again. Yes its reliable, but Way too time consuming unless u do multiple patient tests simultaneously. The other problem is non-specific amplification which gives u inaccurate results. We seriously need some point of care micro devices based on microfluidics, my core skill.

It will come sooner or later using smartphone as detection system.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> And the other side of the Latvia coin may be Spain. I was seeing reports yesterday on the end of their lockdown and it struck me that even though it was one of the strictest in the world, Spain had one of the worst outcomes...the worst levels of cases and deaths. So it may be reasonable to ask now whether that strictness helped....


I'm sure this will be extensively studied. Studies in the future may be done on the basis of more comprehensive data than what is published today, in particular how to count all COVID-19 deaths. 

As for now, we have to do with the data that is available. For example Belgium took a much stricter approach than the Netherlands, yet the numbers and trends in the Netherlands are not radically different. It's not like the virus went out of control in the Netherlands or even Sweden. 

Sweden for example hasn't seen the large reduction of cases that countries with strict lockdowns have recorded. But on the other hand, the virus also didn't went out of control either. There was no continued exponential increase in the number of cases in Sweden, nor did it overwhelm the healthcare system. 

But there are also differences between countries. Social norms, multigenerational living, they way that people have contact all played a role in the spread of the virus besides superspreader events or public transport usage.

I'm hopeful that we can return to normal for most of daily life, as long as we don't go to mass gatherings or major indoor events and find a way to operate the crowded enclosed 'sardine can' way of traveling on trains without spreading the virus. The data is suggesting that the risk is rather low if you avoid close contact. Which could be less than 1.5 meters for brief contacts / crossing paths.


----------



## mgk920

Here in the USA, there is a concept called the 'living will', where someone can legally demand that no extraordinary steps be taken to revive him or her self should he or she clinically die, often called a No Not Resuscitate ('DNR') order. This is frequently done by cancer or other serious illness patients.

Mike


----------



## PovilD

I don't like crowded places anyway, so I would be appreciated more than enough if most bussineses are open, and borders are not shut down like in some North Korea  It horrifies me that Spanish/Hubei scenarios are practised for erradicating/reducing spread of the virus. I'm very very hopeful that Hubei-style measures are too drastic for such virus, and not needed at all.


----------



## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I did not know that Scandinavia was part of "Northeast Europe" ;-)


True. I should say Northeastern Europe+Scandinavian Peninsula.

Scandinavian Peninsula is actually part of Northwest Europe, Finland, Baltics and Northern lattitudes of European Russia are Northeastern Europe. Finland is culturally Northwestern European. Estonia is "Nordic wannabe" (mix of Northwestern and Northeastern Europe culturally). Latvia seemingly leaning toward Northeastern Europe, although Latvia is more Germanic than Lithuania. Lithuania was always true Northeastern European with only little traces of Northwestern European, some traces of Central European feel, especially in Vilnius. Poland, Belarus, Ukraine are also Northeastern European. Maybe Poland a little bit of the mix of Central Europe (Habsburg/Germanic Europe) and Northeastern Europe.

---
My perception:









Green - The Baltics. Mix of Northeastern, Northwestern and Central Europe.
Light Orange - Northwestern Europe. Nordic+Benelux+British Isles.
Orange - Central Europe. Mostly Habsburg (Austria-Hungary)+Germany influenced areas.
Yellow - Southeastern Europe. The Balkans+Greece.
Brown - Southwestern Europe. Romance-speaking countries.
Pink - Northeastern Europe.

Poland historically could fit into Baltic Area too, but since its not considered Baltic State I put it on Central European category


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm sure this will be extensively studied. Studies in the future may be done on the basis of more comprehensive data than what is published today, in particular how to count all COVID-19 deaths.
> 
> As for now, we have to do with the data that is available. For example Belgium took a much stricter approach than the Netherlands, yet the numbers and trends in the Netherlands are not radically different. It's not like the virus went out of control in the Netherlands or even Sweden.
> 
> Sweden for example hasn't seen the large reduction of cases that countries with strict lockdowns have recorded. But on the other hand, the virus also didn't went out of control either. There was no continued exponential increase in the number of cases in Sweden, nor did it overwhelm the healthcare system.
> 
> But there are also differences between countries. Social norms, multigenerational living, they way that people have contact all played a role in the spread of the virus besides superspreader events or public transport usage.
> 
> I'm hopeful that we can return to normal for most of daily life, as long as we don't go to mass gatherings or major indoor events and find a way to operate the crowded enclosed 'sardine can' way of traveling on trains without spreading the virus. The data is suggesting that the risk is rather low if you avoid close contact. Which could be less than 1.5 meters for brief contacts / crossing paths.


I’m inclined to agree. And I’m certainly not criticizing Spain. We’re all - and I mean the whole world (well, most of us) - trying to figure this out as we go along. (New York and New Jersey have awful numbers, and fairly strict measures, but it’s now thought the virus was percolating in the area long before anyone knew it.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> Here in the USA, there is a concept called the 'living will', where someone can legally demand that no extraordinary steps be taken to revive him or her self should he or she clinically die, often called a No Not Resuscitate ('DNR') order. This is frequently done by cancer or other serious illness patients.
> 
> Mike


But those orders don’t permit active euthanasia. How many states permit “physician-assisted suicide” - Washington and Oregon?


----------



## Attus

A new drive-in ciname opened in the where I live. I had the ide to visit it but tickets are sold out for thw following two weeks.
They must have some LED diisplay, because films start at 9PM, and at 9PM the sky is hell bright here nowadays.


----------



## Verso

Zero (0) new cases in Slovenia yesterday.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

PovilD said:


> True. I should say Northeastern Europe+Scandinavian Peninsula.
> 
> Scandinavian Peninsula is actually part of Northwest Europe, Finland, Baltics and Northern lattitudes of European Russia are Northeastern Europe. Finland is culturally Northwestern European. Estonia is "Nordic wannabe" (mix of Northwestern and Northeastern Europe culturally). Latvia seemingly leaning toward Northeastern Europe, although Latvia is more Germanic than Lithuania. Lithuania was always true Northeastern European with only little traces of Northwestern European, some traces of Central European feel, especially in Vilnius. Poland, Belarus, Ukraine are also Northeastern European. Maybe Poland a little bit of the mix of Central Europe (Habsburg/Germanic Europe) and Northeastern Europe.
> 
> ---
> My perception:
> View attachment 103821
> 
> 
> Green - The Baltics. Mix of Northeastern, Northwestern and Central Europe.
> Light Orange - Northwestern Europe. Nordic+Benelux+British Isles.
> Orange - Central Europe. Mostly Habsburg (Austria-Hungary)+Germany influenced areas.
> Yellow - Southeastern Europe. The Balkans+Greece.
> Brown - Southwestern Europe. Romance-speaking countries.
> Pink - Northeastern Europe.
> 
> Poland historically could fit into Baltic Area too, but since its not considered Baltic State I put it on Central European category


I guess these definitions belong very much on the perspective. For instance, normally all the European countries formerly belonging to the Warsaw pact are usually still classified as Eastern European in Norwegian news media, although e.g. the Czech republic in fact is as central as it gets in Europe, and Norway's eastern border is at the same longitude as Turkey. On the other hand, I would not be surprised if the Greek consider France to be part of north-western Europe. Instead of these relative terms, I rather like the more specific and less ambigous geographical terms like Benelux, Iberia, Baltics (not to be mixed with Baltic region), Balkan, British Isles, Nordics (GRO, IS, FO, N, S, AX, FIN, DK), Scandinavia (N,S,DK, not to be mixed with the Scandinavian peninsula), Balkan, the Alpine region etc., although such terms are quite often also used in different ways. Mostly due misunderstandings, but also here perspective plays a role.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'd say that from a Dutch perspective, Finland is almost always included in Scandinavia.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Attus said:


> A new drive-in ciname opened in the where I live. I had the ide to visit it but tickets are sold out for thw following two weeks.
> They must have some LED diisplay, because films start at 9PM, and at 9PM the sky is *hell* here nowadays.


A little bit of German here, perhaps


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'd say that from a Dutch perspective, Finland is almost always included in Scandinavia.


Yeah, I know this is quite common outside the region, but this is matter of both the perspective and misunderstanding I discussed above ;-) Both the Finns and the rest of us up here disagree, and which is why we use the Nordics term instead.

Whereas the Nordics is rather homogenous culturally, Scandinavia is also rather homogenous linguistically. ("Rather", because there also within Scandinavia are indigenous minority languages completely different from the main national languages)


----------



## MichiH

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> A little bit of German here, perhaps


yep, I thought the same. I guess _Attus_ wrote it on the phone considering all the typos....


----------



## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I did not know that Scandinavia was part of "Northeast Europe" ;-) Both NA and Scandinavia are highly urbanized.


The largest city of Scandinavia has the population of less than 1 million citizens. To compare, Warsaw has almost 1.8 million, Berlin has almost 3.8 million.

I wouldn't call it highly urbanized. Scandinavia is plenty of open areas and kilometers of fields and forests between villages.


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'd say that from a Dutch perspective, Finland is almost always included in Scandinavia.


It's better to call it Nordic. Geographically it lies on the Fennoscandian Peninsula together with Sweden, Norway, and a part of Russia.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Allmost right. Denmark is not part of Fennoscandia....



Kpc21 said:


> The largest city of Scandinavia has the population of less than 1 million citizens. To compare, Warsaw has almost 1.8 million, Berlin has almost 3.8 million.
> 
> I wouldn't call it highly urbanized. Scandinavia is plenty of open areas and kilometers of fields and forests between villages.


Yes, there are plenty of open places, but the degree of urbanization (percentage of people living in cities) is still quite high. Among the Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are at 88, 87 and 82 %, respectively, all above e.g. Spain,. Italy, France, and Germany. Poland is at 60 %. And villages do not really exist at all in Norway and most of Sweden.








Urbanization by country - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I guess these definitions belong very much on the perspective. For instance, normally all the European countries formerly belonging to the Warsaw pact are usually still classified as Eastern European in Norwegian news media, although e.g. the Czech republic in fact is as central as it gets in Europe, and Norway's eastern border is at the same longitude as Turkey. On the other hand, I would not be surprised if the Greek consider France to be part of north-western Europe. Instead of these relative terms, I rather like the more specific and less ambigous geographical terms like Benelux, Iberia, Baltics (not to be mixed with Baltic region), Balkan, British Isles, Nordics (GRO, IS, FO, N, S, AX, FIN, DK), Scandinavia (N,S,DK, not to be mixed with the Scandinavian peninsula), Balkan, the Alpine region etc., although such terms are quite often also used in different ways. Mostly due misunderstandings, but also here perspective plays a role.


It's interesting that while we in Poland consider ourselves Central Europe, what is called in English Middle East (I mean, the Arabic and Muslim countries of South-East Asia), we still call Near East. I guess, English uses Middle East because we are the "Near East" for the western Europeans.

Far East is the name we use for the region of China, Japan and Korea.


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> yep, I thought the same. I guess _Attus_ wrote it on the phone considering all the typos....


Shi happens  Corrected. 
Unfortunately the mistakenly used word means something completely different in English, what is usually not associated with the sky.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> It's better to call it Nordic.


I agree. There is a word for in Dutch: '_Noordse_' which isn't used very much because it creates confusion with '_Noorse_' (something from or about Norway). So in Dutch the concept of 'Nordic' isn't used a whole lot. Most people probably think it has to do with Norway, so the usage of Scandinavia for Nordic is prolific.


----------



## Verso

Kpc21 said:


> The largest city of Scandinavia has the population of less than 1 million citizens.


Stockholm urban area has 1.6 million inhabitants.


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> Hairdressers are allowed to be opened since yesterday all over Germany. This was the biggest pain for many (male) Germans....


I, too, look even more awful than usually... There were queues at the front of all hairdressers here in the town I live (I didn't go there, but saw them as I was walking on the street).


----------



## Spookvlieger

Kpc21 said:


> So how do e.g. construction workers deal with such a restriction? Do they go everywhere by private cars? Or are the constructions suspended?
> 
> In Poland you can carry as many persons with you in a car (not in a bus – a vehicle with more than 9 places for passengers is a bus) as long as everyone wears masks. You don't have to wear a mask if you are in your car alone, with your family member or with someone who lives with you in the same apartment/house.


Most of construction is severely delayed or even halted. Someone I know who has a small construction company just rented cheap used cars to bring his workers around. Apparently workers can be with two in a car if they wear a facemask.

Today in the news a person who was caught four times driving with other people was given a 200h+ community work punishment and heavy fines.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Wide spread ground level frost forecast for tonight in Benelux and Germany potentially severely damaging young crops.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> I, too, look even more awful than usually... There were queues at the front of all hairdressers here in the town I live (I didn't go there, but saw them as I was walking on the street).


At many hairdressers in Poland even normally you have to make an arrangement before – especially if you want to come during the weekend.

I wonder how it will be when they reopen – but certainly they will have queues.

But if you can just enter a hairdresser in Poland from the street, then there will often be a queue anyway inside – often there is a couch or seats for the persons waiting. It is also sometimes so that the hairdresser is doing a complex hairstyle, which takes long to make, for a women and takes a man for a simple cut in the break, when the women is under a hairdryer, waiting for the hair paint to apply or something like that.

Maybe now those queues are thrown out of the hairdresser offices onto the streets, so that only the person currently being cut or styled can be inside?

In Poland most constructions continue. I also saw some works like renovation and warming up the outside walls on some private houses.

My employer is during a construction of their new headquarters in Warsaw. I mean, it's a skyscraper currently being under construction which they will be renting out. Today we had a quarterly meeting of the central management with the employees and they announced the construction isn't really delayed (by 4 weeks or so but it was even originally taken into account) – but they are going to redesign the interior and cut the rented office surface by 4 floors. Even after coronavirus, they are going to promote the home office model more and there will be less desks than employees. Originally it was planned without hot desks.

Luckily I work in the other headquarters (in Łódź), so as I still hope, I won't be affected.


----------



## Suburbanist

Masks are quite ubiquitous here in Switzerland.


----------



## PovilD

g.spinoza said:


> It has been reported in Europe, too:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Coronavirus e sindrome di Kawasaki. I pediatri: "La terapia c'è. Non tardate a contattare i medici"
> 
> 
> La malattia rara che colpisce i bambini sembra più frequente con il coronavirus. La Società Italiana di Pediatria ha avviato una raccolta naziona…
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.repubblica.it
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Explained: Inflammatory syndrome possibly linked to COVID-19
> 
> 
> There have been hundreds of cases of children with a multisystem inflammatory syndrome. Here we explain the possible link to COVID-19 and the symptoms to look out for.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.euronews.com



I heard about two strange conditions on younger people: strange inflamatory disease for children and heart strokes on people in their 30s and 40s. Good sign (probably) that these conditions are considered as rare.

There are "strange frostbites on feet from COVID19" too, but I don't know if this reduces your ability to work most jobs, so I don't bother about it. Maybe more like an interesting condition rather than something very worrying. They dissapear in few weeks.

Herpes on lips usually doesn't reduce your ability to work too, unless you play an brass instrument (like trombone) which can make playing an instrument more painful experience


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't think there is a huge appetite from society to use masks in the Netherlands. Especially because the curve was flattened without draconic restrictions or mask usage. It could be unavoidable in trains and buses, but otherwise I doubt if we'll see mass usage of masks in other public places.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't think there is a huge appetite from society to use masks in the Netherlands. Especially because the curve was flattened without draconic restrictions or mask usage. It could be unavoidable in trains and buses, but otherwise I doubt if we'll see mass usage of masks in other public places.


Same here. Rather mild measures compared to most European countries and few people wear masks in public places.


----------



## MichiH

What are the current measures in Denmark? What is allowed again? It was one of the first countries after Italy with restrictions.


----------



## Penn's Woods

joshsam said:


> Wide spread ground level frost forecast for tonight in Benelux and Germany potentially severely damaging young crops.


Accumulating snow forecast for Saturday for parts of New York state and northern New England.


----------



## PovilD

My opinion about obligatory mask wearing is that you have more freedom to decide on the spot what do you want to do: take public transport, or go shopping.

We are allowed not to wear masks if there are no other people except household in at least 20 meters distance.
On the other hand, getting disease outdoors from random stranger is considered as 1 from 10,000. But globally we are not completely clear about pretty much anything.

Today, we accidentally found COVID19 cluster in hospital here in Kaunas. One patient (woman in her 70s) had fever since mid-April, but not typical COVID19 symptoms, she tested negative, so she was treated as normal patient. When it was decided to take her to nursing home yesterday, she took COVID19 test again and tested positive. Then another few cases in other patients were find in the same hospital. We know that test rellialibility is only 70%, so I'm not too surprised about such case, although it somewhat unsettling that clusters of cases in hospitals and nursing homes still appear here in Lithuania. We had problematic start in mid-March though, with hospital workers becoming sick in very disproportional rate (18% of COVID cases were medics at one time, and it was considered very shameful, since it was one of the highest rate in Europe).

On positive note, clusters on nursing homes seems to not produce much death, since we diagnose many asymptomatic cases too.

I currently see three concerns: laxing of restrictions is still jumping into unknown, and we are not as sophisticated country as South Korea or RoC (Taiwan); cluster of cases every few days in one or few nursing homes/hospitals all around the country; truck drivers from Belarus. Belarus is still on deny mode, and their deny mode is closer to that seen in Turkmenistan rather than Sweden.



joshsam said:


> Wide spread ground level frost forecast for tonight in Benelux and Germany potentially severely damaging young crops.


I was never interested much in those crop news, since I thought the last thing in my life that I would likely to face is famine, but in these circumstances with disrupted production chains, you are more aware about it. If you know Chris Martenson from Peak Prosperity (on YouTube), he always on every episode, reminds viewers "to plant a garden".


----------



## MichiH

Bavaria has decided today that hotels can also open again for non-business stays. It's now reported that it will be announced tomorrow, that hotels should be allowed to open at the end of May all over Germany! Also (first) restaurants should be allowed opened next weekend, all restaurants by the end of month.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Penn's Woods said:


> Accumulating snow forecast for Saturday for parts of New York state and northern New England.


That's even worse. Is the growing season allready begun overthere?


----------



## Spookvlieger

PovilD said:


> My opinion about obligatory mask wearing is that you have more freedom to decide on the spot what do you want to do: take public transport, or go shopping.
> 
> We are allowed not to wear masks if there are no other people except household in at least 20 meters distance.
> On the other hand, getting disease outdoors from random stranger is considered as 1 from 10,000. But globally we are not completely clear about pretty much anything.
> 
> Today, we accidentally found COVID19 cluster in hospital here in Kaunas. She had fever, but not typical COVID19 symptoms, tested negative, so she was treated as normal patient. When it was decided to take her to nursing home, she took COVID19 test again and tested positive. Then another few cases in other patients were find. We know that test rellialibility is only 70%, so I'm not too surprised about such case, although it somewhat unsettling that clusters of cases in hospitals and nursing homes still appear here in Lithuania. We had problematic start in mid-March though, with hospital workers becoming sick in very disproportional rate (18% of COVID cases were medics at one time, and it was considered very shameful, since it was one of the highest rate in Europe).
> 
> 
> 
> I was never interested much in those crop news, since I thought the last thing in my life that I would likely to face is famine, but in these circumstances you feel more aware about your local agriculture.


Yeah so true. Prices of food allready jumped 20 % in Belgium with this crisis.


----------



## PovilD

joshsam said:


> Yeah so true. Prices of food allready jumped 20 % in Belgium with this crisis.


Hopefully there will be no famine as such, but some products that we know may dissapear due to outgoing pandemic in other parts of the World.



joshsam said:


> Wide spread ground level frost forecast for tonight in Benelux and Germany potentially severely damaging young crops.


I wonder if they have some prevention from such occurence.

For instance, in Eastern Europe, we have so called "second homes", we called "Garden(s)" in our language. We usually grow vegetables and fruits there and take a rest outside. This is more apparent for older generation living in commie blocks. Mostly older people plant gardens there as far as I know, since they probably grasp what Peak Prosperity is "scaring" us about when products were actually scarce, which is not the case for younger generation  During such colder nights, I saw people covering up their our grown vegetables by some blanket. This saves warmth for grown vegetables.


----------



## Penn's Woods

joshsam said:


> That's even worse. Is the growing season allready begun overthere?


Oh, I don’t know much about agriculture. Northern New England (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire) certainly isn’t intensely farmed; I associate the region with seafood, blueberries, potatoes, maple sugar...it’s a rugged landscape (rocky soil) with lots of woodland.

The parts of New York close to the Great Lakes are flatter and more agricultural. The region’s known for grapes and decent wines. But they have long, harsh winters. Snow in May is pushing it, but I’d guess it’s not unprecedented. (A friend once went to Rochester for a seminar or something in May and came back to Philadelphia complaining that “everything’s still brown.” In fact, I drove to Montreal at the end of April a few years ago, using I-81. Trees were still bare north of Syracuse.)


----------



## Alex_ZR

People in Serbia are wearing masks less and less after government announced lifting state of emergency and curfew from May 6. Gyms and hairdressers are open since last Monday, restaurants, cafes and public transport since yesterday. Elections will be held on June 21.


----------



## Spookvlieger

PovilD said:


> Hopefully there will be no famine as such, but some products that we know may dissapear due to outgoing pandemic in other parts of the World.
> 
> 
> 
> I wonder if they have some prevention from such occurence.
> 
> For instance, in Eastern Europe, we have so called "second homes", we called "Garden(s)" in our language. We usually grow vegetables and fruits there and take a rest outside. This is more apparent for older generation living in commie blocks. Mostly older people plant gardens there as far as I know, since they probably grasp what Peak Prosperity is "scaring" us about when products were actually scarce, which is not the case for younger generation  During such colder nights, I saw people covering up their our grown vegetables by some blanket. This saves warmth for grown vegetables.


Not much people here own gardens like that. Some People do own they own food gardens but it's certainly not the majority, if anything for sure not the poor people and they will go hungry first it at least see their life standard fall even more because they have to spend more in food.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Meanwhile tons and tons of agricultural products in the Netherlands are going to waste due to lack of exports. The Netherlands normally exports some 75% of its agricultural output. There are no indications for food shortages in the Netherlands.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Penn's Woods said:


> Oh, I don’t know much about agriculture. Northern New England (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire) certainly isn’t intensely farmed; I associate the region with seafood, blueberries, potatoes, maple sugar...it’s a rugged landscape (rocky soil) with lots of woodland.
> 
> The parts of New York close to the Great Lakes are flatter and more agricultural. The region’s known for grapes and decent wines. But they have long, harsh winters. Snow in May is pushing it, but I’d guess it’s not unprecedented. (A friend once went to Rochester for a seminar or something in May and came back to Philadelphia complaining that “everything’s still brown.” In fact, I drove to Montreal at the end of April a few years ago, using I-81. Trees were still bare north of Syracuse.)


The saying goes it can snow untill the ice saints but I rarely have seen snow afther Easter and snow overall is becoming more rare every year in this part of the world. This year only 2 snow days. The norm should be around 20-25.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have decided that the free movement of people between the three countries will be restored on May 15.

Finland has decided that workers will be allowed to travel between Estonia and Finland starting from May 14. 

These are definitely necessary steps towards normalcy but a noticeable rise in cases is to be expected.


----------



## tfd543

MichiH said:


> What are the current measures in Denmark? What is allowed again? It was one of the first countries after Italy with restrictions.


Final year high school students started to go to school again and also 1st to 5th grade elementary school pupils.

Barbers are open without masks. Hehe. I had a hair cut where the barber didnt have a mask on.

PhD and post docs are allowed to work at universities with some restrictions.

The government started to reconeve again.

We wait for new restriction liftings on the 10th of May


----------



## Penn's Woods

Here’s something.









PA Turnpike to reopen service plazas on Friday


The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission announced that it will reopen its service plazas on Friday, after they were briefly shutdown to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19. All 17 of the PA Turnpike service plazas will be reopened Friday at 7 a. m. , according to a news release, and restrooms...




wjactv.com


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## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch government announced the easing of some restrictions.

To be sure, the Dutch economy did not go into a hard lockdown. Most work continued and most shops remained open. Mask usage is not obligatory.

The 'stay at home' advisory has been changed to 'avoid busy locations'. From 11 May, so-called 'contact professions' (hairdressers, beauty salon, driving instruction, etc.) can reopen. 

From 1 June, restaurants and outdoor bars can reopen. Restaurants and cultural events up to 30 people are allowed. High schools are planned to reopen as well. Non-medical masks will be mandatory in public transport. This is the only situation where masks will be mandatory because social distancing cannot be practically enforced.


----------



## italystf

Italy reopened several economical activities on May 4. We are now allowed to walk or cycle away from home for exercise reasons, but not to travel by car or PT without valid reasons. We can now meet close relatives but not friends and acquiatances. It's still forbidden to leave our own region unless we have a strong necessity.
On May 18 shops and museums will reopen. On June 1st bars, restaurants, hairdressers and beauty centers will open too.
Freedom of movement across the whole Italy will be restored when the contagion index R0 will fall below 0.2.


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## ChrisZwolle

italystf said:


> Freedom of movement across the whole Italy will be restored when the contagion index R0 will fall below 0.2.


Is that realistic? 0.2 means that 5 patients combined infect only 1 other person. I wonder if that figure is even attainable without an extended lockdown, herd immunity or vaccine.

_But real-time R0 estimates like Germany’s are, however sophisticated, highly speculative. It is an estimate built on other estimates, some more informed than others.

Italy reported 15,918 new cases in the past five days, a workable shorthand for the number of people who might still be infectious. At an R0 of 0.8, it would take 26.8 generations of the virus for Italy’s new infections to pace South Korea’s.

At four days per generation, that’s about 100 days, or early August. And that’s only if the status quo — lockdown — is maintained._










R0, the Messy Metric That May Soon Shape Our Lives, Explained (Published 2020)


‘R-naught’ represents the number of new infections estimated to stem from a single case. You may be hearing a lot about this.




www.nytimes.com


----------



## Suburbanist

R-values also drop when you have a sufficiently large number of people that, if exposed, will not get infected. Since there is reasonable evidence covid-19 is non-recurring (i.e. those who recover are immune to reinfection at least in the short term), worst-affected areas will see a drop on R-values, especially for clusters of infections.

This is also the essence of the epidemiological effect of vaccination btw.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Potentially historic May snowstorm headed for Northeast and New England


In addition to snow, 75 million people will wake up to below freezing temperatures Saturday. For many cities it will be colder than it was on Christmas Day.




www.nbcnews.com


----------



## Penn's Woods

I’m guessing this sign is impossible:


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## Kpc21

Poland's border aren't (and never were) closed in the strict sense, you are only obliged to undergo quarantine after you come back. However, it seems, the Polish authorities are refusing the citizens to renew their passports, unless for reasons such as business travel or treatment abroad.

Is it really up to the international regulations and democracy standards? When people are forced to declare why they need at passport, at the first place?


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^ I do not know, it certainly would have caused an outcry around here. Currently, many countries close their borders to foreigners in any case, though.

Today, on the day before the 75 year anniversary of the WWII liberation, the Norwegian government announced the plan for a gradual opening of the society until June 15th, essentially reflecting that there is now very few new COVID-19 cases and the curve is pointing steeply downwards still. The measures have never been as strict as in many other countries, though, and already during the last few weeks kindergartens, year 1-4 of elementary schools, hairdressers, physiotherapists etc. have opened. Next week, the remaining elementary, secondary and high schools will also open. In essence, we will then in fact have measures that are similar to or even less restrictive than famously relaxed Sweden, where high schools I think are planned to be partly closed even next fall. A statistical Corona-comparison between the Nordic countries is quite interesting, I think. Because of their apparent similarities, such a comparison should form a better basis to conclude on the effect of different strategies than if the subjects were say Germany and Italy:
Corona-viruset: Status i Norden
(I am sorry, but the text is unfortunately in Norwegian. The graphs and numbers should not be too hard to decipher, though)
During the start of the outbreak, the countries were fairly similar with quite a few imported cases coming from central and southern Europe. Currently, though, Sweden stands out compared with DK, FIN; and N, having continued spread and much higher number of deaths and hospitalizations than the other countries. It is certainly too early to say which strategy has been the right one, but it has been sometimes argued that the Swedes can keep the current measures for a long time. What is perhaps undercommunicated, is that they actually are forced to keep them in place for a very long time because the number of sick people is going down so slowly. Right now, the number is at level where the hospitals are just able to cope, but it must come at a cost of downprioritizing many other patients. At the same time, the spread is still so slow that it will take a very long time reach group immunity, and, such a group immunity will come at a high cost in number of lives (already at 7.5x the Norwegian number per capita). What strikes me as very odd, though, is that there seems to be no real debate regarding the strategy they have chosen. This is very unlike my own country, where the strategy has been strongly contested during the whole outbreak. Could it be a matter of the stereotypical Swedish tendency to seek consensus?


----------



## Penn's Woods

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> ^^ I do not know, it certainly would have caused an outcry around here. Currently, many countries close their borders to foreigners in any case, though.
> 
> Today, on the day before the 75 year anniversary of the WWII liberation, the Norwegian government announced the plan for a gradual opening of the society until June 15th, essentially reflecting that there is now very few new COVID-19 cases and the curve is pointing steeply downwards still. The measures have never been as strict as many other countries, though, and already during the last few weeks kindergartens, year 1-4 of elementary schools, hairdressers, physiotherapists etc. have opened. Next week, the remaining elementary, secondary and high schools will also open. In essence, we will then in fact have measures that are similar to or even less restrictive than famously relaxed Sweden, where high schools I think are planned to be partly closed even next fall. A statistical Corona-comparison between the otherwise somewhat similar Nordic countries is indeed quite interesting, I think:
> Corona-viruset: Status i Norden
> (I am sorry, but the text is unfortunately in Norwegian. The graphs and numbers should not be too hard to decipher, though)
> Clearly, Sweden stands out with continued spread and high, and much higher, number of deaths and hospitalizations than the other countries. It is certainly too early to say which strategy has been the right one, but it has been sometimes argued that the Swedes can keep the current measures for a long time. What is perhaps undercommunicated, is that they actually are forced to keep them in place for a very long time because the number of sick is going down so slowly. Right now, the number is at level where the hospitals are just able to cope, but it comes at a cost of downprioritizing many other patients. At the same time, the spread is so slow even there that it will take a very long time reach group immunity, and, such a group immunity will come at a high cost in number of lives (already at 7.5x the Norwegian number per capita). What strikes me as very odd, though, is that there seems to be no real debate regarding the strategy they have chosen. This is very unlike my own country, where the strategy is debated all the time. Could it be a matter of the stereotypical Swedish tendency to seek consensus?


There was an interesting article on the Norwegian approach in the New York Times, actually.
EDIT: I take that back. An idea of Norwegian researchers is discussed, not what was actually done there. When you talked about the remaining schools opening, it rang a bell. (I read this a few days ago.) Still interesting, I think, so I'll leave it. :cheers:









Did Closing Schools Actually Help? (Published 2020)


Researchers have a plan to find out.




www.nytimes.com


----------



## mgk920

Penn's Woods said:


> I’m guessing this sign is impossible:
> View attachment 112140


Yea, 'STOP' signs in France say "STOP".

'ARRET' is a Quebec thing.

Mike


----------



## tfd543

Got a New job yesterday. Its like winning the lottery in these days. Yaay.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Currently, though, Sweden stands out compared with DK, FIN; and N, having continued spread and much higher number of deaths and hospitalizations than the other countries.


It would also be interesting to look at the Swedish statistics at a more in-depth level. I've read that 30-50% of all fatalities occurred in nursing homes. Maybe the Swedish strategy has overall been reasonably succesful, but perhaps they didn't protect the nursing homes sufficiently. The Netherlands also has a relatively eased lockdown, dubbed the 'intelligent lockdown' by our PM, but they banned visits to nursing homes fairly quickly after it became apparent that these were at very high risk. Did Sweden ban all visits to nursing homes?

I think all of Scandinavia / Nordics didn't have domestic superspread events like many other areas had. Most people were infected in apres ski bars in Austria and then some - rather limited - community transmission began at home. In the Netherlands the cases were initially mostly linked to travel to Italy and Austria, but after a week or so it became apparent that many cases had no travel link and were likely linked to carnival, which is mostly celebrated in Southern Netherlands, which also became a much more intense hotspot for community transmission than elsewhere. 

The Belgian media appears to make a sport of it to bash Sweden. The Belgians also bashed the Netherlands for the 'irresponsible approach' to the virus, but after a few weeks it became clear that the Belgian figures are actually worse than the Netherlands (and Sweden), so it became a point of debate how useful a hard lockdown really is. But Belgium likely had a much higher rate of community transmission than Sweden and most of the Netherlands.


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## PovilD

Sweden's approach is surprising although costed more lives than other Nordic countries, but still waay less than anything close to the models like Imperial college London which made UK to turn into its lockdown policies. ...and after few weeks, Boris Johnson got something like in between of very strong flu and lite version of Ebola..

I tend to spot tendency that Romance-speaking countries are affected seemingly stronger than other (Germanic, Slavic, etc.) countries. It's seems prevalent in Europe (with exception being UK, Belgium (in bad way) and Portugal (in good way)), and Canada too, since Quebec seems to be disproportionally affected while English-speaking regions mostly have concrete clusters and most trends of active cases are down.

When I see mass death, mostly there are Romance-speaking countries: Brazil, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium (partially). There are exceptions though, but very few countries are exceptions. Btw, even New York, although not Romance speaking, I learned that there is great minority of Italian descent.

Russia and Belarus are similar to UK for that matter, I didn't saw any mass graves yet there, only queues of ambulances waiting 10-15 hours to admit patient to the hospital.


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## ChrisZwolle

There are reports about a study by the University of East Anglia which looked at the effectiveness of various measures: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.20088260v1.full.pdf

In short;

banning mass gatherings: effective
closing schools: effective
closing restaurants / cafes: effective
stay-at-home orders: not effective
closing non-essential business: not effective
fask masks: not effective

_The closure of non-essential business does not appear to have a significant effect on the number of COVID-19 cases. This is evident as the estimated relationship and its 95% credible interval stay close
to zero on the Y axis. Surprisingly, stay-home measures showed a positive association with cases. This means that as the number of lock-down days increased, so did the number of cases. The use of
face coverings initially seems to have had a protective effect. However, after day 15 of the face covering advisories or requirements, the number of cases started to rise. _

This is rather interesting because the most inconvenient and economically most disruptive measures are not effective.


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## g.spinoza

Yesterday, Milan:







The wrath of mayor Sala: "It's a shame! I'm ready to close Navigli once again".
Virologist Gallo: "You give a ***** they make a breach"

Variously attributed to Mussolini, Giolitti or Churchill: "Ruling Italians is not hard: it is pointless".


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## keber

As it is usual with all those reports of "mass gatherings", all the footage is very zoomed which makes that streets are crowded which actually aren't.


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## g.spinoza

keber said:


> As it is usual with all those reports of "mass gatherings", all the footage is very zoomed which makes that streets are crowded which actually aren't.


???
Zoom or no zoom, that's crowded.


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## ChrisZwolle

I think we can all learn and observe the situation from Sweden and maybe the Netherlands. Sweden had the least restrictions and the Netherlands probably the second-least. There are however differences between those two countries, ICU capacity in Sweden is still at a plateau while it has gone down over 70% in the Netherlands since early April.

However both countries were criticized - sometimes fiercely - for the alleged lack of action. However in both countries the number of cases did not cascaded out of control. The health care system was stretched but not overloaded, in particular in reference to modelling of the virus, the situation was not nearly as bad as anticipated in the models, all figures were corrected downwards. ICU occupancy in the Netherlands is now 80% lower than what was modelled for this time in mid-March.

The figures from Sweden and the trend in the Netherlands compared to countries with a dictatorial lockdown suggest that social distancing alone may already be sufficient to keep the virus under control. I get the idea that many countries with a hard lockdown believed they could eradicate the virus back to zero. I think that is unattainable and not worth the economic cost. The economic cost is not just some arbitrary 10 or 12 figure number, but are the livelyhoods of real people like you and me.


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## PovilD

Attus said:


> We don't know. No one of us, neither you, nor I, nor anyone else may know, what would have happened without those restrictions in Italy, Spain, or any other nation of the world. Right, in a very logical way we can presume, the situation would have most probably been worse, but what 'worse' means is unclear, and will remain unclear forever.
> 
> On the other side, I think ... I don't know but I think ... all those restrictions helped us to prevent Europe from the Inferno of Bergamo getting multiple times larger. I really believe we saved tens, hundreds of thousands of lives.
> 
> But, guys, if I wanna be honest, I have quite bad feelings. The epidemic is not over. It's under control which is nice but it is not over. And if we want to keep it under control, we must keep some restrictions. Not all of them, not the most strict ones, but some social distancing will be needed. How long? When will we have vaccines? Never? I'm old enough to know since when try scientists to find a vaccine against HIV. I have really very bad feelings when I think about having to live this way for several years or even longer. It's unbearable. What will happen if we don't open the schools for five or ten years? How will our live change if we can't have any large events any more? I don't know. I know nothing. But I have very bad feelings. I hope it'll be better tomorrow.


True, basically I meant that we shouldn't go back to complete normal, but not into deep lockdown too.

On the other hand, yes, we will see. We will be learning constantly too. We are at the beginning of this journey yet. As we see, the process is slow and likely will be slow. I hope too that social distancing is enough, and no draconian written permits to go outside are needed to maintain hospital occupancy levels below maximum stretch, except you were on situation of Italy or France in January or February, but currently it's not like that.

Maybe for introverts, it would be somewhat bearable, but for social people who like crowded parties every Friday, it would be harder.


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## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> Stereotyping or not, there is always some national average. In one country it's more common to trust the government, in another one less common.


Every distribution has a mean and a variance. Source: basics to statistical analysis. The variance is usually the best instrument to interpret the distribution. Unless the variance approaches zero, the wording "in general" is pure nonsense.


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## Kpc21

So in other words – in one country there is a certain percentage that gives the government a specific level of trust. In another country this percentage is likely to be different and it will mainly depend on the previous experiences of the given nation with the governments ruling it.


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## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> Regional restrictions in a country where you're free to travel can generate terrible consequences. Just like last week when a large furniture store in Cologne had a queue of several hundreds of meters, because furniture storer in nearby regions were still closed so people from other regions come there for shopping.


As the Governor of New York kept saying: Much good it does to close restaurants in New York if everyone drives to New Jersey or Connecticut to eat. Or words to that effect. There's a block of states in the Northeast who are coordinating their restrictions. Although that may be breaking down a little now that there's serious talk of reopening in certain areas.

But couldn't that furniture store limit (or local authorities require them to limit) how many people are in the store at a time? Unless the queue you're talking about is people waiting to get in, which seems like less a terrible consequence than an inconvenience, assuming they're all spaced out and masked....


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## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> I don't think that Germany will be the _leading nation_ to look at when talking about tracing  I think that Germany has most restricted laws for privacy protection!
> 
> 
> 
> I don't believe in the idea of tracing apps.
> 
> There are still many - especially older - people who don't have a smart phone.
> I don't think that simple technology like _the smartphone of an infected person was less than 1.5m away from you_ is an improvement. Just imagine, a person passes by behind you. Behind your back. The chance that you will be infected is zero but you might have to go in quarantine should because of the distance detected by your smartphone? Can the smartphone detect whether the other person coughed? That the person turned the head towards you and not ot the other direction? Does the smartphone detect whether the other person wore a mask?


And if it tells you the person who just passed you is infected, well, imagine the potential for violence. Although why is this infected person walking the streets at all? I haven't thought this through yet, but it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.


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## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> A deep distrust of government is at the very foundation of the culture of the USA, too. It dates back to before the Revolution. Much of the USA's Constitution is written to limit the power of government.
> 
> Mike


Although it becomes problematic when people just assume that experts are lying to them and therefore ignore their advice....


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch government has also downplayed the app argument. In April it was announced to have the app operational within a week or 2-3, and they held a request for proposal session which showed that no proposal was considered acceptable. The push for the app has since been considerably downplayed by the health minister, instead they increased capacity for human contact tracing.


I saw a report on that! I mean the proposal process and what it came up with.


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## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Temperatures are plummeting to below average across a wide swath of Europe. In my city it dropped from 23 °C to 13 °C in just 90 minutes, and further to 8 °C right now. Such large temperature drops are something you regularly see in North America, but not as commonly in the Netherlands.


We had a dusting of snow , that melted after about 15 minutes, around 6 p.m. yesterday at my mom's in Union County, New Jersey. It was very cold (for May) from Friday evening through Saturday nignt. Saturday's high was about 9 celsius.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> But couldn't that furniture store limit (or local authorities require them to limit) how many people are in the store at a time? Unless the queue you're talking about is people waiting to get in, which seems like less a terrible consequence than an inconvenience, assuming they're all spaced out and masked....


Yes, actually it was the queue outside of the store, waiting to get in. And since having a mask is only compulsory inside, many people did not wear it while waiting...


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## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think we can all learn and observe the situation from Sweden and maybe the Netherlands. Sweden had the least restrictions and the Netherlands probably the second-least. There are however differences between those two countries, ICU capacity in Sweden is still at a plateau while it has gone down over 70% in the Netherlands since early April.


We've been over this several times. We cannot learn anything from the Netherlands and Sweden, except maybe that these measures are good for Sweden and Netherlands. 
Had these measures been used in Italy, we would be facing a true apocalypse.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

g.spinoza said:


> We've been over this several times. We cannot learn anything from the Netherlands and Sweden, except maybe that these measures are good for Sweden and Netherlands.
> Had these measures been used in Italy, we would be facing a true apocalypse.


Exactly. There are too many variables here. Just an example: (the 1st) spring break for schoolchildren in Estonia was the last week of February. This meant that lots of (wealthy) families were on skiing holidays in the Alps exactly at the time when the virus was spreading quickly over there. In Latvia there was no school break during that time so fewer people were travelling. This meant that going into March Estonia had significantly more cases than Latvia and therefore the outbreak was worse in Estonia than it was in Latvia, even though the measures were less strict in Latvia.

If you just looked at the numbers without any context, the Latvian less strict measures would seem more efficient but if you looked behind the numbers you could see that there are other factors at play.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's the same in the Netherlands, the south went on vacation to Austria at the peak of the spread and the north a week earlier and avoided it. The south therefore had far more cases than the north, yet the policies of social distancing and closing bars / restaurants had sufficient effect to reduce the load on health care. 

Every time the news media makes (often misleading) articles about how people are not adhering to the social distancing rules, there were people screaming how they are irresponsible and will wreck the health care system and I've seen people comparing going outside your house with 'genocide'. Yet no such thing happened, ICU occupancy has seen a lineair downward trend, the alleged second waves after weekends with good weather or Easter with lots of people outside never happened. This indicates that you don't need a de-facto imprisonment of the population to control the virus.

It's also interesting what the populist parties did. In the beginning they were screaming for a hard lockdown. When the first polls came out and saw support for those parties plunging, they reversed 180 degrees and suddenly wanted an exit strategy. 🙃


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> This indicates that, *in the Netherlands*, you don't need a de-facto imprisonment of the population to control the virus.


Corrected for you.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

But would you think Italians / Spaniards / French / Belgians are that different that they need to be imprisoned? Believe me, the sentiment in the Netherlands is as well that 'Dutch people don't do what government tells them and go their own way'. These are the people that screamed catastrophy due to the perceived lack of restrictrictions (which never happened).


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Temperatures are plummeting to below average across a wide swath of Europe. In my city it dropped from 23 °C to 13 °C in just 90 minutes, and further to 8 °C right now. Such large temperature drops are something you regularly see in North America, but not as commonly in the Netherlands.


View out of my kitchen window a few minutes ago:


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> But would you think Italians / Spaniards / French / Belgians are that different that they need to be imprisoned? Believe me, the sentiment in the Netherlands is as well that 'Dutch people don't do what government tells them and go their own way'. These are the people that screamed catastrophy due to the perceived lack of restrictrictions (which never happened).


It's interesting if The Netherlands was slightly behind Belgium in the curve, and the more behind the curve you are the more lax quarantine can work. Maybe Spain, Italy, France was too ahead in to the curve, so they needed more strict quarantine. We just don't know if imprisonment was required to achieve similar results as we saw with those countries.


----------



## PovilD

MattiG said:


> View out of my kitchen window a few minutes ago:


It's too cloudy for sunbathing here in Kaunas, but still warm, and you don't need a jacket. Forecast says that snow conditions are several hours away now. Level 1 tornado warning was actually issued for Vilnius region for this evening/night.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> But would you think Italians / Spaniards / French / Belgians are that different that they need to be imprisoned? Believe me, the sentiment in the Netherlands is as well that 'Dutch people don't do what government tells them and go their own way'. These are the people that screamed catastrophy due to the perceived lack of restrictrictions (which never happened).


I don't know why, if there is something inherent to "latin countries", or sheer bad luck, or something else, but the situation HAS been different in these countries. It is a fact that, before the beginning of Italian lockdown, and even a week after, the rise in contagion in Lombardy was unprecedented in the world. And it is a fact that, after the lockdown, the contagion started dwindling, but not really that fast. And the lockdown was strict, and strictly enforced. So I cannot say why, but it is certain that a looser lockdown would have had basically no effect in circumscribing the epidemic.

So what I'm saying is that strict lockdown is not the recipe for everywhere and everytime, and so isn't a mild or "smart" lockdown.
I'm not even sure that a strict lockdown was imperative for the whole of Italy. Maybe a "northern Italy" thing or "Lombardy+" thing would have been sufficient, given that in the South there has never been an emergency so large.


----------



## PovilD

g.spinoza said:


> I don't know why, if there is something inherent to "latin countries", or sheer bad luck, or something else, but the situation HAS been different in these countries. It is a fact that, before the beginning of Italian lockdown, and even a week after, the rise in contagion in Lombardy was unprecedented in the world. And it is a fact that, after the lockdown, the contagion started dwindling, but not really that fast. And the lockdown was strict, and strictly enforced. So I cannot say why, but it is certain that a looser lockdown would have had basically no effect in circumscribing the epidemic.
> 
> So what I'm saying is that strict lockdown is not the recipe for everywhere and everytime, and so isn't a mild or "smart" lockdown.
> I'm not even sure that a strict lockdown was imperative for the whole of Italy. Maybe a "northern Italy" thing or "Lombardy+" thing would have been sufficient, given that in the South there has never been an emergency so large.


I think it has deep correlation with city/town structures (and luck), as it was mentioned here before. In the country where I live, there are lots and lots of open space. The only potentially crowded places being older parts of the cities, parks and beaches. It's quite easy to social distance. Just we have to be more careful with closed poorly ventilated areas. South Korea faces "second wave" just because the clubs were open (I don't know if they were innitially closed, and recently opened).

One thing is go out and have tens if not hundreds of meters without people, and other thing is when you go out and you are instantly in the crowd.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think we can all learn and observe the situation from Sweden and maybe the Netherlands. Sweden had the least restrictions and the Netherlands probably the second-least.


Maybe in Europe, not in the world. Brazil? Mexico?



ChrisZwolle said:


> But would you think Italians / Spaniards / French / Belgians are that different that they need to be imprisoned? Believe me, the sentiment in the Netherlands is as well that 'Dutch people don't do what government tells them and go their own way'. These are the people that screamed catastrophy due to the perceived lack of restrictrictions (which never happened).


Boy, people are primitive and stupid. And there IS a *herd effect*. The pandemic hit regions in China first, and no one in Europe really cared. Sure, travels to China were canceled and people returning from China had to go into quarantine. But the virus _suddenly_ reached Europe. Southern Europe first. Lockdown in Italy. Whole Europe was scared. First restrictions appeared all over Europe. Even Dutch and Schwede feared a lockdown. We all cared much more than when the virus was just plaguing China. Lockdown for Austria, Denmark, France, Spain, Switzerland. It came closer. People were getting more careful. OF COURSE, the *herd effect* worked. When there are harder restrictions around you, you are automatically more careful. And being careful helps to limit the pandemic. In the end, it doesn't matter whether you have a stricter lockdown, say, like in Bavaria where you were only allowed to leave your home for working or shopping, a so-called "good reason", or a softer lockdown like in Baden-Württemberg where you still were allowed to travel and more shops like DIYs were opened. *Fearing the harder lockdown prevents you ignoring the softer restrictions. Again, herd effect works.*

I claim that the restrictions in the Netherlands mainly worked _so well_ because there were harder restrictions around. Sweden is different, the lower population density and different culture is also a big difference there.


----------



## geogregor

MichiH said:


> I claim that the restrictions in the Netherlands mainly worked _so well_ because there were harder restrictions around.


I'm not sure about that. People self-regulate not because they fear lockdown but because the fear the virus.

In fact we will soon have opposite problem. Some people will be very reluctant to go back to work even if rates of infections really drop and when governments will try to revive the economies. Unions are already kicking the fuss in the UK, even if not much has changed yet. Some would like to stay home (and get paid) for months to come.

I think most people will be weary of crowds for a long time. I can see public transport suffering and revival of commuting by car (which will create its own environmental and health issues in the long term).


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## g.spinoza

geogregor said:


> I'm not sure about that. People self-regulate not because they fear lockdown but because the fear the virus.


Ah, you put too much faith in people.









La spiaggia di Mondello si ribella: "Qui il virus non c'è"


Tante i palermitani che ieri hanno preso d'assalto la spiaggia di Mondello. Distanze di sicurezza non mantenute e mascherine poche. Nessuna multa.




www.ilgiornale.it





"Mondello beach in Palermo revolts: «here there is no virus»"


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## ChrisZwolle

The daily COVID-19 hospitalizations in the Netherlands.

The number of hospitalizations has decreased greatly. This was achieved;

without mask usage
without shutdown of the economy
without travel restrictions
without strict stay-at-home orders

But with;

social distancing
closing schools
closing nursing homes to visitors
closing restaurants, cafes and mass gatherings.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^ Norway had more or less the same restrictions, except that restaurants were not forced to close* and there are/were some travel restrictions**. Still, the peak was considerably lower. When was the Dutch measures introduced? In any case I think we can conclude that other factors play a role, I think in particular the populations structure and infrastructure in the wider sense (e.g. prevalence of multigeneration homes vs e.g. single person homes, how crammed the grocery shops are, overall urban density, the degree of facilititation for home office etc.), but possibly more sociological signatures of different countries could also play a role.

* Restaurants had to obey social distancing and sanitasion regulations, and the lack of bussiness closed a lot of them down anyway.
** Only people with permanent resident permit can enter the country, and quarantine applies even for them. People was for a period banned to go to their holiday homes, a truly ineffective measure based on the idea that local health services in small communities could be overwhelmed. Also, there were some local quarantine regulations applied in some of the same communities.



Penn's Woods said:


> It’s probably related to “ale” in English.


*History and Etymology for ale*
Middle English, from Old English _ealu_; akin to Old Norse _ǫl_ ale, Lithuanian _alus_


MattiG said:


> View out of my kitchen window a few minutes ago:


Around here they are still making cross country skiing tracks....





Kart skisporet.no


Skisporet.no



skisporet.no


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> Stereotyping or not, there is always some national average. In one country it's more common to trust the government, in another one less common.


Yes of course, the spectrum might be big ie. there is prolly a difference b/t governments of El Salvador and Sweden, but thats about it..


----------



## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> ^^ Norway had more or less the same restrictions, except that restaurants were not forced to close* and there are/were some travel restrictions**. Still, the peak was considerably lower. When was the Dutch measures introduced? In any case I think we can conclude that other factors play a role, I think in particular the populations structure and infrastructure in the wider sense (e.g. prevalence of multigeneration homes vs e.g. single person homes, how crammed the grocery shops are, overall urban density, the degree of facilititation for home office etc.), but possibly more sociological signatures of different countries could also play a role.


I think Norway (and Denmark) escaped the larger scale community transmission that occurred in the Netherlands, particular in the south during carnival. Northern Netherlands has always had a very low infection rate with the exception of a few hotspots, they don't celebrate carnival and also escaped the travel transmission in Austria & Italy because their vacation was a week earlier. 

I last worked in the office on 12 March, when people were strongly adviced to work from home. The so-called 'intelligent lockdown' started on 23 March, including closing schools and bars. At that time the ICU occupancy was rapidly increasing with model projections for the 'black scenario' (i.e. ICU not having sufficient capacity). The black scenario was projected at a demand greater than 1900 ICU beds for covid patients in May. We peaked at 1300 in early April and are now under 500.

I'm optimistic that we can keep the virus under control by shunning large-scale indoor events, mass gatherings (festivals, concerts, weddings) and maintain a level of social distancing in combination with decent contact tracing. These measures proved effective in significantly reducing the community transmission. 

Testing capacity has expanded but demand for testing is down, due to fewer people having symptoms, a good indication that the spread has slowed considerably.


----------



## tfd543

g.spinoza said:


> Ah, you put too much faith in people.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> La spiaggia di Mondello si ribella: "Qui il virus non c'è"
> 
> 
> Tante i palermitani che ieri hanno preso d'assalto la spiaggia di Mondello. Distanze di sicurezza non mantenute e mascherine poche. Nessuna multa.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.ilgiornale.it
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "Mondello beach in Palermo revolts: «here there is no virus»"


Well if people want to die, let them die, but let me ask you, are you going to the beach this summer? Be honest, days at 35+ C Will come in weekends. What else do you have to do?


----------



## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> Well if people want to die, let them die,


Unfortunately it's not that simple. They are going to clog up hospitals again, and what if I need hospitalization for some other unrelated reason? 



> but let me ask you, are you going to the beach this summer? Be honest, days at 35+ C Will come in weekends. What else do you have to do?


My friend, this is not Denmark. We have mountains


----------



## Suburbanist

I read some reports on how earlier cases of Cov-SAR-19 were found on stored blood samples of pneumonia patients in France, in December already. 

Also, a spike on pneumonia cases with high hospitalization rates happened in the town of Crema, before Christmas, very close to one of the initial focus areas of the epidemic in Italy. 


> Da tre a cinque casi al giorno, con una percentuale di ricoveri vicina al 50%. È il picco di polmoniti, che sta mettendo alla prova il personale del pronto soccorso dell’ospedale Maggiore. E per rendere le dimensioni del fenomeno, normalmente le diagnosi di infezioni polmonari non superano le tre quotidiane, tra autunno e inverno, con periodi senza che i sanitari cremaschi si debbano occupare di un singolo paziente affetto da questo tipo di patologia


----------



## volodaaaa

It seems like a victory day today. Many countries have relaxed their anti-coronavirus-spreading measures. It is good to read. I hope we will remain smart & responsible. Btw. another day without any positive tested people in Slovakia.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> In fact we will soon have opposite problem. Some people will be very reluctant to go back to work even if rates of infections really drop and when governments will try to revive the economies. Unions are already kicking the fuss in the UK, even if not much has changed yet. Some would like to stay home (and get paid) for months to come.


This will apply mostly to people who can work remotely and who don't necessarily come back to the offices. People who can't work at all will now do everything to be able to come back to work. There are already large demonstrations of businesses in Warsaw...










The police used force against the protesters:







The daily number of new cases in Poland is still not dropping:










It's probably because we successfully managed to "flatten the curve" according to the social distancing principles. Flattening the curve results in stretching it in the time domain.

The number of active cases has also reached a nearly flat level, although it's still increasing:










It hasn't yet begun dropping either.



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> People was for a period banned to go to their holiday homes


Which I don't really understand – shouldn't they be safer in those holiday homes rather than in cities?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The idea was that an outbreak at remote 'second home' locations could overwhelm the small-scale health care systems in those areas.


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## PovilD

volodaaaa said:


> It seems like a victory day today. Many countries have relaxed their anti-coronavirus-spreading measures. It is good to read. I hope we will remain smart & responsible. Btw. another day without any positive tested people in Slovakia.


Personally, I feel slightly more relaxed than in mid-March, but still way not as much as in early March  At least at most times. If not those economical and movement restrictions, I wouldn't care much about the virus, just another interesting event along with many other events. I was aware about Hubei lockdowns, and feared that this will be repeated in Europe.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> This will apply mostly to people who can work remotely and who don't necessarily come back to the offices. People who can't work at all will now do everything to be able to come back to work. There are already large demonstrations of businesses in Warsaw...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The police used force against the protesters:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The daily number of new cases in Poland is still not dropping:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's probably because we successfully managed to "flatten the curve" according to the social distancing principles. Flattening the curve results in stretching it in the time domain.
> 
> The number of active cases has also reached a nearly flat level, although it's still increasing:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It hasn't yet begun dropping either.
> 
> 
> Which I don't really understand – shouldn't they be safer in those holiday homes rather than in cities?


How is your situation with contact tracing and testing in Poland? Last time I checked, testing in Poland is not very rampant. Experts around the World claim that better have many negatives, and few positives rather than third or even near-half of tests positive.

What do I follow, Lithuania tries to contact trace every case, although I still fear is likely not as sophisticated as in South Korea. Problems with care homes and hospitals continues, there are claims that some hospitals are old and it's hard to maintain sterile conditions, or staff don't follow the measures, like using PPE incorrectly. I wish that this could over soon, but I fear that this will continue to be a problem for extend period. I'm becoming somewhat jealous to the countries where these issues doesn't occur, or occur rarely enough to don't mind too much.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> How is your situation with contact tracing and testing in Poland? Last time I checked, testing in Poland is not very rampant. Experts around the World claim that better have many negatives, and few positives rather than third or even near-half of tests positive.


There were cases when e.g. the sanitary authorities were issuing appeals for the passengers of e.g. a specific bus or people who were in a specific restaurant at a specific time (the latter at the beginning when the restaurants were still open) in the media to contact them.

The contact tracing capabilities are, generally, quite limited – but it seems they are trying to do that as much as they can.



PovilD said:


> there are claims that some hospitals are old and it's hard to maintain sterile conditions, or staff don't follow the measures, like using PPE incorrectly


If they have PPE. In Poland they often don't.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PovilD said:


> Experts around the World claim that better have many negatives, and few positives rather than third or even near-half of tests positive.


I've read that a circa 10% positive rate is a good testing policy. If you test 30-50% or more positive, you're testing too little and if you test very few positives, testing capacity may be wasted or testing the wrong population. Unless the virus has really been reduced.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've read that a circa 10% positive rate is a good testing policy. If you test 30-50% or more positive, you're testing too little and if you test very few positives, testing capacity may be wasted or testing the wrong population. Unless the virus has really been reduced.


I read that 3% is optimal limit, like it is in South Korea, now in Italy, some countries has below or way below such rate. We do lots of prophylactic testing though. Vast majority are negatives (maybe (one of the) lowest positive percentages in Europe), but I don't think that we are wasting tests. Maybe it helps to make the situation of the virus more visible in the population. For example, we are opening hospitals for non-essential services, and as far as I know, you will have to test negative for the virus to be accepted to those non-essential services.

There are risks of testing wrong population (and I have most fears about it), but how you will know. Logically, why "healthy" asymptomatic spreader should want to get tested and become quarantined at home for 14 days while he feels alright to do things and even get wasted in the clubs like in South Korea. Unless, contact tracers will find his/her contacts with other spreaders.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> The idea was that an outbreak at remote 'second home' locations could overwhelm the small-scale health care systems in those areas.


This has been an issue here in Switzerland.

Generally speaking, people who are ill, very frail or depending on continued medical care do not head to chalets or lakeside houses in tiny towns. It is the same in other countries, I guess. Thus, local health care systems of second-home/vacation towns are geared to take care of the odd emergency, ski accident, avalanche rescue, but they are not equipped properly to handle prolonged hospitalization of a whole cluster of patients. Removing such patients only increases the spread of the disease even more.

I was reading that, apparently, the outbreak at Ischgl (Austria) late January was even more severe than initially suspected. Many local focuses of covid-19 in Europe can be specifically traced there. More than 2/3 of the workforce at Ischl had contracted covid-19, and several were also not locals, but youngsters working temporarily on peak ski season. Ischl is also different from most ski resorts in that it has a prominent party scene that is the primary reason for people who go there (since the ski facilities themselves are not that different from the dozens of comparable ski towns in Austria and Switzerland nearby), with many pubs and bars that are really packed. So perfect Cov-SAR-19 spreading environment.

American patients can face huge health care bills if they require hospitalization, some have posted bills of US$ 100 000, which will cost them often 10-20% out of pocket, if not more, on most common insurance plans.


----------



## radamfi

Suburbanist said:


> American patients can face huge health care bills if they require hospitalization, some have posted bills of US$ 100 000, which will cost them often 10-20% out of pocket, if not more, on most common insurance plans.


I presume these people have voluntarily opted for a high deductible to save on insurance premiums.

It was established earlier that the federal government will pay the COVID-19 treatment for the uninsured. So surely you would be better off not claiming off your insurance if you need COVID-19 treatment?


----------



## PovilD

At noon, May 12, I took a walk for mid-May snow pictures. Kaunas, Lithuania









Commie block snowman:









Apple tree blossom:









I saw kids using sledge here, usual sight in January, but unseen in May:









I guess, these sights would be more usual for montainous, or polar areas, but not on temperate flatlands. On the other hand, if not the warm Atlantic currents, these sights would be more usual for many parts of Europe even in May.


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## ChrisZwolle

Masks in public places - even for statues.


Monumentos da capital com máscaras de proteção by Governo do Estado de São Paulo, on Flickr


Monumentos da capital com máscaras de proteção by Governo do Estado de São Paulo, on Flickr


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## g.spinoza

Turin is experimenting the bike-boxes (in Italian they are calling them "casa avanzata", i.e. "advanced house"). I know in other countries these are widespread, but in Italy they are not even mentioned in the road code. I think only in Reggio Emilia and Ferrara there are already some of them.
What do you think about them? I have the feeling they are unsafe, and that cyclists will be submerged by honks of cars behind them.



Oscaruzzo said:


>


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It looks like it is designed for through traffic. They are widespread in the Netherlands but for left turns. I don't see it making much sense for cyclists that want to go straight through. 

Another possibility is a separate light for cyclists that goes green a couple of seconds before the rest of traffic. That way cyclists can clear the intersection and not be mixed with cars and trucks.


----------



## Kpc21

tfd543 said:


> Yes we did that. They are taking the kids outside as much as they can.


In Poland they recommended taking the kids outside (although they can't use playground infrastructure) – but they can't leave the kindergartens and e.g. be taken on walks.

In practice, even though the government allowed opening the kindergartens, most municipalities haven't done it yet.



radamfi said:


> Does any European country have free healthcare for everyone? Even in the UK we have to pay for glasses and dentistry. People in England pay a modest flat charge for prescriptions (unless you are exempt) but in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland they are free.


But interestingly, the healthcare being financed mostly from taxes makes the healthcare services (both the public ones, paid by the governments, and the private, fully commercial ones) quite reasonably priced, while from what I have heard, in the US you sometimes have to pay hundreds of dollars for a simple X-ray, in general, the services are much overpriced as compared to Europe.

In Poland basic dentistry services are free, although from what I can see, most people anyway use the commercial ones, which aren't subsidized by the government.

Concerning glasses, you have to pay for them, but you can also get a subsidy that covers kind of 25% of the price of the most basic, worst and ugliest models. However, the price span in case of glasses is very broad, and both some specific types of lenses (with anti-glare, for computers, progressive ones etc.) and fancy rims can increase the price even over 10 times. So this subsidy is almost nothing for most buyers of glasses, and to get it, you must have a prescription for glasses from a public healthcare ophthalmologist, to which you must earlier get a referral from a GP, so it's really too much hassle to deal with that and get only a small portion of the glasses price refunded.



g.spinoza said:


> Turin is experimenting the bike-boxes (in Italian they are calling them "casa avanzata", i.e. "advanced house"). I know in other countries these are widespread, but in Italy they are not even mentioned in the road code. I think only in Reggio Emilia and Ferrara there are already some of them.
> What do you think about them? I have the feeling they are unsafe, and that cyclists will be submerged by honks of cars behind them.


We call them bike sluices. In Poland they got introduced several years ago. It's actually safer for the cyclists, as they are visible for the drivers. Normally they are in danger especially from the drivers who are turning right (do you always check in the mirror if you don't have a cyclist on your right when you are turning right at an intersection? I don't think so). And it gives priority in traffic to the cyclists, thus promoting cycling over driving, which is advantageous for everyone.

In Poland they cover the whole width of the part of the roadway for the given direction of traffic – so in the case from the photo, it would cover both the left and the right lane.

Central Poland doesn't have snow. We only had a heavy rain yesterday, the temperatures dropped, and from what I have heard, there also were some local tornadoes.


----------



## tfd543

Suburbanist said:


> We will remain working in home office until August 15th...
> 
> I can't really complain, both my work contracts are relatively secure and I can do 90% of my work remotely anyway, which is a rather privileged position compared to many people out there, but I wanted to go back part-time to the office because it gets tiring to staying inside my flat the whole day working.
> 
> At least, this week many business reopen in Switzerland, and on June 8, the mountain trails, gondolas, cable cars all reopen as well.
> 
> My parents were supposed to travel here for a family reunion including my brother late in July, I am not sure that will happen now... It has been 12 years since we last gathered together (the whole family of 4, I have seen them separately many times ever since of course).


Oh my gosh. U must be looking forward for that gathering.. 

Im in a funny situation as well where i Can do some theoretical work from pc but Im gonna need to work in a clean room. Yes literally clean down to dust prticles as anti-corona as it can get.. but they have still closed it until august.. fk sake.


----------



## tfd543

g.spinoza said:


> Italy does.
> You usually have to pay a small fee for specialist visits, but your family doctor is free, as well as hospitals and usually also drugs for chronic illnesses.
> I was hospitalised only once in my life (bad case of appendicitis with peritonitis): one visit of family doctor, two with night doctors, the emergency room, the surgical procedure, all the drugs for one month after surgery, removal of stitches and follow up: all free.
> And, at that time, I was unemployed: I had a grant at my institute, but according to Italian laws this is considered a period of studies, not work.
> 
> Glasses you have to pay, but IIRC you can have money back with the taxes. Dentist you usually pay, but I guess there are dentists with a special connection with the health system that you don't pay... Never seen one though.


Does the doctor come and visit you at home?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland they recommended taking the kids outside (although they can't use playground infrastructure) – but they can't leave the kindergartens and e.g. be taken on walks.
> 
> In practice, even though the government allowed opening the kindergartens, most municipalities haven't done it yet.
> 
> 
> But interestingly, the healthcare being financed mostly from taxes makes the healthcare services (both the public ones, paid by the governments, and the private, fully commercial ones) quite reasonably priced, while from what I have heard, in the US you sometimes have to pay hundreds of dollars for a simple X-ray, in general, the services are much overpriced as compared to Europe.
> 
> In Poland basic dentistry services are free, although from what I can see, most people anyway use the commercial ones, which aren't subsidized by the government.
> 
> Concerning glasses, you have to pay for them, but you can also get a subsidy that covers kind of 25% of the price of the most basic, worst and ugliest models. However, the price span in case of glasses is very broad, and both some specific types of lenses (with anti-glare, for computers, progressive ones etc.) and fancy rims can increase the price even over 10 times. So this subsidy is almost nothing for most buyers of glasses, and to get it, you must have a prescription for glasses from a public healthcare ophthalmologist, to which you must earlier get a referral from a GP, so it's really too much hassle to deal with that and get only a small portion of the glasses price refunded.
> 
> 
> We call them bike sluices. In Poland they got introduced several years ago. It's actually safer for the cyclists, as they are visible for the drivers. Normally they are in danger especially from the drivers who are turning right (do you always check in the mirror if you don't have a cyclist on your right when you are turning right at an intersection? I don't think so). And it gives priority in traffic to the cyclists, thus promoting cycling over driving, which is advantageous for everyone.
> 
> In Poland they cover the whole width of the part of the roadway for the given direction of traffic – so in the case from the photo, it would cover both the left and the right lane.
> 
> Central Poland doesn't have snow. We only had a heavy rain yesterday, the temperatures dropped, and from what I have heard, there also were some local tornadoes.


These appeared in my neighborhood last fall:


----------



## tfd543

Left lane direction for bikes? I dont remember When i have seen that before, but i get it, the bus needs the space on the right.. is that bike lane one way? How do you bike in the opposite direction?


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Left lane direction for bikes? I dont remember When i have seen that before, but i get it, the bus needs the space on the right.. is that bike lane one way? How do you bike in the opposite direction?


Our streets are on a grid. That picture was taken on Pine Street, just west of 10th, looking east. On the left side of this map just below halfway down.
Two bike lanes were established about a decade ago - one eastbound on Pine and one westbound on Spruce, a block north of Pine. Consistent with the one-ways for other vehicles. So they’re one-way bike lanes. They were on the right-hand side of each street; last summer they were shifted to the left. I think the reason was to separate the bikes from buses. Those rows of bars were installed a few months later. The main effect they have on cars is that we can no longer pull into the bike lane to turn left. And I assume that’s why they were installed.


----------



## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> Does the doctor come and visit you at home?


When the conditions of the patient are such, that it is impossible for him to go to the doctor (or it would endanger him to do so), the doctor must visit your at home, for free.
When I was sick that time, the night shift doctor came to visit me at home (it must have been 3 AM) and concluded that I "might" have some appendix infection and advised me to go to my family doctor the morning after. I did, and he sent me straight to the ER.


----------



## italystf

tfd543 said:


> Well if people want to die, let them die, but let me ask you, are you going to the beach this summer? Be honest, days at 35+ C Will come in weekends. What else do you have to do?


I will go to the beach when it will be legal and reasonably safe to do so. Not now. I've always followed covid-related rules and I will always do.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've read that a circa 10% positive rate is a good testing policy. If you test 30-50% or more positive, you're testing too little and if you test very few positives, testing capacity may be wasted or testing the wrong population. Unless the virus has really been reduced.


In Italy now about 1.5% of tests is positive. We perform about 50,000-70,000 tests a day.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> I think so.
> They say the single biggest mistake was not instating the third "red zone", after those of Codogno and Vo' Euganeo, in Alzano-Nembro (lower Brembana Valley, North of Bergamo). That's what became the worst center in the whole Italy: in the whole province (much larger than that area) deaths rose fivefold with respect to the same period last year.


That was not done because of lobbying from factories owners. The results turned out terrible. Liable people should pay with lifetime prison for this massacre of thousands of innocents!


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> Our streets are on a grid. That picture was taken on Pine Street, just west of 10th, looking east. On the left side of this map just below halfway down.
> Two bike lanes were established about a decade ago - one eastbound on Pine and one westbound on Spruce, a block north of Pine. Consistent with the one-ways for other vehicles. So they’re one-way bike lanes. They were on the right-hand side of each street; last summer they were shifted to the left. I think the reason was to separate the bikes from buses. Those rows of bars were installed a few months later. The main effect they have on cars is that we can no longer pull into the bike lane to turn left. And I assume that’s why they were installed.


I get it. How frequently used are the sidewalks? They could also slim down the sidewalks and add the lane b/t the parking cars and sidewalk. This is done many places in DK.


----------



## tfd543

g.spinoza said:


> When the conditions of the patient are such, that it is impossible for him to go to the doctor (or it would endanger him to do so), the doctor must visit your at home, for free.
> When I was sick that time, the night shift doctor came to visit me at home (it must have been 3 AM) and concluded that I "might" have some appendix infection and advised me to go to my family doctor the morning after. I did, and he sent me straight to the ER.


Man, you must have been ill. In DK they rarely come for nocturnal visits.


----------



## tfd543

italystf said:


> I will go to the beach when it will be legal and reasonably safe to do so. Not now. I've always followed covid-related rules and I will always do.


What if Its gonna be legal but crowded ? Come on, beaches are crowded all the time during the summer season. Alternative is to be there at off times or off season. 

Its not so much that I see the sun during the year so Im gonna suffer if its gonna be prohibited.


----------



## italystf

tfd543 said:


> What if Its gonna be legal but crowded ? Come on, beaches are crowded all the time during the summer season. Alternative is to be there at off times or off season.
> 
> Its not so much that I see the sun during the year so Im gonna suffer if its gonna be prohibited.


They say that they would enforce proper distancing on Italian beaches this summer.
Considering that the epidemic is already shrinking, we hope that in July/August the number of cases will be low enough to make the probability of a casual encounter with a positive person not that high.


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> I get it. How frequently used are the sidewalks? They could also slim down the sidewalks and add the lane b/t the parking cars and sidewalk. This is done many places in DK.


Philadelphia's sidewalks are generally noticeably narrower than those in, say, New York or Washington. I've never heard anyone propose making them narrower, and I think it would be political suicide for any politician to suggest it. This neighborhood is close to the center of the business district and sidewalks are busy. (Supposedly, according to statistics I saw in the 90s, more people walk to work in Philadelphia than in any other American city, because the business district is surrounded by desirable residential areas...the professionals who in New York would be taking a subway from the Upper West Side to Midtown have "commutes" that consist of 15 minutes' walking.) You can't see much of it, but these blocks of Pine are lined with shops, mostly antiques; there are hospitals and medical schools in the neighborhood, and therefore lots of doctors, medical students, and so on living in it. Restaurants and bars....My phone tells me this was taken at 5:30 p.m. on the Saturday of Columbus Day weekend. People were away, it's early for going out to dinner...that accounts for the quietness.


----------



## Kpc21

The Covid restrictions have quite an interesting consequence. Thousands of people who have their cars registered in countries other than those where they currently live (e.g. many Poles living abroad having their cars registered in Poland) have no possibility of getting the obligatory technical inspection without undergoing a 14-day quarantine twice in a row. Because it is possible only in the country of registration.

According to some estimates, this issue may affect even 400 thousand Polish car owners living abroad.

And in theory, after the inspection deadline passes, one has to tow the car to the inspection station as driving it is illegal. Of course normally nobody does it if he forgets about the deadline, people just drive to the inspection station illegally, and, at least in Poland, the police also doesn't really make problems with that if someone declares he just drives to the inspection and it's credible for the police. But such a drive through half of Europe would be quite risky...

I was recently getting my car (Micra) inspected. The inspection was a little bit different from what was before the epidemic. I wasn't invited to the office to have my registration certificate stamped and to pay for the inspection – but instead, the inspector took the certificate and the money from me sitting inside the car. And I didn't leave the car throughout the whole inspection process. And by the way, normally they also give a free voucher to a local restaurant (those inspection stations must compete with each other somehow while they cannot compete with price as the prices of inspections are fixed by the law), now they didn't, supposedly because the restaurant is closed. Although it serves take away and on delivery, but the inspector said no – because the voucher would not be valid for take away or delivery anyway... To me it rather seems that the restaurant resigned from taking part in this action just because they are in a bad financial situation by themselves.


----------



## radamfi

Is Inspector Montalbano still allowed to do his morning swim in the sea?


----------



## Suburbanist

Using Swiss-registered cars within the EU and vice-versa come with some additional implications and complications. For instance, EU citizens renting Swiss-registered cars and driving them into the neighboring countries might get fined if they don't have a specific form. The Austrians and Germans seem to care a lot about that, the Italian and French customs officials, much less so.

Distance-based tolls with privacy-protected blackboxes could take care of these issues, cars would be tracked by GPS at all times (or radios in tunnels) and charged road fees and/or environmental access fees and/or punitive pollution fees according to the place and time they drive. Other taxes could just be appropriated annually based on the amount of time the car spends in each EU country.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I went to the hair salon to get a haircut. They didn't use masks or gloves, though you had to disinfect your hands when entering the salon. And nobody with symptoms can come in. The government says the opening up of hair salons is a controllable risk, that according to the models, wouldn't lead to a significant uptick in cases.

The hospital in my city has closed its temporary corona wards. The number of covid-19 patients went down from 130 in late March to 8 today.


----------



## Suburbanist

It appears that leisure intra-Schengen land and air travel will be resumed in June with few caveats concerning crowding.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> Using Swiss-registered cars within the EU and vice-versa come with some additional implications and complications. For instance, EU citizens renting Swiss-registered cars and driving them into the neighboring countries might get fined if they don't have a specific form. The Austrians and Germans seem to care a lot about that, the Italian and French customs officials, much less so.
> 
> Distance-based tolls with privacy-protected blackboxes could take care of these issues, cars would be tracked by GPS at all times (or radios in tunnels) and charged road fees and/or environmental access fees and/or punitive pollution fees according to the place and time they drive. Other taxes could just be appropriated annually based on the amount of time the car spends in each EU country.


I like the idea of having Umweltplaketten and so on being handled by a transponder. Not that it affects me much, unless I’m renting a car in Europe, and who knows when that will happen again. Having to research in advance what stickers you’ll need is, well, a task one can do without. Do Europeans find this annoying?


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I went to the hair salon to get a haircut. They didn't use masks or gloves, though you had to disinfect your hands when entering the salon. And nobody with symptoms can come in. The government says the opening up of hair salons is a controllable risk, that according to the models, wouldn't lead to a significant uptick in cases.
> 
> The hospital in my city has closed its temporary corona wards. The number of covid-19 patients went down from 130 in late March to 8 today.


I’m about seven weeks overdue for a haircut, although it doesn’t look nearly as bad as I would have expected and I may ask him to leave it longer next time. Still can’t get one in Philadelphia. (Or New Jersey, but I have a regular guy I go to in Philadelphia and I’m sure he needs the business.)


----------



## Kpc21

Coccodrillo said:


> He can't use his parent's car in Switzerland (except if the parent legally owning the vehicle is on board), and vice-versa the parents couldn't use their son's car in Italy if he had one (except if he is on board).


Why not? Is it forbidden to use someone else's car in Switzerland? What about cars which are in leasing (so they are formally the property of a bank or a leasing company)?

In many countries it is required to have a written permission of the owner while crossing the national border if driving a borrowed car – but I haven't heard about it being prohibited.



Penn's Woods said:


> If a Pennsylvania-registered car is legal in Pennsylvania, it’s legal everywhere. (By a provision of the U.S. Constitution requiring the states to give “full faith and credit” to the legal determinations of other states.)


In Europe it's regulated by the Vienna convention, which states that a country which is allowed to drive in one Vienna convention country, it is also allowed in all other Vienna convention countries. Which is, by the way, often misinterpreted by people who claim that if they have the equipment required by the country of registration in the car, they don't need anything more in any another country, even if this country requires more (I mean items such as retroreflective vests, spare light bulbs, snow chains etc.).

By the way, the spare light bulbs requirement is often absurd nowadays.


On Monday Poland opens restaurants but it will be with many restrictions. It seems that, contrary to earlier predictions, it will be also allowed to sit in the building.

But:
– it will be necessary to wear masks while walking to the table and back (not at the table and not outside the building in the restaurant area),
– only one person will be allowed at the table except family or people living together or if the persons sit more than 1.5 m from each other and not opposite each other.

So meeting friends, talking to other people (not family) etc. in restaurants will still be practically impossible.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I wonder if people are really that eager to go to a restaurant if the experience resembles that of sitting in an operation room or at the dentist...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> In other news, there’s reportedly a runaway emu tying up traffic on US 422 near Philadelphia. (And googling tells me there was a runaway emu near Baltimore a few days ago. Could be the same one, I suppose.)
> 
> EDIT: Actually, it couldn’t. The Baltimore emu died. :-(






__ https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=277098777024197


----------



## keber

Slovenia officially ended epidemic state. We had just 35 new infected in last 14 days. Restaurants and bars are running, even our highest ski resort. Schools, kindergartens are opening on Monday. From today there is also no more obligation for citizens of EU for 7-day self-quarantine after entering country.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> In other news, there’s reportedly a runaway emu tying up traffic on US 422 near Philadelphia. (And googling tells me there was a runaway emu near Baltimore a few days ago. Could be the same one, I suppose.)
> 
> EDIT: Actually, it couldn’t. The Baltimore emu died. :-(


Are there that many runaways emus in the US?


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> I like the idea of having Umweltplaketten and so on being handled by a transponder. Not that it affects me much, unless I’m renting a car in Europe, and who knows when that will happen again. Having to research in advance what stickers you’ll need is, well, a task one can do without. Do Europeans find this annoying?


I think this is a largely ignored problem, at least in Italy.
Just before the beginning of the quarantine, one of my colleagues decided to do a road trip to Paris, and asked me for advice given that I've lived there for some time.
He was really surprised that you need a Crit'Air sticker to drive in Paris: it was like I told him the Pope was a smurf.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Are there that many runaways emus in the US?


I wouldn’t have thought so.

Although there is an insurance company that uses an emu in silly commercials. I guess at some point they realized that if they shortened their name (Liberty Mutual) to “LiMu,” it would rhyme with “emu.”...


----------



## Penn's Woods

In the last hour, I’ve seen two different, humorous solutions to restaurant seating:









Inn at Little Washington Chef Will Fill His Socially Distanced Dining Room With Midcentury Mannequins


Chef Patrick O'Connell's Michelin-starred destination will also have Marilyn Monroe masks.




www.washingtonian.com














German restaurant gives patrons hats with pool noodles to keep social distance after reopening


In a stunt to encourage social distancing, a German restaurant gave its diners hats with pool noodles upon its reopening.




thehill.com


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> I think this is a largely ignored problem, at least in Italy.
> Just before the beginning of the quarantine, one of my colleagues decided to do a road trip to Paris, and asked me for advice given that I've lived there for some time.
> He was really surprised that you need a Crit'Air sticker to drive in Paris: it was like I told him the Pope was a smurf.


My concern is how to do that with a rental car. Particularly if you’re driving into multiple countries. I would expect a rental operation in Frankfurt to be aware of the rules that apply in Germany and have whatever stickers may be required on the car. I wouldn’t expect them to have a Swiss or Austrian toll vignette or a CritAir sticker for Paris. I wouldn’t expect them to even be familiar with other countries’ requirements. Which means it’s up to the renter, and I have no trouble with that on principle, but it’s getting to be a bit much.

I remember trying to find a breathalyzer in Flanders (and trying to explain this in my limited Dutch at the last service area before the border) when I was heading to France. Because I’d read that France required them. I never did get one and eventually forgot about looking for it. (Jeremy Clarkson was convinced the French did this sort of thing just to annoy English people. But Jeremy Clarkson’s an ass.)


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> My concern is how to do that with a rental car. Particularly if you’re driving into mutual countries. I would expect a rental operation in Frankfurt to be aware of the rules that apply in Germany and have whatever stickers may be required on the car. I wouldn’t expect them to have a Swiss or Austrian toll vignette or a CritAir sticker for Paris. I wouldn’t expect them to even be familiar with other countries’ requirements. Which means it’s up to the renter, and I have no trouble with that on principle, but it’s getting to be a bit much.
> 
> I remember trying to find a breathalyzer in Flanders (and trying to explain this in my limited Dutch at the last service area before the border) when I was heading to France. Because I’d read that France required them. I never did get one and eventually forgot about looking for it. (Jeremy Clarkson was convinced the French did this sort of thing just to annoy English people. But Jeremy Clarkson’s an ass.)


I agree.
That just means that United States of Europe are a long way.

BTW, aren't there some EZ-passes which work in some US states and not in another?


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> I agree.
> That just means that United States of Europe are a long way.
> 
> BTW, aren't there some EZ-passes which work in some US states and not in another?


They work in every state that participates in the program, which is basically the whole Northeast and Midwest. Even on the Niagara-area bridges to Canada. Some states charge holders of in-state passes lower rates.


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> I would expect a rental operation in Frankfurt to be aware of the rules that apply in Germany and have whatever stickers may be required on the car.


There is only one sticker required for Germany, the _Umweltplakette_. Every German rental car has it as far as I know.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> There is only one sticker required for Germany, the _Umweltplakette_. Every German rental car has it as far as I know.


That’s something, anyway. But if I rented a car outside of Germany and drove into a German city where it’s needed, would I have been able to get one reasonably easily? Say at an Autobahn service area? More importantly perhaps, are foreign motorists - whether renters from overseas or Europeans who don’t go to Germany often - even aware they need it?

And if there are places outside of Germany with similar requirements, is the German sticker accepted as proof your car qualifies?


----------



## Coccodrillo

Kpc21 said:


> Why not? Is it forbidden to use someone else's car in Switzerland? What about cars which are in leasing (so they are formally the property of a bank or a leasing company)?


You can't drive the car of someone's else if it is registered in another country, and you can't drive a Swiss car in Italy (or likelay any other country) if you are a resident of Italy (citizenship doesn't matter).

That friend of mine expressly asked some custom official if he had a legal way to share a car with his parents, and the answer was "no".

There are some exeption for rented cars, and people who has just moved from a country to the other, and that's all. I don't know about leased cars.


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> That’s something, anyway. But if I rented a car outside of Germany and drove into a German city where it’s needed, would I have been able to get one reasonably easily?


You can get it online: All German and European environmental badges and zones



Penn's Woods said:


> Say at an Autobahn service area?


No.



Penn's Woods said:


> More importantly perhaps, are foreign motorists - whether renters from overseas or Europeans who don’t go to Germany often - even aware they need it?


I don't think so.



Penn's Woods said:


> And if there are places outside of Germany with similar requirements


Of course! See All German and European environmental badges and zones

Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Spain. The German version also mentions Finland France, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, UK: Europäische Plaketten und Vignetten - Green-Zones.eu

btw: The blue sticker was never introduced in Germany. I don't know why it's still mentioned on the site.



Penn's Woods said:


> is the German sticker accepted as proof your car qualifies?


Of course, NOT!


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> That’s something, anyway. But if I rented a car outside of Germany and drove into a German city where it’s needed, would I have been able to get one reasonably easily?


For my old car I got one in Munich, at TÜV offices. No appointment, no problems with a foreign car. For the current one, I went to TÜV in Berlin, zero hassle. But then I had to replace my windscreen, so I got another Plakette online


----------



## Penn's Woods

So image sharing from the app is now disabled?


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> So image sharing from the app is now disabled?










I think it works


----------



## MichiH

Dutch shirt?


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> View attachment 130897
> I think it works


It wouldn’t let me. I’ll try again. But is that you?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Nope. Still get “Your forum has disabled image sharing from this app”


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> It wouldn’t let me. I’ll try again. But is that you?


The one and only!

That's odd though. Android or iOS? It seems to work on Android.


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> Dutch shirt?


Shirt and bandana from a mountain hut near Turin... I guess the owner likes the Netherlands


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> The one and only!
> 
> That's odd though. Android or iOS? It seems to work on Android.


iPhone. But we seem to be back.


----------



## Penn's Woods

So, I took another run to Philadelphia today - blood work for a doctor’s appointment at the beginning of June (and the office says they expect to be seeing patients in person by then), pharmacy, mail. Highway traffic at near-normal levels, pedestrian traffic in the city as well. But it’s a nice day: 84F/29C and sunny with a bit of a breeze. I was curious about how far people are traveling, so I paid attention to license plates. Saw most states on the Eastern Seaboard from Maine to North Carolina; a couple of Floridas; Ohio, Michigan, Colorado, California. I’m not sure why all of these people are roaming that far from home....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Hey, mods, I’m getting that photo-sharing error again....


----------



## PovilD

On the optimistic note, second consecutive day without no new cases in Lithuania outside of city of Vilnius. Currently, Vilnius has four clusters: one nursing home, two hospitals (one being poorly managed, second, probably accident by using PPE, or other causes), and dormitory in Naujoji Vilnia district.

If this were China, they would probably decide to conceal Vilnius Region from entry 

---
Health management (funding, organising work, etc.) in Lithuania is one of the few things that makes Lithuania some sort of the mix of best managed/richest CEE countries and Ukraine/Moldova. Other ones being education and partially construction (how comfortable there will be infrastructure, design, etc.) standards. Maybe some other things too that I don't think too much. (Demographic is s**t too, but it's an outcome....).

There are still fears that new clusters all across Lithuania are likely, and many clusters would been preveted if hospitals and nursing homes would be better prepared.

In general (not only COVID related topic), we feel cool when comparing with Ukraine, Moldova, rural Russia, but feel a bit s**t when comparing with Germany, and I guess the best managed and richest CEE countries... like Czech Republic, Estonia, probably Slovenia. They seem to be avoiding new unnecessary clusters in their institutions, at least Slovakia and Slovenia.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What's the media reporting about possible summer vacations like in your country?

In the Netherlands it's extremely bad and confusing. The narrative changes every day and all of it is full of unfounded speculation, because nobody knows for sure what the situation will look like over the summer. It's basically guesswork, often based on poor translation of foreign sources.

This week they reported that France would not allow any international travel. However that was a case of mistranslation, because the French expected that there would be less foreign travelers willing to go to France, which is quite a different situation. Of course the correction got much less attention than the initial report.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> What's the media reporting about possible summer vacations like in your country?
> 
> In the Netherlands it's extremely bad and confusing. The narrative changes every day and all of it is full of unfounded speculation, because nobody knows for sure what the situation will look like over the summer. It's basically guesswork, often based on poor translation of foreign sources.
> 
> This week they reported that France would not allow any international travel. However that was a case of mistranslation, because the French expected that there would be less foreign travelers willing to go to France, which is quite a different situation. Of course the correction got much less attention than the initial report.


There are talks about plans for summer inside the country for an extended period now. I think it's likely that Mediterranean resorts will likely be available too, although is not certain.


----------



## bogdymol

From the recent media I understood the following:

Italy will allow travel from the 3rd of June
Slovenia and Croatia will soon open borders for tourists
Austria will open starting today the border with Switzerland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia. However, the Czechs seem a bit reluctant to the idea, and will keep the quarantine for whoever is coming to their country
Other restrictions also relaxed in Austria since last Friday (restaurants and cafes opened)
Romania has canceled the quarantine in state-run hotels and now has only mandatory quarantine at home. Other restrictions also relaxed a bit since Friday.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

bogdymol said:


> From the recent media I understood the following:


These are all current events. Not what will and won't be possible in July or August. 

The Dutch media has 'explainers' which you watch and at the end you have learned nothing and hasn't made the situation for the summer vacation any clearer. Why is that? Because nobody knows what will or won't be possible by then. Even governments don't know that. These media 'explainers' are more an attention grab than anything useful, if they don't know what will happen either. In the past we called that clickbait, now we call it mainstream media. 🙃

Anyhow, I never book something in advance so I can go wherever I want to, coronavirus situation contingent. It could be Sweden. Or the Alps. Or maybe even Southern Europe. I'll just have to wait and see what happens.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Why is that? Because nobody knows what will or won't be possible by then. Even governments don't know that


Exactly! We have no clue what will hapen.

However, there are many discussions that tourism will restart in summer again. But it's nothing for sure! If a second wave will come, even if it will be very small and only in isolated places, it will still trigger some lockdown-type measures.


----------



## volodaaaa

Well, I have dipped more into driving licence categories and found a strange stupidity in the system implemented in Slovakia.

Let us talk about the B category in the EU.

The general rule is as follows: if you possess a driving licence with the B category you can:

drive a motor vehicle except for those included in the A category (motorbikes) with a maximum authorised mass not exceeding 3500 kg and not constructed for carrying more than eight passengers except for a driver. This is pretty much clear.
attach a trailer to your vehicle included in the B category that does not exceed a maximum authorised mass of 750 kg. Again, pretty clear-
drive a set of two cars with the joint maximum authorised weight not exceeding 3500 kg while the trailer must not exceed the 1000 kg of a maximum authorised mass. I guess this was intended as an exception for camper trailer.
The last was implemented incorrectly in Slovakia, though. Instead, we have this one:

drive a set of two vehicles with a joint maximum authorised mass not exceeding 4250 kg (3500+ 750) provided that a maximum authorised mass of a trailer is not greater than a maximum authorised mass of a tractor.
It also sounds reasonable, but it creates nice paradoxes. For example, Hummer H2 has a maximum authorised mass equal to 3900 kg. Usually, you are not allowed to drive that thing with a B-driving licence category. But if you live in Slovakia, get a light trailer (with MAM lower than 250 kg), attach it to your monster, and you are pretty safe.


----------



## g.spinoza

A nice infographic about Covid-19 situation in Italy, 4-10 May

Number of cases for 100k inh; weekly trend; number of alerts.
Color means alert level.
Below the map, an estimate of R0 for each region :


















Quali sono le regioni che rischiano di più la ripartenza del contagio? Il monitoraggio dell’indice Rt


Ecco le Regioni che rischiano di più nella fotografia scattata al termine del lockdown: il rapporto sull’indice del contagio è dell’Istituto superiore di Sanità e del ministero della Salute




www.corriere.it


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands appears to somewhat of an 'odd man out' in that mask usage has been absolutely minimal. So far I've seen only three people wearing a mask over past two months. However it will be mandatory in public transport from 1 June. Supermarkets started selling reusable masks. But I really doubt if people are going to use it as it is meant to be.

Washing your hands before you put it on, then never touch it or your face at any time, then washing your hands to take them off, seal it, then wash your hands again. You should use a separate mask on the return trip or wash it between using. I think the reality is that people will touch their face and the mask all the time, pulling it down to talk or eat, sticking it in a pocket, using it multiple times before washing, etc.


----------



## tfd543

I am seeing 0 persons with masks in whatever place. Its not mandatory at all here.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

In Scandinavia in general, the usefulness of masks are disputed. I have seen zero people using it on the streets or other public places of Trondheim, but with certain health workers it is different. Last time I saw some ordinary people with masks it were Asians on my last return flight to Norway (a couple of months ago, of course)....


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> LOL!
> 
> Sorry. Clearly you’re not familiar with the American right wing. Fox News and its ilk (and talk radio before that) have spent 30 years training them to assume the establishment is lying to them. And scientists are part of the establishment.
> 
> Trump was running for re-election on the strong economy. But more than 35 million people have lost their jobs in the last two months, so that’s gone. So he’s desperate to get the country opened up again. And honestly, I can understand people in areas where cases are low - it’s a big country and the impact of this has been very uneven - being annoyed that they can’t open up their businesses again for what doesn’t look to them like a good reason.
> 
> Add a dose of conspiracy theories - “this is a hoax invented by the Democrats and the media to bring Trump down” - and there we are. It’s depressing.
> 
> The latest news is that the idiot’s self-medicating now: Coronavirus Live Updates: Trump Says He Takes Drug Against Covid-19. There’s No Proof It Works.


I know what are Trump's views on science, from medical science to climate change and such. He's probably one of the worst contemporary leaders of the free world for that aspect. Either him or Bolsonaro.
Do most Republicans (citizens, local governors,...) think like Trump regarding scientific topics or most of them are more reasonable?
Is the American society strongly split along the Democratics/Republicans traditional division regarding views on lockdown?
In Italy the M5S party was very conspirationist and anti-science (but pro environment) until few years ago. Now they have calmed down, as they changed alliance from the right to the centre-left, although M5S is shrinking fast in term of share of votes.


----------



## Alex_ZR

The Pandemic Crisis staff in Serbia recommended the lifting of requirements to enter the country for both Serbian and foreign nationals.


----------



## italystf

PovilD said:


> For me, this whole quarantine had ended this Monday  Sure, quarantine regime is still in place, but indoor dining places were opened with restrictions. I decided to go to eat at indoor pizzeria, it was cold and rainy outside, so it fit well. Additionally, you can go to other Baltic States without 14 day quarantine. If they will open borders with other EU countries, it would be "complete back to normal" for me. Personally, I don't care too much if they (even ever) allow mass events or not. To be honest, I would travel Europe for some nature trip with social distancing than going to some mass event.
> 
> I'm aware that everything's fragile though.


In Italy, since this Monday we are allowed to travel freely within our region. Most businesses are allowed to reopen with improved safety measures. Meeting friends is legal again. Since June 3rd we'll be allowed to travel to other regions.


----------



## PovilD

It's interesting that Baltic States travel bubble comprises quite small population of about 6m. I think Baltic States is the largest area in EU where even three countries comprise pretty small population.

Many countries are larger than that. We have Poland on the corner which also allows free travel within a country for about 40m population in larger area than Baltic States combined (correct me if I'm wrong).


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands appears to somewhat of an 'odd man out' in that mask usage has been absolutely minimal. So far I've seen only three people wearing a mask over past two months. However it will be mandatory in public transport from 1 June. Supermarkets started selling reusable masks. But I really doubt if people are going to use it as it is meant to be.
> 
> Washing your hands before you put it on, then never touch it or your face at any time, then washing your hands to take them off, seal it, then wash your hands again. You should use a separate mask on the return trip or wash it between using. I think the reality is that people will touch their face and the mask all the time, pulling it down to talk or eat, sticking it in a pocket, using it multiple times before washing, etc.


We are still quite strict with mask wearing inside supermarkets. There are not a lot of people with a masks outdoors, but indoor everyone must wear a mask. It was a bit strange expierence while you can be without a mask inside dining places while in shops you have to put a mask. Pizzeria where I ate was inside the mall, and when I went out I forgot to put a mask. I was accidentally reminded by one very official looking person (maybe shop director) to put on the mask when I was approaching restroom. I read that restrooms are one of the most unsafe public spaces during the pandemic, since the virus can spread through smell of the feces, so I was planning to put the mask anyway...

What I read about Latvia, it seems that they're also very relaxed toward the quarantine - people don't maintain social distancing that much and don't wear masks, while we are more strict on that. ...and they already didn't closed restaurants like us, most business were open.

I'm still jealous for Slovakia though  Not too rich or influential country, but managed the situation very good. It's probably a long way for Lithuania for Slovakia's level of success. We have clusters here and there, mostly in hospitals or even community spread related to hospitals...


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Washing your hands before you put it on, then never touch it or your face at any time, then washing your hands to take them off, seal it, then wash your hands again. You should use a separate mask on the return trip or wash it between using. I think the reality is that people will touch their face and the mask all the time, pulling it down to talk or eat, sticking it in a pocket, using it multiple times before washing, etc.


To me, what you describe sounds like a dream of epidemiologists which will never come true. However, if in many countries it was decided that that masks would be obligatory, this must mean that even a not so correctly worn mask is better than nothing.

You touch the mask... normally you also sometimes touch your face, so what does it change? If you have coronavirus around your mouth, you will anyway carry it onto other surfaces.



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Last time I saw some ordinary people with masks it were Asians on my last return flight to Norway (a couple of months ago, of course)....


Now over here, wearing masks, everyone looks like an Asian person 



PovilD said:


> We have Poland on the corner which also allows free travel within a country for about 40m population in larger area than Baltic States combined (correct me if I'm wrong).


Yeah, there is indeed whole 40 million of us and we can travel freely around the country, although it was restricted for several weeks, with leaving homes not being strictly forbidden (leaving home without necessary reasons was) but there were people getting fined for that.

Even more, the epidemic over here still looks heavy, although it's stable.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> I know what are Trump's views on science, from medical science to climate change and such. He's probably one of the worst contemporary leaders of the free world for that aspect. Either him or Bolsonaro.
> Do most Republicans (citizens, local governors,...) think like Trump regarding scientific topics or most of them are more reasonable?
> Is the American society strongly split along the Democratics/Republicans traditional division regarding views on lockdown?
> In Italy the M5S party was very conspirationist and anti-science (but pro environment) until few years ago. Now they have calmed down, as they changed alliance from the right to the centre-left, although M5S is shrinking fast in term of share of votes.


I’d say a lot of Republicans, but my no means all of them (maybe not even a majority), and next to no Democrats, are opposing the lockdowns. And some Republican politicians have decided it’s in their interest to seem to support these people. On the other hand, the Republican Governor of Ohio was one of the first to start shutting things down. About a week ahead of New York. His actions may be responsible for making people sit up and say “whoa!” The last polls I saw had about 80 percent of the public supporting the stricter measures. Although that was a couple of weeks ago. We’re starting to see isolated instances of open defiance...a gym in New Jersey announcing to the media (as opposed to just discreetly informing their clients) that they’d open up yesterday. So that was a bit of a stunt.

And let’s be fair: not all motivations are the same. The impact of this, as I said, has been very uneven. There are areas where cases are sparse. I have more respect for people saying they want to go back to work, reopen businesses, and so on, in areas like that, than I do for idiots claiming “this is just the flu,” or who just don’t care: One of those is a respectable point of view, even if I don’t agree with it; the other isn’t. And no respect at all for people just disobeying rules they don't like.

Anyhow, at this point I think every place in the country, even New York City, is taking cautious steps towards reopening, or at least announcing dates on which such steps can be considered, or laying out criteria that an area needs to meet....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Are middle names a thing in Europe? Most American men have two given names. As in “Donald John Trump.” I have my paternal grandfather’s first name as my middle name, and my brother has my maternal grandmother’s first name. Or it may be another family name, such as "John Fitzgerald Kennedy." ("Fitzgerald" was his mother's last name.) Most people don’t use their second name very often, but will use the initial (the first letter) in formal contexts...such as signing a letter “Barack H. Obama.” I’ve noticed European aristocrats often have long strings of names, but do “normal” people have middle names at all? At some point I noticed it seems to be rare.
Just something I’m curious about.


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## MattiG

Penn's Woods said:


> Are middle names a thing in Europe?


Most often no. It is good to see that Europe is not a single cultural area in this dimension, and traditions related to names vary a lot. Notable exceptions are Denmark and Norway, where a middle name is widely in use, but its basis is totally different from the American way.


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## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands appears to somewhat of an 'odd man out' in that mask usage has been absolutely minimal. So far I've seen only three people wearing a mask over past two months. However it will be mandatory in public transport from 1 June. Supermarkets started selling reusable masks. But I really doubt if people are going to use it as it is meant to be.
> 
> Washing your hands before you put it on, then never touch it or your face at any time, then washing your hands to take them off, seal it, then wash your hands again. You should use a separate mask on the return trip or wash it between using. I think the reality is that people will touch their face and the mask all the time, pulling it down to talk or eat, sticking it in a pocket, using it multiple times before washing, etc.


I may have said this before, but I've developed a system (when I'm out and about) of using only my left hand to touch "foreign" objects (shopping carts, door handles, products...) and only my right hand to, say, adjust my glasses or handle payment cards. So any contaminants my left hand picks up won't get onto my face. Lately if I need to adjust the mask, I'll use the left hand on the left side of my face, my right hand on the right. Haven't quite thought that through, but I think that should work. The system breaks down a bit when I'm taking groceries from the store to my car and then into the house - I can't quite work out when a "foreign," left-hand object ceases to be foreign. But I wash my hands thoroughly as soon as I've brought everything into the house, then again after I've put everything away.


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## tfd543

MattiG said:


> Most often no. It is good to see that Europe is not a single cultural area in this dimension, and traditions related to names vary a lot. Notable exceptions are Denmark and Norway, where a middle name is widely in use in, but its basis is totally different from the American way.


Yea in dk, Its used a lot.


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## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> Whats like the culture of using the horn over there ? Is it like the polite 0,5 sec sound of “hey buddy, watch out” or like the horrible 5 sec of “dik head, get the hell out of my sight before I fk ur mother up”
> 
> Well, sometimes u gonna use the latter. I cant deny that
> 
> Ive seen a YouTube video where they even hack the sound to be more polite.


Nothing polite on roads in Italy. I think I used 3 times the polite sound in my life, and 300 (maybe more) the unpolite one...



Penn's Woods said:


> Are middle names a thing in Europe? Most American men have two given names. As in “Donald John Trump.” I have my paternal grandfather’s first name as my middle name, and my brother has my maternal grandmother’s first name. Or it may be another family name, such as "John Fitzgerald Kennedy." ("Fitzgerald" was his mother's last name.) Most people don’t use their second name very often, but will use the initial (the first letter) in formal contexts...such as signing a letter “Barack H. Obama.” I’ve noticed European aristocrats often have long strings of names, but do “normal” people have middle names at all? At some point I noticed it seems to be rare.
> Just something I’m curious about.


Not at all in Italy.
Few people have 2 names, but either they usually use all of them or just the first one: I've never seen an Italian using first name and the initial of the second.
It is somewhat more popular for females, with the first name being "Maria" or "Anna". So there are many "Anna Rosa", or "Maria Giovanna", but far less "Monica Antonia".
My sister's name is "Maria Serena", but everyone just calls her "Serena". The double name has caused her some troubles lately: it seems that some public database has her name as "Maria Serena", some other "Maria-Serena", and they don't recognize it's the same person...
Interestingly enough, the feminine name "Maria" can seldom be used as masculine middle name: so you can find "Antonio Maria" or "Giovanni Maria", but I guess it's becoming less common nowadays.


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## ChrisZwolle

Christian names are very common in the Netherlands. Protestants usually give a single Christian name (in addition to the first name), but Catholics two or three. So if you see someone with 4 initials, he or she is likely from a Catholic background. It is also somewhat common to shorten the first name. For example someone given the Christian names of 'Albertus Jozef Maria' may just be called Bert or Albert, but have the initials A.J.M. <insert last name>. The 'Christian names' are not necessarily named after religious figures. Often they're named after their parents or grandparents, especially in light of declining religiosity over the decades. 

So it's kind of like a middle name, but slightly different. It's extremely unusual to use your Christian name in everyday life or even at official functions, except baptism or a wedding.


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## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Christian names are very common in the Netherlands. Protestants usually give a single Christian name (in addition to the first name), but Catholics two or three. So if you see someone with 4 initials, he or she is likely from a Catholic background. It is also somewhat common to shorten the first name. For example someone given the Christian names of 'Albertus Jozef Maria' may just be called Bert or Albert, but have the initials A.J.M. <insert last name>. The 'Christian names' are not necessarily named after religious figures. Often they're named after their parents or grandparents, especially in light of declining religiosity over the decades.
> 
> So it's kind of like a middle name, but slightly different. It's extremely unusual to use your Christian name in everyday life or even at official functions, except baptism or a wedding.


I have a Dutch colleague, recently retired, named Petrus Paulus Maria. I guess his Catholic background is not given just by the number of names...
However, he went by the name of Peter. Or PPM, which is funny, because he made extremely precise measurements at ppm (part per million) level...


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## tfd543

Haha lol. Funny^^


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## Autobahn-mann

g.spinoza said:


> Not at all in Italy.
> Few people have 2 names, but either they usually use all of them or just the first one: I've never seen an Italian using first name and the initial of the second.
> It is somewhat more popular for females, with the first name being "Maria" or "Anna". So there are many "Anna Rosa", or "Maria Giovanna", but far less "Monica Antonia".
> My sister's name is "Maria Serena", but everyone just calls her "Serena". The double name has caused her some troubles lately: it seems that some public database has her name as "Maria Serena", some other "Maria-Serena", and they don't recognize it's the same person...
> Interestingly enough, the feminine name "Maria" can seldom be used as masculine middle name: so you can find "Antonio Maria" or "Giovanni Maria", but I guess it's becoming less common nowadays.


In my family, only my mother's relatives (and my mother herself) have 2 names, but all uses alternatively one of them or a diminutive or, only in familiar situation, nickname.


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## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> Not at all in Italy.
> Few people have 2 names, but either they usually use all of them or just the first one: I've never seen an Italian using first name and the initial of the second.
> It is somewhat more popular for females, with the first name being "Maria" or "Anna". So there are many "Anna Rosa", or "Maria Giovanna", but far less "Monica Antonia".
> My sister's name is "Maria Serena", but everyone just calls her "Serena". The double name has caused her some troubles lately: it seems that some public database has her name as "Maria Serena", some other "Maria-Serena", and they don't recognize it's the same person...
> Interestingly enough, the feminine name "Maria" can seldom be used as masculine middle name: so you can find "Antonio Maria" or "Giovanni Maria", but I guess it's becoming less common nowadays.


But there are many Italian long single-word names that are amalgamations of different names such as Pierfrancesco or Giancarlo


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## PovilD

We are Catholic country (Lithuania), but it's interesting that many Catholic stuff doesn't apply there: double/triple names are really rare, for being social in general, I think we are closer to Protestants. In parties and leisure, I think we are Orthodox Christians  But not universally, for example vodka is not that prominent, I think. Russian music is still prominent somewhat, but for younger generation it has narrowed to Russian rap. Russian hardbass is mostly seen as a meme, as far as I know. Russian chanson is not popular, personally I heard it only few times on the street while being in Vilnius which has larger Slavic ethnic minority. Even our only local nation-wide Russian-language radio station, plays mostly something that resembles Russian rap, and only rarely Russian pop right now.

Although religion is somewhat really important for older generation (to the levels it influences our legislature), young generation seems to be almost atheist like Czechia or Estonia. You have to be a bit "special" if you are into religion and your'e in your 20s or even 30s. Only stereotypically* "Catholic thing" that I could think of in Lithuania is that we are not that much into "ordnung" as Germans, Scandinavians, or even most developed CEE countries. I mean, from those stereotypes that Catholic Southern Europe is worse managed than Protestant Scandinavia, Germany, etc. Russia is also heard for "mismanaging stuff" too (for example, USSR have collapsed, and many people are still nostalgic about it), so I also wonder if this has to with Russian (Orthodox) influence. Since we are southernmost member of the Baltic States, and we are Catholic, Lithuanians sometimes call themselves "Baltic Italians" (probably they mean Southern Italians, tbh), especially in the context when Latvians and Estonians look for us more into German "ordnung" from their legacy, but also that we are somewhat a bit more social and louder too 

It is said that there are some pre-Christian influence too, but I don't think this influences socio-economical development of country (maybe others would say otherwise). I think it mostly influences our folklore rather than our today's culture. I would rather think that this has to do that we don't despise witches, devils or other Halloween stuff as much as other European countries. For example, some people managed to collect folklore devils or witches, and we have "Devils museum" in Kaunas, and this was from the 30s, and I read that is already "one of the strangest museums in Europe". There are "Kauko laiptai" ("Sprite/Ghost stairs") too in Kaunas, built in the 30s to connect valley of the city with the upper terrace. Why do you need to call it such creepy name  In the country, there are few notable objects too that can be considered creepy, hill of Crosses or hill of Witches, etc.

*Some Catholic or Protestant regions don't strictly follow the rule of being more developed/better maintained according to their religion.


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## g.spinoza

Suburbanist said:


> But there are many Italian long single-word names that are amalgamations of different names such as Pierfrancesco or Giancarlo


I wouldn't say many. Those starting with Pier- and Gian- and maybe, but less common with Anton- (Antongiulio). But they are considered a single name.


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## Coccodrillo

ChrisZwolle said:


> So it's kind of like a middle name, but slightly different. It's extremely unusual to use your Christian name in everyday life or even at official functions, except baptism or a wedding.


A friend of mine has officially got all her names used for the baptism (four, two of them are of the great-mothers) because some officier copied them all into the registry from the baptism documents, and not only the "real" first name. When she married she got also her husband's family name, so officially now she has a total 6 names. And if she and/or he had a double family name as some people I know, she would have had no less than 7 or 8 names...this can certainly make cases of homonymy quite unlikely but creates other problems.

A swiss mobile telecom company to avoid the use of fake documents or names decided to use an OCR software to obtain from an official document the name of the new client. You can't change it afterwards, it forces you to use what the software has read from the document. However this software has a limit on the number of characters it can handle, so it truncated the full legal name of that friend, who was unable to subscribe to this company (as the company couldn't accept an incorrect name).


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## Suburbanist




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## CNGL

In Spain we don't have middle names, and don't need them since (unlike most of the world) we use two surnames . However, having two given names wasn't rare in the past, although this is declining.


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## ChrisZwolle

Unlike Easter, there is now a considerable amount of traffic congestion due to recreational travel for the Ascension Day long weekend in Denmark, Germany, Poland & Netherlands. Not as much in France and Southern Europe though.


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## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


>


I’ve watched the first few minutes. Looks good so far.


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## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Christian names are very common in the Netherlands. Protestants usually give a single Christian name (in addition to the first name), but Catholics two or three. So if you see someone with 4 initials, he or she is likely from a Catholic background. It is also somewhat common to shorten the first name. For example someone given the Christian names of 'Albertus Jozef Maria' may just be called Bert or Albert, but have the initials A.J.M. . The 'Christian names' are not necessarily named after religious figures. Often they're named after their parents or grandparents, especially in light of declining religiosity over the decades.
> 
> So it's kind of like a middle name, but slightly different. It's extremely unusual to use your Christian name in everyday life or even at official functions, except baptism or a wedding.


I was unfamiliar with that meaning of “Christian name”; to me that’s just another way of saying “first name,” used more in the U.K. than here. But I was brought up Roman Catholic, and when we were “confirmed” - basically when someone who was baptized as a baby accepts membership in the church now that they’re old enough to understand - our church asked us to choose a “confirmation name,” to be used in the ceremony. That seemed silly to me so I just used my real first name.
But I did have a friend who used his conformation name as a second middle name. By which I mean his signature had his first name and two initials; he told me the second one was the confirmation name.


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## ChrisZwolle

They installed a vending machine with masks and hand sanitizer at the busiest railway station in the Netherlands:


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## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> I was unfamiliar with that meaning of “Christian name”; to me that’s just another way of saying “first name,” used more in the U.K. than here. But I was brought up Roman Catholic, and when we were “confirmed” - basically when someone who was baptized as a baby accepts membership in the church now that they’re old enough to understand - our church asked us to choose a “confirmation name,” to be used in the ceremony. That seemed silly to me so I just used my real first name.
> But I did have a friend who used his conformation name as a second middle name. By which I mean his signature had his first name and two initials; he told me the second one was the confirmation name.


In Italy, when you're baptized as a child, you are given 3 names: one from your parents, one from your godfather, one from your godmother.
They're not legal in any way, and I've never heard them used, not even in church (but I never went to church after confirmation).


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## x-type

I am thinking about adding middle name. It would be my baptism name since it differs completely from my first name. 
Double names are kinda trendy, and there are some impossible combinations, but the term known as middle name here is absolutely unknown. So even if your name is Ana Marija or Petar Krešimir, it is considered as - one.


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## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> Are middle names a thing in Europe?


In Poland most people have a middle name but they don't use it. My case is interesting because while most people call me by the first name, my grandparents call me by

There are also Christian names that people usually choose for their confirmation – but they are even more not used in practice. I don't have one, I don't have confirmation.

In Poland there are also vending machines with masks. I haven't seen one in practice but I heard that the masks offered in them are overpriced.

One in Cracow:










Polish language is very flexible and therefore while those names rather aren't used officially, it's popular to call vending machines by things what their offer, with the "-omat" suffix. Which comes from the generic word for an automated machine in Polish (and in some other languages too): automat.

So more officially e.g. a ticket machine would be called automat biletowy – but it's often shorted to: biletomat.
A parking machine (the one in which you can pay for parking) – automat parkingowy, but usually shorted to: parkomat.
I have once seen a vending machine in a mall that was placed near restrooms and which was originally supposed to sell nappies and other articles for babies – it was labeled: bobomat. Although there were no more nappies inside, there were beverages and snacks instead 
Once someone came with an idea for a business which would install vending machines selling fresh milk ("straight from the cow") – it was named mlekomat.

So now, those machines with face masks are commonly called "maseczkomat". From maseczka – diminutive of maska (as those masks are lightweight, they are often called in Polish in diminutive, one wouldn't use diminutive e.g. for a welding or skiing mask, but for masks like those for coronavirus it's used in most cases).

Using a diminutive is generally an interesting phenomenon in Polish, there are so many things people normally call in diminutive and not in the basic form. E.g. when someone sees a live mouse, he is likely to, scared, shout "mysz!", but most people refer to a computer mouse in diminutive, as "myszka". Also Mickey Mouse is Myszka Miki in Polish – but this is rather the more obvious diminutive usage (by kids or while talking to kids).

When you have a huge gate for a car or a truck, one says "brama" – but a turnstile somewhere e.g. in an office or the gate at the airport which you have to go through so that it scans you for security (but not the gate through which you exit the terminal to enter the airplane), would be rather called "bramka". This diminutive is also used e.g. for logic gates in electronics or for football goals.

Also "korona" has a diminutive "koronka" – but in this case, the meaning is totally different. "Korona" is the kind of golden hat a king wears, or more historically it may also refer to a country which is a kingdom, but "koronka" normally means a type of cloth decoration:










or also there is a prayer in Catholicism "koronka do Bożego miłosierdzia" – seemingly, its English name is "The Chaplet of The Divine Mercy".

"Korona" may also mean a part of a tooth implant (the one that gives it the outside appearance, so not the metal core but the rest), an in this meaning it's sometimes "diminutivized" (is there such a word in English?) to "koronka". But never in the meaning of a crown like for a king to wear on his head.

But some people (it's not very popular but I've seen that) refer to the coronavirus as "koronka"


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## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Also "korona" has a diminutive "koronka" – but in this case, the meaning is totally different. "Korona" is the kind of golden hat a king wears, or more historically it may also refer to a country which is a kingdom, but "koronka" normally means a type of cloth decoration:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> or also there is a prayer in Catholicism "koronka do Bożego miłosierdzia" – seemingly, its English name is "The Chaplet of The Divine Mercy".
> 
> "Korona" may also mean a part of a tooth implant (the one that gives it the outside appearance, so not the metal core but the rest), an in this meaning it's sometimes "diminutivized" (is there such a word in English?) to "koronka". But never in the meaning of a crown like for a king to wear on his head.
> 
> But some people (it's not very popular but I've seen that) refer to the coronavirus as "koronka"


We use "korona" which doesn't mean anything for us except for the beer. We have very similar word "koronė" which means "punishment; torment, misery, misfortune". I think it's kinda meaningful from what we see what this disease brings to us: restrictions, lockdowns and mass deaths in some places unseen from the wartime.

Word "koronė" is not used anymore, but it was used in older times, even my mother told that her grandparents were using this word, but not younger people, and I learned this word only after the COVID was declared pandemic.


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## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> So now, those machines with face masks are commonly called "maseczkomat". From maseczka – diminutive of maska (as those masks are lightweight, they are often called in Polish in diminutive, one wouldn't use diminutive e.g. for a welding or skiing mask, but for masks like those for coronavirus it's used in most cases).
> 
> Using a diminutive is generally an interesting phenomenon in Polish, there are so many things people normally call in diminutive and not in the basic form. E.g. when someone sees a live mouse, he is likely to, scared, shout "mysz!", but most people refer to a computer mouse in diminutive, as "myszka". Also Mickey Mouse is Myszka Miki in Polish – but this is rather the more obvious diminutive usage (by kids or while talking to kids).
> 
> When you have a huge gate for a car or a truck, one says "brama" – but a turnstile somewhere e.g. in an office or the gate at the airport which you have to go through so that it scans you for security (but not the gate through which you exit the terminal to enter the airplane), would be rather called "bramka". This diminutive is also used e.g. for logic gates in electronics or for football goals.


Don't even get me started on Polish diminutives. Sometimes I try to explain something to my Irish girlfriend and she just keeps laughing when I try to explain the whole diminutive business...

I don't know if any other language uses anywhere near as much diminutives as Polish, probably not.


BTW, in central London space for cars is shrinking:

DSC00358 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC00364 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC00368 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


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## m_w_r

geogregor said:


> Don't even get me started on Polish diminutives. Sometimes I try to explain something to my Irish girlfriend and she just keeps laughing when I try to explain the whole diminutive business...


Haha, Polish has double diminutives too, e.g.: _korona_ – crown (as in headgear), _koronka_ – small crown, _koroneczka_ – even smaller crown, or _grzyb_ – mushroom_, grzybek_ – small mushroom, _grzybeczek_ – even smaller mushroom. Then it has augmentatives, often with negative connotations: _grzybsko_ – huge (and usually ugly) mushroom; there's none for the crown I could think of though (perhaps all crowns are pretty and sought after).


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## Attus

Recently I have the feeling, either the world got crazy, or I did.
More and more of my friends believe in conspiracional theories and/or state there is no pandemic at all, there is either no virus or it's not dangerous, social distancing, disinfection or masks are completely useless.


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## MacOlej

Penn's Woods said:


> I may have said this before, but I've developed a system (when I'm out and about) of using only my left hand to touch "foreign" objects (shopping carts, door handles, products...) and only my right hand to, say, adjust my glasses or handle payment cards.


This reminds me of the muslim system: left hand for dirty deeds/actions (e.g. wiping butt after toilet use) and right hand for clean deeds/actions (e.g. eating). I've read that together with obligatory ablutions before prayers it led to big improvement in hygiene among Arabs in VII century.



m_w_r said:


> Then it has augmentatives, often with negative connotations: _grzybsko_ – huge (and usually ugly) mushroom; there's none for the crown I could think of though (perhaps all crowns are pretty and sought after).


You can easily make one up like _koronisko_ and it will be gramatically correct! That is definitely one of the most fun parts of Polish language.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> BTW, in central London space for cars is shrinking:


There is increasing criticism about the social distancing requirements outdoors, in case of 'just crossing paths', the infection risk is virtually 0, apparently a Hong Kong study that traced over 7,300 infections, only 1 was found to have been infected outdoors. So there is no need to create super wide sidewalks to maintain 1.5 meters distance. Almost all infections occur indoors or in public transport, which is also an enclosed environment.


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## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> There is increasing criticism about the social distancing requirements outdoors, in case of 'just crossing paths', the infection risk is virtually 0, apparently a Hong Kong study that traced over 7,300 infections, only 1 was found to have been infected outdoors. So there is no need to create super wide sidewalks to maintain 1.5 meters distance.


The British are known for over-reacting when it comes to Health & Safety. Just have a talk with one H&S responsible person from one large British construction company and you will see what mentality they have. I have almost daily contact with them for 6 years already.


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## Autobahn-mann

g.spinoza said:


> In Italy, when you're baptized as a child, you are given 3 names: one from your parents, one from your godfather, one from your godmother.
> They're not legal in any way, and I've never heard them used, not even in church (but I never went to church after confirmation).


AFAIK usually, for semplicity, the name is the same. And also in church people use the same name. I was still going to church before the limitation due to this crisis


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## g.spinoza

Autobahn-mann said:


> AFAIK usually, for semplicity, the name is the same. And also in church people use the same name. I was still going to church before the limitation due to this crisis


Well, where I come from the names are usually different. My first name is Graziano, but at the church I was Graziano Giordano Alessandro...


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## Penn's Woods

Mask vending machines are coming to Philly


They're already a thing in Vegas and NYC.




billypenn.com


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## Penn's Woods

Something interesting: New York City has tested “first responders” - from doctors and nurses through police officers to transit workers - as well as random samples of the population, and found considerably fewer infections among the first responders. The Governor is presenting this as proof that masks protect even the person wearing them. Not convinced myself.


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## m_w_r

MacOlej said:


> You can easily make one up like _koronisko_ and it will be gramatically correct! That is definitely one of the most fun parts of Polish language.


Yeah, I guess you're right, but I think it would have to be supported by the context somehow to be understood, because while grammatically correct its meaning may not exactly be clear to whoever reads it or hears it on its own.


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## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> In Italy, when you're baptized as a child, you are given 3 names: one from your parents, one from your godfather, one from your godmother.
> They're not legal in any way, and I've never heard them used, not even in church (but I never went to church after confirmation).


The cultural differences are quite big. Finland has kept pretty strict rules what comes to names since the early 20th century. The rules have been liberalized in several steps since 1990's, latest in 2019, but still they are pretty strict: max four given names (three before 2019), can take a last name in use by someone only if some of the ancestors max five generations back had that name, no boy's name to a girl and vice versa, no inappropriate names, etc.

All the names are registered into the national Population Information System. The churches are operators of that system. Thus, everyone is subject to the same rules, regardless of whether the name is given at the babtism in a church or in an other way. Usually, the godfathers and the godmothers do not contribute to the names.

Typically, the first one of the first names is the primary name, but anyone can change that by notifying the Population Information Agency. It is 100% up to the person itself to decide if he/she wants to to use the other names, or their initials. Thus, say Pekka Juhani Virtanen may be known as Pekka Virtanen, Juhani Virtanen, Pekka Juhani Virtanen, Pekka J Virtanen or even P Juhani Virtanen. Using several initials, like L Arvi P Poijärvi or Timo T A Mikkonen, is possible, too. However, this is rare, and it is often seen somewhat snobby.


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## PovilD

g.spinoza said:


> In Italy, when you're baptized as a child, you are given 3 names: one from your parents, one from your godfather, one from your godmother.
> They're not legal in any way, and I've never heard them used, not even in church (but I never went to church after confirmation).


In Lithuania, I heard that second name is given only if you're name is not Christian origin. Since my name is considered Christian, my parents told me that I didn't needed second name when I was baptized. While my one relative when baptized she got her second Christian name, since her original name (that is on passport) is not considered Christian. As far as I know, those second names aren't included in passports or other official documents, and sometimes not even remembered. In general, it's rare to have two names on your passport, and as far as I know, three names (not including surname) on passport is almost unheard of.

non-Christian names are those that mostly considered pre-Christian (Pagan) origin, or for newly invented names. Pagan-origin names are mostly names of the historical dukes with Pagan-origin names, or Pagan gods (goddess).


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## ChrisZwolle

We had a very nice summer day today in the Netherlands, on top of that it was also a public holiday, so people went out and about. As per usual, the media is obsessing about busy locations again. 










The earlier reporting about 'way too much people outside' lead to nothing in the corinavirus numbers.

The daily hospitalization rate is now under 10 for several days (that is a 98% decline from late March). They will be opening up bars and restaurants on 1 June. They still consider this a risk. They didn't want to reopen earlier to first see how the opening of schools would affect the infection rate, and as you can only see those results after some time, they didn't want to open up too much at a time.

From 1 June most restrictions in the Netherlands are lifted, but social distancing is still required, large events remain banned and you need a non-medical mask in public transport, the fine is € 95. Though they are reporting that there is not much appetite to enforce it. 

A VMS showing a message to avoid busy locations:


Vermijd drukke plekken - Samen tegen corona by European Roads, on Flickr


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## PovilD

I've read that there is data that masks reduces transmission of the virus by 75%. We can virtually replace trillion dollar worth lockdowns with basically masks and good ventilation, and achieve similar result.

We concluded antigen test on one town near Vilnius on every inhabitant (about 6000 people), and found out that people that tested positive are all (except one) that had direct contact with one cluster that made to close the town. It made conclusions that chances that you can get affected from random contact is slim. You won't transmit the virus that easily on outdoor area. We're still obligatored to wear masks on indoor areas, like malls, but outdoors we are free from masks.


----------



## tfd543

What do you guys think will change in the world after this crisis? I thought about it yesterday in the evening. Sat down for a while. Man, its sad. 

Pretty much anything Will change even after we get the vaccine. Anyway, in the end of the day, one should be happy to be healthy and safe. Thats what matters after all and everything else is just redundant. There are azholes that fool around and try to be experts in whatever shit and I feel sorry for my fellows on this planet that adhere to these crazy ideas with absolute no scientific arguments.


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## Penn's Woods

Pennsylvania now permitting alcoholic beverages to go.... (I.e. take-away, in British terms). 🥃


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> What do you guys think will change in the world after this crisis? I thought about it yesterday in the evening. Sat down for a while. Man, its sad.
> 
> Pretty much anything Will change even after we get the vaccine. Anyway, in the end of the day, one should be happy to be healthy and safe. Thats what matters after all and everything else is just redundant. There are azholes that fool around and try to be experts in whatever shit and I feel sorry for my fellows on this planet that adhere to these crazy ideas with absolute no scientific arguments.


There will probably be less change than many expect. I experienced 9/11 and the months following in the Northeastern U.S., as “experts” were predicting that similar events or worse would happen regularly from now on, that cities would empty out as people moved to safer places (or places they -felt- safer). But that didn’t happen. My worries about such things pretty much subsided after about three years, and daily life got back to basically normal sooner than that.
Human nature will reassert itself, probably fairly fast. I see signs of it already. There are some things that have changed for the better - I’m thinking pollution levels - and it would be nice if we could continue that.


----------



## Kpc21

m_w_r said:


> Yeah, I guess you're right, but I think it would have to be supported by the context somehow to be understood, because while grammatically correct its meaning may not exactly be clear to whoever reads it or hears it on its own.


To me "korońsko" would be a really appropriate name for the coronavirus, especially if the one who uses this word is annoyed at this biological entity 



tfd543 said:


> What do you guys think will change in the world after this crisis?


I don't think much will change. Obviously for some time there will be an economic crisis and for some time people will be more careful with their health, e.g. not going to work while being sick etc. But people will finally forget.

Employers will allow for more remote work than they allowed before, some will even force the employees to partially work remotely to save on office space (mine is just doing that).

By the way, the popularization of remote work will give a good option for those who want to work while they are sick. They will just work remotely instead of coming to the office and infecting the others. And this is especially important in the modern "open space"-style offices (rather hated by the employees but for some reasons, the employers prefer them).



tfd543 said:


> Pretty much anything Will change even after we get the vaccine.


I wouldn't be so sure that there will be a vaccine. It's not unlikely that it will not be possible to find an effective vaccine because e.g. of the frequent mutations. E.g. vaccines against flu are in theory available, but they are effective only short-term as the flu virus mutates a lot.

If a vaccine isn't found, the government will have to control the virus spread-out and do everything to detect the centers of the epidemic early enough. Very large social gathering like huge concerts might get forbidden for some time. And it would have to last until the virus becomes so widespread that almost everyone has had contact with it.


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## MichiH

tfd543 said:


> What do you guys think will change in the world after this crisis? I thought about it yesterday in the evening.


My thoughts on this:
I think that the most important question is when vaccine will be available. I remember Attus writing that he's waiting for HIV vaccine for decades. Will it ever be available in our lifetime?
Some countries act really bad with the virus. Will it ever disappear naturually? Will people be immune when they had it once?

Since more or less all developed countries are effected with lockdowns, I don't think that economy in general will have a big problem. But some businesses will benefit, other businesses will suffer and might close, e.g. closing fashion shops might develop quicker than without the crises.
What will happen to tourismn? The 2020 season will be a big loss for hotels, restaurants and bars. Will they survive? Maybe one season, but will 2021 season be like 2019 was? Countries with a high share of tourismn like Spain, Italy or Greece which already had financial problems before the crises.........

Less people will use PT for the time being. Especially commuters will avoid full trains.
Since we are on the road infrastructure board, will road traffic increase significant? Will we need more road works (road widenings and new roads)?

Positive impacts:

Germans pay more and more with cards instead of cash! Reopened restaurants must ensure that card payment is possible. That's a big change to German culture! I draw out money in Mid March for the last time. I only paid cash in bakery in the last two months. I paid by card for a long time when I had to pay 20€ or more in the supermarket but I also pay smaller amounts with card now (it was often not accepted by shops).
German politicians realized that some business is bad. For instance, slaughterhouse workers (especially from Eastern Europe EU countries) live in bad environments close to work. A law to be passed next week should limit the exploitation of labor.
Health care systems in many countries like Italy or France might be improved.
More people will partially work in home office - say 1 day/week. Saving commuting time and costs
There will be more video conferences instead of meetings in person - not much but a little bit more.


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## ChrisZwolle

This whole situation has led to a large experiment with teleworking. It immediately eliminated traffic congestion and crowding in trains. While it demonstrates that many office jobs are technically feasible to work from home, I think it also demonstrates that telework-only is not desirable, people miss the social contact with colleagues. I also think it is bad for the social cohesion in an organization. For example I hardly have any contact with colleagues I don't have a direct work relation to, but who I would otherwise socialize with at the coffeemachine, during a break or lunch. I miss that. 

We still have to work from home full-time until at least September. I work for the government and their policy is not to give company cars, but stimulate train usage. However the interior ministry has instructed all levels of government to free up public transport capacity, so people are advised to remain working from home for the foreseeable future.

I already worked from home for one day per week before the coronavirus. I hope to upgrade that to 2-3 days per week after this whole crisis is over. But I don't want to work from home full-time.


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## Attus

The catholic church celebrates Ascension today. To explain it using words that are comon nowadays: it's the event when Jesus started to work from home office.


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## keber

Teleworking:
Depends of work. I work as infrastructure designer and working from home is not really very effective, as you still have to be in almost constant contact to coordinate projects.with other designers. The best part is videoconferencing so you don't lose time with meetings (but most important meetings are still better to be carried in person)


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## keber

Double


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## MichiH

I had my first business trip after two months yesterday. It was a great experience seeing the colleagues again! And traveling - on less congested roads  It was also the first day I have worn a "real" mask. Not great but... so what.

We are allowed to go back to office* but in 3 groups. Group 1 will be in the office on Monday + Tuesday, group 2 Wednesday + Thursday, group 3 Monday + Tuesday etc. Since all my usual contacts do not work at the same location like me, I'll stay in home office as much as I can because my calls are scheduled anyway and I had to be in a meeting room most of the day. I hope that I'll have more one-day business trips again or that my colleauges travel to my office.

_*Well, it was just recommended to work from home. Colleagues with bad internet connection, small flats or whatever were always in office. I was in the office twice for a few hours and twice for a few minutes to pick something up._


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## MichiH

^^ Just to add: A LOT HAS CHANGED TO ME! And it will remain like this for the time being. Will things change? No, they have already changed!


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## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> This whole situation has led to a large experiment with teleworking. It immediately eliminated traffic congestion and crowding in trains. While it demonstrates that many office jobs are technically feasible to work from home, I think it also demonstrates that telework-only is not desirable, people miss the social contact with colleagues. I also think it is bad for the social cohesion in an organization. For example I hardly have any contact with colleagues I don't have a direct work relation to, but who I would otherwise socialize with at the coffeemachine, during a break or lunch. I miss that.
> 
> We still have to work from home full-time until at least September. I work for the government and their policy is not to give company cars, but stimulate train usage. However the interior ministry has instructed all levels of government to free up public transport capacity, so people are advised to remain working from home for the foreseeable future.
> 
> I already worked from home for one day per week before the coronavirus. I hope to upgrade that to 2-3 days per week after this whole crisis is over. But I don't want to work from home full-time.


Is your office in Zwolle or farther away?


----------



## Coccodrillo

MacOlej said:


> This reminds me of the muslim system: left hand for dirty deeds/actions (e.g. wiping butt after toilet use) and right hand for clean deeds/actions (e.g. eating). I've read that together with obligatory ablutions before prayers it led to big improvement in hygiene among Arabs in VII century.


It is the same in India.

But seeing the left hand "bad" and the right hand "good" is something very spread in humanity.

To say that something is correct, in English you say "it's right". If you forget something on the bus, so that you will never find it again (= sad thing), you can say "oh, I have left my bag on the bus".

In Italian, "sinistro/sinistra" (masculine/feminine form, it varies according to the subject) means "left / on the left", but it also means "scary/fearsome" (un luogo sinistro = a scary place).

Left-handed people (because they are a minority) have long been seen as sick, I know left-handed people in their 60s-70s which have been forced by their parents or teachers to use their right* hand even if for them it was very difficult (some of them now do "learned" things with the right hand, like writing, and "innate" things with the left hand, like picking up a glass to drink).

*do you see that prejudice again? (the use of the same word to indicade both a correct thing and the position of something in the space relative to you)


----------



## MichiH

^^ If nothing goes right, go left


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## tfd543

Im actually a lefter and I agree, we are paid more attention. I have been asked a couple of times in my life whether I am a lefter because they have seen me writing with left hand.


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## tfd543

It was actually commonlace in YU (SR Macedonia) in my parents local school to be forced to write with right hand. I didnt know that also other countries practiced that decades ago. They were told that its the devil’s hand. Mathafaker teachers... now my mum is very confused What is right and left in different languages (3). Here we have a proof, a proof that tells us What stupid people Can do if they have power. Freedom to all people....


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## PovilD

It's interesting that writing on your left hand was still considered as a bad thing during my childhood years (kindergarten, elementary school in early 2000s), while in teens, I didn't witnessed such "discrimination" anymore. From today, stigmas on writing on your left seem to look like historical artifacts. Although, I guess in many countries, children are still forced to write on your right.

I don't even know for sure about my country if elementary schools and kindergartens still teach children to write on your right, and older kids are not forced anymore, and they can write whenever hand they want. I would think that this shouldn't be an issue anymore, but I don't know.

Left, right are not used to describe something as right or wrong in my language though. English was surprising for me for that matter when I was still learning the basics of the language during my childhood years


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## Penn's Woods

MacOlej said:


> Well, that's a nice little _koronisko_:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's funny that you bring up 9/11 and then argue that not much changed. After all, Patriot Act was introduced as a countermeasure against terrorism but proved such a handy tool for the government's surveillance that they never abolished it after the war on terror was basically over.
> And this is one of the things I'm mostly afraid of: some governments will not phase down all lockdown regulations (e.g. gatherings ban) which in turn will limit our freedoms.


I’m thinking more of how much daily life has changed for people in the part of the world where 9/11 happened, and it really hasn’t significantly.


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## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> Britain has long been a stupid country. For example, they don't have a democratic voting system. It is the only developed country where buses are deregulated (outside London and Northern Ireland) It is the only country that uses predominantly single door buses in big cities (outside London). They don't believe in integrating public transport modes. They prefer local buses to compete with trams and local trains. They don't have unemployment benefit, other than £74 a week job seekers allowance. Kids are mostly taken to school by their parents by car.


What’s un-democratic about their voting system?


----------



## Penn's Woods

MacOlej said:


> Well, that's a nice little _koronisko_:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's funny that you bring up 9/11 and then argue that not much changed. After all, Patriot Act was introduced as a countermeasure against terrorism but proved such a handy tool for the government's surveillance that they never abolished it after the war on terror was basically over.
> And this is one of the things I'm mostly afraid of: some governments will not phase down all lockdown regulations (e.g. gatherings ban) which in turn will limit our freedoms.


À gatherings ban would be unconstitutional in the U.S. outside an emergency context. Freedom of association. Either New Jersey or New York (I forget which) just increased this morning the maximum number of people permitted in outdoor gatherings from 10 to 25. Long-term, in normal times, there’s no way it would survive legal challenge. (It will be interesting to see to what extent current measures are upheld.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Coccodrillo said:


> It is the same in India.
> 
> But seeing the left hand "bad" and the right hand "good" is something very spread in humanity.
> 
> To say that something is correct, in English you say "it's right". If you forget something on the bus, so that you will never find it again (= sad thing), you can say "oh, I have left my bag on the bus".
> 
> In Italian, "sinistro/sinistra" (masculine/feminine form, it varies according to the subject) means "left / on the left", but it also means "scary/fearsome" (un luogo sinistro = a scary place).
> 
> Left-handed people (because they are a minority) have long been seen as sick, I know left-handed people in their 60s-70s which have been forced by their parents or teachers to use their right* hand even if for them it was very difficult (some of them now do "learned" things with the right hand, like writing, and "innate" things with the left hand, like picking up a glass to drink).
> 
> *do you see that prejudice again? (the use of the same word to indicade both a correct thing and the position of something in the space relative to you)


You realize that the “left” in “left something on the bus” is a form of the verb “leave,” nothing to do with the left side of the body?


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## PovilD

radamfi said:


> Britain has long been a stupid country. For example, they don't have a democratic voting system. It is the only developed country where buses are deregulated (outside London and Northern Ireland) It is the only country that uses predominantly single door buses in big cities (outside London). They don't believe in integrating public transport modes. They prefer local buses to compete with trams and local trains. They don't have unemployment benefit, other than £74 a week job seekers allowance. Kids are mostly taken to school by their parents by car.


We know how British are conservative and probably stuck in their 1930s 

I found it suprising that UK are so depressed about their country. When I was kid, from my undermaintained commie block district, UK looked for me like paradise, when my relative took a picture of typical UK (well-maintained) street 

Now, I know, maybe Germany, Sweden are better, blah blah blah...


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## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> What’s un-democratic about their voting system?


They use the First Past the Post voting system. Which means that if you live in a "safe" seat, your vote is basically irrelevant.

I can illustrate with an example. There are 650 seats in the UK each covering a geographical area. Suppose in 325 seats you have the following:

Conservative 50%
Lib Dem 49%
Labour 1%

and in the other 325:

Labour 50%
Lib Dem 49%
Conservative 1%

The overall percentage votes (assuming equal population seats):

Lib Dem 49%
Labour 25.5%
Conservative 25.5%

The number of seats won:

Labour 325
Conservative 325
Lib Dem 0


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## radamfi

PovilD said:


> We know how British are conservative and probably stuck in their 1930s
> 
> I found it suprising that UK are so depressed about their country. When I was kid, from my undermaintained commie block district, UK looked for me like paradise, when my relative took a picture of typical UK (well-maintained) street
> 
> Now, I know, maybe Germany, Sweden are better, blah blah blah...


On paper, the UK may well have a relatively high GDP per capita, but it can't even provide the basics. Most if not all European countries perform better on the things I mention in the message, maybe including Lithuania. And if you don't like it in Lithuania you can move anywhere in the EU/EEA/Switzerland. From next year, we are stuck with either Britain, Ireland or Gibraltar.


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## MichiH

radamfi said:


> The number of seats won:
> 
> Labour 325
> Conservative 325
> Lib Dem 0


It's the very same with the German system. That's why we have "two votes".

Assuming first and second votes have the same result, the seats won would be:
Labour 325 + 328 = *653*
Conservative 325 + 328 = *653*
Lib Dem 0 + 644 = *644*

However, the second vote is calculated per state....


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## Coccodrillo

Penn's Woods said:


> You realize that the “left” in “left something on the bus” is a form of the verb “leave,” nothing to do with the left side of the body?


Sure, in this case it can be a coincidence, but still there is a certain trend in many cultures that "left" is associated with something "bad", and "right" with something "good".

(I forgot that "sinistro" in Italian also means "incident", now most often used in a legal or bureaucratic situation, and that certainly is linked to the concept of "left")


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## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> Yes, I understood. Companies tend to abandon them, because they cannot see added value from the feeling of a real meeting room. The room is not the key thing in the meeting, but the content.


Video equipment im meeting rooms in offices?

We have it (I mean, maybe not whole video walls, but TV screens) and it's extensively used (well, it was before the pandemic).

If you want to organize a physical meeting of people who work in two locations and you don't want to make them travel – it's a perfect thing.



Coccodrillo said:


> In Italian, "sinistro/sinistra" (masculine/feminine form, it varies according to the subject) means "left / on the left", but it also means "scary/fearsome" (un luogo sinistro = a scary place).


In many languages the word from "right" (in terms of directions) also has the meaning of "appropriate" or related to the law.

English – "right" may mean a direction but it's also an adjective with a meaning opposite to wrong.
Polish – "prawo" means a direction but it also literally means law.
Also in English it has the meaning of being allowed – "to have a right to do something", human rights etc.

Even the political right-wing is conservative, it's for following some long existing rules (rights), whether they are good and still appropriate or not, instead of making changes.



PovilD said:


> It's interesting that writing on your left hand was still considered as a bad thing during my childhood years (kindergarten, elementary school in early 2000s), while in teens, I didn't witnessed such "discrimination" anymore. From today, stigmas on writing on your left seem to look like historical artifacts. Although, I guess in many countries, children are still forced to write on your right.
> 
> I don't even know for sure about my country if elementary schools and kindergartens still teach children to write on your right, and older kids are not forced anymore, and they can write whenever hand they want. I would think that this shouldn't be an issue anymore, but I don't know.


Forcing people to write with a right hand actually made sense (although only in the areas with left-to-right writing systems) in the times before ball pens came out, while people were using fountain pens (or earlier quills) for writing.

Text written with a fountain pen dries slowly. And while using such a pen with your left hand, you move your hand over the paper surface where you have just written. Which blurs the text and makes your hand dirty with ink.

Even while writing with a ball pen, as a left-handed, I often get my hand dirty with ink. But now it isn't a big issue.

I went to primary school in Poland in 2000 or 2001 (I don't remember now and I don't want to waste time for calculating it) and nobody at school ever forced me to write with the right hand. My grandma was trying for a moment but she quickly resigned, it just made no sense.

Maybe to Lithuania it came a little bit later.



radamfi said:


> They use the First Past the Post voting system. Which means that if you live in a "safe" seat, your vote is basically irrelevant.


Well, some time ago some anti-system politicians wanted to introduce such a thing (one candidate chosen from each election district) in Poland – it was advertised as a system which brings the chosen member of parliament closer to the voters, this way every voter gets his own representative in the parliament (whether it's the one one voted for or not), who would feel responsible for his area and for his people.

They even made a referendum (I was even writing about it back then in this thread) in 2015. And most people (79%) voted for it. Although it doesn't mean anything as this referendum had the lowest turnout ever in the modern Poland's history – 7.8%.

Currently such a system is used in the upper chamber of our parliament, the lower chamber using a proportional system.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are pros and cons to every system. The Netherlands uses a proportional system with no threshold, so very democratic you'd say. However the government is often accused of being 'Randstad-centric' and other regions feel like they have no priority or being underrepresented, despite them having an overall larger population. 

Another problem is that it is too easy to form a party and get in parliament, resulting in too many small parties, making government formation difficult with 3 or 4 parties to attain a 1 seat majority, or ending up with a compromise nobody voted for. The Netherlands has had stable leadership (only 4 prime ministers since 1982), but rocky coalition governments (12 since 1982 and Rutte II being the first to complete an entire term in 20 years). 

So the stable leadership has compensated for the unstable coalitions, but there is a sizable and growing portion of the electorate that is eternally unhappy, no matter how good or bad the economy rolls. New parties tap into that unhappy electorate, which in turn is making the political landscape even more divided and dysfunctional. 

What's interesting about Dutch politics is that we never had a left-wing government. Left-wing parties have been in government, but they never formed a majority. The Netherlands may be one of the few such countries in Europe.


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## g.spinoza

"Dexterity" as in "physical prowess" or "being good at something with your hands" comes directly from Latin "dextrus", "right-handed".


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Another problem is that it is too easy to form a party and get in parliament, resulting in too many small parties, making government formation difficult with 3 or 4 parties to attain a 1 seat majority, or ending up with a compromise nobody voted for. The Netherlands has had stable leadership (only 4 prime ministers since 1982), but rocky coalition governments (12 since 1982 and Rutte II being the first to complete an entire term in 20 years).


But this seems to be actually the more democratic thing. You have more forces in the parliament, the voices of which must be taken into account while creating the law, so that everyone is happy. More people get represented.

We had such a system in early 1990s, when there were many "couch parties", as they were called (supposedly because all the members could fit on a single couch), but the system got changed later. Back then, even a joke party (Polish Beer Lovers' Party) managed to get 16 seats in the parliament.


----------



## radamfi

In countries which have a proportional voting system, is there a strong demand to change the system to First Past the Post? Certainly in the UK there are a lot of people who want the system changed, but because the two major parties support the current system, there is no chance of change. I haven't heard many Americans complain about their two party system, though.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't think there is any demand in Netherlands to change the system, though there does seem appetite for an electoral threshold of 5%. Though some argue that a threshold wouldn't solve much. A 10% threshold certainly would, but that appears to be somewhat undemocratic as well.


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## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> The usefulness of masks usage in outdoor situations is debatable.


European Respiratory Journal disagrees:




__





Universal use of face masks for success against COVID-19: evidence and implications for prevention policies


A hot debate is taking place on the use of face masks (including cloth and surgical) as a prevention tool in the community vis-à-vis the recent World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations. To shed light on this important topic we reviewed relevant literature focused on the key words...




erj.ersjournals.com





However, the Lancet's position is less strict:


https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30134-X/fulltext


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The problem is that compliance with guidelines on how to wear and handle masks is very poor in reality, so its usefulness is much lower than in theory. It also doesn't explain why the Netherlands flattened the curve without any mask usage while not having had a mass house-arrest of the population either.

The Dutch or Swedish policy would seem outrageously irresponsible if you look at the measures taken in Southern Europe. Yet the Netherlands also flattened the curve and the health care systems in both countries weren't overwhelmed. Switzerland appears confident that the no-mask policy while at the same time allowing gatherings up to 300 people is appropriate.

Because almost all measures were implemented simultaneously, it's difficult to really track their effectiveness. And no politician would admit that they've incurred billions of damage to the economy on measures that weren't necessary. The government of Spain for example still maintains the 'herd immunity with 300,000 deaths' narrative as if that was the only alternative. In fact no country is actively pursuing herd immunity, not even Sweden.


----------



## Kpc21

g.spinoza said:


> Gloves are useful when you don't have portable sanitizer or you can't take it with you. If you use gloves, than when you come home you don't have to use sanitizer if you put them off correctly, just wash your hands with regular soap.


But when you are already back home, then there is absolutely no problem to just wash your hands with normal soap, so if you take them off only then, then there is absolutely no sense in using gloves... Yes, you can contaminate something on the way to the bathroom after you enter your home, but gloves can also be a source of contamination, so it doesn't change much...

And regular soap is better against viruses than sanitizer. Using sanitizer only makes sense if you don't have access to running water..

Gloves make sense e.g. just for the time of visit in a shop, this way you don't contaminate the products on the shelves and you also protect yourself from the contamination on them. In general, for a short time when you are at higher risk. Not for the whole stay outside – then they make absolutely no sense.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> I suppose the wild variation in symptoms will be studied extensively, why do so many infected report no illness at all while others - even sometimes young & fit people - have severe complications?
> But another thing to keep in mind is that in normal situations, healthy young people do sometimes become ill or die of an unexpected disease. Normally this doesn't make the news.


This is common for many infectious diseases and especially respiratory diseases.



CNGL said:


> Here in Spain waring masks is now mandatory, but only if distancing cannot be guaranteed. Thus, I still don't wear a mask because I don't want my glasses to become foggy only by breathing xD.


If your lenses get foggy, you are wearing your mask wrong. You could try masks with out-vents that help exhalation (but they cost 6-8x as much as simple surgical masks).


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> Well, check and check (for familiarity). My father just died of diabetes.


Of secondary disorders....

_I also belong to such a risk group..._


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> But when you are already back home, then there is absolutely no problem to just wash your hands with normal soap, so if you take them off only then, then there is absolutely no sense in using gloves... Yes, you can contaminate something on the way to the bathroom after you enter your home, but gloves can also be a source of contamination, so it doesn't change much...
> 
> And regular soap is better against viruses than sanitizer. Using sanitizer only makes sense if you don't have access to running water..
> 
> Gloves make sense e.g. just for the time of visit in a shop, this way you don't contaminate the products on the shelves and you also protect yourself from the contamination on them. In general, for a short time when you are at higher risk. Not for the whole stay outside – then they make absolutely no sense.


I tend instinctively use my sleeve of my clothes or jacket to push buttons or open doors. I use different clothes for outdoor and indoor use, so I hope (not 100% chance, of course) that the virus will die until the time I will decide the use the cloth or jacket again. I heard sayings that viruses don't stick to the cloths easily, so chances for infecting from the cloth is not very high.

Gloves for me creates discomfort. When getting the change, accidentally touching gloves of the shop worker, it's so uncomfortable. Maybe sweat from naked hands might increase the chance, so maybe gloves are better, but I just theorizing 

My father told me that he heard that South Koreans use stick part of the toothbrush to push the buttons: no need to use gloves, your'e hands don't get contaminated, but it's not very comfortable to use toothbrush stick on many types of door handles. It may be possible to use it, but I think it may look ridiculous.


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## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> But when you are already back home, then there is absolutely no problem to just wash your hands with normal soap, so if you take them off only then, then there is absolutely no sense in using gloves... Yes, you can contaminate something on the way to the bathroom after you enter your home, but gloves can also be a source of contamination, so it doesn't change much...
> 
> And regular soap is better against viruses than sanitizer. Using sanitizer only makes sense if you don't have access to running water..
> 
> Gloves make sense e.g. just for the time of visit in a shop, this way you don't contaminate the products on the shelves and you also protect yourself from the contamination on them. In general, for a short time when you are at higher risk. Not for the whole stay outside – then they make absolutely no sense.


What do you think it's better, washing your already already clean hands because you used gloves, or bare hands that touched everything for long periods of time?
I have no doubts.


----------



## Kpc21

So you are thinking of an additional layer of security... In those terms, it makes sense. The question is, if it's worth the effort. If you are in a risk group, maybe it is.



PovilD said:


> My father told me that he heard that South Koreans use stick part of the toothbrush to push the buttons: no need to use gloves, your'e hands don't get contaminated, but it's not very comfortable to use toothbrush stick on many types of door handles. It may be possible to use it, but I think it may look ridiculous.


It's problematic if it's an elevator with touch buttons.

For elevators they aren't luckily that popular (although they are getting more and more popular, in one new building of my university there was such an elevator) – but almost all the buttons for traffic lights at pedestrian crossings are like that.

In the first days or weeks of the pandemic, I once or two crossed a road on red light to avoid touching the button. And for it, using a stick or a toothbrush wouldn't be helpful because the buttons wouldn't work (it's already problematic when you have thick winter gloves on you).


----------



## geogregor

g.spinoza said:


> What do you think it's better, washing your already already clean hands because you used gloves, or bare hands that touched everything for long periods of time?
> I have no doubts.


Don't take me wrong, but I feel a bit sorry for you. It must be hard to live in state of such anxiety. I would get mad if I was following such thinking...

But of course it is personal. I hope you will be able to relax again eventually.


----------



## Jschmuck

In regards to pushing buttons, I use my knuckles and/or elbows. When I have long sleeved clothing on (shirt, jacket, etc...) I use the clothing to minimize my hands being exposed. These practices have become 2nd nature to me thus I don't have anxiety over it.


----------



## g.spinoza

geogregor said:


> Don't take me wrong, but I feel a bit sorry for you. It must be hard to live in state of such anxiety. I would get mad if I was following such thinking...
> 
> But of course it is personal. I hope you will be able to relax again eventually.


It's not anxiety. I won't end up in a hospital bed, so I'm fine.


----------



## MichiH

Jschmuck said:


> In regards to pushing buttons, I use my knuckles and/or elbows. When I have long sleeved clothing on (shirt, jacket, etc...) I use the clothing to minimize my hands being exposed. These practices have become 2nd nature to me thus I don't have anxiety over it.


I do this for many years now. Especially in (public) rest rooms. It makes no sense to wash your hands when you touch the doorknob afterwards.... or anything else in the lavatory...


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> It's problematic if it's an elevator with touch buttons.
> 
> For elevators they aren't luckily that popular (although they are getting more and more popular, in one new building of my university there was such an elevator) – but almost all the buttons for traffic lights at pedestrian crossings are like that.
> 
> In the first days or weeks of the pandemic, I once or two crossed a road on red light to avoid touching the button. And for it, using a stick or a toothbrush wouldn't be helpful because the buttons wouldn't work (it's already problematic when you have thick winter gloves on you).


I have to use elevator (an old one, tbh), where I live, but these are normal buttons, that I think are usable with some thick stick (toothbrush stick being an (best?) example of it). Though I use my sleeve, instead of toothbrush.

For touch buttons (which, in my area these are mostly for traffic lights), I use my elbow. This photo is from Germany, but we have these here, translated in to our language:











> So you are thinking of an additional layer of security... In those terms, it makes sense. The question is, if it's worth the effort. If you are in a risk group, maybe it is.


I think there are psychological factors too. I don't want to feel that my hands touched something dirty. I feel some sense of security. Though I will wash my hands after being outside with soap and water.

It has been for me even before the pandemic. I tend to avoid to touch surfaces outside if possible, except if I know these are rarely touched surfaces. I think only outdoor recreation facilities was the only exception (if we found them not being used at that time), but this has changed during the pandemic. ...and I liked handshakes, as a form of giving respect, but this has also changed, at least for now.


----------



## cinxxx

I stopped being scared about this over a month ago after seeing how the whole thing isn't really as dramatic as it was presented on mass and social media.
It was non stop panicking and hysteria. I started thinking about it, I realized I don't really know anyone infected, not to mention getting really sick.
I also don't know anyone knowing someone infected. 
I wear a face mask in shops and public transport because it's mandatory, but other than that, I don't.
I do try to keep a decent distance, but I won't like cross the street if someone comes from the opposing direction.
I'm also happy restaurants reopened 
I think it was really good that they didn't go full lock down, locking people inside their homes here in Germany. Take in mind that staying inside for weeks is very bad for your health and immune system. You do need to walk, to get that vitamin D and stuff. It's no wonder a lot of new infections were people that actually didn't leave their house regularly.


----------



## MichiH

cinxxx said:


> I stopped being scared about this over a month ago after seeing how the whole thing isn't really as dramatic as it was presented on mass and social media.
> It was non stop panicking and hysteria.


I was never ever scared. I was careful though.



cinxxx said:


> I started thinking about it, I realized I don't really know anyone infected, not to mention getting really sick.
> I also don't know anyone knowing someone infected.


Me too!



cinxxx said:


> I wear a face mask in shops and public transport because it's mandatory, but other than that, I don't.


yep!



cinxxx said:


> I think it was really good that they didn't go full lock down, locking people inside their homes here in Germany. Take in mind that staying inside for weeks is very bad for your health and immune system. You do need to walk, to get that vitamin D and stuff. It's no wonder a lot of new infections were people that actually didn't leave their house regularly.


Fully agree! People also avoided going to the doctor. Less medical checkup. Less diagnostics. Likely more severe diseases...

However, due to the German soft lockdown, it was possible to keep the health care system working. It was even possible to transport some Italians or Frenchmen to German hospitals.
What had happened when the lockdown had been introduced one week later? Or one month later after Eastern holidays? More people had traveled to the Alps for skiing, visiting their parents in other regions or countries. Still business travels. Perfect conditions for the virus to spread.

And... It is NOT over... I'm quite sure that a second wave will come. Who knows how our politicians will react next time. And how will people react? Will they accept another soft lockdown as they did this time? In worst case, my previous questions "What had happened when...." will be answered in one year.... I hope the answer will stay without reply...


----------



## PovilD

I admit I was scarred, now I'm just a little bit anxious...



cinxxx said:


> I stopped being scared about this over a month ago after seeing how the whole thing isn't really as dramatic as it was presented on mass and social media.


I was indeed scarried with mild panic thoughts too until mid- to late- April, now I'm just a little bit anxious thinking about the future (planning future events), since the World itself is in the new situation (but often I have a feeling of pre-pandemic normalcy, I mostly got back to my regular interests and hobbies).

I've never panicked about the World's situation as much as in this pandemic, but I think it's expected from what the media and other people were reporting...



> It was non stop panicking and hysteria. I started thinking about it, I realized I don't really know anyone infected, not to mention getting really sick.


I heard that was actually the case in hot spots, where nearly everyone knew about some relatives/friends having become really sick to go to the hospital... Most of Europe didn't became a hot spot, although I had fears it will happen weeks after lockdowns implemented. Sweden surprised me a lot, and it still surprises. Very interesting how their situation will end (up).



> I also don't know anyone knowing someone infected.


I only heard someone got tested 



> I wear a face mask in shops and public transport because it's mandatory, but other than that, I don't. I do try to keep a decent distance, but I won't like cross the street if someone comes from the opposing direction.


Me too. I wear than not just because their mandatory, but because indoor environments are the best for virus spread. I don't want to be part of cluster infections. Actually, I'm not too much afraid to get sick (young, but I don't eat healthy, that's might be an issue, but who knows...), but don't want to pass the virus to random strangers.



> I'm also happy restaurants reopened


I'm happy to have possibility to eat somewhere that is not home 



> I think it was really good that they didn't go full lock down, locking people inside their homes here in Germany. Take in mind that staying inside for weeks is very bad for your health and immune system. You do need to walk, to get that vitamin D and stuff. It's no wonder a lot of new infections were people that actually didn't leave their house regularly.


I read sayings that strong immunity can make worse outcomes, since the immunity can react to the virus to fiercly.

On the other hand, getting Vitamin D, can reduce possibility for serious conditions.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Chile has surpassed China in total cases. The number of cases in Chili, and in particular the Santiago metropolitan area has escalated dramatically this month despite there being a partial and later a full lockdown since 26 March.


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> I also don't know anyone knowing someone infected.


Half the people I know in Brescia was infected. One died.


----------



## sponge_bob

The EU 'Recovery' Plan. €750bn

This is in addition to the €150bn a year the EU would normally spend....and which has not been agreed at all from 2021 to 2027 The recovery plan will be disbursed between 2020 and 2023 only. It would be much greater, per year, than the normal spend of €150bn the EU would do. 

In terms of roads only a few countries have projects ready to go that could benefit, the projects would have to go to tender around now and be completed by end 2023 to benefit from these funds. As well as that, some are loans and some are grants, loans would be cheap as loans go but they would be added to the national debt. So the main benefit there is to swap expensive national debt for cheaper Eurodebt...in many cases. Especially outside the Eurozone. 

Therefore_ most of the money is likely to be swallowed by social programmes not by infrastructure programmes_ as they can be cycled up faster. The recovery fund is heavily skewed to countries that had a bad time with Covid. _Italy gets 100x what Ireland gets_, for example and Ireland gets less than 10% of what the government is likely to have to borrow anyway. 

*ITALY* - €172.7 billion (of which €81.8 billion in grants) 
*SPAIN* - €140.5 billion (of which 477.3 billion in grants)
*POLAND* - €63.8 billlion euros (of which €37.7 billion in grants)
*FRANCE* - €38.8 billion (all grants)
*GREECE* - €32 billion (of which €22.6 billion in grants) 
*ROMANIA* - €31.2 billion (of which €19.6 billion in grants)
*GERMANY* - €28.8 billion (all grants) 
*PORTUGAL* - €26.4 billion (of which €15.5 billion in grants) 
*CZECH REPUBLIC* - €19.2 billion (of which €8.6 billion in grants) 
*HUNGARY* - €15.1 billion (of which €8.1 billion in grants) 
*SLOVAKIA* - €12.8 billion (of which €7.9 billion in grants)
*BULGARIA *- €12.4 billion (of which €9.2 billion in grants) 
*CROATIA* - €10 billion (of which €7.4 billion in grants) 
*THE NETHERLANDS* - €6.8 billlion (all grants) 
*LITHUANIA* - €6.3 billion (of which €3.9 billion in grants) 
*BELGIUM* - €5.5 billion euros (all grants) 
*SLOVENIA* - €5.1 billion (of which €2.6 billion in grants) 
*SWEDEN* - €4.7 billion (all grants) 
*LATVIA* - €4.5 billion (of which €2.9 billion in grants) 
*AUSTRIA* - €4 billion (all grants) 
*FINLAND* - €3.5 billion (all grants) 
*ESTONIA* - €3.3 billion (of which €1.9 billion in grants) 
*CYPRUS* - €2.5 billions (of which €1.4 billion in grants) 
*DENMARK* - €2.2 billion (all grants) 
_*IRELAND*_ - €1.9 billion (all grants) 
*MALTA* - €1 billion (of which 40.4 billion in grants) 
*LUXEMBOURG* - €0.2 billion (all grants)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

https://www.regeringen.dk/media/9544/fact-sheet-borders-english-version.pdf



Meanwhile Denmark appears to keep its border closed to most EU countries over the summer. Only tourists from Germany, Norway and Iceland can enter the country (with some requirements) and maybe Sweden and Finland before 31 August, but the rest remains uncertain. They also want to keep Danish citizens in quarantaine after returning from travel from most countries until 31 August. So travel to and from Denmark doesn't look very favorable this summer.

At the same time France is opening its borders by 15 June. They also open up beaches, restaurants, recreation by June 2. Almost the entire country is now in green phase, except for the Parisian region which is still in yellow phase. 


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1266316132081897472


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> The eurocentrism is only a function of the participants in this sub forum.  Who happen to be mostly European. Maybe because Europe has more international travel by road and have so many languages, so that it attracts more members to a single lingua franca (English) to discuss these subjects.


Yep, and for that reason I decided to use British English on this forum, with some exceptions (e.g. I don't use the word "lorry" because I feel it doesn't convey me the idea of a large goods vehicle, so I use "truck" instead). And now I realise I may have used the -ize ending instead of -ise by mistake. Over at AARoads, I use American English instead due to obvious reasons (and it's also the only place I use miles, otherwise always km).


----------



## bogdymol

On another topic: history was made today. First private space rocket with people on board launched today from Florida. SpaceX Demo-2 will dock to ISS in about 19 hours.










The spacecraft crossed also over Austria about 20 minutes after launch. I went outside and I could see it with naked eye. It was like a bright star that crossed the sky from one side to the other very quickly, in about 30 seconds.


----------



## Penn's Woods

CNGL said:


> Yep, and for that reason I decided to use British English on this forum, with some exceptions (e.g. I don't use the word "lorry" because I feel it doesn't convey me the idea of a large goods vehicle, so I use "truck" instead). And now I realise I may have used the -ize ending instead of -ise by mistake. Over at AARoads, I use American English instead due to obvious reasons (and it's also the only place I use miles, otherwise always km).


One of the leading “English English” usage authorities (Fowler’s Modern English Usage) actually prefers -ize. So it’s not a mistake. Although perhaps that’s not for me to say.

I do things here like spelling out state names rather than using abbreviations you all may not know. But totally briticizing my vocabulary is something I wouldn’t do. I don’t know if it would be convincing. (And IN England, I’ll adjust my vocabulary - “return” instead of “round trip,” that sort of thing - but not try a brutish accent. It would sound ridiculous.)

And I haven’t been to AA Roads in years. Nothing against it; just got out of the habit.


----------



## Penn's Woods

bogdymol said:


> On another topic: history was made today. First private space rocket with people on board launched today from Florida. SpaceX Demo-2 will dock to ISS in about 19 hours.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The spacecraft crossed also over Austria about 20 minutes after launch. I went outside and I could see it with naked eye. It was like a bright star that crossed the sky from one side to the other very quickly, in about 30 seconds.


Meanwhile we’ve got a pandemic and riots....


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> Meanwhile we’ve got a pandemic and riots....


What can we do, money talks...


----------



## PovilD

For me, the best word of British English is the word "roundabout" It would be much easier if this word is used in all variants of English.

I don't think much what version of English I use. It may be a mix of British and American English, but I don't know


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> I don't think much what version of English I use. *It may be a mix of British and American English*, but I don't know


It is quite common for non-native speakers.

In Poland in school and at university they insisted on British English. But we had a lot of contact with American English because of cinema, TV and music. Then I went twice for summer work in the US, did some summer jobs in rural England and finally spent a few months in Scotland.
.
So when I moved to London permanently, about 15 years ago, my English was all over the place. And maybe still is, hard to judge myself...

I had some funny situations during travels around the US. People can't really place my accent. I don't sound like Hugh Grant so I'm not English. I don't sound like Sean Connery so I'm not Scottish. Once in Illinois welcome center (American spelling deliberate ) one guy said that "you must be Welsh". Wow, I didn't see that coming...  It seems that to many Americans I sound like someone who is from the British Isles but hard to place anywhere in particular.

Here in Britain people know I'm a foreigner but also struggle to place me. Some guess that I must be Dutch or Norwegian or Swedish. But I guess it is partially due to my stereotypical look (a red viking beard) 

Oh one thing I still struggle with the articles. I either omit them or put the wrong ones in the wrong places. If I write some more serious stuff I still ask my girlfriend to check it for that... I hate the bloody things...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands is experiencing a record dry spring, we've had virtually no rain at all since mid-March. Drought is particularly pronounced in the more inland locations that have a lower ground water table. 2019 and 2018 also had droughts. The grass is yellow or brown in most places that aren't close to the waterline. Water pressure was reduced in some areas yesterday due to extremely high consumption (people watering their lawn).

The Dutch meteorological service keeps track of the 'precipiation deficit' over the summer. While it is normal to have a deficit due to high evaporation, it is currently drier than the spring of 1976, the record year.


----------



## RipleyLV

Penn's Woods said:


> Meanwhile we’ve got a pandemic and riots....


They made the right choice to leave.


----------



## panda80

Managed to do a PB in terms of continous driving (just with stops for toilet and tank) yesterday. I had to bring someone to the hungarian-romanian border (I chose Battonya-Turnu), there were 1930km go and back, in 21h 30min (normally you can do it quicker, but I lost about 1h 30 at the austrian-hungarian border and chose another route in Austria and Bavaria, other than classical A4-A1-A8, went on B4-B38 through north Austria, than took some secondary roads in Bavaria to reach my home).


----------



## MichiH

A beta of the German "Corona warn app" is available: Open-Source Project Corona-Warn-App
You can check the source code: https://github.com/corona-warn-app/


----------



## CNGL

Wow, e-skip has been on fire all over Europe. The same day I received Danish radio station DR P4 Copenhagen 1775 km away from the transmitter they received my local station SER Radio Huesca in Germany and in Northern Ireland. Not bad.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands is experiencing a record dry spring, we've had virtually no rain at all since mid-March. Drought is particularly pronounced in the more inland locations that have a lower ground water table. 2019 and 2018 also had droughts. The grass is yellow or brown in most places that aren't close to the waterline. Water pressure was reduced in some areas yesterday due to extremely high consumption (people watering their lawn).
> 
> The Dutch meteorological service keeps track of the 'precipiation deficit' over the summer. While it is normal to have a deficit due to high evaporation, it is currently drier than the spring of 1976, the record year.


It is the same in SE England. In some London parks grass is completely brown. Add crowds and it looks like after summer festival...

UK sees sunniest spring on record



> *The UK has experienced its sunniest spring since records began in 1929, the Met Office has said.
> 
> It is also set to be the driest May on record for some parts of UK, including the driest in England for 124 years.*
> 
> Some areas are already warning of drought conditions despite exceptionally wet weather and flooding earlier in the year.
> 
> But there are no plans for hosepipe bans yet, according to the water industry trade body Water UK.
> 
> The UK spent much of spring in lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, but thousands flocked to beaches last week to enjoy the sun following a slight easing of restrictions in England.
> 
> *Only nine springs on record have topped 500 hours of sunshine but, by Wednesday, the UK had clocked up 573 hours.*
> 
> While the Met Office's full figures will not be available until Monday, the village of Benson in Oxfordshire is likely to have been the driest place, with "no measurable rain" falling in their rain bucket, BBC Weather meteorologist Matt Taylor said.
> 
> Explaining the prolonged sunny weather, he said the jet stream - strong winds driving much of the UK's variable weather - was largely anchored to the north of the UK during spring. That allowed high pressure to build, whilst the rainy low pressure systems stayed out in the Atlantic.
> 
> "Some scientists say these 'stalled' weather patterns are a result of climate change and the warming that is taking place in the Arctic region could lead to more extreme weather events in future," he said.
> 
> Prof Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, said the swing from record-breaking wet weather to the months of sunshine was "unprecedented" and "concerning" because it showed how much the UK's climate was changing.
> 
> National Farmers' Union deputy president Stuart Roberts said while water availability was "generally good" at the moment, "it could shape up to be an extremely challenging season for farmers and growers".
> 
> But the spring weather has been good news for strawberry farmers, with 2020 on track to produce one of Britain's biggest ever crops of fruit.
> 
> According to Tesco, the record levels of sunshine have resulted in an estimated 20% increase in strawberry production.
> 
> The months of sun followed the wettest February since records began in 1862.
> 
> Storms Ciara, Dennis and Jorge all brought masses of rainfall and flooding to England and Wales.
> 
> But some of the rivers that flooded at the time are now running at exceptionally low levels, including the Rivers Lune and Kent in the north-west of England.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch spring even recorded over 800 hours of sunshine. This is the third-sunniest season of all time and the sunniest spring of all time.

On the other hand, May wasn't warmer than average. So while it was sunny, it wasn't exceptionally warm.


----------



## mgk920

bogdymol said:


> On another topic: history was made today. First private space rocket with people on board launched today from Florida. SpaceX Demo-2 will dock to ISS in about 19 hours.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The spacecraft crossed also over Austria about 20 minutes after launch. I went outside and I could see it with naked eye. It was like a bright star that crossed the sky from one side to the other very quickly, in about 30 seconds.


I kindof teared up while watching that launch on my phone while I was dining on a late lunch at a local fast food joint here in the Appleton, WI area.  At that point in the mission, it would have been at a low altitude, between 200 and 250 km, just safely entering orbit, so yes, it would have crossed the sky very quickly where you were.

I was the first launch of humans into orbit on a USA-built spacecraft from USA soil in nearly ten years and I wished that I could have seen it at that point.

Mike


----------



## keber

^^ Sadly here we had a cloudy evening and I couldn't observe ISS+Dragon passing above about 20 minutes after launch. I have to admit, as a fan of manned spaceflight I was quite nervous before and during launch.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands is reopening sit-down restaurants, bars and cafés today. The media is livestreaming the 'event'. A maximum of 30 people are allowed in indoor locations. Indoor eating also requires a reservation, outdoor facilities do not, and can accommodate unlimited numbers of guests as long as non-household members are seated 1.5 m apart.

At the same time, testing is expanded to 30,000 per day, everyone with symptoms can get a test. The phone number for making an appointment was overloaded, though if the spread of the virus is a function of the hospitalization rate, the share of positive tests will likely be low, it already was below 5% positive in recent weeks.

Masks are now also mandatory in public transport. It remains a hotly debated topic.


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> It is quite common for non-native speakers.
> 
> In Poland in school and at university they insisted on British English. But we had a lot of contact with American English because of cinema, TV and music. Then I went twice for summer work in the US, did some summer jobs in rural England and finally spent a few months in Scotland.
> .
> So when I moved to London permanently, about 15 years ago, my English was all over the place. And maybe still is, hard to judge myself...
> 
> I had some funny situations during travels around the US. People can't really place my accent. I don't sound like Hugh Grant so I'm not English. I don't sound like Sean Connery so I'm not Scottish. Once in Illinois welcome center (American spelling deliberate ) one guy said that "you must be Welsh". Wow, I didn't see that coming...  It seems that to many Americans I sound like someone who is from the British Isles but hard to place anywhere in particular.
> 
> Here in Britain people know I'm a foreigner but also struggle to place me. Some guess that I must be Dutch or Norwegian or Swedish. But I guess it is partially due to my stereotypical look (a red viking beard)
> 
> Oh one thing I still struggle with the articles. I either omit them or put the wrong ones in the wrong places. If I write some more serious stuff I still ask my girlfriend to check it for that... I hate the bloody things...


My situation was similar. Remember clearly that learned such terms like "lorry" in elementary school 

I remember my English being a bit poor in comparison with today. I think I learned English that is mostly American English from YouTube and reading stuff on the internet, including SSC. This had greatly my English improved in late teens. I think even this forum have its great influence.

But some elements that I learned in school, that were or are might be prominent in Post-Soviet area f*cked my English a bit too. I have problems mixing dinner with lunch. I had problems in an international group mixing those two up, and being misunderstood. I had to correct myself. I sometimes accidentally call lunch as dinner, while dinner is a "supper". When in real life lunch is on afternoon, dinner is on the evening, and supper is not widely used term in general. I read one influential local Lithuanian columnist (and food critic) that this has come from Armenian affairs in Soviet Union for having great responsibility in English-Russian dictionary translations.


----------



## Penn's Woods

PovilD said:


> My situation was similar. Remember clearly that learned such terms like "lorry" in elementary school
> 
> I remember my English being a bit poor in comparison with today. I think I learned English that is mostly American English from YouTube and reading stuff on the internet, including SSC. This had greatly my English improved in late teens. I think even this forum have its great influence.
> 
> But some elements that I learned in school, that were or are might be prominent in Post-Soviet area f*cked my English a bit too. I have problems mixing dinner with lunch. I had problems in an international group mixing those two up, and being misunderstood. I had to correct myself. I sometimes accidentally call lunch as dinner, while dinner is a "supper". When in real life lunch is on afternoon, dinner is on the evening, and supper is not widely used term in general. I read one influential local Lithuanian columnist (and food critic) that this has come from Armenian affairs in Soviet Union for having great responsibility in English-Russian dictionary translations.


Of course, when I was growing up, we had our big Sunday meal after church, so early in the afternoon, and called it “dinner”; we’d have sandwiches later and call that “supper.” That may - judging from things I’ve heard from friends who didn’t grow up Roman Catholic - that may be typical of Catholic cultures - Irish, Italian, Polish - and I’m guessing it’s because of the old church rule of fasting until you’d received Communion, so you were hungry after church. Although my mom has remarked she hates having to cook a big meal late on a Sunday. I’m doing most of her cooking these days, but on holidays where she does some of it and additional people are coming, she’ll still campaign for an early “dinner.”

Bottom line, I think “dinner” isn’t so much an evening meal as the main meal of the day....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Actually, I just took an informal, small survey - a friend who grew up in Georgia (and Protestant): he used the term “dinner” ONLY for the big Sunday meal after church. The evening meal was “supper” every day.


----------



## MichiH

I've been downtown for the first time in three months today. I only took a walk in my urban district and the forest in the past weeks.

There were a lot of people sitting in the parks and cafes. They usually kept the distance. But when walking, it was impossible to keep the distance. I didn't see people wearing masks except of waitresses in the cafes and just two(!) women on the streets. It looked very close to _normal_.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> Actually, I just took an informal, small survey - a friend who grew up in Georgia (and Protestant): he used the term “dinner” ONLY for the big Sunday meal after church. The evening meal was “supper” every day.


In UK it varies a lot depending on region and class.

In general in London middle-class people call the meal at the start of the afternoon 'lunch' and the evening one 'dinner'. Working-class people in London generally call the meal at the end of the day 'tea', using 'dinner' only for the big Sunday meal 'Sunday dinner'. This is followed up by a smaller 'tea' about 7 or 8pm on a Sunday. This is generalising though, it does vary from household to household. Almost all the working class people I grew up around are Catholic, I think this applies to Protestants too though.

I myself grew up in a working class area but one of my parents wasn't a native English speaker which meant that the language spoken in the house was pushed further towards standard English that someone might learn. Growing up, I called the main meal 'dinner' everyday (though it was earlier on a Sunday). I didn't have a specific word for anything I might have eaten later on on a Sunday though I'm sure I must have eaten something. This cause some confusion at my grandparents', if they asked if I wanted 'tea' I would say I didn't like tea.

Sunday lunch also means an earlier dinner on a Sunday though.

There are parts of the UK where people do say 'supper', and I don't doubt some Londoners do too but I wouldn't ever use it. Unless I was talking about the Last Supper I guess.


----------



## Penn's Woods

DanielFigFoz said:


> In UK it varies a lot depending on region and class.
> 
> In general in London middle-class people call the meal at the start of the afternoon 'lunch' and the evening one 'dinner'. Working-class people in London generally call the meal at the end of the day 'tea', using 'dinner' only for the big Sunday meal 'Sunday dinner'. This is followed up by a smaller 'tea' about 7 or 8pm on a Sunday. This is generalising though, it does vary from household to household. Almost all the working class people I grew up around are Catholic, I think this applies to Protestants too though.
> 
> I myself grew up in a working class area but one of my parents wasn't a native English speaker which meant that the language spoken in the house was pushed further towards standard English that someone might learn. Growing up, I called the main meal 'dinner' everyday (though it was earlier on a Sunday). I didn't have a specific word for anything I might have eaten later on on a Sunday though I'm sure I must have eaten something. This cause some confusion at my grandparents', if they asked if I wanted 'tea' I would say I didn't like tea.
> 
> Sunday lunch also means an earlier dinner on a Sunday though.
> 
> There are part of the UK where people do say 'supper', and I don't doubt some Londoners do too but I wouldn't ever use it. Unless I was talking about the Last Supper I guess.


Yeah, I don’t think I ever have occasion to use “supper” these days.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Thanks to the unrest, no one’s talking about the pandemic any more, except for the occasional remark about how many protesters/looters are wearing masks....


----------



## g.spinoza

DanielFigFoz said:


> In UK it varies a lot depending on region and class.
> 
> In general in London middle-class people call the meal at the start of the afternoon 'lunch' and the evening one 'dinner'. Working-class people in London generally call the meal at the end of the day 'tea', using 'dinner' only for the big Sunday meal 'Sunday dinner'. This is followed up by a smaller 'tea' about 7 or 8pm on a Sunday. This is generalising though, it does vary from household to household. Almost all the working class people I grew up around are Catholic, I think this applies to Protestants too though.
> 
> I myself grew up in a working class area but one of my parents wasn't a native English speaker which meant that the language spoken in the house was pushed further towards standard English that someone might learn. Growing up, I called the main meal 'dinner' everyday (though it was earlier on a Sunday). I didn't have a specific word for anything I might have eaten later on on a Sunday though I'm sure I must have eaten something. This cause some confusion at my grandparents', if they asked if I wanted 'tea' I would say I didn't like tea.
> 
> Sunday lunch also means an earlier dinner on a Sunday though.
> 
> There are parts of the UK where people do say 'supper', and I don't doubt some Londoners do too but I wouldn't ever use it. Unless I was talking about the Last Supper I guess.


This is all really, really, confusing.


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## ChrisZwolle

Dinner has a Dutch (French) equivalent: _diner_ (pronounced as in French). A _diner_ is more formal and extensive than a regular everyday evening meal.

Dinner / supper time also varies a lot by countries. In the Netherlands it is often around 5:30 - 6:30 p.m., depending on work schedules. 

People always speak of a '9-5 job', but in my experience if you go into the office at 9 you're pretty much the last one in. Most people start around 8 or 8:30 and leave after 4 - 4.30. It depends if people work 8 or 9 hours per day. 4x9 is fairly common as an alternative for 5x8. Some work 40 hours one week and 32 the other.


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## ChrisZwolle

In Taiwan:


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## Verso

bogdymol said:


>


Right over my head.


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## radamfi

In addition to what was said earlier, in the north of England the midday meal is generally called "dinner" and evening meal is called "tea" even by middle class people. To add to the confusion, the people (usually women) who look after the kids and prepare and serve the lunchtime meals at school are informally called "dinner ladies", even in the south of England, although I expect there is probably a gender neutral name used officially these days.


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## PovilD

I remember learning "lunch" as short meal between breakfast and (early afternoon) dinner, when you eat sandwich, or something that could quickly boost you up at work, but don't let you overeat for "dinner".


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## PovilD

DanielFigFoz said:


> Growing up, I called the main meal 'dinner' everyday (though it was earlier on a Sunday). I didn't have a specific word for anything I might have eaten later on on a Sunday though I'm sure I must have eaten something. This cause some confusion at my grandparents', if they asked if I wanted 'tea' I would say I didn't like tea.


That's really interesting. Expecting just a tea, but probably having a whole meal, but the tea would always be included?

It's possible, like in my country, that if you say that you will bring tea to the guest, you can additionally bring something along the tea, like cake, candies or cookies.


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## radamfi

PovilD said:


> That's really interesting. Expecting just a tea, but probably having a whole meal, but the tea would always be included?


In Britain (a cup of) tea is rarely part of the evening meal, even when the meal is called "tea".


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## keber

Yestrday I was observing traffic toward Slovenian coast area (and then Croatia). Just two or three weeks ago there were no foreigners except trucks.Yesterday there was already some tourist traffic which consisted of 95% Gemans and about 5% of all other nationalities. Maybe there was about a quarter of usual traffic from Germany for that time of the year. Many Germans already had campers or camp trailers. Other nationalities were all from easteren Europe. Except Germans there were no other plates from west Europe (which should be plenty of them in normal times). A complete absence of Austrian licence plates is also astonishing as there were holidays and Austrians usually flood coastal area in this time of year. Austria doesn't let own citizens to cross border toward Slovenia even if corona statistics is much better in Slovenia than in Austria.
Noticeable is also a complete absence of long distance bus traffic, but I did see three Romanian busses with trailers in convoy (I can't say if they carried passengers or not).

Here we have open bars and restaurants already for a month, also all shops for about 2 weeks, also partly schools but that doesn't show in the covid-19 statistics. We have up to 5 new cases per week (per 2 million people) and virus is thought to be almost erradicated in country.


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## Verso

keber said:


> A complete absence of Austrian licence plates is also astonishing as there were holidays and Austrians usually flood coastal area in this time of year.


I saw around 5 Austrians yesterday between Novo mesto and Ljubljana. Maybe they were Bosnians going back to Austria. That highway is usually calm, but it was quite busy yesterday; it looked like a typical Sunday afternoon when students go back to LJ.


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## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> I have problems mixing dinner with lunch.


Because the Central/Eastern-European mode of meals is different from the Western-European one.

In Poland it's not really customary to have a large meal around midday and I don't think it's different e.g. in Lithuania.

About midday, we normally have so called "second breakfast", which is usually something prepared at home in the morning, taken to work – e.g. sandwiches, salads and other smaller things.

Then we have "obiad" (which can be translated as lunch or dinner) after we return home from work. Although people who work in offices, especially in corporations, now more and more often tend to have lunches at work in the western-European fashion – at a restaurant in the office building/campus or ordered with delivery to the workplace. This is also sometimes called "obiad", although some people use the English term "lunch".

And a small meal in the evening, last one in a day – a sandwich, a yogurt or something like that, is called "kolacja".

When you buy a pre-organized trip that also includes meals, it often includes a large meal quite late in the afternoon (so that you have more time for sightseeing before that) and this is then called "obiadokolacja". This seems to me to be the most literal translation of the English "dinner", but in Polish it practically only refers to a meal included in a trip.

Apart from that, some people have a small meal, often just a snack, between "obiad" and "kolacja" and this is called "podwieczorek", literally the "sub-evening" meal.

Also a large, ceremonial evening meal isn't called "kolacja" but "wieczerza". But it must be really ceremonial – the only two types of meals I can thing of which are normally called so are the Christmas Eve dinner (I guess in English it would be called a dinner, we have it in the evening, traditionally it should start when the first star appears in the sky; in practice it's usually so that kids wait for this first star, it doesn't appear anyway because it's cloudy, and it's anyway impossible to prepare a meal for an accurate moment which isn't clearly defined in terms of time) and the Last Supper from the Bible (in this case it's called "supper" and not "dinner" in English...).



ChrisZwolle said:


> People always speak of a '9-5 job', but in my experience if you go into the office at 9 you're pretty much the last one in. Most people start around 8 or 8:30 and leave after 4 - 4.30. It depends if people work 8 or 9 hours per day. 4x9 is fairly common as an alternative for 5x8. Some work 40 hours one week and 32 the other.


In Poland it was customary in the past to start office work at 8 AM and and at 4 PM, now more people work like 9–5. A full time job is considered to be 40 hours a week and if someone works shorter (like you mention, 36 hours a week on average), it would be a part-time job.

Also schools by convention start classes at 8 AM, although sometimes you start from the second "lesson hour" of a day, which starts around 8:50–8:55, depending on the school, when they have the bell for the second hour. And nowadays e.g. many high schools in Lodz start the classes not at 8:00 but at 8:15, so that the students can avoid the worst congestion in the traffic.

A friend of mine works in a company that builds IT systems for cars. They had to cut down the employment because of Covid – and so that they didn't have to fire anyone, they made it so that they shorted the work time to 4 days a week. Of course, this is now a part-time job and they get 20% lower salaries – but they have free Fridays. The friend I mentioned isn't complaining – he earns a little bit less but it isn't problem for him and he has more time for himself.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ˇˇˇˇ


ChrisZwolle said:


> In Taiwan:


How does this even happen? Even if the camera based system got confused and "thought" the truck was an overhead sign (this has actually happened in the past) the forward-facing radar should've been able to detect a huge immovable object in the middle of the road, right? Right?

I'm one of those people who thinks that calling an assisted cruise control "auto-pilot" is highly disingenuous and even unethical. What is more, there should definitely be systems in place to check whether the driver is paying attention or not. Systems like these were actually available on cars even before assisted cruise controls came along but for some reason they haven't been implemented, at least on Teslas. The open-source comma.ai system which enables you to have a Tesla-like driver assist on your regular Honda or Toyota has a camera pointed towards the driver to check whether he/she is paying attention to the road.


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## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> I'm one of those people who thinks that calling an assisted cruise control "auto-pilot" is highly disingenuous and even unethical. What is more, there should definitely be systems in place to check whether the driver is paying attention or not. Systems like these were actually available on cars even before assisted cruise controls came along but for some reason they haven't been implemented, at least on Teslas. The open-source comma.ai system which enables you to have a Tesla-like driver assist on your regular Honda or Toyota has a camera pointed towards the driver to check whether he/she is paying attention to the road.


The discussion of autopilots and self-driving cars taking over the world within the next few years is pure nonsense. For example, modeling the normal winter driving conditions will be a nightmare. Camera based systems do not work if it is snowing, and their pattern recognition still is primitive. During the last parliament election in Finland, the cars' traffic sign recognition systems were reported to interpret the candidate numbers in the advertisements to be speed limit signs.










I have turned the line assist off in my Skodillac (Karoq m/2019), because its horror-like behavior. In addition, the default setting of some other assists are too sensitive. The front collision assist has once slammed the brakes on a motorway to a speed of 30 km/h without reason. Another assist blows a siren on when it sees a metal guard railing ahead in a normal curve. 

I am working in the IT industry. Typically, after getting the prototype or a mock-up complete, some 90 to 99 percent of the work is still ahead. As the car industry apparently has invented no silver bullet, the same rule applies to their software development, too. The difference between "standard" IT systems and car software is that consequences from car applications making wrong decision are potentially fatal.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've also read about Tesla's having problem distinguishing between shadows and objects, people say that Tesla sometimes slam the brake when approaching an overpass shadow. I also heard a story recently about a T-Roc that activated the emergency braking in a tunnel for no reason.

Due to the continuous mode of operation (20,000, 30,000 or 80,000 km per year) systems like these become dangerous or annoying if they do not perform flawlessly. 99.9% accuracy is not enough.


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## Suburbanist

Enhanced control systems are not "auto-pilot". It is correct to call these parking systems "auto-parking", since they do perform their task.

This is why vehicle automation need to evolve quickly to the stage of driverless systems, or until then, autopilot that can fully operate without driver input of 'emergency supervision' unless the system itself sounds an alarm requiring the driver to intervene. That is how aircraft autopilot systems work: they cannot handle all situations, but when aviation autopilot recognizes it cannot handle something, it sounds a loud alarm requiring pilots to intervene.

So driverless = no human input needed, at all. A completely self-driven pod that will safely stop if unable to operate, you could send a child or blind person there from A to B. This requires a wider system that cannot be just voluntary car-based.
And autopilot = performs most tasks, and can alert drivers quickly when facing a situation it cannot handle or that is outside its parameters.

What Tesla and some others have now is a system that cannot, by itself, distinguish properly when it cannot fully operate. So the driver must surveil the operating space all the time and be on alert to ensure the input replacement of the system is safe and sound. That is possible, although riskier since drivers do not get the type of operational awareness that - say - ocean-going vessel operators do. Car drivers treat these partial input automation systems as something they are not, and then crashes happen.

In any case, driving automation in controlled-access highways is the future, and the future had better arrive sooner than later. Car traffic is one of the riskier machine-operating activities in the developed world, done by highly untrained and distracted operators in huge numbers.

Auto-braking systems and pedestrian-avoidance systems, imperfect as they might be, have prevented many deaths and debilitating injuries for pedestrians as well. What is needed is a general protocol for car-to-car communication, one that should be mandatory within 4 years in all new road vehicles sold (in Europe, for instance) and completely interoperable. A transponder-like feature that might prevent frontal collisions, those very dangerous pile-ups under fog or at the tail of a full-stop congested road sector etc. Vehicle A would inform in real time speed, acceleration, trajectory and braking capabilities to all surrounding vehicles. Computers quickly calculate if a collision is imminent (this is trivial with current computer power any smartphone chipset has) and override drivers to prevent it.


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## ChrisZwolle

On the other hand, controlled-access highways are already the safest type of road by a considerable margin. While it would be easiest to automate driving on those, the benefits to overall traffic safety would be relatively small. 

A major difference between autopilot on a plane and autopilot on a car is that a car is in a much more demanding environment, always seconds away from a potential crash. This is why partial automation with the driver being the supervisor doesn't work. People are not good in montoring systems continuously, but get distracted easily. This already is a big problem with people actually driving a car today.

In any case, the optimistic reporting in the mid 2010s that level 5 autonomous vehicles would flood the market in the early 2020s have faded away. I don't think anyone working on those systems actually believes that it is possible, and the idea that level 5 may not become operational in our lifetimes became more prevalent in recent years.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Because the Central/Eastern-European mode of meals is different from the Western-European one.
> 
> In Poland it's not really customary to have a large meal around midday and I don't think it's different e.g. in Lithuania.
> 
> About midday, we normally have so called "second breakfast", which is usually something prepared at home in the morning, taken to work – e.g. sandwiches, salads and other smaller things.
> 
> Then we have "obiad" (which can be translated as lunch or dinner) after we return home from work. Although people who work in offices, especially in corporations, now more and more often tend to have lunches at work in the western-European fashion – at a restaurant in the office building/campus or ordered with delivery to the workplace. This is also sometimes called "obiad", although some people use the English term "lunch".


If talking about my family. We indeed have big meal in midday, if we are not at work, and meal in the evening everyday usually after work. If we had meal in midday, we have slightly lighter meal in the evening.

If at work, then yes, lunch usually resemble second breakfast, unless we go to canteen. Breakfasts are usually somewhat light ...or we stick to the grain porridge.

I don't know certainly about other families in Lithuania, but I have perception that situation is similar.

Interestingly "lunch" is translated to Lithuanian as "pietūs" which literally mean "South" in our language. Probably because the Sun is in the South.
For dinner (or supper), we use term "vakarienė" which is similarly sounding as "Vakarai" which means "West" in our language.
For breakfast, we use term "pusryčiai" which would be translated as "half-Easts" (plural) or "semi-Easts" (plural). I don't know why it is called that way, maybe because the meal is light and the sun is in the East.

This put lingual confusions down. You just look on which direction the Sun is, and call the meal accordingly 

---
By the way, Schengen regime is back between Lithuania and Latvia from this Monday, but Polish border is still shut tight.


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## ChrisZwolle

A staggering 323,000 people have called the hotline for a coronavirus test in the Netherlands yesterday. 

These figures are insane and the vast majority did not qualify. You can only get a test if you currently have symptoms. 5,500 people eventually got an appointment for a test. But hay fever is now also out in full force.


----------



## MacOlej

Rebasepoiss said:


> I'm one of those people who thinks that calling an assisted cruise control "auto-pilot" is highly disingenuous and even unethical.


That is actually a pretty common accusation towards Tesla among car journalists. Although it is written in fine print that it is not a fully autonomous system, most people don't read manuals and disclaimers but limit their "research" to the marketing part. Therefore they understand that Tesla's Autopilot is like an autopilot in a plane where a plane flies itself and the pilot doesn't have to do anything (and even that is obviously not true as other guys here explained).



Rebasepoiss said:


> What is more, there should definitely be systems in place to check whether the driver is paying attention or not. Systems like these were actually available on cars even before assisted cruise controls came along but for some reason they haven't been implemented, at least on Teslas. The open-source comma.ai system which enables you to have a Tesla-like driver assist on your regular Honda or Toyota has a camera pointed towards the driver to check whether he/she is paying attention to the road.


I've seen Cadillac's Super Cruise being praised as a system superior to Tesla's. And one of the advantages is exactly this: driver surveillance. You can find plenty of hacks online on how to trick a Tesla to think a driver is holding the steering wheel. However, it's almost impossible to trick a Cadillac which has a camera constantly scanning driver's eyes - so if he/she takes his/her eyes off the road, car will start to beep and eventually will switch the Super Cruise off.


----------



## Penn's Woods

PovilD said:


> If talking about my family. We indeed have big meal in midday, if we are not at work, and meal in the evening everyday usually after work. If we had meal in midday, we have slightly lighter meal in the evening.
> 
> If at work, then yes, lunch usually resemble second breakfast, unless we go to canteen. Breakfasts are usually somewhat light ...or we stick to the grain porridge.
> 
> I don't know certainly about other families in Lithuania, but I have perception that situation is similar.
> 
> Interestingly "lunch" is translated to Lithuanian as "pietūs" which literally mean "South" in our language. Probably because the Sun is in the South.
> For dinner (or supper), we use term "vakarienė" which is similarly sounding as "Vakarai" which means "West" in our language.
> For breakfast, we use term "pusryčiai" which would be translated as "half-Easts" (plural) or "semi-Easts" (plural). I don't know why it is called that way, maybe because the meal is light and the sun is in the East.
> 
> This put lingual confusions down. You just look on which direction the Sun is, and call the meal accordingly
> 
> ---
> By the way, Schengen regime is back between Lithuania and Latvia from this Monday, but Polish border is still shut tight.


In French, “midi” - which comes from the Latin for “mid-day” - is the normal word for noon, but is also a way of saying “south.” In France “le Midi” means southern France. Brussels has a train station called “gare du Midi”....


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> A staggering 323,000 people have called the hotline for a coronavirus test in the Netherlands yesterday.
> 
> These figures are insane and the vast majority did not qualify. You can only get a test if you currently have symptoms. 5,500 people eventually got an appointment for a test. But hay fever is now also out in full force.


Only people with symptoms can be tested? Does your government not know that asymptomatic people can be carriers?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Well they do test people who have been in contact with coronavirus patients, even if they do not have symptoms yet. But it makes no sense to waste a huge amount of testing capacity if there is no reason to test. 

There is a segment of the population who is hugely paranoid, as evidenced by the 323,000 calls in a single day despite every available figure indicates that the virus has been diminished almost entirely.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

For a long time now the number of tests made in Estonia has been limited by the number of people who have a reason to do the test, rather than the capacity for tests in general. Today the number of new cases was 0 for the first time (out of around 1,000 tests). There's an estimated 79 active cases of Covid, 20 people in hospital and 0 in ICU. And all of this without mask usage nor a complete lockdown. I'm not saying either of those don't work, I'm just saying that perhaps their efficacy is a bit overrated compared to simple social distancing and following basic hygiene recommendations. That being said, people are already rather careless over here so I woudn't be surprised by a second wave.


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## PovilD

Penn's Woods said:


> In French, “midi” - which comes from the Latin for “mid-day” - is the normal word for noon, but is also a way of saying “south.” In France “le Midi” means southern France. Brussels has a train station called “gare du Midi”....


We also indicate cardinal directions for time of the day too.
Rytas - Morning. Rytai - East
Pietūs - Noon. Pietūs (same word)- South
Popietė - Afternoon. Prieš pietus - Before noon.
Vakaras - Evening. Vakarai - West.

Night is "naktis". I couldn't find anything "North" in this word, and this has been interesting for me even when I was pre-school kid  North is šiaurė. Night meal is sometimes called "naktipiečiai" (translates as "night lunch/dinner"), mostly for those in the night shift. They derived from the word "pietūs", but has nothing to do with the direction of the sun, since there are no sun out there in the night.

Day is "diena".

Btw, for the greetings, I found interesting that Russians greets "dobriy notsh" in the middle of the night when I was listening one Russian radio station through the internet. Which means something like "good night", similarly used as "good morning" or "good evening". I didn't find this feature in my language or I think even English language. Good night or "Labanaktis" in Lithuanian, means wish for good night sleep. In my language, we usually stick with Good evening for those who haven't went to sleep, and good morning for those who have slept for a while (but woke up at least in 3-4 am). I think at 5-6 am, everyone should greet "good morning", and I think 4-5 am is changing point for pottential night shows to shift from good evening to good morning.


----------



## tfd543

ChrisZwolle said:


> Dinner has a Dutch (French) equivalent: _diner_ (pronounced as in French). A _diner_ is more formal and extensive than a regular everyday evening meal.
> 
> Dinner / supper time also varies a lot by countries. In the Netherlands it is often around 5:30 - 6:30 p.m., depending on work schedules.
> 
> People always speak of a '9-5 job', but in my experience if you go into the office at 9 you're pretty much the last one in. Most people start around 8 or 8:30 and leave after 4 - 4.30. It depends if people work 8 or 9 hours per day. 4x9 is fairly common as an alternative for 5x8. Some work 40 hours one week and 32 the other.


I usually prefer to come early and leave early. Im mostly productive from morning to noon. After noon, it just goes down.


----------



## g.spinoza

MattiG said:


> The discussion of autopilots and self-driving cars taking over the world within the next few years is pure nonsense. For example, modeling the normal winter driving conditions will be a nightmare. Camera based systems do not work if it is snowing, and their pattern recognition still is primitive. During the last parliament election in Finland, the cars' traffic sign recognition systems were reported to interpret the candidate numbers in the advertisements to be speed limit signs.
> 
> View attachment 176083
> 
> 
> I have turned the line assist off in my Skodillac (Karoq m/2019), because its horror-like behavior. In addition, the default setting of some other assists are too sensitive. The front collision assist has once slammed the brakes on a motorway to a speed of 30 km/h without reason. Another assist blows a siren on when it sees a metal guard railing ahead in a normal curve.
> 
> I am working in the IT industry. Typically, after getting the prototype or a mock-up complete, some 90 to 99 percent of the work is still ahead. As the car industry apparently has invented no silver bullet, the same rule applies to their software development, too. The difference between "standard" IT systems and car software is that consequences from car applications making wrong decision are potentially fatal.


After 70000 km, the line assistant of my Peugeot didn't miss a beat. Maybe it's just yours which is flawed.


----------



## PovilD

tfd543 said:


> I usually prefer to come early and leave early. Im mostly productive from morning to noon. After noon, it just goes down.


I spot that too, that it's most comforting to me to do important works at morning till afternoon, but at late afternoon/evening I want to postpone undone work to the next morning (if I have such possibility)..


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> Interestingly "lunch" is translated to Lithuanian as "pietūs" which literally mean "South" in our language. Probably because the Sun is in the South.


In Polish south and midday are exactly the same word – południe. The same is with the midnight/north – północ. The two other directions are wschód – sunrise and zachód – sunset.

It's logical. The direction where the sun rises is called sunrise (wschód), the direction where it comes at the midday – midday (południe, etymologically "half-day"), the direction where it sets is called sunset (zachód) and where it would be if it was visible at the midnight – is called midnight (północ).

It doesn't work in case of intermediate directions and intermediate moments of the day. E.g. afternoon is popołudnie (literally "after-south", "after-midday") but south-west is południowy zachód (literally "southern west").

The name of dinner, lunch or whatever you translate it to (basically, the largest meal of the day) is absolutely unrelated – it's obiad. And it seems to be related to the word "to eat" (jeść). The word for to eat a lot, above the standard is "objeść się" and from this I guess "obiad" must have come.



PovilD said:


> Btw, for the greetings, I found interesting that Russians greets "dobriy notsh" in the middle of the night when I was listening one Russian radio station through the internet. Which means something like "good night", similarly used as "good morning" or "good evening". I didn't find this feature in my language or I think even English language. Good night or "Labanaktis" in Lithuanian, means wish for good night sleep. In my language, we usually stick with Good evening for those who haven't went to sleep, and good morning for those who have slept for a while (but woke up at least in 3-4 am). I think at 5-6 am, everyone should greet "good morning", and I think 4-5 am is changing point for pottential night shows to shift from good evening to good morning.


I don't know, maybe some natives can confirm or deny that, but from one English teacher I once heard that in English, "good night" may also be used as a greeting.

But in Polish it is like in Lithuanian:


> Good night or "Labanaktis" in Lithuanian, means wish for good night sleep


If it's late at night and you really want to greet someone, you will say "dobry wieczór" (good evening), although it sounds quite awkward.

We don't have "good morning" and "good afternoon" greetings, instead we have just "good day" (dzień dobry). But indeed in case of some shows e.g. on TV, radio, one would say "good day" from about 5 AM and "good evening" before.

Anyway, I think even in English, if someone is active until late at night, e.g. attending parties, or just working, for him it's still considered to be evening and not night. Night is when you sleep, unless, of course, you sleep during the day. In Polish it's the same.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> If it's late at night and you really want to greet someone, you will say "dobry wieczór" (good evening), although it sounds quite awkward.
> 
> We don't have "good morning" and "good afternoon" greetings, instead we have just "good day" (dzień dobry). But indeed in case of some shows e.g. on TV, radio, one would say "good day" from about 5 AM and "good evening" before.
> 
> Anyway, I think even in English, if someone is active until late at night, e.g. attending parties, or just working, for him it's still considered to be evening and not night. Night is when you sleep, unless, of course, you sleep during the day. In Polish it's the same.


We have "good morning" ("labas rytas"), but I like the idea only to stick with "good day" in the morning, like in Polish or Italian. To be honest, I'm not feeling comfortable thinking if it's time to use "good day" ("laba diena") or "good morning", I tend to use "good day" instead, although sometimes I feel awkward after that. Once I said to one lecturer "good day" in 9 am without thinking much, and he replied with "good morning" 

We don't have "good afternoon", we just use "good day" instead. I think it's closest equivalent.

I only used this word once in Poland near Czech border (DK8), while changing currency to Czech crowns. I was afraid to say "dzien dobry" since I don't speak Polish, so I said closest English equivalent "good day" that he could understand (since regular "hello" or "good afternoon" is not usual stuff in our region ) He didn't spoke English though, and he was speaking through calculator only  But I managed to change currency almost no problem


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> In Polish south and midday are exactly the same word – południe. The same is with the midnight/north – północ. The two other directions are wschód – sunrise and zachód – sunset.
> 
> It's logical. The direction where the sun rises is called sunrise (wschód), the direction where it comes at the midday – midday (południe, etymologically "half-day"), the direction where it sets is called sunset (zachód) and where it would be if it was visible at the midnight – is called midnight (północ).
> 
> It doesn't work in case of intermediate directions and intermediate moments of the day. E.g. afternoon is popołudnie (literally "after-south", "after-midday") but south-west is południowy zachód (literally "southern west").
> 
> The name of dinner, lunch or whatever you translate it to (basically, the largest meal of the day) is absolutely unrelated – it's obiad. And it seems to be related to the word "to eat" (jeść). The word for to eat a lot, above the standard is "objeść się" and from this I guess "obiad" must have come.
> 
> 
> I don't know, maybe some natives can confirm or deny that, but from one English teacher I once heard that in English, "good night" may also be used as a greeting.
> 
> But in Polish it is like in Lithuanian:
> 
> 
> If it's late at night and you really want to greet someone, you will say "dobry wieczór" (good evening), although it sounds quite awkward.
> 
> We don't have "good morning" and "good afternoon" greetings, instead we have just "good day" (dzień dobry). But indeed in case of some shows e.g. on TV, radio, one would say "good day" from about 5 AM and "good evening" before.
> 
> Anyway, I think even in English, if someone is active until late at night, e.g. attending parties, or just working, for him it's still considered to be evening and not night. Night is when you sleep, unless, of course, you sleep during the day. In Polish it's the same.


I wouldn’t say “good night” as a greeting.


----------



## MattiG

g.spinoza said:


> After 70000 km, the line assistant of my Peugeot didn't miss a beat. Maybe it's just yours which is flawed.


There are two main categories of lane assists: passive and active. Barely comparable. 

The passive one in my previous Citroën C4 was passive and just gave a warning. Not much added value. This one is active, thus taking the steering wheel. In certain cases, it takes pretty drastic actions being dangerous in winter conditions. 

Modeling all driving conditions will be a huge effort, and fully autonomic cars will be pure scifi for several decades at least.


----------



## g.spinoza

MattiG said:


> There are two main categories of lane assists: passive and active. Barely comparable.
> 
> The passive one in my previous Citroën C4 was passive and just gave a warning. Not much added value. This one is active, thus taking the steering wheel. In certain cases, it takes pretty drastic actions being dangerous in winter conditions.
> 
> Modeling all driving conditions will be a huge effort, and fully autonomic cars will be pure scifi for several decades at least.


The Peugeot 3008 I'm referring to has the active one.


----------



## g.spinoza

PovilD said:


> If talking about my family. We indeed have big meal in midday, if we are not at work, and meal in the evening everyday usually after work. If we had meal in midday, we have slightly lighter meal in the evening.


In Italy it's oh so simple.
Breakfast ("colazione") right after you wake up.
Midday meal ("pranzo") between 12-14. Usually lighter meal, especially when at work. On Sundays, it may become the largest meal.
Evening meal ("cena"), between 19-21 (maybe later in the South in summer). Usually the largest meal.

But they never change names!



tfd543 said:


> I usually prefer to come early and leave early. Im mostly productive from morning to noon. After noon, it just goes down.


I am usually most productive after 16...


----------



## tfd543

PovilD said:


> I spot that too, that it's most comforting to me to do important works at morning till afternoon, but at late afternoon/evening I want to postpone undone work to the next morning (if I have such possibility)..


Yea i know. I guess its the metabolism in my case. Kl having big lunches usually.


----------



## tfd543

g.spinoza said:


> In Italy it's oh so simple.
> Breakfast ("colazione") right after you wake up.
> Midday meal ("pranzo") between 12-14. Usually lighter meal, especially when at work. On Sundays, it may become the largest meal.
> Evening meal ("cena"), between 19-21 (maybe later in the South in summer). Usually the largest meal.
> 
> But they never change names!


How Can you endure until 21? My blood sugar would go crazy if I only eat lunch at 12 to have dinner at 21.. thats like 9 hours pretty much without eating smth serious. I would be dead meat.


----------



## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> How Can you endure until 21? My blood sugar would go crazy if I only eat lunch at 12 to have dinner at 21.. thats like 9 hours pretty much without eating smth serious. I would be dead meat.


I usually even skip lunch...


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> The German way.
> Is it common to other Slavic languages too?


We use 12 hours format in spoken language (only at TV in very formal circumstances 24 hour mode is used). Sometimes I write in whatsapp messages 24h format, but i feel incredibly stupid then 🙂

About half hours: in continental part we use as Alex said - 16:30 would be half five (not half to five, but really half five). Rarely, and mostly in rural areas people use the same thing with quarters. 16:15 would be quarter five. 16:45 would be three quarters five. Youngsters don't understand it at all, and they are very confused if someone would speak in that way.
At the coast however it is opposite: 16:30 is 4 and half. 16:15 is 4 and quarter. 16:45 is 5 minus quarter 😁


----------



## Coccodrillo

Penn's Woods said:


> You think that’s bad, try Dutch: “ten after half nine” is 8:40.












****

And to remain in-topic on the road forum:










The text is a pun based on a (quite famous) Italian song which, after each paragraph, adds a new element to the story (my father bought a mouse/a cat ate the mouse which my father bought/a dog bit the cat which ate the mouse my father bought/...).


----------



## sbondorf

tfd543 said:


> In dk we use 24 hour format both casually and formally.


Casually? Not so much. When talking casually about points in time, 16.00 / 16.30 would usually be fire (four) / halv fem (half five) for a Dane, i.e. the same pattern as in casual German. Literally saying 16 / 16.30 is perfectly acceptable but less common.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> Do Italians use the 24-hour clock in casual conversation? I get the impression the French, for example, will always write “16 hours” or “16h30,” but SAY “four in the afternoon” or “four and a half.”


In France people say seize heures quite a lot in my experience.


----------



## Penn's Woods

DanielFigFoz said:


> In France people say seize heures quite a lot in my experience.


I should have written “will always write...but OFTEN say”; what was in my head was that I almost never see the 12-hour system in writing.


----------



## tfd543

sbondorf said:


> Casually? Not so much. When talking casually about points in time, 16.00 / 16.30 would usually be fire (four) / halv fem (half five) for a Dane, i.e. the same pattern as in casual German. Literally saying 16 / 16.30 is perfectly acceptable but less common.


Prolly, but it depends who u say it to..


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Unbelievable footage of a landslide in Northern Norway taking houses into the sea.


----------



## Attus

Hundred years ago, June 4th 1920 was the Trianon peace treaty signed. Hungary lost 72% of its area and 64% of its population. This day counts in Hungary as a day of tragedy. Today, the centennial day, the life stopped for two minutes, bells rang. 
But of course it's quite ambivalent. For Slovak people it's the birth of a nation, for Romania a big victory.


----------



## tfd543

^^ no politics. Btw thats What 1 gunshot Can do.


----------



## tfd543

But maybe we Can keep it alive with a relevant non-political question, did traffic really stop in Budapest today??


----------



## bogdymol

Attus said:


> Hundred years ago, June 4th 1920 was the Trianon peace treaty signed. Hungary lost 72% of its area and 64% of its population. This day counts in Hungary as a day of tragedy. Today, the centennial day, the life stopped for two minutes, bells rang.
> But of course it's quite ambivalent. For Slovak people it's the birth of a nation, for Romania a big victory.


It is true that Hungary lost a big chunk of its territory back then. However, the majority of inhabitants of those regions were not Hungarians, but Romanians, Slovaks, Croats, Austrians and so on. Indeed, there were certain smaller areas that were mostly inhabited by Hungarians and found themselves in a different country overnight, but that doesn't mean that this separation of land should not have happened. Maybe only draw the borders a bit more careful in respect to the actual ethnicity of the people living in each town or village.

The Hungarian people are still very upset that this happened, as I often see maps of "greater Hungary" as well as posts and comments regarding this. However, that happened 100 years ago, so maybe such nostalgia should stop after a century. We now live in a completely different world, within a peaceful and united Europe, as it never was before. We shall look forward to live together like good neighbors regardless of the language each one speaks or the nationality each one has.


----------



## Attus

tfd543 said:


> But maybe we Can keep it alive with a relevant non-political question, did traffic really stop in Budapest today??


I wasn't in Budapest, but as far as I know, it didn't. Public transport stopped but car traffic did not. It was planned so, but apparently motorists didn't care about it.








Ma egy percre leállt minden busz, villamos és metró


Sőt, még a troli és a fogaskerekű is. Trianon 100. évfordulójára egy perces beszéddel emlékeztek a leálló BKV-járműveken.




index.hu


----------



## italystf

Since yesterday 3 june we're allowed to travel all over Italy freely.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Someone I know has already driven from the Netherlands to Venice this week


----------



## Kpc21

And Poland has not yet made any decisions.

Which is interesting. Indeed we are a country with one of the largest epidemic severities in Europe nowadays – but as in the neighboring countries the epidemic is at a later stage, opening the borders won't be dangerous for the epidemic situation in Poland, we may rather be a threat for other countries.


----------



## PovilD

Since my family didn't knew exact borders of current-day Hungary (although I did), they (accidentally) bough fridge magnet in Tokaj, Hungary, year 2010, that consists borders of Greater Hungary. We were doing bus trip to Transylvania, Romania. Visiting Dracula stuff  +other Romanian objects. Those were one of the first excursions to Romania from Lithuania by tourist bus.









I don't mind riding 1000 km per day by a bus (don't know if my standards are low, or I'm too excited to go to foreign countries anyway, watching the roads...), but sleeping is almost impossible. They mostly book a hotel, but last night (or nights) are usually on the bus.


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> Unbelievable footage of a landslide in Northern Norway taking houses into the sea.


Such landslides happen in Norway more often than you think - geomechanics of that black soil is the culprit for that. There is nothing you can do, just don't build on dangerous areas. We learned about that even in our university classes.



> > Someone I know has already driven from the Netherlands to Venice this week


Two day ago I saw a car from Ireland. Ireland licence plates here in the east are more rare than US plates even in times without coronavirus, but now ...
I have plan to go see Venice as soon as possible, it is a unique opportunity to finnaly see Venice without big touristic groups.


----------



## PovilD

keber said:


> Such landslides happen in Norway more often than you think - geomechanics of that black soil is the culprit for that. There is nothing you can do, just don't build on dangerous areas. We learned about that even in our university classes.
> 
> 
> Two day ago I saw a car from Ireland. Ireland licence plates here in the east are more rare than US plates even in times without coronavirus, but now ...


But I bet not as rare as in Poland, and especially Lithuania 

Personally, I saw Irish plates slightly more often than US plates in my city.

Most US plates that I saw were in more fancy parts of the city, only rarely on poorer districts, while Irish plates were mostly seen in poorer areas, like commieblock districts. Most likely those people with Irish plates are migrant workers coming home by car.

For me personally, Irish plates have one of the most odd designs in Europe that indicates the city where the plates were registrated ...and in unusual language 



keber said:


> Such landslides happen in Norway more often than you think - geomechanics of that black soil is the culprit for that. There is nothing you can do, just don't build on dangerous areas. We learned about that even in our university classes.
> Two day ago I saw a car from Ireland. Ireland licence plates here in the east are more rare than US plates even in times without coronavirus, but now ...
> I have plan to go see Venice as soon as possible, it is a unique opportunity to finnaly see Venice without big touristic groups.


You're lucky though for this potential occasion


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> And Poland has not yet made any decisions.
> 
> Which is interesting. Indeed we are a country with one of the largest epidemic severities in Europe nowadays – but as in the neighboring countries the epidemic is at a later stage, opening the borders won't be dangerous for the epidemic situation in Poland, we may rather be a threat for other countries.


Baltic States were decided to open border with Poland, starting next Monday. Big news for Lithuanians wanting cheaper products in Suwalki Region.

Do you know exat data what is situation in Suwalki/Augustow region? I'm looking forward too for short trip to Poland  My focus would not be cheap products, but rather I'm interested to see Suwalki, since I've only bypassed it


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> And Poland has not yet made any decisions.
> 
> Which is interesting. Indeed we are a country with one of the largest epidemic severities in Europe nowadays – but as in the neighboring countries the epidemic is at a later stage, opening the borders won't be dangerous for the epidemic situation in Poland, we may rather be a threat for other countries.


Baltic States were decided to open border with Poland, starting next Monday. Big news for Lithuanians wanting to buy cheaper products in Suwalki Region.

Do you know exact data what is situation with COVID19 in Suwalki/Augustow region? I'm looking forward for short trip to Poland. My focus would not be cheap products, but rather I'm interested to see Suwalki with a friend, since I've never been abroad with him  Poland is nearest visa-free country for us after all


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> Baltic States were decided to open border with Poland, starting next Monday. Big news for Lithuanians wanting cheaper products in Suwalki Region.


Firstly, Poland also has to open the border, which isn't announced yet.

You can find the stats by voivodeship in the Wikipedia article: COVID-19 pandemic in Poland - Wikipedia. Suwałki are in the Sub-Forest Voivodeship (województwo podlaskie), another one close to the border with Lithuania (bordering with Russia) is Warmia-Mazuria (województwo warmińsko-mazurskie).

In the "województwo podlaskie" there are several new discovered Covid cases a day, in "warmińsko-mazurskie" – practically no new cases. Those are ones of the least Covid-affected regions in the country, as there are mostly rural.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Firstly, Poland also has to open the border, which isn't announced yet.
> 
> You can find the stats by voivodeship in the Wikipedia article: COVID-19 pandemic in Poland - Wikipedia. Suwałki are in the Sub-Forest Voivodeship (województwo podlaskie), another one close to the border with Lithuania (bordering with Russia) is Warmia-Mazuria (województwo warmińsko-mazurskie).
> 
> In the "województwo podlaskie" there are several new discovered Covid cases a day, in "warmińsko-mazurskie" – practically no new cases. Those are ones of the least Covid-affected regions in the country, as there are mostly rural.


I see that Sejny Region has no cases reported as of May 22. Maybe situation not as bad in Suwalki Region.

Sub-Forest Voivodeship in our language is Near-Poland or Polandside Voivodeship (Palenkės vaivadija)


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Firstly, Poland also has to open the border, which isn't announced yet.
> 
> You can find the stats by voivodeship in the Wikipedia article: COVID-19 pandemic in Poland - Wikipedia. Suwałki are in the Sub-Forest Voivodeship (województwo podlaskie), another one close to the border with Lithuania (bordering with Russia) is Warmia-Mazuria (województwo warmińsko-mazurskie).
> 
> In the "województwo podlaskie" there are several new discovered Covid cases a day, in "warmińsko-mazurskie" – practically no new cases. Those are ones of the least Covid-affected regions in the country, as there are mostly rural.


I see that Sejny Region has no cases reported as of May 22. Maybe situation not as bad in Suwalki Region. I thought there are some Polish service that collects data from every powiat, Wikipedia only generalizes all the data.

Sub-Forest Voivodeship in our language is Sub-Poland, Near-Poland or Polandside Voivodeship (Palenkės vaivadija) 

I read on my local media that there are decision between PMs of Poland and Lithuania to open the border, and it was quite unexpected. I read about it only today.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> I read on my local media that there are decision between PMs of Poland and Lithuania to open the border, and it was quite unexpected. I read about it only today.


Nice to know.
I still wonder where I'll be able to go.

I've never been to Lithuania, it might be interesting to visit.


----------



## MichiH

Will Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania join Schengen area from July 1?









Global report: EU pledges to lift internal border controls by end of month


Ban on non-essential travel into EU by foreign nationals is extended until 1 July




www.theguardian.com







> The *EU* has pledged to lift border controls inside its territory by the end of the month, while extending a ban on travellers coming from outside the bloc.
> 
> The extension of the ban on non-essential travel by foreign nationals into the EU’s border free-travel zone was approved by the EU’s 27 home affairs ministers on Friday by video conference.


German media also reports today that border control between _all_ EU states will end on June 30. For instance, the German Ministor of Interior is quoted that this will happen. The one from Bavarian.... So, I reason that not just Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania must join Schengen on July 1 but the temporary immigration border controls between Germany (Bavaria) and Austria, Austria and Hungary etc. must be abolished?

_Maybe I just take them too literal _


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Someone I know has already driven from the Netherlands to Venice this week


Today Veneto had only 6 new cases of covid in 5 million inhabitants. Although Padova area was one of the first hotspots in Europe, now it's probably safer than many other places in Europe. Actually now pretty much all Italy except Lombardy is relatively safe.


----------



## PovilD

italystf said:


> Today Veneto had only 6 new cases of covid in 5 million inhabitants. Although Padova area was one of the first hotspots in Europe, now it's probably safer than many other places in Europe. Actually now pretty much all Italy except Lombardy is relatively safe.


What's happening in Lombardy? I found data that 4/5 of all Italian cases today are from Lombardy.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> I've never been to Lithuania, it might be interesting to visit.


Tourists actively discover Vilnius historical centre, some other localities (Trakai, seaside, etc.), and likely even Kaunas historical centre (after more renovations completed), as new visit spot.

If talking about Lithuania as Post-Soviet country (people might be interested on that fact), I think in 2010s Lithuania saw biggest step forward toward desovietisation of the country in terms of infrastructure, and in some places, mentally. My city having maintenance of 300k Polish city (like Bialystok or Lublin), was a distant dream just in early 2010s, situation was really not acceptable, now it's closer to reality. Sure, there are still places (especially 70s to 90s constructions) that look stuck in the dull 90s, but are considered more safe than in early 00s or 90s itself. Maybe aging population on those areas has to do with it too.


----------



## tfd543

MichiH said:


> Will Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania join Schengen area from July 1?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Global report: EU pledges to lift internal border controls by end of month
> 
> 
> Ban on non-essential travel into EU by foreign nationals is extended until 1 July
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.theguardian.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> German media also reports today that border control between _all_ EU states will end on June 30. For instance, the German Ministor of Interior is quoted that this will happen. The one from Bavarian.... So, I reason that not just Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania must join Schengen on July 1 but the temporary immigration border controls between Germany (Bavaria) and Austria, Austria and Hungary etc. must be abolished?
> 
> _Maybe I just take them too literal _


Yes tooo literal but its nice to dream


----------



## ChrisZwolle

covid-19 in the three most important countries for tourists in Europe:


----------



## PovilD

Spain's strictest quarantine in Europe has give its fruits. From almost a 10000 in late March to less than a 100 in early June.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> My city having maintenance of 300k Polish city (like Bialystok or Lublin), was a distant dream just in early 2010s, situation was really not acceptable, now it's closer to reality. Sure, there are still places (especially 70s to 90s constructions) that look stuck in the dull 90s, but are considered more safe than in early 00s or 90s itself. Maybe aging population on those areas has to do with it too.


So kind of like in Poland 

Talking about Covid over here:










Almost no improvement can be seen – but actually there are regional drops in the numbers of cases.

The ban on international passenger flights to and from Poland got extended to 16 June.


----------



## Coccodrillo

Penn's Woods said:


> I should have written “will always write...but OFTEN say”; what was in my head was that I almost never see the 12-hour system in writing.


That reminds me that in the USA I have always seen public transport timetables shown in 12 hours + am/pm.

In this case, they just show A or P on the first bus run after midday/midnight: https://media.metro.net/documents/c0a74a19-b51c-4057-a516-47eb56b506e7.pdf

In other cases I have seen the afternoon times shown in *bold* or _italic_. In Europe they always use 24h in these cases.


----------



## valkrav

g.spinoza said:


> In Italy it's oh so simple.
> Breakfast ("colazione") right after you wake up.
> Midday meal ("pranzo") between 12-14.
> Evening meal ("cena"), between 19-21


You forgot MERENDA ,


----------



## radamfi

Coccodrillo said:


> That reminds me that in the USA I have always seen public transport timetables shown in 12 hours + am/pm.


Which is very silly because it means that it is easier to misread the timetable.



Coccodrillo said:


> In Europe they always use 24h in these cases.


Barry Doe, a well known public transport expert, has been campaigning for timetables to use the 24 hour clock for at least 30 years. Some major companies in Britain persisted with the 12 hour clock for a long time and there are still two significant operators, in Nottingham and Reading, that still use it



https://www.barrydoe.co.uk/special.pdf



"In a significant move, the new Brighton & Hove timetable just issued has changed to 24-hour clock after decades of resistance, and they are to be congratulated on this move. This site shows details of the printed publications of 317 operators and 85 local authorities in the British Isles (52 authorities publish nothing). Of the total of 402, only 2 remain using the 12-hour clock: Trent Buses (TrentBarton/Kinchbus) and Reading Buses. All local authorities use 24-hour. Trent Buses is no surprise as they pride themselves on being out-of-step and not allowing their users quality timetables. Reading Buses is a surprise, as they are in an area with sophisticated users (Thames Valley), university students, rail users and, indeed, all the other bus operators in the area use 24-hour, as do the local authorities. Perhaps they just don’t realise how old-fashioned they look and how remote they’ve become. The 12th printed edition of my Directory, published 30 years ago last month, showed only 62% of the industry using 24-hour: now it’s 99.5%. The world has moved on; Trent Buses never will; Reading Buses should."


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Bloomberg has an article about the Dutch 'intelligent lockdown': 
Dutch Cooperation Made an ‘Intelligent Lockdown’ a Success

(how can you turn off this automatic formatting when copying text... )

The Netherlands has about 150 - 200 positive tests per day, which is still somewhat high. The number of hospitalizations and deaths went down much more than the number of positive tests, but this is also a result of a lack of testing in March and early April. There have been several days with 0 hospitalizations. 

There is no large-scale community transmission anymore. There are a few remaining hotspots, in particular in industries with a lot of migrant workers (they work, travel and live together).


----------



## PovilD

'Intelligent Lockdown' proved to be indeed 'Intelligent'


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> (how can you turn off this automatic formatting when copying text... )


Paste into Notepad, then copy it again. Only the text will be copied, without any formatting.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Coccodrillo said:


> That reminds me that in the USA I have always seen public transport timetables shown in 12 hours + am/pm.
> 
> In this case, they just show A or P on the first bus run after midday/midnight: https://media.metro.net/documents/c0a74a19-b51c-4057-a516-47eb56b506e7.pdf
> 
> In other cases I have seen the afternoon times shown in *bold* or _italic_. In Europe they always use 24h in these cases.


Americans refer to the 24-hour system as “military time,” because that’s really the only context it’s used in. I personally started putting my computers and phones and so on on the 24-hour system about 15 years ago, I guess because I wanted to get used to it. I was seeing times in European news sources and having to mentally convert.

French Canada uses the 24-hour system in things like TV and radio schedules (“Ce soir, 20 heures, Maritimes 21 heures....”) both spoken and in print. But English Canada behaves like the U.S. Also, Spanish-language TV channels in the U.S. use the 12-hour system, and Fahrenheit temperatures in their weather reports (as far as I can tell; I don’t watch them much).


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> Which is very silly because it means that it is easier to misread the timetable.
> 
> 
> 
> Barry Doe, a well known public transport expert, has been campaigning for timetables to use the 24 hour clock for at least 30 years. Some major companies in Britain persisted with the 12 hour clock for a long time and there are still two significant operators, in Nottingham and Reading, that still use it
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.barrydoe.co.uk/special.pdf
> 
> 
> 
> "In a significant move, the new Brighton & Hove timetable just issued has changed to 24-hour clock after decades of resistance, and they are to be congratulated on this move. This site shows details of the printed publications of 317 operators and 85 local authorities in the British Isles (52 authorities publish nothing). Of the total of 402, only 2 remain using the 12-hour clock: Trent Buses (TrentBarton/Kinchbus) and Reading Buses. All local authorities use 24-hour. Trent Buses is no surprise as they pride themselves on being out-of-step and not allowing their users quality timetables. Reading Buses is a surprise, as they are in an area with sophisticated users (Thames Valley), university students, rail users and, indeed, all the other bus operators in the area use 24-hour, as do the local authorities. Perhaps they just don’t realise how old-fashioned they look and how remote they’ve become. The 12th printed edition of my Directory, published 30 years ago last month, showed only 62% of the industry using 24-hour: now it’s 99.5%. The world has moved on; Trent Buses never will; Reading Buses should."


What a ridiculous thing to get worked up about. (I don’t mean you’re worked up; I mean Mr. Doe.) “Sophisticated,” “old-fashioned”.... judgmental language. But some people don’t see how off-putting that is. Adapt to your environment. Don’t expect everything in other countries to be done your way. -I- actually have no trouble with that, even accepting these harmless little differences as part of life.


----------



## CNGL

I use 24 hour clock when writting, but 12 hour clock when speaking.


ChrisZwolle said:


> There is no large-scale community transmission anymore. There are a few remaining hotspots, in particular in industries with a lot of migrant workers (they work, travel and live together).


Pretty much the same happens here in most of Spain now.


----------



## PovilD

Pretty much the same in my language.

12 hour clock when speaking. We indicate something like "6th (hour) of the evening", "2nd (hour) of the noon", "1st (hour) of the night".

When written, we mostly use 24-hour clock, indicate 17:00 or 21:30. On formal speech, we use something like "18 hours and 30 minutes", etc.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> (how can you turn off this automatic formatting when copying text... )


For me it works by pasting with Ctrl+Shift+V instead of just Ctrl+V.


----------



## bogdymol

Yes, I know that, but at work I have German keyboard and some things are different. For example the shortcut you mentioned does not work.

Worst thing are the formulas in Excel. They are all in German. So I had to learn all the formulas I knew English also in German. And when I switch to my private computer it’s back to English. A bit messy...


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> What a ridiculous thing to get worked up about. (I don’t mean you’re worked up; I mean Mr. Doe.) “Sophisticated,” “old-fashioned”.... judgmental language. But some people don’t see how off-putting that is. Adapt to your environment. Don’t expect everything in other countries to be done your way. -I- actually have no trouble with that, even accepting these harmless little differences as part of life.


In what circumstances is it best to learn from other countries, and when is it best to ignore what happens abroad and try and solve problems internally? Or just assume a problem is unsolvable because of culture?


----------



## keber

bogdymol said:


> Yes, I know that, but at work I have German keyboard and some things are different. For example the shortcut you mentioned does not work.
> 
> Worst thing are the formulas in Excel. They are all in German. So I had to learn all the formulas I knew English also in German. And when I switch to my private computer it’s back to English. A bit messy...


Do at least formulas made in non-german Excel work in German version? I alwasy just type formulas.


----------



## MichiH

keber said:


> Do at least formulas made in non-german Excel work in German version? I alwasy just type formulas.


I was curious.... Excel Functions Translator Add-in


----------



## CNGL

And now I'm getting those redirects to scam sites others had reported. Great. I've blacklisted the site, but this still tries to redirect me there.


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> Yes, I know that, but at work I have German keyboard and some things are different. For example the shortcut you mentioned does not work.
> 
> Worst thing are the formulas in Excel. They are all in German. So I had to learn all the formulas I knew English also in German. And when I switch to my private computer it’s back to English. A bit messy...


German formula? Omg I had no idea thatxls formulas are being translated into various languages! I don't think it helps to anybody.


----------



## MichiH

^^


> Has been localized for English, Danish, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Portuguese Brazilian, Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese Traditional and Chinese Complex Script.


----------



## bogdymol

keber said:


> Do at least formulas made in non-german Excel work in German version? I alwasy just type formulas.


Of course not.

At least it "translates" automatically a file which I did for example on my private computer (in English), if I transfer it to my work computer (in German). But if you need to write a new formula, you need to write it in the language that you have the Excel program.



x-type said:


> German formula? Omg I had no idea thatxls formulas are being translated into various languages! I don't think it helps to anybody.


Yeah, think about my surprise when I moved to Austria. I had a fair knowledge of Excel and the most commonly used formulas... until I realized I have to learn them again.


----------



## Attus

I think the following weeks, months, will be decisive. 
There are nowadays lots of demonstrations everywere in the world against racism. Without social distancing, without masks, withut any other preventive measures. 
In July the beaches of Souther Europe will be full of tourists. Without social distancing, without masks. Yes, I know what politicians say, but I'm old enough to know, nothing of that will happen. 
So either we'll have a lot of new infections, similar amount like in March and early April, but less concentrated. Or we will have only a few of them - this case would mean, the danger is over.


----------



## MichiH

true, but still... you report about Europe only. And European travels only....... IT'S NOT OVER TILL IT'S OVER!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's kind of amusing to see how the media obsessively reported each weekend about how busy it was and what dangers it would pose to the infection. But the anti-racism demonstrations had squares packed with thousands of people, then all the sudden the media made a complete 180 and reported how this was unlikely to have an impact on the virus transmission.


----------



## MichiH

^^ Maybe in the Netherlands. German media reported (and cites politicians) just two minutes ago in the news that it important to demonstrate against racism but they should keep the distances!


----------



## x-type

It is quite obvious that anti-corona measures in the autumn will be completely different. More or less it will be who-will-survive-he-will-talk. Imo there will be no more closures. There will be recommended (or obligatory) measures such as physical distancing, max number of people in certain space, masks, sanitizers etc. But people infected with corona will be probably left to get well or to die, not to occupy space in hospitals for some other patients. I am exaggerating now, but imo the world will go in that direction.


----------



## ufonut

Boston, Los Angeles, Atlanta ? No. Warsaw, Poland.

12 km from downtown on S7 expressway.

Photo by *kandinhoe90*


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> I think the following weeks, months, will be decisive.
> There are nowadays lots of demonstrations everywere in the world against racism. Without social distancing, without masks, withut any other preventive measures.
> In July the beaches of Souther Europe will be full of tourists. Without social distancing, without masks. Yes, I know what politicians say, but I'm old enough to know, nothing of that will happen.
> So either we'll have a lot of new infections, similar amount like in March and early April, but less concentrated. Or we will have only a few of them - this case would mean, the danger is over.


It IS supposedly safer outdoors....


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's kind of amusing to see how the media obsessively reported each weekend about how busy it was and what dangers it would pose to the infection. But the anti-racism demonstrations had squares packed with thousands of people, then all the sudden the media made a complete 180 and reported how this was unlikely to have an impact on the virus transmission.


I don’t know about that. Maybe over there. Here I’ve heard concern about that, including from Democratic officials and liberal media; certainly no one’s said that conclusively it’s not a problem.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's kind of amusing to see how the media obsessively reported each weekend about how busy it was and what dangers it would pose to the infection. But the anti-racism demonstrations had squares packed with thousands of people, then all the sudden the media made a complete 180 and reported how this was unlikely to have an impact on the virus transmission.


I am sure there will be people that will get infected while participating at such demonstrations.

However, I don't think the numbers will be huge, as there are some factors which will limit the spread of the virus:

The demonstration is outdoors, and it has been proven that outside the virus is far less contagious
People are close to each other, sometimes very close, but at many times there is also at least 2 m distance between the people. Close encounters happens only for a very limited amount of time
Everybody wears masks. If for coronavirus or for not being identified by the police, people have masks


----------



## PovilD

ufonut said:


> Boston, Los Angeles, Atlanta ? No. Warsaw, Poland.
> 
> 12 km from downtown on S7 expressway.
> 
> Photo by *kandinhoe90*


For us Lithuanians, I think the common coolest things about Polish post-socialist progress are Polish motorways/expressways, and Varsovian skyscrapers  Third thing that there is believe that Polish "manage economy better" with cheaper prices for food in Sejny or Suwalki shopping malls (areas closest to Lithuanian border). I think it has to do with Poland not being Post-Soviet country, but "only" post-socialist, maybe leaving Poland with more developed market in comparison with most parts (especially rural ones) in The Baltics.

If talking about Suwalki, we have region called "Suvalkija" on Southwest Lithuania, which mostly comprises the borders of former Suwalki Governorate. It was slightly freeier and belonged to Congress Poland during Tsarist Russia times while the rest of Lithuania were basically Russian provinces in political sense. There are sayings that people from former Suwalki Governorate have better understanding how to manage money... Since they were most Capitalist Lithuanians, Soviet Lithuanian unofficial policies were against uniqueness of former Suwalki Governorate people, mostly by mocking them slightly Germanic sounding accent, or rumors that they are not very good people in general (mostly by "not wanting to share stuff"). At least in some people groups it may persist even today.

I hope someday they will remove Budzisko from signs indefinetively  ...and I will see signage of the city where I was born with Warsaw skyscrapers on the background


----------



## PovilD

Attus said:


> I think the following weeks, months, will be decisive.
> There are nowadays lots of demonstrations everywere in the world against racism. Without social distancing, without masks, withut any other preventive measures.
> In July the beaches of Souther Europe will be full of tourists. Without social distancing, without masks. Yes, I know what politicians say, but I'm old enough to know, nothing of that will happen.
> So either we'll have a lot of new infections, similar amount like in March and early April, but less concentrated. Or we will have only a few of them - this case would mean, the danger is over.


I have thoughts that the spread will continue, and this whole pandemic thing will settle down in 2 years no matter if the vaccine will be invented or not. As for right now, I think we didn't learned too much mechanic about the spread of the virus, although we are learning quickly.

I bet that this thing will not spread quickly on well ventilated places like beaches or outdoor areas in general. I think we have to learn three Cs from Japan. If your'e in poorly ventilated area, on the crowd that talks or sings, your'e in trouble


----------



## geogregor

My shitty hometown seems to be hotspot of Covid in Poland. Most infected are miners and their families:

Surge in Polish coronavirus cases linked to mine



> *A single coal mine in Poland's Upper Silesia region is behind a record spike in the country's confirmed coronavirus cases, the health ministry says.*
> Over the weekend 1,151 new infections were recorded nationally.
> An outbreak among miners and their families at the Zofiowka colliery in southern Poland accounted for two-thirds of that figure.
> The global number of deaths from coronavirus has now passed 400,000. There have been 6.9 million infections.
> Poland introduced a strict lockdown early in March, and has avoided the comparatively large number of deaths seen in Western Europe.
> In Poland, 1,157 people have died from Covid-19 and 26,561 have been infected but the stubborn persistence of cases in Upper Silesia mean the country has not passed its peak.
> Most EU countries recorded fewer new cases than Poland on Sunday.
> 
> Upper Silesia is Poland's industrial heartland with more than a dozen active mines where workers toil in humid conditions at close quarters.
> More than 4,000 people in the region have tested positive for the virus. Of Sunday's new infections, 57% were recorded in Upper Silesia.
> Coal company JSW says it has reduced output at a mine in Pniowek, and PGG, another company, closed some mines temporarily in May, reports Reuters.
> Despite the persistent infections in Upper Silesia, Poland began to ease restrictions on 20 April when parks were allowed to reopen. Some school children returned to school at the end of May.


Poland reports daily jump in coronavirus cases, mostly among miners


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> My shitty hometown seems to be hotspot of Covid in Poland. Most infected are miners and their families:
> 
> Surge in Polish coronavirus cases linked to mine
> 
> 
> 
> Poland reports daily jump in coronavirus cases, mostly among miners


All three Cs I mentioned above overlaps inside those mines perfectly


----------



## Kpc21

bogdymol said:


> Worst thing are the formulas in Excel. They are all in German. So I had to learn all the formulas I knew English also in German. And when I switch to my private computer it’s back to English. A bit messy...


Using Polish version of Excel also always annoys me. The names of functions are just more logical in English. Using LibreOffice, I switch it to English, but in MS Office it's unfortunately not possible to switch the language.



keber said:


> Do at least formulas made in non-german Excel work in German version? I alwasy just type formulas.


If I remember well, they work, they must be saved in the file in a "universal" format. Still, typing them in English in another language version (Polish, German) doesn't work. Microsoft screwed it up – I understand translating them as many users may not know any English; but at least the English names should also work in all the language versions.



x-type said:


> German formula? Omg I had no idea thatxls formulas are being translated into various languages! I don't think it helps to anybody.


Of course they are  I thought it's obvious for anyone except native English speakers.



PovilD said:


> For us Lithuanians, I think the common coolest things about Polish post-socialist progress are Polish motorways/expressways, and Varsovian skyscrapers  Third thing that there is believe that Polish "manage economy better" with cheaper prices for food in Sejny or Suwalki shopping malls (areas closest to Lithuanian border). I think it has to do with Poland not being Post-Soviet country, but "only" post-socialist, maybe leaving Poland with more developed market in comparison with most parts (especially rural ones) in The Baltics.


In Poland many people think it's thanks to not introducing euro – that's one of the reasons why most Poles are against it.



PovilD said:


> I hope someday they will remove Budzisko from signs indefinetively  ...and I will see signage of the city where I was born with Warsaw skyscrapers on the background


Actually, putting those names of border villages for Schengen borders is not really consistent with the Polish law, which says about using names of *border crossings* on those signs, while formally there are no border crossings there, as you can legally cross the border at any point. But this is a matter of interpretation, it seems the officials responsible for the signage claim that the border crossings mentioned there are not meant to be the border crossings according to the legal definition but rather just the points where the road crosses the border.


----------



## Suburbanist

Individual outbreaks can be relatively contained, as long as it is not happening everywhere, now that we have very quick tests for active contagion.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This also makes a huge second wave less likely. There may be isolated outbreaks or an uptick in overall cases, but a huge wave with tens of thousands of infections in a short period of time appears to be less likely. The first wave occurred because nobody was really paying attention or taking precautions.

The Dutch R0 already dropped below 1 before the stricter measures and social distancing were implemented. Because people became more aware, increased hygiene and reduced the more intimate contact such as hugging or kissing or shaking hands. My thinking is that the footage from overburdened Italian hospitals was a decisive factor in the acceptance of those new standards. When it happened in China it seemed far away, when it happened in Italy, people became somewhat alert but didn't take real action until the first cases were detected in the Netherlands. Of course, by that time there already was a significant community transmission that had remained under the radar, which caused the first wave from mid-March to early April.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> Actually, putting those names of border villages for Schengen borders is not really consistent with the Polish law, which says about using names of *border crossings* on those signs, while formally there are no border crossings there, as you can legally cross the border at any point.


You now mix terms "border crossing" and "border checks".


----------



## PovilD

As far as I know, we were never using border crossing villages on our road signs, due to our history in Soviet Union which made only border with Poland close shut. There were signs for Kaliningrad, and I think Riga, Minsk too. These weren't considered "foreign" localities.

---
Interestingly, some if not many people in Lithuania colloquially still don't consider areas of former Soviet Union as foreign countries. If you say that you go "abroad" you would probably mean going somewhere that is not Russia or other Baltic countries, since it was very clear and strict divide where is your country (which was USSR), and where is abroad. Due to recent history, I think Poland is also not considered "true abroad" anymore by Lithuanians, since there were more times with common history anyway... The least foreign place today being Latvia due to our language similarities, and despite very different history before 1918, the political history was pretty much identical afterwards. When I was in Latvia for the first time when I was a kid, I was needing permission from both parents to get outside from the country, and there were border checks, but in psychological sense it was like going to the different region (not a country) with international lingua franca being Russian.


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> You now mix terms "border crossing" and "border checks".


Polish law defines "border crossings" as specific points, in which it is allowed to cross the border.



PovilD said:


> When I was in Latvia for the first time when I was a kid, I was needing permission from both parents to get outside from the country, and there were border checks, but in psychological sense it was like going to the different region (not a country) with international lingua franca being Russian.


Even now, theoretically, when you cross an inner Schengen border, you are obliged to have your national ID card (or a passport) with you. At least it's explained like that in Poland – actually, from what I have heard, not every country enforces such a regulation.

But in practice, there are random checks made by border guards around the borders. E.g. once taking a bus from Berlin to Poland, I encountered such a check yet in Germany, before the Polish border. The German police followed the bus indicating the driver to pull off to a rest area, on which they checked the documents of all the passengers. I guess without a personal document I could have a problem.

In Poland, a child up to 18 years old needs a consent of only one of the parents to get a national ID card, so in practice, a consent of only one parent is necessary to travel within the EU. To go outside the EU (with some exceptions that mostly include several non-EU countries in the Balkans), one needs a passport and to get a passport, a consent of both parents is required. So for a child which doesn't have any contact with one of the parents, going on a trip outside the EU is quite problematic (one has to either reach that other parent, or if I remember correctly, it's also possible to get a consent from a court – but I guess, the waiting time for such a decision may be many months or even over a year; or another way would be to sue the other parent for cancelling his parental rights, this would probably take even more time but it would be permanent for any decisions like this one).


----------



## PovilD

On the other hand, I think you need to keep your ID anyway, if police will decide to check you for some reason. It happened to me once


----------



## Kpc21

Yeah but when you are a kid, you normally don't own an ID. You probably own a school ID, maybe also a cycling card, but you don't necessary carry those documents with you, unless you travel by public transport or ride a bicycle.


----------



## Penn's Woods

PovilD said:


> As far as I know, we were never using border crossing villages on our road signs, due to our history in Soviet Union which made only border with Poland close shut. There were signs for Kaliningrad, and I think Riga, Minsk too. These weren't considered "foreign" localities.
> 
> ---
> Interestingly, some if not many people in Lithuania colloquially still don't consider areas of former Soviet Union as foreign countries. If you say that you go "abroad" you would probably mean going somewhere that is not Russia or other Baltic countries, since it was very clear and strict divide where is your country (which was USSR), and where is abroad. Due to recent history, I think Poland is also not considered "true abroad" anymore by Lithuanians, since there were more times with common history anyway... The least foreign place today being Latvia due to our language similarities, and despite very different history before 1918, the political history was pretty much identical afterwards. When I was in Latvia for the first time when I was a kid, I was needing permission from both parents to get outside from the country, and there were border checks, but in psychological sense it was like going to the different region (not a country) with international lingua franca being Russian.


Do you understand Latvian naturally, by which I mean if you haven’t studied it? Is it similar enough to Lithuanian for that?


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Yeah but when you are a kid, you normally don't own an ID. You probably own a school ID, maybe also a cycling card, but you don't necessary carry those documents with you, unless you travel by public transport or ride a bicycle.


I don't remember if I was checked for cycling card. There were thoughs in my family that since we are in EU, cycling permits will be checked as often as driving license 

I was indeed obtaining my cycling rights in 5th grade


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland I haven't heard about enforcing this law, although it exist.

I guess it was more enforced in case of moped cards, but they are now replaced with AM driving licenses.


----------



## g.spinoza

PovilD said:


> I don't remember if I was checked for cycling card. There were thoughs in my family that since we are in EU, cycling permits will be checked as often as driving license
> 
> I was indeed obtaining my cycling rights in 5th grade


What's a cycling card?


----------



## PovilD

Penn's Woods said:


> Do you understand Latvian naturally, by which I mean if you haven’t studied it? Is it similar enough to Lithuanian for that?


I think differences between Latvian and Lithuanian are similar to differences between English and French. You have to listen very carefully to understand what is said, you have to get used to the accent to understand roughly from 10 to 30% without learning the language. In written text you can understand about 30% of what is written. Some most primitive words are the same: saule - sun, upe - river. Latvian endings are shorter than Lithuanian, when we end the word with -as, they only add letter "s" although sometimes we both end the word with "-is" which is the same in Lithuanian and Latvian. Bridge in Lithuanian is "tiltas", in Latvian - "tilts". Interestingly is very similar to Finnish "silta".

Lithuanians say that they don't understand Northwestern Lithuanians accents properly although they are still closer to Lithuanian than Latvian, but are a little bit closer Standard Latvian too. I heard even about cases during Soviet times, when Lithuanians from Vilnius went to the Northwest end of Lithuania, and decided that it was easier to speak Russian with them  You don't usually imagine speaking with your national different language, unless for education or other purposes.



g.spinoza said:


> What's a cycling card?


Cycling document of some kind. I don't even remember how to call it properly  Maybe they, are (or were) for kids to show you that you are adequate driver at least knowing some cycling rules


----------



## g.spinoza

PovilD said:


> Cycling document of some kind. I don't even remember how to call it properly  Maybe they, are (or were) for kids to show you that you are adequate driver at least knowing some cycling rules


Is it issued formally like driving license?
Nothing of the sort exists in Italy.


----------



## PovilD

g.spinoza said:


> Is it issued formally like driving license?
> Nothing of the sort exists in Italy.


It was roughly more than 10 years ago. I don't know how it is now.

Maybe it was related with children cycling, since I think at least in late 2000s you can legally drive bicycle from 14 years without adults, but if you have "permit" you can do it from, if I remember correctly, 10 year old.

I think that having or not having a "permit" doesn't change anything for cycling adults (or late teens).

I remember they are give us to learn how to drive through obstacles by lifting up front wheel  Almost never used that maneuver ever since, it look too dangerous for me since my bike is a bit heavy


----------



## tfd543

PovilD said:


> It was roughly more than 10 years ago. I don't know how it is now.
> 
> Maybe it was related with children cycling, since I think at least in late 2000s you can legally drive bicycle from 14 years without adults, but if you have "permit" you can do it from, if I remember correctly, 10 year old.
> 
> I think that having or not having a "permit" doesn't change anything for cycling adults (or late teens).
> 
> I remember they are give us to learn how to drive through obstacles by lifting up front wheel  Almost never used that maneuver ever since, it look too dangerous for me since my bike is a bit heavy


Wow, but did you get a physical card for that? Funny.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> Do you understand Latvian naturally, by which I mean if you haven’t studied it? Is it similar enough to Lithuanian for that?


I wonder about that as well. The languages do appear pretty different. Wikipedia says they are 'closely related', but no word on the extent of mutual intelligibility. 

Edit, the Baltic languages article states:

_Although morphologically related, the Lithuanian, Latvian and, particularly, Old Prussian vocabularies differ substantially from one another, and as such they are not mutually intelligible, mainly due to a substantial number of false friends, and foreign words, borrowed from surrounding language families, which are used differently._


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder about that as well. The languages do appear pretty different. Wikipedia says they are 'closely related', but no word on the extent of mutual intelligibility.
> 
> Edit, the Baltic languages article states:
> 
> _Although morphologically related, the Lithuanian, Latvian and, particularly, Old Prussian vocabularies differ substantially from one another, and as such they are not mutually intelligible, mainly due to a substantial number of false friends, and foreign words, borrowed from surrounding language families, which are used differently._


Latvian is as strange for us as general Baltic languages for others 

It's like extremely modified Western Lithuanian (Samogitian) with strong Germanic accent, but there are some words of Slavic origin that we don't use despite Lithuania having deeper cultural connections with Slavic World than Latvia historically, like tooth - Latvian Zobi - Russian Зубы (Zuby) - Lithuanian: dantys (probably more archaic which is similar to Indo-Aryan word for teeth).


----------



## Kpc21

tfd543 said:


> Wow, but did you get a physical card for that? Funny.


Yes.

In Poland, and I guess also in Lithuania and in many other countries, if you are underage, you must be at least 10 (except little children's bikes, on which you are treated as a pedestrian) and pass an exam to be able to legally ride a bicycle.

Those exams are normally organized by primary schools in the 4th grade. Theoretically (according to the law), they should be both theoretical and practical, and from what I read, they are usually like that. Mine was theoretical only. At the time of the exam, a policewoman came to the school and we were solving a multiple choice test.

In theory, if you don't pass the test, you can't ride a bicycle until you are 18 years old. If you pass it, you get indeed a physical card. Mine was like this one:


















In practice nobody at all cares about that and I haven't heard about checking those cards by the police.

An a little bit more seriously approached thing was a moped card, which you could get, also at school (although it depended on the school, mine didn't have that) when you were 14 and which allowed you to ride mopeds until you were 18 (adults could ride mopeds without any documents). Not long ago they replaced it with the AM category of driving license, which you also can get when you are 14, but you must take a course in a driving school and pass an exam in the same examination center where there are exams for e.g. driving licenses for cars. It has an interesting consequence. As the legislator applied here, to me – with some exaggeration – the "the law does not act backwards" principle, people who could get the moped card, can ride mopeds without any special documents and permits (all of them are already of age). Meanwhile, the people who weren't able to get a moped card (born after 1995 or somewhere around, I don't remember exactly) need at least AM (or e.g. B) driving license to ride mopeds even if they are of age.

I suppose, the exams in bigger cities may be organized in "road traffic towns":










We have them in Poland, I've also seen those in Germany.

Here are photos from a practical exam – this one inside the school, in the gym: Karta rowerowa - pierwsze ,,prawo jazdy’’


----------



## Kpc21

Meanwhile.

End-of-high-school exams (this is the word which has a literal translation in most popular languages, e.g. Abitur in German, baccalaureate in French, but not in English – as there are multiple English-speaking countries which name those exams differently) are just taking place.

In quite an unusual way:
– a month delayed,
– without the oral part (normally there are also oral exams in Polish and in foreign languages, now they are only organized in exceptional cases, for students who want to apply to foreign universities which may require it),
– with students entering the school building using multiple entrances, divided into sub-groups which are supposed to enter the school in different moments in time,
– with all the doors within the school building open, so that nobody has to touch door handles, also with a recommendation to keep the windows open whenever possible (unless there is noise outside, and they can be closed while the recordings for the listening part of foreign language exams are played),
– with students wearing face masks all the time, except the time when they are actually sitting the exam (masks must be worn e.g. when they go to toilet, or if they e.g. have an issue with the exam sheets and must call a teacher),
– with a recommendation not to share the impressions with classmates in the school building or in front of it, but rather from homes on the phone or online,
– with smaller than usual groups of students in a single room.

Photos from my ex-high school, from their Facebook page:



















Physical distancing maintained:























































It says "anti-bacteria liquid"... Shouldn't it rather be anti-virus?


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## mgk920

Never heard of anything like that here in the USA, either. There are bicycle safety classes and the like in schools, as well as some cities still register bicycles (I had a stolen one recovered that way when I was young), but nothing else.

Mike


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## Rebasepoiss

The bicycle license is apparently a Soviet/Eastern Bloc relic since we also have a thing called a cyclists license. If you are between the ages of 10 and 15 and want to ride your bike on* the road* then you need a cycling license. If you are younger than that then you aren't allowed to drive on the road at all (i.e. sharing the road with cars). You can still ride your bike on a cycling lane or a mixed cycling/pedestrian path without the license as far as I can tell.

In reality the bicycle license is very rarely enforced to my knowledge.


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## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> Meanwhile.
> 
> End-of-high-school exams (this is the word which has a literal translation in most popular languages, e.g. Abitur in German, baccalaureate in French, but not in English – as there are multiple English-speaking countries which name those exams differently) are just taking place.


"Esami di maturità" or just "maturità" in Italian.


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## PovilD

I checked our traffic rules and found this paragraph: (It's not 10, but 12 years old)



> 55. Važiuoti važiuojamąja dalimi dviračiu leidžiama ne jaunesniems kaip 14 metų asmenims, o išklausiusiems Lietuvos Respublikos švietimo ir mokslo ministerijos nustatytą mokymo kursą ir turintiems mokyklos išduotą pažymėjimą, – ne jaunesniems kaip 12 metų asmenims. Prižiūrint suaugusiajam, važiuoti važiuojamąja dalimi dviračiu leidžiama ne jaunesniems kaip 8 metų asmenims. Gyvenamojoje zonoje dviračių vairuotojų amžius neribojamas.


My rough translation:
To drive on the road that is shared with motorized traffic ("važiuojamoji dalis" literally translates as "part where driving takes place"), you must be at least 14 years old or older. If you have certificate issued by school (not driving school, but regular school), you can drive from being 12 years old. Certificate is issued if person attended courses that were set by Ministry of Education of Rep. of Lithuania. If you are going with adults (age not specified), you can drive with motorized traffic from being 8 years old.


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## geogregor

g.spinoza said:


> "Esami di maturità" or just "maturità" in Italian.


It is called "matura" in Polish, I usually translate it to "matural exam" if I try to explain it to my British friends as they have completely different system here.


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## PovilD

g.spinoza said:


> "Esami di maturità" or just "maturità" in Italian.





geogregor said:


> It is called "matura" in Polish, I usually translate it to "matural exam" if I try to explain it to my British friends as they have completely different system here.


We also have term "brandos egzaminai" which can be translated as "matural exams". It's used interchangeably with "abitūros egzaminai" (which derived from German word "Abitur").


----------



## PovilD

While playing with Google Translate, I found similar paragraph in Estonian traffic rules 



> *§230.* 10–15-aastasel jalgratturil ja 14–15-aastasel mopeedijuhil peab mujal kui õuealal olema kaasas käesoleva määruse ja ohutu sõidu võtete tundmist tõendav tunnistus.


"§230. Cyclists aged 10 to 15 and moped drivers aged 14 to 15 must carry a certificate attesting to knowledge of this Regulation and safe driving techniques outside the outdoor area."

Estonians are more liberal for younger children, but more strict for older children (teens) on that (10-15 instead of 12-14).


----------



## Džiugas

PovilD said:


> Interestingly, some if not many people in Lithuania colloquially still don't consider areas of former Soviet Union as foreign countries. If you say that you go "abroad" you would probably mean going somewhere that is not Russia or other Baltic countries


This is very weird and I hear this for the first time in my life. Going to Russia or Belarus is much more exotic activity than visiting Italy, Spain or even the USA. The culture of EU is much less foreign than culture of Tajikistan, Russia or Azerbaijan.


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## PovilD

Džiugas said:


> This is very weird and I hear this for the first time in my life. Going to Russia or Belarus is much more exotic activity than visiting Italy, Spain or even the USA. The culture of EU is much less foreign than culture of Tajikistan, Russia or Azerbaijan.


Probably yes. In 2000s, there was feeling for me that "foreign" places are named those outside of Soviet Union, but due to generational change, there is a feeling that Russia or Belarus becoming more foreign than Poland. When in the 90s, I think it was opposite. I think this mindset may have persisted in older generation which can communicate only in Russian as lingua franca.

I heard about concept from Russia, about "near abroad", and ""true" abroad". New Post-Soviet states being "near abroad" while other countries are just "abroad".

For our generation (90s and so on), Central Asia is indeed very exotic and almost unknown place. Due to bigger fertility rates, there is likelihood, that Central Asian people wouldn't relate themselves with Soviet/Russian past at all, and this potentially will happen quite soon. Most people might not relate Central Asia with being former Soviet Union anymore.

There are some artefacts with Central Asia in Lithuania. Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Uzbek people come to used car market in Kaunas (largest in Europe), and there is Uzbek cuisine dining place not too far from that market.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

PovilD said:


> I think differences between Latvian and Lithuanian are similar to differences between English and French. You have to listen very carefully to understand what is said, you have to get used to the accent to understand roughly from 10 to 30% without learning the language. In written text you can understand about 30% of what is written. Some most primitive words are the same: saule - sun, upe - river. Latvian endings are shorter than Lithuanian, when we end the word with -as, they only add letter "s" although sometimes we both end the word with "-is" which is the same in Lithuanian and Latvian. Bridge in Lithuanian is "tiltas", in Latvian - "tilts". Interestingly is very similar to Finnish "silta".
> 
> Lithuanians say that they don't understand Northwestern Lithuanians accents properly although they are still closer to Lithuanian than Latvian, but are a little bit closer Standard Latvian too. I heard even about cases during Soviet times, when Lithuanians from Vilnius went to the Northwest end of Lithuania, and decided that it was easier to speak Russian with them  You don't usually imagine speaking with your national different language, unless for education or other purposes.





ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder about that as well. The languages do appear pretty different. Wikipedia says they are 'closely related', but no word on the extent of mutual intelligibility.
> 
> Edit, the Baltic languages article states:
> 
> _Although morphologically related, the Lithuanian, Latvian and, particularly, Old Prussian vocabularies differ substantially from one another, and as such they are not mutually intelligible, mainly due to a substantial number of false friends, and foreign words, borrowed from surrounding language families, which are used differently._





PovilD said:


> Latvian is as strange for us as general Baltic languages for others
> 
> It's like extremely modified Western Lithuanian (Samogitian) with strong Germanic accent, but there are some words of Slavic origin that we don't use despite Lithuania having deeper cultural connections with Slavic World than Latvia historically, like tooth - Latvian Zobi - Russian Зубы (Zuby) - Lithuanian: dantys (probably more archaic which is similar to Indo-Aryan word for teeth).


From the quotes above it appears to me as the difference between Latvian and Lithuanian is nothing like the difference between English and French. English and French belong to two completely different branches of the indo-european language family, the Germanic/Teutonic and Romance languages splitting more than 5000 years ago. However, mainly due to the Normannic invasion (ironically lead by nobles of Norse origin), there are a lot of French words in English. I.e., different morphology, some similar vocabulary, although at least for concrete concepts you almost always find Germanic or Norse equivalent to the French word, e.g dog/hound vs canine. Latvian and Lithuanian, on the other hand, split relatively recently, so as indicated by the source found by Chris, they are morphologically related, but with differences in vocabularies.


----------



## PovilD

Yes, I meant vocabulary, and phonology, but apart from that, everything is pretty similar, for example, grammar is very similar. From my casual perception, looking at Latvian for me brings similar feeling like looking at French as an English-speaker.


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## tfd543

geogregor said:


> It is called "matura" in Polish, I usually translate it to "matural exam" if I try to explain it to my British friends as they have completely different system here.


Also in Albanian. Semi-matura after elementary school and matura after high school.


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## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> It is called "matura" in Polish, I usually translate it to "matural exam" if I try to explain it to my British friends as they have completely different system here.


"Matura" is a colloquial name. Officially it's "egzamin maturalny" – matural exam, previously it was officially called "egzamin dojrzałości" – maturity exam.

I don't think the system is really different in other countries. I think most countries have national exams that you can take (not obligatorily) after high school, which allows you to apply to a higher education institution (e.g. university) and on the results of which the recruitment to the universities is usually based.

It was a little different in the previous Polish system (back when the exam was officially called "egzamin dojrzałości"), as its result wasn't taken into account in recruitment by universities – instead, each of them had its own entry exams. They unified it during an educational reform in the early 2000s.

The only weird thing is that the word "matura" is easily translatable to most European languages but not to English. If I remember correctly, equivalent exams in the UK (or at least in England) are called A-levels, in the US – SAT, and all those names are specific to a country. Meanwhile Polish "matura" is a generic word that can refer to the Polish exam but equally well also to the German one, to the French one, or to ones from many other countries. There is also an international "matura" – International Baccalaureate (it seems it loaned its official English name from French) – organized by the Swiss, which makes it easier to apply to foreign universities (although nowadays, the universities abroad often recognize foreign local exams without any problems, e.g. you can easily apply with a Polish "matura" to a British university).

The Polish law about bicycle licenses...



http://prawo.sejm.gov.pl/isap.nsf/download.xsp/WDU20190000341/U/D20190341Lj.pdf




> Art. 7. 1. Dokumentem stwierdzającym posiadanie uprawnienia do kierowania:
> 1) tramwajem – jest pozwolenie na kierowanie tramwajem;
> 2) rowerem i wózkiem rowerowym – jest karta rowerowa lub prawo jazdy kategorii AM, A1, B1 lub T – w przypadku osób, które nie ukończyły 18 lat;
> 3) pojazdem zaprzęgowym – jest karta rowerowa lub prawo jazdy kategorii AM, A1, B1 lub T – w przypadku osób, które nie ukończyły 18 lat.
> 2. Kierujący tramwajem może posiadać tylko jedno ważne pozwolenie na kierowanie tramwajem.
> 
> Art. 8. 1. Wymagany minimalny wiek do kierowania wynosi:
> 1) 14 lat – dla pojazdów określonych w prawie jazdy kategorii AM;
> 2) 16 lat – dla pojazdów określonych w prawie jazdy kategorii A1, B1 i T;
> 3) 18 lat – dla pojazdów określonych w prawie jazdy kategorii A2, B, B+E, C1 i C1+E;
> 4) 20 lat – dla pojazdów określonych w prawie jazdy kategorii A, jeżeli osoba co najmniej od 2 lat posiada prawo jazdy kategorii A2;
> 5) 21 lat – dla motocykli trójkołowych o mocy przekraczającej 15 kW, jeżeli osoba posiada prawo jazdy kategorii A;
> 6) 21 lat – dla pojazdów określonych w prawie jazdy kategorii C, C+E, D1 i D1+E, z zastrzeżeniem ust. 2 pkt 1, ust. 3 pkt 2 oraz art. 9;
> 7) 24 lata – dla pojazdów określonych w prawie jazdy kategorii:
> a) A – jeżeli osoba nie posiadała co najmniej przez 2 lata prawa jazdy kategorii A2,
> b) D i D+E, z zastrzeżeniem ust. 2 pkt 2, ust. 3 pkt 3 oraz art. 9;
> 8) 21 lat – dla tramwaju;
> 9) 15 lat – dla pojazdu zaprzęgowego;
> 10) 10 lat – dla roweru;
> 11) 17 lat – dla roweru wieloosobowego, roweru lub wózka rowerowego przewożących inną osobę;
> 12) 13 lat – dla jadącego po jezdni wózka inwalidzkiego;
> 13) 21 lat – dla kolejki turystycznej.
> 
> 2. Wymagany minimalny wiek do kierowania dla żołnierzy kierujących pojazdami Sił Zbrojnych Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej wynosi:
> 1) 18 lat – dla pojazdów określonych w pozwoleniu wojskowym kategorii A, C i C+E;
> 2) 19 lat – dla pojazdów określonych w pozwoleniu wojskowym kategorii D.
> 
> 3. Wymagany minimalny wiek do kierowania wynosi:
> 1) 18 lat – dla funkcjonariuszy kierujących pojazdami Policji oraz Straży Granicznej, określonymi w prawie jazdy kategorii A;
> 2) 19 lat – dla funkcjonariuszy kierujących pojazdami Państwowej Straży Pożarnej, Policji, Straży Granicznej oraz Służby Ochrony Państwa, określonymi w prawie jazdy kategorii C;
> 3) 21 lat – dla funkcjonariuszy kierujących pojazdami Państwowej Straży Pożarnej, Policji, Straży Granicznej oraz Służby Ochrony Państwa, określonymi w prawie jazdy kategorii D





> Art. 7. 1. The document granting the right to drive:
> 1) a tram – is a permit for driving trams,
> 2) a bicycle or a bicycle cart – is a cycling card or driving license of AM, A1, B1 or T category – in case of persons who are below 18 years old,
> 3) an animal-drawn vehicle – is a cycling card or driving license of AM, A1, B1 or T category – in case of persons who are below 18 years old,
> 2. A tram driver may have only one valid permit for driving trams.
> 
> Art. 8. 1. The required minimum driving age is:
> 1) 14 years – for the vehicles defined for the AM category driving license;
> 2) 16 years – for the vehicles defined for the A1, B1 and T category driving license;
> 3) 18 years – for the vehicles defined for the A2, B, B+E, C1 and C1+E category driving license;
> 4) 20 years – for the vehicles defined for the A category driving license if the person has had an A2 category driving license for at least 2 years;
> 5) 21 years – for three-wheel motorcycles with the power not exceeding 15 kW if the person has an A category driving license;
> 6) 21 years – for the vehicles defined for the C, C+E, D1 and D1+E category driving license, with the restrictions from 2.1, 3.2 and art. 9;
> 7) 24 years – for the vehicles defined for the driving license of the category:
> a) A – if the person has not had an A2 category driving license for at least 2 years,
> b) D and D+E with the restrictions from 2.2, 3.3 and art. 9;
> 8) 21 years – for trams;
> 9) 15 years – for animal-drawn vehicles;
> 10) 10 years – for bicycles;
> 11) 17 years – for tandem bicycles, bicycles and bicycle carts while carrying other persons;
> 12) 13 years – for wheelchairs moving on the roadways;
> 13) 21 years – for tourist trains.
> 
> 2. The required minimum driving age for soldiers driving vehicles of the Polish Military Services is:
> 1) 18 years – for the vehicles defined for the A, C and C+E category military permit;
> 2) 19 years – for the vehicles defined for the D category military permit.
> 
> 3. The required minimum driving age is:
> 1) 18 years – for the inspectors driving Police and Border Guard vehicles defined for the A category driving license;
> 2) 19 years – for the inspectors driving National Fire Service, Police, Border Guard and State Protection Service vehicles defined for the C category driving license;
> 3) 21 years – for the inspectors driving National Fire Service, Police, Border Guard and State Protection Service vehicles defined for the D category driving license[./quote]


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## DanielFigFoz

No end of year exams in the UK this year.


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## cinxxx

Tonik1 said:


> *Polish soldiers occupy chapel on Czech side of border in “misunderstanding”*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Polish soldiers crossed the border with the Czech Republic and set up a checkpoint outside a chapel on the Czech side, reportedly barring people from entering it. Poland’s defence ministry blames a “misunderstanding”.
> 
> The chapel in question is thirty metres inside the Czech side of the border, across from the Polish village of Pielgrzymów. The building is often frequented by tourists and had been serving both the Polish and Czech communities before the border was closed in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
> 
> According to reports, first revealed by Czech news portal Deník earlier this week, Polish soldiers crossed the border at Pielgrzymów into the Czech Republic in late May and established a guarded checkpoint outside the chapel, forbidding entry to it.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Polish soldiers occupy chapel on Czech side of border in "misunderstanding"
> 
> 
> The soldiers set up a checkpoint outside the chapel and barred visitors from entering.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> notesfrompoland.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *
> 
> https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1270671179695771648
> 
> https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1270740180970934284*
Click to expand...


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## Penn's Woods

^^ :-O


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## tfd543

Speaking of flashing with high beams, do your country practice this optical horn in case of cops using speed guns? In Al, its used extremely much. In dk, i have never seen somebody use it.


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## Kpc21

In Poland it's used.

CB radio is also still quite popular among the drivers, especially in trucks. You can even hear ads on CB. So people warn each other about patrols but also other disruptions (jams, accidents) on the radio.






List of CB slang - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org




Polish also has a CB drivers' slang and interestingly, "bears" ("miśki") mean the same as in English.


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## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> Speaking of flashing with high beams, do your country practice this optical horn in case of cops using speed guns? In Al, its used extremely much. In dk, i have never seen somebody use it.


In Italy it was used more in the past. It's been years since I last saw high beams used that way.


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## Rebasepoiss

In Estonia it's now much more common for people to mark the police patrol in Waze than to flash lights for those coming the other way. I personally don't do either. The police in Estonia doesn't stop you for driving a couple km/h over the limit so you have to be deliberately speeding by quite a lot to get a ticket and I don't condone that. Yes, there are places with unnecessarily low speed limits but that doesn't justify speeding per se. I'd say that overall the speed limits on rural roads in Estonia are quite reasonable. In urban areas they should even be lower than they currently are, at least in city centres.


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## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands has performed 103,000 tests since 1 June. 1.7% has been tested positive. 

Over the past two weeks the number of daily positive tests has fluctuated between 107 and 262, with an average of 168, which is just under 10 cases per million inhabitants. 

There is widespread reporting about the lack of social distancing compliancy, in particular at restaurants and bars. I suppose we'll have to wait and see how this evolves.

With the exception of public transport, I have seen 8 people wearing a mask since the outbreak began. I ordered a couple of reusable masks for vacation this summer, just to be sure.


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## x-type

I always flash as warning to police patrol within 2 km. It is kinda road bonton here, although against the law.


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## tfd543

x-type said:


> I always flash as warning to police patrol within 2 km. It is kinda road bonton here, although against the law.


I also see it as an act of being a gentleman.


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## Suburbanist

If you want to travel... 

https://reopen.europa.eu/en


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## PovilD

Rebasepoiss said:


> In Estonia it's now much more common for people to mark the police patrol in Waze than to flash lights for those coming the other way. I personally don't do either. The police in Estonia doesn't stop you for driving a couple km/h over the limit so you have to be deliberately speeding by quite a lot to get a ticket and I don't condone that. Yes, there are places with unnecessarily low speed limits but that doesn't justify speeding per se. I'd say that overall the speed limits on rural roads in Estonia are quite reasonable. In urban areas they should even be lower than they currently are, at least in city centres.


In Lithuania, speed limits are usually not reasonable at the points where city/town/village limit sign is implemented. They put urban area signs at non reasonable spots, making speed limits too low at almost completely empty areas.

There were plans to implement 30 km/h zones in Lithuanian minor streets near City centres, but it seems the idea was abandoned for some reason, at least for the time being. Speed limits remains 50 km/h.

I was cycling yesterday on such streets after rush hour with the earphones on, listening to the music, without mirrors (though they aren't implemented in bicycles anyway), and helmet, it seemed for me like a death wish. I think I will be much more careful with cycling in Kaunas. I'm sometimes get bored on cycling same paths, but other cycling directions seems to be little catastrophic to cycle, especially during work days when people are driving (commuting job/home) slightly carelessly, I think they do not expect (and don't want to) any cycling at all on the streets.


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## ChrisZwolle

7,000 employees of a meat-packing plant in Germany have been quarantined after 657 employees tested positive for the coronavirus.

Again, a meatpacking plant...

In Rheda-Wiedenbrück. It's a large industrial complex:


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## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> 7,000 employees of a meat-packing plant in Germany have been quarantined after 657 employees tested positive for the coronavirus.
> 
> Again, a meatpacking plant...
> 
> In Rheda-Wiedenbrück. It's a large industrial complex:


Wow.


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## keber

There is a sign of second wave epidemic coming in SE Europe. Stricter border and travel controls could be the first action taken by governments.


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## Suburbanist

keber said:


> There is a sign of second wave epidemic coming in SE Europe. Stricter border and travel controls could be the first action taken by governments.


Which sign?

Some increase in cases is all but inevitable. However, unless the health system is put again under the same strain as at the start of the epidemic, I doubt lockdowns, closed borders and the like would be reinstated. Especially if the situation remains more or less homogeneous within Europe.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Bulgaria has seen an uptick in cases over the past week. But their number of cases has been very low so far (3,500), so any increase looks bad on a graph. 









COVID-19 pandemic in Bulgaria - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


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## keber

I wouldn't be so sure, in Northern Macedonia there is again strict lockdown because there are much more active cases than ever before. Number of active cases are rapidly rising in Bosnia and Albania too, border controls are very relaxed, however. Problem is that people in SE Europe relaxed too much in last month and almost nobody observed precautions especially not social distancing (which is probably the most effective measure) and virus never disappeared from those countries.
I don't see severe lockdowns soon, but stricter bordercontrols for sure.


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## Suburbanist

SE Europa had very few cases to begin with. So the virus didn't reach its 'baseline' contagion as it did in - say - Italy or Belgium. Thus, some increase is inevitable.

New Zealand and Australia will have to deal with the same issue. They have very few cases right now, and overall (cumulative) contagion, but they set themselves up in a manner that either they keep isolation-upon-foreign-arrival for possible 1 year, maybe more than 1 year, or sooner or later face an uptick in cases.


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## Rebasepoiss

Small outbreaks aren't a huge issue if they can be traced back to the source and contained. If you have lots of cases where the source of the infection is unclear, then you have a problem.


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## PovilD

In Lithuania, quarantine/lockdown conditions are over since Wednesday. Only state of emergency situation is left out. Nothing has changed much, except mask wearing is now only on recommended mode. I think similarly like it was with Latvia and The Netherlands on all this period.

There are plans to implement regional lockdowns instead of national ones if situation demands. From today's tendencies, it seems that Vilnius region is the most close to such circumstances, but situation is declared mostly under control. Rest of the country sees no cases (except imported ones) for some consecutive days. I think Vilnius never saw a day without cases from mid-March which was not the case with Riga or Tallinn.


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## Penn's Woods

Just heard Monroe County, Florida (the southernmost county in the state; it includes Key West), will be requiring masks in public places through NEXT June!


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## Penn's Woods

The New York Times published this yesterday evening:


----------



## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> I fail to see how going around freely can be labeled "rational" when there's a pandemic. The correct word is "stupid", if not "criminal".


I remember a report on this thread from a guy who was happy that he left Torino just before the lockdown


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> I remember a report on this thread from a guy who was happy that he left Torino just before the lockdown


Fair enough. But please remember the whole story. I went from a Covid-free zone to a soon-to-be-closed Covid zone. I think it's not comparable. I endangered nobody other than myself.


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> Part of the problem is that the whole Europe went to panic mode and random and immediate border closures. In fact those people responded to unclear situation in a rational way, going back to where their family and friends networks, on which they can to some degree rely on support, are.
> 
> I did something similar but in opposite way., I was in Poland just before lockdown and made sure to come back to the UK so not to be stuck in the wrong place. I was one of the last flight from Katowice to London. But I live in the UK for more than 15 years, all my friends, my partner, my whole life network is here. My friend from Lithuania did something similar, she even had to rebook her flight to London not to be stuck.
> 
> On the other hand, if those Romanian workers are in Germany only since recently they might correctly think that it will be easier for them to weather the storm back home in Romania. Especially if they don't speak good German and don't have family or friends there etc.


But when Trump closed our borders to the EU and UK (which I think was March 18th), the EU was mad at him.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> I fail to see how going around freely can be labeled "rational" when there's a pandemic. The correct word is "stupid", if not "criminal".


That was certainly true in March and April (and February if we’d only realized it); I’m not sure border closures accomplish anything now. Except for the rare places like New Zealand where the virus is gone.

I don’t mean it should be okay to pack into nightclubs and sports arenas, but prohibiting people from Infected Country A from entering Also-Infected Country B seems silly.


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## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> That was certainly true in March and April (and February if we’d only realized it); I’m not sure border closures accomplish anything now. Except for the rare places like New Zealand where the virus is gone.


I was referring to the acute stage of the pandemic, at least in most of Europe.


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## MichiH

g.spinoza said:


> I endangered nobody other than myself.


I only heard this argument from people ignoring the restrictions. But that was exactly the problem. We should stay at home to avoid getting infected and reduce the load for the health care system. I'm just one more person. One more in risk. One more who would need a hospital bed in a overloaded region....

I have no problem with an Italian moving from Torino to Brescia nor with a Romanian moving from Rheda-Wiedenbrück back home to RO. I even understand the situation of the latter better. When I would be in a foreign country and don't speak the language very well I would for sure try to get home.


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## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Especially if they don't speak good German


Or if they don't speak German at all.


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## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> I only heard this argument from people ignoring the restrictions.


Since the restriction was the other way around, I do not see, legally and logically, any issue. I did not ignore any restriction.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> Since the restriction was the other way around, I do not see, legally and logically, any issue. I did not ignore any restriction.


I was in a similar situation in mid-March. I’d been spending a lot of time at my mother’s already, because she needs someone around the house. Once it became clear I’d need to either stay there, or stay in Philadelphia and stay away from her, it was a no-brainer. I did make a few trips to Philadelphia to get mail and prescriptions (but never spent the night there until a couple of weeks ago, after the stay-at-home order was lifted), and maybe I technically shouldn’t have done that, but my conscience is clear that it was the right thing to do.


----------



## geogregor

g.spinoza said:


> I fail to see how going around freely can be labeled "rational" when there's a pandemic. The correct word is "stupid", if not "criminal".


Where did I say freely? More intelligent social distancing would be much more preferable than closing borders in the "dumb mode".

I'm originally from a town on the Polish - Czech border, with many people working on the other side. So a builder (just an example), could freely move 600 km to the other side of Poland to paint a shed but he couldn't paint a shed 10 km from home, just because it was in Czech republic. And we are talking about two countries which always had similar level of infection. Sorry but I will stay with my assessment that it was daft policy with negligible effect on infection rate in Poland or Czech Republic. 

Anyway, going back to my original comment, people act in their own best interests. So if Romanian meatpacking workers in Germany feel they can't rely on help there (for various reason, including linguistic) and if they fear that borders might get shut from one day to another (as they were in March) they did make logical decision to go back while they still can. Whether you like it or think they made stupid move from epidemiological point of view it doesn't really matter.


----------



## g.spinoza

geogregor said:


> Whether you like it or think they made stupid move from epidemiological point of view it doesn't really matter.


I can say the same for you: whether you approve of them or not it doesn't really matter.
The "dumb" lockdown, as you called it, saved Italy, and nobody is going to change my mind on that because I lived it. Maybe because we Italians are dumb, who knows. But anything different than that and we would have had hundreds of thousands of deaths, instead of "just" 35,000.


----------



## Attus

You guys seem to forget that those workers from Romania are not well educated people, and they can not read German press, because they don't understand tha language. So they are not very well informed about the pandemic, they may have read some conspirational theories, etc. 
They may have believed, that virus is fake, and is spread by Bill Gates in order to kill everyone through vaccines, and they fled in order not to be killed by Bill Gates. Or perhaps on the contrary: they thought all infected people would die and returned home in order not to be buried in a foreign country. Or they simply thought they, Romanian citizens, would not be accepted by German hospitals at all.
And remember: the vast majority of workers seemed to be healthy, then suddenly the authorities come and say, many of them are infected. They could think, German authorities infect them in the process which is called "testing", because the Germans want to get rid of them. And they fled in order not to be infected by the Germans.


----------



## geogregor

g.spinoza said:


> I can say the same for you: whether you approve of them or not it doesn't really matter.


Of course it doesn't matter.

First, it is not us on this forum who make decisions.

Second, we are discussing past events. 

But I can bet a case of beer that nobody will go the route of strict blanket lockdowns again. For one simple reason. No country will survive it economically the second time around.


----------



## cinxxx

Ok, so I flew the first time this Saturday since early March. I'm in Timisoara, Romania. Hopefully nothing too dramatic will happen and I can take my return flight back to Germany on Wednesday...
Feel free to label me as criminal if you think that's the case...


----------



## g.spinoza

geogregor said:


> But I can bet a case of beer that nobody will go the route of strict blanket lockdowns again. For one simple reason. No country will survive it economically the second time around.


If I have to be honest, I tend to agree with you this time.


----------



## g.spinoza

cinxxx said:


> Ok, so I flew the first time this Saturday since early March. I'm in Timisoara, Romania. Hopefully nothing too dramatic will happen and I can take my return flight back to Germany on Wednesday...
> Feel free to label me as criminal if you think that's the case...


It depends on the conditions. If you were working in the affected slaughterhouses, yes you're a criminal. 🙂


----------



## tfd543

cinxxx said:


> Ok, so I flew the first time this Saturday since early March. I'm in Timisoara, Romania. Hopefully nothing too dramatic will happen and I can take my return flight back to Germany on Wednesday...
> Feel free to label me as criminal if you think that's the case...


How was the experience cuz Im thinking to do the same in july to croatia.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's not looking so good in Sweden. Their trend is the opposite of the rest of Europe, Sweden is recording record amounts of new cases over the past 2 weeks.





ChrisZwolle said:


> You can't really blame them...





radamfi said:


> https://www.thelocal.se/20200617/has-sweden-passed-its-coronavirus-peak-yet
> 
> 
> 
> "The number of new reported cases has been increasing, but Tegnell said this was due to more people being tested for the virus and therefore more mild cases being discovered, where previously low testing rates meant only more serious cases or those in priority groups were reported."


More interesting Nordic corona statistics here: Corona-viruset: Status i Norden (note that there has been no update from Sweden since Thursday since the mid-summer holiday). The number of deaths and hospitalized in Sweden has decreased over the last couple of months, but slowly so compared with comparable countries, and the number of hospitalized per capita in Sweden currently is 40x that of e.g. Norway. Sweden's number of deaths per capita are now close to 11 times higher than Norway. Basically, Sweden early on decided, that COVID-19 could not be controlled, and hence they did not control it. Until recently Sweden has made no serious effort in testing and tracking the disease (and the aforementioned Tegnell still seems to oppose it, almost in a Trumpian manner). It is kind of amazing why there at no point, at least until now, has been any serious effort to change their strategy. It almost seems like it is more important to prove a scientific theory rather than acting on the facts on the ground.

I think it is pretty clear by now, that for countries that are capable, extensive testing and tracking of the epidemic, combined with rather mild social distancing (1 m/restricted group sizes/hand sanitation) are by far the most cost-efficient countermeasures until we have a vaccine. It is not clear to me that the more draconian, and very expensive (economical and social) lockdowns have had that much impact on the spread in comparison, but it could of course be because many countries that imposed the most severe restrictions had a low level of control, and probably high penetration of the epedemic, to begin with.

The level of testing and tracking is actually the main difference between the measures of Norway/Iceland and Sweden throughout the crisis, other measures being relatively mild in all three countries. International mass tourism makes tracking quite a bit harder, especially when some countries still have quite a lot people being contagious. Hence, proportional restrictions on travel make a lot sense to me, and the travel restrictions to other countries than Finland/Denmark/Iceland have a high degree of support in Norway, even though it means that we cannot go to our closest neighbor Sweden on leisure.


----------



## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Hence, proportional restrictions on travel make a lot sense to me, and the travel restrictions to other countries than Finland/Denmark/Iceland have a high degree of support in Norway, even though it means that we cannot go to our closest neighbor Sweden on leisure.


The question is for how long? 

I know Norway is not in the EU but you are in Schengen zone. Freedom of movement is one of the cornerstones of European project and most visible aspects of the EU benefits to many citizens. If countries reintroduce borders for prolonged periods of time it might have unforeseen consequences, including political ones.

So at some point international travel will have to be allowed, especially inside Europe. 

So, when? On what conditions?


----------



## Verso

I wish people would stop being so "smart" about initial reactions of governments. This virus looked like plague at first, so it's easy to be a general after a battle. These same people would accuse governments of not doing enough, if there were millions of deaths.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I’m in Switzerland. I have yet to spot the first mask, but I’m not in a big city. In Germany everyone wears a mask in shops.


----------



## cinxxx

tfd543 said:


> How was the experience cuz Im thinking to do the same in july to croatia.


It's just a 1:15 flight, so not that long. 
The flight was quite full, around me no empty seats. Didn't hear any coughing or sneezing and people complied quite well to all measures.
Wearing masks was compulsory while inside the plane, but they still sold food and beverages onboard.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Verso said:


> I wish people would stop being so "smart" about initial reactions of governments. This virus looked like plague at first, so it's easy to be a general after a battle. These same people would accuse governments of not doing enough, if there were millions of deaths.


Yeah, but we are talking about what to learn from the past here, are we not?


geogregor said:


> The question is for how long?
> 
> I know Norway is not in the EU but you are in Schengen zone. Freedom of movement is one of the cornerstones of European project and most visible aspects of the EU benefits to many citizens. If countries reintroduce borders for prolonged periods of time it might have unforeseen consequences, including political ones.
> 
> So at some point international travel will have to be allowed, especially inside Europe.
> 
> So, when? On what conditions?


Currently Norway has defined the following objective criteria for quaranteen free travel to/from Nordic regions:
a) Average verified incident rate of COVID-19 <20/100 000 per week over the last two weeks
b) New IVA patients < 0.5/100 000 over the last two weeks
c) Share of the tests that has been positive over the last two weeks < 5% (I guess this says something about the test intensity)
d) All suspected COVID-19 patients are encouraged to test by the authorities
e) A system is established for epidemic tracking around verified cases
f) Corona info material available for travelsers

Note that these rules are for leisure travels, and they are evaluated every two weeks. Currently only a tiny region of Sweden (Gotland) satisfies these, and even Gotland is likely to fail next time they are checked (I believe this week). Finland and Denmark have similar policies this summer, which makes inter-Nordic holidays possible, with Sweden being an exclusion zone in the middle.....

Possibly these criteria could also be applied for non-Nordic regions after the summer. In particular within the Nordic region, where there as been a passport union since 1952, the current border controls have some highly undesirable impacts. However, the cost of having border controls must be weighed against the cost for public health from imported cases, and the consequential damage on the economy at large of a new outbreak.


----------



## tfd543

cinxxx said:


> It's just a 1:15 flight, so not that long.
> The flight was quite full, around me no empty seats. Didn't hear any coughing or sneezing and people complied quite well to all measures.
> Wearing masks was compulsory while inside the plane, but they still sold food and beverages onboard.


Im gonna opt for the rearmost seat in my case. In that case, i dont have anyone befind me. Its usually the worst seat though where a/c fluid is leaking time to time.

Btw guys, what seat do you prefer in a plane independent of the outbreak.. aisle or window?

I go always for the aisle seat where i Can have one leg stretched at the corridor.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> I’m in Switzerland. I have yet to spot the first mask, but I’m not in a big city. In Germany everyone wears a mask in shops.


Are there any big cities in Switzerland?


----------



## Verso

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Yeah, but we are talking about what to learn from the past here, are we not?


I don't know, I'm just saying.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

tfd543 said:


> Im gonna opt for the rearmost seat in my case. In that case, i dont have anyone befind me. Its usually the worst seat though where a/c fluid is leaking time to time.
> 
> Btw guys, what seat do you prefer in a plane independent of the outbreak.. aisle or window?
> 
> I go always for the aisle seat where i Can have one leg stretched at the corridor.


I am normally clearly an aisle man as well ;-)


----------



## g.spinoza

tfd543 said:


> Im gonna opt for the rearmost seat in my case. In that case, i dont have anyone befind me. Its usually the worst seat though where a/c fluid is leaking time to time.
> 
> Btw guys, what seat do you prefer in a plane independent of the outbreak.. aisle or window?
> 
> I go always for the aisle seat where i Can have one leg stretched at the corridor.


Window. I am a tiny man and I fit everywhere, so I might as well enjoy the view.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Verso said:


> I wish people would stop being so "smart" about initial reactions of governments. This virus looked like plague at first, so it's easy to be a general after a battle. These same people would accuse governments of not doing enough, if there were millions of deaths.


Yep.

In American English it’s called being a Monday-morning quarterback. Because the quarterback is the player on an American football team who has the ball at the start of the play and decides what to do with it (pass it to that guy, give it to this guy to run...) and most professional games take place on Sunday. So Monday morning is when fans of losing teams will be obsessing over what went wrong.


----------



## Penn's Woods

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Yeah, but we are talking about what to learn from the past here, are we not?
> 
> 
> Currently Norway has defined the following objective criteria for quaranteen free travel to/from Nordic regions:
> a) Average verified incident rate of COVID-19 100 000 per week over the last two weeks
> b) New IVA patients < 0.5/100 000 over the last two weeks
> c) Share of the tests that has been positive over the last two weeks < 5% (I guess this says something about the test intensity)
> d) All suspected COVID-19 patients are encouraged to test by the authorities
> e) A system is established for epidemic tracking around verified cases
> f) Corona info material available for travelsers
> 
> Note that these rules are for leisure travels, and they are evaluated every two weeks. Currently only a tiny region of Sweden (Gotland) satisfies these, and even Gotland is likely to fail next time they are checked (I believe this week). Finland and Denmark have similar policies this summer, which makes inter-Nordic holidays possible, with Sweden being an exclusion zone in the middle.....
> 
> Possibly these criteria could also be applied for non-Nordic regions after the summer. In particular within the Nordic region, where there as been a passport union since 1952, the current border controls have some highly undesirable impacts. However, the cost of having border controls must be weighed against the cost for public health from imported cases, and the consequential damage on the economy at large of a new outbreak.


Well, re judging after the fact steps that were taken: I guess it’s a matter of attitude. Learning from what was done wrong for the purpose of getting it right next time is one thing; using it just for criticism or political attack is something else. (Although the latter -can- be all right; if a politician ignored scientific advice because it would be unpopular, that may be a reason not to vote for them. And I DON’T have anyone particular in mind here, or at least I’m trying to be fair and apply the same standards to everyone. There have been good, competent leaders in both major parties here. And the opposite.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Im gonna opt for the rearmost seat in my case. In that case, i dont have anyone befind me. Its usually the worst seat though where a/c fluid is leaking time to time.
> 
> Btw guys, what seat do you prefer in a plane independent of the outbreak.. aisle or window?
> 
> I go always for the aisle seat where i Can have one leg stretched at the corridor.


Window. Absolutely window. I like to look out and see what there is to see.


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> I like to look out and see what there is to see.


Which might be interesting as long as you aren't flying above clouds.


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> Window. Absolutely window. I like to look out and see what there is to see.


Indeed thats nice, but only When taking off and landing I think. Window seats have concaved wall so you lose some space, but then again you win some and lose some..


----------



## bogdymol

tfd543 said:


> Btw guys, what seat do you prefer in a plane independent of the outbreak.. aisle or window?


Normally window, especially if I fly in a new area where the views are nice.

However, if I take a trans-Atlantic flight where I could see only the ocean for several hours, I would go for an aisle seat so that I can stretch easier. I can also get to my bag easily to take my laptop or whatever and also go to the toilet without disturbing anybody.

These being said, my favorite seat is different. I had twice the opportunity to fly business class on long haul flight, so I would take that if offered, regardless if it is window or aisle. 😁


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> Which might be interesting as long as you aren't flying above clouds.


Idk why but i also like to use the toilet without having to ask people to stand up. I have easy access to my bag as well if i need to grab a book or wear a sweater.


----------



## Suburbanist

tfd543 said:


> Im gonna opt for the rearmost seat in my case. In that case, i dont have anyone befind me. Its usually the worst seat though where a/c fluid is leaking time to time.
> 
> Btw guys, what seat do you prefer in a plane independent of the outbreak.. aisle or window?
> 
> I go always for the aisle seat where i Can have one leg stretched at the corridor.


Airbus and Boeing air intake is in the front of the cabin, and air exhaust is at the rear. A relic of the unimaginable days when smoking inside airplanes was allowed and smokers' sections were in the back.

In any case, I take an aisle if traveling alone on longer flights, to be able to get up and stretch a bit.


----------



## tfd543

Suburbanist said:


> Airbus and Boeing air intake is in the front of the cabin, and air exhaust is at the rear. A relic of the unimaginable days when smoking inside airplanes was allowed and smokers' sections were in the back.
> 
> In any case, I take an aisle if traveling alone on longer flights, to be able to get up and stretch a bit.


Ah i didnt Think of that. Good to know.


----------



## x-type

Window on shorter flights up to 3 hrs. Aisle on long hauls. I hate asking somebody to let me pass. I rather act a victim


----------



## keber

Suburbanist said:


> A relic of the unimaginable days when smoking inside airplanes was allowed and smokers' sections were in the back.


Actually just 16 years ago on many transcontinental flights, I still remember that. And smoker/non-smoker compartment actually had no distinct border.


----------



## tfd543

keber said:


> Actually just 16 years ago on many transcontinental flights, I still remember that. And smoker/non-smoker compartment actually had no distinct border.


I guess smokers lament over those times.. now they need to hold out


----------



## Kpc21

I guess Google Translate will deal with that without problems. I recently discovered that it now almost perfectly translates Polish to English. It's incomparable to what was still several years ago. And to translate from German, it should be even easier...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Greetings from Philadelphia, where I’m in a long, socially distanced line outside the Parking Authority customer service place (but at least it’s not too hot and we’re under an overhang) waiting to renew my resident parking permit.... Usually this takes about five minutes. But this is the first week they’ve been open since March and they weren’t enforcing until this week. Mine actually expired at the end of March, but I hadn’t renewed it yet when the world shut down.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Kpc21 said:


> Thanks, I can understand it in German, no need to translate
> 
> Polish official sources claim it's necessary to undergo a quarantine upon entering Poland through the external EU border (so surely also e.g. returning from Turkey to a Polish airport... but what if someone flies back from Turkey to Germany and then enters Poland through the land border?) but it may well be no longer up to date.


Unless you lock people up, which would require significant resources, it is impossible to police the quarantine in practice. To some extent you need to trust people, or at least trust that a significant portion of the populus will follow the policies that have been put in place for the greater good.

The Norwegian government btw now says that travel to and from Schengen and EU from July 15th will follow the same rules as to and from the other Nordic countries today. I.e., travel will be allowed without quarantine when the epedemic situation in the countries / areas in question is sufficiently under control. The first list of approved countries in Europe will be provided July 10th, but the Norwegian government still will not recommend international travel, so e.g. neither the insurance companies or the Norwegian foreign services will be obliged to aid Norwegian tourists abroad if they get stuck or sick from Corona.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

cinxxx said:


> Meanwhile I booked another flight in around 3 weeks, to Hamburg, let's see how it will go
> 
> Driving 8-9 hours to spend 2 days somewhere is not my thing.
> I looked at train fares, the 1st leg was more than double the price of the flight, the return leg had similar price.
> I could have booked the return by train, but having to wear a mask for almost 6h on the train is not very appealing tbh, since the flight is only around 1h.


A Dutch reporter went to Vienna by train. She had to wear a mask for 13 hours.

The longest I had a mask on so far was like 3 minutes in a German fuel station. You only sporadically see people wearing masks in Switzerland and that includes tourist trains and cable cars.


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> Greetings from Philadelphia, where I’m in a long, socially distanced line outside the Parking Authority customer service place (but at least it’s not too hot and we’re under an overhang) waiting to renew my resident parking permit.... Usually this takes about five minutes. But this is the first week they’ve been open since March and they weren’t enforcing until this week. Mine actually expired at the end of March, but I hadn’t renewed it yet when the world shut down.


Why doesn't it work online?

Concerning travelling to non-EU countries, I checked Polish touroperators, and it seems they're normally selling trips to countries such as Turkey or Albania (by plane)...

Which is interesting considering that if what I mentioned is up to date, tourists from this trips will have to undergo quarantine when they return.


----------



## Attus

Hmm...

_A study led by the University of Barcelona (UB) has detected the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater samples from Barcelona on *March 12, 2019*.







SARS-CoV-2 detected in Barcelona water study from March 2019


Research led by University of Barcelona shows Covid-19 in Catalonia a year before first case confirmed




www.catalannews.com




 _


----------



## MichiH

^^ I just heard today that the tests (in general, not about Barcelona) are not very reliable. Well, it was about antibodies.... I don't take all these reports too serious....

Are there more sources for the Barcelona thing? It would be a _game changer_.... but why only one day? Just one day but 15 months ago....


----------



## g.spinoza

MichiH said:


> ^^ I just heard today that the tests (in general, not about Barcelona) are not very reliable. Well, it was about antibodies.... I don't take all these reports too serious....
> 
> Are there more sources for the Barcelona thing? It would be a _game changer_.... but why only one day? Just one day but 15 months ago....


I read something similar (virus found in city waters) about Turin, and it was referring to December 2019.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> Why doesn't it work online?
> 
> Concerning travelling to non-EU countries, I checked Polish touroperators, and it seems they're normally selling trips to countries such as Turkey or Albania (by plane)...
> 
> Which is interesting considering that if what I mentioned is up to date, tourists from this trips will have to undergo quarantine when they return.


The parking permit renewal? It’s an actual sticker you put in the rear windshield. It’s just as easy to do it in person as mail the form in - you’d also need copies of your car registration and proof of residence - and then wait for it to come in the mail. (I’m not sure they actually offer it on line, because of the other stuff they need.) And I don’t even use stamps or checks these days. Usually it takes just a few minutes, as I said....


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> I read something similar (virus found in city waters) about Turin, and it was referring to December 2019.


It’s already known that there was a human case in Paris that month.









New Report Says Coronavirus May Have Made Early Appearance in France (Published 2020)


A sample taken on Dec. 27 from a French patient with pneumonia has tested positive for coronavirus, nearly a month before the disease was first officially acknowledged to have emerged in France.




www.nytimes.com


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> I read something similar (virus found in city waters) about Turin, and it was referring to December 2019.


December is OK, it's more or less clear the virus was in Europe in December. However March is unbelievable.


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> I think it's not that bad. I used the tram in the last days and everyone wore a mask. One teen didn't have one and one didn't cover the nose. Of course, everyone in supermarkets wore masks. All restaurant waitresses I've seen wore masks but some didn't cover nose nor mouth. 99% of the people in the streets don't wear masks.


In North-Rhine-Westphalia it's compulsory to wear a mask in shops. If you don't, you'll be warned by the staff immediately. It's compulsory in public transport as well, but it is not controlled and most passengers have no mask, or wear it so that it covers only the chin (i.e. neither mouth, nor nose). No one wear a mask in places where it is not compulsory, and no one cares about social distancing.


----------



## MichiH

It seems that it is _a little bit better_ down here...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> In North-Rhine-Westphalia it's compulsory to wear a mask in shops. If you don't, you'll be warned by the staff immediately. It's compulsory in public transport as well, but it is not controlled and most passengers have no mask, or wear it so that it covers only the chin (i.e. neither mouth, nor nose). No one wear a mask in places where it is not compulsory, and no one cares about social distancing.


The city of Philadelphia just yesterday - I found out while I was in that parking-permit line checking news - made wearing masks mandatory in (1) indoor public spaces (shops...) and (2) outdoor public spaces where you’re going to be unable to stay six feet from others. But that’s been the actual practice for the last couple of months, so I don’t know if it was just strongly advised before.... Most businesses have signs saying you can’t come in without a mask. Those rules have been in effect, definitely mandatory, in New Jersey and New York since mid-April. Where I usually am in New Jersey, everyone is wearing them indoors but not usually outside. I’ll take mine off the second I leave the supermarket for example. In Philadelphia - and again this is before yesterday’s rule change - I see more masks on the street.

I’m seriously annoyed at this point at the large parts of the country where resistance to masks has become a political position. They’re making us all look bad. The EU ban on Americans was big news for a couple of days before it happened, and at first I was mad at Europe (and quoting statistics about death rates, in which respect we’re still behind several European countries), but I realized my anger was misdirected. And that I felt the same way about the South that you do about us. :-(

I wonder, though, how many Americans who are railing at the “ignorance” of those who refuse to wear masks are aware that there are entire countries in Europe, including two of my favorites , that have taken the same position. Which, more seriously, makes me wonder just how effective we’re being in fighting this thing...to what degree we’re fumbling for what we hope is the right response. Or maybe it’s dumb luck that the Dutch have done better than some places with stricter rules, from Italy to New York. (“Dumb luck” including the fact that it was likely spreading in the population before we knew it.)

Maybe I’ll be able to travel again some day.

(And I’m sure I will.)

Ahem. Sorry. Didn’t mean to get into a rant.


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> there are entire countries in Europe, including two of my favorites , that have taken the same position.


When you look at the number of cases and fatalities, they managed it worse compared to neighboring countries. I have no figures about economical results (higher health care system costs but also lower loss in sales) but the Netherlands were quite thankful that German hospitals healed their patients: Netherlands sends first herring catch to German medics as coronavirus thank you | DW | 10.06.2020 



> NRW, bordering the Netherlands, in early April took in coronavirus patients from three EU member states, including 28 from the Netherlands, to help overburdened intensive care units


----------



## PovilD

I think the longest I wore a mask is 3 to 4 hours. You can feel your ears getting tired from wearing a mask.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> When you look at the number of cases and fatalities, they managed it worse compared to neighboring countries. I have no figures about economical results (higher health care system costs but also lower loss in sales) but the Netherlands were quite thankful that German hospitals healed their patients: Netherlands sends first herring catch to German medics as coronavirus thank you | DW | 10.06.2020


None of my Dutch sources mentioned them using German hospitals....


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> None of my Dutch sources mentioned them using German hospitals....


I was also surprised when I heard about that - that they were so thankful - in the German main news two weeks ago. It didn't make the news in Germany when they've brought to Germany. It was only about French and Italians.









Covid-19 patients in ICU falls again; "Stable decline" says acute care boss


New figures from Dutch patient coordinator LCPS showed that intensive care patients being treated for Covid-19 fell for the third straight day to 1,303 patients. The fall in patients, 35 in total, was the sixth day out of the previous eight where a decline was reported. "We are now seeing a...




nltimes.nl







> There were 1,248 patients from the Netherlands were being treated in the country's ICU facilities. Another 55 were being treated in German hospitals.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands has a very low ICU rate, only about 1200 beds on a 17.3 million population. It is sufficient for regular demand but not for a coronavirus outbreak. Germany on the other hand has a huge ICU capacity, I believe a couple dozen Dutch patients were eventually transported to Germany.


----------



## MichiH

Dutch media reported about 55 patients. It was 4.4% of the 1,248 patients in Mid April.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Penn's Woods said:


> I wonder, though, how many Americans who are railing at the “ignorance” of those who refuse to wear masks are aware that there are entire countries in Europe, including two of my favorites , that have taken the same position. Which, more seriously, makes me wonder just how effective we’re being in fighting this thing...to what degree we’re fumbling for what we hope is the right response. Or maybe it’s dumb luck that the Dutch have done better than some places with stricter rules, from Italy to New York. (“Dumb luck” including the fact that it was likely spreading in the population


There is certainly a debate among experts how efficient the use of masks by the general public is to prevent the virus from spreading. There is however no disagreement in that distancing, cleaning hands, and staying home if there are more important.


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## ChrisZwolle

There is also debate as to what extent asymptomatic transmission has occurred outside of intimate contact. For example through talking or touching surfaces. In the Dutch media they reported that almost all infections are now traced through household contact, not in public. But mask usage is the other way around....


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## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> There is also debate as to what extent asymptomatic transmission has occurred outside of intimate contact. For example through talking or touching surfaces. In the Dutch media they reported that almost all infections are now traced through household contact, not in public. But mask usage is the other way around....


The point of mask use in crowded indoor public places it to reduce the transmission potential of the few extremely contagious 'superspreaders', which have been identified in many countries/cities: 1 single patient, often with mild or no symptoms, that end up spreading the diseases to many dozen people at a single gathering/night/event. 

It is not feasible to use masks with people you live with, in a consistent manner. Most contagion happens within the household, but masks help to prevent mass spread events (the types that 'seed' new cases such as in Ischl, Austria, in February).


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## ChrisZwolle

The question is if superspreaders occur from asymptomatic patients. Back in February nobody thought twice of coughing, but we know better now. If the virus would transmit superspread style but without symptoms like coughing or intimate contact, the outbreak would’ve been much greater (a scenario of a completely airborne virus).


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## Kpc21

Attus said:


> December is OK, it's more or less clear the virus was in Europe in December. However March is unbelievable.


Maybe someone accidentally coughed to the sample while being infected...



PovilD said:


> I think the longest I wore a mask is 3 to 4 hours. You can feel your ears getting tired from wearing a mask.


Shortly before they made it obligatory to wear masks, I bought quite a large supply of them in a pharmacy store – thing is, they didn't have those attached to ears but rather ones tied behind your head. Actually, when you google for photos of surgeons at work, they wear them this way and it seems those masks were surgical grade. By the way – operations often take several hours and all the staff around the patient must wear the masks all the time even normally... Now everyone may feel like a surgeon during an operation.

Anyway, because I use masks tied behind my head, I don't have this problem. And it doesn't really require so much effort to tie the mask, it's also much easier than it seems.


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## geogregor

Suburbanist said:


> but masks help to prevent mass spread events


Just to clarify, reduce the risk, not prevent the spread.

Even correctly used mask (which is, let's face it, rare) does not offer 100% protection. There is also argument that people wearing masks take more risks (wash hands less, stay closer to others, venture outside more etc.). I can understand it in really confined spaces (crowded bus or tram) but not really in many other settings.

The most time I used mask was a few minutes on a train. To be honest once I took my seat in a corner I often remove the mask, and I see many people doing the same thing. People use it when they pass through the carriage, go to the door etc. but once they are seated the masks are lowered or removed.

Oh, the enforcement is non-existent. You can be asked at the gates if you have the mask but once you on a train you do what you like. Especially now when ticket check are pretty much suspended.


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## Kpc21

The elections in Poland finally take place today. And it seems the turnout is record again. From 7 to 12 AM today it was 24% while 5 years ago it was 14%. The voting end at 21.

Queues to polling stations are reported. Also two polling stations in the south-east Poland had to be moved to other locations because of floods. In north-west Poland a polling station had to be moved to another room in the same school building because of a... roof collapse.

There was also a case of the temperature of voters being measured even though there is no such requirement – after an intervention they stopped doing it. And well, if someone stays in a queue outside for a prolonged period of time, and it's hot today in Poland (about 30 degrees Celsius where I live), the temperature might be increased even if someone is healthy.


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## Attus

What is the rule in Poland? What does happen, if at 9PM there is a queue at a polling station?


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## Kpc21

The people who appear in the queue before 9 PM can vote. Even if it's outside the building.

I voted and there was no queue. Although took my own pen not to use one after someone who could be infected.

By the way – as far as I know not all the countries have that, in Poland we have something called "election silence". Yesterday, as well as today till the moment when the voting ends, it is forbidden to do any agitation, promote any political party, present any data about the current election results except for the turnout. Except for the posters, banners etc. placed before the silence started – but they can't also be removed.

But in the social media it doesn't really work. Of course it's forbidden to present the current results and to promote any parties – but the leaked out results are shown as "marketplace" where the candidates are represented by various food items (originally mostly vegetables, now there are also things like jam, pudding, lemons, confiture) and the percentage of votes as their prices.


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## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> The people who appear in the queue before 9 PM can vote. Even if it's outside the building.
> 
> I voted and there was no queue. Although took my own pen not to use one after someone who could be infected.
> 
> By the way – as far as I know not all the countries have that, in Poland we have something called "election silence". Yesterday, as well as today till the moment when the voting ends, it is forbidden to do any agitation, promote any political party, present any data about the current election results except for the turnout. Except for the posters, banners etc. placed before the silence started – but they can't also be removed.
> 
> But in the social media it doesn't really work. Of course it's forbidden to present the current results and to promote any parties – but the leaked out results are shown as "marketplace" where the candidates are represented by various food items (originally mostly vegetables, now there are also things like jam, pudding, lemons, confiture) and the percentage of votes as their prices.


In the U.S., no “electioneering” - campaign activities like handing out literature - within a certain distance of a polling place. (As a matter of state and local law, so it will vary from place to place, and maybe there are places without that rule.) There’s no prohibition on publishing results before polls close - the First Amendment wouldn’t permit that. But customarily TV channels censor themselves...won’t report results in a given state or whatever until poll-closing time. This year may be interesting with so much voting by mail; we may be waiting a week or more to know who won the presidential race. (Consider yourselves warned.)


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## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> I voted and there was no queue. Although took my own pen not to use one after someone who could be infected.


That would be illegal in Italy. You have to use their pencil (not pen), a special kind that cannot be erased.


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## Kpc21

Turnout 62,9% – official.


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## Kpc21

And the results are quite predictable. 40% Duda, 30% Trzaskowski. There will be second round, in which the results will be probably almost equal.


----------



## MichiH

As it happened: France's local elections see Greens surge, far-right win Perpignan


In France's second round of local elections on Sunday, Marine Le Pen's far-right party the Front National has won in Perpignan, Anne Hidalgo has been re-elected mayor of Paris and France's green party…




www.france24.com







> Polls have closed in the run-off local elections that have been held in 4,827 cities and towns across France on Sunday. Turnout has been even lower than it was for the first round on March 15. According to figures published at 5pm, the participation rate for these elections is around 34.7 percent, even lower than the first round figure of 38.8 percent.


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## Kpc21

g.spinoza said:


> That would be illegal in Italy. You have to use their pencil (not pen), a special kind that cannot be erased.


In Poland once I heard about concerns that the pens delivered in the polling station might be erasable, with someone recommending to better take your own pen. Anyway, in case of any manipulations, it's still possible that someone makes my vote invalid. But at least it isn't possible to change my vote.


----------



## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland once I heard about concerns that the pens delivered in the polling station might be erasable, with someone recommending to better take your own pen. Anyway, in case of any manipulations, it's still possible that someone makes my vote invalid. But at least it isn't possible to change my vote.


Well, pen markers aren't that difficult to erase...


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## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> By the way – as far as I know not all the countries have that, in Poland we have something called "election silence". (...) But in the social media it doesn't really work.


Hungary used to have it, but does no more, and that's exactly because of internet.


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## Suburbanist

France has "electoral silence" concerning the publication of polls and some other stuff, as a result Swiss and Belgian news sites have a huge speak in audience around French elections...


----------



## Suburbanist

g.spinoza said:


> Well, pen markers aren't that difficult to erase...


This is terrible, more like sandpaper. They even had bi-color models with a harsher red end that in all likelihood put a hole in your paper before erasing ballpen writing.


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## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland once I heard about concerns that the pens delivered in the polling station might be erasable, with someone recommending to better take your own pen. Anyway, in case of any manipulations, it's still possible that someone makes my vote invalid. But at least it isn't possible to change my vote.


How the voting slips are handled after voting?

The Finnish way is simple: There are always people from several parties present when the boxes are opened, and the slips counted. No way for a single person to do any modification under several pairs of eyes. Thus, it is irrelevant which kind of a pen is in use.


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## Attus

I visited a hairdresser today.
In the region where I live, it's mandatory to record the clients's name and contact data, wash his hair, wear a mask for both the hairdresser and the client, desinfect the hands, wear gloves.
The hairdresser broke all the rules. He even removed my mask, without asking.

In the church it's forbbiden to sing. It's clear: by loud singing can the virus be spread to longer distances. Our priest asked us not to follow this rule.


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## ChrisZwolle

Germany seems to be a bit hysterical with the masks... The are so few contagious persons in public that the chance of running into one is 1 in ten thousands at this point.

The Swiss and Dutch are much more relaxed about it and they don’t have massive outbreaks, now a month after most measures were relaxed.

In the Netherlands they say that all clusters are related to intimate contact during weddings, funerals or parties with people kissing, hugging or sharing food and drinks.


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## Kpc21

An article from 2018 elections: Wyborcza.pl



> *Committee members on the counting of votes: when a friend felt unwell, the Commissioner threatened the police*
> Kacper Sulowski
> October 24, 2018 | 9:00
> 
> There were five of us to count 8,000. cards. They left us two bottles of water for the whole night and a half day. The ladies brought soup from the school canteen. When a friend felt unwell and wanted to go home, the Commissioner threatened her with the police.
> 
> This is the account of Joanna Ciszewska, who after Sunday local elections worked in Ursynów commission No. 625 at the school at ul. Zaruby. - I wanted to fulfill my civic duty and make sure that the votes are counted fairly. If I knew that I would experience such a horror, I would not have decided in my life. There were many ambiguities already during the training. Nobody knew exactly how to count votes, whether we can use pens or pencils and how to make reports. They said that at any time you can call the Commissioner, who will immediately answer our questions - he says.
> 
> Tired, sleepless, hungry
> Joanna's commission started working at 21: - We had over 8,000 ballots to view in five people. Most of them folded in four. It was warned not to tilt the ballot box, so it took us two and a half hours to pull them out and put them together. While counting, we had a lot of doubts, but the Commissioner did not answer the phone until four in the morning. After the day shift, we had two bottles of water, although we were promised a snack of coffee and tea. There was a ban on leaving the room. In the morning my friend felt bad, she called the Commissioner. She heard a threat that if she left, he would come back with the police. She didn't leave. The counting of votes lasted until 16. The headmistress of the school in which we took the corridor kept asking how long it would take us. The ladies from the canteen brought us soup. Finally, we took the bags with the votes to the office. We sat there like refugees. On the floor, wherever, tired, sleepless and hungry - recalls Joanna Ciszewska.
> 
> - We had no contact to anyone who could help in an emergency. We did not know how to prepare a protocol for forwarding the lists from the day to night committee - says Mariusz Umecki, deputy chairman of commission No. 525 at the high school at ul. Halna in Falenica. - There were also problems with the final document. We counted the votes in five people for 18 hours. Nobody even offered coffee. When the lessons started, we had to move everything from the corridor to one of the classrooms. Only at 15 we took the votes to the district office. There were 33 commissions in Wawer (a Warsaw district), and the bags were being accepted in one window. We waited there for over an hour. I felt just humiliated.
> 
> For 300 PLN
> Sunday's election was the first after a change in the law introduced by PiS. Two committees worked - one during the voting, the other only involved in counting. In few districts it was possible to collect teams larger than five. And this in the collision with the record turnout caused exceptional chaos. In many places, residents had to stand in long lines. Some even waited for several hours. In seven committees, including At Bernardyńska Water in Mokotów, ul. Andersa in Muranów and ul. Powiśle District, voting continued until late at night.
> 
> Read also: Trzaskowski's team in the town hall. Who stays, who joins?
> Observers pointed out that there were no tables for drawing crosses next to the names of selected candidates, and some voters had to go outside. In several committees, even several dozen more ballot papers were found in the ballot boxes than were issued. This was the case in buildings where two or more committees operated. Impatient queues of voters simply threw cards into the nearest ballot box. The situation was clarified by stamps on the cards.


The candidates may send so called "husbands of trust" (of course, they can also be women, but the name doesn't change to "wife of trust") to the polling stations to watch the whole voting, opening the ballot boxes and counting the votes. I found some guidelines for those – they're quite old (from 2010) but it explains well what bad may happen and for what to watch out: https://solidarni2010.pl/downloads/09_otwarcieurny.pdf



> *9. Opening the ballot box and counting votes*
> When opening the urn, make sure you don't see anything disturbing. Are some commission members not nervous? Can their clothing contain a file with 50-100 ballot papers? Do they reach into pockets and purses nervously (ladies)? Do they have put away pens with which they could "ruin" votes by putting a second cross, etc.?
> Make sure the room has enough space for the committee to work together - so that the members can see each other. Very important: try to clean the center of the room and get the commission to slide the tables into a square so that everyone can sit around the common table and see each other. Make sure everyone puts away any writing utensils and their hands were empty. If possible, check if nobody has crosses painted on their fingers with ink (this is one of the cases reported to us).
> 
> *9.1.* Checking the ballot box and the seal before opening it. The Commission checks the urn and seals and then - if the seals are intact - they open the ballot box and take out the ballot papers. These activities should be performed without haste and confusion, transparently to all participants. The ballots taken out, or any part of them must not be set aside or hidden from other people's eyes in the polling station. Note if there are no files of ballots in the box that appear to be inserted together. Also check that no cards have been left in the box. It should be stated by the committee that the box is empty after which they reseal it. The whole commission signs the seal.
> 
> *9.2.* Determining the number of ballot papers thrown into the ballot box The commission counts all ballot papers located in the box, describing and counting any torn cards etc. Reviewing the cards removed from the box, the committee separates them to votes cast in elections to the Sejm and to the Senate, and then tells the counts. As a trustee, note these values. Wile removing and counting ballots, pay attention if the ballots have authentic seals and correct appearance, in accordance with the PKW template. Note: If there is even one more ballot in the box than the previously established number of the ballots issued (signatures on the voters list), it is necessary to count the votes again and clarify the situation. Confirmed excess means that the card has been illegally thrown and this fact must be noted on the record. In addition, it is necessary to provide the supposed cause of this event. It is necessary to review all the cards to check
> their authenticity (stamp, print quality, etc.). The situation becomes the more serious, the larger is the excess of the ballots found in the box. It is absolutely necessary to verify the authenticity of the ba;lots and the suspicious copies must be secured as evidence for future investigation. If too few ballot papers were found, most likely not all voters who received the ballots dropped them
> to the ballot box.
> 
> *9.3. *Determining the number of valid and invalid votes
> a) Determining the number of invalid votes The invalid ballots are separated in such a way that everyone can confirm the invalidity of a given vote. After counting the invalid ballots they should be packed and sealed in such a way that nothing can be added to or removed from the package. As a trust husband, look at the quality of this security. This procedure is carried out twice -
> separately for votes to the Sejm and Senate.
> b) Determining the number of valid votes In the next stage of work, the commission determines the number of valid votes to the Sejm and then to the Senate. Most often then the counting of votes by committee members happens, then they sum up the results.
> Please note whether committee members:
> a) do not try to annul these votes by e.g. placing an additional cross or tearing the card
> b) do not try to steal or replace ballot papers
> c) look at the members of the committee for pens; if they have some, tell it to the chairman of the committee and ask him to order putting the pens away.
> Note: Particular attention should be paid to votes found to be invalid.
> 
> *9.4.* Possible reasons for considering the vote invalid are:
> a) votes are cast on a false card, i.e. one that has not been issued and sealed by the commission
> b) the card is missing the cross ("x") next to the name of any candidate
> c) candidates from various election committees were chosen
> d) the card has been broken
> Try to record the number of invalid votes of each type. Pay special attention to blank and incorrectly filled ballots.
> 
> *9.5. *Counting votes for individual election committees
> *a)* At this stage, the following activities are carried out:
> 
> segregating votes
> counting votes in individual groups
> saving the received values on support sheets
> (the procedure is carried out separately for cards with votes to the Sejm and Senate).
> Note: While counting, committee members should avoid unnecessary rush and perform all activities very carefully and calmly. Pay attention to any signs of embarrassment and confusion. Keep a record of the results obtained during counting so that you can later check the correctness of the prepared report.
> *a)* Sorting votes - grouping in "piles". Counting votes is done by separating the ballots with votes to piles corresponding to all the committees. Every ballot paper should stay shown to committee members and placed the vote up (!) on the appropriate pile. Here you should be very careful so that the ballots with votes for a candidate of a given election committee do not hit - accidentally or intentionally - a wrong place. Look carefully at whether the chair or other person puts the ballot shown on a right pile!
> *b)* Counting votes. Counting votes in individual groups can be conducted on an ongoing basis during sorting by placing, for example, lines on the previously prepared list of committees, and then theirs count. In addition, however, always request counting and viewing the ballot papers in each group. Encourage the members of the electoral commission to count and review the piles of competing committees. Let everyone make sure that there are no mistakenly put ballots with votes for another committee. Make sure the ballots have been completely recalculated in the given group. Member of the commission passes the entire pile to the next person so that he can check the counting result. Checked piles should be sealed, the result should be written down and the pile put aside. The number received should be announced out loud and recorded on a sheet with the names of individual candidates, which lies at the chairman of the commission. Check if
> the result was correctly recorded.
> *c)* Summary of the number of cards in all groups. After counting the cards in individual groups all values are added together. The number received should be equal to the sum of all cards
> with valid votes (separately to the Sejm and the Senate). If the results are divergent, make sure that the cards are counted again.
> Note: Minor discrepancies are usually the result of counting mistakes. Bigger differences, e.g. exceeding 10 ballots should already raise suspicions. Too few cards in groups can mean
> that some cards with valid votes were stolen by those working in the commission, which could happen when sorting and counting cards. A too high value means that cards may have been added to the piles. A significant discrepancy in this case means a serious situation that requires immediate attention that requires an immediate explanation and carefully checking all calculations again.
> *d)* Counting votes cast for individual candidates.
> (The procedure described above is - with minor modifications - carried out separately for cards with votes to Sejm and Senate.) Remember that the number of ballots issued = the number of signatures in the register of people voting based on the address, certificates and letters of authority.
> 
> *9.6.* Securing documents It must be remembered to secure all the ballots, both those removed from the box (valid and invalid) and unused. The measures should prevent the addition or removal of ballots and the change of their content. Cards with valid votes should be divided into packages so that in case of doubt it is possible to quickly count the cards in a given one package.
> 
> *9.7.* Report on the work of the commission.
> a) Saving the counted amounts for the report After the counting is completed, a report is prepared on the activities of the precinct electoral commission. The data are entered into the report on the basis of auxiliary sheets. Remember to check that the record entries match the results of counting the votes. The partial results saved during counting will now be useful for comparison
> with the data in the report.
> b) Signing and announcing the report of the precinct electoral commission. The chairman of the committee is obliged to announce the election results immediately after signing the protocol by all committee members. The results should be placed outside the polling station.


So the protection measures are quite well but the whole system still has some unavoidable vulnerabilities.


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## Suburbanist

e-voting is the future, isn't it? With some open-acess encryption protocol of course.


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## Kpc21

It's difficult to secure it and to prevent from manipulations. Manipulating "manual" elections on large scale is costly. In e-voting the scale doesn't really matter. You never know if you can trust the voting system. Even if the source code is public, you never know what's going on on the servers on which it's running.


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## Penn's Woods

Here’s something about that Barcelona waste-water result. Reason to be skeptical I think. Although I’m no scientist.









Was coronavirus really in Europe in March 2019?


Scientists in Spain have reported finding traces of the novel coronavirus in wastewater dating back to March 12, 2019.




theconversation.com


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> I visited a hairdresser today.
> In the region where I live, it's mandatory to record the clients's name and contact data, wash his hair, wear a mask for both the hairdresser and the client, desinfect the hands, wear gloves.
> The hairdresser broke all the rules. He even removed my mask, without asking.
> 
> In the church it's forbbiden to sing. It's clear: by loud singing can the virus be spread to longer distances. Our priest asked us not to follow this rule.


At some point, I read that when hair salons reopened in I forget which jurisdiction, they WOULDN’T be allowed to wash hair. Which goes back to my fumbling-around theory.

I got an illegal haircut ten days ago. I wasn’t sure of the rules in Philadelphia because I’ve mostly been in New Jersey, but I have a guy I’m loyal to there so I called a few weeks ago to see if he was open. He wasn’t supposed to be, but he was. I thought about it for a week then made an appointment which turned out to be a week before it would have been legal. He mentioned that his customers the previous day had included someone from the District Attorney’s (prosecutor’s) office and four cops, so he wasn’t worried about getting into trouble.

And he was doing things responsibly. Wore a mask, was spacing out appointments so he wouldn’t have people in the shop waiting.... He did wash my hair.


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## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> e-voting is the future, isn't it? With some open-acess encryption protocol of course.


What happens if you need a recount? I don’t see how you have an election without some form of paper.


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## keokiracer

Suburbanist said:


> e-voting is the future, isn't it? With some open-acess encryption protocol of course.


I hope not


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## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> At some point, I read that when hair salons reopened in I forget which jurisdiction, they WOULDN’T be allowed to wash hair. Which goes back to my fumbling-around theory.


 It is MANDATORY that the haridresser must wash your hair in Germany now.


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## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> e-voting is the future, isn't it? With some open-acess encryption protocol of course.


Of course, it is not. Nobody can be sure if it is the citizen itself who votes, or someone else.


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## bogdymol

I also visited the hairdresser last Friday. This was for the first time since early March, before this crisis really began. Since then, my wife cut my hair.

The hairdresser I usually go to has a small room in a saloon rented just for her clients. I had an appointment and was asked not to use the front door as usual, but the back door so that I will not meet anybody else and get directly to her. The hairdresser had a mask on, took my temperature and disinfected her hands before starting. She also mentioned that she voluntarily made a coronavirus test because her colleagues were a bit suspicious on her, as her mother died recently (unrelated to the coronavirus).


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## ChrisZwolle

A Dutch reporter traveled to Vienna to see what it is like. She had to wear a mask on the entire 13 hour train journey, but other than that, almost nobody wears masks in Vienna and everything is open. Very different from Germany or France, but similar to Switzerland.


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## Kpc21

MichiH said:


> It is MANDATORY that the haridresser must wash your hair in Germany now.


I have never had my hair washed by a hairdresser. Only cutting.

I was at a hairdresser more or less a month or month and a half ago, a week after it became legal in Poland. She has two seats inside, so that usually while she is making a more time-consuming hairstyle for a woman, and has to wait for something (for a dye to apply, hair to dry, I have no idea), she is able to do a haircut for a man. And it worked as usual – but the two seats were separated with a tall foil curtain and she did the haircut to me while I was wearing a mask. And I had to wait outside for my turn because no more people are allowed inside than the maximum number of people that can be serviced simultaneously.


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## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> I have never had my hair washed by a hairdresser. Only cutting.
> 
> I was at a hairdresser more or less a month or month and a half ago, a week after it became legal in Poland. She has two seats inside, so that usually while she is making a more time-consuming hairstyle for a woman, and has to wait for something (for a dye to apply, hair to dry, I have no idea), she is able to do a haircut for a man. And it worked as usual – but the two seats were separated with a tall foil curtain and she did the haircut to me while I was wearing a mask. And I had to wait outside for my turn because no more people are allowed inside than the maximum number of people that can be serviced simultaneously.


Me also. I dont wanna pay for that shit. I only pay 17 euro for a haircut in dk which is really cheap. Danes normally pay smth like 50 euro for a cut which is insane IMO.


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## bogdymol

tfd543 said:


> I only pay 17 euro for a haircut in dk which is really cheap. Danes normally pay smth like 50 euro for a cut which is insane IMO.


That is one of the reasons why I bought a trimming machine and my wife learned to use it. In the small village where I live in Austria costs 20 € for a haircut. If I go to the city is even more expensive. In Romania I used to pay about 5,5 € for a haircut last year, but now they increased the price to about 7,5 €. Still ok.

So whenever I go to Romania I go to this professional hairdresser, but apart from that my wife cuts my hair.


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## Suburbanist

bogdymol said:


> That is one of the reasons why I bought a trimming machine and my wife learned to use it. In the small village where I live in Austria costs 20 € for a haircut. If I go to the city is even more expensive. In Romania I used to pay about 5,5 € for a haircut last year, but now they increased the price to about 7,5 €. Still ok.
> 
> So whenever I go to Romania I go to this professional hairdresser, but apart from that my wife cuts my hair.


In Zürich is hard to find a decent hairdresser of male hair (not long) for less than CHF 40/45.


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## DanielFigFoz

bogdymol said:


> That is one of the reasons why I bought a trimming machine and my wife learned to use it. In the small village where I live in Austria costs 20 € for a haircut. If I go to the city is even more expensive. In Romania I used to pay about 5,5 € for a haircut last year, but now they increased the price to about 7,5 €. Still ok.
> 
> So whenever I go to Romania I go to this professional hairdresser, but apart from that my wife cuts my hair.


Wow 20 euros in a small Austrian village for a haircut. I'm quite surprised as I found Austria to be quite good value for money (Vienna at least). 

I seem to always pay £10 in the UK, in London (working-class suburbs though) or a small town or anywhere between. I could really do with a haircut.



Suburbanist said:


> In Zürich is hard to find a decent hairdresser of male hair (not long) for less than CHF 40/45.


Can't remember exactly how much I paid for a haircut in Fribourg but nothing like that.


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## Suburbanist

DanielFigFoz said:


> Can't remember exactly how much I paid for a haircut in Fribourg but nothing like that.


Fribourg is cheap, one of the cheapest medium-size Swiss cities together with Biel/Bienne and Yverdon-Les-Bains. Délemont is also cheap but too small to qualify for the comparison.


----------



## Suburbanist

I wear masks when using Zürich public transportation to and from the office (I re-started working from my office). I noticed a serious dip in overall mask usage rate even as trams and trains are now more packed. Even the cable car I use to reach my office building is also much busier now than 2 weeks ago.

I have a variation of rhinitis, it is not serious, but i do cough here and there, and these days coughing in a confined public space makes people very nervous (understandably).


----------



## tfd543

bogdymol said:


> That is one of the reasons why I bought a trimming machine and my wife learned to use it. In the small village where I live in Austria costs 20 € for a haircut. If I go to the city is even more expensive. In Romania I used to pay about 5,5 € for a haircut last year, but now they increased the price to about 7,5 €. Still ok.
> 
> So whenever I go to Romania I go to this professional hairdresser, but apart from that my wife cuts my hair.


In Albania I pay 1.5 Euro and thats including a coffee for chatting with the hairdresser. You know, they like to talk down there ... but hey, beat that price fellas..


----------



## Kpc21

tfd543 said:


> In Albania I pay 1.5 Euro and thats including a coffee for chatting with the hairdresser.


In Poland, at a local, standard (not any special) hairdresser, currently I pay about 15 zł ~ 3-4 euro for a simple hair cut.

Did the cinemas in your countries open? If so, do they require face masks while watching?

In Poland cinemas are now allowed to open but most of them haven't opened yet. Only every second seat in the projection room can be occupied (except for people living together) and all the watchers must wear masks all the time.

Interestingly, cinemas are allowed to sell drinks and snacks, but consuming them while watching might be problematic.

In Germany, from what I can see, wearing masks is required at all moments except while watching.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Suburbanist said:


> Fribourg is cheap, one of the cheapest medium-size Swiss cities together with Biel/Bienne and Yverdon-Les-Bains. Délemont is also cheap but too small to qualify for the comparison.


Yes that's true but 40 francs!


----------



## g.spinoza

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland, at a local, standard (not any special) hairdresser, currently I pay about 15 zł ~ 3-4 euro for a simple hair cut.


I've paid anywhere between 10 and 18 euro for a simple haircut here in Italy, in the last 5 or so years.


----------



## Suburbanist

Switzerland is expensive in particular ways. Housing, for instance, is extremely expensive, but not in a linear way compared to other countries. If one were to compare average after-tax wages and housing costs, it pays off - compared to its 4 large neighboring countries - to work on medium-skill occupations and just swallow the high housing costs while living outside the core of largest cities and commuting. There is no widespread social housing system, though, and whatever is there is mostly devoted to the most vulnerable sub-populations with a host of co-existing issues often.

This is what makes Switzerland particularly attractive for foreign skilled construction or industrial workers, even if the pay is okay (not great) by Swiss standards and costs, a diligent person can save quite a bit by living in decent but small flats, not spending much, and later taking the money back to their home countries after some 10-15 years working here. This is often enough to buy a couple rental properties in Eastern Europe, for instance, or just build a very nice house. It also means one immigrant can easily pay the basic expenses of the rest of his or her immediate family if he or she immigrates alone (far less common nowadays due to several cultural and legal changes - the scenario where a family with 2 working adults immigrate but also pays for their old parents' expenses in Croatia/Bulgaria/Poland is more common).

However, groceries, which are a much higher % share of poor household budgets than middle- and upper-income, are very costly in Switzerland, which makes being poor more lifestyle-costly in terms of diet adjustments forced through prices for households with low income and - say - 3 children, or single-parent ones. It is not that people go hungry or anything like that, but things like good beef or pork cuts, high-quality dairy, far-away fruit/veggie imports are much more expensive here than in DE, FR, IT, AT... Pork is easily twice as expensive in CH than IT....

Then, as commercial real estate is very expensive and given all the above, labor-intensive location-dependent services like hairdressers or run-of-the-mill restaurants are also very costly in the largest cities. Here in Zürich it is virtually impossible to find any restaurant for a reasonable sit-down quick lunch meal (nothing fancy) for less than CHF 25 or 30 (no alcohol included, only water). For comparison, a Burger King or McDonalds regular combo will set you off around CHF 15. You can get bland industrial pasta with simple sauce from fast-foods for the same price range, but they don't taste good (fresh but frozen and brought from outside factories for quick boiling). Two-scoop Italian-style 'gelato' (called by its Italian name everywhere in the country) on a street kiosk sets you back CHF 6 or 7, with CHF 2 extra for walnut toppings or something alike.


----------



## Attus

I think I'm getting mad.
It may not be possible that we have an epidemic, and I am the only one caring about it. No one nearby, no one that I know cares about it. I know no one caring about social distancing or washing hands. My workmates speak to each other and to me as well, face to face, having a distance of less than a meter. When they see that I don't like it, they laugh. They make sport here in the office (jumping, makung push ups etc.), of course they pant heavily - less than a meter distance between each other. The hairdresser doesn't wear a mask and doesn't let me wearing one, doesn't disinfect his hands. The priest in the church says we shall sing loud without masks (it is not only forbidden, but may be a source of an outbreak). People in the bus wear no mask, my workmates share food without washing hands. 
Every one behaves as if we had not any epidemic. 
Do we? Or does the epidemic only exist in my imagination? Am I getting mad?


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> They make sport here in the office (jumping, makung push ups etc.), of course they pant heavily - less than a meter distance between each other.


This is unacceptable, even without the pandemic ongoing.


----------



## MattiG

Attus said:


> I think I'm getting mad.
> It may not be possible that we have an epidemic, and I am the only one caring about it. No one nearby, no one that I know cares about it. I know no one caring about social distancing or washing hands. My workmates speak to each other and to me as well, face to face, having a distance of less than a meter. When they see that I don't like it, they laugh. They make sport here in the office (jumping, makung push ups etc.), of course they pant heavily - less than a meter distance between each other. The hairdresser doesn't wear a mask and doesn't let me wearing one, doesn't disinfect his hands. The priest in the church says we shall sing loud without masks (it is not only forbidden, but may be a source of an outbreak). People in the bus wear no mask, my workmates share food without washing hands.
> Every one behaves as if we had not any epidemic.
> Do we? Or does the epidemic only exist in my imagination? Am I getting mad?


People are seeking the balance between risk and freedom. If the virus begins to spread again, people are happy to re-isolate themselves, I believe.

Finns seem to still be pretty careful, in average. People are disinfecting their hands all the time, and a reasonable distance is kept. It was only a few days ago in a supermarket when I blocked another customer from entering a lift, and asked him to take the next one. He obeyed silently. Virtually nobody is using masks, because the non-surgical face masks are more or less useless in this case.


----------



## radamfi

DanielFigFoz said:


> I seem to always pay £10 in the UK, in London (working-class suburbs though) or a small town or anywhere between. I could really do with a haircut.


In Selhurst and Croydon (south London) there are several places charging about £8.

In northern England, you can find many places charging £5-6


----------



## geogregor

Attus said:


> I think I'm getting mad.
> It may not be possible that we have an epidemic, and I am the only one caring about it. No one nearby, no one that I know cares about it. I know no one caring about social distancing or washing hands. My workmates speak to each other and to me as well, face to face, having a distance of less than a meter. When they see that I don't like it, they laugh. They make sport here in the office (jumping, makung push ups etc.), of course they pant heavily - less than a meter distance between each other. The hairdresser doesn't wear a mask and doesn't let me wearing one, doesn't disinfect his hands. The priest in the church says we shall sing loud without masks (it is not only forbidden, but may be a source of an outbreak). People in the bus wear no mask, my workmates share food without washing hands.
> Every one behaves as if we had not any epidemic.
> Do we? Or does the epidemic only exist in my imagination? Am I getting mad?


Where is it? Germany? What sort of workplace?


----------



## MichiH

geogregor said:


> Where is it? Germany? What sort of workplace?


Nope, just a small part in the west of Germany. It's totally different where I live - in southern Germany.

I virtually saw no one in Germany wearing masks by late April. Wearing nose-mouth protection is mandatory in shops and PT since late April. I virtually saw no one in Germany (in shops and PT) not wearing nose-mouth protection from the day it became mandatory.


----------



## radamfi

NRW is also the state where lockdowns have been reimposed in some localities. The problems seem to occur in relatively impoverished areas where a lot of people work in low skill, low wage industries. The English city of Leicester where restrictions are being tightened is also a particularly poor area.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Working from home is still a major thing in the Netherlands. There still isn’t much congestion during the morning rush, despite traffic volumes being back to 90% of the regular level.

They hope this will remain a practice in the future to reduce congestion.


----------



## mgk920

Most places around here (northeastern Wisconsin, USA) have been charging $15-25 for a mens' haircut.

Mike


----------



## mgk920

MattiG said:


> Of course, it is not. Nobody can be sure if it is the citizen itself who votes, or someone else.


Another problem that has been reported with electronic voting systems is voters complaining that they pressed the icons on the touchscreens for candidates who they wanted, the screen was displaying that they voted for someone else and they couldn't change it back, the changes wouldn't 'take'.

I will never trust such systems. Paper ballots are light years more secure and trustworthy. Machine counting of paper ballots is OK, as the ballots can be manually recounted, if necessary.

I am also very suspect of mail-in voting, both due to its inherent lack of security and with the consistently reported problems with the Post Office delaying and/or not properly postmarking the envelops.

Mike


----------



## mgk920

Attus said:


> What is the rule in Poland? What does happen, if at 9PM there is a queue at a polling station?


Here in the USA, those who are in the queue at poll closing time are allowed to vote. The line is cut off, but those who were there before the cutoff time vote as normal.

Mike


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I’ve never had to queue to vote in the Netherlands. I just walk in, show ID and voting registration, and proceed to mark the sweet spot. And turnout is often in the 70 - 80% range (less for unimportant elections).

It sounds to me that elections are not well organized if there are often big queues...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don’t understand why the U.S. can’t get the coronavirus under control after so many months of restrictions. It took pretty long in Europe as well and in some countries it is still substantial, but in most countries the number of cases receded significantly after 6-7 weeks. The U.S. still has large amounts of new cases everyday. At the same time the restrictions are relaxed significantly in many European countries for 4-8 weeks now without a giant second wave.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> I’ve never had to queue to vote in the Netherlands. I just walk in, show ID and voting registration, and proceed to mark the sweet spot. And turnout is often in the 70 - 80% range (less for unimportant elections).


Me neither. It might be more of a thing in big cities.



ChrisZwolle said:


> At the same time the restrictions are relaxed significantly in many European countries for 4-8 weeks now without a giant second wave.


Because after some time European countries realized what restrictions are actually necessary and what restrictions were excessive. Initially, more care was needed and later, successively, it was possible to verify if releasing a given restriction won't result in a large increase of cases.

Poland managed to leverage much of the restrictions still having new cases of disease appearing at a constant rate (but with the rate of recoveries being at a similar level).


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> It sounds to me that elections are not well organized if there are often big queues...


Yes, if there are OFTEN. However, in many cases, especially in nations where election offices close early, there may be people who arrive in the last minutes. It's pretty possible that there was no queue in the whole day, but there is one exactly when the office should close.


----------



## g.spinoza

italystf said:


> That's plain stupid and irrationale. Mask usage outdoors where you haven't other people close is pointless. On the other hand, it's extremely uncomfortable to wear a mask for a long time with that hot weather.


I think it's much more uncomfortable to lay in a hospital bed between life and death, so I stick with the rules and always wear one.
I think I will wear masks well beyond the deadline.

About the whole "social distancing" stuff, well I'm social distancing since I was 10.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In Delft, Netherlands:


----------



## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> I think it's much more uncomfortable to lay in a hospital bed between life and death, so I stick with the rules and always wear one.
> I think I will wear masks well beyond the deadline.


Correct, but it does really not make any sense to wear a mask outdoors, where you can not see any other people nearby.


----------



## g.spinoza

Attus said:


> Correct, but it does really not make any sense to wear a mask outdoors, where you can not see any other people nearby.


But you have to have it with you. I cannot see other people nearby, but who knows who's there round the corner?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

geogregor said:


> That is very true.
> 
> 
> I think that policy was perfect for British politicians, they could be seen as doing something and equally send message that it was "them bloody foreigners" who are the threat, even those arriving from countries like Slovakia, with hardly any cases...


Oh for sure and I think you hit the nail on the head with your last point. I've seen many comments disparaging people who are planning on going abroad this summer, saying things like 'if you go abroad you shouldn't be allowed back, 'if you go abroad you should be refused medical care', 'if you go abroad you're a menace to the country', as if the situation isn't worse here than in almost anywhere people are likely to be going.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

Barcelona


----------



## PovilD

g.spinoza said:


> I think it's much more uncomfortable to lay in a hospital bed between life and death, so I stick with the rules and always wear one.
> I think I will wear masks well beyond the deadline.
> 
> About the whole "social distancing" stuff, well I'm social distancing since I was 10.


I think no mask wearing outdoors make sense if you are not entering indoor environments, and you keep 2 m distance when communicating with others, or rather, not communicating with anybody at all. Ok, it's easy to speak for me, since in my area, all the crowding happens in the shops, or near the shops, the rest is pretty much empty, only random pedestrians on the other edge of the sidewalk. Some areas in city centre is probably the only exception in my city (or any largest cities in Lithuania for that matter). Ok, parks can count too at times.

As far as I learned, catching the virus outdoors from random pedestrian is exceptionally rare, unless we are talking about big shouting crowds without masks.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Only 20 people remain in ICU in the Netherlands for covid-19, down from over 1400 in early April. 

Testing capacity has been expanded to practically no limit since 1 June, but the capacity isn't used due to the lack of actual infections. Similarly, contact tracing is almost unused, at only 4% of capacity, due to the lack of cases. Well, at least it's prepared now for a possible future outbreak. 

The Netherlands has now seen a full month since most measures were relaxed, but no uptick in cases has occurred yet. More and more people feel that the whole situation is over (despite reporting from other countries not being so good).


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> Only 20 people remain in ICU in the Netherlands for covid-19, down from over 1400 in early April.


79 is the current number in Italy.


----------



## MichiH

There was a question a few weeks ago. Whether anything will really change due to the pandemia....

I've been to a bistro in *Germany *today. The waitress came to the table next to me and explained to the other guest who has also just arrived that they do *not except cash* anymore. He must pay by card. The guy (German in his 50s) answered that it's fine to him because he generally pays by card and only has cash for emergency cases. The waitress said "oh, that's great. You are an exception. Most people have cards but do still prefer paying cash" And she said that her boss thought that the current situation is perfect for that test without accepting cash anymore. Then, she came to me. "I think you've heard that you cannot pay cash." - "yes, finally!" - she was quite surprised "Really? Cool!"

I had never thought that this would ever happen in Germany. Germany! Where it was often hard to have the chance paying with card at all.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

g.spinoza said:


> 79 is the current number in Italy.


It's pretty much identical relative to population size.

The Netherlands, much like Italy, was affected regionally instead of nationwide. Italy had a lot in the north but not as much elsewhere, the Netherlands had a lot in the south but not as much elsewhere. 

Given the lack of ICU capacity in the Netherlands, things could've been much worse if transmission in March would've as widespread through the entire country.... ICUs in the south reached maximum capacity and it was only due to quick redistribution of patients to other areas (and Germany) that they didn't reach an overloaded status where patients would've been refused.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> There was a question a few weeks ago. Whether anything will really change due to the pandemia....
> 
> I've been to a bistro in *Germany *today. The waitress came to the table next to me and explained to the other guest who has also just arrived that they do *not except cash* anymore. He must pay by card. The guy (German in his 50s) answered that it's fine to him because he generally pays by card and only has cash for emergency cases. The waitress said "oh, that's great. You are an exception. Most people have cards but do still prefer paying cash" And she said that her boss thought that the current situation is perfect for that test without accepting cash anymore. Then, she came to me. "I think you've heard that you cannot pay cash." - "yes, finally!" - she was quite surprised "Really? Cool!"
> 
> I had never thought that this would ever happen in Germany. Germany! Where it was often hard to have the chance paying with card at all.


I’ve seen some “cards strongly preferred” signs, but it may be illegal to refuse cash. It’s certainly illegal in the city of Philadelphia, and the rationale for that prohibition is requiring cards disadvantages people who can’t get them or even get bank accounts.

I still prefer cash for small transactions. Because I’m compulsive about recording things and don’t want to make a mistake because I spend money I don’t have (because a card transaction hasn’t gone through yet). So not having to record every five-dollar purchase saves some trouble.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's pretty much identical relative to population size.
> 
> The Netherlands, much like Italy, was affected regionally instead of nationwide. Italy had a lot in the north but not as much elsewhere, the Netherlands had a lot in the south but not as much elsewhere.
> 
> Given the lack of ICU capacity in the Netherlands, things could've been much worse if transmission in March would've as widespread through the entire country.... ICUs in the south reached maximum capacity and it was only due to quick redistribution of patients to other areas (and Germany) that they didn't reach an overloaded status where patients would've been refused.


The south meaning Limburg and Noord-Brabant? Why was it worse there?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> The south meaning Limburg and Noord-Brabant? Why was it worse there?


That's right. The reason was a combination of returning travelers from Austria and Italy and a lot of carnival festivities in late February. Carnival is mostly celebrated in southern Netherlands (a traditionally catholic area, unlike the rest of the country which was protestant). Due to carnival being in February, many festivities are indoors in bars and restaurants, which turned out to be a superspreader event chain.


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> I still prefer cash for small transactions.


Define "small". I paid 26 € at Müller (drugstore), 17 € at Lidl (discount store) and 13 € at that bistro including tip today. All with credit card. I didn't draw out money since the lockdown began in Mid March....


----------



## Suburbanist

Here in Switzerland digital payments usage increased up to 340% (just the main ones, not the niche apps).

It is not even that many places were not fit with portable machines, but many would just not let you pay by card for small purchases before, or you would get Swiss rolling eyes if asking to pay a CHF 5 cafe/ice-cream shop small bite with card.

An advantage of this late-adoption of digital payments is that NFC-enabled apps are everywhere and people use their phones quite a bit to pay.

ATM usage dropped >70% in the second quarter here in Switzerland.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

In Norway most people have not been using cash other than in exceptional cases for years, and before that a couple of decades where cash was mostly used for the bus, buying a cookie at a school event, cash collection for gifts at work, tipping, and similar instances using small change only. For the latter applications people are now using other payment options, mainly by mobile. Carrying cash is in general simply something of the past, Corona or not. But I do think people also here have the right by law to pay with cash if they want to.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> Define "small". I paid 26 € at Müller (drugstore), 17 € at Lidl (discount store) and 13 € at that bistro including tip today. All with credit card. I didn't draw out money since the lockdown began in Mid March....


I always use cash for anything much below $10 (unless I don’t have it because I haven’t been to the ATM); almost always cards above $20; $10 to 20 is a gray area. The overpriced cafe around the corner has “cards preferred, cash accepted” sign, or words to that effect, that I didn’t notice until today.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> In Delft, Netherlands:


Too late for the pink day (NATIONAL PINK DAY - June 23 - National Day Calendar)


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> In Norway most people have not been using cash other than in exceptional cases for years, and before that a couple of decades where cash was mostly used for the bus, buying a cookie at a school event, cash collection for gifts at work, tipping, and similar instances using small change only. For the latter applications people are now using other payment options, mainly by mobile. Carrying cash is in general simply something of the past, Corona or not. But I do think people also here have the right by law to pay with cash if they want to.


Same in Finland, but an obligation to accept cash does not exist. A cashless shop has to mention it at the door.

That causes some problems. I have lost my last 50 cent coin, and now I am in a trouble at the supermarket where the carts work on a deposit of 50 cent or euro coin. Have to go to a hardware shop to buy some washers of same size.


----------



## MichiH

MattiG said:


> I have lost my last 50 cent coin, and now I am in a trouble at the supermarket where the carts work on a deposit of 50 cent or euro coin.


I have a 1 DM coin and a quarter $ from Canada for it


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands has now seen a full month since most measures were relaxed, but no uptick in cases has occurred yet. More and more people feel that the whole situation is over *(despite reporting from other countries not being so good).*


It's not comforting to see when Europe is doing relatively well, while US is not. USA is somewhat centre of the World in terms of economics and probably culture (or at least seen as such). Their inside problems tends to become global problems at times.

I understand that poorer countries has less resources, people can't afford being quarantined, but it's undesirable to see such situation with developed countries, especially with countries having one of the largest GDP per capita in the World, like US.


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> That causes some problems. I have lost my last 50 cent coin, and now I am in a trouble at the supermarket where the carts work on a deposit of 50 cent or euro coin. Have to go to a hardware shop to buy some washers of same size.


In Poland, you can get special tokens that can replace the coins in carts for free at Lidl. Maybe Finnish Lidl also gives them away.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

MattiG said:


> That causes some problems. I have lost my last 50 cent coin, and now I am in a trouble at the supermarket where the carts work on a deposit of 50 cent or euro coin. Have to go to a hardware shop to buy some washers of same size.


Quite a few supermarkets have abolished the cart locks altogether. Good riddance! It has become an important criterion for me when selecting which supermarket to use ;-)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Catalan government has imposed a lockdown on a region of 200,000 people around Lleida, everyone has to leave before 16h today, otherwise you'll be in quarantine.









Nueve brotes obligan a confinar a más de 200.000 personas en Lleida


El cierre afecta a la comarca de Segrià, que incluye la capital, y durará 15 días. Solo se permite entrar y salir de la zona por trabajo y con un certificado




elpais.com





This makes me hesitant to go to Spain if you have to deal with sudden lockdowns. Now this area isn't very touristic, but major roads cross it and could be problematic for travelers.
Also, there still seems to be widespread mask usage outdoors, this is also not my idea of a vacation.


----------



## CNGL

There shouldn't be any problems for travelers crossing the lockdown area as long as they just go through it without stopping. I worried about a relative who lives near Barcelona, as I did earlier when most of Eastern Huesca province (roughly South of the foothills and East of the Prime Meridian) had to re-impose some restrictions. And yes, there is still widespread mask usage outdoors even though it's not mandatory if social distancing can be kept, at least where I live, I'm among the few who don't wear mask when out for a walk (but I still carry one just in case).


----------



## Penn's Woods

PovilD said:


> It's not comforting to see when Europe is doing relatively well, while US is not. USA is somewhat centre of the World in terms of economics and probably culture (or at least seen as such). Their inside problems tends to become global problems at times.
> 
> I understand that poorer countries has less resources, people can't afford being quarantined, but it's undesirable to see such situation with developed countries, especially with countries having one of the largest GDP per capita in the World, like US.


And it was completely avoidable.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland, you can get special tokens that can replace the coins in carts for free at Lidl. Maybe Finnish Lidl also gives them away.


In some countries, you can use a shopping cart for free. And public bathrooms. And drinking fountains.

Of course, you can also...no, stopping myself here.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Catalan government has imposed a lockdown on a region of 200,000 people around Lleida, everyone has to leave before 16h today, otherwise you'll be in quarantine.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Nueve brotes obligan a confinar a más de 200.000 personas en Lleida
> 
> 
> El cierre afecta a la comarca de Segrià, que incluye la capital, y durará 15 días. Solo se permite entrar y salir de la zona por trabajo y con un certificado
> 
> 
> 
> 
> elpais.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This makes me hesitant to go to Spain if you have to deal with sudden lockdowns. Now this area isn't very touristic, but major roads cross it and could be problematic for travelers.
> Also, there still seems to be widespread mask usage outdoors, this is also not my idea of a vacation.


Would you rather vacation in a place that requires masks or not vacation at all?

Seriously, this may be reality in much of the world for some time. It may be wise to just get used to it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think masks are nonsense for the most part. Nobody uses them like medical professionals do, so their effect is much more limited than in theory. People get infected through close / intimate contact, not by crossing paths outdoors or in the supermarket. The vast majority of cases were traced through the household members, inside bars in February and certain work locations (mostly health care and meat processing plants). Not outdoors, not in offices and not in supermarkets or shops. 

You can argue that they could help in really confined spaces like overcrowded public transport or crowded elevators. But really the best way to stop the virus is by staying home if you have any symptoms. And follow the basic hygiene instructions.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think masks are nonsense for the most part. Nobody uses them like medical professionals do, so their effect is much more limited than in theory. People get infected through close / intimate contact, not by crossing paths outdoors or in the supermarket. The vast majority of cases were traced through the household members, inside bars in February and certain work locations (mostly health care and meat processing plants). Not outdoors, not in offices and not in supermarkets or shops.
> 
> You can argue that they could help in really confined spaces like overcrowded public transport or crowded elevators. But really the best way to stop the virus is by staying home if you have any symptoms. And follow the basic hygiene instructions.


Re supermarkets and shops, think of the risk to those who work there, exposed to possible infection all day. And it’s not just the cashiers, who are behind plastic shields.

But the merits of masks aren’t what I was getting at. Staying away from places because you’ll have to wear one is going to mean you’re not going to see much. My choice would be to make the best of it.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think masks are nonsense for the most part. Nobody uses them like medical professionals do, so their effect is much more limited than in theory. People get infected through close / intimate contact, not by crossing paths outdoors or in the supermarket. The vast majority of cases were traced through the household members, inside bars in February and certain work locations (mostly health care and meat processing plants). Not outdoors, not in offices and not in supermarkets or shops.
> 
> You can argue that they could help in really confined spaces like overcrowded public transport or crowded elevators. But really the best way to stop the virus is by staying home if you have any symptoms. And follow the basic hygiene instructions.


Bars/nightclubs and air travel were also very important in the early stages, at least for the spread between countries in Europe. Also we should perhaps remember that "shops" (or more generally markets) have very differ layouts and density of people around the world, so experience from one country/region cannot necessarily be transferred to another.

The economic consequences of staying at home also varies quite a lot around the world, even in the western world or between people of different occupations. Similarly will the possibility for social distancing during work or commute. Hence, in areas where people are not likely stay home if they have mild symptoms and the virus is prevalent, even a rather poorly designed or operated phase mask will reduce the spread of droplets coughed up by sick persons. Hence, in many countries mandatory phase mask regulations are indeed nonsense, in others perhaps not.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think masks are nonsense for the most part. Nobody uses them like medical professionals do, so their effect is much more limited than in theory. People get infected through close / intimate contact, not by crossing paths outdoors or in the supermarket.


This is entirely to be proven. Most reports state that covid is much more easily spread than normal flu, which may mean that even quick contacts could be dangerous.


----------



## MichiH

Many people infected other people before they had first symptoms. Working from home is fine for many of us but not for people working in health care system, in supermarkets, food production etc. It's simple to simplify things when you just look at your bubble....

I prefer wearing a mask in a shop or in the tram for a few minutes instead of not going out. OTOH, if wearing a mask would not be mandatory, I would not wear one.


----------



## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> This is entirely to be proven. Most reports state that covid is much more easily spread than normal flu, which may mean that even quick contacts could be dangerous.


I read this a couple of months ago and found it interesting and helpful. It suggests that quick contacts really aren’t that dangerous because one needs to be exposed to a certain amount of virus in a certain amount of time to be infected. I’m much less concerned about getting infected from someone I pass on the street or in a supermarket aisle than I would be about -working- in a supermarket in an area where the virus is spreading.

For what it’s worth. I’m no scientist, so I can be persuaded this person is wrong. But it made sense to me.









The Risks - Know Them - Avoid Them


Please read this link to learn about the author and background to these posts. It seems many people are breathing some relief, and I’m not sure why. An epidemic curve has a relatively predictable upslope and once the peak is reached, the back slope can also be predicted. We have robust data from...




www.erinbromage.com


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> I think it's much more uncomfortable to lay in a hospital bed between life and death, so I stick with the rules and always wear one.
> I think I will wear masks well beyond the deadline.
> 
> About the whole "social distancing" stuff, well I'm social distancing since I was 10.


Ok, but if you have nobody around, mask or no mask, the chance to get infected or to infect someone else is zero. It's necessary to always have a mask with you, because you don't know if you will stay close to other people, but not to wear it all the time outdoor.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I haven't seen any reports that supermarkets or shops are a likely source of infections, even among workers. The contacts are brief and not as close as in a crowded bar for example. 

There are many ways the virus could theoretically be transmitted, including through contact with contaminated surfaces, however most of those are not a likely source. It's possible, but not a common way. 

On the other hand it is also known that even among household transmission (the most common form), only about 20-30% of those living with an infected member get infected themselves, which indicates that the virus transmission is not as easily, as if any contact with a contagious patient means certain infection.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I haven't seen any reports that supermarkets or shops are a likely source of infections, even among workers. The contacts are brief and not as close as in a crowded bar for example.
> 
> There are many ways the virus could theoretically be transmitted, including through contact with contaminated surfaces, however most of those are not a likely source. It's possible, but not a common way.
> 
> On the other hand it is also known that even among household transmission (the most common form), only about 20-30% of those living with an infected member get infected themselves, which indicates that the virus transmission is not as easily, as if any contact with a contagious patient means certain infection.


There have been reports of supermarket workers getting infected in the U.S., particularly early on.









Coronavirus Cases at D.C. Whole Foods Highlight Risks Facing Grocery Workers (Published 2020)


A cluster of infections at the store in the heart of trendy downtown Washington is not an isolated episode, as the nation’s grocery workers increasingly fall ill.




www.nytimes.com













COVID-19 claims lives of 30 grocery store workers, thousands more may have it, union says


So far in the COVID-19 pandemic, 30 grocery store workers have died, the UFCW says. Contributing: Customers are not adhering to safety precautions.



www.usatoday.com


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> ....
> 
> “On the other hand it is also known that even among household transmission (the most common form), only about 20-30% of those living with an infected member get infected themselves, which indicates that the virus transmission is not as easily, as if any contact with a contagious patient means certain infection.”


Do you remember where you saw that? I thought it was a lot higher.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

As with most of these reporting: it's possible, but is it also a likely / common way?

I met a couple on a campsite in Switzerland. She told me her sister got infected. She works in an ICU. But it was determined that the source was not the ICU, but her husband who went skiing in Austria...

They can actually trace the path of virus transmission, so they can also trace within a household who infected who. It turned out for example that children almost never infected parents, but parents infected each other.


----------



## g.spinoza

Penn's Woods said:


> I read this a couple of months ago and found it interesting and helpful. It suggests that quick contacts really aren’t that dangerous because one needs to be exposed to a certain amount of virus in a certain amount of time to be infected. I’m much less concerned about getting infected from someone I pass on the street or in a supermarket aisle than I would be about -working- in a supermarket in an area where the virus is spreading.
> 
> For what it’s worth. I’m no scientist, so I can be persuaded this person is wrong. But it made sense to me.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Risks - Know Them - Avoid Them
> 
> 
> Please read this link to learn about the author and background to these posts. It seems many people are breathing some relief, and I’m not sure why. An epidemic curve has a relatively predictable upslope and once the peak is reached, the back slope can also be predicted. We have robust data from...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.erinbromage.com


Fair enough. I'm reading interviews made by Italian news agency ADNKronos to a bunch of experts: Coronavirus, mascherina all'aperto: sì o no?
Many of them say the chance of getting infected outdoors are "much less than indoors, but not zero". There is no unanimous consensus on this, though. One of these experts (professor of Microbiology and Virology) says: "I will continue to wear a mask, even outdoors, until there are no more cases. For two reasons: I see it works, and I've seen sick people".

I will yield on this, but I won't underestimate the importance of masks, and I will continue to wear them, even outdoors, for many months in the future.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> I haven't seen any reports that supermarkets or shops are a likely source of infections, even among workers. The contacts are brief and not as close as in a crowded bar for example.


Here you go:








Focolai di contagio in Italia, nuovi cluster da nord a sud: la situazione


Sono diversi i focolai di contagio individuati su tutto il territorio nazionale dalla fine del lockdown




www.fanpage.it




(a hotspot in Feltre (Veneto) in a DIY shop).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

These are small incidents. Penn's Woods quoted an article stating that 30 shop workers have died, while there have been almost 120,000 deaths in the United States. This is a really small percentage, especially considering that supermarkets remained open all the time during the pandemic. In addition, with widespread transmission, workers could well have been infected outside of their workplace. 

The problem is that the media reports on incidents all the time but you need to see the overall picture. People were really scared that touching a shopping cart would mean almost certain infection if they weren't disinfected, but it's now clear that this is not a very likely way to become infected. 

Of course if one feels more comfortable wearing a mask there is nobody stopping them from doing so. But mandatory mask usage outdoors, especially in the stage of the outbreak Europe is currently in is a bit too far for my liking. The Netherlands managed to overcome a large outbreak with no mask usage at all. An estimated 5.5% of the population has antibodies, which translates to a million people.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Shared without comment.


----------



## g.spinoza

ChrisZwolle said:


> These are small incidents. Penn's Woods quoted an article stating that 30 shop workers have died, while there have been almost 120,000 deaths in the United States. This is a really small percentage, especially considering that supermarkets remained open all the time during the pandemic. In addition, with widespread transmission, workers could well have been infected outside of their workplace.
> 
> The problem is that the media reports on incidents all the time but you need to see the overall picture. People were really scared that touching a shopping cart would mean almost certain infection if they weren't disinfected, but it's now clear that this is not a very likely way to become infected.
> 
> Of course if one feels more comfortable wearing a mask there is nobody stopping them from doing so. But mandatory mask usage outdoors, especially in the stage of the outbreak Europe is currently in is a bit too far for my liking. The Netherlands managed to overcome a large outbreak with no mask usage at all. An estimated 5.5% of the population has antibodies, which translates to a million people.


"It's not very likely" means nothing. I can't understand why people wishes to take a risk, however small, of getting infected just because they are annoyed by the mask. It is a very childish - and selfish - view in my opinion.

And, enough already with this "Netherlands beat the virus with one hand tied behind its back". Ok, we got it, Netherlands is sooooo manly.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> These are small incidents. Penn's Woods quoted an article stating that 30 shop workers have died, while there have been almost 120,000 deaths in the United States. This is a really small percentage, especially considering that supermarkets remained open all the time during the pandemic. In addition, with widespread transmission, workers could well have been infected outside of their workplace.
> 
> The problem is that the media reports on incidents all the time but you need to see the overall picture. People were really scared that touching a shopping cart would mean almost certain infection if they weren't disinfected, but it's now clear that this is not a very likely way to become infected.
> 
> Of course if one feels more comfortable wearing a mask there is nobody stopping them from doing so. But mandatory mask usage outdoors, especially in the stage of the outbreak Europe is currently in is a bit too far for my liking. The Netherlands managed to overcome a large outbreak with no mask usage at all. An estimated 5.5% of the population has antibodies, which translates to a million people.


My article was 30 supermarket-worker deaths AS OF MID-APRIL. It’s not 30 out of 120,000. I wasn’t trying to say you were at much risk from shopping; I don’t think you are. I was trying to emphasize the risk to workers, whom your wearing a mask would protect. Whether supermarket workers consider 30 deaths during the first weeks of this to be excessive is something I’ll let them speak for themselves on.

And saying they may have been infected elsewhere...well, there’s no basis whatsoever for assuming that’s true (or that it isn’t), so wouldn’t it be prudent to assume it IS?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Here’s something a bit more recent.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/05/24/grocery-workers-coronavirus-risks/?arc404=true


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is no need for frustration or personal attacks. I'm just pointing out examples.

There is no such thing as a risk-free society. You can get killed today in a car crash, yet nobody thinks twice when driving off. The virus transmission is very low in most of Europe right now, so the risk is also very low.

In Switzerland they've went into a bit of a panic mode after a spike in cases and made masks mandatory in public transport (and calls for making them mandatory in shops as well). However it has not escalated into an exponential increase. These spikes are probably unavoidable without a permanent lockdown into next year.


----------



## g.spinoza

I just want to remind that Rutte and Boris Johnson were on the same boat about "we should get infected all of the population so they develop herd immunity" (which is the stupidest thing anyone could think ever). The difference in outcome between Netherlands and UK is sheer luck, so I won't brag about it.

Fortunately, there are some Dutch who know better:








The Dutch COVID-19 strategy is ineffective and inhumane


The herd immunity approach of the Netherlands has escaped much international scrutiny – until now.




www.containmentnu.nl





Even BBC has a different opinion:
"The Netherlands has tried to adopt an "intelligent lockdown", but the infection is spreading rapidly and it has one of the world's highest mortality rates from the pandemic."








Coronavirus: Why Dutch lockdown may be a high-risk strategy


As coronavirus spreads rapidly the Dutch official stance has been criticised as cold-hearted.



www.bbc.com


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands has not actively pursued herd immunity at any point in time, though the prime minister's remarks were unfortunate. They were also somewhat misinterpreted, they said that herd immunity was a by-product of the large transmission that was occurring at the time, not a goal in itself. Otherwise they wouldn't've imposed a semi-lockdown.

The herd immunity approach has been said to have been both unrealistic (low percentages of people actually having antibodies) and more realistic than thought, as a larger proportion of the population appeared immune to the virus than originally believed. But reporting on this changed numerous times.

The BBC article (from early April) has been proven wrong by the outcome in the month beyond that when the virus transmission has greatly receded (unlike Sweden). It was written when the Netherlands had a peak number of ICU occupation, it dropped off immediately afterwards and was already down by some 90-95% by late May.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The UK has removed 30,000 cases from their totals due to double-counting. This means there are now 284,000 cases and Peru and Chile overtook the UK. This means that there are now no European Union countries in the top 5 anymore. Meanwhile, Mexico has overtaken Italy. Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are also on track to overtake Italy and later Spain.

While the virus transmission has receded greatly in Europe, it is still massive in other parts of the world, in particular the Americas and the Middle East / South Asia, with now over 11 million cases worldwide.

South Africa is also seeing a fast increase in cases, now at 177,000 with a consistent 4-5% increase daily. This means that within two weeks, the number of cases will double.


----------



## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> Fair enough. I'm reading interviews made by Italian news agency ADNKronos to a bunch of experts: Coronavirus, mascherina all'aperto: sì o no?
> Many of them say the chance of getting infected outdoors are "much less than indoors, but not zero". *There is no unanimous consensus on this*, though. One of these experts (professor of Microbiology and Virology) says: "I will continue to wear a mask, even outdoors, until there are no more cases. For two reasons: I see it works, and I've seen sick people".
> 
> I will yield on this, but I won't underestimate the importance of masks, and I will continue to wear them, even outdoors, for many months in the future.


The part in bold can be referred to almost anything related to covid-19.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> These are small incidents. *Penn's Woods quoted an article stating that 30 shop workers have died*, while there have been almost 120,000 deaths in the United States. This is a really small percentage, especially considering that supermarkets remained open all the time during the pandemic. In addition, with widespread transmission, workers could well have been infected outside of their workplace.
> 
> The problem is that the media reports on incidents all the time but you need to see the overall picture. People were really scared that touching a shopping cart would mean almost certain infection if they weren't disinfected, but it's now clear that this is not a very likely way to become infected.
> 
> Of course if one feels more comfortable wearing a mask there is nobody stopping them from doing so. But mandatory mask usage outdoors, especially in the stage of the outbreak Europe is currently in is a bit too far for my liking. The Netherlands managed to overcome a large outbreak with no mask usage at all. An estimated 5.5% of the population has antibodies, which translates to a million people.


Still a significant number, as shop workers are usually young and young people rarely die (some say 99.8% surival rate for people under 40).


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> The UK has removed 30,000 cases from their totals due to double-counting. This means there are now 284,000 cases and Peru and Chile overtook the UK. This means that there are now no European Union countries in the top 5 anymore. Meanwhile, Mexico has overtaken Italy. Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are also on track to overtake Italy and later Spain.
> 
> While the virus transmission has receded greatly in Europe, it is still massive in other parts of the world, in particular the Americas and the Middle East / South Asia, with now over 11 million cases worldwide.
> 
> South Africa is also seeing a fast increase in cases, now at 177,000 with a consistent 4-5% increase daily. This means that within two weeks, the number of cases will double.


These official numbers are rather meaningless, even within Europe, due to large differences in testing. In terms of real infection rates, I would be surprised if any European country even makes it to top 10.

At least Norwegian health officials point out that unless you use N95 - masks or better, face masks do not effectively protect the bearer, but reduces the risk of transmission from the bearer. In Norway, where masks never have even been recommended in the public, I am more concerned that a lot of people, especially younger at e.g. at beaches, on public transport, and outside bars etc. seem to think that this is over now, disregarding any advice on social distancing.

Edit: I meant top 10.


----------



## italystf

In Italy attitude of most people towards covid-19 has changed a lot in the past month or so. People are getting less and less responsible and behave like the virus doesn't exist.
Shops, bars, and restaurants still enforce (more or less) safety rules, because they risk fines and closures. But more and more people, especially in tourist and nightlife areas, are gathering in crowds without masks and social distancing. That's not a good thing, as there's always the risk of new hotspots.
The lockdown ended 1.5 months ago, and since mid-June is open almost everything, albeit with reinforced safety measures.
We are having between 100 and 300 new cases every day, and although these number are manageable by the healthcare system (the number of people who heal each day is greater than that, so the number of currently infected people in decreasing, and most of positive people doesn't require hospitalization anyway), it means that the virus still circulates so some care is needed.
The most pessimistic forecasts of thousands of people in ICU again after the end of the lockdown haven't concretized, fortunately. But also the most optimistic forecasts of zero cases by June/July haven't concretized. Zero cases would probably be achievable only with a prolonged strict lockdown of several months, but in that cases probably hunger and social revolts would have killed more people than the virus.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> The UK has removed 30,000 cases from their totals due to double-counting. This means there are now 284,000 cases and Peru and Chile overtook the UK. This means that there are now no European Union countries in the top 5 anymore.


Being pedantic, the UK is no longer in the European Union (unfortunately). I bring this up only to point out that some news websites, obviously including the BBC, now have to continually say "EU, as well as the UK" (or words to that effect) whenever they used to say EU when the UK is included in whatever statistics or EU/UK wide discussion is being written about. This is tedious to read and continually reminds the reader that the UK is now outside the EU, which is still distressing to many people. I wouldn't be surprised if websites based outside the UK continue to assume the UK is in the EU without thinking about it for years to come.

The UK is now 7th in the world for cases, Spain is 8th.

Has there been any analysis why the Netherlands has got its infection rate so low despite starting at a high level and having a less strict lockdown than most other countries?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> Has there been any analysis why the Netherlands has got its infection rate so low despite starting at a high level and having a less strict lockdown than most other countries?


Yes this would be interesting to study.

The actual number of cases in the Netherlands is likely much higher than 50,000 because of the limited testing in March and early April. But almost every country says that its numbers are likely underestimated.

The best indicator so far has been the R0 value. It's interesting that it already dropped below 1 shortly before the 'intelligent lockdown' was imposed in stages between 15-23 March. The first case was detected on 27 February, followed by a frenzy once more cases were detected in the next week, and by then awareness was to such a level that people already voluntarily began to social distancing (a term that hadn't been used much by that time).

The timeline in the Netherlands;


27 February: first case
9 March: instructions for hygiene, no more shaking hands
12 March: first social distancing advisory, no large gatherings allowed
23 March: 'intelligent lockdown' commenced


----------



## Attus

German R. The case Tönnies influenced the statistics heavily.


----------



## radamfi

This article hypothesizes historical and cultural reasons for the lockdown success:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...coronavirus-lockdown-dutch-followed-the-rules

"The Netherlands was opting for what Rutte termed an “intelligent lockdown.” In a nationally televised address, the first by a Dutch prime minister in more than four decades, he noted that restrictions have a price, even if they’re not immediately visible. “We will continue to search for the balance between needed measures and allowing ordinary life to continue as much as possible,” he said.

Rutte’s guiding principles—allowing people to go out but trusting them to practice safe distancing—asked a lot of his constituents. “The whole plan relied upon public support,” says Daan Roovers, a medical doctor, professor of philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, and the “thinker of the fatherland” (an unofficial title bestowed by Philosopher magazine and the newspaper De Trouw). “When you impose a rule in the Netherlands, there will be a lot of resistance—we’re not that obedient,” she says. “So if you leave people a little room to maneuver for themselves, to think for themselves, you’ll gain more support and it will be more successful.”

This is grounded in Dutch history and—to the extent such a thing can be said to exist—the national character. Bas Heijne, a columnist for Amsterdam newspaper NRC who lives part-time in Paris, says France “is very much about procedures—the ornament, the ritual of bureaucracy.” In the Netherlands, by contrast, “the attitude toward the crisis was much more talking about people’s own responsibility—it must all come from the inside, not from rules.” Indeed, on March 12, Rutte said, “I want to call on everyone to keep an eye on one another. Help each other where possible.” Automated announcements on the Amsterdam Metro echo him and ask riders every few minutes (in Dutch and English) to keep a distance of 1.5 meters.

For the Dutch, sacrificing a measure of freedom to achieve a shared goal is a notion that goes back to the 11th century, when Netherlanders started cooperating to drain bogs and beat back the ocean to reclaim land that was later divided among the volunteers as farms. Nine out of 10 Dutch people said in March they were “willing to give up some of their individual freedoms to keep the coronavirus from spreading,” according to polling by Motivaction and the WIN/Gallup network."


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^ The same could be said about quite a few countries, though. Although I do not know a lot about how Netherlands handled this, I think the reason Netherlands did not go "fully Sweden" was that some kind of public acknowledgement that life in some way had to change. There is certainly a lot to dig into for researchers here in the coming years ;-)









Estimated R-values for Norway. Due to the low number of cases from May on, I would say these statistics are rather sketchy, but the peak in early June coinciding with BLM-demonstrations is not neccessarily random....


----------



## MichiH

radamfi said:


> “When you impose a rule in the Netherlands, there will be a lot of resistance—we’re not that obedient,” she says. “So if you leave people a little room to maneuver for themselves, to think for themselves, you’ll gain more support and it will be more successful.”


The pandemia is the proof that it is the opposite for Germany  As reported before, even when the restrictions (masks mandatory) were announced to be valid in a few days, virtually no one worn masks. The day it was obligatory, virtually everyone worn masks


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Official estimates for R in Sweden....."flat curve" indeed...


----------



## italystf

radamfi said:


> For the Dutch, sacrificing a measure of freedom to achieve a shared goal is a notion that goes back to the 11th century, when Netherlanders started cooperating to drain bogs and beat back the ocean to reclaim land that was later divided among the volunteers as farms. Nine out of 10 Dutch people said in March they were “willing to give up some of their individual freedoms to keep the coronavirus from spreading,” according to polling by Motivaction and the WIN/Gallup network."


That's the exact reason why the covid situation is so tragic in the USA. Due to historical reasons that date back to the days when the country was born, in the USA the "freedom before security" libertarian sentiment is still prevalent among many people (especially conservative/Republicans). That means that many Americans and their politicians are less keen to accept/impose stricter regulations, compared to their European counterpart (where there's a longer tradition of government intervention).


----------



## italystf

As for R0 indicator: it may be misleading when the number of infected people is very low.
If in a certain territory on a certain day a single person infects two people, R0 is 2. It sounds dramatic, but at the end there are 2 infected people, not 1,000.
Yesterday media went crazy because R0 in Veneto went above 1. It was because an infected guy from Vicenza passed it to other 5 people. Today Veneto registered 4 new cases in over 5 million people. 4, not 40 or 400. That doesn't mean that the pandemic is out of countrol like it was in March. Probably right now Veneto is safer than the average place in Europe.
That case made a lot of rumour in the media because the guy (who has returned from a business trip to Serbia, one of the most affected European countries) knew that he was infected, but did meet other people anyway. That is considered criminal behaviour. Ironically he is now in ICU, while people infected by him are not that serious. Sort of karma...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't know if it works like this everywhere, but the Dutch R0 is mainly based on the hospitalization figures. This is also why the last 2 weeks are not included, because it usually takes a while from infection to hospital admission. But they also say that the figure is not as reliable if there are very few new hospitalizations, that's why the uncertainty bandwidth becomes very large at this stage of the outbreak.

The uptick in cases in Switzerland is also partially traced back to Serbia, where people attending a party in Belgrade got infected. They then lied about their contacts in Switzerland, it turned out they had much more contacts than they reported. At the same time a 'superspreader event' in a night club in Zürich was found difficult to trace because 30% of visitors gave up a fake name for contact tracing.


----------



## radamfi

italystf said:


> That is considered criminal behaviour.


So can he be prosecuted for that? In the UK and probably other countries, self-isolating is considered a matter of conscience and as far as I know there is no sanction for non-compliance.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Breaking the regulations related to Covid-19 is in theory punishable also in Norway. In fact you can get up to 6 months in jail, but it probably has to be a blatant and very serious breach. A lot is however given as public recommendations, which are not punishable. E. g. quarantine rules are regulations, social distancing is a recommendation.




__





Forskrift om smitteverntiltak mv. ved koronautbruddet (covid-19-forskriften) - Lovdata


Covid-19-forskriften




lovdata.no





In Norway R0 estimates are also based on new hospitalizations. With in total 15 Covid-19 patients in hospitals at the moment, there are bound to be fluctuations.


----------



## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Quite a few supermarkets have abolished the cart locks altogether


Some did it because of the coronavirus.



Penn's Woods said:


> In some countries, you can use a shopping cart for free. And public bathrooms. And drinking fountains.


But those carts ARE for free. You have to insert a coin but you get it back once you return the cart. This way the stores and malls make people return the carts to the "stations" instead of leaving them on parking lots in weird places where they can block parking spots, driveways and pose danger for the parked cars e.g. in case of wind.



g.spinoza said:


> "It's not very likely" means nothing. I can't understand why people wishes to take a risk, however small, of getting infected just because they are annoyed by the mask. It is a very childish - and selfish - view in my opinion.


If you are thinking this way, you shouldn't leave home at all because you can get hit by a car, which still seems to be much more likely than getting infected with Covid by a momentary contact.

It doesn't mean nothing. There are really plenty of such small dangers in life, avoiding which maybe is possible but would be very uncomfortable.

But you already wrote that you almost never leave home even without any coronavirus epidemic, so you can say you're avoiding even those risks. OK, it's you, you are an exception. For most people it's uncomfortable and dangerous for their mental health.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

On free toilets: U.S. Cities Should Bring Back For-pay Toilets | Scott Beyer


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> Some did it because of the coronavirus.
> 
> 
> But those carts ARE for free. You have to insert a coin but you get it back once you return the cart. This way the stores and malls make people return the carts to the "stations" instead of leaving them on parking lots in weird places where they can block parking spots, driveways and pose danger for the parked cars e.g. in case of wind.
> 
> 
> If you are thinking this way, you shouldn't leave home at all because you can get hit by a car, which still seems to be much more likely than getting infected with Covid by a momentary contact.
> 
> It doesn't mean nothing. There are really plenty of such small dangers in life, avoiding which maybe is possible but would be very uncomfortable.
> 
> But you already wrote that you almost never leave home even without any coronavirus epidemic, so you can say you're avoiding even those risks. OK, it's you, you are an exception. For most people it's uncomfortable and dangerous for their mental health.


American supermarkets have employees who go out into the lot periodically to gather up the carts. And also this sort of thing:


----------



## Penn's Woods

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> On free toilets: U.S. Cities Should Bring Back For-pay Toilets | Scott Beyer


God forbid.
And in my limited experience of European paid public toilets, they’re no cleaner than our free ones. Often less so. Believe it or not.

And the author of that piece exaggerates their scarcity.


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## g.spinoza

What I find intolerable, for someone like me who lived in the worst place for covid, is reading people constantly downplaying the importance of this virus. I've seen people getting sick, not being able to breathe, and I've known people who died. For a period, ambulances were continuous. I know doctors who cried, having to choose who lives and who dies.
For me, reading constantly that "masks are not useful" or "we won without a lockdown" is nothing short of an insult.
That said, and given the fact that it hurts so bad, I'll never access this thread again.


----------



## x-type

g.spinoza said:


> What I find intolerable, for someone like me who lived in the worst place for covid, is reading people constantly downplaying the importance of this virus. I've seen people getting sick, not being able to breathe, and I've known people who died. For a period, ambulances were continuous. I know doctors who cried, having to choose who lives and who dies.
> For me, reading constantly that "masks are not useful" or "we won without a lockdown" is nothing short of an insult.
> That said, and given the fact that it hurts so bad, I'll never access this thread again.


One very itneresting thing happens among Italians. None of them who I know (and I know them quite a lot) got infected according to their words. Ok. But none of them knows nobody who got infected, what is already very very weird. Covid is obviously total taboo.
Similar thing is here in rural areas - I know one woman who was waiting test (it was negative) and she was almost excommunicated from society due to gossipping.


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## PovilD

My thoughts would be that like war, pandemic can easily bring you PTSD too, especially while living in the hotspots. On the other hand, it's not over yet, we can only hope that Bergamo, Brescia (where Spinoza lives) situations would be avoided in Europe.
I'm also sometimes doubting if life without adjusting to the virus is possible, when masks are only in recommended mode, and only contract tracing helps. Currently, it's looking like playing with luck, without knowing the outcomes. I hate current on/off lockdown system. Open up, close again, then open up again, and so on  Ok, we don't know what works the best toward this pandemic, let's hope we will learn in the longer term.

---


x-type said:


> One very itneresting thing happens among Italians. None of them who I know (and I know them quite a lot) got infected according to their words. Ok. But none of them knows nobody who got infected, what is already very very weird. Covid is obviously total taboo.
> Similar thing is here in rural areas - I know one woman who was waiting test (it was negative) and she was almost excommunicated from society due to gossipping.


Probably they are not from Brescia or Bergamo. Italy had comparably small hotspots (ok they were not small for themselves, but it's not that whole Italy became a hotspot), thanks to the lockdown, of course.


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## x-type

PovilD said:


> Probably they are not from Brescia or Bergamo. Italy had comparably small hotspots, thanks to the lockdown, of course.


Mostly Udine, Venezia-Padova-Vicenza, Ancona, Milano.


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## PovilD

x-type said:


> Mostly Udine, Venezia-Padova-Vicenza, Ancona, Milano.


Only Milano astonishes me here (but it depends on how many people you know here), Milano is a big city. Veneto and Eastern Italy was hit comparably lighter. Don't know about Ancona.


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## ChrisZwolle

I know several people that became infected and one died (a father of a colleague, he was in his 80s with underlying health problems). 

The biggest cause for the relatively high death rate in the Netherlands was the lack of personal protective equipment in care homes. Half of all tested deaths occurred there, the share is likely higher when you include the non-tested deaths in the 'excess mortality' figures. 

The lack of PPE in care homes caused a significant death toll, in various care homes whole departments became infected and many died. However the lack of PPE is now addressed, which leads me to believe that an eventual second wave could have a lower death rate because we are more prepared for it than in March.


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## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> I know several people that became infected and one died (a father of a colleague, he was in his 80s with underlying health problems).
> 
> The biggest cause for the relatively high death rate in the Netherlands was the lack of personal protective equipment in care homes. Half of all tested deaths occurred there, the share is likely higher when you include the non-tested deaths in the 'excess mortality' figures.
> 
> The lack of PPE in care homes caused a significant death toll, in various care homes whole departments became infected and many died. However the lack of PPE is now addressed, which leads me to believe that an eventual second wave could have a lower death rate because we are more prepared for it than in March.


Yeah. Virtually, same in my country. Patients with underlying conditions get infected on hospitals and nursing homes. This rises case fatality rate despite relatively good testing.

For example, currently, IFC (recovered vs. death) is 0,065% in Singapore, and it tends to be higher than Case Fatality Rate (all cases vs. death). No new deaths for about a month now (26 deaths as for today), since June 13. Sure, I don't know how they count deaths from COVID though, but I bet that despite how they count, IFC should remain quite low.

Yes, this doesn't include people on the risk group, since fortunately they aren't get infected as much.

My only concern is what post-exposure issues could appear on recovered patients.


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## Rebasepoiss

On Friday I came back from a week long road trip to Latvia and Lithuania. Although there were definitely fewer tourists than on a regular year, especially in Vilnius and Kaunas, the situation overall seemed quite normal. People were just going about their business and very few people were wearing masks which was quite surprising since just a few weeks ago it was compulsory in Lithuania to wear masks indoors (with some exceptions if I recall correctly).

Anyways, regarding the condition of roads in these countries, I was positively surprised by Latvia and a bit negatively surprised by Lithuania. Although there were definitely some very bad road sections in Latvia as well (the dual carriageway section on the A6 before Daugavpils, for example), you could see that they have done a huge job in the last decade and many sections were impeccable.

In Lithuania the A6 from LV border to Utena and A14 from Utena towards Vilnius is just as bad now if not worse as it was in 2009 when I last drove there. They've improved the final section before Vilnius but that's about it. The A1 from Kaunas to Klaipeda had some sections with surprisingly bad road surface quality as well which made driving at 130 km/h (i.e. the speed limit) uncomfortable if not unsafe at times. 

Lithuania has the reputation in the Baltic countries (or at least in Estonia) as having the best road system among the three and although that's definitely true when it comes to the amount of motorways, expressways and dual carriageways, I can't agree with that sentiment when it comes to road surface quality. 

When it comes to the quality of sidewalks, bicycle paths and the pedestrian environment in cities in general, both Latvia and Lithuania are miles ahead of Estonia. It's all just better designed, better looking and you can see that they actually pay attention to small details as well. In Estonia the pedestrian and cycling infrastructure is usually an afterthought after the streets have already been designed for cars.


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## PovilD

Rebasepoiss said:


> Lithuania has the reputation in the Baltic countries (or at least in Estonia) as having the best road system among the three and although that's definitely true when it comes to the amount of motorways, expressways and dual carriageways, I can't agree with that sentiment when it comes to road surface quality.
> 
> When it comes to the quality of sidewalks, bicycle paths and the pedestrian environment in cities in general, both Latvia and Lithuania are miles ahead of Estonia. It's all just better designed, better looking and you can see that they actually pay attention to small details as well. In Estonia the pedestrian and cycling infrastructure is usually an afterthought after the streets have already been designed for cars.


Hmm, there been some resurfacements in A6 between LV border-Utena, like LV border-Zarasai, some random sections. I didn't drive there recently, so I don't know the situation if those sections are deteriorating too quickly or there are just too few of those sections in the entire length of your trip in A6. All of A14, except few resurfaced sections, is made of cheaply laid concrete blocs during last years before collapse of Soviet Union.

As for general surface quality in Lithuania, yeah I also noticed that too. I think it has to do with more money given to the town street refurbishments rather to the intercity roads in the course of 2010s. My city, Kaunas, has changed a lot if compare that it almost didn't changed in the 2000s. Almost all sidewalks and streets were in bad quality and even without markings, while situation is now improving quickly. Quite similar situation is in Vilnius, but Vilnius pays less attention to road surface quality than Kaunas, but more on cycling paths, as they have plans to have World-class cycling infrastructure by 2030s similar to that in the Netherlands. I'm slightly starting to be disappointing on Kaunas cycling infrastructure development, since it has better terrain than in Vilnius, but most new projects I saw are sidewalk designed for cycling. No new cycling lanes on minor streets, and only relatively few cycling paths designed for cycling, while Vilnius' most new street refurbishment projects has cycling path near it.

Lithuania could do at least some more resurfasing on their intercity roads in the course of 2020s. There are plans to achieve minimum requirements for road surface quality by 2035. There are hundreds of kilometers of sections right now which doesn't apply to minimum requirements, so we will see. There are plans for A14 resurfacing and widening to 2+1 by the end of 2020s.

As for Estonia, I actually quite adore your lane marking standards (at least in Tallinn): designed left turns everywhere and cycling lanes, while there is more an exception to see in Lithuania a left turn to minor access road, and lanes sometimes are too wide for 50 km/h traffic.


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## DanielFigFoz

g.spinoza said:


> What I find intolerable, for someone like me who lived in the worst place for covid, is reading people constantly downplaying the importance of this virus. I've seen people getting sick, not being able to breathe, and I've known people who died. For a period, ambulances were continuous. I know doctors who cried, having to choose who lives and who dies.
> For me, reading constantly that "masks are not useful" or "we won without a lockdown" is nothing short of an insult.
> That said, and given the fact that it hurts so bad, I'll never access this thread again.


Yeah, I am staying on and off at my parents' at the moment as is now allowed as I live on my own. They don't ridiculise me or anything like that but they can't relate to how I feel about the virus. I feel an aversion to crowds, to going in shops and I am constantly disinfecting things. And my mother wants to pop into every shop. It wasn't as bad as the Milan area in Inner London where I live but it was quite bad. The ambulances were constant, it was really hard to sleep because of them some nights. I live right next to a hospital where many died and it was closed off to everyone except coronavirus patients, other emergencies had to go elsewhere. I also got to experience the verge of total chaos at work with signifcant numbers of teachers and other staff off sick, as well as children. At one point hundreds of kids in one big room because there simply wasn't any staff to supervise otherwise - while we knew exactly what was happening. There were no other options really, until the government closed the schools we had to stay open.


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## Attus

g.spinoza said:


> That said, and given the fact that it hurts so bad, I'll never access this thread again.


If this sentence means what I think it means, this thread will be a worse place.


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## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> American supermarkets have employees who go out into the lot periodically to gather up the carts. And also this sort of thing:


So it's less efficient because requires employing special employees, which costs more. We also have those roofed things at parking lots, but still without coin locks, it is often very messy under them, and there is a risk of people leaving the carts at random places at the parking lot.

In Poland, the only work required is to periodically move some carts from those roofed gizmos at parking lots inside the store (as people tend to take the carts from inside the store and to leave them outside under those roofed thingies), which is usually done by security guys.



g.spinoza said:


> What I find intolerable, for someone like me who lived in the worst place for covid, is reading people constantly downplaying the importance of this virus. I've seen people getting sick, not being able to breathe, and I've known people who died. For a period, ambulances were continuous. I know doctors who cried, having to choose who lives and who dies.


But this is already the past and leveraging the restrictions (to the current level) doesn't seem to make it return. In case it starts coming back, the restrictions, at least some of them, will probably get brought back again. For now, the current level of restrictions seems to be sufficient. There is no increase of the number of active cases, in most countries of Europe it's actually dropping or it has already dropped a lot.


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## ChrisZwolle

Densely packed crowds of people in Soho, London after restrictions were lifted. This not exactly how you avoid getting the coronavirus...


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1279538037928742924


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## DanielFigFoz

Urgh you can count me out.


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## Penn's Woods

g.spinoza said:


> What I find intolerable, for someone like me who lived in the worst place for covid, is reading people constantly downplaying the importance of this virus. I've seen people getting sick, not being able to breathe, and I've known people who died. For a period, ambulances were continuous. I know doctors who cried, having to choose who lives and who dies.
> For me, reading constantly that "masks are not useful" or "we won without a lockdown" is nothing short of an insult.
> That said, and given the fact that it hurts so bad, I'll never access this thread again.


Don’t do that. Stay away I mean. Maybe take a break.


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## keber

Kpc21 said:


> So it's less efficient because requires employing special employees, which costs more. We also have those roofed things at parking lots, but still without coin locks, it is often very messy under them, and there is a risk of people leaving the carts at random places at the parking lot.


What I found in USA that there are more people employed in grocery stores than in Europe grocery stores. There are even people that put bought stuff into shopping bags instead of you (do they need to be tipped?) and people that readily collect carts around parking lot. And yet there are far less customers per store area and at the same time much more product choice. Efficient or not, apparently it works.


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## Suburbanist

A positive side-effect of mask usage in Europe right now is that there will be no longer stigma or just weird looks when people who are sneezing or with common cold/flu symptoms use them. Which is a much better alternative for everybody on workplaces, transportation, stores etc. A mild common flu doesn't need to keep a worker out of a retail clerk job, but before the current pandemic, the association was that you'd only use a mask in public if you either had some invasive procedure done in your mouth/nose and it was bleeding, or if you were really, really at risk or sick such as recently transplanted patients or those with doing aggressive leukemia treatments.


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## Suburbanist

keber said:


> What I found in USA that there are more people employed in grocery stores than in Europe grocery stores. There are even people that put bought stuff into shopping bags instead of you (do they need to be tipped?) and people that readily collect carts around parking lot. And yet there are far less customers per store area and at the same time much more product choice. Efficient or not, apparently it works.


Wages are lower as well, labor indirect costs are smaller, adjusting for differences in gross household income.

When low-wages in an economy are not so low, inefficiency threshold for baggers or restockers of carts is raised substantially. There is no way Swiss grocery stores could afford that without losing even more market share to online shopping.

Another side-effect is that retail and hospitality is also generally less staffed in Europe, it is rather common on expensive European countries that you have cashier queues, or that you need to wait for an attendant if you need one. In the US, in many sectors, the idea is to have an army of otherwise idle people ready to talk to you and multi-task between clients in all but the most critical periods. Same goes for restaurants (a problem made worse by out-of-control tipping culture in the US). 

I have heard from several Americans when they first came to work in the Netherlands and also here in Switzerland that they have this perception that service is generally "slow", when what they really mean is that to get the same level of personal attention, they need to wait longer. 

Another side-effect: automated grocery store cashiers are much, much more common in Europe than in the US. Any additional losses from misuse of self-scanning are likely offset by savings in labor.


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## Penn's Woods

keber said:


> What I found in USA that there are more people employed in grocery stores than in Europe grocery stores. There are even people that put bought stuff into shopping bags instead of you (do they need to be tipped?) and people that readily collect carts around parking lot. And yet there are far less customers per store area and at the same time much more product choice. Efficient or not, apparently it works.


I almost never bag my own stuff. Usually the cashier does it as they ring things up. Once in a while there’s another employee helping out. These days I’ll be getting my card out, scanning it, and so on, while they do that. It would never occur to me to tip.


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## bogdymol

You will never get that sort of special treatment in Europe. You either bag the stuff yourself (in your own or purchased bags!), or you carry all items in your hands.


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## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> Wages are lower as well, labor indirect costs are smaller, adjusting for differences in gross household income.
> 
> When low-wages in an economy are not so low, inefficiency threshold for baggers or restockers of carts is raised substantially. There is no way Swiss grocery stores could afford that without losing even more market share to online shopping.
> 
> Another side-effect is that retail and hospitality is also generally less staffed in Europe, it is rather common on expensive European countries that you have cashier queues, or that you need to wait for an attendant if you need one. In the US, in many sectors, the idea is to have an army of otherwise idle people ready to talk to you and multi-task between clients in all but the most critical periods. Same goes for restaurants (a problem made worse by out-of-control tipping culture in the US).
> 
> I have heard from several Americans when they first came to work in the Netherlands and also here in Switzerland that they have this perception that service is generally "slow", when what they really mean is that to get the same level of personal attention, they need to wait longer.
> 
> Another side-effect: automated grocery store cashiers are much, much more common in Europe than in the US. Any additional losses from misuse of self-scanning are likely offset by savings in labor.


I’m not sure I agree about the armies of staff. Right before the pandemic, with nearly full employment, you sometimes had to wait a long time (or what would seem to us like a long time) to check out, because they didn’t have enough cashiers working. The supermarket I usually use has about 15 checkout lanes, not counting the self-checkouts, but it’s very rare for more than four of them to be open.

I hate self-checkouts and will avoid using them if possible. One pharmacy I occasionally use in Philadelphia has actually abolished its, but that may have been a shoplifting issue.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Suburbanist said:


> A positive side-effect of mask usage in Europe right now is that there will be no longer stigma or just weird looks when people who are sneezing or with common cold/flu symptoms use them. Which is a much better alternative for everybody on workplaces, transportation, stores etc. A mild common flu doesn't need to keep a worker out of a retail clerk job, but before the current pandemic, the association was that you'd only use a mask in public if you either had some invasive procedure done in your mouth/nose and it was bleeding, or if you were really, really at risk or sick such as recently transplanted patients or those with doing aggressive leukemia treatments.


Right now people with flu symptoms should stay home though, mask or no mask.


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## ChrisZwolle

At least in the Netherlands there has long been a mentality to show up for work when sick, to show how strong and loyal you are. This situation has certainly changed that, but for how long? 

The Netherlands has paid sick leave from day one, so there is no incentive to keep working if you fear an income loss. Some do it out of solidarity with co-workers, but on the other hand what good does it do when you infect co-workers with the flu...


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## Penn's Woods

bogdymol said:


> You will never get that sort of special treatment in Europe. You either bag the stuff yourself (in your own or purchased bags!), or you carry all items in your hands.


But that’s not special treatment here. It’s standard.


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## radamfi

I remember being very surprised about the manpower used on NJ Transit trains between New Jersey and New York City. The tickets seemed to be checked within seconds as soon as people boarded each station, and the ticket checker put a piece of paper above the seat to show that your ticket had been checked. If you wanted to move seat you had to take that piece of paper and put it above your new seat. This must have required a lot of people as surely that's only viable if you have multiple people checking tickets. This was about 10 years ago so maybe things have changed.


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## radamfi

It is much more quick and convenient (and cheaper for the store) to scan your shopping while you do it and then just scan your device or smartphone at the till at the end. Then there is no packing at all. This is also better for COVID safety..


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## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> I remember being very surprised about the manpower used on NJ Transit trains between New Jersey and New York City. The tickets seemed to be checked within seconds as soon as people boarded each station, and the ticket checker put a piece of paper above the seat to show that your ticket had been checked. If you wanted to move seat you had to take that piece of paper and put it above your new seat. This must have required a lot of people as surely that's only viable if you have multiple people checking tickets. This was about 10 years ago so maybe things have changed.


And those are union jobs. So, hardly cheap labor.


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## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> And those are union jobs. So, hardly cheap labor.


Is it a good use of taxpayers' money? Rather surprising this is allowed in a country noted for its suspicion of "big government". If staff weren't so plentiful, the money saved could be used for more trains or lower fares. In Europe it is not uncommon for local/suburban trains to run with no staff other than the driver. Ticket checks are done by automatic barriers or by dedicated staff who roam around the network catching people who didn't pay and giving them big fines. Where you have ticket staff on the train, that is usually just one or at the most two people per train.

It is also surprising that public transport ("transit") in the US is still mostly local/state government owned and operated. In countries that are considered socialist in American eyes (for example the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark), bus and train operations are widely franchised out to private companies.


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## Kpc21

keber said:


> Efficient or not, apparently it works.


But as a result, you pay more for the things than you could.

Today I was cycling near several ice cream parlors in the town. To each of them there was a queue and in all of those queues people neither wore masks nor kept the distance. I don't necessarily expect them to wear masks at ice cream parlors, I also don't expect them to keep the distance between the members of the same family (this doesn't make sense anyway) but there should at least be small groups of people with distance between them – and this didn't happen. This is indeed quite scary.

So I went for ice cream to a small grocery store in another part of the town (in Poland it's generally forbidden to open stores on Sundays, except for the last Sunday in a month, but there, probably, the shop owner was selling, and in this specific case it's legal). Even there, most customers didn't wear masks although by law it's absolutely obligatory inside stores. It doesn't look good.

But when I visit supermarkets, almost all the people wear masks there – and small stores are not so dangerous in terms of the risk of transmitting the virus.



> I remember being very surprised about the manpower used on NJ Transit trains between New Jersey and New York City. The tickets seemed to be checked within seconds as soon as people boarded each station, and the ticket checker put a piece of paper above the seat to show that your ticket had been checked. If you wanted to move seat you had to take that piece of paper and put it above your new seat. This must have required a lot of people as surely that's only viable if you have multiple people checking tickets. This was about 10 years ago so maybe things have changed.
Click to expand...

In Budapest it looks more or less this way. At the entrances to all the underground stations they don't have turnstiles, instead, there are always multiple inspectors to whom the passing people are supposed to present their tickets. There is definitely more of them than it would be required to protect the system from fare evasion already very well.

Meanwhile in Łódź, Poland, it happened to me that I used public transport almost every day for like 2 or 3 years and I didn't met any ticket inspector for so long. And no, the drivers aren't responsible for checking the tickets either.

Speaking of ice cream...

What kinds of ice cream happen to be served at ice cream parlors in your countries? Because there are some types that are, for example, very common in Poland, but I couldn't find them at all in some southern countries.

In Poland, in general, we have:

– ball (or "knob" as we call them) ice cream – they usually come as a selection of many tastes, sometimes even unusual ones, you can choose the tastes and the number of balls, they are served in wafer cones









(2 vanilla balls)









(variety of tastes you can choose from)

Now more and more parlors offer "natural" ice cream – but I have no idea what's the difference. Those "natural" tend to have more unusual tastes and smaller choice.

Sometimes some tastes of those to choose from are sorbets and not ice cream.

– Italian ice cream (sometimes, more often in the past, known as "ice cream from machine") – you usually have choice between two tastes or a mix of them, it's usually cream or vanilla and chocolate or strawberry, also served in wafer cones









(this one is a little bit unusual – cream and currant)

They come from such machines:


















(an older type, of East German production; to me, those from those old machines tasted better but now you practically don't find them any more)

Interestingly, I couldn't really find them in Italy 

– curly ice cream, sometimes known as American ice cream – practically always you have choice between two tastes: cream/vanilla and chocolate or a mixture of them, they come from similar machines as Italian ice cream










They are much harder than those Italian ones – and also always more expensive. Also served in wafer cones.

By the way – McDonald's in Poland also serves ice cream in wafer cones. But in all other countries I visited, the local McDonald's only offered ice cream in plastic or cardboard vessels, no wafer cones... I wonder why.

I mean, in other countries I practically only find ice cream like this in McDonald's:










Not like this:










Although the option from the last photo is available in Polish McDonald's.


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## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> It is also surprising that public transport ("transit") in the US is still mostly local/state government owned and operated. In countries that are considered socialist in American eyes (for example the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark), bus and train operations are widely franchised out to private companies.


But in the US there is simply no public transport out of big cities, is there?


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## keokiracer

radamfi said:


> It is also surprising that public transport ("transit") in the US is still mostly local/state government owned and operated. In countries that are considered socialist in American eyes (for example the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark), bus and train operations are widely franchised out to private companies.


 The bus market is dominated by private enterprises, certainly the longer routes:
Flixbus, Greyhound, BoltBus, Megabus and probaby loads more that I have missed.


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## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> But in the US there is simply no public transport out of big cities, is there?


It depends what you call a "big city". For example, the NJ Transit example earlier operates a fairly comprehensive network of hundreds of bus routes and several train routes across the state. Much of the area could be vaguely considered to be suburbs of New York or Philadelphia, but not all.


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## radamfi

keokiracer said:


> The bus market is dominated by private enterprises, certainly the longer routes:
> Flixbus, Greyhound, BoltBus, Megabus and probaby loads more that I have missed.


Those are express services. I was really talking about local bus services. Ones that stop regularly in a single town or between neighbouring towns.


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## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> Is it a good use of taxpayers' money? Rather surprising this is allowed in a country noted for its suspicion of "big government". If staff weren't so plentiful, the money saved could be used for more trains or lower fares. In Europe it is not uncommon for local/suburban trains to run with no staff other than the driver. Ticket checks are done by automatic barriers or by dedicated staff who roam around the network catching people who didn't pay and giving them big fines. Where you have ticket staff on the train, that is usually just one or at the most two people per train.
> 
> It is also surprising that public transport ("transit") in the US is still mostly local/state government owned and operated. In countries that are considered socialist in American eyes (for example the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark), bus and train operations are widely franchised out to private companies.


I suspect - from something a NJ Transit ticket-seller once said to me - the union would be resistant to any sort of automation that takes away jobs. This guy - this was about 20 years ago - wasn’t happy that there were ticket machines in his station at all. The only reason I was at his window at all was that I was doing Philadelphia to north Jersey by locals, which involved changing trains - and changing from the Philadelphia-area system to NJ Transit - at Trenton. It wasn’t possible at that time to buy tickets for the whole trip in Philadelphia, because there were different entities and therefore different unions involved, so you had to rush from the platform to the ticket window in Trenton and buy the next leg. Which was ridiculous, of course, and it’s changed since. I think transit funding is popular with New Jersey taxpayers; the Democrats support it on principle and a lot of Republicans who might normally oppose it use the system to get to jobs in New York....


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## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> But in the US there is simply no public transport out of big cities, is there?


It’s not quite that bad; even fairly rural areas may have some sort of system where someone who doesn’t drive can request a ride. There will be some sort of county-owned van that makes that sort of trip even if it doesn’t run regular routes....


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## Kpc21

I have heard opinions that travelling – I mean, making trips – in the US without a car is nearly impossible or the possibilities are very limited.


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## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> – curly ice cream, sometimes known as American ice cream – practically always you have choice between two tastes: cream/vanilla and chocolate or a mixture of them, they come from similar machines as Italian ice cream
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> They are much harder than those Italian ones – and also always more expensive. Also served in wafer cones.


Tbh, I never saw such type of ice cream in real life  I mean, ice cream like from that picture. It must be quite an uncomfortable experience when your ice cream starts to melt, and your hands gets dirty and sticky from the ice cream. I remember having such experience with ball ice cream which doesn't have such big top (but it was sunny, outdoors with temperature above +30, and it was abroad, in Italy ). I buy them very rarely to be honest. I prefer ice cream from supermarkets which are most similar to that to McDonalds but has larger size. These are sold in my country:


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## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> I have heard opinions that travelling – I mean, making trips – in the US without a car is nearly impossible or the possibilities are very limited.


There are plenty of people in big cities who don’t own cars. I didn’t from 1995 to 2009. But that meant there were a lot of places outside of cities that I just didn’t get to. When my parents were away I might borrow one of their cars, take vacation time, and do some road trips.


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## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> It must be quite an uncomfortable experience when your ice cream starts to melt, and your hands gets dirty and sticky from the ice cream.


Then it would be yet worse with ice cream on sticks 

You are supposed to eat it quickly enough so that it doesn't mange to melt before it's consumed. I usually first lick off those protruding parts, so it isn't a problem, and this type of ice cream is anyway quite well frozen, it doesn't melt as quickly as e.g. what we call in Poland Italian ice cream.

Supermarket ice cream... isn't bad but it's not the same experience.



Penn's Woods said:


> There are plenty of people in big cities who don’t own cars. I didn’t from 1995 to 2009. But that meant there were a lot of places outside of cities that I just didn’t get to. When my parents were away I might borrow one of their cars, take vacation time, and do some road trips.


Meanwhile in Europe, maybe except Balkans and Greece, it's difficult to find tourist attractions that wouldn't be accessible with public transport.

In Balkans and Greece public transport also exists but it's often so expensive and car rental is so cheap that it is cheaper to rent out a car rather than to use public transport. Maybe not when you travel on your own – but in a group of three, or maybe even two, it's already more affordable to rent out a car.

The only thing might be the cheapest cars for rental are usually small city cars with small engines and they sometimes don't have enough power to drive up some larger inclinations which you meet in mountainous areas. It happened to me that we had a Volkswagen Up rented, being on Corfu, and I drove into a one-way street, the other and of which turned out to be quite steep. I think it was here: Google Maps

If I stopped at the top to see if there weren't any cars approaching, I wasn't able to start driving again, the car simply didn't have enough power to start driving at such a hill. I had to go back down, get some speed and only then enter the main road, possibly ignoring the right of way, not being able to check if there aren't cars approaching.


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## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> I have heard opinions that travelling – I mean, making trips – in the US without a car is nearly impossible or the possibilities are very limited.


In Europe it is usually possible to get somewhere by public transport but most of those trips require at least twice as much time as by car. Hence the vast majority of travel in Europe is by car. Only tourists and people living in urban bubbles think you don't need a car in Europe. If you live in Europe and don't need a car, you're the outlier, not the norm.

The share of car in European travel (Eurostat figures):


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## Kpc21

It's interesting that Germany, with so well developed railway system (trains departing every hour or more often on most routes) and public transport in general (practically every village without a railway station has a bus connection), has such a large share of car trips.

And in Turkey so many people travel by public transport... Interesting.

Does the graph include all the trips (like, work and school commutes too) or only touristic ones?


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## ChrisZwolle

All travel motives.

Switzerland has arguably the most extensive public transport system in Europe. Especially considering the rail density and the post buses going to every outhouse in the mountains. While their car share is lower than most countries, it's not a huge gamechanger.


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## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Supermarket ice cream... isn't bad but it's not the same experience.


It has is own price, and I prefer eating ice cream at home 

To be honest, I don't like ice cream with a stick, I almost always prefer ice cream with a cone. I like additional flavor of the waffle. Only exceptions when I accept a stick is when I buy Snickers ice cream. I usually buy them during the cold season, and sometimes I even eat it outdoors, since it consists less ice cream than I usually tend to take in summers  Ice cream is said to be very seasonal product here in Lithuania, and I sometimes feeling rebellious when buying ice cream on winter


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## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> In Europe it is usually possible to get somewhere by public transport but most of those trips require at least twice as much time as by car. Hence the vast majority of travel in Europe is by car. Only tourists and people living in urban bubbles think you don't need a car in Europe. If you live in Europe and don't need a car, you're the outlier, not the norm.
> 
> The share of car in European travel (Eurostat figures):


High share of car usage likely shows that Lithuania has quite underdeveloped public transport. Since we are lacking good passenger rail network (+no tram/metro services), our public transport situation in some ways resemble US. Maybe situation is not as bad if we talk how much towns you can reach by bus (rarely train) since there are quite a lot of people, in many cases elderly women, who don't drive the car (probably even don't have a driving license). Potentially, due to changing situation in demographics, smaller towns could get cut off from public transport system, or bus services could became very rare.

The main problem is that public transport almost completely can't compete with personal car in any cases (maybe except rare occasions in Vilnius). This creates situation when richer people don't use public transport at all, while it's mostly a transport for poorer people. This includes mostly students, elderly, and troubled (mostly jobless(-alike), and alcohol addicted in various degrees, more prevalent in males in their 40s and older).

Elderly in Lithuania and former East bloc has lower standard of living than those in middle age group and even post-graduates of some degrees.


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## Kpc21

How is the bus transport in Lithuania organized? Are the bus connections out of urban areas of large cities (e.g. Vilnius, Kaunas), to smaller towns and villages, subsidized or do they operate on fully commercial principles? Do the authorities coordinate the timetables? Are they operated by mostly private companies or by the descendants of the ex-communist transport conglomerates? What is the typical rolling stock on such routes: large buses or minibuses? 



PovilD said:


> Elderly in Lithuania and former East bloc has lower standard of living than those in middle age group and even post-graduates of some degrees.


Well, pensions are generally low. In Poland there are elderly people who choose between buying food and buying necessary medicines. Throughout the last 10 years the minimum wage grew quite a lot, the pensions, before PiS came to power, only by slight amounts. And people wonder why so many people vote for PiS... PiS simply did things which were impossible, undoable for all the previous governments.


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## Attus

PovilD said:


> High share of car usage likely shows that Lithuania has quite underdeveloped public transport.


Yeah. In Lithuania car usage has a share of 89%, in France or Germany 85%. Is it really a significant difference? Or do you mean, those nations, too, have underdeveloped public transport?


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## Attus

PovilD said:


> The main problem is that public transport almost completely can't compete with personal car in any cases (maybe except rare occasions in Vilnius).


But it's not a Lithuanian phenomen. It's the same in whole Europe. The denser the population, the higher the usage of public transport. In big cities like London, Paris, Madrid public transport may have a share over 50%. In Switzerland, where the population live in narrow valleys, and the state subsidies train traffic heavily, public transport has a share of near to 20%, but it's a situation that can not be compared to flat areas.
Eastern European people tend to think public transport usage is low in their nation but it's high in Western Europe. No, it is not. Public transport's split may be 2-5% higher, simply because of cities like Paris or Madrid, agglomerations that have higher population than the three Baltic republics together, and that can not be compared to towns like Ljubljana or Vilnius. But that's all.


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## radamfi

Obviously if you present modal share by distance then it will be skewed towards cars because almost all long trips are done by car and car trips are typically longer. If you are actually interested in the question "What mode of transport do people use?" then it is better to present modal share by percentage of trips. It is also useful to split such a breakdown by distance band or by urban/rural.


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## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> In Europe it is usually possible to get somewhere by public transport but most of those trips require at least twice as much time as by car. Hence the vast majority of travel in Europe is by car. Only tourists and people living in urban bubbles think you don't need a car in Europe. If you live in Europe and don't need a car, you're the outlier, not the norm.


There is still a very big difference between most European countries, especially "the core ones" (the UK, France, Germany, Benelux, Italy, Austria etc.) and the USA.

Yes, car make life in those countries easier, especially outside the metropolitan areas. But you can still function without a car, apart from some really rural regions.

It is quite the opposite in the USA, you simply cannot function without the car, with a few exceptions, like NYC.

It really isn't the same.


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## ChrisZwolle

The modal share by percentage of trips tends to overrepresent the importance of walking and short trips, which doesn't really reflect the usage and load of transportation systems. For example someone walking 1 km to work has the same weight as someone making a 100 kilometer train journey. 

Another problem is what to take into account. Include someone walking his dog in the share of trips?


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## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> How is the bus transport in Lithuania organized? Are the bus connections out of urban areas of large cities (e.g. Vilnius, Kaunas), to smaller towns and villages, subsidized or do they operate on fully commercial principles? Do the authorities coordinate the timetables? Are they operated by mostly private companies or by the descendants of the ex-communist transport conglomerates? What is the typical rolling stock on such routes: large buses or minibuses?
> 
> 
> Well, pensions are generally low. In Poland there are elderly people who choose between buying food and buying necessary medicines. Throughout the last 10 years the minimum wage grew quite a lot, the pensions, before PiS came to power, only by slight amounts. And people wonder why so many people vote for PiS... PiS simply did things which were impossible, undoable for all the previous governments.


As far as I understand, they operate as state subsidized private companies, but related with the government of that municipality. I don't know exactly how it is. I have a friend who works in the bus company of my city, and I look at him as public sector worker.

Most districts have their own bus park which operates their administrative centre with nearby villages and small towns. Smaller towns usually operate older buses. The newest buses are operated by largest cities, they also have most significant importance for operating intercity routes between most important cities. Some smaller cities also operates some intercity routes, but these are relatively not common.

As for buses/midibuses. Nearby smaller towns and villages are usually operated by minibuses, while larger towns are operated by large bus, maybe sometimes by both large bus and minibus, but I don't know exact situation.


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## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> The modal share by percentage of trips tends to overrepresent the importance of walking and short trips, which doesn't really reflect the usage and load of transportation systems. For example someone walking 1 km to work has the same weight as someone making a 100 kilometer train journey.
> 
> Another problem is what to take into account. Include someone walking his dog in the share of trips?


I'm not saying that modal share by distance isn't useful or valid. Indeed, it is the most relevant statistic in many if not most circumstances. Modal share by number of trips is useful in the particular case what we are discussing here. To answer the question, is car ownership required to function in society. Further stratification by distance bands separates your 1 km walking trip from the 100 km train trip.


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## PovilD

Attus said:


> But it's not a Lithuanian phenomen. It's the same in whole Europe. The denser the population, the higher the usage of public transport. In big cities like London, Paris, Madrid public transport may have a share over 50%. In Switzerland, where the population live in narrow valleys, and the state subsidies train traffic heavily, public transport has a share of near to 20%, but it's a situation that can not be compared to flat areas.
> Eastern European people tend to think public transport usage is low in their nation but it's high in Western Europe. No, it is not. Public transport's split may be 2-5% higher, simply because of cities like Paris or Madrid, agglomerations that have higher population than the three Baltic republics together, and that can not be compared to towns like Ljubljana or Vilnius. But that's all.


Ok, maybe you're right. I'm telling you what I heard from other "Eastern Europeans", since I don't have really good knowledge about public transport, and why things are like this 

As for last 30 years, former East bloc faced explosion in car usage, while during communist times, most people used public transport. This meant vast underdevelopment of road network, and huge investments in rail network, although high speed rail was limited or non-existing. Lithuania was interesting exception: limited rail network, but huge investments in road network, which contrasted all neighboring republics, especially Latvia. For example, I found out that M-road between Riga and Moscow was directed via gravel roads in Latvia if I understand the route correctly.

I think main problems is with car usage in largest cities: Vilnius, Kaunas, maybe Klaipėda. Kaunas for a long time saw underdeveloped infrastructure in general. Situation is improving, but is still not comfortable to cross patches where other vehicles interfere, since you have to cross relatively large patches of asphalt intended for other vehicles, and they can cross it with dangerous speeds, cycling infrastructure development is existing, but it lacks quality for me as for Kaunas. I think car share is unacceptable in those cities. Other forms of transportation should be attractive too.

Vilnius has hilly terrain which make you more tired, more quickly if you are not on some motorized vehicle. Cycling and long walks are more tiring there. Also there were lack of pavement refurbishment in some places, making walking and cycling uncomfortable. The good thing that situation shows tendencies to improve, especially cycling infrastructure, despite relatively hilly terrain of the city.

As for public transport in largest cities, buses are slow, sometimes old (10-30 years), and by being used by poorer population it can bring its own effect.


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## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> The modal share by percentage of trips tends to overrepresent the importance of walking and short trips, which doesn't really reflect the usage and load of transportation systems. For example someone walking 1 km to work has the same weight as someone making a 100 kilometer train journey.
> 
> Another problem is what to take into account. Include someone walking his dog in the share of trips?


The question is what do you want the data to represent. If it's energy use and overall environmental cost, for example, then looking at travel distance is surely the best way to go. In other cases it's most likely best to distinguish everyday travel from non-regular travel, divide people depending on where they live and work etc. Otherwise the results are skewed in another direction. Someone living in a rural area driving 100 km a day is overrepresented in the travel distance data 10 times compared to someone who lives in the city and only drives 10 km a day. In addition, people who live further away from work are also more likely to driver rather than walk, cycle or take PT compared to someone who lives in the city proper, for example. This also results in an overrepresentation of people living further away in the commuting to work data when looking at travel distance figures.

The only way to really have an apples to apples comparison is to look at similar trips and compare the modal share between those trips.


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## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> As far as I understand, they operate as state subsidized private companies, but related with the government of that municipality.


It would also be interesting to hear how the switch from the communist system to the current one looked like.

Because e.g. in Czech Republic and Slovakia, the ex-communist bus companies (SAD) are still quite powerful and in good condition, they operate many connections. But Czechs subsidize such local bus lines. Poland practically doesn't do it (now it has started to change very slowly), and the ex-communist operators in many cases went bankrupt or phased out most of their services, getting replaced with either nothing (at unaffordable routes), or with very small private companies that mostly use minibuses – which won partially by being more flexible in adjusting to the passengers' needs, partially by playing unfair (like departing just before the competitors, ignoring the timetable, offering quicker rides by violating the speed limits).

In Poland, the age of buses is more related to the rolling stock management model employed by the specific company. Many large cities buy or lease new buses and use them to the moment of their technical death. Others, not necessarily small ones, and many private operators, prefer importing used buses from countries such as Germany or Netherlands, which are still in very good state and can be used for some years – and replace the buses more frequently. In general, municipally-owned bus companies tend to buy new buses, private ones (even if contracted by municipalities) – used buses.


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## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> There is still a very big difference between most European countries, especially "the core ones" (the UK, France, Germany, Benelux, Italy, Austria etc.) and the USA.
> 
> Yes, car make life in those countries easier, especially outside the metropolitan areas. But you can still function without a car, apart from some really rural regions.
> 
> It is quite the opposite in the USA, you simply cannot function without the car, with a few exceptions, like NYC.
> 
> It really isn't the same.


But you don’t necessarily need to -own- one. If you live in a city neighborhood where you can get to work and everything else you need by public transit or even on foot, you can join a a car-sharing service for the occasions when you need one. I did that for about a year; then my mother broke her leg while my father was at a point he really couldn’t drive, so I ended up spending weekends at their place doing errands and chores and bringing the car to Philadelphia between trips, because it was really the only way of doing that; it was much cheaper than doing that by car share would have been, and after a few months I bought the car.


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## ChrisZwolle

A judge in Germany has overturned the lockdown in the Gütersloh district. The lockdown was implemented after over 1500 workers at the Tönnies meatpacking plant turned out to be infected. Extensive testing of the general population revealed only limited spread of the virus. The Warendorf district lockdown was lifted last week and now the Gütersloh district lockdown is overturned due to being disproportional. They also re-tested 1,000 members of Tönnies worker households, but virtually no new infections were detected.





__





Gericht stoppt Corona-Einschränkungen im Kreis Gütersloh


• Oberverwaltungsgericht setzt Corona-Beschränkungen außer Kraft • "Lockdown" für ganzen Kreis Gütersloh sei nicht mehr verhältnismäßig • Einschränkungen wegen Corona-Ausbruch bei Tönnies verhängt




www1.wdr.de


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## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> A judge in Germany has overturned the lockdown in the Gütersloh district. The lockdown was implemented after over 1500 workers at the Tönnies meatpacking plant turned out to be infected. Extensive testing of the general population revealed only limited spread of the virus. The Warendorf district lockdown was lifted last week and now the Gütersloh district lockdown is overturned due to being disproportional. They also re-tested 1,000 members of Tönnies worker households, but virtually no new infections were detected.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> __
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Gericht stoppt Corona-Einschränkungen im Kreis Gütersloh
> 
> 
> • Oberverwaltungsgericht setzt Corona-Beschränkungen außer Kraft • "Lockdown" für ganzen Kreis Gütersloh sei nicht mehr verhältnismäßig • Einschränkungen wegen Corona-Ausbruch bei Tönnies verhängt
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www1.wdr.de


Do you know the reasons for the judge’s decision? (I suppose I could try the German....)

EDIT: I did read it. Schreckliche Sprache. (jk)

“Nicht verhältnismässig” = disproportionate?


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## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> “Nicht verhältnismässig” = disproportionate?


Yep. Let's say, a bad benefit / cost relation 

btw: Face masks considerably contribute to reducing the spread of coronavirus infections (from June 15)



> The* mandatory wearing of face masks in public in Germany, for example when shopping or on public transport, clearly contributes to reducing the spread of the coronavirus*. Researchers at four universities, among them economist Professor Klaus Wälde from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), came to this conclusion after comparing the rate of growth of COVID-19 case numbers in Jena with that in similar cities. In Jena, mandatory mask wearing had already been introduced on April 6, 2020, much earlier than in any other German regions and cities. After the introduction, there was only a slight increase in the number of registered infections in Jena.
> [...]
> Wälde also believes it is possible that the masks could have a kind of signaling function in that they remind the population to adhere to the restrictions on social contact.


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## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> A judge in Germany has overturned the lockdown in the Gütersloh district.


It had expired tomorrow anyway


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## PovilD

Today, I heard the news that one person who arrived from trip to Serbia catched the COVID19, and was on the train from Klaipėda to Vilnius. As far as I understand, the train was full, and 30 people from the same wagon was put into quarantine, and at least 1 person catch the virus on train. I'm anxious about using public transport. It seems that contact tracing system is now working way better than it was in March and early April, and, actually, I'm afraid to be accidentally contact traced, so I tend to social distance when possible.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Normally at this time of the year, shopping malls and towns in Sweden close to the Norwegian border are packed with Norwegians. Since a visit to Sweden from Norway still requires a quarantine on return, many of the bussinesses have experienced a loss of income of 90 % or more. Especially in the coastal border areas, there are not a lot of other sources of income, so this is really an economic catastrophy for these local communities in Sweden.








No problem to park outside the huge Nordby shopping mall just south of the N-S border








The guest harbor in the nearby town of Strømstad is also normally packed with Norwegian boats at this time of the year


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## PovilD

Now, I'm thinking that Sweden could have only carry on like the rest of the World and don't invent their unique strategies, but still, it's not over yet. It's a long road living in this pandemic.. I can only hope that it would be easier to make conclusions next year.


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## italystf

g.spinoza said:


> What I find intolerable, for someone like me who lived in the worst place for covid, is reading people constantly downplaying the importance of this virus. I've seen people getting sick, not being able to breathe, and I've known people who died. For a period, ambulances were continuous. I know doctors who cried, having to choose who lives and who dies.
> For me, reading constantly that "masks are not useful" or "we won without a lockdown" is nothing short of an insult.
> That said, and given the fact that it hurts so bad, I'll never access this thread again.


Countries that were only lighty hit could get away without harsh measures. Countries that were badly hit, such as Italy (especially certain areas) between early March and early May, needed strong measures. Better 2 months at home than American/Brazilian scenario.


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## italystf

x-type said:


> One very itneresting thing happens among Italians. None of them who I know (and I know them quite a lot) got infected according to their words. Ok. But none of them knows nobody who got infected, what is already very very weird. Covid is obviously total taboo.
> Similar thing is here in rural areas - I know one woman who was waiting test (it was negative) and she was almost excommunicated from society due to gossipping.


I don't know directly anyone who was infected, but I know several people who know people who had been infected. I also know several people who had been checked and tested negative. In the area where I live the situation was quite alarming like everywhere, but nothing comparable to the hell of Bergamo and Brescia (in my municipality there were 29 official cases in 13,000 people - all survived - although real numbers are likely higher like everywhere).
I don't see why it should be a taboo topic. We are not talking about STDs or diseases related to alchool, drugs, or tobacco abuse, that carry a lot of social stigma. Anyone can catch Covid-19.


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## italystf

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Right now people with flu symptoms should stay home though, mask or no mask.


In Italy is now illegal to go out if you have temperature above 37.5°C or other symptoms that may be related to Covid-19.


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## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> At least in the Netherlands there has long been a mentality to show up for work when sick, to show how strong and loyal you are. This situation has certainly changed that, but for how long?
> 
> The Netherlands has paid sick leave from day one, so there is no incentive to keep working if you fear an income loss. Some do it out of solidarity with co-workers, but on the other hand what good does it do when you infect co-workers with the flu...


It happened to me a couple of times in my life to go to work while I was "almost ok, just some cold", and returning home with something around 38°C. Not pleasant for me, nor for other people who risked to getting ill from me. I certainly won't do it anymore, not even when Covid-19 will be over.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I must confess that I have gone to work without feeling fantastic. I would have felt bad if I stayed at home as long as could do a decent effort for my employer. It has never done me any harm as I have a non-physical job, and in fact it almost felt like a relief when I had small kids ;-) However, I think now there is certainly an increased awareness among both employers and workers that this is probably not a wise behavior, as co-workers might get infected, and I think working from home in such situations will be more easily accepted as we have seen it could be done with almost the same efficiency.


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## PovilD

We will see if this pandemic will create a break point. Right now, I considering having a remote job. I don't own a car yet, and I want to limit contacts as much as possible (of course, this wouldn't include family, close friends, and people that I adore). My biggest wish is that pandemic would be solved as soon as possible. I don't see it being solve when you have to slightly fearfully wait for potential second wave (or waving in general). We need a stability in going back to normal. Unless we wouldn't care, and go for hypothetical herd immunity, survive of the fittest or luckiest.


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## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Idiots:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> “No masks or social distancing” as hundreds of Dutch youngsters party into the night in Albufeira - Portugal Resident
> 
> 
> “No masks or social distancing” as hundreds of Dutch youngsters party into the night in Albufeira. GNR police issued dozens of fines last weekend
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.portugalresident.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Apparently a large group of Dutch high school graduates are partying in Albufeira, ignoring all rules. Bars close at 11 but they organize parties in their hotel rooms until the early morning.
> 
> Dutch youth generally don't have as much respect for police because the Dutch police is quite lenient. They are not used to authority.
> 
> Dutch high school graduates are usually 16 or 17, so under the legal drinking age. Some are 18.


About 2,000 people gathered in a disco in Alba Adriatica where a famous DJ was exhibiting. No sight of masks (except wrapped around arms) nor physical distancing. The venue was closed by authorities for 5 days.

















Folla in discoteca per la serata con Andrea Damante dj: lui pubblica le foto sui social e il locale è costretto a chiudere - Il Fatto Quotidiano


Oltre duemila ragazzi, tra i 18 e i 22 anni, tutti senza mascherina, assembrati, per partecipare alla serata con Andrea Damante in consolle. È quanto successo in una discoteca di Alba Adriatica che, dopo che sui social sono stati pubblicati alcuni scatti dell’evento ed è scoppiata la polemica, è...




www.ilfattoquotidiano.it


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## italystf

As of July 2020, a sizeable percentage of new Covid-19 infections in Italy is related to arrivals from non-EU countries, especially Bangladesh and Serbia.
Apparently, in Bangladesh is very easy to pay for a fake "negativity certificate" to be used for international travel. Thus, Italy has suspended all flghts with Bangladesh.


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## PovilD

It's interesting that in some EU countries, imported cases became the biggest issue, and not like between locals due to relaxed restrictions. As for Lithuania, we have Belarus, Russia, partially Balkans, USA, and others. It seems like Lithuania being some sort of the fortress between Belarus and Russian Kaliningrad.


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## Attus

Hungarian guy complaints on Facebook, only a minority of passengers wear a mask in the train, although it's compulsory. Comments:

You fool, there is no epidemic at all, there has never been any, why should someone wear a mask?
You fool, masks don't protect anyone, it isn't useful to wear them.
You fool, wearing a mask is dangerous, all that wear it will be sick because of wearing a mask!

Hungarian women reports in Facebook about the happenings in Belgrade: demonstrans protest against restrictions. Comments:

Those Serbians, they are brave people, we, too, should protest!
Unfortunately Hungarians are not so brave, they wear a mask, I'm very sad about it. No one should wear it!
I'm brave, I am not a servant of Orbán like all those who wear a mask. I don't!

Hungarian man complaints in a Hungarian forum about it's compulsory to wear a mask in public transport. Responses:

It's useless to wear a mask, the virus can only be spread by people who have symptoms, and they should stay home.
It's useless to wear a mask, the epidemic is a fake, there is no virus at all.
I'm young, I can be infected, without any problem. Old people shall stay home if they don't want to be infected, I won't wear a mask.
Wearing a mask is dangerous, if you wear a mask you'll inhale CO2 and you'll die.
It's unbearable to wear a mask more than an hour, all who do it die.
There is no pandemic at all, it's fake news.

OK, Hungary, just like Slovakia or Czechia, had quite a few cases. Hungary (population ~9.5 millions) had less than 5,000 cases since March, for the vast majority of Hungarian people the epidemic is only news, something that happens with other people in other places, so actually I can understand, many of them do not think Covid-19 may be dangerous for them. But this ignorance is disappointing.


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## PovilD

> You fool, masks don't protect anyone, it isn't useful to wear them.


You might be infected and spread the virus asymptomatically, but probably you don't believe in "those fairytales".



> I'm brave, I am not a servant of Orbán like all those who wear a mask. I don't!


At least Orbán is not Bolsonaro 
When you're braveness is defined by you're smartness, you win 



> Wearing a mask is dangerous, if you wear a mask you'll inhale CO2 and you'll die.
> It's unbearable to wear a mask more than an hour, all who do it die.


lmao 



> OK, Hungary, just like Slovakia or Czechia, had quite a few cases. Hungary (population ~9.5 millions) had less than 5,000 cases since March, for the vast majority of Hungarian people the epidemic is only news, something that happens with other people in other places, so actually I can understand, many of them do not think Covid-19 may be dangerous for them. But this ignorance is disappointing.


I agree with you.


----------



## Penn's Woods

I’m sure Verso and Volodaaaa will be thrilled to know the Joy Reid is getting her own nightly hour-long show....



__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/888421258706251778


----------



## PovilD

Slovenoslovakia.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Dutch prime minister Rutte on an airplane to Germany. This is actually the first time I've seen him wearing a mask. All press conferences were maskless (but with distance).


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> Hungarian guy complaints on Facebook, only a minority of passengers wear a mask in the train, although it's compulsory. Comments:


It isn't different on Polish Facebook pages  For sure you will also find comments claiming that this whole epidemic is a conspiracy made to depopulate the human kind as there are too many people in the world. By the way, similarly to vaccines...

But I see social media comments simply tend to be that radical. If someone agrees with the fact that wearing masks makes sense, he has nothing to talk about, so he remains silent.

At the beginning of hot temperatures some people complained that it's very uncomfortable to wear masks when it's so hot and with the air conditioning not turned on (earlier, the sanitary authorities prohibited using air conditioning on public transport). But it's no longer a problem as the sanitary authorities agreed to turn on the aircon (on condition that it will be cleaned often enough etc.).

Not to risk an infection it's still best to simply avoid using PT and choose car, or e.g. bicycle, instead.

Meanwhile, maybe you have heard about the bus accidents in Warsaw from 2 weeks ago, when a city bus with passengers fell off a bridge. It turned out its driver was under amphetamine. This Tuesday another bus accident with a driver who was under amphetamine happened in Warsaw – this one, luckily, much smaller (the bus drove into four parked cars). Now there is a discussion whether PT operators should be allowed to test their drivers for drugs, similarly as they test them for alcohol. The city of Warsaw suspended the contract with the Arriva company (a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn), which operated the lines on which both accidents happened. Which results in much of the timetable not being realized on the lines that used to be operated by Arriva, as they had to pass them to other companies (including the city-owned MZA), which weren't prepared for such a situation.

Unfortunately, as the opposition's candidate in the presidential elections is currently the mayor of Warsaw, the ruling party and the public media use those events in the election campaign. Initially they were accusing, for example, for not being in Warsaw (or not quickly coming there) when this large accident happened. Now they accuse him of employing a German company (as if it was anything evil...) that employs drivers who take drugs – as if it was absolutely his fault...

The also send out such leaflets (we at home got two of them):












> BEWARE!
> 
> Together with Trzaskowski, those will return:
> 
> – conflicts
> Trzaskowski will start a political war, his veta will block Poland's development and trigger a crisis.
> 
> – crisis
> For political benefits, Trzaskowski will block the fight with economical crisis, in the same way as Senate was doing it.
> 
> – division
> PO people divide Poland into Poland A and Poland B. This division will come back together with Trzaskowski.
> 
> – poverty
> When Trzaskowski was a minister, the minimum wage was by 1000 zł lower and over 1.8 million children were endangered with poverty.
> 
> – scandals
> The Warsaw reprivatisation scandal has not yet been accounted for and the victims haven't got their compensations yet. A series of scandals will come back!
> 
> ---
> 
> They will come back too!


So the fight for the presidency is really hot. Duda seems to be doing whatever he can, violating any sensible standards, using means similar to the propaganda from the early communist period right after the war, so that he would be reelected.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> It isn't different on Polish Facebook pages  For sure you will also find comments claiming that this whole epidemic is a conspiracy made to depopulate the human kind as there are too many people in the world. By the way, similarly to vaccines...
> 
> But I see social media comments simply tend to be that radical. If someone agrees with the fact that wearing masks makes sense, he has nothing to talk about, so he remains silent.
> 
> At the beginning of hot temperatures some people complained that it's very uncomfortable to wear masks when it's so hot and with the air conditioning not turned on (earlier, the sanitary authorities prohibited using air conditioning on public transport). But it's no longer a problem as the sanitary authorities agreed to turn on the aircon (on condition that it will be cleaned often enough etc.).
> 
> Not to risk an infection it's still best to simply avoid using PT and choose car, or e.g. bicycle, instead.
> 
> Meanwhile, maybe you have heard about the bus accidents in Warsaw from 2 weeks ago, when a city bus with passengers fell off a bridge. It turned out its driver was under amphetamine. This Tuesday another bus accident with a driver who was under amphetamine happened in Warsaw – this one, luckily, much smaller (the bus drove into four parked cars). Now there is a discussion whether PT operators should be allowed to test their drivers for drugs, similarly as they test them for alcohol. The city of Warsaw suspended the contract with the Arriva company (a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn), which operated the lines on which both accidents happened. Which results in much of the timetable not being realized on the lines that used to be operated by Arriva, as they had to pass them to other companies (including the city-owned MZA), which weren't prepared for such a situation.
> 
> Unfortunately, as the opposition's candidate in the presidential elections is currently the mayor of Warsaw, the ruling party and the public media use those events in the election campaign. Initially they were accusing, for example, for not being in Warsaw (or not quickly coming there) when this large accident happened. Now they accuse him of employing a German company (as if it was anything evil...) that employs drivers who take drugs – as if it was absolutely his fault...
> 
> The also send out such leaflets (we at home got two of them):
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So the fight for the presidency is really hot. Duda seems to be doing whatever he can, violating any sensible standards, using means similar to the propaganda from the early communist period right after the war, so that he would be reelected.


So you're in a second round? When's the vote, and who do you think will win?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> But I see social media comments simply tend to be that radical. If someone agrees with the fact that wearing masks makes sense, he has nothing to talk about, so he remains silent.


This is the whole problem with social media, in particular Twitter. The radical voices are exaggerated. Journalists spend all day on Twitter searching for news, so they apparently believe that what is trending on Twitter, is mainstream while most of the time it isn't. I don't like the Twitterization of news media.


----------



## geogregor

Penn's Woods said:


> So you're in a second round? When's the vote, and who do you think will win?


The vote is this coming Sunday. Unfortunately I don't really follow the polls. I have to admit that I even forgot send my postal ballot...



ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't like the Twitterization of news media.


I hate it. On some news websites more than half of any article contain quoted Twits. I can check them directly on Twitter. And then they are surprised that news organizations go bust. 

Well, if they mostly run Twitter publicity they are guilty of digging their own graves.

BTW, central London is still, deserted during the week.

This is Cittie of Yorke pub on the edge City of London, normally it is hard to get in at that time (between 6-7 pm)


20200709_184013 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

No problem with social distancing...

I do wonder what long term impact the current crisis will have on urbanism. We took growth of ever larger cities for granted...


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> No problem with social distancing...
> 
> I do wonder what long term impact the current crisis will have on urbanism. We took growth of ever larger cities for granted...


I'm more anxious about officially recovered COVID patients than future of urbanism


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The flood defence system of Venice:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1281607862683230210


----------



## geogregor

Penn's Woods said:


> So you're in a second round? When's the vote, and who do you think will win?



BTW, here is how British media see Polish election. Pretty accurate I would say...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Norway reopens for international travel from most Schengen countries from 15 July.









New travel advice for travel between Norway and other European countries


From 15 July, the Government is lifting restrictions on entry into Norway for people resident in countries in the Schengen area/EEA that have an acceptable level of infection. From the same date, quarantine will no longer be required on entry from thes...




www.regjeringen.no





These countries in green will be permitted entrance without a quarantine:


----------



## Attus

Spain green, Hungary red. It has nothing to do with Covid 19.


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> I do wonder what long term impact the current crisis will have on urbanism. We took growth of ever larger cities for granted...


It may have seemed that big cities continue to grow and grow, but that trend has only been the case in the last 30 years or so. When I was a kid, inner cities were something to be avoided because of crime and pollution. The population of Inner London fell continuously from 1931 for the next 50 years, bottoming out in the 80s:









Inner London - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org














Even more stark is the population trend of Manchester:



https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Greater_Manchester_Population.png


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't like the Twitterization of news media.


Agree!



ChrisZwolle said:


> The flood defence system of Venice:
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1281607862683230210


Wonder!


----------



## keber

Not all blocks rose from the water. As it was a demonstration of flood protection, was that intentionally or a malfunction?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Wow.
The city of Philadelphia just canceled all “large events” through FEBRUARY.










No Parades, No Runs: Philly Cancels Big Events Through Feb. 2021 Due to Coronavirus


No Mummers marching up Broad Street on New Year’s Day, no Thanksgiving Day parade and no marathon runners looping through the city this fall: Philadelphia has canceled all large-scale events into next year as the coronavirus pandemic continues.




www.nbcphiladelphia.com





EDIT: And then the -next- item in my feed was a squirrel in Colorado testing positive for bubonic plague.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Some U.S. states have a very large number of cases relative to population. For example Arizona (pop. 7.2 million) has 117,000 cases. By comparison, the hardest-hit European country with a similar population is Switzerland (pop. 8.5 million) with 33,000 cases. 

I don't understand why the United States hasn't managed to suppress the virus like Europe did. The U.S. has recorded +700,000 cases since 1 July and +1,500,000 cases since 1 June. There is still a 1.8 - 2.1% daily growth across the U.S., so long into the outbreak.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Quarantine has different meanings in different countries. In some countries it means that you basically are locked up in some hotel. In Norway you just have to stay home. You are allowed to be with your family /house mates or even get out for an exercise as long as you you stay away from other people. If you are confirmed infected you need to isolate, though.

Covid-19 is abating in Sweden now. Right now, they are around the peak levels of Norway in terms of hospitalizations and new deaths per capita, which is a huge decrease compared with a few months back.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Some U.S. states have a very large number of cases relative to population. For example Arizona (pop. 7.2 million) has 117,000 cases. By comparison, the hardest-hit European country with a similar population is Switzerland (pop. 8.5 million) with 33,000 cases.
> 
> I don't understand why the United States hasn't managed to suppress the virus like Europe did. The U.S. has recorded +700,000 cases since 1 July and +1,500,000 cases since 1 June. There is still a 1.8 - 2.1% daily growth across the U.S., so long into the outbreak.


Because there’s a segment of the public who trust medical information from Donald Trump over scientists, who think they have a right not to be told what to do (masks, distancing, staying the hell out of bars...), who don’t give a f—- about anyone but their worthless selves, or who believe the whole thing’s a hoax, a plot to get people to do what the elites want, a plot to prevent Trump’s re-election.

A lot of people in the Northeast are disgusted and mystified.

I’ve gotten a couple of Facebook ads for flights to Savannah/Hilton Head (Georgia, South Carolina); I keep responding “I’d need to quarantine for two weeks when I got back thanks the the way your ignorant, selfish population is handling the pandemic, so no thanks; I’ll be staying in the civilized part of the country.” Which was perhaps not the politest thing to say (and I should actually see Savannah and Charleston some day), but it was honest.

Ahem. Sorry. You got me started.
Your question surprised me; I thought it was widely known over there what’s going wrong here.


----------



## Penn's Woods

That said, I take case numbers with a grain of salt just because of inconsistencies in testing from one place to another. Deaths, overcrowded hospitals, and so on, I take seriously.

Governor Cuomo of New York was on TV yesterday predicting that what we see happening in the South and West will spread into the Northeast; it’s just a matter of time. But measures he’s taken like the quarantine may buy some time. I can’t remember any time in my life when there was such animosity between different parts of the country, at least to this degree. It would be a bit depressing if there weren’t more important stakes and if I weren’t feeling it myself.


----------



## Penn's Woods

AND you have to remember the George Floyd incident and its aftermath knocked COVID to a back burner, in the media and among politicians, for a few weeks.


----------



## MichiH

^^ George who? (unfortunately) this period of protest disappeared quite quick again. It was a "hype" but.... nothing changed. As always... And Donald Duck will be re-elected for sure! Sad. Really sad. God bless America....


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> ^^ George who? (unfortunately) this period of protest disappeared quite quick again. It was a "hype" but.... nothing changed. As always... And Donald Duck will be re-elected for sure! Sad. Really sad. God bless America....


Now, now....


----------



## geogregor

I was flying to Poland for the weekend and this couple was waiting to board my plane...

DSC07508 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

But many people wore masks like this guy on the left:

DSC07510 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

But the airport was a rather depressing sight:

DSC07506 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC07496 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC07500 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Duty Free:

FJIMG_20200711_070918 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

To me they look a bit slow with reopening. There were three small shops open which caused silly queues if one wanted to buy water or snack:

FJIMG_20200711_072433 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

There is quite number of flights now, they could reopen more services...

DSC07503 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


----------



## MichiH

Germany does not classify Sweden as corona risk region from today but Luxembourg will be a risk region again. It's getting ridiculous.....


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> Germany does not classify Sweden as corona risk region from today but Luxembourg will be a risk region again. It's getting ridiculous.....


New York and New Jersey have added Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota and New Mexico to the quarantine list; New Jersey has dropped Delaware.

Why Luxembourg?


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> Why Luxembourg?


Rising number of cases (more than 50 new cases within 7 days per 100,000 inhabitants). Denmark and Lithuania also put them on the "red" list.
German states can decide whether people returning from Luxembourg to Germany (or returned within the last 14 days) have to go in quarantine for 14 days. Saarland already ordered it! Borders will (likely) remain open! Commuters (and there a lot to Luxembourg) are not affected.

It is ridiculous that every country and every state of each country make individual decisicions and different restrictions are valid and no one understands what's allowed and what's not. And it changes every now and then.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> Rising number of cases (more than 50 new cases within 7 days per 100,000 inhabitants). Denmark and Lithuania also put them on the "red" list.
> German states can decide whether people returning from Luxembourg to Germany (or returned within the last 14 days) have to go in quarantine for 14 days. Saarland already ordered it! Borders will (likely) remain open! Commuters (and there a lot to Luxembourg) are not affected.
> 
> It is ridiculous that every country and every state of each country make individual decisicions and different restrictions are valid and no one understands what's allowed and what's not. And it changes every now and then.


Talking of local restrictions: I just saw Boris Johnson’s government will be requiring masks in England. Belgium mandated masks last week (after deciding not to the week before). France, I believe, is considering it now; the Netherlands has never required it (someone correct me if I’m wrong on that).

Mask requirements began kicking in on a state and local level in the U.S. in April. Much of the sort of inter-regional debate I’ve mentioned focuses on that. (“Those ignorant —— aren’t even wearing masks!”) A lot of Americans on the pro-mask side would be surprised, I think, to learn that mask requirements aren’t universal in Europe.

So I’m wondering what countries or local entities are actually requiring masks in shops, say. And when these rules kicked in. I don’t suppose there’s a handy site that’s compiled that.

And I’m disappointed to see Europe starting to backslide. That’s not a criticism; it just makes me think the whole world may be in for a tougher time dealing with this, and for longer, than I would have guessed a few weeks ago.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MichiH said:


> Rising number of cases (more than 50 new cases within 7 days per 100,000 inhabitants). Denmark and Lithuania also put them on the "red" list.


Luxembourg has a population of 600,000. But a very large international commuter belt. However 600,000 inhabitants means that it can become redlisted if it reaches more than 43 cases per day (50*6=300, 300/7=43).

I'm happy I don't have to choose in the American elections. The choice between a madman or a party overrun by radicals that want to defund the police while crime is dramatically increasing. 









Police Wrestle With Surge in Crime in U.S. Cities Amid Defunding Efforts


Law-enforcement officials in several large U.S. cities are wrestling with a sharp rise in violent crime amid a national debate over the role of police, calls to reduce police department budgets and growing fiscal troubles.




www.wsj.com


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^LOL.

Hardly overrun.
Biden has rejected that defunding idea, so don’t pin it on him.
Actually, defunding talk was big a couple of weeks ago, but I haven’t heard it lately:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Biden hardly makes the news. Even analysis is almost exclusively about Trump, with an 'oh we also have to talk about Biden' segment at the end. But the impression is that the far left dominates the news cycle from the other side. 

But you wonder how Democrats are going to solve these police issues. After all, they've been running these major cities virtually unopposed for decades. Almost all of the largest cities have Democratic mayors and Democratic-majority councils, often continuously since the 1980s or even 1960s. Minneapolis hasn't had a Republican mayor since 1961.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Biden hardly makes the news. Even analysis is almost exclusively about Trump, with an 'oh we also have to talk about Biden' segment at the end. But the impression is that the far left dominates the news cycle from the other side.
> 
> But you wonder how Democrats are going to solve these police issues. After all, they've been running these major cities virtually unopposed for decades. Almost all of the largest cities have Democratic mayors and Democratic-majority councils, often continuously since the 1980s or even 1960s. Minneapolis hasn't had a Republican mayor since 1961.


Biden hardly makes the news in Europe, you mean?
He just made a live speech here. “Just,” like ended about 90 seconds ago.

The far left is very noisy and good at getting attention. They don’t get much done, though; couldn’t even be bothered to actually go vote for Bernie; they were too busy complaining on social media. It’s going to be a weird campaign this year, but I’d expect to start hearing much more about Biden than the fringe by the end of August. The next big event will be the choice for Vice President. Which normally happens just before the convention. (It can’t be after because the delegates have to vote on it.)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I could support Biden's platform, but I believe he is way, way too old for this job. Biden was by far the most moderate voice in the primary elections and won the Democratic vote, so you'd wonder how much impact the noise far left really has. But they manage to dominate the news cycle. I just hope he won't be hijacked by the noisy crazies.


----------



## tfd543

I was also in cph airport today, just to exchange cash. There was an attendant in front of the door and didnt let people go in without a mask even though Its not mandatory in dk. I thought I wouldnt be let in since i was not flying, but i was lucky I guess.


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> I was flying to Poland for the weekend and this couple was waiting to board my plane...
> 
> DSC07508 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> But many people wore masks like this guy on the left:
> 
> DSC07510 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> But the airport was a rather depressing sight:
> 
> DSC07506 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> 
> DSC07496 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> 
> DSC07500 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> Duty Free:
> 
> FJIMG_20200711_070918 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> To me they look a bit slow with reopening. There were three small shops open which caused silly queues if one wanted to buy water or snack:
> 
> FJIMG_20200711_072433 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> There is quite number of flights now, they could reopen more services...
> 
> DSC07503 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


You can fly to Southend or Stansted? Or is this not from Heathrow?


----------



## PovilD

Suburbanist said:


> If making cars safer for occupants is reaching its limits, what should come next - other than full automation? More advanced detection systems? Lower speed limits for trucks and larger vehicles? 5G-enabled electronic speed restrictions to prevent speeding at the driving computer module level regardless of driver's actions? Mandatory advanced radar-like detection systems with several cameras around the car to detect other vehicles and people? Replacement of traditional mirrors by full-blown screens with augmented reality?


I think we must focus on cycling/pedestrian comfort and safety. My city (along with the capital too) should more focus on smarter solutions in terms of traffic safety.

I would like an idea that motorways would remain motorways/urban expressways, and new ones being built, but other streets (and some roads) should be refurbished for multiple use, instead of "everything for car" politics.


----------



## Penn's Woods

PovilD said:


> If this would be the case, the countries that didn't lockdown would have almost all people infected. Probably more than 80%. Urban areas - close to 100%.
> 
> ...but it burns quite slowly. It seems.


Well, with herd immunity, would it ever reach 100 percent?
I get what you're saying though. It would spread as widely as it naturally can.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> I drove yesterday through Austria (Nickelsdorf - Suben). It was raining heavily when I drove between Vienna and Wels, traffic slowed down significantly. I was shocked as I saw how many cars ran in such a heavy rain without rear lights on. They were hardly visible.
> But some other people, too, could have had the same idea, because the radio, too, announced, every one should use the lights.


In much of the U.S., headlights are obligatory when it's raining.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> It seems covid19 restrictions greatly reduce traffic deaths, for the obvious reason of lack of traffic. I wonder if this will put more pressure towards a renewed push for bringing road traffic death rates down. They had fallen for more than 2 decades, but have stagnated in the last 5 years.
> 
> It feels as if even more modern airbags and vehicle body design have reached a point where benefits of further improvements are small. Any picture of the aftermath of a crash where road vehicles were involved and vehicle occupants died, these days, show that the crash was physically unsurvivable, no matter how well designed the car might have been. This probably explain why debilitating lifetime injuries out of crashes to road vehicle occupants have also gone down: seems as if almost everyone who can survive does survive in reasonable shape, but others dies on scene by blunt force trauma, artery rupture, crushed internal organs etc.
> 
> On the other hand, the share of road-traffic related deaths happening to passengers and cyclists is increasing.
> 
> If making cars safer for occupants is reaching its limits, what should come next - other than full automation? More advanced detection systems? Lower speed limits for trucks and larger vehicles? 5G-enabled electronic speed restrictions to prevent speeding at the driving computer module level regardless of driver's actions? Mandatory advanced radar-like detection systems with several cameras around the car to detect other vehicles and people? Replacement of traditional mirrors by full-blown screens with augmented reality?
> 
> Bringing down the road fatality rate another 40% in Western Europe will be a great challenge and a costly program. I wonder if the impetus to invest massive amounts for automated driving will become justifiable in terms of the alternatives. I don't think, politically, that another 10 years with flatlined death rates will be acceptable, and if the car industry and transportation authorities don't act proactively, populist anti-car meaures will become prevalent in city/town environments.


Re your last paragraph, are accident rates that big a political issue over there? I just don't hear much about that here. EDIT: I guess I mean I’d think “flatlined” rates would be acceptable to the voters, unless they flatlined at an unacceptably high level.
Re COVID, I saw a headline a day or two about speeding in France. It increased during the lockdown when roads were empty, and has stayed up. (And either the mayor of New York City or the governor of the state mentioned during a briefing a few months ago when they were concerned about hospital capacity that they were seeing far fewer accident victims in hospitals.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Graph of the Day:
















Source:








A Detailed Map of Who Is Wearing Masks in the U.S. (Published 2020)


The patterns from hundreds of thousands of survey respondents reflect partisanship, peer pressure and the footprint of the coronavirus itself.



www.nytimes.com


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

The "Always" Norwegians of the poll must have been lying. I have not seen a single person wearing mask in public.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

9% 'always' seems too high for the Netherlands as well. 9% always wearing a mask means that a random street scene with 10 people, 1 would be wearing a mask. It's much less than that, you can see hundreds of people before seeing someone with a mask (except around public transit, but that doesn't count as 'always'.) 

Masks are mandatory only in public transport in the Netherlands. I've found it extremely rare to spot someone with a mask outside of transit. Mask litter is a problem as well, in particular near bus stops.


----------



## PovilD

Penn's Woods said:


> Well, with herd immunity, would it ever reach 100 percent?
> I get what you're saying though. It would spread as widely as it naturally can.


I meant, if this so airbone, this could mean R0 to be as dramatic as measles if not more.

As far as I understand, it's partially airbone, but the environment (ventilation level) affects the spread dramatically, I think.


----------



## keokiracer

ChrisZwolle said:


> Masks are mandatory only in public transport in the Netherlands. I've found it extremely rare to spot someone with a mask outside of transit.


I have seen exactly one, a ~10 yo kid cycling by a couple of days ago.


----------



## PovilD

keokiracer said:


> I have seen exactly one, a ~10 yo kid cycling by a couple of days ago.


No masks in public transport means I don't using it (or avoiding it as much as possible)  Cycling or long walks are the solutions for me


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> Graph of the Day:


63% for Germany is very, very far from reality. I suppose, the question was not exactly "They Wear a Mask When They Leave the House". Amount of persons wearing a mask "always", when "they leave the house" must be under 5% in Germany.


----------



## MichiH

Attus said:


> 63% for Germany is very, very far from reality. I suppose, the question was not exactly "They Wear a Mask When They Leave the House". Amount of persons wearing a mask "always", when "they leave the house" must be under 5% in Germany.


Agree. The question must have been different but I cannot image how. If the question was "Do you wear a mask when it is mandatory", 63% doing it "always" would be too less, and 9% doing it "never" would be too high. Germans usually obey this kind of rules  and I also monitored that about 99% wear masks in shops and PT. There are people who don't wear it correct though - don't cover the nose.

Wearing masks was compulsory for PT in France and it will be extended to shops from next week because of raising cases. The rule will be quite similar to Germany:









Mask-wearing compulsory indoors in public from next week, French PM Castex says


France will make it compulsory to wear a face mask indoors in public places from next week, the government said Thursday as the country reported an uptick in new coronavirus cases.




www.france24.com





A colleague of mine was on vacation in southern France for two weeks. He said that about 50% of the people already worn masks in shops.


----------



## x-type

Do you have some incidents with people who refuse to wear a mask where it is mandatory (public transportation, grocery stores etc.)?


----------



## MichiH

x-type said:


> Do you have some incidents with people who refuse to wear a mask where it is mandatory (public transportation, grocery stores etc.)?


Most indidents in Germany (which made the news) happened at _anti corona (restrictions)_ demos. I've googled right now but didn't find many examples when people have been fined. Sometimes cautions have been issued in Germany ("Verwarnung") but not much fines. Sometimes for restaurant owners.

It is mandatory to register contact data (and store them for 1 month) of restaurtant visitors in Germany. I've been to six different restaurants since and I only had to fill the document at two or three. I always sat outside and only had to wear a mask when I went inside to the rest room. Waitresses usually wore masks but some did not cover their noses and I remember one who didn't wear a mask when she brought something to my table. Well, it's outside..... Sometimes it is allowed to sit down but some German restaurants applied to "wait to be seated" rule. It's sometimes not obvious whether you are allowed to sit down without waiting or not.

I've been to different ice cream parlors to pick up ice cream as takeaway. If you can buy it at the window without entering the building, I don't use a mask. When you need to enter the building - sometimes just 2-3 meters - you need to wear a mask. There are usually signs. Once I just arrived and the server directly called me. I was not yet wearting my mask - just pulled it out -, do I ordered and she answered "but you need to wear a mask". I put it on. I paid, got the ice cream and remove the mask after about 30 seconds again....


----------



## geogregor

x-type said:


> Do you have some incidents with people who refuse to wear a mask where it is mandatory (public transportation, grocery stores etc.)?


Quite number of people still don't wear masks on public transport in the UK, where it already is compulsory for a few weeks.

They are rarely challenged for that. I work for the railway company and our policy is not to challenge the passengers. There is plenty of posters stating that you must wear the mask but if you don't not much will really happen to you. There were a few incidents of heated arguments between passengers but it is quite rare.

In the meantime on Friday I felt like some sort of normality returned. I had a proper south London pub crawl with a friend:


FJIMG_20200717_143416 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


FJIMG_20200717_152058 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


FJIMG_20200717_160836 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


FJIMG_20200717_161438 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


FJIMG_20200717_172531 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


FJIMG_20200717_181203 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


FJIMG_20200717_192004 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

It was all pretty relaxed. Nobody asked for contact details and none of the nonsense of a table service, one can go normally to the bar to order the round.


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> none of the nonsense of a table service, one can go normally to the bar to order the round.


I don't go to pubs/bars in general. I only go to pubs in Britain for food or for a work social. And I have never been to a bar outside Britain for more than a few minutes, usually to use the toilet. But I thought table service is the usual system outside Britain and Ireland. I don't like bar service if it is busy and it is difficult to work out who is next.


----------



## PovilD

17 new cases today in Lithuania (when normally there were weeks with less than 10 cases), but related to multiple clusters now. I wonder if this is a start of "second wave" in the country. People are very relaxed. People are acting like it's "complete back to normal" which is shouldn't the case when there is a virus in the community.

On positive note, this part of our learning about "to live with the virus".

I guess mask wearing will be back if numbers will remain above 10.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> Do you have some incidents with people who refuse to wear a mask where it is mandatory (public transportation, grocery stores etc.)?


In the Netherlands it is only mandatory in public transport, compliance is reported to be very good. Though it has also been reported that correct handling of masks is pretty much 0%. People touch it all the time, stuff it in their pocket, reuse disposable masks, take it down to sneeze or cough, etc.


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## ChrisZwolle

Sweden's case continues to be interesting. At first Sweden was criticized for not taking appropriate action, then it didn't look nearly as bad as doomsday, then the figures increased and Sweden became the worst in Western Europe, but the figures are declining again, it appears that the past week had the lowest amount of new cases since the outbreak began to take shape in March. 

The graph shows (top to bottom): number of new cases, new ICU admittances, new deaths.


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## mgk920

geogregor said:


> Quite number of people still don't wear masks on public transport in the UK, where it already is compulsory for a few weeks.
> 
> They are rarely challenged for that. I work for the railway company and our policy is not to challenge the passengers. There is plenty of posters stating that you must wear the mask but if you don't not much will really happen to you. There were a few incidents of heated arguments between passengers but it is quite rare.
> 
> In the meantime on Friday I felt like some sort of normality returned. I had a proper south London pub crawl with a friend:
> 
> 
> 
> FJIMG_20200717_192004 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> It was all pretty relaxed. Nobody asked for contact details and none of the nonsense of a table service, one can go normally to the bar to order the round.


What was the game on the screen?

🍺 

Mike


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Kpc21 said:


> The standard European plugs:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> fit to them, except for the earth connections. So you can connect a device with such a plug to a Danish socket and it will work, but you won't be protected from an electric shock in case of its failure. Those plugs are compatible with two European standards of the earth connection in sockets (let's name them the German and the French one, from the largest countries which use them) – but not with the Danish one.
> 
> The problem is that, supposedly, most devices on the Danish market, seemingly because of EU pressure, are delivered with standard European plugs and without any adapters.
> 
> So the electric shock protection by the earth connection often doesn't exist in Denmark – which is theoretically a civilized country with high technical culture.
> 
> And Denmark doesn't seem to want to change their socket standard either... But even if they did, the conversion would take decades.
> 
> Those sockets may look happy but actually they are dangerous.
> 
> In Poland we have another problem – the earth connection in the socket is often not present or not connected to anything, just floating in the air. Or sometimes, connected to the neutral wire within the socket (as the whole building wiring is two-wire instead of three-wire as it should be according to modern standards), which gives some protection but also brings dangers (the neutral wire is earthed but it's also a part of a working circuit that powers the devices). I guess it might be similar in some third-world countries. But I really didn't except a similar issue from a country like Denmark.


Although the "Schuko" (Type F, shown in the map below) is the most common standard in Europe, there are 6 standards for earthed plugs only in our part of the world. However, luckily, for travelers, 5 of them (Schuko, Swiss, Danish, Swiss and Italian) are interopable when it comes to ungrounded devices equipped with the "Europlug"(which means most chargers etc.), the UK being the obvious exception. The Europlug should have a completely sealed design such that electroshock is avoided. In addition, the CEE 7/7 standard earthed plug is compatible with both Schuko and French sockets. I think all these standards for power plugs around the world are a pain in the ass, but they are not likely to change, ever. What country would be willing to foot the bill to change their system? It is like left hand vs right hand driving.

I am a bit surprised that it is allowed to sell devices with CEE 7/7 plugs in Denmark.

Sockets without earth (Type C for Schuko-type in the map below) was commonplace everywhere a few decades back , I think. My house has several, and it is allowed, but it is not allowed to install new circuits without ground. In older installations, earth is actually "floating" also in Norwegian circuits in the sence that it should be connected to the real earth and not provided by the power company. We have always been told that only Albania has been using this system in addition to us, but it seems like that intel was wrong ;-) Many appliances are not using the ground wire anyway.


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## ChrisZwolle

My house was built in the mid-1980s and only the sockets in the kitchen and bathroom are grounded. All others are not.


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## bogdymol

Greetings from Mayrhofen, Tirol, Austria. There was a former forum member from here if I remember well.


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## Penn's Woods

bogdymol said:


> Greetings from Mayrhofen, Tirol, Austria. There was a former forum member from here if I remember well.


Two, even. Depending on how you count them.


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## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> My house was built in the mid-1980s and only the sockets in the kitchen and bathroom are grounded. All others are not.


Sounds familiar. It became mandatory to install all new sockets as grounded in 1997 in Finland. TN-C grounding has been forbidden since 2007.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Grounded circuits became mandatory in 1998 in Norway. I suspect the requirement came from some EU regulation. You are still allowed to install new sockets on existing ungrounded circuits I believe, as long as the old requirements are fulfilled ("non-conducting" room without grounded sockets nearby.) You are really only in danger if you manage to touch a metallic surface on an appliance with grounding error with one hand and something conducting current to the ground (or another potential) with the other. 

In Norway, the most common grounding has not been TN-C, but IT, i. e. no ground or neutral from the transformator at all. It has been speculated that the IT prevalence has caused an excess number of fires in Norway. 








In new areas TN is used today, though, mostly TN-CS I believe. TN-C is not allowed on the consumer-side.


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## cinxxx

Today


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## mgk920

ChrisZwolle said:


> My house was built in the mid-1980s and only the sockets in the kitchen and bathroom are grounded. All others are not.


I'm not sure when the USA's NEC (National Electric Code) was amended to require a female ground prong connection in all new residential power outlet installations, but I seem to recall them being the only thing in houses starting sometime in the 1960s or 1970s. When I was growing up, our house (built in 1955) did not have them (only two-prong outlets).

Also, all of the power outlets in my apartment building (built in 1968) are three prong grounded with the ground prong in top. I am not sure if these are original to the building, though.

Mike


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## Coccodrillo

Ni3lS said:


> Going to Switzerland on Friday and hope to record some scenic roads  Thanks for info!


Dashcam are often in a grey area. I think theoretically even filming tourist roads for fun might be illegal, in Switzerland and likely also in other countries. But is is also likely that nobody will ever care of accelerated videos like those of ChrisZwolle. Also, filming using some sort of mechanism to fix the camera to the windscreen and filming while keeping the camera in position with your hand (if you aren't driving, of course!) might be different.


__
https://www.reddit.com/r/askswitzerland/comments/cl432g





__





Erläuterungen zu Videoüberwachung in Fahrzeugen (Dashcam)


Der neuste Trend auf dem Markt der Videoüberwachung heisst «Dashcam». Diese Kameras werden in Fahrzeuge eingebaut, um das Geschehen auf der Strasse zu filmen. Die Gründe dafür reichen von reiner Unterhaltung bis zur Beschaffung von Beweismitteln bei Unfällen. In einigen Ländern sind solche...




www.edoeb.admin.ch









__





Are dash cams legal in Switzerland? - English Forum Switzerland


I have a Swiss car and have fitted a front and rear dash cam. Simply put, I would like to know if it is legal or not? Also, in a crash situation, are



www.englishforum.ch













Use of dash cam footage to be decided by Swiss court


The data protection watchdog has warned against the use of private dashboard cameras to convict dangerous drivers.




www.swissinfo.ch


----------



## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> In Norway, the most common grounding has not been TN-C, but IT, i. e. no ground or neutral from the transformator at all. It has been speculated that the IT prevalence has caused an excess number of fires in Norway.


In most countries IT system is used only in hospitals, especially in operating rooms. It allows to continue using the circuit in case of an insulation failure without a risk of electric shock.

Poland also has quite a lot of TT system, where you are not allowed to use the neutral wire as ground (like it is done in TN-C-S or in the old systems with the ground connected to the neutral wire directly in power outlets – it's also a form of TN-C-S, although not satisfying the requirements for the neutral wire). 

A big disadvantage of the two-wire system is that it's not possible to use RCD breakers (GFCI in American English) with it. And when the ground is connected to the neutral wire but not grounded by itself, a break in the neutral wire cause the grounded parts of devices to become live, even though the devices appear to be out of power (they don't work as the circuit is open).

In Poland it's now (from late 1990s, I think) compulsory to use three-wire circuits and RCDs everywhere (with some minor exceptions like life support devices in hospitals), of course in new circuits. Thing is, the certification system for electricians is totally spoilt, and many of them are not up to date with the current regulations and standards. It's also not uncommon (as most private houses are self-built) to employ electricians who aren't even certified, as nobody cares about that. So, for example, it often happens that the electrician making the wiring in the house doesn't check if the network is TN-C, or TT, and uses the neutral wire from the network as ground although he shouldn't do it.

Meanwhile...

My house is powered from a transformer that powers just several quite short streets – about 30-40 houses. The medium voltage line that powers the transformer is underground, only the low voltage line (230 V / 400 V) from the transformer along the streets to the houses is overhead. So I don't suffer from frequent power outages. But just recently it got worse... About a week ago, the power went out with a short (maybe a minute long) strong blow of wind that appeared at a beginning of a thunderstorm. And it took about 20 hours for the power delivery company to repair it. OK, I understand it, there was much damage in the whole network, even one medium voltage pole nearby (made of reinforced concrete) just got broken in half, probably because of a heavy tree that fell onto the wires. When I called the company to report the failure, there were about 140 persons in the queue (luckily, the queue went fast).

But yesterday, even though there was practically no wind or thunderstorm, one of three phases I have power from went out. So 1/3 of the house doesn't have the power again. When I called them – I got a connection immediately, there was no queue. So I don't think their repair crews are busy. It happened yesterday about 3 PM – and the power is still not back... It's quite weird and not really understandable, they just seem not to care...

Unfortunately, while it is possible in Poland to choose the company from which you buy the power, you can't choose the company that delivers it to you (so if you change the seller, you are getting two invoices: for the power itself and another one from another company for the power delivery via their infrastructure). There are five companies that deliver the power in five regions of Poland:










and you are bound to the one that operates in your region (in my case – PGE).

In the past there were much smaller companies that operated in small areas (e.g. in my case it was ŁZE, operating only in Łódź and neighboring towns; a neighboring municipality already had another company – ZEŁT) but about 10 years ago they got consolidated.


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> I'm not sure when the USA's NEC (National Electric Code) was amended to require a female ground prong connection in all new residential power outlet installations, but I seem to recall them being the only thing in houses starting sometime in the 1960s or 1970s. When I was growing up, our house (built in 1955) did not have them (only two-prong outlets).
> 
> Also, all of the power outlets in my apartment building (built in 1968) are three prong grounded with the ground prong in top. I am not sure if these are original to the building, though.
> 
> Mike


I was born in 1964, so my first memories go back to the late 60s. Our house was built in the late 40s. We put on an addition about 1967. I vaguely remember three-prong plugs were a novelty at some point, probably in the 70s - even remember a gray rubber thing with three female openings but two male prongs that you could put over a three-prong plug to make it work in a two-prong outlet. On the other hand, we’ve got three-prong outlets in the 1967 addition. I doubt that was ever rewired, so three-prong outlets existed in 1967, although maybe they weren’t obligatory yet.


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## Kpc21

The question is, whether those three prong outlets have the third prong connected to anything, the whole house got rewired, or someone just wanted to replace the outlets to a newer model and as there was no such option, he did not connect the ground contacts to anything...


----------



## Ni3lS

Coccodrillo said:


> Dashcam are often in a grey area. I think theoretically even filming tourist roads for fun might be illegal, in Switzerland and likely also in other countries. But is is also likely that nobody will ever care of accelerated videos like those of ChrisZwolle. Also, filming using some sort of mechanism to fix the camera to the windscreen and filming while keeping the camera in position with your hand (if you aren't driving, of course!) might be different.
> 
> 
> __
> https://www.reddit.com/r/askswitzerland/comments/cl432g
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> __
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Erläuterungen zu Videoüberwachung in Fahrzeugen (Dashcam)
> 
> 
> Der neuste Trend auf dem Markt der Videoüberwachung heisst «Dashcam». Diese Kameras werden in Fahrzeuge eingebaut, um das Geschehen auf der Strasse zu filmen. Die Gründe dafür reichen von reiner Unterhaltung bis zur Beschaffung von Beweismitteln bei Unfällen. In einigen Ländern sind solche...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.edoeb.admin.ch
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> __
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Are dash cams legal in Switzerland? - English Forum Switzerland
> 
> 
> I have a Swiss car and have fitted a front and rear dash cam. Simply put, I would like to know if it is legal or not? Also, in a crash situation, are
> 
> 
> 
> www.englishforum.ch
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Use of dash cam footage to be decided by Swiss court
> 
> 
> The data protection watchdog has warned against the use of private dashboard cameras to convict dangerous drivers.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.swissinfo.ch


Thanks for the info! I read something similar and heard from colleagues that we are not allowed to drive into Switzerland with some of our company cars because they have certain camera functionalities. At the same time I have those on my private car as well and would be surprised if that would block me from entering Switzerland. 

And as long as videos like these keep on popping up on Youtube... 




Let's see what happens


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Penn's Woods said:


> I was born in 1964, so my first memories go back to the late 60s. Our house was built in the late 40s. We put on an addition about 1967. I vaguely remember three-prong plugs were a novelty at some point, probably in the 70s - even remember a gray rubber thing with three female openings but two male prongs that you could put over a three-prong plug to make it work in a two-prong outlet. On the other hand, we’ve got three-prong outlets in the 1967 addition. I doubt that was ever rewired, so three-prong outlets existed in 1967, although maybe they weren’t obligatory yet.


Schuko with ground clips has been around since the 1920s, but it (i.e. circuits with ground wire and associated sockets) has not been compulsory in dry rooms until about 20 years, in most of Europe it seems. Using grounded sockets on a circuit without earth wire is illegal. It is possible to put a grounded Schuko into an ungrounded socket, but not the other way around. This is opposite of the US system. What I do not like about the American and some other plugs, is that live prongs are not well protected. 


Kpc21 said:


> In most countries IT system is used only in hospitals, especially in operating rooms. It allows to continue using the circuit in case of an insulation failure without a risk of electric shock.


One advantage with the IT system, is that nominally none of the wires are more than 115 V from the ground.


----------



## Kpc21

Dash cams are a very useful thing as a proof for the insurance company about any road incident you suffer from and you want to get it covered from the insurance of the one who caused it. Normally you may not even notice the licence plate numbers of that car, with a dash cam you can always check it.

Similarly if the police is to decide who caused the incident and whom to fine for it. Sometimes it's not obvious at all and both sides claim it's the other one's fault. A dash cam solves all the issues.

I am therefore not getting how a country may ban such a useful thing.



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> One advantage with the IT system, is that nominally none of the wires are more than 115 V from the ground.


Well, in real IT, they might be at any potential with respect to the ground as they are not connected to it through any load. 115 V from the ground (negative and positive in both wires) appears in split phase systems, like in the US.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

That is why I wrote nominally, and I should have written 132 V, of course. When the voltage deviates from this there is a grounding error somewhere in the IT system. With RCD breakers becoming more and more common, and compulsory for new circuits, the prevalence of grounding errors will hopefully go down ahead.


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## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> The question is, whether those three prong outlets have the third prong connected to anything, the whole house got rewired, or someone just wanted to replace the outlets to a newer model and as there was no such option, he did not connect the ground contacts to anything...


Not a clue.


----------



## Kpc21

In Biały Dunajec on the Kraków–Zakopane highway (Zakopianka), on Saturday, three cars crashed: Maserati, Jaguar and Dodge. It must be one of the most costly accidents in terms of money on Polish roads.

Photos – Wypadek supersamochodów na zakopiance. Trzy rozbite pojazdy kosztują w sumie około 700 tys. zł


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## Penn's Woods

Ni3lS said:


> Thanks for the info! I read something similar and heard from colleagues that we are not allowed to drive into Switzerland with some of our company cars because they have certain camera functionalities. At the same time I have those on my private car as well and would be surprised if that would block me from entering Switzerland.
> 
> And as long as videos like these keep on popping up on Youtube...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Let's see what happens


Is it illegal because it’s distracted driving* or because of the same privacy issues that have affected Google Streetview?

*I don’t think it needs to be distracted driving, but lawmakers may not feel that way.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Macron & Michel, demonstrating how not to use a mask properly 🙃


----------



## Ni3lS

I'll make sure to mount the GoPro after I cross the border


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> Did you have a flu shot?


Nope, in the Netherlands the flu shot is something only elderly at risk take. 

I've heard is common in the U.S. to get a medical checkup each year, with blood samples taken, etc? In the Netherlands that's also uncommon, I haven't seen my practioner in a few years. People only go to the doctor if they have issues. Maybe because the Netherlands is a relatively healthy country (far less obesity, more exercise through cycling, etc.) there isn't as much need to get checked up regularly.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Not a bad payday for Jeff Bezos:









Jeff Bezos Adds Record $13 Billion in Single Day to Fortune


Jeff Bezos added $13 billion to his net worth on Monday, the largest single-day jump for an individual since the Bloomberg Billionaires Index was created in 2012.




www.bloomberg.com





Bezos' net worth of $ 189 billion is greater than that of 133 countries in the world. His net worth is higher than the economy of Ukraine (a country with 42 million inhabitants).

In case it's difficult to visualize how much more a billion is than a million:


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Sweden's Covid-19 strategy bashed by Swedish scientists in USA Today: Sweden hoped herd immunity would curb COVID-19. Don't do what we did. It's not working.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Swedish death rate is much lower though, if you count those 10% of people who have antibodies as cases. That would be 5,500 deaths on an infected population of 1 million instead of the 78,000 counted officially. That means the CFR would be 0.5% instead of 7%. 

Apparently there are also indications that a proportion of the population is immune even without developing antibodies. 

The coronavirus approach suffers from tunnel vision, it is difficult to change policy or admit that some restrictions aren't effective or proportional. It's like a battle cruiser that is slow to change course.


----------



## PovilD

There are talks that lower CFR is about 0,5%

I think it has to do with T-cell response rather than antibodies, since there are talks that quite an amount of people produce no antibodies after recovery. Antibody tests may not reveal full picture about the prevalence of the virus.

There are early alarmists talking about "actual reinfected cases" (positive, then negative for 3 months, then positive again with symptoms). I was a little bit scarred though, but now I'm thinking is not that simple here, because immunity is more complex than antibodies, and there are maybe problems with T-cell responses in individual people. Of course, we have to learn more about the virus.

I think many concepts how we understand this virus may change in the future.


----------



## cinxxx

I think we can agree European politicians will defend their measures as much as they can, even if they realized they were actually wrong.
The continues fear and panic mongering campaign I see in Romanian media and authorities can easily be attributed to this.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

"the driver got out with minor injuries". 👀


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Nope, in the Netherlands the flu shot is something only elderly at risk take.
> 
> I've heard is common in the U.S. to get a medical checkup each year, with blood samples taken, etc? In the Netherlands that's also uncommon, I haven't seen my practioner in a few years. People only go to the doctor if they have issues. Maybe because the Netherlands is a relatively healthy country (far less obesity, more exercise through cycling, etc.) there isn't as much need to get checked up regularly.


Annual physicals are indeed standard. I used to skip for years at a stretch, but it's free under my health plan ("Obamacare" encourages this sort of maintenance care on the theory it will cut down on more extensive interventions after problems develop), and I'm at an age where you really should stay on top of things just in case. And I like my doctor.
So back to flu shots, if I'm in my doctor's office in October or November, he'll usually ask if I want one and I'll say "why not?" and one of his staff will do it before I leave.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Swedish death rate is much lower though, if you count those 10% of people who have antibodies as cases. That would be 5,500 deaths on an infected population of 1 million instead of the 78,000 counted officially. That means the CFR would be 0.5% instead of 7%.
> 
> Apparently there are also indications that a proportion of the population is immune even without developing antibodies.
> 
> The coronavirus approach suffers from tunnel vision, it is difficult to change policy or admit that some restrictions aren't effective or proportional. It's like a battle cruiser that is slow to change course.


I think CFRs are about as reliable as case numbers. Which is to say, not very. Actual numbers of deaths are, and I'm sorry but Sweden's number of deaths as a share of its total population is nothing to brag about. Particularly compared to their neighbors. Are they still ahead of even the U.S. on that point (as are quite a few European countries, but we're not supposed to talk about that. And we may be catching up. :-( )?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

My employer (a municipality government) arranges a doctor to come in once a year in early Autumn and everybody who wants gets a free flu shot. It's not covered by the national health insurance and in the general population it's very uncommon for people to get one. I think it should be more common, though, especially the elderly and those with a compromised immunity system should get it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

On the other hand, the Swedish death rate (relative to population) is still a bit lower than that of Spain. Two countries which are on either end of the extremes: Sweden had the least restrictions, Spain probably the harshest (in Europe). 

However, the current trends for Sweden are much more optimistic. Its ICU admittances are near zero (generally 0-2 per day now) and deaths are also minimal at this point. The number of cases in Sweden spiked in June, but now 4 weeks later there is no effect on ICU admittances or deaths. And despite having no lockdown, its health care system was not overwhelmed.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> On the other hand, the Swedish death rate (relative to population) is still a bit lower than that of Spain. Two countries which are on either end of the extremes: Sweden had the least restrictions, Spain probably the harshest (in Europe).
> 
> However, the current trends for Sweden are much more optimistic. Its ICU admittances are near zero (generally 0-2 per day now) and deaths are also minimal at this point. The number of cases in Sweden spiked in June, but now 4 weeks later there is no effect on ICU admittances or deaths. And despite having no lockdown, its health care system was not overwhelmed.


Spain and Italy, like New York and New Jersey, were overwhelmed early on. The case of your country - sizable early outbreak I guess, “gentle” restrictive measures, few cases now (if I’m not mistaken) is intriguing.


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## Penn's Woods

This, by the way, is what I refer to for international comparisons. But it would be useful at this point if they’d start breaking some of those totals down by month: How many people per million population died in Spain and the U.S. and Sweden and wherever in March, how many since the beginning of July....

Actually, a few weeks ago there were eight countries above us, all in Europe. Now Peru and Chile are ahead of us as well.









COVID Live Update: 182,981,857 Cases and 3,962,879 Deaths from the Coronavirus - Worldometer


Live statistics and coronavirus news tracking the number of confirmed cases, recovered patients, tests, and death toll due to the COVID-19 coronavirus from Wuhan, China. Coronavirus counter with new cases, deaths, and number of tests per 1 Million population. Historical data and info. Daily...




www.worldometers.info


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands has also seen an increase last week, though these are a few clusters, the overwhelming majority of the country has seen no notable increase in cases. Most cities have seen less than 20 new cases over a two-week period, which means there is virtually no community transmission. Most new cases are linked to parties and family get togethers.

Of course this doesn't stop the media from going into full hysteria mode. They had a press conference yesterday where journalists kept asking stupid questions about why the Netherlands hasn't made masks mandatory.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The WorldOMeters website is considered unreliable by the folks at Wikipedia. They say WOM has minor and major errors which sometimes aren't corrected for weeks. Evidently there is also moaning on Twitter by statistical experts about why journalists keep using worldometers as a source.

The Wikipedia article is based on the health authorities of each country:









COVID-19 pandemic by country and territory - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The WorldOMeters website is considered unreliable by the folks at Wikipedia. They say WOM has minor and major errors which sometimes aren't corrected for weeks. Evidently there is also moaning on Twitter by statistical experts about why journalists keep using worldometers as a source.
> 
> The Wikipedia article is based on the health authorities of each country:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> COVID-19 pandemic by country and territory - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org


I hadn’t heard that about Worldometers. It would be nice if that Wikipedia table would include the rate per million population, or at least include the countries’ populations so you could figure it out yourself without looking them up individually.

But if the Wikipedia table has the good numbers, how far off is Worldometers?


----------



## Jschmuck

ChrisZwolle said:


> "the driver got out with minor injuries". 👀
> 
> View attachment 332397


Who? The tractor driver? lol


----------



## MichiH

> *Belgium *on Thursday tightened its rules on *wearing facemasks, making them compulsory* in outdoor markets and busy shopping areas, as fears of a resurgence of coronavirus grow.





https://today.rtl.lu/news/world/a/1553862.html





> Fears of a *second wave* of Covid-19 in *Australia *after three months of control











Fears of a second wave of Covid-19 in Australia after three months of control


The total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 continue to rise globally with over 14.5 million cases now reported across 190 countries. Australia’s initial response to the novel virus was amongst the most successful worldwide, though a recent increase in daily confirmed cases since the start...




www.pharmaceutical-technology.com





It's not over till it's over....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Hmm, a German professor of infection prevention of a WHO expert council says that the WHO advisory to use masks in public is not based on science but political pressure and public opinion. 

The mask discussion has flared up in the Netherlands, mainly through sensationalist media reporting and a few mayors.


----------



## Kpc21

To me it seems that people simply don't want to wear masks (because it's uncomfortable, makes it difficult to breathe), so there is pressure of the public opinion, and some not very competent professors repeat that masks don't help. The issue is, also WHO initially didn't recommend wearing masks – which actually might have been political (not to cause a runout of masks that were more needed by professionals fighting with the epidemic rather than by random people) – but they were saying that masks don't help and may harm and now this can be repeated on and on by others. When something becomes public, it remains public forever, it's not possible to cancel it.

But I don't know, I am not an expert, it's just my view.


----------



## geogregor

In the UK from today masks are compulsory in shops (they are compulsory on public transport since mid June). From my experience with public transport most people do wear them but there is significant percentage which can't be bothered. And enforcement was so far pretty much nonexistent.

We can have endless debate how good masks are in preventing spread of Covid but the main reasons they are introduced here is to reassure public that it is safe to go shopping and spending money.

I think authorities realized that we have a serious problem. British public is particularly reluctant to go from their homes back out, into the world.

London slow to return to Underground compared with other European cities, Assembly hears - OnLondon



> London is still lagging behind other major cities with getting passengers back onto public transport, with significant consequences both for the future of the network and the Central London economy.





> Usage is now back to between 20 and 25 per cent of pre-pandemic levels in London, compared to 40 per cent of passengers now back in Madrid, and 45 per cent in Paris and Brussels.


The whole "stay home" messaging became more successful than anyone expected. And without much of heavy police enforcement like in Spain or France. British media machine did the trick. If you believed them as soon as you stepped outside your home you were basically killing some brave nurses...

And the economy is taking a heavy blow. There are predictions that the UK economy will be one of the hardest hit as it is relying on retail and hospitality spending. I'm not sure compulsory mask will do the trick in encouraging people to spend money. In fact it might put people off. I don't like wearing masks and I won't be spending much time in shops if I have to wear one. Period.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Train usage in the Netherlands has returned to 50-55% of regular levels. It was down to less than 10% in April. 

Road traffic is pretty much back to regular traffic volumes, but there has been a significant shift, with less traffic during the morning rush but higher volumes throughout the day and in the afternoon. A lot of people work part-time from home and partially at the office, but avoid the traditional rush hour. 

The downside is that traffic volumes are so high off-peak that it feels overcrowded the entire day, even if there is much less actual congestion. Traffic is very dense even at 11 or 2. Today you can see that in the patterns of traffic congestion, normally congestion begins to pick up around 2 p.m. on a Friday, but today it was already congested at 10 a.m. 

I'm wondering if we'll see traffic congestion throughout the day instead of two rush hours. My feeling is that there doesn't need to be a huge increase of traffic for that to happen.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Bond World: Schilthorn in Switzerland. It's interesting that they can still cash in on the Bond theme, half a century after the film was released.

The James Bond film _On Her Majesty's Secret Service_ was released in 1969. It had a substantial part of the film recorded in this area, the cinematography in particular was spectacular for that era, the theme is also considered one of the best.

The people who originally seen the movie in the theater as a young adult are now in their 70s. But the Bond brand still lives on. This particular film had an unusual actor for the role of James Bond: George Lazenby, who performed that role only once. Appreciation for the movie has significantly improved over time though, it is often considered one of the best entries of the series by aficionados. It stayed very true to the novel.


Schilthornbahn Talstation 04 by European Roads, on Flickr


----------



## Coccodrillo

They are going to replace the ropeways going to the Schiltorn (because they are aging and to increase capacity), so they will likely use James Bond theme even more to advertise the novelty.


----------



## cinxxx

Today while I wanted to go eat something for lunch I saw that my bicycle had disappeared.
I had it locked on 2 bars. Bars are intact, my lock is gone too. For my next bike I will have to invest in a better steal non cable lock.


----------



## MichiH

It made the news this evening that the German Robert Koch institute is worried about a rise in new cases. There have been 815 new cases in the last 24 hours. It was about 400..500 in the last weeks. The last days with higher numbers was on 19 June (895) and 17 June (987)

Italy has introduced new restrictions (quarantine) for people returning from RO and BG. Norway for people returning from Spain.


----------



## mgk920

ChrisZwolle said:


> Hmm, a German professor of infection prevention of a WHO expert council says that the WHO advisory to use masks in public is not based on science but political pressure and public opinion.
> 
> The mask discussion has flared up in the Netherlands, mainly through sensationalist media reporting and a few mayors.


I am becoming more and more convinced that this Virus issue is primarily a partisan political thing and less and less of a 'health' thing. The percentage of those who 'test positive' for it who will be dead from it within a month or so is well under 1% and yet there is virtually no discussion regarding the mortality rate and ongoing trends in it while through constant reinforcement from the politicians and the press corps, the public is still being scared witless to venture outside of their little safe places.



Mike


----------



## tfd543

cinxxx said:


> Today while I wanted to go eat something for lunch I saw that my bicycle had disappeared.
> I had it locked on 2 bars. Bars are intact, my lock is gone too. For my next bike I will have to invest in a better steal non cable lock.


Azholes... i have locked my foldable 2 km from my hotel in porec, cro. I hope Its still there tomorrow. Btw freaking expensive here. I miss my dear Al. Will absolytely never go to cro again.


----------



## MichiH

France has more than 1,000 new cases the 2nd day in a row. Spain more than 900. Spain (Catalonia) is closing clubs and other public places again.
People returning from abroad to Germany can be tested for free if they want, e.g. directly at the airports. There were talks if it should be mandatory when returning from risk regions, e.g. Balkans.


----------



## MichiH

tfd543 said:


> Btw freaking expensive here.


I think Croatia is pretty cheap compared to Denmark....


----------



## PovilD

mgk920 said:


> I am becoming more and more convinced that this Virus issue is primarily a partisan political thing and less and less of a 'health' thing. The percentage of those who 'test positive' for it who will be dead from it within a month or so is well under 1% and yet there is virtually no discussion regarding the mortality rate and ongoing trends in it while through constant reinforcement from the politicians and the press corps, the public is still being scared witless to venture outside of their little safe places.
> 
> 
> 
> Mike


The biggest issue, I think, is not the mortality, but what the virus could do for recovered patients. There are talks about damage on multiple organs, etc. and there are reports of reinfection after 3 months, but evidence is still anecdotal. If we depend only on mortality, then yes, I would be thinking if we can forget this topic and move on...


----------



## Kpc21

But the morality is very high among the elderly. In a nursing home in my town, there was a Covid breakout. Something like 30% of the infected persons died. There was also one reported as who was infected but died because of something else.


----------



## mgk920

Kpc21 said:


> But the morality is very high among the elderly. In a nursing home in my town, there was a Covid breakout. Something like 30% of the infected persons died. There was also one reported as who was infected but died because of something else.


That is why, for example, assisted living centers and nursing homes often don't allow visitors during flu seasons. Their residents are by their nature very susceptible to illnesses that we wouldn't even notice.

Mike


----------



## cinxxx

This virus will not go away in the next years.
I hope you realize a working vaccine will not be available very soon, if ever.

I have my doubts people will so easily accept other lockdowns again and again.
We will kill our economy and help the rise of populist extreme movements.

Also, we shouldn't forget there are many more important problems in the world than Covid-19 and have to ensure proper medical care for them.
I personally already know a few people that didn't get according medical access because of lockdown measures.
I also personally know about a few people that had psychiatric problems because of lockdown, one with sever depression that wants to die and almost doesn't eat anymore. Wasn't admitted to hospital for observation and care because Covid-19. I'm sure we will hear of more and more such cases, studies will be done, and I have a feeling more people will be affected by lockdonw, economy collapse than the virus itself... 

I also think the whole thing got politicized over the top.
In some countries like the USA, they actually sabotage the well being of people using the virus.
In other countries authorities seem to do anything to justify their measures and will not admit if they did wrong.

For example here in Germany they keep insisting their approach was the best. They give bad examples such as USA, Brazil, but also Sweden, since they say, although Sweden didn't really impose any restrictions, they had more deaths and the economic impact was the same (which, last one, I kind of doubt tbh), it's all propaganda and justification. Meanwhile many small businesses had to close or sustained huge losses, etc.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

cinxxx said:


> I hope you realize a working vaccine will not be available very soon, if ever.


There appears to be a sentiment that we just have to hold out until a vaccine arrives and then everything will instantly go back to normal. Presumed timeline: next 6-9 months.

I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.

A poll in the Netherlands show that the willingness to get the vaccine is just around 60%. There is much more skepticism about a quickly developed vaccine than your typical niche of antivaxxer crazies.


----------



## tfd543

MichiH said:


> I think Croatia is pretty cheap compared to Denmark....


Indeed but i expected only slightly more expensive than Albania, maybe 10-20 %. This is prolly 3 fold higher.

Its my most expensive vacation ever, but now I know better. And no, Im not staying in a luxury hotel.
In general, Im somewhat beginning to prefer private accommodation (airbnb) more than hotels.


----------



## PovilD

tfd543 said:


> Indeed but i expected only slightly more expensive than Albania, maybe 10-20 %. This is prolly 3 fold higher.
> 
> Its my most expensive vacation ever, but now I know better. And no, Im not staying in a luxury hotel.
> In general, Im somewhat beginning to prefer private accommodation (airbnb) more than hotels.


As far as I know, Albania and Croatia are at very different development levels. Albania is closer to Ukraine, while Croatia is similar to other relatively new EU member states.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> But the morality is very high among the elderly. In a nursing home in my town, there was a Covid breakout. Something like 30% of the infected persons died. There was also one reported as who was infected but died because of something else.


Yes, but I think we could learn to protect them without harming the economy, but there are not only death issues here, I think. The problem is the virus being too novel for us to grasp about its effects.

So we have to be careful at least for now.
We have to give hope to science to find out proved mechanisms to cope all of this.


----------



## x-type

tfd543 said:


> Indeed but i expected only slightly more expensive than Albania, maybe 10-20 %. This is prolly 3 fold higher.
> 
> Its my most expensive vacation ever, but now I know better. And no, Im not staying in a luxury hotel.
> In general, Im somewhat beginning to prefer private accommodation (airbnb) more than hotels.


No more cheap Mediteranean except in Turkey, Albania and Montenegro for years.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> From what I have heard, you should also beware of sea urchins:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If you step onto one, it hurts your foot a lot with its spikes and injects venom. Which isn't dangerous but it's painful and the venom makes the wound difficult to cure.
> 
> It's recommended to wear shoes in water in Croatia.


I had relatives who visited Croatian coast saying exactly the same, so I aware while being at Adriatic Sea for those urchins. I was on Italian side (Rimini) though once, but I was told they are not common in Italy so I was taking a swim bare foot, but in Croatian side I would be automatically aware. I've been to Croatia (Zagreb Area), but I never been to the Adriatic coast. I'm looking forward visiting it, I heard it's beautiful here


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## ChrisZwolle

The UK government has ordered a quarantine for people returning from Spain. British tourists normally make up a huge chunk of the international tourist travel to Spain.

Cases are on the rise. But they also say that detection is much better now than it was in March and April. And that those affected are now younger than during the initial outbreak. Younger people have a much more active social life, so they are potentially much more exposed.









Coronavirus crisis in Spain: data from 10 regions shows rise in cases and hospital admissions


After a months-long downward trend, the country is now reporting more than 1,000 new infections a day, while outbreaks have been detected across the territory




english.elpais.com


----------



## Kpc21

But wasn't it proven that they also don't transmit the virus as much?


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> The UK government has ordered a quarantine for people returning from Spain. British tourists normally make up a huge chunk of the international tourist travel to Spain.


I know of several people who are currently in Spain so will be unable to go back to work when they get home. This is the problem with going on holiday at the moment.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> But wasn't it proven that they also don't transmit the virus as much?


Younger people?
I haven’t heard that and I don’t see why that would be the case.


----------



## Kpc21

I think someone was posting such information over here, and it was even discussed more, e.g. as an argument for opening the kindergartens, or even primary schools during the pandemic. Because kids, contrary to earlier expectations, don't transmit the virus as much.

Okey, there is a difference between the kids and the youth, but as they are also young (not as much as, let's say, kids in kindergarten age), I guess they also aren't likely to transmit the virus as much as adults. So the larger amount of social activities should become compensated by that.


----------



## geogregor

I absolutely hate the idea of typical seaside holiday. I think in my life I have spend something like one they on a beach, once in Spain, with my Italian ex-girlfriend. The second day I left her behind to sunbath and drove to Gibraltar for some sightseeing.

That relationship didn't last much longer and our outlook on holidays could be a contributing factor


----------



## x-type

Kpc21 said:


> Is it really that different from the Balkan Mediterranean coast? I mean, it is also mostly rocky with little beaches, so different e.g. from the Baltic coast of the continental Europe, which I don't really know in other countries, but in Poland it's just a huge coast-long continuing beach. Anyway, Croatia and Bulgaria are not that different in those terms. Bulgaria is even better, having mostly sandy beaches, while those in Croatia are mostly rocky.
> 
> Ukraine isn't (and wasn't when they still had Crimea) that popular in Poland either but it was always a very interesting alternative option (now, having no Crimea, not that much, but still).
> 
> In 2019, 54% of Poles went somewhere for holidays. Of that, 36% of them travelled within Poland, 18% went abroad.
> 
> Talking about foreign destinations, the statistics are:
> 1. Greece – 26%
> 2. Turkey – 21%
> 3. Bulgaria – 14%
> 4. Egypt – 9%
> 5. Spain – 9%
> 6. Tunisia – 5%
> 7. Albania – 3%
> 8. Italy – 2%
> 9. Cyprus – 1%
> 10. Croatia – 0.4%
> 
> It's interesting to see that Croatia was that unpopular, but... it's based on the data of travel agencies. Even the agencies claim that in case of Croatia, people mostly choose the offers with "own transport", which in practice means those are de facto room or apartment rental offers. In practice, people mostly book such accommodation individually and not through travel agencies, so – they simply weren't counted.
> 
> But it's interesting to see Albania much higher than Montenegro. It's further from Poland than Croatia (already quite far for travelling by car), and the offer of regular low-cost flights to Montenegro is very poor, so certainly more people from Poland should be going there with travel agencies... But it seems they aren't.
> 
> Maybe it's simply because Montenegro doesn't have such a long coast, which simply results in a lower number of offers available. In Greece it's very long and they also have islands, which results with this high position. And Bulgaria is cheap, with also quite long coast and two huge towns being typical hotel resorts: Sunny Beach and Golden Sands (by the way, they are quite unusual for having exonyms in English, in case of Sunny Beach, even the meaning is different, as in the original, or even in the Polish exonym, it's Sunny Shore).
> 
> In case of Albania, an interesting thing is that Polish travel agencies fly the tourists travelling to southern Albania to the Greek Corfu airport, and the tourist are then taken to the mainland by regular line boats (there are ferry boats and faster hydrofoils on this route). It seems to be faster than if there were supposed to be taken by coaches from Tirana airport – and this way the agencies can put the tourists to Corfu and to southern Albania on the same plane.


Of course it is very different. Architecture, influences, terrain, plants... I will not say too much about different smell of the sea here because many of you would make fun of it (our Italian forumers might understand it, although you never know with them  ), but it is different. 
Oh, and it's not all about sand. Croatian coast has sand beaches, but they are almost always out of inhabitted areas. And those are just becahes, not long sand shores. For large sand beaches in Europe you must have large river mouth nearby. Doesn't happen in HR.
For me the best thing is to immerse myself into crystal sea far from any noise, and after that to enjoy smells and sounds of the nature on some rock. I'm not for crowd, children screaming around, zillions of beach accessories around, sand, Venice-lagoon coloured water to swim... No.


----------



## Kpc21

x-type said:


> Oh, and it's not all about sand. Croatian coast has sand beaches, but they are almost always out of inhabitted areas. And those are just becahes, not long sand shores. For large sand beaches in Europe you must have large river mouth nearby. Doesn't happen in HR.


Italy has large sandy beaches. At both coasts. Do they have so many large rivers?

Poland has two large rivers with their mouths at both ends of the coast – which is about 500 km long (it's not possible to measure accurately the length of any coast, so the data available diverge quite a lot). And the whole coast is a sandy beach.

With both crowded and calm points, by the way. You can choice between a noisy crowded place with hundreds of screaming children, building castles out of sand around, a massive number of inflatable beach accessories and every family marking their area on the beach with those (I have no idea how those are called in English, anyway they aren't popular in southern-European counties):










– this is usually at large tourist resorts – and an empty piece of the beach where you can stay alone and listen to the sounds of the nature – this happens between the resorts, in the coasts of small villages:










An interesting thing at the Polish coast is that most of it, even in most of the resorts, is separated from the civilization by a narrow lane of forest.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> Italy has large sandy beaches. At both coasts. Do they have so many large rivers?
> 
> Poland has two large rivers with their mouths at both ends of the coast – which is about 500 km long (it's not possible to measure accurately the length of any coast, so the data available diverge quite a lot). And the whole coast is a sandy beach.
> 
> With both crowded and calm points, by the way. You can choice between a noisy crowded place with hundreds of screaming children, building castles out of sand around, a massive number of inflatable beach accessories and every family marking their area on the beach with those (I have no idea how those are called in English, anyway they aren't popular in southern-European counties):
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> – this is usually at large tourist resorts – and an empty piece of the beach where you can stay alone and listen to the sounds of the nature – this happens between the resorts, in the coasts of small villages:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> An interesting thing at the Polish coast is that most of it, even in most of the resorts, is separated from the civilization by a narrow lane of forest.


And we’ve got hundreds of miles of sandy beaches on “barrier islands” - basically overgrown sandbars.


----------



## x-type

Kpc21 said:


> Italy has large sandy beaches. At both coasts. Do they have so many large rivers?
> 
> Poland has two large rivers with their mouths at both ends of the coast – which is about 500 km long (it's not possible to measure accurately the length of any coast, so the data available diverge quite a lot). And the whole coast is a sandy beach.


Well actually - yes  Po and Adige are enough to do it with sea current in Adriatic, which flows northbound at the eastern (Croatian) coast, and southbound by western, Italian coast. + small counter clockwise sea current in northernmost part of the sea that brings sand to Bibione, Jesolo & co. (and makes Istrian coast not that much representative regarding the sea quality). The only large sand beach that is few km long is at south of Montenegro. Why? Because of Bojana river.


----------



## CNGL

The data quality regarding new coronavirus cases in Spain varies wildly among regions. Aragon has been bashed for accounting up to half of the new cases in some days, but that is the result of a hard work identifying asymptomatic cases and extensive tracking. Thus, at a rate of new cases that cannot be tracked back to an outbreak of only 4% (compare to the crazy high 75% in neighboring Catalonia), Aragon is the place to be right now. Especially Teruel, where the lack of cases is certain. It is worth noting that Aragon is the only region capable of placing one clinic not only in Andorra but also on the Moon, and even has set up a GP office all the way out at Alpha Aurigae 43 light-years away


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Norway could also impose restrictions on travel from Belgium, as it has exceeded the Norwegian threshold of 20 cases per 100,000 per 14 days (i.e. an average of 1.4 cases per 100,000 per day). Other countries like Czechia, Austria, Switzerland and France are also inching up to the Norwegian threshold.









Belgia har passert rødt nivå – flere grønne land nærmer seg grensen


Ifølge tall fra det europeiske smittevernsenteret ECDC ligger Belgias smittetall for de siste 14 dagene over grensen for å bli regnet som rødt på FHIs reiseoversikt.




www.nrk.no





Is the threshold too strict? Can it be maintained without a permanent (semi) lockdown?

There is still discontent in the Netherlands over the negative travel advisory to Croatia by the Dutch government, because the most popular tourist areas didn't have that many new cases. Now they are disagreeing about the data quality provided by Croatia and/or the EDCD. Quite frankly it appears that the Dutch government jumped the gun and did not take the whole picture into consideration. The Croatian data looks detailed enough:









Službena stranica Vlade za pravodobne i točne informacije o koronavirusu


Sve pravodobne i točne Informacije o koronavirusu - službena stranica Vlade Republike Hrvatske o korona virusu, coronavirus COVID-19




www.koronavirus.hr


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> There is still discontent in the Netherlands over the negative travel advisory to Croatia by the Dutch government, because the most popular tourist areas didn't have that many new cases.


Does it matter? Self-isolation on return to the Netherlands is only advisory, not compulsory.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> But wasn't it proven that they also don't transmit the virus as much?


Was. Maybe just another theory proven wrong.... It's new to all of us including "experts". We all still learn....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> Does it matter? Self-isolation on return to the Netherlands is only advisory, not compulsory.


It means the end of your vacation if you booked a package deal at a travel agency. Most people would book and travel to Croatia without a travel agency though, it's not like Turkey or Crete. Anecdotal reporting indicates that many vacationers have decided to stay. And most will likely not follow the quarantine advisory.

Some employers might put you on unpaid leave for 14 days. Or have you consume your remaining leave hours. There is little case law on this topic in Dutch labor regulations.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Norway could also impose restrictions on travel from Belgium, as it has exceeded the Norwegian threshold of 20 cases per 100,000 per 14 days (i.e. an average of 1.4 cases per 100,000 per day). Other countries like Czechia, Austria, Switzerland and France are also inching up to the Norwegian threshold.
> (...)
> Is the threshold too strict? Can it be maintained without a permanent (semi) lockdown?


Too strict? I don't think so. 20 cases / 100,000 / 14 days, it would mean for example for Germany (pop. 83M) 20 × 830 / 14 = 1,186 new cases daily, what is pretty much. Germany hasn't had so much since late April. For the Netherlands (17.3M): 20 × 173 / 14 = 247 new cases daily. You haven't had so much since early May. 
So, let's check Austria! Population: 8.9 millions. 20 * 89 / 14 = 127 new cases. They're actually in this category, in some days even above this limit. That's why they made wearing masks compulsory again, and I expect they will introduce some new restricions, but far from a lockdown.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Well, too strict to be a viable threshold without permanent restrictions. Cases are seeing an uptick in many European countries, though a huge second wave hasn't materialized yet despite relaxation of travel restrictions in early to mid June. But it moves many countries to or over that 20 cases/100,000/14day threshold.

The Dutch RIVM publishes statistics about new cases and travel history every week. Over a three week period from 1 July to 21 July there were 136 cases with a travel history in the 14 days prior to a positive test. This is 7.1% of positive cases. The top 5 countries were Belgium (28), Serbia (20), Germany (19), France (9) and Kazakhstan (9).


----------



## PovilD

...and we recently reduced to 16 per 100,000 from I think 26 per 100,000 since it's now main trigger for outbreaks in Lithuania.

...I will patiently wait for at least the next year if I want to travel somewhere


----------



## Kpc21

A interesting photo from the front of a labor office in Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Poland:










Because of the epidemic, many public administration offices in Poland recommend or only accept (or only accepted in the time of toughest restrictions) documents inserted to boxes placed in front of an appropriate office – to prevent from any contact between the client and the office employee. 

In this specific case, they reused an old wooden ballot box from elections – this is how they looked like up to something like 5 years ago, when they all got replaced with plastic transparent ones.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A hot day in France today:

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1287384901646524418
Meanwhile, a rare hurricane hit for Hawaii. Despite being in a hurricane-prone region, Hawaii itself is very rarely hit by hurricanes. Most pass to the south or dissipate upon nearing the islands.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1287638809576865792


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Another weekend in Chicago: 59 people shot 😵









Chicago Weekend Shootings: 3 Dead, at Least 59 Wounded in Gun Violence


Three people were killed and at least 59 wounded in shootings across Chicago over the weekend, authorities said. The weekend shootings come as the city’s violence is under national scrutiny, with hundreds of federal agents being sent in to help quell a rise in shootings. The most recent fatality...




www.nbcchicago.com





What is going on over there?

Apparently this is 'normal':


----------



## bogdymol

If this would have happened in any European city or region, next day you would see already urgent discussions for changing the gun laws as well as other measures to prevent such things from happening again.

I really don’t understand how USA works in this case and why are they allowing such things to happen on a regular basis.


----------



## Penn's Woods

bogdymol said:


> If this would have happened in any European city or region, next day you would see already urgent discussions for changing the gun laws as well as other measures to prevent such things from happening again.
> 
> I really don’t understand how USA works in this case and why are they allowing such things to happen on a regular basis.


There have been dramatic increases in crime over the last month or so in many cities. New York’s seen its highest rates of shootings in 30 years. I believe Chicago has a long-standing problem with gangs.
The sad fact is that there’s a sizable part of the population that is ideologically committed to viewing gun ownership as part of personal freedom and resists any attempt to limit it as an attack on that freedom. And Chicago in particular, where gun controls are actually fairly strict (but which can’t stop guns coming in from outside the city), is regularly pointed to by the gun-rights side as proof gun control doesn’t help, even proof that people need to own guns to protect themselves. It’s insane. And events of the last couple of months haven’t helped the situation.
It’s a mistake to assume no one’s talking about it, but it never goes anywhere. (And these days, the federal government doesn’t do -any-thing “urgently.”)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This would make world headlines if 59 people are shot by a single gunman. In Chicago, it's just another weekend.


----------



## keokiracer

bogdymol said:


> If this would have happened in any European city or region, next day you would see already urgent discussions for changing the gun laws as well as other measures to prevent such things from happening again.


Chicago has some of the strictest gun control in the US. In general in the US the places with the strictest gun control have the biggest violence issues.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> This would make world headlines if 59 people are shot by a single gunman. In Chicago, it's just another weekend.


It wasn’t one gunman.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes captain obvious! 

My point being that 59 people shot in one weekend in one city doesn't make the international news, but if one gunman shoots 59 people, it would surely make world headlines.


----------



## mgk920

The main problem is criminal gangs fighting over the rights to sales territory (a major failure of the Drug War) and ideologically weak city governments ordering their police departments to stand down, if not be completely disbanded. The spike in violence coincides exactly with those recent riots.

It's driving law-abiding people and businesses out of those cities and either into their suburbs or out of their metros and even states.



Mike


----------



## radamfi

The vast majority of murders happen in particular areas of big cities. The vast majority of Americans don't live in such areas so it doesn't really affect them. Therefore there's no real incentive to fix the problems. It may well be safer to live in small town America than an average town in western Europe.


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> The main problem is criminal gangs fighting over the rights to sales territory (a major failure of the Drug War) and ideologically weak city governments ordering their police departments to stand down, if not be completely disbanded. The spike in violence coincides exactly with those recent riots.
> 
> It's driving law-abiding people and businesses out of those cities and either into their suburbs or out of their metros and even states.
> 
> 
> 
> Mike


The spike also coincides with opening up. And summer. I’m not really blaming the jurisdictions that opened up; maybe there was a bit of pent-up stuff during lockdown...settling scores and the like. Although honestly, -last- summer was an issue in Philadelphia. Nothing like Chicago though. And it’s unfortunate; parts of Chicago are great. I could live there if the winters were less unreasonable....


----------



## Jschmuck

FACT CHECK: Is Chicago Proof That Gun Laws Don't Work?


The White House claims that Chicago has a high crime rate despite its stricter gun laws. This claim doesn't work on two levels.




www.npr.org


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> My point being that 59 people shot in one weekend in one city doesn't make the international news, but if one gunman shoots 59 people, it would surely make world headlines.


If 59 people would be shot in a single week-end in Amsterdam for example, that would make international (European) headlines. Even if there would be multiple gunmans.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Rotterdam has a higher number of corona cases, over 400 new cases in the past two weeks. It turns out that there is an outbreak among students studying.... medicine 🙃


----------



## Penn's Woods

Highway humor:









L.A. Designates Open-Air Dining Areas Along 101 Freeway Median


LOS ANGELES—In an effort to provide residents with a way to more safely patronize restaurants without fear of contracting Covid-19, Los Angeles officials announced a new initiative Tuesday to designate open-air dining areas along the 101 freeway median. “We’re thrilled to take this bold step to...




www.theonion.com


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Rotterdam has a higher number of corona cases, over 400 new cases in the past two weeks. It turns out that there is an outbreak among students studying.... medicine


I suppose it got into the med school from someone who’s been working with COVID patients, or just in a hospital?


----------



## Kpc21

bogdymol said:


> If 59 people would be shot in a single week-end in Amsterdam for example, that would make international (European) headlines.


Probably even a national mourning not only in the Netherlands but also in some other countries.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> I suppose it got into the med school from someone who’s been working with COVID patients, or just in a hospital?


Nah, some kind of social gathering. A beach volleyball tournament is said to be a likely source. 75% of cases are traced to family / household settings. Most untraceable cases appear to be linked to social gatherings outside a family setting.


----------



## Alex_ZR

There is a discussion if it is correct to call a river whose bed was modified a "canal". I wouldn't agree, because the water flows by river's natural flow.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wow that is hot...


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Wow that is hot...


At what point does it become literally impossible for humans to live in a place? I mean they drop dead if they set food outside? I saw an article last week (but didn't read past the intro and I don't remember where it was) speculating that with climate change, some places will become literally uninhabitable.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It is known that heat waves affect the elderly in particular, and at lower temperatures than those 50 °C+ in Iraq.

In 2003 there was a heat wave in Europe that caused approximately 70,000 deaths, mostly elderly and the worst-affected country was France, which saw temperatures around 40 °C.









2003 European heat wave - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





The area with temperatures forecasted to be over 50 °C in Iraq is relatively fertile, it is a river system (Euphrates & Tigris) so they can sustain agriculture even in extreme heat. Temperatures reach up to 50 °C pretty much every year in southern Iraq and the neighboring area of Iran. Though every degree over 50 is increasingly rare. I believe 54 °C could be a national record for Iraq.


----------



## mgk920

Remember that the currently recognized world record high temperature was recorded in the USA, not in the Arabian Peninsula nor in north Africa/Sahara desert - 56.7C/134.1F at Furnace Creek, CA, USA, in what is now the very correctly named Death Valley National Park. That temperature was recorded on 1913-07-10, well over a century ago and before anyone was even beginning to think about anything relating to climate change, global warming nor even the forthcoming new Ice Age.

Cross country travelers in the southwestern USA (I-8, I-10, I-15, I-40, etc, across southern California, Arizona, Nevada and so forth) are strongly advised to carry copious quantities of water (as in cases of two liter soda bottles of it) in case of a breakdown, which those areas is a life-threatening emergency. Normal summer high temps in the Phoenix, AZ and Las Vegas, NV areas are in the low 40s C/mid to upper 100s F - the Sonoran and Mojave Deserts.

Just yesterday it was in the mid 40s C/mid 110s F along I-10 between Phoenix, AZ and the California state line.

Mike


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Penn's Woods said:


> At what point does it become literally impossible for humans to live in a place? I mean they drop dead if they set food outside? I saw an article last week (but didn't read past the intro and I don't remember where it was) speculating that with climate change, some places will become literally uninhabitable.


A wet-bulb temperature of 35C is considered to be the physiological limit for humans: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance | Science Advances . The Middle East has a very dry climate so even at 54C the wet bulb temperature is well below 35C.


----------



## Blackraven

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1288471590573940736


----------



## MacOlej

Penn's Woods said:


> some places will become literally uninhabitable.


What does that even mean in the A/C era? Even now people in places like Dubai are living basically their whole life "indoors", that is in houses, cars, offices and malls which are all air-conditioned.

I think that there will be two much bigger problems in terms of uninhabitability (I had to google if it's a valid word):
1. Coastal areas which will be flooded by rising sea levels.
2. Thawing permafrost turning into mud baths. I've heard on the radio that the oil leak in Norilsk a few weeks ago was caused by the oil tank losing its stability on the thawing ground.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MacOlej said:


> 2. Thawing permafrost turning into mud baths. I've heard on the radio that the oil leak in Norilsk a few weeks ago was caused by the oil tank losing its stability on the thawing ground.


This is also an issue in Northern Canada, the Alaska Highway in Yukon is subsiding because the permafrost thaws. 

In Canada, south of the surface permafrost but north of the cultivated world, there is a belt of muskeg. It's very soft soil, very expensive to build infrastructure on. That's why these areas are usually only accessible in the winter over winter roads built on the muskeg and such communities in Canada don't have year-round road access.









Muskeg - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## geogregor

England highest level of excess deaths in Europe



> *England had the highest levels of excess deaths in Europe between the end of February and the middle of June, official analysis shows.*
> 
> The Office for National Statistics says England saw the second highest peak rates of death in Europe, after Spain.
> 
> But England had the longest period where deaths were above average, and so overall had the highest levels.
> 
> Areas in Spain and Italy, like Milan and Madrid, were harder hit than cities in the UK
> 
> But the ONS analysis shows the epidemic in the UK was more widespread than in other countries, with Scotland seeing the third highest death rate in Europe.


----------



## CNGL

As a side effect of that, here in Aragon there have been a few weeks in which _less_ deaths than expected have been recorded. I don't know elsewhere.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Basque Country is melting... Usually summer temperatures are more moderate in that area. 40 °C in San Sebastián and Bilbao. It looks like 38.1 °C in Palma de Mallorca is a new record high.


----------



## Kpc21

CNGL said:


> As a side effect of that, here in Aragon there have been a few weeks in which _less_ deaths than expected have been recorded. I don't know elsewhere.


I guess it was the case in most of Europe... Certainly in Poland.


----------



## kosimodo

For the record: the coldest july in 22 years in Denmark.. Efter koldeste juli i 22 år: Sådan bliver august


----------



## Rebasepoiss

MacOlej said:


> What does that even mean in the A/C era? Even now people in places like Dubai are living basically their whole life "indoors", that is in houses, cars, offices and malls which are all air-conditioned.
> 
> I think that there will be two much bigger problems in terms of uninhabitability (I had to google if it's a valid word):
> 1. Coastal areas which will be flooded by rising sea levels.
> 2. Thawing permafrost turning into mud baths. I've heard on the radio that the oil leak in Norilsk a few weeks ago was caused by the oil tank losing its stability on the thawing ground.


Yes and no. A lot of people live in tropical but rather poor countries and these people can't afford A/C. What is more, a lot of work still has to happen outside, like construction work. These types of jobs are also physically demanding which makes having a heat stroke much more likely. The amount of people living in areas with permafrost is negligible compared to that. The worst part about thawing permafrost is probably the release of methane into the atmoshpere which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. 

The rise of sea levels is a much bigger issue but it will most likely happen on a longer time scale. There is a lot of inertia in the system. Supposedly, even if you stopped all CO2 emissions today, the sea levels would keep rising for at least a century or two. Even for wealthy countries many areas won't be saved by sea walls, it is just too expensive. Poorer countries like Bangladesh, however, are pretty much doomed and this is likely to cause the biggest migration of people in the history of Earth.


----------



## MichiH

Face masks mandatory in parts of Amsterdam, Rotterdam from Aug. 5


Visitors to several public areas of Amsterdam and Rotterdam will be required to wear non-medical face masks beginning on August 5, according to the Amsterdam-Amstelland and Rotterdam-Rijnmond Security Regions. The decision had become increasingly likely after the Cabinet agreed to allow the 25...




nltimes.nl


----------



## tfd543

kosimodo said:


> For the record: the coldest july in 22 years in Denmark.. Efter koldeste juli i 22 år: Sådan bliver august


Good that I went to Cro this year.


----------



## MichiH

It's not that bad but a little bit windy. I put a sweater on today


----------



## PovilD

Glad this summer in my place is not that annoying with heat as few recent summers. We get enough warm days, but not hot days. I don't mind times with colder weather with around +20C for a week or two.


----------



## tfd543

Above 17 C is fine with me, I like to Call it the t shirt weather. I generally dont find it pleasant above 28. Above 35 Its just gonna be running from shade to shade for me.

Below 5 C is normally freaking cold for me. Below -5 is just shit.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

July was also a relatively cold month in the Netherlands, there will likely be only 3 days over 25 °C in De Bilt, which are considered summer days in the Netherlands. Quite a departure from the last few years. It hardly felt like summer in my city this month: most days were fairly cloudy, windy and temperatures barely reaching 20 °C. 

On the other hand, better than the 40 °C we had last year. And we had a very sunny and dry spring, so can't complain too much. I hope August will be more summer-like though.


----------



## PovilD

I wear T shirts depending on the weather (cloud cover, wind speed, etc.), but usually above +20°C. I'm comfortable with temperatures above +12 +13°C since your hands never gets too cold while cycling  It's increasingly discomforting for temperatures above +25°C, it's also not that comfortable with temperatures being below +5°C, but personally I like snow when temperatures are below zero, so I don't mind low temperatures if there is some snowfall  I hate weather when temperature is around zero. It's easier for your feet to get wet from mushy snow, and I don't like when snow melts unless it's time for Spring 

---
Face masks will be required in my country again from this Saturday (1st of August) inside indoor areas since daily cases are now mostly double digit, although previous two months it was mostly single digit. I don't see it's safe right now to catch the virus as if is influenza, so I don't mind new rules.


----------



## Suburbanist

> Bond World: Schilthorn in Switzerland. It's interesting that they can still cash in on the Bond theme, half a century after the film was released.
> 
> The James Bond film _On Her Majesty's Secret Service_ was released in 1969. It had a substantial part of the film recorded in this area, the cinematography in particular was spectacular for that era, the theme is also considered one of the best.
> 
> The people who originally seen the movie in the theater as a young adult are now in their 70s. But the Bond brand still lives on. This particular film had an unusual actor for the role of James Bond: George Lazenby, who performed that role only once. Appreciation for the movie has significantly improved over time though, it is often considered one of the best entries of the series by aficionados. It stayed very true to the novel.


Did you go to the top? I found the 007 theming a bit kitsch but a nice add-on for fans of the franchise. Plenty of information about the actors and the filming in the area. I learnt the mountain cable car and restaurant company was almost bankrupt and the film producers paid enough to use the summit facilities for filming.

I also think the mountain panorama point there is one of the best in the Bernese Oberland because it allows nice views of the Eiger and Jungfrau side by side.


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> Basque Country is melting... Usually summer temperatures are more moderate in that area. 40 °C in San Sebastián and Bilbao. It looks like 38.1 °C in Palma de Mallorca is a new record high.


San Sebastian airport (which is right by the French border) has hit 42.8 °C today! That's a full 16 °C higher than yesterday. This most likely has been caused by Foehn winds, and tomorrow the temperature will plummet back to where it was.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PovilD said:


> Face masks will be required in my country again from this Saturday (1st of August) inside indoor areas since daily cases are now mostly double digit, although previous two months it was mostly single digit. I don't see it's safe right now to catch the virus as if is influenza, so I don't mind new rules.


The Dutch situation is a bit surreal. This week the government was advised not to make masks mandatory, because the vast majority of cases are found in social / private functions, not in the street, so even if masks were effective, they would be mandatory in situations where they don't make a difference, and not mandatory / enforceable where they could make a difference.

But Amsterdam and Rotterdam have announced mandatory mask usage the day after, only in a small area though (some popular shopping streets). This was done after a media push and a push from shopkeepers. But now those shopkeepers are mad because they found out they still have to implement social distancing measures. 🙃 They thought they could crowd up their stores and streets if masks were mandatory.

Large swaths of the Netherlands have almost no infections though. It is mostly confined to a few cities. There is also concern about the virus circulating in the muslim community and this weekend is Eid, which could increase transmission.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> There is also concern about the virus circulating in the muslim community and this weekend is Eid, which could increase transmission.


In England, the vast majority of the areas where infections are a concern are in areas of significant South Asian/Muslim population. Leicester was the first area to have a local lockdown and it has the highest South Asian population proportion of any British city. From today, the areas of northern England with high South Asian populations have increased restrictions









Coronavirus: Visiting people at home banned in parts of northern England


Millions face new lockdown rules prohibiting separate households from meeting each other at their homes.



www.bbc.co.uk


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Disastrous economic figures over Q2 2020:

Spain: -18.5%
Portugal: -14.1%
France -13.8%
Italy: -12.4%
Belgium: -12.2%
Austria: -10.7%
Germany: -10.1%
United States: -9.5%
Czechia: -8.4%
Latvia: -7.5%
Lithuania: -5.1%

Statistics from Eurostat + U.S. Not all countries have submitted Q2 data to Eurostat yet.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

CNGL said:


> This most likely has been caused by Foehn winds


I was not aware that this term was used outside Scandinavia. The Norwegian (and Scandinavian) high temperature records of November, December, January, and February (from 18 to 22 C) are all held by the two small towns surrounded by mountains in Central Norway due to føn winds. This is far above average July temperatures of the two towns (about 14 C).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The term 'Föhn' appears to be pretty widely used in the English-language meteorology:









Foehn wind - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Disastrous economic figures over Q2 2020:
> 
> Spain: -18.5%
> Portugal: -14.1%
> France -13.8%
> Italy: -12.4%
> Belgium: -12.2%
> Austria: -10.7%
> Germany: -10.1%
> United States: -9.5%
> Czechia: -8.4%
> Latvia: -7.5%
> *Lithuania: -5.1%*
> 
> Statistics from Eurostat + U.S. Not all countries have submitted Q2 data to Eurostat yet.


...and Lithuanians seems to be the biggest optimists about their economy right now... I don't know where this is all going to.

...and half of the new cases (7 out of 13) today are said to be from unknown origin. Interesting how (and if) mask wearing will affect this.


----------



## geogregor

Meanwhile, a huge change in the UK, Argos will no longer print their catalogues:

Argos axes 'book of dreams' after 48 years 



> *Argos axes 'book of dreams' catalogue after 48 years*
> 
> "The laminated book of dreams," was how comedian Bill Bailey jokingly described the plastic-coated Argos catalogue.
> 
> But 48 years on from its launch, the catalogue is finally coming to an end.
> 
> The encyclopedia-like catalogues, the basis of many a child's Christmas wishlist, will no longer be regularly printed by the end of the January 2021.


I remember that when I first time arrived to the UK (more than 20 years ago) I saw their characteristically painted trucks everywhere. I was hitchhiking back then and remember that their drivers had policy of not picking anyone. I had no clue what company it was back then, I suspected something with logistics.

Those catalogues are fascinating, not only Argos in the UK. When I was growing up, long time ago in pre-1989 Poland, I had neighbors who had family in Germany. Among many things they had which we couldn't get (like Lego) they also had Quelle catalogues. I remember we got some from them and spend hours browsing. It was fascinating to see all those things (toys, electronics) which we couldn't get in Poland. It was great outside world, so distant that almost impossible to imagine. Nobody predicted that in a few years the world would change.

I don't remember when did I last time looked at the actual printed Argos catalogue but I think I'm going to get myself one before they disappear.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's pretty busy across Europe right now.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch situation is a bit surreal. This week the government was advised not to make masks mandatory, because the vast majority of cases are found in social / private functions, not in the street, so even if masks were effective, they would be mandatory in situations where they don't make a difference, and not mandatory / enforceable where they could make a difference.
> 
> But Amsterdam and Rotterdam have announced mandatory mask usage the day after, only in a small area though (some popular shopping streets). This was done after a media push and a push from shopkeepers. But now those shopkeepers are mad because they found out they still have to implement social distancing measures.  They thought they could crowd up their stores and streets if masks were mandatory.
> 
> Large swaths of the Netherlands have almost no infections though. It is mostly confined to a few cities. There is also concern about the virus circulating in the muslim community and this weekend is Eid, which could increase transmission.


If the Dutch government still thinks masks are not effective, I think that’s very much a minority view.


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> Meanwhile, a huge change in the UK, Argos will no longer print their catalogues:
> 
> Argos axes 'book of dreams' after 48 years
> 
> 
> 
> I remember that when I first time arrived to the UK (more than 20 years ago) I saw their characteristically painted trucks everywhere. I was hitchhiking back then and remember that their drivers had policy of not picking anyone. I had no clue what company it was back then, I suspected something with logistics.
> 
> Those catalogues are fascinating, not only Argos in the UK. When I was growing up, long time ago in pre-1989 Poland, I had neighbors who had family in Germany. Among many things they had which we couldn't get (like Lego) they also had Quelle catalogues. I remember we got some from them and spend hours browsing. It was fascinating to see all those things (toys, electronics) which we couldn't get in Poland. It was great outside world, so distant that almost impossible to imagine. Nobody predicted that in a few years the world would change.
> 
> I don't remember when did I last time looked at the actual printed Argos catalogue but I think I'm going to get myself one before they disappear.


Sears catalogs here. I don’t know if it still exists. (Although Sears itself wasn’t on its last legs even before the pandemic, so I’d guess not.) I haven’t even thought of it in years.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> If the Dutch government still thinks masks are not effective, I think that’s very much a minority view.


There are two things at play here;

are masks themselves effective?
is mask usage in public spaces effective?

Bona fide experts in virology or infection prevention are deeply divided on this issue. There doesn't seem to be a scientific consensus on it and real-world results are not straightforward. While masks may be effective in reducing the spread of the virus, mandating them in places where most infections don't occur makes them less effective overall. There are numerous places with mandatory masks that continue to see a growth in cases, or places that see a resurgence in cases. 

Legal scholars have already said that mandatory masks are not enforcable under the Dutch constitution.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> There are two things at play here;
> 
> are masks themselves effective?
> is mask usage in public spaces effective?
> 
> Bona fide experts in virology or infection prevention are deeply divided on this issue. There doesn't seem to be a scientific consensus on it and real-world results are not straightforward. While masks may be effective in reducing the spread of the virus, mandating them in places where most infections don't occur makes them less effective overall. There are numerous places with mandatory masks that continue to see a growth in cases, or places that see a resurgence in cases.
> 
> Legal scholars have already said that mandatory masks are not enforcable under the Dutch constitution.


I saw something about the constitutional problem the other day, and it surprised me. But I thought it was an actual court decision; is my memory wrong?


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> Sears catalogs here. I don’t know if it still exists. (Although Sears itself wasn’t on its last legs even before the pandemic, so I’d guess not.) I haven’t even thought of it in years.


Argos is a rather unusual catalogue shop in that most of its sales have historically been in store. The original concept (1970s to 1990s) was that you take the catalogue home, write down the order numbers, go into the store and pay for the goods and then wait for the staff to bring your goods to you. In the beginning, there was no mail order. If you wanted mail order then there were other mail order catalogue companies to choose from. When the internet started they were slow to adapt even though they were in a great position to offer mail order via the internet. However, nowadays they offer Amazon style service in a fraction of the time. You can have same day delivery with Argos whereas with Amazon you have to wait until at least the next day. If you prefer you can collect from the store without waiting for delivery.

The advantage over a normal department store was (and still is) is that they sell a very large number of goods but the vast majority of the stock is in the backroom, meaning that they don't need huge premises and don't have stolen goods. People have been predicting the end of Argos for years, but now they have been taken over by Sainsbury's (a huge supermarket chain), this probably improves the viability. Many Argos stores have been relocated inside Sainsbury's supermarkets.

I've come across many immigrants to Britain who are really impressed with the Argos concept and wish that they had it back home. The Netherlands had a similar shop called "Kijkshop" but that closed down a couple of years ago.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've read about soda fountains, or 'fountain dispensers'. A Buc-ee's in Texas has 80 of them.









Soda fountain - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





Are these common for self-service? I know them from fast food restaurants but they are operated by staff. 

Self-serve coffee machines are common in gas stations and some shops, but I don't recall seeing those for carbonated drinks. Usually you would buy a refrigerated bottle.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've read about soda fountains, or 'fountain dispensers'. A Buc-ee's in Texas has 80 of them.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Soda fountain - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Are these common for self-service? I know them from fast food restaurants but they are operated by staff.
> 
> Self-serve coffee machines are common in gas stations and some shops, but I don't recall seeing those for carbonated drinks. Usually you would buy a refrigerated bottle.


They’ve become common in the U.S. at convenience stores and some fast-food places within the last decade or two. I like the newer kind that let you concoct your own combinations: fill it halfway with Coke and the rest of the way with ginger ale, add a touch of a fruit flavor, that sort of thing. Basically you buy an empty cup at the counter and then go play with the machine.

This sort of thing:









Soda: We Try All 127 Flavors from the Coke Freestyle Machine


Have you seen the <a href="http://www.coca-colafreestyle.com" data-component="link" data-source="inlineLink" data-type="externalLink" data-ordinal="1">Coca-Cola "Freestyle"</a> soda fountain yet? It's a pretty remarkable thing. Instead of levers for different sodas, you've got a touchscreen...




drinks.seriouseats.com





There are also the simpler ones with just half a dozen options and an ice dispenser....


----------



## tfd543

Considering to buy some face masks from aliexpress. Anyone any review?


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've read about soda fountains, or 'fountain dispensers'. A Buc-ee's in Texas has 80 of them.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Soda fountain - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Are these common for self-service? I know them from fast food restaurants but they are operated by staff.
> 
> Self-serve coffee machines are common in gas stations and some shops, but I don't recall seeing those for carbonated drinks. Usually you would buy a refrigerated bottle.


I've seen it only at Ikea, and one of American fast food chains (KFC or Burger King, i don't know which of them has free refill).

Edit: those are self service.


----------



## tfd543

^^ but Its usually worse quality than the soda in bottles. Its also cleaner since you dont know if somebody has touched the nozzle. All in all, I mostly prefer drinking all fluids from glass.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've read about soda fountains, or 'fountain dispensers'. A Buc-ee's in Texas has 80 of them.
> Are these common for self-service? I know them from fast food restaurants but they are operated by staff.
> Self-serve coffee machines are common in gas stations and some shops, but I don't recall seeing those for carbonated drinks. Usually you would buy a refrigerated bottle.


In Germany they are quite common in fast food restaurants. I mean, they were before Covid-19, and I have no idea about the current situation.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've seen my Youtube videos changing status to 'partially blocked', it turns out they are blocked in only one country: Denmark. About a quarter of my videos are blocked in Denmark now. 

Evidently there is some major disagreement between Google and license holder KODA, with Google threatening to block everything related to KODA in Denmark.









YouTube threatens to remove music videos in Denmark over songwriter royalty fallout - Music Business Worldwide


Koda claims that YouTube is trying to pay its member nearly 70%




www.musicbusinessworldwide.com





Can people from Denmark confirm that music availability on Youtube has decreased?


----------



## tfd543

^^ i have no idea about that, but then again Its relatively rare that i use youtube.


----------



## mgk920

Attus said:


> In Germany they are quite common in fast food restaurants. I mean, they were before Covid-19, and I have no idea about the current situation.


Self service soda dispensers were common as dirt in the USA before this episode and a few places locally still have theirs in use. The places that I usually patronize where self-serve is available generally request that you use a new cup when you refill, but one place that I frequent lets me 'top off' a partially filled cup on the way out the door with nary a whimper.



Mike


----------



## mgk920

x-type said:


> I've seen it only at Ikea, and one of American fast food chains (KFC or Burger King, i don't know which of them has free refill).
> 
> Edit: those are self service.


A local Popeye's (opened about a year ago) has one, but their indoor seating area has yet to reopen.



Mike


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> Self service soda dispensers were common as dirt in the USA before this episode and a few places locally still have theirs in use. The places that I usually patronize where self-serve is available generally request that you use a new cup when you refill, but one place that I frequent lets me 'top off' a partially filled cup on the way out the door with nary a whimper.
> 
> 
> 
> Mike


Was the request that you use a new cup in effect pre-pandemic, or is that a new thing? Because I've never seen that, and at most places these days* that would require asking for one at the counter, so you'd be adding to the customer traffic, creating more work.

*These days meaning the last few years. At least where I am, cup dispensers have become rare; it would be too easy to get a drink and not pay. If you order a meal and a drink and THEN get the drink, they give you the cup. If you help yourself to food and get a drink and THEN pay, the cups are at the drink machine. That said, I don't remember the last time I was inside a fast-food place; the last time I tried, it was drive-through only.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Keep forgetting to mention I was in a shopping mall the other day, for the first time since before all this.... Meaning (for people in places where the terminology may be different) the sort of place that has a couple of hundred stores arranged along a wide corridor, typically on two levels, under a roof. Several large stores around the edge of the complex which you can enter from the parking lot and pass through into the mall proper, some entrances directly into the mall proper....) This is the rather posh Short Hills Mall in New Jersey; I was only there because I needed a new charging cord and the nearest Apple Store is there. (Last time I bought a cheaper cord it lasted less than two months.) It was surprisingly busy. (I wasn't sure they were open at all yet...called the store the day before to make sure.) Parking lot about as full as I'd expect on a July weekday afternoon, ditto for the traffic inside. Other than food places, only a couple of stores were closed, which I was glad to see; masks were obligatory (as should be the case in New Jersey now) and everyone was wearing them; Apple is carefully controlling customer flow...you had to have a temperature scan and answer health questions to get in, and then you couldn't wander around the store; someone came to you, even just to buy a charging cord.) The food places WERE all closed, and the seating areas meant for eating (the ones with tables rather than just armchairs and benches) were roped off.

Now, has anyone else noticed this fricking forum randomly jumping several lines of text from time to time as you type? (I’m talking about the web version, not the smartphone app.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

So here’s a non-COVID topic: musical tastes. I mostly listen to rock, from classic to alternative. And I’m perfectly happy with good old-fashioned commercial radio when I’m driving. In the U.S., where radio is local (even if stations are largely owned by multi-market companies, many do their own thing...), listening to the radio as you travel the highways helps give a sense of place.... When I’m not driving, I often listen to stations from all over the world via the app TuneIn. I’ve got OuïFM in France on right now; never listened to it before, but I’m liking it. One of my regulars is StuBru in Belgium.... My favorite station over here is WMMR 93.3 in Philadelphia; in the New York area I’m leaning lately towards Alt92.3.
When I hear something I like, whether it’s something new or an old favorite I’d forgotten about, I’ll Shazam it, and periodically transfer those over to Apple Music.

My favorite current group is Twentyone Pilots. (I think that’s how they spell their name...)

So what do you all listen to?


----------



## Jschmuck

90's Alternative and classical (yes I said classical) are my favorite...Tchaikovsky is probably my favorite classical artist. A concerto is probably my favorite classical style. Also a huge fan of blues rock - namely Stevie Ray Vaughan. One of my most favorite band overall is Muse.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've seen my Youtube videos changing status to 'partially blocked', it turns out they are blocked in only one country: Denmark. About a quarter of my videos are blocked in Denmark now.


When I was in Germany, many YT videos were blocked there. "This content isn't available in your country". This practically doesn't happen in Poland.

In Poland you can find those dispensers at fast food restaurants but they aren't very common... They usually appear when the restaurant offers free refills, and why, from what I have heard, this is an extremely popular offer in the US, it's not really common in Europe and Poland. If I remember well, it was Burger King in a mall where I met that and they offered free refills.



Penn's Woods said:


> Keep forgetting to mention I was in a shopping mall the other day, for the first time since before all this.... Meaning (for people in places where the terminology may be different) the sort of place that has a couple of hundred stores arranged along a wide corridor, typically on two levels, under a roof. Several large stores around the edge of the complex which you can enter from the parking lot and pass through into the mall proper, some entrances directly into the mall proper....) This is the rather posh Short Hills Mall in New Jersey; I was only there because I needed a new charging cord and the nearest Apple Store is there. (Last time I bought a cheaper cord it lasted less than two months.) It was surprisingly busy. (I wasn't sure they were open at all yet...called the store the day before to make sure.) Parking lot about as full as I'd expect on a July weekday afternoon, ditto for the traffic inside.


Two weeks ago I was in a mall in Wrocław. On Sunday. Stores are closed in Poland on Sundays (except the last in a month, but that one was last but one), so people really had no reason to go there except for visiting a fast food restaurant or a cafe that are there... But the mall was full of people, I expected much less of them. I went there only because they have a free restroom (I mean, one in the "pay if you want" mode).

Talking about music, I am not focused on any specific music style, but I am a little bit fed up with the mainstream radio music; they tend to play the same songs every few hours and even repeat them every day in more or less the same time... Recently, while driving, I tend to listen to a local university station. They play almost only alternative music, they aren't that monotone, they also talk on various topics (which isn't so common in the mainstream stations any more, they are all music and very short news reports) and they don't have commercials.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> So what do you all listen to?


I like the older stuff, mostly rock and pop between 1970 and the early 1990s. I was that kid that listened to Pink Floyd and Dire Straits in high school while most friends listened to Eminem and Linkin Park. 

There is some contemporary music I listen to, but most of that isn't top 40 music. I like Dream Theater and Joe Bonamassa. I used to listen to Joe Satriani a lot, but his recent albums - while technically proficient - couldn't entertain me as much as they used to. 

There is some 1960s music I also like, but most music from that era sounds fairly dated. I do not care for hiphop or rap, except for a odd one from the 1990s. I also don't like the current generation of pop singers. The music is just not interesting to me.

I do not listen to the radio, the Dutch government auctions off the FM bands so it's very generic music with overrated DJs plus a lot of advertising. I also don't watch TV programming (haven't done that regularly for 10+ years). I do own a TV, but that's for internet content.


----------



## Kpc21

I also prefer the old rock and pop to the modern, current one...



ChrisZwolle said:


> plus a lot of advertising


And those radio commercials tend to be annoying... Very often they advertise medicines, mentioning various ailments and their symptoms... And let it be, I don't know, headache or spine pain... that would be OK. But no, they must commonly advertise drugs for anal and rectal diseases. And the presenters inviting all the time to send an SMS to take part in their stupid contest, where the question has a banal answer and the whole contest is organized so that they earn money on people texting them (those are special expensive phone numbers) and on sending back spam to those people.

They don't play new songs only, old ones from 1970s, 1980s, 1990s too – but it's always a very limited catalogue of songs repeated all the time.


----------



## mgk920

Penn's Woods said:


> Was the request that you use a new cup in effect pre-pandemic, or is that a new thing? Because I've never seen that, and at most places these days* that would require asking for one at the counter, so you'd be adding to the customer traffic, creating more work.
> 
> *These days meaning the last few years. At least where I am, cup dispensers have become rare; it would be too easy to get a drink and not pay. If you order a meal and a drink and THEN get the drink, they give you the cup. If you help yourself to food and get a drink and THEN pay, the cups are at the drink machine. That said, I don't remember the last time I was inside a fast-food place; the last time I tried, it was drive-through only.


It was after they reopened a few months ago. Before this episode started they had no such rules.

Also, the seating areas at the local McDs franchise here reopened couple of months ago. Before this whole thing started one of their outlets that I stopped at for a late lunch was normally a third to a half full at the time of day when I went there (mid afternoon). I ordered my usual simple lunch, expected to kick back and relax for about a half hour, and instead it was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. I felt like I was walking into a high-priority hospital ward, it smelled worse (Disinfectant City!), and it was totally unrelaxing. And I was the only customer in there the whole time. I'm feel better off just going through the drive through and finding a quiet place to park. This cannot be sustained by the franchisee.



BTW, the 'free refills' thing is because it was started by someone to be more competitive than the neighbors. Since the wholesale cost on fountain sodas is very small (as in a couple of cents for the contents of the largest sized cup - the cliché is very true, the most expensive part of a cup of soda to the retail seller is the cup), they could easily afford to offer that and it quickly became the standard.

Mike


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> It was after they reopened a few months ago. Before this episode started they had no such rules.
> 
> Also, the seating areas at the local McDs franchise here reopened couple of months ago. Before this whole thing started one of their outlets that I stopped at for a late lunch was normally a third to a half full at the time of day when I went there (mid afternoon). I ordered my usual simple lunch, expected to kick back and relax for about a half hour, and instead it was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. I felt like I was walking into a high-priority hospital ward, it smelled worse (Disinfectant City!), and it was totally unrelaxing. And I was the only customer in there the whole time. I'm feel better off just going through the drive through and finding a quiet place to park. This cannot be sustained by the franchisee.
> 
> 
> 
> BTW, the 'free refills' thing is because it was started by someone to be more competitive than the neighbors. Since the wholesale cost on fountain sodas is very small (as in a couple of cents for the contents of the largest sized cup - the cliché is very true, the most expensive part of a cup of soda to the retail seller is the cup), they could easily afford to offer that and it quickly became the standard.
> 
> Mike


I tried to get a late breakfast at a McDonald’s in Philadelphia, last weekend in June I think. The building was still closed, which surprised me, because there was counter service at other places in the city by this point. (I don’t think takeout was ever shut down.) The drive-through was operating but breakfast was unavailable. So I tried Dunkin - also closed except for drive-through and by this point I didn’t feel like doing that, then ended up getting a made-to-order breakfast INside a Wawa convenience store that was operating more-or-less normally and fairly crowded. Not sure all that made sense....


----------



## geogregor

Penn's Woods said:


> So what do you all listen to?


Absolutely everything. Seriously, I can jump from classical music, to heavy metal and then to disco in a space of an afternoon. 

As for radio I spend a lot of time listening to BBC Radio 4. I guess that is a sign that I'm definitely well over 40 by now


----------



## kosimodo

ChrisZwolle said:


> Can people from Denmark confirm that music availability on Youtube has decreased?


Tried 10.. nobprobs whatsoever..


----------



## bogdymol

One of the advantages of this pandemic is that, instead traveling somewhere far away in a fancy location, you search a bit deeper what activities you can do closer to your home.

Greetings everybody!


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Is that the Vidraru dam (which also featured in a Top Gear episode)?


----------



## bogdymol

No, this is Schlegeis dam in Tirol, Austria. 131 m high.


----------



## Coccodrillo

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I was not aware that this term was used outside Scandinavia. The Norwegian (and Scandinavian) high temperature records of November, December, January, and February (from 18 to 22 C) are all held by the two small towns surrounded by mountains in Central Norway due to føn winds. This is far above average July temperatures of the two towns (about 14 C).


Föhn is used for many hot winds.

In Italian and (I discover it now) in German "föhn" and its derivatives are used as synonyms for "hair dryer". The origin seems to be the commercial name given to some dryers (not only for hairs) sold at the beginning of XX century. Clearly that name comes from the winds.









I capelli si asciugano con il fon, il fono o il phon? - Consulenza Linguistica - Accademia della Crusca






accademiadellacrusca.it







ChrisZwolle said:


> I've read about soda fountains, or 'fountain dispensers'. A Buc-ee's in Texas has 80 of them.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Soda fountain - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Are these common for self-service? I know them from fast food restaurants but they are operated by staff.
> 
> Self-serve coffee machines are common in gas stations and some shops, but I don't recall seeing those for carbonated drinks. Usually you would buy a refrigerated bottle.


In Europe I have seen usable by customers them only in KFCs (not in other fast foods), and quite often in hotels during breakfast (only for water, ice, milk, coffee and similar).

KFCs allows you to take as many beverage as you want (using the glass they gave you).


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Prolly some pythagoras and trigonometry. What else do you wanna use? Geometry shit.


Marty, you don't think four-dimensionally. 😁

The first one is easy, it adds up to 44. The second one is more tricky and little bit unclear. If we assume the 2 concerns the vertical line, not he horizontal one (which would be useless) then the result is 44 as well. 

All science is to complete the shapes into a rectangle.


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## tfd543

^^ hehe what Can I do, i Think too complicated in most situations.


----------



## volodaaaa

The Cinderella is nicknamed Popolushka, meaning an ashgirl. But one of the most interesting translations was the Hangover. It is called Vo štvorici po opici (a nice rhyme) meaning In four upon the hangover. Czechs translated it to Parba ve Vegas = a party in Vegas causing a trouble to name the last film of the trilogy.


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## Kpc21

Polish translation was Kac Vegas, where "kac" means hangover in Polish. And our translators fell into exactly the same trap.


----------



## Attus

bogdymol said:


> The area is indeed impossible to calculate, but the perimeter is easy:
> 
> First one: 12*2+10*2 = 44
> Second one: 9*2+11*2+2*2 = 44


OK, the second one is unclear. I thought 2cm is the red size. If it is, calculating the perimeter is impossible. You obviously thought it is the green one. In this case the calculation is only slightly more difficult than at the first one, and your calculation is correct.


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## bogdymol

Exactly. The 2 cm has to be the green one, otherwise it would be impossible to calculate the perimeter.


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> ^^ hehe what Can I do, i Think too complicated in most situations.


I pretend to be smart now, but in reality, I have spent roughly 45 mins calculating the area too.


----------



## MacOlej

Kpc21 said:


> Poles also call a machine for cleaning with pressurised water "a kärcher", even if it's not of the Kärcher brand. And having no ä in Polish doesn't make any problem with that...


Poles don't have a problem with ä because they pronounce it "karcher" or "kerszer". So even if this word is obviously taken from the company's name, it has already been distorted.

The other funny case is a popular term "boszka" for an angle grinder. This one obviously comes from the company Bosch.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> We also use a strange name "kulma" for a curling iron and a strange world Papuče (read Papuche) for slippers.


Haha. "Kulma" is Finnish, meaning a corner or an angle. Or a remote village in certain areas of the country.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Speaking of math, apparently there is something called 'Common Core' in U.S. education and parents don't understand the homework their children get.










When I was in school and struggled with math, I tried to reverse it. Not 568 - 293, but how much do you need to get from 293 to 568? That provides the same answer but seems easier to me.

A criticism of math in the Netherlands is the amount of irrelevant information and cartoons around an assignment, which makes some students miss the main point and get stuck in trying to understand the story.


----------



## tfd543

Thats the point of it, you need to filter out and use only the info that is necessary. I had this kind of assignment as well in analytical chemistry in uni When determining volume, concentration, and pressure.


----------



## tfd543

Its Funny because sometimes i asked the teacher for the result right away if I could promise to give an explanation how to get the result. Of course u cant do that in the exam, but it helped me in the start of a course When everything is usually New and hard.


----------



## bogdymol

At first sight the additional information is useless. However, children not only need to think what's the surface of a rectangle for example, but need to be able to correlate this with real life needs that they will encounter later on.

Later on in their lives they will need to do some real-life math: how much paint do I need to buy to paint this wall? Can I fill up the car with the money I have in my wallet? If the cooking recipe says I need 1 kg of flour, but I only have 750 g left, how much of the other ingredients do I have to use? And so on... Unfortunately there are many adults that struggle with example like these.


----------



## Kpc21

MacOlej said:


> Poles don't have a problem with ä because they pronounce it "karcher" or "kerszer". So even if this word is obviously taken from the company's name, it has already been distorted.


Or kercher 



ChrisZwolle said:


> A criticism of math in the Netherlands is the amount of irrelevant information and cartoons around an assignment, which makes some students miss the main point and get stuck in trying to understand the story.


In Poland I didn't really find such issues. And being able to analyze a problem and describe it using math is a very important aspect of the education. What's the use in learning math if you can't apply it in practice?

Over here in Poland, we were always given both purely computational examples and "text problems", where there was a practical thing to calculate without indicating what actual numbers and formulas you should use (although the topic in which they appeared usually suggested what would they be). Of course, with time and the level of education, there was less practical and more computational examples – at the university we had very few of those practical ones (probably also because those more advanced mathematical concepts like e.g. integrals aren't so much used in everyday life but rather in more scientific contexts, like in physics).

Concerning subtracting big numbers using a similar algorithm to the one shown in this sheet (although going in the opposite way), in Poland it's always presented at schools by making a small, I would say, table.

Step 1:

.. 5 6 8
- 2 9 3
-------

You look at the last column. 8-3=5, so you write 5 under it.


.. 5 6 8
- 2 9 3
-------
.......... 5

You look at the next column (last but one). You can't subtract 9 from 6, so you borrow a one tenth from the next column to get a 16. The number in that next column gets decremented.

.(4)(16) 
.. 5 6 8
- 2 9 3
-------
.......... 5

So you subtract 9 from 16, which is 7:

.(4)(16) 
.. 5 6 8
- 2 9 3
-------
...... 7 5

Of course, being precise from the mathematical point of view, it's actually subtracting 160-90. 

In the next column, after you have borrowed a tenth, you have 4. 4-2=2.

.(4)(16) 
.. 5 6 8
- 2 9 3
-------
.. 2 7 5

It's so simple (and often faster than taking out a calculator). With more experience you can do it in your mind, although in more complicated cases it's easier to do it on paper.

I can show you some problems from the Polish national exam after the primary school (until recently, it was after junior-high school, but they deleted them, and instead extended primary schools by 2 years and high schools by 1 year).

From this year...

The first 15 problems are multiple choice questions.

The first one is:

A cyclist participated in a cycling race. He did the whole route in four days. The table shows the length of the stages of the race that happened on each day (in km):
1. Monday – 26
2. Tuesday – 27
3. Wednesday – 21
4. Thursday – 31

On Monday and Tuesday, the cyclist did in total:
A. more than 50%
B. less than 50%
of the length of the whole race.

On Wednesday he did:
C. 1/4
D. 1/5
of the whole route.

Very simple.

Another one:

Three owners of a company – Adam, Janusz and Oskar – bought a van for 154 000 zł. The amounts paid by Adam, Janusz and Oskar are – respectively – in the ratio of 2 : 3 : 6. What amount was paid by Janusz?
A. 14 000 zł
B. 28 000 zł
C. 42 000 zł
D. 84 000 zł
Also really simple...

Another one, this one is more computational and not practical, anyway very simple when you know the laws of mathematics:

The sharp angle in a rhombus is equal to 60 degrees and its side has the length of 4 cm. Choose True or False.

1. The shorter diagonal divides this rhombus into two equilateral triangles. T/F
2. The surface area of this rhombus is 8 sqrt(3) cm^2. T/F

A simple open problem:

In a community center, there was a recitation contest organized. For the participants, there were prizes bought: books and e-books. Books were 2/3 of the number of the prizes bought. There were 8 less e-books than books. How many books were bought? Write down your calculations.

In this case, the student must at least build some equations... But this is a typical "text problem" that would appear on math classes in primary school, when discussing equations, or systems of equations.

Another one.

In a tailor workshop, cushions for pets are made. The work in this shop takes place 5 days a week (from Monday to Friday), 7 hours daily. In 2020, 1 March was on Sunday and there were no free days in March other than Saturdays and Sundays. Within every hour, there were 3 cushions made on average. How many cushions were made in March? Write down your calculations.

Also simple, although requires a little bit more analysis... Actually, even without knowing maths, one can simply write down the whole calendar for March 2020 and count the working days... And multiply by three.

A more abstract one from those multiple choice, from geometry:

In the KLM triangle, the height KN was drawn. The lengths of some line segments are described with algebraic expressions: |KL| = 2y, |LM| = 2x, |KN| = k+1.









(a dot means a right angle, although in this picture it doesn't really look like that...)

The surface area of the KLM triangle is described with the expression:
A. x(k+1)
B. 2x(k+1)
C. y(k+1)
D. 2y(k+1)

And one from stereometry...

The base of the pyramid with the height H is a square. The picture shows the grid of the pyramid and the lengths of some of its edges. 










Calculate the volume of this pyramid. Write down your calculations.


All of that seems to be very easy, especially when you are right after the primary school maths course... But the average result of this exam was only 46%. This is the distribution of the results:









(horizontal – the result, vertical – percentage of the students)

To me, it doesn't tell any good about the quality of the math education in Poland... Such a simple exam and so bad results.


----------



## volodaaaa

I don't mind calculating on math classes with any further reason. What I missed much more and realised it just during recent years is the comprehensibility of study material. 

For example on physics classes we calculated the torque or speed of gears with no further details. Or electricity was based on axioms never explained. I have found a lot of American videos on YouTube, like from 1950s that explain it very easily. 

Last thing I have learned was the principle of retarder, an air based engine brake for heavy cars and the principle of axle differential. 

I found a lot of Slovak sites with loads of formulas I did not understand. Then I found two black and white American videos from 1950s where everything was incredibly easily explained. So easily I have already understood the formulas as well.


----------



## Kpc21

Yeah, Americans and other English-speaking guys are usually much better in explaining various things than our Slavic teachers and handbooks...

Maybe because in speaking English, a language which is spoken by probably much more non-natives than natives, there is always a tendency to keep things simple, so even non-native speakers can understand it?

Although on the other hand, the scientific terminology in English tends to use too many Latin and Greek loans that make no sense for someone who doesn't know any Latin and Greek. But maybe it draws them even more to explaining things in simple words, because they simply aren't that obvious and need explaining?

An example I well remember, from math...

The names of the sides of a square-angled triangle.

In Polish they are simple:
– przyprostokątna – it's the one that lies at the right angle (przy kącie prostym -> przy prostym kącie -> przy-prosto-kątna)
– przeciwprostokątna – it's the one that lies opposite to the right angle (naprzeciwko kąta prostego -> naprzeciw prostego kąta -> przeciw-prosto-kątna)

In English those are some very weird probably Ancient Greek-loaned words I don't even remember (one of them was... hypotenuse, or something like it) that make absolutely no logical sense and you just have to remember their names by heart.


----------



## tfd543

bogdymol said:


> At first sight the additional information is useless. However, children not only need to think what's the surface of a rectangle for example, but need to be able to correlate this with real life needs that they will encounter later on.
> 
> Later on in their lives they will need to do some real-life math: how much paint do I need to buy to paint this wall? Can I fill up the car with the money I have in my wallet? If the cooking recipe says I need 1 kg of flour, but I only have 750 g left, how much of the other ingredients do I have to use? And so on... Unfortunately there are many adults that struggle with example like these.


I agree, but I mean, there is a given curriculum no matter what. It doesnt have to accord with real-life needs but Its nice if it does, yes.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> Or electricity was based on axioms never explained.


But you can build a nice and wonderful theory on top of axioms only. ;-)

Most problems of the basic electricity physics can be solved by applying two fundamental formulae:

_P=UI, U=RI_

In Finland, those are called the PUI formula and the URI formula, combined as *PUI*M*URI*. That is a Finnish word, meaning a harvester.









_PUIMURI_

Thus, remembering the word PUIMURI, it is possible to solve virtually everything Joe Average needs to know about electricity.

I my earlier life to do strategic planning for data centers, I sometimes had to give basic lessons on electric power: "Think about a waterfall: The volts tell us the height of the fall. The amperes tell us the amount of water to fall. The watts tell how much the volts and amperes make power together". People were pretty happy on this oversimplification. If there were Americans in the audience, I avoided discussing 3-phase power, because it is a big big mystery to them.


----------



## PovilD

Half of the cases in Lithuania can't be traced with existing clusters. I'm starting to wonder if situation will gonna go out of control, although authorities try to contact trace cases as much as they can. Mask wearing is now mandatory in confined spaces, like shops and public transport. That's it for today's COVID news from me


----------



## PovilD

MattiG said:


> But you can build a nice and wonderful theory on top of axioms only. ;-)
> 
> Most problems of the basic electricity physics can be solved by applying two fundamental formulae:
> 
> _P=UI, U=RI_
> 
> In Finland, those are called the PUI formula and the URI formula, combined as *PUI*M*URI*. That is a Finnish word, meaning a harvester.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _PUIMURI_
> 
> Thus, remembering the word PUIMURI, it is possible to solve virtually everything Joe Average needs to know about electricity.
> 
> I my earlier life to do strategic planning for data centers, I sometimes had to give basic lessons on electric power: "Think about a waterfall: The volts tell us the height of the fall. The amperes tell us the amount of water to fall. The watts tell how much the volts and amperes make power together". People were pretty happy on this oversimplification. If there were Americans in the audience, I avoided discussing 3-phase power, because it is a big big mystery to them.


It seems for me that Math and physics problem solving was not something I was truly successful (or rather interested) at  I was taking math and physics advance level classes though just to feel that I'm achieving something in life, like diploma (which I did) and to gain respect in the future. There were people that tried to help me, I was solving Math, Physics, sometimes Chemistry problems with them, and it was enough to achieve slightly above average results in exams.

I'm more into geography, current and retrospective regional situation, transport, travel stuff, but I thought it was too easy for me just to stick with only those  Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong.

In today's World, tech savvies are needed, that's why I chose physics/math over history/geography 

Time will tell...


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch minister of health held a press conference yesterday. He said there are multiple problems with contact tracing
> 
> most positive cases are people in their 20s
> these people have far more contacts than older people. Someone in their 50s may have had 5 or 6 close contacts, students could have 20 or 30
> some don't want to give up contacts
> many contacts cannot be reached (many 20 something year olds are actually afraid to pick up the telephone).
> This means that the contact tracing of 20-something year olds requires three times as much time as that of older people. It appears this has been underestimated.


It is absolutely the same in whole Europe. Youngsters are positive due to released measures and due to kinda rebellion because nobody wants to sit at home isolated and healthy anymore. Also, people don't want to give contacts to avoid self-isolation measures if they have no symptoms.


----------



## tfd543

Whats your thought about hand dryers in public toilets. Im referring to the non-Air blade models (old school). It takes forever to dry your hands. I usually take a bunch of toilet paper and try to dry hands in that way. Downside is that a lot of paper residues are left on the hand. I mostly prefer tissue paper holders, but cotton towel Rolls are neither bad.


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Whats your thought about hand dryers in public toilets. Im referring to the non-Air blade models (old school). It takes forever to dry your hands. I usually take a bunch of toilet paper and try to dry hands in that way. Downside is that a lot of paper residues are left on the hand. I mostly prefer tissue paper holders, but cotton towel Rolls are neither bad.


The rough cloth towels that are in a big roll so that you’re using what someone else used a couple of hours ago are unknown here. I’d guess they’re considered unsanitary. I prefer paper when it’s available, because it’s faster, at least faster than the older air dryers. But I’m talking paper towels from a dispenser.near or at the sinks, not toilet paper. That’s still available in many places.


----------



## tfd543

Why unsanitary? You get fresh towel every time you turn the knob.. its a bit more gentle to your hands, but whatever..


----------



## mgk920

x-type said:


> It is absolutely the same in whole Europe. Youngsters are positive due to released measures and due to kinda rebellion because nobody wants to sit at home isolated and healthy anymore. Also, people don't want to give contacts to avoid self-isolation measures if they have no symptoms.


You are 'alive', but are you 'living'? Right now I really feel for those residents of nursing homes and especially assisted living centers. They are 'alive', but they are essentially trapped in prison cells, unable to leave, have visitors nor do anything else - and have been since at least February. That is _NOT_ 'living'.

The 'Virus™' horse left the barn in December of last year, if not earlier. It's time that we learned to live with it and go back to 'living'.

Mike


----------



## mgk920

Penn's Woods said:


> The rough cloth towels that are in a big roll so that you’re using what someone else used a couple of hours ago are unknown here. I’d guess they’re considered unsanitary. I prefer paper when it’s available, because it’s faster, at last faster than the older air dryers. But I’m talking paper towels from a dispenser.near or at the sinks, not toilet paper. That’s still available in many places.


I have not seen one of those hand dryers in years, these days I mostly see paper towel dispensers of numerous varieties or electric air dryers. I don't like the air dryers and will wipe my hands on my pants legs instead.

Those cloth towel things had a take-up roll where the used part of the towel went, it was changed when it was full and the supply roll was empty. The towel strip then (supposedly, of course) went to a laundry where it was washed.

Mike


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Why unsanitary? You get fresh towel every time you turn the knob.. its a bit more gentle to your hands, but whatever..


It’s on a loop, at least the ones I’m thinking of. What you use goes back into the dispenser and someone else gets it a couple of hours later. Unless it’s being cleaned inside the dispenser....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> It’s on a loop, at least the ones I’m thinking of. What you use goes back into the dispenser and someone else gets it a couple of hours later. Unless it’s being cleaned inside the dispenser....


Given what mgk920 says right above me, I guess this was wrong.

But they never looked all that clean; maybe that’s why I always assumed that.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

To my knowledge, they don't cycle endlessly, but just reach the end of the towel and then has to be manually replaced with a fresh one. 

I don't like them either, too often you'll find one at the end of the cycle so it's all wet from people before you. As they are reusable, they are often promoted as an environmental-friendly alternative to paper towels.

The problem with paper towels is that they often leave a mess, the bin gets full, people drop them on the floor without cleaning up, etc.


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> You are 'alive', but are you 'living'? Right now I really feel for those residents of nursing homes and especially assisted living centers. They are 'alive', but they are essentially trapped in prison cells, unable to leave, have visitors nor do anything else - and have been since at least February. That is _NOT_ 'living'.
> 
> The 'Virus' horse left the barn in December of last year, if not earlier. It's time that we learned to live with it and go back to 'living'.
> 
> Mike


The problem, of course, is we’re not yet at a place where giving you the complete freedom to exercise the (completely understandable) desire to get on with your life as before doesn’t endanger others who are not a party to your choice. It’s not completely going away, at least for a while. So we will have to live with it. But we also can’t live with hospitals turning people away and teachers getting sick and dying of this (they didn’t sign up for that), just so that others don’t have to be inconvenienced.


----------



## Suburbanist

Air Blade is probably going extinct, it is unsanitary (warm mi air is good for all sort of bacteria).

The towel rolls are used in my office. They don't cycle but are retrieved when finished. Or daily as in our office. In well trafficked washrooms the rolling towel might well get to the end too early before the next janitorial round.

Old style hot air exhausts are inefficient to dry hands. It is basic physics.

My pet peeve with most public washroom design are door knobs that require you to touch them after you have washed hands. Hopefully they disappear with the pandemic as well (for now, many access doors are being just kept opened permanently around here).


----------



## x-type

I have recently seen some new type of air blades integrated into faucet, so basically you don't make the mess, you don't touch anything, and the air stream is really strong to dry the hands within 10 seconds. Looks like this. From the middle part comes the water, and from those wings comes the air.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ One big drawback of this system is that it keeps the sink blocked also for drying hands. In crowded places this might be an issue, as normally, when somebody finishes washing hands, he goes to the hand drying area and leaves the sink available for the next user.


----------



## tfd543

^^ fancy stuff. Yes Im pretty sure they can redesign the interior so that you Can avoid doors. However sometimes Its nice to have doors so that you dont hear people pee in the basin of the toilet Bowl.

Im a silent type, i usually pee at the wall of the bowl, but i need to target the basin When there is no lock to make sure people dont enter. Lool. Well, it works..


----------



## tfd543

Suburbanist said:


> Air Blade is probably going extinct, it is unsanitary (warm mi air is good for all sort of bacteria).


+1. They forgot to add some holes so that things Can escape


----------



## MattiG

x-type said:


> I have recently seen some new type of air blades integrated into faucet, so basically you don't make the mess, you don't touch anything, and the air stream is really strong to dry the hands within 10 seconds. Looks like this. From the middle part comes the water, and from those wings comes the air.


You need ear protectors while using that.


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> ^^ One big drawback of this system is that it keeps the sink blocked also for drying hands. In crowded places this might be an issue, as normally, when somebody finishes washing hands, he goes to the hand drying area and leaves the sink available for the next user.


There will be always people who don't care about crowd, and will look themselves in the mirror despite 8 people waiting in a line after them.


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> There is no simple answer. The system is somewhat complex, and there are several pricing models. The price consists of fixed fees, production fee, transmission fee, and taxes. In remote countryside locations, the fixed fee may be the dominating factor if the power usage is low. As a rule of thumb, the price for a typical household varies between 12 and 18 cents per kWh. The price is lower in the cities where both the fixed fees and transmission fees are lower than in the countryside.


In Poland it is like that either, with the complex price. In addition, you can choose a tariff, in which the price is lower at night and for 2 hours during the day, and (depending on the choice) possibly also on weekends. But those are the average prices reported by the media.

Anyway, it seems the price is comparable to the Polish one, or de facto lower, taking into account the difference in the purchasing power.

The issue might be that Poland produces most of its energy from coal, and it's getting expensive because the power companies must pay extra taxes to the EU for the CO2 emissions. How is it in Finland?


----------



## Kpc21

tfd543 said:


> Whats your thought about hand dryers in public toilets. Im referring to the non-Air blade models (old school). It takes forever to dry your hands.


There are various types of even those conventional non-airblade ones. Some are very strong, and they work well. Some give a very subtle blow, and in case of those, I simply don't use them, because it makes no sense. Unless you spend hours at the dryer, you anyway get out with wet hands.

By the way, I heard some time ago about recommendations to replace hand dryers with paper towels, as dryers aren't very hygienic. Recently I was travelling, so I visited quite some public bathrooms – and many of them had no paper towels but just the dryers, I even met an airblade one somewhere.



mgk920 said:


> You are 'alive', but are you 'living'? Right now I really feel for those residents of nursing homes and especially assisted living centers. They are 'alive', but they are essentially trapped in prison cells, unable to leave, have visitors nor do anything else - and have been since at least February. That is _NOT_ 'living'.


And this is a real issue. They should allow visits in a somehow limited way, maybe after someone has recent test results confirming he isn't infected...

I also heard that while in China the pandemic is already long past, they still keep students living in dorms closed in the university campuses, not allowing them to leave them.




ChrisZwolle said:


> To my knowledge, they don't cycle endlessly, but just reach the end of the towel and then has to be manually replaced with a fresh one.


I rarely see them in Poland and I never understood how they really work... Anyway, you have to pull the part with which someone was drying his hands just before a moment, to get a clean piece...

By the way, talking about faucets in public bathrooms, I hate those where you have to push a button to make the water run.

It usually works in such a way that the water stops a short moment after releasing the button. 

So you have no way of cleaning your both hands properly, one using the other.

Best are the conventional ones with handles, same as those used at homes. But they aren't so popular in public restrooms because someone can forget and leave the water running... Also people don't have such issues at their homes, so why should they in public?

Anyway, you rarely see them and if so, most often in the restrooms for the disabled (e.g. I sometimes use the restroom for the disabled at my workplace; we anyway don't have any disabled employees at my floor, so I use it when all the cabins in the "normal" bathroom are occupied).

Not bad are also those automatic ones... Although often they also work for a limited time and to make the water continue running, you sometimes have to make weird acrobations with your hand around the sensor. And sometimes the sensors are in wrong places, so that it doesn't really detect your hands while you're washing them (which again results in having to do weird hand acrobations). And a small disadvantage is that they are electricity-dependent. Some time I was in a mall, which was at that moment partially out of power. Luckily, the store where I wanted to buy something had power, but the bathroom (I needed to use) not. So not only it was totally dark inside (don't the regulations require emergency lighting in such places?), but also the faucets did not work and I couldn't wash my hands after using the toilet.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> There are various types of even those conventional non-airblade ones. Some are very strong, and they work well. Some give a very subtle blow, and in case of those, I simply don't use them, because it makes no sense. Unless you spend hours at the dryer, you anyway get out with wet hands.
> 
> By the way, I heard some time ago about recommendations to replace hand dryers with paper towels, as dryers aren't very hygienic. Recently I was travelling, so I visited quite some public bathrooms – and many of them had no paper towels but just the dryers, I even met an airblade one somewhere.
> 
> 
> And this is a real issue. They should allow visits in a somehow limited way, maybe after someone has recent test results confirming he isn't infected...
> 
> I also heard that while in China the pandemic is already long past, they still keep students living in dorms closed in the university campuses, not allowing them to leave them.
> 
> 
> 
> I rarely see them in Poland and I never understood how they really work... Anyway, you have to pull the part with which someone was drying his hands just before a moment, to get a clean piece...
> 
> By the way, talking about faucets in public bathrooms, I hate those where you have to push a button to make the water run.
> 
> It usually works in such a way that the water stops a short moment after releasing the button.
> 
> So you have no way of cleaning your both hands properly, one using the other.
> 
> Best are the conventional ones with handles, same as those used at homes. But they aren't so popular in public restrooms because someone can forget and leave the water running... Also people don't have such issues at their homes, so why should they in public?
> 
> Anyway, you rarely see them and if so, most often in the restrooms for the disabled (e.g. I sometimes use the restroom for the disabled at my workplace; we anyway don't have any disabled employees at my floor, so I use it when all the cabins in the "normal" bathroom are occupied).
> 
> Not bad are also those automatic ones... Although often they also work for a limited time and to make the water continue running, you sometimes have to make weird acrobations with your hand around the sensor. And sometimes the sensors are in wrong places, so that it doesn't really detect your hands while you're washing them (which again results in having to do weird hand acrobations). And a small disadvantage is that they are electricity-dependent. Some time I was in a mall, which was at that moment partially out of power. Luckily, the store where I wanted to buy something had power, but the bathroom (I needed to use) not. So not only it was totally dark inside (don't the regulations require emergency lighting in such places?), but also the faucets did not work and I couldn't wash my hands after using the toilet.


Re your second paragraph:

Just today I was in a highway-service-area men’s room where there was a sign above one of the air dryers explaining that they’re greener than paper towels because of the waste....

So who knows?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's a newsworthy event in the Netherlands, it was at the top of the headlines yesterday and this morning and the public broadcaster even had a liveblog going, which is usually only for very important / developing events. 

The internet was also out / difficult to access in Belarus, though it seems like it may have been restored now.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's a newsworthy event in the Netherlands, it was at the top of the headlines yesterday and this morning and the public broadcaster even had a liveblog going, which is usually only for very important / developing events.
> 
> The internet was also out / difficult to access in Belarus, though it seems like it may have been restored now.


Ok, maybe I'm not well informed. I watched Lithuanian forums, and someone found out that BBC or CNN are not putting Belarus on top headlines. I presumed that is probably the case with most Western media outlets.


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> Ok, maybe I'm not well informed. I watched Lithuanian forums, and someone found out that BBC or CNN are not putting Belarus on top headlines. I presumed that is probably the case with most Western media outlets.


Protests in Belarus are mentioned by the BBC and other British media but it is not top of the headlines. Too many other things going on:

Beirut protests and explosion fallout,
record numbers of migrants crossing the English Channel in dinghies,
lockdown in Australia,
arrest of press tycoon in Hong Kong,
scramble to reopen schools in September,
will France be added to quarantine countries,
heatwave etc.

Belarus is somewhere there, but it will never receive the coverage it will in Lithuania or Poland. For obvious reasons.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Current headlines at NOS (Dutch public broadcaster): 2 articles on Belarus, 1 on Beirut, 1 on dangerous currents on the coast (which caused several drownings) and 1 on the housing crisis.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Kpc21 said:


> It's interesting... So they must be using smart energy meters that transmit the data about your current energy use to the operator all the time. In Poland, many houses and apartments still have electro-mechanical meters (those with a rotating wheel). At my home, I have an electronic one, but it doesn't have any "smart" capabilities – it can only distinguish between three different "fare zones" that may differ depending on the time during the day and on the day of the week.


In Estonia all meters were changed to smart meters from 2012 to 2016. These log your consumption at one-hour intervals, send the data to the grid operator and allow you to view your electricity consumption online. For example, this is my flat's electricity consumption from a random 8 day period from April:









All of my (kitchen) appliances are electric + my water heater is also electric.


----------



## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> In Estonia all meters were changed to smart meters from 2012 to 2016. These log your consumption at one-hour intervals, send the data to the grid operator and allow you to view your electricity consumption online. For example, this is my flat's electricity consumption from a random 8 day period from April:


The smart meters at homes became mandatory by the end of 2013 in Finland. (To be precise, 80% of meters meeting the criteria must be smart ones, but the actual figure is about 100%). The system not only enables accurate reporting but power outages are detected quickly, too, in a few minutes. The operator sends an SMS and an email message when an outage occurs. Many operators provide with a mobile app to deliver the key consumption figures.


----------



## Penn's Woods

I’ve mentioned the New York/New Jersey quarantine rules; here’s a summary for the whole country. Disconcerting to know I can’t go to Maine, for example.










Map: State-by-state breakdown of coronavirus travel restrictions


U.S. states and territories are making new rules for travelers. Find which ones across the United States have implemented travel restrictions to curb the spread of COVID-19.




www.nbcnews.com


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> The system not only enables accurate reporting but power outages are detected quickly, too, in a few minutes


This is a good thing... No more calling the power company's emergency hotline and being the 140th in the queue. Unfortunately, we still live with dumb meters.

By the way, in an apartment in Karlsruhe (western Germany near the border with France) I once saw, several years ago, an energy meter made in Poland... It was an old analog electro-mechanical meter, they are still common also in Germany. Although those mechanical meters shouldn't really be used as they are susceptible to manipulations by attaching magnets to them (an external magnetic field slows down the meter).

The situation in Belarus is today number one in the Polish media. Polish government is much for democracy in Belarus, they are even running a pro-democratic TV channel for that country.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> The situation in Belarus is today number one in the Polish media. Polish government is much for democracy in Belarus, they are even running a pro-democratic TV channel for that country.


Western oriented Belarus would be essentially beneficial for Lithuania (longest land border, and most common history, btw), but I don't know if Western-oriented Belarus is possible despite biggest protests since collapse of USSR. Even in Lithuania, we have quite large population that are relatively nostalgic to Soviet times, and they mostly live more rural, and more economically challenging areas, they form our Parliament for us after most elections (Socialdemocrats (some/many(?) of them being ex-communists) and mentally similar parties being quite popular), and I don't think such polarization is any different in Belarus. Btw I know one person my age who is pro-Lukashenko, he lives in small town not far away from Belarus, has Belarusian mother (and Russian father), he thinks Belarus is on better path than Baltics (for example, not that extreme population decline, some social programs, relatively developed infrastructure, etc.). I have some admirations to Belarus too: roads are better than usual roads in rural Russia or Ukraine, agriculture is better developed than in neighboring countries (although state funded), cities are quite clean, maybe some more things. I never been to Belarus, but I have impression from the internet and that person which makes Belarus look better than Russia and Ukraine in my eyes. I don't say that Belarus is an example state, but it's not that bad as you expect from typical Post-Soviet state.


----------



## Kpc21

Unfortunately there are practically no independent election polls in Belarus, but there were online ones, and according to all of them, Lukashenko has almost no support. Of course, it isn't necessarily a good way of checking the support of various candidates in elections (in Poland such polls are always won by the libertarian right-wing Korwin-Mikke, who is the leader of a rather niche political option, but at the same time, he himself is a meme), but if Lukashenko really had significant support, it would also appear in those Internet polls. Having actually 80% of support, he maybe wouldn't necessarily win an Internet poll, but he wouldn't definitely get the results of the order of 5% in them.

And Soviet nostalgia (or PRL nostalgia in Poland) is one thing, but at the same time, most people practicing this nostalgia, definitely wouldn't want a return to those times.

Some may want, but it would be, let's say, 10%, definitely not over 50%.

I also thought Belarus is quite well developed, but then, why do people hate Lukashenko so much and give him so little support?


----------



## PovilD

Even in my country internet polls shows vastly different results even in most popular news agencies, giving votes to parties that are more popular in more economically advanced areas (mostly largest cities). We have large voters group that are mostly elderly and don't use the internet. I think situation in Belarus is a little bit worse in terms of internet coverage.

As for Belarus, I still have thoughts that rural Belarus is still relatively pro-Lukashenko despite the protests. I have no doubts that Lukashenko is not that popular in largest cities as we see protests. I have my impression (and stereotypes) that Belarus is more oriented to rural areas (agriculture, agriculture mechanisms, etc.), and maintaining proper self-image with some real investments in maintenance which is not that usual among other Post-Soviet states. It makes cities to look quite maintained too... although economically they are weaker than any city in Poland and Lithuania.

If something interesting will escalate, I will change my opinion... I don't call myself pro-Lukashenko by most means, I don't like Vilnius being stuck on the corner with the country that is document-wise harder to access than some far away lands, along with different mentality and interests. I can't imagine Lukashenko being a leader of EU country. I think if Belarus gains EU membership it could become as rich as Poland since it has quite hard-working and quite developed society.

As for nostalgia, maybe it has to do with self-proud that Soviet propaganda gave to regular citizens along with construction of new working places and a bit rising quality of life. There is no "self-proud" feeling anymore, areas that don't have economical purpose are really sad with random people wandering around in quite empty towns with houses that quite often don't see proper maintenance.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> As for nostalgia, maybe it has to do with self-proud that Soviet propaganda gave to regular citizens along with construction of new working places and a bit rising quality of life.


This "self-proud" is called, in other words, propaganda 

Probably this is the way the current Polish government is getting so popular among many people, even though being not perfectly democratic (still being far away from what we are seeing in Belarus). They are building this feeling of proud in the people.


----------



## Kapetan Miki

When it comes to Belarus, I'm certain we can all agree - we don't want another Euromaidan and another failed state like Ukraine.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Kapetan Miki said:


> When it comes to Belarus, I'm certain we can all agree - we don't want another Euromaidan and another failed state like Ukraine.


Calling Ukraine a failed state is a bit of a stretch, don't you think? Sure, it has a small ongoing conflict area in the East and other problems like corruption but it isn't Somalia after all.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> Probably this is the way the current Polish government is getting so popular among many people, even though being not perfectly democratic (still being far away from what we are seeing in Belarus).


I was listening to a Dutch report and they said that democracy in Poland is almost similar to Belarus


----------



## PovilD

Kapetan Miki said:


> When it comes to Belarus, I'm certain we can all agree - we don't want another Euromaidan and another failed state like Ukraine.


Actually, I would be doubtful about Belarus being "failed state" in most circumstances. Ukraine's problem is size and multiple interests inside the country which likely weakens it, it has elements of "failed state" due to immense corruption, but yes, it's not worst in the World situation, but could be better. Belarus is smaller, borders richer countries, and it's relatively closer to Nordic mentality, I guess  For me, if comparing directly with Belarus, I have an impression that Ukraine is more "relaxed country", more Southern European-like, things get slightly more into about good food, having a good time, singing and dancing  Ukrainians are hard working people too.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

When I look at footage of Belarus, it's noticeable how neat this country is. Maybe it's a selection bias, but the roads look in good condition and major cities look well-maintained. Very different from footage I've seen from Ukraine. The Ukrainian road network was recently rated as one of the worst in the world, behind even many African and Asian countries. Only a few percent of roads were considered to be in good condition.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> When I look at footage of Belarus, it's noticeable how neat this country is. Maybe it's a selection bias, but the roads look in good condition and major cities look well-maintained. Very different from footage I've seen from Ukraine. The Ukrainian road network was recently rated as one of the worst in the world, behind even many African and Asian countries. Only a few percent of roads were considered to be in good condition.


Yes, it's not just Minsk which is better maintained than some EU capitals, but other cities too. Main roads are also relatively well maintained, constructions of substandard 2x2 take place to connect all largest cities. I slightly doubt if this has to do only with Lukashenko's regime, and without Lukashenko, Belarus would follow path of Ukraine.


----------



## Tenjac

Kpc21 said:


> Probably this is the way the *current Polish government is* getting so popular among many people, even though being *not perfectly democratic*.


Very nice euphemism.


----------



## keber

5 years ago I was in Belarus on a self organized (an important fact) roadtrip. With my friends we visited also Poland, Lithuania and Latvia and for a day also Ukraine. Belarus seemed very organized country and especially Minsk very clean and safe. But on every step it was felt that this is not democratic country with many restrictions and bureaucratic nonsense. I remember 45 minutes long procedure with bunch of papers signed to get simple electronic toll tag for our car, or 30 minutes of almost political speech from agency representative when we just took keys from our rented apartment.
Also 2h long bordercrossing procedure, which was completely absurd with windows here and there, officers left and right, collecting signs and stamps. Probably we could easily enter with drugs and other contraband stuff into the country as no one looked our luggage, just all of papers and documents had to be in order. 
But on the other hand, only in Belarus you can experience, when all of traffic on full 8 lane avenue suddenly stops on both sides you just show your intention to cross street on pedestrian crossing - no traffic lights needed. There is law and order, you feel very safe going around everywhere and anytime. I think that many Belorussians appreciate that especially when they compare own country to neighbor Ukraine and Russia.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's good to take a trip in these unusual times. I was glad I went to Switzerland in late June after 3 months of working from home and not having much social contacts.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

bogdymol said:


> Today I had a quite embarrassing experience. I "stole" a bike in front of a lot of people.
> 
> I biked with my wife about 30 km today, then we stopped at a beautiful waterfall. To better explore the place we locked our bikes to a fence right at the entrance (where everybody was walking by!) and went to see the waterfall. When we came back we realized that we don't have the key of the lock with us, but was left at home. So we were stuck there as we were unable to unlock our bikes.
> 
> I had a small screwdriver with me and I tried everything possible to unlock it. It did not want to unlock itself. It was a good lock. So had to call a friend who came by car, picked my and by wife and drove us to our house. Took the key and went back by car to recover the bikes. When I arrived there, I found out that the lock was jammed and the key would not work anymore, as I tried too hard with the screwdriver to unlock it. So the only solution was to cut the bike lock.
> 
> Luckily I had anticipated this, so brought with me a handsaw. So I started cutting it with the handsaw. As I mentioned before, the bikes were locked right at the entrance, so everybody coming there (and there were a lot of people!) were seeing what I was doing. There was also a group of teenagers on a nearby bench who were looking at me and laughing. They most probably were thinking I was trying to steal the bikes. I was already thinking that someone might call the police on me
> 
> It was a good lock, so after about half an hour of cutting I managed to break it and recover the bikes.


I have "stolen" bikes of my family members twice in similar circumstances. I think I used a simple hacksaw on both occasions. Noteworthy is that it is in fact extremely easy even with rather expensive locks, and that I never got any questions or comments, not even the time right outside the reception of a posh hotel. I guess I do not look as shady as I thought, or that Norwegians are too conflict averse to act....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> Pandemic life: for the first time since it started, I spent a night somewhere other than my place or my mom’s. No, nothing like that.... Took a road trip. Just to Gettysburg - about 200 km from Philadelphia, 300 from my mom’s. Site of what may have been the most important battle of the American Civil War. I’ve been there many times, sometimes just on day trips, because I like it and find it meaningful, even spiritual. And I was in the mood to get away, even for just a day, and had a discount from Expedia to use. This was the first time I’d spent the night there in seven years. Did most of the driving tour....
> 
> It was much less crowded than I’d expect on an August weekend, but that may have been due to off-and-on rain. Some places have indoor dining; some have outdoor set-ups, even tents; some are carry-out only. Otherwise things were pretty normal. Glad I did it.


Oh. Saw plates, en route and at Gettysburg, from between 20 and 25 states and a few from Canada. But Pennsylvania's not quarantining. Don't know what those Canadians were doing down here, though.

Usually it's possible to see most of the country there, certainly on a summer weekend. It's that big a deal, particularly - my theory is - with the sort of people who want to see one Civil War battlefield on their tour of the East Coast, because it's the obvious one to choose.


----------



## Penn's Woods

I believe we’ve got some weather nerds here. This is 54 point something Celsius:









Heat wave continues across the West, as Death Valley hits record-breaking 130 degrees.


Sunday's temperature in Death Valley, California, was the third hottest recorded in the history of the planet.




www.nbcnews.com


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> What if penalty notices are lost in the post?


I guess, they probably resend them, or if not (having no confirmation of delivery from the post, signed by the recipient), they cannot enforce the fine?



bogdymol said:


> Luckily I had anticipated this, so brought with me a handsaw. So I started cutting it with the handsaw. As I mentioned before, the bikes were locked right at the entrance, so everybody coming there (and there were a lot of people!) were seeing what I was doing. There was also a group of teenagers on a nearby bench who were looking at me and laughing. They most probably were thinking I was trying to steal the bikes. I was already thinking that someone might call the police on me


A bit sad that nobody reacted as if you were the actual thief, someone would be left without a bike...

But at least it saved you the explanations.

I wonder what the police does in such cases when you are breaking the lock because it failed, you lost the key etc. and you are unable to confirm you own that bike. It's difficult to expect from someone that he would have a document confirming that he is the owner of the bicycle...

Especially if you buy a used bike from another person, not from a company, you usually don't get any receipt, bill etc. And even if you have one, who keeps such things, especially if it isn't a new bike with warranty?


----------



## bogdymol

I was also thinking at that. I bought the bike from a private person, so no recipt. I had in my phone some pictures with me and the bike, which I could have shown (the bike was very visible in them).

I guess the police would have taken my details, took pictures of the bike, and if someone would have complained about a stolen bike they would have contacted me?


----------



## italystf

x-type said:


> Does that mean that I shouldn't have paid it?


Yes. It was their fault to deliver the fine after 90 days.


----------



## italystf

bogdymol said:


> Few days ago there was an impressive police chase in my hometown in Romania. An Austrian citizen was followed by the police for almost 80 km before they managed to stop him (shot the car tires as well as the driver - he was taken to the hospital):
> 
> 
> 
> 
> __ https://www.facebook.com/politistiiauumor.ro/posts/3206109632842157


In Italy the police could have been prosecuted for "excess of legitimate self-defence"


----------



## Penn's Woods

More on pandemic travel:









Large crowds taking toll on Pennsylvania state parks


In the late 1800s, Ohiopyle State Park’s 100-acre Ferncliff Peninsula was home to a boardwalk, bowling alley and hotel along the Youghiogheny River. The small resort eventually closed as automobiles replaced rail transportation to the small Fayette County town, allowing the natural landscape to...




triblive.com


----------



## Kpc21

italystf said:


> In Italy the police could have been prosecuted for "excess of legitimate self-defence"


In Poland they, supposedly might be charged for the damages caused to the police cars... even if they were chasing a criminal.


----------



## bogdymol

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland they, supposedly might be charged for the damages caused to the police cars... even if they were chasing a criminal.


I have a friend who is a police officer. Once he drove the police car inside the city, 50 km/h, nothing fast or special, and his bonnet (the steel cover above the engine) suddenly opened and turned itself against the windscreen. He had to pay for the damages as his bosses considered that he "did not properly check the car before driving".


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> Pandemic life: for the first time since it started, I spent a night somewhere other than my place or my mom’s. No, nothing like that.... Took a road trip. Just to Gettysburg - about 200 km from Philadelphia, 300 from my mom’s. Site of what may have been the most important battle of the American Civil War. I’ve been there many times, sometimes just on day trips, because I like it and find it meaningful, even spiritual. And I was in the mood to get away, even for just a day, and had a discount from Expedia to use. This was the first time I’d spent the night there in seven years. Did most of the driving tour....
> 
> It was much less crowded than I’d expect on an August weekend, but that may have been due to off-and-on rain. Some places have indoor dining; some have outdoor set-ups, even tents; some are carry-out only. Otherwise things were pretty normal. Glad I did it.


Any pic if you had to choose 1 and only 1?


----------



## tfd543

bogdymol said:


> I was also thinking at that. I bought the bike from a private person, so no recipt. I had in my phone some pictures with me and the bike, which I could have shown (the bike was very visible in them).
> 
> I guess the police would have taken my details, took pictures of the bike, and if someone would have complained about a stolen bike they would have contacted me?


In dk, we have chassis nr engraved in the frame. They register the number if they stop u.


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Any pic if you had to choose 1 and only 1?


It was tough to choose. The battlefield sprawls for miles and I was focused on specific spots rather than overviews.

But this is relatively representative...taken in fields that look much as they did at the time, a bit of high ground in the distance; you can see a couple of monuments off to the right, not very big from here....

I think this is the spot, looking north-northeast:









Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




goo.gl


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Spain is seeing quite a significant increase in cases, with +59,000 cases in just two weeks.















El Coronavirus: Gráficos, Mapas y Datos del COVID-19 - RTVE.es


RTVE.es te ofrece todos los datos, mapas y gráficos que reflejan la evolución de la crisis del coronavirus COVID-19 en España y en el resto del mundo.



www.rtve.es


----------



## VITORIA MAN

many tests are made


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> It was tough to choose. The battlefield sprawls for miles and I was focused on specific spots rather than overviews.
> 
> But this is relatively representative...taken in fields that look much as they did at the time, a bit of high ground in the distance; you can see a couple of monuments off to the right, not very big from here....
> 
> I think this is the spot, looking north-northeast:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Google Maps
> 
> 
> Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> goo.gl
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> View attachment 417040


You must hold that place in high esteem. Good that u paid a visit.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch 'outbreak management team' is advising the government to shorten the quarantine from 14 to 10 days. Studies show that almost everyone becomes ill within 10 days if they are infected. Some countries already use a 10 day quarantine.

They say that 99% of infected patients become sick within 10 days and 97% within 7 days. (assuming they develop any illness or symptoms at all). The few patients with an incubation time longer than 10 days are considered an acceptable risk.

A quarantine cannot be enforced under Dutch laws. It is a 'strong advisory' instead of obligatory. They don't post a police officer at your house.


----------



## Suburbanist

Norway quarantines are 10 days and have been for a while already.


----------



## Attus

VITORIA MAN said:


> many tests are made


But surely not multiple times more than four weeks ago.


----------



## PovilD

I have an impression that quarantines are strictly enforced in my country, you can't leave your home at any means, and fines are high. There were some relaxation on quarantine measures (you can walk within 1 km radius, shop, take-away), but now I heard they become more strict again. Sure, officers can't outlook all cases..


----------



## MacOlej

bogdymol said:


> ^^ Yes, I know. Or a rebar cutter. But I have none of those, and today is a Sunday, so all shops were closed. I had to use whatever I had available.


A friend of mine here in Poland had a similar problem once (key broke inside the lock) and called the fire brigade. It took them about 1-2 seconds to cut one of the best u-locks on the market with the equipment they had.



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Noteworthy is that (...) I never got any questions or comments, not even the time right outside the reception of a posh hotel. I guess I do not look as shady as I thought, or that Norwegians are too conflict averse to act....


Or they simply don't care. A few years back I saw a video of an experiment in New York (sadly I can't find it now) in which a guy was locking his bicycle in various public places and a moment later another guy was cutting locks and "stealing" it. On every next try they used tougher locks but also more heavy-duty equipment to cut it. And the selected spots were more and more crowded. In the final part the "thief" connected an angle grinder with a cable to a lamppost a few meters away and even had a welding mask on. He was making a lot of noise for a few minutes in the middle of a very crowded plaza and NOBODY gave a damn.



bogdymol said:


> I was also thinking at that. I bought the bike from a private person, so no recipt. I had in my phone some pictures with me and the bike, which I could have shown (the bike was very visible in them).
> 
> I guess the police would have taken my details, took pictures of the bike, and if someone would have complained about a stolen bike they would have contacted me?


If I recall correctly, that was exactly the case with above mentioned friend of mine. He showed his pictures with the bike to the firefighters and that proof was enough for them. I guess policemen would have made some more notes and collect his ID data.



tfd543 said:


> In dk, we have chassis nr engraved in the frame. They register the number if they stop u.


Ok but how does the police know that frame with serial no. 12345 belongs to you? Do you register bicycles to your name just like cars?


----------



## tfd543

[QUOTE="MacOlej, post: 169398703, member: 1453570"

Ok but how does the police know that frame with serial no. 12345 belongs to you? Do you register bicycles to your name just like cars?[/QUOTE]

Yep. Basically yes.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Spain is seeing quite a significant increase in cases, with +59,000 cases in just two weeks.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> El Coronavirus: Gráficos, Mapas y Datos del COVID-19 - RTVE.es
> 
> 
> RTVE.es te ofrece todos los datos, mapas y gráficos que reflejan la evolución de la crisis del coronavirus COVID-19 en España y en el resto del mundo.
> 
> 
> 
> www.rtve.es


I heard yesterday that France had 3,000 the day before. :-( Although I take case numbers with a healthy dose of skepticism.


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> You must hold that place in high esteem. Good that u paid a visit.


A Confederate invasion of the northern states was pushed back. If it had succeeded, the world would be very different today.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch 'outbreak management team' is advising the government to shorten the quarantine from 14 to 10 days. Studies show that almost everyone becomes ill within 10 days if they are infected. Some countries already use a 10 day quarantine.
> 
> They say that 99% of infected patients become sick within 10 days and 97% within 7 days. (assuming they develop any illness or symptoms at all). The few patients with an incubation time longer than 10 days are considered an acceptable risk.
> 
> A quarantine cannot be enforced under Dutch laws. It is a 'strong advisory' instead of obligatory. They don't post a police officer at your house.


Belgian media last week were comparing their curve favorably to yours.

But seriously, I don’t think any place in the world is in a position to point fingers at others. This damn thing’s tenacious.


----------



## mgk920

tfd543 said:


> You must hold that place in high esteem. Good that u paid a visit.


The Gettysburg Battlefield is hallowed ground for many with even a slight passing knowledge of USA history.

Mike


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I know Gettysburg from movies, television and reading up on topics on Wikipedia. 

I don't recall having ever learned something about pre 20th century U.S. history in high school. On the other hand I didn't learn that much about European history either, it quickly moved from the middle ages to the 20th century without getting much understanding about how countries or kingdoms worked in the 16-19th centuries. Apart from industrialization and Napoleon we quickly jumped to World War I. And even World War I was very limited because the Netherlands wasn't directly involved in it.

But of course time is limited and history can be endlessly interesting to some and plain boring to others.


----------



## keber

Penn's Woods said:


> I believe we’ve got some weather nerds here. This is 54 point something Celsius:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Heat wave continues across the West, as Death Valley hits record-breaking 130 degrees.
> 
> 
> Sunday's temperature in Death Valley, California, was the third hottest recorded in the history of the planet.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.nbcnews.com


3 years ago I visited Death Valley and it was 122F around Furnace creek, that is 50°C, which is probably pretty usual. But when we walked outside to middle of a salt field of Badwater Basin the temperature there was probably at least 10 degrees higher if not more. It was like walking in a finnish sauna. When we returned to our cars it felt considerably cooler (and it was 50 degrees).


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't recall having ever learned something about pre 20th century U.S. history in high school. On the other hand I didn't learn that much about European history either, it quickly moved from the middle ages to the 20th century without getting much understanding about how countries or kingdoms worked in the 16-19th centuries. Apart from industrialization and Napoleon we quickly jumped to World War I. And even World War I was very limited because the Netherlands wasn't directly involved in it.


In Poland, the course of history was quite extensive and covered that period too. We were learning not only about Poland but also about e.g. the situation in France with Napoleon, about Austria (or rather the Habsburgs' Empire), about the reunification of Germany. And about the colonial conquests too. If I recall correctly, there was also a lesson, or at least a part of it, that covered the civil war in the US.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The number of new cases in the Netherlands has stabilized, the weekly number was similar to last week. A large proportion is just in two cities: Amsterdam and Rotterdam. A few other clusters have erupted but those were traced and put under control, it's mostly those two cities where a significant number of infections continue to occur. 

45% of cases are people under 30, though they accounted for only 1 hospitalization last week. Children up to 14 years account for only 2.5% of cases, but the 15-19 age group has a substantially higher amount of cases (9.9%).

No tough restrictions were announced today, though they have limited private parties to a maximum of 6 people over 12 years old. 

Similar to Amsterdam, Rotterdam shopkeepers noted that since masks became obligatory in a couple of busy streets, visitors and revenue has plummeted dramatically.


----------



## Kpc21

Meanwhile, the Polish minister of health has resigned.

The cases:










The numbers seem to be stabilizing.

However, a friend of mine has a family that works in a hospital, and he claims that according to his family, many coronavirus cases detected in the hospital aren't actually reported.

Covid deaths:










Even though there are more cases, it hasn't really become much more lethal.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland, the course of history was quite extensive and covered that period too. We were learning not only about Poland but also about e.g. the situation in France with Napoleon, about Austria (or rather the Habsburgs' Empire), about the reunification of Germany. And about the colonial conquests too. If I recall correctly, there was also a lesson, or at least a part of it, that covered the civil war in the US.


In Lithuanian history classes, we don't call it colonial conquests, maybe just conquests, and we don't learn that we "belonged to Poland". We learned that we made a union with Poland, similar like is with European Union.

...and yes, our history is also quite extensive, and every period is covered. Coolest part of history was Lithuania being large country and covering both Baltic and Black Sea coasts when Northern Crusades left us from terrorizing. Then, after some time, union with Poland begin. Still kinda cool at the beginning, Vilnius was economically strong and has university, but for later periods, things not doing so well, wars happening, inner weakening, which lead to partitions. Then, after partition period, sad part of history begin, being economically backward area with agriculture, and delayed development of industry. It was better times for Latvia and probably Estonia, but not Lithuania. Then, slightly happier period between WWI and WWII, but have tensions with Poland over Vilnius/Wilno. After WWII, another sad (unless you like Stalinist regimes in general), but relatively recent period of being part of USSR, and "democratic & free period" after dissolution of USSR. Most recently, I would say, light tensions with Russia (information war).



Kpc21 said:


> Meanwhile, the Polish minister of health has resigned.
> 
> Even though there are more cases, it hasn't really become much more lethal.


In Lithuania, things seems to be going to direction of Croatia where three digit number of cases were found. Now we have 38 cases for Monday. New cluseter was found along with multiple clusters right now. It seems that contact tracing is not ideal. People are not wiling to cooperate. I have an impression that denial is of extreme levels as nothing was happening, or Lithuania is just immune and COVID is just another foreign issue, like terrorist attacks, or migrant crisis... As for Monday, Estonia - 8 cases, Latvia - zero cases. Single digit new case numbers are now history for us...

I don't blame people who are self-isolating and go for groceries or for a walk. It's just more than stupid to attend entertainment facilities in this condition. I think main driver of the spread are bars, clubs and parties where people drink alcohol and don't wear masks.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I know Gettysburg from movies, television and reading up on topics on Wikipedia.
> 
> I don't recall having ever learned something about pre 20th century U.S. history in high school. On the other hand I didn't learn that much about European history either, it quickly moved from the middle ages to the 20th century without getting much understanding about how countries or kingdoms worked in the 16-19th centuries. Apart from industrialization and Napoleon we quickly jumped to World War I. And even World War I was very limited because the Netherlands wasn't directly involved in it.
> 
> But of course time is limited and history can be endlessly interesting to some and plain boring to others.


I bumped into a Canadian on Facebook yesterday who didn’t know that half of the U.S. had abolished slavery soon after independence. I was stunned. Because that seems basic to me.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I know Gettysburg from movies, television and reading up on topics on Wikipedia.
> 
> I don't recall having ever learned something about pre 20th century U.S. history in high school. On the other hand I didn't learn that much about European history either, it quickly moved from the middle ages to the 20th century without getting much understanding about how countries or kingdoms worked in the 16-19th centuries. Apart from industrialization and Napoleon we quickly jumped to World War I. And even World War I was very limited because the Netherlands wasn't directly involved in it.
> 
> But of course time is limited and history can be endlessly interesting to some and plain boring to others.


I’d think in the Netherlands of all countries you’d get something about the 17th century...your “golden age”!


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> In Lithuanian history classes, we don't call it colonial conquests, maybe just conquests, and we don't learn that we "belonged to Poland". We learned that we made a union with Poland, similar like is with European Union.


As colonial conquests I meant the conquests e.g. of America, India and so on. Discovery of America is considered as one of the dates to refer to as the end of Middle Ages and the start of Modern Ages (or whatever it is called in English, Polish "nowożytność", as opposed to "starożytność" – Ancient Ages, or whatever the period in history the adjective for which is "ancient" is called).

And we are also taught that we were in a union with Lithuania. Although... it looks like Poland played the dominant role. The capital was in Cracow or later in Warsaw, the head of the state (the same person) was the King of Poland but only Duke of Lithuania... But maybe it's only my impression. Anyway, for most for that period we were a democracy. Not like the democracies today, as peasants had no right to vote, only the nobility had – but regarding that, the nobility from Lithuania had the same rights as the nobility from Poland.

By the way, to those not knowledgeable about the eastern-European history, we are talking about Lithuania, but it wasn't Lithuania in the current borders – it also covered most of the current Belarus and Ukraine.

I wonder if Belorussians and Ukrainians may feel bad about this fact... But taking into account the quite democratic form of ruling the country, especially for that period, it doesn't seem to me they should. However, they didn't have their own states (or even anything like federal regions), probably considering themselves to be separate nations...


----------



## PovilD

I see Grand Duchy of Lithuania as Lithuania-Belarus. Baltic nobility with actual Baltic names, but no Baltic language of some sort at all in official setting. Only Polish/Ruthenian/Latin instead.

There were also parts of Ukraine too in Grand Duchy, but as far as I know they switched to Poland. Lithuania-Belarus was almost until the end 
On those times Belarus and Ukraine probably was more or less one nation - Ruthenians. Moscow Russia would call them "Another/Different Russians".

---
As for Polish dominance, yes, I think there was some of it, Polish language was becoming more and more dominant as far as I know. Many Lithuanians would admit that "we belonged to Poland" after the union was made, and the best times was when Grand Duke Vytautas (popular name in Lithuania, btw) has ruled when Lithuania has largest land area and reached as South as Black Sea, and there were still no union back then.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> As colonial conquests I meant the conquests e.g. of America, India and so on. Discovery of America is considered as one of the dates to refer to as the end of Middle Ages and the start of Modern Ages (or whatever it is called in English, Polish "nowożytność", as opposed to "starożytność" – Ancient Ages, or whatever the period in history the adjective for which is "ancient" is called).
> 
> And we are also taught that we were in a union with Lithuania. Although... it looks like Poland played the dominant role. The capital was in Cracow or later in Warsaw, the head of the state (the same person) was the King of Poland but only Duke of Lithuania... But maybe it's only my impression. Anyway, for most for that period we were a democracy. Not like the democracies today, as peasants had no right to vote, only the nobility had – but regarding that, the nobility from Lithuania had the same rights as the nobility from Poland.
> 
> By the way, to those not knowledgeable about the eastern-European history, we are talking about Lithuania, but it wasn't Lithuania in the current borders – it also covered most of the current Belarus and Ukraine.
> 
> I wonder if Belorussians and Ukrainians may feel bad about this fact... But taking into account the quite democratic form of ruling the country, especially for that period, it doesn't seem to me they should. However, they didn't have their own states (or even anything like federal regions), probably considering themselves to be separate nations...


If only the nobility could vote, that's by definition not a democracy. I've seen it referred to as a "noble republic," but that still sounds odd.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> Grand Duke Vytautas (popular name in Lithuania, btw)


This reminds me a very weird Internet commercial:







Advertising mineral water Vytautas (rather not known in Poland) and Haier fridges (a brand that sometimes appears in Poland but isn't really popular either).

The voice is evidently a foreigner speaking Polish, I don't know of which nation/native language, but rather not any western-European. E.g. he pronounces our "ą" as "ou".

Translating that voice... if you want to understand it, because it makes it even weirder.



> Internet is full of things.
> For example like this, or this.
> They just waste precious megabytes.
> Haier fridges and Vytautas water, both in the same video.
> To save your time and Internet space.
> ~ Vytautas takes you Haier ~
> Vytautas is useful to you.
> This is what it contains:
> Calcium.
> Magnesium.
> Sodium.
> Happiness.
> Molten lava.
> And dark matter.
> And lightnings.
> Because lightnings cure hangover.
> When you have one.
> Haier is enormous.
> It's larger than my first room.
> The room in which I lost my virginity.
> You need GPS to find this steak.
> This is what you can fit inside.
> Food.
> Much food.
> Four other fridges.
> A tractor.
> A cloud that looks like an elephant.
> An elephant alone.
> I said that Haier is enormous.
> But there are things that don't fit inside.
> It's your masculinity,
> Putin's ego
> and the number of all Poles living in England.
> Ha!
> Drinking Vytautas
> is as good to you
> as to talk to the Miss of the Universe
> on a super-yacht
> that gently rocks on the ocean
> of the tears
> of your enemies.
> Did I say to talk?
> I wanted to say
> To love each other.
> Are you saying it's too large for you?
> Who are you?
> A woman?
> "Too large for me"
> It's not what men should be saying
> They should hear that.
> Ha!
> A joke about the ***** size.
> F**** off conventional marketing.
> Vytautas!
> Once upon a time there was
> a man whose head exploded
> after drinking.
> This weak cad was allergic to coolness.
> Oops.
> Having a Haier in your kitchen
> is like having a portal to another dimension
> a world full of happiness and luck
> in form of beer, steak
> and something your lady eats.
> What would happen
> if you placed the best mineral water in the world
> into the best fridgeeee$%##%#$ in the world?
> Can you see it?
> Even by thinking so, I broke the Internet for a moment.
> But will it stop you from trying?
> Nooooo!
> ~ No no. No no no no. No no no no. No no No No. NO NO. ~
> Don't stop!
> Mineral water Vytautas.
> Juice from the Earth.
> And the Haier fridge.
> Your widest door to another dimension.





Penn's Woods said:


> If only the nobility could vote, that's by definition not a democracy. I've seen it referred to as a "noble republic," but that still sounds odd.


Not a democracy in the modern sense, but something much closer to a true democracy than in most European countries back then. It is called "noble democracy" over here.


----------



## MichiH

What do you think about the new Google Maps map style?


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> What do you think about the new Google Maps map style?


Did I miss something? I can't see any change.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't see the new layout either, but apparently it looks like this:


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Penn's Woods said:


> If only the nobility could vote, that's by definition not a democracy. I've seen it referred to as a "noble republic," but that still sounds odd


Democracy is government by the people. The definition of "people" was more restricted in e.g. the Athenian republic or in the old Norse governance structures, men without land generally were not allowed to vote until the late 19th century, women until the 20th century, but in all countries "people" still does not mean all humans in the country, e.g. temporary immigrants, children, and sometimes convicts still do not have the right to vote.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't see the new layout either, but apparently it looks like this:


Exactly! It wasn't that "green" for me till yesterday when zoomed-out..... Was it already changed earlier for you?


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> This reminds me a very weird Internet commercial:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Advertising mineral water Vytautas (rather not known in Poland) and Haier fridges (a brand that sometimes appears in Poland but isn't really popular either).
> 
> The voice is evidently a foreigner speaking Polish, I don't know of which nation/native language, but rather not any western-European. E.g. he pronounces our "ą" as "ou".


It was voiced by quite famous Lithuanian actor Marius Repšys which appears in some Lithuanian movies. There are videos of Vytautas mineral water mostly in Lithuanian language in this YouTube channel katashnis85 where things got popularized. These commercials were popular in 2014-2016 period, and some of them were shown even on television (at least not regularly). It's interesting to find out that some Lithuanian things become popular in Poland, like DJ Jovani (Jonas Nainys) and this commercial  You get 10x times bigger audience 



ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't see the new layout either, but apparently it looks like this:


I would think that The Netherlands is a huge forest with towns on highway junctions.


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't see the new layout either, but apparently it looks like this:


So still just two colors for all the types of roads. I still remember times when there was distinction even between tolled and non tolled roads which would be very welcome in planning trips.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's irrelevant information, just like knowing which roads are motorways and which are narrow two lane roads is not relevant information. You don't have to decide anything for your trip, Google will do that for you. Google knows best.

That's pretty much how Google works these days. The next thing is Google Maps with only a white map with no features. The algorithm will decide. Human knowledge not required.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^ In the future I guess google will also drive your car ;-)

So farmed areas become green? Right now, the area color coding changes with the map of the scale. When zooming in to a certain height blue is water and green is forest or national parks. Everything else (e.g. urban, mountainous, farmed) is grey, which is not very informative.....


----------



## PovilD

Google will decide what nutrients will you need, along with your emotions, job, life, and travel intentions


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't see the new layout either, but apparently it looks like this:


Nothing like that here:


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

The number of Corona-quarantine free countries for traveling into Norway is dwindling. UK, Greece, Austria, and Ireland will probably enter the Norwegian red list.








Coronaviruset: Reisekart


VG henter inn tall så du hele tiden kan holde deg oppdatert på hvordan innreisereglene slår ut for ulike land.



www.vg.no




Then only Germany, Italy, Finland and a few Baltic and Eastern European countries in addition to some regions in Denmark and Sweden will not require quarantine. Germany is actually also quite close to become red, though. Norway has itself entered the red list of Finland as Norway has had more than 10/100 000 registered infections during the last 14 days. However, the rate of registered infections seems to flatten now, despite of a steep increase in testing.








Coronaviruset: Slik spres viruset i Norge og verden. Kart og statistikk.


VG gir deg de siste tallene og oversikt over coronavirusets utvikling. Sjekk status i din egen kommune. Informasjonen oppdateres fortløpende.



www.vg.no


----------



## Attus

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> e.g. *temporary immigrants*, children, and sometimes convicts still do not have the right to vote.


Not only temporary ones. In some countries it's pretty difficult to get citizenship for immigrants, and citizenship is needed for voting, at least on national level. 
And it's quite an important issue nowadays, even in Europe. I guess there are several forum members here, e.g. Bogdy or me (Surel? Tfd543?), who are not citizens of the country they're living in. In Germany of a population of 83 millions, aprox. 11M people have no German citizenship, i.e. ~13% of the population. In Luxembourg ~50% of the population have no citizenship and may not vote. 
Having dual citizenship is restricted in many nations. Being a German *and *a Turkish citizen is not fully impossible but for most of the people unavailable, so many people having Turkish origins don't apply for a German citizenship in order not to lose the Turkish one. There are lots of adult people, having been born in Germany, having lived in Germany in all their life, without German citizenship.


----------



## PovilD

btw, normal Google Maps for me too, no forest Netherlands or Europe for that matter.


----------



## PovilD

I had a dream tonight that I was really scared that new daily COVID cases tripled over what is now (20-30), since I was pretty anxious about fast second wave during first half of Summer. After another dream has passed where I dream about being in the Alps, I woke up, and I was thinking myself that if there really will be 70 cases I won't be scarred like in the dream  Then checked statistics - 23 cases. Then I thought: "Nope. Not today"  ...but I would say that 70+ new cases per day are quite likely in Lithuania probably as soon as following weeks


----------



## MacOlej

Attus said:


> Nothing like that here:
> View attachment 421596


I've read today that the rollout of the new version should take a few days. During this period, some users may already see the new interface, some may not.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

PovilD said:


> btw, normal Google Maps for me too, no forest Netherlands or Europe for that matter.


Even Iceland will be green, even if its interior in reality is a lava desert. Why not use other colors?








Google Maps is getting a lot more detail


Helping show the difference between ice caps and greenery.




www.theverge.com


----------



## PovilD

It should have light green-yellowish shade, I think.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Finland will restrict travel to/from almost all of Europe.


----------



## PovilD

They want to be safe island for this winter. Good for them, I guess.

Lithuania, and I think Estonia, should become not available from next week for them. Thanks to nightclubs, parties, and youth events, especially in my city.

Italy is doing better than expected for Southern European country  It may have to do with psychological factor that they were first "outside of China" (well, not first, maybe first among Developed countries).


----------



## radamfi

Google Maps is _useful_ but isn't _pretty_, ever since they got rid of the different colours for the different kinds of roads. OpenStreetMap has that, so it is my default choice unless I need something that Google Maps provides.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

PovilD said:


> is doing better than expected for Southern European country


I dont find it funny


----------



## Penn's Woods

Am I the only one who finds this insane? I mean, finds that legislating this is insane?









Germans must walk their dogs twice a day, new law will say


Minister to introduce law next year to ensure nation’s 9.4 million dogs get enough exercise




www.theguardian.com


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> Am I the only one who finds this insane? I mean, finds that legislating this is insane?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Germans must walk their dogs twice a day, new law will say
> 
> 
> Minister to introduce law next year to ensure nation’s 9.4 million dogs get enough exercise
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.theguardian.com


It's not a joke, it's true!


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> It's not a joke, it's true!


I know it’s no joke. That’s insane. For starters, how do you enforce this?


----------



## MichiH

I think that the law is "needed" to have a measure in case of cruelty to animals. Dogs should be "outside" minimum twice per day for minimum one hour.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> I think that the law is "needed" to have a measure in case of cruelty to animals. Dogs should be "outside" minimum twice per day for minimum one hour.


Oh, I’m sure it’s well intended....


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> Oh, I’m sure it’s well intended....


And if there is trouble with a dog owner, anyone can monitor him. The district veterinary offices should be responsible for that. I don't think that anyone would monitor the dog owner 24 hours but in case that it is, say, just 10 minutes, they have a threshold to judge whether it is enough or not. The previous law just said that the time must be "enough".


----------



## MattiG

MichiH said:


> It's not a joke, it's true!


Ordnung muss sein!


----------



## Penn's Woods

MattiG said:


> Ordnung muss sein!


Ja wohl!


----------



## PovilD

VITORIA MAN said:


> I dont find it funny


Ok

---
All South was pretty much the first to go for a current wave, including Spain, Balkans, then Greece. Italy is doing better than most of Europe I would say.


----------



## Penn's Woods

First I’ve heard of this:









Berlin Autobahn Crashes Are Deemed a Possible Terrorist Attack (Published 2020)


A man injured six by allegedly ramming motorcycles on a city highway. The public prosecutor is investigating whether it was an act of Islamist terrorism.




www.nytimes.com


----------



## MichiH

MattiG said:


> Ordnung muss sein!


Yep, there was a sitcom in 2000s: Hausmeister Krause – Ordnung muss sein - Wikipedia

It was about a caretaker his dog and dog club. Their slogan was: "Everything for the sausage dog ("Dackel"), everything for the club, our life for the dog!"


----------



## Kpc21

What if it's a typical purse dog, like chihuahua? Are you also supposed to walk it twice a day?

And what if the dog lives outside, in your backyard?



MichiH said:


> Everything for the sausage dog ("Dackel"),


Interestingly, the word for Dackel in English is dachshund. This English word, I guess loaned from German, means a "roof dog" in German 

In Poland we have "dachowiec" ("the roof one") but it refers to a breedless cat (cat equivalent of a mongrel dog).


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> What if it's a typical purse dog, like chihuahua? Are you also supposed to walk it twice a day?
> 
> And what if the dog lives outside, in your backyard?


It is only required that the dog must be "outside", e.g. in the backyard, minimum twice per day for minimum one hour in total.



Kpc21 said:


> Interestingly, the word for Dackel in English is dachshund. This English word, I guess loaned from German, means a "roof dog" in German
> 
> In Poland we have "dachowiec" ("the roof one") but it refers to a breedless cat (cat equivalent of a mongrel dog).


Dachshund - Wikipedia or wiener dog or badger dog or sausage dog


----------



## Kpc21

It's a low-floor type of dog, which is used by the Solaris brand of city buses (from Poland, although now they are owned by the Spanish CAF) in their marketing 










niskopodłogowy means low-floor


----------



## PovilD

Saw similar dog logo in some of my city trolleybuses which are Solaris too


----------



## Kpc21

I guess the dachshund on a trolleybus has a leash, though


----------



## Penn's Woods

Spot the map fail:


----------



## Spookvlieger

It says US over Canadian territory?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Spookvlieger said:


> It says US over Canadian territory?


It does.


----------



## cinxxx

MichiH said:


> Latest German risk classification changes:
> Croatia – the counties Šibenik-Knin and Split-Dalmatia County are classified as risk areas; Romania – the county of Vâlcea is classified as risk areas. Luxembourg and in Romania the counties of Ialomita, Mehedinți and *Timis are no longer considered as risk areas*.
> 
> 
> https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Transport/Archiv_Risikogebiete/Risikogebiete_20082020_en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile


Great, the reason I canceled my drive to TM last weekend was because it was added on the risk zone and I was not exactly clear if I would be forced to quarantine after my return or I could go out with a negative test.
I could have just go and then return without any trouble since it's no longer a risk zone...


----------



## PovilD

x-type said:


> Second wave is so old fashioned. We are entering the third wave 🙃
> 
> View attachment 425604


Wave "Two and a half"


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> Another leading brand is Mercedes Conecto (unfortunately, Mercedes offers a worse, lower quality model for the central- and eastern-European markets, than the model Citaro which you find e.g. in Germany – Solaris offers the same model in the whole Europe)


Presumably the Conecto is cheaper. Surely if a bus company can afford the Citaro, why can't it buy one, even if it isn't in western Europe? Central Europe drives the same side of the road as western Europe. Also, when I visited Bulgaria about 5 years ago I saw lots of second-hand Citaros. A lot of them weren't repainted and still had bus maps of German cities.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> Presumably the Conecto is cheaper. Surely if a bus company can afford the Citaro, why can't it buy one, even if it isn't in western Europe?


Because Mercedes always offers us Conecto and not Citaro. Probably because they compete with Solaris proposing here lower prices than in the West. They consider Citaro a "premium" product only the western-European markets can afford...

There is something called public procurement law, you cannot write in the tender "we want to order n Mercedes Conecto buses". You write "we want to order n buses of such and such length, with such and such engine power, with such and such environmental parameters", and so on, describing your expectations in detail, and any manufacturer or bus dealer may answer to your tender. And it cannot be so detailed that it would discriminate one producer and favour another. Actually, public transport operators are sometimes trying to do such things, but they don't always work. Łódź used to do it, but once it happened they wanted Mercedes (back then the rolling stock was assigned to all the depots, one depots had Jelcz and Mercedes buses, the other Volvo and Solaris) and Solaris won. Since then, they aren't doing such things any more. Anyway, it isn't legal.



radamfi said:


> Also, when I visited Bulgaria about 5 years ago I saw lots of second-hand Citaros.


Second-hand is another thing. They are usually bought from western Europe, so naturally you find Citaros and not Connectos.

Anyway, in the last years Solaris is always winning and Mercedes failing, and it's good because they would offer the new version of Connecto, which is different in appearance from Citaro (previously those two models looked almost the same) and it's just ugly.










Meanwhile, the new version of Solaris has really interesting design.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> There is something called public procurement law, you cannot write in the tender "we want to order n Mercedes Conecto buses". You write "we want to order n buses of such and such length, with such and such engine power, with such and such environmental parameters", and so on, describing your expectations in detail, and any manufacturer or bus dealer may answer to your tender. And it cannot be so detailed that it would discriminate one producer and favour another.


So is the problem that the bus company is owned by the state? What if you had franchised bus services where private bus companies are paid to run the buses on behalf of the government? Then would the private bus company be allowed to buy Citaros? 

Mercedes offer the Citaro to UK operators but it is not popular because UK bus companies are very cost-conscious and so mostly only buy very low specification buses. For example, no double-glazing or air-conditioning. And from what I've heard the right-hand drive version of the Citaro is not as good. So nearly all buses in Britain are Alexander Dennis or Wright (from Northern Ireland).


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> So is the problem that the bus company is owned by the state?


It is owned by the city. Although recently they contracted an external company for several tram replacement routes.



radamfi said:


> What if you had franchised bus services where private bus companies are paid to run the buses on behalf of the government?


Some cities in Poland do it, although the model with a city-owned bus company is dominant. It's not easy to change it, certainly trade unions would strongly protest and oppose that.

And also an issue is that those companies are most often with foreign capital (Mobilis from Israel or Arriva from Germany). Although not always, e.g. the mentioned bus replacement service is operated by a Polish company from Lublin, which recently finished a long-term contract in Warsaw and they could reuse the buses. The company is BP Tour, and they are more known in Poland for long-distance routes from Lublin.

But even if it was a private company buying buses, I guess it wouldn't be affordable for them to buy Citaro, having Solaris available.

Currently in Warsaw, apart from the city-owned MZA, there are four private contractors: Arriva, Mobilis, Michalczewski and PKS Grodzisk Mazowiecki. Arriva, although being a German company (and not really private – as they are owned by German railways), uses mostly Solaris buses, and also some Otokar from Turkey. Michalczewski uses only Scania buses, PKS Grodzisk Mazowiecki has mostly Solaris and several MAN Lion's City. Mobilis has a similar number of Solaris, Mercedes Conecto and MAN.

So for some reason, even private companies are buying lower quality Connecto instead of Citaro. I wonder why it doesn't happen in western Europe, where such situations with contracting the local public transport to private companies also happen.



radamfi said:


> Mercedes offer the Citaro to UK operators but it is not popular because UK bus companies are very cost-conscious and so mostly only buy very low specification buses. For example, no double-glazing or air-conditioning. And from what I've heard the right-hand drive version of the Citaro is not as good. So nearly all buses in Britain are Alexander Dennis or Wright (from Northern Ireland).


British buses are weird, and your system of city transport is very specific. It's sad that there is practically no fare integration. For each ride you need a new single ticket. Tickets are typically purchased from the drivers, which extends the ride duration. There are no multimodal interchanges around the city, but all the suburban bus lines must go to the very city center. I saw that in Edinburgh. 

I was at a camping near the airport. From the airport, there is a tram line to the city center, however, the camping was too far to walk to the tram, so we were choosing buses. And we had to keep riding those buses to the center, otherwise we would have to pay twice for the ticket. In the center, on the main road, there were so many buses arriving from various towns around, that even though it had a DOUBLE bus lane, this lane was totally jammed and the buses lost really a lot of time just at the destination. I even joked this is the reason why in the UK you use double-decker buses instead of articulated ones – with articulated buses, those jams would be twice longer.

Even in Poland, which is quite underdeveloped regarding the public transport, you can normally switch between various buses or buses and trams (in Łódź even between buses, trams and regional trains... although the train system within the city is still under development and doesn't have much to offer) within the same single ticket. In Germany, such a system also covers regional buses. And in the UK, you need a new ticket to transfer from a bus to a tram... The result is that all the buses must go to the center instead of allowing an easy transfer to a tram or to a train that would take the passenger from the outskirts to the center in a fast and efficient way.

A weird thing regarding British buses is while they have the front door in the right way, taking into account the left-hand traffic, the rear door is on the right, as if the bus was made for right-hand traffic. So it cannot be used by the passengers during normal operation; they are forced to use the front door, and the rear one is only an emergency exit. Why the heck would you have door in a bus on the wrong side?

The whole right-hand-driving Europe doesn't have them, the buses don't have any doors on the left, and there is absolutely no problem with that.

Even if there is an accident, in which the bus falls onto its side (a very rare situation, usually anyway being a huge disaster with many injured, or even dead people), you are either supposed to exit through the vents in the roof (which are designed so that they can also work as emergency exits), or crash a specially labelled window on the left – the bus is equipped with special little hammers for this purpose.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> British buses are weird, and your system of city transport is very specific. It's sad that there is practically no fare integration. For each ride you need a new single ticket. Tickets are typically purchased from the drivers, which extends the ride duration. There are no multimodal interchanges around the city, but all the suburban bus lines must go to the very city center. I saw that in Edinburgh.
> 
> I was at a camping near the airport. From the airport, there is a tram line to the city center, however, the camping was too far to walk to the tram, so we were choosing buses. And we had to keep riding those buses to the center, otherwise we would have to pay twice for the ticket. In the center, on the main road, there were so many buses arriving from various towns around, that even though it had a DOUBLE bus lane, this lane was totally jammed and the buses lost really a lot of time just at the destination. I even joked this is the reason why in the UK you use double-decker buses instead of articulated ones – with articulated buses, those jams would be twice longer.
> 
> Even in Poland, which is quite underdeveloped regarding the public transport, you can normally switch between various buses or buses and trams (in Łódź even between buses, trams and regional trains... although the train system within the city is still under development and doesn't have much to offer) within the same single ticket. In Germany, such a system also covers regional buses. And in the UK, you need a new ticket to transfer from a bus to a tram... The result is that all the buses must go to the center instead of allowing an easy transfer to a tram or to a train that would take the passenger from the outskirts to the center in a fast and efficient way.


Tell me about it...! The UK doesn't understand how to do public transport, even though it would be trivial to copy what happens in other European countries. I've already written at length about British insularity. However, if you go onto British bus forums, people actually prefer the British system as they always say that people don't want to change and always want a direct bus. Of course, ignoring the fact that most destinations are only accessible by changing bus. Again, when you say that, people say that everybody wants to go to the city centre (!)

The sad thing is, your example of Edinburgh is actually considered to be one of the best bus networks in the UK! 

London is better than elsewhere as it isn't deregulated there and since about 3 years ago even allows you to change between buses without paying extra, and between buses and trams. However, the Underground is not integrated with bus fares. As you rightly say, in most of the country drivers sell a lot of tickets, wasting a lot of time, but in London drivers don't sell tickets at all.


----------



## Kpc21

On the other hand, isn't it so that you have developed and government-organized public transport between towns and villages, outside big cities?

In Poland such a thing practically doesn't exist; it's in a state of collapse.



radamfi said:


> people actually prefer the British system as they always say that people don't want to change and always want a direct bus.


Then you would have to have bus lines from everywhere to everywhere... And it isn't feasible.

An issue is there might be such a tendency that:
1. There are too many infrequent lines that connect various points, so the PT is unattractive for passengers
2. So it's decided to reduce the number of direct connections, and instead to increase the frequency
3. Everyone is happy
4. With time the frequency is slowly going down, not all the lines come back to old timetables after the holidays
5. Finally, we have frequencies like in (1), but with the reduced number of direct connections, which makes the public transport even less attractive than in (1)

This is what happened throughout last decades with the trams in Łódź.

To me, important issues are:
– a predictable and consequent system (so that it's easy to plan trips),
– comfortable interchange points (it's best if the transfer happens within the same stop, worst are situations when it's necessary to run through traffic lights or underground passages),
– synchronized timetables (so that you don't wait long for the transfer),
– as I said earlier, an integrated fare system,
– avoiding a tendency I described above – the system must be based on some principles that should be followed all the time.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> On the other hand, isn't it so that you have developed and government-organized public transport between towns and villages, outside big cities?


The way bus deregulation works means that urban buses get almost no subsidy as the private companies have decided they can run the service without subsidy, because they can charge whatever fares they like. Where there is a private company running a bus commercially in this manner, the local government is not allowed to subsidise services unless a direct route is substantially different to a direct route operated commercially. So the main public transport responsibility of the local government is to pay bus companies to run in places where the private bus companies don't want to run a service, so they end up subsidising rural services. However there is usually no evening or Sunday service. The local government has increasingly less and less money to pay for these services. 

As far as I can tell, rural bus services are at least as good in most other European countries.


----------



## Kpc21

So you went the liberal... too liberal way, and this is how it ends up.

In Poland, the transport within cities (and some towns) is managed by those cities and highly subsidized. The rural services in most areas are not regulated and not subsidized at all (except for monthly tickets for students, the state pays 50% of the price of which), so they often don't exist any more, or only exist when they are used by students commuting to their schools. Although many rural municipalities runs separate, closed school bus services only for the pupils, and in those cases there usually isn't any public bus transport. And if such services exist, they are often of poor quality, with too small minibuses or very old buses and very limited timetables, like the bus riding twice a day.

Deregulation of city transport in Poland wouldn't rather work. In the UK, the tickets are several times more expensive than in Poland, and if the prices were such in Poland, there would be certainly much complaints about them. The income gap between Poland and the UK is too large to adopt the British system here... And anyway it doesn't seem to be really good (although... with some changes, like forcing an integrated fare system, it could be).

But, do I understand well, the local governments in the UK can set some standards for those deregulated bus services, like that the buses must be low-floor, not older than n years, fulfilling some specific environmental standards etc.?


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> ...


There is whole European-wide legislation on this and, if I am not mistaken, if the purely private company wants to tender buses for public service obligation contract, they have to tender everything too. You have basically two entities: an authority (usually public administration office such as ministry, region, city) and an operator and there are two models. The main goal of the authority is to provide sustainable and reliable transport services to areas and in times, where it would not be profitable for commercial service provided by the private transport operator. The solution is to tender the operator and reimburse the loss from the authority budget - it is the main subject of the so-called public service obligation contract. And you have two models:

service provided by private operator - you (as an authority) have to tender the private operator once you prepare the serviceability plan including vehicle kilometre volume, routes, tentative timetables (at least the headway) and size of buses. The contract can last from three to ten years.
service provided by an operator owned by the authority - no transport operator tender is needed.

This is the European regulation 1371/2007 valid in all member states, not only in Slovakia. According to my experiences, the latter one system works better.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> In Łódź we only have 12 m and 18 m Solaris buses. Another leading brand is Mercedes Conecto (unfortunately, Mercedes offers a worse, lower quality model for the central- and eastern-European markets, than the model Citaro which you find e.g. in Germany – Solaris offers the same model in the whole Europe), there are also some Volvo and Jelcz, but new buses of those brands haven't been bought for many years. Although now Volvo won a tender for new electric buses. And recently, the city purchased some Isuzu Novociti Life with the length of 7.86 m – actually, they had their European premiere in Łódź. Also my town recently purchased two such buses.


We have different brands, mostly new ones: Iveco, Solaris, Mercedes and Czech manufacturer SOR. The biggest ones are Mercedes Capacity. They are 19,8 m long with 4 axles.









We also have a few second-hand buses from Klagenfurt (MAN) an Berlin (Solaris):

MAN in the original livery from Klagenfurt










Solaris from Berlin in our livery:


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> So you went the liberal... too liberal way, and this is how it ends up.
> 
> In Poland, the transport within cities (and some towns) is managed by those cities and highly subsidized. The rural services in most areas are not regulated and not subsidized at all (except for monthly tickets for students, the state pays 50% of the price of which), so they often don't exist any more, or only exist when they are used by students commuting to their schools. Although many rural municipalities runs separate, closed school bus services only for the pupils, and in those cases there usually isn't any public bus transport. And if such services exist, they are often of poor quality, with too small minibuses or very old buses and very limited timetables, like the bus riding twice a day.
> 
> Deregulation of city transport in Poland wouldn't rather work. In the UK, the tickets are several times more expensive than in Poland, and if the prices were such in Poland, there would be certainly much complaints about them. The income gap between Poland and the UK is too large to adopt the British system here... And anyway it doesn't seem to be really good (although... with some changes, like forcing an integrated fare system, it could be).
> 
> But, do I understand well, the local governments in the UK can set some standards for those deregulated bus services, like that the buses must be low-floor, not older than n years, fulfilling some specific environmental standards etc.?


Yes, there are basic rules that all bus companies must comply with, although there is no age limit.

Deregulation started in 1986 when Margaret Thatcher was the prime minister. She privatised most things that were possible to privatise and she wanted everybody to buy cars and use cars as much as possible. In some cities in the north of England, prices were very cheap. For example, in Sheffield the bus fare was 5p. Even in today's money that would only be about 15p (about 0.20 euros). So Margaret Thatcher was fed up of these subsidies. Fares went up a lot in most cities and passenger numbers fell dramatically. Yes, some people complained but most people use cars so no one took any notice. But in London they only did franchising and didn't do deregulation. In London, bus passengers have gone up a lot since 1986 but in the big cities outside London they have fallen by about half.


----------



## Suburbanist

Traditional buses are going obsolete and should be replaced by trams, self-driving light (automated) metros, and possibly self-driving/autonomous last-mile connecting van services.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

new electric bus - tram for Vitoria (E)
Irizar ie tram 18m by Irizar emobility, en Flickr
Irizar ie tram 18m by Irizar emobility, en Flickr
Irizar ie tram 12m by Irizar emobility, en Flickr


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## geogregor

radamfi said:


> Tell me about it...! The UK doesn't understand how to do public transport, even though it would be trivial to copy what happens in other European countries. I've already written at length about British insularity. However, if you go onto British bus forums, people actually prefer the British system as they always say that people don't want to change and always want a direct bus. Of course, ignoring the fact that most destinations are only accessible by changing bus. Again, when you say that, people say that everybody wants to go to the city centre (!)
> 
> The sad thing is, your example of Edinburgh is actually considered to be one of the best bus networks in the UK!


British public transport (outside London) is a fricking joke. Deregulated private city buses is strange phenomenon, I don't thing it exists in any other developed country.

I know that Greater Manchester would like to replicate London system but we'll see if Tory rightwingers will let hem.

I'm surprised that Scots (which have devolved control of the transport policy) kept the system of private buses, I would think they would be the first to follow London's example.



> London is better than elsewhere as it isn't deregulated there and since about 3 years ago even allows you to change between buses without paying extra, and between buses and trams. * However, the Underground is not integrated with bus fares*. As you rightly say, in most of the country drivers sell a lot of tickets, wasting a lot of time, but in London drivers don't sell tickets at all.


Actually it is, but in a strange way. You have daily cap for any given combination of zones. In that way if you do a few tube journeys, let say between zones 2-4, then you rich the cap and buses are free. And that applies to buses in all zones. It is not ideal as it doesn't really offer much benefit on a simple journey (for example one tube ride and one bus) but in many situations it does work to passenger benefit.

Traditionally in London Tube journey cross-subsidized bus network, which grew significantly in the last two decades or so. But I think they went too far, there are no moves to rationalize the bus network, by cutting duplicated routes on the same corridors. Since people can now switch buses on a single fare it should be easier to implement.


----------



## radamfi

I've been on the Irizar ie tram in Amiens in northern France and it is a very nice electric bus. But is it sufficiently "tram like" to fool people into thinking that it isn't a bus, despite the name and covering up the tyres?


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## VITORIA MAN

i think its just a commercial name , this is the irizar electric bus :
Irizar ie bus by Irizar emobility, en Flickr
Irizar ie bus 18m by Irizar emobility, en Flickr


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## radamfi

geogregor said:


> British public transport (outside London) is a fricking joke. Deregulated private city buses is strange phenomenon, I don't thing it exists in any other developed country.


A watered down version of bus deregulation was introduced in New Zealand but it was different because the council were allowed to run buses in competition with commercial services, and the proportion of commercial services was much lower than the UK.



geogregor said:


> I know that Greater Manchester would like to replicate London system but we'll see if Tory rightwingers will let hem.


It must be remembered that Labour were in government from 1997 to 2010 and did nothing to get rid of deregulation, so I don't trust them either. If it wasn't for the current government, there would be no Greater Manchester mayor and no powers to get rid of bus deregulation, although I believe that this was an unintended consequence. Even so, the progress towards franchising is very slow and has been further delayed (possibly terminally) by the Covid crisis.



geogregor said:


> I'm surprised that Scots (which have devolved control of the transport policy) kept the system of private buses, I would think they would be the first to follow London's example.


The SNP had a policy of getting rid of deregulation until about 2005. Then Brian Souter (boss of major transport firm Stagecoach) made a big donation to the SNP. Then the SNP got into government and conveniently forgot about their old bus policy.



geogregor said:


> Actually it is, but in a strange way. You have daily cap for any given combination of zones. In that way if you do a few tube journeys, let say between zones 2-4, then you rich the cap and buses are free. And that applies to buses in all zones. It is not ideal as it doesn't really offer much benefit on a simple journey (for example one tube ride and one bus) but in many situations it does work to passenger benefit.


Big cities in Britain have long had multi-modal tickets but never for single trips. London has had paper Travelcards since the 80s. For the most part, you have to get a day ticket or longer to make transport vaguely affordable. A lot of the time you need to get a day ticket just to make a single journey, especially outside London. For example, a single bus or tram ride in Manchester can easily cost £4, yet an off-peak bus and tram day ticket costs £7.50, so if you change from bus to tram you are better off with a day ticket.


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## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> Then Brian Souter (boss of major transport firm Stagecoach) made a big donation to the SNP.


This man revolutionized the long-distance bus transport in Poland. Previously, it was based mostly on post-communist bus companies, who next to their local lines (those still existing...) ran long-distance connections. Although those long-distance connections were often stopping even in small villages, not necessarily using the shortest and fastest routes (e.g. they rarely made use of the motorways) and did not provide much quality – either second-hand coaches imported from western Europe, or the obsolete Polish products from 1990s and early 2000s. Or sometimes even yet older Polish buses. E.g. often the lavatory was unavailable (closed) and nobody cared about that.

Souter started the company PolskiBus.com in 2011. Its operation was based on novel principles as for Poland:
– they stopped only in large cities,
– tickets could only be bought online,
– the fares were dynamic, like in low-cost airlines – the earlier you bought the ticket, the cheaper it was.

Especially through their offer of cheap tickets (buying it early enough, you could even pay just 1 zł ~ 0.20 EUR), they generated quite a lot of demand and popularized weekend "city breaks".

In the answer to their offer, the railway had to improve its services. With time, some other companies also started adapting this model. 

With the end of 2017, Souter finished his activity in Poland, selling everything to FlixBus (actually, if I am not mistaken, they still operate some connections under the FlixBus brand, but there is less and less of them). But the market of intercity bus connections in Poland is totally different now.



radamfi said:


> Big cities in Britain have long had multi-modal tickets but never for single trips. London has had paper Travelcards since the 80s. For the most part, you have to get a day ticket or longer to make transport vaguely affordable. A lot of the time you need to get a day ticket just to make a single journey, especially outside London. For example, a single bus or tram ride in Manchester can easily cost £4, yet an off-peak bus and tram day ticket costs £7.50, so if you change from bus to tram you are better off with a day ticket.


In Poland it's usually so that the price of the ticket depends on the time of its validity. E.g. in Łódź we have 20-minute, 40-minute and 60-minute tickets. And daily ones. So you e.g. get a 20-minute ticket and you can change between buses, trams etc. as much as you wish. If you are only going to spend several minutes at your destination, it might even be a better option to use the same ticket for the right there and for the ride back instead of two separate ones.

The only issue is what happens if the vehicle is delayed. In Łódź, in theory, the times from the timetables matter. But after a transfer it's quite difficult to prove the bus from which you transferred was stuck in a traffic jam and your trip took more than it should.

In Germany it's a little bit different. There is a single price for a single ticket (they sometimes have maximum time, but it's just in the regulations and not printed on the ticket, and it's so long that it's difficult to exceed it), you are allowed to transfer with that ticket, but only continuing your trip towards the destination – you can't use the same ticket on your way back.

And the London system is very good, as you don't have to wonder what ticket to buy – it will always charge you the cheapest option possible for you.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> Souter started the company PolskiBus.com in 2011. Its operation was based on novel principles as for Poland:
> – they stopped only in large cities,
> – tickets could only be bought online,
> – the fares were dynamic, like in low-cost airlines – the earlier you bought the ticket, the cheaper it was.


PolskiBus was almost an exact copy of Megabus which started about 2003 in the UK and soon after in the USA. The only difference was that Megabus is part of Stagecoach, which was founded by Souter and his sister, whereas PolskiBus was started by Souter independent of Stagecoach.


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## ChrisZwolle

Apparently there is a movement in some European countries to move from 'White Russia' to Belarus.

In Germany, the country was known as Weißrussland, in the Netherlands similarly Wit-Rusland and Sweden Vitryssland (all meaning White Russia). This is a literal translation of Беларусь, but in these languages it sounds like it is a part of Russia, or related to Russia while Belarus developed as a separate nation and identity.

In the Netherlands the government has used Belarus for years in most official documents and press releases. However the media is now switching from Wit-Rusland to Belarus as well. Apparently this is also a thing in Germany.









Belarus or "White Russia"? What's in a name


Opposition demonstrations have dominated worldwide headlines, but media coverage has differed in one noticeable way across Europe - how to name the country involved.




www.euronews.com





_“Even if had to be broken down into etymological parts and then translated, the ‘-rus’ element did not mean ‘Russia’, other than in the then Tsarist Russia's propaganda.”

And after the country gained independence in 1991, its international name in English and French was adjusted closer to the Belarusian language.

“Belarus is etymologically different from White Russia,” added Alesia Rudnik, “saying White Russia is not correct due to political associations with Russia.”_


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## MichiH

The reports about the elections always started like "The elections in Belarus, also known as White Russia in Germany,...." It's just "Belarus" now. It was written "Weißru*ss*land" instead of "Weißru*ß*land" to distinguish from Rußland (Russia).









Belarus – Wikipedia







de.wikipedia.org


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

This silly trend has not reached Scandinavia yet, as far as I have noticed.


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## ChrisZwolle

Evidently Sweden has changed it from Vitryssland to Belarus as well.

I can understand the problem some people have with it, in Germanic languages it looks like it is related to Russia, while the -rus in Belarus is not related to the -rus in Russia. Both are also written differently in those languages: русь and Рос.

Apparently French uses both standards: Biélorussie. Which I think would be something like Belarussia. French Wikipedia also mentions Bélarus as an alternate name.


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## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> The reports about the elections always started like "The elections in Belarus, also known as White Russia in Germany,...." It's just "Belarus" now. It was written "Weißru*ss*land" instead of "Weißru*ß*land" to distinguish from Rußland (Russia).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Belarus – Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> de.wikipedia.org


I studied German but I never had a handle on Eszett. But I thought there was a phonetic difference between “ß” and “ss,” or rather that they had a different effect on the sound of the preceding vowel. So are the U in “Rußland” and the U in “Weißrussland” pronounced differently?


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> I studied German


Ah, didn't know 



Penn's Woods said:


> but I never had a handle on Eszett. But I thought there was a phonetic difference between “ß” and “ss,” or rather that they had a different effect on the sound of the preceding vowel. So are the U in “Rußland” and the U in “Weißrussland” pronounced differently?


It is not pronounced differently.


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## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> Ah, didn't know
> 
> 
> 
> It is not pronounced differently.


Schreckliche Sprache 
/jk


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## PovilD

We, in Lithuania, usually use Baltarusija which means White Russia too. We have alternate name for Belarus - Gudija. Not very popular, although shorter to pronounce, but I think it has to do that the name is just strange, it has to do with the word "gudus" which means in a context of being somewhere deep in the wilderness, primarily forest. Baltarusija is something thats related to Russia since there are lots of relations. Some people use Gudija, but only intentionally. They are also showing deep Anti-Russian sentiments* which are not very well understood in The West and among those who don't have deeper thoughts about Russia. I mean those are not ethnical, but rather political sentiments. They say that Russians as a nation are more or less political construct, and Russia is originally a multi-national area which originally spoke different languages from different language families, and Putin is doing good job for keeping this "sick construct". It's just what I learned about those few people...

*Some may use it for different reasons, but these are even rarer, I think.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Belarus seems like world away, but Minsk is actually closer to my home than London, and Oslo is closer to Minsk than to some towns in Norway. It would be wonderful if the country could open up like other Eastern European countries.


ChrisZwolle said:


> Evidently Sweden has changed it from Vitryssland to Belarus as well.


I checked, and you are actually right, at least in the extremely politically correct Swedish press. I did not notice that.

I have seen in a few singular cases in the Norwegian press as well, but I thought it was was a matter of journalistic laziness/ignorance. In fact, I still think so ;-) Just like some journalists are calling the capital of Mexico "Mexico City", which of course is only correct in English.

Also in Denmark "Hviderusland" is still used. Medie: Oppositionsleder stiller ikke op igen i Hviderusland


ChrisZwolle said:


> I can understand the problem some people have with it, in Germanic languages it looks like it is related to Russia, while the -rus in Belarus is not related to the -rus in Russia. Both are also written differently in those languages: русь and Рос


This could perhaps have been an argument, except that the origin indeed is the same for the "rus" in Russia and Belarus: Kievan Rus' - Wikipedia


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## mgk920

From what I remember here in the USA, it has been 'Belarus' ever since its independence from the former Soviet Union. Before then, I believe that it was the Belarusian SSR (Soviet Socialist Republic).

Mike


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## PovilD

mgk920 said:


> From what I remember here in the USA, it has been 'Belarus' ever since its independence from the former Soviet Union. Before then, I believe that it was the Belarusian SSR (Soviet Socialist Republic).
> 
> Mike


I think it was Byelorussia then became Belarus.


----------



## Coccodrillo

Kpc21 said:


> A weird thing regarding British buses is while they have the front door in the right way, taking into account the left-hand traffic, the rear door is on the right, as if the bus was made for right-hand traffic. So it cannot be used by the passengers during normal operation; they are forced to use the front door, and the rear one is only an emergency exit. Why the heck would you have door in a bus on the wrong side?
> 
> The whole right-hand-driving Europe doesn't have them, the buses don't have any doors on the left, and there is absolutely no problem with that.


Most British buses outside London have just one usable door (two on articulated buses), which slows down travel considerably as the time lost in stops is greater. Except the Borismasters and articulated buses in London there are no buses with three doors, as far I know. That's why all Citaros for left-hand traffic I have seen are not of a real RHD version, but just a LHD one with the driver's comaprtment and doors on the opposite side. Mercedes Citaro buses have the engine and other components mounted asymmetrically, on the left side of the rear part of the bus, because the right side of the rear is designed to have the space for the third door (fourth door on articulated buses), even if the specific customer choose not to have it, the space is reserved. Existing British Citaros couldn't have the third door as they also have the engine on the left, so to build a 3-door RHD Citaro Mercedes should redesign the rear section of its bus by putting the engine on the right side, which could be not that easy as it seems.

And yes, British PT management outside London is a disaster and shows how it should *not* be done.


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## ChrisZwolle

White Russia used to be a term in English as well, but it faded out of use during the Russian Civil War, which had the White Movement fighting the Red Army, which had nothing to do with White Russia. It then became Byelorussia and finally Belarus.


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## CNGL

While I've seen "Belarús" in Spanish, it was only once and I struck me as odd and even an unnecessary loanword. It is still (almost) universally _Bielorrusia_.


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## x-type

I am now looking at our Foreign Affairs Ministry web, they say Bjelarus. Honestly, I have absolutely never heard anyone using that word. Everybody say Bjelorusija. Wikipedia also mentions that Bjelarus is the official name. 

It seems that we have some other official names that are kinda unusual. I'd say that some countries insist on original names.

Côte d'Ivoire - they definitely insist because we have 2 other names translated (Bjelokosna Obala that is widely used, and more archaic Obala Slonovače)
Kabo Verde - since Cesaria Evora died nobody uses it, but in rare ocassions when used, it is called Zelenortski Otoci
Timor-Leste - it is Istočni Timor, nobody says Timor-Leste (actualy nobody mentions it never neither  )
There are also some countries that insist on long official names:

Laoska Narodna Demokratska Republika - this is Laos
Brunej Darussalam - this is, of course, Brunei
Sirijska Arapska Republika - Syria insists on this official name
Ujedinjena Republika Tanzanija - this is totally new to me that Tanzania insists on this name

Interesting, Iran doesn't require Islamic Republic of Iran anymore - just short for Iran is enough now for them. Of course, IRI remains as full name.


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## PovilD

As for Lithuanian:

Côte d'Ivoire - we still use Ivory Coast variant - Dramblio Kaulo (ivory, literal translation: elephant's bone) Krantas (coast).
Cape Verde - we actually managed to translate it to "Žaliasis Kyšulys" or Green Cape in English. On media they are usually refereed as Žaliojo Kyšulio salos (Green Cape Islands)
Timor-Leste - Rytų Timoras (East Timor). Nobody mentions otherwise, it would be strange.


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## radamfi

Coccodrillo said:


> Most British buses outside London have just one usable door (two on articulated buses), which slows down travel considerably as the time lost in stops is greater. Except the Borismasters and articulated buses in London there are no buses with three doors, as far I know.


I've heard all sorts of excuses why having two doors is bad, the main ones being fare evasion (people getting on at the back), accidents with people getting off at the back who then sue the bus company and loss of seating accommodation. But if those were genuine problems, why is a two door bus good enough for London and for the rest of the world? Obviously they don't care about losing time at bus stops, as they waste enough time with the driver selling tickets.

Britain (outside London) is really fond of building expensive indoor bus stations, even for city bus services. This is especially common in the north of England and Scotland. The design of most of these bus stations means that everybody has to get on or off at the front door as buses leave the bus station by reversing.

I don't think any articulated buses have been sold in the UK for many years now. London bought a lot around 2001 to 2007 but they were got rid of by Boris Johnson when he became mayor in 2008. There are still some of those ex-London articulated buses running in Brighton for university bus routes and possibly other places.


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## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> (actualy nobody mentions it never neither  )


This is a problem with many exonyms, in many cases they exist for geographic features that almost nobody will ever talk about. 

Dutch has exonyms that are only used in Flanders and not in the Netherlands, mainly for places in Northern France. Rijsel / Lille is a famous one. Rijsel is the Dutch exonym but most Dutch people know that city just as Lille. In Flanders usage of Rijsel is still substantial (though Lille is reportedly becoming more common as well). 

There are many Dutch exonyms for Walloon towns and villages that almost nobody will ever use due to their obscurity. Another problem is that many Dutch aren't aware that some names used in Flanders are actually in Wallonia. For example when speaking of Bergen or Doornik, I think a substantial amount of the population in the Netherlands will think these are Flemish cities (they are Mons and Tournai in Wallonia).


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## MichiH

x-type said:


> Honestly, I have absolutely never heard anyone using that word. Everybody say Bjelorusija.


Same for Germany four weeks ago. Now it's Belarus.


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## cinxxx

^^Politics messing up everything as usual... why not call it Weissruss?


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## PovilD

Maybe we could call Russia as Rus?  You can find in the anthem "Velikaya Rus' "  You know, from Kievan Rus thing


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## Suburbanist

_Côte d'Ivoire _and _Cabo Verde _have been insisting with international organizations that their French and Portuguese names are actually used as official country names, instead of their literal English translations (or the weird Cape Verde form [verde = green]). 

Speaking of country names, how much (or little) traction did the change from Czech Republic to Czechia gained in your country/langauge?

There is also the 2018 change of Swaziland to Eswatini, which I only got notice of because I saw "Eswatini" in a drop-down menu on a given website I was subscribing into, and wondered what was that territory I'd never heard about.

Then, out of curiosity/borderom, I was doing some searches on old newspapers articles on Google, it seems the change of "Ceylon" to "Sri Lanka" took a long time to catch up, Bruma to Myanmar appears to have regained a controversial element, but the change in English names of Indian cities in the 1990s (Bombay => Mumbai, Madras => Chennai etc) seems to have caught up with the professional press pretty quickly.

Still within language issues, the Dutch government adopted an official policy a couple years ago of stopping promoting the country interchangeably as named "Holland" or its equivalent in other languages. In some Romance languages, 'low countries' was already more widely used (Pays-Bas [FR]), in others, 'Holland' was more common (Olanda [IT], Holanda [PT]) although 'low countries' existed and was used officially (Paesi Bassi [IT], Países-Baixos [PT]). So far, so good. However, official Dutch government texts in other romance languages (such as on embassy websites) started to use sometimes a new name for the language (Dutch) itself, which seems almost unknown locally in some cases I am aware of (lingua neerlandese [IT], idioma neerlandês [PT]). The common local adjective for "Dutch" in these languages alludes to [from/of] "Holland" (olandese [IT], holandês [PT]).


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

PovilD said:


> Maybe we could call Russia as Rus?  You can find in the anthem "Velikaya Rus' "  You know, from Kievan Rus thing


Because Rus was the name of a ruling dynasty (most likely originating from Sweden, actually), not a country?


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## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Because Rus was the name of a ruling dynasty (most likely originating from Sweden, actually), not a country?


As far as I know there was Rurik dynasty who gave the name Rus' for a country.


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## CNGL

I also consider _Côte d'Ivoire_ to be overkill (especially since the circumflex, or really any diacritics, doesn't exist in English), and thus I prefer to refer to that country as Ivory Coast (Spanish: _Costa de Marfil_, still widely used). On the other hand, I've adopted Cabo Verde quickly since that is also its Spanish name.

Then there are other countries:
Burma, not "Myanmar". _Birmania_ is still widely used in Spanish.
Republic of the Congo and Democratic Republic of the Congo. Why there are two similarly named countries right next to each other? Why Zaire did rename itself DRC? I refer to those as Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa now, but I used to refer to the latter as Belgian Congo.
People's Republic of China ("China") and Republic of China ("Taiwan"). I'll use the long name for both if explicitly mentioning either one, as I consider the term "China" as including Taiwan (which the PRC doesn't, and I've been bashed over this usage before) and the RoC extends a bit beyond "Taiwan". I also have the shorthand forms "Communist China" and "Chinese Taipei" respectively for both (the latter especially in sports).
I like to refer to Sudan as "North Sudan" (as opposed to South Sudan) and to Ireland as "Southern Ireland" (as opposed to Northern Ireland). I don't do the same with Cyprus, since Northern Cyprus is not recognised.


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## PovilD

_Côte d'Ivoire_, and you must spell it in pure French accent


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## ChrisZwolle

On the other hand, the transition from Gold Coast to Ghana didn't seem to be problematic.

Côte d'Ivoire is a more difficult name to spell and pronounce in English.

Remember the days of Siam, Ceylon, Formosa, Zaire, Tanganyika, etc... Name changes have proven to not be impossible. Languages evolve over time, but there are limits, which is why Côte d'Ivoire is much less likely to become commonplace in other languages than French.

Talking of country names, ask a random people on the street if they know what Sakartvelo and Hayastan are...


----------



## PovilD

I which that English name "Lithuania" would be renamed to "Lituania" since it's easier to remember and doesn't look strange on text. Other languages got ir right (Lituanie, Litauen, Litouwen, Litwa, etc.), but somehow not English.


----------



## Attus

Suburbanist said:


> Speaking of country names, how much (or little) traction did the change from Czech Republic to Czechia gained in your country/langauge?


The "Republic" form has never been used in Hungary, the country was called Csehország, literally Czechland, which is a common form for European nations (e.g. Olaszország => Italianland, Németország => Germanland, Spanyolország => Spanishland, etc.). And it has not changed. 
In Germany using the "Republic" form was rarely used even before that change, perhaps because it's long, especially written ("Tschechische Republik"), Tschechei (rare) or Tschechien (common) were used. Since the Czechs changed the country name, it's exclusively Tschechien, but it was the most commonly used name for that country even before.


----------



## Suburbanist

PovilD said:


> I which that English name "Lithuania" would be renamed to "Lituania" since it's easier to remember and doesn't look strange on text. Other languages got ir right (Lituanie, Litauen, Litouwen, Litwa, etc.), but somehow not English.


Romance languages often have confusing names for the Baltics because Latvia is referred to as Lettonia/Letônia/Letonia/Lettonie, closely resemble the spell and pronunciation of Lithuania. It is a similar proximity/confusion as in Slovakia/Slovenia.


----------



## PovilD

Suburbanist said:


> Romance languages often have confusing names for the Baltics because Latvia is referred to as Lettonia/Letônia/Letonia/Lettonie, closely resemble the spell and pronunciation of Lithuania. It is a similar proximity/confusion as in Slovakia/Slovenia.


Luckily, Latvia is not Lettonia in English  Lituania, Lettonia, Estonia. Quit good word chain 

Anyway, Slovakia/Slovenia confusion is still worse, I think, since most languages name them by similar names.


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> From what I remember here in the USA, it has been 'Belarus' ever since its independence from the former Soviet Union. Before then, I believe that it was the Belarusian SSR (Soviet Socialist Republic).
> 
> Mike


I think it was Bielorussian SSR. I have an early 90s National Geographic wall map of Europe I’ll take a look at when I’m in the same room.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> White Russia used to be a term in English as well, but it faded out of use during the Russian Civil War, which had the White Movement fighting the Red Army, which had nothing to do with White Russia. It then became Byelorussia and finally Belarus.


Yes. “White Russia” was never a geographical term since I’ve been paying attention to maps. So, since about 1970.  And I’d guess long before.
Now that I think of it, I don’t know whether it was ever a geographical term in English; did that region really have enough of an identity apart from Russia before 1917 or so to need an English name? I understand White Russia only as a translation of Bielorussia. (Or Byelo-)


----------



## Penn's Woods

CNGL said:


> While I've seen "Belarús" in Spanish, it was only once and I struck me as odd and even an unnecessary loanword. It is still (almost) universally _Bielorrusia_.


“-rusia” with no accent on the I? Is Russia “Rusia” or “Rusía”?


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## CNGL

It's _Rusia_, no accent as it is only two syllabes (_Ru-sia_). Only if it was three syllabes the I would have an accent, as it would denote no diphthong with A is to be pronounced.

As an aside, a while ago the Royal Spanish Academy dictated an accent must be placed in all instances a diphthong is to be broken, even when Y is considered a vowel. This caused Ayna, a village in Albacete province pronounced with three syllabes, to become the only instance in modern Spanish of the character Ý (Y with an acute): _Aýna._


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> I think it was Bielorussian SSR. I have an early 90s National Geographic wall map of Europe I’ll take a look at when I’m in the same room.


Even better: I’d forgotten, but my dad hung that 1992 map (it’s got the Soviet Union broken up but Czechoslovakia still united) over an older one, from the 70s. And the newer one’s smaller, so he sort of hinged it so you can lift it up and look at the older one.

It’s got “Byelorussian SSR” (with a Y), then “Belarus.”


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> This is a problem with many exonyms, in many cases they exist for geographic features that almost nobody will ever talk about.
> 
> Dutch has exonyms that are only used in Flanders and not in the Netherlands, mainly for places in Northern France. Rijsel / Lille is a famous one. Rijsel is the Dutch exonym but most Dutch people know that city just as Lille. In Flanders usage of Rijsel is still substantial (though Lille is reportedly becoming more common as well).
> 
> There are many Dutch exonyms for Walloon towns and villages that almost nobody will ever use due to their obscurity. Another problem is that many Dutch aren't aware that some names used in Flanders are actually in Wallonia. For example when speaking of Bergen or Doornik, I think a substantial amount of the population in the Netherlands will think these are Flemish cities (they are Mons and Tournai in Wallonia).


The problem with “Lille” is there’s also a town by that name somewhere near Antwerp, if I’m not mistaken.

I’ve noticed Dutch names for Walloon places fall off as you move south. Even very small villages near the taalgrens have them, while sizable towns farther south don’t. And I’ve seen all sorts of French names for Flemish places (Laethem-Saint-Martin for Sint-Martens-Latem...), some of which are probably misspellings rather than official exonyms.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> _Côte d'Ivoire _and _Cabo Verde _have been insisting with international organizations that their French and Portuguese names are actually used as official country names, instead of their literal English translations (or the weird Cape Verde form [verde = green]).
> 
> Speaking of country names, how much (or little) traction did the change from Czech Republic to Czechia gained in your country/langauge?
> 
> There is also the 2018 change of Swaziland to Eswatini, which I only got notice of because I saw "Eswatini" in a drop-down menu on a given website I was subscribing into, and wondered what was that territory I'd never heard about.
> 
> Then, out of curiosity/borderom, I was doing some searches on old newspapers articles on Google, it seems the change of "Ceylon" to "Sri Lanka" took a long time to catch up, Bruma to Myanmar appears to have regained a controversial element, but the change in English names of Indian cities in the 1990s (Bombay => Mumbai, Madras => Chennai etc) seems to have caught up with the professional press pretty quickly.
> 
> Still within language issues, the Dutch government adopted an official policy a couple years ago of stopping promoting the country interchangeably as named "Holland" or its equivalent in other languages. In some Romance languages, 'low countries' was already more widely used (Pays-Bas [FR]), in others, 'Holland' was more common (Olanda [IT], Holanda [PT]) although 'low countries' existed and was used officially (Paesi Bassi [IT], Países-Baixos [PT]). So far, so good. However, official Dutch government texts in other romance languages (such as on embassy websites) started to use sometimes a new name for the language (Dutch) itself, which seems almost unknown locally in some cases I am aware of (lingua neerlandese [IT], idioma neerlandês [PT]). The common local adjective for "Dutch" in these languages alludes to [from/of] "Holland" (olandese [IT], holandês [PT]).


I still don’t like countries trying to regulate other languages’ names for them. If Germany told the whole world to start saying “Deutschland” instead of “Germany,” “Allemagne,” etc., would we do it? Should we?

I guess in diplomatic circles you should try to respect these things, but you can’t force them on the public.

I never see or hear “Czechia” except on this forum. I’ll start using it myself when it becomes more widespread in English.


----------



## Penn's Woods

CNGL said:


> I also consider _Côte d'Ivoire_ to be overkill (especially since the circumflex, or really any diacritics, doesn't exist in English), and thus I prefer to refer to that country as Ivory Coast (Spanish: _Costa de Marfil_, still widely used). On the other hand, I've adopted Cabo Verde quickly since that is also its Spanish name.
> 
> Then there are other countries:
> Burma, not "Myanmar". _Birmania_ is still widely used in Spanish.
> Republic of the Congo and Democratic Republic of the Congo. Why there are two similarly named countries right next to each other? Why Zaire did rename itself DRC? I refer to those as Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa now, but I used to refer to the latter as Belgian Congo.
> People's Republic of China ("China") and Republic of China ("Taiwan"). I'll use the long name for both if explicitly mentioning either one, as I consider the term "China" as including Taiwan (which the PRC doesn't, and I've been bashed over this usage before) and the RoC extends a bit beyond "Taiwan". I also have the shorthand forms "Communist China" and "Chinese Taipei" respectively for both (the latter especially in sports).
> I like to refer to Sudan as "North Sudan" (as opposed to South Sudan) and to Ireland as "Southern Ireland" (as opposed to Northern Ireland). I don't do the same with Cyprus, since Northern Cyprus is not recognised.


“Mainland China” is sometimes used in English, although really only when you need to distinguish it from Taiwan. (Actually it’s been used lately to distinguish what I’d call “China proper” from Hong Kong.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> A new study of blood donors in the Netherlands showed that;
> 
> 
> 50% of those with antibodies had not noticed they had any symptoms.
> only 20% of those feared having had covid-19 actually had antibodies.
> 
> So it's quite difficult to make out if you have had covid-19.


Does not having antibodies prove you didn’t have it?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> Does not having antibodies prove you didn’t have it?


Some people who tested positive earlier did not always have antibodies later. Some had antibodies at their first session of donating blood, but not at successive sessions. They track a cohort of blood donors who tested positive in the past, they hoped they could develop a medicine out of their blood cells.


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## x-type

i must admit that I am more and more relaxed. Yes, I am taking care not to hang among too many people in too crowded places and I don't allow too many people in my personal area (around my desk for isntance), but I didn't like it neither sooner. And I wash and sanitize my hands much more often. Am I afraid of getting covid? No. Extremely low percentage of infected cases are hospitalized nowadays. I am only afraid not to transfer it to somebody who wouldn't handle it that well if he/she caught it.


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## PovilD

Basically, I'm actually more afraid of self-isolation than getting through COVID, but I'm still don't think I want to "try" it. I'm still social distancing as much as possible, my introvert personality helps me somewhat, I'm still hang out with family and some close friends though, some life must go on 2020 too.

What I think is good measure is that I don't want to breath other people. I learn that if I smell other person (which is in close contact), I'm in risk. Better avoid such occasions. No matter how light the smell is, maybe just some background smell that the dog would learn how to distinguish you from others 

...but I'm considering to relax too in the long term (or acclimatize?), but 2020 is year of social distancing, and winter of 2021 for sure. Looking more hopeful for summer 2021, we will see. I hope science will prove that they are in proper 21st century levels not in some Middle Ages.

Lithuania has quite high percentage of hospitalised active cases - 7%. Maybe it has to do that older people are not sheltering as much as in other countries. There were youth events too where clusters of infections were among people in their 20s and 30s.


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## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> i must admit that I am more and more relaxed. Yes, I am taking care not to hang among in too crowded places and I don't allow too many people in my personal area (around my desk for isntance), but I didn't like it neither sooner. And I wash and sanitize my hands much more often. Am I afraid of getting covid? No. Extremely low percentage of infected cases are hospitalized nowadays. I am only afraid not to transfer it to somebody who wouldn't handle it that well if i caught it.


I keep getting a few steps from the car and then realizing I forgot my mask.


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## geogregor

PovilD said:


> Basically, I'm actually more afraid of self-isolation than getting through COVID, but I'm still don't think I want to "try" it. I'm still social distancing as much as possible, *my introvert personality helps me somewhat,* I'm still hang out with family and some close friends though, some life must go on 2020 too.


I suspect we have over-representation of introvert people on this forum  

I have to say I was never really that concerned about the virus, even in March and April at the height of lockdown. I was following the rules but only up to a point. I never for example subscribed to the whole "once a day exercise" business. I went out many times a day, often for long walks far from home. After a month or so I also started taking public transport. Since I was often the only person in a train carriage I didn't see the slightest problem with that.

I also met a friend or two when I not supposed to. Since neither of us have families in Britain and we live in small (one or two people) households without contact with older people we decided that risk was small and worth taking.

Now my biggest concern is my holiday. We have two weeks off in the second half of September. One options is a trip to Scotland. It is relatively safe and sensible option in regards of quarantine etc. But after bad experience during the recent weekend trip to the British coast (slow service, high prices, need to book every restaurant in advance) we are seriously considering trip to Portugal. I need a break from Britain and its idiosyncrasies.

Yes, we will risk quarantine after coming back if the rules change again (according to British government lottery-like policy) but then nothing in life is risk free.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch media report that Rotterdam and Amsterdam will end the obligatory mask usage. This was implemented in some busy shopping streets (not city-wide) in August. The measure will be canceled from 1 September. 

Shop owners in these streets reported large losses in customers and revenue. Though some of those shopowners were initially the ones that wanted it.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch media report that Rotterdam and Amsterdam will end the obligatory mask usage. This was implemented in some busy shopping streets (not city-wide) in August. The measure will be canceled from 1 September.
> 
> Shop owners in these streets reported large losses in customers and revenue. Though some of those shopowners were initially the ones that wanted it.


Conversely, I just heard a report about masks just now becoming obligatory everywhere (as opposed to in certain neighborhoods) in Paris.


----------



## Attus

Hungary introduces extreme strict travel restrictions. From Sept 1st foreigners may not enter Hungary, Hungarian citizens and citizens of other nations living in Hungary must be quarantined 14 days after entering Hungary. These rules count for every nations of the world, with no exception.
There will be some exceptions, for example transit traffic, freight, they will be announced later.


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## ChrisZwolle

Science shows that masks are effective in stopping much of the particles. However real world results are not straightforward. Most of the countries that have mandated masks continue to see increases in cases, often rapidly as well. The worst hit countries in Europe over the past few weeks are those that maintained the strictest mask usage, while countries without mandatory masks are not hit hard with a surge in cases.

I've seen it described in Spain: _Everyone follows masks regulations in the street. When they get in a restaurant or outdoor dining, they take the masks off and begin to converse at close distance with no social distancing observed._

Mask usage is pretty futile this way. They are worn in settings where infections are unlikely to occur but not where infections are more likely to occur. It's a form of safety theater.

Another point is the effectiveness of lockdowns. They destroy the economy and society, but their effectiveness in stopping the virus are limited, if not non-existent. Examples beyond the U.S., Brazil or India are countries like Argentina and the Philippines. They are under lockdowns since March, yet have seen rapid increases in cases over the past 6-8 weeks:

Argentina:









The Philippines:


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Science shows that masks are effective in stopping much of the particles. However real world results are not straightforward. Most of the countries that have mandated masks continue to see increases in cases, often rapidly as well. The worst hit countries in Europe over the past few weeks are those that maintained the strictest mask usage, while countries without mandatory masks are not hit hard with a surge in cases.
> 
> I've seen it described in Spain: _Everyone follows masks regulations in the street. When they get in a restaurant or outdoor dining, they take the masks off and begin to converse at close distance with no social distancing observed._
> 
> Mask usage is pretty futile this way. They are worn in settings where infections are unlikely to occur but not where infections are more likely to occur. It's a form of safety theater.
> 
> Another point is the effectiveness of lockdowns. They destroy the economy and society, but their effectiveness in stopping the virus are limited, if not non-existent. Examples beyond the U.S., Brazil or India are countries like Argentina and the Philippines. They are under lockdowns since March, yet have seen rapid increases in cases over the past 6-8 weeks:
> 
> Argentina:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Philippines:


I don’t see how you look at the Northeastern U.S. and say lockdowns, and mask usage, didn’t help....


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Mask usage is pretty futile this way. They are worn in settings where infections are unlikely to occur but not where infections are more likely to occur. It's a form of safety theater.


I would argue that 50% stuff the governments are doing is pure theater. All they need to say is the magical "we follow scientific advice" and they can introduce pretty much whatever they rule they want, for example mandate wearing pink T-shirts.

British government is great at that. They have no clue what they are doing. But if things go wrong they always find someone to blame, from scientists who "gave them the wrong advice" to civil servants who they force to do thing the way ministers want in the first place.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> I don’t see how you look at the Northeastern U.S. and say lockdowns, and mask usage, didn’t help....


New York was hit early on, just like Italy. They likely had far more cases than the official numbers indicate. It has been contemplated that herd immunity could occur at much lower numbers than previously estimated (which was said to be around 60% of the population). The growth of new cases is slowing down significantly in many locations with high numbers, examples are Florida and Arizona. 

On a smaller scale in the Netherlands, the area that was hit hard in March has seen low amounts to almost no coronavirus detected in sewage monitoring recently, while areas with limited infection in March are now seeing higher rates. The question is why there is no resurgence of coronavirus in the cities that were hit hard in March, despite there being no restrictions and no mask usage. A similar question can be asked about Sweden, their numbers have remained at the same low level for 8 successive weeks now, while most of Europe is seeing an increase in cases again.


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## ChrisZwolle

Uruguay has been noted to be a role model; they have very low amounts of cases (around 1,500) but never imposed a lockdown. There were some restrictions but they avoided a big community transmission and were able to extinguish most clusters by extensive testing and tracing.









Uruguay rides out COVID threat without imposing a lockdown


With less than 1,000 registered novel coronavirus cases and just 27 deaths, Uruguay, the country of 3.4 million is a notable exception in a region that has become the epicenter of the global health crisis.




www.thejakartapost.com







https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/coronavirus-uruguay-paraguay-brazil-argentina/2020/07/20/a7894830-c57c-11ea-a99f-3bbdffb1af38_story.html


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## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> Conversely, I just heard a report about masks just now becoming obligatory everywhere (as opposed to in certain neighborhoods) in Paris.


Poland is introducing local "yellow" and "red zones". In red zones it is obligatory to wear masks everywhere outside. Those are the places with large numbers of infections spreading out.


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## ChrisZwolle

I was looking at U.S. counties, I was not aware that their jurisdiction and form of government is not the same across the U.S., but varies considerably by state. Apparently in some counties, the head of government is a county judge. Counties have been abolished as a level of government in some states (but remaining for statistical purposes). I knew that they are called parishes in Louisiana and boroughs in Alaska.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apparently in some counties, the head of government is a county judge.


So...

Europe complaints at the quality of democracy in Poland when the government wants to have more influence on the judges. As those are three types of government (the legislative, the executive and the courts) that should always be separated.

Meanwhile, in a country that wants others to see itself as the best example of democracy in the world, a judge and the head of the executive might be the same person.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I was looking at U.S. counties, I was not aware that their jurisdiction and form of government is not the same across the U.S., but varies considerably by state. Apparently in some counties, the head of government is a county judge. Counties have been abolished as a level of government in some states (but remaining for statistical purposes). I knew that they are called parishes in Louisiana and boroughs in Alaska.


“County judge” seems to be a Texas term.

Every state has its own form of local government. Just as Canadian provinces and Australian states do. Different historical circumstances (the population in early New England concentrated in villages from the start, the population in the South was on farms), different current needs: A low-density state in the West doesn’t need the same sort of municipal level as New Jersey.

But back to Arizona, I think cases started dropping after masks were mandated.


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## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> Just as Canadian provinces and Australian states do.


Not all federal parts of Australia are called states. Some of them are called territories. They have differences even on this level.


----------



## Penn's Woods

This isn’t good...:









COVID-19 reinfection reported in Nevada patient, researchers say


The report comes several days after the first confirmed coronavirus reinfection in the world was identified in Hong Kong.




www.nbcnews.com


----------



## keber

I spend 2 week vacation in nord-west France (and a bit of Germany) just about right time (second half of July) - not very crowded (except at more famous tourist spots) and with reasonable prices. I planned also a vacation seaside week in Croatia in early September, but it is currently not an option because of required quarantine. Actually just Italy is still somehow safe, excluding islands for possible quick return option in case of changed circumstances, as all other countrise around Slovenia are in the red zone or soon-to-be there. Weather is nice in Campania, accomodation prices are lower than in Croatia and it is generaly much less crowded than in normal years. I hope that Italy stays at least in yellow zone through first half of September.


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## ChrisZwolle

Bad weather in the Alps and snow on the highest passes:

Grimsel:









Iseran:









Gotthard:









Susten:









Simplon:


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

KeanoManu said:


> I just want to pinch in that Stockholm are actually very low now.


Everything is relative. On a quick count by me with regard to the list of relative number of infections per capita, Stockholm had 7 regions with higher numbers and 17 with lower. In absolute numbers Stockholm might be on top of the list. The numbers are fortunately much lower than before, though.








Coronaviruset: Slik spres viruset i Norge og verden. Kart og statistikk.


VG gir deg de siste tallene og oversikt over coronavirusets utvikling. Sjekk status i din egen kommune. Informasjonen oppdateres fortløpende.



www.vg.no






PovilD said:


> Netherlands and Sweden are quarantine buds
> 
> As for Sweden, it is now important measure how we will look to COVID long term.


Norway has only a few buddies at the moment. Except Italy, Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, the Baltics, Finland, and some regions in Denmark and Sweden a quarantine is needed upon return. But travel abroad is not really recommended at all, and at least Hungary and Finland no longer welcome us, and Italy and Slovenia probably will enter the Norwegian red list soon. On the other hand, it is expected that some border regions in Sweden, Luxembourg, and Cyprus will go from red to yellow at the end of next week.


----------



## MichiH

German authorities recommend vaccinating children for the seasonal flu this year because children are usually spreaders for flu. A flu wave in combination with covid might overload the health care system.

To those who celebrate that the health care systems in most European countries are currently not overloaded at all (very low ICU occupancy etc.), what would happen in winter if ICUs would already be overloaded now - in summer? Sending Dutch ICU patients to Germany in winter again?

It is currently so simple to keep the distance when people can stay mostly outside. But there are already more and more cases all over Europe. Infections will increase when people will be more inside, when rooms will be ventilated less than in summer etc.
I reported that most people I see in southern Germany obey the rules but this has changed in the last weeks. More and more people wear masks as chin protection only, e.g. waitresses in restaurants - if they wear any at all.

It is too early to celebrate. Hope the best.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MichiH said:


> To those who celebrate that the health care systems in most European countries are currently not overloaded at all (very low ICU occupancy etc.), what would happen in winter if ICUs would already be overloaded now - in summer? Sending Dutch ICU patients to Germany in winter again?


A couple of reasons why this may not happen again;


much more awareness
improved knowledge about covid-19
better treatment
ICU duration has shortened considerably
possibly higher immunity than in March

Over the past few weeks the number of contagious persons in the Netherlands was estimated at 1/10th of that in March. However ICU occupancy is at only 1/40th and trending down.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

The Estonian experience of the past month or so shows that pretty much all of the local outbreaks have been due to indoor parties (either private or public) with secondary infections happening within families and in one case within underground miners. Due to this fact the sale of alcohol has been stopped in several counties after 11 pm including the city of Tallinn (except in shops where it has always been forbidden after 10pm). No other general restrictions have been imposed so far and mask usage overall is very limited to non-existent. 

I got tested for Covid-19 this week as well. I went to a bachelor party and a wedding last week where there were many guests from abroad. After that I developed a sore throat and a few other minor sypmtoms. Since people of my age (under 30) may develop very mild to no symptoms at all, I thought it best to call my family doctor who sent me to get tested.The test came back negative but statistically speaking that was to be expected.


----------



## PovilD

We have already banned alcohol selling in supermarkets (but not dining places) after 8pm few years ago. Not for pandemic cure, but for curing Post-Soviet social traumas  Despite my young age, I'm somewhat indifferent with that alcohol topic, although others react to it kinda dramatically. Probably because I'm not some regular party goer


----------



## PovilD

I feel the biggest fear for me is if I get infected through surfaces, like through groceries, for example. Some scientists say it is unlikely to get infected by surfaces, only via contacts with infected people.


----------



## bogdymol

Today I went to a KFC in Germany. The measures imposed by the coronavirus there were quite extreme: everybody had masks, distance kept, disinfectant, even at the toilets there was only one open out of 3. As you can see in the picture below, of these 5 tables, people were allowed to use only one, to make sure that distance is kept:










30 km down the road, in the neighboring Czechia, I entered a supermarket to buy something. People were keeping the distance as it wasn't very crowded, but nobody had masks. Apart from a hand disinfectant station at the shop entrance, there was no sign that there is any coronavirus.

Such contrasting measures only 30 km away one from the other...


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> German authorities recommend vaccinating children for the seasonal flu this year because children are usually spreaders for flu. A flu wave in combination with covid might overload the health care system.
> 
> To those who celebrate that the health care systems in most European countries are currently not overloaded at all (very low ICU occupancy etc.), what would happen in winter if ICUs would already be overloaded now - in summer? Sending Dutch ICU patients to Germany in winter again?
> 
> It is currently so simple to keep the distance when people can stay mostly outside. But there are already more and more cases all over Europe. Infections will increase when people will be more inside, when rooms will be ventilated less than in summer etc.
> I reported that most people I see in southern Germany obey the rules but this has changed in the last weeks. More and more people wear masks as chin protection only, e.g. waitresses in restaurants - if they wear any at all.
> 
> It is too early to celebrate. Hope the best.


There is a significant difference. Almost everyone knows, young people have in the vast majority (>99%) of cases symptoms that are no worse than a cold - or no symptoms at all. That's why young people don't obey the rules any more. They usually say, Covid-19 is a joke, not a pandemic, and actually, _although I don't agree_, I can not really blame them. They all see they friends had it and had no serious health issues. 
Hungary has more new cases daily than in April. Hospitalization however is significantly lower than in April and there are only a very few fatalities (1 person in this week). The situation in Germany is, as you may know it, very similar. The main reason is that recentl infected people are usually young, the average age of infected people is ~20 years lower than in April.
As long as young people get infected but old ones can be saved, Covid-19 is much less harmful then the flu. That is the main cause why most of European nations have a high number of infections but low number of hospitalizations and fatalities.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> We have already banned alcohol selling in supermarkets (but not dining places) after 8pm few years ago. Not for pandemic cure, but for curing Post-Soviet social traumas


We had that for some time in communism.



bogdymol said:


> Today I went to a KFC in Germany. The measures imposed by the coronavirus there were quite extreme: everybody had masks, distance kept, disinfectant, even at the toilets there was only one open out of 3. As you can see in the picture below, of these 5 tables, people were allowed to use only one, to make sure that distance is kept:


Well, in Poland most dining places have simply relocated the tables so that they meet the Covid restrictions. In theory it's obligatory to wear masks all the time except while sitting at the tables, but actually nobody follows that.

Masks are more used in supermarkets and on public transport – but there, there are also people wearing them as chin protection. Also the medical centers aren't letting the patients without masks in.


----------



## MichiH

Attus said:


> That's why young people don't obey the rules any more.


I agree if "young" means younger than 50.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> We had that for some time in communism.


Many people have doubts on these restrictions. I don't mind restrictions on shops or malls, only for legal drink age being raised (from 18 to 20).

What I like about these restrictions is that in evening after 8pm, less alcoholic looking people are attending, although before 8pm you can feel a mayhem of alcoholics in shops. It's not very pleasing to see alcoholics in general, especially if there are quite many of them (ok, they may not smell alcohol, but often they look depressed, dirty, and just plain poor). Some of them are asking for smoke, or small amounts of money, but not in shops. They are more often seen in neighborhoods where prices are on the lower end. Worse case of them are so called "bomzhi" (homeless alcoholics from former Soviet Union), but these are rarer, they are very distinguishable.

I think it is the worse part what I see here living in Lithuania for now. Accompanied with relatively neglected commieblock infrastructure, and too substandard motorways at places


----------



## Kpc21

I wonder what is the reason. In Germany it's even not illegal to drink in public places. In some Bundesländer, it's not even a problem to drink alcoholic beverages on the public transport. And you don't see so many alcoholics. 

And countries with quite far-going restrictions regarding alcohol consumption have such problems. Like Slavic countries, but I also heard that about Scandinavia – and they are ones of the most restrictive countries regarding alcohol in the world (of course not counting e.g. Muslim countries, in some of which alcohol consumption is absolutely illegal).


----------



## Kapetan Miki

Europe's last dictator appears to be on the way out - celebrations all over Montenegro tonite.
Here's Podgorica:


----------



## mgk920

Kpc21 said:


> I wonder what is the reason. In Germany it's even not illegal to drink in public places. In some Bundesländer, it's not even a problem to drink alcoholic beverages on the public transport. And you don't see so many alcoholics.
> 
> And countries with quite far-going restrictions regarding alcohol consumption have such problems. Like Slavic countries, but I also heard that about Scandinavia – and they are ones of the most restrictive countries regarding alcohol in the world (of course not counting e.g. Muslim countries, in some of which alcohol consumption is absolutely illegal).


I suggest that you read up on the 18th Amendment of the USA's Constitution, outlawing beverage alcohol. It was ratified in 1919, took effect in 1920 and was repealed through another Constitution amendment that was ratified in December of 1933. It, and the events in the years leading up to it, are an amazing period in USA history and I firmly believe that it was a disaster of such a level that it nearly brought down the entire Constitution.

There are issues today in the USA that are a lingering fallout of that era, too (ie, the Drug War, the 21YO national minimum legal drinking age and its paranoiac level of enforcement, etc).

Mike


----------



## ChrisZwolle

ChrisZwolle said:


> A couple of reasons why this may not happen again;


The U.S. government just canceled an order of 30,000 ventilators, which was contracted out to Philips. The reason is not given, but it appears that treatment now is much different from March. Back in March they didn't know how much about the virus and its effects, so everyone was sent into ICU and on ventilators, often for up to 4-6 weeks, which overloaded ICUs. The U.S. government invoked the Defense Production Act to produce as many ventilators as possible. This phase of frantic ventilator production has passed despite much higher case numbers since then.


----------



## tfd543

mgk920 said:


> I suggest that you read up on the 18th Amendment of the USA's Constitution, outlawing beverage alcohol. It was ratified in 1919, took effect in 1920 and was repealed through another Constitution amendment that was ratified in December of 1933. It, and the events in the years leading up to it, are an amazing period in USA history and I firmly believe that it was a disaster of such a level that it nearly brought down the entire Constitution.
> 
> There are issues today in the USA that are a lingering fallout of that era, too (ie, the Drug War, the 21YO national minimum legal drinking age and its paranoiac level of enforcement, etc).
> 
> Mike


Why would they prohibit alcohol in the first place? After all, the US should be the epitome of personal freedom historically. Im just wondering...


----------



## tfd543

Kapetan Miki said:


> Europe's last dictator appears to be on the way out - celebrations all over Montenegro tonite.
> Here's Podgorica:


It just means that EU will be farther away for MNE now. 

If its good or bad, thats up to their citizens..


----------



## PovilD

What I heard for older people that in about 70s and early 80s Soviet Union (mostly Brezhnev stagnation era), alcohol consumption was in some ways encouraged. Government was just trying to find ways how to make its population loyal without much effort. For example, I've been told that you don't get much problems if you drink and drive, maybe even less problems than you being sober since you are considered not "responsible due to your actions 'cause you was drunk". Gorbachev was the one to change those policies, and it indeed started to show some improvements before 90s downfall.

For me, the most prominent feature of that policy is lower average life expectancy in Eastern Europe, especially former Soviet Union, in rural areas and smaller towns. I saw graphs that it just stagnated, while Western Europe was constantly growing. By 60s, life expectancy in both sides of Iron Curtain, including Baltics, was similar.

This drinking problem get worse with every economic crisis, especially 90s, and with waves in 00s. Situation is slowly improving, mostly in bigger cities, by 10s.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The life expectancy for males in Ukraine is still only 66 years, a full 10 years lower than females. Likely due to alcohol abuse. 

By comparison; the retirement age in the Netherlands is currently moving up from 65 to 67 years. An average Ukrainian male will not make it to the Dutch retirement age... Kind of shocking.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> The life expectancy for males in Ukraine is still only 66 years, a full 10 years lower than females. Likely due to alcohol abuse.
> 
> By comparison; the retirement age in the Netherlands is currently moving up from 65 to 67 years. An average Ukrainian male will not make it to the Dutch retirement age... Kind of shocking.


My one relative made only to 50 years old due to alcohol abuse. His situation wasn't affecting his job, family, etc. at first, but became worse in the last years. These things affected me personally how I should treat alcohol (=just being more careful, that's it). When I compared with Western/Southern European life expectancy being like almost 80 years, it kinda shocks me too how low is 50 or 60 years.


----------



## italystf

PovilD said:


> I feel the biggest fear for me is if I get infected through surfaces, like through groceries, for example. Some scientists say it is unlikely to get infected by surfaces, only via contacts with infected people.


Getting infected via surfaces is possible, but less likely compared to droplet infection.
Covid infection can occur through mouth, nose, or eyes, but not through skin. So washing hands and avoiding to touch your face with unwashed hands prevents infections through surfaces.


----------



## italystf

mgk920 said:


> I suggest that you read up on the 18th Amendment of the USA's Constitution, outlawing beverage alcohol. It was ratified in 1919, took effect in 1920 and was repealed through another Constitution amendment that was ratified in December of 1933. It, and the events in the years leading up to it, are an amazing period in USA history and I firmly believe that it was a disaster of such a level that it nearly brought down the entire Constitution.
> 
> There are issues today in the USA that are a lingering fallout of that era, too (ie, the Drug War, the 21YO national minimum legal drinking age and its paranoiac level of enforcement, etc).
> 
> Mike


Another surprising aspect about the USA are the restrictions against drinking alchool in public spaces (outside bars/restaurants, of course).
I don't mean that they just prosecute those who hang around while being very drunk and harrass or annoy other people, that would be understandeable.
Even drinking a beer on the street or a park without disturbin anyone may led to a fine over there. That's probably a relict of 1920s prohibition.


----------



## PovilD

italystf said:


> Another surprising aspect about the USA are the restrictions against drinking alchool in public spaces (outside bars/restaurants, of course).
> I don't mean that they just prosecute those who hang around while being very drunk and harrass or annoy other people, that would be understandeable.
> Even drinking a beer on the street or a park without disturbin anyone may led to a fine over there. That's probably a relict of 1920s prohibition.


These restrictions resulted into USA as being not related with alcoholism  While Europe is relatively "alcoholic" from what I see. Maybe, this has reasons why Eastern European countries that are more affected by alcohol abuse introduced more strict restrictions, hoping for improvements in this sphere.

...and yes, legal drinking age in Lithuania is now 20.


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> I suggest that you read up on the 18th Amendment of the USA's Constitution, outlawing beverage alcohol. It was ratified in 1919, took effect in 1920 and was repealed through another Constitution amendment that was ratified in December of 1933. It, and the events in the years leading up to it, are an amazing period in USA history and I firmly believe that it was a disaster of such a level that it nearly brought down the entire Constitution.
> 
> There are issues today in the USA that are a lingering fallout of that era, too (ie, the Drug War, the 21YO national minimum legal drinking age and its paranoiac level of enforcement, etc).
> 
> Mike


The drinking age in the District of Columbia when I started college there in 1982 was 18. It was increased to 21 while I was in school. For that matter, it was increased in New Jersey a couple of months before I turned 18 (so, January 1, 1982); if I’d been a few months older I would have been legal and grandfathered. As I remember it the increase was meant as a measure against drunk driving; I remember myself and other students thinking it wasn’t fair because we (not having cars on campus) weren’t driving, and I saw a statistic that the worst age group for that was 25-30. I do remember traffic jams of cars from Maryland and Virginia, where the age was higher, in Georgetown on weekend evenings.

I wasn’t a big drinker; I just enjoyed being able to go to bars. That’s why this annoyed me.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The U.S. government just canceled an order of 30,000 ventilators, which was contracted out to Philips. The reason is not given, but it appears that treatment now is much different from March. Back in March they didn't know how much about the virus and its effects, so everyone was sent into ICU and on ventilators, often for up to 4-6 weeks, which overloaded ICUs. The U.S. government invoked the Defense Production Act to produce as many ventilators as possible. This phase of frantic ventilator production has passed despite much higher case numbers since then.


I don’t know if that “everyone was sent into ICU and [put] on ventilators” is true. I remember hearing over and over that once you were on a ventilator, you were unlikely to survive. So it was a last resort that they put off as long as possible.

It is true I don’t hear about ventilators any more. Like, at all. That doesn’t mean they’re not in use; just that we don’t have issues with getting them to where they’re needed, which is what was going on in the spring.


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Why would they prohibit alcohol in the first place? After all, the US should be the epitome of personal freedom historically. Im just wondering...


There was a politically powerful “temperance” movement. Liberating the masses from the curse of drinking was seen as social reform. (And I’m guessing there was a touch of WASP antipathy towards “ethnics” in it.) And a lot of Americans belong to streams of Christianity that prohibit drinking. As does the Mormon church. The amendment extending the right to vote to women was passed at about the same time. I don’t know the exact dates, and ratification of an amendment happens at the state level, so an analysis of who voted for both would be complicated, but they were ratified probably within a year of each other. (We just passed the centennial of the women’s vote amendment, so August 1920 in time for that November’s election.)

(And the reason it was put into the Constitution was because the federal level theoretically has limited powers and couldn’t have done it through ordinary legislation.)


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> I wonder what is the reason. In Germany it's even not illegal to drink in public places. In some Bundesländer, it's not even a problem to drink alcoholic beverages on the public transport. And you don't see so many alcoholics.











Corona: What rules still apply in Munich and Bavaria


Where now the mask requirement applies and other rules




www.muenchen.de





*Public ban on alcohol because of too high corona numbers*

If the 7-day incidence value in Munich rises above the signal value of 35, a nightly ban on alcohol consumption in public places and sales restrictions on alcohol will apply immediately for seven days. This is the case in view of the 7-day incidence value of 35.27 from 28.08.2020. *From Friday, August 28, the following applies for the duration of seven days:*

No alcohol may be sold between 9 pm and 6 am the following day. The only exceptions to this rule are the serving of alcohol for consumption on site in restaurants and at approved events.
*No alcohol may be consumed in public places between 11 pm and 6 am the following day. *The only exceptions are the open bar areas at gastronomies and at authorized events.


----------



## PovilD

As for mornings alcohol ban is also applied to prevent hangover buying. Alcohol sales are available from 10am in Lithuania.

I probably would never drink alcohol in the morning anyway, so I don't mind even more 

...and what I forgot? Oh yes, you can't consume alcohol publicly too in Lithuania 24/7. I have mixed feelings to it, but at least I don't get even worse views when alcoholics drink publicly in the streets, so I think is worth it in sake of community, although I understand it would be fun to walk with friends having drinks like beer or even vodka


----------



## tfd543

PovilD said:


> As for mornings alcohol ban is also applied to prevent hangover buying. Alcohol sales are available from 10am in Lithuania.
> 
> I probably would never drink alcohol in the morning anyway, so I don't mind even more
> 
> ...and what I forgot? Oh yes, you can't consume alcohol publicly too in Lithuania 24/7. I have mixed feelings to it, but at least I don't get even worse views when alcoholics drink publicly in the streets, so I think is worth it in sake of community, although I understand it would be fun to walk with friends having drinks like beer or even vodka


Yea its a bit weird to chug a beer in the morning, say for breakfast.


----------



## PovilD

tfd543 said:


> Yea its a bit weird to chug a beer in the morning, say for breakfast.


It is concluded that if you fix your hangover with alcohol, you probably have addiction problems, since normally you won't


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Yea its a bit weird to chug a beer in the morning, say for breakfast.


What about a Bloody Mary or mimosa with brunch?


----------



## MichiH

tfd543 said:


> Yea its a bit weird to chug a beer in the morning, say for breakfast.


Is it? I learned a saying many years ago (from an old woman in her early 70s): "Du sollst morgens wieder den Hund lecken, der Dich abends zuletzt gebissen hat".

It means: You should lick the dog in the morning which was the last bitten you in the evening.

She said it to a guy who ordered a beer at 10AM for breakfast 

"Frühschoppen" (morning pint) has quite some tradition in Germany.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What is going on in Spain?






El Coronavirus: Gráficos, Mapas y Datos del COVID-19 - RTVE.es


RTVE.es te ofrece todos los datos, mapas y gráficos que reflejan la evolución de la crisis del coronavirus COVID-19 en España y en el resto del mundo.



www.rtve.es





+96,600 cases in the past 2 weeks. This 2-week figure continues to increase at every report. There are now 462,800 cases in Spain, which is +213,000 since 1 July. Far more than any other European country despite maintaining some of the strictest regulations.

By comparison, Sweden has virtually no restrictions and perhaps saw its lowest numbers per week since the beginning of the outbreak, it hasn't seen much more than 400 per day over the past 8 weeks, with the recent two weeks trending down.





__





Experience







experience.arcgis.com


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> despite maintaining some of the strictest regulations.


Do people obey them?


----------



## PovilD

I have a feeling that despite similar death toll Spanish are more relaxed on COVID issue than Italians.

From what I saw, Italians are the most careful (and could say, scarred) people here, while other nations have more mixed picture. Important measure would be how do you look at Swedish model.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MichiH said:


> Do people obey them?


According to an El País survey, about 80-90% do. But they also said that people wear masks in the street but not crowded up with families in a restaurant or outdoor dining.

The survey also showed that people have an exaggerated fear of the virus, with 40-45% of people thinking they would be seriously or very seriously ill if infected, but data shows this is only about 2% in reality (requiring hospitalization).


----------



## PovilD

Maybe it has to do with city/town structure, which makes social distancing harder?
Maybe it has also have to do with Spanish being very extroverted people, and introversion is very unusual?


----------



## MichiH

Is it so much different for Italy and Spain?


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think that is the case almost everywhere in Europe, but other countries don't see nearly the case totals as Spain has seen recently.
> 
> Spanish fatalities and ICU admittances remain relatively low though.


Talking of relaxation AND cultural attitudes towards alcohol, I just watched (thanks to bvn.tv) last night's installment of "Vive le vélo"...a talk show on Flemish television in the evenings during the Tour de France. Normally (I've caught it when in Europe at that time) they'll set up in outdoor locations in the day's finishing town, but this year apparently they're moving around Belgium, with a socially-distanced audience, outdoors. This episode was from what's normally some festival site set up in a cornfield. A bit of music, a bit of discussion of the Tour, a touch of Tour tourism (a place on the day's route), a bit of discussion of life....Odd concept, perhaps, and I only understood about half of it, but I enjoyed it.

I'm bringing it up because it struck me after the show: The host and guests had glasses of wine. Toasted each other at the end of the show. You never see that here on a talk show. I'm not even sure it's allowed. (And I'm not at all saying it shouldn't be. And now that I think of it, whatever rule prohibited it wouldn't apply to non-broadcast channels, so maybe it's cultural. I mean, unlimited use of guns is fine, but don't get me started....)


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> In many instances, drinking alcohol in the morning is done by workers unwinding after working the third shift (out at 07h or 08h, for example). This is common in blue-collar factory towns.
> 
> Mike


Maybe I've led a sheltered life, but I don't think you can even get a drink in Pennsylvania at that hour.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think that is the case almost everywhere in Europe, but other countries don't see nearly the case totals as Spain has seen recently.
> 
> Spanish fatalities and ICU admittances remain relatively low though.


Is it happening primarily in tourist areas, or more broadly?


----------



## Penn's Woods

keokiracer said:


> Maybe the first wave in Spain was worse than previously thought and the increasing positive cases are just undetected (symptom-free) cases from back then.


The New York area had a big outbreak in the spring, but - thankfully - is having very few cases now. There don't seem to be widespread previously undetected cases; the testing is overwhelmingly negative.


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> Maybe I've led a sheltered life, but I don't think you can even get a drink in Pennsylvania at that hour.


How about petrol/gasoline shops?


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> How about petrol/gasoline shops?


I meant at a bar or restaurant.


----------



## PovilD

I watched Peak Prosperity video on YouTube few weeks ago that worst affected Spanish regions aren't facing resurgence, and there are actually other regions that face resurgence. He has his theory right now that it is possible that 15% antibody seroprevelance is enough for what would be called "herd immunity", and lockdowns aren't needed. He also assures that it's just a theory and we have to wait. I have my own thoughts why e.g. New York doesn't face resurgence, like summer effect+hygiene+people being more affected psychologically.


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> I just watched (thanks to bvn.tv) last night's installment of "Vive le vélo"...a talk show on Flemish television in the evenings during the Tour de France.


I'm quite impressed that you watch foreign language TV. Do you understand Dutch?


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> I'm quite impressed that you watch foreign language TV. Do you understand Dutch?


I love languages. Have loved languages for as long as I can remember. I formally studied French and German; started learning Dutch when I found myself a bit unexpectedly (long story involving train schedules) in Ostend and was able - as an English-speaker studying German - to understand about half of what was on the signs. I had a light year in college that fall so I bought a Teach Yourself Dutch book and a Dutch newspaper and dictionary and started working through them. I read it pretty well; understanding speech takes more effort, so I make a point of watching things, when I can.

I actually envy people to whom it comes easily.


----------



## CNGL

Penn's Woods said:


> Is it happening primarily in tourist areas, or more broadly?


It is happening all over Spain. In fact, I believe this second wave started out with fruit-pickers. As I pointed out already, Aragon reacted quite early (even not completing the reopening in some areas) and we were bashed due to that, but now we are in a better position than most other regions.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

CNGL said:


> It is happening all over Spain.


It's rather interesting to see the government response, when there were a couple hundred new cases in July they locked down Lleida and later some of those suburbs of Barcelona. However after that they had over 100,000 new cases but they didn't follow up with more lockdowns. What made them change their mind?


----------



## VITORIA MAN

some small towns are also locked down at present and others have high restrictions for bars , meetings , .. but not for mobility
Madrid municipalities close pools, restrict access to parks in bid to halt coronavirus spread
Valencia region confines municipality after coronavirus outbreak


----------



## mgk920

Penn's Woods said:


> Maybe I've led a sheltered life, but I don't think you can even get a drink in Pennsylvania at that hour.


The legal bar opening time is 08h here in Wisconsin. They can open their doors earlier for non-alcohol sales. That was at the insistence of sportsmans' groups, this so that hunters and fishermen can stock up on things like food and bait before they head out in the early morning.

Mike


----------



## andken

PovilD said:


> I watched Peak Prosperity video on YouTube few weeks ago that worst affected Spanish regions aren't facing resurgence, and there are actually other regions that face resurgence.


In Brazil I'm seeing regions that were hotspots in May and June to have extremely low numbers now. The issue is that having thousands and thousands of deaths to achieve herd immunity is a huge human cost.


----------



## PovilD

I still remember views with mass graves being dig, it affected me that this pandemic is a real deal, and we should be careful with that.

Economy is also a thing that we need to save along with people's lives. Economy for working age people, and lives for parents/grandparents of those who work. This is generalization, but I think this is how current situation should be portrayed.


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> I'm bringing it up because it struck me after the show: The host and guests had glasses of wine. Toasted each other at the end of the show. You never see that here on a talk show. I'm not even sure it's allowed.


I think it wouldn't be allowed in Poland on TV, especially before 9 PM.

Beer commercials on TV are shown only in the evening.


----------



## italystf

Kpc21 said:


> An article from a local newspaper from Wrocław from 10 years ago, which is often used as an example, and even a meme, showing how low down is the journalism in Poland now...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Wrocław: Libacja na skwerku
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> gazetawroclawska.pl
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Literally translating
> 
> 
> 
> There were people celebrating the 10th anniversary of that "party"!


In Italy it's not illegal to drink alchool in public, but people often face severe penalities for just few grams of weed for personal use. That's considered overkill by many, as those police efforts may be better used to target serious crime instead.


----------



## Kpc21

italystf said:


> Italy it's not illegal to drink alchool in public, but people often face severe penalities for just few grams of weed for personal use.


Well, in Poland too. Having even a small amount of whatever recreational drugs is considered a severe crime.


----------



## PovilD

italystf said:


> In Italy it's not illegal to drink alchool in public, but people often face severe penalities for just few grams of weed for personal use. That's considered overkill by many, as those police efforts may be better used to target serious crime instead.


Even jail sentence in Lithuania. I think it has to do with government being extremely pro-restriction as is it with alcohol.

This make me think of elderly (so called boomers) being extremely anti-weed, while young are mostly neutral to positive to weed, thinking if this is not the greatest generational divide among an issue, so I think it's a matter of time when things will get released or legalized. Maybe 10 to 20 years if nothing disrupts current course.
There is a chance that current young generation getting older would get indifferent with younger generation feelings in terms of light drugs or other stuff, but I think it's not very likely.

Despite harsh restrictions, I relatively often see (or rather, smell) young people doing recreational drugs, mostly marijuana, or talk about getting and using one.


----------



## andken

PovilD said:


> I still remember views with mass graves being dig, it affected me that this pandemic is a real deal, and we should be careful with that.


It's real. In NYC the pandemic killed the equivalent to ten 9/11s. In a single Brazilian state, São Paulo, it killed the equivalent to an average municipality in that same state. I'm not a fan of long, strict lockdowns, but the pandemic is real, and governments are failing with dealing with it.


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> Well, in Poland too. Having even a small amount of whatever recreational drugs is considered a severe crime.


In dk, Its very laxed. You Can drink anywhere without anyone saying anything to you. You Can even get beers in cinema shops lol. 

And no, Its not considered disgraceful if you’re drunk on the street at 2 AM fooling around..

Its also pretty relaxed regarding drugs. I mean, you only get caught if the Police sees you.
If you blow trees in a park, nothing Will happen and nobody Will denounce you to the Police..


----------



## cinxxx

2001 A Space Odyssey, book from 1968: 



> "It was hard to imagine how the system could be improved or made more
> convenient. But sooner or later, Floyd guessed, it would pass away, to
> be replaced by something as unimaginable as the Newspad itself would
> have been to Caxton or Gutenberg.
> 
> There was another thought which a scanning of those tiny electronic
> headlines often invoked. The more wonderful the means of communication,
> the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be.
> 
> Accidents, crimes, natural and man-made disasters, threats of conflict,
> gloomy editorials - these still seemed to be the main concern of the
> millions of words being sprayed into the ether. Yet Floyd also wondered
> if this was altogether a bad thing; the newspapers of Utopia, he had
> long ago decided, would be terribly dull."


----------



## Penn's Woods

cinxxx said:


> 2001 A Space Odyssey, book from 1968:


Love it!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

_The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be. _

This is a pretty accurate description of social media these days. It's loaded with uninteresting and poor quality content. Just look at photo quality in 2020 compared to say 2010. The cameras have improved dramatically, but we now edit and view them on tiny screens. If you open up social media on a desktop PC you really notice how extremely poor the quality of many photos posted online are, almost as if we are 20 years back in time.

It's convenient, but not quality. It's fast, but shallow. It's engaging, but more geared to triggering rage-bait than interesting, meaningful discussion (just open up any news article comment feed on Facebook or Twitter).


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> _The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be. _
> 
> This is a pretty accurate description of social media these days. It's loaded with uninteresting and poor quality content. Just look at photo quality in 2020 compared to say 2010. The cameras have improved dramatically, but we now edit and view them on tiny screens. If you open up social media on a desktop PC you really notice how extremely poor the quality of many photos posted online are, almost as if we are 20 years back in time.
> 
> It's convenient, but not quality. It's fast, but shallow. It's engaging, but more geared to triggering rage-bait than interesting, meaningful discussion (just open up any news article comment feed on Facebook or Twitter).


It’s a great tool for what you make of it. Most people don’t make anything good if it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Phones are an addiction to waste time. We don't know what to do with time. As soon as people have to wait for a few seconds, the phone comes out of the pocket, to scroll through information we weren't looking for. It's a bit unnerving that we need so much mental stimuli that we can't even go to the bathroom without a phone to pass those few seconds. Or maybe we think we do while in reality we're overloading ourselves with pointless information. 

Mental health issues are a serious problem for a much larger proportion of the population today. People are under stress a lot more. Police reports about ''confused people" have been skyrocketing over the past 10 years. Anti-depressant usage has increased dramatically.

No device has changed our behavior as much in such a short time as the mobile phone.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Mental health issues are a serious problem for a much larger proportion of the population today.


This very thing may well be caused by the increase of the awareness about mental health in the society.

They could be an equally serious problem previously, but nobody really discussed about them and only more severe cases were being diagnosed.

It's still so that when you think of mental health issues, you often think of the cases when someone is either retarded, or whose mental disease makes him dangerous for the neighborhood. Not necessarily about things like e.g. light forms of depression.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Phones are an addiction to waste time. We don't know what to do with time. As soon as people have to wait for a few seconds, the phone comes out of the pocket, to scroll through information we weren't looking for. It's a bit unnerving that we need so much mental stimuli that we can't even go to the bathroom without a phone to pass those few seconds. Or maybe we think we do while in reality we're overloading ourselves with pointless information.
> 
> Mental health issues are a serious problem for a much larger proportion of the population today. People are under stress a lot more. Police reports about ''confused people" have been skyrocketing over the past 10 years. Anti-depressant usage has increased dramatically.
> 
> No device has changed our behavior as much in such a short time as the mobile phone.


And yet I’m in touch with cousins I haven’t actually seen since the 80s (and whom it turns out I like), friends I’d lost touch with now living in Europe, people all over the world I know from groups.... It’s not all bad.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's true, you can find a lot of interesting stuff on social media. I use Twitter to follow agencies and other things related to roads. Not friends, activists or politicians. 

Every time I stumble upon a political or news thread, it's almost exclusively outrage, anger and non-civilized discussions. If you go to the twitter feeds of some people it's just non-stop obsession, outrage and anger about certain topics. It looks like these people are always unhappy. This can't be healthy in the long term. I do believe it's only a niche of the overall population that actively engages in such Twitter discussions, but they are loud and well-represented in media coverage.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's true, you can find a lot of interesting stuff on social media. I use Twitter to follow agencies and other things related to roads. Not friends, activists or politicians.
> 
> Every time I stumble upon a political or news thread, it's almost exclusively outrage, anger and non-civilized discussions. If you go to the twitter feeds of some people it's just non-stop obsession, outrage and anger about certain topics. It looks like these people are always unhappy. This can't be healthy in the long term. I do believe it's only a niche of the overall population that actively engages in such Twitter discussions, but they are loud and well-represented in media coverage.


I don’t even use Twitter. When it was just becoming a thing, I heard somewhere that two-thirds of the people who signed up dropped it in the first month, so I decided not to bother.


----------



## radamfi

Even if you don't post on Twitter, it seems to have become the default way of corresponding with organisations. For example public transport companies or utilities.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Almost any large company uses webcare on Twitter. They can easily communicate with customers, but it's also a way to avoid image damage, a lot of outrage is targeted to companies perceived of doing some heinous act. Twitter outrage is particularly insane, people gang up to get someone fired over something perceived as offensive, and then the whole thing is forgotten within a day (except for the one who lost its job). 

I wonder what media reporting would be if no journalist had access to Twitter for a month. I research old newspapers from before the 1990s about historic road-related events in the Netherlands. It's just remarkable how much more professional and objective journalism was back then. No clickbait titles, no outrage, no 24/7 news cycle based on rumors. I know we won't be going back to that mindset, but the sheer difference is remarkable.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder what media reporting would be if no journalist had access to Twitter for a month. I research old newspapers from before the 1990s about historic road-related events in the Netherlands. It's just remarkable how much more professional and objective journalism was back then. No clickbait titles, no outrage, no 24/7 news cycle based on rumors. I know we won't be going back to that mindset, but the sheer difference is remarkable.


I couldn't agree more.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Almost any large company uses webcare on Twitter. They can easily communicate with customers, but it's also a way to avoid image damage, a lot of outrage is targeted to companies perceived of doing some heinous act. Twitter outrage is particularly insane, people gang up to get someone fired over something perceived as offensive, and then the whole thing is forgotten within a day (except for the one who lost its job).
> 
> I wonder what media reporting would be if no journalist had access to Twitter for a month. I research old newspapers from before the 1990s about historic road-related events in the Netherlands. It's just remarkable how much more professional and objective journalism was back then. No clickbait titles, no outrage, no 24/7 news cycle based on rumors. I know we won't be going back to that mindset, but the sheer difference is remarkable.


It’s more than just Twitter; it’s manpower. Newspapers in particular have a fraction as many journalists as they did 20 years ago. People aren’t advertising as much, not paying for papers... They can only do so much for free.


----------



## andken

ChrisZwolle said:


> This is a pretty accurate description of social media these days. It's loaded with uninteresting and poor quality content. Just look at photo quality in 2020 compared to say 2010. The cameras have improved dramatically, but we now edit and view them on tiny screens. If you open up social media on a desktop PC you really notice how extremely poor the quality of many photos posted online are, almost as if we are 20 years back in time.


I don't think that the smartphone is the problem. I think that the problem is that creating content requires investment - both in time and money - and there is no return for creating great content. Both on the professional and the amateur level. With good luck you may get some thousand views for a video that took hours to create. For youtubers that don't have to spend money because they basically rant or do jokes while playing videogames that's not a problem(And even then it's not Youtube that pay their bills), but that's not the case of more serious photographers and videographers.

Social networks want to pump up engagement with s* content, and they don't want to pay creators. I think that they, not the smartphone, that's up to blame.


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## ChrisZwolle

How do potholes work?






Potholes are pretty rare in the Netherlands, despite having the climatic conditions that cause them (the freeze-thaw cycle as shown in the video). We use a much thicker layer of asphalt, when you see photos of collapsed roads in the United States it shows how thin the asphalt layer is compared to what we use in the Netherlands.

As explained in the video, a thicker layer of asphalt is more expensive (_x_ cm * the surface area = substantial cost increase). If roads are built to last, they should have more layers of asphalt where maintenance is done only on the upper one or two layers. Many motorways in the Netherlands still have the original 1960s and 1970s asphalt underneath the top layer, which is milled and overlayed frequently with new asphalt.

The resurfacing of the top layer must be done on time to prevent the collapse of the layers underneath. If you wait too long, you need to replace the whole pavement down to the sand which is obviously much more expensive and time consuming (not to mention the traffic impact). The Netherlands does the milling and resurfacing of motorways mostly overnight or during weekends, as opposed to long-term construction zones.


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## ChrisZwolle

Funny story, the longest-serving municipal councilman in the Netherlands is a communist.

81-year old Rinze Visser entered the municipal council of Lemmer (now Fryske Marren) on 1 September 1970. 

You don't think of communism when talking about Dutch politics. But there is a communist party, first the Communist Party of the Netherlands, which merged with other parties to form GreenLeft in 1991. Those opposed to the merger formed the New Communist Party of the Netherlands. 

This party never gained any national or provincial representation. However they do manage to gain a couple of seats in some municipalities, currently in Heiloo and De Fryske Marren (Lemmer). Their best result was a 50% vote share in Reiderland in 1994. They used to have a substantial backing in small-town Eastern Groningen. In the most recent municipal elections they garnered 2,344 votes nationwide.

There are some funny anecdotes about the communist party in the Netherlands. The one in Eastern Groningen said they would welcome a Soviet invasion with open arms and sent a telegram to the Kremlin every year on Stalin's birthday.


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## Suburbanist

Well, there are also elected councilors on parties with open age-discrimination platforms, single-issue causes (animal welfare-turning-into-'the vegan party'), and an ultrareligious party.


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## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Funny story, the longest-serving municipal councilman in the Netherlands is a communist.
> 
> 81-year old Rinze Visser entered the municipal council of Lemmer (now Fryske Marren) on 1 September 1970.
> 
> You don't think of communism when talking about Dutch politics. But there is a communist party, first the Communist Party of the Netherlands, which merged with other parties to form GreenLeft in 1991. Those opposed to the merger formed the New Communist Party of the Netherlands.
> 
> This party never gained any national or provincial representation. However they do manage to gain a couple of seats in some municipalities, currently in Heiloo and De Fryske Marren (Lemmer). Their best result was a 50% vote share in Reiderland in 1994. They used to have a substantial backing in small-town Eastern Groningen. In the most recent municipal elections they garnered 2,344 votes nationwide.
> 
> There are some funny anecdotes about the communist party in the Netherlands. The one in Eastern Groningen said they would welcome a Soviet invasion with open arms and sent a telegram to the Kremlin every year on Stalin's birthday.


Yes, but we have You-Know-Who.


----------



## CNGL

CNGL said:


> It is happening all over Spain. In fact, I believe this second wave started out with fruit-pickers. As I pointed out already, Aragon reacted quite early (even not completing the reopening in some areas) and we were bashed due to that, but now we are in a better position than most other regions.


And even better: while other regions are imposing local lockdowns here and there, and Andalusia and the Canary Islands have reported their highest daily number of cases (not even during the lockdown they had been that high), Aragon is removing all remaining restrictions tomorrow (however face mask will still be mandatory, and nightlife will remain shut down). Fraga (in Southeastern province of Huesca, not far from Lleida) will finally see the "new vulgarity" as I call it, two and a half months later than expected.


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## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm not sure if this is a good thing. The result is that the Spanish government has effectively killed the recovery of the tourist sector by counting so many asymptomatic 'cases', almost all countries have used this metric to advise against travel to Spain.
> 
> The Dutch head of the ICU says that a PCR test alone is not sufficient. He says it's essential that this test is performed on patients with symptoms, because the test shows that the patient has genetic material of the virus, but it could long be dead, so without symptoms there is a considerable possibility that these people are not actually contagious to others.


Something I read (from an epidemiologist, but four months ago), says the infectiousness of a given person -peaks- just before symptoms appear. Testing is a mess, particularly comparing places because standards are inconsistent. But you can’t just ignore the asymptomatic on the theory they’re safe. They may not be safe at all.


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## ChrisZwolle

Yes, that is the problem, you have asymptomatic, but they can be pre-symptomatic, so someone might become symptomatic (and infectious). However the large difference in the trend of new positive cases vs the trend of hospitalizations and deaths suggests that a significant - if not huge - part of those positive tests in Spain may not be infectious and thus not a health concern. But other governments base their travel advice on the totals, which could paint a darker picture than what happens in reality.


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## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes, that is the problem, you have asymptomatic, but they can be pre-symptomatic, so someone might become symptomatic (and infectious). However the large difference in the trend of new positive cases vs the trend of hospitalizations and deaths suggests that a significant - if not huge - part of those positive tests in Spain may not be infectious and thus not a health concern. But other governments base their travel advice on the totals, which could paint a darker picture than what happens in reality.


There was a crowd at the top of one of the Tour de France climbs (the Col de Peyresourde) yesterday....raised eyebrows from media and concerns from the riders. (Too many people, not everyone masked, yadda yadda.) Somewhat surprisingly, the French prime minister, who was there, said he had no problem with it. Of course, it was outdoors on the top of a mountain; it probably was fairly safe....


----------



## MattiG

PovilD said:


> I remember Estonia putting those strips in the middle too, Latvia also started to implement those strips, while Lithuania puts those strips only in places where you can't overtake on Via Baltica (E67) sections. In Lithuania, rumble strips are usually on the side of the roads of our A-road network, put as road marking. Engineers call them "combs", but in many occasions, instead of "combs" there are only a simple wide white line, because it's cheaper to implement.. but in the future there are likely to be "combs" everywhere, at least in motorways. I think there is more sense to implement rumble strips in the middle of the road where you overtake, and not on the sides.


To clarify: The longitudinal rumble strips in Finland are not combs (any more) and they are not painted. The winter operations kill everything popping up above the surface of the asphalt. The strips are carved into the asphalt before the road markings are painted. The most common shape is cylindrical one, appearing every 60 centimeters and being 30 centerimeters wide. Initially, they are 10 millimeters deep, 15 mm at motorways.


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## PovilD

When I cycle, I sometimes drive over combs and sometimes you can feel them being worn down, maybe due to traffic or winter operations too. Maybe we should avoid using combs, and use rumble strips instead?

If talking about Baltic Sea region, I saw Poland, Denmark, Sweden using combs in many places along with Lithuanian A-roads and Estonian 2x2 highways.


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## Rebasepoiss

Estonia has started using rumble strips in the past 10 years or so but only in the middle of the road, like here, except on 2+1 roads where they are used on the sides as well, like here. I'm guessing this is because cyclists use the hard shoulder on 1x2 highways and for them a rumble strip would be very uncomfortable if not dangerous to ride on, forcing them to the road.

The rumble strip is definitely more effective than the comb-pattern road marking, however, which isn't as noticeable even when new and wears off rather quickly in our climate.


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## PovilD

Interestingly, I remember driving on rumble strips only in Estonia when passing. I don't remember seeing/feeling them in other countries though (CEE, France, Italy). Then I spotted them on newly repaved Latvian A1 on Google Street View.

Comb-pattern is popular in Sweden, Poland, Denmark, Lithuania, Estonia. Poland, Denmark and Estonia uses them only on highways with hard shoulders, while Lithuania uses them on regular A-roads as well with or without hard shoulders.

What I saw on Street View comb-pattern is more popular in countries of Northern latitudes where snow is more likely. I didn't saw (or at least don't remember seeing) them in Southern Europe though.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes, that is the problem, you have asymptomatic, but they can be pre-symptomatic, so someone might become symptomatic (and infectious). However the large difference in the trend of new positive cases vs the trend of hospitalizations and deaths suggests that a significant - if not huge - part of those positive tests in Spain may not be infectious and thus not a health concern. But other governments base their travel advice on the totals, which could paint a darker picture than what happens in reality.


This may be a fine point, but one does not "become symptomatic (and infectious)"; you're already infectious when you become symptomatic.


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## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder if these are implemented on any systematic scale outside of the Netherlands.


Haven't seem them in Poland. How are they better in improving road safety from normal shoulders? Ok, soft shoulders might be dangerous if you enter them with one side of your car at a high speed. But how are they safer than normal hard shoulders?


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## ChrisZwolle

There are basically two factors;

paved shoulders may encourage driving faster than the design speed / speed limit
these don't require foundation because they are not driven on constantly. Which means they are cheaper and also easier to implement on roads with trees close to the road (root damage).

However it is becoming more common that some are replaced by poured concrete in locations where heavy vehicles drive on them frequently.


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## geogregor




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## ChrisZwolle

Dutch covid-19 ICU occupancy remains negligible after a summer of socializing and no mask usage. The government and media should focus less on the exact number of positive tests and more on the strain on the health care system (which is non-existent months after most restrictions were lifted). The fear of health care overload has been replaced by a fear of numbers. People are getting more rebellious against the remaining restrictions and proposed legislation.


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## PovilD

Just one winter to learn who is right: fearful scientists, or rebellious public. We just don't know. We didn't lived with COVID last winter, only early Spring.

There are more optimism in front of science too as far as I learn right now, so maybe this crisis will end in less than a year time (like 4-8 months)

As for Netherlands there was slow upward trend in first half of August, but second half shows stabilization. It will be interesting to learn if things will remain as they are.


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## cinxxx

This is more and more just a laboratory pandemic...



> 08/20/2020. For people for whom there is no justified recognition of an infection, the informative value of a positive test result is lost - so the conclusion of Dagmar Lühmann in the new EbM column, which is published in the September issue of the journal of KV Hamburg.
> 
> "Our key message is: test, test, test." Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General, made this decision for all countries on March 16, 2020 on how to deal with the corona pandemic. It became international in the perception of the perception, the condition due to (non) compliant test capacities, the infrastructural framework, the unclear responsibilities or the perception in relation to the handling of the pandemic. In the 235 test laboratories registered with the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the number of official tests increased from 127,457 in week 12 to 573,802 in week 31. The national test strategy of the Robert Koch Institute was tested on 1 (20.8.2020 ) or the effects (6/8/2020) of being tested as a returnee from a risk area (> 50 new infections / 100,000 inhabitants in 7 days and / or according to qualitative reports from the region). The state of Bavaria went even further, where every resident has been able to be tested since July 1st, 2020 - "Tests to manage for certainty in every administration", as the website of the Bavarian Health Protection ...











Neue EbM-Kolumne zum anlasslosen Testen auf SARS-CoV-2


20.08.2020. Für Personen, bei denen kein begründeter Verdacht auf eine Infektion vorliegt, ist die Aussagekraft eines einzelnen positiven Testergebnisses verschwindend gering – so das Fazit von Dagmar Lühmann in der aktuellen EbM-Kolumne, die im Septemberheft des Journals der KV Hamburg erscheint.




www.ebm-netzwerk.de







> 20.08.2020. Für Personen, bei denen kein begründeter Verdacht auf eine Infektion vorliegt, ist die Aussagekraft eines einzelnen positiven Testergebnisses verschwindend gering – so das Fazit von Dagmar Lühmann in der aktuellen EbM-Kolumne, die im Septemberheft des Journals der KV Hamburg erscheint.
> 
> „Our key message is: Test, test, test.” Diese Empfehlung für alle Länder sprach Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General der WHO, am 16. März 2020 zum Umgang mit der Corona-Pandemie aus. International wurde ihr in unterschiedlichem Ausmaß nachgekommen, bedingt durch (nicht) verfügbare Testkapazitäten, infrastrukturelle Rahmenbedingungen, unklare Zuständigkeiten oder unterschiedliche Vorstellungen zum bestmöglichen Umgang mit der Pandemie. In den 235 beim Robert-Koch-Institut (RKI) registrierten Testlaboren erhöhte sich die Zahl der wöchentlich durchgeführten Tests von 127.457 in KW 12 auf 573.802 in KW 31. Insgesamt sollen Kapazitäten für über eine Million Tests pro Woche verfügbar sein. Die nationale Teststrategie des Robert-Koch-Instituts wurde zuletzt ergänzt um die Möglichkeit (1.8.2020) bzw. die Verpflichtung (6.8.2020), sich als Reiserückkehrer aus einem Risikogebiet (> 50 Neuinfizierte/ 100.000 Einwohner in 7 Tagen und/oder entsprechende qualitative Berichte aus der Region) testen zu lassen. Noch weiter ging das Bundesland Bayern, wo sich seit dem 1. Juli 2020 jeder Einwohner testen lassen kann – "Testungen, um für Gewissheit bei jedem Einzelnen zu sorgen", wie die Webseite des Bayerischen Gesundheitsministeriums verspricht...


---


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## ChrisZwolle

ChrisZwolle said:


> Denver: from a heat wave to snow in 1 day! 😵


It's happening, the first major snowfall event is occurring in Wyoming. It's in the middle of the night there so traffic volumes will be very low. Still, I-80 looks like it is difficult to drive across. Notice that I-25 has no traffic data north of Casper. This is due to exceedingly low traffic volumes per hour, it normally carries only 3,000 vehicles per day so at night there is virtually no traffic, so Google can't detect traffic flow.


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## Suburbanist

I miss driving between Laramie and Cheyenne as I did when I lived there for an exchange program. The snow out there is dry, very powdery, and it blows out in your car easily, but also doesn't stick to the windshield while moving, at all, as it is so light.


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## ChrisZwolle

This looks impressive, and according to some firefighters, that's the only reason why they use air tankers. They're called ''CNN drops", so it looks good on TV how the government is taking it serious. But the most effective way to battle wildfires is from the ground.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1302379494758465536









Air tanker drops in wildfires are often just for show


The bulky aircraft are reassuring sights to those in harm's way, but their use can be a needless and expensive exercise to appease politicians. Fire officials call them 'CNN drops.'




www.latimes.com





_To professional firefighters, though, it was a prime example of a “political air show,” the high-profile use of expensive aircraft to appease elected officials.

Fire commanders say they are often pressured to order planes and helicopters into action on major fires even when the aircraft won’t do any good. Such pressure has resulted in needless and costly air operations, experienced fire managers said in interviews. 

The reason for the interference, they say, is that aerial drops of water and retardant make good television. They’re a highly visible way for political leaders to show they’re doing everything possible to quell a wildfire, even if it entails overriding the judgment of incident commanders on the ground.

Firefighters have developed their own vernacular for such spectacles. They call them “CNN drops.”_


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## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's happening, the first major snowfall event is occurring in Wyoming. It's in the middle of the night there so traffic volumes will be very low. Still, I-80 looks like it is difficult to drive across. Notice that I-25 has no traffic data north of Casper. This is due to exceedingly low traffic volumes per hour, it normally carries only 3,000 vehicles per day so at night there is virtually no traffic, so Google can't detect traffic flow.


Wyoming's got under 600,000 people in the land area of the U.K. is there ever much traffic between cities?


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## ChrisZwolle

France: +170,000 cases since 1 July. Hospitalizations remain at their lowest level. 

The theory was that once cases increase, you should see hospitalizations and deaths follow the same upward trend with a 2-3 week delay. But that's not happening. This break of trend is visible in many European countries.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Travel map for Norwegians starting from Saturday morning:








Norway itself would actually be red, according to the Norwegian criteria for other countries ( including <20 cases per 100 k per 14 days), as we have had two local outbreaks in the cities of Bergen and Sarpsborg/Fredrikstad.


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## PovilD

I'm actually waiting for Sweden to become all yellow.


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## MichiH

Germany has also defined new risk regions:



> Information on the designation of international risk areas (Current at: 9 September 2020)
> Changes since last amendment:
> *France:* the regions Occitanie, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes and Corsica are now also considered risk areas.
> *Switzerland:* the cantons of Geneva and Vaud are considered risk areas.
> *Croatia:* the counties of Dubrovnik-Neretva and Pozega-Slavonia are now also considered risk areas.
> *Czech Republic:* the urban region of Prague is considered a risk area.
> *Romania:* the district of Iasi is now also considered a risk area
> The Dobritch oblast in *Bulgaria* and the counties of Buzau, Galati and Vrancea in Romania are no longer considered risk areas.





https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Transport/Archiv_Risikogebiete/Risikogebiete_09092020_en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

PovilD said:


> I'm actually waiting for Sweden to become all yellow.


If you are referring to the Norwegian criteria, you might have to wait a while. Sweden as a whole is now approximately at the limit (20 registered infections per 100 k people per 14 days), but Sweden is like the other Nordic countries evaluated at a regional level, and 7 regions are above 30/100k. There are likely to be local outbreaks until the vaccine is here, I fear. Norway btw has three counties are above the 20/100k limit itself due to local outbreaks (Bergen-> Vestland, Fredikstad/Sarpsborg -> Viken, and Oslo). The other counties are all below 10/100 k per 14 days, but Viken, Oslo, and Vestland are the three most populous of the 11 counties of the country, with in total almost 50% of the population.


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## Attus

Are there specific rules or exceptions for athletes, participating in international competitions?
For example there is a norwegian team (Elverum) in handball champions league, they should visit Porto in Portugal on Sep 17th. In the female competition Vipers (from Kristiansand) should visit Krim in Ljubljana, Slovenia, this Saturday and then meet FTC from Budapest, Hungary in Kristiansand a week later.


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## radamfi

Attus said:


> Are there specific rules or exceptions for athletes, participating in international competitions?
> For example there is a norwegian team (Elverum) in handball champions league, they should visit Porto in Portugal on Sep 17th. In the female competition Vipers (from Kristiansand) should visit Krim in Ljubljana, Slovenia, this Saturday and then meet FTC from Budapest, Hungary in Kristiansand a week later.


Most if not all of the national football teams in Europe played in the UEFA Nations League in the last week, with many teams visiting two countries within a few days. For example, England went to Iceland on Saturday, and then went to Denmark on Tuesday.


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## Attus

radamfi said:


> Most if not all of the national football teams in Europe played in the UEFA Nations League in the last week


I know. I asked because I didn't know the Norwegian regulations. But I've found them in the meantime: athletes needn't to be quarantined.


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## ChrisZwolle

The number of positive tests in the Netherlands has increased considerably, to 1,100 per day yesterday.

The data shows that the number of hospitalizations remains at a low level though. The amount of people requiring hospitalization relative to the estimated number of infectious persons is approximately 1 in 400. The amount requiring ICU is around 1 in 1400.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Attus said:


> I know. I asked because I didn't know the Norwegian regulations. But I've found them in the meantime: athletes needn't to be quarantined.


This is a bit simplified. All professional workers from EEA can be exempted from the 10 day quarantine from red countries or regions, under the following conditions:

Two corona-tests have to be taken after arrival in Norway separated by at least 48 hours (test 2 not earlier than day 5 or later than day 8)
Before the first test result is received, the person must quarantine
If the first test is negative, he or she can work afterwards (e.g. play football if that is their job), but must otherwise quarantine him-/herself
If also the second test is negative, quarantine is no longer required
If any of the tests are positive, isolation is of course required and health officials should be notified by the employer such that tracing can start
When there was a football match in Norway with the Austrian team, some Norwegian players were granted the same excemption when coming from outside the EEA, but this was a one-off decision.

It was btw announced today that additional restrictions could be considered in the near future, including quarantine rules being applied to domestic regions with large outbreaks.


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## Attus

Thanks. It means that for example players and staff of Vipers Kristiansand must be qurantined for approx. two days (i.e. until the first test result is recieved) at least after returning from Ljubljana. 
However it is not clear for me what are the rules for foreign teams visiting Norway only for a single game. They usually do not stay more than two days in the country of their opponent (Norway in our case). Will it be possible to arrive in Friday, play a game in Saturday ad leaving Norway in Sunday? European Handball Federation (EHF) made it compulsory for players and staff to have two negative tests before the game, so all of them will have it for sure.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Vipers: Yes, at least as long as the players are professional, i. e. the travel cannot be considered a leisure travel. And they still need to quarantine off work until a second negative test is confirmed. Actually, I noticed now that there has been some articles in the media exactly about this Viper case.

Foreign team coming to Norway: As far as I can understand, your scenario is only allowed if the players can take the test in Norway on Friday and all receive Covid negative results before the match on Saturday. Except during the match and organized preparations etc (after a negative test), they need to quarantine.

During travel quarantine, it is allowed to leave Norway if the travel to the exit port is done according to regulations minimizing the chance of transmission.

Note that quarantine and isolation are two different things in Norway. Isolation applies for Covid positive cases and is much stricter. Also, if there are positive test in a team, the other members will probably be considered close contacts, in which other quarantine rules than for simply travel from a red country /region. More specifically, public transport will not be allowed. Hence, the whole team risks to be stuck in Norway for a while if I interpret the rules correctly (and the rules are followed).


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## Kpc21

In Poland quarantine and isolation is the same in practice, the terms only differ in that, you are quarantined if you are healthy (but there is a suspicion you may be infected), isolated if you are infected.

In the last days, the numbers of recoveries (green) seem to be high and exceeding the numbers of new cases (red; black are deaths):










But actually it's probably caused by the change of procedures. Now the people without symptoms, after 10 days from the beginning of quarantine, are no longer required to be tested to leave the quarantine. So in the last days, quite a lot of people are getting released from quarantine earlier than it was intended, which adds to those who would be released normally.

And the procedures also changed in that, the decision about the continuation of the quarantine no longer belongs to the sanitary authorities, but rather to the GP doctor. I know a man who actually has Covid and has symptoms – basically, he is sick (but not so much that he would have to stay in a hospital). Several days before the end of previous week, he had a test and the result was positive. But like 2 days later he was called by the sanitary authorities and they said he is no longer on "their" quarantine as the procedures changed and now the decision belongs to his doctor. When he contacted his doctor, she didn't really know the new procedures, and as she wasn't sure what she should do, she issued a normal sick leave instead of a continuation of the quarantine. So it's not impossible that he is counted in the stats as "recovered".


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^Norway has not really made any attempt to keep track of the recoveries. 


54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Foreign team coming to Norway: As far as I can understand, your scenario is only allowed if the players can take the test in Norway on Friday


Free tests are btw offered at the airports.


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## PovilD

Travel restriction threshold is raised from 16 to 25 cases per 100,000 in The Baltics. Giving that Sweden's value is 24.7, it might mean that traveling to Sweden would be available again. Thanks, "herd immunity".

Still, no care free travel to the much of Europe though.


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## ChrisZwolle

The New York Times had an article that the vast majority of positive tests (up to 90%!) have a viral load that is so low that they are unlikely to be infectious to others. 









Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be. (Published 2020)


The usual diagnostic tests may simply be too sensitive and too slow to contain the spread of the virus.




www.nytimes.com





This could explain why European countries are seeing skyrocketing postive test numbers, but only marginally increasing hospitalizations and ICU admittances. If this is consistent with all PCR testing in the world, it would require a radical shift of policy. For example if you can subtract 90% of cases from the numbers, most countries would not have a negative travel advisory. 

It would also mean that the vast majority wouldn't need to isolate or quarantine themselves. They also do not require contact tracing. And masks are even less useful.


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## Kpc21

I recently watched a video (in Polish) of a man who is a medical laboratory diagnostician; he makes many videos on YT about health, but also about Covid and the PCR tests. Previously he was debunking some conspiracy theories regarding those tests – but now he told about one thing which can be considered a fault of those tests. If you have just undergone a Covid infection and your organism managed to win the fight with the virus, it isn't active any more, it cannot reproduce, it is destroyed (not to say killed as viruses don't have all the features of living organisms, so one cannot really say the virus was alive). But remnants of the RNA of the virus are still in the organism and it can take more time before the organism totally gets rid of them. So in such a case, even though someone is healthy and not transmitting the virus any more, the test may come out positive.

From what I can see, they also mention this problem in this article.

This is the likely reason of the change of procedures in Poland, so that they no longer require tests from those who are asymptomatic and have undergone a 10-day quarantine. Previously there were cases of people who were staying in quarantine even for 50 days because the tests were still giving positive results.


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## PovilD

This was known from South Korea when quite many people retested positive, thinking if it's some reinfection, but found out that PCR tests are very sensitive and find renmants of the virus.

As for PCR tests, I watched video on YouTube telling that cheaper paper tests would be enough, and it may have positive influence on stopping the spread and not disrupting life, and according to those tests, you would be seen as infectious for a shorter period of time than what you would with PCR which you don't need to stay at home for prolonged periods when you feel fine.

As for pandemic, I still think that this winter will be important to finally understand this virus, and whenever decide if we just go like Sweden and mind other businesses.


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## PovilD

+53 new cases in Lithuania today. Situation was stabilizing at first with about 30 new cases per day, but now is getting worse again. As with school reopenings, and other stuff, like cooling weather and people relaxing, it is expected. I'm almost guarantee that worst time of the pandemic in Lithuania and probably some other CEE countries will be this fall/winter, while in Western Europe it can be variable situation which will be also interesting.


----------



## Kpc21

Until now, the fears were that those paper (so called serological) tests detect antibodies, and when you just got infected, you may not have the antibodies yet.

In Poland there is still more recoveries than new infections, but the stats may still be broken by that recent change of procedures. Although the numbers of new infections are lower than previously. Today it's 603 new infections and 877 recoveries.

The peak was on 21 August with 903 new infections.

Yesterday was the day with the largest amount of tests - 37,323.

Quarantine and hospital occupancy:










Turquoise (the one at the top) is the number of people in quarantine (and we see a drop at the moment of the change of procedures), black are people in epidemiological supervision (it's kind of "almost quarantine", you also aren't really allowed to leave home and you must measure your temperature twice a day), blue (bottom) are hospitalizations.

Here you can see the numbers of hospitalized people, the dark blue are ICU occupancy:










Unfortunately, it seems they all remain at more or less a constant level, not really going down. The Covid ICU occupancy oscillates between 70 and 90 in the whole country.

And another interesting stat – the mobility of Poles:










Compared with the new infections (red). It's based on the data from the Apple company, so it's based only on the iPhone users. Which aren't that popular in Poland and used by a specific social group, so it doesn't really have to interpolate well to the whole society.


----------



## x-type

PovilD said:


> What I saw on Street View comb-pattern is more popular in countries of Northern latitudes where snow is more likely. I didn't saw (or at least don't remember seeing) them in Southern Europe though.


We have it mostly on motorway access roads to separate the directions, like here
I don't remember seeing the elsewhere on normal roads. We rather use transversal bumps, similar to Italian "rallentare" things. 

But on the motorways and main roads we have signalization made of lots of dots which produce sound when onto them.


----------



## Attus

Hungary has 20 times more new cases daily than a month ago. The country reported more than 900 new infections this morning, ~8% of all tests are positive. Count of hospitalisations, too, got much higher, it was 50-60 in August, 280 today. 
This figures are not so frightening, but they increase rapidly.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Damn it, Europe! Get your act together! I want to be able to travel if and when we get -our- act together.

(Actually, I did half-hear a radio report the other day saying some countries, including the U.K., are considering admitting Americans from safe states.)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

According to the number of positive tests, we have a second wave in the Netherlands. According to hospitalization and ICU admittances, there is nothing of note going on.

Politicians seem to be more hesitant than before to implement more restrictions.

positive tests per day per 100,000k.









daily hospitalizations









daily ICU occupation









So daily hospitalizations are still only 1/50th of what it was in March and April.


----------



## andken

The issue with restrictions is that it's not feasible to keep people at home indefinitely. And restrictions on restaurants, for instance, seems to make a difference, so, governments should be working with targeted restrictions, not wide lockdowns.


----------



## tfd543

Has anybody used ceramic brake pads (ATE) before ? Whats your impression compared to traditional semi-metallic?


----------



## Attus

We have elections today, a mayor and city council are elected. Wearing a mask in the polling station is compulsory, distances were (relative to earlier elections) increased. Using your own pen is compulsory, those, who don't bring their own, get one pen, what they should take home, so that every single person uses a pen that was not touched by other persons.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Theory of the Day:



https://news.yahoo.com/face-masks-could-giving-people-123956392.html


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I just wonder why we aren't seeing more pronounced differences between countries with widespread mask usage and countries with limited or no mask usage. Sweden now has among the lowest daily new cases of all major countries in Europe, in fact I wonder if there is any European country with over 10 million people that has lower numbers than Sweden.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Random thought: Are all the regulars here men, or am I just assuming that?


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> I just wonder why we aren't seeing more pronounced differences between countries with widespread mask usage and countries with limited or no mask usage. Sweden now has among the lowest daily new cases of all major countries in Europe, in fact I wonder if there is any European country with over 10 million people that has lower numbers than Sweden.


Maybe the reason is that the Swedes normally apply social distancing even without any global pandemic.

But on the other hand, they also like to drink, and alcohol normally brings people together...

You can say those are stereotypes, but they probably apply to the majority of the society, and this majority is what actually matters here.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I just wonder why we aren't seeing more pronounced differences between countries with widespread mask usage and countries with limited or no mask usage. Sweden now has among the lowest daily new cases of all major countries in Europe, in fact I wonder if there is any European country with over 10 million people that has lower numbers than Sweden.


I’ve said before that figuring out after all this what measures helped, what measures didn’t, and what factors actively hurt will keep plenty of scientists and researchers busy for a while. Your question is a fair one. But at the same time I don’t know how you account for the flattening of the curve in the Northeastern U.S., and more recently of less dramatic outbreaks in states like Arizona, -without- mask usage.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> Maybe the reason is that the Swedes normally apply social distancing even without any global pandemic.
> 
> But on the other hand, they also like to drink, and alcohol normally brings people together...
> 
> You can say those are stereotypes, but they probably apply to the majority of the society, and this majority is what actually matters here.


Have they been drinking outdoors, though?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> But at the same time I don’t know how you account for the flattening of the curve in the Northeastern U.S., and more recently of less dramatic outbreaks in states like Arizona, -without- mask usage.


If you look at the death rate as a likely percentage of cases (around 0.5%), New York must've had far more cases than detected, possibly over 6 million. Which means they very quickly developed some degree of herd immunity that was lacking in other areas. 

Cases and hospitalizations are declining in a number of southern states, sometimes abruptly. But if this was the result of mask usage, you would expect to see results much quicker, within 2-3 weeks of implementation instead of 2-3 months. I remember we discussed a New York Times article about mask usage in June or so, that showed very widespread adoption of masks in public.


----------



## andken

Penn's Woods said:


> But at the same time I don’t know how you account for the flattening of the curve in the Northeastern U.S., and more recently of less dramatic outbreaks in states like Arizona, -without- mask usage.


The regions that were epicenters in March, April, June are seeing a huge drop in cases in part because of seropositivity. There are so many people that already had the virus and have immunity that it does not have space to spread. In Brazil we are already seeing a drop in the number of deaths, even if they are still very high. 

And yes, the three large countries with lots of deaths per million(The Three Caballeros countries, according to the joke) are having real problems because they are seeing several regions that were or have focuses of the disease. Several Lombardias and Madrids in these countries.


----------



## andken

ChrisZwolle said:


> If you look at the death rate as a likely percentage of cases (around 0.5%), New York must've had far more cases than detected, possibly over 6 million. Which means they very quickly developed some degree of herd immunity that was lacking in other areas.


I've heard estimates of 13% to 25% of seropositivity. In Manaus the number that I've heard was 8% and 15% for São Paulo.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

andken said:


> I've heard estimates of 13% to 25% of seropositivity. In Manaus the number that I've heard was 8% and 15% for São Paulo.


There are some doctors arguing that the right T-cell response is common in about 50% of people, if you combine that with the actual antibody rates, an infection rate between 10 and 20% might be sufficient to create herd immunity (often quoted at 60-70%). Some of these southern states saw the number of hospitalizations decline after 10-15% antibody rates were detected, for example in Florida, the Greater Houston area and I believe Arizona as well.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> If you look at the death rate as a likely percentage of cases (around 0.5%), New York must've had far more cases than detected, possibly over 6 million. Which means they very quickly developed some degree of herd immunity that was lacking in other areas.
> 
> Cases and hospitalizations are declining in a number of southern states, sometimes abruptly. But if this was the result of mask usage, you would expect to see results much quicker, within 2-3 weeks of implementation instead of 2-3 months. I remember we discussed a New York Times article about mask usage in June or so, that showed very widespread adoption of masks in public.


Six million in New York City (which would be about 70 percent of the population) or New York State?

My memory is that cases -did- drop in some of those states very soon after mask rules were adopted.
The Times article you may mean is from mid-July:









A Detailed Map of Who Is Wearing Masks in the U.S. (Published 2020)


The patterns from hundreds of thousands of survey respondents reflect partisanship, peer pressure and the footprint of the coronavirus itself.



www.nytimes.com


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> Random thought: Are all the regulars here men, or am I just assuming that?


Yep i Think so, at least in the highway thread, but skyscraper is much more than highways..


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> Six million in New York City (which would be about 70 percent of the population) or New York State?


The whole state, but likely mostly in the New York City metro area. 

But if you look at the numbers of New York (state/city) it's difficult to believe that Wuhan didn't have far more deaths from the initial outbreak. It is also interesting how China has seemingly managed to keep the number of cases under control while other areas with strict lockdowns didn't. Southern Europe is seeing somewhat of a resurgence (not as bad with hospitalizations though) and for example Buenos Aires has been under lockdown for half a year now, escalating to over 500,000 cases since it started. China is officially still at only 85,000 cases.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

🤡










Obviously a photoshop. Any guesses as to were the original is located? My guess is MKAD at one of the forest sectors around Moscow.


----------



## andken

ChrisZwolle said:


> There are some doctors arguing that the right T-cell response is common in about 50% of people, if you combine that with the actual antibody rates, an infection rate between 10 and 20% might be sufficient to create herd immunity (often quoted at 60-70%).


What I'm seeing is that if you are willing to have dozen of thousands of dead people you reach a point where you have some level of immunity and them there is a huge drop of deaths. But it's too costly to reach there.



ChrisZwolle said:


> and for example Buenos Aires has been under lockdown for half a year now, escalating to over 500,000 cases since it started. China is officially still at only 85,000 cases.


To me Argentina, Colombia and PEru are good examples that lockdowns are useful tools, but they can't be the whole package. Simply imploring people to stay at home is not going to work.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Any guesses as to were the original is located? My guess is MKAD at one of the forest sectors around Moscow.



China, where else it could be? ;-)


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## Penn's Woods

So, are @Verso and @keber enjoying the Tour de Slovénie?


----------



## MichiH

Germany:



https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Transport/Archiv_Risikogebiete/Risikogebiete_16092020_en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile





> Information on the designation of international risk areas - Current at: 16 September 2020 - Changes since last amendment:
> France: the Hauts-de-France region and the overseas territory of La Réunion are now also considered as risk areas.
> Croatia: the counties of Brodsko-Posavska and Viroviticko-Podravska are now also considered as risk areas.
> The Netherlands: the provinces of North Holland and South Holland are now considered as risk areas.
> Austria: the province of Vienna is considered a risk area.
> Romania: the counties of Neamt and Caras Severin are considered as additional risk areas.
> Switzerland: Canton Fribourg is considered as a further risk area.
> Czech Republic: the region Středočeský is considered as a further risk area.
> Hungary: the city of Budapest is considered a risk area.
> The counties of Arges and Dambovita in Romania are no longer considered as risk areas.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

We had +1,500 cases today, the numbers have been over 1,000 for about a week now. Half of all cases are in the 15-34 age group.

They blame students. Student dormitories and social get togethers are identified as major sources of infections. In the city of Delft, students make up 80% of all positive tests. There will likely be new restrictions announced on Friday. 

Students in the Netherlands are generally identified to be college / university students (not high school or elementary school, they have a separate term for those: _scholieren_ or scholars). Not as many infections are reported in younger children though. Only 1% are in the 5-9 age group. The median death age is around 88-89 with no deaths under 75. People over 70 make up only a few percent of all cases though.

They also reported that the average ICU duration has been reduced from 21 to under 8 days, which effectively makes the ICU capacity 3 times larger than what it was in April.


----------



## Attus

Hungary has now more than 50 cases per 7 days per 100,000 people.
Hungary, which was one of the least infected nations in Europe in spring, is now one of the most infected ones (Spain, France and Montenegro, however, have significantly more new infections), the trend is ascending. Additionally: ~8% of all tests are positive what is pretty much.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> We had +1,500 cases today, the numbers have been over 1,000 for about a week now. Half of all cases are in the 15-34 age group.
> 
> They blame students. Student dormitories and social get togethers are identified as major sources of infections. In the city of Delft, students make up 80% of all positive tests. There will likely be new restrictions announced on Friday.
> 
> Students in the Netherlands are generally identified to be college / university students (not high school or elementary school, they have a separate term for those: _scholieren_ or scholars). Not as many infections are reported in younger children though. Only 1% are in the 5-9 age group. The median death age is around 88-89 with no deaths under 75. People over 70 make up only a few percent of all cases though.
> 
> They also reported that the average ICU duration has been reduced from 21 to under 8 days, which effectively makes the ICU capacity 3 times larger than what it was in April.


There is still a chance that getting COVID is unavoidable, but is best to keep away from potential exposure as long as possible since treatment and hospital capacity is improving. Chances really depends on how quickly effective vaccine will be developed too.

Giving the lingering panic, it's better it should be avoided, but I don't think we can avoid it forever. The best case scenario would be avoiding "till the end" when catching become harder (very hard) due to improvements in science (if avoidable in first place).


----------



## italystf

In Italy we're averaging 1,000-1,500 cases per day with 1.5-2% of positive tests.


----------



## italystf

PovilD said:


> There is still a chance that getting COVID is unavoidable, so is best to keep away from potential exposure as long as possible since treatment and hospital capacity is improving. Chances really depends on how quickly effective vaccine will be developed too.
> 
> Giving the lingering panic, it's better it should be avoided, but I don't think we can avoid it forever. The best case scenario would be avoiding "till the end" when catching become harder (very hard) due to improvements in science (if avoidable in first place).


I really hope mass vaccination will be available in 2021. That would be a huge relief for all us!


----------



## keber

Penn's Woods said:


> So, are @Verso and @keber enjoying the Tour de Slovénie?


I don't give a damn to overhyped sports events anymore. I do like to cycle, though.


----------



## cinxxx

I think the virus will mutate and won't be anything different than any regular flu viruses before they get any vaccines out


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch government purchased a large amount of vaccines for the Swine Flu in 2009. That pandemic didn't have much testing and wasn't mitigated significantly. It eventually tapered out after 9-12 months. The vaccines were never used.


----------



## MichiH

cinxxx said:


> I think the virus will mutate and won't be anything different than any regular flu viruses before they get any vaccines out


That's my bet too! But I think it will likely be (a little bit) more fatal.


----------



## PovilD

italystf said:


> In Italy we're averaging 1,000-1,500 cases per day with 1.5-2% of positive tests.


Things are not looking that bad in Italy.


ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch government purchased a large amount of vaccines for the Swine Flu in 2009. That pandemic didn't have much testing and wasn't mitigated significantly. It eventually tapered out after 9-12 months. The vaccines were never used.


Well, I think it's different. Swine Flu was kinda a joke for me. Most of my class including my friends got sick, school was shut down, but I was fine, and got some vacation from school. Things went quick, but now we got situation when things are slow, media covers panic not for days or weeks but months.

I'm starting to think why I was fine during 2009 Swine flu pandemic, if it was immune system, or other causes (luck?)... My family weren't got sick either while it was different situation in schools.


----------



## CNGL

IMO the A-flu "pandemic" (n.b.: in Spanish the term "Swine flu" fell into disuse soon into it, as it was determined it didn't came from pigs) was a laught on us. It was really a new strain of a well known disease that went viral (never better said), unlike the current coronavirus. BTW, I refuse to call the disease "Covid-19" as that doesn't describe its symptoms (but then we have a ton of eponymously-named diseases and syndromes), instead I prefer "Wuhan Respiratory Syndrome" after where it was first described, or "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome 2" like the virus itself.

BTW, regarding the so-called Swine flu, there was a virulent outbreak of that in my region several years later, in early 2014, with many people hospitalised, but not to the extend of the coronavirus.


----------



## PovilD

At least we are learning or grasping what "real" pandemic is... and it seems that it's not fun... and it could have happened at any time...

---
As for me personally, I'm now more than ever waiting for the end of it, from "unprecedented times" to something more or less "back to normal". Just knowing that at least few months still await us without a doubt.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keber said:


> I don't give a damn to overhyped sports events anymore. I do like to cycle, though.


You get the reference, though? You know two Slovenes are in front of everyone else, and I gather one of them is likely to win.


----------



## Penn's Woods

So we heard this today....









Trump disputes CDC head's vaccine timeline and mask claims


President Donald Trump again contradicted his own health officials' coronavirus statements -- this time on the importance of mask wearing and the timing for a vaccine.




www.cnn.com





I don’t see it in the article, but he also says he expects a vaccine next April.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Saw this yesterday in an article from Belgium about the second wave Europe’s expecting:


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> We had +1,500 cases today, the numbers have been over 1,000 for about a week now. Half of all cases are in the 15-34 age group.
> 
> They blame students. Student dormitories and social get togethers are identified as major sources of infections. In the city of Delft, students make up 80% of all positive tests. There will likely be new restrictions announced on Friday.
> 
> Students in the Netherlands are generally identified to be college / university students (not high school or elementary school, they have a separate term for those: _scholieren_ or scholars). Not as many infections are reported in younger children though. Only 1% are in the 5-9 age group. The median death age is around 88-89 with no deaths under 75. People over 70 make up only a few percent of all cases though.
> 
> They also reported that the average ICU duration has been reduced from 21 to under 8 days, which effectively makes the ICU capacity 3 times larger than what it was in April.


No deaths under 75? Is that since the beginning of the thing?


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> Germany:
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Transport/Archiv_Risikogebiete/Risikogebiete_16092020_en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile


Sigh.


----------



## geogregor

Penn's Woods said:


> So we heard this today....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Trump disputes CDC head's vaccine timeline and mask claims
> 
> 
> President Donald Trump again contradicted his own health officials' coronavirus statements -- this time on the importance of mask wearing and the timing for a vaccine.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.cnn.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don’t see it in the article, but he also says he expects a vaccine next April.


There is big difference between "having a vaccine" and implementing effective mass vaccination. Especialy if chunk of population refuses to be vaccinated and other chunk won't be vaccinated due to medical reasons. 

I bet we won't effectively vaccinate populations in 2021. And by 2022 the show might be over, susceptible people will mostly die by then and others will get sick (or just infected) and recover.

Of course some poor people in Africa might die of hunger before then, due to economic mess we are creating. But then, who in Europe or America cares...


----------



## PovilD

Penn's Woods said:


> No deaths under 75? Is that since the beginning of the thing?


I bet it is since of the beginning of sustained upward trend in The Netherlands after relaxation of restrictions.



geogregor said:


> There is big difference between "having a vaccine" and implementing effective mass vaccination. Especialy if chunk of population refuses to be vaccinated and other chunk won't be vaccinated due to medical reasons.
> 
> I bet we won't effectively vaccinate populations in 2021. And by 2022 the show might be over, susceptible people will mostly die by then and others will get sick (or just infected) and recover.
> 
> Of course some poor people in Africa might die of hunger before then, due to economic mess we are creating. But then, who in Europe or America cares...


There are talks how susceptible people will get vaccinated early next year. After vaccination of susceptible is complete, mass vaccination may begin. It's gonna get interesting though.


----------



## Penn's Woods

PovilD said:


> I bet it is since of the beginning of sustained upward trend in The Netherlands after relaxation of restrictions.
> 
> 
> There are talks how susceptible people will get vaccinated early next year. After vaccination of susceptible is complete, mass vaccination may begin. It's gonna get interesting though.


I heard today something about how the vaccine would be rolled out, in the U.S. I assume. Who’d get it first and so on. But I don’t remember the source, and this was on radio news so I couldn’t find it easily, so I don’t know how official it is.


----------



## keber

Penn's Woods said:


> You get the reference, though? You know two Slovenes are in front of everyone else, and I gather one of them is likely to win.


Of course I know that, it is all over the news here, you can't miss it. Still, I don't give a damn.


----------



## keber

Penn's Woods said:


> Saw this yesterday in an article from Belgium about the second wave Europe’s expecting:


In Spain number of deaths is rapidly increasing, almost 400 in last 2 days.


----------



## cinxxx

> The Swedish model continues to amaze. Sweden has recorded the fewest daily cases in the last six months
> 
> The number of new cases in Sweden in the last 14 days is 22.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. By comparison, there were 279 new cases per 100 thousand inhabitants in Spain, 158.5 in France, 118 in the Czech Republic, 77 in Belgium and 59 in the United Kingdom, countries that imposed drastic measures this spring.











Modelul suedez continuă să uimească. Suedia a înregistrat cele mai puţine cazuri zilnice din ultimele şase luni


Numărul cazurilor noi în ultimele 14 zile din Suedia este de 22,2 la 100.000 de locuitori, potrivit Centrului European pentru Prevenirea şi Controlul Bolilor. Prin comparație, au fost înregistrate 279 cazuri noi la suta de mii de locuitori în Spania...




www.digi24.ro


----------



## PovilD

cinxxx said:


> Modelul suedez continuă să uimească. Suedia a înregistrat cele mai puţine cazuri zilnice din ultimele şase luni
> 
> 
> Numărul cazurilor noi în ultimele 14 zile din Suedia este de 22,2 la 100.000 de locuitori, potrivit Centrului European pentru Prevenirea şi Controlul Bolilor. Prin comparație, au fost înregistrate 279 cazuri noi la suta de mii de locuitori în Spania...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.digi24.ro


The only question is IF a second wave occurs, especially having cold season ahead. If not, I think in the mid term we are free from this. +vaccines in hand could help to prevent serious illness.


----------



## cinxxx

Of course there will be a flu season again, this is no news, it happens every year.
What's interesting is that if you look on the statistics in Sweden, they even had less deaths of the flu (including Covid-19) than previous years.
We can't lockdown every winter "to save lives from the flu".
You can't save everyone, people die daily, you can't prevent that, you can't prevent someone to not be unlucky and have a brick falling on his head, or having a maniac or a drunk person make a car accident and kill them.


----------



## PovilD

cinxxx said:


> You can't save everyone, people die daily, you can't prevent that, you can't prevent someone to not be unlucky and have a brick falling on his head, or having a maniac or a drunk person make a car accident and kill them.


In the long term, you're right, but in the short to mid term, I think we CAN actually give some people 10-15+ years of life by preventing the spread, especially if vaccine is only few months ahead. This means that we must be patient for this year and early next year... from my point of view, few months is way better than few years, I wouldn't be that patient for few years though...

Some life must go on, giving really low mortality rate for working population and the young in general, but elderly must be cautious, and people who live with elderly must be cautious too. Ideally, those two groups shouldn't mix together.


----------



## cinxxx

And I'm ok with that, but not by doing lockdowns and destroying economy.
The economy won't recover with same speed and many people will face hardships in the years to come, which should have been avoided.


----------



## PovilD

cinxxx said:


> And I'm ok with that, but not by doing lockdowns and destroying economy.
> The economy won't recover with same speed and many people will face hardships in the years to come, which should have been avoided.


I agree completely that economy is very important here.


----------



## Penn's Woods

cinxxx said:


> Of course there will be a flu season again, this is no news, it happens every year.
> What's interesting is that if you look on the statistics in Sweden, they even had less deaths of the flu (including Covid-19) than previous years.
> We can't lockdown every winter "to save lives from the flu".
> You can't save everyone, people die daily, you can't prevent that, you can't prevent someone to not be unlucky and have a brick falling on his head, or having a maniac or a drunk person make a car accident and kill them.


I’ve heard estimates that achieving herd immunity in the U.S. would cost two to six million lives. Let’s try another way.

I mean, I’m over this too. I get that. But it’s where we’re at right now.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> No deaths under 75? Is that since the beginning of the thing?


Over last week. The case-fatality ratio in the Netherlands since 1 July has been 0.4%.


----------



## cinxxx

Penn's Woods said:


> I’ve heard estimates that achieving herd immunity in the U.S. would cost two to six million lives. Let’s try another way.
> 
> I mean, I’m over this too. I get that. But it’s where we’re at right now.


I really doubt those numbers.
It's full of articles everywhere of "what if", "might", these are exactly that, opinions, not facts.
If I'm also allowed to add such opinion, I think more people would die of poverty than the virus...


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Over last week. The case-fatality ratio in the Netherlands since 1 July has been 0.4%.


A such low fatality ratio probably means very good testing.


----------



## italystf

PovilD said:


> I bet it is since of the beginning of sustained upward trend in The Netherlands after relaxation of restrictions.
> 
> 
> There are talks how susceptible people will get vaccinated early next year. After vaccination of susceptible is complete, mass vaccination may begin. It's gonna get interesting though.


Vaccinating vulnerable people would shrink a lot the number of fatalities and severe cases.
When vulnerable people are vaccinated they could start to vaccinate everyone else.


----------



## PovilD

cinxxx said:


> If I'm also allowed to add such opinion, I think more people would die of poverty than the virus...


Yeah, we must count that too. We're saving lives after all, and it's not just virus, imho.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

cinxxx said:


> I really doubt those numbers.


The initial projections for the number of deaths were way off as well. Or most governments treated the worst-case scenario as the only scenario. 

There is a lack of long-term vision. There is tunnel vision towards a vaccine, but other scenarios must be considered as well, for example if a vaccine won't be available within the near-term future, if it isn't effective, if the virus suddenly dies down, etc. The 2009 swin flu H1N1 virus died out after 9-12 months without any serious mitigation while spreading similar to the coronavirus. Some are even arguing that the lockdowns and masks extend the crisis unnecessarily. 

There should also be a risk-based strategy (protecting the weak and elderly) instead of destroying the economy and people's mental health by an obsession over numbers.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> The initial projections for the number of deaths were way off as well. Or most governments treated the worst-case scenario as the only scenario.


You can't blame them for not knowing in February and March everything what we know today, half a year later.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> You can't blame them for not knowing in February and March everything what we know today, half a year later.


And one can argue that preparing for the worst was prudent.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> Record new cases recorded in Lithuania - 99 cases.


In Poland too – we have over 1000 new infections, which hasn't happened before.

For several days, the number of active cases is again growing.


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> I agree that life must go on and I don't want to be limited in my interests.


What many people forget: it is not yes or no, not all or nothing. 
It's just like car traffic.Car traffic is not banned, nor is it unlimited. If you drive a car, you ARE limited in your interests: you must drive on the right side of the road, you must stop at red light, and your speed, too, is limited. And the rules are not the same everywhere: on the motorway you may drive fast, downtown or in front of a school you must drive slow. Crossings in rural areas have no traffic lights, those in city centers have, etc., etc. 
We need something like that in case of Covid-19 as well. Finding the proper balance is not easy, you fail now and again, but even not-perfect compromises are usually better than no compromises at all. No lockdown, but some restrictions, as precise as needed and possible, in order neither to have too many infections and too many fatalities, nor to break our life.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^This.


----------



## PovilD

Attus said:


> What many people forget: it is not yes or no, not all or nothing.
> It's just like car traffic.Car traffic is not banned, nor is it unlimited. If you drive a car, you ARE limited in your interests: you must drive on the right side of the road, you must stop at red light, and your speed, too, is limited. And the rules are not the same everywhere: on the motorway you may drive fast, downtown or in front of a school you must drive slow. Crossings in rural areas have no traffic lights, those in city centers have, etc., etc.
> We need something like that in case of Covid-19 as well. Finding the proper balance is not easy, you fail now and again, but even not-perfect compromises are usually better than no compromises at all. No lockdown, but some restrictions, as precise as needed and possible, in order neither to have too many infections and too many fatalities, nor to break our life.


Current traffic safety, regulations, road design standards wasn't developed within months or days. It took decades to implement current standards and traffic safety we could enjoy. We are slowly learning from the mistakes we made, finding weak spots. My relative's driving instructor said that current traffic regulations are "written by blood". COVID is similar story, I think, although it has chances (no certainty here) to be eradicated at least in Developed World.


----------



## PovilD

If talking about Italian relations with COVID, I feel there is different attitudes here, with generally being more strict and careful regarding COVID, and this even results in numbers being relatively low, but I don't understand why I don't feel it from Spain, France, or UK, where triage and piling death was also taking place, and there are various opinions here (to lockdown, not to lockdown), and current numbers are high here.


----------



## andken

PovilD said:


> Current traffic safety, regulations, road design standards wasn't developed within months or days. It took decades to implement current standards and traffic safety we could enjoy. We are slowly learning from the mistakes we made, finding weak spots. My relative's driving instructor said that current traffic regulations are "written by blood". COVID is similar story, I think, although it has chances (no certainty here) to be eradicated at least in Developed World.


The issue with driving is that a lot of things that limit traffic fatalities, like not driving on the left, not passing on the right, parking in reverse, smaller speeds in urban areas, are things that people are not willing to do.I'm an enthusiast of defensive driving, and my Mom complains when she is driving with me because I avoid doing left-turns. I think that's a complicated analogy.

The issue with Covid is that a single infected person is enough to infect entire populations. That's why simply expecting people to stay at home does not work. Governments should be working with testing and tracing, and in the end the fact that there is a random person going to bars is used to deflect blame from governments that are not doing their f* jobs.


----------



## x-type

andken said:


> The issue with driving is that a lot of things that limit traffic fatalities, like not driving on the left, not passing on the right, parking in reverse, smaller speeds in urban areas, are things that people are not willing to do.I'm an enthusiast of defensive driving, and my Mom complains when she is driving with me because I avoid doing right-turns. I think that's a complicated analogy.
> 
> The issue with Covid is that a single infected person is enough to infect entire populations. That's why simply expecting people to stay at home does not work. Governments should be working with testing and tracing, and in the end the fact that there is a random person going to bars is used to deflect blame from governments that are not doing their f* jobs.


You mean you avoid left turns, not right? (unless you live in left-hand traffic area)

Europe has shown in the spring 2020 that staying at home works. But it is not long term solution because people go crazy and will accept no more lockdowns in the future. People are becoming more and more rebellious and for social, but also for ecomonical reasons lockdowns are not solution anymore.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Well, it’s great they managed to hold and finish the Tour de France, safely apparently.
:cheers:


----------



## andken

x-type said:


> You mean you avoid left turns, not right? (unless you live in left-hand traffic area)


Yes, I'm going to correct it. ;-)



> Europe has shown in the spring 2020 that staying at home works.


Shutdowns can be used to gain time for test-and-trace. Colombia, Peru, Argentina, South Africa, India proved that shutdowns alone are at best going to kick the can down the road. And obviously, is not sustainable to expect people to stay indefinitely at home, we need better solutions.


----------



## Verso

Penn's Woods said:


> So, are @Verso and @keber enjoying the Tour de Slovénie?


When you wrote this four days ago, I must say I only knew about Roglič leading the Tour. I knew Pogačar was also there somewhere, but that's all. Then, yesterday he turned everything upside down. Of course it's nice to see two Slovenes lead the Tour, but I'm still sorry about Roglič, I like him (nothing against Pogačar though). My _second cousin once removed_ Jan Polanc finished 40th. :cheers:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> Pogačar


Aha, I didn't get he was Slovene. I don't follow the tour so I only read the headlines and the Dutch media thinks people are too stupid to understand diacritics, so I thought there was something about a type of car. I thought, what's a Pogacar?


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> Aha, I didn't get he was Slovene. I don't follow the tour so I only read the headlines and the Dutch media thinks people are too stupid to understand diacritics, so I thought there was something about a type of car. I thought, what's a Pogacar?


Heh, "pogača" is some kind of cake in Slovenian (but made of dough, like bread) and "rogljič" is croissant. So now we're asking ourselves what's better: cake or croissant? 😁


----------



## Penn's Woods

Okay, if you all will forgive me a virus post, it struck me while watching Tour coverage that there’s one thing I don’t know about transmission, and I’m wondering if anyone else -has- heard:
Say you’ve got a thousand people packed fairly close together at a mountaintop stage finish (or in any other setting, outdoors or in, but that’s what made me think of this), and they’re there for a half an hour, or a hour, or a few hours....Say there’s one infected person in this crowd. How much of the crowd can he infect? Which seems to me to depend on how fast a newly infected person becomes infectious enough to pass it on. Could it spread from person to person through that crowd while they’re all together, or does it spread to a few people, mostly close to the infected person, but any further spread is not within that crowd, but over the coming days as those people go home and pass it on. And that will happen regardless, unless they’re lucky, and quarantine. But I’m getting at that that first round of infections within the crowd from the first person.


----------



## andken

Penn's Woods said:


> Say you’ve got a thousand people packed fairly close together at a mountaintop stage finish (or in any other setting, outdoors or in, but that’s what made me think of this), and they’re there for a half an hour, or a hour, or a few hours....Say there’s one infected person in this crowd.


If they are unmasked and talking with each other? Probably _every _single of them, that's why it's so difficult to control this virus, and why only using lockdowns aren't going to do much against that.


----------



## Penn's Woods

andken said:


> If they are unmasked and talking with each other? Probably _every _single of them, that's why it's so difficult to control this virus, and why only using lockdowns aren't going to do much against that.


Hmmm.


----------



## PovilD

I have read about super spreaders that some people can transmit it as easily as measles (aerosolized transmission), some don't transmit the virus that easily. It was spotted with SARS 1.0 too.

If talking about crowds, one person could infect most of the crowd quite easily, while other people may be only be infecting few nearest people or even none.


----------



## tfd543

Ahh the time-resolved infection rate. Well, who knows.. could be wonderful to know that plot.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Aha, I didn't get he was Slovene. I don't follow the tour so I only read the headlines and the Dutch media thinks people are too stupid to understand diacritics, so I thought there was something about a type of car. I thought, what's a Pogacar?




Btw including diacritics, a car called Pogača would be total crap. Also those "bread" like surnames sound very funny here. And kinda redneckish.


----------



## Kpc21

The Polish government is in crisis. PiS had the majority in the government was thanks to that they were in coalition with two minor right-wing parties (more conservative than PiS), together with which, as a single committee, they stood for elections in 2019.

The point of the disagreement was a law concerning protection of animals. It involved ban on breeding animals (except rabbits) for fur coats, using animals for entertainment (currently almost all circuses in Poland use animals in their shows, with this law it becomes illegal), also ritual killing of animals would only be allowed for registered religious groups. It also forbids keeping domestic animals on permanent tethers (and time and length limits for the temporary ones) and spiked collars for dogs. And it defines the minimum dimensions of enclosures in which animals are kept.

The law was proposed by PiS – but in the voting, one of two other coalition parties voted all against it and one all abstained. Also 17 members of PiS voted against.

Interestingly, this law got passed, because it was also supported by almost all the opposition.

This way the coalition probably fell apart. Also PiS threw out all the members who voted against.

Now the negotiations in the former coalition still take place – but the most likely scenario is that PiS will be ruling the country for 3 years with a minority in the parliament. So they will be solely the executive.


----------



## italystf

andken said:


> If they are unmasked and talking with each other? Probably _every _single of them, that's why it's so difficult to control this virus, and why only using lockdowns aren't going to do much against that.





PovilD said:


> I have read about super spreaders that some people can transmit it as easily as measles (aerosolized transmission), some don't transmit the virus that easily. It was spotted with SARS 1.0 too.
> 
> If talking about crowds, one person could infect most of the crowd quite easily, while other people may be only be infecting few nearest people or even none.


Do people became contagious as soon as they get infected or only after a couple of days?
In the second case, I don't see how can a single person infect the whole crowd. In the first case it would be possible, indeed.


----------



## MichiH

italystf said:


> Do people became contagious as soon as they get infected or only after a couple of days?
> In the second case, I don't see how can a single person infect the whole crowd. In the first case it would be possible, indeed.


Correct. I've googled.... I didn't find much but it seems that you get symptoms after up to 14 days. And I just read (DE) that it is possible that one can infect other people even 1-2 days before one gets symptoms.

If that's right, we talk about the latter. And the answer would be: NO!



Penn's Woods said:


> Okay, if you all will forgive me a virus post, it struck me while watching Tour coverage that there’s one thing I don’t know about transmission, and I’m wondering if anyone else -has- heard:
> Say you’ve got a thousand people packed fairly close together at a mountaintop stage finish (or in any other setting, outdoors or in, but that’s what made me think of this), and they’re there for a half an hour, or a hour, or a few hours....Say there’s one infected person in this crowd. How much of the crowd can he infect? Which seems to me to depend on how fast a newly infected person becomes infectious enough to pass it on. Could it spread from person to person through that crowd while they’re all together, or does it spread to a few people, mostly close to the infected person, but any further spread is not within that crowd, but over the coming days as those people go home and pass it on. And that will happen regardless, unless they’re lucky, and quarantine. But I’m getting at that that first round of infections within the crowd from the first person.


But who knows


----------



## Attus

Have you ever heard of Darwin Award? It was in a question in German edition of Who wants to be a millionaire (Wer wird Millionär?), for 125,000 Euro. 
I grew up in Hungary, in Hungary almost everyone know the Darwin Award. In Germany ... the candidate didn't, the showman, Günther Jauch, didn't, no one of the spectators did. I was really very surprised.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> The Polish government is in crisis. PiS had the majority in the government was thanks to that they were in coalition with two minor right-wing parties (more conservative than PiS), together with which, as a single committee, they stood for elections in 2019.
> 
> The point of the disagreement was a law concerning protection of animals. It involved ban on breeding animals (except rabbits) for fur coats, using animals for entertainment (currently almost all circuses in Poland use animals in their shows, with this law it becomes illegal), also ritual killing of animals would only be allowed for registered religious groups. It also forbids keeping domestic animals on permanent tethers (and time and length limits for the temporary ones) and spiked collars for dogs. And it defines the minimum dimensions of enclosures in which animals are kept.
> 
> The law was proposed by PiS – but in the voting, one of two other coalition parties voted all against it and one all abstained. Also 17 members of PiS voted against.
> 
> Interestingly, this law got passed, because it was also supported by almost all the opposition.
> 
> This way the coalition probably fell apart. Also PiS threw out all the members who voted against.
> 
> Now the negotiations in the former coalition still take place – but the most likely scenario is that PiS will be ruling the country for 3 years with a minority in the parliament. So they will be solely the executive.


Are new elections possible?


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Do people became contagious as soon as they get infected or only after a couple of days?
> In the second case, I don't see how can a single person infect the whole crowd. In the first case it would be possible, indeed.


That’s exactly what I’m wondering.


----------



## MichiH

Attus said:


> Have you ever heard of Darwin Award?


No. But I can google.... Darwin Awards - Wikipedia Nothing I need to know...just bullshit...


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> Are new elections possible?


Yes, but from what PiS is saying now, it seems that if the negotiations fail, they will rather maintain a minority government. Of course, that government may fail not being able to do anything, so that the only option will be new elections. Such a situation has already happened in Poland some 15 years ago, or so. It was also PiS who failed (back then yet with Lech Kaczyński as the leader, the one who died in a plane crash), also unable to maintain a coalition. There were early elections, won by PO.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> No. But I can google.... Darwin Awards - Wikipedia Nothing I need to know...just bullshit...


Like 90 percent of social media. And I’m being generous to social media.


----------



## andken

italystf said:


> Do people became contagious as soon as they get infected or only after a couple of days?
> In the second case, I don't see how can a single person infect the whole crowd. In the first case it would be possible, indeed.


The research has shown that a lot of the contagion can be traced to super spreaders, single individuals contaminating large numbers of people. 









A few superspreaders transmit the majority of coronavirus cases


Epidemiological data suggests that 80% of COVID-19 cases can be traced to just 20% of those infected with SARS-CoV-2.




theconversation.com





There was a choir practice where a single person infected 50 people. There are lots of incidents where a single person infected a whole crowd.
(That's also why countries with the best results weren't necessary the ones with the toughest lockdowns, but the ones with more testing and proper isolation for people with infections).


----------



## Penn's Woods

andken said:


> The research has shown that a lot of the contagion can be traced to super spreaders, single individuals contaminating large numbers of people.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A few superspreaders transmit the majority of coronavirus cases
> 
> 
> Epidemiological data suggests that 80% of COVID-19 cases can be traced to just 20% of those infected with SARS-CoV-2.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> theconversation.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There was a choir practice where a single person infected 50 people. There are lots of incidents where a single person infected a whole crowd.
> (That's also why countries with the best results weren't necessary the ones with the toughest lockdowns, but the ones with more testing and proper isolation for people with infections).


I’d forgotten about the choir case. So it probably did happen there.


----------



## andken

Penn's Woods said:


> I’d forgotten about the choir case. So it probably did happen there.


There dozens of events connected to almost a hundred cases there. I find difficult that more than one people with Covid went to a wedding or a church. And if only symptomatic people transmitted the virus that would be over a long time ago.


----------



## Penn's Woods

andken said:


> There dozens of events connected to almost a hundred cases there. I find difficult that more than one people with Covid went to a wedding or a church. And if only symptomatic people transmitted the virus that would be over a long time ago.


But on further thought, that’s a different situation: That was several dozen people together for a few hours, in a fairly small indoor space, engaged in an activity that produced lots of exhalation from deep in the respiratory tract. It’s possible if not likely that a single infected member of the choir -directly- infected most of the other people in the room.

My hypothesis concerns rapid, indirect transmission: Imagine a few thousand people fairly close together on the top of a mountain in a breeze, most wearing masks. If one infected person - call them A - is on the crowd, they’ll likely infect, say, a dozen people close to them - call them B1, B2... - but not anyone who’s hundreds of feet away on the far side of the crowd. What I’m wondering is whether people become infectious quickly enough after catching the virus that those Bs could each pass it on to several Cs, then the Cs on to Ds, and so on, all before the crowd disperses. Could a single infected person pass it on INdirectly to an entire crowd?


----------



## andken

Penn's Woods said:


> But on further thought, that’s a different situation: That was several dozen people together for a few hours, in a fairly small indoor space, engaged in an activity that produced lots of exhalation from deep in the respiratory tract. It’s possible if not likely that a single infected member of the choir -directly- infected most of the other people in the room.


There were several superspreaders events related to weddings. A wedding is a social event, but it's not an activity in a knit close space and there aren't that much talking, unlike a choir. You go to a wedding, talk to some people, but you basically watching the bride and the groom. 

There were very few superspreaders events related to mass transit, so, in theory, if everyone is masked and keep social distancing crowds are going to be safe. But if you are in a crowd doing what people in crowds like to do there is always a lot of risk of a single people with Covid spreading the virus.


----------



## Penn's Woods

andken said:


> There were several superspreaders events related to weddings. A wedding is a social event, but it's not an activity in a knit close space and there aren't that much talking, unlike a choir. You go to a wedding, talk to some people, but you basically watching the bride and the groom.
> 
> There were very few superspreaders events related to mass transit, so, in theory, if everyone is masked and keep social distancing crowds are going to be safe. But if you are in a crowd doing what people in crowds like to do there is always a lot of risk of a single people with Covid spreading the virus.


I don’t know if you’ve seen this...I posted it here before...but it made a lot of sense to me. Of course, it’s a bit old....










The Risks - Know Them - Avoid Them


Please read this link to learn about the author and background to these posts. It seems many people are breathing some relief, and I’m not sure why. An epidemic curve has a relatively predictable upslope and once the peak is reached, the back slope can also be predicted. We have robust data from...




www.erinbromage.com


----------



## keber

There is a know case of superspreader from Ischgl, Austria, where a single barman in one apres-ski bar infected hundreds or even thousands from all over Europe.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> There is a know case of superspreader from Ischgl, Austria, where a single barman in one apres-ski bar infected hundreds or even thousands from all over Europe.


A barman meets directly plenty of people one after another. And in February nobody used masks and/or distancing. It's not like a person infecting a whole crowd at once.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> A barman meets directly plenty of people one after another. And in February nobody used masks and/or distancing. It's not like a person infecting a whole crowd at once.


And was this people he came into contact with over a period of several days or...?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The 'ginormous' hurricane Teddy is approaching Nova Scotia. It is an exceptionally large hurricane, with tropical storm force winds extending up to 870 kilometers from the center. In most hurricanes this is not much more than 300 kilometers.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> And was this people he came into contact with over a period of several days or...?


Yes. However, several thousands of people got infected in Ischgl, it is not possible to know who infected whom. Infection Zero was that barman, it's more or less clear.


----------



## Kpc21

They say Polish has difficult to pronounce clusters of consonants. What to say about Ischgl? One vowel, three "harsh" consonants. In German


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> They say Polish has difficult to pronounce clusters of consonants. What to say about Ischgl? One vowel, three "harsh" consonants. In German


But you’d insert a sort of vowel between the G and the L, or pronounce the L as what linguists call a “liquid.”
So, “ish-g’l.” Not that difficult.


----------



## Penn's Woods

!









California governor signs executive order to ban gas-powered cars and trucks


This rule, if not halted by a court challenge by the oil and gas industry and the Trump administration, would make California the first U.S. state with a plan to phase them out completely.




www.fox29.com


----------



## Attus

> ban gas-powered cars and trucks in California by 2035


Does it mean, that no new gas powered cars may be sold in California after 2035, or does it mean, that none of them may drive in the state after 2035?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

AEB = Automatic Emergency Braking.






Not all drivers like it though, they say that it engages unnecessary, for instance if a motorist cuts in front of them or when they approach a turn or curve, some turn it off, though I believe there are systems that cannot be turned off.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> Does it mean, that no new gas powered cars may be sold in California after 2035, or does it mean, that none of them may drive in the state after 2035?


No new ones sold.


----------



## andken

Attus said:


> Does it mean, that no new gas powered cars may be sold in California after 2035, or does it mean, that none of them may drive in the state after 2035?


California have been trying these types of mandates since 1990, and almost all cars sold there are still gas-powered.


----------



## Penn's Woods

andken said:


> California have been trying these types of mandates since 1990, and almost all cars sold there are still gas-powered.


I see (after skimming that quickly) a lot of steps to encourage electric cars and so on, but no outright ban. That’s new.
Although an executive order taking effect 15 years from now could easily be overturned by a future governor or the legislature....


----------



## PovilD

Penn's Woods said:


> But you’d insert a sort of vowel between the G and the L, or pronounce the L as what linguists call a “liquid.”
> So, “ish-g’l.” Not that difficult.


Transponed form to Lithuanian would be Išglas. Ish-glass, but 'a' is short. Not a problem at all  Pronunciation resemble original, I mean first syllable is stressed.

Išglas is nominative, and Lithuanian language only in exceptional situations uses only roots in the word, it must have ending.


----------



## Suburbanist

Truck drivers don't like certain proven safety devices but they must just get on with the safety agenda. 

There were complaints when automatic rear driving alarms became mandatory, when electeonic speed limiters became the norm...


----------



## andken

Penn's Woods said:


> I see (after skimming that quickly) a lot of steps to encourage electric cars and so on, but no outright ban. That’s new.
> Although an executive order taking effect 15 years from now could easily be overturned by a future governor or the legislature....


Yes, but the State government in California is trying to do the same thing that they did in the past, try to solve the problem by passing mandates. I don't think that's going going to work, in the same way that mandates didn't work in the 90's. They would have to go further(And I think that an affordable electric car with lots of autonomy is a non-brainer).


----------



## Rebasepoiss

If you want the vast majority of vehicles on the road to be emissions-free then by 2050 then you must have all (or practically all) new cars sold be electric by 2035 if not earlier. Otherwise there is no way in achieving that goal. The average age of all light vehicles has been increasing steadily in the US and is nearing 12 years, according to US Deparment of Transportation.

Taking that into account, the mandate by California is not radical at all but rather the minimum of what needs to be done.


----------



## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> If you want the vast majority of vehicles on the road to be emissions-free then by 2050 then you must have all (or practically all) new cars sold be electric by 2035 if not earlier. Otherwise there is no way in achieving that goal. The average age of all light vehicles has been increasing steadily in the US and is nearing 12 years, according to US Deparment of Transportation.
> 
> Taking that into account, the mandate by California is not radical at all but rather the minimum of what needs to be done.


In addition, the electricity production must be carbon neutral. An electric car running on coal-made electricity is not emission-free.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Evidently California is phasing out all its nuclear plants and other base load stations, relying more and more on imports (coal?) and intermittent renewables.


----------



## keber

Without new nuclear plants there is no emissions-free future (except in some small areas).


----------



## Rebasepoiss

MattiG said:


> In addition, the electricity production must be carbon neutral. An electric car running on coal-made electricity is not emission-free.


Yes, of course, that was implied.

I tend to fall in the nuclear camp myself as well, although my main concern is that they are currently astronomically expensive and take almost decades to build. Look at Finland, for example. The decision to build a third reactor in Olkiluoto was made in 2000, they started construction in 2005 and it's expected to enter commercial service in February 2022. That's 17 years to build and 22 years from the decision to build it! And the total cost of the project has risen from € 3 billion to € 11 billion. No sane investor is going to look at that and consider that a good choice for their money.

It's probably cheaper to build a huge overcapacity of renewable electricity production. For example, tha average price for off-shore wind power in 2019 was $ 3,800 per kW. That means it would cost around € 5 billion to build 1,600 MW worth of wind power or what the third reactor in Olikluoto is going to be rated for. With € 11 billion you are going to get around 3,400 MW in off-shore wind power. In a 100% rational world it would still make sense to go nuclear but the real world of politics and making money say otherwise.


----------



## Suburbanist

Is California actually phasing out nuclear?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nuclear seems to be gaining some momentum in the Netherlands as well, after decades of being a taboo subject. It becomes clear that solar & wind is not going to provide reliable energy and we need a stable 24/7/365 base load. 

The problem in the Netherlands is that the subsidies and intermittent high output of wind energy makes other base load stations unprofitable, even though we really need them when wind & solar don't provide sufficient energy. Being flat, the Netherlands can also not use hydropower or pumped storage systems. 

People point to the long and expensive process to build a nuclear power plant. But if we didn't make it a taboo subject 20 years ago, we could've had a much higher output of emission free energy by now. Now we'll have to wait another 15 - 20 years.


----------



## Suburbanist

Nuclear is a good complement to extensive intermittent renewable sources.

What is really needed (but being finally addressed) is a lot of new high-capacity for long-distance transmission on the continental European grid. The more intermittent sources are linked, the more stable their prices will be, and the less load variance will there be. A key point is bringing solar from Spain, France and Italy (especially Spin) integrated with the central European demand centers, which also means tethering all North Sea wind power to this super-grid. 

A geopolitically complicated, but not worse than reliance on oil suppliers, is to also explore the potential for extremely large solar farms in North Africa.

There are some interesting projects ongoing (u/c or under advanced planning) to link up Norway, Denmark, UK and Netherlands on a North Sea node. Norwegian hydro companies are very eager to see that going as well, since hydro reservoirs are perfect for intra-day load management. Electricity here in Norway is ridiculously cheap as well.


----------



## radamfi

Suburbanist said:


> There are some interesting projects ongoing (u/c or under advanced planning) to link up Norway, Denmark, UK and Netherlands on a North Sea node. Norwegian hydro companies are very eager to see that going as well, since hydro reservoirs are perfect for intra-day load management. Electricity here in Norway is ridiculously cheap as well.


Iceland as well should be linked up. Norway and Iceland have virtually unlimited electricity potential yet hardly anyone lives there. So that electricity should be delivered to places where people actually live.


----------



## keber

Long-distance electricity transmission is still not considered the best option. Transmission losses even with new technologies are still too big to be viable for connecting Norway with south Germany, for example.
Current nuclear projects with western technology (Finland, UK) are just too expensive, but there are several planned projects with russian technology in eastern Europe and Turkey that could bring profitability of nuclear technology back. Modern Russian nuclear technology is not to be compared with technology from Chernobyl, as it is as safe and reliable as current western technology but much cheaper.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

keber said:


> Modern Russian nuclear technology is not to be compared with technology from Chernobyl, as it is as safe and reliable as current western technology but much cheaper.


What is the difference?

A complaint I've read is that western countries lost their knowledge of nuclear power because most countries stopped constructing new ones after the 1970s. The numbers floating around for a new nuclear power plant is just insane, what makes it cost € 15 billion instead of 3 or 4 billion? (which is still an incredible sum of money for a single project).


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## keber

Lack of knowledge is probably really the main difference. Russians developed technology further that made it cheaper, safer, more reliable and advanced, and simpler at the same time. Western companies stopped development until about 2000 with about two or even three decades of development hole. Now Russians have a proven technology that is much cheaper to build and now they are successfully competing for new nuclear projects in east EU (Czechia, Hungary, Finland, possibly Bulgaria, Slovenia) with certification pending for western markets.


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## MacOlej

ChrisZwolle said:


> AEB = Automatic Emergency Braking.


I think this video from Volvo is even more impressive, especially the onboard part:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I wonder if these systems are working as well with worn down brakes and older tires. There are a lot of trucks on the road with insufficient maintenance. There is almost no enforcement on this in most countries. 

Norway is one of the countries that performs a lot of checks on trucks and they routinely find trucks with serious defects (such as cracked brakes).


----------



## andken

ChrisZwolle said:


> Nuclear seems to be gaining some momentum in the Netherlands as well, after decades of being a taboo subject. It becomes clear that solar & wind is not going to provide reliable energy and we need a stable 24/7/365 base load.


I think that one of the biggest issues with nuclear is nimbyism. Most all of the opposition to nuclear comes from NIMBYs. In Brazil, the nuclear plants are located in a resort city very popular among people in Rio de Janeiro. I see lots of writings complaining about nuclear power and the possibility of accidents in newspapers from Rio, but not in São Paulo or anywhere else.

In France it's possible to build a dozen nuclear plants in areas where there are no one living there to attract NIMBYs. It proved not possible in Japan and Germany. Will be that possible in Netherlands? Count me as skeptical.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

radamfi said:


> Iceland as well should be linked up. Norway and Iceland have virtually unlimited electricity potential yet hardly anyone lives there. So that electricity should be delivered to places where people actually live.


Fulfillment of this -"unlimited" potential is only politically possible if going offshore,at least when talking about Norway. Already building new wind power plants, as well as hydropower, is very difficult. Building power plants in Norwegian nature to cover the needs of central Europe is simply not a good proposition to most Norwegians. Going offshore, for Norway normally meaning floating wind power, is of course more expensive.

Worldwide, solar is undoubtedly the way to go. Using just a fraction of Sahara would easily cover all of Europe's needs. But I guess depending on the good will of Northern Africa for Europe's energy supply is seen as too risky. Dry areas of Spain or floating solar in the Mediterranean are probably safer bets.


----------



## mgk920

CNGL said:


> Only the second time we have gone into Greek alphabet, with the first being 2005. And there's still 2.5 months remaining. Anyway, I remember hurricane Leslie in 2018, which _almost_ made landfall in Portugal, but turned extratropical right before doing so.


There was a tropical storm (I forget the name offhand) this past spring that made landfall on the northern Gulf of Mexico coast (Mississippi/Louisiana?) and continued northward up the eastern Mississippi River valley, with its center passing over Stevens Point, WI and the storm not going 'extratropical' until it got to Michigan and hit Lake Superior.



Yes, it has been a strange year.

Mike


----------



## CNGL

That was Cristobal. Anyway, this year would be even more weirder if the Western Pacific fails to produce a single Category 5 typhoon (this actually happened 3 years ago, though operationally there was one that was downgraded later).


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## keber

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Worldwide, solar is undoubtedly the way to go. Using just a fraction of Sahara would easily cover all of Europe's needs. But I guess depending on the good will of Northern Africa for Europe's energy supply is seen as too risky. Dry areas of Spain or floating solar in the Mediterranean are probably safer bets.


For solar energy to be "way to go" we need enormous energy storages which are currently unfeasible for larger nationwide or even continental systems. I don't see that in the close future. Nuclear is the only stable emmision-free energy source available anywhere in the world until fusion energy becomes feasible (which won't be at least for another 40 years, more likely only at the end of the 21st century)


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Energy storage is an issue, but not an insurmountable one. Batteries are improving all the time. Concentrating solar power plants can store heat during the day and produce electricity during night. Chemical conversion, e.g. to hydrogen, is also possible. For locations where it is feasible, dams with reversible turbines is an extremely efficient way of storing large amounts of energy.

Nuclear is not a renewable source of energy, the storage of waste still not a fully solved problem, and it is not politically acceptable in most parts of the world.

Pardon me if I am a bit sceptical of "safe" Russian nuclear technology. Did they not say that before Chernobyl as well, an accident that still has an environmental and economic impact as far away as Norway? 








Chernobyl: 33 Years On, Radioactive Fallout Still Impacts Scandinavian Farmers


An incredible 33 years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, radioactive fallout remains a problem in farming communities in both Sweden and Norway. The slaughter of animals is only permitted after radiation testing in large parts of the countries.




www.forbes.com





Has the industry ever confessed, anywhere, anytime, that nuclear energy is unsafe? There are now many decades of experience with nuclear power plants. Given that Japan, one the most advanced and well-functioning countries of the world, recently had a catastrophic nuclear accident, I do not think nuclear is a sensible power source for the world at large.


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## ChrisZwolle

The safety issue of nuclear plants is partially irrational. Far more people have died of fossiel fuel plants (coal mining, emissions) than of nuclear accidents. Maybe even more people died in hydropower dam failures than nuclear accidents.


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Pardon me if I am a bit sceptical of "safe" Russian nuclear technology. Did they not say that before Chernobyl as well, an accident that still has an environmental and economic impact as far away as Norway?


The case Chernobyl was a semi-intentional event happening when debugging a point of failure in RMBK type plants. It was conducted under bad instructions, and deviating from the instructions. The RMBK type plants are not in use in western countries. Not a very credible case to draw conclusions.

The Loviisa Nuclear Power Plant in Finland has been in prodution since 1977 (Loviisa 1) and 1980 (Loviisa 2). It is a PWR type plant 2x507 MW were the reactor is Russian, and the safety systems were delivered by Siemens and Westinghouse. One INES 2 degree incident in 1993. Very reliable.


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## keber

Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters with today Russian technology is like comparing apples and oranges or better (a road forum) comparing car safety from 1980 to car safety in 2020. I'm still impressed by media in 2020 to write about Chernobyl disasters and then to pump people and politicians that "nuclear energy is bad therefore". Although by the terawatt hour produced it is by the far safest energy source in the world, even safer than solar or wind energy by some statistics.

















What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy?


Fossil fuels are the dirtiest and most dangerous energy sources, while nuclear and modern renewable energy sources are vastly safer and cleaner. The differences are huge.




ourworldindata.org





And most deaths by nuclear energy are from old Generation I and II reactors, new projects use mostly generation III and III+ reactors that are far safer.


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## ChrisZwolle

The graph also shows how distant a future based on non-fossil fuels is. They are a complete niche. 2030 or even 2040s seem utterly unrealistic.


----------



## Attus

1., The first non-experimental nuclear power plant was opened in 1954. Today it's 2020. I.e., the Chernobyl disaster, 1986, happened in the first half of the history of nuclear power plants. it's just like comparing cars of the 1950's to the ones being produced today. All but one (Fukushima) level 5-7 nuclear accidents happened in 1987 or before, i.e. in the first half of history of nuclear power plants.
2., Coal based power plants killed lots of people and have had an important role in climate change. But since it did not happen in a very short time, unexpectedly, just like the Chernobyl disaster, but has been happening steadily for more than 130 years now, we are used to accept these issues.
3., Chernobyl disaster did not happen by producing electricity, but during an experiment, partially by people who were not prepared for such an experiment at all. Of cases like that everyone in the world learned, that such experiments are much more dangerous than testing whether your 3 years old son can build a bridge of Lego stones. 
4., The Fukushima disaster was caused by an unexpected and dramatical natural disaster: earthquake + tsunami. Circumstances wich are impossible for most of nuclear plants.


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## ChrisZwolle

It has also been pointed out that very few deaths are actually linked to the Fukushima disaster. 

The tsunami resulted in catastrophic destruction, killed 16,000 people and destroyed 120,000 houses over a large coastal area. Yet almost all the coverage went to the Fukushima disaster which has caused 1 death.


----------



## Suburbanist

keber said:


> Long-distance electricity transmission is still not considered the best option. Transmission losses even with new technologies are still too big to be viable for connecting Norway with south Germany, for example.
> Current nuclear projects with western technology (Finland, UK) are just too expensive, but there are several planned projects with russian technology in eastern Europe and Turkey that could bring profitability of nuclear technology back. Modern Russian nuclear technology is not to be compared with technology from Chernobyl, as it is as safe and reliable as current western technology but much cheaper.


Is that actually true?

Brazil has plenty of experience with very long distance (>2000km) HV/DC transmission systems connecting Amazon region's massive hydropower dams with the populates Southeast. Effective energy losses on the long-distance transmission are below 6% on average. Norway => Netherlands cables U/C are all HV/DC.

The issue is that "Russian technology", athough much safer than Chernobyl's design, is still one full order of magnitude/generation behind the latest Japanese and European nuclear reactors. Which are extremely safe, but also extremely expensive.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> It has also been pointed out that very few deaths are actually linked to the Fukushima disaster.
> 
> The tsunami resulted in catastrophic destruction, killed 16,000 people and destroyed 120,000 houses over a large coastal area. Yet almost all the coverage went to the Fukushima disaster which has caused 1 death.


The tsunami did have a lot of coverage in the immediate aftermath. However, that was a sudden-impact disaster, after the waves receded, the only prolonged effects were clean-up and body recoveries. Same with hurricanes or sudden floods.

This is different with a protracted crisis like wildfires in Australia or a slow-moving partial reactor meltdown.


----------



## keber

Suburbanist said:


> The issue is that "Russian technology", athough much safer than Chernobyl's design, is still one full order of magnitude/generation behind the latest Japanese and European nuclear reactors. Which are extremely safe, but also extremely expensive.


Newest type of VVER1200 reactors that are being built around the world (and soon in three EU countries) are the first Generation III+ currently in operation or construction. Their safety is comparable to European or Japanese Generation III+ reactors, which are however so expensive that are not feasible at current (and future) electricity prices.


----------



## MacOlej

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder if these systems are working as well with worn down brakes and older tires.


No way they can work as well with worn-out hardware. I would even say that programming such systems to take into consideration worn-out brakes and bald tires is pointless, if possible at all. Some safety systems are based on assumptions that all other systems are working well. A good example is designing airbags with an assumption that driver and passengers always fasten their seatbelts. If they don't, airbags can be harmful for them.



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Nuclear is not a renewable source of energy, the storage of waste still not a fully solved problem, and it is not politically acceptable in most parts of the world.


I've heard an interview with a nuclear scientist some time ago on the radio. He said that the technology is improving so much that it should be possible to re-use rods which were thought to be depleted and were therefore dumped.


----------



## VITORIA MAN

Valencia councillor criticised after it emerges speech made in perfect English was dubbed


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> The whole point of the origins of the European Union (European Coal and Steel Community) was to force countries to be interdependent with each other and so prevent war between France and Germany.


And this works perfectly when you have more or less even forces.

But not with countries which are weaker, so they naturally become dependent on others and the others not necessarily dependent on them.



ChrisZwolle said:


> The criticism is that a very large data center of Microsoft will consume a lot of this renewable energy


But otherwise it would consume non-renewable energy... so what's the problem? Without this wind farm, there wouldn't be the data center?



radamfi said:


> I thought data centres preferred to be in Iceland, to take advantage of cheap geothermal electricity and cool climate?


As an IT administrator I know that you sometimes need physical access to your data center and having this in a remote country could be cumbersome. Also, it has to have good Internet links with the area to which it delivers Internet services, and the Netherlands seems to be a good location in this terms for delivering services for the whole Europe.

The second largest Internet Exchange Point in Europe is in Amsterdam – much of the European Internet traffic goes through there.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> And this works perfectly when you have more or less even forces.
> 
> But not with countries which are weaker, so they naturally become dependent on others and the others not necessarily dependent on them.


What are you supposed to do if you are a small country? There's no way they could be self-sufficient in everything.


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## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> Without this wind farm, there wouldn't be the data center?


That is likely. All major data centers built in the Netherlands so far are near a new wind farm. These wind farms are heavily opposed by surrounding communities, and then it turns out there isn't even a net benefit to them or the renewable goals if all new renewable capacity is hijacked by data centers.


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## ChrisZwolle

Some friends dumped 40 cubic meters of sawdust in the backyard of a house of a newlywed couple in Oosterwolde, Netherlands.

Apparently the groom was involved in stunts at weddings of his friends, and now his friends got back at him.











They used a complete tower crane to lift all that sawdust into the backyard 😵


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## bogdymol

That will be a nightmare to clean.


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## ChrisZwolle

Harpel, Groningen, Netherlands. Huge solar park will be expanded to 200 hectares.


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## PovilD

bogdymol said:


> That will be a nightmare to clean.


Not the company I would like to hang out with.. I guess?


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## Suburbanist

Amsterdam is becoming an increasingly important node on the international high-frequency finance network, and that require extremely expensive IT infrastructure. The sea part (with new subsea cables connecting to London and North america) has been completed.

Without all the data centers, the large ecosystem of IT companies in the Netherlands would be smaller. And these are high-paid jobs that bring a lot of money, revenue and attract a bunch of very high-skilled people (both Dutch and foreign) to a myriad of obscure (to the public) companies that provide critical infrastructure for global finance and some other niche fields. This is because certain applications require extremely low latencies, which means the 60-80ms round-way on a fiber trip to Iceland or Norway (where it is much cheaper to source electricity) is a business-killer in a world where 10ms is the difference between tiny profit or tiny loss that will aggregate massively over time.

The Netherlands punches well in the global finance IT scene and large data centers with short latency are a necessity. Without that, there will be no companies with average salaries for tech staff on the 120-150 thousand Euro/year. It is as simple as that. 

When I was living in Tilburg, there was a large data center near my house. It was not that big, just some 2000 m2 split on three floors, if that, but used 2% of the electricity of the whole city (including its industrial district). 

NIMBYs will always complain, be it about new highways, new airport runways, new energy infrastructure, even new bike superhighways in rural areas. Doesn't make their complaints right, as everybody benefits, on average, from having a globally developed IT infrastructure.


----------



## Suburbanist

As for windfarm towers, people will just get used to them in the same way we are extremely used to asphalt on roads, light poles and night lighting in general, or, in the Dutch case, ditches and drainage structures scattered all over the country. Flevoland had been, itself, a lakebed from sometime in the 11th Century until the 1950s. It only exists because of heavy human intervention to begin with, so it is weird to hear about complaints about wind farms specifically there.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> Sorry for going political – but such things are decided about by nobody else but politicians. As a Polish citizen, observing the general views and opinions within Poland, to me it seems that a country which was attacked by its neighbours and betrayed by its allies so many times throughout the history is not really likely to do that, unless forced – but this will be considered by many as an attack on its independence.


Sorry but as a fellow Polish citizen I see such thinking ludicrous.

The only way of having total true independence and safety is autarky and that really means going North Korean style.

Yes we had bad history but having power stations providing 100% electricity within the country's borders doesn't for example stop anyone bombing them.



> Someone might be your ally now but he may turn into your enemy at any moment. What then?


If you trade a lot both ways, have highly integrated economies and both live in quasi-federal organism it is rather unlikely. Of course not completely impossible but neither is meteorite hit or bombing ride by "friends" from the east.



> Poland already has enough problems and fears with having to import natural gas from Russia. Back when those distribution systems were built, they were our ally, so pipelines built to import it from Russia had perfect sense. Now we don't want to have anything to do with Russia but we cannot import natural gas from western Europe because of the lack of appropriate infrastructure.


Ironically Poland is also actually importing more and more coal from the east.



> And it's rather obvious that having to import energy (even if we are able to diversify the deliveries and not rely on a single country) is much worse from that perspective than being able to address all your energy demand from your own sources.


No, it is not obvious at all. It all depends on natural conditions in both importing and exporting country as well as on many other factors, political, historic and economic.

You can for example have two friendly countries, call them A and B. let say that due to geography country A can produce surplus of cheap energy and in country B it would cost twice as much. Should country B insist on producing all its energy, despite the high cost, or allow some import from country A thus lowering cost for its industry (which could otherwise relocate to A)?

I don't think anyone is advocating importing majority of energy. That would be as silly as insisting on 100% self-reliance.

Is Poland producing all the critical components it needs, like for example computer chips now needed in pretty much everything?

If not it is also jeopardizing its security


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> Without that, there will be no companies with average salaries for tech staff on the 120-150 thousand Euro/year. It is as simple as that.


Which will be a benefit to regular citizens who make 35 - 50k per year. These (mostly foreign) staff who make 3-4 times more than average will only escalate housing prices out of control, which is already a significant problem. And the Netherlands is not alone in that, just look as Silicon Valley where housing prices are insane for anyone but the top 10% of tech company employees. 

The planned data center in Zeewolde is huge: 166 hectares (4 times larger than the Microsoft data center in Wieringermeer), and this consists of large buildings up to 20 meters high and hundreds of meters long in a currently rural area. And as mentioned before, it consumes twice as much electricity as the entire city of Amsterdam. Who benefits from this except for a few hundred highly paid staff?


----------



## Suburbanist

^^ These companies have deep ripple service chain effects that creates a large demand for a number of other jobs, including many average salary jobs in the IT industry itself. 

Such staff also pay a lot of personal taxes, and help to move a "creative economy" that is on the agenda of every other Randstad municipality. They have spare money for things like premium Concertgebouworkest subscriptions, to buy designer furniture out of newly minted young designers (almost all Dutch natives) from the academy in Rotterdam, to patronize expensive restaurants by ascent Dutch chefs, and, yes, to buy expensive houses in fancy areas. All these things have secondary ripple effects in the service economy. 

Regardless of them being 'foreign', and in contraposition to directors of postbox companies, these people actually live in the Netherlands and contribute a lot to is economy. Well-paid high-skilled professionals are a great group to attract: the (in this case) Dutch government didn't spend a lot of money to educate them, the Netherlands is taking advantage of their skills at the expense of their own home countries (where said skills would be underutilized likely), they start paying taxes from the moment they start working, and they are far less likely to require social assistance or other expensive social services (otherwise it is unlikely they'd have become highly-skilled professionals hired by these companies).

I assume the data centers will pay some form of land use fee as well. Which might be more than the very low fees charged on farmers (other than water district fees, which everybody must pay regardless anyway). 

A similar thing could be said of the Port of Rotterdam - its land footprint is massive, most of its activity does not concern products to be ultimately used or to have been produced by Dutch citizens, yet few would deny the massive benefits to the overall Dutch economy of having said port operating there as one of the fanciest and most efficient and technologically advanced (as ports go) in the World.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Apart from a group of network engineers and IT staff, these mega data centers don't provide much employment beyond some low paid security and cleaning staff after construction. They occupy a huge amount of land relative to actual employment, worse than warehouses. 166 hectares is an enormous site for just one company. The site is almost 2 kilometers long.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^ The salaries of high income workers will be used many times in the local economy they live in. That is basic economic theory. However, I guess this is not a good argument in the communities around the data centers if most of the high income jobs of the companies benefitting from the new infrastructure are located elsewhere, like in A'dam.


radamfi said:


> What are you supposed to do if you are a small country? There's no way they could be self-sufficient in everything.


I second that. As an example, most would agree that grain is a fairly fundamental need of a country. Norway has not been able to grow all of the grain it needs for more than 1000 years. Same with Italy during the Roman times (no comparison in other aspects ;-)). In fact, a lot of the most economically successful countries of the world are poor in natural resources, but they succeed because they specialize in what they are good at.


Suburbanist said:


> This is because certain applications require extremely low latencies, which means the 60-80ms round-way on a fiber trip to Iceland or Norway (where it is much cheaper to source electricity) is a business-killer in a world where 10ms is the difference between tiny profit or tiny loss that will aggregate massively over time.


The great circle distance KRS-AMS is 688 km. Group velocity at 1550 nm in telecom fiber is about 200 000 km/s. Hence, round-trip time to Norway is less than 7 ms per fiber. Of course, you also have to take into account switching and data processing etc., but distance, at least to Norway, might not be as big an obstacle as you think.


----------



## MacOlej

geogregor said:


> No, it is not obvious at all. It all depends on natural conditions in both importing and exporting country as well as on many other factors, political, historic and economic.
> 
> You can for example have two friendly countries, call them A and B. let say that due to geography country A can produce surplus of cheap energy and in country B it would cost twice as much. Should country B insist on producing all its energy, despite the high cost, or allow some import from country A thus lowering cost for its industry (which could otherwise relocate to A)?


Furthermore:





Comparative advantage - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Which will be a benefit to regular citizens who make 35 - 50k per year. These (mostly foreign) staff who make 3-4 times more than average will only escalate housing prices out of control, which is already a significant problem. And the Netherlands is not alone in that, just look as Silicon Valley where housing prices are insane for anyone but the top 10% of tech company employees.
> 
> The planned data center in Zeewolde is huge: 166 hectares (4 times larger than the Microsoft data center in Wieringermeer), and this consists of large buildings up to 20 meters high and hundreds of meters long in a currently rural area. And as mentioned before, it consumes twice as much electricity as the entire city of Amsterdam. Who benefits from this except for a few hundred highly paid staff?


When Amazon was looking for a site fur a second headquarters and Philadelphia was in the running, I had a cousin in the Seattle area who kept warning me about housing costs....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

To be fair, these are two different things: a data center (mostly technical infrastructure that consumes _a lot_ of electricity) or a big corporate campus with loads of high-paid staff. The first ruins the landscape and makes renewable goals much more difficult to achieve, the second impacts the regional housing market amongst other things.

In tight markets, the housing prices are influenced strongly by the supply of money. Imagine someone on a median income bidding for a house of € 300,000 but then there are a bunch of tech employees who can just offer € 400,000 or even € 1,000,000. This dramatically escalates housing prices if supply is tight. Houses around San Jose can cost over $ 1 million that would've cost just $ 200,000 in a regular housing market.


----------



## Suburbanist

Money supply does affect the housing price, but the majority of oversupply of money comes in the form of institutional money, such as real estate portfolio companies, and those who (in the case of Amsterdam) were buying flats by the dozens to set up AirBnB (which incidentally are the ones losing the most with the pandemic and new laws enacted in the municipality).


----------



## radamfi

Two questions.

1. Should Microsoft build this data centre at all?
2. If so, where?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Well, there is obviously a demand for such a 'hyperscale data center', but it may be more suitable in a less densely populated region, near a hydropower plant. I believe many California tech companies have their data centers in Washington state for that reason. California electricity prices are very high while Washington state has a lot of hydropower in the Columbia River.


----------



## MichiH

radamfi said:


> 1. Should Microsoft build this data centre at all?


No. Shutdown the damn internet instead


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Well, there is obviously a demand for such a 'hyperscale data center', but it may be more suitable in a less densely populated region, near a hydropower plant. I believe many California tech companies have their data centers in Washington state for that reason. California electricity prices are very high while Washington state has a lot of hydropower in the Columbia River.


But is there a logistical reason for it to be built in continental Europe? Otherwise they would have built it in an easier, cheaper and less controversial location.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You see, preserving open space and rural areas was an important cornerstone of Dutch urban planning, especially in light of the rapid population growth from the middle of the 20th century. And this largely succeeded, the Netherlands still has a lot of wide open land, even in the west. Especially compared to Belgium.

But it's threatened from multiple sides, of which housing may turn out to be the least controversial. There are large amounts of large-scale warehouses popping up, especially in the south and east. These are much larger than warehouses built up to the 1990s so they do not fit in existing industrial areas. They are almost all greenfield developments. Then you have the renewable energy goals, people are now beginning to grasp just how much visual impact this is going to produce with large scale solar & wind farms. The industrialization of rural areas is advancing at a rapid pace.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> You see, preserving open space and rural areas was an important cornerstone of Dutch urban planning, especially in light of the rapid population growth from the middle of the 20th century. And this largely succeeded, the Netherlands still has a lot of wide open land, even in the west. Especially compared to Belgium.
> 
> But it's threatened from multiple sides, of which housing may turn out to be the least controversial. There are large amounts of large-scale warehouses popping up, especially in the south and east. These are much larger than warehouses built up to the 1990s so they do not fit in existing industrial areas. They are almost all greenfield developments. Then you have the renewable energy goals, people are now beginning to grasp just how much visual impact this is going to produce with large scale solar & wind farms. The industrialization of rural areas is advancing at a rapid pace.


So if this is so contrary to planning policy, why are such developments getting approved? How did lots of motorway construction and widening get built? Dutch zoning is widely known to be very strict and other countries use the Netherlands as a example of how to plan towns and cities sustainably.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> What are you supposed to do if you are a small country? There's no way they could be self-sufficient in everything.


You are in a situation worse than larger countries?

Look at Vatican – they are the smallest country in the world, and de facto depend to a large extent on Italy, and even on the city of Rome.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Apart from a group of network engineers and IT staff, these mega data centers don't provide much employment beyond some low paid security and cleaning staff after construction. They occupy a huge amount of land relative to actual employment, worse than warehouses. 166 hectares is an enormous site for just one company. The site is almost 2 kilometers long.


Thanks to those data centers, people can work in office buildings.

Previously, servers were often located in the office buildings. However, separate data centers have many advantages, especially from the point of view of data safety. Even the humidity in the server rooms is controlled so as to provide the optimum conditions for the servers, to minimize the likelihood of failure. Obviously there are also more visible and important aspects, e.g. such a data center has no water infrastructure except for some toilets at the bottom, so there is no risk of flooding the servers in case of a water pipe failure.

Obviously, such a data center doesn't employ much staff because there is no such a need. Even the network engineers usually don't work in such data centers but manage their infrastructure remotely. In our company we have a dedicated team which only deals with the physical data center maintenance, not doing any configurations, software installations, nothing like that.



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> In fact, a lot of the most economically successful countries of the world are poor in natural resources, but they succeed because they specialize in what they are good at.


Well, there is something in it. Look at the Switzerland. Small, mountainous country with no land to grow crops, and they are one of the most successful countries in the world.

But for some reasons they have always attracted money...

The problem of Poland is that we have a terrible geopolitical location, on the way between Germany and Russia – so throughout the history, both countries always wanted to exploit us.



radamfi said:


> So if this is so contrary to planning policy, why are such developments getting approved? How did lots of motorway construction and widening get built? Dutch zoning is widely known to be very strict and other countries use the Netherlands as a example of how to plan towns and cities sustainably.


In Poland such situations normally happen in areas which don't have spatial plans. And there is many of them, as all old spatial plans in Poland got simply erased, by a single political decision, in mid-1990s and covering the areas with new plans often takes many years.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> So if this is so contrary to planning policy, why are such developments getting approved?


Spatial planning used to be a national competence, but once the large scale residential expansions called 'VINEX' were declared completed, the national government stopped doing this. But it has become clear that the housing shortage is so severe that a new national planning instrument is necessary.

In case of energy and industrial developments, this is mostly devolved to the provinces and municipalities. In the Netherlands, municipalities operate like land developers, they acquire land from farmers and sell them at a premium for developments, it's one of the main ways for municipal governments to get revenue, especially because nearly all municipalities are financially overloaded with a transfer of responsibility from the national government to the municipal level. So selling land for large warehouses brings in money. Municipalities have so far been far more reluctant to open land for residential development though.

The energy developments are mostly a competence of provinces, but also municipalities. They have to execute the goals set by the national government. That way, the municipalities and provinces are responsible for large scale solar and wind farms, so the national government cannot be blamed for ruining the landscape, even though they set the goals that make it unavoidable.

They naturally seek the path of least resistance, so the most rural areas are the most obvious locations, which is why Flevoland province has become a haven for wind farms, as there are fewer villages near those developments. In practice it has become almost impossible to challenge the plans or strategy. It is an increasingly divisive issue now that it's coming to many more people.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> In the Netherlands, municipalities operate like land developers, they acquire land from farmers and sell them at a premium for developments, it's one of the main ways for municipal governments to get revenue


Do the farmers have a say, or are we talking about institutionalized theft?


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> But it's threatened from multiple sides, of which housing may turn out to be the least controversial. There are large amounts of large-scale warehouses popping up, especially in the south and east. These are much larger than warehouses built up to the 1990s so they do not fit in existing industrial areas. They are almost all greenfield developments. Then you have the renewable energy goals, people are now beginning to grasp just how much visual impact this is going to produce with large scale solar & wind farms. The industrialization of rural areas is advancing at a rapid pace.


Personally though, I think that windmills in some cases makes the view more interesting.








Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




maps.app.goo.gl




But I can understand that not everyone would agree. However, a windmill has a limited lifetime, and in the mean time I assume that the landscapes in Netherlands otherwise could be maintained /farmed, and only minimum will have to be made in a landscape normally already criss-crossed with power lines, roads and other infrastructure. And the windmills will be a barrier against other developments. The situation is different in Norway, where windparks almost always are set in pristine and hilly or mountainous landscape, requiring significant road nfrastructure which leaves permanent scars in the landscapes.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Trump has COVID.


----------



## keokiracer

Penn's Woods said:


> Trump has COVID.


No, one of his advisors has.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keokiracer said:


> No, one of his advisors has.


No, this is new news.


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## keokiracer

*^ Oops! We ran into some problems.*

You do not have permission to view this page or perform this action.

The only thing i can find is that one of his advisors got COVID and that Trump is now ging into quarantine because of that, nowhere does it say that Trump actually has COVID himself


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## Penn's Woods

keokiracer said:


> *^ Oops! We ran into some problems.*
> 
> You do not have permission to view this page or perform this action.
> 
> The only thing i can find is that one of his advisors got COVID and that Trump is now ging into quarantine because of that, nowhere does it say that Trump actually has COVID himself


He tweeted it himself 20 minutes ago. Check the New York Times or, I suspect, any American news site.


----------



## tfd543

Not only trump, but also Melania.


----------



## radamfi

How does Trump acquiring the virus help him get re-elected? I'm trying to understand the strategy here.


----------



## tfd543

Who claimed that? I guess Its not a stunt.


----------



## radamfi

tfd543 said:


> Who claimed that? I guess Its not a stunt.


Maybe after he recovers he can therefore "prove" that Covid is not that big a deal. If he does get properly ill, he will get sympathy. Boris Johnson got a lot of sympathy when he ended up in hospital.


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## Attus

Unless Bolsonaro and Johnson, Trump is 74, such an infection may be dangerous for him.
Btw., what happens if he dies before the election?


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## keokiracer

Attus said:


> Btw., what happens if he dies before the election?


President Pence and candidate Pence.


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## Penn's Woods

keokiracer said:


> President Pence and candidate Pence.


Pence becomes President. Until January 20th. This presidency ends at noon Eastern time on January 20th. That’s in the Constitution and it’s not changing. (There are complicated rules for the House electing a President and so on if the normal process doesn’t work...I don’t remember the details of that...it hasn’t happened since the 1870s.) If Trump and Pence were both knocked out, well, there’s a succession law but also a procedure for replacing the Vice President.

The election’s not as simple as that. For starters: (1) it’s technically run by the states, so what happens is up to them, and (2) many if not most states have some form of early voting and in some places it’s already going on. Philadelphia opened early voting centers - where you can apply in person for what is technically an absentee ballot, fill it out and turn it in all in one trip - on Tuesday. I’ll probably vote tomorrow. My mother’s dropping her ballot off in a drop-off box today. 

The date on which the “electors” - the infamous Electoral College - meets to formally vote (which also actually happens in each state, not all in one place), in early December is in the Constitution and no way is it being changed. The other federal offices (Congress) being on the ballot on November 3d is a matter of federal law, and it would take Congress to change it. And many states are also voting for state offices; the feds have no say in that. For all the speculation I’ve heard since this broke (with a break for about three hours’ sleep), I haven’t heard a word about postponing the election(s).

And Trump and his entourage were at the debate on Tuesday, not wearing masks and likely already infected. Biden may have been exposed too.


----------



## Kpc21

x-type said:


> We are talking about direct services without changing.


So you can count it from Słubice. From the Polish-German border to Madrid.


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## ChrisZwolle

Buses are much cheaper to operate and more flexible. They can easily change routes if demand changes without having to bother about a sunken infrastructure cost. And they don't require massive operating subsidies.


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## aubergine72

Penn's Woods said:


> I early-voted today. For the first time in my life. Pennsylvania didn’t offer it until last year.
> I went to the Election Commissioners office in City Hall. You get what is officially an application for a mail-in ballot (and if that’s all you want to do on this trip, you can take it with you), go to a room where a clerk processes it and issues you your ballot; you fill it out, seal it in two envelopes (the inside one blank and the outside one with your contact information, signature, and some sort of identifying code); and drop it in a locked box with a slot and someone watching over it. Whole thing took ten or 15 minutes.
> 
> A month until the last votes are cast....


High potential for fraud with early voting.


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## Penn's Woods

aubergine72 said:


> High potential for fraud with early voting.


There is no evidence whatsoever of that. None.

That’s an argument Trump has been raising to delegitimize the election so that only people who vote on the day of the election will have their votes counted. Please don’t help spread it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Maybe he means postal voting. 

I'm not sure if early voting is a thing in most of Europe, but I've read that the Swiss referendums are mostly postal voting. The results are often available in the early afternoon.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Maybe he means postal voting.
> 
> I'm not sure if early voting is a thing in most of Europe, but I've read that the Swiss referendums are mostly postal voting. The results are often available in the early afternoon.


Several states vote entirely by mail and have done so for years. I prefer to vote in person (which in Pennsylvania until this year also meant voting on Election Day), not because of concerns about fraud but because it seems like it should be a communal experience...voting worn your fellow citizens. But we need every option this year.


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## ChrisZwolle

I can understand that people don't feel okay with postal voting, especially with 'the most important election in our lifetime' (as almost every presidential election gets branded nowadays). The margins are razor thin in some states and if there are even the smallest reports of fraud or dumping ballots in a ditch, this'll look very bad, and both sides could claim the election is illegitimate. 

I don't understand why the Democrats are pushing for postal voting, this'll only embolden Trump to make a claim the election is rigged against him if he loses. If you can go to the supermarket, you can also go to a polling station.


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## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I can understand that people don't feel okay with postal voting, especially with 'the most important election in our lifetime' (as almost every presidential election gets branded nowadays). The margins are razor thin in some states and if there are even the smallest reports of fraud or dumping ballots in a ditch, this'll look very bad, and both sides could claim the election is illegitimate.
> 
> I don't understand why the Democrats are pushing for postal voting, this'll only embolden Trump to make a claim the election is rigged against him if he loses. If you can go to the supermarket, you can also go to a polling station.


Sigh.

There are documented cases of infection resulting from Wisconsin going ahead with its April primary. And who knows now what the situation will be in November.

The supermarket analogy is absurd, sorry to say so; do you end up spending possibly hours in line there?


----------



## Penn's Woods

But I wish more Democrats were pushing for early voting. I think I’ve explained here (and don’t really have time to check now) my bad experience with mailing my ballot for the primary. I trust that my vote yesterday will be handled properly and counted. And now no matter what happens in the next month, it’s done.


----------



## Penn's Woods

And a lot of people aren’t going to supermarkets because they’re high-risk. They need an option.


----------



## PovilD

Attus said:


> Rail travel can never be so cheap, unless government not only invest, but subsidy services as well. And the majority of bus travellers takes a bus because it's cheap.


It seems that only commuter rail is profitable? Short trips like job, university, short vacation, etc. Not international travel?

I heard talks how rail will change planes, like Chinese building high speed rail from China to Europe, and similar. I don't have such deep knowledge on rail transport, so I don't know.

Rail travel thorough Baltic virtually don't exist (or just very minor one), mostly buses operate through capitals.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> The supermarket analogy is absurd, sorry to say so; do you end up spending possibly hours in line there?


I've never ever spent more than 5 minutes to vote, and we don't have early voting or postal voting, so everyone votes the same day. If you have to spend hours waiting in line to vote, you need to organize your elections more professionally. Especially in light of the relatively low turnout in presidential elections. 2016 only had a 55% turnout.


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## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've never ever spent more than 5 minutes to vote, and we don't have early voting or postal voting, so everyone votes the same day. If you have to spend hours waiting in line to vote, you need to organize your elections more professionally. Especially in light of the relatively low turnout in presidential elections. 2016 only had a 55% turnout.


That’s part of the right wing’s voter-suppression tactics. Open as few polling places as possible, particularly in “minority” areas. Certain states - Georgia for example - are notorious for long, long lines. I think the longest I ever needed to wait was for the 2004 federal election. An hour, at a busy downtown polling place I stopped by on my way to work with, I guess, a lot of other professionals who had the same idea. Other than that, I don’t think I’ve ever had to wait more than a few minutes (in a city with about 1,600 polling places). But the number of polling places is part of the problem. When they announced a few weeks before the spring primary that they’d only be able to open about a fifth as many as usual (because certain locations such as senior centers were unsafe to use and they were having trouble recruiting poll workers), that’s when I decided to use the mail option. Voting in person just didn’t seem safe.

American ballots are complicated. With federal elections falling on fixed dates because there’s no such thing in our system as a government falling, the tendency is to put everything on the ballot for November. I voted yesterday for President, U.S. House, both houses of the state legislature, a few state-level executive offices, and four “ballot questions” - referenda basically - amendments to the city charter that need to be submitted to the voters. Do you ever, in the Netherlands, vote for more than one thing at a time? (Asking seriously.)


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## ChrisZwolle

Elections in the Netherlands are usually separate, so there isn't a whole list of things to go through, though there might be more than one thing to vote for, like a local referendum. There are plenty of polling stations, I can usually choose from 4 or 5 polling stations within a 2 kilometer radius. Queues are rarely reported.

Referendums are a contentious issue in the Netherlands because they scrapped them after a couple which didn't got the result they wanted. 🙃 We had a notorious referendum in 2016 about an association of Ukraine with the EU which was de-facto a referendum about the EU and it got a 61% against vote.


----------



## radamfi

In the UK it is common to combine local and national elections. However you are only allowed to use your designated polling station. Long queues are rare. However, there was one election (2010 I think) where some areas had long queues because polls suggested that the election would be close and it was considered outrageous that people should be queuing for a long time. The queues were mainly in the late evening just before closing time. Obviously this was only in the small minority of constituencies which actually affect the result (analogous to American "Swing States")


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## MichiH

radamfi said:


> In the UK it is common to combine local and national elections. However you are only allowed to use your designated polling station. Long queues are rare.


Same for Germany!


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Elections in the Netherlands are usually separate, so there isn't a whole list of things to go through, though there might be more than one thing to vote for, like a local referendum. There are plenty of polling stations, I can usually choose from 4 or 5 polling stations within a 2 kilometer radius. Queues are rarely reported.


The Finnish system is pretty straightforward: Exactly one thing to vote for. Each individual has their home polling station open at the day of election from 0900 to 2000, and they are in a walking distance in cities. The advance voting (11 to 5 days before the day of election) is getting very popular. There are advance polling stations in supermarkets, public libraries, nursery homes, universities, schools, etc. About 45 per cent of the votes at the latest parliament election in 2019 were given in advance.

The voting always takes place in person, in a box at the polling station. This is for the secrecy. No mail voting, with the exception of citizens living abroad.

The voting system in the U.S. looks very strange, complex and unreliable within the context of the Finnish system.


----------



## bogdymol

For Romanian elections you can vote through mail, but only if you have a permanent residence abroad. This is a fairly new thing that was introduced a few years ago. However, it works only for the general parliament elections or for country president, not for local elections.

In Romania there were 1 week ago local elections. Unfortunately, due to covid I could not travel home to vote. However, for the parliament elections scheduled for December I already registered myself to vote by mail. I will get an envelope at home (in Austria), cast the vote, and place the vote paper in another envelope that was inside the initial one (second envelope already stamped). Seems quite easy.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Elections in the Netherlands are usually separate, so there isn't a whole list of things to go through, though there might be more than one thing to vote for, like a local referendum. There are plenty of polling stations, I can usually choose from 4 or 5 polling stations within a 2 kilometer radius. Queues are rarely reported.
> 
> Referendums are a contentious issue in the Netherlands because they scrapped them after a couple which didn't got the result they wanted. 🙃 We had a notorious referendum in 2016 about an association of Ukraine with the EU which was de-facto a referendum about the EU and it got a 61% against vote.


I'm not against direct democracy, but I think referendums should be made only for things that have a wide general interest.
How many people in NL do actually care about the EU-UA agreement? Maybe those with Ukrainian descent or those who have business in that former Soviet republic, but others?
Anyway, in Italy, referendums on international treaties are forbidden by our Constitution.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> It seems that only commuter rail is profitable?


But commuter trains aren't profitable, they are subsidized in most countries.

Poland also has all types of voting on different dates. Once we had a local referendum in my town on the same day as elections. It used the same polling stations but separate rooms and separate commissions seating in them.

Also the elections for neighborhood councils (bodies that usually appear in large cities, supposed to represent local neighborhood and having no much voice, although they get some very small yearly budgets assigned from the city) sometimes happen to be organized on the same day as local elections, and they are also in separate rooms at the same polling stations.

Some years ago you could vote by post if you lived abroad (I even used this opportunity once), unfortunately it got changed and now voting by post is available only for the disabled people. And this year there is an exception because of Covid. Originally the elections were supposed to be postal-only – but because of opposition protests, they weren't prepared on time, so finally they got postponed and organized when most restrictions were already gone. So they were postal voluntarily, and unusually, they took place in summer holidays, so many people voted at polling stations other than they are assigned to.

In Poland you are assigned to a specific polling station and if you want to vote at a different one, you have two possibilities:
– register at another polling station – this can even be done online, but it has a trap, if you do it for the first round of the elections, you have to vote at the same one in the second round,
– take a document from your municipality which allows you to vote at any polling station (it's called "certificate about the right to vote") – but then, you aren't assigned to your polling station any more, and even if you want to vote there, you must have the certificate with you; if you lose it, you can't vote.

This procedure is not available for local elections – probably for logistics reasons, as they would have to transfer the ballots. In parliamentary elections, you always vote for the candidates from the district of the polling station at which you vote, not from the one where you live. In case of the abroad, it's one of the two districts of the city of Warsaw.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

italystf said:


> How many people in NL do actually care about the EU-UA agreement?


Pretty much nobody, the turnout was low (albeit slightly over the minimum threshold to make it valid). But it was initiated by popular initiative, mainly over frustration about the lack of influence on EU matters.

Referendums usually don't attract a very large turnout. From what I've seen, the turnout in Switzerland is usually in the 40-55% range. They usually have a number of referendums on one date, and iniatives that are very controversial or with wide appeal result in a higher turnout than referendums about minor subjects.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Elections in the Netherlands are usually separate, so there isn't a whole list of things to go through, though there might be more than one thing to vote for, like a local referendum. There are plenty of polling stations, I can usually choose from 4 or 5 polling stations within a 2 kilometer radius. Queues are rarely reported.
> 
> Referendums are a contentious issue in the Netherlands because they scrapped them after a couple which didn't got the result they wanted.  We had a notorious referendum in 2016 about an association of Ukraine with the EU which was de-facto a referendum about the EU and it got a 61% against vote.


That’s one thing. No choice of polling places on Election Day. Because thanks to all these permutations (in local races), exactly what you get to vote for will depend on where you live. Go a couple of blocks and you could be in a different council district and so on.

When I voted yesterday, the clerk who processed my application generated a ballot for -me-, or rather for someone who lived at my address (it doesn’t actually have my name on it). The next person might have had different choices. But in day-of voting on machines, that hasn’t been possible.


----------



## Kpc21

I'd like to remind that in 2015, we had a referendum in Poland with a 7.8% turnout  Lowest of all national voting in Europe since 1945.

And for the results of a referendum to be valid, in Poland it has to have at least a 50% turnout.

After 1989, we actually had one referendum in Poland with more than 50% turnout – the one about joining the EU.

Before, in 1997, we had a referendum about introducing a new constitution – it had a turnout below 50% but as to such a referendum special regulations applied, this result was considered valid.

Backwards in time, we had a referendum in 1987 carried out by the communist government about a large liberalization of the economy and politics. It had over 60% turnout officially (although according to the independent sources... supposedly only about 30%), but it wasn't valid, as for that, at least 50% of those eligible to vote had to vote yes. Even though the majority of the voters voted yes. But the program of reforms was realized anyway, practically ending the communist system in 1989.


----------



## Penn's Woods

In other news, foliage is coming along in northeastern Pennsylvania. Not spectacular yet, but in a couple of weeks....


----------



## mgk920

With the way that postal voting is handled in some areas, a problem of 'ballot harvesting' is a real concern - party operatives going door-to-door to 'harvest' unused mail-in ballots, fill them out in their favorable manners and then submit them to local poll judges. The California legislature passed and Jerry Brown signed (it was one of his last official acts as governor a few years ago) a law to allow anyone to submit anyones' ballots to poll judges.

It is believed by many that this swung several USHouse districts in Republican leaning Orange County, California to the Democrats, including one that had the Republican candidate leading by 7 percentage points at the end of election day in 2018.

Mike


----------



## Suburbanist

mgk920 said:


> With the way that postal voting is handled in some areas, a problem of 'ballot harvesting' is a real concern - party operatives going door-to-door to 'harvest' unused mail-in ballots, fill them out in their favorable manners and then submit them to local poll judges. The California legislature passed and Jerry Brown signed (it was one of his last official acts as governor a few years ago) a law to allow anyone to submit anyones' ballots to poll judges.
> 
> It is believed by many that this swung several USHouse districts in Republican leaning Orange County, California to the Democrats, including one that had the Republican candidate leading by 7 percentage points at the end of election day in 2018.
> 
> Mike


With the large amount of investigations opened on illegal voting, and the minuscle number of cases of voting fraud actually found, looking from the outside I tend to be highly skpetical of ex-ante claims of mass vote fraud.

But this whole election in the US, again as an outsider, is a sad thing in the sense that major forces cannot even agree on basics about how to execute suffrage and counting. I am well aware one of the parties, the Republican, is engaged in widespread voter suppression efforts through all sorts of procedural and barely-legal tricks, such as 'tailored' voter-ID laws that allow gun permits or hunting permits as valid IDs, but not university cards. In Florida, an explicit referendum allowing former felons to vote was approved, but the legislature found a way to impose new requirements about payment of criminal fines. For no reason other than political expediency.*

I have a colleague that works on a small 'college town' of a good public university in a non-coastal state. For almost 10 years (since we first got to know each other in person), they have been organizing entirely legal and by-the-book efforts to get students to register to vote locally, instead of at their parents' address. The students stay there 9 out of 12 months per year for 4 years, which is more than the average permanence of people who live in the near USAF base two counties away...

Anyway: the state legislature split the medium-size compact town into 4 different Congressional districts, with no geographic sense whatsoever, to prevent a "student takeover" over what was once a competitive House district that flipped between parties until the early 2000s. On the state legislature, then also gerrymandered the district to make sure all students are on a single super-Democrat majority (>75%) district merged with a large city across a major mountain range and far away, tying it with suburbs to again prevent students from becoming a major political force in two assembly districts.

Then, they tried to greatly reduce the number of polling places near student residences, and specifically slated poll places accessible by the lackluster local bus system for removal. The town's GOP operative didn't even conceal very well the motives (make it harder for students to vote, and preventing a booth just "down their dorms") . These removals were shut down in state court, and then also refused at the federal court with jurisdiction over there.

It is kinda frightening, some GOP legislature members (at this state) openly talk about "finding a way" to prevent students from voting, such as crafting local registration periods exactly for weeks when the university is on break.

The students did take over some seats on the local council, and organized with locals to vote out several county elected officials, mostly GOP, mostly old and on volunteer/unpaid positions, out of spite/retaliation. Things like some volunteer firefighting commission and the local school district or some commission that oversees a local park. This precedes Trump, it happened during the Obama years. According to my colleague, it created a sense of desperation on the local old folks, who earn some decent money providing all sorts of services and selling stuff to students and renting them houses, but were 'shocked' when students + newcomers (with $$$ made in California) just booted 10/15 (?) out of the blue, for no other stated reason than political retaliation for the state legislature shenanigans against what the student-activists really want - not being diluted on elections to state and especially the House district, which is the election they really want to have a decent non-gerrymandered shot at.

The military service members stationed a dozen miles away face no such restrictions or contempt of the local population.

*_*

I just read that a massive effort, with donations from several multi-billionaires and NGOs, is trying to pay the fines for dozens of thousands of former felons, and register them to vote in November. The initiative created anger in some political operators in FL, which are saying it is "unfair" that powerful moneyed people are "subveritng the spirit" of the law (because the ex-felons are gifted the amoung of the fines, instead of having to actually work their butt off to pay them with interest later on)


----------



## PovilD

I see we are talking about elections. By the way, Lithuania will have its parliamentary elections next Sunday 

I want to learn more about covid prevention in voting places, dunno situation, so I little anxious altough I have overall more interest in voting which often happens not the be the case in my age group, but despite of lower interest in younger age group, social initiatives and protests are rising in Lithuania and it comes mostly from the younger people, and this results in rising interest in politics from young generation. In the past I think people are used to that state and people are separated thing (with specific political culture rising from it) which was actually a thing in totalitarian societies. I think larger and larger part of society that grew up in non-totalitarian environment, makes some difference.

---
As for trains, although I sometimes take a ride from Kaunas to Vilnius (and vice versa) by train. I think an extensive train usage and interests in train traffic is a thing that foreign countries have. Lithuania is one of the least train-dependant countries in Europe. We are for the most part dependent on cars, buses and trolleybuses


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## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Two days ago a thread about longest bus routes appeared in Skybar, now we have an identical discussion here... Accident?


I know that I escalated this topic about bus routes, and didn't knew about ongoing identical discussion in Skybar 

What a coincidence.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PovilD said:


> I have overall more interest in voting which often happens not the be the case in my age group, but despite of lower interest in younger age group, social initiatives and protests are rising in Lithuania and it comes mostly from the younger people, and this results in rising interest in politics from young generation.


On the other hand the importance of the youth vote is usually overestimated and exaggerated by the media. College students are just a small segment of the overall electorate and their turnout tends to be among the lowest despite online activism suggesting otherwise.

When the British people voted for Brexit, it was said that it passed because the younger voters didn't turn out. And that this would surely be rectified in a next referendum or the 2019 parliamentary elections, when Boris Johnson had a platform of getting Brexit done. But the conservatives won in a historic landslide, while Labour got its worst result post World War II.

The problem is that the media lives in a bubble, staff of online publications often consists mostly of inexperienced editors in their twenties, projecting their urban, 20s worldview in their selection of articles and news, which often doesn't represent the real world we live in. Baby boomers are the largest population cohort in many Western European countries, while younger people are among the smallest cohort due to declining birth rates over the years.

This is also why I wouldn't rule out a Trump win despite the polls consistently showing Biden in the lead.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> On the other hand the importance of the youth vote is usually overestimated and exaggerated by the media. College students are just a small segment of the overall electorate and their turnout tends to be among the lowest despite online activism suggesting otherwise.
> 
> When the British people voted for Brexit, it was said that it passed because the younger voters didn't turn out. And that this would surely be rectified in a next referendum or the 2019 parliamentary elections, when Boris Johnson had a platform of getting Brexit done. But the conservatives won in a historic landslide, while Labour got its worst result post World War II.
> 
> The problem is that the media lives in a bubble, staff of online publications often consists mostly of inexperienced editors in their twenties, projecting their urban, 20s worldview in their selection of articles and news, which often doesn't represent the real world we live in. Baby boomers are the largest population cohort in many Western European countries, while younger people are among the smallest cohort due to declining birth rates over the years.
> 
> This is also why I wouldn't rule out a Trump win despite the polls consistently showing Biden in the lead.


It's happening in my country too. I try not to stuck on that bubble and see broader picture with my own opinion, although I was pushing myself into it in my late teens, but I was disappointed by that bubble. It looked too idealist for me, especially when their praised parties lost last parliamentary elections. Lithuania is just both Western, and Post-Soviet. It has deep potholes in some neighborhoods, especially in my city, along with cars parked on grass chaotically with people walking on grass due to uncomfortably build pathways, sometimes quite neglected rural areas, which would resemble something we imagine about Russian outskirts, but also there are quite a lot of beautiful parks, with new neighborhoods in some places, cut grass, and also some nice places of visit with those same urban 20s youth drinking their daily coffee in some Old Town cafe or in some seaside resort. I feel it's in some path of transformation from relatively typical (although more developed) Post-Soviet state to true Western state. Yes, it could be more equal development, but it is what it is.

My neighborhood although somewhat neglected in terms of infrastructure refurbishment (very slow progress being made + refurbished parks), but grass and bushes are being cut regularly.


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> With the way that postal voting is handled in some areas, a problem of 'ballot harvesting' is a real concern - party operatives going door-to-door to 'harvest' unused mail-in ballots, fill them out in their favorable manners and then submit them to local poll judges. The California legislature passed and Jerry Brown signed (it was one of his last official acts as governor a few years ago) a law to allow anyone to submit anyones' ballots to poll judges.
> 
> It is believed by many that this swung several USHouse districts in Republican leaning Orange County, California to the Democrats, including one that had the Republican candidate leading by 7 percentage points at the end of election day in 2018.
> 
> Mike


The Orange County incident I’ve never heard. Republicans stealing a seat in North Carolina that way on the other hand....









How Republicans Tried to Rig an Election in North Carolina (And Almost Got Away With It)


It’s been nine months, and the district still doesn’t have a congressional representative. But voters head to the polls again soon.




www.gq.com


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> With the large amount of investigations opened on illegal voting, and the minuscle number of cases of voting fraud actually found, looking from the outside I tend to be highly skpetical of ex-ante claims of mass vote fraud.
> 
> But this whole election in the US, again as an outsider, is a sad thing in the sense that major forces cannot even agree on basics about how to execute suffrage and counting. I am well aware one of the parties, the Republican, is engaged in widespread voter suppression efforts through all sorts of procedural and barely-legal tricks, such as 'tailored' voter-ID laws that allow gun permits or hunting permits as valid IDs, but not university cards. In Florida, an explicit referendum allowing former felons to vote was approved, but the legislature found a way to impose new requirements about payment of criminal fines. For no reason other than political expediency.*
> 
> I have a colleague that works on a small 'college town' of a good public university in a non-coastal state. For almost 10 years (since we first got to know each other in person), they have been organizing entirely legal and by-the-book efforts to get students to register to vote locally, instead of at their parents' address. The students stay there 9 out of 12 months per year for 4 years, which is more than the average permanence of people who live in the near USAF base two counties away...
> 
> Anyway: the state legislature split the medium-size compact town into 4 different Congressional districts, with no geographic sense whatsoever, to prevent a "student takeover" over what was once a competitive House district that flipped between parties until the early 2000s. On the state legislature, then also gerrymandered the district to make sure all students are on a single super-Democrat majority (>75%) district merged with a large city across a major mountain range and far away, tying it with suburbs to again prevent students from becoming a major political force in two assembly districts.
> 
> Then, they tried to greatly reduce the number of polling places near student residences, and specifically slated poll places accessible by the lackluster local bus system for removal. The town's GOP operative didn't even conceal very well the motives (make it harder for students to vote, and preventing a booth just "down their dorms") . These removals were shut down in state court, and then also refused at the federal court with jurisdiction over there.
> 
> It is kinda frightening, some GOP legislature members (at this state) openly talk about "finding a way" to prevent students from voting, such as crafting local registration periods exactly for weeks when the university is on break.
> 
> The students did take over some seats on the local council, and organized with locals to vote out several county elected officials, mostly GOP, mostly old and on volunteer/unpaid positions, out of spite/retaliation. Things like some volunteer firefighting commission and the local school district or some commission that oversees a local park. This precedes Trump, it happened during the Obama years. According to my colleague, it created a sense of desperation on the local old folks, who earn some decent money providing all sorts of services and selling stuff to students and renting them houses, but were 'shocked' when students + newcomers (with $$$ made in California) just booted 10/15 (?) out of the blue, for no other stated reason than political retaliation for the state legislature shenanigans against what the student-activists really want - not being diluted on elections to state and especially the House district, which is the election they really want to have a decent non-gerrymandered shot at.
> 
> The military service members stationed a dozen miles away face no such restrictions or contempt of the local population.
> 
> *_*
> 
> I just read that a massive effort, with donations from several multi-billionaires and NGOs, is trying to pay the fines for dozens of thousands of former felons, and register them to vote in November. The initiative created anger in some political operators in FL, which are saying it is "unfair" that powerful moneyed people are "subveritng the spirit" of the law (because the ex-felons are gifted the amoung of the fines, instead of having to actually work their butt off to pay them with interest later on)


Yep.


----------



## Suburbanist

I read about some shenanigans in Pennsylvania about clerk officials drawing made-up rules to refuse to register New Yorkers who had relocated in a semi-permanent basis to their second homes : A Pennsylvania County Allegedly Turned New Voters Away Because They Used to Live in New York


----------



## Suburbanist

In close-call elections on first-past-the-post systems (like the US and UK), what really matters are marginal voters in 'swing' constituencies.

Which, in the age of powerful computation and mapping, means that one can outright exclude large swaths of the electorate altogether. This is also the major flaw os such systems, IMHO. Voters in California who might align with Trump's agenda can be completely ignored and steamrolled politically because they don't matter in any electoral calculus, state or national. Ditto for, let's say, "Bernie Bros" in Mississippi or Louisiana. They can just be ignored, even if they are a far from non-negligible share of the local electorate. First-past-the-post delivers total state control for one of the other party, and the 'battle lines' become about minute and relatively unimportant intra-base fluff (such as minute university admission criteria in California or whether Plan-B is 'abortifacent' in Mississippi)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> I read about some shenanigans in Pennsylvania about clerk officials drawing made-up rules to refuse to register New Yorkers who had relocated in a semi-permanent basis to their second homes : A Pennsylvania County Allegedly Turned New Voters Away Because They Used to Live in New York


Wow.
However, I believe the county -can- require such people to give their old address, and the county can communicate with New York or wherever they’re from making sure they stop voting there. They can’t vote in two states. And the people who came out and said they wanted to change their registration “because it’s a battleground state” were idiots.
When I moved to Pennsylvania in 1994 I had to give my New Jersey address on my voter registration form. And I assume it was communicated to New Jersey because I stopped getting election mail there (I’d know, because it was and is still my mother’s house.)


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> When the British people voted for Brexit, it was said that it passed because the younger voters didn't turn out. And that this would surely be rectified in a next referendum or the 2019 parliamentary elections, when Boris Johnson had a platform of getting Brexit done. But the conservatives won in a historic landslide, while Labour got its worst result post World War II.


I don't think you can connect the 2019 election result to Brexit. The Labour party had an unelectable, very left wing leader and the party's stance on Brexit was ambiguous at best. Therefore they were unlikely to attract Remain voting Conservatives. The voting system prevented Remain voters from switching to the Liberal Democrats, the only significant party which vowed to stop Brexit.

If we had another referendum I would be in no doubt that Remain would win.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> On the other hand the importance of the youth vote is usually overestimated and exaggerated by the media. College students are just a small segment of the overall electorate and their turnout tends to be among the lowest despite online activism suggesting otherwise.
> 
> When the British people voted for Brexit, it was said that it passed because the younger voters didn't turn out. And that this would surely be rectified in a next referendum or the 2019 parliamentary elections, when Boris Johnson had a platform of getting Brexit done. But the conservatives won in a historic landslide, while Labour got its worst result post World War II.
> 
> The problem is that the media lives in a bubble, staff of online publications often consists mostly of inexperienced editors in their twenties, projecting their urban, 20s worldview in their selection of articles and news, which often doesn't represent the real world we live in. Baby boomers are the largest population cohort in many Western European countries, while younger people are among the smallest cohort due to declining birth rates over the years.
> 
> This is also why I wouldn't rule out a Trump win despite the polls consistently showing Biden in the lead.


Well, it is a bit more complicated. Yes boomers are still the largest cohort, just about, but not for long. Generations born in 70s 80s and later might not be as large as boomers but it is already 40 years worth of births.

As suburbanist wrote, situation in Britain and America is influenced by dysfunctional voting system benefiting a few swing constituencies, often more rural, white and older.

Here is interesting article about situation in America:

Younger Americans feel their voting weight



> *Younger Americans feel their voting weight*
> 
> After years of elder-power, a new generation may well decide the election





















Situation in Britain is similar.

Yes, media live in their own bubble but there is genuine generational shift. One could argue that both, Trump and Brexit are swan songs of certain generation which is on its way out. One only has to look at age analysis of Brexit vote or Trump supporters.



















Yes, some of younger voters will shift to the right with age but it might not be enough to keep Tories or Republicans in power, unless they change with the electorate, as they did on the same sex marriage issue etc. Such shift might be easier in the UK than in the US as the culture war is less pronounced (apart from Brexit that is)


----------



## andken

geogregor said:


> Well, it is a bit more complicated. Yes boomers are still the largest cohort, just about, but not for long. Generations born in 70s 80s and later might not be as large as boomers but it is already 40 years worth of births.


Boomers are losing political power because they are dying, and millennials are gaining political power because they are entering middle age. The problem is that we have political systems(Even in countries with mandatory voting) that are too centered on issues of older voters. Politicians pander to old people because that's the people that go vote. A lot of people that voted for Brexit and for Trump have died. 

George Will once said that the United States invested in it's past(Pointing out to spending with pensions and healthcare for seniors) while China invested in it's future(Education and infrastructure). I think that there is a point about that, we need more discussion about things in the future, specially infrastructure and education(And even climate change), and less about cultural issues that older people are obsessed with.


----------



## MichiH

andken said:


> we need more discussion about things in the future, specially infrastructure and education(And even climate change), and less about cultural issues that older people are obsessed with.


Sure, but young people are getting older. When politicians do something for elderly, they also do something for the youngers - for their remote future. And most youngers still have parents and grandparents and wish good conditions for them......

I think that I still belong to the "youngers" and have no worries today. But I have no idea how the situation will be when I will retire one day. Doing something for the old people is also doing something for me..... one day....


----------



## Suburbanist

So with all these storms in the Mediterranean, the new, expensive and delayed flood prevention system Moses was finally activated for the first time, and worked as intended to avoid flood in the Venetian lagoon

https://news.yahoo.com/venice-deploys-flood-barrier-first-084754303.html


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> Yes, media live in their own bubble but there is genuine generational shift. One could argue that both, Trump and Brexit are swan songs of certain generation which is on its way out. One only has to look at age analysis of Brexit vote or Trump supporters.


I'm not so sure, when people age, they tend to become more conservative. There already is a political shift when people transition from college to a working life, and is particularly pronounced after they get into their 40s. At 35 and over the brexit vote was already near 50%. Keep in mind that the age cohort that is now the most conservative was coming of age during the counterculture of the 1960s. 

Also, the age cohorts aren't equal in the graphs you posted. 18-24 and 25-29 are smaller ranges than 30-39, 40-49, etc. If anything, it shows that the influence of college age voters isn't as important despite their most pronounced swing. 

Another interesting observation is that many people seem to think that Millennials are still mostly in college. By general definition, the youngest Millennials were born in 1996 so they are almost all out of college and into the workforce, the oldest Millennials will be entering their 40s soon. Maybe this is because Millennials have been associated with college students during the advent of social media and online activism.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm not so sure, when people age, they tend to become more conservative.


Yes, people become more conservative when they age. But, they become more conservatives than their younger selves yet still more liberal than the preceding generations. Otherwise world would never change.

I do for example think anti-European feelings in the UK are past its peak. Of course I don't believe in reversing Brexit or anything along those lines but I would expect decent cooperation in the future, once the big Eurosceptic cohort in their 60s and 70s reach the end. 

It is also worth remembering that the younger cohorts coming in the ranks will be much more diverse ethnically than the overwhelmingly white boomers. In America it will be massive shift, more an more places ill be minority white. It is less advanced in Europe but in big cities (London for example) trends are similar.


----------



## radamfi

The Brexiteers are mostly poorly educated. Graduates overwhelmingly support EU membership, even older ones. Most of the young Brexiteers didn't go to university. Most older people didn't go to university whereas something like 50% of 18 years olds now go there. So as the poorly educated become a smaller percentage of the population, Europhobia will reduce. The UK could at least have similar bilateral arrangements to the EU as Switzerland in about 10 years time.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> ...In parliamentary elections, you always vote for the candidates from the district of the polling station at which you vote, not from the one where you live. In case of the abroad, it's one of the two districts of the city of Warsaw.


Wait, people can choose which district/constituency they vote in? So if a candidate you don’t like is running in a district other than the one you live in, you can go over there to vote against them?
Or am I misunderstanding something?

I can think of a couple of U.S. Senators I’d like to be able to vote against. And I’m always up for a road trip....


----------



## andken

MichiH said:


> Sure, but young people are getting older. When politicians do something for elderly, they also do something for the youngers -


Not always. In a lot of countries we are seeing politicians(A lot of them that have large support among seniors) increasing the retirement age while not messing with current benefits. In practice younger people are paying for benefits that are going to be far less generous when their retirement comes. And to pay for retirement benefits in the future we need a vibrant economy, with investments in infrastructure and education. If you are going to be dead in ten years that's not an issue, but we need a better debate about the future, not only the past.


----------



## Penn's Woods

I’m listening right now to a discussion of the latest American polling (yes, I know...) that says Trump is doing worse among seniors than any Republican Presidential candidate in 20 years.


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> Wait, people can choose which district/constituency they vote in? So if a candidate you don’t like is running in a district other than the one you live in, you can go over there to vote against them?


Theoretically it's possible (it involves a travel), in practice I haven't heard about anyone doing it... People anyway usually don't think about specific candidates while voting but rather about the specific parties.


----------



## italystf

Kpc21 said:


> Theoretically it's possible (it involves a travel), in practice I haven't heard about anyone doing it... People anyway usually don't think about specific candidates while voting but rather about the specific parties.


In Italy you can vote only where you have the legal residence.


----------



## italystf

andken said:


> Not always. In a lot of countries we are seeing politicians(A lot of them that have large support among seniors) increasing the retirement age while not messing with current benefits. In practice younger people are paying for benefits that are going to be far less generous when their retirement comes. And to pay for retirement benefits in the future we need a vibrant economy, with investments in infrastructure and education. If you are going to be dead in ten years that's not an issue, but we need a better debate about the future, not only the past.


There are some problems that make well-paid public retirement wages unsustainable in the future:

population is ageing: we live longer and we make less children;
more people study for longer, so they start to work later.
At least in Italy, people who are in their 20s or 30s should save some money for a private retirement plan, that doesn't replace the public one (that is mandatory), but it will be added to it. Otherwise, we'll likely get about 50% of the wage when we'll retire (not earlier than 67-70).
Italian public spending on retirement wages is bigger than public spending on education, health care, or infrastructure. Taxes paid by workers aren't enough to pay all retirement wages.
Italian public retirement agency is called INPS (Istituto Nazionale Previdenza Sociale). However, I like to make fun of it saying it means Italian National Ponzi Scheme.


----------



## Kpc21

italystf said:


> In Italy you can vote only where you have the legal residence.


So when you are on a holiday trip, you can't vote?

There are also countries without such a thing as "legal residence" or "registration" of where you live.


----------



## mgk920

Kpc21 said:


> So when you are on a holiday trip, you can't vote?
> 
> There are also countries without such a thing as "legal residence" or "registration" of where you live.


In my area (State of Wisconsin, USA), when one is on an extended roadtrip, he or she can vote absentee. Either 'early vote' at your local municipal clerk's office before leaving or if it is a longer absence, apply for an absentee ballot to be sent to you. Normal 'absentee' voting is different from general mail-in voting in that one must take a positive action to obtain an absentee ballot and the chain of the ballot's custody is much better defined.

Mike


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> In my area (State of Wisconsin, USA), when one is on an extended roadtrip, he or she can vote absentee. Either 'early vote' at your local municipal clerk's office before leaving or if it is a longer absence, apply for an absentee ballot to be sent to you. Normal 'absentee' voting is different from general mail-in voting in that one must take a positive action to obtain an absentee ballot and the chain of the ballot's custody is much better defined.
> 
> Mike


At least in Pennsylvania, there is no difference whatsoever in the chain of custody. Mail-in voting IS absentee voting. It’s the same process. The only difference is you no longer need to present an excuse (such as you’ll be away) to get the ballot.


----------



## mgk920

Also, one must have an established 'domicile' (legally defined residence) for 10 days before being able to vote at that residence, it allows time to sync up the poll list in time for the election. If one has moved into his or her new residence after that deadline, just vote, absentee if necessary, at the previous address. IIRC, there are also special provisions for those with no defined residence (ie, the 'homeless').

Mike


----------



## italystf

Kpc21 said:


> So when you are on a holiday trip, you can't vote?
> 
> There are also countries without such a thing as "legal residence" or "registration" of where you live.


No, unfortunately. Not even if you study in another city.


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> Also, one must have an established 'domicile' (legally defined residence) for 10 days before being able to vote at that residence, it allows time to sync up the poll list in time for the election. If one has moved into his or her new residence after that deadline, just vote, absentee if necessary, at the previous address. IIRC, there are also special provisions for those with no defined residence (ie, the 'homeless').
> 
> Mike


I’ve always wondered about ex-pats. If you’re living in Europe, say, what counts as your voting address? Your last residence even if it now belongs to someone else?


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> I’ve always wondered about ex-pats. If you’re living in Europe, say, what counts as your voting address? Your last residence even if it now belongs to someone else?


In Poland such votes are assigned to one of the constituencies of Warsaw.


----------



## andken

italystf said:


> There are some problems that make well-paid public retirement wages unsustainable in the future:


There are lots of problems, and we should be more open about them. But we can't have a debate that's completely centered around older voters, nor should we be lying to young people saying that we are supporting a lot of spending for seniors saying that this spending will be around for them. In a lot of countries spending with pensions and things like that is suffocating the spending with education and infrastructure, even the debate about housing is too geared toward older voters.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> I’ve always wondered about ex-pats. If you’re living in Europe, say, what counts as your voting address? Your last residence even if it now belongs to someone else?


There are no general rules, every nations have their own regulations.


----------



## MattiG

Penn's Woods said:


> I’ve always wondered about ex-pats. If you’re living in Europe, say, what counts as your voting address? Your last residence even if it now belongs to someone else?


These things can be quite easily arranged, if there is a population register and a waterproof legislation. Finland:

Each election is arranged at municipalities, under strict rules and control by the Ministry of Justice. 
Each home address is assigned a voting area. One poll station per voting area on the day of the election. Everyone receives a letter telling where the polling station is. 
There is a default poll station in each municipality for those ones having no assigned voting area. 
Each resident has a home municipality to vote in. It is the municipality where the person is registered to live on the 51st day before the election. 
For non-residents, there is a "population register municipality" instead. By default, it is the last home municipality before moving abroad. Persons having no prior home municipality follow their mother, father or spouse, in this order. 
If no such a municipality can be determined, the person votes in Helsinki. 
The person can freely choose where to vote in advance. The voting slips are routed to the home municipality based on the data in the population register. The voter puts the slip in an envelope, and the clerk writes the destination on the envelope after checking it in the register.


----------



## Morsue

Penn's Woods said:


> I’ve always wondered about ex-pats. If you’re living in Europe, say, what counts as your voting address? Your last residence even if it now belongs to someone else?


For Sweden, you have the right to vote in national elections and referenda if you are legally living abroad. You lose your right to vote in local elections since you don't live there anymore. On the other hand, you don't have to be a citizen of Sweden in order to vote in local elections.

If you are not able to go to your local polling place on election day, you can vote at designated early voting places that are set up in different locations. They then send your ballot to your local polling place to be counted on election day or whenever the mail is delivered. For local elections, you can only vote for candidates/parties within your own constituency, no matter where you vote. If you want to vote for a specific candidate, you will have to write that person in if you're voting away from home. But since Sweden uses a proportional system, you vote for the party first and the candidate second.

I just thought of one instance where you could theoretically vote twice. In EU parliament elections, all EU citizens may vote either in their home country or their country of residence (if that's another EU country). A German living in Sweden has the right to vote for the Swedish parliamentary delegation, but also has a right to vote for the German delegation, and vice versa. This is of course illegal.


----------



## Kpc21

MichiH said:


> If you can work from home, the quarantine is more or less no issue.


If you are in quarantine, you are forbidden to work – it works identically to a typical sick leave from a doctor. At least it is how it works in Poland.



tfd543 said:


> Im surprised that it Costs in other places. Thats the Shock of the day, but hey, we are just naive Danes


And you don't have issues with shortages of the capacity of the laboratories making the tests? It was the issue, at least initially, in Poland; many test results were coming delayed because of that.

In Poland, after making the masks obligatory in the whole country and making the whole country a yellow zone, they are now going to re-introduce the senior-only hours in stores. From Thursday 15 October.

To me, those senior-only hours really make no sense. Even previously, it ended up with seniors queuing up to stores in those hours as they treated it like a privilege and really wanted to use it.

And they are going to apply also in places such as pharmacies, so in theory, if you are in an urgent need of a drug, you may have troubles getting it in a pharmacy, unless you send there your grandma...


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Not water. Cph airport nearly Accord with the eu recommendations that 0.5 l of water bottles should be capped at 1 euro. We get it for 1.5 euro which is surprisingly low.
> Anyway i have seen that many airports are beginning to install water dispensers around free of charge
> 
> Good ol times...


That’s another thing! We’ve had public drinking fountains as long as I can remember. You really need to warn North American visitors how much they’ll be spending on water and the like if they’re in, say, Amsterdam during a heat wave.

Bathrooms are free too.

Just saying.


----------



## PovilD

Watching Lithuanian parliamentary election results first round along with discussion podcasts. It's almost 3am here.
People vote for parties and members of parties that stand for particular district.
At second round they will vote for members of parties that won first two places in the first round. It will be held two weeks from now.

Check the map if you interested is being constantly updated as of I posting this post: Rezultatai - LR Seimo rinkimai 2020


----------



## Kpc21

In most of Europe tap water is safe to drink. But refilling your bottle at an airport, which doesn't have those fountains, might be tricky... I did it once in a wash basin in a bathroom, or using a service tap for the cleaning staff also in a bathroom, but both were problematic, having a tall bottle and not much space between the tap and the wash basin.

It might be easier in the bathroom for the disabled, they tend to have more distance from the end of the tap to the sink.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> If you are in quarantine, you are forbidden to work – it works identically to a typical sick leave from a doctor. At least it is how it works in Poland.
> 
> 
> And you don't have issues with shortages of the capacity of the laboratories making the tests? It was the issue, at least initially, in Poland; many test results were coming delayed because of that.
> 
> In Poland, after making the masks obligatory in the whole country and making the whole country a yellow zone, they are now going to re-introduce the senior-only hours in stores. From Thursday 15 October.
> 
> To me, those senior-only hours really make no sense. Even previously, it ended up with seniors queuing up to stores in those hours as they treated it like a privilege and really wanted to use it.
> 
> And they are going to apply also in places such as pharmacies, so in theory, if you are in an urgent need of a drug, you may have troubles getting it in a pharmacy, unless you send there your grandma...


I think we never had senior-only hours. Maybe stores only imposed them as recommended hours for seniors. I think this idea makes no sense as wearing mask outside when you aren't surrounded by people.

What I think I like about mask wearing outside is if temperatures drop below freezing, like -5C, face get too cold, and I would prefer mask instead of other options.


----------



## Suburbanist

Avinor airports in Norway do have a water bottle refilling station after security.


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> If you are in quarantine, you are forbidden to work – it works identically to a typical sick leave from a doctor. At least it is how it works in Poland.
> 
> 
> And you don't have issues with shortages of the capacity of the laboratories making the tests? It was the issue, at least initially, in Poland; many test results were coming delayed because of that.
> 
> In Poland, after making the masks obligatory in the whole country and making the whole country a yellow zone, they are now going to re-introduce the senior-only hours in stores. From Thursday 15 October.
> 
> To me, those senior-only hours really make no sense. Even previously, it ended up with seniors queuing up to stores in those hours as they treated it like a privilege and really wanted to use it.
> 
> And they are going to apply also in places such as pharmacies, so in theory, if you are in an urgent need of a drug, you may have troubles getting it in a pharmacy, unless you send there your grandma...


Not What i have heard of. Approx 10k are being tested Per day. We want to increase it to 100k by New Year.


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> That’s another thing! We’ve had public drinking fountains as long as I can remember. You really need to warn North American visitors how much they’ll be spending on water and the like if they’re in, say, Amsterdam during a heat wave.
> 
> Bathrooms are free too.
> 
> Just saying.


Now to a stupid question, just because I’ve never been to the US before, is it drinkable? The water from the tap.


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> In most of Europe tap water is safe to drink. But refilling your bottle at an airport, which doesn't have those fountains, might be tricky... I did it once in a wash basin in a bathroom, or using a service tap for the cleaning staff also in a bathroom, but both were problematic, having a tall bottle and not much space between the tap and the wash basin.
> 
> It might be easier in the bathroom for the disabled, they tend to have more distance from the end of the tap to the sink.


Ahh yea. The classical mistake. I use my hand to divert the flow. Works pretty okay.


----------



## radamfi

Obviously testing is free in the UK, as people are used to free healthcare in the UK. If it was chargeable, hardly anyone would bother.


----------



## radamfi

A lot of people are eligible for a flu shot (vaccine) for free under the NHS or through work, however supermarkets and chain drug stores/chemists are doing them for a small fee. For example, the biggest supermarket chain, Tesco, is charging £9. I had a look how much they are charging in the US. Most of the main stores are charging as much as $40.


----------



## geogregor

tfd543 said:


> Now to a stupid question, just because I’ve never been to the US before, is it drinkable? The water from the tap.


Yes, it is drinkable. 

There were some local exception where there were technical issues with water treatment plants (most infamously Flint in Michigan and recently some places in Texas) but as a general rule you can drink tap water in the US. 

I travel(ed) to the US quite regularly and never had problem with water there.


----------



## Attus

In Hungary tests had a price bout 20-35,000 forints, i.e. ~ 55-100€. Private institutes in weekend charged the higher prices. The government made the price fix, it must be 19,500 forint (~ 55€). Private labours don't make tests any more, because it is not worth for them for this price.
I think it was one of the goals o the government, to decrease the amount of tests. So Hungary has ~10,000 test daily, ~11% of them are positive. 

Hungary has now much more new cases than in spring, significantly more hospitalizations than in spring, significantly more people are in ICU than in spring, and mutiple times more people die than in spring. And all trends are increasing, except for new cases: it's more or less stable as less and less tests are made.


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Now to a stupid question, just because I’ve never been to the US before, is it drinkable? The water from the tap.


I hardly ever see signs saying it isn’t. That’s another thing I associate with Europe, actually. “Don’t drink the water!” as advice for people traveling abroad is a bit of a cliché, maybe out of date....

But this is what I’m talking about. Literally never seen one in continental Europe outside of Frankfurt airport. Drinking fountain - Wikipedia


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Ahh yea. The classical mistake. I use my hand to divert the flow. Works pretty okay.


But I don’t carry a bottle with me. No need to over here, so I don’t think of it there.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> A lot of people are eligible for a flu shot (vaccine) for free under the NHS or through work, however supermarkets and chain drug stores/chemists are doing them for a small fee. For example, the biggest supermarket chain, Tesco, is charging £9. I had a look how much they are charging in the US. Most of the main stores are charging as much as $40.


I’ve never paid for a flu shot. I guess people who aren’t insured do. I just Googled “free flu shots”; it should be easy enough to find. Even found a suburban county outside Atlanta offering them through its health department at polling places. The last couple of years I’ve had doctor’s appointments this time of year so they do it as part of the visit.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Then, of course, there’s this weirdness:









Why Do Canadians Drink Bagged Milk?


As proud Canucks, we have our share quirky traits and tastes — and bagged milk is one of those uniquely Canadian inventions.




www.foodnetwork.ca


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> I hardly ever see signs saying it isn’t. That’s another thing I associate with Europe, actually. “Don’t drink the water!” as advice for people traveling abroad is a bit of a cliché, maybe out of date....
> 
> But this is what I’m talking about. Literally never seen one in continental Europe outside of Frankfurt airport. Drinking fountain - Wikipedia


I know them. I have seen them as well in other eu airports but cant remember where. I Think it was Warsaw airport and munich. Cant recall.


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> Then, of course, there’s this weirdness:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Why Do Canadians Drink Bagged Milk?
> 
> 
> As proud Canucks, we have our share quirky traits and tastes — and bagged milk is one of those uniquely Canadian inventions.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.foodnetwork.ca


Lol. Thats funny


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Moving houses for road projects (Norway & Netherlands):


----------



## Kpc21

Universities in Poland are starting the academic year, some with a delay because of the delayed recruitment, caused by the delayed end-of-high-school exams.

Most universities and other higher education schools have most classes taking place remotely, with only a small amount realized physically at the university – those are usually the laboratory classes.

E.g. I have friends that study at the Lodz University of Technology (the school I graduated from), and they have classes at the university only one or two days a week.

Meanwhile, the Mathematics and IT Faculty of the University of Lodz – has physical classes only 2 or 3 days every four weeks (there are four different versions of the timetable for different weeks). Everything else is online.

Even the physical education classes are online  It looks so that the teacher requires from the students to do some physical activity, report it in Endomondo or a similar app, and send the reports to the teacher.

It's different from normal (primary, high etc.) schools, which have all the classes at school, except for the cases when there are Covid infections among the students or the teachers. I know a school where one group of students and some teachers are in quarantine, so only this group has online classes.

By the way... it seems there is no way to accurately translate the Polish word "klasa" (in the meaning of a group of students) to English...

I mean, at schools, you normally have the years divided into groups of about 30 students that have all the classes together. In Poland they are usually denoted by the number of the year (often written as a Roman numeral) and a letter representing a specific group.

E.g. the first year of a high school is likely to have "klasy": Ia, Ib, Ic etc. – depending on the total number of students.

For classes such as foreign languages, IT, physical education, each of them is usually divided into two smaller groups.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> In many of these countries these are record numbers for the past couple of months.


I only follow German media - mostly my regional radio station. And they reported that France has a new record, Italy has an all-time record (but five times more tests than in spring). They report that new restrictions are in force in many countries now, namely France (surfews at night in hotspots). And they reported this evening that the Dutch health system is facing severe difficuilties.

They only report it about the Netherlands.

Maybe just bad research by German journalists.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> I only follow German media - mostly my regional radio station. And they reported that France has a new record, Italy has an all-time record (but five times more tests than in spring). They report that new restrictions are in force in many countries now, namely France (surfews at night in hotspots). And they reported this evening that the Dutch health system is facing severe difficuilties.
> 
> They only report it about the Netherlands.
> 
> Maybe just bad research by German journalists.


I don’t think an American who follows only American media - even the most serious sources - is getting an accurate impression of what’s happening with the pandemic beyond our borders. We do get extreme examples like New Zealand wiping the virus completely out (as it seemed a couple of months ago), and we were hearing about Italy before it got bad here. But I think most Americans (forgetting about the conspiracy-theory-inclined people that think the whole thing’s a hoax) believe Europe has licked it, that we’re handling it uniquely badly.


----------



## radamfi

There was a report on Aljazeera TV about the Netherlands situation


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MichiH said:


> Maybe just bad research by German journalists.


The man in charge of patient distribution is known to be an 'alarmist' and pushing for stricter measures than some other members of the so-called Outbreak Management Team. The government also went further than the OMT advice, they said it wasn't necessary to close all restaurants. They also don't really believe that masks are a major factor, they made it mandatory, just to get rid of the endless discussion about it. The prime minister also said that it makes very little difference.

My city of 130,000 inhabitants has not seen a single covid-19 hospitalization since 27 April...

They also endlessly complain about testing capacity, but the number of tests per 100,000 is only slightly lower than Germany.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Even the physical education classes are online  It looks so that the teacher requires from the students to do some physical activity, report it in Endomondo or a similar app, and send the reports to the teacher.


Actually, I never thought about how physical education is being held in this pandemic times 

By default I would guess that such and similar lectures (like arts, technologies, etc.) are being cancelled for semester due to lack of resources.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> The man in charge of patient distribution is known to be an 'alarmist' and pushing for stricter measures than some other members of the so-called Outbreak Management Team. The government also went further than the OMT advice, they said it wasn't necessary to close all restaurants. They also don't really believe that masks are a major factor, they made it mandatory, just to get rid of the endless discussion about it. The prime minister also said that it makes very little difference.
> 
> My city of 130,000 inhabitants has not seen a single covid-19 hospitalization since 27 April...
> 
> They also endlessly complain about testing capacity, but the number of tests per 100,000 is only slightly lower than Germany.


For me, NL looked so chill about covid in first wave, but now they are ahead of many places of Europe for being alarmists in my eyes.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> By default I would guess that such and similar lectures (like arts, technologies, etc.) are being cancelled for semester due to lack of resources.


During the lockdown, e.g. some laboratory classes at my former university were simply presented by the teachers in form of demonstrations... there was no other way, when it required some dedicated equipment.

But those that only required a computer, took place. Only sometimes the software had to be changed to something else, if the university was unable to deliver appropriate licenses for commercial software to the students, and it wasn't possible to use, for example, trial versions.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> I don’t think an American who follows only American media - even the most serious sources - is getting an accurate impression of what’s happening with the pandemic beyond our borders. We do get extreme examples like New Zealand wiping the virus completely out (as it seemed a couple of months ago), and we were hearing about Italy before it got bad here. But I think most Americans (forgetting about the conspiracy-theory-inclined people that think the whole thing’s a hoax) believe Europe has licked it, that we’re handling it uniquely badly.


Actually Europe managed it pretty well, with the exception of Spain, but they were hit very hard by the pandemic in spring. Then came the holidays season and the season of mass night parties... 
Figures are rapidly increasing everywhere in Europe. And in this time Eastern Europe, having very few cases in spring, has it very bad. Czechia is in these days the hottest spot in Europe, having had ~44,000 new cases in a week (pop. 10.7M, i.e., it's like the US having 1.3 million new cases in a week), and Hungary has more fatalities than Germany, although Germany is 9 times larger. 
Hungary has approx. 100 times more new cases than in summer, 20-25 new fatalities daily (it was 18 in the whole August!), Germany has ~5,000 new cases daily, 20 times more than in summer months, and almost everywhere in Europe are the actual figures at least 10 times more than in July and August.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Please delete - glitch.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> Actually Europe managed it pretty well, with the exception of Spain, but they were hit very hard by the pandemic in spring. Then came the holidays season and the season of mass night parties...
> Figures are rapidly increasing everywhere in Europe. And in this time Eastern Europe, having very few cases in spring, has it very bad. Czechia is in these days the hottest spot in Europe, having had ~44,000 new cases in a week (pop. 10.7M, i.e., it's like the US having 1.3 million new cases in a week), and Hungary has more fatalities than Germany, although Germany is 9 times larger.
> Hungary has approx. 100 times more new cases than in summer, 20-25 new fatalities daily (it was 18 in the whole August!), Germany has ~5,000 new cases daily, 20 times more than in summer months, and almost everywhere in Europe are the actual figures at least 10 times more than in July and August.


I don’t think Europe...well, I don’t think Europe’s -governments- handled it badly, but you hear over and over people assuming that everyday people in Europe are invariably doing what they need to, what their leaders are telling them to, while Americans are all behaving like selfish idiots. That mask protests and crowded beaches and parties are something happening only here. There’s a certain type of American that is all too ready (and this is true all the time, not just during the pandemic) to assume all Americans (with the exception of the one making the assumption) are, well, as I said, “selfish idiots,” and all Europeans or Canadians or whatever are superior human beings. Cultured, generous.... And naturally there are Europeans who are happy to encourage this belief.  So when you point out that deaths per million are higher in Britain or France or Sweden or wherever are higher than ours (or were the last time I looked)....

Whereas the truth seems to be more that the -Northeastern- U.S. at least is having an experience comparable to western Europe’s. And I realize I just broad-brushed western Europe. This came out a few months ago, but confirmed the impression I already had:









U.S. Northeast, Pummeled in the Spring, Now Stands Out in Virus Control (Published 2020)


In just over two months, the Northeast has gone from the country’s worst coronavirus hot spot to its most controlled. “It’s acting like Europe,” one expert said.




www.nytimes.com


----------



## VITORIA MAN

the situation in Spain is now better than in other european countries for *14-day cumulative number of COVID-19 cases per 100 000*


*EU/EEA and the UK**Sum of Cases**Sum of Deaths**14-day cumulative number of COVID-19 cases per 100 000**14-day cumulative number of COVID-19 deaths per 100 000*Spain908 056 33 413295.93.5France779 063 33 037321.61.6United_Kingdom654 644 43 155302.21.5Italy372 799 36 28996.00.7Germany341 223 9 71059.60.3Netherlands195 933 6 654435.21.5Belgium181 418 10 278515.42.3Romania164 477 5 601190.14.0Poland141 804 3 217132.41.9Czechia139 290 1 172660.84.9Sweden101 332 5 90780.00.2Portugal 91 193 2 117152.31.4Austria 59 368 888153.71.0Ireland 45 243 1 835185.30.6Hungary 41 732 1 052147.62.8Denmark 33 593 67596.40.4Bulgaria 26 593 92982.31.5Greece 23 495 46946.80.7Slovakia 22 296 66223.00.3Croatia 21 741 334126.31.3Norway 15 791 27735.20.1Finland 12 703 35049.10.1Luxembourg 10 030 133247.81.5Slovenia 9 938 148204.10.5Lithuania 6 505 10964.80.6Malta 4 048 44200.62.0Estonia 3 947 6843.50.3Iceland 3 757 10288.20.0Latvia 2 942 4158.20.2Cyprus 2 130 2542.80.3Liechtenstein 155 191.20.0*Total**4417239**198 004**NA**NA*


----------



## Penn's Woods

New U.S. pandemic maps:









U.S. Virus Cases Climb Toward a Third Peak


Cases are surging again after falling from a summer peak. And the spread to new areas of the country suggests the outbreak is far from over.



 www.nytimes.com


----------



## PovilD

Hoping for things to get better in Spain, and then the rest would follow (maybe I'm slightly optimistic giving the start of cold season).

As for covid. I'm sometimes see media being too alarmist at times. The most recent one is the new research that virus can stay alive on surfaces (in very specific environment - darkness) for 28 days. This have generated clickbaits that you may feel it's an end of the world, but it's just media who need ad revenues.

As for lockdowns, I think I'm siding opinion that lockdowns should come from people's willingness to obey these rather strict rules. Maybe I'm not very educated in this subject, but what I know that democratic governments (as we think of EU) come from regular citizens, while dictatorships are kinda opposite. If we are willing to obey a dictatorship from medical system from prolonged period (if things will get not that well), I don't know.


----------



## PovilD

Penn's Woods said:


> New U.S. pandemic maps:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> U.S. Virus Cases Climb Toward a Third Peak
> 
> 
> Cases are surging again after falling from a summer peak. And the spread to new areas of the country suggests the outbreak is far from over.
> 
> 
> 
> www.nytimes.com


I heard that Florida removed all pandemic restrictions. I wouldn't be surprised at all if another similar case rise will take place.


----------



## andken

Penn's Woods said:


> I don’t think Europe...well, I don’t think Europe’s -governments- handled it badly, but you hear over and over people assuming that everyday people in Europe are invariably doing what they need to,


Europe handled it badly. The countries in the Americas - both Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and the Three Caballeros countries(Brazil, Mexico, US) handled it awfully _horribly_.


----------



## PovilD

We know that South Korea, China, Southeast Asia handled it very good or at least satisfactory, but...
What can we say about Japan?

I heard there are quite a lot of percentage of people with antibodies, but not very much deaths. They never lockdown like Europe did. Japan did well in terms of masking, vit D, hygiene, ventilation stuff.


----------



## andken

PovilD said:


> What can we say about Japan?


Japan wasn't a _disaster _like most countries in Europe and the Americas. But they did considerably worse than their peers in the Pacific. I think that's one of the reasons why Shinzo Abe saw the writing in the wall and decided to leave office.


----------



## PovilD

andken said:


> Japan wasn't a _disaster _like most countries in Europe and the Americas. But they did considerably worse than their peers in the Pacific. I think that's one of the reasons why Shinzo Abe saw the writing in the wall and decided to leave office.


I heard lockdowns are against Japanese post-war ideals. It basically meant "dictatorship".

Japan for me is better (if not way better or best) example for no lockdown policy than Sweden


----------



## italystf

Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and New Zealand are probably the best performing countries in the world in dealing with this pandemic.
I don't mention mainland China, since is a dictatorship and thus it's impossible to get reliable data from it.


----------



## cinxxx

radamfi said:


> I think the assumption is the sort of people who are out late at night are the sort of people who are spreading the virus.


Imho this is just superficial totalitarian thinking.

From time to time I only got out from work after 9pm, or shortly before that.
In big cities it's very normal to see people out after 9pm.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Some dude made a video of a railroad crossing near my city. It got 100 MILLION views 🙃


----------



## keber

cinxxx said:


> From time to time I only got out from work after 9pm, or shortly before that.
> In big cities it's very normal to see people out after 9pm.


It is not really very strict curfew - public transport will still work after 9PM, also gas stations, even some other shops, also you can be outside because of work reasons, emergencies or taking a dog for a walk. It is mostly for limiting people to gather on open spaces or going from one private party to another. Most other people don't have problem with that, however, as all bars and restaurants are now closed for at least one month. It is not any different like a curfew in France, Belgium, even some places in Germany.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> I think the assumption is the sort of people who are out late at night are the sort of people who are spreading the virus.


Like who? People walking dogs? Or myself going for a jog?

This is nonsensical and totalitarian policy. If some idiots decide to implement similar rules in the UK I have no intention of obeying them.

You are actually more likely to spread virus in the middle of the day where there are more people everywhere.

Governments are panicking and want to be seen doing something. It is self-perpetuating cycle. Government introduce restriction, people got scarred and want even more restriction, even if they don't make much sense. And so it goes on. Where will it end? Mass confinement for winter months?



keber said:


> It is not really very strict curfew - public transport will still work after 9PM, also gas stations, even some other shops, also you can be outside because of work reasons, emergencies or taking a dog for a walk. It is mostly for limiting people to gather on open spaces or going from one private party to another. Most other people don't have problem with that, however, as all bars and restaurants are now closed for at least one month. It is not any different like a curfew in France, Belgium, even some places in Germany.


So, if everything is closed anyway, what is the point of such curfew? Do we really want to criminalize simply being outside? This is madness.


----------



## PovilD

I heard some conspiracy believers in my country (just give you an example) that they want to create their own anti-vac community, but most interesting part is that they think that travel should be forgotten for like 30-50 years until hysteria passes out.

Thinking if totalitarianism is going back with people giving up their freedoms due to this virus.

...and this virus being too unpredictable.


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> Like who? People walking dogs? Or myself going for a jog?
> 
> This is nonsensical and totalitarian policy. If some idiots decide to implement similar rules in the UK I have no intention of obeying them.
> 
> You are actually more likely to spread virus in the middle of the day where there are more people everywhere.


Well, Wales are imposing a two week lockdown from Friday, so there are even more strict rules in the UK!

Daytime curfew has a more severe impact on the economy and on education.

There are of course innocent reasons for going out at night which don't impact on the virus. Similar to why we have to put up with traffic calming in residential areas. If everyone could be trusted to drive in such roads at 30 km/h or less there would be no need but the minority of reckless drivers spoil it for everyone.


----------



## keber

geogregor said:


> So, if everything is closed anyway, what is the point of such curfew? Do we really want to criminalize simply being outside? This is madness.


There is no clear consensus what works the best in case of this pandemic. Some governments have stricter measurements, some less. Some nations are used to live in less democratic times, some other aren't. Anyway, here we still have about 11 (eleven!) times less deaths per capita from coronavirus than in UK. And measurements were still less strict (mostly) than in UK.
Some people are annoyed by "curfew" but on the other hand most people rather like to see "law, order and safety" even if it needs to be enforced.


----------



## PovilD

Staying at home like it was in March doesn't work, but restrictions on notion to reduce household mixing, especially indoors, can work. It's just simple as that.

Post 9pm curfew can be seen as speed bump for those who want to go to do such occasion by drinking, hanging out and stuff, but it shouldn't affect late evening joggers and stuff.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is quite a different mindset compared to March. In March the outlook was to reduce social contacts to a minimum for maybe 4-6 weeks, with the outlook that better weather was coming: more daylight, higher temperatures, generally a more pleasant season was ahead.

It's quite different now. The outlook is much more bleak: restrictions appear certain to continue until at least afters New Year's, the weather is darker, colder, rainy, snowy. The mindset may well be that things won't get better for at least 6 months. 

This'll make a difference to the extent that people are willing to isolate themselves from family and friends for such a long time, and it will likely have a huge impact on mental health.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> Well, Wales are imposing a two week lockdown from Friday, so there are even more strict rules in the UK!


Luckily I don't live in Wales. Let's see how will things work there in the long term.



> There are of course innocent reasons for going out at night which don't impact on the virus. Similar to why we have to put up with traffic calming in residential areas. If everyone could be trusted to drive in such roads at 30 km/h or less there would be no need but the minority of reckless drivers spoil it for everyone.





PovilD said:


> Post 9pm curfew can be seen as speed bump for those who want to go to do such occasion by drinking, hanging out and stuff, but it shouldn't affect late evening joggers and stuff.


The problem is you criminalize perfectly innocent behaviors, like being outside after certain hour. If the problem is gathering of groups of youths it is already banned. You don't need the curfew to enforce it. The curfew gives power to police to penalize you. If you have bad luck, even during a jog. All you need is grumpy officer who had a bad day.
Police simply should not have such discretionary powers. Not in a western democracy.

Using speed bump analogy. A lot of virus related restrictions are like fighting with speeding by building walls or blowing up bridges rather than by calming measures. Yes, if you destroy bridge nobody will be able to speed there. But is it the best way?


----------



## PovilD

Our local towns who face restrictions right now doesn't have (and actually never implemented) such restrictions, only limited gatherings to 2 people which also took place in whole quarantine period in March-May nationwide.


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> Beat this:
> 
> I am toying with the idea to avoid the test, not because of some 5G etc. garbage, but because I have been home officing with my son and wife for 2 weeks with no contacts except some grocery shopping - actually I play infected. There is no sense in hazard to be infected in the poll places (yeah, the testing is to be done in poll places).


Sure.... if you Can proof it, which you cant.. How Can you proof that you have stayed home for those 2 weeks ? What if everybody began to claim this?!


----------



## tfd543

geogregor said:


> Well, it depends on which country or rule we are talking about.
> 
> Let's take Ireland. They just announced "lockdown 2.0", for at least 6 weeks. As part of the restrictions you can go for exercise only within 5 km from your house. If I had nice mountain or trail where I like to walk but which was, let say, 7 km from my house I would absolutely defy the rule and go. If I go on my own and don't create any crowd I don't see how would that endanger anyone.
> 
> Or let's take curfew. If I felt like going for a walk at midnight, because for example I could not sleep due to stress or whatever, I would go for a walk.
> 
> Earlier in the year I openly defied rule that public transport should be for "key workers only". Since trains were running mostly empty I didn't see much point in not taking them to reach some nice park.
> 
> So please spare me the moral high ground. A lot of those rules make little sense and are massive limitations of freedoms. At the same time they often make little actual epidemiological sense. At least comparing to costs imposed on wider society.
> 
> I'm lucky that in London enforcement is quite light and I can still enjoy a lot of freedoms. I hope it will stay that way for as long as possible. Irish or Spanish approach, with roadblocks and heavy police presence would really depress me.
> 
> The worry is that once politicians find it easy to limit freedoms of scarred populations what will stop them from doing it more often, maybe for more nefarious reasons? I find it worrying how quickly people are prepared to behave like sheep.


Those 2 km Will soon be 2.1, then 2.7. After some time, people Will attempt 3 km out of the confined area. Then we Will have those that opt for 3.5, 3.6, 4, 10 and here we go..

The whole point is that everybody has to be in the same boat with same rules. Yes, i know the trains might be empty, thats the point of it.. take the car or walk instead.


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Sure.... if you Can proof it, which you cant.. How Can you proof that you have stayed home for those 2 weeks ? What if everybody began to claim this?!


It has been announced today, that all people who undergo the nation-wide testing will have been given a special permission card an officer can request to show. Citizens without this card will be the subject of a strict curfew. Breaching this "law" is to be charged 1.650 €. However, the presidentess has already announced that this measure is against the constitution.


----------



## Penn's Woods

volodaaaa said:


> It has been announced today, that all people who undergo the nation-wide testing will have been given a special permission card an officer can request to show. Citizens without this card will be the subject of a strict curfew. Breaching this "law" is to be charged 1.650 €. However, the presidentess has already announced that this measure is against the constitution.


How -often- are they going to test the whole country? Testing the whole country, say, tomorrow shows someone looking at the figures a week from now what the situation was tomorrow, nothing more that that. Sorry to state the obvious. Seems more like a gimmick than something really useful. Unless, I suppose, it picks up some clusters and you actually on them.
Also, I’ve seen headlines from Belgium about a shortage of tests...they won’t be able to test everyone they’d like to right now.


----------



## volodaaaa

Penn's Woods said:


> How -often- are they going to test the whole country? Testing the whole country, say, tomorrow shows someone looking at the figures a week from now what the situation was tomorrow, nothing more that that. Sorry to state the obvious. Seems more like a gimmick than something really useful. Unless, I suppose, it picks up some clusters and you actually on them.
> Also, I’ve seen headlines from Belgium about a shortage of tests...they won’t be able to test everyone they’d like to right now.


I agree.... completely. It is bound to fail spectacularly.


----------



## MichiH

> *Travel restrictions implemented early on in the pandemic have been crucial in slowing the spread of the coronavirus and keeping death rates low.* A new study published by Ruud Koopmans, director at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, shows that countries that had travel restrictions in place by February or early March suffered fewer COVID-19 fatalities by mid-year than countries that acted later. The study examines for 181 countries worldwide how restrictions on international travel have affected COVID-19 mortality.
> ...
> The study further shows that *targeted travel restrictions* (represented in the study by entry bans and mandatory quarantines for travelers from China or Italy) *were more effective than restrictions targeted against all foreign countries.*







__





Stopping the Virus and Closing Borders







wzb.eu


----------



## DanielFigFoz

The current restrictions in London make no difference to me. I live on my own so I am allowed to go to one other household and I still have to go to work.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> There is quite a different mindset compared to March. In March the outlook was to reduce social contacts to a minimum for maybe 4-6 weeks, with the outlook that better weather was coming: more daylight, higher temperatures, generally a more pleasant season was ahead.
> 
> It's quite different now. The outlook is much more bleak: restrictions appear certain to continue until at least afters New Year's, the weather is darker, colder, rainy, snowy. The mindset may well be that things won't get better for at least 6 months.
> 
> This'll make a difference to the extent that people are willing to isolate themselves from family and friends for such a long time, and it will likely have a huge impact on mental health.


And we shall add that, unlike in spring, most people, especially those under 50, are not afraid of the virus at all. And as more and more people will see that their friends and relatives were infected and had no symptoms at all, or only symptoms like a simple cold, so will the acceptance of the restrictions decrease, day by day.


----------



## Verso

It's 9 pm and I see plenty of people outside.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I heard a fragment on a Dutch radio station about a professor asking his students if they thought how much worse the coronavirus would be for them compared to a serious flu: 10 times as worse, 100 times, or 1000 times. Most students thought it was 100 or 1000x worse. The actual answer was none of those, it's less worse than a serious flu.

A serious flu is, by definition, serious. That means in bed for multiple days. The coronavirus for most people in their early 20s often doesn't even show any real symptoms and if they do show it's usually mild. But evidently these students are hugely overestimating how bad the virus would be for them.


----------



## mgk920

ChrisZwolle said:


> I heard a fragment on a Dutch radio station about a professor asking his students if they thought how much worse the coronavirus would be for them compared to a serious flu: 10 times as worse, 100 times, or 1000 times. Most students thought it was 100 or 1000x worse. The actual answer was none of those, it's less worse than a serious flu.
> 
> A serious flu is, by definition, serious. That means in bed for multiple days. The coronavirus for most people in their early 20s often doesn't even show any real symptoms and if they do show it's usually mild. But evidently these students are hugely overestimating how bad the virus would be for them.


Yea, same here, we have many people, young to middle-aged totally healthy adults, who are totally afraid that they'll literally melt if anyone walks near them and kept scared inside their little 'safe space' cubbyholes 24/7.

Here in northeastern Wisconsin, the organizers of a popular long running annual series of outdoor weekend rock and country music festivals ('Rock USA' and 'Country USA' in Oshkosh, WI) just announced that they are about to file for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy (complete liquidation) due to their not being able to run their festivals this past summer, solely due to the 'Virus™' and the over the top reaction from the powers that be to it.

No fans at the games of the local NFL team (the Green Bay Packers, 81K capacity at their home stadium), bars, restaurants other small businesses failing in large numbers due to Virus™ related restrictions on their operations (no business can withstand that for very long), etc.

We are losing our economy, our lives, our very culture, a far worse outcome than whatever the Virus™ itself is taking from us (the Chinese Communist Party couldn't have schemed it any better, IMHO).

This brings me back to a couple of 'life lesson' stories that I read and took great heed of when I was a child and I guess must be relearned - the stories of Chicken Little and the Boy Who Cried 'Wolf'.



Mike


----------



## CNGL

Meanwhile and seeing the coronavirus stats in Aragon, Spain by health center, I've developed a new saying. Where Mr. Pearson has managed to reach, the coronavirus hasn't found its way there yet xD. So far the health center at Ariza has reported the least number of cases, with just 3... and none of them came from the area. This especially remarkable given that Ariza lies right on the main road between Madrid and Barcelona, so it's not precisely off the beaten path. The town (which I've verified is also home to a case of the ultra rare mitochondrial disease I linked to its Wikipedia article, hence the saying) went into lockdown a full week before the nationally mandated one, and reopened at a slower pace than permitted (and I believe they haven't completed that yet), thus keeping the coronavirus away.


----------



## geogregor

DanielFigFoz said:


> The current restrictions in London make no difference to me. I live on my own so I am allowed to go to one other household and I still have to go to work.


Restrictions in London are relatively lax so far. The only serious bit is that you can't sit at a table in a restaurant or pub with anyone outside your household. But you can still sit in a beer garden with up to 6 mates. Anyway, nothing stops you and 5 friends claiming that you all live together in shared house, like many younger people in London do.

Enforcement in general is, well, let's say patchy. I went to my favorite local pub on Sunday to watch some football and it was pretty much as normal. Regulars still sat relatively closely and chatted away.

I the meantime prolonged restriction mean only one thing, deep economic shit. Some people really face destitution.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Northeastern states starting to quarantine each other. Awkward.










Quarantines won’t be enforced for travel to N.Y., Pa. and Ct. even though N.J. meets coronavirus criteria


Connecticut and Pennsylvania — along with New Jersey — also meet the criteria for be on the travel advisory. But officials in New York said travel between Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania won’t be restricted.




www.nj.com


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I heard a fragment on a Dutch radio station about a professor asking his students if they thought how much worse the coronavirus would be for them compared to a serious flu: 10 times as worse, 100 times, or 1000 times. Most students thought it was 100 or 1000x worse. The actual answer was none of those, it's less worse than a serious flu.
> 
> A serious flu is, by definition, serious. That means in bed for multiple days. The coronavirus for most people in their early 20s often doesn't even show any real symptoms and if they do show it's usually mild. But evidently these students are hugely overestimating how bad the virus would be for them.


*less bad


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> Yea, same here, we have many people, young to middle-aged totally healthy adults, who are totally afraid that they'll literally melt if anyone walks near them and kept scared inside their little 'safe space' cubbyholes 24/7.
> 
> Here in northeastern Wisconsin, the organizers of a popular long running annual series of outdoor weekend rock and country music festivals ('Rock USA' and 'Country USA' in Oshkosh, WI) just announced that they are about to file for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy (complete liquidation) due to their not being able to run their festivals this past summer, solely due to the 'Virus' and the over the top reaction from the powers that be to it.
> 
> No fans at the games of the local NFL team (the Green Bay Packers, 81K capacity at their home stadium), bars, restaurants other small businesses failing in large numbers due to Virus related restrictions on their operations (no business can withstand that for very long), etc.
> 
> We are losing our economy, our lives, our very culture, a far worse outcome than whatever the Virus itself is taking from us (the Chinese Communist Party couldn't have schemed it any better, IMHO).
> 
> This brings me back to a couple of 'life lesson' stories that I read and took great heed of when I was a child and I guess must be relearned - the stories of Chicken Little and the Boy Who Cried 'Wolf'.
> 
> 
> 
> Mike


Good lord.

You realize your state has the worst outbreak in the fricking country right now?

Don’t come crying to the rest of us when your hospitals are full. Which ought to be any day now. Not giving a f—- about anything other than yourselves works both ways.


----------



## geogregor

tfd543 said:


> Those 2 km Will soon be 2.1, then 2.7. After some time, people Will attempt 3 km out of the confined area. Then we Will have those that opt for 3.5, 3.6, 4, 10 and here we go..


So? How long do you advocate keeping people on 2 or 3km leash? Until spring? Anyway, what's the point of it? The whole "confinement idea" is flawed. As I understand it is all about keeping people apart rather than in the same place. If you don't come into close proximity with anyone it doesn't make any difference if you are 3 km or 30 km from home. It is another example of "lazy rule" which politicians come up with simply because they can and nobody seems to question them nowadays



> The whole point is that everybody has to be in the same boat with same rules. Yes, i know the trains might be empty, thats the point of it.. take the car or walk instead.


I don't have a car. So if I have to go somewhere (or even just feel like going), in London or to the coast, I'm going to catch train, whether epidemiologists like it or not. I'm not going to be second class citizen just because I don't own a car.

There is another problem with the whole "stay away from public transport" messaging. Cities are gridlocked and at the same time state has to bail out failing railways as they carry mostly fresh air.

It is all bloody mess of random policies. Some are good, some meaningless and some outright stupid. Anyone with half brain can see that. Now, we can all naively clap and repeat mantra that "we are all in it together" and behave like sheep or we can use our brains occasionally and make some judgement calls.

Anyway, next week I'm actually planning renting a car and touring some more remote corners of England. It is my last week off work until spring, I'm not going to spend it at home, whether people like it or not.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Record-shattering 4,591 coronavirus cases as state catches up on reporting; record 218 COVID-19 hospitalizations


Deaths almost tied the one-day record.




www.wbay.com


----------



## MichiH

geogregor said:


> It is all bloody mess of random policies. *Some are good,* some meaningless and some outright stupid.


True! The problem is that no one knows (in western world) how to deal with it...... A lot of measures don't really hurt but there is also a lot of bullshit. It looks quite random when different authorities / regions / countries introduce different rules but.... again, we do not (yet) know the best way to deal with it. We might know it afterwards - if ever.....

I'm happy that we can consider some measures being "good"


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> I don't have a car. So if I have to go somewhere (or even just feel like going), in London or to the coast, I'm going to catch train, whether epidemiologists like it or not. I'm not going to be second class citizen just because I don't own a car.
> 
> There is another problem with the whole "stay away from public transport" messaging. Cities are gridlocked and at the same time state has to bail out failing railways as they carry mostly fresh air.


In England it has never been illegal to travel by train during lockdown. The government issued guidance during the spring lockdown to use alternatives to public transport if possible, but it was just guidance not law. If a trip is allowed to be done by car, it is also allowed by train.

Buses still have capacity limits well below normal, typically 30 for a double decker bus. As far as I know, this no longer occurs in any of our neighbouring countries.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> The problem is you criminalize perfectly innocent behaviors, like being outside after certain hour.


Same as criminalizing entering the street intersection with a red light when there is no traffic across.

There are many things which are illegal although they don't harm anybody.



radamfi said:


> As far as I know, this no longer occurs in any of our neighbouring countries.


Poland reintroduced the public transport limits, but in the current situation, as compared with the one from spring, there is practically no way of enforcing them.

It's 30% of the official maximum number of passengers (sitting and standing) of the given vehicle, or 50% of the number of seats, whichever is a larger number. The former usually applies to city buses, trams etc., the latter – to coaches, regional buses, intercity trains etc.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Shared without comment.
Originally shared -with- comment, but I thought better of it.










Was a 'Sacrifice the Weak' Sign Shown at a COVID-19 'ReOpen Tennessee' Rally?


A person reportedly was seen holding up such a sign.




www.snopes.com


----------



## PovilD

I wrote a post just now, I don't see it anywhere 

EDIT: This post has entered the chat.

Yeah, I was writing about covid 

---
...that it has complications too, so it's not just hospitalizations which make me to rethink about the whole pandemic control.

It happens to be 10x more complications too (if not worse), similarly like there are 10x more deaths than a flu, and it involves all age groups.
I just read on local news yesterday.

I was also slowly entering the thoughts that it's not that big deal, but maybe... it is.
We will see in few years.

I think this crisis won't be fully solved in 5 years probably (depending on how prevalent the virus is). Recovery might happen. Now we are obiviously not in that process.
Sure if talking about some normalcy, it will take place next year as it was with this year for few months, maybe mask wearing will still be required for some time.


----------



## PovilD

I think I'm starting to get used to this New World with totalitarian elements. I mean, stopped thinking when pre-pandemic normal will come back, "as it came too sudden, it's shouldn't be new normal". Interestingly my grand parents have entered totalitarianism (socialism/comunism) after WWII at similar age as mines


----------



## Penn's Woods

PovilD said:


> I think I'm starting to get used to this New World with totalitarian elements. Interestingly my grand parents have entered totalitarianism (socialism/comunism) after WWII at similar age as mines


Now, now.


----------



## PovilD

Penn's Woods said:


> Now, now.


I think there are great chances that normalcy will come back, but with all the uncertainty, it's better think that current new normal it's just "normal".
It's like waiting when we invent convenient flying cars or jet packs that could be cheaply manufactured and distributed in big numbers 

Good thing that is likely that vaccines are just 3-4 months ahead. It's not like March-May when it was said to be 12-18 months away.


----------



## keber

For most people vaccines are probably still about a year away. For now no vaccine has been thoroughly tested.


----------



## cinxxx

A vaccine can be deemed safe after 5-7 years after its release.
I for one won't vaccinate for sure in the first 3 years, prefer to let other people test it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PovilD said:


> I wrote a post just now, I don't see it anywhere


I've noticed that too a few times. Apparently it happens when you're writing a post but you're not on the last page of the thread. It just disappears after submitting it.


----------



## PovilD

keber said:


> For most people vaccines are probably still about a year away. For now no vaccine has been thoroughly tested.


Our local infectious disease centre director said that we must treat it like flu who is 10 times deadlier and 8 times more contagious. It won't just disappear soon, like we know this with flu, and it's not a good move to scare people with it anymore, because it might make no sense anyway. We need to put targeted measures into affected areas/places not to disporportionally affect hospitals, and hospitals must reorganise themselves with adding more covid beds.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> In England it has never been illegal to travel by train during lockdown. The government issued guidance during the spring lockdown to use alternatives to public transport if possible, but it was just guidance not law. If a trip is allowed to be done by car, it is also allowed by train.


Yes, I was aware of the distinction between "recommendation" and "law", that's why I never stopped using trains. In fact a lot of restrictions in the UK for a long time were only recommendations and not actual laws. I do wonder what happens if some people challenge some of the fines in courts. There were already some cases of annulled fines if I remember correctly.

As far as I know Irish are much more strict with police questioning people at stations and manning check points on roads. I hope we will never see it in England. 



> Buses still have capacity limits well below normal, typically 30 for a double decker bus. As far as I know, this no longer occurs in any of our neighbouring countries.


Like with everything else it depends on the people's judgement, in this case the driver. I've been on buses with more people on them than the supposed limit.



PovilD said:


> I think I'm starting to get used to this New World with totalitarian elements. *I mean, stopped thinking when pre-pandemic normal will come back,* "as it came too sudden, it's shouldn't be new normal". Interestingly my grand parents have entered totalitarianism (socialism/comunism) after WWII at similar age as mines


Well, with such attitudes we might stay in this semi-free state for a while. There is always temptation among those in power to have more control. If population does't push back you might be right, at least in some countries. I'm sure Orban or Netanyahu might quietly enjoy the whole situation 



Kpc21 said:


> Same as criminalizing entering the street intersection with a red light when there is no traffic across.


Sorry but this is rather daft comparison. Are you seriously comparing one of the fundamental freedoms with a traffic rule?


----------



## keber

Lockdown (and all similar measures like curfew) is actually a medical measure that has been proposed by medical experts. It is used for centuries as the most effective measure to contain infectious diseases. Freedom of health of other people prevails freedom of going anywhere anytime.
If you think you have a better solution that doesn't kill more people, please.


----------



## geogregor

keber said:


> Lockdown (and all similar measures like curfew) is actually a medical measure that has been proposed by medical experts. It is used for centuries as the most effective measure to contain infectious diseases. Freedom of health of other people prevails freedom of going anywhere anytime.
> If you think you have a better solution that doesn't kill more people, please.


Lockdown is not the only solution, in fact it is not a magical solution. Japan or South Korea never had lockdown and yet are in much better situation than most of Europe.

Maybe it should rise some questions? I'm not against all the restrictions. But I ask for questioning them every single day. Don't they go too far? What effect do they have in the medium and log term? Are they needed? How long should they last?

As we can see, even in some of the posts here, governments come up with a lot of different ideas, some of them just plain stupid. Just because we have pandemic we shouldn't switch off our brains

It is not simply about me going for a walk after 22. This might be just a silly example. But it is about fundamental values as well as economy and long term health prospects.

I don't know about your country but huge numbers of people in the UK face destitution if economy locks for months (as some would like). This is not sustainable, it never was.


----------



## keber

Europe is not an isolated island like Japan, Korea or even China (or New Zealand). Every corona case in those countries is (forcefully) isolated, quarantined and heavily monitored including all associated contacts, and all arrivals to country are also strictly quarantined for at least 14 days with strict controls, including obligatory state mobile app on your cellphone. Any protests against such state surveillance are quickly punished and silenced. Nothing even remotely similar to any European country.
Here:








Coronavirus (COVID-19) Travel Restrictions | Travel Japan（Japan National Tourism Organization）


See official announcements about COVID-19 from the government of Japan.




www.japan.travel









Immigration Restrictions - Korean Air







www.koreanair.com





If Europe would act like this (of course with absolutely hermetically sealed borders) and that would be an enormous task then lockdowns really wouldn't be necessary. So yeah, there are alternatives to lockdowns. Are they better for economy and health? Yes they are. Are better for "fundamental values"? Answer yourself.


----------



## PovilD

At least you get not a lot of such people.


----------



## radamfi

keber said:


> If Europe would act like this (of course with absolutely hermetically sealed borders) and that would be an enormous task then lockdowns really wouldn't be necessary. So yeah, there are alternatives to lockdowns. Are they better for economy and health? Yes they are. Are better for "fundamental values"? Answer yourself.


There are (at least) two places in Europe like this. The Isle of Man, an island in the sea between England and Ireland, and Guernsey, an island between England and France, including some smaller islands nearby. They are self-governing British dependencies but are not officially part of the UK. They have had virtually no cases for months (maybe one or two) so they don't have any restrictions. No visitors from anywhere (even the UK) are allowed with only a few exceptions and if you go back to the island then you have to quarantine for 14 days. You are allowed to get a plane between the Isle of Man and Guernsey without quarantine. Someone who broke quarantine rules in the Isle of Man went to prison for 6 weeks:









Coronavirus: Man jailed for going to McDonald's while self-isolating


Jake Waring, 20, admitted visiting the fast food restaurant two days after arriving on the Isle of Man.



www.bbc.co.uk


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> No visitors from anywhere (even the UK) are allowed


So how do they manage the supply of food and of the resources for the industry?


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> So how do they manage the supply of food and of the resources for the industry?


Freight is allowed. Moving supplies around the world happens worldwide regardless of lockdowns.


----------



## geogregor

keber said:


> Europe is not an isolated island like Japan, Korea or *even China* (or New Zealand).


China an island???? This is country bigger then the whole of Europe.

But admittedly it is not the best example for any EU country as it is a dictatorship.



> Every corona case in those countries is (forcefully) isolated, quarantined and heavily monitored including all associated contacts, and all arrivals to country are also strictly quarantined for at least 14 days with strict controls, including *obligatory state mobile app on your cellphone*. Any protests against such state surveillance are quickly punished and silenced. Nothing even remotely similar to any European country.


As far as I know there are no compulsory apps in Korea or Japan. Could you provide source of that information? I might have missed something.

Korea relies mostly on effective manual tracing on local level. Something which for example Britain decided not to do and instead went the way of centralized tracing system run by a few overpaid private companies (some with questionable history, like SERCO). Results are disastrous, many cases cannot be traced by random folks in call centers, without any local knowledge. And state is paying billions to the private companies to run this joke of a system.

Japan is interesting case. Their tracing actually isn't great, nor did they go the way of strict lockdowns. Some argue that slower spread of the virus there is mostly due to high sanitary standards among the population.



> If Europe would act like this (of course with absolutely hermetically sealed borders) and that would be an enormous task then lockdowns really wouldn't be necessary.


The EU could have seal the outside borders and develop decent tracing regime inside. Not with some Orwellian apps (benefits of which are being questioned) but with regionally run local tracing systems (but with exchange of information between the regions). Sure in spring time was limited, but we had whole summer to get ready. Instead all politicians can come up with are lockdowns 2.0



> So yeah, there are alternatives to lockdowns. Are they better for economy and health? Yes they are. Are better for "fundamental values"? Answer yourself.


Yes, there are better alternatives. A few suggestions:

Proper track and trace run on local level but with exchange of information between regions. We had months to prepare it.

Improved sanitary regimes. Masks, washing hands, disinfecting surfaces, polite distance, no touch etc. We all should become more Japanese.

Restrictions. Ban on mass gatherings, limiting size of groups, table service only, social bubbles etc. There are plenty of sensible restrictions

Expansion of health services. More beds (some permanent some temporary), better care etc.

Finally, the target is not some dream of "eradicating virus" but keeping case load on levels which health service can cope with. We will have to live with this virus and vaccine is months away (at best).

Lockdowns and curfews are not the long term solutions, they are admissions of failure by governments and public health officials.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Expansion of health services. More beds (some permanent some temporary), better care etc.


For that you need medical staff. Which is already in a large shortage. Educating new medical staff takes many years and rather only those intelligent can become doctors (medical studies are ones of the most difficult, require memorizing much theoretical knowledge and so on), while this type of people also isn't in a large "supply".

If you make doctors work 24 hours a day instead of 12 every day all the week, as it often happens now, it rather won't work, finally they will have to replace the patients on the hospital beds with themselves.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> For that you need medical staff. Which is already in a large shortage. Educating new medical staff takes many years and rather only those intelligent can become doctors (medical studies are ones of the most difficult, require memorizing much theoretical knowledge and so on), while this type of people also isn't in a large "supply".
> 
> If you make doctors work 24 hours a day instead of 12 every day all the week, as it often happens now, it rather won't work, finally they will have to replace the patients on the hospital beds with themselves.


We are talking about emergency situation not about educating heart or brain surgeons. To care about people who don't need ventilators (which is majority) we need people with basic nursing training. Army is the obvious choice of manpower. Temporary Covid wards have one job to do and there is no need for complicated diagnostics.

Sure Covid is going to be strain on health systems, but it is pretty much unavoidable. Unless you shut countries for months, at least well into spring. But then what about millions who will loose jobs? Who will take care of them? 

I hate Boris Johnson, I really do. But I agree with his resistance towards immediate national lockdown. British government is instead trying to balance situation with local restrictions (but still not total local lockdowns, not yet at least). I'm prepared to give that strategy a chance.

Where British government is failing massively is shambolic test & trace system, problems with testing, underfunding care and health sector etc. 

In the long term we have really serious problem, not only medical. Borrowing is ballooning out of proportion, unemployment is rising, particularly among the young. We are facing possible lost generation. The only positive of the whole mess is that population will most likely blame current Tory administration for most failings. Which is not difficult, it is rare to accumulate such a bunch of useless morons in one government.

In the long term rising unemployment and cohorts of disillusioned young people might be a dangerous mix. Extremism might rise.

At the moment all people seem to care about are numbers of positive cases. It is important statistic but not the only important thing we should watch.

I know that economy in Poland (and other eastern European countries) is not that badly affected. It is less dependent on services so maybe people don't focus that much on economic hardships (at least not yet). In the UK it is much more on people's minds. And for a good reason.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> To care about people who don't need respirators (which is majority) we need people with basic nursing training.


But there is also a shortage of medical staff that can work with respirators/ventilators/whatever you call it in English (isn't respirator in English a kind of mask?). And the number of the sick that require them is incresing. What about that?


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> (isn't respirator in English a kind of mask?).


True, I meant ventilator. Joy of writing in different threads and constant jumping between two languages 

We have to monitor situation. Lockdown is a valid tool. But is should be an absolute last resort if situation is really, really bad. At the moment winter haven't even started yet and lockdowns are becoming first (and last) resort in some people's minds. So, what will we do in December or January?

And I still would like to know how countries which didn't have drastic lockdown (be it Sweden or Japan) didn't experience total meltdown of health service. And such meltdown is in my opinion the only justification of prolonged hard lockdowns.

Countries have different cultures, different geographies, different urban mix, different health provision etc. Also different economies. As I already mentioned, the UK is very dependent on services, often services based on human interaction (retail, hospitality but also theaters, live music etc.). So lockdown here have much heavier economic toll than in countries which have bigger industrial sector (so far nobody is proposing shutting down factories).

All these differences have to be taken to account when tailoring response to Covid.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> And I still would like to know how countries which didn't have drastic lockdown (be it Sweden or Japan) didn't experience total meltdown of health service.


Because these two countries have a public sector which is more well-organized than most developed countries and they also both have a strong medical industry, including advanced ventilator production. And although the population of these two countries were not locked in, it was and is not business as usual. Culturally, both countries are known for social control, and the Japanese in addition has extreme cleanliness if not in their blood, certainly as a cultural characteristic.


----------



## MichiH

geogregor said:


> All these differences have to be taken to account when tailoring response to Covid.


Exactly. And there are differences within single countries - the bigger the country the more differences. For instance, north-eastern rural Germany was never affected that much as cities and western/southern Germany. But when every single restriction is different - state A allows 5 persons to meet, state B allows 10 persons to meet, state C allows 50 persons.... and it changes every now and then, not at the same time and only state by state... that's not good for people who travel between those state. I think that there should be different categories with clear restrictions _everyone knows_. The same but on a bigger scale happens with European countries.... and worldwide.

The restrictions must be introduced in a democratic way - by governments (short-term) and in parliaments (medium/long-term). *Not by persons themselves ignoring the restrictions. *I'm fine with protests against restrictions - because it is democratic - but it must be in a deliberate way.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Former Belgian prime minister Wilmès is admitted into ICU, 5 days after testing positive. She's only 45 years old.

Cases in the Netherlands continue to increase, over 9,000 were reported today, the highest yet. There is government / medical frustration that the restrictions do not seem to have much effect. Masks have been strongly advised since 28 September and from my experience compliance is very high (near 100% in supermarkets, I wear one too). There is a semi-lockdown since 14 October. 

For me, life is basically the same as during the first lockdown. Minimal personal contacts, 100% working from home (been in the office 3 times in September before that got cancelled again), only go out for a run and a trip to the supermarket. It's monotonous....


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Former Belgian prime minister Wilmès is admitted into ICU, 5 days after testing positive. She's only 45 years old.
> 
> Cases in the Netherlands continue to increase, over 9,000 were reported today, the highest yet. There is government / medical frustration that the restrictions do not seem to have much effect. Masks have been strongly advised since 28 September and from my experience compliance is very high (near 100% in supermarkets, I wear one too). There is a semi-lockdown since 14 October.
> 
> For me, life is basically the same as during the first lockdown. Minimal personal contacts, 100% working from home (been in the office 3 times in September before that got cancelled again), only go out for a run and a trip to the supermarket. It's monotonous....


I follow a bunch of Belgian media on Facebook and I’ve been seeing headlines about Wimès; supposedly she’s not in danger.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> Cases in the Netherlands continue to increase, over 9,000 were reported today, the highest yet.


Germany over 11,000 today, new record!



ChrisZwolle said:


> restrictions do not seem to have much effect.


Most German cases are reportingly caused by private parties where people generally don't wear masks. E.g. a little birthday party with parents and grandparents, uncle's 50s birthday, wedding ceremonies etc.



ChrisZwolle said:


> For me, life is basically the same as during the first lockdown.


Differences for me:
I'm allowed to travel - I was allowed to travel within Germany except to Bavaria in spring, the "border" to Bavaria is less than 1km from my home.
Thus, I'm allowed to visit my mother now who lives in Bavaria
I'm allowed to meet my colleagues anywhere within Germany - I do it twice this week
I need to wear a mask now! It was only recommended by April 27 and I did not wear it back then.


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> Germany over 11,000 today, new record!


Yes, but Gemany has approx. five times the population of the Netherlands. 

The district I live reached the limit of 50 (cases / 100.000 / 7 days), we have new restrictions. Wearing a mask in the main street is now compulsory, just like in the office, as long as you don't sit at your own desk.


----------



## keber

Here we have 1670 new cases (this is like if Germany had around 70.000 cases a day), and we could reach 2000 daily cases by the end of the week (that is 1000 daily cases per million capita). Health officials want complete public lockdown, but government will wait for another few days. Life is despite night curfew and closed bars and restaurants still going pretty normal.
I dont know what will happen in a week or two in hospitals, ICU occupancy with covid pacients is already over one third of total capacity.
EDIT: now additional restrictions are announced for next week, closing all but essential shops, all hotels and kindergartens (schools will be closed because of school holidays)


----------



## MichiH

The German reports published on Tuesdays include some nice details (detailed epidemiological presentation by reporting weeks (e.g. age, gender, clinical aspects, proportion of those hospitalized); infection settings of outbreaks, exposure countries):

The latest one: https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ...2020/2020-10-20-en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

some quotes:

Hospitalisation was reported for 38,287 (13%) of 305,290 COVID-19 cases with information on hospitalisation status. 

Of all deaths, 8,836 (85%) were in people aged 70 years or older, but only 13% of all cases were in this age group (Table 3). Thus far, five deaths among COVID-19 cases under 20 years of age have been reported to the RKI.

In reporting week 11, the proportion of all cases was 46% for cases that had a possible foreign country as place of exposure. It then fell steadily to 0.4% in reporting week 19 as a result of travel restrictions. As of reporting week 25, borders reopened, initially in Europe, after which the proportion of cases reporting a probable country of infection abroad markedly increased. It peaked in week 34 at 49% and declined again since, to currently 3.1%.
Turkey, Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, Austria and Italy were most frequently reported as the country of exposure.

Overall, 30,276 intensive care beds were registered, of which 21,301 (71%) are occupied, and 8,872 (28%) are currently available.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MichiH said:


> Overall, 30,276 intensive care beds were registered, of which 21,301 (71%) are occupied, and 8,872 (28%) are currently available.


Germany has over 5 times more ICU beds than the Netherlands, on a per capita basis. 

They say we can create much more beds, but the problem is staffing. ICU patients need a lot of care so a lot of nurses and medical staff. Training takes at least 1.5 years.

Back in March the world was scrambling to get ventilators but I haven't read much about that since ~May.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> Germany has over 5 times more ICU beds than the Netherlands, on a per capita basis.


I think it is even more because: "As of 12/10/2020, a total of 1,286 hospitals or departments reported to the DIVI registry." which have 30,276 ICUs but the total number of hospitals was 1,925 in 2018. I guess it might be about 50% more (depending on which kind of hospitals did not report), and that we might have 45,000 ICUs according to this assumption.


----------



## MichiH

And there is still one German district with 0 new cases in the last 7 days, Wittmund district in the northwest of Germany with 56,926 inhabitants, and two districts with less than 5 cases / 100,000 inhabitants / 7 days in Saxony-Anhalt.

The German average is 56 cases / 100,000 inhabitants / 7 days as of today.

The German Minister of Health is infected and there is some critism that the federal cabinet still meets in person. The government says that they always maintain the distance rule in their meetings. They are no in quarantine although they met the minister last Friday.


----------



## Kpc21

The Constitution Tribunal of Poland has made its first significant sentence that is kind of in line of the politics of the current conservative government.

They sentenced that the law that allows the abortion (of pregnancy) in case of a probably damaged fetus is against the constitution.

The abortion remains legal if the health of the pregnant woman is endangered or if the the woman got pregnant as a result of an illegal act like rape.

The law says:



> Art. 4a. 1. Przerwanie ciąży może być dokonane wyłącznie przez lekarza, w
> przypadku gdy:
> 1) ciąża stanowi zagrożenie dla życia lub zdrowia kobiety ciężarnej,
> *2) badania prenatalne lub inne przesłanki medyczne wskazują na duże
> prawdopodobieństwo ciężkiego i nieodwracalnego upośledzenia płodu albo
> nieuleczalnej choroby zagrażającej jego życiu,*
> 3) zachodzi uzasadnione podejrzenie, że ciąża powstała w wyniku czynu
> zabronionego,
> 4) (utracił moc).2)





> Art. 4a. 1. Abortion of pregnancy can be done only by a doctor, in the cases when:
> 1) the pregnancy endangers the life or health of the pregnant woman,
> *2) the prenatal testing or other medical premises indicate a high probability of heavy and irreversible impairment of the fetus or a terminal disease,*
> 3) there is a justified suspicion that the pregnancy appeared as a result of a forbidden act,
> 4) (deleted in 1997 also by a sentence of Constitution Tribunal).


According to the court, it violated the following points of the Constitution:


> Art. 38.
> Rzeczpospolita Polska zapewnia każdemu człowiekowi prawną ochronę życia.
> Art. 30.
> Przyrodzona i niezbywalna godność człowieka stanowi źródło wolności i praw człowieka i obywatela. Jest ona nienaruszalna, a jej poszanowanie i ochrona jest obowiązkiem władz publicznych.
> Art. 31.
> 3. Ograniczenia w zakresie korzystania z konstytucyjnych wolności i praw mogą być ustanawiane tylko w ustawie i tylko wtedy, gdy są konieczne w demokratycznym państwie dla jego bezpieczeństwa lub porządku publicznego, bądź dla ochrony środowiska, zdrowia i moralności publicznej, albo wolności i praw innych osób. Ograniczenia te nie mogą naruszać istoty wolności i praw.





> Art. 38.
> Republic of Poland provides every human with a legal protection of his life.
> Art. 30.
> The inherent and inalienable dignity of a human is the source of freedom and rights of a human and a citizen. It is unalterable and its respect and protection is an obligation of the public authorities.
> Art. 31.
> 3. Limitations to the constitutional freedoms and rights can be only introduced as parliament legal acts, only if they are necessary in a democratic country for its safety or public order, or for the protection of environment, health and public morality, or freedoms and rights of other people. Those limitations cannot infringe the matter of those freedoms and rights.


To me it sounds like the constitution is faulty. Since it protects every life under any circumstances, it seems that if a child has a chance of being alive for just a second after being born, its life is protected and removing it during the pregnancy violates that constitutional right to live.

A decision of the court from today resulted in a protest... today:









Onet Wiadomości - Protest po decyzji TK - 22.10.2020 | Facebook


Decyzja TK ws. aborcji wywołała falę protestów. Tłumy wyszły na ulicę




www.facebook.com


----------



## PovilD

Pope Francis indicates support for same-sex civil unions


"They are children of God and have a right to a family," Pope Francis says in a new documentary.



www.bbc.com





What are thoughts in Poland about this subject, giving LGBT free zones and stuff?

It also may have implications in Lithuania too, although I thought Lithuania is more secular (which kinda is if comparing with Poland), but Catholic church are said to be still influential in cultural Lithuanian life (although originally I thought anti-LGBT stances may came from sovietization which inherited some aspects of Christianity).

I've read one joke that probably Lithuanian church would rather secede from Vatican than accept such things from them


----------



## Penn's Woods

Delete. What I said made no sense.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Another 'Brazil is freaking huge' map:


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> Pope Francis indicates support for same-sex civil unions
> 
> 
> "They are children of God and have a right to a family," Pope Francis says in a new documentary.
> 
> 
> 
> www.bbc.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What are thoughts in Poland about this subject, giving LGBT free zones and stuff?


I'm sure there will be uproar in Polish "cathotaliban" movement.  



> I've read one joke that probably Lithuanian church would rather secede from Vatican than accept such things from them


Maybe Polish church will follow?


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Germany has over 5 times more ICU beds than the Netherlands, on a per capita basis.
> 
> They say we can create much more beds, but the problem is staffing. ICU patients need a lot of care so a lot of nurses and medical staff. Training takes at least 1.5 years.
> 
> Back in March the world was scrambling to get ventilators but I haven't read much about that since ~May.


My friend is nursing corona patients in local hospital. She says that it's incredibly boring. They don't require lots of medical care, they are self motile, they take care after themselves. Quite a weird situation. Of course, ICU patients are excluded of those opinions (49 in the whole country atm).


----------



## radamfi

The two week lockdown in Wales starts in less than an hour and in some ways it is more severe than the original UK-wide lockdown in the spring. Just like the spring lockdown, shops will not be allowed to sell non-essential goods. However, in the spring lockdown supermarkets were allowed to sell everything in the store. So while a specialist electronics retailer had to close, you could buy electronics in a big supermarket as it was allowed to be open due to also selling food. Wales think that is unfair, so in this new lockdown, supermarkets are only allowed to sell essential goods.

So they have been covering "illegal" goods with plastic:









Wales lockdown: Supermarkets covering up non-essential items


Some shops are blocking off clothing and decorations after being told to stop selling them.



www.bbc.co.uk





Obviously, Amazon etc. are still delivering to Wales, so if you want an iPhone or a new coat, you can still buy them!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That's insane, using a nuclear bomb to destroy the remaining 1% of a target.

In the Netherlands all shops are allowed to stay open. But they can't sell alcohol after 8 p.m.


----------



## mgk920

How many of those Welsh businesses will survive that? That is a lot of people who, although they will be 'alive', will no longer be 'living'.



Mike


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's insane, using a nuclear bomb to destroy the remaining 1% of a target.
> 
> In the Netherlands all shops are allowed to stay open. But they can't sell alcohol after 8 p.m.


There is increasing divide between England and the so called "Celtic fringe". Wales, Scotland, Ireland and NI seem to be goin towards ever harder restrictions. In the meantime England seems to be quietly slipping to wards the "Swedish route", without ever admitting it.

Even in the highest restriction areas in England all retail as well as restaurants and hotels are still open even if you can only meet with members of your household (at least in theory).

It will be interesting experiment to watch. How will trajectories diverge and how long England stick to its approach?


----------



## PovilD

Limiting household mixing ang gatherings is enough, I think. Works well if rules are followed. Retail shouldn't be closed at all, but I agree that bars and nightclubs are too dangerous.

I heard Europe is dividing itself into red, orange, green zones. It is also implemented in Lithuanian regional level too. My city will be back to lockdown from next Monday (Oct 26) along with Vilnius, Šiauliai and dozen other smaller municipalities.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> What are thoughts in Poland about this subject, giving LGBT free zones and stuff?


They don't care of what the pope is saying... You know, this is somewhere "far away in Italy". Anyway, there are also liberal fractions of practicing Catholics and Catholic priests who aren't against LGBT in any way. It's more of a political issue rather than a religious one.

Remember that the representative of Catholic church who is most influential politically in Poland is not closely related to Vatican. It's a Redemptorist monk who owns a religious radio station (extremely popular especially among the older part of the society), a religious TV channel, some magazines and newspapers, a media college and even a geothermal energy company. He is in good terms with the PiS government, so that it's mostly thanks to him and his followers that PiS has won the elections. 

You should read:








Tadeusz Rydzyk - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org












Radio Maryja - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org












Mohair berets - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## PovilD

We also have "Marijos radijas", main religious radio in Lithuania. We don't have religious TV channel though.

...and we also have mohair berets too (megztos beretės). I thought it's invented thing inside Lithuania, didn't knew it exist in Poland, but giving how Lithuanian and Polish people are similar in many ways it don't surprise me.
I heard more often about them like 10 years ago, but now, although such people exist, not many are talking about them. I think it was most used durin early periods of independence (from USSR).



geogregor said:


> Maybe Polish church will follow?


Very likely.


----------



## italystf

geogregor said:


> I'm sure there will be uproar in Polish "cathotaliban" movement.
> 
> 
> 
> Maybe Polish church will follow?


The Vatican is already more progressive than some populist politicians.
At least is anti-racist and recently even stopped bashing homosexuality.


----------



## radamfi

Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands have religious radio stations. The Irish station is the only medium wave (AM) station in the country and the Dutch one was the last high power medium wave station in the Netherlands (now DAB+ digital radio). Unlike the US, most European countries have fully or mostly discontinued AM.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> That's BBC Radio 4, which is still going! Powerful long wave transmitters cost a lot of money to run and Radio 4 is also on FM and DAB, so it isn't really needed. But bizarrely the electricity industry pays for this transmitter to keep going. There is a so called "Economy 7" electricity plan that you can choose where you pay less for night time electricity in return for more expensive electricity during the day. This is mostly used by people who live in flats and use night storage heating. The radio transmitter sends a signal to the electricity meter in your flat so that it switches between daytime and night-time electricity at the right time. The electricity industry are trying to replace this system with smart meters which will mean there will be no need for this transmitter any more.


Well....

“If nuclear armageddon is about to rain down on the earth and the UK is "Assumed to be no-longer functioning state", the signal to warhead-carrying Trident nuclear submarines around the world is that BBC Radio 4 can no longer be heard.”









This one secret signal lets Britain know if nuclear war is about to kick off | JOE.co.uk


If this happens, start sh*tting yourself...




www.google.com


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> Seemingly, Radio Luxembourg was also very popular here, east of the Iron Curtain, being practically the only source of the latest music hits.
> 
> There was also Radio Free Europe, which even had programs in Polish and, from what I know, which was popular either as it was delivering news bypassing the censorship of the communist government. So it was jammed. Luxy wasn't jammed as it was just music.
> 
> 
> Maybe from the north-eastern regions... Certainly not from the central Poland, at least not during the day.
> 
> In the US, even the TV stations use call signs, don't they?


Yep.
I’m on the road tonight; I’ll see what I can find on the hotel TV at the top of the hour....


----------



## Penn's Woods

DanielFigFoz said:


> Europe 1, but apparently their longwave transmission ended at the start of the year so I can't do that anymore.


That’s the transmitter that was actually in the Saarland, wasn’t it? It was a Radio Luxembourg competitor broadcasting into France from outside in the days when broadcasting -in- France was all state-owned. Became a normal national FM network when that became legal around 1980 (as did RTL). There are a few others like this in Monaco, Andorra...; they’re known in France as the “radios périphériques.” I’ve listened to Europe1 on line - streaming or TuneIn.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> They blew up the old Europe 1 transmitter mast the other day
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Sendemasten gesprengt: Zwei der Sendemasten von Europe 1 sind jetzt Geschichte
> 
> 
> Und es hat doch ganz schön geknallt, als am Dienstagmittag um 14 Uhr die Masten 11 und 12 des Europasender Berus gesprengt wurden. Ein Reh und ein Hase brachten sich auf den Feldern in der Nachbarschaft in vollem Galopp schnell in Sicherheit, einige kleine Kinder in Ittersdorf und Düren weinten...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.saarbruecker-zeitung.de
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Like Radio Luxembourg it was another station that was started to get around broadcasting regulations by broadcasting from outside the country, in the case of Europe 1 to France from across the border in Saarland.
> 
> French language stations can still be heard at night in the UK on AM, mostly from Algeria.


My post about Europe1 was written before I saw yours. Didn’t mean to step on your toes.


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> When you go to Dover you can get plenty of French stations on the FM band. I was exploring some of the forts a few months ago and majority of radio stations where French in some points.
> 
> Also, in some parts of the coast, especially under the cliffs, you are more likely to get French mobile phone networks than the British ones. Especially in the so called "closes pub to France", The Coastguard in St Margaret’s Bay:
> The Coastguard | Britain's nearest pub to France!
> 
> 
> DSC04045 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> 
> DSC04046 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> Actually I found it impossible to log into British network there, I kept getting "Welcome to France" messages. Brexiters must be livid


I could pick up the BBC from Jersey at Granville in Normandy when I was there in 2016. Couldn’t get anything in English along the coast east of Étretat on that trip. Couldn’t get any British TV when I studied in Caen either, in 1985, and was at one point sort of borrowing an apartment with an enormous black-and-white TV probably from the 60s in it. Could get Belgian FM stations well below the border in northern France on the ‘15 and ‘16 trips.

Dover’s not actually that far from Calais for radio-reception purposes.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> In theory DAB/DAB+ _can_ broadcast high quality sound. When the BBC started the first DAB service in the world over 20 years ago, the quality was almost indistinguishable from CD as they only had 5 radio stations. Rich people who wanted to listen to classical music on Radio 3 in the best possible quality bought very expensive DAB radios when they first came out. They had wasted their money as within a few years the BBC started many more services so the space available for Radio 3 was much less. However, the BBC quality is actually one of the best. Commercial radio stations reduce the quality to as poor as they can get away with, like in that Jazz FM example. In other countries, bit rates are much higher, but still worse than internet streaming. DAB+ is really only for getting more stations than FM, not for quality.


It doesn’t seem to be much of a thing here yet.


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> When you go to Dover you can get plenty of French stations on the FM band. I was exploring some of the forts a few months ago and majority of radio stations where French in some points.
> 
> Also, in some parts of the coast, especially under the cliffs, you are more likely to get French mobile phone networks than the British ones. Especially in the so called "closes pub to France", The Coastguard in St Margaret’s Bay:
> The Coastguard | Britain's nearest pub to France!
> 
> 
> DSC04045 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> 
> DSC04046 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> Actually I found it impossible to log into British network there, I kept getting "Welcome to France" messages. Brexiters must be livid


I remember a Tour de France commentator once talking about getting Italian cell-phone networks on the east coast of Corsica. I was skeptical. When I drive across the U.S.-Canadian border, I always find the first time I look that I’ve switched networks.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

As in many other aspects of life, Norway is an outlier when it comes to radio broadcast.
All national channels ceased to broadcast over FM in 2017, keeping only DAB+. At the same time, the local channels in the four biggest cities were also forced to switch. The bill switch to DAB was passed by the parliament in 2011 with support from all national patties. The inactivation of the FM was still very controversial when it much delayed was implemented in 2017, because it meant that tens of millions of radio receivers would be scrapped, while DAB radios are expensive compared with FM, and many see DAB as a transitional technology only.

AM has not played a major role in Norway for half a century, and there has for a long time been no AM transmitters. 

Technically, DAB+ has the advantage over analog technologies that no tuning is necessary and there is no noise, but when the reception is poor I prefer a noisy FM signal to DAB silence. When the reception is good, the potential sound quality is better with FM compared with DAB+, except for DAB+ channels with high bandwidth. However, this is only significant when listening to mue using high quality sound equipment.


----------



## Penn's Woods

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> As in many other aspects of life, Norway is an outlier when it comes to radio broadcast.
> All national channels ceased to broadcast over FM in 2017, keeping only DAB+. At the same time, the local channels in the four biggest cities were also forced to switch. The bill switch to DAB was passed by the parliament in 2011 with support from all national patties. The inactivation of the FM was still very controversial when it much delayed was implemented in 2017, because it meant that tens of millions of radio receivers would be scrapped, while DAB radios are expensive compared with FM, and many see DAB as a transitional technology only.
> 
> AM has not played a major role in Norway for half a century, and there has for a long time been no AM transmitters.
> 
> Technically, DAB+ has the advantage over analog technologies that no tuning is necessary and there is no noise, but when the reception is poor I prefer a noisy FM signal to DAB silence. When the reception is good, the potential sound quality is better with FM compared with DAB+, except for DAB+ channels with high bandwidth. However, this is only significant when listening to mue using high quality sound equipment.


We had the same problem with the digital TV conversion: far fewer channels because when the reception isn’t perfect you get nothing. And signals still break up a lot. I’ve only tried over-the-air digital once in Philadelphia, and not in my current apartment, but at my mom’s, where I used to get a couple of dozen stations, there’s now very little.


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> We had the same problem with the digital TV conversion: far fewer channels because when the reception isn’t perfect you get nothing.


In Poland it isn't really like that. There are almost no places where there is no DVB-T coverage, and where there are such places, most likely they also had very poor analog TV coverage, so that it was practically unusable and in such places (like some valleys in the mountains) everyone was using satellite TV, so nothing has changed.

What, however, has changed, is that many viewers (obviously in other areas than those mentioned) switched from paid satellite TV (especially those who subscribed low-cost satellite packages that offered almost only the most basic channels – doing that only for the picture quality) to DVB-T, which is free of charge.

In the times of analog TV, I had access to seven channels (although two of them with quite a lot of interference) – but much of Poland had only three or four. Now I have over twenty. Most of that are junk channels nobody watches anyway – but the picture quality is much better.

And all of that happens even though the transmission powers of all the transmitters got significantly decreased. If I remember well, in analog, some of the transmitters even had power of the order of megawatts, and powers of 100-200 kW were typical. Now it's almost always below 100 kW.

I don't know, maybe the ATSC system which you have in the US is somehow inferior to the DVB-T that we have in Europe? After all, NTSC color system for analog TV was also inferior to PAL.

This is the issue. In TV, the switch to digital meant a significant improvement in quality. In the radio, in practice it means a drop in quality.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland it isn't really like that. There are almost no places where there is no DVB-T coverage, and where there are such places, most likely they also had very poor analog TV coverage, so that it was practically unusable and in such places (like some valleys in the mountains) everyone was using satellite TV, so nothing has changed.
> 
> What, however, has changed, is that many viewers (obviously in other areas than those mentioned) switched from paid satellite TV (especially those who subscribed low-cost satellite packages that offered almost only the most basic channels – doing that only for the picture quality) to DVB-T, which is free of charge.
> 
> In the times of analog TV, I had access to seven channels (although two of them with quite a lot of interference) – but much of Poland had only three or four. Now I have over twenty. Most of that are junk channels nobody watches anyway – but the picture quality is much better.
> 
> And all of that happens even though the transmission powers of all the transmitters got significantly decreased. If I remember well, in analog, some of the transmitters even had power of the order of megawatts, and powers of 100-200 kW were typical. Now it's almost always below 100 kW.
> 
> I don't know, maybe the ATSC system which you have in the US is somehow inferior to the DVB-T that we have in Europe? After all, NTSC color system for analog TV was also inferior to PAL.
> 
> This is the issue. In TV, the switch to digital meant a significant improvement in quality. In the radio, in practice it means a drop in quality.


My mom’s house is 20 miles from New York. Analog broadcast reception was so good that we were late getting cable. 1981. Cable in North America started for areas with bad reception (one consequence of stations being mostly local is we didn’t have the sort of national transmitter infrastructure that francs and the U.K. had; if you were too far from the nearest big city, or on the wrong dus of a mountain, you might not get much); there was no point to it for metropolitan areas until channels available ONLY on cable a CNN, MTV... - began to appear. Philadelphia’s more like 70 miles but the topography’s reasonably flat. So -I- could get most stations in both markets, just on an indoor antenna. My parents had cable as soon as it became available, but only on the main TV. Not the second one in the back room where we ate (and would put the TV on for sports or news), or in my room or the room I sleep in now when I’m there.... With the conversion to digital, Philadelphia reception disappeared (which no one but me cared about) and most New York stations either disappeared or became unreliable. (I’m not sure what the issue is with New York; Philadelphia’s presumably too far.) And when you’re trying to listen to the news, a digital signal pixelating and the sound dropping out is more annoying than an analog signal that’s not perfect but clear enough to watch, and doesn’t lose the sound. We’ve given up on trying to use those secondary TVs.


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> Well....
> 
> “If nuclear armageddon is about to rain down on the earth and the UK is "Assumed to be no-longer functioning state", the signal to warhead-carrying Trident nuclear submarines around the world is that BBC Radio 4 can no longer be heard.”
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This one secret signal lets Britain know if nuclear war is about to kick off | JOE.co.uk
> 
> 
> If this happens, start sh*tting yourself...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.google.com


The article doesn't say whether the submarines are only checking for the long wave transmission. Depending how far they are from land, they should be able to pick up FM as well. But long wave goes a lot further. The long wave transmitter is definitely on borrowed time as almost no one listens to it given the near universal coverage on FM and DAB, as well as over the air and satellite TV.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> The article doesn't say whether the submarines are only checking for the long wave transmission. Depending how far they are from land, they should be able to pick up FM as well. But long wave goes a lot further. The long wave transmitter is definitely on borrowed time as almost no one listens to it given the near universal coverage on FM and DAB, as well as over the air and satellite TV.


That article is whole load of bullshit. Submarines on patrol spend months underwater. There is no way for them to check for BBC4 or other standard radio signal.

To communicate with submarines VLF (very low frequency) and ELF (extremely low frequency) are used.

Very low frequency - Wikipedia

Extremely low frequency - Wikipedia


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> It doesn’t seem to be much of a thing here yet.


The US has adopted so-called "HD Radio" instead. Whilst DAB/DAB+ utilises a completely different waveband (generally VHF Band III), HD Radio basically piggybacks onto the original FM frequency to provide extra services, including a digital version of the original FM station (required by law). Stations in the US are 0.2 MHz apart rather than 0.1 MHz in Europe so there is more bandwidth available for putting on extra services. It suits the American radio industry better than DAB+ as DAB+ generally requires stations to share the transmission costs with rival companies, unless they can fill the whole capacity with their own services, which only the biggest public broadcasters in Europe can do.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> This is the issue. In TV, the switch to digital meant a significant improvement in quality. In the radio, in practice it means a drop in quality.


Just like DAB/DAB+ radio, DVB-T can mean better or worse quality depending on how many services are squeezed into the capacity. In Britain, just like with radio, too many TV channels are being squeezed meaning remarkably poor quality pictures on the more minor channels. The available capacity has also been cut to accommodate 5G. DVB-T, like DAB (without the +) is an old, inefficient format, and has been superseded by DVB-T2. DVB-T2 means you can fit in full HD TV channels or standard definition channels in better quality. However conversion has been slow because if you swap to DVB-T2, some people will need a new TV or set top box. So there are only a few HD channels available to people with over the air TV only. People who want more HD channels have long ago switched to satellite or cable.


----------



## MichiH

The number of new cases in Germany has doubled compared to last Sunday (that means, cases reported on Saturday). It is 11,176 now (cases reported on weekend are usually a little bit lower compared to other days). France reported 45,000 new cases.

Where I live, we had 50 new cases / 7 days / 100,000 inhabitants last Sunday. It is 112 now.
It increased from 12 or 14 if memory serves to 38 in the district where my mother lives.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Belgium is in a worrisome situation. They recorded almost 17,000 new cases yesterday, the 7 day moving average is near 12,000 per day, but most of that is in Wallonia and around Brussels. Flanders is much less affected. It's bizarre how the infections closely match the language border.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Belgium is in a worrisome situation. They recorded almost 17,000 new cases yesterday, the 7 day moving average is near 12,000 per day, but most of that is in Wallonia and around Brussels. Flanders is much less affected. It's bizarre how the infections closely match the language border.


Now we finally know where is the border between southern and northern Europe


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Sure, why not?









In Hindeloopen, Netherlands.


----------



## MichiH

No, that also existings here:






Wertheim, Germany - directly next to A3 (you can see I from the Autobahn)


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> To make even more money! As I mentioned the other day, the UK used to have "proper" local radio stations all over the country, but most of them are now owned by two large companies and are now mostly networked. Most of them were profitable before being bought out and were kept as independent stations for a while after being bought out, but that changed when the rules changed to allow networking.


I think shutting down either of them would be very risky from a business point of view. The history of American broadcasting is littered with the debris of ill-conceived format changes. Most of the stations I was listening to 30 years ago no longer exist. They’ve both been doing what they do for more than half a century and are still attracting large, loyal audiences with it....

Actually, I was looking at radiomap.eu’s list for New York last night, and it appears the -third- all-news station for New York that Bloomberg launched in the mid-90s - WBBR 1130 - is still on the air. At least the call letters haven’t changed. I’ll check it out next time I’m in the car. No separate digital band like they show in Europe, though. Which is what I was wondering about. A few HD subchannels under existing stations. And as you may have gathered from “WNEW-HD3,” on WINS’s station ID, a subchannel is often just another station. Perhaps an FM HD signal for an AM one.

And talking of good local radio, I was in northeastern Pennsylvania for a good chunk of the weekend, so spent more time than usual listening to a station that I’ve listened to before when passing through their territory. Found myself shazamming a lot of stuff that was new to me and have added them as a favorite on TuneIn. Typical corporate-owned small-market rock station that must just have a good person doing the music selection. WBSX - Wikipedia. And that not the first time I’ve favorited a station in an area I have no connection with.

Also, TuneIn recommended to le something called Rock Antenne Alternative. Can’t find much about them, but I guess they’re German?


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Interesting system you guys have:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 2020 Lithuanian parliamentary election - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _The Seimas has 141 members, elected to a four-year term in parallel voting, with 71 members elected in single-seat constituencies and 70 members elected by proportional representation.
> 
> Parliament members in the 71 single-seat constituencies are elected in a majority vote, with a run-off held within 15 days, if necessary. The remaining 70 seats are allocated to the participating political parties using the largest remainder method. _





Penn's Woods said:


> Isn’t that basically what Germany does?


I doubt it is something we invented for home use  I think it is a borrowed stuff, even subject for reform (refusing of single-seat constituencies).

There was interesting situation in 2016 where in first round Conservatives (Christian Democrats) have won, when in second round it was mostly current government by rural votes and Kaunas city. Now when Kaunas turned away from current government (but not rural areas), it helped Conservatives to win 2020 elections in both rounds. Lithuania had pretty much populist governments from early 2000s (except, well... 2008-12 crisis), it might have contributed to complicated development of political culture too. Now when we are in another crisis, mostly non-populist Conservatives have won again.

This year's biggest surprise is two oponents winning by only 1 vote in one district  When I checked yesterday, it was 0 votes difference. Now 1 votes have appeared from somewhere.









7074 vs 7075

Socialdemokracts were called "former communists" but true "communists" have turned away from this party to form their own party which was popular only in few specific regions, but there are fears that this party doesn't seem to have a future right now, and 2024 can left Lithuania without popular left-leaning party (although it never been truly left popular parties, tbh, I think it's due to communism history).


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Penn's Woods said:


> That’s what I would have guessed; I was surprised to see resistance to COVID restrictions coming from that end of the political spectrum. It would be from the right here. (And he has made American newscasts.)


I don't think he's against the restrictions themselves but wanted more financial support from central government to get through them. Or perhaps I'm presuming that, I haven't read much on the topic.


----------



## Kpc21

If we talk about politics... the recent decision of the Polish Constitution Court, who claimed that the law allowing abortion of what would become a disabled child violates our constitution (and thus invalidated it), caused protests on a scale unseen in Poland since the end of communism. Protests happen every evening, in all Poland, even in small towns, also those where PiS has always been winning the elections. And many people appear.

There are cases of the protesters being attacked by the police.

One of the symbols of the protests is the Solidarity logo but with the text changed to "f.ck off":


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> I’ve often said the two ends of the curve bend around so far they meet in the back.


It's called horseshoe theory








Horseshoe theory - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Verso

^^ Far-leftists and far-rightists have no idea how similar they actually are. Same as radical Muslims and radical Christians. But for the rest of us it's better that they're enemies, not friends.


----------



## MichiH

Verso said:


> But for the rest of us it's better that they're enemies, not friends.


I think I know how you mean it - don't support them - but my general opionion is _that we should all be friends_


----------



## geogregor

DanielFigFoz said:


> I don't think he's against the restrictions themselves but wanted more financial support from central government to get through them. Or perhaps I'm presuming that, I haven't read much on the topic.


He would like more help, and tighter restrictions, as long as they cover the whole country. Which is bonkers. Why would folks in rural Suffolk go to full blown lockdown because situation is bad in Liverpool of Manchester?

Anyway, it will be "interesting" winter. Many health professionals would like as tight restrictions as possible, probably until spring. But politicians are in a bind. If they follow that wish they risking ruining the whole economies, which will affect especially poorer and younger populations.

There are already protests in Italy:

Covid: Protests erupt across Italy over anti-virus measures



> *Violent protests broke out across Italy on Monday over new restrictions to curb the country's second wave of Covid.*
> 
> Clashes were reported in several major cities - including Turin, where petrol bombs were thrown at officers.
> 
> In Milan tear gas was used to disperse protesters, while violence was also reported in Naples.
> 
> The demonstrations began soon after the national government's order to close restaurants, bars, gyms and cinemas came into effect at 18:00 local time.
> 
> Many regions have also imposed night-time curfews - including Lombardy, where Milan is, and Piedmont, where Turin is.
> 
> Protests took place in about a dozen other cities, including Rome, Genoa, Palermo and Trieste.


It might get worse if we get more young unemployed people with lots of time on their hand and little prospect of getting job any time soon.

There is difference with spring lockdown. Back then everyone was terrified and at the same time politicians were selling narrative that if we only lock for a while virus will "magically go away". And population bought that bullshit.

It won't happen this time.

For one thing younger folks know that they face relatively limited risk. But they also know that economic normality is not coming back any time soon and their lives will be royally screwed for months if not years to come. In that situation they might have not much to loose by "having some fun", for example burning some cars etc.

Politicians will really have to thread carefully, it is fine balancing act to keep some measures but not pushing population too far, as it might backfire.

Anyway, I try not too think about is too much for now. I have used the fact that the UK government have recently added Canary Islands to list safe travel corridor locations (so need for quarantine after return) and I flew to Tenerife. It was last minute decision, booked flight on Saturday for Sunday morning.

I really pleased with my decision 

The way the things go who knows when will they let us travel again if they lock the whole countries and regions in, as some would like...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> But politicians are in a bind. If they follow that wish they risking ruining the whole economies, which will affect especially poorer and younger populations.


I wonder though, can this situation be sustained from a fiscal and economical point of view? The first wave in the Netherlands was calculated to have cost the government a staggering € 70 billion in lost tax revenue, income support measures and other costs. At some point countries would enter a problematic fiscal situation, right? Especially considering the scale of this problem: worldwide. The Netherlands had a managable public debt so it isn't under immediate stress. The debt has jumped to 63.1% of GDP this year.


----------



## radamfi

Are people in super rich countries worried about the economic consequences? For example Norway, as we have Norwegians on here, has its sovereign fund worth about $1 trillion.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> Are people in super rich countries worried about the economic consequences? For example Norway, as we have Norwegians on here, has its sovereign fund worth about $1 trillion.


Norway is a bit of an exception. British debt recently went over 100% GDP. What I was saying about politicians, some would like to lock populations in for prolonged periods of time. But even if they were willing to override philosophical objections (freedom etc.) they might not be able to afford it. 

And if they don't support populations financially they face backlash. 

It is going to be interesting winter. Are politicians ready to trash capitalist economic system? All we need is sudden panic on the markets and it is all over.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Well, I think this year shows that a basic income is financially unsustainable. Government debt and budget shortfalls are escalating like never before.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Well, I think this year shows that a basic income is financially unsustainable. Government debt and budget shortfalls are escalating like never before.


Income-support in the context of the pandemic is very different than the premises of UBI.

First, government revenues have dropped precipitously.

Second, the main idea behind UBI is that it can replace an array of other forms of direct and indirect transfer, and many tax deductions, with a much simples universal mechanism. In normal times, UBI would also severely reduce the gross welfare spending, both in direct (benefits) and indirect (administration) costs.

There is also the argument that, in normal times, UBI allows people to take a few more risks earlier in life like try new business, or some more unusual high-risk/high-reward career, knowing they would still have the basics.

I am not saying that UBI is necessarily a good or bad idea, just that we cannot compare it with counter-cyclical emergency relief in the context of a sharp drop in overall economic activity due to an external event.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder though, can this situation be sustained from a fiscal and economical point of view?


I think a serious financial crisis is unavoidable.


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> He would like more help, and tighter restrictions, as long as they cover the whole country. Which is bonkers. Why would folks in rural Suffolk go to full blown lockdown because situation is bad in Liverpool of Manchester?
> 
> Anyway, it will be "interesting" winter. Many health professionals would like as tight restrictions as possible, probably until spring. But politicians are in a bind. If they follow that wish they risking ruining the whole economies, which will affect especially poorer and younger populations.
> 
> There are already protests in Italy:
> 
> Covid: Protests erupt across Italy over anti-virus measures
> 
> 
> 
> It might get worse if we get more young unemployed people with lots of time on their hand and little prospect of getting job any time soon.
> 
> There is difference with spring lockdown. Back then everyone was terrified and at the same time politicians were selling narrative that if we only lock for a while virus will "magically go away". And population bought that bullshit.
> 
> It won't happen this time.
> 
> For one thing younger folks know that they face relatively limited risk. But they also know that economic normality is not coming back any time soon and their lives will be royally screwed for months if not years to come. In that situation they might have not much to loose by "having some fun", for example burning some cars etc.
> 
> Politicians will really have to thread carefully, it is fine balancing act to keep some measures but not pushing population too far, as it might backfire.
> 
> Anyway, I try not too think about is too much for now. I have used the fact that the UK government have recently added Canary Islands to list safe travel corridor locations (so need for quarantine after return) and I flew to Tenerife. It was last minute decision, booked flight on Saturday for Sunday morning.
> 
> I really pleased with my decision
> 
> The way the things go who knows when will they let us travel again if they lock the whole countries and regions in, as some would like...


I -don’t- get travel restrictions at this point. Generally speaking. There are circumstances in which they make sense - countries like New Zealand for example - but when there’s “community spread” going on both in the place issuing the restrictions and in the place restricted.... I don’t see any reason travel can’t be done safely, by behaving the same way you would at home (assuming that way is safe). I just made my second overnight road trip in three months and don’t feel guilty at all. Apart from everyone wearing masks and some things bring closed, it was normal. And the foliage was peaking.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> Are people in super rich countries worried about the economic consequences? For example Norway, as we have Norwegians on here, has its sovereign fund worth about $1 trillion.


By people do you mean the general public or politicians? I’d say in the U.S., bearing in mind we’ve got this fricking election in a week, a substantial part of the public is worried about the economic consequences. Unfortunately, that part of the public tends to also be the part that’s in denial about the virus. “It’s a hoax. It’ll disappear on November 4th. It’s all to get Trump out.” We’re talking people with blue-collar jobs, or owners of businesses, in fields that are affected. Another part of the public isn’t very worried, or worried at all, but ought to be. This includes people who are able to work remotely, retirees whose income is safe (for now), and people whose main worry is the virus. I’d rate myself closer to the “ought to be more worried” camp on the economy; on the virus, I’m taking it seriously but not really feeling personally threatened.
As for politicians, there’s been less concern than I would have predicted about incurring enormous amounts of debt to help individuals, help businesses, but that may be changing. There was a very generous initial stimulus/relief outlay in the spring, with surprisingly little political fight about it, but a later effort has stalled, due more to the upcoming election than anything else, I think.


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> By people do you mean the general public or politicians? I’d say in the U.S., bearing in mind we’ve got this fricking election in a week, a substantial part of the public is worried about the economic consequences. Unfortunately, that part of the public tends to also be the part that’s in denial about the virus. “It’s a hoax. It’ll disappear on November 4th. It’s all to get Trump out.” We’re talking people with blue-collar jobs, or owners of businesses, in fields that are affected. Another part of the public isn’t very worried, or worried at all, but ought to be. This includes people who are able to work remotely, retirees whose income is safe (for now), and people whose main worry is the virus. I’d rate myself closer to the “ought to be more worried” camp on the economy; on the virus, I’m taking it seriously but not really feeling personally threatened.
> As for politicians, there’s been less concern than I would have predicted about incurring enormous amounts of debt to help individuals, help businesses, but that may be changing. There was a very generous initial stimulus/relief outlay in the spring, with surprisingly little political fight about it, but a later effort has stalled, due more to the upcoming election than anything else, I think.


I guess I mean both politicians and people in general. I wasn't really referring to the US in my question as it obvious that there were already a vast number of people suffering economically even before Covid and the US was already carrying a huge debt burden. Norway, on the other hand, has more than 200% of its annual GDP saved up in its sovereign wealth fund, so if any country can cope with a downturn it would be Norway.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> I guess I mean both politicians and people in general. I wasn't really referring to the US in my question as it obvious that there were already a vast number of people suffering economically even before Covid and the US was already carrying a huge debt burden. Norway, on the other hand, has more than 200% of its annual GDP saved up in its sovereign wealth fund, so if any country can cope with a downturn it would be Norway.


I figured we -might be- one of the super-rich countries. Not the only one, but the only one I could answer knowledgeably about.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Worrisome story from Argentina: 



https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/coronavirus-argentina-million-quarantine-lockdown/2020/10/26/65eefde2-149c-11eb-bc10-40b25382f1be_story.html



_The government announced one of the world’s strictest lockdowns. The next few weeks would be difficult.

But those hard weeks have turned into seven months, and much of Argentina’s quarantine, believed to be the world’s longest, is still dragging on.

The South American country has become one of the coronavirus’s most explosive breeding grounds. In early August, fewer than 200,000 Argentines had contracted the virus. That number has since surged to 1.1 million — 1 out of every 44 people — and 28,000 are dead. _


----------



## mgk920

Penn's Woods said:


> I agree the NBA would be completely different. Soccer as well. There are times in baseball that there’s just not a lot to look at...there’s interplay between pitcher and catcher that’s best seen close up - or described to you - and everyone else is waiting.


I have always considered Baseball and AM radio to be the media marriage that is made in heaven, nearly a century now and I still consider it to be the best way to experience a game without being there in the stands (sadly prohibited by the Chicken Littles this year....). "The pictures are so much clearer on radio." Also, to me 'spoken word' is best heard on AM and music on FM, except for older music recordings that were specifically equalized/balanced for play on AM radio. Voice is too 'tinny' sounding on FM.

I also seriously appreciate the transmitting range of AM. I can listen to stations from Milwaukee and Chicago directly over the air without even thinking about it, something that is impossible with FM.

Mike


----------



## cinxxx

Madness beginning again.



> According to German media reports, Merkel is in favour of a so-called “lockdown light”, with an emphasis on keeping schools and Kitas open except in the worst affected areas. This kind of action would involve closing restaurants and bars, and putting strict limits on private and public gatherings . Shops could remain open with further restrictions in place.
> 
> Another idea is a short but tough shutdown, which has been put forward by deputy state premier of Baden-Württemberger Thomas Strobl, of the Christian Democrats (CDU). If the figures continue to develop upwards, measures "such as closing down everything for a week" should be considered, Strobl told the news portal The Pioneer.





https://www.thelocal.de/20201027/what-might-a-new-lockdown-to-fight-coronavirus-surge-look-like-in-germany


----------



## Alex_ZR

bogdymol said:


> Bavaria is saying this
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.thelocal.at/20201027/austria-blamed-for-bavarias-covid-19-surge


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> This strategy is failing across the world. Contact tracing may work with relatively rare viruses like Ebola, but this virus spreads as easily as influenza, making contact tracing impossible once cases escalate into the thousands or tens of thousands per day.


Except in East Asia


----------



## keber

They didn't have tens of thousands of cases to start with. And their concept of personal freedom vs. public safety is not comparable to western countries.


----------



## Penn's Woods

keber said:


> They didn't have tens of thousands of cases to start with. And their concept of personal freedom vs. public safety is not comparable to western countries.


No one -starts with- tens of thousands of cases. It’s a matter of how fast you realize it’s in your area and how effectively you act to stop its spread. South Korea, Taiwan, etc., beat the West on that score. Whether our differing ideas of the relative value of personal freedom and public safety are worth the differing cost is a separate question. (And I don’t know those cultures well enough to evaluate their side of that anyway.)


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> This strategy is failing across the world. Contact tracing may work with relatively rare viruses like Ebola, but this virus spreads as easily as influenza, making contact tracing impossible once cases escalate into the thousands or tens of thousands per day.


Contact tracing should be combined with social distancing measures of course, but has worked fairly well in Norway, where we never had a full lock-down as in many other countries. But it becomes impossible when the infection rates become too high, new clusters from imported cases form new clusters all the time, or people are not motivated for testing or testing capacity is not high enough. That is why somewhat stronger restrictions on international travel and some other measures, mostly locally in the most affected areas, have been introduced in Norway now: To avoid losing control.


----------



## MichiH

"Lockdown Light" in Germany from Monday. Similar to the lockdown in spring but schools, kindergarten and non-essential shops remain open. Professional sports will also be allowed - without audience though. Borders will remain open. The businesses which have to close will get 75% of their sales in November 2019. That's likely 8-10 billion €.

The lockdown is for November only. Goal: "Save Christmas". There will be a review of the measures in two weeks.


----------



## radamfi

I just learned that "stoplicht" in Dutch means traffic light, even though it includes a green lamp which doesn't mean stop! "Verkeerslicht" also means traffic light. Which word is more widely used?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

_Stoplicht_ is colloquial usage. _Verkeerslicht_ is more formal / jargon. _Stoplicht_ is used far more common but I believe this term originally referred to a brake light of a car.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> _Stoplicht_ is colloquial usage. _Verkeerslicht_ is more formal / jargon. _Stoplicht_ is used far more common but I believe this term originally referred to a brake light of a car.


You can say “stop light” in (American) English too, but “traffic light” is more common. Or just “light,” as in “turn right at the second light.”


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> They didn't have tens of thousands of cases to start with. And their concept of personal freedom vs. public safety is not comparable to western countries.


Measures introduced in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are much less oppressive against personal freedom compared to those introduced in Europe.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Measures introduced in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are much less oppressive against personal freedom compared to those introduced in Europe.


I was going to say, my impression is they jumped on it so fast they didn’t need any of that stuff.


----------



## Kpc21

MichiH said:


> Lockdown Light" in Germany from Monday. Similar to the lockdown in spring but schools, kindergarten and non-essential shops remain open.


Are the schools indeed open? In Poland, in the recent weeks before the closure, there were so many infections in many schools, with whole class groups and big numbers of teachers getting quarantined, that normal operation of a school was anyway impossible; half of the classes would have to be cancelled.

So the only sensible option was to go online with the school education.

Currently only the years 1-3 of the primary school (and the kindergartens) have the classes physically in schools (and kindergartens). With them, the easier thing is that they have all the classes with the same teacher, so there is a lower risk of transferring the disease around school.

Meanwhile in Poland...

Thousands of people shouting "f.ck PiS" (which is, by the way, pronounced in Polish as "j.bać PiS" but usually spelled as


Code:


***** ***

 – everyone knows what it's about and this way nobody will censor it):



















I live in a less than 15-thousand town. And even I could hear


Code:


***** ***

 from my window.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> Are the schools indeed open?


That's the plan announced! Schools were not (often) hotspots so far. However, restrictions can only be ordered by the German states - not by the federal government. The states make a "Verordnung" (ordinance / decree ?) and... every state can do it differently and they always did it differently. We will see


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> You can say “stop light” in (American) English too, but “traffic light” is more common. Or just “light,” as in “turn right at the second light.”


In British English it is usually plural i.e. "lights", "traffic lights" or "set of traffic lights". So you say "turn right at the second set of traffic lights,"


----------



## Kpc21

In Polish we just say "lights". "Turn right at the second lights".

And more formally, it's "light signalling". A single "semaphore" is "light signaller". Or the whole intersection, it's most correctly to say "intersection with light signalling".

This refers to roads, because in terms of railway, those are simply semaphores. While speaking colloquially, when you hear "semaphore", you usually think of the old-fashioned type, with a hand (or set of hands) that goes horizontal or vertical but in the railway terminology, even those in the form of lights are called semaphores.

To add something regarding those protests in Poland – for now, the police is not attacking the protesters in any way (maybe except for some incidents when they probably got provoked), they stay calm and secure the protests. Even though they could pacify them, as they are practically illegal, regarding the Covid restrictions.

The organizers call the protesters not to vandalize the public property and not to use vulgar words. While the first postulate is usually fulfilled (there is one known case of vandalism of a military monument in Warsaw; the city authorities, which are from the opposition, promised to clean it, but before they managed to do that, some protesters already did that; there were also some cases of vandalising churches), the second one isn't, the protesters use vulgar vocabulary almost all the time. But apart from the vocabulary, the protests are peaceful.

The conservatives organize watches of the churches, protecting them from possible acts of vandalism. But it's usually like not more than a dozen of people in front of the door of the church, and hundreds or thousands of protesters. There aren't large counter-protests of the conservatives.

Jarosław Kaczyński in his speech called people to protect and defend churches, meanwhile the president called them to stay calm and safe, and not go protect the churches as it will be done by the police.

Meanwhile, in some hospitals, there are the last ventilators available for those with Covid that require intensive care. And there are multi-hour queues of ambulances at the hospitals in some large cities (especially in Warsaw) – this has been going on already for a week or two. We are not far from a situation that would require triage of the patients.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Okay, here’s a new one: The cashier in the supermarket just now wouldn’t let me put my groceries on the conveyor belt until the previous customer’s were six feet away....

I guess she meant well.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> groceries on the conveyor belt


I haven't done that in 15 years (except on vacation)... The supermarket chain I usually go to has self-scanning. I pick up a hand scanner and scan everything while shopping and then pay at a payment terminal. You can see how much you have to pay while shopping and there is no waiting in line, ever. I love this system.


----------



## MichiH

The French lockdown will start on Friday (and last by December 1st so far) and will be quite strict. However, schools should remain opened.


----------



## Kpc21

MichiH said:


> The French lockdown will start on Friday (and last by December 1st so far) and will be quite strict. However, schools should remain opened.


I guess we can except some similar announcements for Poland tomorrow. I wonder how it will affect the protests.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> I haven't done that in 15 years (except on vacation)... The supermarket chain I usually go to has self-scanning. I pick up a hand scanner and scan everything while shopping and then pay at a payment terminal. You can see how much you have to pay while shopping and there is no waiting in line, ever. I love this system.


I have seen this ONCE in Germany. It is close to where I live now but I was there only once. Since it was early in the morning and there was no queue at the cashier, I didn't checked it out. I only used it in UK and southern Europe where you often have them*

*I miss traveling to those countries....


----------



## Kpc21

Some stores in Poland have that but it isn't popular, and it's available in the largest, what we call, hypermarkets, rather than small supermarkets.

I know Tesco have it, but Tesco is going bankrupt at the moment.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> Some stores in Poland have that but it isn't popular, and it's available in the largest, what we call, hypermarkets, rather than small supermarkets.
> 
> I know Tesco have it, but Tesco is going bankrupt at the moment.


This says Tesco in Poland has been sold









Tesco sells Polish supermarket business


The deal comes as the UK supermarket giant continues to scale back its international operations.



www.bbc.co.uk





Sainsbury's (one of Tesco's rivals in the UK) have these as well, but they also have a phone app where you can scan the shopping using your phone's camera instead of the hand held readers. Since the start of Covid they have been encouraging the use of the app so that fewer people touch the readers. The app stores your loyalty card as well so you you don't need to scan that where as you would have to scan it if you used the hand held reader.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> Sainsbury's (one of Tesco's rivals in the UK) have these as well, but they also have a phone app where you can scan the shopping using your phone's camera instead of the hand held readers.


My supermarket also has the phone app as an option. I tried it but found it less convenient than a hand-held scanner. They clean them after each customer, though I'm not too worried about touching surfaces or products, just wash the hands after I've been in a public place.

They also have some kind of UV 'cleaning' system for shopping carts:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> In Polish we just say "lights". "Turn right at the second lights".
> 
> And more formally, it's "light signalling". A single "semaphore" is "light signaller". Or the whole intersection, it's most correctly to say "intersection with light signalling".
> 
> This refers to roads, because in terms of railway, those are simply semaphores. While speaking colloquially, when you hear "semaphore", you usually think of the old-fashioned type, with a hand (or set of hands) that goes horizontal or vertical but in the railway terminology, even those in the form of lights are called semaphores.
> 
> To add something regarding those protests in Poland – for now, the police is not attacking the protesters in any way (maybe except for some incidents when they probably got provoked), they stay calm and secure the protests. Even though they could pacify them, as they are practically illegal, regarding the Covid restrictions.
> 
> The organizers call the protesters not to vandalize the public property and not to use vulgar words. While the first postulate is usually fulfilled (there is one known case of vandalism of a military monument in Warsaw; the city authorities, which are from the opposition, promised to clean it, but before they managed to do that, some protesters already did that; there were also some cases of vandalising churches), the second one isn't, the protesters use vulgar vocabulary almost all the time. But apart from the vocabulary, the protests are peaceful.
> 
> The conservatives organize watches of the churches, protecting them from possible acts of vandalism. But it's usually like not more than a dozen of people in front of the door of the church, and hundreds or thousands of protesters. There aren't large counter-protests of the conservatives.
> 
> Jarosław Kaczyński in his speech called people to protect and defend churches, meanwhile the president called them to stay calm and safe, and not go protect the churches as it will be done by the police.
> 
> Meanwhile, in some hospitals, there are the last ventilators available for those with Covid that require intensive care. And there are multi-hour queues of ambulances at the hospitals in some large cities (especially in Warsaw) – this has been going on already for a week or two. We are not far from a situation that would require triage of the patients.


In English, I don’t know that “semaphore” applies to anything other than the colored flags that were used to communicate between ships.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I haven't done that in 15 years (except on vacation)... The supermarket chain I usually go to has self-scanning. I pick up a hand scanner and scan everything while shopping and then pay at a payment terminal. You can see how much you have to pay while shopping and there is no waiting in line, ever. I love this system.


That exists, I guess, or apps that do the same thing on your phone....


----------



## keber

italystf said:


> Measures introduced in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are much less oppressive against personal freedom compared to those introduced in Europe.


True, because they are defacto isolated islands. Also they acted very quickly to stop disease spread. Every case is strictly quaraintined with associated contacts, monitored and controled, often with a state mobile app that you have to install on your phone or you are video called even fewtimes every day. That also includes all travelers from abroad (domestic and foreign) that have to go over strict quarantines without any exemptions. That is impossible to have in Europe, mostly because of all sorts of privacy laws and also our way of life.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> Okay, here’s a new one: The cashier in the supermarket just now wouldn’t let me put my groceries on the conveyor belt until the previous customer’s were six feet away....
> 
> I guess she meant well.


I should clarify, by the way, she meant there needed to be six feet of space between my -groceries- and the other person’s. Not between me and the groceries.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> In Polish we just say "lights". "Turn right at the second lights".
> 
> And more formally, it's "light signalling". A single "semaphore" is "light signaller". Or the whole intersection, it's most correctly to say "intersection with light signalling".
> 
> This refers to roads, because in terms of railway, those are simply semaphores. While speaking colloquially, when you hear "semaphore", you usually think of the old-fashioned type, with a hand (or set of hands) that goes horizontal or vertical but in the railway terminology, even those in the form of lights are called semaphores.


We use the word "šviesoforas". It's a remnant from Soviet times, and translated word from Russian - "svetofor". It means "light -phore". Many now Post-Soviet republic have intruduced their translated versions with "-for(-s) (-as)" ending. I remember Latvian is luksofors, Estonian - valgusfoor or just foor.

I wonder if without Soviet influence (let's say, without Soviet occupation) we would just used "Šviesos" like Poles do or something more interesting like German "Ampel(is)" 

We describe "šviesos" only for car's lights.


----------



## PovilD

keber said:


> True, because they are defacto isolated islands. Also they acted very quickly to stop disease spread. Every case is strictly quaraintined with associated contacts, monitored and controled, often with a state mobile app that you have to install on your phone or you are video called even fewtimes every day. That also includes all travelers from abroad (domestic and foreign) that have to go over strict quarantines without any exemptions. That is impossible to have in Europe, mostly because of all sorts of privacy laws and also our way of life.


If Balts wouldn't have opened borders so broadly in early June, I guess we wouldn't have community cases right now, or only a little bit.


----------



## Verso

Someone's just told me that _night_ is called "öö" in Estonian.  😄


----------



## Verso

italystf said:


> 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
> I think it's something around 10,000€.
> In the past it was even punisheable with prison.


Today in Ljubljana. 😄😄😄


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> This says Tesco in Poland has been sold


Yeah they are going bankrupt in Poland and selling their business.

The smaller supermarkets are getting sold to the Danish Netto (don't mistake it with the German Netto, which isn't present in Poland), the large "hypermarkets" (which have already decreased their surface a year or so ago) are getting sold individually. One of those in Łódź got sold to a housing developer who will demolish it and build apartment buildings in its place.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> Yeah they are going bankrupt in Poland and selling their business.


They are not "going bankrupt". The owner decided to sell out and quit Polish market. It is not the same thing as bankruptcy, even if for customers it means the end of Tesco brand in Poland. Bankruptcy is quite technical term. Tesco was making loses in Poland but making loses does not equal bankruptcy.


----------



## Kpc21

If they operated in Poland only, they would be going bankrupt. As they are international, they just didn't want to spend extra on their business in Poland, from which they didn't have income. Technically it's not the same but for us it isn't much different.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^ No, it is not the same. Even if they only operated in Poland they could (and should) close down before going bankrupt. It you go bankrupt you lose someone else's money, and the members of the board of the company can in some cases be held responsible. If you close down before only the owners lose money. 


ChrisZwolle said:


> You can see how much you have to pay while shopping and there is no waiting in line, ever. I love this system.


No waiting time, but maybe you spend more time totally in the shop. That is certainly the case for me, who buy groceries once a week for a hungry family. This is generally the same with all self service systems I have seen (be it scanner, app or self scanning at checkout). I understand that the grocery stores wants these systems, but not why so many customers swirch. I won't until I am forced to or the economic benefit corresponds to the loss of service (which I doubt would happen in many years).


----------



## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> No waiting time, but maybe you spend more time totally in the shop. That is certainly the case for me, who buy groceries once a week for a hungry family. This is generally the same with all self service systems I have seen (be it scanner, app or self scanning at checkout). I understand that the grocery stores wants these systems, but not why so many customers swirch. I won't until I am forced to or the economic benefit corresponds to the loss of service (which I doubt would happen in many years).


I don't shop for hungry family, just for myself and my partner. But most of the times I find using self-checkout faster and more efficient than cashiers.

I like packing my items my own way and I don't like the following customer breathing down my neck wishing I moved faster, which does happen from time to time. The self-checkout gives me full control of how fast and in what order I'm scanning and packing. I only go to cashiers late in the evenings if I have one item or two and see they are bored and fancy a chat.


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> I don't shop for hungry family, just for myself and my partner. But most of the times I find using self-checkout faster and more efficient than cashiers.
> 
> I like packing my items my own way and I don't like the following customer breathing down my neck wishing I moved faster, which does happen from time to time. The self-checkout gives me full control of how fast and in what order I'm scanning and packing. I only go to cashiers late in the evenings if I have one item or two and see they are bored and fancy a chat.


The self-checkout at the store I shop at most still has the conveyor belts....you scan your item and send it on its way. Whenever I use it, after about five items it tells me “there are too many items in the bagging area.” So you have to go bag them. It’s a pain in the *ss. So I don’t use them unless I’m in a hurry and have very few items. This way, I’m helping keep cashiers employed anyway.


----------



## geogregor

Penn's Woods said:


> The self-checkout at the store I shop at most still has the conveyor belts....you scan your item and send it on its way. Whenever I use it, after about five items it tells me “there are too many items in the bagging area.” So you have to go bag them. It’s a pain in the *ss. So I don’t use them unless I’m in a hurry and have very few items. This way, I’m helping keep cashiers employed anyway.


I guess it helps that I worked as self-checkout assistant when I moved to the UK, some 15 years ago, I know how to play with those damn machines. In fact I know how to cheat here and there 

Back then you had to actively convince people to use them, even if there were long queues to regular tills. Now it is actually the opposite, people can wait for self-checkout rather than to go to the cashier with no queue. But then, we talk about Britain, people are socially awkward here and don't like small talk and engaging with strangers. Same like in Poland. I guess that's why I feel like home here


----------



## mgk920

Penn's Woods said:


> I should clarify, by the way, she meant there needed to be six feet of space between my -groceries- and the other person’s. Not between me and the groceries.


Am I getting a sense that a rapidly increasing number of people are getting fed up with and embittered by the 'cure' to this virus as opposed to worrying about the virus itself, sort of like the 'cure is becoming worse than the illness'?

Mike


----------



## Penn's Woods

MattiG said:


> Two different techniques.
> 
> A semaphore is a person having a flag in both hands. The position of the hands is significant. Words can be formed by waving hands. Pretty slow.
> 
> A signal flag itself is a signal, and no human being is needed to deliver the message.
> 
> Semaphore alphabet:
> View attachment 679506
> 
> 
> Signal flags:
> View attachment 679511


Got it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Mark Rutte has been prime minister of the Netherlands since 2010, currently leading his 3rd government. We have elections in March 2021. Rutte has said he wants to go for a fourth term. Polls consistently give his party a huge margin over all other parties, currently around twice as many seats as the next largest party. Approval of his leadership during the corona crisis has been quite high, even after the initial 'rally around the flag' had faded away.

The Netherlands has a tradition of governments that don't make it to the end of their term, but leadership has been surprisingly stable. Rutte is only the 4th prime minister since 1982. He's on track to a term length similar to that of Angela Merkel (2010-2025).


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> Angela Merkel (2010-2025).


2005-2021


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I was referring to the possible (likely) length of Rutte's prime ministership.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Belgium is going in a hard lockdown. There are over 6,000 hospitalizations and this number is still escalating quickly. 

Keep in mind they went in lockdown in March when there were just over 500 hospitalizations. They waited much longer this time, maybe too long... A draconic lockdown is deemed necessary, all non-essential shops must close.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> I suppose the railway semaphores in terms of those old-fashioned mechanical-visual signals descend directly from that.


That is true. The difference in that the system on railroads has been simpler than on the seas. Basically the semaphores were bi-state (stop and go) or tri-state (caution, stop and go). The tricolor traffic lights are direct descendants of those.


----------



## radamfi

Coccodrillo said:


> I know that your electoral system makes it practically impossible for a third party candidate to become president, but how much attention on the media these have, if they have attention at all? In Europe, nobody speaks about these theoretical "third options" (well, except this year when someone cited Kanye West's candidacy as a curiosity).
> 
> (actually, even an MP of a third party or independent is a rare occasion, but they got elected from time to time)


The Liberal Democrats is a sort of a third party in the UK and by arithmetic fluke managed to get into coalition 2010-2015, but generally speaking it is almost irrelevant due to the electoral system. It must be extremely demoralising being in the Liberal Democrats, knowing that you are basically pointless. Anyone who wants to become successful in politics needs to join one of the main two. At least in the US they don't pretend that a viable third party is realistic.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> The Liberal Democrats is a sort of a third party in the UK and by arithmetic fluke managed to get into coalition 2010-2015, but generally speaking it is almost irrelevant due to the electoral system. It must be extremely demoralising being in the Liberal Democrats, knowing that you are basically pointless. Anyone who wants to become successful in politics needs to join one of the main two. At least in the US they don't pretend that a viable third party is realistic.


The last third-party candidate I remember being treated seriously was Ross Perot in 1992.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands doesn't have presidential or prime minister elections. The Netherlands has a proportional system with no threshold. There are 150 seats to divide. A coalition of multiple parties has always been necessary to form a government. There are currently 4 parties needed to gain a tiny majority. A problem is that the majority in parliament may not have a majority in the senate. Mark Rutte is a very good manager of such problems, he governed with support of the left, the social liberals and the populist right. He could become the longest-serving prime minister. 

The problems with the Dutch system: too many parties in general, too many small parties, it requires too many parties to form a government and you never get a government people actually voted for. The amount of compromise required also makes the government coming across as lacking a clear vision or objective.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands doesn't have presidential or prime minister elections. The Netherlands has a proportional system with no threshold. There are 150 seats to divide. A coalition of multiple parties has always been necessary to form a government. There are currently 4 parties needed to gain a tiny majority. A problem is that the majority in parliament may not have a majority in the senate. Mark Rutte is a very good manager of such problems, he governed with support of the left, the social liberals and the populist right. He could become the longest-serving prime minister.
> 
> The problems with the Dutch system: too many parties in general, too many small parties, it requires too many parties to form a government and you never get a government people actually voted for. The amount of compromise required also makes the government coming across as lacking a clear vision or objective.


Do your government formations routinely take more than a year, though? (That’s a dig at my favorite neighbor of yours.)


----------



## Suburbanist

The advantage of fragmented political scenarios like the Netherlands, when they work, are the prevention of the rise of populists in general (since they always fight with others), the fact parties that come and go (such as Geert Wilders' PVV) sometimes get into government where they actually need to take responsibilities, and that public policy tends to be more stable over time, without the effect of a government that gets 52-55% of votes effectively trashing over all opposition and assuming it can do whatever legal (or change the law otherwise). The Dutch system makes these things hard to achieve, much less persists, because people don't become that attached to specific parties as well. Finally, political parties do not have a single boogeyman as in de-facto duopolies like the USA, where political affiliation to one of two options becomes often part of a person's identity.

My Dutch colleagues might have some different preferences (most support D66 I'd say, but only in a plurality), but I don't hear them attaching a huge emotional or personal cost because they decided to switch at a given election. Also, there is no "party K-friendly" ecosystem of think-thanks, yellow press and pundit cheerleaders.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Not that long, but the last government formation took 225 days.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> Also, there is no "party K-friendly" ecosystem of think-thanks, yellow press and pundit cheerleaders.


This surely helps to reduce polarization. That's not to say that the Netherlands doesn't have polarization or radicals against the government. I wasn't aware of this, but the pizzagate conspiracy is actually a thing in the Netherlands as well (the conspiracy that world leaders run a child abuse ring). Apparently there are routinely people screaming at politicians when they enter or exit parliament.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> The problems with the Dutch system: too many parties in general, too many small parties, it requires too many parties to form a government and you never get a government people actually voted for. The amount of compromise required also makes the government coming across as lacking a clear vision or objective.


As for my country, many small parties seem to have been more prominent in earlier periods after dissolution of Soviet Union, but it doesn't seem they have made significant implications with forming government since we had two big parties that win on pendulum mode (big party + some small parties). Now with people seeing that voting for small parties usually don't work (not much votes), they now tend to vote for popular parties more often. You must have very good reason and have known accepted people to have chances with a new party, but still with lots of unknowns.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> This surely helps to reduce polarization. That's not to say that the Netherlands doesn't have polarization or radicals against the government. I wasn't aware of this, but the pizzagate conspiracy is actually a thing in the Netherlands as well (the conspiracy that world leaders run a child abuse ring). Apparently there are routinely people screaming at politicians when they enter or exit parliament.


Weirdos and wackos are everywhere, but I highly doubt major party leaders would embrace this type of conspiracy for political expediency.

A dispersed party scenario also helps contain extremists (religious, nationalists) in their own little clubs, where they can make noise or fight with other extremists about posturing politics without contaminating much of the political discourse. Like a party for animal rights, another for fundamentalist Christianity, another for retirees-only, and the ephemeral list-parties that appear every 10 years only to fade afterward.


----------



## radamfi

Most people probably aren't aware how the Swiss system works where there is a seven member Federal Council. They all take turns to be the President one year at a time, but he still has no more power than the other six. The President is not a big celebrity and can even travel by train on his own without security. That seems healthier than having a lot of power concentrated in one person.


----------



## volodaaaa

A complete madness in Slovakia. Nation-wide testing is about to start tomorrow for a weekend. The prime minister decided to make it an ultimate PR action although the Ag tests are complete improper for this kind of activity. He compares it to the D-day and blames people who refuse to go (even though a lot of them are locked down willingly). The testing is optional; however, a constitutional right to work is breached if you refuse to be tested. If you go to work without a negative test result, you can be fined 1650 €. Some people want to boycott it; however, some started to widen the scope of restrictions to situations, where the negative test result is no officially required. 

That is how the totalitarian regime is born. Everything is discussed through Facebook, the prime minister threatens in every press conference.

The saddest part of this pointless madness are:

draining the healthcare personal, which slowly start to be less disposable,
wasting the medical stuff (gloves, overalls, etc.),
throwing money into sewage, because it may slow down the spread for a while, but not eradicate the virus.

I must go tomorrow, even though there are not enough medical workers so far to guarantee the testing procedure for 100 % of potential people, so there is a chance to be stuck in line without being tested. My employer told me to go for a wage-free holiday if I'm not able to show the negative test.

The negative test is now a freedom ticket. There is no time to care about false positivity or negativity.

Last but not least, the primary strategy to tackle the virus is to subdue the mobility and do as much of social distancing as possible. I don't know forcing people to gather around a certain point is kind of opposite to this attitude. There is a risk to get infected during this castling.


----------



## PovilD

Don't know what to say: "Go Slovakia!" or "I feel sorry for Slovakia"  It's very interesting experiment you have, still.

Good chances that it wouldn't work though , but still interesting, at least we would learn stuff.

Testing should improve, current molecular testing is kinda archaic for me. Slovakia might go too early for Chinese methods.
After better tests were conducted there would be easier to test the entire country.


----------



## volodaaaa

Yes, indeed. Thanks. It will certainly be a lesson to be learned


----------



## Coccodrillo

radamfi said:


> Most people probably aren't aware how the Swiss system works where there is a seven member Federal Council. They all take turns to be the President one year at a time, but he still has no more power than the other six. The President is not a big celebrity and can even travel by train on his own without security. That seems healthier than having a lot of power concentrated in one person.


It is not only that. The seven councillors are elected by the parliament, and an unwritten rule is that these have to roughly represent the electorate. They are elected by all MPs, so the populist right parties have to find councillors that have their ideas (obviously) but that are also accepted by the left and green parties, and viceversa.

So there is no head of government, no head of state, and all ministers officially take every decision together even if they are from opposite political parties and have opposite ideas on a aprticular matter. At the moment there are two from the populist right, three from the centre-right, two from the left.

This political system makes things slow, but on the other hand the government is stable. A joke is that federal councillors have to coordinate so as their solutions are compromise that make everyone equally unhappy. The same system applies for cantonal and even municipal governments.

And yes, federal councillors often commute to work by trains and buses (they get a free first class subscription for every PT service, and they use it). I have myself seen a couple of MPs travelling by train in the (second class) seat next to me.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The most reliable car brands according to the Dutch consumers association. Asian cars make out 9 of the 10 most reliable cars, European brands are the least reliable. Nissan is the worst Asian brand, which may not be surprising considering they have used a lot of Renault technology. 

It's also interesting that the Korean brands Hyundai and Kia are now among the most reliable cars. They have come a long way over the past 15 years. They also initiated the extended warranty, Hyundai at 5 years and Kia at 7 years, as opposed to many brands offering only the minimum 2 years. More brands are now introducing longer warranties.

(1) Lexus: 8,8
(2) Subaru: 8,6
(3) Honda: 8,4
(4) Toyota/Mazda: 8,3
(6) Suzuki: 8,2
(7) Mini/Mitsubishi: 8,0
(9) Hyundai: 7,7
(10) Kia: 7,6
(11) Mercedes-Benz: 7,5
(12) BMW: 7,4
(13) Dacia: 7,0
(14) Fiat: 6,7
(15) Seat/Ford: 6,6
(17) Volvo/Renault/Nissan: 6,5
(20) Opel/Audi: 6,4
(22) Tesla/Volkswagen/Skoda: 6,3
(25) Citroën: 6,2
(26) Peugeot: 6,1
(27) Alfa Romeo: 5,7


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> The most reliable car brands, according to the Dutch consumers association. Asian cars make out 9 of the 10 most reliable cars, European brands are the least reliable. Nissan is the worst Asian brand, which may not be surprising considering they have used a lot of Renault technology.
> 
> It's also interesting that the Korean brands Hyundai and Kia are now among the most reliable cars. They have come a long way over the past 15 years. They also initiated the extended warranty, Hyundai at 5 years and Kia at 7 years, as opposed to many brands offering only the minimum 2 years. More brands are now introducing longer warranties.
> 
> (1) Lexus: 8,8
> (2) Subaru: 8,6
> (3) Honda: 8,4
> (4) Toyota/Mazda: 8,3
> (6) Suzuki: 8,2
> (7) Mini/Mitsubishi: 8,0
> (9) Hyundai: 7,7
> (10) Kia: 7,6
> (11) Mercedes-Benz: 7,5
> (12) BMW: 7,4
> (13) Dacia: 7,0
> (14) Fiat: 6,7
> (15) Seat/Ford: 6,6
> (17) Volvo/Renault/Nissan: 6,5
> (20) Opel/Audi: 6,4
> (22) Tesla/Volkswagen/Skoda: 6,3
> (25) Citroën: 6,2
> (26) Peugeot: 6,1
> (27) Alfa Romeo: 5,7


In our family, we had Škoda, Volkswagen, Opel, Suzuki and Toyota. Thanks to this experience, I will never buy a European car. The faulty rate and repair costs are incomparable. Japanese and Korean only. But again, it is my personal experience.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> The most reliable car brands according to the Dutch consumers association. Asian cars make out 9 of the 10 most reliable cars, European brands are the least reliable. Nissan is the worst Asian brand, which may not be surprising considering they have used a lot of Renault technology.
> 
> It's also interesting that the Korean brands Hyundai and Kia are now among the most reliable cars. They have come a long way over the past 15 years. They also initiated the extended warranty, Hyundai at 5 years and Kia at 7 years, as opposed to many brands offering only the minimum 2 years. More brands are now introducing longer warranties.
> 
> (1) Lexus: 8,8
> (2) Subaru: 8,6
> (3) Honda: 8,4
> (4) Toyota/Mazda: 8,3
> (6) Suzuki: 8,2
> (7) Mini/Mitsubishi: 8,0
> (9) Hyundai: 7,7
> (10) Kia: 7,6
> (11) Mercedes-Benz: 7,5
> (12) BMW: 7,4
> (13) Dacia: 7,0
> (14) Fiat: 6,7
> (15) Seat/Ford: 6,6
> (17) Volvo/Renault/Nissan: 6,5
> (20) Opel/Audi: 6,4
> (22) Tesla/Volkswagen/Skoda: 6,3
> (25) Citroën: 6,2
> (26) Peugeot: 6,1
> (27) Alfa Romeo: 5,7


What were the parameters for this list? This one looks quite ok actually, but often those lists are made only according to branded and authorized assistance (that's why often expensive brands are at the top - nobody with brand new mercedes won't take it to some unauthorized garage, unlike Škoda or Ford). 

Btw, those 7 or 5 years warranties - do you really trust them? They don't cover the things that get broken in 99,9%: It's like covering fatal breakdowns of engine, or corrosion, and similar things that are very unexpected to happen in 7 years.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've been driving Hyundai for a while now, I never had any repairs outside of regular maintenance. My maintenance cost is typically not more than € 300 - 400 per year. 

In regards to warranty, I think that someone bumped into my car once and the ABS sensors were broken. They were replaced under warranty despite being almost at the end of the warranty period. Saved me € 600.


----------



## radamfi

You can of course buy extended warranties for cars that only have two year warranties from external companies. You can then add that to the price if you want to make a direct comparison with a car with a 5/7 year warranty.

What percentage of things that go wrong occur in the first two years? Certainly with electrical goods, you get a standard one year warranty but you are strongly encouraged to buy an extended warranty. This is rarely worth buying as most things go wrong either in the first year or after many years, when you would have probably bought a replacement anyway.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Sean Connery on the Furka Pass in Switzerland, during the filming of Goldfinger (1964). He passed away at the age of 90.


----------



## Suburbanist

Cars have became remarkedly more reliable as more and more processes are electronic and computer-managed. Your average new 2020 has dozens of different electronic sensors for everything.


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> Cars have became remarkedly more reliable as more and more processes are electronic and computer-managed. Your average new 2020 has dozens of different electronic sensors for everything.


Number of sensors does not necessarily have positive correlation to reliability. Think about a car full of sensors gradually dying and delivering false alarms.


----------



## radamfi

England is going into lockdown from Thursday for a month. Largely similar restrictions to the spring lockdown. Non-essential shops, pubs and restaurants to shut. But schools and universities will remain open.


----------



## Suburbanist

MattiG said:


> Number of sensors does not necessarily have positive correlation to reliability. Think about a car full of sensors gradually dying and delivering false alarms.


These sensors replaced mechanical interface of just nothing at all, and they allow easy identification of software failures that can be fixed instead of festering problems that blow up as a mechanical failure later on. This is what I meant to say. 

It is an interesting development: cars themselves are more reliable, but also more fragile for safety reasons, the severity of a crash needed to make a car a complete loss is much lower now than 30 years ago (which is not a bad thing, considering the utmost priority is safety of passengers). Thus, insurance prices are also creeping up. Ater-collision repairs are also more expensive in part due to all those sensors and other electronic components.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A friend of mine drove a 20 year old Volvo and hit the mirror of a new Volvo on a narrow road. His damage: € 50 to replace the mirror. The other Volvo's damage was around € 1600: it had radar, mechanically moving mirrors, heated mirrors, indicators, etc. That driver had to get a rental for a few days too.


----------



## Kpc21

The yesterday's announcement of the closure of the graveyards in Poland in the period from today to Monday turned out to be terrible for the dealers of flowers and graveyard candles, who were normally selling them around graveyards on 1 November. While the candles produced for this year can, at least, be stored until the next year and sold on 1 November 2021, a huge number of flowers will be simply wasted...


----------



## PovilD

We didn't closed graveyards though. People were insisted to avoid meetings while grave visits. Earthworks or candle lighting that people usually do while being at their relatives' graves aren't considered risky unless people start to meet each other, or worse start to hug and kiss.


----------



## CNGL

Graveyards aren't closed in Spain either, but there are many mobility restrictions in place. I, for example, can only go to my hometown's graveyard and no others.

Regarding car brand reliability, the first car I drove was a Honda, and I have to agree with its placement near the top of that ranking. It didn't really have a major breakdown in the 18 years we had it, although the interior had started falling apart by the time my brother crashed it. Now I have a Citroën van, and seeing how it's near the bottom I'm now praying. Besides I also have a 12 year old Volvo that is still running OK.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> A friend of mine drove a 20 year old Volvo and hit the mirror of a new Volvo on a narrow road. His damage: € 50 to replace the mirror. The other Volvo's damage was around € 1600: it had radar, mechanically moving mirrors, heated mirrors, indicators, etc. That driver had to get a rental for a few days too.


I put the watershed at the moment they started putting sensors in the seats to tell you your passengers aren't wearing their seatbelts. That's when we lost the plot.


----------



## Kpc21

But is All Saints in Lithuania and Spain as popular as in Poland? Over here, the graveyards are absolutely full of people on that day.


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> These sensors replaced mechanical interface of just nothing at all, and they allow easy identification of software failures that can be fixed instead of festering problems that blow up as a mechanical failure later on. This is what I meant to say.
> 
> It is an interesting development: cars themselves are more reliable, but also more fragile for safety reasons, the severity of a crash needed to make a car a complete loss is much lower now than 30 years ago (which is not a bad thing, considering the utmost priority is safety of passengers). Thus, insurance prices are also creeping up. Ater-collision repairs are also more expensive in part due to all those sensors and other electronic components.


The reliability of mechanical structures comes from robotics, numerically-controlled production machinery reducing tolerances, and from anything reducing human impact.

Sensors and electronics are must because they control the process of the car to be compatible with emission and other regulations. Like in any other technology, increasing complexity reduces the reliability. 

Electronics make it possible to create failures which where unknown in bare-metal cars.


----------



## Suburbanist

MattiG said:


> Electronics make it possible to create failures which where unknown in bare-metal cars.


Would a modern carburator car be more reliable than a modern engine car with advanced computer systems controlling fuel injection, given the same required emission and efficiency parameters from the combustion process?


----------



## Suburbanist

Yet on the car-as-a-computer issue: there was, for a while, in the early 2000s, complaints about how do-it-yourself or independent-garage repairs were becoming difficult/impossible due to all onboard electronics. I remember reading some stuff about that: the end-of-line for the amateur mechanic who could fix/rig his own car with somehow basic tools and a nerdy perchant for applied mechanical engineering stuff.

In the end, software tools were just developed and then licensed for independent mechanics to deal with the electronic parts. And whole electronic components can be just replaced if they are the problem itself.

Electrical cars will again change that. They have far less moving parts. I wonder if we will ever see a car with four independent engines, one powering each wheel, without differential, gear boxes, and anything like that.


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> Would a modern carburator car be more reliable than a modern engine car with advanced computer systems controlling fuel injection, given the same required emission and efficiency parameters from the combustion process?


Ever been involved with a manufacturing production quality assurance?

You seem to mix concepts of reliability and functionality.


----------



## MichiH

^^ Same here! Exactly the same... No "goal" I can plan but minimum days go by quick. And I hope that 2021 will be much better (for me, not in general)


----------



## Kpc21

There is a digital radio standard suitable for the medium wave band – called DRM. However, the limited bandwith results in a low sound quality.

Concerning Covid, for two days we also have a decline. But I suppose it might be only temporary.

Meanwhile, the protests don't stop. Today the prime minister proposed talks with representatives of the protestes, but it doesn't seem they will accept that.


----------



## bogdymol

Shooting in Vienna, Austria, happening right now.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1323353271390605313
I just came back from Vienna. I spent the week-end there.


----------



## PovilD

bogdymol said:


> Shooting in Vienna, Austria, happening right now.
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1323353271390605313
> I just came back from Vienna. I spent the week-end there.


My thoughts about current events in Western Europe:

Double trouble.


----------



## cinxxx

It's pretty clear that Islamist terror season has started.
Every day another city.
We can only guess which one will be hit tomorrow...


----------



## MichiH

Terror attack in Vienna, yes. Islamist terror... maybe... don't prejudicate please.


----------



## Slagathor

Fatfield said:


> As far as other countries are concerned, they all have different accents when speaking English. My personal favourite is Dutch English.


Welcohm to de Nedderlunds. We haf many buy-cycles and drugs also. Can I ket you a beer?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> Welcohm to de Nedderlunds. We haf many buy-cycles and drugs also. Can I ket you a beer?


Except they’d probably say “Welcome in.”


----------



## bogdymol

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1323500395428257792


----------



## cinxxx

MichiH said:


> Terror attack in Vienna, yes. Islamist terror... maybe... don't prejudicate please.











Vier Todesopfer in Wien: Täter hatte islamistischen Hintergrund


Innenminister Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) hat nach dem Terroranschlag Montagabend in Wien in einer Pressekonferenz Dienstagfrüh eine erste Bilanz gezogen und die Bevölkerung aufgerufen, daheim zu bleiben. Seine Gedanken seien bei den Opfern und deren Angehörigen. Fünf Menschen kamen bei dem Anschlag ums...




orf.at






> Täter hatte islamistischen Hintergrund


----------



## Fatfield

Slagathor said:


> Welcohm to de Nedderlunds. We haf many buy-cycles and drugs also. Can I ket you a beer?


I'll have a Hertog Jan if you don't mind. 🍺 No kets* though, as they change the taste of the beer.

*Ket is slang for sweets/candy where I come from.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The number of cases has skyrocketed in Switzerland as well:


----------



## tfd543

bogdymol said:


> Shooting in Vienna, Austria, happening right now.
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1323353271390605313
> I just came back from Vienna. I spent the week-end there.


Its crazy. Saw all of the footage videos yesterday. One Young guy was barbarically shot twice and killed.

In the video, Its quite weird because another lady flees while this guy just hides behind a wall.

I am interested to see these videos to help me understand What i would do in those situations. Sometimes life or death is about milliseconds.


----------



## Slagathor

tfd543 said:


> Its crazy. Saw all of the footage videos yesterday. One Young guy was barbarically shot twice and killed.
> 
> In the video, Its quite weird because another lady flees while this guy just hides behind a wall.
> 
> I am interested to see these videos to help me understand What i would do in those situations. Sometimes life or death is about milliseconds.


You can't know what you would do, it's an instinctive reaction that will vary depending on the circumstances (whether you're alert/sleep deprived, fit/feeling unwell, alone/part of a group, with strangers/with loved ones).

Instinctively, people will either:
1) fight,
2) flight, or
3) freeze.

And there's no way of knowing which reaction the caveman part of your brain will go for.

In these kinds of terror situations, there have been reports of elderly mothers fighting because their children were near, while big strong men ran away and off-duty cops or firefighters froze (even though they have been trained for extreme situations, but under very different circumstances).

If you are thrust into this situation, your instincts take over. What they will do, is anyone's guess.


----------



## Verso

I'd probably try to befriend the terrorist, say that I support all this, that I'm also a Muslim, death to the West etc. I don't know, might help.

But this is bad, I don't know what Austria has done to deserve this attack in Vienna.


----------



## geogregor

Slagathor said:


> You can't know what you would do, it's an instinctive reaction that will vary depending on the circumstances (whether you're alert/sleep deprived, fit/feeling unwell, alone/part of a group, with strangers/with loved ones).
> 
> Instinctively, people will either:
> 1) fight,
> 2) flight, or
> 3) freeze.
> 
> And there's no way of knowing which reaction the caveman part of your brain will go for.
> 
> In these kinds of terror situations, there have been reports of elderly mothers fighting because their children were near, while big strong men ran away and off-duty cops or firefighters froze (even though they have been trained for extreme situations, but under very different circumstances).
> 
> If you are thrust into this situation, your instincts take over. What they will do, is anyone's guess.


All true. But there are certain scenarios which you can think of beforehand. Some people for example check for emergency exits where they get into places like restaurants, bars or shops. This is sound strategy, you should always know your way out.

It is not always about milliseconds. Depending on scenario you might have quite a bit of time to decide what to do. I work for railway company and we had a bit of online training running through some basic scenarios. Like where to hide or behind what to take cover, remembering to switch your mobile to silent etc.

If you have really bad luck and someone fires at you from point blank range there is nothing you can do about it. But more likely you will have some time to react. Especially if attacker have knife and not firearms.


----------



## Verso

MichiH said:


> ^^ Same here! Exactly the same... No "goal" I can plan but minimum days go by quick. And I hope that 2021 will be much better *(for me, not in general)*


Yeah, who cares about others. 😁


----------



## Attus

In Hungary, the government forces towns to have more bus and train services in rush hour, in order to fight against Covid-19 (so that less people use a bus). 
However, not any town has a lot of reserve bus for the case of a pandemic. So it is almost impossible to do anything. Yes, you can make less pause, but that does not mean dramatical increase. 
And towns that don't make more services will be punished.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A crazy U.S. presidential fact:

John Tyler (1790 - 1862), elected president in 1840, still has a living grandchild: Harrison Ruffin Tyler (born 1928).


----------



## Slagathor

On this day in 1973, the Netherlands introduced car-free Sundays due to an oil shortage.

The Guardian reprinted the article from '73. Quite an interesting read.









Netherlands introduces car-free Sundays - archive, 1973


For three months from November 1973, the Dutch government banned private motor vehicles on Sundays to curb oil consumption during the Opec energy crisis




www.theguardian.com


----------



## Suburbanist

Suburbanist said:


> Elections in 1880... Many unincorporated areas, Indian treaty areas and territories still around. I think Arizona was the last state admitted to the Union in the lower 48?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> MapLab: The Rise of Micro-Politics
> 
> 
> White men without college degrees.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.bloomberg.com


----------



## keokiracer

Suburbanist said:


> I think Arizona was the last state admitted to the Union in the lower 48?


Yes.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Schiphol Airport parking: 2018 and during the March 2020 lockdown:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Covid-19 cases continue to decline in the Netherlands for six days in a row now. Hospital bed occupation is also down by substantial numbers for two days in a row.

Cases per 100k.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> Covid-19 cases continue to decline in the Netherlands for six days in a row now. Hospital bed occupation is also down by substantial numbers for two days in a row.


Does it mean that the lockdown _works_?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Apparently... But isn't the Netherlands the first country in Europe where a significant second wave has been flattening?


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Covid-19 cases continue to decline in the Netherlands for six days in a row now. Hospital bed occupation is also down by substantial numbers for two days in a row.
> 
> Cases per 100k.


Good for you!
Meanwhile, we hit 100,000 cases yesterday and almost no one noticed because of the election.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Schiphol Airport parking: 2018 and during the March 2020 lockdown:


Has nobody mentioned yet that on Saturday last week, the BER airport in Berlin, famous for it's long and multiple times delayed construction, did finally open?


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> Has nobody mentioned yet that on Saturday last week, the BER airport in Berlin, famous for it's long and multiple times delayed construction, did finally open?


The next failure of BER. It opened at a time when no one needs it. It must be subsidized now.


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> Has nobody mentioned yet that on Saturday last week, the BER airport in Berlin, famous for it's long and multiple times delayed construction, did finally open?


Finally after a decade of delay.


----------



## PovilD

MichiH said:


> The next failure of BER. It opened at a time when no one needs it. It must be subsidized now.


What an irony.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apparently... But isn't the Netherlands the first country in Europe where a significant second wave has been flattening?


Those who were most ahead are now flattening. It seems... Those who are following will follow flattening soon. Maybe only Finland, Norway, maybe Estonia, Latvia(?) will get away without significant restrictions or at least fears for need for significant restrictions.

Lithuania is clearly becoming worst hit Northern European (if we rank it that way) country this time. Lithuania is more into Central European-style tendencies. Lithuania has Central European history anyway (Catholicism, union with Poland and other stuff...)

Before mandatory masks was implemented outside, when I was seeing into people's faces I could feel some sense of fatalism. Fatalism doesn't help for curbing the spread.


----------



## Kpc21

An interesting thing is that in the Facebook app, I saw multiple times an information (displayed by Facebook itself) about that the Polish Ministry of Health recommends flu vaccine as a precaution against Covid. Multiple times after the huge shortages of those vaccines appeared and already for long long it was simply impossible to get one... Where is the logic?

Did a similar thing appear on Facebook in your countries either? And also despite the unavailability of vaccines?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> An interesting thing is that in the Facebook app, I saw multiple times an information (displayed by Facebook itself) about that the Polish Ministry of Health recommends flu vaccine as a precaution against Covid. Multiple times after the huge shortages of those vaccines appeared and already for long long it was simply impossible to get one... Where is the logic?
> 
> Did a similar thing appear on Facebook in your countries either? And also despite the unavailability of vaccines?


Over here, the thinking with flu shots is that (1) flu and COVID symptoms look similar, so if there’s a bad flu epidemic we could have too many people wanting tests and treatment and so on who’ll turn out not to have needed them, and (2) no one knows what it would be like having COVID and the flu at the same time. Best to just keep the flu outbreak as low as possible,


----------



## Kpc21

Yeah, but at first, you would have to able to get this flu shot, and in Poland, for something like 2 months, it's practically impossible. The pharmacies have waiting lists of patients wanting to buy them and they're getting longer and longer.


----------



## MichiH

Kpc21 said:


> Yeah, but at first, you would have to able to get this flu shot


I got it last week. I just went to a doctor and got it.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> Yeah, but at first, you would have to able to get this flu shot, and in Poland, for something like 2 months, it's practically impossible. The pharmacies have waiting lists of patients wanting to buy them and they're getting longer and longer.


Really! They’re widely available here and I haven’t heard of problems.


----------



## Kpc21

Yeah it's the reality in Poland. It seems the situation it which the flu shots got many times more popular than normally caused the demand to shoot beyond the capacity of the pharmaceutical companies. But it's weird that there's no problem with their availability in some other countries – aren't the pharmaceutical companies producing them for the whole world?


----------



## tfd543

Nothern jutland in Denmark Will lock down from today. They have found mutated COVID-19 in minks and 12 persons. Frightening.. 

The beast is getting New muscles! 
Get ready lads.


----------



## tfd543

Okay Its just confirmed that we have one patient with the mutated covid-19 in Zealand. The name for this virus is cluster 5. Dk might be the New Wuhan.


----------



## Kpc21

And the farmers in Poland have been protesting for a month or two against the government's project to outlaw mink farms. Which, by the way, almost broke the government coalition, which would make PiS powerless... Did they know more than we do?


----------



## PovilD

How this mutation will be contained will depend if there'll be future with mink farms.


----------



## geogregor

Nobody will cry after mink farms. Their closure was long overdue. 

As for mutations, let's wait and see before we panic. It might as well be less dangerous than the original virus. We simply don't know yet.


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> Nobody will cry after mink farms. Their closure was long overdue.
> 
> As for mutations, let's wait and see before we panic. It might as well be less dangerous than the original virus. We simply don't know yet.


The only concern would be its virulence if it could outperform other strains.

...but Danish virologists (and politicians) are sounding very concerned about vaccines and antibodies (no mention about virulence), so I wouldn't be too open about it too, better contain it as soon as possible.

On the other hand we could compare China vs. Denmark for responses.


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apparently... But isn't the Netherlands the first country in Europe where a significant second wave has been flattening?


I think Ireland was the first with lockdown and has flattened the curve significantly since.
Here in Slovenia we have very high numbers and lockdown finally is showing some effects. Still, average daily mortality these days is about 30-50% over usual numbers.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Scenery in the city of Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine:


----------



## Attus

Hungarian prime minister Orbán said, he expected in Hungary 2,240 patients in ICU on Nov 21st, and twice as much on Dec 10th. The current count of ICU patients is top secret, experts guess it's about 5-600. Not any new restrictions are planned. 
However, Hungarian health system is not able to handle so many patients. More than hundred people died in Covid-19 yesterday, and it could be much more in late November or December.


----------



## marcobruls

Kpc21 said:


> And the farmers in Poland have been protesting for a month or two against the government's project to outlaw mink farms. Which, by the way, almost broke the government coalition, which would make PiS powerless... Did they know more than we do?


of course they knew, the dutch were killing off the minks weeks ago after finding out they were spreading the stuff and decided to end close and ban the entire industry by jan 1.
Its time to end the barbarian mink farming in europe anyway.


----------



## Sponsor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Scenery in the city of Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine:


Why are those buildings so tall?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I believe these are shafts for underground coal mines. However Kryvyi Rih also has very large open mining pits, some hundreds of meters deep, all around the city.


----------



## MichiH

The Interior of Baden-Württemberg (CDU party) has suggested to *"prison" quarantine denier* since some don't stay at home as they should. They already found a closed hospital where those people could be brought. The "hospitalization" should be ordered by a judge.









Innenminister Strobl will Quarantäne-Verweigerer zwangseinweisen


Der baden-württembergische Innenminister fordert ein hartes Vorgehen gegen Quarantäne-Verweigerer. Er will sie schon beim ersten Verstoß in einem geschlossenen Krankenhaus unterbringen lassen.




www.swr.de


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Scenery in the city of Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine:


My next vacation!


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> My next vacation!


yep, Ukraine is also still missing on my list (beside Iceland, Cyprus, Kosovo and Moldova).


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> yep, Ukraine is also still missing on my list (beside Iceland, Cyprus, Kosovo and Moldova).


There are places outside of Europe, you know....


----------



## geogregor

From yesterday London, like the whole of England, is in lockdown. So I decided to go for a photo-walk. West End is quiet but not as deserted as in spring. Some selected shots:


DSC02946 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC02952 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC02960 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC02964 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC02966 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC02984 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC02989 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC02990 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC02994 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC03002 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC03021 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC03018 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC03026 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC03032 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC03036 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

There was also a small protest in the evening around Trafalgar Square, but it looked like there was more police than protesters:


DSC03069 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC03068 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC03070 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC03072 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

More about it here:

Covid: London anti-lockdown protest leads to 104 arrests


----------



## keber

Penn's Woods said:


> My next vacation!


I've been in Ukraine even on skiing vacation. I'm sure not many Germans, Austrians, French or English did that.


----------



## geogregor

keber said:


> I'm sure not many Germans, Austrians, French or English did that.


Of course not. Ukraine is still rather niche destination, somehow popular among some Eastern Europeans but virtually unknown in the west. 

I visited Ukraine some 20 years ago as part of student exchange. Never went back. Somehow there was always some other tempting destination.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What is police corruption like in Ukraine? Do people get pulled over for a fake offense and a bribe? Or are those stories that were true in the 1990s?


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> What is police corruption like in Ukraine? Do people get pulled over for a fake offense and a bribe? Or are those stories that were true in the 1990s?


I think that I've reported here that I know one who was robbed by police in Kiev downtown back in 2009. He was there for work and went back from a pub to the hotel. Alone. He was stopped by police and they asked for his ID. He didn't have it so he was prisoned. He could call his colleagues in the morning and when he got his things back.... his wallet was empty. He complaint but police said: There was no money in the wallet when we caught you.


----------



## MichiH

ah, and I recently talked to a guy from Romania and he told me that things like that were still common in 2000s but it has changed since. He said that I could travel there without any "risk".


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> What is police corruption like in Ukraine? Do people get pulled over for a fake offense and a bribe? Or are those stories that were true in the 1990s?


From what I have read on some Polish forums, it was still popular like, 10 years ago, but now it changed to better.

The road police of Ukraine was called DAI, and some people in Poland were joking that you should understand it literally as "daj", which means "give" in Polish.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> From what I have read on some Polish forums, it was still popular like, 10 years ago, but now it changed to better.
> 
> The road police of Ukraine was called DAI, and some people in Poland were joking that you should understand it literally as "daj", which means "give" in Polish.


When I read "dai", it sounds like English "die". If you write how "die" sounds in my language, it would be written as "dai".

...but yeah, what I've learned from Russian, "dai" also means "give". Since my Russian is limited, I mostly remembered word "daite" (something like "give me" in polite form/plural)


----------



## Kpc21

In Polish saying "dajcie" is as far from being polite as it can be 

To say it politely, you say "poproszę" (literally "I'll be asking for", but the meaning is practically the same as "give", only different in the politeness).


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> What is police corruption like in Ukraine? Do people get pulled over for a fake offense and a bribe? Or are those stories that were true in the 1990s?


I wrote already about my experience last year.








The roadside rest area


Just received a speeding ticket, dating last month when I was in central Italy. Doing 96 km/h on a 90 road, meaning that after the roundings and tolerances, I was doing 91 km/h. I just so hate this.




www.skyscrapercity.com




Yes it is still true in some places.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> In Polish saying "dajcie" is as far from being polite as it can be
> 
> To say it politely, you say "poproszę" (literally "I'll be asking for", but the meaning is practically the same as "give", only different in the politeness).


I'm not that fluent in Slavic languages, but I guess it's the same with Russian. Just remembered analogous word "пожалуйста" ("pozhaluistva").

In Lithuanian word for "daite", "dajce" would be "duokite". It would be used in such words like "give me time" ("duokite man laiko"). The most polite form would be "prašau duoti man laiko" ("please give me time")

---
I was always intrigued by the word "proszę" since in Lithuanian it translates as "prašau" ("please"). It's like live Commonwealth past 

"poproszę" sounds similar to word "paprašyti" it is used as "planning/wanting to ask for smth" for most cases.

My favorite Polish word is "przepraszam" which means "atsiprašau" in Lithuanian and "sorry" in English. When pronounced silently enough, they sound like the same words, since there is a form in Lithuanian "atsiprašom" too ("we are sorry"), and it could be understood as "atsiprašau".

As far as I know the single word "prašau" never associates with word "give" you have to use word "duoti" ("prašau duoti").


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Covid-19 figures in the Netherlands continue to improve.

There were 6689 positive tests reported today, the lowest in almost a month. The daily number of new cases per 100,000 has dropped by 40% since a peak on 30 October. The covid-19 hospital occupancy has dropped by 13% in 5 days. There are no Dutch covid-19 patients in Germany anymore.


----------



## MichiH

There is a new all-time record in Germany: 23,399 new cases in just 24 hours! 130 fatalities.

Belgium say 200 fatalities yesterday. There are reports that the health care system is close to collapsing - especially in Wallonia. Some patients are brought to Germany (I think by helicopter) but it is difficult to transport patients from overloaded hospitals to other hospitals in Belgium for two reasons: First, lack of ambulance vehicles and second, because relatives don't want that the patients are brought to the damn Dutch Flanders...

Does anyone know more about the situation in Belgium?


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> There is a new all-time record in Germany: 23,399 new cases in just 24 hours! 130 fatalities.
> 
> Belgium say 200 fatalities yesterday. There are reports that the health care system is close to collapsing - especially in Wallonia. Some patients are brought to Germany (I think by helicopter) but it is difficult to transport patients from overloaded hospitals to other hospitals in Belgium for two reasons: First, lack of ambulance vehicles and second, because relatives don't want that the patients are brought to the damn Dutch Flanders...
> 
> Does anyone know more about the situation in Belgium?


I believe the Dutch have an expression: Belgische omstandigheden. Belgian circumstances.

What’s the not wanting to cross the linguistic frontier thing about? (And why couldn’t Walloon patients go to France rather than Germany if that’s an issue?)

EDIT/PS: As long as they don’t start talking about Pennsylvanische omstandigheden.


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> (And why couldn’t Walloon patients go to France rather than Germany if that’s an issue?)


Going to Germany is not an issue just to Flanders.... Germany has patients from the Netherlands, Belgium and France. It makes no sense to bring Walloons to France while France brings patients to Germany...


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> I believe the Dutch have an expression: Belgische omstandigheden. Belgian circumstances.
> 
> What’s the not wanting to cross the linguistic frontier thing about? (And why couldn’t Walloon patients go to France rather than Germany if that’s an issue?)
> 
> EDIT/PS: As long as they don’t start talking about Pennsylvanische omstandigheden.


Omstandigheden is relatively neutral. We reserve the word toestanden for deplorable stuff. So we tend to say Belgische toestanden. 

Also, we sometimes do say Amerikaanse toestanden, usually regarding situations that involved guns. 



MichiH said:


> Going to Germany is not an issue just to Flanders.... Germany has patients from the Netherlands, Belgium and France. It makes no sense to bring Walloons to France while France brings patients to Germany...


The numbers in the Netherlands have dropped significantly. As of today, there are no more Dutch patients in Germany.


----------



## Suburbanist

I don't think the issue is some form of hatred, just a general worrying about patients, often old and frail already before Covid made them sick, being taken to other areas where, on top of everything, they might have language difficulties.


----------



## Penn's Woods




----------



## Penn's Woods




----------



## MichiH

But HE just twittered less than a hour ago: "I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT! "


----------



## Slagathor

Thank you Philadelphia!


----------



## Fatfield

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1324126229100978176


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> Omstandigheden is relatively neutral. We reserve the word toestanden for deplorable stuff. So we tend to say Belgische toestanden.
> 
> Also, we sometimes do say Amerikaanse toestanden, usually regarding situations that involved guns.
> 
> 
> 
> The numbers in the Netherlands have dropped significantly. As of today, there are no more Dutch patients in Germany.


I wasn’t sure, after I posted, if it wasn’t actually “toestanden.” Is there also a nuance about duration: “omstandigheden” for circumstances at the moment, “toestanden” for more permanent conditions?


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> I wasn’t sure, after I posted, if it wasn’t actually “toestanden.” Is there also a nuance about duration: “omstandigheden” for circumstances at the moment, “toestanden” for more permanent conditions?


Not inherently, I don't think. How much permanence is ascribed to them depends on the context.

They're a little tricky because they don't have clear English equivalents. Both omstandigheden en toestanden mean conditions or circumstances, but in different senses.

Omstandigheden is somewhat more frequently used with external conditions. Such as weersomstandigheden for bad weather or moeilijke omstandigheden to describe a situation where one might meet difficulty (like having to do some work without all the proper tools - you'll have to improvise, which _may_ be difficult).

Toestanden we use when the conditions are more inherent. For example lichamelijke toestand for physical condition or moeilijke toestand for a situation that's already difficult of its own (rather than merely capable of spiraling into difficulty - like having to study in a noisy environment, it _will_ hinder you).

It's a category of vocabulary that language teachers like me deeply dislike: words with multiple meanings and contexts, all vaguely defined. 🤨


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> Not inherently, I don't think. How much permanence is ascribed to them depends on the context.
> 
> They're a little tricky because they don't have clear English equivalents. Both omstandigheden en toestanden mean conditions or circumstances, but in different senses.
> 
> Omstandigheden is somewhat more frequently used with external conditions. Such as weersomstandigheden for bad weather or moeilijke omstandigheden to describe a situation where one might meet difficulty (like having to do some work without all the proper tools - you'll have to improvise, which _may_ be difficult).
> 
> Toestanden we use when the conditions are more inherent. For example lichamelijke toestand for physical condition or moeilijke toestand for a situation that's already difficult of its own (rather than merely capable of spiraling into difficulty - like having to study in a noisy environment, it _will_ hinder you).
> 
> It's a category of vocabulary that language teachers like me deeply dislike: words with multiple meanings and contexts, all vaguely defined. 🤨


Bedankt.
I’ll probably forget that before it comes up again... :-(


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> But HE just twittered less than a hour ago: "I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT! "


It gets worse:









Text of Statement from President Donald Trump on Election Result


“We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner, and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him ..."




www.snopes.com


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> It's a category of vocabulary that language teachers like me deeply dislike: words with multiple meanings and contexts, all vaguely defined. 🤨


I bet you like teaching the Dutch word "er".


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> It gets worse:


Well, the last sentense gives hope:
"I will not rest until the American People have the honest vote count they deserve and that Democracy demands "

Always think positive


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Italy recorded almost 40,000 new cases today. 

Back in September Italy was mentioned as a 'model country' compared to Spain, France, Netherlands, etc. People were reported to follow mask rules, social distancing, etc.


----------



## geogregor

Penn's Woods said:


> View attachment 707749


For fun I decided to watch a bit of coverage of Biden victory on the very biased Polish state media, complete slaves of the ruling right wing party, huge fans of Trump.

Fascinating mindf*ck and excellent example of collective "pain of the ass syndrome" (as we say in Polish, not the best translation).

They are just explaining as it is all "American left wing media plot to rob Trump of the support".

Just made myself G&T and I'm having excellent evening


----------



## tfd543

Time for some budweisers tonite!


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> I bet you like teaching the Dutch word "er".


When in doubt, just toss one in.


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> For fun I decided to watch a bit of coverage of Biden victory on the very biased Polish state media, complete slaves of the ruling right wing party, huge fans of Trump.
> 
> Fascinating mindf*ck and excellent example of collective "pain of the ass syndrome" (as we say in Polish, not the best translation).
> 
> They are just explaining as it is all "American left wing media plot to rob Trump of the support".
> 
> Just made myself G&T and I'm having excellent evening


Good Lord.
That would explain what I’m seeing elsewhere on SSC....

Well, apparently Fox “News” is in on the plot....

View attachment 708405


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Time for some budweisers tonite!


You can do better than that, I hope.


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> You can do better than that, I hope.


Hehe. Just a soft start.


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Hehe. Just a soft start.


I meant a better beer. Even an American one. Assuming you can get any.


----------



## MattiG

tfd543 said:


> Time for some budweisers tonite!


I recommend having some beer instead.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> My favorite Polish word is "przepraszam" which means "atsiprašau" in Lithuanian and "sorry" in English.


It doesn't only mean "sorry". It also means "excuse me".

Weirdly, some young Poles in Poland say "sorry", or even in the Polish diminutive of this word "sorki", "sorka" for "excuse me".

And Poland also have a cases record today.










Although now, a record happens almost every day...



geogregor said:


> For fun I decided to watch a bit of coverage of Biden victory on the very biased Polish state media, complete slaves of the ruling right wing party, huge fans of Trump.
> 
> Fascinating mindf*ck and excellent example of collective "pain of the ass syndrome" (as we say in Polish, not the best translation).
> 
> They are just explaining as it is all "American left wing media plot to rob Trump of the support".
> 
> Just made myself G&T and I'm having excellent evening


You watch it for fun.

It would be fun if it was a satirical show. Like, I remember a program on the first channel of Polish TV called "Dziennik Telewizyjny Jacka Federowicza". It used the intro of the main news of the Polish TV from the communist times (although it was on TV in the late 1990s/early 2000s) but it actually was a joke.

But it isn't satirical. It isn't a joke. People really BELIEVE in what they are showing and speaking there.

And now it contains propaganda worse than back in communism...



> "American left wing media plot to rob Trump of the support".


Well, according to them, the left-wind western-European propaganda also wants to damage Poland and rob it off from its culture.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> It doesn't only mean "sorry". It also means "excuse me".
> 
> Weirdly, some young Poles in Poland say "sorry", or even in the Polish diminutive of this word "sorki", "sorka" for "excuse me".
> 
> And Poland also have a cases record today.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Although now, a record happens almost every day...
> 
> 
> You watch it for fun.
> 
> It would be fun if it was a satirical show. Like, I remember a program on the first channel of Polish TV called "Dziennik Telewizyjny Jacka Federowicza". It used the intro of the main news of the Polish TV from the communist times (although it was on TV in the late 1990s/early 2000s) but it actually was a joke.
> 
> But it isn't satirical. It isn't a joke. People really BELIEVE in what they are showing and speaking there.
> 
> And now it contains propaganda worse than back in communism...
> 
> 
> Well, according to them, the left-wind western-European propaganda also wants to damage Poland and rob it off from its culture.


I gave up on learning Polish after I realized half of the words in the language began with prz-.


----------



## Kpc21

"prz-" at the beginning of a word is actually pronounced as "psz-", or in English you would spell it "psh-".


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> It doesn't only mean "sorry". It also means "excuse me".
> 
> Weirdly, some young Poles in Poland say "sorry", or even in the Polish diminutive of this word "sorki", "sorka" for "excuse me".


Yeah, it also applies to "excuse me" in my language too  It just that I tend to see "excuse me" and "sorry" as synonymous. Btw, for the same manner as Polish "pzepraszam", I also fell in love with French "excusez-moi" (in my language it would be pronounced as "ekskiuze..mua") 



Kpc21 said:


> And Poland also have a cases record today.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Although now, a record happens almost every day...


Same here. Lithuania is easily becoming another Czechia and Belgium just divide ~11/3 and from the given number you divide from Czech and Belgium cases to get my country cases, and I think these number of cases are likely to be expectably by next week (if we are not at the peak yet (there are doubts)).



> You watch it for fun.
> 
> It would be fun if it was a satirical show. Like, I remember a program on the first channel of Polish TV called "Dziennik Telewizyjny Jacka Federowicza". It used the intro of the main news of the Polish TV from the communist times (although it was on TV in the late 1990s/early 2000s) but it actually was a joke.
> 
> But it isn't satirical. It isn't a joke. People really BELIEVE in what they are showing and speaking there.
> 
> And now it contains propaganda worse than back in communism...
> 
> Well, according to them, the left-wind western-European propaganda also wants to damage Poland and rob it off from its culture.


We have one joke news program too, but is now losing its charm. It was mostly aired at commercial TV (BTV and LNK: sometimes both, sometimes one of them) when it was most popular (like late 90s, early to mid 2000s), and my parents watched it. When I was a kid (like 5-8 years old, early 2000s) I was watching it as some "pseudo-kids show" although I grasped is political humor. It was called "Dviračio šou" or "Dviračio žinios" (translates as "Bicycle news/show"). This television show mostly involved satyrical performances highlighting current events where actors are dressing up as real life politicians and related people. Main presenter of the "news" was even candidate for president in 2002, he received 7,75% of votes and he was fourth out of ten candidates. I remember their liked to created songs depicting political events, and one song from 2002 was when they've used melody of "9th symphony" (EU anthem) and put words which involves "Kandidatas Vytautas" (candidate Vytautas), but back then I never understood properly for what reasons the song was created. I learned it only checking the fact on Wikipedia. He's name was Vytautas Šerėnas. He's suddenly passed away in his late 50s just two years ago. I spotted that many famous Lithuanian men are passing away in their late 50s, early 60s, although they didn't looked deteriorated. For some time, the show for some reason was transferred into national television LRT, and I don't see it fitting here, and I think is losing popularity.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> "prz-" at the beginning of a word is actually pronounced as "psz-", or in English you would spell it "psh-".


For example there is a word "Wilenszczyzna" or "Suwalszczyzna" depicting Lithuanian regions from Tsarist times. When I saw these words, I jokingly started to call Poland as "Szczyzna"  Mostly in my head, I don't know if others would understand except my few friends/relatives ...but I didn't moved too derogatory and never used "Pszczyzna" in my head  Btw, I heard that Lithuanian derogatory word for Poles is "pšekas" (sing.), "pšekai" (plural.) (something like "pszekas/pczekas/pszczekas" in Polish) Btw I even spotted that some Polish name forms in Lithuanian are avoiding using form of "Psz" or "Prz", like "Przemisl" in Lithuanian is "Peremislis".


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> I meant a better beer. Even an American one. Assuming you can get any.


There's only one _Budweiser _


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> For example there is a word "Wilenszczyzna" or "Suwalszczyzna" depicting Lithuanian regions from Tsarist times. When I saw these words, I jokingly started to call Poland as "Szczyzna"


Suwalszczyzna is quite a small and not much known region, except for that... it's almost always mentioned in the weather forecasts. Because it's the coldest part of Poland (except for the mountains).

Even the town of Suwałki is always marked on the weather maps on TV, even though it isn't a large city, and at the same time, almost 10 times larger Białystok gets omitted.










This is from the first channel of the state TV... Now, at least, Łódź is marked (in the past it's never been) – but still you can see Suwałki instead of Białystok. While Suwałki is like 30k of population, Białystok – 300k.

In the past it was like this:










Łódź as a town was marked – but the weather for Łódź was never shown on the map.

By the way, Pszczyna is not Poland. It's a town in Poland.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> "prz-" at the beginning of a word is actually pronounced as "psz-", or in English you would spell it "psh-".


Oh, I know. I can pronounce Polish; I just don’t know what I’m saying. Because after a month all the words started to look alike. :-/


----------



## PovilD

Penn's Woods said:


> Oh, I know. I can pronounce Polish; I just don’t know what I’m saying. Because after a month all the words started to look alike. :-/


What helps me while potentially learning Slavic languages is that grammar and some words are similar to Baltic/Lithuanian.

I bet is harder for non-Slavic/non-Baltic speakers.

If I would be some n generation American with Lithuanian roots, I probably also have hard time to learn my ancestors language


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Suwalszczyzna is quite a small and not much known region, except for that... it's almost always mentioned in the weather forecasts. Because it's the coldest part of Poland (except for the mountains).
> 
> Even the town of Suwałki is always marked on the weather maps on TV, even though it isn't a large city, and at the same time, almost 10 times larger Białystok gets omitted.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is from the first channel of the state TV... Now, at least, Łódź is marked (in the past it's never been) – but still you can see Suwałki instead of Białystok. While Suwałki is like 30k of population, Białystok – 300k.
> 
> In the past it was like this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Łódź as a town was marked – but the weather for Łódź was never shown on the map.
> 
> By the way, Pszczyna is not Poland. It's a town in Poland.


Yeah, It gave me interest too since we can see TVP Polonia on our TV. In Lithuania, you tend to not to think as Suwalki is some less importance town, since is the most important town in areas near Lithuanian border. It's featured on every Lithuanian map where neighboring country cities are featured.

...or is that Lithuania is somewhat important for Poles: Commonwealth, Vilnius/Wilno, etc. It's now the only place which is part of EU that belonged to Grand Duchy of Lithuania  ...and historically: most links with Catholicism, now EU/NATO membership, wider coastline=Baltic Sea connection with Nordics through port of Klaipėda.


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> I can pronounce Polish


Burn the witch!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A Dutch news station made a map of what the Netherlands would look like if we had an electoral college similar to the U.S. They divided the country up into 40 statistical regions and divided the parties among the left and right. 

The right-wing block would win the elections in a huge landslide, gathering 127 out of 150 electoral votes. D66 is a swing party, if they are included in the right, the right-wing block would win all 150 electoral votes.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> And Poland also have a cases record today.
> 
> Although now, a record happens almost every day...


Part of the reason is that Poland is still a virgin territory for the virus, very few people had it in the spring. Combining with respiratory illness season it is recipe for high numbers. At the moment numbers in Poland (cases and deaths) are higher than in the UK, despite significantly lower population. And that's after taking to the account that the UK tests 4x as many people every day as Poland does.

Actually, I just checked, more people died in Poland in the last 24h than in the UK, 445 vs. 413

Cases: Poland 27k, the UK 25k.

Tests: Poland 80k (is that correct?), the UK 350k

Population: Poland 38m, the UK 66m.

The numbers really look bad in Poland. And yet I remember how politicians and experts in Poland were glowing in spring, blaming Western Europe for slow action, lack of closures, gloating about how successful Poland was. It was such a shortsighted narrative...




> You watch it for fun.
> 
> It would be fun if it was a satirical show. Like, I remember a program on the first channel of Polish TV called "Dziennik Telewizyjny Jacka Federowicza". It used the intro of the main news of the Polish TV from the communist times (although it was on TV in the late 1990s/early 2000s) but it actually was a joke.
> 
> But it isn't satirical. It isn't a joke. People really BELIEVE in what they are showing and speaking there.
> 
> And now it contains propaganda worse than back in communism...


Yes, I watched it for fun since I don't live in Poland for more than 15 years now. I have developed certain detachment from situation in Poland as we have enough problems here in the UK. But of course I hope for positive change in Poland, I still have family there. Let's hope that Trump's defeat is sign of turning tide.




> Well, according to them, the left-wind western-European propaganda also wants to damage Poland and rob it off from its culture.


Yes, I'm aware of that.

But how many people really do watch state news and believe in the narrative? Are there any figures what's the market share of that channel?


----------



## MichiH

I was told that today's European right-wing / left-wing is NOT comparable to US right-wing / left-wing. US lefts are more right than most of European rights (main parties not considering small extreme parties).

Also, when you compare German SPD of the 1970s ("left-wing"), it was more "right-wing" that today's CDU or even CSU parties which are considering being more "right-wing"..

I think that we discussed about "right" and "left" on this thread years ago and came to the conclusion that there are more than those two dimensions and that it's just stupied trying to classify parties into "right" and "left" like centuries ago.....


----------



## MichiH

geogregor said:


> And yet I remember how politicians and experts in Poland were glowing in spring, blaming Western Europe for slow action, lack of closures, gloating about how successful Poland was. It was such a shortsighted narrative...


Like virtually all European countries blamed China first. Like most of Europe blamed Italy when it spreaded there. Like UK blaming the continental countries. Like Americas blaming Europe.....

It is all the very same shit: POLITICS! And in the end, all failed. All failed! No one is prepared well to deal with the virus. And most countries didn't improve the situation since the virus hit their countries for the first time, like health care systems in France or Belgium.

And again, it's still early November. The winter will come.... The flu season is usually in February / March.


----------



## tfd543

Surel said:


> There's only one _Budweiser _


I was also puzzled about the comment originally.

But hey, budweisers are nice... idk How popular they are in the US though


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Part of the reason is that Poland is still a virgin territory for the virus, very few people had it in the spring. Combining with respiratory illness season it is recipe for high numbers. At the moment numbers in Poland (cases and deaths) are higher than in the UK, despite significantly lower population. And that's after taking to the account that the UK tests 4x as many people every day as Poland does.


I have a friend who works in a local hospital, which has been turned into a special hospital dedicated for Covid patients only. From what he says, the medical staff is assigned a SINGLE set of a face mask and gloves for the whole day. And it seems that they, for example, use the same gloves to gather the samples for Covid tests from multiple patients... Of course, unless they bring their own gloves. Which is a perfect way to transmit the virus between subsequent patients.

Separation between "clean" and "dirty" zones was made using painter's tape and plastic foil... But it at least exists – I heard in the news about hospitals where it's only theory and actually the patients mix up.

Ventilators are a way of treating Covid patients with more advanced symptoms. For those with lighter symptoms, the treatment is the oxygen therapy. The problem is that the oxygen systems in most hospitals are at the peak of their capacity, so there are cases when a hospital has free places for Covid patients – but it cannot admit a new patient who requires oxygen because they would overload the system and it would lower the concentration of oxygen delivered to other patients. It's to such an extent that the prime minister has created a new position in the administration of all the voivodeships: a regional oxygen coordinator.

There are also ventilators that are getting delivered to hospital by the government from the supply they made at the beginning of the pandemic – but from what I've read somewhere, it turns out, each of those ventilators has only one set of maintenance parts that must be replaced for every new patient (from what I've understood it's about the pipes that conduct the air between the device and the patient) and when one of the hospitals tried to order more of them from the manufacturer, they were informed that they could be delivered not earlier than in January.



geogregor said:


> The numbers really look bad in Poland. And yet I remember how politicians and experts in Poland were glowing in spring, blaming Western Europe for slow action, lack of closures, gloating about how successful Poland was. It was such a shortsighted narrative...


Typical Poland...



geogregor said:


> But how many people really do watch state news and believe in the narrative? Are there any figures what's the market share of that channel?


Obviously those are mostly older and less educated people, especially those from smaller towns and villages, mostly in south-eastern Poland. About the figures – I tried to find them, I even posted that once in this group, but it was difficult to interpret.

Concerning the news TV programs:










Fakty (by TVN, they are strongly anti-government) seem to be slightly more popular than Wiadomości (the main news of the state TV). But if you add Panorama (the main news of the second channel of the state TV) – it will probably be more. There is also Teleexpress, also by the state TV (so it also shows the government's propaganda), but it's a different format, very characteristic, much more lightweight (like, they also have a music section, and at the end they often show something funny they observed, like e.g. funny errors on signs etc.), so I don't know if it should be added in.

And this is the viewership on the main channels. But Wiadomości are shown simultaneously on TVP1 (the main channel) and TVP Info (the news channel). Similarly, Fakty are shown simultaneously on TVN (the main channel) and TVN24 Biznes i Świat (the business news channel). If you sum up that, Wiadomości became more popular than Fakty in September. In general, the viewership of those programs seems to be similar.










Here we can see that there are two different figures describing the viewership – in one Wiadomości are better, in the other one, Fakty are better. But still there is the thing that TVP has multiple channels and multiple news programs.

There are also news channels. And here the issue is also that the news channel of TVP: TVP Info, is available free-to-air, meanwhile the news channel of TVN: TVN24 is a premium channel, available only in more expensive packages of cable or satellite TV. So obviously poorer people will watch TVP Info (the government propaganda one) more often and TVN24 (the anti-government one) less often.










Interestingly, the results of TVN24 and TVP Info are similar regardless of that...

But there are also other factors that influence that. For example church attendance...


----------



## Kpc21

Do other European countries also build temporary hospitals for Covid patients?

Here the Expo center in Łódź becoming a hospital:









Powstaje szpital tymczasowy w Hali Expo [ZDJĘCIA]


Najpóźniej pod koniec listopada ma być gotowy szpital tymczasowy w łódzkiej Hali Expo. Obiekt dostosowywany jest w taki sposób, by pomieścił 270 łóżek dla pacjentów covidowych, w tym 100 miejsc respiratorowych.




www.radiolodz.pl





And the National Stadium in Warsaw has already admitted its first patients.










Of course the Prime Minster must visit and watch everything... Propaganda like in North Korea. At least he went practical and he isn't wearing suits everywhere.

And not so long ago we looked at China quickly building a temporary hospital as at something weird...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The German state of Schleswig-Holstein has the abbreviation 'sh'. It makes sense

But there is an education portal that's called _it's learning_.
So you can see where this is going: sh.itslearning.com


----------



## radamfi

MichiH said:


> I was told that today's European right-wing / left-wing is NOT comparable to US right-wing / left-wing. US lefts are more right than most of European rights (main parties not considering small extreme parties).
> 
> Also, when you compare German SPD of the 1970s ("left-wing"), it was more "right-wing" that today's CDU or even CSU parties which are considering being more "right-wing"..
> 
> I think that we discussed about "right" and "left" on this thread years ago and came to the conclusion that there are more than those two dimensions and that it's just stupied trying to classify parties into "right" and "left" like centuries ago.....


I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh (famous American right-wing radio talk presenter) in the car on the way home from work, for the entertainment value to see how outrageous he would get. I remember him calling David Cameron (the Conservative UK prime minster at the time) a "leftie". This was at the height of the post financial crisis austerity.


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> I think that we discussed about "right" and "left" on this thread years ago and came to the conclusion that there are more than those two dimensions and that it's just stupied trying to classify parties into "right" and "left" like centuries ago.....


There are several parties today that are nationalistic (right) but make socialist economical politics (left). But even the late Kohl age in the 90's was more socialist (economically). And, yes, exactly in the nation where we live there used to be a party a hundred years ago that called itsels nationalist and socialist.
The poltical terms of left and right origin from the times if the French revolution, more than two hundred years ago. The world, and politics, changed a lot since then.
And you can see that many European socialist parties moved in a liberal way in the last twenty years, they fight much more for ethnical and sexual minorities than for workers.


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> Like virtually all European countries blamed China first. Like most of Europe blamed Italy when it spreaded there. Like UK blaming the continental countries. Like Americas blaming Europe.....


Hungarian government does not blame any one. They simply say they do it very well, they say the pandemic is dangerous, but Hungary is successful against it - what is actually not true. Hungary has ~4,000 new cases daily, but test very few (yesterday: 18,000 tests; 4,600 positive), ~100 fatalities daily, increasing trend.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> Burn the witch!


It’s genetic in my case.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> A Dutch news station made a map of what the Netherlands would look like if we had an electoral college similar to the U.S. They divided the country up into 40 statistical regions and divided the parties among the left and right.
> 
> The right-wing block would win the elections in a huge landslide, gathering 127 out of 150 electoral votes. D66 is a swing party, if they are included in the right, the right-wing block would win all 150 electoral votes.


Why statistical regions and not provinces? You need Drenthe getting extra votes relative to Noord-Holland to capture the full flavor of it.


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> Part of the reason is that Poland is still a virgin territory for the virus, very few people had it in the spring. Combining with respiratory illness season it is recipe for high numbers. At the moment numbers in Poland (cases and deaths) are higher than in the UK, despite significantly lower population. And that's after taking to the account that the UK tests 4x as many people every day as Poland does.
> 
> Actually, I just checked, more people died in Poland in the last 24h than in the UK, 445 vs. 413
> 
> Cases: Poland 27k, the UK 25k.
> 
> Tests: Poland 80k (is that correct?), the UK 350k
> 
> Population: Poland 38m, the UK 66m.
> 
> The numbers really look bad in Poland. And yet I remember how politicians and experts in Poland were glowing in spring, blaming Western Europe for slow action, lack of closures, gloating about how successful Poland was. It was such a shortsighted narrative...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, I watched it for fun since I don't live in Poland for more than 15 years now. I have developed certain detachment from situation in Poland as we have enough problems here in the UK. But of course I hope for positive change in Poland, I still have family there. Let's hope that Trump's defeat is sign of turning tide.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, I'm aware of that.
> 
> But how many people really do watch state news and believe in the narrative? Are there any figures what's the market share of that channel?


Are you a Polish citizen? British? Both? Where do you vote? Just curious.

For that matter, does dual citizenship exist within the EU? (I realize that no longer applies to the UK.) If I understand right, a French person can settle in Germany and live and work there indefinitely without becoming a German citizen. But -could- the French person become a German citizen if they wanted to? Could they retain their French citizenship as well? If so, do people in that situation care about citizenship in the new country; do they bother to do it?


----------



## bogdymol

Penn's Woods said:


> For that matter, does dual citizenship exist within the EU?


Yes, it still exists. Although some states (Austria for example) forbid dual citizenship. If you want to become Austrian, you need to renounce at your old one.

Other states, like Germany, permit it. You can have 2 passports, from 2 different countries.

Each European country has its own citizenship rules. Some give it to you after a shorter stay in the country (ex. 5 years), but Liechtenstein for example asks for 30 years of residence before granting it.



Penn's Woods said:


> If I understand right, a French person can settle in Germany and live and work there indefinitely without becoming a German citizen. But -could- the French person become a German citizen if they wanted to? Could they retain their French citizenship as well? If so, do people in that situation care about citizenship in the new country; do they bother to do it?


You can get it if you want it, and many people do it. However, if the rules are too complicated or too strict, many people don't bother with it (I'm looking at you Austria).

However, if you are EU citizen, you can live and work in another EU country like any regular citizen. You have no restrictions. So many people don't bother with it.

I for example live in Austria since 6 years ago. I never had any issues because I am not an Austrian.

However, unlike the US, where you can move from state to state without any issues, there is though a significant barrier in Europe: almost every country has a different language.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> I was told that today's European right-wing / left-wing is NOT comparable to US right-wing / left-wing. US lefts are more right than most of European rights (main parties not considering small extreme parties).
> 
> Also, when you compare German SPD of the 1970s ("left-wing"), it was more "right-wing" that today's CDU or even CSU parties which are considering being more "right-wing"..
> 
> I think that we discussed about "right" and "left" on this thread years ago and came to the conclusion that there are more than those two dimensions and that it's just stupied trying to classify parties into "right" and "left" like centuries ago.....


I hear that all the time, to the point where it’s a cliché, but I’m not sure it’s accurate. It may depend on the issue. A good friend of mine, gay, from Georgia, got into a relationship about five years ago with a German man living in Germany. My friend has lived and worked in Germany, speaks German fluently, met this guy in Frankfurt.... At some point they made a deal that they’d get married in whichever jurisdiction, Germany or Georgia, permitted it first. I don’t think either of them or anyone else expected that Georgia would “win” that race, but it did. Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court rather than Georgia’s own leaders but still. Where I’m going with this is, my understanding as of a couple of years ago (by which point my friend had moved to Germany and the closest he could get to having their marriage recognized was a domestic partnership or something) was that the CDU, or at least Merkel, was still opposing gay marriage. While most Democrats publicly support it and I think the public is accepting it. So are the Democrats to the left of the CDU on that? Another example; I think most Democrats are in favor, to varying degrees, of a “European-style” (as we simplistically call it) social safety net. The variation is in how we get there and how fast. I personally will not vote for someone who doesn’t favor -some- form of “universal health care,” by which I mean a system that covers everyone even if it’s partially private. Are there European parties that are to the right of us (Democrats) on that? I see talk from the UK of “the Tories wanting to abolish the NHS,” but I don’t know what that’s based on and how accurate that is....


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The German state of Schleswig-Holstein has the abbreviation 'sh'. It makes sense
> 
> But there is an education portal that's called _it's learning_.
> So you can see where this is going: sh.itslearning.com


What does that “it’s” actually mean here? Way too many native speakers can’t distinguish “its” and “it’s”; I’m not assuming a local website in Germany, even of an educational institution, would, or that it would be fair to expect it. And what do they have against their own language?


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> Like virtually all European countries blamed China first. Like most of Europe blamed Italy when it spreaded there. Like UK blaming the continental countries. Like Americas blaming Europe.....
> 
> It is all the very same shit: POLITICS! And in the end, all failed. All failed! No one is prepared well to deal with the virus. And most countries didn't improve the situation since the virus hit their countries for the first time, like health care systems in France or Belgium.
> 
> And again, it's still early November. The winter will come.... The flu season is usually in February / March.


We, at least, have a President-elect who’s convening a new COVID task force tomorrow who’ll base their recommendations on...get this...science. They have no power, officially, yet; their mission is to convert the Biden COVID plan from the campaign into detailed policy that can be put into place in January. But I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see state and local governments starting to follow whatever they announce right away.


----------



## volodaaaa

It has been a week since we have undergone the nation-wide testing. Don't do it - it is a trap.

The current government replaced almost the 12-year stable corrupted government, so people were initially happy when the new PM took the rule. However, he turned out to be a psycho. Some people call him Slovak Trump or Carpathian Trump. Unfortunately, it all reminds George Orwell's Animal Farm. Not only the government but even some people keep repeating "you don't want Jones previous government back, do you?" So every failure, every questionable measure is automatically resolved with this phrase.

The way he tackles the coronavirus crisis is outrageous: he imposes restrictions unclearly to some sector of economy or region, the minister of healthcare repeats the limits with some changes and the minister of defence adds some more. The whole decision-making sources at the PM himself although he keeps repeating that there are at least three expert commissions. Some experts were fired from the commissions as they opposed measures proposed by the PM.

Sometimes it is the PM who undermines the conclusions of the commissions. For example, in late August the commissions agreed on a measure limiting the maximum wedding guests to 30 (including the priest, DJ, venue staff, etc.). The PM immediately published a post asserting "Don't worry my little brides, let me see what can I do with it" followed by another one "I did it. I convinced the commission to re-establish the threshold to 100 guests! This one is for you my little brides" Approximately two weeks after, the outbreak of the second wave started in Slovakia, especially in pure religious districts of northern Slovakia where a wedding below 200 guests is not considered a wedding.

The nation-wide testing idea was ignited shortly after the PM accidentally showed he can't speak English even though he criticised everyone in the previous government. He came up with the idea and made it mandatory. The constitutional court alerted that this is breaching the constitution. Then, he decided to do it optionally. Seemingly optional. See below.

There were three phases of the nation-wide testing.

1. The pilot testing in four most infected districts took place on 24th and 25th of October
2. The nation-wide testing held on 31st of October and 1st of November
3. The second round ended up in districts with the infection rate higher than 0,7 % in the first round held during the last weekend.

After the second phase, a strict lockdown was announced as we were in a "complicated epidemiologic situation":

curfew for all people from 5 AM to 1 AM (although it may not make sense at first glance, this was done to make it fully legal - the constitution does not allow 24/7 lockdown with no reason)
exceptions:
the nearest grocery store
taking care of relatives
chemist's store
funeral, but also a wedding and a baptising (!)

Other exceptions were given only if a person carries a "medical certificate with negative COVID result" issued during the testing and does not have a positively tested person in the household:

going to work (!)
going to school (!)
Some people (even experts and the presidentess) expressed some fears about:

the logistic of the operation - the army was in charge, while personnel had to be managed by the municipalities.
the risk of being infected - the project raised mobility and led to an undesirable gathering
the relevancy of the Ag tests
the sustainability of disposable human resources, mainly medical staff.
Some people refused to take part as:

it was a PR of the PM who earlier mentioned if the project failed, he would resign,
they were already locked down (e.g. my parents who had not been anywhere for a month),
it was against the constitution where the right to go to work and school is one of the elementary human rights,
it was against the GDPR to show you residence and birthdate to a shop assistant,
it was against the medical privacy rules to show your medical results.
some believed it was a secret vaccination with chipsets, etc. (yes, indeed).
The PM started to mention people who attended as the "responsible and wise" and those who refused referred as to "hoaxers, neo-Nazis, irresponsible ones".

He basically introduced the fascism because:

a lot of people took up this distinguish, even if it was not necessary. E. g. some companies started to threaten their employees they would be fired if they omit the testing.
There was even a case when a facility manager demanded owners of flat to be tested, which is ridiculous.
Some doctors decided to apply this rule as well.
The situation is even crazier now. Some districts were (the threshold was set out of the blue by our Excellency) to be re-tested (over 0,7 % incidence). Nobody cared about trends. Inhabitants from the below-0,7-districts have their certificates valid for the next week (the Ag testing is the least reliable method and the certificate is a piece of useless paper after a fortnight), inhabitants from the "red" districts (over 0,7 %) must carry the new certificates.

However, my parents from the green district who refused to be tested because they don't go anywhere must stay home for another seven days. Yes, people from a green district with certificate roaming around Slovakia are less dangerous than my parents who sat at home for a week with no chance to be infected. Human rights are nothing.

The overall results were ridiculous and could be interpreted both ways:

There is no difficult epidemiologic situation in Slovakia
The Ag tests are shite.
Given the everyday PCR positive increment, the latter one is more plausible.


















BA - Bratislava, the capital - 0,33 %.


----------



## radamfi

Yet another European country is switching off AM. The Czech Republic is going to switch off AM at the end of next year, because DAB+ now reaches 95% of the population.









Český rozhlas rozšířil pokrytí DAB+ na 95 procent populace a oznámil vypnutí středních vln


Český rozhlas vstoupil do další, významné fáze digitalizace rádia. Signál multiplexu ČRo DAB+ dosáhl k dnešnímu dni 95 % pokrytí populace. Spuštěno bylo deset nových vysílačů v Čechách i na Moravě. Jejich detailní popis najdete níže.




digital.rozhlas.cz


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

bogdymol said:


> UK and Ireland do not have exit checks. I think all other European countries do have them.


Do you mean out of Schengen?


----------



## bogdymol

Ok, Schengen is a bit of an exception, as there are no internal controls at all (at least in theory). But there are external ones, all around the Schengen borders. Also non-Schengen European countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus) have exit checks. So do non-EU European countries (Serbia, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine).


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> UK and Ireland do not have exit checks. I think all other European countries do have them.


Well... I have never met an exit check at Finnish borders. 

Of course, airlines may ask travel documents. It is because the carrier is responsible for the cost and penalties in case of denied entry.


----------



## bogdymol

MattiG said:


> Well... I have never met an exit check at Finnish borders.


Not even at the Russian border? I highly doubt.


----------



## radamfi

At airports in the Schengen area typically most of the airport has no passport control with certain gates dedicated to outside Schengen destinations. You often walk through a lot of the airport before getting to the passport control. As I am usually flying to the UK I'm very used to this scenario. Sometimes the facilities available at non-Schengen gates are limited, so in those cases I avoid going through passport control too early.

There was one time at Alicante airport where the flight was very late and passport control had gone home, so that time there was no passport check.


----------



## geogregor

MichiH said:


> I'm still careful though.... No experiments on human beings - not on me!


No worry, nobody is testing it on you, there are plenty of volunteers. In fact over 40k people were already vaccinated with Pfizer vaccine during the tests.

Even if it gets rolled out quickly it is very unlikely it will be offered to you any time soon. First in line for vaccination will be health and care workers as well as the most vulnerable folks.

If you are fairly healthy young or middle-age man you won't even have a chance to get the vaccine any time soon, even if you wanted. 



Penn's Woods said:


> Yeah. If you read that item, they’ve established it’s effective but making sure it’s safe is the next step.


Actually it is quite the opposite. They are fairly sure of the safety of the vaccine. What they will try to establish now is how will protection differ in different age groups, how long will it last, does it stop transmission or just symptoms etc.


----------



## tfd543

^^Thats a mean comment, wouldnt you agree?


----------



## geogregor

tfd543 said:


> ^^Thats a mean comment, wouldnt you agree?


Mean??? In what way?


----------



## MichiH

geogregor said:


> No worry, nobody is testing it on you, there are plenty of volunteers. In fact over 40k people were already vaccinated with Pfizer vaccine during the tests.


Only 40k. And they have only been observed for a few weeks / months. Not long-term.

Like covid-19 is not that critical itself - for most people it's just like a mild flu or cold - but the long-term issues make the difference to... flu etc.



geogregor said:


> Even if it gets rolled out quickly it is very unlikely it will be offered to you any time soon. First in line for vaccination will be health and care workers as well as the most vulnerable folks.
> If you are fairly healthy young or middle-age man you won't even have a chance to get the vaccine any time soon, even if you wanted.


German authorities published their plan yesterday. First medical stuff, vulnerable folks and people with system-relevant job, e.g. police etc.

I (officially) belong to a "risk group" and I talked to my doctor about the issue in July. She said that she would not recommend me to vaccine in the first "round". She also said that her daughter was offered to be a test person - for 1300€. The mother advised against doing it because the test phases are too short, too risky. Although she is generally in favor to support this but everything is going quite quick with this vaccines.....


----------



## geogregor

MichiH said:


> Although she is generally in favor to support this but everything is going quite quick with this vaccines.....


Well, things are going quickly because time is of an essence.

There is judgement to be made. Should we slow down to be 120% sure of all the long term aspects of the vaccine or progress quicker than usual to save lives? Thousands of them...

No to mention bringing some sort of resemblance of normality to our lives.

I'm fairly healthy and in my early forties, so I don't expect to receive the vaccine for a while yet. 

If I was from vulnerable group I would most likely prefer as soon vaccination as possible because it would be better than living in fear or shielding for months.

As things stand I'm not in rush, I'm quite relaxed in general. Statistically my personal risk is quite low, with or without vaccine.


----------



## Attus

Yes, wen can wait, check if the vaccines cuse any health issues for vaccinated people. How long shall we wait? Ten years? Ten years, lock down our countries twice a year and/or let people belonging to a risk group die, is it OK?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> Yeah. If you read that item, they’ve established it’s effective but making sure it’s safe is the next step.
> 
> By the way, I’m just waiting for Trump to accuse Pfizer of sitting on this until after the election....











Donald Trump accuses the FDA of holding up Pfizer vaccine


Donald Trump on Monday night said that the FDA had held up a coronavirus vaccine deliberately, costing many lives, in order to thwart his electoral chances.




www.dailymail.co.uk





He’s so predictable. It’s sad, really.


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> No worry, nobody is testing it on you, there are plenty of volunteers. In fact over 40k people were already vaccinated with Pfizer vaccine during the tests.
> 
> Even if it gets rolled out quickly it is very unlikely it will be offered to you any time soon. First in line for vaccination will be health and care workers as well as the most vulnerable folks.
> 
> If you are fairly healthy young or middle-age man you won't even have a chance to get the vaccine any time soon, even if you wanted.
> 
> 
> 
> Actually it is quite the opposite. They are fairly sure of the safety of the vaccine. What they will try to establish now is how will protection differ in different age groups, how long will it last, does it stop transmission or just symptoms etc.


It said something about how it would take a couple of months to make sure there were no bad side effects, didn’t it? (I haven’t actually re-read, though.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Just heard a Dutch DJ say, in English, “five after half five.” They know that’s not right, right?


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> Just heard a Dutch DJ say, in English, “five after half five.” They know that’s not right, right?


Not necessarily.

I partly blame the British. They've stopped saying "past" so "half past five" becomes "half five".

Dutch people hear that, and they go: "Oh! The British say it the same way we do!" Except, of course, "half five" in British English = 5.30 and in Dutch "half vijf" = 4.30.

So it's a goddamn mess now. 

I've noticed my students messing this up over the past 10-15 years. It was not a common problem before then.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> Not necessarily.
> 
> I partly blame the British. They've stopped saying "past" so "half past five" becomes "half five".
> 
> Dutch people hear that, and they go: "Oh! The British say it the same way we do!" Except, of course, "half five" in British English = 5.30 and in Dutch "half vijf" = 4.30.
> 
> So it's a goddamn mess now.
> 
> I've noticed my students messing this up over the past 10-15 years. It was not a common problem before then.


Oh, Lord.

They may have been joking...this was introducing the news report and they’d been chatting with the anchor a few minutes earlier about (if I understood right) speaking English, on vacation for example, with people whose English isn’t as good as yours.

Gave Radio 538 a try. Not really my taste, musically...(I like StuBru, Oüi FM in France....)...but got the beginning of their afternoon-drive show. Rock-station rush-hour chat shows annoy me so much that that’s the main reason I wasn’t listening to anything American. My favorite stations are crap in the morning. Left it on because I can always use an opportunity to hear Dutch.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> Gave Radio 538 a try. Not really my taste, musically...


It's a radio station geared to a younger audience. I used to listen to it when I still followed top 40 music in the early 2000s. 

Dutch radio stations generally play generic music of each genre. The government has been auctioning the FM frequencies off so only the highest bidder with the most mainstream music can afford them. There isn't as much room for niche music. Even the classic rock stations mainly play the same 80-90s hits every day over the past 2 decades. 

I've mostly tuned out from listening to the radio in the Netherlands. French FM radio is even worse with their mandatory quota of French music, though it's funny to hear a French version of Bryan Adams music. I do listen to the radio when I travel through Germany, also for traffic information that gives me a better situational awareness than Waze or Google Maps.


----------



## tfd543

geogregor said:


> Mean??? In what way?


Just a bit arrogant. Im referring to the vaccine comment..


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> Then you should not need reminding that the rules are not static. And that is my point.
> 
> It's funny to talk about native speakers especially in the case of Americans. Most of those that defined American English were in fact no native speakers. Or we could put it differently. Most of the forummers here command more of English language that the so called native speakers that defined the language in the immigrant country called America.
> 
> On the example of British English and American English you can see that the "nativeness" of the speakers is irrelevant for the corpus of that language.
> 
> It doesn't really matter whether "native speakers" invent grammar shortcuts as "wanna" or whether "welcome in" would become another standard use driven by the "non native speakers". The rules of a language are set by the users of that language and their relevance is given by their quantity. If more people will accept and use "welcome in" than that will become the new standard. Whether or not the today "rules" you seem to cherish say something else and whether or not some users of that given language call themselves natives. It really is not relevant for that given language. It will simply adapt to the mass use of it.


And I’m using “rules” the way a descriptive grammarian, not a prescriptive one, does. The rules by which a language actually functions in the present. It’s not an issue of preserving Shakespearean standards or whatever. “‘Welcome’ is followed by ‘to’ or ‘into.’ “ is a rule. Word meanings are rules. Any language is full of them.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Like Penn's Woods said, one thing is saying "A main news channel reported that a technical inspection revealed that bridge X requires reconstrution.", another thing is saying "That bridge doesn't look safe to me because I think that its pillars are too thin", when you don't have any engineering competence to know how large pillars must be.


And you seemed to be saying non-specialists shouldn’t be discussing this at all. I can’t agree with that, as it affects all of us. We need to understand it, so we can help each other understand it by using the best information available to the public.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> But to me it seems that the more people will be vaccinated, the more difficult it will be for the virus to spread, so the restrictions will be able to be less strict.
> 
> 
> Yes – but there is this general concept of what is considered correct English, French, Dutch, Polish, German etc. – and those bodies try to determine what is considered correct, what not and why. This way e.g. the teachers know how to teach the language.
> 
> Although... concerning the vocabulary, I guess, there is more power in the hands of the authors of dictionaries than in the hands of those bodies.
> 
> It isn't anything objective and really scientific – but while reading a text in your language, you notice the errors and see that the text with them looks weird and simply "wrong". Unless you are dyslectic, of course. And a text with many errors is difficult to read as the words, when incorrectly spelled (or... spelled incorrectly? what's the correct word order in this case? does it even matter?), don't look familiar.


There isn’t such a body in English that I’m aware of. Dictionaries and the like are it. (Which may explain why we get ornery when anyone - let alone an entity like the EU - tries to tell us what words ought to mean. I remember reading a couple of weeks ago that the EU will be deciding on whether a veggie burger can be called a burger. And it got a lot of reaction. I -guess- they have the authority to decide that question in EU commercial contexts, but they have no right to expect that Americans or Australians (or now Brits) should abide by their ruling.


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> *forumers. One M
> *more of THE English language (and “have a better command of” would sound more natural).
> *thaN
> *hyphen in “so called”
> 
> There. Proved that ridiculous (and insulting) statement wrong.
> 
> And what’s with the “so-called”? If I’m not a native speaker of (American) English, which is just as valid a standard as Brazilian Portuguese or Mexican Spanish (in their respective countries), what -am- I a native speaker of? And what does most Americans being immigrants have to do with it
> 
> My immigrant ancestry does not prevent my English from being far, far closer to the British standard (if you insist that that the only valid one) than yours will ever be. Seriously.


No. I did not mean better command of English, I meant the degree to which people are able to express oneself in English.

I dare bet that I utilize English more than your immigrant ancestors, no native speakers, yet those were the people that defined the American English at the time, English that you presume only the native speakers have the right to define.

While the differences between American and British english clearly shows that the native speakers did not define the language, as if they did, there would have been no differences between the two.

If a universal continental "Esperanto" English would evolve (as you put it) it would be the same case. I bet the British disliked (and many still do) and looked down on American English. In my eyes it's a childish shun.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> No. I did not mean better command of English, I meant the degree to which people are able to express oneself in English.
> 
> I dare bet that I utilize English more than your immigrant ancestors, no native speakers, yet those were the people that defined the American English at the time, English that you presume only the native speakers have the right to define.
> 
> While the differences between American and British english clearly shows that the native speakers did not define the language, as if they did, there would have been no differences between the two.
> 
> If a universal continental "Esperanto" English would evolve (as you put it) it would be the same case. I bet the British disliked (and many still do) and looked down on American English. In my eyes it's a childish shun.


I may have misunderstood you; I thought you were talking about present-day Americans. Sorry!
But I think most linguists would say that the basis of American English was the English of the first British (English, Scottish...) colonists. There are dialects in long-settled areas along the East Coast that are reputed to be closer to Elizabethan (1558-1603) English than anything spoken in England today. Immigrants assimilated quickly. My maternal grandfather was born in New Jersey in 1907 in a neighborhood that was so Polish that he didn’t speak any English until he started school. Then, it was sink or swim. He was proud of his heritage but he refused to teach my mother or her sisters (there were no boys) Polish, because “they were going to be Americans.” (And by the way, his English was good enough to pass for native, as I remember it, and he did well enough with it to become a trial lawyer. But he started at age 5. In general, I’m not sure that the assumption that you use English more, or better, than an immigrant who’s been in an English-speaking country for a few years is. It would depend on how the immigrant spends their time and where...a young professional in a diverse environment will have a different relationship to the language than an older person running a little store in a neighborhood where most people are from her own country, or who spends most of her time among family.)

But I’m not sure where that gets us. Maybe some day “welcome in Frankfurt” will be correct. It’s understandable, so it would be a harmless change. But it isn’t now. Nor is - to go back to my original point - expecting native speakers to dumb down our language to be understood by foreigners harmless. Because WE lose something that way.

But perhaps we should leave it there; I think we’re talking past each other.


----------



## Penn's Woods

As far as that Continental Esperanto is concerned, maybe its existence is a reality. But expecting native speakers to conform to it is absolutely unacceptable. It can’t be permitted to displace the real thing among natives. And I have difficulty accepting a variety spoken exclusively by non-natives as equal to a native one.


----------



## italystf

Euro English - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Slagathor

On languages adopting changes, I go by a simple rule:

If you wouldn't put it in a job application, it isn't proper use of the language.​
By the time a change has become truly deeply embedded, you can use it anywhere. Until then, it's either wrong, new or artsy (street language, song lyrics, etc.).

To illustrate how slowly these changes can take, you wouldn't use "wanna" or "gotta" in a job application. They've been around for a while now, we use them all over the place, but they're still not quite embedded enough to be considered proper English.

A change like "Welcome in Frankfurt" would take decades, if not centuries, to become the norm. Until it does, it's incorrect.



Penn's Woods said:


> Yes!
> 
> I used to put the sort of people who switch to English in, say, Quebec when you’re speaking French to them in the same category. I say “used to” because I can now, as I’ve mellowed, at least assume they mean well.
> 
> And putting on an accent is just going to sound silly. Unless you’re exceptionally good at it. I adjust my vocabulary in Britain - “return” instead of “round trip” - but I wouldn’t try to say it with a British accent.


Montreal is essentially bilingual so I get it. Like Brussels, people walk around with an antenna, always trying to figure out which language is the most useful in any particular encounter. They don't mean anything by it. In those kinds of cities, more than anywhere else, language is only a tool. A means to be understood. 

But if you're trying to learn a language, it can be unhelpful. I would typically respond by saying: "Excusez-moi, je ne parle pas Anglais. Seulement Français et Néerlandais." That usually did the trick. 



radamfi said:


> I've never heard of this before. Maybe people do this without realising. Some people pick up accents when they go travelling. This is obvious when British people go to Australia or US and if you call them up while on holiday they sound almost local. Some people even keep the accent for a bit when they get back home.


Australia and the US are alright, those are native accents at least. Copying that is not patronizing. 

If it's someone's second language, though... Then you're effectively saying: "I can tell you suck at this, so let me meet you halfway." Which isn't very nice.  



Fatfield said:


> I don't but I sometimes have to turn down my accent as the person I'm talking to doesn't understand.
> 
> I also have a mate, who when talking to non native English speaking people, speaks slowly as if the person he's talking to has done something wrong or is stupid. I find this very condescending and embarassing. He hasn't graduated to the little englander school of language by shouting yet so I suppose there's some hope.


Speaking a bit slower is OK if someone's understanding of English is really rudimentary. But the attitude with which you do it matters a lot. 

The shouting thing we get a lot from baby-boomer Germans in the Netherlands. Not really shouting per se, but raising their voice and slowing down... There's a lot of that.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Euro English - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org


Slagathor brought that to my attention earlier. I do not approve.


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> I remember reading a couple of weeks ago that the EU will be deciding on whether a veggie burger can be called a burger


In Poland there is a misconception that EU dictates that snails or slugs (no idea, it's the same word in Polish) are fish, even though they obviously aren't fish...

From what I suppose, they classified snails together with fish for the needs of some law concerning seafood because it made sense for the regulations to be similar for those two products.

What you are talking about are trade laws – and they are needed, so that selling fake products which seem real and are marketed as real would be illegal. So they can define the minimum content of e.g. butter in butter or meat in a burger. I suppose if a vege burger is marketed as vege burger and not just burger (so that the consumer may think it contains meat and buy it because he wants to eat some meat), there isn't a problem.

Although it sometimes hurts companies and brands...

There was a very old Polish margarine brand, existing, supposedly, since 1970s – Masło Roślinne. Translating literally: Plant-based Butter, Vegetable Butter, or something like that. The brand was well established, and not really misleading – since it says "plant-based", everyone knew it's margarine and not real butter.










But several years ago, the market regulator found that this product doesn't fulfill the legal criteria to be called "butter", and forced the producer to rename it. So they changed it to MR Roślinne. The acronym MR had been anyway used on the packaging for many years, so the consumers knew it's the same product:










But was it really necessary? Not really. And anyway, if I remember correctly, after some appeals, they got allowed to use the name "Masło Roślinne" again, although they aren't doing it anyway.

At the same time, shops are full of margarine packed in blocks like butter, with very similar packaging that resembles the traditional packaging for butter. And in this case, even though it doesn't actually say "butter" on the packaging, mistakes of the consumers are very common...

An example of fake butter (in a fine print, it says "fat mix"):










Which resembles a lot the traditional package for butter (5-10 years ago still most milk companies were using this or similar template, now they usually use something more customized):










Or:










"Zambrowski Mlemix" – it's also not a real butter, but butter-margarine mixture.

As you can see, even the weight may mislead the customer – as it's in a 200 g block (the usual weight of butter blocks), while margarine, when it's sold in blocks (this format is usually used for margarines intended for baking; those intended for spreading on bread are normally sold in plastic cups), they normally weigh 250 g.

Interestingly, there are several brands of such mixtures, probably ones of better quality, which are really well-established on the market in Poland.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Ironically perhaps, the AM tuner on the trusty old Crosley in the kitchen that my mother says she bought at a store that’s been out of business for 40 years just broke....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Meanwhile in Turkmenistan:









Turkmenistan’s president unveils giant statue of his favourite dog


Turkmenistan’s president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has unveiled a giant gold statue of his favourite dog on a busy traffic circle in his country’s capital.




www.standard.co.uk


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Meanwhile in Turkmenistan:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Turkmenistan’s president unveils giant statue of his favourite dog
> 
> 
> Turkmenistan’s president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has unveiled a giant gold statue of his favourite dog on a busy traffic circle in his country’s capital.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.standard.co.uk


Wook at de boggie!

Sorry.
Ahem.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> Slagathor brought that to my attention earlier. I do not approve.


Me neither. Even if I'm not an English motherlanguage, most of these "Euro English" phrases sound like mistakes to me.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Me neither. Even if I'm not an English motherlanguage, most of these "Euro English" phrases sound like mistakes to me.


Exactly.


----------



## Coccodrillo

Surel said:


> Anheuser Busch can't use Budweiser name in the EU.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Budweiser trademark dispute - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org


The French managed to block wine from the village of Champagne in Switzerland being called with its real name, even thoughit clearly isn't a competitor for the French wine as Champagne only produces a few thousand bottles and mostly sell them locally.





__





Swiss Winemakers Go to Court to Keep Champagne Name | Wine Spectator


It doesn't sparkle, there is no trademark "pop," in fact it doesn't even come from France -- but a group of winemakers in western Switzerland are going to court to fight for the right to label their white wine "Champagne.




www.winespectator.com













Champagne vs. Bread, Prosecco vs. 'Nosecco,' JaM vs. 'Jammy': Trademark Battles Erupt


From Napa to Champagne to a tiny Swiss town—also named Champagne—regions around the world are roiling with recent legal disputes over who gets to call their wine what. In Wine Spectator's Unfiltered.




www.winespectator.com





Something similar happened with Prosecco and Prosek, that are written in a similar way but pronounced differently.









Prosek vs Prosecco - The Wine & More


Wine is important and powerful: weddings, business deals, alliances, and agreements are all often made over a glass or two of wine. But one Croatian wine has earned a place in international media headlines by almost making a political and diplomatic scandal! Sometime in the spring of 2013, just...




www.thewineandmore.com


----------



## Kpc21

What about whisky and whiskey?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Coccodrillo said:


> The French managed to block wine from the village of Champagne in Switzerland being called with its real name, even thoughit clearly isn't a competitor for the French wine as Champagne only produces a few thousand bottles and mostly sell them locally.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> __
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Swiss Winemakers Go to Court to Keep Champagne Name | Wine Spectator
> 
> 
> It doesn't sparkle, there is no trademark "pop," in fact it doesn't even come from France -- but a group of winemakers in western Switzerland are going to court to fight for the right to label their white wine "Champagne.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.winespectator.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Champagne vs. Bread, Prosecco vs. 'Nosecco,' JaM vs. 'Jammy': Trademark Battles Erupt
> 
> 
> From Napa to Champagne to a tiny Swiss town—also named Champagne—regions around the world are roiling with recent legal disputes over who gets to call their wine what. In Wine Spectator's Unfiltered.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.winespectator.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Something similar happened with Prosecco and Prosek, that are written in a similar way but pronounced differently.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Prosek vs Prosecco - The Wine & More
> 
> 
> Wine is important and powerful: weddings, business deals, alliances, and agreements are all often made over a glass or two of wine. But one Croatian wine has earned a place in international media headlines by almost making a political and diplomatic scandal! Sometime in the spring of 2013, just...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.thewineandmore.com


And people wonder what anyone could possibly have against the EU. Enforcing the Champagne restriction IN SWITZERLAND?

Ahem. Sorry. I’ll go back to minding my own business now.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> What about whisky and whiskey?












I think both of those are correct in different parts of the world, or for products -from- different parts of the world, or both...?

I’d have to look it up.


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> And people wonder what anyone could possibly have against the EU. Enforcing the Champagne restriction IN SWITZERLAND?


The Swiss signed a treaty with the EU on the mutual recognition of geographical indications. I can't make a cheese in Holland and call it Gruyère. So yes, we expect the Swiss to honor their signature. I guess that may not necessarily come naturally to a civilization that's still sitting on stolen Nazi gold.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> What about whisky and whiskey?


Those are two different alcohols from two different countries. I don't see any issue here. Also, those are not brand names, everyone in Ireland can produce whiskey and everyone in Scotland can produce whisky, as long as they follow certain rules.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> The Swiss signed a treaty with the EU on the mutual recognition of geographical indications. I can't make a cheese in Holland and call it Gruyère. So yes, we expect the Swiss to honor their signature. I guess that may not necessarily come naturally to a civilization that's still sitting on stolen Nazi gold.


Well, sure, but it’s a local product made in a place actually called Champagne. To me this looks like bullying. They could let this one go, particularly if the stuff is only sold in Switzerland.

EDIT/PS: Surely consumers can tell the difference....


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> Those are two different alcohols from two different countries. I don't see any issue here. Also, those are not brand names, everyone in Ireland can produce whiskey and everyone in Scotland can produce whisky, as long as they follow certain rules.


You know more about it than I do. 🥃


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> Those are two different alcohols from two different countries. I don't see any issue here. Also, those are not brand names, everyone in Ireland can produce whiskey and everyone in Scotland can produce whisky, as long as they follow certain rules.


And I don’t know if the -ey spelling is actually used over here. It looks wrong to me although I know it isn’t. If that makes sense.


----------



## Penn's Woods

@Slagathor, you presumably don’t want to hear about Wisconsin Gouda:









Gouda Cheese from Wisconsin | Wisconsin Cheese


See how we do the Dutch proud with buttermilk-rich gouda cheese. Creamy and slightly sweet gouda is perfect for nearly any role you want it to play.




www.wisconsincheese.com


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> And I don’t know if the -ey spelling is actually used over here. It looks wrong to me although I know it isn’t. If that makes sense.


I can admit when I’m wrong.
At least if we believe Wikipedia.









Whisky - Wikipedia







en.m.wikipedia.org


----------



## geogregor

Penn's Woods said:


> You know more about it than I do. 🥃


I have Irish girlfriend but one who prefers Scottish whisky over Irish whiskey 

Myself I also prefer Scottish whiskies, especially the more peaty ones like Laphroaig, Jura, Lagavulin, Talisker or Bowmore

Whisky or whiskey: What’s the difference?



> 'Whisky’ derives from the Gaelic term _usquebaugh_ which translates as ‘water of life’. _Uisge_ means water. _Beatha_ means life. It’s a term used for many types of invigorating spirits over time, for example _Eau de Vie_. In modern usage, *whisky is from Scotland* and *whiskey is from Ireland*.
> The difference comes from the translation of words from the Scottish and Irish Gaelic forms. In the late 1800s, Scottish whisky was also very poor quality therefore the Irish producers wanted to differentiate their product. These days though, both Scotch and Irish are two of the greatest spirits on the planet.


And in America I always go for bourbon, so I wasn't even sure what is correct spelling of whisky/whiskey there


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> I have Irish girlfriend but one who prefers Scottish whisky over Irish whiskey
> 
> Myself I also prefer Scottish whiskies, especially the more peaty ones like Laphroaig, Jura, Lagavulin, Talisker or Bowmore
> 
> Whisky or whiskey: What’s the difference?
> 
> 
> 
> And in America I always go for bourbon, so I wasn't even sure what is correct spelling of whisky/whiskey there


Bourbon IS (a type of) whisk(e)y, isn’t it?

(I’m not into the stuff, so I wouldn’t know.)


----------



## geogregor

Penn's Woods said:


> Bourbon IS (a type of) whisk(e)y, isn’t it?
> 
> (I’m not into the stuff, so I wouldn’t know.)


Bourbon has to be distilled from corn and aged in freshly fired oak barrels. Whisky and whiskey are distilled from different grains and and don't need freshly fired barrels for ageing. In fact many Scottish distilleries reuse barrels after bourbon (as they can only be used once in Kentucky). They also reuse wine and sherry barrels. They have much more freedom than bourbon makers in that respect and it is one of the reason why they are able to produce such a variety of tastes.

You are not that far from Kentucky, proper bourbon territory. Couple of years ago I visited a few distilleries there...

Maker's Mark:

DSC03620 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC03686 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

All bottles are hand-dipped in wax:

DSC03634 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Buffalo Trace:

DSC03745 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC03732 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC03725 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Woodford Reserve

DSC03757 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Ironically, I have never been to Scottish distillery, even when I lived there for almost a year. As they say, we often put off for later destinations which are close to us...


----------



## spartannl

What an enjoyable topic!


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> Well, sure, but it’s a local product made in a place actually called Champagne. To me this looks like bullying. They could let this one go, particularly if the stuff is only sold in Switzerland.
> 
> EDIT/PS: Surely consumers can tell the difference....


Are you making allowances because Switzerland is officially outside of the EU? Would your opinion be the same if we were talking about a German product called Champagne?

Switzerland is not in the EU customs union but other than that is de facto in the EU through bilateral agreements. They enjoy access to the EU single market and they allow free movement of people from the EU (and Swiss people are allowed free movement in the EU). They are arguably more EU than the UK was, given that the UK was never fully part of the open borders Schengen agreement.

Switzerland is annoyingly outside of certain EU agreements, for example on mobile phone roaming (although some operators voluntarily treat Switzerland the same as EU countries, for example certain UK operators) and digital media roaming (for example you can use your Netflix service in any other EU country as if you were at home).


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> Well, sure, but it’s a local product made in a place actually called Champagne. To me this looks like bullying. They could let this one go, particularly if the stuff is only sold in Switzerland.
> 
> EDIT/PS: Surely consumers can tell the difference....


It's not just about the name of a place. In food, the policy is meant to protect products that have become staples of national cuisines and an integral part of national culture and gastronomic heritage.

I can't just rename my Dutch hometown to "Parma" and start makin parmigiano reggiano.



Penn's Woods said:


> @Slagathor, you presumably don’t want to hear about Wisconsin Gouda:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Gouda Cheese from Wisconsin | Wisconsin Cheese
> 
> 
> See how we do the Dutch proud with buttermilk-rich gouda cheese. Creamy and slightly sweet gouda is perfect for nearly any role you want it to play.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.wisconsincheese.com


As a rule of thumb, I don't trust Americans with cheese. Y'all put it in spray cans. I don't consider myself to be particularly refined or sophisticated, but there are lines that even I will not cross. 

I do like Californian wine though.


----------



## madannie

spartannl said:


> What an enjoyable topic!












Good to see The Edradour there: the first single malt whisky I ever bought, and which became the first of many


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The European media seems to focus solely on the U.S. presidential election, of which Biden is the projected winner, but the story isn't as great for Democrats at the state level despite the very high turnout.









Democrats’ ‘Blue Wave’ Crashed in Statehouses Across the Country (Published 2020)


Democrats failed to flip chambers in Texas, North Carolina, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Republicans flipped New Hampshire’s Legislature.




www.nytimes.com













State legislative elections, 2020


Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics




ballotpedia.org





There were 86 state chambers (state senate or state house) up for elections. The Democrats did not manage to flip a single one, while the Republicans flipped both the New Hampshire house and senate (and possibly the Alaska house). The Republicans also flipped a governorship, the Democrats 0. The Republicans also increased their trifectas (governor + house + senate) in 2 more states, the Democrats in 0. 

_“Democrats spent hundreds of millions of dollars to flip state chambers. So far, they don’t have a damn thing to show for it.” _

This is quite important because the next elections will be based on the 2020 census, so those in control of state legislatures are favored in the redistricting process. The Democrats lost seats in the U.S. House of representatives, though retained their majority. But the redistricting may be unfavorable for them in the 2022 midterms and other elections over the next 10 years.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> The European media seems to focus solely on the U.S. presidential election, of which Biden is the projected winner, but the story isn't as great for Democrats at the state level despite the very high turnout.


Do Europeans really care whether Democrats or Republicans rule the country?

In the end, the presidential election was against the person in charge and not against the party behind. Well, it was just the presidental election. There is no combination to the other elections which just happened at the same time.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MichiH said:


> Do Europeans really care whether Democrats or Republicans rule the country?


Considering the amount of media attention over the past 1.5 year I'd say they are more interested in the U.S. politics than that of any other country. 

There was a quote: _'If journalists spend as much time to report about society and elections in Russia, Turkey or China as they do in the U.S., we might understand the world a little better_'.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Considering the amount of media attention over the past 1.5 year I'd say they are more interested in the U.S. politics than that of any other country.
> 
> There was a quote: _'If journalists spend as much time to report about society and *elections in Russia, Turkey or China* as they do in the U.S., we might understand the world a little better_'.


But there is good reason for it. The US is real democracy (despite various flaws) and elections still matter there. We cannot say the same about China and Russia.

It is also easier and safer to report from the US. China and Russia are secretive regimes which can harm or disappear journalists.

Yes we should pay closer attention to internal events in China and Russia but it is objectively more difficult to get the truth out of there. Also, it is not the elections we should follow there but the internal powers struggles. But that is even more difficult...


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> It's not just about the name of a place. In food, the policy is meant to protect products that have become staples of national cuisines and an integral part of national culture and gastronomic heritage.
> 
> I can't just rename my Dutch hometown to "Parma" and start makin parmigiano reggiano.
> 
> 
> 
> As a rule of thumb, I don't trust Americans with cheese. Y'all put it in spray cans. I don't consider myself to be particularly refined or sophisticated, but there are lines that even I will not cross.
> 
> I do like Californian wine though.


But did this Swiss place REname itself just so that its local wine could be mistaken for French sparkly? I don’t think so. I don’t see a danger of confusion (which is important in trademark law), let alone a real threat to sales of French sparkly, or its prestige, in Switzerland or anywhere else.

I can even distinguish Wisconsin Gouda* bought in a supermarket dairy aisle from the imported stuff that costs three times as much at a specialty cheese shop.

To answer @radamfi’s question, yes, I would say the same if it were a German product.

*Now I’m wondering if I should lower-case “Gouda.” My auto-“correct” wants to lower-case “champagne” (although it flagged “Gouda” when I didn’t capitalize it). Which may get to another issue I haven’t quite thought through. Whether “champagne” as used for sparkling wine from the French region of that name refers to the region or the product (which could arguably be made elsewhere). Although I’m not sure what that has to do with the Swiss stuff, which if I understand correctly isn’t sparkly at all....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> It's not just about the name of a place. In food, the policy is meant to protect products that have become staples of national cuisines and an integral part of national culture and gastronomic heritage.
> 
> I can't just rename my Dutch hometown to "Parma" and start makin parmigiano reggiano.
> 
> 
> 
> As a rule of thumb, I don't trust Americans with cheese. Y'all put it in spray cans. I don't consider myself to be particularly refined or sophisticated, but there are lines that even I will not cross.
> 
> I do like Californian wine though.


And there are Philadelphians who insist that a proper cheesesteak is made with Cheez-Wiz, or however it’s spelled (because I don’t touch the stuff), but I consider these people heathens. Half American, half provolone, please.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The European media seems to focus solely on the U.S. presidential election, of which Biden is the projected winner, but the story isn't as great for Democrats at the state level despite the very high turnout.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Democrats’ ‘Blue Wave’ Crashed in Statehouses Across the Country (Published 2020)
> 
> 
> Democrats failed to flip chambers in Texas, North Carolina, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Republicans flipped New Hampshire’s Legislature.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.nytimes.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> State legislative elections, 2020
> 
> 
> Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ballotpedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There were 86 state chambers (state senate or state house) up for elections. The Democrats did not manage to flip a single one, while the Republicans flipped both the New Hampshire house and senate (and possibly the Alaska house). The Republicans also flipped a governorship, the Democrats 0. The Republicans also increased their trifectas (governor + house + senate) in 2 more states, the Democrats in 0.
> 
> _“Democrats spent hundreds of millions of dollars to flip state chambers. So far, they don’t have a damn thing to show for it.” _
> 
> This is quite important because the next elections will be based on the 2020 census, so those in control of state legislatures are favored in the redistricting process. The Democrats lost seats in the U.S. House of representatives, though retained their majority. But the redistricting may be unfavorable for them in the 2022 midterms and other elections over the next 10 years.


Very true. I’m trying not to think about it. But I have seen coverage of Congress in the European media I follow, actually. And even serious American media have been fixated on the presidential race, and to some degree the Senate. Especially now that it’s still up for grabs. I’ve seen the number of seats in the House, but if i want to know who won a particular seat I need to seek that out. As for state legislatures.... But even the Times is reporting on this now, after the votes are mostly counted and the drama of the presidential has subsided. Of course, do, say, Dutch people get federalism, get how important the states actually are?


----------



## Penn's Woods

valkrav said:


> I'm agree with you
> This is the same thing when adults speaking with small kids try to adjust their oration to children mode.
> It's a most common parents mistake in primary education of their children
> 
> But english native speakers must understand
> not all foreigners understand their quikly fluent speech and should speak purely like TV announcers
> and not like rap-singers


I do make very minor adjustments here. Spelling out state names rather than abbreviating them, adding metric equivalents to things like distances and temperatures, that sort of thing.
But fast speech is an issue for me when I’m trying to function in a language I have no trouble reading. Which is why I make a point of watching foreign newscasts or listening to foreign radio; it’s as much for practice hearing the language as it is for the substance.


----------



## Penn's Woods

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Not sure if language makes a big difference, to be honest. In most countries, even the number of people that regularly follow even domestic debates are a minority. And I do know a whole lot more about politics in Vietnam, Korea, and Japan than NZ, which is essentially zero....


Well, if you’re not interested in New Zealand politics you’re not going to know anything about it even if you do know the language. But if you -are- interested in Japanese politics, culture, history, but don’t know the language, there’s a lot of information and material that’s unavailable to you.


----------



## mgk920

I wonder how long it will be before it will be _illegal_ to market a cheese as being 'Colby' if it is not made within a 100 km radius of Colby, WI?

Mike


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> I wonder how long it will be before it will be _illegal_ to market a cheese as being 'Colby' if it is not made within a 100 km radius of Colby, WI?
> 
> Mike


If you don’t mind my saying so, I was starting to wonder about you...Wisconsin’s having a rough time. Everything all right?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> But if you -are- interested in Japanese politics, culture, history, but don’t know the language, there’s a lot of information and material that’s unavailable to you.


I agree, it's not just national politics but society as well. 

What bugs me on the English Wikipedia is that the recent history sections of many country articles are almost exclusively about who won the elections, not as much about societal changes, major events, or how a country physically developed. 

I was reading up on Ukraine, in the early to mid-1990s this country seen an almost unprecedented economic crash, losing two-thirds of its GDP in a a few years. That is a huge event and change in one of the largest countries in Europe. There are only two sentences about this on the Ukraine article of the English Wikipedia. On the Dutch Wikipedia this is not mentioned at all.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I agree, it's not just national politics but society as well.
> 
> What bugs me on the English Wikipedia is that the recent history sections of many country articles are almost exclusively about who won the elections, not as much about societal changes, major events, or how a country physically developed.
> 
> I was reading up on Ukraine, in the early to mid-1990s this country seen an almost unprecedented economic crash, losing two-thirds of its GDP in a a few years. That is a huge event and change in one of the largest countries in Europe. There are only two sentences about this on the Ukraine article of the English Wikipedia. On the Dutch Wikipedia this is not mentioned at all.


Of course, in an ideal world, different versions of Wikipedia would have the same Information.


----------



## Slagathor

Attus said:


> German media reports a lot from France, in the prime time news there are reports from France two or three times a week (considering that these news shows are pretty short, it's very much). From Austria, too, is reported frequently, but it's easy because of the same language. Usually an Austrian guy reports in German media as well (you can recognize their accent). The UK, too, is represented frequently. *The Netherlands is not. Their political system is too complex, the country too small to be important.*
> Poland is overrepresented, but reports are quite boring, they always speak/write about how bad is Kaczynski and Co.


There is a lack of coverage of Germany in the Netherlands as well. The last Bundestag elections were covered by Dutch media maybe 2-3 days around election day and never as the main item on the news. This is a bit strange, given how important Germany is to our economy.

I think it's because we're both a bit boring and stable, really.  Neither the Netherlands nor Germany are at risk of some kind of populism taking control of the country. There are no big crises in either country. There's just not really anything interesting to report. So we don't.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

German state elections only make the news in the Netherlands if AfD manage to get a lot of seats. 🙃

But isn't it a bit odd, that in this era of getting as much content out as possible every day, there is so little attention to European countries or even EU affairs? Only if there is some kind of outrage (like Poland and Hungary) do they make the news. I mean there is more news about the EU than just Brexit.

I follow a Dutch podcast called the 'Perestroikast' (  ) on current events and political news of Eastern Europe (defined as everything east of the Elbe River). I find it interesting to learn about countries that are overlooked or ignored in regular news reporting. I want less outrage news and more insight news.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> But isn't it a bit odd, that in this era of getting as much content out as possible every day, there is so little attention to European countries or even EU affairs?


Have you tried watching Euronews?


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> I was reading up on Ukraine, in the early to mid-1990s this country seen an almost unprecedented economic crash, losing two-thirds of its GDP in a a few years. That is a huge event and change in one of the largest countries in Europe. There are only two sentences about this on the Ukraine article of the English Wikipedia. On the Dutch Wikipedia this is not mentioned at all.


As far as I know (but I was born few years after USSR have fallen) this has happened in the Baltics too. Something like local great depression. Things started to get better with accession process to EU.

I'm thinking if this economic event describes post-Soviet area as we see today.

Things are not ideal though. Few locations get their proper economic growth, while there rest are stagnating. The only "good" thing that in the future, most people would probably move to those areas, and the rest will be left almost empty.

I always tend to connect economic development with infrastructure maintenance, so I would add that some places get renovated, but in very patchy order. Right now, some places look like worse post-USSR places with potholes and mud, some are well maintained. I can't say I like this model. Is like politicans don't know for which places should they give priority, so they refurbish stuff randomly.


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> What bugs me on the English Wikipedia is that the recent history sections of many country articles are almost exclusively about who won the elections, not as much about societal changes, major events, or how a country physically developed.


Wikipedia's crowd-sourced nature is part of the issue there, if there aren't people who are motivated to contribute to those articles then they aren't going to get that sort of in-depth content. Also articles on any subject can be all over the place IMHO and in need of editing in the sense of making into a coherent article. Also I would guess it is partly down to Wikipedia's insistence on sourced material: It's easy to find news articles in English about elections that can be used as the reference, for countries out of the sphere of interest of major media organisations that sort of deeper understanding tends not to exist. I guess it probably does in academic publications but that takes more research


----------



## radamfi

Anyone who didn't know about sport but read Wikipedia every day would think that snooker is one the most important sports in the world. Every year, the winner of the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield, England is the main news article on the front page for several days. There is comprehensive snooker coverage on Wikipedia. Even low ranked professionals get a detailed page.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> As far as I know (but I was born few years after USSR have fallen) this has happened in the Baltics too. Something like local great depression. Things started to get better with accession process to EU.


In Poland it began in the early 1980s (when it turned out the state was unable to pay off the debts taken in the western-European banks in 1970s – which was a period of rapid development of the country) and, from what it seems to me, contributed a lot to the fall of communism in the country. But they didn't even really teach about that on the history classes at school...

The late 1980s and early 1990s were the time of total economic collapse. After that things started changing to better, which coincided with introducing free-market economy (although some elements of it were already slowly being introduced by the communists in 1980s... I guess more because they were forced to do it rather than because they wanted). And since then until, at least, the beginning of the current pandemic, it has been practically a constant growth.



PovilD said:


> I'm thinking if this economic event describes post-Soviet area as we see today.


Definitely.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland it began in the early 1980s (when it turned out the state was unable to pay off the debts taken in the western-European banks in 1970s – which was a period of rapid development of the country) and, from what it seems to me, contributed a lot to the fall of communism in the country. But they didn't even really teach about that on the history classes at school...
> 
> The late 1980s and early 1990s were the time of total economic collapse. After that things started changing to better, which coincided with introducing free-market economy (although some elements of it were already slowly being introduced by the communists in 1980s... I guess more because they were forced to do it rather than because they wanted).* And since then until, at least, the beginning of the current pandemic, it has been practically a constant growth.*


Here in the Baltics we had more bumpy ride in terms of economic growth which I think was psychologically challenging for those who live here: early 90s depression, late 90s Russian crisis (which resembled late 00s crisis in some West Europe countries, few percent drop), then late 00s crisis which resembled Great Depression drop again (I think it was a bit demoralizing event too), and now this pandemic with all its unknows. At least in this pandemic people aren't complaining that much yet. There is just a feel of crisis but not to deranged levels (like "run for your lives to the West", etc.).

I think constant almost uninterrupted growth of Polish economy was something Lithuanians were somewhat jealous of (in addition to larger country size and potential influence), at least the feeling I get when I speak about Poland. At least some people, and my general feeling from it. Sure, there are things they don't know about Poland, and things they know, but don't think much (I'm talking about downsides especially when lightened in riots).

As for me, I don't know what is the difference between living in small country, or in big country. Does it makes you different person... when I talk with other people in my circle, there is a feeling that it might induce some sort of national self proud "that your country is big or influential", maybe something that Russians could have, and we don't.


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> I think constant almost uninterrupted growth of Polish economy was something Lithuanians were somewhat jealous of (in addition to larger country size and potential influence), at least the feeling I get when I speak about Poland.


In that respect Poland is quite a phenomenon, experiencing constant growth (sometimes faster, sometimes slower) for almost three decades.

Actually I think it might make current pandemic-induced crisis in Poland worse than in some other countries. Society (and the economy) is used to constant growth. I do wonder what resilience will Poland show in times of falling GDP, something that country didn't experience since the early 90s. Even if that fall is smaller than in many other places. It might strain the social contract, especially with populists in power and with generation of young people who never experienced crisis and who do feel alienated due to some other cultural issues.



> As for me, I don't know what is the difference between living in small country, or in big country. Does it makes you different person... when I talk with other people in my circle, there is a feeling that it might induce some sort of national self proud "that your country is big or influential", maybe something that Russians could have, and we don't.


What does the size of the country matter? I suspect that the Norwegians or the Swiss don't have any problems with their identity or confidence, despite being from small countries (population wise).


----------



## Jschmuck

Penn's Woods said:


> If you don’t mind my saying so, I was starting to wonder about you...Wisconsin’s having a rough time.


Indeed, horrible COVID numbers of which I'm sure you are referring. Our previous governor really created a negative impact on the states education system, of which will take years to decades to recover. The lies that were spread back then about how government employees (especially teachers) are grossly overpaid wages with the greatest benefits, took their toll. Not to mention the Foxconn Fail.


----------



## Coccodrillo

Penn's Woods said:


> @Slagathor, you presumably don’t want to hear about Wisconsin Gouda:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Gouda Cheese from Wisconsin | Wisconsin Cheese
> 
> 
> See how we do the Dutch proud with buttermilk-rich gouda cheese. Creamy and slightly sweet gouda is perfect for nearly any role you want it to play.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.wisconsincheese.com


There are also many fake "Parmesan" and "Emmental" cheese, which copied the name of the original cheeses which in turn come from the names of two regions of Italy and Switzerland. The only difference with Champagne (and Prosecco?) is that these geographical name are not registered trademarks. So you can call your cheese Parmesan or Emmental even if you don't come from a region which is named Parma or Emmental, while you cannot say that your wine is from Champagne even if you live in Champagne*. That's why the Swiss have changed their name in Emmentaler, where -er is a suffix with the same meaning as the English 's (English is the least Germanic of the Germanic languages, but it is still one of them).

*sure, Champagne is a common name used to desgnate a quite flat agricultural region, so there are many villages or regions with this name


----------



## radamfi

PovilD said:


> As for me, I don't know what is the difference between living in small country, or in big country. Does it makes you different person... when I talk with other people in my circle, there is a feeling that it might induce some sort of national self proud "that your country is big or influential", maybe something that Russians could have, and we don't.


The UK has the 5th/6th/7th biggest economy in the world (India, France and the UK have roughly the same size economy) so it is clearly quite important in the world, but many people in the UK think it is more important than it actually is. Its economy and military are puny compared to the US and China. Per capita GDP is only about 20th in the world. I suspect Brexit would have been less likely to happen if the UK was a much smaller country.

As I mentioned a few days ago, there are however advantages of being in a big country. During the financial crisis, individual countries had to bail out banks, so smaller countries had more difficultly even if they had a high GDP per capita. Iceland and Ireland had to be bailed out and Iceland couldn't afford to compensate a relatively small number of savers in the UK and the Netherlands who lost money in Icelandic banks. The UK and the Netherlands governments (being bigger countries) were able to compensate the savers straight away but wanted Iceland to pay them back, which lead to diplomatic issues.

Only the biggest countries in the world have a full Amazon service. Smaller countries, even rich ones, have to buy from Amazon in neighbouring countries. That means longer delivery times and higher delivery costs. Bigger countries generally have a wider range of retailers and service providers to choose from.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Stuu said:


> Also I would guess it is partly down to Wikipedia's insistence on sourced material: It's easy to find news articles in English about elections that can be used as the reference, for countries out of the sphere of interest of major media organisations that sort of deeper understanding tends not to exist.


I think this is part of the problem. Also the overuse of mainstream media as 'reliable sources' as opposed to official or academic sources also leads to a bias as to what gets extensive coverage and what not. 

For example, in an article about a road project, it could be sourced that the road project is bad for the environment, reliable sources that quote some environmental organization saying that are everywhere (the media). But for example if the court strikes the appeals of that organization down, you need to dig deeper. Sometimes direct sources (like the court verdict) aren't even allowed to disprove a previous claim made in a major news publication. Because it is then labeled as 'original research'. 

We had this issue in the Netherlands, when they raised the speed limit from 120 to 130 km/h it was plastered all over the media how bad this was for noise and air quality. All appeals were struck down by court, saying the impact was negligible and within the limits, but that received virtually no media attention.


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> What does the size of the country matter? I suspect that the Norwegians or the Swiss don't have any problems with their identity or confidence, despite being from small countries (population wise).


Maybe, it's harder to be known/influential as Eastern European country than the West European due to the fact that countries are younger and poorer, especially small new countries. People might have the feeling that their a little bit forgotten, and maybe even illuminated by negative light ("look at those eastern europeans..., etc.").

Switzerland associates as "strong militarized neutral mountain money bank" (=rich and strong), Norway as "rich country with beautiful nature" (=rich and beautiful), and Norway is big on the map anyway with very distinguishable shape.
Something can be said for the rest of Western European smaller countries, only smallest microstates could be a little bit forgotten for this matter. Their only distinctiveness is their size (although Monaco, Vatican could be biggest exception).


----------



## x-type

Coccodrillo said:


> There are also many fake "Parmesan" and "Emmental" cheese, which copied the name of the original cheeses which in turn come from the names of two regions of Italy and Switzerland. The only difference with Champagne *(and Prosecco?)* is that these geographical name are not registered trademarks. So you can call your cheese Parmesan or Emmental even if you don't come from a region which is named Parma or Emmental, while you cannot say that your wine is from Champagne even if you live in Champagne*. That's why the Swiss have changed their name in Emmentaler, where -er is a suffix with the same meaning as the English 's (English is the least Germanic of the Germanic languages, but it is still one of them).
> 
> *sure, Champagne is a common name used to desgnate a quite flat agricultural region, so there are many villages or regions with this name


No, prosecco wine doesn't have anything with village Prosecco that is located in the hills over Trieste. Also, prosecco and prošek are 2 completely different types of drings (Italian prosecco is sparkling white wine, Croatian prošek is aromatic sweet wine made of dried grapes)


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think this is part of the problem. Also the overuse of mainstream media as 'reliable sources' as opposed to official or academic sources also leads to a bias as to what gets extensive coverage and what not.
> 
> For example, in an article about a road project, it could be sourced that the road project is bad for the environment, reliable sources that quote some environmental organization saying that are everywhere (the media). But for example if the court strikes the appeals of that organization down, you need to dig deeper. Sometimes direct sources (like the court verdict) aren't even allowed to disprove a previous claim made in a major news publication. Because it is then labeled as 'original research'.
> 
> We had this issue in the Netherlands, when they raised the speed limit from 120 to 130 km/h it was plastered all over the media how bad this was for noise and air quality. All appeals were struck down by court, saying the impact was negligible and within the limits, but that received virtually no media attention.


On your last point, having worked in public relations I know media attention is something you can get. I mean actively get, work for it, as opposed to just having it fall on you. Who was defending the increased speed limit in the courts? They could have sent out press releases, called reporters, and so on, when they won.


----------



## Coccodrillo

x-type said:


> No, prosecco wine doesn't have anything with village Prosecco that is located in the hills over Trieste. Also, prosecco and prošek are 2 completely different types of drings (Italian prosecco is sparkling white wine, Croatian prošek is aromatic sweet wine made of dried grapes)


Yes, but there were some disputes anyway, because prošek is written similarly (but pronounced differently) to prosecco, but the latter name is registered.


----------



## MichiH

Austria will go into FULL lockdown from Tuesday for (minimum) three weeks. You should only leave your house for work or shopping (only essential shops will remain open) or to visit your doctor or "to rest". Schools are closed. The Chancellor said that you should only meet people which live in your household. If you live alone, you should define exactly one person you meet. Austria has more than 550 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, locally more than 850. They had similar measures to Germany in the last weeks but the number of cases still raise while the German curve is flatten and still slightly below 100 caes per 100,000 inhabitants. German politicians will meet on Monday to discuss whether the "lockdown light" will end at the end of the month or not. Recent reports say that it will most likely not end...


----------



## Slagathor

Any basement-specific rules?

Sorry, sorry, I'll see myself out.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> ....Sorry, sorry, I'll see myself out.


Do you have a legitimate reason to go out?


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> As I mentioned a few days ago, there are however advantages of being in a big country. During the financial crisis, individual countries had to bail out banks, so smaller countries had more difficultly even if they had a high GDP per capita. Iceland and Ireland had to be bailed out and Iceland couldn't afford to compensate a relatively small number of savers in the UK and the Netherlands who lost money in Icelandic banks. The UK and the Netherlands governments (being bigger countries) were able to compensate the savers straight away but wanted Iceland to pay them back, which lead to diplomatic issues.


The problem was not the small size of Ireland or Iceland but their oversized banking sectors. Bloated out of proportion. Their problem was simply greed in some parts of financial elites. And yes, the UK was able to bail out its banks. But at what cost? Isn't Brexit a result of that?

Ultimately what matters is standard of living not the "size and power". Let's just ask ourselves, would we prefer to live in tiny places like Slovenia or Lithuania or in giants like Nigeria or Pakistan? (the second one is a nuclear power)



PovilD said:


> Maybe, it's harder to be known/influential as Eastern European country than the West European due to the fact that countries are younger and poorer, especially small new countries. People might have the feeling that their a little bit forgotten, and maybe even illuminated by negative light ("look at those eastern europeans..., etc.").
> 
> Switzerland associates as "strong militarized neutral mountain money bank" (=rich and strong), Norway as "rich country with beautiful nature" (=rich and beautiful), and Norway is big on the map anyway with very distinguishable shape.
> Something can be said for the rest of Western European smaller countries, only smallest microstates could be a little bit forgotten for this matter. Their only distinctiveness is their size (although Monaco, Vatican could be biggest exception).


But why this obsession's with being known, influential or "powerful"? I honestly don't give a damn if my country is known or influential, as long as I feel safe, secure and have decent standard of living.

I guess I'm just not one of those flag waving types which need "pride" and dick measuring contests. That's why I don't get the whole Brexit project or "raising from our knees" narrative promoted by the current Polish government (supposedly regaining power, influence and independence which we lost to the western elites).

Such a colossal waste of energy and effort which could be used to so something sensible (like facing climate change etc.)


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> I guess I'm just not one of those flag waving types which need "pride" and dick measuring contests. That's why I don't get the whole Brexit project or "raising from our knees" narrative promoted by the current Polish government (supposedly regaining power, influence and independence which we lost to the western elites).


Quite a lot of people like such dick measuring contests, even politicans use the agenda "where is better", "where is worse". I was extremely into it from early to mid-2010s, like my life depend on it. Now I start to look at stuff more neutrally, and less emotional, with my own explanations, although is still not easy to get away with my b*tthurts that developed in my mid-teens (mostly social stuff about my country, especially where we lead in bad places, causes of uncivilized manners in people, depression/despair, emigration).


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> We had this issue in the Netherlands, when they raised the speed limit from 120 to 130 km/h it was plastered all over the media how bad this was for noise and air quality. All appeals were struck down by court, saying the impact was negligible and within the limits, but that received virtually no media attention.


That's because 'something changing' is literally what news is, and therefore what gets attention and also gets the opposite opinions aired on TV for balance. Something staying the same just doesn't get the same attention - obviously if the court ruling had gone against then it _would _have been a newsworthy event.


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> The problem was not the small size of Ireland or Iceland but their oversized banking sectors. Bloated out of proportion. Their problem was simply greed in some parts of financial elites. And yes, the UK was able to bail out its banks. But at what cost? Isn't Brexit a result of that?


No, Brexit (IMO), was nothing to do with the financial crisis. Brexit was the result of a 40+ year campaign of propaganda by the newspapers against the EEC/EC/EU and it's use as a scapegoat for stupid rules by governments of different parties for the whole time Britain was a member. 

Then the mass immigration from central and eastern Europe did cause a lot of panic - prior to that, immigration had been pretty much confined to the larger cities, but the new immigrants from C&E Europe also went to smaller, fairly homogenous towns and that upset a lot of the residents who weren't used to change or hearing foreign languages spoken on the streets. Lots of people who shouldn't be thought of as out-and-out racists or xenophobes were concerned - the moronic government said they would control immigration but they couldn't, which helped build the impression that we didn't control our own country. Of course there were plenty of controls that could have been used built into the EU treaties, but for whatever reason the British government chose not to do that.

And now we are left with a country run by a failed journalist, in the worst crisis since 1945. May you live in interesting times


----------



## radamfi

radamfi said:


> Anyone who didn't know about sport but read Wikipedia every day would think that snooker is one the most important sports in the world. Every year, the winner of the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield, England is the main news article on the front page for several days. There is comprehensive snooker coverage on Wikipedia. Even low ranked professionals get a detailed page.


Just one day after posting this, a snooker tournament is today's featured article!









Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ha, I've noticed those snooker articles as well. Apparently they have an active community. To be fair, U.S. roads are also fairly frequently featured on Wikipedia, even 'random' state routes.


----------



## Kpc21

Coccodrillo said:


> The only difference with Champagne (and Prosecco?) is that these geographical name are not registered trademarks.


But does it matter whether something is a registered trademark if the name has passed to the everyday language as a common noun for any thing of specific kind, regardless of the company which made it?

There are plenty of such words, it's a common phenomenon in languages...

And trademarking a common noun sounds like something ridiculous.

I don't really know how it actually works e.g. in English – but in Polish "szampan" (a loan word from "champagne") is just a common word for any sparkling wine and rarely does anyone have in mind the actual Champagne from Champagne. It may even be a cheap fake Russian version made by a Polish company:


----------



## geogregor

Stuu said:


> No, Brexit (IMO), was nothing to do with the financial crisis.


Here I disagree. Financial crisis, together with the subsequent "austerity" and lowering of standard of living for many ordinary folks, had a lot to do with Brexit.

I agree with your following statement:



> Brexit was the result of a 40+ year campaign of propaganda by the newspapers against the EEC/EC/EU and it's use as a scapegoat for stupid rules by governments of different parties for the whole time Britain was a member.


But such campaign became much easier when you have millions suffering economically and dissatisfied with the mainstream politics. Brexit referendum came just in the right time, after years of cutting of public services which caused lowering their standard. It made it easier to blame immigrants for longer queues to the GPs or lack of social support (supposedly it went to immigrants). 



> Then the mass immigration from central and eastern Europe did cause a lot of panic - prior to that, immigration had been pretty much confined to the larger cities, but the new immigrants from C&E Europe also went to smaller, fairly homogenous towns and that upset a lot of the residents who weren't used to change or hearing foreign languages spoken on the streets. Lots of people who shouldn't be thought of as out-and-out racists or xenophobes were concerned - the moronic government said they would control immigration but they couldn't, which helped build the impression that we didn't control our own country. Of course there were plenty of controls that could have been used built into the EU treaties, but for whatever reason the British government chose not to do that.


All true. But I will stand by my statement that if we didn't have 2008 crash and subsequent slow and protracted recovery combined with drastic austerity in public sector, then we wouldn't have Brexit. Brexiters really timed it well. They had one window of opportunity before demographic change (young people are pro-European while dying generation is most eurosceptic) and more substantial economic recovery and stupid Cameron played into their hands. 

Anti-immigrant sentiment and "blaming the other" always rises in economically difficult times. And the crucial few years after 2008 were really tough for millions of Brits. If I had to choose someone guilty of Brexit I would say Cameron and Osborne. Those arrogant posh boys first throwed millions of people under the proverbial bus and the completely misread their mood before calling this stupid and unnecessary referendum.



> And now we are left with a country run by a failed journalist, in the worst crisis since 1945. May you live in interesting times


Here I can 100% agree.



Kpc21 said:


> I don't really know how it actually works e.g. in English – but in Polish "szampan" (a loan word from "champagne") is just a common word for any sparkling wine and rarely does anyone have in mind the actual Champagne from Champagne. It may even be a cheap fake Russian version made by a Polish company:


Do people in Poland use name Prosecco or Cava in casual conversations? In the UK Prosecco is nowadays probably even more popular than Champagne.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Do people in Poland use name Prosecco or Cava in casual conversations?


Rather not, unless they mean specifically Prosecco or Cava and not a generic sparkling wine (then, they would say "szampan"; obviously it won't say so on the bottle).

In Germany I often heard about Prosecco, although they also have a generic word for sparkling wine: Sekt.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Ha, I've noticed those snooker articles as well. Apparently they have an active community. To be fair, U.S. roads are also fairly frequently featured on Wikipedia, even 'random' state routes.


I always get into Wikipedia via Google, so I go right to whatever I want to look up. So I never see the home page; that’s where this “featured” stuff is? Who’s deciding what’s featured. Is there an American roadgeek among them?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> But does it matter whether something is a registered trademark if the name has passed to the everyday language as a common noun for any thing of specific kind, regardless of the company which made it?
> 
> There are plenty of such words, it's a common phenomenon in languages...
> 
> And trademarking a common noun sounds like something ridiculous.
> 
> I don't really know how it actually works e.g. in English – but in Polish "szampan" (a loan word from "champagne") is just a common word for any sparkling wine and rarely does anyone have in mind the actual Champagne from Champagne. It may even be a cheap fake Russian version made by a Polish company:


Wait, “Sovietskoye”?


----------



## Coccodrillo

Yes, and every version of Wikipedia has a different article in the homepage.



Kpc21 said:


> But does it matter whether something is a registered trademark if the name has passed to the everyday language as a common noun for any thing of specific kind, regardless of the company which made it?


Yes, "scottex" became (at least here) a synonym for paper tissues used in kitchens, but no manufacturer except the original can use that name for its product. Other examples are kleenex for paper tissues or scotch for adhesive tape.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Coccodrillo said:


> Yes, and every version of Wikipedia has a different article in the homepage.
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, "scottex" became (at least here) a synonym for paper tissues used in kitchens, but no manufacturer except the original can use that name for its product. Other examples are kleenex for paper tissues or scotch for adhesive tape.


For a while in the U.S., any copier was a “xerox machine” (to my surprise, my auto-“correct” let me lower-case that just now) and “xerox” was a verb.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Winter is coming:


----------



## MichiH

Austria wants to copy the "success of Slovakia" with their mass test. It should happen after the full lockdown which begins now. Details will be published next week.


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> I always get into Wikipedia via Google, so I go right to whatever I want to look up. So I never see the home page; that’s where this “featured” stuff is? Who’s deciding what’s featured. Is there an American roadgeek among them?


Polish Wikipedia has several sections on the main page:
– "do you know?"
– events
– anniversaries
– medal ("golden") article
– good article
– medal ("golden") picture

The medal article, good article, medal picture are distinctions granted to the best, professional made articles. Any user can propose articles or pictures for those distinctions. Then, there is a 30-day long discussion between the users about the proposed article on a special page. It must be reviewed in detail by at least three users. Of course, everyone can report his remarks and doubts about whether the article should be classified as a "medal article" or "good article". There is also a procedure of a "medal revoke" if the article changes to worse in the future.

The anniversaries are probably based on the Wikipedia articles about specific years and days of the year, which mention all the important events that happened in them. Like this one: 2020 - Wikipedia or this one: November 15 - Wikipedia.

And the "do you know?" section... There is also a page, on which users may propose articles to appear in this section. The criteria are that the articles must be fresh or after a recent large update. And they are also checked by others. There is a special WikiProject that takes care of this section. WikiProjects are groups of users that focus on developing articles from a specific areas of knowledge – which can be very diverse, e.g. Polish Wikipedia has a "Roads and motorways" WikiProject.



Penn's Woods said:


> For a while in the U.S., any copier was a “xerox machine” (to my surprise, my auto-“correct” let me lower-case that just now) and “xerox” was a verb.


A photocopier or photocopy shop in Polish is "ksero", and the verb "to photocopy" – "kserować", "odkserować", "skserować".

The final "x" somehow got lost, and the pronunciation is changed – in English, even though it begins with "x", the "k" from "x" isn't pronounced, so de facto you pronounce it like "zerox". At least from what I was taught.


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> All true. But I will stand by my statement that if we didn't have 2008 crash and subsequent slow and protracted recovery combined with drastic austerity in public sector, then we wouldn't have Brexit. Brexiters really timed it well. They had one window of opportunity before demographic change (young people are pro-European while dying generation is most eurosceptic) and more substantial economic recovery and stupid Cameron played into their hands.
> 
> Anti-immigrant sentiment and "blaming the other" always rises in economically difficult times. And the crucial few years after 2008 were really tough for millions of Brits. If I had to choose someone guilty of Brexit I would say Cameron and Osborne. Those arrogant posh boys first throwed millions of people under the proverbial bus and the completely misread their mood before calling this stupid and unnecessary referendum.


I don't remember that much interest in leaving the EU among the general public before 2008, and certainly not before 2004. I did work with one young person 2004-2006 who was obsessed with hating the EU. He was very old-fashioned and was very interested in the British military, the Commonwealth and Royal Family. He ended up emigrating to New Zealand, presumably so he could find somewhere that was like Britain in the old days.

The Conservative Party made a big deal about the EU since the 90s but it was really an internal party matter. Most of the EU debate in politics in general was about whether to join the Euro currency. Nobody was seriously discussing leaving the EU. Even UKIP was mostly campaigning on keeping the pound, and less about immigration. Before 2004 there was little EU immigration. Most EU countries were richer than the UK and if anything there was a small flow of people leaving the UK for other EU countries. There was a famous comedy TV series from the 80s called "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet" where tradesmen went to work in Düsseldorf because they couldn't find a job in the UK. It was called "Pet" because most of the tradesmen were from Newcastle and in the local dialect it is common to affectionately call people "Pet".









pet - Wiktionary







en.wiktionary.org


----------



## Kpc21

So the situation was largely changed by the admission of poorer, central- and eastern-European countries to the EU, the citizens of which started to migrate for work to countries like the UK (the UK and Ireland being ones of the most popular probably for the linguistic reasons, although many Poles also went to the Netherlands even though learning Dutch has never been popular in Poland).

So it seems that Brexit is our (Poles') fault 

For some reasons, there is always a large group in the society of probably any country which dislikes immigrants.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> Wait, “Sovietskoye”?


Sovietskoye Igristoye was a popular mark in Hungary as well. It was originally a Soviet product (the name means something like "Soviet Sparkling (wine)"), but was produced in Hungary as well. USSR does not exist eny more, their sparkling wine does


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> Sovietskoye Igristoye was a popular mark in Hungary as well. It was originally a Soviet product (the name means something like "Soviet Sparkling (wine)"), but was produced in Hungary as well. USSR does not exist eny more, their sparkling wine does


Wow.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> So the situation was largely changed by the admission of poorer, central- and eastern-European countries to the EU, the citizens of which started to migrate for work to countries like the UK (the UK and Ireland being ones of the most popular probably for the linguistic reasons, although many Poles also went to the Netherlands even though learning Dutch has never been popular in Poland).


Eastern European countries joind EU in 2004. The "old" member states had the possibility, not to let citizens of the new ones work there, until at latest 2011. Germany, pretty obvious destination for Poles, used this possibilitiy, the UK did not. So Polish citizens (jus like Hungarian or Czech ones) needed a working permit in Germany between 2004-11, but not in the UK. I can't remember about the Netherlands.


----------



## cinxxx

Penn's Woods said:


> For a while in the U.S., any copier was a “xerox machine” (to my surprise, my auto-“correct” let me lower-case that just now) and “xerox” was a verb.


I'm reading an American book from 1987: The Monkey's Raincoat by Robert Crais. The term xerox copy was used just a few pages ago


----------



## Attus

It has a Hungarian web site and a Facebook page as well:








Szovjetszkoje Igrisztoje


Szovjetszkoje Igrisztoje



szovjetszkojeigrisztoje.hu




And the Facebook page has a lot of recent posts:




__





Log in or sign up to view


See posts, photos and more on Facebook.




www.facebook.com


----------



## radamfi

Attus said:


> Eastern European countries joind EU in 2004. The "old" member states had the possibility, not to let citizens of the new ones work there, until at latest 2011. Germany, pretty obvious destination for Poles, used this possibilitiy, the UK did not. So Polish citizens (jus like Hungarian or Czech ones) needed a working permit in Germany between 2004-11, but not in the UK. I can't remember about the Netherlands.


Only the UK, Ireland and Sweden allowed free movement for work from 2004.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> It has a Hungarian web site and a Facebook page as well:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Szovjetszkoje Igrisztoje
> 
> 
> Szovjetszkoje Igrisztoje
> 
> 
> 
> szovjetszkojeigrisztoje.hu
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And the Facebook page has a lot of recent posts:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> __
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Log in or sign up to view
> 
> 
> See posts, photos and more on Facebook.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.facebook.com


Is it still made, as opposed to sitting in people’s liquor cabinets? (What does 30-year-old sparkly taste like anyway?)


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> Is it still made


Yes, produced in Hungary (possibly in Poland as well).


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland it is stil made – the one produced here is very cheap and of low quality.

The same company also has some other sparkling wine brands, e.g. Dorato or Cin&Cin.

They also make a quite popular fake alcohol-free champagne for kids:










Which is actually nothing more than just an ordinary, sweet fizzy drink in a champagne-like bottle.

I remember that once, when big New Year concert parties were yet being organized in Łódź, it happened that the mayor of the city used it for the toast, as they wanted to promote partying without alcohol.


----------



## PovilD

Penn's Woods said:


> Winter is coming:
> View attachment 738273


We should get our colder weather by next weekend with chances of sleet and snow, but it's still week ahead, lots of space for update.


----------



## MichiH

Reuters | Breaking International News & Views


Find latest news from every corner of the globe at Reuters.com, your online source for breaking international news coverage.




de.reuters.com


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> Reuters | Breaking International News & Views
> 
> 
> Find latest news from every corner of the globe at Reuters.com, your online source for breaking international news coverage.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> de.reuters.com


Gosh!

Well, the governor of New York’s been saying it came here from Europe, not China....


----------



## Slagathor

Kpc21 said:


> many Poles also went to the Netherlands even though learning Dutch has never been popular in Poland).


I've taught Dutch to migrants from CEE and in my experience, they pick it up quickly. Especially the Poles, who usually know some German. Dutch is very close to German, but with much simpler grammar. Any Polish person who speaks German won't find it very difficult to learn Dutch.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> I don't remember that much interest in leaving the EU among the general public before 2008,


Precisely my point.

Just to make it clear. I don't underestimate the influence of migration from Eastern Europe after 2004. It really was visible everywhere and was probably most striking in smaller places which were previously not used to mass migration. Like the infamous Boston (and the wider Lincolnshire). That influx was then used by the committed Brexiters who cynically blamed immigrants for all the ills.

But here we return to the 2008 crash. People lost jobs, services were cut, etc. Suddenly the anti-immigrant narrative (which to some degree was always present in the UK) got even more traction with the wider public.

There are a few ways it happened.

First, in times of scarce jobs immigrants were easy to portrait as unfair competition, as people "stealing" the limited jobs. Such argument gets much less traction in boom times where in fact we often have shortage of labour.

Second, in times of limited resources (due to government cuts) it was easier to portrait immigrants as competition for those limited services. Especially in the healthcare sector ( the proverbial "queues to the GP"). It didn't really matter that immigrants from Eastern Europe were mainly young and healthy, didn't use much of health sector and claimed few benefits (less than average Brit). It was all about the perception, fueled by the crisis.

Third aspect is not related to the 2008 crash. It was easier to attack white immigrants from Europe without the fear of being called racist. Being anti-immigrant was previously associated with being racist and people often didn't want to be seen that way. So even if they did have some anti-immigrant views there was reluctance to express them or act on them. But if you were against "the Poles" it was more difficult to be called racist. Yes, smarter people could use word xenophobe but id didn't (and still doesn't) have the same sting. Suddenly being anti-immigrant was OK. It was simply "concern about the economy", a practical point of view, nothing to be ashamed of.

So suddenly leaving the EU, previously obsession of small minority of population was pushed to the center of political stage. With quite a help of British media which never really understood the EU. There were of course outlets openly hostile to the EU (no shortage of them, especially on the tabloid side) but even the more balanced organizations were strangely cynical toward the EU, the way they never were towards the US. Always looking for plots, twists etc.


Anyway, we are where we are. On one hand I find it a sad state of affair. But on the other hand it is definitely interesting thing to watch.

If I think about it, I was 12 when the Iron Curtain fell and Poland started its transition. It became obvious pretty quickly that the ultimate goal was joining the EU, club of rich and developed countries. It finally happened when I was 26, Poland joined the EU in 2004. Year later, at the age of 27 I moved to the UK. At the time it was a bit of adventure, little I knew that I will still be here more than 15 years later.... And now, at the age of 43 I will again live outside the EU. What next?

I guess time will tell...


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> First, in times of scarce jobs immigrants were easy to portrait as unfair competition, as people "stealing" the limited jobs. Such argument gets much less traction in boom times where in fact we often have shortage of labour.
> 
> Second, in times of limited resources (due to government cuts) it was easier to portrait immigrants as competition for those limited services. Especially in the healthcare sector ( the proverbial "queues to the GP"). It didn't really matter that immigrants from Eastern Europe were mainly young and healthy, didn't use much of health sector and claimed few benefits (less than average Brit). It was all about the perception, fueled by the crisis.


I'm going to go back a bit on what I said previously... the fact is the economy was doing pretty well by the time of the actual referendum, but the perception that "immigrants steal our jobs" was firmly ingrained in a lot a people and that was clearly spread as a result of the financial crisis.

The vile right-wing tabloids have been pushing the line that people travel thousands of miles from their homes just to claim benefits here for as long as I can remember, they are still doing it now about the poor people trying to cross the channel on inflatable dinghies. 



geogregor said:


> Third aspect is not related to the 2008 crash. It was easier to attack white immigrants from Europe without the fear of being called racist. Being anti-immigrant was previously associated with being racist and people often didn't want to be seen that way. So even if they did have some anti-immigrant views there was reluctance to express them or act on them. But if you were against "the Poles" it was more difficult to be called racist. Yes, smarter people could use word xenophobe but id didn't (and still doesn't) have the same sting. Suddenly being anti-immigrant was OK. It was simply "concern about the economy", a practical point of view, nothing to be ashamed of.


Absolutely right


geogregor said:


> There were of course outlets openly hostile to the EU (no shortage of them, especially on the tabloid side) but even the more balanced organizations were strangely cynical toward the EU, the way they never were towards the US. Always looking for plots, twists etc.


I don't know that cynical is the right word, but definitely not taken as seriously as it should have been. The silly stories like how bendy a banana needs to be always got far more coverage than how much our trade was improving or whatever. The number of British people choosing to live and work elsewhere in Europe was also not really talked about, they don't count as immigrants or something (a surprising minority of British residents in other EU countries voted FOR Brexit, which baffles me to this day). The British obsession with the US above all other countries is just strange, I suppose it's partly down to how familiar it all is with so much exposure from TV and Film, and obviously the language.


----------



## Attus

Hungary has a frightening new record: 107% of all Covid-19-tests are positive. 
OK, it's for sure a data error, but officially the authorities reported more new infections than the amount of executed tests.


----------



## PovilD

Attus said:


> Hungary has a frightening new record: 107% of all Covid-19-tests are positive.
> OK, it's for sure a data error, but officially the authorities reported more new infections than the amount of executed tests.


Window for new conspiracies.


----------



## radamfi

If Brexiteers were hoping for an end to immigration they will be very disappointed. Demographics mean immigration is essential. The UK has already relaxed immigration rules for NHS staff and has effectively given citizenship to millions of Hong Kongers. Skilled people from central/eastern Europe will still be able to apply for visas, but hardly any will apply. Why would say, a Polish person, get a limited time visa to come to the UK when they can go somewhere in the EU without a visa and know they can stay there as long as they like? Immigration will have to come from Asia and Africa, who may find it more difficult to integrate into British society, and who will be even more undesirable to racists.


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> Gosh!
> 
> Well, the governor of New York’s been saying it came here from Europe, not China....


We have also got it confirmed that it was present at least in January in Croatia despite first official case was registered on 25.02. We hade huge number of some weird lungs infections in late 2019, they have all been characterized as pneumonia, but it was very weird actually.


----------



## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> We have also got it confirmed that it was present at least in January in Croatia despite first official case was registered on 25.02. We hade huge number of some weird lungs infections in late 2019, they have all been characterized as pneumonia, but it was very weird actually.


I think the main reason Cuomo was saying this was to annoy Trump, who keeps calling it “the China virus.” But apparently they have established that the first cases on the East Coast were from the same strain that was seen in Italy, and the Chinese one was different.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> OK, it's for sure a data error, but officially the authorities reported more new infections than the amount of executed tests.


The results of the tests don't always come out on the same day. So it's possible that those tests were from different days.


----------



## riiga

Sweden is taking "drastic" measures: recently sale of alcohol was banned after 22:00 and now public gatherings are being limited to only 8 persons (down from 50). The prime minister has also made the point several times that the recommendations made by the Public Health Agency and the Regional Boards in practice are rules to be obeyed and not to be taken lightly (even if it isn't something the police can enforce).

I have noticed less people out and about and less traffic in the morning, but marginally so in the grocery stores. My work can't be done from home so I continue as usual while avoiding meeting other people than co-workers and my parents, shopping only necessary stuff, going out for walks in the woods rather than strolling down to the city, etc.


----------



## Penn's Woods

City of Philadelphia just announced new rules. Based, the guy said, on what’s been working in several European countries.

As far as I can tell, though, my haircut tomorrow is still legal.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The number of cases in the Netherlands has pretty much halved since a peak in late October, though the decline has started to stagnate.

They want the number of daily cases below 1200 (7/100k).


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> They want the number of daily cases below 1200 (7/100k).


Are you serious? The goal is less than 1,200 new cases / 7 days / 100,000 inhabitants? Germany is still under 100...


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> The number of cases in the Netherlands has pretty much halved since a peak in late October, though the decline has started to stagnate.
> 
> They want the number of daily cases below 1200 (7/100k).


Below 1200 lol. The only way that's gonna happen is when the season turns to Spring.



radamfi said:


> If Brexiteers were hoping for an end to immigration they will be very disappointed. Demographics mean immigration is essential. The UK has already relaxed immigration rules for NHS staff and has effectively given citizenship to millions of Hong Kongers. Skilled people from central/eastern Europe will still be able to apply for visas, but hardly any will apply. Why would say, a Polish person, get a limited time visa to come to the UK when they can go somewhere in the EU without a visa and know they can stay there as long as they like? Immigration will have to come from Asia and Africa, who may find it more difficult to integrate into British society, and who will be even more undesirable to racists.


You have to feel sorry for Hong Kongers who finally got offered a genuine British passport only to realize that it no longer allows them to live anywhere in the EU. Nor Scotland, soon, by the looks of it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MichiH said:


> Are you serious? The goal is less than 1,200 new cases / 7 days / 100,000 inhabitants? Germany is still under 100...


The goal is less than 7 per 100,000. That translates to less than 1200 per day. I have a hard time seeing that happen before spring... 

A problem is that people won't take it serious once the numbers drop, so they start to stagnate (or worse: rise again). My guess is that Christmas will cause another huge spike. People are not willing to give that up. 

They also banned fireworks this year to prevent a spike in hospitalizations. Though most of that is caused by illegal fireworks which are - you've guessed it - illegal. Fireworks have gotten out of hand in the Netherlands over the past 25 years, with large-scale vandalism and teenage boys doing ridiculous stunts such as blowing up washing machines, bus stops or setting streets on fire.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> The goal is less than 7 per 100,000. That translates to less than 1200 per day. I have a hard time seeing that happen before spring...


Got it! 



ChrisZwolle said:


> They also banned fireworks


Fireworks happened in the _German A49 forest_ last weekend...


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> You have to feel sorry for Hong Kongers who finally got offered a genuine British passport only to realize that it no longer allows them to live anywhere in the EU. Nor Scotland, soon, by the looks of it.


Yes, it was outrageous that only a few got offered proper British passports when Hong Kong reverted to China. Portugal gave people in Macau a passport. 

On the point about an independent Scotland, I would be surprised if free movement between England and Scotland is lost. There are too many Scottish people living in England. Free movement between Ireland and the UK continues under the Common Travel Area. So people in the UK can still move to Ireland, live there for 5 years and then get an Irish passport.


----------



## geogregor

Heart of the City on Monday lunchtime:


DSC03655 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC03708 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Most people on the streets are construction workers and various contractors, there are very few suits, taxis, limos and general traffic. In fact most traffic are buses and construction vehicles. I suspect construction managers enjoy the ease of getting deliveries to urban construction sites like this one:


DSC03678 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

I'm a bit surprised that more developers didn't pause at least some of the office developments. It is still hard to judge if we will need all this new office space if more people switch to at least partial home office.

The same applies with dense urban housing developments. Projects started in the recent months, despite all the talk of people moving to the far suburbs and rural location and working from home. In the Canary Wharf area they are starting quite a few residential towers as we speak.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> I'm a bit surprised that more developers didn't pause at least some of the office developments. It is still hard to judge if we will need all this new office space if more people switch to at least partial home office.


It would be interesting to see if we end up with a large volume of vacant and overvalued downtown real estate... 

The same goes for public transport. In the Netherlands train usage dropped by 40-50% once all government workers were ordered to work from home and by over 90% when the schools were also closed.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I am frequently the only person in a suit on the tube.. It still feels a bit strange. 

I have also noticed that the morning rush is earlier now, it's usually busier on the tube at 6.30 than at 7.30.


----------



## geogregor

DanielFigFoz said:


> I have also noticed that the morning rush is earlier now, it's usually busier on the tube at 6.30 than at 7.30.


I noticed it on the trains. A lot of those people are construction workers as well as the NHS staff and people working in supermarkets etc. Basically folks keeping the city going. They start earlier than "suits". They always have, they just haven't been noticed before as the focus was on the main "rush hour" a bit later when public transport network was swarmed by the office and retail workers, many of them starting their jobs around 8:30-9:00 rather than 6:30-8:00


----------



## mgk920

Penn's Woods said:


> If you don’t mind my saying so, I was starting to wonder about you...Wisconsin’s having a rough time. Everything all right?


I'm fine, 'positive' test results are up, but life seems to be going on as usual. I'm most miffed in that they aren't allowing fans to attend Packer games.

Mike


----------



## mgk920

Kpc21 said:


> But does it matter whether something is a registered trademark if the name has passed to the everyday language as a common noun for any thing of specific kind, regardless of the company which made it?
> 
> There are plenty of such words, it's a common phenomenon in languages...
> 
> And trademarking a common noun sounds like something ridiculous.
> 
> I don't really know how it actually works e.g. in English – but in Polish "szampan" (a loan word from "champagne") is just a common word for any sparkling wine and rarely does anyone have in mind the actual Champagne from Champagne. It may even be a cheap fake Russian version made by a Polish company:


Under USA federal trademark law, trademarks must be vigorously protected lest the trademark be lost. This happened to the word 'aspirin'. Bayer lost their USA trademark rights to that word when they failed to adequately protect it from everyday vernacular use. Now, anyone can legally use that word in the USA to denote a product containing acetylsalicylic *acid* (ASA) and marketed as a pain relieving drug.

There are many other commonly used words that are in fact registered trademarks where their owners are scared crazy that they may similarly lose their rights to those words, thus their legal departments vigorously and continually work to protect them.

Mike


----------



## andken

radamfi said:


> Immigration will have to come from Asia and Africa, who may find it more difficult to integrate into British society, and who will be even more undesirable to racists.


One of the few arguments that I've heard from Nigel Farage that made some sense is that when he argued that the UK was required to accept an unlimited number of White people from the EU instead of accepting people from the Commonwealth. But, I don't live in the UK and I'm the most pro-immigration type of person possible.



radamfi said:


> Portugal gave people in Macau a passport.


Portugal is relatively open to immigrants from their former colonies, to be fair. ;-)



ChrisZwolle said:


> It would be interesting to see if we end up with a large volume of vacant and overvalued downtown real estate...


I don't know about Amsterdam, Rotterdam and other other cities in NL, but I think that in global cities we are at most likely to see more realistic real estate prices for offices space. Companies will still need some real estate, and real estate prices in global cities had been insane in the last decades.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I wonder what disinfectant was used. I guess most of them would have issues when used like that


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Other than smallpox, no disease have ever been eradicated all over the world.
> Other diseases still exist, but they're kept under control with vaccines. It will be the case of covid too.


How about polio?


----------



## Penn's Woods

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> A genius among us has in his great and unmatched wisdom already freely shared his idea for how UV disinfection can be brought one step further.


LOL.


----------



## Penn's Woods

andken said:


> In Mexico they had a tunnel to spray disinfectant over people:


Doesn’t Putin do that?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

andken said:


> In Mexico they had a tunnel to spray disinfectant over people:


Speaking of Mexico, this country doesn't get much attention in reporting over here, but apparently they do not test as much and the number of cases is likely much higher than the 1 million they have recorded now. The case-fatality rate in Mexico is much higher than other countries that have recorded around 1 million cases. Mexico has almost 100,000 deaths, the 4th highest in the world while they have 5-10 times fewer recorded cases than other 100,000+ countries.

I've read somewhere that AMLOs response isn't much better than that of Trump or Bolsonaro, yet this is apparently ignored in the media (in Europe?)


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Speaking of Mexico, this country doesn't get much attention in reporting over here, but apparently they do not test as much and the number of cases is likely much higher than the 1 million they have recorded now. The case-fatality rate in Mexico is much higher than other countries that have recorded around 1 million cases. Mexico has almost 100,000 deaths, the 4th highest in the world while they have 5-10 times fewer recorded cases than other 100,000+ countries.
> 
> I've read somewhere that AMLOs response isn't much better than that of Trump or Bolsonaro, yet this is apparently ignored in the media (in Europe?)


The county judge in El Paso, Texas, was on TV last night talking about the dire situation there and mentioned it was worse across the border in Ciudad Juárez.

But, yeah, most of what we hear about the situation abroad is from Europe. Or when something extraordinary like New Zealand apparently eradicating it happens.


----------



## Penn's Woods

U.S. just passed 250,000 deaths.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> How about polio?


Only 175 cases worldwide in 2019, all in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Almost eradicated.
In 1988 there were 350,000 cases worldwide.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> Especially if they call 17 cases a 'wave'.


17 cases in South Australia which has a population of 1.7m. That means, 1 case per 100,000 inhabitants.

btw, it was reported that all ICUs in Switzerland are occupied now. France: 95%, Germany 78%*.

*I checked official data and think it's only 68%


----------



## andken

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've read somewhere that AMLOs response isn't much better than that of Trump or Bolsonaro, yet this is apparently ignored in the media (in Europe?)


Among journalists there is the joke about the Three Caballeros because of these three countries. Three federal republics where the national government basically tried to ignore the pandemic and that threw everything in the response to the coronavirus toward state and local governments, with really bad results.

But international media is mostly ignoring the countries that fared badly in LatAm(Most of them), the ones that had decent results(Paraguay, Costa Rica, Bolivia) and the absolute star, Uruguay.


----------



## Slagathor

The new cases in New Zealand were, ultimately, all traced back to logical sources. It always involved people breaking quarantine rules. 

There is very little evidence that covid infections occur through contaminated surfaces that were shipped around the globe. The viral loads are usually not significant enough, especially when it comes to sea transportation.

The Australian policy of eradication is feasible in their case. It's completely out of the question in Europe, but the Australians may still pull it off.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> The new cases in New Zealand were, ultimately, all traced back to logical sources. It always involved people breaking quarantine rules.
> 
> There is very little evidence that covid infections occur through contaminated surfaces that were shipped around the globe. The viral loads are usually not significant enough, especially when it comes to sea transportation.
> 
> The Australian policy of eradication is feasible in their case. It's completely out of the question in Europe, but the Australians may still pull it off.


If it was -completely- eradicated, breaking quarantine wouldn’t do it. Or am I missing something?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> The Australian policy of eradication is feasible in their case. It's completely out of the question in Europe, but the Australians may still pull it off.


We're now almost a year into the outbreak. Australia still has those small outbreaks, which are evidently enough reason to lock everything down.

A problem with low numbers is that awareness fades and people are going about their daily activities as if there is no virus. These are good conditions for the virus to spread quickly, we saw it in February after carnival, in early summer during Ramadan and in Canada during their Thanksgiving (which is in October). Canada is now also seeing a significant spike with even reports of overloaded hospitals:



https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-covid-19-wednesday-november-18-1.5806486


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> We're now almost a year into the outbreak. Australia still has those small outbreaks, which are evidently enough reason to lock everything down.
> 
> A problem with low numbers is that awareness fades and people are going about their daily activities as if there is no virus. These are good conditions for the virus to spread quickly, we saw it in February after carnival, in early summer during Ramadan and in Canada during their Thanksgiving (which is in October). Canada is now also seeing a significant spike with even reports of overloaded hospitals:
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-covid-19-wednesday-november-18-1.5806486


No “almost” actually:









It's been exactly one year since the first case of COVID was found in china


By December 2019, medical staff in Wuhan, China, were treating dozens of patients suffering from a mysterious pneumonia of unknown cause.




www.newsweek.com





And that’s forgetting about the news that it’s now known to have been circulating in...was it Italy?...a couple of months before that.


----------



## italystf

MichiH said:


> 17 cases in South Australia which has a population of 1.7m. That means, 1 case per 100,000 inhabitants.
> 
> btw, it was reported that all ICUs in Switzerland are occupied now. France: 95%, Germany 78%*.
> 
> *I checked official data and think it's only 68%


Some ICUs need to remain available to non-Covid patients.


----------



## italystf

Penn's Woods said:


> No “almost” actually:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's been exactly one year since the first case of COVID was found in china
> 
> 
> By December 2019, medical staff in Wuhan, China, were treating dozens of patients suffering from a mysterious pneumonia of unknown cause.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.newsweek.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And that’s forgetting about the news that it’s now known to have been circulating in...was it Italy?...a couple of months before that.


Scientific community is quite skeptical about that hypotesys.
It's almost certain that it originated in Wuhan around November and it probably arrived in Italy in December.


----------



## italystf

23 December 2019
Increase of pneumonia cases in Crema area








Salute, picco di polmoniti nel Cremasco


Sino a cinque casi quotidiani accertati al pronto soccorso nell’ultima settimana, la metà con ricovero. A rischio anziani e bambini, per gli adulti trattamenti antibiotici a domicilio seguiti dal medico di base




crema.laprovinciacr.it





7 January 2020
Increase of pneumonia cases in Milan: they could arise due to untreated flu








Polmonite, picco di casi a Milano: può derivare da influenza trascurata


Si tratta di un processo infiammatorio in genere di natura infettiva, spesso provocato dal batterio Pneumococco. A volte però a causarla può essere un virus




www.corriere.it


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> If it was -completely- eradicated, breaking quarantine wouldn’t do it. Or am I missing something?


Uuuuuh... Couldn't it have been completely eradicated in Australia/New Zeeland but brought by someone from abroad and spread because he broke the quarantine rules?


----------



## andken

Kpc21 said:


> Uuuuuh... Couldn't it have been completely eradicated in Australia/New Zeeland but brought by someone from abroad and spread because he broke the quarantine rules?


The issue with Covid is that a single person is enough to literally infect millions. That's why a lot of countries that did strict lockdowns for months still got very high death rates, and that's why lockdowns should be part of a larger suppression, not mitigation strategy.


----------



## Penn's Woods

italystf said:


> Scientific community is quite skeptical about that hypotesys.
> It's almost certain that it originated in Wuhan around November and it probably arrived in Italy in December.


I hadn’t heard that. Thanks.


----------



## geogregor

italystf said:


> That's the issue with every communicable disease. The difference is that other communicable diseases are either kept under control with vaccines (that create herd immunity) or enough harmless to most people (common cold or flu).
> Until the mid-20th century of so deadly outbreaks were part of the daily life. *Average lifespan was short because of that.*


Average life span was short mostly due to high rates of infant mortality as well as general low standard of hygiene and medicine. Majority of children didn't reach the age of 5. That really lowered the average. But once people reached adulthood surprising number lived quite long. Of course not as long as today but it is not true that majority died before 40 or around.

Yes we had deadly epidemics and pandemics in history but it wasn't main reason for the low *average *lifespan.

As for borders.

Closure of borders make sense only on the very early stage of epidemics, if it is still contained to single country or even better region. After that it is all over, you are fighting a loosing battle. Closing intra-European borders now is not practical. We have hundreds of thousands lorry drivers crisscrossing the continent. Plus a lot of other staff (pilots, medical staff, vaccine specialists, engineers etc.) You simply cannot stop it. Unless you want to dismantle the EU and the single market.

I know people yearn far safety of border (like Trump voters for wall) but is just false sense of security.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

The problem of having open borders, or high mobility in general, during an pandemic is that detection and tracking becomes much more difficult. In Europe it is of course not practical to seal it completely off, but just having some restrictions improves the situation greatly. But of course, the premiss is that the country you are trying to protect has an efficient and not overloaded system of detection and tracking the epidemic to begin with.


----------



## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> The problem of having open borders, or high mobility in general, during an pandemic is that detection and tracking becomes much more difficult. In Europe it is of course not practical to seal it completely off, but just having some restrictions improves the situation greatly. *But of course, the premiss is that the country you are trying to protect has an efficient and not overloaded system of detection and tracking the epidemic to begin with.*


Which is not the case in most European countries. In the UK track& trace is able to contact about 60% identified contacts. We can safely assume that many of those contacted won't isolate. So the whole system is probably less than 50% efficient. 

If didn't have to isolate for 14 days on my return from Poland it would be miniscule detail in epidemiological situation at the moment.

It is different if infections are at low level and we talking about tracing low numbers of people. 

Strict border quarantines make sense when one country has low number of cases and another one high. With virus rampant all over Europe it is statistically insignificant. Especially if travel is recommended only for people who really have to travel and regular tourism is pretty much dead.

There is also question what are we trying to achieve. Some island nations which never had high penetration of the virus (NZ, Australia, some Pacific island) seemingly try to achieve near virus eradication. In Europe the fight is mostly to flatten the curve until we reach immunity (due to vaccine or otherwise). Which is sensible. People advocating NZ approach in Europe are bonkers. It would be completely impractical.

Just to make it clear. I don't advocate "high mobility". Work from home makes perfect sense, limiting travel and gatherings etc. But I do feel annoyed that I can't visit my ageing mother after loosing father earlier in a year. I can't do that because I can't afford 14 days quarantine upon return. But my neighbor can do it, just because his parents live in the same country, even if it is hundreds of km away.

When people think about closing borders they think about tourism. Yes, I can skip holidays for a while. But my mum won't be around forever. In the EU we have millions of divided families. Limiting contacts for a few weeks is fine but for longer it is not practical. People have kids, parents and spouses in different countries.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Attus said:


> A land border, too, may be sealed perfectly, but it's pretty complex, epxensive, and you need long time for achieve it. In a flat area you can build a wall or a fence, but to have it really closed, so that not any single person can cross it, you need police to guard it day and night, at least one policeman in fifty meters. But in the mountains you need many years to build such a fence.
> And, yes, you need a lot of police. Multiple times more than currently. It will be very expensive.
> In the history, nations that built such fences or even walls, usually thought: if they are a few people crossing the border, it's OK, so they did something that was not perfect, but made 99+ percent of the job.


What about this?


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> Which is not the case in most European countries. In the UK track& trace is able to contact about 60% identified contacts. We can safely assume that many of those contacted won't isolate. So the whole system is probably less than 50% efficient.


In both Poland and UK I guess the systems have broken down due to the high number of cases. Most people lean on public transport when traveling abroad, meaning that you tend to meet a lot of people. Domestic travel in Europe is more car based, especially during this pandemic. Hence, I think quarantine after international travel is not without merits even in the case of UK.

The situation is different in the Nordics where track and trace, at least excluding Sweden, have enabled us to keep a lot of the society open throughout the pandemic. A large number of the new clusters in Norway lately have in fact originated from Polish guest workers, which turn out quite costly due to track and tracing and closing down of affected work places, schools, restaurants, gyms etc.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> Vaccine news: Pfizer is applying for “emergency use authorization” in the U.S. -tomorrow (Friday) morning- and doses will begin to be distributed as soon as it’s received. I haven’t heard how long that takes.


Review/approval should take a few weeks, I now hear. If all goes well, they could be vaccinating high-priority people by the second half of December.

(I know the federal government, months ago, went ahead and ordered millions of doses of a pending vaccine, taking the risk that they wouldn’t be able to use it, so that if they -could- use it, they could use it immediately. I think this is the one.)


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> I thought they weren’t letting anyone in. Anyone at all.


Is it even possible? How you then handle the transportation of goods



Attus said:


> A land border, too, may be sealed perfectly, but it's pretty complex, epxensive, and you need long time for achieve it. In a flat area you can build a wall or a fence, but to have it really closed, so that not any single person can cross it, you need police to guard it day and night, at least one policeman in fifty meters. But in the mountains you need many years to build such a fence.


But such borders are common even in some parts of Europe... The borders between Poland and Ukraine or between Poland and Russia (Kaliningrad region) don't have natural obstacles like rivers or mountains – and they are heavily guarded, so that it's almost impossible to get through not being caught. And if you are not a citizen of the country to which you sneaked in, you will probably be expelled after they discover you entered the country illegally.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Is it even possible? How you then handle the transportation of goods
> 
> 
> But such borders are common even in some parts of Europe... The borders between Poland and Ukraine or between Poland and Russia (Kaliningrad region) don't have natural obstacles like rivers or mountains – and they are heavily guarded, so that it's almost impossible to get through not being caught. And if you are not a citizen of the country to which you sneaked in, you will probably be expelled after they discover you entered the country illegally.


We're surrounded by hard borders from both direction. If Belarus unites with Russia (just describing case scenario) then we would be surrounded by Russia. Anxious experience. Some would say, dangerous.


----------



## Kpc21

At least you have an open border with us 

So it seems Poland is for you like a window to the western world.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> At least you have an open border with us
> 
> So it seems Poland is for you like a window to the western world.


Yeah.
Baltic Sea and Poland virtually. It's basically for all us three Baltic states.

If we want to go to any EU country that is not Scandinavia or another Baltic State, we must go through Poland. S61 is/will be our vital connector


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The 'Suwałki Gap'. It's an important concept in regional geopolitics.


----------



## Kpc21

Yeah, the small town which appears on all TV weather maps in Poland


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Yeah, the small town which appears on all TV weather maps in Poland


The small town that doesn't feel for us that unimportant  Most of our trips to Europe (excl. Nordics) goes through Suwalki  With S61/A5 being constructed, I think even more people would probably choose motorways instead of regular roads.


----------



## Kpc21

By the way, if we talk about Baltic states and TV... 

The East Germany main TV news were called "Aktuelle Kamera" – "Current Camera". This program was shut down with the end of communism and German reunification. A similar thing happened in Poland. In communism, the main TV news program was called "Dziennik Telewizyjny" – "TV Journal". One of the symbols of the end of communism was its name change to "Wiadomości" – "News" or, more literally, "Messages" (it's difficult to translate the English word "news" to Polish literally, without referring to the name of the main TV news program; but it would rather be something like "wieści" or "aktualności").

But... it seems Estonia (well, the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic back then) took the inspiration for the name from East Germany and named their news program "Aktuaalne kaamera". However... this name is still used, the program wasn't renamed.

So the name was a symbol of communism and its fall in Germany, but in Estonia it's still in use.


----------



## PovilD

Talking about East German legacy, I always remember green arrow 









Most Lithuanians want U.S. style turn on red regulations, so these became prominent through the years, now they are slightly reduced due to safety concerns, but still receive a lot of popularity. Even city local specialists don't understand why they are dangerous on pedestrians. Until like mid-2010s, you didn't even need to stop on red when you see the arrow.









Local variant ^^^


----------



## x-type

Since those fixed green right arrows are unexistable in Croatia, I am sure that at least 90% of drivers wouldn't know how to behave with it. Here it works only with additional green light. It's not that people are stupid, it is intuitive, but the habbits say different and it is hard to fight against them.
That is also one of things to think about inside the E(U) where the legislations about road signals are absolutely individual for each country.


----------



## radamfi

x-type said:


> Since those fixed green right arrows are unexistable in Croatia, I am sure that at least 90% of drivers wouldn't know how to behave with it. Here it works only with additional green light. It's not that people are stupid, it is intuitive, but the habbits say different and it is hard to fight against them.
> That is also one of things to think about inside the E(U) where the legislations about road signals are absolutely individual for each country.


Given that road signs are largely standardised in Europe, it is weird that signals can be so different. Surely it can be decided for all countries whether it goes straight from red to green or not? Although there are important differences in road signs as well. For example, in some countries it only requires a sign showing the name of the urban area you are entering for the speed limit to change to the urban speed limit. In other countries, you need a red circle sign to change the speed limit.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The sign reads: 'bridge not suitable for motor vehicles'


















Veegwagen zakt door brug – Centraal Deventer


Deventer Nieuws door Centraaldeventer.nl




www.centraaldeventer.nl


----------



## x-type

radamfi said:


> Given that road signs are largely standardised in Europe, it is weird that signals can be so different. Surely it can be decided for all countries whether it goes straight from red to green or not? Although there are important differences in road signs as well. For example, in some countries it only requires a sign showing the name of the urban area you are entering for the speed limit to change to the urban speed limit. In other countries, you need a red circle sign to change the speed limit.


And in some countries there are different types of those rectangular signs with name of the place, depending of which the urban speed limit is put into effect of not.


----------



## spartannl

ChrisZwolle said:


> The sign reads: 'bridge not suitable for motor vehicles'
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Veegwagen zakt door brug – Centraal Deventer
> 
> 
> Deventer Nieuws door Centraaldeventer.nl
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.centraaldeventer.nl


What a “sukkel”


----------



## PovilD

If talking about schools. I'm thinking how to put it, but in my life it was something important.

I've been changing schools, and I still tend to have thoughts of regret. The thing was that at first I went "to bad school" in my Soviet commieblock neighborhood (worst parts for me was general underfunding in building infrastructure and lack of active/good learning students which could be a better example for me...), and changed it to "good school" few districts away and about 30 min bus commute from home, but almost never felt that I feel better, maybe only for a year before graduation. I had social anxiety problem, and meeting new people was a slight struggle, especially during my mid-teen years, when I was trying my best to show my best part of my personality (that probably I don't have). Probably it was hard to fit for me in general, I had other hobbies than anybody else, I was not very into sports, while many in my school involved in at least some post-school sporting activities (some more, some less), many had interests in more pop stuff that I didn't had.

I appreciate old school for warmer relations with teachers which I didn't had in my new school. In my new school, classes were indeed bigger, school was cramped, while my old school had lots of space.
In new school you had to wear uniform which was quite unattractive for me, while in old school there were no uniforms, although I had thoughts that how cool it will be if I go to new school, and have uniform for academic purposes 

I was viewed as a strange kid in old school, but I thought that by changing schools I will new fresh start, but I didn't enjoyed 

On the other hand, I wanted to change school, because I had a feeling that I was missing something in life, but nothing much interesting found there, just status that you are "in better school"  I didn't wanted to change to my old school, because I thought I will change myself to fit better (my goal, kinda), but after few months I already felt nostalgic as probably nothing more nostalgic in my current life. ...and if I decided to change to old school after few months, parents would very likely not agree with me, they would probably say that if I lost my mind or smth, so I've stayed at new school, hoping for brighter tommorow.

Sorry if I sound too complainant. It's just my personal expierence. I don't say I didn't had any quirks... maybe I could be better person in some fields, maybe I was slightly lazy here and there.


----------



## Suburbanist

Children can quickly overwhelm an adult


----------



## noi-pinuela

My early morning road trip in Qatar; from West Bay Area to Al Wakrah District
more or less 27 km


----------



## Penn's Woods

TuneIn is a trip. Listening to France Bleu Elsass, where they’re speaking Alsatian and just played an oompah party mix from someone called Anton aus Tirol....


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> TuneIn is a trip. Listening to France Bleu Elsass, where they’re speaking Alsatian and just played an oompah party mix from someone called Anton aus Tirol....


They guy is called DJ Ötzi and the song is called Anton aus Tirol. It's from late 1990s.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The youth is much more rebellious in the Netherlands this year, due to the coronavirus restrictions. It was reported that the number of youth incidents had already doubled compared to last year and then the most problematic month is just ahead: December. They banned fireworks this year, so the youth thinks the government stole the one thing they could look forward to this winter. Many people are buying fireworks from other countries. So far posession is still legal so you can legally buy and transport it as long as it doesn't break any regulations on the quantity that is allowed. 

Fireworks incidents are also escalating over the past few weeks, with youth terrorizing neighborhoods and setting fires. Evidently the police doesn't do that much about it, they have their hands full on other types of enforcement relating to the coronavirus restrictions. This could be a riot-y kind of December.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> The youth is much more rebellious in the Netherlands this year, due to the coronavirus restrictions. It was reported that the number of youth incidents had already doubled compared to last year and then the most problematic month is just ahead: December. They banned fireworks this year, so the youth thinks the government stole the one thing they could look forward to this winter. Many people are buying fireworks from other countries. So far posession is still legal so you can legally buy and transport it as long as it doesn't break any regulations on the quantity that is allowed.
> 
> Fireworks incidents are also escalating over the past few weeks, with youth terrorizing neighborhoods and setting fires. Evidently the police doesn't do that much about it, they have their hands full on other types of enforcement relating to the coronavirus restrictions. This could be a riot-y kind of December.


Young people were remarkably patient this year and sacrificed a lot of freedoms (as well as economic prospects), largely for the sake of boomers. I was expecting more trouble to be honest.

But with economy sinking for at least few more months we are not out of the woods yet...

Especially in light of the fact that we will pay for this shit for decades to come:

Rishi Sunak warns 'economic emergency has only just begun'



> *The "economic emergency" caused by Covid-19 has only just begun, according to chancellor Rishi Sunak, as he warned the pandemic would deal lasting damage to growth and jobs.*
> 
> Official forecasts now predict the biggest economic decline in 300 years.
> 
> The UK economy is expected to shrink by 11.3% this year and not return to its pre-crisis size until the end of 2022.
> 
> Government borrowing will rise to its highest outside of wartime to deal with the economic impact.
> 
> The government's independent forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) expects the number of unemployed people to surge to 2.6 million by the middle of next year.
> It means the unemployment rate will hit 7.5%, its highest level since the financial crisis in 2009.


In Britain it is the biggest economic slump since the great frost of 1709. Larger than the great depression.

And with all the debts we are all basically screwed.


----------



## mgk920

ChrisZwolle said:


> The youth is much more rebellious in the Netherlands this year, due to the coronavirus restrictions. It was reported that the number of youth incidents had already doubled compared to last year and then the most problematic month is just ahead: December. They banned fireworks this year, so the youth thinks the government stole the one thing they could look forward to this winter. Many people are buying fireworks from other countries. So far posession is still legal so you can legally buy and transport it as long as it doesn't break any regulations on the quantity that is allowed.
> 
> Fireworks incidents are also escalating over the past few weeks, with youth terrorizing neighborhoods and setting fires. Evidently the police doesn't do that much about it, they have their hands full on other types of enforcement relating to the coronavirus restrictions. This could be a riot-y kind of December.


There are numerous video clips on YouTube of the Independence Day celebrations this year here in the USA (2020-07-04), especially in Chicago and Los Angeles. The governors of both California and Illinois (and many other states) essentially banned fireworks and other gatherings in their states (due to the Virus™) and the locals then proceeded to celebrate a holiday that is based on one of the most supreme ever acts of defiance by being . . . defiant.

Chicago





Mike


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> The youth is much more rebellious in the Netherlands this year, due to the coronavirus restrictions. It was reported that the number of youth incidents had already doubled compared to last year and then the most problematic month is just ahead: December. They banned fireworks this year, so the youth thinks the government stole the one thing they could look forward to this winter. Many people are buying fireworks from other countries. So far posession is still legal so you can legally buy and transport it as long as it doesn't break any regulations on the quantity that is allowed.
> 
> Fireworks incidents are also escalating over the past few weeks, with youth terrorizing neighborhoods and setting fires. Evidently the police doesn't do that much about it, they have their hands full on other types of enforcement relating to the coronavirus restrictions. This could be a riot-y kind of December.


Yeah, I'm very happy I no longer live in The Hague. I still remember the massive bon fires from New Year's Eve 2018 when they nearly burned half the city down. The Hague spends most of late December in a haze of smoke from illegal fires and fireworks even during a good year.



geogregor said:


> Young people were remarkably patient this year and sacrificed a lot of freedoms (as well as economic prospects), largely for the sake of boomers. I was expecting more trouble to be honest.
> 
> But with economy sinking for at least few more months we are not out of the woods yet...
> 
> Especially in light of the fact that we will pay for this shit for decades to come:
> 
> Rishi Sunak warns 'economic emergency has only just begun'
> 
> 
> 
> In Britain it is the biggest economic slump since the great frost of 1709. Larger than the great depression.
> 
> And with all the debts we are all basically screwed.


Yeah, I don't envy you guys. Brexit is coming and your chancellor is already aiming for austerity. It's gonna be rough.


----------



## geogregor

Slagathor said:


> Yeah, I don't envy you guys. Brexit is coming and your chancellor is already aiming for austerity. It's gonna be rough.


The biggest problem is that we have baboon and bunch of mediocre morons in power.


----------



## Fatfield

geogregor said:


> The biggest problem is that we have baboon and bunch of mediocre morons in power.


You don't say!


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1331599438935166976


----------



## bogdymol

A sad announcement has been made today.

No more Fucking, Austria. From 1st of January it will be renamed Tarsdorf.


----------



## Attus

What do you mean by that? Fucking is no separate, independent village, but is a part of Tarsdorf. Will it be Tarsdorf inside Tarsdorf, or what? 








Tarsdorf – Wikipedia







de.wikipedia.org


----------



## radamfi

Fucking, Austria - Wikipedia says it will be renamed "Fugging"


----------



## Attus

So, I found it:


> Der Gemeinderat hat beschlossen, die Ortschaft Fucking in den Ortschaftsnamen Fugging mit Wirkung vom 01 .01.2021 umzubenennen.


_Village council decided to rename the community Fucking to Fugging, as of Jan 1st 2021. _
Fucking was and is a part of Tarsdorf, and remains a part of it.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> What do you mean by that? Fucking is no separate, independent village, but is a part of Tarsdorf. Will it be Tarsdorf inside Tarsdorf, or what?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tarsdorf – Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> de.wikipedia.org



“Ende 2020 beschloss die Gemeinde, sich zum 1. Jänner 2021 in Fugging umzubenennen.”









Fugging (Gemeinde Tarsdorf) – Wikipedia







de.m.wikipedia.org





Humorlose Deutschsprachige.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> Humorlose Deutschsprachige.


I can understand them. All possible signs of the village were stolen in a daily basis. They tried for example to use signs carved in stone and similar tricks. And imagine living in a small village (Fucking has only a population of a hundred people), and having lots of tourists day by day, who come they in order to laugh about you and about the name of your village.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> I can understand them. All possible signs of the village were stolen in a daily basis. They tried for example to use signs carved in stone and similar tricks. And imagine living in a small village (Fucking has only a population of a hundred people), and having lots of tourists day by day, who come they in order to laugh about you and about the name of your village.











Intercourse, Pennsylvania - Wikipedia







en.m.wikipedia.org





It’s not far from Bird-in-Hand and Blue Ball.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> Intercourse, Pennsylvania - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.m.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It’s not far from Bird-in-Hand and Blue Ball.


Ignore. Wrong pic. Thought I had a Blue Ball town sign.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> Fucking, Austria - Wikipedia says it will be renamed "Fugging"


That article is hilarious, in a childish sort of way.


----------



## kosimodo

^^ rumours are they rename Petting first.


----------



## tfd543

Attus said:


> So, I found it:
> 
> _Village council decided to rename the community Fucking to Fugging, as of Jan 1st 2021. _
> Fucking was and is a part of Tarsdorf, and remains a part of it.


How is that possible? Then we gonna have 2 Fuggings. There is already the other village called Fugging.


----------



## Grotlaufen

Penn's Woods said:


> Intercourse, Pennsylvania - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.m.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It’s not far from Bird-in-Hand and Blue Ball.



Btw, what do the Amish in Intercourse think of the name? Now that we're in German territory that is.


----------



## radamfi

tfd543 said:


> How is that possible? Then we gonna have 2 Fuggings. There is already the other village called Fugging.


Why can't you have more than one village with the same name? Surely that is the case in many countries?

The Australian snooker player, Neil Robertson, is famous for missing a snooker tournament because he drove to the wrong Barnsley. Most British people know Barnsley to be a moderately significant town in the north of England but Robertson, being from Australia, didn't know that and used his Satnav to drive to a small village called Barnsley about 300 km away from where he was supposed to be.









Robertson drives to the wrong Barnsley


Former world champion Neil Robertson forfeits his World Open qualifier - after driving to the wrong Barnsley.




www.bbc.co.uk


----------



## Penn's Woods

Grotlaufen said:


> Btw, what do the Amish in Intercourse think of the name? Now that we're in German territory that is.


I’m guessing they appreciate the attention and dollars from tourists.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> Why can't you have more than one village with the same name? Surely that is the case in many countries?
> 
> The Australian snooker player, Neil Robertson, is famous for missing a snooker tournament because he drove to the wrong Barnsley. Most British people know Barnsley to be a moderately significant town in the north of England but Robertson, being from Australia, didn't know that and used his Satnav to drive to a small village called Barnsley about 300 km away from where he was supposed to be.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Robertson drives to the wrong Barnsley
> 
> 
> Former world champion Neil Robertson forfeits his World Open qualifier - after driving to the wrong Barnsley.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.bbc.co.uk


Weren’t we talking about the dominance of snooker in the public consciousness a few days ago?


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> Weren’t we talking about the dominance of snooker in the public consciousness a few days ago?


We were talking about how snooker gets a disproportionate amount of coverage in Wikipedia. It is still a very big sport in Britain and gets very good TV ratings, although snooker is nowhere near as big as it was in the 1980s. In those days snooker players were on TV game shows and snooker matches were big news. The biggest ever TV audience after midnight was the 1985 World Championship. Even though I was only 10 years old I was allowed to stay up at watch the end. The top snooker player, Steve Davis, was the highest paid sportsman in Britain, above soccer players. I was trying to find evidence of this to prove this to a young person and bizarrely the only thing I could find was this 1985 LA Times article:









Suddenly, Pool Game of Snooker Has Become the Rage in England : As TV Drama, It Plays and Draws Better Than 'Dynasty,' and It Has Made Wealthy Celebrities of Its Best Players


The most popular sport on British television is not soccer, or golf or rugby or cricket but the once-lowly game of pool known as snooker.




www.latimes.com





The current world number one ranked player is called Trump!


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> We were talking about how snooker gets a disproportionate amount of coverage in Wikipedia. It is still a very big sport in Britain and gets very good TV ratings, although snooker is nowhere near as big as it was in the 1980s. In those days snooker players were on TV game shows and snooker matches were big news. The biggest ever TV audience after midnight was the 1985 World Championship. Even though I was only 10 years old I was allowed to stay up at watch the end. The top snooker player, Steve Davis, was the highest paid sportsman in Britain, above soccer players. I was trying to find evidence of this to prove this to a young person and bizarrely the only thing I could find was this 1985 LA Times article:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Suddenly, Pool Game of Snooker Has Become the Rage in England : As TV Drama, It Plays and Draws Better Than 'Dynasty,' and It Has Made Wealthy Celebrities of Its Best Players
> 
> 
> The most popular sport on British television is not soccer, or golf or rugby or cricket but the once-lowly game of pool known as snooker.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.latimes.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The current world number one ranked player is called Trump!


Ah, yes. I couldn’t remember the context.


----------



## CNGL

I was about to say that. No more f***ing village in Austria. But there is always Unterfucking and Oberfucking.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Grotlaufen said:


> Btw, what do the Amish in Intercourse think of the name? Now that we're in German territory that is.


“Mennonites” is a broader term than “Amish” - the Amish are a sect within the Mennonite group - but Mennonites have been known to satirize it:









Frat Boys Disappointed with Visit to Intercourse, Pennsylvania


INTERCOURSE, PA Dozens of lecherous Pennsylvania frat boys are upset and considering litigation after a visit to the small Amish town of Intercourse did not go as expected. “I truly feel like we were misled,” [...]




dailybonnet.com


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> We were talking about how snooker gets a disproportionate amount of coverage in Wikipedia. It is still a very big sport in Britain and gets very good TV ratings, although snooker is nowhere near as big as it was in the 1980s. In those days snooker players were on TV game shows and snooker matches were big news. The biggest ever TV audience after midnight was the 1985 World Championship. Even though I was only 10 years old I was allowed to stay up at watch the end. The top snooker player, Steve Davis, was the highest paid sportsman in Britain, above soccer players. I was trying to find evidence of this to prove this to a young person and bizarrely the only thing I could find was this 1985 LA Times article:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Suddenly, Pool Game of Snooker Has Become the Rage in England : As TV Drama, It Plays and Draws Better Than 'Dynasty,' and It Has Made Wealthy Celebrities of Its Best Players
> 
> 
> The most popular sport on British television is not soccer, or golf or rugby or cricket but the once-lowly game of pool known as snooker.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.latimes.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The current world number one ranked player is called Trump!


I love watching snooker.

Actually my first experience of snooker coverage was in the 1990 or 1991. Our housing association set up satellite dish on the roof of our block of flats and we got two western channels. RTL from Germany and Sky from the UK. At the time we only had black and white TV set and I didn't speak a word of English (nor German). But that didn't stop me from watching Ninja Turtles, WWF and.... snooker.

When I think about it now I find it bizarre. The balls were in all the shades of grey, I didn't know the rules and I didn't understand the commentary. But somehow, after a while I learned to recognize the grey which was representing the reds as well of course as black and white. And I even got basics of rules and scoring. But my interest faded after a year or two, especially once we got more TV channels and shows translated to Polish

Then when I moved to the UK, 15 years later, I eventually rediscovered snooker again. This time in colour and with all the commentary and context. It is great game. At the top level games can be real joy to watch. I remember couple of year ago I watched finals until 1am despite the fact I had to get up early the next morning. It was one of those gems when opponents kept setting up snooker on each other in multiple frames. Recently I watch snooker much less, got distracted by Netflix ad the likes. Which is a bit sad...


Oh, and about the RTL in the early 90s... With my brother we watched shows like A-Team, Knight Rider, Airwolf etc. We watched it in German, without understanding the dialog, but still getting gist of the story. But that is completely different subject than snooker


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> I love watching snooker.
> 
> Actually my first experience of snooker coverage was in the 1990 or 1991. Our housing association set up satellite dish on the roof of our block of flats and we got two western channels. RTL from Germany and Sky from the UK. At the time we only had black and white TV set and I didn't speak a word of English (nor German). But that didn't stop me from watching Ninja Turtles, WWF and.... snooker.
> 
> When I think about it now I find it bizarre. The balls were in all the shades of grey, I didn't know the rules and I didn't understand the commentary. But somehow, after a while I learned to recognize the grey which was representing the reds as well of course as black and white. And I even got basics of rules and scoring. But my interest faded after a year or two, especially once we got more TV channels and shows translated to Polish
> 
> Then when I moved to the UK, 15 years later, I eventually rediscovered snooker again. This time in colour and with all the commentary and context. It is great game. At the top level games can be real joy to watch. I remember couple of year ago I watched finals until 1am despite the fact I had to get up early the next morning. It was one of those gems when opponents kept setting up snooker on each other in multiple frames. Recently I watch snooker much less, got distracted by Netflix ad the likes. Which is a bit sad...
> 
> 
> Oh, and about the RTL in the early 90s... With my brother we watched shows like A-Team, Knight Rider, Airwolf etc. We watched it in German, without understanding the dialog, but still getting gist of the story. But that is completely different subject than snooker


The rollout of colour TV in the 70s was the main reason why snooker became popular. Before then it was a very niche sport. BBC executives wanted to show programmes that made the most of colour TV, hence snooker. The BBC gradually showed more and more snooker each year and by the 80s BBC2 used to show snooker almost all day long during the World Championship, basically 10am to midnight with only small gaps. And this is when we only had 4 channels. The BBC still cover the three biggest tournaments but all the rest are on Eurosport. Eurosport coverage is credited with making the sport more popular in mainland Europe and now there are professionals from Belgium, Switzerland, Germany and Poland.

The pandemic means that the tournaments have to be played without a crowd, so they have decided to play all tournaments in Milton Keynes for the time being, even ones usually in other countries, like the Northern Ireland Open and Scottish Open.

When satellite TV started in the UK in the early 90s, we could get all the German channels for free as they were not encrypted and they were in the same position in the sky as British channels. So a lot of people watched the erotic TV late at night as it was far more explicit than British TV. Unfortunately that ended when Sky went digital as they moved the satellite position to different position in the sky.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't think snooker is a thing in the Netherlands. I don't follow sports on TV but I never see it in the headlines.


----------



## Slagathor

Didn't we have some good players like a decade ago?

EDIT: never mind, that was darts I think.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't think snooker is a thing in the Netherlands. I don't follow sports on TV but I never see it in the headlines.


There was a Dutch professional about 15 years ago but he didn't last long. However, arguably the most well known referee is Dutch, Jan Verhaas









Jan Verhaas - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> Didn't we have some good players like a decade ago?
> 
> EDIT: never mind, that was darts I think.


Obviously darts is massive in the Netherlands! Raymond van Barneveld ("Barney") was five times world champion and retired last year, although he is now thinking of a comeback.

Michael van Gerwen is three times world champion and has been dominant in the sport for about 5 years, although he's becoming less consistent in the last year or two. He's got a very glamourous wife called Daphne.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The largest party in the Netherlands imploded this week: Forum for Democracy. Almost all high-profile members quit the party over the party leader Thierry Baudet who seemingly spun out of control in the maze of conspiracy theories and nazism / anti-semitism in its youth wing.

FvD is a right-wing nationalist party who got the most votes in the 2019 provincial elections (and thereby in the Dutch senate). They moved into the void that is perceived to have been left by the traditional center-right parties. It's a bit of a controversial party, with debate as to whether they are far-right or not, with Baudet getting involved with the conspiracy thinkers over the coronavirus, George Soros's world takeover and Hillary Clinton's child abuse ring (yes this is a 'thing' in the Netherlands as well.... ).


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't think snooker is a thing in the Netherlands. I don't follow sports on TV but I never see it in the headlines.


I’m not clear what it even is...what Americans call pool?


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The largest party in the Netherlands imploded this week: Forum for Democracy. Almost all high-profile members quit the party over the party leader Thierry Baudet who seemingly spun out of control in the maze of conspiracy theories and nazism / anti-semitism in its youth wing.
> 
> FvD is a right-wing nationalist party who got the most votes in the 2019 provincial elections (and thereby in the Dutch senate). They moved into the void that is perceived to have been left by the traditional center-right parties. It's a bit of a controversial party, with debate as to whether they are far-right or not, with Baudet getting involved with the conspiracy thinkers over the coronavirus, George Soros's world takeover and Hillary Clinton's child abuse ring (yes this is a 'thing' in the Netherlands as well.... ).


Is this Wilder’s party?


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> I’m not clear what it even is...what Americans call pool?


There are various kinds of pool, for example 8-ball, 9-ball and blackball. Snooker is different to all those. It is played on a much bigger table than pool (and the variants of pool have different sized tables themselves) and the pockets are smaller. There are plenty of snooker games on YouTube, for example the fastest maximum break by Ronnie O'Sullivan:






He earned £147,000 in 5 minutes.


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> Is this Wilder’s party?


No, we've got two extreme right wing parties now. Luckily, between the two of them, they've never really polled higher than ~30 seats out of 150. They also tend to steal seats from each other; one goes up, the other goes down. So there's somewhat of a ceiling for these lunatics and it's far removed from the majority of 76 seats.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> Is this Wilder’s party?


No, it is a separate party that was established more recently. It was originally a movement against the EU-Ukraine association treaty, which resulted in a referendum in the Netherlands (where there was a no vote against the treaty).


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> There are various kinds of pool, for example 8-ball, 9-ball and blackball. Snooker is different to all those. It is played on a much bigger table than pool (and the variants of pool have different sized tables themselves) and the pockets are smaller. There are plenty of snooker games on YouTube, for example the fastest maximum break by Ronnie O'Sullivan:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> He earned £147,000 in 5 minutes.


...and then appeared on Top Gear, if memory serves.


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> ...and then appeared on Top Gear, if memory serves.


Yes, wow, that's quite impressive knowledge for someone who isn't sure what snooker is!  Ronnie has had remarkable longevity in the sport, now almost 45 and just won his sixth world championship in August. He is largely unknown in the US, and there was a TV show that exploited that ("Ronnie O'Sullivan's American Hustle"). He went into pool halls in America and played against locals for money and because nobody knew he was, he cleaned up. There are various videos of that on the internet.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> Yes, wow, that's quite impressive knowledge for someone who isn't sure what snooker is!  Ronnie has had remarkable longevity in the sport, now almost 45 and just won his sixth world championship in August. He is largely unknown in the US, and there was a TV show that exploited that ("Ronnie O'Sullivan's American Hustle"). He went into pool halls in America and played against locals for money and because nobody knew he was, he cleaned up. There are various videos of that on the internet.


I used to watch those Top Gear episodes on a channel called BBC America that re-ran them a lot. So I’ve seen them all multiple times. I didn’t remember his name, but did recommend a professional snooker player who’d had a big win.


----------



## AnelZ

ChrisZwolle said:


> The largest party in the Netherlands imploded this week: Forum for Democracy. Almost all high-profile members quit the party over the party leader Thierry Baudet who seemingly spun out of control in the maze of conspiracy theories and nazism / anti-semitism in its youth wing.


The way it is going, the same could happen with SDA in Bosnia and Herzegovina which is currently the largest Bosniak party. Two weeks ago on local elections they lost many urban municipalities. The Sarajevo branch is currently on very thin ice. Many high ranking members are literally giving ultimatums what has to be done in order for them to stay in the party. I could be two interesting and very uncertain years for the Party and if they record a major decline in the 2022 general elections it could really spell the doom for them.


----------



## radamfi

DFDS are starting a new freight ferry service from Rosslare in the southeast of Ireland to Dunkerque in northern France so that trucks avoid having to drive through Wales and England. It takes longer but avoids customs paperwork.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> Yes, wow, that's quite impressive knowledge for someone who isn't sure what snooker is!


Ha, ha, Penn's Woods seems to have some random knowledge. From languages to snooker players  



> Ronnie has had remarkable longevity in the sport, now almost 45 and just won his sixth world championship in August. He is largely unknown in the US, and there was a TV show that exploited that ("Ronnie O'Sullivan's American Hustle"). He went into pool halls in America and played against locals for money and because nobody knew he was, he cleaned up. There are various videos of that on the internet.


Somehow I developed dislike of Ronnie. Usually I support whoever plays against him


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> Somehow I developed dislike of Ronnie. Usually I support whoever plays against him


He's obviously been a very controversial figure. He's assaulted officials, regularly says stupid things in interviews, and is very arrogant. For example he doesn't think he should have to qualify for tournaments. He thinks it should be like in the old days when the top 16 players would automatically advance to the last 32 stage with the remaining 16 players having to qualify. Nowadays, the first round of most tournaments starts with 128 players and every player starts in the first round. For some tournaments, the early rounds are played at a separate venue and Ronnie boycotts those tournaments. Some people are annoyed by the fact he picks and chooses the tournaments he plays in.

On the other side he is a very fast (and therefore popular) player and most commentators now consider him the best player of all time. He's also had to contend with depression and his father going to prison for murder. So maybe allowances should be made because of that.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is a clear coronavirus fatigue in the Netherlands. Advice from the government is outright ignored, people went Black Friday shopping, traffic volumes are back to 2019 levels, youngsters are rebellious in the streets. I'm not sure if they can keep this going for much longer. On the other hand the pressure on the health care system is not that high, there are currently 1769 people hospitalized, down over 30% this month.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> There is a clear coronavirus fatigue in the Netherlands. Advice from the government is outright ignored, people went Black Friday shopping, traffic volumes are back to 2019 levels, youngsters are rebellious in the streets. I'm not sure if they can keep this going for much longer. On the other hand the pressure on the health care system is not that high, there are currently 1769 people hospitalized, down over 30% this month.


In the meantime here in the UK there is huge debate in the media about how many people you should meet over Xmas, should you hug family members etc. This morning on the radio I heard advise from health officials to avoid board games during family gatherings as there is "too much touching of the same objects".

The whole thing is reaching new levels of absurdity and madness. If it continues soon we will receive "scientific advice" how to wipe our own ass...

I don't know, do politicians, scientific advisers, bureaucrats and journalists really think that people don't have their own brains? If you have Xmas dinner with family it is rather irrelevant if you play chess or domino afterwards. If someone in the household have Covid you will most likely get it regardless whether you play a game of cards or not.

The new tier system is also widely criticized. Some localities with lower level of infections are in higher tiers of restrictions just because they belong to large county where cases might be driven by completely different region. Some conservative MPs are furious at their own government, including some quite influential ones.

There are also absurdities like this one:
Covid: Groombridge village pubs split by 'perplexing' tiers



> *The landlords of two pubs in a village that sits on a county border say it makes no sense that only one of them can open under coronavirus measures coming into force next week.*
> 
> Groombridge has two pubs, but the Crown Inn is in Kent's tier three and the Junction is in East Sussex tier two.
> 
> Steve Harmes, at the Crown, said it was "horrendous" and the Junction's Tiffany Pearson-Gills called it "perplexing".
> 
> The BBC has approached the Department of Health for comment.
> 
> The pubs are 0.4 miles apart, and there is a seven-minute walk between them.
> However, under next week's rules, residents on either side of Groombridge, home to about 1,600 people, should not cross over the county border at a bridge over the river - meaning Kent villagers cannot go to the East Sussex pub.
> 
> Mr Harmes said not being able to open was "very frustrating".
> 
> "We were not in such a bad position before, but now, being put in this position, it's really hard for us to move forward."
> 
> He said even if the tiers were reviewed in December, the pub would not be able to prepare and take advantage of the busy Christmas period.
> 
> Asked if he could make up for the loss, he said: "It's not going to happen."


I never had particularly high opinion about the current government but I'm fast loosing faith in the wider British state apparatus. Sometimes it all feels like bad written comedy, whether is Brexit or response to pandemic.


----------



## x-type

About this Black Friday thing - how long does it live in your countries? I msut admit that I have never heard of it untill some 7-8 years ago. Something rings a bell about Americans and their crazy shopping at certain day, camping in front of Wallmarts etc, but it was never known here that much. Also, it turned to be Black Month, not only friday. And all those discounts are a big fraud, it is really subintelligent to believe into them.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Black Friday, Cyber Monday & Single's Day are all something introduced in the past decade in the Netherlands. 

There are often complaints that those sale deals are not very good deals at all.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> The whole thing is reaching new levels of absurdity and madness.


I'm under the impression that most restrictions' efficacy are more based on guesswork than real-world evidence. They often introduce so many restrictions at the same time that you can't make out which ones are effective and which ones aren't.


----------



## radamfi

x-type said:


> About this Black Friday thing - how long does it live in your countries? I msut admit that I have never heard of it untill some 7-8 years ago. Something rings a bell about Americans and their crazy shopping at certain day, camping in front of Wallmarts etc, but it was never known here that much. Also, it turned to be Black Month, not only friday. And all those discounts are a big fraud, it is really subintelligent to believe into them.


In Britain the sales traditionally started in January, which then became 26 or 27 December. There were lots of people waiting outside shops to get the best bargains. Some shops open at 5am on the first opening day after Christmas. But now Britain has copied the US with Black Friday, lasting throughout most of November. Some shops have made publicity by saying they won't participate in Black Friday this year, making they point that their prices are low all year around. There is a lockdown in England at the moment so a lot of shops are closed, although many are still open as it is still allowed to collect items at shops bought on the internet. Crazily, some stores of the popular clothes shop Primark chain are going to be open 24 hours a day when lockdown ends on Wednesday.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> Crazily, some stores of the popular clothes shop Primark chain are going to be open 24 hours a day when lockdown ends on Wednesday.


Shopping for bad quality T-shirt at 3 am. Dreams do come true sometimes


----------



## MichiH

geogregor said:


> I don't know, do politicians, scientific advisers, bureaucrats and journalists really think that people don't have their own brains?





x-type said:


> About this Black Friday thing ... And all those discounts are a big fraud, it is really subintelligent to believe into them.


It seems that many people lost their minds - brains out of order.

Politicians, scientific advisers, bureaucrats and journalists are also "just" people...


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm under the impression that most restrictions' efficacy are more based on guesswork than real-world evidence.


Yep! It is the first pandemic for a very long time. There is no experience. And politicians of every country or even region within each country don't trust each other and always know it best!

I think that the quickest way to get rid off these stupid restictions is, to obey the restrictions and reduce social contacts as much as possible.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think that almost every country has a playbook and contingency plans for an epidemic. In so far they are at least somewhat prepared. But evidently most of those plans did not include the restrictions we are seeing now.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Masks can be effective but are mandatory in places where few infections occur and are not worn where most infections occur. *The chance of getting infected during a dinner or get-together with friends or family is much greater than in a supermarket or in the street.*
> 
> If masks were really so effective as portrayed, we wouldn't have millions of new cases per week. It also can't explain why the Netherlands managed to get the first wave under control without mask usage at the same rate as countries that mandated masks and strict lockdowns from the beginning.
> 
> Nobody is respecting social distancing anymore with masks.


Yes, and those are exactly the locations where people refuse to wear masks. They go to the house of a relative or a friend, in order to sit in the living room talking for hours without masks on. What do they expect?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't visit my 85 and 89 year old grandmothers for that reason. I haven't seen them for almost a year now.

But they are quite lonely, with so few visitors. Many people at that age don't know how to entertain themselves either. My grandmother used to bake things for her children and grandchildren but almost nobody is visiting her. And doing puzzles all day long for months is boring too. One of them at least knows how to browse Facebook on a tablet. The other just waits for time to pass.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't visit my 85 and 89 year old grandmothers for that reason. I haven't seen them for almost a year now.
> 
> But they are quite lonely, with so few visitors. Many people at that age don't know how to entertain themselves either. My grandmother used to bake things for her children and grandchildren but almost nobody is visiting her. And doing puzzles all day long for months is boring too. One of them at least knows how to browse Facebook on a tablet. The other just waits for time to pass.


Some people here are socializing remotely. Would their living situation (and the weather) permit setting up lawn chairs outdoors? There was a lot of talk here about outdoor Thanksgiving dinners. Although I can’t say I know anyone who actually did it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I call my grandmother from time to time, but get-togethers outside is difficult, it's winter now and one lives in an apartment and the other in a care home.


----------



## Slagathor

It was 2 degrees Celsius today so outdoor activities are quite limited. 

"My grandpa died."
- "Sorry to hear that. Covid?"
"Hypothermia."


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> It was 2 degrees Celsius today so outdoor activities are quite limited.
> 
> "My grandpa died."
> - "Sorry to hear that. Covid?"
> "Hypothermia."


I see you’re not joking.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^I’ve got a few such places in my iPhone weather.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> Black Friday, Eastern European way:
> View attachment 791155


Hey mods, I just somehow flagged this, but totally by mistake. Sorry!


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> I see you’re not joking.
> View attachment 795752


I don’t even want to know what time the sun sets at that latitude at the end of November.


----------



## geogregor

This was last weekend in England under national lockdown, from Wednesday country switches to system of tiers of restrictions. As shops, museums, pubs and restaurants are all closed parks are full of people, despite gloomy and grey weather. In my local park there was long queue to get some takeaway drinks:


DSC04474 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

It was just silly.

Luckily pub around the corner was selling mulled wine, and there was no queue 

I can't wait for pubs to reopen, just two more days...

London will be in tier 2 which means drinking only with "substantial meal". 

Short explanation of English rules which will apply from Wednesday:










Well, some are getting ready 


substantial meal by Geogregor*, on Flickr


substantial meal 2 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> I don’t even want to know what time the sun sets at that latitude at the end of November.


Today we'll have 8 hours and 7 minutes of daylight.

Sunrise at 8:25, sunset at 4:32.

But, to be honest, when it's overcast or foggy (which it frequently is), it starts to get noticeably darker around 3 PM or 3.30 PM.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> Today we'll have 8 hours and 7 minutes of daylight.
> 
> Sunrise at 8:25, sunset at 4:32.
> 
> But, to be honest, when it's overcast or foggy (which it frequently is), it starts to get noticeably darker around 3 PM or 3.30 PM.


Sunset’s just about the same as here then. You must be farther west in that time zone than I thought, it comes -up- here at 7:02 today. (Sets at 4:36.)

So if you went to year-round daylight saving time, which would be the only way to abolish time changes (which I don’t personally see the need for) while keeping wonderful long summer evenings, you’d be going to work in the dark....


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> Sunset’s just about the same as here then. You must be farther west in that time zone than I thought, it comes -up- here at 7:02 today. (Sets at 4:36.)


Much of western Europe is in the "wrong" time zone. 7.5 degrees east passes approximately through Bern, so France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and especially Spain ought to be in the UTC±00:00 time zone.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> Much of western Europe is in the "wrong" time zone. 7.5 degrees east passes approximately through Bern, so France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and especially Spain ought to be in the UTC±00:00 time zone.


I’ve always said so. Although it’s none of my business.  Having Lublin and Lugo, or if you prefer both Galicias, on the same time....

-Really- hope there are still post-10 p.m. sunsets next time I’m in the Benelux or northern France in July.... (sigh). Best we get here is about 8:35.

75 west and 40 north intersect very close to me actually. Both pass through Philadelphia but they meet in New Jersey.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> Sunset’s just about the same as here then. You must be farther west in that time zone than I thought, it comes -up- here at 7:02 today. (Sets at 4:36.)
> 
> So if you went to year-round daylight saving time, which would be the only way to abolish time changes (which I don’t personally see the need for) while keeping wonderful long summer evenings, you’d be going to work in the dark....


It's the case even right now (OK, not considering the fact that I work in home office because of Covid-19). When I start working, it's dark outside. Usually I go to work around half past seven, and it's dark here at that time (although I'm a few hundreds of kilometers east of Amsterdam). The sun rises after 8AM. And it is not December yet. With DST in winter, it would be dark till half past nine in December.


----------



## geogregor

Britain is funny country 

Covid-19: Drinkers in tier two 'could order Scotch egg' as substantial meal



> *Drinkers in tier two areas of England could order a Scotch egg with their pint to keep in line with post-lockdown rules, a cabinet minister has said.*
> 
> Under new restrictions from Wednesday, pubs in those high risk areas can only open if they function as a restaurant.
> 
> And alcohol can only be served as part of a "substantial meal".
> 
> Environment Secretary George Eustice told LBC Radio that Scotch eggs would constitute such a meal "if there were table service".
> 
> Downing Street has not ruled out tier two drinkers being able to order a Scotch egg, but would not set out the difference between a snack and a meal.
> 
> The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "I'm obviously not going to get into the detail of every possible meal.
> 
> "But we've been clear: bar snacks do not count as a substantial meal but it's well established practice in the hospitality industry what does."
> 
> Pubs and restaurants are currently closed across England, apart from for takeaways.
> 
> Mr Eustice said the "substantial meal" provision in tier two was "understood very much by the restaurant trade".
> 
> He said: "I think a Scotch egg probably would count as a substantial meal if there were table service.
> 
> "Often that might be as a starter but yes I think it would, but this is a term that's understood in licensing... you can have the concept of a table licence for alcohol that also requires you to serve a substantial meal.
> "
> That is the model that is being followed."
> 
> Mr Eustice added that there had been issues with pubs "where you had large groups of people congregating and actually not maintaining social distancing, they were just drinking".
> 
> "They were more likely to maintain social distancing sat down and having a meal," he said.
> 
> On Sky News, Mr Eustice was asked whether people in tier two would have to leave the pub as soon as they had finished their meals.
> 
> The environment secretary said people could finish their drinks, but should not have a "small meal and then sit at the table all night ordering drinks".
> 
> It comes after Downing Street suggested drinkers visiting pubs in tier two regions would have to leave once they had finished their meal.
> 
> The government's latest guidance for hospitality in tier two states: "Venues must close unless they operate as if they were a restaurant.
> 
> "This means serving substantial meals, like a main lunchtime or evening meal. They may only serve alcohol as part of such a meal."
> 
> Meanwhile, pubs, restaurants and cafes in Wales will be banned from serving alcohol from Friday and will be forced to close at 18:00 GMT, under new rules to tackle a surge in coronavirus cases.





> *Cornish pasty*
> 
> The concept of a "substantial meal" is not actually a new one in pubs, bars and restaurants.
> 
> It's an extension of the law that covers 16 and 17 year olds drinking alcohol in pubs with table meals.
> 
> In October, under England's previous three-tiered system, there was confusion over the definition of a "substantial meal".
> 
> Under those restrictions, it was only pubs and bars in tier three areas that faced extra curbs - and were forced to close unless they were serving substantial meals.
> 
> Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick responded by saying that a "plated meal" of a Cornish pasty with chips or a side salad would count as a "normal meal".












I guess one could call it all "first world problems"...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> -Really- hope there are still post-10 p.m. sunsets next time I’m in the Benelux or northern France in July.... (sigh). Best we get here is about 8:35.


That is one of the best things about summer at our latitude, a sunset around 10 p.m, it allows for a lot of recreational activities past dinner. Children can play outdoors for a long time during summer vacation. This is a very decent time for sunset: late enough to allow for activities: but not so late that it messes up the biological clock.


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> Britain is funny country
> 
> Covid-19: Drinkers in tier two 'could order Scotch egg' as substantial meal
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I guess one could call it all "first world problems"...


Don’t die of COVID; die of clogged arteries!

Seriously, what is that stuff the egg’s embedded in?


----------



## MichiH

Attus said:


> I work in home office because of Covid-19


Is the false friend "home office" understandable in English? It should be read: "I am working from home"


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> Is the false friend "home office" understandable in English? It should be read: "I am working from home"


It’s completely correct.
Even before the pandemic. A home office would be a place in your home you have set up as an office so you can work from home.


----------



## Slagathor

That's kinda fading, though, wouldn't you say? I remember it being a huge pain in the butt in the 1990s through the 2000s, but these days there seems to be less English and more pedantic Dutch in manager-speak (stuff like "snel schakelen", "terugkoppelen", "strakker erop zitten", "verbeterpunten"). Drives me nuts. 

Marketing is still swamped with bad English though.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Dutch is loaded with English terms as well. The worst is 'management-speak' where it seems to be a goal to use as much English terms as possible to make something look more important than it is.


Management and IT are examples of fields constantly generating new bullshit-class terms. They seldom live longer than 24 months. No reason to put much effort to actively invent translations for them. Good terminology survives naturally, and it often gets adapted to the home language.

The term "remote work" has a good and witty equivalent in Finnish: "etätyö".


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> Wait, they use the English term 'home office' and not the local equivalent?


Sure! "Home office" is used in German for years now. In a more official way "mobiles Arbeiten" - mobile working - appeared a few years ago.
A new "Home office" law is currently discussed because "Home office" - expenses for the room, the equipment and their operation - can be set off against tax-liability. If you just "work from home" but without a dedicated "Home office" ROOM, it is currently not possible. It was proposed that you can set 5€/day off against tax-liability, just like the commuter tax relief (which is 0.30€/km one-way).


----------



## geogregor

Slagathor said:


> Marketing is still swamped with bad English though.


Marketing and management is full of bad and pointless English, even in English speaking countries


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> To me, 'Home Office' in the UK is their equivalent of the State Department in the USA.
> 
> 
> 
> Now, here in the USA, a 'home office' is a place to get paperwork and related stuff done in one's residence, either personal or employment/business related.
> 
> Mike


Not the State Department; that’s the Foreign Office. (Or Foreign and Commonwealth Office.) The Home Office is responsible for some domestic matters (hence the name), such as the police. The continental European countries I pay attention to would call it “interior” or “domestic affairs.” Whereas our Interior Department, thanks to federalism, has a smaller purview; I associate it with national parks and federal public lands.


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> Marketing and management is full of bad and pointless English, even in English speaking countries


I was going to say that.... I’ve also been known to refer to stuff I was editing in my previous life as “social-services gobbledygook.”


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Poland has seen a huge escalation of coronavirus cases: from 380,000 cases on 1 November to over 1,000,000 today, a virtual tie with Germany (which has twice the population). 

Is the health care system in Poland overloaded?

The excess mortality during the second wave in the Netherlands is much lower than during the first wave. There were almost 9,000 excess deaths during the first wave (9 weeks) and 3,900 during the second wave (also 9 weeks). In particular, the regions hardest hit during the first wave had much fewer deaths in the second wave. Limburg province had 62% excess deaths during the first wave and only 5% during the second wave.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Poland has seen a huge escalation of coronavirus cases: from 380,000 cases on 1 November to over 1,000,000 today, a virtual tie with Germany (which has twice the population).
> 
> Is the health care system in Poland overloaded?
> 
> The excess mortality during the second wave in the Netherlands is much lower than during the first wave. There were almost 9,000 excess deaths during the first wave (9 weeks) and 3,900 during the second wave (also 9 weeks). In particular, the regions hardest hit during the first wave had much fewer deaths in the second wave. Limburg province had 62% excess deaths during the first wave and only 5% during the second wave.


November was by far the worst month for cases in the U.S. But who knows how good that number is?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

An enormous amount of precipitation is forecasted for Northeastern Italy over the weekend, with 4 - 5 meters of snow at higher elevations and potentially dangerous flooding in the lower elevations.


----------



## MichiH

ChrisZwolle said:


> with 4 - 5 meters of snow


I think 515mm is 51.5 cm only.


----------



## mgk920

MichiH said:


> I think 515mm is 51.5 cm only.


Yea, 515 mm is just over a half meter.

Mike


----------



## x-type

We had the first snow today! And the traffic collapsed in whole country :lol:
I madea 300 km trip today, it was not pleasant seeing drivers adopting to winter conditions. I admit, took me some time too altough I had full winter equipment. But later it becomes annoying when somebody is doing 40 km/h in front of you because of snowy road.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MichiH said:


> I think 515mm is 51.5 cm only.


No, snowfall is not calculated that way. 500 mm of rain equivalent is 5 meters of snow. It's more or less a 10 to 1 ratio. 10 mm of rain = 10 cm of snow.


----------



## MichiH

Are *early* birthday wishes a thing in your culture?

I read that *early* birthday wishes are better than belated ones but in Germany early birthday wishes are impolite. It is said that they bring bad luck. If you don't meet the person on his/her birthday, you just do it a few days later. But never ever earlier!


----------



## MichiH

Germany just extended the current covid restrictions by January 10. The next debate about an extension or changes is scheduled for January 4. It will be allowed to meet a few more people around Christmas. There are only country-wide recommendation. Each state is dealing with it differently. E.g. some states will allow hotels to open over Xmas, others don't.

Just another stupid state-thing: If you have been in contact with an infected person, you need to stay in quarantine. If you live in Bavaria, you can always make a test and quit the quarantine earlier. If you live in Baden-Württemberg, you are only be allowed to make a test if you have symptoms. I live directly at the border between both states (~1km)......


----------



## Attus

MichiH said:


> Are *early* birthday wishes a thing in your culture?


In Hungary you usually wish happy birthday (and namesday, since that, too, is celebrated in Hungary) in the evening before the actual birthday. This habit goes back to the jewish tradition, feasts begin in the previous evening. Wishing happy birthday/namesday several days before is unusual but accepted (for example if you won't meet in the following days).
I had to learn, in Germany you may never do it


----------



## geogregor

MichiH said:


> Germany just extended the current covid restrictions by January 10.


What are the restrictions? In the UK shops opened today after a 4 week lockdown. In tier 2 (for example London) bars and restaurants also opened but only for table service and you can get a drink only if you get "substantial meal".

Oxford Street and surroundings fairly busy but not hectic (as it can be sometimes)


DSC04487 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC04493 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC04510 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC04526 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC04528 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC04536 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Nobody mentioned, the UK approved the Pfizer vaccine, first of the developed countries:

Covid Pfizer vaccine approved for use next week in UK



> *The UK has become the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for widespread use.*
> 
> British regulator, the MHRA, says the jab, which offers up to 95% protection against Covid-19 illness, is safe for rollout next week.
> 
> Immunisations could start within days for those who need it the most, such as elderly people in care homes.
> 
> The UK has already ordered 40m doses - enough to vaccinate 20m people.
> 
> Around 10m doses should be available soon, with the first 800,000 arriving in the UK in the coming days.
> 
> It is the fastest ever vaccine to go from concept to reality, taking only 10 months to follow the same developmental steps that normally span a decade.
> 
> Health Secretary Matt Hancock tweeted "Help is on its way", and told BBC Breakfast that people will be contacted by the NHS when it is their turn for the jab.
> 
> NHS Chief Executive, Sir Simon Stevens, said the health service was preparing for "the largest-scale vaccination campaign in our country's history".
> 
> Around 50 hospitals are on standby and vaccination centres in venues such as conference centres are being set up now.
> Although vaccination can start, people still need to remain vigilant and follow coronavirus rules to stop the spread, say experts.
> 
> That means sticking with the social distancing and face masks, and testing people who may have the virus and asking them to isolate.





> *What about other Covid vaccines?*
> 
> There are some other promising vaccines that could also be approved soon.
> 
> One from Moderna uses the same mRNA approach as the Pfizer vaccine and offers similar protection. The UK has pre-ordered 7m doses that could be ready by the spring.
> 
> The UK has ordered 100m doses of a different type of Covid vaccine from Oxford University and AstraZeneca. That vaccine uses a harmless virus, altered to look a lot more like the virus that causes Covid-19.


Vaccination will start next week.


----------



## kosimodo

Good news about the snow. Booked week 8 in Austria 

Vacation cant start soon enough


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> The worst is 'management-speak'


We call it corpo-speak 



ChrisZwolle said:


> Poland has seen a huge escalation of coronavirus cases: from 380,000 cases on 1 November to over 1,000,000 today, a virtual tie with Germany (which has twice the population).
> 
> Is the health care system in Poland overloaded?


Now it's coming back to stable. When the Covid cases were at the peak, I was writing about it in this thread; there were many cases of ambulances bringing Covid patients to hospitals waiting in queues because the hospitals didn't want to admit those patients.

It doesn't really influence the general healthcare system (except for that some patients might be afraid of going to a doctor because of the risk of getting infected with Covid, and also many doctors are afraid of accepting patients with fever, so many of those get diagnosed only by a phone call, which obviously shouldn't really happen; another interesting thing is that the same doctors often diagnose patients only by a phone call in the public healthcare, but are happy to see and check the same patient in their office privately) because the Covid treatment is separated from the general one. Some hospitals and hospital wards are dedicated for Covid patients only. Obviously, in this situation, the non-Covid patients also have less access to hospitals, they often must go to hospitals in other towns etc. Also, many planned surgical operations got cancelled.

In addition, the government prepared temporary hospitals in the major cities, often at stadiums or in expo centers. However, they are treated as the "last resort". Only one of those has actually started its operation: the one at the National Stadium in Warsaw. And it's kind of too much to say it has actually started... it seems that currently, it has more staff than patients.

Because of Covid, Poland has shifted the winter school holidays from the end of January and the whole February to the first half of January. Normally, they are in different two-week periods in late January and whole February for different regions of Poland. In 2021, it'll be different – all the regions will have the holidays together. And it's likely that accommodation facilities, like hotels, AirBnBs etc., will still only be allowed to accept business travellers, like it is now.


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> Marketing and management is full of bad and pointless English, even in English speaking countries


Marketing and their habit of turning everything into a verb is my pet hate: architecting, authoring, dialoguing etc. A special circle in hell is reserved for those mofos


----------



## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> Those green monk parakeets are fairly well established in the Chicagoland metro area, mainly the city's south side and south and southwest suburbs. They are descended from birds that escaped into the wild when a pet supply truck overturned in a traffic accident on the city's near southside lakefront area (Hyde Park neighborhood?). They are mainly a problem in that their communal nests have a way of mucking up power lines.
> 
> Mike


The geographic distribution is interesting. That they would spread from the South Side out into the suburbs on that side of the area, sort of like humans, but not west and north. Maybe they couldn’t get across the canal/55 corridor if they need a certain density of trees or whatever?


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Finland is also a pretty large country by European standards, I feel like it is underestimated because not that many people go up there compared to France, Italy, Germany, etc. Or they only go to Helsinki.


People tend to notice that when they begin driving from the south to the far north. My mother-in-law owns some land close to Oulu, which lies at the halfway in the N-S direction. The trip is about 670 kilometers one-way plus a ferry, and it is always a project. I was there a few weeks ago, and I decided to make the return trip in two days, because the length of the day was less than six hours. (Well, I wanted to take the eastern route to film the newly opened 2+2 section on the road 5 east of Mikkeli in the daylight.) 

There is a lot of daylight in the summertime, and even long trips are not an issue. My rule of thumb is that the 600 kilometers from Helsinki Ring 1 to Oulu take 6.5 hours plus breaks in the summertime. A lot of options to invest 100 to 200 kilometers more to alternative routes and still to have daylight all way long.


----------



## radamfi

In 1998 I got the train from Helsinki to Rovaniemi. It was a very comfortable train and the countryside is pristine, but 12 hours of trees was too much!  I got the sleeper back.


----------



## PovilD

When driving South, you don't get that climate and nature is that much different. Few vineyards that start to pop when you cross ~50N latitude doesn't change much. You start to feel the difference when you cross latitudes of The Alps (something like 45-46N) where you start to notice unusual trees (trees that don't grow on temperate climate/biome), and everything gets lighter, similarly how things gets darker after crossing 60N lattitude.


----------



## x-type

MattiG said:


> Seagulls are quite dumb.
> 
> A few years ago, someone had dropped a pizza on a nearby street. Two crows were eating it, surrounded by 50+ seagulls looking at a distance. A black-headed gull is clever enough to understand that it is smaller than a crow. In the same time. it is too dumb to understand that 50 gulls have much more power than two crows.


Our mediteranean gulls are much larger than crows  And they act so mediteranean (gulls). They are extremely lazy, just flying around for no reason, screaming for no reason, eating trash and following the fishermens' boats. On the other hand, the crows are probably the most intelligent birds I've seen hereby.


----------



## MattiG

radamfi said:


> In 1998 I got the train from Helsinki to Rovaniemi. It was a very comfortable train and the countryside is pristine, but 12 hours of trees was too much!  I got the sleeper back.


Good news. The fastest train connections Helsinki-Rovaniemi nowadays are 8 hours only.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

MattiG said:


> Seagulls are quite dumb.
> 
> A few years ago, someone had dropped a pizza on a nearby street. Two crows were eating it, surrounded by 50+ seagulls looking at a distance. A black-headed gull is clever enough to understand that it is smaller than a crow. In the same time. it is too dumb to understand that 50 gulls have much more power than two crows





x-type said:


> Our mediteranean gulls are much larger than crows  And they act so mediteranean (gulls). They are extremely lazy, just flying around for no reason, screaming for no reason, eating trash and following the fishermens' boats. On the other hand, the crows are probably the most intelligent birds I've seen hereby.


In general I think it is hard to rate animals from dumb to smart. The crows and their relatives are well known to be rather intelligent and social. Seagulls are in general predators, some of them quite sophisticated, and as such, more intelligent than most birds. Like the crows, some of the seagulls also seem to adapt fairly well to the modern world. However, they can work on their social skills, and most of the time they do not care more about their brethren than birds of other species. To their credit, though, I have heard they pair up in lifelong partnerships.

In compliance with Bergmann's rule, The largest seagulls btw live at the coasts of the North Atlantic, and the largest of them all, the great black-backed gull, is many times larger than the crows and even larger than the (common) raven.


----------



## Kpc21

The Polish state oil conglomerate Orlen bought today a huge Polish press group – Polskapresse – which until now was in German hands. It owns really many popular local and regional newspapers.

The propaganda machine of the government is growing...


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> The Polish state oil conglomerate Orlen bought today a huge Polish press group – Polskapresse – which until now was in German hands. It owns really many popular local and regional newspapers.
> 
> The propaganda machine of the government is growing...


Poland is becoming more and more like Hungary...


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> In general I think it is hard to rate animals from dumb to smart.


Still there are notable examples on smartness of birds. Ostriches bury their heads in the ground to watch moles showing x-rated movies.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

MattiG said:


> The map of climate zones tells us how much the sea affects the climate. It works as a heat battery.


Not only battery, but also as a heat distribution system. Without the heat being transported from the Caribbean, the climate would be significant colder in Europe in general, but the coastal areas in particular. Some of the biggestgrain districts of Norway (which admittedly does not say much) are around 64 degrees latitude, where in other parts of the world you would find tundra.


----------



## Fatfield

We have a lots of Herring Gulls in NE England. Clever bastards like.






Looking for worms.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Two Biedronka supermarkets were bombed in the Netherlands last night, one in Heeswijk-Dinther and one in Aalsmeer (which are pretty far apart). It looks like a targeted attack. Biedronka is a Polish supermarket.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Two Biedronka supermarkets were bombed in the Netherlands last night, one in Heeswijk-Dinther and one in Aalsmeer (which are pretty far apart). It looks like a targeted attack. Biedronka is a Polish supermarket.


Two one of the most important foreign concerns for Lithuanians: cheaper prices in Polish "Biedronka" (incl. "Zabka" and Polish "Lidl"...), and terrorism (looking as likely) in one go.

I thought that Biedronka is only found in Poland. I found it interesting there is Biedronka in The Netherlands, but not Lithuania.


----------



## Slagathor

Apparently the two don't actually have anything to do with each other, except the fact they (accidentally) share a name. It's really bizarre.


----------



## geogregor

Slagathor said:


> Apparently the two don't actually have anything to do with each other, except the fact they (accidentally) share a name. It's really bizarre.


The name is not accidental. The owners use the name familiarity among Polish immigrants to their advantage. And since Biedronka company doesn't operate in the Netherlands they could adopt the name.

There are plenty of Biedronkas in the UK:


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> The name is not accidental. The owners use the name familiarity among Polish immigrants to their advantage. And since Biedronka company doesn't operate in the Netherlands they could adopt the name.
> 
> There is plenty of Biedronkas in the UK:


Google tells me there are three Biedronkas in Brooklyn. Not that I asked it that; I was looking for news items.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> Google tells me there are three Biedronkas in Brooklyn. Not that I asked it that; I was looking for news items.


Not getting a lot of coverage; Google News has only six items. Four of which are in Polish. (The others from WTOP and Omroep Brabant.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

“Lieveheersbeestje”?










Biedronka, dit weten wij over de supermarktketen die het doelwit was van explosieven


Bij de Poolse supermarkt Biedronka in Heeswijk-Dinther is maandagnacht rond vier uur een explosief ontploft. Een uur eerder was er een vergelijkbare explosie bij een vestiging in het Noord-Hollandse Aalsmeer. Wat weten we over Biedronka?



www.omroepbrabant.nl


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> “Lieveheersbeestje”?


Ladybugs. That's what Biedronka means in Polish.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Ladybugs. That's what Biedronka means in Polish.


Right. I just would never have guessed that.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Ladybugs. That's what Biedronka means in Polish.


Seriously, though. Any more on why this happened?


----------



## Penn's Woods

In other news, Belgium’s now got a monolith....

Have you all heard about these monoliths that have been appearing, and in some cases disappearing, all over the U.S. and Europe (at least) over the past few weeks?


----------



## PovilD

For some reasons "biedronka" rhymes for me with "biedny" which means poor (or Russian "beda" (Lithuanians use "bėda") which means "problem" or "trouble").

It has nothing to do about Biedronka market though.

At least smiling biedronka cheers things up!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Biedronka sounds a lot like bier + dronken (beer + drunk) in Dutch. 🍺


----------



## Penn's Woods

Is it (in Polish) “bie-“ or “bię-“?


----------



## Slagathor

Like any Western European is gonna be able to answer that.


----------



## bogdymol

The story of the small Austrian village called F*cking is like a soap opera:

The locals were annoyed of too many tourists coming there just to take a picture with the village entrance sign. The sign was also stolen a couple of times.
The decision has been made to change the name from F*cking to Fugging at the end of the year
Shortly after the decision was announced, the sign was stolen again
The stolen sign appeared for sale on an Austrian ebay-like site
The authorities did not wait until year's end, but already change the signs to Fugging
The new sign was vandalized last night, to write again F*cking


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> Like any Western European is gonna be able to answer that.


@Kpc21 or @geogregor could.


----------



## MichiH

Penn's Woods said:


> In other news, Belgium’s now got a monolith....
> Have you all heard about these monoliths that have been appearing, and in some cases disappearing, all over the U.S. and Europe (at least) over the past few weeks?


I heard about it only today. I've googled now and they appeared (and partially disappeared again) in USA, Romania, England, the Netherlands and Germany.

Is there a combination to this thread?   

I mean, it is not a balcony but one is called a "10-foot *shiny* metal object"









Mysterious monoliths popping up in US, Europe – DW – 12/07/2020


Several metal monoliths have appeared in remote spots in the US and Europe over the past several weeks. While they are likely art installations, speculation remains about the objects' potential otherworldly origins.




www.dw.com







radi6404 said:


> Guys, here´s my shiny balcony which some of you wanted see, by now the balcony is even shinier because I used a technology which makes the color painted smooth.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Some minor tweaks to your story:


_The story of the small Austrian village called F*cking is like a soap opera:_

_The Fucking locals were annoyed of too many Fucking tourists coming there just to take a picture with the Fucking village entrance sign. The Fucking sign was also stolen a couple of times._
_The decision has been made to change the name from F*cking to Fugging at the end of the year_
_Shortly after the Fucking decision was announced, the Fucking sign was stolen again_
_The stolen Fucking sign appeared for sale on an Austrian ebay-like site_
_The Fucking authorities did not wait until year's end, but already change the signs to Fugging_
_The new sign was vandalized last night, to write again F*cking_
🙃


----------



## bogdymol

Fück! I could have written the story a lot fucking better, but I did not want to fucking swear on this fucking forum.

Ok, maybe that was a bit too (fucking) much...

edit: you can also buy a fucking mask with the former name of that fucking village


----------



## Penn's Woods

bogdymol said:


> Fück! I could have written the story a lot fucking better, but I did not want to fucking swear on this fucking forum.
> 
> Ok, maybe that was a bit too (fucking) much...


Aren’t you and @ChrisZwolle supposed to be setting an example? /jk


----------



## bogdymol

Indeed, we should probably do that.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> I thought that Biedronka is only found in Poland. I found it interesting there is Biedronka in The Netherlands, but not Lithuania.


Well, I guess this one was fake. Like, people migrating there from Poland certainly know the brand Biedronka, so it's a way to attract customers which will know the name and therefore they'll guess they can buy some Polish products there.

Similarly, there is a bus company PKS Oslo in Norway (that operates a shuttle connection to the Torp airport), named by they Polish ex-communist bus companies that have the form of PKS + the name of the town.



geogregor said:


> There are plenty of Biedronkas in the UK:


Some of them are inspired by the very old design of Biedronka logo and marketing materials 



Penn's Woods said:


> Is it (in Polish) “bie-“ or “bię-“?





Slagathor said:


> Like any Western European is gonna be able to answer that.





Penn's Woods said:


> @Kpc21 or @geogregor could.


A dictionary could? 









biedronka - Wiktionary







en.wiktionary.org





It definitely contains e, not ę, and as a native Polish speaker I can confirm they aren't wrong 

I don't think there is any specific story behind the name. Someone had an idea for business to open a chain of supermarkets, so he did. He had to think of a name that would attract people... why not Ladybug? Like, it has something to do with nature and freshness, so it seems to be OK for a supermarket chain.

There is also Żabka (little frog) chain of convenience stores, or Stokrotka (daisy flower) chain of something in between...

At least he was creative. Many businesses appearing back then had names that were constructed with either the name of the owner, or a random word, and a suffix "-pol" or "-ex". Especially those with "-ex" were, probably, supposed to sound international as the letter "x" doesn't appear in native Polish words.

Nowadays, a colloquial word for a business run by a greedy owner who doesn't either care at all about the quality, neither of the employees, nor of the customers, is Januszex. Janusz is a man's name that has become a meme of a stereotypical Pole from the lower layers of the society (greedy, lazy and ignorant); on pictures represented by a monkey with a large nose.

Janusz contains the Polish-specific "sz", and in "-ex" you have the non-Polish "x".

And there is indeed, for example, e.g. a branch of supermarkets (a smaller one) called Marc-Pol.

Or one of the most funny of such company names, is the window producer Drutex. Where "drut" means "metal wire". There is also verb "drutować" – to repair or make something in a DYI way, but in a really quick, provisional way, and often so that it doesn't comply with any safety standards.


----------



## MichiH

The second German state will most likely go into full lockdown from next Monday: Saxony. Schools and shops should close like last spring. It is even stricter than in Bavaria which will tighten the restrictions from tomorrow as reported on Sunday (e.g. schools will not be fully closed in Bavaria).
It is possible that whole Germany will be fully closed like in spring soon.

The number of infections is stabile but not declining. There are a lot of hotspots. Politicians say that the relaxed restrictions over Xmas should be handled very carefully. I don't know, maybe they will even be canceled....

The problem is that one cannot distinguish which "restrictions" are ideas, recommendations, pre-decided or already valid. And different for the 16 German states. That's what I hate most about it....


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> The second German state will most likely go into full lockdown from next Monday: Saxony. Schools and shops should close like last spring. It is even stricter than in Bavaria which will tighten the restrictions from tomorrow as reported on Sunday (e.g. schools will not be fully closed in Bavaria).
> It is possible that whole Germany will be fully closed like in spring soon.
> 
> The number of infections is stabile but not declining. There are a lot of hotspots. Politicians say that the relaxed restrictions over Xmas should be handled very carefully. I don't know, maybe they will even be canceled....
> 
> The problem is that one cannot distinguish which "restrictions" are ideas, recommendations, pre-decided or already valid. And different for the 16 German states. That's what I hate most about it....


Hang in there....


----------



## PovilD

MichiH said:


> The second German state will most likely go into full lockdown from next Monday: Saxony. Schools and shops should close like last spring. It is even stricter than in Bavaria which will tighten the restrictions from tomorrow as reported on Sunday (e.g. schools will not be fully closed in Bavaria).
> It is possible that whole Germany will be fully closed like in spring soon.
> 
> The number of infections is stabile but not declining. There are a lot of hotspots. Politicians say that the relaxed restrictions over Xmas should be handled very carefully. I don't know, maybe they will even be canceled....
> 
> The problem is that one cannot distinguish which "restrictions" are ideas, recommendations, pre-decided or already valid. And different for the 16 German states. That's what I hate most about it....


We've tried your model, and end up with relatively similar result (only R0 is slightly higher, so we're faring worse).
We now need stricter measures, and current measures are implemented until 31th of December, but I doubt about ending current restrictions even then. It will probably go well into January, then due to immunity and stuff (vaccines, restrictions), things will improve. I'm thinking that restrictions will be gradually lifted from February through spring.


----------



## madannie

geogregor said:


> The name is not accidental. The owners use the name familiarity among Polish immigrants to their advantage. And since Biedronka company doesn't operate in the Netherlands they could adopt the name.
> 
> There are plenty of Biedronkas in the UK:


Good grief - never expected to see my local Biedronka feature on SSC. I work not very far from the last one pictured above and often used it for milk, bread and a few other provisions. It is also, by some distance, the nearest cash machine to my work, which is a big plus point.

And I now know why there are rather stylised ladybirds on the shop sign. I guess I could have looked it up online, but it never really occurred to me until reading this thread yesterday.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Another Biedronka was bombed last night in Beverwijk. It's a new location, from the same owner as the Aalsmeer one.


----------



## MichiH

madannie said:


> It is also, by some distance, the nearest *cash machine* to my work, which is a big plus point.


Do you still need such ancient relicts?


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Another Biedronka was bombed last night in Beverwijk. It's a new location, from the same owner as the Aalsmeer one.


Does anyone have a clue who’s doing this and why?


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> Do you still need such ancient relicts?


This from someone in a country that has a reputation for being resistant to payment cards.... /jk

(Seriously, I prefer cash for shall purchases. I’ll go into why when I’ve had some caffeine. Or maybe not.)


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> Does anyone have a clue who’s doing this and why?


No news yet. But the branch that was bombed this morning is owned by the same guy who owns one of yesterday's branches.

Yesterday we had bombings in Aalsmeer and Heeswijk-Dinther. Today there was one in Beverwijk.

All are Polish supermarkets by the name of Biedronka.

The stores in Aalsmeer and Beverwijk belong to the same owner, one Mr Mohamed Mahmoed (whom I assume is not Polish). The Heeswijk-Dinther store is owned by someone else and has no affiliation with the other two.

The Chamber of Commerce database revealed that Mr Mahmoed, his brother and a third man own - in different constellations - a total of 12 businesses that are registered as stores. So any further bombings (if there will be any) should shed some light on whether these are targeted against Polish supermarkets, or Mr Mahmoed and his crew.

Police are investigating.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> No news yet. But the branch that was bombed this morning is owned by the same guy who owns one of yesterday's branches.
> 
> Yesterday we had bombings in Aalsmeer and Heeswijk-Dinther. Today there was one in Beverwijk.
> 
> All are Polish supermarkets by the name of Biedronka.
> 
> The stores in Aalsmeer and Beverwijk belong to the same owner, one Mr Mohamed Mahmoed (whom I assume is not Polish). The Heeswijk-Dinther store is owned by someone else and has no affiliation with the other two.
> 
> The Chamber of Commerce database revealed that Mr Mahmoed, his brother and a third man own - in different constellations - a total of 12 businesses that are registered as stores. So any further bombings (if there will be any) should shed some light on whether these are targeted against Polish supermarkets, or Mr Mahmoed and his crew.
> 
> Police are investigating.


So his other businesses aren’t “Polish” stores?

I’m starting to wonder whether there’s some anti-Polish-immigrant sentiment at play here.


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> So his other businesses aren’t “Polish” stores?


They didn't say.



Penn's Woods said:


> I’m starting to wonder whether there’s some anti-Polish-immigrant sentiment at play here.


Seems unlikely to me. If that were the case, I would have expected some kind of turmoil in The Hague which has a very high density of Polish migrants and shops.

That said, it's impossible to rule that out at this stage. I expect the police to take it into consideration as well.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I was looking at the covid-19 data of the United States and I noticed that the number of deaths among younger age groups seems high.

I compared the data to the Netherlands and it turns out that the 25-34 and 35-44 age groups in the U.S. have a death rate that is 10 times higher, both as a percentage of all national covid deaths and relative to population.

I wonder if obesity plays a role here. Obesity rates in the Netherlands are much lower than in the U.S., especially for these younger age groups.


----------



## PovilD

I heard US population is slightly younger than Europe (probably incl. Netherlands).

...and they don't have that good quality cycling infrastructure, aren't they?


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I was looking at the covid-19 data of the United States and I noticed that the number of deaths among younger age groups seems high.
> 
> I compared the data to the Netherlands and it turns out that the 25-34 and 35-44 age groups in the U.S. have a death rate that is 10 times higher, both as a percentage of all national covid deaths and relative to population.
> 
> I wonder if obesity plays a role here. Obesity rates in the Netherlands are much lower than in the U.S., especially for these younger age groups.


I suppose there may be a lot of things go on. Differences in level of exposure? People working in “essential” jobs? People ignoring restrictions?


----------



## Penn's Woods

PovilD said:


> I heard US population is slightly younger than Europe (probably incl. Netherlands).
> 
> ...and they don't have that good quality cycling infrastructure, aren't they?


That’s true: Swarms of people biking like you see in Amsterdam (I haven’t seen enough of the rest of the Netherlands) just doesn’t happen here.


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> That’s true: Swarms of people biking like you see in Amsterdam (I haven’t seen enough of the rest of the Netherlands) just doesn’t happen here.


@ChrisZwolle has regularly posted cycling statistics on the Dutch cycling thread over the years, showing that the cycle rate in Amsterdam is higher than Rotterdam and Den Haag, but is mediocre compared to most other smaller cities apart from Limburg province. Groningen is world famous for its cycle rate but Assen and Zwolle also have particularly high rates. There is a long standing blog from David Hembrow who moved his family from England to Assen around 2006 just because of the cycling.





__





A view from the cycle path


Why is it that people cycle more in the Netherlands than in any other country ? The answer is in the infrastructure. Long established blog with content up to the present day detailing how the infrastructure of the Netherlands makes cycling so pleasant that almost everyone cycles in this country...




www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com





In the first few years it was primarily about infrastructure but in recent years it has become more about the environment. Mark Wagenbuur has now replaced Hembrow as the "go to" blog on Dutch cycling, after first being a guest writer on Hembrow's blog.









BICYCLE DUTCH


All about cycling in the Netherlands




bicycledutch.wordpress.com


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> This from someone in a country that has a reputation for being resistant to payment cards.... /jk
> 
> (Seriously, I prefer cash for shall purchases. I’ll go into why when I’ve had some caffeine. Or maybe not.)


There has been a lot of discussion on British forums about the decline in cash use due to the pandemic. In London it was already fairly common to see card only shops and cafes. Most young people almost never use cash. In general, the only places where you need cash tend to be small independent ("corner") shops and cheaper hairdressers. Contactless cards have largely replaced cash for smaller transactions. As I understand it, contactless has been slow to catch on in the US.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Most Dutch live in small cities (population up to 150,000), where distances are often very good to cycle (typically not more than 5-7 km and often under 3 km). 

Amsterdam is the most outlier municipality in the Netherlands in many aspects, it's not representative for the Netherlands at all, especially in a political sense. Voting patterns are most average in large towns and small cities with a population between 20,000 and 80,000. There is quite some dissatisfaction with the mainstream media being in an 'Amsterdam bubble' that is not reality almost everywhere else. The media calls this the urban-rural divide, but that is a mischaracterization as well, most Dutch do not live in rural areas or the canal belt, but in those 20,000 - 80,000 towns. The media only goes there if there is a disaster.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> There has been a lot of discussion on British forums about the decline in cash use due to the pandemic. In London it was already fairly common to see card only shops and cafes. Most young people almost never use cash. In general, the only places where you need cash tend to be small independent ("corner") shops and cheaper hairdressers. Contactless cards have largely replaced cash for smaller transactions. As I understand it, contactless has been slow to catch on in the US.


The city of Philadelphia has actually prohibited cashless retail businesses. (A year or two ago, before the pandemic.). Which I totally approve of; some of the most disadvantaged people don’t have bank accounts (and therefore debit cards). let alone credit cards. I don’t know that that’s happened anywhere else. I’ve encountered a few businesses during the pandemic saying they -prefer- not to take cash...a little café around the corner from me (which can’t refuse it since it’s in the city), and the food services on the New Jersey Turnpike. Conversely, the place that cuts my hair now says they prefer cash; some sort of dispute with their bank.... 

I’m old-school enough that I record everything that can affect my account balances...either making a note or just keeping the receipt...until it shows up on the account on line. Because some things may not show up immediately, and sometimes I need to be careful...don’t need anything bouncing when I’m on a trip, say, and spending a lot. So having cash in my pocket for those five- and ten-dollar purchases means less paperwork or note-taking.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Most Dutch live in small cities (population up to 150,000), where distances are often very good to cycle (typically not more than 5-7 km and often under 3 km).
> 
> Amsterdam is the most outlier municipality in the Netherlands in many aspects, it's not representative for the Netherlands at all, especially in a political sense. Voting patterns are most average in large towns and small cities with a population between 20,000 and 80,000. There is quite some dissatisfaction with the mainstream media being in an 'Amsterdam bubble' that is not reality almost everywhere else. The media calls this the urban-rural divide, but that is a mischaracterization as well, most Dutch do not live in rural areas or the canal belt, but in those 20,000 - 80,000 towns. The media only goes there if there is a disaster.


What’s the canal belt?


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> The city of Philadelphia has actually prohibited cashless retail businesses. (A year or two ago, before the pandemic.). Which I totally approve of; some of the most disadvantaged people don’t have bank accounts (and therefore debit cards). let alone credit cards. I don’t know that that’s happened anywhere else. I’ve encountered a few businesses during the pandemic saying they -prefer- not to take cash...a little café around the corner from me (which can’t refuse it since it’s in the city), and the food services on the New Jersey Turnpike. Conversely, the place that cuts my hair now says they prefer cash; some sort of dispute with their bank....
> 
> I’m old-school enough that I record everything that can affect my account balances...either making a note or just keeping the receipt...until it shows up on the account on line. Because some things may not show up immediately, and sometimes I need to be careful...don’t need anything bouncing when I’m on a trip, say, and spending a lot. So having cash in my pocket for those five- and ten-dollar purchases means less paperwork or note-taking.


I can't see cashless working in America until there's some sort of technological innovation that really catches on like WeChat Pay in China or those apps in India and Africa. The latter developments are particularly interesting; those countries are just skipping widespread traditional banking in the same way they skipped widespread landline telephone networks. They just went straight to cell phones and now financial services through smartphones.

America's banking network also suffers from the strain of point duty. They were really advanced in the post-war decades but have fallen badly behind. The continued popular usage of checks is really outdated from a European point of view, and international transfers are often pretty challenging.

Europe is ahead of the US on this, but only because it had no choice. Europe wanted a single currency, which logically dictates cross-border harmonization of banking and payment systems. We're behind China, Japan and South Korea on alternative payment methods though; things like digital wallets on your smartphone unaffiliated with any bank, or e-currencies. That's pretty rare here.



Penn's Woods said:


> What’s the canal belt?


The historic center of Amsterdam.

Grachtengordel in Dutch. A synonym for the wealthy out-of-touch elite.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> I can't see cashless working in America until there's some sort of technological innovation that really catches on like WeChat Pay in China or those apps in India and Africa. The latter developments are particularly interesting; those countries are just skipping widespread traditional banking in the same way they skipped widespread landline telephone networks. They just went straight to cell phones and now financial services through smartphones.
> 
> America's banking network also suffers from the strain of point duty. They were really advanced in the post-war decades but have fallen badly behind. The continued popular usage of checks is really outdated from a European point of view, and international transfers are often pretty challenging.
> 
> Europe is ahead of the US on this, but only because it had no choice. Europe wanted a single currency, which logically dictates cross-border harmonization of banking and payment systems. We're behind China, Japan and South Korea on alternative payment methods though; things like digital wallets on your smartphone unaffiliated with any bank, or e-currencies. That's pretty rare here.
> 
> 
> 
> The historic center of Amsterdam.
> 
> Grachtengordel in Dutch. A synonym for the wealthy out-of-touch elite.


So Chris was referring to the Amsterdam Grachtengordel? He put it with rural areas so I was imagining some belt of canals out in the country....

When I went to Europe in 2015, for the first time in years, making sure my cards would work over there took some attention on my part. Getting chip cards where I didn’t have them mainly. Now I’ve been seeing headlines about how using the CVC for an online purchase won’t suffice any more over there; haven’t yet had occasion to try.

I haven’t written a check since I moved in 2017; for several years before that the only one I wrote was to my landlord. (The new one collects rent electronically.) Don’t own postage stamps either.


----------



## Penn's Woods

A few months ago, I got a haircut at a place I hadn’t used before; their credit-card machine was down, and they suggested I pay through I particular app. I would have needed to set it up, though, and it was easier to walk a block and back and get cash out of the ATM. I do have Zelle, but they didn’t. I used Zelle once, to pay for data recovery. So that stuff exists. You see ads for it; they seem to be marketing mostly to people like personal trainers who go to their clients....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> Grachtengordel in Dutch. A synonym for the wealthy out-of-touch elite.


The radio station BNR had a whole series about 'city vs rural areas' recently, it becomes quite clear that for journalists the city means the Amsterdam canal belt, and the rest is compared to East Groningen province (the least developed area of the Netherlands). The whole 'middle land' where 80% of the Dutch population lives is overlooked or ignored in national politics and national media, despite this being the area where elections are decided.

Earlier this week there was an article in a printed paper that used the English exonym 'Bavaria', which is not used in the Netherlands at all for the German state (even Bayern would've made more sense like their football team). It was ridiculed for being 'another journalist that travels from Amsterdam to New York and copies English media but has no idea what is beyond Utrecht'.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1335849698620547072


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The radio station BNR had a whole series about 'city vs rural areas' recently, it becomes quite clear that for journalists the city means the Amsterdam canal belt, and the rest is compared to East Groningen province (the least developed area of the Netherlands). The whole 'middle land' where 80% of the Dutch population lives is overlooked or ignored in national politics and national media, despite this being the area where elections are decided.
> 
> Earlier this week there was an article in a printed paper that used the English exonym 'Bavaria', which is not used in the Netherlands at all for the German state (even Bayern would've made more sense like their football team). It was ridiculed for being 'another journalist that travels from Amsterdam to New York and copies English media but has no idea what is beyond Utrecht'.
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1335849698620547072


It should be “Beieren”?

NBC was annoying me during the 2006 Olympics. They kept saying “Torino,” while “Turin” is well-established in English.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MattiG said:


> I believe the case is similar in all Scandinavian countries. Details vary.


This is also the case in the Netherlands. I only withdraw money from an ATM if I travel to southern Europe, where they seem to prefer cash for small payments in bars and sometimes for coin operated machines.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> This is also the case in the Netherlands. I only withdraw money from an ATM if I travel to southern Europe, where they seem to prefer cash for small payments in bars and sometimes for coin operated machines.


I had some trouble in 2017 while visiting the Netherlands. Some food stores did not accept the Finnish combo cards. The cards have several card numbers, and the first one in the list is the credit card. The POS devices were not able see the debit card, and the entire transaction was rejected in the debit-only shops. No problems in parking halls, gas stations, museums etc.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Very comprehensive explanation. Reminds me some of the conversations I have with my partner when I try to explain to her various aspects of Polish culture.


I may also mention a large, countrywide meat company – Indykpol – literally "Turkey-pol" (with, obviously, turkey as a name of bird, not a country).

There are many countrywide brand names, especially of food, created after town names from where they originate. Like ones of the most popular juice brands are Tarczyn and Tymbark. A company that makes various food ingredients and products, from mayonnaise to pudding, is Winiary. The most popular brand of jams – Łowicz. You can find all of that on the map  When Poles became free to open their own businesses, they often weren't creative at all.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MattiG said:


> Finnish combo cards


shoot, I missed that in your post. The Dutch bank cards are usually debit cards only, though they are accepted abroad much more than in the past, I don't think I've had any refusal over the past few years. I do use my credit card at automated fuel stations abroad, since the refunding of the typical € 150 reservation they make could take up several days on my debit card. I've had that happen a few times in France. One time it took 5 days to refund the difference between € 150 and the amount pumped. On some road trips I fuel every day or even twice a day so I don't want that to happen several times in a row.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The craziest thing happened in Belgium a year or two ago. I stopped at a Shell along E17 to fuel up and for whatever reason the bank charged me an exchange rate because they said I paid in Brazilian reais. I had to call the bank up up and refer to the payment to show them it was just in euros. I'm not sure what went wrong there...


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland nowadays practically all the bank card are debit cards (unless someones explicitly applies for a credit card, which is kind of a premium product), but they are just normal MasterCard or Visa cards, which can be used for everything, for which credit cards are used. Maybe the only thing with which one may have problems with such a card, is car rental.

Paying abroad – not a problem, paying online – not a problem.

It was different like, 10–15 years ago. But it's the past.


----------



## geogregor

MattiG said:


> Banks are pretty natural to be involved in the value chain, because the money lies there. Does this make a problem?
> 
> A typical cashless setup in Finland is
> 
> Bank account with a debit-credit combo card
> Contactless card payments up to 50 EUR. Random checks for the PIN.
> Electronic bills for all regular payments. They can be either pre-approved (no action needed) or approved case by case.
> Smartphone apps to pay public transport tickets, parking, etc. Technically, authorize the payment operator to charge the debit or credit card.
> 
> I believe the case is similar in all Scandinavian countries. Details vary.


Sound similar to the UK system as well. 

I use cash only occasionally. For example the Baltic/Romanian shop where I regularly get nice dark Lithuanian bread still doesn't take card payments.

I also don't understand why all the hype about non-bank payment systems. If banking system is efficient I don't see much need for them. The reason why they are so common in some countries is because banking systems in those countries were underdeveloped and simply sucked.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland we have Blik. Its advantages over cards are:
– while paying online, you don't have to remember to change your limit, type in all those codes and in addition, confirm the transaction with an SMS code or in the bank app – instead, you just type a code from the bank app in the online store, confirm the transaction in the app and that's all,
– while using ATM, you don't have to insert your card, which is safer (although modern ATMs also have contactless card readers, it also solves this problem),
– you can pay without having your card with you, using just a smartphone (this is getting superseded by the NFC feature in smartphones, but some lower- to middle-end models still don't have it).


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland we have Blik. Its advantages over cards are:


Blik looks like workaround of unnecessary controls on card payments.



> – while paying online, you don't have to remember to change your limit, type in all those codes and in addition, confirm the transaction with an SMS code or in the bank app – instead, you just type a code from the bank app in the online store, confirm the transaction in the app and that's all,


When I pay online in the UK I don't need any codes or changing any limits. I just type my card number (or rather use the one stored in my browser or on the phone) and just type the CVV. Easy and simple. 



> – while using ATM, you don't have to insert your card, which is safer (although modern ATMs also have contactless card readers, it also solves this problem),


I use ATMs so rarely that it hardly is an issue. 



> – you can pay without having your card with you, using just a smartphone (this is getting superseded by the NFC feature in smartphones, but some lower- to middle-end models still don't have it).


Here we just store debit/credit card on the phone to use the NFC payments. No need for any "Bliks"


The whole things really is not that necessary if other elements of the payment systems work as they should.


----------



## Penn's Woods

One thing you can say for cash is it doesn’t malfunction....


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> shoot, I missed that in your post. The Dutch bank cards are usually debit cards only, though they are accepted abroad much more than in the past, I don't think I've had any refusal over the past few years. I do use my credit card at automated fuel stations abroad, since the refunding of the typical € 150 reservation they make could take up several days on my debit card. I've had that happen a few times in France. One time it took 5 days to refund the difference between € 150 and the amount pumped. On some road trips I fuel every day or even twice a day so I don't want that to happen several times in a row.


Credit cards are also recommended for car hire as you get a similar reservation on the card. 

Maestro in theory is a worldwide brand so should be accepted virtually everywhere even if they are not issued by local banks in that country. Vendors rarely restrict Maestro but can choose to refuse Visa and MasterCard even though you can get both of those as both credit and debit card. American Express is accepted even less, although more shops accept it than they used to. In the UK most shops now accept it.

The Netherlands and Germany are famous for refusing Visa and Mastercards, regardless whether they are debit or credit, although many shops accept them nowadays. It causes confusion for some people when the shop assistant says they don't accept credit cards, even though you are presenting them with a Visa or MasterCard debit card.

Are there other countries that primarily use Maestro debit cards and so don't accept Visa and Mastercard everywhere?

Like a lot of British people, I use my credit card almost exclusively. Many credit cards offer rewards or cashback for using them so it is effectively cheaper to use a credit card. Obviously a lot of people can't control their spending so would be better off with a debit card, but that doesn't apply to me.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> When I pay online in the UK I don't need any codes or changing any limits. I just type my card number (or rather use the one stored in my browser or on the phone) and just type the CVV. Easy and simple.


Keeping your limit for online transactions high is an easy way to get robbed... Imagine that a photo of both sides of your card is sufficient to buy something for your money. Certainly, hiding or scrapping off the CVV code from your card is helpful – but there are stores and websites (usually foreign ones) where you can pay having only the card number and the owner's name and surname...

SMS code or confirmation in a bank app is necessary if the shop employs the 3D-Secure feature. Most shops in Poland already have it, and I think it's only the matter of time before it spreads where it isn't present yet.



geogregor said:


> Here we just store debit/credit card on the phone to use the NFC payments. No need for any "Bliks"


I mentioned that. But until now (now it's changing) many lower- and middle-end smartphones (especially of Chinese brands, and they are usually most affordable of all) didn't have NFC.

I bought my current smartphone less than a year ago, it's Motorola G7 Power, and it still doesn't have NFC.



radamfi said:


> The Netherlands and Germany are famous for refusing Visa and Mastercards, regardless whether they are debit or credit, although many shops accept them nowadays. It causes confusion for some people when the shop assistant says they don't accept credit cards, even though you are presenting them with a Visa or MasterCard debit card.
> 
> Are there other countries that primarily use Maestro debit cards and so don't accept Visa and Mastercard everywhere?


Those shops, at least in Germany, basically didn't accept ANY bank cards from the worldwide operators (Visa/Mastercards). Typical German bank cards are (or at least were several years ago) a combination of an international Maestro card and a national EC (Electronic Cash) card. The EC payment isn't even treated as a card transaction – but as something called direct debit (Lastschrift). And those EC direct debits were what was only accepted at many German shops. So even a foreign Maestro card wouldn't work.

In Poland we also have direct debit (polecenie zapłaty), but it's only used for periodic payments, like e.g. telephone subscriptions or energy bills. And it isn't popular – as it's basically allowing an external company (which you don't necessarily trust) to charge any money from your bank account directly, without asking you for a consent. In Germany it's orders of magnitude more common and universal.


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## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> Obviously a lot of people can't control their spending so would be better off with a debit card, but that doesn't apply to me.


I think this is why the Netherlands hasn't adopted the credit card as widespread as many other countries. Dutch people tend to be conservative for spending too much, and taking up loans for anything other than a house is considered unfavorable. For example not as many Dutch people have car payments like they do in North America. Most Dutch drive a second-hand car even if they have a decent income. Millennials tend to be enticed with 'private lease' schemes that have become more common over the past 5 years or so, where you can drive a brand new car for 'only' € 300 or 400 per month.


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## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland we also have direct debit (polecenie zapłaty), but it's only used for periodic payments, like e.g. telephone subscriptions or energy bills. And it isn't popular – as it's basically allowing an external company (which you don't necessarily trust) to charge any money from your bank account directly, without asking you for a consent. In Germany it's orders of magnitude more common and universal.


Direct debits are widely used in Britain, and a lot of the time you get cheaper prices if you choose direct debit, especially for gas/electricity. Some people are suspicious of them and prefer to pay bills manually, but most people are too lazy for that. In theory there is a "direct debit guarantee" where you are entitled to an immediate refund if there is a mistake. One thing I have noticed from my Dutch bank account is that you can choose to verify every payment on your phone app before it goes through, which I think is a cool feature. As far as I know this isn't available in Britain.


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## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think this is why the Netherlands hasn't adopted the credit card as widespread as many other countries. Dutch people tend to be conservative for spending too much, and taking up loans for anything other than a house is considered unfavorable. For example not as many Dutch people have car payments like they do in North America. Most Dutch drive a second-hand car even if they have a decent income. Millennials tend to be enticed with 'private lease' schemes that have become more common over the past 5 years or so, where you can drive a brand new car for 'only' € 300 or 400 per month.


The Dutch are famous for their dislike of debt. However, you would have thought that would mean that they could enjoy the convenience of credit cards without overspending. I'm basically like a Dutch person and I don't have debt for anything. I have even paid off my mortgage as fast as possible. But I still prefer using credit cards. I would spend the same whether I have a credit or debit card.


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## kosimodo

The dutch are not afraidcof debt at all.. all housing is bebt based. 
The reason that visa and mastercard are not that widespread in the Netherlans is that it costs money. Visa and mastercard dont do it for free. And a quick look at their office tells us that they make a lot of money. That 3-5 % ( i have been told) of every transaction is easily saved.


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## mgk920

Penn's Woods said:


> One thing you can say for cash is it doesn’t malfunction....


I often muse out loud that cash keeps on working even when the power goes out.

I remember a TV ad from a few years ago that was set in a restaurant where all of the customers at the tables and in line were paying with the advertiser's card and the whole set was a finely choreographed dance. I kept imagining everything on that set quickly grinding to a chaotic halt when one customer's card comes back 'TRANSACTION _DENIED_'.

A few years ago when the entire electric power and communication infrastructure grid of Puerto Rico was wiped out by hurricane Maria, one of the first relief related things sent to the island by the USA's federal government was a military transport airplane loaded with pallets of cash, this for the island to be able to restart its economy. The banks had the customer account records available by using backup power supplies, so they were able to issue cash withdrawals to their customers, but the cash was then needed for them to buy whatever needed things.

The United States Postal Service also quickly resumed operations, with the vast majority of the island's Post Offices back up and running within a couple of days, so that line of communications was open.

Sometimes 'old school' tech is the best tech.

Mike


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## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> I often muse out loud that cash keeps on working even when the power goes out.
> 
> I remember a TV ad from a few years ago that was set in a restaurant where all of the customers at the tables and in line were paying with the advertiser's card and the whole set was a finely choreographed dance. I kept imagining everything on that set quickly grinding to a chaotic halt when one customer's card comes back 'TRANSACTION _DENIED_'.
> 
> A few years ago when the entire electric power and communication infrastructure grid of Puerto Rico was wiped out by hurricane Maria, one of the first relief related things sent to the island by the USA's federal government was a military transport airplane loaded with pallets of cash, this for the island to be able to restart its economy. The banks had the customer account records available by using backup power supplies, so they were able to issue cash withdrawals to their customers, but the cash was then needed for them to buy whatever needed things.
> 
> The United States Postal Service also quickly resumed operations, with the vast majority of the island's Post Offices back up and running within a couple of days, so that line of communications was open.
> 
> Sometimes 'old school' tech is the best tech.
> 
> Mike


If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.


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## radamfi

kosimodo said:


> The reason that visa and mastercard are not that widespread in the Netherlans is that it costs money. Visa and mastercard dont do it for free. And a quick look at their office tells us that they make a lot of money. That 3-5 % ( i have been told) of every transaction is easily saved.


Yes, Maestro fees are considerably lower. So why don't other countries refuse credit cards? The most famous British department store (Marks & Spencer) refused credit cards for a long time but eventually had to start accepting them as they were losing a lot of business because of it. It used to be permitted to surcharge credit cards, to make up for the extra processing cost, but that is no longer allowed in the EU.


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## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> The craziest thing happened in Belgium a year or two ago. I stopped at a Shell along E17 to fuel up and for whatever reason the bank charged me an exchange rate because they said I paid in Brazilian reais. I had to call the bank up up and refer to the payment to show them it was just in euros. I'm not sure what went wrong there...


I had a similar situation a few years ago in Spain. I was using a Visa card issued by a Romanian bank, but the card as well as the bank account linked to it were in € (although issued by a Romanian bank).

When I tried to pay the hotel bill, the card reader was converting automatically the amount in Romanian currency, at a very bad rate. I told them it's not ok, and that I want to pay in €, as the hotel was booked in € and Spain uses €. They said the system is like that* and they can't change it. I ended up paying in cash, as I did not want to pay in Romanian currency at a bad exchange rate, and then my bank would have converted that back again to €, so double exchange.

* This is quite a widespread semi-scam. If you are in a foreign country the system will identify that you have a foreign-issued card and will give you the option (sometime force you) to make the payment in your home currency. Many people would accept that as they are more used with their home currency and know how much is to pay. However, this is a scam, as that automatic exchange rate is always a really bad one. You are much better to pay in the local currency and let your bank do the exchange.


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## tfd543

^^ had a similar situation last summer. The austrian hotel rather wanted croatian kunas than paying by card. Poor hotelier. I said I would accept if they paid me a beer in the bar but they refused.


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## ChrisZwolle

In Switzerland ATMs and payment terminals also entice you to make the withdrawal or payment in euros which is usually a worse exchange rate than if you let the bank handle it. I always set it to CHF.


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## Kpc21

mgk920 said:


> The banks had the customer account records available by using backup power supplies, so they were able to issue cash withdrawals to their customers, but the cash was then needed for them to buy whatever needed things.


But the bank branches anyway need communication with the data center to know how much money everyone has on his account and to register the withdrawals... But yes, it requires connectivity only at the bank branch (in the worst case it can even be a mobile Internet connection... normally, dedicated lines leased from telecom operators are used, but obviously they may not be restored immediately, or as immediately as mobile phone networks) and not at all the stores, for which it may take more time.


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## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> I do use my credit card at automated fuel stations abroad, since the refunding of the typical € 150 reservation they make could take up several days on my debit card. I've had that happen a few times in France. One time it took 5 days to refund the difference between € 150 and the amount pumped. On some road trips I fuel every day or even twice a day so I don't want that to happen several times in a row.


150 euros? Aaargh.

At the pumps in Finland, the customer can choose the sum for an preathorization. Usually, there are half a dozen single-click alternatives available, like 10, 20, 40, 60, 90, 120 euro. The preauthorization is corrected immediately to reflect the actual sum, when the fueling is complete.


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## Coccodrillo

ChrisZwolle said:


> Ascona, Switzerland. Palm trees in the snow.


The same area today, but seen from the other side of the lake. The mountains are around 1400 m high (~4600 ft). There was a small ski resort on a mountain to the right (not visible), it was partly closed some 20 years ago but two short lifts survived until last year. In the last years it was managed basically by volunteers which worked at a loss (with some private donations and small public help).


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## MattiG

radamfi said:


> Credit cards are also recommended for car hire as you get a similar reservation on the card.


That is pretty easy to understand: The rental companies need an authorization mechanism to collect their money, but they do not want be banks of deposits. If a debit card were used, they would first receive the money, and they would have to refund it later. Too much unnecessary hassle.


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## Penn's Woods

MattiG said:


> 150 euros? Aaargh.
> 
> At the pumps in Finland, the customer can choose the sum for an preathorization. Usually, there are half a dozen single-click alternatives available, like 10, 20, 40, 60, 90, 120 euro. The preauthorization is corrected immediately to reflect the actual sum, when the fueling is complete.


Pre-authorizations for fuel purchases? How quaint. :-D

Seriously, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Just enter the card and start pumping. (Which somehow sounds dirty....)


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^ Yeah, such a thing exists in some countries. Actually, I think that has happened to me in the US as well, or at least I had to pay prior to filling. Maybe such policies are applied only when using foreign cards? Also, the US also is pretty tough on prepayment when filling in manned filling stations, something which is extremely rare in the Nordics, at least.

When I tank my car in Sweden (seems like COVID-19-ages ago, already), there is instead for some reason usually a limit to how much I can charge, I think it is 500 SEK, which means I need two different debit or credit cards to fill up the car.


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## radamfi

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> ^^ Yeah, such a thing exists in some countries. Actually, I think that has happened to me in the US as well, or at least I had to pay prior to filling. Maybe such policies are applied only when using foreign cards? Also, the US also is pretty tough on prepayment when filling in manned filling stations, something which is extremely rare in the Nordics, at least.


The US is the only place I've been where you have to pay before filling. At the time I was doing road trips in the US at least annually and the policy seemed to change around 2001. If you paid in cash you had to pay first, fill up, then go back inside for your change. Before then paying afterwards was OK. In the UK, and probably elsewhere, they let you pay after filling because they record your number plate (licence plate) so they can report you to the police if you drive off without paying. I guess they don't do this in the US.


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## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> ^^ Yeah, such a thing exists in some countries. Actually, I think that has happened to me in the US as well, or at least I had to pay prior to filling. Maybe such policies are applied only when using foreign cards? Also, the US also is pretty tough on prepayment when filling in manned filling stations, something which is extremely rare in the Nordics, at least.
> 
> When I tank my car in Sweden (seems like COVID-19-ages ago, already), there is instead for some reason usually a limit to how much I can charge, I think it is 500 SEK, which means I need two different debit or credit cards to fill up the car.


At the conceptual level, the preauthorization and pay-before-filling are very similar. At the practical level, preauthorization is much more straightforward. 

Credit card payment mechanisms are always trade-offs between simplicity and safety.


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## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> In Switzerland ATMs and payment terminals also entice you to make the withdrawal or payment in euros which is usually a worse exchange rate than if you let the bank handle it. I always set it to CHF.


That is good advice for purchases in general: always use local currency, the exchange rate offerred by the ATM or POS will almost always be worse than what is offerred by a reasonable bank (at least within Europe).


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## Suburbanist

The Dutch PIN network (now integrated with Maestro) has a huge cost advantage for merchants: it charges very low transaction fees, versus the usual 1.0 - 2.5% for credit cards.

American stores often spend quite a bit of money to organize cash transfers to banks with security vans, due to high criminality risks.


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## Penn's Woods

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> ^^ Yeah, such a thing exists in some countries. Actually, I think that has happened to me in the US as well, or at least I had to pay prior to filling. Maybe such policies are applied only when using foreign cards? Also, the US also is pretty tough on prepayment when filling in manned filling stations, something which is extremely rare in the Nordics, at least.
> 
> When I tank my car in Sweden (seems like COVID-19-ages ago, already), there is instead for some reason usually a limit to how much I can charge, I think it is 500 SEK, which means I need two different debit or credit cards to fill up the car.


We’re sometimes asked to enter the “ZIP code” - five-digit postal code - that’s associated with our billing address. Maybe the extra step is required for foreign cards since they don’t have one....


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## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> That is good advice for purchases in general: always use local currency, the exchange rate offerred by the ATM or POS will almost always be worse than what is offerred by a reasonable bank (at least within Europe).


That’s been my experience on trips to Europe and Canada. I haven’t actually used a foreign-exchange counter since a morning in the early 90s when I changed leftover cash at a Deak-Perera in Buffalo, then made a withdrawal in Toronto that afternoon and got a noticeably better rate. Now I just get cash from ATMs (associated with recognized bank names).

It also feels like common courtesy not to ask, say, waiters to handle foreign cash.


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## bogdymol

Penn's Woods said:


> Pre-authorizations for fuel purchases? How quaint. :-D
> 
> Seriously, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Just enter the card and start pumping. (Which somehow sounds dirty....)


Except in the US foreign cards do not work directly at the pump. I tried with Romanian-issued and Austrian-issued cards, Visa and Maestro, and does not work. I always had to go inside the building and pay (cash or card, it works inside) before refueling.


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## Suburbanist

Pre-authorizations are common to guarantee the card can pay for a full tank refuel. In most cases the pre-authorized amount is not even shown on the card statement and is immediately released upon completion of transaction. Problems arise when sometimes different bank systems don't treat such pre-authorizations the same. 

France pumps of 2 major vendors were notorious for that. A work around involved refueling with a certain fixed amount of money instead of using an undetermined (until full) option.


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## Slagathor

Since we're on the subject, does anyone know if any Canadian banks allow you to open an account when you're not a resident?

I have family and friends in Canada and I go there quite often, so it would be convenient for me to have a Canadian bank account. That way, I could just transfer a sum of money there ahead of my trip, and then use that during my stay. Fewer fees and less exchange rate math involved.

But I only ever go there as a tourist, so I don't think it's possible...


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## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> Seriously, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Just enter the card and start pumping.


I suppose all systems use some kind of pre-authorization because there is no way to know how much the bill will be but they need to authorize payment. Usually this preauthorization doesn't come up on my bank statement, just the amount fueled, but I had seen that € 150 disappear a few times in France, only to be refunded after a few days.

€ 150 is the highest I've seen. Some pumps use € 90. These systems don't know if you show up with a Toyota Aygo or a big pickup truck or RV.


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## ChrisZwolle

Ice in Kyiv 😅


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1337177689145438210


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## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> Since we're on the subject, does anyone know if any Canadian banks allow you to open an account when you're not a resident?
> 
> I have family and friends in Canada and I go there quite often, so it would be convenient for me to have a Canadian bank account. That way, I could just transfer a sum of money there ahead of my trip, and then use that during my stay. Fewer fees and less exchange rate math involved.
> 
> But I only ever go there as a tourist, so I don't think it's possible...


What would you like to do? If you just want to have a card that will hold CAD that you can spend in shops and online and withdraw cash from ATMs then a Revolut card might be worth looking at. You can hold balances in most major currencies, and many minor ones, and instantly transfer between them at interbank rates. You also get IBANs in EUR and GBP so you can easily transfer money between your main Dutch account and the Revolut account. I've got a Revolut account as it is particularly useful for me as I can transfer from my regular GBP bank accounts to the Revolut GBP account, then transfer to the Revolut EUR account, and then transfer to my Dutch bunq EUR account.

If you want to be able to transfer money to Canadian bank accounts then it offers cheap money transfer facilities but you don't get a Canadian bank account number so if you need people in Canada to transfer money to you then they can only transfer to your EUR or GBP accounts so for them it will be like an international money transfer.


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## Slagathor

Well ideally I would like a Canadian account with a Canadian app + card. But this Revolut thing seems to at least bypass the exchange rate and fees problem, which is a big win already. I'll check it out!


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## keber

Penn's Woods said:


> We’re sometimes asked to enter the “ZIP code” - five-digit postal code - that’s associated with our billing address. Maybe the extra step is required for foreign cards since they don’t have one....


From my experience in 2017 and 2019 trip to USA: When you want to fill your car as a foreigner, you have to go inside, tell the sales person that you have foreign card and then he/she unblocks the pump beside your car. You fill your car and then you return inside to pay your actual bill. Entering ZIP, PIN or any other codes into card machine beside the pump doesn't work with European credit cards (you could have luck, though - it happened to me once or twice). Of course you can mostly forget about using European debit cards in USA, even on ATMs.


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## Slagathor

keber said:


> From my experience in 2017 and 2019 trip to USA: When you want to fill your car as a foreigner, you have to go inside, tell the sales person that you have foreign card and then he/she unblocks the pump beside your car. You fill your car and then you return inside to pay your actual bill. Entering ZIP, PIN or any other codes into card machine beside the pump doesn't work with European credit cards (you could have luck, though - it happened to me once or twice). Of course you can mostly forget about using European debit cards in USA, even on ATMs.


I usually give 'm cash. The first time I had to do that I freaked out the employee because, being used to European prices, I gave him a 100 dollar bill and said: "I think that should cover it."

Came back, turns out it was 12 bucks. 😂


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland we also have direct debit (polecenie zapłaty), but it's only used for periodic payments, like e.g. telephone subscriptions or energy bills. And it isn't popular – as it's basically allowing an external company (which you don't necessarily trust) to charge any money from your bank account directly, without asking you for a consent. In Germany it's orders of magnitude more common and universal.


As radamfi already wrote, direct debits are very popular in Britain, I pay most of my reoccurring bills that way.



radamfi said:


> The US is the only place I've been where you have to pay before filling. At the time I was doing road trips in the US at least annually and the policy seemed to change around 2001. If you paid in cash you had to pay first, fill up, then go back inside for your change. Before then paying afterwards was OK. In the UK, and probably elsewhere, they let you pay after filling because they record your number plate (licence plate) so they can report you to the police if you drive off without paying. I guess they don't do this in the US.





keber said:


> From my experience in 2017 and 2019 trip to USA: When you want to fill your car as a foreigner, you have to go inside, tell the sales person that you have foreign card and then he/she unblocks the pump beside your car. You fill your car and then you return inside to pay your actual bill. Entering ZIP, PIN or any other codes into card machine beside the pump doesn't work with European credit cards (you could have luck, though - it happened to me once or twice). Of course you can mostly forget about using European debit cards in USA, even on ATMs.





bogdymol said:


> Except in the US foreign cards do not work directly at the pump. I tried with Romanian-issued and Austrian-issued cards, Visa and Maestro, and does not work. I always had to go inside the building and pay (cash or card, it works inside) before refueling.


Ah, paying before filing and then going back to get "unused balance" back, brings many memories from my road trips in the US 

Really annoying practice...

But I think it is changing, more and more often I was able to pay with my British card at the pump. In Canada it was possible in most places during my last trips. But even in the US it happens more often than in the past.

As for cash in the US I use it less and less during my trips. 10 years ago or so I used to do majority of payments in cash, probably with the exception of accomodation. All the rest was cash. Last year during a week trip I probably used $50-80 of cash.

Which is a bit of a problem.

Some time ago I noticed those nice quarters coins with different states and started collecting them. Basically I always got so much change in quarters which I couldn't be bother spending that I started noticing all those different coins. I got most of them by now but I still have dozen or so states missing. And since I pay so little with cash recently I'm adding the missing ones only very slowly...


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## Suburbanist

Slagathor said:


> Well ideally I would like a Canadian account with a Canadian app + card. But this Revolut thing seems to at least bypass the exchange rate and fees problem, which is a big win already. I'll check it out!


Transferwise also has a "borderless account" that allows you to withdraw cash at more advantageous rates, and without additional fees for debit purchases. It also has IBAN numbers you can use in several countries (not sure if they offer local Canadian account numbers already).


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## radamfi

keber said:


> Of course you can mostly forget about using European debit cards in USA, even on ATMs.


Which debit cards are you talking about? I've been using debit cards in the USA, including ATMs, since the 90s.


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## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> I suppose all systems use some kind of pre-authorization because there is no way to know how much the bill will be but they need to authorize payment. Usually this preauthorization doesn't come up on my bank statement, just the amount fueled, but I had seen that € 150 disappear a few times in France, only to be refunded after a few days.
> 
> € 150 is the highest I've seen. Some pumps use € 90. These systems don't know if you show up with a Toyota Aygo or a big pickup truck or RV.


Once I got € 300 (several years ago), because I was wrongfully refueling a diesel car at a pump meant for trucks. But it wasn't a high pump where it is obvious cars shouldn't refill, nor dit it have those large noozles. It looked kinda normal, and fit the car tank entrance normally. It did feel as if it had refilled twice as faster but I hadn't made a fuss about it, until I got an SMS alert few minutes later showing a € 300 'reservation' on my credit card.


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## Suburbanist

radamfi said:


> Which debit cards are you talking about? I've been using debit cards in the USA, including ATMs, since the 90s.


Chip-and-PIN debit cards, until very recently, had troubles being recognized on the strip-based POS machines in the US. This has been changing, though. New POS machines can read the chips.

Almost all European banks have shut off the magnetic strip funcionality within SEPA. I am not sure it is forbidden to use it, or just if the risks are too high for vendors.


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## radamfi

Suburbanist said:


> Transferwise also has a "borderless account" that allows you to withdraw cash at more advantageous rates, and without additional fees for debit purchases. It also has IBAN numbers you can use in several countries (not sure if they offer local Canadian account numbers already).


I looked into Transferwise but chose Revolut because they don't charge any fees for the small amounts that I needed to transfer between GBP and EUR. Revolut have extra charges at the weekend though so I make sure I do exchanges during Monday to Friday. Transferwise is better if you need to transfer larger amounts of money as Revolut charge fees above a certain amount.

Transferwise offer bank account numbers in the UK, Eurozone, US, Australia, New Zealand, Hungary, Romania and Singapore but unfortunately no Canada. But it might be a good option for Americans visiting Europe. Although for some reason, residents of Hawaii and Nevada can't get the Transferwise debit card!


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## MichiH

Germany had an all-time record yesterday: 29,900 new cases and 598 fatalities!
It was over 23,000 the day before - similar to previous all-time record - and there were calls from experts and some politicians for an immediate or "latest after Xmas" full lock down for whole Germany.
I woke up this morning with the news: "Decision today about full lockdown for Baden-Württemberg from next week, decision for full lockdown of Germany on Sunday or maybe also today". I just heard: full lockdown of Baden-Württemberg decided. From *TOMORROW!*

What I know so far: Stricter than in spring when I was still allowed to travel within Germany - only Bavaria was a no-go area with stricter rules!


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## geogregor

MichiH said:


> Germany had an all-time record yesterday: 29,900 new cases!
> It was over 23,000 the day before - similar to previous all-time record - and there were calls from experts and some politicians for an immediate or "latest after Xmas" full lock down for whole Germany.
> I woke up this morning with the news: "Decision today about full lockdown for Baden-Württemberg from next week, decision for full lockdown of Germany on Sunday or maybe also today". I just heard: full lockdown of Baden-Württemberg decided. From TOMORROW!


Don't panic, fetch a drink and wait for the decision. People whip themselves into frenzy constantly following "Covid news". It is not healthy.

They might decide to close hospitality in London next week. Since there is not much I can do about it I'm going to enjoy myself while I still can, most likely by visiting pub and restaurant 

But I agree that introducing major changes to restrictions from one day to another is simply bonkers.


----------



## MichiH

geogregor said:


> Don't panic, fetch a drink and wait for the decision.


Since I live in Baden-Württemberg, there is already a decision.


----------



## MichiH

geogregor said:


> Don't panic, fetch a drink and wait for the decision. People whip themselves into frenzy constantly following "Covid news". It is not healthy.


I don't panic at all. I'm just TOTALLY PISSED OFF by the suggestions, pre-announcements, announcements,.... every day again and again. Every state differently - I live "between" two states - and I doubt that anyone is really aware what is currently allowed and what is not allowed. It is just insane!

Restaurants and pubs are closed since early November. Schools are mostly still more or less fully open...


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> As radamfi already wrote, direct debits are very popular in Britain, I pay most of my reoccurring bills that way.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ah, paying before filing and then going back to get "unused balance" back, brings many memories from my road trips in the US
> 
> Really annoying practice...
> 
> But I think it is changing, more and more often I was able to pay with my British card at the pump. In Canada it was possible in most places during my last trips. But even in the US it happens more often than in the past.
> 
> As for cash in the US I use it less and less during my trips. 10 years ago or so I used to do majority of payments in cash, probably with the exception of accomodation. All the rest was cash. Last year during a week trip I probably used $50-80 of cash.
> 
> Which is a bit of a problem.
> 
> Some time ago I noticed those nice quarters coins with different states and started collecting them. Basically I always got so much change in quarters which I couldn't be bother spending that I started noticing all those different coins. I got most of them by now but I still have dozen or so states missing. And since I pay so little with cash recently I'm adding the missing ones only very slowly...


So you know there are actually -two- state series, right?
After they’d gone through the states and territories, they started with a national-parks series on a one-park-per-state basis. I gave up on collecting them at that point. I don’t even pay attention to them now.

Canada has a series of quarters with what I suppose we’re supposed to believe are Canadian national virtues, like perseverance....


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> Chip-and-PIN debit cards, until very recently, had troubles being recognized on the strip-based POS machines in the US. This has been changing, though. New POS machines can read the chips.
> 
> Almost all European banks have shut off the magnetic strip funcionality within SEPA. I am not sure it is forbidden to use it, or just if the risks are too high for vendors.


And on my 2015 trip to Europe I had the opposite issue: the chips were a novelty here and not all my cards had them. At least I knew from Rick Steves’s travel-advice site that that night he an issue over there, so I wasn’t taken by surprise. By the next year, we all had chip cards here. Nowadays you don’t know what to do...: insert, swipe, tap? I suppose they all work. (But there are some quirks. At the supermarket I use most often, the card reader will ask me to confirm the balance when I’ve inserted or swiped, not when I tap. I prefer to have that step.)

Thinking now about gas purchases, most of my gas purchases these days are in New Jersey, where it’s not self-service. You hand the pump attendant your card. So I don’t know what verification steps he does. Once in a while, he’ll ask me for my ZIP code, but that’s rare. It probably comes up a bit more often when I pump my own gas in other states.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> So you know there are actually -two- state series, right?
> After they’d gone through the states and territories, they started with a national-parks series on a one-park-per-state basis. I gave up on collecting them at that point. I don’t even pay attention to them.
> 
> Canada has a series of quarters with what I suppose we’re supposed to believe are Canadian national virtues, like perseverance....


PS: Collecting coins is one thing I miss about pre-euro Europe. Not enough to outweigh the convenience of not having to be changing money every couple of hundred miles....


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> Seriously, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Just enter the card and start pumping. (Which somehow sounds dirty....)


The pump must somehow verify that you have a sufficient amount of money to pay...



MattiG said:


> That is pretty easy to understand: The rental companies need an authorization mechanism to collect their money, but they do not want be banks of deposits. If a debit card were used, they would first receive the money, and they would have to refund it later. Too much unnecessary hassle.


But debit card also offer pre-authorization.



Suburbanist said:


> It did feel as if it had refilled twice as faster but I hadn't made a fuss about it, until I got an SMS alert few minutes later showing a € 300 'reservation' on my credit card.


So what happened with the excessive fuel? Anyway, normally when the tank is full, the nozzle "jumps off", so you should know you're full... Didn't it work there?


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> Germany had an all-time record yesterday: 29,900 new cases and 598 fatalities!
> It was over 23,000 the day before - similar to previous all-time record - and there were calls from experts and some politicians for an immediate or "latest after Xmas" full lock down for whole Germany.
> I woke up this morning with the news: "Decision today about full lockdown for Baden-Württemberg from next week, decision for full lockdown of Germany on Sunday or maybe also today". I just heard: full lockdown of Baden-Württemberg decided. From *TOMORROW!*
> 
> What I know so far: Stricter than in spring when I was still allowed to travel within Germany - only Bavaria was a no-go area with stricter rules!


Our total COVID deaths just passed World War II American combat deaths. We’re having “a 9/11 every day.” Or a Pearl Harbor. Or two Titanics, or the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> The pump must somehow verify that you have a sufficient amount of money to pay...
> 
> 
> But debit card also offer pre-authorization.
> 
> 
> So what happened with the excessive fuel? Anyway, normally when the tank is full, the nozzle "jumps off", so you should know you're full... Didn't it work there?


Well, I’ve never had a hold showing up on my account for days (or at all) afterwards, and I can’t remember the last time I needed to specify an amount at which it would cut off.... I suppose it does something “invisibly,” without involving me. Of course, my fill-ups never run above $30 these days, and I’ve never tried to buy gas I knew I couldn’t pay for.... So I have no idea what would happen if I tried to buy gas with $10 in my account.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Canadian postal codes are mixed letters and numerals - LNL NLN. I have it on good authority (Kanadzie) that if someone with a Canadian card enters the numerals and two zeroes when an American pump asks for the ZIP - so if your postal code is A1B 2C3, enter 12300 - it works. So maybe try that with European postal codes?? With French or Spanish ones, you wouldn’t even need to add zeroes.


----------



## MichiH

keber said:


> From my experience in 2017 and 2019 trip to USA: When you want to fill your car as a foreigner, you have to go inside, tell the sales person that you have foreign card and then he/she unblocks the pump beside your car. You fill your car and then you return inside to pay your actual bill.


True! Also my experience from 2007.



keber said:


> Entering ZIP, PIN or any other codes into card machine beside the pump doesn't work with European credit cards (you could have luck, though - it happened to me once or twice). Of course you can mostly forget about using European debit cards in USA, even on ATMs.


There was no issue with my German credit card back in 2007. ZIP and PIN - all worked fine! If memory serves, my debit card also worked at ATMs.

My VISA credit card was not accepted at toll stations in Srpska (I passed three) but mastercard worked. I think I never experienced other general issues anywhere else.


----------



## Penn's Woods

If you’d told me a year ago I’d be listening to live, all-day, breaking-news coverage of a vaccine rollout....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Or daily updates about ICU occupancy... 🙃


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Or daily updates about ICU occupancy...


Well, yes. The vaccine rollout’s better news, though.


----------



## Penn's Woods

MichiH said:


> I don't panic at all. I'm just TOTALLY PISSED OFF by the suggestions, pre-announcements, announcements,.... every day again and again. Every state differently - I live "between" two states - and I doubt that anyone is really aware what is currently allowed and what is not allowed. It is just insane!
> 
> Restaurants and pubs are closed since early November. Schools are mostly still more or less fully open...


I don’t stress about knowing what’s supposed to be open; if the business is supposed to be closed, I assume it will be closed. To the extent we’re getting pre-announcements, they’re sort of warnings, or incentives to behave better: “if we don’t get our act together, we’ll have to close restaurants,” that sort of thing. But I’m starting to feel nervous again about going out....


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Or daily updates about ICU occupancy...


Seriously, though, we’re talking about reporters live outside of warehouses.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

We had reporters at churches counting how many people went inside (churches were exempt from the 30 persons limit that was in force at the time). So they could write headlines outraged that a staggering 200 people went into a church (which had a 2,400 capacity so it was filled at less than 10%).


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> We had reporters at churches counting how many people went inside (churches were exempt from the 30 persons limit that was in force at the time). So they could write headlines outraged that a staggering 200 people went into a church (which had a 2,400 capacity so it was filled at less than 10%).


I’m guessing these reporters weren’t from Trouw.


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> Canadian postal codes are mixed letters and numerals - LNL NLN. I have it on good authority (Kanadzie) that if someone with a Canadian card enters the numerals and two zeroes when an American pump asks for the ZIP - so if your postal code is A1B 2C3, enter 12300 - it works. So maybe try that with European postal codes?? With French or Spanish ones, you wouldn’t even need to add zeroes.


Gonna try that next time.

Beats my current strategy of punching in "90210" because it's the only US postal code I know (if you were a teenager in the '90s you know what I'm talking about).


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> Gonna try that next time.
> 
> Beats my current strategy of punching in "90210" because it's the only US postal code I know (if you were a teenager in the '90s you know what I'm talking about).


I was in my 20s. But I get the reference.
Well, if it’s really verifying that your card matches that ZIP code, it wouldn’t work. Although if it did, I wonder if people in Beverly Hills have higher purchase limits.


----------



## bogdymol

Penn's Woods said:


> Canadian postal codes are mixed letters and numerals - LNL NLN. I have it on good authority (Kanadzie) that if someone with a Canadian card enters the numerals and two zeroes when an American pump asks for the ZIP - so if your postal code is A1B 2C3, enter 12300 - it works. So maybe try that with European postal codes?? With French or Spanish ones, you wouldn’t even need to add zeroes.


I tried. Doesn't work. The postal code where I live in Austria is 1234. I tried writing 12340 (to have 5-digit like US postcode) and did not work. I also tried 00000. Doesn't work.


Austria is now COVID-19 mass-testing its population (fast antigen test). In my region the tests are made from today till Monday, but so far only about 15% of the population registered for it.

I went today with my wife to get tested. Went there, showed our ID and pre-filled forms, got tested (long stick down your nose; I heard nasty experiences with this one, but it wasn't anything as bad as I thought it would be, was quite ok actually), then went out. Before we got back home we got a link by SMS where we could check the results. Both negative.

If someone would have tested positive, it would get a call and get a free appointment for a more precise PCR test. It has to be said that in Vienna about half of the antigen tests turned out to be false-positive (were negative at the PCR test).


----------



## radamfi

Now that Chip & PIN exists in the US, why don't gas stations change to PIN instead of ZIP?


----------



## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> And on my 2015 trip to Europe I had the opposite issue: the chips were a novelty here and not all my cards had them. At least I knew from Rick Steves’s travel-advice site that that night he an issue over there, so I wasn’t taken by surprise. By the next year, we all had chip cards here. Nowadays you don’t know what to do...: insert, swipe, tap? I suppose they all work. (But there are some quirks. At the supermarket I use most often, the card reader will ask me to confirm the balance when I’ve inserted or swiped, not when I tap. I prefer to have that step.)
> 
> Thinking now about gas purchases, most of my gas purchases these days are in New Jersey, where it’s not self-service. *You hand the pump attendant your card*. So I don’t know what verification steps he does. Once in a while, he’ll ask me for my ZIP code, but that’s rare. It probably comes up a bit more often when I pump my own gas in other states.


Machines around here no longer allow swapping, as far as I know. Either insert or tap. The difference is that some systems allow a tap to replace an insert, even if the values are higher, such that it asks for your pin. Other systems only allow a tap if no PIN is further required.

Giving your card for a waiter to wisk away to the machine is a huge security flaw. In the magnetic-strip times or, even further back, on the carbon-copy swipe era, that was the easiest way for unscrupulous agents to clone your card.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> Now that Chip & PIN exists in the US, why don't gas stations change to PIN instead of ZIP?


Speaking only for myself, I don’t have PINs with all my credit cards. I’d only need them to withdraw cash (and withdrawing cash on a credit card is a bad habit to get into), or when in Europe. (In fact I have a little note to self where I track account balances to set them up before I next leave the country.) But the system’s constantly evolving. I was about to say that they’re requiring no ID for smaller purchases*, and for larger ones you sign, but I’m actually not being asked for signatures much any more. I don’t know whether that small-purchase threshold’s been raised to the point I never hit it? I don’t really know. I’m -guessing- you sign for a purchase made in person above $100. Which is something I haven’t done in a bit, thanks to the pandemic.

*Which I -don’t- like; it doesn’t feel secure; I guess the bank rather than the consumer is taking the risk of loss if the card’s stolen and used illicitly,


----------



## Suburbanist

Actually, it appears from what I read that the first wave of credit card scams were when online shopping had just sprung in 1996-1997, and virtually anyone with a credit card number could make small orders with relatively lax standards. Thus, scammers started harvesting cc numbers and ordering stuff to other addresses in the name of the original card owner. Eventually, card owners got refunded by their banks, but in the process many scammy online merchant stores were built up during the Internet craze of the late 1990s, so by the time banks would caught up to the gig, a phantom business had already vanished and the bank could sue the merchant to get its refund money back.


----------



## MichiH

My credit cards only work with PIN or with double authorization (pin sent to cell phone). I remember that there was a time when showing the credit card and signing the receipt was enough but that was long ago - fifteen years?


----------



## Suburbanist

Penn's Woods said:


> Speaking only for myself, I don’t have PINs with all my credit cards. I’d only need them to withdraw cash (and withdrawing cash on a credit card is a bad habit to get into), or when in Europe. (In fact I have a little note to self where I track account balances to set them up before I next leave the country.) But the system’s constantly evolving. I was about to say that they’re requiring no ID for smaller purchases*, and for larger ones you sign, but I’m actually not being asked for signatures much any more. I don’t know whether that small-purchase threshold’s been raised to the point I never hit it? I don’t really know. I’m -guessing- you sign for a purchase made in person above $100. Which is something I haven’t done in a bit, thanks to the pandemic.
> 
> *Which I -don’t- like; it doesn’t feel secure; I guess the bank rather than the consumer is taking the risk of loss if the card’s stolen and used illicitly,


In my European bank accounts, there is a small daily limit that is also the maximum liability I'd face if I lost the card, didn't notice, and somebody else used it. One of the accounts is € 250 Euro or something. I can just reduce it to € 10 on my online bank if I so wished. Every purchase after notification of loss is stalled as well. In any case, banks will often refund small purchases in case of loss to retain the costumer, if data indicates the loss is legit.

If you were to get robbed or victim of a crime with a police report, then you often get refunded full amount.


----------



## Suburbanist

MichiH said:


> My credit cards only work with PIN or with double authorization (pin sent to cell phone). I remember that there was a time when showing the credit card and signing the receipt was enough but that was long ago - fifteen years?


I dislike two-factor authentication using SMS. I prefer those that send a message through the app and ask for my fingerprint to validate a purchase on spot.


----------



## radamfi

Rollout of contactless bank cards has been critical in encouraging people to use cards for small amounts and enables cards to be used for public transport as the ticket. If you had to type in the PIN every time you get on the bus or enter a subway station it would take too long. For years now it has been possible to travel on London's public transport using your bank card as the ticket and many now use it exclusively.


----------



## MichiH

Suburbanist said:


> I dislike two-factor authentication using SMS. I prefer those that send a message through the app and ask for my fingerprint to validate a purchase on spot.


Agree. I have it with my debit card only.


----------



## mgk920

radamfi said:


> The US is the only place I've been where you have to pay before filling. At the time I was doing road trips in the US at least annually and the policy seemed to change around 2001. If you paid in cash you had to pay first, fill up, then go back inside for your change. Before then paying afterwards was OK. In the UK, and probably elsewhere, they let you pay after filling because they record your number plate (licence plate) so they can report you to the police if you drive off without paying. I guess they don't do this in the US.


A lot of that has to do wth the attitudes of the local police and prosecutors. In many areas, they won't bother with a petty $20-30 fuel 'drive off'. Some places are so transient and high crime that that is pretty much expected.

Fortunately, that's not (yet) a problem here in the Appleton, WI area.

Mike


----------



## mgk920

Penn's Woods said:


> PS: Collecting coins is one thing I miss about pre-euro Europe. Not enough to outweigh the convenience of not having to be changing money every couple of hundred miles....


I would think that in 'Euro' Europe, coins would be more interesting in that each Euro-zone country issues their own coins (a 'common' design on one side and a design specific to the country that issued it on the other) and they mix freely in circulation, such that you can have coins of how many different countries in your pocket at any given time, dated from 2002 to present (1999 for Nederlands) and five different mint mark varieties for German coins. That is a LOT of varieties, some of which are very interesting designs.

Mike


----------



## Slagathor

Disagree. Eurocoins are hideous. 



Penn's Woods said:


> I was in my 20s. But I get the reference.
> Well, if it’s really verifying that your card matches that ZIP code, it wouldn’t work. Although if it did, I wonder if people in Beverly Hills have higher purchase limits.


Oh it never works. But it makes me smile.


----------



## geogregor

Penn's Woods said:


> So you know there are actually -two- state series, right?
> After they’d gone through the states and territories, they started with a national-parks series on a one-park-per-state basis. I gave up on collecting them at that point. I don’t even pay attention to them now.


Well, I knew there were two series, one with states and another one with national parks. I though they were going to go through all the parks not just one per state.

Anyway, here is my collection:


DSC04936 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

I realized I miss more than I thought...

DSC04942 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

I definitely have to pay with cash next time I'm in the US (whenever we are allowed to travel)  



radamfi said:


> Like a lot of British people, I use my credit card almost exclusively. Many credit cards offer rewards or cashback for using them so it is effectively cheaper to use a credit card. Obviously a lot of people can't control their spending so would be better off with a debit card, but that doesn't apply to me.


I use debit cards far more often than credit but I do use credit cards often enough. As long as you pay the balance off every month there is no extra cost. I always do as it is set up to pay off my balance automatically every month. 

Many people assume that if you pay with credit card you will automatically go into debt. Well, it is not true as long as you are disciplined (which as you say, many people are not).




Slagathor said:


> Beats my current strategy of punching in "90210" because it's the only US postal code I know (if you were a teenager in the '90s you know what I'm talking about).


I used to watch that show a lot in the early '90s. It was such an alien world for us as we just came out of communist economy. A bright rich world.

Funnily, when 10 years later I went for a summer job in the US I had moments when I felt like I was living in "90210 set". Especially as my job was in Disney World in Florida and we lived in quite nice campus full of students, with palm trees and outdoor swimming pools...


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> But debit card also offer pre-authorization.


Of course it does, but it is not the same thing as the credit card based guarantee. The use of a debit card always involves a money transaction, while the guarantee does not. It is an safety net for the rental companies to cover parking and speedincg tickets arriving maybe months after the rental.

Some rental companies like Hertz do nowadays have an option to pay debit card in some countries. This involves withdrawing a deposit, and that deposit will be released some time after the rental. Meanwhile, the amount of deposit is held, and it is not available to the card holder. I believe that the companies have special agreements with the local banks for the arrangements.

The local legislation may make the credit card use safer than a debit card in certain circumstances. In Finland, it is easier to start a claim against a credit card transaction than a debit card one. A debit card transaction is a one-to-one agreement between the bodies, while in the the credit card transaction the issuing bank finances the purchase, and it is responsible for paying the money back in case of a non-delivery or a questionable claim. Therefore, I never use a debit card for any prepaid orders if the value exceeds some tens of euros.


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> So maybe try that with European postal codes?? With French or Spanish ones, you wouldn’t even need to add zeroes.


I have read many times that European postal codes don't work there. Anyway, each country has a different system of them. In Poland it's two digits, dash and three digits. In international delivery you can just enter five digits and it works. But it doesn't work at American


----------



## PovilD

Our postal codes are hard to remember. It's: LT-five digits. I get frustrated when I have to put my home postal code. I don't remember it. No wonder PIN codes are four digits.

They are only assigned for a house, not a flat (the house where the flat is, or individual house).

It's way easier for home address, since house numbers and flat numbers are never longer than three digits. There are sometimes letters near digits, but these never cause problem, since you know it's assigned to one area.

For flat (like commieblock flat): [house number]-[flat number] format is used. Random gatvė* 12-34, Kaunas, Lithuania
For house usually only house number used. Random gatvė 123, Kaunas, Lithuania.

*For the most part, gatvė is shortened as *g.

We also depict streets with prospektas (avenue), alėja (alley), plentas (chausee, road), skersgatvis (short connector street), akligatvis (dead end) on rare occasion: kelias (road).
They are shortened respectably as: pr., al., pl., kel.


----------



## geogregor

MattiG said:


> The local legislation may make the credit card use safer than a debit card in certain circumstances. In Finland, it is easier to start a claim against a credit card transaction than a debit card one. A debit card transaction is a one-to-one agreement between the bodies, while in the the credit card transaction the issuing bank finances the purchase, and it is responsible for paying the money back in case of a non-delivery or a questionable claim. Therefore, I never use a debit card for any prepaid orders if the value exceeds some tens of euros.


In the UK it is also easier to claim money back on credit card transactions than on debit ones. In fact it is often advised that if you buy something from more risky vendor to pay using credit rather than debit card.


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> In fact it is often advised that if you buy something from more risky vendor to pay using credit rather than debit card.


Anything over £100 and the credit card company is liable for non-delivery. The legal difference is that with a credit card, the contract is between you and the credit card company, when you pay with a debit card, the contract is between you and the vendor directly


----------



## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> Beats my current strategy of punching in "90210" because it's the only US postal code I know (if you were a teenager in the '90s you know what I'm talking about).


I'd always assumed that they had made up the ZIP code in the same way they do with phone numbers on the movies (not that it has been at the front of my mind very often!)


----------



## Suburbanist

Speaking of rental cars, I really wish there were a less stressful way or going about that business than the combo of super low 'fares' that have sketchy insurance and questionable damage cost attribution practices.

These days, I just bite the bullet of the "super cover" and carry supplemental insurance for the deductible. Well, not really these days due to Covid19 anyway.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Stuu said:


> I'd always assumed that they had made up the ZIP code in the same way they do with phone numbers on the movies (not that it has been at the front of my mind very often!)


I believe 90210 is legitimate for (part of) Beverly Hills. Wait, hang on....

Yep:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Stuu said:


> I'd always assumed that they had made up the ZIP code in the same way they do with phone numbers on the movies (not that it has been at the front of my mind very often!)


American movies and TV shows often use numbers beginning 555, because in real life that prefix is reserved for what you’d call directory enquiries (for us, directory assistance or just “information.”), so you’re not going to run into the 867-5309 problem: 








867-5309/Jenny - Wikipedia







en.m.wikipedia.org


----------



## Stuu

Penn's Woods said:


> I believe 90210 is legitimate for (part of) Beverly Hills. Wait, hang on....
> 
> Yep:


Yes I checked before writing that, I was quite surprised - was the zip code famous in the US before the show? I'd always used my ex-employer's head office zip code when asked for one and it always worked, somewhat defeating the point of them


----------



## Stuu

Penn's Woods said:


> American movies and TV shows often use numbers beginning 555, because in real life that prefix is reserved for what you’d call directory enquiries (for us, directory assistance or just “information.”), so you’re not going to run into the 857-5309 problem:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 867-5309/Jenny - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.m.wikipedia.org


Indeed, that's the similar thing I was thinking of, as explained in one of Arnie's movies (Last Action Hero?)


----------



## Penn's Woods

Stuu said:


> Yes I checked before writing that, I was quite surprised - was the zip code famous in the US before the show? I'd always used my ex-employer's head office zip code when asked for one and it always worked, somewhat defeating the point of them


I don’t think there are many well-known ZIP codes, really....


----------



## Stuu

Penn's Woods said:


> I don’t think there are many well-known ZIP codes, really....


No I didn't really think there would be, I guess they just wanted to think of something more to call their show than just Beverley Hills - from memory "The *** of Beverley Hills" would have been entirely appropriate (insert your preferred profanity)


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> For flat (like commieblock flat): [house number]-[flat number] format is used. Random gatvė* 12-34, Kaunas, Lithuania
> For house usually only house number used. Random gatvė 123, Kaunas, Lithuania.
> 
> *For the most part, gatvė is shortened as *g.
> 
> We also depict streets with prospektas (avenue), alėja (alley), plentas (chausee, road), skersgatvis (short connector street), akligatvis (dead end) on rare occasion: kelias (road).
> They are shortened respectably as: pr., al., pl., kel.


In Poland you always use the postal code in the address. No matter if it's house or apartment. What's the difference, after all?

The assignment of postal codes often doesn't really overlap with the borders of municipalities. So you just have to know the appropriate one, or check it.

We usually write if it's a street (ul.), avenue (al.) or square (pl.). Houses just have numbers, might have an extra letter (if a piece of land was divided and they had to squeeze a new number between two subsequent ones), it also might be double, with two subsequent numbers, or with a larger separation of them (if several pieces of land with addressed buildings were joined).

So you may have e.g.
pl. Wolności 1 –> 1, Liberty Square
ul. Kopernika 53A -> 53A, Copernicus Street – it's a number which was probably squeezed in between 53 and 55.
al. Kościuszki 34/36 -> 34/36, Kosciuszko Avenue – when the numbers 34 and 36 were joined

It's usually (although not always) so that the buildings on one side of the street have odd numbers, and the other side has even numbers.

Small villages (especially if one spreads e.g. only along a single road) often don't have street names. If so, you just write the name of the village before the number.

And after the postal code, you don't put the name of the village in which the specific address is located, but the one with the post office, to which the specific village belongs.

In apartment buildings, it's a little bit more complex. Because there are several notations used.

One system is to write the building number slash the apartment number. Although it might be misleading because slash is also used if several subsequent addresses got joined, as I described above.

So e.g. 
ul. Zielona 24/58 – Green Street, house 24, apartment 58.

Another option is to use "m." as an abbreviation for "mieszkanie" – "apartment". So:
ul. Zielona 24 m. 58 – meaning the same as above.

Although in my town, there are three neighborhoods of commie blocks, which have quite unusual addresses... They don't have typical building numbers from the numbering scheme of the street (well, probably the whole neighborhoods have them, but they aren't used in practice), instead you have the number of the BLOCK (the building), which you have to indicate in the address. Like:
ul. Kopernika bl. 10 m. 7
This way they know it's the commie block number 10 and not the house number 10.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Houses just have numbers, might have an extra letter (if a piece of land was divided and they had to squeeze a new number between two subsequent ones), it also might be double, with two subsequent numbers, or with a larger separation of them (if several pieces of land with addressed buildings were joined).


Yeah, same here, especially when one developer builds an apartment complex with divided land. I don't remember how it is called in English, we call them "kotedžai" (smth like atached housing complex probably?). At this case same address can have all alphabet letters  but for the most part, only additional house can get letter A (sometimes two houses with attached letters A and B) near the main house.



> al. Kościuszki 34/36 -> 34/36, Kosciuszko Avenue – when the numbers 34 and 36 were joined


We don't join numbers, we just left number vacant. It's usual to find odd or even numbers on one side of the street with missing numbers: 1, 3, 7, 9, 11, 15...



> It's usually (although not always) so that the buildings on one side of the street have odd numbers, and the other side has even numbers.


I think we use this format quite firmly. Fot most cases, on one side of the street there are odd numbers, on the other side there are even numbers. I think I didn't even heard about mixing them up (not using odd/even number format for street). Only squares (aikštės) have house numbers going evenly side by side 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.
Btw, aikštė is shortened as a., for example Panevėžys has Laisvės aikštė (translates as Freedom square), on addresses, it is written as Laisvės a.
Kaunas has one of the most famous pedestrian streets in Lithuania, Laisvės alėja. It is shortened as Laisvės al.  (btw, it is translated to English as Freedom Avenue).

I think I should fix myself what I wrote in my last post there. Alley is skersgatvis in Lithuanian (shortened as skrg.), while avenue is usually alėja (al.), while prospektas is understood as "important street" and it derived from Tsarist Russia times. Kaunas is a capital of the name "prospektas" . There are few prospektas in Vilnius and Klaipėda too, but these are mostly located in commieblock districts, excl. Konstitucijos prospektas, which goes through highrise complex where we have our highest buildings in Lithuania.

...and one most important central street which was formely called Lenino pr.  Is now Gedimino pr. in Vilnius, and Vytauto pr. in Kaunas 



> Small villages (especially if one spreads e.g. only along a single road) often don't have street names. If so, you just write the name of the village before the number.


Partially it's the same here, some municipalities have chose to name every track just to avoid this situation, while most have decided to give only house number near village name.
We write it as "Dangoraižių k. 5" where k. is shortened form of "kaimas" (village).

For the long time, there were villages without any addreses. I even heard news about this issue that there are some villages left to this day (although I don't know for sure if this process is now finished, judging form data I saw, it looks like it's finished or very near finished).



> In apartment buildings, it's a little bit more complex. Because there are several notations used.
> 
> One system is to write the building number slash the apartment number. Although it might be misleading because slash is also used if several subsequent addresses got joined, as I described above.
> 
> So e.g.
> ul. Zielona 24/58 – Green Street, house 24, apartment 58.
> 
> Another option is to use "m." as an abbreviation for "mieszkanie" – "apartment". So:
> ul. Zielona 24 m. 58 – meaning the same as above.
> 
> Although in my town, there are three neighborhoods of commie blocks, which have quite unusual addresses... They don't have typical building numbers from the numbering scheme of the street (well, probably the whole neighborhoods have them, but they aren't used in practice), instead you have the number of the BLOCK (the building), which you have to indicate in the address. Like:
> ul. Kopernika bl. 10 m. 7
> This way they know it's the commie block number 10 and not the house number 10.


We use the same notation with the hyphen (-), although we were under Russian influence where they use "house 15, flat 25" kinda notation, shortened as "d. 15, kv. 25" in Cyrrilic if I remember correctly.

We use slash for houses that are near the corner. For the long time, houses that are on the corner, used two adresses divided by the slash. It was something like Gėlių g. 15/Rugiagėlių g. 17, but it was shortened to Gėlių g. 15/17, I think, by choosing which street name you want to depict.

---
...and I still don't understand why postal codes are needed when you have the full address. For typical commieblock building, you find its streets, then house number, then flat number. You enter house, you find place where you put the letters for every flat, and select the flat in question.

Unless it's about post offices where all letters come to one centre, and then distributed along flats/houses.


----------



## Stuu

PovilD said:


> ...and I still don't understand why postal codes are needed when you have the full address. For typical commieblock building, you find its streets, then house number, then flat number. You enter house, you find place where you put the letters for every flat, and select the flat in question.


Aren't the codes the basis of the system? I could in theory send a letter with just the house number and the postcode and it would be delivered, no other detail is really needed for the system to work, it's more courtesy to the postman that the rest of the address is included


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## mgk920

In the USA, ZIP (short for 'Zoning Improvement Plan') codes are assigned in blocks by state, with lower numbers generally in the east and the higher ones in the west. The lowest geographical ZIP code numbers serve Puerto Rico. For example, my home state of Wisconsin has ZIP codes beginning with 530 through 549. Iowa's start with 500-529, Minnesota's 550-569, etc.

They are farther divided into one hundred blocks - for example, all ZIP code numbers starting with '532' serve the City of Milwaukee and a few close-in suburbs. '531' numbers are generally Milwaukee suburbs and exurbs. Within one hundred blocks that do not serve major central cities, individual numbers are generally assigned in alphabetical order based on the name of the city. My home city of Appleton, WI has numbers starting with '549', with 54911, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 19 currently being active (my residence is in 54911). The 549 block of ZIP code numbers centers on Oshkosh, WI, 54901 and a few more in the 5490x range (Oshkosh was a much larger city than was Appleton in about 1960, when the numbers were first assigned).

Other well known ZIP code number ranges include 606xx (City of Chicago), numbers in the 600xx-605xx range are Chicagoland suburbs with those 100 blocks increasing anti-clockwise around the metro area); 100xx (New York, NY - Manhattan); 202xx (Washington, DC); 900xx (central Los Angeles, CA); 303xx (Atlanta, GA); 554xx (Minneapolis, MN and suburbs); 482xx (Detroit, MI); etc.

A few decades ago, the USPS added a four digit extension to their ZIP code numbers (xxxxx-xxxx) that allows parsing of addresses down to the residential block, apartment building, Post Office ('PO') Box, office building floor, etc. This allows regular letter mail to be machine sorted every step of the way down to the block and then the specific address number/apartment number/office suite number, etc of address, if readable, allows it to then be machine sorted into the proper order for final delivery.

Until the 1960s, it was hand sorted every step of the way and the sorting clerks had to be experts in USA geography - and able to read some amazing chicken scratch fast and accurately.

Mike


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## MattiG

PovilD said:


> ...and I still don't understand why postal codes are needed when you have the full address.


They improve the quality and efficiency of mail sorting dramatically, and remove the ambiguity of similar place names. Like in the natural languages, redundancy improves the probability to get understood. For instance, *Vanhatie 1, 65380 Vaasa Finland* is 300 kilometers apart *Vanhatie 1, 91700 Vaala Finland*. People tend to make mistakes on writing, and redundancy helps to sort out the correct address.


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## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> In the USA, ZIP (short for 'Zoning Improvement Plan') codes are assigned in blocks by state, with lower numbers generally in the east and the higher ones in the west. The lowest geographical ZIP code numbers serve Puerto Rico. For example, my home state of Wisconsin has ZIP codes beginning with 530 through 549. Iowa's start with 500-529, Minnesota's 550-569, etc.
> 
> They are farther divided into one hundred blocks - for example, all ZIP code numbers starting with '532' serve the City of Milwaukee and a few close-in suburbs. '531' numbers are generally Milwaukee suburbs and exurbs. Within one hundred blocks that do not serve major central cities, individual numbers are generally assigned in alphabetical order based on the name of the city. My home city of Appleton, WI has numbers starting with '549', with 54911, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 19 currently being active (my residence is in 54911). The 549 block of ZIP code numbers centers on Oshkosh, WI, 54901 and a few more in the 5490x range (Oshkosh was a much larger city than was Appleton in about 1960, when the numbers were first assigned).
> 
> Other well known ZIP code number ranges include 606xx (City of Chicago), numbers in the 600xx-605xx range are Chicagoland suburbs with those 100 blocks increasing anti-clockwise around the metro area); 100xx (New York, NY - Manhattan); 202xx (Washington, DC); 900xx (central Los Angeles, CA); 303xx (Atlanta, GA); 554xx (Minneapolis, MN and suburbs); 482xx (Detroit, MI); etc.
> 
> A few decades ago, the USPS added a four digit extension to their ZIP code numbers (xxxxx-xxxx) that allows parsing of addresses down to the residential block, apartment building, Post Office ('PO') Box, office building floor, etc. This allows regular letter mail to be machine sorted every step of the way down to the block and then the specific address number/apartment number/office suite number, etc of address, if readable, allows it to then be machine sorted into the proper order for final delivery.
> 
> Until the 1960s, it was hand sorted every step of the way and the sorting clerks had to be experts in USA geography - and able to read some amazing chicken scratch fast and accurately.
> 
> Mike


But mail without the plus-4 is still deliverable, isn’t it? (Well, I suppose all mail is. But you’ll regularly see addresses without it.)

Anyhow, to answer Stuu’s question, “90210” without the plus-4 covers a sizable chunk of Beverly Hills and can’t be matched to a single household, unlike a seven-digit phone number. Even with a house number, because the same number can occur on dozens of streets. Like the “WC1” of a British postcode without the three or four additional characters.


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## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> Anyhow, to answer Stuu’s question, “90210” without the plus-4 covers a sizable chunk of Beverly Hills and can’t be matched to a single household, unlike a seven-digit phone number. Even with a house number, because the same number can occur on dozens of streets. Like the “WC1” of a British postcode without the three or four additional characters.


That's why the Dutch postal codes have letters. The four numbers identify an area and then the two letters narrow it down to a street.

A random example from downtown The Hague is the postal code 2514EJ. The "2514" puts you in downtown, then the "EJ" identifies the street Lange Voorhout.

I once tested this in primary school. I sent my friend a card and made sure the street name and the town's name were basically illegible, but I was very careful to write both the postal code and the house number clearly and correctly. It arrived. 



PovilD said:


> Our postal codes are hard to remember. It's: LT-five digits. I get frustrated when I have to put my home postal code. I don't remember it. No wonder PIN codes are four digits.


Don't move to Asia. My Thai and Chinese PIN numbers are all six digits.


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## radamfi

My friend lived in Indiana for 9 years and he always put the full ZIP code, even though it didn't seem to be the popular thing to do. 



Slagathor said:


> I once tested this in primary school. I sent my friend a card and made sure the street name and the town's name were basically illegible, but I was very careful to write both the postal code and the house number clearly and correctly. It arrived.


This works in the UK as well.



PovilD said:


> ...and I still don't understand why postal codes are needed when you have the full address.


Ireland thought this way but eventually decided to introduce a postcode system, which only came into use in 2014. Unusually, every property has its own postcode.


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## geogregor

PovilD said:


> ...and I still don't understand why postal codes are needed when you have the full address. For typical commieblock building, you find its streets, then house number, then flat number. You enter house, you find place where you put the letters for every flat, and select the flat in question.
> 
> Unless it's about post offices where all letters come to one centre, and then distributed along flats/houses.


As others said, it makes sorting easier and reduces mistakes.

Talking about postcodes, Ireland was until recently probably the only country in Europe without postcodes (at least I don't know any other).

When sending mail you had to make sure to write the whole address really carefully and correctly and also indicate in which county the particular village is. Lack of house numbers in rural areas also didn't make things easier...

My girlfriend is from Ballyduff . Now there is quite a few of those in many different counties. And even in her county (Waterford) there are two Ballyduffs. They are colloquially called "upper" and "lower" and are actually not even close to each other. 

Now they have postcode system where each individual address has its own postcode. Technically postcode alone should be enough to deliver mail.

Here is more about this system:
Eircode



> An Eircode is a unique 7-character code consisting of letters and numbers. Each Eircode consists of a 3-character _routing key_ to identify the area and a 4-character _unique identifier_ for each address, for example, *A65 F4E2*.
> 
> The _routing key_ is the first 3 characters of an Eircode. The first character is always a letter, followed by 2 numbers (except for D6W). The letters are not linked to a county or city name, except for postal districts in Dublin, which have had their existing postal codes transferred into a _routing key_ format such as D03, D12 and D22. The same _routing key_ can be shared by several towns and townlands.
> 
> The _unique identifier_ is a group of 4-characters and comes after the _routing key_. Each _unique identifier_ is different and unique to your home or premises. They are not in sequence. This is to avoid the situation where a new building is created between two existing ones, and the code sequence would be broken, requiring all Eircodes in the area to be changed.


Basically giving someone postcode in Ireland means they can identify you exact address. Which have some privacy implications.

EDIT:

I see radamfi mentioned Ireland already. He did it when I was writing this post. You have to be quick on this forum


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## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> to write the whole address


I'm trying to think when I did this for the last time... Must've been years ago. 😊


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## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> But mail without the plus-4 is still deliverable, isn’t it? (Well, I suppose all mail is. But you’ll regularly see addresses without it.)
> 
> Anyhow, to answer Stuu’s question, “90210” without the plus-4 covers a sizable chunk of Beverly Hills and can’t be matched to a single household, unlike a seven-digit phone number. Even with a house number, because the same number can occur on dozens of streets. Like the “WC1” of a British postcode without the three or four additional characters.


I don’t actually know my own plus-four. I’m never asked for it. The original five-digit ZIP is always enough on forms.


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## MattiG

geogregor said:


> Now they have postcode system where each individual address has its own postcode. Technically postcode alone should be enough to deliver mail.


Theoretically, a 40-bit geohash is enough to map any 2D position on the Earth into an accuracy of two meters. So, this could be arranged globally.

However, this approach ignores the human behaviour. Human beings tend to prefer expessing things as words rather than as codes.


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## radamfi

MattiG said:


> However, this approach ignores the human behaviour. Human beings tend to prefer expessing things as words rather than as codes.


This system uses three words to locate someone within a 3 metre square, and you can tell these three words to the emergency services:









Three words for a faster emergency response | what3words


To find you more easily in an emergency, many UK Emergency Services are encouraging you to share your 3 word address.



what3words.com


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Penn's Woods said:


> We’re sometimes asked to enter the “ZIP code” - five-digit postal code - that’s associated with our billing address. Maybe the extra step is required for foreign cards since they don’t have one....


Yes, now I remember, that was the issue. 


Suburbanist said:


> Speaking of rental cars, I really wish there were a less stressful way or going about that business than the combo of super low 'fares' that have sketchy insurance and questionable damage cost attribution practices.
> 
> These days, I just bite the bullet of the "super cover" and carry supplemental insurance for the deductible. Well, not really these days due to Covid19 anyway.


My main complaint, though, is the long time it often takes from the airport arrival area until you can drive away with the rental.


----------



## radamfi

Suburbanist said:


> Speaking of rental cars, I really wish there were a less stressful way or going about that business than the combo of super low 'fares' that have sketchy insurance and questionable damage cost attribution practices.
> 
> These days, I just bite the bullet of the "super cover" and carry supplemental insurance for the deductible. Well, not really these days due to Covid19 anyway.


You can buy your own excess insurance that will pay for any damage costs the car hire place charges. Although there is this place at Alicante airport that I like that only charges 3 or 4 euro per day to waive excess charges:









Coys Rent-A-Car - Car Hire from Alicante Airport and Torrevieja


We offer the highest of customer service, an easy booking procedure and extremely competitive prices with no hidden charges on arrival. We offer you a personal and professional experience whilst keeping in mind that your satisfaction is our key to success.




www.coysrent-a-car.com


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## MichiH

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> My main complaint, though, is the long time it often takes from the airport arrival area until you can drive away with the rental.


I always booked in advance and it mostly took less than 5 minutes because the documents are usually prepared and I just have to sign them. Waiting in a queue can take a few minutes. If documents are not prepared - I only remember the airport in Romania - it took me up to 20 minutes. The quickest was in Chicago, Frankfurt and Munich. You see your name on a big display and the parking lot number. Documents are in the car and you just need to sign them and give it to the staff. It takes less than 60 seconds...


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## MattiG

MichiH said:


> I always booked in advance and it mostly took less than 5 minutes because the documents are usually prepared and I just have to sign them. Waiting in a queue can take a few minutes. If documents are not prepared - I only remember the airport in Romania - it took me up to 20 minutes. The quickest was in Chicago, Frankfurt and Munich. You see your name on a big display and the parking lot number. Documents are in the car and you just need to sign them and give it to the staff. It takes less than 60 seconds...


Waiting at the counter is usually a small fraction of the total time spent.

My record, I believe, is from Atlanta. The Atlanta International Airport is a rat's nest. The travel from the arrival gate to the parking lot of the rental car took almost three hours. It was not a rush hour, but the whole system is pretty ancient. At smaller airports, the procedure is usually smooth.


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## MichiH

MattiG said:


> Waiting at the counter is usually a small fraction of the total time spent.


sure, you generally spend a lot of time at airports. Pickup up your luggage, walking between gates, security checks etc. Of course, walking to the rental station or directly to the parking lot usually also takes time - the bigger the airport the longer the walking time.


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## MattiG

MichiH said:


> sure, you generally spend a lot of time at airports. Pickup up your luggage, walking between gates, security checks etc. Of course, walking to the rental station or directly to the parking lot usually also takes time - the bigger the airport the longer the walking time.


One of my best experiences is from the Oulu airport. It was November, the temperature was about -15°C, windy, and it was snowing. The ceremonies took about one minute, the car was waiting at the front door, engine on, and the car was pre-heated to +20 degrees.


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## Penn's Woods

Ah, travel!
I remember that.
:-(

(There’s a series of radio ads for car insurance here called “Sounds of the Old World.” They start out with a narrator breathlessly saying things like “it’s 2019, and this couple is waiting for a -table-! At a -restaurant-!”)


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## Suburbanist

Several rental agencies offer express check-in and check-out options. The problem is that is leaves you at the mercy of whatever they say about the state of your rented car. I always take a short video at the beggining and end of rental.


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## PovilD

New government took office and there are plans for what we call "hour of commendant" ("komendanto valanda"). From 21h to 6h no leaving home except with permission.
There are plans for weekend curfew from 1pm! This is getting a little bit too much, but what can you know.

Last time it was implemented was during Vilnius question times with Poles between World wars  ...and yeah, it lasted for some years too.

I wonder if old government tried to sabotage stuff, or just change of government turn our situation for the worse possible scenario.


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## Kanadzie

I have a credit card that includes the insurance for rental cars automatically. 
I think some Ukranian scratched my rental car in Warsaw, rental car place charged me almost 600 USD, but credit card paid eventually!


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## Penn's Woods

mgk920 said:


> IMHO, the 'We must STOP or slow down the spread!!!' ship sailed when the first virus particle left that lab in Wuhan. The cost in human misery from the lockdowns is far in excess of the damage that has been done by the actual virus.
> 
> A couple of childrens' 'life lesson' stories come to my mind here - the stories of Chicken Little and The Boy Who Cried 'WOLF!'.
> 
> 
> 
> Mike


You realize hospitals are actually over capacity? In Wisconsin as much as elsewhere? What if you have a heart attack and the nearest hospital can’t treat you because it has no ICU beds free? Is that the point at which you’ll care, because it’s affecting you? 300,000 dead Americans IS “damage done by the virus.”

I’m sorry, but talking about Chicken Little and The Boy Who Cried Wolf is as indecent as it is ignorant. Save that crap for Trump-cult rallies.


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## Penn's Woods

Both Chicken Little and the Boy Who Cried Wolf were raising alarm about things that weren’t happening. That’s not the case here. And in The Boy..., the Wolf -did- eventually appear. So what’s the life lesson?


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## mgk920

Penn's Woods said:


> Both Chicken Little and the Boy Who Cried Wolf were raising alarm about things that weren’t happening. That’s not the case here. And in The Boy..., the Wolf -did- eventually appear. So what’s the life lesson?


Nobody believed he boy when he tried to sound the alarm because of all of the false alarms that he pulled.

A couple of more of these COVID pandemics blow through and then what happens when something akin to the pre-antibiotic (or a modern antibiotic-resistant) Plague shows up....

Mike


----------



## geogregor

Attus said:


> It's somehow bizarre...
> Germany expects a lockdown. People expect the shops being closed in Wednesday, up till early January (pharmacies, food, etc. remain open of course). So today was the last Saturday before Christmas, when shopping is possible. In the small town where I live, I saw today a long line of waiting customers in front of the book shop, but there was a line even at the jewellery shop.





ChrisZwolle said:


> Does it even make sense to close all non-food shops? It seems that the world has gone mad with implementing unproven lockdowns every time.


It is interesting dynamic. Most people expect tightening restrictions in the UK in the coming weeks. But for now all shops are open.

As for hospitality, well it's complicated. In tier 3 (which cover huge swaths of north of England) only takeaways are allowed. But in tier 2 (for example in London) restaurants are open as well as pubs which serve food. Basically according to government regulations you can have a drink in a pub only with "substantial meal"

Which create weird anomalies and encourage "creativity".

For example I have my favorite Irish boozer which normally doesn't serve food. But to open post November lockdown they had to start serving food. That means pizza van outside on some days or alternatively cheep pastry from the microwave on a paper plate. My yesterday "substantial meal" looked like that:


20201212_152955 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

That little pastry (£2.50) was enough for me to seat there for a few hours having a few pints of perfectly pulled Guinness. People just kept empty plates on their tables for hours 

We chatted, watched football and had a laugh. Little bit of normality in shitty times.

I was having conversation with some of the regulars and the landlord. Most are sick an tired of all the restrictions. And landlord was furious at how governments (in the UK as well as in Ireland) treated hospitality industry. They became scapegoats and got little support.

Anyway, the latest data shows that most infections in London (which are rising fast) are among secondary schools kids. Despite that all the talk is about closing pubs and restaurants again. Why? What's the point? The problem is that if people loose faith in logic behind the restrictions they will just ignore them even more often than before.

I would say most people in the UK are resigned for proper lockdown in January anyway (it will be bloody depressing month, I hate January even at the best of times). But such expectations have perverse effect of increasing social contacts now as people want to have some fun before they are locked in again.

So, I keep meeting friends, including in pubs. If anyone asks we "live together" so are allowed to go out in group of 3 or 4. But nobody really ask, pubs don't have incentive to check on people, they are desperate to get any bit of cash heading their way. I was in a pub in the City last week and there were groups of people who definitely didn't belong to the same household. Nobody cared.

Just to make it clear, I'm not one of those fruitcakes believing that virus is "fake" or produced by Gates and the government to microchip as all. It is dangerous virus, especially for older and vulnerable. But, It is not Ebola. And I will act accordingly. I'm sorry to say that but I'm not going to scarify all the aspect of my life for some nebulous idea of "wider good", especially when it is defined by politicians (many of them corrupt lying bastards, like in the UK). So I will avoid restrictions as much as I can and milk al the possible loopholes. And is some think I'm selfish? Well, why would I care about their opinions, I'm selfish, am I not?


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## Slagathor

How does that pastry thing qualify as serving "food"?


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland, in the mountains, there are hotels renting out "ski storage rooms", where you can also guard your skis overnight instead of hotel rooms, renting out which is now not allowed (except for business trips).


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## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland, in the mountains, there are hotels renting out "ski storage rooms", where you can also guard your skis overnight instead of hotel rooms, renting out which is now not allowed (except for business trips).


I have read about it this morning. One has to admire Polish creativity


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## MichiH

The idiots (the dear German politicians) decided this morning that the "hard lockdown" (German: "harter Lockdown") will come on Wednesday. All non-essential shops will be closed - depending of the definition of each state of course. Fireworks and all the like will not be allowed to be sold (usually only allowed from Dec 27 to Dec 31) because there are so many accidents every year that hospitals are usually full. This should be avoid this year. Visiting schools will be voluntary from Wednesday. Pupils should stay at home if possible. If they cannot - parents not at home etc. -, they can go to school. Another exception are pupils who will graduate next year. They can also go to school. Some schools will open after holidays as planned, some will remain closed longer - again, state-dependend.

Saxony* has the German high score, with currently 348 new cases / 7 days / 100,000 inhabitants. Thuringia has 230, Bavaria* 200, Berlin 186, Baden-Württemberg* 180, Hesse 176.
Schleswig-Holstein 79, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 83, Lower Saxony 85. The goal of the "hard lockdown" is to bring the number of new cases down from currently 169 (for whole Germany) to below 50.

*Saxony, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg have strictest rules right now.





__





Experience







experience.arcgis.com







geogregor said:


> I would say most people in the UK are resigned for proper lockdown in January anyway (it will be bloody depressing month). But such expectations have perverse effect of increasing social contacts now as people want to have some fun before they are locked in again.


Because of those selfish idiots, there will be a "proper lockdown" for sure. It is insane! They anticipate what will happen and do exactly what will lead to the worst!



geogregor said:


> I hate January even at the best of times


Last January was one of the most interesting months in my life! And next January will be great - I believe in that!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MichiH said:


> Because of those selfish idiots, there will be a "proper lockdown" for sure.


I think these 'selfish idiots' are just regular people like you and me who visit their family. Anti corona parties make headlines but they are incidents, I doubt if that is epidemiologically comparable to millions and millions people doing mundane things like visiting family, going to school or to work and thereby spreading the virus. 

Social distancing is the best way to reduce the spread of the virus. Not going to any other household than your own. Of course people might be willing to do this for 3 weeks but not 3 months (or longer)...


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Of course people might be willing to do this for 3 weeks but not 3 months (or longer)...


With all these international travel restrictions some people are doing it for more than that, even if they like it or not.

I haven't seen my family in Romania since June (there was a 3-week period back then with no travel restrictions both ways between Austria and Romania). Normally I was visiting them at least once a month. I also have colleagues and friends who haven't visited their families since last Christmas.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> How does that pastry thing qualify as serving "food"?


Depending what’s inside it, it might make a nice snack, actually.


----------



## Attus

bogdymol said:


> I haven't seen my family in Romania since June (there was a 3-week period back then with no travel restrictions both ways between Austria and Romania). Normally I was visiting them at least once a month. I also have colleagues and friends who haven't visited their families since last Christmas.


The same here.


----------



## geogregor

Penn's Woods said:


> Depending what’s inside it, it might make a nice snack, actually.


This one was with chicken filling. Some of the pastries can be good but this one was very basic. Anyway, that was not the point, it is not a pub where anyone would go for gourmet experience 



bogdymol said:


> With all these international travel restrictions some people are doing it for more than that, even if they like it or not.
> 
> I haven't seen my family in Romania since June (there was a 3-week period back then with no travel restrictions both ways between Austria and Romania). Normally I was visiting them at least once a month. I also have colleagues and friends who haven't visited their families since last Christmas.


I was lucky that I managed to go to Poland in July and September. Unfortunately the second trip involved family funeral.

Anyway, strict travel restrictions really bother me. Let's take Xmas regulations. My London colleagues will be able to see their parents in Yorkshire or Scotland (due to temporary easing of restrictions) but I won't be able to see my mum in Poland. I do find it deeply unfair. Basically state picks who is more deserving to have family life. We should either all have the same restrictions or all have exceptional allowance to see parents.


----------



## mgk920

Penn's Woods said:


> Depending what’s inside it, it might make a nice snack, actually.


It's not at all unusual for bars in the USA to sell little 'finger food' items at least on the side. Things like 'appetizers', bags of chips, strips of dried beef or other meat jerky, even cook up a pizza or something else of that sort. The salty popcorn that many have also helps sell beer.

Many, especially sports bars, have full menus, too.

Mike


----------



## x-type

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland, in the mountains, there are hotels renting out "ski storage rooms", where you can also guard your skis overnight instead of hotel rooms, renting out which is now not allowed (except for business trips).


Here the hotels rent a room for so called daily rest (usually that means getting laid with someone during the daylight in hotel room) and you actually don't enter the room, but you get the voucher in countervalue to spend in the hotel restaurant. Namely, the restaurants are closed here, but hotel restaurants are open for hotel guests. 
The first who "invented" it was Sheraton


----------



## Kpc21

If I'm not mistaken, it also works in Poland 

Not to mention... "You want to come? You can only come if you are on a business trip but it isn't a problem, you will sign a paper that you've done these and those works for us and it'll be your business trip".


----------



## Penn's Woods

Weather buffs, the word “blizzard” is now being used in New York-area weather forecasts, re a storm coming Wednesday.


----------



## ppplus

PovilD said:


> I heard US population is slightly younger than Europe (probably incl. Netherlands).
> 
> ...and they don't have that good quality cycling infrastructure, aren't they?


U.S. cities are do for cars.


----------



## mgk920

Penn's Woods said:


> Weather buffs, the word “blizzard” is now being used in New York-area weather forecasts, re a storm coming Wednesday.


The USA's NOAA-NWS has an official definition of 'blizzard' - it is a combination of heavy snow, strong sustained wind and falling temperatures. An official 'blizzard warning' is for a life-threatening storm that is to be genuinely feared in the midwest and high plains and thus is used sparingly, this to avoid a dangerous 'cry wolf' effect.

Mike


----------



## Slagathor

I don't think I've ever seen a blizzard. Of course I avoid visiting relatives and friends in Canada during the winter, which helps.


----------



## Penn's Woods

I don’t know about the Netherlands, but COVID has killed more Americans than the last FIVE years of flu. And that’s as of late October. Death rates are far higher now.



https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/articles/no-covid-19-is-not-the-flu.html


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Maybe that's the price they pay for having fast food on every corner? Or pretending to be 'healthy at any size'? It has long been warned that obesity is a massive problem, particularly in the U.S. but also elsewhere, like the Middle East where obesity rates are also very high. Middle East death rates were also relatively high compared to the median age of the population. In the Netherlands the people who became the most ill were also generally significantly overweight. At one point they said that ICUs were mostly filled with overweight people from Turkish, Surinamese and Moroccan background. It's known that people from these backgrounds are substantially more overweight than the rest of the population.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Maybe that's the price they pay for having fast food on every corner? Or pretending to be 'healthy at any size'? It has long been warned that obesity is a massive problem, particularly in the U.S. but also elsewhere, like the Middle East where obesity rates are also very high. Middle East death rates were also relatively high compared to the median age of the population. In the Netherlands the people who became the most ill were also generally significantly overweight. At one point they said that ICUs were mostly filled with overweight people from Turkish, Surinamese and Moroccan background. It's known that people from these backgrounds are substantially more overweight than the rest of the population.


LOL/Rolleyes 

There’s no fast food on my corner. Or my mom’s corner. Or for several blocks around either location.
Never heard the “healthy at any size” bit either. I’m also not sure how you explain COVID death rates in several European countries being even higher than ours unless, say, Belgians and Spaniards are junk-food-eating barbarians. 

So maybe we can get away from silly national and ethnic stereotypes (and language like “the price they pay”). Where’d you get those numbers on flu and COVID death rates for the Netherlands? Or the ethnic makeup of hospital patients? And isn’t it possible the latter are more likely to be exposed to the virus because they’re doing jobs a lot of natives won’t? That’s certainly true here. 

Sources in Dutch work for me.


----------



## Penn's Woods

By the way, saw Chicago’s curve last night. It’s going down after a few weeks of strict measures.


----------



## Penn's Woods

This table, sorted by deaths per million:









COVID Live Update: 182,981,857 Cases and 3,962,879 Deaths from the Coronavirus - Worldometer


Live statistics and coronavirus news tracking the number of confirmed cases, recovered patients, tests, and death toll due to the COVID-19 coronavirus from Wuhan, China. Coronavirus counter with new cases, deaths, and number of tests per 1 Million population. Historical data and info. Daily...




www.worldometers.info


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> LOL/Rolleyes


Last week we were talking about the death rates among younger adults being 10 times (!) higher in the U.S. than in the Netherlands. Not 50% more, not 100% more, but 10 times higher.

There must be an explanation for this enormous difference among what is supposed to be a less affected and more healthy segment of the age pyramid. And BMI plays a significant role, as it is said in the article you linked. 

The 'healthy at any size' bit is a slogan by body positivity advocates who try to make obesity more socially acceptable and claims it's not unhealthy to be obese (though I doubt if doctors would agree that weighing 250+ pounds is not a health risk).

In regards to immigrant groups, there are multiple risk factors: they do indeed work more often in more exposed professions, they far more often have multi-generational living and they have a much higher frequency of obesity. However this does not apply to all immigrant groups evenly. Official statistics are not kept on the backgrounds of ICU patients, in fact this was kind of an outrage when it was reported on, as it is considered politically incorrect to speak up about this.


----------



## mgk920

I seriously wonder how many of those died from other causes (ie, cancer, heart conditions, diabetes, COPD, etc) and the Virus was detected in the victim's system during the autopsy, with that death then being counted as a 'virus' death.

Mike


----------



## Attus

mgk920 said:


> I seriously wonder how many of those died from other causes (ie, cancer, heart conditions, diabetes, COPD, etc) and the Virus was detected in the victim's system during the autopsy, with that death then being counted as a 'virus' death.
> 
> Mike


And how many died because of Covid-19 but were never autopsied and never counted as a "virus" death. 
I don't know about the US, but in Italy in spring or in Hungary in these weeks, the actual number of Covid-19 victims may be not lower, but much higher than the official figures. 

Any yes, how many died in cancer or heart attack, etc., who probably could live more if they hadn't a Covid-19 infection. Not in all, but in very many cases the infection made the other disease worse so that it killed the patient.


----------



## Slagathor

mgk920 said:


> I seriously wonder how many of those died from other causes (ie, cancer, heart conditions, diabetes, COPD, etc) and the Virus was detected in the victim's system during the autopsy, with that death then being counted as a 'virus' death.
> 
> Mike


The tricky part is that this appears to be a systemic virus, so it's hard to make a distinction.

Medically speaking, the "cause of death" is uncomplicated. It's whatever killed the patient.

So it's things like "respiratory failure" or "cardiac arrest".

What you then have to figure out is: was that caused by the virus? The respiratory failure seemed obvious back in March, and to a degree still does. Cardiac arrest less so, until we found out the virus also actively attacks the body's heart and blood circulatory system.

So yeah, I'm with you. It's hard to glance at the statistics and really assess what's going on if you're not a medical expert. What were the pre-existing conditions these patients had and how severe were they? Did covid-19 take years of their life, or only months?


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

The most dependable statistics is probably the overall mortality rate in a society. However, such numbers are only available after some time, and you then need to interpret factors that affected mortality rates in the refence years before the pandemic, and in addition consider secondary effects of restrictions (lower rates of other transmittal diseases, suicide rates, impacts of economic downturn, etc.) as well as of the stress on the health system (less other examinations and treatments). A study I saw on the impact of Covid-19 in Scandinavia during the spring however indicates that these secondary impacts are not that important.

To assess the years of living lost also the age and condition of the deceased persons have to be taken into account.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Driving down the highway with a lamppost. On A-4 near Cádiz in Spain.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1338874317224992770


----------



## PovilD

Why driving with a lamppost in the first place?

The only situation where I can imagine driving with a lamppost is due to traffic accident.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Last week we were talking about the death rates among younger adults being 10 times (!) higher in the U.S. than in the Netherlands. Not 50% more, not 100% more, but 10 times higher.
> 
> There must be an explanation for this enormous difference among what is supposed to be a less affected and more healthy segment of the age pyramid. And BMI plays a significant role, as it is said in the article you linked.
> 
> The 'healthy at any size' bit is a slogan by body positivity advocates who try to make obesity more socially acceptable and claims it's not unhealthy to be obese (though I doubt if doctors would agree that weighing 250+ pounds is not a health risk).
> 
> In regards to immigrant groups, there are multiple risk factors: they do indeed work more often in more exposed professions, they far more often have multi-generational living and they have a much higher frequency of obesity. However this does not apply to all immigrant groups evenly. Official statistics are not kept on the backgrounds of ICU patients, in fact this was kind of an outrage when it was reported on, as it is considered politically incorrect to speak up about this.


I don’t remember that coming up. What article?

But I’m still not clear why that would apply to COVID and not the flu to the point that a wide disparity between COVID and flu deaths would exist in one country and not another (particularly within the so-called “West”).


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Last week we were talking about the death rates among younger adults being 10 times (!) higher in the U.S. than in the Netherlands. Not 50% more, not 100% more, but 10 times higher.
> 
> There must be an explanation for this enormous difference among what is supposed to be a less affected and more healthy segment of the age pyramid. And BMI plays a significant role, as it is said in the article you linked.
> 
> The 'healthy at any size' bit is a slogan by body positivity advocates who try to make obesity more socially acceptable and claims it's not unhealthy to be obese (though I doubt if doctors would agree that weighing 250+ pounds is not a health risk).
> 
> In regards to immigrant groups, there are multiple risk factors: they do indeed work more often in more exposed professions, they far more often have multi-generational living and they have a much higher frequency of obesity. However this does not apply to all immigrant groups evenly. Official statistics are not kept on the backgrounds of ICU patients, in fact this was kind of an outrage when it was reported on, as it is considered politically incorrect to speak up about this.


And what’s your source for COVID deaths not being much higher in the Netherlands than flu deaths?


----------



## Penn's Woods

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> The most dependable statistics is probably the overall mortality rate in a society. However, such numbers are only available after some time, and you then need to interpret factors that affected mortality rates in the refence years before the pandemic, and in addition consider secondary effects of restrictions (lower rates of other transmittal diseases, suicide rates, impacts of economic downturn, etc.) as well as of the stress on the health system (less other examinations and treatments). A study I saw on the impact of Covid-19 in Scandinavia during the spring however indicates that these secondary impacts are not that important.
> 
> To assess the years of living lost also the age and condition of the deceased persons have to be taken into account.


I think assessing years of living lost can lead us to dangerous places. I saw a headline (I can’t remember where) the other day about an Australian bio-ethicist arguing that the elderly should not get priority in vaccination because their lives were - his words - “worth less” than those of a younger person. That shocked me. And I thought about it a bit. If we’re going to go that way, you need at the very least take into account the relative likelihood of that older person getting seriously ill AND what a nasty death it would be.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Polls supposedly show a 60-70% support for stricter measures. On the other hand, polls in the Netherlands also showed support for mandatory masks while previously you rarely saw someone wear them voluntarily.
> 
> I wouldn't underestimate how mass media is scaring people. The death rate of covid-19 has been only slightly higher than the flu in the Netherlands, but people hugely overestimate how dangerous the virus would be to them, with 40-50% thinking they would be severely ill due to the virus (in reality this rate is under 2%). The media only shows the worst outlier cases like the one teenager that ended up in ICU. Even a large majority of 80+ year olds survive covid-19.
> 
> What's lacking, is context and nuances to the corona figures headlined every day.


Isn't the major issue, now, hospital capacity? Not ICU beds, which were ordered aplenty, but enough (and reasonably healthy) specialized staff to cater to a surge in patients?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> Isn't the major issue, now, hospital capacity? Not ICU beds, which were ordered aplenty, but enough (and reasonably healthy) specialized staff to cater to a surge in patients?


That's a fair point, but the daily hospitalizations in the Netherlands have declined since late October. Many indicators like sewage, daily hospitalizations, deaths and estimated number of infectious persons are stable or on a downward trend, nothing that would really justify a hard lockdown. The numbers are still relatively high but there isn't a huge surge in hospitalizations.

It's also debatable how incapable the health care system is if 1800 hospitalizations on a population of 17.5 million is reason to destroy the economy, society and well-being. This figure is considerably lower (in particular on a per capita basis) than hospitalizations seen in Belgium and Switzerland for example.

Daily hospitalizations over time:


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's a fair point, but the daily hospitalizations in the Netherlands have declined since late October. Many indicators like sewage, daily hospitalizations, deaths and estimated number of infectious persons are stable or on a downward trend, nothing that would really justify a hard lockdown. The numbers are still relatively high but there isn't a huge surge in hospitalizations.
> 
> It's also debatable how incapable the health care system is if 1800 hospitalizations on a population of 17.5 million is reason to destroy the economy, society and well-being. This figure is considerably lower (in particular on a per capita basis) than hospitalizations seen in Belgium and Switzerland for example.
> 
> Daily hospitalizations over time:


So what justification is being given for the lockdown? Because here, I’m inclined to agree with you.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Many indicators like sewage


What's sewage got to do with it?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> What's sewage got to do with it?


They measure the amount of virus in the sewage system. This is seen as an early warning system. 

The amount of virus per 100k inhabitants has declined significantly since late October:


----------



## PovilD

Penn's Woods said:


> Accumulations up to 44 inches - about 112 cm - reported around Binghamton, New York.


Lake-effect snow?

These are fairly typical in this part of U.S., and I heard about them from time to time, only in different locations, while Europe only typically receives such amount of snow only in the mountains, afaik.


----------



## Slagathor

Seems weird you don't get that anywhere in Europe, given how much relatively warm water we've got lying around.


----------



## Penn's Woods

PovilD said:


> Lake-effect snow?
> 
> These are fairly typical in this part of U.S., and I heard about them from time to time, only in different locations, while Europe only typically receives such amount of snow only in the mountains, afaik.


No, that’s the heavy part of this East Coast storm we just got. It was expected to be heavy, although not -that- heavy. Looks like about six inches (15 cm) where I am, but I’m hearing it was more like a foot (30 cm) in much of the New York metropolitan area.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> Seems weird you don't get that anywhere in Europe, given how much relatively warm water we've got lying around.


Do you have cold air blowing over it coming from the Arctic, though?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Winter Storm Gail Was a Record Snowstorm for Two Northeast Towns | The Weather Channel


Gail wasn't just a major winter storm, it smashed all-time records in at least two cities. - Articles from The Weather Channel | weather.com




weather.com


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Significant lake-effect snow is rare in Europe, but apparently it does occur from time to time in Turkey when cold air flows over the warmer Black Sea, dumping huge amounts of snow on the mountain ranges there. It could happen around most bodies of water in Europe, but large amounts like they get along the Great Lakes is rare.


----------



## PovilD

I remember 2009-2010 winter season, when two heavy snow events have happened in the same season and it resembled lake effect snow since it affected not very big territories (affecting area up to few hundred km in lenght, but only few dozen km wide).

2009 November - Curonian Spit and South Samogita have received 30-50 cm of snow in one go, while in January 3rd, 2010 my city have received 45 cm of snow in January 3rd. It said to be record new snow in one go.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Significant lake-effect snow is rare in Europe, but apparently it does occur from time to time in Turkey when cold air flows over the warmer Black Sea, dumping huge amounts of snow on the mountain ranges there. It could happen around most bodies of water in Europe, but large amounts like they get along the Great Lakes is rare.


I’m wondering -why- it’s rare. What’s the difference between the Dutch and Belgian coast and the U.S. side of lakes Erie and Ontario? And of course the North Sea is bigger than the lakes.


----------



## PovilD

Penn's Woods said:


> I’m wondering -why- it’s rare. What’s the difference between the Dutch and Belgian coast and the U.S. side of lakes Erie and Ontario? And of course the North Sea is bigger than the lakes.


Maybe there are a lot of water, and it's all warm, and the land surround it, is also affected by it, while Great Lakes are relatively small and surrounded by colder land to produce lake effect snow.

European inner seas could resemble Great Lakes, but they also don't produce that effects, maybe local conditions don't satisfy (mountains, currents, weather patterns, etc.)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

For lake-effect snow to occur you need cold air over a warmer body of water, affecting land cold enough for snow to accumulate. This is often a problem for the Benelux: northwestern circulation is often warmer air. Only a 'polar low' could bring blizzard conditions but these are rare, because you need cold temperatures plus an intense depression descending from the Norwegian Sea without pushing mild air in front of it. 

Of course, depressions affecting Scandinavia from the west often bring blizzard conditions in the mountains but I don't think this is really considered to be lake-effect snow.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Speaking of lake-effect snow: the Niigata region of Japan (west coast of northern Honshu) is also susceptible to it:









Heavy snow strands 1,100 cars on highway, causes blackouts in Japan


Around 1,100 vehicles are stranded on an expressway and more than 10,000 households suffer blackouts as heavy snow hits a wide area along the Sea of Japan coast, the government and police say




english.kyodonews.net


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> So that's a Polski Fiat? 😊


Polski Fiat was 125p and 126p; there were also some Polski Fiat in the inter-war period.

Seicento was produced in Poland, in the same factory as previously Fiat 126p – but already after this factory was sold to Fiat. 126p were made by the Polish state-owned FSM on Fiat license.

By the way, Fiat 125p was an interesting car, because it was very different from the Italian Fiat 125 – it was more or less the Italian Fiat 1300/1500 in the Fiat 125's chassis.

Anyway, Fiat is a company which motorized most of the Eastern Bloc 

But this usage of a Seicento is definitely Polish


----------



## Rebasepoiss

PovilD said:


> I remember 2009-2010 winter season, when two heavy snow events have happened in the same season and it resembled lake effect snow since it affected not very big territories (affecting area up to few hundred km in lenght, but only few dozen km wide).
> 
> 2009 November - Curonian Spit and South Samogita have received 30-50 cm of snow in one go, while in January 3rd, 2010 my city have received 45 cm of snow in January 3rd. It said to be record new snow in one go.


2010 was a record year for snow depth over here, at least in Tallinn. On the 3rd of January the snow depth was measured at 62 cm or 2 ft (compared to NW US it's really not a lot) The whole winter was very snowy and I remember it quite well because I was going through driving school at that time  On many intersections you had no way of knowing whether another car was coming or not because the snow was piled up so high and they didn't manage to haul it away on time. So you just guessed and went  Many smaller streets weren't wide enough for two cars to pass anymore etc. Definitely a good experience for a new driver since I haven't seen a more difficult winter for driving since.


----------



## PovilD

I think I now even remember that situation was worse in terms of snow in Estonia. I remember late November snow storm there of 2009 I think since we got some of it too (although it wasn't nothing extreme).

As for driving school, yeah, I think that "guessing game" is the worst sometimes in intersections with bad visibility or high traffic levels, sometimes you just need more practice, sometimes you're trapped


----------



## Penn's Woods

Pandemic Rule Change of the Day:









You Are Once Again Allowed to Pee Indoors at NYC Restaurants


An ill-considered new rule only lasted a few hours.




www.grubstreet.com





The head of the New York City Restaurant Association reportedly tweeted “What a relief!”


----------



## Kpc21

Even though there is no increase in Covid infections in Poland, yesterday new restrictions that will come to force after Christmas were announced. The shops other than grocery and other with necessary items will be closed again. Furthermore, there will be a ban for the hotels for accepting also the business travellers (seemingly because these business travels were often abused) and skiing slopes will be closed.

The government wanted to close the skiing slopes already a few weeks ago but they gave up after large protests of their owners. I wonder what will happen now.

Another new but very short-lasting restriction will be a curfew on the New Year's Eve night – from 19:00 to 6:00. So you can go to someone's home to celebrate the New Year together but you must stay there until the morning.

And there will be an obligatory 10-day quarantine for all those entering Poland with all the public means of transport (including those rented or chartered ones). If someone wants to enter Poland individually, it's not very difficult to go around... If you are not by car, just cross the border on foot, e.g. in Frankfurt/Oder or Görlitz.

The sports facilities will only be available for the professional sportsmen. So it won't be enough any more just to declare that you prepare yourself for some competitions e.g. organized by the fitness club in which you're training.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Just heard a VRT (Flemish Radio) reporter, in a report on Christmas shopping, say that you’re “not hearing many Dutch people in the street” in Antwerp. If I understood her correctly. (I’m not sure she said “hear” - I wasn’t giving it my full attention.)
Are they that obvious? :-D
Seriously, I’m understanding spoken Dutch better and better, but differences in accent aren’t obvious to me yet.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Delete - duplicate.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

For native speakers the difference in accents and intonation between Dutch from the Netherlands and Dutch from Flanders is very noticable. You'll hear it instantly.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> For native speakers the difference in accents and intonation between Dutch from the Netherlands and Dutch from Flanders is very noticable. You'll hear it instantly.


I -think- I’m hearing the difference in the pronunciation of G. ;-)


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> For native speakers the difference in accents and intonation between Dutch from the Netherlands and Dutch from Flanders is very noticable. You'll hear it instantly.


Does Dutch TV even put subtitles when showing Flemish TV programmes? I'm sure I've read that somewhere.


----------



## radamfi

The UK Government has changed its mind on the Christmas relaxation of restrictions, especially for people in London and some surrounding areas, where they will not be able to mix with other households at all. In the rest of England, household mixing will only be allowed on 25 December, not for five days as previously allowed.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> Does Dutch TV even put subtitles when showing Flemish TV programmes? I'm sure I've read that somewhere.


Flemish newscasts - I’ve been watching them lately - subtitle some Flemish speakers. I can’t figure out what the rule for that is. For a while I thought they were subtitling people with masks, but that’s not consistent. And it’s not always “dialect” speakers.


----------



## kosimodo

They do on “every dialect”. That is... outside holland.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> For native speakers the difference in accents and intonation between Dutch from the Netherlands and Dutch from Flanders is very noticable. You'll hear it instantly.





Penn's Woods said:


> I -think- I’m hearing the difference in the pronunciation of G. ;-)


For native speakers, it's not the G that gives it away. It's the vowels.

Speakers from Limburg and Noord-Brabant, as well as parts of Gelderland (Nijmegen), also speak with a "soft G". Speakers from Zeeland exchange the G for an H, as do people from West-Flanders. So the G can't necessarily tell you where someone is from.

The vowels, on the other hand, are a dead give-away. Flemish vowels are flat, Dutch vowels are rounded.

The Flemish "ee" is quite close to an "i" sound. There is relatively little difference between "leeft" and "lift" to a Dutch ear.

In Dutch, the "ee" is elongated and ends with a "j"-sound. So "leeft" becomes "leeeejft", which sounds very exaggerated to a Flemish ear.

Other examples are "au" and "oo". 

In Flemish, these are short and flat sounds. So "auto" is pronounced something along the lines of "ahtoh".

In Dutch, these are long and rounded. So "auto" becomes "aauwtoow".



radamfi said:


> Does Dutch TV even put subtitles when showing Flemish TV programmes? I'm sure I've read that somewhere.





Penn's Woods said:


> Flemish newscasts - I’ve been watching them lately - subtitle some Flemish speakers. I can’t figure out what the rule for that is. For a while I thought they were subtitling people with masks, but that’s not consistent. And it’s not always “dialect” speakers.





kosimodo said:


> They do on “every dialect”. That is... outside holland.


I don't think there are fixed rules in either country.

In both countries, they tend to subtitle accents that are further removed from the linguistic center of the country.

For the Netherlands, any accent from outside the Randstad-area is usually subtitled (and that includes all of Belgium and Suriname, for example).

In Flanders, every accent outside the Antwerp-Brussels corridor is often subtitled, such as Limburgish and West-Flemish. This includes all accents from the Netherlands.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> For native speakers the difference in accents and intonation between Dutch from the Netherlands and Dutch from Flanders is very noticable. You'll hear it instantly.


That was noticeable even between Tilburg and Turnhout. However, the accent in Heerlen is somehow closer to the Belgian accent, from what I remember, but Heerlen is the toughest city to understand people speaking casually with Dutch-as-second-language.


----------



## Suburbanist

It also didn't help that people there tend to create a new vowel before certain consonants when speaking, sometimes almost making simple words like 'elf' as if they had one extra syllabe.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't understand most of the Limburghish dialects either. Written Limburgish has many variants (there is no unified standard) but that isn't easily readable as well. A little better than Frisian. I can read German quicker than Frisian.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> For native speakers, it's not the G that gives it away. It's the vowels.
> 
> Speakers from Limburg and Noord-Brabant, as well as parts of Gelderland (Nijmegen), also speak with a "soft G". Speakers from Zeeland exchange the G for an H, as do people from West-Flanders. So the G can't necessarily tell you where someone is from.
> 
> The vowels, on the other hand, are a dead give-away. Flemish vowels are flat, Dutch vowels are rounded.
> 
> The Flemish "ee" is quite close to an "i" sound. There is relatively little difference between "leeft" and "lift" to a Dutch ear.
> 
> In Dutch, the "ee" is elongated and ends with a "j"-sound. So "leeft" becomes "leeeejft", which sounds very exaggerated to a Flemish ear.
> 
> Other examples are "au" and "oo".
> 
> In Flemish, these are short and flat sounds. So "auto" is pronounced something along the lines of "ahtoh".
> 
> In Dutch, these are long and rounded. So "auto" becomes "aauwtoow".
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't think there are fixed rules in either country.
> 
> In both countries, they tend to subtitle accents that are further removed from the linguistic center of the country.
> 
> For the Netherlands, any accent from outside the Randstad-area is usually subtitled (and that includes all of Belgium and Suriname, for example).
> 
> In Flanders, every accent outside the Antwerp-Brussels corridor is often subtitled, such as Limburgish and West-Flemish. This includes all accents from the Netherlands.


They don’t subtitle Rutte.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> It also didn't help that people there tend to create a new vowel before certain consonants when speaking, sometimes almost making simple words like 'elf' as if they had one extra syllabe.


Actually, I’m hearing a schwa (a weak neutral vowel) between L and a following consonant (in words like “film” or “twaalf” consistently from all speakers. Or at least hearing it a lot; it’s possible that when it doesn’t happen I’m not noticing its absence.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't understand most of the Limburghish dialects either. Written Limburgish has many variants (there is no unified standard) but that isn't easily readable as well. A little better than Frisian. I can read German quicker than Frisian.


The cadenced spoken Dutch in Fryslân was easy for me to understand. Or maybe I spent just a lot of time in Minnerstga ..


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> In both countries, they tend to subtitle accents that are further removed from the linguistic center of the country.
> 
> For the Netherlands, any accent from outside the Randstad-area is usually subtitled (and that includes all of Belgium and Suriname, for example).
> 
> In Flanders, every accent outside the Antwerp-Brussels corridor is often subtitled, such as Limburgish and West-Flemish. This includes all accents from the Netherlands.


Is it really difficult to understand such accents? As far as I know, no English speaking country routinely subtitles TV from another English speaking country in such a manner.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> Is it really difficult to understand such accents? As far as I know, no English speaking country routinely subtitles TV from another English speaking country in such a manner.


I’ve seen subtitles on the thicker British Isles dialects.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> Is it really difficult to understand such accents? As far as I know, no English speaking country routinely subtitles TV from another English speaking country in such a manner.


In my opinion, no. I can easily understand Flemish Dutch, there is no need for subtitles in my opinion.

Though this changes with dialects. Some dialects are not easily understandable if you don't hear it regularly. I did not grew up with any dialect so I couldn't understand my grandparents very well when they spoke dialect.


----------



## Kanadzie

radamfi said:


> Is it really difficult to understand such accents? As far as I know, no English speaking country routinely subtitles TV from another English speaking country in such a manner.


Lately on American TV I see subtitles pop up for people speaking English (usually African or southern US people with thick accent), but it is same wording


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kanadzie said:


> Lately on American TV I see subtitles pop up for people speaking English (usually African or southern US people with thick accent), but it is same wording


Yes, but do Québécois subtitle each other?
(Joking, but seriously. I once had a cashier in Montreal tell me something cost a couple of “piasse.” I was a block from the store when I realized he’d taken a 17th-century word, “piastre,” and mutilated it.)


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> I’ve seen subtitles on the thicker British Isles dialects.


I suppose British TV wouldn't do that, as it would be considered insulting to those regions. Obviously British people are accustomed to watching American TV and films, as well as Australian soaps. It has never occurred to me that subtitles might be needed.


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> They don’t subtitle Rutte.


Yeah, like I said: no rules. Just preferences and a general tendency to subtitle "the far away folks".



Suburbanist said:


> It also didn't help that people there tend to create a new vowel before certain consonants when speaking, sometimes almost making simple words like 'elf' as if they had one extra syllabe.





Penn's Woods said:


> Actually, I’m hearing a schwa (a weak neutral vowel) between L and a following consonant (in words like “film” or “twaalf” consistently from all speakers. Or at least hearing it a lot; it’s possible that when it doesn’t happen I’m not noticing its absence.


This is a feature of the Randstad accents which has, over the years, become the national standard. Belgians do it to a much lesser extent.

Suburbanist: the fact you noticed it, makes me wonder where you're from.  It's usually other Germanic language speakers as well as Slavic language speakers who notice this when they're learning Dutch.

Romance language speakers never really notice this, because their native languages are more rhythmical and carry relatively more schwas as well.



radamfi said:


> Is it really difficult to understand such accents? As far as I know, no English speaking country routinely subtitles TV from another English speaking country in such a manner.


No, I understand everyone just fine. From Groningers to Limburgers. Provided they don't completely derail into their actual dialect (as opposed to just an accent).


----------



## Kanadzie

Penn's Woods said:


> Yes, but do Québécois subtitle each other?
> (Joking, but seriously. I once had a cashier in Montreal tell me something cost a couple of “piasse.” I was a block from the store when I realized he’d taken a 17th-century word, “piastre,” and mutilated it.)


I once had this lady from, perhaps Haiti as a bank teller when I was maybe 19 and wanted to withdraw some some of money, perhaps 2000 $. I asked for 2000 piasse and she looked at me like I was from space. I think she was probably from say an educated family haha


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> I suppose British TV wouldn't do that, as it would be considered insulting to those regions. Obviously British people are accustomed to watching American TV and films, as well as Australian soaps. It has never occurred to me that subtitles might be needed.


Well, I’ve yet to encounter a form of American or Australian speech that’s as unintelligible as certain British dialects.

PS: And there’s a good linguistic reason for that: “New World” English just hasn’t had time to develop the sort of regional differences that have existed in England since the Middle Ages. Supposedly there’s very little difference in speech from one part of Australia to another.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Here’s news....









Kilauea volcano erupts in Hawaii, residents asked to stay indoors


Hawaii residents on the Big Island were asked to stay at home after the Kilauea volcano erupted in an explosion that sent a plume of ash into the sky.




www.nbcnews.com


----------



## PovilD

Reasons staying indoors...


----------



## Penn's Woods

PovilD said:


> Reasons staying indoors...


Maybe the volcano gods are mad that Hawaii’s just started allowing travel from the mainland again.


----------



## PovilD

Penn's Woods said:


> Maybe the volcano gods are mad that Hawaii’s just started allowing travel from the mainland again.


I'm imagining what volcano gods are saying 

"Patience is the key, and you don't follow it!"


----------



## Suburbanist

The Kilauwea is a lame if annoying volcano. Slow-moving lava flows with not explosions or violent venting of pressure chambers.


----------



## Suburbanist

Slagathor said:


> Amsterdam would do well to shun the awful drugs & sex tourism though. Those people only spend pennies anyway and they eat at trashy fast food joints. You spend more money cleaning up their vomit and used condoms than you earn from their stay.
> 
> Much better to attract the crowd that visits the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh museum, etc.


But wasn't that the plan of the municipality already?

Since soft drug use has been pretty much decriminalized in most of Europe and North America, much of the weed-stoning appeal of the city has somehow diminished for good reason.

They were also reducing the number of windows allocated to legal prostitution over time, seems to be, even if one is to assume sex work is legal, a disappearing form of trade in the age of Internet and social apps.

Tourists who can spend money on good restaurants and English-programming at theaters or else are unlikely to overlap with that crowd anyways.

I read many of the Nutella, Waffle and Cheese stores that sell cheap stuff for hungry budget tourists are closing down for good. I didn't know that a couple Dutch entrepreneurs had basically set up a shadow-franchise scheme to control dozens of such hyper-touristic shops in Amsterdam, although I had noticed the vast increase on the number of Nutella candy/waffle/ice-cream parlors with very similar bright signs.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Suburbanist said:


> A couple of colleagues who live in Amsterdam told me last few weeks all the 'novelty' of a mass-tourist-free Amsterdam has waned off and they miss the semi-organized chaos when venturing into the 'canal belt' (which I'd guess they don't do often anyways, since they live on newer settlements outside the medieval belt).
> 
> But their more serious worries is that lack of tourists might decimate the restaurants and cultural programming oriented to the internationals.


Restaurants in Tallinn's Old Town have been closing in droves already. Most of them catered solely to tourists and well, there haven't been almost any since February-March. Some of them tried to recapture the local customer base by dropping prices by up to 50% but it didn't really work. The Old Town has been too touristy for years already so there are other areas that are more popular among locals now.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> But wasn't that the plan of the municipality already?
> 
> Since soft drug use has been pretty much decriminalized in most of Europe and North America, much of the weed-stoning appeal of the city has somehow diminished for good reason.
> 
> They were also reducing the number of windows allocated to legal prostitution over time, seems to be, even if one is to assume sex work is legal, a disappearing form of trade in the age of Internet and social apps.
> 
> Tourists who can spend money on good restaurants and English-programming at theaters or else are unlikely to overlap with that crowd anyways.
> 
> I read many of the Nutella, Waffle and Cheese stores that sell cheap stuff for hungry budget tourists are closing down for good. I didn't know that a couple Dutch entrepreneurs had basically set up a shadow-franchise scheme to control dozens of such hyper-touristic shops in Amsterdam, although I had noticed the vast increase on the number of Nutella candy/waffle/ice-cream parlors with very similar bright signs.


I don’t see the need to go to Amsterdam for English-language theater any more than I see the need to go to Groningen or Leiden for English-language college courses. The real thing is available elsewhere, and this policy of attracting foreigners at the expense of the Dutch language has always mystified me. Although we’re back in none-of-my-business territory....


----------



## radamfi

Suburbanist said:


> They were also reducing the number of windows allocated to legal prostitution over time, seems to be, even if one is to assume sex work is legal, a disappearing form of trade in the age of Internet and social apps.


Germany is now more famous for its super-brothels so you are more likely to go there if that's the main purpose of the trip and in any case prostitution is legal or tolerated in about half of Europe. Even in countries famously anti-prostitution like Sweden and most of the US, there's not much you can do about sugar-daddy websites.


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> I don’t see the need to go to Amsterdam for English-language theater any more than I see the need to go to Groningen or Leiden for English-language college courses. The real thing is available elsewhere, and this policy of attracting foreigners at the expense of the Dutch language has always mystified me. Although we’re back in none-of-my-business territory....


University is big business. If Dutch universities don't speak English then they won't be able to attract foreign students other than Belgians. British and American universities would get all the foreign students (and therefore the money) if you could only study in English in English speaking countries. It is not just NL, universities throughout Europe are offering English language courses.

Is there any difference if an American student studies in a British university or a Dutch one?

Quite a few British students have studied in Maastricht in recent years as Dutch tuition fees are much lower. Studying is also a way for Americans (and now Brits) to live in the Netherlands without a visa. They only need a residence permit.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> this policy of attracting foreigners at the expense of the Dutch language has always mystified me. Although we’re back in none-of-my-business territory....


The restaurants in the Amsterdam Canal Belt are often English-only. Even staff doesn't always speak Dutch. It's very international.

For me as a Dutchman Amsterdam is not a very interesting place at all. It doesn't feel exotic to me. From my perspective Rotterdam is much more un-Dutch than Amsterdam. Rotterdam is the only city with a real collection of skyscrapers, the city feels much more impressive than Amsterdam, which is just a big village. I can find canals and similar architecture in my own city. Maybe not as grand, but Amsterdam just doesn't feel as exotic as Paris or Barcelona. 

I live just over an hour away from Amsterdam but there are years when I don't go inside the A10 ring road...


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> University is big business. If Dutch universities don't speak English then they won't be able to attract foreign students other than Belgians. Otherwise British and American universities would get all the foreign students (and therefore the money). It is not just NL, universities throughout Europe are offering English language courses.
> 
> Is there any difference if an American student studies in a British university or a Dutch one?
> 
> Quite a few British students have studied in Maastricht in recent years as Dutch tuition fees are much lower. Studying is also a way for Americans (and now Brits) to live in the Netherlands without a visa. They only need a residence permit.


I guess I don’t agree that it should be primarily a business. If a Dutch student wants to study in his or her own language, where do they go if every university in the Netherlands and Flanders has become a second-rate Oxford or Harvard? A Dutch university’s first responsibility is to those Dutch students.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The restaurants in the Amsterdam Canal Belt are often English-only. Even staff doesn't always speak Dutch. It's very international.
> 
> For me as a Dutchman Amsterdam is not a very interesting place at all. It doesn't feel exotic to me. From my perspective Rotterdam is much more un-Dutch than Amsterdam. Rotterdam is the only city with a real collection of skyscrapers, the city feels much more impressive than Amsterdam, which is just a big village. I can find canals and similar architecture in my own city. Maybe not as grand, but Amsterdam just doesn't feel as exotic as Paris or Barcelona.
> 
> I live just over an hour away from Amsterdam but there are years when I don't go inside the A10 ring road...


I stayed several times on visits to Montreal at a hotel that was very close to the McGill University campus. Not that I particularly wanted to be there; It was convenient and easy to get to (and the last time I went it had become student housing). I’ve heard waitresses in that area apologize for their bad French....

I was in Rotterdam once, in 1986, and I didn’t like it. I don’t remember why; it felt a bit depressing I guess. What I knew about it in advance was that it was rebuilt and had lots of modern architecture, but once I was there it fell flat.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I found this rather shocking: 









Survey: 69% of Americans Have Less Than $1,000 in Savings


Find out why they say they can't save more.




www.gobankingrates.com





Two-thirds of Americans don't even have $ 1,000 saved up. How do they pay for unforeseen expenses? Or how do they pay when they want to move?

Of course you can take out loans, but if you have less than $ 1000 in savings that'll probably means you don't have much - if any - room for more monthly payments. 

69% is a far greater percentage of the population than only the low-income tier. That means that even middle income Americans don't have any meaningful savings?


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I found this rather shocking:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Survey: 69% of Americans Have Less Than $1,000 in Savings
> 
> 
> Find out why they say they can't save more.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.gobankingrates.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Two-thirds of Americans don't even have $ 1,000 saved up. How do they pay for unforeseen expenses? Or how do they pay when they want to move?
> 
> Of course you can take out loans, but if you have less than $ 1000 in savings that'll probably means you don't have much - if any - room for more monthly payments.
> 
> 69% is a far greater percentage of the population than only the low-income tier. That means that even middle income Americans don't have any meaningful savings?


A lot of people have retirement accounts. Which are protected from taxation if you don’t touch them until you reach a certain age (but can be “raided,” as the article puts it, with tax penalties, if you need to before then). I’m not clear they’re including retirement accounts in their statistics.


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> I guess I don’t agree that it should be primarily a business. If a Dutch student wants to study in his or her own language, where do they go if every university in the Netherlands and Flanders has become a second-rate Oxford or Harvard? A Dutch university’s first responsibility is to those Dutch students.


The truth is that universities have no choice; some fields are simply global subjects and studies are released and peer-reviewed in English, the de facto language of science. This includes things like medicine, finance and taxation, sociology, psychiatry, technology, IT, math, economics...

There really is no point offering a master's degree in aerospace engineering in the Dutch language because anyone who wants to achieve anything in that field needs to have a firm grasp on the English language. If not, they simply don't have access to the latest studies and developments or, for that matter, career opportunities.

If you publish a study on the evolution of modern populism in democratic European nations in the Dutch language, nobody of interest is going to read it. You'll have written yourself into irrelevance.

On a more personal note; if my oncologist 7 years ago hadn't been capable of reading and speaking English, I would have transferred to a different doctor immediately. I don't need to be treated by a medical professional who's sitting around waiting for the research on cutting-edge treatments to be translated into frigging Dutch.

This is a huge part of the reason why those countries in Europe where English fluency is low are perennially struggling in various important industries.

So the list of topics you can still reasonably study in the Dutch language is rather limited. They include Dutch literature, Dutch history, colonialism, water management, the performing arts...

Most Dutch universities get this right, imo. Most bachelor's courses are taught partly in Dutch and partly in English. For master's courses, international topics are taught in English while national topics are taught in Dutch. Nobody is studying Dutch literature in English, for example (that'd be weird).

But there's no point teaching biotechnology in Dutch. You're just setting your students up for a life of working on the fringes in their field.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> The truth is that universities have no choice; some fields are simply global subjects and studies are released and peer-reviewed in English, the de facto language of science. This includes things like medicine, finance and taxation, sociology, psychiatry, technology, IT, math, economics...
> 
> There really is no point offering a master's degree in aerospace engineering in the Dutch language because anyone who wants to achieve anything in that field needs to have a firm grasp on the English language. If not, they simply don't have access to the latest studies and developments or, for that matter, career opportunities.
> 
> If you publish a study on the evolution of modern populism in democratic European nations in the Dutch language, nobody of interest is going to read it. You'll have written yourself into irrelevance.
> 
> On a more personal note; if my oncologist 7 years ago hadn't been capable of reading and speaking English, I would have transferred to a different doctor immediately. I don't need to be treated by a medical professional who's sitting around waiting for the research on cutting-edge treatments to be translated into frigging Dutch.
> 
> This is a huge part of the reason why those countries in Europe where English fluency is low are perennially struggling in various important industries.
> 
> So the list of topics you can still reasonably study in the Dutch language is rather limited. They include Dutch literature, Dutch history, colonialism, water management, the performing arts...
> 
> Most Dutch universities get this right, imo. Most bachelor's courses are taught partly in Dutch and partly in English. For master's courses, international topics are taught in English while national topics are taught in Dutch. Nobody is studying Dutch literature in English, for example (that'd be weird).
> 
> But there's no point teaching biotechnology in Dutch. You're just setting your students up for a life of working on the fringes in their field.


I could swear I read somewhere that you can in fact study Dutch literature in English in the Netherlands. You can certainly do it at Berkeley: Courses in English | Dutch Studies.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Delete - dupe - it’s this app’s fault.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^And in Groningen, it appears.









Dutch Studies


The Faculty of Arts at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, offers an English taught programme of Dutch Studies, which includes courses in Dutch...




www.rug.nl









__





Language of instruction


Language of instruction




www.rug.nl


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> A lot of people have retirement accounts. Which are protected from taxation if you don’t touch them until you reach a certain age (but can be “raided,” as the article puts it, with tax penalties, if you need to before then). I’m not clear they’re including retirement accounts in their statistics.


You can of course have stock market based investments that aren't protected from tax, so you could access them in an emergency without penalties. Still, stock market investments shouldn't really be touched for at least five years minimum so it is better not to withdraw them because you need the money fast. Or you could have a Roth IRA which doesn't impose such restrictions. The Roth IRA doesn't appear to as generous with its contribution limits as the UK equivalent (ISA):






Roth IRA - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org









Individual savings account - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





Lots of people who have invested the maximum allowed into ISAs since they were launched in 1999 are now millionaires.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> The truth is that universities have no choice; some fields are simply global subjects and studies are released and peer-reviewed in English, the de facto language of science. This includes things like medicine, finance and taxation, sociology, psychiatry, technology, IT, math, economics...
> 
> There really is no point offering a master's degree in aerospace engineering in the Dutch language because anyone who wants to achieve anything in that field needs to have a firm grasp on the English language. If not, they simply don't have access to the latest studies and developments or, for that matter, career opportunities.
> 
> If you publish a study on the evolution of modern populism in democratic European nations in the Dutch language, nobody of interest is going to read it. You'll have written yourself into irrelevance.
> 
> On a more personal note; if my oncologist 7 years ago hadn't been capable of reading and speaking English, I would have transferred to a different doctor immediately. I don't need to be treated by a medical professional who's sitting around waiting for the research on cutting-edge treatments to be translated into frigging Dutch.
> 
> This is a huge part of the reason why those countries in Europe where English fluency is low are perennially struggling in various important industries.
> 
> So the list of topics you can still reasonably study in the Dutch language is rather limited. They include Dutch literature, Dutch history, colonialism, water management, the performing arts...
> 
> Most Dutch universities get this right, imo. Most bachelor's courses are taught partly in Dutch and partly in English. For master's courses, international topics are taught in English while national topics are taught in Dutch. Nobody is studying Dutch literature in English, for example (that'd be weird).
> 
> But there's no point teaching biotechnology in Dutch. You're just setting your students up for a life of working on the fringes in their field.


If you write a study on the rise of modern populism with a target audience of the general public, and do so in your own language, there are readers in your own country who will read it. Which isn’t “no one.” Meanwhile, you can get it translated into other languages, preferably by native speakers of those languages (even the English-speaking translators will likely be able to produce better English than a Dutch writer and his Dutch publisher‘s editors, no matter how good the people who say “five after half five” think their English is).

If you’ve studied epidemiology in English and now have to convey it to the general public during a pandemic, don’t you risk not having the necessary Dutch vocabulary? Obviously, you should have a good command of English, and perhaps another major language or two. And a lot of your study, perhaps most of it, will happen in that language. But I think the complete exclusion of your own language from your education is short-sighted.

I didn’t mean to say English should be completely excluded from Dutch universities. I realize I may have; that was a sort of passing remark spurred by the notion of English-language theater for tourists (or anyone else) in Amsterdam. Because I’m aware of the debate on this. I do think it’s probably gone too far, though. There’s no reason at least an undergraduate general education, subjects like history, can’t be taught in the national language. Require mastery of English (and again, maybe another major language or two) as part of the degree qualifications. Expect students to be able to do research in more than one language. But an ability to convey higher knowledge to Dutch people in Dutch is not completely useless yet. To, say, a journalist. Or a doctor explaining things to a patient.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> I found this rather shocking:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Survey: 69% of Americans Have Less Than $1,000 in Savings
> 
> 
> Find out why they say they can't save more.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.gobankingrates.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Two-thirds of Americans don't even have $ 1,000 saved up. How do they pay for unforeseen expenses? Or how do they pay when they want to move?
> 
> Of course you can take out loans, but if you have less than $ 1000 in savings that'll probably means you don't have much - if any - room for more monthly payments.
> 
> 69% is a far greater percentage of the population than only the low-income tier. That means that even middle income Americans don't have any meaningful savings?


What is even more shocking is that in the US getting sick is an unforeseen expense...

I can't find stats for Estonia in absolute monetary values but according to a recent survey 27% of respondents have enough in savings to last for up to a month, 30% for up to two months, 20% for up to 6 months and 23% for up to a year. Make of that what you will.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The average savings in the Netherlands is € 40,800 but this figure is distorted due to very wealthy people. The median savings is € 13,900, that means that the median Dutch has savings similar to the top 25% of Americans. 

Most Dutch don't save money in a retirement account, because there are pension plans for workers (plus government benefits). The older generation is actually very wealthy: they have an average of over € 60,000 in savings, usually good pensions plus government benefits every month. 

Self-employed people do need to save up money in a retirement account because they are responsible for their own pension.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Most Dutch don't save money in a retirement account, because there are pension plans for workers (plus government benefits).


Do the people actually trust these to be worth anything once they get old, because of the lack of affordability (too many old people, not enough young people)?


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> If you write a study on the rise of modern populism with a target audience of the general public, and do so in your own language, there are readers in your own country who will read it. Which isn’t “no one.” Meanwhile, you can get it translated into other languages, preferably by native speakers of those languages (even the English-speaking translators will likely be able to produce better English than a Dutch writer and his Dutch publisher‘s editors, no matter how good the people who say “five after half five” think their English is).
> 
> If you’ve studied epidemiology in English and now have to convey it to the general public during a pandemic, don’t you risk not having the necessary Dutch vocabulary? Obviously, you should have a good command of English, and perhaps another major language or two. And a lot of your study, perhaps most of it, will happen in that language. But I think the complete exclusion of your own language from your education is short-sighted.
> 
> I didn’t mean to say English should be completely excluded from Dutch universities. I realize I may have; that was a sort of passing remark spurred by the notion of English-language theater for tourists (or anyone else) in Amsterdam. Because I’m aware of the debate on this. I do think it’s probably gone too far, though. There’s no reason at least an undergraduate general education, subjects like history, can’t be taught in the national language. Require mastery of English (and again, maybe another major language or two) as part of the degree qualifications. Expect students to be able to do research in more than one language. But an ability to convey higher knowledge to Dutch people in Dutch is not completely useless yet. To, say, a journalist. Or a doctor explaining things to a patient.


Few studies are aimed at the general public, though. Articles in newspapers and magazines are, but those will be checked by an editor.

In any case, I don't think the problem of not knowing terminology in Dutch actually exists. I've heard this argument before, but I've never found any evidence for it. Once you understand a certain term in English, translating it into your native language is easy. Even when initially stumped in a high pressure situation you'd be able to come up with an approximation or an explanation. Doing the same thing the other way around is much harder. So it makes sense to focus on the foreign language during your education. Your native language is always holstered. A second language takes work.

I do agree there is some sense in teaching 50/50 as many bachelor's courses do. Turning an entire master's course English is perhaps taking it too far. Some have argued that it causes otherwise talented students to drop out only because they're not sufficiently proficient in English. So some talent may go to waste. But that's where the quality and money arguments come in: you can't attract lucrative foreign students when half your course is in Dutch and if you want to compete in hiring the best professors and teachers, you need to offer the option to teach in English.

The alternative would be to cease attracting foreign students but then you'd have to raise tuition fees for Dutch students which, in turn, would see talent go to waste as poor kids decide to take a different career path.

It's not an easy decision.

PS. As for studying Dutch literature in English in Groningen, that's just ridic. 



ChrisZwolle said:


> The average savings in the Netherlands is € 40,800 but this figure is distorted due to very wealthy people. The median savings is € 13,900, that means that the median Dutch has savings similar to the top 25% of Americans.


I'm calling bs on that. Does that include the value of a home or something?

I'm always reading about Dutch people not having enough savings to cover emergency expenditure. Here's one random article that Google coughed up saying 34% of young people have less than 3k in savings.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> I'm calling bs on that. Does that include the value of a home or something?


Here is the data from Statistics Netherlands: CBS Statline

I suppose there is a gap between people who live paycheck to paycheck and people that do have a meaningful savings. If people manage to save money on a structural basis, the average savings would quickly escalate into the thousands.

I'm 33 and I also have a substantial savings (which would put me in the top 20% of Americans). Not having kids helps with that of course. I also don't have any monthly car payments, I always saved up money and traded in my older car. That way you don't need to spend a large amount of money to drive a decent car. I don't think I ever paid more than € 6500 for a car and I usually buy them 2-3 years old.


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> I'm always reading about Dutch people not having enough savings to cover emergency expenditure. Here's one random article that Google coughed up saying 34% of young people have less than 3k in savings.


Does it matter that much anyway in the Netherlands, given the generous unemployment benefits? My friend worked in Rotterdam about 15 years ago and he kept telling me that his colleagues were practically begging to be laid off.


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> Two-thirds of Americans don't even have $ 1,000 saved up. How do they pay for unforeseen expenses? Or how do they pay when they want to move?


It doesn't say that though, it says 69% of Americans don't have $1,000 _in a savings account. _That is very different to don't have_ $1,000 to their name. _It's a press release from a banking service, cui bono and all that


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> Does it matter that much anyway in the Netherlands, given the generous unemployment benefits? My friend worked in Rotterdam about 15 years ago and he kept telling me that his colleagues were practically begging to be laid off.


That was a long time ago. The unemployment benefits have been sharply reformed.

These days you can get a maximum of 1 month for every 1 year of your life that you've worked. It also comes with a range of strings attached: mandatory applications and training, for one. If you generate any kind of income, it's immediately deducted from your pay-out for that month.

The first three months you're allowed to turn down any job offer. After three months, you're no longer allowed to turn down a job offer that fits your resume. After six months, you basically have to accept any job that is offered to you.

It's such a hassle, I know people who didn't bother even applying after they had lost their job. They just lived off their savings for 2-3 months until they found something else.


----------



## MattiG

Slagathor said:


> The truth is that universities have no choice; some fields are simply global subjects and studies are released and peer-reviewed in English, the de facto language of science. This includes things like medicine, finance and taxation, sociology, psychiatry, technology, IT, math, economics...
> 
> There really is no point offering a master's degree in aerospace engineering in the Dutch language because anyone who wants to achieve anything in that field needs to have a firm grasp on the English language. If not, they simply don't have access to the latest studies and developments or, for that matter, career opportunities.


In my opinion, the teaching language and the language of the science are two quite different things. 

I have a MSc in IT. About 95% of the materials to be read during the university years was in English. Still, it would have been ridiculous if the Finnish lecturer had made the presentations in English in front of the full-Finnish audience. The classes were about IT, not about learning English.

As a member in a small language group, it is easy the switch the languages. No problem to give a presentation in Finnish while the slides are in English. This is quite a standard setup both in schools and at work. In my consultant work, I have had three categories of domestic clients: The first group wants to have all materials in Finnish, the second one needs everything in English, and the third one tolerates a mixed approach (like supporting end-users in the local language while writing the contract-related papers in English). Still, the spoken language in the meeting rooms is Finnish, if everyone is a Finn. When a non-Finn enters a room, the language is immediately switched into English, even in the middle of a clause.


----------



## Kanadzie

^^ is it switched to English after an involuntary "perrrkele" ?


----------



## Kanadzie

Stuu said:


> It doesn't say that though, it says 69% of Americans don't have $1,000 _in a savings account. _That is very different to don't have_ $1,000 to their name. _It's a press release from a banking service, cui bono and all that


would be frankly stupid to keep any money in a savings account. What are interest rates now, 0,00001% ? better to have some stocks or whatever, especially if you set them up as a Roth IRA (capital gains are shielded from tax).


----------



## MattiG

Kanadzie said:


> ^^ is it switched to English after an involuntary "perrrkele" ?


It is not necessary to switch languages due to that. Every bloody foreigner working with Finns knows the word. However , they do not need to know the word if they listen to the tone of the speaker.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Rebasepoiss said:


> What is even more shocking is that in the US getting sick is an unforeseen expense...
> 
> I can't find stats for Estonia in absolute monetary values but according to a recent survey 27% of respondents have enough in savings to last for up to a month, 30% for up to two months, 20% for up to 6 months and 23% for up to a year. Make of that what you will.


Do employers there normally pay severance? When I was laid off, I got full pay (and then some) for 17 weeks.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Stuu said:


> It doesn't say that though, it says 69% of Americans don't have $1,000 _in a savings account. _That is very different to don't have_ $1,000 to their name. _It's a press release from a banking service, cui bono and all that


Yep.


----------



## Slagathor

MattiG said:


> In my opinion, the teaching language and the language of the science are two quite different things.
> 
> I have a MSc in IT. About 95% of the materials to be read during the university years was in English. Still, it would have been ridiculous if the Finnish lecturer had made the presentations in English in front of the full-Finnish audience. The classes were about IT, not about learning English.
> 
> As a member in a small language group, it is easy the switch the languages. No problem to give a presentation in Finnish while the slides are in English. This is quite a standard setup both in schools and at work. In my consultant work, I have had three categories of domestic clients: The first group wants to have all materials in Finnish, the second one needs everything in English, and the third one tolerates a mixed approach (like supporting end-users in the local language while writing the contract-related papers in English). Still, the spoken language in the meeting rooms is Finnish, if everyone is a Finn. When a non-Finn enters a room, the language is immediately switched into English, even in the middle of a clause.


You've described situations that sound almost alien to me here in the Netherlands though:

1) A classroom at the university level with only Dutch people in it.
2) An IT company with only Dutch employees.

That doesn't happen here. I've never seen that. Several of my friends work in IT, they rarely use Dutch. The only jobs where you'd use Dutch is in customer support type roles.

Universities and IT companies are full of people from all over the world. And that's the point of using English. We want to attract that talent. The population of the Netherlands is currently 17.3 million but only 13.2 million of them are Dutch people.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Penn's Woods said:


> Do employers there normally pay severance? When I was laid off, I got full pay (and then some) for 17 weeks.


Yes but there are a bunch of rules that regulate who and how can be let go (more here) so let's just talk about a hypothetical situation where a company is downsizing and has to let some people go (in the sense that the positions themselves are no longer needed):

Here's a table to sum up the compensation rules based on length of employment relationship:


Duration of the employment relationshipRedundancy period of noticeRedundancy Compensation paid by the employerRedundancy insurance benefit paid by the unemployment insurance fundLess than 1 year15 calendar days1 month1–5 years30 calendar days1 month5–10 years60 calendar days1 month1 monthOver 10 years90 calendar days1 month2 months

You can be given a shorter notice than shown above but you still have to be paid in full for the notice period. In my case I've worked for the same employer for 2.5 years so if they wanted to terminate my contract I would get a 30 days notice and 1 month in compensation which effectively gives me 2 months to find another job before I have to go into my savings.


----------



## Surel

Slagathor said:


> You've described situations that sound almost alien to me here in the Netherlands though:
> 
> 1) A classroom at the university level with only Dutch people in it.
> 2) An IT company with only Dutch employees.
> 
> That doesn't happen here. I've never seen that. Several of my friends work in IT, they rarely use Dutch. The only jobs where you'd use Dutch is in customer support type roles.
> 
> Universities and IT companies are full of people from all over the world. And that's the point of using English. We want to attract that talent. The population of the Netherlands is currently 17.3 million but only 13.2 million of them are Dutch people.


Actually no. There are only 1 million foreigners in the Netherlands and 16 millions are Dutch.


https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/migr_pop2ctz/default/table?lang=en


----------



## Slagathor

Surel said:


> Actually no. There are only 1 million foreigners in the Netherlands and 16 millions are Dutch.
> 
> 
> https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/migr_pop2ctz/default/table?lang=en


I wasn't talking about citizenship.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> Several of my friends work in IT, they rarely use Dutch. The only jobs where you'd use Dutch is in customer support type roles.


I've heard that too. It's apparently common to have online meetings with developers in India or executives in the United States. 

IT is one of those fields where English is required for almost all aspects. 

It's also trendy to study abroad for a year, so you need English too. I think that universities have become an international domain, similar to airports. In fact, I think aviation and universities have a lot in common. Cheap aviation has accommodated studying abroad / overseas. Back in the 1990s only a small percentage of students studied abroad, nowadays many do. In the 1990s and early 2000s doing high school for a year in the United States or becoming an au-pair was your way to explore the world. Flying was too expensive to do regularly as a student.


----------



## bogdymol

I have recently read that in Vienna, Austria, 30% of the population does not have an Austrian passport.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> You've described situations that sound almost alien to me here in the Netherlands though:
> 
> 1) A classroom at the university level with only Dutch people in it.
> 2) An IT company with only Dutch employees.
> 
> That doesn't happen here. I've never seen that. Several of my friends work in IT, they rarely use Dutch. The only jobs where you'd use Dutch is in customer support type roles.
> 
> Universities and IT companies are full of people from all over the world. And that's the point of using English. We want to attract that talent. The population of the Netherlands is currently 17.3 million but only 13.2 million of them are Dutch people.


And thus the English language - or a form of it that some people -think- is English - is mutated into continental Europe’s Esperanto.

Next, we have Dutch people and Romanians on SSC telling Americans to Briticize our vocabulary so they can understand us, or telling us we don’t have the right to call our language “English.” I’m not making either of those up. (Not to mention the chorus of predictable condemnation every time we call soccer “soccer,” as is correct in more than 80 percent of the English-speaking world.)

Why don’t you - and I’m sure this will seem outlandish - ask people settling in the Netherlands to learn the language? Some of them may just be willing to do it. Instead you’re trying to be England or the U.S., something you’ll never succeed in anyway.


----------



## geogregor

Penn's Woods said:


> And thus the English language - or a form of it that some people -think- is English - is mutated into continental Europe’s Esperanto.


"Eurenglish" 



> Next, we have Dutch people and Romanians on SSC telling Americans to Briticize our vocabulary so they can understand us, or telling us we don’t have the right to call our language “English.” I’m not making either of those up. (Not to mention the chorus of predictable condemnation every time we call soccer “soccer,” as is correct in more than 80 percent of the English-speaking world.)


And we didn't even mention the Aussies with their weird dialect they claim to be English 



> Why don’t you - and I’m sure this will seem outlandish - ask people settling in the Netherlands to learn the language?


I suppose in the long term most of the newcomers do learn the language. But there is a lot of people spending only some time there (both highly paid expats and low paid manual workers) who won't master the language in a year or two they might spend in the Netherlands.

Especially in highly specialized fields and among traveling academics and specialists there might be little incentive to master such niche language as Dutch (or Polish)


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> And thus the English language - or a form of it that some people -think- is English - is mutated into continental Europe’s Esperanto.


Which is fine. If there is to be a sort of Euro-English, it won't be any less legitimate as a local tool of communication than Malaysian English.



Penn's Woods said:


> Next, we have Dutch people and Romanians on SSC telling Americans to Briticize our vocabulary so they can understand us, or telling us we don’t have the right to call our language “English.” I’m not making either of those up. (Not to mention the chorus of predictable condemnation every time we call soccer “soccer,” as is correct in more than 80 percent of the English-speaking world.)


That's pedantic nonsense and I can see how that would tick you off.

Incidentally, I've only ever heard it the other way around; people generally prefer a North American accent (the generic Western version of it, anyway) over the cacophony of various British tongues.

One of the funnier moments I ever experienced was a meeting of EU officials (I won't go into further detail on the field and positions of those present for privacy reasons). The British representative had some sort of Northern English accent that I couldn't quite pin-point, but he pronounced "back" like "bach", and "those" as "dose". He also did a weird thing with his Gs, sometimes dropping them ("readin") and sometimes voicing them when they're silent ("ring-ging" instead of "ringing").

Anyway, so we go around on the first item of the agenda and when it's the British rep's turn to speak, he launches into this gobbledygook and after about 30 seconds, the Slovenian guy next to me turned to me and asked: "What language is he speaking?"

I'll admit I laughed loud enough to temporarily interrupt the proceedings. 



Penn's Woods said:


> Why don’t you - and I’m sure this will seem outlandish - ask people settling in the Netherlands to learn the language?


We tend to tell people that if they want to stay long-term and genuinely become a member of Dutch society, speaking the Dutch language is essential.

But not everyone is here long-term. It makes little sense to tell a space engineer temporarily working for ESA in Noordwijk to learn Dutch. What's the point if he's gonna be back in Cayenne a year or two later?


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> Why don’t you - and I’m sure this will seem outlandish - ask people settling in the Netherlands to learn the language? Some of them may just be willing to do it.


On one of my last visits I remember seeing a lot of adverts (for example on bus shelters) advising people to learn Dutch so they can get a better job. This was clearly aimed at the less educated migrant. The Netherlands is quite strict in getting migrants to learn the language, even to the extent that the regime has been considered draconian by some commentators. Many non-EU immigrants have to pass the integration exam within 3 years, which includes learning Dutch to a reasonable level. If they don't, they might get a fine.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> Incidentally, I've only ever heard it the other way around; people generally prefer a North American accent (the generic Western version of it, anyway) over the cacophony of various British tongues.


I would agree, this likely has to do with the influence of American television shows and movies people grew up with, in particular in countries that use subtitles instead of dubbing. 

There is a lot of English spoken by non-natives to non-natives on universities, which might create a 'Eurenglish' standard. The proficiency of English also varies substantially across Europe, especially the north vs the south. I'm under the impression that Eastern Europe might develop better English skills than Southern Europe. It's a rarity to find someone in inland Spain who can speak more than 10 words of English.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> I would agree, this likely has to do with the influence of American television shows and movies people grew up with, in particular in countries that use subtitles instead of dubbing.


In my last job I used to work with an older Dutch person, now about 60 years old, who came to Britain in the 80s, incidentally quite famous in transport modelling. I used to talk to him a lot about the Netherlands and Dutch. I showed him this YouTube video about the annual Top 2000 radio event (apt to mention this now given the time of year):














Top 2000 - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





and he was taken aback by her American sounding English accent. I suggested to him that she sounds that way because of watching American TV and films. He replied that he was taught to speak "the Queen's English".


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> Which is fine. If there is to be a sort of Euro-English, it won't be any less legitimate as a local tool of communication than Malaysian English.
> 
> 
> 
> That's pedantic nonsense and I can see how that would tick you off.
> 
> Incidentally, I've only ever heard it the other way around; people generally prefer a North American accent (the generic Western version of it, anyway) over the cacophony of various British tongues.
> 
> One of the funnier moments I ever experienced was a meeting of EU officials (I won't go into further detail on the field and positions of those present for privacy reasons). The British representative had some sort of Northern English accent that I couldn't quite pin-point, but he pronounced "back" like "bach", and "those" as "dose". He also did a weird thing with his Gs, sometimes dropping them ("readin") and sometimes voicing them when they're silent ("ring-ging" instead of "ringing").
> 
> Anyway, so we go around on the first item of the agenda and when it's the British rep's turn to speak, he launches into this gobbledygook and after about 30 seconds, the Slovenian guy next to me turned to me and asked: "What language is he speaking?"
> 
> I'll admit I laughed loud enough to temporarily interrupt the proceedings.
> 
> 
> 
> We tend to tell people that if they want to stay long-term and genuinely become a member of Dutch society, speaking the Dutch language is essential.
> 
> But not everyone is here long-term. It makes little sense to tell a space engineer temporarily working for ESA in Noordwijk to learn Dutch. What's the point if he's gonna be back in Cayenne a year or two later?


I didn’t realize you were talking about short-term people; I was getting the impression of a quarter of the permanent population living happily in Engleranto* and Dutch society happily bending over backwards to accommodate that.

*If anyone has a better idea, that was spur-of-the-moment.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> I showed him this YouTube video about the annual Top 2000 radio event (apt to mention this now given the time of year):


She's Dutch? You can hardly tell, most Dutch have a much more noticeable accent when speaking English. 

Top 2000 is the only time of the year I actually listen to the radio nowadays. They start earlier this year because they want to play more album versions instead of the shorter radio edits.

This isn't really the most popular music of what's usually played on the radio, but more what people find the best music. Top 2000 consists of a lot of music you won't even hear on classic rock channels. Many songs are quite a bit longer than the traditional radio format (3-4 minutes). 

I mean Hotel California gets played regularly, but not Telegraph Road by Dire Straits (14 minutes) or Echoes by Pink Floyd (23 minutes).

Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen is almost always the #1 song, it's only rarely pushed to #2. I find it a bit overrated, but it apparently has wide appeal among the younger audience as well.


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> I didn’t realize you were talking about short-term people; I was getting the impression of a quarter of the permanent population living happily in Engleranto* and Dutch society happily bending over backwards to accommodate that.
> 
> *If anyone has a better idea, that was spur-of-the-moment.


They would really struggle to do that because since English isn't an official language of the Netherlands, all business with the authorities is conducted in Dutch. 

If you come here on a temporary work contract, there's usually an agent somewhere to help you out with the paperwork. But if you plan to stay here longer... learning Dutch is pretty much essential. 

You have to file taxes in Dutch, all municipal communications heading your way are in Dutch, all major contracts (utilities and more) are in Dutch and if, god forbid, you ever find yourself in a court of law, you'll have to defend yourself in Dutch or risk being misunderstood through an interpreter. 

You can be a temporary 'guest' in English no problem at all. But living here? With all the nitty-gritty stuff that comes with settling down? No, you'll need Dutch.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> She's Dutch?


She's from Zwolle, according to the description in this video


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> She's Dutch? You can hardly tell, most Dutch have a much more noticeable accent when speaking English.
> 
> Top 2000 is the only time of the year I actually listen to the radio nowadays. They start earlier this year because they want to play more album versions instead of the shorter radio edits.
> 
> This isn't really the most popular music of what's usually played on the radio, but more what people find the best music. Top 2000 consists of a lot of music you won't even hear on classic rock channels. Many songs are quite a bit longer than the traditional radio format (3-4 minutes).
> 
> I mean Hotel California gets played regularly, but not Telegraph Road by Dire Straits (14 minutes) or Echoes by Pink Floyd (23 minutes).
> 
> Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen is almost always the #1 song, it's only rarely pushed to #2. I find it a bit overrated, but it apparently has wide appeal among the younger audience as well.


I’m not familiar with this event, but many stations do year-end lists. I also hear a lot of stuff that’s new to me (but not new) in WMMR’s back-to-school A-to-Z in September, which runs a couple of weeks. I wish they’d publish the whole playlist. But I’m sure you can find plenty of comparable events elsewhere.









MMR's Back to School A to Z 2019


MMR's Back to School A to Z 2019 Starts: Friday, August 30th at 5pm with Jaxon and Sara Ends: Some time on Monday, September 9th Follow along below to see what we've played so far! Test your musical knowledge with the MMR A to Z Pop Quiz Thousands of different songs, played in alphabetical




wmmr.com


----------



## Surel

Slagathor said:


> I wasn't talking about citizenship.


Even if you would mean ethnicity, whatever that means in the Netherlands as there's no survey asking about people's ethnicity, you would not be quite correct. Nevertheless, everyone with a Dutch passport is by definition Dutch...

There are 2,3 million foreign born residents in the Netherlands.



https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/migr_pop3ctb/default/table?lang=en


----------



## Surel

American English is a simple result of non British Europeans learning British English, that's also why the accent appeals more and is easier to pick up for the non British Europeans.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> They would really struggle to do that because since English isn't an official language of the Netherlands, all business with the authorities is conducted in Dutch.
> 
> If you come here on a temporary work contract, there's usually an agent somewhere to help you out with the paperwork. But if you plan to stay here longer... learning Dutch is pretty much essential.
> 
> You have to file taxes in Dutch, all municipal communications heading your way are in Dutch, all major contracts (utilities and more) are in Dutch and if, god forbid, you ever find yourself in a court of law, you'll have to defend yourself in Dutch or risk being misunderstood through an interpreter.
> 
> You can be a temporary 'guest' in English no problem at all. But living here? With all the nitty-gritty stuff that comes with settling down? No, you'll need Dutch.


I’ve seen people in Belgium seriously propose making English a, or even the, official language in Belgium.
Anything to avoid having to learn the other national language, I suppose.... SMH.


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> all municipal communications heading your way are in Dutch


Except in Amsterdam









What languages do they speak in the Netherlands? - Learn Dutch Online


It sounds like a simple question. But there is more to it than you would think: what languages do they speak in the Netherlands? Here's the answer



www.learndutch.org





"The municipality of Amsterdam recognizes English as an official language but with a lower status than Dutch. This means that communication with the municipality can be done in English, but Dutch remains the language of publications, meetings, and administration."


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> They would really struggle to do that because since English isn't an official language of the Netherlands


Being even more pedantic, it is!  









Netherlands - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> American English is a simple result of non British Europeans learning British English, that's also why the accent appeals more and is easier to pick up for the non British Europeans.


That’s not true.









How Americans preserved British English


Americans today pronounce some words more like Shakespeare than Brits do… but it’s in 18th-Century England where they’d really feel at home.




www.bbc.com










American English - Wikipedia







en.m.wikipedia.org




“Minor influences” from immigrants’ languages in -some- regional varieties. 

Its starting point is the English that was brought to America by people from England. It’s probably closer to standard English English today, let alone that of the time the colonists were leaving England, than many British dialects are.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^ I did not know. Very interesting. But yes I also find US English (most accents) easier to speak than the various dialects and sociolects found on the British isles and e.g. Australia. Also US English has a slightly more rational connection between spoken and written language, although there is still a huge improvement potential compared with any other language I know....



Penn's Woods said:


> And thus the English language - or a form of it that some people -think- is English - is mutated into continental Europe’s Esperanto.


Well, English has been the lingua franca for quite some time now, really since WW II. Even the French seems to have given up. But it ought to be remembered that English itself is almost creol, having taken up a lot of vocabulary from other European languages into its Anglosaxon (i.e. German) base (Norse, French, Celtic, etc..... ). This has made the language messy, but with some recognizable bits and pieces for most of us Europeans.


----------



## Penn's Woods

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I did not know. Very interesting. But yes I also find US English (most accents) easier to speak than the various dialects and sociolects found on the British isles and e.g. Australia. Also US English has a slightly more rational connection between spoken and written language, although there is still a huge improvement potential compared with any other language I know....


Are we worse than Danish?


----------



## Slagathor

Surel said:


> Even if you would mean ethnicity, whatever that means in the Netherlands as there's no survey asking about people's ethnicity, you would not be quite correct. Nevertheless, everyone with a Dutch passport is by definition Dutch...
> 
> There are 2,3 million foreign born residents in the Netherlands.
> 
> 
> 
> https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/migr_pop3ctb/default/table?lang=en


"Begin 2020 waren er 13,2 miljoen inwoners met een Nederlandse achtergrond. "

Source: CBS.

The reason I decided to use that figure was to illustrate the country's long history of relying on foreign workers. I'll disregard colonial times (as it's not especially relevant today) but even in post-war history, the influx of foreign workers has had a big impact. While initially (1950s through to 1970s), the country sought to attract low-skilled laborers, the focus shifted to higher educated individuals in the 1980s. This has immediately influenced language policies in higher education, which was not previously a topic subject to debate.

And no, I'm not equating ethnicity with nationality. But if you want to examine the impact of migration on a country over a longer period of time, it does serve a purpose to illustrate the percentage of ethnically native people.



Penn's Woods said:


> I’ve seen people in Belgium seriously propose making English a, or even the, official language in Belgium.
> Anything to avoid having to learn the other national language, I suppose.... SMH.


The motive is usually insincere, though. It's never brought up by people seeking a real solution to Belgium's linguistic struggles.

Certain Walloons will suggest it just because they'd do anything to avoid learning Dutch and certain Flemings will suggest it because they hope it will further erode the Belgian state and help lead to Flemish independence.



radamfi said:


> Except in Amsterdam
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What languages do they speak in the Netherlands? - Learn Dutch Online
> 
> 
> It sounds like a simple question. But there is more to it than you would think: what languages do they speak in the Netherlands? Here's the answer
> 
> 
> 
> www.learndutch.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "The municipality of Amsterdam recognizes English as an official language but with a lower status than Dutch. This means that communication with the municipality can be done in English, but Dutch remains the language of publications, meetings, and administration."





radamfi said:


> Being even more pedantic, it is!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Netherlands - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> View attachment 885425
> 
> 
> 
> View attachment 885433


Yes, alright. 



Penn's Woods said:


> Are we worse than Danish?


Nobody and nothing is worse than anyone or anything Danish.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> ...
> 
> The motive is usually insincere, though. It's never brought up by people seeking a real solution to Belgium's linguistic struggles.
> 
> Certain Walloons will suggest it just because they'd do anything to avoid learning Dutch and certain Flemings will suggest it because they hope it will further erode the Belgian state and help lead to Flemish independence.
> 
> Inderdaad/En effet. It’s sad.
> 
> ...
> 
> Nobody and nothing is worse than anyone or anything Danish.


LOL!


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Penn's Woods said:


> Are we worse than Danish?


Yes, but the Danes have been heading in a very wrong direction over the last generation or so..... To detail a bit: In modern Danish, at least for us other Scandinavians, it is sometimes very difficult to know how to translate the spoken language to written language, as some Danes have gotten rather incomprehensible. In fact, research shows that Danish kids toddlers are slower to learn how to speak than toddlers in comparable countries, probably for this reason, and I have experienced a few times that even Danes do not understand each other, so this is not purely a interscandinavian joke, it seems. (Let's hope no Danes are seeing this ;-P )

But if you are able to understand what your conversation partner is saying, the rules for how to write it down are much clearer than in English. If you read a Danish word, it is also fairly clear how it is _supposed_ to be properly pronounced. In English, there are basically no rules for how a word should be written based on its pronounciation or how to write what you hear correctly down. You just need to know, almost for each individual word...


----------



## kosimodo

^^ au contraire! There is absolutly no link between writing and pronouncing in danish. There are no rules. Thats why it is relativly hard to learn danish.


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> Are we worse than Danish?


Somebody said Danish


----------



## tfd543

kosimodo said:


> ^^ au contraire! There is absolutly no link between writing and pronouncing in danish. There are no rules. Thats why it is relativly hard to learn danish.


Totally agree with my compatriot here. Its very simple, there are no rules. Thats What you are being told When u learn Danish, at least refugees do.
Its extremely hard to learn it, not relatively...


----------



## Penn's Woods

kosimodo said:


> ^^ au contraire! There is absolutly no link between writing and pronouncing in danish. There are no rules. Thats why it is relativly hard to learn danish.


I’ve tried, although I didn’t get as far as I did with Dutch. But on the rare occasions I fear or spoken, I don’t get a word.
(And if I seem to be making fun of the language, well, I suppose I am, but it’s with some affection.)


----------



## Surel

Slagathor said:


> "Begin 2020 waren er 13,2 miljoen inwoners met een Nederlandse achtergrond. "
> 
> Source: CBS.
> 
> The reason I decided to use that figure was to illustrate the country's long history of relying on foreign workers. I'll disregard colonial times (as it's not especially relevant today) but even in post-war history, the influx of foreign workers has had a big impact. While initially (1950s through to 1970s), the country sought to attract low-skilled laborers, the focus shifted to higher educated individuals in the 1980s. This has immediately influenced language policies in higher education, which was not previously a topic subject to debate.
> 
> And no, I'm not equating ethnicity with nationality. But if you want to examine the impact of migration on a country over a longer period of time, it does serve a purpose to illustrate the percentage of ethnically native people.


Going by these definitions and use them as you do you would need to say that the royal family is not Dutch as well. That's why I commented on it, because you disregarded 4 million of people as not being Dutch, while that is simply not how the things are. Imagine calling 100 million (I don't have the appropriate figure but imagine it would be in even a higher ballpark) Americans not being Americans. By such a language use when adhering to the "allochtoon" definition the person you were answering to could be a non American as well. You can see how stupid that would be.

If you want to say that there's been immigration to the Netherlands, it's fine. It's then correct to use the same language as CBS does. But that's different than disregarding substantial portion of the population as not being Dutch.

Btw, Austria has even higher rates of immigration if you look at the numbers and you don't see English being that prominent there.


----------



## SeanT

If you read a Danish word, it is also fairly clear how it is supposed to be properly pronounced.
.... In which point of you? I am sure that a person from the UK would pronounce a danish word way to different compared it to a hungarian.
Although I admit that the swedish pronounciation fits better for a hungarian then the danish.


----------



## Slagathor

Surel said:


> Going by these definitions and use them as you do you would need to say that the royal family is not Dutch as well. That's why I commented on it, because you disregarded 4 million of people as not being Dutch, while that is simply not how the things are. Imagine calling 100 million (I don't have the appropriate figure but imagine it would be in even a higher ballpark) Americans not being Americans. By such a language use when adhering to the "allochtoon" definition the person you were answering to is not an American as well. You can see how stupid that would be.
> 
> If you want to say that there's been immigration to the Netherlands, it's fine. But that's different than disregarding substantial portion of the population as not being Dutch.
> 
> Btw, Austria has even higher rates of immigration if you look at the numbers and you don't see English being that prominent there.


Why don't you go ahead and send this complaint to [email protected]

I said, quite plainly:

I'm not equating ethnicity with nationality.​
I was illustrating the quantity of people who arrived in the Netherlands relatively later. Some became Dutch, others did not and others still may still be in the process of doing so.

As for the link between language and migration; those are policy decisions. It's entirely possible Austria took different decisions, I have no idea.


----------



## Surel

Slagathor said:


> Why don't you go ahead and send this complaint to [email protected]
> 
> I said, quite plainly:
> 
> I'm not equating ethnicity with nationality.​
> I was illustrating the quantity of people who arrived in the Netherlands relatively later. Some became Dutch, others did not and others still may still be in the process of doing so.
> 
> As for the link between language and migration; those are policy decisions. It's entirely possible Austria took different decisions, I have no idea.


Why should I? In the article you mention they use quite correctly the Dutch people with foreign background. It's not what point you were illustrating, it's how you were illustrating it. They don't say that those people are not Dutch. You disregard those people as not Dutch. You did that here:



Slagathor said:


> The population of the Netherlands is currently 17.3 million but *only 13.2 million of them are Dutch* people.


This is simply not correct whether you would look at nationality or ethnicity. That's all I wanted to turn your attention to.

"aantal Nederlanders met migratieachtergrond" means "the number of Dutch with a migration background", not "the number of non Dutch people".

As about Austria. I don't think that that has to do much with policy, although there are certainly differences on many levels*, as it has to do with the fact that Dutch is a much closer language to English than German is and it has to do with the labor market demands. The Netherlands is simply a more internationally oriented country, which is given by economic, historic and geographic facts.

*be it education system, be it handling of the asylum people


----------



## Suburbanist

I have worked in Finance in the Netherlands (in the pension fund industry, but not on a specific pension fund). The company had a lot of interaction with foreign entities, from banks and insurance companies to IT providers of all types (hardware and software). 

It was a bi-lingual company, some departments Dutch-first, others English-first. A couple units were Dutch-only due to the nature of their work.

I'd say 80% of my co-workers were native Dutch (as in: people who grew up and completed basic schooling in the Netherlands). Yet, it was fairly common to pass through some table where a working group comprised only of them were discussing an issue in English. Some technical terms in Dutch as very obscure, and I think at some point people fluent in English prefer to use English instead of using 20% of English terms embedded in Dutch sentences.


----------



## Suburbanist

Dutch being close to English has downsides as well, such as weird verbal tenses many Dutch people use because it makes sense in Dutch. It is the same as people with Romance mother tongues learning another, although the grammatical differences are more subdued between them (excluding Romanian which has some rules that would sound like very arcane in Western European Romance languages).


----------



## Slagathor

Surel said:


> Why should I? In the article you mention they use quite correctly the Dutch people with foreign background. It's not what point you were illustrating, it's how you were illustrating it. They don't say that those people are not Dutch. You disregard those people as not Dutch. You did that here:
> 
> 
> 
> This is simply not correct whether you would look at nationality or ethnicity. That's all I wanted to turn your attention to.
> 
> "aantal Nederlanders met migratieachtergrond" means "the number of Dutch with a migration background", not "the number of non Dutch people".


Good grief, do you always expect people to communicate perfectly to every point and comma in an unofficial setting?


----------



## Surel

Slagathor said:


> Good grief, do you always expect people to communicate perfectly to every point and comma in an unofficial setting?


Of course not. I felt appealed by the problematic meaning and felt the need to clarify that. What's the problem with that?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> Dutch being close to English has downsides as well, such as weird verbal tenses many Dutch people use because it makes sense in Dutch. It is the same as people with Romance mother tongues learning another, although the grammatical differences are more subdued between them (excluding Romanian which has some rules that would sound like very arcane in Western European Romance languages).


I’ve come across Dutch people whose English is perfect until they say something like “I’ve been there last week.”

Their English is still far better than my Dutch, French or anything else will ever be, of course.


----------



## geogregor

British home secretary (minister of interior in many other countries) is well known for being mean and nasty woman. She is not particularly competent, there are accusations of bullying, she was kicked out of her previous ministerial post etc. 

Now she is also officially deluded...









Priti Patel faces backlash amid claims UK ‘ahead of curve’ on Covid-19


Priti Patel has been accused of living in a “parallel universe” after she described the government as being “consistently ahead of the curve” in its handling of the pandemic.




www.standard.co.uk





What a bunch of morons we have running this country. One can only despair...


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> British home secretary (minister of interior in many other countries) is well known for being mean and nasty woman. She is not particularly competent, there are accusations of bullying, she was kicked out of her previous ministerial post etc.
> 
> Now she is also officially deluded...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Priti Patel faces backlash amid claims UK ‘ahead of curve’ on Covid-19
> 
> 
> Priti Patel has been accused of living in a “parallel universe” after she described the government as being “consistently ahead of the curve” in its handling of the pandemic.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.standard.co.uk
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What a bunch of morons we have running this country. One can only despair...


People have said the reason this new strain was found in the U.K. is you’re the only place testing precisely enough....


----------



## Thermo

Slagathor said:


> Certain Walloons will suggest it just because they'd do anything to avoid learning Dutch and certain Flemings will suggest it because they hope it will further erode the Belgian state and help lead to Flemish independence.


The 'ideal' situation that could lead to Flemish independence is actually the current one: every Flemish kid learns French (mandatory) from the age of 10, while Wallonia still refuses to make Dutch mandatory in their schools, almost 200 years(!) after the creation of the Belgian state. It's like a giant middle finger towards us. I hope they keep it this way


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Christmas eve in a hard lockdown, for me that means pizza, Die Hard and an evening run alone... 🙃


Our situation is indeed hard lockdown too, you can't even leave your city without urgent reason, but tbh, I don't feel like it's very different for me, except fears for unknown future. Better be as stringent as possible with vaccines rolling out. Less spread = less unwanted mutations, etc. Less of the unknown in general 
Last two weeks were relatively bad news from covid front, hoping for better news in the future.

Merry Christmas!


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Christmas eve in a hard lockdown, for me that means pizza, Die Hard and an evening run alone... 🙃


No pizza. I'm home alone, and watched Kevin in the movie of the same title. I ate fish, what is usual in Hungary in Christmas eve. Tomorrow I'll eat goose, what is usual here in Western Germany.


----------



## tfd543

I had some faroean salmon. The fishmonger told me not to take the norwegian one because they inject too much growth hormones. Disgusting for a nice delicate fish.

15 euros Per kg fish. Not a bad price given that Its in DK


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> Our situation is indeed hard lockdown too, you can't even leave your city without urgent reason, but tbh, I don't feel like it's very different for me, except fears for unknown future. Better be as stringent as possible with vaccines rolling out. Less spread = less unwanted mutations, etc. Less of the unknown in general


In Poland a much softer lockdown will only start after Christmas. No travel restrictions, except for that hotels will close not only for private but also for most business guests.

I still live with parents, so I'm not home alone. Neither did I watch Home Alone  Which became kind of a traditional Christmas show in Poland, every year on the Polsat TV station – they showed it today at 8 PM.


----------



## cinxxx

tfd543 said:


> I had some faroean salmon. The fishmonger told me not to take the norwegian one because they inject too much growth hormones. Disgusting for a nice delicate fish.
> 
> 15 euros Per kg fish. Not a bad price given that Its in DK


The Faroe Islands are part of Danish Kingdom, makes sense maybe to tell you that to buy "local"?


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland a much softer lockdown will only start after Christmas. No travel restrictions, except for that hotels will close not only for private but also for most business guests.
> 
> I still live with parents, so I'm not home alone. Neither did I watch Home Alone  Which became kind of a traditional Christmas show in Poland, every year on the Polsat TV station – they showed it today at 8 PM.


Since we still have cases growing, although relatively slowly, we are not even considering softening lockdown. I think it wouldn't result much in general for entire cold period and without proper immunity (only 4.5% of population had virus at some point catched via tests, probably general immunity is not more than 10-15% considering good testing).
Currents plans are lifting intermunicipality travel restrictions by 3th of January, and "lockdown" ("quarantine") in January 31, but I guess we will stay that way for another month probably, like to mid- -late February, maybe slowly and carefully lifting restrictions, way more carefully than some countries tried in autumn which resulted in instant exponential growth. Btw, naturally aquired immunity might start to play a role too, but lifting restrictions can still result in exponential growth even with 30+% immunity, and it's higher than London, or New York before second wave (+current and potential mutations with increased transmissibility, hopefully not mutability )

I think proper travel bans should be implemented until (at least) late Spring similarly like we had this year. My worries are only around mutation there, but vaccine makers are saying that they are aware of this, and they can promise their vaccines will work, but it will take more time as we wish this pandemic would be over as soon as possible.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland it's also not softening, it's hardening, but I meant that it will be softer than in Lithuania. Over here, the cases are decreasing, although now very slowly. According to the earlier government's promises, from the beginning of November, the division of the country into red and yellow zones, yellow ones with less strict restrictions, should come back soon (it should come back when there is below 25 cases per 100k people on average within 7 days and the current figure is 25.74). But it seems the government has now absolutely forgotten about what they promised (typical politics) and now they are hardening the restrictions even though there is no increase in infections.










Deaths:










Active cases – yellow:










The problem is in that the numer of active cases stopped dropping and it's still quite high.


----------



## PovilD

I don't see promising trends in Poland. I think it's the effect of cold season.

That's why I'm kinda doubtful about softening restrictions in winter, without proper immunity, when people stay inside.

Btw, I think winter itself increases virus transmissibility value due to various factors. It's easier for more transmissible strains to pop in.

It will be interesting to watch Ukraine, Armenia and few other places which (it seems) saw their peaks without proper measures taken excl. masking indoors, but with all restaurants, etc. working. I wonder if they have some form of immunity kicking in or there are just enough super spreaders to be infected + limited travel.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

tfd543 said:


> I had some faroean salmon. The fishmonger told me not to take the norwegian one because they inject too much growth hormones. Disgusting for a nice delicate fish.


That's a quite wild accusation. Growth hormones are illegal in any food production in Norway as far as I know.


----------



## AnelZ

PovilD said:


> It will be interesting to watch Ukraine, Armenia and few other places which (it seems) saw their peaks without proper measures taken excl. masking indoors, but with all restaurants, etc. working. I wonder if they have some form of immunity kicking in or there are just enough super spreaders to be infected + limited travel.


You can kinda count Bosnia and Herzegovina in it as well.

We had a curfew and general closure of service and transport based industries at the start of the pandemic as well as obligatory masks inside and outside. We had a curfew from 22nd March (21st for RS) till 28th of March (FBiH 18:00-05:00, RS 20:00-05:00) and then from 29th March till 24th April (20:00-05:00 for whole BiH). From 24th April till 07th May only RS and Brčko District had a curfew (20:00-05:00) which was shortened from 07th May till 22nd May (22:00-05:00). Since 22nd May, the country had no curfew.

Hairdressers and beauty salons opened on May 1st in FBiH. In FBiH cafes and restaurants opened again on 12th May but only outside (exception was serving of shisha which was still forbiden), while public transport was reintroduced on May 15th as well as Museums, Theaters and Cinemas. Shopping centers in FBiH opened on 28th May as well as allowing cafes and restaurant to serve inside and not only outside but restricted to 50 persons max (or less depending on the size as distancing of 2m was still obligatory) but without a limit to working times which essentially allowed nightclubs to work. Serving of shisha was yet again allowed from 31st of May. Since June 1st the whole country opened our Airports as well borders to Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro and masks became non obligatory also from June 1st when being outside in the whole country. On that same date FBiH allowed up to 100 persons inside and 300 outside (still, 2m distance was obligatory).

But since the population started to behave very liberal about all of this and nightclubs were packed full, we again from 28th June restricted working times for restaurants, cafes, clubs and similar in the timeperiod of 00:00-05:00 and limited to 50 persons inside and 100 outside which then yet again was additionally hardened from 26th July and restricted working times between 23:00-05:00. We opened our borders to EU on 16th July and to everyone else on 12th September (with a negative PCR test, not older then 48 hours).

Since October 15th, masks were yet again obligatory outside. FBiH introduced curfew again on 11th November in the timeperiod of 23:00-05:00, while Brčko District introduced curfew on 22nd November from 22:00-05:00. RS didn't introduced any curfews. But although curfew is introduced yet again, there is no restrictions to any industries (aside of in Brčko District) which means all shopping centers, restaurants, hotels, cafes (including shisha), cinemas, public transport and similar is working normally with the only limit being max 30 persons, no matter if inside or outside (distance of min. 2m is still obligatory).

You could work a morning shift at your office and go to a barber after work and then to a shopping center, try out and buy clothes. Take a breather after that in a café in the same shopping center, smoke one inside with a coffee and then hop over to a shisha bar next and finish of the day with a beer or two at a pub (without a substantial meal) and then head out of the pub at 22h and take a tram home.

An although we are having declining figures for new cases for a month and a half (at one point we were among the worst performers in Europe and Sarajevo was probably the biggest hotspot per capita in Europe in August) we still are performing very badly when it comes to death per capita where we are fourth in the world (just surpassed Italy and now chasing down Slovenia).

Population: 3.2 million


----------



## kosimodo

tfd543 said:


> I had some faroean salmon. The fishmonger told me not to take the norwegian one because they inject too much growth hormones. Disgusting for a nice delicate fish.
> 
> 15 euros Per kg fish. Not a bad price given that Its in DK


Weird. Why cant you eat duck and porc like the rest?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's interesting what Gen Z votes as the best songs ever. 8 out of their top 10 is considerably older than what they are. Despite being the generation growing up with streaming and likely not listening much to classic rock radio.

This is the 21-25 year age group top 10 for the Top 2000 in the Netherlands:


----------



## tfd543

cinxxx said:


> The Faroe Islands are part of Danish Kingdom, makes sense maybe to tell you that to buy "local"?


Yea prolly, but i was still surprised to hear that. I was taught that the norwegian was the best of the best.


----------



## tfd543

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> That's a quite wild accusation. Growth hormones are illegal in any food production in Norway as far as I know.


Yea its a nutty thing. I am also sceptical, but I gave it a try this time.


----------



## tfd543

kosimodo said:


> Weird. Why cant you eat duck and porc like the rest?


Ah it was a long time ago I had fish. I just wanted to try smth different this year.


----------



## mgk920

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's interesting what Gen Z votes as the best songs ever. 8 out of their top 10 is considerably older than what they are. Despite being the generation growing up with streaming and likely not listening much to classic rock radio.
> 
> This is the 21-25 year age group top 10 for the Top 2000 in the Netherlands:


It has been interesting the staying power of some of those titles. I also remember when many of those were released and at that time, I thought that they were, perhaps, above average, but nothing really all that special. Also, since about the mid-00s, the non-rap independent stuff has been amazingly and consistently good.

OTOH, when compared with the vile hard-core gangsta (c)rap of the past few decades....

Mike


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> This is the 21-25 year age group top 10 for the Top 2000 in the Netherlands:


So it's also me. Actually, I am 26, so I kind of count as a Millenial, so the generation which remember times without computers and the Internet so widespread. In primary school I still happened to look up some words and things in a paper encyclopedia instead of the Internet. I also remember that when I was in Łódź with one of my parents and we spontaneously wanted to go to a cinema, the thing to do when we wanted to check what movies are played where was not to take out a smartphone and google the schedules but rather to go to a kiosk (which were back then at all important public transport stops), buy a local newspaper and check it there, as the local newspapers always printed such things. Or that when we wanted to go for holidays to the seaside – we bought a newspaper on a day of the week when it had a large supplement with small ads, checked the section with room rentals for holiday stays and just called them one after another, asking about the prices, whether they are still free and when. And then called the railway hotline to check the train departure times.

Generation Z, to me, is different in that they don't remember those times at all. I am on the verge – most of my life is with the Internet, so I am probably more Z than a Millenial.

And yes, those old songs are good!


----------



## radamfi

I know quite a few people in that age bracket and I've been impressed by their knowledge and interest in 80s music. When I was growing up in the 80s, most people my age had little interest in music from the 50s or even the 60s, only about 20 years before my time.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> So it's also me. Actually, I am 26, so I kind of count as a Millenial, so the generation which remember times without computers and the Internet so widespread. In primary school I still happened to look up some words and things in a paper encyclopedia instead of the Internet. I also remember that when I was in Łódź with one of my parents and we spontaneously wanted to go to a cinema, the thing to do when we wanted to check what movies are played where was not to take out a smartphone and google the schedules but rather to go to a kiosk (which were back then at all important public transport stops), buy a local newspaper and check it there, as the local newspapers always printed such things. Or that when we wanted to go for holidays to the seaside – we bought a newspaper on a day of the week when it had a large supplement with small ads, checked the section with room rentals for holiday stays and just called them one after another, asking about the prices, whether they are still free and when. And then called the railway hotline to check the train departure times.
> 
> Generation Z, to me, is different in that they don't remember those times at all. I am on the verge – most of my life is with the Internet, so I am probably more Z than a Millenial.
> 
> And yes, those old songs are good!


Same here. I remember primary school without Internet, we just had a computer with old Windows 98 in it, and I only nerded there with MS Office, MS Paint and not much to do  I remember braking normal functioning of the computer back then just because of memory overuse, and mother liked to play Solitaire in it as far as I remember.

Then I got a computer, but I was outcast with father installing Linux since he had catched thoughts from his workplace that in few years Linux will change Windows, etc. etc.* . I only got Windows when I turned 18 

I remained an slight outcast to others I know due to my personality** and my parents attitudes through my childhood, and I still remain to be one just because it's my childhood development that will probably remain to stay with me for the of my life 

*It became partially true, but only for cell phones (Android could be seen as mobile version of Linux).
**I'm sensitive, kinda short tempered person, but I was like that since childhood. Psychiatric help is seen in my family (and tbh, country I live in general thanks to legacy of "Psychiatric political prisons of USSR") as unreliable there, so it might disadvantaged me a bit. My brother sees me as some version of Homer Simpson, or Father Richard from Gumball animations. Tbh, I don't like those personalities, I don't like their ideas them being lazy and relying on success in unrealistic ways.


----------



## Kpc21

All the outcasts use Linux  Arch user here.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

USGS puts it at a 6.4 https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000d3zh/executive


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Always gotta be careful with Twitter 'news', but the license plate matches.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1343886692399382528


----------



## Verso

Sisak is probably in ruins.


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> Always gotta be careful with Twitter 'news', but the license plate matches.
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1343886692399382528


It is correct, many houses are destroyed.


----------



## CNGL

I once read the longer the earthquake, the more powerful is. That may explain why I haven't noticed an earthquake yet xD.


----------



## Penn's Woods

CNGL said:


> I once read the longer the earthquake, the more powerful is. That may explain why I haven't noticed an earthquake yet xD.


I’m no seismologist, but I -think- it’s a matter of the longer it lasts, the more damage it causes. It may not actually be higher on the Richter scale. Also, the type of ground, how shallow it is....


----------



## Penn's Woods

I’ve experienced two or three earthquakes. Two very minor.

I was at a trade show in San Francisco in Christmas week 1987, deep inside the convention center, when I heard a sort of rumble. Wouldn’t have known it was an earthquake if I hadn’t seen it in the paper the next day.

In 1989 or 1990, I was working at a map-and-travel-book store (NOT Stanford’s or anything like it) in a New Jersey strip mall, when an atlas propped against a wall fell over. I was alone in the store, the thing had stood there for months...again, the next day’s paper said there’d been a small earthquake in the area at the right time. This is the one I’m counting as possible...that’s why I said two or three.

The big one, relatively, was 2011 Virginia earthquake - Wikipedia.

I was in a sixth-floor cubicle at work when I felt the building move from side to side. It was lunchtime and there weren’t a lot of people around so I didn’t have others’ reactions to go by, but I just quickly got out of the building, using the stairs rather than the elevator. (I tended to walk those six flights when I was going down anyway, but I do remember thinking not to use the elevator.) About half of the people in the building gathered outside, not knowing what was up, until an executive came out after maybe 15 minutes and said media were reporting an earthquake in Virginia.


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## Slagathor

Earthquakes are icky. I remember the only noteworthy quake in the Netherlands back in 1992 or 1993 (Roermond). I also experienced a biggish one in France once in the late 1990s in Chamonix. I think that was a 6.5.

I'm pretty stress-resistant. I've been in multiple car crashes, at sea during big storms in a boat you wouldn't have chosen for the conditions, I've been out in the open during fierce thunderstorms, I've dealt with flash flooding... All kinds of stuff. And I handled it just fine. But not earthquakes. Earthquakes get to me, they seem to stir some kind of ancient instinct, a really deeply entrenched fear. I couldn't _not _run outside in a panic.


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## ChrisZwolle

Earthquake dynamics are pretty complex. There are earthquakes with a large magnitude but a deep hypocenter (focus) that do almost no damage, while a weak but shallow earthquake can cause havoc. Then there are factors like the soil and types of seismic waves that can make the earthquake experience very different from location to location. There are plenty of M6 - M7+ earthquakes that do almost no damage while some of the deadliest earthquakes were only in the M5-6 range. This also depends on the types of housing and extent of earthquake engineering. 

For example in 2020 there have been 110 earthquakes in the range of the Croatian one today. But almost none of those made the news. The largest earthquake in 2020 so far was in Alaska, a M7.8 that resulted in 0 fatalities and pretty much no damage.


----------



## PovilD

Slagathor said:


> Earthquakes are icky. I remember the only noteworthy quake in the Netherlands back in 1992 or 1993 (Roermond). I also experienced a biggish one in France once in the late 1990s in Chamonix. I think that was a 6.5.
> 
> I'm pretty stress-resistant. I've been in multiple car crashes, at sea during big storms in a boat you'd wouldn't have chosen for the conditions, I've been out in the open during fierce thunderstorms, I've dealt with flash flooding... All kinds of stuff. And I handled it just fine. But not earthquakes. Earthquakes get to me, they seem to stir some kind of ancient instinct, a really deeply entrenched fear. I couldn't _not _run outside in a panic.


Intriguing. I could imagine most what you described, except earthquakes. I've never felt real earthquake yet, only when building shakes from nearby streets  I don't know if this how earthquake should feel. I live in a very stable geological area. I bet average Joe didn't heard about any earthquakes from Moscow, Warsaw, or... Baltic States  Unless you are very interested in this topic, there were few earthquakes once or two in a century. Last significant earthquake in Lithuania was in 2004. Only few years left and its already 20 years without significant earthquake. I probably have expierenced it, but it didn't felt it, If I remember timing correctly, I was outdoors back then, and tremors were light. Some of my classmates told they felt an earthquake. It was like fifty fifty, some have felt, some didn't. Tbh, I don't remember ANY earthquake since then, let alone significant.


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## Suburbanist

Of all teaching assignments, teachers of small children and preteens should absolutely be the most trained. This idea that because the contents are 'easy' wouldn't follow rigorous professional training is highly detrimental to the education of children. Finland gets it right there. Some countries in Europe and elsewhere get it shockingly wrong with 'fast-track' routes with limited training for people who are going to teach 6, 8, 10 year-old


----------



## Verso

Toilet of the Slovenian parliament (150 km away):


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1343888771595595776


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A problem with elementary school teachers in the Netherlands is a huge dropout rate for student teachers. There is a quite clear correlation with the introduction of mandatory internships in the lowest grades, the dropout rate and the dwindling proportion of men pursuing a position as an elementary school teacher. It is said that men are not interested in teaching the lowest grades, because they want to teach children instead of taking care of very young children (teaching vs caregiving). Nowadays around 90% of elementary school teachers are women. This is a bad situation for children as they do not have a male role model, in particular the large share of children growing up in a divorced household (typically living with their mother).


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> A problem with elementary school teachers in the Netherlands is a huge dropout rate for student teachers. There is a quite clear correlation with the introduction of mandatory internships in the lowest grades, the dropout rate and the dwindling proportion of men pursuing a position as an elementary school teacher. It is said that men are not interested in teaching the lowest grades, because they want to teach children instead of taking care of very young children (teaching vs caregiving). Nowadays around 90% of elementary school teachers are women. This is a bad situation for children as they do not have a male role model, in particular the large share of children growing up in a divorced household (typically living with their mother).


One of the problems I know about Dutch infant/child/first cycle schools is that past cabinets gave them (and the provinces) plenty of autonomy to choose how to spend their money; however, there have been many new mandates, not all of them funded. So 'shadow working hours' has become an increasing problem.

Teaching has always been a bit like this: teachers are expected to work quite a bit at home (even before pre-Covid) and that time is not compensated adequately as it would in most professional fields where 'service execution' requires plenty of preparation. Only higher education instructors have long been paid on that basis (that contact time is just a part of their working load to prepare for contact time).

I also read that there has been a slow adaptation in the Netherlands: in the past (up to the early 1970s) many schools were religiously segregated. In that context, 'teaching' younger classes was often seen as a sort of 'vocation more than a job' that meant schools could get away with paying somehow lower wages and still attracting plenty of qualified people (mostly but not only women) to take the jobs. That has of course changed a lot, and with new expectations among younger couples, the idea that someone who has the skills to earn far more would just get years of low wages and overwork for the vocation of teaching is more and more rejected.

This was absolutely not something limited to Netherlands: in many countries, teaching school children was for a long time one of the few jobs that 'respectable' housewives could do without going afoul of stale social norms of the middle classes fo the day, even after they had their own children. It is a high-demand job, physically and mentally. Yet, somehow having women working in a law office or in a bank trading desk was seen as somehow 'scandalous' in the post-war period, while teaching was totally embraced in religious communities. It is one of the main reasons why teaching children never caught up with prestige and pay with the medical profession after both education/pedagogy and medicine modernized a lot early in the 20th century in the Western World. 

But there have been some interesting measures, teacher's training is often free and there are special financial assistance for those pursuing it.


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## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Nowadays around 90% of elementary school teachers are women. This is a bad situation for children as they do not have a male role model, in particular the large share of children growing up in a divorced household (typically living with their mother).


I began the elementary school in 1980, in Hungary. A male teacher in the lower grades (1-4.) was unthinkable back then - and it hasn't changed since then.


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## ChrisZwolle

There is also earthquake damage to the roads in Croatia:


----------



## x-type

The bridge on the second photo is closed for traffic, probably due to damage.









Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.hr





(traffic layout is different on Street View - this side was refurbished with new road built in the midtime)


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## AnelZ

The basic monthly net wage in Sarajevo for teachers are 600€ (preschool and elementary 1-5 grade i.e. age 6-10) and 665€ (elementary 6-9 grade i.e. age 11-14 and high school i.e. age 15-18). Professors at public university have a basic monthly net wage of 1450€. 

But this isn't their whole monthly income as all of them have at least 140€ non-taxable income, additional income depending on their role. That is if you lead a class you have additional pay, if you conduct extracurricular activities (only exists in elementary schools) you get additional pay, you get additional pay if you are responsible for the extended stay (in preschool and the first grades of elementary school), trips are free, you have longer then the minimum mandated per law payed holidays, you get thirteen wages, you are employed as full-time and most are on a contract for an indefinite period which easies the way for getting a loan. 

So basically if you are a preschool educator or elementary teacher for grade 1-5, you may have a basic net wage of 7200 € a year but your true yearly income is probably near or over 10000 €. Which yet again is a tiny amount compared to west Europe and significally lower then in most of the of Europe.


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## Kpc21

In Poland the salary of a teacher depends on so called "level of professional development". There are four stages of that:
– nauczyciel stażysta (intern teacher)
– nauczyciel kontraktowy (contract teacher)
– nauczyciel mianowany (nominated teacher)
– nauczyciel dyplomowany (diploma teacher)

All of them (I'm not sure about the intern teachers, I suppose they may still be during their studies) must have higher studies including pedagogic preparation. But they don't necessarily have to be in the subject the specific teacher is going to teach. It can be walked around with so called "studia podyplomowe". Which is a weird term, because most dictionaries translate it as "postgraduate studies", but from what I know, in English postgraduate studies are those after which you get the MSc/MA title (or even higher), and typical "studia podyplomowe" aren't anything more than just a simple weekly professional course that don't require much effort from the student, compared to typical MSc studies. You don't even have student rights while attending those and you get a certificate, not a diploma.

Apart from the salary, those levels are also different in terms of the employment rights and privileges. Contract teachers are employed based on yearly job contracts, for those nominated and diploma – there are different procedures, so that the teacher stays employed at the specific school, at least so long as long the school has work for him and he doesn't get fired disciplinary.

Promotion to the next level is made in such a way that you are assigned some time, throughout which you must attend as much various courses as you can, show that you do various things other than teaching for the school etc. Although most of that is the paperwork and preparing documents listing and describing what you've done. After that, you have a large binder with many documents confirming that, you present what you have done in front of a special committee – and, usually, they pass you. There are also some defined periods of work as a teacher required to even apply for starting that special period.

Teachers aren't paid extra for the non-teaching work. Except for being the school headmaster (the headmaster normally has very few teaching hours, like, only several in a week – because of all the management work he has to do) and the teacher – caretaker of a class (group of students). Although being a caretaker is really a lot of extra work and the addition to the salary is very low, like maybe 50 euro, or even less, in a month. The headmaster earns only a little bit more than a typical teacher.

In Poland also most teachers, especially in primary schools, are women.

In the "initial education" (years 1-3 of primary schools + also kindergartens; there is an obligatory year of kindergarten for the 6-year-old kids, before going to school at the age of 7, and it already includes some very basics of writing and reading, even though the actual learning of that happens in the first year of primary school, at the age of 7) there is no division of school into various subjects, there is also no strict division of time into 45-minute lesson hours and breaks between them (except for the lunch breaks). All the classes are with the same teacher (also being the caretaker of the class) and with the same book, where content from reading, writing, art, science, maths, also some elements of history (about the most important historic events, like the beginning of the WW2 in 1939) and civic education (like, about the national symbols, administrative division of the country, also about the local region and town, its history, symbols and characteristics) is interleaved. I remember, for example, a series of texts to read (as a reading exercise), which were about some famous inventions. At this stage, practically all the teachers are women, and men are very rare.

After that, there is a division into subjects and 45-minute long classes, every subject with a different teacher – and at this stage, men appear, although the higher the level of the school, the more there is men and the less there is women. With a similar number of men and women working as teachers in high schools. And, obviously, more men at the universities.


----------



## SeanT

My father could feel the earthquake too, and he lives in Székesfehérvár, HU. Although I don't know if it was a dirrect conection to the croatian one.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^ I see that quite a few posts were written before I was able to complete this one...


Smaller landslides, rock-falls and avalanches happen fairly regularly in Norway. Action movies have been made on the impact of catastrophic tsunamis caused by disintegrating mountains on the west coast of Norway The Wave (2015) - IMDb

Although fairly far down on the global lists, the flooding caused by a sand and gravel landslide led to the largest natural catastrophy ever of Norway in Gauldal, Trøndelag, 1345 AD [N] Norway | road infrastructure • Veier i Norge

However largest risk of catastrophic landslides in Norway is in fact the lower altitude areas of south eastern and central Norway (Trøndelag). The culprit is marine clay, which in contact with ocean water is stabilized by salt. However, due to the uplift after the last ice age, this clay exists in large quantities on dry land in northern latitudes where the salt could be washed out. In this condition, the structure of the clay could collapse in matter of seconds if exposed to enough stress or vibration, turning from a solid material into a liquid. This has caused large landslides in the past, like the 3 km^2 Verdal landslide in 1893, the deadliest landslide of Norway (as it was the secondary flooding which killed people into in Gauldal's case), killing around 120 . It is all explained in a much better way in this documentary on the 1978 Rissa landslide, also in Trøndelag, and the largest landslide of Norway of the last century:




The style is perhaps dated but some of the footage is spectacular, IMO. 

The problem is that this clay is deposited also in areas which happen to be some of the most densely populated areas of the country, with plenty of existing infrastructure.


http://geo.ngu.no/kart/arealis/?lang=Norsk&Box=-801707:6300000:1621707:9000000&map=Norges.vassdrags..og.energidirektorat:.Kvikkleire...faresonekart



Quick clay slides could happen both due to natural causes (e. g. erosion) or human activity (i.e. construction). Geotechnical factors are always considered at some point before something is constructed, i. e. during the zoning regulation process or for individual buildings. In this particular case, the initial story at least is that all the right experts have been consulted, although we are still in the reactive rather than analysis phase, of course. Hence, in principle natural causes should have been considered, although the geologists never have the full picture and it is hence also a question of proper risk assessment. Hence, my bet /speculation is that the landslide is caused by (unregulated? ) digging, possibly fairly far away from the affected houses.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Suburbanist said:


> Indeed. These cases are more common near the shores.


Not really. The marine zone in some locations extends to higher than 200 m in altitude in Norway, including far inland towns such as Lillehammer and Elverum.








Løsmasser


Norges geologiske undersøkelse (NGU). NGU er landets sentrale institusjon for kunnskap om berggrunn, mineralressurser, løsmasser og grunnvann i Norge.




geo.ngu.no


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Sudden stop...


----------



## Slagathor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> ^^ I see that quite a few posts were written before I was able to complete this one...
> 
> 
> Smaller landslides, rock-falls and avalanches happen fairly regularly in Norway. Action movies have been made on the impact of catastrophic tsunamis caused by disintegrating mountains on the west coast of Norway The Wave (2015) - IMDb
> 
> Although fairly far down on the global lists, the flooding caused by a sand and gravel landslide led to the largest natural catastrophy ever of Norway in Gauldal, Trøndelag, 1345 AD [N] Norway | road infrastructure • Veier i Norge
> 
> However largest risk of catastrophic landslides in Norway is in fact the lower altitude areas of south eastern and central Norway (Trøndelag). The culprit is marine clay, which in contact with ocean water is stabilized by salt. However, due to the uplift after the last ice age, this clay exists in large quantities on dry land in northern latitudes where the salt could be washed out. In this condition, the structure of the clay could collapse in matter of seconds if exposed to enough stress or vibration, turning from a solid material into a liquid. This has caused large landslides in the past, like the 3 km^2 Verdal landslide in 1893, the deadliest landslide of Norway (as it was the secondary flooding which killed people into in Gauldal's case), killing around 120 . It is all explained in a much better way in this documentary on the 1978 Rissa landslide, also in Trøndelag, and the largest landslide of Norway of the last century:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The style is perhaps dated but some of the footage is spectacular, IMO.
> 
> The problem is that this clay is deposited also in areas which happen to be some of the most densely populated areas of the country, with plenty of existing infrastructure.
> 
> 
> http://geo.ngu.no/kart/arealis/?lang=Norsk&Box=-801707:6300000:1621707:9000000&map=Norges.vassdrags..og.energidirektorat:.Kvikkleire...faresonekart
> 
> 
> 
> Quick clay slides could happen both due to natural causes (e. g. erosion) or human activity (i.e. construction). Geotechnical factors are always considered at some point before something is constructed, i. e. during the zoning regulation process or for individual buildings. In this particular case, the initial story at least is that all the right experts have been consulted, although we are still in the reactive rather than analysis phase, of course. Hence, in principle natural causes should have been considered, although the geologists never have the full picture and it is hence also a question of proper risk assessment. Hence, my bet /speculation is that the landslide is caused by (unregulated? ) digging, possibly fairly far away from the affected houses.


Super interesting read, thanks!!


----------



## SeanT

Penn's Woods said:


> What do you mean by “direct connection to the Croatian one”? Was it the same earthquake or an aftershock?
> 
> EDIT: I hate auto-“correct.” “Croatian,” not “creation.”...


Probably an aftershock.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> Does anyone know what this is about? Opened Messenger to contact a friend in Germany and saw this at the top.
> View attachment 911999


It's about European data privacy regulations (EU GDPR). Messaging is not restricted at all, some extensions don't work in Europe currently.


----------



## OnTheNorthRoad

This is the second large quick clay landslide this year. This happened in Alta in the north earlier this year.





About the current landslide, it is also possible that high temps and wet weather have been contributing factors. Despite geotechnical measures, building on marine clay will never be completely safe. The landslide can start elsewhere, you can't control all digging activities and these things are unpredictable. The codes have become stricter since these units were built, but I figure there will be a debate about the feasibility of building anything new on marine clay. It's hard to avoid though seeing as there's so much of it and many communities are built on it. This will unfortunately keep happening.

There are now 10 people still missing. Latest news is that they found a dog with a drone and was able to pick it up with a copter. The dog's owners were in the house as it slid, but were evacuated from the pit by helicopter early in the morning. They couldn't prioritise the dog at the time. It's not yet known how many persons they've evacuated from the pit.

Zajka (10) and one of the owners. Their house collapsed and the man in the picture broke his collar bone, but otherwise they're fine. They were evacuated from the hallway, which was intact, but with no roof. They could still get outdoor clothes from the cabinets there.









It's not yet considered safe to enter the pit on foot with search dogs as the wall keeps collapsing and houses falling down, but they're considering it and may enter soon. 31 housing units are gone. 

Video of search Se video fra redningsarbeidet - VGTV


----------



## Penn's Woods

Hey, it’s my least favorite day...two days I guess...of the year. But I may be willing to make an exception this time.


----------



## Penn's Woods

I hear (because I was awake early , and thought I might as well hear it in there thanks to TuneIn), New Zealand has had a COVID-restriction-free New Year’s. And New South Wales is concerned about ten new cases. Meanwhile, this side of the Equator....


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

OnTheNorthRoad said:


> The codes have become stricter since these units were built, but I figure there will be a debate about the feasibility of building anything new on marine clay. It's hard to avoid though seeing as there's so much of it and many communities are built on it.


Marine clay is not necessarily quick, but even stopping all new construction on quick clay would be a very expensive and not very efficient safety measure. About 90 000 people live in zones where a risk for quick clay landslides exists, and the mapping is still ongoing. These zones include parts of central Oslo and Trondheim. Far more people live on marine clay. New constructions will not necessarily increase the existing risks. Sometimes they will even contribute directly, or be able to finance to measures for, an improvement of the stability in an area.

However, I think having large scale greenfield developments on marine clay as we have seen a lot of e. g. in Romerike (region of the current landslide) I think is wrong. It is increases the risk, but more important: most of our best, scarce farmland is dominated by marine clay.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Illegal 'fireworks' in the Netherlands.


----------



## CNGL

2021 is here, at least up to CET. The Austrian village is now officially named Fugging, and in a few generations it won't be more known than any other hamlet in its neighborhood. I wish that everyone has a decent year.


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## Penn's Woods

CNGL said:


> 2021 is here, at least up to CET. The Austrian village is now officially named Fugging, and in a few generations it won't be more known than any other hamlet in its neighborhood. I wish that everyone has a decent year.


So, what’s 2021 like? Better than ‘20?


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## PovilD

Currently, most that have darker thoughts about the future are either antivax people, or just plainly depressed (covid fatigue, no physical end in sight). When you work with something hard either with vaccines or with plain social distancing (taking part in stopping the spread), you usually don't try to be demotivated.

HAPPY (from all my heart) New Year!


----------



## cinxxx

If you don't have an optimist view or don't succeed, doesn't mean you're depressed or antivaxxer 😏
That if you're not happy is a bad thing is an American concept that has nothing to do with reality...


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> So, what’s 2021 like? Better than ‘20?


New decade. New political energy in the US. The virus wont be over for sure, but lets have a toast that we didnt die. Cheers.

Happy New Year.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The government issued a fireworks ban this year. But it was outright ignored. Look at the PM2.5 values:


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## tfd543

ChrisZwolle said:


> Illegal 'fireworks' in the Netherlands.


What the hell is that chemical compound causing that? Tnt ?


----------



## PovilD

cinxxx said:


> If you don't have an optimist view or don't succeed, doesn't mean you're depressed or antivaxxer 😏
> That if you're not happy is a bad thing is an American concept that has nothing to do with reality...


I narrowed a little bit too much, there are not only antivaxers, but also "quick vaccine" sceptics, and also those who have increasing anti-political thoughts (yeah, there are reasons for it). I don't have problem with them, my main interest is general picture of the situation.

Sure, it won't be over in general ofc as with most viruses... (I will not continue here, we will see ), but who want that restrictions who affect business and general freedom of movement to last..


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

In Norway the priority was originally to vaccinate the people at most risk of getting seriously sick first. Due to the increase in infection rates lately, it was however dyuring Christmas decided to also provide vaccination to some critical health personnel at an early stage (I would guess ICU nurses and such). So far, however, only eldery at nursing homes have been vaccinated, afaik.

I would certainly take the vaccination when offered to me. Not that because I am overly afraid of getting seriously sick myself, even though the risk of getting sick is much higher than the risk of be seriosly affected by side-effects. However, to vaccinate a large proportion of the population is the clearly the fastest way I can see for the world to come back on track.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> How will it help? If someone refuses to take the vaccine from the government, will he take a commercial one for which he has to pay?
> 
> There is no logic in what you are saying.
> 
> Because timing isn't an issue – the vaccination timeline has been decided about at a worldwide level and it starts everywhere with vaccinating the medical staff. Normal people will probably be vaccinated in something like 3-4 months.


Negative.
In some nations, e.g. Izrael, even "normal people" can be vaccinated in Ferbruay, but surely not later than March. It's a little bit slower in the US. And it's much slower in Europe. In Germany normal people like me may surely not be vaccinated before June, but for many of us it will rather be August. So there are huge differences.


----------



## Slagathor

Exactly, the differences are huge.

In the Netherlands, healthy young people have been penciled in for the 3rd quarter. So I might not get called up until September. That's 9(!) months away.

So yeah, if I could buy the vaccine in April with my own money, I definitely would.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> That is simply not true. It might have a comparable fatality rate, but a long stay in an ICU often leaves lifelong consequences.


The overwhelming majority of younger covid infections do not end up in ICU, in fact many hardly fall ill at all: making them even less affected than by the flu.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> The overwhelming majority of younger covid infections do not end up in ICU, in fact many hardly fall ill at all: making them even less affected than by the flu.


Sure. But your point was that younger covid infections were less problematic than younger flu infections, which is most definitely not the case. Given an infection, Covid seems to be far more serious.

Speaking of it, influenza infections dropped significantly this winter, due to the precautions against Covid19.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> Given an infection, Covid seems to be far more serious.


These are outliers, a large share of covid infections are asymptomatic, by definition this is far less serious than the flu. Many others are hardly sick with only minor symptoms. An estimated 98% of cases remain under the medical radar (not serious enough to seek medical attention). At the same time, the flu is often represented as not serious, while it can bring serious complications as well, in particular but not exclusively for older patients.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

But what you need to consider (on a personal level) is the very low risk of serious side effects of a vaccine vs the risk of a Covid-19 serious infection. For adults, it seems like the latter risk is far higher.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> The overwhelming majority of younger covid infections do not end up in ICU, in fact many hardly fall ill at all: making them even less affected than by the flu.


On the flipside, there are currently 15.000 - 17.000 people in the Netherlands suffering from long covid and many of them are young. Scientists think it's very likely most of them will never recover, in a similar way that some people never recover from Lyme disease or Q-fever.


----------



## geogregor

Slagathor said:


> So yeah, if I could buy the vaccine in April with my own money, I definitely would.


I would too, but only if it gives me "passport" to travel again. Otherwise I don't see a point to "jump the queue".

I really start wondering when will I see my mum again. Spring? Summer?


----------



## Suburbanist

Also, because vaccines are never 100% effective, not getting vaccinated because oneself thinks to be at a lower risk is also undermining of the so-called herd immunity. For instance, influenza only still exists in large numbers because (1) seasonal vaccines are only 60-65% effective, and (2) younger people rarely get vaccinated. 

If only the elderly or those with associated medical conditions, and health care workers, take the vaccine, it will still not curb the circulation of the virus. And some people with certain conditions like organ transplants cannot take the vaccine. Assuming the 90-95% efficacy of the SAR-CoV-19 vaccines hold, getting the younger vaccinated is crucial to substantially reduce and almost eliminate the virus, at least for one generation. Else, we will still be contending with the healthy 40yo that went to visit a grandparent in a nursing home and spread it to a few there who cannot take the vaccines.

It is the same conundrum with measles vaccination: for most of the infected, there are no long-term repercussions and lifelong natural immunity, but for the few who cannot - even if they wanted - get vaccinated, measles can be severely debilitating or deadly.


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## ChrisZwolle

Ireland was lauded for succesfully containing its second wave. But now there is an even larger third wave:


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> Negative.
> In some nations, e.g. Izrael, even "normal people" can be vaccinated in Ferbruay, but surely not later than March. It's a little bit slower in the US. And it's much slower in Europe. In Germany normal people like me may surely not be vaccinated before June, but for many of us it will rather be August. So there are huge differences.


The slow roll-out in the U.S. has become a political issue during the last week or so...someone pointed out that at the current pace it would take ten years to achieve herd immunity. Personally, I’m assuming they’ll get it together soon enough and not getting worked up about that. And I’m now hearing that countries like France are having similar issues, or worse.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> Exactly, the differences are huge.
> 
> In the Netherlands, healthy young people have been penciled in for the 3rd quarter. So I might not get called up until September. That's 9(!) months away.
> 
> So yeah, if I could buy the vaccine in April with my own money, I definitely would.


September!
So should I not plan on visiting Europe this year? :-(


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> I would too, but only if it gives me "passport" to travel again. Otherwise I don't see a point to "jump the queue".
> 
> I really start wondering when will I see my mum again. Spring? Summer?


When’s she due for the vaccine?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Another Polish supermarket has been bombed in the Netherlands, this time in Tilburg.

Apparently they all have Iraqi Kurdish owners.


----------



## geogregor

Penn's Woods said:


> When’s she due for the vaccine?


I was trying to find out yesterday but she is not sure, she wasn't given any dates yet.

Health service in her town is a bit of a joke. She has a lot of various health issues and finding specialist is a bit of a nightmare. Getting appointments is even more difficult. I do hope that vaccine administration will work better than the day to day health provision because that is crap where my mum lives.

She is 79 so I hope she will get it by February.

The bigger problem is me. Without vaccination I might not be allowed to travel for months. And I have a bit rigid schedule for time off work. I have week off in mid-March and then again in mid-May. Ideally it would be great if I was allowed to travel to Poland in March but I doubt it will be possible. 

I just hope she won't develop any serious problems in the next few months...


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> September!
> So should I not plan on visiting Europe this year? :-(


To be honest, I've even seen articles that mention simply "the second half of 2021" so no, I wouldn't.

I was going to leave the Netherlands in the summer but I've postponed it to October (so far).


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> To be honest, I've even seen articles that mention simply "the second half of 2021" so no, I wouldn't.
> 
> I was going to leave the Netherlands in the summer but I've postponed it to October (so far).


I’m over this pandemic.


----------



## tfd543

Digressing from This crisis, on this day 294 years ago, a baby was born in the UK that would change the world forever and would become the greatest scientist ever on this planet. 
Newton invented calculus, discovered planetary motion and laid the foundation of modern physics. Truly incredible given the facilities at that time.

Happy Newton anniversary day!

Damn, we missed Pasteur’s day some days ago. Described the general vaccine, discovered by accident...


----------



## geogregor

Slagathor said:


> I was going to leave the Netherlands in the summer but I've postponed it to October (so far).


I will have to travel to Poland earlier that that. If I have to "cheat the system" somehow to do that then I will.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

At the moment in the UK it's fairly easy to get tested if you have symptoms, but generally not otherwise. I will be tested once a week at work going fowards, unless the government is about to announce that I won't be going to work.


----------



## Slagathor

cinxxx said:


> I don't buy that. I'm sure it lasts.


The duration of non-vaccine immunity directly correlates with the severity of symptoms. 

In other words; if you suffered a lot and had to be admitted to a hospital ICU, your immunity will last you a long time. This is because your immune system had to pull out all the stops, which leaves a strong 'memory' of the disease in your immune system.

But if you only had a mild cough, your body's immune system will quickly forget about covid. Annoyingly, this means you can get infected a second time but there's no guarantee that the 2nd time, you'll only have mild symptoms again. That time around, you could very well end up in the hospital.


----------



## PovilD

Slagathor said:


> The duration of non-vaccine immunity directly correlates with the severity of symptoms.
> 
> But if you only had a mild cough, your body's immune system will quickly forget about covid. Annoyingly, this means you can get infected a second time but there's no guarantee that the 2nd time, you'll only have mild symptoms again. That time around, you could very well end up in the hospital.


This is something like gambling with the disease. Mild covid and mild immunity after the infection? Better "luck" next time.
---
On the other hand, I found it strange if person get reinfected in very random manner (e.g.: mild>severe>mild>mild, etc.), since my gut feeling is telling me that severity of the disease depends on person (with parameters like age, blood pressure, weight, genetics, etc.). The only thing that should make a difference is viral load.


----------



## cinxxx

Slagathor said:


> The duration of non-vaccine immunity directly correlates with the severity of symptoms.
> 
> In other words; if you suffered a lot and had to be admitted to a hospital ICU, your immunity will last you a long time. This is because your immune system had to pull out all the stops, which leaves a strong 'memory' of the disease in your immune system.
> 
> But if you only had a mild cough, your body's immune system will quickly forget about covid. Annoyingly, this means you can get infected a second time but there's no guarantee that the 2nd time, you'll only have mild symptoms again. That time around, you could very well end up in the hospital.


Is there any real evidence to this?


----------



## Penn's Woods

DanielFigFoz said:


> No idea what goes into the calculator. I'd guess it's before the sudden change which seems to have gone almost unmentioned here.


I heard about it on Europe1, of all places.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Health-care workers in New Jersey are getting their second doses starting today.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

PovilD said:


> This is something like gambling with the disease. Mild covid and mild immunity after the infection? Better "luck" next time.
> ---
> On the other hand, I found it strange if person get reinfected in very random manner (e.g.: mild>severe>mild>mild, etc.), since my gut feeling is telling me that severity of the disease depends on person (with parameters like age, blood pressure, weight, genetics, etc.). The only thing that should make a difference is viral load.


The immune system effectiveness of a given person is also varying over time due to various factors such as other diseases, physical activity, hours of sleep....


----------



## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> The immune system effectiveness of a given person is also varying over time due to various factors such as other diseases, physical activity, hours of sleep....


Probably winter doesn't help either, nor for mood, nor for immunity, you just need to stay indoors all the time. It's very uncomfortable outside without proper clothing, and even with clothing is not as comfortable as just having warmer weather and less clothing to keep you warm.

I've always heard that prolonged exposure to cold can lead to pneunomia. My mother was always feared about pneunomia that she was really careful with us. This meant less fun in the cold (+17-19C) Baltic water, for example  When I saw/see kids having fun in the water for like hours.

I had a classmate who had worked out in the cold (if I'm not mistaken) and he got pneunomia. He couldn't attend regular school for about two months.


----------



## Slagathor

cinxxx said:


> Is there any real evidence to this?


Yes. 

I don't have access to all the studies I've bookmarked on this subject as I'm currently on a different laptop. But here are two.

1) This study looked at early studies of SARS-CoV-2 and analyzed studies on SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV to conclude:

"Antibody kinetics varied across the severity gradient, with antibodies remaining detectable longer after illness with more severe symptoms."

2) This study looked at SARS-Cov-2 specific antibodies and concluded:

"Outpatient and asymptomatic individuals’ SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, including IgG, progressively decreased during observation up to five months post-infection."

But it should be noted there are still a lot of questions left unanswered. These are all preliminary findings but they do seem to point in the same direction, which is: "few symptoms = short duration of immunity".


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> I was kidding.


No probs, but thnx for correcting me.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

PovilD said:


> Probably winter doesn't help either, nor for mood, nor for immunity, you just need to stay indoors all the time. It's very uncomfortable outside without proper clothing, and even with clothing is not as comfortable as just having warmer weather and less clothing to keep you warm.
> 
> I've always heard that prolonged exposure to cold can lead to pneunomia. My mother was always feared about pneunomia that she was really careful with us. This meant less fun in the cold (+17-19C) Baltic water, for example  When I saw/see kids having fun in the water for like hours.
> 
> I had a classmate who had worked out in the cold (if I'm not mistaken) and he got pneunomia. He couldn't attend regular school for about two months.


Never move to Norway ;-)
















In Norway, there is no such thing as bad weather!


While many around the world enjoy warmth and Sun, Norwegian kids grow up with a ...




www.thesocialguidebook.no





or as expressed from 3:52 here in this really relevant video for Norwegians during the days of Covid-19 when going to warmer latitudes is not really an option...


----------



## cinxxx

I read that immunity is not actually based on antibodies but mostly on T cells, and that that's also very relevant for SARS/MERS too


----------



## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Never move to Norway ;-)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In Norway, there is no such thing as bad weather!
> 
> 
> While many around the world enjoy warmth and Sun, Norwegian kids grow up with a ...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.thesocialguidebook.no
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> or as expressed from 3:52 here in this really relevant video for Norwegians during the days of Covid-19 when going to warmer latitudes is not really an option...


Nah, I don't have such cold phobia anymore as I was scarred with it in childhood, probably since around 5-6th grade at school (11-12 y. o.) 

I think your advice should be applied to my both parents, probably, not me 

Sooner in life, I have learned that you need infection first to have a disease, not even talking about complications xD

Btw, we don't hear talks about staying warm, or similar. We have talks about hygiene and social distancing


----------



## mgk920

Penn's Woods said:


> I’m over this pandemic.


I've been so beyond 'over it' ever since the powers that be doubled down instead of standing down after the 'two weeks to flatten the curve' thing early last spring.

Mike


----------



## Penn's Woods

Pandemic-restriction humor. With built-in American geography lesson.









State-By-State Covid-19 Restrictions


The Onion provides in-depth coverage of how the coronavirus response is being mismanaged, botched, and fucked up at the state-level.




www.theonion.com


----------



## mgk920

tfd543 said:


> Digressing from This crisis, on this day 294 years ago, a baby was born in the UK that would change the world forever and would become the greatest scientist ever on this planet.
> Newton invented calculus, discovered planetary motion and laid the foundation of modern physics. Truly incredible given the facilities at that time.
> 
> Happy Newton anniversary day!
> 
> Damn, we missed Pasteur’s day some days ago. Described the general vaccine, discovered by accident...


Calculus was simultaneously and independently discovered by both Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. 

Mike


----------



## Slagathor

cinxxx said:


> I read that immunity is not actually based on antibodies but mostly on T cells, and that that's also very relevant for SARS/MERS too


Long-term memory of the body's immune system does rely on T-cells but there are still many unknowns on that front. It is unclear, for example, to what extent T-cells are involved in the fight against Covid-19 and in which stages of the disease. You can read more about it here, if you're interested:









The known unknowns of T cell immunity to COVID-19


Unanswered questions remain about the contributions of T cell immunity to protective and dysfunctional responses in COVID-19.




immunology.sciencemag.org





Right now, it is thought that no-symptom cases or mild cases do not strongly involve a T-cell response, which means our body's immune system would not develop a long-term memory for Covid-19. But, like I said, many open questions remain.


----------



## Suburbanist

Here in Bergen the children are out at the kindergarten down my flat all the time (literally in front of my window looking down). They even have an outside makeshift fire pit for colder days. Toddlers will be sliding the mud, climbing the apparatuses and what not no matter the weather.

There is also an open playground on the other side of the building complex, older children also go there under rain and snow to play, sometimes while it is still dark-ish in the morning. At least the onesie garments seem ubiquitous here, parents must spend a fortune on laundry detergent here.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Well, aside from going in on a rota for the children that are still allowed to go to school it looks like I am working from home until February.










On a more serious note I am glad, it was ridiculous at work and that's before it got as bad as it is now. I was teaching most lessons via webcam from school anyway.


----------



## tfd543

mgk920 said:


> Calculus was simultaneously and independently discovered by both Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
> 
> Mike


Hmm yes and no. Newton won the battle in the end and got the credits as he wrote the paper of premature calculus first in 1669 but wasnt published. Leibniz came later with his idea phase in 1674 and published it in 1684.
There is no doubt that Newton’s work preceded that of Leibniz’s.

I remember we talked so much about it in a math lesson in high school. It became the UK vs Germany thing. Lol.









Who Invented Calculus: Newton or Leibniz?


Who gets the credit for discovering calculus?? One of the most revolutionary concepts in all of mathematics. Was it Newton or Leibniz who discovered Calculus?




www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com







https://www.ams.org/notices/200905/rtx090500602p.pdf


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Verso said:


> Funnily, "sad" means _now_ (at the moment) in Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian.


So Novi Sad means 'new now'?


----------



## tfd543

ChrisZwolle said:


> So Novi Sad means 'new now'?


^^ haha, good one.


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> Okay, Trumpist protesters are storming the U.S. Capitol (after the Coward-in-Chief left them to it to go back to the safety of White House)....


Where is the army? Where are the military muscles that the country is so Proud of? Its a joke that the cops are only pulling out pistols. M16 please.... as a minimum


----------



## Kpc21

In Polish "sad" means an orchard, in other ways, a garden of fruit trees. If it's the same in Serbian, Novi Sad would simply mean "new orchard", which makes much more sense for a town name.


----------



## Sponsor

'Sad' means fruit plantation.


----------



## Penn's Woods

tfd543 said:


> Where is the army? Where are the military muscles that the country is so Proud of? Its a joke that the cops are only pulling out pistols. M16 please.... as a minimum


National Guard from D.C., Maryland and Virginia are there. There are legal limits in using the actual military domestically. Besides, when the Commander-in-Chief is also the one who incited this, it’s awkward.

That said, “the military” was just mentioned on the channel I have on....


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> In Polish "sad" means an orchard, in other ways, a garden of fruit trees. If it's the same in Serbian, Novi Sad would simply mean "new orchard", which makes much more sense for a town name.


We have the word "sodas" which means the same 
It could mean allotment too  "Važiuojam į sodą" means "We are taking a ride to allotments".


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> National Guard from D.C., Maryland and Virginia are there. There are legal limits in using the actual military domestically. Besides, when the Commander-in-Chief is also the one who incited this, it’s awkward.
> 
> That said, “the military” was just mentioned on the channel I have on....


I thought it was illegal for the US military to be deployed on American soil? Isn't that why the National Guard exists in the first place?

I do wonder why the Capitol wasn't more heavily defended to begin with. Why was there just a (seemingly) regular security force present as if it were just another ordinary day?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> I thought it was illegal for the US military to be deployed on American soil? Isn't that why the National Guard exists in the first place?
> 
> I do wonder why the Capitol wasn't more heavily defended to begin with. Why was there just a (seemingly) regular security force present as if it were just another ordinary day?


A question many are asking.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

The police are busy taking selfies with the terrorists:

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1346920198461419520


----------



## Verso

ChrisZwolle said:


> So Novi Sad means 'new now'?


No, "sad" also means _plantation_ in Serbian (although that's also called "plantaža" and "voćnjak") (I actually thought it meant _fruit_).


----------



## Kpc21

Plantation seems to me to be something more large-scale, of the size of towns and cities, which you often find in tropical, ex-colonial countries. Orchards is what you find in Europe, they may also be big but they are a totally different scale.

Am I right?

And "sad" is rather orchard than plantation.


----------



## geogregor

Sponsor said:


> _Wielka Brytania_ is correct. According to official polish standards _Wielka Brytania_ = England + Wales + Sctoland + Northern Ireland = _Zjednoczone Królestwo_.


Correct Polish name is as follow _"Zjednoczone Krolestwo Wielkiej Brytanii i Irlandii Polnocnej_" which is literary translation from _"United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"_



https://archiwum.miir.gov.pl/media/43621/KE_Wielka_Brytania_4_09_2017.pdf





https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/76828279.pdf



People mostly use "Wielka Brytania" in common speech but it is not the correct name of the country. At least it is better than _"Anglia" _(which was widespread 10-15 years ago, especially among the emigrating masses).

Probably the most correct short name would be _"Zjednoczone Krolestwo"_, which I would say is nowadays used more often than in the past.


----------



## PovilD

If "Sad" means the same as in other Slavic languages, then in Lithuanian it would be "Naujasis Sodas", it would be quite normal name. We have Naujojo Sodo gatvė in Klaipėda central part. Probably it has to do with some "new garden" in the city that was implemented in the past.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> Plantation seems to me to be something more large-scale, of the size of towns and cities, which you often find in tropical, ex-colonial countries. Orchards is what you find in Europe, they may also be big but they are a totally different scale.
> 
> Am I right?
> 
> And "sad" is rather orchard than plantation.


In the U.S., a “plantation” was (note the past tense) a large estate and farm in the South, with a house for the owner’s family, other buildings, the fields... It’s a whole property in other words. And to me it’s limited to pre-Civil War contexts, with slaves living there and doing the work. In the present-day, it might refer to such a place maintained as a historic site. I guess you can use it for other large agricultural estates elsewhere.

And orchard is just a group of trees of a particular type, planted intentionally rather than occurring naturally, cultivated for the fruit. So yes, a completely different scale. I suppose a plantation can also be a -large- area cultivated with a particular type of tree, but to me the main meaning of plantation is what I described.


----------



## AnelZ

Novi Sad was historically been called Neusatz (an der Donau) in German.

Sarajevo (from Turkish saray) essentially means "palace" or by some etymologists "palace field". In German you could translate the name of the city to Schlossfeld what I guess would be a quite ordinary name.


----------



## Verso

Kpc21 said:


> Plantation seems to me to be something more large-scale, of the size of towns and cities, which you often find in tropical, ex-colonial countries. Orchards is what you find in Europe, they may also be big but they are a totally different scale.
> 
> Am I right?
> 
> And "sad" is rather orchard than plantation.


I don't know, it says plantation in English Wikipedia, but it could also mean an orchard. In Slovenian "sad" means fruit.



AnelZ said:


> Sarajevo (from Turkish saray) essentially means "palace" or by some etymologists "palace field". In German you could translate the name of the city to Schlossfeld what I guess would be a quite ordinary name.


Naah, Sarajevo means Sara-is-an-ox. :troll:


----------



## Sponsor

@geogregor According to...? I base on listing provided by Komisja Standaryzacji Nazw Geograficznych


----------



## AnelZ

Verso said:


> Naah, Sarajevo means Sara-is-an-ox. :troll:


Weeeeell, Sara was always a bit stubborn


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Correct Polish name is as follow _"Zjednoczone Krolestwo Wielkiej Brytanii i Irlandii Polnocnej_" which is literary translation from _"United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"_


Poland has an official list of correct names of foreign geographic names, including countries. It is issued by the governmental Committee of Standardization of Geographic Names.

This is the list of all the names: http://ksng.gugik.gov.pl/pliki/wykaz_polskich_nazw_geograficznych_2019.pdf; this is the list of countries: http://ksng.gugik.gov.pl/pliki/urzedowy_wykaz_nazw_panstw2019.pdf

The list of the country names mentions three names for the UK: Wielka Brytania, Zjednoczone Królestwo and Zjednoczone Królestwo Wielkiej Brytanii i Irlandii Północnej:










It also includes the name of the country in its official language, the official Polish name of its citizen, the official Polish adjective and the Polish name of its capital.

In the list of all the names it's slightly different:










The full name is marked as "official". But this simply means the "full official" name, like Poland is also not the actual official name of the country I am citizen of, the official name is Republic of Poland.

See how it looks like in case of Germany:











Quite a popular riddle in, like, last 10 years (?), in Polish, is what's the name of a citizen of Ivory Coast. In Polish it's Wybrzeże Kości Słoniowej (literally: Elephant Bone Coast; Polish has no single word for ivory; therefore e.g. the standard color of desktop computers up to mid-2000s, in English normally named "ivory", in Polish is usually called beige) and it's difficult to construct a sensible adjective from this name.

The correct answer to this riddle seems to be "Iworyjczyk" (like "Ivorian") – the Polish adjective is just created from the foreign (Latin/French/English) name instead. The sources, like Wikipedia, and the language aid service of the most renowned Polish dictionary publishing (PWN), claim that the word "Iworyjczyk" is possible, but it isn't use in practice. However, it seems that this riddle changed the language so that they have to update the data  While googling for "Iworyjczyk" I e.g. found a sports news report about an Ivorian footballer (Yaya Toure – maybe someone being more into football/soccer than me, will recognize him, it seems he used to play for FC Barcelona and Manchester City), where he was named "Iworyjczyk".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ministries are more likely to use the full form. Wikipedia uses the short form: Tchéquie — Wikipédia

By the way French Wikipedia is pretty awful on a desktop layout. Everything's narrow like a mobile view, resulting in unnecessary scrolling and huge amounts of white space. This is unnecessary and pointless because Wikimedia already has a mobile view for those who don't use Wikipedia in the app.


----------



## Surel

Czech Republic found its way to english because it were the Czechs who wanted this name of their country to be used. There was no short version of the country name introduced, because there was unresolved internal debate about such name in the Czech language. "Čechy", "Morava" and "Slezsko" are historical lands of the country and "Česko" was experienced as giving to much emphasis on only one historical region of the country. After 3 decades the name "Česko" came into more common use in the Czech language and thus English could follow. And adjective "Czech Republic", "Česká Republika" was not seen as a problem because it has a more general feeling to it.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Ministries are more likely to use the full form. Wikipedia uses the short form: Tchéquie — Wikipédia
> 
> ....


I’d expect ministries, particularly ministries of foreign affairs, to be the most likely to respect the Czech government’s preference.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Studio Brussel, which I put on for music, is covering Washington (with occasional interruptions for music).


----------



## SeanT

Well, before the early '90's was used CSEHszlovákia and after Csehország és Szlovákia in Hungary. In danish it will be Tjekkiet & Slovakiet


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The 'Cz' is indeed unusual for Č. Like Cyrillic Ч it would normally be transliterated as 'ch' and not 'cz'. (see: Chechnya)

Wikipedia notes that 'cz' used to be more common in Europe: 
_This digraph was once common across Europe (which explains the English spelling of Czech), but has largely been replaced. _

The Č even becomes 'Tsj' in Dutch. Which is phonetically correct but it generates placenames that are difficult to read, especially because 'tsj' doesn't naturally occur in Dutch much. For example Chechnya reads as Tsjetsjenië in Dutch, with a second 'e' added to make it a little more readable.


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> I don’t think most English-speakers have accepted Czechia yet. And as @Kpc21 points out, language doesn’t respond well to decisions from so-called authority. When I have nothing better to do, I’ll check a few references for things like what terms respected publications are using.


This is weird though. In my experience, people are lazy (and I very much include myself in this statement ). So when someone offers a change that's considerably easier than the previous norm, I would expect it to be widely and enthusiastically embraced.


----------



## Slagathor

Since we're on the topic of pronunciation, it strikes me as really weird how British people find it acceptable to just change the pronunciation of American names. Example:

Barack Obama (US: *Buh-RACK Obama*, UK: *BER-ruhk Obama*).
Bernie Sanders (US: *Bernie SEN-ders*, UK: *Bernie SAHN-ders*)

British people; why do you do this? It strikes me as supremely arrogant. Like telling someone: "You seem to have misunderstood how to pronounce your own name, let me fix that for you."


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The 'Cz' is indeed unusual for Č. Like Cyrillic Ч it would normally be transliterated as 'ch' and not 'cz'. (see: Chechnya)
> 
> Wikipedia notes that 'cz' used to be more common in Europe:
> _This digraph was once common across Europe (which explains the English spelling of Czech), but has largely been replaced. _
> 
> The Č even becomes 'Tsj' in Dutch. Which is phonetically correct but it generates placenames that are difficult to read, especially because 'tsj' doesn't naturally occur in Dutch much. For example Chechnya reads as Tsjetsjenië in Dutch, with a second 'e' added to make it a little more readable.


Wouldn’t “tj” produce the same sound (in Dutch)?


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> Wouldn’t “tj” produce the same sound (in Dutch)?


Strangely, no.

We usually get this combination at suffixes. When a word that finishes in a T is gains the diminutive suffix -je. Examples:

beetje
weetje
maatje

And there's no S-sound between the T and the J there.

I can't think of a word (as opposed to a (geographical) name) that actually begins with "tj" except one of those wholesome swear words (like when you say "fudge" in English) that goes "tjemig". There's no S-sound there either.


----------



## CNGL

Meanwhile, who said global warming? Spain has hit its lowest temperature _ever _recorded: -35.6 °C at Vega de Liordes in the Europa Peaks, near the boundary between Castile and Leon and Cantabria. It is a basin at about 1900 meters above sea level, where cold air gets trapped, thus allowing for such extreme temperature.


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> Bernie Sanders (US: *Bernie SEN-ders*, UK: *Bernie SAHN-ders*)


This is the southern English pronounciation. The north of England doesn't generally use such long vowels in this scenario. Someone from the north of England called Sanders would be called "Sahnders" by someone from the south. So people in England don't even mind changing people's names even for people within the same country.


----------



## tfd543

AnelZ said:


> Novi Sad was historically been called Neusatz (an der Donau) in German.
> 
> Sarajevo (from Turkish saray) essentially means "palace" or by some etymologists "palace field". In German you could translate the name of the city to Schlossfeld what I guess would be a quite ordinary name.


Sarajevo, a nice city name to hear. Idk if its because it contains 4 vowels in such a short name. You Can nearly sing it.. 
Much more elegant name than Paris, munich, Madrid and dusseldorf (omg)..


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> Since we're on the topic of pronunciation, it strikes me as really weird how British people find it acceptable to just change the pronunciation of American names. Example:
> 
> Barack Obama (US: *Buh-RACK Obama*, UK: *BER-ruhk Obama*).
> Bernie Sanders (US: *Bernie SEN-ders*, UK: *Bernie SAHN-ders*)
> 
> British people; why do you do this? It strikes me as supremely arrogant. Like telling someone: "You seem to have misunderstood how to pronounce your own name, let me fix that for you."


They can’t deal with Spanish either. Nick-uh-RAG-you-uh. JAG-you-uh. Reminds me of a scene from the Adams Chronicles, a series from about 1980 about John Adams (second U.S. president) and his family: There’s a diplomatic incident early in the Civil War involving a ship called the San Jacinto, and Charles Francis Adams - John’s great-grandson I think - is U.S. ambassador to the U.K., is meeting with the foreign secretary. Foreign secretary mentions the “San Juh-kin-tow”; Adams responds “Sahn Kha-theen-to. Spanish.”

By the way, in an earlier episode John Adams is in the Netherlands and we hear him speak Dutch.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> Strangely, no.
> 
> We usually get this combination at suffixes. When a word that finishes in a T is gains the diminutive suffix -je. Examples:
> 
> beetje
> weetje
> maatje
> 
> And there's no S-sound between the T and the J there.
> 
> I can't think of a word (as opposed to a (geographical) name) that actually begins with "tj" except one of those wholesome swear words (like when you say "fudge" in English) that goes "tjemig". There's no S-sound there either.


But there is an S sound in “tsj”? It’s not just t + sj, which I thought had a “sh” sound?


----------



## AnelZ

tfd543 said:


> Sarajevo, a nice city name to hear. Idk if its because it contains 4 vowels in such a short name. You Can nearly sing it..
> Much more elegant name than Paris, munich, Madrid and dusseldorf (omg)..


I like it more how it is pronounced in our language then on English. On English, it sounds to me more harsh then when we pronounce it which rolls easy off the tongue.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Slagathor said:


> Since we're on the topic of pronunciation, it strikes me as really weird how British people find it acceptable to just change the pronunciation of American names. Example:
> 
> Barack Obama (US: *Buh-RACK Obama*, UK: *BER-ruhk Obama*).
> Bernie Sanders (US: *Bernie SEN-ders*, UK: *Bernie SAHN-ders*)
> 
> British people; why do you do this? It strikes me as supremely arrogant. Like telling someone: "You seem to have misunderstood how to pronounce your own name, let me fix that for you."


Nah, that's a consequence dialects /accents, and as already mentioned, names tend to be pronounced differently also within countries with dialects. I do not think many Americans pronounce Boris Johnson using received pronounciation either.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

radamfi said:


> This is the southern English pronounciation. The north of England doesn't generally use such long vowels in this scenario. Someone from the north of England called Sanders would be called "Sahnders" by someone from the south. So people in England don't even mind changing people's names even for people within the same country.


And conversly a southeastener called Sahnders would be called Sanders by a northerner. My middle name has a long a in it in my native accent but I wouldn't expect someone who wouldn't naturally use a long a there to do so. I definetly don't think any American would. It's my grandfathers name, and in his native accent it's got a short a and he would say it with a short a, but if I was reading his name out or soemthing I would say it with a long a. I also have a cousin with a changeable a in her name depending on who is talking, within the same family. 


I think you'd have to be pretty posh to use sahn instead of san, for say, San Francisco, anywhere in England.


----------



## tfd543

AnelZ said:


> I like it more how it is pronounced in our language then on English. On English, it sounds to me more harsh then when we pronounce it which rolls easy off the tongue.


Yea like when someone ruins it completely and say the j as in jay. Michael Jackson did it when he visited the city.


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> The 'Cz' is indeed unusual for Č. Like Cyrillic Ч it would normally be transliterated as 'ch' and not 'cz'. (see: Chechnya)
> 
> Wikipedia notes that 'cz' used to be more common in Europe:
> _This digraph was once common across Europe (which explains the English spelling of Czech), but has largely been replaced. _
> 
> The Č even becomes 'Tsj' in Dutch. Which is phonetically correct but it generates placenames that are difficult to read, especially because 'tsj' doesn't naturally occur in Dutch much. For example Chechnya reads as Tsjetsjenië in Dutch, with a second 'e' added to make it a little more readable.


Cz is a czech transcription of the consonant "č" as it existed in the Czech written language before the diacritics changes introduced by Jan Hus in the 1400th. Before the diacritics you would read "Czechi/Czechy" in the Czech written texts as e.g. in the chronicle of Dalimil from the 14th century.

English simply took the original Czech transcription.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Europe almost hit a large-scale blackout today after a substantial drop of the frequency on the transmission network:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1347612487613607937


----------



## Slagathor

Spooky.

Blackouts are so rare around here that I'm really unprepared for one. I have some candles, I think, but that's about it.


----------



## Spookvlieger

There is a Flemish serie called Blackout. It's airing its first season. It think it might interest the Dutch because it's full of typical Belgian stuff... It like it anyways. It's about a European Blackout and at the heart of it is a fictive Belgian nuclear powerplant (clearly pictured Doel) and while the rest of Europe restores power...Belgium stays without...





__





VRT MAX







www.vrt.be


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> The best one 😅


Sounds like some kind of vending machine :lol:


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Europe almost hit a large-scale blackout today after a substantial drop of the frequency on the transmission network:


Interesting. Is it known what caused this incident? Were the networks overloaded, or what?

A few years ago in summer, the power grid in Poland was close to being overloaded because of too much consumption and decreased capacity of the power plants because of draught. So countrywide power saving was ordered to avoid a blackout, e.g. many industrial plants had to suspend the production, also e.g. shopping centers decreased the power of air conditioning, reduced the interior lighting, and if I remember well, also escalators weren't fully operational. And it lasted several weeks.

Back in communist Poland, such obligatory power savings were a more frequent thing, and sometimes also included power being cut off from the households – probably the industry had a higher priority.

Maybe not the largest, but certainly the most meaningful blackout of the last years was something like 10 years ago in winter, when the major part of the city of Szczecin had no power for most of the day, from the early morning. It was caused by heavy, wet snow, which caused some poles of an important transmission line to collapse. Some years later I watched the main local news from Szczecin of the public TV from that day – the whole program was about that blackout. Interestingly, it was shown without a title sequence and without any graphics, subtitles etc. on the screen – as they even told during the program, they had to improvise a lot to even be able to prepare it, as from what it seems, their premises in Szczecin doesn't have (or didn't have back then) any permanent emergency power generators, and they couldn't power most of their equipment from an external one. An interesting situation was also in the public transport. Trams, obviously, couldn't work, but... because of an expected strike of the employees, the city had contracted replacement bus services for the trams from external bus operators. So they could make use of those contracts in a kind of unexpected way. You could even see this type of buses: https://phototrans.eu/14,234849,0,_ZGY_89CL.html serving as replacement for trams on major lines in the city xD

Anyway, in case of such major, citywide blackouts, usually most companies and institutions don't work, so there were neither many passengers on the public transport, nor much traffic on the streets, so both such a form of public transport and street intersections with traffic lights being off worked quite well. Although on a normal day, during rush hours, typically, a failure of traffic lights at any large intersection ends up with a lot of mess and traffic jams.

In rural areas, blackouts are much more frequent, especially after thunderstorms with strong winds, because practically all the local transmission lines (middle voltage – usually 15 kV) in such areas are not underground, and they often go through forests, where in case of strong winds, falling trees often damage the lines. Within the last 10 years, there were also cases of hurricanes that blacked out quite large, but rural areas.

By the way, talking about power transmission lines, I noticed quite an interesting solution in Germany, when the "last-mile", low voltage (230 V AC / 400 V three-phase) lines aren't lead on poles along the street, but they go directly from building to building over the roofs. In Poland it would be unacceptable for most private house owners to have such a public infrastructure over their houses, having to let the service brigades in onto one's own roof if a neighbor has a power failure etc. And certainly one would want some money from the electricity provider for that. Meanwhile, in Germany it's normal...

In the city of Łódź, it used to be a standard for the tram catenary to be attached to buildings. But more or more often the building owners disagree with that, and the public transport authority is forced to install poles on the sidewalks and move the attachments of the grid onto them. Like here: Google Maps – there is a pole in the middle of the sidewalk, but seemingly there was no other option. There is also a hook on the wall, which probably used to suspend the catenary, but probably the house owner disagreed.

Or here: Google Maps – compare the StreetView from 2011 and 2014. In the one from 2011, the catenary is attached to the buildings, but in the newer versions, there are poles, luckily at least ones that also serve as street lamps. But earlier, also the street lamps were on the buildings...


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Maybe not the largest, but certainly the most meaningful blackout of the last years was something like 10 years ago in winter, when the major part of the city of Szczecin had no power for most of the day, from the early morning. It was caused by heavy, wet snow, which caused some poles of an important transmission line to collapse. Some years later I watched the main local news from Szczecin of the public TV from that day – the whole program was about that blackout. Interestingly, it was shown without a title sequence and without any graphics, subtitles etc. on the screen – as they even told during the program, they had to improvise a lot to even be able to prepare it, as from what it seems, their premises in Szczecin doesn't have (or didn't have back then) any permanent emergency power generators, and they couldn't power most of their equipment from an external one. An interesting situation was also in the public transport. Trams, obviously, couldn't work, but... because of an expected strike of the employees, the city had contracted replacement bus services for the trams from external bus operators. So they could make use of those contracts in a kind of unexpected way. You could even see this type of buses: https://phototrans.eu/14,234849,0,_ZGY_89CL.html serving as replacement for trams on major lines in the city xD


I remember Szczecin blackout was featured in our local TV too.



> Anyway, in case of such major, citywide blackouts, usually most companies and institutions don't work, so there were neither many passengers on the public transport, nor much traffic on the streets, so both such a form of public transport and street intersections with traffic lights being off worked quite well. Although on a normal day, during rush hours, typically, a failure of traffic lights at any large intersection ends up with a lot of mess and traffic jams.


I remember reports about blackout in The Netherlands, and most noticable thing was traffic lights being completely turned off or with blinking amber. I don't remember which year.



Kpc21 said:


> In the city of Łódź, it used to be a standard for the tram catenary to be attached to buildings. But more or more often the building owners disagree with that, and the public transport authority is forced to install poles on the sidewalks and move the attachments of the grid onto them. Like here: Google Maps – there is a pole in the middle of the sidewalk, but seemingly there was no other option. There is also a hook on the wall, which probably used to suspend the catenary, but probably the house owner disagreed.
> 
> Or here: Google Maps – compare the StreetView from 2011 and 2014. In the one from 2011, the catenary is attached to the buildings, but in the newer versions, there are poles, luckily at least ones that also serve as street lamps. But earlier, also the street lamps were on the buildings...


These streets need proper reconstruction for wider sidewalks. Now it looks as counter-improvement 
---
Where I live, most blackouts are very short few second shut downs. It turns off PC, TV, some other devices (like clocks). These are happening from time to time, hard to say how frequent, but not very frequently (rarer than one time in a month).

There were few longer, around 1-2 hours long blackouts in previous years. It was more frequent in 2000s, and maybe early 2010s, and less frequent in late 2010s, maybe to non-existent in recent few years, although it could happen any time still.


----------



## Kpc21

This year I had a total blackout for something like a day this summer. You may remember me reporting that in this thread 

In addition, this summer I had quite frequent partial outages; I have three-phase power delivered home and one of the phases was going out. But it seems they finally found the source of the problem and fixed it as it isn't appearing any more. In some places around, there were trees growing into the power line – they finally cut all the tree branches around them as this could be source (although if I remember well, when they did it, it didn't really help). The service men that came to repair the line claimed they have troubles cutting out those branches and trees around power lines, as people later complain that they either damage their trees or... leave cut branches on the ground without removing them. But actually it's the responsibility of the property owners, having some trees on them, not to allow those trees to interfere with the public infrastructure...



PovilD said:


> These streets need proper reconstruction for wider sidewalks. Now it looks as counter-improvement


And I suppose it will finally happen, such things have already been happening in Łódź – although it meets a lot of complaints of the drivers. The truth is also that the proper road infrastructure of the city is also underdeveloped.

You can have a look here: Google Maps and compare the street with its earlier format. After the modernization, the street got closed for the car traffic and only public transport and access to the properties along the street are allowed.

Or here: Google Maps

Although this form of a street is disadvantegous for the cyclists.


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> Europe almost hit a large-scale blackout today after a substantial drop of the frequency on the transmission network:


A 250 MHz drop in grid frequency is a really serious issue, I'm surprised that didn't cause much bigger problems. The grid in the UK dropped about 120MHz in August 2019 and it caused a lot of problems, loads of trains were unable to continue and were stopped for hours (it was outside their parameters for reset and restart so had to be rebooted manually)

Edit: I meant mHz, not MHz


----------



## Suburbanist

Reminds me of this other event:


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> The grid in the UK dropped about 120MHz in August 2019 and it caused a lot of problems, loads of trains were unable to continue and were stopped for hours (it was outside their parameters for reset and restart so had to be rebooted manually)


In Poland there wouldn't be a problem at all because the trains over here are powered with DC voltage 

Some other European countries use AC, but with a frequency different from the 50 Hz from the national grid.










So anyway much of Europe uses 50 Hz for trains, and therefore a drop in the national grid would also affect the trains...

But I guess trains in other countries are more immune to frequency fluctuations. Anyway, modern trains and other electric vehicles usually control the motors by varying the frequency through inverters, so I guess the frequency at the input doesn't really matter for them. Older trains in Poland simply used (and many still use) DC motors and the speed was regulated, basically, by connecting resistors in series with the motors. No idea how it was made in countries with AC power for trains...


----------



## MattiG

Stuu said:


> A 250 MHz drop in grid frequency is a really serious issue, I'm surprised that didn't cause much bigger problems. The grid in the UK dropped about 120MHz in August 2019 and it caused a lot of problems, loads of trains were unable to continue and were stopped for hours (it was outside their parameters for reset and restart so had to be rebooted manually)


250 MHz? Grid?


----------



## Stuu

MattiG said:


> 250 MHz? Grid?


Senior moment, I meant mHz


----------



## MattiG

Stuu said:


> Senior moment, I meant mHz


OK. Turns more understandable.

The document *








What happened to our electricity system on Friday August 9th 2019?


Keith Bell, Professor of Smart Grids at the University of Strathclyde and a co-Director of the UK Energy Research Centre




ukerc.ac.uk




* tells that the frequency dropped to 48.8 Hz. Thus, the deviation was 1200 mHz to the nominal frequency.


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> But I guess trains in other countries are more immune to frequency fluctuations.


It was Siemens Desiro trains which didn't cope because of a software limit, rather than any actual damage. Older, simpler trains didn't have the same problem as they aren't clever enough... the software has now been upgraded to allow for the driver to reset in the event of something similar happening


----------



## Stuu

MattiG said:


> OK. Turns more understandable.
> 
> The document *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What happened to our electricity system on Friday August 9th 2019?
> 
> 
> Keith Bell, Professor of Smart Grids at the University of Strathclyde and a co-Director of the UK Energy Research Centre
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ukerc.ac.uk
> 
> 
> 
> 
> * tells that the frequency dropped to 48.8 Hz. Thus, the deviation was 1200 mHz to the nominal frequency.


You're right... I shouldn't attempt maths on Fridays


----------



## Attus

Ágnes Keleti (Budapest, Jan 9 1921), the oldest living olympic champion, turned 100 today. 
She won 1 title in gymnastics in Helsinki 1952, and 4 titles in Melbourne, 1956. 

She was born as Ágnes Klein, she's a jew. In Hungary people having non-Hungarian names had to change it (not every one, but persons of publicity for sure), she became Keleti. 
After the games of 1956 (only a few weeks after the revolution in Hungary had been suppressed by the Soviet army), several Hungarian athletes did not return to Hungary. Neither did Keleti, she moved to Izrael, after 1990 she returned to Hungary.


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> It was Siemens Desiro trains which didn't cope because of a software limit, rather than any actual damage. Older, simpler trains didn't have the same problem as they aren't clever enough... the software has now been upgraded to allow for the driver to reset in the event of something similar happening


Those computers... Anyway, why does it even require a reset and doesn't allow driving with a decreased frequency?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> Ágnes Keleti (Budapest, Jan 9 1921), the oldest living olympic champion, turned 100 today.


Keleti means 'eastern' according to Wiktionary. I only looked that up because I knew that 'kelet' is a cardinal direction in Hungarian.


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> Those computers... Anyway, why does it even require a reset and doesn't require driving with a decreased frequency?


To protect the onboard systems - the quadrant controllers (whatever they are) shut down. The reset function was set up to only be done by a technician and not the driver, so 27 trains were stuck at different places.


----------



## marcobruls

radamfi said:


> What about TV programmes? Do people like to watch programmes from the other country? How popular are British TV channels in the Netherlands and Belgium (I believe the BBC has been available in both countries since the 80s)? Are foreign channels even surveyed for TV ratings? (i.e. are viewing figures for NPO1 and BBC One surveyed in Belgium and are viewing figures for Eén and BBC One surveyed in the Netherlands?)


Back in the 70s and 80s BBC defined part of local culture in The Hague, we grew up with BBC because dutch tv didnt have daytime programming and there were only 2 channels.
My mom and sister and most women in our slum watched those BBC soap's.
Back then you grew up with snooker and darts and in the morning before school bbc news with the little clock in the top corner.
We also had Skychannel back then; saturday morning gotta get up early cause from 8 to 12 they aired The Funfactory wich showed all the cool cartoonseries like Transformers,He man,MASK etc.
Snooker never really became popular because of the expensive tables obviously but darts was something else; real soon EVERYONE in The Hague was playing darts in the local bars and there were local leagues as early as 1980. This of course got some locals to the "embassy" like bert vlaardingerbroek, roland scholten and van barneveld.

It was a local something because people would recieve it with their antennas only in and around The Hague and later on the city forced its cablecompany to air BBC.

The Belgians used to watch dutch tv mainly in the 60s and 70s; as a kid i remember watching BRT for shows like "hoger lager"  and i still watch "Blokken" every now and then.

Dutch kids are now almost 100% raised by "Studio100" almost all popular kidshows in the netherlands are belgian, ever since the late 80s.

Something like that anyway


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> There is no money in rolling news so *I don't see why anyone wants to start another news channel*. Sky News has always been loss making and obviously BBC News is funded by the licence payer. ITV tried a news channel years ago and was closed after only a few years.


People who have an agenda and aren't in it for the money, that's who.


----------



## Stuu

Penn's Woods said:


> Of course they don’t know what socialism is. They’ve been very well trained for 25 years by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh to think that Democrats are Socialists (or even Communists), and that that’s bad, immoral, evil.... They’re STILL at it, even after this event.


It is a bit ironic, in a country where the first amendment is so highly regarded, that people can say whatever they want unless it's something vaguely leftist/socialist. When it becomes unAmerican... so freedom of thought except for some thoughts.

I assume the socialism they fear is more to do with the second amendment rather than state control of the commanding heights of the economy, or the horror of subsidised healthcare


----------



## Penn's Woods

Stuu said:


> It is a bit ironic, in a country where the first amendment is so highly regarded, that people can say whatever they want unless it's something vaguely leftist/socialist. When it becomes unAmerican... so freedom of thought except for some thoughts.
> 
> I assume the socialism they fear is more to do with the second amendment rather than state control of the commanding heights of the economy, or the horror of subsidised healthcare


No, I think it’s all of that.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I always find it interesting that the U.S. is more 'socialist' than the Netherlands in some ways. Like the U.S. post office, or the Department of Transportation doing so much in-house. Snowplow drivers in the U.S. work for the DOT, in the Netherlands they work for a contractor. Similar things are signage production and drawing up schematics for projects, which are (mostly) government workers while these are private sector workers in the Netherlands.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> I always find it interesting that the U.S. is more 'socialist' than the Netherlands in some ways. Like the U.S. post office, or the Department of Transportation doing so much in-house. Snowplow drivers in the U.S. work for the DOT, in the Netherlands they work for a contractor. Similar things are signage production and drawing up schematics for projects, which are (mostly) government workers while these are private sector workers in the Netherlands.


Was the Dutch postal service always private, or is that a result of the EU’s push for liberalization?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It was privatized in 1989. I'm not sure if this was an EU push. Apparently it was also privatized during German occupation in 1940-1945.


----------



## Attus

radamfi said:


> There is no money in rolling news so I don't see why anyone wants to start another news channel.


Anyone who want to make propaganda. news channels are not for giving you information but for changing your mind and making you vote for a certain party or politician.


----------



## radamfi

The Netherlands closed all its dedicated post office buildings. Now you find all the post offices inside other shops or supermarkets. Has any other country done that? Other countries have smaller post offices inside shops but still have dedicated post office buildings in main towns.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

For all practical purposes this has already happened in Norway. There is only two post offices left: one in Oslo and one in Longyearbyen (Svalbard /Spitsbergen). The process to move postal services to grocery stores started already 20 years ago, though.


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> The Netherlands closed all its dedicated post office buildings. Now you find all the post offices inside other shops or supermarkets. Has any other country done that? Other countries have smaller post offices inside shops but still have dedicated post office buildings in main towns.


I don't even go those post office service points anymore. If I want to send a package, I can register it online, print the address and customs labels, and give it to the postman the next time he swings by.

From the Dutch perspective, a post office is about as useful as a fax or a telex.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> I always find it interesting that the U.S. is more 'socialist' than the Netherlands in some ways. Like the U.S. post office, or the Department of Transportation doing so much in-house. Snowplow drivers in the U.S. work for the DOT, in the Netherlands they work for a contractor. Similar things are signage production and drawing up schematics for projects, which are (mostly) government workers while these are private sector workers in the Netherlands.


The differences in the size of the public sector between developed countries are not that big. Since most of health care is outside the public sector in USA, your findings are not that surprising. 








Government spending


Total government spending, including interest government expenditures, as share of national GDP




ourworldindata.org






ChrisZwolle said:


> It was privatized in 1989. I'm not sure if this was an EU push. Apparently it was also privatized during German occupation in 1940-1945.


The postal directive came afterwards, I think. It has lead to free market competition on mail and parcel services, but still allows public ownership of actors.


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> I don't even go those post office service points anymore. If I want to send a package, I can register it online, print the address and customs labels, and *give it to the postman the next time he swings by*.
> 
> From the Dutch perspective, a post office is about as useful as a fax or a telex.


Surely this is an informal arrangement? Is it normal in the Netherlands to give packages to your postman?

In the UK there is still an obsession about keeping post offices open. Bizarrely, the main argument given against closing post offices is that they give lonely old people a place to meet. A lot of people still use post offices to withdraw their pension or pay bills. In rural areas post offices are also considered essential by many because of the closure of most rural bank branches. Even under Covid lockdown you still see people queuing up outside the post office in the rain at 9 o'clock in the morning, most of them not using the post office for postal services.

I get the impression the Netherlands is faster to get rid of pointless legacy systems than other countries. Some 2G/3G mobile networks have already been switched off, or will soon be switched off.


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> Surely this is an informal arrangement? Is it normal in the Netherlands to give packages to your postman?


It's not strictly speaking the postman. In other words: it's not the guy who goes door-to-door dropping letters into mailboxes. Those people use bicycles anyway, it would never work. 

It's the guy who drives around in a van delivering packages. You can book him to pick one up at your address. This is definitely not informal. They're trying to make it the new norm so they can get rid of postal service points entirely.



radamfi said:


> In the UK there is still an obsession about keeping post offices open. Bizarrely, the main argument given against closing post offices is that they give lonely old people a place to meet. A lot of people still use post offices to withdraw their pension or pay bills. In rural areas post offices are also considered essential by many because of the closure of most rural bank branches. Even under Covid lockdown you still see people queuing up outside the post office in the rain at 9 o'clock in the morning, most of them not using the post office for postal services.
> 
> I get the impression the Netherlands is faster to get rid of pointless legacy systems than other countries. One 2G mobile network has already been switched off.


Our supermarkets have coffee corners where old people can meet and dads can sit down and entertain the kids while mom does the grocery shopping (before covid, anyway).

And yeah, Britain is a lot more traditional than the Netherlands. We're pretty quick to dismiss things as "old junk". Sometimes a bit too quick perhaps.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Pre-covid-homeoffice, I found these home services a bigger hassle, than picking up or delivering at the grocery store. It is often quite unpredictable when I home, and I regularly buy groceries anyway.


----------



## Suburbanist

In the US, as far as I know, postal workers collect letters or small packages under 2kg if they are left on mailboxes with some indicator like those famous red short poles.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> Surely this is an informal arrangement? Is it normal in the Netherlands to give packages to your postman?


The Royal Mail let you do this, and have done for a year or 2


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> The Netherlands closed all its dedicated post office buildings. Now you find all the post offices inside other shops or supermarkets. Has any other country done that? Other countries have smaller post offices inside shops but still have dedicated post office buildings in main towns.


I’m not aware of -any- significant post-office closures in the U.S. I have noticed in Philadelphia some tendency to move things around, and the enormous main post office of 20 years ago is no longer a post office, but in suburban New Jersey, the post offices of my childhood are all still there. The one in my mom’s town is still open six days a week, although a bit less on Saturdays. The main post office in Manhattan has been converted at least in part to a train station, or an annex to an existing one. Opened last week.

We’re still getting mail six days a week. Packages and priority mail may even come Sunday or after hours. You sometimes hear talk of eliminating Saturday delivery or one weekday, but nothing’s come of it yet.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Suburbanist said:


> In the US, as far as I know, postal workers collect letters or small packages under 2kg if they are left on mailboxes with some indicator like those famous red short poles.


Those red poles don’t exist on all mailboxes. In some neighborhoods, you have that sort of mailbox at the roadside; in others, including my mother’s, they’re attached to the house. She leaves things in the box for them to take all the time (sort of hanging out of the box so they see it).

Now that I think of it, she -has- been complaining that there are fewer public mailboxes - the sort of box on a street corner or wherever that you can put your mail into and a carrier empties it once a day or more - than there used to be.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Mail is delivered 5 days per week in the Netherlands (Tuesday through Saturday), though parcels can be delivered 7 days per week. I got my new phone delivered on a Sunday. There is also the option to get parcels delivered in the evening but it usually costs a little more. 

The Netherlands is a small country so there normally is next day delivery. Many web shops advertise 'ordered before midnight, delivered the next day'. What are delivery times in larger countries?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> Anyone who want to make propaganda. news channels are not for giving you information but for changing your mind and making you vote for a certain party or politician.


And they’re clearly making money; prime-time cable hosts in the U.S. can make tens of millions a year.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> It's not strictly speaking the postman. In other words: it's not the guy who goes door-to-door dropping letters into mailboxes. Those people use bicycles anyway, it would never work.
> 
> It's the guy who drives around in a van delivering packages. You can book him to pick one up at your address. This is definitely not informal. They're trying to make it the new norm so they can get rid of postal service points entirely.
> 
> 
> 
> Our supermarkets have coffee corners where old people can meet and dads can sit down and entertain the kids while mom does the grocery shopping (before covid, anyway).
> 
> And yeah, Britain is a lot more traditional than the Netherlands. We're pretty quick to dismiss things as "old junk". Sometimes a bit too quick perhaps.


Philistinism.
The thin end of the wedge.
The general decline of civilization.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Mail is delivered 5 days per week in the Netherlands (Tuesday through Saturday), though parcels can be delivered 7 days per week. I got my new phone delivered on a Sunday. There is also the option to get parcels delivered in the evening but it usually costs a little more.
> 
> The Netherlands is a small country so there normally is next day delivery. Many web shops advertise 'ordered before midnight, delivered the next day'. What are delivery times in larger countries?


Short answer: unreliable. I don’t worry about them, though, because I never mail anything any more.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Penn's Woods said:


> Philistinism.
> The thin end of the wedge.
> The general decline of civilization.


Not necessarily, one of the richest families of Norway plans to make the old main post office of Trondheim, built in Jugendstil in 1911, but which has been out of the postal service since 2012, into a new art gallery and theater....


----------



## Attus

Closing post offices is not an option in Hungary. Many people still pay their bills in post offices. By the bill you get a yellow check, you take that to the post office and pay the bill.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Mail is delivered 5 days per week in the Netherlands (Tuesday through Saturday), though parcels can be delivered 7 days per week. I got my new phone delivered on a Sunday. There is also the option to get parcels delivered in the evening but it usually costs a little more.
> 
> The Netherlands is a small country so there normally is next day delivery. Many web shops advertise 'ordered before midnight, delivered the next day'. What are delivery times in larger countries?


Mail deliveries happen Monday to Saturday in the UK. First class deliveries are scheduled to be next day and generally that happens, except possibly to remote parts of Scotland. If you don't mind if it takes longer then you can choose second class post to save money. You can pay extra for post to be delivered guaranteed next day and even more to be delivered by 9am.

There is a bewildering array of parcel companies to choose from and I think most if not all deliver seven days a week. Amazon has long offered next day delivery to Prime members, years before it was available in the US. (Obviously geography makes it much easier to do it in the UK). They now generally use freelance drivers who deliver using their own car. Next day delivery is also available with many other online retailers but often charged at a premium. Some of them use their own vans and trucks to deliver large items at a chosen time of day and day of the week including Sunday.


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> The Royal Mail let you do this, and have done for a year or 2


Ah, I didn't hear about this.









Royal Mail launches 72p parcel pick-up service


The firm claims it is "one of the biggest changes to the delivery since the launch of the post box".



www.bbc.co.uk





says it started in October after a trial in the west of England.


----------



## andken

radamfi said:


> There is no money in rolling news so I don't see why anyone wants to start another news channel.


Fox News is the most profitable division of Fox(And it was when NewsCorp controlled BSkyB and the Fox Studios), but they are not really news. I think that Murdoch has in mind the Fox News model.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> says it started in October after a trial in the west of England.


I guess I must live in the trial area as they have been promoting it for a while here


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> Mail deliveries happen Monday to Saturday in the UK. First class deliveries are scheduled to be next day and generally that happens, except possibly to remote parts of Scotland. If you don't mind if it takes longer then you can choose second class post to save money. You can pay extra for post to be delivered guaranteed next day and even more to be delivered by 9am.
> 
> There is a bewildering array of parcel companies to choose from and I think most if not all deliver seven days a week. Amazon has long offered next day delivery to Prime members, years before it was available in the US. (Obviously geography makes it much easier to do it in the UK). They now generally use freelance drivers who deliver using their own car. Next day delivery is also available with many other online retailers but often charged at a premium. Some of them use their own vans and trucks to deliver large items at a chosen time of day and day of the week including Sunday.


“I object to having second-class stamps thrust through my letterbox!” -Hyacinth Bucket


----------



## Slagathor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Pre-covid-homeoffice, I found these home services a bigger hassle, than picking up or delivering at the grocery store. It is often quite unpredictable when I home, and I regularly buy groceries anyway.


We have delivery points at grocery stores too. Major train stations as well, which is handy for commuters. I think you can also have packages delivered to select motorway service stations, but Chris will be able to confirm or deny that. 

You never got stuff delivered to your office (before covid)? I used to do that. Very convenient. I'd have to buy the receptionist a nice cup of coffee every once in a while to keep her on my good side though. 



Penn's Woods said:


> Philistinism.
> The thin end of the wedge.
> The general decline of civilization.


Nah. It's just shedding dead weight on the path to enlightenment.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> We have delivery points at grocery stores too. Major train stations as well, which is handy for commuters. I think you can also have packages delivered to select motorway service stations, but Chris will be able to confirm or deny that.
> 
> You never got stuff delivered to your office (before covid)? I used to do that. Very convenient. I'd have to buy the receptionist a nice cup of coffee every once in a while to keep her on my good side though.
> 
> 
> 
> Nah. It's just shedding dead weight on the path to enlightenment.


I thought you all had already achieved enlightenment.


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> You never got stuff delivered to your office (before covid)? I used to do that. Very convenient. I'd have to buy the receptionist a nice cup of coffee every once in a while to keep her on my good side though.


Like many other companies, my last company banned deliveries to the office after the post room's workload was mostly taken up by personal online shopping deliveries. Transport for London blamed a large increase in central London congestion on online shopping delivery vehicles, as well as Uber-style taxis. The alternative is to get deliveries posted to local convenience stores or to Amazon lockers.


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> I thought you all had already achieved enlightenment.


Not even close. I quite dislike this caricature of the Netherlands that exists in the English-speaking world.

Abortion isn't even technically legal here ffs.



radamfi said:


> Like many other companies, my last company banned deliveries to the office after the post room's workload was mostly taken up by personal online shopping deliveries. Transport for London blamed a large increase in central London congestion on online shopping delivery vehicles, as well as Uber-style taxis. The alternative is to get deliveries posted to local convenience stores or to Amazon lockers.


I like the locker system.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Mail is delivered 5 days per week in the Netherlands (Tuesday through Saturday), though parcels can be delivered 7 days per week. I got my new phone delivered on a Sunday. There is also the option to get parcels delivered in the evening but it usually costs a little more.
> 
> The Netherlands is a small country so there normally is next day delivery. Many web shops advertise 'ordered before midnight, delivered the next day'. What are delivery times in larger countries?


Post mail in Norway, since 2019, is delivered every other day Mon-Sat (e.g. Mon, Wed, Fri then Tue, Thu, Sat next week).

Mailboxes here are rather small, e-commerce is often picked up at a nearby package point like a grocery store or large supermarket. Several supermarkets modified the physical layouts of these parcel corners to accommodate vastly increased traffic. It is seen as a win-win as it attracts a lot of customers to the store as well.

Things in Oslo metro might be different; elsewhere such as in Bergen, it normally takes 2 nights for a package to arrive if you order from Norwegian retailers. It seems very few of them user domestic air freight. Next-day delivery is available for a substantial surcharge if you order early the day before. During winter, the cut-off times for Bergen delivery are often pushed back, maybe trucks don't want to drive overnight from Oslo here routinely? The main winter route is not bad, but it does have a couple chokepoints and a few sections that can be closed due to snowstorms.

International parcels from the EU/EEA that use DHL or DPD take 1 extra night than the normal delivery time for Denmark or Sweden. At least here in Bergen, where parcels are sent to be cleared locally by customs.


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> Abortion isn't even technically legal here ffs.


How do you mean?









Abortion in the Netherlands - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





says "Abortion in the Netherlands was fully legalized on November 1, 1984, allowing abortions to be done on-demand until the twenty-first week. Abortion for medical reasons can be performed until 24 weeks. There is a five-day waiting period for abortions."


----------



## radamfi

I just looked up the cheapest price of sending a domestic letter in selected countries:

Hungary: 145 HUF = 0.39 EUR
US: 0.55 USD = 0.45 EUR
UK: 0.66 GBP = 0.73 EUR
Switzerland: 0.85 CHF = 0.79 EUR
Germany: 0.80 EUR
Netherlands: 0.96 EUR
Ireland: 1.00 EUR
France: 1.05 EUR
Norway: 18 NOK = 1.75 EUR

I would have expected Switzerland to be first or second most expensive in that list but it is one of the cheapest. The US is also remarkably cheap given the huge distances possible.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> I always find it interesting that the U.S. is more 'socialist' than the Netherlands in some ways. Like the U.S. post office, or the Department of Transportation doing so much in-house. Snowplow drivers in the U.S. work for the DOT, in the Netherlands they work for a contractor. Similar things are signage production and drawing up schematics for projects, which are (mostly) government workers while these are private sector workers in the Netherlands.


Maybe simply other things are private and other things are public here, other things are in the other country?

I don't think anyone has ever tried privatizing prisons in Europe. Much of the healthcare in some countries (hospitals probably in most of them...) also remain public. Similarly, most European countries subsidize public transport in rural areas, which, to my knowledge, isn't done in the US.

Anyway, the things mentioned by you are publicly funded also in Europe, but often contracted at private companies instead of being maintained directly by the government. And there is a tendency to shift more and more towards this model.

It's OK if those are local companies, but equally often those happen to be large corporations... E.g. much of the garbage disposal in Poland is now maintained by international giants such as Tönsmeier and Remondis. Not so long ago it was often done by the municipalities directly, maintaining their own employees and vehicles, but now the law practically doesn't allow that. And if corporations take it over, it's definitely not good; it leads to monopoly, or at least oligopoly.



ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands is a small country so there normally is next day delivery. Many web shops advertise 'ordered before midnight, delivered the next day'. What are delivery times in larger countries?


In Poland it's normal in companies like DHL, DPD etc. In case of the post, it depends, it is usually slower and doesn't even follow the delivery times it promises.



Attus said:


> Closing post offices is not an option in Hungary. Many people still pay their bills in post offices. By the bill you get a yellow check, you take that to the post office and pay the bill.


I guess it's a standard bank transfer form; you can also use it at your bank, or just send an online bank transfer to the number shown on this form. This is how it is in Poland. From the post office, you can send any bank transfer to someone's account. Bills (like electricity, telephone, cable/satellite TV etc.) usually have those pre-filled, to simplify things for the customers.

For parcels, and especially online shopping, there is also a company which has machines, in which you can receive your package (sending is also possible). This is probably the most convenient option, because you aren't bound to any opening hours. And it's also usually the cheapest or one of the cheapest options to choose from.

Interestingly, some time ago I ordered a parcel from the UK, which was then sent via the Royal Mail, but here in Poland... it was delivered by DPD. So it's no longer like the post offices from all the countries cooperate with each other and only each other to exchange international postage. Now it's often also passed by the post offices to those corporations for international delivery.

I would expect that a parcel sent by Detusche Post could be delivered in Poland by DHL and not by Poczta Polska, as DHL basically belongs to the Deutsche Post – but I didn't really expect a parcel from the UK being delivered by DPD.


----------



## Suburbanist

There are many post offices in Switzerland, although banking is their main business.


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> How do you mean?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Abortion in the Netherlands - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> says "Abortion in the Netherlands was fully legalized on November 1, 1984, allowing abortions to be done on-demand until the twenty-first week. Abortion for medical reasons can be performed until 24 weeks. There is a five-day waiting period for abortions."


Abortion in the Netherlands is regulated by the penal code (_Wetboek van Strafrecht_), which stipulates the doctor who performs abortion may be excluded from criminal prosecution if the pregnant woman declares she is in "an emergency situation".

Article 82a of the law in question, however, says that "the termination of a fertilized egg that may reasonably be expected to survive outside the womb" is equal to "the murder of a child following birth".

Over the years, the Ministry of Public Health has issued guidelines to clarify the situation. One of the rules is that the woman must be sent home to reconsider her decision for a minimum of 5 days and that the abortion must be performed by a specifically licensed doctor in a specifically licensed hospital or clinic.

In practice, this means abortion beyond life-threatening situations (where the mother's life is in danger) is not technically legal, merely tolerated. Any government is also free to significantly curb the right to abortion simply by limiting the issuing of licenses or even by withdrawing licenses, all of which is easy to do. It doesn't even require a change in legislation.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> Anyway, the things mentioned by you are publicly funded also in Europe, but often contracted at private companies instead of being maintained directly by the government. And there is a tendency to shift more and more towards this model.
> 
> It's OK if those are local companies, but equally often those happen to be large corporations... E.g. much of the garbage disposal in Poland is now maintained by international giants such as Tönsmeier and Remondis. Not so long ago it was often done by the municipalities directly, maintaining their own employees and vehicles, but now the law practically doesn't allow that. And if corporations take it over, it's definitely not good; it leads to monopoly, or at least oligopoly.


This model is becoming more and more problematic. The UK was early adopter, outsourcing plenty of public services to private operators, including some detention centres and prisons (not to American extent though).

In recent years there were quite a few spectacular failures (for example collapse of Carillion giant) as well as a lot of scandals where private operator clearly took public sector for a ride.

I used to support such model but here in the UK it went too far and on top of that contracts are badly managed, with limited oversight. We have absurd situation when companies which started as construction contractors are organizing school meals (Carillion was one of them).

More a bout the fiasco here:









Carillion report: the summary


Here is the summary of the report into the collapse of the Carillion by a joint inquiry of the House of Commons work & pensions and business committees, as published within the report itself.




www.theconstructionindex.co.uk





G4S is another dodgy company. They couldn't cope with Olympics security and in the last minute army had to be drafted to save the situation. They run some detention centres and there plenty of complains and accusations.









Public inquiry launched into abuse at Brook House detention centre


Home Office performs U-turn after initially challenging judge's call for probe




www.independent.co.uk





Their prisons are also problematic:









Private jails more violent than public ones, data analysis shows


Figures for England and Wales raise questions over government’s prisons model




www.theguardian.com





Initially using private companies to provide public services looked promising. Bidding wars lowered prices. But eventually a few giants dominated the sector. They underpay staff, working condition worsened and outcomes for public are not great either. It is rotten model for everyone, except executives and shareholders.


----------



## Kpc21

The strongest winter attack in my neighborhood which I remember was on 29 November 2010. The whole city just got stuck and the fastest transportation even over long distances was to walk. There was a heavy snowfall with quite a strong frost during the morning rush hours, and it was enough to block the city for the whole day, and even more. The city hadn't had have the motorway bypass yet, and the roads were so slippery that stopped trucks simply couldn't start – the wheels slipped and the whole vehicle couldn't move. Even on the next day morning, on larger streets you had to slalom between trucks parked directly on the roadway lanes.

The public transport also didn't work. Some tram drivers waited at distant loops to the next day morning, before the tracks were cleared and they could come back. I also remember a bus at a loop that hanged with its bottom at a pile of snow, which it had to cross to enter the road  It didn't managed to do it, and anyway, it's normal route took, like, 10 times longer than normally.

The main square of the city was a traffic jam made of trams:










Source: W koło Macieju, czyli... - Łódzka Galeria Transportowa - GTLodz.eu

Trucks blocking one of the main streets:







This is 1 AM on the night from 29 to 30 November 2010:







He drives on the wrong roadway (on the one for the opposite direction), because the correct one is still blocked by trucks.

Here they were driving on the sidewalk:







Or here:







even the Hungarian bus technology yet from the communist times (Ikarus 280, the legend) doesn't manage to deal with that snow.

Here:







someone wrote in the video description that it took him one and a half day to drive across the city.







It was a magic day xD


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> The infection rates within the last weeks have only slightly increased in the last week, but it could be expected after Christmas and New Year, there were also less infections before, as in general there is much less reported infections and deaths on Sundays and public holidays (do they keep those corpses overnight until a working day without calling emergency services, or what?):
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Deaths:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Percentage of positive tests:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (but this may not be representative in the long run, as the testing strategies changed from time to time)


Lithuania finally sees decrease, but with real psychological cost I must say since we are closed in the small areas of 60 municipalities. You can't legally enter municipality borders, although is possible to cross the borders unchecked. The biggest concern I think are children playing with sleigh, since we have wonderful winter weather out here.

I feel some people are feeling down here directly from restrictions, and if you think about future risk possibilities (UK strains, other potential concerning variants) you are feeling even more down, good thing you don't think about it. Better vaccines starting to work in Israel as a proof that vaccines are way out of this.

On the contrary there are people who just feel fine, I guess. I had a groupmate from university (we are graduates) who just don't care about this whole situation. He earn money remotely as he did before pandemic. I call him "a Finn"  He's how I personally imagine typical young Finnish male  Closest country to ours probably that are feeling less affected by covid by surveys  He's peaceful, don't rush his head about stuff (like covid), kinda slow person, I have to mention, good career possibilities too...


----------



## JackFrost

I was watching Rambo 5 yesterday, and I have a question: in the movie the girl drives across the Arizona/Mexico border in a car with Arizona plates. Well since there is no front plate on the car, I wondered if driving over is possible in real life with no front plates? Maybe you have to mount a temporary plate while being in Mexico? (same question regarding Canada) 

For example, it would for sure not be possible to drive a car with no front plates in Europe.


----------



## Slagathor

JackFrost said:


> I was watching Rambo 5 yesterday, and I have a question: in the movie the girl drives across the Arizona/Mexico border in a car with Arizona plates. Well since there is no front plate on the car, I wondered if driving over is possible in real life with no front plates? Maybe you have to mount a temporary plate while being in Mexico? (same question regarding Canada)
> 
> For example, it would for sure not be possible to drive a car with no front plates in Europe.


In Canada, Ontario, British Columbia and Manitoba are the only provinces that require drivers to have license plates on the front of their vehicles and Ontario is considering getting rid of that requirement.

For the US, I had to google it:

"Thirty-one states require their motorists to display front license plates and plates on the back of their vehicles. The “Rugged Nineteen” states that require only one plate include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico. North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia."

Source: click here.


----------



## JackFrost

Slagathor said:


> In Canada, Ontario, British Columbia and Manitoba are the only provinces that require drivers to have license plates on the front of their vehicles and Ontario is considering getting rid of that requirement.
> 
> For the US, I had to google it:
> 
> "Thirty-one states require their motorists to display front license plates and plates on the back of their vehicles. The “Rugged Nineteen” states that require only one plate include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico. North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia."
> 
> Source: click here.


Okay, I thought Canada requires both plates.

Anyway, Mexico does as far I know. So I wonder how Rambo could cross the border…


----------



## Slagathor

Oh right, like that.

Well I've never driven into Mexico but I've driven across provincial borders in Canada and you're not expected to put a temporary plate on your car when you drive from Quebec into Ontario.


----------



## JackFrost

Slagathor said:


> Oh right, like that.
> 
> Well I've never driven into Mexico but I've driven across provincial borders in Canada and you're not expected to put a temporary plate on your car when you drive from Quebec into Ontario.


Yeah, I have rented a car with Florida plates in New York back in 2016. And we had no problems driving it in the north-east. 

However it's crossing country borders, I am interested in.


----------



## geogregor

JackFrost said:


> So I wonder how Rambo could cross the border…


Because he was Rambo? Would you stop Rambo?


----------



## JackFrost

geogregor said:


> Because he was Rambo? Would you stop Rambo?


Of course. I am Hungarian.


----------



## Penn's Woods

I don’t know about Canada, but I suspect it would be unconstitutional for any state in the U.S. not to honor another state’s choice not to require front plates. Heck, how would you even do that? Pennsylvania, as far as I know, doesn’t even offer front plates, so what is someone crossing into New Jersey supposed to do? Stop at the state line to get a temporary New Jersey plate? Given the volume of traffic, that’s absurd. (I don’t understand why any state doesn’t require front plates, but that’s beside the point.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

European gastronomy:










EU food agency approves mealworms as human food – DW – 01/13/2021


Mealworms, whole or as powder in pasta, have become the first insect-based food approved by the EU's food safety watchdog. The EU Commission has yet to endorse the decision.




m.dw.com





:-D


----------



## JackFrost

Penn's Woods said:


> I don’t know about Canada, but I suspect it would be unconstitutional for any state in the U.S. not to honor another state’s choice not to require front plates. Heck, how would you even do that? Pennsylvania, as far as I know, doesn’t even offer front plates, so what is someone crossing into New Jersey supposed to do? Stop at the state line to get a temporary New Jersey plate? Given the volume of traffic, that’s absurd.


Yes, thats clear. I was interested in crossing to Mexico in the first place.



> (I don’t understand why any state doesn’t require front plates, but that’s beside the point.)


I love it. If it would be allowed anywhere in the EU, I would consider to register my car in that country. Heck, it wasnt easy to get a smaller front plate for my car in this very burocratic part of the world... but after about half a year, I succeeded.


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> I don’t know about Canada, but I suspect it would be unconstitutional for any state in the U.S. not to honor another state’s choice not to require front plates. Heck, how would you even do that? Pennsylvania, as far as I know, doesn’t even offer front plates, so what is someone crossing into New Jersey supposed to do? Stop at the state line to get a temporary New Jersey plate? Given the volume of traffic, that’s absurd. (I don’t understand why any state doesn’t require front plates, but that’s beside the point.)


We get spare plates in Europe that you can use when you rent a light trailer, for example. Do trailers have their own plates in the US?

But yeah, with cross-border traffic volumes being what they are, requiring everyone to fit a front plate when drive into another state would be ludicrous.



Penn's Woods said:


> European gastronomy:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> EU food agency approves mealworms as human food – DW – 01/13/2021
> 
> 
> Mealworms, whole or as powder in pasta, have become the first insect-based food approved by the EU's food safety watchdog. The EU Commission has yet to endorse the decision.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> m.dw.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> :-D


To be fair, this stuff is quite good:









Épatez vos invités... cuisinez-leur de super pâtes au menu de vos fêtes !


ALDENTO, Les pâtes artisanales 100% naturelles et enrichies à la farine d’insectes




www.goffardsisters.com


----------



## radamfi

Unsurprisingly, UK plates can no longer be produced showing the EU flag. However, existing plates do not need to be replaced. The UK, England, Scotland or Wales flags can be shown instead (and were allowed even before Brexit), but not the Northern Ireland flag. Bizarrely, someone driving into the EU with an EU flag on the plate has to have an additional GB sticker, but not someone with a plate without the EU flag as long as it has the GB symbol.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> In Canada, Ontario, British Columbia and Manitoba are the only provinces that require drivers to have license plates on the front of their vehicles and Ontario is considering getting rid of that requirement.
> 
> For the US, I had to google it:
> 
> "Thirty-one states require their motorists to display front license plates and plates on the back of their vehicles. The “Rugged Nineteen” states that require only one plate include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico. North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia."
> 
> Source: click here.


“Rugged”
[rolleyes]


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> We get spare plates in Europe that you can use when you rent a light trailer, for example. Do trailers have their own plates in the US?
> 
> But yeah, with cross-border traffic volumes being what they are, requiring everyone to fit a front plate when drive into another state would be ludicrous.
> 
> 
> 
> To be fair, this stuff is quite good:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Épatez vos invités... cuisinez-leur de super pâtes au menu de vos fêtes !
> 
> 
> ALDENTO, Les pâtes artisanales 100% naturelles et enrichies à la farine d’insectes
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.goffardsisters.com


Don’t know about trailers.

Why does it not surprise me that that insect-meal flour is from your favorite neighbor?


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> Unsurprisingly, UK plates can no longer be produced showing the EU flag. However, existing plates do not need to be replaced. The UK, England, Scotland or Wales flags can be shown instead (and were allowed even before Brexit), but not the Northern Ireland flag. Bizarrely, someone driving into the EU with an EU flag on the plate has to have an additional GB sticker, but not someone with a plate without the EU flag as long as it has the GB symbol.


Now if I’ve understood correctly, your plates are manufactured by private businesses to specifications provided by the government? Here they’re actually produced by the states. When I bought my dad’s car and registered it in Pennsylvania, I handled the registration at the AAA, and they gave me a plate from a supply they had on hand. Once found myself parked behind a plate that had the same number as mine except the last two digits, which were eight lower than mine. LLL-xx43 where I have -51. Maybe registered the day before at the same AAA office.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> Don’t know about trailers.
> 
> Why does it not surprise me that that insect-meal flour is from your favorite neighbor?


Let me amend that: There are certainly plates -on- trailers, but I -think- it’s registered to that trailer. The rear plate on the car towing it may not be visible.


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> Now if I’ve understood correctly, your plates are manufactured by private businesses to specifications provided by the government?


Yes, most car service locations can supply plates. I've just put my postcode into 





__





Find your nearest number plate supplier


Find a business that sells number plates for your vehicle




www.gov.uk





and got about 10 locations within about 20 minutes walk from here. You don't have to buy them unless your existing plates are damaged as you normally buy a car with them already fitted.


----------



## Yörch1

JackFrost said:


> Okay, I thought Canada requires both plates.
> 
> Anyway, Mexico does as far I know. So I wonder how Rambo could cross the border…


You just get a "temporary import permit" and you can bring your car into Mexico beyond the border cities. 

As for the front plates, it depends on the state but most of them require the front plate. In Jalisco state, regulation says that it is required unless the car has no place to put them at the front, as my Mazda 3.


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> “Dat Amerikanen niet altijd over een hoog IQ beschikken, dat wisten we al,...”
> 
> Dutch humor? ;-)


Lame stereotypical humor. You don't really hear that anymore these days. In much the same way the old jokes about Germans and Belgians are dying out. If you put that in your article, you're kinda showing your age.


----------



## radamfi

Suburbanist said:


> I know politicians in many countries try to be non-commital and to avoid at all costs providing materials their opponents can use as attack ads in following elections, but his British cabinet member definitively wins the prize in recent memory
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1349366803558969344


This is probably the most famous interview with a Conservative politician. He refused to answer a question _twelve_ times. He became leader of the party six years later.


----------



## PovilD

I'm starting to feel tired of this covid stuff as anytime before. I was mostly felt anxious, now I feel tired. Sorry if someone who reads it is tired too, I feel you too. I was more tolerant to the fact that we will experience second wave due to cooling weather.

Some specialists in my country fears we will have potential life "from lockdown to lockdown" which doesn't seem to be attractive at all since governments are unprepared and vaccine rollout is sluggish. I don't say anything, there could be lockdowns, but only quick up to a week lockdowns to curb the outbreak (easing the work for contact tracers), or we just "forget lockdowns" with problems like potential reinfections, increased death rate, cramped hospitals? since sorry... life is now tougher still. I'm in favor for Australia/SE Asia model anyway... relatively free life but not much covid, vaccines will probably work more effectively due to less mutations.

My wish is to reduce the spread inside Europe as much as possible, boost vaccination as soon as possible, and close most intercontinental travel. Only areas with low case rates and high vaccination rates should be opened for more proper international travel. I don't see the other way, and other way is just suicidal I think. Low vaccination/high infection rate areas should be cealed off.

Many areas in Europe now experiencing some drop in cases. I don't see no jk around with potential Third wave here especially with concerning strains.

I guess I have nothing to add there. Probably I will quit writing in this thread for a while. I feel I've been viewed here as problematic personality...

P.S. I understand those who are tired of lockdowns too. I don't dump Swedish model yet since it's interesting apporach too.


----------



## Penn's Woods

PovilD said:


> I'm starting to feel tired of this covid stuff as anytime before. I was mostly felt anxious, now I feel tired. Sorry if someone who reads it is tired too, I feel you too. I was more tolerant to the fact that we will experience second wave due to cooling weather.
> 
> Some specialists in my country fears we will have potential life "from lockdown to lockdown" which doesn't seem to be attractive at all since governments are unprepared and vaccine rollout is sluggish. I don't say anything, there could be lockdowns, but only quick up to a week lockdowns to curb the outbreak (easing the work for contact tracers), or we just "forget lockdowns" with problems like potential reinfections, increased death rate, cramped hospitals? since sorry... life is now tougher still. I'm in favor for Australia/SE Asia model anyway... relatively free life but not much covid, vaccines will probably work more effectively due to less mutations.
> 
> My wish is to reduce the spread inside Europe as much as possible, boost vaccination as soon as possible, and close most intercontinental travel. Only areas with low case rates and high vaccination rates should be opened for more proper international travel. I don't see the other way, and other way is just suicidal I think. Low vaccination/high infection rate areas should be cealed off.
> 
> Many areas in Europe now experiencing some drop in cases. I don't see no jk around with potential Third wave here especially with concerning strains.
> 
> I guess I have nothing to add there. Probably I will quit writing in this thread for a while. I feel I've been viewed here as problematic personality...
> 
> P.S. I understand those who are tired of lockdowns too. I don't dump Swedish model yet since it's interesting apporach too.


Please hang in there.


----------



## PovilD

Penn's Woods said:


> Please hang in there.


I may also get the feeling since some people are anti-lockdown or even anti-government and might be tired of reading of opinions why lockdowns are good or why curbing the spread to the minimum is good, and sometimes give opinions "Covid is just a flu", etc. ...and adding my personal situation and personal fears doesn't improve anything either.

UK is already seeing highest death rates since WWII. If not for lockdowns probably it would be higher. Sure population has increased since then, but death rates were generally getting lower and lower from year to year until now despite population growth...

I liked the summer was more free per se, but I didn't liked I was anxious about meeting people since they might test positive any time soon, and you may face self-isolation although you may not die from it or even get to the hospital...

I think we could do better than that, and have this covid stuff finally out of our heads (at least way more often than now).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The entire Dutch government tendered its resignation today. As elections were already scheduled for 17 March, this doesn't have many practical implications. Parliamentary support for the coronavirus strategy is sky high. 

The Dutch PM went to the king to tender his resignation - on a bicycle of course.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

PovilD said:


> I'm starting to feel tired of this covid stuff as anytime before. I was mostly felt anxious, now I feel tired. Sorry if someone who reads it is tired too, I feel you too. I was more tolerant to the fact that we will experience second wave due to cooling weather.


I don't feel anxious about it but it is tiring. I just find it long, I had a bit of a rough week this week at work although today was quite good. But it's all just loooong.

There probably will be another wave after this. It will pass though. Life will eventually return to normal, I don't doubt it. It's not the first pandemic we've faced as humanity and it won't be the last.


----------



## PovilD

DanielFigFoz said:


> I don't feel anxious about it but it is tiring. I just find it long, I had a bit of a rough week this week at work although today was quite good. But it's all just loooong.
> 
> There probably will be another wave after this. It will pass though. Life will eventually return to normal, I don't doubt it. It's not the first pandemic we've faced as humanity and it won't be the last.


Yeah, same feelings. I could say I'm slightly anxious for 2021, but on the other hand, I tend to feel there are starting to be more and more working solutions to this problem.


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> I'm starting to feel tired of this covid stuff as anytime before.


I'm bored more than anything else. I still go to work every day but there is not much to do so I spend a lot of time reading and on the internet.

But since I'm on a full pay I can't really complain too much  

In fact since I can't spend money on travel or going and eating out I'm saving more money than ever. So we just bought new bed and new TV. Which I placed along stationary bike I bought a few weeks ago. Now I can cycle and watch Netflix 

But I do feel sorry for people who lost jobs or for young who will really suffer with starting career. 



> Some specialists in my country fears we will have potential life "from lockdown to lockdown" which doesn't seem to be attractive at all since governments are unprepared and vaccine rollout is sluggish. I don't say anything, there could be lockdowns, but only quick up to a week lockdowns to curb the outbreak (easing the work for contact tracers), or we just "forget lockdowns" with problems like potential reinfections, increased death rate, cramped hospitals?


I think it is road to nowhere. Only vaccination offers the way out. I don't know about Lithuania but here in the UK significant relaxation probably won't happen before vaccinations of most vulnerable groups are not advanced. If we lucky they might reopen schools in mid February but even that looks increasingly less likely. I don't expect any serious reopening of economy until mid or late March, possibly later. 

It sucks. I might personally think it is screwing country in the long term and its young generation will really suffer but there is not much I can do about it so I don't dwell on it too much. Most people seem to support such approach. But it's not surprising as the whole system here is geared to support boomers' generation who decide the course of the country (like with Brexit) 



> since sorry... life is now tougher still. I'm in favor for Australia/SE Asia model anyway... relatively free life but not much covid, vaccines will probably work more effectively due to less mutations.


That horse has bolted a long time ago. With millions of infections on the continent, many of them without symptoms, we will never achieve what Australia and NZ were able to do. If you hope for it you will be disappointed. 



> I guess I have nothing to add there. Probably I will quit writing in this thread for a while. I feel I've been viewed here as problematic personality...


Keep writing. Writing can be therapeutic. I like writing what I think, even if others might not like it.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

What we can learn from history is that life will return to normal! And yes, keep writing, PovilD.

In the meantime, we have had som chilly days in the southern half of Norway. The electric consumption has been correspondingly record high with people turning up the heat in their home offices. No less than 24.5 GWh between 8 and 9 this morning, or roughly 4.5 kW on average per person. In comparison, I see that Germany had a peak consumption per capita of 0.89 kW and Netherlands 1.16. It should be added that Norway depend more on electricity for heating than most other countries, though.

Edit: Embarrassing prefix error corrected..


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> But it's not surprising as the whole system here is geared to support boomers' generation who decide the course of the country (like with Brexit)


'Boomers', or generally the population over 50, have become a much bigger share of the population pyramid than 30 or 50 years ago. This means their influence has increased, in particular politically because the younger people often do not turn out to vote. The media focuses - perhaps too excessively - on what Millennials and Gen Z find important, but statistics show that those under 30 are turning out to vote at substantially lower numbers.

And Millennials - often stereotypically thought of as students living in urban cores - are now mostly over 30 with the oldest entering their 40s by now. There is generally a trend that older people vote more conservative. Many boomers blamed for conservatism today were coming of age in the counterculture of the 1960s. People's priorities change as they get older. And the older generation is by far the largest voting block.

For example Labour has its highest support in the 18-24 age group but this group has by far the lowest turnout (47%) on top of being a smaller proportion of the overal voting population (and things will get worse). So while they are overrepresented in media, they are underrepresented politically.


----------



## radamfi

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> It should be added that Norway depend more on electricity for heating than most other countries, though.


But isn't electricity cheap in Norway?


----------



## Suburbanist

radamfi said:


> But isn't electricity cheap in Norway?


Very cheap, although the difference is becoming less and less due to cryptominers, mass data centers, and especially much higher capacity interconnections with Germany and Netherlands.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

On the other hand, wind power developments have driven the prices in the other direction. Unfortunately, there is typically very little wind during the coldest periods.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> And Millennials - often stereotypically thought of as students living in urban cores - are now mostly over 30 with the oldest entering their 40s by now. There is generally a trend that older people vote more conservative. Many boomers blamed for conservatism today were coming of age in the counterculture of the 1960s. People's priorities change as they get older. And the older generation is by far the largest voting block.


A lot of people are pinning their hopes on the current younger generation to vote out the Tories and get us back into the EU in the future. The counter argument is that young people get more right wing as they get older. So I had a look at the general election results when Thatcher was prime minister from 1979 to 1990. If you look at the age profile in the 1979, 1983 and 1987 elections, which Thatcher won convincingly, the 18-24 age group voted roughly in a similar way to older age groups. So whilst these people are the people voting for the Tories and Brexit now, they were already voting Tory in the 80s.






How Britain Voted Since October 1974


Demographic breakdown of voting from MORI's election aggregates of polls (corrected to the final result), 1974-2010




www.ipsos.com





The diverse age profile we have currently have is a relatively recent phenomenon.

It also has to be remembered that Labour had a very unelectable leader at the 2019 election. The current leader seems a much more viable prime minister. Given that the Tories have now moved so far to the right, it should be easier for Labour to take the middle ground, which is essential in a First Past the Post voting system. This was the tactic used by Tony Blair to great effect in the 90s. Blair managed to get middle class votes in the London commuter belt and perhaps these voters should be wooed instead of trying to reclaim the so-called "red wall" of working class areas in the north.


----------



## Penn's Woods

On the New Jersey Turnpike, headed to Philadelphia. Washington is in the same direction. Stopped for lunch. Contingent of about six Customs & Border Patrol using the men’s room. (And I saw three of their vehicles traveling as a group.) CNN on the TVs inside, carrying a briefing about security preparations for the inauguration.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> A lot of people are pinning their hopes on the current younger generation to vote out the Tories and get us back into the EU in the future.


While perennial tory governments are not guaranteed with the aging of the population, I think the idea that younger people will radically change things forever is overrated. 

Around 2010, there were popular stories about Millennials 'moving back' to the cities, ditching car ownership and suburban lifestyles. While this was a trend for a few years, Millennials quickly became the largest house and car buying cohort by the mid-2010s. They move to the suburbs just as much as previous generations, though maybe slightly delayed. When it comes to people getting older, trends that are 'more of the same' like previous generations are more likely than 'radical change'. That's not to say there are no societal changes at all of course, but focusing all hope on a small cohort of young people won't work. 

Voting age people in their early 20s are only a small proportion of the entire voting age population and on top of that they have lower turnout. While it seems on (social) media that most activists are young, an even larger amount of young people don't even care enough to go vote, let alone become an activist.


----------



## aubergine72

italystf said:


> About 10 years ago I saw a couple of US cars without front plate in Italy. I think they were from Florida and Kansas.


In Quebec there are no front plates.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> While perennial tory governments are not guaranteed with the aging of the population, I think the idea that younger people will radically change things forever is overrated.


And yet things do change. Take any social issue, from LGBT to abortion, and every generation pushes boundary of what is "the norm".

So yes, people are getting more conservative when they age, but almost always they are less conservative than the previous generation.

So people might still be buying cars and moving to the suburbs (which i Europe are not growing nowhere near as fast as in the past) but at least they don't propose destroying neighborhoods to make space for urban motorways or other similar stupid ideas from the past.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> So yes, people are getting more conservative when they age, but almost always they are less conservative than the previous generation.


I think this is mostly due to the secularisation, conservatism has evolved beyond the traditional religious sphere. From religious conservative to liberal conservative (in a European sense) and populist/nationalist. 

If every young voter since the 1960s would keep voting for progressive parties, they would've build up a huge voting block over time, which they didn't. Social democrats are performing poorly across much of Europe, seeing huge declines in Germany, Italy, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Greece, Czechia and even Sweden. Many social democrat parties that once dominated politics have hit their worst election results in recent years, this is called Pasokification.


----------



## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> Most new aparment buildings in Estonia use district heating and most new detached or semi-detached houses use heat pumps. Geothermal is used as well but to a lesser degree since the installation cost is higher. Also, if you use horisontal piping you can't really plant any trees in that area which might be a significant portion of your plot. Drilling deep holes for geothermal is too expensive in most cases to make economic sense. All in all district heating is the most common form of heating in Estonia, making up roughly half of all housing stock.
> 
> My friends recently moved to Oslo and I was surprised to find out that electric radiators are so common there. I guess it comes down to cheap electricity prices. In Estonia electric heating is something that was installed only for a relatively short period in the 90s.


It is much about what is available. The electric panels are very cheap to install. Quite a standard setup nowadays in Finland outside the reach of district heating is electricity plus an air-souce heat pump.

Our town home has a central heating. The typical annual cost of heating (including making warm water) is currently about 15 euros per square meter. Depends, of course, on the outside temperature. Heating makes about 25% of the running costs of the housing community (25 flats in terrace houses).

The country-side home consists of two log houses. Log is not a very good insulation material. We have electricity panels and one infrared heater there. Last March-April we stayed there five weeks in a row in an isolation for the Covid-19, and kept the both houses warm. The electricity bill was almost 15 euros per day.


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Installing central heating system for existing houses is extremely expensive and normally does not make economic sense.


Well, it depends. If the existing system is based on waterborne radiators, and the pipes are in an ok condition, moving to the central heating is about carrying the boiler out and the heat exchanger in. But the local tariff policy might turn the business case upside down.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

MattiG said:


> It is much about what is available. The electric panels are very cheap to install. Quite a standard setup nowadays in Finland outside the reach of district heating is electricity plus an air-souce heat pump.


In new detached and semi-detached homes over here the heat pump is usually combined with an underfloor heating system since that's the most effective way to use an air heat pump. And if you do that you have no need for electric radiators. In case of extremely cold weather there is an electric heating element in the boiler itself so that takes care of the peak load.

In Tallinn district heating costs currently around €56 per MWh. Electricity price depends on your contract but for the month of December I paid € 0.1229 per kWh or € 122.9 per MWh. That's 2.2 times the price of district heating.


----------



## andken

PovilD said:


> What are thoughts about situation in Brazil?


1-) Brazil has a something effective public healthcare system(SUS, that could be translated as Single Healthcare System). It's a system managed both by the federal government and the states and municipalities. For instance, the federal government buys insulin, and then the states and municipalities distribute it. In Brazil the Health Minister, that manages this infrastructure, is pretty powerful. Far more than the Health Minister in France, unimaginably more powerful than anyone in the American healthcare bureaucracy.

2-) That became a problem when the country elected a weirdo as President because it was very easy for this weirdo to sabotage the entire response to a pandemic. Bolsonaro thought that if he ignored Covid-19 it would go away. And that what he did. He didn't want to face the economic consequences of even mild restrictions, nor do the hard work that would allow controlling the virus without major restrictions(Like Uruguay did).

3-) That means that people are not being tested. I was never tested, and never had to give my address or ID number for any type of tracing. Even people with symptoms are not being tested. So, no one really knows how many of these variants are out there. I also think that there are lots of variants in Mexico and in the United States that no one knows about. Maybe there is a North Dakota variant, a Swedish variant. That might explain why there is an increase in infections and deaths in Europe and the Americas.

4-) I think that in places with high seropositity rates, like Manaus, it's easier to control the number of infections. That doesn't mean that there is "herd immunity" and people can ignore the virus. It only means that it's _easier _to control things. People in Manaus thought that they could basically ignore the virus. There is clear fatigue over social isolation in Brazil, that does not help. Note this photo, it's from last December(!):










Brazilian media is talking about reinfections, but I don't know. I don't think that the number of cases and infections in Manaus would _require _reinfections - it might just mean that "herd immunity" was a complete nonsense. But it also possible that people are being reinfected - without testing we don't really know. I also imagine that there are variants in Mexico and the United States that we don't know.

I'm seeing a skyrocketing number of cases in the Americas and in Europe(In Europe if you consider the lockdown) and that could be explained by more contagious variants. Even with vacines I'm really pessimistic.


----------



## Suburbanist

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Oil heaters are no longer allowed to be used in Norwegian homes.


I didn't mean oil heaters where oil is the fuel, just those systems where oil is the heat transfer medium (including portable ones). So electricity heats oil that heats radiators.


----------



## PovilD

andken said:


> 1-) Brazil has a something effective public healthcare system(SUS, that could be translated as Single Healthcare System). It's a system managed both by the federal government and the states and municipalities. For instance, the federal government buys insulin, and then the states and municipalities distribute it. In Brazil the Health Minister, that manages this infrastructure, is pretty powerful. Far more than the Health Minister in France, unimaginably more powerful than anyone in the American healthcare bureaucracy.
> 
> 2-) That became a problem when the country elected a weirdo as President because it was very easy for this weirdo to sabotage the entire response to a pandemic. Bolsonaro thought that if he ignored Covid-19 it would go away. And that what he did. He didn't want to face the economic consequences of even mild restrictions, nor do the hard work that would allow controlling the virus without major restrictions(Like Uruguay did).
> 
> 3-) That means that people are not being tested. I was never tested, and never had to give my address or ID number for any type of tracing. Even people with symptoms are not being tested. So, no one really knows how many of these variants are out there. I also think that there are lots of variants in Mexico and in the United States that no one knows about. Maybe there is a North Dakota variant, a Swedish variant. That might explain why there is an increase in infections and deaths in Europe and the Americas.
> 
> 4-) I think that in places with high seropositity rates, like Manaus, it's easier to control the number of infections. That doesn't mean that there is "herd immunity" and people can ignore the virus. It only means that it's _easier _to control things. People in Manaus thought that they could basically ignore the virus. There is clear fatigue over social isolation in Brazil, that does not help. Note this photo, it's from last December(!):
> 
> View attachment 971465
> 
> 
> Brazilian media is talking about reinfections, but I don't know. I don't think that the number of cases and infections in Manaus would _require _reinfections - it might just mean that "herd immunity" was a complete nonsense. But it also possible that people are being reinfected - without testing we don't really know. I also imagine that there are variants in Mexico and the United States that we don't know.
> 
> I'm seeing a skyrocketing number of cases in the Americas and in Europe(In Europe if you consider the lockdown) and that could be explained by more contagious variants. Even with vacines I'm really pessimistic.


I've liked your insight, but I don't like feeling pessimistic about vaccines, and variants makes me kinda anxious, at least in European context. Sure, vaccinations wouldn't be quick, but at least getting hospitals out of cramping would be very desirable. Israel/Palestine, UAE are somewhere at the point of achieving this.


----------



## radamfi

I saw an interview with someone involved in vaccines when the UK variant started and he sounded fairly sure that vaccines would still work against it and even if they didn't it would be a relatively small change to the vaccine to make it work again. I suspect we will be taking vaccines regularly for the next few years at least to cope with variants. Similar to what we do for flu vaccines, as the flu changes every year.


----------



## PovilD

radamfi said:


> I saw an interview with someone involved in vaccines when the UK variant started and he sounded fairly sure that vaccines would still work against it and even if they didn't it would be a relatively small change to the vaccine to make it work again. I suspect we will be taking vaccines regularly for the next few years at least to cope with variants. Similar to what we do for flu vaccines, as the flu changes every year.


I guess there would be/there are variants (that) would affect sterilizing immunity, but maybe we would need years, not months, for concerning variant to develop that would make more hospitalizations despite vaccine (maybe my thoughts are kinda optimistic, but still). That's why I think is the best to have some sort of Intercontinental ban for some time being to learn more about how the virus changes, and how it affect vaccines. I don't say we should ban travel inside continent, and I think sophisticated continents like Europe could do better with genome sequencing and research, taking more care on people with more concerning strains, not going into worse case scenarios like we have with the UK. We shouldn't go barefoot here.

I guess sterilizing immunity could be stage two in getting out of this pandemic. Stage one is to reduce hospitalizations, but it would be nice if sterilizing immunity would work too.


----------



## Suburbanist

International overseas travel is still low, but already very far from a ban as in March of last year. It is just not feasible, without imposing a lot of further damage, to prevent people from traveling for reasons as diverse as moving in with a new spouse, taking up a new job offer abroad, or going on some work secondment, or going on long-stay family visits.

Restricting most short-term tourism (business or leisure) creates an acute but relatively concentrated problem in a couple economic sectors. A long-term ban on long-distance travel is much, much more problematic.


----------



## Suburbanist

RNAm vaccinations are said to be more likely to retain very high efficacy against most mutations, and they are also the easiest ones to be repurposed. It seems RNAm immunization seems to be a major breakthrough achieved as part of the unprecedented research effort on vaccines.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

MattiG said:


> Well, it depends. If the existing system is based on waterborne radiators, and the pipes are in an ok condition, moving to the central heating is about carrying the boiler out and the heat exchanger in. But the local tariff policy might turn the business case upside down.


I think maybe we are talking about different things. In my book:

Central heating: One boiler or other heat source in a house with the heat distributed around the house by circulation of hot water, typically to radiators or floor heating. A major operation to install in existing houses
District heating: A heat source serving a larger area. Waste incineration or combustion of biomass or other fuels, or excess heat from industrial processes are typical heat sources. Many Norwegian cities have such systems, but they typically serve larger users /building complexes, heating pavements etc. But you are right, shifting from a boiler to this I guess is straight forward. Bringing the hot water to each individual house is normally still a major undertaking, especially when most houses in most residential areas is not ready to accept that hot water.



Suburbanist said:


> I didn't mean oil heaters where oil is the fuel, just those systems where oil is the heat transfer medium (including portable ones). So electricity heats oil that heats radiators.


I understood, but obviously was not expressing myself clearly. What I meant was that any residential system using oil or kerosene burners for heating.

The oil filled radiators you describe are normally mobile units standing on the floor, which means that it is, like fan ovens, easy to move around. They were quite popular 20 years ago, but since it has been warned against them as they have caused multiple fires following oil leaks. 

Wall mounted convection heaters, also called panel heaters, are by far the most popular electrical heater type, at least in Norway. An advantage is that their footprint is small compared with the heat they produce. A disadvantage is they can turn dust into sooth as the air flows directly through the glowing heating wires, so it not something you want to place below valuable art work. In that case, you should rather use a heater where the wires are integrated into something else (like e. g. radiators), but such heaters are more bulky.


----------



## radamfi

Before reading this thread I hadn't even heard of district heating. Other than small flats like I mentioned earlier, almost all houses in the UK have gas central heating.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

District heating has seen limited usage in the Netherlands, from what I've heard from people I know and media reports, these systems are unpopular: expensive, don't always deliver hot water and no flexibility to choose another supplier like with gas and electricity (no competition, poor service). 

The Netherlands became a major producer of natural gas in the 1960s so most houses are connected to gas pipes. As this is a fossil fuel, there are policies enacted to move away from them but this is increasingly being criticized: natural gas is one of the cleanest sources of fossil fuels and the energy transition cost is much higher than anticipated, in case of 1950s and 1960s housing a complete demolition may be required to switch to heat pumps.


----------



## Suburbanist

The problem is that the cheapest Groningen gas reserves are dwindling down. Options are fracking of the fringe glacial area (which causes small earthquakes) or off-shore drilling of the deep gas layers.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Or imports from Norway or Russia. But they say that this gas has a different composition so it's not automatically suitable for Dutch systems apparently. But I assume they're already importing some, considering that gas production in Groningen has already gone down by some 80% over the past few years.


----------



## radamfi

Is district heating more advantageous in countries with more severe winters?


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I don't really think so, but it is quite widespread in Eastern Europe and Russia, I believe. One advantage ahead is that big boilers or waste incineration plants are viable sources for CCS, which of course is not the case when the heat is produced in each individual house.


ChrisZwolle said:


> District heating has seen limited usage in the Netherlands, from what I've heard from people I know and media reports, these systems are unpopular: expensive, don't always deliver hot water and no flexibility to choose another supplier like with gas and electricity (no competition, poor service).


I believe you when you say that is the Dutch experience, but often there is no other good way of utilizing excess heat from waste incinerators and industrial processes. 


ChrisZwolle said:


> Or imports from Norway or Russia. But they say that this gas has a different composition so it's not automatically suitable for Dutch systems apparently.


Or hydrogen? Only rational, though, if produced from excess electricity (green H2) or from natural gas with CCS (blue H2).


----------



## andken

PovilD said:


> I've liked your insight, but I don't like feeling pessimistic about vaccines, and variants makes me kinda anxious, at least in European context. Sure, vaccinations wouldn't be quick, but at least getting hospitals out of cramping would be very desirable.


I'm pessimistic because I don't see how that s* can be controlled until we have large populations vaccinated. Until even younger people are vaccinated I think that I'm going to be a pessimistic. ;-D


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> In 1970's, the Finnish authorities forbade installing a direct electric heating for those homes where the state granted part of the loan. Instead, the oil heating was pushed heavily. Until end on 1980's, the oil was still the default setup, but the electricity was as accepted option, subject to some paper work. Installing a traditional wood stove was a plus, and it was rewarded by the state. Nowadays the oil heating is no-no.


Oil as heating source was popular in Poland only for a very short period around late 1990s and early 2000s. After that it got very expensive, and many people switched back to coal.



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Is there any plans for coal phase-out in Poland? I probably miss a detail here, but corrosion rates are normally higher with higher temperatures.


Coal phase-out – but do you mean as heating source in individual detached houses, or for generation of electricity?

If we talk about electricity – now the government says something about their plans to build a nuclear power plant. Not long ago they also opened a new natural gas power plant somewhere in the country. In general, it certainly will be a long process because there is simply no other way. We can't go 100% renewable (no country can) because conventional energy sources are necessary to stabilize the grid and compensate for variations in energy consumption. And the production of electricity from conventional sources in the country is currently based on coal almost in 100%.

A year or so ago, the government started promoting installing solar cells in the households. They pay 5000 PLN (about 1000 EUR) for every such set-up installed (unless it's very small, then it's a percentage of the price of the set-up), and if you have over-production of energy in summer, you can use 80% of it in winter (when the production from your solar cells is very small). Although the energy providers are already calling the government to change this scheme, as it obviously puts the grid into even more imbalance.

IF we talk about burning coal for individual house central heating – currently only the most efficient coal boilers, and with the lowest emissions, can even be sold. The rules about when even that may become illegal differ from region to region. In my region there is no deadline for removing those most efficient coal boilers – but I will be able to legally use mine (which is old and doesn't belong to those most efficient – although it's also not that bad; it's "class 3" according to the standard, and the best ones are "class 5") until 2026. Probably most coal boilers used in the region will become illegal already in 2023. And the government is going to build a countrywide registry of all the heating systems at individual houses and apartments in the country, like it is with cars, to be able to trace and control that.



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Air to air heat pumps are much cheaper to install, but still the net cost benefit is rather marginal in Norway.


For some reason they aren't very popular in Poland. In old houses the reason is obvious, they already have the whole set-ups with pipes, radiators and so on, to which you can quite easily connect an air-to-water heat pump instead of e.g. a coal boiler. And air-to-air pumps would require either installing a unit in every room, or building the whole air distribution system from scratch.



MattiG said:


> Quite a standard setup nowadays in Finland outside the reach of district heating is electricity plus an air-souce heat pump.


In Poland it really differs. This year someone bought piece of land at the neighborhood (previously used by someone like an allotment garden, although it was just a normal piece of land suitable for building a house there), and build a house there. Interestingly, in a technology, which isn't very popular in Poland – based on a wood skeleton, like it's usually done in Scandinavia and in North America but not in most of Europe, including Poland, where brick walls (or made of other brick-like thingies, like those lightweight white concrete blocks; gas concrete, cell concrete or whatever you call it) are the dominant style.

And he installed an outdoor gas tank, so it seems he has a gas boiler. I haven't asked why not a heat pump. But heat pumps are also quite popular for newly built houses. They are more expensive to install than gas heating – but you save on the chimney, which also costs something to build.

This year also the legal requirements for the thermal insulation of newly built houses changed, now they have to be even closer to passive houses... And heating them just with electric heaters may also make financial sense, taking into account that it's the cheapest system to install and its usage will not cost much in such a well-insulated house anyway.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Or imports from Norway or Russia.


Poland is now working hard on diversifying the supply of natural gas. Until recently, for infrastructural reasons, we were forced to buy it from Russia. Which is, obviously, a difficult partner to negotiate with, and this gas aspect also influenced the politics; basically if Russia didn't like some political decisions of Poland very much – they could freeze us by cutting us off from their gas supply. Not immediately, because the country also keeps some reserves – but anyway it was a way through which they had political impact on us. 

One of the large investments of the last years was building a gas port in Świnoujście, which allows us now to import gas on ships. There is also a pipeline under construction to, if I remember well, Denmark, which will allow us to import gas from Norway.



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Not sure, don't really think so, but it is quite widespread in Eastern Europe and Russia, I think.


In Poland it's only widespread in cities.


----------



## italystf

PovilD said:


> I guess there would be/there are variants (that) would affect sterilizing immunity, but maybe we would need years, not months, for concerning variant to develop that would make more hospitalizations despite vaccine (maybe my thoughts are kinda optimistic, but still). That's why I think is the best to have some sort of Intercontinental ban for some time being to learn more about how the virus changes, and how it affect vaccines. I don't say we should ban travel inside continent, and I think sophisticated continents like Europe could do better with genome sequencing and research, taking more care on people with more concerning strains, not going into worse case scenarios like we have with the UK. We shouldn't go barefoot here.
> 
> I guess sterilizing immunity could be stage two in getting out of this pandemic. Stage one is to reduce hospitalizations, but it would be nice if sterilizing immunity would work too.


Apparently Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines do block transmission in most cases. In Israel, where about 1/3 of population is already vaccinated, cases are slowly decreasing.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't know what they're doing, they've seemed to have lost their minds. All the 'intelligent' from the first wave has been replaced with a dumb carpet bombing strategy: just spit out restrictions and see what sticks.
> 
> But people buy it. The curfew may have been the most controversial restriction so far, but the 300 days of non-stop fearmongering in the media has resulted in a hugely exaggerated fear. The British variant is a headline almost the entire day for weeks now.
> 
> If you're under 60, you have a greater annual chance of dying from a random accident (0.05%) than from a covid-19 infection (0.00 - 0.05% depending on age).


They haven't lost their minds, don't exaggerate.

The curfew was implemented because of the British strain of the virus. The overall numbers are falling, for now, but within those numbers, the British strain is multiplying fast.










Most people continue to contract the virus in the home-setting, typically by having visitors.

So the curfew is an attempt to stop people visiting each other for dinner and drinks. Will it work? I don't know. But all the other measures aren't stopping the British strain of the virus, so something needs to be done.

Also, your statistics are an oversimplification that doesn't take into account the phenomenon of long-covid where people suffer debilitating symptoms for months. Scientists believe 2% of all patients who contract covid-19 will develop long-covid lasting their entire lives (like Lyme disease or Q-fever). For the Netherlands, that comes down to over 18.000 people already.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> But all the other measures aren't stopping the British strain of the virus


Well, this is the problem. The restrictions do a lot of damage, but are apparently not really effective. Care homes continue to be infected all over the country despite the lockdowns & restrictions, protective equipment, testing and much more knowledge. There government has sunk into a trap of ever more restrictions and don't know how to get out of it. I don't count on anything until April.


----------



## radamfi

Case numbers in the epicentre of the British variant (known in the tabloid British press as the "Kent variant") seem to have been falling gradually for the last week or so.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Well, this is the problem. The restrictions do a lot of damage, but are apparently not really effective. Care homes continue to be infected all over the country despite the lockdowns & restrictions, protective equipment, testing and much more knowledge. There government has sunk into a trap of ever more restrictions and don't know how to get out of it. I don't count on anything until April.


I agree. They've painted themselves into a corner.

We're basically at the mercy of the weather now. Let's hope for an early Spring.

Let's hope, also, that voters remember how the government botched buying protective equipment, how the government failed to set up a proper track-and-trace system, how the government is failing to curtail second and third waves in care homes and how the government is struggling to implement a proper vaccination program. 

Yet still the VVD top the polls. You get the leaders you deserve, I guess.


----------



## PovilD

I think the best option is to put cases down to zero, no matter how long it takes, implement good contact tracing and quarantines on arrivals from all suspicious regions, since it seems lightening restrictions too early doesn't cost less, unless go meh about life and death.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

__





Put Bernie Anywhere!






bernie-sits.herokuapp.com





The latest Bernie Sanders meme. You can put Bernie anywhere 😅


----------



## PovilD

Bernie visiting my life in Post-Soviet environment


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Kind of nice that Biden also had a copy of the MUTCD with him.


The ghosts of early-19th-century Southern politicians are muttering about how a federal role in "internal improvements" is unconstitutional....


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Well, this is the problem. The restrictions do a lot of damage, but are apparently not really effective. Care homes continue to be infected all over the country despite the lockdowns & restrictions, protective equipment, testing and much more knowledge. There government has sunk into a trap of ever more restrictions and don't know how to get out of it. I don't count on anything until April.


Heard this morning (afternoon your time) the Belgian federal government is expected to prohibit "non-essential travel" starting this evening until the end of February.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> Case numbers in the epicentre of the British variant (known in the tabloid British press as the "Kent variant") seem to have been falling gradually for the last week or so.


Glad to hear it. Because we're starting to hear concerns it may not be as responsive to the vaccines.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> I agree. They've painted themselves into a corner.
> 
> We're basically at the mercy of the weather now. Let's hope for an early Spring.
> 
> Let's hope, also, that voters remember how the government botched buying protective equipment, how the government failed to set up a proper track-and-trace system, how the government is failing to curtail second and third waves in care homes and how the government is struggling to implement a proper vaccination program.
> 
> Yet still the VVD top the polls. You get the leaders you deserve, I guess.


I hesitate to ask, but out of curiosity, who do you support? (You can of course not answer.)


----------



## Penn's Woods

PovilD said:


> Bernie visiting my life in Post-Soviet environment
> View attachment 994404
> 
> 
> View attachment 994407


Well, he -is- a socialist, sort of. :troll:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The British variant was found on a school in the Netherlands in late December. They mass-tested the entire municipality of 63,000 people over the past few days, but after a month of possible spread, they found only 1 British variant case outside of that school.


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> Glad to hear it. Because we're starting to hear concerns it may not be as responsive to the vaccines.


According to today's Downing Street briefing, the UK variant may be more deadly but the vaccines should work. However there are concerns about whether the vaccines will work against the South Africa and Brazil variants.









Coronavirus: UK variant 'may be more deadly'


Evidence suggests the variant that emerged in the UK may be more deadly as well as faster-spreading.



www.bbc.co.uk


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> According to today's Downing Street briefing, the UK variant may be more deadly but the vaccines should work. However there are concerns about whether the vaccines will work against the South Africa and Brazil variants.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Coronavirus: UK variant 'may be more deadly'
> 
> 
> Evidence suggests the variant that emerged in the UK may be more deadly as well as faster-spreading.
> 
> 
> 
> www.bbc.co.uk


Ah. I must have misheard.


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> I hesitate to ask, but out of curiosity, who do you support? (You can of course not answer.)


I don't identify with any one particular party. I've voted D66, CDA, VVD, PvdA and even GroenLinks once. It depends on the state of the nation and the most pressing issues at that time, as well as the leader and general direction of a party.

I believe in course correction. In a system like ours, voters should always be prepared to switch parties.


----------



## Suburbanist

Slagathor said:


> I don't identify with any one particular party. I've voted D66, CDA, VVD, PvdA and even GroenLinks once. It depends on the state of the nation and the most pressing issues at that time, as well as the leader and general direction of a party.
> 
> I believe in course correction. In a system like ours, voters should always be prepared to switch parties.


Would you consider PvdD, SGP and 50Plus?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've heard from religious people who are turned off by the Christian Union (CU) for being too progressive / left-wing on many issues, some have switched to SGP since they moderated their policies on women. My city is surrounded by Bible Belt municipalities. SGP usually doesn't get many votes in Zwolle, they don't participate in municipal elections over here, despite surrounding municipalities having a heavy SGP presence.

CDA is only nominally religious nowadays. They're more about moral / christian values than active religious policy. They have a big agrarian electorate in rural Netherlands, though some of those switched to FvD over the nitrogen policies.

Party switching is very common in the Netherlands. This makes polling somewhat difficult. They always say that there is a substantial share of undecided votes who don't make up their mind until they're in the polling booth. I'd say most polls are relatively accurate considering our splintered political landscape. But since there is no winner takes all system, a few percentage points swing doesn't turn the result upside down as they would in the U.S. or UK.


----------



## Slagathor

Suburbanist said:


> Would you consider PvdD, SGP and 50Plus?


PvdD I suppose is not entirely out of the question, but it wouldn't become an option for me unless many other issues I care about had been solved already. Animal rights are a noble cause, but not in my personal top 5 of most pressing concerns.

SGP - I'm happily gay married so obviously not.

50+ maybe when I'm 50+.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't know what they're doing, they've seemed to have lost their minds. All the 'intelligent' from the first wave has been replaced with a dumb carpet bombing strategy: just spit out restrictions and see what sticks.


In Poland it has been so from the beginning, and while initially people now accepted it, now we observe more and more banned businesses opening, ignoring the restrictions.

And we have big problems with the vaccines. Initially, there was a vaccine scandal, in which in the first stage, apart from the medical personnel, some celebrities got vaccinated. The hospital which did that claimed that they had unfrozen vaccines left that otherwise would be wasted – but actually, not all the employees were vaccinated, and there were also students having practical classes there (as it was a university hospital), who weren't vaccinated. Now – the vaccines come to Poland from Pfizer in much smaller amounts than it was ordered, and as a result, there are vaccine stations that can vaccinate e.g. only several patients a day.

The previous week, the first restriction was released – the students of primary school grades from 1 to 3 went back to school.


----------



## riiga

MattiG said:


> The attitude in Sweden has been pretty different, because Swedes still think they are immortal chosen people.


Rude.


----------



## PovilD

Suburbanist said:


> Temperature seems to have little impact. The virus is spreading on equatorial areas of Brazil, Indonesia...


Why Sweden saw cases down in summer, and now we have the opposite? Same pattern for Belarus.

I think we shouldn't play guessing game from Tropical areas. Usage of aircon, less vit. D due to avoiding sun., etc. might be factors. The reason why Northern part of U.S. was relatively free from virus, while it was mostly Southern states that suffered.

Btw, I heard cold weather reduces spread, like really cold weather, like that in Siberia/North Scandinavia. I think due to people are more likely to avoid unnecessary meetings to avoid beeing outside. Most indoor mixing is probably at temperatures around freezing point. Not too cold not to go outside, but not too warm to be in well ventilated areas/indoor areas are poorly ventilated.


----------



## Slagathor

Curfew in the Netherlands.

Amsterdam









Haarlem









Rotterdam









The Hague


----------



## Suburbanist

PovilD said:


> Why Sweden saw cases down in summer, and now we have the opposite? Same pattern for Belarus.
> 
> I think we shouldn't play guessing game from Tropical areas. Usage of aircon, less vit. D due to avoiding sun., etc. might be factors. The reason why Northern part of U.S. was relatively free from virus, while it was mostly Southern states that suffered.
> 
> Btw, I heard cold weather reduces spread, like really cold weather, like that in Siberia/North Scandinavia. I think due to people are more likely to avoid unnecessary meetings to avoid beeing outside. Most indoor mixing is probably at temperatures around freezing point. Not too cold not to go outside, but not too warm to be in well ventilated areas/indoor areas are poorly ventilated.


I think it is just a coincidental period when the first wave subsided (back when Corona was far more scary), until it the very slowly picked up again.

At first, cases were through the roof (mainly through widespread testing, not available in the Spring), but hospitalizations didn't. Then, we started getting mutations.

But even if you want to disregard tropical areas, Argentina (with a subtropical climate in Buenos Aires) just had cases and deaths skyrocket as it entered the Southern hemisphere summer.

Now, we understand that most contagion occurs either at prolonged exposure like social setting where people interact, or through a few hypercharged superspreader events. There is no reason to suspect the weather any longer (public transportation end up being not a high-risk activity except cruises where, alas, people chat, talk, eat in common settings, a lot).


----------



## Suburbanist

It is so sad to see Amsterdam shut off like that. Friends who live in the metro areas, as I said, are already saying they miss the hustle and bustle of the city.


----------



## Suburbanist




----------



## geogregor

In London we got dusting of snow earlier today, first time for a while.

These are views from my windows:

DSC05674 by Geogregor*, on Flickr 


DSC05666 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC05668 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Of course snow immediately become a major news story as well as got people outside.

This is Greenwich Park:









Hampstead Heath:









Battersea Park:


----------



## radamfi

I'm about 50 km south of London and it snowed for about two hours this morning. But most of it has already melted away. We haven't had any disruptive snowfall here for at least two years.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> I'm about 50 km south of London and it snowed for about two hours this morning. But most of it has already melted away. We haven't had any disruptive snowfall here for at least two years.


Most of the snow in London is also gone. The problem will be the overnight frost, it will be icy morning tomorrow. Hopefully overnight contractors will treat platforms on the station I work tomorrow, otherwise I will have busy morning...

In the 15 years I live in London I remember only two really significant snow events. Especially one was quote big, proper snow for a good week. It must have been a decade ago or so.


----------



## PovilD

It's snowing there too in Kaunas after relatively long period of above freezing temperatures (from Wednesday, I think), despite forecasts was saying it will just rain (mostly). I'm quite surprised how slowly the snow had melted, and I think with new colder wave, we should have continuous snow cover for weeks now. Quite contrast what was happening with last year: warmest winter followed by strangest times in decades.


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> Most of the snow in London is also gone. The problem will be the overnight frost, it will be icy morning tomorrow. Hopefully overnight contractors will treat platforms on the station I work tomorrow, otherwise I will have busy morning...
> 
> In the 15 years I live in London I remember only two really significant snow events. Especially one was quote big, proper snow for a good week. It must have been a decade ago or so.


That was probably 2009. I was working in Woking at the time and I remember the boss ensuring that we had our laptops so we could work from home, which wasn't really the done thing back then. I also remember taking a photo of my car thermometer on the way home as I had never seen it show -10 before.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The last few winters in the Netherlands were mild with only minor frost and hardly any snow. This winter has so far been similar, albeit not as warm, most days seem to be in the -2 to +5 range. 

9 years ago we had -22 in the Netherlands.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands has a curfew since yesterday, it starts at 9 p.m. However this seems to have exceeded a limit people are willing to accept. There were some minor anti-lockdown protests in the past but the situation has become more grim, there was quite a big riot in Eindhoven today and more cities are reporting rioting, vandalism, arson and unrest due to large groups of youths clashing with police. A covid-19 testing location was set on fire yesterday in Urk during clashes with police. Riots are rare in the Netherlands.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands has a curfew since yesterday, it starts at 9 p.m. However this seems to have exceeded a limit people are willing to accept. There were some minor anti-lockdown protests in the past but the situation has become more grim, there was quite a big riot in Eindhoven today and more cities are reporting rioting, vandalism, arson and unrest due to large groups of youths clashing with police. A covid-19 testing location was set on fire yesterday in Urk during clashes with police. *Riots are rare in the Netherlands.*


That's a bit of bold statement...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Riots of this scale are relatively rare. Unless you call a protest with a trashed bus stop a riot. Or an average night in Schilderswijk? 🙃 They call it the worst riots in 40 years.


----------



## Slagathor

Granted, I used to live right next to Schilderswijk so my view may be tainted. 

But what about all those football-related riots?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Places with unrest / riots this weekend:


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Nothing like a Sunday night riot. Why mostly in the south?


----------



## Slagathor

Brabant and Limburg provinces have a higher density of deplorables. Every election map sees the extreme right winning most of their votes there too.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

They also eat _friet_ instead of _patat_. 🙃 









Patat-frietgrens - Wikipedia







nl.wikipedia.org


----------



## Slagathor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> With "cramped living conditions" I considered the area per person and quality of homes. That is what I imagine matters most during strict lockdown and in particular curfew, not the landscape you can see from your window.


That matters a lot though. 

I'm lucky enough to live in Zeeland which is relatively sparsely populated, but in many parts of the country people effectively can't go outside. The small natural parks that we do have get so crowded, the authorities are quick to close them. So going for a walk in natural surroundings is not self-evident. Nor is walking through the city because sidewalks are crowded and you have to keep a distance from others. 

It gets pretty claustrophobic.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I guess my imagination was not well developed enough. Indeed. I feel priveleged living closer to the North Pole than to some European capitals these days, but then I always do.....

Speaking of which, while working from home I try weekly or so to to make a break in the endless sequence of Teams meetings to go skiing during daylight, which is much more feasible than from the downtown office. I am surprised to see though, that the number of people out there is comparable or higher than what I see during the weekends in a normal year. Covid-19 has indeed accelarated the already existing growth in popularity for outdoor activities around here, as many shun gyms etc (which actually still are not closed), and have more flexible hours.


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> Wow. When did that happen? I think if you go back far enough Belgium actually had more people than the Netherlands, and a smaller land area.


B vs NL population 1900 to 2020:


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> B vs NL population 1900 to 2020:
> 
> View attachment 1008822


That recently! I knew Belgium was larger during the United Netherlands period...1814-1830.


----------



## Slagathor

In 1848 (the year the current Netherlands properly got underway with a new constitution), the Netherlands only had some 3 million people. Can you imagine how much space we had?


----------



## radamfi

In NW Europe generally, the amount of space you have doesn't seem to be that related to population density. People in the Netherlands and Belgium mostly live in terraced or semi-detached houses, often with gardens. Even in most of London that is the case. Ireland (Republic) is very thinly populated outside the Dublin region. Yet if you go to the other major "cities" (no town in Ireland other than Dublin and Cork has a population of over 100,000), people still mostly live in terraced or semi-detached houses. They don't take advantage of the huge space they have.


----------



## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> To be honest, I have been impressed with the youth throughout this pandemic. A year is an eternity for them, at least for the teens, and a lot of the socializing that normally is an important ingredient of growing up has been put at halt. *Not that I in any way defend rioting*, I can understand that some frustration is building up, in particular in the countries with the longest / strictest lockdowns and cramped living conditions. Arguably, Netherlands is not on top of that list, though...


I don't defend rioting, but.... I see it as necessary balancing act.

The whole response to pandemic is driven by politicians who are mostly aged and represent mostly boomer's generation interests. Young people and their prospects were basically scarified. They are those who will pay the price of our response to this pandemic for decades to come.

So if those riots make politicians think a bit harder about anything other than health service (also outside the Netherlands) then I welcome them. State have many more functions than just organize health service and throw absolutely everything at it. So far there is only one mantra: lock, lock, lock, harder, stronger, faster. Sound almost like bad porn movie 

What surprise me is that we have seen these riots in the Netherland rather than in France or Germany, countries with longer and stronger tradition of rioting. In fact I'm surprised it took so long, I was expecting something like that earlier.


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> In NW Europe generally, the amount of space you have doesn't seem to be that related to population density. People in the Netherlands and Belgium mostly live in terraced or semi-detached houses, often with gardens. Even in most of London that is the case. Ireland (Republic) is very thinly populated outside the Dublin region. Yet if you go to the other major "cities" (no town in Ireland other than Dublin and Cork has a population of over 100,000), people still mostly live in terraced or semi-detached houses. They don't take advantage of the huge space they have.


Yeah, but like I said before, just because you don't _live _in a nature reserve area, doesn't mean you don't _use _the nature reserve area.

If I wanna go for a walk in a rugged natural landscape without constantly bumping into people, or hearing the traffic from a nearby motorway, I'm fresh out of luck. A place like that doesn't exist in the Netherlands. It did a hundred years ago.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Rugged?


----------



## Slagathor

OK, _any _natural landscape.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> The officially reported population density of the Netherlands is also usually too low a figure because roughly 10% of the country's area consists of surface water where nobody lives (like the IJsselmeer).


Yes this is a recurring problem with comparisons. There are two water area figures floating around: 10% and 18%. The higher figure probably includes all major water bodies which are dammed off, only excluding the Wadden Sea and Western Scheldt.


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> Yeah, but like I said before, just because you don't _live _in a nature reserve area, doesn't mean you don't _use _the nature reserve area.
> 
> If I wanna go for a walk in a rugged natural landscape without constantly bumping into people, or hearing the traffic from a nearby motorway, I'm fresh out of luck. A place like that doesn't exist in the Netherlands. It did a hundred years ago.


In the Netherlands you can go out on your bike. As you know I've got OV-Fiets membership so when I visit NL I typically go on a 20-30 km tour in the countryside of the chosen area, usually following the _knooppunten_. Sometimes I won't see anyone for ages, especially if it is during a weekday and it is not a sunny day. I go out on my bike in England as well but it is not as good as you either have to go on roads with traffic, or onto muddy footpaths. I'm relatively lucky here as I've got a former railway line nearby that has been converted into a bike path but it gets muddy in parts in winter.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> The whole response to pandemic is driven by politicians who are mostly aged and represent mostly boomer's generation interests. Young people and their prospects were basically scarified. They are those who will pay the price of our response to this pandemic for decades to come.


I don't agree. The ones that are prioritized are the elderly, kids and youths in school age, at least in our country, as school are open or partly open, and sports activities for young also is prioritized. The group I think is worst off are actually students, as teaching has been digital a lot of time, and much social and outgoing organized sport activities for adults have been restricted. Especially new students coming to a new town have little social network, and few non-digital ways of getting one.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Slagathor said:


> The officially reported population density of the Netherlands is also usually too low a figure because roughly 10% of the country's area consists of surface water where nobody lives (like the IJsselmeer).


Although you have a point comparing Netherlands with Belgium, I think comparison of population density becomes quite difficult if you start excluding landlocked areas where "nobody lives". That would certainly boost the population density a lot for many countries.


----------



## geogregor

Hold on a second, you say:



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I don't agree.


But the you write:



> The group I think is worst off are actually students, as teaching has been digital a lot of time, and much social and outgoing organized sport activities for adults have been restricted. Especially new students coming to a new town have little social network, and few non-digital ways of getting one.


That's what I meant. Older teenagers, students, young people just entering job market. They are all comprehensively screwed. And it is not just about socializing.

As for younger schoolchildren it is still unclear. In the UK they lost months of teaching time, by the time it is over it will be more than a year, maybe more.

Now, some of it might be possible to correct in the next few years but more and more experts say that we might have generation permanently scarred educationally and psychologically. It will be especially visible among poorer parts of society. In place already as unequal as the UK it will be massive problem for years to come.


----------



## Slagathor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Although you have a point comparing Netherlands with Belgium, I think comparison of population density becomes quite difficult if you start excluding landlocked areas where "nobody lives". That would certainly boost the population density a lot for many countries.


Yes, you're right. This is mostly an issue when people try to figure out which country in Europe is most densely populated, which requires comparing the Netherlands, Belgium and England.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> That's what I meant. Older teenagers, students, young people just entering job market. They are all comprehensively screwed. And it is not just about socializing.
> 
> As for younger schoolchildren it is still unclear. In the UK they lost months of teaching time, by the time it is over it will be more than a year, maybe more.


Clearly, this pandemic has affected different regions and countries in very different ways, and for the most part, it is difficult to generalize. For instance, in Norway the schools were digital around a month and a half in the beginning, and are not likely to completely physically closed again. Although digital teaching is not the same, pupils lost nominally only two days or so as the teachers planned the transition. What probably is fairly general, unfortunately, is that most of the jobs lost have been relatively lowly paid. However, I think there is a great variation countries in how much of the economy has been affected, how much those losing their jobs receive in social welfare benefits, and how much the government has done to support industries affected by the restrictions.

In any case, restrictions to curb Covid-19 would have to affect someone, and it was and is really up to the governments to find the measures that are most effective to reduce the direct impact of the disease relative to the damage the restrictions make. Although the ability of doing the right choices has varied a lot between countries, I think it is wrong to put different age groups or economic classes up against each other. It ought to be remembered that the Covid-19 death rate in poorer districts has had a disproportionately high death rate, and the poor will be the hardest hit if we give up now. I believe that doing little only is only the best solution in very poor countries.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The first significant tornado of 2021 has hit Fultondale, Alabama.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1354112111899598853


----------



## Slagathor

If I lived in tornado alley, I'd be tempted to build an underground nuclear bunker instead of a house. Daylight is overrated. 

There was a landspout in my hometown when I was 7 or 8 years old. It ripped the roof tiles off the homes it hit and tossed a few small cars into a canal. I thought it was insane but that was nothing by comparison.


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> I don't defend rioting, but.... I see it as necessary balancing act.
> 
> The whole response to pandemic is driven by politicians who are mostly aged and represent mostly boomer's generation interests. Young people and their prospects were basically scarified. They are those who will pay the price of our response to this pandemic for decades to come.
> 
> So if those riots make politicians think a bit harder about anything other than health service (also outside the Netherlands) then I welcome them. State have many more functions than just organize health service and throw absolutely everything at it. So far there is only one mantra: lock, lock, lock, harder, stronger, faster. Sound almost like bad porn movie
> 
> What surprise me is that we have seen these riots in the Netherland rather than in France or Germany, countries with longer and stronger tradition of rioting. In fact I'm surprised it took so long, I was expecting something like that earlier.


There is better chance for younger person to recover and don't need any health services, even if those collapse (although I think "collapse" they mean "triage" that those who have less chances to survive are basically ditched, not "no health services at all"). I compare it with parachute jump when your parachute is your fitness and luck. Yes, parachute jump could be scary for many people. When I think about parachute jumps I have slight frightening feeling too. 99.5%+ of young people may survive those scary waves, and they may have needed services if some long covid symptoms kicks in.
Sadly, elderly would lost on average their last 10 years of life. Another sad fact is long covid. I think I'm more scarred of me getting long covid rather than covid death.

Now, we are hoping on working vaccines. If no working vaccine, instead of saving around 10 years of life may turn out to be max 0.5-1 year of life and death in another wave.
As for alternatives "of saving lives", just look how Australia and N. Zealand manages a pandemic. I wish Europe could implement something too, maybe invent something even better than that, but I've been reading comments that "Europe is too interconnected" and "it's not possible".

I had more apocalyptical thoughts in March in both economy and pandemic, but it seems that waves are somewhat survivable with "partial lockdown" (with weighting your contacts, mask wearing where necessary, etc.) , but elderly and other unfortunate's deaths would still be everywhere. Hospitals may still "collapse" at some points. Staff would be the biggest problem too, their psychological situation, etc. They would need to become more numb for the situation, I guess.

---
Don't get impression on me that I'm extreme pro-lockdowner. I feel really down that lockdowns are implemented, and also because the result is too foggy. I see two models now that "work": Australian and Swedish. EU could vaccinate faster then... If vaccine bet will be lost due to changing virus nature, I think most people may just lost hope on lockdowns. We would just enter on more survivalist mode of the pandemic. Good thing people are a little bit trained to avoid unnecessary contacts... maybe too worse will be avoided but deaths would not be avoided... Some parts of the World may be ceiled off like Australia, NZ, at least for some time.


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> The UK has just passed the milestone of 100,000 deaths. It's just a number but the media has really got hold of this. There were pictures of Boris Johnson holding his head in shame, saying that he takes "full responsibility". The government has failed to keep either side of the argument happy.


BoJo takes full responsibility by... what? Staying in power and continuing to balls it up?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

According to Statistics Netherlands, 60% of the corona fatalities in 2020 were in a so-called 'wlz' care home. The average life expectancy in such a care home was 7 months before corona. In other words, they had a very high likelyhood of passing away soon anyway.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Just heard an interesting comparison, but I’m not sure if it’s significant: the state of Michigan now has more people vaccinated than it does cases. I suppose that’s per day....


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> With all the respect for the experts. Being experts doesn't mean that someone can't be ludicrous, and this guy you quoted clearly is.
> 
> If "experts" really hope that population will let be imprisoned in their homes for months, and only go out once a week, then we are doomed. Not because of pandemic but because bad quality of experts...


He’s free to give that advice; so long as no one in power makes it mandatory. As far as I’m concerned. I guess it’s pointing out what (he believes) the risk is, and that’s fair, so long as we can say I’ll take the risk. (Since I don’t see how either of these affects the safety of other people.)


----------



## PovilD

Penn's Woods said:


> Just heard an interesting comparison, but I’m not sure if it’s significant: the state of Michigan now has more people vaccinated than it does cases. I suppose that’s per day....


I found statistics that in Lithuania around 2,000 people were vaccinated yesterday first dose (Pfizer) and around 1,200 new cases. More vaccinated per day than actual cases. Wishing for bigger difference between such values though  Still around 2x more total infections than total injections first dose.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> According to Statistics Netherlands, 60% of the corona fatalities in 2020 were in a so-called 'wlz' care home. The average life expectancy in such a care home was 7 months before corona. In other words, they had a very high likelyhood of passing away soon anyway.


Still, it’s not a pleasant death. Even if you’re comfortable (I’m not) valuing one life over another based on how long it’s likely to be, leaving the elderly to die also means leaving them to suffer.


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> Biden administration is ordering 200 million more vaccine doses.


He can, but will he get those doses he ordered, not like us in Poland, where Pfizer simply fails to deliver the ordered vaccines?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> Still, it’s not a pleasant death. Even if you’re comfortable (I’m not) valuing one life over another based on how long it’s likely to be, leaving the elderly to die also means leaving them to suffer.


Well, they're not 'leaving them to die'. But it now has a label everyone freaks out over, as if these people were cut down in their prime. 

The 'quality-adjusted life year' (QALY) is a measure as to how much money it is worth to save one year of life with a quality of living. It has been argued to be in the range of € 20,000 - 80,000. The direct monetary cost of the coronavirus in the Netherlands is now approaching € 100 billion while the number of quality life years saved is very low: almost all deceased had limited or no healthy life remaining. 

This is very different from traffic safety, where each prevented death of a child would have a high value on the QALY measure, as opposed to an 85 year old in a care home. Such calculations are routinely made for medical policies, but with the coronavirus it seems that money & societal impact are suddenly irrelevant.


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> BoJo takes full responsibility by... what? Staying in power and continuing to balls it up?


Seems that way. There were rumours he would quit when Brexit "was done" and after Covid. Let's see what happens. The problem is that another Tory will replace him. It is hard to imagine someone worse than BJ but you never know. Lots of people were celebrating when May quit. They probably now wish she stayed.

He now wants to visit Scotland, which Nicola doesn't think is an essential trip.


----------



## Slagathor

I'd pay good money to watch Boris walk the streets of Glasgow.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> This is very different from traffic safety, where each prevented death of a child would have a high value on the QALY measure, as opposed to an 85 year old in a care home. Such calculations are routinely made for medical policies, but with the coronavirus it seems that money & societal impact are suddenly irrelevant.


This makes sense in most medical situations, but how do you avoid the health system getting overwhelmed? The only way I can see such a quantitative pragmatic approach being a viable option is if you decide to euthanise patients soon after being admitted to hospital. If this was ever going to be considered, it would only have been worth doing right at the beginning of the pandemic. It is hardly likely to be considered now that vaccines should stop hospitals being overwhelmed soon.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> The 'quality-adjusted life year' (QALY) is a measure as to how much money it is worth to save one year of life with a quality of living. It has been argued to be in the range of € 20,000 - 80,000. The direct monetary cost of the coronavirus in the Netherlands is now approaching € 100 billion while the number of quality life years saved is very low: almost all deceased had limited or no healthy life remaining.


I guess this line of thinking has many of the same supporters as euthanasia. Personally I find it very problematic. It ought anyway to be remembered that the reasons for surpressing Covid-19 is not only to save lives that would otherwise be directly lost from the disease, but as least as important is to avoid that the health care services breaks down under the burden. Already, there is a lot of catch up to do in other areas than Covid-19 in many countries. Further, even if younger people are less likely to die, the disease seems to have serious long term effects on many of the survivors. "Reducing their QALY" , I guess. 

On a slightly more positive note, I am surprised no one has commented on the new and more accurate Chinese Covid-19 testing method:China begins using anal swabs to test for Covid in Beijing


----------



## Kpc21

Meanwhile, the Polish Constitutional Court finally announced their sentence from October that makes abortion of fetuses with defects illegal. Which resulted in protests.

Live transmissions from Warsaw:











These protests, like previously, are with no physical aggression from the protesters.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I guess this line of thinking has many of the same supporters as euthanasia. Personally I find it very problematic.


It's a way to put rationale before emotion, because financial resources are not limitless.

I don't have a problem with euthanasia, if people choose to do that voluntarily. Freedom also means the freedom to choose to die instead of suffering. (I'm not talking about covid-19, but in general)


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> Well, they're not 'leaving them to die'. But it now has a label everyone freaks out over, as if these people were cut down in their prime.
> 
> The 'quality-adjusted life year' (QALY) is a measure as to how much money it is worth to save one year of life with a quality of living. It has been argued to be in the range of € 20,000 - 80,000. The direct monetary cost of the coronavirus in the Netherlands is now approaching € 100 billion while the number of quality life years saved is very low: almost all deceased had limited or no healthy life remaining.
> 
> This is very different from traffic safety, where each prevented death of a child would have a high value on the QALY measure, as opposed to an 85 year old in a care home. Such calculations are routinely made for medical policies, but with the coronavirus it seems that money & societal impact are suddenly irrelevant.



You would need to compare not the monetary value of QALY of those that deceased to the costs of corona antimesures. You would need to compare the costs in case of no corona anti measures versus the costs of corona anti measures.

E.g. if you would have 100 000 corona cases per day instead of 10 000, you would have 20 000 hospital admission cases instead of 2000. That would translate to inadequate health care for those 18 000 patients. This would mean many deaths of those in their 40s or 50s who now did not get corona. Those who got it had received adequate care with which they survived, with ten times more cases they would have not been able to provide the care to them and they would have not survived.

On the other hand, I think that economically speaking it would be less costly to leave the whole pandemic a free go, without any anti measures whatsoever or only very mild anti measures.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Kpc21 said:


> He can, but will he get those doses he ordered, not like us in Poland, where Pfizer simply fails to deliver the ordered vaccines?


He’s already invoked something called the Defense Production Act. He can compel production.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> This makes sense in most medical situations, but how do you avoid the health system getting overwhelmed?





54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> It ought anyway to be remembered that the reasons for surpressing Covid-19 is not only to save lives that would otherwise be directly lost from the disease, but as least as important is to avoid that the health care services breaks down under the burden.


I think the point is that some of the restrictions are heavy-handed and economically destructive while not having much effect on the spread of the virus. For example the shock effect of closing 'non-essential' shops, barbers, etc. fades after 2-3 weeks: the idea is that people stay home but you can't expect people to stay home for weeks that turn into months that turns into half a year or more. People live their lives around the restrictions as much as they can and feel safe to do.

Would the reopening of 'non-essential' shops really overwhelm the health care system? I highly doubt that. Much of the measures lack a clear scientific basis: how many more people would be infected if they allow barbers to open? Nobody seems to know. There isn't even much anecdotal evidence that they significantly contribute to the spread.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Norway will close its borders tomorrow midnight. Only permanent residents and a few other groups are allowed in. The closure will last at least for two weeks. It could perhaps have made sense before Christmas. Not sure now.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> This is very different from traffic safety, where each prevented death of a child would have a high value on the QALY measure, as opposed to an 85 year old in a care home. Such calculations are routinely made for medical policies, but with the coronavirus it seems that money & societal impact are suddenly irrelevant.


Tell it to the Polish conservatives, who have now pain in their butts, after a Polish man in coma (with almost no chances of waking up), in a British hospital, got disconnected from the whole machinery that kept him alive and he'll die... naturally. There was a legal conflict around him, because, if I remember well, his wife (living with him in the UK) wanted the hospital to let him die, while his family (living in Poland) wanted to keep him alive; they even arranged a diplomatic passport for him so that he could be transported to Poland.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A big privacy scandal has emerged in the Netherlands: there is a large-scale trade of personal information from the systems of the health agency doing all the corona testing and tracing. They have hired a lot of staff but they can access the systems without any checks and even create bulk exports of data. 

This data is worth a lot of money to criminals because it makes it very easy to do identity theft or phishing. Basically anyone who was tested or contacts given up for tracing could be compromised, which can easily be over a million people. 

The staff is approached by criminals, who offer them thousands of euros for data, which is a lot of money for somebody making € 11 per hour doing callcenter work.


----------



## Slagathor

Worst. Government. Ever.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

People seem to like it. The government polls higher than the number of seats they received in 2017, which almost never happens....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A man in Brabant turned his car into an office because he couldn't work with his children at home.

The police checked him out because there was a car with damp windows reported.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> A man in Brabant turned his car into an office because he couldn't work with his children at home.
> 
> The police checked him out because there was a car with damp windows reported.


That can’t be comfortable....


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> That can’t be comfortable....


It's a lot more comfortable than the nearby presence of a toddler.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> People seem to like it. The government polls higher than the number of seats they received in 2017, which almost never happens....


Most people don't understand the meaning of privacy and personal data.


----------



## Kpc21

Poland released two of the Covid restrictions.

From 1 February:
– the senior hours in stores are removed,
– all the shops in malls will be open,
– museums and galleries will be open.

Still valid restrictions:
– hotels closed for most clients,
– closed skiing slopes,
– 10-days quarantine for the people entering Poland on public and other pre-organized transport,
– sports infrastructure available only for the professional sportsmen,
– 1 peron/15 sqm. limit in churches,
– public gatherings of people up to at most 5 persons,
– closed gyms, fitness clubs and water parks,
– closed theaters and cinemas,
– restaurants offering food only with delivery or for take out,
– public transport seat limit (50% of seats or 30% of sitting and standing places),
– obligatory face masks/covering in public places, including the streets, in the whole country,
– forbidden to organize parties such as weddings, first communions, consolations,
– closed discos, night clubs and other dancing places (except sport dancing clubs),
– fairs and exhibitions can take place only online,
– students of the years from 4 up have online classes,
– medical spa resorts are closed.

Meanwhile, the European Commission threatens the vaccine companies that if they don't stop failing to deliver the vaccines to EU countries in the ordered amounts, they'll make it illegal to export the vaccines produced in the EU countries outside the EU (except poor and neighboring countries; I guess it doesn't include the UK).


----------



## PovilD

We surely remain in hardest lockdown in the region  I guess we are about a month behind what is happening in e.g. Poland, and maybe even more what is happening in Estonia.

Btw, when Lithuania became first in Europe/World in terms of infections which was around Christmas, everybody was meh at me 😁


----------



## x-type

We are very angry because we're not getting bars and restaurants open from next week, and everyone was expecting it, just as gyms. Only elementary schools will open. 
On the other hans, at saturday i went to the thermal spa and wellness without any problems. The only thing was that steam saunas were out of order (dry saunas worked properly). Those restrictions are really silly.


----------



## tfd543

Penn's Woods said:


> That can’t be comfortable....


I wonder where he got juice from ? That car battery wont last long if thats his source of electrons.


----------



## Kpc21

x-type said:


> We are very angry because we're not getting bars and restaurants open from next week, and everyone was expecting it, just as gyms.


Same as in Poland – restaurants and hotels excepted to get the right to open. Anyway, more and more of them start to ignore the restrictions and open regardless. I recently was in an electronics branch supermarket in a mall, which was also open illegally.

Although already for some time it's been known that they wouldn't be allowed open in the near future – the government claims that they want to keep the people's mobility at the lowest possible level.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^ No enforcement? 


tfd543 said:


> I wonder where he got juice from ? That car battery wont last long if thats his source of electrons.


Extension cable from his house?


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

It has pretty much not been on the radar of news media around here, but Portugal is not in a good situation, and probably has the worst COVID-19 outbreak in Europe right now, with still increasing death and infection rates: Portugal extends lockdown and closes border over 'terrible' Covid outbreak


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Portugal is going through the roof, now significantly more affected than the UK with its 'British variant'.

Portugal was one of the least-affected Western European countries in the first wave.

7 day average of new infections per 1 million inhabitants:


----------



## PovilD

Well... it's BECAUSE of "British strain"


----------



## cinxxx

Or maybe the Brazilian?


----------



## tfd543

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> ^^ No enforcement?
> 
> Extension cable from his house?


Prolly.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The last two nights were mostly quiet in the Netherlands, but there is fear of new riots this weekend.

This is the P.C. Hooftstraat, the most prestigious shopping street in Amsterdam. Almost everything is boarded up, even with huge concrete walls set up in front of Louis Vuitton.


----------



## PovilD

cinxxx said:


> Or maybe the Brazilian?











Portugal deemed ‘high risk’ for Brazil strain – but it’s the UK variant driving country’s third wave


As ministers move to protect Britain, the Kent mutation is thought to be behind the Iberian country's current health crisis




www.telegraph.co.uk





*Portugal deemed ‘high risk’ for Brazil strain – but it’s the UK variant driving country’s third wave*

Portugal is probably seen high risk due to connections with Brazil, but it's the UK variant find in 40% of cases


----------



## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> ^^ No enforcement?


For now not really, as there is no legal basis for that. Anyway, most fines and punishments for breaching the Covid restrictions get invalidated by courts – if someone refuses to accept the fine given by the police. 

The Polish legal system, same as probably in most countries, is based on:
– the constitution,
– acts (established by the parliament),
– resolutions (established by the ministers),
– local law acts (established by regional/county/municipal councils).

Acts cannot violate the constitution, but in general, they are the foundation of law, and normally, the regional/local courts don't decide if a law written in an act complies with the constitution. Such judgment is made by the Constitutional Court and if they decide that a specific regulation written in an act violates the constitution, their sentence simply makes it invalid.

With resolutions it's different; they must always be based on a specific regulation from an act, which delegates a specific decision (usually about some details of a law established in the act) to a specific minister. 

E.g. the Polish highway code is an act, but it delegates the decision about the appearance, meaning and rules of installing of road signs to the minister responsible for transportation. So there are two resolutions about road signs, one for the drivers – with appearances of road signs and their meanings – and another for the road managers – with rules how to use the signs, in the meaning, where and how to install them.

Local law acts work more or less the same as resolutions.

Situations, in which a law established in a resolution or a local act exceeds the delegation given in a national-level act most often happen in case of local law acts, especially at the level of municipalities, as they are prepared by members of municipal councils, who aren't necessarily professionals. But this time, such a situation appeared also in the resolution of the Minister of Health that introduces the Covid restrictions. Changing or introducing a new parliamentary act takes a lot of time as the procedure consists of many steps; it takes at least several weeks and often many years. It would be impractical for Covid restrictions, which are sometimes changed from day to day. The government could make it possible to introduce such restrictions fully legally by declaring state of emergency – but they didn't want that because then, they would have to pay everyone affected compensations.

So they went for introducing restrictions in a resolution of the Minister of Health which exceeded the delegation from an act. Which results in a situation, in which when someone rejects a fine and the police sends the issue to a court, the court sentences that the fine was actually illegal.


----------



## Attus

Hungarian government approved the Chinese vaccine "Sinopharm", although Hungarian health authorities suggested not to.


----------



## SeanT

Attus said:


> Hungarian government approved the Chinese vaccine "Sinopharm", although Hungarian health authorities suggested not to.


Well, the OGYÉI gave the "the green light" to go!


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> Hungarian government approved the Chinese vaccine "Sinopharm", although Hungarian health authorities suggested not to.


I thought that was up to the EU.


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> I thought that was up to the EU.


The EU have bought vaccines in bulk, to make it cheaper for individual member states. They disapprove of what Hungary has done, but it isn't illegal.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> The EU have bought vaccines in bulk, to make it cheaper for individual member states. They disapprove of what Hungary has done, but it isn't illegal.


Now what’s this flap between the EU and the UK about?


----------



## SeanT

Penn's Woods said:


> I thought that was up to the EU.


They wish...!


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> Now what’s this flap between the EU and the UK about?


The EU are angry that Astra-Zeneca are unable to deliver the volume of vaccine they promised. This vaccine is produced in the UK and is currently delivering large volumes domestically, but the EU say that they are obliged to deliver vaccine to them, which might harm vaccine deliveries within the UK. The Pfizer vaccine is produced in Belgium so the EU want to restrict export of that vaccine while there are shortages, which would affect vaccinations in the UK.


----------



## Attus

Penn's Woods said:


> I thought that was up to the EU.


And, shall the EU send the army to Hungary, in order to prevent Hungary importing Chinese vaccines?  They do what they want.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> And, shall the EU send the army to Hungary, in order to prevent Hungary importing Chinese vaccines?  They do what they want.


Hey, I’m just an outside observer.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> Hey, I’m just an outside observer.


But, what army?


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> The EU are angry that Astra-Zeneca are unable to deliver the volume of vaccine they promised. This vaccine is produced in the UK and is currently delivering large volumes domestically, but the EU say that they are obliged to deliver vaccine to them, which might harm vaccine deliveries within the UK. The Pfizer vaccine is produced in Belgium so the EU want to restrict export of that vaccine while there are shortages, which would affect vaccinations in the UK.


But the same failure in case of Pfizer (some say they prefer to deliver their vaccines to China instead of distributing them in Europe, but it might be just a gossip) is perfectly OK


----------



## radamfi

Are Norway and Switzerland getting their own vaccines or are they covered by the EU distribution?


----------



## CNGL

Spain may have gotten to almost 900 cases per 100000 inhabitants on this wave, but my province hasn't even reached 500. Now that is something. It also helped Aragon not to get over 1000 new daily cases again.

In the meanwhile I found there are populated places in Italy named Magenta, Giallo ("yellow") and Ciano ("cyan"). All three primary colours of painting . Okay, magenta the colour was actually named after Magenta the town, but I find that combo interesting.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

radamfi said:


> Are Norway and Switzerland getting their own vaccines or are they covered by the EU distribution?


Norway and Iceland are covered by the EU distribution. That is not the case with Switzerland, I beliveve. Some think we would have been better off on our own, however. Personally I do not subscribe to that view. Even if it were true of we as a small country could have turned around faster and gotten more doses quickly Israel-style, we could not have gone back to normal until our neighboring countries also were vaccinated.


----------



## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> we could not have gone back to normal until our neighboring countries also were vaccinated.


Well, people make this observation quite a lot saying "nobody is protected until we are all protected" but is it really the case?

Let's assume that country "A" vaccinate 90% of its population and it's neighbors only 30%. It will mean that population of country "A" can go pretty much "back to normal" regardless what happens abroad as they will limit hospitalizations (and that's main goal of vaccination at the moment) among its own population.

Or am I missing something here?



Penn's Woods said:


> Now what’s this flap between the EU and the UK about?


The European Commission made a massive blunder here:









EU vaccine export row: Bloc backtracks on controls for NI


It follows anger over a decision to invoke an emergency provision in the Brexit deal in order to control vaccine exports.



www.bbc.co.uk







> *The EU has reversed its decision to temporarily override part of the Brexit deal amid an ongoing row over Covid vaccine supplies in the bloc.*
> 
> The move would have seen checks at the border of Ireland and Northern Ireland to prevent shipments entering the UK.
> 
> But the European Commission later said it would ensure the Northern Ireland Protocol is "unaffected".





> The European Commission's proposals had also sparked concern from all five parties in Northern Ireland's devolved government and Irish prime minister Micheál Martin.
> 
> Mr Martin welcomed the EU's reversal, describing it as a "positive development given the many challenges we face in tackling Covid-19".
> 
> However, it was not thought that the move would have directly disadvantaged Northern Ireland, which gets its vaccine supplies through the UK procurement system.





> The Brexit deal guarantees an open border between the EU and Northern Ireland, with no controls on exported products.
> 
> However, Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol part of the deal allows the EU and UK to chose to suspend any aspects they consider are causing "economic, societal or environmental difficulties".
> 
> The EU had announced it would trigger the clause and introduce the export controls on its vaccines entering Northern Ireland in a bid to prevent the region becoming a backdoor for jabs to be sent to the wider UK.


First the EU talks about not wanting border on the island of Ireland (hence protracted negotiations for the last couple of years) and then yesterday the European Commission decided to flush it all in the toilet.

Interestingly they managed to unite five parties in Stormont, a rare feat 

Apparently nobody even consulted the move with Dublin, Irish politicians are furious.

It is massive own goal by the EU. Overnight they antagonized a lot of folks and probably harmed European image in these islands. It might even influence sentiment in Scotland in regards of the independance.



> "Mistake," "misjudgement," "blunder."
> 
> These are just some of words EU insiders have been using privately to describe the European Commission's initial decision on Friday to suspend areas of the Brexit deal dealing with Northern Ireland, a part of its Covid vaccine row.
> 
> Although it then U-turned on those plans, critics say the damage was already done.
> 
> Brussels previously lectured the UK government about respecting the Irish Protocol - which was painfully and carefully drafted during Brexit negotiations.
> 
> Now the EU seemed quick to undermine the agreement.
> 
> Member state Ireland felt stung that it hadn't been consulted. This all adds to the impression of chaos surrounding the EU's vaccine rollout.
> 
> Brussels was already under fire from a growing number of EU countries for having been slow to sign vaccine contracts with pharmaceutical companies.
> 
> This "mishap" over the Irish Protocol as Spain's Foreign Minister called it, hasn't exactly helped the commission's reputation.


Basically it is a mess.

Let's hope it was just some low level official who wanted to "control the borders" and made the mess. 

The EU quickly reversed the silly decision but the damage was done.


----------



## Slagathor

geogregor said:


> Overnight they antagonized a lot of folks and probably harmed European image in these islands. It might even influence sentiment in Scotland in regards of the independance.


Fortunately, we don't have to care about any of that.

And please don't assume this one episode erases all the sh!t the British have thrown at us over the past four years (let's be generous and not include all the insults from before the referendum).

Frankly, I'm amazed it took this long for the European Commission to lose their sh!t and throw a tantrum.


----------



## geogregor

Slagathor said:


> Frankly, I'm amazed it took this long for the European Commission to lose their sh!t and throw a tantrum.


Tantrum about what?

Anyway, I'm very pro-European. I voted remain and I think Brexit is moronic decision.

But one positive was that in might have speeded up eventual unification of Ireland, and possibly even Scottish independence. From that perspective moves like in the recent days are not helpful.

I guess the EU politicians, facing growing anger at home (in relation to vaccinations), won't care about what people think in the UK, and that's fair enough. But Ireland is still part of the EU. And sidelining Dublin in this matter was just ludicrous. 

Basically it is a fu*ck up. So far the EU behaved largely professionally, especially comparing to monkeys running the British government. I don't think lowering standards now will help anyone.

They must have realized as the decision was reversed the same night.


----------



## Slagathor

This happens all the time though.

The EU is not usually very intimately involved in internal affairs of member states. The attention paid to Northern Ireland on behalf of the Irish Republic over the past 4 years is really, really unusual. People fail to appreciate that.

Look at Catalonia - zero intervention by Brussels.


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> ...
> Anyway, I'm very pro-European. I voted remain and I think Brexit is moronic decision.
> 
> But one positive was that in might have speeded up eventual unification of Ireland, and possibly even Scottish independence. From that perspective moves like in the recent days are not helpful.
> ...


I have thoughts if Brexit could be an interesting case where potential dissolution of UK could speed up. Scotland wants remain in EU, it seems N. Ireland too (+unification?). I wonder if Wales could secede too (from England) if Scotland and N. Ireland secedes. If not it would remind me situation about country called Serbia and Montenegro  Then, England and Wales could rejoin EU if they change their minds 

P.S. If EU don't mess things up not to be attractive anymore (it's already for some countries, but it's not around Russian-style euroscepticism which are mostly because of stark mentality differences about human rights not legislation).


----------



## radamfi

PovilD said:


> I have thoughts if Brexit could be an interesting case where potential dissolution of UK could speed up. Scotland wants remain in EU, it seems N. Ireland too (+unification?). I wonder if Wales could secede too (from England) if Scotland and N. Ireland secedes. If not it would remind me situation about country called Serbia and Montenegro  Then, England and Wales could rejoin EU if they change their minds


Wales has its own language that is far more prominent than the equivalent in Scotland. Road signs and markings in Wales are bilingual. When the fourth TV channel opened in the UK in 1982, Wales got its own Welsh language channel instead. English language programmes from the England/Scotland/Northern Ireland version of Channel 4 were relegated to off-peak times. (Now there is digital TV, the UK Channel 4 is now available in Wales).

Despite that, there is considerably less interest in independence in Wales compared to Scotland. Unlike Scotland, Wales voted for Brexit by a similar (very small) margin as in England, despite receiving a lot of EU funding because it was one of the poorest parts of the EU. They play cricket much more than in Scotland. The England cricket team represents both England and Wales, yet Wales is not part of the name. Scottish people would never allow a joint England and Scotland team to be called just "England".

Scottish independence is just a dream as long as the UK government doesn't give permission, just like Catalonia. I was surprised that Scotland were allowed to have an independence referendum in 2014. I guess the UK government was pretty sure that there would not be an vote in favour of Independence.


----------



## Penn's Woods

radamfi said:


> Wales has its own language that is far more prominent than the equivalent in Scotland. Road signs and markings in Wales are bilingual. When the fourth TV channel opened in the UK in 1982, Wales got its own Welsh language channel instead. English language programmes from the England/Scotland/Northern Ireland version of Channel 4 were relegated to off-peak times. (Now there is digital TV, the UK Channel 4 is now available in Wales).
> 
> Despite that, there is considerably less interest in independence in Wales compared to Scotland. Unlike Scotland, Wales voted for Brexit by a similar (very small) margin as in England, despite receiving a lot of EU funding because it was one of the poorest parts of the EU. They play cricket much more than in Scotland. The England cricket team represents both England and Wales, yet Wales is not part of the name. Scottish people would never allow a joint England and Scotland team to be called just "England".
> 
> Scottish independence is just a dream as long as the UK government doesn't give permission, just like Catalonia. I was surprised that Scotland were allowed to have an independence referendum in 2014. I guess the UK government was pretty sure that there would not be an vote in favour of Independence.


Well, until devolution, Wales was so integrated into England’s political system and so on that no one was even sure which country Monmouthshire was in....

EDIT: Or I guess until the overhaul of local government in 1974.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> Fortunately, we don't have to care about any of that.
> 
> And please don't assume this one episode erases all the sh!t the British have thrown at us over the past four years (let's be generous and not include all the insults from before the referendum).
> 
> Frankly, I'm amazed it took this long for the European Commission to lose their sh!t and throw a tantrum.


No one on the Continent ever throws, ever would even dream of throwing, sh*t the other way, of course, since decades before the referendum....

But I’m just an observer....


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Quite frankly, I think the passion has been running higher in UK than the other way around. Many in the UK feel that their country is something special, but from the outside it is just another European country. At least until Pierre's grandmother dies from lack of Corona vaccine...

I know what I am talking about, since we have the lot of the same sentiment here, feeling ourselves a bit apart from the people "down at the continent", which for some reason are lumped together like a homogeneous lot. This has become less evident over the last half a century with increased travel, work mobility, and communication across borders, but it is still there.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I hadn't even noticed this vaccine spat until it was over, I suspect no one will remember it this time next week.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> Well, people make this observation quite a lot saying "nobody is protected until we are all protected" but is it really the case?
> 
> Let's assume that country "A" vaccinate 90% of its population and it's neighbors only 30%. It will mean that population of country "A" can go pretty much "back to normal" regardless what happens abroad as they will limit hospitalizations (and that's main goal of vaccination at the moment) among its own population.
> 
> Or am I missing something here?


Since the effectiveness of the various vaccines are varying between 60ish and 95 %, and non-vaccinated above 80 years have a case fatality rate maybe above 10 %, it means that the vaccines does not provide great protection at an individual level. Hence, if Corona were running freely in the neighboring countries, while we were fully vaccinated, they would probably still be restrictions in place.

It would of course be great if the whole world was vaccinated at the same time as that could completely cull the virus (and development of new resistant strains), but that is probably not likely due to the logistical challenges.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

DanielFigFoz said:


> I hadn't even noticed this vaccine spat until it was over, I suspect no one will remember it this time next week.


The news cycle is so fast that outrage one day is already forgotten the next day. 2 weeks ago the Dutch government resigned. This is already mostly out of the picture.


----------



## Penn's Woods

DanielFigFoz said:


> I hadn't even noticed this vaccine spat until it was over, I suspect no one will remember it this time next week.


It’s made mainstream news sources over here.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> The news cycle is so fast that outrage one day is already forgotten the next day. 2 weeks ago the Dutch government resigned. This is already mostly out of the picture.


You’re voting soon anyway, though, aren’t you?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> You’re voting soon anyway, though, aren’t you?


17 March is election day.

All polls put the center-right conservative-liberal VVD at a big win (the party from incumbent prime minister Rutte). They are likely to receive twice as many seats as the next largest parties.

The Dutch political landscape has fragmented since the 1990s, up to that point the center-right CDA and center-left PvdA were dominant, with VVD usually being in third position.

VVD received 41 seats in 2012, they're now projected to be in that region again. However, unlike 2012 which was a matchup with PvdA, the left-wing parties are in shambles. VVD is likely to gain more seats than all left-wing parties combined.

The map turned from red (PvdA) and green (CDA) to mostly blue (VVD). However in the Netherlands this only means which party is the largest, it doesn't show a majority as no party has ever received a majority of votes.


----------



## Slagathor

2002 was the first time I was allowed to vote. My resistance to the CDA was... not entirely successful.


----------



## Attus

DanielFigFoz said:


> I hadn't even noticed this vaccine spat until it was over, I suspect no one will remember it this time next week.


The quarrel about Northern Ireland was surely important for the Irish and for the English, but rather a secondary issue in European level. In the EU a much more important problem is the vaccine shortage (that's why the EU stopped exports). The EU ordered much less vaccines than needed, but even the ordered amount is not delivered: each supplier delivers significantly less vaccines than what was contracted. So Europe has much less vaccines than the US, despite having a significantly bigger population. 
That's the main issue, and it is not over, and it won't be at least until September.


----------



## Stuu

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Quite frankly, I think the passion has been running higher in UK than the other way around. Many in the UK feel that their country is something special, but from the outside it is just another European country. At least until Pierre's grandmother dies from lack of Corona vaccine...


I don't know if it has, it seems from here that the EU commission has got itself in a bit of a mess and the British government (for once) has tried to calm things down.

As to the wider point about a percentage of the British population thinking they are special, I do agree that is true. There's a great many myths, like not being invaded since 1066 (totally untrue), all the nonsense around WW2 (standing alone, with nothing but the biggest empire the world has ever seen as a fall back) and more, coupled with a basic disinterest in our neighbouring countries.

Also part of it is the fault of the English language: I could go pretty much everywhere and get by without learning the slightest bit of the local language, which means you don't find out anything of the actual culture. The fact English is the default international language leads to a lot of arrogance IMHO


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> Also part of it is the fault of the English language: I could go pretty much everywhere and get by without learning the slightest bit of the local language, which means you don't find out anything of the actual culture. The fact English is the default international language leads to a lot of arrogance IMHO


I agree that many English (less so Scottish) people think they are special, commonly known as "English Exceptionalism". However, whilst it is true that most English/British go abroad speaking only English, surely the same goes for most other people? Even the most impressive language learners (Dutch/Scandinavians) generally only know English and maybe one other foreign language. If they go to Poland or Greece or Estonia they are no better equipped than a British tourist and end up speaking English.

The Irish ability to speak foreign languages is as pitiful as in Britain, but they are among the most enthusiastic Europeans. Euroscepticism hardly exists there.


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> I agree that many English (less so Scottish) people think they are special, commonly known as "English Exceptionalism". However, whilst it is true that most English/British go abroad speaking only English, surely the same goes for most other people? *Even the most impressive language learners (Dutch/Scandinavians) generally only know English and maybe one other foreign language. If they go to Poland or Greece or Estonia they are no better equipped than a British tourist and end up speaking English.*
> 
> The Irish ability to speak foreign languages is as pitiful as in Britain, but they are among the most enthusiastic Europeans. Euroscepticism hardly exists there.


This is true, but when it's your native language, the arrogance is unavoidable. It's not a good look. Not much anyone can do about that although the best remedy is probably to ask the question in their language. So if you're in Germany, you go: "Entschuldigung, sprechen Sie Englisch?" That way, you're at least seen to be making some sort of effort.

Also, the Dutch multilingual reputation in the UK is overrated imo. I often see references that we supposedly speak 4 languages, but that's not true at all. While we're all taught 3 foreign languages in high school (English, French, German), not many of us continue studying French and German beyond highschool so our knowledge is limited. Most Dutch people go to Paris and are all: "Do you speak English?" 

I will say this: I find that monolingual English speakers often don't know how to make their speech more accessible to non-native speakers. They don't know how hard it is to learn another language, so they don't think to temporarily drop their regional accent or use a more basic vocabulary. That's kind of a handicap. Just for that reason, learning a foreign language should be mandatory everywhere; it generates empathy.

Best example of that I ever witnessed was in Southern Italy, where the older locals speak extremely limited English. I was in a tiny restaurant run by a little Italian grandma and this fancy looking British couple came in. The guy was all: "Excuse me, madam, would you mind terribly if blah blah blah." That's like throwing a smoke bomb. The lady had no idea what was going on, but she thought she caught the word "terrible" (similar to the Italian _terribile_) and was a bit shaken. I had to step in and translate.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> Also, the Dutch multilingual reputation in the UK is overrated imo. I often see references that we supposedly speak 4 languages, but that's not true at all. While we're all taught 3 foreign languages in high school (English, French, German), not many of us continue studying French and German beyond highschool so our knowledge is limited. Most Dutch people go to Paris and are all: "Do you speak English?"


I agree, the Dutch are generally proficient in English but considerably less so in German and even less in French. A critique is that many high schoolers cannot speak basic German or French even after several years of instruction, because the methods are outdated. It's also a problem to find German teachers. The German grammar is considered to be very difficult even though Dutch and German are relatively similar on the surface. Due to the similarity, Dutch people do tend to speak German better than French, which for most people is a far away language they need once a year or less on vacation. German is more relevant due to the number of tourists visiting the Netherlands and Dutch people going shopping / skiing in German-speaking countries.


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> I will say this: I find that monolingual English speakers often don't know how to make their speech more accessible to non-native speakers. They don't know how hard it is to learn another language, so they don't think to temporarily drop their regional accent or use a more basic vocabulary. That's kind of a handicap. Just for that reason, learning a foreign language should be mandatory everywhere; it generates empathy.


As far as I know language learning is mandatory in England (not sure about Scotland as it has a separate education system but I would assume it is there as well). Certainly it was when I went to school. In my day most kids learned French, maybe a quarter learned German. I remember having to choose the subjects I would take from age 14-16 and we had to explain why. We had to choose at least one foreign language. I chose French and said it was because closer European integration was coming so it would be useful in the future! (This was when the Maastricht Treaty was in the news all the time). So, like many others, I've got a piece of paper showing that I have a qualification in French. I'm not sure many people have gained empathy from this experience. Maybe you only gain empathy when you become fluent in a foreign language. You are nowhere near fluent in French after passing the school French exam.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> The German grammar is considered to be very difficult even though Dutch and German are relatively similar on the surface.


German grammar is considerably harder than Dutch. German has three genders compared to two in Dutch and the case system in German is very complicated. Plurals are a lot easier in Dutch as all plurals use "de". In German, plural endings are far more random than adding "en" or "s".


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> I agree that many English (less so Scottish) people think they are special, commonly known as "English Exceptionalism". However, whilst it is true that most English/British go abroad speaking only English, surely the same goes for most other people? Even the most impressive language learners (Dutch/Scandinavians) generally only know English and maybe one other foreign language. If they go to Poland or Greece or Estonia they are no better equipped than a British tourist and end up speaking English.
> 
> The Irish ability to speak foreign languages is as pitiful as in Britain, but they are among the most enthusiastic Europeans. Euroscepticism hardly exists there.


They have to learn _another_ language though, that's the point! Foreign languages used to be mandatory to 16, but that was scrapped in 2004 and now the numbers are terrible. 

I would suggest that the history of Ireland plays a big part in their enthusiasm for the EU, both long term English imperialism and the shorter term of Ireland being a bit of a backward virtual theocracy within living memory.


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> They have to learn _another_ language though, that's the point! Foreign languages used to be mandatory to 16, but that was scrapped in 2004 and now the numbers are terrible.


Wow, I had no idea! I see they still have to learn a language up to age 14 but if they start at age 11 that's almost nothing.


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> I would suggest that the history of Ireland plays a big part in their enthusiasm for the EU, both long term English imperialism and the shorter term of Ireland being a bit of a backward virtual theocracy within living memory.


Ireland really has done a very good job of reinventing itself. If you had told me 20 years ago that they would have legalised divorce, abortion and gay marriage I wouldn't have believed you. It seems like a no-brainer now for a young British Europhile to move to Ireland, as British people still enjoy free movement to Ireland despite Brexit, and then apply for Irish citizenship after five years to regain their EU citizenship. I'm seriously considering retiring there.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> A critique is that many high schoolers cannot speak basic German or French even after several years of instruction, because the methods are outdated.


Is it also so in the Netherlands (and other countries) that the school foreign language teachers often focus mainly on explaining grammar rules (and then learning them by heart) instead of practicing reading, listening and speaking, don't speak the language at all during the class while talking to the students, and don't even have correct pronunciation?

At my university, I attended a French course, and it was totally different. It was a course for absolute beginners, and almost from the first class, the teacher spoke to us in French (of course using words she already taught us) and invited us also to talk to her in French, or at least to try, whenever we could. In the reading exercises she always wanted out to read out the text loudly (of course, by various students interchangeably, not everyone together), so that she could correct our pronunciation, and we also practiced it. Most exercises were about reading texts, speaking (e.g talking to each other in groups) and translating sentences, like, almost at every class she was giving us some sentences to translate to French, related to vocabulary (and sometimes grammar) we had during the class. She didn't really lecture us much about grammar – like, just a dozen of minutes on one class of explaining a new tense, grammar form etc. and asking us about that to remind it on one or two next classes. And some sentences to translate which used that new grammar thing. And it was absolutely enough.

Instead of what we had with one English teacher at school, who always dictated us all the possible usages of a new tense in detail, to write them down in our notebooks, and then asked us about that theory. Although in practice those rules aren't always useful and you just have to have the "feeling" of e.g. whether you should say "I saw" or "I have seen".

Or in high school I had a German teacher, who was often asking us about words we haven't yet had on the class and sometimes even giving us grades for not knowing them. Giving negative grades for making language errors during the class is something which should be absolutely forbidden, and some school teachers over here do it... This way, the students are later afraid of speaking the language in general, because they will be afraid that they would make an error, and someone will not understand, laugh about that, or something. But this might also be related to the fact that Poles are generally "grammar nazis", even in internet forums like this one, they like pointing out language errors to other.

Like, in English, where something is written somewhere, you can say "it says". In Polish we similarly say colloquially "it writes" (pisze). And many people like correcting others, and telling them they shouldn't be saying "it writes" (pisze), because it's incorrect (nobody is writing that just now) and they should use "it's written" (jest napisane) instead.


----------



## radamfi

I've spent the last few minutes researching the sorry state of language learning in English schools. I notice they've got rid of several language qualifications, including Dutch, although I didn't even realise it was possible to study Dutch at an English school. Here's the first page of a specimen Dutch examination paper. You might have been able to pass even without learning Dutch at all!


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> Is it also so in the Netherlands (and other countries) that the school foreign language teachers often focus mainly on explaining grammar rules (and then learning them by heart) instead of practicing reading, listening and speaking, don't speak the language at all during the class while talking to the students, and don't even have correct pronunciation?


That was pretty much my experience of learning French and German in the UK, which was not helped by two years of teaching being done by a woman with an extremely strong Belfast accent. I learnt French at school and as part of my university degree, so I can read French newspapers and understand proper spoken French like the news on TF1 or something, but real people don't speak like that at all


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> I've spent the last few minutes researching the sorry state of language learning in English schools. I notice they've got rid of several language qualifications, including Dutch, although I didn't even realise it was possible to study Dutch at an English school. Here's the first page of a specimen Dutch examination paper. You might have been able to pass even without learning Dutch at all!
> 
> View attachment 1030449


Is a jeugdherberg a youth hostel?


----------



## keokiracer

Stuu said:


> Is a jeugdherberg a youth hostel?


Yes.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> This is true, but when it's your native language, the arrogance is unavoidable. It's not a good look. Not much anyone can do about that although the best remedy is probably to ask the question in their language. So if you're in Germany, you go: "Entschuldigung, sprechen Sie Englisch?" That way, you're at least seen to be making some sort of effort.
> 
> Also, the Dutch multilingual reputation in the UK is overrated imo. I often see references that we supposedly speak 4 languages, but that's not true at all. While we're all taught 3 foreign languages in high school (English, French, German), not many of us continue studying French and German beyond highschool so our knowledge is limited. Most Dutch people go to Paris and are all: "Do you speak English?"
> 
> I will say this: I find that monolingual English speakers often don't know how to make their speech more accessible to non-native speakers. They don't know how hard it is to learn another language, so they don't think to temporarily drop their regional accent or use a more basic vocabulary. That's kind of a handicap. Just for that reason, learning a foreign language should be mandatory everywhere; it generates empathy.
> 
> Best example of that I ever witnessed was in Southern Italy, where the older locals speak extremely limited English. I was in a tiny restaurant run by a little Italian grandma and this fancy looking British couple came in. The guy was all: "Excuse me, madam, would you mind terribly if blah blah blah." That's like throwing a smoke bomb. The lady had no idea what was going on, but she thought she caught the word "terrible" (similar to the Italian _terribile_) and was a bit shaken. I had to step in and translate.


Dropping a regional accent is often easier said than done. Accents are stigmatized enough in the English-speaking world that I think most people who cared would. It’s but like Flanders or German-speaking Switzerland, where a lot of people switch between dialect and standard according to situation, as if they were different languages.

Good point about empathy, though.


----------



## Slagathor

Kpc21 said:


> Is it also so in the Netherlands (and other countries) that the school foreign language teachers often focus mainly on explaining grammar rules (and then learning them by heart) instead of practicing reading, listening and speaking, don't speak the language at all during the class while talking to the students, and don't even have correct pronunciation?
> 
> At my university, I attended a French course, and it was totally different. It was a course for absolute beginners, and almost from the first class, the teacher spoke to us in French (of course using words she already taught us) and invited us also to talk to her in French, or at least to try, whenever we could. In the reading exercises she always wanted out to read out the text loudly (of course, by various students interchangeably, not everyone together), so that she could correct our pronunciation, and we also practiced it. Most exercises were about reading texts, speaking (e.g talking to each other in groups) and translating sentences, like, almost at every class she was giving us some sentences to translate to French, related to vocabulary (and sometimes grammar) we had during the class. She didn't really lecture us much about grammar – like, just a dozen of minutes on one class of explaining a new tense, grammar form etc. and asking us about that to remind it on one or two next classes. And some sentences to translate which used that new grammar thing. And it was absolutely enough.
> 
> Instead of what we had with one English teacher at school, who always dictated us all the possible usages of a new tense in detail, to write them down in our notebooks, and then asked us about that theory. Although in practice those rules aren't always useful and you just have to have the "feeling" of e.g. whether you should say "I saw" or "I have seen".
> 
> Or in high school I had a German teacher, who was often asking us about words we haven't yet had on the class and sometimes even giving us grades for not knowing them. Giving negative grades for making language errors during the class is something which should be absolutely forbidden, and some school teachers over here do it... This way, the students are later afraid of speaking the language in general, because they will be afraid that they would make an error, and someone will not understand, laugh about that, or something. But this might also be related to the fact that Poles are generally "grammar nazis", even in internet forums like this one, they like pointing out language errors to other.
> 
> Like, in English, where something is written somewhere, you can say "it says". In Polish we similarly say colloquially "it writes" (pisze). And many people like correcting others, and telling them they shouldn't be saying "it writes" (pisze), because it's incorrect (nobody is writing that just now) and they should use "it's written" (jest napisane) instead.


Certainly when I went to high school in the late 1990s, it was very much like that.

For example, to this day, I can tell you that if you see one of the following prepositions in German:

mit, nach, bei, seit, von, ausser, aus, gegenüber, zu, entgegen

you need to use the 3rd case.

But I struggle to have a fluent conversation about random topics. Because we _never _practiced that in class.

I myself have been a Dutch and English teacher for a few years and I was trained in much more recent educational techniques. When I teach a class, my students spend most of the time talking. I'm like the referee in a football game; I'm there to make sure it all goes to plan, but I'm not the center of attention.

Oftentimes, my students are a bit older and when they just start their course, I get a lot of comments along the lines of: "I had no idea you could learn a language this way! It's so much more fun!"

It's kinda sad when you think about it. We all wasted so much time and effort.


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> Is a jeugdherberg a youth hostel?





keokiracer said:


> Yes.


Isn't it a kind of hostel, which is owned by public authorities or an NGO, as opposed to those commercial ones?




Slagathor said:


> When I teach a class, my students spend most of the time talking.


For several years I was at an extra English class in a language school. An exercice we had during practically every class, sometimes even twice, was "talk in English for 15 minutes about ..." or "talk in English for 15 minutes about whatever you want". Obviously, it was a group exercise.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> Certainly when I went to high school in the late 1990s, it was very much like that.
> 
> For example, to this day, I can tell you that if you see one of the following prepositions in German:
> 
> mit, nach, bei, seit, von, ausser, aus, gegenüber, zu, entgegen
> 
> you need to use the 3rd case.
> 
> But I struggle to have a fluent conversation about random topics. Because we _never _practiced that in class.
> 
> I myself have been a Dutch and English teacher for a few years and I was trained in much more recent educational techniques. When I teach a class, my students spend most of the time talking. I'm like the referee in a football game; I'm there to make sure it all goes to plan, but I'm not the center of attention.
> 
> Oftentimes, my students are a bit older and when they just start their course, I get a lot of comments along the lines of: "I had no idea you could learn a language this way! It's so much more fun!"
> 
> It's kinda sad when you think about it. We all wasted so much time and effort.


durch für gegen ohne um


----------



## Attus

2624


Stuu said:


> Is a jeugdherberg a youth hostel?


A Jugendherberge 
Yes, at least understanding Dutch is quite easy if you speak Germand and English. A friend of mine said learning Dutch is easy if you speak English, German and Hebrew (the latter one because of the pronounciation). I have really no clue about Dutch grammar, I have not learned Dutch ever, but I understand a lot of written Dutch.


----------



## Attus

Slagathor said:


> you need to use the 3rd case.


In Hungary we used to learn the cases in the order: Nominativ, Akkusativ, Genitiv, Dativ. I don't know the reason, why. It may be because of the classical Latin declension, which is nominativus, accusativus, geinitivus, dativus, ablativus. There's no Ablativ in German, and the rest is used in the same order. 
The Germans, however, use another order: Nominativ, Genitiv, Dativ, Akkusativ. It makes me crazy.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> In Hungary we used to learn the cases in the order: Nominativ, Akkusativ, Genitiv, Dativ. I don't know the reason, why. It may be because of the classical Latin declension, which is nominativus, accusativus, geinitivus, dativus, ablativus. There's no Ablativ in German, and the rest is used in the same order.
> The Germans, however, use another order: Nominativ, Genitiv, Dativ, Akkusativ. It makes me crazy.


All learning materials for German I’ve seen in English, use the NGDA order, and use names for the cases.


----------



## Stuu

Attus said:


> 2624
> 
> A Jugendherberge


Which got me thinking that the word for youth comes from latin in both germanic and romance languages. Is that unusual I wonder?


----------



## x-type

Dunno, the things that are complicated to me in German are: difference between hard and weak conjugation, declention of adjectives and pronouns, and prefixes that change whole word's meaning.
But the whole language is actually just as everything else in Germany - pure mathematics with strong rules.


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> Which got me thinking that the word for youth comes from latin in both germanic and romance languages. Is that unusual I wonder?


Interesting is the German word for a boy (ein Jung), which seems related to the English word young. Or youth.



x-type said:


> difference between hard and weak conjugation


Well, English also has that.



x-type said:


> declention of adjectives and pronouns


This is indeed problematic. I can talk and more or less understand German, but this thing I usually do by guessing and using a random tense, unless I remember that e.g. für always goes with Akkusativ, or after those words like in, auf, hinten – you use Akkusativ if you mean direction of movement and Dativ if you mean just static location. But even if you make and error, the interlocutor will know from the verb that you mean either movement or location... OK, if you have a verb that indicates movement, it can still be used with Dativ and have then a different meaning (movement WITHIN that location instead of towards it), but it's still something you can deduct from the context, or simply ask.

Interestingly, in Polish, or, I guess, in Croatian too, it doesn't really work different; we also use the same conjunction for both location and direction of movement, and differentiate the meaning by the case of the noun. And in English...

1. Ein Maus rennt unter den Wagen.
2. Ein Maus rennt unter dem Wagen.

both would be, I think, translated to:

A mouse is running under the car.

and this sentence can mean two different things, you must guess, which one someone meant.

But in Polish (and probably also Croatian) the cases work so differently from German that in most cases it isn't really helpful. One thing is that in Slavic languages tenses change the end of the noun, in German they rarely do it and in most cases they only change the article (while Slavic languages don't even have articles, for us it's something weird and unnecessary, also in English). The other is that the situation with using specific cases with specific articles or verbs often is completely different in Polish and in German.



x-type said:


> prefixes that change whole word's meaning


This is also something English has... The difference is in English those prefixes aren't prefixes and are placed after the verb and a space. But it doesn't change anything. When I try to teach English someone from my family, she often struggles with exactly the same thing in English. She sees e.g. "look after" and thinks it's about looking, like, with one's eyes. Or that the "have" that makes a past tense means having, like, possessing something.


----------



## Penn's Woods

The sky is falling!


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Most of populated Western Australia is in full lockdown the next week. Reason? A single hotel quarantine worker has tested positive on Covid-19....



Attus said:


> Yes, at least understanding Dutch is quite easy if you speak Germand and English. A friend of mine said learning Dutch is easy if you speak English, German and Hebrew (the latter one because of the pronounciation). I have really no clue about Dutch grammar, I have not learned Dutch ever, but I understand a lot of written Dutch.


I do not know hebrew, so for me written Dutch is OK, but spoken Dutch is almost in incomprehensible.



Stuu said:


> Which got me thinking that the word for youth comes from latin in both germanic and romance languages. Is that unusual I wonder?


I do not believe so in this case, any similarity is probably due to the Indo-European roots of both Germanic and Romance languages. (Roots not shared by Hungarian, of course.) In Merriam-Webster:
*History and Etymology for youth*
Middle English _youthe_, from Old English _geoguth_; akin to Old English _geong_ young — more at young

In my Norwegian dictionary it is similary said that the word for youth comes from Norse.


----------



## Slagathor

Attus said:


> In Hungary we used to learn the cases in the order: Nominativ, Akkusativ, Genitiv, Dativ. I don't know the reason, why. It may be because of the classical Latin declension, which is nominativus, accusativus, geinitivus, dativus, ablativus. There's no Ablativ in German, and the rest is used in the same order.
> The Germans, however, use another order: Nominativ, Genitiv, Dativ, Akkusativ. It makes me crazy.





Penn's Woods said:


> All learning materials for German I’ve seen in English, use the NGDA order, and use names for the cases.


We had NGDA as well, but we rarely used those terms because they're meaningless to a Dutch person (and nobody studies Latin here anyway). We would usually number them and add descriptors:

Eerste naamval - Onderwerp (subject)
Tweede naamval - Bezittelijk (possessive)
Derde naamval - Meewerkend voorwerp (indirect object)
Vierde naamval - Lijdend voorwerp (direct object)



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I do not know hebrew, so for me written Dutch is OK, but spoken Dutch is almost in incomprehensible.


I'm the same with Norwegian.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Can’t find a good map and have a slow connection (transitioning between phones; SSC only working on the one that doesn’t have the new network...), but the National Weather Service warning for where I am is 14 to 18 inches. 35 to 45 cm I think.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> We had NGDA as well, but we rarely used those terms because they're meaningless to a Dutch person (and nobody studies Latin here anyway). We would usually number them and add descriptors:
> 
> Eerste naamval - Onderwerp (subject)
> Tweede naamval - Bezittelijk (possessive)
> Derde naamval - Meewerkend voorwerp (indirect object)
> Vierde naamval - Lijdend voorwerp (direct object)
> 
> 
> 
> I'm the same with Norwegian.


Me in Amsterdam, to almost anyone: “Heb niet begrepen; ik kan het Nederlands lézen, maar....”

Me at a Burger King in Frankfurt Hauptbahnof: “Mein Deutsch is nicht sehr gut.”
Counter person: “Neither is mine.”


----------



## PovilD

radamfi said:


> The tabloid British press was no different in those days.


Even 70s to 80s?


----------



## radamfi

PovilD said:


> Even 70s to 80s?


Definitely 80s. I don't remember the 70s but I doubt it was much different. The more right wing Sun overtook the more left wing Mirror in sales at some point in the 80s. The Sun started putting topless women on Page 3 in the 70s. There was always gossip about the royal family especially Princess Diana.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Breakthrough? This is from a local TV station (part of the NBC network) and I don’t know where they got it, but I have no reason to believe they’re lying....









Common Anti-Depressant Pill Shows Promise In Fighting COVID-19


The drug Fluvoxamine, sold by the brand name Luvox, appears to prevent inflammation in the lungs of people infected with COVID-19, which can be fatal.




www.nbcphiladelphia.com


----------



## PovilD

Penn's Woods said:


> Breakthrough? This is from a local TV station (part of the NBC network) and I don’t know where they got it, but I have no reason to believe they’re lying....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Common Anti-Depressant Pill Shows Promise In Fighting COVID-19
> 
> 
> The drug Fluvoxamine, sold by the brand name Luvox, appears to prevent inflammation in the lungs of people infected with COVID-19, which can be fatal.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.nbcphiladelphia.com


Hmm, interesting coincidence that this pandemic is partially (if not even more than that) related with mental health too, and yet mental health drug shows promise in fighting covid.


----------



## Kpc21

There is already quite a lot of drugs found to be able to somehow help with curing the disease, but none of those is a magic pill you just swallow and get healthy, not even anything close to it.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> There is already quite a lot of drugs found to be able to somehow help with curing the disease, but none of those is a magic pill you just swallow and get healthy, not even anything close to it.


True. There are actually not much antiviral drugs to begin with. There are either vaccines or drugs that work somewhat and have antiviral properties.


----------



## geogregor

DanielFigFoz said:


> The British media is always in a state of panic about something or another.


True. But it used to be domain of the tabloids. Now sadly even the traditionally more measured outlets adopted this approach as well.

Brits seemingly just like to be scarred or outraged. For example when some hairdresser broke some regulations or there was some small gathering the British media went all up in arms, "OMG, the sky is going to collapse on our heads"

While in Poland quite a few outlets reports dispassionately about hospitality outlets openly defying the rules and trading (and there is more of them than you would think). I see much less outrage there, they at least try to present both sides of the story, highlight desperation of business owners as much as health aspect of the story.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> There is already quite a lot of drugs found to be able to somehow help with curing the disease, but none of those is a magic pill you just swallow and get healthy, not even anything close to it.


True. But remember, the same is true for any viruses. We basically have no drugs for curing diseases caused by viruses.


----------



## Stuu

PovilD said:


> Even 70s to 80s?


Yes, although there were fewer that would be called tabloids. The Sun has been populist and reactionary since Murdoch slimed his way into the country. The other downmarket papers have slowly got worse to match... the Daily Express used to be a proper newspaper but is now primarily aimed at the elderly who can't remember that it runs completely contradictory headlines every few days. Even the 'quality' press is not averse to screaming headlines which the articles don't really match. 

The mistake people make is to assume that newspapers exist to tell people the news: they don't, they exist, fundamentally, to sell more newspapers


----------



## geogregor

Stuu said:


> The mistake people make is to assume that newspapers exist to tell people the news: they don't, *they exist, fundamentally, to sell more newspapers*


And to do that they don't tell people news or even truth. They tell people what people want to hear (not that it is working particularly well, the papers' circulation is falling fast).

The problem is that what used to be the tabloid-style reporting is nowadays permeating all British media organizations. From papers, via radio to the TV channels and from tabloids up to what used to be established broadsheets.

Then we have the social media, even the most rabid tabloids can't compete with hysteria visible there.

I follow one or two local groups on FB. Nothing political or controversial, purely local stuff. It is useful to find out what's going on, like road closures, new businesses opening or recommendations. For example that's I found plumber when I needed one, I just asked on local group.

But in the time of pandemic those groups are often full of absurd outrage and complains about everything. People were up in arms because "crowds in the park" in summer. To be clear, I was there, and you could hardly call it a crowd. Just what you would normally see in the park, most people stayed out of each other way anyway.

But no, outraged "netizens" were winding each other up. "people are selfish, we will be locked up forever because people went to park" and all sort of nonsense like that was dominating local groups. And it wasn't one off. People were complain about other people shopping, walking on pavements, basically about everything you could imagine.

I suspect such groups reinforce panic mentality, people switch off thinking and concentrate on being outraged as part of the group.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

This is what I associate with UK tabloids of the 80s


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> But no, outraged "netizens" were winding each other up. "people are selfish, we will be locked up forever because people went to park" and all sort of nonsense like that was dominating local groups. And it wasn't one off. People were complain about other people shopping, walking on pavements, basically about everything you could imagine.
> 
> I suspect such groups reinforce panic mentality, people switch off thinking and concentrate on being outraged as part of the group.


One of many things that has astonished me was when the Met Police complained that there were over 3000 people in Brockwell Park on one of the sunny days in the first lockdown. And no journalists pointed out that the park is a couple of km/2 and 3000 people is entirely reasonable in such a large space with multiple entrances

Yes I agree some people are completely over the top and social media is an echo chamber where many people only see comments matching their own opinions/prejudices... but a massive part of the problem is the total lack of leadership from the government, leading to people feeling out of control and in fear of the worst. The constant changes of plan and Johnson's personality flaws have done a lot of damage


----------



## geogregor

Stuu said:


> One of many things that has astonished me was when the Met Police complained that there were over 3000 people in Brockwell Park on one of the sunny days in the first lockdown. And no journalists pointed out that the park is a couple of km/2 and 3000 people is entirely reasonable in such a large space with multiple entrances


There were some ludicrous actions taken by authorities in th spring, such as taping off benches so people wouldn't seat on them.

Transmission out in the open in sunny summer days was negligible problem. And yet we had these mass panic about "too many people in the parks".

This is actually in Brockwell Park:

DSC04325 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

And here Greenwich park:

DSC03596 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Streatham Common:

DSC03132 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC03126 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Of course people were routinely ignoring this silly stuff and the same way fuelling even more outrage from some folks on social media. Occasionally there were some overzealous police officers but luckily I never had a problem.

More often there were "covid wardens" urging people to move. They were mostly ignored and even if someone moved it was just for a minute:

DSC03418 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

It was all completely bonkers but enough to create social media outrage. But more than that, there were serious debates in the media if sitting on the bench is actually illegal. I'm kidding you not.


----------



## PovilD

Never been seeing such things in our parks last summer, nothing bad happened  ...or at least I extremely doubt that our second wave was because of that, in the worse case, only very minor part of infections.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Stuu said:


> And no journalists pointed out that the park is a couple of km/2 and 3000 people is entirely reasonable in such a large space with multiple entrances


This type of journalism is seen in the Netherlands as well. There are unprecedented restrictions on freedoms with many practical and mental problems, yet almost no journalist questions the need, effectiveness or proportionality. The press conferences are a complete joke, with stupid nonsense questions where the prime minister is just repeating what he has already said. Journalism almost feels like a North Korea parody. 

We also had journalists counting how many people went inside a church and updating those in live blogs. It's just absurd.

But don't underestimate how much the media benefits from the corona crisis. They get more clicks and views than ever before. They want you to stay locked down so you have more time to update the news feed for the 40th time that day.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's coming: The Beast From The East!










Some models are predicting 30-40 cm of snow, high winds and temperatures down to -20 in the Netherlands over the weekend and next week.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

-20? Is that common in Netherlands? Does not happen every year here, and when it does, normally only in a valleys etc. due to inversion. The last few nights have been that cold actually.

The coldest temperature on record in Norway is btw -51.4 C, far from Siberian or Antarctic levels, of course


----------



## keokiracer

-20 is extremely uncommon in the Netherlands. Once a decade maybe?


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> This type of journalism is seen in the Netherlands as well. There are unprecedented restrictions on freedoms with many practical and mental problems, yet almost no journalist questions the need, effectiveness or proportionality. The press conferences are a complete joke, with stupid nonsense questions where the prime minister is just repeating what he has already said. Journalism almost feels like a North Korea parody.
> 
> We also had journalists counting how many people went inside a church and updating those in live blogs. It's just absurd.
> 
> But don't underestimate how much the media benefits from the corona crisis. They get more clicks and views than ever before. They want you to stay locked down so you have more time to update the news feed for the 40th time that day.


Okay, I’m sorry, but that last paragraph is in tin-foil-hat territory.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's coming: The Beast From The East!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Some models are predicting 30-40 cm of snow, high winds and temperatures down to -20 in the Netherlands over the weekend and next week.


Amateurs. /jk


----------



## cinxxx

I'm amazed about how so many people still care about this so much anymore.
I become more numb everyday, care less about anyone getting the virus, surviving or not from it.
It's been a year and I had enough. 
Looking forward for warmer weather and will do some trips without caring about measures anymore.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A possibly historic snow event could unfold this weekend in the Netherlands, with 20 - 40 cm, even 50 cm in some areas are forecasted by the GFS model. All models seem to be in agreement for a substantial amount of snow across much of the country. It is combined with strong winds, which will lead to significant snow drifts blocking roads. Temperatures could drop to -10 to -15 afterwards, with windchills around -20 or lower. It could be a 'once-in-a-decade' event.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Think of it this way: if a significant wave does occur, the government has basically no countermeasures anymore, because all options have already been exhausted, except maybe for imprisonment of the population.


What are you talking about? The point of the lockdown is to minimize said third wave. 

If you open up now, you'll have a fancy toolbox full of measures available to you, but they won't make any difference because it'll be too late. 

When your car gets a puncture, you don't drive around on a flat because you wanna make sure you have a countermeasure available to you (the spare wheel in the trunk). That doesn't make any sense.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> A possibly historic snow event could unfold this weekend in the Netherlands, with 20 - 40 cm, even 50 cm in some areas are forecasted by the GFS model. All models seem to be in agreement for a substantial amount of snow across much of the country. It is combined with strong winds, which will lead to significant snow drifts blocking roads. Temperatures could drop to -10 to -15 afterwards, with windchills around -20 or lower. It could be a 'once-in-a-decade' event.


Looks like I'll be fine down in Zeeland, wehey!


----------



## geogregor

cinxxx said:


> I'm amazed about how so many people still care about this so much anymore.
> I become more numb everyday, care less about anyone getting the virus, surviving or not from it.
> It's been a year and I had enough.
> Looking forward for warmer weather and will do some trips without caring about measures anymore.


Pretty much the same here. I become completely desensitized. It is all just numbers now. Few thousand dead one way or another is just another number. People die every year, some years more of them, some years less. Call me selfish bastard but I really don't care that much. 

But before critics jump on me, ask yourself, do you really care how many children die every year in Africa due to malaria? Or HIV? Or working in illegal mines which produce metals for your shiny smartphones? 

Do you even know those numbers? Do you follow charts every day?

We are all bunch of hypocrites here in the so called rich world. 



ChrisZwolle said:


> A possibly historic snow event could unfold this weekend in the Netherlands, with 20 - 40 cm, even 50 cm in some areas are forecasted by the GFS model. All models seem to be in agreement for a substantial amount of snow across much of the country. It is combined with strong winds, which will lead to significant snow drifts blocking roads. Temperatures could drop to -10 to -15 afterwards, with windchills around -20 or lower. It could be a 'once-in-a-decade' event.


Similar thing is expected in the UK.

In the meantime Scottish ski resorts already have the best snow in years, sadly they can't benefit out of it:









Covid in Scotland: Closed ski resorts have 'best snow in years'


Despite the most magnificent conditions in 11 years, the slopes remain closed because of lockdown.



www.bbc.co.uk







> *Some of Scotland's mountain ski centres are having their best winter conditions in years while closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.*
> 
> Cairngorm Mountain, near Aviemore, has reported "high quality snow" on its slopes.
> 
> Glencoe Mountain said it was experiencing the best conditions it had ever seen for the time of year.
> 
> It follows weeks of frequent snowfalls and freezing temperatures, with more wintry weather expected this weekend.
> 
> All of mainland Scotland, along with the Western Isles, are in lockdown to supress the spread of Covid and to help prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed.
> 
> Ski centres, like the vast majority of businesses, are closed in line with restrictions.
> 
> Cairngorm Mountain has a "skeleton" technical operations team still working to keep lifts and other facilities maintained and protected, ready for when the site can reopen.
> 
> Susan Smith, interim chief executive of Cairngorm Mountain, said: "For the whole team here, it is hugely frustrating that we are unable to welcome snowsports enthusiasts to enjoy the high-quality snow cover, which is the best we have seen in recent years.
> 
> "We await guidance from the Scottish government on the potential opportunity to reopen the ski area and hope that this winter weather continues."
> 
> Andy Meldrum, of Glencoe Mountain, said his business was also working towards a date when they could welcome back skiers and snowboarders.
> 
> He said: "There is lots of snow - the best we have seen at this time of year - and the weather has been really good as well with less wind than normal.
> 
> "We remain ever hopeful that we will be able to open soon, even if it's only for locals.
> "We successfully ran throughout most of December without any issues and believe we could do so again."





> Recent years have seen Scotland's mountain snowsports centres invest heavily in artificial snow-making equipment because there was not enough of the natural white stuff.
> 
> This year there is more than enough snow, but few can enjoy it.
> 
> Last year resorts also missed out on "one of the best springs in years" due to the pandemic, having to shutdown just as lots of snow and a spell of calm, cold weather arrived.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> What are you talking about? The point of the lockdown is to minimize said third wave.
> 
> If you open up now, you'll have a fancy toolbox full of measures available to you, but they won't make any difference because it'll be too late.


You make it sound as if all restrictions will be lifted, which I think nobody is advocating for. However some restrictions could be eased, like opening so-called 'non essential' shops and maybe hairdressers. This lockdown is doing unprecedented damage to the economy, the future state budgets , education and mental health. They can't keep it locked down forever or maybe some point 3-5 months in the future when maybe enough people will be vaccinated. 

News report from 13 January: Almost 170,000 cases per day if British variant floods the Netherlands (by early February). We're in early February, the British variant is thought to be two-thirds of all cases now, and we're at 4,000 per day. Not 170,000. 

They justify these extended lockdowns based on some unlikely high end scenario which haven't played out in the past either. Projections of problematic hospital waves keep being pushed into the future, first it was December, then January, now sometime im March. Easing _some_ of the restrictions won't immediately escalate things into an uncontrollable outbreak. 

Some say the curfew was a distraction by the PM to keep attention away from the child care benefit scandal. It's kind of strange to implement such a measure while indicators were trending down.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> You make it sound as if all restrictions will be lifted, which I think nobody is advocating for. However some restrictions could be eased, like opening so-called 'non essential' shops and maybe hairdressers. This lockdown is doing unprecedented damage to the economy, the future state budgets , education and mental health. They can't keep it locked down forever or maybe some point 3-5 months in the future when maybe enough people will be vaccinated.
> 
> News report from 13 January: Almost 170,000 cases per day if British variant floods the Netherlands (by early February). We're in early February, the British variant is thought to be two-thirds of all cases now, and we're at 4,000 per day. Not 170,000.
> 
> They justify these extended lockdowns based on some unlikely high end scenario which haven't played out in the past either. Projections of problematic hospital waves keep being pushed into the future, first it was December, then January, now sometime im March. Easing _some_ of the restrictions won't immediately escalate things into an uncontrollable outbreak.
> 
> Some say the curfew was a distraction by the PM to keep attention away from the child care benefit scandal. It's kind of strange to implement such a measure while indicators were trending down.


I won't comment on that last paragraph because I have no way of knowing. Although I do resent Rutte for always dodging difficult stuff and sacrificing his ministers and state secretaries any time there's a scandal. Somehow it's always someone else's fault.

I agree that some restrictions could be lifted in theory, but the problem is human behavior.

Take the primary schools, for example. A lot of people are struggling to work from home while the kids are there. Virtual education is also not great for the kids themselves. So the government is doing the right thing reopening primary schools since little kids don't really transmit the virus much anyway.

But the last time we reopened primary schools, the flipping parents immediately started going back to the office in large numbers. _That wasn't part of the deal, people!_ So there's a lot of unintended consequences to consider.

It sounds great: "Just let the hairdressers reopen." but society doesn't work like that.


----------



## PovilD

I'm not advocating long or eternal lockdowns, and I guess nobody wants them, since it would just prolong inevitable death from covid if vaccinations wouldn't go that well.

Vaccinations just need to go faster, but they don't. Current situation looks like that those who have more money purchase vaccines and EU gets dog's dinner. Data shows that vaccines provide sterilizing immunity (although not 100%). I don't think it would be bad idea to create travel bubble between fairly vaccinated countries. Those who come into those bubbles are put in quarantine, check for antibodies maybe, and maybe even vaccinated, etc.

No exit strategy, like we see now, only vague vaccination plan, could lead people to becoming partially numb to those new waves (even if those become really bad), and protest against lockdowns would increase. From what I seen these are mostly antivaxers and hooligans right now, later it could be larger group of very regular people.

From what I heard, more and more people in my country don't want to get tested, they tired of lockdowns, especially in rural areas, since they see it produces more problem than achieve solutions.


----------



## cinxxx

Slagathor said:


> It sounds great: "Just let the hairdressers reopen." but society doesn't work like that.


While society doesn't work like it's made to since already too long either...
I will try to defy rules as much as I can and find loopholes and all, and my guess is many people will do the same...


----------



## Slagathor

cinxxx said:


> While society doesn't work like it's made to since already too long either...
> I will try to defy rules as much as I can and find loopholes and all, and my guess is many people will do the same...


If your behavior and that of people like you leads to higher infection numbers and more hospitalizations, then you're actively contributing to a longer lockdown.


----------



## PovilD

@cinxxx
Just wait patiently 2-3 months.

I think we could win out of this having slow vaccination process and pottentially seasonality of this virus in Temperate latitudes, but 3rd and 4th, etc. lockdowns if those happen should be local and only last up to 2 weeks, like in Australia.

If 3rd and etc. long few+ month lockdowns do happen, and nothing much else happens about it (like simple hot discussion, etc.), I would be astonished.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

cinxxx said:


> I'm amazed about how so many people still care about this so much anymore.
> I become more numb everyday, care less about anyone getting the virus, surviving or not from it.
> It's been a year and I had enough.
> Looking forward for warmer weather and will do some trips without caring about measures anymore.





cinxxx said:


> While society doesn't work like it's made to since already too long either...
> I will try to defy rules as much as I can and find loopholes and all, and my guess is many people will do the same...


Is this for real?

What is the motivation for defying rules as much as you can? Does it give you some kind of inner pleasure?




ChrisZwolle said:


> A possibly historic snow event could unfold this weekend in the Netherlands, with 20 - 40 cm, even 50 cm in some areas are forecasted by the GFS model. All models seem to be in agreement for a substantial amount of snow across much of the country. It is combined with strong winds, which will lead to significant snow drifts blocking roads. Temperatures could drop to -10 to -15 afterwards, with windchills around -20 or lower. It could be a 'once-in-a-decade' event.


Enjoy!


----------



## cinxxx

Lol, inner pleasure.
Actually I don't have to justify myself, so you can play Corona police with other people if you like 
I just had enough. 1 year of this was enough for me.
If my behavior will do this or that, I just don't care anymore, my mental health is more important than that )


----------



## Stuu

cinxxx said:


> Lol, inner pleasure.
> Actually I don't have to justify myself, so you can play Corona police with other people if you like
> I just had enough. 1 year of this was enough for me.
> If my behavior will do this or that, I just don't care anymore, my mental health is more important than that )


We all have a role to play in looking after each other in a society, that is the fundamental point of all this. Exactly where that line should be is a matter of debate, but there has to be a line somewhere.


----------



## geogregor

Slagathor said:


> If your behavior and that of people like you leads to higher infection numbers and more hospitalizations, then you're actively contributing to a longer lockdown.


The problem is there seems to be little reward for obeying the rules, (even the silly ones). Instead we now start seeing ever moving goalposts. It looks like it is never be safe to even talk about strategy of reopening as it might "encourage stupid population to act wrong".

Well, some people might want to be treated like mindless stupid mass. I will use my best judgment when deciding my behavior in the spring. For now weather is crap and I'm taking care of friend's dog so I'm fairly content.

But I'm on a full pay and even saving money. Others are not so lucky.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> The problem is there seems to be little reward for obeying the rules, (even the silly ones).


If you mean personal reward, that is the same with almost any rule or convention, though. Having no social antennas or consiousness combined with some intelligence, you can have a pretty good life being a bastard.


----------



## cinxxx

I come from Eastern Europe and have a different perspective of what rules should be respected and especially not respecting everything blindly just because it's decreed.


----------



## Slagathor

geogregor said:


> The problem is there seems to be little reward for obeying the rules, (even the silly ones).


I guess "fewer deaths" doesn't count because that particular reward concerns _other people_...



geogregor said:


> Instead we now start seeing ever moving goalposts. It looks like it is never be safe to even talk about strategy of reopening as it might "encourage stupid population to act wrong".


We _do_ have an exit strategy: vaccinate the old and vulnerable first, then reopen in stages as hospitalization numbers begin to drop.

The seasonality of the disease will help. Spring, once it kicks in, will speed up the process.


----------



## Penn's Woods

cinxxx said:


> Lol, inner pleasure.
> Actually I don't have to justify myself, so you can play Corona police with other people if you like
> I just had enough. 1 year of this was enough for me.
> If my behavior will do this or that, I just don't care anymore, my mental health is more important than that )


Your mental health is dependent on being able to do whatever the hell you want?

Not to mention more important than the consequences of your actions to others, up to and including helping to kill them?

Grow up.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> I guess "fewer deaths" doesn't count because that particular reward concerns _other people_...
> 
> 
> 
> We _do_ have an exit strategy: vaccinate the old and vulnerable first, then reopen in stages as hospitalization numbers begin to drop.
> 
> The seasonality of the disease will help. Spring, once it kicks in, will speed up the process.


Re exit strategies and moving the goalposts: I can’t speak to what’s happening over there, but I wonder whether that’s being communicated well. We get so focused on what’s going on today...what’s the state of testing availability or vaccine availability...that maybe we don’t hear enough about what’s down the road. U.S. numbers are dropping now, which you’d think would be a major headline, but it’s almost an afterthought when you hear it.

And I think there was a move-the-goalpost effect when we stopped talking about “flattening the curve” and started talking about wiping it out altogether. I’ve remarked a couple of times on this thread that it seemed to me it ought to be possible to loosen some restrictions well before herd immunity is achieved, that it seemed to me that having some significant part of the population vaccinated even well short of herd immunity ought to have some effect on spread, but that I wasn’t hearing that. Dr. Fauci did actually say something along those lines a few days ago, but you needed to be listening to the right briefing at the right time...it got lost among other news. People -do- have other things to do than listen to daytime virus briefings and that needs to be taken into account.

I have no problem with questioning rules. Examples: Was it really necessary to close every state and county park in New Jersey for a couple of months last spring, even the ones where you can hike by yourself without ever seeing another person for long stretches of time? Does making people stay indoors after 6 as opposed to after 10 really accomplish anything? (Or making them stay indoors at all?) Does closing borders stop the spread of a variant that’s already present on both sides of it? All legitimate questions. But you can’t lose sight of your responsibility to the society you live in. Note that I’m asking “does this help?) as opposed to just saying “I don’t wanna.”

I’m also not so cynical as to assume politicians and media are doing all of this for fun. At the time of the park closure, which annoyed me, I remarked to a friend on Facebook (he’d asked his friends a question along these lines) that I was prepared to assume, until there was evidence to the contrary, that officials were trying to do the right thing, even if they were occasionally getting it wrong (they’re fallible human beings like the rest of us), so I didn’t get angry about it....

@ChrisZwolle’s story of Dutch journalists apparently pushing for stricter rules surprises me. But I haven’t seen much if any of that here.


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> A possibly historic snow event could unfold this weekend in the Netherlands, with 20 - 40 cm, even 50 cm in some areas are forecasted by the GFS model. All models seem to be in agreement for a substantial amount of snow across much of the country. It is combined with strong winds, which will lead to significant snow drifts blocking roads. Temperatures could drop to -10 to -15 afterwards, with windchills around -20 or lower. It could be a 'once-in-a-decade' event.


When is this?


----------



## Penn's Woods

geogregor said:


> Pretty much the same here. I become completely desensitized. It is all just numbers now. Few thousand dead one way or another is just another number. People die every year, some years more of them, some years less. Call me selfish bastard but I really don't care that much.
> 
> But before critics jump on me, ask yourself, do you really care how many children die every year in Africa due to malaria? Or HIV? Or working in illegal mines which produce metals for your shiny smartphones?
> 
> Do you even know those numbers? Do you follow charts every day?
> 
> We are all bunch of hypocrites here in the so called rich world.
> 
> 
> 
> Similar thing is expected in the UK.
> 
> In the meantime Scottish ski resorts already have the best snow in years, sadly they can't benefit out of it:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Covid in Scotland: Closed ski resorts have 'best snow in years'
> 
> 
> Despite the most magnificent conditions in 11 years, the slopes remain closed because of lockdown.
> 
> 
> 
> www.bbc.co.uk


So if you’re allowed not to care about deaths, why should we care about Scottish ski resorts? Not trying to be snarky here, but I don’t see how an argument for, well, selfishness is supported by appeals to others’ altruism.

The people that actually work there and run them, sure, it makes sense for them to care. But the public at large who in your model of society are doing whatever they want with no thought to the consequences for others?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Penn's Woods said:


> When is this?


This weekend, the weather model shows the forecasted snow depth as of 8 February 18Z (UTC)


----------



## cinxxx

Penn's Woods said:


> Your mental health is dependent on being able to do whatever the hell you want?
> 
> Not to mention more important than the consequences of your actions to others, up to and including helping to kill them?
> 
> Grow up.


Where did I write that I would want to be able to do whatever the hell I want? Exaggerating a bit?

And btw all this "killing others because of your actions" is getting out of hand and needs to stop. How many people did you maybe kill maybe because you had some cold 10 years ago and didn't stay home and infected an innocent granny? Are we really going there?


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

cinxxx said:


> Where did I write that I would want to be able to do whatever the hell I want? Exaggerating a bit


In my head, your statements indicate that you would like to go further than you normally would, but it could of course just be a provocation:


cinxxx said:


> I will try to defy rules as much as I can and find loopholes and all





cinxxx said:


> I come from Eastern Europe and have a different perspective of what rules should be respected and especially not respecting everything blindly just because it's decreed.


This might be the key to understand the different perspectives. In my mind, trusting that the elected government actually do not try to harm you is vital for a well-functioning society. Compare these figures:








Trust index








Covid-19 incident rates.

Do you see the correlation between lack of trust and Covid-19? If you looked at the number of fatalities over the pandemic, I think the correlation would be even bigger. Netherlands and Sweden are anomalies here, but in both cases I think the reason is a relaxed initial approach to the pandemic, and the testing is probably also much higher than in some of the countries without public trust.


----------



## Penn's Woods

cinxxx said:


> Where did I write that I would want to be able to do whatever the hell I want? Exaggerating a bit?
> 
> And btw all this "killing others because of your actions" is getting out of hand and needs to stop. How many people did you maybe kill maybe because you had some cold 10 years ago and didn't stay home and infected an innocent granny? Are we really going there?


LOL!
That’s ridiculous.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Penn's Woods said:


> So if you’re allowed not to care about deaths, why should we care about Scottish ski resorts? Not trying to be snarky here, but I don’t see how an argument for, well, selfishness is supported by appeals to others’ altruism.
> 
> The people that actually work there and run them, sure, it makes sense for them to care. But the public at large who in your model of society are doing whatever they want with no thought to the consequences for others?


By the way, I do care about the economy, about business owners. I’m sure governments do too. (What politician, no matter how “Communist” you think a western liberal may be, actually -wants- to damage an economy?). They’ve got to balance all of this.


----------



## cinxxx

@54°26′S 3°24′E, defying as much as possible while not putting other people at risk, do I have to spell it out completely? 😁

Where I'm from you just don't trust the government lol. But if you say that in the west, surely there must be something wrong with you 😂

And yes, I talked about this with some people already, and the Corona online policing thing has to stop. This has become a new form of bullying and shaming.


----------



## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> If you mean personal reward, that is the same with almost any rule or convention, though. Having no social antennas or consiousness combined with some intelligence, you can have a pretty good life *being a bastard*.


I never claimed to be particularly nice person.  And yes, personal reward. Aren't we all driven by it? Especially in our current capitalist society where nobody gives a damn where the goods come from?

Please don't sell me the altruism story. Western capitalist societies are driven to large degree by greed (or reward, if one wants nicer, more diplomatic, phrase). People want things and they want them cheap. And very few people are particularly ethical. As I said, very few question where the metals in their smartphones come from. Lives of kids in Congo doesn't matter. For most folks.

I did ask, and nobody yet answered, why don't we care about victims of malaria? At least nowhere near as much as for victims of Covid? I tell you why, because it doesn't concern us, white folks in the rich world. We are all bastards in that respect.

As for questioning rules. You live in Norway, nice rich country, run by sensible politicians (as far as we outsiders see it). Like cinxxx I grew up in Eastern Europe, partially during communism. Now I live in the UK, country run by elitists and yet inept bunch of completely incompetent morons. I have every right to question their decisions and use my brain. In the spring I did break rules forbidding me from sitting on the park bench. How many grannies did I kill in your opinion?

I guess our different outlook comes from the fact that we have different experiences with politicians and the wider rulling elites.





Penn's Woods said:


> *I have no problem with questioning rules*. Examples: Was it really necessary to close every state and county park in New Jersey for a couple of months last spring, even the ones where you can hike by yourself without ever seeing another person for long stretches of time? Does making people stay indoors after 6 as opposed to after 10 really accomplish anything? (Or making them stay indoors at all?) Does closing borders stop the spread of a variant that’s already present on both sides of it? All legitimate questions. But you can’t lose sight of your responsibility to the society you live in. Note that I’m asking “does this help?) as opposed to just saying “I don’t wanna.”
> 
> I’m also not so cynical as to assume politicians and media are doing all of this for fun. At the time of the park closure, which annoyed me, I remarked to a friend on Facebook (he’d asked his friends a question along these lines) that I was prepared to assume, until there was evidence to the contrary, that officials were trying to do the right thing, even if they were occasionally getting it wrong (they’re fallible human beings like the rest of us), so I didn’t get angry about it....


And that is precisely what I do. Apparently that's enough to be a bastard. At least I'm genuinely bastard but some other people might just question the rules. As we all should, every day.




Penn's Woods said:


> So if you’re allowed not to care about deaths, why should we care about Scottish ski resorts? Not trying to be snarky here, but I don’t see how an argument for, well, selfishness is supported by appeals to others’ altruism.


Did I say I care about Scottish ski resorts? I posted it is as lighthearted story. As for deaths. People die. They always did, they always will. Yes, we should minimize risk and try to save life. But the question is how far should we go. We will never be able to save every single life.

OK, we are on road forum. Every year people die in car accidents. We try to minimize risk of death by various safety measures. Road rules, design or roads, design of cars. But we don't ban driving. Why? It would ultimately save all the road deaths. Well, we calculate that some deaths will happen, it is the cost of mobility which driving allows us.

Precisely the same calculation have to go into combating Covid. Of course here more lives are at stake and calculations are more complicated, but ultimately it is the same principle. Simply stating that "life is priceless" is meaningless phrase. For example insurance companies routinely price lives, they just don't advertise it.


Just to make it clear, I don't go out masskless and cough in people's faces just to make a point. In fact I follow most of the rules. But I do break some of them from time to time. Like that example of sitting on a bench when it was prohibited by some idiot. Or lowering mask for a bit in an empty train carriage, even just to have a drink or snack. And I will keep doing it.

Anyway, let's see what happens next. Britain is moving quite well with vaccination. Now the new debate starts here, how many people have to be vaccinated before we start reopening society. This decision again will involve calculations involving lives. The safest approach would be to wait months to vaccinate everyone. And some politicians and commentators will push for as late opening as possible. Others will want to move faster. I'm definitely in the second camp.


----------



## Penn's Woods

There’s a multi-day bike race going on now in France? I had no idea until I saw a headline about it.





__





Étoile de Bessèges 2023 -Les étapes


L'Etoile de Bessèges 2023 se déroulera du 1er au 5 février 2023. Cinq étapes dont un contre la montre individuel en fin d'épreuve




www.etoiledebesseges.com





(And this has nothing to do with COVID. Outdoor sports without lots of seated spectators should be doable. I actually enjoyed the Tour de France last year more than most, and I don’t think it was just the novelty of doing it in September.)


----------



## x-type

It's a flu. Escaped from lab. Nothing else.


----------



## Penn's Woods

^^Oh, boy....


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^Oh, boy....


What?
Is it normal that I had to start attending shrink because of that? Is it normal that I cannot organize business dinner with my clients? Is it normal that I cannot go out for a dinner at all? Is it normal that my shrink fromfirst "is it normal" saw me without mask for the first time after 10 meetings and was amazed that I had a beard and tought that my appereance was completely different? Is it normal that my hairdresser had to fire her employees and start working in shifts?

(I can start with economic "is it normals" too if you want, starting with Chinese who made absolute chaos with prime materials' prices in whole world)


----------



## Kpc21

In general, politicians are considered ones of the LEAST trustworthy people. They make their careers by lying. It's a fact, difficult to discuss with.

So:


54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> trusting that the elected government actually do not try to harm you is vital for a well-functioning society


is said easily, but it's completely impractical.

Over here, I hear and read more and more people just starting to ignore the restrictions.

Most of the public debate is now about the vaccines, and how does it look like? The politicians say about their own ideas and concepts how to do that process, but the vast majority of comments in social media and under these articles are people not trusting the vaccines.

"I'll never ever get the vaccine. It's a plan to kill out the people to reduce their number in the overpopulated world"
"But vaccine is the only way to get out of this pandemic and restrictions"
"What pandemic? It's not a pandemic, it's a plandemic. Have you seen any corpses of dead people lying out in the streets?"
"Well, no, but it's not how pandemics work. It's only thanks to the restrictions that it's not like MANY times more people die from it than there would die normally"
"But how do you know that?"
"You know, there are statistics, published by the government every day, THIS many people have died from Covid already"
"And you really believe in these government's statistics? Don't you know that the doctors are paid to register deaths from other reasons as deaths from Covid? It's actually nothing different from ordinary flu"
"I know an anecdote is not a proof but maybe it'll persuade you; I know someone who had really severe Covid symptoms and had to stay in a bed for two months afterwards, and even now he can't do the physical activities he did previously"
"Anyway, people sometimes die from flu either... And even if we assume that it's not made deliberately to kill out people, or at least to inject microchips to them so that they will be controlled (haven't you heard that Bill Gates already killed quite many children with a vaccine sponsored by him in a poor country somewhere in Africa or Asia?), how can you trust a vaccine which isn't even properly tested? Normally it takes 10 years, and now it's not even a year since this 'pandemic' became a 'worldwide problem'"
"But the producers promise it was tested sufficiently, and scientists confirm that"
"The producers make vaccines to make money, so they'll obviously do everything to persuade people that their vaccines are good even if they aren't. It's business. And what scientists? These paid by those pharmaceutical corporations?"
"Well, there are independent international scientific bodies which confirm that, like WHO"
"WHO? Do you really trust WHO? They are wrong about nearly everything! Even Trump left this weird organization. Watch this video: ... – where they interview an independent scientist and he tells how it really is."
"Uuuuh... such videos with yellow subtitles really don't look trustworthy to me. And does he even specialize in medicine? I checked him on Wikipedia and it looks like he is an astronomer"
"He used to be a doctor but he got excluded from his profession. He discovered many breakthrough things, found a drug for cancer and so on, but they shut him up because he was too dangerous for the medical environment with his discoveries. But his methods cured THAT MANY people from cancer!"

This is more or less how such discussions look like.


----------



## Penn's Woods

x-type said:


> What?
> Is it normal that I had to start attending shrink because of that? Is it normal that I cannot organize business dinner with my clients? Is it normal that I cannot go out for a dinner at all? Is it normal that my shrink fromfirst "is it normal" saw me without mask for the first time after 10 meetings and was amazed that I had a beard and tought that my appereance was completely different? Is it normal that my hairdresser had to fire her employees and start working in shifts?
> 
> (I can start with economic "is it normals" too if you want, starting with Chinese who made absolute chaos with prime materials' prices in whole world)


It is not “just a flu.” If you say it is, you’re either an idiot or a liar. Possibly both.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Please tell me we’re not going to start arguing basic facts here. I don’t have the patience for that.


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> It is not “just a flu.” If you say it is, you’re either an idiot or a liar. Possibly both.


Do you have info how many flu cases have been indicated so far in 2020/2021 season? Let me remind you, we should be on the top of the season right now. Is anybody mentioning it? Has covid made old-fashined flu dissappeared perhaps?


----------



## Kpc21

Well, its a flu, and the whole pandemic is fake, made to make people get injected with quantum microchips, made to control them, which will be presented as vaccinating them against this fake-lethal disease...

One thing is that we may not agree with all the Covid-related policies, restrictions and so on, claiming that some of those may not help or help very little, another thing is that it's not like this pandemic doesn't exist and doesn't force us to have at least some restrictions, without which it would become really bad. One can only discuss the extent of these restrictions.

And I think we can trust the scientists that Covid is not really comparable with flu. It spreads differently, and much more often it gives severe symptoms that require hospital treatment.

An often discussed thing over here is whether it makes sense that the government re-opens malls, and they don't reopen schools at the same time. As if schools were more dangerous from malls, where so many random people meet together.

To me, it makes sense (malls generate economic loses, schools don't, and it probably was so that the government could open one of these but not both together, so they had to choose), but for vast majority of people, I even talk to, it doesn't.


----------



## Slagathor

x-type said:


> Do you have info how many flu cases have been indicated so far in 2020/2021 season? Let me remind you, we should be on the top of the season right now. Is anybody mentioning it? Has covid made old-fashined flu dissappeared perhaps?


It still isn't a flu.

Ignoring stuff like HIV and Ebola, there are 3 families of common or famous viruses:

1) *Rhinoviruses*. They are usually responsible for the common cold.

2) *Influenza viruses*. They are responsible for various kinds of flu (_flu _being short for _influenza_).

3) *Coronaviruses*. They are responsible for such illnesses as SARS, MERS and Covid-19.

Covid-19 is a coronavirus and therefore NOT a flu. This is a simple, basic fact. It's easily testable.


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> Or lowering mask for a bit in an empty train carriage, even just to have a drink or snack. And I will keep doing it.







__





National Rail Enquiries - Face Coverings


The gateway to Britain's National Rail network. A portal into UK rail travel including train company information and promotions; train times; fares enquiries; ticket purchase and train running information.




www.nationalrail.co.uk







> *Can I remove my face covering to eat or drink?*
> 
> Yes. If a passenger needs to temporarily remove a face covering whilst eating, drinking or taking medication whilst maintaining social distancing, then this should be permitted with an expectation that they replace it to continue their journey. We kindly ask passengers to keep the removal of face coverings, when it comes to eating, drinking or taking medication, to a minimum especially on short journeys.


Using the car instead of the train has been considered to be the "ethical" option during the pandemic. But there might be some unintended consequences as a result, even though travelling by train has not been proven to be a risky activity regarding Covid. The chance of having an accident driving is higher than when using a train, so how many people have died or got injured as a result of someone switching their trip from train to car? There's a concern that people will continue to use cars instead of the train after the pandemic because they have got used to it and because train services get cut because of reduced funding, and that would increase death and injury in the long run as well. As public transport usage generally involves some walking or cycling, if people walk or cycle less because of driving more that will lead to poorer health and premature death.


----------



## tfd543

@x-type has right to have his opinion as Long as he has solid arguments... i dont see why it should create a scene.. people have Their own view on things.


----------



## x-type

Ok, we all know that I have presented my opinion very metaphorically calling it a flu, we shouldn't have PhD to get it. 
So, now my honest opinion: it is easily transmittable disease which has shown not to be as dangerous as it was tought at first, but still misterious enough not to ignore it. Should our normal habbits suffer because of it? My opinion is no. We can get many nasty virus or bacterial diseases in everyday life, and we dont make a fuss over it. Covid19 should be very welcomed into that group.


----------



## Attus

tfd543 said:


> @x-type has right to have his opinion as Long as he has solid arguments...


Saying that Covid-19 is a flu, is no opinion, but a false statement. It is NOT, and it's a fact.


----------



## cinxxx

Penn's Woods said:


> It is not “just a flu.” If you say it is, you’re either an idiot or a liar. Possibly both.


Great argument winner!
That's what it come to, insulting people because they don't share their way.
Coming from someone claiming not to like Trump and his supporters


----------



## Kpc21

Slagathor said:


> Covid-19 is a coronavirus and therefore NOT a flu. This is a simple, basic fact. It's easily testable.


This is not an argument, taking into account, that a coronavirus could possibly also give the same symptoms as a flu virus. By the way, most coronaviruses also cause common cold, like rhinoviruses. The Covid-19 virus, same as the MERS and SARS-1 viruses, is an exception.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Attus said:


> Saying that Covid-19 is a flu, is no opinion, but a false statement. It is NOT, and it's a fact.


I know pages where that would be a banning offense. And “false information” is now reportable to Facebook, at least in the U.S. (where the option appeared a few days after the coup attempt).


----------



## x-type

[mode=serious]
I have corrected myself. You can start arguing over new statment. I appologize for calling covid a flu. It is false statment.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Keep calm everyone


----------



## Penn's Woods

ChrisZwolle said:


> Keep calm everyone


OMMMMMMMM....


----------



## x-type

I also have a proof that covid is not a flu. My father (69), few years ago heart attack, type 2 diabetes, got infected by covid. He had symptomes for 5 days and went back to normal after that. He would handle the flu much worse.


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> I know pages where that would be a banning offense. And “false information” is now reportable to Facebook, at least in the U.S. (where the option appeared a few days after the coup attempt).


It is very sad what happens with Facebook, it became a very sad platform.

The fact that people are being muted for speaking their mind (with exception of hate speech aiming for violence) shows a decay of a society. Censorship is a sign of a fettered society that is losing its freedoms.

As any new medium, internet was free in its start, now follows the phase when the elite tries to control it and censor it. It's a very dangerous phase. I might only hope that suggestions as those of you will not make us lose the enormous development that internet, a new free medium, has to offer to the the mankind.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> It is very sad what happens with Facebook, it became a very sad platform.
> 
> The fact that people are being muted for speaking their mind (with exception of hate speech aiming for violence) shows a decay of a society. Censorship is a sign of a fettered society that is losing its freedoms.
> 
> As any new medium, internet was free in its start, now follows the phase when the elite tries to control it and censor it. It's a very dangerous phase. I might only hope that suggestions as those of you will not make us lose the enormous development that internet, a new free medium, has to offer to the the mankind.


But false information -can- lead to violence. As we’ve seen here recently. People literally died because others were lied to about election fraud.


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> But false information -can- lead to violence. As we’ve seen here recently. People literally died because others were lied to about election fraud.


Also true information can lead to violence. It's a nonsense argument.

If you face information that you deem not true, beat it with good arguments, not with censorship. In the end truth prevails. Scientific approach to the world is the approach that seeks the truth, whatever it might be. Ideological approach to the world dictates the "truth" and censors the "untruth".

Free speech has its limits there when someone is commiting a crime with it, not there where it is inconvenient. And a free society defines crime very carefully, especially when it comes to freedom of speech.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> I never claimed to be particularly nice person.


Sorry, I meant it figuratively. I have no reason to believe that you are not nice.


geogregor said:


> I have every right to question their decisions and use my brain. In the spring I did break rules forbidding me from sitting on the park bench. How many grannies did I kill in your opinion?


Sure, everybody should question decisions made by the government. But that does not give us right to break the rules made by a democratic government just because we think they are silly. I am sure you did not kill any grannies by sitting on that bench. Most violation of Corona restrictions have no impact. But the sum of them do. And I honestly believe that the various governments around the world discussing with their health experts have a better basis overall to conduct a proper risk analysis and see the bigger picture than the man in the street. The most serious impact of you sitting on the bench probably was that it was a statement to passserbys that restrictions and recommendations in general are silly.


geogregor said:


> I did ask, and nobody yet answered, why don't we care about victims of malaria? At least nowhere near as much as for victims of Covid? I tell you why, because it doesn't concern us, white folks in the rich world. We are all bastards in that respect.


You of course have a point, most people care most about their own community or at most country. Although malaria actually is in decline, there are plenty of health issues out there that in the ideal world could have been resolved completely with relatively small means, much smaller than the cost of the Corona pandemic. However, we do not live in an ideal world, but in a world rife with mismanagement and corruption. Further, we do not solve one problem by ignoring another.


geogregor said:


> I guess our different outlook comes from the fact that we have different experiences with politicians and the wider rulling elites.


That was kind of my point, which makes this both a difficult and somewhat interesting discussions. Both my point is that mistrust has a high cost.



geogregor said:


> OK, we are on road forum. Every year people die in car accidents. We try to minimize risk of death by various safety measures. Road rules, design or roads, design of cars. But we don't ban driving. Why? It would ultimately save all the road deaths. Well, we calculate that some deaths will happen, it is the cost of mobility which driving allows us.


Even in Norway, the Covid-19 deaths corresponds to 6 years of traffic accidents. In Sweden almost 70 years, probably. Until now. If we let it loose, we are talking hundreds of years. 



cinxxx said:


> @54°26′S 3°24′E, defying as much as possible while not putting other people at risk, do I have to spell it out completely? 😁


Apparently. But how do you you know that you are better to judge what puts other people at risk than experts that have devoted their life to study transmissable diseases?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> Also true information can lead to violence. It's a nonsense argument.
> 
> If you face information that you deem not true, beat it with good arguments, not with censorship. In the end truth prevails. Scientific approach to the world is the approach that seeks the truth, whatever it might be. Ideological approach to the world dictates the "truth" and censors the "untruth".
> 
> Free speech has its limits there where it becomes a crime, not there where it is inconvenient.


I largely agree with you, when it’s government that’s doing the censoring. The “where it becomes a crime” bit makes no sense to me in a First Amendment context. I don’t want government to have the power to define fake news, for example. But a private platform, whether it be Facebook or a little forum like this one, is a different matter. It’s up to society (as opposed to the government) to say, no, this isn’t cool.


----------



## mgk920

geogregor said:


> There were some ludicrous actions taken by authorities in th spring, such as taping off benches so people wouldn't seat on them.
> 
> Transmission out in the open in sunny summer days was negligible problem. And yet we had these mass panic about "too many people in the parks".
> 
> This is actually in Brockwell Park:
> 
> DSC04325 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> And here Greenwich park:
> 
> DSC03596 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> Streatham Common:
> 
> DSC03132 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> 
> DSC03126 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> Of course people were routinely ignoring this silly stuff and the same way fuelling even more outrage from some folks on social media. Occasionally there were some overzealous police officers but luckily I never had a problem.
> 
> More often there were "covid wardens" urging people to move. They were mostly ignored and even if someone moved it was just for a minute:
> 
> DSC03418 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> It was all completely bonkers but enough to create social media outrage. But more than that, there were serious debates in the media if sitting on the bench is actually illegal. I'm kidding you not.


When the Virus™ mania started late last winter, during March and into April, the governor of our USA state (Wisconsin - Democrat Tony Evers) went as far as ordering that golf courses stay closed as the snow was melting, the grass was greening and the trees were budding out 'to slow the spread and flatten the curve'. When you are partaking in a round of golf, that means that you are enjoying a participatory activity and experience while you are staying about as far away from anyone else beside your own playing partners as is possible while staying on land.

Yes, many people were not happy about it and I do understand that there was some 'civil disobedience' going on in some of the more remote parts of the state.

Mike


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> I largely agree with you, when it’s government that’s doing the censoring. The “where it becomes a crime” bit makes no sense to me in a First Amendment context. I don’t want government to have the power to define fake news, for example. But a private platform, whether it be Facebook or a little forum like this one, is a different matter. It’s up to society (as opposed to the government) to say, no, this isn’t cool.


I am not looking at it with a specific US perspective of US Constitutional laws. I am simply applying natural philosophy.

Sure, the owner of a platform may decide what it prints and what it doesn't print. On the other side when a private platform becomes a monopoly with power even overstretching the power of a government, it is a different matter. Then the government should in fact step in to protect the right of freedom of speech against such a platform. The society says what is cool or not cool through laws. And one of the most basic laws that our (there are certainly other models functioning in societies with different cultures) society created is the right for freedom of speech. The private companies should offer competing platforms, monopolisation is not really that great. It's better if services that lead to natural monopolies are either regulated or provided by the governments. In the case of Facebook it's not even the society that decides what is cool or what is not cool but a very small group of people that set the rules in a monopolized situation.

Imagine a situation when e.g. the private owned telephony would be censored by the owners of the phone companies. E.g. certain phone calls that would not fall under what the company policy would approve would be simply banned and censored, or certain people would be banned from having a phone access. What a terrible totalitarian world would that be. Now look at e.g. Google. It has that power and you don't even know about whether it uses such censorship on you. And this is just an example.

Luckily Internet is a very flexible medium, so far more or less free at least in the western world, offering ways for new platforms to arise and provide uncensored access. Although it can be very tough for the incumbents against the monopolist as the monopolist has enormous capital at its disposal. Another downside is that there is a big chance for partitioning and stratifying of the internet. Instead of ingenious arena or forum where opinions can meet and compete, you will get bubbles. And that's the better case yet. In the worst case scenario, the whole medium would get crippled by various regulations (which could also be put in place by private interests of e.g. those monopolists).

Another point is the general slide towards ideological control by a self proclaimed elite that we can see in the public sphere that cripples the principles of scientific thinking and competition of arguments.


----------



## cinxxx

My wife had 3 new admissions in her clinic, kids aged 11, 13 and 17. All of them developed mental illnesses because of the lockdown.

One of them stopped seeing other people because he was afraid of killing his parents and grandparents with Corona, while his parents actually encouraged him to go see his friends.

Besides that they all struggle with suicide. 

Now you come and tell me how great the lockdown is, and how these kids will recover.


----------



## Surel

cinxxx said:


> My wife had 3 new admissions in her clinic, kids aged 11, 13 and 17. All of them developed mental illnesses because of the lockdown.
> 
> One of them stopped seeing other people because he was afraid of killing his parents and grandparents with Corona, while his parents actually encouraged him to go see his friends.
> 
> Besides that they all struggle with suicide.
> 
> Now you come and tell me how great the lockdown is, and how these kids will recover.


The problem with Covid is that in the meantime there is really not a good solution, only a choice of bad solutions, finding the least bad one.

The reason is that the problem can't be solved individually and there are always groups that suffer from either the solution of the problem or the problem itself.

It simply is costly, it is a disaster.

It would be nice to have a superintelligence that would be able to compute all the possible scenarios, all the possible reactions to the situation, compensations, costs, losses, etc and the possible outcomes and then provide us with a choice that we would chose as a society and then stand behind that choice. We are not able to find the best solution on the fly anyway, but I would believe that we are trying. On the other side, you can see that there are many approaches to the problem as there are many countries. The computation of the problem happens on the fly in the real. We will only know with the hindsight what was the best. At least this could help us in the future when similar situation arises.

If we compare the situation to "Spanish" influenza, we are certainly advanced in our ability to cope with the problem. I am not sure whether if we have let it have a free go as the "Spanish" influenza had would have been a better scenario.


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> I also have a proof that covid is not a flu. My father (69), few years ago heart attack, type 2 diabetes, got infected by covid. He had symptomes for 5 days and went back to normal after that. He would handle the flu much worse.


I think it's clear that flu is more dangerous than Covid-19, if risk is calculated per person.
It's difficult to compare pandemies, but the deadliest pandemic of the modern age was a flu (1918-20). So flu is not something harmless. Saying "Covid-19 is a flu" annoys me nut only because it's scientifically totally wrong, but because I think flu is more dangerous than Covid-19, especially for peopla under 60. At least per person. But Covid-19 spreads much wider and faster than flu, and it makes it so dangerous.


----------



## radamfi

Penn's Woods said:


> And before @Surel yells at me, I -don’t- believe Fox News should be banned. That’s why I don’t like having that impulse. It goes against my principles. And does having that impulse make me any better than those on the other side who “want to ban parties and newspapers they don’t like”?


The UK has just banned the Chinese state-run channel CGTN from traditional broadcast platforms. However, the internet stream still works.


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> Which brings me back to our free-speech discussion. I struggle lately with the fact that there are people who don’t believe in basic reality or aren’t committed to democracy that have the same power - the right to vote - that those who do have. I don’t see a good solution to that problem and have impulses I don’t like having. (Ban Fox News!). Who was it that said that democracy depends on an informed citizenry?


Those 80 % are responsible for those 20 %. It's the failure of the whole society. Simply put, you can say that such a society is less developed than societies where this problem is not that prominent.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> Those 80 % are responsible for those 20 %. It's the failure of the whole society. Simply put, you can say that such a society is less developed than societies where this problem is not that prominent.


It seems to me there are quite a few countries where 20 percent of the public, or more, support parties like the Front national or AfD....
So what societies ARE developed? New Zealand maybe?


----------



## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Again, I am not talking about always agreeing with the government, but a trust in the democratic institutions. That includes accepting that decisions are made by people voted in by a system with a certain amount of accountability, and with the most important decision based on detailed studies and public debate. In most of my life, there have been governments in charge which I did not vote for and in my opinion do not direct the country in the correct direction.


I trust democratic institutions. I don't claim that British government is illegitimate (even if I think that British voting system is crap). Saying that Boris is liar and moron doesn't mean I'm trying to say he is not legitimate PM.

The same way I didn't call for ignoring Brexit referendum results, despite all the manipulations and lies during the campaign and the fact that I think it is moronic decision and massive own goal. Decision mostly taken by older nostalgic folks which will cost mostly the younger folks, some of them which couldn't yet vote at the time. If I was brutal I could say pity we didn't get Covid before the referendum... 


Anyway, I can be critical of the decisions made, make my opinion known, for example here. I can also try to convince others to my point of view. The same way people were critical of Trump when he won the election



> However, if everybody starts living by their own rules, unless forced not to, you have no less than a dysfunctional society, which becomes particularly evident in a time of crisis.


Did you never broke any rule in your life? Like crossing street on a red light? Even when it is empty in the middle of the night?

Life is full of petty rules and laws which are still in the books but are obsolete. Certain level of common sense is always a good thing.

Here are some examples:









24 Weird British Laws I Can't Believe Actually Still Exist In The UK


I'm sorry, it's ILLEGAL to be drunk in the pub!?!




www.buzzfeed.com


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> It seems to me there are quite a few countries where 20 percent of the public, or more, support parties like the Front national or AfD....
> So what societies ARE developed? New Zealand maybe?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


>


18th-century France? Maybe, but then they started guillotining dissenters....


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> 18th-century France? Maybe, but then they started guillotining dissenters....


Nah, it's a lesson we can take from the history, what happens if the elite abandones the society.


----------



## Slagathor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Why the English?
> 
> Is there something else to it?


There is:









Ubuntu philosophy - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org







Penn's Woods said:


> If we tried your system, imagine how many Marjorie Taylor Greenes we’d have.
> 
> (Seriously, proportional representation has its advantages, but also its disadvantages. But I haven’t had any caffeine yet, so I’ll spare you. At least for now.)


I don't follow.

Marjorie Taylor Greene won her seat because she managed to get 229,827 people to vote for her.

The House has 435 seats iirc and the US had 239 million eligible voters in 2020. That means, in order to win a single seat, a candidate would have to gather a minimum of 549,425 votes in a proportional representational system.

In practice, the system doesn't really work like that. Most people in the Netherlands simply vote for the first person on the list of whichever party they want to vote for. The total number of seats allocated to a party are then filled based on the numbered list of candidates a party filed before the election.

Few candidates are elected directly by what we call "preferential votes" (where people don't vote for the #1, but opt to vote for someone further down the list).

If the Republican party's establishment were to draft a list of - let's say 400 - candidates for the national election (without having to consider where the candidates come from, because districts are not a thing), would it have a lot of Marjorie Taylor Greenes on it? Remember that the voters have no say in this. Some parties require their members to rubber stamp the list by organizing a conference vote, but others do not. It's entirely up to the party's establishment.

(And here we've immediately identified a few downsides to proportional representation; a lack of local representation and limited democratic accountability within political parties.)



Attus said:


> Not so many. And even those would be irrelevant, representing some minor party, having got 1.2% of the votes. Ms Taylor Greene is only important because she's representing one of the two major parties of the US.


I agree. I don't think she'd be getting as much airtime if she was the leading member of a QAnon political party that only had 3 seats.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Surel said:


> Nah, it's a lesson we can take from the history, what happens if the elite abandones the society.


So the 80 percent are responsible for the other 20 in the sense of charged with making them good citizens...making them live in reality, making them commit to democracy? So how do we do that?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> There is:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ubuntu philosophy - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't follow.
> 
> Marjorie Taylor Greene won her seat because she managed to get 229,827 people to vote for her.
> 
> The House has 435 seats iirc and the US had 239 million eligible voters in 2020. That means, in order to win a single seat, a candidate would have to gather a minimum of 549,425 votes in a proportional representational system.
> 
> In practice, the system doesn't really work like that. Most people in the Netherlands simply vote for the first person on the list of whichever party they want to vote for. The total number of seats allocated to a party are then filled based on the numbered list of candidates a party filed before the election.
> 
> Few candidates are elected directly by what we call "preferential votes" (where people don't vote for the #1, but opt to vote for someone further down the list).
> 
> If the Republican party's establishment were to draft a list of - let's say 400 - candidates for the national election (without having to consider where the candidates come from, because districts are not a thing), would it have a lot of Marjorie Taylor Greenes on it? Remember that the voters have no say in this. Some parties require their members to rubber stamp the list by organizing a conference vote, but others do not. It's entirely up to the party's establishment.
> 
> (And here we've immediately identified a few downsides to proportional representation; a lack of local representation and limited democratic accountability within political parties.)
> 
> 
> 
> I agree. I don't think she'd be getting as much airtime if she was the leading member of a QAnon political party that only had 3 seats.


But a lot more than 229,000 people would have voted for her if they could*; the only reason they couldn’t is they don’t live in her district. So assume a list of MTGs running for a share of that 435. That’s what I’m saying: Fringe parties get representation. How much airtime does Geert Wilders get?

*Or would now, now that we’ve heard of her. Or would vote for her and people like her. You know what I mean: She represents a much larger demographic than 229,000.


----------



## radamfi

Obviously the situation is hopeless for most parties under the UK system. The best they can do is to concentrate all their resources into one seat. The Green Party have one seat in Brighton which is probably the most liberal town in the country.


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> But a lot more than 229,000 people would have voted for her if they could*; the only reason they couldn’t is they don’t live in her district. So assume a list of MTGs running for a share of that 435. That’s what I’m saying: Fringe parties get representation. *How much airtime does Geert Wilders get?*
> 
> *Or would now, now that we’ve heard of her. Or would vote for her and people like her. You know what I mean: She represents a much larger demographic than 229,000.


I haven't done the math on that. 

Look, Wilders does a lot of shouting on the sidelines which pleases his base. But he holds zero power. Instead, the other parties work together to strike sensible compromises.

Ultimately, that's not a bad deal.

Wilders was originally an MP for the VVD party of the current prime minister. His views weren't widely shared within the VVD, so he decided to found his own party; knowing that our system makes that a viable option.

If we didn't have PR, it's likely Wilders would have instead taken over the VVD in the same way Trump took over the Republican party. That would have been far worse, not in the least because we don't have term limits.


----------



## Penn's Woods

Slagathor said:


> I haven't done the math on that.
> 
> Look, Wilders does a lot of shouting on the sidelines which pleases his base. But he holds zero power. Instead, the other parties work together to strike sensible compromises.
> 
> Ultimately, that's not a bad deal.
> 
> Wilders was originally an MP for the VVD party of the current prime minister. His views weren't widely shared within the VVD, so he decided to found his own party; knowing that our system makes that a viable option.
> 
> If we didn't have PR, it's likely Wilders would have instead taken over the VVD in the same way Trump took over the Republican party. That would have been far worse, not in the least because we don't have term limits.


-Could- he have taken over the VVD? Would enough of them buy what he’s selling?

As for zero power, wasn’t he once part of the governing coalition?


----------



## Surel

Penn's Woods said:


> So the 80 percent are responsible for the other 20 in the sense of charged with making them good citizens...making them live in reality, making them commit to democracy? So how do we do that?


Everyone is responsible for everyone in a way. Those with more means have more responsibility. The point is that making the society better you must start by yourself taking the responsibility not only for yourself, but also for the society. The more people that do that, the better the society.

The best way is a persuasion. Be it by example or be it by arguments.
Of course there are also laws and upholding those laws. The quality of those laws and their upholding then depends on the society. It's a loop.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> not in the least because we don't have term limits.


Rutte could well serve to 2025, his party is on track to win the elections by a huge margin and it is customary that the largest coalition party also delivers the prime minister. That means he would serve as PM from 2010 to 2025, rivaling Merkel's long term as Chancellor of Germany.

Journalists were baffled to hear that Rutte has never been tested for covid.


----------



## Slagathor

Penn's Woods said:


> -Could- he have taken over the VVD? Would enough of them buy what he’s selling?
> 
> As for zero power, wasn’t he once part of the governing coalition?


If we had a system like yours and with the right slow-purge method? Absolutely. Trump taking over the Republicans seemed like a ridiculous idea not that long ago, didn't it?

Wilders and his PVV were never part of a governing coalition. He propped up a coalition of VVD-CDA from October 2010 to April 2012. It didn't amount to much; he basically promised to refrain from supporting any no-confidence motions by the opposition (meaning they would fall short of the necessary majority) in exchange for tougher asylum policies and increased spending on care for the elderly. At the first sign of trouble (the Eurozone crisis austerity measures), he walked away.

This set-up was a VVD experiment aimed at neutering the PVV. It failed miserably and nobody wants to go there again.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Rutte could well serve to 2025, his party is on track to win the elections by a huge margin and it is customary that the largest coalition party also delivers the prime minister. That means he would serve as PM from 2010 to 2025, rivaling Merkel's long term as Chancellor of Germany.


I'm not sure how much of it is due to his popularity and how much of it is due to the complete lack of appealing political figures in all the other parties. 



ChrisZwolle said:


> Journalists were baffled to hear that Rutte has never been tested for covid.


Well, he doesn't seem to have much of a life.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> Well, he doesn't seem to have much of a life.


He's still a bachelor. Can't blame him for that though. 

He also wants to play by the rules: no haircut (he's got quite long hair now), no covid tests because he didn't qualify for one, no early vaccine because he's not in the right age range for early vaccination.


----------



## Attus




----------



## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> trust towards governments only is relevant towards democracies


Define a democracy. USSR was also a democracy. Even specifically called "people's democracy" – as if "democracy" hasn't already meant "rule of the people". Did it have a government one could trust? I don't think so.

It's very easy for a totalitarian system to hide as a democracy.

If you think about it, actually, democracy is a form of totalitarian government. It's a dictatorship of the majority. Let it be 51% of the society in favor of something and 49% against it, these 49% can be completely ignored and it still is a democracy, by its strict definition.



PovilD said:


> Our pedestrian crossings are sometimes long, like across 2-4 lanes, and it's painful to see when drivers stops 2-3 lanes ahead of you, and driver expect you to run/jog.


Well, literally, the legal definition of "giving way to someone" (at least over here) is not forcing him to stop, change his speed or direction of movement. If a car is several lanes ahead of the pedestrian, even already present on the zebra – normally it's thought that the driver should stop, but actually he doesn't even have to. He won't force the pedestrian to change his behavior, when he still has several lanes to cross.



ChrisZwolle said:


> That means an enormous ballot.


Do you get a booklet, or just a huge, folded sheet of paper?



Attus said:


> That trust does not exist in Eastern Europe.
> OK, I exaggareted it a little bit, but, really, quite many people in Eastern Europe think democracy is something bad and completely banning the party they dislike and the newspapers they dislike would be great.


Not exactly so. People think that making it possible is just a part of democracy. When you have the majority, you can do anything, can't you?



Surel said:


> There's nothing else than the government that upholds the laws. It's up to the people of the given country to be able to arrange for themselves such a government with which they can be satisfied. No one says its easy.


The problem seems to be that some people – as it seems, mostly in the US, Eastern Europe, and don't forget about Central Europe – don't really understand the basic concepts of democracy. As I said – they think that democracy means that when they are the majority – even just slightly above 50% – they have the full power and can't do anything they want, completely ignoring the other part, not respecting their views at all, and so on. And the trouble is, they aren't wrong, technically – this is what democracy actually is. It's not a democracy we would want to see. In a well-functioning democracy, all the voices would be heard and taken into account proportionally. But there is nothing that can stop the side with the majority from monopolizing the legislation and decision-making with their own views and ideas only.

Some day, I guess, the other side will win, and what will, I fear, happen, is that that other side will want to revenge. And also disrespect and ignore that currently ruling side.

What we can see now is simply a failure of the democracy.


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> If we didn't have PR, it's likely Wilders would have instead taken over the VVD in the same way Trump took over the Republican party. That would have been far worse, not in the least because we don't have term limits.


It also happened to the UK Tory party. After BJ became leader, moderate Tory PMs (aka "Remainers") were deselected to ensure Brexit would happen. Many traditional Tory voters were horrified at this but still felt obliged to vote Tory because they perceived Labour as even worse. There are also many people who identify as Tory or Labour voters regardless of what the party does or says, similarly to how Americans call themselves either Republican or Democrat.

Brexit wouldn't have happened under PR. As long as UKIP got less than 50% of the vote, the other parties could have blocked them. In the 2019 election, the Tories were forced to adopt a hard Brexit approach as the Brexit Party threatened to stand against them which would split the vote. If second preferences were taken into account, that wouldn't have worked.


----------



## kosimodo

Google is your friend  Bevidstløs bilist kørte over 15 kilometer på motorvej


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The IJssel River near Zwolle in the Netherlands. High water levels made the river 10 times wider than normal. The normal riverbed is between those red and green markers and is 100 - 150 meters wide. The river has now swollen to 1500 - 2000 meters wide. There are dikes / levees everywhere. Those farms on the right are on slightly elevated land, there is hundreds of meters of water behind them. They may not be accessible by road now. Some farms and outlying houses require boat acces during high water levels, this is a recurring 'problem' here.


IJssel Zwolle 06-02-2021 03 by European Roads, on Flickr


----------



## Stuu

Penn's Woods said:


> This may be the most disgusting food item I’ve seen lately:
> View attachment 1056091


Which is sold as "American Style" Burger Sauce in the UK!


----------



## Alex_ZR




----------



## Penn's Woods

Stuu said:


> Which is sold as "American Style" Burger Sauce in the UK!
> 
> View attachment 1056434


Which somehow reminds me of the brat on Fawlty Towers demanding salad cream. A concept unknown to us.


----------



## x-type

Penn's Woods said:


> This may be the most disgusting food item I’ve seen lately:
> View attachment 1056091


How about Big Mac sauce, invented in USA, which is mayonnaise + ketchup + bunch of other things?


----------



## tfd543

kosimodo said:


> Google is your friend  Bevidstløs bilist kørte over 15 kilometer på motorvej


More like, driver-assist is your friend


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The winter storm has hit the Netherlands as forecasted. The snow is very powdery though, so the usual 1 mm = 1 cm snow ratio didn't play out, the totals were mostly in the 10-20 cm range, but the strong winds mean that snow on the streets fluctuates from 0 to 50 cm. Most surface streets are difficult to drive on, I had to push several cars onto the road, the plows have created snow walls on intersections where regular cars have trouble getting through. 

Traffic impact is limited as practically nobody takes a trip out of town today. Almost all train services are cancelled. 

Next up: a small ice age (by Dutch standards). The forecasts call for at least 2 weeks of continuous subzero temperatures, which is quite rare in the Netherlands. The lows may go under -15. 

People are sliding down the IJssel River dike. This is the windward side which has less snow than the leeward side, but the leeward side has high water so people don't slide down there.

Sneeuw Zwolle 07-02-2021 20 by European Roads, on Flickr


Sneeuw Zwolle 07-02-2021 19 by European Roads, on Flickr


----------



## bogdymol

You can easily see the area affected by this winter storm just by looking at traffic on Google Maps:










Do cars in Netherlands usually have snow tires?

Few years ago I was in the UK during a snow storm which was very tough by UK standards but would have been considered normal winter in Austria. The cars in UK usually don't have winter tires, so I have seen cars struggling with driving through snow although it was not that much snow as you regularly see in Austria. Another issue that I had back then with my rental car was that it did not have proper winter windscreen washing fluid, so the entire pipes were frozen.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

bogdymol said:


> Do cars in Netherlands usually have snow tires?


A fairly large amount of people do have snow tires (marketed as winter tires). However in many streets the snow is as deep as the bumper, making it difficult to get through.


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## Kpc21

So called winter tires do not only have the tread prepared for driving on snow, but they also have different composition of rubber, so that it stays soft in low temperatures.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Kpc21 said:


> So called winter tires do not only have the tread prepared for driving on snow, but they also have different composition of rubber, so that it stays soft in low temperatures.


There are different types of winter tyres as well. Some models are more suitable for Western European winters e.g in Germany but you also have Nordic winter tyres meant for colder winters. Here's a rather good video on testing different types of tyres in various road conditions and temperatures:


----------



## Kpc21

Probably those tires are usually adjusted to the road conditions and range of temperatures in the countries where they are offered...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Kpc21 said:


> Probably those tires are usually adjusted to the road conditions and range of temperatures in the countries where they are offered...


They are altogether different models. For example, Goodyear has the Ultragrip Ice 2, which is the "nordic" winter tyre but they also have the Ultragrip Performance series which is meant for milder winters.


----------



## Penn's Woods

So, outdoor dining has become a popular way here to permit restaurants to keep operating during the pandemic, even in climates where the appeal of dining outdoors may seem limited....









Michigan Restaurant Server Asks Frozen Bodies Of Dining Couple On Outdoor Patio If They’d Like To See Dessert Menu


The Onion brings you all of the latest news, stories, photos, videos and more from America's finest news source.




local.theonion.com


----------



## Kpc21

Penn's Woods said:


> So, outdoor dining has become a popular way here to permit restaurants to keep operating during the pandemic, even in climates where the appeal of dining outdoors may seem limited....


Over here, with all the leisure facilities closed, the hobby of "walrusing" (bathing in freezing cold sea, lakes and rivers) gained quite a lot of extra popularity.

There were some reports of people practicing "dry walrusing" by hiking wearing swimming costumes only in the mountains, which had to be taken down by rescuers, because they froze so much that they weren't even able to dress up.


----------



## PovilD

Europe winter 2021 is a Little Ice Age. I wonder if decrease in pollution in early pandemic period has to do with this. I'm somewhat predicted that winter will probably be colder and snowier this year.

Kinda surreal to see long subfreezing temperature forecasts for The Netherlands. It would be quite normal conditions for us (and, actually, it is expected weather in our place).


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> Europe winter 2021 is a Little Ice Age. I wonder if decrease in pollution in early pandemic period has to do with this.


Nope, it has nothing to do with pollution. It is all about jet streams and high level circulation.


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> Nope, it has nothing to do with pollution. It is all about jet streams and high level circulation.


Maybe temporary reduction in pollution might produced some butterfly effect 
On the other hand, I've read article about sun activity, and we entered period when sun is not as active, and winters might get colder because of that, probably for few winters, then with more active sun, weather would be warmer. There maybe other factors too like El Nino/La Nina phenomenon, etc.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The cold weather is caused by the position of high and low pressure areas. A low pressure area over the Balkans and high pressure over Scandinavia will introduce a strong easterly flow from Russia into Western Europe, reversing the regular weather patterns where a westerly flow tends to be dominant.


----------



## mappero

"Snow disaster" is moved across central Germany today


----------



## x-type

PovilD said:


> Europe winter 2021 is a Little Ice Age. I wonder if decrease in pollution in early pandemic period has to do with this. I'm somewhat predicted that winter will probably be colder and snowier this year.
> 
> Kinda surreal to see long subfreezing temperature forecasts for The Netherlands. It would be quite normal conditions for us (and, actually, it is expected weather in our place).


Correction: Northern Europe winter 2021 is Little Ice Age.
On the other hand, we have global warming here in the south. For my city 70-years average is 1,9°C in February. First 8 days of 2021 February show tmin=9,1°C, tmax=16,8°C. We had 5 consecutive days with tmax over 15°C last week. Disaster!


----------



## mgk920

It seems like we're finally having that new Ice Age™ that we were promised when I was in school. Lots of snow this past Friday, followed by several days of highs around -15C to -20C followed by lows in the -20C to -25C range. As of this typing (about 1pm local time Monday here in Wisconsin) it is -19C.

😮

Mike


----------



## Rebasepoiss

For Estonia this winter is nothing special if you look at the long-term (50 year) averages. January was actually slightly warmer than average. It's just that the last 10 years has seen a large amount of very mild winters so people now perceive this winter as something out of the ordinary. You will always have fluctuations in weather patterns year to year, it's the patterns over several years to decades to pay attention to.


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## PovilD

Here in more continental longitudes of Europe we now get old traditional winters, like big blizzards in Belarus expected this week, or periods with temperatures dropping below -20C amd with snow depth staying around 20-30 cm here in my place. It was probably more usual decades and century ago, but now it's just seen as "unusually traditional winter".


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## ChrisZwolle

There is a huge traffic jam on German A2 near Bad Oeynhausen. Traffic has been at a standstill for hours in both directions, spanning 20 kilometers or more, and drivers will likely spend the night on the Autobahn in very low temperatures. 


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1358875905964314627


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> Maybe temporary reduction in pollution might produced some butterfly effect


It's even more interesting:






Second half of this video is also interesting:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

mgk920 said:


> It seems like we're finally having that new Ice Age™ that we were promised when I was in school. Lots of snow this past Friday, followed by several days of highs around -15C to -20C followed by lows in the -20C to -25C range. As of this typing (about 1pm local time Monday here in Wisconsin) it is -19C.


Milwaukee


----------



## cinxxx

Here you go 🤮



> Ministry of the Interior hired scientists to justify corona measures
> 
> The Federal Ministry of the Interior engaged scientists from several research institutes and universities for political purposes in the first wave of the corona pandemic in March 2020. It commissioned the researchers from the Robert Koch Institute and other institutions to create a calculation model on the basis of which the Ministry of the Interior, Horst Seehofer (CSU), wanted to justify tough corona measures.
> 
> 
> This emerges from more than 200 pages of internal correspondence between the management level of the Ministry of the Interior and the researchers that WELT AM SONNTAG has received. A group of lawyers fought for e-mail in a legal dispute with the Robert Koch Institute that lasted several months.











Interner E-Mail-Verkehr: Innenministerium spannte Wissenschaftler ein - WELT


Ein umfangreicher Schriftwechsel, der WELT AM SONNTAG vorliegt, zeigt: In der ersten Hochphase der Pandemie wirkte das Haus von Innenminister Horst Seehofer auf Forscher ein. Daraufhin lieferten sie Ergebnisse für ein dramatisches „Geheimpapier“ des Ministeriums.




www.welt.de


----------



## Penn's Woods

The Paris-Nice (a week-long bike race in early March) has been canceled for this year due to COVID. :-(


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Milwaukee


No way! All mighty jerseys?


----------



## Penn's Woods

Leaving SSC for a while.
@Kanadzie and @Slagathor know how to reach me on Facebook if anyone wants to keep in touch.


----------



## mgk920

ChrisZwolle said:


> Milwaukee


It was about freezing (-1C to +1C) all day when about 10-20 cm of snow fell on Friday (05-Feb), followed by a deep cold front passing about when the snow ended. It has been in the -15C to -25C range from Chicago on north ever since. LOTS of packed snow and ice that has been pretty much impervious to plows and salt was the result - NASTY driving conditions.

That video is looking southwest at the I-41/I-94 'Zoo' interchange (the World renowned Milwaukee County Zoo is right next to it to the right) on Milwaukee's west edge. I-41 is upper left to lower right and I-94 is from lower left to upper right.

Mike


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The clouds from the cooling towers of a nuclear power plant caused a local 20 - 30 cm snow dump in Northeastern France:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1359099276803072000


----------



## PovilD

Wow never thought about such possibility


----------



## DanielFigFoz

That's super interesting.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> There is a huge traffic jam on German A2 near Bad Oeynhausen. Traffic has been at a standstill for hours in both directions, spanning 20 kilometers or more, and drivers will likely spend the night on the Autobahn in very low temperatures.


Interesting that just a normal winter (which, however, hasn't happened for quite long) totally paralyzed the traffic in Germany.

In Poland we don't have such problems – when it was snowing, the traffic was obviously slowed down a lot, there were even places where the traffic stopped e.g. because of an accident, but not like someone has to wait 20 hours in a traffic jam.

By the way, if such a situation indeed occurred, shouldn't the police evacuate the drivers from the motorway onto other roads? Either through emergency exits and service roads (removing the snow from them first, obviously), or just by telling the drivers to make a U-turn and drive to the previous junction in the "wrong" direction (of course, having closed the road first).


----------



## PovilD

At here, everybody are just depressed that they need to drive slowly at packed snow and fear if their cars to last this harsh winter  We had snow day today from cloud coming from Poland, it was like at least 5 cm of new snow and total snow is like 25-30 cm.

Btw, at very low temperatures, like -15-18C, I spotted noticeably more cars without lights on in the day, although lights are mandatory at all times. I wonder what is the reason? Or it's just a coincidence?


----------



## CNGL

Penn's Woods said:


> The Paris-Nice (a week-long bike race in early March) has been canceled for this year due to COVID. :-(


What has been cancelled is an amateur course taking place on the last stage the day before, the pro race is still up as usual.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> Btw, at very low temperatures, like -15-18C, I spotted noticeably more cars without lights on in the day, although lights are mandatory at all times. I wonder what is the reason? Or it's just a coincidence?


Maybe because it's generally brighter at night (and during a sunny day too, brighter than in summer...) when there is snow.

On Saturday I was at a local lake/pond in Łódź. There wasn't snow yet, but it was frozen. There were quite many people around on walks – but also ice skating on that lake. And even... some people playing ice hockey! For the first time in my live I saw people playing ice hockey for recreation. 

To me this winter doesn't look like anything special. I remember a winter somewhere around 5-10 years ago, when there was snow on the streets which didn't melt down for over a month, or even two. I managed to forget how sidewalk surfaces look like...

Today I was on a 3-hour. 10 km long walk around the town. At some moment I had to take down my mask to have a snack or drink some water. I did hang it down from one ear, so that I can quickly put it back on and I don't make it dirty and squashed in my pocket. After a few minutes of having it hanged down like that, it just froze and got stiff


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> Nobody cared about insulation in the years of cheap gas and double glazing was novelty until just a few years ago. Plumbing was peculiar to say the least (double taps are famously British )


Double taps exist because the idea of being able to leave the hot water running was an unimaginable luxury, or something

When Poland joined the EU it was a common joke in the years after that it was good to finally have competent plumbers and other trades available for sensible prices... this caused the first rumblings of discontent that led to brexit. How dare they come over here and work hard every day of the week, something must be done


----------



## DanielFigFoz

geogregor said:


> British plumbing, insulation, windows etc. are all much worse than the *wealth of the country* would suggest.


I think the fact that you said 'wealth of the country' as opposed to saying that the country is wealthy says a lot about the distribution of wealth in the country. 

I think we get pushed up a lot of international rankings because of the sheer might of the City and a couple of other sectors and a sort of intergenerational economic strength that a lot of people have descending from a time when we were much more relevant. It's debatable how relevant this is to much of the country outside the south-eastern corner. If you take the powerhouse that is London out of the equation then this is a rather middling listing to the lower end country by European standards. Of course you could say the same to some extent about every country but it's more extreme here than in most European countries. I don't think this is helped by a lot of our wealth being of that sort of flaky paper type that might flutter away in the wind if we're not careful.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> British plumbing, insulation, windows etc. are all much worse than the wealth of the country would suggest.


For some reason they still insist on having separate taps for cold and hot water even though having them in a single tap is not an issue at all in the rest of Europe and probably even in the rest of the world.

The argument is, if I remember well, that the hot water may backfeed through the tap to the cold water pipe, and contaminate it, as hot water may contain bacteria being often heated up and stored in a tank. But all Europe has tanks for hot water, other continents too (I recently saw some videos on YouTube from a plumber who specializes in heating systems from somewhere in the US; they also have tanks, interestingly, quite often powered with gas separately from the boiler or stove – something almost unknown in Poland and probably most of Europe), and it isn't an issue anywhere except for Britain.

Over here, tanks for heating hot water either have a long spiral pipe inside that carries water from the central heating system, acting as a heat exchanger, or just an electric heating element. In an apartment of my grandparents (who don't live any more), I remember that there was a coal-powered hot water tank, you actually had to make fire with wood and/or coal at its bottom. Although these aren't popular either nowadays. If someone heats his house with coal, he usually has two options for heating the water – either from the water in the central heating, or electrically (usually used in summer).

If someone uses gas for heating – then, in apartments and very small houses, they have a boiler that just heats up the water flowing through it, without a tank, or in larger houses, it's more or less the same as with the coal heating – a tank with a pipe which acts as a heat exchanger.

And many modern boilers have a program that periodically, like, every few weeks, heats up the water in the tank to a higher temperature, to kill the bacteria.



Stuu said:


> When Poland joined the EU it was a common joke in the years after that it was good to finally have competent plumbers and other trades available for sensible prices...


xD It actually worked in the opposite direction, all the competent plumbers and other trades left Poland


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

DanielFigFoz said:


> I think we get pushed up a lot of international rankings because of the sheer might of the City


It will be interesting to see how this powerhouse will develop outside EU in the decades ahead.


Stuu said:


> Double taps exist because the idea of being able to leave the hot water running was an unimaginable luxury, or something


I think the point was for how many decades these remained / remain popular in the UK. I remember I was very surprised when I saw separate taps in a UK luxury hotel in the 90s. For me that was something I associated with very old and dilapidated installations. At least for showers, separate valves will for most people increase water usage, as they need to spend longer time adjusting the temperature.


----------



## Stuu

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> It will be interesting to see how this powerhouse will develop outside EU in the decades ahead.


The money won't launder itself


----------



## Slagathor

Separate tabs, single glazing and paper thin Victorian walls. That's England for me (I lived there for about a year when I was 18). 

It's funny because their real estate shows are quite popular on Dutch TV but it's always a couple with a half a million pounds to spend looking for a mansion in Shropshire or something. It's never a normal person struggling to buy a shitty Victorian terrace house without central heating in one of those dire neighborhoods where the sidewalks are made of tarmac and you couldn't find a tree to save your life. But that's where most people live.


----------



## radamfi

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> It will be interesting to see how this powerhouse will develop outside EU in the decades ahead.


It was in the news today that Amsterdam has overtaken London as the largest financial centre in Europe because EU-based banks wanting to buy European shares can no longer trade via London and the Bank of England is complaining about it.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Frankfurt must be annoyed.


----------



## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> Separate tabs, single glazing and paper thin Victorian walls. That's England for me (I lived there for about a year when I was 18).
> 
> It's funny because their real estate shows are quite popular on Dutch TV but it's always a couple with a half a million pounds to spend looking for a mansion in Shropshire or something. It's never a normal person struggling to buy a shitty Victorian terrace house without central heating in one of those dire neighborhoods where the sidewalks are made of tarmac and you couldn't find a tree to save your life. But that's where most people live.


I've just looked up the statistics, 70% of British homes were built post 1945, which I'm quite surprised by. There really is no excuse for them to be as shitty as they often are


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> It was in the news today that* Amsterdam has overtaken London as the largest financial centre in Europe* because EU-based banks wanting to buy European shares can no longer trade via London and the Bank of England is complaining about it.


That is not quite correct. What actually happened is that more shares were traded daily in Amsterdam than in London in January. But there is a lot of other financial activity. 

London is clearly weakened by Brexit but it is still by far the largest financial center in Europe.



DanielFigFoz said:


> I think the fact that you said 'wealth of the country' as opposed to saying that the country is wealthy says a lot about the distribution of wealth in the country.
> 
> I think we get pushed up a lot of international rankings because of the sheer might of the City and a couple of other sectors and a sort of intergenerational economic strength that a lot of people have descending from a time when we were much more relevant. It's debatable how relevant this is to much of the country outside the* south-eastern corner.*


Well, my experience with British houses is from this supposedly stinking rich corner of the country. It is not really visible in the quality of construction here. I have a feeling that people outside the M25 have very caricaturish view of London, they see it as place dominated by bankers and hedge fund managers. There is a lot of poverty in London and the South East. Or go to Thanet or Medway Towns...


----------



## radamfi

You can go to pretty much any town in the UK and find obvious disparities in wealth within it. Surrey is probably the most stereotypically wealthy county and it undoubtedly has a strong economy. It has not only plenty of London commuters working in the financial industry but is home to several multi-national companies. But even in Guildford, probably the most overrated town in the country, where the average house price is over half a million pounds (twice the national average) there are quite rough housing estates. Conversely, if you go to my "poor" home town in the north of England, where the average house price is about a quarter that in Guildford, there are very well off areas.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ice-skating at Kinderdijk, Netherlands:


----------



## mgk920

It has long been the code here in the USA to require hot and cold 'mixing' taps 🚰. It is a safety thing. Also, I have never known home heating furnaces ever being part of the water supply system.

A few years ago the Mythbusters did a show where they removed all of the safeties from several water heaters and let them go, including having them installed in code-built demonstration houses. Some of them got very good altitude and hang time, too. 

Mike


----------



## DanielFigFoz

geogregor said:


> Well, my experience with British houses is from this supposedly stinking rich corner of the country. It is not really visible in the quality of construction here. I have a feeling that people outside the M25 have very caricaturish view of London, they see it as place dominated by bankers and hedge fund managers. There is a lot of poverty in London and the South East. Or go to Thanet or Medway Towns...


I say this as a working class Londoner whose family (the ones who aren't immigrants that is) has worked on the underground since the 1860s and as a teacher in a deprived Inner London neighbourhood. Nonetheless, if you took the south east of England as a whole out of the equation the UK would rank in similar terms to Slovakia or Hungary per capita I reckon. And of course, the extreme wealth that does exist in London lies in the hands of very few. And of course, these are generalsiations. There are wealthy people everywhere, and plenty of nice towns all accross the country. That said, the distorted view of the UK in international rankings is because of the wealth that is created in London. Isn't it something like 9 of the 10 poorest regions in Western Europe are in the UK? While London has is super wealthy per capita, even if isn't well distribuited. And I can say that, even though the wealth does not drip down in waterfalls to your average Londonder, I have never been unemployed and I can't think of anyone that I know in London that has been long-term unemployed. Even when I was at school I could find weekend and holidays jobs easily. I know that this isn't the case for everyone even in London but I think it certainly wouldn't be the case in most of the UK. Even though my father is stuck on the minimum wage for the rest of his life I still think the average Londoner has more access to at least apsiring to have a better life.

I certainly didn't realise how the situation really is for a lot of people outside London until I lived outside London. Towns upon towns that have no good jobs and no prospect of *good* jobs. Sure, there's no mass starvation but without skilled jobs life prospects are a bit depressing. That said, I will probably leave London so that I can one day afford to live somewhere where my bed isn't in the kitchen. As for the quality of construction as you well know this is a country that values money over life, why wouldn't we have shit houses. Indeed, those Victorian terraces are often better than what gets built now. This is the country where we don't even wear masks in classrooms in the middle of a pandemic. There is no foresight here anymore, people choose not to think beyond the next couple of years and businesses and politicans certainly do not. Thousands of families depend on charity and schools and the like for food while we have trident and try to maintain a worldview of the UK as a powerful nation that the rest of the world scoffs at. The government is only interested in immediate returns.

I barely bother to speak to anyone about anything anymore cause what's the point. I have tried and I have failed. I am angry that my pupils' futures are being flushed down the toilet so that bankers can avoid paying taxes. I am almost in tears now. I want the next generation to have the opportunities to travel and study abroad that I had. I want the UK to bother to invest in its own god damn future. To bother to invest in green technology. To pay nurses properly. I want the media to hold this ludicrously incompetent government to account. Over a hundred thousand deaths and the worst economic contraction in Europe. How the hell is that possible? But no we'd rather stick two fingers up at foreigners even if it means making our futures harder than they have to be in the mean time. I guess they proabably want me out too for being of half-olive skinned stock, they're willing to ruin their children's futures for it. 

I also feel guilt, guilt that haven't done better.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wealth in per capita income might not be a very good indicator in some instances, for example areas or cities with high incomes typically also have a very high cost of living, which in some cases may outweigh the higher incomes. This is why California has the highest cost of living adjusted poverty rate in the United States, despite having enormous wealth. Housing is usually by far the biggest problem. 

The average house price in Los Angeles County is $ 800,000 while many of these houses are relatively small and often dated one storey bungalows on small plots that would sell for $ 150,000 - 200,000 in most other parts of the country. But in Los Angeles you might need 3 or 4 incomes to rent one. This leads to overcrowding, which are poor living conditions on what looks like a high income state on paper. I've also read about a similar story in Paris, which has become so expensive that almost the entire middle class with children has moved elsewhere.


----------



## Stuu

DanielFigFoz said:


> I say this as a working class Londoner whose family (the ones who aren't immigrants that is) has worked on the underground since the 1860s and as a teacher in a deprived Inner London neighbourhood. Nonetheless, if you took the south east of England as a whole out of the equation the UK would rank in similar terms to Slovakia or Hungary per capita I reckon. And of course, the extreme wealth that does exist in London lies in the hands of very few. And of course, these are generalsiations. There are wealthy people everywhere, and plenty of nice towns all accross the country. That said, the distorted view of the UK in international rankings is because of the wealth that is created in London. Isn't it something like* 9 of the 10 poorest regions in Western Europe are in the UK*?


It's not true, at least at a regional level. This map shows European regions split by their average GDP (levelled for purchasing power parity) as a percentage of the EU average. If you look into the data on Eurostat (still featuring the UK for now!), you can see that quite a lot of regions do have lower incomes, but then so do large sections of Spain, France and Italy. What is undoubtedly true, if you look at the gini coefficient, the gap between rich and poor in the UK as a whole is terrible and even more split by regions. As you and others have mentioned, you get extreme poverty and extreme wealth, often in neighbouring streets










I do share your general despair with the outlook for the future of the UK though. It's a shite state of affairs and there is very little brightness on the horizon

Edited to add: As to your points re jobs etc, I lived in London for a long time and was never unemployed either, it was always easy to do something to pay the bills both at university and afterwards. I left London and moved back to my home town in the south west for various reasons.. I got a job first, but when made redundant from that there was literally nothing, because you can't get lower-skilled jobs to tide you over because they know you will leave the second something better comes along. The town I live in doesn't have particularly bad social or economic problems, but you can see that the place is slowly falling apart. It must be horrendous in worse-hit places


----------



## Slagathor

Stuu said:


> It's not true, at least at a regional level. This map shows European regions split by their average GDP (levelled for purchasing power parity) as a percentage of the EU average. If you look into the data on Eurostat (still featuring the UK for now!), you can see that quite a lot of regions do have lower incomes, but then so do large sections of Spain, France and Italy. What is undoubtedly true, if you look at the gini coefficient, the gap between rich and poor in the UK as a whole is terrible and even more split by regions. As you and others have mentioned, you get extreme poverty and extreme wealth, often in neighbouring streets
> 
> View attachment 1079778


At the risk of being a tad pedantic; I believe that original quote of the UK having an X number of the poorest regions in Western Europe, was based on the _narrow _definition of Western Europe (British isles, France, Germany, Benelux, Switzerland, Austria).

In that view of Europe, Iberia and Italy are part of Southern Europe, but not Western Europe.

There's obviously a sense of cherry-picking statistics for a spicy headline there, but I just thought I'd mention it.


----------



## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> At the risk of being a tad pedantic; I believe that original quote of the UK having an X number of the poorest regions in Western Europe, was based on the _narrow _definition of Western Europe (British isles, France, Germany, Benelux, Switzerland, Austria).
> 
> In that view of Europe, Iberia and Italy are part of Southern Europe, but not Western Europe.
> 
> There's obviously a sense of cherry-picking statistics for a spicy headline there, but I just thought I'd mention it.


Good point, but it's not true in those terms either, at a NUTS 2 level (the one the map is showing). Southern Belgium and lots of rural France are much poorer than neighbouring regions too... I'm sure there would be a way to arrange the statistics for the statement to be true of course


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

There is reason to be cautiously optimistic regarding Covid-19 right now. Both fatalities and infections rates are flat or decreasing in many countries, and vaccination rates are also picking up, at least in the developed world. Four counties of Norway, including two of the more populous ones, Trøndelag, where I live, and Rogaland, are back in green on ECDC's map. Most of the elderly above 80 around here, including my parents, have received at least the first vaccination shot, and will be fully vaccinated in a couple of weeks.








Still, restrictions here in Trondheim and many other places of the kingdom are actually quite strict on a Norwegian scale, and you need a very good reason to be allowed to enter Norway. The fear of the UK/SA/BR mutants is strong.


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## radamfi

In any league table, someone is going to be bottom. The question is, what is life like for those living in those poorer regions? Cornwall is supposed to be poorer than Hungary, but what is it like to live in Cornwall? For many people in London, Cornwall is considered idyllic and it is a dream for many Londoners to retire in Cornwall. I moved to the south-east for a better standard of living 25 years ago, but in hindsight I could probably have done the same jobs staying in the north-west and now be living in a much bigger house. My last company had offices in Liverpool and Manchester doing much the same stuff as what I was doing in London and we worked together pretty much as if we were one office.

House prices in London have obviously gone up to crazy levels, and @ChrisZwolle has regularly explained how similar has happened in the west of the Netherlands and just now in Los Angeles. But how much has _rent_ gone up in those expensive areas? I read on another forum that rent in London has roughly doubled in the last twenty-five years, which means it has only gone up in line with wages, whereas house prices have gone up probably about 5 times. Therefore London has not become inaccessible as long as you rent. There is a British obsession with house buying which means that people who rent feel left out, but in some other European countries, for example Germany and Switzerland, renting is considered OK and normal.


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## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> You can see this with transportation as well. Many people, especially from North America, are drooling over the cycling and public transport in the Netherlands. They say you don't need a car to get around. But they are tourists. In reality, you typically do need a car, as evidenced by the statistics that generally 75 - 90% of ground transport in the EU is by car.
> 
> As a tourist you tend to visit the outlier places. Suburban Kansas City is probably much more representative for the United States than Manhattan, San Francisco or Hollywood. As a tourist you see the highlights, but generally not what a country is all about until you start exploring the hinterlands beyond the tourist hotspots. Especially tourists that are focused on city trips get a distorted view of a country.


I like architecture of the middle ages, and visit (not in these days, of course...) several medieval buildings. These are usually churches, since many profane medieval buildings were destroyed in the past centuries. Some of these buildings are in city centers, perfectly reachable by public transport. The most famous example is for sure the Cologne cathedral, wich is not only one of the most visited monuments in Western Germany but stands less than a hundred meters apart from the central station of the city. But I visited a lot of village churches, just like this beautiful one in Leur, called simply as Oude Kerk or Dorpskerk. I don't know hoe and whether it would have been possible to get there by public transport. I suppose there is some bus service connecting Leur to Wijchem, and Wijchem has a train station with good connections to Nijmegen, Arnhem or 's-Hertogenbosch, but I think I'd never take it. Of course I drove, although basically I like to travel by train. 
Dorpskerk Leur by Attila Németh, on Flickr
So not even for tourists is it obvious to use public transport ;-)


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Suburbanist said:


> Will an Elfstedentocht be held in 2021?


Another Covid-19 casualty: Definitely no Elstedentocht during the coronavirus pandemic

Like all planned skiing world cup events in Norway it seems. The government will not allow entry without quarantine.

On the "bright" side, Covid-19 has led to record consumption in many sectors in Norway, as international travel has been difficult and available cultural events limited, many have cash to spend, for instance on frozen pizza...


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## bogdymol

Skopje/Скопје said:


> How was your business trip in Skopje, btw. Any interesting stories or photos?


Everything went well. Some remarks:

the city roads are generally good, but the sidewalks could be improved
all people I got contact with were nice and friendly. Many also could speak English
food is good, prices are low
traffic is Balkan style. Nobody lets you change lanes. They would better have a small crash than let you go in their lane

I even managed to have a walk in the city center both in the morning and in the evening. Here are some pictures:










You guys like statues:










Statues everywhere:










Even on buildings there are statues:










At the hotel where I slept I got a free upgrade to a premium room. Let's just say that I have a slightly different taste for interior decoration:


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## Slagathor

Skopje looks nice in those photos but that hotel room is for a drag queen dressed as Marie Antoinette.


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## tfd543

Statues that are degraded altogether. All rusty when you look closely in daylight. It was heavily criticized when they installed them some years ago.


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## Stuu

geogregor said:


> Then there is girl who, like myself, moved to the UK 15 years ago or so. Couple of years ago she started sharing all the racist anti immigrant crap (including some really nasty manipulated material) but recently switched to antivax stuff.


Its the whole echo chamber nature of social media, people tend to be friends with people with similar views, or don't get challenged enough when they post things (I'm guilty of that too), so they think their views are commonplace or the majority. The media can be just as bad but are generally not as off the charts mental as some of the stuff on youtube or shared in facebook


geogregor said:


> That is the whole point I was making. Until you live somewhere you often don't see the annoying things which locals have to deal with. It is difficult to judge a country which we only sporadically visit for holiday. Especially if we don't know the local language.


Absolutely, but Italy's variance between official figures and what people actually experience is a noted economic phenomenon. It mostly works even though it shouldn't. 

The worst place for blatant extremes between rich and poor I have ever experienced was San Francisco. People begging at traffic lights with signs explaining they need money for healthcare was a real shock to me. As were the homeless tents in the streets.. things you expect to see in India, not California


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I guess you have not been in Brazil or India....(me neither, btw)


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## Stuu

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I guess you have not been in Brazil or India....(me neither, btw)


Yes I have been to India, I expected to see people sleeping on the streets there. I hadn't expected to see homeless people's tents filling up parking lots and small squares in the city in California


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## geogregor

Speaking about crap in Poland, its is just getting worse...


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1360164400506822656
And if life wasn't shitty enough quite good take on what's happening in Britain:









In the fairytale land of Brexit, we’re trading with the world. It’s a fantasy | Nick Cohen


The Tories – and much of the media – would have us believe we’re living in Shangri-la




www.theguardian.com





So basically my native country and my adopted country are engaged in a race to the bottom. So fricking sad.


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## Stuu

geogregor said:


> Speaking about crap in Poland, its is just getting worse...
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1360164400506822656


That's one way of making sure the past isn't forgotten


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## ChrisZwolle

Minimum wages across the EU:


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## PovilD

Just few years ago, Lithuania was on TOP4 EU bottom in terms of gross and net wages. There were taxes reforms which had increased our gross wage. Similar reforms were held in Romania and now they have higher wage than Hungary there.

Wages in Hungary gives me mixed feelings about Orban. I expect the country wages and GDP per capita to be at par with Czech Republic, and not somewhere closer to Balkan countries.

On the other hand, this graph is not smth that would warm someone heart, at least in my country, people mostly care about their wages after taxes, and I think difference is more extreme there than in other countries, but Lithuania did not bad job in rising its net wage too.


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## ChrisZwolle

PovilD said:


> On the other hand, people mostly care about their wages after taxes, at least in my country.


I wonder how this works in some countries similar to the Dutch minimum wage. The Netherlands has several tax exemptions, so while the first tax bracket is officially 37.1%, the effective tax rate for people earning the minimum wage is closer to 8%. They pay a little over € 100 in income tax on a € 1685 minimum wage. Still, this is not enough to make ends meet in the Netherlands, so people in this income range are eligible for certain health care, rent and childcare benefits.


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## Attus

PovilD said:


> Wages in Hungary gives me mixed feelings about Orban. I expect the country wages and GDP per capita to be at par with Czech Republic, and not somewhere closer to Balkan countries.


The wages in Hungary increase year by year since Orbán is in office. Taxes decreased so even if your gross wage did not change, you can get a higher net wage. Since Orbán is PM, Hungarian ecenomy developes quite fast - apart from Covid-19-recession of course. Orbán my be criticized heavily, but for the economy he's a far better prime minister than any other one since WW2.


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## PovilD

Attus said:


> The wages in Hungary increase year by year since Orbán is in office. Taxes decreased so even if your gross wage did not change, you can get a higher net wage. Since Orbán is PM, Hungarian ecenomy developes quite fast - apart from Covid-19-recession of course. Orbán my be criticized heavily, but for the economy he's a far better prime minister than any other one since WW2.


Maybe, but even net wage is kinda low. Economy developed fast (and hope to continue to develop soon) in all new EU member states I wonder how Orban boosted all of this for the better. Maybe Hungary could have been even worse than is now? I remember Hungary suffered badly late 2000s recession (but so as we, and yeah, our demographics was almost wartime situation then).

I hear both good and bad stuff about Orban, and it's interesting to listen to both sides. I can say it's even more interesting to listen to pro-Orban side since I get bored of that mainstream anti-Orban agenda  I still consider region from Estonia to Croatia as higher interest and more related with my home situation, I mean if something happens in one CEE country, same may happen in my country. It was even visible during Soviet times, when stuff was happening in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, Lithuania was also having some protests, just probably in lighter form, since Soviets could ruin your life fairly easily.

With both Poland and Hungary being viewed with kinda negative light, I could say I'm more optimistic about Poland. At first, I saw Hungary as richer country than Poland, and more connected with West Europe, but with checking many stats it looks like it's the opposite.


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## bogdymol

PovilD said:


> Just few years ago, Lithuania was on TOP4 EU bottom in terms of gross and net wages. There were taxes reforms which had increased our gross wage. Similar reforms were held in Romania and now they have higher wage than Hungary there.


Indeed. Before in Romania, every employee got a gross wage, from which tax was deducted. On top of this, every employer had to pay, from employer's money (not from employees wage), the "employers tax contribution". I think that was around 16%.

Last year (or 2 years ago?) those 16% were moved from the employer to the employee. Basically this means higher gross wages, but the net wage remained the same.


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## kosimodo

Weird tabel. Like luxembourg is well off. Here in DK it is about the same. The 15 Euro an hour leads to around the 2200 a month.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

There is no legal minimum wage in Norway, is there in Denmark? Unions have always been opposed as they think it gives them less leverage when negotiating tariffs for unskilled labor.


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## ChrisZwolle

The note below the table says that Scandinavia and some other EU countries do not have official minimum wages. 

I suppose it also varies by country how big the difference is between minimum wage and average or median wage.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Following the free movement of labor in EEA, what was introduced in Norway was general application of collective agreements in certain sectors, to prevent social dumpling of immigrants. Meaning that agreements made between the main employer and labor unions must be adhered to in order to get a work permit.


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## geogregor

Attus said:


> If you ask the people, what do they want: liberal democracy + poverty or a one party state + economical prosperity + welfare, the vast majority would choose the latter one. Everywhere in the world.


Are you seriously claiming that only Orban can be "savior of Hungary" and without him country would collapse or become poor?

If he is such great manager of economy why does he need total control of the media and judiciary? What does he fear? That people won't love him unconditionally? Especially once they see local corruption and way his cronies cream off economy (including the EU funding)?

I'm not Hungarian so I don't mind Orban staying in power for decades. If Hungarians like his right wing bullshit it is none of my business. But only as long as he plays by modern democratic rules. And it is becoming increasingly doubtful. He is stretching the norms, to say the least.

The EU is an elite club of democratic nations. There needs to be mechanism ensuring that someone somewhere is not tempted to slide back on democratic and freedom principles. At the moment the EU is completely failing in that regard.



> China has had an enormous economical development since the late 70's, just like not any other nation in the 20th and 21st century. For hundreds of millions of people it means, they need not to live in poverty but they have some level of welfare. Clear, the economical situation in Hungary was even in 2009 much better than in China after Mao, so a strict comparision does not work. But if Hungary had in average 7% economical growth every year, if the Hungarian economy and the wealth of people living in Hungary were 7 times higher in twenty years than today (it's approximately what in China happened since 2000), I suppose people would be happy, even if it would be a one party state.


South Korea started from even bigger economic hole and they are not a one party state. In fact being dictatorship is more often leading to stagnation than fast economic development.

On a personal note I find it quite depressing that you seem to be ready to accept dictatorship as long as you have better model of car or TV.

I would rather be a bit poorer than live in a country where soon an algorithm (controlled by the party) will decide my every step and my future.


----------



## Attus

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> If you look at the development in neighboring countries, that is not really a relevant question, is it?


And please remember, Suburbanist wrote: "if a deep economic crisis is the price to be paid for his removal in some election, so be it ". 
I answered *him*, saying, I disagree, and the vast majority of Hungarian people, too, disagree.


----------



## Attus

geogregor said:


> Are you seriously claiming that only Orban can be "savior of Hungary" and without him country would collapse or become poor?


Yes, I do, because, unlike you or some other forum members here, I know the Hungarian opposition. I don't speak theoretically, I compare him to the real options.



> That people won't love him unconditionally? Especially once they see local corruption and way his cronies cream off economy (including the EU funding)?


People, unlike you, see and saw, that in the times when the current opposition ruled Hungary, they were corrupt as well. And in the local authorities led by the opposition they're corrupt as well. So no one really believes, tthat if the opposition wins the next eleections, Hungary will have less corruption than now. I too, expect, if the opposition wins, Hungary will not have less corruption, but more than today.



> If Hungarians like his right wing bullshit it is none of my business.


1., Basically many of them do, yes. Hungarian society is not quite liberal. 
2., They know, the alternative is not some theoretically ideal government, but the current oppposition. 



> In fact being dictatorship is more often leading to stagnation than fast economic development.


True, no doubt. So I'm not saying, dictatorship is great. But I'm saying, if (once again: IF) dictatorship makes eceonomical development and people will be wealthier, than usually people don't mind living in a dictatorship. Especially if they saw (because it happend in the near past) that in democracy they were poor and the economy was weaker. 



> On a personal note I find it quite depressing that you seem to be ready to accept dictatorship as long as you have better model of car or TV.


1., What I accept does not matter. I've left Hungary eight years ago because of Orbán and have not participated in any Hungarian elections since then, and I don't want to participate next year. I have the Hungarian citizenship, so I may participate, I simply don't want to. I am not living there, I let people living in Hungary decide about their future. 
2., It's not about a better model of car, Hungarian economy collapsed quite fast in the 2000's, many people lost their cars completely, some people lost their houses completely and the state was literally insolvent in 2009. We're not talking about 10% more or less income.


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## PovilD

Similar situation with my city administration. They are popular because they started street resurfacing programmes after 20 years of pure stagnation with very few random places receiving resurfacing, and my city was called a pothole capital of the country. Similar situation with many local administrations, and I can feel autocratic tendencies there. Maybe I'm more optimistic, but I believe in my city opposition, and streets resurfacing programs in 2010s was mostly country-wide programme when we just decided to put same money on local roads and streets instead of main roads. For this reason our main roads has stuck in 2000s, and I don't like many things of them, and for some it became a symbol of country stagnation, especially when comparing our roads with new S-roads and A-roads in Poland. Seeing stuff in Poland, we expect World class roads there too.

On the other hand, I don't say that we didn't need city refurbishment programs, things looked awful and stuck basically in Soviet 80s, but I think we need to start to balance money for different things as cities don't look that bad anymore, but I guess some local authorities might lose momentum, esp. in my city, but we are democratic country and there should be some believe in opposition, I think.


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> You can see in the graph that the summer PV generation is four-five time as intensive as the winter one. Although there is indeed, as it seems, more wind in winter. Still, does it always (or at least on average) work like that? And what if it doesn't? For example, the last weeks over here are practically windless.


I guess it depends on geography. Here it is rare to have many windless days, especially at sea. It's usually sunny when there is no wind so solar can pick up. 

It's much more inefficient in terms of needing so much more installed capacity which only produces power for less than 50% of the time, which is why some always-on baseload is needed, ideally nuclear, unless someone has a better idea


----------



## radamfi

Is there a danger of Hungary leaving or being kicked out of the EU?


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## geogregor

Attus said:


> Yes, I do, because, unlike you or some other forum members here, I know the Hungarian opposition. I don't speak theoretically, I compare him to the real options.
> 
> People, unlike you, see and saw, that in the times when the current opposition ruled Hungary, they were corrupt as well. And in the local authorities led by the opposition they're corrupt as well. So no one really believes, tthat if the opposition wins the next eleections, Hungary will have less corruption than now. I too, expect, if the opposition wins, Hungary will not have less corruption, but more than today.


If Orban is so great and everyone else so bad what is the point in limiting the fair democratic competition for power? If opposition is really so bad (and it might well be, I don't know absolutely anything about Hungarian opposition) then Orban has nothing to fear. Why then limiting media freedoms and tinkering with judiciary?



> 1., Basically many of them do, yes. Hungarian society is not quite liberal.
> 2., They know, the alternative is not some theoretically ideal government, but the current oppposition.


Well, nobody forces people to vote for opposition. What I'm arguing for is that opposition should have fair shot and be able to compete fairly for power. Without healthy doze of opposition ruling parties start rotting. It is already quite visible in Hungary.

Free media are crucial in keeping government accountable. Media situation in Hungary is really unhealthy. Unfortunately Polish government is starting to go the same way, with state power companies buying local media.



> True, no doubt. So I'm not saying, dictatorship is great. But I'm saying, if (once again: IF) dictatorship makes eceonomical development and people will be wealthier, than usually *people don't mind living in a dictatorship*. Especially if they saw (because it happend in the near past) that in democracy they were poor and the economy was weaker.


Interesting, and how would you know when people don't have choice of kicking dictators from power? They also don't have free media to air their complains.

According to Putin vast majority love him. The truth is we don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no, without competitive democracy it is impossible to say.



> 1., What I accept does not matter. I've left Hungary eight years ago because of Orbán and have not participated in any Hungarian elections since then, and I don't want to participate next year. I have the Hungarian citizenship, so I may participate, I simply don't want to. I am not living there, I let people living in Hungary decide about their future.


And you completely wouldn't care if Hungary turned into semi-dictatorship?

I left Poland over 16 years ago but I still care about my native country. At least a bit. My family still lives there, so do many of my friends. I wouldn't like for Poland to turn into Kazakhstan or Venezuela.



> 2., It's not about a better model of car, Hungarian economy collapsed quite fast in the 2000's, many people lost their cars completely, some people lost their houses completely and the state was literally insolvent in 2009. We're not talking about 10% more or less income.


I'm aware that situation in Hungary wasn't great. But it wasn't "collapse". You paint it as if it was something like hunger in Ethiopia. It wasn't. Many countries had bad spells. Italy, Greece, Spain, even Poland had some bad periods post 1989 (despite overall success). Luckily so far those countries don't have leaders who want to be "little Putins" and "saviors of the nation".

In general I would agree that it should be mostly Hungarian problem to solve (even if I would favor helping democratic forces in any dictatorship).

The problem is that Hungary is an EU member and receives generous funding from the EU budgets. If Orban doesn't like democratic institutions why not making "Hungexit"?



radamfi said:


> Is there a danger of Hungary leaving or being kicked out of the EU?


I don't think there is even remote chance of Hungary being kicked out from the EU. The EU is unable to apply even tokenistic sanctions against Orban.

Unfortunately the EU was designed as a club of western democracies and there isn't really any mechanism what to do with country which is gradually backsliding on democratic institutions. Personally I see it as one of the biggest flaws of the EU.


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> According to Putin vast majority love him. The truth is we don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no, without competitive democracy it is impossible to say.


Although my country is more or less democratic, but people tend to support president as well, and interestingly any president that is in power with highest support than any person, although his popularity is not high right now. I think it has to do with image. I don't like image of current president of my country, and I liked image of previous president more, although it left many people, esp. Russians, triggered due to relations with Russia becoming cold and almost warlike. If you live for drama, you could get it  Now, we live more drama-free. Biggest drama probably if we will be few countries that will refuse Sputnik V.


----------



## Attus

radamfi said:


> Is there a danger of Hungary leaving or being kicked out of the EU?


No.


----------



## PovilD

I liked there was discussion in this forum, don't remember which thread that EU funds are good breeding ground for local dictatorships if those come in.


----------



## CNGL

Meanwhile I was browsing WikiSara for some info on former French national routes (Are there any remaining? xD), I decided to pan the Google Maps inset all the way to Saudi Arabia and... Ha'il still shows up as _Grêle_ ("hail" as in the icy precipitation) when set to French. I'm surprised they haven't corrected that yet. This doesn't happen in Spanish, where it shows correctly "Hail", not _Granizo_.


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> According to Putin vast majority love him. The truth is we don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no, without competitive democracy it is impossible to say.


If I lived in a random Russian city, I would have seen the collapse of the USSR and then the chaos of the Yeltsin era, followed by stability and at least some level of prosperity under Putin, not to mention a return of national pride. In those terms I can imagine that Putin is pretty popular, and why people might not like the idea of change. That's not to say I like the idea, but compared to the perceived alternative I do get it


----------



## geogregor

Stuu said:


> If I lived in a random Russian city, I would have seen the collapse of the USSR and then the chaos of the Yeltsin era, followed by stability and at least some level of prosperity under Putin, not to mention a return of national pride. In those terms I can imagine that Putin is pretty popular, and why people might not like the idea of change. That's not to say I like the idea, but compared to the perceived alternative I do get it


It is of course perfectly plausible, however, two things.

First, we simply don't know what is Putin's real popularity as there isn't credible polling going on in Russia, media are government controlled and elections are a sham.

Second, if he was genuinely so overwhelmingly popular why going to such lengths to suppress the opposition? Why jail and poison the opposition? Clearly he is not so sure of his "support"

It is always the same story with dictators, even the "mild uncle" types. They all do it "for the nation and the people", often "suffering" themselves. But all the same people can't be trusted in voicing their opposition.

Orban is no Putin (yet) but if he is such a god given miracle for his nation he shouldn't have anything to fear from the grateful folks. He could live independent media and judiciary alone. Somehow he didn't. I wonder why...

As we can see, people often favor stability of "firm rule", just look at those smiles, who need polling or independent media: 



















It is also worth remembering than in Russia we have whole emerging generation who don't even remember live before Putin. With a bit of brainwashing it is a potent mix...


----------



## PovilD

Those looks of those kids in that portrait with Stalin kinda reminds me of usual looks of my school bullies 
Probably short hairstyle do some trick too which resemble me gopnik(-alikes) and "district cool/tough guys".


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Attus said:


> Yes, I do, because, unlike you or some other forum members here, I know the Hungarian opposition. I don't speak theoretically, I compare him to the real options.


You cannot have a (healthy) opposition if there is no free media and any kind of opposition is swiftly suppressed. It is also truly ironic that you are defending an authoritarian government in your home country, yet you yourself reap the benefits of a free and democratic country...


----------



## SeanT

Do you Guys reading, watching & listening to HU media, (I do!) Somehow I can not see this all media power the hungarian goverment has in the country.
The problem is, that the leasing force on the opposition is an excommunist, exprimeminister who actually led the country into poverty (Police brutality and so on) Where were Bruxelles back then?


----------



## Attus

Rebasepoiss said:


> You cannot have a (healthy) opposition if there is no free media


Isn't there? n my opinion, media has more freedom in Hungary than in Germany. In Hungary you may write or say Orbán is a Nazi, you may write or say he's a dictator, he's corrupt, you may do it without any restriction. Not any single newspaper, TV or radio channel or web site was banned, not any single journalist was arrested. So what are we talking about?



> and any kind of opposition is swiftly suppressed.


Who is suppressed in Hungary? When the current opposition was in rule, they brutally suppressed demonstrations. Nothing like that happened under Orbán. 



> It is also truly ironic that you are defending an authoritarian government in your home country, yet you yourself reap the benefits of a free and democratic country...


I "defend" a government that was elected three times democratically (four, if you count 1998 as well). I don't like this government at all, I really don't. But 

My solid opinion is that the current opposition would be even worse.
I really don't like that in Western Media Hungary is presented as if Orbán would be a Pol Pot combined with Hitler.
My solid opinion is that economy and the welfare of people are more important than some liberal principles. Hungary is successful economically, and it was not, when the current opposition led the country. It's easy for you and some other forum members, never lived in Hungary, whishing that Hungarians were poor - they themselves don't want to.


----------



## geogregor

SeanT said:


> Do you Guys reading, watching & listening to HU media, (I do!)


Well, I occasionally check Polish media coverage. 

The state media is a joke. You wouldn't believe the level of propaganda. 

For now we have decent independent media conglomerates but government really would love to get its hands on them as well. Recently some state companies, controlled by ruling party cronies, started buying local media groups. Ruling morons really don't even hide their agenda of taking over as much media as possible, under cover of "Poles taking control back". 

Other method of control is government spending on advertising only in "friendly outlets". Especially on local level media often relay on government's ads and announcements. 

It is process which is even more advanced in Hungary.

I don't get defensive stance from Attus. Sure some criticism from the western media is childish and lack of local context. But there is real concern where Hungary is going (and Poland would love to follow).

If the problem is the quality of the opposition then people should argue for better opposition than for keeping Orban (or whoever else) in power for ever, especially with use of some questionable methods.

Parts of Eastern Europe really do have a problem. Democracy looks more fragile then I was thinking even decade or two ago. Tendency towards controlling media and curtailing independence of judiciary is clearly visible.

Sure, we don't have Pol Pots or Hitlers here. In we never will. Be might end up with corrupted and inefficient semi-democracies run by oligarchs well connected to dominant ruling parties which trash any opposition at the early stage.

Attus might be comfortable with such future for Hungary, I don't want to see it materializing in Poland.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> If the problem is the quality of the opposition then people should argue for better opposition than for keeping Orban (or whoever else) in power for ever, especially with use of some questionable methods.


In Poland we also have this problem... 

The leading party of the Polish left, SLD, is also ex-communist, related to a lot of corruption and nepotism, and when they were ruling, the country did not develop very well (although it was them who introduced us into EU); these were times of stagnation, heavy unemployment and poverty.

Apart from them, on the left we also have the newly created several years ago Razem (Together). But they are too small and too week. In the recent elections they created a coalition with SLD – because otherwise they would have no chance of entering the parliament. It was even quite successful as after the previous failure of SLD when they also didn't even enter the parliament, now both of them in coalition managed that. Still, we just just the compromised SLD and Razem, which means nothing alone.

And Wiosna (Spring, like a season) of Robert Biedroń, which is even weaker, and they focus so much on things like gay rights that they will never be a choice for that more conservative part of a society. Although they would be a good coalition party.

I don't know, maybe as a result of the current abortion protests, the Polish left will become stronger and more meaningful, even without any participation of SLD...

And we have centrists (PO, now after some divisions it's a coalition called KO that includes PO and some other parties, mainly Nowoczesna – The Modern) who ruled for two terms before PiS and contributed to the economic development of the country quite a lot (on a similar level to the one PiS does now). However – there were many issues they should address which they did not even touch (like, for example, the excessive privileges for the Catholic Church), the legislation was slow and not really efficient, and the main trigger for their failure was probably when they brutally treated and finally arrested journalists who illegally recorded behind-the-scenes talks of their politicians. However, they still remain the main competitor of the current government and the main opposition force... So they aren't innocent either, if we talk about media independence.

One of the main problems here is the same as the one in Hungary. Maybe to a lesser extent, but still. Lack of sensible opposition. Or there is some, but it is too weak and unable to break through the main, dominant parties.

Another issue is that a large part of the society does not live in a large cities but in smaller towns and villages. And here we have more than one aspect. One thing is that they are naturally more conservative – it has always been and will probably always be so that the countryside lives more in accordance with traditions and all the new things and ideas reach those places later. So it's obvious that they are more pro-Church and so on. Another thing is that there are more simple, not very intelligent people there, so there is more tendency to vote for the more populist political options. And the last important issue is that while the average values for the country concerning unemployment, salaries etc. show that it's going on very well in Poland, they are actually pumped up by the cities, while the life in the rural and "county" Poland is still full of stagnation, monopolies on the job market (you are bullied by your employer but you can't do anything about it because otherwise you would stay unemployed), even unemployment, nepotism in the local politics... For these people PiS is really a hope for a change to better. Their more fundamental needs are not satisfied, so things such as democracy, women rights etc. are of lower importance for them.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands is going from deep freeze to spring temperatures in a week, with -15 last Saturday to +18 this weekend.  All snow melted very quickly.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands is going from deep freeze to spring temperatures in a week, with -15 last Saturday to +18 this weekend.  All snow melted very quickly.


Well, THAT'S global warming  It's not about temperature or sea level rise, but around this.

It's kinda becoming fairly typical Spring weather in our country too, like snow in mid-May followed by +20 afterwards.



geogregor said:


> If the problem is the quality of the opposition then people should argue for better opposition than for keeping Orban (or whoever else) in power for ever, especially with use of some questionable methods.


I find that "opposition would be worse, why having an opposition" stance kinda weird. It's not healthy at all if there is no proper opposition, it's open trampoline to being in dictatorship and shutting your mouth for saying anything bad. I think it's good thing to develop alternatives in politics, not remain in the stance "why need opposition?".

Still, I can relate it with my local city government as some people may have similar stances too which I don't find healthy.
As we don't have national government turning to be like Poland and Hungary (at least yet), the processes are already going with local governments. Refurbishing infrastructure helps a lot.


----------



## Suburbanist

I am planning an EV road trip here in Norway early this summer, early July. I am impressed how chargers have been deployed even in minor dead-end valleys with no towns. It is hard to go more than 60km without a charger station available. As all the mountain passes are close to home, I have never taken the time to travel there, always escaping somewhere else in the summer. Time to change that.

I found quite a good deal for an unspecified "long-range EV" for rental at a major agency. I had driven an EV before through some short stretch of mountain roads, they are awesome for climbing and quite efficient on regenerative braking (which also slows the car quite easily), comparable to turbocharged ICE engine-powered cars (which are expensive gas guzzlers otherwise). Let's see how it feels after crisscrossing the mountains passes all the way to Trodnlag.


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## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> I find that "opposition would be worse, why having an opposition" stance kinda weird. It's not healthy at all if there is no proper opposition


That's true. But the actual choice is between two evils. You have to choose the smaller one... For some it will be the bad opposition, but imagine a pensioner who now finally doesn't have to choose whether to buy food or medicines. For such people the choice is obvious. And this is just an example.

And this is not Switzerland, over here people still don't really understand democracy. The most popular way of thinking of the government is as of an enemy. The government is not "us", it is "they". Imposing weird rules on the people and extorting money from them in form of taxes. People don't believe they can have any influence on the government. But also they don't understand that something which will be good just for themselves, will not necessarily be good for the society as a whole.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'd love to drive an EV, as it's faster, has more fluid acceleration and is quiet. However there still is a combination of three things that make EVs uninteresting for me yet: cost + range + charging times. 

First, the upfront *cost* is still too high, I'm in the market for cars around € 15,000 - 18,000, usually one that's 2-4 years old. There are no EVs in that price range with a good range. Then, the cost of driving is not as advantageous if you can't charge from a home outlet. I would be dependent on a commercial public charging point, which is typically around € 0.41 per kWh according to ANWB. That amounts to around € 8 per 100 km. Which is not very different from my tax guzzler Hyundai on petrol. Fast charging is even more expensive than petrol.

Then, the *range*. While ~400 kilometers would be surely be sufficient for most day-to-day driving, it's not as convenient for longer trips. If you drive long distance, you'll start the day with a 100% battery. But the next leg will likely be from 80% to 10%, hence only 70% of the battery capacity is usable, which drops the range to 280 kilometers. Add in motorway driving that is not hypermiling but just cruising 120-130 km/h with the A/C on, and the real motorway range may only be just 200 kilometers or 2 hours of driving. 

And this is where *charging time* comes into play. A 40 - 50 minute charge may be acceptable for one time, I don't want to charge 50 minutes every 2 hours. Or having to hop from charger to charger all day long on a trip across Europe. Long-distance trips are normally about 60% of my annual mileage, as I don't commute to work by car. Long-distance trips means using fast chargers a lot, which are expensive, some charge up to € 0.70 per kWh, which is more expensive than driving on petrol.


----------



## radamfi

I mentioned earlier I would like to hire an electric car, just to see what it is like. I've ridden on plenty of electric buses, especially in the Netherlands (which is at the forefront of electric bus rollout in Europe) but also in London, and the ride experience compared to the diesel version of the same bus is so much better. As well as the issues mentioned by @ChrisZwolle insurance is also more expensive, at least in the UK. Obviously in Norway there are huge subsidies so the upfront cost isn't so much of an issue there.


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## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> And this is not Switzerland, over here people still don't really understand democracy. The most popular way of thinking of the government is as of an enemy. The government is not "us", it is "they". Imposing weird rules on the people and extorting money from them in form of taxes. People don't believe they can have any influence on the government. But also they don't understand that something which will be good just for themselves, will not necessarily by good for the society as a whole.


You wrote a shortest textbook, how people East of Iron Curtain (colloquially known as Eastern Europe) understand politics 

I find this stance kinda sad. I wish to influence the country in a good way. For example, I have interest in International situation of infrastructure so I want to make influence for good practices to come in my country. I think in a smaller country, one person can have bigger weight too, although in bigger countries there may be more variable ideas with more competition.

Some people just don't have knowledge how to contribute to the country, either they don't feel themselves wanting protesting over relatively minor stuff, or either not knowing how to sell ideas to the government. Instead, they have thoughts like "what gives, idk anything, they are evil, I will go to Norway soon anyway".


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## bogdymol

I just want to appreciate Chris's post above, as it fits very well also my driving habits. The only exception is that I could charge it at home, but as most of my km in a year are long-range trips (or at least it was before corona), I really don't want to be hopping from a charger to the next. Usually when I make a long trip I have fairly limited time, so I usually drive with as few stops as possible (refuel or grab something quick to eat). I never spend more than 15 minutes with a single stop.

I drove a few full hybrid cars, which worked in full electric mode at very low speeds (like, in the parking lot). It's interesting to see how you are moving although it is complete silence (petrol engine was turned off). However, I never drove a full electric car. I had booked a few weeks ago a drive test at a Tesla dealer, just to see how it is, but they called a few days before to cancel it as they did not have any car available.

For me at least, there is still a long way until I will own an electric car. On top of what Chris mentioned above, I am currently very happy with my current 2018 Ford Focus diesel. Yes, I drive a diesel, but a very efficient one. It has a very low fuel consumption, very low emissions and therefore relatively low taxes and insurance. It drives great, has plenty of modern features, so I don't see any reason to change it anytime soon.


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## geogregor

@ Chris & bogdymol

But guys, for how many people longs distance, cross-Europe, trips are majority of driving? Average driver covers much shorter distances (especially in island nations like Ireland or the UK).

I would say that for 80-90% drivers in Europe the current electric range is perfectly adequate in most situations

The biggest problem is the cost of the electric car.


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## Suburbanist

I agree that long distance highway drive might not be the ideal scenario for EVs today. That will change in the future. I still think the revolutionary idea of standardized hot swap batteries (that are replaced by robot stations in 3 or 4 minutes) was a better way to go.


----------



## andken

PovilD said:


> I find that "opposition would be worse, why having an opposition" stance kinda weird. It's not healthy at all if there is no proper opposition, it's open trampoline to being in dictatorship and shutting your mouth for saying anything bad. I think it's good thing to develop alternatives in politics, not remain in the stance "why need opposition?".


I think that Hungary has problems that go beyond Orban.

The countries in Central Europe were provinces or parts of several empires until World War I, them they were throw over to Moscow after World War II(With exception of Greece). Greece is the only country of Central Europe that wasn't part of the either the Ottoman Empire, Russia, Germany/Prussia or Austria-Hungary in 1848. Órban has a point when he invokes the Treaty of Trianon. 

People thought that simply giving these countries structural funds them putting them in the Eurozone would mean that they would become like Western European countries. Most of these countries, that went from the Austro-Hungarian Empire(Or some type of partition between empires) to the Eastern Bloc did not have a lot of experience with democratic institutions.

I think that officials in Brussels like to decry governments in Warsaw and Budapest in part to pass the buck over their own failures.


----------



## bogdymol

geogregor said:


> @ Chris & bogdymol
> 
> But guys, for how many people longs distance, cross-Europe, trips are majority of driving? Average driver covers much shorter distances (especially in island nations like Ireland or the UK).
> 
> I would say that for 80-90% drivers in Europe the current electric range is perfectly adequate in most situations
> 
> The biggest problem is the cost of the electric car.


For someone that commutes 50 km every day, and has the option to charge the car either at home or at work, and if that someone does not really go on long trips, an electric car might be the solution. Only the price is still a drawback. 

What Chris and I were writing is that an electric car does not suit our own needs today. Maybe it is ok for others, or maybe it will be ok in the future but not for us and not today. 

At the moment, for our particular cases, the cheapest and fastest option is an old style petrol or diesel car.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think the word 'average' is the mistake that many EV-advocates are making, and why EVs have not yet been adopted by the private market on a substantial scale. People generally want a car that is adequate for all of their usage, not only their average trips. It may need to tow something, be adequate for irregular longer distance trips, have a big trunk for vacation, etc. 

However I think the real obstacle is that EVs are not that cheap to drive as it is often portrayed. Except for some outliers like Norway, electricity prices are generally high. It doesn't seem like electricity prices will come down significantly, or that EVs become (much) more efficient. As mentioned, insurance tends to be fairly high as well. And there might be more taxes coming to make up for lost revenue of tax exemptions and dwindling fuel taxes in the future. 

In my example, motorists being dependent on public charging points, are already not saving money compared to high-taxed fuel cars. Not to mention those who need to fast charge regularly. At least in the Netherlands, sales of EVs are highly dependent on tax incentives for business cars, which don't reflect on the much larger private market.


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## Stuu

Suburbanist said:


> I agree that long distance highway drive might not be the ideal scenario for EVs today. That will change in the future. I still think the revolutionary idea of standardized hot swap batteries (that are replaced by robot stations in 3 or 4 minutes) was a better way to go.


It sounds like a good idea but there's lots of reasons not to do that... it places big limits on the car design for a start. What if a car manufacturer wants to distribute the battery pack around the car for better weight distribution? 

Also you need to get all manufacturers to agree on one standard and for it not to be changed for decades. That doesn't seem remotely sensible to me, imagine if computer manufacturers had made that agreement in 1980, which is effectively where we are with electric cars

And you would be removing any competitiveness between battery makers, if they all have to be the same size, or maybe 3 different standard sizes, then there is no point innovating


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## mgk920

Those issues that Chris brought up are the exact same ones that doomed straight battery-electric in the open market in the earliest days of automobility, during the late 19th and very early 20th centuries.

Early auto builders offered literally EVERYTHING in propulsion technologies and the market decided that internal combustion gasoline/petrol engines were the superior technology.

Mike


----------



## PovilD

andken said:


> People thought that simply giving these countries structural funds them putting them in the Eurozone would mean that they would become like Western European countries. Most of these countries, that went from the Austro-Hungarian Empire(Or some type of partition between empires) to the Eastern Bloc did not have a lot of experience with democratic institutions.


It's something we believed in 2000s, but then 2008 crisis struck, and I think feeling that we don't go anywhere (like becoming new W. European welfare countries) increased, despite some growth after the crisis.

As for my country, it was hard to believe for people hat is possible (at least, theoretically) to become proper West European state when you start from very low development level, post-Soviet crisis, rampant 90s criminal gang activity. Then, when we became EU members, there was new hype that EU money will raise us to W. European development. Now the hype is only in places where there was true growth, like Vilnius, partially Kaunas, and very limited in other areas. This gets clear with voting results, where areas outside of largest cities vote for populists and semi-populists, many of them being seen more as circus clowns than proper humanbeings.


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## radamfi

PovilD said:


> As for my country, it was hard to believe for people hat is possible (at least, theoretically) to become proper West European state when you start from very low development level, post-Soviet crisis, rampant 90s criminal gang activity. Then, when we became EU members, there was new hype that EU money will raise us to W. European development.


Central/Eastern European countries are growing faster than Western European countries so eventually there will be convergence.


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## PovilD

radamfi said:


> Central/Eastern European countries are growing faster than Western European countries so eventually there will be convergence.


Most growth is happening in the cities, but on the other hand, rural areas may be affected positively by it too. I mean, from the perspective of tourism, second homes, or new homes.


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## Suburbanist

The price advantage of use can be tackled by tax policy. I think an emissions tax would be the better way to go, fuel prices in Northern Europe is already, at retail, around 65 to 70% of all sorts of levies, duties, and taxes. 

In urban environments (speeds below 50km/h or so), EVs are very quiet, and reduce noise significantly and, if the pavement is also optimized to reduce noise, then streets can be really quiet. At least this is my experience here in Bergen. At low speeds, EVs are silent for pedestrians, people sit on sidewalk tables for outdoor dining etc. Now that they deployed a large electric bus fleet, the improvement on noise perception from pedestrians near the central streets clogged with buses has been noticeable.


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## OnTheNorthRoad

ChrisZwolle said:


> The North Sea is already getting congested, almost all open sea is allocated to something: fishing, nature, (planned) wind farms & shipping.
> 
> For example the German exclusive economic zone:


With floating offshore wind farms, available sea space is much less of an issue. Granted, there's still ways to go with the technology (mainly getting the costs down), but it's happening.


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## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> Central/Eastern European countries are growing faster than Western European countries so eventually there will be convergence.


Economic growth is one thing. Developing democracy is another.

Although western-European countries also had to transition from monarchies and dictatorships to democracies at some moments in history...

Still, Poland has never had true democracy before, except for a 20-year period after the WW1. We have long democratic traditions from before the partitions – but this democracy referred solely to the nobility, the large land owners, and the majority of the population were peasants – with practically no rights. Then we had 123 years of partitions, when, again, the big ones imposed their rules and people from Poland had no voice (this is by the way, one of the main lines of euroscepticism in Poland – people afraid that it will be or there is again like that – although it doesn't seem so), especially in the parts ruled by Russia and Germany (although, interestingly, while the part ruled by Austria had more freedoms and liberty, now this is the most conservative and pro-current government region of the country). Then World War 1, just 20 years of democracy, and again, first German occupation, under which Poles were explicitly called sub-people, and then being a USSR satellite state, when we had more freedom, but average citizens still could not really say anything. Now we have the first generations that grew up in free, democratic Poland that just recently got right to vote and who create new families – but even though it wasn't really true, they were taught by these older that the government is their enemy and they can't influence its decision.

And to some extent it is so, especially with the current situation with the walls and divisions in the society growing. If you want free, truly democratic Poland, which would respect the rights of the minorities – you can protest, we have the freedom of speech, but nobody will listen to you but rather try to turn anything you say and do against you.


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## PovilD

Me as being from younger generations, I remember getting some indoctrination in my late childhood-early teens that government is evil, but in late teen since I'm interested in development issues of my country and The World, it's now kinda hard for me to call my government evil. Yes, it could be better (esp. since we lie in EU/Schengen zone), but I think on average still better than World average, I guess.

Many people remain with that early teen indoctrination (I guess kids and politics are further apart anyway), since many people are just not interested in stuff that may be seen even geeky. They just compare current situation between East and West, and don't bother their heads with visions, esp. if they see those visions as broken. On the other hand, I heard Lithuania getting more popular activity through the years of 2010s, it's not too bad situation. People are protesting more which is kinda good thing for democratic development.


----------



## geogregor

Oh, I forgot to mention, I got first dose of Covid jab this week  


20210217_111143 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

To be honest I'm not sure why. I'm only 43 and don't have any serious health conditions (as far as I know). The only reason I can think of is that in the past I used to take steroids on a few occasions for my sinuses' problems. The algorithm could lump with the asthmatics. 

Anyway, I'm obviously not going to complain


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Congratulations. UK is way ahead of the rest of Europe. Still only the first jab for everyone? 



ChrisZwolle said:


> In my example, motorists being dependent on public charging points, are already not saving money compared to high-taxed fuel cars.


I guess that is only true in a transitional phase until the infrastructure is there at every corner / curb parking. Today's electricity price in Netherlands is around 4 cents. Hence, making a rough estimate, the fuel price has to be of the order of 12 cent per liter to be competitive. Currently, electric car prices, not taking into account incentives, are more expensive than ic cars, but it is just a matter of time / economics of scale before this changes. Already they are cheaper to maintain. And the use of fossil cars of course has a much higher environmental cost. My next car will be an EV. 


Stuu said:


> Also you need to get all manufacturers to agree on one standard and for it not to be changed for decades. That doesn't seem remotely sensible to me, imagine if computer manufacturers had made that agreement in 1980, which is effectively where we are with electric cars
> 
> And you would be removing any competitiveness between battery makers, if they all have to be the same size, or maybe 3 different standard sizes, then there is no point innovating


I do not see much need to change the interface between car and battery. The requirements in terms of current, which determines the contact dimensions, are not likely to change significantly. Still possible with significant improvements of the batteries themselves, though, in terms energy density and efficiency etc. And it is not like standards for fuel have remained the same for decades.


----------



## PovilD

Kinda jealous for UK, tbh  ...and despite I live in a country which is slightly above EU average for giving doses last time I checked.


----------



## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Congratulations. UK is way ahead of the rest of Europe. Still only the first jab for everyone?


I saw YouTube video Today around daily covid updates and there is info that one dose can be enough, while second is more or less a booster.
It would make sense to make doses in line with mutation speeds, and lineage spread.


----------



## andken

Kpc21 said:


> Although western-European countries also had to transition from monarchies and dictatorships to democracies at some moments in history...


They still have problems in this department. The part of Germany that used to be a puppet state of the Soviet Union isn't much better than the rest of Central Europe. And Italy used to have Mr. Bungabunga as Prime Minister. Malta also has problems that aren't much different than Poland or Hungary. But there is very little debate about the Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the treaties of the Paris Conference or even Yalta/Potsdam. It's like if Viktor Orban had appeared from nowhere.

It's easy for elites in Brussels, London, Paris and Berlin to point out to Viktor Orban, like if he had nothing to do with them. But Orban is a huge symptom of much larger problems with European integration and with European institutions.


----------



## andken

PovilD said:


> Kinda jealous for UK, tbh  ...and despite I live in a country which is slightly above EU average for giving doses last time I checked.


To be fair, the EU isn't much better than Brazil's Bolsonaro, governed by a weirdo that talked about people being transformed into alligators after being vaccinated.


----------



## radamfi

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Congratulations. UK is way ahead of the rest of Europe. Still only the first jab for everyone?


Some people are now due to be getting their second jab. My partner got her first jab in December (because she works in the NHS) so now has the second jab booked for 1 March.


----------



## Slagathor

geogregor said:


> Oh, I forgot to mention, I got first dose of Covid jab this week
> 
> 
> 20210217_111143 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> To be honest I'm not sure why. I'm only 43 and don't have any serious health conditions (as far as I know). The only reason I can think of is that in the past I used to take steroids on a few occasions for my sinuses' problems. The algorithm could lump with the asthmatics.
> 
> Anyway, I'm obviously not going to complain


Congrats! You got the fancy Pfizer one too, nice. 

I'm 37 and healthy so I think I've been penciled in for September or something.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Well, officials in Scandinavia still thinks there is a chance that all adults are offered full vaccination by the summer. In the most optimistic scenario, of course. I guess the roll out should be similar in the rest of Europe.


radamfi said:


> Some people are now due to be getting their second jab. My partner got her first jab in December (because she works in the NHS) so now has the second jab booked for 1 March.


They are strict about the 3 weeks around here. But of course, the infection rates were and are much higher in the UK, so that may justify different priorities. Personally I am looking forward to my parents being fully vaccinated with the second dose during the next week.


----------



## Kpc21

How do getting the second dose not exactly 3 weeks after the first one, but later (like, 3 months later), affect its efficiency?


----------



## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Congratulations. UK is way ahead of the rest of Europe. Still only the first jab for everyone?





Kpc21 said:


> How do getting the second dose not exactly 3 weeks after the first one, but later (like, 3 months later), affect its efficiency?


Well, the UK chose to go for extended administration of second dose because it was really badly affected by the "Kent variant" of the virus. More than thousand people were dying every day at the time when decision was taken. It was decided that it is better to have possibly slightly lower protection but vaccinate much larger population, especially from the oldest and most vulnerable groups.

Pfizer didn't have exact statistical data what would happen after first dose in the extended period so certain assumption had to be made based on laboratory test and general knowledge how immunity works.

Recent research from Israel seems to be confirming that it was right decision:









One Pfizer/BioNTech shot gives 85% Covid protection - study


Research findings from Israel lend support to UK’s decision to increase gap in dosing to 12 weeks




www.theguardian.com
 






> A team of researchers in Israel, which is ahead of every other country in its immunisation programme and is using the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, has found that efficacy is high just before people have their second dose.
> 
> In the Lancet medical journal, staff at the Sheba Medical Centre, the country’s largest hospital, published their analysis of data from the vaccination of more than 9,000 healthcare workers.
> 
> *They found that efficacy increased over time. “What we see is a really high effectiveness right after two weeks, between two weeks to four weeks after vaccine, already high effectiveness of 85% reduction of symptomatic infection,” Gili Regev-Yochay, co-author of the study, told a small group of journalists.*
> 
> Including asymptomatic cases, the efficacy was 75%. *People in Israel receive their second dose at around three to four weeks after the first, but scientists do not expect the efficacy to wane in the couple of months after a single dose.*





> Their findings are in line with evidence from Public Health England in December, which supported the UK government’s decision to increase the gap in dosing. The manufacturer’s data showed that the vaccine was only 52.4% effective between the first and second dose. The PHE paper, however, said the figure “includes Covid-19 infections occurring shortly after the first dose, an interval within which this dose would not be expected to have had an effect [ie prior to the recipient mounting an immune response].”
> 
> PHE re-did the sums using only infections that occurred from 14 days after the first dose, and found efficacy of around 90% before the second dose.
> 
> Also in the Lancet, Oxford University has published the detailed results of an analysis of the data in trials of the vaccine it made with AstraZeneca, looking at efficacy after a single dose.
> 
> The paper found that the efficacy of a single dose was 76%, measured after the first 22 days. People who received two doses, 12 weeks apart, had protection of 85% against symptomatic disease, while for those whose two doses were given six weeks apart it was 55%.
> 
> “Vaccine supply is likely to be limited, at least in the short term, and so policymakers must decide how best to deliver doses to achieve the greatest public health benefit,” said the lead author, Prof Andrew Pollard.
> 
> “Where there is a limited supply, policies of initially vaccinating more people with a single dose may provide greater immediate population protection than vaccinating half the number of people with two doses.







__





Single Pfizer shot 90 per cent effective after 21 days







www.uea.ac.uk







> They used the data to see how the Israeli vaccination programme impacted case numbers, and went on to estimate vaccine effectiveness over time.
> 
> They found that after the initial vaccination - case numbers increased for eight days before declining to low levels by day 21.
> 
> Prof Hunter said: “Surprisingly, the daily incidence of cases increased strongly after vaccination till about day eight – approximately doubling. We don’t know why there was this initial surge in infection risk but it may be related to people being less cautious about maintaining protective behaviours as soon as they have the injection.
> 
> *“We found that the vaccine effectiveness was still pretty much zero until about 14 days after people were vaccinated. But then after day 14 immunity rose gradually day by day to about 90 per cent at day 21 and then didn’t improve any further. All the observed improvement was before any second injection.*
> 
> “This shows that a single dose of vaccine is highly protective, although it can take up to 21 days to achieve this.
> 
> “And it supports the UK policy of extending the gap between doses by showing that a single dose can give a high level of protection.
> 
> “Whilst we do not know how long this immunity will last beyond 21 days without a second booster, we are unlikely to see any major decline during the following nine weeks,” he added.


It looks to me that decision to extend the gap between the doses to protect as many people as quickly as possible was the right one. For once I have to give credit to the British authorities.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

The main concerns raised are how well one shot protect the elderly, with less immunity response, but foremost that this strategy could provide enhanced conditions for the development of escape mutants: Will Delaying Vaccine Doses Cause a Coronavirus Escape Mutant?


----------



## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> The main concerned raised is how well one shot protect the elderly, with less immunity response, but foremost that this strategy could provide enhanced conditions for the development of escape mutants: Will Delaying Vaccine Doses Cause a Coronavirus Escape Mutant?


I guess any immunization efforts (two doses, one dose, natural infection herd immunity) would make virus more likely to try to escape, it's just around chances.

I can hypnotize that I think the speed is most important there, not dose regime. My gut feeling says the slower you vaccinate, the bigger chances for virus to mutate in general.

I think it's more about theories, and I think most important part of this article is here:


----------



## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> The main concerns raised are how well one shot protect the elderly, with less immunity response, but foremost that this strategy could provide enhanced conditions for the development of escape mutants: Will Delaying Vaccine Doses Cause a Coronavirus Escape Mutant?


Risk of mutation is always there, whether people have one dose, two or none. Even that article says that extending gap between the doses might not have particularly big influence on pace of the mutations.

Anyway, maybe I got my vaccine due to something similar 









Man mistakenly invited for Covid jab as NHS thought he was 6cm tall


A man in his thirties with no underlying health conditions was accidentally offered a Covid vaccination because he was incorrectly registered as 6cm tall.




www.standard.co.uk







> *A man in his thirties with no underlying health conditions was accidentally offered a Covid vaccination because he was incorrectly registered as 6cm tall.*
> 
> Liam Thorp, 32, was surprised to receive a text telling him he had been offered an appointment for his first jab.
> 
> Mr Thorp, a journalist at the Liverpool Echo, decided to give his GP a call and find out if there had been a mix-up.
> 
> They informed him he had been invited for the vaccine due to his weight, which they had registered as amounting to morbid obesity.
> 
> The journalist, who was under the impression this information was inaccurate, was left confused.
> 
> His doctor's surgery called back the next day to confirm there had been a mix-up. Mr Thorp said the phone call was one of the most "bizarre phone calls of [his] life".
> 
> Recalling the conversation in an article for the Liverpool Echo, he wrote: "A nervous sounding chap on the line began quietly explaining to me that there had been a mix-up in offering me a vaccine.
> 
> Mr Thorp added: ”He said, unfortunately, my details had been put into the system incorrectly when I had registered with the GP just a year ago.
> 
> "He was really polite and very apologetic but said I was in fact not due to get my vaccine anytime soon."
> 
> Mr Thorp was curious to know more about the error.
> 
> *He wrote: ”The man from the surgery took a sharp intake of breath and tried to remain composed as he informed me that rather than having my height registered as six foot two, it had been put into the system as 6.2 centimetres.
> 
> "I'm not sure how he kept it together when he told me that this, combined with my weight, had given me a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 28,000."*
> 
> He explained: "For reference, a BMI of 40 or more is considered morbidly obese - so I'm not sure what this would have made me.
> 
> "If I had been less stunned, I would have asked why no one was more concerned that a man of these remarkable dimensions was slithering around south Liverpool.
> 
> "But he was very apologetic and really nice and I think he was just relieved that I found it so funny.”
> 
> Mr Thorp, following the blunder, contacted his local Clinical Commissioning Group to ask what people should do if they think they might have been wrongly invited for a vaccine.
> 
> Dr Fiona Lemmens, chair of Liverpool CCG said: "I can see the funny side of this story but also recognise there is an important issue for us to address.
> 
> “There are millions of GP appointments taking place every day and while we take care to make sure records are accurate occasional data errors do occur.
> 
> "We are grateful to Liam for his honesty and for alerting his GP practice when he received his vaccination invitation.
> 
> “We would encourage anyone who has received a text invitation that they think they are not eligible for at this stage, to contact their GP practice to clarify.
> 
> “This will help ensure that more vulnerable people get vaccinated first.”


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> Risk of mutation is always there, whether people have one dose, two or none. Even that article says that extending gap between the doses might not have particularly big influence on pace of the mutations.
> 
> Anyway, maybe I got my vaccine due to something similar
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Man mistakenly invited for Covid jab as NHS thought he was 6cm tall
> 
> 
> A man in his thirties with no underlying health conditions was accidentally offered a Covid vaccination because he was incorrectly registered as 6cm tall.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.standard.co.uk


Reminds me of those fairytales about the midget people (up to few inches tall) and living toys.

According to NHS, these are looking like the risks groups too.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> Risk of mutation is always there, whether people have one dose, two or none. Even that article says that extending gap between the doses might not have particularly big influence on pace of the mutations.


Yes, this was a fairly balanced article. It was in "the Scientist" after all, but the fact is that no one can say for sure, so a calculated risk has been taken. I think the point is that in a state of partial vaccination, the virus may not be completely eradicated in people with poor immune system, but stay in their body so long, that not only one mutation happens, but many. If the partial vaccination is ineffective against a strain with one or a combination of these mutations, that strain will multiply and could be transmitted to others. As the population is vaccinated, this strain will of course have a large competitive advantage.


----------



## bogdymol

After hundreds of off-topic post, here's an on-topic one: how do fuel tanks at gas stations ensure they are spill-free:


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

While we are on topic. A new Circle K service station at E18 in Bamble, Norway, won a contest as "the most important store of 2020" staged by the "Global Convenience Store Focus"


https://www.globalconveniencestorefocus.co.uk/video/18-the-most-important-store-of-2020/



It is the largest Circle K station, with one of largest EV charging areas, of the country, and was for some reason opened by the transport minister last summer. Otherwise I am not sure what is so special about it....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Fuel stations and service areas in the Netherlands tend to be outdated. The shift has been to unmanned stations since the 1990s so not as many new staffed ones with a shop have been built over the past 25 years, and this is beginning to show, many gas stations and service areas look dated and a place where you want to spend as less time as possible.


----------



## radamfi

The UK still uses mpg even though petrol has been sold in litres for decades (at least since the 80s). I wonder what they use in Ireland. They changed the speed limits from mph to km/h about 15 years ago so Irish cars only have the speedometer in km/h. Their distance signs were in km for a long time before that, which was a bit strange.


----------



## Suburbanist

Electric cars have tricky measures in terms of efficiency. kilojoules-per-km would be ideal, but since (at least here in Norway) electricity is prices as a combination of kWh + time using the charger, I think kWh/km is more common.

But electric vehicles' energy consumption is much more sensible to environmental conditions, because they are extremely efficient in regards of delivering kinetic forces per se only when needed. Different cars also have very different regenerative braking energy storage efficiency, and that will obviously affect much more cars driven on hilly terrains or stop-and-go traffic than free-flow gentle-grade highway traffic.


----------



## SeanT

bogdymol said:


> I also haven't heard anybody using km/l instead of l/100 km.
> 
> Maybe this is a thing in Norway, now that electric vehicles are more and more present, and they need a different concept for measuring fuel consumption, as there's no "liters" for an electric vehicle?


You use the term of Km/l in Denmark too.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Supposedly liter/100 km is becoming some kind of EU norm, making Norway, far more compliant than many EU countries, moving away from the aforementioned liter/10 km. 



radamfi said:


> They changed the speed limits from mph to km/h about 15 years ago so Irish cars only have the speedometer in km/h. Their distance signs were in km for a long time before that, which was a bit strange.


The mix of miles and km/h in the republic indeed caused temporary misery on a family car trip predating my first GPS ownership. Say no more...(but it was not speeding).


----------



## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> The mix of miles and km/h in the republic indeed caused temporary misery on a family car trip predating my first GPS ownership. Say no more...(but it was not speeding).


Tell us more


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Suburbanist said:


> Electric cars have tricky measures in terms of efficiency. kilojoules-per-km would be ideal, but since (at least here in Norway) electricity is prices as a combination of kWh + time using the charger, I think kWh/km is more common.


For most people, (k)J is something they maybe remember from the physics class and, in terms of daily life, at most relate to food (even if kJ has been printed on the packages for years, kcal is still more used, though). kWh is something that get specified on their power bill every month and which most people can relate to.


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> For most people, (k)J is something they maybe remember from the physics class and, in terms of daily life, at most relate to food (even if kJ has been printed on the packages for years, kcal is still more used, though). kWh is something that get specified on their power bill every month and which most people can relate to.


I believe that kWh/100 km will be quite a common measure. 

That might, however, be somewhat misleading from the value chain point of view. If you need to consume 20 kWh on a car, 50 kWh is needed to be produced at the power plant. If the production and the consumption were expessed as different units, there would be less danger to compare apples to oranges.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Only if you talk about a thermal power plant, and people will anyway compare apples (liters/gallons of fuel) with pears (kWh electric energy).


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> Interesting. In the Netherlands the amount of kilometers per liter is common usage, virtually nobody uses l/100 km.


Somebody should make a map of how it's expressed in different countries...

In Estonia it's always l/100 km. Therefore kWh/100 km for electric cars also seems logical and is easy to understand as a measurement unit, at least for me. And as far as I can tell, that's what most EU manufacturers are showing. Another way of looking at it would be Wh/km but that's an easy conversion between the former.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Sahara dust has engulfed the Dutch skies.


----------



## geogregor

A day of good weather is enough to make bits of London positively "normal", despite most interesting things still being closed...






I went to Crystal palace Park on Sunday and it was also busy.

Basically as soon as spring arrive properly people will be out in force, whether restrictions relax substantially or only just a little.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Buc-ee's is a chain of very large convenience stores and fuel stations. They originated in Texas.

This one opened near Jacksonville. It has 104 fuel pumps.









Florida’s first Buc-ee’s travel center opens to large, excited crowd


The line outside the brand new (and massive) store at World Golf Village began to form at 4 a.m. Monday. As the doors opened at 6 a.m., people were cheering as they walked in.




www.news4jax.com


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Buc-ee's is a chain of very large convenience stores and fuel stations. They originated in Texas.
> 
> This one opened near Jacksonville. It has 104 fuel pumps.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Florida’s first Buc-ee’s travel center opens to large, excited crowd
> 
> 
> The line outside the brand new (and massive) store at World Golf Village began to form at 4 a.m. Monday. As the doors opened at 6 a.m., people were cheering as they walked in.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.news4jax.com


I've watched random travel vlog recently how one guy drive in tornado watch zone in North Florida, and showed footage how was surprised to find Buc-ee's not being in Texas.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> Buc-ee's is a chain of very large convenience stores and fuel stations. They originated in Texas.
> 
> This one opened near Jacksonville. It has 104 fuel pumps.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Florida’s first Buc-ee’s travel center opens to large, excited crowd
> 
> 
> The line outside the brand new (and massive) store at World Golf Village began to form at 4 a.m. Monday. As the doors opened at 6 a.m., people were cheering as they walked in.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.news4jax.com


I don't get it, isn't the point of convenience stores fast in - fast out?


----------



## Slagathor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I don't get it, isn't the point of convenience stores fast in - fast out?


No you're thinking of brothels.


----------



## andken

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I don't get it, isn't the point of convenience stores fast in - fast out?


These large convenience stores that are in practice rest areas? I always thought of them as rest areas enticing tired motorists to stop, rest for a while and them spend money. Not so much fast in, fast out.


----------



## MattiG

Today it is the last day of the Real Winter, at least in the south and central Finland. Right now it is -11 degrees, and the wind makes it to feel like about -17 to -20. The temperature will raise by 10 to 20 degrees during the next few days. March is a winter month, but the day temperature seldom drop as low as -10 to -20, which has been standard during this winter.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I don't get it, isn't the point of convenience stores fast in - fast out?


Convenience stores typically sell products that are consumed (almost) immediately.

But convenience stores are shifting to more fresh food.


----------



## PovilD

MattiG said:


> Today it is the last day of the Real Winter, at least in the south and central Finland. Right now it is -11 degrees, and the wind makes it to feel like about -17 to -20. The temperature will raise by 10 to 20 degrees during the next few days. March is a winter month, but the day temperature seldom drop as low as -10 to -20, which has been standard during this winter.
> 
> View attachment 1122850


Almost the same here, after cold wave with lows around -20, we already have thaw since Saturday. It was +8C Yesterday. Today is colder +4C, but +11C on Thursday! For coming week, temperatures should remain well above freezing, between +5 and +10C.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Slagathor said:


> No you're thinking of brothels.


No, you are discussing with a Norwegian. In Norway the christian party and the left parties has ensured that we can be prosecuted even if we visit such establishments abroad. We would probably be arrested just for thinking about brothels if they had the chance ;-)


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> Those shortages are filled with Ukrainians who can fairly easily obtain work permits in Poland.


Can Ukrainians obtain work permits easier than people from other countries?


----------



## radamfi

PovilD said:


> Brexit and not wanting of immigrant Eastern Europeans, is somewhat reminds me for one child policy in China. From what I seen, Chinese fertility rates were already dropping and very likely it would have been continuing dropping due to economic growth, but it's possible they now made more problems than without One Child policy.


The UK will simply get people from outside the EU. Obviously people from inside the EU can still come to the UK and get a work permit, but not many will when they can go somewhere else within the EU without any visa hassles. So people who want no immigration will be disappointed. The main people who suffer are British people who want to work or retire in the EU.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Many people from other parts of the Netherlands are not familiar with the -sz, some people think it's a Polish supermarket chain.


To me, it could be Hungarian


----------



## radamfi

West Frisian is meant to be the foreign language closest to English, but if you look at the signs when driving around Fryslân, for example town/village names, the Dutch version sounds more like English to me.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> To me, it could be Hungarian


It's kinda similar to Fidesz, for example 

Interestingly, I find many people here in Lithuania it pronouncing as Fideš or Fidesz in Polish way (English way would probably be Fidesh).
In reality, if I understand Hungarian alphabet, Hungarian s is Polish sz and English sh, while sz is English s, and vice versa, "sz" in Hungarian is English "s". Probably it's related with German gramatic, like "s" in Stuttgart being pronounced as "sh". Even Budapest, is interesting example, in Hungarian it's pronounced as Budapesht.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> Even Budapest, is interesting example, in Hungarian it's pronounced as Budapesht.


In Polish we call it correctly  We say Budapesht and spell it in Polish Budapeszt. The only probably wrong thing is that we stress it at "da": Bu*da*peszt, not at "pe" like in English. Although I don't know how it is in Hungarian.


----------



## SeanT

and we are not even close to Warszawa in hungarian. VARSÓ


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> In Polish we call it correctly  We say Budapesht and spell it in Polish Budapeszt. The only probably wrong thing is that we stress it at "da": Bu*da*peszt, not at "pe" like in English. Although I don't know how it is in Hungarian.


In Hungarian it's easy: it's always the first syllable, that is stressed. Always. 
It makes us more difficult to learn foreign languages: for us it's automatic: where there is stressed, there begins a new word. What actually is in most languages not so.


----------



## Kpc21

So it's *Bu*dapest, right?

In Polish it's normally the second syllable from the end. In some words of Greek origin, like names of sciences – but only while speaking very carefully, not colloquially – the third syllable from the end. So it's also a problem for some people while learning foreign languages.


----------



## Ni3lS

Random question to some of the experts here: are there any (universal) dashboard covers that you can recommend?


----------



## Slagathor

Oh god, what did you do now? 


(joking)


----------



## Ni3lS

It's for anti-glare purposes


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Ni3lS said:


> Random question to some of the experts here: are there any (universal) dashboard covers that you can recommend?


I've seen various solutions to this niche problem: from a big t-shirt to a towel or a customized cover made out of cardboard with a cover wrapped around it. It shouldn't have a noticable texture or markings on it. I think you need one that is heavy enough that it doesn't shift or gets blown out by the fan (or wind when you open the doors or windows).

However it's very difficult to get everything out of view when you use a wide angle lens. A wide angle lens is easier on the eyes on curvy roads (like hairpin turns), but a linear field of view might be better to get as much detail as possible and not the distortion of a wide angle lens.


----------



## bogdymol

Try using polarized lenses either for your dashcam or your sunglasses. I bought myself a pair of polarized sunglasses and my eyes no longer get tired after a long drive. I do not see the windscreen reflections anymore, nor the sun reflecting from other cars.


----------



## geogregor

Spring is in the air. Pandemic? What pandemic... 

DSC06276 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC06300 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC06298 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


20210227_133756 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC06328 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


----------



## Kpc21

Well, they seem rather to be keeping distance, at least between these group of friends, who would probably meet anyway in a building, so I don't think it's actually bad. The transmission of virus is much less likely outside than inside.


----------



## andken

Ni3lS said:


> Random question to some of the experts here: are there any (universal) dashboard covers that you can recommend?


I use a large black plastic cardboard(EVA). It helps(It's not the best idea in the world for the Brazilian summer), and as you can see some times you can still see reflections from time to time. But it's the best solution for me. ;-)


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> Well, they seem rather to be keeping distance, at least between these group of friends, who would probably meet anyway in a building, so I don't think it's actually bad. The transmission of virus is much less likely outside than inside.


I didn't say it was bad. In fact I thoroughly enjoyed my day out today. But, plenty of people are clearly meeting friends from outside their household, which is still against the UK regulations. Of course everyone with half brain must know that those rules regarding outdoor meeting have little sense and won't be obeyed as soon as weather improve. Today was perfect example of that.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The sentiment in the media reporting and politics have made a 180 degree turn in the Netherlands over the past two weeks. From endless doomsday stories to 'we want to open now' and 'enough is enough'. The huge weather shift may have to do with this. Surveys also show a sudden and significant drop in support for the restrictions (by around 20 % points). People are done with the endless lockdown. The government has announced some easing of restrictions for next week: most 'contact professions' like hairdressers can reopen and schools are partially reopened. However, this announcement tasted like more, shops and gyms also want to reopen and restaurants want to reopen outdoor seating again.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> The sentiment in the media reporting and politics have made a 180 degree turn in the Netherlands over the past two weeks. From endless doomsday stories to 'we want to open now' and 'enough is enough'. The huge weather shift may have to do with this. Surveys also show a sudden and significant drop in support for the restrictions (by around 20 % points). People are done with the endless lockdown. The government has announced some easing of restrictions for next week: most 'contact professions' like hairdressers can reopen and schools are partially reopened. However, this announcement tasted like more, shops and gyms also want to reopen and restaurants want to reopen outdoor seating again.


It's the same in most European nations. However, exactly now should we be much more careful, because of the mutant B.1.1.7. But we don't want to. 
So I expect many European countries having similar situations in March, what Portugal, Slovakia and Czechia had recently or have currently. The following six weeks will be the darkest period of Covid-19 in Europe.


----------



## cinxxx

The following <insert number> weeks will be critical, darkest times, dreadful.
Aren't you tired of these type of panicked thinking? Is there nothing better left than being afraid daily?


----------



## Attus

cinxxx said:


> The following <insert number> weeks will be critical, darkest times, dreadful.
> Aren't you tired of these type of panicked thinking? Is there nothing better left than being afraid daily?


Ne, I am not. Especially, because it's the very forst time I write something like that. 
And, because I'm sure it will be so The circumstances, how people feel, what kind of virus versions are spread, are new, are not the same like X, Y, or Z weeks/months ago.
If you drive 160 km/h against a wall, you'll crash. No matter if some people say you won't, and it's only panicked thinking.


----------



## cinxxx

This has been said for a year now already, you're just cherry picking now, if maybe one of those 100 predictions was right, then apocalypse scenario was correct...


----------



## Attus

cinxxx said:


> you're just cherry picking now


No, I am not. I'm considering changing circmstances. You don't.


----------



## cinxxx

Attus said:


> No, I am not. I'm considering changing circmstances. You don't.


I just simply don't care anymore.
That's my only to cope with this, while being already physically and mentally over stressed.
Without possibility of vacation in sight and without normal ways to visit family, to have some kind of entertainment.


----------



## PovilD

Attus said:


> In Hungarian it's easy: it's always the first syllable, that is stressed. Always.
> It makes us more difficult to learn foreign languages: for us it's automatic: where there is stressed, there begins a new word. What actually is in most languages not so.


In our region we have similar situation with Northwest Lithuanian dialects, Latvian language, and Finno-Ugric Estonian and Finnish.
I think some of our dialects had Finnic influence too in terms of way of stressing syllables. For me, language sounds pretty different with this feature, even when you talk about the dialects of same language or its group. The rest of Lithuanian dialects, including Standartised Lithuanian don't have fixed stress, similar situation with neighboring East Slavic countries probably. Btw, we pronounce Budapest as Budapeštas, and pe is stressed, Buda is not stressed at all.



Kpc21 said:


> So it's *Bu*dapest, right?
> 
> In Polish it's normally the second syllable from the end. In some words of Greek origin, like names of sciences – but only while speaking very carefully, not colloquially – the third syllable from the end. So it's also a problem for some people while learning foreign languages.


Not having fixed stress helps us learning foreign languages I think. I don't call my language to be producing strong accents, at least for English (or at least my impression), unless you are really unfamiliar with the language.

*Bu*dapest would be foreign way to pronounce it, but not a problem with English. I get impression that this is how we pronounce it in English too, but rhymes with my language word "gudobelė" (plant) where "gu" is stressed


----------



## andken

cinxxx said:


> The following <insert number> weeks will be critical, darkest times, dreadful.
> Aren't you tired of these type of panicked thinking? Is there nothing better left than being afraid daily?


I'm seeing "experts", specially Brazilians that live in Europe, arguing that Brazilian media should be more... panicky about the pandemic, so that the average Brazilian(Most of us are not really leaving our homes) would "understand" the gravity of the problem.


----------



## cinxxx

andken said:


> I'm seeing "experts", specially Brazilians that live in Europe, arguing that Brazilian media should be more... panicky about the pandemic, so that the average Brazilian(Most of us are not really leaving our homes) would "understand" the gravity of the problem.


Well that's exactly what happens.
Some people found their new vocation to "save" the people from the virus.
And the media caught that and writes panicky news everyday.
The result: People are more or less brainwashed by the 1 year repeated panic and can't see anything else.


----------



## andken

cinxxx said:


> Well that's exactly what happens.
> Some people found their new vocation to "save" the people from the virus.
> And the media caught that and writes panicky news everyday.


My issue is that this pandemic was created by failures of politicians in at least four continents, international institutions like the WHO also did a really awful job, but these "experts" are trying to blame common people because they are not being panicked enough. If we are going to avoid these pandemics in the future then the buck should stop somewhere. These people seem wanting to reelect Bolsonaro in Brazil.


----------



## geogregor

Surprise, surprise...









Jobless rate around UK airports above average, say MPs


A report by MPs found the number of people claiming jobless benefits was much higher near the top 20 UK airports.



www.bbc.co.uk







> According to parliamentary data, the number of people claiming unemployment benefits went up 112% across the UK between January 2020 and January 2021.
> 
> But analysis by a group of MPs with interest in aviation found that in constituencies around the UK's top 20 airports, it rose 145% on average.
> 
> Some airports in London and the South East saw particularly high rises.
> 
> In Hayes and Harlington, which contains Heathrow, the number of people claiming unemployment benefits has increased 221%. In Crawley, around Gatwick, it has increased 224% and in Saffron Walden, the home of Stansted, it has increased 228%.


Yes, keep the borders shut for months, make Britain "unglobal". Harder and longer restrictions now!!! Isn't it what masses want? Journalist are definitely calling for it.

I'm sure it will work out well for our island nation in the long term...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wikipedia has lots of lists. Some of those seem mind boggling, like this one: American Civil War widows who survived into the 21st century

The American Civil War ended in 1865, but there were widows of veterans who survived into the 21st century. This happened because some young women married elderly veterans during the 1930s economic depression for their pensions. The oldest veteran was born in 1843, while his wife died in 2020, 177 years later. They married when she was 17 and he was 93.


----------



## CNGL

The best, ultimate Wikipedia list is, of course, the list of lists of lists .


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Now this is an unusual accident. A car was squashed between a tanker truck and subway train on a motorway.... 


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1366452586979729419


----------



## andken

I thought that Brazilians were weird for transporting these trains by truck. But at least I don't know about any accident involving these trucks.


----------



## Suburbanist

andken said:


> I thought that Brazilians were weird for transporting these trains by truck. But at least I don't know about any accident involving these trucks.


I assume this subway car has a different gauge than the main Iberian-gauge network in Spain.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Wikipedia has lots of lists. Some of those seem mind boggling, like this one: American Civil War widows who survived into the 21st century
> 
> The American Civil War ended in 1865, but there were widows of veterans who survived into the 21st century. This happened because some young women married elderly veterans during the 1930s economic depression for their pensions. The oldest veteran was born in 1843, while his wife died in 2020, 177 years later. They married when she was 17 and he was 93.


History and the present may collide in an interesting way. At school we learned about the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which collapsed after the WW I. It was really a kind of prehistory to me.

Things happen. I happened to be in Vienna on a business trip at April 1st, 1989, and suddenly I was participating in the funeral of the last empress of Austro-Hungary. Kaiserin Zita von Bourbon-Parma had passed away a few weeks earlier at the age of 96. The length of the funeral conduit on the streets of downtown Vienna was almost three hours, and 40,000 people lined the streets. The feeling was pretty surrealistic.


----------



## geogregor




----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


>


How often do they use the word "zebra" in daily conversation?

What kind of visa do they have? Does YouTubing pay so well that they can afford to live in such an expensive looking flat? Maybe these questions are answered in their other videos?


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> How often do they use the word "zebra" in daily conversation?


Depends on what it's a euphemism for.

Hey baby, would you like to lick my zebra?

I was talking about vanilla/chocolate ice cream, you perv.


----------



## ppplus

If you are interesting to see something unusual on the roads.

Search in twitter "perro motociclista" translate to english "dog biker" in Medellin, Colombia.


----------



## Slagathor

_How_ do you choose a ballot though? Is that anonymous?

In any case, that seems a lot more annoying than the Dutch set-up. 

You walk in, confirm your identity, receive the blank ballot, color a circle, and dump it into the ballot box.

I don't wanna be fiddling around with books and envelopes.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

As I said, in the Norwegian system, you put the ballot into an envelope inside an enclosure. All the different ballots are available there in separate shelves / stacks, although we normally do not have 32 different kinds ;-) Takes me two seconds. Not even your spouse can be there with you, so if you want to make him or her happy, you can walk into the enclosure with one ballot in your hand, and put a different kind into the envelope ;-)

Folding that city map and find the right person among 1000s (?) of names (is that is what you do) seems like a lot more hassle to me. If you require people to use a pen, I would guess there is also a much bigger chance for people to do it wrongly and accidentally invalidate the vote. Also, it is very hard (in the Norwegian system) to sneak an extra ballot into the ballot box as the envelope has to be stamped for the ballot to be valid.


----------



## Slagathor

I still don't like the sound of it. 

Bedsheets for the win!


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Did not really understand your comment, but then I am only a simple Norwegian.

It appears that the Norwegian system is kind of similar to....Argentina? And the Dutch system is more like Turkey....








Inside The Voting Booth In Countries Around The World


As Election Day grows closer in the US, we looked into how some of the other countries around the world vote, and, well, just be thankful, Americans, that you aren't required to vote with marbles.




www.buzzfeednews.com





And, you know,








We went to 'world's best democracy' to ask what U.S. needs to learn


While Norway was ranked the best democracy in the world for the sixth year running, the U.S. was downgraded to a "flawed democracy."




www.nbcnews.com





(Tbh, no clue about the validity of that index, but it came in handy for my argument ;-P )


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Seems like there are other dangers than Covid-19 in some ski resorts....


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> As I said, in the Norwegian system, you put the ballot into an envelope inside an enclosure. All the different ballots are available there in separate shelves / stacks, although we normally do not have 32 different kinds ;-) Takes me two seconds. Not even your spouse can be there with you, so if you want to make him or her happy, you can walk into the enclosure with one ballot in your hand, and put a different kind into the envelope ;-)
> 
> Folding that city map and find the right person among 1000s (?) of names (is that is what you do) seems like a lot more hassle to me. If you require people to use a pen, I would guess there is also a much bigger chance for people to do it wrongly and accidentally invalidate the vote. Also, it is very hard (in the Norwegian system) to sneak an extra ballot into the ballot box as the envelope has to be stamped for the ballot to be valid.


It is interesting to see how differently the elections may be implemented even if the political system is about the same:









_Voting slip, Norway_









_Voting slip, Finland_


----------



## Morsue

In Sweden, it looks similar to Norway. Ballots are available on a table at the voting site, with one ballot per party (and blank ones for write-in). There are sometimes even party officials at the site trying to give you ballots in person. Really. You then take the ballot of your choosing, and behind a closed curtain you put it in an envelope which is sealed and then given to the administrator.

This gives exactly the kind of privacy problem that you're talking about, since everyone can see what ballot(s) you take. Me, I usually take several ballots. I put my choice in the envelope and dispose of the rest. This has received some criticism from international organizations for not being secret enough, but I don't know of any process to fix it.


----------



## Slagathor

Morsue said:


> This has received some criticism from international organizations for not being secret enough, *but I don't know of any process to fix it.*


----------



## Morsue

I mean in Sweden, there is no government task force in place or such.

Your ballot seems user friendly though


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Morsue said:


> This gives exactly the kind of privacy problem that you're talking about, since everyone can see what ballot(s) you take. Me, I usually take several ballots. I put my choice in the envelope and dispose of the rest. This has received some criticism from international organizations for not being secret enough, *but I don't know of any process to fix it.*


Put the selection of ballots inside the enclosures as in Norway?

Otherwise I must correct myself. The last elections I have been voting in advance, where an envelope is needed. On the election day, there are actually no envelopes (unless you were supposed to vote somewhere else, I think), only the ballots, but the ballot of choice should be folded before getting the stamp such that only the backside is visible and the party name is not visible. The names are already printed on the ballot for all parties. The ballot MattiG showed was for local elections, there you can ticking off some candidates to give them some extra weight, but still you will vote for all the other people on the list as well. You can also write persons from other parties on the ballot ("kandidater fra andre lister"), which in practice means that you will have split vote. For national election you are only allowed to reorder the preselected candidates. In any case, manual editing in most cases has no influence over the results, as most people do not bother. So, in practice, the voters decide which parties should rule, but not which persons.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland it's simple:
– there is a single ballot for every type of elections (local elections consist of up to 4 types of elections that are held together: for the mayor, for the municipal council, for the county council and for the voivodeship parliament, so you get four ballots; otherwise you get just a single ballot)
– the number of candidates isn't as extensive as in the Netherlands, usually it's just several parties with about 5-10 candidates each (if we talk about elections to a parliament or council of any kind, in case of the choice of the president or the mayor it's yet simpler, and in the second round of the president/mayor elections, it's choice between just 2 candidates, so it's a horizontal A5 sheet), normally they all fit on an A3 sheet of paper
– polling stations are most often at schools (the actual polling station is often just a... classroom), sometimes at public administration offices or community centers; you are always assigned to a specific polling station, which depends on where you live
– while entering the polling station, you get your hands disinfected against Covid-19 (at least it was so in the elections last year  )
– you come to a table with a tablecloth behind which multiple officials are sitting, look for an official assigned to your street, show him your ID
– he or she shows you a place in their huge book where you have to sign that you have received your ballot (already for a few years, the names of other people written into this book get hidden using a special GDPR overlay, but it contains just the list of all people from your street entitled to vote)
– you get your ballot (or set of ballots for all the types of local elections, if those are local elections)
– you go with your ballot to a special booth, where you can anonymously cast your vote
– you have to put a cross (actually, by definition these must be two intersecting lines) in a square next to the name of the candidate you want to vote for – only one on the whole ballot
– – if there are multiple crosses on a list of the same party, the vote is valid and is treated as a vote for a specific party (if I remember well, it gets granted to the candidate from the top of the list; the order of candidates on the list is decided about by the specific party, and usually the first position belongs to the most known and popular candidate from the given party in the region)
– – if there are multiple crosses on lists of different parties (or just multiple crosses in the elections for the president or the mayor), the vote is invalid
– – you can't add any extra candidates (anything drawn or written on the ballot extra doesn't matter)
– – when there is no cross at any candidate from the ballot, your vote is also invalid, although if you want to deliberately cast an invalid vote, it's better to put just multiple crosses at different parties – nobody will be able to fraud your vote
– it's not obligatory but if you want make sure that your vote is anonymous, you can fold your ballot (especially taking into account that already for a few years, the ballot boxes are transparent; previously they were always white-and-red)
– you put it into the ballot box, which is at a well-visible location in the polling station; if people come with kids, they usually let them do it

If you want to vote at a different polling station than the one assigned to the place where you live, there is also a procedure (or even two procedures) for that.

One option is to sign up for the elections directly in the municipality, where you want to vote. But this cannot be changed for the second round of the elections, so it's a bad option if you go to somewhere for holidays and you won't be there during the second round. The deadline for that is usually quite early. If I remember well, you can even do it through the Internet.

The second option is to take a special document from the municipality in which there is the polling station, to which you are assigned. Then you can vote ONLY with this document – at any polling station. If you lose this document, you can't vote. You get crossed out from that book, which the official at your standard polling station will have. At the polling station where you finally vote, they manually write your data into that book where you put your signature. The deadline for obtaining this document is just a few days before the elections.

The last elections in Poland were, unusually, held in the holiday period, so many people had to vote at polling stations other than these to which they are assigned. Me too  – in the second round of the elections. Where I voted it was a mountain resort, so they had a special official at the table, who only dealt with the "external" voters. Normally, he would also have some streets assigned to him.

These two options allow to ensure that nobody will cast multiple votes at different polling stations.

Allowing people to see for whom you voted (or an election system which force you to doing that) is a really bad idea... Then you can be persecuted because of the party for whom you voted... But I guess countries with no authoritarian pseudo-democracy in their history just don't feel the need for that.

And anyway, the political topics usually cause strong emotions, so it's not a good idea to talk about politics with friends or at your workplace. To show off with for whom you voted as well.


----------



## Alex_ZR

In Serbia your index finger gets sprayed so you can't vote twice.


----------



## mgk920

Alex_ZR said:


> In Serbia your index finger gets sprayed so you can't vote twice.


Just like dipping your finger in a bottle of a dark blue dye, like is/was done in Iraq.

 

I wonder if something like that could work here in the USofA....

Mike


----------



## Stuu

mgk920 said:


> I wonder if something like that could work here in the USofA....
> 
> Mike


You would just end up with claims of false fingers being used. Or even...

"Democrats cut off my fingers so they could cheat"


----------



## Jschmuck

"The ink is an acid!" or "The ink has microchips in it which then burrow under your skin!."


----------



## Kpc21

An interesting automotive phenomenon in Poland. Until recently it was common for people to remove catalytic converters from the cars when one gets used up or broken. Now there is a plague of... thieves actually stealing the catalytic converters from parked cars xD


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Is not emission control part of the roadworthiness control in Poland? I thought this was an EU requirement.


----------



## Stuu

Same thing happening in the UK, supermarket car parks are the favourite location from what I have seen


----------



## radamfi

__





Catalytic converter theft | AA


Demand for precious metals, and the parts that contain them, is rising. Here's what you can do about it.




www.theaa.com





"In recent years, catalytic converter theft has risen dramatically. AA insurance claims have gone up from *32 *in 2018 to *393* in 2019. It is believed that this is driven by the value of the metals inside. While platinum prices have remained fairly stable, there has been a sharp increase in the value of palladium.

Thieves simply cut the catalytic converter from the exhaust pipe of a parked car and sell them on to scrap metal dealers.


Taller vehicles (4x4s) are particularly vulnerable as the converters are more accessible. Because they tend to have larger engines, they contain more of the precious metals too.
Once an unmarked converter has been removed from a vehicle it's quite difficult to match it to that vehicle as there aren't any distinguishing marks."


----------



## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Is not emission control part of the roadworthiness control in Poland? I thought this was an EU requirement.


Roadworthiness control? Of what? It's still sometimes so that the car stays in the garage and only its registration certificate undergoes this "check". I mean, less and less often, but still it's possible to find an inspection station that will do it for you this way.

Yet something like two years ago, I was on an inspection with a car, the chassis of which was so rusted that both a general car mechanic and one specialized in body repairs told me that driving the car in this state is dangerous and the chassis in this state can break even while driving into a larger pothole. On the inspection? Roadworthy. The diagnostician only told me to go to a car body mechanic to check it, but officially permitted me to continue driving that car.

I have never had the emissions of my car checked. They test the brakes and the steering system using their machinery, check if the lights work, inspect the car visually, and this is all.

In Poland these checks are required quite frequently. I think most countries in Europe require them every 2 years, in Poland it's every year. Only brand new cars have the first check in 3 years after the registration, and the next one in 2 years.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Both emissions and structural integrity are indeed checked in Norway (along with a host of other things). They started with these regular checks after the EEA agreement (i. e. the association of Norway and a few other smaller countries with EU), hence the nick-name "EU control" in Norway.

From Wikipedia:
_The EU Directive 2014/45 of April 3, 2014 mandates all member states to carry out periodic safety and *emission* (roadworthiness) inspections for most types of motor vehicles_


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

(ignore)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are parliamentary elections in the Netherlands today. The incumbent government may hold on to their majority, which is pretty rare in Dutch politics. 

The parliament will likely be even more fractioned, with several new parties having chances to win one or two seats. One of them is Volt, part of a pan-European movement. They did not appear in polls until the last few weeks but they may win 3 or 4 seats according to the latest polls. 

The biggest losers are likely a pensioners party called 50+ and the Greens.






Opinion polling for the 2021 Dutch general election - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Both emissions and structural integrity are indeed checked in Norway (along with a host of other things). They started with these regular checks after the EEA agreement (i. e. the association of Norway and a few other smaller countries with EU), hence the nick-name "EU control" in Norway.
> 
> From Wikipedia:
> _The EU Directive 2014/45 of April 3, 2014 mandates all member states to carry out periodic safety and *emission* (roadworthiness) inspections for most types of motor vehicles_


We are talking about Poland, country where burning rubbish is considered a human right


----------



## Suburbanist

50-Plus basically want to stick the bills for low growth of pension fund assets (due to >10 yrs of very low interest rates) into the younger generation.

I have several Dutch colleagues strongly supporting Volt (instead of other mainstream parties) and I am curious to see whether D66, which always oscillates in support, will have a strong or weak year.

It would be nice if Volt got more traction throughout other countries, as a way to make them decisive for coalitions in other countries where they can push a coordinate integrationist agenda.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> I have several Dutch colleagues strongly supporting Volt (instead of other mainstream parties) and I am curious to see whether D66, which always oscillates in support, will have a strong or weak year.


It seems that D66 is also taking voters away from GreenLeft, which has been increasingly weak in the polls. Apparently D66 leader Kaag is seen as a stronger leader than GL leader Klaver. The Greens were significantly overestimated in polls leading up to the 2017 elections.

Also, the energy transition is becoming more visible with the industrialization of rural areas (solar fields, ever larger wind farms, biomass) and GL is categorically excluding any other type of energy production which seems to turn against them. Biomass in particular has gotten a bad name, many environmentalists are opposed to any tree cutting and biomass requires a lot of that. Also: Amsterdam wanted to build large wind turbines right in front of one of their electoral bases, which got controversial. The Green electorate supports renewable energy as long as it's not in their back yard.

Another point of discussion is the goal to move away from natural gas to heating. This seems increasingly financially infeasible. They want to take hundreds of thousands of houses off gas per year but so far they haven't done more than a few hundred and those were low-hanging fruit. This is also a divisive issue on the left side of politics due to the exorbitant cost for lower incomes, who often live in houses which are the most expensive / impossible to get off natural gas.


----------



## Fatfield

Sabine Schmitz has died. Bit of a shock that. Loved her on Top Gear. RIP lass.









Sabine Schmitz: Top Gear star and 'Queen of the Nürburgring' racing driver dies aged 51


Tributes pour in for the much-loved motorsport figure - known to many simply as the "Queen of the Nürburgring".




news.sky.com


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Another point of discussion is the goal to move away from natural gas to heating. This seems increasingly financially infeasible. They want to take hundreds of thousands of houses off gas per year but so far they haven't done more than a few hundred and those were low-hanging fruit. This is also a divisive issue on the left side of politics due to the exorbitant cost for lower incomes, who often live in houses which are the most expensive / impossible to get off natural gas.


We struggle with the same in Poland, but with the transition from coal to less polluting energy sources... including natural gas!

It's interesting to see that what over here is considered "the clean fuel", somewhere else is now considered dirty.

Looking around at the newly built houses, quite many of them have heat pumps installed. After cheap coal boilers disappeared from the market (only more advanced models that fulfill the strictest pollution standard are now permitted to be sold), actually quite many people also go for those while modernizing their heating systems.

I was supposed to get a natural gas connection, but when I recently called the company (after, like, two years of them postponing the construction), I learned that I am the only one interested in the street, and at least two more houses would have to express interest in it, for it to make a financial sense for them to build the pipe.

It's an old house from 1970s, and I am now choosing between two options:
– gas from a tank in a backyard,
– air-to-water heat pump.

The last one is obviously more ecological, but there are also other factors that have to be considered. 

Gas tank and gas boiler are together cheaper than a heat pump – but as I'm switching to them from a coal boiler, I can get a subsidy from the government, and the subsidy for a heat pump is larger. So the final cost is comparable.

Gas from a tank is certainly more secure if we consider the risk of power outages (like what recently happened in Texas). In case of an outage, I can power a gas boiler from a UPS or a diesel generator, and it will still work. Having own tank with gas, I don't have to rely on the deliveries from the town gas network. A heat pump, while it is an energy-saving device, still consumes quite a lot of that energy in form of electricity – so much that it's impossible to power it from any generator that would make sense for a small private house. 

Power outages are rare where I live, and if they happen, they almost always happen in summer (because of thunderstorms and strong winds). I think I haven't had any power outage in winter for something like 15 years, and one that would last more than a day (in winter; in summer I even had a few last year) – ever in my life. So actually the risk is similar to the one of that something will break down in the heating system and the repair will take several days... But when gas heating stops working, I can rescue myself with some portable electric heaters. With electric heating (like a heat pump) it's more problematic... But well, it's still possible to keep a full gas bottle at home together with a portable gas heater for an emergency use.

In the costs of heating, it will probably be similar. If I had underfloor heating, this would be optimal for a heat pump, with radiators heat pump's efficiency (COP – coefficient of performance) is quite low. So it may even get more expensive in case of a heat pump... I don't know. And therefore I don't know what to choose.

An advantage of a heat pump is certainly that it doesn't require remembering about refuelling the tank every year.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ I am using an air-to-water heat pump at home, for both heating and producing hot water. It's a really nice system to have.

Although the investment is a bit higher at the beginning, I think that over time the advantages will eventually pay for it. It is best to be used with floor heating (not wall radiators), as the pump does not warm the water for heating at such a high temperature (or at least not in an efficient way).

It is very simple to use: I set once the temperature in my house, and I haven't touched any button for the entire winter. There's nothing, really nothing, that you have to do. Once per year someone from the manufacturer comes to do the yearly maintenance and change some internal fluids, and that's it (doesn't take more than 1.5 hours).

In regards to the costs, for example for the entire 2020 year my electricity bill was, on average, 63 € per month. This includes the heat pump (so heating+hot water), but also all the electrical items in the house (lights, oven, TV etc.).

When it comes to costs, a gas unit would be cheaper, but for that you need to have the gas pipe on your street. If that is not available, I think the heat pump is the next best option.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch elections were quite surprising, the centrist socially liberal party D66 got a much better result than any poll had predicted, while the classical left has again seen its vote share diminish. However the center-right VVD of prime minister Rutte also won seats, as was projected, making VVD the clear leader again. 

The Netherlands has three parties that are considered the classical left: PvdA (Labour Party), Socialist Party & GreenLeft. They received a combined 65 out of 150 seats in 2012. They only got 25 today, which is only one sixth of parliament. The Greens in particular suffered a heavy loss; they lost half of their seats. The socialists also suffered a substantial decline while Labour failed to do any better than 2017, which was their worst result ever.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands has three parties that are considered the classical left: PvdA (Labour Party), Socialist Party & GreenLeft. They received a combined 65 out of 150 seats in 2012. They only got 25 today, which is only one sixth of parliament. The Greens in particular suffered a heavy loss; they lost half of their seats. The socialists also suffered a substantial decline while Labour failed to do any better than 2017, which was their worst result ever.


They're all a bit pointless, really.

The VVD has moved to the left on economic affairs under the pressure of the pandemic, pretty much everyone has agreed that climate change needs to be addressed urgently and nobody likes the left's ideas on immigration.

So the vegetablists voted for the animal party, the BLM folks voted for BIJ1, and the pro-Europeans for Volt and D66. On that premise, it's surprising the old left managed to win 25 seats at all.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch elections were quite surprising, the centrist socially liberal party D66 got a much better result than any poll had predicted, while the classical left has again seen its vote share diminish. However the center-right VVD of prime minister Rutte also won seats, as was projected, making VVD the clear leader again.
> 
> The Netherlands has three parties that are considered the classical left: PvdA (Labour Party), Socialist Party & GreenLeft. They received a combined 65 out of 150 seats in 2012. They only got 25 today, which is only one sixth of parliament. The Greens in particular suffered a heavy loss; they lost half of their seats. The socialists also suffered a substantial decline while Labour failed to do any better than 2017, which was their worst result ever.


You've written a lot about the poor performance of the left and green parties in the Netherlands in the past. But maybe the so-called "centre-right" isn't really that right-wing? Maybe green/left policies are already incorporated into government? Given the length of time the VVD has been the major party in the Netherlands, how come personal taxation is still so high? It is still one of the few countries with a general wealth tax. Why does the Netherlands spend so much on local buses, including the biggest roll-out of electric buses in Europe? I could mention cycling but maybe that's more cultural than environmental.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

VVD has clearly moved to the left ever since Rutte came to power. However they're still center-right, though not a 'party of bankers' as is often clichéed. VVD is the only true people's party in the Netherlands, it gets a third of its vote share from each income class (lower, middle, high). It's also the largest party in each class. 

However I'd say that VVD is still more conservative on some liberal issues, including the environment. They want nuclear power to address climate change while most left-wing parties are categorically against it. 

The income tax in the Netherlands isn't really as high as the brackets suggest, because a portion of your income is exempt from taxes. For example the first tax bracket is 37.1%, but lower to median incomes pay less than that. If you make the median income of € 2800 per month, the effective tax rate is only about 18%. If you earn minimum wage, the net income is higher than the gross income due to benefits being higher than the income tax deducted. 

An example: List of European countries by average wage

If you look at this map, the average wage in Germany is € 4035 gross but only € 2559 net. In the Netherlands those figures are € 2808 and 2240, so the average Dutch pays much less income taxes than the average German.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> If you look at this map, the average wage in Germany is € 4035 gross but only € 2559 net. In the Netherlands those figures are € 2808 and 2240, so the average Dutch pays much less income taxes than the average German.


Does the average German really earn that much more gross than the average Dutch person? Sounds hard to believe, especially considering Germany includes the former East Germany.


----------



## Suburbanist

Gross wages in Germany are inclusive of hefty pension contributions that, in the Netherlands, are made by employers directly to 2nd pillar pension funds or AVB (Social security), bypassing wages.


----------



## Kpc21

bogdymol said:


> When it comes to costs, a gas unit would be cheaper, but for that you need to have the gas pipe on your street. If that is not available, I think the heat pump is the next best option.


You can get a gas tank in your backyard installed; then the costs are similar, but you have to remember about buying gas (refuelling the tank) every year. The tank stores propane gas, so it's similar to LPG used for powering your car.

Concerning heat pumps, I have radiators, so this will make it less efficient (although it can be partially worked around by installing larger radiators), and I live in Poland, not Romania, we have a slightly colder climate, the difference between the outside temperature and the one I want to get inside is larger, and this also decreases its efficiency.


----------



## bogdymol

Kpc21 said:


> I live in Poland, not Romania, we have a slightly colder climate, the difference between the outside temperature and the one I want to get inside is larger, and this also decreases its efficiency.


I live in the Austrian Alps. Today I had to shovel fresh snow. There's enough winter here, I can't complain


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You know how the Dutch PM goes to work on a bicycle? The newly elected 1 MP from the Farmer-Citizen Movement came with a tractor on her first day:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1372519780125663232


----------



## Slagathor

Completely ignoring parking regulations I'm sure.

I'm starting to get pretty sick and tired of these farmers and their damn tractors.


----------



## Park- en Rijntoren

Slagathor said:


> I'm starting to get pretty sick and tired of these farmers and their damn tractors.


Luckily D66 won seats this election and wants to cut the livestock in half, as do other progressive parties. De PvdD (Party for the animals) which has won one seat and now has six, even wants to reduce the amount of cattle with atleast 75%.


----------



## Stuu

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> It was reported today that 2 more Norwegian patients have died of the combination of blood clots / low blood platelett level / bleeding following AZ. I.e., the relative Norwegian fatality rate from probable side effects from the Astra Zeneca vaccine has risen to 4/122 000, or 3.3 per 100 000 jabs.


That's quite extraordinary. The latest safety report about the vaccination programme in the UK up to 7 March showed that 12m doses had been given, including over 500k under 50s, and there had been 3 serious adverse reactions needing hospital treatment. There must be more to it i.e. Contimination of supplies or incorrect doses, or something else unknown


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

The jury is still out, but I sincerely doubt so, as these are all independent cases (and similar cases have been identified in Germany, Austria, and Denmark). There are reports of several blood clots cases after AZ vaccinations also in the UK, and some people have died (470 cases of blood clots and 9 deaths according to this article: AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine isn’t tied to blood clots, experts say ). These cases have not been linked to the vaccination as blood clotting is a quite common disease. However, the combination of blood clots and low blood platelet counts is otherwise extremely rare, and could easily go unnoticed if you do not search for it.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> The jury is still out, but I sincerely doubt so, as these are all independent cases (and similar cases have been identified in Germany, Austria, and Denmark). There are reports of several blood clots cases after AZ vaccinations also in the UK, and some people have died (470 cases of blood clots and 9 deaths according to this article: AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine isn’t tied to blood clots, experts say ). These cases have not been linked to the vaccination as blood clotting is a quite common disease. However, the combination of blood clots and low blood platelet counts is otherwise extremely rare, and could easily go unnoticed if you do not search for it.


Yes, very interesting...now please send those doses that you don't plan on using our way  That would be much appreciated. We're kind of in a hurry over here.


----------



## PovilD

If AZ in Norway is somehow more dangerous than covid+restrictions then okay. You have been doing relatively well anyway in suppressing covid.

I think AZ vaccine would still help a lot for many non-Nordic countries since we are not that good at social distancing.

If you ask me, I trust Pfizer and Moderna the most, then it goes J&J, and only then is AZ. If those non-AZ vaccines will cover Norway and the rest of Europe soon, I would be a tiny bit relieved. As long as there are no good other options, we have to be left with AZ as it's better than nothing.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Without AZ, the vaccination program will be more vulnerable to delays from the other suppliers, of course. So far, however, only AZ has consistently underperformed in their deliveries, to the extent that their expected importance for population immunity is only marginal. 


Rebasepoiss said:


> Yes, very interesting...now please send those doses that you don't plan on using our way  That would be much appreciated. We're kind of in a hurry over here.


If Norway makes a more permanent decision to stop using AZ (on Friday at the earliest), my unqualified guess is that the Norwegian doses will be redistributed to EU countries that want to continue using this vaccine. Provided that EMA does not change its mind and pause the roll-out of AZ Europe-wide, of course.


----------



## PovilD

Our President and PM got vaccinated Today with AZ. One U.S. research claims AZ is safe and almost 80% effective. I think we should continue using AZ, unless other options are readily available.


----------



## andken

PovilD said:


> Our President and PM got vaccinated Today with AZ. One U.S. research claims AZ is safe and almost 80% effective. I think we should continue using AZ, unless other options are readily available.


My unpopular opinion is that the EU should have resorted to both the Chinese and the Russian vaccines too.


----------



## Stuu

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> The jury is still out, but I sincerely doubt so, as these are all independent cases (and similar cases have been identified in Germany, Austria, and Denmark). There are reports of several blood clots cases after AZ vaccinations also in the UK, and some people have died (470 cases of blood clots and 9 deaths according to this article: AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine isn’t tied to blood clots, experts say ). These cases have not been linked to the vaccination as blood clotting is a quite common disease. However, the combination of blood clots and low blood platelet counts is otherwise extremely rare, and could easily go unnoticed if you do not search for it.


It's very strange that there is such an enormous variation in death rates. Perhaps it's just terrible luck that the only people who have had this reaction happened to be Norwegian, statistics can work like that sometimes.

Also, even if the death rate from the vaccine was as high, 1 in 33,000 is still far, far lower than the death rate from Covid-19, which is about 1 in every 1000 for people under 50. Stopping vaccination on that basis makes no logical sense - an individual would be 33 times less likely to die being vaccinated than catching the disease


----------



## PovilD

Stuu said:


> It's very strange that there is such an enormous variation in death rates. Perhaps it's just terrible luck that the only people who have had this reaction happened to be Norwegian, statistics can work like that sometimes.
> 
> Also, even if the death rate from the vaccine was as high, 1 in 33,000 is still far, far lower than the death rate from Covid-19, which is about 1 in every 1000 for people under 50. Stopping vaccination on that basis makes no logical sense - an individual would be 33 times less likely to die being vaccinated than catching the disease


1 in 1000 if we are talking about 50 and younger. If we talk about older people, chances increase above 1 in 100. I think we must continue. Sure, I hope for other vaccines taking place too.

Btw, Lithuania crossed 10% vaccinated at least first dose. It's still not surpassing around 20-30% already infected. I can only hope Third wave will not add up to that percentage (hopefully up to 5%) and vaccinated will surpass infected in a month time.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Stuu said:


> Also, even if the death rate from the vaccine was as high, 1 in 33,000 is still far, far lower than the death rate from Covid-19, which is about 1 in every 1000 for people under 50. Stopping vaccination on that basis makes no logical sense - an individual would be 33 times less likely to die being vaccinated than catching the disease


Sure, but that far less than 1 in 33 will catch COVID-19 while we wait out the delay in population vaccination caused by a full termination of the AZ vaccine in Norway. The AZ delivery problems / UK protectionism / EU incompetence (take your pick) means that we are only talking weeks here. 

Otherwise, Norway is far from a COVID-19-free paradise these days. The incident rate is not a very precise measure due the dependence on testing policy, but nevertheless our national rate is now at the level of USA, and higher than both Germany and the UK, although the fatality rate in Norway still is very low. Hence new stricter national regulations were announced today, including a ban for pubs and restaurants to serve alcohol and closures of gyms for adults. Local measures in the most affected areas are much stricter. 

The situation is strangely bipolar. Some suburbs of Oslo have higher incident rates than Czechia, while Trondheim, a town with about 230 000 citizens including a large student population, has had its 5th day with no incidents. This is clearly an unstable situation as Easter is approaching and many people are likely to travel between the regions.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Otherwise Norway is far from a COVID-19-free paradise these days. The incident rate is not a very precise measure due the dependence on testing policy, but nevertheless our national rate is now at the level of USA, and higher than both Germany and the UK, although the fatality rate in Norway still is very low. Hence new stricter national regulations were announced today, including a ban for pubs and restaurants to serve alcohol and closures of gyms for adults. Local measuresin the most affected areas are much stricter.


This is interesting because Norway has made travel into the country almost impossible.

I can just drive into Germany and vice versa, there are no border checks. You can technically go into Germany without a test or quarantine if your stay is shorter than 24 hours. But nobody seems to check this. All hotels and accommodations in Germany are closed though.

The Netherlands has a relatively high incidence rate, but the fatality rate has gone way down:








(deaths per million as a 7-day average)


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> I can just drive into Germany and vice versa, there are no border checks. You can technically go into Germany without a test or quarantine if your stay is shorter than 24 hours. But nobody seems to check this.


That's different at the eastern German border. There are checks at the border between Germany and Austrian on both ways, always performed by the country you are entering in. Without proper documents and a valid travel reason (=not tourism, visiting somebody etc.), you will not be allowed to cross the border.

Today I read an article in the newspaper that an Austrian ambulance transporting a patient to a hospital in Germany was not allowed to cross the border as they did not have one paper that is now mandatory. It delayed their trip until a second ambulance came just to deliver that paper, so that they can cross the border. :nuts:


----------



## geogregor

bogdymol said:


> That's different at the eastern German border. There are checks at the border between Germany and Austrian on both ways, always performed by the country you are entering in. Without proper documents and a valid travel reason (=not tourism, visiting somebody etc.), you will not be allowed to cross the border.
> 
> Today I read an article in the newspaper that an Austrian ambulance transporting a patient to a hospital in Germany was not allowed to cross the border as they did not have one paper that is now mandatory. It delayed their trip until a second ambulance came just to deliver that paper, so that they can cross the border. :nuts:


Bureaucracy is killing the idea of European integration...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

So this is how the UK vaccination program is going so well - illegal transportation of vaccines from the EU to the UK. No way the UK government wasn't aware of this.


> *Italian authorities discover 29M Oxford/AstraZeneca doses: La Stampa*
> 
> Italian authorities have discovered 29 million doses of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine that had been stocked at a manufacturing site in the country, reported La Stampa on Wednesday.
> 
> According to the newspaper, the doses likely come from AstraZeneca's Halix plant in the Netherlands, which hasn't yet been approved for EU production.
> 
> *La Stampa cites EU sources who say that those doses were originally destined to the U.K*. But exports stopped after the bloc introduced a mechanism to restrict exports on vaccines*.*
> 
> [...]La Stampa reports that AstraZeneca hadn't alerted EU authorities to the doses, which were being stored in a fill-finish site run by Catalent in the town of Agnani. But following an inspection of the Halix plant, Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton took an interest in where the doses being manufactured at Dutch the site were going, leading him to alert Italian authorities to look into the matter. [....]


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Yeah, I wonder what this could mean for further collaboration across the channel. This revelation, as well as the commission" allegedly tougher stance, of course also will raise the stakes for possible national or European withdrawals of the of the AZ vaccine approval.








Coronavirus: EU and UK try to end row with 'win-win' on vaccines


After weeks of tension over Covid vaccine supplies, the two sides now say they are working together.



www.bbc.com


----------



## Stuu

Rebasepoiss said:


> So this is how the UK vaccination program is going so well - illegal transportation of vaccines from the EU to the UK. No way the UK government wasn't aware of this.


Nowhere in that article does it use the word "illegal", it states the doses didn't get exported following the change of the rules. In fact AZ are saying that the doses were for the EU, and distribution to third-world countries, so the whole article is deliberately inflammatory

That's no excuse for AZ not being 100% transparent, which they really don't seem to be


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

A not so good day at work. The huge container ship Ever Given is stuck and will block Suez for at least 2 days. Notice the size of the containers and the excavator at the bow to get an idea of the dimensions of this beast.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Stuu said:


> Nowhere in that article does it use the word "illegal", it states the doses didn't get exported following the change of the rules. In fact AZ are saying that the doses were for the EU, and distribution to third-world countries, so the whole article is deliberately inflammatory
> 
> That's no excuse for AZ not being 100% transparent, which they really don't seem to be


The manufacturers of vaccines are obligated to inform the EU about the production and movement of vaccines within the EU. The fact that almost 30 million doses were discovered in a secret warehouse in Italy is a rather clear sign this requirement wasn't met.


----------



## Attus

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> A not so good day at work. The huge container ship Ever Given is stuck and will block Suez for at least 2 days. Notice the size of the containers and the excavator at the bow to get an idea of the dimensions of this beast.


20,100 TEU. I.e., this ship can deliver 20,000 short (20") or 10,000 long (40") containers (or mixed, of course). A truck can carry 2 short or 1 long one. Right, if you don't use a container, a typical semi-truck can deliver approx. 2.5 TEU.


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## mgk920

Attus said:


> 20,100 TEU. I.e., this ship can deliver 20,000 short (20") or 10,000 long (40") containers (or mixed, of course). A truck can carry 2 short or 1 long one. Right, if you don't use a container, a typical semi-truck can deliver approx. 2.5 TEU.


And in North America, about 300-400 or so 'long' containers will fit on a typical train.

Mike


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I was hoping for some travel (by car) around Europe by May or early June, but the speed of vaccination is very slow across the EU, much slower than the UK or USA.The Netherlands is stil in the phase of vaccinating those in their mid-70s and a few other high-risk groups, evidently most of the EU countries are vaccinating at the same speed.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> evidently most of the EU countries are vaccinating at the same speed.


Most. 
















COVID-19 Data Explorer


Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems




ourworldindata.org


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Hungary has the highest fatality and infection rates in Europe right now. Hopefully the additional vaccines will help. Norwegian media have reported that there will be more vaccines in April than we have received in total so far. I guess the situation is the same elsewhere in Europe. If the AZ-vaccine will not be approved again in Norway, the date when the full adult population will have been offered vaccination will only be delayed by a week. Provided the other suppliers deliver on time, of course.


PovilD said:


> Outdoor dining is right way to move.


It was snowing here yesterday, but many restaurants are open for indoor dining. However, currently no alcohol serving is allowed.


----------



## PovilD

I've been looking at German OpenStreetMap layout, and I find that Lithuanian names near Nemunas river often has quite original German versions. It's not surprising to have German names in Klaipėda Region which belonged to Germany for centuries (it's actually more surprising to have Lithuanian names here with German ending where Lithuanian ending "-(i)ai" just changes to German "-en"). As far as I know there was some German influence on Nemunas river region which often remembered in the light where fights with Northern crusades, etc. took place, and castles were built.
Lithuania while being not part of Germany or having German-ruling regions was not really German influenced like the neighboring countries, e.g. Latvia, Estonia. Probably only minor influences or limited influences due to geographical locality.

Let's start from Kaunas downstream to former Prussian border:
Kaunas >> Kauen. Lithuanian forms often transposes to "-en" in German, nothing surprising.
Raudondvaris >> Rotenhoff. Town which is part of Kaunas agglomeration. It could be just translation of "red manor" which is the actual meaning in Lithuanian. A little bit surprising at first glance, but if you know some German, probably not too much.

*Kačerginė >> Waydensburg*. Really surprising for such small locality near Kaunas. Nice cycleway has been constructed from Kaunas to this place. I would have expected Kacherginen at best 
*Kulautuva >> Bastau. *Same story as with Kačerginė, really surprising for small locality. Kulautuva is on the other side of the river, but relatively near Kačerginė. Seasonal ferry services took place from nearby locality Zapyškis which has more expected German version "Sapischken".
*Vilkija >> Memelburg. *Interesting, but it confuses me a bit, since I know that Klaipėda in German is Memel. Nemunas is also Memel in German, probably it took place from the river.
*Raudonė >> Pistenwerden. *Raudonė is known for its castle, probably from times of Northern crusades. Maybe the German name could be also from those times...


Other relatively interesting German versions of names:
Seredžius >> Schrödnik
Kriūkai >> Kricken
Jurbarkas >> Georgenburg (German/English name of George is Jurgis in Lithuanian).

Then we approach former Prussian border. Nemunas becomes state border. You get Kaliningrad Oblast to the South, and Klaipėda region of Lithuania to the North.

German names are very local here (Pagėgiai >> Pogegen, Šilgaliai >> Schilgalen). On currently Lithuanian side, we had Lithuanian majority living in the region. There are few exceptions of course. The difference was that most Lithuanians there were Lutherans. I don't know much about post-war situation there, but as far as I know many Catholic Lithuanians from formely Tsarist Russian/Grand Duchy part of Lithuania has moved to these lands. Lutheran Lithuanians could have flown to Germany and maybe continued to assimilate to German culture.


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## andken

Attus said:


> Most.


Hungary sent the middle finger to Brussels and are importing vaccines from Russia and China. And they are right to do so.


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## PovilD

Now I tried to catch interesting German version names of Lithuanian names around Lithuania that are in German OSM.
Sorry for the long post.
*Vilnius >> Wilna. *This and similar form is very common non-Lithuanian form of the name. We have Polish Wilno, Belarusian/Ukrainian/Old Russian Vilnia. Btw, Vilna in Lithuanian means "wool". Actual etimiology of the name is "vilnia" which means has poetic meaning for small wave and the river that flows into Neris river in Vilnius is also called "Vilnia", similarly like we have with Moscow River.
*Elektrėnai >> Grossteich. *Extremely interesting. I'm even wondering if this not made up name. Just checked Google Translate, it means "big reservoir". In Lithuanian Elektrėnai mean "Electric Town" or smth like that. It is artificial city built in the 60s when construction of biggest Lithuanian electric plant took place. Elektrėnai is near the highway/motorway A1 between largest cities of Kaunas and Vilnius.
*Balbieriškis >> Hannusburg.* This town is upstream of river Nemunas from the city of Kaunas. Balbieriškis is seen as funny name in Lithuania. I think it has similarities with word "bulbos" which is funny name to describe "potatoes". Potato in Lithuanian is actually "bulvė" ("bulvės" in plural). I heard jokes on the internet that Latvians are called potato country or smth, but in Lithuania, jokes around potatoes mostly involve Belarus, hence there is pregoratory word for Belorussian - "bulbash". Latvia is not asociated with potatoes, rather with pine forests and seaside. Hannusburg could also be seen as funny if you remove "h" I guess.
*Salantai >> Gränishof.* Town in Northern Samogitia (West Lithuania), but didn't belonged neither to Courland nor East Prussia. Probably geographic proximity played the role there. Other names I looked at in this area are just Germanised Lithuanian names we talked before.
*Giedraičiai >> Sandersfurt an der Nerryne. *That's just wow  Small town between few dozen kilometers North of Vilnius. It is mostly known by historicans that Polish forces were stopped who planned to recreate Polish dominated Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in early 1920s, but were only left with Vilnius/Wilno.
*Kvetkai >> Memelhof. *There is also another river with the root of Nemunas river. It's called Nemunėlis or Little Nemunas in Lithuanian. It has no direct geographic connections with Nemunas river. Memel is also used there. Latvians use word "Memele" for river Nemunėlis in Latvian side. I wonder what is German name for Nemunėlis. It could be complicated to call another river Memel. Kleine Memel would be ok.
*Barstyčiai >> Jegminsburg. *Barstyčiai is also in West Lithuania, it's mostly known for having largest stone in Lithuania.








--
Interesting reshapings of Lithuanian names that I found interesting:
*Eišiškės >> Eiksiskendorf. *Town near Belorussian border in Polish/Slavic majority areas near Vilnius.
*Katyčiai >> Coadjuthen.* On the border between former East Prussia and Grand Duchy of Lithuania areas. Hard to tell right now on which side belonged.
*Varniai >> Mediniken*. Probably other name was used for Varniai which is Medininkai. Varniai is in Central Samogitia (West Lithuania).
*Skuodas >> Schoden*. I wouldn't think is remade from Lithuanian name  It's near Latvian border closer to the Baltic Sea.
*Leckava >> Lutzhoff.* Random small town near the Latvian border.
---
Most interesting German names in former East Prussian side:
*Giruliai >> Försterei.* One of the seaside neighborhoods of Klaipėda.
*Smiltynė >> Sandkrug. *Locality on the tip of Curonian Spit. Officially is the neighborhood of Klaipėda, but only accessable by ferry.
*Juodkrantė >> Schwarzort.* My parents used to have seaside summer vacation there in the Curonian Spit. There is also one neighborhood here called *Gintaro Įlanka* which is *Bernsteinbucht* in German, or *Amber Bay *if you like to call it. Amber had been dug there.
*Šilutė >> Heydekrug. *Second largest town in Klaipėda region which belonged to Prussia. Šilutė is relatively new name. It was created in early 1920s when Lithuania took control of Klaipėda Region. Before then, it was called *Šilokarčema* which was seen as ambigous name. It could be translated as Forest Inn in English.
*Rusnė >> Ruß.* German form is very similar to word Rus' like used for Kievan Rus. I wonder if anybody was expecting that Ruß will be on the Russian border 
*Šventoji >> Heiligenau.* Ok, this was not Prussia, but Courland side (only on Tsarist times). Second most popular seaside resort after Palanga in Lithuania. It could be called as part of Palanga aglomeration. It was part of Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
--
There are German names that turned to be Lithuanian 
*Charlottenhoff >> Šarlotės dvaras.* One of the newly expanding neighborhoods of Klaipėda.
*Normanten, Sudmanten >> Normantai, Sudmantai.* One is on the North part of Klaipėda, another is on the South 

Oh, I don't forget the Nimmersatt  Nemirseta is now one of the neighborhoods of Palanga resort town, and is more asociated with Palanga than with Klaipėda/Memel, although it was Northemost part of pre-war Germany.

There are some more names, but probably I will end there


----------



## x-type

-


54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Hungary has the highest fatality and infection rates in Europe right now. Hopefully the additional vaccines will help. Norwegian media have reported that there will be more vaccines in April than we have received in total so far. I guess the situation is the same elsewhere in Europe. If the AZ-vaccine will not be approved again in Norway, the date when the full adult population will have been offered vaccination will only be delayed by a week. Provided the other suppliers deliver on time, of course.
> 
> It was snowing here yesterday, but many restaurants are open for indoor dining. However, currently no alcohol serving is allowed.


Each European country is announcing some huge amounts of vaccines soon. Imo Europe will again feel as a donkey in front of Ursula the Supreme.


----------



## Suburbanist

andken said:


> Hungary sent the middle finger to Brussels and are importing vaccines from Russia and China. And they are right to do so.


Noting prevents countries from importing other non-licensed vacines, but for geopolitical reasons this will buy yet more ill-ill within intra-EU politics. Especially with respect to the Russian vaccine, which has not been approved for use in the EU (contrary to the Chinese vaccines that applied for approval).

The EU has no powers to prevent Hungary or any country from using unlicensed medicines in their territory. They only cannot export or sell for the public at large, uncontrolled, these types of non-EMA approved stuff. However, when the EMA licenses something, it is automatically approved throughout the bloc.

Before the EMA, many smaller European countries just copied-and-pasted whatever the FDA in the US did, which was a worse solution than having a more powerful medicines agency in Amsterdam* (it is not economical for a country the size of Denmark or Portugal to have a full-fledged medicines authority that single-handly requires independent studies instead of accepting what pharma cos. did in the US, but the EMA can and often demands that, which had the effect to kill the prominence of the FDA as the world's de-facto licensing agency - the FDA and EMA collaborate closely now).

It used to be in London until 2017.


----------



## radamfi

Suburbanist said:


> Before the EMA, many smaller European countries just copied-and-pasted whatever the FDA in the US did, which was a worse solution than having a more powerful medicines agency in Amsterdam* (it is not economical for a country the size of Denmark or Portugal to have a full-fledged medicines authority that single-handly requires independent studies instead of accepting what pharma cos. did in the US, but the EMA can and often demands that, which had the effect to kill the prominence of the FDA as the world's de-facto licensing agency - the FDA and EMA collaborate closely now).


Why do there have to be multiple agencies? It would be more efficient if the WHO approved medicines for the whole world.


----------



## andken

PovilD said:


> There are some more names, but probably I will end there


Nah, this thread is really interesting.  ;-)



x-type said:


> Each European country is announcing some huge amounts of vaccines soon. Imo Europe will again feel as a donkey in front of Ursula the Supreme.


I hope so. I really hope so, not only this is costing people's lives but that's being used as excuse in LatAm.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> Why do there have to be multiple agencies? It would be more efficient if the WHO approved medicines for the whole world.


Politics, both in the sense of "not trusting the WHO", and in the more rational sense of the lack of political oversight. Something as important as a medicine regulator has to be legally responsible and accountable. Also would it be more efficient? Any process that all major players could agree on strikes me as unlikely to be the most-optimal


----------



## MattiG

radamfi said:


> Why do there have to be multiple agencies? It would be more efficient if the WHO approved medicines for the whole world.


Such a transition shall be done gradually and carefully. The first steps would be taken regionally. In Europe, the EU would be the natural choice as the centralized decision making body. The UK would be happy to hand that burden over to the EU, I believe.


----------



## x-type

radamfi said:


> Why do there have to be multiple agencies? It would be more efficient if the WHO approved medicines for the whole world.


Exactly! And that messy situation just confirms how EU and USA strongly protect their producers. Is there really somebody in the world who thinks that Russian and Chinese pharmaceutical industries are not reliable enough to take part in global pharmaceutical race? Moreover, the freestylers, such as Serbia or Israel or UK, bought the vaccines on free market, just as it should work. EU got stuck in its own bureaucracy, rules, regulations, protections, procedures... This whole corona thing shows how rotten it is.


----------



## radamfi

Has any country decided not to approve a vaccine that other countries did approve? Why would a medicine be safe in one country but not in another?


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Suburbanist said:


> However, when the EMA licenses something, it is automatically approved throughout the bloc.


Approval of national agencies is still not guaranteed, as seen in the current row on the AZ vaccine.

In order to reach group immunity it is important that a large percentage of the population accepts the vaccine they are offered. Trust in the system is hence very important. Starting to use vaccines that have not gone through the formal approval procedures would undermine this trust and has hence been out of the question for Norway, and I believe, many other countries. However, I understand that priorities could be different in countries where the impact of COVID-19 is more severe.


radamfi said:


> Has any country decided not to approve a vaccine that other countries did approve? Why would a medicine be safe in one country but not in another?


Yes, we have the current example of AZ vaccine. The benefits always have to be compared with the risks. The benefit of faster vaccination is larger in areas that have not been able subdue COVID-19 without serious lock-downs (e. g. UK) than in areas where the measures have been less costly. Further, there are differences in how effectively serious side effects are identified and how these are evaluated (risks).


PovilD said:


> *Barstyčiai >> Jegminsburg. *Barstyčiai is also in West Lithuania, it's mostly known for having largest stone in Lithuania.


LOL


----------



## Rebasepoiss

andken said:


> Hungary sent the middle finger to Brussels and are importing vaccines from Russia and China. And they are right to do so.


Sputnik V is largely a PR project for Russia in the sense that they are delivering vaccines mostly to those countries where they have the biggest political impact. According to Financial Times Russia is able to produce only 31 million doses of Sputnik V by the end of the year. This is a drop in the ocean compared to Pfizer's 1.5 billion, AstraZeneca's 3 billinon and Moderna's 600 million. So far AstraZeneca has not been able to deliver according to their initial plans but the others have. That being said, AZ has still produced tens of millions of doses already.

In effect this means that since Serbia and Hungary are one of the few European countries to use Sputnik V, Russia is happy to export a large part of theri vaccine production to those countries since that will make it seem like they are beating the virus (partly) thanks to Russia. However, if more (and bigger) countries started using their vaccine, its impact would signficantly diminish since they don't have the production capabilities needed to produce hundreds of millions or billions of doses in a short timeframe. Globally Sputnik V plays a very small part in the vaccination program, at least in the near future, but they have done really well in terms of PR.

This goes hand in hand with a massive disinformation campaign against Western vaccines and a positive campaign to promote Sputnik V. A significant portion of Russians living in Estonia (who mostly follow Russian media) are refusing to vaccinate with "Western" vaccines, especially AZ, and are hoping to get Sputnik V in the future.


----------



## radamfi

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Yes, we have the current example of AZ vaccine. The benefits always have to be compared with the risks. The benefit of faster vaccination is larger in areas that have not been able subdue COVID-19 without serious lock-downs (e. g. UK) than in areas where the measures have been less costly. Further, there are differences in how effectively serious side effects are identified and how these are evaluated (risks).


However, the medicine is available for use in all EU/EEA countries, even if some countries have chosen not to take advantage of that availability. Should Norway, for example, decide to resume use of the vaccine, they can do so immediately, because it has been approved by the EMA. The EMA has approved it, and the equivalent bodies in the UK and USA have approved it. Is there actually a comparable agency that has decided not to approve it?


----------



## Attus

In Hungary the following vaccines are currently either available or already applied (rounded figures):
Pfizer/BioNTech: 650,000
Moderna: 70,000
AstraZeneca: 210,000
Sputnik V: 550,000
Sinopharm: 550,000


----------



## Dikan011

Meanwhile, in Serbia...


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## tfd543

Not visible


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## x-type

Rebasepoiss said:


> Sputnik V is largely a PR project for Russia in the sense that they are delivering vaccines mostly to those countries where they have the biggest political impact. According to Financial Times Russia is able to produce only 31 million doses of Sputnik V by the end of the year. This is a drop in the ocean compared to Pfizer's 1.5 billion, AstraZeneca's 3 billinon and Moderna's 600 million. So far AstraZeneca has not been able to deliver according to their initial plans but the others have. That being said, AZ has still produced tens of millions of doses already.
> 
> In effect this means that since Serbia and Hungary are one of the few European countries to use Sputnik V, Russia is happy to export a large part of theri vaccine production to those countries since that will make it seem like they are beating the virus (partly) thanks to Russia. However, if more (and bigger) countries started using their vaccine, its impact would signficantly diminish since they don't have the production capabilities needed to produce hundreds of millions or billions of doses in a short timeframe. Globally Sputnik V plays a very small part in the vaccination program, at least in the near future, but they have done really well in terms of PR.
> 
> This goes hand in hand with a massive disinformation campaign against Western vaccines and a positive campaign to promote Sputnik V. A significant portion of Russians living in Estonia (who mostly follow Russian media) are refusing to vaccinate with "Western" vaccines, especially AZ, and are hoping to get Sputnik V in the future.


How about Sinopharm vaccine? China has much more capacities, and it is stigmatized the same as Sputnik as some poor mass production good only for third world countries, just like we are talking about plastic toys. And in reality the things work compeltely different. Nor Russia nor China has disgraced Astra Zeneca, but European countries. 
Also, Russia admits its capacities for production. Western producers are giving lip promises about their capacities, and world, lead by EU, is sucking that. How can it be trustfull?


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

According to this article, the production capacity of China is barely enough to cover their own needs in 2021 (2 to 2.6 billion doses), but it of course does not stop them prioritizing the vaccine abroad for political reasons.








Everything you need to know about China’s coronavirus vaccines


At least 25 countries and territories around the world — largely in Asia and the Middle East — are using Chinese vaccines.




www.politico.eu




So far no Chinese vaccine has initiated an approval process for Europe, or am I missing something?


radamfi said:


> However, the medicine is available for use in all EU/EEA countries, even if some countries have chosen not to take advantage of that availability. Should Norway, for example, decide to resume use of the vaccine, they can do so immediately, because it has been approved by the EMA. The EMA has approved it, and the equivalent bodies in the UK and USA have approved it. Is there actually a comparable agency that has decided not to approve it?


Yes, I guess you are right, Norway has so far only paused the use of AZ. Norway is not part of EU, and issue their own approvals. However, as far as I have understood, the government has to issue a marketing approval within 30 days after an EMA approval according to the EEA agreement. What exceptions that exist in this agreement, and whether this also applies to emergency approvals (like the one of AZ vaccine), I do not know.

It was news to me that USA has approved the AZ vaccine. Are you sure?








Fauci says U.S. may not even need AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine: report


AstraZeneca PLC's COVID-19 vaccine, which has been plagued by problems with its rollout, may not even be needed in the U.S., Dr. Anthony Fauci told Reuters.




www.marketwatch.com


----------



## radamfi

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> It was news to me that USA has approved the AZ vaccine. Are you sure?


I'm not sure! I have to admit, I just assumed it was approved. However, that link shows it hasn't yet been rejected and if it isn't used it is because they don't need it.


----------



## Attus

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> So far no Chinese vaccine has initiated an approval process for Europe, or am I missing something?


No, up till now whether the Chinese nor the Russians applied for a European approval.


----------



## andken

Rebasepoiss said:


> Sputnik V is largely a PR project for Russia in the sense that they are delivering vaccines mostly to those countries where they have the biggest political impact.


Their strategy is largely to license Sputnik V for other countries to produce the vaccines by themselves, they don't have the capabilities to produce the vaccine on their own. But countries that successfully vaccinated are using all the options available, and that was one of the problems with Ursula von der Leyen strategy.


----------



## Suburbanist

andken said:


> Their strategy is largely to license Sputnik V for other countries to produce the vaccines by themselves, they don't have the capabilities to produce the vaccine on their own. But countries that successfully vaccinated are using all the options available, and that was one of the problems with Ursula von der Leyen strategy.


There is no shortage of capable manufacturers of other vaccines that have been properly approved in the EU. The problem is factory capacity, something that cannot be solved quickly.

However, Curevac is coming online soon, Bayer will help manufacture it, and that should completely clear the queue for vaccine delivery within the EU. Low takeover will start being the challenge, together with the mounting political crisis about looming compulsory vaccination requirements for international travel, and work in certain professions like education.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

In Norway there is a general entry ban for non-residents now, with some exceptions. Lately, compulsory quarantine in hotel has been introduced for residents coming back from "unnecessary travel". For some reason, this is something certain individuals try to avoid at all costs. On Easter Eve, an idiot tried to evade the compulsory quarantine by skiing across the Sylan mountain range at the border between Trøndelag (central Norway) and the Swedish Jemtland county. The problem is that (forecasted) bad weather was coming, and he had to be rescued out of the area. Now he has to pay a hefty fine for the breach of the COVID-19 regulations and probably also for the rescue operation.

He should however consider himself lucky. Many have frozen to death in this exposed area, including thousands of Swedish/Finnish troops retreating from Trøndelag at the end of the Great Nordic War (1712-1721).

Some links:
News story (in Norwegian)








Tok seg over svenskegrensen på ski for å unngå karantenehotell


Påskeaften måtte en mann hentes ned fra fjellet av Norsk folkehjelp etter et kreativt forsøkt på å omgås karantenehotellreglene, skriver Adresseavisen.




www.vg.no





Map
Gule Sider® Kart

Wikipedia on the fatal fatal end of the Swedish military campaign 300 years ago:








Carolean Death March - Wikipedia







en.m.wikipedia.org





Route of the "death march":


----------



## Rebasepoiss

x-type said:


> How about Sinopharm vaccine? China has much more capacities, and it is stigmatized the same as Sputnik as some poor mass production good only for third world countries, just like we are talking about plastic toys. And in reality the things work compeltely different. *Nor Russia nor China has disgraced Astra Zeneca, but European countries.*
> Also, Russia admits its capacities for production. Western producers are giving lip promises about their capacities, and world, lead by EU, is sucking that. How can it be trustfull?


Maybe not on a governmental level but the (mostly state-controlled) Russian media has been talking shit about Western vaccine since last Fall. Russia doesn't care whether it's AZ, Pfizer or Moderna. If it's from a Western country they are going to attack it in media outlets to undermine people's faith in them. But you can be sure that when European countries themselves lost faith in AZ Russian propaganda took full use of that.


----------



## geogregor

Rebasepoiss said:


> Maybe not on a governmental level but the (mostly state-controlled) Russian media has been talking shit about Western vaccine since last Fall. Russia doesn't care whether it's AZ, Pfizer or Moderna. If it's from a Western country they are going to attack it in media outlets to undermine people's faith in them. But you can be sure that when European countries themselves lost faith in AZ Russian propaganda took full use of that.


Russia has well established machine of creating shitstorms and peddling conspiracy theories. Did you ever tried to watch Russia Today? It is so laughable it could actually be called entertaining.

I'm always amazed when anyone take their coverage seriously. I mean I understand some brainwashed Russians from Estonia or Latvia but people on this forum? Or anyone else with half brain...

In the meantime glorious spring continues in London, plenty of people out and about. It took boat cruise yesterday expecting for it to be empty but it was actually quite full. People are clearly desperate to find something to do...


DSC08914 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

People enjoying the sun along the river:

DSC08934 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC08940 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Parks are full (here Battersea Park):

DSC09083 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC09086 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Cheers!

20210404_183208 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Unfortunately much colder from today:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1378420310224080902
I even saw a few snow flakes this morning.


----------



## tonttula

radamfi said:


> However, the medicine is available for use in all EU/EEA countries, even if some countries have chosen not to take advantage of that availability. Should Norway, for example, decide to resume use of the vaccine, they can do so immediately, because it has been approved by the EMA. The EMA has approved it, and the equivalent bodies in the UK and USA have approved it. Is there actually a comparable agency that has decided not to approve it?


AstraZeneca has not been approved in US still to my understanding.



radamfi said:


> Why do there have to be multiple agencies? It would be more efficient if the WHO approved medicines for the whole world.


WHO approving medicines for the whole would sounds like a beautiful idea. Countries and regions have different cultures around over the counter and prescription medicine approval process and what actually gets approved. Also, the reality is that FDA and EMA are the dominant regulators. These regions don't have a reason to let that power to be diluted and I'm sure example Japan has no interest to be part of some huge global approval process for every medicine. They work as the highest standard globally for receiving license to sell a drug in the market, but also indirectly work as form of protectionism for the region.

The likes of WHO already coordinate legislation. Recent example is prescription medicine track and trace that was driven by WHO to counter counterfeit prescription medicine and the intent has been implemented by US, EU, Turkey, China past 7 years. Ohers are essentially copying the systems of these regions/countries. Imo that's how it should be. Giving direct power to global approval would be just a political nightmare, even if that body I'm sure should be based on science and removed from geopolitics. Reality is usually different.

There are way simpler things like food contact regulation (FDA in US and ECHA in Europe) that is also regulated differently on each region and country. But the same applies just as above Most people don't understand just how huge the legislation is on what kind of coating can be used on the cardboard your big mac is delivered in and it is constantly living document.


----------



## spartannl

Snowing here too, The Hague...our backyard... about 4 degrees now, last week it was 24!


----------



## Kpc21

Snow today in Poland as well... In the northern regions.

Approving medicines on a worldwide level would be interesting but also quite complicated, as, for example, there happen to be medicines safe for the population of some regions and for some not. Public health is racist... But this is how it works and you won't change it.

An example is a painkiller metamizole. In many countries it's banned because of the high risk of side effects, namely something called agranulocytosis – but for example, the population of Poland (and many other Slavic counties) is practically not susceptible to these side effects. In some other parts of the world, the risk of these life-threatening side effects is high and therefore this drug has been withdrawn over there.

And another thing is that probably many countries (and many people!) would not like to delegate a part of the sovereignty to the worldwide level... People generally don't like concentration of power over a huge area or large population in the hands of a relatively small group, which can be seen in conspiracy theories. There is one about the "world government" that supposedly exists. Why is it evil according to those who believe in that?


----------



## MattiG

*When Maps Fail*

Digital map rendering sometimes fails miserably. The car navigator displays that we are about to cross a river or a lake about 300 meters wide:










This is what the official map tells us:










And here is the view through the windscreen:










Apparently, the navigator severely misinterpretes the purple line, which is the border of municipalities of Ikaalinen and Ylöjärvi in the hinterland.


----------



## geogregor

Situation in Poland really makes me mad at times. I hope young people will kick those attitudes away...






Sometimes I'm really glad I left all this nonsense behind...


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> Unfortunately much colder from today:
> 
> I even saw a few snow flakes this morning.





spartannl said:


> Snowing here too, The Hague...our backyard... about 4 degrees now, last week it was 24!





Kpc21 said:


> Snow today in Poland as well... In the northern regions.


You southerners are such whinies ;-) I came back from a late night trip in the Trondheim city forest an hour ago, where I most likely enjoyed the last local dry snow skiing of the year. The weather was changing from hail, thunder to snow storms, and no tracks were groomed today, but I was having a good time. But outside our coasts a ship is in trouble, and I guess the conditions are difficult across many mountain passes. I actually planned to do some gardening during Easter because we have had a long period with mild weather, but I decided to put it off....


----------



## Suburbanist

We had very dry powdery snow falling into Bergen, which I had never seen before. Reminds me of Rocky Mountain snow including its distinct sound when blown or crushed.


----------



## andken

Kpc21 said:


> An example is a painkiller metamizole. In many countries it's banned because of the high risk of side effects, namely something called agranulocytosis – but for example, the population of Poland (and many other Slavic counties) is practically not susceptible to these side effects.


It's safe. Metamizole is the most popular painkiller in Latin America and I don't know about any problem with it. I think that United States and Western Europe should legalize it - I think that the opioid crisis in the US would have been a lesser problem if people had access to this painkiller.


----------



## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> You southerners are such whinies ;-) I came back from a late night trip in the Trondheim city forest an hour ago, where I most likely enjoyed the last local dry snow skiing of the year. The weather was changing from hail, thunder to snow storms, and no tracks were groomed today, but I was having a good time. But outside our coasts a ship is in trouble, and I guess the conditions are difficult across many mountain passes. I actually planned to do some gardening during Easter because we have had a long period with mild weather, but I decided to put it off....
> View attachment 1314986
> View attachment 1314989
> View attachment 1314992
> View attachment 1314994


I actually like proper snowy winter. But that's not what you get in London. Winter here means rain, wind and greyness. 

Anyway, it is April and everyone is desperate for drinks and partying outside, especially this crazy year. I hope weather improves by April 12 when a lot of things will reopen in the UK, including beer gardens.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> I actually like proper snowy winter. But that's not what you get in London. Winter here means rain, wind and greyness.


Yes it's the same in the Netherlands. Basically six months out of the year with unpleasant weather, but not really a full out winter either. This winter had really only about 10 days of winter and the rest was an endless fall. Throw in an endless lockdown and you can see how monotonous life has become over the past 6 months. There is nothing to do. No winter sports, no family gatherings, no parties, no eating out, no visiting other places, nothing but sitting at home. Many people have noticeably gained weight.


----------



## Attus

geogregor said:


> Situation in Poland really makes me mad at times. I hope young people will kick those attitudes away...


You shouldn't watch Deutsche Welle. Their reports about Hungary are lies, lies and lies. No other opinions, no, factual lies.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> I actually like proper snowy winter. But that's not what you get in London. Winter here means rain, wind and greyness.
> 
> Anyway, it is April and everyone is desperate for drinks and partying outside, especially this crazy year. I hope weather improves by April 12 when a lot of things will reopen in the UK, including beer gardens.





ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes it's the same in the Netherlands. Basically six months out of the year with unpleasant weather, but not really a full out winter either. This winter had really only about 10 days of winter and the rest was an endless fall. Throw in an endless lockdown and you can see how monotonous life has become over the past 6 months. There is nothing to do. No winter sports, no family gatherings, no parties, no eating out, no visiting other places, nothing but sitting at home. Many people have noticeably gained weight.


Yes, sorry guys, I am just pulling your legs. Meanwhile, in the Norwegian Sea, we have some flying Dutchmen out of their home prisons.....





Update: The Dutch ship, from which all the sailors have been evaluated, is still drifting towards the coast. Some of its cargo, the green boat seen the video, has slid off the deck. However, it landed on the keel and is now drifting on its own...


----------



## geogregor

Attus said:


> You shouldn't watch Deutsche Welle. Their reports about Hungary are lies, lies and lies. No other opinions, no, factual lies.


Yes, DW is often overdramatic in their reporting. But situation in Poland is genuinely not great. It would be tempting to dismiss DW as silly propaganda. But sadly it is not that simple.

I still have family and friends in Poland. And most of them are not happy watching how things are going around them. Namely Poland becoming more like Hungary (no offence). 

I also know LGBT Poles here in the UK who don't want to go back. Not because they particularly love London but because they do feel uncomfortable in Poland.

To put it bluntly Polish politics and large parts of Polish state is a backward joke.


----------



## radamfi

There are significant advantages of NW European climate. It rarely gets too hot or too cold, meaning you don't need air conditioning and your heating costs are not as high as they would be in places with a continental climate. When it rains it is usually relatively light and not disruptive.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands and Germany are under a barrage of snow showers today, coming from the North Sea. The snow doesn't accumulate though, because temperatures are above freezing. There is a snow or hail shower every 10 - 20 minutes, followed by sunshine.


----------



## Coccodrillo

Stuu said:


> I think that is to do with anti-mafia laws... when I was in Italy 13 or 14 years ago I had to have my ID copied to use an internet cafe, the man there said it was to stop criminals using services which could be used for crime


That was the sort of security theatre governments love so much. I have even seen some automated kiosks, basically a computer with a coin counter where you could surf the internet, which had a camera where you had to show your pass. I don't know if and how these checked you were the owner of the document or if that was authentic.

Another kind of security theatre is performed on Spanish main high speed stations., where you have to pass your baggage throught X-ray scanners. This doesn't happen on regional trains, but neither (AFAIK) at minor stations served by high speed trains, so it is likely that on the same train some people have had their bagagge "checked" and some not.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands and Germany are under a barrage of snow showers today, coming from the North Sea. The snow doesn't accumulate though, because temperatures are above freezing. There is a snow or hail shower every 10 - 20 minutes, followed by sunshine.


It has reached us as well. Today morning it was snowing just like the middle of the winter.


----------



## AnelZ

Sarajevo is covered with a nice layer of snow which will have to be plowed as warmer weather is only forecasted from Thursday and without minus from Saturday (and finally above 10 degrees Celsius). It is forecasted that tomorrow and Wednesday the temperature during the night could get below -5C.

Edit after 2-3 hours: it finally stopped and there is around 8-10 cm of snow, on some spots it goes to 15 cm. I would guess the conditions on the mountains are probably quite good for skiing.


----------



## Kpc21

andken said:


> It's safe. Metamizole is the most popular painkiller in Latin America and I don't know about any problem with it. I think that United States and Western Europe should legalize it - I think that the opioid crisis in the US would have been a lesser problem if people had access to this painkiller.


Whether this drug is dangerous or not depends on one specific gene. Which populations of some regions of the world have, some don't. Maybe it's safe for you in South America either.



Attus said:


> You shouldn't watch Deutsche Welle. Their reports about Hungary are lies, lies and lies. No other opinions, no, factual lies.


I've no time to watch that video, but indeed there were enormous protests in Poland several months ago about sex-related issues. On a scale unseen, I believe, since the end of the WW2. The protests were absolutely peaceful, although the protesters were saying (and singing) vulgar words about the government. There were some very minor devastation incidents. The government, in the public media, depicts them as hooligans and "Antifa fighters", focusing only on these minor devastation cases, where some protesters were even voluntarily repairing what someone broke or damaged (and which could equally well be provocation).

The truth is that while abortion in some specific cases is legal in Poland, doctors and hospitals are afraid of the potential legal consequences and avoid doing it even if scientific arguments indicate that in this specific case abortion should be done, e.g. because keeping the pregnancy could permanently damage the health of the mother. There are areas of the country with very limited access to contraception medicines. I've read about cases where a local gynecologist refused some young women prescribing contraception medicines "because at this age one should already get pregnant", in consequence, they were getting these prescriptions... from a local vet (vets are allowed to prescribe human medicines because they are sometimes used in the treatment of animals, if there is no equivalent of the drug made specifically for animals).

There is also practically no sex education. Because... the church would like to get a monopoly for that, and you can guess, how it would then look like. And the situation of LGBT people... Better not to talk about it. The government claims all the time that they have equal rights with all other citizens and that all what you hear from them is "evil LGBT propaganda". Which actually isn't true; they cannot form official relationships, not to say about same-sex marriages.

Psychological care... Either you pay you-know-yourself-how-much for a visit at a psychologist, or you wait long months for a visit at one of the public healthcare, who won't necessarily be one who will work well for you.

In my opinion, the LGBT or pro-choice activists often go too far with their requests, e.g. I can't see anything wrong with putting always someone's biological sex in all official documents; at least this is something permanent; legalizing ALL abortion is also not OK for me. But there are enormous problems, which the current government just denies, of course being influenced by the Catholic church to do so. And this is something impossible to change under the current government's rule, because it's thanks to the Church how they won the elections.


By the way, talking about government and security. Now we have a census in Poland. It's supposed to be made mostly online, like, you enter a website and you put all your data there. And there are obviously large doubts about the security of all the data.

One of the most ridiculous things from the security perspective is that... you access the form by entering your national identification number (PESEL) and your mother's maiden name. Data which aren't really secret. Knowing someone's PESEL and his mother's maiden name, you can fill in the form in his name. Putting wrong data. And then, the actual person not only cannot send his own data to the census, but he can also get fined for actually sending WRONG DATA.

The General Statistics Office, who organizes this census, asked if they will change that, as this is a major security vulnerability in the system, replied... that they won't do it, because people are safe. Nobody will send wrong data in someone's name because it is illegal. 

Well... if stealing is illegal, why do I then need to lock the doors of my home?


----------



## cinxxx

Afaik,metamizole is available in Germany, I bought it a few months ago.
See picture:


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> Nobody will send wrong data in someone's name because it is illegal.
> 
> Well... if stealing is illegal, why do I then need to lock the doors of my home?


Did they seriously say that? That's properly crazy... I'm sure the rest of the world can't wait to learn how Poland has managed to stop people doing things which are illegal


----------



## Kpc21

cinxxx said:


> Afaik,metamizole is available in Germany, I bought it a few months ago.


In Poland it's called Pyralgina and it's an over-the-counter drug, it can even be bought in grocery stores or at gas stations:










The picture suggests it works fast 



Stuu said:


> Did they seriously say that? That's properly crazy... I'm sure the rest of the world can't wait to learn how Poland has managed to stop people doing things which are illegal


Yes and this is the main news now on the website of the General Statistics Office (GUS)... 

It's here: <strong> Oświadczenie rzecznika prasowego Prezesa Głównego Urzędu Statystycznego ws. logowania do formularza spisowego przy użyciu numeru PESEL </strong>



> In response to the information raised in the public space about the possibility of using data and logging in to the census form without authorization, first of all I am pointing out that this activity is a violation of the currently valid law.
> 
> All the data processed by the public statistics are safe ans subject to special protection (statistic confidentiality). I am also pointing out that impersonating someone else's identity in order to log in to the census form is a crime, according to Article 190a of the Penal Code. The GUS will report every such incident to the police and to the Internal Security Agency (ABW).
> 
> I also inform that due to the legal obligation introduced in the National Census Act to take part in the census over the Internet, the GUS has prepared several options of logging in to the form:
> 1. Through the National Electronic Identification Node (login.gov.pl: trusted profile, online banking)
> 2. By using the PESEL number and the mother's maiden name
> 3. By a specially assigned password, in case of the people not having a PESEL number
> 
> The methods mentioned were tested in two trial censuses in 2019 and 2020. All the logging in options were tested by the public statistics services and they guarantee the possibility to use the form safely.
> 
> If anyone ever identifies an event of someone impersonating his identity, he should notify the GUS immediately by:
> – the form: <URL address> (selecting the topic: "Censuses")
> or
> – the census hotline, under the number <phone number> (the hotline is active from 8 AM to 6 PM and is operated by the public statistics employees)
> 
> After reporting the incident, the GUS will undertake immediately the appropriate steps to verify the information and data, placing the true data in the form and to notify the police and the ABW.
> 
> The logging in methods available will not be changed.
> 
> /-/ Karolina Banasek
> The GUS Director's spokeswoman


----------



## andken

Kpc21 said:


> Whether this drug is dangerous or not depends on one specific gene. Which populations of some regions of the world have, some don't. Maybe it's safe for you in South America either.


We have plenty of people with European genes. But I think that after the opiate crisis more countries should consider legalizing it, it can't be more dangerous than some of the alternatives. ;-)


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands and Germany are under a barrage of snow showers today, coming from the North Sea. The snow doesn't accumulate though, because temperatures are above freezing. There is a snow or hail shower every 10 - 20 minutes, followed by sunshine.


Here we got between 15 and 30 cm of snow and deep freeze. Most of Slovenia woke up at about -5°C but there were record April numbers with below -20°C, even -25°C in one settlement in the south. Most this year's fruit is believed to be destroyed with morning freeze.


----------



## Attus

Leading Hungarian oppositional politicians say, if they win the elections next year, they will abolish the freedom of the press and they will abolish the rule of law. 
And no, it is not a bad translation, not my bad English, they actually say they'd do that. And they are supported by many Western European government and Western European press.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> You shouldn't watch Deutsche Welle. Their reports about Hungary are lies, lies and lies. No other opinions, no, factual lies.


Fixed


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> Leading Hungarian oppositional politicians say, if they win the elections next year, they will abolish the freedom of the press and they will abolish the rule of law.
> And no, it is not a bad translation, not my bad English, they actually say they'd do that. And they are supported by many Western European government and Western European press.


Last year, we replaced the 12-year-in-office-corrupted-government with a clown who promised to establish the "law" and order. This government is even more horrible and is only a year in office. Oh, I have forgotten, actually, the government fell apart as some ministers resigned due to the prime minister purchasing a delivery of Sputnik V. But the "new" government is the same and all ministers returned. Just the prime minister swapped with the finance minister. However, the finance minister is now a guy, who almost failed to graduate a financial management program and owns a fortune, obviously transmitted to his wife, so he is now officially the poorest politician in whole Slovakia.

This crisis/pandemic indeed changed a lot. At least my perception.

Btw. sorry for vanishing. I had some issues in my job. I am about to start a tiny enterprise and my wife is pregnant again


----------



## geogregor

Fun in Northern Ireland:









Belfast: Rioting 'was worst seen in Northern Ireland in years'


Police were attacked and petrol bombs thrown in the latest disorder close to a Belfast peaceline.



www.bbc.co.uk














It looks like shit is kicking off there, riots few nights in a row now...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

keber said:


> Here we got between 15 and 30 cm of snow and deep freeze. Most of Slovenia woke up at about -5°C but there were record April numbers with below -20°C, even -25°C in one settlement in the south. Most this year's fruit is believed to be destroyed with morning freeze.


----------



## keber

Those are official numbers, which are new record, but there are also private weather stations, and one of them measured record low -25.8°C:





Rekordno nizke temperature: v Retjah -25,8 stopinje Celzija #video - siol.net







siol.net


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

No extreme cold temperatures here in central Norway, but the contrasts over the last week have been large. A week back the first brave flowers had started to bloom, now ski tracks are groomed right into residential areas (from approx 150 m altitude up to ~500 m) both east and west of Trondheim.

It is a bit unusual to get so large snow falls so late, but last year we in fact had a similar snow fall about a month later....




























Webcam Nilsbyen


----------



## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Meanwhile, in the Norwegian Sea, we have some flying Dutchmen out of their home prisons.....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Update: The Dutch ship, from which all the sailors have been evaluated, is still drifting towards the coast. Some of its cargo, the green boat seen the video, has slid off the deck. However, it landed on the keel and is now drifting on its own...


Boskalis has rescued the ship. Apparently there were long discussions with the Norwegian authorities about boarding the ship, the Norwegians thought this was too dangerous and they thought the ship wouldn't reached the coast as quickly, but Boskalis got the green light once the ship was nearing the Stad peninsula and the situation became more dire. They towed the ship to a fjord where the circumstances are more controllable. 

Boskalis / Smit International is quite legendary in international maritime salvage. They raised the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk, worked on the Costa Concordia recovery, salvaged the sunken container ship MOL Comfort, removed the Suez Canal blockade, amongst many others. Apparently there are not many companies that do this kind of work internationally.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Smit Salvage has an impressive portfolio, but it is a bit unclear to me what role they have had in rescuing Eemslift Hendrika. The coast authorities took control of the operation when the ship closed in on the Norwegian coast faster than expected due to the risk of pollution. Both towing ships were Norwegian, but ordered by Smit Salvage. In addition a Norwegian coast guard ship was following the operation. Not sure which helicopters were used.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

These people usually work on two fronts: a team of engineers with computer models to predict future developments, and a team that is airlifted to the site. They usually don't have their own vessels or aircraft available on such short notice.

According to the CEO, the computer model guys predicted that the ship would drift close to the Norwegian coast faster than the Norwegian authorities believed. They turn out to be correct, so they gained approval and had to quickly start their operation to board the ship. They wanted to do this at daylight but the delays with Norwegian approval caused this to be at nightfall.

Similarly with the Suez Canal blockade, they used computer models to calculate the ship's movement and weight distribution, they started with this before another team arrived in Egypt. The CEO said that it was very difficult to get the blueprints for the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk, which delayed the operation and created some operational hazards.


----------



## spartannl

“... In addition to cargo both above and below deck, on board the Eemslift Hendrika is approximately 350 tonnes of heavy oil and 50 tonnes of diesel. A green workboat that was previously on deck was lost overboard, but apparently spotted in the area still afloat and retrieved.” 









Salvors Rescue Eemslift Hendrika in Last-Ditch Effort Off Norway


A salvage team was successful in securing a tow line to the Eemslift Hendrika and the vessel is now under tow to Ålesund, the Norwegian Coastal Administration has confirmed. At...




gcaptain.com


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## PovilD

geogregor said:


> Fun in Northern Ireland:
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> Belfast: Rioting 'was worst seen in Northern Ireland in years'
> 
> 
> Police were attacked and petrol bombs thrown in the latest disorder close to a Belfast peaceline.
> 
> 
> 
> www.bbc.co.uk
> 
> 
> 
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> 
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> 
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> 
> It looks like shit is kicking off there, riots few nights in a row now...


Covid changed it all. All those far away lands news are indeed just for you eating popcorn, how on Earth the rest of The World could be affected by N. Ireland issues. (if you compare that it was not the case with Wuhan crisis in 2020).


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## radamfi

When I was a kid growing up in the 80s, Northern Ireland was in the news pretty much every day and most people knew the names of small towns in the province, like Omagh, Enniskillen, Strabane, Dungannon and Newry. They became more famous than many much larger towns in England.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^Let us hope those days do not return


ChrisZwolle said:


> These people usually work on two fronts: a team of engineers with computer models to predict future developments, and a team that is airlifted to the site. They usually don't have their own vessels or aircraft available on such short notice.


I found an English (compact) version of events from Kystverket (Norwegian Coastal Administration) confirming that there indeed were Smit people on deck. But the operation was run/coordinated by Kystverket rather than the ship owner (or insurance company or Smit?) which was the case in earlier phases.





Eemslift Hendrika towed to safe harbour


A lot happened during some hectic hours last night, Wednesday 7th of April. First, the Norwegian Coastal Administration mobilized according to their contingency plan against acute pollution, salvage crews managed to get on board the drifting vessel Eemslift Hendrika and managed to connect it to...




www.kystverket.no


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## geogregor

I love accent of this guy 






It looks like they are removing toll booths at Florida Turnpike









70-mile stretch of turnpike through Central Florida going cashless


You soon will be unable to pay cash for some toll roads in Central Florida.




www.clickorlando.com


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## x-type

spartannl said:


> “... In addition to cargo both above and below deck, on board the Eemslift Hendrika is approximately 350 tonnes of heavy oil and 50 tonnes of diesel. A green workboat that was previously on deck was lost overboard, but apparently spotted in the area still afloat and retrieved.”
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Salvors Rescue Eemslift Hendrika in Last-Ditch Effort Off Norway
> 
> 
> A salvage team was successful in securing a tow line to the Eemslift Hendrika and the vessel is now under tow to Ålesund, the Norwegian Coastal Administration has confirmed. At...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> gcaptain.com


The green one is a cute boatie


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## DanielFigFoz

radamfi said:


> There are significant advantages of NW European climate. It rarely gets too hot or too cold, meaning you don't need air conditioning and your heating costs are not as high as they would be in places with a continental climate. When it rains it is usually relatively light and not disruptive.


Yes, I quite like British weather. I mean, I do like heat and snow and all but it is nice and pratical here most of the time. I can imagine it's tough for people who can't stand the greyness though.

I remember coming back to the UK for Christmas one time when I was living in Portugal as a child and finding that the grey and the dark red bricks which I had always known before emigrating suddenly all hurt my eyes until I got used to them again. Funnily enough I really love red bricks now and I think the light rain brings out the beauty in our surroundings.


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## ChrisZwolle

More and more people in the Netherlands are installing A/C in their house nowadays, especially after the past few summers which had intense heat waves. 

My apartment is made of thick concrete walls. However once the heat has gotten inside, it doesn't get out easily, which means 4-5 days of 30+ degrees means my house is uncomfortably hot for 2-3 weeks. Especially at night.


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## bogdymol

^^ I had this problem too. While I lived in Romania, only the A/C would have solved this issue.

However, in Austria the nights are not that hot, so on the hottest summer days, in the evening, as well as early in the morning, I open 2 windows that are farthest apart between them, and let the wind do its job: get the hot air out and bring fresh & cooler air inside. 10-15 minutes of this usually solves the problem here. It also helps that the house is well insulated.


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## ChrisZwolle

If I open all the windows at night the temperature will drop temporarily but it goes back up within half an hour of closing the windows, the heat is absorbed in the walls. A problem in the Netherlands is that during heat waves, there is usually almost no wind after sunset, so it's difficult or impossible to get an airflow through the house.


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## DanielFigFoz

Yes, I have AC in the UK but I live on the 16th floor of quite a glassy building. On the other hand I don't need to put the heating on in winter.


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## radamfi

bogdymol said:


> ^^ I had this problem too. While I lived in Romania, only the A/C would have solved this issue.


Isn't it supposed to be hot in Romania in summer anyway?

A work colleague who grew up in Sri Lanka complained to me that she found the London summers too hot (this was during one of the recent heatwaves). I was surprised because I thought she would be used to hot weather. But after further investigation I found out that whilst Sri Lanka is usually much warmer than London, the record temperature is lower than London. For example in Colombo, the record temperature for any month is only a few degrees above the average high.









Colombo - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





Whereas in London the average high in August is 23.2 and the record high is 38.1.


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## bogdymol

radamfi said:


> Isn't it supposed to be hot in Romania in summer anyway?


Yes it is. That's why we had A/C.


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## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> But after further investigation I found out that whilst Sri Lanka is usually much warmer than London, the record temperature is lower than London. For example in Colombo, the record temperature for any month is only a few degrees above the average high.


Tropical climates usually don't have much temperature variation. There are some tropical climates that have a hot dry season and a warm wet season, for example in parts of West Africa, where the dry season temperatures reach higher than in other tropical climates. But otherwise the temperate regions of the earth tend to have higher record highs than in the tropics. For example London has a higher record than Accra or Jakarta.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

radamfi said:


> A work colleague who grew up in Sri Lanka complained to me that she found the London summers too hot (this was during one of the recent heatwaves).


In England it _is_ quite hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Inside, that is....

In Norway today, people got agitated from other reasons than weather.
1. The former Swedish prime minister made a tweet (did he not watch Fawlty Towers?)

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1380469886007316484
Factually what he is writing is not wrong. Sweden probably had a stronger defense as expected since it also back then was by far the most populous country. And, it probably would have been some kind of fight if Germany had invaded. But, even if it has been a long time since Bildt had an official role in the Swedish government, the tweet made on the 61st anniversary of the German invasion of Denmark and Norway made a bit of a stir. Not mainly because it took Germany 62 days to get control of Norway (longest of the countries Germany had invaded until then, and longer than e.g. France and Poland). Most Norwegians agree that the country was largely unprepared. A far more important reason for the controversy is that the Swedish role during WW2 was quite controversial, allowing free passage of German troops and access to their iron ore. A tweet even brought in Thatcher:




I should hasten to say that there is and was no widespread bitterness in Norway regarding our neighbor wartime action, as Sweden, in particularly towards the end of the war, was an important free haven for Jews and other Norwegians fleeing the Nazis. Unfortunately, most of the Norwegian Jews realized the full danger too late.

2. An outspoken conspiracy theory maker/believer, anti-vaccer, and non-believer in the seriousness of Covid-19 has died from, well, it seems Covid-19, as one of only a few hundreds in Norway. Some of his fans of course believe he was murdered, while the health authorities are having a hard time tracking Corona spread from his recent meetings, as the participants are less than cooperative. And tomorrow some of the same people will hold a demonstration in Oslo.

3. Just in the week when the rare, but serious, blood clotting /low blood plate condition has been accepted as a rare side effect of the AZ vaccine by EMA, similar conditions have been detected in a few patients vaccinated with Janssen in the US. If this side effect is common for all the virus vector vaccines (which also include e. g. Sputnik, Norway, and maybe other countries, must make some tough decisions. In Norway's case, not using Astrazeneca and Janssen, but only Moderna and Pfizer would mean a delay of maybe two months before full vaccination is achieved. Does anyone has any intelligence on the time schedule of Curevac?

Points 1&3 remind me of a theory I have heard on why Sweden responded so differently to Covid-19 than most other countries: It has been a very long time since they have experienced any serious crisis or war. Sweden's last war was with Norway in 1814.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

The spring snow continues in Norway, and except some areas in the east, there has been accumulation all over Norway over the last week. In some areas by more than a meter, as indicated by dark blue in the map below estimated by a model and provided in senorge.no - xgeo.no. 








Another indicator of the conditions are the locations where ski tracks have been groomed lately:








Timer: Hours 
Dager: Days


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## ChrisZwolle

Remember GDPR coming into force three years ago? Especially American news websites geoblocked all EU traffic because their websites didn't conform to GDPR standards for data protection.

Some websites, for example those in the USA Today network, have implemented an EU version for their website (seems to be the same content, but with fewer data collection). However some websites still block all incoming EU traffic, like Fox5 in San Diego:


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## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> I found this map: _The countries and territories on the map have a *net average monthly salary * (adjusted for living costs in PPP) _
> 
> Look at how far Portugal is behind the rest of Western Europe. They are even being overtaken by the eastern EU countries. Portugal has a mix of low incomes and high cost of living.


It's interesting. Take a look from my perspective 

Our Lithuanian motorway signage is for a country where you could expect $1400-1600 wage  Around Belarus and Ukraine, maybe slightly better at times.
Portugal is probably between Poland, and Czechia, but here you get something like $2220, but in reality you have worse than both Lithuania and Latvia (and Romania!), the countries (Lithuania, Latvia) who had slower recover from 2009 economic crisis, and it's not too clear how we recover from this one since I saw data from March that net migration is not on our side again after around a year and hald. Interestingly, I feel kinda reliefed toward Lithuania for a country with such a low start. It's just demographical issues that can move in either direction.

---
Ok, jokes and thoughts aside, my friend who is a public transport bus driver told me that he has Portuguese working in his workplace. It got me instant thoughts: what's going on Portugal that technically "Western European" works in such so Eastern European/Post-Soviet workplace. Here, many 50-year olds work who mostly know only Russian as foreign language, and the atmosphere is also typical 50-year old Post-Soviet people dominated. It's from the series from me, like imagining a random fairly typical Dutchman (also Western European) working in Ukrainian medium town public transport system.


----------



## geogregor

Stuu said:


> People have gone a bit nuts. I've just driven down the M5 south of Bristol, absolutely solid with people with caravans and motorhomes or otherwise obviously going on holiday. People have been queuing since 7 to go to Primark. Mental


Forget about shopping, pubs are crucial to the nation's well-being  

So, morning wasn't too promising, it was actually snowing when I was at work. 

20210412_073936 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

I almost wrote the day off.

But later the weather improved so I hit my usual joint. The garden was properly full and in the sun it was very pleasant indeed. 


20210412_161204 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

First proper Guinness in a few months:

20210412_160734 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Of course it wasn't the only drink this afternoon 

20210412_164544 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


20210412_174013 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

I was lucky when I arrived, I didn't have to wait. Later there was a queue to get into garden:


20210412_180857 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Overall it was a very decent afternoon, small touch of normality in these shitty times.


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## PovilD

geogregor said:


> From today pubs are open for outdoor drinking.
> 
> Despite freezing weather it didn't stop some people from heading to pub right after midnight:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Drinkers brave freezing cold for midnight pints as pub gardens reopen in England
> 
> 
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> 
> That's what I call " true British spirit"


...when UK started doing OK somewhat after that Brexit/covid period, it seems Lithuanians started to move there again in proportions where our net migration is now negative again (more moving out than moving in). What a weird World when you think.

It's just is unclear if it's temporary or we will see another wave of moving out (more known as "emigration"). I kinda expected this will happen in summer 2021.



__ https://www.facebook.com/zygimantas.mauricas/posts/10158317738597371


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## geogregor

PovilD said:


> ...when UK started doing OK somewhat after that Brexit/covid period, it seems Lithuanians started to move there again in proportions where our net migration is now negative again (more moving out than moving in). What a weird World when you think.
> 
> It's just is unclear if it's temporary or we will see another wave of moving out (more known as "emigration"). I kinda expected this will happen in summer 2021.
> 
> 
> 
> __ https://www.facebook.com/zygimantas.mauricas/posts/10158317738597371


Could you translate what exactly this graph says? Is it net migration? Where is the source of the data?


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## PovilD

geogregor said:


> Could you translate what exactly this graph says? Is it net migration? Where are the data from?


His source is Lithuanian department of statistics. I didn't checked the data since I rely on him. He shares this data at times. I don't think he made a mistake there although there were at least one debunk where he mixed up something with climate data 

As for translation:

He expects that we will have short drop in migration, if not, we will have problems. He fears for prolonged lockdowns, and if we don't open economy sooner, young people will move to richer countries. He didn't mentioned that, but I think he thinks other countries will be freeier for some reason (like probably UK right now is slowly opening with good vaccination program (fingers crossed due to variants)). Many young people work in leisure sector which is closed.

Emigration as a whole would make our recovery slower, likely slower than other countries (although is interesting what processes are happening in other CEE countries this winter and if Lithuania is an exception (kinda is with unemployement rate though)).


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## PovilD

Unemployment itself is now higher than in 2009:


https://take-profit.org/en/statistics/unemployment-rate/lithuania/










The drop potentially could be amortized by this new wave(?). It could have happened already in early to mid 2010s when many people moved out.


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## geogregor

PovilD said:


> His source is Lithuanian department of statistics. I didn't checked the data since I rely on him. He shares this data at times. I don't think he made a mistake there although there were at least one debunk where he mixed up something with climate data


So, is it movement of people per month? Numbers with minus mean more people leaving Lithuania than arriving?


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## sponge_bob

Bastard. 


geogregor said:


> First proper Guinness in a few months:
> 
> 20210412_160734 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


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## Dikan011

Not a big fan of Guinness. Maybe with some food, like a good steak, but not on an empty stomach. Nice weather though!


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## radamfi

Dikan011 said:


> Not a big fan of Guinness. Maybe with some food, like a good steak, but not on an empty stomach. Nice weather though!


The BBC made a special short video to explain why it is so cold, yet it feels warm in the sun









Why is it so cold?


BBC Weather presenter, Owain Wyn Evans, explains the chilly temperatures and teaches us a new word.



www.bbc.com


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## PovilD

geogregor said:


> So, is it movement of people per month? Numbers with minus mean more people leaving Lithuania than arriving?


Yes


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## ChrisZwolle

In Oakland, California:

_This morning, a CHP Oakland Officer attempted to make a speed stop on a Maserati SUV. The Maserati accelerated to over 100 MPH and a pursuit ensued. Shortly after, the Maserati exited the freeway, drove up an embankment, and collided with the underside of the freeway. _


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## geogregor

There is a lot of noise about number of deaths in Brazil. I think people forget how populous this country is. Per capita situation in Brazil is not that much worse than for example in Poland:










Yet, you don't hear world media reporting scary stories from Poland...


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## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> I think people forget how populous this country is.


I've noticed this too with the reporting on Brazil and how people view the country. Most people know it's 'fairly big' in area, but the 210 million people account for half the population of the entire South American continent: Brazil has the same population as all of Western Europe, or all other South American countries combined. 

Similarly, most people don't know how big Mexico is. It has a population of 126 million, being only somewhat smaller than Russia. In regards to the coronavirus, there is basically no reporting about Mexico despite it having the third highest number of covid deaths in the world.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> Per capita situation in Brazil is not that much worse than for example in Poland:


According to the statistics.


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## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> According to the statistics.


Sure. We can of course only speculate how big the real figures are.

The best measure are the excess deaths as they are most comparable between countries and most difficult to manipulate.

By that measure Poland also seems to underreport Covid cases. Also, we have to wait for the numbers as there is often lag or a few weeks.

So we will be able to compare current excess mortality probably in May.

The latest graphic I could find:










The really badly affected country is Peru, and yet we hear much less about it than about Brazil. Death rate more than doubled there (comparing to standard mortality), in badly affected European countries it grew by around 20% by comparison.


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## mgk920

geogregor said:


> Forget about shopping, pubs are crucial to the nation's well-being


Or its very existence - The entire 🇺🇸 American Revolution 🇺🇸 was plotted and planned late at night over tankards of ale 🍺 at local taverns.



Mike


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## mgk920

ChrisZwolle said:


> In Oakland, California:
> 
> _This morning, a CHP Oakland Officer attempted to make a speed stop on a Maserati SUV. The Maserati accelerated to over 100 MPH and a pursuit ensued. Shortly after, the Maserati exited the freeway, drove up an embankment, and collided with the underside of the freeway. _


Poor car....



Mike


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## andken

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> According to the statistics.


The issue in Brazil is not so much the undercounting of deaths(Although I've heard that people were dying less of other things), the real issue is that our population is _much _younger than Poland's. And the biggest problem is that Bolsonaro became a good excuse for European politicians to pass the buck of their poor handling of the pandemic while the poor handling of the pandemic from the Europeans is also a good excuse for politicians in LatAm(Including, but not limiting to Bolsonaro) to also pass the buck. Politicians are using other politicians as excuses(And the Japanese that were right to force their Prime Minister to quit for his awful response to the pandemic).

Yes, there were no national lockdowns, but there were several restrictions from states and municipalities, and even if they opened indoor dining during the Southern Hemisphere summer you don't go inside any type of business without masks. Some weeks ago I went to a something remote waterfall, when I was coming home I did a stop at a gas station, and began eating outside(I had brought lunch-or dinner- from home). Then, some cops appeared to check me, because I was unmasked(Outside).

Since Brazil did not have a national, strict lockdown people think that everything is normal here. But it really is not. But as I pointed out, playing in the same league as Bolsonaro is not a good excuse because he is really awful and really incompetent.


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## ChrisZwolle

The government of the state of São Paulo has a Flickr account that is updated every day. It shows the politicians with a mask for a year now. Even more than in Europe. Blaming it all on Bolsonaro is just your typical media reporting that is catering to people's existing biases. As seen in the graph posted earlier, other South American countries have a high death rate as well (especially Peru stands out).

Especially in the Netherlands people do not understand how federal governments work. They don't understand that governments at a lower level have much more powers and responsibilities in a federal system than Dutch provinces. And that's in a country where both its neighbors are federal states.










Governo do Estado de São Paulo


Explore Governo do Estado de São Paulo’s 108,451 photos on Flickr!




www.flickr.com





I followed this account because it had frequent updates about road projects in the state, but not so much over the past year.


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## Attus

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> One of the charteristics of the COVID-19 pandemic is that the infection is very unevenly distributed,, with minorities being overrepresented in many countries.


It is almost everywhere in Western Europe so. However, those on the left political side usually try to forbid to speak about it, so it's very difficult to make researches.


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## radamfi

England opened up the vaccinations for my age group on Tuesday and I managed to get an appointment as soon as yesterday. I took the AZ vaccine. As part of the consent I had to listen to them explain the possibility of blood clots but they made it quite clear how unlikely that would be. I feel fine so far but if I suddenly disappear from the forum...


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## radamfi

Attus said:


> It is almost everywhere in Western Europe so. However, those on the left political side usually try to forbid to speak about it, so it's very difficult to make researches.


There was quite a bit of reporting about the over-representation of BAME in Covid deaths in the UK especially in London in the early days of the pandemic. For example Coronavirus: What's the risk for ethnic minorities?


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## andken

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I guess it would be a matter of future research to identify the causes of these differences between country background. Particularly striking is the difference between the people of Pakistani background and all others. I guess there could be both genetic and other reasons.


From what I read Pakistanis in Europe are very likely to live in multigenerational homes or with very close proximity with relatives. It's one of the reasons why the pandemic hit LatAm SO hard.


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## ChrisZwolle

MattiG said:


> So, the mortgage system in the Netherlands is based on fixed interest rates?


Yes, though it is dependent on the duration of the fixed interest rate for mortgage. For example if you choose to fix your interest rate at a longer term, the interest is typically higher than if you fix it to a shorter term. However if you set the fixed interest rate for a long term (longer than 10 years), banks often allow a higher mortgage. The lowest interest rate typically applies for short duration, though these usually don't allow as high of a mortgage. It's a bit of a tradeoff for both the risk to the bank and the homeonwer. 

But with interest rates so low, people manage to fix their interest rate for 30 years for around or even under 2%. This was unthinkable even 4 years ago.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

radamfi said:


> England opened up the vaccinations for my age group on Tuesday and I managed to get an appointment as soon as yesterday. I took the AZ vaccine. As part of the consent I had to listen to them explain the possibility of blood clots but they made it quite clear how unlikely that would be. I feel fine so far but if I suddenly disappear from the forum...


The official UK number of the serious blood clotting side effects more than doubled today, though, up by 96 to 175. I would probably have taken the vaccine as well, but maybe not recommended it to my wife and kids. Around here the trust in it has shattered, and taking it in again would probably jeapordize the the public support of the whole vaccination program.


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## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands has vaccinated 4.2 million people as of today. That is a 30% increase in 2 weeks, the AstraZeneca issues have not caused a major slowdown, in fact the past two weeks had the highest number of vaccinations, now at around 100,000 per day. The Dutch vaccination rate has now exceeded the EU average for the first time, though most European countries have a very similar vaccination rate, with some outliers like Hungary and obviously the UK.


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## PovilD

Lithuania ended this week with 20% vaccinated. I guess 30-40% of population has some sort of immunity (vaccine + infection). Despite case growth, death rate remain relatively stable, hospitalisations are slightly increasing, probably due to 50-year olds not being vaccinated (but some older too). Yet we remain at easing the restrictions course. It's hard to say anything. I'm good with what it's now. Don't want any strenghtening of restrictions, but I don't feel it's time to easen restrictions. Only thing I think would be good to easen is outdoor dining. Good ventilation reduces the spread of viruses, but people should not meet in big crowds, up to three people is enough on one table.

I'm continuing with some social distancing for some time, but when cases will drop below 100 for 100,000 considering I think I may thinking to stop (although I may completely stop when they will stop isolating suspected (and maybe even confirmed) cases which was always patchy enough that we see epidemic all around Europe).


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## radamfi

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> The official UK number of the serious blood clotting side effects more than doubled today, though, up by 96 to 175. I would probably have taken the vaccine as well, but maybe not recommended it to my wife and kids. Around here the trust in it has shattered, and taking it in again would probably jeapordize the the public support of the whole vaccination program.


175 out of 20 million is still very low risk and has to be balanced against the risk of getting seriously ill with Covid. The usual side effects don't seem as bad as for the Pfizer vaccine. My partner and my best friend's wife have already had two doses of Pfizer and felt horrible for two days afterwards. My friend works with care homes and they have complained about the Pfizer side effects as well. My side effects so far have not been so bad. I feel a bit weak at times and couldn't sleep very well on Thursday night but that's it so far.


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## geogregor

Stuu said:


> I live in Taunton, I grew up here, then moved to London and then came back a few years ago. It's a good location as it's half an hour to Bristol, and 1.5 hours to Paddington by train, or 15 minutes drive to the sea or out to the hills. It took a while getting used to not being able to buy a burrito or whatever on the way to work, but then again I have never been told not to leave my home by the police because there has been a drive by shooting, so ups and downs!


Ah, I pass it on a train sometimes, when we go to visit sister of my other half who lives in Totnes. I like South West of England but for me it is a bit too far from civilization 

I would say it is a bit far to relocate from London, even if you don't have to be in office too often. Even if workwise it would be fine you would completely cut off your social networks as it is too far to maintain them effectively. Which is interesting aspect not touched so far in most debates on the subject of relocations. There is a lot of argument that people are simply motivated by work access and cost of housing and will relocate just based on that. I'm not so sure. People have friends, families, kids have friends in schools etc. I suspect the "mass movement" because of increased home working will be much less "mass", and also more local, than some expect. Some people will go back to where they came from to London (like yourself) but for many it is not an option. I'm definitely not going back to Poland  After 16 years London is my home.

Anyway, Taunton and surroundings look more like option for folks from Bristol than from London.



radamfi said:


> The usual side effects don't seem as bad as for the Pfizer vaccine. My partner and my best friend's wife have already had two doses of Pfizer and felt horrible for two days afterwards. My friend works with care homes and they have complained about the Pfizer side effects as well. My side effects so far have not been so bad. I feel a bit weak at times and couldn't sleep very well on Thursday night but that's it so far.


I had Pfizer vaccine and didn't have any side effects whatsoever. Unless you count a sore arm for a few hours but I wouldn't really call it a side effect. 



andken said:


> From what I read Pakistanis in Europe are very likely to live in multigenerational homes or with very close proximity with relatives. It's one of the reasons why the pandemic hit LatAm SO hard.


That is one of the factors often quoted here in the UK. Multigenerational living among many people from immigrant background. Partially due to culture, partially due to poverty.



PovilD said:


> Yet we remain at easing the restrictions course. It's hard to say anything. I'm good with what it's now. Don't want any strenghtening of restrictions, but I don't feel it's time to easen restrictions. Only thing I think would be good to easen is outdoor dining. Good ventilation reduces the spread of viruses, but people should not meet in big crowds, up to three people is enough on one table.


London was busy yesterday. As we can only drink and eat outside in central London many streets are closed too traffic, at least from the afternoon, and many restaurants an bars erect something like this:

DSC09418 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

But many places take advantage of any space available:

DSC09575 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC09576 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

It is good to see London buzzing again. My friend told me that Soho was packed last night. Oh, and track & trace is a bit of hit and miss. I haven't leave my details anywhere yet since reopening of pub gardens  



> I'm continuing with some social distancing for some time, but when cases will drop below 100 for 100,000 considering I think I may thinking to stop (although I may completely stop when they will stop isolating suspected (and maybe even confirmed) cases which was always patchy enough that we see epidemic all around Europe).


To be absolutely honest I never took social distancing too literally. I'm not going to run away at the sight of fellow human being (as some people do), especially when I'm outdoor. I do follow most of the legal requirements but bend some rules here and there, like most people do, event if they don't admit it.


----------



## PovilD

I remember last year Vilnius did good campaign with outdoor eating with reserving public spaces for stools, and as if I remember correctly it managed to get through into international waters. Hoping this campaign to repeat again


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> So, the question still remains, why are they being build in the Netherlands? I would assume it would be much cheaper to place them in, say, Poland. There is a lot of available land there, for example in the north west of the country. There are fewer NIMBYs as well.


In Poland you don't even have to care about planning regulations because in most areas of Poland they are non-existent!

My town is all covered by them, but especially countryside areas and large cities often to a large extent aren't.

Which is not good, because it e.g. results in terrain reserves for roads getting built-up.

I don't think there is a country with more chaos in urban planning than Poland – at least not in Europe. Which makes Poland more unusual – and therefore interesting.

A sample of Polish countryside:










Houses built along rural roads, often (although it depends on the place) not so close to each other.

To me in most countries in Europe it rather looks so that the village takes some densely built-up small enclosed area instead of being stretched along a road, like it's usually in Poland.

But the good fiberoptic connection with the rest of the world is also important. When you check a traceroute from Poland to a foreign host somewhere, in most cases your packets are routed through Frankfurt on Main or Amsterdam.


----------



## Suburbanist

Poland looks a bit like Belgium. 

Urban planning is quite chaotic in Norway as well, outside its largest cities.


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## Kpc21

This may be one of the reasons why road speed limits are ignored so much in Poland... Next to the cheap speeding tickets and the limits often being too low, too conservative according too many (like, there is a turn on which you can safely drive 90 kph in good conditions, but they put a 70 kph limit anyway, just in case).

The built-up areas simply often stretch for many kilometers, because the villages are so long. Driving at 50 kph for a half of the whole route is quite impractical. Personally – in the Polish built-up areas I slow down, but rather not to the official 50 kph, but rather to 70, sometimes 60 kph.


----------



## geogregor

Polish spatial planning is like cancer. It is fricking depressing.

What is worse, things are getting worse rather than better. Every year brings new developments spread around like guano dropped from a fast flying jet...


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> It is good to see London buzzing again. My friend told me that Soho was packed last night. Oh, and track & trace is a bit of hit and miss. I haven't leave my details anywhere yet since reopening of pub gardens


Sorry to be a party pooper, but going from strict lock down to this seems quite risky to me. Just see what happened in Chile. Why don't try to find a middle ground?


andken said:


> From what I read Pakistanis in Europe are very likely to live in multigenerational homes or with very close proximity with relatives.


Yes, this is probably part of the explanation, which is only partly included as a correction factor (I wrote "housing conditions", but a more precise translation of "trangboddhet" would be degree of overcrowding in housing.) But it is still striking how much the Pakistanis are affected compared with other immigrant groups. Possibly it is because they have a longer history here and hence have had more time to establish multigenerational homes.



radamfi said:


> 175 out of 20 million is still very low risk and has to be balanced against the risk of getting seriously ill with Covid.


The Norwegian incident rate was more than 5 times higher. Some of the difference could be explained by statistical variation and demographics, as the AZ vaccine was mainly used for health workers in Norway and not for the elderly. Still, I would be surprised if the UK number is not still grossly underreported. That does not mean that I think the UK should stop using the AZ vaccine. Every country must make a decision based on their own epidemic situation. The UK was much more severely affected than Denmark or Norway, and hence a delay in vaccinations could also have larger impact. I guess the UK also will not have access to the same number of Biontech/Pfizer doses ahead as the rest of Europe?


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Polish spatial planning is like cancer.


Saying "Polish spatial planning" is a joke – it's a thing which doesn't exist! And it hasn't be treated seriously throughout the history, at least during the two recent centuries.


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> Ah, I pass it on a train sometimes, when we go to visit sister of my other half who lives in Totnes. I like South West of England but for me it is a bit too far from civilization
> 
> I would say it is a bit far to relocate from London, even if you don't have to be in office too often. Even if workwise it would be fine you would completely cut off your social networks as it is too far to maintain them effectively. Which is interesting aspect not touched so far in most debates on the subject of relocations. There is a lot of argument that people are simply motivated by work access and cost of housing and will relocate just based on that. I'm not so sure. People have friends, families, kids have friends in schools etc. I suspect the "mass movement" because of increased home working will be much less "mass", and also more local, than some expect. Some people will go back to where they came from to London (like yourself) but for many it is not an option. I'm definitely not going back to Poland  After 16 years London is my home.


It did take a while to get used to being so far from civilisation, there is a lot I miss but at the same time I wouldn't want my son growing up there.

That's a good point about social networks etc. But my experience is that most of the people who I was living with and going out with have now moved out of London as well. Not many have gone back to their hone towns/countries but once people start having kids they do tend to leave. You never go out once you have kids, so all the opportunities are wasted anyway


----------



## andken

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Yes, this is probably part of the explanation, which is only partly included as a correction factor (I wrote "housing conditions", but a more precise translation of "trangboddhet" would be degree of overcrowding in housing.) But it is still striking how much the Pakistanis are affected compared with other immigrant groups. Possibly it is because they have a longer history here and hence have had more time to establish multigenerational homes.


I remember watching the BBC Two show Restaurant Man with Russell Norman, where he would go and help struggling restaurateurs. One of the people that he would help was a woman of Pakistani descent and I noted that Russell was having to deal with all types of relatives to work with her - nephews, cousins, uncles, everyone(The woman did not look poor or anything like that). These very close family connections seems to be more common among British Muslims than among other groups, including Blacks and East Asians.

I think that one of the biggest mistakes of the handling of the pandemic was failure to design specific policies for multi-generational housing. Like "Stay home" isn't a very effective way of controlling the virus if you live with seven, eight, ten or more people.


----------



## radamfi

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Sorry to be a party pooper, but going from strict lock down to this seems quite risky to me. Just see what happened in Chile. Why don't try to find a middle ground?
> 
> Yes, this is probably part of the explanation, which is only partly included as a correction factor (I wrote "housing conditions", but a more precise translation of "trangboddhet" would be degree of overcrowding in housing.) But it is still striking how much the Pakistanis are affected compared with other immigrant groups. Possibly it is because they have a longer history here and hence have had more time to establish multigenerational homes.
> 
> 
> The Norwegian incident rate was more than 5 times higher. Some of the difference could be explained by statistical variation and demographics, as the AZ vaccine was mainly used for health workers in Norway and not for the elderly. Still, I would be surprised if the UK number is not still grossly underreported. That does not mean that I think the UK should stop using the AZ vaccine. Every country must make a decision based on their own epidemic situation. The UK was much more severely affected than Denmark or Norway, and hence a delay in vaccinations could also have larger impact. I guess the UK also will not have access to the same number of Biontech/Pfizer doses ahead as the rest of Europe?


Many restrictions are still in place. Mixing households indoors is still not allowed. Restaurants and pubs can only serve outdoors. Hotels are not open yet.

According to Chile sees Covid surge despite vaccination success the vaccine mainly used in Chile is only 3% effective after the first dose and most people haven't yet received the second dose. Whereas the Pfizer/AZ vaccines used in the UK seem to give good protection a few weeks after the first vaccine.

Pakistani communities in the UK are heavily concentrated in certain towns. For example Leicester, Blackburn, Rochdale, Oldham and Burnley. During last summer when restrictions were reduced considerably, these towns still had relatively high infection rates and had local lockdowns imposed on them.

The UK has a particular affinity with the AZ vaccine due to the Oxford University connection. It is also cheap. It is easier to use because it doesn't need to be stored at such cold temperatures. Therefore it can be offered almost anywhere. For example, I had my AZ vaccine in a shopping centre. The UK has decided to use other vaccines, including Moderna, for the under 30s.

The most "risky" thing the UK is doing is probably allowing the World Snooker championship to be a test event for allowing indoor crowds, which started today. For the early stages they will be allowing a 30% socially distanced crowd. However for the final in two weeks time, they will be allowing full capacity. This is for a theatre with about 1,000 capacity. But all spectators need prove they have a negative Covid test before being allowed in.


----------



## Kpc21

Poland is still in lockdown and now there are only talks about releasing the restrictions regionally.

The infections, after the last wave, started dropping, but there is still too early to talk about a success.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

420 (cannabis culture) - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Americans... is this for real? "675.9 km" could have been an alternative in order to place the milepost correctly ;-)


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> 420 (cannabis culture) - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org


Good thing we don't have kilometer 420 anywhere in Lithuania, nor such distance to any place, nor such road number.... 

For me, 420 also associates with neo-Nazi stuff.


----------



## geogregor

Damn, one always learn something interesting on this forum 

I have to admit I didn't have a clue there is any significance to number 420...


----------



## CNGL

The second longest national road in Spain is numbered N-420 . My province has two kmposts 420, one on N-2, the other on A-23. Anyway I prefer km 666 of N-330 right at the entrance of a tunnel, too bad it's a minor one just before the Somport one...


----------



## geogregor

Deer grazing on London housing estate:









Deer graze on east London housing estate


Surprised residents wake up to find a herd of deer grazing on their doorstep.



www.bbc.co.uk


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

There are a lot more deer (Red deer, like in these pictures, roe deer and elk / moose) in Scandinavia than it used to be, probably due to milder winters and less grazing competition from cattle and sheep. Roe deer are in my garden almost daily in early spring, being cute, but also almost like a pest, eating up all the tulips and crocus and spreading ticks.


----------



## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Americans... is this for real? "675.9 km" could have been an alternative in order to place the milepost correctly ;-)


Mile 419,(9)


----------



## keokiracer

Mile 419+1


----------



## Suburbanist

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> There are a lot more deer (Red deer, like in these pictures, roe deer and elk / moose) in Scandinavia than it used to be, probably due to milder winters and less grazing competition from cattle and sheep. Roe deer are in my garden almost daily in early spring, being cute, but also almost like a pest, eating up all the tulips and crocus and spreading ticks.


Did there use to be some midsize cat around in Scandinavia, like bobcat or lynx?


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Yes, we did, and still have lynx (gaupe in Norwegian). Roe deer is its favorite meal, although the lynx is not that big itself (max 26 kg). It has actually been spotted in residential areas of Trondheim as well, but is in general extremely shy towards humans and nocturnal, so most Norwegians never see a lynx in their lives. Lynx is disliked by sheep farmers, and since it is not considered critical threatened there is some limited hunting which I guess does not make them less shy. 









I actually learned today that roe deer was almost extinct in Scandinavia, and only returned to Norway 120 years ago. That may of course also explain why I did not see as many roe deer when I was a kid.


----------



## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> There are a lot more deer (Red deer, like in these pictures, roe deer and elk / moose) in Scandinavia than it used to be, probably due to milder winters and less grazing competition from cattle and sheep. Roe deer are in my garden almost daily in early spring, being cute, but also almost like a pest, eating up all the tulips and crocus and spreading ticks.


It is the same here, especially in Scotland:









Scotland's deer population 'should be cut'


A report recommends a series of measures to significantly reduce Scotland's population of wild deer.



www.bbc.co.uk













Huge rise in Scotland's deer cull needed to protect land, says report


Experts call for controversial measures to control numbers, estimated at up to 1 million




www.theguardian.com


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> There are a lot more deer (Red deer, like in these pictures, roe deer and elk / moose) in Scandinavia than it used to be, probably due to milder winters and less grazing competition from cattle and sheep. Roe deer are in my garden almost daily in early spring, being cute, but also almost like a pest, eating up all the tulips and crocus and spreading ticks.


The population of white-tailed deer has turned somewhat problematic in Finland. The first animals were imported in 1930's and 1940's. The entire population of 100,000 are descendants of these animals. The population grows quickly, because they have not much natural enemies. More than 5000 cars accidents with deers are reported annually.


----------



## mgk920

MattiG said:


> The population of white-tailed deer has turned somewhat problematic in Finland. The first animals were imported in 1930's and 1940's. The entire population of 100,000 are descendants of these animals. The population grows quickly, because they have not much natural enemies. More than 5000 cars accidents with deers are reported annually.
> 
> View attachment 1391065


Those creatures are native here in temperate regions of North America and a serious pest in parts of it due to agricultural removal of most of their alpha predators from the wild in their range (wolves and coyotes love to eat farm animals, too). Car v. deer collisions are über-common, they are like the repair shops' friends. The fall gun-deer hunting season is an annual cultural ritual in the upper Great Lakes region of the USA and Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources sells around a half-million licenses to shoot them every year (this is in a state with just under 6M population, nearly one in ten Wisconsinites takes part in it - and they are all armed with high-powered semi-automatic deer rifles, the state would rank in the top ten of standing armies worldwide during those two weeks), with bonus permits for taking 'antlerless' (primarily female) deer in many parts of the state, this all to keep the population under control.

Wolves have been reintroduced in the upper Great Lakes region and do appear to be doing very well, so much so that there is now a highly regulated hunting season for them every year, too.

Mike


----------



## geogregor

London on first weekend after opening outdoor dining and drinking. Soho was buzzing:


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

MattiG said:


> The population of white-tailed deer has turned somewhat problematic in Finland. The first animals were imported in 1930's and 1940's. The entire population of 100,000 are descendants of these animals. The population grows quickly, because they have not much natural enemies. More than 5000 cars accidents with deers are reported annually.


A bit strange that it has not spread to the Scandinavian peninsula. Today I guess introducing an American species into Europe would have been considered a crime.


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> A bit strange that it has not spread to the Scandinavian peninsula. Today I guess introducing an American species into Europe would have been considered a crime.


Most of the population lives in the south, where the sea separates Finland and the Scandinavian peninsula. Spreading to Sweden in the north still is a matter of time.


----------



## geogregor

This is becoming a real plague:









€2.2m worth of catalytic converters seized in Dublin


Gardai have seized over two thousand catalytic converters and 14 drums of smelted converters with an estimated value of €2.2 million.




www.rte.ie







> Gardai have seized over two thousand catalytic converters and 14 drums of smelted converters with an estimated value of €2.2 million.
> 
> A man in his 20s was arrested and charged and is due in court next month.
> 
> Almost €75,000 in cash and a vehicle was also seized during the search of a business premises in Finglas in Dublin.
> 
> *There has been a dramatic rise in the theft of catalytic converters in recent months because the price of metal has been rising. They are being stolen in seconds by organised crime gangs and melted down.*





> It's the fourth such seizure in the last two months in Dublin and Meath as part of a targeted investigation into the theft of Catalytic converters which includes the seizures of 110 converters, €27,500 and £55,000 Sterling in County Meath in February and 300 converters in St Margarets in Dublin last week.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

April 2021 is very cold in the Netherlands. There is an almost continuous northerly wind through the entire month, resulting in low temperatures and a record amount of frost for this month, with some stations recording the highest amount of frosty days since 1953. The average temperature may turn out 3.5 °C below average and almost 5 °C below last year. Weather enthusiasts call it historic. Weather forecasts also do not show an improvement into May. It's also quite dry now. 

There were also reports about destroyed fruit orchards in France and Switzerland.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> April 2021 is very cold in the Netherlands.


In Western Germany April is colder than March was (OK, April has not finished yet).


----------



## Suburbanist

We had two days with rather high temperatures here (up to 18 C), which drew hundreds/thousands outside.

It was the first time I went to my office without wearing a coat in transit.

Now, temperatures are below 10 oC again, although sunny today. There is a strong office culture at my workplace about cutting the day short and go hiking on days with exceptionally sunny weather, if possible.

I got vaccinated yesterday, second dose scheduled on June 3.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> April 2021 is very cold in the Netherlands. There is an almost continuous northerly wind through the entire month, resulting in low temperatures and a record amount of frost for this month, with some stations recording the highest amount of frosty days since 1953. The average temperature may turn out 3.5 °C below average and almost 5 °C below last year. Weather enthusiasts call it historic. Weather forecasts also do not show an improvement into May. It's also quite dry now.
> 
> There were also reports about destroyed fruit orchards in France and Switzerland.


True. We had few warm days up to +20°C, now we are left with high +5-10°C, and winter conditions like sleet is also expected.
Judging from mid-term forecasts (up to two weeks) below average temperatures are expected in last week of April and first week of May. Cold and not nice high +5-12C interval.

I'm starting to think what summer we will have. +15°C is still bearable as it is the lowest summer high usually in Lithuania (+12-13°C highs were exceptional situations in summer). I expect cold summer weather to be typically around +15-20°C range. Beaches are usually empty at these conditions, so it make ruined holidays for some.


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> I'm starting to think what summer we will have.


It is way to early to predict. Any forecast for more than 10 days ahead is more of a guess work than "forecasting".

UK is also colder than usual but not as cold as further east (Netherlands or Germany) On a flip side we have much more sunny and settled weather than usual. Which allows for nice walks with my camera. And when one needs a lunch... 


20210422_151543 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


20210422_153147 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


----------



## PovilD

We have yet relatively sunny (well, more like partly cloudy) weather too, but with occasional rain/sleet/hail showers. There was sleet in the early morning, were some rain showers more into morning, now I'm waiting if some sleet/small hail showers will occur. I think high would be +10C without these showers, but with these showers I think weather is only up to +6C Today.


----------



## Slagathor

I hate these chilly temperatures and that ceaseless polar wind. But there may be hope on the horizon.


----------



## Suburbanist

Slagathor said:


> I hate these chilly temperatures and that ceaseless polar wind. But there may be hope on the horizon.
> 
> View attachment 1398306


There is no rain, though. I like crisp cold dry air days in the Netherlands, except if they are very windy.


----------



## Slagathor

Suburbanist said:


> There is no rain, though. I like crisp cold dry air days in the Netherlands, except if they are very windy.


It's been nothing but wind. Ceaseless, ice cold, miserable, fvcking wind. I've struggled to find a wind-free spot in my backyard and it has walls on all sides.


----------



## Suburbanist

Slagathor said:


> It's been nothing but wind. Ceaseless, ice cold, miserable, fvcking wind. I've struggled to find a wind-free spot in my backyard and it has walls on all sides.


Well, you live in Zeeland if I remember correctly, right?


----------



## Slagathor

Suburbanist said:


> Well, you live in Zeeland if I remember correctly, right?


Even then, this Spring is very unusual and so are these Northern winds. We're very used to Southwestern winds but they tend to be relatively balmy courtesy of the Gulf Stream and the warmer sea water. These Northern winds, however, picked up at the end of March and have been absolutely bone-chilling. When I get on my bicycle, I feel like covering up my face with a scarf because the winds are just that cold. That's not normal.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Wind from the north is the most common to occur in spring in the Netherlands, but it's highly unusual to last for weeks on end. This type of weather also generates lots of cumulus coulds, which means it's not entirely overcast but still mostly cloudy with some sunshine in between. Sometimes the cumulus grows to an overcast sky during the day. Most days do have a fair amount of sunshine but it's fragmented.


----------



## Suburbanist

Steady wind is a boon for offshore wind farms, though, as long as not so strong as to require them to lock the blades as they go supersonic at the edges.


----------



## PovilD

In the afternoon, precipitation indeed turned from rain into sleet/small hail like precipitation. These come in a form of a shower and are indeed impressive to have in late April.
When there is no precipitation, sun comes out through clouds, but it's windy and cold, need warmer jacket.

Now we are in such almost winter conditions as I'm writing this post. Ground is almost becoming white from heavy sleet shower cloud.

Wintry conditions are possible for an entire weekend, and it will remain relatively cold next week with highs only up to +10C.

I like winter conditions due to landscapes changing, but in this time of year, I would prefer nice 20 degrees Celsius


----------



## PovilD

Now sleet turned into proper winter snow, except ground temperature is above zero, so no snow formations.
I call such snow events as true polar occurences as it weird to have snow when it's not dark outside and it's 7pm or later  This include early morning like 5-6am.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Those longing for summer have had another setback also here. I have been waking to fresh snow on the ground two days in a row now. Today it was also snowing during the day and more is expected during the weekend. Luckily I like snow ;-)


MattiG said:


> Most of the population lives in the south, where the sea separates Finland and the Scandinavian peninsula. Spreading to Sweden in the north still is a matter of time.


Yeah, maybe the distance from Åland to Sweden is too long. But it is a close call. From the western islets of Åland to Sweden it appears as the distance is around 25 km. Although it is probably rare, that is about the longest distance red deer has been observed swimming in Norway.

Controlling deer populations is a matter of political will. Hunting without quotas will lead to extinction as we have seen before. E. g., the white-tailed deer in North America was almost gone before the hunting was regulated.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You will see this 'angles morts' sticker on trucks all over Europe. France made such stickers mandatory from 1/1/21 to warn road users of blind spots, so every truck that drives into France needs to have such a big sticker at several blind spots. Trucking associations are not happy with this French rule. What if every country mandates such a thing in their local language? The trucks would run out of space to put the stickers on. And these French stickers don't make any sense outside of French speaking areas.


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Yeah, maybe the distance from Åland to Sweden is too long. But it is a close call. From the western islets of Åland to Sweden it appears as the distance is around 25 km. Although it is probably rare, that is about the longest distance red deer has been observed swimming in Norway.


The population is spreading to the north, and some animals have been seen in the Tornio river valley on the Swedish side. Crossing the Gulf of Bothnia at Åland is quite an unrealistic scenario, I believe. The Åland Islands currently are free of those. It is an indication that they avoid swimming across wide waters, unlike elks.


----------



## SSCreader

Regarding the 'angles morts' stickers, the regulation requiring them states:

_



Les véhicules qui portent, sur les côtés et à l’arrière, un dispositif destiné à matérialiser la présence des angles morts en application d’une législation d’un autre Etat membre de l’Union européenne sont réputés satisfaire aux dispositions du présent arrêté.

Click to expand...

_This means that the French stickers are not required if there are already markings on the back and on the side of the vehicle reminding other road users of the driver's blind spots. However those markings need to be mandatory ones from other EU countries, so UK signs or optionals signs are out.


----------



## PovilD

I think those sticks are too small to read. You may not understand what they stand for, let alone if written in non-English foreign language. Universal symbol would be a better solution.


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> You will see this 'angles morts' sticker on trucks all over Europe. France made such stickers mandatory from 1/1/21 to warn road users of blind spots, so every truck that drives into France needs to have such a big sticker at several blind spots. Trucking associations are not happy with this French rule. What if every country mandates such a thing in their local language? The trucks would run out of space to put the stickers on. And these French stickers don't make any sense outside of French speaking areas.


Next of bureaucratic nonsense things ... As an average road user, what mean those stickers to me? If I see it on a truck, what precautions I have to take? How does that improve road safety?


----------



## Suburbanist

In-store bakeries are tricky, not only in terms of manpower required to operate them but electrical and fire safety issues, air exhausts etc.


----------



## x-type

geogregor said:


> Interestingly British supermarkets are in the process of closing of the in-store bakeries.


Really? Are they being substituted with packed bread products? When did the in-store bakeries appear in the UK at all? For Eastern block it is rather a new thing, appeared some 20 years ago maybe.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

It must have been about the same time I last saw those semi-automated in-store bakeries in Norway...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Corona? What corona?

Amsterdam today


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Interestingly British supermarkets are in the process of closing of the in-store bakeries.


In Poland they got popular just a few years ago...

Previously, supermarkets sold mostly packed bread, sometimes – bread from local bakeries from the neighborhood. Although the last thing is rather a domain of small, private grocery stores and not supermarkets.

Does it pose any fire hazard (other than any other electrical device)? They use a large specialized oven, fridge-sized with multiple shelves, on which they put all the frozen raw bread to bake.


----------



## Stuu

x-type said:


> Really? Are they being substituted with packed bread products? When did the in-store bakeries appear in the UK at all? For Eastern block it is rather a new thing, appeared some 20 years ago maybe.


They have existed for at least 30 years, starting from when supermarkets started opening much larger sites in the 1980s, they are usually listed on the main sign advertising the services in-store, so used as a selling point. Some of them are closing, I think mostly in smaller stores, they are also closing fish and meat counters where someone needs to serve you. The UK has a strange relationship with food, for a lot of people they are only interested in the cheapest product, and not because they can't afford better


----------



## Suburbanist

Stuu said:


> They have existed for at least 30 years, starting from when supermarkets started opening much larger sites in the 1980s, they are usually listed on the main sign advertising the services in-store, so used as a selling point. Some of them are closing, I think mostly in smaller stores, they are also closing fish and meat counters where someone needs to serve you. The UK has a strange relationship with food, for a lot of people they are only interested in the cheapest product, and not because they can't afford better


In the case of meat cuts, vacuum packaging has improved a lot and it has no discernible effect than a cut made to specs from a in-store butcher.

This is different than loose plastic wraps that made meat stale ans dry of years past.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Despite my deep distrust and hate towards current Polish government, I must admit one thing -- Covid vaccination drive in Poland is going much better than I've anticipated. Standard registration is slowly progressing, adding two vintages each day, but today we have an additonal feature -- Today, registration also got open for 'early adopters' aged 30+ (people, who filled out a declaration that was circulated in January). Both me and my gf got a registration for first jab just next week (we are both mid-30s). I am more than ecstatic, as it means that we'll get the full immunity just at the end of June, so the summer will be... normal. It was such an exotic idea just two months ago. It is a first sign of relief and hope in this year. Awesome.

The centralised registration system is working OK, you have an overall overview of available locations, time-slots and dates within a city, you can choose which vaccine you'd like to have, and all that is working relatively drama-less. Great improvement since beginning of the year -- when my parents could register, nothing actually worked as it should, and many slots were booked using an old fashioned commie-time method of phoning a clinic directly and asking the front-desk people to literally pencil you in.


----------



## geogregor

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Despite my deep distrust and hate towards current Polish government, I must admit one thing -- Covid vaccination drive in Poland is going much better than I've anticipated. Standard registration is slowly progressing, adding two vintages each day, but today we have an additonal feature -- Today, registration also got open for 'early adopters' aged 30+ (people, who filled out a declaration that was circulated in January). Both me and my gf got a registration for first jab just next week (we are both mid-30s). I am more than ecstatic, as it means that we'll get the full immunity just at the end of June, so the summer will be... normal. It was such an exotic idea just two months ago. It is a first sign of relief and hope in this year. Awesome.
> 
> The centralised registration system is working OK, you have an overall overview of available locations, time-slots and dates within a city, you can choose which vaccine you'd like to have, and all that is working relatively drama-less. Great improvement since beginning of the year -- when my parents could register, nothing actually worked as it should, and many slots were booked using an old fashioned commie-time method of phoning a clinic directly and asking the front-desk people to literally pencil you in.


The problem is they are vaccinating younger cohorts while many older folks are sill unvaccinated, for various reasons, including hesitancy. So it looks great from the perspective of someone in late 30s who is excited to get his jab soon but it might mean slower drop i hospitalizations and deaths as they mostly affect older folks anyway. It might mean slower relaxations of restrictions than it would if vaccinations were going strictly according to age group.

Also, I don't get why do you have to "register interest" firts. Here in the UK I just got message when and where I will get my jab, I didn't have to "prebook" or travel to other regions (as some people in Poland do)



ChrisZwolle said:


> Corona? What corona?
> 
> Amsterdam today


What's going on there?



Stuu said:


> They have existed for at least 30 years, starting from when supermarkets started opening much larger sites in the 1980s, they are usually listed on the main sign advertising the services in-store, so used as a selling point. Some of them are closing, I think mostly in smaller stores, they are also closing fish and meat counters where someone needs to serve you. The UK has a strange relationship with food, for a lot of people they are only interested in the cheapest product, and not because they can't afford better


Those bakeries are being closed for various reasons. Cost to the supermarket chains is one thing. But the other is that they offered limited range anyway. It was mostly a few items baked from frozen. It is not like you were buying "artisan" bread in the supermarkets. People's habits are changing:









Asda to cease baking in stores, with 1,200 jobs at risk


The supermarket chain is to enter formal consultations with those potentially affected




www.theguardian.com







> In future, Asda’s baked products, such as bread and pastries, will be made in a central bakery and then warmed in stores. It said the changes would provide a broader range of products baked fresh several times a day, compared to just once a day at present.
> 
> Asda said the proposal followed “a notable shift in customer buying behaviours” in recent years, with demand for speciality breads, wraps, bagels and pancakes outstripping traditional loaves.











Tesco is cutting 1,800 UK jobs


Supermarket chain cuts back on baking as cost-cutting drive continues




www.independent.co.uk







> From May Tesco will stop baking bread from scratch in 58 stores with products prepared elsewhere. In 201 stores, only the most popular products will continue to be baked from scratch on the premises.
> 
> The UK’s largest supermarket chain said it was responding to changing shopping habits, with consumers now demanding a wider choice of options such as wraps, bagels and flatbreads as well as the traditional loaf.


I always though that the main function of the in-store bakery was spread of nice smell rather than baking anything particularly good 

Anyway, it doesn't affect me as I mostly buy dark Lithuanian bread in eastern European store in my neighborhood


----------



## Dikan011

Serbia these days...not a mask in sight.
But we're first in Europe in vaccination so makes sense.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

geogregor said:


> The problem is they are vaccinating younger cohorts while many older folks are sill unvaccinated, for various reasons, including hesitancy.


TBH, I don't know anyone 60+ that still haven't received the first dose, so I may have a skewed outlook. I know that it is a whole other story for people with mobility problems and for people with declined mental capacity, but let's be honest here -- this country never cared for less fortunate people, and Covid pandemic won't change that.
And as for hesitancy, I also don't have an answer here, but I know one thing -- if there are willing, younger people waiting, let's process them. For the heard immunity pumping the sheer numbers up is the most important thing, and also 30+es tend to be frontline workers or generally more social people -- and vaccinations not only prevent hospitalisations, but also significantly curbs transmission.





geogregor said:


> Also, I don't get why do you have to "register interest" firts. Here in the UK I just got message when and where I will get my jab, I didn't have to "prebook" or travel to other regions (as some people in Poland do)


NHS is playing in entirely different league than NFZ. My expectations were low. I don't expect that Polish health system will suddenly start caring, that it would become proactive instead of reactive. But within this bounds of reactiveness, the system is actually delivering some output. Better than I've expected.


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## PovilD

As for my circle, I know few people who are anti-vax, are afraid of everything "chemical" and propagate "being natural", swimming in the icy water, and similar stuff. Due to their work, they decided to test themselves instead of vaccines.

Interestingly relatively many people (you can count them on your one hand fingers, but I was surprised) reported having being afraid of vaccines due to potential allergic reactions, and choose testing or no vaccine instead.

Few reported that vaccine is "too new" and they are afraid.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Corona? What corona?
> 
> Amsterdam today


How many of them are vaccinated?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Probably 0. There seem to be hardly anyone over the age of 23-24.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Probably 0. There seem to be hardly anyone over the age of 23-24.


I could have guessed somewhere between 6 to 8% 

In my country, younger cohort (year group 18-35) is around that level of vaccination. Some workplaces are allowed to organize vaccinations and this is the best way for younger people to vaccinate right now. During my vaccination, I wasn't the only young people in vaccination centre, there were relatively many of them. Ofc, there are few with commorbidities, but I guess most younger are vaccinated through workplaces. My parents were also vaccinated through workplace.


----------



## MattiG

PovilD said:


> As for my circle, I know few people who are anti-vax, are afraid of everything "chemical" and propagate "being natural", swimming in the icy water, and similar stuff. Due to their work, they decided to test themselves instead of vaccines.
> 
> Interestingly relatively many people (you can count them on your one hand fingers, but I was surprised) reported having being afraid of vaccines due to potential allergic reactions, and choose testing or no vaccine instead.
> 
> Few reported that vaccine is "too new" and they are afraid.


Many of those are still alive because of vaccines and medicines.


----------



## Stuu

Fields with traffic lights for access:









Near my home is a narrow railway bridge. When developers wanted to build new homes nearby, rather than rebuild the bridge, the solution was to put one-way traffic lights on the bridge. The narrow section includes access to fields on either side so the the great idea was to put in traffic lights for them. They have been there for 15 years. I wonder how often they have ever been needed


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## PovilD

MattiG said:


> Many of those are still alive because of vaccines and medicines.


I'm wondering which disease would have affected me the worst if there were no vaccines. I have a very very tiny needle size bright red spot my shoulder where we usually get vaccinations. Does this mean I would have hard or even deadly form of Rubella or measles, I don't know. Thanks to vaccines I didn't found out...

I heard theories that the higher reaction to vaccine the more serious disease would be. This might be not the case with covid vaccine, but it's an interesting theory. I think this theory works with smallpox, but my generation don't even given smallpox vaccine as far as I know since it's eradicated.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

How often do you get vaccines? I think my last one was 25 years ago or something. Definitely when I was under 10 years old, I can remember one vaccination when I was in elementary school, in the early to mid 1990s. The others were probably when I was an infant.


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## Attus

Vaccination for children was compulsory in Hungary when I was a child, and as far as I know it's so even now. So I recieved a lot of them in the 70's and early 80's. 
Two years go Germany had some measles cases. I visited my doctor and asked about vaccinations. I didn't know whether I was vaccinated against measles. The doctor said it doesn't matter, if I'm sure I didn't have measles in the last five years, and was not vaccinated in these years, there is no risk of being vaccinated (again), on the contrary, it an be useful. So I got vaccinated against a lot of diseases two years ago.


----------



## Suburbanist

Kpc21 said:


> Talking about common diseases... Is it common in your countries too that doctors prescribe antibiotics for things similar to severe common cold? Without doing any tests whether it's actually a bacteria infection?


Absolutely not.


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> Talking about common diseases... Is it common in your countries too that doctors prescribe antibiotics for things similar to severe common cold? Without doing any tests whether it's actually a bacteria infection?


Not in the UK, any more. They are much stricter about giving out antibiotics these days. In the past some doctors would give out prescriptions basically to reassure the patient, even though it obviously wouldn't do anything against a virus


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## Kpc21

In Poland they often argue that such a severe case of common cold (like, when you have fever and practically have to stay in bed) easily transitions into a bacteria infection, and if it happens – it can be dangerous and and using antibiotics makes a lot of sense. But they aren't able to test the patient for bacteria quick enough, so they prescribe antibiotics or not just based on the symptoms. Or now, in the Covid times – without even looking into the patient's throat and listening to his lungs, like they normally do – now they rely only on a telephone interview.


----------



## Slagathor

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland they often argue that such a severe case of common cold (like, when you have fever and practically have to stay in bed) *easily transitions into a bacteria infection*, and if it happens – it can be dangerous and and using antibiotics makes a lot of sense. But they aren't able to test the patient for bacteria quick enough, so they prescribe antibiotics or not just based on the symptoms. Or now, in the Covid times – without even looking into the patient's throat and listening to his lungs, like they normally do – now they rely only on a telephone interview.


The common cold is caused by a family of viruses. Viruses cannot morph into bacteria. I fail to follow the logic here and if my doctor ever uttered something along those lines, I would find a different doctor.


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## Kpc21

Slagathor said:


> The common cold is caused by a family of viruses. Viruses cannot morph into bacteria.


But they weaken the organism and make it easy to get infected by bacteria.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

But if you hand out antibiotics uncritically it will contribute to the dominance of antibiotic resistant bacteria. In short, when antibiotics actually is needed (eg. in case of pneumonia) they may no longer be effective.








Data from the ECDC Surveillance Atlas - Antimicrobial resistance


The Surveillance Atlas of Infectious Diseases is a tool that interacts with the latest available data about a number of infectious diseases. The interface allows users to interact and manipulate the data to produce a variety of tables and maps.




www.ecdc.europa.eu












Prevalence maps







www.euro.who.int


----------



## geogregor

The problem is that people in Poland love antibiotics. They could literary bludgeon a doctor if he/she refuses to prescribe them.

For example internet is full of Polish folks living in the UK complaining that local doctors don't give them antibiotics. They immediately call British doctors uneducated, cruel, discriminatory, stupid etc.


----------



## Slagathor

Kpc21 said:


> But they weaken the organism and make it easy to get infected by bacteria.


Antibiotics decimate the gut microbiota which has the effect of weakening you and your immune system just as it's trying to fight off a viral infection. Prescribing antibiotics when there isn't a bacterial infection already present, is a fantastically stupid idea.


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> The problem is that people in Poland love antibiotics. They could literary bludgeon a doctor if he/she refuses to prescribe them.
> 
> For example internet is full of Polish folks living in the UK complaining that local doctors don't give them antibiotics. They immediately call British doctors uneducated, cruel, discriminatory, stupid etc.


Heh, I was prescribed antibiotics in my teen years, didn't even knew if this was viral or bacterial infection, and I thought that antibiotics should work since I was prescribed to...

I expect this was viral infection, although I don't know for sure. It might have been secondary bacterial infection...


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> For example internet is full of Polish folks living in the UK


Oh, that explains why my connection was sluggish the other day ;-)


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> Remember guys that sick pay is not great for many people. In the UK the statutory sick pay is a joke.





Attus said:


> You may see it this way from Norway. But for example in Hungary quite many people are only paid for the days they actually work.


You are right, I was probably seeing this too much from a Norwegian perspective. It has been a lot of discussion whether we should continue providing pay from the first day sick, as in the public sector has rather high percentage of employees on sick leave. I guess those discussions will not be heard for a while now. UK seems like at least as much as an outlier in Europe as Norway in this area, however. I am more surprised, however, about low first week sick payment in France and Finland, if this map is correct:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Paid sick leave in the Netherlands is officially 70%, but in practice 100% in the first year and 70% in the second year. Employers often consider this to be an unreasonable risk to carry, a reason why many don't want to offer permanent contracts. They can only cancel a contract after 2 years of sick leave.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are some interesting differences between Germany and the Netherlands.

The Netherlands has had a higher incidence rate throughout the winter and spring. It is currently about twice as high as Germany (over 300). However the death rate in the Netherlands has remained substantially below that of Germany over the past 6 months and the current ICU occupancy in Germany is also over 30% higher than the Netherlands, proportional to population.

So these figures don't match.  Testing and positivity rates have been roughly similar over the past couple of months.


----------



## radamfi

Whilst statutory sick pay in the UK is a joke, in reality a fairly large proportion of workers are paid reasonable sick leave by employers, typically those working in more middle class professions. Even so, many staff are reluctant to take time off even if it would not cost them any money, because they are worried that the boss might think they are being lazy. It is also a common interview question to ask how many sick days you have in the last year.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^ I am surprised the employers are allowed to ask this.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Paid sick leave in the Netherlands is officially 70%, but in practice 100% in the first year and 70% in the second year. Employers often consider this to be an unreasonable risk to carry, a reason why many don't want to offer permanent contracts. They can only cancel a contract after 2 years of sick leave.


In Norway the maximum length of a sick leave is one year, and the employer pay only for the first 16 calendar days. If the employee cannot work after one year, other types of public support, normally less generous, can be given. That does not necessarily mean that the employer can terminate the work contract, however.


----------



## tonttula

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I am more surprised, however, about low first week sick payment in France and Finland, if this map is correct:


As long as I'm not missing something Finnish Employment Contracts Act states that you are allowed to full salary for 10 days, as long as employment has lasted at least 1 month. If less, then half of salary will be paid.

Of course with the collective agreements being present pretty much in all industries this differs all around. Example in the industry I work in it is 28 days and goes up to 56 days once your employment has lasted 10 years.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> There are some interesting differences between Germany and the Netherlands.
> (...)
> So these figures don't match.


And the Dutch and German society are quite similar in terms of age, health, obesity, immigration, health system, etc. Yes, there are some differences, but they simply are too small to eplain those figures, we don't speak about the Netherlands and Somalia.


----------



## PovilD

Attus said:


> And the Dutch and German society are quite similar in terms of age, health, obesity, immigration, health system, etc. Yes, there are some differences, but they simply are too small to eplain those figures, we don't speak about the Netherlands and Somalia.


I always saw Netherlands as "very German". It's Germanic-speaking country after all and share many connections with Germany. Second "most German" being Scandinavians.

like those Post-Soviet states are somewhat Russian sphere (of influnece or smth), small countries bordering Germany are also kinda like that with "German sphere". Belgium might be a mix between German and French sphere (Flanders more German, Valonia more French). Talking about my area, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia seem to be neutral (nor really Russian, nor really German). Estonia could be Nordic (Germanic influenced), but also leaning towards "neutral" in recent years  There could be renewed "Polish sphere of influence" with small countries like Baltics, Slovakia, Hungary having similarities with "main country - Poland".


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> It is also a common interview question to ask how many sick days you have in the last year.


I've never heard of that, and it is completely illegal to make an employment decision based on that, so any reputable employer should not be asking it


----------



## Stuu

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> You are right, I was probably seeing this too much from a Norwegian perspective. It has been a lot of discussion whether we should continue providing pay from the first day sick, as in the public sector has rather high percentage of employees on sick leave. I guess those discussions will not be heard for a while now. UK seems like at least as much as an outlier in Europe as Norway in this area, however. I am more surprised, however, about low first week sick payment in France and Finland, if this map is correct:


UK statutory sick pay is £95 per week, not £36. Most employment contracts have much better terms, at least 10 days per year on full pay without medical proof. My contract says three months on full pay, then 3 on half pay and I think that is fairly common


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> And the Dutch and German society are quite similar in terms of age, health, obesity, immigration, health system, etc. Yes, there are some differences, but they simply are too small to eplain those figures, we don't speak about the Netherlands and Somalia.


Yes, and this difference is not just one odd week, but for about 6 months now. The Netherlands had a higher death rate in spring 2020 and early fall 2020 though. But after that the situation flipped. 

It is reported that the Dutch government purchased 2.5 billion masks for the health care system, far more than there is demand for. They only used 15% of it and at current rate they will have to throw most of it away due to their 2-5 year shelf life.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Stuu said:


> UK statutory sick pay is £95 per week, not £36. Most employment contracts have much better terms, at least 10 days per year on full pay without medical proof. My contract says three months on full pay, then 3 on half pay and I think that is fairly common


The figure was taken from an 5 years old article, so the rates may have increased a bit. What is probably more important, however, was that the 3 day waiting period was taken into account. I am sure more people have better benefits than the statuary lower limits in the UK than in countries where the statuatory limit is 100 % compensation, such that this evens out a bit. However, does that also apply to lower paying jobs, which I guess was Geogregor's concern?


----------



## Suburbanist




----------



## Stuu

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> The figure was taken from an 5 years old article, so the rates may have increased a bit. What is probably more important, however, was that the 3 day waiting period was taken into account. I am sure more people have better benefits than the statuary lower limits in the UK than in countries where the statuatory limit is 100 % compensation, such that this evens out a bit. However, does that also apply to lower paying jobs, which I guess was Geogregor's concern?


It depends on the employer and the contract. Lower paid jobs with proper contracts will pay for a few days at full pay, but there are millions on zero hours or agency contracts who are paid hourly, and they will only get statutory pay. 

It used to be the case that you had to get signed off as sick by a doctor to get sick pay, and only after 3 days off, so I guess the £36 figure makes sense. Covid changed that so now sick pay is from day 1 and was increased a bit


----------



## tfd543

Stuu said:


> I've never heard of that, and it is completely illegal to make an employment decision based on that, so any reputable employer should not be asking it


i was once asked whether I take stimulants ( alcohol, drugs etc). This was an engineer position.
Weirdo.


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> I've never heard of that, and it is completely illegal to make an employment decision based on that, so any reputable employer should not be asking it


In Poland, from what I know, it happens that young women get asked whether they plan pregnancy – and in general, employers are less willing to employ these because of the risk that the woman will get pregnant and go on maternity leave.

A similar problem happens in case of people right before (up to a few years) the pension – it's risky to employ them because of the law that is supposed to protect them, forbidding to fire such people.


----------



## geogregor

Stuu said:


> I've never heard of that, and it is completely illegal to make an employment decision based on that, so any reputable employer should not be asking it


Try to proof that decision was made based on that...  

Anyway, when I had higher number of sick leave days I simply lied. I remember being asked this question during one or two of my interviews in the past and I always answered generic "2-3 days" even if I was off for a week or two.


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> Try to proof that decision was made based on that...


Of course, but any employer stupid enough to ask discriminatory questions is likely to end up paying for it sooner or later.


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> I've never heard of that, and it is completely illegal to make an employment decision based on that, so any reputable employer should not be asking it


I've been asked it at least twice. Admittedly not for at least 10 years.


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I am more surprised, however, about low first week sick payment in France and Finland, if this map is correct:


I do not know where this chart comes from, but it really does not reflect the reality in Finland.

The legal minimum is to pay 100% of the salary for two weeks (exactly ten weekdays Mon-Fri) if the employment has been continued for one month; else 50%. After that the state pays daily sick allowance for maximum 300 working days. This allowance is some 40-70% of the salary.

Most collective labor agreements go beyond the legal minimum. Typically, 100% of the salary is paid for 2-3 months, depending on the years worked. In such cases, if the duration of the sickness exceeds the legal minimum of ten days, the daily allowance is paid to the employer. They might override the legal default setup if certain conditions apply. For example, the first day in some blue-collar jobs may not be covered in some cases.


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> People who have an agenda and aren't in it for the money, that's who.


The proposed "UK Fox News" Murdoch news channel has been shelved, seemingly because they think it can't make money









Rupert Murdoch ditches plans for News UK rolling news TV station


News UK Chief Executive, Rebekah Brooks, concludes that a rolling news station is not commercially viable




inews.co.uk





Although the supposedly similarly right-wing GB News is still launching and has already got a slot on Freeview, the free to air terrestrial TV platform. I'm still sceptical about how "outrageous" they will be able to get away with being given the UK's strict broadcasting rules.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't even have a TV subscription. The last time I regularly watched TV was probably before 2010. 

I do have a television set, but not to watch regular programming. I don't really care about sports, I've heard from quite a number of people that that is the last reason to keep a TV subscription. 

It wouldn't surprise me if TV viewership has declined more than they say. TV stations have a benefit from inflating viewership because they can get more advertising revenue. I don't really buy the figures that show only a small TV decline while people have gotten Netflix and other streaming services at a huge scale. Plus all the time spent on their phone. That must've replaced a substantial bit of regular TV watching.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't even have a TV subscription. The last time I regularly watched TV was probably before 2010.
> 
> I do have a television set, but not to watch regular programming. I don't really care about sports, I've heard from quite a number of people that that is the last reason to keep a TV subscription.
> 
> It wouldn't surprise me if TV viewership has declined more than they say. TV stations have a benefit from inflating viewership because they can get more advertising revenue. I don't really buy the figures that show only a small TV decline while people have gotten Netflix and other streaming services at a huge scale. Plus all the time spent on their phone. That must've replaced a substantial bit of regular TV watching.


The majority of people in the UK don't have a TV subscription and rely on free channels received either terrestrially using a UHF aerial on the roof or, less likely, by satellite. Cable only has a small market share in the UK and pay TV by satellite is more popular, but even there, pay channels that aren't sport only get a relatively small audience compared to free to air channels.

The Netherlands has very high cable penetration and not many free channels are available terrestrially which means that a lot of people have at least a basic cable subscription. For example, as I understand it, the biggest commercial TV channel RTL 4 cannot be obtained legally without some kind of subscription (although bizarrely in Luxembourg it is free). Even Digitenne, the equivalent to UK's Freeview, isn't free. 

If TV viewing figures are exaggerated they would be soon found out because the main reason for viewing figures is so they can sell advertising. If not many people watch TV, then not many people will see the adverts. The advertisers would soon notice that they are not getting any results from their advertising campaigns and then they would stop advertising on TV.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> It wouldn't surprise me if TV viewership has declined more than they say.


I guess it's mostly elderly who now watches TV...

I live with two other generations at home, and:
– the generation of my grandparents watches TV a lot, it's practically their only entertainment
– the generation of my parents watches only some specific shows on TV, usually some talent shows based on worldwide formats, like The Voice, Got Talent, Dancing with the Stars, or whatever is currently being aired on TV
– my generation practically doesn't watch TV at all

I guess TV, similarly to cinema or radio, will find a niche for itself, like these mentioned media, previously very popular, have found. Cinema – extremely popular before the TV came, now it's a form of "weekend entertainment" and exclusively shows premiere movies. The radio – also previously very popular, now usually serves as a source of random background music. What will happen with TV – I don't know, but I don't really see it serving the only purpose for which it can't really be replaced by Internet services, that means, transmitting live events, because these live events aren't all the time, and it also has to show something in between.

By the way... concerning the conventional "over-the-land" TV (not cable and not satellite), Poland has just recently – about 9 years ago – transitioned from analog transmission to digital in the DVB-T system. Now... a new transition is going to happen just soon – from DVB-T to DVB-T2. Throughout the last 10 years people have bought modern TV sets, and now they are becoming obsolete and requiring an external box just to receive any TV...


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> By the way... concerning the conventional "over-the-land" TV (not cable and not satellite), Poland has just recently – about 9 years ago – transitioned from analog transmission to digital in the DVB-T system. Now... a new transition is going to happen just soon – from DVB-T to DVB-T2. Throughout the last 10 years people have bought modern TV sets, and now they are becoming obsolete and requiring an external box just to receive any TV...


There are significant advantages to DVB-T2 as you can have more channels in better quality. Other than a few channels which are available in both DVB-T and DVB-T2 (so they can be in high definition as well as standard definition for those with old TVs or boxes) the UK has shown no sign of wanting to get rid of DVB-T. This is frustrating to many, as it means the only way you can get the majority of channels in high definition is to get a satellite dish or subscribe to cable. About 70% of the UK population can get some more DVB-T2 channels, but these will be removed in the next year as the frequencies are needed for 5G mobile networks.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> There are significant advantages to DVB-T2 as you can have more channels in better quality.


The problem is that most channels that got its way to DVB-T during the conversion from analog – at least here in Poland – were anyway channels with crap content. So "more channels" doesn't bring any profit, as it would mean yet more channels with nothing to watch. The only advantage is that more channels could be in the HD quality (there are also plans for at least one 4K channel of the public TV in DVB-T2).

In the current Polish DVB-T, only the public TV channels are in HD.

Anyway, who now watches TV mostly, are elderly people, and they don't care anyway whether the channel is in SD, HD or 4K...

My grandfather always listens to a single radio station – Polish Radio One. It's the only Polish radio station that also broadcasts on long waves, next to FM. I always set his hi-fi set to get this station on FM, but he often accidentally switches it to long waves, and he doesn't even notice it. Or – he placed both loudspeakers of this set just next to each other, so he isn't getting any stereo effect (on FM; in case of long waves, he obviously wouldn't be getting any stereo anyway, although to my knowledge, there are stereo AM broadcasts in North America), but he doesn't care either.

The necessity to free up frequencies for the needs of 5G telephony is the main reason why DVB-T2 gets deployed in Poland.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> I guess it's mostly elderly who now watches TV...
> 
> I live with two other generations at home, and:
> – the generation of my grandparents watches TV a lot, it's practically their only entertainment
> – the generation of my parents watches only some specific shows on TV, usually some talent shows based on worldwide formats, like The Voice, Got Talent, Dancing with the Stars, or whatever is currently being aired on TV
> – my generation practically doesn't watch TV at all


It's interesting what films/series watch different generations. As for my country/family:

Generation of my grandparents or grand grand parents (70+), especially older, from my experience tend to watch Developing countries films from Latin America, Turkey and India. Weird romatinc stories, and story twists, lots of bright colors and stuff (+dance if talking about Indian sequels). Not that much into Western production. They are aired around afternoon, when probably elderly non-working people finishes their house chores.

Generation of my parents (50-60 year olds) a little bit distances themselves from Developing countries media, tend to look at them as weird, and tend to watch Western European/US romantic films, series. Sometimes they don't understand "those Americans" and their weird behavior in films, but watch them just because they're bored  They are aired on evenings between around Evening News time (7-9pm) to midnight. (elderly are probably usually going to bed after evening news).

Younger generation are probably less into TV series and more into what's going on the Internet, including films.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> The problem is that most channels that got its way to DVB-T during the conversion from analog – at least here in Poland – were anyway channels with crap content. So "more channels" doesn't bring any profit, as it would mean yet more channels with nothing to watch. The only advantage is that more channels could be in the HD quality (there are also plans for at least one 4K channel of the public TV in DVB-T2).
> 
> In the current Polish DVB-T, only the public TV channels are in HD.
> 
> Anyway, who now watches TV mostly, are elderly people, and they don't care anyway whether the channel is in SD, HD or 4K...
> 
> My grandfather always listens to a single radio station – Polish Radio One. It's the only Polish radio station that also broadcasts on long waves, next to FM. I always set his hi-fi set to get this station on FM, but he often accidentally switches it to long waves, and he doesn't even notice it. Or – he placed both loudspeakers of this set just next to each other, so he isn't getting any stereo effect (on FM; in case of long waves, he obviously wouldn't be getting any stereo anyway, although to my knowledge, there are stereo AM broadcasts in North America), but he doesn't care either.
> 
> The necessity to free up frequencies for the needs of 5G telephony is the main reason why DVB-T2 gets deployed in Poland.


Just to clarify, when I said "more channels in better quality" I meant better picture quality. Yes, the channels are no better than they were before! Arguably DVB-T is a worse picture quality than a good analogue signal was so you need DVB-T2 to get an improvement over analogue. In the UK there is enough capacity for 5G mobile even if the channels stay on DVB-T, hence no urgency to switch to DVB-T2. They started some extra DVB-T2 channels about 5 years ago (the ones I mentioned covering 70% of the population) but they were always going to be temporary as their frequencies had already been planned to be needed for 5G. The idea was to encourage people to get DVB-T2 receivers. Unfortunately many of the extra DVB-T2 channels are not HD versions of major channels and many are very low budget TV services. So not many people have been encouraged to switch to DVB-T2 and most of these channels won't be missed when they get switched off.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> Just to clarify, when I said "more channels in better quality" I meant better picture quality.


Yes, I understood, I just pointed out that new free channels usually miss that other type of quality (content quality) 



radamfi said:


> Arguably DVB-T is a worse picture quality than a good analogue signal


Maybe in the UK it is so, in Poland it's definitely an improvement. Remember that in analog TV, when you had weaker signal, you often got "ants", "ghosts" and other weird phenomena, especially if your antenna system wasn't advanced or you were far away from the transmitter. Many people were subscribed to paid satellite TV not for the content but for the picture quality. DVB-T solved all these issues.

It's a different story with the digital radio (DAB), and I heard it's also an issue in the UK. The broadcasters are trying to squeeze as many stations as possible on a single frequency (in a single multiplex, as it's called), and to get it, they decrease the bitrate to low values. Which means that lossy compression of the data stream is used.

There are some foreign (Italian?) free satellite channels that suffer from this issue as well.

So maybe it also affects the British DVB-T.

In Poland most DVB-T channels are Standard Definition – but I can't complain about any excessive video compression. Everything looks OK, same as it looked in analog, but without all these ant and ghost effects.

And while in analog TV, living near a big city, I had access to 7 channels (although some of them had weak signal, which meant the effects I mentioned), large areas of the country had just 3 channels (usually – two main public TV channels + one private, called Polsat) and nothing more. With DVB-T, they obtained some extra quality TV channels too.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> Maybe in the UK it is so, in Poland it's definitely an improvement. Remember that in analog TV, when you had weaker signal, you often got "ants", "ghosts" and other weird phenomena, especially if your antenna system wasn't advanced or you were far away from the transmitter. Many people were subscribed to paid satellite TV not for the content but for the picture quality. DVB-T solved all these issues.


Yes, DVB-T is an improvement in those respects. But people who had a strong analogue signal who didn't suffer ghosting could argue that their DVB-T picture is worse, because of the compression. The UK analogue transmitter system was very comprehensive. They installed relay transmitters to very small villages so not many people suffered from poor analogue pictures, at least if they had installed a high quality aerial. Many of these relay transmitters are unnecessary now. They can now point their aerials at the main transmitter because ghosting etc. don't happen with DVB-T but it was decided to keep the relay transmitters to avoid people having to move their aerials. However, only the main channels are provided at relay transmitters so if they move their aerial then then can get more channels.

Maybe UK TV channels are more compressed than Polish ones. The main channels have reasonable picture quality but many of the minor channels are incredibly compressed and look horrible on a large TV.



Kpc21 said:


> It's a different story with the digital radio (DAB), and I heard it's also an issue in the UK. The broadcasters are trying to squeeze as many stations as possible on a single frequency (in a single multiplex, as it's called), and to get it, they decrease the bitrate to low values. Which means that lossy compression of the data stream is used.


Yes, similarly the UK has been slow in adopting DAB+ because a lot of people bought original DAB radios. Radio stations are afraid of losing listeners who have older radios which only have DAB and not DAB+. However there has been some progress in getting new stations on DAB+ because it uses less space, and therefore costs less. If it is a new station then they don't have to worry about losing listeners.


----------



## mgk920

I have not turned on a broadcast TV receiver in my residence since I moved into the current on in late 2007 - there is just nothing that is being offered either direct OTA, 'cable' or satellite that is worth my bother, it just does not turn me on. Most of the stuff that I find interesting I can get on-demand either on my desktop computer or phone and if there is a sports event on that I want to watch, I'll walk a couple of blocks to my favorite sports bar and watch it there, it's a LOT more fun that way anyways. I'll also take in a lot of live sports games and news/discussion on the radio, including out of market games and other programs via analog AM ('medium wave') radio from Chicago or Milwaukee and from greater distances (ie, NYC) at night.

Also, without taking the time to look it up, what is the current annual 'free' TV receiver license rate in the UK?

Mike


----------



## radamfi

mgk920 said:


> Also, without taking the time to look it up, what is the current annual 'free' TV receiver license rate in the UK?


£159. Although there are no adverts on BBC TV or radio, unlike some other countries with TV licence fees. Some other countries fund public broadcasting through general taxation.


----------



## Attus

I've just seen Wer wird Millionär (German Who wants to be a millionaire) in TV. So if you asked who is the only forum member watching TV frequently, it's me


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are several big turnoffs with TV for me, but the biggest one is advertising. I hate it. I'd rather watch Youtube for amusement and educational videos. Or some series on a streaming platform. I also don't listen to the radio much, too many commercials and annoying DJs. I usually stream music in my car. 

I do listen to some podcasts about topics that interest me. I like some more background and context to the news, the news is too generic, little background and too focused on some racist incident on another continent that the media thinks is relevant to the Netherlands.  Journalists should spend a little less time reporting on American outrage Twitter and spend a little more time on relevant topics about world affairs. I want more context and background and less rewriting of other media.

China is ascending to the world stage like no other country over the past half century yet the media coverage is poor. Last year we found out that there happens to be a 10+ million city called Wuhan that no journalist seemed to have heard of before...


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> I do listen to some podcasts about topics that interest me. I like some more background and context to the news, the news is too generic, little background and too focused on some racist incident on another continent that the media thinks is relevant to the Netherlands.  Journalists should spend a little less time reporting on American outrage Twitter and spend a little more time on relevant topics about world affairs. I want more context and background and less rewriting of other media.
> 
> China is ascending to the world stage like no other country over the past half century yet the media coverage is poor. Last year we found out that there happens to be a 10+ million city called Wuhan that no journalist seemed to have heard of before...


There are two easy explanations for both trends.

First, it is hard for serious media companies with general audiences to make money these days. So many get hollowed out on clickbaiting or just cannot funtion paying no one else than younger journalists who do mainly desk-based work. And, then, in countries where journalists are fluent in English it becomes easy to recycle American or British news for internal consumption.

Second, China places severe restrictions on the working of foreign journalists, and routinely expells those who dare to touch hot-button topics and the like. They have become more and more paranoid about Western media working in China, restricted visas, and the Great Internet Firewall makes it hard to organize remote production teams that do no have the IT infrastructure of, let's say, the Financial Times or CNN. It becomes very hard to do good reporting in those circumstnaces. Since there is no independent media in China, the only alternative would be to rely on partisna loudmouths of the CCP, which any minimally self-respectable journalist wouldn't do. So there aren't acceptable foreign media to lean upon, nor openings for ground work, and reporting is diminished.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> The UK analogue transmitter system was very comprehensive. They installed relay transmitters to very small villages so not many people suffered from poor analogue pictures, at least if they had installed a high quality aerial.


In Poland such transmitters were in use, but mostly in mountain areas, and usually only had two channels of the public TV.

And similar ones (but re-transmitting the signal on the same frequency, as DVB-T allows that) are in use also now.



radamfi said:


> However there has been some progress in getting new stations on DAB+ because it uses less space, and therefore costs less. If it is a new station then they don't have to worry about losing listeners.


In Poland DAB practically only contains the public radio.



mgk920 said:


> Also, without taking the time to look it up, what is the current annual 'free' TV receiver license rate in the UK?


Whatever it is in Poland, it's practically not enforced – this way the public media get less funding and the government can have easier control over them, and use them more as a tool of propaganda.



ChrisZwolle said:


> There are several big turnoffs with TV for me, but the biggest one is advertising. I hate it. I'd rather watch Youtube for amusement and educational videos. Or some series on a streaming platform. I also don't listen to the radio much, too many commercials and annoying DJs. I usually stream music in my car.


Sometimes while watching a movie on TV, there is more adverts than the movie, and when it's broken several times with 15-minute long blocks of adverts, you forget what the movie was about.

Short breaks are OK, just to go to the bathroom or to get some snacks from the kitchen, but what we see in practice is too much.

The public TV in Poland is not allowed to break movies with commercials – the only exception are game shows, during which they sometimes advertise the companies that sponsor the prizes. But they sometimes go around it, e.g. while transmitting a live event, they divide the transmission into multiple parts with credits after each of them (so that they formally become separate shows), or in case of own-produced soap operas, they make shorter episodes and show them one after another with commercials between them.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Journalists should spend a little less time reporting on American outrage Twitter and spend a little more time on relevant topics about world affairs. I want more context and background and less rewriting of other media.


The quality of the modern journalism is yet a different issue, discussed here already several times.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> The last time I regularly watched TV was probably before 2010.


You mean "linear TV" or any TV show? You didn't watch any Dutch TV show in the last decade? No news bulletin, sport event or documentary? Even over the internet?

I watch quite a lot of BBC content but I watch it on their streaming service called iPlayer. I watch some sport coverage and a lot of documentaries, both nature and history. But does it count as "watching TV" if i don't watch it "live"? 

BBC still offers some decent content (despite what ever-moaning people say, especially folks on the right but also on the far left). I guess if I still lived in Poland I wouldn't bother with national broadcaster because it is a joke in Poland. 

In the UK there are also some niche shows on other channels which can be accessed via their online players. For example related to railways or canals on Yesterday channel. 

For example this:









Watch The Architecture The Railways Built Series & Episodes on UKTV Play


Tim Dunn explores the stunning architecture that lines the railway network.




yesterday.uktv.co.uk





You can see on the page on what services you can watch it, I watch it online.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland such transmitters were in use, but mostly in mountain areas, and usually only had two channels of the public TV.


Analogue TV had about 98.5% coverage in the UK using 80 main transmitters covering 90% of the population and about 1,000 relay transmitters to cover 8.5%. The system was designed in the 1960s to allow for four channels nationwide even though there were only three until 1982. There was continuous construction of relay transmitters from the 60s to the 90s covering increasingly smaller and smaller populations. They are many in hilly areas but there are relays in all parts of the country. Even the main London transmitter has about 30 relays.


----------



## Suburbanist

Many European countries were very late to open their TV markets. Several didn't actually open commercial TV channels until cable started to be deployed.

Of course, nothing is as bad as South Africa, whose apartheid regime just decided in the 1950s TV was too immoral or politically risky to be allowed in the country. I think it was only in the mid 1970s they got the first full-fledged TV station.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

radamfi said:


> £159. Although there are no adverts on BBC TV or radio, unlike some other countries with TV licence fees. Some other countries fund public broadcasting through general taxation.


Estonia is one of those countries. The Estonian Public Broadcasting is funded through general taxes to the tune of € 48 million this year which amounts to roughly € 37 per person. This includes two Estonian-language TV channels and a Russian-language TV channel, some radio stations, an online news portal etc. Estonia in general spends a lot of money on cultural activities.


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## ChrisZwolle

Apparently there are world-wide shortages of certain products. Computer chips are the most reported on, but apparently steel and lumber is also in short supply. Lumber prices were said to have tripled in North America. Lumber prices have also increased significantly in Europe but the product has less demand in Europe than North America (house construction).

But there is also a shortage of aluminium that has pushed North Carolina to suspend its license plate replacement program:

*NCDMV Suspends Replacement of Older License Plates Because of Aluminum Shortage *
_
A world-wide shortage of aluminum is forcing the N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles to indefinitely suspend its program to replace license plates that are older than six years. The move is being taken to help ensure there is enough material to produce first-time plates. 

Normal first-time plate production is 400-500 a day. But the older plate replacement program, passed into law by the General Assembly, meant that figure this year has been about 10 times that number. More than 640,000 replacement plates were produced in the first four months of this year, with about another 1.4 million projected to be needed for the rest of the 2021.

Corrections Enterprises, which handles the plate production, has enough aluminum on hand to make about 160,000 plates, and another shipment of the metal is expected the middle of this month. _





__





NCDMV Suspends Replacement of Older License Plates Because of Aluminum Shortage







www.ncdot.gov


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apparently there are world-wide shortages of certain products. Computer chips are the most reported on, but apparently steel and lumber is also in short supply. Lumber prices were said to have tripled in North America. Lumber prices have also increased significantly in Europe but the product has less demand in Europe than North America (house construction).


There are also shortages of styrofoam. Although... in Poland it's still easier to get than mineral wool, from the thermal insulation materials for buildings. The main mineral wool supplier on the Polish market is, supposedly, all booked up until the autumn.

I am going to insulate my house this year, but I guess I will wait several months until the situation with styrofoam stabilizes.


----------



## mgk920

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apparently there are world-wide shortages of certain products. Computer chips are the most reported on, but apparently steel and lumber is also in short supply. Lumber prices were said to have tripled in North America. Lumber prices have also increased significantly in Europe but the product has less demand in Europe than North America (house construction).
> 
> But there is also a shortage of aluminium that has pushed North Carolina to suspend its license plate replacement program:
> 
> *NCDMV Suspends Replacement of Older License Plates Because of Aluminum Shortage *
> 
> _A world-wide shortage of aluminum is forcing the N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles to indefinitely suspend its program to replace license plates that are older than six years. The move is being taken to help ensure there is enough material to produce first-time plates.
> 
> Normal first-time plate production is 400-500 a day. But the older plate replacement program, passed into law by the General Assembly, meant that figure this year has been about 10 times that number. More than 640,000 replacement plates were produced in the first four months of this year, with about another 1.4 million projected to be needed for the rest of the 2021.
> 
> Corrections Enterprises, which handles the plate production, has enough aluminum on hand to make about 160,000 plates, and another shipment of the metal is expected the middle of this month. _
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> __
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> NCDMV Suspends Replacement of Older License Plates Because of Aluminum Shortage
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.ncdot.gov


Many states do a seven year plate replacement cycle because that is the interval that is recommended by plate base manufacturer 3M. Wisconsin used manufacturer Avery for many years until some time in the mid 00s, when WisDOT switched to 3M (starting around plate number [101-LAA]. The Avery plates from before then that are still on the road remain perfectly readable and although some of them are now somewhat faded, they are still fully intact. The 3M plates that WisDOT used after then are literally peeling apart and many of those older 3M ones are really UGLY and beyond unreadable.

WisDOT switched back to Avery right before their switch to number format LLL-NNNN about three years ago (the old NNN-LLL format exhausted its number supply), starting with plates numbered at about [101-ZZK]. Starting at plate number [101-AAA] in 1999, Wisconsin has not been on a regular plate replacement schedule (I consider such regular replacements to be a waste of money and resources).

Mike


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apparently there are world-wide shortages of certain products. Computer chips are the most reported on, but apparently steel and lumber is also in short supply. Lumber prices were said to have tripled in North America. Lumber prices have also increased significantly in Europe but the product has less demand in Europe than North America (house construction).





Kpc21 said:


> There are also shortages of styrofoam.


The company I work at uses lots of lumber, styrofoam and steel reinforcement. All of these 3 products are hard to find and expensive.

For styrofoam I know that the prices went up by about 20%, and the delivery time increased from on stock (with immediate delivery) to about 6-8 weeks.

For steel reinforcement the prices went also up by about 30% compared to end of last year, and delivery times increased. At some suppliers you don't even get a confirmation that they will deliver at all. You only get a confirmation that they put you in the waiting queue, and that they will sell it to you sometime in the future at an yet-unknown price. Crazy!


----------



## Kpc21

Electricians are saying that the prices of copper also went up.

This all license plate replacement concept seems to me absolutely weird and exotic... In Poland, the license plates sometimes last decades and remain legible. It doesn't happen often only because the cars usually much more often change the owner. But you can still find some cars from 1990s, with their original license plates, which are still in perfect condition.


----------



## Suburbanist

It is a bad time to buy higher performance desktops. Almost all high-end graphics cards are scooped up by cryptocurrency miners; serious gamers cannot possibly compete with them and even the second-hand market is tight at this moment.


----------



## Attus

License plates in Hungary are not changed, when the car changes its owner, they have the same license plate from the first registration on. Sometimes you can see cars, registered in the early ninties, having their original license plates, pretty legilbe.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> This all license plate replacement concept seems to me absolutely weird and exotic...


Same here. The cars are inspected at the age of 4, 6, 8, and 10 years, and thereafter every year. If plates are in a bad condition (which is a rare situation) then they are ordered to be replaced. Replacing them proactively every six years sounds waste of money.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apparently there are world-wide shortages of certain products. Computer chips are the most reported on, but apparently steel and lumber is also in short supply. Lumber prices were said to have tripled in North America. Lumber prices have also increased significantly in Europe but the product has less demand in Europe than North America (house construction).





bogdymol said:


> The company I work at uses lots of lumber, styrofoam and steel reinforcement. All of these 3 products are hard to find and expensive.


These increases are mostly demand-driven. With travel restrictions and low interest rates, many have more time and money to initiate new projects. In addition there is an increase in public investments many places.

For fun I looked up the Norwegian lumber market. Prices in March were up 7.4 % compared with 2020, but production was almost unchanged from previous years. It seems like this market is quite inelastic in the short run. 


Kpc21 said:


> This all license plate replacement concept seems to me absolutely weird and exotic..


In the US, license plates are used for marketing of the states and building local patriotism.


----------



## MattiG

Today, it is the halfway between the March equinox and June solstice. Thus, the lightest quarter of the year is about to begin on the northern hemisphere.

The declination of the Sun was +16.25 degrees today at 00:00 UTC. 

The approaching summer has quite a strong impact to the length of the day on the high latitudes. It is 16 hours 23 minutes in Helsinki today, 17 hours 34 minutes in Oulu at latitude 65, and 19 hours 43 minutes in Utsjoki at latitude 70.

The length of the day is, however, not the whole truth. There is pretty light during the civil twilight time, when the altitude of the Sun is less than six degrees below the horizon. The duration of daylight plus the civil twilight time today is 18:16 hours in Helsinki, 20:21 in Oulu and 24:00 in Utsjoki. The last sunset in Utsjoki during this spring will occur on May 16th.

The following formula tell the altitude of the Sun (H) at the noon and the midnight this time a year betweem the north pole and the tropic of cancer:

Noon: H = Declination + 90° - Latitude
Midnight: H = Declination - 90° + Latitude

[email protected]: H = 16.25 - 90 + 60 = -13.75 thus astronomical twilight

H > 0°: daylight
H 0°..-6°: civil twilight
H -6°..-12°: nautical twilight (no light, no dark)
H -12°..-18°: astronomical twilight (quite dark)
H < 18°: darkness


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Interesting, is there any idea what has caused the large decline in Poland?


A lockdown, I guess. And vaccinating people.

Unfortunately it means that most school students are on remote education since October. They will probably come back to school in May.

Only the grades 1–3 of primary school, and the kindergartens, had shorter periods (like a month, two or so) when the education was remote.

But in the grades 1–3 it's much simpler to isolate the students from each other as a single group of students (a single "class" as we call it in Polish, although in English the meaning of this word in the educational context is different) has all the classes with the same teacher, without any division into subjects. From the grade 4 up, there are separate subjects, each one with a different teacher, so it's more difficult.

And remote education in these lowest grades, or even worse – in kindergartens – is practically no education...


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> For some reasons, much less people die from Covid on weekends and holidays. I haven't heard any sensible explanation of this fact yet. Does the virus have free weekends?


It's the same in many countries. People who die on weekend are only registered on Tuesday and Wednesday, because statistical offices don't work on weekends. For example, it's the chart of Hungary. Weekly cycle is recognizable.


----------



## Kpc21

But if they actually died on Sunday... then in their death certificates it's rather Sunday and not Monday, isn't it? I mean, the one who officially declares someone dead is not a statistics official, but a doctor, often of the emergency service, and they do work on Sundays and on holidays too.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

In most countries COVID-19 fatality statistics are by publication date rather than fatality rate. Although it is not ideal, it is probably better than the opposite. In e. g. Sweden there are often weeks of delay between the two dates. Statistics are still provided by date of death, so it has throughout the pandemic appeared as if the worst days were over, probably on purpose.








Swedish fatality curve early in May 2020, when the official death toll was less than 3000. The chief epidemiologist (Tegnell) had talked about group immunity for weeks. Currently the total number of fatalities is above 14 000.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

We had some snow in the Netherlands this morning, which is pretty unusual for May. Meanwhile, this weekend is forecasted to get temperatures in the range of 20-25 °C, not only in the Netherlands but temperatures are ramping up across a larger region, including Germany & France.


----------



## weatherc

ChrisZwolle said:


> We had some snow in the Netherlands this morning, which is pretty unusual for May. Meanwhile, this weekend is forecasted to get temperatures in the range of 20-25 °C, not only in the Netherlands but temperatures are ramping up across a larger region, including Germany & France


Eastern Finland this morning. Up to 20 cm of fresh snow


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Meanwhile, this weekend is forecasted to get temperatures in the range of 20-25 °C, not only in the Netherlands but temperatures are ramping up across a larger region, including Germany & France.


In Poland this summer is going to begin on Sunday.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland this summer is going to begin on Sunday.


Sadly not in the UK. Next week I'm off to Wales and it seems that I can expect more of the same weather here, maybe a little bit warmer than recently but still below average for this time of year.

On top of that more rain than recently and some strong winds. It will be "fun" holiday


----------



## keber

Interesting is happening in Seyshelles - that small island country has one of the highest vaccination rates on the world - to speed up tourism - almost all were vaccinated with Chinese Synopharm vaccine:








Yet number of new cases is growing rapidly:










Are those Chinese vaccines effective at all?


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> But if they actually died on Sunday... then in their death certificates it's rather Sunday and not Monday, isn't it?


No one analyzes death certificates. They simply report: "We have 12 new fatalities". It will be recorded: 12, without asking which day those people died.


----------



## Morsue

keber said:


> Interesting is happening in Seyshelles - that small island country has one of the highest vaccination rates on the world - to speed up tourism - almost all were vaccinated with Chinese Synopharm vaccine:
> View attachment 1466993
> 
> Yet number of new cases is growing rapidly:
> 
> View attachment 1467007
> 
> 
> Are those Chinese vaccines effective at all?


Have a look at this:

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1389955259410354177
TL;DR: The Chinese vaccines aren't as efficient (50%), but they do an important job of mitigating. Myself, I would prefer another vaccine.


----------



## spartannl

^ indeed, a nice article about efficacy of the vaccins:









A COVID-19 Vaccine May Be Only 50% Effective. Is That Good Enough?


Scientists are racing to develop a vaccine that proves "safe and effective." It may not prevent infection in everyone who gets it, but it still could eventually stop the pandemic. Here's how.




www.npr.org


----------



## tfd543

They are considering to upgrade to fiber net in our flat association. Gonna replace copper based tele wires. 
How faster is it in practice ? I know the pc itself is a bottleneck and there are digferent up and down rates.

Im asking because Im afraid they Will install a new socket in a random place and i have buried my cables under my laminate floor in a big network. Having 2 routers so its a mess..


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## ChrisZwolle

They also recently installed fiber optics in my street. I chose not to subscribe, I currently have a 100 mbit connection via telephone line which is sufficient for me. Most of the time the website you're downloading data from is slower than your connection anyway.

For example the highest data consumption for Netflix is 7 GB/hour, or 2 MB per second. That is 16 megabit per second, so you do not need anywhere near 1 Gbit/s to stream video.

1 gbit/s data connections are wildly oversized for regular household usage.


----------



## tfd543

ChrisZwolle said:


> They also recently installed fiber optics in my street. I chose not to subscribe, I currently have a 100 mbit connection via telephone line which is sufficient for me. Most of the time the website you're downloading data from is slower than your connection anyway.
> 
> For example the highest data consumption for Netflix is 7 GB/hour, or 2 MB per second. That is 16 megabit per second, so you do not need anywhere near 1 Gbit/s to stream video.
> 
> 1 gbit/s data connections are wildly oversized for regular household usage.


Wise choice and good point with the netflix consumption. I didnt know it only draws that amount. Is also for hd quality?

Advanced routers are also overkill. Im still on my apple extreme lol. 10 years old buddy.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

It depends really on what you have before. We have had fiber to our house for a couple of decades, and it has been working very well, and judging from the last year's experience with online meetings (often at the same time as multiple kids are streaming different movies or even linear TV using the same line) , there are still room for improvement in internet speed in many homes. However, a sluggish network can of course also be caused by a poor local wifi or LAN. 
As long as the distance to the local hub in your neighborhood is not too far, copper (twisted pair or even coax) can provide acceptable speeds, though, as Chris mention. 

I'm very happy that I accepted the original fiber deal, because that means I have multiple internet options, and no provider can take my business for granted. This has worked in my favor at multiple occasions where the different providers have offered competing bids. Hence, I would not remove the copper lines yet. And if in any case they should manage to put the new router at the same location as the old.


----------



## Suburbanist

If your home CAT5 cables are in good condition, it is fine to have fiber to your own home.

Consistent 4K video links will require more than what copper wires can provide.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> They also recently installed fiber optics in my street. I chose not to subscribe, I currently have a 100 mbit connection via telephone line which is sufficient for me. Most of the time the website you're downloading data from is slower than your connection anyway.
> 
> For example the highest data consumption for Netflix is 7 GB/hour, or 2 MB per second. That is 16 megabit per second, so you do not need anywhere near 1 Gbit/s to stream video.
> 
> 1 gbit/s data connections are wildly oversized for regular household usage.


You have internet via the old phone line?? I don't know anyone who has that, I thought it had died out. 

We get our internet through the TV cable. In theory, that cable allows maximum speeds of up to 500 mb/s so the incentive to get glass fiber installed simply isn't there. I don't know anyone who's considering the switch.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes, they still offer ADSL subscriptions in the Netherlands. I used to have cable internet but they (Ziggo) became too expensive, nearing € 60 per month for internet only. I switched to a T-Mobile ADSL connection for € 32 per month. It actually has a faster upload speed than Ziggo cable internet offered. 

It still has this funky 1990s telephone connector. It works surprisingly well due to the short distance to the hubs. I get a consistent 100 mbit download speed, with which I can stream, download large files, upload videos to Youtube and have MS Teams conference calls without any problems.


----------



## PovilD

spartannl said:


> ^ indeed, a nice article about efficacy of the vaccins:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A COVID-19 Vaccine May Be Only 50% Effective. Is That Good Enough?
> 
> 
> Scientists are racing to develop a vaccine that proves "safe and effective." It may not prevent infection in everyone who gets it, but it still could eventually stop the pandemic. Here's how.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.npr.org


This is old article not covering exact Seychelles or Maldives situation.
It could be the case with Sinopharm vaccine which might be 50% effective or even less. Western vaccines Pfizer, Moderna are said to do better mitigation effect, including variants.


----------



## tfd543

Slagathor said:


> You have internet via the old phone line?? I don't know anyone who has that, I thought it had died out.
> 
> We get our internet through the TV cable. In theory, that cable allows maximum speeds of up to 500 mb/s so the incentive to get glass fiber installed simply isn't there. I don't know anyone who's considering the switch.


Still in dk in many places as well. Kinda shameful.


----------



## tfd543

Btw i pay 20 euros for 150 mbps up and down. Beat that.


----------



## Slagathor

tfd543 said:


> Btw i pay 20 euros for 150 mbps up and down. Beat that.


I can't beat that. I live on the countryside so choices are limited here. I can either pay 36 euros per month for 100 mb/s or 69 euros per month for 1.000 mb/s.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch cable internet market is a monopoly, there is only one cable company that serves the entire country, so without any competition, the prices are high.

The Dutch internet connections are relatively outdated compared to some other countries, until recently there was almost no fiber to homes. They prioritized ADSL improvements instead, the high density of hubs meant that they could offer 100 mbit or even more on telephone lines, which is sufficient for most household usage (but very slow in many rural areas).

It wasn't until recently that they began the large-scale implementation of fiber optic cables to the homes. They connected my home free of charge last year. However the fiber subscription is considerably more expensive than my ADSL internet, while there is no clear benefit for my use case.


----------



## Kpc21

tfd543 said:


> They are considering to upgrade to fiber net in our flat association. Gonna replace copper based tele wires.
> How faster is it in practice ? I know the pc itself is a bottleneck and there are digferent up and down rates.


Actually, the medium of the "last mile" doesn't really matter. At distances of tens of metres, on copper wires you can get similar speeds like on fibers.



Slagathor said:


> You have internet via the old phone line?? I don't know anyone who has that, I thought it had died out.
> 
> We get our internet through the TV cable. In theory, that cable allows maximum speeds of up to 500 mb/s so the incentive to get glass fiber installed simply isn't there. I don't know anyone who's considering the switch.


Over here, practically only commie blocks and other multi-apartment buildings have cable TV network. Other areas, before the newly installed fiber optics, could get Internet access only from the old telephone network (ADSL) or wirelessly (either local providers using WiFi to deliver their signal – in English there is a nice acronym for that: WISP – or now popular LTE mobile network).

If you were getting 500 Mb/s over a TV coaxial cable, you surely already have a fiberoptic cable that ends either somewhere in your street or in your building, and the conversion to copper happens there.



ChrisZwolle said:


> It still has this funky 1990s telephone connector.


It's interesting that until so recently practically every country had its own standard of telephone plugs.

In Poland it looked like this:

– socket (although it also accepts the modern, international RJ-11 plugs):










– plug:










Until recently I used an adapter from the Polish telephone plug to an RJ-11 socket, but after some wiring failure, the technician just replaced the old telephone socket with an RJ-11-only one.

Over that telephone network, I am not getting anything more in terms of speed than 6 Mb/s. It's better over LTE – without an external antenna, I am getting something like 20 Mb/s (although it depends when, and sometimes it depends on what frequency band I select manually), but it isn't always stable, and it has monthly transfer limits.

I was supposed to get fiber optic access in January 2020, but the company has some delays all the time – and obviously they blame Covid for them. But I have a friend who is supposed to get it in... 2032. And now he only has very slow ADSL.

The condition of the old telephone lines, at least where they are on poles along streets and roads (like mine), is often terrible – like wires connected with each other in the open air, cables loosely hanging down from the poles, and so on. I even know places where cables were hanging so low that larger cars couldn't enter a side road, and someone had to put long sticks under the cables to raise them up. It's interesting, because most of them were installed in the mid-1990s, so they aren't that old. But their owner (the Orange company) is not taking care of them at all, considering them to be legacy infrastructure.


----------



## Suburbanist

When I was a teenager there was this promise of "Internet through the electric wires". 

Don't know what happened or not with the commercial adoption of the technology. It is not that groundbreaking, AC electrical cables can carry other signs despite being "energized"


----------



## Suburbanist

Improved ADSL is tricky. It is like wireless 3G-plus network. They try to get the max out of an older technology. The problem is that it reaches the limits far sooner than the new generation. With portable gadgets on a short life cycle or modular complex machines that are extremely expensive (like airplanes) this is not a big deall. For fixed distributed infrastructure, it can be.

I do have fiber to home but it is limited in bandwidth. My Internet provider was recently absorbed into a larger telecom firm, let's see how the transition goes. One of the first changes was to remove email support in favor of a call center as the point of entry only option.

We have a new office building at my workplace, it is 10Gb/s enabled and 100Gb/s capable, although in practice standard workplace laptops and desktops cannot make use of such transfer speeds even to the internal server as SSD and other components become the bottleneck


----------



## Suburbanist

Still on the technology front, I feel that video screen resolution is reaching a point where returns are diminishing. The transition from CRT to LCD then LEDs was quite an improvement, worth buying new screens or upgrading phones or computers a little earlier just because new screens were so much better.

Now, I feel that it is very hard to gain more from higher resolution monitors than full HD for office stuff or 4K for video. 

I bought a new monitor for home-office use here in Norway last year, got a very good one (with swivel and pivot adjustments) for less than € 170. 

My laptop is full HD and it is more than enough for anything, really, at its size.

As for smaprthones, I think they will keep pushing new screens but the optimal point of maximum resolution is already there. There could be other improvements, but higher res is a lower priority now. If only they increased battery life...


----------



## bogdymol

tfd543 said:


> Btw i pay 20 euros for 150 mbps up and down. Beat that.


Romania: my parents have 300 mbps with 6 € per month. They could upgrade to 1 gbps for 8 € per month, but they don't need that speed anyway.

I on the other hand, pay in Austria 20 € per month for a 25 mbps connection.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> Now, I feel that it is very hard to gain more from higher resolution monitors than full HD for office stuff or 4K for video.


I recently upgraded my phone but I don't really see much difference between 1080p and 4K on a phone screen. It's just too small.

Streaming video is heavily compressed. Higher end video cameras like GoPros and a few 4K dashcams can record at a 60k bitrate, but it's scaled down to 15 or less on many streaming services. 1080p is equally compressed. Youtube is known to noticeably compress 1080p content more than 2 or 4K video. 

I have several cameras that are capable of 4K recording, but I've used 1080p or 1440p to render my videos, I would have to upgrade my PC at a considerable cost to edit videos at 4K. GoPros also have the problem that they overheat at high resolutions, making them not as viable for highway recording. I recorded some 1440p60fps video with my GoPro recently and the camera shut down after about 15 minutes due to overheating and the ambient temperature in the car was only around 18 degrees.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A huge weather shift occurred in the Netherlands today. After weeks and weeks of northern winds with daytime temperatures mostly in the 10-12°C range and nighttime temperatures at freezing, it spiked to 27°C today. Yesterday morning it was freezing!


----------



## Stuu

tfd543 said:


> They are considering to upgrade to fiber net in our flat association. Gonna replace copper based tele wires.
> How faster is it in practice ? I know the pc itself is a bottleneck and there are digferent up and down rates.
> 
> Im asking because Im afraid they Will install a new socket in a random place and i have buried my cables under my laminate floor in a big network. Having 2 routers so its a mess..


As others have said once you have a certain speed it is the websites or other services that you use which slows things down. I only have 75Mbit connection via fibre to the street cabinet, but in practice it is no slower to actually use than 1gbit connections for normal daily use. The big benefit is if you work from home and need to send big files as upload speeds should be much higher


----------



## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> It is not that groundbreaking, AC electrical cables can carry other signs despite being "energized"


Obviously they can. You can use this technology to transmit computer network signal through the home electrical wiring, you can buy for that so called PLC (Power Line Communication) adapters.

Although it causes some interference on the radio waves.

But I guess it doesn't have much range.



Suburbanist said:


> Improved ADSL is tricky. It is like wireless 3G-plus network. They try to get the max out of an older technology. The problem is that it reaches the limits far sooner than the new generation.


It only works on short distances. So the telecom companies started doing things like installing remote (with respect to the telephone exchange), fiberoptic-powered, ADSL multiplexers (DSLAMs) nearer the customers. But now the tendency is to deliver the fiber directly to the customer.



bogdymol said:


> Romania: my parents have 300 mbps with 6 € per month. They could upgrade to 1 gbps for 8 € per month, but they don't need that speed anyway.


I thought Poland has cheap internet services, but this is even cheaper then in Poland! Over here, the prices actually started going up.

The standard cost of the most basic internet connection is about 9.5-10 euro, and you pay, like, 12-14 euro for something a little bit better.



ChrisZwolle said:


> A huge weather shift occurred in the Netherlands today. After weeks and weeks of northern winds with daytime temperatures mostly in the 10-12°C range and nighttime temperatures at freezing, it spiked to 27°C today. Yesterday morning it was freezing!


In Poland it's similar – it was 23 centigrades today.


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> If your home CAT5 cables are in good condition, it is fine to have fiber to your own home.
> 
> Consistent 4K video links will require more than what copper wires can provide.


VDSL2 over copper can transfer 100 Mbit/s on short distances less than 500 metres. The video bitrate depends on the degree of compession. Commercial streaming services seldom transmit their 4k content over 30-40 Mbit/s.

Still, if there were fiber available at a reasonable price, I would select it. It will not get obsolete for decades like the copper will do.

If you still have Cat5 cables, throw them away now. Even if they can transmit 100 Mbit/s, and 1 Gb/s over Cat5e, Cat6 cables are much better shielded to resist crosstalk and other interference. Decent cables are essential if there is device-to-device communication in the home network, like file servers.


----------



## tfd543

MattiG said:


> VDSL2 over copper can transfer 100 Mbit/s on short distances less than 500 metres. The video bitrate depends on the degree of compession. Commercial streaming services seldom transmit their 4k content over 30-40 Mbit/s.
> 
> Still, if there were fiber available at a reasonable price, I would select it. It will not get obsolete for decades like the copper will do.
> 
> If you still have Cat5 cables, throw them away now. Even if they can transmit 100 Mbit/s, and 1 Gb/s over Cat5e, Cat6 cables are much better shielded to resist crosstalk and other interference. Decent cables are essential if there is device-to-device communication in the home network, like file servers.


My main problem is that I am restricted to flat ethernet cables as they need to go under my floor. When I replaced it some 5 yrs ago, only cat5e was available in flat model and I couldnt wait to purchase smth online..


----------



## tfd543

Btw guys, do you crimp ur own cables? Lol.


----------



## MattiG

tfd543 said:


> My main problem is that I am restricted to flat ethernet cables as they need to go under my floor. When I replaced it some 5 yrs ago, only cat5e was available in flat model and I couldnt wait to purchase smth online..


Cables under the floor? Sounds creative.


----------



## Suburbanist

MattiG said:


> Cables under the floor? Sounds creative.


I think raised floors are a fairly common solution for office spaces, no?


----------



## tfd543

MattiG said:


> Cables under the floor? Sounds creative.


Under the soundproof underlay of the laminate floor. Its foam so there is room for the flat type.


----------



## Slagathor

tfd543 said:


> Under the soundproof underlay of the laminate floor. Its foam so there is room for the flat type.


We usually run them through hollow skirting:


----------



## Suburbanist

Indoor dining has been reopened here for a month, already. With 1m social distancing between tables and use of masks on arrival and departure from your table.

We again have no patients hospitalized with Covid19 in Bergen (as of this morning).

Most new clusters of the disease are among school students.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> It's interesting to hear that you used to have marshrutka-style minibuses in Lithuania but you got rid of them. How did it happen?


It looked like this. Their appearance is also design chaos 









I used to take 24 from city Centre to my home 

Well, I heard about illegal stuff like not paying taxes, etc. It also indicated bad quality of our public transport system. Reforms are made for banning marshrutkas. Now our public transport is slowly improving, but still below expectation since my city is very Americanised in terms of getting somewhere (car is a No.1, and only the poorest (like elderly in our case) are taking a walk).

The same happened in Vilnius too, only difference from Kaunas is that their modal share is less in favor of the car, but still relatively very car city. Don't know about Klaipėda, I think they're using midibuses now.
All this process happened in early to mid 2010s.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> I managed to get in one trip to Eindhoven last July but can't wait to cross the Channel again as soon as possible. *But there are a lot of people who would prefer to close the borders indefinitely.* I'm boycotting Brexit voting areas like Wales and SW England so I'm not holidaying there. So I'm restricted to Scotland and Northern Ireland until travelling to mainland Europe gets easier. And even Northern Ireland wants visitors from England to take tests before travelling.


This seriously pisses me of. Bloody island mentality.

As much as I might be desperate for holiday I really would love to go to Poland and see my mum. Haven't seen her since September, when I went to Poland for dad's funeral. The problem is that many small minded people don't seem to understand that people have transnational family links and not everyone has family in the neighboring county.

What does not help is constant barrage of warnings about variants, some experts would prefer vary cautious approach and adopt Australian approach. Many media folks spin it constantly, putting pressure on politicians to adopt ever harder stance regarding borders, knowing that it will please certain groups in society. Coincidentally many Brexit voters who see "abroad" and "foreigners" threatening anyway would love borders closed.

As for holidaying in places like Wales, I won't people's political choices in some regions deciding where I can or can not travel.

Then there is problem if we will be welcomed in some countries anyway...

My biggest problem with "close the borders" shout is that there is no clear exit strategy. The idea that we will have to wait for the the whole world to be vaccinated, so the risk of variants is no longer there, is ludicrous. Some parts of Africa might not get fully vaccinated for years, maybe ever. Does it mean I should be stuck in Britain for the next decade? Just to please some epidemiologists as well as many Daily Mail and Telegraph readers?

If that's the case I will have to seriously reconsider if I want to live here. Or find ways of circumventing rules, for example becoming truck driver, at least on paper 

In fact the UK is facing acute shortage of drivers, as the EU drivers go back to the mainland:





__





Subscribe to read | Financial Times


News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication




www.ft.com







> An exodus of EU lorry drivers from the UK since Brexit has left the British haulage and logistics industry facing an acute staff shortage and a looming crisis for industrial and retail deliveries, the sector has warned.
> 
> Industry associations and leading UK freight companies said that unless urgent steps were taken to address shortages, strains now visible within the industry would become evident to the public by the end of the summer.
> 
> While the sector has endured chronic driver shortages in recent decades, these have become acute thanks to a “triple whammy” of Brexit ending recruitment from the EU, a backlog of driving tests caused by Covid-19 and self-employment tax reforms that have exacerbated the outflow of EU drivers.
> 
> “Britain has had a chronic driver shortage for many years, but the problem is now acute. In 10 years of campaigning on this issue we have never seen members as concerned as they are now,” said Alex Veitch, policy manager at Logistics UK, the trade body that was formerly the Freight Transport Association.
> 
> The cancellation of an estimated 28,000 HGV driver tests as a result of the Covid-19 restrictions has also stymied efforts to expand domestic recruitment of drivers into the pool of some 300,000 qualified lorry drivers in the UK.
> 
> Rod McKenzie, managing director of policy and public affairs at the Road Haulage Association, said the industry was now facing a perfect storm. “To the public as opposed to the industry this is something of a quiet storm but it could soon turn into a hurricane with shortages evident, escalating stress and tension among suppliers and hauliers,” he said.
> 
> Haulage company bosses said the ending of the Covid-19 lockdown, which had caused a sharp uptick in demand from retail, construction and hospitality, had exposed a problem that had remained hidden by the drop-off in demand caused by the pandemic.





> Kieran Smith, chief executive of Driver Require, a recruitment agency, said t*heir research suggested 12,000-15,000 EU drivers had already returned home, partly because of the Covid-19 pandemic and partly because of tax changes.*


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Damn, I understand why Brits are desperate to go abroad (so am I), especially this year when we are consistently stuck on the wrong side of the jet stream. Windy, cold, often rainy.


Poland today also looks like this 



PovilD said:


> It looked like this. Their appearance is also design chaos


In Poland this is still the basic and usually only (if any) public means of transport outside large cities.

Although they have professionalized and more and more often the companies even employ standard, large buses, at least when there is large demand of passengers.

On my route to work (if it wasn't for Covid and obligatory teleworking) it's, however, still these, what in ex-Soviet countries is called marshrutka (in Poland it's called just bus, as opposed to autobus, which means a normal, large bus).

They have all the licenses for the bus operation and they have an official timetable (although not always followed, especially if the competitor company has its departure around the same time – then they race for passengers). They used to exceed very often the speed limits on the road, now they usually follow them. Another illegal thing they often do is taking more standing passengers than the number of passengers from the registration certificate of the vehicle – but also to a lesser extent than in the past. Anyway, it seems a little bit weird to me that in the EU it is still legal to register and get a homologation for such a minibus with standing passenger places. Standing on an hour-long route, via a national road, in such a minibus is an experience I don't recommend anyone – but it's the everyday life over here.

There are many annoying things in that, including being affected by the centrifugal force when the vehicle is turning – but one of the more annoying ones is that while standing, you aren't able to see the outside world (the windows don't reach so high), so sometimes you have to lean to check if you aren't approaching your stop.

Taller persons are sometimes too tall to fit inside and they have to lean all the time, or take the place under the roof window, where it is a little bit higher.

But sitting in these buses isn't much more comfortable, especially if you aren't a slim and a short person (and I'm certainly not).

If you have a free seat next to you, it's kind of OK (you just occupy one and a half seat). Otherwise... the space is too limited in both width (so that you really have to squeeze next to the neighboring passenger) and length (legroom? what is legroom? those who complain about the amount of legroom on Ryanair airplanes, certainly haven't experienced the Polish minibuses). The aisle seat also isn't really a rescue because you get accidentally hit or poked by the standing passengers (or they touch you with their body because there is no other way), and you practically have a half of a seat for you.

The last large buses (of the old, ex-communist bus companies) on my route got suspended somewhere around 4 years ago, I think.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Poland today also looks like this
> 
> 
> In Poland this is still the basic and usually only (if any) public means of transport outside large cities.
> 
> Although they have professionalized and more and more often the companies even employ standard, large buses, at least when there is large demand of passengers.
> 
> On my route to work (if it wasn't for Covid and obligatory teleworking) it's, however, still these, what in ex-Soviet countries is called marshrutka (in Poland it's called just bus, as opposed to autobus, which means a normal, large bus).
> 
> They have all the licenses for the bus operation and they have an official timetable (although not always followed, especially if the competitor company has its departure around the same time – then they race for passengers). They used to exceed very often the speed limits on the road, now they usually follow them. Another illegal thing they often do is taking more standing passengers than the number of passengers from the registration certificate of the vehicle – but also to a lesser extent than in the past. Anyway, it seems a little bit weird to me that in the EU it is still legal to register and get a homologation for such a minibus with standing passenger places. Standing on an hour-long route, via a national road, in such a minibus is an experience I don't recommend anyone – but it's the everyday life over here.
> 
> There are many annoying things in that, including being affected by the centrifugal force when the vehicle is turning – but one of the more annoying ones is that while standing, you aren't able to see the outside world (the windows don't reach so high), so sometimes you have to lean to check if you aren't approaching your stop.
> 
> Taller persons are sometimes too tall to fit inside and they have to lean all the time, or take the place under the roof window, where it is a little bit higher.
> 
> But sitting in these buses isn't much more comfortable, especially if you aren't a slim and a short person (and I'm certainly not).
> 
> If you have a free seat next to you, it's kind of OK (you just occupy one and a half seat). Otherwise... the space is too limited in both width (so that you really have to squeeze next to the neighboring passenger) and length (legroom? what is legroom? those who complain about the amount of legroom on Ryanair airplanes, certainly haven't experienced the Polish minibuses). The aisle seat also isn't really a rescue because you get accidentally hit or poked by the standing passengers (or they touch you with their body because there is no other way), and you practically have a half of a seat for you.
> 
> The last large buses (of the old, ex-communist bus companies) on my route got suspended somewhere around 4 years ago, I think.


We call them "mikriukai" or "mikroautobusai". Rough English translation: "microbuses". They are still used in rural areas by smaller municipalities, and they are actually still used in my city for accessing other towns inside aglomeration (around 30 km radius from city centre). Sometimes for connecting larger towns too, like those with 30-40k people. Btw, despite vast Russian influence for my country, I never heard calling them "marshrutkas", although there are a lot of words in our colloquial language that ends with Slavic -utka, -otka. Sometimes Lithuanised to -utkė or -otkė. Never used in official setting since we tend to avoid Slavic and partially Germanic influence in our language.

It's been a long time since I used marshrutka. I tend to avoid public transport, and just avoiding crowding in general. Marshrutkas are usually way worse in terms of crowding. Btw, I tend to avoid unnecessary crowding even if there aren't corona times.

Getting around a city with marshrutka are one of the most noticeable aspects of my childhood. There were times I used them more than regular buses.


----------



## PovilD

Btw I will translate Lithuanian jokes about marshrutkas (local name: mikriukai). These were more popular in 2000s, when there were lots of marshrutkas in largest cities.


> No matter how many passengers are already traveling in the minibus, there is *always* room for one more.





> Why go to the adventure park if there are marshrutkas?





> Marshrutkas in Klaipėda (Lithuanian only large coastal city) doesn't have property to reflect view on the rear-view mirrors





> "Lithuania, without any doubt, is a brave country!" - The (still alive) tourist who got out of the marshrutka





> Inscription in marshrutka: 5 minutes of horror and you're home!





> Instead of a turn signal, marshrutka drivers use an audible signal or Russian swear words





> Some climb mountains, others jump with a parachute or train lions, and I... oh, I ride minibuses





> "Ruskoje Radijo" adds 15% speed and 20% capacity to the marshrutka





> If you like speed, don't know road signs and adore "Russkoe Radio"? It’s time to become a marshrutka driver


Russkoe Radio (translates as "Russian Radio") is listened both by Ethnic Russians and Ethnic Lithuanians of all ages and airs primarily Russian new songs. I sometimes hear/read jokes about Russkoe Radio too.

Humorous way to set rules for marshrutka:








Translation. I also added my own comments which are in _Italics:_


> More silent you will be, more away from your destination you will go _(people need to tell driver vocally where he need to stop, it could be almost any place, sometimes even where stopping is prohibited)_
> There is no bus stop "Here" or "Somewhere here" in this route
> House doesn't have an end _(weird sentence)_
> No need to lecture me how to do stuff (or "live"), you better assist me with your money (materially)
> Book of wishes and complaints are in the car behind
> I'm very asking you to eat sunflower seeds, nuts and bananas UNSHELLED
> *Do not hit the door* - driver is scared ! _(as doors are usually opened by a passenger, not automatically)_


In the black background text says: "Marshrutka drivers. They have their own rules".


If I remember correctly those rules were in my city  Not all of them had them. It was 2000s, and I was barely a teen then  Those sentences were so weird sounding, I barely understood what they mean


----------



## Kpc21

> *Do not hit the door* - driver is scared ! _(as doors are usually opened by a passenger)_
Click to expand...

Doors in the minibuses used in Poland usually also don't close fully if they aren't shut a little bit violently 



But bus stops are obeyed. You may ask the driver to leave you somewhere else (or at a bus stop not included in the timetable), but sometimes they don't agree as it is illegal and the driver risks fine. Obviously, technically you can also leave when the minibus stops at traffic lights (because the doors are opened manually), although drivers don't like that, for obvious reasons.



> Book of wishes and complaints are in the car behind


Do western-Europeans know the concept of a book of wishes and complaints (in Polish known as "Książka skarg i zażaleń" – "Book of complaints... or complaints", using two different words for more or less the same, both translating to English as "complaint")?

Playing the radio from the loudspeakers in the passenger section also isn't uncommon on the Polish minibuses – although it isn't normally played very loud, and we don't have "Russkoye Radio" in Poland. We have a station playing disco polo music – but on my route, the most popular was Radio Eska, usually playing just the latest music hits (the same repeated so often that you can vomit – although this applies to almost every radio station that mainly plays music). I don't think any of those companies (these are usually small businesses, like the owner + just a few driver, and just a few minibuses; sometimes even one-person companies without any employees, just the owner being also the driver and a single minibus).

But they never really caught in in the city public transport – just now, there is, I think, only one town in Poland where they serve such a function – the most famous Polish mountain resort, Zakopane. They are most common on suburban routes, where no local authority has decided to subsidize the local public transport from the taxes.


----------



## Kpc21

Meanwhile... Because of a technical failure at a power substation, most of the largest power plant in Poland – the brown coal powered one in Bełchatów – is out. We miss 3.9 GW of power. Which luckily hasn't caused any blackout. Nice to have such a stable power system.

The Bełchatów power plant covers 20% of the yearly demand for power in the country.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's the same in the Netherlands. Ascension day long weekend: rainy, cold, cloudy. Pentecost long weekend forecast: rainy, cold, cloudy.
> 
> Normally I would've taken a trip abroad at these long weekends. Even though the weather isn't very good in most of Europe, unless you travel really far south which isn't an option if you have just 4 days off.
> 
> Sevilla is already in full hot summer mode:





MattiG said:


> The Ascension day long weekend was summer-like in Finland. The maximum temperature in Hämeenlinna (100 north of the south coast) was +26 on Thursday, about +21 otherwise. Slightly less on next seven days.


It's been summerlike here as well, and in Norway this is a super long weekend due to our constitution day today (17th of May).

Personally, cannot relate to some people's need to go to a southern country during summer due to weather only. I can understand that some people feel the need for some warmth during late fall or winter, but the mediteranean summer is way too warm for me. When living in warmer countries, I have always missed the more distinct differences between the seasons, and the explosion of life and long hours of soft daylight during May and early June in the Nordics are always enjoyable, almost regardless of the weather....


Suburbanist said:


> Indoor dining has been reopened here for a month, already.


Was it ever shut down completely in Bergen? It never did in Trondheim, but in the short periods where alcohol serving was banned (just after Christmas and around Easter), many good restaurants choose to close because they otherwise would have operated with a loss.


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## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Personally, cannot relate to some people's need to go to a southern country during summer due to weather only.


I find July-August a bit too hot in Southern Europe as well, I prefer to travel in June or early September. I really like June in Scandinavia, I haven't had bad weather every time I went up there. The mountains still have some snow cover, the waterfalls are at their peak, but everything has turned green and the daylight hours are long. And I haven't had much problems with mosquitoes.

The weather in the Netherlands during the summer tends to alternate between cloudy / windy with 20-22 degrees and 27-35 degrees with high humidity. Long stable periods of pleasant weather tends to be rare.

Last year pretty much all of July was cool and rainy in the Netherlands. That's a primary summer month wasted. This is why many Dutch people want to vacation in France, Italy or Spain during the summer, due to the 'guarantee' to have good weather.


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## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Personally, cannot relate to some people's need to go to a southern country during summer due to weather only. I can understand that some people feel the need for some warmth during late fall or winter, but the mediteranean summer is way too warm for me.



That's not what I had in mind.

But if you have gloomy grey weather, often from October until May, (like this year) I wish (and many others too) to have a break in the south, maybe in March or April.

I never go on holiday in height of the summer. Prices go up, everything is full of screaming children and tour bus groups. No, thank you very much. For me May and second half of September are the best times for travel. If I go proper south October is even better.

And in summer London is great city. We have a lot of fantastic parks, there is plenty of roof terraces and pub gardens (especially on the riverside) for parties etc. I really don't see a need for holiday out of London in the summer.


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## Suburbanist

Under 23s in Norway love to travel to Spain or Croatia and the like for partying and having fun. For starters, club and party venues' age restrictions are 18 instead of the usual 20 around here. Cheap alcohol is 70% cheaper than in Norway (the difference is less for more expensive wines or prime distilled products). Fees for fun watersports or similar activities are much cheaper than here. And the water is reasonably warm.

This being said, here in Bergen all that it takes is a low-wind day with temps around 16 oC for higher for the flat balconies and grass lawns to be full of people taking a tan shirtless or in tops.


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## Kpc21

But at least in Poland, from today, it's raining all the time and it's not that warm...


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## Slagathor

geogregor said:


> That's not what I had in mind.
> 
> But if you have gloomy grey weather, often from October until May, (like this year) I wish (and many others too) to have a break in the south, maybe in March or April.
> 
> I never go on holiday in height of the summer. Prices go up, everything is full of screaming children and tour bus groups. No, thank you very much. For me May and second half of September are the best times for travel. If I go proper south October is even better.
> 
> And in summer London is great city. We have a lot of fantastic parks, there is plenty of roof terraces and pub gardens (especially on the riverside) for parties etc. I really don't see a need for holiday out of London in the summer.


I agree. I never understood why people leave the Netherlands in July or August; those are the best months! They may not always be that great, weather-wise, but it won't get any better in September or October. 

I often used to book tropical holidays in February. The perfect moment for a much-needed Vitamin D boost.


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## radamfi

Strictly speaking it "is" possible to go on holiday from England to Portugal, as of yesterday. But you have to spend lots of money on tests, possibly costing more than the holiday. And then you have to spend hours waiting to get through immigration at the airport on the way home because they have to check the test.


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## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Personally, cannot relate to some people's need to go to a southern country during summer due to weather only. I can understand that some people feel the need for some warmth during late fall or winter, but the mediteranean summer is way too warm for me. When living in warmer countries, I have always missed the more distinct differences between the seasons, and the explosion of life and long hours of soft daylight during May and early June in the Nordics are always enjoyable, almost regardless of the weather....


Your mileage may vary. There are people prefering as hot as possible on the holiday, and they naturally go south in the summer. Let us them to do whatever they want. Then, most people have their longer holidays in the summertime, and there are necessarily much choices.

Everything above +25 is not very comfortable to me. Our kids sometime criticized our choices to sometimes go north or to the coastal Norway on holidays instead of roasting us on some crowded beach at the Mediterranean. They launched the family-internal term "The cold twig Norway".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Was it common for Finnish families to travel to the Mediterranean by car? Nowadays people can fly at a low cost but I remember the time that flying to a vacation was relatively rare, at least in the Netherlands. It wasn't until the mid-to-late 2000s that flying became far more widespread. In the 1990s and early 2000s almost nobody I knew went on vacation by airplane with their whole family, though those cheap resort vacations in Turkey and Greece were gaining ground at that time.

Dutch people really like France. There is even a name for them: the 'Francofiel' or Francophile. It's not rare to see French autoroute A31 full with Dutch license plates during the summer. People don't hesitate to drive 1000 - 1400 km to southern France. It's always noticeable how there seems to be so many Dutch cars abroad. Even more than other nationalities of bigger countries.


----------



## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> I often used to book tropical holidays in February. The perfect moment for a much-needed Vitamin D boost.


Me too, it's a great time of year to get away. Although the moment when the pilot tells you the temperature on the descent to home is never nice

"We have just begun our descent to London Heathrow Airport, it's clear skies, minus three degrees on the ground"


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## radamfi

Do Dutch people buy dilapidated houses in the French countryside like Brits did? There have been several TV programmes about British people moving to France, including a very poor 80s comedy called French Fields, a sequel to a previous comedy called Fresh Fields. There is a current long running series about a British couple renovating an old large house









Escape to the Chateau - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





Driving from the Netherlands to southern France doesn't involve an expensive ferry or car carrying train. Coming from southern Finland you have to get a ferry or go through Russia, or a huge detour via northern Sweden.


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## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Was it common for Finnish families to travel to the Mediterranean by car?


Absolutely not. 

The moderately cheap holiday packages using charter flights begun to gain popularity in late 1960's and early 1970's, mainly to Mallorca, Rhodos, Costa del Sol, and Canary Islands. The four to six flight hours was pretty less compared to several days of driving time one way. For example, it is 2200+ kilometers from Stockholm to Genova. The cars from that era would have needed to been serviced en-route, at least by changing the oil.

Here is one advertisement in 1971:










The price per person of FIM 235 equals about EUR 330 on today. (That company went bankcrupt in 1974 because of suddenly increased fuel prices.)


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I only expressed my personal preferences here, but even for me there are of course plenty of reasons for going south on vacation, first and foremost to gain new perspectives and experiences. Pre-Corona I used to travel a bit internationally through my job, and probably will do that soon again, but normally there is no time for anything but airports, meeting rooms, and a possibly few restaurants and a hotel.

During holidays in Norway, we often go to our holiday home or do multi-day hikes or skiing trips using a tent or mountain chalets. However, it often turns out cheaper to go abroad than having a domestic vacation if using hotel accommodation of similar standards in the two cases, even for a few days if you get the right flight deals.

And, unfortunately, we cannot choose our holiday time freely due to the schools of my kids and the work situation of my wife and myself. Hence, we have gone to southern Europe many times during the summer, but not due the weather. And the best times I have had in the mediterrean area have always been during the fall, when the climate is mild, there are fewer tourists, grapes in the wineyards, and the sea temperature still is decent for a Norwegian ;-)

I few times I have also driven to southern Europe, both with my parents as a kid and as an adult myself with my own family. I also know families with a second home as far away Spain who regularly drive down with their own car. Also from Norway, flights have been the dominating mode of transportation over the last 50 years, however, and probably more so today than in the 70s / 80s when e.g. interrail and camping car holidays were more popular.

When driving long distance with family, a single international ferry out of Norway is not an obstacle, btw. It provides a welcome break, and unless using a very long distance ferry requiring sleeping (e.g. Oslo-Kiel or Denmark - Iceland), they could be quite cheap. I think I paid ~30 € for the car and whole family for the less than 4 hours Larvik (N)-Hirtshals (Dk) line last time. Their main income seems to be tax-free shopping and restaurants / bars (much the same bussiness model as airports, actually....). Possibly, ferries Finland-Sweden are currently more expensive because they no longer have tax-free, though.


----------



## PovilD

Oh, the free World  Mallorca, Rhodos in the 1970s, not the thing my parents or people in my country in general would think about


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My great-grandparents went on vacation to Switzerland by car... in the 1930s. That was highly unusual at that time, even though the Netherlands was constructing its first motorways, car ownership was very low at that time. Car ownership in the Netherlands in 1930 was only 5%. It was 50% in the United States by then.


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## Stuu

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> When driving long distance with family, a single international ferry out of Norway is not an obstacle, btw. It provides a welcome break, and unless using a very long distance ferry requiring sleeping (e.g. Oslo-Kiel or Denmark - Iceland), they could be quite cheap. I think I paid ~30 € for the car and whole family for the less than 4 hours Larvik (N)-Hirtshals (Dk) line last time. Their main income seems to be tax-free shopping and restaurants / bars (much the same bussiness model as airports, actually....). Possibly, ferries Finland-Sweden are currently more expensive because they no longer have tax-free, though.


That's incredibly cheap. Last time I looked at Portsmouth to Cherbourg (which is shorter), Brittany Ferries wanted €600 return. €30 is cheaper than Dover-Calais which only takes 90 minutes. Perhaps duty free and reducing the cost of ferries will be the one, minute trivial benefit of Br*xit


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> My great-grandparents went on vacation to Switzerland by car... in the 1930s. That was highly unusual at that time, even though the Netherlands was constructing its first motorways, car ownership was very low at that time. Car ownership in the Netherlands in 1930 was only 5%. It was 50% in the United States by then.


My parents were born in the mid-1950s but they remember that when they were kids (so around 1965), only few people had a car. In a typical village, the mayor, the doctor and the reverent would have a car, but that was pretty much it. Perhaps a wealthy farmer as well, if they got lucky.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Stuu said:


> That's incredibly cheap. Last time I looked at Portsmouth to Cherbourg (which is shorter), Brittany Ferries wanted €600 return. €30 is cheaper than Dover-Calais which only takes 90 minutes. Perhaps duty free and reducing the cost of ferries will be the one, minute trivial benefit of Br*xit


I had to check my email archive and saw that the last peak season (July) Larvik - Hirtshals ticket I bought (family of 6 plus car) was at 595 NOK, or around 60 Euros, so I exaggerated a bit. Note that this ferry is a fast ferry at more than 30 knots max speed. Still cheaper than driving via Øresund, though. The last international ferry ticket I bough was Strømstad (S) - Sandefjord (N) , costed only 175 NOK / 17 Euro for car and family. 2.5 hours with a more normal ferry speed, also mid summer.



ChrisZwolle said:


> My great-grandparents went on vacation to Switzerland by car... in the 1930s. That was highly unusual at that time, even though the Netherlands was constructing its first motorways, car ownership was very low at that time. Car ownership in the Netherlands in 1930 was only 5%. It was 50% in the United States by then.


My grandfather had an assignment in Sicily right after the war, and traveled by car from Norway with some family members. Given the state of Europe at the time it must have been quite an adventure as well.


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## Stuu

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> The last international ferry ticket I bough was Strømstad (S) - Sandefjord (N) , costed only 175 NOK / 17 Euro for car and family. 2.5 hours with a more normal ferry speed, also mid summer.


How many beers does that buy in Sandefjord I wonder?


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## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> My great-grandparents went on vacation to Switzerland by car... in the 1930s. That was highly unusual at that time, even though the Netherlands was constructing its first motorways, car ownership was very low at that time. Car ownership in the Netherlands in 1930 was only 5%. It was 50% in the United States by then.


Now that’s a big east-west difference!

I never heard of my grandparents to ever go on a holiday. They also never owned a car in their life (one pair of grandparents had a horse driven carriage, the others not even that). 

But things changed a lot in Romania in the past 30 years. Now younger people are much more mobile and travel quite a lot.


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## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Possibly, ferries Finland-Sweden are currently more expensive because they no longer have tax-free, though.


There are tax-free sales on the Sweden-Finland ferries, as they call at Åland being a non-EU customs union area. However, the price tags are adjusted to match with the land prices at the endpoints. Prices are lower on the Finland-Estonia routes than on the Finland-Sweden routes even if there is no tax-free sales on the FIN-EST routes. Tax-free does not equal to profit-free.

As a rule of thumb, the prices for 11-16 hour trips Finland-Sweden are cheaper than short crossings from Norway or Sweden to Denmark or Germany. 

The low or mid-season price tag for a day ferry Turku-Stockholm with a car and a 4-berth cabin is some 30 to 50 euros, and the wonderful archipelago views come for free. The prices at the night departures are about double. The high-season price tag on a night ferry might be some 120-150 euros.

From the logistics point of view, Finland is an island. The ferries are combination of passenger ships, luxyry cruising ships and cargo ferries, and quite a big part of the import and export is carried by them. The cargo provides with a constant and substantial cash flow to the shipowners. About one third of the income comes from cargo, one third from passengers, and one third from the sales and the restaurants.

My favourite is a night departure on the Silja route Turku-Stockholm. It takes 11 hours, just enough for a light dinner and a good sleep. It arrives at the port of Värtan at 06:10 in the morning, before the rush hours of Stockholm. The motorway begins at gate of the port, and there is the whole day available for driving, if needed.


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## geogregor

Stuu said:


> That's incredibly cheap. Last time I looked at Portsmouth to Cherbourg (which is shorter), Brittany Ferries wanted €600 return. €30 is cheaper than Dover-Calais which only takes 90 minutes. Perhaps duty free and reducing the cost of ferries will be the one, minute trivial benefit of Br*xit


Inhabitants of Britain (and Ireland) are clearly being screwed over looking how much ferries cost in comparisons with, for example, the Baltics.

I do wonder what is the reason. Lack of competition from the "land option"? 

How come that crossings in the Baltics can be so much cheaper?


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## radamfi

Dover-Calais used to be cheap for a day return or next day return, much cheaper than for a one-way trip, especially with ferries and there were regular offers giving you free bottles of wine. But if you want a longer trip, the fares were usually far more expensive, particularly on Eurotunnel. The terms and conditions give Eurotunnel the right to retrospectively charge your credit card the full price of a single fare in case you decide to buy two day trip tickets to try to save money.


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## Stuu

geogregor said:


> Inhabitants of Britain (and Ireland) are clearly being screwed over looking how much ferries cost in comparisons with, for example, the Baltics.
> 
> I do wonder what is the reason. Lack of competition from the "land option"?


Finland doesn't have a very practical land option either. The Baltic examples are so much cheaper though - does the government subsidise them?

My son and I went to Santander from Plymouth a couple of years ago, that cost £228 as _foot passengers_, including a cabin. I dread to think how much they charge for taking a car as well


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## weatherc

MattiG said:


> The low or mid-season price tag for a day ferry Turku-Stockholm with a car and a 4-berth cabin is some 30 to 50 euros, and the wonderful archipelago views come for free. The prices at the night departures are about double. The high-season price tag on a night ferry might be some 120-150 euros.


4 pers, cabin and car, Turku-Stockholm:
next week: 46€ day, 87€ night
in july: 58€ day, 155€ night


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## radamfi

I just had a look through my emails to see how much I've actually paid on Channel crossings by car. I'm normally fussy about paying high fares. Most of these involved booking well in advance.

May 2009:
Folkestone - Coquelles £54 Eurotunnel day return

January 2011:
Dover - Calais £30 day trip P&O Ferries

October 2013:
Dover - Calais £45 single P&O Ferries
Hoek van Holland - Harwich £155 single

October 2015:
Harwich - Hoek van Holland £340 return, coming back 4 days later, including £83 on overnight cabins.

December 2016:
Folkestone - Coquelles £60 Eurotunnel next day return

It used to be possible to buy combined train-ferry-train tickets between London and Brussels/Paris/Amsterdam/Cologne on the day reasonably cheaply but they ended soon after the Channel Tunnel opened. There are still combined train and ferry fares between London and the Netherlands using the Hoek van Holland ferry but these are not cheap unless well booked in advance. Similarly, Eurostar uses airline style pricing so it is very expensive to travel at short notice. If flights and Eurostar are expensive because you have to travel at short notice then the most affordable way of crossing the Channel is typically by coach (long distance bus). You can still buy foot passenger tickets between Dover and Calais (although currently not available because of Covid) and buy separate train tickets at either end and this can be a cheaper than Eurostar if travelling at short notice but you need to make your own way to the ports as they are not near the railway stations.

The most guaranteed way of crossing the Channel cheaply is by taking your bike, and this is cheaper than being a foot passenger. It seems to be more or less the same fare whether you book in advance or not.


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## MattiG

Stuu said:


> Finland doesn't have a very practical land option either. The Baltic examples are so much cheaper though - does the government subsidise them?


All countries subsidise their marine traffic. Well... I do not know about Paraguay.

The ferries on the Helsinki-Stockholm-Turku-Tallinn triangle are substantially bigger than most of those ones sailing in the Channel. This brings the economy of scale. The passenger capacity varies between about 2000 and 2800. The cargo and car lane length are typically 1000-1500 meters. However, the new Megastar shuttle on the Helsinki-Tallinn route is optimised for the cargo: her car decks have 3650 lane meters. (The space for cabins were allocated to car decks. The travel time is two hours only and cabins are not needed.)

Another source of efficiency is the extremely efficient port logistics. The port turnaround time on the Turku-Stockholm route is 60 minutes for the m/s Baltic Princess and 75-80 minutes for m/s Galaxy. That enables the ferries to make a daily return trip on a route where the speed limits prevents from increasing the cruising speed. Think about unloading and loading hundreds of cars, managing 2800 arriving and 2800 departing passengers, unloading and loading waste and food for those masses, and cleaning 800 cabins in 60 minutes!

The third factor is the multi-modality of the ships. Many people come there just for having fun. They spend quite a lot of money in the restaurants, bars, and shops. Much of the revenue comes from these sources, not from tickets. Especially on the low season, the cruises are often sold on a low prices, perhaps for a few euros only. On the Turku-Stockholm route, the cruise passengers stay on board for 23 hours, and they potentially spend money every hour they are awake.

The staff is quite optimized, too. The employees may have several hats. The one who is the bartender at night, may collect the used bedlinen in the morning, and stand guiding the new passengers.

This all squeezes down the cost per passenger, reflected at the prices.


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## radamfi

My best friend's wife is from Tallinn and when they visit her family they sometimes fly via Helsinki and get the ferry depending on the flight prices and times.


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## MattiG

radamfi said:


> My best friend's wife is from Tallinn and when they visit her family they sometimes fly via Helsinki and get the ferry depending on the flight prices and times.


That is quite common. In the normal situation, there are about 12 daily ferry departures.


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## x-type

bogdymol said:


> Now that’s a big east-west difference!
> 
> I never heard of my grandparents to ever go on a holiday. They also never owned a car in their life (one pair of grandparents had a horse driven carriage, the others not even that).
> 
> But things changed a lot in Romania in the past 30 years. Now younger people are much more mobile and travel quite a lot.


It obviously depends about way of life. My grandparents have chosen to be labour family, instead of farming, which was very common. And they have managed to buy a car in late 1960es or early 1970es (what was quite exotic for farming families). It was a Fiat 850 Special. In 1977 grandpa was able to buy a new, larger car. And he made an epic flop (from today's point of view) buying Wartburg 353W 🤦 However, I'm pretty sure they have never driven out of country. But truly exotic thing is that my grandparents flew to Belgium in late 70es  They had friends there so they managed to get visas and to organize that trip. It is kinda hard to imagine them flying, but they did it


----------



## ChrisZwolle

bogdymol said:


> Now that’s a big east-west difference!
> 
> I never heard of my grandparents to ever go on a holiday. They also never owned a car in their life (one pair of grandparents had a horse driven carriage, the others not even that).
> 
> But things changed a lot in Romania in the past 30 years. Now younger people are much more mobile and travel quite a lot.


My grandfather was a tradesman. He traveled all around West Germany from the 1960s to 1990s. He had seen the Autobahn system develop to what it is today. Apparently he drove 80,000 kilometers per year in his car. 

Another great-grandfather of mine worked on several bridge projects in the 1930s during the Great Depression. The Netherlands initiated a lot of public works to combat unemployment, similar to the Public Works Administration in the U.S. He was working on bridges spanning the Twente Canal, which was dug by hand at the time.


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## radamfi

Whilst low cost airlines have killed a large part of the market regardless, I think ferry fares across the Channel would be cheaper now if the Channel Tunnel wasn't built. Before the Tunnel there were so many ferry companies and routes, as well as hovercrafts and faster ferries. There were several departures per hour on the Dover to Calais route alone.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

MattiG said:


> I doubt. Typically, the cost from extra minutes for loading and unloading is about nothing compared to the cost of multiple operations. Again, unloading and loading hundreds of vehicles in 60 minutes is superfast.


It depends, on routes where there are alternative routes or modes of transport, e.g. the channel ferries, Strömstad - Sandefjord, and even to some degree the Norway - Denmark ferries, longer loading /unloading, or more specifically, longer waiting times for cars before embarkment, is a competetive disadvantage. For instance, by comparing travel times between the E6 turnoff to Strømstad and the E18 turnoff to Sandefjord, Moss - Horten is significantly faster than the direct ferry. (Currently, the Strømstad - Sandefjord ferry is anyway Corona-shut-down. )


----------



## Kpc21

x-type said:


> I don't know. I think there was just regular 91, and one had manualy add oil for 2 stroke engines, just as we are doing for chainsaws or lawn trimmers today.
> I had that luck to drive it few times before we pulled it to the scrapyard.


I remember once finding a very old Polish educational video for driving learners on YouTube. 

Nowadays, when you are driving downhill, it is recommended to utilize engine braking as much as you can, to avoid boiling the brake liquid.

In that video, if I remember well, the approach was different. They were telling to switch the car to "free wheel" (like in a bicycle, as opposed to "sharp wheel", found in all modern cars and in sports bicycles) and brake using the brakes as much as you can.

Seemingly, one of a features of two-stroke engines was that engine braking could be damaging for such an engine.


----------



## tfd543

The Eurovision is having an attendance of 3500 people in NL. Thats a good sign.
AFAIK, they are testing the crowd massively. I was delighted to see happy faces on the tv tonight. Maybe Its part of the code of being in live broadcast, but still. Could be worse.


----------



## radamfi

tfd543 said:


> The Eurovision is having an attendance of 3500 people in NL. Thats a good sign.
> AFAIK, they are testing the crowd massively. I was delighted to see happy faces on the tv tonight. Maybe Its part of the code of being in live broadcast, but still. Could be worse.


I hope it doesn't become a rule that we have to have an unpleasant Covid test before we go to any event. It definitely shouldn't be required once you have been vaccinated.


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## x-type

radamfi said:


> I hope it doesn't become a rule that we have to have an unpleasant Covid test before we go to any event. It definitely shouldn't be required once you have been vaccinated.


I actually hope that neither vaccination won't be a condition for such ocassions. It's really sick. Don't get me wrong, I got vaccinated, but still such conditions for attending public events are really sick.
I had a meeting in one company yesterday and they didn't require masks. It felt so weird, but in the same time it felt so good, free and nostalgic. Very sad.


----------



## tfd543

x-type said:


> I actually hope that neither vaccination won't be a condition for such ocassions. It's really sick. Don't get me wrong, I got vaccinated, but still such conditions for attending public events are really sick.
> I had a meeting in one company yesterday and they didn't require masks. It felt so weird, but in the same time it felt so good, free and nostalgic. Very sad.


Im afraid Its gonna be the new trend in the Coming years. U are not immune forever, or at least we dont know that.

If it means that we are not gonna die, im totally cool with tests, syringes and masks.. life changes.. sometimes things go bad and sometimes outstandingly good..


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## ChrisZwolle

Homeoffice share of workers in Europe. 

I'm one of those Dutch homeoffice workers. We may be returning after the summer vacation. I haven't seen many colleagues for over a year.


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## radamfi

Presumably the more affluent countries at the top of this league have the highest proportion of people who normally work in offices using a computer. Norway data seem strange here, also Germany seems a bit low as well.


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## ChrisZwolle

I suppose it also depends on the culture of management. Managers need to be confident that their workers are productive and efficient from home, and be willing to let loose the old school management style of looking at their work all the time. 

The general observation in the Netherlands is that workers are more productive than in the office (much less chit-chat and smalltalk) and actually need to be protected from getting overworked. Especially during the winter when there wasn't much to do you could see people doing work out of boredom. I receive emails during the weekend and late in the evening.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

radamfi said:


> Presumably the more affluent countries at the top of this league have the highest proportion of people who normally work in offices using a computer. Norway data seem strange here, also Germany seems a bit low as well.


Yes, 11 %. is way too low for Norway. Although lockdowns have overall been relatively mild in Norway, working from home has been recommended for long periods (the whole period), and some periods it has been mandatory if possible. E. g. all teachers worked from home in March 2020. I have been working from home almost the whole period, and most of the meetings I have had, be it from private or public sector, have been working from home.

(All Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Italians, Spaniards, Americans and Brits I have met at Teams meetings have as also been sitting at home at some or all the times, btw. The Poles and Australians, on the other hand....)


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## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> I suppose it also depends on the culture of management. Managers need to be confident that their workers are productive and efficient from home, and be willing to let loose the old school management style of looking at their work all the time.
> 
> The general observation in the Netherlands is that workers are more productive than in the office (much less chit-chat and smalltalk) and actually need to be protected from getting overworked. Especially during the winter when there wasn't much to do you could see people doing work out of boredom. I receive emails during the weekend and late in the evening.


I've had the same experience. People are working well beyond regular office hours. Of course, that sometimes simply translates into a different schedule.

One of my colleagues has small children, so he works during the morning and early afternoon when they're at daycare. During the late afternoon and early evening, he's unavailable because he has to take care of his kids. Then, after they've gone to bed around 7 PM, he returns to his desk to get some work done. Sometimes until 11 PM or even midnight.

I started my current job in November 2020. I haven't met a single one of my coworkers in real life yet.


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## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Yes, 11 %. is way too low for Norway. Although lockdowns have overall been relatively mild in Norway, working from home has been recommended for long periods (the whole period), and some periods it has been mandatory if possible. E. g. all teachers worked from home in March 2020. I have been working from home almost the whole period, and most of the meetings I have had, be it from private or public sector, have been working from home.
> 
> (All Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Italians, Spaniards, Americans and Brits I have met at Teams meetings have as also been sitting at home at some or all the times, btw. The Poles and Australians, on the other hand....)


We look low too, but I bet nobody is too surprising there, just another sad statistics for some of us. There are visible patterns where we end up "last" (not saying literally, but it just statististics), staying near Balkans and similar countries. Soviet past might have to do with these patterns (not saying about particular stuff). I have theories that maybe delayed industrialization from Tsarist times might have to do here too for overall lower development of the country. I personally sometimes find it weird when Lithuania is seen in some positive light from people from foreigners, not in neutral (just for being unknown) or negative. On the other hand, our start position in 90s were resembling Sub Saharan African in some aspects (differencies were relatively developed educational and health systems).


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## Attus

radamfi said:


> Presumably the more affluent countries at the top of this league have the highest proportion of people who normally work in offices using a computer. Norway data seem strange here, also Germany seems a bit low as well.


It's about 2020, yearly average. Only a few people worde from home in Germany in summer-autumn 2020. For example, I worked approx. two months from home March-May and have been working every single day from home since November. But if I had been asked between June and October, I had had to say: never.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I misunderstood the question (did not read the graphics properly) . I interpreted it as sometimes during 2020. Also in Norway, few worked at home due to the pandemic during the first (before March 12th) and third quarter and October (in the fourth quarter) of 2020.


PovilD said:


> We look low too, but I bet nobody is too surprising there, just another sad statistics for some of us. There are visible patterns where we end up "last" (not saying literally, but it just statististics), staying near Balkans and similar countries. Soviet past might have to do with these patterns (not saying about particular stuff). I have theories that maybe delayed industrialization from Tsarist times might have to do here too for overall lower development of the country. I personally sometimes find it weird when Lithuania is seen in some positive light from people from foreigners, not in neutral (just for being unknown) or negative. On the other hand, our start position in 90s were resembling Sub Saharan African in some aspects (differencies were relatively developed educational and health systems).


I got a good impression of your country when I visited some years ago. Clean, orderly, modern facilities, friendly people mostly well kept historical buildings. Of course , I realize there is more to a society than a tourist see on a brief visit, but looking at a some economic statistics, you already have passed many southern European states, which is a great achievement given where you came from. I do not know about Lithuania, but at least Estonia is well-known for its IT-sector.


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## kosimodo

Thx to corona i will be allowed to work from home some days a week now.  saving me 2 hrs a day with commuting. 
Now on 2 days a week at the office. 

I shouldnt have bought my diesel though


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## ChrisZwolle

Working only 2 days in the office gives you the opportunity to live in a more desirable / affordable area. A 90 - 100 minute commute may be too much to do every day, but could be doable if you only have to be in the office for 2 days. I suspect there will be more supercommuters. But it won't work if everyone does this the same 2 days (for example Tuesday and Thursday).


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## ChrisZwolle

There are stories from Dutch people who have traveled to Portugal and Spain by car recently.They said that there are no border checks at all, nobody asking for a PCR test, nobody checking vaccination, no police checks at toll plazas, nobody registering a quarantaine. 

I have a feeling all this fuss about travel restrictions may go away soon, at least for many EU countries. The incidence is declining rapidly across Europe. Every week without tourists is a lot of lost money, especially in Southern Europe, where the tourist season normally ramps up in May-June. It won't be long before most or all of Europe is a low incidence region, with no pressure on the health care system. That ought to get rid of all travel restrictions within Europe / Schengen. 

I went to Switzerland in June 2020. Without a quarantine, Without a vaccination. Without a negative test. Without border checks. Even without masks. I hope this summer will be the same.


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## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I misunderstood the question (did not read the graphics properly) . I interpreted it as sometimes during 2020. Also in Norway, few worked at home due to the pandemic during the first (before March 12th) and third quarter and October (in the fourth quarter) of 2020.


Here we can see a cultural difference between Norway and Finland. Many Finnish companies have talked about location-independent work (not always working at home) for years. Even before the pandemic, less than a half of the office seats might have been in use. Of course, everything is about the nature of the work. 

I worked 22+ years in globally operating companies, being a member of global teams, and heading global teams. In case of meetings where the participants spanned across 17 time zones, it was quite evident that quite many of them joined at their homes. I such an environment where most colleagues and business partners are based elsewhere, sitting at the office does not bring much value. For that time of 22 years, about 15 years my bosses were based in a different city than me. Most of the meetings were remote ones as soon as the technology matured. Seeing team colleagues was a special event needing arrangements and a lot of traveling. This is why I have had some difficulties to understand all this hype about remote working.

My lakeside office:


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Looks nice!

You could very well be right regarding your assumption. Working from a different locations for members of permanent teams has been an exception in all the employers I have had. If accepted on a long-term basis, it is because the competence of that person is seen as indispensible.

The reason has not been managerial control: In my line of work the managers cannot follow what the co-workers are doing on daily basis anyway. Rather, the fear has been that the group cohesion, company culture building, and creativity/innovation due to informal communication are lost.

I believe the mentality possibly will change a bit post-covid though.


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## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> There are stories from Dutch people who have traveled to Portugal and Spain by car recently.They said that there are no border checks at all, nobody asking for a PCR test, nobody checking vaccination, no police checks at toll plazas, nobody registering a quarantaine.
> 
> I have a feeling all this fuss about travel restrictions may go away soon, at least for many EU countries. The incidence is declining rapidly across Europe. Every week without tourists is a lot of lost money, especially in Southern Europe, where the tourist season normally ramps up in May-June. It won't be long before most or all of Europe is a low incidence region, with no pressure on the health care system. That ought to get rid of all travel restrictions within Europe / Schengen.
> 
> I went to Switzerland in June 2020. Without a quarantine, Without a vaccination. Without a negative test. Without border checks. Even without masks. I hope this summer will be the same.


The UK travel situation is getting worse by the day even though deaths and hospitalisations are extremely low now, similar to last summer. There were only 41 deaths in the last week:









England Summary | Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK


Official Coronavirus (COVID-19) disease situation dashboard with latest data in the UK.




coronavirus.data.gov.uk





It seems being ahead in vaccinations is little help when it comes to going abroad. Germany has banned travellers from the UK from today. The Netherlands has designated several "safe" countries where you don't even need to have a test to go to the Netherlands from there. The UK isn't one of them even though the UK has a much better Covid case rate than many of them. 

Safe countries with a low COVID-19 risk 

By contrast, Spain is allowing visitors from the UK from tomorrow. This is all academic really because Germany, the Netherlands and Spain are all on the UK's "amber" list so you have to get two expensive tests and have a 10 day quarantine when returning to the UK.


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## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I got a good impression of your country when I visited some years ago. Clean, orderly, modern facilities, friendly people mostly well kept historical buildings. Of course , I realize there is more to a society than a tourist see on a brief visit, but looking at a some economic statistics, you already have passed many southern European states, which is a great achievement given where you came from. I do not know about Lithuania, but at least Estonia is well-known for its IT-sector.


Our statistics is interesting. I don't know how to interpret this as probably many countries has this situation. It can be my own personal understanding into stats sometimes, or we just have problems here and there, like other countries in some other stats. I started to reason our low work at home rates, maybe it has to do with our economic specifics, lower (than aparent) economic development(?). Sometimes you find we are doing relatively fine in CEE context, sometimes it's weird to find important(-looking) stats where we are almost last in a row like near Balkans ending last, behind many CEE countries, and Netherlands/Denmark ending first. Even in this thread there were two wage maps. There was first map about wages where we are doing relatively fine, and there was another with family median wages where we are doing kinda bad.


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## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> The UK travel situation is getting worse by the day even though deaths and hospitalisations are extremely low now, similar to last summer.


I suppose that governments think in terms of travel restrictions mostly of people who come by plane. As far as I know many European countries did not perform border checks over the past 6-8 months, so why would they now with a rapidly improving situation? It makes no sense, governments are still a bit in panic mode but I think this'll mostly fade away over the next month or so. 

A problem with the 48 or 72 hour PCR test is that you can't use it on a multi-country trip. Even if you want to drive far away you'll have trouble making it in time of its validity. If you take a PCR test with the result in 12-24 hours you need to haul ass to get from the Netherlands to Portugal before it's not valid anymore. Or if you want to spend 3 days in France before traveling to Spain. 

It'll be a 'battle for the tourists' this summer which is an incentive to create as few obstacles as possible. In many countries a PCR test for travel is not free but could cost € 100 - 150. That's a huge expense for a whole family to travel.

Germany has designated the Netherlands as a 'high incidence' region. However judging by the sheer number of German plates many citizens don't really care.


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## keber

Restrictions in Schengen area are now mostly just in paper and that is enough except on main transit routes. Most people actually obey government laws without needing much control so border checks on less important roads are not needed. I believe that 2021 summer vacations will be at least similar to those in 2020, and probably even more relaxed, at least through Europe. Vaccination rates are rising rapidly, hospitalisation rates are rapidly declining. I thing road trip through whole Europe will be perfectly doable.


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## PovilD

I kinda already starting to see those travel restrictions inside Europe as a bit too panicky. It would be better to strengthen control for travel outside of EU, and relax travel inside of EU as most concerns are around poor(ly vaccinating and testing) countries.


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## ChrisZwolle

ChrisZwolle said:


> Germany has designated the Netherlands as a 'high incidence' region. However judging by the sheer number of German plates many citizens don't really care.


German government: 'the Netherlands is a high risk country'.

German people: 'let's go shopping in Roermond!'


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## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> I suppose that governments think in terms of travel restrictions mostly of people who come by plane. As far as I know many European countries did not perform border checks over the past 6-8 months, so why would they now with a rapidly improving situation? It makes no sense, governments are still a bit in panic mode but I think this'll mostly fade away over the next month or so.


Right, but... if I want to visit my mother, living in another European country, shall I take the risk, being quarantined there, not being able to return home where I actually live? Even if this risk is no more than 5%?



> Germany has designated the Netherlands as a 'high incidence' region. However judging by the sheer number of German plates many citizens don't really care.


Even so it's fully legal to visit the Netherlands and return to Germany the same day. No quarantine, no any other restriction. 
And yes, many people really don't care.


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## Slagathor

We'd prefer it if you could just pull up next to the border, throw your wallets across, and then drive back home.


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## keokiracer

Slagathor said:


> We'd prefer it if you could just pull up next to the border, throw your wallets across, and then drive back home.


Well I mean the Germans ging to the Designer Outlet in Roermond are the closest you are going to get to that


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## ChrisZwolle

Lenin in the forest: Google Maps


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## Suburbanist

Seems we have a new geopolitical crisis in Europe.

Lushakenko, Bielorrusian dictator, basically hijacked a Ryanair plane flying normally, as usual, from Athens to Vinlus and used military jets to force it to land in Minsk, under a false bomb threat pretense.

They then arrested a prominent political opponent that has a large media following exposing the regime and news the regime doesn't want out.

It is a major escalation not seen in Europe in 30 years. The Polish authorities are alarmed by the development.

I hope they close the EU airspace to Belaurs-registered civilian airfact in retaliation, at the least. There was already a high-level meeting scheduled tomorrow that will be used also to address this.

I do think that Lushakenko went way overboard as he must be paranoid about the democratic protests and pro-democracy groups willing to bring his regime down.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

keber said:


> Restrictions in Schengen area are now mostly just in paper and that is enough except on main transit routes


This is certainly not the case for Norway's borders yet. A look at the ECDC maps partly explains why. The policies might relax during the summer, though, but a Corona passport is anyway likely to be necessary to avoid quarantine.


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## ChrisZwolle

That map will look a lot more yellow in a few weeks. The Netherlands had one of the highest incidence rate in April-May (coinciding with one of the coldest springs in recent history), but case numbers are now dropping fast. The daily number of cases have dropped by almost two-thirds in just three weeks. Occupied hospital beds have dropped by 40% in only two weeks, reaching their lowest levels in 7 months. The death rate has been very low for a few months now.

Once vaccinations have reached a momentum that hospitals won't be under stress, the focus should shift away from incidence. We're already pretty much there with hospitals emptying out. Give it a couple of weeks and sentiment will be different.

I do wonder what kept Norway and Finland in the clear. You guys had much less restrictions than in most of Europe.


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## geogregor

radamfi said:


> The UK travel situation is getting worse by the day even though deaths and hospitalisations are extremely low now, similar to last summer. There were only 41 deaths in the last week:


It is all due to British media, opposition parties and the Tories trying to be tougher than each other on border policy.

I actually wrote letter to my local MP asking what is her party (Labour) real policy on travel, apart from just trying to kick Boris. I did ask her if she thinks I will be able to see my mother in a month or two or are they (politicians) trying to mimic Australia and cut Britain from the rest of the world.

The problem is that Britain is an island nation and has certain obsessions with borders and isolation. Even before pandemic there is always some debate on tougher border policy. Things outside are "scary", "threatening" etc. Some junior ministers said we shouldn't travel abroad at all this year. Sure it is not official policy (well, not yet) but reaction of aviation and travel sectors was furious.

I'm really depressed watching media coverage and political debate here. I have a feeling that if they could get away with it many people in power would like to isolate Britain from the outside world as much as possible.


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## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> I do wonder what kept Norway and Finland in the clear. You guys had much less restrictions than in most of Europe.


The Finnish border has been essentialy closed for over two months now (and continues to be closed at least until June 15). The EU has given them several warnings for breaking the Schengen rules but they don't care. Also, the restrictions weren't actually that lax at all in relation to their number of cases.


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## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> The Finnish border has been essentialy closed for over two months now (and continues to be closed at least until June 15). The EU has given them several warnings for breaking the Schengen rules but they don't care. Also, the restrictions weren't actually that lax at all in relation to their number of cases.


I believe that the more significant factor is that the citizens and employers have taken the restrictions and recommendations pretty seriously.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> That map will look a lot more yellow in a few weeks. The Netherlands had one of the highest incidence rate in April-May (coinciding with one of the coldest springs in recent history), but case numbers are now dropping fast.


Sure, but our main concern will anyway be Sweden, and although rates are dropping there as well, it is from a high level, so it will take some time.


ChrisZwolle said:


> I do wonder what kept Norway and Finland in the clear.


It may be a matter of future research. I think a keyword for Norway at least have been efficient tracing and targeted regional / municipal measures with local responsibility to keep the infection rates down. And as Matti says, people mostly listen to their government.

Quite controversially, the government has also now extended this local adaption to vaccine distribution. Due to higher historical incident rates, 25 municipalities in the Oslo - area get 60 % higher number of vaccines per capita than the national average until all adults have been offered a vaccine. 24 other municipalities, mostly in the same region but also including a few other large municipalities (Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger, Kristiansand) will get the national average, whereas all other municipalities will receive 35% less. I fear this was the last nail in the coffin of the government following the national election in September.

Otherwise, there has been some interesting demographic trends in Norway due to Covid-19.

Net immigration has been greatly reduced (by 50 %)
Mortality has decreased (a trend from previous years has accelerated, see statistics for Q1 below) - hence also the life expectancy has increased, in contrast to e. g. Sweden (see last figure below)
Number of births have increased by 5 % in Q1 compared with last year. This is quite unusual during a crisis.
Overall the population growth has been similar to previous periods, but there are some interesting local trends:
Oslo has had net domestic emigration for some years now, but until 2020, this was compensated by birth surplus and international immigration. With the latter greatly reduced, and net domestic emigration increasing strongly, Oslo had a growth of only 8 persons in Q1 2021.
The largest population growth was in the regional main cities (Trondheim had the largest growth of them all in absolute numbers), and the municipalities surrounding Oslo.


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## Rebasepoiss

MattiG said:


> I believe that the more significant factor is that the citizens and employers have taken the restrictions and recommendations pretty seriously.


Sure, that may play a small part but it's not _that _difficult to curb the spread of the virus (and especially the spread of newer, more aggressive variants) if you basically lock your country to the outside world. That's what Australia and New Zealand have done, to a more extreme extent, of course.


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## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> That map will look a lot more yellow in a few weeks.


It will take a while for Aragon to turn yellow, due to the low thresolds used for the yellow/orange boundary. In fact it has turned orange from red again only in the last week.


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## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> Sure, that may play a small part but it's not _that _difficult to curb the spread of the virus (and especially the spread of newer, more aggressive variants) if you basically lock your country to the outside world. That's what Australia and New Zealand have done, to a more extreme extent, of course.


Most countries have introduced restrictions at borders. That is why they are not differentiating factors even if details vary.

Most bad epidemic waves in Finland have been domestic origin caused by people not obeying the meeting restrictions.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Border restrictions eases transmission tracing when the contrast in incident levels is large between countries, such as between Sweden and the other Nordic countries. However, the borders have never been more or less hermetically closed such as Australia and NZ. A number of groups have been allowed to enter Norway, at least, throughout the crisis, including Norwegian citizens, truck drivers, health workers, and even (most of the time) daily commuters. And I guess by now the higher transmission rate mutants are dominating everywhere.


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## PovilD

Largest developing suburban area in Kaunas, Lithuania:









Some roads are still gravel, many are asphalt.

I will talk about my city (basically, my surroundings).

People move from commieblock "centrally planned districts" with all necesisties to undeveloped suburban areas. Commieblock districts (especially with cheaper-priced flats) tend to have more visible share of alcoholics and generally more aggressive looking people who tend to stare at you for some reason, might ask for a fire or change if you are lucky enough. Many pathways are unmaintained, and look as having little chances for refurbishment. People often park at grass too, especially in older-built (yet cheaper) commieblock districts.

Previously, worse are being Chruchevka districts, but they see more renovation and often located closer to city centre, maybe public is not very welcoming at times. Renovated chuchevkas look nice and "European". There are still not very renovated parts.









Currently, I see Brezhnev era commieblocks (late 60s to 70s) are worse and most depressing in my opinion. Trees growing randomly, cars being parked randomly, potholes, etc.









Younger districts has slightly younger and more maintained population and infrastructure. Newest Soviet-built commieblock districts even tend to have positive reputation despite not being renovated.









What I can sense there is some sort of order existing in building houses and choosing how public spaces will look like. Yes, it's not as good as you will see further West from there, but relatively to other districts, it just has better feeling. There are downsides of newer districts too, as they usually don't have good parks (some are being developed, but not as good as in older districts).

Old districts compensate situation by recently renovated parks:


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## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> What do voters actually want?


Voters want to be able to build houses wherever they want, not being limited by zoning and urban plans.

By the way modern urban residential development in Poland very often look so that the buildings are built very close to each other, with no much green area in between, and e.g. the legal requirement for a playground for children happens to be fulfilled with... a 3x3 m square with a single swing or another similar toy.

While communism did much evil to Poland, even in terms of urban planning – the residential districts back then were designed many times better.

The district of Residential Teofilów (Teofilów Mieszkaniowy) in Łódź:










North of it, behind the main road, there is the Industrial Teofilów (Teofilów Przemysłowy).










Modern residential development in Cracow:



















Or another new one, in Warsaw:










In communist Poland, the technical quality of these buildings was very low. But the quality in terms of urban planning – much higher than now.


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## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> Voters want to be able to build houses wherever they want, not being limited by zoning and urban plans.


Even if it affects other people adversely? I don't see such an appetite for such laissez-faire planning rules anywhere in northern/western Europe. Even in the UK under the 80s Thatcher government, which made a big deal about loosening planning rules, there was nowhere near that amount of freedom, and those relaxations were largely rolled back in the 90s by the subsequent Major (still conservative) government.

It is regularly in the UK news, usually as a lighthearted article, how someone has to demolish his recently built house because he didn't follow the rules properly. There was a good one last week:









Five houses must be torn down after they were built a third bigger than planned


The £1million six-bed houses at Grundy Fold Farm near Bolton were built up to a third bigger than allowed and in different locations.




metro.co.uk





Even if you want to extend your house, you have to tell the council so that your neighbours can complain about it. You need to get planning permission.


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## Attus

Yes, everyone (at least people with a family) want to live in a single family house, in a quiet and calm area, and the city center must be available by 5 minutes of walk. And that is, of course, impossible. So the more people live in single family houses, the flatter the residential structure is, the more traffic you'll have and the more roads you need. What is, yes, expensive. 
Image 10 million people of London or Ile de France living in such houses! The traffic, the road network they'd need. It would be crazy.


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## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Unfortunately, this is quite common today. It often feels like urban planning resembles Sim City in the way that solutions are all top-down with little regard for reality, for example the increasingly radical anti-car movement that defies *reality that 80-90% of land travel in Europe is by car.*


The question is how long trips do we take into those calculation?. How about walking? I can guarantee that more people might actually walk rather than drive, if we include short trips, in 1-2 km range.

I know it is road enthusiast section of the forum and folks here love cars, roads and driving (I also like driving) but you have tendency to be quite picky with your statistics.

Also, high share of driving is it not a law of physics or god given truth.

The problem is that developments "the Polish way" (which is throwing single family homes wherever one wishes, with very little planning) creates situation where you have to drive virtually everywhere, even if you need a bread roll or a small milk.



> They seem to think that historic city centers equal the entire world in terms of transportation policy. In planning circles, *suburbs are always characterized as something evil that must be stopped.*


Again, typical hyperbole. Suburbs are being built everywhere in Europe. But it has to be managed process. I really hope you don't advocate spreading the mess we have in Poland into western Europe.



> They don't seem to understand what most of the people want: living in a quiet, boring street where nothing ever happens.


True, but that apply as much to urban street as to suburban one. You can have quiet street in the city too.



> In the Netherlands surveys are always framed: people say they want to live in or near a city. Planners believe they want to live on the 10th floor of an inner city apartment building but if you look to the actual data they just like the convenience of living near services, but they prefer a single-family house with a garden. This became even more apparent over this past year: people want larger houses with more space for remote working. Dense, inner city living for most people is just a phase until they settle down in a suburb or other residential area. Even for most Millennials.


Suburbs are relatively new development, maybe last 200 years or so. Car based suburbs exist even less, maybe 80 years or so. And yet you seem to argue that it is natural way of living for the human race. Do you seriously believe that 10 bln people on this planet all want to live in car dominated suburbs and that's how we should organize our cities and the built environment?










We will definitely screw the planet if we all try to live like that.


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## ChrisZwolle

You make too many assumptions based on things I did not say. I'm not going to address them separately, but there is a huge tendency among urban planners, aided by the media, to implement anti-car and anti-suburb regulations and designs. Which simply do not reflect the real world where most people own and drive a car. Even in higher density areas most regular households still own a car. And we should plan accordingly, I'm not saying every urban core should be paved over with parking lots or eight lane roads, or that the Polish (or Belgian) way of suburban development is the ideal model. But it should reflect the reality of a mostly car-based society. And that doesn't exclude other modes of transport.


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## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> You make too many assumptions based on things I did not say. I'm not going to address them separately, but there is a huge tendency among urban planners, aided by the media, to implement anti-car and anti-suburb regulations and designs. Which simply do not reflect the real world where most people own and drive a car. Even in higher density areas most regular households still own a car. And we should plan accordingly, I'm not saying every urban core should be paved over with parking lots or eight lane roads, or that the Polish (or Belgian) way of suburban development is the ideal model. But it should reflect the reality of a mostly car-based society. And that doesn't exclude other modes of transport.


I made assumption based on your general posting (and you are even more prolific than myself ) not just one quoted post.

I think where we differ is that you assume that "car-based society" is inherently a good thing and it should be protected at any cost, or even promoted. At least that what I read from you multiple posts where you show certain annoyance with "the planners" or "green lobby".

I think that role of the car should be gradually diminished. At least from the absurd levels seen in America and similar countries where virtually all public policy is dominated by car (with a few local exceptions). Luckily Europe is not that bad, there is some public transport option.

I enjoy driving. I really do. But I do realize that car dominated society, in planetary scale, is absolutely unsustainable. We really can't have the whole world population living like average Texan, or even Belgian.


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## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> I think that role of the car should be gradually diminished.


This has been officially or unofficially the goal since the 1970s. And it failed decade after decade after decade. Modern societies rely on fast and convenient transportation and for the vast majority this means a trip by car. This is a reality that cannot be overlooked.

The impact of car ownership has never been as low as it is today: gone are the times when central squares were parking lots. Traffic safety is better than any point in motorized history. Noise barriers are the norm now. Gone are the times with high emissions. Cars today are much cleaner than any time in history. Emissions like benzene have been reduced by 100%. Emissions like PM10 and NOX have been greatly reduced through technological advancements, not through anti-car policies. And CO2 emissions will drop with the adoption of electric vehicles over the next two decades.


----------



## radamfi

I don't see much to complain about when it comes to a Dutch suburb, even for someone who uses their car as their only transport. There is normally space for parking at your house, either on the road, in the garage or on the driveway. Often you are close to the motorway or main road and there is normally ample parking (often free) at the neighbourhood shopping centre where you can get groceries and basic shops and services.


----------



## Slagathor

For me, personally, I would advocate a policy that shifts routine trips to bicycles and public transportation as much as possible.

When I say routine trips, I mean stuff like going to the grocery store, going to work, going to school. All the day-to-day stuff.

I would also shift cargo traffic to rail and water as much as possible.

In doing so, the roads would be freed up which would:
1) stimulate the economy as small entrepreneurs like plumbers are no longer stuck in traffic, and
2) make driving a pleasurable experience again.

People would still own a car and use it to visit family out of town, or go to the beach, or anything like that. But nobody wants to be stuck in traffic every single day on the way to work and trucks are horrible things that get in everyone's way.

The Netherlands is doing pretty well on this, except on two points:

when it comes to the logistics industry, their lobbyists successfully keep arguing for more asphalt for more trucks.
many (if not most) work places are located in business parks off the motorway where public transportation doesn't exist. This generates unnecessary commuting traffic.


----------



## Attus

Slagathor said:


> I would also shift cargo traffic to rail and water as much as possible.


Nice idea. But for that you must construct seveal new railway lines for freight trains. The existing railway lines are full. There are capacity issues almost everywhere.
And new railway lines are very expensive, blocked by almost every one (environmentalists as well...) so that they won't be built. So cargo is shifting exactly in the opposite way: from rail to the roads.


----------



## Slagathor

Attus said:


> Nice idea. But for that you must construct seveal new railway lines for freight trains. The existing railway lines are full. There are capacity issues almost everywhere.
> And new railway lines are very expensive, blocked by almost every one (environmentalists as well...) so that they won't be built. So cargo is shifting exactly in the opposite way: from rail to the roads.


Actually it is _you _who should build a new railway line. We already built an entire railway line from Rotterdam to the German border specifically dedicated to cargo. It was finished in 2007 but pretty much ends at the border because you guys can't be bothered to build a proper connection despite years of empty promises. 

If Germany won't build a proper connection, I would advocate that we invest in a transshipment facility on the border. Then we'll bring stuff to the border by train, and you guys can take it from there with trucks. At least that would get the trucks off the Dutch roads.

Cause the current situation is a waste of a railway.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> This has been officially or unofficially the goal since the 1970s.


Where? In Texas or Arizona?



> And it failed decade after decade after decade. Modern societies rely on fast and convenient transportation and for the vast majority this means a trip by car. *This is a reality* that cannot be overlooked.


This is reality which can be changed. I don't understand you fatalism. Do you assume that the situation is unchangeable and all we can do is to provide never ending growth of road capacity?

Slagathor wrote it already. A lot of shorter trips can be shifted to walking and cycling if we design cities (and suburbs) less car-centric. There is also certain element of laziness which we should discourage. I used to have neighbor who could drive 500m just to get some small items from local shop. We really can't design our urban environment with people like him in mind.



> The impact of car ownership has never been as low as it is today: gone are the times when central squares were parking lots. Traffic safety is better than any point in motorized history. Noise barriers are the norm now. Gone are the times with high emissions. Cars today are much cleaner than any time in history. Emissions like benzene have been reduced by 100%. Emissions like PM10 and NOX have been greatly reduced through technological advancements, not through anti-car policies. And CO2 emissions will drop with the adoption of electric vehicles over the next two decades.


You conveniently omit the fact that car production and maintenance is resource heavy activity. Electric vehicles remove direct CO2 emission but create a lot of problems with batteries' production, disposal and transportation. There is simply no denying the fact that the fewer cars the better it is for environment.

It is also worth remembering that building underground car parks can rise prices of already expensive properties. I know some people display certain scorn towards the "car free developments" but more of those the less traffic you will have to deal with.

Now, I'm not one of the lunatics advocating banning cars etc. Cars do have and will have important role in transport mix. But the idea that growing planetary car ownership and ever more driving is good thing for society is just not true. We should look at ways we can reduce demand for driving and not poke fun at "crazy planners trying to ban cars"


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> This is reality which can be changed. I don't understand you fatalism. You assume that the situation is unchangeable and all we can do is to provide never ending growth of road capacity.


You have to look at the reality, not some top-down 'ideal'. The reality is that road traffic has been growing strongly for decades, despite all investment in alternative modes of transport. They grow too, but the growth of road traffic overall is much larger, which means that the overall modal split has remained relatively unchanged. They may change locally (for example in inner cities) but this has more to do with a demographic shift than a modal shift. However inner cities comprise only a very small portion of the population. 

Despite all the differences between European countries, the share of driving in land transport is remarkably similar across the EU. 












geogregor said:


> Slagathor wrote it already. A lot of shorter trips can be shifted to walking and cycling if we design cities (and suburbs) less car-centric.


The Netherlands has adopted this model decades ago. In fact Dutch cities were never really designed to be car-centric. While this works for many short trips, the Netherlands also shows that the large majority of travel remains by car and there is a continued need for road improvements. All projections about 'peak car' or slower population growth have proved to be wrong.

There is a big disconnect between preferred policy and reality, which seems to be growing even larger.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> You have to look at the reality, not some top-down 'ideal'. The reality is that road traffic has been growing strongly for decades, despite all investment in alternative modes of transport.


But don't forget that large chunks of western mobility and economy were designed and based around the cars since at least WWII. Car production and maintenance were (and still are) large parts of economy and enjoy huge benefits of scale as well as political support and lobbying power There wasn't much effort to change it until a few years ago, and even that is rather tokenistic so far. 

I'm still surprise that you seem to assume that modal split is absolutely impossible to change (just because it didn't so far). Societies do change, I have a bit more faith in humanity. 



> They grow too, but the growth of road traffic overall is much larger, which means that the overall modal split has remained relatively unchanged.


Curbing that endless growth would be a good start. Postpandemic changes in work patterns might help.



> The Netherlands has adopted this model decades ago. In fact Dutch cities were never really designed to be car-centric.


Which is good. I actually have good general opinion about Dutch urbanism. Definitely better than Polish mess or American dystopia



> While this works for many short trips, the Netherlands also shows that the large majority of travel remains by car and there is a continued need for road improvements. All projections about 'peak car' or slower population growth have proved to be wrong.
> 
> There is a big disconnect between preferred policy and reality, which seems to be growing even larger.


I have to admit that I don't have particularly good knowledge of local Dutch conditions, I'm more familiar with the US, British Isles and Poland.

Especially Poland and the US definitely favor car based mobility, often even in urban environment. There are many reason behind it. History, geography and politics all influence policy choices regarding investment. Poland has post-communist hangover and anything public is often seen quite badly, people went full on towards individualism since the 90s.

America is America, totally car based and obsessed society. 

Important question is what sort of mobility will be developed in places like Asia and Africa, both with population of multiple of what we have in the so-called "West". If they follow Texas or Poland we are all doomed.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I like to look at what people actually do, not what they think they are going to do, or what policymakers people think should be doing. If you look at what people actually do, you can see that the modal split has remained pretty much unchanged for decades. And vehicle kilometers traveled are pretty much at all-time highs before the coronavirus and traffic volumes are quickly bouncing back, already reaching or exceeding 2019 levels in the U.S.

And that the share of driving is so similar across Europe despite highly variable policies, variable urban development, economic development, etc. I'm not under the impression that this would radically change in the near future. What will change is technology: such as the adoption of electric vehicles and the continuous development of safety features.


----------



## Suburbanist

Slagathor said:


> For me, personally, I would advocate a policy that shifts routine trips to bicycles and public transportation as much as possible.
> 
> When I say routine trips, I mean stuff like going to the grocery store, going to work, going to school. All the day-to-day stuff.
> 
> I would also shift cargo traffic to rail and water as much as possible.
> 
> In doing so, the roads would be freed up which would:
> 1) stimulate the economy as small entrepreneurs like plumbers are no longer stuck in traffic, and
> 2) make driving a pleasurable experience again.
> 
> People would still own a car and use it to visit family out of town, or go to the beach, or anything like that. But nobody wants to be stuck in traffic every single day on the way to work and trucks are horrible things that get in everyone's way.
> 
> The Netherlands is doing pretty well on this, except on two points:
> 
> when it comes to the logistics industry, their lobbyists successfully keep arguing for more asphalt for more trucks.
> many (if not most) work places are located in business parks off the motorway where public transportation doesn't exist. This generates unnecessary commuting traffic.


Trucks and vans are sort of a necessity if we are going to have same-day deliver from online shops. Ditto for warehouses near every major city for each online shop.


----------



## radamfi

Maybe policies towards driving in cities have changed somewhat since the 1970s but when it comes to inter-urban and long-distance travel, car oriented policies are still almost universal. Virtually all countries continue to build motorways, widen motorways and build bypasses.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands has adopted this model decades ago. In fact Dutch cities were never really designed to be car-centric. While this works for many short trips, the Netherlands also shows that the large majority of travel remains by car and there is a continued need for road improvements. All projections about 'peak car' or slower population growth have proved to be wrong.
> 
> There is a big disconnect between preferred policy and reality, which seems to be growing even larger.


I don't _entirely _agree.

It's true that our suburbs are relatively well set-up: with commercial centers, bicycle lanes and public transport.

Our problem is work. There are too many offices in anonymous business parks with zero public transport that are juuuust far enough from residential areas that cycling becomes unattractive.

This means that every single rush hour, there are a lot of people on the road who don't necessarily want to be there. But they don't have a choice. Because their workplace is literally only reachable by car.

Now, I don't think you can bully people so that the car-share in the modal split drops from 85% to 55%. And I think trying would be foolish.

But the Netherlands is still heavily car-centric. You see it in the pandemic too: almost all vaccinations sites are perfectly reachable by car but hard or impossible to reach by public transport. Why? Because everyone in government and in the civil service naturally assumes that everyone has a car.

Business parks and office buildings keep popping up in weird places for the same reason.

I think this is a bad idea. It clogs up the road with people who don't have a choice but to drive to work. As a result, driving becomes considerably less fun and considerably more stressful for everyone.

I would much prefer the Japanese approach of clustering every desk-job or semi-desk job around public transit hubs. Give people a choice in how they commute.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Those are fair points. I never understood why UMC Utrecht (De Uithof) wasn't served by a train station.

On the other hand, the dispersed model of industrial areas at least spreads the commuting flows, instead of a concentration of commuter traffic to a single destination. The problem is that the Dutch motorway network was designed for intercity usage but is really used for commuting. The Dutch cities are typically spaced at 30 - 50 kilometers, making it viable to commute between cities. In many cases the outbound traffic flow is almost as big as the inbound traffic flow in the morning. Germany has an in-between pattern and distances in France are too big for daily commuting between larger cities.


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## radamfi

About 5 years ago I remember seeing a report that the German obsession with austerity means infrastructure is not being maintained properly. Therefore road maintenance builds up so you end up with a lot more unplanned roadworks. Similarly train delays have become a lot more common.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Also, the road system has very outdated design standards, especially the geometry of interchanges seems to have been updated very little since the 1950s. It's surprising that in a country with high speed limits, its interchanges are not designed for speed or fluid traffic motions.


I find the cloverleaf interchange design very dangerous as you hardly get any time to move into the next lane before the lane goes off again. At least once in Germany I couldn't find a safe gap so I ended up staying staying in the lane and going back to where I came from. Obviously these interchanges exist in other countries but maybe you get more time to move lanes. Maybe I was scared because these kinds of interchanges are rare in the UK.


----------



## Gorky

radamfi said:


> Iceland is now the only country that British tourists can visit without quarantine when you get home, now that Portugal has been removed from the list. Even for Iceland you still need to pay for a test before you come return and you still have to have the test even if you have had two doses of vaccine.


It's not clear why... Portugal still has fewer cases and deaths than the UK


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## ChrisZwolle

Cloverleafs are very common in Germany, even some of the busiest interchanges are cloverleafs. They have a multitude of design flaws: not suited for traffic volume, very low design speed on both the loop ramps as well as the outer ramps, short weaving distances, short acceleration and deceleration lanes, poor visibility on ramps, short collector/distributor lanes, tight S-curves in them, etc.


----------



## bogdymol

^^ And some countries are still building new cloverleafs, even without collector/distribuitor lanes, on some of the busiest motorway intersections in the country.

I am looking at you Romania, A1xA0 and A2xA0.


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## metacatfry

Clowerleafs have one advantage, cost, you only need one bridge. that's the only good ting about them. And for some reason so many countries keep building them. It is also strange to read a lot of comments on this site in countries where cloverleafs are seen as something special or extraordinary. I guess there's an attractive aesthetic about them


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## geogregor

radamfi said:


> Iceland is now the only country that British tourists can visit without quarantine when you get home, now that Portugal has been removed from the list. Even for Iceland you still need to pay for a test before you come return and you still have to have the test even if you have had two doses of vaccine.


I find British border policy utterly depressing. The obsession with the "fear of variants" doesn't bode well for the future. Threat of variants will be with us for years to come. I really hope British politicians and mandarins of power don't want to turn the country into isolated prison island for years to come.


----------



## PovilD

On the other hand, everybody will be back to office, around 1/2 to 2/3 are vaccinated. I kinda want to see collegues I didn't saw for almost months, and I've never saw some collegues face to face. I think my anxiety is that I like to plan stuff far ahead, now I think I must act quick when planning stuff.

Only thing that actually bothers me is restriction of movement, close contact and travel stuff.

My country looks like starting to accelerate with vaccinating. I think in this India variant coming, I think this is very important. I wish to have an opportunity to have my second dose earlier.


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> I find the cloverleaf interchange design very dangerous as you hardly get any time to move into the next lane before the lane goes off again. At least once in Germany *I couldn't find a safe gap so I ended up staying staying in the lane and going back to where I came from.* Obviously these interchanges exist in other countries but maybe you get more time to move lanes. Maybe I was scared because these kinds of interchanges are rare in the UK.


Funnily enough this sort of thing happened to me in England the first time I went there by car. It was somewhere on the M25 near to the M1 (I was heading North from the Channel Tunnel) and I needed to stop for petrol. So I turned off when I noticed a sign saying "motorway services" and I ended up on some horribly complicated roundabout system featuring traffic lights and very short lanes. I didn't understand it and ended up going back to where I had come from, driving South.


----------



## PovilD

Most notable example for me in Germany:









Main road from Central to Southwest Europe basically goes through a cloverleaf loop


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## ChrisZwolle

Other major cloverleaf interchanges with significant turning movements:

Kreuz Oberhausen
Kreuz Leverkusen
Kreuz Dortmund/Unna
Kreuz Hilden
Kreuz Köln-West
Kreuz Bochum
Kreuz Recklinghausen
Westhofener Kreuz
Kreuz Hannover-Ost
Bremer Kreuz
Kreuz Bad Oeynhausen
Frankfurter Kreuz
Kreuz Bad Homburg
Offenbacher Kreuz
Kreuz Wiesbaden

Most of this type of interchanges have at least one bypass or direct connector in Bavaria and most of Eastern Germany. Western Germany is lagging behind in this aspect, especially NRW. Some are scheduled for reconstruction in the near future.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> Priority 1 was opened first, priorities 2 and 3 later. People belonging to a priority which has already been opened, could try to get an appointment in vaccination centers. You usually needed several dozens of phone calls to get an appointment. There is not any central control, not even in regional level.


Germany, this country known for being well-organized? xD

In Poland it also didn't work the best, but still much better than how you describe it.



ChrisZwolle said:


> It's surprising that in a country with high speed limits, its interchanges are not designed for speed or fluid traffic motions.


"High speed limits"... The only country that actually has sections of roads without ANY speed limits! (obviously except for that you are obliged to drive with such a speed which gives you control over the vehicle in the current conditions)



radamfi said:


> infrastructure is not being maintained properly


Sounds like the Polish approach  Building new things (so that the government has something that they made to show to the voters) and then forgetting about them (because maintenance costs money, but it's not something with which you can show off).


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

There is a serious bush / heath fire developing at Sotra west of Bergen. Several hundred people have been evacuated. It is windy, and the vegetation is very dry, so the fire is difficult to control.

















On a more positive note, UK and Norway finally have a post-brexit agreement.


----------



## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> Funnily enough this sort of thing happened to me in England the first time I went there by car. It was somewhere on the M25 near to the M1 (I was heading North from the Channel Tunnel) and I needed to stop for petrol. So I turned off when I noticed a sign saying "motorway services" and I ended up on some horribly complicated roundabout system featuring traffic lights and very short lanes. I didn't understand it and ended up going back to where I had come from, driving South.


Sounds like South Mimms. The roundabout is very large, so traffic can get up to quite serious speeds. Terrible motorway services is something the UK excels at, I assume it is one of our USPs post-Brexit - I once stopped at Birchanger Green on the M11, and somehow the traffic which had stopped for a piss and then discovered they had to go back round to get fuel had entirely gridlocked the place, I didn't move for nearly an hour


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> I find British border policy utterly depressing. The obsession with the "fear of variants" doesn't bode well for the future. Threat of variants will be with us for years to come. I really hope British politicians and mandarins of power don't want to turn the country into* isolated prison island *for years to come.


They dream of that. The only people who watch Kim Jong Un with envy work for the British Civil Service. They cried when the Berlin wall fell


----------



## Suburbanist

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> This sounds strange. There has been no national priority for students or university employees, but maybe those individuals not present belonged to risk groups or had patient contact? In any case I doubt it is within the national guidelines to bypass the priority lists in such a case, unless there was a no-show emergency. There is no lack of people wanting the vaccine.


I didn't phrase it properly: my local GP serves many university students and staff. They get vaccine appointment offers but cannot go since many are staying elsewhere out of the city. This allowed the doctor to move up some patients in the vaccination list who can take appointments at short notice.


----------



## tfd543

@Kpc21, whats the official web site for Pl border administration? 

There are 2 different as i could see.. i have found Komenda Główna Straży Granicznej

I wanna e-mail them to ask if warsaw airport accepts an antigen test taken in a non-eu country.. thanks


----------



## radamfi

Michael O'Leary, the Ryanair boss, was on BBC news this morning with his reaction to Portugal being removed from the list of countries that don't need quarantine when arriving in the UK. He's disliked by many but he's often good for a soundbite and he was scathing about the Johnson government, and used the phrase "variant, scariant." However he's pretty confident that restrictions in Europe will be gone in the next few months.


----------



## Kpc21

tfd543 said:


> @Kpc21, whats the official web site for Pl border administration?
> 
> There are 2 different as i could see.. i have found Komenda Główna Straży Granicznej


Looks like it's the one. Which is the other you've found?

Btw according to this: https://www.gov.pl/web/koronawirus/aktualne-zasady-i-ograniczenia (official Polish Covid restriction website), if you travel to Poland from a non-Schengen country, you can only be exempt from quarantine if you make a Covid test in Poland (might be at the airport, before the border check). Another option is to be vaccinated with one of the vaccines accepted in the EU.

I guess that if you got a Covid test within the last 48 hours outside Schengen, you will be considered a person travelling from outside Schengen (after all, you could get infected there) and this test will not be accepted. But you can get an antigen test in Poland within 48 hours from the arrival (major airports in Poland have multiple Covid testing points, from what I've checked, the airport in Warsaw even has two in the baggage reclaim area), and this will free you from quarantine. A typical price for an antigen test is 200 PLN (= 45 EUR), at some airports it's cheaper; somewhere in the city, I guess, too.

An exception are: India, South Africa and Brasil, in case of these countries, after coming from them, you have to be quarantined for at least 7 days.


----------



## Alex_ZR

Kpc21 said:


> Looks like it's the one. Which is the other you've found?
> 
> Btw according to this: https://www.gov.pl/web/koronawirus/aktualne-zasady-i-ograniczenia (official Polish Covid restriction website), if you travel to Poland from a non-Schengen country, you can only be exempt from quarantine if you make a Covid test in Poland (might be at the airport, before the border check). Another option is to be vaccinated with one of the vaccines accepted in the EU.


Can I enter Poland since I have been vaccinated with Pfizer vaccine?


----------



## Kpc21

If you've already got both doses and you are an EU citizen (or of the UK, or of Belarus, or of EEA countries, or of Switzerland), yes. Otherwise – there is a closed list of who can enter Poland (available also in English): Koronawirus – wjazd do Polski, granica zewnętrzna

It seems an ordinary citizen of Serbia doesn't count 

But I think it's only a matter of time until people from other countries (except for some of high risk with these new mutations) will be allowed. Poland is loosening up more and more restrictions every two weeks or so.


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## Kpc21

The (or rather die) deutsche Ordnung is overadvertised.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

WDR also reports about the mandatory PCR test for entry into the Netherlands, despite German incidence being 3 times lower: Urlaub in den Niederlanden: Schnell noch ein PCR-Express-Test

They also note that this law was made up a while ago, and only came into effect on 1 June, in a different reality. However the Netherlands is slow to update the risk areas. 

Don't waste your money on a PCR test if you drive from Germany to the Netherlands. There are no border controls and nobody will ever ask for it.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Don't waste your money on a PCR test if you drive from Germany to the Netherlands. There are no border controls and nobody will ever ask for it.


Can't they fine people who did not get tested?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't think so. They can't even enforce the quarantine for travelers from very high risk areas (like India and South America). Negative tests are also not needed in the Netherlands to enter restaurants, terraces, barbers or any kind of accommodation. Nobody in the Netherlands will test for regular day-to-day access, you only need it for certain mass events (like concerts with a large audience).


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't think so. They can't even enforce the quarantine for travelers from very high risk areas (like India and South America).


According to this









Travelling to the Netherlands from abroad


The Government of the Netherlands has decided to lift the European Union (EU) entry ban for the Netherlands as of 17 September 2022. Given the current epidemiological situation in the Netherlands, the Government feels that for entry to the Netherlands the EU entry ban is no longer proportional...




www.government.nl





"You must also be reachable on the phone number you provided. If you do not open the door or answer the phone you may be fined €339."


----------



## Suburbanist

I wonder if the nitrogen tire filling fad will ever come back.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes it's a lot of tough talk in the regulations, but they don't check anything if you travel by road. But there were also news reports that they don't check the quarantine for air travelers, apparently they don't have a system in place how to register and enforce it.

This whole law is kind of insane, the situation has dramatically improved in Europe over the past month and now they are officially enacting by far the strictest entry regulations. We call that 'mustard after dinner' (i.e. something that comes too late and has no use anymore).

But it's kind of sad for German families to conform to the rules, purchase 300 or 400 euros worth of negative tests for a holiday in the Netherlands, only to find out nobody ever asks for it.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> We call that 'mustard after dinner' (i.e. something that comes too late and has no use anymore).


Polish also has this idiom. English doesn't?


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes it's a lot of tough talk in the regulations, but they don't check anything if you travel by road. But there were also news reports that they don't check the quarantine for air travelers, apparently they don't have a system in place how to register and enforce it.
> 
> This whole law is kind of insane, the situation has dramatically improved in Europe over the past month and now they are officially enacting by far the strictest entry regulations. We call that 'mustard after dinner' (i.e. something that comes too late and has no use anymore).
> 
> But it's kind of sad for German families to conform to the rules, purchase 300 or 400 euros worth of negative tests for a holiday in the Netherlands, only to find out nobody ever asks for it.











Travelling to the Netherlands: negative COVID-19 test result no longer required


From 23 March 2022 people travelling to the Netherlands from outside the EU/Schengen area no longer need to show a negative test result. Check the current rules for entering the Netherlands.




www.government.nl





is strangely specific about what kinds of public transport you need a test for. There are plenty of local buses that cross the border that aren't on this list. You could also take a bus to the border and walk across, for example from Aachen to Vaals. Walking doesn't appear to be explicitly mentioned.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> Polish also has this idiom. English doesn't?


I've never heard of it.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> Polish also has this idiom. English doesn't?


In English the equivalent would be _"to close the stable door after the horse has bolted"_


----------



## radamfi

This fairly well known London based Dutch Youtuber has a video where she gets her English friend to try and guess what Dutch expressions mean when translated into English literally. She always introduces her videos with "Hoi" and ends them with "Doei".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

40 °C in Manitoba, Canada. They had snow on the ground a couple of weeks ago.



__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1400976150411845632

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1401017743088832519


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## Kpc21

Last years during the holidays I was in a museum of transport in Dresden. As a lady from the staff told us – we weren't even required to wear masks. So the restrictions were looser than in Poland, where in all enclosed public spaces masks were obligatory.

This was a year ago. Now... A friend of mine just wanted to visit a museum in Görlitz (the same federal state of Sachsen). No way – one needs either a vaccination certificate, or a Covid test result from the last 48 hours. The same for eating in restaurants, even outside the building.

But in the federal state of Brandenburg it was much more relaxed.


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> This fairly well known London based Dutch Youtuber has a video where she gets her English friend to try and guess what Dutch expressions mean when translated into English literally. She always introduces her videos with "Hoi" and ends them with "Doei".


That was fun but it's quite an accomplishment to do make a video on this topic and somehow miss all the nautical expressions we have. 

It's one of the things that sets Dutch apart from German: our language is littered with nautical terms and expressions and theirs isn't.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Yeah, and many of those are common among the coastal nations bordering the North Sea, I believe.

"Fighting the windmills" is not only a Dutch idiom, of course, coming from Don Quixote. And the English version is "Tilling at windmills" I believe. 



geogregor said:


> In English the equivalent would be _"to close the stable door after the horse has bolted"_


Similar in Norwegian. Mustard does not grow here ;-)


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Seems like Norwegian urban young people no longer care about Corona, as there are heaps of them partying in parks during the nice summer weather we have now. 








Oslo tonight 








Trondheim yesterday


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> In English the equivalent would be _"to close the stable door after the horse has bolted"_


Yeah, I heard about this idiom too in my local language 

---
I think it was always like that with covid since March 2020. Most things we failed or still failing with managing covid is being too late to react.
As long as there will be chances for "catastrophic covid conditions" in Developing countries, it's possible not to expect much improvement even in Developed countries in this story (unless vaccinations will provide some stability).
Europe seems to be ditching "Fortress Europe" (Australia-like travel bubble) idea from very beginning. We could be at least better prepared what to expect.


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## volodaaaa

geogregor said:


> In English the equivalent would be _"to close the stable door after the horse has bolted"_


Ours is more sadistic 😂 we say "someone or something came after the funeral"


----------



## volodaaaa

geogregor said:


> In English the equivalent would be _"to close the stable door after the horse has bolted"_


Ours is more sadistic 😂 we say "someone or something came after the funeral"


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland practically every adult already had the chance of getting vaccinated with at least one dose of the vaccine.


Unfortunately hundrends of millions of European people don't live in Poland.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> Unfortunately hundrends of millions of European people don't live in Poland.


I was just posting this as an example, not blaming you or anything... And pointing out an interesting and unusual fact that the Polish government managed to do something quite well compared with other countries.

I wish Germany also a success in vaccinating the population.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Our level of success is more-or-less the same. Right now, only one figure matters: % of population fully vaccinated. And here, the numbers are not lying: COVID-19 Data Explorer

In Europe, we have some outliers (Malta, Hungary, UK, with the rate of 40% or higher). Serbia is reporting at 32% at the moment, also very good achievement. Lithuania is at 26%.
Looking further down the list, we are all in low 20s (Denmark, Spain, Poland, Norway, Belgium, Germany -- to name a few), or near this figure (Austria, Netherlands), with European avg being 18% so far.

So, situation in PL, DE or NL is more or less *the same*, but perception is different. Why? Because Poland was never a country with equality. We have young, internet-present cohorts all already jabbed or in the middle of the cycle, spreading the optimistic PoV of 'everybody can get a vaccine at any time', but it is because we have a lot, A LOT of older people either not willing or not motivated enough to book a shot, and a lot of immobile, senile or not tech-savvy seniors who are completely ignored by the system. Therefore, we are happily jabbing 16-year-olds right now, with almost half of the 50+es unvaccinated. As far as I know, it is much less chaotic in DE, NL etc.

And TBH, I would happily wait another 2 months for my shots, if that would mean that all of the seniors that I meet in the morning tram are protected. But it aint like that -- because Eastern Europe ingeneral, and Poland in particular is not a place that cares for those who are not young, healthy and savvy.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

(sorry for double posting, i am in the woods right now and the internet is not so great)


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## PovilD

Attus said:


> No, you can't. I'd like to be vaccinated today, simply because I'm worried about Covid (Yes, I know, many people, especially young ones aren't. I am.). But I must wait several weeks. If I have luck, I can be vaccinated in July.


Sorry to hear that.

I'm not worried about covid disease right now, get vaccinated and your chances for true horrors are quite low. I'm worried about epidemic in general. Cutting link of transmission is very important, and many vaccines seem to be helping that at least for time being.


----------



## PovilD

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Our level of success is more-or-less the same. Right now, only one figure matters: % of population fully vaccinated. And here, the numbers are not lying: COVID-19 Data Explorer
> 
> In Europe, we have some outliers (Malta, Hungary, UK, with the rate of 40% or higher). Serbia is reporting at 32% at the moment, also very good achievement. Lithuania is at 26%.
> Looking further down the list, we are all in low 20s (Denmark, Spain, Poland, Norway, Belgium, Germany -- to name a few), or near this figure (Austria, Netherlands), with European avg being 18% so far.
> 
> So, situation in PL, DE or NL is more or less *the same*, but perception is different. Why? Because Poland was never a country with equality. We have young, internet-present cohorts all already jabbed or in the middle of the cycle, spreading the optimistic PoV of 'everybody can get a vaccine at any time', but it is because we have a lot, A LOT of older people either not willing or not motivated enough to book a shot, and a lot of immobile, senile or not tech-savvy seniors who are completely ignored by the system. Therefore, we are happily jabbing 16-year-olds right now, with almost half of the 50+es unvaccinated. As far as I know, it is much less chaotic in DE, NL etc.
> 
> And TBH, I would happily wait another 2 months for my shots, if that would mean that all of the seniors that I meet in the morning tram are protected. But it aint like that -- because Eastern Europe ingeneral, and Poland in particular is not a place that cares for those who are not young, healthy and savvy.


Only around 50% of people in their 80s are vaccinated in Lithuania. Some 70% in their 70s. There was and still is information campaign, bu tI feel there is fatalist approach in older age group. I think people think wrong when they think only about themselves even in fatalist manner ("why need vaccine when you almost on the death bed anyway"), don't think about younger people, and that them being infected is not good not just for them but for those who surround them too.

On the other hand IF vaccine cut the transmission by some large percent, it might not be as big of a problem. Younger people won't infect older people who might die.

Eastern (part of) Europe(an Union) might have some advantages in comparison with West Europe, like higher natural immunity, and more vaccination in more active age groups, less vaccinations in more isolated and immobile age groups.


----------



## Slagathor

Kpc21 said:


> I guess this is the propaganda, but still, I don't believe it's much worse from the western vaccines, and probably better from some of them.


I've said this before, but it bears repeating:

I find it entirely credible and likely that Russian medical scientists came up with an excellent vaccine. They've also been doing some amazing work in the fight against antibiotic resistance in Russia in recent years. I don't doubt their skills.

But the problem with the Sputnik vaccine is that the Kremlin got its dirty hands on it. There's no way we can trust it now. The only way to be sure would be to start producing it ourselves in Western facilities and then running trials on it.


----------



## Suburbanist

Slagathor said:


> I've said this before, but it bears repeating:
> 
> I find it entirely credible and likely that Russian medical scientists came up with an excellent vaccine. They've also been doing some amazing work in the fight against antibiotic resistance in Russia in recent years. I don't doubt their skills.
> 
> But the problem with the Sputnik vaccine is that the Kremlin got its dirty hands on it. There's no way we can trust it now. The only way to be sure would be to start producing it ourselves in Western facilities and then running trials on it.


Exactly. The lab has a good track record, but it has refused to engage in the normal processes that drug manufacturers do regarding the EMA and FDA. And the Russian diplomatic service became its de facto marketing agent. They even tried to coerce influential bloggers in ohter countries to take down any criticism of the vaccine (as if they were in Russia itself).


----------



## Kpc21

Fuzzy Llama said:


> because we have a lot, A LOT of older people either not willing or not motivated enough to book a shot, and a lot of immobile, senile or not tech-savvy seniors who are completely ignored by the system


Maybe it's the matter of perspective, but seniors whom I know were first to get vaccinated and they wanted that on their own.

Although they don't use Internet, they watch TV, and getting vaccinated is quite heavily promoted over there.

Being tech-savy is not required to get a vaccine.

But indeed the difference may, for example, come from the fact that while in western Europe, I believe, most seniors live in nursing homes, in Poland most of them live either alone, or with their families. Nursing homes exist but they aren't even nearly as popular as in the West.

And there were – i think everywhere, in Poland too – organized actions of vaccinating people in the nursing homes; while in case of seniors not living in such places, the decision was up to themselves.

Still, the seniors should be more willing to get a vaccine, because they know they are more vulnerable to Covid, and they remember times, when diseases now almost completely eradicated thanks to vaccines, were still present, so they are more likely to believe that vaccines are actually a useful tool that gives much more good than evil, unlike many younger people (especially from the boomers generation) witch much more sceptical approach to vaccines.



Slagathor said:


> But the problem with the Sputnik vaccine is that the Kremlin got its dirty hands on it. There's no way we can trust it now. The only way to be sure would be to start producing it ourselves in Western facilities and then running trials on it.


But I am not talking about vaccinating our people with Sputnik. I understand not trusting Russians in the terms of safety. I'm talking about not requiring Covid tests from those vaccinated with the Sputnik vaccine same as they are not required from those vaccinated with Pfizer, Moderna, Astra Zeneca, Johnson's Baby (yes, it's the same company which makes the shampoo – although its another division). If Russia believes in the vaccine to be effective, actually uses this vaccine on its society and expects that it will stop the spread of the virus, many other countries the same, then it doesn't make much sense not trusting its effectiveness. Which has nothing to do with its safety. Even if people vaccinated with Sputnik were getting antennas growing from their heads and starting looking like aliens from class B sci-fi movies (for some reasons it got such a cosmic name...), they would still be immune and this is what matters for making them also exempt from restrictions, not whether the vaccine is safe.

In general, I am against differentiating people into those vaccinated and not vaccinated, and some medical professionals also think so (that getting vaccinated should be an aware decision, based on education and knowledge, and not on promotion or de-facto forcing people to do it), but if we are already doing it, we should do it so that it makes sense, and not treat someone vaccinated by our political enemy as someone in any way inferior.



Suburbanist said:


> Exactly. The lab has a good track record, but it has refused to engage in the normal processes that drug manufacturers do regarding the EMA and FDA. And the Russian diplomatic service became its de facto marketing agent. They even tried to coerce influential bloggers in ohter countries to take down any criticism of the vaccine (as if they were in Russia itself).


This is how Russia nowadays mainly "works"... This is often considered their participation in the cyber-war. By spreading misinformation and manipulating people this way.

Although I don't know anyone who would actually believe that Sputnik is for any reasons better than Astra Zeneca... There are many people preferring Pfizer to Astra Zeneca, but this doesn't seem to be a result of the Russian propaganda, but rather of Astra getting suspended in some countries because of these blood clots situations. Now, at least according to my knowledge, we know that the same situation may equally well occur with Pfizer, and that these cases were so rare that we can't even know if they weren't connected with the vaccine by simple accident.

And maybe of the fact that Astra is more likely than Pfizer to cause side effects. But, again, I don't know if it's true, probably not. The first group to be vaccinated over here were medical doctors – and because of their education, they knew what to expect from the vaccine, so if they had side effects, they didn't complain. The next one were teachers – they were vaccinated with Astra – and actually many of them complained. The majority of teachers are rather old and with long-lasting diseases (e.g. of throat – simply due to their work), so they were more likely to get some side effects, and also Astra is more likely to give side effects after the first dose, as opposed to Pfizer, which gives more side effects after the second dose.

Some people may believe that we should accept Sputnik to get more vaccines and make the process faster – but after the initial troubles, now it works really well, and there aren't situations any more (at least not as many of them so that it would be a major problem) when people aren't getting vaccinated as planned because the vaccines simply haven't arrived. So the Russian propaganda doesn't seem to work here.


----------



## Suburbanist

With the new EU measures taking place from today, the air traffic map in Eastern Europe looks quite different.

In addition to the previous "black holes" in Donetsk (for virtually anyone) and Crimea (for non-Russian traffic), the interdiction of Belarus airspace for EU aircraft and the ban on Belarussian airlines from the EU had created a shadow void over Ukraine as well, since most diversion of Asian-Europe traffic is happening through a now congested airway on the tight spot between Russia and Lithuania or Latvia.

Traffic from Scandinavia to the Balkans is particularly affected by the extra detour.

A further measure could be a ban of other foreign aircraft (namely Russian) that overflow Belaurs on their way to or from EU airports. I noticed on FlightRadar24 that several Gulf and Far East carriers, even cargo ones, are starting to avoid overflowing Belaurs as well.

There are also other areas where traffic is avoided over Syria and Iraq, with only some designated airways being in use.


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## Kpc21

There are also some airplanes taking a detour over Poland.

For example...










Quite a long one, actually.


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## Suburbanist

Yeah, flights to Kyiv and many other Ukraine destinations from Scandinavia and Baltics will get substantially longer.

I don't see another way, though, after the state hijacking of the Ryanair flight. I wonder if Belaurs will relent and free the two imprisoned activists and journalists as their state airlines risk bankruptcy (or maybe be taken over by the Russians altogether).


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## Dikan011

I'm old enough to remember that Yugoslavia's airlines were under far heavier sanctions and managed to survive quite well actually.☕ 

So, no worries.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> those vaccinated with Pfizer, Moderna, Astra Zeneca, Johnson's Baby (yes, it's the same company which makes the shampoo – although its another division). I


Yeah, when I first heard about this vaccine, I thought about that shampoo


----------



## PovilD

Suburbanist said:


> With the new EU measures taking place from today, the air traffic map in Eastern Europe looks quite different.
> 
> In addition to the previous "black holes" in Donetsk (for virtually anyone) and Crimea (for non-Russian traffic), the interdiction of Belarus airspace for EU aircraft and the ban on Belarussian airlines from the EU had created a shadow void over Ukraine as well, since most diversion of Asian-Europe traffic is happening through a now congested airway on the tight spot between Russia and Lithuania or Latvia.
> 
> Traffic from Scandinavia to the Balkans is particularly affected by the extra detour.
> 
> A further measure could be a ban of other foreign aircraft (namely Russian) that overflow Belaurs on their way to or from EU airports. I noticed on FlightRadar24 that several Gulf and Far East carriers, even cargo ones, are starting to avoid overflowing Belaurs as well.
> 
> There are also other areas where traffic is avoided over Syria and Iraq, with only some designated airways being in use.


I'm thinking if we will gonna be back to Cold War situation when nobody (well, at least Western World) will fly over Russia too. Who knows what precedent might happen.

Belarus kinda resemble me Russia's playground on experimenting stuff. Just my impression, from civilian infrastructure to military maneuvers.

Belarus is not even a war zone like Crimea or Donbass. Neither Russia.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> In Norway they have declared the pandemic to be 'virtually over': FHI-overlege: – Det var den pandemien
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1401465455269888001


That is not the official view.


----------



## Suburbanist

PovilD said:


> I'm thinking if we will gonna be back to Cold War situation when nobody (well, at least Western World) will fly over Russia too. Who knows what precedent might happen.
> 
> Belarus kinda resemble me Russia's playground on experimenting stuff. Just my impression, from civilian infrastructure to military maneuvers.
> 
> Belarus is not even a war zone like Crimea or Donbass. Neither Russia.


Russia earns a lot of money from overflight rights. I also think an attempt by Russia to close its airspace to Western traffic will be retaliated in kind and also subject to further prohibitions of thrid-country airplanes (e.g. Chinese) operating on EU airspace for purposes of landing on EU airports.

Of course, a ban from Russia on overflying would severely disrupt traffic from Asia to Europe and to some extent from Asia to the US as well. But Aeroflot might be then forbidden to operate in the EU.

I am ambivalent about what is happening in Russia. It can no longer be considered a barely functioning democracy any longer. At the same time, Russian elected three times a government with an explicit anti-democracy agenda, blaming the post-Cold Wars woes on Western interference and liberal reforms. So to some extent (some), it is as if Russian brought their predicament upon themselves when thinks looked as if they could only get better after the Boris Yieltsyn years. Same as in Venezuela, a collapsing country where the current violent dictatorsship was elected in reasonably fair elections, more than once, before it just dismantled the whole institutions of the country (while explicitly saying it was what they were going to do when campaigning for votes).


----------



## Slagathor

PovilD said:


> I'm thinking if we will gonna be back to Cold War situation when nobody (well, at least Western World) will fly over Russia too. Who knows what precedent might happen.


Back to transferring in Anchorage like in ye olden days. I hope they've got a proper coffee shop at that airport.


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## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> At the same time, Russian elected three times a government with an explicit anti-democracy agenda


If they did actually elect it in the first place. Do Russian allow others to even verify that?

Also don't forget that opposition politicians get prosecuted in Russia.


----------



## Attus

Suburbanist said:


> I am ambivalent about what is happening in Russia. It can no longer be considered a barely functioning democracy any longer. At the same time, Russian elected three times a government with an explicit anti-democracy agenda, blaming the post-Cold Wars woes on Western interference and liberal reforms. So to some extent (some), it is as if Russian brought their predicament upon themselves when thinks looked as if they could only get better after the Boris Yieltsyn years.


The nineties, with Yeltsin, were quite a bad age for Russia and Russian people. Collapsing economy, people becaming poor in a short time, chaos, corruption. No wonder they did not like it. 
Putin is everything but a liberal democrat. But both the economy and the society are stable, and people like it.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> The nineties, with Yeltsin, were quite a bad age for Russia and Russian people. Collapsing economy, people becaming poor in a short time, chaos, corruption.


Like probably everywhere in the former Eastern Bloc... Poland wasn't different in the early 1990s.


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## masala

Suburbanist said:


> (such as another co-worker from Rwanda who resents and gets angry at people complaining about their dictator and non-existing democratic institutions).


But you won't complain "about their dictator and non-existing democratic institutions" if Russia would keep pro-western foreign policy, like e.g. Turkey does?


----------



## Suburbanist

masala said:


> But you won't complain "about their dictator and non-existing democratic institutions" if Russia would keep pro-western foreign policy, like e.g. Turkey does?


Erdogan is high on my dislike list. I have a handful of colleagues from Turkey who basically live in exile because their research activities or careers were deemed dangerous or because they are secular.


----------



## masala

Suburbanist said:


> Erdogan is high on my dislike list. I have a handful of colleagues from Turkey who basically live in exile because their research activities or careers were deemed dangerous or because they are secular.


But can you tell that you wish Turkey to collapse politically and financially same as Russia (presumably)?
If so, then it explains why your Russian colleges do not distinguish criticism for Putin and their homeland.


----------



## volodaaaa

PovilD said:


> Yeah, when I first heard about this vaccine, I thought about that shampoo


We keep talking about vaccines like they were some sorts of wine  Sir, do you prefer white dry Moderna? No, thank you, I'd rather have semi-sweet red Pfizer. Hey, look at these homeless people drinking that notorious low-end cartoon wine nobody wants - AstraZeneca.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Attus said:


> Putin is everything but a liberal democrat. But both the economy and the society are stable, and people like it.


It's been a long time since economy was the main selling point of Putin. For the last decade at least it has been nationalism.


Kpc21 said:


> Although I don't know anyone who would actually believe that Sputnik is for any reasons better than Astra Zeneca... There are many people preferring Pfizer to Astra Zeneca, but this doesn't seem to be a result of the Russian propaganda,


Sputnik and AstraZeneca (and Janssen) vaccines are made using similar technology (anodevirus vector). Pfizer has now been used in very high numbers in the countries that identified the lethal, but rare, side effects of AstraZeneca and Janssen. So, no, Pfizer does not have the same side effect as Astrazeneca and Janssen, but Sputnik most likely has.


----------



## geogregor

Attus said:


> Putin is everything but a liberal democrat. But both the economy and the society are stable, and people like it.


Economy was doing well in the first years of Putin's rule. He brought certain degree of stability (even is supported by corruption) after the chaos of the 90s.

But in recent years, probably a decade, Russian economy is not doing well. It is heavily reliant on oil and other mineral exports. They are brewing themselves serious problems in the long term. The economy is not competitive, not innovative, corrupted, infrastructure outside Moscow is often falling apart. Whoever inherits that mess from Putin (everyone eventually dies) will have big job on his/her hands...

And then there is Russian demography, really not great.


----------



## masala

geogregor said:


> Whoever inherits that mess from Putin (everyone eventually dies) will have big job on his/her hands...


Putin keeps conservative financial and budgeting policy in the last few years. Russia saves money, not spending them. This is bad for economy growth and good for macro stability. Only in last coronovirus year Russia had budget deficit, this year switched again to surplus. Practically no foreign debts. Also Putin managed to complete unpopular but needed reforms, such as increasing pension age or increasing VAT. Any foreign pressure to damage Russian economy will have limited inpact.
Demography is a problem and population decreased last year, but look at Eastern Europe, population is falling faster, especially in the Ukraine or Baltic states.
The one who will come after Putin, will get the country with healthy finances.
Look also at US, at the huge debt and huge budget deficit which keeps growing every year. Huge division between poor and rich people, huge number of prisoners, no chance for people from poor families to get decent education and job.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands has now moved up with opening appointments for vaccination of 1985 & 1986. As far as I know you can get your shot about 7-10 days later. So things are moving along. It helps that the Millennial generation is numerically substantially smaller than the boomers & Gen X generation, so they move through these birth years faster than those who are 50-70 years old.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

masala said:


> Look also at US, at the huge debt and huge budget deficit which keeps growing every year.


Comparing the Russian economy with the American one is ludicrous. The GDP of USA is more than 12 times bigger than the Russian GDP, which is smaller than Italy's. And unlike most of Eastern Europe, the economic growth of Russia has not been strong since 1990. Instead of focusing on the real problems of Russia, Putin has promoted military spending, foreign policy adventures, and suppression of opposition. Maybe because Putin and his cronies are a big part of Russia's problems. It is a tragedy, really, Russia has such potential given its vast natural and intellectual resources, and there was such a hope for better relations with Russia in Europe following the cold war.


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## masala

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Comparing the Russian economy with the American one is ludicrous. The GDP of USA is more than 12 times bigger than the Russian GDP, which is smaller than Italy's.


I don't compare absolute numbers, just look at the US debt and deficit as US GDP percentage. 
Also, comparing GDP in nominal numbers kind of makes sense, but PPP figures are also important, because it doesn't depend on current exchange rates which may change rapidly.
If you took Italy as an example, development of the country was exceptionally bad in last few decades and this country was not hit by sanctions as Russia did. 
Also, in 2000 Russia's GDP per capita PPP was 30% of the Italian level, in 2020 - 68%.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Yes, the Russian economy improved over the first decade of Putin's rule, but starting from rock-bottom caused by the economic meltdown of the later 1990s and fueled by increasing oil prices. The last decade Russia has not gotten any closer to Italy, however, and Italy's performance has not exactly been stellar either as you mention. The sanctions have of course contributed negatively to Russia's economy, but they are a direct result of Putin's own aggressive and irresponsible foreign policy.


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## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> The last decade Russia has not gotten any closer to Italy


The Russian overall economy has grown around 30% since 2010, according to Wikipedia: Economy of Russia - Wikipedia


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## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Russian overall economy has grown around 30% since 2010, according to Wikipedia: Economy of Russia - Wikipedia


I think the key is lack of predictability, and lack of overall management (know-how) which also results in unpredictability. Some Russian on Quora (named Misha) jokingly called Russia like a country a bit resembling India (when someone compared Russia to PR China).

Yeah, I guess Russia is interesting country, a mix of South+Central Asia and Western Europe. Kinda makes sense even geographically, and looking how things look in Street View.
As for everything in this part of The World, I'm really looking forward toward anything that would make Russia shine in better light, e.g. I'm interested about transport infrastructure projects in Russia. Don't get me wrong. I want to see whole World with good aspects of the Netherlands, Singapore and Switzerland  I hate those conflicts, and extreme differences between countries in GDP or corruption indexes. This is probably the worst thing I hate about this World, tbh. Some live good, some are suffering instead just because of the place of birth.


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## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Russian overall economy has grown around 30% since 2010, according to Wikipedia: Economy of Russia - Wikipedia


Which is not exceptional when compared to a couple of its neighbours in the EU:










2021:








List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org












List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





2010:








List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org












List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


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## PovilD

As for development of Lithuania, there are visible trends toward moving from "unique Post-Soviet path" to some more Western World practises.

My city was really very typical Post-Soviet city and not really typical EU city in this regard with extreme underinvestment in infrastructure. Now situation have changed, and Kaunas influences Lithuania for good. Kaunas is kinda American-oriented in terms of car infrastructure and office building. There are still places with Soviet cultural influence left, mostly in Soviet built districts, and actually also litle bit in old industrial neighborhoods near city centre built in old Tsarist times, but trend is kinda American-like.

















Dutch infrastructure planners might deem that street as "crime"  ...while nobody "sane" in my city would allow narrowing that street (for time being)  ...and despite being virtually in the city centre, like U.S. Interstate crossing Downtown.

---
Vilnius is a bit more European, in some regards even Dutch-oriented with those new cycle paths and active community of multimodal transportation activists while such community is almost non-existent in Kaunas.


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## PovilD

del


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## masala

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> The sanctions have of course contributed negatively to Russia's economy, but they are a direct result of Putin's own aggressive and irresponsible foreign policy.


The idea of the sanctions was that it will hit Russian citizens hard and they will start blaming Putin for it. In theory it looks attractive, in practice Russians unite and blame foreign countries for that. More sanctions, more support for Putin at home.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> In Norway they have declared the pandemic to be 'virtually over': FHI-overlege: – Det var den pandemien
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1401465455269888001





54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> That is not the official view.


In fact, this tweet by Preben Aavitsland, a senior employee of the Norwegian Insitute of Public Health has caused quite a bit of stir, with both the prime minister, health minister, health directorate, and his own boss stating that pandemic is not over yet and the tweeter himself essentially saying the same thing. Others have used other and stronger words regarding the communication skills of Aavitsland....











radamfi said:


> Which is not exceptional when compared to a couple of its neighbours in the EU:
> 
> View attachment 1609309
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Interesting statistics. When claiming that Russia did not grow faster than Italy over the 10 last years I used a different source, Country comparison Russia vs Italy Annual GDP at market prices 2021 / the World Bank rather than Wikipedia / IMF, but I believe the biggest difference is in the choice of reference years, 2010 and 2020, rather than 2009 (according to the source you are referencing) and 2021. I guess 2021 is a bit early to call.


----------



## radamfi

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> In fact, this tweet by Preben Aavitsland, a senior employee of the Norwegian Insitute of Public Health has caused quite a bit of stir, with both the prime minister, health minister, health directorate, and his own boss stating that pandemic is not over yet and the tweeter himself essentially saying the same thing. Others have used other and stronger words regarding the communication skills of Aavitsland....
> 
> View attachment 1609590
> 
> 
> Interesting statistics. When claiming that Russia did not grow faster than Italy over the 10 last years I used a different source, Country comparison Russia vs Italy Annual GDP at market prices 2021 / the World Bank rather than Wikipedia / IMF, but I believe the biggest difference is in the choice of reference years, 2010 and 2020, rather than 2009 (according to the source you are referencing) and 2021. I guess 2021 is a bit early to call.


I've added Italy to the table.


----------



## masala

radamfi said:


> I've added Italy to the table.
> 
> View attachment 1610120


Norway looks bad in this list, worse than Italy.


----------



## radamfi

I've changed the table so it uses World Bank data instead of IMF, and also changed the reference year to 2010. The current Wikipedia pages still say 2019 for World Bank, so the current year links are the same as before.










2019: 








List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org












List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





2010:








List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org












List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Norway's decline may be due to oil prices. Oil was $ 79 in 2010 and $ 39 in 2020.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Norway's decline may be due to oil prices. Oil was $ 79 in 2010 and $ 39 in 2020.


Exchange rates... Norwegian kroner was quoted as high as 0.138 euro. Now it is around 0.093. It reached 0.081 in 2020 during the early pandemic crisis.


----------



## volodaaaa

My two cents on Putin:
1. He did a good job during the first of his term. Honestly, I think that after always drunk Jelcin, Putin seemed like some serious leader.
2. As usual, having the power for too long is not good for anyone except the power-possessor who keeps losing contact with reality. Putin has not been the only one to see this. Having power for more than 20 years is not healthy for anyone. The longer the overdue take, the longer the recovery.
3. But this is not only about Russia. The problem in Russia is that Russia is a reluctant country, in addition to what I said in the first two paragraphs, which does not have to be bad. But it is far from human rights. We see that there are human-rights-hostile countries that are obedient and are described as good or allied, and then there are human-rights-hostile countries that are reluctant and depictured as bad. And maybe human rights is not a real deal in these bad countries.
4. Putin is an a$$hole anyway.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

masala said:


> Norway looks bad in this list, worse than Italy.





ChrisZwolle said:


> Norway's decline may be due to oil prices. Oil was $ 79 in 2010 and $ 39 in 2020.





Suburbanist said:


> Exchange rates... Norwegian kroner was quoted as high as 0.138 euro. Now it is around 0.093. It reached 0.081 in 2020 during the early pandemic crisis.


You are all right. Norway has not had a good decade in terms of GDP per capita development. Like Russia, our economy is still too dependent on oil and gas extraction and our currencies also fluctuate more than e g. the Euro and USD. During the same period, our population also grew by 10%, while the extracted volumes of oil and gas have gone down.

However, during the same period, our foreign trade balance has turned from huge surpluses that were stashed into foreign investments to a more balanced situation, so I do not think you would find many Norwegians complaining that they are worse off now than 10 years ago.

GDP (PPP) overall has a number of weaknesses as a tool for measuring the welfare. For instance, it does not take into account inequality, education, and safety aspects.


----------



## Suburbanist

The oil fund is still getting some quite significant transfers. Equinor still has quite a lot of oil to extract, if it so decides. There are of course environmental concerns e.g. exploration of oil near Tromsø or gas extraction for Norwegian Arctic shelf.


----------



## Dikan011

No Covid in Serbia anymore 

Town of Uzice, high school graduating class of 2021:


----------



## masala

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Like Russia, our economy is still too dependent on oil and gas extraction and our currencies also fluctuate more than e g. the Euro and USD. During the same period, our population also grew by 10%, while the extracted volumes of oil and gas have gone down.


Norway has oil production per capita 4-5 times higher than in Russia, still everyone overestimate Russia's dependency on oil.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Not sure what your point is. You are possibly right regarding the oil production numbers, but even so, the Norwegian GDP per capita is 6.5 times the Russian one as per the statistics above. And everyone agrees that Norway pt has an oil-dependent economy.


----------



## PovilD

volodaaaa said:


> My two cents on Putin:
> 1. He did a good job during the first of his term. Honestly, I think that after always drunk Jelcin, Putin seemed like some serious leader.
> 2. As usual, having the power for too long is not good for anyone except the power-possessor who keeps losing contact with reality. Putin has not been the only one to see this. Having power for more than 20 years is not healthy for anyone. The longer the overdue take, the longer the recovery.
> 3. But this is not only about Russia. The problem in Russia is that Russia is a reluctant country, in addition to what I said in the first two paragraphs, which does not have to be bad. But it is far from human rights. We see that there are human-rights-hostile countries that are obedient and are described as good or allied, and then there are human-rights-hostile countries that are reluctant and depictured as bad. And maybe human rights is not a real deal in these bad countries.
> 4. Putin is an a$$hole anyway.


I have these thoughts about our "great" neighboring countries leaders  Putin and Lukashenko.
Putin is kinda cosmopolitan in comparison with Lukashenko, and Moscow always had some cosmopolitan into it. City was somewhat capital city of the communism (maybe future capital of The World?) anyway. Maybe Russia must be attractive as some sort of global power in one way or another. Lukashenko is kinda down to Earth to regular people. Talking stuff what people want to hear. It seems he was popular among Post-Soviet countries, and Belarus was seen as example of stability, and not chaos with organized crime gangs. It looks like he's biggest popularity days are a little bit in the past. Unless you really fell in love with Belarusian system, and you think everything's "Western propaganda", is not usual you will adore Lukashenko.


----------



## Stuu

volodaaaa said:


> My two cents on Putin:


As a serious question, for someone who has never been closer to Russia than Helsinki, what is life like for a completely average citizen in, say, Omsk? Or somewhere even more provincial? Materially things seem to be better from where I am sitting, obviously there are fairly strict guidelines to avoid attracting the interests of the state but it is clearly freer than under communism. There seems to be a sense that "the west" is anti-Russian but if that is the case it is at government level, not at a popular level, even at the worst points of the Cold War it was seen as the system at fault, not the people


----------



## Dikan011

Away from politics ☕

I'd like to use the opportunity to salute the new NBA MVP Nikola Jokic, first Serbian and only 2nd European to win the award as well as well as World's #1 Novak Djokovic, who just made the semi-finals of French Open and will face Rafa Nadal soon.

Against all odds...😂😂😂


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I hope the vaccinations win the race against the delta / India COVID-19 mutation this summer. UK has been low in incident rates for a while now, but right now the growth appears exponential.


https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases#card-recent_7-day_case_rates_by_specimen_date


----------



## radamfi

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I hope the vaccinations win the race against the delta / India COVID-19 mutation this summer. UK has been low in incident rates for a while now, but right now the growth appears exponential.
> 
> 
> https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases#card-recent_7-day_case_rates_by_specimen_date


Cases may be going up fast, but most people contracting Covid now are young people who haven't yet been vaccinated. People who have had both doses of the vaccine are well protected against this variant. This means that, if you look at the "healthcare" and "deaths" parts of that website, there has been hardly any increase in deaths or hospitalisations as almost all older people had the second vaccine dose some time ago. However the increase in cases might delay the final removal of lockdown restrictions scheduled in England on 21 June. There is supposed to be a decision on Monday. And it will probably mean a further delay in the reopening of international travel.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> young people who haven't yet been vaccinated


How far along are they in the UK with younger people? I'm 33 and I get my first shot this weekend.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> How far along are they in the UK with younger people? I'm 33 and I get my first shot this weekend.


England opened vaccinations to over 25s on Tuesday. Wales and Northern Ireland are a bit ahead and opened up vaccinations to the over 18s a few weeks ago. Scotland is a bit behind and are still doing the over 30s.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Expect the unexpected:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1402617954882048004


----------



## Kpc21

Poland releases next restrictions on 26 June – and it will probably remain so for the holidays – the limits on the number of people apply only to the non-vaccinated people:

– gyms, fitness clubs, casinos, shops, post offices, libraries, fairs, conferences, exhibitions and playgrounds – at most 1 person per 1 sq. m
– churches – at most 75% of the full capacity
– discos – at most 150 persons (so they become legal again; it's the industry which was shut down for the longest period of time)
– parties, feasts, meetings organized in open air, inside or in a food zone – at most 150 persons
– gatherings – at most 150 persons
– transportation – 100% of the capacity, but wearing masks remains obligatory
– theme parks – at most 75% of the capacity
– cinemas and theaters – at most 75% of the capacity
– hotels – at most 75% of rooms; the limit doesn't apply to organized groups of youth under 12 years old
– restaurants – at most 75% of capacity
– fans on sports events – at most 50% of capacity

You are considered a vaccinated person only after 14 days from the last dose of the vaccine.

Already for a few days, we are below 1 Covid case per 100 thousand people.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

radamfi said:


> Cases may be going up fast, but most people contracting Covid now are young people who haven't yet been vaccinated. People who have had both doses of the vaccine are well protected against this variant. This means that, if you look at the "healthcare" and "deaths" parts of that website, there has been hardly any increase in deaths or hospitalisations as almost all older people had the second vaccine dose some time ago.


Let's hope it remains so. 


ChrisZwolle said:


> How far along are they in the UK with younger people? I'm 33 and I get my first shot this weekend.


I am a bit surprised that you have gotten so far down in age. When I look at the statistics less than 44 % have received the first dose in Netherlands. In Norway, the 25 to 39 years old without risk factors are the last to be vaccinated (i. e. after 18-24), but most places they are now working on the 50-60 years old.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Expect the unexpected:
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1402617954882048004


A weird accident happened 2 days ago in Romania. Who's guilty?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I am a bit surprised that you have gotten so far down in age. When I look at the statistics less than 44 % have received the first dose in Netherlands.


Most of these statistics seem to be outdated for the Netherlands, because the official report is only updated weekly. However daily statistics are also provided. According to the health agency, over 50% of adults have received their first dose by 8 June. Almost everyone over 70 have also received their second dose, though few under 65.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm wondering if people who do not speak Dutch understand signs like this:


Schippershuizen Wijhe 01 by European Roads, on Flickr


----------



## PovilD

radamfi said:


> Cases may be going up fast, but most people contracting Covid now are young people who haven't yet been vaccinated. People who have had both doses of the vaccine are well protected against this variant. This means that, if you look at the "healthcare" and "deaths" parts of that website, there has been hardly any increase in deaths or hospitalisations as almost all older people had the second vaccine dose some time ago. However the increase in cases might delay the final removal of lockdown restrictions scheduled in England on 21 June. There is supposed to be a decision on Monday. And it will probably mean a further delay in the reopening of international travel.


Lithuania had interesting "third wave" with British variant. I see there are many similarities with India variant now in UK. Cases were rising (although not as fast, but still) and nobody was talking about strengthening restrictions, just try to vaccinate out of the wave. Now we are in some decrease. It's still not enough to be like Israel, but variants come later there too, me might have time to prepare.

Western Europe having hard time to avoid unknown variants. Eastern Europe has more time to prepare.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Poland releases next restrictions on 26 June – and it will probably remain so for the holidays – the limits on the number of people apply only to the non-vaccinated people:
> 
> – gyms, fitness clubs, casinos, shops, post offices, libraries, fairs, conferences, exhibitions and playgrounds – at most 1 person per 1 sq. m
> – churches – at most 75% of the full capacity
> – discos – at most 150 persons (so they become legal again; it's the industry which was shut down for the longest period of time)
> – parties, feasts, meetings organized in open air, inside or in a food zone – at most 150 persons
> – gatherings – at most 150 persons
> – transportation – 100% of the capacity, but wearing masks remains obligatory
> – theme parks – at most 75% of the capacity
> – cinemas and theaters – at most 75% of the capacity
> – hotels – at most 75% of rooms; the limit doesn't apply to organized groups of youth under 12 years old
> – restaurants – at most 75% of capacity
> – fans on sports events – at most 50% of capacity
> 
> You are considered a vaccinated person only after 14 days from the last dose of the vaccine.
> 
> Already for a few days, we are below 1 Covid case per 100 thousand people.


I don't hear about any relaxing of restrictions in Lithuania anymore. To be honest, I don't feel we need relaxing them for time being.

E.g. Indoor dining only if you vaccinated or recovered from covid. I see this as good measure.

I tend to not like when everybody vaccinated and unvaccinated can mix like in UK or in many places in Europe.

You need to have vaccination certificate (media called it "opportunity passport" in English) for activities like wedding, parties, dining, etc. I think it's good thing.


----------



## mgk920

Major League Baseball's Milwaukee (Wisconsin, USA) Brewers go back to full stadium capacity on June 25, for their home game v. the Colorado Rockies. As for vaccination requirements, I believe that it is 'we'll take your word for it'.

They've been billing it as 'Reopening Day' (normally, the season home opener is a big cultural event here).

Mike


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm wondering if people who do not speak Dutch understand signs like this:


No.

And this is why such under-sign plates must (or at least should, but it usually works so) always exclude someone from the obligation indicated by the sign and not vice versa.

If you don't know what the plate means, you just don't enter this area with a car – and that's all. The content on the plate, as I guess, probably anyway makes an exclusion that applies only to the locals.



PovilD said:


> I tend to not like when everybody vaccinated and unvaccinated can mix like in UK or in many places in Europe.


I think it's a form of discrimination and dividing the society. It should NEVER happen. Even in such a form like in Poland, where e.g. an event or a place can be attended by a limited number of non-vaccinated persons and an unlimited number of those vaccinated.

Many doctors also claim so – that people should be invited to get vaccinated not by differentiating restrictions between those put onto those vaccinated and non-vaccinated, but by education, so that they will understand that the vaccine is good for them and why it is so.

And it's not a problem from the epidemiological point of view. When more and more people get vaccinated, the transmission of infections gets more and more reduced. Because of simple statistics. So relaxing the restrictions is an obvious reaction.

Even if you aren't vaccinated, the chance that you will catch Covid is much, much lower now than it was 2 months ago. So there are no medical and epidemiological reasons for still putting on you the same restrictions as before.

For now, nobody even thought about freeing from the restrictions, next to those vaccinated or those who recently had Covid, also the people who can't be vaccinated for medical reasons. And this is something which should be obvious now...

But I guess the issue here might be that suddenly we would have much more people with documents showing that they can't be vaccinated for medical reasons than the actual number of these people. Still, it's not fair towards those who actually can't be vaccinated. And for now it seems that everyone is forgetting about them.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Just read now that Pfizer /Biontec will deliver significantly less vaccines to Europe than expected in July.


ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm wondering if people who do not speak Dutch understand signs like this:
> 
> 
> Schippershuizen Wijhe 01 by European Roads, on Flickr


I can guess, with knowledge in Norwegian and some German. Not sure what "man t/m vr" means, but I am guessing Monday to Friday, and that the prohibition is for those days and the time slots indicated. Tractors and traffic to the specified addresses allowed. I assume not a lot of foreigners will need to drive there anyway, and who cares if one or two per month do? The main problem with the sign is that there is too much text. In Norway only the time slots and "driving to the properties" (in Norwegian) would probably have been included. Numbers in black means Monday - Friday, in parantheses Saturday, and in red Sunday /public holiday.


Kpc21 said:


> also the people who can't be vaccinated for medical reasons.


Who are those people exactly, who are either not too sick, or too allergic to attend public events anyway? The main problem I see in Norway regarding this that the vaccines currently are not uniformly offered across the country.


----------



## geogregor

bogdymol said:


> A weird accident happened 2 days ago in Romania. Who's guilty?


I would say the bloke. He wasn't exactly at the crossing


----------



## Suburbanist

Kpc21 said:


> No.
> 
> And this is why such under-sign plates must (or at least should, but it usually works so) always exclude someone from the obligation indicated by the sign and not vice versa.
> 
> *If you don't know what the plate means, you just don't enter this area with a car –* and that's all. The content on the plate, as I guess, probably anyway makes an exclusion that applies only to the locals.
> .


That logic is good when the signs are exclusionary for most traffic and/or most of the time. 

However, it would leave you hanging dry inside your car in several Italian or German cities where there are blanket prohibitions based on EURO levels or the like.


----------



## radamfi

Although there are still some annoying differences between countries, at least there is a standard European set of road signs. What I find scary is that people from outside Europe can simply hire a car without any knowledge of European road signs.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Some Vienna conventions road signs are not self-explanatory. I've seen Americans commenting that they have no clue what signs like these mean:


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Some Vienna conventions road signs are not self-explanatory. I've seen Americans commenting that they have no clue what signs like these mean:


Most British or Irish people wouldn't know the priority sign as that doesn't exist there. Giving way to traffic from the right on a non-priority road doesn't come naturally to British or Irish drivers as there are almost always give way lines where needed. Although when I was learning to drive, my driving instructor would deliberately take me to a junction where there were are no give way lines (probably the only one in the whole town) and tell me off if I didn't yield.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

You also have the inconsistency that eg. some Latin American countries are using what would by a prohibition signs in Europe as mandatory signs.


----------



## radamfi

A random sample of people in the UK are surveyed each week to estimate how many people have got Covid. This is arguably more useful than looking at case numbers. The latest results clearly show that it is almost exclusively young people who are contracting Covid:





__





Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey, UK - Office for National Statistics


Estimates for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. This survey is being delivered in partnership with University of Oxford, University of Manchester, Public Health England and Wellcome Trust. This study is jointly led by the ONS and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC)...



www.ons.gov.uk


----------



## radamfi

Bolton was the first place where the Indian variant became prevalent. Here it also seems that older people are largely immune.









June 21: Why lockdown easing may be delayed


The UK should be braced for a surge in infections - but what's coming will be quite different to before.



www.bbc.com


----------



## CNGL

What is happening in the UK with the so-called Indian variant taking over I think is not different from what happened in April in Spain, when the so-called British variant became dominant. That graphic speaks for itself. Vaccines definitely work with any variant, no resistance so far (and definitely they don't inject any microchips, nor cause autism).


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

And that's my biggest problem with the current vaccination tech -- they promise you microchips, but they don't deliver. I want my microchip!


----------



## MattiG

Fuzzy Llama said:


> And that's my biggest problem with the current vaccination tech -- they promise you microchips, but they don't deliver. I want my microchip!


You have got it already, but the SIM card will be delivered after the second vaccination.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands has designated the UK as a 'very high risk' area due to the Delta variant.

I'm a bit worried for you guys that you can't travel anywhere this summer. The headlines are alarming but the data shows a more nuanced picture









England’s lockdown easing on 21 June likely to be delayed by up to four weeks


Monday’s announcement will come as coronavirus case are rising at fastest rate since second wave




www.theguardian.com





There have been 128 overnight hospitalizations among vaccinated people with the Delta variant since early February. That's about one per day on average. But we know the vaccines have no 100% efficacy. 

The Netherlands has no lockdown anymore. There are only a few restrictions remaining. Incidence is slightly higher than the UK at this moment, but both countries are trending in the opposite direction.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands has designated the UK as a 'very high risk' area due to the Delta variant.
> 
> I'm a bit worried for you guys that you can't travel anywhere this summer. The headlines are alarming but the data shows a more nuanced picture


It is quite possible it will be a write-off travel season. When Europe was letting us in the British government wasn't letting us out, soon the situation might be reversed.

I'm really fed up and dispirited. I definitely wan't to go to Poland at some point to see my mum. Yet the fricking politicians, on all sides, are trying to do everything to stop me from that. I'm starting to despise the whole mainstream political class.

I always tended to be rather centrist in my outlook but if things continue as they are I might start supporting any fruitcake solely on a basis of who is going to relax some of the restrictions.

For example I do think that Theresa May is a bloody witch. But here she sounds eminently sensible:



Theresa May savages 'chaotic' Covid travel rules in broadside at Boris Johnson



_I think there are some facts the Government needs to be upfront with the British people about and ministers need to think a bit more of when making these decisions.

"First, we will not eradicate Covid-19 from the UK. There will not be a time when we can say that there will never be another case of Covid-19 in this country.

Secondly, variants will keep on coming. There will be new variants every year. If the Government's position is that we cannot open up travel until there are no new variants elsewhere in the world then we will never be able to travel abroad ever again. 

And the third fact that the Government needs to state much more clearly is that sadly people will die from Covid here in the UK in the future, as 10,000 to 20,000 people do every year from flu." _

It is ironic that I managed to do fair a bit of international travel last year, despite lack of any vaccines. Now we are in supposedly better situation, with millions being vaccinated daily in Europe and in the UK, but it looks like travel-wise things are heading in the wrong direction.

Perversely I could claim it is lucky that mu ill dad died last year not this, at least I could attend funeral without quarantines etc.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Well, at least the Norwegian borders opened - somewhat, after a long year of closure to e.g. Sweden. People with Norwegian residency can from yesterday afternoon enter Norway without quarantine, provided:

They have a Norwegian Corona - pass, currently only given to the ones that are registered in Norway as fully vaccinated or having had a positive test during the last six months
They test negatively at the border station (or within 3 days if that station is out of capacity.
Currently there are only about 25% in Norway that are fully vaccinated, but a larger fraction in some of the southeastern towns close to the border. Predictably, there were almost instant long queues at the busiest border crossings, with people having been shopping Pepsi Max and what not waiting to have their paperwork (or smartphones to be precise) checked and to have that COVID-19 test, even if "unecessary travels" are not recommended at this time. It will be much worse on Sunday, however, when the hoards are returning from their first weekend in a long time at their Swedish holiday homes.


----------



## radamfi

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> with people having been shopping Pepsi Max


Do a lot of Norwegians go to Sweden for the Pepsi Max?


----------



## Kpc21

And you still have to undergo a quarantine (or a Covid test) upon coming back to Poland from abroad... And relaxing that is not included in the list of restrictions that are supposed to be relaxed from 26 June.

At least it doesn't apply if you are already vaccinated.


----------



## Dikan011

Are you guys still still talking about Covid? That's so passe.

18 charter flights out of Belgrade airport today, 9 of which to Hurgada, Egypt. ☕


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> And you still have to undergo a quarantine (or a Covid test) upon coming back to Poland from abroad... And relaxing that is not included in the list of restrictions that are supposed to be relaxed from 26 June.
> 
> At least it doesn't apply if you are already vaccinated.


Not even vaccinated foreigners may enter Hungary, only vaccinated Hungarian citizens, and vaccinated foreign citizens living in Hungary. Non-vaccinated Hungarians, too, may enter, but they must be quarantined.


----------



## Kpc21

But Hungary was also closed for foreigners during the previous holidays, wasn't it?

And Poland is still applying stricter restrictions than a year ago, even though the situation is safer. The new infection rates going down, already being at the level from the beginning of the pandemic. The number of currently infected people is still high, but the number of recoveries is more or less twice higher than of new infections, so this figure is also going down.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

There are exceptions, but generally the same rule applies in Norway as in Hungary, but it is not about citizenship but residency.


Dikan011 said:


> Are you guys still still talking about Covid? That's so passe.
> 
> 18 charter flights out of Belgrade airport today, 9 of which to Hurgada, Egypt. ☕


Serbia had a good start on vaccinations, but worldwide only about 6% has been vaccinated, and even in Serbia only about 33 % are fully vaccinated according to the statistics I checked. There were 27 international flights from Oslo today, some of them to typical holiday destinations. Saturday is normally the slowest day of the week. There were as far as I can see no charterflights, however, maybe because the government still says that unnecessary international travel should be avoided. In May there were to and from Norway 183 charter flughts, but only 1394 passangers, so a lot of them were probably business flights.



radamfi said:


> Do a lot of Norwegians go to Sweden for the Pepsi Max?


There is a tax on a lot of food with high sugar content in Norway, including soda. Pepsi Max is counted as soda, even if the sugar content is low The government just decided that the tax on sugar free soda will be reduced, however. Also meat, tobacco and alcohol is significantly cheaper in Sweden. Even though the price differences are a bit smaller than they used to be, there is a certain segment of people, and generally people living right next to the border, that pro-covid did a lot of their grocery shopping in Sweden, but standing in line for hours to save a few bucks sounds crazy to me


----------



## Suburbanist

The sugar tax also applies to candy. There are some large candy stores at the Swedish border. Candy is alsomvery prominent at the Duty Free Shop at Bergen Airport.


----------



## radamfi

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> There is a tax on a lot of food with high sugar content in Norway, including soda. Pepsi Max is counted as soda, even if the sugar content is low The government just decided that the tax on sugar free soda will be reduced, however. Also meat, tobacco and alcohol is significantly cheaper in Sweden. There is a certain segment of people, and generally people living right next to the border, that pro-covid did a lot of their grocery shopping in Sweden, but standing in line for hours to save a few bucks sounds crazy to me


Ah, that makes sense! I should have realised that as we have that here too. In the supermarket, a box of 24 cans of normal Coke with sugar is £11 but Coke Zero is £8.50. But the extra tax only applies to soft drinks/sodas, not food like chocolate.


----------



## radamfi

For most practical purposes there are two genders in Dutch, common gender and neuter. So for a common gender word you say "de" for "the" and for a neuter word you say "het". So you have "de krant" (the newspaper), "de hond" (the dog) and "het kind" (the child). Common means masculine or feminine. If you look in the dictionary, you can see that "krant" is feminine and "hond" is masculine. People in the Netherlands (except in the south) don't generally know whether a "de" word is masculine or feminine but they do in Belgium. This doesn't matter for "the" but it can mean using "haar" instead of "zijn" for "its"



https://www.dutchgrammar.com/en/?n=Pronouns.Po01












So what if someone from Amsterdam gets a job in Antwerpen? Is that person supposed to learn what words are feminine?


----------



## radamfi

Suburbanist said:


> The sugar tax also applies to candy. There are some large candy stores at the Swedish border. Candy is alsomvery prominent at the Duty Free Shop at Bergen Airport.


Even more prominent than in other airports? Pretty much all airports sell a lot of chocolate, especially big bars of Toblerone, even though it is often cheaper in the supermarket.


----------



## cinxxx

Attus said:


> Not even vaccinated foreigners may enter Hungary, only vaccinated Hungarian citizens, and vaccinated foreign citizens living in Hungary. Non-vaccinated Hungarians, too, may enter, but they must be quarantined.


Not true, some fully vaccinated foreigners can enter for 1-2 weeks already (like Romanians, Serbs, mostly neighboring countries, but they have to be vaccinated in those specified countries).
For example, my Romanian wife, vaccinated in Germany can't 🤡


----------



## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Serbia had a good start on vaccinations, but worldwide only about 6% has been vaccinated, and even in Serbia only about 33 % are fully vaccinated according to the statistics I checked.


6% is basically nothing. More people probably had infection than actually being vaccinated Worldwide. Only Developed States now probably see more vaccinated than recovered from infection.


----------



## Suburbanist

radamfi said:


> Even more prominent than in other airports? Pretty much all airports sell a lot of chocolate, especially big bars of Toblerone, even though it is often cheaper in the supermarket.


Yes, not only giant Tolberones, but other types of candy as well.


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> There is a tax on a lot of food with high sugar content in Norway, including soda. Pepsi Max is counted as soda, even if the sugar content is low The government just decided that the tax on sugar free soda will be reduced, however. Also meat, tobacco and alcohol is significantly cheaper in Sweden. Even though the price differences are a bit smaller than they used to be, there is a certain segment of people, and generally people living right next to the border, that pro-covid did a lot of their grocery shopping in Sweden, but standing in line for hours to save a few bucks sounds crazy to me


The price differences may lead to odd statistics. Finland is making an official statistics about many things like alcohol sales per capita per municipality. (Why? I really do not know.) A few years ago, the average was 7.7 litres of 100-% ethanol per person, while the figure was 59.8 litres in Utsjoki. Utsjoki is the northernmost municipality in Finland, and there are two alcohol shops close to the Norwegian border crossing points in Nuorgam and Karigasniemi. Norwegians buy most of the products of those shops.

There is a big food (and alcohol) shop in the tiny village of Kilpisjärvi with population of about 100:










Norwegians buy huge amounts of meat, and about 90 per cent of the sales are exported to Norway. The distance from Tromsø is 170 kilometers, thus a good choice for a day trip. The shopkeeper tells that a typical shopping cart contains a 10 kg bag of wheat flour, an 18-kg pack of sugar, and a heap of potato crisps and candy. Importing alcohol and tobacco to Norway is limited, but quite many Norwegians see that there is a business case to take a risk.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> For most practical purposes there are two genders in Dutch, common gender and neuter.


I was talking about gender in language last night, coincidentally... I can speak French and German to a reasonable degree but I have never fully understood the point of the railway station being feminine or whatever - is there any practical benefit?


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> I was talking about gender in language last night, coincidentally... I can speak French and German to a reasonable degree but I have never fully understood the point of the railway station being feminine or whatever - is there any practical benefit?


In English probably the one common noun which has a gender is a ship. For some reasons, it's often "she".

Speaking Polish which also has genders of common nouns, like German or French, I don't really see any practical benefit of that. But it's an inherent part of the language, like many others, which also don't make sense... For sure if everything was neuter, the language would be more monotonous. 

In the same way I can't see any practical use of articles like "a" or "the" in English. I mean, I understand and feel the difference in meaning of "a something" and "the something" – but in almost all cases you anyway know from the context if someone means a random thing of a kind, or a specific one, and in these rare cases when it isn't obvious, you can explain it in a different way.

And these articles appear so often in the English texts, that they generate quite a lot of redundancy.

At least, it gives quite a lot of gain if you are compressing a text file with an actual text on a computer 

This thing with noun genders sometimes has weird consequences while translating various media. Mouse in Polish is feminine. So if you are Polish, it takes some time before you realize that Mickey Mouse is a boy. Although it fits well to the other weirdnesses of this Disney world, like having two dogs in it, one of which is anthropomorphic and the other one being just a pet... For quite long I thought Goofy is some other species but not a dog.


----------



## MattiG

Stuu said:


> I was talking about gender in language last night, coincidentally... I can speak French and German to a reasonable degree but I have never fully understood the point of the railway station being feminine or whatever - is there any practical benefit?


Try to learn Finnish.  We can survive very well without genders, articles, and most prepositions.

Ok, there might be other challenges. Like those 51 different classes on how to conjugate nouns.


----------



## PovilD

MattiG said:


> Try to learn Finnish.  We can survive very well without genders, articles, and most prepositions.
> 
> Ok, there might be other challenges. Like those 51 different classes on how to conjugate nouns.


Why need prepositions when you have tens of grammatical cases  ..and I imagine life without articles, and I think I could use English without "the" or "a/an".

There is interesting case of probably Finnic influence in my language:
"namop" - "to (direction) of home"
"Lietuvon"- "to (direction) of Lithuania"
Usually, "link namų" and "į Lietuvą" are used instead. ("link" and "į" means "to" or "direction to").
This is the case that if you don't have prepositions you could use gram. classes instead, like probably Finnic aglutinative languages do.


----------



## Suburbanist

Several American weather stations registered highest-ever temperature readings













__





Records Fall in Early Summer Heatwave


Extreme heat has descended on the southwestern United States, with several states enduring temperatures near and above record highs for June.




earthobservatory.nasa.gov


----------



## Slagathor

Has anyone watched Jeremy Clarkson's farming show on Amazon? It's really funny.


----------



## Attus

That's what is called tropical night. But it's Rhineland, Western Germany. And the window was open in the night.


----------



## SeanT

It is over 50 years ago, that temperature reached 30 °c so early in the summer in Denmark.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Palm Springs, California reached 123 F / 50.5 ° C yesterday


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1405668490791378946


----------



## MattiG

SeanT said:


> It is over 50 years ago, that temperature reached 30 °c so early in the summer in Denmark.


Something similar is now happening in Finland, but there is no need to go 50 years back to catch the previous one. It was May (sic!) 15th, 2018, when the temperature reached +29.6°C, rounded to +30°C, at the Kokkola-Pietarsaari airport. It is located at the latitude 63°43'N.

I do not remember the year, but most probably it was in 1990's, when I visited the island of Hailuoto at the very beginning of June. A hot wave of 30+ degrees attacked while there still were big ice slabs in the sea. The situation was quite surrealistic.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I visited the Hardangervidda several times. In 2014 there was a lot of ice in the lakes while there were summer-like temperatures (almost 30 in the valleys).


Rv 7 Hardangervidda-3 by European Roads, on Flickr


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch government will likely announce today that mask usage will not be mandatory from 26 June. This includes most indoor locations (except public transport and probably health care facilities). In practice, this means for most people that mask usage will be gone from their life. 

I'm not sure how many other countries have also scrapped the mask mandate indoors. I believe Denmark? And Sweden didn't introduce it? Spain will lift the outdoor mask mandate on 26 June.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

There are no national rules mandatory mask usage in Norway, except when people in quarantine use public transport to get from e. g. the airport to the quarantine premises. It is a bit hard to track the continuously changing rules, but I do not think we even ever had a national rule other than that, and even the national advisories on mask usage was lifted in April. Masks have never been used in schools. 

But we have had many examples of local regulations for mask use in e. g. public transport and shops in areas and times with (relatively) high incident rates, although these remain only in few places now. Nowhere has outdoor masks been mandated. And there are still plenty of rules and advisories, both national and local, regarding group sizes and distancing.


----------



## Suburbanist

I wonder why the Hardangenvidda is not a major tourist hit, it has some pretty amazing scenery. It lacks infrastructure, though.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

It is a nice region. But, tbh, I would say that Hardangervidda is less than averagely spectacular compared with other mountain areas of Norway, and has received more attention than deserved due to its central position between Oslo and Bergen.


----------



## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> There are no national rules mandatory mask usage in Norway, except when people in quarantine use public transport to get from e. g. the airport to the quarantine premises. It is a bit hard to track the continuously changing rules, but I do not think we even ever had a national rule other than that, and even the national advisories on mask usage was lifted in April. Masks have never been used in schools.
> 
> But we have had many examples of local regulations for mask use in e. g. public transport and shops in areas and times with (relatively) high incident rates, although these remain only in few places now. Nowhere has outdoor masks been mandated. And there are still plenty of rules and advisories, both national and local, regarding group sizes and distancing.


Fully vaccinated could have more freedoms on wearing masks.
Other people may need to wear masks depending on situation.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> It is a nice region. But, tbh, I would say that Hardangervidda is less than averagely spectacular compared with other mountain areas of Norway, and has received more attention than deserved due to its central position between Oslo and Bergen.


Hardangervidda is unusual for being a large, barren, tundra plateau which you don't find as much elsewhere. Though the road from Setesdalen - Suleskard - Lysebotn also has some of those qualities. 

Sognefjell and Valdresflya are more spectacular though. The mountains at Hardangervidda are pretty distant. It seems to me that the railroad via Finse follows a more spectacular route than highway 7. 

I know Finse is somewhat of an obsession for Dutch weather enthusiasts.


----------



## riiga

ChrisZwolle said:


> And Sweden didn't introduce it?


There wasn't any, except a strong recommendation to use it on public transport during rush hour.


----------



## PovilD

riiga said:


> There wasn't any, except a strong recommendation to use it on public transport during rush hour.


If average people may have up to 2-5 contacts a week probably virus wouldn't cause such epidemics in unvaccinated population which means more limited need for masks.

Some people just voluntary have tens of contacts. I guess continental Europe has this disadvantage for having been more socializing, making epidemic worse.

If there is high prevalence and high socializing, no mask is looking very unsafe option since it's high likelihood there are enough spreaders that public transport or shops alone could make pandemic worse. On the other hand, some people may choose not to get infected anyway, so they might prefer restrictions.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch government will likely announce today that mask usage will not be mandatory from 26 June. This includes most indoor locations (except public transport and probably health care facilities). In practice, this means for most people that mask usage will be gone from their life.
> 
> I'm not sure how many other countries have also scrapped the mask mandate indoors. I believe Denmark? And Sweden didn't introduce it? Spain will lift the outdoor mask mandate on 26 June.


I notice masks are still required in schools until the end of the term. England dropped that requirement on 17 May, yet still require masks for most other indoor activities. 

The Netherlands are giving free tests for people going abroad in July and August, which helps if they are going to a country which requires a negative test to enter. Compare this with the UK/Scottish/Welsh governments who are urging people to holiday in the UK this summer and they are punishing those who dare to go abroad by requiring them to pay for tests privately on their return, even if they have been vaccinated. The Euro 2020 match between Croatia and the Czech Republic in Glasgow this afternoon had very few spectators, presumably because of the strict Covid restrictions to enter the UK.


----------



## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> Has anyone watched Jeremy Clarkson's farming show on Amazon? It's really funny.


Yes, watched it all now. Very good, and the final episode is quite eye-opening


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> Hardangervidda is unusual for being a large, barren, tundra plateau which you don't find as much elsewhere.


You mean south of Hardangervidda in Europe?

One thing that makes Hardangervidda special in Norway, is the herds of wild reindeer. There are wild reindeer also in e.g. the Dovre / Reinheim mountains, but not at the same numbers I think. Further north in Norway all reindeer are domesticated (but for a tourist I guess it makes no difference ;-) )



ChrisZwolle said:


> Sognefjell and Valdresflya are more spectacular though. The mountains at Hardangervidda are pretty distant. It seems to me that the railroad via Finse follows a more spectacular route than highway 7.


You might hate that I say this, but not all natural gems of Norway is next to a highway ;-)


ChrisZwolle said:


> I know Finse is somewhat of an obsession for Dutch weather enthusiasts.


Which is true also for some other creatures


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> The Netherlands are giving free tests for people going abroad in July and August, which helps if they are going to a country which requires a negative test to enter.


The Dutch government was against free tests for travel as an EU-mandate. However they have set up a huge 'testing for entry' programme which is currently used at only 3% capacity. The willingness to test for entry to events is really low.

The Dutch government has given organizers of events and indoor facilities the option: either open to a certain 1.5 m-proof capacity with no tests, or open up to full capacity, but then you need to have a test for entry. So far this opening up to full capacity with tests seems to be unpopular.

However this test for travel seems to be pretty pointless for some (most?) countries. I've heard from people who traveled to France, Spain & Portugal that there are no borders checks at all and nobody ever asks you to show a negative test or proof of vaccination.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Four 150 kV transmission towers were blown over during a violent storm in the Netherlands yesterday. Apparently this is only the second time this has ever happened. 

Evidently they collapsed as designed: 4 went down but the next ones were designed to break any domino effect. There was no power outage reported.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1406182288635879424


----------



## Kpc21

A map showing how many people are already vaccinated against Covid in the Polish counties:



https://scontent-waw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/202588766_1674729396046237_58724454130443816_n.jpg?_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=rQEOxHEMUPoAX-18TUR&_nc_ht=scontent-waw1-1.xx&oh=f8b345fe241a4458eb61bdeb2684e1fe&oe=60F93B45


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Netherlands (first dose among 65+ year olds):










Data for 18+ is incomplete because not everyone in that age group has been able to get their first dose yet. However since last weekend all birth years up to 2003 have received an invitation.


----------



## Slagathor

The light blue communes can be explained by:

1) rural Christian nutbags, and 
2) migrant communities.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Suburbanist said:


> I really wish the EU would initiate expulsion proceedings against Hungary. It would have not been admitted to the Union in its current political shape if it were outside looking to gain entry.


I kind of agree but I totally understand why the EU wouldn't want to do that even if that was possible. Even though Hungary has violated many of the core values of the European Union, they are still mostly in the Western sphere of influence. If Hungary were to be thrown out of EU, they would immediately and completely fall under the influence of Russia (which they already are to an extent). And what we definitely do not need in Europe is more Russian influence.

Remember how Russia has spent almost the last year badmouthing Western Covid vaccines and spreading false information, trying to undermine their reputation? Well, it has massively backfired since Russians now distrust all vaccines. Only something like 12% of Moscovians are currently vaccinated, for example, and 60% of Russians are not planning on getting vaccinated at all. Moscow is having a huge virus outbreak at the moment and now the government is forcing service workers to get vaccinated under the threat of losing their job otherwise.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> 1) rural Christian nutbags, and


I think this shows that the anti-vaxx movement isn't very big even in conservative christian communities. Probably half of the municipalities with a strong CU / SGP voter base are over 85% on this map. Even in places like Staphorst a significant majority has taken the vaccine. Urk is the biggest outlier (as it usually is in any metric).


----------



## Suburbanist

How fundamentalist are newer generations of younger people growing up in these regions? Between Internet, social media and whatnot, I think the culture of these areas might be changing.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In my experience, these younger people in their 20s can be quite fanatical about religion, they are not like their peers from other parts of the country who almost never attend church. SGP (orthodox conservative) has grown from 2 to 3 seats due to the numerical growth of those voters, unlike PvdA (Labor) or CDA (Christian Democrats) which have seen their voter base dwindle due because almost no younger people vote for them and their older electorate is diminishing over time.


----------



## radamfi

I'm half Hungarian. 7 years ago I wrote this, when I first considered the possibility of getting a Hungarian passport:



radamfi said:


> As I said earlier, I am half Hungarian, my dad was born in Oroshaza, however I have only ever lived in the UK and only have British nationality. Is it possible for me to acquire Hungarian nationality as well? I am concerned that the UK might leave the EU in the next few years, which might mean I am unable to emigrate to the Netherlands, which has been my plan for a number of years. Or at least it might not be as easy as it is now. So if I am also Hungarian, I would still be an EU citizen and so I would still enjoy freedom of movement.
> 
> Unfortunately my father died 20 years ago and I lost contact with the Hungarian side of my family after that, primarily because of the language barrier.


These replies made me forget about it, because I thought it would be too difficult to learn Hungarian and obviously the UK had no chance of leaving the EU :



Kanadzie said:


> I think it would be extremely difficult to acquire Hungarian nationality without language ability, but I wouldn`t worry about the UK going out of the EU either.





nbcee said:


> Don't worry, it's quite easy to acquire Hungarian citizenship though you'll need to learn at least some Hungarian first.


I recently decided I was going to learn Hungarian as I wanted my EU freedom of movement back. I joined a Facebook group about Hungarian citizenship to learn about the process. I then realised that because my father is Hungarian, I automatically became Hungarian at my birth, so I don't need to learn Hungarian! The Hungarian embassy confirmed this. I had to get my father's birth certificate from Hungary and fill in a form in Hungarian to register my birth and to get confirmation of my citizenship. The embassy just emailed me to confirm that I am indeed Hungarian although there is still some processing required before I can get my passport.

So I don't want Hungary to be thrown out of the EU!


----------



## radamfi

Spot the deliberate mistake (Dutch TV):


----------



## bogdymol

England conquered Scotland!??? I guess they didn't want them to leave the UK (Scotexit).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Using England pars pro toto for the entire UK or all of Great Britain is rather common, even though most people know it's not correct.


----------



## CNGL

I once was asked where in England is Scotland . That usage of England is akin to using Holland for the Netherlands.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Using England pars pro toto for the entire UK or all of Great Britain is rather common, even though most people know it's not correct.


In many languages the term "United Kingdom" doesn't even exist, and the whole country is denoted as Great Britain – it's a similar pars pro toto thing.


----------



## Suburbanist

Kpc21 said:


> In many languages the term "United Kingdom" doesn't even exist, and the whole country is denoted as Great Britain – it's a similar pars pro toto thing.


Well, it is an abbreviation, one seldomly used with the full descriptor "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".


----------



## Dikan011

Suburbanist said:


> I really wish the EU would initiate expulsion proceedings against Hungary. It would have not been admitted to the Union in its current political shape if it were outside looking to gain entry.


The way I see it , as long as Orban is spending billions of euros on , lets face it - largely useless, German weapons such new Leopard tanks, armored vehicles, artillery & helicopters, these are pipe dreams.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Suburbanist said:


> Well, it is an abbreviation, one seldomly used with the full descriptor "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".


The way Boris is handling things we might have UK<=Great Britain in a few years ;-)


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> In many languages the term "United Kingdom" doesn't even exist, and the whole country is denoted as Great Britain – it's a similar pars pro toto thing.


It does exist, "Zjednoczone Krolestwo" it is the same sort of shortening of the long name as is "United Kingdom" in English


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> I recently decided I was going to learn Hungarian as I wanted my EU freedom of movement back. I joined a Facebook group about Hungarian citizenship to learn about the process. I then realised that because my father is Hungarian, I automatically became Hungarian at my birth, so I don't need to learn Hungarian! The Hungarian embassy confirmed this. I had to get my father's birth certificate from Hungary and fill in a form in Hungarian to register my birth and to get confirmation of my citizenship. The embassy just emailed me to confirm that I am indeed Hungarian although there is still some processing required before I can get my passport.
> 
> So I don't want Hungary to be thrown out of the EU!


Good to have you back.  If you do make it to the Netherlands; you'd be safe there anyway. We didn't kick out the British after Brexit and we wouldn't kick out the Hungarians if they suffer some kind of expulsion.


----------



## Fatfield

ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1407247729567449088


----------



## radamfi

There is an anomaly that England and Northern Ireland use the UK national anthem before international football matches but Scotland and Wales have their own separate ones. So when England play Scotland like they did on Friday, England are playing an anthem that covers both countries. Many Scottish people find this very irritating. When the England (UK) national anthem is playing, they say "Get your own anthem!" When England play Northern Ireland, the UK national anthem is only played once.


----------



## MattiG

A thunderstorm attacked. The temperature dropped 11 degrees from +29° to +18° in 70 minutes.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> Netherlands (first dose among 65+ year olds):
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Data for 18+ is incomplete because not everyone in that age group has been able to get their first dose yet. However since last weekend all birth years up to 2003 have received an invitation.





Rebasepoiss said:


> Well, it has massively backfired since Russians now distrust all vaccines. Only something like 12% of Moscovians are currently vaccinated, for example, and 60% of Russians are not planning on getting vaccinated at all.


Regarding the first dose vaccination coverage, major EU countries are now passing USA, and are also closing in on UK. By the end of this, I expect vaccination rates around the world to have a strong correlation with the trust index. 








Share of people agreeing with the statement "most people can be trusted"


The survey question was "Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?" Possible answers were "Most people can be trusted", "Don't know" and "Can't be too careful".




ourworldindata.org


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> A map showing how many people are already vaccinated against Covid in the Polish counties:
> 
> 
> 
> https://scontent-waw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/202588766_1674729396046237_58724454130443816_n.jpg?_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=rQEOxHEMUPoAX-18TUR&_nc_ht=scontent-waw1-1.xx&oh=f8b345fe241a4458eb61bdeb2684e1fe&oe=60F93B45


Can we see antivax belt already there?

Our situation:









More problems with vaccinating ethnic minority areas, and also there are emerging problems in Western Lithuania.
I guess it correlates with anti-globalist attitudes since vaccine is seen as globalist thing. West Lithuania also seem to be more into it. Tbh, I always felt West Lithuania has strongest regional nationalism, and I may say they have less Pro-West attitudes. Seaside is a little bit different, as you can see, vaccination is slightly better, except Klaipėda region which seem to be having a mix of West Lithuanian nationalism in addition with Russian ethnic minority in the city.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> In the Netherlands as well. And these are far more common than the official measurements indicate. Because most official weather stations are located in rural areas, while urban areas don't cool off as much due to the 'urban heat island' effect. It could make up 3-5 degrees difference.
> 
> We had that heat last week, with temperatures soaring to well over 30 degrees. Today it was only 14! With almost a month's worth of rain.


I think there are many surfaces like asphalt, concrete buildings that don't cool off as quick. I can easily feel in the evenings when I enter city with a bike, and how things get warmer by few degrees at least.

In the city, I may call it "hot asphalt/concrete night" 

Btw, most of our official tropical nights happen to be in the seaside area due to effects of the sea.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Budapest or Bucharest? 









France fans accidentally travel to Romania after mixing up Budapest & Bucharest


A GROUP of France supporters heading to see their country take on Hungary last week instead watched it 518 MILES AWAY after confusing Bucharest with Budapest. Les Bleus maintained top spot in Euro …




www.thesun.co.uk


----------



## CNGL

I was about to say the Budapest/Bucharest confusion had happened again. It's not the first time it has happened, and it won't be the last.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands opened Janssen vaccination up for voluntary usage. People could call the hotline from 10 a.m. to make an appointment. It was immediately overwhelmed, apparently some 200,000 people attempted 4.4 million calls to make an appointment.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> It does exist, "Zjednoczone Krolestwo" it is the same sort of shortening of the long name as is "United Kingdom" in English


Have you even seen it being used in Polish texts?

It's the literal translation of the English name, but it practically doesn't exist in the language as it's simply almost never used.



PovilD said:


> Tbh, I always felt West Lithuania has strongest regional nationalism, and I may say they have less Pro-West attitudes. Seaside is a little bit different, as you can see, vaccination is slightly better, except Klaipėda region which seem to be having a mix of West Lithuanian nationalism in addition with Russian ethnic minority in the city.


In Poland it works different with the regional nationalism. In Poland a strong regional identity is in general a rare thing – but obviously in some regions it's stronger than in others; the strongest – in Upper Silesia. And it goes with being pro-West. The areas which are more traditionalist, anti-West, pro-church and have lower vaccination rates, are also more "national nationalist".

By the way, while the Covid infection rates in Poland are decreasing all the time – today an unusual thing happened. It's been always so that the highest number of daily new infections was reported on Wednesdays (actually the data were from Tuesday). It was a sinusoid, with most infections reported on Wednesdays and least infections on Mondays (data from Sundays, when simply less tests are made as it's weekend). But today, exceptionally, even though it's Wednesday (and not a holiday of any kind, maybe except for being a Father's Day in Poland, but it doesn't change the thing that it's a normal working day), there were less new infections than on Tuesday!

Data from the last 5 weeks:










Red – New infections
Black – New deaths
Green – People recovered

And overall:










The peak number of daily new infections was 35,251 on April 1st. Today it was 165 new infections and yesterday – 188 new infections. On Wednesday a week ago – 241 new infections, 2 weeks ago – 428 new infections, 4 weeks ago – 664 new infections, 5 weeks ago – 1267 new infections.

In my region (the Łódź region) it was 9 new infections today, 19 new infections yesterday. In the city of Łódź itself – 4 new infections today, 7 new infections yesterday.

A worse thing is that the total number of currently infected people doesn't drop so fast – for now there are 153,448 such people in Poland. A week ago it was 154,177, two weeks ago – 155,267, three weeks ago – 158,392.

Which is weird. Two weeks ago we had above 400 new infections on the peak day of the week. Summing up all the people who got infected within the last two weeks, 400 times 14 equals 5600 (and in fact it's less because I assumed 400 people were getting infected every day, which is not true, because these amounts were lower and lower, and there were less people getting infected around the weekends). Did the government got somehow lost with these data, or what?


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands opened Janssen vaccination up for voluntary usage. People could call the hotline from 10 a.m. to make an appointment. It was immediately overwhelmed, apparently some 200,000 people attempted 4.4 million calls to make an appointment.


Why not an appointment with DigID? It is used for virtually anything...


----------



## Dikan011

Enough of boring covid...

Spain might start hating us soon....first Novak Djokovic sends Rafa Nadal packing at Roland Garros and now Serbian girls eliminated host Spain in quarters at Eurobasket 2021 😂 🤣


----------



## Attus

Dikan011 said:


> Spain might start hating us soon....first Novak Djokovic sends Rafa Nadal packing at Roland Garros and now Serbian girls eliminated host Spain in quarters at Eurobasket 2021 😂 🤣


Football European Championship is running, and Spain had a game last night. I guess, far less than 1% of Spanish people know, there is such a thing like Eurobasket for women, ad even less know it is running currently. 
Sorry, but I, having grown up in Hungary, know very well: such things can get an interest only in countries which are not present in top football. It's like a replacement: we have no successes in football, so we 

It happened five years ago, UEFA Euro 2016. Hungarian team had some successes, and some football haters shared news in Facebook: Female water polo national team won the European championships! So, they ment, the women water polo team is even better than the football team. However, no one cared about female water polo. Not even those haters that shared the news. If they had had any interest in water polo, they should have known, water polo European Championship was in January, i.e. 6 months before the UEFA Euro, but they thought it was recent news.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland it works different with the regional nationalism. In Poland a strong regional identity is in general a rare thing – but obviously in some regions it's stronger than in others; the strongest – in Upper Silesia. And it goes with being pro-West. The areas which are more traditionalist, anti-West, pro-church and have lower vaccination rates, are also more "national nationalist".


West Lithuania has relatively unique history. Last place in European core to be baptized, and had constant battles with Northern Crusades before then. I think it created some Anti-German sentiment, giving the fact, we had German East Prussia there too for centuries. They were probably seen as invaders. Now, there could be some rudiment leftovers which may form some Anti-West attitudes.

West Lithuania is mostly known as Samogitia (Žemaitija, Zmudz), and they have strongest regional identity, and even history of their own administration (there was some Samogitian Province in Commonwealth times). The rest of Lithuania don't have such strong regional identity. Maybe second strongest might be Suvalkija (Lithuanian Suwalczyzna) due to history of being part of Congress Poland. The rest are just distinguished by regional accent (South Lithuania - Dzūkija, Northeast Lithuania (basically, so-called the rest of Lithuania) - Aukštaitija).

There may be strong regionalism in Lithuania ethnic minority areas, but I don't know much about them, I was mostly talking about ethnic Lithuanians.

Southeast Lithuanian Polish minority also seem to have even stronger Anti-globalist attitudes. I think there are some identity problems. There could be strong cultural differences between Republic of Poland Poles and Lithuania Poles. I guess, it's like East Ukraine version of Poland :/ My attitudes would be that they should be more like Republic of Poland Poles, not Soviet Poles, and if they don't want to be Lithuanians is their choice (we have problem with strong, sometimes illogical, anti-Slav sentiment in our linguistic commissions despite our colloquial language being very Slav-language influenced). I'm not afraid about Vilnius becoming Poland city again. Currently, I think there are more chances Šalčininkai/Soleczniki becoming part of Russia or Belarus, than part of Poland.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> Have you even seen it being used in Polish texts?
> 
> It's the literal translation of the English name, but it practically doesn't exist in the language as it's simply almost never used.


Sure, it is not popular, but I have heard it used by commentators and journalists debating politics and other UK-related subjects. 



> The peak number of daily new infections was 35,251 on April 1st. Today it was 165 new infections and yesterday – 188 new infections. On Wednesday a week ago – 241 new infections, 2 weeks ago – 428 new infections, 4 weeks ago – 664 new infections, 5 weeks ago – 1267 new infections.


Looks like good progress. Is testing widespread? Or people don't bother anymore?

I hope the UK government will move Poland to its green list at some point, so I won't have to quarantine after returning to London. 

But then we had 16k cases yesterday, I know Merkel wants the EU-wide quarantine for arrivals from Britain. It will be annoying if the British government will finally allow me to travel only for the EU to ban us. But I hope it will be left to the individual states and some won't follow German lead. I'm fully vaccinated for months now, I have some hope for visit to Poland in August



> A worse thing is that the total number of currently infected people doesn't drop so fast – for now there are 153,448 such people in Poland. A week ago it was 154,177, two weeks ago – 155,267, three weeks ago – 158,392.
> 
> Which is weird. Two weeks ago we had above 400 new infections on the peak day of the week. Summing up all the people who got infected within the last two weeks, 400 times 14 equals 5600 (and in fact it's less because I assumed 400 people were getting infected every day, which is not true, because these amounts were lower and lower, and there were less people getting infected around the weekends). Did the government got somehow lost with these data, or what?


Do people stay ill longer? Or data just not being updated?


----------



## Slagathor

Suburbanist said:


> Why not an appointment with DigID? It is used for virtually anything...


We use that for the regular appointments system, but this J&J thing was a one-off special thing.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Apparently the average caller tried 24 times to make an appointment. There were 5.3 million calls by 222,000 people. This shows how desperate people are to get the Janssen vaccine for vacation / festivals. There were screenshots circulating, showing people attempted to call 100+ times within 30 minutes.


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> But then we had 16k cases yesterday, I know Merkel wants the EU-wide quarantine for arrivals from Britain. It will be annoying if the British government will finally allow me to travel only for the EU to ban us. But I hope it will be left to the individual states and some won't follow German lead. I'm fully vaccinated for months now, I have some hope for visit to Poland in August


France has taken the sensible approach and said anyone vaccinated doesn't have to quarantine, that seems far more pragmatic to me, otherwise this will go on indefinitely every time a new variant springs up somewhere


----------



## PovilD

My approach to the pandemic:

Less testing. Why testing mild cases? 
More vaccinating. Fighting those anti-vaxx nonsense.
Better vaccines, and invent drugs as Variants slowly shifting towards immune escape.
Free carefree travel within EU for vaccinated (no papers, just green passport).
No travel outside EU, except Canada, Australia, U.S. and few developed areas. No need to travel to variant factories.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apparently the average caller tried 24 times to make an appointment. There were 5.3 million calls by 222,000 people. This shows how desperate people are to get the Janssen vaccine for vacation / festivals. There were screenshots circulating, showing people attempted to call 100+ times within 30 minutes.


Why don't they do online booking?


----------



## Suburbanist

PovilD said:


> My approach to the pandemic:
> 
> Less testing. Why testing mild cases?
> More vaccinating. Fighting those anti-vaxx nonsense.
> Better vaccines, and invent drugs as Variants slowly shifting towards immune escape.
> Free carefree travel within EU for vaccinated (no papers, just green passport).
> No travel outside EU, except Canada, Australia, U.S. and few developed areas. No need to travel to variant factories.


Testing is essential to monitor progress of the disease and caught mutations very early on. This involves genetic sequencing at mass scale.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Looks like good progress. Is testing widespread? Or people don't bother anymore?


I don't think it matters if they bother  If they have to (were referred to a test by a doctor, who suspects Covid; or e.g. they are coming back from abroad and don't want to be quarantined – as the quarantine upon arrival still applies), they get tested. If not, they don't. It has always been so. Nobody wants to get tested voluntarily, for obvious reasons – it equals risking having to quarantine yourself and your whole family.

But the percentage of positive test results also dropped significantly.

It's actually less than even now:










Which would mean that testing now works much better than e.g. during the first wave.



geogregor said:


> Do people stay ill longer? Or data just not being updated?


There must be something wrong with the data. Because according to them, people would have to stay ill for over 2 months.

Unfortunately, Poland imposed even stricter restrictions on people coming from Great Britain (United Kingdom) now 

You are obliged to quarantine for a week, and can be released from the quarantine if you get a negative test result after 7 days.

What's the sense of getting tested on the last day of quarantine and why would you even do that – I have no idea, as it doesn't seem to do anything with the quarantine itself. It lasts either a week, or 7 days 

Obligatory quarantine (unlike now, when a test taken upon arrival releases you from it) will also be for people coming from other non-EU and non-Schengen countries.

In case of people from these other countries, quarantine doesn't apply if one is vaccinated. I am not sure what happens with these travelling from the UK.

My former university announced today how they are going to work from October, in the new academic year. All the classes with more than 30 students present (so most lectures, especially for lower years) will still be conducted online. In the recent academic year (the one that is just finishing), practically all the university activity was online, except for – partially – the first week of October.

The largest problems is with the exams. Lecturers often e.g. limit the time for an answer so that it's very short, to avoid students cheating – but it discriminates students with some disabilities, or those who have poor Internet connections...



PovilD said:


> No travel outside EU, except Canada, Australia, U.S. and few developed areas. No need to travel to variant factories.


The problem is that "no travel" rule hasn't really worked anywhere in the modern world, maybe except China and some island countries...

If such a rule is applied, then you got a thousand exceptions from it. For truck drivers, railway employees, important business people, seasonal workers... And they all transfer these variants.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> I have a passport, but I've also frequently heard that people only have an ID. The ID is just a card while a passport is more cumbersome to carry around all the time.


That's why I was looking forward to getting a UK ID card but the idea was scrapped immediately after the election in 2010. They had already issued some cards to people in Manchester and those were cancelled immediately without compensation.

I think I'll be able to get a Hungarian ID card but it won't be much use if I have to carry around a passport anyway. Ireland have a "Passport Card" which can be used like an ID card but you still have to pay for a passport as you are not allowed to have a Passport Card without first having a passport.

There are usually no passport checks if you travel from Ireland to the UK so there's little stopping someone flying to Ireland with an ID card then getting another plane or boat to England, Scotland or Wales.


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## tfd543

PovilD said:


> As for dating.
> 
> I feel I'm just kinda too much weirdo to have a girlfriend
> I don't feel most girls would be comfortable around me
> I like geek stuff (like this forum matter), and I don't like too manly stuff.
> 
> I work where most colleges are young women and (relatively) recently married, and I see how they look at me...
> 
> Covid didn't helped here either. I felt (feel) there are still weird times to create a family or find love.
> Having job, driving license and stuff are first steps to maybe have girlfriend, but no 100% guarantees.


I feel you. How about Reading the game ? Did u ever run across this book??

and Its not only about dating girls.. Its also excellent for social dynamics.


----------



## radamfi

PovilD said:


> As for dating.
> 
> I feel I'm just kinda too much weirdo to have a girlfriend
> I don't feel most girls would be comfortable around me
> I like geek stuff (like this forum matter), and I don't like too manly stuff.
> 
> I work where most colleges are young women and (relatively) recently married, and I see how they look at me...
> 
> Covid didn't helped here either. I felt (feel) there are still weird times to create a family or find love.
> Having job, driving license and stuff are first steps to maybe have girlfriend, but no 100% guarantees.


I've known a lot of geeky men from various European countries and they seem to do well with girls from China and from the Far East. I've got a geeky Swiss friend who only dates Asians and he just married a Chinese girl he met at university in London.


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## bogdymol

radamfi said:


> How many Europeans have an ID card but no passport, because they only travel within Europe? I read a post from a Dutch person on another forum saying that most people he knows don't have a passport. That means they will have to get a passport if they want to visit the UK from October as EU ID cards will no longer be valid.


I only had an ID card for many years, and traveled with it to many European countries. When I moved to Austria I did not have a passport.

I made myself a passport about a year after I moved to Austria, as I traveled to Asia. As an additional benefit, I found it useful during my frequent business travels to the UK, as I could use the automatic passport gates on all airports, thus getting through faster.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

radamfi said:


> That means they will have to get a passport if they want to visit the UK from October as EU ID cards will no longer be valid.


Why will UK no longer accept these cards? Sounds like a safe way to receive less visitors (and income).

Norway only last fall introduced these cards, after a process which for some reason was extremely long and expensive. But since then travel out of Norway (or rather into) has had a lot of restrictions most of the time, so probably not a lot of people have acquired the card.


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## Rebasepoiss

radamfi said:


> How many Europeans have an ID card but no passport, because they only travel within Europe? I read a post from a Dutch person on another forum saying that most people he knows don't have a passport. That means they will have to get a passport if they want to visit the UK from October as EU ID cards will no longer be valid.


My previous passport was valid from 2012 to 2017 and I didn't use it even once. Not only did I visit several EU countries using only my ID card but also Northern Cyprus (I had my passport with me, though). The newer passports are valid for 10 years instead of the 5 years before so it still made sense to get one just in case.


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## radamfi

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Why will UK no longer accept these cards? Sounds like a safe way to receive less visitors (and income).
> 
> Norway only last fall introduced these cards, after a process which for some reason was extremely long and expensive. But since then travel out of Norway (or rather into) has had a lot of restrictions most of the time, so probably not a lot of people have acquired the card.


Allegedly for security reasons. The minister responsible claims that ID cards are too easily forged. However, EU citizens living in the UK will still be able to use their ID cards, so that security risk remains. Of course, you are right. It is likely to severely damage tourism, already badly hit by Covid. In addition, the UK will be introducing an online authorisation scheme similar to the one being introduced in the Schengen Area.

So most Europeans have a choice of getting a passport as well as paying for the travel authorisation to visit the UK, or simply use their ID card to go somewhere else in Europe.


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## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> How many Europeans have an ID card but no passport, because they only travel within Europe? I read a post from a Dutch person on another forum saying that most people he knows don't have a passport. That means they will have to get a passport if they want to visit the UK from October as EU ID cards will no longer be valid.


I have a passport that expired last year. I will get a new one when I will be going to travel somewhere outside the EU (and associated countries like Norway and the Switzerland, and the countries in the Balkans which permit entry with EU IDs even though not being member states).



PovilD said:


> If there ever be times when you could just use ID for travel around The World?  Plus, whole World is something like Schengen Zone, no border controls


It's sad that we still have world in which it isn't possible.



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Why will UK no longer accept these cards? Sounds like a safe way to receive less visitors (and income).


Well, for now they seem to be doing everything to get less visitors. Like first the whole Brexit, and now e.g. these excessive Covid restrictions for people travelling in, incomparable with most EU countries.

Poland has always had national IDs, although only in something like the early 2000s, we switched from passport-like booklets to actual cards.

I wonder when did other countries switch from booklets to cards.



radamfi said:


> The minister responsible claims that ID cards are too easily forged.


And this is an actual issue, but a national and not really international one. It's just to easy e.g. to take a loan on someone else's data. But nobody seems to care about that, except for some IT geeks... And this is really sad.

Although maybe after the recent scandal with a minister's email box being hacked and some data leaked from it, someone will start to think about information security issues seriously?

In Poland, now newly issued IDs have an "electronic layer", a microchip with digitally signed data about your identity. But for now I don't think it's required from anyone to actually verify these electronic data, and still most ID cards in use are without that. They started being issued, like, 2 years ago, or so, and the ID cards expire 10 years after being issued (except for underage people, in case of whom it's 5 years and it's not obligatory to own one). In addition, ID cards of people who were under 65 before March 2015 don't expire at all. Maybe at some time the government will make them expire by law? But they aren't even announcing anything like that now.

It will take years before the IDs of most citizens will expire and be replaced with these electronic ones.


----------



## PovilD

radamfi said:


> I've known a lot of geeky men from various European countries and they seem to do well with girls from China and from the Far East. I've got a geeky Swiss friend who only dates Asians and he just married a Chinese girl he met at university in London.


Yeah, I heard about that 

I still have hopes to find something closer to home, but I'm open for Asian girls too 

I think I wait for more stable times too for about a year maybe.

Btw, I wonder why East European (esp. Post-Soviet countries types) girls are hard for me, if it's me not being really risky and really manly, and not involving in too much stupid communal activities 

Can't say about Western European girls. I don't remember about Eastern European (like Ukraine, Russia, maybe Poland, Baltics) men date Western European women. My thoughts would be mostly around finances, and maybe East Europe men might be on average too rough.


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## Attus

I did not have a passport when I moved to Germany. 
However, Hungarian laws only allow you to have an ID card if you are resident in Hungary. So I had to give my ID card back. Before that I applied for a new passport, without that I wouldn't have any document to officially identify myself.


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## bogdymol

Is almost the same also in Romania. You need to have a fixed address in Romania, to be able to get an ID card. This address is written on the ID card itself. However, you can get one, and next day leave the country, it still remains valid for 10 years. I changed my ID card once since I moved to Austria. 

And probably I will change it again in a few months, as they introduce a new version of the ID card, which is a bit more usefull (credit-card sized, not double-sized as before, has signature on it (current one does not have, and sometimes foreign authorities ask for a document with signature) etc.)


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## ChrisZwolle

The mandatory mask indoors is scrapped in the Netherlands today. I went to a couple of shops and virtually all people were mask-less. Maybe 1 in 20 still had one on (5%). It felt liberating in a weird way. 

I live in a city with a population of 130,000. The last few weeks had between 0 and 4 positive tests per day, with the 7-day average at 1.3 per day, so the chances of running into an infectious person is exceedingly small.


----------



## ChrisZwolle




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## radamfi

Attus said:


> I did not have a passport when I moved to Germany.
> However, Hungarian laws only allow you to have an ID card if you are resident in Hungary. So I had to give my ID card back. Before that I applied for a new passport, without that I wouldn't have any document to officially identify myself.








E-személyi - A Belügyminisztérium tájékoztató oldala a megújult személyazonosító igazolványról


A Belügyminisztérium tájékoztató oldala a megújult személyazonosító igazolványról. Itt talál részletes információkat a megújult személyazonosító igazolvánnyal kapcsolatban.



eszemelyi.hu





says 

"*As from 1 January 2016, Hungarian citizens living abroad have also been entitled to apply for personal identification cards."*


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> Well, for now they seem to be doing everything to get less visitors. Like first the whole Brexit, and now e.g. these excessive Covid restrictions for people travelling in, incomparable with most EU countries.


It is because Britain is nowadays run by extreme morons. 

They are small-minded, flag-waving nationalists who don't like anyone apart themselves. They also think that they are simply the best at everything and that everyone on the whole planet dreams about coming here. 

For right of centre party they also have surprising disregard of business and economic needs of the country. It is just better educated, more posh and less religious version of Law and Justice party in Poland.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> I live in a city with a population of 130,000. The last few weeks had between 0 and 4 positive tests per day, with the 7-day average at 1.3 per day, so the chances of running into an infectious person is exceedingly small.


Not an excuse to get vaccinated at all  There are some waves likely, and better to be on the other side of this whole thing as much as possible.


----------



## geogregor

Anyway, let's drop Covid and politics for a moment. We have football on, even work takes second place


----------



## keber

Is it just me or do football championships generally lose interest in general population, especially in non-very-typical football nations? I remember times about 10-15 years ago when almost all bars had TV with all matches of Euro or World championship, now I hardly see them.


----------



## mgk920

geogregor said:


> Anyway, let's drop Covid and politics for a moment. We have football on, even work takes second place
> 
> View attachment 1694103


And it looks like you have little work to do at that cashier's station - because everyone else is also watching that match.



Did you catch the Mexico-USA match a couple of weeks ago?

Mike


----------



## ChrisZwolle

keber said:


> Is it just me or do football championships generally lose interest in general population, especially in non-very-typical football nations? I remember times about 10-15 years ago when almost all bars had TV with all matches of Euro or World championship, now I hardly see them.


It's a bit of a tradition to hang up orange flags in the Netherlands. However this year it isn't a whole lot.

This street made the newspaper:









I cycled around there this week and all the surrounding streets have almost no orange flags. So this is an outlier. Elsewhere you only see sporadic flags, with many streets without any flags.


----------



## geogregor

Stuu said:


> This point you make here is so strange to me. One of the fundamental things about Britishness, or more specifically Englishness, is an absolute refusal to claim to be any good at anything. Our highest praise is "not bad". When the country was inventing the jet engine, or the electronic computer or the world wide web, we barely said a word, despite these being genuinely world-changing.


Well, you later wrote:



Stuu said:


> however the basic point stands that the UK government and a significant proportion of the population believe the country is superior to others, and this is a fairly new phenomenon. This belief was a part of the reason for the brexit vote.


This is the thing. The "old school" virtue of self-mockery and understatement of achievement was replaced by jingoism and annoying conviction of own superiority. I can see it daily in public debate. It really annoys me. Britain in 2021 is very much different than Britain into which I moved in early 2000s. And it changed for worse rather than for the better...

I think it is to large degree because of gradual Americanization of media and politics in the UK. Partially it is due to influence of social media but Tories are also trying hard to replicate Republican's approach to politics.


----------



## volodaaaa

radamfi said:


> Well known travel journalist Simon Calder wrote an article a few days ago. He says "at least *100 million citizens of the European Union* have never owned [a passport]"
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The UK has put up a giant ‘Closed’ sign this summer
> 
> 
> The Man Who Pays His Way: How can anyone expect the UK to welcome back the 41 million international visitors who came to the UK for business or pleasure in 2019 in the next two years?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.independent.co.uk
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> View attachment 1697068


I might have missed the very first step, but why the heck is the UK insisting on passports? I mean, isn't there some bilateral endorsement at the UK-EU level about accepting the ID cards? I have been living in a country with a very turbulent post-cold war history and still, the year 2004 was the first to drive across all the Balkan (not even the EU) with my passport solely. 2004, right?


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> I might have missed the very first step, but why the heck is the UK insisting on passports?


Because they can.

What is the problem in requiring a passport? A passport is the global default instrument to cross the national borders. In addition we have some insider clubs like Nordics and the EU having implemented easier arrangements to their members. Because the UK wants to reintroduce Napoléon's Continental Blockade, let us allow them to do so.


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> Because they can.
> 
> What is the problem in requiring a passport? A passport is the global default instrument to cross the national borders. In addition we have some insider clubs like Nordics and the EU having implemented easier arrangements to their members. Because the UK wants to reintroduce Napoléon's Continental Blockade, let us allow them to do so.


I have no problem with this. We used to be travellers before the COVID pandemic so all members of our family have their passports. They are, at least, a backup for losing an ID. Just being curious why the need since most EU-nonEU relations now are done without a mandatory passport.

Moreover, I think that the statement about passports as a major repellent factor is a little bit exaggarated. Those who travel usually own one.


----------



## radamfi

volodaaaa said:


> I mean, isn't there some bilateral endorsement at the UK-EU level about accepting the ID cards?


Only for EU/EEA/Swiss people living in the UK under the EU Settlement Scheme and some other exceptions





__





Visiting the UK as an EU, EEA or Swiss citizen


What you need to know about crossing the UK border and visiting the UK.




www.gov.uk


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> Moreover, I think that the statement about passports as a major repellent factor is a little bit exaggarated. Those who travel usually own one.


I don't think so. For example Hungarian citizens need no passport in the whle EU and no passport in the Balkan countries. And only a few people travel outside this area. I, too, had no passport for several years, although I travelled abroad several times a year.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> I have no problem with this. We used to be travellers before the COVID pandemic so all members of our family have their passports. They are, at least, a backup for losing an ID. Just being curious why the need since most EU-nonEU relations now are done without a mandatory passport.
> 
> Moreover, I think that the statement about passports as a major repellent factor is a little bit exaggarated. Those who travel usually own one.


There is a fundamental difference between Slovakia and the UK: Slovakia wanted to join the gang and the UK wanted to withdraw from it. Of course, this is reflected to the behavior.

I am quite sure that when Archie Mountbatten-Windsor as the Prime Minister in 2080 leads the UK back to the membership of the EU, the passport requirement will be dropped among the first actions.


----------



## tfd543

Slagathor said:


> It's not that the Dutch are modest (they're not), it's that the Danish are arrogant pricks.


Ar u sure?


----------



## tfd543

Attus said:


> I don't think so. For example Hungarian citizens need no passport in the whle EU and no passport in the Balkan countries. And only a few people travel outside this area. I, too, had no passport for several years, although I travelled abroad several times a year.


Could be the cost of course. Whats like the price difference b/t passport and the id card?


----------



## Attus

tfd543 said:


> Could be the cost of course. Whats like the price difference b/t passport and the id card?


I don't know any Hungarian citizens, living in Hungary and having no ID card. Applying for a new ID card is in Hungary free, i.e. no price, no costs. For a new passport you have to pay 14.000 HUF, ~ 40 Euro, it is valid for ten years.


----------



## bogdymol

tfd543 said:


> Could be the cost of course. Whats like the price difference b/t passport and the id card?


In Romania is like 3-4 € for an ID card and 52 € for a passport. 

The ID card is mandatory, everybody has one, so most people don’t bother getting a passport if they don’t plan on traveling outside of Europe.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> I don't know any Hungarian citizens, living in Hungary and having no ID card. Applying for a new ID card is in Hungary free, i.e. no price, no costs. For a new passport you have to pay 14.000 HUF, ~ 40 Euro, it is valid for ten years.


Almost the same here except for second duplicates (e.g. if you lose a document once, you get new for free, but if you lose it for a second time, you are considered a moron and you have to pay for it).

The passport costs 36 € + there are extra charges if you need to get it isssued within 3 days or 24 hours.


----------



## SeanT

A new passport in Denmark costs over DKK 1000 € 134,- and valid for 10 years.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

It is good that we have countries like Denmark and Switzerland, such that Norway is not always the most expensive ;-)

Passport or ID card: NOK 570 (340 below 16 and 10 year of age, respectively).
Package deal of passport + ID card: NOK 920 (730 between 10 and 16, and 540 below 10). 
Emergency passport: 1000 NOK

Divide roughly by 10 to get the €-price.


----------



## radamfi

A Swiss passport is similar price to a Danish one, costing 140 CHF (€128) plus 5 CHF postage, although it is only another 8 CHF to buy a passport and ID card together.

Even the UK and Irish passports cost more than a Norwegian one.

An Irish passport is €75, with the optional Passport Card costing €35 or €100 for both together. Arguably the Irish passport is the best in Europe given it is the only one to give free movement to both the UK and EU, yet it costs less than the £75.50 (€88) UK passport.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I thought the point was that you did not need a passport between UK and Ireland ;-)

To be fair, Norwegian passports used to be more expensive, but the price was lowered a few years ago.


----------



## radamfi

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I thought the point was that you did not need a passport between UK and Ireland ;-)


I suppose "Irish citizenship is the best in Europe" would have been more correct to say, given that an Irish citizen can live in the UK without owning a passport 

Although in practice not having a passport can make life difficult. The "Common Travel Area" means that people in the UK, Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man can, in theory, travel and reside in any of those places without a passport. Certainly there is no need for a passport to travel between any of those places other than Ireland. Also, when you fly from the Republic of Ireland to England, Scotland or Wales you normally arrive in a separate part of the airport to international arrivals so you don't have to pass through passport control. However, when you fly to an airport in the Republic of Ireland, everyone goes through the same passport control and there is no separate area for arrivals from the UK. This means you have to prove to the officer that you don't need a passport to enter Ireland. By far the easiest way of doing this is by showing a British or Irish passport! You might get away with some other kind of photo ID, but that might lead to additional questioning. In any case, most airlines require you to have a passport or European ID card.

There is an additional complication regarding visas. If you have a UK visa, that doesn't give you access to Ireland and vice versa for an Irish visa. You can potentially get around this by flying via Northern Ireland, but the authorities sometimes check cross border buses and trains for people exploiting this loophole.

It is also tricky for someone from outside Jersey to live in Jersey. A British or Irish passport gives you permission to live there in theory but you are only allowed to buy or rent houses above a certain (high) price, so that locals aren't priced out and to ensure that only rich people move to Jersey. You are, however, allowed to rent a room in someone's house.


----------



## tfd543

SeanT said:


> A new passport in Denmark costs over DKK 1000 € 134,- and valid for 10 years.


Nope. Its 890 kr from the Year of 18 until pension age.. price as of 2021 feb. 
10 years validity.

Its interesting that in nmk, validity is only 10 years after the age of 27.. somebody found a Way to harvest money…


----------



## tfd543

Attus said:


> I don't know any Hungarian citizens, living in Hungary and having no ID card. Applying for a new ID card is in Hungary free, i.e. no price, no costs. For a new passport you have to pay 14.000 HUF, ~ 40 Euro, it is valid for ten years.


Oh boy thats a huge price, 14k forints.


----------



## tfd543

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> It is good that we have countries like Denmark and Switzerland, such that Norway is not always the most expensive ;-)
> 
> Passport or ID card: NOK 570 (340 below 16 and 10 year of age, respectively).
> Package deal of passport + ID card: NOK 920 (730 between 10 and 16, and 540 below 10).
> Emergency passport: 1000 NOK
> 
> Divide roughly by 10 to get the €-price.


Lol Yea.. what do they refer to when they say emergency passport? Is it that u get some sort of laissez passer on the spot ?


----------



## volodaaaa

Talking about light bulbs, have you heard about this?






Phoebus cartel - Wikipedia







en.m.wikipedia.org


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> This Osram one is a halogen one; if I am not mistaken, those are still permitted.


"Normal" E27 and E14 halogen bulbs were phased out as of Sep 1st 2018. Certain fittings like R7, G4 and G9 were exempt from the ban because alternatives for oven lamps etc are not in the market. R7s >2700 lumen will be phased out in Sep 2021 and the remaining ones in 2023.

Anyway, halogen incandescent bulbs are allowed to be sold for special purposes, not for household illumination.


----------



## Stuu

tfd543 said:


> Lol Yea.. what do they refer to when they say emergency passport? Is it that u get some sort of laissez passer on the spot ?


I had my bag stolen in New York about 10 years ago which had my passport in. Spent the weekend worrying about it, went to the consulate on Monday morning, handed over $150 and a photo, had a new emergency passport within half an hour which was valid for 9 months


----------



## KONSTANTINOUPOLIS

Traveling to Greece by car from CE Europe, read post #123 



https://www.skyscrapercity.com/threads/greece-hellas-%CE%95%CE%BB%CE%BB%CE%AC%CE%B4%CE%B1.2304477/page-7



Plan your trip carefully, thank you.


----------



## radamfi

It seems the UK, Ireland and Denmark has/had an opt-out from the requirement to have fingerprints in passports. A more recent ruling requires ID cards to have fingerprints but Ireland has negotiated an opt-out from that on the grounds that their Passport Card is not strictly speaking an ID card. Ireland has a similar cultural aversion to ID cards and fingerprints as the UK.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> I guess Disneyland want your fingerprints in case you commit a crime in the park.


You mean Disneyland in Paris? Because Disney parks in the US don't collect fingerprints, and never had as far as I know. They definitely didn't when I was working in WDW in Florida.


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> You mean Disneyland in Paris? Because Disney parks in the US don't collect fingerprints, and never had as far as I know. They definitely didn't when I was working in WDW in Florida.


I've been to Paris, California and Florida. I definitely remember my fingerprint being scanned in California around 2008 ish. I can't remember regarding Florida. Probably not Paris as that was a lot earlier, around 2000. If you search for "Disneyland fingerprints" you can see lots of evidence of fingerprinting, and the decision to stop fingerprinting to help prevent the spread of Covid.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

volodaaaa said:


> Talking about light bulbs, have you heard about this?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Phoebus cartel - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.m.wikipedia.org


I suspect many manufacturers of LED-bulbs purposedly design them for short life span today...

Anyway, it is possible to make incandescent bulbs which has essentially eternal lifetime by using thick enough threads, as was sometimes done in the early days. The problem is that the light is weak and the efficiency becomes terrible.


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> Same in Poland.
> 
> 
> Is it banned in DK to sell incandescent bulbs? In Poland it really isn't. In theory it is, but they are normally sold, with markings on the package that they aren't intended for home use.
> .


Yea it has been so for some years now, but some bars and cafés still got them.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Today there was an article in my local newspaper about a downturn in the undertaker bussiness in 2020. 5.5 % less people died in Norway in 2020, in my region, which has had only a handful of COVID-fatalities, the decline in funeral bussiness has probably be even larger. But, as the interviewed undertaker states, the downturn does not mean that the future market is in threat 

Otherwise, vaccination rates have been quite high in June, as in other places of Europe I guess, and the anti-vaccers do not seem to have significant influence in Trondheim (or in Norway):

85+: First dose 93,5% (3341) and 91,3% (3261) second dose
75-84: First dose 98,5% (9604) and 97,9% (9544) second dose
65-74: First dose 97,9% (16 794) and 93,1% (16 375) second dose
55-64: First dose 93,6% (20 559) and 34,1% (7486) second dose
45-54: First dose 76,4% (20 227) and 21,8% (5761) second dose
40-44: First dose 24,3% (3226) and 15,1% (2004) second dose
25-39: First dose 19,6% (10 064) and 11,3% (5816) second dose
18-24: First dose 19,3% (4419) and 7,9% (1809) second dose
16-17: First dose 140 and 26 second dose (persons with particular risks)
Note there has been an increase in vaccination rates even for the 75-84-years old group since my previous post on these statistics less than two weeks ago. The extreme vaccination acceptance rates have somewhat surprised the government, which has now postponed the date when everybody in Norway will have been offered the first dose to September. In e.g. Oslo, this will happen in July. The good thing about the high vaccination rates, combined with the scrapping of Janssen / AstraSeneca is that the group immunity hopefully will be very high when we are done. 



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Vaccination speeds are higher in some other parts of Norway, but in my town they have so far only sent invitations to the general population born in or before 1968. But quite a few younger, having a relevant medical condition or patient contact, have also been vaccinated:
> 
> 85+: First dose 93,2% (3331) and 90,6% (3237) second dose.
> 75-84: First dose 98,1% (9566) and 97,1% (9462) second dose.
> 65-74: First dose 95,0% (16 711) and 91,5% (16 094) second dose.
> 55-64: First dose 75,2% (16 501) and 29,9% (6573) second dose.
> 45-54: First dose 27,4% (7244) and 14,3% (3787) second dose.
> 40-44: First dose 21,7% (2874) and 10,5% (1396) second dose.
> 25-39: First dose 17,4% (8960) and 8,6% (4433) second dose.
> 18-24: First dose 13,5% (3084) and 6,1% (1397) second dose.
> 16-17: First dose 43 and 13 second dose (persons with particular risks)


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> A more recent ruling requires ID cards to have fingerprints but Ireland has negotiated an opt-out from that on the grounds that their Passport Card is not strictly speaking an ID card. Ireland has a similar cultural aversion to ID cards and fingerprints as the UK.


Several years ago the Polish ID cards got changed, so that the address and the owner's signature got removed out of them.

Now the government is going to add the signature back, supposedly – because the new EU regulations require it.



tfd543 said:


> Yea it has been so for some years now, but some bars and cafés still got them.


Many bars and cafes now use the "filament" LED bulbs.


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> Several years ago the Polish ID cards got changed, so that the address and the owner's signature got removed out of them.
> 
> Now the government is going to add the signature back, supposedly – because the new EU regulations require it.
> 
> 
> Many bars and cafes now use the "filament" LED bulbs.


Yea i have seen those as well but the color of the Beer is still better displayed with the traditional ones. Also People’s face and skin color actually.


----------



## tfd543

Stuu said:


> I had my bag stolen in New York about 10 years ago which had my passport in. Spent the weekend worrying about it, went to the consulate on Monday morning, handed over $150 and a photo, had a new emergency passport within half an hour which was valid for 9 months


Ouch.. how did it happen? The steal..


----------



## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> 85+: First dose 93,5% (3341) and 91,3% (3261) second dose
> 
> 75-84: First dose 98,5% (9604) and 97,9% (9544) second dose
> 65-74: First dose 97,9% (16 794) and 93,1% (16 375) second dose
> 55-64: First dose 93,6% (20 559) and 34,1% (7486) second dose
> 45-54: First dose 76,4% (20 227) and 21,8% (5761) second dose
> 40-44: First dose 24,3% (3226) and 15,1% (2004) second dose
> 25-39: First dose 19,6% (10 064) and 11,3% (5816) second dose
> 18-24: First dose 19,3% (4419) and 7,9% (1809) second dose
> 16-17: First dose 140 and 26 second dose (persons with particular risks


I look at your data in relative jealousy  This is the stats from my country:








On the other hand, more mobile groups are better vaccinated than in West Europe. If vaccines help to reduce the spread to unvaccinated, this is also benefiting, but with new variants, you never know what may happen :/

...and first dose vaccinations are slowing down. Don't know if from vaccine sceptics or due to us not having much cases right now.
I would wait for mandatory vaccinations for some work groups when things probably start to get worse again.

---
Btw, got my second AZ


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

MattiG said:


> Illumination is a very ineffective way to make heat. Most of the heat is produced close to the ceiling where its value is close to zero, except in reflective lamps.


It is not like the lighting in any case is the only or dominent heat source, the other heat sources should be placed in such a location in the room that there is natural circulation. If not, warm air will still accumulate through in the upper layers of a room. And in multistory houses a hot ceiling of course means a warm floor for others.



MattiG said:


> Light is needed during the warm season, too, and the traditional bulbs are pure waste then.


It depends very much on where you live. Here the average temperature in July is 14.6 C. And then it of course depends on other heat sources, sun/ light conditions and insulation. Let's say there are 60 days I do not need any heating. Then I need 12 x 60 W bulbs running continously even to reach 1 MWh consumption. In practice, most lights are off most of the time during the summer, some heating is needed, and the real dent in my ~25 MWh power bill would be insignificant.


----------



## PovilD

It seems whole regions are affected by this slow down factor, but West Europe stays strong.


----------



## Stuu

tfd543 said:


> Ouch.. how did it happen? The steal..


I was in a bar/restaurant, having a beer and something to eat. Someone came up and asked me the time, and started talking to me about nothing much, and when I next looked down my bag was gone, so I assume it was a deliberate distraction. Very annoying, but could have been worse... while I was at the consulate waiting for my passport, a man came in who said he got in a taxi from the airport, and when he got to his destination he got out, took his wallet out to pay, at which point the taxi driver grabbed his wallet and drove off, with his bags in the back. So he had nothing but the clothes he was wearing


----------



## tfd543

Stuu said:


> I was in a bar/restaurant, having a beer and something to eat. Someone came up and asked me the time, and started talking to me about nothing much, and when I next looked down my bag was gone, so I assume it was a deliberate distraction. Very annoying, but could have been worse... while I was at the consulate waiting for my passport, a man came in who said he got in a taxi from the airport, and when he got to his destination he got out, took his wallet out to pay, at which point the taxi driver grabbed his wallet and drove off, with his bags in the back. So he had nothing but the clothes he was wearing


Poor guys.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

PovilD said:


> It seems whole regions are affected by this slow down factor, but West Europe stays strong.
> View attachment 1707454


There has been a slow-down in countries like Israel and USA as well (but at a higher level than Eastern EU). What is most striking when looking at the statistics, however, is how far behind high-profile countries like Russia, Japan, and Australia are.


----------



## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> There has been a slow-down in countries like Israel and USA as well (but at a higher level than Eastern EU). What is most striking when looking at the statistics, however, is how far behind high-profile countries like Russia, Japan, and Australia are.


There is lots of general mistrust in Russia and former Soviet Union, Australia decided to basically outlive pandemic by lockdowns (if strains become more and more transmissible than it will be harder and harder with lockdowns...), while Japan is most surprising as there are no harsh lockdowns, and also no vaccinations.


----------



## PovilD

My thoughts those quarantine stuff should end somewhere since I extremely doubt covid will ever go away. We just need to develop drugs and vaccines, there is especially problem with lack of drugs.

My only lasting fear are variants and how they will mess up things with hospitalizations. Logically, covid should become mild disease for immunized people.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> Maybe that will be announced in the next few days when there is an update from the transport minister. There are various news reports that scrapping quarantine for the double jabbed is being 'considered', which is a good sign. It would be weird to continue to insist on quarantine for travel from amber countries for the double jabbed given what will be allowed from 19 July. Even if quarantine when entering the UK ends, your destination country has to let you in. At present the NHS app is only recognised in some countries. Also the reports have only mentioned quarantine. It would be still annoying if we have to pay for tests privately when entering the UK even if quarantine is no longer required.


I can't imagine that they will remove the need for a test both ways, so one for the country you are going to and one to show to the UK authorities when coming back. I did have a look into it and they are at least £80 each, and potentially more if the result doesn't come through quickly enough, which was one of my biggest concerns


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've traveled across France over the past 2 weeks.

There were no border controls. I crossed the border at Couvin (E420), Luxembourg (A31) and Col de la Lombarde. However there were some customs inspections at some toll booths. I got stopped once, they did not ask for anything covid-related.

I stayed on 5 campsites. Nobody ever asked for proof of vaccination or a negative test.

Mask usage is still mandatory indoors. You'll see a small minority also wearing them outdoors, this was lifted a few weeks ago. Mask usage in bars and restaurants is very limited.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

There is certainly still control at all legal entry points into Norway. Since significantly more people /areas have been allowed quarantine free travel this has meant massive queues at airports and highway border checkpoints at times, with hours of waiting time (I think the worst I heard was 11 hours on the border to Finland. The reason is that everyone that is not vaccinated needs to take a test, even from green regions. 

But meanwhile we have had quite warm weather all over the country, in particular in the far north.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1412157062960844800
The area also has some fantastic beaches.









So why go anywhere else? (hint: water temperature...)


----------



## Rebasepoiss

June was 4C warmer than average in Estonia and a heat record for June was broken as well at 34,6C on the 23rd of June. I don't mind the warm weather as such but what bothers me is that I don't have AC at home so it's too hot to sleep comfortably.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Very cool timelapse of snow depth in Slovenia:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1412664018813267970


----------



## Cookiefabric

Rebasepoiss said:


> June was 4C warmer than average in Estonia and a heat record for June was broken as well at 34,6C on the 23rd of June. I don't mind the warm weather as such but what bothers me is that I don't have AC at home so it's too hot to sleep comfortably.


Stores like Bauhaus (Tallinn, Tartu, Rakvere, Paide) did quickly ran out of stock (Fans / Mobile A/C units), as I understood. Usually a sign that summer is there to stay for a while


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've traveled across France over the past 2 weeks.
> 
> There were no border controls. I crossed the border at Couvin (E420), Luxembourg (A31) and Col de la Lombarde. However there were some customs inspections at some toll booths. I got stopped once, they did not ask for anything covid-related.
> 
> I stayed on 5 campsites. Nobody ever asked for proof of vaccination or a negative test.
> 
> Mask usage is still mandatory indoors. You'll see a small minority also wearing them outdoors, this was lifted a few weeks ago. Mask usage in bars and restaurants is very limited.


What is the average price for tent place in French autocamps?


----------



## radamfi

Is it possible to rent ready made tents? I quite like the idea of paying very little for accommodation, but I don't particularly want to carry a tent everywhere.


----------



## Suburbanist

radamfi said:


> Is it possible to rent ready made tents? I quite like the idea of paying very little for accommodation, but I don't particularly want to carry a tent everywhere.


There are some tents that take less than 1min to assemble. But they offer little to no comfort.


----------



## radamfi

Suburbanist said:


> There are some tents that take less than 1min to assemble. But they offer little to no comfort.


I mean a tent where the park owns the tent and you simply stay in their tent. So you don't need your own tent.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> What is the average price for tent place in French autocamps?


For one person: typically around € 15 per night. I usually pay between € 10 and 20 per night. In France this also includes showers and sometimes wifi. Some countries (like Germany, Scandinavia) require coins or tokens to use the shower. 

Most of the time I spent more on dinner than the campsite. 

I have a 2 seconds pop-up tent (suitable for 3 persons). I only use it to sleep in, everything else is outside. I don't cook on campsites, I usually go to restaurants / take-away. A new trend are larger inflatable tents. They are much faster to set up than traditional pitch tents. Decathlon usually has a wide range of affordable camping products. 

Rental tents do exist, this is called 'glamping'. The prices are much higher though. They often have refrigerators, cooking stove, etc. Some even have a toilet and shower, making them similar to a mobile home.


----------



## radamfi

I have seen those 2 second tents from Decathlon. They would be fine if you are driving direct from home but too big for taking on your bike, inconvenient for taking on trains, and expensive to take on the plane because of the luggage costs. I'd be happy with such a tent as a rental tent. I suppose if it costs more than €25 then you might as well stay in an Airbnb anyway. So I guess I'm too niche a market!


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> For one person: typically around € 15 per night. I usually pay between € 10 and 20 per night. In France this also includes showers and sometimes wifi. Some countries (like Germany, Scandinavia) require coins or tokens to use the shower.
> 
> Most of the time I spent more on dinner than the campsite.
> 
> I have a 2 seconds pop-up tent (suitable for 3 persons). I only use it to sleep in, everything else is outside. I don't cook on campsites, I usually go to restaurants / take-away. A new trend are larger inflatable tents. They are much faster to set up than traditional pitch tents. Decathlon usually has a wide range of affordable camping products.
> 
> Rental tents do exist, this is called 'glamping'. The prices are much higher though. They often have refrigerators, cooking stove, etc. Some even have a toilet and shower, making them similar to a mobile home.


Good prices. I will be camping this year after 8 years again, but prices are higher here, starting around 10eur per person and 15-20eur per tent place. Usually fridge shelf costs some 3-5eur per night as well. But here you have always complere bathroom included in price, no tokens required. More famous camps are 10-15eur more expensive. 
Of course, there is a flood of those glamping things (mobile homes, and in last several years fixed tents). They are lovely, very cozy, and expensive (usually 130eur+ for a night), but usually they are quite luxurious. I like them, but I don't like mixing them with traditional camping facilities.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is a trend in the Netherlands to move away from seasonal caravan places to mobile homes. A seasonal spot usually costs between € 2000 - 3000 per year. A mobile home could be rented out for € 90 - 150 per night, so the revenue is much higher. But it remains to be seen if this is a viable business model, because high occupancy rates for mobile homes are only for a few months per year. I know from luxurious 'campsites' at Lake Garda that they have a relatively short season: it usually folds by mid-September because the operational costs are too high to make it profitable to stay open with lower occupancy rates. 

Most of those luxurious campsites are being purchased by ever larger chains. They kind of lose their campsite charm, becoming a big corporate business instead of a family-owned business with a small staff and owners living on the campsite. 

Another trend is the huge rise of RVs instead of tents and caravans (travel trailers). Especially in the lower/mid seasons a large majority of people on campsites have an RV.


----------



## x-type

Whole Mediteranean the same. Basically, large tourist resort chains came with glamping sites first here. They buy huge area, build large hotel resort, around it they place lots of various rental facilities, and, of course, huge glamping site. Cozy, but I got used on real camps.
RVs have always been present, but it is easier to rent them nowadays than ever. I don't mind them, they have always been present. At least we don't have those huge bus-alike things like America RVs. Usually it is on base of Fiat Ducato or similar vehicle.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Rental tents do exist, this is called 'glamping'. The prices are much higher though. They often have refrigerators, cooking stove, etc. Some even have a toilet and shower, making them similar to a mobile home.


I was once twice on a trip from a travel agency in Poland which was setting up ready-made tents (huge ones, you can stand in one, it has two zipper-enclosed "bedrooms" inside, each with 2 field beds, and some common space) at campings in some tourist places in Europe. It also included food, they were putting up their own field kitchen on the campsite. The sanitary standards maybe weren't the best, but it was very cheap.

I was with them in Italy (near Naples) and in Spain, or actually Catalonia (in Blanes, near Lloret de Mar).

Unfortunately this travel agency went bankrupt something like 2 years ago.

But in Italy, they were actually subrenting those tents from another agency, which was from Czech Republic or Slovakia (I can't remember now); surely the kitchen was serviced by a Czech or Slovak cook.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I know someone who worked as a mechanic in mobile homes on campsites in Italy and France that also have rental tents. He said that every spring, a team of people from Poland arrives to build the tents back up. 

He also says that the amount of damage in mobile homes is quite high, this is of course reflected in the rental price. Renters often break stuff that needs to be replaced instantly.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> I 'd rather trade removing mask for easier international travel. Removing mask mandate won't change that much in my life, I don't really care one way or another. But I'd love to be able to leave the UK without the need for silly quarantines. I really want to see family in Poland at some point.


I'm wondering if all British people abroad have been in quarantine? I've seen some (not a large number) of British tourists in France.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm wondering if all British people abroad have been in quarantine? I've seen some (not a large number) of British tourists in France.


There's very little enforcement so most people who decide to take a chance will get away with it.


----------



## Kpc21

I checked the availability of vaccines in my area, if I wanted to get vaccinated now. And...

I can get Pfizer (most available), Moderna or AstraZeneca even tomorrow (actually – today as it's already after the midnight) in a place 600 m away from my home.

If I want Johnson's Baby, I have to travel about 20 km and I may need to wait one day more.

I wonder how much it is an effect of simply lower supply of Johnson's vaccines, how much of the increased demand for Johnson's as it is single-dose, so it allows for getting the Covid "passport" in much a shorter time.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> I mean a tent where the park owns the tent and you simply stay in their tent. So you don't need your own tent.


Yes there's loads of them. We used to go and stay in those when I was a kid, Eurocamp is a big company that does that, I'm sure there are others. Surprisingly expensive when I looked into it a couple of years ago

Lots of independent people have yurts and posh tents too, if you look on Airbnb


----------



## radamfi

So, as expected, the UK transport minister has announced that fully vaccinated people can enter the UK without quarantine from 19 July. There is also a slight improvement when it comes to testing requirements. Only two tests are required instead of three, one before arriving in the UK and one after. However, with cases set to dramatically increase due to the full relaxation of restrictions, that might make other countries even less likely to accept visitors from the UK.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Cases have escalated quickly in the Netherlands, from 700/day a week ago to 3700/day yesterday. The main reason are student parties, the increase is mostly in the 20-25 age group in the largest cities. They reopened nightclubs and discos and allowing people in who were tested or vaccinated, but QR codes were sent around and entry with proof of vaccination (Janssen) was possible immediately after getting the shot. One nightclub had 180 infections recorded, which is likely the largest single superspread event since March 2020.

There is now backlash for reopening nightclubs too soon. While this will likely not lead to a substantial increase in hospitalizations, it may make it difficult for Dutch people to travel abroad if infections rise above the ECDC threshold for orange codes. The sentiment is: students partied for one weekend and as a result, the rest of the people can't go on vacation. We'll have to see how this plays out.


----------



## radamfi

radamfi said:


> So, as expected, the UK transport minister has announced that fully vaccinated people can enter the UK without quarantine from 19 July. There is also a slight improvement when it comes to testing requirements. Only two tests are required instead of three, one before arriving in the UK and one after. However, with cases set to dramatically increase due to the full relaxation of restrictions, that might make other countries even less likely to accept visitors from the UK.


I overlooked the fact that the exemption from quarantine only applies to people receiving their vaccinations in the UK. No idea why there is such a restriction.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

x-type said:


> Good prices. I will be camping this year after 8 years again,


I wonder if I will ever stay at a campsite again. It is a harder sell to my wife now that we no longer have minor kids. Usually we use airbnb or similar or hotels when exploring new places, or in Norway, the cabins of the Norwegian Trekking Association (Home - The Norwegian Trekking Association) . We also from time to time sleep in a tent, but in the wilderness, not in an organized camping site. This is in general legal in Norway and Sweden as long as you are at least 150 m from the nearest house, you stay less than 48 hours, and leave no trace from your stay. 


ChrisZwolle said:


> While this will likely not lead to a substantial increase in hospitalizations, it may make it difficult for Dutch people to travel abroad if infections rise above the ECDC


Netherlands is already mostly orange in the ECDC maps, and as far as Norway concerns, Dutch tourists will not be admitted. Ironically, also some Norwegian regions, including my own, are orange, though.


----------



## x-type

Regarding the summer vacation I am very impulsive. I decide it in a minute, and various motives impact on my decision. For instande, this year's inspiration was the video on the web of this camp:


https://camp-kargita.hr/


Furthermore, the scene with sunken ship have made me to decide instantly to buy a new kayak and to do some kayaking around the nearby islands.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

When I traveled to France over the past 2 weeks I did not book any accommodation. I stayed on campsites for 1-3 nights and when I moved to another one I only chose the next campsite 1 hour in advance, drove up to it, and checked in. I like the flexibility of being able to go wherever I want without having to book or reserve spots in advance. This is a main reason why I never have rainy vacations. I just follow the good weather. Having even half a day of rain is rare for me.

I think AirBNB also allows for this kind of flexibility, but renting a cabin or mobile home tends to be less flexible, for one they often require a minimum stay of 3 - 7 nights, which I do not want to do most of the time. One thing I do not like about AirBNB is that you don't know the exact location of your stay.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Cases have escalated quickly in the Netherlands, from 700/day a week ago to 3700/day yesterday. The main reason are student parties, the increase is mostly in the 20-25 age group in the largest cities. They reopened nightclubs and discos and allowing people in who were tested or vaccinated, but QR codes were sent around and entry with proof of vaccination (Janssen) was possible immediately after getting the shot. One nightclub had 180 infections recorded, which is likely the largest single superspread event since March 2020.
> 
> There is now backlash for reopening nightclubs too soon. While this will likely not lead to a substantial increase in hospitalizations, it may make it difficult for Dutch people to travel abroad if infections rise above the ECDC threshold for orange codes. The sentiment is: students partied for one weekend and as a result, the rest of the people can't go on vacation. We'll have to see how this plays out.


Netherlands covid control judging from case rates compared to Germany, Norway or Finland has always mingled somewhat toward Sweden, I don't know why. Is population density the only factor?

Yes, Dutch case show that testing could be even harmful somewhat with such a low hospitalization potential.

Me myself is also kinda becoming sceptical toward all this testing stuff. Diseases are treated by drugs not by nose swabs.
I'm not mad at those who catched covid, since it seems everybody will probably face covid at some point. I'm more mad about people who refuse to vaccinate, becoming case potentially to clog the hospital with more transmissible strain. Here in East Europe we are more at risk for hospital clogging since more people refuse to vaccinate. I guess we will have like two harder months with lots of covid hospitalisations, but no harsh lockdows. I'm already waiting for immunity evading variants, delta seem to be clear for time being, and I'm not that afraid of it.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> When I traveled to France over the past 2 weeks I did not book any accommodation. I stayed on campsites for 1-3 nights and when I moved to another one I only chose the next campsite 1 hour in advance, drove up to it, and checked in. I like the flexibility of being able to go wherever I want without having to book or reserve spots in advance. This is a main reason why I never have rainy vacations. I just follow the good weather. Having even half a day of rain is rare for me.
> 
> I think AirBNB also allows for this kind of flexibility, but renting a cabin or mobile home tends to be less flexible, for one they often require a minimum stay of 3 - 7 nights, which I do not want to do most of the time. One thing I do not like about AirBNB is that you don't know the exact location of your stay.


I often do it, and hosts always think that I am touristic inspector just testing them (because I book accomodation, and i appear within 1 hour at site  )


----------



## andken

PovilD said:


> Here in East Europe we are more at risk for hospital clogging since more people refuse to vaccinate.


Yup, vaccination, not putting masks into vaccinated people, that should be the main worry. Specially because things are likely to get worse during the winter.


----------



## PovilD

andken said:


> Yup, vaccination, not putting masks into vaccinated people, that should be the main worry. Specially because things are likely to get worse during the winter.


I'm personally not that afraid of (harsh) lockdowns becoming a thing at least for delta, since I think people will be more against them than ever, and maybe even go a little bit fatalist there, but vaccinating people and proper mask wearing should be in tact.

I'm not that afraid of that delta wave, get vaccinated and your chances being a problem for doctors is relatively low.
I'm more afraid what will be after delta wave. I guess immunity evading variants will become more prevalent since more people will get immunized via infection or vaccines.
The only hope that even with new strains, there will be more proportion of mild cases than with previous waves. At least that how epidemic should work, they burn, but they burn out eventually to become milder.

I think EU is prepared for having proper travel for immunized people inside EU. Not having free travel is not good, okay unless you are really good at having very low cases all the time like Scandinavia (Finland, Norway).


----------



## andken

PovilD said:


> I'm personally not that afraid of (harsh) lockdowns becoming a thing at least for delta,


What really worries me is that governments in general are using the "Yes Minister" playbook of doing something for the sake of doing something, So, we still seeing temperature checks and people being told to wash their hands in a lot of countries. Brazil's share of delta is very, very low, but even with a country where only 15% of the population has been vaccinated vaccines are having a huge effect(Amazonas, famous for having a huge death rate, doesn't have any hospitalized patient in most of it's municipalities).

Governments in the Northern Hemisphere should be worried with vaccinations, not with putting masks into people that are vaccinated. Things aren't going to be so nice during winter.


----------



## PovilD

andken said:


> What really worries me is that governments in general are using the "Yes Minister" playbook of doing something for the sake of doing something, So, we still seeing temperature checks and people being told to wash their hands in a lot of countries. Brazil's share of delta is very, very low, but even with a country where only 15% of the population has been vaccinated vaccines are having a huge effect(Amazonas, famous for having a huge death rate, doesn't have any hospitalized patient in most of it's municipalities).
> 
> Governments in the Northern Hemisphere should be worried with vaccinations, not with putting masks into people that are vaccinated. Things aren't going to be so nice during winter.


I don't see a problem with masks. Vaccines aren't 100% effective, and delta inevitably will be dominant strain everywhere.

I see a problem when you are scared to stay at home 90% of the time, and the rest of 10% is just to walk for fresh air. This should be avoided, and I don't see need for vaccinated to be such restricted there. I would only wait for worse strains, and World is big and mutants can come from everywhere. I don't know how Developing countries will manage with booster doses, but Developed countries are likely to be living with booster doses, just don't know if 6 months, or 1 year, maybe even up to 2 years. I'm prepared to take booster doses, since I feel there is no end for potential restrictions, and there is no clear light in the end of the tunnel. The truth is that respiratory viruses just don't go away usually, they could become milder through immunized population.

Amazonas is interesting case, there were two devastating waves, now is interesting if it follows post-Spanish flu path (I expected this path for the World in early 2020, tbh) or some own path with potential resurgences (the scenario which is indeed scary, in a way, worse than 1918-19 flu).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are huge shortages of workers in the hospitality sector in the Netherlands, in particular in restaurants. Many workers were laid off during the lockdown and have moved on, now that everything is open there is a huge shortage. Many restaurants can only open to 30 or 50% capacity, or remain closed during certain days or hours. Even restaurants in smaller cities are trying to get workers from abroad, but the shortage of housing also plays a role. 

The hospitality sector is a low-paid sector so many workers are only seasonal or work there as a side hustle during school or college. So far there is not a big new inflow of young workers to compensate for those who have moved on.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> There are huge shortages of workers in the hospitality sector in the Netherlands, in particular in restaurants. Many workers were laid off during the lockdown and have moved on, now that everything is open there is a huge shortage. Many restaurants can only open to 30 or 50% capacity, or remain closed during certain days or hours. Even restaurants in smaller cities are trying to get workers from abroad, but the shortage of housing also plays a role.
> 
> The hospitality sector is a low-paid sector so many workers are only seasonal or work there as a side hustle during school or college. So far there is not a big new inflow of young workers to compensate for those who have moved on.


That has been in the UK news as well, including the well known Wetherspoons pub chain which has at least one pub in most town centres. The boss was in the news a lot for being a staunch Brexiteer, leading to many people boycotting the chain (although Wetherspoons' downmarket image meant that most stereotypical middle-class Remainers wouldn't go there anyway). Now he's got staff shortages and wants the UK government to allow more immigration into the UK to work in hospitality!


----------



## bogdymol

I don't know why, but I like when I hear such stories.

Some guys think they are smarter and better than others, vote for Brexit, then exactly the opposite happens than they thought it will happen. 

PS: we have new, facebook-style, Like button for the posts.


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> There are huge shortages of workers in the hospitality sector in the Netherlands, in particular in restaurants. Many workers were laid off during the lockdown and have moved on, now that everything is open there is a huge shortage. Many restaurants can only open to 30 or 50% capacity, or remain closed during certain days or hours. Even restaurants in smaller cities are trying to get workers from abroad, but the shortage of housing also plays a role.
> 
> The hospitality sector is a low-paid sector so many workers are only seasonal or work there as a side hustle during school or college. So far there is not a big new inflow of young workers to compensate for those who have moved on.


This is problem everywhere in Europe in these times. There are just not enough workers in most sectors. Decades of "forcing" young people to get highly educated are now showing serious effects. Even my hairdresser said it is impossible to get fresh students from hairdresser schools as there are far too few of them.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This is also evident in the construction sector. Even though these are skilled jobs that pays reasonably well, there aren't enough people enrolling in trade schools to become a contractor. 

I'm wondering if this shortage will be more acute in female-dominated professions, like health care, wellness & personal care, cleaning, hospitality, etc. There is a trend that women are more highly educated than men. You don't need a masters degree for every type of work. This large supply of college-educated people may also inflate the value of a masters degree.

Though high education doesn't always mean people are financially or socially literate. There is the Dave Ramsey show that advises people with large debts and these often involve highly educated people who have unsustainable levels of personal debt they can't get out of. And this is not just student loan debt, it also involves very large credit card debts, car loans, mortgages, personal loans, etc.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> This is also evident in the construction sector. Even though these are skilled jobs that pays reasonably well, there aren't enough people enrolling in trade schools to become a contractor.
> 
> I'm wondering if this shortage will be more acute in female-dominated professions, like health care, wellness & personal care, cleaning, hospitality, etc. There is a trend that women are more highly educated than men. You don't need a masters degree for every type of work. This large supply of college-educated people may also inflate the value of a masters degree.


People complain about the lack of hairdressers and plumbers, but people also complain about paying a fair price to get a haircut or a new bathroom. 

A starting hairdresser makes 1440 a month (before taxes). I wouldn't call that "reasonably well" paid, to be honest. In fact, I think that's a sh!t wage that I personally wouldn't get out of bed for. But then people complain when they go to get a haircut and it costs them 20 bucks. What's the solution here? I have no idea. 



ChrisZwolle said:


> Though high education doesn't always mean people are financially or socially literate. There is the Dave Ramsey show that advises people with large debts and these often involve highly educated people who have unsustainable levels of personal debt they can't get out of. And this is not just student loan debt, it also involves very large credit card debts, car loans, mortgages, personal loans, etc.


It's very easy to tell financially literate and illiterate people apart. The second group is anyone who's ever taken out a loan to buy a car.

If you think it's sensible to get a loan to pay for something that loses half its value the second you drive it out of the showroom, you don't understand money.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Though high education doesn't always mean people are financially or socially literate. There is the Dave Ramsey show that advises people with large debts and these often involve highly educated people who have unsustainable levels of personal debt they can't get out of. And this is not just student loan debt, it also involves very large credit card debts, car loans, mortgages, personal loans, etc.


That is so true. Since leaving university I've only ever worked with highly educated people, typically people with maths or engineering degrees, and almost everyone I've worked with has little knowledge or interest in personal finance. Most of these people are very clever and understand complicated mathematical models or sophisticated computer programs, so they could easily understand personal finance if they could be bothered to learn. I've always been interested in personal finance and have been quite open to colleagues about my financial targets when it comes up in conversation. People sometimes say that what I'm doing is a really good idea, but then say they can't do it for x, y or z reason, even though they probably could easily do some or all of what I'm doing. It's sad really because even a small change in lifestyle, which people wouldn't even notice, can make a big difference in the long run.


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## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> A starting hairdresser makes 1440 a month (before taxes). I wouldn't call that "reasonably well" paid, to be honest. In fact, I think that's a sh!t wage that I personally wouldn't get out of bed for. But then people complain when they go to get a haircut and it costs them 20 bucks. What's the solution here? I have no idea.


€ 1440 is less than the minimum wage of € 1700 in the Netherlands.

A problem is that these used to be middle-class professions. Older people who do that kind of work often own a house, which is almost impossible for new starters nowadays. 

Another issue is the idea that six-figure incomes are the norm. You'll see this often in the media, which tends to be based in outlier locations (income-wise). There is a CNBC series about 'Millennial money' and they often portray people in their 30s making $ 100,000 - 200,000 per year. However this is an outlier income, only a small percentage of workers make over $ 100,000 per year. The average / median income is closer to $ 40,000 or 50,000. These people don't really seem to understand how unusual it is to make $ 120,000 per year and pay $ 3,500 per month for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco or New York. 

Such high incomes are common in tech, but for most other industries only people in high managerial / executive positions make that kind of money and usually not by their thirties.


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## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> € 1440 is less than the minimum wage of € 1700 in the Netherlands.


I googled that:






Wat verdient een Kapper?


Wat verdient een Kapper? ✅ Hier vindt je het Salaris van een kapper of kapster. ✅ Hoe kun je kapper worden? Check het HIER!




tradingcoach.nl




.




__





Hoeveel Verdient een Kapper of Kapster (Salaris)? - Kappers.nl


Het beroep kapper is gericht op de verzorging van het haar van anderen. Wil je ook kapper worden en ben je benieuwd naar het salaris? Lees dan dit artikel.




www.kappers.nl







ChrisZwolle said:


> A problem is that these used to be middle-class professions. Older people who do that kind of work often own a house, which is almost impossible for new starters nowadays.
> 
> Another issue is the idea that six-figure incomes are the norm. You'll see this often in the media, which tends to be based in outlier locations (income-wise). There is a CNBC series about 'Millennial money' and they often portray people in their 30s making $ 100,000 - 200,000 per year. However this is an outlier income, only a small percentage of workers make over $ 100,000 per year. The average / median income is closer to $ 40,000 or 50,000. These people don't really seem to understand how unusual it is to make $ 120,000 per year and pay $ 3,500 per month for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco or New York.
> 
> Such high incomes are common in tech, but for most other industries only people in high managerial / executive positions make that kind of money and usually not by their thirties.


I can only dream of a six-figure salary and I have a master's degree. I agree that the media are complicit in twisting people's expectations. Social media do this too; with all the influencers and other people only ever posting fancy photos.


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## Suburbanist

The construction industry in the Netherlands took a huge employment hit in the protracted aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. 

There were many news about people in their early 50s unable to find any job at all for 1, 2 years. 

Meanwhile, people with a university or applied science degree had an easier time pivoting from one line of work to another. 

Throw in the increase in retirement age, which was needed to keep pension funds and SVB actuarially solvent. Construction in particular tends to be hard on older human bodies and, unless reforms were made, the disability system takes a huge financial toll on post retirement income as well. 

Here in Norway hairdressers and restaurant waiters earn decent living wages. But these services are rather expensive due to their intensive labor utilization. As a result they cannot afford idle staff, meaning good hairdressers require reservations (hard to find walk-in appointments at all), and restaurant service is either off the charts expensive on the higher end, or perennially understaffed (compared to other parts of Europe let alone the UK or US). I am not saying this is bad, just pointing the trade-off.


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## Suburbanist

I'd guess the proportion of the population that regularly patronized hairdressers in the 1950s was probably smaller than today.


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## Suburbanist

As for tech, salaries are on average higher, but cases of younger people without advanced degrees making $150K by age 26 are rare even within the industry. But they receive outsize attention and become archetypes, in the same way as the "unemployable 30yr old political science PhD living with his parents with $200K in student debt".

Yes, there are a few techies out of high school making big bucks, but the consistently high salaries and good career progression are often reserved for people with uni degrees in computer science or maths. In part that makes sense, Computer Science is to programmers like Medicine is to physician assistants.

Then, although this is changing, IT is a field full of middle age cliffs for perfectly competent people who just don't fancy going on the management track, and in some ways still not that friendly to female professionals (including a small but annoying nucleus of males with low social abilities that resent having to put effort to deal with the nuances of mixed gender and non-monocultural workplaces where sharing a childish meme about female breasts or self-pleasure is going to get others to fire you instead of laugh with you)


----------



## radamfi

I've stopped going to hairdressers and now cut my own hair. I used to work with a Swiss colleague in London and he had cut his own hair for years. Obviously hairdressers in Switzerland are particularly expensive. Other people at work thought he was particularly mean with his money but I was intrigued. However I was too scared to do it. But during the initial lockdown last year my hair was uncomfortably long and after speaking with my Swiss colleague I bought some basic hair clippers for £11 and thought I would give it a go. I was working from home so if it went wrong hardly anyone would notice anyway. It was so easy! I never enjoyed having to go for a haircut. You have the hassle of going to the hairdressers, waiting maybe 30 minutes or more. Then the haircut itself is not always comfortable and occasionally hurts, because the hairdresser doesn't feel what you feel. When I do it myself I can be as careful as I like. Finally I can shower my hair straight away to get rid of the hairs when I do it myself.


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## geogregor

radamfi said:


> That is so true. Since leaving university I've only ever worked with highly educated people, typically people with maths or engineering degrees, and almost everyone I've worked with has little knowledge or interest in personal finance. Most of these people are very clever and understand complicated mathematical models or sophisticated computer programs, so they could easily understand personal finance if they could be bothered to learn.


Part of the story here is that many of those people never had lo live on small budget. Nothing teaches every day economy better than having to live in low income. Then you learn about budgeting daily expenses, cost of money etc. You just have to.



radamfi said:


> I've stopped going to hairdressers and now cut my own hair. I used to work with a Swiss colleague in London and he had cut his own hair for years. Obviously hairdressers in Switzerland are particularly expensive. Other people at work thought he was particularly mean with his money but I was intrigued. However I was too scared to do it. But during the initial lockdown last year my hair was uncomfortably long and after speaking with my Swiss colleague I bought some basic hair clippers for £11 and thought I would give it a go. I was working from home so if it went wrong hardly anyone would notice anyway. It was so easy! I never enjoyed having to go for a haircut. You have the hassle of going to the hairdressers, waiting maybe 30 minutes or more. Then the haircut itself is not always comfortable and occasionally hurts, because the hairdresser doesn't feel what you feel. When I do it myself I can be as careful as I like. Finally I can shower my hair straight away to get rid of the hairs when I do it myself.


I think my last visit to hairdresser was more than a decade ago. And even then I used to go only occasionally. But it helps that I wear very short hair.


----------



## bogdymol

geogregor said:


> Part of the story here is that many of those people never had lo live on small budget. Nothing teaches every day economy better than having to live in low income. Then you learn about budgeting daily expenses, cost of money etc. You just have to.


Not necessarily. I know people that have both lower-than-average and above-average incomes, and they had this for most of their lives, but still live on the limit and on a month by month basis, as they are unable to control their expenses. Most often they have a principle of "I need this now, I buy it now... and then I will see later how can I pay it".


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## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> If you think it's sensible to get a loan to pay for something that loses half its value the second you drive it out of the showroom, you don't understand money.


Buying a new car at all is financially madness, but that's not why people do it


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## Slagathor

Stuu said:


> Buying a new car at all is financially madness, but that's not why people do it


True. But if you have several million bucks and you decide to buy a brand-new 80.000 euro car, it's consumerism. That's not any kind of investment; but if you're super into cars and you've got the money, I honestly can't fault you for it.

On the other hand, if your annual salary is 35k, you've got a mortgage, and you take out a loan to buy a brand new 30k car... Then that's financial illiteracy in my opinion. I feel like someone in that situation has a poor understanding of money and debt.


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## ChrisZwolle

I believe Dave Ramsey says that you should not buy a car that is more expensive than half your annual income. So if you make $ 40,000, a car worth $ 20,000 is appropriate for your budget. 

I've also seen a CNBC report about young people buying new cars because they want the fancy connectivity, so they end up with car loans for a $ 35,000 car which tends to exceed their budget. Earlier generations purchased a cheaper car, or second-hand car. This has to do with the large rise of the 'instant gratification' mentality, as opposed to 'delayed gratification'. This also creates the system of people having a credit card to pay off the other credit card, which is also unsustainable. 

I'm a bit more old school despite being of the Millennial generation. I never took on a car loan. I always paid my cars by saving money, starting with a € 3000 car and gradually working up to the € 15,000 range. The Dutch in general are a bit more weary about taking on car loans, though in recent years the 'private lease' is gaining ground, especially among younger car owners.


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## Stuu

Do many people actually buy new cars with loans? Most new cars here are leased or effectively leased, so one monthly payment and switch to another new car after three years or whatever. They cost a lot less than a loan to buy one outright would be, but with all the limits on mileage and condition etc


----------



## radamfi

Some naturally frugal people are nervous about buying a used car, because of the fear of how it has been treated by previous owners. So they end up buying a new one, however they keep it for many years, sometimes until it gets scrapped 10 to 15 years later. This is arguably not too unreasonable, particularly if you bought it without a loan in the first place.


----------



## andken

Slagathor said:


> A starting hairdresser makes 1440 a month (before taxes). I wouldn't call that "reasonably well" paid, to be honest. In fact, I think that's a sh!t wage that I personally wouldn't get out of bed for. But then people complain when they go to get a haircut and it costs them 20 bucks. What's the solution here? I have no idea.


Unpopular opinion: immigration. ;-)



PovilD said:


> I don't see a problem with masks. Vaccines aren't 100% effective, and delta inevitably will be dominant strain everywhere.


I don't see a problem with masks per se. I see a problem with worrying whether vaccinated people are using or not using masks, and yes, I think that if people are going to have to use masks that serves as an incentive not to take vaccines. Vaccines should be the main priority right now, and globally.


----------



## PovilD

andken said:


> I don't see a problem with masks per se. I see a problem with worrying whether vaccinated people are using or not using masks, and yes, I think that if people are going to have to use masks that serves as an incentive not to take vaccines. Vaccines should be the main priority right now, and globally.


Since vaccination is very patchy, I feel comfortable when everybody are wearing a mask in public transport, shops, and mass events. As for people that I know were vaccinated, me myself are being without masks.

Luckily, my close environment is mostly fully vaccinated. Few are unvaccinated, maybe there are chances that my close environment will be 100% vaccinated, although I think some people in my extended family are not vaccinated, don't know if they gonna get vaccinated at least in coming months.

Most risky places even for me personally are places where I see wearing mask important even for vaccinated: shops and public transport. I still avoid dining indoors, although I did for the first time this year recently to eat a hamburger  It was very quick though, and it was hot outdoors.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands was criticized in early 2021 for being about the last European country to start vaccinating. But the programme has really taken off, the vaccination rate is now the highest in the EU, together with Belgium. Surveys also show that the willingness to get vaccinated is among the highest in Europe (despite lots of stories about antivaxxers).


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands was criticized in early 2021 for being about the last European country to start vaccinating. But the programme has really taken off, the vaccination rate is now the highest in the EU, together with Belgium. Surveys also show that the willingness to get vaccinated is among the highest in Europe (despite lots of stories about antivaxxers).


I kinda look with jealousy to West Europe right now in terms of vaccination. There are chances we will have rougher delta wave than you, because people believe weird stuff more easily


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## ChrisZwolle

Spectacular footage of a large rock collapse on Les Diablerets in Switzerland yesterday:


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## PovilD

On the other hand, I plan to visit Netherlands, hopefully this September, so more vaccinated people there, more chances I will be let in without problems as vaccinated


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## Stuu

Absolutely no drama travelling today, hardly any queues leaving the UK, through Alicante Airport in 35 minutes from landing to driving out of the car park. Bet it's not like that every August


----------



## Suburbanist

I read that there is a movement among authorities of the EU states with high vaccination rates among the riskier population (>50) to relax, soon, inward travel restrictions for vaccinated people from all but the most dire places under the reasoning that there is sufficient homegrown protection to allow the small spillover risk.

Here in Norway, just outside the EU but looking in, these are the current full (partial) vaccination rates:


Code:


>85yr : 0.897 (0.927)
75-84: 0.972 (0.983)
65-74: 0.923 (0.955)
55-64: 0.497 (0.928)
45-54: 0.295 (0.861)
16-44: 0.162 (0.602)

It is a complete reversal from the situation earlier this year with respect to the US and UK.

US authorities announced that, due to the low vaccination of the high-risk population (elderly, multiple co-morbidity patients) rates in several regions of the US, the US will remain closed from travel from non-Americans/non-residents from the Schengen area, Brazil, Ireland, India and some other places, regardless of vaccination status.

The US key problem is, exactly, low-ish vaccination among people in their 50s and 60s + poor average health of this groups (obesity, untreated diabetes, hypertension and other respiratory diseases etc)..This is not the very old group that is at high risk of any infection (like the >70yrs), but a much larger cohort likely to take up hospital beds and remain there for weeks. On top of the economic effect (more likely to live with teens/young adults, to work and need time off to recover etc).

However, the US still allows travel from some countries with lax testing and controls. Right now, Europeans that want to go to the US need to stay 14 days e.g. in Mexico, Japan, Russia (if that is still allowed) and take direct flights to the US afterward. Mexico sprang a cottage industry catering for people wanting to travel to the US and spending 14 days there.

Canada has had fast-paced vaccination and is already ahead of the US and shooting for 80%+ coverage. So people could spend time in Canada before entering the US by land.

Australia, on the other hand, is crashing its no-Covid strategy, the full track-and-trace system is getting quickly overwhelmed (they were really tracking, tracing and testing all local possible sources of transmission, which means like contacting sometimes whole workplace's workers to test them all if one worker had been in the same dentist office as a girlfriend of a patient detected with the virus. In addition, it seems people are unhappy that, after all isolation from the outside World, half of the population is under lockdown to try to put off the virus. It is the same situation of Europe in early March 2020.


----------



## Suburbanist

I'm also reading on the never-ending drama of the "Northern Ireland" protocol. 

Seems UK ministers want to just renegotiate, completely, a quasi-treaty negotiated less than one year ago. 

Of course, the provisions would be disruptive (anyone understanding a bit of logistics would get that).

Some more sinister readings of the situation suggest the UK wants the Republic of Ireland to ask the EU to somehow create exceptions to the Republic, within the single market, to allow some spillover of (third-country) British products to enter the R.O.I. through N.I. if that is what it takes to remove cumbersome paperwork on Great Britain <=> Northern Ireland goods movement.

And some are alarmed that supermarkets in N. Ireland and other shops might start to shift, very soon, to R.O.I. suppliers vs. Great Britain Isle-based ones, because the export procedures from the single market to N.I. are very light (due to the protocol).


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> Absolutely no drama travelling today, hardly any queues leaving the UK, through Alicante Airport in 35 minutes from landing to driving out of the car park. Bet it's not like that every August


Which car hire firm did you use? We used Coys based on several good reviews on Tripadvisor.


----------



## radamfi

Suburbanist said:


> I'm also reading on the never-ending drama of the "Northern Ireland" protocol.
> 
> Seems UK ministers want to just renegotiate, completely, a quasi-treaty negotiated less than one year ago.
> 
> Of course, the provisions would be disruptive (anyone understanding a bit of logistics would get that).
> 
> Some more sinister readings of the situation suggest the UK wants the Republic of Ireland to ask the EU to somehow create exceptions to the Republic, within the single market, to allow some spillover of (third-country) British products to enter the R.O.I. through N.I. if that is what it takes to remove cumbersome paperwork on Great Britain <=> Northern Ireland goods movement.
> 
> And some are alarmed that supermarkets in N. Ireland and other shops might start to shift, very soon, to R.O.I. suppliers vs. Great Britain Isle-based ones, because the export procedures from the single market to N.I. are very light (due to the protocol).


There's no incentive for the EU to renegotiate. The UK government is complaining but I don't think it has a serious belief that anything will change. This is all for the domestic audience, especially the unionist community in Northern Ireland which is obviously deeply unhappy with it.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> Which car hire firm did you use? We used Coys based on several good reviews on Tripadvisor.


Goldcar, via a website called Doyouspain.com who I have used before and are notably cheaper than some of the other search sites. The car we got was a Hyundai I20 which is much nicer than I expected when I saw the name on the form. It has active lane control which freaked me out the first time I strayed near the white line, not driven anything with that before


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## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> Australia, on the other hand, is crashing its no-Covid strategy


With this policy, Australia will be in a hard lockdown for the rest of the year and possibly beyond. It's an unsustainable policy. Even if they were to ramp up vaccinations like Europe did they won't achieve a zero covid level by Christmas.


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## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> With this policy, Australia will be in a hard lockdown for the rest of the year and possibly beyond. It's an unsustainable policy. Even if they were to ramp up vaccinations like Europe did they won't achieve a zero covid level by Christmas.


And that, although they live literally on an island, separated from the rest of the world.


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## ChrisZwolle

A major explosion has occurred in Leverkusen, Germany this morning. A1, A3 and A59 were shut down as a precaution.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1419947797642633216


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## geogregor

Stuu said:


> Goldcar, via a website called Doyouspain.com who I have used before and are notably cheaper than some of the other search sites. The car we got was a Hyundai I20 which is much nicer than I expected when I saw the name on the form. It has active lane control which freaked me out the first time I strayed near the white line, not driven anything with that before


I heard a lot of bad stories about Goldcar. I hope you have decent indurance. From what I heard they often add all sort of dodgy charges. As a rule I always avoided them, even when they were the cheapest. I'd rather pay extra for peace of mind.

As for line assist I got Audi A3 with it on my trip to Wales earlier in the year. It kept fricking me out. Especially on narrow mountain roads when one routinely crosses the lines. I can't really see the point of it.


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## Stuu

geogregor said:


> I heard a lot of bad stories about Goldcar. I hope you have decent indurance. From what I heard they often add akl sort of dodgy charges. As a rule I always avoided them, even when they were the cheapest. I'd rather pay extra for peace of mind.
> 
> As for lste assist I got Audi A3 with it on my trip to Wales earlier in the year. It kept fricking me out. Especially on narrow mountain roads when one routinely crosses the lines. I can't really see the point of it.


I rented a car from them a couple of years ago and had no problems, they said there was too much sand in the car and they gave me directions to the nearest place with car vacuums as otherwise they would have to charge. I thought that was decent customer service. I guess it depends on which office you go to and the mood of the staff etc. I do always take out my own excess cover insurance to avoid any issues as well


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## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> With this policy, Australia will be in a hard lockdown for the rest of the year and possibly beyond. It's an unsustainable policy. Even if they were to ramp up vaccinations like Europe did they won't achieve a zero covid level by Christmas.


With more transmissible variants, it's getting more and more unsustainable.

I heard they are planning to built special covid hotels (along with China), it would be interesting how it will help them to keep zero covid politics.

I have very mixed feelings around zero covid strategy. If they will succeed with their new hotels, then it may continue to go, but with current politics, I tend to doubt zero covid is feasible.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to statistics. Between countries in Europe, you have this strange inversion when it comes to the number of average work hours per week and other economic parameters. Further, the number of work hours differ more between male and females in the northern and western part of Europe than in south and east. However, the statistics only includes those that are employed:









All countries of Europe had a reduction of hours worked in 2020, but there were large differences:


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## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands is known as a part time society, especially for women. Full-time jobs are typically 36 hours per week in government and 38 - 40 in the private sector. 

The Dutch child care system is extremely expensive, child care benefits are high but this depends on income level. Women working low-income jobs may receive almost as much child care benefits as actual net income. So even when the government pays a large chunk of child care costs, for many women it's not worth it to work more hours. 

This was not always so. Dutch female labor participation was very low until it started to boom in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This can also be tracked in traffic volumes, which doubled on many motorways over a 12 year period (and congestion levels exploded as a result...)


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## Attus

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to statistics. Between countries in Europe, you have this strange inversion when it comes to the number of average work hours per week and other economic parameters. Further, the number of work hours differ more between male and females in the northern and western part of Europe than in south and east.


Basically, the more the "Total" hours, the less the difference between male and female. Greece is an outlier, and Denmark, Sweden and Finland, too, however, in the opposite way.


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## ChrisZwolle

Pretty busy across most of Europe right now:


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## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Pretty busy across most of Europe right now


Especially in the UK. 

Last few days I'm driving in Poland and it isn't bad here. But I'm not visiting the worst tourist hotspots, just boring industrial home region. 😉


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## PovilD

geogregor said:


> Especially in the UK.
> 
> Last few days I'm driving in Poland and it isn't bad here. But I'm not visiting the worst tourist hotspots, just boring industrial home region. 😉


I think I've been near your place one time, when we took off from A1 near Czech border. We were doing trip from Lithuania to Czechia/Austria in one day. I got weird feeling there as Lithuanian. It's still Poland, but it feels kinda exotic with Czechia nearby, and Austria and Germany is quite near too.

I was thinking how I would fare there. I doubt I would be having very different personality if I were Pole, not Lithuanian, maybe I would know/aware of less Russian stuff.


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## Stuu

I'm staying near the RM1 south of Murcia. If anyone ever wants to film a post-apocalyptic movie it's definitely the road to chose, I have never driven on a motorway as quiet. I assume it was a vanity project of some sort?


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## radamfi

Stuu said:


> I'm staying near the RM1 south of Murcia. If anyone ever wants to film a post-apocalyptic movie it's definitely the road to chose, I have never driven on a motorway as quiet. I assume it was a vanity project of some sort?


Quiet even compared to the M45?


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## Stuu

radamfi said:


> Quiet even compared to the M45?


Yes, nothing in sight on either carriageway is not unusual when we have been on it, I don't think the M45 is that quiet


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## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Pretty busy across most of Europe right now:


Earlier this month, I had a three-week trip and drove a few thousands kilometers in Finland. The traffic profile was pretty different from the "standard" summers. 99+ per cent of the passenger vehicles were domestic. Some legs which are normally quite empty had queues, like the 9/E63 from Kuopio to Jyväskylä. The AADT of the thru traffic was less than 3000 in 2019 on that leg. Many hotels at the lake district in the east Finland are full-booked.


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## geogregor

PovilD said:


> I think I've been near your place one time, when we took off from A1 near Czech border.


Sounds like my place, last large town before the border. But it is such boring, coal mining shi*thole that I can't think of any reason for stopping there 



> We were doing trip from Lithuania to Czechia/Austria in one day. I got weird feeling there as Lithuanian. It's still Poland, but it feels kinda exotic with Czechia nearby, and Austria and Germany is quite near too.


I find Poland and Czech Republic quite similar, especially in my region. If not for the street names, brands and road signs it would be difficult to say on which side of the border you are. Slovakia is even more similar, especially to southern Poland (the hilly bits)

I have never been to Lithuania, despite having quite a few friends frim there. It is on my list of places to visit. I'm sure it is similar to NE Poland. Borderd in our part of Europe are rather "fluid"


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## ChrisZwolle

This seems to be the trend in most of Europe, perhaps except for some southern European countries. I know someone who works at a large campsite in the Netherlands and they had full occupancy almost continuously since March, normally they only reach that in July & August. 

The Dutch motorists & tourism assocation ANWB predicts the worst 'Black Saturday' ever tomorrow. They say that the Fridays start to look like Saturdays and that previous Saturdays in France were already worse than Black Saturday in previous years. 

In addition to all the travelers staying in their home country, many people who would normally fly outside of the EU or fly inside the EU would now travel by car within Europe. Especially France & Italy seem popular for travelers from Benelux and Germany, more so than usual. Maybe due to the poor summer weather Northwestern Europe has had for most of June and July. 

I'm not sure if Spain can also profit from the 'staying in the EU' trend this year. I have heard from virtually nobody that they travel to Spain this year. There is also no traffic congestion near the French border like you usually see on French A9 and A63.


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## radamfi

Going on holiday in the summer school holidays is not recommended. It is more expensive and is a better time for work commuting (less road traffic and quieter trains) so you might as well go to work in August and have time off in September instead.


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## ChrisZwolle

I usually avoid the peak summer travel in Europe, I usually travel in June and early September, I try to avoid (most of) July & August. I almost never run into any traffic congestion. France is fairly predictable, Germany is more of a wild card. 

I drove home this evening at 2300 hours in the Netherlands. Traffic is busier than most of the French autoroutes on mid day in the low season...


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## ChrisZwolle

Europe is going on summer vacation:


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## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Europe is going on summer vacation:


Not me  Maybe next time.

I wish to go, and I love there are no movement restrictions, but...


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## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> Going on holiday in the summer school holidays is not recommended. It is more expensive and is a better time for work commuting (less road traffic and quieter trains) so you might as well go to work in August and have time off in September instead.


But if you have children in school age (or... if you are a school teacher), you don't really have much other choice...


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## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> But if you have children in school age (or... if you are a school teacher), you don't really have much other choice...


You have a choice whether to have children or become a teacher! . If you want money or cheap holidays, don't do either of those things!

In Britain there is a temptation to take kids on holiday during school time to save money. There is often a debate whether parents who do that should be fined. Does such a debate exist in other countries?


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm not sure if Spain can also profit from the 'staying in the EU' trend this year. I have heard from virtually nobody that they travel to Spain this year. There is also no traffic congestion near the French border like you usually see on French A9 and A63.


Hardly any foreign cars here, only seen one Dutch car which is unusual. Did see a Russian plated car but it was a Porsche 911 so I guess that was shipped in rather than driven across Europe. Its not completely dead but I would imagine it is much busier in normal years here


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## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> In Britain there is a temptation to take kids on holiday during school time to save money.


It happens in Poland, but it's not very frequent and nobody is really combating it, probably because of its small scale.

Although it's not good as children miss some classes. And attendance is usually one of the factors taken into account for the final grade in behavior.


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## ChrisZwolle

Stuu said:


> Hardly any foreign cars here, only seen one Dutch car which is unusual.


I've driven to southern Spain by car from the Netherlands. Foreign cars are quite common down to the Barcelona area, but considerably less once you're past Valencia. My guess is that most foreign cars in southern Spain belong to expats. It's a really long drive, the general sentiment in the Netherlands among car-vacationers is that 1200 - 1500 kilometers is considered to be a maximum range for travel from the Netherlands by car. That puts southern France, Italy down to Tuscany and the northern part of Spain in driving range.

Of course there are people who drive further than that (like I do almost every year), but those are not nearly as numerous as the crowd that travels up to 1200-1500 kilometers.


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## Suburbanist

Anadaluzia is 800km further south... I'd say people travel and rent a car.


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## radamfi

I had never considered the fact that most of Spain is beyond the comfortable driving distance from the Netherlands but southern France is just inside that distance, which surely makes southern France more popular for the Dutch than for tourists from other countries where southern France is beyond comfortable driving distance. If you have to get on a plane to get to somewhere warm because southern France is too far to drive, then you might as well go to Spain, as the climate is even warmer and drier, and lower cost.

I've heard that the Costa Blanca (Alicante - Benidorm region) is more popular with the Flemish than the Dutch. Is that right and if so, why? In 2019 I stayed in Calp/Calpe, east of Benidorm, and there was a Dutch (Flemish) speaking cafe selling waffles. I really like the cheap waffles you can easily get in Brussels and in other Belgian town centres, so I thought I would have a waffle in the cafe. I didn't realise until then there is a difference between a 'Brussels waffle' and a 'Liège waffle'. In Britain they generally only know about the Liège waffle and that is simply called a 'Belgian waffle', and that is the kind you normally get on the street in Belgium. In the cafe I had a Brussels waffle and I didn't like it at all.


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## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> I've heard that the Costa Blanca (Alicante - Benidorm region) is more popular with the Flemish than the Dutch.


This region is stereotyped to be a destination for the elderly (in particular Benidorm). Most Dutch who travel to southern Spain go to Andalusia, usually a fly + drive or to one of those resort towns on the Costa del Sol. 

Southern France is a very popular driving destination for the Dutch, the amount of Dutch license plates 1000+ kilometers away is just incredible. Even in the low season there are loads of Dutch people driving down A31 + A6 + A7. 

The Dutch roadside assistance ANWB even sends mechanics with their vans down to France and Italy in the summer vacation because France and Italy do not have organized roadside assistance like in the Netherlands. These guys will go above and beyond to repair your car and prevent an expensive garage or tow bill. But they cannot operate on the toll roads, as those have contracted garages.


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## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch roadside assistance ANWB even sends mechanics with their vans down to France and Italy in the summer vacation because France and Italy do not have organized roadside assistance like in the Netherlands.


I didn't know this! Surely you can still get breakdown cover for those regions? Several companies in the UK, including the main breakdown services (the AA and RAC), sell European breakdown cover. So if you break down you can phone someone who speaks English who will organise recovery wherever you are. I suppose even if you did take out this cover when driving abroad you would still have to deal with local garages who might not speak good English. This worry probably puts some people off driving abroad. Hiring a car on holiday is lower risk as the chance of breakdown with a brand new hire car is very low and you can normally speak with the car hire firm in English if you do have a problem.


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## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've driven to southern Spain by car from the Netherlands. Foreign cars are quite common down to the Barcelona area, but considerably less once you're past Valencia. My guess is that most foreign cars in southern Spain belong to expats. It's a really long drive, the general sentiment in the Netherlands among car-vacationers is that 1200 - 1500 kilometers is considered to be a maximum range for travel from the Netherlands by car. That puts southern France, Italy down to Tuscany and the northern part of Spain in driving range.


I'm not sure that foreign cars are mostly expats: there's loads of British people about who live here but I haven't seen a single British car. Anyone who actually lives here will have to register their car locally anyway. There are noticeably less foreign cars on the roads than when I was in Andalusia two years ago, and that's another 300km south. 

I think for whatever reason people are avoiding Spain this year. Looking at the departures from Alicante Airport, there's maybe 70 or 80 flights tomorrow, pre covid there would have been at least 400 in August


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## Stuu

radamfi said:


> I didn't know this!  Surely you can still get breakdown cover for those regions? Several companies in the UK, including the main breakdown services (the AA and RAC), sell European breakdown cover. So if you break down you can phone someone who speaks English who will organise recovery wherever you are.


Entirely anecdotal, but there was an episode of Top Gear where they went to Italy. One of them broke down and called for a breakdown truck. The guy arrived, looked at the car, said nothing and got on his mobile for ages, and then drove off. This was obviously exaggerated for comedy effect, but is more or less exactly what happened to my mum and dad. For them, eventually a different truck turned up, and then they were taken to a garage and everything got sorted out from there, but it was nothing like the experience if you phone the AA


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> I didn't know this! Surely you can still get breakdown cover for those regions? Several companies in the UK, including the main breakdown services (the AA and RAC), sell European breakdown cover. So if you break down you can phone someone who speaks English who will organise recovery wherever you are. I suppose even if you did take out this cover when driving abroad you would still have to deal with local garages who might not speak good English. This worry probably puts some people off driving abroad. Hiring a car on holiday is lower risk as the chance of breakdown with a brand new hire car is very low and you can normally speak with the car hire firm in English if you do have a problem.


There's a stereotype in the Netherlands of Dutch people who drive down the South of France with a caravan full of Dutch food and supplies to last them their entire vacation, and an ANWB membership in case anything goes wrong along the way. That way, they can enjoy Southern France's climate without ever realizing they left the Netherlands.


----------



## keber

Stuu said:


> I'm not sure that foreign cars are mostly expats: there's loads of British people about who live here but I haven't seen a single British car.


Probably he meant expats returning to home for vacation. There are many Swiss plates in south Italy, but it is pretty clear that most of them are people, who sometime in history moved to Switzerland for living and are returning in summer to visit relatives.
Like from my Yesterday travel, the most aggressive driver on pretty full Italian A14 (really _aggressive, _even for south Italian standards) was a shiny Rangerover with Dutch plates. He surely wasn't a typical Dutch tourist.


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## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> There's a stereotype in the Netherlands of Dutch people who drive down the South of France with a caravan full of Dutch food and supplies to last them their entire vacation, and an ANWB membership in case anything goes wrong along the way. That way, they can enjoy Southern France's climate without ever realizing they left the Netherlands.


Or those people who are going to the same campsite in France for 20 or 40 years and claim to have 'seen France'.

Though I think this type of vacations will die off with the current 60+ generation. These are the people who own a seasonal spot on a campsite with a caravan, or go to the same campsite for decades on end. I don't see Millennials or even Gen X doing that style of vacation much.

There are stories in the Netherlands that contracts for seasonal spots are terminated because the campsite wants to install rental mobile homes. A seasonal spot may cost € 2500 - 3000 per year, but they can charge € 80 or 100 for a rental per day.

On the other hand I've seen quite a number of people my age (early-mid 30s) now settling down with a family, ditching the world trips for more traditional campsite vacations in Europe. It's funny to see people who traveled the world by plane now buying tents for their family to travel to France or Italy. This already started pre-covid.


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## Suburbanist

It is more expensive to travel with children overseas. And, depending on the age of the children involved, certain types of trips will annoy the children and become a huge hassle to manage. 

This being said, I do believe it is important for parents who like certain activities to introduce them, slowly, to their kids so that when they are a little older they can enjoy these activities traveling together (be it museums, nature hiking, photography). It does not guarantee it will work, though, my parents used to go on wild camping, I dreaded it and never went again with them after age 13.


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## Stuu

Not only is it massively more expensive, with young kids you have to take so much more stuff with you, that anything other than just filling up the car is a pain. Also you need a lot more certainty and security once you have kids, no more arriving in a city and finding a hotel or whatever. And kids' needs are obviously very different so a campsite or holiday park makes a lot of sense.

Once they get a bit older it's easier, but then you have the hassle of finding hotels with family rooms, or having multiple rooms which doubles the cost.

Basically don't have kids if you want spontaneous holidays!


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> Europe is going on summer vacation:


In Norway, Sweden, and I believe Sweden, this is weekend is actually the end of the most important holiday period. It was a massive congestion at the E6 Svinesund S/N border, due to the end of holiday for many, the fact that some Swedish regions become orange or red from tomorrow, and of course the border checks. Some had to wait for hours to get into Norway, but otherwise there were no major problems at the Norwegian highways today.


MattiG said:


> Earlier this month, I had a three-week trip and drove a few thousands kilometers in Finland. The traffic profile was pretty different from the "standard" summers. 99+ per cent of the passenger vehicles were domestic. Some legs which are normally quite empty had queues, like the 9/E63 from Kuopio to Jyväskylä. The AADT of the thru traffic was less than 3000 in 2019 on that leg. Many hotels at the lake district in the east Finland are full-booked.


I had a similar experience driving around in Norway this summer. High traffic, dominated by domestic cars, but not 99%. There were still some German, Italian and Danish cars around, but less than usual. Markedly less from Sweden, Netherlands, and UK. For the latter two countries there have been travel restrictions for most of the summer.


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## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I had a similar experience driving around in Norway this summer. High traffic, dominated by domestic cars, but not 99%. There were still some German, Italian and Danish cars around, but less than usual. Markedly less from SwedenDæ, Netherlands, and UK. For the latter two countries there have been travel restrictions for most of the summer.


The rules of the game at the FIN/N border were somewhat unclear and they were changed at least twice during those two weeks in July, when we traveled with kids. We had a plan to possibly enter the northern Norway. Because I did not want to any risk of a need for a two weeks quarantine in some camping cabin, we took the plan B and stayed in Finland.

A few Norwegian cars were observed, less from Sweden and Germany, and none from the Netherlands. Usually the Dutch are everywhere.


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## geogregor

I got back to the UK. It was actually smoother experience than I feared.

I did cheap test at the airport (around £24) which was required to board the plane. Basically most of the check and enforcement is done when boarding. Airline agents wanted to see my negative test and the QR code confirming that I filled the British passenger locator form online (to do that you need another code, confirming that you booked PCR test for day 2 after arrival, costing another £69).

After that it was travel experience as usual. After landing in the UK nobody checks any additional paperwork, passengers go through the e-gates as usual.

The biggest drawback are the tests' cost, in my case almost £100 between the two test required by the UK. Not the end of the world for longer trip but it absolutely discourages shorter travel. I'm not going to go for long weekend in Europe if tests cost more than flights or accommodation.

Testing industry must be laughing all the way to the bank...


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> I did cheap test at the airport (around £24) which was required to board the plane. Basically most of the check and enforcement is done when boarding. Airline agents wanted to see my negative test and the QR code confirming that I filled the British passenger locator form online (to do that you need another code, confirming that you booked PCR test for day 2 after arrival, costing another £69).
> 
> After that it was travel experience as usual. After landing in the UK nobody checks any additional paperwork, passengers go through the e-gates as usual.


Maybe the airlines get fined if passengers arrive in the UK without the required tests done/ordered. It would be chaos if the border staff had to check everyone. Maybe they just do occasional spot checks, like with quarantine.



geogregor said:


> The biggest drawback are the tests' cost, in my case almost £100 between the two test required by the UK. Not the end of the world for longer trip but it absolutely discourages shorter travel. I'm not going to go for long weekend in Europe if tests cost more than flights or accommodation.
> 
> Testing industry must be laughing all the way to the bank.


There is another review of travel policies this week so maybe things will change. I'm giving it a few more weeks until I bite the bullet and book somewhere that needs tests. I've got a trip to Dublin booked for next week, which will be the first time I get to use my NHS vaccine certificate. I've got a feeling the excessive requirements for France are primarily to avoid logistical problems with having to check for tests of lots of people crossing the Channel by Eurotunnel or ferry, and little to do with any virus threat in France. As the Netherlands is still restricted for travel from the UK that cuts off all major Channel crossings.

Ireland used to have very draconian restrictions but now allows most vaccinated Europeans in without a test, so I wonder if some people are travelling to the UK via Ireland to avoid having to pay for tests, and also avoid quarantine where required, for example from France? The law says it makes no difference even if you travel via Ireland, as long as you were in other countries in the last 10 days, but nobody would check if you travelled that way.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> Maybe the airlines get fined if passengers arrive in the UK without the required tests done/ordered. It would be chaos if the border staff had to check everyone. Maybe they just do occasional spot checks, like with quarantine.


Yes, that's the idea, government outsourced enforcement to the airlines.



> There is another review of travel policies this week so maybe things will change. I'm giving it a few more weeks until I bite the bullet and book somewhere that needs tests.


If things stay as they are we are still going for two weeks European holiday in September. Whatever I loose on costs of tests I'll save by not paying silly British prices (especially for accommodation and eating out). And don't let me even start talking about the shitty weather we have this year. Summer so far is pretty much non-existent, apart from a few days in July.



> I've got a feeling the excessive requirements for France are primarily to avoid logistical problems with having to check for tests of lots of people crossing the Channel by Eurotunnel or ferry, and little to do with any virus threat in France. As the Netherlands is still restricted for travel from the UK that cuts off all major Channel crossings.


It sound a bit like conspiracy theory but there might be something in it. They already struggle with Brexit related checks and paperwork, last thing the ports need is mass influx of tourists and the related Covid checks. 

On the other hand it is lost revenue. I would guess that putting France into strange "amber plus" category is just an example of government stupidity. Wouldn't be the first one during the pandemic...



> Ireland used to have very draconian restrictions but now allows most vaccinated Europeans in without a test, so I wonder if some people are travelling to the UK via Ireland to avoid having to pay for tests, and also avoid quarantine where required, for example from France? The law says it makes no difference even if you travel via Ireland, as long as you were in other countries in the last 10 days, but nobody would check if you travelled that way.


In fact I was considering it as an emergency option if my test were screwed up. I could fly to Dublin and then enter UK without major issue.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> And don't let me even start talking about the shitty weather we have this year. Summer so far is pretty much non-existent, apart from a few days in July.


It's the same in the Netherlands, it's pretty much unstable weather since the beginning of spring. The idea of good summer weather is expressed as an 'ADS day' (above average, dry, sunny). Those have been far and few between. Stable summer weather has been almost entirely absent except for early June (late June was trash).

The problem is apparently a low pressure area off the coast of Greenland that has been in that location almost continuously since December. It pushes the jet stream into a meandering flow, keeping northwest Europe under maritime conditions, with the Alps being on the boundary between colder and hotter weather. Switzerland has seen thunderstorms and rain very frequently for 2 months now.


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## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's the same in the Netherlands, it's pretty much unstable weather since the beginning of spring. The idea of good summer weather is expressed as an 'ADS day' (above average, dry, sunny). Those have been far and few between. Stable summer weather has been almost entirely absent except for early June (late June was trash).


Well well... The summer has been record warm (and dry) this year in Finland. The criteria for a hot day is temperature exceeding +25°C. There were five such days in May, 25 in June and 20 in July. Too hot for most Finns.


----------



## radamfi

MattiG said:


> The criteria for a hot day is temperature exceeding +25°C.


I like the way you had to put a '+' sign there, as if there could be some possibility that the Finnish criteria for a hot day might be above -25°C!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Eastern and Southeastern Europe have seen a lot of hot weather since June. Finland is on the northern end of that heat. Summer 2021 is very different from where you are in Europe. 

Temperature-wise the summer has been close to average, though these statistics do not really convey the summer feeling for most people. Especially on cloudy nights the temperature doesn't drop very low so averages are higher than what it feels like for most people. There were only half the amount of summer days (25+) and zero tropical days (30+) in the Netherlands in July.


----------



## MattiG

radamfi said:


> I like the way you had to put a '+' sign there, as if there could be some possibility that the Finnish criteria for a hot day might be above -25°C!


Engineers do not express themselves in ambiguous ways!


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

MattiG said:


> The rules of the game at the FIN/N border were somewhat unclear and they were changed at least twice during those two weeks in July, when we traveled with kids.


I think they deliberately made it complicated this year ;-) But, if you are not fully vaccinated it depends on the color of your region, which has changed for many Finnish regions. 


ChrisZwolle said:


> Eastern and Southeastern Europe have seen a lot of hot weather since June. Finland is on the northern end of that heat. Summer 2021 is very different from where you are in Europe.


It's been warmer than average for most of Norway as well I think. There have been many days above 25.


----------



## PovilD

Europe roughly East of Berlin got very hot weather, indeed here we had hottest July in recorded history! I personally got little fed up with heat.

Now we started with August with fairly average weather, but it feels like autumn already with temperatures being around +20C during the day. I don't mind such weather, since I little bit missed cooler weather.


----------



## AnelZ

I'm melting over here in Sarajevo. Since mid June the temperatures are really high.

In 46 days from mid june (16th June) till end of July we had only 3 days with temperature below 25°C and 32 days with temperatures at or above 30°C. Out of those 32 hot days, 17 were at or above 35°C. Two days at the end of July capped at 39°C. And it seems August won't be any different as only in the last week of August is it forecasted to go below 25°C. 

In that same time period only 13 days went below a minimum temperature below 15°C at night (just 9 days from 20th June) and 4 days didn't dip below 20°C at all during whole 24h since mid June.

And on top of that, we got very little precipitation.


----------



## keber

I just came from south Italy (Puglia-Apulia) where last week temperatures were above 40°C. It started last Sunday, temperatures at 9:00 were already around 35 degrees and in some places they were above 40 already before 11:00. It got just too hot for camping as night temperatures didn't drop below 28°C so we moved to air conditioned hotels. Even sea temperatures were around 28°C. I'm used t temperatures above 35°C, even at work outside but night temperatures in Slovenia are almost never above 22°C, so you can cool down before next day even without air condition.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland the last two days were quite cold, about 22 degrees Celsius.


----------



## tfd543

AnelZ said:


> I'm melting over here in Sarajevo. Since mid June the temperatures are really high.
> 
> In 46 days from mid june (16th June) till end of July we had only 3 days with temperature below 25°C and 32 days with temperatures at or above 30°C. Out of those 32 hot days, 17 were at or above 35°C. Two days at the end of July capped at 39°C. And it seems August won't be any different as only in the last week of August is it forecasted to go below 25°C.
> 
> In that same time period only 13 days went below a minimum temperature below 15°C at night (just 9 days from 20th June) and 4 days didn't dip below 20°C at all during whole 24h since mid June.
> 
> And on top of that, we got very little precipitation.


Same in Skopje that lies in a valley which is subject to extremely high temps in summer times compared to other cities in the region.. +40 today.. we cant breathe..


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland the last two days were quite cold, about 22 degrees Celsius.


Everything is relative ;-)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

keber said:


> It got just too hot for camping as night temperatures didn't drop below 28°C so we moved to air conditioned hotels.


Was it easy to find a hotel at the last moment? Traffic patterns indicate a higher than usual amount of vacationers, with large amounts of traffic congestion in Italy and France outside of their usual summer patterns.


----------



## Attus

And Europe around the Rhine has an unusually cold summer. We had only a couple of days above 30 degrees (it's OK), but only a few day above 25 as well, and quite many under 20. These days the temperature remains under 20, no, not in the early morning, but afternoon. Today we had 21, but I messed it in the town, the "official" temperature must have been 2-3 degrees lower.


----------



## Stuu

I got back yesterday to 16°C and light rain. Its going to rain every day for the next week and a max of 22. Pretty miserable... glad I left the country for a week. Even with the stupid expense of Covid tests it's still much cheaper than staying here, and much sunnier.

No issues travelling, there were only about 30 people on the flight though which helped as the airline had to check all the forms and test results which would have taken a long time if it was full. Didn't even get asked any questions about covid coming back, but the woman at passport control spent a long time comparing us to our photos which seemed strange, hopefully she was new and not some new idiotic hostile policy


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> Didn't even get asked any questions about covid coming back, but the woman at passport control spent a long time comparing us to our photos which seemed strange, hopefully she was new and not some new idiotic hostile policy


Weren't there any ePassport gates there? (Is this Bristol airport?)


----------



## Stuu

Yes, there are some of those at Bristol Airport, but I was travelling with my son so we can't use those


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I think they deliberately made it complicated this year ;-) But, if you are not fully vaccinated it depends on the color of your region, which has changed for many Finnish regions.


The complexity is not the problem, but the unclarity and unpredictability are. The rules changed every Monday. Nobody seemed to know how to cope with kids having no vaccination. 

The coloring of the regions was pretty irrational, because the checks were made based of the home address of the travelers. However, many people tend to spend time outside their home region during the holiday season. Other way round, people at the border might have arrived directly from red regions, but they were granted entry because they were residents of non-red areas. The IQ of the Norwegian authorities was sometimes questioned.


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> Was it easy to find a hotel at the last moment? Traffic patterns indicate a higher than usual amount of vacationers, with large amounts of traffic congestion in Italy and France outside of their usual summer patterns.


No problems at all. There are enough rooms everywhere, especially in larger towns, if you are not very picky with microlocation or some special wishes. I just use Booking app and pick the most suitable find, sometimes even just an hour or two before arrival. And it is worth mentioning that ferragosto is now spread over July too - at least this year. All touristic points of interest are crowded with people especially historical town centers (with noticeable lack of Asian tourists).


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

MattiG said:


> The complexity is not the problem, but the unclarity and unpredictability are. The rules changed every Monday. Nobody seemed to know how to cope with kids having no vaccination.
> 
> The coloring of the regions was pretty irrational, because the checks were made based of the home address of the travelers. However, many people tend to spend time outside their home region during the holiday season. Other way round, people at the border might have arrived directly from red regions, but they were granted entry because they were residents of non-red areas. The IQ of the Norwegian authorities was sometimes questioned.


The rules relate to where you have been, not your home address. This system is partly based on trust, it would be impossible for the government to know the detailed whereabouts of all passing the border. And scary if they had that info.


----------



## Verso

keber said:


> night temperatures in Slovenia are almost never above 22°C


No, but just across the border it's quite normal to reach 28 C in Rijeka and Pula. I can sleep quite easily without A/C, I just don't wear much and don't cover myself.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Winter is coming....

We finished the final leg of our summer holiday travel. Part of the drive was Oslo - Trondheim. Due a series of circumstances, we had to push on into the morning and just arrived in Trondheim. Alhough the maximum altitude is only 733 m on the route chosen (the faster Rv 3 rather than the more spectacular and touristy E6), the minimum temperature was -1 C. Since the sky was clear and the relative humidity was 100% (seen by local fog), I feared black ice. I wonder how Helmut Wohnmobil von Köln would have handled that...

Anyway, the sky was still light throughout the night while going north, so I guess summer is not completely over...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Anyway, the sky was still light throughout the night while going north, so I guess summer is not completely over...


Sunset in Lapland in September is almost the same as in Southern Europe. This time of the year still has relatively long evenings in Scandinavia. I'm considering Sweden for a road trip in September. Are the mosquitos still a problem in early September?

I'm thinking of staying in a stuga this time, I've never done that before. Apparently you can book them for one night, mobile home rental in Southern Europe is usually for a minimum of three nights. Does anyone have experience with stuga's? The holiday season is over by that time, so I think you don't need to book them in advance?


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Stuga means hut or cottage and is a rather generic term. In Norway alone there are half a million of them (although we normally call them "hytter". Most are not open for public use.

But I am guessing you mean those at camp sites rather than e. g. Airbnb (or other private accommodation) or the cabins of the Swedish hiking association (Startpage - Swedish Tourist Association). You would normally not need booking for camp site stugor (plural), and in September there should be good availability (but check that the site is open). The mosquitoes in general taper off during the fall. They could still be around in some locations and times in September, but less than in May-August. It is very much dependent on the weather and microclimate, and local breeding opportunities (mosquitos need non-running water, i. e puddles or lakes, and don't fly that far). They will not bother you if there is wind or cold enough.

Once, we had a bad experience midsummer near Gothenburg. It was a blistering night, but stugan (the hut) was close to a lake, had no screens in the windows, and of course no a/c, and there was no wind. Essentially, we had the choice of swimming in our own sweat, or being eaten alive. We ended up returning home, in the middle of the night ;-)


----------



## Suburbanist

For some reason mosquitoes are not a big problem here in Bergen, at least within the built-up area.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

There are in general not a lot of puddles in built-up areas, and a lot of the surface water is drained to the underground. In some other areas of the world I have been mosquitoes in urban areas are more common, possibly due to more use of open drainage systems?

Where I live there are almost no mosquitoes either, but at warm, humid nights without wind there could be gnats, tiny biting flies. They do not need open water but can breed in humid earth. Not everyone is bothered by them, though, and they hardly enter houses.


----------



## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> There are in general not a lot of puddles in built-up areas, and a lot of the surface water is drained to the underground. In some other areas of the world I have been mosquitoes in urban areas are more common, possibly due to more use of open drainage systems?
> 
> Where I live there are almost no mosquitoes either, but at warm, humid nights without wind there could be gnats, tiny biting flies. They do not need open water but can breed in humid earth. Not everyone is bothered by them, though, and they hardly enter houses.


I live near area where is huge contrast between swampy areas with extremely lots of mosquites, and built-up area where there is almost no mosquites, or only relatively few mosquitos.

In calm summer evenings you can also feel quite huge temperature contrasts too between two places. Outside of built-up areas with swampy/puddly places it's at least few degrees colder. You can feel the cold coming from the puddle.


----------



## Verso

I live next to a river and there are tons of (tiger) mosqitoes around my house. When I open the door they usually enter in a couple of seconds. It's a huge problem since my cat goes in and out every half an hour.


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> For some reason mosquitoes are not a big problem here in Bergen, at least within the built-up area.


The harm caused by mosquitoes is highly exaggerated. There are several preventive and corrective means to cope with them.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Exaggerated? It is still the deadliest animal of the world, according to e. g. CDC and the UN:





Fighting the World’s Deadliest Animal | CDC


Fighting the World’s Deadliest Animal. The meager, long-legged insect that annoys, bites, and leaves you with an itchy welt is not just a nuisance―it’s one of the world’s most deadly animals. Spreading diseases such as malaria, dengue, West Nile, yellow fever, Zika, chikungunya, and lymphatic...




www.cdc.gov








__





Vector-borne diseases


Vector-borne diseases are illnesses caused by pathogens and parasites in human populations. WHO works with partners to provide education and improve awareness so that people know how to protect themselves and their communities from mosquitoes, ticks, bugs, flies and other vectors.




www.who.int





Although there were historic outbreaks of malaria even in Norway, mosquitoes are of course currently mostly a nuisance in the boreal regions of the world.


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Exaggerated? It is still the deadliest animal of the world, according to e. g. CDC and the UN:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Fighting the World’s Deadliest Animal | CDC
> 
> 
> Fighting the World’s Deadliest Animal. The meager, long-legged insect that annoys, bites, and leaves you with an itchy welt is not just a nuisance―it’s one of the world’s most deadly animals. Spreading diseases such as malaria, dengue, West Nile, yellow fever, Zika, chikungunya, and lymphatic...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.cdc.gov
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> __
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Vector-borne diseases
> 
> 
> Vector-borne diseases are illnesses caused by pathogens and parasites in human populations. WHO works with partners to provide education and improve awareness so that people know how to protect themselves and their communities from mosquitoes, ticks, bugs, flies and other vectors.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.who.int


The scope of discussion is Sweden, perhaps extended to other Nordic countries. As a point, malaria is as valid as alligators.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The development and funding of professional sports is obviously a key to the success of a country at the Olympics. India, despite having a huge pool of potential athletes, won only one gold medal and finished at #48 on the medal table, behind small countries like Kosovo, Bahamas, Slovenia or Belgium. 

On the other hand, small countries like Netherlands, New Zealand, Cuba and Hungary finished in the top 15. 

Ukraine is the lowest ranking country with double-digit medal scores, they won 19 medals but only 1 gold, ending up at #44. The closest country with more overall medals is South Korea at #16.


----------



## marcobruls

The end of a lot of state sponsored doping programs no doubt helped too.


----------



## Sponsor

Medals per 1 milion inhabitants


----------



## Kpc21

x-type said:


> The worst Olympics ever due to various ideology things, covid, karate etc.


What about the two Olympics from 1980s that were boycotted by countries from the opposite side of the iron curtain? To me, those should be considered the worst – that division went totally against the olympic spirit.



Attus said:


> "Tokyo 2020" is a brand name, and yes, the olympic games, finished yesterday, were called so. The official logo of the games contains this brand name as well.


Weird that they didn't rename it, but maybe they already had the marketing materials and so on prepared and renaming them to Tokyo 2021 would be a big waste of money?


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Medals in Olympics really do not say all about the level of elite sports in a country. Everybody can run a 400 m, whereas a lot of the sports require a expensive equipment of facilities which only a minority of the world population can afford. A gold in soccer or basket ball counts as much in the statistics as a gold in one of the myriad of surface water sports events. Cricket, the second most popular sport in the world, is not even in the Olympics. Moreover, what is far more important than elite sport is the physical condition of everyone else.

But, most events in the Olympics are certainly more entertaining than watching a cricket match for days or average Joe doing his daily walk ;-)


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Kpc21 said:


> What about the two Olympics from 1980s that were boycotted by countries from the opposite side of the iron curtain? To me, those should be considered the worst – that division went totally against the olympic spirit.


Quite frankly, I feel that most Olympics of the 70s and 80s (and also partly later) were completely against the Olympic spirit. Some nations had sport programs saturated with doping, which really spoiled the fun. We probably never get rid of doping, but indications are that doping is at least not without risk anymore.


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> Weird that they didn't rename it, but maybe they already had the marketing materials and so on prepared and renaming them to Tokyo 2021 would be a big waste of money?


It was the same with Euro 2020 this year too, probably down to the marketing, websites etc already existing


----------



## geogregor

Stuu said:


> It was the same with Euro 2020 this year too, probably down to the marketing, websites etc already existing


It is all about symbolism, organizers of both events tried to project ethos or "resilience" in face of adversity. Show that the 2020 events still happened, despite postponement.




Fatfield said:


> Funding is the the main reason. Since the National Lottery started funding for athletes has gone through the roof. So much so that some atheletes wouldn't be able to compete without it.
> 
> In 1996 we won one gold medal. Prior to that we never got into double figures for gold medals going as far back as Antwerp 1920 with 15 gold medals. Since 1997, when the National Lottery started funding elite sports, our record has been phenomenal. Gold medals won since then are as follows:
> 
> 2000 Sydney = 11
> 2004 Athens = 9
> 2008 Bejing = 19
> 2012 London = 29
> 2016 Rio = 27
> 2020 Tokyo = 22
> 
> We also finished 36th in the medal table in 1996. Since then we've finished 10th, 10th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd & 4th.


It's not only about absolute level of funding but also its targeting. British funding is ruthlessly targeted at sports which might bring medals, regardless how popular (or rather non-popular) they are or how many people play them on a daily basis.

If your sport is not on list of targeted disciplines you won't get a penny, even if you are decent competitor (but without medal guarantees) in popular sport.

It is also quite noticeable how Britain doesn't really care about, nor fund, the big team sports. Partially because apart from football and rugby the other Olympic team sports hardly exists in the UK (basketball, handball, volleyball etc.). I was reading some time ago how basketball folks tried to get some funding but got rebutted due to "having no chance of success".

Some say it also shows "classism" (if not racism) of the people who make decisions. Authorities fund elitist sports like equestrian events or rowing but neglect sports popular among the inner city kids (basketball might be rare in general but people do play it, especially kids in the inner cities).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Field hockey is seen as a sport for upper class children in the Netherlands. Ice hockey is pretty much non-existent. 

Many Olympics sports are niche. The Dutch won medals in rowing, archery, BMX racing, sailing, equestrian, boxing and keirin, sports that hardly ever make headlines. You often see headlines about this if the Dutch team or athlete makes the final of some tournament most people didn't even know was going on. 

Team sports like water polo, handball, basketball and volleyball do not have notable following in the Netherlands. They do make headlines from time to time but tournaments like that don't generate much attention or merchandise.

In the end, football is king. No other sport comes close to that though ice skating is popular in the winter. The Netherlands is often successful in ice skating at the Winter Olympics.


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> It was the same with Euro 2020 this year too, probably down to the marketing, websites etc already existing


On a website it's absolutely easy and costless to change it. But if some physical marketing materials were already made, it would mean costs. And Olympics are already enough unnecessary spending of money, it makes no sense to make it even worse.



ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch won medals in rowing, archery, BMX racing, sailing, equestrian, boxing and keirin, sports that hardly ever make headlines.


I don't know how it is in the Netherlands, but in Poland practically every sport makes headlines if it just so happens that our player(s) qualified to world cup finals or anything like that. Sometimes – it's enough to even have a player that takes part in the world class events of the specific sport.

Let's say Formula 1. It used to be a totally niche sport (there are many even more niche ones, but certainly it didn't regularly make headlines), until one Polish guy – Robert Kubica – started making a world career in it. Then it started being followed by the masses.

But I agree that more focus should be put on sports that can be practiced by any random people rather than elite sports, such as this Formula 1. Or other sports with much limited access. Like ski jumping. One thing, it's an extreme sport, the other thing, it can be trained professionally practically only by those living in the mountains. Which, in case of Poland, means a very small portion of the country. But regardless of that, it's probably the most followed sport in Poland in the winter season.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> In the end, football is king.


It' basically the same everywhere in Europe, apart from some nations that are quite weak in football but strong and successful in some other sport.


----------



## Alex_ZR

ChrisZwolle said:


> Team sports like water polo, handball, basketball and volleyball do not have notable following in the Netherlands. They do make headlines from time to time but tournaments like that don't generate much attention or merchandise.


I remember the Netherlands winning medals in volleyball in the 90s.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

We're always behind those guys down at the continent ;-)


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> Some say it also shows "classism" (if not racism) of the people who make decisions. Authorities fund elitist sports like equestrian events or rowing but neglect sports popular among the inner city kids (basketball might be rare in general but people do play it, especially kids in the inner cities).


I honestly don't know, I don't doubt that there is some judging the "character" of the potential athlete which is virtually guaranteed to have some classist/racist influences, but as you say the basic principle is to get medals at all costs. It's no surprise that they are heavily targetting swimming, after all you can only win one 100m sprint medal but you can win four 100m swimming medals so I expect even more of that in future.

Success in a sport outside of pretty much any other sport but football only comes from having parents who can invest a big amount of time and money in getting their kids to a certain standard. That automatically excludes massive numbers of the population, it's inherently self-selecting on the middle class who can afford it. And of course the same applies to countries as well, who knows how many kids in Kinshasa would be brilliant at dressage?

As to why the British government is so keen on success at the olympics, I imagine it is because they have nothing else to offer right now but circuses, bread being somewhat delayed by brexit


----------



## mgk920

I was sorely disappointed in the USA's womens' football team, historically the best in the World, being so distracted by off the field/pitch nonsense that they lost their focus, losing to Canada in the semi-final and having to settle for the bronze medal.

OTOH, the USA swept the gold medals in skeet shooting, with the womens' winner setting a new Olympic record (IIRC, 57 out of 60 targets broken).

Ditto sweeping the gold medals in the 4x400 relays.

A Wisconsinite also won the Bronze medal in the womens' marathon.



I was also a bit surprised at how well Nederlands did on the running track.

Mike


----------



## Attus

The biggest surprise was, I think, Italy winning 4×100 and an Italian athelete 100m of men.


----------



## geogregor

Attus said:


> The biggest surprise was, I think, Italy winning 4×100 and an Italian athelete 100m of men.


Absolutely. I don't think many saw that coming...


----------



## PovilD

Attus said:


> It' basically the same everywhere in Europe, apart from some nations that are quite weak in football but strong and successful in some other sport.


In Lithuania, is basketball, but I personally find it weird why we not like everybody else with football. I kinda meh around basketball, and I don't care 100% if somebody would hate me around this.

Football association in Lithuania is said to be stuck in the 90s with gang mentality stuff resulting in weak football. I know people who feel bad Lithuania is so bad at football unnecessarily (potentially).

I personally want to see Lithuania as football nation rather than basketball nation. Playing good football with Netherlands, Italy and other similarly good countries would be nice.

On the other hand, it could be climate that resulted basketball being popular. Winters are probably too warm for ice sports (oceanic seaside weather makes winters milder), and too cold for football (occasional snow)  There few regions in more continental areas who are more into ice sports, it's Rokiškis in Northeast Lithuania and Elektrėnai in East Lithuania. Historically poorer sport infrastructure and slow development could also be blamed for our sports situation.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Norway is relatively weak in football, still it is by far the sport with most active athletes and media attention. For the latter, only cross-country skiing come close during the season.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

87,6% of adults above 18 have now received the first vaccination dose in Trondheim, but only 36,8 % the second dose. Hence, vaccines are still high in demand. Ordinary, people book appointments using an online system following an invitation, but last Wednesday and today teachers at schools and kindergartens were invited for dropin-vaccination for the second dose. Last Wednesday ended up with a huge traffic jam around the vaccination centre. Today most people had learned the lesson and arrived by foot, bike or public transport, but the queues of people were hundreds of meter long, and not everyone was served. Probably, drop-in vaccinations will not be offered again for a while....


----------



## PovilD

We have first mass scale anti-covid measures protest here in Lithuania (maybe first in The Baltics?) near the Parlament. People are protesting against vaccines being "created too quickly", "not properly tested", etc. and against covid passport where you have to proof that you are vaccinated for certain activities.

Just now I heard these protests became almost riot-like. It could have been first riot(-like) situation since 2009 financial crisis protest which happened near Parlament too, at least I don't remember any since then.

Interesting thing what I noticed around these protests are deep regionalism of West Lithuania also known as Samogitia or Żmudź in Polish. Lots of Samogitian regional flags.
This region is also have lower vaccination rates. There are anecdotes that Samogitians got their distinct character from Northern Crusades times, and probably not too friendly neighborhood with East Prussia which was part of Germany. Now there is no East Prussia, and no German threat, but character persisted. Samogitians in our local language are called "stubborn", but not always in a bad way.

I have mixed feelings around these protests. Me personally have fears if vaccines will do the job mid to long term. I have mixed feelings around that covid pass. I think we have to move for saving risk groups, but I'm not against young people vaccinating, because it's actually (at least currently) it reduce rates of transmission (not 100%, but still), reduce risk for severe disease (also not 100%, but still). Governments may create false picture how we will go back to normal with vaccination and forget about it. Thinking about this I still got vaccinated myself, despite my fears it's new vaccine and if it will work mid to long term.
---
I find interesting theory around spread of covid.








Why have some places suffered more covid-19 deaths than others?


Income inequality is a big part of the answer




www.economist.com





It seems not lockdowns, but income inequality (and general undevelopment, especially polarization of society) can be responsible for spread of covid.

I think it makes sense, why Scandinavia had so much less cases, and Latin America was worse hit despite harshest lockdowns ever seen like in Peru.

Lithuania having quite high income inequality (but not among working population, but between working population and those who receive social benefits, like elderly) was very prone to high infection and especially death rates. Elderly was especially affected in December 2020 wave.

I think that's why Sweden decided not to move to harsh lockdowns, and ended having relatively few deaths in comparison if other countries would do the same without vaccines.
Norway, Iceland and Finland basically had nothing in comparison to other European countries.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Interesting. In the Netherlands you would book both appointments at the same time after receiving an invitation. When I booked my first appointment I also simultaneously booked the second one. 

According to the statistics the first dose is administered to 47% of 12-17 year olds, 64% among 18-25 year olds,70% for people over 40 and 80-93% for age groups over 50. 
Pretty much all adults who wanted to have received their first dose, so I think these figures won't go up a whole lot more. Many vaccination sites have already closed down because the weekly numbers of vaccinations have leveled off.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Interesting. In the Netherlands you would book both appointments at the same time after receiving an invitation. When I booked my first appointment I also simultaneously booked the second one.
> 
> According to the statistics the first dose is administered to 47% of 12-17 year olds, 64% among 18-25 year olds,70% for people over 40 and 80-93% for age groups over 50.
> Pretty much all adults who wanted to have received their first dose, so I think these figures won't go up a whole lot more. Many vaccination sites have already closed down because the weekly numbers of vaccinations have leveled off.


Same here in Lithuania. If you book first dose, you are automatically receiving date for second dose.

I think there is still room for vaccination in Lithuania, but I don't know if it will reach West European, and especially Northern European levels.

I guess we will end in Russia-like or rather Republican U.S. situation, with hospitals difficult to cope, difference could be more vaccinations, and similarities are having polarized society with government probably having bad time implementing harsher measures.

West Europe, it's hard to tell. I wish to say vaccinations will help this winter, but I don't know for certain. It's even hard to tell what will happen with Israel where cases still rising and rising. Hard to tell if there will be big protest movements against harsher restrictions like closing businesses, especially among younger vaccinated people...

I even go further, and I wish largely unrestricted travel within Europe to remain for this autumn and winter for vaccinated, although my colleges at work are pessimistic around this.

North Europe could be doing fine, I guess. Like last winter.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> Winters are probably too warm for ice sports (oceanic seaside weather makes winters milder), and too cold for football (occasional snow)


If snow was any major issue with playing football  Especially when it's occasional.

There even happen to be international football games played on a snowy pitch  If it so happens that it starts snowing during the match. They usually replace then the ball with a yellow one, so that people can see it on TV better on the background of snow.



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Norway is relatively weak in football, still it is by far the sport with most active athletes and media attention.


Poland the same.



PovilD said:


> I even go further, and I wish largely unrestricted travel within Europe to remain for this autumn and winter for vaccinated, although my colleges at work are pessimistic around this.


But it's already much more restricted than a year ago...


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> Interesting. In the Netherlands you would book both appointments at the same time after receiving an invitation. When I booked my first appointment I also simultaneously booked the second one.


As many things related to COVID-19, the actual vaccinations have mainly been organized at the municipal level in Norway. In Trondheim, we booked two doses following an SMS invitation, just like you describe. In other places, people are simply given a time, which of course means that somewhat less people show up. Some municipalities have only a few hundred people, scattered over a large area or between scattered islands, in which case more primitive scheduling systems are more efficient. Finally, e. g. some health workers got vaccinations by or at least scheduled through their employer.

The teachers in Trondheim basically got an opportunity to skip the queue before the schools are starting up next week. Due to higher availability of doses, the city has however said that most of us will get an invitation to reschedule the second dose and get it one or two weeks earlier than the initial plan.

In Norway overall we will probably pass Netherlands in terms of overall first dose vaccination rate this week, although almost none below 18 has been vaccinated. In fact, it has not even been officially confirmed that they will be offered vaccinations. In terms of full vaccination, we are far behind, but I guess we will catch up with other European countries in the weeks ahead.


Kpc21 said:


> There even happen to be international football games played on a snowy pitch  If it so happens that it starts snowing during the match. They usually replace then the ball with a yellow one, so that people can see it on TV better on the background of snow.


W
What I personally find very silly, is that regardless of weather, soccer players insist on playing matches in shorts.


PovilD said:


> "not properly tested"


Only been tested by a few billion people by now ;-) Although I hear quite a few people are getting sick by dose number two.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> If snow was any major issue with playing football  Especially when it's occasional.


Many top football clubs have under soil heating so snow should never prevent the playing surface getting full of snow. The match is more likely to be cancelled due to transport problems caused by snow, meaning fans would not be able to travel to the game.


----------



## radamfi

I just spent 2 days in Ireland, mainly because it is the most exotic place you can go without needing a test when coming back to the UK. Now is a good time to go to a restaurant in Ireland as they check your vaccine at the door. That means a lot of younger people can't get in so you can easily find a table inside. Younger people sit outside if they have outside tables. At McDonald's they scanned my barcode using their tablet and my UK NHS barcode worked successfully. That was the first time I had needed to scan the barcode and until then I didn't even know if it worked properly.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Although I hear quite a few people are getting sick by dose number two.


I had no side-effects from the second dose (Pfizer), nor the first one. Though you hear a lot of people saying they had some mild effects like a bit of a headache, muscle pain or a general unfit feeling, for 1-2 days.



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> In Norway overall we will probably pass Netherlands in terms of overall first dose vaccination rate this week, although almost none below 18 has been vaccinated.


The vaccine take-up for younger people is not as high in the Netherlands, with a 62-65% rate taking up the first dose in the 18-35 age group. There are several factors, many people in that age group have had a mild infection and might not feel the need for a vaccination, it is also lagging behind amongst youths of some foreign heritage and a few outlier municipalities with an antivaxx history.

So far the Netherlands is not pushing vaccination as much as France, Germany and Italy are doing with health passes. Night clubs are closed but pretty much everything else is accessible without having to present proof of vaccination or a negative test.

The Netherlands also does some random entry checks at borders, though the chances of getting pulled over is very small, yesterday they reported to have checked 65 cars on A67 from Antwerp to Eindhoven. Normally the inbound direction carries 20,000 vehicles per day. Entry requirements by road are mostly a symbolic measure that is not enforced seriously. And the fine for non-compliance is only € 95 and entry won't be refused for residents.



radamfi said:


> That was the first time I had needed to scan the barcode and until then I didn't even know if it worked properly.


You can check that by downloading covid check apps. I downloaded the French app to see if my international QR code would work and it does. It cannot scan my domestic QR code. Likewise, the Dutch app cannot scan the international QR code.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> You can check that by downloading covid check apps. I downloaded the French app to see if my international QR code would work and it does. It cannot scan my domestic QR code. Likewise, the Dutch app cannot scan the international QR code.


Why do you need a different barcode domestically?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The European QR code contains a lot of personal information, like full name, date of birth, date of vaccinations, etc. The Netherlands wanted a more privacy-friendly QR code, which only contain the initials and no information about vaccination status.


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> We have first mass scale anti-covid measures protest here in Lithuania (maybe first in The Baltics?) near the Parlament. People are protesting against vaccines being "created too quickly", "not properly tested", etc. and against covid passport where you have to proof that you are vaccinated for certain activities.


There are idiots like that in Poland. There was even arson attack at vaccination centre. Fricking morons, most of them right wing.









Fire at Polish vaccination center an ‘act of terror,’ says health minister


Poland has been hit with a series of anti-vaccine incidents.




www.politico.eu





I wonder how hard will authorities fight them. Those folks are often natural supporters of the ruling party and are the strongest in the most conservative regions, where vaccination rates are also the lowest.



> ---
> I find interesting theory around spread of covid.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Why have some places suffered more covid-19 deaths than others?
> 
> 
> Income inequality is a big part of the answer
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.economist.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It seems not lockdowns, but income inequality (and general undevelopment, especially polarization of society) can be responsible for spread of covid.


I have read it as I subscribe the Economist. Definitely interesting take. Of course it is not the whole explanation but there are fascinating correlations.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands also does some random entry checks at borders, though the chances of getting pulled over is very small, yesterday they reported to have checked 65 cars on A67 from Antwerp to Eindhoven.


Last weekend, this was the situation at what used to be one of the most open international border during larger part of the last hundred years. 








Hours and many km of cars queuing up at the N-S border. It has been bad the whole summer, but culminated last weekend as the core holiday period ended and some border regions in Sweden turned orange. 

Even at 23.25 tonight it was not free flow, however.


----------



## Fatfield

radamfi said:


> Many top football clubs have under soil heating so snow should never prevent the playing surface getting full of snow. The match is more likely to be cancelled due to transport problems caused by snow, meaning fans would not be able to travel to the game.


There's also the H&S aspect too. The stadium of my team (Sunderland) is in an industrial area. On a match day some areas are cordoned off for pedestrian access only and if this hasn't been cleared of snow/ice on a weekend then the game can be called off as its not safe for pedestrians. Its the same for inside the stadium if the terraces haven't been cleared. Its only happened a couple of times though.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> But it's already much more restricted than a year ago...


I'm waiting for the worse  It's already fairly bad. It was really bad last winter. I wonder if this is even acceptable for intra-EU travel. Strains are usually very similar across Europe, just timing might be different.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

New York Times:









Why Evening Rush Hour Feels So Much Worse Now (Published 2021)


The pandemic has reshaped California’s traffic patterns, so roads are more crowded than ever in the afternoons. Plus, “Hamilton” returns to San Francisco.




www.nytimes.com





Traffic patterns show less congestion in the morning but higher traffic volumes during the day and in the afternoon rush hour. 

The Netherlands is still working from home despite lockdowns lifted a long time ago. So morning rush hour congestion remains minimal, though traffic volumes in the afternoon are up. This is different from Belgium, Germany and Paris, where there is considerably more traffic congestion than in the Netherlands, evidently they have returned to the office in greater numbers than in the Netherlands.

I'm still working from home full-time, I have not been in the office since March 2020. I don't mind it during the summer, but I hope to return to the office during the fall and winter for one or two days per week. I think working remotely full time is not good for the social cohesion of any organization. I have not seen a lot of colleagues since March 2020 because we do not always have a direct work relation. It's almost impossible for new employees to build up a network outside of their direct work circle.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> I hope to return to the office during the fall and winter for one or two days per week.


However, unless your colleagues also come in on those same days, you still won't see them.

About a year ago, you mentioned that many people were trying to get their companies to agree to permanent remote working, so they could move out of the west of the Netherlands to save money. Has that actually happened?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Judging by the frenzy on the housing market almost everywhere in the Netherlands, this has surely happened. People from the west sell their houses for insane prices and can outbid buyers in cheaper markets by huge margins. There are houses in my city that used to be around € 220,000 ten years ago, which are now listed for € 300,000 - 350,000 and sold for € 400,000 because people from the west can offer € 50,000 or more over the asking price.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Judging by the frenzy on the housing market almost everywhere in the Netherlands, this has surely happened. People from the west sell their houses for insane prices and can outbid buyers in cheaper markets by huge margins. There are houses in my city that used to be around € 220,000 ten years ago, which are now listed for € 300,000 - 350,000 and sold for € 400,000 because people from the west can offer € 50,000 or more over the asking price.


And are properties in the west cheaper or gone up at a slower pace?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is a huge shortage of housing, so combined with the low interest rates, the prices remain inflated, also in the west. However prices have always been higher in Western Netherlands because that is the most overheated housing market. However the lack of influx of new expats means that the price escalation is not as great, but they already have a very high price level.

People's assets are artificially inflated this way. Most people could never afford to buy houses at such prices based on their annual income, but the rapid appreciation of housing prices of sometimes € 100,000 in just a few years means that people are able to buy larger houses or ridiculously overbid in areas with lower housing prices.

There isn't much housing construction in small towns and villages in the Netherlands so any houses that come on the market quickly get sold to people moving from elsewhere, edging out local residents and starters in the market.

There are cheap loans for first time house-buyers, but these apply to houses up to € 180,000. The amount of such loans taken out is pretty much zero, as there are no houses below that price level anymore. The market up to 200k was usually seen as the entry level market but that has moved up to 300k or more, which are almost impossible prices for first-time buyers. Cheap credit and other incentives only make it worse.


----------



## x-type

They say that today was recorded highest ever temperature in Europe - 48,8°C in Floridia near Siracusa,Sicily, Italy. The thing is still unofficial, and some meteo groups are already highly negating due to being recorded by automatic agrometeorological station (special position, doubtful preferences etc.). Waiting WMO to confirm it as official.




__





SIAS - Tempo Reale - Temperature massime






www.sias.regione.sicilia.it


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PovilD said:


> It's interesting to think here in Europe that with vaccines we are just (trying) to get away from lockdowns, not just saving lives as there was "primary intention" with vaccines.


Surveys in the Netherlands also indicate that. The primary reasons to take the vaccine were, in order: to get rid of the lockdowns, to get rid of annoying testing, and risk to own health was only the third priority on average.


----------



## volodaaaa

PovilD said:


> Understood.
> 
> It's interesting to think here in Europe that with vaccines we are just (trying) to get away from lockdowns, not just saving lives as there was "primary intention" with vaccines.
> 
> When Delta started spreading in Lithuania, vaccination rates has started to increase again, probably because of fearing for another lockdown (the current plan is "lockdown for unvaccinated"). Kinda resembling U.S., but we are somewhat in even better situation as we started vaccination way before hospitals having potential strain like in Southern U.S.
> 
> I see B&H has relatively low vaccination rates, and if I understand correctly, no long lasting lockdowns like we had in Europe last winter.
> 
> ...and there is still slight fear at least in some of us that if vaccines will not succeed or not too many people will get vaccinated we will "happily" gonna back to lockdowns.
> I guess possibility of lockdown is somewhat lower than last winter, but not non-existing (could put into low to medium-low probability category). West Europeans are relatively well vaccinated, Northern Europeans just don't go into many contacts in general, hard to tell about South Europe, East Europeans probably going fatalist/nihilist (joining Russia, Ukraine, Belarus in this regard). On the other hand many EU new member countries will be relatively fairly vaccinated.


Maybe @AnelZ will confirm, but our media informed at the summit of the second wave in Winter that situation in BiH got that serious that live music was prohibited after 22.00


----------



## PovilD

I sorta read interesting article around vaccine efficacy in the future, that if current vaccines are able to neutralize SARS-1 (distant relative of current SARS-2), it could mean vaccines should do the job in coming months/years time, including coming winter. Third dose (Booster doses) might be needed only for risk groups similarly like we have with flu.

It could be bad at preventing infection, but good in terms of preventing hospitalization/death. I would say mass testing may lose sense if we reduce risks of severe disease.
I would cautiously say, testing already could be losing sense after certain point of population is vaccinated.



volodaaaa said:


> Maybe @AnelZ will confirm, but our media informed at the summit of the second wave in Winter that situation in BiH got that serious that live music was prohibited after 22.00


In most other places, I think live music was prohibited 24/7 if I'm not mistaken.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> Surveys in the Netherlands also indicate that. The primary reasons to take the vaccine were, in order: to get rid of the lockdowns, to get rid of annoying testing, and risk to own health was only the third priority on average.


Well, that is my intention, too, besides lowering the chance of infecting my wife. She does not dare get vaccinated in the last trimester of pregnancy.


----------



## AnelZ

It was kinda a joke at one point. Essentially the entity of Republika Srpska allowed at the beginning of March 2021 live music in restaurant and taverns but nobody aside the singers were allowed to sing and/or to dance. The epidemiological situation was somewhat ok at that time but the numbers were climbing and soon after we had a lockdown.

The measures were a lot more relaxed over here in general. Yes, even we had from time to time hard lockdown, the hardest being at the start of the pandemic (mid march - end april 2020) and then again sometimes during march-april this year. But all other time almost everything was open albeit many times with restricted opening times (until 22:00 or 23:00) and for the most time curfew as well in the same time.

Essentially all measures are abolished at the end of May this year and everything works without any restrictions in time or attendance although measures such as distancing and masks in closed spaces are still in power but aren't followed by almost anyone and not enforced by the police.

When it comes vaccines, we were lagging behind a lot because we didn't have any or a very small amount. Over 50k people got vaccinated in Serbia during the time when only the age 75+ and chronic pattients were getting vaccinated in our country. Only since start of August could one get vaccinated if not directly called, but we immediatelly allowed to get vaccinated without prior notice or registration. But the epidemiological situation is now calm and quite so people don't feel the need to get vaccinated, unlike in March-Mai when most people would have wanted but couldn't.


----------



## Kpc21

We will see how it will be in October... Last summer was also calm, but autumn changed everything.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> We will see how it will be in October... Last summer was also calm, but autumn changed everything.


Some say constantly covid doesn't have seasonality. I get a feeling there is seasonality in Europe even with delta (also high immunity levels help)
We will see with October. I guess situation will be overall better for vaccinated, maybe not saving you from case, but more chances you will be save from severe disease.
This coming cold season is still uncertain, but my guess things will be more relaxed in one way or another. I guess calmer winters will be in 3-4 years time if vaccines are indeed powerful as it is claimed and will help to reduce severe disease from more distant strains we have Today.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> We will see how it will be in October... Last summer was also calm, but autumn changed everything.


We have a very different situation. Last year no one was vaccinated, now in Europe elderly people are vaccinated (over 99% of elderly people may have been vaccinatied, those, who are not, did not want to be). We know, youg people usually get through covid without having heavy symtomps, the majority(!) of young people gets through covid without even noticing it. 
UK or the Netherlands had very many new infections in June-July but only a handful of fatalities. Without vaccinations both nations had had lots of them. And, surprisingly, in both the UK and the Netherlands the amount on infections dropped very fast.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> UK or the Netherlands had very many new infections in June-July but only a handful of fatalities.


That's right. The number of cases jumped from 1000 to 10,000 per day in a short amount of time. By far the largest amount of infections was among people under 25. However while deaths only inched up minimally, the number of hospitalizations jumped a bit more. Not overloading the system, but it went up more than expected given the demographic group that mainly got infected.


----------



## radamfi

Cases have stopped going down in the UK, possibly going up a little or maybe flatlining and the number of cases is still at quite a high level compared to the end of the lockdown periods, but hospitalisations are at manageable levels and deaths are still at quite low levels. This is entirely consistent with vaccines being very good at preventing serious illness but less good at preventing mild infection. Restrictions ended in England nearly a month ago so if this is as bad as it gets then I'm sure the government will be very pleased. There is actually another relaxation tomorrow. Fully vaccinated people no longer have to self-isolate after coming into contact with someone testing positive. This should alleviate the severe staff shortages experienced over the last month.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> I notice they have just said that the capacity will be restricted to 67%. Is the enhanced train service still needed with that level of crowd? I'm surprised that sporting events are still being restricted in capacity at this stage, and F1 is outdoors. The snooker tournament I mentioned (in Leicester, England) will allow full capacity with no testing or vaccine requirements. It may only be a few hundred people but it is indoors with no social distancing. They are just telling spectators to fill in an online questionnaire on the day and they will take your temperature on entry.


I actually went for local football game (Dulwich Hamlet in south London) and there were no restrictions. It is so refreshing after all the months of empty stadiums:


DSC01940 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC01938 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


20210814_152658 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is quite a noticeable difference in afternoon congestion: many motorways in the Rhine-Ruhr Area in Germany are jammed, while most of the Netherlands has free-flow traffic at 16:15 hours. 

A lot of Dutch people are still working from home (including me).


----------



## radamfi

Is this because the Netherlands has a greater proportion of people working in offices than Rhein-Rhur? The region is historically famous for blue collar work, for example in car factories, but maybe that is out of date.


----------



## Attus

radamfi said:


> Is this because the Netherlands has a greater proportion of people working in offices than Rhein-Rhur? The region is historically famous for blue collar work, for example in car factories, but maybe that is out of date.


The most important factors may be:

closure of A1 and A61
end of holidays season in NRW, many people arriving home
German companies don't like remote working, e.g. in our company it is forbidden, and in many other companies, too, is either forbidden or only partially (e.g. 2 days per week) allowed.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Do you want this attractive job offer? (N.º 5): BOE.es - BOE-A-2021-13924 Resolución de 6 de agosto de 2021, de la Subsecretaría, por la que se convoca la provisión de puestos de trabajo por el sistema de libre designación.

The Spanish government posted a job opening to be a communications operator in Kabul for € 4230.


----------



## tfd543

ChrisZwolle said:


> Do you want this attractive job offer? (N.º 5): BOE.es - BOE-A-2021-13924 Resolución de 6 de agosto de 2021, de la Subsecretaría, por la que se convoca la provisión de puestos de trabajo por el sistema de libre designación.
> 
> The Spanish government posted a job opening to be a communications operator in Kabul for € 4230.


I dont wanna be dead meat.. on the other hand, could be an experience for life if one is defiant..


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Seems like a grossly underpaid job to me, even before the Taliban takeover.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Seems like a grossly underpaid job to me, even before the Taliban takeover.


I once met an Estonian guy who (supposedly) made €5,000 a month putting up scaffolding for high-rise construction projects in Finland. So...yeah. A little bit over €4,000 to work in Kabul? No thanks!


----------



## tfd543

Remember Its according to spanish standards, not northern. I think 4K euro is more than what the surgeon gets over there.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

List of European countries by average wage - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





The average gross wage in Spain is € 2279 per month according to Wikipedia. So that job posting is almost twice that. 

This doesn't sound like a well-paying job for such a location, even pre-Taliban takeover a job in Afghanistan was probably very different from one in France or Japan. On the other hand the job description doesn't sound a like a very complex job. It sounds like an office job where you do some basic IT stuff? Then it's probably a better paying job than a similar one in Spain.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> For example, half of all traffic in London has an origin _and_ destination in Outer London. 77% of this traffic is by car. This means that Outer London is more similar to the rest of the UK than Inner London or Central London.


Perhaps the rail network in Outer London is underdeveloped? Generally speaking, to go from one part of Outer London to another means a lengthy bus journey, or going in and out of central London. There is only a small tram network in south London, no dedicated busways and little bus priority.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> Generally speaking, to go from one part of Outer London to another means a lengthy bus journey, or going in and out of central London.


This is very typical for most trips outside of dense cores, pretty much anywhere across Europe. The trips are very diffuse with no large groupings of starting and endpoints, making it almost impossible to serve adequately and economically by public transport. 

In answer to geogregor: I'm simply stating the observations and statistics by Eurostat, that car usage is remarkably similar across Europe, even with significantly varying development patterns, size of cities, abundance (or lack of) public transport, income levels, etc. 30-40 years of pro-public transport policy, or anti car policy, has not changed it much at all.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> In answer to geogregor: I'm simply stating the observations and statistics by Eurostat, that car usage is remarkably similar across Europe, even with significantly varying development patterns, size of cities, abundance (or lack of) public transport, income levels, etc. 30-40 years of pro-public transport policy, or anti car policy, has not changed it much at all.


Fair enough.

Things might actually get worse. Car traffic in the UK recovered much faster than public transport. It is effectively back to pre pandemic levels while trains and underground are way below. But when politicians did everything they could to discourage using public transport and switch to driving what can one expect?

The question is what next. If we take outer London there is virtually no chance for any significant road investment. There is no space for it and locals would kill any project in no time, even if there was funding for it. And congestion is growing. I live somewhere between inner and outer London. Traffic can be silly at times.

In that situation the only option is to improve public transport and try to encourage even modest modal shift. Just people not driving their kids a few hundred yards to school every morning would help. Places like outer London should try to encourage cycling and walking. Most of the areas have local service centres where in most cases you shouldn't need to drive.

It will be interesting to see where will things go. In recent years the UK had much less investment in road infrastructure than some other European countries. I wonder if the UK will invest more or other countries will invest less (often due to increasing opposition to road projects). Or will things stay as they are?


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> This is very typical for most trips outside of dense cores, pretty much anywhere across Europe. The trips are very diffuse with no large groupings of starting and endpoints, making it almost impossible to serve adequately and economically by public transport.


I think there is better peripheral public transport in other cities though. Amsterdam has its ring road metro line. Île-de-France (outer Paris) has been busy building lots of tram lines in recent years and has some dedicated busways as well. In that book I referenced earlier, there is a detailed description of the Zurich system. At first glance, Zurich is deficient, because it has no metro and the S-Bahn only covers a few parts of the city. But they have used the tram network very well. If you have good interchange facilities then you can deal with diffuse patterns trips using public transport (this is the main theme of the book). Most trips in Zurich require people to change vehicles but they've got good mode share for public transport within the city, even for trips not going to the centre. There is an assumption in the UK that you can't get people to change vehicle, but that is because they make changing difficult and unattractive, for example by making changing cost more in fares than a direct service.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> However the cost per passenger kilometer by public transport is far higher than any other type of transport, you see in many western European countries that expenditures on rail systems are 50% or more of total transport spending while representing 10% or less of all travel.


To be fair: infrastructure spending on roads privatize the cost of the mode of transportation. Part of the reason why railways are expensive, is because we don't all have to buy our own trains.

Conversely if the government builds a motorway, I won't be able to use it unless I spend several thousands of euros on buying a car.

So a direct comparison is inherently flawed.


----------



## geogregor

Slightly different subject, downsides of "staycation":









Snowdon: Call to respect mountain amid spike in visitors


Litter, erosion and traffic put "significant pressure" on the mountain, says Snowdonia Society.



www.bbc.co.uk


----------



## Slagathor

Jesus


----------



## geogregor

Slagathor said:


> Jesus


I know, even crap weather doesn't stop British people from queuing 

I was once on Snowdon, during my first ever trip to the UK, over 20 years ago. I could not see further than the end of my arm...


----------



## radamfi

When I went up Snowdon when I was a teenager, I decided it was easier to get the train up the hill rather than walk the whole way. It was a rare sunny day.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> I decided it was easier to get the train up the hill rather than walk the whole way.


Seriously? Who would have thought...


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> I know, even crap weather doesn't stop British people from queuing
> 
> I was once on Snowdon, during my first ever trip to the UK, over 20 years ago. I could not see further than the end of my arm...


I went up Glyder Fawr which is across the valley as part of a school trip, brilliant sunshine and blue skies when we started, then about 100m from the top the cloud came down and visibility was literally as bad as you say. Pretty scary


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

When I hiked in the UK some years ago a received a lot of strange warnings. Same thing in Australia. Maybe it is because the average Brit/Australian is clueless when it comes to mountaineering (as this article indicates regarding the British....).


----------



## x-type

I see that there are problems with hiking in flip-flops in the UK as well. We are fightin with it each year, Polish tourists are leaders in that sport. Unfortunately, several deaths are registered at mountain Biokovo each year due to inappropriate (hiking) equipment.


----------



## TheLakes

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> When I hiked in the UK some years ago a received a lot of strange warnings. Same thing in Australia. Maybe it is because the average Brit/Australian is clueless when it comes to mountaineering (as this article indicates regarding the British....).


Strange warnings for strange situations. The last time I walked up Mt Kosciuszko in the Australian Alps, I was walking up the steep track out of Thredbo township breaking the webs spun across the track overnight, past scurrying black snakes and wallabies, then to be met with some decent snow past the top of the chair lifts. This is a relatively easy walk, not mountaineering, with a metal board walk provided most of the way.
The higher peaks we can find easily in New Zealand. The only people who seemed to have no clue during that walk from Thredbo were a bunch of foreign nationals wearing crocks and open shoes on a day trip bus tour down from Canberra.


----------



## TheLakes

Unfortunately the Border Gate Roadhouse, once a pub, has closed its doors due to covid restrictions, hopefully this is temporary for this road side rest facility, that straddles the border between the states of South Australia and New South Wales. It is a welcome stop on the long drive between Adelaide and Sydney.









But until it does reopen travelers are well provided for on the other side of the highway.


----------



## MattiG

x-type said:


> I see that there are problems with hiking in flip-flops in the UK as well. We are fightin with it each year, Polish tourists are leaders in that sport. Unfortunately, several deaths are registered at mountain Biokovo each year due to inappropriate (hiking) equipment.
> 
> View attachment 1949872


Well well. How to teach people that the conditions in the wilderness and on the mountain tops are very different from the valley.

Six Irish morons were rescued in Sweden a few days ago. Some of them weared shorts only while the night tempetature dropped to -10.









Six Irish people rescued from Swedish mountain


Group became stranded overnight after reaching country’s highest peak




www.irishtimes.com


----------



## Stuu

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> When I hiked in the UK some years ago a received a lot of strange warnings. Same thing in Australia. Maybe it is because the average Brit/Australian is clueless when it comes to mountaineering (as this article indicates regarding the British....).


They are. It comes from living in a relatively benign climate that generally won't kill you, and being mostly urban where help is just around the corner. Common sense seems to be in short supply too


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I have seen foreigners trying to climb Norwegian mountains with crutches, in jeans during rain and sleet, and of course with flip-flops (not necessarily the same person, though..). Corona has also inspired many new Norwegians to explore mountaineering, mostly too take pictures it seens, and around the most instagram-popular spots it has become apparent that not all Norwegians know how to prepare for a mountain trip either


TheLakes said:


> Strange warnings for strange situations. The last time I walked up Mt Kosciuszko in the Australian Alps, I was walking up the steep track out of Thredbo township breaking the webs spun across the track overnight, past scurrying black snakes and wallabies, then to be met with some decent snow past the top of the chair lifts. This is a relatively easy walk, not mountaineering, with a metal board walk provided most of the way.
> The higher peaks we can find easily in New Zealand. The only people who seemed to have no clue during that walk from Thredbo were a bunch of foreign nationals wearing crocks and open shoes on a day trip bus tour down from Canberra.


We were with minor kids when visiting Mt Kosciuszko years ago, so we took the very easy road, which used to be open for cars, from Charlotte pass. It was almost completely clear day during spring with good weather forecase, but a guy we met was terrified that we attempted this with kids, pointing to a single, small cumulus cloud stating that this could be a thunder cloud...

Otherwise what I have noted in Australia's fabolous national parks is the abundance of warning signs....

In the Norwegian national parks, or in the wilderness in general, such signs are extremely rare, but I guess this is a cultural thing.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This is a thing: Nanny state - Wikipedia


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> This is a thing: Nanny state - Wikipedia


Not really. Nanny state is when authorities are trying to nudge people to change certain behaviors. For example stop smoking, reducing sugars and fats intake, exercising more etc.
It is often actually quite good thing but of course some more right wing oriented folks really don't like it. They are the ones usually complaining about the "nanny state"

The proliferation of warning signs come from something different, from tendency to excessive suing, culture of litigiousness. Organizations and businesses are sued for injuries and damages, (real and imagined) so they try protect themselves with various signs, often quite obvious.

Some call it "compensation culture":






Compensation culture - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





It is most pronounced in the US but it is spreading to the UK and other English speaking countries where common law is applied. 

In fact one could argue that it is opposite thing to the "nanny state". Nanny state regulate things. Sometimes maybe to excess but on the other hand there is less need for suing. In more liberal states, with fewer protective regulations, the fear of lawyers often have the same function as regulation in some other places.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

radamfi said:


> Child freedom in the UK was removed around 1990. Firstly, because of the irrational safety fears already mentioned. Secondly, parents started to be allowed to send their kids to any appropriate school, not just the nearest school. This was billed as 'parental choice'. This means that a lot of kids go to school by car because the school is too far away and public transport would take too long or doesn't exist. The kids' friends therefore live all over the place so are not in easy walking/cycling/bus distance away, hence more need for parents to take them by car.
> 
> Inevitably, most parents want their kids to get into the 'best' school (and schools are rated and there are regularly published school league tables), so some schools get oversubscribed and end up restricting access to those nearby, which makes a mockery of parental choice.
> 
> When I talk to Europeans I've worked with (e.g. Dutch, German, Swiss etc.) about going to school by car and parental school choice they are amazed. The 'school run' seems to be a British (and probably Irish) thing.


Unfortunately Estonia is very similar in this sense. The majority of schools are local district schools but there are also schools which children from all over the place can attend (and they usually have higher ratings as well). This means there are plenty of parents who train their children in so-called pre-schools the whole year before 1st grade so they would pass the tests to study in one of those elite schools. What's even worse, the parents who have the time and money to train their children so much are usually more wealthy so it creates this social bubble of mostly rich parents' kids going to the same schools and then forming their own social circles which inevitably carry on into the future. 

Anyways, those elite schools are almost all in the city centre whereas most of those wealthy parents live in the suburbs. So there's *a lot *parents who drive their children every morning from the surburbs into the city centre to go to school. That being said, taking children to school by car is common elsewhere as well since Tallinn is incredibly hostile towards pedestrians and cyclists. Maybe not as bad as towns in North America but not far off.


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> Maybe this is more of an American / British thing? The Netherlands doesn't have a culture of 24/7 news channels with focus on local crime, even though this kind of coverage has increased on local news outlets via social media and the so-called '112 photographers' who cover every incident.


It's the newspapers mostly, and these days social media too. The press love a good murder, especially of children or single young women. There was increasingly lurid coverage through the 1980s, and then in in early 1990s two 12 year olds abducted and murdered a two year old boy, which caused mass hysteria and a noticeable change in the freedom of kids. The media, the school changes Radamfi mentioned, and the general poor quality of pedestrian and cycling infrastructure all add up to kids staying at home and being driven everywhere.

TV news is a lot more neutral here, although the fact that not enough actually happens to justify 24 hour news means the same stories are repeated over and over


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Probably the most frequent issue in municipal traffic engineering in the Netherlands is how to configure roads near schools. Parents dropping children off by car is actually much more common than you would think.

The Netherlands has free school choice, so parents can enroll their children at any school they want. There are in fact many types of schools, from regular schools with no particular identity to regular religious schools, to fairly orthodox schools, jenaplan schools, dalton schools, montessori schools, etc.

Though I believe it's still fairly common to enroll children in one of the nearest schools, unless it has special needs, those schools are often farther away. There is a big taxi business to drive these children to school, funded by the government.


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> It's the newspapers mostly, and these days social media too. The press love a good murder, especially of children or single young women. There was increasingly lurid coverage through the 1980s, and then in in early 1990s two 12 year olds abducted and murdered a two year old boy, which caused mass hysteria and a noticeable change in the freedom of kids.


There was also this murder of two 10 year old girls around the same time which resulted in similar levels of hysteria









Soham murders - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





The press only care about murders when the victim is young or beautiful. Only a few months ago, the rape and murder of a 30-ish year old woman in London dominated the press for what seemed like forever. But there are murders of black youths (aged roughly 16 to 25) in London on a regular basis. They may get a passing mention on regional TV news, if they are lucky.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Missing white woman syndrome - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> There was also this murder of two 10 year old girls around the same time which resulted in similar levels of hysteria


I went on holiday to SE Asia just after the girls disappeared, their bodies being found was on the front page of the Bangkok Post, something I still find astonishing


----------



## tfd543

Stuu said:


> I went on holiday to SE Asia just after the girls disappeared, their bodies being found was on the front page of the Bangkok Post, something I still find astonishing


Have you or has anybody ever seen a person being killed at point blank range ? 

I havent, but could be crazy to hear somebody’s story.

I have only heard a person being shot (not killed) in a neighboring hotel while I was eating dinner.. 15 yrs ago.


----------



## Dikan011

radamfi said:


> There was also this murder of two 10 year old girls around the same time which resulted in similar levels of hysteria
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Soham murders - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The press only care about murders when the victim is young or beautiful. Only a few months ago, the rape and murder of a 30-ish year old woman in London dominated the press for what seemed like forever. But there are murders of black youths (aged roughly 16 to 25) in London on a regular basis. They may get a passing mention on regional TV news, if they are lucky.



It's the same everywhere though, not just London.

Look at the faces of murdered people in Canada's largest city for past 3 years- and these are just the unresolved cases.

It's largely black on black crime, and nobody seems to care.





__





Homicide- Toronto Police Service







www.torontopolice.on.ca


----------



## Cookiefabric

With the lastest update being in, I am wondering what Poland is doing differently in comparison to other EU-countries?


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Covid-19 /delta is on the rise in Norway now as schools and universities have started, on green level (basically business as usual). A 20% rise week on week, but hospitalizations remain few as more than 80% of adults have received the first dose and 61 % the second. Nevertheless, Trondheim reintroduced mandatory facemasks in some indoor public situations today. 

Meanwhile, vaccinations are still ongoing at full speed. Both in this week and the next, around 1 million doses will be distributed to the municipalities, or in total around 38 doses per 100 people, mainly dose #2 to adults (including myself) , but also 16 and 17 years old will be offered vaccines now, such that high schools will be mostly immunized. No decision has been made for 12 to 15 years old, yet, but I expect that also will be offered, and then probably a third dose for the elderly. The high number of doses available now is said to be due low vaccination rates in Eastern Europe. 

Adults are mainly given Moderna in Trondheim now, as Pfizer doses are reserved for the younger since more side effect data are available for the latter. Experts say this combination of vaccines, combined with the longer interval between the doses, probably gives higher immunity than Pfizer - 3 weeks - Pfizer. Indications are that Moderna in itself also is more effective than Pfizer against delta. Luckily, I have no plans for travel to the UK this fall ;-ö



geogregor said:


> As Stuu said it is pretty much confirmed that Delta variant is more infectious, the debate is by h


That the Delta-virus is more infectious than previous major strains are proven by the facts on the ground. In India, without much vaccinations at the time, delta not became dominant. In Europe, other strains have been more or less exterminated, while delta flourish.


PovilD said:


> I'm kinda against testing, at least mid to long term, but I'm for good treatments, vaccines included.
> 
> Testing feels a bit of a lottery. Positive test - isolated with ruined plans for two weeks. Negative test - it also depends (due to high risk contacts, etc.).


Testing is gold, and together with diligent tracing that enabled Nordic countries except


radamfi said:


> It has long been understood that children very rarely get bad symptoms. Perhaps people get that confused with not getting it at all.


At least in the beginning, it was claimed that infected children, due to few symptoms, also infected others to a smaller degree. 


ChrisZwolle said:


> I think the idea of a 7-8 year old cycling several kilometers from home on its own might be very scary for parents in other countries.


When I was a kid, I was allowed to roam around freely from an early age, I even walked home with a fellow kid from the kindergarten during the last year. That is still pretty much the case, and babies sleep outside in their strollers. But also here, more kids are driven to activities, although it is discouraged to drive kids to school. 

When it comes to biking, that is a different story. Younger kids have limited side view, and most are not mature enough to understand complex traffic. In Norway it is recommended that kids do not bike in traffic alone before the age of 10-12. In order to be allowed to bike to school, they often need to pass a test. 


TheLakes said:


> As an ex club president I think If signage reduces the premium and keeps these facilities open, so we can teach more kids to swim, then I'm all for it.


I fully agree with your reasoning on an individual level. Learning kids to swim is very important!


----------



## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Testing is gold, and together with diligent tracing that enabled Nordic countries except


I doubt covid will be erradicated, best solution is being less morbid disease itself (via vaccination, immunity, treatment, etc.) and preferably lessened infectivity.

Testing may be temporary solution when covid is very morbid for large amount of people in small time frame, but I don't think we have to live like this.

Testing was really good when there were no vaccine, no treatment, nothing, and almost no population immunity.
Now is also kinda good, at least helpful, but I don't feel "test, trace, isolate" is good thing long term for this disease, we need better options. I don't feel becoming totalitarian state for some disease. Long years to come, I mean.

---
I've read funny thing Today.

"Antivax don't like any testing, but cry why they will need to pay for testing" 

Ok, on the other hand, I understand what's going on with this "joke". Antivax don't like testing, but okay, get tested anyway for having their freedoms back, but now they also need to pay for those freedoms. Get vaccinated and you will get freedoms (probably) without testing (=for free)

...but then you will need to get vaccinated... oh no...


----------



## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> When it comes to biking, that is a different story. Younger kids have limited side view, and most are not mature enough to understand complex traffic. In Norway it is recommended that kids do not bike in traffic alone before the age of 10-12. In order to be allowed to bike to school, they often need to pass a test.


In Poland, the children to be able to cycle alone, they are required to be 10 years old and pass an exam (which is normally organized at schools). Then one gets one's "bicycle card", which is kind of a driving license for a bicycle, for the underage youth.

This is theory. Those exams are organized at schools, but having that "bicycle card" with you isn't really enforced by the police.

What about the age from which the children are legally allowed to walk on public roads alone? In Poland the law is that a child which is 7 or less years old must be accompanied on the road by someone who is at least 10 years old.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

There is no such law in Norway, in fact it is recommended that school children from an early age go to walk to schools. But put it this way: If your toddler is found repeatably roaming around on the streets without any caretakers, it won't be your toddler anymore....

Close to the schools, the most dangerous roads are usually secured by safe crossings, and children more than 4 km away or who has a particularly dangerous school road are offered public transportation.



PovilD said:


> Now is also kinda good, at least helpful, but I don't feel "test, trace, isolate" is good thing long term for this disease, we need better options.


I agree, but not everyone has had the chance (or is) vaccinated yet. All 35 000 students of Trondheim will btw be tested now. This is the second such mass testing campaign.


----------



## Attus

In North and Northwest (NL, B, West Germany) Europe it's an important issue, that that winter mornings are dark, so school children go to school in darkness. I, having grown up in Hungary, have never gone in darkness to the school, but here, where I am currently living, it's normal from mid November to late February.


----------



## Slagathor

Google tells me that on December 21st, the sun rises at 8:49 in the Netherlands. School usually starts at 8:30.

As I remember, we would go to school in the dark in December and January. I don't think we needed the lights on our bicycles in November or February though. Dawn was bright enough to go without.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't really remember going to school in pitch dark. School started at 8:30 so it wasn't totally dark by that time. Apparently in some countries the elementary school begins much earlier to fit the work schedule of the parents. 

School buses don't exist in the Netherlands, though some regular bus lines cater almost exclusively to students. Taxi vans are common for students with special needs, who go to special schools that are typically farther away. In a city, an elementary school is usually within 1 - 1.5 kilometers from most homes. I grew up in a suburban residential area, there were 6 elementary schools in a 1 kilometer range. High school was 5 kilometers away, though there were closer ones.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

It is certainly a walk in the dark for school kids during late fall / early winter here, although snow helps. Luckily, street illumination is better around here compared with other countries I have lived in, and most smaller kids are equipped with reflectors, or even blinking LEDs, from top to toe by concerned parents. Most outdoor clothing also have reflectors. To be on the safe side, my local county even gives a free backpack loaded with reflectors to each first year school kid.


----------



## Kpc21

Although now, already for a few months, we have a law in Poland that a pedestrian entering a zebra crossing has priority over the vehicles (previously, only the one already being on the crossing had the priority), there was recently a case:



https://www.rmf24.pl/fakty/polska/news-zostala-potracona-na-przejsciu-dla-pieszych-dostala-mandat,nId,5445845


(there is a video in the article)

in which the police decided the pedestrian (an 18-year-old woman) was guilty and fined her for causing that accident.

What do you think about that?


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't really remember going to school in pitch dark. School started at 8:30 so it wasn't totally dark by that time. Apparently in some countries the elementary school begins much earlier to fit the work schedule of the parents.


Yeah, you're right. The difference between sunrise and the start of school isn't big enough in the Netherlands.

My primary school was down the street from my house. I never had to walk there in the dark.

My high school, on the other hand, was a 7km bike ride away and if we had classes at 8:30, we would need to set off at 7:50. That's a whole hour before sunrise in December and early January, so we'd have to use our lights but we'd often be able to turn them off about 2/3 of the way (unless thick cloud cover made for a dark dawn). Of course, back then we had those big, heavy, bottle dynamos so you would turn those off at the earliest possible opportunity. They really made it noticeably harder to pedal your bike.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> What do you think about that?


I don't know the exact Polisch rules. For me in this case is obviously the driver guilty.


----------



## Stuu

Pretty much every year when the clocks go back or forward there is a discussion about the benefits or not of the UK being on CET rather than GMT. The main argument against is about kids travelling to and from school (apart from the fact it is geographically correct for noon to be noon at Greenwich). Being an hour earlier means that sunrise is no later than 8 so kids never go to school in the dark, but in the north and Scotland they come home in the dark, and that is thought better/safer as there is less traffic at 3-4pm than in the mornings. No doubt the brexiters wouldn't approve either


----------



## Suburbanist

At least here in Bergen, kindergartens take children that already walk steady into errands in the neighborhoods, to train them to navigate the urban environment. Toddlers walk with high visibility vests, always holding the hand of another toddler or an adult.

I heard that it is a ´big´ milestone for local children when they reach the age after which they are no longer required to use the vests when walking out of school.


----------



## MattiG

Slagathor said:


> Yeah, you're right. The difference between sunrise and the start of school isn't big enough in the Netherlands.


The sunrise is not the moment the light suddenly turns on. The civil twilight is usually seen as "almost daylight", and it begins about 35 minutes before the sunrise most of the year at the latitude of the Netherlands.

In the North, the duration of the daylight in the winter time is less than the length of the school day. Thus, it is normal to go to school and back home when it is dark in Finland. Usually, no need to walk on the darkness because of the street lights. In the rural areas, the taxis and buses transport kids to the school and back home.


----------



## Slagathor

The idea that the school day is longer than the actual day kinda blew my mind.


----------



## radamfi

MattiG said:


> Usually, no need to walk on the darkness because of the street light


Street lighting exists in urban areas everywhere, but people still seem to worry about children and other vulnerable people being outside when there is no daylight. Is that not the case in Finland?


----------



## MattiG

radamfi said:


> Street lighting exists in urban areas everywhere, but people still seem to worry about children and other vulnerable people being outside when there is no daylight. Is that not the case in Finland?


No, the darkness is an everyday phenomena for six months a year. People are familiar to it. Quite young kids go the school without accompanying adults, no matter if there is light or not.

Actually, many British-originated crime series are quite amusing to the Finns: Often, the most frightening scenes take place in a wood (or in a churchyard) in the darkness. A wood is not a scary place to Finns either.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

radamfi said:


> Street lighting exists in urban areas everywhere, but people still seem to worry about children and other vulnerable people being outside when there is no daylight. Is that not the case in Finland?


That's not the case in Estonia either since we're not that far South of Finland (only 80 km from Helsinki to Tallinn). Darkness over here has just as much to do with time of year as it has to do with time of day. You basically just accept the fact that it's dark in winter for 18 hours a day a that's it.


----------



## PovilD

Rebasepoiss said:


> That's not the case in Estonia either since we're not that far South of Finland (only 80 km from Helsinki to Tallinn). Darkness over here has just as much to do with time of year as it has to do with time of day. You basically just accept the fact that it's dark in winter for 18 hours a day a that's it.


Darkness was never an issue for me when I was going to school here in Lithuania. When I was younger school was just few hundred meters away, actually, quite convenient to have all your facilities by walking distance.

Only mornings were dark, and school time is over 1-2pm when it's always light.
Dark at evenings maybe an issue if you have after school activities, and many of us have them, including me (many at some sports activity, few at music and arts).

Thinking about this, I'm kinda not missing 17-18 hours of darkness in winters  Overcast (but not constantly rainy) weather for at least 12 hours is probably better than calendar day with 18 hours of darkness. Better enjoy the time of light between equinoxes in spring and autumn.
Ok, unless it's winter wonderland and you don't drive on slippery road  Darkness mean less due to white snow.


----------



## radamfi

The UK is increasing the contactless bank card payment limit to 100 GBP (116 EUR) in October. Does any other country have (or plans to have) such a high limit?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't think there is a limit in the Netherlands. Though you do need to enter your PIN for amounts over € 50.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Though you do need to enter your PIN for amounts over € 50.


That's what I mean by limit. The whole point of contactless is that you don't enter the PIN. To reduce fraud, you normally have to enter the PIN every so often for amounts under the limit. These limits don't apply to Google/Apple Pay.


----------



## TheLakes

The limit for Tap and Go (scan your card without using a pin) was increased to $200 by most Australian banks in April 2020, Some media wanted this dropped back to $100 when covid cases were low over Christmas, but delta fixed that.
A lot of stores are now providing contactless click and collect online services for groceries and bulk items.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

You have to enter pin for card paymenta above 500 NOK 500 in Norway as well. Unfortunately, my employer, who owns my mobile, does not allow NFC, hence no Google pay or similar. 


radamfi said:


> Street lighting exists in urban areas everywhere, but people still seem to worry about children and other vulnerable people being outside when there is no daylight. Is that not the case in Finland?


Brits are afraid of all sorts of things outside. A Scottish friend of mine once expressed deep worry for me as I ran alone in the forest. What if I tripped over a root? I was in the twenties at the time.. 

Where I live, the shortest day of the year is 4.5 hours. Having the kids inside for 19.5 hours would be a nightmare. 


MattiG said:


> A wood is not a scary place to Finns either.


When I was a kid, there was something called TV theater on our lone state owned TV channel. Quite regularly, there was some piece from Finland. For some reason, it always seemed to involve wood chopping, alcoholism, suicide and general misery. Unfortunately, I think these made a permanent impact on the view of Finns for many Norwegians of my generation. I do not know why, but I came to think of this blog post I once read. 








11 Reasons Why Finland is the Worst Scandinavian Country


Living in Norway, I'm constantly having to navigate all those Scandinavian stereotypes. Like how Norwegians are always making fun of Swedes, but if you as an outsider try to join in they suddenly start defending




www.heartmybackpack.com


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland at the beginning of the pandemic they increased this threshold from 50 PLN (about 22 EUR) to 100 PLN (about 44 EUR).



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> When I was a kid, there was something called TV theater on our lone state owned TV channel.


In Poland we still have TV theater on the public TV  They actually do show theater plays on TV – they are deliberately prepared for the TV and utilize some of the TV technology, but those definitely aren't movies.


----------



## TheLakes

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> You have to enter pin for card paymenta above 500 NOK 500 in Norway as well. Unfortunately, my employer, who owns my mobile, does not allow NFC, hence no Google pay or similar.
> 
> Brits are afraid of all sorts of things outside. A Scottish friend of mine once expressed deep worry for me as I ran alone in the forest. What if I tripped over a root? I was in the twenties at the time..


Here I find the forests a very peaceful place to be, I become more nervous when walking through long grass, for obvious reptile reasons.


----------



## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> When I was a kid, there was something called TV theater on our lone state owned TV channel. Quite regularly, there was some piece from Finland. For some reason, it always seemed to involve wood chopping, alcoholism, suicide and general misery. Unfortunately, I think these made a permanent impact on the view of Finns for many Norwegians of my generation. I do not know why, but I came to think of this blog post I once read.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 11 Reasons Why Finland is the Worst Scandinavian Country
> 
> 
> Living in Norway, I'm constantly having to navigate all those Scandinavian stereotypes. Like how Norwegians are always making fun of Swedes, but if you as an outsider try to join in they suddenly start defending
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.heartmybackpack.com


Well, Finland is actually Baltic, along with Estonia 

There are two Indo-European Baltic nations, and two Uralic Baltic nations.


----------



## radamfi

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Unfortunately, my employer, who owns my mobile, does not allow NFC, hence no Google pay or similar.


It is hard to get a phone these days that _doesn't_ have NFC, unless it isn't a smartphone.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> It is hard to get a phone these days that _doesn't_ have NFC, unless it isn't a smartphone.


Lower-end smartphones of Chinese brands (like Huawei or Xiaomi) usually don't have NFC.


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> When I was a kid, there was something called TV theater on our lone state owned TV channel. Quite regularly, there was some piece from Finland. For some reason, it always seemed to involve wood chopping, alcoholism, suicide and general misery. Unfortunately, I think these made a permanent impact on the view of Finns for many Norwegians of my generation.


It wouldn’t be the first time an image of neighbors is created with silly stereotypes.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^Very true, only in this case, the stereotypes were created by the Finns themselves ;-)


PovilD said:


> Well, Finland is actually Baltic, along with Estonia


Not in English or Scandinavian usage.


TheLakes said:


> Here I find the forests a very peaceful place to be, I become more nervous when walking through long grass, for obvious reptile reasons.


I truly love being in forests as well, both in Australia and the Nordics.


radamfi said:


> It is hard to get a phone these days that _doesn't_ have NFC, unless it isn't a smartphone.


Sure, but it is disabled through mandatory safety settings.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

volodaaaa said:


> *The limit here is 20 € without a PIN except for every third payment, which requires a PIN regardless of the amount. *During the pandemic last year, the limit was increased to 60 € then decreased to the standard value. I use Google Pay, and it is limitless (as far as I know). I don't remember the highest amount paid over a POS terminal, though I am pretty much sure it was not higher than 250 € 350 € (I forgot paying for a brake replacement)


This seems awfully inconvenient. Over here the limit is set by the banks, most have it at € 50. And a pin is required according to whatever algorithm the bank uses. I have no idea how often I have to use my pin but I'm guessing it's once every 15 times or so. I have my cards organised in my wallet in such a way that I don't even have to take my card out to pay contactless.


----------



## bogdymol

Stuu said:


> Did anyone check anything in Dublin on the way to the UK?


At the flight between Ireland and England, there was no check apart from the usual flight ticket + ID, like it was also before covid.

At the flight from Vienna to Ireland, the airline checked the covid documents for each passenger, upon boarding. At arrival, there were no covid-related checks by anybody.



radamfi said:


> What is there to check? There is no form required, no tests needed and no vaccination needed when travelling from Ireland to the UK. It is just like a UK domestic flight, with the exception that you have to pass through customs at the British airport.


Exactly!


----------



## geogregor

Attus said:


> We initiated to start heating in the house. It's 19 °C in my flat, what is a little bit cold, but OK, I could live with that. But the humidity is very high, i.e. what is wet, remains wet. I use three towels, changing them again and again, in order to always have a dry one.


I didn't switch heating at home yet, but this morning I switched it on at work.

It is soooo gloomy in London. It is not temperature which is a problem, I can still go out in shorts, it is the lack of proper sunshine which gets me. I don't remember when was the last time we got over an hour of sunshine or more than 22 degrees.

I'm really, really, really looking forward towards holiday in Portugal. I just pray my pre-flight tests don't go wrong...

This is how our sky looks in recent weeks:


20210826_154253 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

And the forecast is for more of the same, for another week at least, and then "weather systems" will arrive. That probably means rain and wind instead of just clouds.

Great, we didn't really get summer going this year and now we'll get the usual 8 months of "shittiness". Bring on 2022 spring...


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> What is there to check? There is no form required, no tests needed and no vaccination needed when travelling from Ireland to the UK. It is just like a UK domestic flight, with the exception that you have to pass through customs at the British airport.


I knew it was a way to avoid quarantine rules, I didn't realise they weren't checking vaccine status or anything.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

geogregor said:


> And the forecast is for more of the same, for another week at least, and then "weather systems" will arrive. That probably means rain and wind instead of just clouds.
> 
> Great, we didn't really get summer going this year and now we'll get the usual 8 months of "shittiness". Bring on 2022 spring...


Yeah I wanted to go to the beach one day for a few hours while I was off work, (am a teacher), but there really wasn't a single day where I could do it. Oh well, bring on 2022 as you say.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

You guys are too picky, sure there was a day when you could do it ;-)


----------



## radamfi

It was sunny in Brighton on 24 August when I did a bike ride around there, so there was at least one sunny day at the beach!


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I sat on the beach to watch the sunset the other day but it was definitely a bit cold to go swimming in my book. There were a few days that would have been ideal but they were in early July.


----------



## geogregor

Stuu said:


> Very glad I had a week in Spain instead of some crappy staycation


Did you need to take test before flying to Spain? It looks we need at least antigen test before boarding flight to Portugal. Which company did you use?

I'm trying to make the most of the weather:

20210831_160819 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> Did you need to take test before flying to Spain? It looks we need at least antigen test before boarding flight to Portugal. Which company did you use?
> 
> I'm trying to make the most of the weather:
> 
> 20210831_160819 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


I didn't as vaccinated people only needed to show proof of that, but my stepson who is 16 did... we booked for one with Randox who didn't deliver it in time so had to go and pay for a 24 hour test with Expresstest. They did send the results exactly when they said they would but it was expensive. 

Costa Del Islington?


----------



## cinxxx

Look what I received in the mail today.
A fine for not paying the electronic only toll on the motorway (having no transponder and all).
Almost 5 years ago, in *August 2016!















*


----------



## Stuu

cinxxx said:


> Look what I received in the mail today.
> A fine for not paying the electronic only toll on the motorway (having no transponder and all).
> Almost 5 years ago, in *August 2016!
> 
> View attachment 1992183
> View attachment 1992189
> *


And the fine is €11.36? Must be less than the cost of the admin


----------



## cinxxx

The toll would have been 1.66€


----------



## geogregor

What happens if you don't pay? Especially now post Brexit? I suspect not much.


----------



## cinxxx

Post Brexit? I live in Germany 
I paid anyway. Lunch today was more than that.


----------



## geogregor

cinxxx said:


> Post Brexit? I live in Germany
> I paid anyway. Lunch today was more than that.


Sorry, I saw comment from Stuu, somehow I thought it was his ticket. Silly me... 

This is cool map:


----------



## radamfi

There are roundabouts, and then there are roundabouts! It would be interesting to see a split by roundabout size. Mini-roundabouts, roundabouts one lane wide and large roundabouts with more than one lane. I'm not a fan of big roundabouts. They don't feel safe to me. The ones in the Netherlands that physically separate the lanes are better.

I wonder whether signalised roundabouts count in those maps? It is debatable whether they are still roundabouts.


----------



## keber

geogregor said:


> Sorry, I saw comment from Stuu, somehow I thought it was his ticket. Silly me...
> 
> This is cool map:


I drove about 11500 km in US and never saw a roundabout. Where are they hiding them?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Carmel, Indiana


----------



## cinxxx

I saw one near some national park but if I remember correctly, there was no yield sign, so those entering it would actually have priority...


----------



## radamfi

radamfi said:


> I'm half Hungarian. 7 years ago I wrote this, when I first considered the possibility of getting a Hungarian passport:
> 
> 
> 
> These replies made me forget about it, because I thought it would be too difficult to learn Hungarian and obviously the UK had no chance of leaving the EU :
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I recently decided I was going to learn Hungarian as I wanted my EU freedom of movement back. I joined a Facebook group about Hungarian citizenship to learn about the process. I then realised that because my father is Hungarian, I automatically became Hungarian at my birth, so I don't need to learn Hungarian! The Hungarian embassy confirmed this. I had to get my father's birth certificate from Hungary and fill in a form in Hungarian to register my birth and to get confirmation of my citizenship. The embassy just emailed me to confirm that I am indeed Hungarian although there is still some processing required before I can get my passport.
> 
> So I don't want Hungary to be thrown out of the EU!


So I now have my Hungarian birth certificate and some kind of ID card! 
I now know for sure that I'm an EU citizen again! 

@Attus (or anyone who knows) can I ask a question about the card? The card is like this:

























Home


The European Council and the Council of the EU are served by a single administration, the General Secretariat of the Council (GSC).




www.consilium.europa.eu





The number there is supposed to be my personal identification number, but there is a different number on my birth certificate, totally different format, starts with SZ.

Can you explain these numbers?

Also, why does the card have my mother's maiden name?

What is the purpose of this card, given that it isn't an ID card that can be used for travel?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> I'm trying to make the most of the weather:


I've been near Madrid for a few days and the weather forecast through weather apps turned out to be total nonsense. The automated forecast was 28-30 degrees and sun every single day for 2 weeks. The reality was anything between 15 and 32 degrees with severe thunderstorms, but also sunny and clear. The radar forecast is not reliable either, even just 1 or 2 hours ahead. 

Spain has seen some unsettled weather in recent days, with even some very localized flash flooding. Right now it's sunny and warm again. Time for an alcohol-free beer now. 😎


----------



## radamfi

There seems to be warm weather forecast for London next week. Monday 26, Tuesday 27, Wednesday 26 degrees.


----------



## Attus

radamfi said:


> I now know for sure that I'm an EU citizen again!


Cheers  



> @Attus (or anyone who knows) can I ask a question about the card? The card is like this:
> (...)
> What is the purpose of this card, given that it isn't an ID card that can be used for travel?


In the 90's (I can't remember the exact year) a Hungarian court decided, it is not allowed to have the address in the normal ID card, for privacy reasons. Since then Hungarian citizens have two cards, the normal ID card, and the for the address. Even citizens having no address in Hungary (e.g. me) have it, in this case for the address you have "Külföldi cím", i.e. "Address in abroad". 
Authorities may only ask for this card, if they actually need your address. 



> The number there is supposed to be my personal identification number, but there is a different number on my birth certificate, totally different format, starts with SZ.


It is your personal identification number, the other one is only the number of the birth certificate, i.e. the exact document itself. 



> Also, why does the card have my mother's maiden name?


Since the usage of the personal number is restricted (for privacy reasons), in Hungary usually three data are used for identifying a person:

full name (own maiden name, if it's different)
birthdate
mother's maiden name.
Most Hungarian official documents have them.


----------



## Kpc21

Poland has declared the state of emergency in 183 municipalities along the border with Belarus. The reason being planned Russian military maneuvers in Belarus and a migration crisis at the Polish-Belarussian borders (for some weeks, the Belarussian government is trying to... forcibly push refugees/immigrants from Iraq through the Polish border, in illegal places).

The restrictions introduced there due to the state of emergency are:
– no right to organize public gatherings,
– no right to organize mass art and entertainment events,
– obligation to carry your ID card (or school ID if you are underage and you are a school student) with you,
– no right to photograph the border infrastructure as well as police officers, border guard officers and soldiers, or to record them on video,
– right for the government to close some areas from public access,
– limitation of the right to access the public information,
– no right to carry firearm, ammunition, explosives with you.

The government argues that they are afraid of possible provocation from Belarus. And that similar states of emergency have already been introduced by Lithuania and Latvia.

This state of emergency is going to last for 30 days.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> So I now have my Hungarian birth certificate and some kind of ID card!
> I now know for sure that I'm an EU citizen again!


Congratulations on becoming the EU citizen... again 



Kpc21 said:


> Poland has declared the state of emergency in 183 municipalities along the border with Belarus. The reason being planned Russian military maneuvers in Belarus and a migration crisis at the Polish-Belarussian borders (for some weeks, the Belarussian government is trying to... forcibly push refugees/immigrants from Iraq through the Polish border, in illegal places).


Ok, let's look at the details:



> The restrictions introduced there due to the state of emergency are:
> – no right to organize public gatherings,
> – no right to organize mass art and entertainment events,


Why? Is it to intimidate some of the organizations and charities supporting immigrants and refugees? How about concert?



> *no right to photograph* the border infrastructure *as well as police officers, border guard officers and soldiers, or to record them on video,*


WTF? Are we still a democratic country? Why shouldn't I be able to record police officers or border guards carrying out their duties? Do they want to hide something?



> – right for the government to close some areas from public access,


I can understand that.



> – limitation of the right to access the public information,


Why? What's there to hide?



> – no right to carry firearm, ammunition, explosives with you.


Perfectly sensible.



> The government argues that they are afraid of possible provocation from Belarus. And that similar states of emergency have already been introduced by Lithuania and Latvia.


Count me a cynic but government must be thanking god for this opportunity for sounding tough. They will milk it as much as they can. In fact it might be weird Kremlin game. Polish and Hungarian governments are blocking any coherent EU policy in many fields. It is in the Kremlin interests to keep PiS in power in Poland. That way they isolate Poland from the core of the EU


----------



## Dikan011

Do you Poles wake up in the morning and think about Russia and the Kremlin? 🤣


----------



## Nimróad

radamfi said:


> So I now have my Hungarian birth certificate and some kind of ID card!
> I now know for sure that I'm an EU citizen again!
> 
> @Attus (or anyone who knows) can I ask a question about the card? The card is like this:
> 
> View attachment 1997844
> View attachment 1997823
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Home
> 
> 
> The European Council and the Council of the EU are served by a single administration, the General Secretariat of the Council (GSC).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.consilium.europa.eu
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The number there is supposed to be my personal identification number, but there is a different number on my birth certificate, totally different format, starts with SZ.
> 
> Can you explain these numbers?
> 
> Also, why does the card have my mother's maiden name?
> 
> What is the purpose of this card, given that it isn't an ID card that can be used for travel?


Its rare to meet a Hungarian-born from Croatia. Congrats for being one of them!
Their number is around 14,000 only.
Btw, I'm from Zalaegerszeg.


----------



## radamfi

Nimróad said:


> Its rare to meet a Hungarian-born from Croatia. Congrats for being one of them!
> Their number is around 14,000 only.
> Btw, I'm from Zalaegerszeg.


I'm not from Croatia, I just copied those card pictures from the internet.  They were on the Council of the EU link I gave. I thought it wouldn't be a good idea to put my own card on here, in case someone decided to steal my identity.


----------



## x-type

Does each EU country use the personal identification number for civil persons?


----------



## geogregor

Dikan011 said:


> Do you Poles wake up in the morning and think about Russia and the Kremlin? 🤣


Nah, we are just weary of their "pan-Slavic friendship" bull*shit


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Count me a cynic but government must be thanking god for this opportunity for sounding tough. They will milk it as much as they can. In fact it might be weird Kremlin game. Polish and Hungarian governments are blocking any coherent EU policy in many fields. It is in the Kremlin interests to keep PiS in power in Poland. That way they isolate Poland from the core of the EU


Indeed, I also think so.



Dikan011 said:


> Do you Poles wake up in the morning and think about Russia and the Kremlin? 🤣


Those living in these areas along the eastern border... possibly...

By the way, an interesting photo from one of the Polish media...










In the bottom we have a sign telling about the state of emergency in the area. But the upper one, is a sign indicating beginnning of a village and, simultaneously, a built-up area... (like nowadays it is done normally e.g. in Germany) but such signs were removed from the traffic code somewhere in the late 1990s  Now we always have separate signs for a village/town/city (green background, white letters) and for the built-up area (white background, black silhouette of a town).

They managed to find such an ancient sign.

On a concrete pole! Another thing almost unknown nowadays.

It's probably this sign: Google Maps  This little village (with the population of 75) is now famous in the whole country because of the migration crisis.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Those living in these areas along the eastern border... possibly...


...and in a sense, where I live, our whole country could considered as "area near eastern border", and we also have relations with Russia a bit shaky. Russia is sceptical towards our love to USA/UK and a little bit Nordics, while we don't understand their WWII story and Stalinist rule after the war. No traces of May 9th celebrations in my country outside of Russian (and some other Slavic) communities.



geogregor said:


> Nah, we are just weary of their "pan-Slavic friendship" bull*shit


Sometimes I feel strange Lithuania is officialy not Slavic despite quite Slavic-influenced history, but our geography is probably very into play why Russia has interests in us. I guess it's most similar to Georgia in the Caucasus mountains. Georgia has some leanings toward U.S./Europe friendships, while Armenia is more like Russia ally. On our situation Kaliningrad region and Belarus being nearby plays extremely huge role, and we also EU/USA leaning.


----------



## riiga

x-type said:


> Does each EU country use the personal identification number for civil persons?


Sweden uses a personal identity number ("personnummer") for every citizen. It's on the form YYMMDD-XXXX and is used for pretty much all interaction with public services, banks, insurance, etc. Most people know their number by heart and often also that of their parents/kids. It forms the basis of the civil registry where everyone living in Sweden has to be registered along with their names and main address. The information is also open, anyone can look up where someone else lives or what their personal identity number is.

A similar number is used for the identification of any organisation (association, company, etc.) in Sweden, also present in a similar central registry.


----------



## Kpc21

We have PESEL (that actually states for the name of the computer system in which it identifies the person, State Electronic System for People Record). It's an 11-digit number, the initial six of it represent the date of birth, and whether the last one is odd or even (if I remember well), the gender. I remember mine by heart and as it seems, it's used similarly to the Swedish one.

Though it also happens to be used as a password, e.g. for the online resources of university libraries, or recently, for documents sent in by banks and insurance companies by email. And it is not impossible to e.g. make a fake ID and get a loan (maybe not from a bank, but from a loan company it's much easier) based on just very basic personal data, including the PESEL number. So people are concerned about giving away the PESEL number.



PovilD said:


> ...and in a sense, where I live, our whole country could considered as "area near eastern border", and we also have relations with Russia a bit shaky. Russia is sceptical towards our love to USA/UK and a little bit Nordics, while we don't understand their WWII story and Stalinist rule after the war. No traces of May 9th celebrations in my country outside of Russian (and some other Slavic) communities.


What is the reception of the state of emergency in Lithuania? Lithuania also introduced it just in the municipalities along the Belarussian border, am I right?


----------



## geogregor

riiga said:


> Sweden uses a personal identity number ("personnummer") for every citizen. It's on the form YYMMDD-XXXX and is used for pretty much all interaction with public services, banks, insurance, etc.





Kpc21 said:


> We have PESEL (that actually states for the name of the computer system in which it identifies the person, State Electronic System for People Record). It's an 11-digit number, the initial six of it represent the date of birth, and whether the last one is odd or even (if I remember well), the gender. I remember mine by heart and as it seems, it's used similarly to the Swedish one.


I still remember my PESEL number even if I hardly ever use it since I left Poland for the UK. 

In the last decade I only had to use it once or twice, renewing my passport and filing the Covid passenger locator form.


----------



## Kpc21

I even remember PESELs of some people in my family though they don't remember them xD


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> What is the reception of the state of emergency in Lithuania? Lithuania also introduced it just in the municipalities along the Belarussian border, am I right?


Not following the news recently as I feel there are bigger issues (like covid politics), but I feel more issues around Belarus border, not in largest cities.

Btw, Kaunas will organize its first LGBT+ pride march in history this Saturday. City known to be more conservative than capital city Vilnius. Maybe not entirely by religious reasons, but more around sexuality and "manlihood" topics. What is interesting that Soviets (1945-1990) suppressed both sexuality topics and religion, and some legacy persisted.

Vilnius already organized few such events.

Few are triggered as expected, some protests should take (including religious ones), but me personally feel weirdly* no emotions to different sexual relationships or public events to express them. I just don't have problems with any of those stuff.

*in comparison with those who do feel emotions in those things, especially more East you go from Berlin


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> What is interesting that Soviets (1945-1990) suppressed both sexuality and religion, and some legacy persisted.


In Poland it doesn't seem like this first thing was ever suppressed (as opposed to religion), it seems to be more of a social thing related to us having not so much western-European influence.

For decades it was more like, different orientations, transgender etc. were kind of a "weirdness", people knew about the fact, but nobody was talking about that publicly.

Now it's much different as we have people that actually want to talk about these things publicly, and their opposition in form of the church, which now has much more political power (in communism, it had much social power, but none political, as the church stand in opposition to the communist Soviet-supported government).


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland it doesn't seem like this first thing was ever suppressed (as opposed to religion), it seems to be more of a social thing related to us having not so much western-European influence.
> 
> For decades it was more like, different orientations, transgender etc. were kind of a "weirdness", people knew about the fact, but nobody was talking about that publicly.
> 
> Now it's much different as we have people that actually want to talk about these things publicly, and their opposition in form of the church, which now has much more political power (in communism, it had much social power, but none political, as the church stand in opposition to the communist Soviet-supported government).


My thoughts were that some Western (particularly French) films were allowed to show in Soviet Union, but some sexual scenes were deleted.
There were no popular literature around sexuality until mid 80s
There are even jokes that there were "no sex in Soviet Union".

Maybe it was the result of no cultural influence of Western Europe since end of WWII, maybe there were indeed some suppression policies in tact. I've never lived in Soviet Union, only live/work with people who have lived there.

What I understood, homosexuality was something seen like prison stuff too, compared with orientations that are deemed illegal to this day. Even colloquial (derogatory) words are almost the same for gay and pedophile. Sometimes same word is used "p**er(ast)".

On the other hand, sexual equality was pushed in workplaces. We never reached Scandinavia levels even to this day, but there were some efforts, I guess there were more gender divisions before Soviet revolutions. I feel Lithuania is not a country with gender inequality problems, like wage gap is not very wide, there are bigger problems elsewhere.


----------



## radamfi

What always baffled me was why companies were willing to spend huge sums of money for their employees to fly business class for meetings, let alone waste working time travelling. They might be spending a tenth or more of the employee's annual salary on a single trip.


----------



## tonttula

radamfi said:


> What always baffled me was why companies were willing to spend huge sums of money for their employees to fly business class for meetings, let alone waste working time travelling. They might be spending a tenth or more of the employees annual salary on a single trip.


I don't know about business class, but especially for sales I don't think the idea of creating connections has changed at all while there is maybe a bit more window dressing around sales these days on building longer-term sales goals. If my calendar for the next 2 months is anything to go by it seems like nothing has changed as a person sitting on the other side of the table from sales people. Especially my German, Swiss and Italian counterpart have been itching to start local visits again. Something they are getting now as company visitor policies are easing up. At the same time none of my Nordic counterparts have even suggested to do local visits.


----------



## MattiG

radamfi said:


> What always baffled me was why companies were willing to spend huge sums of money for their employees to fly business class for meetings, let alone waste working time travelling. They might be spending a tenth or more of the employee's annual salary on a single trip.


The value of the business is the key decision making factor and the ticket price vs the traveller's salary is just irrelevant. Business class travel has certain strong benefits, like flexibility and not appearing at an important meeting as a zombie after an intercontinental flight. Loosing millions of company money by saving thousands in flight tickets is not a winning business case.


----------



## radamfi

MattiG said:


> The value of the business is the key decision making factor and the ticket price vs the traveller's salary is just irrelevant. Business class travel has certain strong benefits, like flexibility and not appearing at an important meeting as a zombie after an intercontinental flight. Loosing millions of company money by saving thousands in flight tickets is not a winning business case.


Some companies, famously including Ikea, have a economy only policy for business travel and they seem to do OK.


----------



## Suburbanist

Daytime continental flights in economy are fine. European airliens don't even have much distinction on their business seats for these intra-Europa flights, it is often middle seat empty and more legroom. Which is fine paying for, if it did not cost, often, 3x as much. 

Zurich and Frankfurt are some of the worst airports in regard of price differential of short-haul business class.

In international overseas travel, the difference is huge, since business class means a lie-flat sea that allows the passenger to sleep. That makes a tremendous difference in terms of jet lag or how rested the person is, especially I guess for frequent fliers.

I think in person business will return, not as much. My hint is that "contact and relationship" visits or those comprising active participation will come back. Internal company travel just to keep tabs on teams, training meetings and the like are doomed to be permanently reduced I'm afraid. I also think Covid19 put the nail in the coffin in terms of several old-school firms (such as traditional major banks, large law partnerships) whose senior older stuff couldn't be bothered making Skype calls (RIP Skype), or who relied on flying people from several countries for a large meeting where every participant had 20-30 min to say something of which only a few others in the large meeting room would have any reason to be interested in hearing or knowing about.


----------



## MattiG

radamfi said:


> Some companies, famously including Ikea, have a economy only policy for business travel and they seem to do OK.


Better not to compare apples to oranges.

As said, the business case talks. Ikea is in a B2C retail business, and I believe their suppliers are those ones who fly into Sweden. A sales director or a top specialist at a paper machine vendor would have a totally different travel profile.

It is a part of the corporate brand image of Ikea to pretend saving money everywhere. We do not know what their travellers receive as a compensation for joining the theatre.

Most people are zombies after a 10-16 hour overnight trip crossing 6-10 time zones in the coach class, and not able to work without a recovery day. That would imply additional hotel and other cost and loss of efficiency.

There are people traveling for business for 100-200 days a year. Traveling is not glorious to them, like it may be to those ones making a trip to Ibiza every third year. Usually, the contribution of those people well exceeds the travel cost, and it would be a torture to force them to travel in utterly uncomfortable conditions. At least, it would be a quick way to get rid of them.


----------



## Suburbanist

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> There are already 23 flights daily in each direction Trondheim-Oslo. I tried to book a week from now, and a lot of the flights were already full. During the COVID-19, we have got an additional national carrier, so now four companies are competing on the route (Wizz air was also in for a short while, but pulled out following massive negative publicity regarding their HR policies.
> 
> Nationally, the number of domestic / international /offshore /total pax were down by 29 % / 76 % / 8.1 % / 50% in August 2021 compared with 2019, while movements were down 9.3% / 62 % / 5.3% / 21 % (total also including "other civil flights" for movements). I think the traffic has picked further in September, especially internationally, as many people became fully vaccinated in August / early September.


They have 29 scheduled flight Bergen- Oslo for next weekdays from Flyr (3), SAS (12), Norwegian Air (9) and Wilderøe (5). Wilderøe flies to a secondary airport, though, in Oslo. There are also some 3 or 4 additional Bergen-Oslo flights with stops in Østra-Volda, Songdal and somewhere else I forgot, in small planes.


Bergen and Oslo are rather close by air, but even the fastest rail service takes >6h, and driving takes around 7h to 7h30min.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^ Interesting. I did not count flights to Torp/ Sandefjord, which I assume you mean, as only Ryan Air would call that Oslo ;-) Nevertheless, if I include Torp, I only get up to 26 flights Trondheim - Oslo, which normally is slightly busier than Bergen - Oslo. I believe part of the reason is that more of the international travel to /from Trondheim is routed via Oslo. Both Bergen - Oslo and Trondheim - Oslo are normally among the top 10 busiest air routes in Europe, and Oslo - Stavanger is not far behind.


MattiG said:


> The fastest connection is 5:25 minutes, while the three direct daytime Oslo-Trondheim trains travel the shorter route in 6:32-6:49 hours, and have almost a double price tag.


It should also mentioned in this forum that Norwegian highways are on average behind the Finnish ones in terms of travel speed. Oulu-Helsinki is 6:23 according to Google maps, while Trondheim - Oslo is only slightly shorter in time at 6:09, despite that the former is significantly longer in distance. Train travel has only a small fraction of the passenger traffic between major Norwegian cities.



radamfi said:


> What always baffled me was why companies were willing to spend huge sums of money for their employees to fly business class for meetings, let alone waste working time travelling. They might be spending a tenth or more of the employee's annual salary on a single trip.


In our company we are instructed to always select flexible tickets, which also includes e. g. priority in security checks and access to lounges. Hours spent on airports are much more expensive than the premium of the tickets in Europe. It is also more feasible to do some work in airport lounges. I normally don't fly business on intercontinental flights, though, as that could be very expensive. Most of my travels are within Europe, though. If I flew frequently to e. g. Asia or America I would have insisted on business for health reasons.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't know, I assumed there was a sizable amount of people who liked that kind of travel opportunities for work. Maybe not Helsinki - Oulu, but to Paris, London, Milan, etc.


Quite often was it so: I flew to Berlin, from airport by taxi to the client's office, and after the meeting by taxi back to the airport. In this case, it does not matter at all, if it's Berlin, Paris, Helsinki, or a small town in the middle of nowhere, you see nothing of it.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Yes, that's more or less how it has been for European travels also for me. Quite often, meetings are even held at the airport hotels. Hence, I hope that more meetings can be done online also after the pandemic, as it saves a lot of time.


----------



## Slagathor

I've worked for both governments and businesses over the years and from talking to (former) coworkers, I've noticed a trend.

In government circles and similar industries, there's going to be a huge increase in online meetings. In those circles, there's a ton of meetings of _a coordinating nature_. Take the EU, for example: it has literally tens of thousands of project groups where every member state has one or more civil servant participating in a certain project. Before, those project groups would meet in Brussels (or a capital state of a presiding nation) once a month or so to catch up on how everything is going and what the next steps should be. Those meetings have all been taking place online since early 2020, and there's no urgent reason to go back to in-person meetings. The added benefit of meeting in person is extremely limited.

On the other extreme, there's the sales people in the private industry. If you've got a product to sell, you really need to be making your pitch in person. You want to talk to someone up close and bring the product with you so the prospective customer can touch it, feel it, try it out... The past year-and-a-half, they've tried to make this work by mailing the product and having online meetings, but that's not nearly as effective. Those folks will get back to traveling asap.


----------



## Attus

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I hope that more meetings can be done online also after the pandemic, as it saves a lot of time.


Yes, but it has a backside as wel.. Now, that we all have online meeting tools installed, it's quite usual to have a meeting of ten people for a topic what was discussed by two people in a phone call before the pandemic. I had 2-3 meetings weekly when I really can't see why I must participate, I sit there thirty minutes or two hours, without any sense.


----------



## Slagathor

Attus said:


> Yes, but it has a backside as wel.. Now, that we all have online meeting tools installed, it's quite usual to have a meeting of ten people for a topic what was discussed by two people in a phone call before the pandemic. I had 2-3 meetings weekly when I really can't see why I must participate, I sit there thirty minutes or two hours, without any sense.


lol yes, I have one or two of those every week as well. And every time I'm like: "Why am I here?"


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> Yes, but it has a backside as wel.. Now, that we all have online meeting tools installed, it's quite usual to have a meeting of ten people for a topic what was discussed by two people in a phone call before the pandemic. I had 2-3 meetings weekly when I really can't see why I must participate, I sit there thirty minutes or two hours, without any sense.


In my company, this disease even got a name: meetingosis 

Although if you don't feel you can bring any benefit for the meeting, why do you even participate in it?


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I can see that, but my calendar was pretty booked as it was, and in digital meetings it is easier to focus on other stuff in sections where your participation is not really needed.


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I can see that, but my calendar was pretty booked as it was, and in digital meetings it is easier to focus on other stuff in sections where your participation is not really needed.


Lusers only have no overlapping meetings in the calendar. When there are overlaps, one can tell every organizer that sorry, there is another priority meeting, and then skip all those meetings.


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## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> Although if you don't feel you can bring any benefit for the meeting, why do you even participate in it?


Because no one asks if I want to.


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## Suburbanist

The pandemic killed the cold phone business call. I hope it stays that way. Other than in settings like a live construction site or some emergency/support capacity, non-scheduled calls tend to be disruptive of the workflow.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> Because no one asks if I want to.


But is it so that if you get added to a meeting and it appears in your calendar, you must obligatorily attend it, even though you know that it will bring no added value?

In my company it doesn't work like that... Indeed people tend to invite people they don't want to meetings (and the same problem, on even larger scale, applies to e-mails – there is often a chain of "reply all" e-mails where you appear and then it's not even possible to sign out of that) – but nobody forces you to actually attend one, if you aren't actually needed (or sometimes it just may be in the interest of you or your team to be there, then you also appear because e.g. you have to tell something).



Suburbanist said:


> The pandemic killed the cold phone business call. I hope it stays that way. Other than in settings like a live construction site or some emergency/support capacity, non-scheduled calls tend to be disruptive of the workflow.


At my work, I often have to ask people who opened issues in the ticket system some questions about details they forgot to mention. They often come to mind already after I start dealing with an issue. Then it's really beneficial for me if I can get a quick answer from the author of the issue.

Technically, I can:
– ask a question through the ticket system,
– write an e-mail to someone,
– write to someone on the company IM (now it's MS Teams in our company; previously it was Skype for Business),
– call someone on the company IM,
– call someone on the phone.

Asking a question through the ticket system usually ends up with suspending the issue for weeks – because people tend not to notice the e-mails notifying about a new question to an issue in the ticket system. So usually I usually don't even try that. I don't like having a single issue open for a long time, I like to close one as soon as possible. It creates a feeling of "having a thing done and dealt with".

Usually I write to people on the company IM. Then – sometimes people answer immediately. Sometimes they don't answer at all and this is a little bit annoying, because I don't know whether I can expect the answer in, like, 2 minutes, or should I temporarily forget about this specific issue, start another one, and later be surprised when someone answers, and I don't even remember what the whole thing was about. The worst it is when someone answers something like "hi", but then when I explain my problem and what I need from him, this person suddenly disappears... And I totally don't know what to do.

Calling someone on the phone would solve such a problem immediately, but as I myself don't like being called, especially with some sudden issues or questions, I use it only on special occasions, like, when someone tells me the case is urgent, but then when I need some extra information, he doesn't answer at all on the company IM.

But it also happens to me, when people suddenly, even without any text question if they can call, call me either on Teams, or on the phone, and then ask some kind of a general question, not being anything urgent, or anything like that... I don't like it most.


----------



## keber

In Slovenia we have relatively low rate of covid vaccination. So from today we need to show our covid passports for almost everything, that includes entering shopping malls, bars and restaurants, theaters, cinemas, sport venues, all other services and shops, using all public transport, gas stations (yes, even for just simple filling up a car with gasoline) and all employed people (not just public services) that are not working from home. Covid passport is needed even for going to a doctor if it is not an emergency and also for children from 12 years onward.
I think just China had such covid passports regime in the past. Of course demand for vaccination dramatically rose in recent days as it is really impractical to test every 48 hours to do anything except shopping in smaller grocery shops and farmacies (which are exempted).


----------



## Suburbanist

Post boxes in Norway are huge. At the same time, Posten loves to deliver packages that would fit the boxes to collection points.


----------



## radamfi

Suburbanist said:


> Post boxes in Norway are huge. At the same time, Posten loves to deliver packages that would fit the boxes to collection points.


Don't they leave the packages with a neighbour or outside the door? They do that here most of the time these days, especially since Covid, so you rarely have to collect afterwards. Surely the chance of theft is low in Norway?


----------



## Attus

I, too, visited rural places in the Netherlands several times. The Dutch have qite an interesting population structure, it's the opposite of that of Belgium  Their towns are very densely built and populated, with pretty much rural land between them. OK, right, it is not like Russia, has much more rural areas than people may think.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch cities and towns aren't really that dense either. By far most people live in single family houses with a yard and car in front. There isn't as much detached housing, but the density is a balance between providing single family houses while not sprawling out the entire countryside. I would say that Dutch cities and towns are 'compact' rather than 'dense'. Of course there are some dense pockets here and there but the vast majority of city limits are not really that dense. 

However there has been a downside to the preservation of rural land as farmland. Although it looks green and open, almost all land is intensively used, the Dutch agrarian sector has a very high output, but at the expense of natural habitats. That's why we have the nitrogen crisis now. There has been a lot of large-scale farms with enormous amounts of animals per hectare (often in mega barns instead of in the fields).


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Suburbanist said:


> Something common (not sure if only in Vestland/Hordaland or also elsewhere in the country) are historical housing developments that were done on private land and remain private. This means adjacent homeowners own the small street that gives access to their houses, and are responsible for maintaining it, and so the poles an other wiring system. There can be a huge chunk of wires branching out of the main public street pole, where BKK (the local grid company) boxes are, to the houses. Bergen soil is rocky in most neighborhoods, thus expensive to excavate.


I missed this one, but normally the grid owners' responsibility extends at least to the wall of the house, not only the property border. I would be surprised if BKK leave (or is allowed to leave) the responsibility of an areal wire to its customers. Before, the grid owners' responsibility often extended to a fuse box inside the house, but now there is normally a fuse at the wall instead. 

Usually you need to accept whatever power lines the grid company wants across your property, as part of the terms of delivery. They can also expropriate.


----------



## radamfi

It is not a major surprise that the Netherlands has mostly single family homes. Most people live in towns with a population less than 100,000. In towns so small you wouldn't expect a lot of flats, in any country.


----------



## PovilD

I feel Netherlands has this tendency to spread evenly its population throughout the country, not having very large population concentration centre. 

When I been to 1m+ city like Copenhagen, I was thinking if we need such large cities, maybe cities could be evenly spread with maybe 100-500k population, divided by nature areas. Maybe Ruhr or Katowice model would be ok, if we need to place lot of people in limited geographical area.

Lithuania is also similar in this regard, where first and second largest cities don't have vast difference in population size: 340k vs. 550k

In comparison many surrounding countries have very large largest city and the rest are tertuary-level cities. I'm talking about rest of Baltics and Nordic countries, it also applies to Višegrad states like Czechia, Hungary. Slovakia is somewhat more similar to Lithuania too.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> In towns so small you wouldn't expect a lot of flats, in any country.


Spanish towns are surprisingly dense, much more people live in apartment buildings in such towns and small cities than in most other European cities of that size. I think this may have to do with post-civil war reconstruction and water access.


----------



## volodaaaa

PovilD said:


> I feel Netherlands has this tendency to spread evenly its population throughout the country, not having very large population concentration centre.
> 
> When I been to 1m+ city like Copenhagen, I was thinking if we need such large cities, maybe cities could be evenly spread with maybe 100-500k population, divided by nature areas. Maybe Ruhr or Katowice model would be ok, if we need to place lot of people in limited geographical area.
> 
> Lithuania is also similar in this regard, where first and second largest cities don't have vast difference in population size: 340k vs. 550k
> 
> In comparison many surrounding countries have very large largest city and the rest are tertuary-level cities. I'm talking about rest of Baltics and Nordic countries, it also applies to Višegrad states like Czechia, Hungary. Slovakia is somewhat more similar to Lithuania too.


It has touched my heart 💕 calling Bratislava a "very large" city. No kidding, I got your point 🤣

Edit: I've misread the period.


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> Spanish towns are surprisingly dense, much more people live in apartment buildings in such towns and small cities than in most other European cities of that size. I think this may have to do with post-civil war reconstruction and water access.


Yes, definitely, we have discussed this before. Towns/villages with a few thousand people have 5 or 6 storey apartment blocks in Spain, and they have very little sprawl compared to elsewhere, which is odd considering the pressure on land is completely different to the Netherlands or UK.. The only other country similar is Turkey, which again is strange superficially as they have thousands of miles of emptiness


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's not Scandinavia of course, but the Netherlands has more rural land than you'd expect. There isn't much exurban development so once you leave the city there's usually an abrupt transition to rural land (as in: farmland, nature reserves, villages).
> 
> For example this location: Google Maps It's only 4 kilometers from the inner city of Utrecht yet it looks like any rural area.


Last year my son and I went by train from Rotterdam to Hamburg. I have driven across the NL-DE border before but never taken the train. It is so obvious how much more managed and organised the Netherlands is compared to Germany, which as someone brought up in the UK is kind of hard to believe. Germany has always been held up as an example of efficiency and productivity (something that a quick glance at the Autobahn thread obviously dispels), whilst the Netherlands is generally seen as a beacon of individuality and laissez-faire freedom, mostly because of the dope and red light zones which are all the average Englishman knows about the place


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## PovilD

volodaaaa said:


> It has touched my heart 💕 calling Bratislava a "very large" city. No kidding, I got your point 🤣
> 
> Edit: I've misread the period.


I understand you  Lithuania is unique case in the region with how population spread. Not many would think or know that. We joke around Latvia or Estonia having "one city" and the rest are towns.

Bratislava is even smaller than Vilnius.

Vilnius is smaller than Riga despite country Lithuania is larger than Latvia.


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## metacatfry

apparently, When Sweden took power in Vilnius, back during the height of their power in the middle ages, Vilnius was the largest city in the empire.


----------



## PovilD

If Lithuania chose Latvia or Estonia city development path, Vilnius would be by far largest city in The Baltics, one of the larger cities in North Europe too with population probably exceeding 1m people.

Due to its history, Vilnius would need to speed up development quick in Soviet times, but probably in the end it would resemble Minsk with most of city being Soviet commieblocks, and after Soviet collapse who knows if the city would face depopulation problem as rest of country, like it was the case with Riga in Latvia.

Now the city is smaller, but actually growing with lots of internal migration, and although there are still lot of Soviet commieblock districts, many new modern developments are happening too. We can see more Nordic architecture elements there as well.

Other cities would probably be smaller, like size of Šiauliai or Klaipėda. Kaunas and Klaipėda would probably be at 100-200k range, the other towns would be not larget than 50k probably. I would expect most Soviet development in Vilnius, and just little Soviet development in other cities.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> They are an issue in large cities, because they take up space, but in cities the distances aren't large, so these capacitance issues are also less significant, and high-voltage lines in cities do get buried, as I have even shown.
> 
> From what I know, in the center of Warsaw there is even an underground high-voltage/medium-voltage transformer station – which normally take up quite a lot of open-air area.


In London National Grid is investing heavily in tunnels to run high voltage cables. It is the only practical option in dense metropolis. They are tunneling another 30 km stretch in south London

Project summary – London Power Tunnels

Couple of years ago they finished other stretches in north and west London.

London Power Tunnels - Wikipedia

Those are major infrastructure projects that not many people are aware about.


----------



## MattiG

geogregor said:


> In London National Grid is investing heavily in tunnels to run high voltage cables. It is the only practical option in dense metropolis. They are tunneling another 30 km stretch in south London
> 
> Project summary – London Power Tunnels
> 
> Couple of years ago they finished other stretches in north and west London.
> 
> London Power Tunnels - Wikipedia
> 
> Those are major infrastructure projects that not many people are aware about.


The tunnel diameter is that huge becase of the heat generated. Unlike cabling, the overhead lines do not need special arrangements for cooling or insulation.

There are some cut-and-cover projects in the UK, too. According to the regulations, the 400 kV transmission needs 18 wires in groups of three. The area needed for such a line is almost as wide as the width of an overhead line. An underground line needs service points in quite short intervals. In general, tunneling is better from the maintenance point of view, while much more expensive than cut-and-cover.

Such projects seem to be somewhat easier at the colder latitudes. A new 400 kV feed to Helsinki is in the planning phase. The length of the line would be 10-12 kilometers depending on the route selected. There will be six wires in the depth of 130 cm, and protected by concrete slabs. The cut-and-cover trench would be about five meters wide, and the construction needs a 20-meter wide work area.


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> The tunnel diameter is that huge becase of the heat generated. Unlike cabling, the overhead lines do not need special arrangements for cooling or insulation.
> 
> There are some cut-and-cover projects in the UK, too. According to the regulations, the 400 kV transmission needs 18 wires in groups of three. The area needed for such a line is almost as wide as the width of an overhead line. An underground line needs service points in quite short intervals. In general, tunneling is better from the maintenance point of view, while much more expensive than cut-and-cover.
> 
> Such projects seem to be somewhat easier at the colder latitudes. A new 400 kV feed to Helsinki is in the planning phase. The length of the line would be 10-12 kilometers depending on the route selected. There will be six wires in the depth of 130 cm, and protected by concrete slabs. The cut-and-cover trench would be about five meters wide, and the construction needs a 20-meter wide work area.


130 cm? Isn't it too shallow for 400 kV?


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## Stuu

This is being installed about 30km from my house, the overhead line is being put underground through the Mendip hills as part of the connection to the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant. This is one of 12 cables being laid to carry 400kV. The website says the trench is dug 1.8m deep and then the bottom is lined with sand before the cables are put in









Also as part of this project a new design of overhead pylon is being used for part of the route


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> 130 cm? Isn't it too shallow for 400 kV?


The figure is copied from the preliminary plans. A figure of 150 can be seen in some versions. The detailed planning is ongoing.


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## ChrisZwolle

American style transport in the Netherlands. The owner of this vehicle received a € 4400 fine for transporting freight in a combination over 7.5 tons without a tachograph.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1439927361592512515


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## volodaaaa

Lol


----------



## Attus

There is a turbulence in Hungary that will be stronger and stronger. In spring/summer Hungary vaccinated many people, and the campaign was so successful, because Hungary used Chinese (Sinopharm) and Russian (Sputnik V) vaccines, too. They are almost as effective as Pfizer or Moderna, so I think using them saved lives. 
However, those vaccines are not accepted in the majority of European nations. I.e., people vaccinated by them, are not allowed to travel, or, in some countries, they may enter but nay not visit any events, may not go to a restaurant, or book a room in a hotel. But they are actually vaccinated, so it's strictly forbidden to vaccine them again using some other vaccines. They are actually in a trap.


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## Attus

Vaccine usage in Hungary (second dose, data from early September, rounded):
Moderna: 330,000
BioNTech/Pfizer: 2,480,000
Sinopharm: 1,020,000
AstraZeneca: 580,000
Sputnik V: 900,000
Johnson&Johnson (1 dose): 110,000


----------



## volodaaaa




----------



## ChrisZwolle

A pro crash in Argentina:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1439952605556453381


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> There is a turbulence in Hungary that will be stronger and stronger. In spring/summer Hungary vaccinated many people, and the campaign was so successful, because Hungary used Chinese (Sinopharm) and Russian (Sputnik V) vaccines, too. They are almost as effective as Pfizer or Moderna, so I think using them saved lives.
> However, those vaccines are not accepted in the majority of European nations. I.e., people vaccinated by them, are not allowed to travel, or, in some countries, they may enter but nay not visit any events, may not go to a restaurant, or book a room in a hotel. But they are actually vaccinated, so it's strictly forbidden to vaccine them again using some other vaccines. They are actually in a trap.


The same issue applies to people vaccinated outside central and western Europe... In countries which generally used the Chinese and the Russian vaccines.

It's already quite long for those vaccines still not being accepted in the EU...


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> The same issue applies to people vaccinated outside central and western Europe... In countries which generally used the Chinese and the Russian vaccines.


True, but not so many people from Mozambique or Mongolia want to visit Austria, but quite many Hungarians.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Highways & Autobahns forum reached 100 million views today.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Attus said:


> There is a turbulence in Hungary that will be stronger and stronger. In spring/summer Hungary vaccinated many people, and the campaign was so successful, because Hungary used Chinese (Sinopharm) and Russian (Sputnik V) vaccines, too. They are almost as effective as Pfizer or Moderna, so I think using them saved lives.


Yes, Sinopharm and Sputnik V save lives, but the indications are that they are not nearly as effective as the Pfizer/Biontech, Moderna and Astra-Zeneca vaccines. https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-828021/v1_covered.pdf?c=1629920029 

Sputnik V is approved by neither WHO nor EMA, Sinopharm is approved by WHO but not EMA. I am sure they would be approved if they provide the right documentation that pass the mark. Regulations need to be based on something.


----------



## PovilD

Sputnik is probably closer to AZ by effectiveness than China inactivated virus ones. The problem is no trust with limited info around Sputnik.


----------



## Kpc21

Still it's discriminating people, who maybe had no chance of getting vaccinated with another vaccine. Now they are in a deadlock. To me, it's a violation of fundamental human rights. Someone is treated worse because he got vaccinated with a vaccine made in a "wrong" country...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This may also be an issue for Europeans traveling to the United States, where AstraZeneca is not approved.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Traveling wherever you want is not a fundamental human right.


----------



## Kpc21

In my opinion it should be, but still – treating someone better or worse, depending on with which vaccine he or she was vaccinated, even if one had no choice, is straight discrimination. And freedom from discrimination rather is a human right.

I would understand it in some kind of a transition period, but now it lasts definitely too long... Nobody really cares about the pandemic any more, but these weird and discriminatory rules, with accepting some Covid vaccines for incoming people and some not, still apply.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I would not say that it is any more discriminating than barring people from entry just because they are born in the wrong country, a family member was an islamist or communist, you are poor, or whatever. Immigration rules are always based on macro-scale protection or risk assessment of the country in question, and are almost always unfair on an individual basis. It was the decision of the Hungarian government to use vaccines that were not approved by EMA, and unfortunately its people now have to suffer.

Most likely, a booster would anyway be needed in rather near future, but I am not sure if this will help if the other jabs are Sinopharm or Sputnik, but this issue will also be resolved if the vaccines are approved, of course. Sputnik is perhaps the least likely to be approved as the WHO denial is due to production quality issues. Poles can currently travel to at least Norway regardless if they are vaccinated because Poland is currently "green". Hopefully "green" countries will be the norm soon, or the vaccination requirement will be lifted altogether.


----------



## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Poles can currently travel to at least Norway regardless if they are vaccinated because Poland is currently "green".


Poland luckily has not used non-approved vaccines... But some Hungarians may have this problem.



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Immigration rules (...) are almost always unfair on an individual basis.


And this is something the world should, in my opinion, do something about...



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> It was the decision of the Hungarian government to use vaccines that were not approved by EMA, and unfortunately its people now have to suffer.


And maybe it was to their (and the world's) benefit because less people died this way. But instead of getting praised, they get punished for that...

Not enough transparency of the Chinese and Russian vaccines is something it should be dealt with – but not in such a discriminatory way


----------



## radamfi

It was in the news recently that some people who had one vaccine dose in England and one in Scotland can't get a vaccine certificate.


----------



## CNGL

I've heard recently that Malta is even worse at discrimination. They demand two doses of any vaccine (one in the case of Janssen) without exceptions, and some people that got only one dose and were done because they had been infected by the coronavirus earlier have been denied entry even with a valid vaccination certificate.


----------



## Attus

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> It was the decision of the Hungarian government to use vaccines that were not approved by EMA, and unfortunately its people now have to suffer.


... and fortunately they live. Free travel is nice, but to be alive, too, is important. In my solid opinion the Hungarian government made it well. According to recent statistics Sputnik and Sinopharm vaccines are slightly less effective than mRNA ones, but much more effective than not to be vaccinated at all.


----------



## Kpc21

CNGL said:


> I've heard recently that Malta is even worse at discrimination. They demand two doses of any vaccine (one in the case of Janssen) without exceptions, and some people that got only one dose and were done because they had been infected by the coronavirus earlier have been denied entry even with a valid vaccination certificate.


Quite quickly after introducing the rule of allowing only vaccinated people into the country, they added a backdoor saying that if you can't get vaccinated for medical reasons, you can enter the country with a Covid test.



radamfi said:


> It was in the news recently that some people who had one vaccine dose in England and one in Scotland can't get a vaccine certificate.


The same problem is if one gets both doses in different countries. Unless someone is courageous enough to not tell the doctors in the country two that he has already been vaccinated in the country one, and to get de facto the third dose, being the second dose in the country two.

In theory there is single EU Covid certificate, but it seems the EU could not solve such a basic problem (and related to fundamental EU values), such as getting both doses of the vaccine in different EU countries...


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Kpc21 said:


> And this is something the world should, in my opinion, do something about...


That is a fair and idealistic position, but I do not see it coming. Too my knowledge, no developed country or territory have free immigration, perhaps with the exception of Svalbard, but even there you need to show that you can sustain yourself.


Attus said:


> .. and fortunately they live. Free travel is nice, but to be alive, too, is important. In my solid opinion the Hungarian government made it well. According to recent statistics Sputnik and Sinopharm vaccines are slightly less effective than mRNA ones, but much more effective than not to be vaccinated at all.


I don't say that the decision of using those vaccines was necessarily wrong, as you are right that it lead to higher vaccination rates. But most decisions have a cost. In this case there was a health risk involved with using unapproved vaccines, possibly a political cost for the Hungarian government within EU, and, as you point out now, problems with vaccine certificates.


----------



## PovilD

Got AZ, but no plans travelling to U.S. for probably few years at least (never been to Americas though).
I think I will get Moderna as third dose if needed.

If delta wave is the last great outbreak then it's likely more and more countries will be green.
There is no certainty around new strains or waning immunity.
There are two paths:

High prevalence at times, but milder disease for most
Constant low rates of current disease (lower transmissibility)


----------



## AnelZ

Kpc21 said:


> The same problem is if one gets both doses in different countries. Unless someone is courageous enough to not tell the doctors in the country two that he has already been vaccinated in the country one, and to get de facto the third dose, being the second dose in the country two.
> 
> In theory there is single EU Covid certificate, but it seems the EU could not solve such a basic problem (and related to fundamental EU values), such as getting both doses of the vaccine in different EU countries...


In Bosnia and Herzegovina you could have been vaccinated in Serbia with first dose and then in Bosnia and Herzegovina with second dose and it was all valid. At least, in Canton Sarajevo there was no issue regarding this.


----------



## PovilD

EU is quasi-federation, it should provide free movement, but individual countries have this "they know better" in them, and things may get disrupted.

On the other hand, they have right "to know better", it may be beneficial for current form of EU too.

People don't want EU becoming true country, but also EU is not facing real existential treat. It is probably at its best form in contemporary times.
I have pro-federalist thoughts. I think is probable future scenario where individual European countries would be too weak and won't stand for themselves, while one union would work better in global scale. Alternatives for Europe would be that some other power would take Europe (divide and rule). I don't know if this good solution for Europe.


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> European countries would be too weak and won't stand for themselves, while one union would work better in global scale.


European countries ARE to weak on their own. With all the respect for Lithuania, or Austria, or Norway, or Finland. Only USA, the EU and China can stand up to global corporations (think Apple, Google etc.) All the rest simply have to roll over and follow rules set up by the big boys.

The UK, with its delusion of grandeur, will have to learn it the hard way


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

We feel pretty powerful in the international ski federation, though ;-) (and UK has the advantage of being permanent UN security council member while the Norwegian state owns 1.4% of the global equity vales The fund). Seriously though, your argument is very true. When listening to Norwegian political debate, it sounds like everyone is looking at Norway, and hence it is very important to be a forerunner in areas like emission control. While I agree that emission control is extremely important, the reality is that the world does not give a shit what Norway thinks or does.

But if anyone caees, life is slowly returning to normal here, it seems. Yesterday, the national bank of Norway increased the poli interest rate, to a whopping 0.25 %. A further 0.75 % increase is expected within a year.


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> European countries ARE to weak on their own. With all the respect for Lithuania, or Austria, or Norway, or Finland. Only USA, the EU and China can stand up to global corporations (think Apple, Google etc.) All the rest simply have to roll over and follow rules set up by the big boys.
> 
> The UK, with its delusion of grandeur, will have to learn *is already learning* it the hard way


Fixed that for you


----------



## radamfi

It was just in the news that the EU want to standardise charging on USB-C. Apple don't like it, claiming it will stifle innovation, but they will have to go along with it. More than likely that means that iPhones will use USB-C in the whole world, not just in the EU. If a single European country made such a demand, Apple would just laugh. In reality, no single European country would dare.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> When listening to Norwegian political debate, it sounds like everyone is looking at Norway, and hence it is very important to be a forerunner in areas like emission control. While I agree that emission control is extremely important, the reality is that the world does not give a shit what Norway thinks or does.


Ha, the sentiment is exactly the same in the Netherlands. 🤭 

A weakness of the EU is its eternal internal division. That's something that'll never be changed, and why EU will almost always come third in world politics (after USA & China). 

There is also debate in Canada why it wasn't part of the 'Aukus' pact between Australia, UK and USA. Maybe Canada isn't a relevant partner anymore for those countries. Evidently the Canadian government wasn't even aware of the Aukus pact being drawn up, so the Aukus countries didn't even seriously consider Canada to be a part of it. That's a bit of a slap in the face for Canada.


----------



## radamfi

Over the last 50 years or so, Australia has been even more keen to join in with American wars than the UK, whereas Canada has been more sceptical. France has even been harshly critical (remember 'Freedom Fries'?) Neither France nor Canada were involved in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I find the whole Aukus saga baffling. Why should France care so much about being excluded? I take no pride in the fact that the UK is part of the pact. Are people in Norway frightened because they don't have any of their own nuclear submarines, even though they could probably afford them? I doubt it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Geopolitical analysts / commentators in the Netherlands are coming to the realization that the foreign policy in regards to Europe of the Biden administration may not be very different from that of Trump. The geopolitical attention has clearly shifted towards China. And this Aukus pact is seen as American support for Brexit instead of France / EU.


----------



## radamfi

When Biden came to power there was a lot made of his Irish background and so he would not tolerate any erosion of the Northern Ireland peace agreement as a result of Brexit. He made it quite clear that there would be no trade agreement with the UK if Brexit caused difficultly in Northern Ireland. He reiterated those concerns in discussion with Boris Johnson the other day. However, it seems that they have given up on a comprehensive trade agreement, so maybe the UK will behave in an even more cavalier fashion regarding Northern Ireland given it has less to lose now.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> Over the last 50 years or so, Australia have been even more keen to join in with American wars than the UK, whereas Canada has been more sceptical. France has even been harshly critical (remember 'Freedom Fries'?) Neither France nor Canada were involved in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I find the whole Aukus saga baffling. Why should France care so much about being excluded? I take no pride in the fact that the UK is part of the pact. Are people in Norway frightened because they don't have any of their own nuclear submarines, even though they could probably afford them? I doubt it.


Money. The underlying point of the deal is to provide Australia with nuclear submarines, whilst simultaneously cancelling the contract with France for diesel submarines. €56bn is a lot of money to lose. The puzzling thing is why they bothered to include the UK in it, presumably just some cover to pretend it wasn't just the Americans selling nuclear submarines to Australia


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nuclear submarines are very important platforms in power projection. They are invisible attacking platforms. They have a much greater range and duration than conventional diesel-electric submarines. 

Diesel-electric submarines can actually be quieter than nuclear submarines, but they have this ability only for a relatively short period of time before they need to recharge the batteries. Nuclear submarines have pretty much an unlimited range and the duration is only limited by the food supplies. Nuclear submarines are also much faster and do not need to be refueled for 25+ years. This gives nuclear submarines a considerable advantage over diesel submarines.

This doesn't mean that Australia will acquire nuclear weapons though. A 'nuclear submarine' in this sense means that it has nuclear propulsion, not nuclear wapens. Australia doesn't have nuclear power plants and the nuclear technology will be supplied by the US (or maybe the UK). 

The commentary in the Netherlands is that Australia pursued the 'French' approach to China for a long time because its economy is quite dependent on China. However they seen the Chinese expansion in the South China Sea and possibly beyond the first chain of islands. China is a large country, but it has few allies and China can be blocked off by naval forces due to the ring of islands around it (Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, etc.) This is a vital concept in geopolitics. Nuclear submarines play a significant role in containing this.


----------



## radamfi

People are panic buying petrol here. There is gridlock on my road because people are queuing at the nearby petrol station.

We'll probably have to start working from home again to save petrol.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> People are panic buying petrol here. There is gridlock on my road because people are queuing at the nearby petrol station.
> 
> We'll probably have to start working from home again to save petrol.


I saw your comment and wandered up to the corner where I can see my local garage... it's not gridlocked just yet but there are queues there and there never are normally. FFS


----------



## radamfi

My local bus company has just said on social media it is diverting bus routes because of queues at a petrol station (at different one, about 3 miles from here).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What is going on then? Are there fuel shortages? Are people afraid that the higher natural gas price will lead to very high petrol prices?


----------



## Stuu

BP closes some petrol stations amid HGV driver shortage


Up to 100 of firm’s UK forecourts short of at least one grade of fuel, with several forced to shut




www.theguardian.com





There are some very minor shortages, with up to 1% of the country's petrol stations closed, caused by a lack of tanker drivers not a lack of fuel.

Now the government have said there is no need to panic buy, the population seem to have taken the opposite view, unsurprisingly considering the government's actual record

The real shortage is between people's ears


----------



## volodaaaa

Slovakia in a single photo.


----------



## radamfi

I can now burn my old passport, now almost useless since 1 January...










Applying for a Hungarian passport was very easy. I went to their London embassy. They filled out the form for me and all I had to do was sign. They had a machine in the embassy that took my photo, signature and fingerprints. And it only took three weeks to arrive, including delivery from Budapest. A British passport typically takes two months to arrive and costs twice as much.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

She must've run the numbers, but € 300,000 over 25 years is only € 12,000 per year. I doubt if that is half the contribution of a multi-person household, but if it is, they're really living at near poverty levels to save money.

Inflation + wealth tax will eat away a substantial chunk of her € 300,000 savings over the next 25 years.

The pension may not be very high if she skips contribution for 25 years. Normally the final 10-15 years of employment contribute the most to your pension fund.

Also, while the cost of living will go down after children are not living at home, they eventually go up again because if you're in your 60s or over, you are more likely to hire help for things that you normally would do yourself (like small or large-scale renovations on a house).

With being retired at an early age: what would you do with all that time, while at the same time having to live on a tight budget? I can see the appeal of FIRE if you're in your 30s or 40s and having a substantial amount of wealth so you can live comfortably without having to work. But not on a minimal budget.

In my opinion, it makes more sense to plan for an early retirement in your late 50s instead of living on a tight budget in your prime years to avoid having to work.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Inflation + wealth tax will eat away a substantial chunk of her € 300,000 savings over the next 25 years.


There is the 4% rule which makes early retirement easier than it looks.









The 4% Rule: The Easy Answer to “How Much Do I Need for Retirement?”


In the world of early retirees, we have a concept that goes by names like “The 4% rule”, or “The 4% Safe Withdrawal Rate”, or simply “The SWR.” As with all thing…




www.mrmoneymustache.com





Based on historical stock market performance, as long as you withdraw less than 4% a year you should have enough money for the next 30 years. More than likely your money will grow exponentially as 4% is a worst case scenario.



ChrisZwolle said:


> In my opinion, it makes more sense to plan for an early retirement in your late 50s instead of living on a tight budget in your prime years to avoid having to work.


The problem then is you might not live very long to enjoy your retirement. Even if you live long, you might not be healthy enough to enjoy it in your later years.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> I can now burn my old passport, now almost useless since 1 January...


Well, I share your sentiment about Brexit nonsense but British passport is not too bad. And then, you never know what Hungarian government have in store so don't burn your British one just yet...  
But seriously, having two passports have its advantages. Like myself my girlfriend have two (Irish and British in her case). She is Irish and for years it was her only passport but it was full of stamps from various Middle Eastern states. So she applied for British one (which she was always entitled to due to complicated family history) before flying with me to the US on holiday. Can you imagine questioning on the border if they saw all the stamps from Iran, Syria and the likes in her Irish passport? 



> Applying for a Hungarian passport was very easy. I went to their London embassy. They filled out the form for me and all I had to do was sign. They had a machine in the embassy that took my photo, signature and fingerprints. And it only took three weeks to arrive, including delivery from Budapest. A British passport typically takes two months to arrive and costs twice as much.


I wish it was that easy to renew the Polish one. Like most people last time I renewed mine I did it while I was in Poland on holiday, a few years ago. Polish embassy is notorious for queues, delays and inefficiency. 

Also, issuing passport in the embassy is more expensive than in Poland. Embassy charges £94 while normally it costs 140PLN (around £26). Greedy bastards.


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> Well, I share your sentiment about Brexit nonsense but British passport is not too bad. And then, you never know what Hungarian government have in store so don't burn your British one just yet...
> But seriously, having two passports have its advantages. Like myself my girlfriend have two (Irish and British in her case). She is Irish and for years it was her only passport but it was full of stamps from various Middle Eastern states. So she applied for British one (which she was always entitled to due to complicated family history) before flying with me to the US on holiday. Can you imagine questioning on the border if they saw all the stamps from Iran, Syria and the likes in her Irish passport?


I'm not really going to burn it!  I may still need it to prove I'm allowed to work in the UK and to avoid the fee once the UK electronic authorisation system comes in. I'll now be able to avoid both UK and EU fees by carrying both passports when travelling.



geogregor said:


> I wish it was that easy to renew the Polish one. Like most people last time I renewed mine I did it while I was in Poland on holiday, a few years ago. Polish embassy is notorious for queues, delays and inefficiency.
> 
> Also, issuing passport in the embassy is more expensive than in Poland. Embassy charges £94 while normally it costs 140PLN (around £26). Greedy bastards.


Hungary charge a consular fee as well, but not as much as Poland. I passed the Polish consular today by accident. I didn't realise they had both a consular and embassy in London.


----------



## Shenkey

radamfi said:


> There is the 4% rule which makes early retirement easier than it looks.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The 4% Rule: The Easy Answer to “How Much Do I Need for Retirement?”
> 
> 
> In the world of early retirees, we have a concept that goes by names like “The 4% rule”, or “The 4% Safe Withdrawal Rate”, or simply “The SWR.” As with all thing…
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.mrmoneymustache.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Based on historical stock market performance, as long as you withdraw less than 4% a year you should have enough money for the next 30 years. More than likely your money will grow exponentially as 4% is a worst case scenario.
> 
> 
> 
> The problem then is you might not live very long to enjoy your retirement. Even if you live long, you might not be healthy enough to enjoy it in your later years.


4% I guess is based upon inflation and returns.
7% return 2% inflation and minimum extra.
This breaks down if returns are lower or when inflation picks up.


----------



## radamfi

Shenkey said:


> 4% I guess is based upon inflation and returns.
> 7% return 2% inflation and minimum extra.
> This breaks down if returns are lower or when inflation picks up.


The guy who invented the 4% rule thinks that a 5% rule may be more appropriate nowadays because inflation is so low.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

I just learned that an ID-card is no longer a valid travel document to enter the UK, citing security concerns. What a load of bollocks.








In post-Brexit move, European identity cards no longer accepted at UK borders


A post-Brexit rule banning the use of identification cards from the EU and European Economic Area (EEA) to enter Britain comes into force from Friday, the UK government said.




www.france24.com





I think I haven't used my passport in over ten years, even though I've visited several non-EU countries or territories during that time, including Northern Cyprus. I still have a passport just in case but still...


----------



## radamfi

Rebasepoiss said:


> I just learned that an ID-card is no longer a valid travel document to enter the UK, citing security concerns. What a load of bollocks.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In post-Brexit move, European identity cards no longer accepted at UK borders
> 
> 
> A post-Brexit rule banning the use of identification cards from the EU and European Economic Area (EEA) to enter Britain comes into force from Friday, the UK government said.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.france24.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I think I haven't used my passport in over ten years, even though I've visited several non-EU countries or territories during that time, including Northern Cyprus. I still have a passport just in case but still...


Maybe there was some argument years ago, when ID cards were just a piece of paper, but now ID cards are far more secure. Also, the UK is still allowing the Irish passport card, and ID cards from people living in the UK under the EU Settlement Scheme, so they still have to worry about the security of those.

I've ranted about this on this thread in the past. It will definitely hurt UK tourism as so many Europeans don't have passports.


----------



## PovilD

Italy had bad 2010s, I wonder if UK will not swap place in 2020s, while Italy leave stagnation period and start to see some growth.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I guess empty gas stations will hurt tourism more ;-)


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> Maybe there was some argument years ago, when ID cards were just a piece of paper, but now ID cards are far more secure.


I wouldn't say so. Poland is just now (for a few years) introducing IDs with an electronic chip, and most people have ones without. Without that it's just a piece of plastic, and it's not difficult to get a fake one on the black market.

I would also prefer not having to have a passport with me while travelling to the UK (especially accounting that several non-EU countries in Europe accept EU IDs – e.g. Serbia, Albania), but it's their right to require it...


----------



## Shenkey

What is the problem? IDs usually don't work for border crossing.


----------



## bogdymol

In Europe they do. You can travel just with ID card in all EU, plus a few other countries.

Now UK is no longer on that list. 

You can use a backdoor though: fly to Republic of Ireland with your ID, then drive to Northern Ireland (UK) as there are no border checks.


----------



## Slagathor

bogdymol said:


> You can use a backdoor though: fly to Republic of Ireland with your ID, then drive to Northern Ireland (UK) as there are no border checks.


Yeah but why would you?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Kpc21 said:


> I wouldn't say so. Poland is just now (for a few years) introducing IDs with an electronic chip, and most people have ones without. Without that it's just a piece of plastic, and it's not difficult to get a fake one on the black market.
> 
> I would also prefer not having to have a passport with me while travelling to the UK (especially accounting that several non-EU countries in Europe accept EU IDs – e.g. Serbia, Albania), but it's their right to require it...


Only now? OK. I guess my viewpoint is heavily skewed then since the Estonian ID-card has had a chip on it since introductin in 2002.

Since I saw the Covid EU green pass working flawlessly on my recent trip to Italy I think it's time to include some form of EU-wide verification for ID-cards as well.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Is it safer to travel between Kandahar and Kabul than on the Chicago expressways? 









Here's the Full List of All 185 Chicago Expressway Shootings This Year


The Chicago area has seen a total of 185 expressway shootings so far this year as of Thursday, according to Illinois State Police.




www.nbcchicago.com


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Is it safer to travel between Kandahar and Kabul than on the Chicago expressways?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Here's the Full List of All 185 Chicago Expressway Shootings This Year
> 
> 
> The Chicago area has seen a total of 185 expressway shootings so far this year as of Thursday, according to Illinois State Police.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.nbcchicago.com


They've _only_ just thought about installing plate reading cameras?


----------



## Kpc21

bogdymol said:


> You can use a backdoor though: fly to Republic of Ireland with your ID, then drive to Northern Ireland (UK) as there are no border checks.


But can't then e.g. the police somewhere in the UK require you to present your ID or passport?



Rebasepoiss said:


> Since I saw the Covid EU green pass working flawlessly on my recent trip to Italy I think it's time to include some form of EU-wide verification for ID-cards as well.


Poland has actually recently introduced a mobile app version of its ID, but it actually works only in some places, and in many others they require you to present your actual ID.

Obviously it only works within the Poland's borders, but the Covid passport is in the same app, and this is what works in the whole EU. So I can't see a reason why the ID couldn't.


----------



## MattiG

Shenkey said:


> What is the problem? IDs usually don't work for border crossing.


Love, this is Europe. Of course they work.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Kpc21 said:


> Poland has actually recently introduced a mobile app version of its ID, but it actually works only in some places, and in many others they require you to present your actual ID.


Are you obligated to carry ID in Poland?


----------



## geogregor

Well, asking for passports is totally withing the UK's rights. Maybe I'm used to traveling into countries which require passports so I don't see particular problem personally.

But I agree that it will hurt UK tourism as it might deter some casual tourists. Of course if someone really wants to come it is not a major issue but if some are looking for weekend destination they might choose some city in continental Europe rather than York, Edinburgh or Bath.

Oh and I agree it is completely pointless. I'm not buying the security excuse. I'm guessing it is largely to play to domestic audience. Remember that people here are obsessed with borders, typical example of bloody island mentality.

Of course now the major problem are not passports or IDs but testing regimes. What is really hurting the UK tourism industry at the moment is requirement for multiple testing for everyone entering the country. Before flying, after arriving etc. Who in right mind would bother when the rest of continent is open to travel without similar hassle?

Oh, this is pure gold:









Fuel supplies: Mortar tanker tailed by drivers looking for petrol


Driver Johnny Anderson says about 20 vehicles followed him to a building site in Northamptonshire.



www.bbc.co.uk







> *A tanker driver has told how he was tailed by about 20 drivers who were dismayed to discover he was not transporting petrol.*
> 
> Johnny Anderson, who drives for Weaver Haulage, was transporting 44 tonnes of mortar from Bilston, Wolverhampton, to a building site in Northamptonshire.
> 
> When he reached his destination, he saw a line of traffic backed up behind him.
> 
> "The man at the front... actually said 'You could have stopped and told us you weren't a petrol tanker," he said.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> But can't then e.g. the police somewhere in the UK require you to present your ID or passport?


There is no obligation to carry ID in the UK so that would be extremely unlikely. Even if you are driving you aren't obliged to carry your licence with you. You just have to present it to a police station within 7 days. Your lack of passport may only be noted if you were arrested and were then questioned on an unrelated matter. Given that many EU citizens are living in the UK and can still use their ID card the police probably wouldn't think it weird if you just showed an ID card. Even if you were caught without a passport, I'm not sure what the offence would be. My guess it is just the responsibility of the Border Force and/or airlines etc. to enforce the rule.

The most likely place to get caught would be on the infrequent spot checks crossing the border into Northern Ireland, which mostly occur on the Dublin - Belfast trains and coaches. Ireland and the UK have their own separate visa policies. A visa for the UK isn't valid in Ireland and vice versa. Better to cross the border by less obvious routes, for example a local bus from Monaghan to Armagh.


----------



## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Are you obligated to carry ID in Poland?


In theory not, you are only obliged to own one. In practice, having no identity document while being asked for one by the police may cause some troubles, up to getting jailed for up to 24 hours in an extreme case (like if they suspect you may be a criminal and are not able to confirm your identity otherwise).


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Also, while the cost of living will go down after children are not living at home


I missed this bit earlier. They don't have kids. That makes a big difference. If you think about the vast amount that people spend on kids, you could just cut that amount of money from your expenditure and invest it instead. So you would not have any worse standard of living than someone who has kids.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> I missed this bit earlier. They don't have kids. That makes a big difference. If you think about the vast amount that people spend on kids, you could just cut that amount of money from your expenditure and invest it instead. So you would not have any worse standard of living than someone who has kids.


Yes, having or not having children makes big difference.

We don't have and don't want to have kids. That is one of the reasons why we have decent standard of living ( but not lavish) despite our rather modest (by London standards) income.


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> Yes, having or not having children makes big difference.
> 
> We don't have and don't want to have kids. That is one of the reasons why we have decent standard of living ( but not lavish) despite our rather modest (by London standards) income.


It made me thinking.

I'm also thinking to have relatively modest life, but not too discomfort too. I'm also not trying to spend money on everything I see. Purchase must have best quality/price ratio. I don't need golden toilets, or golden cars 

This makes me also think if I prepared to create family in foreseeable future. My parents provided me with shelter and education, but I feel they don't gave me example of being parent I want to be. Parenthood for me feels like lots of money spend, and the feeling you are left out alone without proper knowledge what to expect.


----------



## Shenkey

MattiG said:


> Love, this is Europe. Of course they work.


I am not talking about Schengen. 

Usually your can only travel with an ID to countries that yours has an agreement with.


----------



## x-type

Shenkey said:


> I am not talking about Schengen.
> 
> Usually your can only travel with an ID to countries that yours has an agreement with.


Well, yes, we can do it. Schengen treaty has nothing with it.


----------



## Kpc21

The rule is that within the whole EU, one can travel with ID cards only, without passport. Schengen has nothing to do with it. Schengen is about removing the checkpoints at the borders and allowing to cross the borders at any point.
In addition, there are some extra countries that allow travellers with EU ID cards just because they like (e.g. to improve tourism), or because of some agreements.


----------



## Stuu

PovilD said:


> This makes me also think if I prepared to create family in foreseeable future. My parents provided me with shelter and education, but I feel they don't gave me example of being parent I want to be. Parenthood for me feels like lots of money spend, and the feeling you are left out alone without proper knowledge what to expect.


Kids do cost a fortune, and obviously they have an enormous impact on your lifestyle and pretty much every decision you make for 20 odd years. I never particularly wanted kids but once my son was born everything changed, it's quite incredible really. I have never regretted it and I don't know anyone with kids who does. Of course it's tough sometimes but the positives absolutely are much bigger than the negatives


----------



## MattiG

Shenkey said:


> I am not talking about Schengen.


Me neither.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Negative prices over large parts of western and northern Europe last night, whereas GB remains an island. The owners of the just opened, and record long, power cable Norway - England must have made good money. 
















World's longest undersea power cable linking Norway and UK switched on


"North Sea Link is a truly remarkable feat of engineering."




www.euronews.com


----------



## keokiracer

Is that bit of Norway so expensive because they are sending everything to the UK?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Maybe industrial processes that continue in the night hours. That part of Norway has a refinery. And perhaps some aluminium plants? They consume an incredible amount of electricity, but maybe those have their own hydropower plants that are off the main grid?


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I can only speculate. The region has no major aluminum plant to my knowledge, but has but has little wind power production and no direct international cable connection. Hence, it is maybe less exposed to short term fluctuations on the continent and in local weather.

See for instance the contrast between my region (Middle Norway) and West Norway. Note that the latter region in the electricity market is much smaller than what we normally think of as Western Norway.








Middle Norway








West Norway

Green, red, blue, and turquoise represent imported, gas, hydro and wind power, respectively. Whereas both regions imported quite a lot of power, Middle Norway also had considerable wind power production. While the hydro power production can be regulated relatively quickly up or down, a minimum production is needed since there are regulations to preserve some water flow in rivers, and some power plants have little or no reservoir capacity. Hence there was too much power available in Middle Norway while the market in West Norway was more in balance.


keokiracer said:


> Is that bit of Norway so expensive because they are sending everything to the UK?


It was not really expensive, although prices were higher than in surrounding regions. The cable to the UK actually goes from a neighboring region to the south.


----------



## Suburbanist

they will build new cables to the new mega wind project in Doggerland banks right?

That will be a sight to see when flying over.

I don't like it, however, that massive offshore wind capacity in Norway, including the protected waters behind the first islands, is being used by NIMBYs as a way to protest large windfarms that would spoil the view of mountains. There are even talks of creation of a couple national parks to outright prevent wind power development with 150m or taller towers near Songfjord or at the outer areas of the Harddanger plateau. All wind capacity in this windy part of Europe must be developed to allow the EU/EEA to move away from coal ans gas, especially when considering anti-nuclear NIMBYsm as well.
I also wonder how much capacity for geothermal production is there in Iceland. Geofarms are not entirely renewable, but still another piece of the puzzle.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Yes, there is a big potential for wind power in Norway that is currently held back by NIMBYs, and a huge potential offshore that is held back mainly by costs. There is also a bit potential for geothermal energy, both on Iceland and in other parts of Europe, but some of the energy exploited in Iceland is renewable, but not necessarily green, as the ground water being pumped up contains CO2 and other gases.


----------



## Suburbanist

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Yes, there is a big potential for wind power in Norway that is currently held back by NIMBYs, and a huge potential offshore that is held back mainly by costs. There is also a bit potential for geothermal energy, both on Iceland and in other parts of Europe, but some of the energy exploited in Iceland is renewable, but not necessarily green, as the ground water being pumped up contains CO2 and other gases.


When you pump hot pressurized water, it will eventually reduce the temperature gradient, right?

That is less an issue in Iceland, for geological reasons. Massive pumping far away from heat sources might be depleted eventually.


----------



## Suburbanist

Offshore floating wind will eventually become cheaper, but it will be necessarily more expensive than land-based wind farms. I was reading about the efficiency gains in taller towers, at least with traditional design, once towers blades are 170m long, the hypersonic speed at the outer edge of the blades starts to create too much disturbance that it produces negative gains in even longer blades, at least with the current design.

I understand that people might not want wind turbines in direct sight of the major scenic spots, but as I start to grasp, that argument of relative importance is hard to push here in Norway, people in Arna suburbs of Bergen become very defensive if one tries to argue that their little hills in a windy valley are not as relevant as the Ulriken (ironically, it has a cable car, restaurant and radio tower).

NEar Bergen alone there are sozens of uninhabited islets facing the open seas that are prime spots for wind towers. The city of Bergen itself (like most of Norway) turns its back on the open water coastline and islets, it is too harsh and water are too dangerous for recreational boating or stuff like that. The islets facing the open water are barren in part because of how they bear the burnt of oceanic wind. Yet, people in Bergen get apopletic about putting some towers over these otherwise rather unused chunks of post glacial rock.


----------



## volodaaaa

PovilD said:


> You have so many diacritic letters. Želaju znat čto tы написал (that's my poor knowledge of Slavic languages)


That is still a lot.


----------



## PovilD

volodaaaa said:


> Damn, wrong thread 🥶😅🤣🤣🤣


I was wondering if you wanted to write smth in Slovak for us 

Kadangi nelabai turime erdvės rašyti lietuviškai SSC forume, tai galite čia pasižiūrėti kaip aš rašau lietuvių kalba šioje temoje, kam įdomu 



volodaaaa said:


> That is still a lot.


Interestingly our diacritic letters is mix of Polish and Czech. Probably we are unique here. For example, Latvians invented that they don't need umlauts, they just use ā, ē, ū instead which indicate long vowels.

Polish: ą, ę... with additional * į, ų* (and why not having *ė*)
Czech: č, š, ž (but without r with _varnelė_).

In addition we use:
"Latvian": ū


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> Quite astonishing:


The Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have a combined population of 300 million, almost the same as the United States despite having a combined land area of only slightly more than New Mexico. 

And even more interesting: Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have 300 million people despite not having many large cities. There are only 8 cities with a population over 1 million, with 6 of those under 2 million. The population is still quite rural.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have a combined population of 300 million, almost the same as the United States despite having a combined land area of only slightly more than New Mexico.
> 
> And even more interesting: Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have 300 million people despite not having many large cities. There are only 8 cities with a population over 1 million, with 6 of those under 2 million. The population is still quite rural.


Why even bother (jk)  It's clear as day


----------



## Attus

Árvíztűrő tükörfúrógép.
These two words have every Hungarian diacritical letters.


----------



## Verso

Shenkey said:


> on the top, and wait a bit after writing
> View attachment 2173901


This posted already Chris, but I'm asking about finding something by a specific forumer in a specific thread (not (sub)forum). I still don't see this option.


----------



## keokiracer

^ Same screenshot: advanced search


----------



## Verso

No thread option there, just subforums.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> Árvíztűrő tükörfúrógép.
> These two words have every Hungarian diacritical letters.


These two words are the reason why I gave up learning Hungarian  I wanted to say that it is crazy when a diacritic changes the meaning, but we have similar in the Slovak language too:
stáť = to stop
sťať = to cut down (a tree)
štát = a state
šťať = to piss
stať = a short article



PovilD said:


> I was wondering if you wanted to write smth in Slovak for us
> 
> Kadangi nelabai turime erdvės rašyti lietuviškai SSC forume, tai galite čia pasižiūrėti kaip aš rašau lietuvių kalba šioje temoje, kam įdomu
> 
> 
> Interestingly our diacritic letters is mix of Polish and Czech. Probably we are unique here. For example, Latvians invented that they don't need umlauts, they just use ā, ē, ū instead which indicate long vowels.
> 
> Polish: ą, ę... with additional * į, ų* (and why not having *ė*)
> Czech: č, š, ž (but without r with _varnelė_).
> 
> In addition we use:
> "Latvian": ū


Yeah, the Lithuanian language is very specific and to me, easily recognizable. 

We have some similar diacritic letters with the Czech language, but some are exclusive:
common: á, č, ď, é, í, ň, ó, š, ť, ú, ý, ž
exclusive in the Czech language: ě, ř, ů
exclusive in the Slovak language: ä, ľ, ĺ, ô, ŕ


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> I wanted to say that it is crazy when a diacritic changes the meaning


veres = red
verés = beating
véres = bloody


----------



## x-type

Attus said:


> veres = red
> verés = beating
> véres = bloody


If _veres _is red, what kind of red are _piros _and _vörös_?


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> If _veres _is red, what kind of red are _piros _and _vörös_?


You have to ask some woman. Maybe it is a kind of Strawberry, Carnation, Magenta, Salomon, Tangerine stuff  In our speech: shades of red.


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> If _veres _is red, what kind of red are _piros _and _vörös_?


_Veres _and _vörös _are the very same, different regional way of writing and speaking. 
The difference between piros and vörös is complex, it depends on circumstances. Some things are _piros_, some are _vörös_, although the same color. The red star of the communism is _vörös_, and never _piros_, but if you have a car of the very same color, it's _piros _- except if it's a Ferrari, than it's _vörös_. 
The stop light in traffic lights is _piros _if it's road traffic but _vörös _if it's a railroad signal, although the very same color. If you speak to a railwayman and say the signal is _piros_, he'll answer you, it's _vörös_, becuase apes' ass is _piros_, not the signal.


----------



## PovilD

volodaaaa said:


> Yeah, the Lithuanian language is very specific and to me, easily recognizable.


As for CEE languages...

It's most easy for me to recognize Latvian, Polish, Hungarian. Very specific languages and their writing systems too.

Not too hard to recognize is Romanian, but you need to have longer sentences since is similar to other Romance languages.

Other West and South Slavic are relatively similar at first glance, you have to give second thought sometimes which language is written. Croat, Slovene, Czech, Slovak sometimes look similar.

Estonian could be mixed with Finnish, only that letter õ in Estonian makes it clearer, but if you don't know this feature you may just mix Estonian with Finnish. Other important feature that Finnish use way more umlauts.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PovilD said:


> Other important feature that Finnish use way more umlauts.


I don't know much about Finnish (or Estonian). Do the umlauts have the same function in pronounciation as in German or Swedish?

For example the town of Kankaanpää. Three different types of 'a': a, aa & ää. And is ää different than ä? I have no idea.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Matti can sure clarify, but I think a double vowel in Finnish has the same sound as a single one, just longer. In the Indo-European languages I know we tend to do differentiate long and short vowels by using double consonants after the shorter ones, for some reason.


----------



## x-type

Attus said:


> _Veres _and _vörös _are the very same, different regional way of writing and speaking.
> The difference between piros and vörös is complex, it depends on circumstances. Some things are _piros_, some are _vörös_, although the same color. The red star of the communism is _vörös_, and never _piros_, but if you have a car of the very same color, it's _piros _- except if it's a Ferrari, than it's _vörös_.
> The stop light in traffic lights is _piros _if it's road traffic but _vörös _if it's a railroad signal, although the very same color. If you speak to a railwayman and say the signal is _piros_, he'll answer you, it's _vörös_, becuase apes' ass is _piros_, not the signal.


Christ... This with Ferrari is the best part 😂


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Sooo, piros ~red, while vörös is its pretentious cousin (vermilion, burgundy, ruby, or whatever ;-) )


----------



## SeñorGol

ChrisZwolle said:


> International tourism to Spain was still down -50% in August 2021 compared to August 2019, however it's not as bad as June and July.
> 
> Interestingly, the only major travel group that has nearly reached 2019 levels are the Dutch. This confirms my observation in Catalonia in early September: there were Dutch license plates all over the place (though not south of the Ebro). Italian, French, German and especially British tourist numbers are still way down.


Interesting. The Spanish Statistics Institute has an application in which you can see where Spanish people travels on certain dates, based on mobile phone data. For instance, on the 15th August 2021, some districts "lost" 90% of its population, while others multiplied theirs by 2, 3 or even 4. However if you compare with the 15th August 2019, you can see that the differences aren't that extreme, which means that not as many people are moving within Spain.



https://ine.es/prensa/experimental_em4_2.pdf


Webpage: https://www.ine.es/experimental/movilidad/experimental_em4.htm
Interactive map: Experience


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

So parts of Mallorca is depopulated in August even during a normal year? That is quite interesting.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> _Veres _and _vörös _are the very same, different regional way of writing and speaking.
> The difference between piros and vörös is complex, it depends on circumstances. Some things are _piros_, some are _vörös_, although the same color. The red star of the communism is _vörös_, and never _piros_, but if you have a car of the very same color, it's _piros _- except if it's a Ferrari, than it's _vörös_.
> The stop light in traffic lights is _piros _if it's road traffic but _vörös _if it's a railroad signal, although the very same color. If you speak to a railwayman and say the signal is _piros_, he'll answer you, it's _vörös_, becuase apes' ass is _piros_, not the signal.


Seems the railway employees are at the top of the caste system in Hungary too.🤣

If you want to see a mad railway employee, call a signal a traffic light.😅


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Apparently Spain has a bit different holiday pattern than most of Northwestern Europe, in that many people in the cities travel to their hometown / home region for vacation, a trend that doesn't really exist in most of Northwestern Europe as far as I know. Except for the migrant workers from other countries. But Dutch, British or German people do not travel _en masse_ to the region they grew up in for summer vacation.


----------



## SeñorGol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apparently Spain has a bit different holiday pattern than most of Northwestern Europe, in that many people in the cities travel to their hometown / home region for vacation, a trend that doesn't really exist in most of Northwestern Europe as far as I know. Except for the migrant workers from other countries. But Dutch, British or German people do not travel _en masse_ to the region they grew up in for summer vacation.


Many people still own their parents' or grandparents' houses in rural areas, so it's cheaper for them. Each branch of the family arrange their holidays so that they can all use the house without being there at the same time, e.g. Son#1: from 1 to 15 July; Son#2 from 16 to 31 July; son #3 from 1 to 15 August, etc.

Sometimes it is very clear that people moved from poor rural areas to rich industrial areas or the province capital after the Spanish Civil War. This is for example the Sanabria area in Zamora province. If you click to see where people come from, it's Zamora city, plus the industrial areas in Madrid, Valladolid, León, Asturias and the Basque Country.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apparently Spain has a bit different holiday pattern than most of Northwestern Europe, in that many people in the cities travel to their hometown / home region for vacation, a trend that doesn't really exist in most of Northwestern Europe as far as I know. Except for the migrant workers from other countries. But Dutch, British or German people do not travel _en masse_ to the region they grew up in for summer vacation.


I wonder if this exist in more sparsely located areas and due to mass movement from rural areas to cities. I have North Scandinavia in mind, including sparsely populated areas of Spain, France, sparsely populated areas of East Europe.

Parts of my family used to visit relatives in smaller towns. It's like part of the holiday, although we also went for seaside too.

I also heard lots of stories where children went to their grandparents in rural areas during summer vacation.

In younger generation, I feel people are less often visiting rural areas as less and less people live there, but more often go to seaside and specific recreation towns (simply known as resorts).
My situation is happening to be something like that. I don't feel urge to visit relatives every year with whom I don't speak with regularly.


----------



## SeñorGol

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> So parts of Mallorca is depopulated in August even during a normal year? That is quite interesting.


"Depopulated" is a bit too much but yes, some towns in the interior lose population in August during normal years.

BTW, it's interesting that these maps confirm the common belief that people from X city prefer certain coastal or mountain towns for holidays.

La Manga in Murcia region is full of _Madrileños_


The Cerdanya in the Pyrenees is full of _Barcelonins_


And the eastern coast of Cantabria is full of _Castellanos_ but also Basques and people from the Ebro Valley


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PovilD said:


> In younger generation, I feel people are less often visiting rural areas as less and less people live there, but more often go to seaside and specific recreation towns (simply known as resorts).


Once they enter their thirties and start families, vacations also tend to change. I'm 34 and it is interesting to observe family, friends, colleagues and acquantainces my age changing their vacations from 'flying around the world' to 'car trip in Europe' over the past 5 years or so. Some have even purchased tents to go back to basic camping with their young children.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apparently Spain has a bit different holiday pattern than most of Northwestern Europe, in that many people in the cities travel to their hometown / home region for vacation, a trend that doesn't really exist in most of Northwestern Europe as far as I know.


This is actually quite common in the Nordics as well, where quite a few urban people own properties where they, their parents, or grandparents grew up. It feels like vacation because the landscape, local community and things to do often are drastically different from home. I guess you could feel the same if you lived in Amsterdam and had ancestors in the Friesian Islands, but while I guess this is not that common, many urban Nordic people have relatively close ancestors that could come from areas quite far from their cities, both geographically and culturally. As time passes by, more and more urban people are getting holiday homes in areas where they don't necessarily have any family connection. Hence, travel to the same rural area each holiday is still common for many families in Norway, and this has of course been even more evident during the last two years.

I would say approximately 90 % of my own vacations are in rural Norway. Almost all of my flights abroad are related to work.


----------



## Coccodrillo

ChrisZwolle said:


> I drove 6,700 kilometers in two week's time last month.


That's around the double I drive per year when I am alone (that is, when I choose to use a car rather than public transport). If I count trips with other people (friends or relatives) that should be another 5000 km or so, as a driver or as a passenger (most of the time it is because of somebody other's deside to travel by car, rather than mine). If I couldn't use my parent's cars (which are nearby) I woudn't own a car at all. The longest trip I did alone by car should have been around 400 km in lenght, and it was a day trip.



volodaaaa said:


> If you want to see a mad railway employee, call a signal a traffic light.😅


That's the same in Italian language. Tell an Italian or Swiss train driver than there there are _semafori_ rather than _segnali_ on railways and he will get angry with you for the rest of your life. And that's likely the same in other languages.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

A Spanish car is not a rare sight here during a (non-covid) summer. I saw one this week. I assume quite a few of them continue along the Norwegian coast to North Cape. From e.g. Madrid that would be more than 5 000 km. Each way, and with no detours.








North Cape to Madrid







goo.gl





I think Turkish trucks are a bit more common than Spanish ones, though. But the endeavors are not always entirely successful. See for instance the unlucky driver at 11:40 here....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I think Turkish trucks are a bit more common than Spanish ones, though. Which is a bit shorter. But the endeavors are not always entirely successful. See for instance the unlucky driver at 11:40 here....


It seems amazing that truck drivers from Eastern Europe or Turkey run into problems in the snow in Scandinavia. They have lots of snow in their home country (including Turkey!), why would they not be prepared?


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I guess most Turkish trucks do not venture up in their domestic mountains. But if the truck owner does not want to spend money on winter tires or chains, it is not easy to be the driver in any case.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Most of the interior of Turkey is a high-altitude plateau, most cities are around or over 1,000 meters in elevation, so they get snow quite regularly.

I saw this video from Deutsche Welle. It also touches on the driver shortage. They say that it seems unlikely that foreign drivers want to return to Britain like they did in the past. There is a truck driver shortage across most of Europe so why would they go to the UK if they can get work anywhere?






There are fairly large numbers of non-EU truck drivers, more than you'd guess from the license plates. Apparently if you spot a Lithuanian truck abroad, chances are high that the driver is a non-EU national.

This article states that out of the 77,000 long-haul truck drivers based in Lithuania, 69,000 of them are from outside the EU: often from Belarus, India, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine or Uzbekistan.









Exploitation of migrant workers widespread in Lithuania's multi-billion transport sector – investigation


An investigation by Lasivės TV details exploitation of migrant workers in Lithuania's logistics sector.




www.lrt.lt





Not to long ago I saw a tweet from a Dutch road inspector, assisting a broken-down truck. The driver was from Ecuador.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I am sure there are rough winter days in the interior of Anatolia. However, I though the inland plateau was mostly fairly flat, the sun is strong even during winter, the precipitation and relative humidity quite low, and the average temperature in e.g. Ankara is above zero for all months of the year. I have never been to Turkey or Anatolia, but I imagine the driving conditions on most days are quite far from winding Norwegian mountain roads during a stormy night. And perhaps they have the same approach as many European countries and most of US: Simply avoid driving on a snowy day. But, I am speculating ;-)


----------



## Shenkey

Port lead times are apparently decreasing since middle of September








The worst of the supply chain crisis is over


Data show that traffic through global ports is finally starting to ease as backlogs clear




www.ft.com


----------



## SeñorGol

ChrisZwolle said:


> There are fairly large numbers of non-EU truck drivers, more than you'd guess from the license plates. Apparently if you spot a Lithuanian truck abroad, chances are high that the driver is a non-EU national.
> 
> This article states that out of the 77,000 long-haul truck drivers based in Lithuania, 69,000 of them are from outside the EU: often from Belarus, India, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine or Uzbekistan.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Exploitation of migrant workers widespread in Lithuania's multi-billion transport sector – investigation
> 
> 
> An investigation by Lasivės TV details exploitation of migrant workers in Lithuania's logistics sector.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.lrt.lt
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Not to long ago I saw a tweet from a Dutch road inspector, assisting a broken-down truck. The driver was from Ecuador.


Many Spanish and Portuguese companies hire Brazilians and other Latin Americans as truck drivers. In fact I was recently asked for directions by a Brazilian driver in a truck with a Portuguese licence plate belonging to a Spanish transportation company (Primafrio).


----------



## vallzo

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Matti can sure clarify, but I think a double vowel in Finnish has the same sound as a single one, just longer. In the Indo-European languages I know we tend to do differentiate long and short vowels by using double consonants after the shorter ones, for some reason.


Finnish pronunciation is pretty much as logical as it can get, because every letter makes the same sound no matter what letters come before or after it (except for some rare cases like names or -ng). Double vocals, as you said means we prolong that sound and double consonants act pretty much the same way as in English. What's funny though is that written Finnish is based on the extremely formal spoken language which nobody speaks and makes it confusing for learners especially with all the dialects.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> I saw this video from Deutsche Welle. It also touches on the driver shortage. They say that it seems unlikely that foreign drivers want to return to Britain like they did in the past. There is a truck driver shortage across most of Europe so why would they go to the UK if they can get work anywhere?


Boris Johnson had to admit in an interview recently that hardly anyone had applied for the temporary visas for truckers. No surprise given they were going to expire at Christmas. They've now extended them to March, but that will make no difference. Sensible policy would allow truck drivers to get a proper work visa lasting at least two years, but that would go totally against the current dogmatic approach to EU immigration.


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apparently Spain has a bit different holiday pattern than most of Northwestern Europe, in that many people in the cities travel to their hometown / home region for vacation, a trend that doesn't really exist in most of Northwestern Europe as far as I know. Except for the migrant workers from other countries. But Dutch, British or German people do not travel _en masse_ to the region they grew up in for summer vacation.


Two things I can think of: firstly the weather is a lot nicer pretty much anywhere in Spain which helps, and most importantly urbanisation and industrialisation in Spain happened a lot later than in northern Europe, so people are only a generation or two removed from their "home" province, even if they have never actually lived there


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Matti can sure clarify, but I think a double vowel in Finnish has the same sound as a single one, just longer. In the Indo-European languages I know we tend to do differentiate long and short vowels by using double consonants after the shorter ones, for some reason.


The mapping the spoken to the written language is quite straightforward. By default, one phoneme is mapped to one letter. (There are some nice exceptions like "vauva" (baby) pronounced clearly "vauvva", but we can live with the basic rule.)

Yes, double vowels are written by two letters. The same basically applies to consonants. However, spoken double K, P and T are not really double but about 1.5 times of the single one. Nobody can say two K:s in line but the short and long versions are formed in different areas of the mouth.

The length of consonants and vowels is significant: tuli-fire, tuuli-wind, tulli-customs.

There are no umlauts. The letters Ä and Ö are separate letters from A and O: saari-island, sääri-leg.

There are no other diacritics for the native-Finnish words. There is no need, because the first syllable of a word is almost always the accented one. Anyway, the intonation has less significance. Listen to Kimi Räikkönen.

In compound words, if the previous word ends with the same vowel as the next word begins, a hyphen is added as a separator. It makes clear that there is no long vowel but two separate ones: linja-auto (bus) but henkilöauto (passenger car).


----------



## MattiG

vallzo said:


> What's funny though is that written Finnish is based on the extremely formal spoken language which nobody speaks and makes it confusing for learners especially with all the dialects.


I believe the case is similar in most languages. The official written language is kind of an average across a number of dialects. The written Finnish is accepted in all areas, and there is no such a mess of two competing orthographics like in Norway.


----------



## PovilD

Our centre right (or may I call them "city parties") could be called leftists by some, since they lean to Western European understanding of human rights 
Our so called centre-left (their general slogan: "for general folk") have these things: popular in rural poorer areas, but have many scandals, or at least our Vilnius media kinda oppose them. They may do few good things too, but by city voters they are seen as stagnants.

Btw, our president seem to become quite populist as he want acceptance in both vaxx and antivaxx communities. There are rumours that his presidential team has antivaxx people. I thought that he has "city parties" mentality (and maybe he is, but their tactic is seen as a bit dangerous right now due to slight tolerance to antivaxx).


----------



## radamfi

Attus said:


> But in the 90's no one told Spain, they MUST accept mass immigration from the Middle East and Africa, no one told them they MUST accept homosexuality, etc. Lot of people in Hungary say:Western Europe is full of muslims and n*gg**s (this word is commonly used in Hungary!), so Western Europe is a bad place. The cultural difference between Germany/France and Hungary did not decrease but increase in the last ten years. And what makes it even worse: many people think, the West want to force Hungary to do what the Hungarians don't want to.


Do young Hungarians typically have these opinions? My Hungarian dad was very racist, hated Jews and gypsies, but he was born in 1928.


----------



## SeanT

My grandfather (1911) and father (1940) was/is not racist. They just can not except at a minor procentage of the sociaty should decide which dirrection the country should go. The LMBTQ-xywzzs thinks and acts as this is the shit and the norme! The problem is that in W Europe the sociaty acts like that, but in CEE Europe the sociaty makes them aware of REALITY!


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> AfD in Germany is, according to my knowledge, rather a minority party, which most people don't treat in any way seriously. Kind of a similar thing in Poland is the Korwin or Confederation party (it changes names more often than... I don't know what, they do it every few years, joining or splitting with other yet smaller extreme right-wing parties) – they are monarchist, nationalist, right-wing concerning things like minority rights, against nanny state, supporting extreme forms of free market. And popular mostly among young people; people say that you grow out of supporting this party. While they have a serious program, they (especially their leader, Korwin-Mikke, yeah, the one who once said in the European Parliament that young unemployed Europeans are the "n___ers of Europe") are considered more of a meme party in our society. Still... they are in our parliament, and recently, as PiS has no actual majority in our parliament, their votes do matter.
> 
> You can't compare AfD with PiS or with the ruling party of Hungary. PiS has grown to become one of two major political parties in Poland...
> 
> And while from western European perspective they may be considered extreme right wing (but what is then the Korwin-Mikke's party I just mentioned?) – they are actually quite centrist. This is a situation when these left/right divisions don't really work well – because while they are conservative, they also are more into building a "nanny state", with introducing western-Europe-style social benefits etc. – which PO didn't want (they were more free-market-oriented).
> 
> I would say PiS follows the path of the Polish communists (from the times when we were a Soviet satellite state). Back then Poland was also a "nanny state", to much a larger extent than now and than in any western country (like, the state was even pre-organizing holiday stays for the people), and... it was also ruled in a dictatorship way. And the government was also utilizing propaganda to an enormous extent. "Cheap", low-quality propaganda, suited mostly for not well-educated people – same as PiS nowadays.
> 
> The only two things that are different are that PiS still has fully legal political opposition (as well as media which are independent of them) – and that they are with the church and support the church (and therefore, they also oppose what the church opposes), while for the communists... the church was actually the opposition (although back then things like minority rights, sex freedom etc. were never a part of the political debate... the church just wanted democracy; now we have an opposite situation).
> 
> Both back then and now, the government is looking for artificial enemies, both back then and now finding Germany and Jews among them.
> 
> But I think they found what really many people in Poland missed throughout these decades since 1989 – and they exploit that now.
> 
> 
> Talking about trade unions... In Poland it's weird because the unions are too politicized (which kind of makes sense as most political powers in Poland descend directly from one specific trade union) and often negotiating on behalf the union members and leaders themselves, and not the employees. Although there are exceptions.


Divisions in Poland follow the same pattern as in the US, the UK and quite a few countries in Europe. The old division between "left" and "right", based on economy are things of the past.

The new split is between the so called "metropolitan elites" (term popular in the UK) and "the real people". It is largely split between people inhabiting biggest urban areas and folks living in villages and towns. Between people largely (not completely) happy with diversity and multiculturalism and those who prefer old style communities, tried and tested over centuries.

There is also economic element as the first group gained more from the modern globalized economy as the second. Folks in the first group are on average younger and better educated. In the US PiS supporter would vote Republican (especially Trump variety) in the UK they would vote Conservative (especially the BoJo type, who is as populist as Kaczynski).

Couple of years ago The Economist published good analysis.









Drawbridges up


The new divide in rich countries is not between left and right but between open and closed




www.economist.com







> IS POLAND’S government right-wing or left-wing? Its leaders revere the Catholic church, vow to protect Poles from terrorism by not accepting any Muslim refugees and fulminate against “gender ideology” (by which they mean the notion that men can become women or marry other men).
> 
> Yet the ruling Law and Justice party also rails against banks and foreign-owned businesses, and wants to cut the retirement age despite a rapidly ageing population. It offers budget-busting handouts to parents who have more than one child. These will partly be paid for with a tax on big supermarkets, which it insists will somehow not raise the price of groceries.
> 
> “The old left-right divide in this country has gone,” laments Rafal Trzaskowski, a liberal politician. Law and Justice plucks popular policies from all over the political spectrum and stirs them into a nationalist stew. Unlike any previous post-communist regime, it eyes most outsiders with suspicion (though it enthusiastically supports the right of Poles to work in Britain).
> 
> From Warsaw to Washington, the political divide that matters is less and less between left and right, and more and more between open and closed. Debates between tax-cutting conservatives and free-spending social democrats have not gone away. But issues that cross traditional party lines have grown more potent. Welcome immigrants or keep them out? Open up to foreign trade or protect domestic industries? Embrace cultural change, or resist it?
> 
> In 2005 Stephan Shakespeare, the British head of YouGov, a pollster, observed:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _We are either “drawbridge up” or “drawbridge down”. Are you someone who feels your life is being encroached upon by criminals, gypsies, spongers, asylum-seekers, Brussels bureaucrats? Do you think the bad things will all go away if we lock the doors? Or do you think it’s a big beautiful world out there, full of good people, if only we could all open our arms and embrace each other?_
> 
> 
> 
> He was proven spectacularly right in June, when Britain held a referendum on whether to leave the European Union. The leaders of the main political parties wanted to stay in, as did the elite of banking, business and academia. Yet the Brexiteers won, revealing just how many voters were drawbridge-uppers. They wanted to “take back control” of borders and institutions from Brussels, and to stem the flow of immigrants and refugees. Right-wing Brexiteers who saw the EU as a socialist superstate joined forces with left-wingers who saw it as a tool of global capitalism.
> 
> A similar fault line has opened elsewhere. In Poland and Hungary the drawbridge-uppers are firmly in charge; in France Marine Le Pen, who thinks that the opposite of “globalist” is “patriot”, will probably make it to the run-off in next year’s presidential election. In cuddly, caring Sweden the nationalist Sweden Democrats topped polls earlier this year, spurring mainstream parties to get tougher on asylum-seekers. Even in Germany some fear immigration may break the generous safety net. “You can only build a welfare state in your own country,” says Sahra Wagenknecht, a leader of the Left, a left-wing party.
> 
> In Italy, after the Brexit vote, the leader of the populist Northern League party tweeted: “Now it’s our turn.” Japan has no big anti-immigrant party, perhaps because there are so few immigrants. But recent years have seen the rise of a nationalist lobby called Nippon Kaigi, which seeks to rewrite Japan’s pacifist constitution and make education more patriotic. Half the Japanese cabinet are members.
> 
> *There’s no we in US*
> In America the traditional party of free trade and a strong global role for the armed forces has just nominated as its standard-bearer a man who talks of scrapping trade deals and dishonouring alliances. “Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo,” says Donald Trump. On trade, he is close to his supposed polar opposite, Bernie Sanders, the cranky leftist who narrowly lost the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton. And Mrs Clinton, though the most drawbridge-down major-party candidate left standing, has moved towards the Trump/Sanders position on trade by disavowing deals she once supported.
> 
> Timbro, a Swedish free-market think-tank, has compiled an index of what it calls “authoritarian populism”, which tracks the strength of drawbridge-up parties in Europe. On average a fifth of voters in European countries back a populist party of the right or left, it finds. Such parties are represented in the governments of nine countries. The populist vote has nearly doubled since 2000 (see chart 1). In southern Europe austerity and the euro crisis have revived left-wing populism, exemplified by Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain. In Northern Europe the refugee crisis of 2015 has boosted the populists of the right.
> 
> Drawbridge-up populists vary from place to place, but most share a few key traits. Besides their suspicion of trade and immigration, nearly all rail against their country’s elite, whom they invariably describe as self-serving. British people “have had enough of experts”, said Michael Gove, a leader of the Brexit campaign. Mr Trump last week said that the elite back Mrs Clinton because “they know she will keep our rigged system in place….She is their puppet, and they pull the strings.”
> 
> Distrust of elites sometimes veers into conspiracy theory. Poland’s defence minister suggests that Lech Kaczynski, a Polish president who died in a plane crash in 2010, was assassinated. Mr Trump talks of “the plain facts that have been edited out of your nightly news and morning newspaper”. Panos Kammenos, a member of Greece’s ruling coalition, wonders if Greeks are being sprayed with mind-altering chemicals from aeroplanes.
> 
> Nearly all drawbridge-up parties argue that their country is in crisis, and explain it with a simple, frightening story involving outsiders. In Poland, for example, Law and Justice accuses decadent Western liberals of seeking to undermine traditional Polish values. (A recent magazine cover spoke of “Poland against the Gay Empire”.) It also plays up the threat of Islamist terrorists, who have killed no one in Poland since the days of the Ottoman Empire—but will start again, unless the government is vigilant.
> 
> Poland’s previous government, led by a party called Civic Platform, agreed last year to take a few Middle Eastern refugees—7,000 in total—to show solidarity with fellow members of the EU. Law and Justice accused them of recklessly endangering the lives of Poles. Voters kicked them out of office.
> 
> The recent string of terrorist attacks in France, Belgium and Germany has boosted support for drawbridge-raising throughout Europe. On Bastille Day a jihadist in a truck killed 84 people in Nice; on July 26th two men linked to Islamic State slit the throat of an 85-year-old Catholic priest celebrating mass near Rouen. These assaults on symbols of French culture—the anniversary of the revolution and the dominant, if declining, religion—prompted President François Hollande to declare war on Islamic State. He vowed that: “No one can divide us.” Ms Le Pen retorted on Twitter: “Alas, @fhollande is wrong. Islamic fundamentalists don’t want to ‘divide’ us, they want to kill us.”
> 
> Europe’s drawbridge-uppers would have enjoyed the Republican convention in Cleveland last week, where team Trump wrote a new script for the party of Lincoln. Speaking by video link, Kent Terry and Kelly Terry-Willis described the murder of their brother Brian, a border-patrol agent, in a shootout in Arizona. Later, three parents told the audience how their children had been murdered by illegal immigrants. There is no evidence that illegal immigrants commit more crimes than other people. But Mr Trump said that to Barack Obama, each victim was “one more child to sacrifice on the altar of open borders”.
> 
> *The great disruption*
> Mr Trump’s charisma aside, the success of drawbridge-up parties in so many countries is driven by several underlying forces. The two main ones are economic dislocation and demographic change.
> 
> Economics first. Some 65-70% of households in rich countries saw their real incomes from wages and capital decline or stagnate between 2005 and 2014, compared with less than 2% in 1993-2005, says the McKinsey Global Institute, a think-tank. If the effects of lower taxes and government transfers are included, the picture is less grim: only 20-25% of households saw their disposable income fall or stay flat. In America nearly all households saw their disposable income rise, even if their headline wages stagnated. Such figures also fail to take full account of improvements in technology that make life easier and more entertaining.
> 
> Nonetheless, it is clear that many mid- and less-skilled workers in rich countries feel hard-pressed. Among voters who backed Brexit, the share who think life is worse now than 30 years ago was 16 percentage points greater that the share who think it is better; Remainers disagreed by a margin of 46 points. A whopping 69% of Americans think their country is on the wrong track, according to RealClearPolitics; only 23% think it is on the right one.
> 
> Many blame globalisation for their economic plight. Some are right. Although trade has made most countries and people better off, its rewards have been unevenly spread. For many blue-collar workers in rich countries, the benefits of cheaper, better goods have been outweighed by job losses in uncompetitive industries. For some formerly thriving industrial towns, the impact has been devastating (see page article).
> 
> Economic insecurity makes other fears loom larger. Where good jobs are plentiful, few people blame immigrants or trade for their absence. Hence the divide between college-educated folk, who feel confident about their ability to cope with change, and the less-schooled, who do not.
> 
> Consider Austria, where a presidential election on October 2nd will pit Norbert Hofer of the anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic and protectionist Freedom Party against a global-minded Green candidate, Alexander van der Bellen. In Linz, an industrial city on the Danube, the central Kaplanhof district is full of startups and technology firms that have moved into former factories and warehouses. Here, globalisation means customers and opportunities; pro-openness messages go down a treat. In a nearby café, Mr van der Bellen told cheering regulars: “Don’t forget that in Austria, every second job is directly or indirectly linked to trade with the rest of the world.”
> 
> A couple of miles south is a different Linz: the Franckviertel. Vast chimneys from chemical plants loom over rusting railway sidings. Streets are lined with cheap clothes shops and empty video-rental outlets. Here, globalisation has meant decline. Like Kaplanhof, it has an above-average proportion of foreigners (32% of the population), but these tend to be the poorer, less well qualified sort: Afghans and north Africans attracted by low rents. This has bred resentment: “It’s the Moroccans. They rape, they sell drugs. Have you seen the train station?” complains Peter, a “Linzer born-and-bred” waiting for the trolley bus into town. In these parts Mr Hofer is likely to win.
> 
> This divide is new in Austria. For decades it was dominated by a centre-left and a centre-right party. But both have struggled to reconcile the cosmopolitan and nativist parts of their electoral coalitions. In the first round of this year’s presidential election, they won just 22.4% of the vote between them and had to drop out.
> 
> The second force pulling drawbridges up is demographic change. Rich countries today are the least fertile societies ever to have existed. In 33 of the 35 OECD nations, too few babies are born to maintain a stable population. As the native-born age, and their numbers shrink, immigrants from poorer places move in to pick strawberries, write software and empty bedpans. Large-scale immigration has brought cultural change that some natives welcome—ethnic food, vibrant city centres—but which others find unsettling. They are especially likely to object if the character of their community changes very rapidly.
> 
> This does not make them racist. As Jonathan Haidt points out in the _American Interest_, a quarterly review, patriots “think their country and its culture are unique and worth preserving”. Some think their country is superior to all others, but most love it for the same reason that people love their spouse: “because she or he is yours”. He argues that immigration tends not to provoke social discord if it is modest in scale, or if immigrants assimilate quickly.
> 
> 
> 
> When immigrants seem eager to embrace the language, values and customs of their new land, it affirms nationalists’ sense of pride that their nation is good, valuable and attractive to foreigners. But whenever a country has historically high levels of immigration from countries with very different moralities, and without a strong and successful assimilationist programme, it is virtually certain that there will be an authoritarian counter-reaction.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Several European countries have struggled to assimilate newcomers, and this is reflected in popular attitudes. Asked whether having an increasing number of people of different races in their country made it a better place to live, only 10% of Greeks and 18% of Italians agreed (see chart 2). Even in the most cosmopolitan European countries, Sweden and Britain, only 36% and 33% agreed. In America, by contrast, a hefty 58% thought diversity improved their country. Only 7% thought it made it worse.
> 
> Most immigrants to America find jobs, and nearly all speak English by the second generation. For all Mr Trump’s doomsaying, the recent history of race relations is one of success. But that cannot be taken for granted. In one respect, America is entering uncharted waters. Last year white Christians became a minority for the first time in three centuries. By 2050 whites will no longer be a majority. The group that has found these changes hardest—whites without a college education—forms the core of Mr Trump’s support.
> White Americans, like dominant groups everywhere, dislike constantly being told that they are privileged. For laid-off steelworkers, it doesn’t feel that way. They do not like being accused of racism if they object to affirmative action or of “microaggressions” if they say “America is a land of opportunity”. Another Pew poll found that 67% of American whites agreed that “too many people are easily offended these days over language”. Among Trump supporters it was 83%.
> 
> *How to fight back*
> What can drawbridge-downers do? The most important thing is to devise policies that spread the benefits of globalisation more widely. In the meantime, and depending on how their national political system works, they are trying various tactics. In Sweden, France and the Netherlands, the mainstream parties have formed tactical alliances to keep the nationalists out of power. So far, they have succeeded, but at the cost of enraging nationalists, who see the establishment as a conspiracy to keep the little guy down.
> 
> Instead of, or in addition to this, mainstream politicians sometimes borrow the nationalists’ clothes. In Britain the Conservatives have taken a far tougher line on immigration than many of their cosmopolitan leaders would have preferred. Theresa May, the new prime minister, was the architect of this policy. In America Mrs Clinton’s flip-flop on free trade is a tactical concession to her party’s protectionist wing: among the free-trade deals she now decries is one that she helped negotiate.
> 
> Virtually no politicians have forthrightly argued that free trade and well-regulated immigration make most people better off. Emmanuel Macron, France’s economy minister, says it is time to try. Drawbridge-downers in France’s main parties have more in common with each other than with the National Front, he says, so he has launched a new movement.
> 
> An obvious objection is that if parties align themselves into explicitly globalist and nationalist camps, this might lend the nationalists legitimacy and accelerate their ascent. Piffle, says Mr Macron. “Look at the reality,” he says: in France the National Front was already the top party in voting at the most recent (regional) elections. It’s not a risk; it has already happened.
> 
> Although the drawbridge-uppers have all the momentum, time is not on their side. Young voters, who tend to be better educated than their elders, have more open attitudes. A poll in Britain found that 73% of voters aged 18-24 wanted to remain in the EU; only 40% of those over 65 did. Millennials nearly everywhere are more open than their parents on everything from trade and immigration to personal and moral behaviour. Bobby Duffy of Ipsos MORI, a pollster, predicts that their attitudes will live on as they grow older.
> 
> As young people flock to cities to find jobs, they are growing up used to heterogeneity. If the Brexit vote were held in ten years’ time the Remainers would easily win. And a candidate like Mr Trump would struggle in, say, 2024.
> 
> But in the meantime, the drawbridge-raisers can do great harm. The consensus that trade makes the world richer; the tolerance that lets millions move in search of opportunities; the ideal that people of different hues and faiths can get along—all are under threat. A world of national fortresses will be poorer and gloomier.
Click to expand...











5 years on this article is still spot on. These are the new divisions, in Europe, Britain and America.



SeanT said:


> My grandfather (1911) and father (1940) was/is not racist.


Personal opinion of your dad doesn't really matter. What matters is what statistically are views and voting patterns of his generation.



> The LMBTQ-xywzzs thinks and acts as this is the shit and the norme! The problem is that in W Europe the sociaty acts like that, but in CEE Europe the sociaty makes them aware of REALITY!


What are you on about?


----------



## PovilD

I wonder if brain drain and long years of internal migration has to do with this urban-rural divide?

This already started to happen in The Baltics during Soviet times, lots of people have left villages for cities (many of them for studies). Now quite many of them vote for progressivist (a.c.a. "city") parties.

Many people leave their small hometowns for studies and never come back. People just see lower opportunities there, especially for good paying, good conditions jobs.
Lithuania's case: many leave for largest cities or just fly abroad.

---
I heard lots of discussions around recent populism waves in Developed World.

The divide is over the speed of progress. I think to myself, what a weird thing to be divided to, but this is the reality.

Conservative people want slower pace of progress, while others want huge changes in societies, and this creates conflict. I think roots are from Industrial revolution times when progress speed really kicked in, but in recent years this conflict escalated a lot.

Divides are also weird: young vs. old. I can understand why there could be divides over income groups, but I don't understand this age divide.


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## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Personal opinion of your dad doesn't really matter. What matters is what statistically are views and voting patterns of his generation.


And what when they are split 50/50? 

This is what we have now in Poland.

A half is happy, the other half is very unhappy.



PovilD said:


> I wonder if brain drain and long years of internal migration has to do with this urban-rural divide?


This is probably the reason why those voting for progressive politicians are simultaneously both better educated and from larger cities.

In quite an obvious way, most "white collar" jobs, for those with better education, are in large cities, especially – in the country capitals. Nobody builds headquarters of a huge corporation in the countryside. And if he does... it will anyway start becoming more like a city rather than like a village.

In a small towns and countryside municipalities, such jobs are almost only in the public administration.


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> I can understand why there could be divides over income groups, but I don't understand this age divide.



But this is always one of the most fundamental divides. The older people are naturally conservative (with small "c") and they don't want change. They (statistically) are more for things staying "as they always were". It is the young who often push for changes. They organize street protest, rallies etc. The problem is they are far less likely to vote than the pensioners. That's why the current political systems are geared towards the older generation, especially pensioners. It is the same in Poland, the UK or America.

As young people are drawn to urban areas this generational divide creates geographical divide. It is especially visible in Poland where a lot of young people left rural areas for a few largest metropolitan areas.


----------



## Suburbanist

It reminds me of a reading I did on Swiss politics. Women were only allowed to vote in federal elections nationwide in 1973, and it took an unusual act of its highest court to force the last canton to grant local voting rights to women in... 1991. Incredible to think I was already born and women could not vote in parts of Switzerland.

Some sociologists and some people digging deep into the issue wrote that it was not that rural Swiss men from the hills of Eastern Switzerland were particularly hateful of females (I digress though), but that they just resented being characterized over and over as backward farmer descendants afraid of females expressing their own political opinions, because there was an undercurrent sentiment that it was an attack on their ability to provide for their families. Since families in these rural areas had gotten quite well-off financially (for European standards) after WW1, women in villages could afford to become full-fledged stay-at-home-parents, not working at all while children had not reached their mid teenage years. Outdated family views saw this as a sign of progress - the ability of a man to pay off all bills of the household in one income, a luxury two generations preceding them afforded only to the richest. In poorer times everybody had to work to survive, so the ability to be able to "insulate" women from the need to work to survive and "preserve" them from the heat of political discussions (an extremely paternalistic and hateful view IMHO) struck a chord with men who thought voting rights for women were an insult promoted from girls and women from big cities. Where they made even more money and were represented in the media all the time while campaigning against the backward ways of certain Swiss cantons.


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## tfd543

I removed my wisdom tooth today. Paid the surgeon 500 euros for a 15 min service. Ouch. A working hour rate of 2000 euro. Not bad..


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## radamfi

tfd543 said:


> I removed my wisdom tooth today. Paid the surgeon 500 euros for a 15 min service. Ouch. A working hour rate of 2000 euro. Not bad..


I would get it done in Hungary if I ever have to pay so much for the dentist. I was lucky that I had my wisdom teeth out when I was at university, so it was free. Since then I've only ever had to pay for check ups and hygienist. I pay 11 GBP a month to get two check ups and hygienist appointments per year.


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> But this is always one of the most fundamental divides. The older people are naturally conservative (with small "c") and they don't want change. They (statistically) are more for things staying "as they always were". It is the young who often push for changes. They organize street protest, rallies etc. The problem is they are far less likely to vote than the pensioners. That's why the current political systems are geared towards the older generation, especially pensioners. It is the same in Poland, the UK or America.
> 
> As young people are drawn to urban areas this generational divide creates geographical divide. It is especially visible in Poland where a lot of young people left rural areas for a few largest metropolitan areas.


I have this thinking that old people should understand that the future of the World belongs to young people, and the young people will decide how the World will go on. Elderly should more accept the way young people are moving with this World*

Now is looking like everybody's pointing fingers at each other. The narrative is who are worse at not understanding: old people or young people.

*but I don't say old people should be left out. Their problems should be solved too, since leaving out certain groups is not sustainable.


----------



## tfd543

radamfi said:


> I would get it done in Hungary if I ever have to pay so much for the dentist. I was lucky that I had my wisdom teeth out when I was at university, so it was free. Since then I've only ever had to pay for check ups and hygienist. I pay 11 GBP a month to get two check ups and hygienist appointments per year.


Is HU known for savvy dentists that are visited by people from outside the country? I know Its cheap, but i dont want to have jaw dysfunction.


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## Kpc21

For us central Europeans 500 euro for a wisdom tooth removal is just a complete rip-off. 

And I think every country has some good and skilled dentists.

I also guess that in the Switzerland or in Denmark you are able to find a terrible dentist who would charge as much and leave you with an actual jaw dysfunction.


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## radamfi

tfd543 said:


> Is HU known for savvy dentists that are visited by people from outside the country? I know Its cheap, but i dont want to have jaw dysfunction.


About 15 years ago it started to become widely known that there were a lot of trained dentists (more than were needed) in Hungary so dental tourism began. Especially in the west of Hungary, for example in Győr.


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## Attus

radamfi said:


> Do young Hungarians typically have these opinions? My Hungarian dad was very racist, hated Jews and gypsies, but he was born in 1928.


Just like in any other nations, Hungarians, too, are not all the same. But yes, the majority, typically, are racists, although not extremely. (My father, born in 1938, was extremely racist). Apart from some leftist, idealist city intellectuals, the vast majority of Hungarian society hate gypsies. However, it is not purely theoretical: quite many people were victims of some criminal offenses by gypsies (I, too, was). And there is a saying, it sounds in original less complex, than in English: "I am not a racist, but human beings are white". OK, there are virtually no black people in Hungary, so, unlike with gypsies, the hate against black people is basically a hate against something unknown, something unfamiliar. 
And the vast majority of the society is against immigration from Africa or the Middle East. Actually I have never known anyone not being against it.


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## Attus

tfd543 said:


> Is HU known for savvy dentists that are visited by people from outside the country?


Absolutely.


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## MattiG

tfd543 said:


> I removed my wisdom tooth today. Paid the surgeon 500 euros for a 15 min service. Ouch. A working hour rate of 2000 euro. Not bad..


Would it have been better if it had lasted two hours instead of 15 minutes?


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## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> Would it have been better if it had lasted two hours instead of 15 minutes?


And sometimes it can last as long ... Complications happen during wisdom teeth removal. When you listen about what dentists sometimes have to do with these teeth to successfully remove them, it sounds like a horror movie...

I am lucky to still have all four of them.


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## Stuu

PovilD said:


> I have this thinking that old people should understand that the future of the World belongs to young people, and the young people will decide how the World will go on. Elderly should more accept the way young people are moving with this World*


Everyone was young once, and essentially once you get to a certain age for a lot of people accepting change becomes harder and harder. The elderly now were young in the 1950s and 1960s, I bet a lot of them would have said exactly the same as your statement here. There's plenty of people of my parents' age who were brought up on Bowie and the Rolling Stones who now would be considered extremely conservative


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## Stuu

Back to the topic of racism, I've been looking at the front pages of tomorrow's newspapers in the UK. For those who don't know, a member of parliament was murdered today by someone who appears to be a muslim extremist. None of the headlines are remotely aimed at immigrants or in any way refer to the perpetrator, which is a very significant change to how the same event might have been portrayed 10 years ago. Everyone can and does change


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## Rebasepoiss

tfd543 said:


> I removed my wisdom tooth today. Paid the surgeon 500 euros for a 15 min service. Ouch. A working hour rate of 2000 euro. Not bad..


It's expensive but not that surprising if you look at the salaries in Denmark. A procedure like this costs around €100-€200 in Estonia, depending on whether they can just pull it out or if they have to surgically remove it.


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## geogregor

Attus said:


> And the vast majority of the society is against immigration from Africa or the Middle East. Actually I have never known anyone not being against it.


Does it apply to everyone from Africa and Middle East? Even educated IT workers or, for example doctors?

Here a lot of people are against mass uncontrolled immigration not against immigration at all. I think that is the biggest division between east of Europe and countries like the UK, Scandinavia or Germany.

All the countries have some parties which are more open to immigration and some against immigration. But even parties opposing immigration differ in the sense that in western Europe they are less overtly racist. It is more about numbers and educational background of immigrants rather then where they are from or what colour their skin is.

It is quite visible among many Brexiters. Yes there are some bigoted racists among them but many have no problem with immigrants per se, as long as numbers and background is controlled.

It is quite difficult to understand for some Poles. I had conversation with some people I knew from high school. They asked me something among the lines "What's wrong with the Brits, they don't want us white Europeans but they plan issuing more visas to Indians".

It is not that simple but ultimately it looks like there will be some relaxation of visas for students and educated people from around the world, even as freedom of movement with the EU ends. So yes, Brits might prefer students, doctors or engineers from Africa or Asia over manual workers from Eastern Europe.

I'm not completely sold on this idea of bringing only "well off" immigrants. Because country will also need a lot of people willing to work in care sectors. And they will most likely need to be immigrants from low income countries. It will be interesting to watch what's going to happen.

As for Hungary, I wonder what is the plan in the long term. You have very low birth rate and rapidly ageing population. If you want growing economy you will need immigrants, and more of them with every passing year. Sure, some of the gaps might be filled with Ukrainians and the like but they have equally bad demography and ageing society. Sooner or later immigrants from further afield will be needed.


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## Suburbanist

There are studies that show that angst at immigrants is often at the highest when their prevalence is 1 to 5%, because they become from almost invisible to an everyday occurence in social interactions. After 10% societies withou ethnic or religious sectarianism more or less get used to have immigrants. 

In the UK it is well documented that areas with the least percentage of immigrants voted in highest percentage in favor of Brexit.

A side effect of Brexit (minor one but still...) was plummeting support, volunteer time and donations for the maintenance of British war cemeteries in Western Europe. It was already a tricky time of transition when even people who had any living recollection of WW2 were mostly dead and it was their children taking these duties. 

British war cemeteries are far less funded than American ones.


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## Attus

geogregor said:


> Does it apply to everyone from Africa and Middle East? Even educated IT workers or, for example doctors?


Yes. 
However, quite many people simply think: there are no educated it workers or doctors in Africa and the Middle East at all. And the lying propaganda of 2015 made this kind of thinking stronger. 



> As for Hungary, I wonder what is the plan in the long term.


Subsidizing families quite strong. E.g.: if you have 3 children and buy a family car, the state pays the half of the price. If you have 3 children and a normal (i.e. not extraordinary high) income, you need not to pay income tax at all. And so on. 
And yes, politicians do not speak about the fact, that children being born today will not be able to work before the 2040's, and normal people do not think about this problem at all.


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## tfd543

Rebasepoiss said:


> It's expensive but not that surprising if you look at the salaries in Denmark. A procedure like this costs around €100-€200 in Estonia, depending on whether they can just pull it out or if they have to surgically remove it.


Youre right yes, but still expensive in general. Just think what students above 18 years deal with it.

Anyway, it was something that needed to be done. It was positioned 45 deg relative to the second to last tooth. I was afraid of getting a cavity in the area that couldnt be cleaned.


----------



## Stuu

Suburbanist said:


> A side effect of Brexit (minor one but still...) was plummeting support, volunteer time and donations for the maintenance of British war cemeteries in Western Europe. It was already a tricky time of transition when even people who had any living recollection of WW2 were mostly dead and it was their children taking these duties.
> 
> British war cemeteries are far less funded than American ones.


I haven't heard of that... however I have never heard of any appeals for funding in my life either. They are looked after by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, paid for by the British, Australian, Canadian, Indian, NZ and South African governments. I have never heard or seen on TV or anywhere anything about them being neglected or underfunded, and Google doesn't seem to find anything much either


----------



## tfd543

MattiG said:


> Would it have been better if it had lasted two hours instead of 15 minutes?


He told me that it would last 15 min so i was kinda safe.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> It is not that simple but ultimately it looks like there will be some relaxation of visas for students and educated people from around the world, even as freedom of movement with the EU ends. So yes, Brits might prefer students, doctors or engineers from Africa or Asia over manual workers from Eastern Europe


To allow immigration of just educated people is policy of brain drain from poorer countries. I would argue it would have been more ethical to stop immigration from poorer countries completely.


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> For us central Europeans 500 euro for a wisdom tooth removal is just a complete rip-off.
> 
> And I think every country has some good and skilled dentists.
> 
> I also guess that in the Switzerland or in Denmark you are able to find a terrible dentist who would charge as much and leave you with an actual jaw dysfunction.


I know pal, but i had No choice. If I had to travel, i would have to sacrifice a day off or 2, hotel and flight ticket. It sums up, all of that.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

tfd543 said:


> Youre right yes, but still expensive in general. Just think what students above 18 years deal with it.
> 
> Anyway, it was something that needed to be done. It was positioned 45 deg relative to the second to last tooth. I was afraid of getting a cavity in the area that couldnt be cleaned.


My partner had to have her wisdom teeth removed because of braces. All 4 teeth came to a total of € 600.

"Dental tourism" from Finland to Estonia used to be a thing in the past but salaries have basically doubled in the past 10 years and so have the prices so I'm not sure whether it's worth it nowadays.


----------



## Suburbanist

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> To allow immigration of just educated people is policy of brain drain from poorer countries. I would argue it would have been more ethical to *stop immigration from poorer countries completely*.


That is a rather pratronizing view that sees individual high-skilled people as some types of indentured servers of the government of the country they grew up in.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Suburbanist said:


> That is a rather pratronizing view that sees individual high-skilled people as some types of indentured servers of the government of the country they grew up in.


That's the difference. It depends on whether you're looking at this from an individual's perspective or in absolute terms. If mostly talented and educated people are leaving a certain country en-masse, it makes it less likely for that country to become more developed (given that they have the necessary opportunities i.e. I'm not talking about crazy authoritarian states here). Instead, these talented people are making a rich country in the West even better off.

If the goal is to maximise the overall well-being of the most amount of people on the planet than those talented people staying in their home country is likely the better choice.

Allowing only "the good immigrants" in is basically modern-day colonialism since you are using up the (human) resources generated in another country to benefit your own.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Suburbanist said:


> That is a rather pratronizing view that sees individual high-skilled people as some types of indentured servers of the government of the country they grew up in.


I am not judging the moral of individuals seeking a better future for themselves, but of governments cherry picking immigrants.


----------



## Suburbanist

Rebasepoiss said:


> That's the difference. It depends on whether you're looking at this from an individual's perspective or in absolute terms. If mostly talented and educated people are leaving a certain country en-masse, it makes it less likely for that country to become more developed (given that they have the necessary opportunities i.e. I'm not talking about crazy authoritarian states here). Instead, these talented people are making a rich country in the West even better off.
> 
> If the goal is to maximise the overall well-being of the most amount of people on the planet than those talented people staying in their home country is likely the better choice.
> 
> Allowing only "the good immigrants" in is basically modern-day colonialism since you are using up the (human) resources generated in another country to benefit your own.


You also assume that high-skilled people have the same development opportunities at home as they do abroad. A young-ish biomedical scientist working in - say - South Africa, Mexico or Indonesia will have limited propspects because of (among other things) political patronizing of research institutions and paltry funds, no grants for new labs etc. Artists and other creative people might be not able to become even more successful due to political pressure. Would-be entrepreneurs might not have access to capital or a startup ecosystem to make their ideas into risky investments. Then you have countries that are relatively rich but where ethnicity, religion, gender or a combination of those just put heavy limits into the how far can smart people go.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

So only smart people have limited possibilities in these countries, do you think?


----------



## Suburbanist

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> So only smart people have limited possibilities in these countries, do you think?


No, but higher-skilled people are also more interesting from a societal point to host developed countries.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Suburbanist said:


> You also assume that high-skilled people have the same development opportunities at home as they do abroad. A young-ish biomedical scientist working in - say - South Africa, Mexico or Indonesia will have limited propspects because of (among other things) political patronizing of research institutions and paltry funds, no grants for new labs etc. Artists and other creative people might be not able to become even more successful due to political pressure. Would-be entrepreneurs might not have access to capital or a startup ecosystem to make their ideas into risky investments. Then you have countries that are relatively rich but where ethnicity, religion, gender or a combination of those just put heavy limits into the how far can smart people go.


That is still the individual's perspective (which I understand and agree with). My comment was focusing on the big picture. The environment of opportunities doesn't simply pop-up out of nowhere, someone has to create it. If you don't have the people with the necessary talent and skillsets to build that enviornment then it will never happen for anyone else either.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Suburbanist said:


> No, but higher-skilled people are also more interesting from a societal point to host developed countries.


"host by" I assume?

Clearly, you are right, but that was not the question I raised.


----------



## OnTheNorthRoad

tfd543 said:


> Youre right yes, but still expensive in general. Just think what students above 18 years deal with it.
> 
> Anyway, it was something that needed to be done. It was positioned 45 deg relative to the second to last tooth. I was afraid of getting a cavity in the area that couldnt be cleaned.


You're luckier than me, mine was positioned 90 degrees relative to the second to last tooth. It is not visible, which is why it wasn't caught up on until x ray photos.

And I did already get a cavity in the second to last tooth. I have to deal with the cavity first and then (probably) a surgical removal of the wisdom tooth.

I thought 500 euros sounded very expensive! A simple wisdom tooth extraction in Norway typically costs around 100-150 euros, while surgical removals cost up to around 300 euros depending on how complicated it is.


----------



## OnTheNorthRoad

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> True, we now have a much closer relation to EU than the UK, but that is mainly because we are even more dependent on free trade with EU since Norway is a smaller, and open, economy, and because most people value the close relations to our Nordic neighbors, in particular Sweden, with which we share a 1630 km long land border (Europe's longest and oldest). Still, Euro-skepticism runs deep. The minority partner in our new government, the Center party, wants to get out of EEA, and their view is also supported by the two most radical socialists parties in the parliament, and the most populist party former conservative party, the Progress party, wants to renegotiate. They have very different reasons for being opponents to the current EEA:
> 
> Center party: Protection of farmers, ownership of inland and coastal natural resources (this is really a retrospective party mostly fighting for the districts)
> Radical socialists parties: Protection of Norwegian workers' rights and a stop in privatization of railways, postal service etc.
> Progress party: Better control og immigration from outside Europe, stop export of Norwegian welfare benefits
> 
> So far these opponents have been contained by the other parties, and they do not agree on an alternative. Let's hope it remains so, but there is a concerning development in the trade unions, which have a lof of influence over Labor. The industry unions are still strongly in favor of EEA, but their influence seems to be waning as other, more Euro-skeptic trade unions of the protected sectors of our economy are gaining more influence.


The agrarian party uses the EEA opposition as a vote winner for the districts who depend on national subsidization that wouldn't be allowed under the EU. There's a crossover in sentiment between the EU and EEA. 

Fact of the matter is that EEA support is strong in the population and the agrarian party doesn't actually want to get us out of the EEA, because they would then be responsible for the mess and it could no longer be used as a vote winner. 

They are the very definition of populists, even worse than the progressive party. 

66 % yes to EEA - 22 % no









«EØS-avtalen styrker seg stadig mer i den norske befolkningen»


I løpet av de siste fire årene har EØS styrket sin posisjon med over ti prosentpoeng. Dette viser en fersk meningsmåling som Sentio har utført for Klassekampen og Nationen. Paradokset er at det ventelig blir flere EØS-motstandere på Stortinget etter høstens valg.




frifagbevegelse.no


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> In other neighboring languages (Russian, Latvian, *Polish*) if you use *same word* for both hill and mountain (Russian, *Polish*: "gora";


This is not exactly correct. Yes the word for mountain ("góra") and hill ("wzgórze") are similar and have the same root but those are two different words.


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> This is not exactly correct. Yes the word for mountain ("góra") and hill ("wzgórze") are similar and have the same root but those are two different words.


góra can't be used for small hill?

This can be called either "kalva" or "kalnas" as is not high hill.


----------



## AnelZ

That small protrusion over an area wouldn't be called a hill (brdo) over here as it is kinda small (not just in height) but rather "brežuljak" which I'm really not sure how to translate on english, maybe knoll looking on google translate. A mountain is called "planina".


----------



## Dikan011

We use "gora" too...Crna Gora.


----------



## Sponsor

PovilD said:


> góra can't be used for small hill?


It can, but most likely in a diminutive form = _gór*k*a_


----------



## PovilD

Sponsor said:


> It can, but most likely in a diminutive form = _gór*k*a_


Our diminutive form would be unavoidably longer (e.g. "kalnelis"), so we either use "kalva" or stay with "kalnas"


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

AnelZ said:


> That small protrusion over an area wouldn't be called a hill (brdo) over here as it is kinda small (not just in height)


Afaik, there is no limit to how small a can be in English. This discussion reminded me of a movie I saw a long time ago 








The Englishman who Went up a Hill but Came down a Mountain - Wikipedia







en.m.wikipedia.org


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> Here in Bergen, where the city center is near sea level, there some neighborhoods around 200m a.m.s.l. within the city proper. Unfortunately it is pretty difficult to build new buildings above the current maximum altitudes, there are some areas geotechnically suitable for construction at around 400m.


As Finland is generally quite flat (but has quite steep hills), most towns are flat, too.

The highest elevation on the streets of Helsinki is 50 metres above the sea level. However, there are a few steep hills of 30-40 meters even in the downtown area.

Once in the last century, I visited my wife's grandparents in Kokkola. It is a town in the very flat province of Ostrobothnia. While dining, I made a major mistake. There is Tulliharju kindergarten on the opposite side of the street. As "harju" is kind of a hill, I asked where it is located. Deep silence, and everybody glared me irritated. *We are located on its top!* They were right. The house stands on a hill top of nine meters above the sea level. The altitude of the next street 170 meters apart is six meters only.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Thermo said:


> Hmm, what's the definition of a mountain? 🤔


The German language also has the term _Mittelgebirge, (_middle/medium mountains_) _often applied to hills / mountains in the range of 500-1500 meters, essentially all mountain ranges not belonging to the Alps. I kind of like this classification, it separates low mountains from Alpine-type mountains, but this may not be applicable everywhere in Europe.


----------



## Slagathor

Fun fact: there is some debate in the scientific community on the question of why Norway actually has mountains. The country doesn't sit on a fault line, so its mountains were not created the common way (colliding crusts, volcanic activity...).

It's quite a complicated puzzle that's to do with glacial activity and the ice ages. I once read some articles about it and couldn't believe we haven't figured this one out yet. And by "we", I mean other people much smarter than me.


----------



## Coccodrillo

Stuu said:


> Barcelona has some very high suburbs, compared to the city centre, getting up to 500m difference. I would expect Zurich or perhaps Lausanne has even bigger differences


Lausanne and Lugano have around ~400 metres difference in the contiguous built up area.

The villages near Lugano, not in the built up area but with a great proportion of commuters (relative to their small size), are higher. I know a couple of commuters who travel these hairpins daily (800 to 300 m asl):









Swiss Geoportal


geo.admin.ch ist die Geoinformationsplattform der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft. // geo.admin.ch est la plateforme de géoinformation de la Confédération suisse.




map.geo.admin.ch





Pre-alpine lakes remind me fjords, but with a warmer climate and more people living nearby. I suppose they are of similar origin, except that fjords remained connceted to the sea, while Alpine lakes are, evidently, lakes.









Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.ch













Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.ch





Anyway. In the map shown before (The roadside rest area) there are some mostly flat countries, where mountains are concentrated in one certain region. Think of Poland and Finland, and even France outside the three main + a few smaller ranges is quite flat (that is, the majority of the territory of mainland France).


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Coccodrillo said:


> Pre-alpine lakes remind me fjords, but with a warmer climate and more people living nearby. I suppose they are of similar origin, except that fjords remained connceted to the sea, while Alpine lakes are, evidently, lakes.


Most fjords were carved out by I glacier much the same way as I believe e. g. Lake Lugano was. Hence, fjords adhering to this definition, which is used in physical geography, have at least one threshold, one of which is at its mouth. Hence, while the fjords can be very deep (Sognefjorden is 1300 m deep), the outlet is normally shallow in comparison.

However, the Norse people did not know about the terms of modern physical geography, and many fjords, notably some in Denmark and the Oslofjord, do not adhere to their scientific definition. In fact quite a few larger lakes of Norway are also called fjords.

Not all fjords are depopulated, btw. Close to two million people live along the shores of the Oslo fjord. Maybe 450 000 around the Trondheim fjord. Also the two remaining top four cities of Norway, Bergen and Stavanger, are at fjords.


----------



## Attus

A handball game in Germany, one player of the opponent team is called Bartaseviciute. I guess I know which country she (or her parents) comes from


----------



## x-type

Parts of large residential suburb of Rijeka reaches over 450 m amsl (Viškovo). Downtown is, of course, at 0. I guess similar is with Genova or similar cities. Rijeka is known as the city with the most hills (the hilliest?) here. Very bike unfriendly


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

x-type said:


> Very bike unfriendly


With electric bikes hills are not such a big issue though, even for those that do not enjoy the additional exercise. 

Saturday night prank at Biri 160 km north of Oslo....


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> The German language also has the term _Mittelgebirge, (_middle/medium mountains_) _often applied to hills / mountains in the range of 500-1500 meters, essentially all mountain ranges not belonging to the Alps. I kind of like this classification, it separates low mountains from Alpine-type mountains, but this may not be applicable everywhere in Europe.


Such definitions are typically local to each country, and relative to geography characteristics of the country.

The altitude from the sea level is not necessarily the best possible criteria. If the peak is 1000 meters, the case is quite different if the altitude of the next valley is 800 meters or 100 meters. Therefore, the relative altitude difference talks.

The list of place names in Finland contains thousands of names ending "vuori" ("a mountain") even if there are no mountains meeting the criteria of a mountain in the Alps. This one close to the southern seaside is 30 meters high from the sea level.










Measuring the altitude from the sea level is a common practice, but it is not the only one. The summit of Chimborazo in Ecuador is the point on the Earth's surface that is farthest from the Earth's center. This comes from the Earth's shape, which is close to an ellipsoid. Measured at the mean sea level, the poles are 21 kilometers closer to the center than the equator.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

A slightly more useful metrics for a mountain than altitude is prominence - in essence how far you have to go down from a mountain in order to get to a higher altitude. I think however it is difficult to use either metrics to judge whether you have a hill or mountain. There are plenty of heights above 300 m (altitude or prominence) which I would say are hills, but on the other hand, who would say that e.g. Torghatten is a hill, even of it is only 258 m high?










Slagathor said:


> Fun fact: there is some debate in the scientific community on the question of why Norway actually has mountains. The country doesn't sit on a fault line, so its mountains were not created the common way (colliding crusts, volcanic activity...).
> 
> It's quite a complicated puzzle that's to do with glacial activity and the ice ages. I once read some articles about it and couldn't believe we haven't figured this one out yet. And by "we", I mean other people much smarter than me.


Sorry, I missed this ;-)

There is indeed no consensus regarding the origin of the Norwegian mountains.

The traditional theory for about 100 years has been that what used to be a highland plain, has been carved out by the ice. The plain was formed under the ocean, but was uplifted due to the thinning of the continental crust. This theory is easiest to believe when in the eastern parts of the country, where most mountains are gentle, but a variant theory explains the more alpine mountains closer to the coast from a tilting mechanism - the huge deposits in the sea tilts the coastal areas up.

An alternative theory is that the mountains are the remains of the Caledonian mountain range - which most likely used to be higher than the Himalayas today. This theory has surfaced due to the massive amounts of deposits found in the North Sea, which are more than twice larger than what is needed to fill the valleys and fjords of Norway. Critics say that the Caledonian range should have been erased long before the glacial period, though.

In either case, a lot of the rocks that are on the surface in Norway today used to be under the base of the Caledonian mountains, which was caused by a collision between the Baltica (Scandinavia / Baltics) and Laurentia (Greenland and North America). Remains of this range can also be found in e.g. Scotland, Greenland, and the Appalachians.


----------



## geogregor

Being reporter in Britain is dangerous job...  


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1452375380338397193


----------



## Sponsor

Speaking of mountains... We had a rockslide with pieces the size of a house last friday. It was most likely triggered by strong wind. The severe moment from 4:40.


----------



## Attus

West Berlin, 1977:


----------



## Dikan011

If I had a dollar every time I heard Polish whining about Russia....Elon Musk would be asking me for money. ☕


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> Independence Pass, Colorado:


Apparently, a standard Vienna-convention sign is not always enough:








Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




goo.gl


----------



## geogregor

Dikan011 said:


> If I had a dollar every time I heard Polish whining about Russia....Elon Musk would be asking me for money. ☕


It is our favorite pastime. 

But then, Russia does make it easy, doesn't it? 

I admit that some people go a bit over the top, but for that you should check some of the Polish threads.

As for reliance in large degree on one gas supplier, it is daft, whether it is Russia or Turkmenistan or whoever else. Especially if that someone makes some questionable moves in your neighborhood.


----------



## radamfi

There's a national crisp (American English: potato chip) shortage in the UK now. Given the importance of crisps in the British diet it is almost as important as the recent petrol shortage. This time it is an IT issue rather than related to Brexit or the truck drivers shortage.


----------



## AnelZ

AnelZ said:


> Today we have huge storm weather over here and as I'm writing this at 2 in the morning the weather is still very stormy in Sarajevo with a lot of rain and thunder


And now the lowlaying parts of Sarajevo, where 4 rivers flow into the river Bosna, is flooded while the water level on the rivers is very high and endangers the most Ilidza and the other neighborhoods there. It is still not very deep where it is flooded but it could get worse. It is still raining and it is forecasted for tommorow as well.

*EDIT:* Most of the build up area isn't flooded, aside of occasional spots. The pictures show areas (if you are looking google maps) Bojnik, Otes, Reljevo, Rajlovac, Doglodi with river Bosna being flooded and the mouths of rivers Miljacka, Željeznica, Zujevina and Dobrinja. On the pictures you can also see river Željeznica by restaurant Brajlović and rivet Miljacka by Vijećnica in the urban parts of the city. The oldtown, downtown and other parts of city proper are is still fine, with occasional power shortages and a warning to best not consume tap water currently until the situation normalizes. But the situation is very serious and could easily escalate.


----------



## Kpc21

Is it true that currently in the Netherlands you can easily get a Covid test from the government for free, if you need it for something?

I've read that it's officially for entry to various venues, restaurants etc., especially if you are not vaccinated – but it seems you get a normal digital Covid certificate after that, so while it's not intended to use it e.g. for travelling abroad, in practice there shouldn't be a problem to do it.


----------



## Suburbanist




----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> Is it true that currently in the Netherlands you can easily get a Covid test from the government for free, if you need it for something?
> 
> I've read that it's officially for entry to various venues, restaurants etc., especially if you are not vaccinated – but it seems you get a normal digital Covid certificate after that, so while it's not intended to use it e.g. for travelling abroad, in practice there shouldn't be a problem to do it.


The test is a lateral flow test and expires after one day, so even if you can get away with it for travelling it might not be valid, for example if a PCR test is required.

Many foreigners staying in the Netherlands need this test to visit locations that require a vaccine passport even if they are vaccinated because they are only accepting the EUDCC. That included visitors from the UK until a week ago, however the UK has now joined the EUDCC system.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Covid cases are skyrocketing in many European countries, including Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, etc. Even in mask-happy countries they have reached record levels in a very short period of time. 

The Netherlands will issue a mask mandate in shops from tomorrow. Support for it appears to be exceedingly low, I've been to the shopping centers since it was announced, including today, and virtually nobody wears them voluntarily.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland the obligation to wear masks in shops has been valid all the time, they have never removed it – but, for example, today I was in a local supermarket, and something like 30%, maybe 40% (although rather not so much) of shoppers were actually wearing them.

Yet several months ago it was so that the staff would not allow you into the shop if you didn't have mask on you. Sometimes they even asked you to disinfect your hands, if you didn't do it on your own. Now – nobody cares.

Yesterday, the government has announced that they are going to start strictly enforcing it. But generally, the government is now very anti-lockdown. To quote our Minister of Health: "Restrictions aren't a good solution because we want this pandemic or this wave to pass at possibly the lowest socio-economic cost".


----------



## PovilD

Situation is looking like slowly stabilizing in parts of East Europe and Balkans where steeper wave started in July, while main growth now is in Western Europe now where restrictions are more lax than in areas I just mentioned.

Maybe it has to with weather patterns. It was colder than average August and September, while September in West Europe was warm.

Now it's looking interesting if World is actually slowly going out of pandemic phase, and West Europe will be one of the last regions due to harshest enforced restrictions resulting in lowest natural immunity outside of Asia-Pacific.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Covid cases are skyrocketing in many European countries, including Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, etc. Even in mask-happy countries they have reached record levels in a very short period of time.


Germany recorded more new cases than on the top of the second wave: 36.000 new cases in one day. Several nations (France, Spain, UK) had higher numbers last winter, but for Germany it's a new top, and no one really believes it will be lower in the following weeks. And it is expected that in 2-3 weeks more people will be in ICU than any time before. 
But the acceptance of strict measurments are very low. People actually are not afraid of Covid any more.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland the obligation to wear masks in shops has been valid all the time, they have never removed it – but, for example, today I was in a local supermarket, and something like 30%, maybe 40% (although rather not so much) of shoppers were actually wearing them.


My mum told me that police was giving tickets to people not wearing masks in shops in my hometown. 

Here in the UK masks are recommended but not mandated. It is mixed picture. I would say that masks became new class indicator. It is quite visible that well off folks from middle classes often wear them, for example on public transport, while people on lower end of socioeconomic scale less so. It is not universal truth but there definitely is correlation I can spot.

Myself I sometimes put it on when I get into crowded carriage etc. But I have to admit that most of the time I don't wear it. My girlfriend on the other hand wears mask most of the time on public transport an in the shops.


----------



## PovilD

Attus said:


> Germany recorded more new cases than on the top of the second wave: 36.000 new cases in one day. Several nations (France, Spain, UK) had higher numbers last winter, but for Germany it's a new top, and no one really believes it will be lower in the following weeks. And it is expected that in 2-3 weeks more people will be in ICU than any time before.
> But the acceptance of strict measurments are very low. People actually are not afraid of Covid any more.


I got a little bit astonished that Germany has one of the lowest overall covid count in Europe, despite how much attention to the country was given...

... and yeah, I understand it's due to population size probably


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> And it is expected that in 2-3 weeks more people will be in ICU than any time before.


This is not forecasted in the Netherlands as vaccines are still reasonably effective against severe symptoms, though obviously not against infection. 

There are currently 286 people in ICU, while in early 2020 we had around 1,400 in ICU. But the ICU capacity is much lower now: there is insufficient personnel and they do not want to scale down all health care again, so there is already a panic mode at far lower levels than in 2020. 

I'm not sure where this will lead to. Lockdowns are obviously far less enticing, but vaccination is not effective against infection, so it will continue to spread at a rapid pace. It seems kind of absurd to have to go in lockdown again when 87% is vaccinated and another unknown percentage has natural immunity.

It would be interesting to see where Spain and Portugal are headed, they have some of the highest vaccination rates in the world, but if there is a weather effect (more people indoors), this effect would be later in the season for them.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> This is not forecasted in the Netherlands as vaccines are still reasonably effective against severe symptoms, though obviously not against infection.
> 
> There are currently 286 people in ICU, while in early 2020 we had around 1,400 in ICU. But the ICU capacity is much lower now: there is insufficient personnel and they do not want to scale down all health care again, so there is already a panic mode at far lower levels than in 2020.
> 
> I'm not sure where this will lead to. Lockdowns are obviously far less enticing, but vaccination is not effective against infection, so it will continue to spread at a rapid pace. It seems kind of absurd to have to go in lockdown again when 87% is vaccinated and another unknown percentage has natural immunity.
> 
> It would be interesting to see where Spain and Portugal are headed, they have some of the highest vaccination rates in the world, but if there is a weather effect (more people indoors), this effect would be later in the season for them.


Do you have data what is the ratio of vaccinated/unvaccinated in The Netherlands hospitals?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PovilD said:


> Do you have data what is the ratio of vaccinated/unvaccinated in The Netherlands hospitals?


There is no full coverage of that data, though some hospitals have individually released such data. Most vaccinated in the hospitals are apparently over 80 years old. 

However there is better data available of positive tests, where now over half are vaccinated. This share has been increasing by 10 percentage points every month. So the story of 'an epidemic of unvaccinated' doesn't hold true anymore. We'll have to see how much of this translates to hospitalizations, but the stories suggest that this is increasing as well, so they want to administer booster doses to the older population.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> However there is better data available of positive tests, where now over half are vaccinated. This share has been increasing by 10 percentage points every month. So the story of 'an epidemic of unvaccinated' doesn't hold true anymore. We'll have to see how much of this translates to hospitalizations, but the stories suggest that this is increasing as well, so they want to administer booster doses to the older population.


In part, this is a simple mathematical artifact that the more % of the general population if fully vaccinated, the larger this pool is in relate to the unvaccinated pool, thus a simple numerical increase on % of infected who are vaccinated is a misleading number. If 100% were vaccinated and a few cases in a million still got Covid, 100% of the diagnosed would have been vaccinated...


----------



## radamfi

There are now drugs which seem very effective at stopping people getting seriously ill from Covid as long as it is taken soon after infection.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> The test is a lateral flow test and expires after one day, so even if you can get away with it for travelling it might not be valid, for example if a PCR test is required.


Many countries accept antigen tests for the entry, and when you need it just for the entry, 24 hours is enough... By the way, e.g. Poland on the entry accepts, if I remember well, 48-hour old antigen tests (no difference between PCR and antigen).



radamfi said:


> There are now drugs which seem very effective at stopping people getting seriously ill from Covid as long as it is taken soon after infection.


Yes, I've read in the media yesterday, that the UK approved one, and now Pfizer says they are almost finished with another, yet more efficient than the UK-approved one.


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> Here in the UK masks are recommended but not mandated. It is mixed picture. I would say that masks became new class indicator. It is quite visible that well off folks from middle classes often wear them, for example on public transport, while people on lower end of socioeconomic scale less so. It is not universal truth but there definitely is correlation I can spot.


Down here in the south west there has been a noticeable increase in the number of people wearing masks in the last couple of weeks, it was, at a guess, maybe 1 in 3 people in bigger shops, and hardly any in small shops. Now it is more like 2 in 3 in big shops and maybe 1 in 3 in smaller places


----------



## Dikan011

geogregor said:


> It is our favorite pastime.
> 
> But then, Russia does make it easy, doesn't it?
> 
> I admit that some people go a bit over the top, but for that you should check some of the Polish threads.
> 
> As for reliance in large degree on one gas supplier, it is daft, whether it is Russia or Turkmenistan or whoever else. Especially if that someone makes some questionable moves in your neighborhood.


Well, just pay your gas bills on time, and everything will be fine.

I don't know, personally, whenever I read such whining, you mentioned something about Crimea too, I turn over to TV Zvezda and watch the latest launching of Bulava missiles from Borei class subs ... nothing else makes my Serbian heart all warm & happy like that


----------



## Dikan011

Yikes....somewhere in Bosnia:


----------



## geogregor

Dikan011 said:


> Well, just pay your gas bills on time, and everything will be fine.


If only life was so simple... 



> I don't know, personally, whenever I read such whining, you mentioned something about Crimea too, I turn over to TV Zvezda and watch the latest launching of Bulava missiles from Borei class subs ... nothing else makes my Serbian heart all warm & happy like that


I forgot your nationality. That explains the outlook. 



Kpc21 said:


> Yes, I've read in the media yesterday, that the UK approved one, and now Pfizer says they are almost finished with another, yet more efficient than the UK-approved one.


The one approved in the UK is produced by the US company:

Molnupiravir: First pill to treat Covid gets approval in UK


> Molnupiravir, developed by the US drug companies Merck, Sharp and Dohme (MSD) and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, is the first antiviral medication for Covid which can be taken as a pill rather than injected or given intravenously


The UK medicine regulator (MHRA) is quite swift with emergency approvals. If I remember correctly they were also the first to approve the vaccines. I guess Covid emergency justifies skipping some bureaucracy.


----------



## Attus

A new, 6km long bicycle path was opened in Eastern Hungary.
11 politicians opened it, a minister, a deputy minister, two mayors, president and vice president of the regional parliament, the local member of the national parliament, and some less important ones.








Tizenegyen kellenek hozzá, de nem futballcsapat, mi az? Kerékpárút-átadás!


A tizenegy fontos emberből tíz volt férfi.




168.hu


----------



## bogdymol

Did they all fit onto the bike path?


----------



## PovilD

Why such attention?  It looks it's not even separated cycleway, you have to share it with regular pedestrians


----------



## keber

Current corona infections in Europe look like a weather front coming from the East. If anybodi want to know, what will happen in western countries, just look to eastern ones, and Israel (where latest corona wave just finished). Seem like a short, but very intense spike in covid infections numbers, even among vaccinated. Seems that vaccines are effective at decreasing hospitalizations, but not very effective.


----------



## geogregor

keber said:


> Current corona infections in Europe look like a weather front coming from the East. If anybodi want to know, what will happen in western countries, just look to eastern ones, and Israel (where latest corona wave just finished). Seem like a short, but very intense spike in covid infections numbers, even among vaccinated. Seems that vaccines are effective at decreasing hospitalizations, but not very effective.


Well, it is not that simple. Numbers of infections will eventually spike everywhere. But how will it translate to hospitalizations and deaths will depend on vaccination rates in given countries

There simply isn't comparison between, say, Romania or Bulgaria and Spain or Portugal. Even if they will have similar spikes of infections the western countries will have less deaths due to vastly better vaccination percentages.

I would argue there is risk that some Eastern European countries are facing really bad winter eventually even lockdowns (Latvia already has one).

Deaths per capita in Romania and Bulgaria are skyrocketing due to low vaccinations. Just look at the data here:









Free to read: Coronavirus tracked: has the epidemic peaked near you?


Find any country or US state in the live-updating and customisable version of the FT’s Covid-19 trajectory graphs




ig.ft.com





Another chart:


----------



## geogregor

Some things in Poland make me depressed. Young woman died recently due to stupidity of antiabortion legislation:









Death of pregnant woman ignites debate about abortion ban in Poland


The death of a pregnant Polish woman has reignited debate over abortion in one of Europe's most devoutly Catholic countries, with activists saying she could still be alive if it were not for a near total ban on terminating pregnancies.




www.reuters.com







> Activists say Izabela, a 30-year-old woman in the 22nd week of pregnancy who her family said died of septic shock after doctors waited for her unborn baby's heart to stop beating, is the first woman to die as a result of the ruling.
> 
> The government says the ruling was not to blame for her death, rather an error by doctors.
> 
> Izabela went to hospital in September after her waters broke, her family said. Scans had previously shown numerous defects in the foetus.
> 
> "The baby weighs 485 grams. For now, thanks to the abortion law, I have to lie down. And there is nothing they can do. They'll wait until it dies or something begins, and if not, I can expect sepsis," Izabela said in a text message to her mother, private broadcaster TVN24 reported.
> 
> When a scan showed the foetus was dead, doctors at the hospital in Pszczyna, southern Poland, decided to perform a Caesarean. The family's lawyer, Jolanta Budzowska, said Izabela's heart stopped on the way to the operating theatre and she died despite efforts to resuscitate her.
> 
> "I couldn't believe it, I thought it wasn't true," Izabela's mother Barbara told TVN24. "How could such a thing happen to her in the hospital? After all, she went there for help."
> 
> Budzowska has started legal action over the treatment Izabela received, accusing doctors of malpractice, but she also called the death "a consequence of the verdict".











Polish activists protest after woman’s death in wake of strict abortion law


Demonstrations and candlelit vigil after woman, 30, dies of septic shock in 22nd week of pregnancy




www.theguardian.com





It reminds me the case in Ireland a few years ago.

I wonder what will happen. The currently ruling rightwingers push Poland towards some "CathoTaliban" parody. When will that stop?

Will Poland eventually follow the "Irish path" out of church dominated politics?


----------



## keber

geogregor said:


> Well, it is not that simple. Numbers of infections will eventually spike everywhere. But how will it translate to hospitalizations and deaths will depend on vaccination rates in given countries
> 
> There simply isn't comparison between, say, Romania or Bulgaria and Spain or Portugal. Even if they will have similar spikes of infections the western countries will have less deaths due to vastly better vaccination percentages.
> 
> I would argue there is risk that some Eastern European countries are facing really bad winter eventually even lockdowns (Latvia already has one).
> 
> Deaths per capita in Romania and Bulgaria are skyrocketing due to low vaccinations. Just look at the data here:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Free to read: Coronavirus tracked: has the epidemic peaked near you?
> 
> 
> Find any country or US state in the live-updating and customisable version of the FT’s Covid-19 trajectory graphs
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ig.ft.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Another chart:


I agree it is not that simple. However I see by current statistics from Slovenia (which probably isn't unique in Europe).
63% of adults in Slovenia are fully vaccinated, most of then months ago. But in the hospitals there are about 35% fully vaccinated and similar it's in ICUs. If my calculations are correct, then by that statistics there is about 3.5 times more likely for a person to be hospitalized if that person is not vaccinated. That is a good number if a society has some kind of lockdown. But now people are tires of pandemics and obeying reccomendations is mostly non existing and almost all services works without limitations. Share of fully vaccinated rises very slowly especially as it is obvious that vaccines don't protect much from infections.

Numbers are rising fast, even the share of vaccinated in hospitals. That probably means also that vaccine effectiveness is dimminishing pretty fast.

Not to be taken wrong, I'm fully pro-vaccination and was also vaccinated as soon I got my turn. But I also see that current vaccines are not magic and covid won't vanish so quickly. I really wonder what will hapen in Portugal.


----------



## Suburbanist

keber said:


> I agree it is not that simple. However I see by current statistics from Slovenia (which probably isn't unique in Europe).
> 63% of adults in Slovenia are fully vaccinated, most of then months ago. But in the hospitals there are about 35% fully vaccinated and similar it's in ICUs. If my calculations are correct, then by that statistics* there is about 3.5 times more likely for a person to be hospitalized if that person is not vaccinated*.


What complicates these calculations is that, in most countries, the percentage of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated varies a lot across age groups, and so does the likelihood of developing serious symptoms upon contagion.


----------



## PovilD

It's natural that respiratory diseases become more active in winter.

I wonder if Western Europe experience an epidemic of breakthrough cases, or it's mostly boosted by unvaccinated cases? I mean, unvaccinated to unvaccinated, unvaccinated to vaccinated, and only few vaccinated to others?


----------



## radamfi

The UK has had high case levels since the summer and they've been going up and down ever since. Other western European countries are now experiencing similar case levels for the first time and seem to be panicking.


----------



## Suburbanist

radamfi said:


> Very interested to see the end of this sentence!


It was a comment meant for another sub-forum on how I profoundly dislike low-income anti-education culture, the type that have nostalgia for times when children left school at 14 or could work full time at 13.


----------



## radamfi

One thing hindering EV adoption is the inability for many people to charge at home. A suitcase sized portable EV charger has been invented that can be charged indoors from a regular power socket which can then be used to charge the EV:









Portable EV Charging | ZipCharge Go - a powerbank for your EV | London


Charge anywhere you park. The ZipCharge Go is the world's first portable EV charger for personal use at home, work and on the go. Our chargers are part of a global portable EV charging network to provide affordable, convenient EV charging to everyone.




www.zipcharge.global


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^ A portable battery, in other words. I think this would be a solution on a daily basis for the enthusuasts only, and maybe for emergencies for others. I hope it has an anti-theft mechanism, so the user does not have to hang around during charging. 

Clearly, at least low current charging possibilities should be present at most public parking ahead.

In the meantime, across the pond ....

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1425449438202548224
I don't recall my school meetings being that entertaining.


----------



## radamfi

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> ^^ A portable battery, in other words. I think this would be a solution on a daily basis for the enthusuasts only, and maybe for emergencies for others. I hope it has an anti-theft mechanism, so the user does not have to hang around during charging.


Presumably when you charge at a regular public charging station the cable is locked to both the car and charging station (I don't know having never used an EV). Otherwise kids could easily disconnect it for fun. So I would assume the same locking mechanism is used there.

The battery claims to offer 20 to 40 miles of charge, which is sufficient for most commuters.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Yes, the cable is locked to the car, but the cable can be cut.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> The battery claims to offer 20 to 40 miles of charge, which is sufficient for most commuters.


But you need to charge at a far more expensive fast charger for longer trips. Which kind of defeats the purpose of an electric car: it's most economical to charge at home at a lower rate. Fast chargers are twice as expensive or even more. 

20-40 miles could be sufficient, but only if you can charge at your destination. Also: range anxiety has been a major turnoff for people. This isn't a big problem with today's EVs that can travel 300 kilometers or more on a charge. But 20-40 miles of range is far below what most people would normally allow their fuel tank to reach before refueling. And EV consumption is also quite a bit higher in colder weather (even if we're not talking about deep freeze). 

But yes, charging at home is a major challenge for many people. Some localities allow charging cables to run across sidewalks, and sometimes there is a charging point at streetside parking. But these aren't really something you'd want on a very large scale.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Cookiefabric said:


> "This has cost the Netherlands a hundred billion euros in recent years."


Wow that is insane. 

Back in the days there was a powerful communist undercurrent in Italy. The Italian Communist Party received 30% of the vote as recent as 1983, so they were far more mainstream than elsewhere in Western Europe where communists were a niche to nonexistent. They wanted to avoid Italy getting in the Soviet sphere of influence. Apparently the Dutch government thought this was worth € 100 billion.


----------



## Kpc21

Cookiefabric said:


> Any update regarding the DK8 / A5 or DK16 / 135 border zones? Is transit traffic still allowed through?


From the Polish side – yes.

The only closed border crossing point is the one DK19 / M6 to Belarus – near the place where all the things are going on.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> From the Polish side – yes.
> 
> The only closed border crossing point is the one DK19 / M6 to Belarus – near the place where all the things are going on.


Is interesting if EU countries will close all border with Belarus. In the light of this crisis there are worries that cargo transit can be disrupted.


----------



## Kpc21

Belarus isn't the only route to Russia from Europe... You can go through Lithuania and Latvia; the route through Ukraine – at least through its north – if I am not mistaken, also works (in the south we have war area).

Anyway, I don't know how it is now, but at least recently it wasn't even possible to legally go from Poland to Russia through Belarus. It was caused by the fact that the Belarus-Russia border is open, like in Schengen zone – but it doesn't work like in Schengen zone, that when you enter one country, you are legally allowed to travel in all the area.

From what I can read – it's still so.

Though it applies to tourists; there are probably exceptions from that for the professional drivers.

Still, cutting the whole trade with Belarus may anyway make sense as a part of the sanctions, and then the closure of the borders will not really matter, at least from the perspective of delivering goods to Belarus. And regarding the transit to Russia, there are also other routes...


----------



## Suburbanist

There had been crossings from Russia to Norway in the past of illegal immigrants, but not as part of an organized Russian government effort to dump people there. But that has mostly cease. The northern border with Russia is militarize, and the weather is unreleting any season of the year.


----------



## Dikan011

In Serbia, we just give these guys a bottle of water & a sandwich, and send them on. Some have even made a killing smuggling them to Hungary and further.

We neither have the capacity to deal with them, nor they wish to stay. Germany, Sweden and other countries with great social benefit packages are on their mind.

Plus the German labour officials clearly said, they need half a million new workers each year, so why all this fake uproar & stress?

Over at DLM, fascists want to bomb the Minsk airport. 😂 











German Labour Chief Says Germany Needs 400,000 Skilled Immigrants Yearly to Tackle Skilled Workers' Shortage - SchengenVisaInfo.com


The Head of the Federal Employment Agency, Detlef Scheele, said that Germany needs 400,000 new workers per year to fill the labour market, which can be possible by admitting more immigrants to the country, meaning that Germany’s economy is currently dependent on immigration. According to...



www.schengenvisainfo.com


----------



## geogregor

Dikan011 said:


> Over at DLM, fascists want to bomb the Minsk airport. 😂


What is DLM?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Creative?









Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.com


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Creative?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Google Maps
> 
> 
> Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.google.com


It's disappointing to me that he put all that effort into silly curse word. He should have put something on it that makes people think and keeps them up at night wondering. Something like: "You've almost found it!" or "Oh no, not you..!" 

Wasn't there a story a couple of years ago about a guy who lives near an airport and put "Welcome to _different city_" on his roof in order to confuse airplane passengers? That's what I mean. That's properly funny.


----------



## marcobruls

geogregor said:


> What is DLM?


Domus Ludicrae Maximae | Skyscraper City Forum


----------



## Kpc21

Lukashenka has threatened that he may block the transit of natural gas through Belarus. Although in reality the pipe is owned by Russian Gazprom.


----------



## radamfi

radamfi said:


> When it was announced people were just grateful that EHIC was going to continue but clearly the naming is politically motivated. If there are plans to include other countries in the GHIC then it would make more sense but at the moment it covers _fewer_ countries than the EHIC and doesn't cover any that aren't covered by EHIC. The UK has reciprocal healthcare agreements with various non-EU/EEA countries, mostly in the Balkans, as well as Australia and New Zealand but the EHIC card was never required for those countries. Merely presenting the passport would suffice.
> 
> Most old people are probably quite happy now that Spain and other Mediterranean countries are included in the GHIC as long as they don't plan to stay for more than 90 days in every 180 days. However, on a personal note, the omission of Switzerland is disappointing as I intend to make a lot of trips there in my retirement. That will cause problems if I get health problems which travel insurance won't cover.
> 
> Even more confusingly, EU citizens who moved to the UK before 1 January can still apply for a UK EHIC (not GHIC), and they get coverage in Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein.


There has been an agreement between the UK and Switzerland which means the GHIC is now valid in Switzerland. Similarly EHIC card holders in Switzerland can now use it in the UK.


----------



## Dikan011

Just when you thought things couldn't get more strange in Poland.

Polish ultra-nationalists burn German flag at today's festivities in Warsaw. Did they run out of Russian ones? 🤣

Serbian media also reporting they were chanting "We don't want mosques & synagogues, only churches with crosses".


----------



## Slagathor

Dikan011 said:


> Serbian media also reporting they were chanting "We don't want mosques & synagogues, only churches with crosses".


One imperialist Middle Eastern religion is better than the others!


----------



## Attus

Home sweet home. After spending several days, not really planned, in a hospital, I'm home again, and more or less healthy. You can never know, what will happen in ten minutes from now...


----------



## Attus

Dikan is this time right. 99% of the migrants at the Polish and Lithuanian borders does not want to stay there. And exactly this makes the situation so complex.
I, too, think, those nations should not fight against immigration. They simply should order buses and transport migrants directly to the border of Germany.


----------



## Suburbanist

Attus said:


> Dikan is this time right. 99% of the migrants at the Polish and Lithuanian borders does not want to stay there. And exactly this means the situation so complex.
> I, too, think, those nations should not fight against immigration. They simply should order buses and transport migrants directly to the border of Germany.


Why, even in the current environment, should Poland go brazenlty berserk to crate a crisis with Germany by abiding and giving the red carpet to Lushakenko?


----------



## PovilD

Migrant crisis is clearly described as hybrid warfare by Russia/Belarus in Lithuanian and Polish media.

There is not an issue that they don't want to stay. The issue is something like EU bureaucratic glitch used by Russia/Belarus for escalating migrant crisis.

It's not normal to have tens of thousands of people crossing the border at the same time in clearly controlled manner.

On the same time, situation near Russia/Ukraine border is escalating again.


----------



## Attus

Suburbanist said:


> Why, even in the current environment, should Poland go brazenlty berserk to crate a crisis with Germany by abiding and giving the red carpet to Lushakenko?


Because Poland is daily criticized by German politicians, they say, Poland must accept all the immigrants, it's inhuman not to do it. I think. German politicians would be suddenly very, very silent...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch government has just imposed a 3 week semi-lockdown 

Nobody really believes this will just be for three weeks, like last winter...


----------



## Džiugas

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch government has just imposed a 3 week semi-lockdown
> 
> Nobody really believes this will just be for three weeks, like last winter...


What does semi-lockdown mean?


----------



## bogdymol

Starting with Monday there will be a full lockdown for unvaccinated people in the Austrian states of Salzburg and Upper Austria. The government is considering to make this in the entire country.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Džiugas said:


> What does semi-lockdown mean?


They just announced a whole bunch of nonsense restrictions which will make life inconvenient but are unrealistic to have an effect on the spread of the virus. It's a lighter lockdown (so far) than during past winter. Restaurants will close at 8 p.m., almost all shops will have to close at 6 p.m., but theater and cinemas remain open in the evening.

But the most far-reaching measure is the implementation of the so-called '2G system', where access is only allowed for vaccinated or recovered persons (and thus not tested people). They want to include this in almost all shops except those marked 'essential', and possibly also at work on a voluntary basis (so far).

This time the journalists are also more critical in the press conference. A year ago they were pushing for harder lockdowns.


----------



## tfd543

Attus said:


> Home sweet home. After spending several days, not really planned, in a hospital, I'm home again, and more or less healthy. You can never know, what will happen in ten minutes from now...


What happened?


----------



## Attus

tfd543 said:


> What happened?


I felt suddenly very bad last Saturday and called the emergency number. I was absolutely OK, and two minutes later I could hardly walk. I've never had anything like this before. The doctors say it must have been a very strong allergical reaction.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> This time the journalists are also more critical in the press conference. A year ago they were pushing for harder lockdowns.


There were no vaccines yet last year.


----------



## PovilD

Well, the most effective system for Europe would be 2G for those vaccinated/recovered up to 7 months, and probably 2G plus (with negative test) for those vaccinated 4-7 months if cases are high (risks for ICU overflowing), and larger distances (5 m+) indoors can't be maintained (reducing viral load between random contacts). Elderly 60+ should already get vaccinated by booster shots if 4 months have passed, and 2G plus should not be applied for them (just vaccinate them).

If cases are really low, 2G is not needed (this can also be applied if covid will become flu-like mild disease).

For seriousness of any infectious disease. We should always monitor reproductive rate, case number, and percentage of positive cases in last 7 or 14 days ending in hospital/ICU.

Btw, I kinda hate testing may still be used for contact tracing. For me, testing is a tool for monitoring the seriousness of disease in the population, looking for variants and similar properties.


----------



## geogregor

bogdymol said:


> Starting with Monday there will be a full lockdown for unvaccinated people in the Austrian states of Salzburg and Upper Austria. The government is considering to make this in the entire country.


How is this going to be enforced? Will police ask people on the street if they are vaccinated?

A lot of restrictions were effective last year only because populations were, by and large, for it. There wasn't really need for serious enforcement. If people don't buy into it there is not much authorities can do. There is no way things can be enforced in western open societies they way they can do it in China.


----------



## bogdymol

geogregor said:


> How is this going to be enforced? Will police ask people on the street if they are vaccinated?


The police said they are a bit overwhelmed, and do not have the capacity to strictly enforce this.

I think it won't be enforced too much, but some random controls may still happen. Or if you get in trouble for something unrelated, they might check also your vaccination status.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> How is this going to be enforced? Will police ask people on the street if they are vaccinated?


I assume that entry into non-essential locations is restricted by QR codes to people who are either vaccinated or recovered (called the 2G rule in German and Dutch).


----------



## bogdymol

Exactly. 

And now you need a 3G proof (vaccinated, recovered, pcr-tested) for going to work. This is enforced:

I heard of police controls at about 700 different companies in Vienna, plus at a local shopping center not far away from where I live in Upper Austria
Companies are also required to make random checks for their employees, and report weekly the checks. Last week the company I work for asked us, for the first time since the start of the pandemic, about our vaccination status.


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> A lot of restrictions were effective last year only because populations were, by and large, for it. There wasn't really need for serious enforcement. If people don't buy into it there is not much authorities can do. There is no way things can be enforced in western open societies they way they can do it in China.


My bet there is majority support for 3G and 2G. It's not the same as everybody bear for lockdowns. As for government support for restrictions, I would be surprised if something changed there. Even protests were always by those anti-vax people.

I'm expecting wave peak in West Europe for early to mid December. Booster shots may do the trick, especially if did quicker than UK or even Isreal recently. I was reading UK starts to see reduction in cases due to booster shots given. I can say UK to release all restrictions look doing the job quite well. They understood is seasonal disease, and is harder for cases to grow in summer temperate climate.


----------



## Suburbanist

PovilD said:


> They understood is seasonal disease, and is harder for cases to grow in summer temperate climate.


It is a seasonal disease only to the extent that people stay more indoors, but it is unrelated to temperature. South America had its worst crisis during peak summer periods, in regions where minimum temps often are above 20 oC.


----------



## PovilD

Suburbanist said:


> It is a seasonal disease only to the extent that people stay more indoors, but it is unrelated to temperature. South America had its worst crisis during peak summer periods, in regions where minimum temps often are above 20 oC.


My guess, the thing with covid it's just very visible disease for its morbidity. For a long time, only limited amount of people had some sort of immunity too. Heatwaves, like summer in Florida or Texas, can also make covid worse, due to people staying more indoors too with artificial ventilation which doesn't help you with infectious diseases.

I doubt people on the Equator don't get cough, fever or sniffles due to high temperatures.

Europe seem to control it better with improved ventilation, getting vitamin D in summer, but not in winter with minimal vitamin D exposure from sun, and almost no ventilation. Not to mention cold weather which also has effects for nose and mouth.

I think is related to temperature in a way how people behave in certain temperatures. It's also possible, that for respiratory illnesses, immunity factor kicks in too. Vanning immunity after summer, more immunity in spring. Covid is very closely monitored and mitigated disease, so it may look weird, almost mystical in terms of spread. I doubt we ever monitored any respiratory illness that closely.


----------



## Attus

PovilD said:


> My bet there is majority support for 3G and 2G.


No, there is not. 
And exactly that's why we actually have 0G: no matter, what is the rule, because it is not checked. It is not, because people do not want it to be checked. There is no support for restrictions.


----------



## PovilD

Attus said:


> No, there is not.
> And exactly that's why we actually have 0G: no matter, what is the rule, because it is not checked. It is not, because people do not want it to be checked. There is no support for restrictions.


Ok, I understand.

I thought you already implemented it with strict checks


----------



## Cookiefabric

2G is not yet in force in NL, however the discussion about it is huge (it's heading into the direction of tearing a nation apart. A simuliar situation was seen in the UK after the Brexit votes and the elections in Poland (young vs old)). The number of people that has enough of lockdown measurements is growing

Something else: It's almost 9 months after the elections and there is still no new gov. Maybe we will toss Belgium off it's place 
It seems starting to look like that M. Rutte is using "_Divide et impera_" in it's advantage


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Dutch politics cause a lot of outrage online, but political engagement is in fact very low. Membership of parties have steadily declined. Attendance of political events or party congress is very low. People have tuned out of political engagement outside of social media.

The leading party VVD got 2,279,000 votes. However its membership is only 25,000, there are 8 parties with a larger membership (though not by much and almost all are on a continuous decline).

The conspiracy anti-vaxx party FvD with a 5% vote share actually has the highest membership of any party in the Netherlands.


----------



## Attus

PovilD said:


> Ok, I understand.
> 
> I thought you already implemented it with strict checks


In many cases vaccination is not checked at all (although it is compulsory to check it). In some other cases in is checked very lax, if you show something what looks like a QR code, it's OK.


----------



## volodaaaa

Surprisingly good pro-vaccination campaign from Russia





The COVID conspiracy theorists always look up to Russia and I think it is good this campaign was made.


----------



## PovilD

Attus said:


> In many cases vaccination is not checked at all (although it is compulsory to check it). In some other cases in is checked very lax, if you show something what looks like a QR code, it's OK.


Here in Lithuania, QR checks are quite strict. They use scans to prove QR is right, etc.
We have harsher wave since early September, and strict 3G system took place from mid September.

Not using QR scan I see as a lax measure.

I'm fine with that 2G (I think current equivalent used in Lithuania is 3G right now, but I'm not sure if they switched to 2G) system for the most part (dining in, large shops, etc.). There are strict moments I don't like: if I wear mask (as it's mandatory) and just order take away in dine in restaurant, when nobody is dining, or when I need to do something done quick and they still ask me GP with mask when everybody are wearing mask.

I felt quite mad at that strict system of masks and GP, but now seeing how Germanic speaking countries got it out of control, I'm not see it as bad measure.
Ok, unless you will all rebel and remain with 0G, despite overflowed ICUs, idk.

I just talked to a relative, who is becoming old. He says why you, young guy, should care about full ICUs if these are of old people, if they don't get ICU, they days are over anyway. Everybody would be afraid if there are too many young people. Nobody should lockdown for mild disease in the young. At March 2020, there were fears that probably everybody may start dying sooner or later, and just did the best they knew back then.


----------



## Džiugas

Well, here in Lithuania I was asked for ID (passport/Personal Identity Card) only few times, the QR codes are just scanned with no further checks.
When I visited Denmark, they kept on asking for passport every time.


----------



## Džiugas

Džiugas said:


> Well, here in Lithuania I was asked for ID (passport/Personal Identity Card) only few times, the QR codes are just scanned with no further checks.
> When I visited Denmark, they kept on asking for passport every time upon covid document check.


----------



## volodaaaa

I have not been checked since my complete vaccination.  Only once I was asked to show the COVIDPass, but when I reached to get my phone, the person who asked told me she believed me.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I have also shown my QR code only once, in France. This past summer I stayed in a couple of hotels, restaurants & campsites and crossed many borders. Nobody asked for a QR code.

So far my QR code has not been asked for in the Netherlands. But I don't go out every weekend, but I still visited a number of restaurants recently.


----------



## radamfi

Vaccine passports are not generally needed in England, however venues can ask for them if they want. I've only asked for proof of vaccination twice, when going to West End shows, but they just looked at it without scanning it. Since the UK joined the EUDCC two weeks ago I have been checking various apps every few days to see if they work. The Belgium and Netherlands apps worked straight away, but the Switzerland, Cyprus and Luxembourg apps only just started to accept it. Vaccinated visitors from the UK are now allowed to visit Luxembourg as a result of the UK joining the EUDCC.


----------



## bogdymol

I have shown my covid pass several times when entering various places in Austria, North Macedonia or Portugal. Also at various airports I used this year, when boarding flights to destinations that required it. But every time, just showing the pass on the phone was sufficient, nobody actually scanned it.

The only times when it got scanned was at the airport in Vienna (when arriving in Austria, by Austrian border police), as well as twice in Portugal (once at hotel check-in, once at a restaurant). I have to say, the Portuguese were really taking the entire covid checks seriously, and people were also obeying the rules without any comments.


----------



## valkrav

bogdymol said:


> And now you need a 3G proof (vaccinated, recovered, pcr-tested)


And tomorow ??? 
You need 🔯 visible far on yor back...


----------



## PovilD

Džiugas said:


> Well, here in Lithuania I was asked for ID (passport/Personal Identity Card) only few times, the QR codes are just scanned with no further checks.
> When I visited Denmark, they kept on asking for passport every time.


Thanks for mentioning ID. Yes, indeed, ID is usually not asked. I heard about asking IDs only in certain events, like some book fair.

I just compared our strictness with situation we get from Germany, Netherlands, etc.


----------



## bogdymol

valkrav said:


> And tomorow ???
> You need 🔯 visible far on yor back...


Why do you have to be so dramatic?

They announced this rule since end of October. People had sufficient time to get their shot, if they wanted to. Plus, they also have the opportunity to get tested every second day or so, free of charge, in case they don't want to be vaccinated.

Regarding your remark, the employer can ask every employee for their vaccination status. If not vaccinated, they can legally ask to present a valid test every day when they show up for work. There are fines for both the employee and the employer if they don't do this.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> I have also shown my QR code only once, in France. This past summer I stayed in a couple of hotels, restaurants & campsites and crossed many borders. Nobody asked for a QR code.
> 
> So far my QR code has not been asked for in the Netherlands. But I don't go out every weekend, but I still visited a number of restaurants recently.


So far this month I've been to the gym, three different coffee places, two different restaurants and a garden center and _all _of them asked me for my QR code.


----------



## Cookiefabric

bogdymol said:


> *Regarding your remark, the employer can ask every employee for their vaccination status*. If not vaccinated, they can legally ask to present a valid test every day when they show up for work. There are fines for both the employee and the employer if they don't do this.


Hell No:

The employer is NOT allowed to ask during interviews about the medical status of it's staff. Neither when they're hired.
Other example: It's also NOT allowed to ask women if they're pregnant or planning to get pregnant in the near future.


----------



## Attus

Cookiefabric said:


> The employer is NOT allowed to ask during interviews about the medical status of it's staff. Neither when they're hired.


It's surely not the case in Austria or Italy. And I suppose it will be changed in Germany as well: employers will be forced(!) to ask if their employees are vaccinated, and, if they are not, they must be tested again and again.


----------



## x-type

I had to show it several times: on border crossings entering Slovenia, in Italy at the entrance to the fair, but the most bizarre was at rest area in Slovenia where they didn't want to serve people without greenpass, altough they would have already entered.


----------



## bogdymol

Cookiefabric said:


> Hell No:
> 
> The employer is NOT allowed to ask during interviews about the medical status of it's staff. Neither when they're hired.
> Other example: It's also NOT allowed to ask women if they're pregnant or planning to get pregnant in the near future.


In normal times, sure, it is like that. But now, there are no normal times anymore.


----------



## geogregor

bogdymol said:


> I have to say, the Portuguese were really taking the entire covid checks seriously, and people were also obeying the rules without any comments.


I'm not sure about it. We travelled around Portugal for 2 weeks in September and I had to show my proof of vaccination 3 times. Once at the border and in two hotels. Not a single restaurant or bar or any other place asked for it.


----------



## Kpc21

Dikan011 said:


> Polish ultra-nationalists burn German flag at today's festivities in Warsaw. Did they run out of Russian ones? 🤣


It's how Poland celebrates Independence Day. Already for quite a few years it's been looking so that the nationalists organize a huge march in Warsaw. Of course for many people it's just a way to celebrate the independence and show off how patriotic they are, but it's always so that some extreme nationalists appear and do some weird things. At least this year they didn't vandalize a book store, like they did a year ago.

Polish nationalists are more anti-German than anti-Russian, from what I can generally see.

And this year, the march was officially organized not by the nationalists, but by the government.



Attus said:


> They simply should order buses and transport migrants directly to the border of Germany.


From what I've read, the city of Munich has already declared that they can take any number of immigrants from the Belarussian border.



Cookiefabric said:


> The employer is NOT allowed to ask during interviews about the medical status of it's staff. Neither when they're hired.
> Other example: It's also NOT allowed to ask women if they're pregnant or planning to get pregnant in the near future.


During an interview and about some chronic diseases – yes. But e.g. in my team at work it has become an everyday practice since the start of remote work, that we are asked if we are healthy at each daily standup.

I don't really like it, but it kind of makes sense. The employer is obliged to send an employee home (and to a doctor for a sick leave) if the employee is sick, he shouldn't allow a sick employee to work. If he can see that the employee is coughing and sneezing, then he can do it, but with remote work it's not that easy... I guess this is why we have this asking thing.

And there are some professions in case of which there are obligatory vaccinations...


----------



## Dikan011

I hoped that Munich thing was fake news? If it wasn't, and it's real, I'm gonna laugh so hard.

So much wrecked nerves, anti-Belarus, anti-Russia accusations, calls for sanctions, even bombing of airports in Minsk...and for what?

People are sheep, plain & simple.


----------



## Dikan011

Enough about covid, migrants...there are more important things.

World's greatest tennis player of all time reacts to Serbia's World Cup qualifying win over Portugal: 🤣  🍻


----------



## PovilD

Life is easy for Russia. What can go wrong for the largest landmass country in the World. Lots of minerals, oil and gas. Serbia is seem to be very cheerleading there too, maybe due to being cultural/history friends, etc. Nothing wrong with that. Problem with Russia is that they pronounce not very European way of thinking: who is the strongest can take everything. They say "What are rights, treaties? Who care about your rights, you weaklings?" For small Baltics, treaties are everything. If just muscles are everything, then Baltics are screwed. Everybody here understands that, because it's simple human nature. For example, if something like beatings happen, one loses, one win, since one can be stronger, bigger, etc. That why we are a little bit anxious around our relations with Russia.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> No surprises there 😂
> 
> Audis appear the be the vehicle of choice for idiots and criminals.


Nah, that's BMW 😉



> I often wonder how a 22 year old can afford an € 80,000 Audi.


Those cars are often on lease. As long as you can afford repayments (because, for example, you got job in IT) you can drive quite expensive car. In fact insurance might be a bigger problem...

And then we have people with rich parents.


----------



## PovilD

I just saw Today an BMW trying to drift on 6 lane street, but failed miserably 🤣 The car turned around and hit a curb of the side of the street. Luckily nobody was involved in that stunt.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder if this exists elsewhere: a driving mini supermarket. They're called an SRV truck in the Netherlands, they had their heyday in the late 1960s and 1970s, there used to be several thousand of them, nowadays there are about 100.


Never heard about it before.


radamfi said:


> Is it actually permanently lost?


Yes, I believe they are auctioned.


----------



## Kpc21

Who is so smart to think that drifting on a public road (other than that track in Germany) is a good idea?


----------



## Slagathor

x-type said:


> We have them in last 10 years. They have appeared with phasing out the little local grocery stores, mostly in small villages, but those bus-shops have appeared later at more places. For instance, I have it in my neighbourhood, altough we have several stores nearby, and 3 hypermarkets within 3 km. Anyway, our shop buses don't look as weird as this one shown in NL, but they are mostly just usual Fiat Ducato, Ford Transit or similar vans.


Ours are like little 7/11s on wheels. Some parts of the country don't have supermarkets anymore, so they come in handy for homebound senior citizens.



















Source: RTV Rijnmond.


----------



## Coccodrillo

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder if this exists elsewhere: a driving mini supermarket. They're called an SRV truck in the Netherlands, they had their heyday in the late 1960s and 1970s, there used to be several thousand of them, nowadays there are about 100.
> 
> These are not contemporary food trucks. They have a smal aisle and products you can buy without the need of pre-ordering. They are mostly found in rural areas and villages. Apparently they had a comeback in popularity during the covid-19 pandemic. It's mostly the elderly that use them.
> 
> 
> SRV-wagen by European Roads, on Flickr


The supermarket chain Migros in Switzerland had them (actually they were modified buses rather than trucks). This website says that the last was used until 2007 in Wallis-Valais. I had never seen them.






NAW Migros Verkaufswagen


NAW Migros Verkaufswagen



www.specialtrucks.ch





Other than these, I saw trucks used by telecom companies Swisscom and Sunrise as temporary stores during renovations of some of their normal stores. They looked like vehicles permanently dedicated to this duty, not temporarily adapted vehicles. Swisscom uses a semitrailer truck IIRC, Sunrise a van (like a Mercedes Sprinter or equivalent). I have never seen other companies doing that, they might build temporary shops instead, with containers or other prefabricated building.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> Who is so smart to think that drifting on a public road (other than that track in Germany) is a good idea?


An average BMW driver? 😉


----------



## Kpc21

Coccodrillo said:


> Other than these, I saw trucks used by telecom companies Swisscom and Sunrise as temporary stores during renovations of some of their normal stores. They looked like vehicles permanently dedicated to this duty, not temporarily adapted vehicles. Swisscom uses a semitrailer truck IIRC, Sunrise a van (like a Mercedes Sprinter or equivalent). I have never seen other companies doing that, they might build temporary shops instead, with containers or other prefabricated building.


Talking about temporary stores, Biedronka in Poland happens to built such e.g. if their store somewhere is closed to undergo a renovation and there isn't another anywhere nearby. But those are in a form of a tent. I've also heard about a similar tent one built in a seaside resort in summer and another set up by Lidl on the largest rock music festival in Poland, Przystanek Woodstock.

Gas stations, but also e.g. the railway (for the cash desks), use container buildings in such situations.



















A temporary Lidl during a renovation of the proper store:










And the rock festival one:










Those mobile stores in the countryside aren't any branch or anything like that, those are just locals having their businesses...


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> Ours are like little 7/11s on wheels. Some parts of the country don't have supermarkets anymore, so they come in handy for homebound senior citizens.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Source: RTV Rijnmond.


Surely this is not a rural area? There's a huge block of flats in the background!


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> Surely this is not a rural area? There's a huge block of flats in the background!


Rural Netherlands


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> Surely this is not a rural area? There's a huge block of flats in the background!


No, this is in Gorinchem, which is a sizeable town with several supermarkets. The article is about how this guy is running "one of the last" such supermarket trucks in the region. The headline reads: "Johan's job is going extinct, but he refuses to retire."

There were some 2.000 of these all over the Netherlands in the 1970s. Today, there are only ~100 left, _mostly _in rural areas.


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder if this exists elsewhere: a driving mini supermarket. They're called an SRV truck in the Netherlands, they had their heyday in the late 1960s and 1970s, there used to be several thousand of them, nowadays there are about 100.


There were a few of these in the UK but they vanished a long time ago as far as I know. I vaguely remember a TV show where one of the characters drove a mobile shop and it must have been a common enough sight that it didn't need explaining. I don't think I have ever seen one.

There are still a few of these though:


----------



## x-type

Stuu said:


> There were a few of these in the UK but they vanished a long time ago as far as I know. I vaguely remember a TV show where one of the characters drove a mobile shop and it must have been a common enough sight that it didn't need explaining. I don't think I have ever seen one.
> 
> There are still a few of these though:
> View attachment 2375223


Oh, I saw it in Croatia as well, but it it was fixed and used as temporary bank at agricultural fair. It even had ATM, and I think it was the main purpose. (or maybe some financing issues for farmers who bought new agricultural machines).

I'm sure that all countries have bookmobiles


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder if this exists elsewhere: a driving mini supermarket. They're called an SRV truck in the Netherlands, they had their heyday in the late 1960s and 1970s, there used to be several thousand of them, nowadays there are about 100.
> 
> These are not contemporary food trucks. They have a smal aisle and products you can buy without the need of pre-ordering. They are mostly found in rural areas and villages. Apparently they had a comeback in popularity during the covid-19 pandemic. It's mostly the elderly that use them.


Such ones were pretty popular in Finland, from late 1950's to 1980's. Since that, the number of them has decreased from 1200 to about zero.

There are many reasons for that. The urbanization has been strong, and most people still living in the rural areas have their own car. A small shop does not meet the expectations any more: The average area of a food store was 100 sqm in 1960, while it is 800 sqm nowadays. The hypermarkets of 2000-4000 sqm have quite a big market share. 

The mobile food store business survived until the vehicles got dead. The business case nowadays does not allow investing in a new one. 

The residual need of mobile food store has been resolved by other means. Many food stores have a home delivery service. In addition, many municipalities have implemented a "village bus" system to provide with a subsided transport to the centers where the supermarkets and other services are located. Usually, the system is operated by the same minibus taxi companies, which carry kids to the schools and back home. So, the bus system works while the kids are in the school. Quite clever use of resources.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Maybe these mobile stores to my knowledge never existed in Norway because rural towns were too far apart here (in driving time)? The major cost in Norway is anyway staffing. Ahead, I think more and more small stores in rural Norway will be fully automated, i.e. open without staff present during a large part of the opening time.

Anyway, in Norway we have a different concept. The "bacon / body fat" bus (in Norwegian, the word for bacon and body fat is the same...). Free buses going across to grocery stores or even shopping malls at the Swedish side of the border, where the prices of meat, candy, and soft drinks are much lower. It used to be a popular recreational activity for certain segments of the retired and others, but so far I do not think such services have recovered fully from COVID-19....


----------



## Suburbanist

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Anyway, in Norway we have a different concept. The "bacon / body fat" bus (in Norwegian, the word for bacon and body fat is the same...). Free buses going across to grocery stores or even shopping malls at the Swedish side of the border, where the prices of meat, candy, and soft drinks are much lower. It used to be a popular recreational activity for certain segments of the retired and others, but so far I do not think such services have recovered fully from COVID-19....


That's a very Oslo-centric activity.

The only free shopping bus in Bergen is to IKEA.


----------



## tfd543

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder if this exists elsewhere: a driving mini supermarket. They're called an SRV truck in the Netherlands, they had their heyday in the late 1960s and 1970s, there used to be several thousand of them, nowadays there are about 100.
> 
> These are not contemporary food trucks. They have a smal aisle and products you can buy without the need of pre-ordering. They are mostly found in rural areas and villages. Apparently they had a comeback in popularity during the covid-19 pandemic. It's mostly the elderly that use them.
> 
> 
> SRV-wagen by European Roads, on Flickr


Interesting road. Its that a 2-1 ?


----------



## Slagathor

tfd543 said:


> Interesting road. Its that a 2-1 ?


That's a two-way road on the right (max speed 60km/h) and a two-way bicycle path on the left.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

This road used to be a main provincial road, however it was bypassed so it's now only a road for local access to a couple of farms. (N340 east of Zwolle).


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Suburbanist said:


> That's a very Oslo-centric activity.
> 
> The only free shopping bus in Bergen is to IKEA.


That a Norwegian phenomenon does not happen in Bergen does not mean that it is Oslo-centric.


----------



## AnelZ

There is no such trucks in Bosnia and Herzegovina but it is normal for small vans with mostly seasonal vegetables and fruits, sometimes also dairy products to come to some rural areas as well as in urban "suburbs" and sell products. But all of this is gray-market as it happens without any regulation considering sanitation or taxes. Many rural areas in Bosnia and Herzegovina have their own shops, especially if they are on a main route or the village has more then 100 inhabitants as you can earn enough money from such business to live in a rural area, especially if you avoid paying taxes for some purchases which happens, sadly, often.


----------



## Suburbanist

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> That a Norwegian phenomenon does not happen in Bergen does not mean that it is Oslo-centric.


I am just reproducing what I hear around here


----------



## Surel

MattiG said:


> Such ones were pretty popular in Finland, from late 1950's to 1980's. Since that, the number of them has decreased from 1200 to about zero.


There were around 700 of grocery stores on wheels in Czechoslovakia in the 70s. Now there are perhaps a few.


----------



## AnelZ

We were talking about gas prices recently (natural gas, used by households for heating and industries for production). Just today the government of Canton Sarajevo has agreed that it will cover the difference of the price raise of gas that occure after 01.11.2021 for households. This measure will be applied until the end of the year but it is also planned to plan funds for it for the next year.


----------



## tfd543

Slagathor said:


> That's a two-way road on the right (max speed 60km/h) and a two-way bicycle path on the left.
> 
> View attachment 2375926


I just dont get why the marking is at either side of the road. Why not just in the middle.


----------



## geogregor

AnelZ said:


> We were talking about gas prices recently. Just today the government of Canton Sarajevo has agreed that it will cover the difference of the price raise of gas that occure after 01.11.2021 for households. This measure will be applied until the end of the year but it is also planned to plan funds for it for the next year.


What? Local government will subsidise gas? How can they afford it? What happens if market price doubles?


----------



## Cookiefabric

tfd543 said:


> I just dont get why the marking is at either side of the road. Why not just in the middle.


Road wideness and road marking does tell the max. allowed speed in NL

This is the typical design for a 60 km/h limit road (or in Denmark known as 2-1).
Putting a center line there, would mean that the lane would be about 2M width -- Which doesn't make sense at all (FYI: Max allowance for this kind of road is 4.5M width in total)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> What? Local government will subsidise gas? How can they afford it? What happens if market price doubles?


Yes this is a bad idea. Many governments across the world tried it and many also had to scrap such subsidies because they wreck the government budgets. Scrapping these subsidies almost always led to widespread social unrest. 

They could reduce the tax rate, though the canton of Sarajevo probably doesn't levy such fuel taxes in the first place. So they apparently came up with a subsidy.


----------



## AnelZ

geogregor said:


> What? Local government will subsidise gas? How can they afford it? What happens if market price doubles?


*EDIT: I was talking about natural gas (used by households for heating)!!! *I see know that I wasn't completly clear about that. Sorry for the confusion.

-----

Canton Sarajevo has a budget of almost 600 million € for 2021 and it isn't the lowest level of local government. That place is taken by municipalities which on the other hand have limited range of obligations and much smaller budgets. In the city of Sarajevo there are four municipalities which have a budgets in 2021 in range of 13-26 millions € (total of somewhat over 80 million €) + the City of Sarajevo with 8 million €. The other five municipalities of Canton Sarajevo have budgets in 2021 in the range of 6-20 million € (~47 million €). So the total budgets of all governments in Canton Sarajevo is around ~720 million € (population 400-500k, closer to 500k). On top of that, you still have the Federal government above that which invests in some projects which are under their jurisdiction.

Subsidizing gas prices already happened for winter 2019/20 when the prices were raised by 29,29% from May 2019 till end of 2019 i.e. 20,7% compared to prices before 1st May 2019 for the first half of 2020 (as the prices were lowered from start of the year) by the Federal government.

Of course, if the prices raises dramatically I'm sure the government of Canton Sarajevo will limit the percentage till which they will cover it but for now they plan to cover all of it. They do it in the way that they pay the difference in price to the public company which provides gas for Canton Sarajevo (SarajevoGas)

The things is, a lot of houses in Canton Sarajevo still have wood stoves in their homes even if they use natural gas for heating. If the prices go to much up, people would just switch to wood and coal (and mixing all other things which can be burned). Considering we already have problems with air quality during winter, this measure also have a health and quality if living aspect to it in order to try to improve air quality.


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> I vaguely remember a TV show where one of the characters drove a mobile shop and it must have been a common enough sight that it didn't need explaining.


I remember something like that from an animated TV series for children, if I remember well – a British one... Probably Postman Pat or something like that.

By the way, we also have this thing with free buses taking customers, usually to huge malls – but it's disappearing now. It was big between 1990s and something like 10 years ago.



geogregor said:


> What? Local government will subsidise gas? How can they afford it? What happens if market price doubles?


In Poland the government is going to subsidize the electricity – for the people below some income levels.

And talking about gas, I was buying today a 11 kg gas bottle (we use for cooking – we have a gas stove but no gas pipe, so we have to do it like that) – and it cost 70 zł (15 euro). I remember times when it happened to cost 20 zł (4 euro) and if it cost 30 zł (6 euro), it was expensive...


----------



## Stuu

If you


ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes this is a bad idea. Many governments across the world tried it and many also had to scrap such subsidies because they wreck the government budgets. Scrapping these subsidies almost always led to widespread social unrest.


Didn't end well for the Romans...


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> I remember something like that from an animated TV series for children, if I remember well – a British one... Probably Postman Pat or something like that.
> 
> By the way, we also have this thing with free buses taking customers, usually to huge malls – but it's disappearing now. It was big between 1990s and something like 10 years ago.


I do remember something animated having that as well, Postman Pat does sound likely... but I'm sure there was a terrible 1970s comedy which had one in as well

We used to have free buses to big supermarkets in rural areas until fairly recently, probably until home delivery became widespread. The bus would do a different route each day of the week, so each place had a fixed day to go the supermarket


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland those supermarket buses ran in the urban environment, not to the rural districts... In Łódź just one supermarket had two rural routes (or actually – to nearby towns, which weren't THAT rural). All other were around the city, through heavily urbanized areas.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Suburbanist said:


> I am just reproducing what I hear around here


You should take anything you hear at the streets of Bergen with a grain of salt, in particular on matters relating to that city compared to the rest of the world ;-D


Cookiefabric said:


> Road wideness and road marking does tell the max. allowed speed in NL
> 
> This is the typical design for a 60 km/h limit road (or in Denmark known as 2-1).
> Putting a center line there, would mean that the lane would be about 2M width -- Which doesn't make sense at all (FYI: Max allowance for this kind of road is 4.5M width in total)


There is obviously a need for an update of the Vienna convention for more standardized road markings. Currently their meaning and use vary wildly across Europe. I had never guessed that the lack of center line had anything with speed limits.


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## Kpc21

But I guess it works the other way round.

The kind of road marking doesn't indicate the speed limit.

It's the speed limit which causes using a specific kind of road marking.

It's logical that at higher limit we should have narrower lanes – so that the drivers naturally slow down having less room on the road.


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## Stuu

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> There is obviously a need for an update of the Vienna convention for more standardized road markings. Currently their meaning and use vary wildly across Europe. I had never guessed that the lack of center line had anything with speed limits.


In the UK the existence of street lighting means there is a default 30 mph speed limit, unless signed differently. No other signage is needed to show the start of the limit, although there almost always will be


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## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> There is obviously a need for an update of the Vienna convention for more standardized road markings. Currently their meaning and use vary wildly across Europe. I had never guessed that the lack of center line had anything with speed limits.


The Netherlands reclassified its road network in the late 1990s under the 'Sustainable Safety' programme. Part of this reclassification were road markings with which motorists could identify the type of road they're on. However road markings alone do not set the speed limit, there must always be a speed limit sign or the default urban/non-urban speed limit. In this case this type of road markings are typically found in a 60 zone. 

The road markings in the Netherlands are not without criticism. They are counter-intuitive, such as broken lines on the side of the road (which you're not supposed to cross), or this type of 60 km/h roads with road markings that resemble bicycle lanes, but aren't and you're supposed to drive to the right of them to avoid a head-on collission. The exact width of the center portion and the side portion also varies widely, there are some absurd applications here and there. 

The Dutch 60 km/h road markings are also different from those found in Sweden and France, which at first hand, may appear somewhat similar.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

To my knowledge there is no "60 km/h" road markings in Sweden, or road markings associated with speed limits at all except when explictly drawing the speed limit sign on the road surface. Like in Norway, road markings differ depending on the width of the the road, though. Anyway, my main point is that the markings should be standardized across countries more than what is the case today.


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## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> To my knowledge there is no "60 km/h" road markings in Sweden, or road markings associated with speed limits at all except when explictly drawing the speed limit sign on the road surface. Like in Norway, road markings differ depending on the width of the the road, though. Anyway, my main point is that the markings should be standardized across countries more than what is the case today.


In countries where roads are covered by snow and ice for several months a year, it would be ridicolous to rely on road markings only.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

This has been a wet, windy, and mild fall around here. That is good for the electricity prices (Day-ahead overview), but not so good for skiing, although there is snow in the mountains. Luckily, they have in Trondheim for several seasons now saved snow from the last winter over the summer in a large pile (~27 000 cubic m) covered by saw-dust, which they are now distributing in a few km long loop. I suspect Østersund, Sweden was the first place where they tried this, but I might be wrong.


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## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> This has been a wet, windy, and mild fall around here. That is good for the electricity prices (Day-ahead overview), but not so good for skiing, although there is snow in the mountains. Luckily, they have in Trondheim for several seasons now saved snow from the last winter over the summer in a large pile (~27 000 cubic m) covered by saw-dust, which they are now distributing in a few km long loop. I suspect Østersund, Sweden was the first place where they tried this, but I might be wrong.


This has been the standard operating procedure in many Finnish ski centers for years. For instance, the first slopes in Ruka got opened as early as on Oct 8th this year. Today, nine slopes out of 35 are open even if there is 4 cm natural snow only.

They store about 80,000 cubic meters snow. Sawdust is the best insulation material, and about 75 per cent of the snow is remaining in the autumn. 

Ruka is about 280 kilometers closer to the North Pole than Trondheim, and the climate there is quite continental. It might have some impact on the efficiency of the procedure.


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## Suburbanist

Doesn't that compacted snow turn into ice?

Interesting stuff, I have never seen it at large scale in the Alps.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

The snow is compact (also because most of it was artificial to begin with), but the sawdust and the snow itself are excellent insulators. The compact and coarse structure of the snow is actually an advantage as it makes the tracks quite resilient against further mild weather.


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## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> Doesn't that compacted snow turn into ice?


The heaps live only a few months from April-May to early October. The heaps are not that tall that the compaction would be a major issue. However, it has been reported that the ground layer under the heap may freeze 100 cm deep to resemble permafrost. That layer is pretty hard, and it might cause some extra work after the heaps have got opened.

Anyway, the show is treated with snowcats to make it even and to remove ice layers. That is an everyday task during the skiing season.


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## ChrisZwolle

Kabul or Chicago?









1 dead, another wounded in 2 shootings on the Stevenson, state police say. Total expressway shootings this year: 213.


Both expressway shootings occured Thursday morning in different sections of the northbound Stevenson expressway, police said.




www.chicagotribune.com





There have been 213 shootings on Chicago area expressways so far this year. Last year had a record 128, which was already a doubling compared to previous years. It's like the wild west.


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## keber

Suburbanist said:


> Doesn't that compacted snow turn into ice?
> 
> Interesting stuff, I have never seen it at large scale in the Alps.


We do that already for several years in Slovenia. It is not quite large scale but it is enough for biathlon and cross coutry skiing trainings in Pokljuka (1400 m asl) that can start as early as strt of November. This year they saved about 20,000 m3 of snow, 12,000 m3 survived this summer. They used even some snow from 2019.









Or in Planica ski jumping center, this snow was used for December 2020 ski jumps.








They also have underground cooled snow storage for summer cross country skiing (also underground).


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## WiseSupernova

Coccodrillo said:


> Lausanne and Lugano have around ~400 metres difference in the contiguous built up area.
> 
> The villages near Lugano, not in the built up area but with a great proportion of commuters (relative to their small size), are higher. I know a couple of commuters who travel these hairpins daily (800 to 300 m asl):
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Swiss Geoportal
> 
> 
> geo.admin.ch ist die Geoinformationsplattform der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft. // geo.admin.ch est la plateforme de géoinformation de la Confédération suisse.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> map.geo.admin.ch
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Pre-alpine lakes remind me fjords, but with a warmer climate and more people living nearby. I suppose they are of similar origin, except that fjords remained connceted to the sea, while Alpine lakes are, evidently, lakes.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Google Maps
> 
> 
> Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.google.ch
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Google Maps
> 
> 
> Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.google.ch
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Anyway. In the map shown before (The roadside rest area) there are some mostly flat countries, where mountains are concentrated in one certain region. Think of Poland and Finland, and even France outside the three main + a few smaller ranges is quite flat (that is, the majority of the territory of mainland France).


Lausanne has more than 500m of difference, I lived in the north of the city at 870m (Vers-chez-les-Blanc) and the lake is at 372m, some houses are even at 900m in Pully


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## volodaaaa

keber said:


> We do that already for several years in Slovenia. It is not quite large scale but it is enough for biathlon and cross coutry skiing trainings in Pokljuka (1400 m asl) that can start as early as strt of November. This year they saved about 20,000 m3 of snow, 12,000 m3 survived this summer. They used even some snow from 2019.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Or in Planica ski jumping center, this snow was used for December 2020 ski jumps.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> They also have underground cooled snow storage for summer cross country skiing (also underground).


Is that "Bloudkova Velinkanka", famous for ski flying sport discipline?


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## geogregor

This is is supposedly leader of this country:









CBI conference: PM accused of 'shambolic' speech to business leaders


Boris Johnson's mentions of Peppa Pig, Lenin, and his car impression, were criticised by opposition parties.



www.bbc.co.uk







> *Boris Johnson has been criticised after he lost his place in a speech to British businesses leaders and referred to the children's cartoon Peppa Pig.*
> 
> Speaking to the CBI conference, the PM also quoted Lenin and performed an impression of a car.
> 
> Halting his speech led to an awkward 21 seconds of apologies and paper shuffling from the Tory leader.





> After saying government "cannot fix everything" and that "the true driver of growth is not government but the energy and dynamism and originality of the private sector", Mr Johnson turned to CBI chief
> 
> Mr Danker and said: "Yesterday I went, as we all must, to Peppa Pig World."
> 
> He asked the audience for a show of hands for who had been to the Hampshire attraction, and after saying "not enough", the PM continued.
> 
> "I was a bit hazy about what I would find at Peppa Pig World, but I loved it," he said.
> 
> "Peppa Pig World is very much my kind of place.
> 
> "It has very safe streets, discipline in schools, a heavy emphasis on mass transit systems I noticed, even if they are a bit stereotypical about Daddy Pig."
> 
> Mr Johnson added: "The real lesson for me going to Peppa Pig World... was about the power of UK creativity.
> 
> "Who would have believed a pig who looks like... a Picasso like hairdryer, a pig that was rejected by the BBC, would now be exported to 180 countries and theme parks both in America and China, as well as in the New Forest and be a business worth at least £6bn to this country and counting.
> 
> "I think that is pure genius don't you? No government in the world, no Whitehall civil servant, would have conceivably come up with Peppa."





> During the section in the speech on electric cars, accompanied by a potted history of his career as a motoring correspondent, Mr Johnson launched into a seemingly well-practised impression of a car.
> "[Electric vehicles] may not burble like sucking doves," he said. "And they may not have that 'vrrrom vrrrom raaah raaah' that you like.





> But he made an ambitious jump when he appeared to compare himself to Moses as he "came down from [Mount] Sinai and [told] my officials [about] the new 10 commandments" - pledges including more investment in wind power and hydrogen technologies.
> 
> That was still less of a surprise than a Conservative prime minister, known for his quotations, turning to a Russian revolutionary to drive his point home.
> 
> "Lenin once said that the Communist Revolution was Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country," he told the crowd.
> 
> "Well, I hesitate to quote Lenin before the Confederation of British Industry, but the coming industrial revolution is green power plus the electrification of the whole country."







I don't want to compare people to monkeys but this guy is an orangutan. If that comparison is insulting, it is for the orangutans...


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## keber

volodaaaa said:


> Is that "Bloudkova Velinkanka", famous for ski flying sport discipline?


Actually that is the larger one, from Gorišek brothers, K-200 (Wikipedia). Bloudkova velikanka, K-125 (Wikipedia) is from 1934 and was completely rebuilt in 2012 after partial collapse. It is seen far right (a bit).


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## Dikan011

Huge tragedy right now....46 people died in a bus rollover & fire on the Bulgarian Struma motorway - carrying tourists from North Macedonia, including kids.

RIP


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## Stuu

geogregor said:


> I don't want to compare people to monkeys but this guy is an orangutan. If that comparison is insulting, it is for the orangutans...


I have read about it but I can't face watching it, need to keep my blood pressure under control


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## geogregor

Stuu said:


> I have read about it but I can't face watching it, need to keep my blood pressure under control


I was home alone when I was watching it and I actually started laughing out loud. The car noises were the best


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## Stuu

geogregor said:


> The car noises were the best


I bet that sentence has never needed to be written before about the leader of a country. Not even Trump


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## tfd543

Dikan011 said:


> Huge tragedy right now....46 people died in a bus rollover & fire on the Bulgarian Struma motorway - carrying tourists from North Macedonia, including kids.
> 
> RIP


They have stored fuel in the cabin as it was cheaper in turkey.. i dont know if its true but we Will see. A big tragedy..


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## radamfi

A British quirk is the policy of having certain towns designated as cities. In other countries the term city seems to be used simply to mean a big town or just any town. In other languages there may not be a separate word for city. However in Britain, being a city is a big deal. Just because a town is big doesn't mean it is automatically a city and conversely some very small towns can be cities. Milton Keynes in particular has long been upset about not being a city, although it often refers to itself as a city anyway. One town, Rochester, lost its city status because of a failure to file paperwork when boundaries were changed. A Member of Parliament was murdered recently, and the town he represented will be made a city because he had campaigned for it during his life.

If you go on a forum and refer to a town with city status as a "town", often someone will correct you that it is a "city".

Occasionally there is a competition to decide more towns to become cities and there is a competition at the moment because of the Queen's 70th anniversary of being Queen in 2022. Milton Keynes will no doubt be entering.


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## ChrisZwolle

In the Netherlands there is no legal status for a town or city, as they form or are part of a municipality, which is the lowest level of government.

However from medieval times, places received 'city rights', and this continues to be mentioned from time to time, with large places like The Hague (pop. 549,000) or Apeldoorn (165,000) not having had full city rights, while a tiny place like Stavoren (pop 965) or Sloten (710) did receive those rights.

'city rights' have not been a thing since the 18th century, but even today people make fun of The Hague being a village.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

In Norway, and I believe in many other countries, city status was often tied to trading rights, which of course was very important. Currently it has no practical importance in Norway, and it is up to each municipality whether the whole or parts of it should have city status, which has led to some hillariously small "cities" whereas some quite populous municipalities are not.


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## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> In the Netherlands there is no legal status for a town or city, as they form or are part of a municipality, which is the lowest level of government.


When you have the blue road sign indicating the start of the 50 km/h limit with the town's name, if the town is part of a municipality with a different name, it seems compulsory to put the name of the municipality on the sign. Like this.









Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.co.uk















Hoek van Holland is part of Rotterdam municipality, even though it is a very long way from Rotterdam city centre. But there must surely be some definition of the boundary of 'Hoek van Holland', otherwise how do they decide what to put on that sign? Would it be legal just to put 'Rotterdam' on that sign?



ChrisZwolle said:


> However from medieval times, places received 'city rights', and this continues to be mentioned from time to time, with large places like The Hague (pop. 549,000) or Apeldoorn (165,000) not having had full city rights, while a tiny place like Stavoren (pop 965) or Sloten (710) did receive those rights.
> 
> 'city rights' have not been a thing since the 18th century, but even today people make fun of The Hague being a village.


I had never heard of 'city rights', but there's a Wikipedia page



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_rights_in_the_Low_Countries



It seems that city rights were granted to a lot of small towns, so it is more like being granted 'town status' if you were to compare it with British 'city status'.

City status doesn't actually give any right or privilege in the UK either, but people are still obsessed with it. The only real difference is the name of the municipality, which you can put on the sign at the municipality boundary. So you have the 'City of Chelmsford' (awarded city status at the last competition in 2012):




















Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.co.uk





This is in the middle of nowhere, about 5 km from the edge of the Chelmsford urban area, yet they proudly announce the entrance to the city at that location! If you look at old Street View from before 2012, there is no sign there at all. Previous to city status award, it was called 'Borough of Chelmsford'.

Even more bizarrely, the vast majority of London does not enjoy city status. So you have outer London boroughs like Croydon trying to apply for city status.


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## Kpc21

In Poland we have the concept of "prawa miejskie", which can be translated as "town rights" or "city rights".

If a place doesn't have them – it's considered a village rather than a town.

Even though there are some villages larger than some towns.

These rights have been given to settlements since the Middle Ages.

There is no distinguishing between towns and cities – although we can distinguish smaller and larger towns/cities by whether they themselves have a status of a county, or are they a part of a county together with other municipalities.

There are many places which in the past used to be towns. In the year 1870 many of them lost this status, as it was taken from them by the Russian authorities after an uprising against the Russian government (a large part of Poland was then occupied by Russia and Russians obviously didn't like that a "region" wanted to become independent again, as it was before). And many haven't got them back until now. In many cases they are now so small that it makes no sense.

But every year there are several villages that get granted the status of a town either again, or for the first time.

There are some differences in how villages are treated, compared with towns. E.g. it's easier to turn a farmland into land for building houses in a town. Meanwhile villages (or rather rural municipalities, as villages by themselves don't really have their own administration) can easier get some extra funding e.g. from the EU for the development of farms.


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## PovilD

As for heating. We have central heating in Soviet commieblocks, and is usually not possible to change temperature from central heating. You can rise your room temperature with electric heater you can buy in store, but I didn't heard is popular, so we stay with +20-22 degrees all the time, depending on which side wind blows 

Expection is when heating is turned off before heating season in autumn when it's becoming really cold outdoors.


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## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Do they heat it up to like 25 degrees? I've read stories about that being common in apartment blocks with district heating where you can't regulate the temperature yourself.
> 
> I usually heat my house to 20.5 degrees. My gas consumption is actually quite low, so I don't worry too much about the escalating natural gas prices.


I once watched a documentary about Siberia and there's a town somewhere that gets their block heating from some local Soviet factory or something but the water's like 40 degrees Celsius with no option to adjust. So the people that live in these buildings usually keep their windows open.  



Alex_ZR said:


> You never had electricity supply interruption for couple of hours because of some maintenance works?


I think I vaguely remember that happening once or twice when I was a kid in the late 1980s. But not these days.


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## Kpc21

Alex_ZR said:


> You never had electricity supply interruption for couple of hours because of some maintenance works?


This is usually announced some weeks beforehand and the last one I had... I don't know, 10 years ago?

Regarding my house, I feel OK when I keep in it around 21-22 degrees Celcius, 22 probably being the most comfortable for me.

Although when it's very cold outside, like -10 or less, I need higher temperature inside and it feels quite cold anyway.

I don't know what's the reason but I guess it's related to the thermal insulation of the house, or rather the lack of it.

It was built in 1970s and back then, the standard for houses was no special thermal insulation; sometimes it was made in such a way that there were two layers of wall and empty space between them acting as the insulation. Not very efficient for the modern standards, but better than nothing. Still, I don't even know if my house has it. I have its technical documentation, but in 1970s houses were often built in a different way than it was stated in the documentation (which depended mostly on the access to materials, back then in Poland there were absolute shortages of everything, especially regarding construction materials).

I was going to modernize it with extra insulation this year, but... finally I waited, because the prices went crazy. In spring, there was even time when there were no insulation materials on the market at all. Last year, I had a price estimation for it which was slightly less than 10,000 euro; now I have to pay something like 15,000 euro. A sum with which you could buy quite a good car... Even a new one.

Another factor which influences how we feel the specific temperatures is the air humidity.

Regarding the electricity, there was a period of about 10 years, when I had very stable supply. But in the last few years – every summer, I get several outages of one third of the power supply of my house, lasting for from several hours to even about 2 days.

A reason for that might be that when there is a partial power outage, full outages get priority over that...

Although – for really many years, I haven't had any power failure in winter.


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## Suburbanist

Electricity companies in Norway are well positioned to make a killing amount of money as they absorb the role of load balancers for the gigantic North Sea offshore wind farms. Hydro is perfect for that.


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## Suburbanist

Air quality in big Norwegian cities should be stunningly amazing between electric cars and lack of gas or oil boilers. But it is all compensated with stoves that burn wood.


----------



## metacatfry

Kpc21 said:


> I don't know what's the reason but I guess it's related to the thermal insulation of the house, or rather the lack of it.
> 
> It was built in 1970s and back then, the standard for houses was no special thermal insulation; sometimes it was made in such a way that there were two layers of wall and empty space between them acting as the insulation. Not very efficient for the modern standards, but better than nothing. Still, I don't even know if my house has it. I have its technical documentation, but in 1970s houses were often built in a different way than it was stated in the documentation (which depended mostly on the access to materials, back then in Poland there were absolute shortages of everything, especially regarding construction materials).
> 
> I was going to modernize it with extra insulation this year, but... finally I waited, because the prices went crazy. In spring, there was even time when there were no insulation materials on the market at all. Last year, I had a price estimation for it which was slightly less than 10,000 euro; now I have to pay something like 15,000 euro. A sum with which you could buy quite a good car... Even a new one.


That type of construction is common in Denmark. It has also been popular for many decades to fill the cavity with insulation. A common method is a special paper based granulate that is simply blown in. pretty cheap as well there is an offer I found for 99 dkk(~13 eur) per sqare m. Can't you get something like that?


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Do they heat it up to like 25 degrees?


Yes, mum has thermometer at home and at some point I spotted temperature around (maybe above) 26 degrees. She is of course an older lady who has problems with circulation and often feels cols so I can understand that she wants to keep house warm but for me it was way too much.



> I've read stories about that being common in apartment blocks with district heating where you can't regulate the temperature yourself.


We have district heating but you can turn radiators down in each room. My mum actually does it from time to time, otherwise flat would get even warmer.

Another problem is how dry everything gets. With central heating blasting there is virtually no moisture in the air. Big contrast with conditions in the UK (where excessive moisture is often a problem)



> I usually heat my house to 20.5 degrees. My gas consumption is actually quite low, so I don't worry too much about the escalating natural gas prices.


I have simple electric heater in my bedroom and it keeps temperature in the range of 16-20 degrees. 16 might be a bit low (but acceptable) for sleeping, 20 might be tad too high. For me 18-19 is good for sleeping. I have to find model keeping more constant temperature.


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> But even if there was a power outage heating is not really that critical in the British climate. In fact this year I only switched heating in our bedroom in the last two nights, and even that mostly because my girlfriend is away


When I was little my family lived in mid-Wales.. the winter of 1980-81 was one of the coldest on record, and we had about half a metre of snow before Christmas, which meant a few days off school, and that was thought a lot of snow.... It melted over Christmas, but then in January there was a massive snowstorm with up to a metre of snow which drifted and closed all the roads for miles, and took down all the electricity supply too. The RAF were dropping food off using helicopters, my dad had to walk about 3 miles through the snow to get to the location and it took about 6 hours. 

The roads were eventually opened after about a week, but the electricity was off for about two weeks. We had a wood stove and a generator luckily, but lots of people didn't

I can't remember any significant power cut in the last 20 years or more, except for once when a telecoms company drilled through the cable in south London


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## ChrisZwolle

Modern society is hugely dependent on a continuous energy and logistics supply. Most people do not have a backup plan for when the power goes off for a longer period of time.

Just these past two weeks showed how vulnerable a supply chain could be when flooding in British Columbia cut off all road and rail links to the Lower Mainland (Vancouver area). A combination of panic buying and just in time deliveries missing their schedules caused empty shelves and low fuel supplies within 2 days.

This is not hugely new though, in the early 2000s I worked at a supermarket, the truck arrived at 6:45 and the shop opened at 8. The entire supermarket was restocked in just an hour. If the truck was an hour late, many shelves would be empty. Just in time delivery has existed for quite some time. But we don't realize how vulnerable it is.


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## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> If the truck was an hour late, many shelves would be empty.


Which very few people would even notice, as not many people are shopping between 8 and 9 AM...


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## ChrisZwolle

We always had a lineup when we opened the supermarket at 8 a.m. There are actually quite a bit of people that go grocery shopping between 8-9, probably even more per hour than 9-11.


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## Kpc21

It's obvious that there will be less people after 9, as most people are then at work, and before 9, you get people who want to do some shopping before the work.


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## Suburbanist

I think last-mile just-in-time logistics are not a big issue. The real danger lies in more aggregate and thicker links of global supply chains, such as raw materials delivered in bulk, or container ships, or air cargo.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Suburbanist said:


> Air quality in big Norwegian cities should be stunningly amazing between electric cars and lack of gas or oil boilers. But it is all compensated with stoves that burn wood.


Wood stoves are not ideal for air quality, although modern models legal to install today are order of magnitude better than most older types, and I believe people also are getting more educated about how to do it right (for economy and air quality). However, I think you are exaggerating quite a bit. In 2020, when people commuted less than normal and stayed more at home (I certainly burned a lot more firewood than normal), the first Norwegian entry on the European pollution index (PM2.5) was Ski, a suburb of Oslo, but 973 towns and cities in Europe were worse off...








World's Most Polluted Cities in 2020 - PM2.5 Ranking | AirVisual


Find out the most polluted cities in the world in 2020. Check out which city in the world had the highest level of air pollution PM2.5. Download the IQAir AirVisual world air quality report.




www.iqair.com





Probably Norwegian cities are even further down the list in terms of e. g. NOx


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## ChrisZwolle

Central / Western Europe will receive its first blast of winter weather this weekend, with snow into the lower elevations in Austria, Czechia, Poland, Germany, Belgium, France. Significant accumulation will occur over the next two weeks at higher elevations, especially over 800-1000 meters. The north flank of the Alps could look at 1+ meter of snow into the valleys, as well as the Black Forest, Bavarian Forest and Vosges Mountains.

Austria is getting the first round right now:









St. Pölten, Austria (rest area along A1):


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

It has chilled a bit in Scandinavia as well. This has had a fascinating impact on the power market. Some rivers in Northern Sweden have frozen over, which is reducing Sweden's hydro-power production capacity, and as usual there is not much wind during cold winter periods. That means that the electricity surplus of central and Northern Scandinavia has been reduced, enough to match the transmission capacity to the rest of Europe. In a matter of a few days we have gone from the less than 15 €/MWh average prices we have had so far in November to European price levels...In fact, tomorrow, between 4 and 5 PM, the price is predicted to be exactly, or close to 227.38 €/MWh in large parts of North and Western Europe. Indeed a nice situation for the owners of the hydropower plants, with production costs in the area of 8 €/MWh....

These owners are by the way mostly public, and there has been a lot of debate lately in Norway whether the electricity export leading to skyrocketing consumer costs in fact should be considered a form of hidden taxation.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1464173113248206848


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Austria is getting the first round right now:


Where I live in Austria it snowed today for the first time this winter. It started around 8 a.m. this morning, and continued throughout the day, at a very slow pace (it is still snowing also now). Now we have like 20 cm of snow outside, and I also saw twice the snow plough on the secondary street I live on.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Some rivers in Northern Sweden have frozen over


It's quite cold in Lapland right now. Temperatures down to -33. Isn't that quite a bit below average for late November?


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's quite cold in Lapland right now. Temperatures down to -33. Isn't that quite a bit below average for late November?


Averages tell about nothing because the variations are wide and usual. The temperature may be +10°C or it may be -40°C.

The 30-year average of a daily temperature (day and night) in Inari is -5.9 in November and -9.3 in December. However, the variation in annual monthly averages is more than 15 degrees.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I have been freezing a lot in inner Sweden at this time of the year ....


----------



## Kpc21

It's already white behind my window


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> It's already white behind my window


Should be white for us fairly soon too


----------



## keber

When Google maps overreacts with road closures:








No, A1 in Italy and Croatia, A4 in Croatia and A110 in Austria are not closed currently despite snowing in some parts. But you can't plan a route over them in Google maps.


----------



## bogdymol

Indeed, Google Maps seems to have some issues today with the traffic.



keber said:


> But you can't plan a route over them in Google maps.


You can. Just click on "Leave now" in the menu, an select a later date.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Germans are more efficient than the Dutch, in politics at least.

Germany has established a new government with three partially opposing parties in 2 months. Meanwhile the Netherlands still doesn't have a government of the exact same parties of the previous government after 8 months... 

The current caretaker government has not had full mandate for almost a year now (they resigned in January 2020), it's not like there isn't a lineup of crises to resolve... Covid-19, climate, energy, housing, nitrogen, worker shortage, general trust in government, etc.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Are these limitations of authority by convention (i.e. the the government that has asked to resign are not expected to make major moves) or actually constitutional? Sounds kind of stupid to have a system that opens up for longer periods without a functional government.

Over to more important news, to some:









Burnley vs Tottenham: Premier League clash called off after heavy snow covers Turf Moor pitch


Burnley were due to host Tottenham at Turf Moor at 2pm; however, Premier League fixture postponed due to heavy snow falling on the pitch; no information given yet as to when game will be played; Sean Dyche: I cant see how it could go ahead with the way the pitch is




www.skysports.com





Heavy snow in England is 2 cm, it appears....


----------



## Kpc21

I've seen matches which in case of a snowfall were continued. Only the ball was replaced with a yellow one, so that it could be easier seen by TV spectators.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Happens quite often in Norway, as the football season has been extended into the period where you typically have snow, especially in Northern Norway.

Seems like the electricity prices will be peaking all over western and northern Europe tomorrow afternoon, btw:









Prices will decrease later in afternoon / night, especially in NO3 (where I live) and NO4, where prices again will be somewhat decoupled from the rest of Europe, as the wind is predicted to pick up at the coast. And I am sorry, Suburbanist, I am burning my self-chopped firewood today.








Day-ahead overview


Nord Pool runs the leading power market in Europe, and we offer day-ahead and intraday markets to our customers. Trade power in 16 countries and add related services such as compliance, data or courses.




www.nordpoolgroup.com




Seems like the situation is no better in southern Europe:





EnergyLive - European Power Markets Overview


EnergyLive is the go-to platform for a fast overview of European power markets.




www.energylive.cloud


----------



## PovilD

Very unpredictably moving cyclone from Southwest could bring us lots of snow too. Forecast models predicts highest amounts of precipitation very wildly from West Lithuania to East Lithuania for Tommorow. East part of cyclone has warm part, and it could be just rain in some parts of Lithuania, followed by some snow afterwards.

There could be around 5-10 cm of snow if at least part of it will not manage to melt at around zero temperatures.


----------



## Slagathor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Are these limitations of authority by convention (i.e. the the government that has asked to resign are not expected to make major moves) or actually constitutional? Sounds kind of stupid to have a system that opens up for longer periods without a functional government.


When a government resigns, it loses its power of initiative. So it cannot initiate new legislation. In grey areas, parliament can declare something "controversial" meaning the caretaker cabinet can't touch it.

This may come across as paralyzing the country, but that's far from the truth. Sovereignty, after all, lies with parliament, not with the government. And parliament can keep running the country just fine.


----------



## MattiG

Slagathor said:


> When a government resigns, it loses its power of initiative. So it cannot initiate new legislation.


Is it a good or a bad thing?


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

In general, legislation, or changes to a legislation, resulting from initiatives from aparliament tend to be less thoroughly assessed, as they do not have the bureaucracy of the executive branch as readily available. Also, the parliament in theory will hold the cabinet or its ministers accountable if their proposals are poorly prepared. No such control mechanisms exists for proposals coming from the parliament members.


----------



## radamfi

MattiG said:


> Is it a good or a bad thing?


Judging by the tone of the post, it isn't that big a deal. When Belgium had no government for a long time, was that a major crisis? Normal Belgians didn't seem to care too much.

The Northern Ireland assembly was suspended from 2017 to 2020. There was of course a lot of media attention, but one thing that didn't get the headlines was that they couldn't make electric bikes legal. They were legally the same as mopeds. So bike shops in Northern Ireland stopped selling electric bikes until they finally changed the law last year.


----------



## Slagathor

MattiG said:


> Is it a good or a bad thing?


It's usually a nice interlude for civil servants. They can throttle back and finish up loose ends before the next cycle of madness starts.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> Judging by the tone of the post, it isn't that big a deal.


Normally it's not a huge deal, but this is taking almost a year now. The government does have parliamentary support on the coronavirus issues, though support has been dwindling over the past year. 

But the government really needs to get to work on major issues, the housing crisis and nitrogen crisis are interlinked. The nitrogen crisis prevents almost anything from getting built, it has slowed housing production. The house prices have almost doubled over the past 7 years, the gap between haves and have nots is growing fast. 

Then there is the energy transition, which is stalling due to shortage of skilled labor, but also the overloading of the electricity network, increasingly large parts of the Netherlands have reached full capacity and need major upgrades to continue expansion. In many areas no new businesses can be added to the grid. Many renewable energy sources cannot come online due to the system being at 100% capacity. 

Then there are many policy areas which have been put on the backburner due to the pandemic.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Then there are many policy areas which have been put on the backburner due to the pandemic.


Would it make any difference if there was a 'proper' government? Whoever is in charge would have their hands full dealing with the pandemic.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> The nitrogen crisis


What does this mean? Is nitrogen = NOx in the Dutch public debate?

Edit: I see now that it is used also in some English language site and press for NOx and ammonia emissions, but I had hoped we had a bit higher precision level here ;-D

Still inhaling 80 % nitrogen


----------



## tfd543

How many attempts did you do to get your driving license.. T for theoretical and P for practical.

Mine is:

T: 1 attempt
P: 4 attempts

Anyone with a 1, 1 ?


----------



## radamfi

I passed my driving test first time. But it was in 1994, when there was no separate theory test. The examiner simply used to ask a few questions while you were still sat in the car after the drive.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I passed both, both in N and USA, but the latter was a joke, really. In Norway, at least when I was learning to drive decades ago, the real obstacle for most was to get the driving school to let you make the practical test. However, I had to repeat the experience a few years ago to still be able to drive with a decent-sized trailer.


----------



## Attus

Theory at first. In my first practice driving test I was pretty nervous and made several errors. The second attempt was successful. Hungary, 1995.


----------



## keokiracer

tfd543 said:


> How many attempts did you do to get your driving license.. T for theoretical and P for practical.
> [...]
> Anyone with a 1, 1 ?


o/ 
(Netherlands, 2012)


----------



## MattiG

tfd543 said:


> How many attempts did you do to get your driving license.. T for theoretical and P for practical.
> 
> Mine is:
> 
> T: 1 attempt
> P: 4 attempts
> 
> Anyone with a 1, 1 ?


1 and 1.

As my dad taught me, I had quite many kilometers of driving experience before taking the driving test. Instead of the standard duration of 25 minutes, my test was over and approved in 10 minutes.

The starting position that time was somewhat challenging: a hill start backwards from an oblique park. For quite many candidates, the test was over and failed without driving one meter.









Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




goo.gl


----------



## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> What does this mean? Is nitrogen = NOx in the Dutch public debate?
> 
> Edit: I see now that it is used also in some English language site and press for NOx and ammonia emissions, but I had hoped we had a bit higher precision level here ;-D
> 
> Still inhaling 80 % nitrogen


The highest court has invalidated the programme on which all permitting for NOx and Ammonia was based. This means that every single construction project, no matter how insignificant the nitrogen/ammonia emissions, was stopped dead in its track. This means all housing, water safety, road & rail infrastructure, even miniature golf courses could not get a permit.

The problem is that the 'nitrogen deposition' cannot be measured. We know it's there because we can see the impact it is having on Natura 2000 areas, but it's a highly theoretical calculation which sources contribute to these deposits of nitrogen and in which areas. These calculations suggest an extremely high rate of precision (down to 0.05 moles on a total of 1600+) but this is also highly improbable.

By far the largest contributor is agriculture. However it affects pretty much any construction activity. Almost no permit for road projects were issued over the past 2, almost 3 years. Everything is stopped. Governments have deep pockets so they can do these hugely over the top impact studies to find out that the nitrogen deposits due to a large project increases by 0.05% 50 kilometers away. But this is no solution for most small projects. They need a regular registration of emissions instead of an environmental impact study that covers half of the country only to find out it has no meaningful impact. No solution for this has been found yet.


----------



## Slagathor

Netherlands:
T - 2
P - 2

Thailand:
T - 1
P - 1

I panicked at one of the questions during my first theory exam in the Netherlands because I had somehow misread something and the timer was nearly up. So I got it wrong. In the end, I had 6 mistakes and you were only allowed 5. So when we left the room, I walked straight up to the counter and begged the lady to allow me to try another exam immediately. She agreed and I passed that time, about an hour later. 

Thailand was a hilarious affair. If you can't pass that one on the first try, you shouldn't be allowed to participate in traffic in any way, shape or form. One of the questions read: "Is it a good idea to approach an intersection at full speed?". It also asked if army tanks have right of way. I'd like to meet the guy who would cut off an army tank in a VW Golf.


----------



## Kpc21

tfd543 said:


> How many attempts did you do to get your driving license.. T for theoretical and P for practical.
> 
> Mine is:
> 
> T: 1 attempt
> P: 4 attempts
> 
> Anyone with a 1, 1 ?


One theory and four practical – so same as you.

It was an interesting time because it was just after a moment when the government changed the pool of questions. Extending it a lot and making it secret.

Actually there were two question pools prepared by two different companies, which depended on what software was the examination centre using for the exam (the exam is taken on a computer).

They also introduced a group of questions where a video "from behind the wheel" is shown to you and you must select if what is said is true or false, with a short time limit for it.

Previously, there were only just something like slightly above 100 questions, and most people were just memorizing the answers. You didn't even really have to know the actual rules of the road.

But – I was already for quite long in the topic of the highway code, had read it already many times, participating in discussions about traffic rules and what interpretation is right on the Polish SSC section 

So I was quite educated in the topic, therefore it was easy for me to pass.

Some months later, the questions were made again publicly known – it was made so probably because of some claims that some of those questions were stupid (like, I heard about some about e.g. the dimensions of the license plate, or – this one must be fake because I don't think it's standardized in any way, but it was present in the public discussion about the topic – one about the length of the gear stick) and when the questions were kept secret, it wasn't really verifiable. Personally, I don't remember such stupid questions on the test – though, indeed, there were some where I had to wonder, what the author of the question actually meant, because depending on circumstances which weren't told, several answers could be correct. But I passed it at the first attempt, though while previously almost everyone did, after this change, many people had to take multiple attempts to pass it.

Concerning the practical one. In Poland, the practical exam consists of two parts.

The first one is in the exam center. First, you get a question regarding the "technical maintenance" of the vehicle. Like testing if the lights work correctly, if the horn works (this is the simplest one possible, you just press the horn and it's enough xD), or showing where you refill engine oil, check its level, check the level of the cooling liquid or the brake fluid (those are stupid because you have to learn the locations of all tanks and inlets for the specific car model they have in the exam center; in practice, in the future you won't be probably driving this specific model, and your own car will have them somewhere else...).

Then there is a part with driving on a "road turn", marked with lines and traffic cones on the exam center's backyard. Commonly known as "sleeve". You drive forward and then backwards.










This element seems to make a lot of sense – after all, it makes sense to test if someone is really able to control the car before allowing him to enter the road. The problem is... with the teachers (instructors). Because the shape of the lines and the location of the cones (they have sticks coming from them on the top, so they can be seen through the windows) are always the same, they often teach the course participants not to follow the lines in the mirrors – but rather just to make specific turns with the steering wheel while passing the specific cones.

I was also taught this system (in the car in which I was taking the exam, which was Suzuki Swift, I was supposed to make a single full turn with the wheel while passing one specific cone, if I remember well – the first one – with the side mirror) and it made me fail once.

Another time – I failed while driving... forward. It was the most straightforward thing in this task and the examiner told me that what I did was extremely rare. What happened? At the end of the driving forward, I wasn't certain if I was fully fit on the "envelope" painted on the ground (see the picture above), so I drove as far as I could forward to the end. Too far – so far that I hit the cone in front of me. Which meant I failed. Maybe partially the reason was that I didn't have really good feeling of the car; its acceleration and its brakes. My course was on quite an old Swift of the previous generation (seems to be Swift IV), the exam was on a brand-new – as it seems – Swift V. A brand new car obviously drove different than an old piece of crap.

And another time – having passed the first part – during the second part – which is driving on actual city streets – I failed to stop at a stop sign. I can show it on Street View – exactly this one: Google Maps

From the practical perspective – the visibility here is perfect. I could easily see that there were no cars approaching because they would be right in front of me. The layout of those roads over there seems to be a remnant of old times when that street in front wasn't one-way, and the piece of road on which I was, must have originally be used for actually driving into the road. This stop sign is there not because of the visibility, but because the layout of this intersection isn't really logical; it's just too easy not to notice that you aren't allowed to drive forward into this road, that it's one-way in the opposite direction.

I was perfectly aware of it, so seeing no traffic, I just turned left without stopping, only slowing down. Which is a perfectly logical thing to do if you know this place; it causes no danger, especially taking into account that there aren't also any zebra crossings on your way. The visibility is, after all, perfect.

But rules are rules, and not stopping at a stop sign is treated as a cardinal error that automatically makes you fail the exam.

So those were three cases when I failed – and finally I passed at the fourth attempt.

It was in the summer of 2013.


----------



## bogdymol

I also passed at first attempt both theory and practical exam. I did this twice actually, first time when I was 16 (125 cc scooter), second time when I was 18 (car).

Funny thing in Romania, was that the driving school teacher used to ask you right before your first lesson if you have driven before. Now things are different, you can’t do that so easily, but in my time I had no problem driving a car or a scooter before even starting the driving school (and so was the case of many others). So I considered the exam to be relatively easy. Now is a bit different.


----------



## Kpc21

In my case (in 2013), the instructor also asked me if I'd driven before. I answered no – because I hadn't – but many people actually try some driving before the driving license course, are taught a little bit by parents or other relatives (if they want to be legal – out of public roads). Privileged are people from the rural areas, because if not a car, many of them, as teenagers, have already driven a tractor (or even they do it regularly working on the family farm).


----------



## radamfi

Some parents with money pay for their kids to learn to drive under age on private tracks.


----------



## Kpc21

From Wednesday, Poland changes the toll system on the roads.

On the government-managed toll motorways (A2 the section Konin–Łódź and A4 the section Wrocław–Gliwice) toll gates will be shut down.

The payment will be possible:
– by purchasing an e-ticket at one of the system partners (gas stations etc. – I can't find any list of them) or online (there will be a separate mobile app for that, which will come out on Wednesday, called e-Toll PL Bilet)
– through a geolocation app, named e-Toll PL (Android, iOS)
– with an on-board device (the operation of which is also based on geolocation), same as in the system used in trucks



radamfi said:


> Some parents with money pay for their kids to learn to drive under age on private tracks.


In Poland it's rather not a thing – they just practice on parking lots, in forests etc.


----------



## metacatfry

It's legal in Denmark to practice driving if you are accompanied by a licensed driver. I think all you need is to be 17 years old. also , I think you can almost do whatever when you are on a private closed road.

And I passed all my tests the first time . Although it was close when i took the C category. I made two mistakes, I overlooked a oncoming taxi when I turned left, and I "forced other drivers to slow down when entering a roundabout", but I was lucky the examinator was in a good mood.


----------



## x-type

Kpc21 said:


> From Wednesday, Poland changes the toll system on the roads.
> 
> On the government-managed toll motorways (A2 the section Konin–Łódź and A4 the section Wrocław–Gliwice) toll gates will be shut down.
> 
> The payment will be possible:
> – by purchasing an e-ticket at one of the system partners (gas stations etc. – I can't find any list of them) or online (there will be a separate mobile app for that, which will come out on Wednesday, called e-Toll PL Bilet)
> – through a geolocation app, named e-Toll PL (Android, iOS)
> – with an on-board device (the operation of which is also based on geolocation), same as in the system used in trucks
> 
> 
> In Poland it's rather not a thing – they just practice on parking lots, in forests etc.


Hm, I should drive to Opole within a month, that's usefull information. How about the rest? A2 towards D? A1? A4 towards east?


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> From Wednesday, Poland changes the toll system on the roads.
> 
> On the government-managed toll motorways (A2 the section Konin–Łódź and A4 the section Wrocław–Gliwice) toll gates will be shut down.
> 
> The payment will be possible:
> – by purchasing an e-ticket at one of the system partners (gas stations etc. – I can't find any list of them) or online (there will be a separate mobile app for that, which will come out on Wednesday, called e-Toll PL Bilet)
> – through a geolocation app, named e-Toll PL (Android, iOS)
> – with an on-board device (the operation of which is also based on geolocation), same as in the system used in trucks
> 
> 
> In Poland it's rather not a thing – they just practice on parking lots, in forests etc.


So, you mean, if a foreigner want to drive on those sections, it will be more complicated than before, because I have either to install some app or buy an e-ticket in a gas station, and can't simply pay the toll on site?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yes, this is going to result in a tsunami of unpaid tolls. And they will probably send out a lot of fines.

They should at least offer some kind of option to pay the toll afterwards online or at a gas station.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> So, you mean, if a foreigner want to drive on those sections, it will be more complicated than before, because I have either to install some app or buy an e-ticket in a gas station, and can't simply pay the toll on site?


Yes, exactly.



x-type said:


> Hm, I should drive to Opole within a month, that's usefull information. How about the rest? A2 towards D? A1? A4 towards east?


All other toll motorways in Poland aren't managed directly by the government but by the concessionaires. Because of that, old rules remain. Either payment at the gates, or automatic, but via different systems for each concessionaire.

Poland generally has problems with the complex situation regarding the motorway concessions, which results in several toll systems that aren't compatible with each other.

We have:
– *motorways where the concessionaire covers all the costs of the maintenance* – those are: the A2 section Nowy Tomyśl – Poznań – Konin (except the Poznań bypass) and the A4 section Mysłowice – Cracow – a characteristic feature of them are very expensive tolls, like about 10-12 euro for 100 km for a passenger car (not a truck, not a bus, without any trailer),
– *motorways where the costs are shared between the state and the concessionaire* – those include: the A1 section Gdańsk – Toruń and the A2 section Rzepin – Nowy Tomyśl – the toll is about 5 euro for 100 km for a passenger car,
– *state-managed toll motorways, with no concessionaire* – they include: the A4 section Wrocław – Gliwice and the A2 section Konin – Łódź – the toll is about 2.5 euro for 100 km for a passenger car,
– *toll-free motorways intended to be such* – those include the A2 Poznań bypass, the A4 in the Upper Silesia metropolitan area, the A6 southern Szczecin bypass – and several other relatively short motorway sections – as well as all the expressways,
– *toll-free motorways intended to be tolled*, where tolls weren't introduced just because the government decided in 2014 that it makes no sense to build toll gates when they decided to switch to an electronic toll system – this system is just getting deployed, but at the moment, only on those two sections that already had toll gates and where the tolls were collected.

The government has no power to impose the countrywide toll system over the concessionaires.

So we have the following toll systems:
– *e-Toll* – the government's system (sections: A2 Konin – Łódź and A4 Wrocław – Gliwice, in the future probably also most of the currently toll-free motorways), getting converted from toll gates to electronic toll collection this week; it also covers the electronic tolls for trucks on some national (non-motorway) roads; there is also a commercial app for the tolls, *Autopay*, which will also support it
– *Autostrada Wielkopolska* (Greater Poland's Motorway) concessionaire (sections: A2 Rzepin – Nowy Tomyśl, A2 Nowy Tomyśl – Poznań – Konin, except the Poznań bypass) – only payment at toll gates
– *Stalexport Autostrada Małopolska* (Lesser Poland's Motorway) concessionaire (section: A4 Mysłowice – Cracow) – payment at toll gates or through special *A4Go* devices, or through commercial apps connected with a system automatically reading out the license plates: the already mentioned *Autopay*, *SkyCash* (a universal payment app; it also supports parking payments in many Polish cities, city public transport tickets also in many cities as well as railway tickets of most carriers in Poland) or *IKO* (mobile banking app of one of the Polish banks)
– *AmberOne*, the GTC (Gdańsk Transport Company) concessionaire (section: A1 Gdańsk – Toruń) – payment at toll gates or with one of the smartphone apps that connect with a system which reads out the license plates with cameras: the dedicated one *AmberOne* as well as the already mentioned apps: *Autopay, SkyCash* and *IKO*

So at the moment, the best option to get the coverage of most Polish toll motorways (except A2 from Rzepin to Konin, which only accepts manual payments at gates) with a single app or device, is the Autopay app. It covers both the concession sections of A1 and A4 and in addition it will also support tolls on the state-managed toll motorways.

Or SkyCash, if you are not going to use the state-managed motorways, but you are going to park in the paid parking zones in cities (though remember that parking in cities in Poland is always free of charge after 6 PM in the evening and all the day on weekends). Or use city public transport.

I don't know about Autopay, I've never used it – but SkyCash supports two modes of payments: you can either bind a credit card to it, or you can transfer the money to a special account in the app (similarly to pre-paid cell phones), which can be done using various methods, if I remember correctly, they even do have coupons you can buy for cash in Żabka stores.


----------



## x-type

In short, it's a complete mess now. I dont' understand what is the purpose of e-tolling on 2 relatively short sections without agreements with other concessionaires, it only makes mess. Similar thing is Italy with its A36 which was supposed to be pioneer of e-tolling in Italy, and to start transition of all other motorways, but it will remain foer quite some time like first, and the only (Pedemontana Veneta will join it actually).
We are striving to have unique EU model (which failed several times), but we cannot have neither unique models within contries


----------



## radamfi

Attus said:


> So, you mean, if a foreigner want to drive on those sections, it will be more complicated than before, because I have either to install some app or buy an e-ticket in a gas station, and can't simply pay the toll on site?


Whilst this is hassle in terms of payment, it does mean that traffic doesn't need to stop. 

Are there many other motorway tolls in Europe (except HGV tolls) that can't be paid at a toll booth? Obviously you've got national vignette schemes. The M50 around Dublin has no toll booths. The Dartford Crossing removed the toll booths a few years ago, although technically that isn't a motorway.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Norwegian motorways and other toll roads do not use toll booths. Similarly, a few congestion charges and tolls in Sweden don't have toll booths either. A large part of the Portuguese motorway network has all-electronic tolling. Belarus has a transponder system and no toll booths. Turkey has electronic-only tolls in Istanbul.

The Netherlands will introduce electronic tolls on two future motorways.


----------



## Kpc21

x-type said:


> Norwegian motorways and other toll roads do not use toll booths.


But on them, from what I've heard, it works so that they don't fine you if you enter the motorway without paying ahead, but they just send you a bill for the tolls home, based on the license plate number...

Though I don't know how it works for cars registered in some distant countries, for which they don't have connection to the license plate database in the given country. Maybe they just treat it as a cost of running the system...

And I suppose that looking up the actual address based on the license plate numbers, may not be that straightforward in many countries.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Norwegian motorways and other toll roads do not use toll booths. Similarly, a few congestion charges and tolls in Sweden don't have toll booths either. A large part of the Portuguese motorway network has all-electronic tolling. Belarus has a transponder system and no toll booths. Turkey has electronic-only tolls in Istanbul.
> 
> The Netherlands will introduce electronic tolls on two future motorways.


A nightmare for casual users.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Norwegian motorways and other toll roads do not use toll booths. Similarly, a few congestion charges and tolls in Sweden don't have toll booths either. A large part of the Portuguese motorway network has all-electronic tolling. Belarus has a transponder system and no toll booths. Turkey has electronic-only tolls in Istanbul.
> 
> The Netherlands will introduce electronic tolls on two future motorways.


I think that Turkey uses it on complete network, not only Istanbul area. They have 2 types of tolling, both are free flow: first is similar to Portugal with radio-frequency tag, and second is some kind of short-term sticker that I don't understand the best (it seems that antennas on gates recognize it, maybe it is something similar to this new Polish system)


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> But on them, from what I've heard, it works so that they don't fine you if you enter the motorway without paying ahead, but they just send you a bill for the tolls home, based on the license plate number...


Why would they fine?



> Though I don't know how it works for cars registered in some distant countries, for which they don't have connection to the license plate database in the given country. Maybe they just treat it as a cost of running the system...
> 
> And I suppose that looking up the actual address based on the license plate numbers, may not be that straightforward in many countries.


Norway collects the money via a London-based agency specialized in this. The bills they send are very professional, and they will find you. The package contained a timestamp, a photo, the copy of the letter of authorization by the Norwegian government, and a bill payable on euros to a Finnish bank account. 

Sweden sends a tax-slip. The cost of collecting money well exceeds the tax sum itself. Moneywise it is ridiculous, but the systems is compatible with the Swedish thinking about equality. All drivers must pay the taxes, whatever it would cost to the state. In addition, the system leaks. The Swedish authorities have contracts with 12 countries only to receive the owner name and address by the license plate number. The remaining foreigners pay nothing. 

Every time I visit Sweden, I try to plan the route over the tolled Motala bridge. It will be a wonderful time to wait for the printed tax slip to arrive, and then pay the sum of about 0.50 euro. The cost to make, send and handle the bill must be about 20-30 euros. Usually, I pay a few cents more than billed, because those erroneous payments might go to manual handling, thus making some additional cost.


----------



## keber

Kpc21 said:


> The government has no power to impose the countrywide toll system over the concessionaires.


What about a talk between government and concessionaires about unified tolling system? There are just a few tolled roads in Poland and even those have so many different types of tolling. Look at Italy or France, no problems there.


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> Why would they fine?


Because you drive on a motorway without paying for the ticket?

It's the same question as why you would fine someone riding a bus without buying a ticket instead of telling him to pay for the ticket when you catch him.



MattiG said:


> The bills they send are very professional, and they will find you.


But technically – how can they find you, knowing just the license plate number and, maybe, the car make and color?

And a database where you can lookup someone's personal data based on his license plate number isn't something that is made publicly accessible. Even for specialized companies. There would have to be a court trial, or something like that...

Not to mention that:
– in some countries these data may not even be digitized and centralized (in Poland only it happened in the early 2010s),
– with some countries your country may not even have close enough relationships to get such access.


----------



## Kpc21

keber said:


> What about a talk between government and concessionaires about unified tolling system? There are just a few tolled roads in Poland and even those have so many different types of tolling. Look at Italy or France, no problems there.


They are going to try it.

But generally the contracts signed with the concessionaires, especially with those first ones, for those motorways which are now fully financed by them and not at all by the state, gave the concessionaires abnormal number of rights.

Those contracts are kept secret and for some reason, the public information access right doesn't work on them – but from what some journalists managed to establish, for example, while the motorway from Katowice to Cracow is overloaded with traffic – on one hand the state isn't able to force the concessionaire to extend it with the third lane (there were some ridiculously high traffic factors put in the contract that would oblige him to do it), on the other hand, the contract forbids the government to build a new parallel road that could release A4 from some load.

It's quite likely that if those contracts were made public, their content would cause a large political scandal – but no political power wants that (maybe all the meaningful political parties were involved...).

And it's not so many years left till the ends of those concession contracts...

They expire:
– the one for A4 – in 2027
– the one for A2 – in 2037
– the one for A1 – in 2039

The most problematic one is A4 and there are only 6 years left till the end of the contract...


----------



## geogregor

tfd543 said:


> How many attempts did you do to get your driving license.. T for theoretical and P for practical.
> 
> Mine is:
> 
> T: 1 attempt
> P: 4 attempts
> 
> Anyone with a 1, 1 ?


Theory, 1st attempt, practical 2nd. Funnily, I drove much better on my first practical exam attempt but I made silly mistake when I was coming back to the exam center and the guy failed me. Nothing major, but enough to fail me. I was probably too confident.

The second time I was stressed and I think I drove pretty badly, but the guy was nice and I didn't make any obvious big mistake.

I passed my exams just weeks before moving to the UK. I never drove on the left hand side, I never drove on a motorway. Then after 2 or 3 years in the UK I rented car in London to drive to Cornwall. It was my first experience in a car without the instructor. I didn't tell my girlfriend at the time 

It was quite a plunge. I had to drive the M25, M4 and the rural Cornish roads on the same trip. I was apprehensive when I first entered the slip roads of the M25 (remember, it was my first time on motorway) but by the time I reached Bristol I felt perfectly comfortable.

But the real fun started in Cornwall. I still remember oncoming double-decker bus which I met on a narrow country lane. Somehow I managed to squeeze to some field gate with millimeters to spare between walls, my car and the bus.

Changing subject.

What is the reaction to the Omciron variant in your countries? In the UK it completely dominates media coverage. But changes to the rules so far are quite modest, domestically most important is the fact that masks returned to shops and public transport. Otherwise everything is open and trading as much as usual. In fact London was very busy this weekend.

Annoyingly the need of day 2 PCR test on arrival to the UK returned. I do wonder if there is any chance of booking trip home around Christmas or will they tighten rules even more, either here in the UK or in Europe.


----------



## radamfi

I doubt many people will take much notice regarding the reinstated mask mandate. The people who stopped wearing masks before they were no longer required won't bother putting them back on. Other people have kept on wearing masks regardless. Given that pubs and nightclubs can continue as normal with no restrictions (no masks, testing or vaccine passports) the mask mandate seems pointless.

The general Covid situation seems to be much less severe than neighbouring countries. Over the last few months, the case numbers have kept going up and down, with corresponding increases and decreases in hospitalisations (and to a lesser extent, deaths) shortly afterwards. But despite cases going up throughout November, deaths and hospitalisations have continued to decline quite sharply.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> What is the reaction to the Omciron variant in your countries?


Mass hysteria in the media. The top page of news sites are filled with Omicron articles all day long. Though not many people seem to really care... Cases in the Netherlands have skyrocketed but seem to have reached a plateau for now.


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> What is the reaction to the Omciron variant in your countries?


Routine new variant, in a way, nothing new 😅

No changes in people behavior. Just saw one guy buying a little bit more toilet paper than I would expect, but maybe it's not related with mass hysteria, or it's just personal considerations regarding omicron.

We will wait for the news. Youngs, especially vaccinated, are said to be not very affected by it (?). There are no data with olds.

On the other hand, I really feel is better to stick to all other topics, except covid, as much as possible in this thread. There are other specific threads for covid in this forum.


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> On the other hand, I really feel is better to stick to all other topics, except covid, as much as possible in this thread. There are other specific threads for covid in this forum.


So, how was your driving exam?


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> So, how was your driving exam?


This will be road forum hidden secret 

Still on progress.
T: 1
P: 2, but failed. Took longer break due to my anxiety issues. Planning for 3rd. Very miserable driving conditions in some places in my city, especially around parked cars and unsafe junctions with poor visibility. I grow a little older too, and I feel more prepared that you can't cry around unpredictable World  Just prepared myself for multiple attempts.

More or less I know how the traffic works and analyze it. Riding a bicycle and sitting at a front car seat helps.

(this makes me still still road enthusiast)

I was mentioning good aspects of good public transport and cycling in some of this forum threads. Now you know around me there could be personal bias, but I see driving is not pleasant too when streets are not safe from pedestrians/cyclists and unsafe junctions. I'm especially talking about countries that built roads for tanks


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> Because you drive on a motorway without paying for the ticket?


No they are not. They are driving on a motorway showing the ID for billing



> It's the same question as why you would fine someone riding a bus without buying a ticket instead of telling him to pay for the ticket when you catch him.


No it is not. There are many other billing mechanisms available than a prepayment only.



> But technically – how can they find you, knowing just the license plate number and, maybe, the car make and color?
> 
> And a database where you can lookup someone's personal data based on his license plate number isn't something that is made publicly accessible. Even for specialized companies. There would have to be a court trial, or something like that...


Many countries share such information with each other.



> Not to mention that:
> – in some countries these data may not even be digitized and centralized (in Poland only it happened in the early 2010s),
> – with some countries your country may not even have close enough relationships to get such access.


Of course, there are developing countries and countries reluctant to co-operate. The system seems to work at a reasonable level, because such cases usually are marginal. No system is 100 percent leak free (even in Sweden), but a 99 percent efficiency, for instance, is tolerated. For most cases, the benefit to effort ratio is formed like the S-curve: The benefit from increasing something say from 99.5 per cent to 99.8 is likely to be substantially smaller than the respective cost.


----------



## tfd543

PovilD said:


> This will be road forum hidden secret
> 
> Still on progress.
> T: 1
> P: 2, but failed. Took longer break due to my anxiety issues. Planning for 3rd. Very miserable driving conditions in some places in my city, especially around parked cars and unsafe junctions with poor visibility. I grow a little older too, and I feel more prepared that you can't cry around unpredictable World  Just prepared myself for multiple attempts.
> 
> More or less I know how the traffic works and analyze it. Riding a bicycle and sitting at a front car seat helps.
> 
> (this makes me still still road enthusiast)
> 
> I was mentioning good aspects of good public transport and cycling in some of this forum threads. Now you know around me there could be personal bias, but I see driving is not pleasant too when streets are not safe from pedestrians/cyclists and unsafe junctions. I'm especially talking about countries that built roads for tanks


Dont give up. Just do me that favour.. i still remember when i failed how hard it was to accept.. it was at the time when i was working in the lab doing complicated science which also failed and didnt really work.. very vicious period. I began thinking that the system was somehow programmed to do this against me and i thought i would quit the license training as it wouldnt really help me to live a better life… Yea man, it was deep stuff.. then i had a Long talk with my dad that gave me the power to just nail the shit.. i told myself that driving is just driving, not rocket science at all.. some weeks after, i passed… 

The discipline of believing in yourself doesnt really get trained if u dont go through hell.. 
a man that does No mistakes, does nothing.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Funny story from a truck driver with a knack for license plates.

A refrigerated trailer of a Dutch trucking company was stolen and its GPS disabled. They shared the image of the stolen trailer on social media.

A few days later, a Dutch truck driver had unloaded his cargo in Poland and decided to refuel in Rzepin. And he saw that trailer being parked at the fuel station. He contacted the other company and the trailer was recovered. All because of a random fuel stop and a trucker who can memorize license plates.


----------



## PovilD

tfd543 said:


> Dont give up. Just do me that favour.. i still remember when i failed how hard it was to accept.. it was at the time when i was working in the lab doing complicated science which also failed and didnt really work.. very vicious period. I began thinking that the system was somehow programmed to do this against me and i thought i would quit the license training as it wouldnt really help me to live a better life… Yea man, it was deep stuff..


Yes, indeed. Learning one thing - that system is not against you, is essential here.

I really want to start my license training soon. I don't really care how many takes it will take. I think covid did a little bit delay too since I planned to restart a year ago at earliest, although I don't know my destiny if there were no covid. I decide to delay last summer, and I heard exams indeed were postponed when things got bad, creating very large queues, not very good situation. I also been waiting for situation to stabilize too, but I feel I should not have hope for now, we will see around omicron how it behave at least.

Driving exams should be as essential service as farmacy and food stores.

I have my own opinion how traffic works, it's not dark forest for me, it's the safe and rigorous control of the car that should be addressed, I think. I think most work should involve here.

This is probably main secret I was hidden from you for now  For a long time, I really didn't needed a car, student discounts for public transport worked for me well.

Btw, I wish to have license since I want to make road videos too, and analyse existing and new projects


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## Dikan011

It's like the old joke, what was the slogan of the most successful Polish tourism campaign? "Come to Poland, your car is already here" 🤣 🤣

Btw, I was flying with LOT two months ago and saw a really good Polish action flick - "Jak zostalem gangsterom" (how I became a gangster). Good way to kill two hours.


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> This will be road forum hidden secret
> 
> Still on progress.
> T: 1
> P: 2, but failed. Took longer break due to my anxiety issues. Planning for 3rd. Very miserable driving conditions in some places in my city, especially around parked cars and unsafe junctions with poor visibility. I grow a little older too, and I feel more prepared that you can't cry around unpredictable World  Just prepared myself for multiple attempts.
> 
> More or less I know how the traffic works and analyze it. Riding a bicycle and sitting at a front car seat helps.
> 
> (this makes me still still road enthusiast)
> 
> I was mentioning good aspects of good public transport and cycling in some of this forum threads. Now you know around me there could be personal bias, but I see driving is not pleasant too when streets are not safe from pedestrians/cyclists and unsafe junctions. I'm especially talking about countries that built roads for tanks


Good luck with he next attempt. Do you have good instructor? This is often half of the success.

I remember mine. A bit brash guy but really effective. He wasn't trying to be my best friend, he was trying to teach mi driving.

Before I started practical training I have never driven car in my life. My family never owned one so I had no opportunity. So, we have spend half an hour practicing starting, stopping, changing gears, simple turns etc. I though I will be doing this for the first two or three lessons. Then he suddenly tells me to head to the gates (we were practicing in a small car park at the back of the local school) and hit the city streets. It was central Wroclaw, city of more than 600k inhabitants, with trams etc. To say that I was surprised (and horrified) is to say not much. 

But I didn't have a choice. I bit my lips and went outside. We did a small loop around the nearest streets and I loved it.

From then on I never looked back. I still love driving, despite never owning a car and not needing it on a daily basis. In fact I have probably driven more miles in the US than in Europe


----------



## Attus

geogregor said:


> Before I started practical training I have never driven car in my life. My family never owned one so I had no opportunity. So, we have spend half an hour practicing starting, stopping, changing gears, simple turns etc. I though I will be doing this for the first two or three lessons. Then he suddenly tells me to head to the gates (we were practicing in a small car park at the back of the local school) and hit the city streets. It was central Wroclaw, city of more than 600k inhabitants, with trams etc. To say that I was surprised (and horrified) is to say not much.
> 
> But I didn't have a choice. I bit my lips and went outside. We did a small loop around the nearest streets and I loved it.


In Hungary, actually I don't know how it is nowadays, but in the 90's, when I learned driving, practical exam had two steps, and you were only allowed to drive outside the practice area after passing the first step. The first step was start, stop, driving at a certain speed and stop at a certain point (not before or after that), turning, etc. It was compulsory to have four lessons (40 minutes each) before attempting the first step.


----------



## geogregor

Attus said:


> In Hungary, actually I don't know how it is nowadays, but in the 90's, when I learned driving, practical exam had two steps, and you were only allowed to drive outside the practice area after passing the first step. The first step was start, stop, driving at a certain speed and stop at a certain point (not before or after that), turning, etc. It was compulsory to have four lessons (40 minutes each) before attempting the first step.


It was the same in Poland in early 2000s when I passed my test. There was turning, parallel parking between the cones with flags, staring uphill and a few other simple and prescriptive maneuvers. It was first part of the exam, only after passing this you were allowed to drive in the city. 

But that was during exams. How the training lessons were organized it was due to the individual instructors. Mine was mixing the maneuvers with the city driving on most lessons.

Problem with those maneuvers was that they took valuable time to master. So rather than teaching people real driving skills instructors wasted time to teach people parking in tight spots. Well, to be frank people can learn it on their own. New drivers will look for wider parking spots anyway. It was silly, some instructors were telling people to watch flag in their rear view mirror hitting certain point and then turning wheel by some numbers of degrees etc. Nobody drives like that in real life.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Driving experience comes with time. A number like 100,000 km or 5 years is quoted. You can't achieve that during driving lessons. 

But if you want to see some real skilled driving, look at India. A 'kill or be killed' driving style.


----------



## Stuu

Has this Christmas gift idea been reported elsewhere?








Prickly present: dancing cactus toy that raps in Polish about cocaine goes viral


Walmart removes listing by third-party seller after Ontario woman discovers one of toy’s songs is about cocaine and hopelessness




www.theguardian.com


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Before I started practical training I have never driven car in my life. My family never owned one so I had no opportunity. So, we have spend half an hour practicing starting, stopping, changing gears, simple turns etc.


Mine went with me onto the road first 

Ok, it's not true I've not driven before; I've forgotten about that – my mother showed me the basics some weeks before. On a circular piece of a dirt road, obviously not a public one.

But I've read on forums that it's quite frequent that the instructors, on the first driving lesson, immediately go onto the roads.

We had quite a nice drive around Łódź  Both on city roads and on transit ones outside (though not motorways).



geogregor said:


> It was the same in Poland in early 2000s when I passed my test. There was turning, parallel parking between the cones with flags, staring uphill and a few other simple and prescriptive maneuvers. It was first part of the exam, only after passing this you were allowed to drive in the city.


It got simplified later. Now it's only driving on a "turn of a road", marked with flagged cones, forward and backwards (what I've described in an earlier post, on which I failed twice, once while driving forward and once backwards) and starting uphill (with a help of the emergency brake). And one of the "maintenance" things like showing where is that stick for checking the engine oil level or verifying if the horn works 

Parking is tested while driving in the city, and it's either parallel or perpendicular, never both during the same exam. Apart from that, there is also making a U-turn using road infrastructure, like a parking spot or a gate of a random house (so a "T"-shaped maneuver). Interestingly, instructors always teach to do this U-turn by entering that gate, parking spot or whatever backwards and leaving it onto the road forward – but I did it the other way round and it wasn't a problem.



geogregor said:


> some instructors were telling people to watch flag in their rear view mirror hitting certain point and then turning wheel by some numbers of degrees etc.


Yes, it's what I also described and what actually once made me fail the exam


----------



## Kpc21

Media coverage of the new toll system in Poland: https://www.rmf24.pl/fakty/polska/n...-dzis-e-toll-obowiazk,nId,5680237#crp_state=1

The reporter tested two methods of paying – through the geolocation app and by buying a ticket at a gas station:


> Downloading the e-Toll PL app required some time from me. Before entering A4 at the Wrocław Wschód junction I had to start it. To log in, one has to enter the previously set PIN. After that, we click "start driving" and just enter – because the barriers are up. Once I passed Karwiany – the place where the toll motorway ends – I clicked "end driving". I got a message that the data got correctly saved and delivered. And from an account which I previously loaded up, I was charged a bit over 1 PLN. I'll add that at the gates I saw drivers with emergency lights on, who had troubles with the app or who were just installing it. I also saw patrols of the police, Road Traffic Inspection and the tax services.
> 
> When – at a gas station – I said that I wanted to buy a motorway ticket, I was asked from where to where I wanted to go. I had to specifically tell that I was entering the toll motorway on the gates in Karwiany and I was exiting at the Brzezimierz junction. I was told what was the cost. I also had to tell the license plate number of the car and the time when I was going to enter the motorway. It was explained to me that I cannot enter before that time. Then I got a paper ticket, valid for 48 hours. At the station there was a line of people wanting to buy the tickets. At the moment they are available at the ORLEN stations. As the National Tax Administration says, soon they will also be available at LOTOS.


----------



## Kpc21

And a third topic.

Because the state of emergency at the Polish border with Belarus, according to the constitution, has to end and cannot be extended any more – journalists will be allowed to access the border area. The government has prepared special regulations.

They will have to apply for the Border Guard accreditation beforehand, undergo a special safety training, sign some special statements. They will have to be there accompanied by the Border Guard. The Border Guard management will be trying to built the groups of journalists in a way to maintain full pluralism of the media.

And the fourth one. 

Someone mentioned the omicron Covid variant and the new restrictions. In Poland those new restrictions are in force from today – but they are sparse and don't change much. The main change is changing the limits of people in places such as restaurants, hotels, culture institutions, churches, swimming pools, water parks. The limits which until now were set to 75% of the capacity of the place are changed to 50%. On weddings, first communions, discos etc. – the limit was 150 persons, now it will be 100 persons.

But it's all virtual, because those limits anyway only apply to non-vaccinated people. Nobody verifies them in practice.

In addition, there is a flight ban to 7 African countries and – probably the biggest restriction at the moment – people coming to Poland from non-Schengen countries will have to quarantine regardless of the test results.


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## PovilD

I don't think we must quarantine travelers regardless of test result within Schengen area. Searching for positives from abroad, as temporary measure due to omicron risk, probably ok. Slowing omicron spread for at least a month would be appreciated. January, February, and maybe March continues to be extremely unpredictable. Late April, May, depending on the weather we will see if seasonality still works with covid for temperate climate countries 

---
I won't rule out we will see omicron-like freak mutations for time being. It could be new normal living with covid for some time. It's just my guess


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Driving experience comes with time. A number like 100,000 km or 5 years is quoted. You can't achieve that during driving lessons.
> 
> But if you want to see some real skilled driving, look at India. A 'kill or be killed' driving style.


I've was watching travel documentary from India when few Lithuanians from national television LRT renting something like minivan and travelled across India. They say Indian truckers are legendary.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> Norwegian motorways and other toll roads do not use toll booths.


Also ferries are tolled this way now. I.e. passengers are free on car ferries.


----------



## Suburbanist

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Also ferries are tolled this way now. I.e. passengers are free on car ferries.


What about motorcycles? I know they are not that common around...


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

They are not free on ferries, but do not have to pay road tolls. I am assuming they have back cameras installed for ferry ticketing.


----------



## Coccodrillo

Although I did driving school partly with a manual gearbox car and partly with an automatic car, I did my driving exam with an automatic gearbox, and thus I got a license limited to these (either ICE or electric). Then Swiss rules changed, and an exam taken with an automatic car gives a licence also valid on manual cars. I manage to drive a manual car on a flat and quiet road, and I actually quite some kilometres on such roads without too big problems. But I wouldn't try on a busy road. During driving school I also had to pass on busy roads with a manual car, and always people honked at me. And making someone on a driving school's car nervous is not a very intelligent idea, before being quite impolite, it just makes him/her stand stopped in the middle of the road for longer...

I got my licence replaced with a standard one without any exam when the law changed. I thus tried again after some years a manual car a couple of times (one of a car sharing service), again I managed to run alone on a quiet road, but that's all, I cannot drive a manual car in real life. Giving a standard licence to someone who isn't capable to drive a manual car was an idiotic idea, also Swiss driving teacher protested about this change, but it remained in place. In the future manual cars will likely disappear anyway (for common people), with battery or hybrid cars becoming more common.

(As far I understand, with the previous rules if I did the test with an electric car I would have had a license limited to these. I didn't even know such a license existed. Switzerland also has, or had, a driving licence valid for trolleybuses, but not diesel buses.)


----------



## bogdymol

When I was once in the US, I had the opportunity to drive a Jeep Wrangler in off-road conditions. Before the owner let me drive it, he asked if I know to drive a manual. His question was legit, as in the US normally you only drive automatic cars, and thus many don’t know to drive manual. 

My wife had the opposite problem: she got her license on a manual and only drove manual. A couple of years later, she had the opportunity to drive an automatic car and she was scared. “Won’t my engine die when I stop the car without taking it out of gear?”, “What should I do with my left leg?”. She was fine, but needed an hour to get used to doing less actions while driving. 



Coccodrillo said:


> (As far I understand, with the previous rules if I did the test with an electric car I would have had a license limited to these.


What’s the difference between driving a fully electric car and a petrol/diesel car with automatic transmission? Aren’t they, from driving point of view, basically the same?


----------



## Suburbanist

Pure electric cars are much more responsive to acceleration commands than a similar input in a hybrid of similar power. The center of gravity is also low on electrics. But from a usage of human limbs it is the same.


----------



## geogregor

Coccodrillo said:


> Although I did driving school partly with a manual gearbox car and partly with an automatic car, I did my driving exam with an automatic gearbox, and thus I got a license limited to these (either ICE or electric). Then Swiss rules changed, and an exam taken with an automatic car gives a licence also valid on manual cars. I manage to drive a manual car on a flat and quiet road, and I actually quite some kilometres on such roads without too big problems. But I wouldn't try on a busy road. During driving school I also had to pass on busy roads with a manual car, and always people honked at me. And making someone on a driving school's car nervous is not a very intelligent idea, before being quite impolite, it just makes him/her stand stopped in the middle of the road for longer...
> 
> I got my licence replaced with a standard one without any exam when the law changed. I thus tried again after some years a manual car a couple of times (one of a car sharing service), again I managed to run alone on a quiet road, but that's all, I cannot drive a manual car in real life. Giving a standard licence to someone who isn't capable to drive a manual car was an idiotic idea, also Swiss driving teacher protested about this change, but it remained in place. In the future manual cars will likely disappear anyway (for common people), with battery or hybrid cars becoming more common.
> 
> (As far I understand, with the previous rules if I did the test with an electric car I would have had a license limited to these. I didn't even know such a license existed. Switzerland also has, or had, a driving licence valid for trolleybuses, but not diesel buses.)


I did all the training in car with manual transmission. But over the years I drove more in automatic cars than in manual.

Especially when I initially rented cars in the UK I always went for automatic option. I just couldn't imagine changing gears with the left hand 

Only after a while I drove manual car on the left. Actually first time was in Ireland as renting automatic there was much more expensive. I was fine.

In the US it was always automatic, but sometimes my rentals had paddle shifters, especially when I went for V8 versions of Mustang or Camaro. 

In general I prefer automatic. I really don't get why some people get misty-eyed for manual transmission. And all the talk about manual cars being superior is just pure nonsense.

Having said that, I did drive some automatic cars with awful transmissions. But then I also drove manual cars with crap gearboxes.


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> Pure electric cars are much more responsive to acceleration commands than a similar input in a hybrid of similar power. The center of gravity is also low on electrics. But from a usage of human limbs it is the same.


Many electric cars have a rear-wheel drive. In winter conditions, it may make nasty surprises to those ones having most of their experience on the front-wheel drive.


----------



## bogdymol

There are many petrol or gasoline cars with rear wheel drive, just like there are electric cars with 4wd, so I don’t think this is an argument. 

Nor the one with how power gets transmitted to the ground. You can drive an old Fiat 500 with 65hp, or a Bugatti Veyron with 1000 hp with a normal license.


----------



## Slagathor

geogregor said:


> I really don't get why some people get misty-eyed for manual transmission. And all the talk about manual cars being superior is just pure nonsense.


I think it's one of those things that _feel _intuitive to people, so they agree without thinking it through. 

I used to buy into it as well; I thought a manual car gave you greater control and therefore made you a better driver. That illusion was shattered when I ended up driving a piece of sh!t with a broken gearbox. Rather than me changing gears, it was the car that decided which gear I should have. I would move it into 4th and the car would go: "Nah, you're getting 3rd now."

It was a wreck and I just had to get it to the other side of town where the junkyard is, but I barely made it there. 

It was at that point that I realized I don't know how a gearbox really functions and I'm definitely not capable of fixing one when it's broken. So I realized that my feeling of greater control through manually changing gears with a lever when I'm driving is just an illusion. Moving a gear stick is no different from using the indicators. It doesn't make you a better driver. It's just an additional chore for you to do while you're on the move.

These days I view a gear stick as quaint but unnecessary. The same way I view one of these:


----------



## radamfi

If you want a new automatic small car then your choice is limited. Smart is now electric only. Many of the the remaining A-segment cars no longer offer automatics and if they do it is only on their more expensive versions. Car reviews of small cars usually recommend not buying the automatic version.


----------



## Attus

I've had a driver license for 26 years, and have literally never ever driven an automatic car.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> If you want a new automatic small car then your choice is limited. Smart is now electric only. Many of the the remaining A-segment cars no longer offer automatics and if they do it is only on their more expensive versions. Car reviews of small cars usually recommend not buying the automatic version.


???

Aren't most hybrids automatic?


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> ???
> 
> Aren't most hybrids automatic?


Can you get an A-segment hybrid? I would have thought there wouldn't be enough space for the two engines.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

When I got my driver's license, automatic transmission was usually only found on higher end cars, not something a newly licensed driver would have. Almost any driver would start off with a manual transmission, automatic transmission has only became more widespread over the past decade, though even to this day A/B segment automatic transmission is not very common. Most people who buy a car in these segments are price conscious so automatic transmissions are not widely sold on these types of cars, though it is gaining some ground.

It also doesn't help that many automatic transmissions on cheaper cars got bad reviews. Including the infamous Toyota CVT that was deemed annoying when reaching slightly higher RPM.


----------



## Attus

I learned driving on a Seat Malaga, my first car was a Lada 1200. Automatic transmission was something we had already read about but weren't sure if it really existed


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> Can you get an A-segment hybrid? I would have thought there wouldn't be enough space for the two engines.


Yes you can. There is for example Toyota Yaris hybrid, and a few others. 



ChrisZwolle said:


> though even to this day A/B segment automatic transmission is not very common. Most people who buy a car in these segments are price conscious so automatic transmissions are not widely sold on these types of cars, though it is gaining some ground.


I do find it strange. Cars are nowadays so full of various electric gizmos and computers that automatic transmission is probably fraction of their cost. People accepted touchscreens etc. and yet drivers cling to outdated mode of regulating power output. It is like clinging to TV sets with dials rather than remote controller for changing channels. 



> It also doesn't help that many automatic transmissions on cheaper cars got bad reviews. Including the infamous Toyota CVT that was deemed annoying when reaching slightly higher RPM.


As I said, I did have some bad experiences. The worst automatic transmission I ever used was in Fiat 500L. But it was silly car full stop. Absolute piece of crap. 

But apart from that I mostly had good experience with automatic cars. And I drove dozens and dozens of them over the years, from small compacts to 500 bhp rear drive sport cars.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A-segment cars in the Netherlands are popular to import as a used car with automatic transmission. These cars usually have a higher fuel consumption with automatic transmission in the NEDC cycle, so with the Dutch tax system being CO2 based, automatic versions were usually prohibitively expensive compared to manual ones. But when you import a used car, the tax is much lower. So you see many small cars with a license plate that is too new for its model. I mean cars like Toyota Aygo, Kia Picanto, Hyundai i10, Citroën C1, Volkswagen Up, etc.

However the A-segment overall has declined significantly. Their main selling point was the low price, 10 years ago you could buy one for under € 10,000. But with all the safety regulations, they have become much more expensive. Many A-segment cars have been discontinued in the past few years. The Netherlands was one of the few European countries where A-segment cars were really popular. The difference in the top 20 new car sales between the Netherlands and Belgium / Germany was huge.


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> It also doesn't help that many automatic transmissions on cheaper cars got bad reviews. Including the infamous Toyota CVT that was deemed annoying when reaching slightly higher RPM.


I had a Toyota Auris hire car a few years ago with that CVT drive. It always seemed to be in the wrong "gear", for want of a better word. The engine was often at much higher revs than would have been the case in a manual car, horrible things, much worse than a normal automatic gearbox


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> Yes you can. There is for example Toyota Yaris hybrid, and a few others.


The Yaris is now a B-segment car. The small Toyota car is now the Aygo. Other popular former small cars are now bigger B-segment cars, for example the Fiesta, Polo and Corsa. Ford brought out the Ka as its small replacement for the Fiesta but now Ford have no city car at all. Similarly, Vauxhall/Opel got rid of the Adam recently.

According to









European sales 2020 Minicars - carsalesbase.com


European sales of minicars were down by a third in 2020, which translates to nearly 400,000 fewer sales and means the segment loses market share as the overall market is down 24%. As a result, this segment now makes up 6.8% of the total European car market, down from 7.7% last year. And their...




carsalesbase.com





the top 10 city cars in Europe in 2020 were the Fiat Panda, Fiat 500, Toyota Aygo, Renault Twingo, Volkswagen Up!, Hyundai i10, Kia Picanto, Peugeot 108, Citroen C1 and Suzuki Ignis.

The 108 and C1 no longer exist. They were variants of the Aygo anyway. There is no longer an automatic version of the Volkswagen Up! The Ignis is available in a so-called 'mild hybrid', which means it can't move on its own at low speed like a Prius.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> When I got my driver's license, automatic transmission was usually only found on higher end cars, not something a newly licensed driver would have. Almost any driver would start off with a manual transmission, automatic transmission has only became more widespread over the past decade, though even to this day A/B segment automatic transmission is not very common. Most people who buy a car in these segments are price conscious so automatic transmissions are not widely sold on these types of cars, though it is gaining some ground.
> 
> It also doesn't help that many automatic transmissions on cheaper cars got bad reviews. Including the infamous Toyota CVT that was deemed annoying when reaching slightly higher RPM.


I got my license in 2004 and my experience was the same. Automatic transmission cars were practically unheard of back then.

I always thought it was quite surprising they didn't enjoy greater popularity in the Netherlands, given that DAF practically invented the thing.


----------



## cinxxx

I drove a Toyota Yaris hybrid on Mallorca last week. Pretty nice car, fun to drive. Very good acceleration.
It went EV when driving under 20kmh.


----------



## radamfi

I'm sure the Yaris is a nice car, but you would hope so given how much it costs nowadays. On the Toyota UK website, the Yaris starts at £20,210 compared to £13,920 for the Aygo. It's no longer a budget new car.


----------



## tfd543

geogregor said:


> I did all the training in car with manual transmission. But over the years I drove more in automatic cars than in manual.
> 
> Especially when I initially rented cars in the UK I always went for automatic option. I just couldn't imagine changing gears with the left hand
> 
> Only after a while I drove manual car on the left. Actually first time was in Ireland as renting automatic there was much more expensive. I was fine.
> 
> In the US it was always automatic, but sometimes my rentals had paddle shifters, especially when I went for V8 versions of Mustang or Camaro.
> 
> In general I prefer automatic. I really don't get why some people get misty-eyed for manual transmission. And all the talk about manual cars being superior is just pure nonsense.
> 
> Having said that, I did drive some automatic cars with awful transmissions. But then I also drove manual cars with crap gearboxes.


Cvt gearboxes for auto are shitty. Prefer dsg.


----------



## metacatfry

bogdymol said:


> What’s the difference between driving a fully electric car and a petrol/diesel car with automatic transmission? Aren’t they, from driving point of view, basically the same?


An electric car with regenerative braking will start to brake when you remove your foot from the speeder. I rented a BMW i3 and had some adjustment problems because I normally often coast along in neutral, for example when approaching a red light. I had to learn to keep depressing the speeder until the moment where I had to slow down.
In a petrol automatic you can still coast.


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> When I was once in the US, I had the opportunity to drive a Jeep Wrangler in off-road conditions. Before the owner let me drive it, he asked if I know to drive a manual. His question was legit, as in the US normally you only drive automatic cars, and thus many don’t know to drive manual.
> 
> My wife had the opposite problem: she got her license on a manual and only drove manual. A couple of years later, she had the opportunity to drive an automatic car and she was scared. “Won’t my engine die when I stop the car without taking it out of gear?”, “*What should I do with my left leg*?”. She was fine, but needed an hour to get used to doing less actions while driving.
> 
> 
> 
> What’s the difference between driving a fully electric car and a petrol/diesel car with automatic transmission? Aren’t they, from driving point of view, basically the same?


If you wanna joke with her in a nasty way, tell her to try using left leg for left (brake) pedal


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

metacatfry said:


> An electric car with regenerative braking will start to brake when you remove your foot from the speeder. I rented a BMW i3 and had some adjustment problems because I normally often coast along in neutral, for example when approaching a red light. I had to learn to keep depressing the speeder until the moment where I had to slow down.
> In a petrol automatic you can still coast.


The level of regeneration when not using the accelerator pedal is normally adjustable, at least in the e-cars I have tried.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> If you wanna joke with her in a nasty way, tell her to try using left leg for left (brake) pedal


The first time I drove a car with automatic transmission, I drove mostly on a long motorway trip from Italy to the Netherlands. When we reached Karlsruhe, we wanted to take the exit ramp to B10/A65. I had been driving almost 2 hours at motorway speed and totally forgot I was driving an automatic. So I used my left foot to push on the clutch. Only it wasn't the clutch, but the brake pedal. Which I tapped quite hard like you normally do when shifting down 😂 Luckily there was nobody behind us, they wouldn't have expected such a hard braking...


----------



## metacatfry

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> The level of regeneration when not using the accelerator pedal is normally adjustable, at least in the e-cars I have tried.


Sounds sensible. As i said I have only tried a rental so I don't know much about electric cars. I guess this rental was set with maximum regeneration to extend range.


----------



## Kpc21

Coccodrillo said:


> Although I did driving school partly with a manual gearbox car and partly with an automatic car, I did my driving exam with an automatic gearbox, and thus I got a license limited to these (either ICE or electric).


In Poland it also works like that, but in practice almost nobody goes for taking the course on an automatic car... Why do it when it limits the range of cars you would be able to drive?

It only makes sense when driving a manual is really too difficult for you, or when you cannot drive manual because of physical disabilities (but then oftentimes the driving license also requires the car you drive to be equipped with some extra accessibility accessories).



Coccodrillo said:


> I got my licence replaced with a standard one without any exam when the law changed. I thus tried again after some years a manual car a couple of times (one of a car sharing service), again I managed to run alone on a quiet road, but that's all, I cannot drive a manual car in real life. Giving a standard licence to someone who isn't capable to drive a manual car was an idiotic idea, also Swiss driving teacher protested about this change, but it remained in place. In the future manual cars will likely disappear anyway (for common people), with battery or hybrid cars becoming more common.


If I am not mistaken, it works so in the US that even having taken the test on an automatic, you can drive manual. Otherwise very few people would be able to drive manual cars over there...

But it's not a huge issue when there are only few manual cars on the roads; if someone slows down the traffic because he is not used to driving with manual transmission, like you described your experiences, it's just this single driver and not many cars like that.

To drive a manual car without being an obstacle on the road, it's a matter of practice... After a year or so it will be automatic in your head, you will have this gear changing thing in your muscle memory.



Suburbanist said:


> Pure electric cars are much more responsive to acceleration commands than a similar input in a hybrid of similar power.


Isn't it so that in most of them it's possible to adjust that? Like, you have selection between "eco", "normal" and "sport" modes.



radamfi said:


> If you want a new automatic small car then your choice is limited. Smart is now electric only. Many of the the remaining A-segment cars no longer offer automatics and if they do it is only on their more expensive versions. Car reviews of small cars usually recommend not buying the automatic version.


From what I understand, in small cars those automatic transmissions are usually very basic and old-fashioned (otherwise the car would become too expensive), and thus also not very comfortable to use.

Though in general currently the A-segment petrol cars are so expensive that their purchase doesn't make much sense, while B-segment cars cost more or less the same.

Unless you really need it for the city, so that you can park and maneuver more easily. But the times when people were buying A-segment cars just because they couldn't afford anything bigger seem to be gone.



Attus said:


> I learned driving on a Seat Malaga, my first car was a Lada 1200. Automatic transmission was something we had already read about but weren't sure if it really existed


The first car in which I rode as a passenger was Lada 2107... And I remember it was quite comfy.

I've watched some reviews of old Eastern Bloc cars on YouTube; people were comparing Lada 2107, Fiat 125p, and if I remember well, the equivalent from Skoda... Lada was considered better designed than 125p. Though all those cars were actually based on the chassis of the Italian Fiat 1500.

Similarly, later there were Polonez vs. Lada Samara...

As a driver I haven't even ever had an opportunity to drive a car with carburetor. The oldest car I drove was an Opel Corsa from 1993... Of the features you can expect (or rather not expect) from old cars, it had no power steering, so at least I could feel this... And – it wasn't really any problem. While driving, the steering wheel turns just normally, as you expect. Power steering seems to be actually useful when the car is parked.



geogregor said:


> I do find it strange. Cars are nowadays so full of various electric gizmos and computers that automatic transmission is probably fraction of their cost. People accepted touchscreens etc. and yet drivers cling to outdated mode of regulating power output. It is like clinging to TV sets with dials rather than remote controller for changing channels.


People buying a cheap car may also prefer manual transmission, because automatic transmission requires more expensive maintenance. In automatic, you normally have to regularly replace the oil inside. In manual – the producers don't recommend changing the oil in the gearbox at all – in practice it may make sense after 10-15 years or so.



radamfi said:


> The Yaris is now a B-segment car. The small Toyota car is now the Aygo. Other popular former small cars are now bigger B-segment cars, for example the Fiesta, Polo and Corsa. Ford brought out the Ka as its small replacement for the Fiesta but now Ford have no city car at all. Similarly, Vauxhall/Opel got rid of the Adam recently.


I don't think Yaris was ever an A-segment car. Though it's now of a size, which would be probably a C-segment car 20 years ago.

The cars are literally growing in time.

I mentioned this Corsa B. It was a B segment car. Now I drive a Micra K13 – and in practice it feels more like something between the A and B segments, but it's actually slightly longer than that Corsa. The current Corsa version is much, much longer.



radamfi said:


> Ford brought out the Ka as its small replacement for the Fiesta but now Ford have no city car at all.


It's a surprise for me that Ka isn't produced any more. But a year or two ago, when it was still available, it was a car of practically the same size as Fiesta, just lower-budget. As opposed to the earlier generation of Ka, which was indeed small (and while it had the appearance of a smaller Fiesta, technically it had a lot in common with... Fiat Panda).



radamfi said:


> There is no longer an automatic version of the Volkswagen Up!


Is Up still available in a combustion engine version?

I've just checked – and it seems that it is. But it has become very expensive compared with what was there 2 years ago...

And previously it was possible to buy the same car but branded as Skoda Citigo at a lower price. But already over a year ago, or even more, Skoda only left its electric variant...


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> From what I understand, in small cars those automatic transmissions are usually very basic and old-fashioned (otherwise the car would become too expensive), and thus also not very comfortable to use.


I've been driving Smart cars for 20 years now. Until 2014, it was _only_ available as an automatic (or at least semi-automatic), unless you count the Forfour which I don't really think of as a Smart car anyway. I have never had a problem with the gear changes, particularly on the 2007-2014 model. (I haven't driven the post 2014 model). I've recently test driven a new automatic Hyundai i10. The reviews for that were terrible yet it seemed very good to me. I could barely tell when the gear changes happened.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> I've recently test driven a new automatic Hyundai i10. The reviews for that were terrible yet it seemed very good to me. I could barely tell when the gear changes happened.


I've owned two i10's in the past, a 2011 facelifted 1st generation and a 2015 2nd generation. They are good, reliable cars, one of the best in the A-segment. The 2nd generation has a bigger trunk than most A-segment cars.

Cars like that are now popular as imports with automatic transmission (I assume mostly for elderly people). Not many automatic ones were sold in the Netherlands due to the high CO2 tax, adding several thousand euros to the price. The first generation only had a 4-speed automatic with energy label G. 

Right now I'm driving a 2017 Hyundai i20. This car has few downsides for me, 100 HP in a B-segment makes it a reasonably powered car. The only real downside is the 1.0 3 cylinder engine. It has a lot of power but only in a narrow range, with quite a big turbo lag. And the manual transmission stick isn't as smooth as it could be, but that's minor.


----------



## Suburbanist

I wonder if powertrain manufacturers have more or less stopped further intensive R&D of traditional automatic transmission, since the future on the wall are electric vehicles and, possibly, wheel-specific motors only.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've owned two i10's in the past, a 2011 facelifted 1st generation and a 2015 2nd generation. They are good, reliable cars, one of the best in the A-segment.


i10 probably has the best capacity-to-length ratio in the segment. I was actually considering buying a new one, before I finally bought that used Micra.


----------



## keber

Suburbanist said:


> I wonder if powertrain manufacturers have more or less stopped further intensive R&D of traditional automatic transmission, since the future on the wall are electric vehicles and, possibly, wheel-specific motors only.


ICE cars will be still here for a long time (at minimum 20 years in my opinion, probably more). Automatic transmission is still in development and almost every model has noticeable improvements. There are more electronics, more gears and faster and smoother shifting, all in smaller and smaller packages.


----------



## MattiG

keber said:


> ICE cars will be still here for a long time (at minimum 20 years in my opinion, probably more). Automatic transmission is still in development and almost every model has noticeable improvements. There are more electronics, more gears and faster and smoother shifting, all in smaller and smaller packages.


...and substantially better energy efficiency. Nowadays, most modern traditional torque converter based automatic gears have a lock-up functionality. Upon decision by the electronics, the impeller and turbine are physically locked to change the converter into a mechanical coupling. No slippage, no loss of power. According to car specs, an automatic transmission is even slightly more energy-efficient than a manual one, because a computer can optimize the switching better than a human being.

An automatic transmission is gaining more and more popularity among heavy vehicles, which will run on diesel for several decades from now on. No reason to stop development.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

keber said:


> ICE cars will be still here for a long time (at minimum 20 years in my opinion, probably more).


Regarding new car sales in Europe, that is not how it appears to me:








Plug-In Car Registrations In Europe: Q1-Q3 2021 Full Report


Some 548,972 (up 48%) new passenger plug-in electric cars were registered in Q3 2021 in the European Union, EFTA (Norway, Switzerland, Iceland) and the UK.




insideevs.com




Although Croatia is low on BEVs compared with some other European countries, its BEV market share increased by more than 100 %.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Interesting, the Netherlands is not in the lead anymore. It used to be #2 after Norway (ok, #3 after Iceland but who's counting..  )

Still, electric vehicles are still heavily oriented to business sales, relying heavily on government incentives. In the Netherlands hardly any product group has as much government market distortion as cars. Car sales are almost entirely dependent on fiscal regulations, which change almost every year and some models can lose 95% of their market in a year. 

For example the Tesla Model 3 has been sold 30,500 units in 2019 but only 1,650 in 2021 to date, after taxes changed on electric cars over € 50,000.


----------



## Shenkey

Anyone that buys a gas car today will be unable to sell it inside the union in 10 years and will thus export it, or run it to the ground.
How modern cars hold up, I would expect plenty of ICE cars on the roads in 20 years.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Sure, yes. But the question as I understood it was what cars will be sold in 20 years in the developed world.


----------



## Slagathor

Shenkey said:


> Anyone that buys a gas car today will be unable to sell it inside the union in 10 years and will thus export it, or run it to the ground.
> How modern cars hold up, I would expect plenty of ICE cars on the roads in 20 years.


By then you might pass an electric charging station every 10 meters but have to drive 50km to the nearest gas station.


----------



## geogregor

keber said:


> ICE cars will be still here for a long time (at minimum 20 years in my opinion, probably more). Automatic transmission is still in development and almost every model has noticeable improvements. There are more electronics, more gears and faster and smoother shifting, all in smaller and smaller packages.


Well, they "will be" here, but how many of them will be sold annually? 

There will also be big regional differences. I expect that in 20 years big majority of cars in north western Europe might be full electric, plus some hybrids. But in Eastern Europe it won't be the case. 

Poland is importing a lot of used cars, we will "hoover up" all the ICE cars from the western roads


----------



## radamfi

If someone in central/eastern Europe buys a car that was previously used in western Europe it isn't so obvious, as car models are uniform. But secondhand buses are really obvious, particularly when they don't bother repainting them. I found it amazing when I went to Plovdiv and Skopje about 5 years ago and found buses with the colour and logos of German or Dutch bus companies, and especially in the case of Dutch bus companies where bus companies regularly change, companies that haven't existed for years. The interiors were also often left alone, showing maps of Kaiserslautern or wherever. They even left the LED destination blinds alone, so a lot of buses in Plovdiv were still going to "Bahnhof". They just put an extra sign at the bottom of the window to show the real destination.


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> If someone in central/eastern Europe buys a car that was previously used in western Europe it isn't so obvious, as car models are uniform. But secondhand buses are really obvious, particularly when they don't bother repainting them. I found it amazing when I went to Plovdiv and Skopje about 5 years ago and found buses with the colour and logos of German or Dutch bus companies, and especially in the case of Dutch bus companies where bus companies regularly change, companies that haven't existed for years. The interiors were also often left alone, showing maps of Kaiserslautern or wherever. They even left the LED destination blinds alone, so a lot of buses in Plovdiv were still going to "Bahnhof". They just put an extra sign at the bottom of the window to show the real destination.


Reminds me of Cuba.


----------



## PovilD

radamfi said:


> If someone in central/eastern Europe buys a car that was previously used in western Europe it isn't so obvious, as car models are uniform. But secondhand buses are really obvious, particularly when they don't bother repainting them. I found it amazing when I went to Plovdiv and Skopje about 5 years ago and found buses with the colour and logos of German or Dutch bus companies, and especially in the case of Dutch bus companies where bus companies regularly change, companies that haven't existed for years. The interiors were also often left alone, showing maps of Kaiserslautern or wherever. They even left the LED destination blinds alone, so a lot of buses in Plovdiv were still going to "Bahnhof". They just put an extra sign at the bottom of the window to show the real destination.


I feel quite dumb seeing similar buses. They are used to access more rural areas in Lithuania


----------



## AnelZ

That with buses, trolleys and trams keeping the livery and some adds from where they come from is common in Sarajevo as most of the fleet that our public transportation company has, are donations from all across Europe. I guess it is cheaper for companies to donate the vechicles then to be respobsible for their disposal.

We will for first time since the 90's buy new vechicles for our tram and trolley system. 35 new trolleybuses will come from Belarus in 2022 which will renew almost the whole system while Trams will come in more intervals until end of2024 (first ones at the end of 2023) but will renew less then 50% of the system (25 trams) although I'm confident that will order some more until the first gets delievered. Stadler will produce them.


----------



## Surel

Shenkey said:


> Anyone that buys a gas car today will be unable to sell it inside the union in 10 years and will thus export it, or run it to the ground.
> How modern cars hold up, I would expect plenty of ICE cars on the roads in 20 years.





54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Sure, yes. But the question as I understood it was what cars will be sold in 20 years in the developed world.


There are several reasons why the idea that people wil drive only electric in the 10-20 year horizon is rather nonsensical.

First and foremost. There's no infrastructure for it. Especially there are no sources of electric energy available and there's no infrastructure to bring that energy there, where it would be needed. To build this infrastructure will take longer than those 20 years.
Second reason is that it would become prohibitively expensive for a massive part of the population to able to use a own personal car. This would lead to a substantial social unrest. I sincerely hope that our societies won't become similar to the totalitarian societies in the communist countries.


----------



## geogregor

Surel said:


> Second reason is that it would become prohibitively expensive for a massive part of the population to able to use a own personal car. This would lead to a *substantial social unrest.*


Because people won't be able to buy ICE car 20-30 years in the future? Seriously? And yet millions of people allowed themselves to be locked in their homes for weeks and months.

Let's get real. Societies of Europe are old and getting older. Old people don't rebel or create social unrest. They have too much invested in the system. The last 18 months are proof of that.



> I sincerely hope that our societies won't become similar to the totalitarian societies in the communist countries.


Again, one could argue that some aspects of pandemic response take us there quicker that electric cars


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are a number of issues that are potential bottlenecks for electric cars.

First and foremost is a large proportion of people who own a car with a value of under € 5,000. While politicians may think that a € 35,000 car is affordable, there are many people who never buy a new car. Electrification of this price segment will take a long time at the very bottom of the market. The average car age in most of the EU is around 10 years. 

Then there are issues with charging. Charging is the cheapest when you do it overnight at home. But many people do not have a driveway where they can charge their cars, so they would be dependent on public charging points in the street or in a parking garage, which are considerably more expensive. The price difference can be a third or more. It may not be a problem for incidental usage, but it will change the economics if it's your only option.

And there are problems with getting this electricty produced and transmitted across the grid. While you can add charging points almost anywhere, scaling it up from 1 or 3% to 80-100% will prove to be more difficult, for example this is already a real problem in the Netherlands where the grid has reached maximum capacity in many places. 

The economics of electric vehicles are quickly evolving, with many new models on the market every year. Current sales are largely based on government incentives or tax exemptions. Driving an EV may be more expensive in the future if the fuel taxes dwindle and a replacement tax is required. There is some criticism that the EV subsidies are a very expensive way of reducing CO2 emissions, as the subsidy per avoided tonne of CO2 is quite high compared to other industrial sectors.


----------



## Coccodrillo

Charging sockets in new private garages should be mandatory, or it should be mandatory to make their installation easy in new building. I'm sure that many countries are already thinking that, but not many have already made such a law.

Then charging cables should be standardized as much as possible (standards have already beenr educed AFAIK) but especially payment systems. I haven't tried charging a car outside the car sharing parking lot, but I fear that across Europe there are dozen of different and incompatible networks that use different cards and different apps to pay the bill. Paying for electricity should be as easy as paying for fuel.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> If someone in central/eastern Europe buys a car that was previously used in western Europe it isn't so obvious, as car models are uniform. But secondhand buses are really obvious, particularly when they don't bother repainting them. I found it amazing when I went to Plovdiv and Skopje about 5 years ago and found buses with the colour and logos of German or Dutch bus companies, and especially in the case of Dutch bus companies where bus companies regularly change, companies that haven't existed for years. The interiors were also often left alone, showing maps of Kaiserslautern or wherever. They even left the LED destination blinds alone, so a lot of buses in Plovdiv were still going to "Bahnhof". They just put an extra sign at the bottom of the window to show the real destination.


One of the companies operating those special closed (non-public) bus lines that carry workers to logistic centers, production plants etc. in Łódź once had one of their buses with a German beer ad  

Which was interesting, because in Poland such alcohol ads are normally illegal.

Probably nobody considered it a problem as that beer wasn't sold in Poland.

Such imported buses, still in the original livery and sometimes still showing the original direction of "Bahnhof", "Betriebsfahrt" etc. are also not uncommon in Poland 

Maybe not so often in the city public transport (except smaller towns).

But in private companies – yes.









(source: Renault Tracer #ELW 4L87 - Łódzka Galeria Transportowa - GTLodz.eu)

Imported from France, on a route delivering workers to a company.









(source: Setra S215 RL #ELW 4L13 - Łódzka Galeria Transportowa - GTLodz.eu)

Something-Reisen – surely a German carrier (though for some reason, also bus carriers in... Ukraine like to name themselves with the -Reisen suffix, for example they have a bus company Lux Reisen that has some connections between Poland and Ukraine); there is an ad of a German newspaper on the side 









(source: ELW 87SM - E.Leclerc Bałuty - Łódzka Galeria Transportowa - GTLodz.eu)

On a free bus route to a supermarket. On a side there is a Polish ad of the carrier which actually operated this line, but the orange-yellow livery must be of a western European carrier  Probably from Germany.









(source: Z kominami w tle - Łódzka Galeria Transportowa - GTLodz.eu)

This is a line bus on a suburban route. PKS used to be a company that in the past operated all the long-distance, regional and suburban bus transit in Poland. In the 1990s it got split into many local companies and those companies got privatised. PKS Łódź closed its last route this year – but in 2011 they were still one of the biggest bus operators in the region. There was a moment when the city bus operator in Łódź (MPK) didn't have enough buses to accommodate for all the bus replacements for the tram lines under renovation, so they contracted the local PKS to operate on one of such lines. For that, PKS Łódź imported several old low-floor articulated buses like this MAN. When they stopped operating this city route, for something like two months they were used on suburban routes, before they got scrapped.

Previously they also had quite a few imported buses...









(source: EL 6095Y [503] i 2604 [92] - Łódzka Galeria Transportowa - GTLodz.eu)

Those photos are quite old, and e.g. that last one shows Mercedes O405N. Now they have mostly switched to the Mercedes Citaro generation. It's difficult to find anything newer not because there aren't such buses any more, but rather because, for some reason, public transport spotting has lost a lot of popularity as a hobby in, like, the last 10 years...









(source: http://phototrans.pl/14,782904,0,Renault_Tracer_DW_029TF.html)

A bus imported from France as a school bus. This is another local PKS – PKS Łęczyca. Currently they still operate some local lines, but mostly – a lot of special lines contracted by companies (as I mentioned, mostly some logistic centers) for delivering the workers.









(source: http://phototrans.pl/14,877126,0,Renault_Tracer_ELE_2N98.html)

Another former Keolis – this one in the fleet of PKS Łęczyca, on a workers route of the company Arvato. Interesting that you can see both the logo of the original French carrier (Keolis) and the Polish one (PKS Łęczyca) 



ChrisZwolle said:


> And there are problems with getting this electricty produced and transmitted across the grid. While you can add charging points almost anywhere, scaling it up from 1 or 3% to 80-100% will prove to be more difficult, for example this is already a real problem in the Netherlands where the grid has reached maximum capacity in many places.


In Poland it's already a problem with the grid capacity because of the power delivered from the home photovoltaic systems. The parliament has finally passed today a low that will make such systems less affordable than now (currently the rule is that for 80% of the excessive power you've produced above your consumption, you get a full refund in the electricity bills within the next year; it will no longer be so – you will be paid the market price of the energy, which is much lower than 80% of what you pay; more like 50 or even 40-30%). 

EV charging stations will be yet another huge problem for the grid.

By the way, an interesting situation with the EVs might be if the price of the car will depend on the capacity of the battery. Like, there is a car model, let's take this Yaris. And it will be available in several battery capacity versions, with huge price differences.

With petrol/diesel cars it's not like that because the fuel tank is a very small, almost negligible portion of the car price. In case of EV, the battery stands for maybe even the major part of the price. This is why this scenario seems quite likely for me.

People who are able to charge their car every day and don't travel on large distances, will buy cheaper cars with lower-capacity batteries. Who e.g. doesn't have a garage and can't install a private charger (so he has to rely on public charging points), or who traverses long distances, will buy the same Yaris, for much a higher price, with a higher-capacity battery.


----------



## Suburbanist

€ 5000 cars are used ones. At some points, Nissan Leaf cars will also become old and cheap. But they will not pollute much more.

Furthermore, as battery technology evolves, I think we will see more and more replacement batteries, which can prolong the useful life of electric cars. By their own nature, electric cars do not vibrate or resonate nowhere as much as ICE, so there is far less moving parts to be damaged by continued use. Electric trolleybuses, for instance, last much longer than normal buses.

Concerning tax revenue, as tax on fuel dwindles, other forms of revenue will be needed, of course. By then, electric cars will not need subsidies. Or, if needed, they would not be matched possibly by charging ICE vehicles even more.

This phenomena is playing out itself here in Norway right now. Ring tolls around major cities and several tunnels used to be completely free for electric cars, then heavily discounted, soon they will be just a bit cheaper.

I think the combination of distributed renewable generation and electric vehicle fleet will create enough push for massive electric grid overhaul. 

It is just a little lamentable that autonomous car technology is progressing, but not by the leaps and bounds I was expecting it to 4 years ago. Eletric + autonomous can be game changing.


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## Suburbanist

In most of Europe, retail distribution costs of electricity amount to some 30% of total costs for the typical residential use. Different countries wrap up that pricing in different ways, so it is not always explicit. 

When a few people are feeding in solar-generated power into their neighborhood system, no big deal, they can do stuff like give rebates fairly high on the cost a costumer would pay, or give kWh credits. When most houses in a city (since weather and day cycle affects everyone the same in a small-ish enough region) are feeding power to the max, then there is nowhere to send the electricity just within the same small area, you need to feed this into the long-distance transmission grid.


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## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> It is just a little lamentable that autonomous car technology is progressing, but not by the leaps and bounds I was expecting it to 4 years ago. Eletric + autonomous can be game changing.


It's interesting how this has plunged off the radar, the high expectations that level 5 autonomous vehicles were only a few years away has not materialized. I believe Elon Musk said that Tesla is currently at level 2. 

There is some argument to be made that level 3 and 4 should not enter commercial usage. These require drivers to be attentive while not having do much, maybe having to intervene once every 5, 10 or 60 minutes. People are not good at such tasks, being able to react at a moment's notice while having no activitiy for a prolonged period of time. Even drivers of vehicles with no autonomous functions easily become distracted if there is a perceived lull in the driving task and drivers of level 2 cars are known to watch videos, play games or even sleep behind the wheel. 

People are quickly to believe the autonomous function cannot fail. It went through a ramp with no problem 59 times, so they count on it that it will also succeed the 60th time. But there is no certainty and reaction time is far too long if the driver isn't actively engaged in the driving.

Still, some features already provide major benefits, such as automatic emergency braking, radar detection of cross traffic, etc. But it isn't flawless, as evidenced by the Teslas on Autopilot crashing into traffic cones, arrow trucks or even emergency vehicles.


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## volodaaaa

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> 70*600=42 kW is a lot of heating power ...


It's the input power, not the output. Maybe the trolleybus is shite (the heating is not electrical in case of this type)


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## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> I used to drive trolleybuses for a short period. A dashboard computer showed various stats, including power consumption and grid voltage.


Do you have such trolleybuses in Bratislava that have small batteries which allow them to travel on short routes without grid power?

Polish cities/towns that have trolleybuses (unfortunately, we have only three trolleybus networks still remaining and they aren't in major cities) do already have those. And, for example, in Gdynia there are routes with sections without the overhead wires, where the trolleybus goes solely on the batteries.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

volodaaaa said:


> It's the input power, not the output.


The input power cannot just disappear. If it is consumed, it will one way or the other end up as heat.


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## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Do you have such trolleybuses in Bratislava that have small batteries which allow them to travel on short routes without grid power?
> 
> Polish cities/towns that have trolleybuses (unfortunately, we have only three trolleybus networks still remaining and they aren't in major cities) do already have those. And, for example, in Gdynia there are routes with sections without the overhead wires, where the trolleybus goes solely on the batteries.


Not yet. But there is an ongoing procurement for those. Now we have only classic trolleybuses with small capacitors able to hold the energy for a short sections without voltage (section insulators, switches, etc.) (the interior illumination is flickerless). 

Besides we have a few trolleybuses with a diesel aggregate that may drive without overhead lines. But they have only one gear, are extremely loud and the speed is as high as a kick scooter. 😂


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## volodaaaa

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> The input power cannot just disappear. If it is consumed, it will one way or the other end up as heat.


As i mentioned, the electricity heats up the boiler and the warm water does the job. Personally, I think that is quite an ineffective way to heat up a trolleybus.


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## Rebasepoiss

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Norway currently produces about 150 TWh per year (154 TWh last year). Around 15 TWh is exported, of the same order as the full electricity consumption of e. g. Lithuania. Note that the production has increased significantly during the last three decades, about 35 TWh/a, corresponding roughly to 4 GW average power, even if almost no new major hydropower schemes have been developed. The increase is mainly due to increased efficiency of existing hydropower and new windpower. This trend is expected to continue, with another 26 TWh to be added the next 20 years, resulting in an anticipated export of 19 TWh. This prognosis is rather conservative in that offshore wind hardly is included. Some sources (in Norwegian, Google translateable I guess.. ):
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Langsiktig kraftmarkedsanalyse - NVE
> 
> 
> Ingen langsiktig kraftmarkedsanalyse fra NVE i 2022 NVE er i full gang med en omfattende utredning om hvordan ulike nettløsninger for vindkraft til havs i
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.nve.no
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kraftproduksjon - Energifakta Norge
> 
> 
> Norsk kraftforsyning har den høyeste fornybarandelen og de laveste utslippene i Europa. Den foreløpige rekorden for norsk kraftproduksjon ble satt i 2020, hvor det ble produsert 154,2 TWh.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> energifaktanorge.no
> 
> 
> 
> 
> View attachment 2452571
> 
> Electric power balance of Norway. The red curve is the consumption, light blue is hydropower (mean) , medium blue is wind (normal) and dark blue is heat power (actual). I am not sure exactly how "mean" and "normal" are estimated.


I think Norway is quite unique in that they have a large proportion of people heating their homes with electricity (and not with heat pumps, mind you). This means that the grid has been built with a much bigger peak load in mind, compared to countries where heating is done with coal, fuel oil or natural gas, for example. Therefore it's not as huge of a jump to charge electric cars as well. And if more and more people are moving to heat pumps, that will decrease the load created by heating homes at the same time.

In Estonia the shift to heating homes via electricity (mostly by heat pumps) has happened quite rapidly in the last 15 years. This means that you have double troubler in terms of capacity you have to build for the grid to cope.


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## geogregor

Interesting stats from one of the London Bridges:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1466826661568163846
I can't image how bad the the place must have been with 50k cars a day.


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## radamfi

The initial dramatic drop from 2002 to 2003 was the introduction of the congestion charge. Traffic gradually came back over the next few years with the booming economy, and people got more used to paying the charge. Traffic fell again as a result of the financial crisis, increases in the congestion charge and gradual removal of road capacity year on year to accommodate better pedestrian and cycling.


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## Rebasepoiss

Electricity prices are completely nuts lately. Tomorrow the market price will reach € 626 per MWh at 17:00 in Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This is around *20 times* higher than the average market price in 2020.


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## Rebasepoiss

Rebasepoiss said:


> Electricity prices are completely nuts lately. Tomorrow the market price will reach € 626 per MWh at 17:00 in Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This is around *20 times* higher than the average market price in 2020.


Yeah, scrap that, tomorrow will reach over 1000 €/MWh and be at more than 600 €/MWh for most of the day. This is beyond crazy now.









To put this into perspective. 1000€/MWh means that if you have a 2000W electric radiator working for 1 hour then it will cost you € 2.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

You'd better stay out out the house between 6 AM and 8 PM, it seems. Is it cold weather that has
made the Baltics and Finland the expensive corner of Europe right now?










I wonder how these prices affect the political scene in different countries. Certainly, this should be a political unsustainable political situation for the new government in Norway if it goes on for much longer. Maybe to the degree that there could be a change in the regulations of the international power lines.

The main slogan for its larger partner, the Labor party, was "Now it's ordinary people's turn", which is of course easy to turn against them now (Now it's ordinary people's turn to pay ....). In Norway, where the cost of electricity production is fixed (and very low), the extreme prices lead to record revenues for the almost 100 % publicly owned power producers. On top, the national government receives VAT for the full amount (including the electricity tax). The problem for the government is that it is the poorer and rural part of the population who suffers the most due to the high power prices, the core electorate of the two parties in government. At the same time, they have allocated a fair share of this money on silly / symbolic election promises for 2022.


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## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Is it cold weather that has made the Baltics and Finland the expensive corner of Europe right now?


It was very cold there this night. In fact, it was the first time -40 was reached this winter.


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## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I wonder how these prices affect the political scene in different countries.


In Poland the government is reducing taxation on energy and fuels.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Many strange things happened in the power market today. For the first time since the new, and in Norway infamous, cable accross the North Sea opened in September, there is import into the south of Norway from the UK for many hours today. Sweden has fired up an oil power plant, reportedly because the power system of Poland was at the brink of breakdown.


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## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Many strange things happened in the power market today. For the first time since the new, and in Norway infamous, cable accross the North Sea opened in September, there is import into the south of Norway from the UK for many hours today.


It could be due to fact that we have windy weather now all around the UK.


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## ChrisZwolle

A significant windstorm is forecasted for tonight and tomorrow around the British isles, with near hurricane-force winds and gusts up to 160 km/h along the Irish coast.


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## Surel

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> You'd better stay out out the house between 6 AM and 8 PM, it seems. Is it cold weather that has
> made the Baltics and Finland the expensive corner of Europe right now?
> View attachment 2461647
> 
> 
> 
> I wonder how these prices affect the political scene in different countries. Certainly, this should be a political unsustainable political situation for the new government in Norway if it goes on for much longer. Maybe to the degree that there could be a change in the regulations of the international power lines.
> 
> The main slogan for its larger partner, the Labor party, was "Now it's ordinary people's turn", which is of course easy to turn against them now (Now it's ordinary people's turn to pay ....). In Norway, where the cost of electricity production is fixed (and very low), the extreme prices lead to record revenues for the almost 100 % publicly owned power producers. On top, the national government receives VAT for the full amount (including the electricity tax). The problem for the government is that it is the poorer and rural part of the population who suffers the most due to the high power prices, the core electorate of the two parties in government. At the same time, they have allocated a fair share of this money on silly / symbolic election promises for 2022.





54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I can assure you that there currently are a lot of extremely skilled people in both industry, research and governmental institutions that are working on a lot more than keywords in these areas, both in terms of detailed technology developments and how to enable large scale deployment. And it is not just about the environment, a European edge in sustainable energy technologies will be very favorable in the global markets ahead, and Europe's dependence on Russian gas makes the continent's economy currently very vulnerable.


You assure me of something, yet you are surprised by those electricity (gas) prices, which are a direct result of the policies that are made on the EU and national levels.

I can assure you that there's not much of a rational, practical and economic approach towards those issues. The underlying joke of it is that the green parties in most countries proclaim themselves to be left, while the policies they support are mostly outright antisocial.


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## Surel




----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Surel said:


> You assure me of something, yet you are surprised by those electricity (gas) prices, which are a direct result of the policies that are made on the EU and national levels.
> 
> I can assure you that there's not much of a rational, practical and economic approach towards those issues. The underlying joke of it is that the green parties in most countries proclaim themselves to be left, while the policies they support are mostly outright antisocial.


I did not write that I was surprised, but I wondered why we see this regional impact. 

The main reason for high electricity prices in Europe are corresponding high prices in natural gas, controlled by global market conditions and the consistently more autocratic Tsar in the east. The ultimate goal of current policies of Europe is to phase out that dependence. High energy costs will accelerate the shift to clean energy, but no sane government wants high energy price we have now (with the possible exception of Russia and Norway). 

The steep increase in ETS emission allowance price has only contributed to 20% of the energy cost increase.


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## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Sweden has fired up an oil power plant, reportedly because the power system of Poland was at the brink of breakdown.


Yes, it was reported by the Polish media. At some moments we had 1000 MW of shortage. Tomorrow it's also predicted to be difficult.

The Polish main grid operator reports that the reasons are: low wind generation, failures and renovations of several production units.

Although this shortage actually only applies to the power reserves.



geogregor said:


> It could be due to fact that we have windy weather now all around the UK.


Shouldn't it actually make the production excessive and the electricity prices low?


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Surel said:


> You can't predict the future prices completely, but here you will fall into same problem for every energy source, however you can at least predict the future production of e.g. nuclear sources in given period, which you can't do for renewables. You can only aggregate and count with probabilities with renewables. It is thus easy to lock in in certain price with e.g. nuclear energy sources, which in turn brings stability to e.g. consumer or production chain markets as it locks in the price of the input. Stability is one of the most important conditions for healthy economy and good decision making.


From day to day, weather changes considerable at a given place. But across a continent like Europe and from one year to the next, not so much. The variation in the electric power generation of renewable sources (except e.g. geothermal) can be solved by having a suitable backbone power grid and energy storage. Note that power demand also varies considerably through the seasons and on a daily basis, so in a world or continent where electricity production is solely nuclear the power plants also need to have an installed capacity that is higher than the average demand, and there will still be price fluctuations.



Surel said:


> As for the second point. You need to take into account that you need storage/backup and grid updates available for wind and solar, you need to calculate those costs. If the renewables were that great with their price we would actually not see the price spike we see now as we produce the highest levels of electricity from the renewables. The reason why we see this spike are in fact exactly renewables. They are not cheap at all as they increase the total picture costs. Secondly, as you can note, your graph shows installed capacity, not the actually produced energy. Unpredictability is costly.


Actually, the costs were in terms of $/MWh, not installed power. But yeah, I have already stated that grid and storage costs also have to be taken into account. Nevertheless, nuclear will probably be more expensive.




__





Energy Storage Cost and Performance Database | PNNL







www.pnnl.gov






Surel said:


> The point was that the profits go to the market players instead to those that would be adapting cleaner technologies. Long term investments are driven by predictability of the market. It is not at all clear how many ETS will be issued in the future and to whom. It is also not that clear how many ETS a company will need in the future - e.g. because of having to instantly react to low electricity production from renewables with backup ETS depended sources.


The profits only goes to market players if that is desirable to reduce risk. Much the same way as in any other commodity market and, btw, the electricity market. But, mostly, and especially averaged over years, the bulk of cost savings of reducing emissions will come to those who adapt cleaner technologies.

We know roughly how many ETS will be available ahead, with much higher predictability than the global supply of fossil fuels: Revision for phase 4 (2021-2030)


Surel said:


> OK, we can call them virtual pumping stations. The principle is the same. As I understand there was not that much rainfalls in Scandinavia and the damns could not get to optimum levels. Another example of how the unpredictability that the renewables bring to the system is very costly.
> 
> Unpredictability is the worst condition for economy and markets. Risky and uninformed decisions must be made, this leads to emotional and hazardous decision making, it leads to misplaced investments or missed investment opportunities.


In fact, Norway and Sweden has been exporting electric power almost to full capacity of the export lines for most of this fall and early winter, so the power lines are currently the main limitation, not the regulation capacity of the hydropower. If pumps were installed to pump water back from lower altitude reservoirs into higher altitude reservoirs in times of power surplus, the regulating capacity would have been even higher. Following this season, it would however be political suicide to approve more power lines out of Norway, at least unless the basic mechanisms of how the cross border electricity trade operates are drastically changed such that the prices in the Norwegian market is not as directly coupled to the continental ones.


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## Coccodrillo

Kpc21 said:


> 75% limit on public transport (I guess it will be absolutely fictional on city public transport... like it was before with such restrictions)


Where governments imposed that they had to consider as "100%" what is written on the paperwork of the specific vehicle. When people on media complained that "we are too cramped, somebody must alight to go below xyz%", they often discovered that they already were below that limit, as the authorized maximum load of a public transport vehicle is high and the result very, very cramped.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I'm back in the bloody home office, starting from tomorrow :-(


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## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> The problem with nuclear seems to be the lack of technological development in western societies over the past 40 years, which means a lot of know-how has been lost or not developed sufficiently. Only three nuclear power plants are under construction right now in the EU and very few have been built after 1980. Since nuclear is a very expensive upfront investment, combined with lack of recent experience, cost escalation during construction is very likely. The extremely small number of actual reactors under construction since 2010 also skews such a comparison.


To back that up, EDF announced last month that the second reactor being built at Hinkley C has cost 25% less than the first one and been built much quicker. They say the lessons learned will be used to build the next power station at Sizewell, which will they claim will be built for about 25% less. EDF have a guaranteed price of ~€120 per MWh which doesn't look so expensive compared to where prices are now.

The scale of these things is incredible. This is Hinkley C which is about 20km from my house. You can see the lights from it from 40km+ away


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## The Wild Boy

Skopje traffic some days ago:









Apparently the reason what caused this gridlock was that the police (ministry for internal affairs) turned off some of the traffic lights for no apparent reason... then some 4 cars had an accident and boom.

Living in this city is a big challenge itself, every day something bad or weird happens. But we Macedonians are used to it 

I'm gonna say this, Skopje needs an actual metro. That would be the best solution for this city. Obviously it wouldn't be a massive network, even the first line (which realistically could be built in less than 600 million EUR) would make a massive difference and help ease the traffic.

BRT is an ok plan, but it has it's own issues. One of them being that you have to take away a lot of greenery (trees, bushes, green space...), then the other one that you will have to downgrade streets and boulevards. Say, if you have a 6 lane boulevard it would become a 4. If you have a 4 lane stroad, it would become a 2.
BRT promised by the previous mayor would have realistically costed some 100 - 150 million euros, not 70. He did not mention the reconstruction, or completely replacement of the bridge United Nations, which is a 4 lane bridge on the Boulevard Partizanska that is a 6 lane boulevard and also the longest boulevard in my country. It's a very popular place for night time street racers, because it's literally a straight all the way from the city center to Gjorche Petrov's municipality roundabout.
And let's not talk about the crazy drivers who would on purpose drive in the bus lane (that would be physically separated). They did exactly that in one Indian city, i think it was Delhi. The BRT system there made things only worse, it had no effect and the local government decided (if I'm not mistaken) to get rid of the BRT system.









You will hear from me soon, regarding the project I'm working on for a Skopje metro proposal. It will include a lot of other things important for the city as well.


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## PovilD

The Wild Boy said:


> Skopje traffic some days ago:
> View attachment 2472834
> 
> 
> Apparently the reason what caused this gridlock was that the police (ministry for internal affairs) turned off some of the traffic lights for no apparent reason... then some 4 cars had an accident and boom.
> 
> Living in this city is a big challenge itself, every day something bad or weird happens. But we Macedonians are used to it
> 
> I'm gonna say this, Skopje needs an actual metro. That would be the best solution for this city. Obviously it wouldn't be a massive network, even the first line (which realistically could be built in less than 600 million EUR) would make a massive difference and help ease the traffic.
> 
> BRT is an ok plan, but it has it's own issues. One of them being that you have to take away a lot of greenery (trees, bushes, green space...), then the other one that you will have to downgrade streets and boulevards. Say, if you have a 6 lane boulevard it would become a 4. If you have a 4 lane stroad, it would become a 2.
> BRT promised by the previous mayor would have realistically costed some 100 - 150 million euros, not 70. He did not mention the reconstruction, or completely replacement of the bridge United Nations, which is a 4 lane bridge on the Boulevard Partizanska that is a 6 lane boulevard and also the longest boulevard in my country. It's a very popular place for night time street racers, because it's literally a straight all the way from the city center to Gjorche Petrov's municipality roundabout.
> And let's not talk about the crazy drivers who would on purpose drive in the bus lane (that would be physically separated). They did exactly that in one Indian city, i think it was Delhi. The BRT system there made things only worse, it had no effect and the local government decided (if I'm not mistaken) to get rid of the BRT system.
> View attachment 2472861
> 
> 
> You will hear from me soon, regarding the project I'm working on for a Skopje metro proposal. It will include a lot of other things important for the city as well.


Lithuania is one of the few countries in Europe without Light Rail: no trams or metro, just trolleybuses in TOP 2 largest cities.
There were talks in Vilnius about tram system. I would really support smth like tram or metro tram system here. There is just a need for political will 

Currently, politicans talk about BRT system which means adding bus lanes. I could see it as a temporary evolution-like solution for next 10-15 years since I extremely doubt there will be tram system in Lithuania before 2030s or even 2040s.

---
On the other hand, this is automobility thread  Better fitting discussions would be about favorite car brands, not about smth as worse as not even riding on the road, like tram or metro  jk ofc, we can discuss about public transport here too


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## keber

Stuu said:


> To back that up, EDF announced last month that the second reactor being built at Hinkley C has cost 25% less than the first one and been built much quicker. They say the lessons learned will be used to build the next power station at Sizewell, which will they claim will be built for about 25% less. EDF have a guaranteed price of ~€120 per MWh which doesn't look so expensive compared to where prices are now.
> 
> The scale of these things is incredible. This is Hinkley C which is about 20km from my house. You can see the lights from it from 40km+ away
> 
> View attachment 2472652


Still, it is a project in the range of 25 billion euro, which is an amazing number. Although I see that Russian projects in EU are cheaper, but not that much when you compare EUR/MW ratio.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I'm back in the bloody home office, starting from tomorrow :-(


I don't mind home office per se, it allows for greater flexibility and less time in train or car. However home office exclusively is monotonous. I've been to the office only 6 or 7 times since the summer, before it was almost entirely shut down again last month. 

Last Friday I was in the office for a small meeting and decided to work there for a little while but there wasn't anyone else. I took the train back home at 1 p.m. What's the point of going to the office if nobody is there?


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I must say I enjoyed being back in the office, for a significant longer period than last fall, seeing more people (even had a business travel) and the more complex communication and dynamics possible when meeting people face to face. I in fact also enjoyed my daily commute and clearer division between work and family time. However, by and large, my home office is not at all bad and I acknowledge that I am privileged and not in a moral position to rant. I am also in favor of restrictions right now to avoid things getting out of control. But, let's hope this wave comes faster under control than the previous ones, and that we afterwards will be permanently back to a normal life.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> What's the point of going to the office if nobody is there?


I depends heavily on who is at home. The office may be the only quiet place to concentrate.


----------



## Surel

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> From day to day, weather changes considerable at a given place. But across a continent like Europe and from one year to the next, not so much. The variation in the electric power generation of renewable sources (except e.g. geothermal) can be solved by having a suitable backbone power grid and energy storage. Note that power demand also varies considerably through the seasons and on a daily basis, so in a world or continent where electricity production is solely nuclear the power plants also need to have an installed capacity that is higher than the average demand, and there will still be price fluctuations.


The problem is matching the demand with the production, if you have predictable production you can easily match the demand (industrial demand, heating, charging electric vehicles), if you don't you need that power storage. The problem is that it is another slogan, without much concrete plans introduced in agenda's like GreenDeal. And if we talk about energy storage. It is a problem that is not yet solved in fact. Those costs are not added when comparing to nuclear.

Of course we would not need nuclear only. It's all about the right mix. E.g. nuclear can be nicely complement with solar production (winter/summer periods). As for wind, it is much more volatile source of energy.



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> In fact, Norway and Sweden has been exporting electric power almost to full capacity of the export lines for most of this fall and early winter, so the power lines are currently the main limitation, not the regulation capacity of the hydropower. If pumps were installed to pump water back from lower altitude reservoirs into higher altitude reservoirs in times of power surplus, the regulating capacity would have been even higher. Following this season, it would however be political suicide to approve more power lines out of Norway, at least unless the basic mechanisms of how the cross border electricity trade operates are drastically changed such that the prices in the Norwegian market is not as directly coupled to the continental ones.


As I understand, e.g. Sweden was forced to start an oil power plant. The lack of water has effect on the expectations of the future possible production which in turn influences the market price. If your smartphone battery runs empty you need to search for a power outlet.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Surel said:


> if we talk about energy storage. It is a problem that is not yet solved in fact. Those costs are not added when comparing to nuclear.


Well if you compare the statistics I have shown to you, you will see that the sum of costs for storage and renewables already is lower than nuclear, and also for nuclear you need some sort of balancing power, or large, and expensive, overcapacity. 


Surel said:


> As I understand, e.g. Sweden was forced to start an oil power plant. The lack of water has effect on the expectations of the future possible production which in turn influences the market price. If your smartphone battery runs empty you need to search for a power outlet


The oil power plants were started to cover power needs of fully fossil Poland, which lacked 1.7 GW. This also caused excessively high prices in the Baltics, as far as I understand. Otherwise you are correct, the market must in the end be used to match supply and demand. That is the case also with fossil based power systems, as we have clearly seen this fall, and with a nuclear based system during cold periods.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is quite some flooding ongoing in Northern Spain, in particular Basque Country and Navarra. Pamplona seems to have some significant urban flooding. There are also numerous landslides which have blocked roads, motorways and even derailed a train.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> What's the point of going to the office if nobody is there?


Being alone at the office is when I'm most productive at getting things done that require my full attention and concentration for an extended period of time.

But other than that I agree. The most beneficial part of working at the office is the quick and direct communication between coworkers than happens more naturally at the office and is usually more efficient than having endless Zoom calls.

What I absolutely hate is the new trend of having no personal desk at the office anymore and actually having fewer workspaces than there are people. Sure, it may be a cost saving measure for the company or institution but these costs are in the end transferred to the worker with usually no rise in payment to facilitate that. If you have to work from home but this requires you to rent an apartment that's bigger than you would otherwise need then that is a substantial added monthly cost. So unless you get a pay rise equal to that amount you are basically taking a pay cut to work from home.


----------



## Surel

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Well if you compare the statistics I have shown to you, you will see that the sum of costs for storage and renewables already is lower than nuclear, and also for nuclear you need some sort of balancing power, or large, and expensive, overcapacity.


If I look at your link here Energy Storage Cost and Performance Database | PNNL and the data you posted about various power sources, I don't see it being cheaper than nuclear in fact. Also those are very short term solutions, not really applicable to the problems with wind. You need solutions able to store energy for days. In fact, you could rather see those solutions as short term balancing systems that give the grid the time to fire up traditional sources that are slower. Or day/night balancing in the case of solar sources. The only really suitable storage technology is the potential energy in hydro, however the places for deployment are not available, all other technologies are not competitive, not proven, not available for deployment on a big scale that is needed.

One of the most interesting technologies that I like (however yet still very inefficient) is converting atmospheric CO2 into diesel fuels. If we could get the efficiency right there, it would solve many problems.


----------



## Stuu

Rebasepoiss said:


> What I absolutely hate is the new trend of having no personal desk at the office anymore and actually having fewer workspaces than there are people.


Yes, me too. Having to walk round the building looking for a desk with all your stuff is not good for mood or productivity. Pre pandemic my office would be like that, with people having to work in meeting rooms or in the canteen


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A very long-tracked and violent tornado across four states has resulted in catastrophic damage in Mayfield, Kentucky. The tornado had a potential track of nearly 250 kilometers and was obviously a high-end tornado on the Enhanced Fujita scale. It traveled from Arkansas through Missouri, Tennessee and into Kentucky. 

Exact details about the tornado are yet to be determined, but it was likely one of the most significant tornadoes of the past 10 years. There is no clear picture about the number of fatalities, but it may be in excess of 50, perhaps even greater.









Tornado outbreak of December 10–11, 2021 - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Dikan011

Jesus....what, were they sleeping?! Didn't make it to shelter?


----------



## geogregor

Damn, it looks bad:

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1469662822795816968

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1469514539653902342


----------



## Stuu

Dikan011 said:


> Jesus....what, were they sleeping?! Didn't make it to shelter?


There is very little warning of tornadoes forming. Whilst the meteorologists/public services know that the conditions where they _might _form exist, they can't predict exactly where and if they will form. I read an article about the events today, the average warning time once a tornado is detected is 13 minutes. Which is not very long at all


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> I am ever more impressed at the potential to generate wind power if floating installations (like oil rigs) become cheaper in the near future.


The business case is more complex. Wind power needs substantial volumes of load-following production such as hydropower or gas turbines to balance the demand and supply. Wind power is similar to nuclear power in the context of load balancing: quick changes in the production are technically or economically infeasible.

The Nordic countries share the same standards regarding to the balancing: 50% of the load-following capacity must react within 5 seconds to the changes in demand, and the remaining 50% within 30 seconds. The volume of the load-following capacity shall exceed the capacity of the biggest single production plant in the country.

If there if not enough hydropower available to back up the wind power, fossile sources are to be used. In addition, the submarine transmission cables needed are heavyweight, needing tens of tons of copper per kilometer. Copper production is pretty energy-intensive.


----------



## LtBk

I don't know where to post this, but I noticed some time ago the US state of Pennsylvania is full of gaps between motorway stretches, such as US 30 between Lancaster and Coatesville, US 422 between Reading and Allentown, and PA 309 in norwestern suburbs of Philadelphia.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> Wishing this is over soon, and expecting milder covid at least.


I am just having Covid (most likely Delta, as Omicron hasn't developed in Poland yet), or rather just going out of it, and even though I don't have so called severe symptoms (that would make me have to go to hospital, I don't suffocate) – I don't recommend it to anyone. I had really terrible and annoying cough (still have some, but not that bad). Never had anything like that. And it lasts 2 weeks.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> I am just having Covid (most likely Delta, as Omicron hasn't developed in Poland yet), or rather just going out of it, and even though I don't have so called severe symptoms (that would make me have to go to hospital, I don't suffocate) – I don't recommend it to anyone. I had really terrible and annoying cough (still have some, but not that bad). Never had anything like that. And it lasts 2 weeks.


I don't remember if you said if you are vaccinated?

I heard many if not most double vaccinated cases (at least mRna vaccines) had pretty mild common cold-like disease, though AZ vaccinated may get more severe disease, although maybe not as bad as it would lay them in hospital.

I wonder this theory, that your first time may be hardest if covid don't dissapear, next times should be milder. It's just a guess, ofc  Maybe we still move to erradication if things don't improve as good as we want.


----------



## SeñorGol

Spain: The Cantabrian mountains seen from the region of Madrid (Navacerrada pass). The northern plateau in one picture




The distance to the Espigüete peak is actually closer to 250 km:

Source:

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1471201501070700546


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I was at Navacerrada Pass this summer. It was cloudy, I didn't realize you could really see that far. I assume this is only really visible with a very good zoom lens and not really with the naked eye?

This is the naked eye view from Navacerrada:


CL-601 Puerto de Navacerrada 11 by European Roads, on Flickr


A few years ago I was on the top of the Grand Ballon d'Alsace, a peak in the Vosges Mountains in Eastern France. You could very faintly see the snowy Alps (160 kilometers away). This is the maximum zoom my camera could do at that time. You can very faintly see the Bernese Oberland mountains (Jungfrau, Mönch, Eiger, Finsteraarhorn).


Berner Oberland by European Roads, on Flickr

I've also seen photos of Mont Blanc from the southern Black Forest. That's about 220 kilometers.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> I don't remember if you said if you are vaccinated?


I'm not. But in practice the vaccination almost doesn't change the chance of getting such a "mild" infection. Maybe this third dose does. But the stats show that there is no much difference in detected Covid infections between vaccinated and non-vaccinated people.

The difference is in hospitalization and death rates.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> I'm not. But in practice the vaccination almost doesn't change the chance of getting such a "mild" infection. Maybe this third dose does. But the stats show that there is no much difference in detected Covid infections between vaccinated and non-vaccinated people.
> 
> The difference is in hospitalization and death rates.


I was reading stories of spread events when vaccinated and non vaccinated were compared. Unvaccinated got wild variety of symptom severity, from hospital to weeks in beds. Vaccinated just get infected, cold like symptoms that pass quicker, which is in tact with research that vaccinated spread covid in shorter time span.

If I understand you correctly, your situation (like your saying "nobody should get into your situation") would result in hospitalization in older age. Severity could be reduced for non-hospital illness for vaccinated too.

My prediction, omicron should be (way) milder for you, maybe even asymptomatic, since you had recently infection. I hope your (technically - our all) future experience with covid will be mild (if it don't get erradicated), but that will be related how covid will mutate.

My situation, is either I already boosted myself with some asymptomatic infection or expecting good luck with T-cell AZ immunity in terms of omicron  I want my vaccination to be related with Green Pass, since Baltics are generally strict with green pass. I also want to plan travel when we will be past omicron. My GP is expiring in January. I don't know if lockdown will take place, so I'm not hurry right now.

P.S. I'm not saying all get mild disease when vaccinated, but chances for mild disease increase.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> I'm not. But in practice the vaccination *almost doesn't change the chance of getting such a "mild" infection*. Maybe this third dose does. But the stats show that there is no much difference in detected Covid infections between vaccinated and non-vaccinated people.
> 
> The difference is in hospitalization and death rates.


Why are you not vaccinated? Are there medical reasons?

Because vaccination would almost certainly make your symptoms milder.


----------



## tfd543

+1 for that ^^

Just get the jab. How hard Can it be?


----------



## Suburbanist

Non-hospitalized covid cases can also vary a lot. It could mean 4 or 5 days of respiratory discomfort, or 3 weeks of barely moving, strong headaches, being basically bed-ridden. 

Hospitals will not take such patients unless there are other risk factors, in general, because it is much more risky for them go spread and get further infected with other stuff at hospital wards. But it can be still be not a mild thing.


----------



## SeñorGol

ChrisZwolle said:


> I was at Navacerrada Pass this summer. It was cloudy, I didn't realize you could really see that far. I assume this is only really visible with a very good zoom lens and not really with the naked eye?


The Pyrenees are visible with the naked eye from the hills surrounding Logroño (e.g. approaching the town along the A-12 coming from the west). When I say "the Pyrenees" I mean a thin white line crossing the horizon. If you want to see more details you'll need a very good zoom lens indeed.

What you need is a combination of 1) clear atmosphere, 2) enough contrast between the mountains and the sky, and 3) the Sun being opposite of the viewer.

A clear atmosphere is much easier to get in winter time with low temperatures (because there's almost no evaporation from the ground) and high pressure (which usually means no clouds, or very little movement in the atmosphere). The contrast between the mountains and the sky is again much easier to get in winter time because the mountains are covered with snow, and the sun is much lower and therefore hits the southern face of the mountains more directly. This is also why it's much easier to see mountains far away when they're facing south (at least in the Northern Hemisphere).

This is an example of a webcam located near my hometown, about 1100 m high. The Pyrenees are the white line over the fog which covers the Ebro valley. From there you can see the Monte Perdido massif, located ~200 km away.






__





Webcams







actualidad.larioja.org







I recommend this tool, it's very useful if you want to identify the mountains: Generate a panorama


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I became elegible for my booster vaccine yesterday, booked it for today. Thankfully I was in and out in two minutes despite some people having to queue for hours at other locations.


----------



## cinxxx

geogregor said:


> Why are you not vaccinated? Are there medical reasons?
> 
> Because vaccination would almost certainly make your symptoms milder.





tfd543 said:


> +1 for that ^^
> 
> Just get the jab. How hard Can it be?


Why do you people feel the need to ask him why he didn't vaccinate?
To point fingers. To make him feel like he is a bad person.
To lecture him on what to do.

He shared his story, answered the question. Just leave him be.
Besides having empathy to know to shut up and listen to someone is sharing something, also know that lecturing him, making him feel bad, etc, is not what he is needing right now.

It's not rocket science, you don't have to be psychotherapist to learn this.
Pleas people, show more empathy, don't assume someone needs an/your advice all them time.
And worst you can do is make it about yourself, show how you did it better etc.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

You are right, but at least in Norway, the sentiment against the <10 % of non-vaccinated adults seems to have changed radically in social media and otherwise lately, from curiosity and ridicule to bashing. The reason: Almost half the covid-pations being hospitalized are now unvaccinated (and typically mid-aged), a percentage that will increase further when the elderly, and later the rest of the vaccinated population receive the booster. Hence, the unvaccinated are partly to blame for the restrictions that have been re-introduced now, with a high cost for the rest of the society. Bashing is not likely to change the anti-vaxxers convictions, though.


----------



## cinxxx

I'm 3 times vaccinated, hate the restrictions like hell. But I refuse to bash unvaccinated, it's just wrong. It doesn't help. 

And even with 100% vaccinated, it still won't be finished. The pandemic takes its course, that we think we could stop it in a short time, is arrogant af, so we have to find others to blame.


----------



## PovilD

cinxxx said:


> I'm 3 times vaccinated, hate the restrictions like hell. But I refuse to bash unvaccinated, it's just wrong. It doesn't help.
> 
> And even with 100% vaccinated, it still won't be finished. The pandemic takes its course, that we think we could stop it in a short time, is arrogant af, so we have to find others to blame.


I don't bash unvaccinated young people at all, since Kpc's case I think is on more severe spectre for younger age group. No hospital, but very uncomfortable disease. Older may get got hospital bed. I could bash only older people, in their 40s and older when they have something like 1/10 chance getting hospital bed just because they got positive test (if unvaccinated). This probably increases by age. For 80 year old, you have 1/5 chance not just for hospital, but death too. There are many 80 year olds. They still could live 10 years or more. Kinda unacceptable for me.

Sure, there could be more hospital beds, but prevention should be in tact too. No need for too many suffering people. Vaccines help.

I hate restrictions too. Any alternatives to that are more than welcomed.
Better mandatory vaccination than mandatory restrictions. It would reduce suffering in great proportion.

Btw, pandemic may run its course, but all cases being milder than Kpc's case would be welcomed if we don't erradicating it


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Governments, the media and society are looking for someone to blame. This can be the unvaccinated, mutations, party-goers, children, travelers, etc. 

Most of the unvaccinated are young and will not end up in hospital. The real problem is a small group of older people who do not want to get vaccinated. It's a waste of energy to get the last 20-30% of twenty or thirty year olds vaccinated. 

Data in the Netherlands shows that 99% of people will not require a hospitalization after an infection. Many people wildly overestimate their risk of a severe illness. It's a really small segment of the population that is at risk and puts stress on the healthcare capacity. This is the group where boosters will make a difference, you can see this in the UK figures, where hospitalizations have remained manageable.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Governments, the media and society are looking for someone to blame. This can be the unvaccinated, mutations, party-goers, children, travelers, etc.
> 
> Most of the unvaccinated are young and will not end up in hospital. The real problem is a small group of older people who do not want to get vaccinated. It's a waste of energy to get the last 20-30% of twenty or thirty year olds vaccinated.
> 
> Data in the Netherlands shows that 99% of people will not require a hospitalization after an infection. Many people wildly overestimate their risk of a severe illness. It's a really small segment of the population that is at risk and puts stress on the healthcare capacity. This is the group where boosters will make a difference, you can see this in the UK figures, where hospitalizations have remained manageable.


East Europe has more health problems among older people increasing severe disease chance. Quite many of them refuse to get vaccinated. (ok, not a majority here, but still)
That's why I'm slightly scared.

Here in Lithuania, we have only 240 icu beds (240 beds for around 3 milion people) to spare for covid. If all full, then lockdown. Icu require high skills and attention. I guess it shouldn't be much better in other countries if not worse (ratio to total population). What helps is near 100% coverage in many Western European countries among elderly, but what not help if I understand correctly Western European hospitals are even less welcome covid patients than e.g. Lithuanian hospitals (well, nobody are wanting covid patients, but thresholds are seem to look different). I mean, less full beds per capita could require stringent measures.


----------



## keber

Planning trips in S Europe has again become complicated. Italy demands testing for vaccinated and quarantine for non vaccinated. Greece wants even PCR test for vaccinated. France will demand third dose for valid Green pass from January 15th. 
I'm pro vaccination, but this now is getting just too much. I can't even make a proper plan for skiing vacation for my group of friends, all those restrictions change from day to day.


----------



## radamfi

As I posted a while back, I've been driving automatics or semi-automatics for the last 20 years. This has exclusively been in Smart cars, no problems with the gearbox in all that time, even though it is just about the smallest car you can get.


----------



## kosimodo

Been driving automatics since 1999. Started with dsg in vw and skoda. Wasnt a huge succes. 2 (!) broke down. Changed to Opel, then Citroen. No problems. Last 10 yrs in a semi automatic which has been improved a lot with every new car. C5 aircross Diesel i drive nowadays.


----------



## tfd543

Semi automatic? Whats that? And how to deal with drivers license code 78 for those gearboxes? 
FYI, code 78 says that the driver is limited to drive only auto gearbox cars since the practical exam was succeeded with this type of transmission.


----------



## radamfi

tfd543 said:


> Semi automatic? Whats that?


Where you have to change gear manually but there is no clutch pedal.


----------



## MattiG

tfd543 said:


> Wet or dry clutch ? With 1.2 and 1.5, i Can only think Its with dry clutch.


I do not know. Should I?


----------



## geogregor

So, I made it to Poland and now back to the UK. The whole experience was easier than I expected. No queues or delays. The only difference from "normal" times are the tests and masks.

Luckily both Poland and the UK accept antigen tests before flying and entering country. As they can be self-administered there is only small risk of them turning positive, if you don't want them to... 

Now I should be isolating while waiting for the the negative PCR test. Of course I don't, I'm at work. As justification I can say that I work completely on my own. Anyway, I'm much more likely to get infected here in the UK that bring infection from Poland, the whole PCR requirement is just show for the media. 

Interestingly, at the beginning of the week I experienced around -14C in Poland and today we'll have 16C in London. Swing of 30 degrees in just a few days and a short flight. What's unusual it wasn't flight anywhere south, in fact London if further north than my home town 

Oh, and I drove another automatic car while in Poland, Fiat 500. I was just thinking, if I was ever buying car in London I would be aiming for something similar. Small/tiny and automatic.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Omicron... except in Romania.


----------



## x-type

tfd543 said:


> Wet or dry clutch ? With 1.2 and 1.5, i Can only think Its with dry clutch.


VAG DSG 6 gear is wet, 7 gear is dry.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Omicron... except in Romania.


Romania will follow soon, but it will depend on testing capacity.

Omicron comes later in East Europe


----------



## tfd543

radamfi said:


> Where you have to change gear manually but there is no clutch pedal.


I looked it up ever since and Its not that you are obliged to shift manually, only that you have an option to do so. Kinda cool.


----------



## tfd543

MattiG said:


> I do not know. Should I?


Just a detail for mech-geeks..


----------



## tfd543

x-type said:


> VAG DSG 6 gear is wet, 7 gear is dry.


Thnx


----------



## Shenkey

PovilD said:


> Romania will follow soon, but it will depend on testing capacity.
> 
> Omicron comes later in East Europe


Also the antibodies from Delta are higher as Delta came later.


----------



## kosimodo

tfd543 said:


> Semi automatic? Whats that? And how to deal with drivers license code 78 for those gearboxes?
> FYI, code 78 says that the driver is limited to drive only auto gearbox cars since the practical exam was succeeded with this type of transmission.


Not sure 

My Citroen chances gear automaticly 1-8. I can do that myself too. 

My DSG was just an automatic gear.


----------



## radamfi

tfd543 said:


> I looked it up ever since and Its not that you are obliged to shift manually, only that you have an option to do so. Kinda cool.


It depends on the car. For example the cheapest Smart cars from 15 years ago required you to change the gear yourself, but you could pay extra to get the option for the car to change by itself.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Now I should be isolating while waiting for the the negative PCR test. Of course I don't, I'm at work. As justification I can say that I work completely on my own. Anyway, I'm much more likely to get infected here in the UK that bring infection from Poland, the whole PCR requirement is just show for the media.


When I had quarantine, nobody checked it, but remember that for not following the quarantine, you can be fined even up to 30k PLN. In practice, from what I'm reading, they are giving 5k PLN fines, so still quite high. Of course if they catch you, which doesn't seem that likely...

At the beginning of the pandemic, from what I read, following the quarantine was checked often, practically every day, by the police (they were calling you on the phone and you normally had to show up in the window), but now it seems it's no more like that.

In theory, if you have an Android smartphone, by law you are also obliged to install the quarantine app (which forces you to take photos of yourself at random moments, like, once a day or so, confirming that you are staying home), but people I know who were in quarantine didn't do it and also nothing happened. I wouldn't recommend installing it as its quality is questionable, it was made in two days, ordered by the government, by an external company, so it may have some big privacy issues.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Meanwhile in the Netherlands: the annual demolition day is underway. 


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1476914921698955267


----------



## geogregor

The UK has recorded the warmest ever New Year Eve, *15.8C*:









Warmest New Year's Eve recorded in Somerset ushers in 2022


Temperatures reached 15.8C in Somerset earlier and are expected to continue to rise across England.



www.bbc.co.uk






__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1476914559193686047


----------



## Coccodrillo

radamfi said:


> Where you have to change gear manually but there is no clutch pedal.


I have never seen such a car, not even in photo. How much are they common?


----------



## radamfi

Coccodrillo said:


> I have never seen such a car, not even in photo. How much are they common?


I don't know if you can buy a new car like that now but I haven't looked. I gave the example of the Smart car from 15 years ago. My friend's Yaris from about 1999 is semi-automatic


----------



## Slagathor

Surel said:


> That it's the Russians that allow Putin to use the police force in a way he uses it. And its us who allow the Dutch politicians to forbid demonstrations and then send the police to break them in a way we see. If we allow it, it happens. So simple is that.
> 
> Btw. I think that most of all the the whole act on Sunday was highly unprofessional.
> 
> But the police unprofessionalism doesn't excuse Halkema for her decision making though.


I don't think that's how the rule of law is supposed to work. 

Amsterdam is spectacularly bad at handling protests, both the mayor and the police force there keep making embarrassing and worrying mistakes. 

The Hague is usually better at it, though they've had a handful of incidents with excesses of violence towards anti-covid measures protesters as well.


----------



## Stuu

x-type said:


> How about table football, can it be found in pubs or not?


Virtually never in the UK, although there are a few sports bars where you might find one.


----------



## tfd543

x-type said:


> Thanks for notice  We call 8-pool "biljar" so I thought that billiards meant the same, but obviously it is wider term  As I said - only 8 pool here, and maaaybe in some northern villages one might find carambole table, but it is very obsolete.
> 
> How about table football, can it be found in pubs or not?


Table football. Some places in copenhagen. The place where i am a habitue has one. 

Not the most convenient place to have those games. Alcohol and precision is not a good combo, but i understand the fun..


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> A very fast road user in Tianjin, China:


Very poor lane discipline


----------



## Kpc21

And the ostrich isn't using blinkers while changing lanes... It's like a BMW.



Rebasepoiss said:


> Exactly this. When there were the 2007 bronze soldier riots in Tallinn, Russian media was quick to compile a video of a few police officers hitting people with batons but were happy to leave out countless scenes of mindless destruction and looting of "protesters".


And this is probably the reason why Polish government didn't want to allow journalists near the Belarussian border (and even now while they are allowed there, it's to a very limited extent and the journalists practically can only see what the government wants to show them).

Although it's a double-sided weapon. With no access or such limitations on the Polish side, journalists go to the border from the Belarussian side and see what Putin and Lukashenka want them to see...



Surel said:


> That it's the Russians that allow Putin to use the police force in a way he uses it. And its us who allow the Dutch politicians to forbid demonstrations and then send the police to break them in a way we see. If we allow it, it happens. So simple is that.


Not really. It works like that as long as your country is not a dictatorship (and Putin's Russia is one). In dictatorships the society generally doesn't have enough power to disagree with the government. Because... what can you do if you don't agree with the current government's politics? You can protest, you can write petitions, but the most powerful tool are the elections – you can vote for an opposition party. But in Russia the government doesn't allow most opposition parties (except for some extremist ones) to register for elections. So you end up with choice between Putin and something which can be even worse and nobody wants it.

Try to help overthrowing the current government as a public person – and you'll end up like Navalny.

In the Netherlands it's different – if you don't agree how the current government uses the police, you vote for another party and that's all. The government doesn't limit the parties (who satisfy some sensible requirements, like if they manage to collect signatures of a given number of supporters) from taking part in the elections. This is how a democracy works, unlike a dictatorship.

Sometimes government e.g. manipulate with the shapes of constituencies to get more votes – and this is undemocratic, it shifts the government on the democracy-dictatorship scale towards dictatorship – but it's far away from things which happen in true dictatorships, where elections even happen to be completely fake.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> And the ostrich isn't using blinkers while changing lanes... It's like a BMW.


I wonder if it could do that with its wings 

Something we know from cycling:


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> Something we know from cycling:


In early cars you also had to do it like that; later there were indicators which weren't blinkers, but rather something mimicking those hand gestures...

Motorcycles hadn't had turn signals for quite long.

Riders (or whatever you call them in English, I have no idea) of horse-drawn carriages are also using those gestures, aren't they? In Poland meeting such a carriage on a road is now such a rarity that I have no idea. Although from childhood (15–20 years ago) I remember there were still one person who provided transportation services with such carriage (with quite many modern competitors with cars), and several times he carried coal to our home.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm following the fire department of Südtirol (South Tyrol) in Italy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LFVSuedtirol

I've noticed that the fire department is doing vehicle recovery there. Is this common in your area?

In the Netherlands the fire department will put out vehicle fires, or free persons from a crashed vehicle. But they don't do vehicle recovery. That's where the tow company comes in. They will send a tow truck, flatdeck, big wrecker or a large crane if needed. I wonder if this is the same or different in other countries.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm following the fire department of Südtirol (South Tyrol) in Italy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LFVSuedtirol
> 
> I've noticed that the fire department is doing vehicle recovery there. Is this common in your area?
> 
> In the Netherlands the fire department will put out vehicle fires, or free persons from a crashed vehicle. But they don't do vehicle recovery. *That's where the tow company comes in. They will send a tow truck, flatdeck, big wrecker or a large crane if needed. I wonder if this is the same or different in other countries.*


It's the same in Estonia as in the Netherlands. If your car breaks down or you crash it, towing it away is your responsibility and happens at your own cost. There are coutless tow companies from the very big like Falck to simple one-man operations.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland practically all tow companies are small private businesses. And... they are usually the first one to know someone has happened somewhere on the road, and arrive there even before the police or the emergency.

Firefighters over here deal with car accidents that don't include fire, but rather by extracting people from car when the doors can't open, neutralizing spilled out fuel etc.


----------



## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> It's the same in Estonia as in the Netherlands. If your car breaks down or you crash it, towing it away is your responsibility and happens at your own cost. There are coutless tow companies from the very big like Falck to simple one-man operations.


In Finland, the fire department usually cleans the road after a crash, at taxpayers' cost. After that, the owner has 48 hours to move the wreck away, at own cost. If the wreck is in a dangerous position, the police can arrange it to be moved immediately, again at the owner's cost. 

The all risk insurance pays 100% of the towing cost. The tow truck drivers know very well where to transport the vehicle or its remains. The system is quite efficient.

A few years ago, I lost a tire and the loss was total. I called the service point. A truck came, picked both me and the car, and drove to the tire shop nearby. In 90 minutes, I had a temporary tire installed (new ones of right size were not available that day).


----------



## Surel

Kpc21 said:


> Not really. It works like that as long as your country is not a dictatorship (and Putin's Russia is one). In dictatorships the society generally doesn't have enough power to disagree with the government. Because... what can you do if you don't agree with the current government's politics? You can protest, you can write petitions, but the most powerful tool are the elections – you can vote for an opposition party. But in Russia the government doesn't allow most opposition parties (except for some extremist ones) to register for elections. So you end up with choice between Putin and something which can be even worse and nobody wants it.
> 
> Try to help overthrowing the current government as a public person – and you'll end up like Navalny.
> 
> In the Netherlands it's different – if you don't agree how the current government uses the police, you vote for another party and that's all. The government doesn't limit the parties (who satisfy some sensible requirements, like if they manage to collect signatures of a given number of supporters) from taking part in the elections. This is how a democracy works, unlike a dictatorship.
> 
> Sometimes government e.g. manipulate with the shapes of constituencies to get more votes – and this is undemocratic, it shifts the government on the democracy-dictatorship scale towards dictatorship – but it's far away from things which happen in true dictatorships, where elections even happen to be completely fake.


No really. Every country, unless occupied by foreign forces, has just the government it deservers.

Or do you really think that democracy was there allways?


----------



## Kpc21

Yes and no. Dictatorships are not something appearing without a reason – but overthrowing them is difficult even if the society really wants it. Look at Venezuela.

BTW, at the moment people are trying to overthrow a dictator in Kazakhstan – we will see how it will end up. I wish them well.


----------



## andken

Dictatorships have their own internal politics. A dictator can't just dictate, he needs to satisfy groups of interest to remain in power. He might not be popular, but he needs to find support somewhere


----------



## Dikan011

And views can vary, on definition of dictator.

To me, a dictator was the one in Kabul, installed by a foreign military power, who very hastily fled to Uzbekistan from a popular uprising with millions in his coffers, while dozens of occupation forces died in a hastily organized withdrawal last August.


----------



## bogdymol

andken said:


> Dictatorships have their own internal politics. A dictator can't just dictate, he needs to satisfy groups of interest to remain in power. He might not be popular, but he needs to find support somewhere


Exactly!

If you have a few minutes to spare, check out this video from CGP Gray, where the unwritten rules for dictators are explained.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm wondering if we're now seeing the end of the coronavirus crisis. 

The UK has recorded 3.5 million positive tests over the past 4 weeks. Yet this has had zero effect on ICU occupancy.


----------



## radamfi

Hospitalisations are up quite a bit but the lack of increase in intensive care usage is consistent with Omicron being milder. There is medication available now so perhaps people are getting less ill also because of that.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> Hospitalisations are up quite a bit but the lack of increase in intensive care usage is consistent with Omicron being milder.


Another theory gaining ground is that the higher hospitalizations with covid is that due to the extremely large-scale spread, most people hospitalized are not due to covid, but coincidentally with covid. This theory is also mentioned in Denmark and previously South Africa. 

The positivity rate of testing is now 40% in the Netherlands, it has not been that high since the initial March 2020 outbreak. This indicates that the circulation is much wider than detected, but symptoms are so mild or absent that people don't go in for a test. 

Omicron is spreading at record-pace, and weather influences don't seem to play a role anymore, in Australia the 7-day average has increased 35 x in only a few weeks. It's summer there.


----------



## Shenkey

bogdymol said:


> Exactly!
> 
> If you have a few minutes to spare, check out this video from CGP Gray, where the unwritten rules for dictators are explained.


There is a book called "The Dictator's Handbook" that nicely explains the gist


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> Another theory gaining ground is that the higher hospitalizations with covid is that due to the extremely large-scale spread, most people hospitalized are not due to covid, but coincidentally with covid. This theory is also mentioned in Denmark and previously South Africa.


That theory is popular with the anti-measures people in the UK, but it's not true, at least not here


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That data is relatively outdated (considering the rapid developments recently), but you can see that hospitalizations did increase with people treated not primarily for covid. Still, the overall increase is pretty minimal considering the absolutely astounding number of positive tests over the past month. Almost a third of all positive tests in the UK occurred last 5-6 weeks.


----------



## radamfi

The latest survey showed that about 1 in 20 people in England (1 in 10 in London) had Covid in the week before Christmas. About 2 million people had Covid that week alone.





__





Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey, UK - Office for National Statistics


The latest data from the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection survey, containing high level estimates for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. This survey is being delivered in partnership with the University of Oxford, University of Manchester, UK Health Security Agency...



www.ons.gov.uk









__





Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey headline results, UK - Office for National Statistics


Headline estimates for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. 



www.ons.gov.uk


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> That data is relatively outdated (considering the rapid developments recently), but you can see that hospitalizations did increase with people treated not primarily for covid. Still, the overall increase is pretty minimal considering the absolutely astounding number of positive tests over the past month. Almost a third of all positive tests in the UK occurred last 5-6 weeks.


Given the numbers testing positive it's inevitable that more people hospitalised for any reason are going to have covid coincidentally. The numbers in hospital have increased a lot but nothing like before which is good.

The biggest problem at the moment is the numbers of staff at hospitals absent because they are self-isolating, that's causing no end of difficulties


----------



## tfd543

bogdymol said:


> Exactly!
> 
> If you have a few minutes to spare, check out this video from CGP Gray, where the unwritten rules for dictators are explained.


Nice video


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Omicron is spreading at record-pace, and weather influences don't seem to play a role anymore, in Australia the 7-day average has increased 35 x in only a few weeks. It's summer there.


Does it matter that they have calendar summer now, when they are generally a hot country and they don't really have winters?

According to what I know, they only have snow in the mountains.



radamfi said:


> The latest survey showed that about 1 in 20 people in England (1 in 10 in London) had Covid in the week before Christmas. About 2 million people had Covid that week alone.


From what I noticed, recently quite a lot of people from my neighborhood do get sick with Covid. It's anecdotal evidence, so it doesn't really confirm or bust anything – but I wonder if you are also noticing this.



tfd543 said:


> Nice video


I've known this channel already for quite long (like, since 2014–2015, I think) and indeed this whole channel is great. Much effort put into the videos. They come out very rarely (the author started a series about Native Americans somewhere around 2 years ago... and we're still waiting for the next video) – but they are really a piece of quality content.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Does it matter that they have calendar summer now, when they are generally a hot country and they don't really have winters?
> 
> According to what I know, they only have snow in the mountains.
> 
> 
> From what I noticed, recently quite a lot of people from my neighborhood do get sick with Covid. It's anecdotal evidence, so it doesn't really confirm or bust anything – but I wonder if you are also noticing this.
> 
> 
> I've known this channel already for quite long (like, since 2014–2015, I think) and indeed this whole channel is great. Much effort put into the videos. They come out very rarely (the author started a series about Native Americans somewhere around 2 years ago... and we're still waiting for the next video) – but they are really a piece of quality content.


I guess most extreme seasonality is between 45 and 65+ degree latitude depending on the continent.
USA could go down to 35, but not more.

Who knows how omicron would have reacted in summer, maybe peak would still be lower in summer here in Europe. Science don't know much about respiratory viruses seasonality, just the fact it exist.
Delta was wildly transmissible, but it never reached very high transmission rates in summer, only autumn started to be more tense.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> From what I noticed, recently quite a lot of people from my neighborhood do get sick with Covid. It's anecdotal evidence, so it doesn't really confirm or bust anything – but I wonder if you are also noticing this.


The main thing I have noticed is staff shortages. Buses and trains are running a reduced service as too many people are off work with Covid.


----------



## Kpc21

What happens after you drink too much Zatecky Lezak:







(btw those Polish-Czech false friends are gorgeous; "leżak" in Polish means a sunbed xD)


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> What happens after you drink too much Zatecky Lezak:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (btw those Polish-Czech false friends are gorgeous; "leżak" in Polish means a sunbed xD)


Suppose it was a video. Its not visible on my phone..


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PovilD said:


> Who knows how omicron would have reacted in summer, maybe peak would still be lower in summer here in Europe. Science don't know much about respiratory viruses seasonality, just the fact it exist.
> Delta was wildly transmissible, but it never reached very high transmission rates in summer, only autumn started to be more tense.


I think the weather itself likely has little impact, but the behaviour of people due to the weather is a much bigger influence. Colder weather means more time and activities spent indoors, likely with poor ventilation. These are good conditions for the virus to spread. 

However countries where it's currently summer (southern hemisphere) are also reporting record breaking numbers, including Australia and Argentina. So the weather effect may not be applicable to Omicron.

I was looking at the Danish data, they have had a very high incidence since early December, but their ICU occupancy is only 82! In France, the rise of the daily admissions in critical care has also slowed significantly after 10 December, despite a very rapid increase of cases during the same time. This means that the number of ICU admissions relative to the number of new cases has dropped significantly. This is when Omicron took over.

In the UK, the ICU occupancy is pretty much flat, with virtually no change despite 3.5 million new cases since early December.

Things really look promising. This could be the end of it. If these countries can maintain a flatline in ICU despite an extremely high incidence rate, this means that crisis mode is over and that most restrictions can likely be lifted.


----------



## PovilD

I guess some fears will remain similar to that of fears of evolution of the flu.
I mean that some zoonosis could produce some deadlier variant.
I heard omicron is derived from mice.
I heard claims it could be virus itself becomed milder, but if it's luck, it's kinda worrisome if we would be not so lucky with deadlier variant from some other animal...

On the other hand, It's still interesting how current immunity via vaccines or natural infection helps here.
It could be that prior immunity slows virus replication in the lungs.
I heard preliminary data (not sure if comfirmed or debunked already) that for people without no prior immunity is just around 11% milder. The "milder" factor could be statistical noise produced by some asymptomatic cases, etc. That's why I still have slight fears for lockdowns in some Eastern European countries due to some proportion of elderly refusing vaccines.


----------



## Kpc21

tfd543 said:


> Suppose it was a video. Its not visible on my phone..


It's a youtube video...

Use the link:


Code:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTf95LKGgN0


----------



## andken

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm wondering if we're now seeing the end of the coronavirus crisis.


The end, not yet, but probably the beginning of the end, specially for highly vaccinated countries in Europe, the Americas and Asia.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Omicron is spreading at record-pace, and weather influences don't seem to play a role anymore, in Australia the 7-day average has increased 35 x in only a few weeks. It's summer there.


They do. What's happening is that highly vaccinated countries are seeing huge spikes in cases that doesn't reflect in deaths. 








Europe is not so vaccinated, it's has an older population and it's in the middle of winter. But maybe it's the beginning of the end.


----------



## Kpc21

andken said:


> The end, not yet, but probably the beginning of the end, specially for highly vaccinated countries in Europe, the Americas and Asia.


We have already had several as it seemed ends of the pandemic, and each time it came back...

I will believe in it once I see it.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> We have already had several as it seemed ends of the pandemic, and each time it came back...
> 
> I will believe in it once I see it.


There was some feeling of the end last year, but when variants came it became not sure. Never believed in those who claimed it's an end already with such transmissible virus and lots of developing countries with extremely limited posibilities for contact tracing and social distancing.

I agree that the end will be when we will be sure we are past it.

On the other hand, there is quite likelihood we will see similar waves like omicron, it would be almost manageable already without lockdowns.
Still better treatment and better research of respiratory illness should be on the way. Even vaccines have potential to be improved.

I have my own forecasts when pandemic could end:
Optimistic: in about three-four weeks  Reoccuring omicron-like waves or even milder waves that are classified as endemic not pandemic.
Not optimistic: around mid to late 2020s when improved treatments and vaccines will take place, minus some end of the World scenario that better not to think...


----------



## Suburbanist

The main issue here in Norway with omicron is that the fraction of doctors and nurses with Covid19 is rising fast and this (not ICU bed use) is affecting hospital services.


----------



## radamfi

The latest UK Covid survey has just come out, covering 25-31 December. In England, 1 in 15 were estimated to have had Covid, up from 1 in 20 the previous week. However, the rate in London appears to be going down.





__





Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey, UK - Office for National Statistics


Estimates for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. This survey is being delivered in partnership with University of Oxford, University of Manchester, UK Health Security Agency and Wellcome Trust.



www.ons.gov.uk


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> In the UK, the ICU occupancy is pretty much flat, with virtually no change despite 3.5 million new cases since early December.
> 
> Things really look promising. This could be the end of it. If these countries can maintain a flatline in ICU despite an extremely high incidence rate, this means that crisis mode is over and that most restrictions can likely be lifted.


At the moment the main problem for the NHS are not the ICU beds occupancy but general shortages of staff as many doctors and nurses have to isolate. This is the critical issue in this wave. It also affect ambulance staff etc.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch hospitals are already scrapping quarantine for staff if they have no symptoms. 

I'm hearing about a lot of positive tests in my family / friend / colleague circles as well, they are all very mild. One said the test was more annoying than the symptoms.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't like the majority of new car models. I'm not a fan of those oversized SUVs or crossovers. Most electric cars have an over the top design as well.
> 
> I recently saw one of those Hyundai Ioniq 5 electric cars. That car is much bigger than it looks like on photos. It has the shape of a hatchback but they scaled the design by a factor 1.3 or something.


I agree, I am switching to electric soon as it suits my commuting needs and the fact that with the amount of money I'm spending on petrol right now I may as well. I would quite like something the size of my current Fiat Tipo but I had to choose between something like a Fiat 500 or a car which is bigger than what I really need (in my price range anyway). I went for the latter in the end, mainly with long road trips in mind. Going to get an MG ZS EV. I know the infrastructure isn't as good as it will be yet for that, but I figure the planning will add to the adventure.

I had actually planned on getting an MG ZS EV a few years ago but I changed jobs and it didn't make sense anymore. Getting a newer, longer range version now.


----------



## MattiG

Attus said:


> New European rules also subsidy big cars and actually forbid to sell small ones...


Tell us more, please.

In most countries, cars are under heavy taxes. A word "subsidy" sounds strange within this context.


----------



## Džiugas

PovilD said:


> Our commieblocks, especially those built around 70s are looking like worse Third World places


Have you ever been to real 3rd world countries? I guess no. So please stop insanely exaggregating Lithuanian problems.


----------



## Attus

MattiG said:


> Tell us more, please.
> 
> In most countries, cars are under heavy taxes. A word "subsidy" sounds strange within this context.


OK, I think I used the wrong English word. I did not mean financial suppport, I ment rules that favor (this word is better) big cars.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch government actually hands out subsidies (cash) for EV buyers in certain price ranges. 

The subsidy:

€ 3350 for a new EV
€ 2000 for a used EV

EV as in: a vehicle that is able to travel at least 120 kilometers fully electric and has a price between € 12,000 and € 45,000. 

This is on top of various tax exemptions.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

The UK has an equivalent scheme, for new EVs only. The government has recently reduced the subsidy to £1,500 (about €1,800) for cars under £30,000 - (about €35,900). Until last month is was £2,500 in vehicles up to £35,000. No yearly road tax as of yet for EVs.


----------



## PovilD

Džiugas said:


> Have you ever been to real 3rd world countries? I guess no. So please stop insanely exaggregating Lithuanian problems.


I felt s**t, sorry.
Yes, I guess it's not right place to talk about it, let alone anybody cares... (apart from few neighboring countries at best)...

This is my biggest problem. I just can't be adequate sometimes. Everybody hates me because of it.


----------



## radamfi

I know in some European countries there are huge taxes on new cars, but in the UK you just pay the normal VAT rate of 20% just like most other consumer goods. Denmark is famous for steep new car taxes in particular. Are these eased for electric cars?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

radamfi said:


> I know in some European countries there are huge taxes on new cars, but in the UK you just pay the normal VAT rate of 20% just like most other consumer goods. Denmark is famous for steep new car taxes in particular. Are these eased for electric cars?


No, they are not in the UK.


----------



## The Wild Boy

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1480295384509739009
Did anyone else feel it?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It doesn't pop up at the USGS yet, maybe it's too recent. The magnitude is now listed as 5.8 at that website, with a depth of only 2 kilometers, if correct this should've resulted in some serious shaking and perhaps damage too.


----------



## The Wild Boy

ChrisZwolle said:


> It doesn't pop up at the USGS yet, maybe it's too recent. The magnitude is now listed as 5.8 at that website, with a depth of only 2 kilometers, if correct this should've resulted in some serious shaking and perhaps damage too.


I read on one of our local forums that some houses in Prilep might have collapsed. I hope everyone stays safe, and most importantly i hope that there are no aftershocks.


----------



## Stuu

Pilot rescued from a light plane which crashed on rail tracks in LA, just before a train comes along:




Somewhat astonishingly, the plane crashed 20 minutes earlier, so perhaps calling the railway might have been a good idea


----------



## RipleyLV

Dude survived plane crash and train wreck 👏


----------



## MattiG

Attus said:


> OK, I think I used the wrong English word. I did not mean financial suppport, I ment rules that favor (this word is better) big cars.


OK. Which are those rules you refer to?


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> Somewhat astonishingly, the plane crashed 20 minutes earlier, so perhaps calling the railway might have been a good idea


In Poland they installed a few years ago stickers on all level crossings, that tell you to call 112 if you have a car stuck on the tracks and the ID of the crossing so that you can tell it on the phone and they'd know what level crossing exactly it is and quickly notify the railway.

In this case it's an airplane, but probably it would work too.


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland they installed a few years ago stickers on all level crossings, that tell you to call 112 if you have a car stuck on the tracks and the ID of the crossing so that you can tell it on the phone and they'd know what level crossing exactly it is and quickly notify the railway.
> 
> In this case it's an airplane, but probably it would work too.


They have those in the US as well, including at this crossing. You would think the control tower for an airport next to a railway would have some sort of procedure to tell the railway in case of an emergency too


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> You would think the control tower for an airport next to a railway would have some sort of procedure to tell the railway in case of an emergency too


They must know that it crashed at a level crossing, and it may not be so obvious e.g. if the radios stopped working because of the crash, or if the pilot was unconscious.


----------



## keokiracer

ATC audio here:


----------



## Slagathor

Stuu said:


> You would think the control tower for an airport next to a railway would have some sort of procedure to tell the railway in case of an emergency too


This would be one of those things that happen so rarely, nobody would remember. Gotta find it in a manual that ought to be on the shelf except Bob's using it to stabilize his desk.


----------



## geogregor

Slagathor said:


> This would be one of those things that happen so rarely, nobody would remember. Gotta find it in a manual that ought to be on the shelf except Bob's using it to stabilize his desk.


It takes at least a few minutes to do these things. I don't think it is part of standard procedure at any airport to stop rail traffic in the vicinity.

At some crossings in the UK there are sensors and if the barriers are not properly closed then trains get red signal.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> At some crossings in the UK there are sensors and if the barriers are not properly closed then trains get red signal.


In Poland it's similar, though the train gets a signal that orders it to slow down to 20 km/h (so that it can stop almost immediately seeing an obstacle).


----------



## Dikan011

Unlikely Serbian hero - Nigel Farrage.

Common sense guy, supported Djokovic throughout the ordeal he was just put through by scumbag Australian government:


----------



## The Wild Boy

This guy never ceases to amaze me. One of my favorite politicians!


----------



## Dikan011

I know, we in Serbia love the guy, even before Brexit.


----------



## geogregor

Dikan011 said:


> I know, we in Serbia love the guy, even before Brexit.


You can have him. I seriously hope he will relocate to your splendid country 

Not many will cry after him here


----------



## Attus

So, heating will be more expensive. No surprise, it was expected. The price was increades by ~150%.


----------



## Fatfield

The Wild Boy said:


> This guy never ceases to amaze me. One of my favorite politicians!


So much of a politician he was beaten by a man dressed as a dolphin in one by-election. As an MEP he continually called for better fishing rights for the British fishing industry but he only attended 1 of 43 meetings of the CFP as our representitive. His Brexit Party has also been linked with Radovan Karadžić. As @geogregor says, you can keep him.


----------



## Stuu

The Wild Boy said:


> This guy never ceases to amaze me. One of my favorite politicians!


His entire career has been built on xenophobia because of the numbers of central and eastern European immigrants in the UK. He has repeatedly referred to the Balkans and Bulgaria/Romania as full of criminals. 

Very short memories in some places


----------



## geogregor

Stuu said:


> His entire career has been built on xenophobia because of the numbers of central and eastern European immigrants in the UK. He has repeatedly referred to the Balkans and Bulgaria/Romania as full of criminals.
> 
> Very short memories in some places


It is funny how now he became a fan of Djokovic when he spent most of his political career bashing eastern Europeans.

As you say, some people have either short memory or desperately need validation from western European "uncle" 



Fatfield said:


> As @geogregor says, you can keep him.


I think The Wild Boy is Macedonian. If they want Farage too they will have to sort it out with the Serbs 

I propose a cage fight of prime ministers


----------



## MattiG

Interesting weather.

The temperature at our lakeside home 100+ km north of Helsinki raised from -25°C to -7°C in eight hours today. The forecasted maximum temperature for tomorrow is +2°C.


----------



## Suburbanist

We are having a rather warm January here in Bergen. Temps well above 4 oC and nearing 10 oC. Copious rain, though, we could break a precipitation record as it rains a lot.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Attus said:


> So, heating will be more expensive. No surprise, it was expected. The price was increades by ~150%.


Similar story here. District heating prices for most of Tallinn rose from € 50/MWh (+VAT) to € 83 in December and will rise further to € 97 in February. In some areas (where district heating is fully dependent on natural gas) prices have risen to €160 or even € 180.


----------



## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> Similar story here. District heating prices for most of Tallinn rose from € 50/MWh (+VAT) to € 83 in December and will rise further to € 97 in February. In some areas (where district heating is fully dependent on natural gas) prices have risen to €160 or even € 180.


There are interesting fluctuations at the other side of the Gulf of Finland. The city of Helsinki announced about 30 per cent raise to the energy price of district heating. (Fixed fees apply, too, thus the total raise is somewhat lower.) The spring time price will be 87.30 EUR/MWh, including VAT 24%. Meanwhile, Fortum to deliver district heating in the neighboring town Espoo has announced a quite minimal raise only, from 74,40 EUR to 76,88 EUR per MWh. The prices are not directly comparable because of different fixed fees.

Another factor is the monthly pricing. The summer price is 52% of the top price in Helsinki while the ratio is 42% in Espoo.


----------



## Suburbanist

Espoo should merge with Helsinki, they even share a subway line now.


----------



## Suburbanist

Mean infection risk depending on what infected and susceptible persons are wearing in close contact.





> Mean risk of infection in mask scenarios with different mask combinations for a duration of 20 min. The horizontal axis shows the combination of masks used by the infectious and susceptible with two characters; the first character corresponds to the type of mask worn by the infectious, and the second character corresponds to that of susceptible. Mask types and fittings are abbreviated as follows: f, FFP2 mask without adjustment (Fig. 2, case _i_); F, FFP2 mask with adjustment (Fig. 2, case _ii_); S, surgical mask with adjustment (Fig. 2, case _v_). Other parameters used for generating results shown in this plot are fd=1.0, d0,max=50 μm, _w_ = 4, viral load ρp=108.5  virus copies per mL, and ID63.21 = 200.
> 
> 
> 
> Bagheri G, Thiede B, Hejazi B, Schlenczek O, Bodenschatz E. An upper bound on one-to-one exposure to infectious human respiratory particles. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Dec 7;118(49):e2110117118. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2110117118. PMID: 34857639; PMCID: PMC8670465.
Click to expand...


----------



## radamfi

UK cases coming down quite quickly now









England Summary | Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK


Official Coronavirus (COVID-19) disease situation dashboard with latest data in the UK.




coronavirus.data.gov.uk


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> Espoo should merge with Helsinki, they even share a subway line now.


Why?


----------



## Suburbanist

MattiG said:


> Why?


Isn't it difficult to manage the region with separate municipalities like that?


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> Isn't it difficult to manage the region with separate municipalities like that?


Like 33 in Greater London, 131 in Greater Paris, 26 in Greater Stockholm, 12 in Berlin, 31 in Greater Amsterdam, etc?

There is research stating that from the efficiency point on view, a local administrative unit with population 50.000 is close to an optimum. Making the Helsinki metropolitan area a single municipality does not make any sense. Instead, it should be split into 20 boroughs supported by shared functions.

The public transport in the Helsinki area is managed by the Helsinki Region Transport having nine municipalities in the scope.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Exonyms for Italian cities are interesting as well due to the sheer number of them compared to many other countries. When I drove the French A8 for the first time there were signs for 'Gênes'. It took me a minute to figure out this is Genova / Genoa. Another unusual exonym (to my ears) is 'Leghorn' (Livorno). English seems to use more exonyms for Italian cities and regions than for example in France or Spain. Or maybe even Germany.


Maybe that has to do with the fact there was no standardized Italian language well into early 19th Century, when publishing of written texts in France, UK, Germany was already full-fledged. But these Italian cities were hugely important from a historical and artistic perspective, so they would need to be named somehow.

Incidentally, when I lived in the Netherlands I was surprised to discover that non-large Dutch cities sometimes have French exonyms, such as Bois-le-Duc for 's-Hertogenbosch.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Hague is probably the city with the most exonyms in foreign languages in the Netherlands. Wikipedia lists a whole bunch. Amsterdam & Rotterdam seem to have few exonyms. 

I'm not sure if Bois-le-Duc is still actually used in French, since I presume this city isn't particularly well-known in French-speaking areas. 

There were loads of Dutch exonyms for cities and towns in Northern France but nearly all have fallen into disuse. The Flemish often still use 'Rijsel', which most Dutch would refer to it as Lille.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Attus said:


> Back then, in the Frank times, they actually used Frank names. It was the same country, yes, but it did not use two languages (German and French)
> Cologne was actually founded by the Romans 1st century AD, and was called Colonia Agrippina. Every endo- and exonyms have they roots in this Latin name.


The rulers used Frank in the beginning after the conquest, but most people in what is now is France spoke Romance languages (Old French and Old Occitan), which the Franks soon adapted.


----------



## volodaaaa

Guys, I have an off-topic yet transport-related question.

I am about to buy a used 8-seater car (for the first time). I am considering Renault Trafic, 2019, odometer ~53.000 km. I have experienced this model. It is definitely not a Rolls Royce, but suitable for my purposes.
The car looks good (at least in the photo; the physical inspection is due to tomorrow), clean and undamaged.

But, there are two suspicious things:

the car is to be three years old only and already had two owners (me to be the third one). The first one sold the car after nine months.
the price is quite good for such a condition (20.000 €).

I have checked the databases and found no accident involvement in the EU and no stolen car entry. So far, the car has been registered in Slovakia solely.
I found some possible causes:

the 8-seater might have become a useless vehicle during the COVID pandemic, especially the chaotic restrictions Slovakia is well known for.
there is a concealed malfunction. However, the annual distance travelled is similar to my passenger car (used almost daily). If there were an unfixable concealed malfunction constraining the full use of the vehicle, the odometer would show less kilometrage.

What do you guys think about it?

Photo (there are more photos, the documentation is quite exhaustive):


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A vehicle like that may have been owned by a business and not for private use. That could explain why it changed ownership more than once already. Especially if it was owned or leased by a business or entrepreneur that went bust during the pandemic.

I'm curious though, what do you need such a large vehicle for? Do you have that many children? Or do you want to start a taxi business?


----------



## radamfi

Of course, northern France used to be a Dutch speaking area. Some town names sound Dutch. For example, Hazebrouck (Hazebroek in Dutch) and Steenvoorde.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> A vehicle like that may have been owned by a business and not for private use. That could explain why it changed ownership more than once already. Especially if it was owned or leased by a business or entrepreneur that went bust during the pandemic.
> 
> I'm curious though, what do you need such a large vehicle for? Do you have that many children? Or do you want to start a taxi business?


No, I have two. 😂 And I have fulfilled my reproduction strategy. I want to start a small local taxi/rental service. The car will be the property of my company, not mine. But still I do not want to buy a pig in the poke.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Hague is probably the city with the most exonyms in foreign languages in the Netherlands. Wikipedia lists a whole bunch. Amsterdam & Rotterdam seem to have few exonyms.


Usually it's so with capitals and the largest cities in countries...

Amsterdam has a name which can be easily pronounced in most languages at least in Europe, so it has no so much need for exonyms.

The Hague is different in that it has this "gu" connection – and the Germanic feminine "-e" suffix, which must be changed into "-a" in many languages to keep it feminine.

Lake Constance in Polish is Jezioro Bodeńskie, so it's a translation of the German name (Bodensee).



radamfi said:


> Of course, northern France used to be a Dutch speaking area. Some town names sound Dutch. For example, Hazebrouck (Hazebroek in Dutch) and Steenvoorde.


Similarly the east of Germany has cities and towns with names of Slavic origin. So many towns with names that end with "-ow"...

About that Renault, is this offer much cheaper than most offers for such car from a similar year, with similar mileage?

Is it being sold by an individual who has actually used this car for himself or by a second-hand dealer?

I don't know how the Slovak market looks like, but in Poland we have two types of second-hand car dealers. More professional ones, which over here are called "komis" – usually such a dealership has a larger piece of land somewhere in the outskirts of the city with many cars for sale, with a booth where the employees sit while not servicing the customer. And more amateur ones, where someone normally has two or three cars for sale in the backyard at the given moment, usually imported from abroad. Those last ones seem to me to be least trustworthy; they tend to hide the accident history of the car most and so on.

And most trustworthy are private sellers who actually own the car and have used it.



volodaaaa said:


> I have checked the databases and found no accident involvement


Remember that the lack of accident record is not a proof that the car didn't have any accidents. Organize a paint thickness sensor and check the car by yourself (this is also not an absolute proof, but at least with some degree of certainty it allows to check if the seller is telling the truth or not), and take it to a car mechanic for a check (let him look for signs that the car could have accidents in the past too).

Again I don't know about the Slovak market, but in Poland the domestic cars (never imported from any other country) are much more likely to have no weird past.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Remember that the lack of accident record is not a proof that the car didn't have any accidents. Organize a paint thickness sensor and check the car by yourself (this is also not an absolute proof, but at least with some degree of certainty it allows to check if the seller is telling the truth or not), and take it to a car mechanic for a check (let him look for signs that the car could have accidents in the past too).
> 
> Again I don't know about the Slovak market, but in Poland the domestic cars (never imported from any other country) are much more likely to have no weird past.


It is the same here. But sometimes I am over-careful. I have already missed four cars because the stalling took me that much time, that someone bought the car before me. 🤣 🤣 However, the Slovak market is tiny. Currently, there are four vehicles suitable for my conditions (price between 16.000 - 22.000 €; VAT deduction, up to 150.000 km 8-9 seater). And I have no balls to buy an imported car though there are hundreds of such vehicles in Germany.


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> And I have no balls to buy an imported car though there are hundreds of such vehicles in Germany.


Same as in Poland – it's much, much easier to get an imported car than a domestic one.

Because people just don't buy new cars over here.

One more option is to go to Germany for a few days and get a good car there – but it takes time and money; finally it will be definitely more expensive. And you can find a car in bad condition there too. Plus most cars sold in Germany have high mileage.


----------



## Suburbanist

A key issue becoming more and more serious is that, with collapsing sales of new cars in some other European countries, the market for second-hand cars is becoming tighter. Germany used to supply large second-hand relatively new cars to Poland, Hungary, Czechia, but now the Netherlands is firmly into the fray as I read, because it is a country with a tiny market for personal new car purchases and corporate purchases (lessors, car rental companies) shrank a lot during the pandemic, so there is a crunch the domestic market is no longer able to satisfy.


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> English has adopted quite a bit of French names for non-French cities and other features around the Alps.
> 
> For example: Milan, Turin, Lucerne, Lake Lucerne, Lake Constance, Berne, Grisons, etc.
> 
> Also funny: the 'Bernese Oberland'.
> 
> Exonyms for Italian cities are interesting as well due to the sheer number of them compared to many other countries. When I drove the French A8 for the first time there were signs for 'Gênes'. It took me a minute to figure out this is Genova / Genoa. Another unusual exonym (to my ears) is 'Leghorn' (Livorno). English seems to use more exonyms for Italian cities and regions than for example in France or Spain. Or maybe even Germany.


One I have never understood is the biggest football team in Munich is called Bayern Munich in English... when logically it should be either Bavaria Munich or Bayern Munchen, not a combination


----------



## ChrisZwolle

volodaaaa said:


> However, the Slovak market is tiny. (...) (8-9 seater).


The market for large passenger vehicles with that many seats has generally declined throughout Europe. In the late 1990s and 2000s there were many MPV models with up to 7 seats available. However these large vehicles have become prohibitively expensive and the people who need them typically already have large family expenses so they do not buy them new anymore. 

I come from a family of 5. We had a station wagon in the 1990s but later shifted to a Renault Espace. It's a great car for touring around Europe with the whole family. But its maintenance and repairs cost a fortune.


----------



## valkrav

ChrisZwolle said:


> Turkey? No! Türkiye!
> ...
> I don't think this will catch on. Ivory Coast also tried it by changing the English name to Côte d'Ivoire. Swaziland changed its name alltogether to Eswatini, but this country has so little exposure in international affairs that it won't really catch on either I think.


They are infected by virus spread after CCCP collapse
when all new counries start to learn russians (and others too)
how to skeak/write correctly its cities in russian/english/etc


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> One I have never understood is the biggest football team in Munich is called Bayern Munich in English... when logically it should be either Bavaria Munich or Bayern Munchen, not a combination


But it's almost always so that the names of cities in the names of football clubs get translated. And everything else not.

In the same way, in Polish we call a club from London Arsenal Londyn. Not Arsenał Londyn, Aresenał London or anything like that. Similarly Chelsea Londyn, not Chelsea London. Or Bayern Monachium, not Bayern München or Bawaria München.

One exception from this rule is AC Milan. But the other team from this city is in Polish called Inter Mediolan.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> In the same way, in Polish we call a club from London Arsenal Londyn. Not Arsenał Londyn, Aresenał London or anything like that. Similarly Chelsea Londyn, not Chelsea London. Or Bayern Monachium, not Bayern München or Bawaria München


Do you really add "Londyn" to the name? Polish Wikipedia just calls it "Arsenal F.C."

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_F.C. 

What about Tottenham Hotspur? "Tottenham Hotspur Londyn" would be very long!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

volodaaaa said:


> I am considering Renault Trafic


It's probably no coincidence that Facebook now serves me ads for a Renault Trafic...


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> Do you really add "Londyn" to the name? Polish Wikipedia just calls it "Arsenal F.C."
> 
> https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_F.C.
> 
> What about Tottenham Hotspur? "Tottenham Hotspur Londyn" would be very long!


In most cases people just say the club name. So it is Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham, etc.

But then people say Manchester United. I guess for obvious reason that there are more clubs called "united". Same with clubs called "city" line Manchester City or Leicester City.

Oh, and Leicester (like Worcester and Gloucester) is fun to learn first time how to pronounce 

I sill remember face of guy who I was asking for a lift to Worcester during my first hitchhiking trip to England, in 2000.

But even more funny was when couple of years later I lived and worked in the US. I had big debate with Americans how to pronounce the Worcester Sauce. They just didn't believe me the correct pronunciation.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> The market for large passenger vehicles with that many seats has generally declined throughout Europe. In the late 1990s and 2000s there were many MPV models with up to 7 seats available. However these large vehicles have become prohibitively expensive and the people who need them typically already have large family expenses so they do not buy them new anymore.
> 
> I come from a family of 5. We had a station wagon in the 1990s but later shifted to a Renault Espace. It's a great car for touring around Europe with the whole family. But its maintenance and repairs cost a fortune.


In Hungary the government subsidies buying such cars for families. Families having 3 or more children (those under 18) get the half price paid by the government, if they buy a new car of 7 or more seats. There is a limit, tho government pays max 2,500,000 Forints, i.e. approx. 7.000 Euro, so in many cases this limit will be paid, because the price is more than 5 millions. 
My sister bought an Opel Combo this way (she has 3 children).


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Suburbanist said:


> A key issue becoming more and more serious is that, with collapsing sales of new cars in some other European countries, the market for second-hand cars is becoming tighter. Germany used to supply large second-hand relatively new cars to Poland, Hungary, Czechia, but now the Netherlands is firmly into the fray as I read, because it is a country with a tiny market for personal new car purchases and corporate purchases (lessors, car rental companies) shrank a lot during the pandemic, so there is a crunch the domestic market is no longer able to satisfy.


The second-hand market in Estonia is completely nuts nowadays. I contemplated buying a newer car at the beginning of 2021 but decided not to. Now I kind of have to but the prices are so insane that I'd really rather not. 

Just an example. Last Spring there was a 2018-19 (can't remember exactly) VW Golf on sale with 100,000 km and lots of options for € 12,500. Today you can find a similar car on sale for € 16,000-17,000. 



ChrisZwolle said:


> The market for large passenger vehicles with that many seats has generally declined throughout Europe. In the late 1990s and 2000s there were many MPV models with up to 7 seats available. *However these large vehicles have become prohibitively expensive and the people who need them typically already have large family expenses so they do not buy them new anymore.*
> 
> I come from a family of 5. We had a station wagon in the 1990s but later shifted to a Renault Espace. It's a great car for touring around Europe with the whole family. But its maintenance and repairs cost a fortune.


Statistically they've been replaced by SUVs and crossovers which are arguably more expensive and less spacious.


----------



## italystf

Stuu said:


> One I have never understood is the biggest football team in Munich is called Bayern Munich in English... when logically it should be either Bavaria Munich or Bayern Munchen, not a combination


In Italy it's called Bayern Monaco, not Baviera Monaco or Bayern Munchen. The city (not the team), is often called Monaco di Baviera because just "Monaco" is the small country in south-east France.


----------



## x-type

Stuu said:


> One I have never understood is the biggest football team in Munich is called Bayern Munich in English... when logically it should be either Bavaria Munich or Bayern Munchen, not a combination


Well, English commentators say for PSG Paris with English pronounciation, and Saint Germain with French


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> Do you really add "Londyn" to the name? Polish Wikipedia just calls it "Arsenal F.C."


Yes. Polish Wikipedia probably just uses the official name, not the one actually used by people and by the media 



radamfi said:


> What about Tottenham Hotspur? "Tottenham Hotspur Londyn" would be very long!


Just Tottenham Londyn. I have never heard the full name (though I am not at all a football fan).



x-type said:


> Well, English commentators say for PSG Paris with English pronounciation, and Saint Germain with French


In Poland this club is an exception, media (and people) call it just Paris Saint-Germain, with the (more or less successful) French pronunciation.

One of the main football clubs in Łódź is ŁKS. Which stands for Łódzki Klub Sportowy – Łódź Sports Club or the Sports Club of Łódź.

Media quite often call it "ŁKS Łódź" so that it fits between other sports clubs with names following that pattern: name + city. Even though it seems incorrect, as it's redundant.

A similar situation is in Cracow with their football club Cracovia – the name of which is the Latin name of the city. Though I think it happens much less frequently to be called "Cracovia Kraków", media usually say just Cracovia. Maybe because it's obvious when you hear Cracovia that it must be from Cracow – and when you hear ŁKS and you aren't familiar with the club or the city (and with the Polish football scene in general), you may not know what that Ł stands for. Probably a better way to shorten the name would be Łódzki KS – but this doesn't fit into the mentioned pattern...

It's just so that almost all the football clubs have names like "name + city" – and it doesn't only apply to those leading major clubs that play in high leagues, but also those amateur football teams from small towns and villages that play in low-level leagues.



italystf said:


> In Italy it's called Bayern Monaco, not Baviera Monaco or Bayern Munchen. The city (not the team), is often called Monaco di Baviera because just "Monaco" is the small country in south-east France.


Wow, I haven't known that Monaco the country is actually another Munich 

I wonder if they are anyhow related, or is it like with Georgia the US state and Georgia the country – completely nothing in common (by the way – are the names of both different in your languages? Georgia the state is in Polish called just Georgia; Georgia the country translates as Gruzja).


----------



## valkrav

ChrisZwolle said:


> English has adopted quite a bit of French names for non-French cities


And digested original french inside USA
Des Moines, St.Louis, Waterloo, New Orleans, New Rochelle, etc


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> We had a station wagon in the 1990s but later shifted to a Renault Espace. It's a great car for touring around Europe with the whole family. But its maintenance and repairs cost a fortune.


My experience exaxctly. That car was a dream to drive, when it actually could drive ;-D


----------



## Kpc21

By the way, today in the morning we had quite interesting weather. It began with strong winds, then we had a thunderstorm (quite unusual for winter), next hail, and after that – quite a heavy snowfall. Followed by a calm and sunny hour, after which wind came back again – though not that strong.

My colleague from a town 20-30 km away reported that once he drove to pick up his child from school, he noticed quite a lot photovoltaic panels on trees instead of rooftops and also many cars being pulled out of roadside trenches.

As you can see in the video in this article: https://www.rmf24.pl/fakty/polska/n...ach-fatalne-warunki-dla-kierowcow,nId,5774989 – in Tatras roads were more suitable for ice skating than for driving cars on them.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> Yes. Polish Wikipedia probably just uses the official name, not the one actually used by people and by the media


Is Queen Elizabeth referred to as Elżbieta in Poland?

I saw a Bald and Bankrupt video where a lady in Kyrgyzstan seemed to use that version. 

We don't change the names of contemporary people in Dutch, except for maybe the pope.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Is Queen Elizabeth referred to as Elżbieta in Poland?


Yes, she is.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> We don't change the names of contemporary people in Dutch, except for maybe the pope.


So we do it in case of kings and queens too.

In case of the pope, it would be difficult to decide what language is the "original one" of his name  Latin? Italian? From the native language of the specific pope?

By the way, do you call Charlemagne Charlemagne, or is it translated (in English, it has this weird form instead of Carol the Great)?

In Polish he's Karol Wielki – literally Carol the Great.

(it should be noted that in Polish Karol is a masculine-only name; its feminine equivalent is Karolina – but it shouldn't matter, rulers in those times were rather exclusively men)


----------



## x-type

We call her Elizabeta, too  Felipe of Spain is also Filip. But Juan Carlos was Juan Carlos, not Ivan Karlo :lol: Don't ask me why.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> In case of the pope, it would be difficult to decide what language is the "original one" of his name  Latin? Italian? From the native language of the specific pope?


Latin, no doubt.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Is Queen Elizabeth referred to as Elżbieta in Poland?
> 
> I saw a Bald and Bankrupt video where a lady in Kyrgyzstan seemed to use that version.
> 
> We don't change the names of contemporary people in Dutch, except for maybe the pope.


I believe that well-known names have local adaptations in most countries, whatever the official policy instructs. The King of Sweden is known is Finland by his name Carl XVI Gustav, but "Kalle-Kustaa" is quite a common street version in the spoken language. The Queen of UK is "Lissu", and her famous sons "Kalle", "Andy" and "Eetu". Anne is a Finnish name, too, so no shadow versions for her. The remaining European monarchs are less significant, and have no Finnish adaptations.

In general, there are not many exonyms in use in Finnish. To mention a few:

Ruotsi (Sweden)
Norja (Norway)
Tanska (Denmark)
Viro (Estonia)
Saksa (Germany)
Ranska (France)
Puola (Poland)
Kreikka (Greece)
Sveitsi (Switzerland)
Hollanti (The Netherlands)
Belgia (Belgium)
Irlanti (Ireland)
Iceland (Iceland)
Skoone (Skåne)
Värmlanti (Värmland)
Ruija (Finnmark)
Baijeri (Bavaria)
Böömi (Bohemia)
Määri (Moravia)
Tukholma (Stockholm)
Kööpenhamina (Copenhagen)
Lontoo (London)
Bryssel (Brussels)
Hampuri (Hamburg)
Berliini (Berlin)
Pariisi (Paris)
Upsala (Uppsala)
Kiiruna (Kiruna)
Nizza (Nice)
Kiova (Kiev)
Tromssa (Tromsø)
Varsova (Warzaw)
Krakova (Krakow)
Pietari (St Petersburg)
Tartto (Tartu)
Moskova (Moscow)
Tonava (Donau)
Rein (Rhein)
Juutinrauma (Öresund)

Then, there are a few names where the pronunciation is based on pure Finnish: Kalifornia, Alaska, Venetsia (and many other Italian names). The language has no letters B, C, F, Q, W, X and Z, and many names containing them have an exonym, like Kroatia, Hertsegovina, Kuuba, Kolumbia, Kreeta,


----------



## PovilD

MattiG said:


> In general, there are not many exonyms in use in Finnish. To mention a few:





> Viro (Estonia)


It fascinates me is not Eesti, but Viro. I know Voru region in South Estonia. I wonder if the name derived from here. Viro is similar to word "vyras" (man) in Lithuanian.



> Böömi (Bohemia)
> Määri (Moravia)


Cool shortenings. Especially for such far away region for Finland as Czech Republic.



> Juutinrauma (Öresund)


Juutinrauma looks very similar to Jutland, but probably pronounced different. As far as I know "y" sound is similar to "u" sound in Nordic countries. Even Estonian has this feature, but not other Baltic languages.

Jutland in Finnish is Jyllanti

In Lithuanian is Jutlandija (pronounced as Yutlandia). Similar ending as Islandija (Iceland) 

Finnish is probably one of the few languages that pronounces Lithuania almost the same way as Lithuanians: Liettua. (Lithuanian and Latvian is Lietuva). Even Estonians pronounce it as Leedu which looks like shortening from Lietuva to Lietu. Leedu itself is similar to word "ledai" which means ice cream, like in the saying "norėti ledų" (to want (what?) ice cream).


----------



## Slagathor

MattiG said:


> Hollanti (The Netherlands)


Booo!


----------



## Fatfield

In the UK Queen Elizabeth II is often refered to as Her Maj or just plain old Liz/Lizzie. If you're in the armed forces she's mostly known as The Boss as you swear to serve the King/Queen & country. Prince Philip was affectionately called Phil The Greek.


----------



## AnelZ

People (not media) often call her "starica" over here, which means "the old lady/woman".


----------



## The Wild Boy

Oh and is it only us from the Balkans who call Thessaloniki, Solun? Are there other countries outside of the Balkans who call Thessaloniki, Solun?

We call Athens, Atina.

Beograd would be Belgrad for us, Belgrade in English.

Beo meaning white, and we say Bel.

Bratislava has an interesting name in German, Pressburg.

Rome is Rom in German and Rom in my language usually refers to Roma people, Gypsies.

Each language has impressive meanings, German being amongst the top 5 for sure.


----------



## geogregor

The Wild Boy said:


> Oh and is it only us from the Balkans who call Thessaloniki, Solun? Are there other countries outside of the Balkans who call Thessaloniki, Solun?


In Polish it is called Saloniki


----------



## MattiG

PovilD said:


> It fascinates me is not Eesti, but Viro. I know Voru region in South Estonia. I wonder if the name derived from here. Viro is similar to word "vyras" (man) in Lithuanian.


The name is derived from Virumaa, which is the northeast ancient province of Estonia, at the seaside. It is very analogous to "Ruotsi", which refers to current Roslagen, which is the area in Sweden closest to the southwest Finland. Many names date back to the era when the current countries did not exist.



> Juutinrauma looks very similar to Jutland, but probably pronounced different.


The name is logical. "Juutin" is a genetive from "juutti" which means a Dane in the old language (regadless of whether the persons live in Jutland or not). "Rauma" means a long and narrow strait.



> As far as I know "y" sound is similar to "u" sound in Nordic countries.


Finnish is again different. J, U and Y are different letters. (U and Y are relatives, like A and Ä are, as well as O and Ö.) "Tykki"=cannon, "tukki"=a wooden log.


----------



## valtterip

Slagathor said:


> Booo!


It's actually "Alankomaat" but nobody says that lol.

Venäjä (Russia) is also interesting. Don't know where that comes from though.


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> The Queen of UK is "Lissu", and her famous sons "Kalle", "Andy" and "Eetu".


So the sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters of the British queen are in Polish called using their English names.

Like "księżna Kate" (Duchess Kate), not "księżna Katarzyna". Though "książę Filip" (Prince Philip). Diana in Polish would be just Diana, but with different pronunciation – however it was also rather usually pronounced in the English way ("dayana").



geogregor said:


> In Polish it is called Saloniki


I know one Polish travel forum (focused mostly on air travel) where there is a thread about airport lounges. Such a lounge is in Polish called "salonik", plural "saloniki" (and, by the way, the word by itself is a diminutive of "salon"). In the title of this thread, the author had to point out what he meant by writing: "Saloniki (lotniskowe)" – "Lounges (airport)" because otherwise someone could think the thread is about the city 



MattiG said:


> The language has no letters B, C, F, Q, W, X and Z, and many names containing them have an exonym, like Kroatia, Hertsegovina, Kuuba, Kolumbia, Kreeta,


In Poland it's quite similar, even though it has most of those letters (except Q, X and Z, and W means something completely different). 
Chorwacja, Hercegowina, Kuba, Kolumbia, Kreta. 

Though Kreta has no reason to be spelled with C anyway; in Greek it starts with the letter kappa. It's the English exonym what is unusual here.



valtterip said:


> It's actually "Alankomaat" but nobody says that lol.


Sounds like a name of some kind of an automatic machine, probably for producing alanks, whatever it is xD


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> Though Kreta has no reason to be spelled with C anyway; in Greek it starts with the letter kappa. It's the English exonym what is unusual here.


The same goes for Omicron / Omikron.


----------



## Kpc21

We are discussing the representation of a Greek letter in a name of another Greek letter xD

Talking about it, there was this Covid variant, which was "of concern", but finally turned out to be relatively safe, called Mu. In Polish the Greek letter Mu is called "mi" (pronounced "mee" or "me", whatever like you would normally spell it in English). 

And some Polish written media (like news websites), probably with editors which were uneducated regarding the Greek alphabet, were spelling its name the English way, as Mu.

And once I accidentally found a website that generally focused on conspiracy theories, alternative medicine etc. – you know what kind of content I mean – and there was an article about that... "after the variant Mi, there was a new Covid variant found, the variant Mu". Or vice versa, I can't remember now xD

Basically the author found some news about the variant Mu (spelled in English), some news about the variant Mi (spelled in Polish) and thought those are two different variants


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> Sounds like a name of some kind of an automatic machine, probably for producing alanks, whatever it is xD


"Alankomaat" is a direct translation from "Nederlanden".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's depressing weather in the Netherlands. I haven't seen the sun for a week, it's all gray and calm weather. Not a lot of rain though. Temperatures are around 5 °C.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's depressing weather in the Netherlands. I haven't seen the sun for a week, it's all gray and calm weather. Not a lot of rain though. Temperatures are around 5 °C.


What a contrast with London. We have a lot of sunny weather in recent days. Not all days long but quite a lot of hours most days.

Unfortunately it is my week of self-isolation because, as I already mentioned, I finally got Covid. So no walks with camera around London, one of me favorite pastime.


----------



## The Wild Boy

Kpc21 said:


> We are discussing the representation of a Greek letter in a name of another Greek letter xD
> 
> Talking about it, there was this Covid variant, which was "of concern", but finally turned out to be relatively safe, called Mu. In Polish the Greek letter Mu is called "mi" (pronounced "mee" or "me", whatever like you would normally spell it in English).
> 
> And some Polish written media (like news websites), probably with editors which were uneducated regarding the Greek alphabet, were spelling its name the English way, as Mu.
> 
> And once I accidentally found a website that generally focused on conspiracy theories, alternative medicine etc. – you know what kind of content I mean – and there was an article about that... "after the variant Mi, there was a new Covid variant found, the variant Mu". Or vice versa, I can't remember now xD
> 
> Basically the author found some news about the variant Mu (spelled in English), some news about the variant Mi (spelled in Polish) and thought those are two different variants


We had a joke going on about the Mu variant on top of a cow picture, you know... moo  

*Macedonian Humor


----------



## radamfi

Omicron related guidance/regulations will end in England next Thursday. They were not particularly onerous compared to other parts of Europe and the UK anyway. Face coverings will no longer be compulsory and there will no longer be a recommendation to work from home. There are also rumours that all testing requirements for international travellers will be scrapped, leaving only the passenger locator form to be completed. That would be the first time in well over a year that you can travel abroad from the UK (except Ireland) without a test on your return.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Sounds good. The Dutch policymakers don't want to end panic mode yet, despite real world hospitalizations being wildly lower than their scenarios predicted. Apparently they modeled the virus with the Delta properties in terms of number of hospitalizations, severity and time in hospital. The number of people in hospital is now thousands lower than forecasted last month.

Pressure is mounting to end more restrictions. The 'non-essential' shops are back open again for a week now, as well as all of education. But all restaurants, bars, museums, theaters, cinemas, etc. are still closed. Booster vaccine uptake has dropped off a cliff very quickly. Almost all people over 60 took it, but most under 50 don't. And maybe that's enough, there is still a tunnel vision on vaccination despite Omicron being much less severe. The hospitals are emptying out, they are dropping by 20-25% of patients per week since Omicron became dominant. Even though up to a third of hospitalizations are now people who tested positive by coincidence, not because they were admitted due to covid.


----------



## radamfi

The drop in cases in both South Africa and the UK has been incredibly fast and you would expect it to be similar in other countries once Omicron becomes the dominant variant. Other European countries seem to be about 2 weeks behind the UK and so are currently at the peak of cases or just before the peak.

I don't trust modelling. I spent about 20 years working in transport modelling and having seen how it works I certainly don't trust transport/traffic modelling, at least the way it is done in the UK. I can talk about this freely now that I'm changing career. Models are only constructed because the government or local authority wants a scheme and needs modelling as evidence. But because the government or local authority is paying, they obviously have a vested interest in a result that shows that the scheme is worth doing. So it is hardly independent analysis. I wouldn't be surprised if similar biases exist in Covid modelling.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

You should never trust models, but they have become indispensable in so many areas (engineering, science, planning), and we would have been far worse off without them. However, trustworthy models have reliable uncertainty estimates. Often the problem is not the model itself, but that the people using it or citing its result do not understand what they can and cannot do.


ChrisZwolle said:


> It's depressing weather in the Netherlands. I haven't seen the sun for a week, it's all gray and calm weather. Not a lot of rain though. Temperatures are around 5 °C.


It is a matter of perspective, I guess. I do not believe I have seen the sun since Monday 1 1/2 week ago, and it has more or less constantly been snowing or raining and blowing. The development of the filling of our hydropower reservoirs of our region is a good indication of how it has been (and still is). Normally the filling decreases fast in January, as electricity is used for heating and not much new water enters the reservoirs and most of the precipitation is snow. This January, we instead have had a steep increase, as it has been very wet and the wind power turbines have been operating more or less continuously at max capacity.....

But, on the bright side, there is still enough snow on the ground for skiing around here, and plenty in the mountains. And, we still have the lowest electricity spot price in Europe (before taxes and grid fees), at 13.6 €/MWh tomorrow....









Hydropower reservoir storage level of central Norway (electricity region NO3). "Nåværende år": This year (2022). Median, maks (=max) and min is based on the storage levels of the last two decades.Green curve is the statistics of 2021.


----------



## The Wild Boy

I'm not a scientist nor a doctor. But i see many popular and well known people keep saying that Covid "will perish" after this Omicron variant is over. 

What do you think about this, is the likelihood of that true or will this virus end up mutating again and we will have an ongoing pandemic up untill next year (or who knows when)?? 

If the virus somehow "perishes" and ceases to exist, will they stop requiring vaccines? I'm assuming they will keep the vaccination thing going on, since that would eventually be the most effective way (as of now) to beat the virus (till it finally disappears), unless someone discovers something that could be even more effective. I've heard that there were some sorts of military vaccines that were "researched" and maybe could be put in use. They say that those types of vaccines were more effective, could deal with any kind of variant, even new variants / mutations of the virus and that the protection such a vaccine could give would end up lasting more than 6 months. 

Of course the goal here should be to have something that's more powerful and effective in dealing against the virus, something that you could just take say once, that could give you a protection for enough years so the virus completely disappears, instead of having to take a vaccine periodically. Because for many people that can cause disruption, especially for travelling since you never know when an X country can change it's restrictions overnight. 

Let's discuss.


----------



## PovilD

The Wild Boy said:


> I'm not a scientist nor a doctor. But i see many popular and well known people keep saying that Covid "will perish" after this Omicron variant is over.
> 
> What do you think about this, is the likelihood of that true or will this virus end up mutating again and we will have an ongoing pandemic up untill next year (or who knows when)??
> 
> If the virus somehow "perishes" and ceases to exist, will they stop requiring vaccines? I'm assuming they will keep the vaccination thing going on, since that would eventually be the most effective way (as of now) to beat the virus (till it finally disappears), unless someone discovers something that could be even more effective. I've heard that there were some sorts of military vaccines that were "researched" and maybe could be put in use. They say that those types of vaccines were more effective, could deal with any kind of variant, even new variants / mutations of the virus and that the protection such a vaccine could give would end up lasting more than 6 months.
> 
> Of course the goal here should be to have something that's more powerful and effective in dealing against the virus, something that you could just take say once, that could give you a protection for enough years so the virus completely disappears, instead of having to take a vaccine periodically. Because for many people that can cause disruption, especially for travelling since you never know when an X country can change it's restrictions overnight.
> 
> Let's discuss.


My current prediction is that perishing of the virus is wishful thinking. Unlikely scenario. Those who thinks like that I would seriously question what they want to sell here.
My prediction it will keep mutating. Various strains will come and go.

Big question remains is severity. If severity remains that of omicron it might become something like cold. People may start to forget this virus. Multiple variants will go across The World, but nobody will look at close eye on it.

Other question is seasonality. Summer 2020 and summer 2021 somewhat seems there was visible seasonality in Europe (though not elsewhere), but it's not clear yet if this will be the trend. It could be, if people get immunity, low virus circulation in summer, then new strain in autumn, and cycle continue indefinatively.


----------



## Kpc21

The Wild Boy said:


> We had a joke going on about the Mu variant on top of a cow picture, you know... moo
> 
> *Macedonian Humor














ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch policymakers don't want to end panic mode yet


The Polish government seems to have just switched to it 

Today they ordered remote work for all public administration employees.

By the way, do you want to know, how successfully the Polish government has just implemented an income tax reform (with the beginning of this month)?

It's so complex that nobody really understands it, but from what I managed to understand...

The general idea was to make the poorer part of the society pay less taxes than before and the richest part – pay more taxes than before. And probably also to improve the financing of the public healthcare (though I am not sure about that).

Till the end of 2021, the income tax system (at least for ordinary employees) was relativy simple. There was the tax-free amount of income (quite low, so that the tax from it was of the order of about 10 euro a month, so nobody really cared about it), a percentage of tax payed by those with lower income (17%) and the percentage payed by those with high income, much above the average (32%). Apart from that, there are several obligatory state insurance contributions (paid by your employee the same way as the tax) – for healthcare, pension and similar things. And you had a selection of tax deduction options, most of those were a form of a social benefit (like, you can deduct some money from the tax for each child; in the past for quite many years it was also possible to deduct the internet bills). Some of those deductions are from the tax itself, some – from the "taxation base", from the value of income used to calculate the tax. Of course it had many various quirks, but it was easy to comprehend. One of those deductions was also the healthcare contribution (or rather its portion, but it was still a huge part).

In May 2021 the government came out with a proposal of an income tax reform. Its name is difficult to translate in English because it sounds like some communist propaganda – but more or less it translates as "Polish Order" (though some people now prefer to call it "Polish Scam"). The main concept is that the tax-free amount is increased more or less 10 times, the threshold above which you have to pay the higher tax goes up – but the option to deduct the healthcare contribution from the tax disappears. 

But it turned out that for some taxpayers (especially for those with average-higher income), those changes would make them pay more tax then before – and affecting them by those changes wasn't something what the government wanted. So they invented quite a crazy patch for that, named "deduction for the middle class". The amount of this deduction is calculated as a piecewise-linear function of the gross income (a different formula applies up to some amount of income, a different one above it), so that the final tax would more or less match the amount of tax payed before the reform.

This deduction is supposed to be applied to your tax automatically by your employer. Based on your monthly income. But what finally matters for this deduction is your total income from the whole year.

So far, so good. It's weird, but after all, we have computers, and it's not even a problem to enter that formula into Excel and have the results ready. But... it works well only in the very simple case, when someone earns the some amount of money every month, working for a single employer, and being a single.

If you are married, both spouses can pay their income tax separately – but it's also possible to sum up the incomes of both employees, and pay the tax from this sum. This way e.g. if only one of the spouses doesn't work, but the other earns very much, it lowers the chance of hitting the threshold above which you have to pay that very large tax.

But... nobody knows, how it affects that "deduction for the middle class". Should you take into account the summed up income of both spouses, or of each of them separately? The regulations don't precise it.

As I said, the calculation would be simple if you earn a constant amount of money that never changes. But what if you get a pay rise in the middle of the year? What if you sometimes work overtime, but the amount of that overtime (and the money paid to you for it) varies strongly from month to month? What if you get bonuses from your employee which you cannot predict? What if you are employed for half a year and then get fired and become unemployed for the next half a year?

You sometimes don't even know if that middle class deduction would apply to you or not. If your employer deducts it from your tax though you wouldn't finally be entitled to it – it's not a huge issue. You will have to pay that missing tax directly to the tax office with your yearly tax settlement in April next year. In fact, it's like a free credit. 

And if you know that finally this deduction would not apply to you – you can just ask your employer not to apply it to all your monthly salaries. Actually it doesn't make sense (it's better to have that money at your disposal longer – this way you pay the same amount of tax, but in fact what you pay is worth less, because of inflation) – but some people prefer it like that. For sure psychologically it's then easier – when the tax is paid by your employer and not by you yourself, you don't feel you're actually paying any taxes 

But what if your employer doesn't deduct that bonus from your tax though he should (like, for the first half a year you earned so much that you were counted as "higher class", not "middle class", but for the remaining half a year you were unemployed)? Your employer pays more tax for you than he should, you're getting less money than you're entitled too, and the overpaid tax would be only returned to you in April next year. So the government effectively loans money from you for, on average, half a year. And you cannot do anything about it (you can't tell your employer to apply that deduction to you even if in the given month you "aren't entitled" to it). 

A similar problem appears if you work for multiple employers. One employer cannot know how much your other employers are paying you – he will apply that deduction or not according to your salary at his company. But what matters for the final amount of tax that has to be paid is the total income from all the employers.

One more issue is with that increase of the tax-free amount. Previously it was almost meaningless, it decreased your monthly tax by about 10 euro. But now it's about 100 euro, so it matters if that tax-free amount would be taken into account by your employer while paying your taxes to the government every month or not. And for that to happen, you have to send a special form to your employer. Many employers give it to the new employees to sign at the moment of actually employing them – but for most people it was years ago and people don't remember if they were signing such a form or not. Not to mention that people usually don't read what they're signing – and from the content of this form it's anyway difficult to understand what it actually means. If you don't have this form sent – you would suddenly start getting 100 euro less of your salary paid every month to your bank account. On the other hand, if you have those signed at all your employees... you would have your tax-free amount deducted multiple times, though actually it works only once.

And...

The government only realized the severity of those issues... after those changes got implemented. After the first people getting their salaries in the beginning of January 2022 noticed they're getting less of a salary than they were getting before. Those were the teachers (as teachers are one of the very few jobs in which you get your salary ahead, at the beginning of your month of work... for normal employees, like private companies, the deadline for that is the 10th day of the next month) – and the most likely reason is that teachers often work for multiple employers (multiple schools) and it's likely that at a single school, such a teacher earns less than the lower threshold that entitles him to that middle class deduction; it can only be applied after summing up the salaries from all the schools, and this only can be done after the year ends, effectively – in April 2023.

So what the government did to address that?

It's even more crazy. They issued an EXECTUTIVE-type legal act (a resolution) through which they ordered that the employees have to have their taxes computed using two methods – BOTH according to the old and to the new rules, and the tax is supposed to be charged using the one of those methods which is more beneficial for the employee. If an employee doesn't like that – he can, again send an application to his employer to ask him not to use those new-new rules, but rather the old-new rules, after the changes, without comparing them with the calculation based on the old-old rules where one had most of one's healthcare contribution deducted from the tax.

The original rules got introduced by a LEGISLATIVE-type legal act (like, an act of law prepared and voted for it by the parliament) – so one can even question the legality of what the government did here, and if one should even follow that, when those new-new rules may even not actually apply in such a weird situation...

But anyway, now accountants have much more work and the tax system is yet, yet more overcomplicated...


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> The Polish government seems to have just switched to it
> 
> Today they ordered remote work for all public administration employees.
> 
> By the way, do you want to know, how successfully the Polish government has just implemented an income tax reform (with the beginning of this month)?
> 
> It's so complex that nobody really understands it, but from what I managed to understand...
> 
> The general idea was to make the poorer part of the society pay less taxes than before and the richest part – pay more taxes than before. And probably also to improve the financing of the public healthcare (though I am not sure about that).
> 
> Till the end of 2021, the income tax system (at least for ordinary employees) was relativy simple. There was the tax-free amount of income (quite low, so that the tax from it was of the order of about 10 euro a month, so nobody really cared about it), a percentage of tax payed by those with lower income (17%) and the percentage payed by those with high income, much above the average (32%). Apart from that, there are several obligatory state insurance contributions (paid by your employee the same way as the tax) – for healthcare, pension and similar things. And you had a selection of tax deduction options, most of those were a form of a social benefit (like, you can deduct some money from the tax for each child; in the past for quite many years it was also possible to deduct the internet bills). Some of those deductions are from the tax itself, some – from the "taxation base", from the value of income used to calculate the tax. Of course it had many various quirks, but it was easy to comprehend. One of those deductions was also the healthcare contribution (or rather its portion, but it was still a huge part).
> 
> In May 2021 the government came out with a proposal of an income tax reform. Its name is difficult to translate in English because it sounds like some communist propaganda – but more or less it translates as "Polish Order" (though some people now prefer to call it "Polish Scam"). The main concept is that the tax-free amount is increased more or less 10 times, the threshold above which you have to pay the higher tax goes up – but the option to deduct the healthcare contribution from the tax disappears.
> 
> But it turned out that for some taxpayers (especially for those with average-higher income), those changes would make them pay more tax then before – and affecting them by those changes wasn't something what the government wanted. So they invented quite a crazy patch for that, named "deduction for the middle class". The amount of this deduction is calculated as a piecewise-linear function of the gross income (a different formula applies up to some amount of income, a different one above it), so that the final tax would more or less match the amount of tax payed before the reform.
> 
> This deduction is supposed to be applied to your tax automatically by your employer. Based on your monthly income. But what finally matters for this deduction is your total income from the whole year.
> 
> So far, so good. It's weird, but after all, we have computers, and it's not even a problem to enter that formula into Excel and have the results ready. But... it works well only in the very simple case, when someone earns the some amount of money every month, working for a single employer, and being a single.
> 
> If you are married, both spouses can pay their income tax separately – but it's also possible to sum up the incomes of both employees, and pay the tax from this sum. This way e.g. if only one of the spouses doesn't work, but the other earns very much, it lowers the chance of hitting the threshold above which you have to pay that very large tax.
> 
> But... nobody knows, how it affects that "deduction for the middle class". Should you take into account the summed up income of both spouses, or of each of them separately? The regulations don't precise it.
> 
> As I said, the calculation would be simple if you earn a constant amount of money that never changes. But what if you get a pay rise in the middle of the year? What if you sometimes work overtime, but the amount of that overtime (and the money paid to you for it) varies strongly from month to month? What if you get bonuses from your employee which you cannot predict? What if you are employed for half a year and then get fired and become unemployed for the next half a year?
> 
> You sometimes don't even know if that middle class deduction would apply to you or not. If your employer deducts it from your tax though you wouldn't finally be entitled to it – it's not a huge issue. You will have to pay that missing tax directly to the tax office with your yearly tax settlement in April next year. In fact, it's like a free credit.
> 
> And if you know that finally this deduction would not apply to you – you can just ask your employer not to apply it to all your monthly salaries. Actually it doesn't make sense (it's better to have that money at your disposal longer – this way you pay the same amount of tax, but in fact what you pay is worth less, because of inflation) – but some people prefer it like that. For sure psychologically it's then easier – when the tax is paid by your employer and not by you yourself, you don't feel you're actually paying any taxes
> 
> But what if your employer doesn't deduct that bonus from your tax though he should (like, for the first half a year you earned so much that you were counted as "higher class", not "middle class", but for the remaining half a year you were unemployed)? Your employer pays more tax for you than he should, you're getting less money than you're entitled too, and the overpaid tax would be only returned to you in April next year. So the government effectively loans money from you for, on average, half a year. And you cannot do anything about it (you can't tell your employer to apply that deduction to you even if in the given month you "aren't entitled" to it).
> 
> A similar problem appears if you work for multiple employers. One employer cannot know how much your other employers are paying you – he will apply that deduction or not according to your salary at his company. But what matters for the final amount of tax that has to be paid is the total income from all the employers.
> 
> One more issue is with that increase of the tax-free amount. Previously it was almost meaningless, it decreased your monthly tax by about 10 euro. But now it's about 100 euro, so it matters if that tax-free amount would be taken into account by your employer while paying your taxes to the government every month or not. And for that to happen, you have to send a special form to your employer. Many employers give it to the new employees to sign at the moment of actually employing them – but for most people it was years ago and people don't remember if they were signing such a form or not. Not to mention that people usually don't read what they're signing – and from the content of this form it's anyway difficult to understand what it actually means. If you don't have this form sent – you would suddenly start getting 100 euro less of your salary paid every month to your bank account. On the other hand, if you have those signed at all your employees... you would have your tax-free amount deducted multiple times, though actually it works only once.
> 
> And...
> 
> The government only realized the severity of those issues... after those changes got implemented. After the first people getting their salaries in the beginning of January 2022 noticed they're getting less of a salary than they were getting before. Those were the teachers (as teachers are one of the very few jobs in which you get your salary ahead, at the beginning of your month of work... for normal employees, like private companies, the deadline for that is the 10th day of the next month) – and the most likely reason is that teachers often work for multiple employers (multiple schools) and it's likely that at a single school, such a teacher earns less than the lower threshold that entitles him to that middle class deduction; it can only be applied after summing up the salaries from all the schools, and this only can be done after the year ends, effectively – in April 2023.
> 
> So what the government did to address that?
> 
> It's even more crazy. They issued an EXECTUTIVE-type legal act (a resolution) through which they ordered that the employees have to have their taxes computed using two methods – BOTH according to the old and to the new rules, and the tax is supposed to be charged using the one of those methods which is more beneficial for the employee. If an employee doesn't like that – he can, again send an application to his employer to ask him not to use those new-new rules, but rather the old-new rules, after the changes, without comparing them with the calculation based on the old-old rules where one had most of one's healthcare contribution deducted from the tax.
> 
> The original rules got introduced by a LEGISLATIVE-type legal act (like, an act of law prepared and voted for it by the parliament) – so one can even question the legality of what the government did here, and if one should even follow that, when those new-new rules may even not actually apply in such a weird situation...
> 
> But anyway, now accountants have much more work and the tax system is yet, yet more overcomplicated...


The whole system is a mess. I'm glad I have nothing to do with Polish tax system, and never had. 

I read some debates on Polish section of the forum and I'm like "WTF?"


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Kpc21 said:


> The Polish government seems to have just switched to it


I noticed that. A scheduled business trip of mine to Poland was just canceled.

In Norway the government is easing almost all restrictions in practice except homeoffice for those who can and phase masks some places. Infections are increasing fast, but hospitalizations are going down. But Norway, and Western Europe in general, is in a different place than Poland when it comes to vaccinations.

Personally I think Putin's nationalism is a much bigger threat than Covid to our well-being right now.


----------



## Stuu

The Wild Boy said:


> I'm not a scientist nor a doctor. But i see many popular and well known people keep saying that Covid "will perish" after this Omicron variant is over.
> 
> What do you think about this, is the likelihood of that true or will this virus end up mutating again and we will have an ongoing pandemic up untill next year (or who knows when)??


It will (and practically is already) endemic in the population much like influenza and colds and all the rest. It won't perish, it will carry on mutating and be an ongoing issue, but similar to flu it will be in the background. There's hundreds of viruses which move around in the population as a whole, lots of which cause people to be ill but don't kill people so don't get the publicity or research

I would have thought that it will continue to be vaccinated against for the elderly and at-risk, with an updated version for latest variants just the same as the flu vaccine is updated every year


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> The Polish government seems to have just switched to it
> 
> Today they ordered remote work for all public administration employees.
> 
> By the way, do you want to know, how successfully the Polish government has just implemented an income tax reform (with the beginning of this month)?
> 
> It's so complex that nobody really understands it, but from what I managed to understand...


There was panic mode in September-October here, now is relatively calm from government. Stats doesn't show hospital surge. Young people will get natural immunity, potentially protecting elderly at least a bit (since many of our elderly live in many cases with other elderly or alone).

Delta wave seem to have been worse, it was huge though flattened to the longer period (from August to early November). Now we just have more immunized people.

We had avoided worse of the alpha wave, but we had less immunized people resulting from it, so it was just around start of July that there were few cases, the rest of summer had some cases (alpha and delta). Areas with poorer immunization (like West Lithuania) seen quite a significant wave.


----------



## geogregor

Dutch are funny 










Dutch museums open as salons to protest COVID rules | DW | 20.01.2022


Famed museums and Amsterdam's concert hall offered haircuts and manicures, as the cultural sector protested lockdown measures that allow shops, hairdressers and gyms to open — but not cultural venues.




www.dw.com







> Museums and concert halls in the Netherlands opened briefly on Wednesday to protest their continued closure.
> 
> Cultural venues, including famous museums and Amsterdam's historic concert hall, offered yoga sessions, haircuts and manicures.
> 
> Last weekend, the Netherlands eased a month-long lockdown, by allowing gyms, hairdressers and shops to reopen. However, cultural venues were ordered to remain closed to the public.
> 
> On Wednesday, authorities handed out enforcement notices to a number of the 70-odd venues that took part in the day-long protest.





> *Haircut with a symphony*
> 
> Some 50 visitors were welcomed to the "Kapsalon Concertgebouw (hairdresser concert hall)" performance, in which people were given haircuts during an orchestra rehearsal at the 130-year-old building.
> 
> "We do not understand and there is no reasoning for it because we have shown over the last two years that it's very, very safe to go to a concert or to go to a museum,'' said Simon Reinink, director of the Concertgebouw.
> 
> "Actually, it's our profession — crowd management. We know how to deal with large crowds. And we've done it in a very, very safe way," Reinink added.
> 
> *'You need a mental gym too'*
> Across the street from the Concertgebouw, a barber cut the hair of 10 visitors and 10 more people got manicures at the Van Gogh Museum.
> 
> "It's definitely a first for us at the Van Gogh Museum," the museum's director, Emilie Gordenker, told the AP news agency.
> 
> "I understand that the government has opened gyms but... you need a mental gym, too, and a museum is a place where people are increasingly coming to find a little depth or reason for their life," Gordenker said.
> 
> "And the theme of mental health is particularly relevant to our museum, obviously, because of Vincent van Gogh's own mental situation,'' she added.


----------



## keber

A splendid weather now in Italian Dolomites, enough snow for skiing on snow pistes but not really white mountains.
Many anti-covid measures are amazingly stupid. For example some (but not all) ski lifts have just 80% capacity open. That often means that gondolas accept 4 instead 6 people and we've seen a family of five (parents and three children) forcefully divided by ski area personnel, because "it's the law just 4 can be in a cabin at time". Or a mainteance worker at ski lift not wearing a mask demanding passing skiers to wear those unbreathable FFP2 mask.
Being myself 3 times vaccinated, I find all those measures even more absurd than jokes in Mel Brooks comedy movies. I hope that this insanity will be over with omikron variant slowly taking end.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The rebellion in the Netherlands against covid-measures is intensifying and the national government and the 'Outbreak Management Team' are losing their authority and control of the narrative. The pressure on the government to ease restrictions has never been this great and widespread. Almost everything is being criticized, including in the mainstream media. The media sentiment has changed substantially, as the media used to closely align with the government restrictions. For the first time ever, there is talk of civil disobedience, even amongst lower governments. 

Mayors saying they will not enforce lockdowns of restaurants, provincial governments issuing statements that things must be relaxed now, the security council saying they cannot justify this lockdown anymore and calling for and end. Even the culture minister says things should reopen now. Traffic congestion is increasing, which shows that the work at home order is being defied more and more. And I've also noticed that the mask mandates are being ignored on a larger scale than before.


----------



## Shenkey

ChrisZwolle said:


> Mayors saying they will not enforce lockdowns of restaurants, provincial governments issuing statements that things must be relaxed now, the security council saying they cannot justify this lockdown anymore and calling for and end. Even the culture minister says things should reopen now. Traffic congestion is increasing, which shows that the work at home order is being defied more and more. And I've also noticed that the mask mandates are being ignored on a larger scale than before.


Good


----------



## CNGL

Meanwhile down here in Spain there have been only few restrictions (they vary by community), perhaps the fewest of Europe. However the most controversial one has been the re-imposition of mandatory mask outdoors at all times, which I decided not to obey due to lack of scientific basis (I still wear mask when in a crowded environment or indoors). So far I haven't been fined, and I don't think the police is doing anything.


----------



## Kpc21

The basis for such a mandate might be such that when it's obligatory to wear masks outdoors, more people wear them indoors. Enforcing this rule outdoors makes no sense, but it has some effect...

I don't like that and I think following such logic is a huge error, but as it works...


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> The basis for such a mandate might be such that when it's obligatory to wear masks outdoors, more people wear them indoors. Enforcing this rule outdoors makes no sense, but it has some effect...
> 
> I don't like that and I think following such logic is a huge error, but as it works...


I heard stories that it doesn't improve anything. If you stick your nose outdoors, then you also likely to stick your nose indoors too. I was sticking nose outdoor due to glass fogging when masks where obligatory, but good mask wearing (no nose sticking out) indoors though and despite fogging.

Due to potential glass fogging (or difficulties making it not to fog), that's the reason why I against masks outdoors.

I understand outdoor masking only where there are crowds of people, I'm against them where there are few to no people, especially in suburban areas of the cities.

---
Sorry to slightly changing the topic, but I think I can grasp how your infection would looked like if you were vaccinated. Maybe as good as just sore throat or sneezing, but if not, I guess your sickness period would be somewhat shorter, not long two weeks, maybe cut to the week followed by typical winter time coughing without fever, idk, you would not say you had worse infection in your lifetime... Though it's impossible to prove alternative reality 

I'm sometimes also trust my gut feeling, but it's also sometimes followed by slight anxiety if I would be wrong


----------



## SeñorGol

From the "Maps and Graphics" thread:


BlueBetta said:


> View attachment 2671444


Edit: Dunno why the picture doesn't show. It's a map about traffic congestion in selected European cities.



CNGL said:


> Meanwhile down here in Spain there have been only few restrictions (they vary by community), perhaps the fewest of Europe. However the most controversial one has been the re-imposition of mandatory mask outdoors at all times, which I decided not to obey due to lack of scientific basis (I still wear mask when in a crowded environment or indoors). So far I haven't been fined, and I don't think the police is doing anything.


Same here, I've come across several police cars at zebra crossings and was never told to put on the mask


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

SeñorGol said:


> Edit: Dunno why the picture doesn't show. It's a map about traffic congestion in selected European cities.


It shows for me  Interesting.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think TomTom's methodology exaggerates traffic congestion for some, but underrepresents it for others.

My city is ranked at TomTom and it often shows 'congestion' which is in reality just a regular waiting line for a traffic light. It's a theoretical delay but it's just a regular baseline because it's almost impossible to get all lights green on a trip. Sometimes TomTom even shows a couple of percent congestion at 2 or 4 a.m. when the roads are practically empty. Nobody perceives this as congestion.

I think that most cities that rank below 20% have virtually no recurring traffic congestion.

However some may be underrepresented. Some cities have a congested expressway network where the speed differential between congested flow and free-flow is much greater than in cities where there are fewer expressways and city streets take on the bulk of traffic, meaning a lower speed differential between congested and uncongested conditions. London is a good example of this, their average uncongested speed is only around 30 km/h, which would be similar to very congested conditions in cities with more motorways (like Paris or the Ruhr).


----------



## x-type

Where does TomTom collect data? External navigation devices are quite outdated thing, it is so 00ish or 10ish. Do they provide naviagtion services to car producers? I have no idea who is actually provider for navigation system in my car, does BMW implement their own system or they use outsourced system. Nevertheless, I still use Google Maps quite often because I can enter exact point of interest (I can enter it to car navigation as well, but it takes too much time).


----------



## kosimodo

^^ Mostly from internal data. In car systems sends anonumously via sim card. Most trucks have such a system. A lot of car manufactures do use the tomtom traffic data. On top of that (vodafone) telefon data. Stunningly accurate. Saved me lots of times.


----------



## Kpc21

x-type said:


> Nevertheless, I still use Google Maps quite often because I can enter exact point of interest


I use it just because Google is likely to have the largest collection of sources of the current congestion data...

And yes, I live in the urban area of the 7th most congested city in Europe...

Underdeveloped road infrastructure + public transport constantly becoming worse and worse...

Several years ago the authorities made a reform of the public system, it became based on the fundamental frequency of departures (of the major tram and bus lines) of 12 minutes, with an assumption that after purchasing more vehicles, it will be changed to 10 minutes.

For the pandemic they changed it to 15 minutes and... never changed back to 12. Now they claim there is no money in the budget for that.

For many years before that, it was so that for the summer holidays the timetables of many tram and bus lines had decreased frequency of departures, peak times (with increased frequency) shorter than normal and so on – and they weren't coming back to the previous situation after the holidays.

Many tram lines in the last few years got suspended for "bad technical condition", but still not renovated and resumed.

At the moment, some streets in the city have so many potholes (not even always marked with traffic cones or anything like that) that it's just dangerous to drive your car on them. It's never been so bad. I remember that something like 10-15 years ago the city was showing that the temporary pothole repairs (by just putting a spot of asphalt into the hole) are indeed temporary – because it's impossible to do it properly in winter conditions – and after winter, they replace it with a correct repair (by cutting out a square of asphalt around the pothole and just lying asphalt in the same place again). So it is done on national roads, so it used to be done in the city. But it's long gone. For the last 10-15 years – the "temporary" repairs of potholes are the only repairs of potholes. The result is... they only get worse and worse, as those temporary repairs don't provide protection from water entering the niche around that spot of asphalt splashed into it and cracking the asphalt while freezing even more.

That 10-15 years ago (actually, it was in 2010), citizens of Lodz revoked the back-then mayor of Lodz in a referendum (though a few years earlier he got elected for his second term). And I fully understood that. The city was neglected, it didn't develop like it should, and the city completely slept through the chances for development related to Poland organizing Euro 2012 (which most major cities used very well for their benefit). And the mayor was spending public money for going for holidays to Israel every so on.

Then, for a moment (as the next elections were just soon to come, so it made no sense to made earlier elections to elect a mayor for just a few months), we had a temporary commissioner assigned by the government – but after that, the current mayor came. And her first term was quite good. She listened a lot to non-governmental organizations dealing with city development, cycling infrastructure improved a lot, they started revitalizing streets in the city center, turning it into walking streets, even adapted and popularized the Dutch word woonerf for that. Imposed unified aesthetic standards for sidewalks and "city furniture" (lampposts, trash cans, bicycle racks...). And started a huge program (still continued) of modernizing city-owned tenement houses in the center (many of them were in bad technical condition, sometimes even had no toilets and running water, and mostly served as social housing for people who could not afford anything better). Even made us a candidate for the organizer and leader of the Expo 2022 (unfortunately, we lost to Buenos Aires, but we were very close to a win) – with the main topic to be city revitalization, as indeed Łódź (thanks to her rule) was and still is a leader in this topic.

At the same time, the condition of roads got slightly worse, but it wasn't really noticeable. And indeed we already were very high in the TomTom's congestion rankings, but the major east-west road in the city was being modernized (and some other important streets closed because of the construction of an underground central train station), so moving around the city just had to be impacted and it was unavoidable. This modernization was mainly to improve the public transport, in the very center, a multi-platform interchange tram stop between two major lines (north-south and east-west) was built. It's good, works well, and it's also very good aesthetically (interestingly, because of the appearance of its roof with many bright colors, it got a weird nickname – unicorns' stable... and it got so popular that, a few years later, a unicorn sculpture was placed next to it).

Meanwhile, what else happened thanks to her rule, was changing the mindset of the actual citizens of Lodz. Previously, most people living here considered Lodz a dirty, industrial city with nothing interesting and nothing to do. With a successful propaganda campaign with the slogan "Kocham Łódź" ("I love Lodz") they indeed managed to do it, and many people changed their approach to the city, starting noticing its beauty and positive features.

So she got elected for the second term. But then... something got wrong. Yes, the city center revitalization program continued (it still continues), same with the positive mindset of the majority of citizens about the city, but... apart from that, the city went again into some kind of stagnation. Nothing big, nothing spectacular any more. The urban-oriented NGOs got forgotten, e.g. the city no longer listens to those who are trying to promote cycling as a form of transportation within the city, about the cycling infrastructure – and again it started building pointless cycling lanes. The condition of roads got visibly worse, and a big failure was the public transport reform I mentioned before. It was prepared in cooperation with public transport oriented NGOs – and on paper everything seemed perfect. New routes, new areas which had no public transport getting the services, new standards regarding information for passengers, new convenient interchange stops.

The problem was... most of those plans never got realized. Many of the areas planned to get new bus services didn't get them. In some cases... the locals protested, they didn't want buses, afraid of the noise, or actually, which is more likely, afraid of that some parking spots would have to disappear to enable the bus to pass, and you probably know how precious parking spots can be in commie block districts. In some others – it turned out the technical parameters of the roads did not allow buses to pass (and we only learned that at the last moment, just before the deployment of the reform). Or... the city promised that they will route a bus line through the given street once they buy more small buses. They bought them, they even put them on the line which was supposed to be re-routed through there, but the bus never got re-routed... As people from the city hall claim, because of the lack of room for bus stops. Information for passengers? Most of that was just to show off. They made a press conference promising big posters with the route of the given line with the important objects and transfer options along it... and it was only done at this one stop where the press conference was held. Indeed they improved the signage of tram and bus stops and introduced common visual standards, but... the actual quality remains the same as before or it's even worse. Just recently, at a bus stop, I found a diagram of route changes due to some works on streets... and it was good I knew the actual current changes after starting some other works, because this diagram was long out of date. And it's common everywhere around the city. They don't even manage to keep the main diagram of tram and bus routes, available to download from the city website, updated on time...

Almost the only what was done was changing routes of some tram and bus lines (mostly bus ones, as trams underwent a big reform with the end of 2000 and beginning of 2001 – which reduced the number of tram routes, but made them go more frequently – now it was only slightly modified). And it didn't bring much benefit (sometimes indeed, but was it worth it?) and simultaneously caused much confusion among the passengers.

Regardless, she was elected for her third term in 2018. In which most noticeable was the ridiculous degradation of the roads condition and the public transport, as I described in the beginning 

Now, in 2022, we will have the next elections and... she is likely to win again. Because she represents the party which is the main competitor of PiS, and in the city with probably the most progressive society in the country – nobody wants a conservative candidate to become the mayor.

Where politics enters, the logic ends...


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> Now, in 2022, we will have the next elections and... she is likely to win again. Because she represents the party which is the main competitor of PiS, and in the *city with probably the most progressive society in the country* – nobody wants a conservative candidate to become the mayor.


Now, that is quite a claim. I'm not that familiar with Lodz (been there once, changing trains in the 90s) but I would argue that citizens of other big cities in Poland (Warsaw, Wroclaw, Gdansk, Poznan etc.) would question your assumption.

Also, with all the criticism of local governments (plenty of that in Wroclaw too), it is worth remembering that funding becomes ever tighter as central government is trying to squeeze local governments (especially in big cities) but not funding them properly. So the central government should in theory fund education but it is never enough so local governments use their own resources to top it up. There is less left for patching the proverbial potholes.

In general right wing parties don't like big cities and always try to "punish" them for "voting wrong". The same is happening in the UK where Tory government tries its best to kick London hard to appease their own provincial base. Never mind that in the long term it is going to hurt the whole country as London big tax surplus was traditionally funding a lot of services elsewhere.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

257 mayors in the Netherlands (out of 352) have supported a statement in a newspaper to fundamentally rethink the coronavirus restrictions. They say the current policy has exhausted police and municipal enforcement and it creates a system of repression by the government against its citizens.

There is also increasing criticism towards the National Institute for Public Health for their continued use of the delta variant for its model projections. The delta variant has almost entirely been replaced by omicron in the Netherlands, so these models use data that is not relevant anymore. However this model output has been used to justify the lockdown and extensions of it, even though hospitalizations and pressure on the health system is way down.

Tomorrow there is another press conference where they will announce easing of restrictions. It seems that restaurants and cultural venues may reopen. I have already purchased tickets for a concert in two weeks. However it seems very unlikely that the Dutch government will follow the easing of restrictions as seen in Ireland or the UK.


----------



## Slagathor

I bought tickets to a comedy show in late March, even that seemed dicey.


----------



## radamfi

radamfi said:


> There are also rumours that all testing requirements for international travellers will be scrapped, leaving only the passenger locator form to be completed. That would be the first time in well over a year that you can travel abroad from the UK (except Ireland) without a test on your return.


That rumour turned out to be true, at least for vaccinated travellers, from 11 February. They say the passenger location form is going to be made more simple as well.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Also, with all the criticism of local governments (plenty of that in Wroclaw too), it is worth remembering that funding becomes ever tighter as central government is trying to squeeze local governments (especially in big cities) but not funding them properly. So the central government should in theory fund education but it is never enough so local governments use their own resources to top it up. There is less left for patching the proverbial potholes.


This is true, but still, other cities manage to maintain their fundamental infrastructure in those conditions...



geogregor said:


> Now, that is quite a claim. I'm not that familiar with Lodz (been there once, changing trains in the 90s) but I would argue that citizens of other big cities in Poland (Warsaw, Wroclaw, Gdansk, Poznan etc.) would question your assumption.


Maybe – though Łódź is often called "political PO bastion", it's Łódź that used to host the techno parade in the early 2000s...


----------



## x-type

Today the organizors of collecting votes for referendum to abolish covid passes in Croatia have submitted the lists to the government. If they did this, that means for sure that they have enough valid signatures, and referendum will for sure have positive result about abolishing the passes. If the government will be clever enough, they will abolish it withous spending money on referendum with an excuse that some European countries (Ireland, UK) have abolished them already.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

ChrisZwolle said:


> Tomorrow there is another press conference where they will announce easing of restrictions. It seems that restaurants and cultural venues may reopen. I have already purchased tickets for a concert in two weeks.


The press conference was held this evening. They are reopening pretty much anything, though still with reduced capacity. This means my concert will not be canceled. 

There was tremendous pressure on the government to reopen society, despite daily case numbers being by far the highest ever. This week they will also start collecting data on hospitalizations which are not due to covid, but coincidentally with covid, to get a better picture how bad or not bad Omicron is right now.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The weather in the Netherlands has been like this for almost two weeks now, only Thursday afternoon had an hour or two with sunshine... It's one of the least sunny January months on record so far.

This wind farm was not generating much electricity...


Windpark Urk by European Roads, on Flickr


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> The weather in the Netherlands has been like this for almost two weeks now, only Thursday afternoon had an hour or two with sunshine... It's one of the least sunny January months on record so far.
> 
> This wind farm was not generating much electricity...
> 
> 
> Windpark Urk by European Roads, on Flickr


Interestingly east coast of England looks quite sunny:










Unfortunately London feels quite gloomy in the last few days.

From positive news, I'm finally finishing my 10 days of self-isolation. I was hoping for it too be shorter but I kept getting positive tests results. In fact today's test was still a bit positive. But the rules are that after 10 days I can stop testing and be free again. I still feel a bit of annoying cold but I'm so bored at home that I'm going to work tomorrow. I need a change of scenery.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Temelín Nuclear Power Plant in Czechia.


----------



## Slagathor

Kpc21 said:


> Wouldn't asking the passenger to drink some of the water from the bottle during the security check be a sufficient proof that it's actually water and not an explosive?


No, double layered bottles are an old trick.


----------



## Attus

bogdymol said:


> Austrians are very strict with covid and travel. At Vienna airport they made an additional checkpoint right before the baggage reclaim area, where they check your covid pass, or take your details and put you in mandatory quarantine if you do not qualify for an exception. The checkpoint is placed in such a way that all arrival passengers have to pass through it, without exception. You cannot cheat it.


For me it's OK, even if it doesn't make much sense. 
What I absolutely deny is being tested at the arrival by the local authorities.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> In Berlin, I did not see anyone in the audience without a mask, and they are all FFP2.


Germany & Austria seem to have an obsession with FFP2 masks. In theory they should work better than regular surgical masks, though real world epidemic curve show that they do not make much of a difference. Austria had the highest infection rate during the late 2021 Delta wave in Europe. Germany has almost a million new cases per week despite everyone seemingly obeying the regulations.

Which do you think is the last country in Europe to do away with masks and vaccine passports? Some countries are already scrapping them, but I think others will keep them for some time. In case of France, Macron has said he wants to make unvaccinated people's life miserable, so I doubt if he will backtrack by ending the usage of vaccination / health passes, even though real-world data show that they are completely ineffective.


----------



## radamfi

France, Germany and Austria seem to be good candidates for the last to scrap them. I'm looking into booking a trip in mainland Europe somewhere after 11 February (when testing requirements are dropped for vaccinated people). Some countries still want visitors from the UK to take a test before arrival, including the Netherlands and France, meaning that road trips are still not possible without a test, or very long ferry ride. Germany doesn't require a test but I don't want to wear a FFP2 mask the whole time.


----------



## SeanT

This is kind of odd here in Denmark. We have about 50 000+ Covid "patients" / Day and from the 1/2 everything nearly minor stuff will be free of Corona! I have all vaccinations but I do understand people which are sceptical. One day it is all forbidden, next day everything is open! Come on! This is nothing to do with a virus. This is a political desission.


----------



## PovilD

SeanT said:


> This is kind of odd here in Denmark. We have about 50 000+ Covid "patients" / Day and from the 1/2 everything nearly minor stuff will be free of Corona! I have all vaccinations but I do understand people which are sceptical. One day it is all forbidden, next day everything is open! Come on! This is nothing to do with a virus. This is a political desission.


We have one virus, though constantly changing through evolution.

There are interest groups, and they rarely change opinions.

From optimistic people who think this is already over, or even nothing have happened in the first place, to really pessimistic people, seeing how evolution makes vaccines not working, how virus harms, and they also wait for theoretical monster variant "to kill us all".

For me, most notable "pessimistic" is Eric Feigl-Ding. Take a look at his Twitter. We are in Doomsday event according to him. I don't say he's right or wrong, just the feeling I get from his messaging.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PovilD said:


> For me, most notable "pessimistic" is Eric Feigl-Ding. Take a look at his Twitter. We are in Doomsday event according to him.


I would avoid Twitter for political / policy debates. It's a dumpster fire. Radicalization is easy on Twitter, with people being fed a non-stop feed of outrage news and messaging. It's easy to get into a bubble. Twitter is a source of activism and extremism which doesn't reflect the real world. Only a small percentage of the population is an active Twitter user but these are heavily biased to the extremes / outspoken side of things. 

Twitter can be a good tool to get real-time information about events. But it's a tricky platform.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> I would avoid Twitter for political / policy debates. It's a dumpster fire. Radicalization is easy on Twitter, with people being fed a non-stop feed of outrage news and messaging. It's easy to get into a bubble. Twitter is a source of activism and extremism which doesn't reflect the real world. Only a small percentage of the population is an active Twitter user but these are heavily biased to the extremes / outspoken side of things.
> 
> Twitter can be a good tool to get real-time information about events. But it's a tricky platform.


It's good site for science reviews. I don't find, e.g. Tom Peacock from UK depressing, at least right now. There are multiple shades, there are good news, there are sometimes bad news, but it's not looking like doomsday event. There could be BA.2 reinfections after BA.1, but more likely it won't be mass reinfections, we will see, but not scare s***t how it could be, and how we should avoid, yata yata...


----------



## PovilD

Tbh, I really want to talk with someone wise around zero covid proponents.
They have strong arguments, but these are mostly theoretical ones, and there are always trade offs everywhere in life.
Eradicating covid would mean that all life 24/7 should be around thinking about covid, but life is not just covid. Life is not ideal, is rather chaotic thing. It's natural thing. That's why totalitarianism fails in the long run. It's not clear if China is on the good tracks right now, unless they are 1000 IQ smart, but idk.


----------



## Attus

Zero Covid does obviously not make any sense since Omicron is the ruling variant. One year ago, with Alpha, it was disputable, but with Omicron no more.


----------



## Attus

SeanT said:


> This is nothing to do with a virus. This is a political desission.


It's obviously a political decision, but it does not automatically mean that it has nothing to do with the virus. On the contrary. 
Of course, no one thinks, Covid is very dangerous tomorrow, and not dangerous at all on Tuesday. A delay of a few days helps people to be prepared for the changes. But the fact that this changes happen at all, is a logical consequence of Omicron _and _very high vaccination rates.


----------



## x-type

Does anyone know is Astra Zeneca officialy available as a third dose vaccine?


----------



## Fatfield

x-type said:


> Does anyone know is Astra Zeneca officialy available as a third dose vaccine?


Moderna & Pfizer are mainly being used as the booster in the UK. AZ might be being used but I've not heard of anyone getting it as a booster. I had AZ, AZ & Mo for my three jabs.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Twitter can be a good tool to get real-time information about events. But it's a tricky platform.


Twitter can be good when you follow the right organizations. I use it mostly to get updates about various infrastructure projects, for example HS2, Crossrail etc. I follow quite a few construction companies, airports, railway companies, urban photographers, transport enthusiasts etc. 

I absolutely agree that one should stay away from politics on Twitter, for the sake of sanity.


----------



## Kpc21

Fatfield said:


> Moderna & Pfizer are mainly being used as the booster in the UK. AZ might be being used but I've not heard of anyone getting it as a booster. I had AZ, AZ & Mo for my three jabs.


Poland, similarly, only uses Pfizer and Moderna as the third dose.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

radamfi said:


> France, Germany and Austria seem to be good candidates for the last to scrap them. I'm looking into booking a trip in mainland Europe somewhere after 11 February (when testing requirements are dropped for vaccinated people). Some countries still want visitors from the UK to take a test before arrival, including the Netherlands and France, meaning that road trips are still not possible without a test, or very long ferry ride. Germany doesn't require a test but I don't want to wear a FFP2 mask the whole time.


I would quite like to go away for February half term, and I don't suppose I risk as much booking now as I now have covid and while re-infection is possible I'm guessing it won't happen in the two weeks after I'm out of isolaiton. 
Under normal circumstances I would probaly drive to France but I am not sure I can be bothered with the requirements.
Do you know if we need an international driving licence to drive in the EU now?

Have you decided on somewhere you might go?


----------



## radamfi

DanielFigFoz said:


> I would quite like to go away for February half term, and I don't suppose I risk as much booking now as I now have covid and while re-infection is possible I'm guessing it won't happen in the two weeks after I'm out of isolaiton.
> Under normal circumstances I would probaly drive to France but I am not sure I can be bothered with the requirements.
> Do you know if we need an international driving licence to drive in the EU now?
> 
> Have you decided on somewhere you might go?


The photocard licence is still valid in the EU. Some countries require you to get an IDP if you still have a paper driving licence.

(Yes, some British driving licences don't have a photo!)

For a while, car insurance required a green card but thanks to lobbying from Ireland that is no longer required.

I'm thinking about flying to Zurich.


----------



## geogregor

MP steps in human poo in layby on Brexit trip to Kent


An MP on a trip to Kent experienced the traffic difficulties post Brexit first-hand when he stepped in human poo in a layby.




www.kentonline.co.uk







> It's a tough life being an MP. At least it was for the chairman of the Select Committee on Transport, Huw Merriman.
> 
> On what is referred to as a fact-finding mission to assess the lack of parking provision for lorries in Kent, the minibus in which MPs were travelling pulled into a lay-by.
> 
> *As he stepped off the minibus he found what he thought to be terra firma but was actually human excrement.*
> 
> Oh well, at least he can claim to have first-hand knowledge of the problems associated with the lack of proper parks for hauliers.
> 
> Dover TAP has been deployed 13 times this month after new Brexit regulations came in, leading to queues that could be seen from space.


But on a serious note, I really feel sorry for truckers caught in the whole Brexit mess....


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The freedom convoy in Canada has also inspired spontaneous protests in the Netherlands. Several provinces report freedom convoys. Most don't seem very organized though, they pop up and grow during their trip.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

radamfi said:


> The photocard licence is still valid in the EU. Some countries require you to get an IDP if you still have a paper driving licence.
> 
> (Yes, some British driving licences don't have a photo!)
> 
> For a while, car insurance required a green card but thanks to lobbying from Ireland that is no longer required.
> 
> I'm thinking about flying to Zurich.


No problem there then. Yes, I went to order a green card from Admiral but the button had dissappeared and I saw it was no longer necessary .



geogregor said:


> But on a serious note, I really feel sorry for truckers caught in the whole Brexit mess....


Yeah absolutely. As ever it's not the people who got us into this mess that have to lay in it.

That MP's little misstep has reminded me of this clip.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> I'm thinking about flying to Zurich.












There has been a lot of media talk about 'flight shame' in the Netherlands. According to journalists, many people are ashamed because they fly and want to travel by international train.

Of course, real-world data shows a different picture. The number of flights from 2010 to 2019 has skyrocketed.

Schiphol Airport:









Billions of passenger kilometers by air from the Netherlands









And now a report shows that only 1-2% of travelers purchase a supplement to their ticket which would compensate the CO2 emissions from their flight.

I'm not much of a flyer myself though, I prefer to travel across Europe by car.


----------



## Slagathor

I love train travel but honestly, traveling across borders in Europe remains a pain in the neck.

The first place to start would be a single website/app for booking tickets. Right now booking a ticket feels like a combination of a maze and the Amazon jungle.

Secondly, we need better pricing. Italy leads the way here. If you want to take a high speed train from Rome to Milan, you can decide to travel when you're having breakfast and just go to the station and buy a ticket for that same day. No problem. That doesn't compare well to the Thalys or the Eurostar which have an airline-style pricing system: either you buy a ticket weeks in advance or you pay 5 times the price. There's no spontaneity possible.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Hard to disagree with that. Getting a sleeper train is high up my travelling wishlist though. Would love to travel to Portugal buy train but I'm not sure the night train to Lisbon from Hendaye has survived covid.


I cancelled my electric car order today, I still really want one but the dealership seemed quite keen to cancel and couldn't guarantee at all really when it would have come. Got some other things I can prioritise first so going to work on those for now.


----------



## Suburbanist

Slagathor said:


> I love train travel but honestly, traveling across borders in Europe remains a pain in the neck.
> 
> The first place to start would be a single website/app for booking tickets. Right now booking a ticket feels like a combination of a maze and the Amazon jungle.
> 
> Secondly, we need better pricing. Italy leads the way here. If you want to take a high speed train from Rome to Milan, you can decide to travel when you're having breakfast and just go to the station and buy a ticket for that same day. No problem. That doesn't compare well to the Thalys or the Eurostar which have an airline-style pricing system: either you buy a ticket weeks in advance or you pay 5 times the price. There's no spontaneity possible.


Italian trains also have dynamic pricing, it is just that the overall pricing levels are lower.

Thalys can be expensive, I once quote a next-morning Thalys fare Rotterdam - Paris and it was >€ 170. But Thalys trains are often full.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> There has been a lot of media talk about 'flight shame' in the Netherlands. According to journalists, many people are ashamed because they fly and want to travel by international train.
> 
> Of course, real-world data shows a different picture. The number of flights from 2010 to 2019 has skyrocketed.
> 
> Schiphol Airport:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Billions of passenger kilometers by air from the Netherlands
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And now a report shows that only 1-2% of travelers purchase a supplement to their ticket which would compensate the CO2 emissions from their flight.
> 
> I'm not much of a flyer myself though, I prefer to travel across Europe by car.


LOL. I like international trains but flying can be so cheap and convenient, especially when you live 5 km from a major airport. At the moment, flying means I can avoid paying for Covid testing. Obviously flying has much more of an advantage when you live on an island. If I lived in the Netherlands I probably wouldn't fly very much. Ironically, I hardly used to fly before Eurostar opened. Flights were expensive then and train tickets were flexible. You could buy a train ticket from London to Amsterdam or Paris on the day of travel at a reasonable price. OK, it took longer because you had to get a ferry but ferries were very frequent. There were several ferries per hour between Dover and Calais and ferries to Oostende were about every hour, which was convenient for the south of the Netherlands. Ferries still exist but they removed the cheap combined train/ferry tickets and the train no longer stops near the ports at Dover and Calais. There is no longer a ferry service to Oostende. 

I sometimes use overnight coaches that use the Channel Tunnel, as they are cheap and time efficient as you sleep on the coach. The Flixbus service from London to Eindhoven was particularly cheap pre-Covid even booking a few days before travel.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> Thalys can be expensive, I once quote a next-morning Thalys fare Rotterdam - Paris and it was >€ 170.


Driving cost less than half that, and the cost stays the same whether you travel with 1, 2 or 4 persons...

Depending on origin and destination, travel time by car may be less than an hour longer than by high-speed rail. 4h30m to drive, 2h45m station to station, could be 3h45m or more if destination and origin are not close to a high-speed rail station. 4 out of 10 Thalys' are canceled today.


----------



## radamfi

I hardly use Thalys for the same reason why I hardly use Eurostar. But there is still a cheap and flexible alternative to Thalys. It can be worthwhile to split the journey into several tickets, taking advantage of cheaper domestic Belgian and Dutch tickets with a ticket between Antwerpen and Breda to join them up.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm not much of a flyer myself though, I prefer to travel across Europe by car.


Not really good option for us islanders, we still have to go through the hassle of booking (and paying for) ferry or the "chunnel" shuttle.

And then we have cars with steering wheel on the "wrong" side  Seriously I can't imagine driving the UK car in the continent (or vice versa). It might be fine on a motorway but otherwise it must be a pain.

BTW, below why I often avoid smaller local car rental agencies and stick to big players, even if more expensive:






It doesn't matter if it is Canada, USA, Spain or anywhere else.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm not much of a flyer myself though, I prefer to travel across Europe by car.


I have no time for that. I either fly or stay home in many cases. 
For example I'll visit my mother ths weekend. It's 6-7 hours door-to-door by flying and 12-14 hours by driving. The difference doesn't seem to be dramatical, but it can decide whether it's possible in a weekend or it is not.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Some maritime action on the North Sea today.

Bulk carrier Julietta D was anchored off the coast of IJmuiden, but broke loose and hit a chemical tanker called Pechora Star. The Julietta D suffered water intake in the engine room and her crew was evacuated by helicopter. The ship then drifted south through an offshore windfarm, apparently hitting a large transformer platform, but damage is unknown. The ship has now drifted about 50 kilometers south, due to the strong wind associated with 'Storm Corrie'.


----------



## geogregor

Attus said:


> I have no time for that. I either fly or stay home in many cases.
> For example I'll visit my mother ths weekend. It's 6-7 hours door-to-door by flying and 12-14 hours by driving. The difference doesn't seem to be dramatical, but it can decide whether it's possible in a weekend or it is not.


Same with me. I've done door to door trips in just under 6 hours (when things work well, normally it is a bit more), I can't imagine I could drive in less than 17-18 hours. Even when going for a week it is a waste of time. And money. I regularly fly for £50-70 (one way).

I can see advantage of driving for Chris. He is going for a road trips, he owns a car, he is already based in well connected country and, most importantly, he is mad about roads


----------



## radamfi

It hasn't even been possible to travel as a foot passenger on the Dover to Calais ferry since the pandemic started, but foot passenger service will resume on Friday





__





Travelling as a foot passenger | Dover to Calais | P&O Ferries


Find out all you need to know about travelling as a foot passenger on our Dover to Calais route!



www.poferries.com





Unfortunately it is just five services a day. I think it is appalling that you cannot travel on Eurotunnel as a foot passenger. For about a year (around 1998) there was a frequent coach service from Ashford to Calais, run by Connex, who used to operate the South Eastern franchise, which was a good alternative to ferries. Obviously an international local train would be the most useful.

You can take your bike on all Dover to Calais and Dover to Dunkerque ferry crossings, as long as you ride the bike onto the ferry yourself. It is cheaper than the foot passenger fare as well. So you could just park it in Calais if you don't actually want to take it on your trip. They even have a bike service on Eurotunnel but it is only once a day.









Cycle to the Continent with Eurotunnel Le Shuttle – Eurotunnel Le Shuttle


Eurotunnel Le Shuttle offers a pick-up and drop-off service that enables you to take your bicycle to France without a vehicle. Find out more here.




www.eurotunnel.com


----------



## Suburbanist

Aren't there Eurostar trains that stop at Pas-de-Calais?


----------



## radamfi

Suburbanist said:


> Aren't there Eurostar trains that stop at Pas-de-Calais?


This was the summer 2019 timetable. No service from Ashford to Calais, two services a day from Ebbsfleet to Calais and three services a day from London to Calais. However, the fares on this service were same or little different than from London to Lille, so too expensive unless you book well in advance.

Eurostar trains are not currently stopping at Ebbsfleet, Ashford or Calais.













https://parisbytrain.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/eurostar_timetable_2019.pdf


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> And then we have cars with steering wheel on the "wrong" side  Seriously I can't imagine driving the UK car in the continent (or vice versa). It might be fine on a motorway but otherwise it must be a pain.


It's a pain, even on the motorway as you have to rely on the passenger paying attention when overtaking etc. Car parks and toll booths are obviously all wrong too. But then I guess you have to pay much more attention and be more cautious so maybe it's not actually any worse, statistically

When I was young we did a lot of family holidays where everything was loaded into the car and then spent 3 days driving to the south of France or something. That's all too much of a ball ache for me though, flying and hiring a car is barely any more expensive because of the price of the ferries - from where I live they are crazy expensive to Brittany/Normandy, or you have to drive all the way to Dover by which time you would be landing anywhere in Europe on a cheapish flight


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I don't mind it apart from overtaking on single carriageways, but yes it's only worth it for those of us that really enjoy the driving as part of the trip. Probably not as fun with a car full of people either.


----------



## CNGL

Dynamic pricing is also used in Spain. In fact it has already caused me to travel in first class instead of tourist class once because the ticket was actually cheaper! (Okay, it was only €1.00 cheaper, but still)


----------



## Rebasepoiss

CNGL said:


> Dynamic pricing is also used in Spain. In fact it has already caused me to travel in first class instead of tourist class once because the ticket was actually cheaper! (Okay, it was only €1.00 cheaper, but still)


Whenever I've watched videos of high-speed train journeys in Spain the trains seem to be mostly empty.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Rebasepoiss said:


> Whenever I've watched videos of high-speed train journeys in Spain the trains seem to be mostly empty.


The frequency on some lines is relatively low too. Especially because they apparently also replaced almost all intercity services in corridors with a high-speed rail.


----------



## geogregor

DanielFigFoz said:


> I don't mind it apart from overtaking on single carriageways, but yes it's only worth it for those of us that really enjoy the driving as part of the trip.


I do enjoy driving as part of a trip. But I wouldn't suffer in a car unsuitable for enjoyable driving.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Every single truck driver that crosses international border must mandatorily stop at the first rest area, and manually change the country code in the tachograph. This starts today.

This is part of the EU Mobility Package that aims to enhance cabotage rules, i.e. rules about drivers from country A doing domestic hauls in country B. Cabotage is a way to protect the domestic market from undercutting by foreign drivers from lower wage countries. However it has several disadvantages, such as more empty kilometers driven, the supply chain is less efficient than it could be. 

But this new rule means that the first rest area after a border could become overwhelmed with every single truck stopping there to change the country code. New trucks from August 2023 must have an intelligent tachograph which records this automatically, with existing trucks by 2026, so this phenomenon of all trucks exiting at the first rest area would last for 4 years at maximum.









Registering border crossings via tachograph is mandatory from tomorrow. Here’s how it’s done


The reason for the new obligation for drivers is to enable effective control of the provisions related to posted drivers and cabotage. The rules apply from tom...




trans.info






EU Cabotage rules are relatively lax compared to some other areas. For example in North America, no cabotage is allowed at all. A Canadian truck driver can only deliver into the U.S. and pick up a load that returns to Canada. Canadian truck drivers cannot pick up and deliver within the United States. From what I've seen this leads to large inefficiencies in logistics, with trucks driving for up to 1,000 kilometers empty to find a load going back to Canada.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Every single truck driver that crosses international border must mandatorily stop at the first rest area, and manually change the country code in the tachograph. This starts today.
> 
> This is part of the EU Mobility Package that aims to enhance cabotage rules, i.e. rules about drivers from country A doing domestic hauls in country B. Cabotage is a way to protect the domestic market from undercutting by foreign drivers from lower wage countries. However it has several disadvantages, such as more empty kilometers driven, the supply chain is less efficient than it could be.
> 
> But this new rule means that the first rest area after a border could become overwhelmed with every single truck stopping there to change the country code. New trucks from August 2023 must have an intelligent tachograph which records this automatically, with existing trucks by 2026, so this phenomenon of all trucks exiting at the first rest area would last for 4 years at maximum.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Registering border crossings via tachograph is mandatory from tomorrow. Here’s how it’s done
> 
> 
> The reason for the new obligation for drivers is to enable effective control of the provisions related to posted drivers and cabotage. The rules apply from tom...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> trans.info
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> EU Cabotage rules are relatively lax compared to some other areas. For example in North America, no cabotage is allowed at all. A Canadian truck driver can only deliver into the U.S. and pick up a load that returns to Canada. Canadian truck drivers cannot pick up and deliver within the United States. From what I've seen this leads to large inefficiencies in logistics, with trucks driving for up to 1,000 kilometers empty to find a load going back to Canada.


I think the main issue is that Canada truckers get paid far more than Americans (and have better protections), who in turn earn 10x more than Mexican truckers, in the context of NAFTA.

It would be hard for the US to allowed Mexican truckers and, if they did, they would instantly create a market whereby truckers from Mexico, living in the relatively spacious cabins of American trucks, would quickly dominate the market earning just some 40 or 50% of net compensation of American ones (which would still make them much better than driving in Mexico).

It is a similar scenario on how OTR long-distance trucking in Europe has all but eliminated any drivers from richer EU countries. It is impossible to compete with salaries from Latvia, Romania, and even Portugal.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Every single truck driver that crosses international border must mandatorily stop at the first rest area, and manually change the country code in the tachograph. This starts today.
> 
> This is part of the EU Mobility Package that aims to enhance cabotage rules, i.e. rules about drivers from country A doing domestic hauls in country B. Cabotage is a way to protect the domestic market from undercutting by foreign drivers from lower wage countries. However it has several disadvantages, such as more empty kilometers driven, the supply chain is less efficient than it could be.
> 
> But this new rule means that the first rest area after a border could become overwhelmed with every single truck stopping there to change the country code. New trucks from August 2023 must have an intelligent tachograph which records this automatically, with existing trucks by 2026, so this phenomenon of all trucks exiting at the first rest area would last for 4 years at maximum.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Registering border crossings via tachograph is mandatory from tomorrow. Here’s how it’s done
> 
> 
> The reason for the new obligation for drivers is to enable effective control of the provisions related to posted drivers and cabotage. The rules apply from tom...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> trans.info
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> EU Cabotage rules are relatively lax compared to some other areas. For example in North America, no cabotage is allowed at all. A Canadian truck driver can only deliver into the U.S. and pick up a load that returns to Canada. Canadian truck drivers cannot pick up and deliver within the United States. From what I've seen this leads to large inefficiencies in logistics, with trucks driving for up to 1,000 kilometers empty to find a load going back to Canada.


But cabotage within EU members is not forbidden for EU registered lorries, isn't it so? For instance, PL regostered lorry may take the transport from Hamburg to Frankfurt. 
And cabotage has been highly forbidden for extra-EU lorries sooner, I don't think that many companies played with it. Or did they?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Cabotage is not banned in the EU, but it is regulated. Foreign drivers / carriers can only do a few number of successive cabotage trips. This new regulation includes a 'cool down period', to avoid drivers going over the border for a few hours before restarting a string of cabotage trips.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Inflation is becoming an increasingly visible problem in the Netherlands. Data was released, which showed that the January year-on-year inflation was 7.6%. This is the highest in 40 years. Energy and fuel is a main driver of inflation, but supermarket prices are rising too, as well as commodity prices. 

Inflation, were were told, was supposed to be transitory once societies reopened. But it's persistent and it's not clear if this is the peak or not.


----------



## radamfi

I bought a new calculator today. Here is the back of it, with the instruction booklet underneath so you can see better. The CE mark is no longer good enough. We have to have a UKCA mark as well.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Inflation is becoming an increasingly visible problem in the Netherlands. Data was released, which showed that the January year-on-year inflation was 7.6%. This is the highest in 40 years. Energy and fuel is a main driver of inflation, but supermarket prices are rising too, as well as commodity prices.
> 
> Inflation, were were told, was supposed to be transitory once societies reopened. But it's persistent and it's not clear if this is the peak or not.


What I heard. At first it was (post-)pandemic rebound, now is mostly due to geopolitical issues. West reliant on Russian oil/gas and stuff.

In my opinion, Russia don't want war, current situation is beneficial enough, oil prices are high, nobody wants to go or invest in Ukraine because of war fears, everybody go by Putin telling him not to start war...

For me, what is sh*tiest are petrol prices. These were down to €0.80 at one point in 2020, but now is almost €1.50 per liter here. It doesn't seem these will go down, at least until spring at best.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Inflation is becoming an increasingly visible problem in the Netherlands. Data was released, which showed that the January year-on-year inflation was 7.6%. This is the highest in 40 years. Energy and fuel is a main driver of inflation, but supermarket prices are rising too, as well as commodity prices.
> 
> Inflation, were were told, was supposed to be transitory once societies reopened. But it's persistent and it's not clear if this is the peak or not.


Transitory in this case means something like 18 - 24 months. Certain supply chains are still disrupted given the draconian measures in China. And now commodities (agricultural and mineral) are on a boom price cycle again.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Cabotage is not banned in the EU, but it is regulated. Foreign drivers / carriers can only do a few number of successive cabotage trips. This new regulation includes a 'cool down period', to avoid drivers going over the border for a few hours before restarting a string of cabotage trips.


Makes sense. 
I am organizing transportation from Matera (I) to our factory in Gradiška (BIH) next week: i have such load each month or two. Finding a lorry to load so far in the south of Italy without cabotage, or without paying empty kilometers is impossible.


----------



## bogdymol

x-type said:


> Makes sense.
> I am organizing transportation from Matera (I) to our factory in Gradiška (BIH) next week: i have such load each month or two. Finding a lorry to load so far in the south of Italy without cabotage, or without paying empty kilometers is impossible.


I also need to organize lorries to transport stuff between Austria and UK or Ireland. From Austria to UK/Ireland it's relatively easy to find one, although the price is high, as the lorry companies don't find enough stuff to carry back from UK/Ireland to Europe, so most of the times the lorries simply drive empty back to Europe.

From UK or Ireland to Europe transport is cheap, as the lorry companies would rather take any load than driving back empty.

Also, for the routes mentioned above in 99% of the cases the lorry is from Eastern Europe (Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland etc.), although it is always ordered through an Austrian company (who in turn is subcontracting the transport to a cheaper company).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

bogdymol said:


> (who in turn is subcontracting the transport to a cheaper company).


I've heard it's very common to subcontract loads, or even subcontract loads from a subcontractor. So the client sometimes doesn't really have a good overview of who is delivering his load. 

Older truckers from the Netherlands are often moaning how 'Eastern Block' drivers or 'slippers' taking their jobs. Even though there is still a significant shortage of truck drivers. And I'm not sure if going over the road is still as attractive as it used to be in the 1980s, with lack of clean sanitary facilities, total lack of parking, traffic congestion, 24/7 tracking of your truck, strict enforcement of driving hours, constant pressure, etc. I feel that OTR is romanticized.


----------



## radamfi

Can big firms get around the rules by opening up new subsidiaries in other countries, like easyJet and Ryanair do in the air?


----------



## Spookvlieger

I work in transport. It isn't rare to see jobs subcontracted several times.

You know who are the biggest offenders? Western/Northern European transport companies themselves. They ofthen hold shares in transport companies from Russia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Ukraine or they might even have been set up and fully financed by them in some EU fringe countries with low wages.

One of the biggest offenders I can think off is a big Austrian transport company, which offcourse has seats across Europe. They constantly sub-contract jobs to the same smaller companies in EE and then those sub-contract to some unknown transporter I've never heard off. Next some Ukrainian or otherwise Russian speaking driver shows up with a truck that looks like it has been driven for 3million kms.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There are also transport companies employing drivers from outside of Europe, for example drivers from India, the Philippines, Tajikistan or Latin America. A whole ago I read a tweet from a road inspector who had never seen an Ecuadorian driver's license before. The truck was from Spain.


----------



## x-type

radamfi said:


> Can big firms get around the rules by opening up new subsidiaries in other countries, like easyJet and Ryanair do in the air?


It is very common. Rhenus or DSV come into mind for instance. Other large players do it as well.
About subcontracting - I don't see anything false about it. Especially large carriers do it because they have their clients, and even they cannot always make transportation in economic way without empty kilometers. They fo to transport market such as Timocom is, and offer that job to someone else because they must satisfy their client. 

I don't like working with large players, they are expensive and I find them suitable only for lazy companies, or for large companies who they make strong contracts with.


----------



## Spookvlieger

bogdymol said:


> Also, for the routes mentioned above in 99% of the cases the lorry is from Eastern Europe (Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland etc.), although it is always ordered through an Austrian company (who in turn is subcontracting the transport to a cheaper company).


I didn't even read your comment before I wrote mine.
I think we are talking about the same Austrian transporter here. It won't mention its name directly - but the practices they use in sub-contracting are clear to see for everyone who works in Transport. My heart bleeds sometimes when I know these are paid by load, not by hour and when I see the waiting times some of these guys have....


----------



## Spookvlieger

x-type said:


> It is very common. Rhenus or DSV come into mind for instance. Other large players do it as well.
> About subcontracting - I don't see anything false about it. Especially large carriers do it because they have their clients, and even they cannot always make transportation in economic way without empty kilometers. They fo to transport market such as Timocom is, and offer that job to someone else because they must satisfy their client.
> 
> I don't like working with large players, they are expensive and I find them suitable only for lazy companies, or for large companies who they make strong contracts with.


Sub-contracting is not false and theoretically there is nothing wrong with it. However, EU regulation has been missing for many years leading to vile practises like fake companies hiring People in Romania for example and then stuffing them for months on end in container flats making them drive jobs in France/Belgium/Netherlands, for instance, on really low wages or payed by the job.

Sometimes you have no choice but to go with the bigger players. Try finding transport for +- 150 loads delivered within the Benelux - every day.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> For me, what is sh*tiest are petrol prices. These were down to €0.80 at one point in 2020, but now is almost €1.50 per liter here. It doesn't seem these will go down, at least until spring at best.


In Poland after they went down at the moment of reducing the excise tax, they went up again and 98 is again about 5,90 zł, close to crossing the magic 6 zł barrier.

But this was on Monday, and from Tuesday, the government decreased the VAT for fuels from 23% to 5%. I don't know how it affected the prices at the stations, as I wasn't near any gas station neither yesterday nor today.

So @PoviID – come to Poland for gas


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland after they went down at the moment of reducing the excise tax, they went up again and 98 is again about 5,90 zł, close to crossing the magic 6 zł barrier.
> 
> But this was on Monday, and from Tuesday, the government decreased the VAT for fuels from 23% to 5%. I don't know how it affected the prices at the stations, as I wasn't near any gas station neither yesterday nor today.


This decreased VAT in Poland is all over the news here in Lithuania.

Lithuanians (majority of them living 50 km around Polish border) love to buy stuff in Poland for cheaper prices, like buying food for few weeks/months in advance.
Now is likely it will gonna be even more Lithuanians comming to Poland, but sad part that Lithuania will lose taxes because of that.

Common people say we should reduce VAT as well, but economists oppose that idea. Some even claim Poland action is "invalid" and attention should be paid from European institutions.

I heard some people saying that reduced VAT is due to some failed wage reform in Poland, and now government want to keep up with people so they not get mad...

I suggested one economist (for fun) on his public FB wall that those living 50 km to Polish border could also have reduced VAT like Poland  I didn't got any unexpected answers from other people. It's clear that Lithuanians would come to Southwest Lithuania to buy food and stuff there (cities like Alytus, Marijampolė).

The economists say we should continue make wages higher, and not prices cheaper. I'm kinda agree. Expensive country usually better quality country (unless is Equatorial Guinea, but I think GINI index should also be something to pay attention).



> So @PoviID – come to Poland for gas


We will see. I guess it's not worth it due to travel cost  It would be at least 200 km round trip just for gas station.

Those who live in Southwest Lithuania (up to 30-50 km to the border), I think, it might be worth it to fill gas somewhere closest to Lithuanian border.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> This decreased VAT in Poland is all over the news here in Lithuania.


Some shops and supermarket chains over here increased the prices of the products a few days ago, to "compensate" for those VAT increases  (or actually, to get a larger margin and earn more)



PovilD said:


> Some even claim Poland action is "invalid" and attention should be paid from European institutions.


From what I understand, the EU agreed for all of that.



PovilD said:


> I heard some people saying that reduced VAT is due to some failed wage reform in Poland, and now government want to keep up with people so they not get mad...


Yes, I described that reform in a long, long post some pages ago – maybe someone accidentally managed to read that  And yes, they even patched that reform just a few days after it got implemented by allowing to calculate the taxes and social security contributions according to the old rules – and account for the difference between the old and the new system just at the end of the year.



PovilD said:


> The economists say we should continue make wages higher, and not prices cheaper.


This makes sense  Though high inflation usually means prices going up at a higher speed than the wages.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Snow is falling over a front of more than 3,000 kilometers, from El Paso to Quebec City:


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## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Yes, I described that reform in a long, long post some pages ago – maybe someone accidentally managed to read that  And yes, they even patched that reform just a few days after it got implemented by allowing to calculate the taxes and social security contributions according to the old rules – and account for the difference between the old and the new system just at the end of the year.


The longer the text, especially if it gets specific, less likely people will read. Polish economic reforms barely touch me, unless in some way we lose taxes, and the news covers it, because too many people come to border towns in Poland to buy cheaper stuff.



> This makes sense  Though high inflation usually means prices going up at a higher speed than the wages.


Inflation could be relatively short term issue, but GINI can be long term issue, and it's more worrying for me.
Long term, like e.g. significant economic differences between Europe and Africa would probably persist for hundreds of years to come. Differences are just too huge. It's sad. It's also s**t to see it when country has economic disparities between people. USA is prime example of that. That's why I'm a little bit USA-sceptic that we mustn't copy USA blindly. Easternmost countries in Europe, closest to Russia, saw USA as some miracle country. It does provide some military support (NATO membership), but it also meant lots of sh*t stuff that are not as harsh in Western Europe do get copied into those countries: car dependency, high GINI index, poor quality public transport etc. Car dependency is still one of the highest in Europe there, and I don't mean everybody not driving cars, but here 10-15% is significant if at least some go to public transport, especially trains. Btw, I'm not anti-car absolutist, it hard to be one if I already write to roads forum, but I think better public transport would be at least somewhat more healthy to cities. Living in Western Europe you might not feel how bad is living without public transport, how drivers who hate to drive everyday, get traffic worse, and related stuff.


----------



## AnelZ

Petrol prices in Sarajevo are at 1,309-1,386 €. Many people again started to contemplate making the change to be able to use LPG where you can find prices like 0,670-0,721 €.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I paid € 1.89 for petrol yesterday. Which means there is a 26 cent discount, since the advisory price is € 2.15 per liter.

I've never seen a discount of 26 cents per liter before. Which suggests that the oil companies have quite a bit of margin. 10 years ago a 10-12 cent discount was common at unstaffed fuel stations. 

LPG used to be quite popular in the Netherlands in the 1990s but it has almost faded away. The return on investment for aftermarket LPG installations used to be relatively long and cars running on LPG were known to have a higher maintenance cost. Nowdays most cars still running on LPG are American pickup trucks.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> I paid € 1.89 for petrol yesterday. Which means there is a 26 cent discount, since the advisory price is € 2.15 per liter.
> 
> I've never seen a discount of 26 cents per liter before. Which suggests that the oil companies have quite a bit of margin. 10 years ago a 10-12 cent discount was common at unstaffed fuel stations.
> 
> LPG used to be quite popular in the Netherlands in the 1990s but it has almost faded away. The return on investment for aftermarket LPG installations used to be relatively long and cars running on LPG were known to have a higher maintenance cost. Nowdays most cars still running on LPG are American pickup trucks.


I remember the good times of gas at € 0.78 at the most discounted shops when I moved to the Netherlands in 2009. There was a gas station in Tilburg in the middle of an industrial park, which had often deeply discounted prices on gas (and just one pump for car nozzles, all other 5 or 6 for truck diesel only)


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> I paid € 1.89 for petrol yesterday. Which means there is a 26 cent discount, since the advisory price is € 2.15 per liter.


What do you mean by 'advisory price'? How do you find out what that is?


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Just booked flights to go to Switzerland for Easter to see my friends there. I lived there for a year in 2017/2018 so it'll be nice to go back. Decided to indulge in my twin interest of travelling around by train instead of driving.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

All the major fuel chains have an 'average national advisory price'. This is the price you usually pay at motorway service areas. They usually vary only 1 cent between chains. 

Off-motorway service areas tend to be around 5-10 cents cheaper, unmanned automated fuel stations about 10-12 cents in the past, but nowadays up to 20 cents discount isn't uncommon, and evidently even 26 cents yesterday.


----------



## Suburbanist

DanielFigFoz said:


> Just booked flights to go to Switzerland for Easter to see my friends there. I lived there for a year in 2017/2018 so it'll be nice to go back. Decided to indulge in my twin interest of travelling around by train instead of driving.


Why not travel to Switzerland by train? You can do it in one day via Paris (with change of station) or Brussel and Köln (or Frankfurt). Should take around 7h of actual train time plus the transfer time.


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## DanielFigFoz

You know that didn't even occur to me. Would probably be less hassle too.


----------



## radamfi

The Man in Seat 61 | The train travel guide is a good website showing how to get from the UK to most of Europe by train, and the best way of getting tickets.

However, at the moment France, Belgium and the Netherlands require visitors from the UK to take a Covid test.


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## DanielFigFoz

Yes that is true, that was part of my reasoning not to drive in the first place. It might change by then though. It's not really an issue I suppose seeing as I test myself a couple of times a week but it's just a minor added hassle to have to and buy one valid for foreign travel. Then some countries seem to accept proof of recent recovery, which will be my case (well I hope I've recovered by April from this) and others don't. Just simpler to go straight to Switzerland.

Thanks for the website recommendation, I may use it in future. Going to have a good look round it.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> LPG used to be quite popular in the Netherlands in the 1990s but it has almost faded away. The return on investment for aftermarket LPG installations used to be relatively long and cars running on LPG were known to have a higher maintenance cost. Nowdays most cars still running on LPG are American pickup trucks.


In Poland it's still very popular. There are even cases of people (especially taxi drivers) installing LPG in hybrid cars xD

LPG is also slightly more damaging for the engine than petrol. And in small cars, like mine, there is not much room for the gas tank. Usually it gets installed in the spare wheel compartment – but then you must either carry the spare wheel directly in the boot (and in my Micra it wouldn't even fit lying horizontally), or travel without the spare wheel, which doesn't seem to be a really good option – in my family I've already used the spare wheel three times, having tyre punctures. There are repair kits you can carry instead of the spare tyre, but, again, they don't work with all possible cases of punctures, and they rely on injecting a glue-like substance into the tyre, after which patching the puncture may be problematic.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> I paid € 1.89 for petrol yesterday. Which means there is a 26 cent discount, since the advisory price is € 2.15 per liter.
> 
> I've never seen a discount of 26 cents per liter before. Which suggests that the oil companies have quite a bit of margin. 10 years ago a 10-12 cent discount was common at unstaffed fuel stations.


I was not aware that petrol was that expensive in Netherlands. I am normally in Netherlands at least once a year on business, but never drives there myself. 

In Norway, geographical and weekly variations of (many) 10s of cents is the rule, not an exception. Fuel prices for some reason normally have minima on Monday and Thursday mornings. In contrast to the continent, prices are often the lowest along main long-distance thoroughfares. The service stations do not make their bucks on fuel, but on overpriced meals and snacks.


----------



## Suburbanist

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I was not aware that petrol was that expensive in Netherlands. I am normally in Netherlands at least once a year on business, but never drives there myself.
> 
> In Norway, geographical and weekly variations of (many) 10s of cents is the rule, not an exception. Fuel prices for some reason normally have minima on Monday and Thursday mornings. In contrast to the continent, prices are often the lowest along main long-distance thoroughfares. The service stations do not make their bucks on fuel, but on overpriced meals and snacks.


In that aspect Netherlands is very different since rest areas are paltry as travel distances are short enough.


----------



## radamfi

Suburbanist said:


> In that aspect Netherlands is very different since rest areas are paltry as travel distances are short enough.


Is there any analysis of trip length of traffic that uses Dutch motorways and if they are significantly different than other countries? There must be a fair bit of long distance international traffic on them. Hazeldonk services, for example, must have a lot of long distance traffic passing it.

Personally, I don't think I've ever filled up at a motorway services. I deliberately avoid them.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Motorway service areas in the Netherlands make most of their profit by selling overpriced coffee, sandwiches & snacks. Their profit on fuel sales is actually pretty minimal despite the high prices. Dutch motorway service areas are leased through a concession, there have been instances where chains bid over € 20 million for a 15 year lease of a service area.

I have never filled up at a motorway service area in the Netherlands. There are cheaper automated stations everywhere, including near many exits. But trips in the Netherlands are generally short, so people plan to fuel up before or after a trip. They say that motorway service areas sell most of their fuel to people who have fuel cards, meaning their employer pays for it.


----------



## radamfi

I prefer filling up at a supermarket petrol stations in the UK because they usually accept cards at the pump (plus you get loyalty points for the supermarket) whereas motorway services usually involve going into the shop to pay. If I'm on a long trip, I know where there are supermarket petrol stations near the major motorways (M1, M40, M4, M6 etc.)


----------



## Suburbanist

When people use fuel cards from their employers, normally they have master price agreements that reduce fluctuations. As least this is what I was told when I lived in the Netherlands. Companies signed off contracts with a criteria of x Eurocent discounts above or below the national price. Any difference of actual fuel bought was compensated later as extra debit or credit.


----------



## valkrav




----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> Is there any analysis of trip length of traffic that uses Dutch motorways and if they are significantly different than other countries? There must be a fair bit of long distance international traffic on them. Hazeldonk services, for example, must have a lot of long distance traffic passing it.


I doubt it. Most of the Netherlands is a dead end. Even driving from Antwerp to Hamburg, you wouldn't be in the Netherlands for very long. And I doubt many people drive that particular route.

Europe has so many ports that you don't get that much long distance travel. Rotterdam serves the German Ruhr area which is an overland distance of roughly 200km. Whatever industry exists in Northern and Eastern Germany is usually served by the ports of Hamburg and Bremen. Anything South of the line Nantes-Vienna typically makes use of French Atlantic or Mediterranean ports.

Even if you were driving between, say, Rotterdam and Lyon, you wouldn't stop in Hazeldonk. It's too close to your point of departure/arrival.

Basically, I struggle to imagine a trip where the Netherlands is somehow in the middle of a long distance and where you'd like to stop over.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Truck stops in the Netherlands do exist though, driving a truck is not just A to B with a stop in the middle, but it might also involve waiting time or an overnight stop before you are scheduled to load or unload. For example a trucker from Poland picking up a load in Western Netherlands, arriving the evening before the early morning pickup. 

There are still a fair number of roadside restaurants catering mainly to truckers. Even on some non-motorway routes.


----------



## Attus

I can remember, 4-5 years ago, I visited the Netherlands in a day which was holiday in Germany but a normal working day in the Netherlands. Which means: free drive for trucks in NL, but a ban in D. A lot of trucks stopped at the border. There is a large parking lot at the border, it was full, and the shoulder of the motorway in the German side of the border was full of trucks parking there, coming from NL but finding do parking place there any more. Of course it's illegal, to park on the motorway shoulder, but to drive on, too, would have been illegal. 
There were quite many trucks, coming from NL to D and stopping at the border that particular day.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Long truck lineups on the shoulder were common in the Netherlands on German-specific holidays. Sometimes the lineup was over 15 kilometers. 

However they have changed policy about 7-8 years ago, started fining every trucker on the shoulder and sending them away. The problem has mostly disappeared since then, as truckers have found alternative parking spots instead of lining up at the border.


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## DanielFigFoz

Going to take advantage of what is hopefully a period of relative post-recovery immunity to go to Copenhagen in a couple of weeks.


----------



## Kpc21

After the VAT decrease, petrol in Poland became amazingly cheap. The average price now is 5.19 zł, which is about 1.15 euro. Before, the price was about 5.80 zł – about 1.30 euro.

So our price is almost twice lower than the Dutch "advisory" price.

From one point of view one may say it's buying votes by the government, but on the other hand, high energy costs pump up the inflation even more (it generates kind of a snowball effect), and this is something we want to avoid...

Although yet another point is that the current decrease is on the VAT tax, and this is something which doesn't really change much for the businesses, as they care about net, not gross prices anyway (normally they get that VAT back later on).


Meanwhile, an association of Polish power plants (Towarzystwo Gospodarcze Polskie Elektrownie – Polish Power Plants Economic Society) has started a media campaign, with billboards and TV spots, telling that the EU climate policies are responsible for 60% of the energy costs.










Translating, from the top:


> Polish
> Power Plants
> 
> The climate fee of the European Union
> stands for up to 60% of the energy production costs
> 
> EU climate policy = expensive energy / high prices


----------



## Suburbanist

Poland had one of the dirtiest power generation sets in Europe, with inefficient low-quality carbon.

The EU does well in making it harder for Poland and others to keep burning such dirty fuels. I have read about their lobbying group and I deeply despise and have nothing but contempt for them.


----------



## Kpc21

Of course Poland should try much better with going into renewable energy sources...

But mainstream politicians prefer supporting coal mines to protect them from bankruptcy. 

But nobody does much effort to explain to people that it's going into renewable sources what should be done to avoid those energy price increases. It's easier to blame the EU (well, from the perspective of the owners of coal power plants it makes sense, but generally – it doesn't).

At least building a nuclear power plant seems to be more close to likely than before. But still stupid decisions are made, like promoting natural gas for heating (and even plans to build gas-powered power plants) while natural gas is dirty too. And even banning all solid fuels (including biomass, which is considered green in western Europe) and forcing people to use either natural gas or electricity (or oil, but in 99% of cases it makes no sense due to the fuel price). Though maybe in our context it makes sense. The West has abandoned solid fuels for heating houses decades ago, so it doesn't have the problems with the smog they produce (burnt in simple household heating systems). And Poland is still dealing with that.

In theory, in my region, from the beginning of 2022, using local solid fuel stoves (directly in the rooms; not central heating boilers; those become illegal with the beginning of 2023 or 2027, depending on the type) is no longer legal. Except those fulfilling the requirements of the Ecodesign EU directive, which means almost none. And at least in my family in the countryside, they still use a metal stove in the room, and a kitchen stove (also one in which you burn wood or coal) in the kitchen. Interestingly, they installed central heating (with a coal boiler, a simple one, operated similarly to an in-room stove) a decade or so ago, but they still prefer those stoves in the rooms. Probably because the house is so small that it is less effort to use them than the central heating. It's likely they are not even aware that stoves are now illegal  There was no informational action regarding that from the local government, or anything like that.

For sure now, with the prices of electricity and natural gas going up, the process of replacing coal heating systems with others slowed down...

By the way, how do people deal with sewage disposal in the places where centralized sewage system is not available? 

I recently read that the government is going to force the municipalities to check if people empty their cesspits regularly and have bills for that. Because it seems we haven't implemented at all one EU sanitary directive, regarding cesspits and sewage disposal...

Officially, we have the following legal options regarding the sewage disposal:
– getting connected to a municipal sewage system – if it's available, but if it's available, it's obligatory (unless you have a home sewage treatment system, in such a case, when a sewer in your street is being built, getting connected to it isn't compulsory),
– having a watertight cesspit – which obviously has to be emptied regularly, otherwise it would overflow, and you either have to have a contract with a company that would empty it, or at least collect the bills,
– having a home sewage treatment system – in such a case you can drain the treated sewage into the soil – but it's not always possible; you must have enough room in your backyard for the drainage, and the type of soil must allow it, also the underground water level cannot be too high.

In practice, quite a lot of cesspits in the country are not watertight, and they quite often happen to be emptied in "unofficial" ways, into "unofficial" places...


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> After the VAT decrease, petrol in Poland became amazingly cheap. The average price now is 5.19 zł, which is about 1.15 euro. Before, the price was about 5.80 zł – about 1.30 euro.
> 
> So our price is almost twice lower than the Dutch "advisory" price.
> 
> From one point of view one may say it's buying votes by the government, but on the other hand, high energy costs pump up the inflation even more (it generates kind of a snowball effect), and this is something we want to avoid...
> 
> Although yet another point is that the current decrease is on the VAT tax, and this is something which doesn't really change much for the businesses, as they care about net, not gross prices anyway (normally they get that VAT back later on).
> 
> 
> Meanwhile, an association of Polish power plants (Towarzystwo Gospodarcze Polskie Elektrownie – Polish Power Plants Economic Society) has started a media campaign, with billboards and TV spots, telling that the EU climate policies are responsible for 60% of the energy costs.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Translating, from the top:


I've already saw reports on local news that Germans come to Poland for gas. Lithuanians come to Poland for groceries.

I will mention again, Polish VAT reduction is seen as quite a major event here in Lithuania. We value our taxes 

When I started to type in Lithuanian the word "Shopping". Most search results involved "Shopping in Poland" 









When I typed letter "z" to Google. Results also involved zloty


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> I've already saw reports on local news that Germans come to Poland for gas.


I saw today a news about someone who came from Germany to Poland for fuel with eight 200 l barrels  Unfortunately, even within the EU, to something like that custom duty is applied; he got caught and he had to pay 2250 euro (including a fine for transporting dangerous goods without required permits).



PovilD said:


> I will mention again, Polish VAT reduction is seen as quite a major event here in Lithuania. We value our taxes


Governments in Poland are known to spend the money from the taxes always in ineffective ways, so people over here generally don't like taxes... Knowing they won't get much from them anyway and that probably much of those will end up in the pockets of the politicians.

This is the general opinion.

There is a saying about four ways of spending money:
– you spend someone else's money on someone else's needs,
– you spend someone else's money on your needs,
– you spend your money on someone else's needs,
– you spend your money on your needs.

It's quite easy to guess, which of those methods is least effective


----------



## PovilD

Taxes are sometimes painful, but Scandinavia is Scandinavia due taxes  Good state services mean taxes. I'm pro-good state services, thing CEE sometimes lack.

I do not agree good society can live without good state services.

Many people do want get stuff for free, people prefer quantity over quality. If you value quality, it's not that painful to pay more for it. Better to have slightly less, but of better quality.

It's like many friends vs. few good friends


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch are very good at speed skating at the Olympics.

Speed skater Ireen Wüst won a gold medal today. She won gold medals at five consecutive Olympics, in Turin (2006), Vancouver (2010), Sochi (2014), Pyeongchang (2018) and now Beijing (2022). Apparently no other athlete of any sport in both summer or winter olympics has ever achieved that before.









Ireen Wüst becomes the first person to win individual golds at five Olympics.


The Dutch speedskater, 35, set an Olympic record in the 1,500 meters, then said she would retire.




www.nytimes.com


----------



## tfd543

DanielFigFoz said:


> Going to take advantage of what is hopefully a period of relative post-recovery immunity to go to Copenhagen in a couple of weeks.


Cool. Welcome.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

tfd543 said:


> Cool. Welcome.


Thank you! I spent a couple of days there a few years ago, really enjoyed it.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> Taxes are sometimes painful, but Scandinavia is Scandinavia due taxes  Good state services mean taxes. I'm pro-good state services, thing CEE sometimes lack.


And I guess most people in Poland wouldn't be against taxes, even higher than until recently, if they were getting as good public services as in Sweden or Norway. At least personally I heard that from some people. But the quality of those in Poland doesn't justify the amounts of taxes.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> And I guess most people in Poland wouldn't be against taxes, even higher than until recently, if they were getting as good public services as in Sweden or Norway. At least personally I heard that from some people. But the quality of those in Poland doesn't justify the amounts of taxes.


The problem is that rather than arguing for better state institutions and better services people argue for low taxes and privatizing of many services. Top 10-20% people who can afford private education and health services will definitely benefit, rest not so much. That will lead to ever higher inequality, like in the US. 

And don't even let me start on absurdities of their private health system...

You often hear arguments in Poland for "cheap state" ("tanie panstwo"). Well, if something is too cheap it is often of poor quality. People complain about slow planning and other processes. Do you know how badly paid are some of the officials? At the end you get what you pay for.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> And I guess most people in Poland wouldn't be against taxes, even higher than until recently, if they were getting as good public services as in Sweden or Norway. At least personally I heard that from some people. But the quality of those in Poland doesn't justify the amounts of taxes.


It could happen if quality improve over time. Not all people in public sector have competence to maintain high standard public services. People need to change. For some it would be painful. In the end of the day, things would improve. More sad part, at first you will need to pay more for low quality, hoping to achieve higher quality in the future. What if we don't succeed? What if corruption will eat though? It's not an easy task.

On the other hand, I think proper protest culture would help, people should not be afraid of their government. I heard people from West Europe were astonished how people in East Europe (especially more East you go) how people are not used to protest, and used to be anxious around their governments, even if they will not do that much harm after late 80s revolutions. Exceptions are more rural areas, when there are not much job offers, and if you protest to one, you may lose your job opportunities for years to come in your region. Regions with more authoritarian tendencies would make your life worse if you protest.


----------



## Shenkey

geogregor said:


> The problem is that rather than arguing for better state institutions and better services people argue for low taxes and privatizing of many services. Top 10-20% people who can afford private education and health services will definitely benefit, rest not so much. That will lead to ever higher inequality, like in the US.
> 
> And don't even let me start on absurdities of their private health system...
> 
> You often hear arguments in Poland for "cheap state" ("tanie panstwo"). Well, if something is too cheap it is often of poor quality. People complain about slow planning and other processes. Do you know how badly paid are some of the officials? At the end you get what you pay for.


When public services are not good enough, the solution is not to reduce taxes and cut more services, but to force the 1% to have a stake in it. Close private schools, force them to send their kids to schools with regular people.

If that would be the case in Manhattan/US, you wouldn't see airport level metal detectors in schools.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

ChrisZwolle said:


> Every single truck driver that crosses international border must mandatorily stop at the first rest area, and manually change the country code in the tachograph. This starts today.


This new regulation may have claimed the first life. 

A truck was stopped on the shoulder at the A74-A61 border crossing from the Netherlands into Germany. A driver decided to pass a bunch of trucks on the shoulder, not realizing there was a truck parked there. The driver slammed into the trailer and was killed. 

There have been reports of truck drivers not going to a rest area, but just stopping on the shoulder to change the country code in the tachograph. This may have also been the issue here.


----------



## PovilD

Shenkey said:


> When public services are not good enough, the solution is not to reduce taxes and cut more services, but to force the 1% to have a stake in it. Close private schools, force them to send their kids to schools with regular people.
> 
> If that would be the case in Manhattan/US, you wouldn't see airport level metal detectors in schools.


I'm not really against private schools existing, but this is the subject, that has chances of changing my opinion if I know more around it.
My personal opinion is that some children need specialized schools, I just don't know if these should be private ones. I don't expect right now, at least in my lifetime, that everything will be free and high quality, just pay taxes.

The problem arise when there is segregation happens between regular kids, just because one's parents are rich, others are poor or even with criminal background. It's horrible if there are almost airport level security installations in some public schools, and along them there are rich parents' kids schools where I heard stories those parents' kids horrified by regular construction workers, because they usually not... ehm... millionaires.. This is a negative aspect of Americanization, when your practical implementation of American Dream ends up with too high income inequality and weak public sector. Worse situation is in Latin America (where GINI index is over the roof), probably other non (very) high income countries too.


----------



## radamfi

As a grouping, the Nordics are the most advanced countries in the world. They have a reputation for wealth and social cohesion, high taxation and excellent public services. Switzerland is also very wealthy but it has low taxation. However, this doesn't translate into American style segregation and Switzerland is a particularly safe country.


----------



## Shenkey

ChrisZwolle said:


> This new regulation may have claimed the first life.
> 
> A truck was stopped on the shoulder at the A74-A61 border crossing from the Netherlands into Germany. A driver decided to pass a bunch of trucks on the shoulder, not realizing there was a truck parked there. The driver slammed into the trailer and was killed.
> 
> There have been reports of truck drivers not going to a rest area, but just stopping on the shoulder to change the country code in the tachograph. This may have also been the issue here.


Aren't the trailer required to have protection so the car doesn't go under it, but actually crashes into that barrier?


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> It could happen if quality improve over time. Not all people in public sector have competence to maintain high standard public services.


The problem is that the public administration has no funds to employ competent people. But again, it just shows what already @geogregor said, how stupid is the "cheap state" concept.

Actually, paying some people more and employing someone competent may make the maintenance of the national infrastructure cheaper, as a competent expert will know how not to spend money on unnecessary things.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Shenkey said:


> Aren't the trailer required to have protection so the car doesn't go under it, but actually crashes into that barrier?


Yes they do have that underride, however I doubt if they are designed to withstand a car going 80 or 100 km/h into a stationary trailer. I've seen some test crash videos of these trailer underrides and they already result in devastating damage at 50-60 km/h.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> The problem is that the public administration has no funds to employ competent people. But again, it just shows what already @geogregor said, how stupid is the "cheap state" concept.
> 
> Actually, paying some people more and employing someone competent may make the maintenance of the national infrastructure cheaper, as a competent expert will know how not to spend money on unnecessary things.


Sounds like vicious cycle difficult to escape, but I don't think we should find excuses to not try getting out from it. I see it as global issue (state institutions quality is rather low everywhere, but must increase everywhere to have realistically better World)
It also one of the things CEE countries must solve to ever reach Western/Northern European level of state institutions.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes they do have that underride, however I doubt if they are designed to withstand a car going 80 or 100 km/h into a stationary trailer. I've seen some test crash videos of these trailer underrides and they already result in devastating damage at 50-60 km/h.


Apparently the regulations for underrun protections were just recently made stricter:


> New regulations for underrun protection: less ground clearance for greater safety
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> As you may be aware, the underrun protection fitted by all manufacturers of new commercial vehicles throughout Europe must comply with new, stricter regulations from 1 September 2021. These regulations have been introduced to provide greater protection with rear-end collisions. As a result, in accordance with UN/ECE Regulation no. 58, 03 series of amendments, Knapen Trailers must also implement a number of modifications to its underrun protection systems.
> 
> This concerns three modifications, which will be implemented on all our moving floor trailers.
> 
> The maximum ground clearance - the height of the underrun protection - will become 450 mm (was 550 mm).
> The distance from the rear of the trailer to the extreme point of the underrun protection will become a maximum of 200 mm (was 270 mm).
> The construction of the underrun protection and the chassis has been modified to absorb higher impact forces.[...]


----------



## Suburbanist

Swiss taxes might be low, but there a lot of tax-alike laws. For instance, mandatory health insurance and high minimum spending before government assistance quicks in. Strong mandatory 2nd pillar pension savings. A host of public service fees of all types with assistance for those unable to pay.

These are all indirect taxes that fall more heavily on the above-median middle classes (2nd highest income quartile) than the wealthy, in net terms.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Rebasepoiss said:


> Apparently the regulations for underrun protections were just recently made stricter:


Interesting. The idea is that the engine compartment of the car will absorb most of the impact force and not the passenger compartment. Low cars are more at risk than SUVs or pickup trucks of course. 

Some trucks already have a lower underride protection due to a loading platform hanging under the back of the trailer.


----------



## radamfi

__





Anglo-Dutch Translation Guide – Expertise in Labour Mobility







www.labourmobility.com


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Most of those things are fairly obvious if you grew up watching English or American TV series, or videos on Youtube nowadays. 

But yes, some people could take it literally.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

You of course need a context and the non-verbal communication to understand what is actually meant with e. g. "very interesting".


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Most of those things are fairly obvious if you grew up watching English or American TV series, or videos on Youtube nowadays.
> 
> But yes, some people could take it literally.


No smoke without fire.

While I was working at a globally executing company, there were internal classes about cultural differences available. The New Yorkish to Finnish lecture was pretty important, because the Finns tend to take texts literally. Like:

New Yorkish:


In 24 hours: Some day this week
In 48 hours: Some day in the indefinite future, perhaps
In 72 hours: Forget the whole dirty story

A Finnish engineer:


In 24 hours: In 24 hours
In 48 hours: In 48 hours
In 72 hours: In 72 hours


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> This new regulation may have claimed the first life.
> 
> A truck was stopped on the shoulder at the A74-A61 border crossing from the Netherlands into Germany. A driver decided to pass a bunch of trucks on the shoulder, not realizing there was a truck parked there. The driver slammed into the trailer and was killed.
> 
> There have been reports of truck drivers not going to a rest area, but just stopping on the shoulder to change the country code in the tachograph. This may have also been the issue here.


Manually change? What year is it?


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> No smoke without fire.
> 
> While I was working at a globally executing company, there were internal classes about cultural differences available. The New Yorkish to Finnish lecture was pretty important, because the Finns tend to take texts literally. Like:
> 
> New Yorkish:
> 
> 
> In 24 hours: Some day this week
> In 48 hours: Some day in the indefinite future, perhaps
> In 72 hours: Forget the whole dirty story
> 
> A Finnish engineer:
> 
> 
> In 24 hours: In 24 hours
> In 48 hours: In 48 hours
> In 72 hours: In 72 hours


I remember my first cooperation with a German guy. He gave me some thoughts and I answered "consider it done". He was like "ok? so send me the results" 🤣


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Norway lifted essentially all Covid-19 restrictions and recommendations today. No recommended distance or use of phase mask. No border entry restrictions. The only recommendations that remain are that adults should test if they have respiratory symptoms, and that they stay home for 4 days and 24 hours after fever ends. Kids do not have to test and are only recommended to stay at home 24 hours after fever occurred.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Do you have to show proof of vaccination in Norway? Or maybe at the border? I don't see it at: Nasjonale råd og anbefalinger


----------



## PovilD

It will depend on how covid will develop, but I still don't opt out posibility covid certificates will not be needed soon for International travel. There could be exceptions left, like proof of vaccination/recovery for elderly people (a.c.a. risk groups), but we will see.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> Do you have to show proof of vaccination in Norway? Or maybe at the border? I don't see it at: Nasjonale råd og anbefalinger


No, nothing at the border anymore. Svalbard is the only exception. Domestic Corona pass has never been in use.


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Norway lifted essentially all Covid-19 restrictions and recommendations today. No recommended distance or use of phase mask. No border entry restrictions. The only recommendations that remain are that adults should test if they have respiratory symptoms, and that they stay home for 4 days and 24 hours after fever ends. Kids do not have to test and are only recommended to stay at home 24 hours after fever occurred.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Social distancing has never really been observed here, except during the first wave in 2020. People have assessed that the risk of infection is rather low if you just briefly cross paths at less than 1 or 2 meters. 

The Netherlands hasn't seen a lot of winter this season.We haven't had any snowfall, even frost has been very minimal, with some light frost only for a few nights over the past 3 months. The weather maps don't suggest that we will get any winter weather over the next two weeks. This is the result of a continuous westerly circulation, with the jet stream over or near our region, which means a continuous flow of moist, mild air. Though most days haven't been exceptionally warm, especially in January. Just a whole bunch of non-weather.


----------



## radamfi

The weather has been much the same here in south-east England. I don't mind winters like this. It means no travel disruption.


----------



## Stuu

Same here, we have had a frost only a couple of times this winter, and hardly any rain. England has had only 59% of normal rainfall in the last three months.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Where I live, January and February have been extreme in the opposite sense: It has been raining or snowing almost every day, and we have hardly seen the sun. In January there was 196 mm precipitation in Trondheim, the normal is 90. This week we have had heavy snow falls from Wednesday through Saturday, with the accumulated levels I have not seen for quite a few years. I spent many hours every day shoveling snow. The winter has been fairly mild, however, and today we are back to rain...


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland we did have frost and snow this winter, but... the last two days were very sunny and exceptionally warm as for the middle of February. The next days are also forecast to be like that.

By the way. Yesterday I left my car outside for a few hours in the afternoon and in the evening. When I wanted to drive it about 9 PM to go shopping, the windows were frozen. Frozen from the outside – which wasn't a big deal, I had a bottle of chemical de-icer, which helped immediately. But also from the inside. Where I didn't want to use the liquid – for, I guess, quite understandable reasons (it would smell terribly and I was afraid it may drop on the dashboard and maybe damage it). I turned on the engine and the heating to the maximum setting, and started scrubbing the windscreen with a rag, but it took something like 5-10 minutes before I managed to get it more or less clean. The fact that the heating doesn't really work well when the engine is idling isn't helpful here. When you start driving, it gets hot much quicker, but... I would have to drive blind. On the other hand, idling a parked car for over a minute is generally illegal... but driving not being able to see anything isn't legal either.

How do you normally deal with such situations? Do you use a mechanical scraper? Do you use a chemical liquid also on the inside of the window?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Unless you can pre-heat the vehicle with an electric heater (or if you have an electric vehicle), you pretty much have to let the engine run idle. You can't go driving without any vision. Maybe you can speed it up by setting the heater to recirculate.

It's probably best to use some kind of moisture absorber in your car, to prevent the inside from fogging and then freezing up. But I'm not sure how effective they are.


----------



## bogdymol

-


ChrisZwolle said:


> It's probably best to use some kind of moisture absorber in your car, to prevent the inside from fogging and then freezing up. But I'm not sure how effective they are.


At my previous car I had a small hole in the trunk, and moisture was getting in through that point. Having the car always parked overnight next to a water stream (=high humidity in the area) did not help. My windows were always foggy in the morning, and in very cold winter days it even froze on the inside a couple of times.

Enough was enough, so I bought a small box with silicate granulate, for absorbing moisture, and placed it in the rear passenger area, where it would not disturb. It worked great!

Now, although I changed the car, I always have such a box in my car. I change it about once or twice a year, and I never have problems with foggy windows anymore. Totally recommend it!

edit: I have a box like this one. Costs 2-3 €:


----------



## Stuu

An electricity company in Northern England sent out compensation cheques for power outages using the customer number as the amount


----------



## Sponsor

Just turn on the AC and set high temperature during some longer ride. It will dry out the moist.


----------



## tfd543

Dont idle too long. Cars were never designed to idle, but to drive. Maybe only 10-20 sec to let fluids run through the system..

“In fact, idling your engine can actually damage it in the long run. Because an idling engine is slower to reach operating temperature, the unburned, unevaporated gasoline can degrade your engine’s vitally important lubricating motor oil that coats and protects the cylinders, cylinder walls, and pistons, resulting in increased wear and tear. The faster your car’s engine can reach operating temperature (e.g., by driving it rather than letting it idle) the better it is for keeping the engine’s moving parts in good condition.”

Text is taken from Honda.


----------



## radamfi

France started allowing vaccinated visitors from the UK yesterday without a test and Belgium have just announced they will do the same from next week. The Netherlands still requires a test.


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> An electricity company in Northern England sent out compensation cheques for power outages using the customer number as the amount


What happens if someone goes to a bank and wants to monetize this cheque? 

By the way... cheques... are they really still used in the UK for whatever reasons? And why? It's so much simpler with bank transfers... And if you only know someone's address, over here companies normally use the money delivery service of the post... In the same way, for example, the social security delivers the pensions to the pensioners with no bank accounts (there are still quite many of those).



Sponsor said:


> Just turn on the AC and set high temperature during some longer ride.


Longer ride... With the head leaning out of the window, as I can't see anything through the windscreen? 



tfd543 said:


> “In fact, idling your engine can actually damage it in the long run. Because an idling engine is slower to reach operating temperature, the unburned, unevaporated gasoline can degrade your engine’s vitally important lubricating motor oil that coats and protects the cylinders, cylinder walls, and pistons, resulting in increased wear and tear. The faster your car’s engine can reach operating temperature (e.g., by driving it rather than letting it idle) the better it is for keeping the engine’s moving parts in good condition.”


And this is probably the reason why the heating heats up much faster while actually driving. But driving with no sight through the windscreen isn't rather a good (and safe) option...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> The Netherlands still requires a test.


I think this policy is not really on the radar in the Netherlands right now, the UK is grouped with all other non-EU countries. There is no enforcement of entry restrictions by land. They had a tiny enforcement campaign in the summer where they checked a few hundred vehicles for about a week but that was about it. Germany and Belgium also don't seem to enforce anything if you travel by land. If you travel from the UK to France and then to the Netherlands there won't be anyone asking for a test.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> What happens if someone goes to a bank and wants to monetize this cheque?


It will bounce as I don't think even an electricity company has a trillion pounds in the bank! 



Kpc21 said:


> By the way... cheques... are they really still used in the UK for whatever reasons? And why? It's so much simpler with bank transfers... And if you only know someone's address, over here companies normally use the money delivery service of the post... In the same way, for example, the social security delivers the pensions to the pensioners with no bank accounts (there are still quite many of those).


Cheques have historically been very popular but shops haven't accepted them for about 10 years now. Bank transfers are probably a lot more popular nowadays with business to business payments but many traditional and small businesses still use a lot of cheques. Some organisations still won't accept bank transfers. Some people who don't like online banking use cheques to pay individuals. 

I've never liked cheques and haven't written one for at least 10 years. The rest of Europe shows that cheques were never needed in the first place.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland we did have frost and snow this winter, but... the last two days were very sunny and exceptionally warm as for the middle of February. The next days are also forecast to be like that.
> 
> By the way. Yesterday I left my car outside for a few hours in the afternoon and in the evening. When I wanted to drive it about 9 PM to go shopping, the windows were frozen. Frozen from the outside – which wasn't a big deal, I had a bottle of chemical de-icer, which helped immediately. But also from the inside. Where I didn't want to use the liquid – for, I guess, quite understandable reasons (it would smell terribly and I was afraid it may drop on the dashboard and maybe damage it). I turned on the engine and the heating to the maximum setting, and started scrubbing the windscreen with a rag, but it took something like 5-10 minutes before I managed to get it more or less clean. The fact that the heating doesn't really work well when the engine is idling isn't helpful here. When you start driving, it gets hot much quicker, but... I would have to drive blind. On the other hand, idling a parked car for over a minute is generally illegal... but driving not being able to see anything isn't legal either.
> 
> How do you normally deal with such situations? Do you use a mechanical scraper? Do you use a chemical liquid also on the inside of the window?


1. Scraper (the most basic form should work for most cars, e.g.








Isskrape


Av plast.



www.biltema.no




, but if your windscreen is highly curved rubber variants may be more efficient.

2. And full fan (with A/C if you have)

Modern cars often have a fine mesh of heating wires in the windscreen, which of course also helps.

I have never heard before that people are using chemicals on the windows, neither at the inside nor outside. Well, except the cleaning fluids of the car, but if it is cold it may turn to ice and make things worse.


----------



## radamfi

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I have never heard before that people are using chemicals on the windows, neither at the inside nor outside. Well, except the cleaning fluids of the car, but if it is cold it may turn to ice and make things worse.


You haven't heard of de-icer?









CarPlan Blue Star De-Icer, 600ml : Amazon.co.uk: Automotive


CarPlan Blue Star De-Icer, 600ml : Amazon.co.uk: Automotive



www.amazon.co.uk


----------



## Rebasepoiss

bogdymol said:


> -
> 
> At my previous car I had a small hole in the trunk, and moisture was getting in through that point. Having the car always parked overnight next to a water stream (=high humidity in the area) did not help. My windows were always foggy in the morning, and in very cold winter days it even froze on the inside a couple of times.
> 
> Enough was enough, so I bought a small box with silicate granulate, for absorbing moisture, and placed it in the rear passenger area, where it would not disturb. It worked great!
> 
> Now, although I changed the car, I always have such a box in my car. I change it about once or twice a year, and I never have problems with foggy windows anymore. Totally recommend it!
> 
> edit: I have a box like this one. Costs 2-3 €:
> 
> View attachment 2780035


I have one in my car as well, although it's in a small cloth bag. It has an indicator on it and when it turns orange you should throw it in the microwave for 3 minutes and then it's effective again.



radamfi said:


> You haven't heard of de-icer?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> CarPlan Blue Star De-Icer, 600ml : Amazon.co.uk: Automotive
> 
> 
> CarPlan Blue Star De-Icer, 600ml : Amazon.co.uk: Automotive
> 
> 
> 
> www.amazon.co.uk


If I used de-icers to get rid of ice I would go through like 10 bottles a winter  So that's not really a viable option in this climate. A scraper gets rid of 99% of the ice anyway.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> By the way... cheques... are they really still used in the UK for whatever reasons? And why? It's so much simpler with bank transfers...


For historic reasons. Cheques were widely used for decades. For some older people it is as normal as using cash, and definitely more normal than online banking.

Cheques are even more popular in the US where many people are still paid by cheque. 

Poland (and Eastern Europe in general) simply skipped the step of cheques and went straight to card payments and electronic transfers when modern banking developed from 1989 onwards. 



radamfi said:


> I've never liked cheques and haven't written one for at least 10 years. The rest of Europe shows that cheques were never needed in the first place.


I have never written cheque in my life. The funny thing is that when I moved to the UK and opened bank accounts here banks kept sending me cheque books. It took me a while to stop banks sending them, and wasting paper 

From what I remember a few years ago there were some moves from the banks to get rid of cheques but there was quite noisy opposition from some businesses and oldies.

But then, this is Britain, people get attached to old stuff, even if better alternative is available.


----------



## radamfi

One of the reasons why people use cheques is because the money doesn't come out of your bank account straight away. If you post a cheque to someone on Monday, they might not get it until Wednesday or Thursday. Then the recipient has to send the cheque to the bank, either by visiting the bank or posting the cheque to the bank. (Although some banks now have mobile apps which let you scan in a cheque and then you don't need to send them the cheque). Then it takes a few days for the cheque to clear the system and finally debit the original account.

It used to be a great annoyance in shops when people used to pay by cheque as it would take ages to write it out. To save a bit of time supermarket tills were equipped to print the cheque for you, but you still had to sign it. Cheques would generally only be accepted in shops if you presented a 'cheque guarantee card' (which no longer exist), which would ensure that payments under £50 or £100 would not bounce. That added more time as the cheque guarantee card number had to be written on the back of the cheque. What was really stupid is that the cheque guarantee card was normally also a debit card. Which meant that you could have used the debit card and not needed to write a cheque! But, as above, some people might have wanted to delay the money leaving the account, for example if it was approaching payday and you were running out of money.

I got a debit card combined with a cheque guarantee card when I opened a bank account as a student in 1991. So there was no need to pay by cheque in the supermarket since then and I never did.

Cheques used to be the main way of drawing money out of the bank and some people still prefer to do that inside the bank branch, rather than draw cash out of the ATM, or better still, pay by card. During Covid restrictions that meant people queuing up outside the bank in the rain.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> One of the reasons why people use cheques is because the money doesn't come out of your bank account straight away. If you post a cheque to someone on Monday, they might not get it until Wednesday or Thursday. Then the recipient has to send the cheque to the bank, either by visiting the bank or posting the cheque to the bank. (Although some banks now have mobile apps which let you scan in a cheque and then you don't need to send them the cheque). Then it takes a few days for the cheque to clear the system and finally debit the original account.


Yes, I hard that explanations. And I see how banks would love to get rid of such annoying process. 95% of people wouldn't mind, but of course small vocal minority is often enough to stop changes.



> It used to be a great annoyance in shops when people used to pay by cheque as it would take ages to write it out. To save a bit of time supermarket tills were equipped to print the cheque for you, but you still had to sign it. Cheques would generally only be accepted in shops if you presented a 'cheque guarantee card' (which no longer exist), which would ensure that payments under £50 or £100 would not bounce. That added more time as the cheque guarantee card number had to be written on the back of the cheque. What was really stupid is that the cheque guarantee card was normally also a debit card. Which meant that you could have used the debit card and not needed to write a cheque! But, as above, some people might have wanted to delay the money leaving the account, for example if it was approaching payday and you were running out of money.


Oh yes, I remember processing some rare cheque transactions when I started in retail in London, some 17 years ago.

But far worse was when on a few occasions our electronic card payments systems failed and we had process cards manually for a few hours. Banking it later was a real pain, I've spent hours going through individual paper forms



> Cheques used to be the main way of drawing money out of the bank and some people still prefer to do that inside the bank branch, rather than draw cash out of the ATM, or better still, pay by card. During Covid restrictions that meant people queuing up outside the bank in the rain.


People still occasionally do (or rather did pre pandemic) pay by company cheque for their annual rail tickets.

But I don't get queueing in the rain just to use cheque. That is as daft as double taps


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> You haven't heard of de-icer?


They say it's bad for the wiper blades, as it would affect the rubbers. I haven't used it, I use a scraper.

This season I think I've scraped the car windows only 2 times. I don't need it very often in the morning, especially with working from home. And there hasn't been much frost. Though they did salt the roads rather excessively.


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> By the way... cheques... are they really still used in the UK for whatever reasons? And why? It's so much simpler with bank transfers... And if you only know someone's address, over here companies normally use the money delivery service of the post... In the same way, for example, the social security delivers the pensions to the pensioners with no bank accounts (there are still quite many of those).


Already answered... but to add, in this case the electricity network is not the company which bills people for their electricity, so they won't hold any bank details. Sending out a cheque is quick and cheap (unless you put the wrong amount on them). It's not uncommon to get things like refunds as a cheque. A cynic might say that they do this because they know that some people won't bother paying the cheque into their account because of the hassle, especially for small amounts.

I haven't personally written a cheque for at least 15 years. No one wants them any more. When I was a student they were handy if money got really tight as you didn't actually need to have any money in your account but the bank would have to pay them out


----------



## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> If I used de-icers to get rid of ice I would go through like 10 bottles a winter  So that's not really a viable option in this climate. A scraper gets rid of 99% of the ice anyway.


Such chemicals were used in Finland say 50 years ago before the carmakers invented the flow-through ventilation. The smell was awful. Since that, the scraper and/or a cabin heater have been the standard options.

















Instead of an electric heater, I have equipped my recent cars with a Webasto fuel-powered heater. It does not need a power supply, and its performance is much higher, but it is much more expensive. In average winter conditions, heating for 30-40 minutes is enough to make the inside temperature to approach +20°C, and to remove the ice from both surfaces of the windscreen. If the temperature drops below -10°C, I extend the heating time to 50 minutes. A 1200 watt electric heater usually needs two hours.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> By the way... cheques... are they really still used in the UK for whatever reasons? And why?


The biggest outdoor museum in Europe is expected to follow the traditions.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

MattiG said:


> Instead of an electric heater, I have equipped my recent cars with a Webasto fuel-powered heater.


I have webasto as well. I can pre-program when I want to start driving, and the heating time is then set automatically depending on the temperature. I do not commute daily by car, so I rarely remember to switch it on, actually, but most winter days here are not that cold. My next car will be electric (maybe this year), so no more webasto.


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I have webasto as well. I can pre-program when I want to start driving, and the heating time is then set automatically depending on the temperature. I do not commute daily by car, so I rarely remember to switch it on, actually, but most winter days here are not that cold. My next car will be electric (maybe this year), so no more webasto.


Yes, there are models for a remote control, for an smartphone app, and factory-built ones integrated to the cockpit controls. For an electric car, the pre-heating delivers a similar functionality. The charging stations usually deliver more more kilowatts than a traditional shared [email protected] station allowing 1200 watts for the air heater and 450 watts for the engine heater. Therefore, the shooting time for a pre-heater is about the same as for a Webasto.


----------



## metacatfry

In hgv trucks fuel and battery powered pre heaters/ oil burners are common. if you come across a truck standing humming by itself that's what that is (or in can be a refrigerator for the cargo). You program your starting time and it starts automatically, making the cabin nice and toasty, the windscreen is clear, and the diesel fuel can flow freely (in very cold weather diesel becomes quite sludgy and difficult to combust if it's not heated up). I also see a lot of diesel vans with them as a standard option.


----------



## radamfi

It was announced in 2009 that cheques would be phased out in the UK by 2018 





__





BBC News - Cheques to be phased out in 2018







news.bbc.co.uk





That idea was cancelled in 2011 due to campaigning by MPs and charities









Cheques not to be scrapped after all, banks say


The banking industry will not scrap the use of cheques after all, the UK's Payments Council has announced.



www.bbc.co.uk





There is no longer any discussion about scrapping cheques. Even though according to



https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/sites/default/files/uploads/SUMMARY-UK-Payment-Markets-2021-FINAL.pdf



the number of cheques written fell by 89% from 2010 to 2020.

There is now much more fuss about closure of bank branches and cash machines, and possibly the end of cash itself. But while the number of cash machines has been falling in recent years, there were still a lot more machines in 2020 than there were in 2000.













https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8570/CBP-8570.pdf


----------



## ChrisZwolle

What is a pay to use ATM? Where it costs money to withdraw money from your account? 

In the Netherlands there has been a major consolidation in ATMs, due to declining usage (and risk of major structural damage to buildings due to criminals attempting to blow them up). 

For example in my shopping center, the ATM was either inside a supermarket or fixed to a building. But they have been moved to a freestanding location so they don't risk a building collapse if criminals use an excessive amount of explosives. 

Many bank offices have also closed down due to online banking, declining usage and an attempt to save operational cost. The low interest rates have also contributed to declining profitability, so they cut cost where they can.


----------



## MattiG

metacatfry said:


> In hgv trucks fuel and battery powered pre heaters/ oil burners are common. if you come across a truck standing humming by itself that's what that is (or in can be a refrigerator for the cargo). You program your starting time and it starts automatically, making the cabin nice and toasty, the windscreen is clear, and the diesel fuel can flow freely (in very cold weather diesel becomes quite sludgy and difficult to combust if it's not heated up). I also see a lot of diesel vans with them as a standard option.


A diesel engine does not create as much excessive heat as a gasoline one. That is why many diesel-driven passenger cars sold in the cold areas are equipped with factory-installed fuel heaters as a standard option. Some of them are for extra cabin heating only, and some of them can be used as a full-scale remote-controlled preheater.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> What is a pay to use ATM? Where it costs money to withdraw money from your account?


All machines were originally run by banks but then independent providers started to install them as they could make money from each withdrawal. To start with, the cash machine owners would charge the customer's bank directly, so it would seem free to the customer. But then they were are allowed to install machines which charge the customer as well. These are typically located inside shops and privately owned premises, but there are also plenty of them in walls. These are somewhat controversial, but there is nearly always a free ATM nearby. You can easily find a free ATM by using a locator 





__





LINK / Cash Locator


The LINK Cash Locator




www.link.co.uk





In the US it seems that nearly all ATMs charge, certainly if you aren't a customer of the bank that owns the machine.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> What is a pay to use ATM? Where it costs money to withdraw money from your account?


Some terminals are maintained by independent operators.

They are often located e.g. near tourist traps. Or at airports. In many European airport, there were infamous "Travelex ATM" which charged € 3 to € 5 + variable fee for every withdraw. Some of these excesses were curbed by new European regulators and within the EU variable fees are no longer allowed within SEPA (Standard European Payment Area). Also, fees must be displayed before a transaction is confirmed.


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## Coccodrillo

Kpc21 said:


> Wouldn't asking the passenger to drink some of the water from the bottle during the security check be a sufficient proof that it's actually water and not an explosive?


I was once transfering between flights in Zürich airport, and bought a 75 cl bottle of water just after having landed. For some reasons we were routed out of the security zone before boarding the second flight, so I had to pass again the security checks, where they wanted me to throw away the bottle they sold me a few minutes before for 5 CHF/EUR or so. I drank it all next to the police officer just because I felt like scammed.

(actually I had already drank, so it was something less than 75 cl)


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^ Luckily a lot of airports have water fountains now, so I normally fly with an empty bottle.

I can't remember the last time I used an ATM, but it must have been abroad, most likely outside Europe. Maybe there are some ATMs left outside banks in Norway, and in the airports, but I seriously do not know. Back when I actually used cash in Norway several years ago, I usually made the withdrawal from the grocery shop cashier.


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## Fuzzy Llama

The ironic thing is that I've never used so much cash as now, just after I've moved to the Netherlands. The country may be the World's Capital of Cashlessness, but actually getting to a point when you can have a bank account takes time. A lot of time. I've moved in the last days of November. It's February, and if I'm lucky MAYBE I'll get my ABN AMRO account by the end of this week.

In the meantime it's "walk around with wads of cash like it's 1999" time for me, because 2/3rds of the businesses accept local cards only.

But apart from that, the country is lovely


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## Suburbanist

Fuzzy Llama said:


> The ironic thing is that I've never used so much cash as now, just after I've moved to the Netherlands. The country may be the World's Capital of Cashlessness, but actually getting to a point when you can have a bank account takes time. A lot of time. I've moved in the last days of November. It's February, and if I'm lucky MAYBE I'll get my ABN AMRO account by the end of this week.
> 
> In the meantime it's "walk around with wads of cash like it's 1999" time for me, because 2/3rds of the businesses accept local cards only.
> 
> But apart from that, the country is lovely


What about online banks like BunQ or Revolut?


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## Suburbanist

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> ^^ Luckily a lot of airports have water fountains now, so I normally fly with an empty bottle.
> 
> I can't remember the last time I used an ATM, but it must have been abroad, most likely outside Europe. Maybe there are some ATMs left outside banks in Norway, and in the airports, but I seriously do not know. Back when I actually used cash in Norway several years ago, I usually made the withdrawal from the grocery shop cashier.


Bergen airport had even a sparkling water option. Not sure if it is still active post-Covid or not.


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## Slagathor

Fuzzy Llama said:


> The ironic thing is that I've never used so much cash as now, just after I've moved to the Netherlands. The country may be the World's Capital of Cashlessness, but actually getting to a point when you can have a bank account takes time. A lot of time. I've moved in the last days of November. It's February, and if I'm lucky MAYBE I'll get my ABN AMRO account by the end of this week.
> 
> In the meantime it's "walk around with wads of cash like it's 1999" time for me, because 2/3rds of the businesses accept local cards only.
> 
> But apart from that, the country is lovely


Welcome!

Signing up with ABN Amro may have been a mistake.


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## ChrisZwolle

Fuzzy Llama said:


> because 2/3rds of the businesses accept local cards only.


That's true, Dutch businesses have not been eager to accept foreign credit cards. The Netherlands had developed its own PIN system (debit) early on with very low transaction costs, hence everybody has been using PIN even for tiny transactions for a long time. Even outdoor vendors like food trucks use the PIN system with a 4G payment terminal.

But that has put foreigners with credit cards at a disadvantage. I'm not even sure if unmanned fuel stations or paid parking accept foreign credit cards.


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## Fuzzy Llama

Slagathor said:


> Signing up with ABN Amro may have been a mistake.


There are only two real banks in NL that offer service in English, and the other is ING with whom I won't be making business because they rejected my mortgage application 10 years ago -- a grudge is a grudge 

The biggest timewaster was actually the municipality of Den Haag, which makes you wait almost 2 months for registration appointment, and then they take their sweet time to post the letter containing the sweet, sweet BSN number that you actually need for the account. But in just a few days the Netherlads will become my oyster


----------



## Slagathor

Fuzzy Llama said:


> There are only two real banks in NL that offer service in English, and the other is ING with whom I won't be making business because they rejected my mortgage application 10 years ago -- a grudge is a grudge


I concur. Feck 'm. 



Fuzzy Llama said:


> The biggest timewaster was actually the municipality of Den Haag, which makes you wait almost 2 months for registration appointment, and then they take their sweet time to post the letter containing the sweet, sweet BSN number that you actually need for the account. But in just a few days the Netherlads will become my oyster


I lived in Den Haag from 2009 until 2019. Nice to hear their service is still abysmal.


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## radamfi

Is there any discussion domestically about increasing Visa/Mastercard acceptance? In most countries you can use cards from other countries, but the Netherlands is an exception because many retailers will only accept Maestro and VPay, which many countries don't issue. I know the reason is because Maestro charges are so much lower, but maybe there is a way around it.



Fuzzy Llama said:


> In the meantime it's "walk around with wads of cash like it's 1999" time for me, because 2/3rds of the businesses accept local cards only.


I posted in the past about getting a Bunq card despite living in the UK (not possible now because of Brexit, although existing account holders are still allowed to keep their accounts). I realise this is too late for you now, but opening a Bunq account before arriving in the Netherlands seems to be a popular idea with expats, as you can open it in many EU countries and it uses English as its main language.


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## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's true, Dutch businesses have not been eager to accept foreign credit cards. The Netherlands had developed its own PIN system (debit) early on with very low transaction costs, hence everybody has been using PIN even for tiny transactions for a long time. Even outdoor vendors like food trucks use the PIN system with a 4G payment terminal.
> 
> But that has put foreigners with credit cards at a disadvantage. I'm not even sure if unmanned fuel stations or paid parking accept foreign credit cards.


Yes, I experienced it... And i'ts fully awful in shops where cash is not accepted. You stand there, have a Mastercard Gold and a lot of money in cash and can't buy anything. A typical WTF situation.


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## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's true, Dutch businesses have not been eager to accept foreign credit cards.


But they don't even like foreign _debit_ cards. This distinction doesn't seem to be applicable in the Netherlands, but in other countries there is a vast difference between a Visa debit card and a Visa credit card. A bank account in the UK, for example, will come with either a Visa or Mastercard _debit_ card. Even though it is Visa or Mastercard, it doesn't automatically mean you can borrow on it. You can have an overdraft if your bank allows, but that is presumably the same in the Netherlands if you have a Maestro card with your bank account. If you want a credit card, then you have to apply for that separately. Then you might have two Visa cards, or one Visa card and one Mastercard, or two Mastercards, and you have to know which one is debit and which one is credit.

If you want to withdraw money from the ATM, then you need to use the debit card, as the credit card will almost certainly cost interest and maybe other charges as well. You can't use a Visa credit card for online gambling, but you can with a Visa debit card.

The Netherlands treats all Visa cards and Mastercards as credit, even though many if not most are actually debit.


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## Attus

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I can't remember the last time I used an ATM, but it must have been abroad, most likely outside Europe.


I do it once or twice a month. A support my mother financially, but she does not have any bank account so I need to give her cash. And there are some small shops nearby that don't accept cards, several parking machines that don't, so I need some cash.


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## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> Is there any discussion domestically about increasing Visa/Mastercard acceptance? In most countries you can use cards from other countries, but the Netherlands is an exception because many retailers will only accept Maestro and VPay, which many countries don't issue. I know the reason is because Maestro charges are so much lower, but maybe there is a way around it.


Not that I'm aware of. These days a majority of people below the age of 30 actually use their smartphones or smart watches to pay for stuff, I've noticed. I rarely see youngsters pull out an actual card. I gather they make use of Apple pay and Google pay but I'm not sure how either of them work. I don't imagine it's Maestro though.


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> Not that I'm aware of. These days a majority of people below the age of 30 actually use their smartphones or smart watches to pay for stuff, I've noticed. I rarely see youngsters pull out an actual card. I gather they make use of Apple pay and Google pay but I'm not sure how either of them work. I don't imagine it's Maestro though.


When I'm in the Netherlands I pay by phone using my Bunq account on Google Pay. Even though I'm using Google Pay it is still uses Maestro. It just creates a virtual account number. On my phone it says

Virtual account number
Maestro **** (followed by four digits)

My Visa card on Google Pay similarly has a Visa virtual number.

So Google Pay doesn't make a difference and you can't use Google Pay in Albert Heijn if you are using a Visa virtual number.

You need to be aware that the virtual number is considered as a different card to your physical card in some circumstances. For example, on London buses if you use Google Pay on a London bus, then the actual card on the next bus, they will be considered to be two separate journeys as the card numbers are different.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> These days a majority of people below the age of 30 actually use their smartphones or smart watches to pay for stuff, I've noticed. I rarely see youngsters pull out an actual card. I gather they make use of Apple pay and Google pay but I'm not sure how either of them work.


I'm 34 and I've never used my smartphone to pay for something like that. I don't really see the advantage either, I have my card in the phone case so I don't carry a wallet. I often see people struggling with their phone to make a connection with the payment terminal. The reading time of the device appears to be longer too. Do you have to unlock the phone to make a payment?


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm 34 and I've never used my smartphone to pay for something like that. I don't really see the advantage either, I have my card in the phone case so I don't carry a wallet. I often see people struggling with their phone to make a connection with the payment terminal. The reading time of the device appears to be longer too. Do you have to unlock the phone to make a payment?


With Google Pay and Apple Pay you can pay for any amount, even above the usual contactless limit. There's isn't really much of a benefit otherwise. I use it simply because my phone is bigger and therefore easier to get out of my pocket. The phone isn't unlocked for small transactions, but you do need to light up the screen with the power button. If you lose your card then you can still pay with your phone. You can potentially leave your card at home.


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## bogdymol

Since covid started, I switched from a combination of card+cash (depending on the situation), to mobile payment only, whenever that is accepted. I have Apple Pay on my phone, so to pay for anything I just take the phone out of my pocket, double-click the start button (fingerprint reader), and just touch with the phone the wireless card reader from the shop. Takes about 5 seconds in total, as you don't need to enter the PIN code (authorization is done by fingerprint reader on the phone). 

Faster than getting your wallet out, search for the right card, puting it into the machine, enter PIN, put the card back etc.

It happened to me on several occasions that I went to the supermarket with nothing more than my phone. My wife also starting doing this more often, after I installed Google Pay on her phone (with my card, terrible mistake ).


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## tfd543

bogdymol said:


> Since covid started, I switched from a combination of card+cash (depending on the situation), to mobile payment only, whenever that is accepted. I have Apple Pay on my phone, so to pay for anything I just take the phone out of my pocket, double-click the start button (fingerprint reader), and just touch with the phone the wireless card reader from the shop. Takes about 5 seconds in total, as you don't need to enter the PIN code (authorization is done by fingerprint reader on the phone).
> 
> Faster than getting your wallet out, search for the right card, puting it into the machine, enter PIN, put the card back etc.
> 
> It happened to me on several occasions that I went to the supermarket with nothing more than my phone. My wife also starting doing this more often, after I installed Google Pay on her phone (with my card, terrible mistake ).


Right card? What other cards do you have in ur Wallet? 

I have 4 only: visa, driving license, health card, and id card from my job. Thats it.


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## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I can't remember the last time I used an ATM, but it must have been abroad, most likely outside Europe. Maybe there are some ATMs left outside banks in Norway, and in the airports, but I seriously do not know. Back when I actually used cash in Norway several years ago, I usually made the withdrawal from the grocery shop cashier.


The same here. Finland is quickly moving towards a cashless society and paying cash is a notable exception, at least in cities. The countryside is more conservative.

Most banks have pretty limited services to deliver cash. Instead, ATMs are in use. Withdrawing cash at a shop cashier has not gained popularity.

Technology is a bottleneck. If the network or the bank back-end systems are down, payments are not possible.


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## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I can't remember the last time I used an ATM, but it must have been abroad, most likely outside Europe. Maybe there are some ATMs left outside banks in Norway, and in the airports, but I seriously do not know. Back when I actually used cash in Norway several years ago, I usually made the withdrawal from the grocery shop cashier.


I try to have some small amount of cash on me. Some small businesses (fish&chips shops, newsagents etc.) have minimum amount over which they accept card. Not many of them but occasionally it is still happening. So when I get chips for £2 it sometimes falls below the threshold.

Also, the Eastern European shop when I get my favorite dark Lithuanian bread from still doesn't take cards. It must be the only place I'm aware of which doesn't take cards at all but they are the only ones selling that bread (without travelling to other parts of London). So I make at least one cash payment a week 

Apart from that I think it might make sense to have some emergency cash. Technologies do fail from time to time. There was situation a year or tow ago that card payments were not working in swaths of London, for a few hours.


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## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm 34 and I've never used my smartphone to pay for something like that. I don't really see the advantage either, I have my card in the phone case so I don't carry a wallet. I often see people struggling with their phone to make a connection with the payment terminal. The reading time of the device appears to be longer too. Do you have to unlock the phone to make a payment?


It's quicker and it's more secure. Google/Apple pay create a new card number for every transaction, the retailer has no access to this so the card cannot be cloned. The transaction doesn't take any more time, but some do take longer which is down to the design of the terminal or intelligence of the user. For Google Pay the screen needs to be on but the device doesn't need to be unlocked, up to £100 in the UK. For higher amounts you have to unlock the device to confirm it's you. The only time I use my actual card is for very infrequent ATMs or self-serve petrol if I'm not going into the shop


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## Suburbanist

Google Pay is more secure than standard cards for contactless transactions indeed.


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## Stuu

Suburbanist said:


> Google Pay is more secure than standard cards for contactless transactions indeed.


Not just contactless, any transactions. The retailer not seeing the real card number means it can't be used later for transactions, especially for internet purchases where no PIN is required


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> I try to have some small amount of cash on me. Some small businesses (fish&chips shops, newsagents etc.) have minimum amount over which they accept card. Not many of them but occasionally it is still happening. So when I get chips for £2 it sometimes falls below the threshold.
> 
> Also, the Eastern European shop when I get my favorite dark Lithuanian bread from still doesn't take cards. It must be the only place I'm aware of which doesn't take cards at all but they are the only ones selling that bread (without travelling to other parts of London). So I make at least one cash payment a week
> 
> Apart from that I think it might make sense to have some emergency cash. Technologies do fail from time to time. There was situation a year or tow ago that card payments were not working in swaths of London, for a few hours.


I can wait for a few hours, but it has not happened so far around here, as far as I know (the online identification system for login to banks etc. however has been a bit more unstable).

For the (very) small businesses, and payment between private persons or payments at local community events etc., phone apps are in general used rather than cash, even by the elderly. Bus and train companies etc. of course have their own apps, but the by far most dominating general purpose payment app in Norway is not Google, but an app called Vipps, which is owned by the banks.


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## ChrisZwolle

I do have some emergency cash with me, I have a € 50 bill in my phone case. 

There have been situations where there is an interruption in payment services, sometimes for a chain, sometimes country-wide. These usually don't last long, but at least you can go on your way by paying in cash.


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## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch government has announced that pretty much all restrictions and mandates will end soon.


the work from home advice ends immediately, as well as number of visitors per day in private (home) gatherings.
from 18 February: closure time of restaurants, theaters, etc. moves from 22h to 01h. The covid health pass still applies
from 25 February: almost everything is lifted. No more covid health pass for entry, no more masks in indoor locations, no more social distancing. No mandate for closing time.

There are a few exceptions, the mask will remain mandatory in public transport until 15 March. And indoor events over 500 people (large nightclubs & events, but not conventions / exhibits) will require a proof of negative test for everyone. This is rather controversial and it wouldn't surprise me if this is dropped quickly.

The Dutch covid health pass / QR code has always maintained, the so-called '3G restriction' (German speakers will understand this). This means vaccinated, recovered or tested. All three words start with 'G' in Dutch and German. The Netherlands didn't go as far as Germany, which has a 2G restriction (dropping the test as a proof of entry). The QR code for entry into facilities will thus end at 25 February (Friday next week).


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> But far worse was when on a few occasions our electronic card payments systems failed and we had process cards manually for a few hours.


Interesting, regarding that in Poland, in case of a card system failure, shops just only accept cash...

I have never seen a debit or credit card processed manually, without electronics... I know that such a process exists and I even know how it more or less looks like (once I saw it in an old TV ad), but for me it's completely exotic.

Actually, from what I can understand, it can only work with embossed cards (ones on which the letters are not just printed on the card, but they physically protrude from it) and while now practically all the debit cards are embossed ones, in the past many of them weren't.

Regarding old people and banking, I once heard about a lady who was always going to the bank and withdrawing everything she got immediately just after the payout. In this case, I have no idea why she even had that bank account. I mean, when you are employed, having no bank account might be problematic (in theory you are not obliged to have one, and if you don't, your employer should pay you your salary in cash; in practice, he would probably try to persuade you to get a bank account as much as he can), but in case of the pensions, there are really many pensioners with no bank account (who went on pension when bank accounts weren't popular yet, and it was common to pay the salary in cash), and our social security has no problems with sending them their pensions by post.



ChrisZwolle said:


> What is a pay to use ATM? Where it costs money to withdraw money from your account?


I don't pay anything for the withdrawals from an ATM.

When I was a student, my bank offered free ATM withdrawals from all ATMs, if I remember, well, not only in Poland, but all around the EU, for free. But this offer was only valid for the people under 26. So once I got 26, I opened an account in another bank, deliberately choosing one, which had a similar offer on condition that are getting a regular income on your account.

It's so much freedom when you don't have to specifically look for an ATM of your bank.

Though many banks also resign for their own ATMs and instead they install ATMs of ATM-specific companies (Euronet, Planet Cash/ITCard) – and arrange free withdrawals for their customers with those companies. This is similar to the consolidation you mentioned.



ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch covid health pass / QR code has always maintained, the so-called '3G restriction' (German speakers will understand this). This means vaccinated, recovered or tested. All three words start with 'G' in Dutch and German. The Netherlands didn't go as far as Germany, which has a 2G restriction (dropping the test as a proof of entry). The QR code for entry into facilities will thus end at 25 February (Friday next week).


Well, over here 2G and 3G only make sense as generations of mobile phone networks (by the way, 3G currently being phased out in Poland)...


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> Actually, from what I can understand, it can only work with embossed cards (ones on which the letters are not just printed on the card, but they physically protrude from it) and while now practically all the debit cards are embossed ones, in the past many of them weren't.


Embossed cards are being phased out as there is no point in them now we no longer need carbon imprinters. A lot of prepaid cards have been non-embossed for a long time. They used to be branded 'electronic use only', indicating that they could not be used with carbon imprinters. I've got quite a number of debit and credit cards and all of the replacement cards I've received in the last year or so are non-embossed with all the details on the back of the card. I prefer non-embossed as they take up less space in the wallet.

Dutch debit cards don't even carry a card number, hence requirement for the iDEAL workaround system for shopping online. They presumably have never been usable with carbon imprinters. My Bunq card has the IBAN, expiry date and name on the back.



Kpc21 said:


> I don't pay anything for the withdrawals from an ATM.


If you use a fee charging machine you have no choice but to pay the fee, as it is considered part of the withdrawal, so is out of the control of your bank.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> If you use a fee charging machine you have no choice but to pay the fee, as it is considered part of the withdrawal, so is out of the control of your bank.


I suppose there aren't such machines in Poland, I haven't seen any...

In other countries I also haven't met any one like that yet. Though I believe they may exist.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch government has announced that pretty much all restrictions and mandates will end soon.
> 
> 
> the work from home advice ends immediately, as well as number of visitors per day in private (home) gatherings.
> from 18 February: closure time of restaurants, theaters, etc. moves from 22h to 01h. The covid health pass still applies
> from 25 February: almost everything is lifted. No more covid health pass for entry, no more masks in indoor locations, no more social distancing. No mandate for closing time.
> 
> There are a few exceptions, the mask will remain mandatory in public transport until 15 March. And indoor events over 500 people (large nightclubs & events, but not conventions / exhibits) will require a proof of negative test for everyone. This is rather controversial and it wouldn't surprise me if this is dropped quickly.
> 
> The Dutch covid health pass / QR code has always maintained, the so-called '3G restriction' (German speakers will understand this). This means vaccinated, recovered or tested. All three words start with 'G' in Dutch and German. The Netherlands didn't go as far as Germany, which has a 2G restriction (dropping the test as a proof of entry). The QR code for entry into facilities will thus end at 25 February (Friday next week).


People get infected left and right around me these days. Due to reduced testing there is no reliable number on the number of infections in Norway anymore, but hospitalization rates are fairly high compared with before (but at 7/ 100 000 I guess the rates are still low compared with most countries). However, ICU rates _keep_ decreasing, which seems to be the case in all the Nordic countries. Due to the current surge in infections (we are probably close to the peak), I kind of doubt that will be the case a few weeks from now, however.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Stuu said:


> Not just contactless, any transactions. The retailer not seeing the real card number means it can't be used later for transactions, especially for internet purchases where no PIN is required


In the EU you cannot make online purchases anymore based only on the card details. You have to log in to your bank to verify it's you. So even if somebody had all of my card details, they still couldn't use it for online payments.


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## Attus

Rebasepoiss said:


> In the EU you cannot make online purchases anymore based only on the card details. You have to log in to your bank to verify it's you. So even if somebody had all of my card details, they still couldn't use it for online payments.


It's the rule, but it is not how it works. It max work this way in a developed country like Estonia, but not everywhere. Two weeks ago I ordered something online and paid by card. There was not any verification. Not any. OK, I know, Germany is one of the least digital and least online European nations, but...


----------



## Attus

I really dislike how several European nations develop some national paying system. In the Netherlands (a country I visit several times a year but where I have never lived) there are shops where neither cash nor international credit cards are accepted so that if you are not Dutch, you may not pay and so may not buy anything there which is crazy.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> Interesting, regarding that in Poland, in case of a card system failure, shops just only accept cash...
> 
> I have never seen a debit or credit card processed manually, without electronics... I know that such a process exists and I even know how it more or less looks like (once I saw it in an old TV ad), but for me it's completely exotic.


Of course it only worked for the embossed cards. And it was well over 10-12 years ago, I don't think it is longer in use.



> I don't pay anything for the withdrawals from an ATM.
> 
> It's so much freedom when you don't have to specifically look for an ATM of your bank.


In my times in Poland (so some 17-18 years ago) you had to stick to your bank's ATMs to avoid charges. It was always a pain. It was surprise to me when I moved to the UK and I could use any bank ATM for free withdrawal



> I suppose there aren't such machines in Poland, I haven't seen any...
> 
> In other countries I also haven't met any one like that yet. Though I believe they may exist.


They definitely exist in the US and the UK.

But here they are mostly traps in touristy areas, at the airports, in the venues etc.


----------



## MattiG

Attus said:


> I really dislike how several European nations develop some national paying system. In the Netherlands (a country I visit several times a year but where I have never lived) there are shops where neither cash nor international credit cards are accepted so that if you are not Dutch, you may not pay and so may not buy anything there which is crazy.


The Netherlands is quite a desperate country for a tourist to buy food. The supermarkets are extremely well hidden somewhere. When you finally find some, there is an uncertainty if you can pay or not.

During the latest visit a few years ago, the Albert Hejn shops rejected my debit/credit combo card. Credit cards are not accepted, and their ancient POS terminals did not recognize the debit card.

Not accepting a credit card might be about thinking dating back for decades to protect clients to run out of money. But is it really a responsibility of a food store to care about clients' finances?

Better to stay close to the borders of Germany or Belgium.


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## Fuzzy Llama

MattiG said:


> The Netherlands is quite a desperate country for a tourist to buy food. The supermarkets are extremely well hidden somewhere. When you finally find some, there is an uncertainty if you can pay or not.


Well, this is a rather surprising statement, as in my expierience there is an Albert Heijn or Jumbo at about every street in the country, and additionally there are like a million of little Turkish or Polish shops at every street just in case. And I could pay cash in every single one of them. (Also, a little top tip: Jumbo accepts Master  )

The biggest payment problem that was apparently fixed is payment for public transport. Just 5 years ago most of the ticket machines accepted only Maestro/Vpay or coins, which really leaves you laughing when you have just landed at Schiphol with nothing but an empty OV-Chipkaart, a Mastercard and some Polish Zloties in pocket. But now all NS (national rail company of The Netherlands) machines accept Master as well, and additonally you can finally just buy a ticket in an app.


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## Slagathor

Yeah, NS have finally solved it which is great. I never even use the ticket machines anymore, I just buy my tickets on the app.

Also; if you can't find a grocery store in the Netherlands, there's definitely something wrong with you.  This is Google Map's search result for "supermarket" in downtown The Hague:


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## ChrisZwolle

Dutch supermarkets may be at less obvious locations than in some other countries. Most aren't near the biggest roads, but in a neighborhood shopping center. It's not like McDonald's.


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## Fuzzy Llama

By the way, I've seen a number of "ethnic" supermarkets around the world, but the one Polish shop I've been to in The Hague is something straight out of an alternate reality. You cross the threshold, and The Netherlands disappear. You are trasferred 20 years back in time to a small Polish city -- maybe Sieradz, maybe Siemiatycze. Everyone speak Polish. Everything is written in Polish, nothing in neither Dutch nor English in sight. There is a distinctive smell of cheap charcuterie in the air, and a distinctive 'organized chaos'. You somewhat _know_, that bottled water is just stored in the widest alley in the shop. (And no, I have no idea why somebody would crave to buy Polish bottled water in The Netherlands, but some things are better left unanswered.) You _know_, where the beer is stored just by instinct, and you know that there will be no fancy craft beer on those shelves -- it's a sole reign of Perła, Żubr and Żywiec. 

But you know that you have to endure all of that to get Majonez Kielecki, the only brand of mayo that my girlfriend consumes. And all of the nostalgia is just a bonus


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## radamfi

Some Albert Heijn supermarkets accept Visa and Mastercard. In Schiphol airport, many rail stations and two shops in Amsterdam. 





__





Zelfscannen en betalen | AH Klantenservice


In onze winkels kun je op verschillende manieren afrekenen. Zo kun je gebruik maken van zelfscannen en afrekenen met je mobiele telefoon, of gewoon bij de kassa en pinnen of contant betalen.




www.ah.nl







> In sommige winkels kan je met je creditcard of buitenlandse pre-paid debetkaart betalen: de winkels op Schiphol, veel stationswinkels, de winkel achter het paleis op de Dam in Amsterdam en de winkel aan de Weteringschans in Amsterdam. Bij alle andere winkels kan dit niet.


So they can accept them if they want. They simply choose not to. AH have shops in Belgium too and they have the same policy.

There are some AH shops that don't accept cash either. So you don't have a Maestro or VPay card, you can't buy anything there!

NS and Dutch local buses even accept American Express which is not universally accepted in the UK. UK train companies are supposed to accept it but there are sometimes problems. Some tram systems (for example in Manchester) don't accept it.


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## geogregor

Fuzzy Llama said:


> By the way, I've seen a number of "ethnic" supermarkets around the world, but the one Polish shop I've been to in The Hague is something straight out of an alternate reality. You cross the threshold, and The Netherlands disappear. You are trasferred 20 years back in time to a small Polish city -- maybe Sieradz, maybe Siemiatycze. Everyone speak Polish. Everything is written in Polish, nothing in neither Dutch nor English in sight. There is a distinctive smell of cheap charcuterie in the air, and a distinctive 'organized chaos'. You somewhat _know_, that bottled water is just stored in the widest alley in the shop. (And no, I have no idea why somebody would crave to buy Polish bottled water in The Netherlands, but some things are better left unanswered.) You _know_, where the beer is stored just by instinct, and you know that there will be no fancy craft beer on those shelves -- it's a sole reign of Perła, Żubr and Żywiec.
> 
> But you know that you have to endure all of that to get Majonez Kielecki, the only brand of mayo that my girlfriend consumes. And all of the nostalgia is just a bonus
> View attachment 2791900


Oh yes, I recognize the vibe 

Used to be the same in Polish shops here in the UK. And some shops are still like that but many broadened their customer base. In my local Polish shop I often see "non-Polish" customers. Some folks just want to try something different, like Polish sausages, pierogis etc.

And yes, I don't get why would you buy Polish bottled water either...


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## radamfi

In smaller Dutch towns/cities you don't seem to get so many small independent shops. When I'm on a bike ride I often want to buy a bar of chocolate and a can of fizzy drink. Sometimes I end up buying them at the petrol station because I can't find them anywhere else. In Britain such small shops are everywhere (known as 'corner shops' even if they aren't on the corner), but that is probably because they are traditionally run by South Asian families.



ChrisZwolle said:


> It's not like McDonald's.


You can't miss McDonald's in the Netherlands! They have big tall signs like in America. I don't think such big signs are legal in the UK.


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## ChrisZwolle

American Express is poorly accepted in the Netherlands. Definitely less than Visa and Maestro. 

The problem for Dutch shopowners is the high transaction cost associated with credit cards and the fact that it has historically not been popular. According to the internet, only about 2.5% of transactions in the Netherlands are by credit card. This is likely near-zero outside of the largest cities.

But I agree that credit card acceptance in the Netherlands should be much better.


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## radamfi

Probably the most famous British shop, Marks & Spencer, refused to accept credit cards for a long time. They only changed their policy (around the year 2000) because of poor sales. Aldi and Lidl only started accepting credit cards in the UK around 2014. It was common for small shops to surcharge credit cards until that practice was banned by the EU.


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## Stuu

Rebasepoiss said:


> In the EU you cannot make online purchases anymore based only on the card details. You have to log in to your bank to verify it's you. So even if somebody had all of my card details, they still couldn't use it for online payments.


That doesn't start till later this year in the UK, another "benefit" of brexit


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## Stuu

Fuzzy Llama said:


> By the way, I've seen a number of "ethnic" supermarkets around the world, but the one Polish shop I've been to in The Hague is something straight out of an alternate reality. You cross the threshold, and The Netherlands disappear. You are trasferred 20 years back in time to a small Polish city -- maybe Sieradz, maybe Siemiatycze. Everyone speak Polish. Everything is written in Polish, nothing in neither Dutch nor English in sight. There is a distinctive smell of cheap charcuterie in the air, and a distinctive 'organized chaos'. You somewhat _know_, that bottled water is just stored in the widest alley in the shop. (And no, I have no idea why somebody would crave to buy Polish bottled water in The Netherlands, but some things are better left unanswered.) You _know_, where the beer is stored just by instinct, and you know that there will be no fancy craft beer on those shelves -- it's a sole reign of Perła, Żubr and Żywiec.
> 
> But you know that you have to endure all of that to get Majonez Kielecki, the only brand of mayo that my girlfriend consumes. And all of the nostalgia is just a bonus
> View attachment 2791900


The one round the corner from me in SW England is exactly like that too. I've always been surprised by the bottled water too, I guess once you have tasted Carpathian water that's been trucked 1500kms in a plastic bottle you can't go back to anything else


----------



## Slagathor

Fuzzy Llama said:


> By the way, I've seen a number of "ethnic" supermarkets around the world, but the one Polish shop I've been to in The Hague is something straight out of an alternate reality. You cross the threshold, and The Netherlands disappear. You are trasferred 20 years back in time to a small Polish city -- maybe Sieradz, maybe Siemiatycze. Everyone speak Polish. Everything is written in Polish, nothing in neither Dutch nor English in sight. There is a distinctive smell of cheap charcuterie in the air, and a distinctive 'organized chaos'. You somewhat _know_, that bottled water is just stored in the widest alley in the shop. (And no, I have no idea why somebody would crave to buy Polish bottled water in The Netherlands, but some things are better left unanswered.) You _know_, where the beer is stored just by instinct, and you know that there will be no fancy craft beer on those shelves -- it's a sole reign of Perła, Żubr and Żywiec.
> 
> But you know that you have to endure all of that to get Majonez Kielecki, the only brand of mayo that my girlfriend consumes. And all of the nostalgia is just a bonus
> View attachment 2791900


When I was living in The Hague, I used to go to this one a lot. I like Polish bread and pastry.


----------



## The Wild Boy

Is storm eunice going to spread to the Baltics?

When is it projected to end? I think i heard that there was another incoming storm on the way 
That part of Europe hasn't seen such storms in quite a while. 


In my country, Skopje had severe rain and flooding in 2016 that i remember of, there was one storm in 2011 which blew off the roof from one of the buildings behind me, and other than those i don't remember many other serious storms. In the Balkans, earthquakes are a more dominant thing and that's probably the more worrying thing here. Thankfully i live in a city that was rebuilt to withstand big earthquakes, so there are no big worries here.

Interestingly enough the only place that i know that had some more severe and interesting storms is Serbia. Belgrade had a big dust - storm, there was footage of even a storm in Knjaz Miloš. There were several small tornados that appeared in Serbia, as i heard on the news many years ago. Don't know about Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia. I'm assuming that places with coastline and mountains prevent the creations of big storms? 


Fun fact:

Skopje has what we call the City Wall. It's essentially a bunch of buildings and towers built in Socialist Yugoslavia, designed by Kenzo Tange that were built in a such interesting state to protect parts of the city from strong winds. It apparently works, but i don't notice any difference when i go to the city center.


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## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> The main risk assessed today in the Netherlands is the risk of trees falling onto railways, potentially on or right before a train. It's not just about delays. Also, the widespread impact means that the high frequency network in the Netherlands quickly becomes paralyzed as delays spread quickly in case of incidents. This is also a problem during snowfall.


In Poland some time ago PKP (well, PKP PLK, its infrastructure division) had a huge action of cutting out trees within a range of 15 m away from the tracks. Interestingly, as our rail transport authorities explain, this is based on an old law from 1934, which generally forbids planting trees anywhere nearer (though it was very loosely enforced before). It was brutal and spoiled the landscape around many stations – and met some criticism of activists (though rather not environmental ones, but those focused on city greenery) – but from the point of view of such situations, it makes a lot of sense – especially regarding that they happen more and more frequently.



geogregor said:


> Here on many sections we run trains so close to each other that 2 or 3 minutes of delays start cascading pretty quickly to a major jam. If disruption is expected it makes sense to thin out services in advance to allow for better margins between the trains.


And limiting the service, regarding that, makes a lot of sense. I guess otherwise there would be a high risk of just deadlocking the network, when it has to accommodate so many trains. A complete shutdown is more difficult to understand. Though still, at least, according to the posted notice, they are going to reopen the traffic at 7 PM – so people can just wait until the storm passes and the trains should be more or less back to normal (though I guess the service still will not be full, as probably some lines will be damaged and still await for repairs – still, for example, I guess someone thought of it and arranged some replacement buses kept in emergency).

The storm was supposed to come to where I live around 10 PM, but I still can't see it outside. There is just some moderate wind and a very light rainfall.

Interestingly, during those storms this winter I haven't lost electric power even once, even on a single phase. Some colleagues from work had more problems, e.g. one person was out of one phase since yesterday morning and only got it back today around 1 PM. Or some weeks ago another colleague... was in an interesting situation. Because he was completely out of power, but he also couldn't come to the office as he had Covid quarantine. Luckily he had an old ex-military combustion engine power generator, which he used – so he could work just normally.


----------



## PovilD

The Wild Boy said:


> Is storm eunice going to spread to the Baltics?


Looks like Lithuanian Baltic coast should be most affected (wind gusts 28-30 m/s) along with parts of Southern Lithuania (up to 25 m/s).
Poland could be most affected. European plain could do the trick here.

Estonia looks like will avoid worse of it. Latvia is in the middle.

Actually, we already got few similar storms this winter. I expect nothing extraordinary here this time here where I live. Just rather windy day Tomorrow. We will see.


Weather in 5am (3am GMT) as of 19th of February:








Source. FB page:
*Orai ir klimatas Lietuvoje*


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> Interestingly, during those storms this winter I haven't lost electric power even once, even on a single phase. Some colleagues from work had more problems, e.g. one person was out of one phase since yesterday morning and only got it back today around 1 PM. Or some weeks ago another colleague... was in an interesting situation. Because he was completely out of power, but he also couldn't come to the office as he had Covid quarantine. Luckily he had an old ex-military combustion engine power generator, which he used – so he could work just normally.


Do domestic properties in Poland have three-phase supply normally then? That's only commercial/industrial here.

One time we had a major power cut when I was a teenager, we had no power for 3 days because so many trees came down, but the streetlights were on a different phase so were on all the time, which was very irritating.

And a question for our Norwegian members: this map of spot prices which has been discussed before, seems to show prices in Oslo are 8 times higher than further north. Is that right? and how does that work? I also saw that the Norway/UK connector has been running at high power all day today


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> Do domestic properties in Poland have three-phase supply normally then? That's only commercial/industrial here.


Yes, I think I mentioned it already multiple times over here 

The UK is weird with that high-amperage single-phase supply to houses. Three-phase allows to save on that amperage. My house has 3 x 25 A supply – which is low as for the current standards, but it got connected in 1970s and back then it was normal. Now I am probably going to upgrade it.



Stuu said:


> One time we had a major power cut when I was a teenager, we had no power for 3 days because so many trees came down, but the streetlights were on a different phase so were on all the time, which was very irritating.


Yes, having three phases is so much better as if one phase fails, at least a part of the house has power, and you can keep the most important devices like fridges etc. running by connecting them with extension cords to power outlets that actually still have power.

Now most of those links from street power lines to houses got upgraded with insulated cables, but until like 10 years ago most of them were made using four bare wires (three phases + neutral), similarly to the power lines:

Like here:










Nowadays it more often looks like this:










(photos – Google Street View)

And regarding newly built houses, nearly all of them get connected with underground cables from nearby street power line poles. Or on new streets, even the street power lines are made as underground.


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> Yes, I think I mentioned it already multiple times over here
> 
> The UK is weird with that high-amperage single-phase supply to houses. Three-phase allows to save on that amperage. My house has 3 x 25 A supply – which is low as for the current standards, but it got connected in 1970s and back then it was normal. Now I am probably going to upgrade it.
> 
> Yes, having three phases is so much better as if one phase fails, at least a part of the house has power, and you can keep the most important devices like fridges etc. running by connecting them with extension cords to power outlets that actually still have power.


I do remember a vague discussion about it. I just checked and my supply is 100A at 220V single phase. So that must mean you have three separate circuits in your house? That's quite an added complication I would have thought. I get the idea that there is some level of redundancy, but generally with power supplied underground in most urban areas, big power failures are more likely at grid level than locally, unless some idiot digs through the wires. Is the extra level of complication worth it?


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> So that must mean you have three separate circuits in your house?


Normally houses anyway have multiple circuits, as far as I know, it's also common in the UK (just in the UK they are always split out from the same phase, in Poland they are divided between three phases). My house originally only had just three + the fourth three-phase one to the basement – but nowadays modern houses normally have like a dozen of them, or more; you normally have separate circuits for high-power devices like dishwashers, oven etc.

The three phase power is rather a metal saving measure. To pass the same power over a single-phase line, you need much thicker wires as it's just more amps. You can use the intra-phase voltage, which is 400 V for the phase voltage of 230 V. Over here, normally you e.g. need three-phase power to connect an electric cooker.

Also even just while building the house, it's useful to already have three phases, as e.g. most beton mixers over here have three-phase motors.


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> Normally houses anyway have multiple circuits, as far as I know, it's also common in the UK (just in the UK they are always split out from the same phase, in Poland they are divided between three phases). My house originally only had just three + the fourth three-phase one to the basement – but nowadays modern houses normally have like a dozen of them, or more; you normally have separate circuits for high-power devices like dishwashers, oven etc.


Yes of course they do, I didn't think that through. My house has 10 different circuits from the fuse box: downstairs lights, upstairs lights, kitchen, oven etc. It only makes a difference in the back of the fuse box if they are on different phases. My cooker has it's own 40A supply circuit

On checking further it is possible in the UK to have three-phase supply to domestic addresses, but the distribution networks don't encourage it. I guess they are too concerned that people will do their own stupid electrical work and wire two phases together, just the same as why we can't be trusted with mixer taps, or being a member of the EU


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland some time ago PKP (well, PKP PLK, its infrastructure division) had a huge action of cutting out trees within a range of 15 m away from the tracks. Interestingly, as our rail transport authorities explain, this is based on an old law from 1934, which generally forbids planting trees anywhere nearer (though it was very loosely enforced before). It was brutal and spoiled the landscape around many stations – and met some criticism of activists (though rather not environmental ones, but those focused on city greenery) – but from the point of view of such situations, it makes a lot of sense – especially regarding that they happen more and more frequently.


There is program of cutting excessive greenery (especially trees) close to the railway lines but it always faces massive opposition from the locals. Especially in urban areas railway lines often face back gardens of private homes. People value trees growing on the edge of their plots, separating gardens from the railways, and fight off any attempts of cutting.



> And limiting the service, regarding that, makes a lot of sense. I guess otherwise there would be a high risk of just deadlocking the network, when it has to accommodate so many trains. A complete shutdown is more difficult to understand. Though still, at least, according to the posted notice, they are going to reopen the traffic at 7 PM – so people can just wait until the storm passes and the trains should be more or less back to normal (though I guess the service still will not be full, as probably some lines will be damaged and still await for repairs – still, for example, I guess someone thought of it and arranged some replacement buses kept in emergency).


Yes, complete shutdown is rare (this is my first one), but as Chris says, today it was more about actual physical danger than about preserving the timetable.

And you are right, they started reopening the lines around 7-8 pm. I was actually quite impressed. I was catching the last train home from Brixton (0:35) and it was bang on time.

It was quite strange. It was very windy until about 6-7 pm but then winds died down very suddenly. It got very quite by the time I got to central London (party time)


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Yes, I think I mentioned it already multiple times over here
> 
> The UK is weird with that high-amperage single-phase supply to houses. Three-phase allows to save on that amperage. My house has 3 x 25 A supply – which is low as for the current standards, but it got connected in 1970s and back then it was normal. Now I am probably going to upgrade it.
> 
> 
> Yes, having three phases is so much better as if one phase fails, at least a part of the house has power, and you can keep the most important devices like fridges etc. running by connecting them with extension cords to power outlets that actually still have power.
> 
> Now most of those links from street power lines to houses got upgraded with insulated cables, but until like 10 years ago most of them were made using four bare wires (three phases + neutral), similarly to the power lines:
> 
> Like here:
> 
> View attachment 2805396
> 
> 
> Nowadays it more often looks like this:
> 
> View attachment 2805403
> 
> 
> (photos – Google Street View)
> 
> And regarding newly built houses, nearly all of them get connected with underground cables from nearby street power line poles. Or on new streets, even the street power lines are made as underground.


I don't have deep knowledge around electricity supply, but I do have interest in aesthetics of electric cables.

One insulated cable looks so much better than 4 bare wires. I don't like many lines on one pole. In many case here in Kaunas where I live there are often not 4, but 8-10 wires on the pole. Instead of 10 bare wires, 3 thick insulated wires would be way better.

Examples.
Bare wires:









Somewhat better looking isolated wires:











Btw, during my trip to Romania I have noticed lots of wires on poles, often put in chaotic way. Didn't saw anything similar elsewhere in Europe during my trips.
Btw, judging from Street View, lots of wires are also popular in Russia, Ukraine and surrounding countries.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> Yes, complete shutdown is rare (this is my first one), but as Chris says, today it was more about actual physical danger than about preserving the timetable.


Apparently there were some 60 locations with trees or debris on the railways in the Netherlands. If they would've kept running trains, people would not be stranded at home, but somewhere in the middle of nowhere. 

Train services are still shut down this morning, as the storm peaked after dark and crews couldn't get out until things died down. Overhead wiring was destroyed in a few locations. The road network is functional again, all downed trees have been removed.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Stuu said:


> And a question for our Norwegian members: this map of spot prices which has been discussed before, seems to show prices in Oslo are 8 times higher than further north. Is that right?* and how does that work? *I also saw that the Norway/UK connector has been running at high power all day today
> View attachment 2805223


This is a simplified explanaition but: most of the power is being produced in the North and most of it is consumed in the South. Since there isn't enough capacity in the grid to send all of the electricity down South, the prices in the Southern regions are higher (higher demand, lower supply). If all countries and regions had infinite grid capacity between them the price would be the same all over Europe basically.

"Live CO₂ emissions of electricity consumption" shows the electricity "flows" quite well across regions.


----------



## Stuu

Rebasepoiss said:


> This is a simplified explanaition but: most of the power is being produced in the North and most of it is consumed in the South. Since there isn't enough capacity in the grid to send all of the electricity down South, the prices in the Southern regions are higher (higher demand, lower supply). If all countries and regions had infinite grid capacity between them the price would be the same all over Europe basically.
> 
> "Live CO₂ emissions of electricity consumption" shows the electricity "flows" quite well across regions.


Thanks. I'm a bit surprised, given how much money the Norwegians have that they don't have a better electricity grid. There's no regional variation here, although the service charge for the connection varies a bit, but that's only ~10% of the total bill


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> There's no regional variation here, although the service charge for the connection varies a bit, but that's only ~10% of the total bill


Are you talking about the standing charge? Certainly some suppliers charge different rates for both the unit price and standing charge according to region. For example, here is an extract of EDF's charges from 1 April:



https://www.edfenergy.com/sites/default/files/r505_deemed_rate_card.pdf












Some suppliers have had tariffs with no standing charge, so if you don't use anything you don't pay anything. I don't think any of those kind of tariffs still exist.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

They're not joking with this sign:


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Rebasepoiss said:


> This is a simplified explanaition but: most of the power is being produced in the North and most of it is consumed in the South. Since there isn't enough capacity in the grid to send all of the electricity down South, the prices in the Southern regions are higher (higher demand, lower supply).


That is actually not entirely correct. There is normally a surplus of power production in the south (in this context excluding central Norway which normally is included in South Norway). This year this surplus is however less than normal (it was a fairly dry winter and summer in that region) , and with new high-capacity cables to Netherlands, Germany and UK, the electricity prices in the south pretty much follows the highest bidder in those markets.

Central Norway, having a large deficit a decade ago, is now more balanced due to wind power (which works very well with the flexibility of hydropower) , and is also well connected with central /northern Sweden and Northern Norway, which have surplus production. Hence, these regions have prices that follow each other.

Normally the price differences between the Norwegian regions have been small. There is however a relatively short missing link in the 420 kV line along the west coast of Norway, such that there is not enough capacity to even out the prices at a national level in the current extreme situation, made possible by the new international lines. There is a plan to fix this, but it will take a few more years. Everything else equal, the "fix" will not change the prices in the south significantly, but will greatly increase the prices in central and northern Norway to European levels as well. The absolute surplus in Northern and Central Norway is nowhere enough to saturate the demand the international cables have created over the last year. Hence, the regional power companies have been a main proponent of improving the grid between central and western Norway.

The new government of Norway from last fall is already hugely unpopular due to the high power prices, which has had a direct impact on the economy of much of its electorate. Electricity is used for heating in Norway, and most people have a price plan that follows the spot price. One of the coalition partners, the Center Party (ironically getting most of its supporters from rural districts) is more than halved in the polls. There is 3.5 years to next election, but clearly they have to make some serious fixes to the system if they want a to be re-elected. The power cables to the continent and UK were branded as necessary to secure stable supply of power to Norway, but it is clear to most people now that they actually are money makers for the publicly owned power companies at the cost of the Norwegian people. 

There are however no easy fixes. Parties in the opposition call for a maximum price, e. g. at 35 or 50 € per MWh. How this would be done in practice is more unclear. Already this winter, the government has paid some support to private consumers. A more drastic fix would be to introduce restrictions in how the international cables operate, such that they do not export power from Norway when the hydropower reservoirs are running dry. Maybe this would represent a breach or needing a renegotiating of international agreements, though, which normally is something Norwegian governments are very reluctant to do.

The best fix would obviously be to increase the power production, such that the power market of Norway would be running at a higher surplus than today. Unfortunately, even if the potential is huge, on-shore wind power has met strong popular resistance lately and also development of new hydropower has more or less halted. Politicians talk about offshore wind power, but this will take years and will be very expensive due to the large sea depths outside Norway. Hence, the power production is not likely to increase significantly in the next few years. On the other hand, the domestic demand is expected to surge, making the power balance worsw, not better.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> Are you talking about the standing charge? Certainly some suppliers charge different rates for both the unit price and standing charge according to region. For example, here is an extract of EDF's charges from 1 April:
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.edfenergy.com/sites/default/files/r505_deemed_rate_card.pdf
> 
> 
> 
> View attachment 2806586
> 
> 
> Some suppliers have had tariffs with no standing charge, so if you don't use anything you don't pay anything. I don't think any of those kind of tariffs still exist.


Yes, I did mean standing charge... I didn't realise that prices varied like that, and that prepay rates were ever cheaper than direct debit


----------



## Suburbanist

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> That is actually not entirely correct. There is normally a surplus of power production in the south (in this context excluding central Norway which normally is included in South Norway). This year this surplus is however less than normal (it was a fairly dry winter and summer in that region) , and with new high-capacity cables to Netherlands, Germany and UK, the electricity prices in the south pretty much follows the highest bidder in those markets.
> 
> Central Norway, having a large deficit a decade ago, is now more balanced due to wind power (which works very well with the flexibility of hydropower) , and is also well connected with central /northern Sweden and Northern Norway, which have surplus production. Hence, these regions have prices that follow each other.
> 
> Normally the price differences between the Norwegian regions have been small. There is however a relatively short missing link in the 420 kV line along the west coast of Norway, such that there is not enough capacity to even out the prices at a national level in the current extreme situation, made possible by the new international lines. There is a plan to fix this, but it will take a few more years. Everything else equal, the "fix" will not change the prices in the south significantly, but will greatly increase the prices in central and northern Norway to European levels as well. The absolute surplus in Northern and Central Norway is nowhere enough to saturate the demand the international cables have created over the last year. Hence, the regional power companies have been a main proponent of improving the grid between central and western Norway.
> 
> The new government of Norway from last fall is already hugely unpopular due to the high power prices, which has had a direct impact on the economy of much of its electorate. Electricity is used for heating in Norway, and most people have a price plan that follows the spot price. One of the coalition partners, the Center Party (ironically getting most of its supporters from rural districts) is more than halved in the polls. There is 3.5 years to next election, but clearly they have to make some serious fixes to the system if they want a to be re-elected. The power cables to the continent and UK were branded as necessary to secure stable supply of power to Norway, but it is clear to most people now that they actually are money makers for the publicly owned power companies at the cost of the Norwegian people.
> 
> There are however no easy fixes. Parties in the opposition call for a maximum price, e. g. at 35 or 50 € per MWh. How this would be done in practice is more unclear. Already this winter, the government has paid some support to private consumers. A more drastic fix would be to introduce restrictions in how the international cables operate, such that they do not export power from Norway when the hydropower reservoirs are running dry. Maybe this would represent a breach or needing a renegotiating of international agreements, though, which normally is something Norwegian governments are very reluctant to do.
> 
> The best fix would obviously be to increase the power production, such that the power market of Norway would be running at a higher surplus than today. Unfortunately, even if the potential is huge, on-shore wind power has met strong popular resistance lately and also development of new hydropower has more or less halted. Politicians talk about offshore wind power, but this will take years and will be very expensive due to the large sea depths outside Norway. Hence, the power production is not likely to increase significantly in the next few years. On the other hand, the domestic demand is expected to surge, making the power balance worsw, not better.


In a few years the technology for floating wind power will be more mature and Norwegian and Dutch companies are leading the way on the platform development side


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Yes, but it will always be much more expensive than onshore. A lot of steel or concrete is needed to counter the wind forces on a floating structure, and an offshore power grid is also inherently more complicated and expensive to develop. Currently, south-eastern and western Norway, which currently has the high power prices, has very little on-shore wind power. Also Northern Norway, with huge sparsely populated areas, have very little wind power. Middle Norway has, relatively speaking, more wind power, at least along the coast, but also here there is a huge unexploited potential.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> and an offshore power grid is also inherently more complicated and expensive to develop.


I know somebody who's an engineer on a ship that is laying those power cables. Apparently it's a pretty well-paying job, he was able to afford a large house on a single income, and that's saying something in the Netherlands where housing prices are out of control.


----------



## PovilD

Eunice storm progress where I live:
1-3am Snow shower, heavy at times, even produced up to 1 cm of snow.
6-7am Rain Showers with squall strong wind. First time I managed to notice Thunderstorm in February. At least few lightings occured, but without thunder.
Storm continues up till now (15-20 m/s). There is even period with stronger winds expected 5-7pm with maybe 20-25 m/s winds.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

PovilD said:


> 1-3am Snow shower, heavy at times, even produced up to 1 cm of snow.


LOL


----------



## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> LOL


Yeah, I was thinking what Western Europeans would think that somewhere the same storm produced snow.

Snowflakes were formed into big chunks.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> I don't have deep knowledge around electricity supply, but I do have interest in aesthetics of electric cables.
> 
> One insulated cable looks so much better than 4 bare wires. I don't like many lines on one pole. In many case here in Kaunas where I live there are often not 4, but 8-10 wires on the pole. Instead of 10 bare wires, 3 thick insulated wires would be way better.


Those single wires are not only more aesthetic, but also less prone to failures and safer (you won't get electrocuted by touching it – obviously it's still a risk if it's broken, so you shouldn't touch it when it falls on the ground anyway).

In the medium voltage power lines, also so called semi-insulated (or whatever is the English term... in Polish they are called "not-fully-insulated") wires are now sometimes installed... these are still separate wires, but they hang nearer each other, so it also looks better. And they can sustain e.g. fallen tree branches even for periods as long as several months. From what I've read, the power supply services tend to install them now on lines traversing forests (although obviously burying those cables is now the preferred method). This technology was first developed in Finland, then it spread to other Nordic countries, but currently it happens to be applied all over Europe.

In Poland, in the most basic setup, there are five wires on the poles (on low voltage power lines). Three phases, neutral, and a separate circuit for the street lights. More wires are installed while e.g. the poles also carry a separate circuit from the transformer to another street.

I've recently read papers telling about the history of deployment of those insulated cable power lines on poles in Poland, and as it seems, they only started being used over here in the early 1990s – though research in deploying them was conducted since 1970s.



PovilD said:


> Btw, during my trip to Romania I have noticed lots of wires on poles, often put in chaotic way. Didn't saw anything similar elsewhere in Europe during my trips.


Yes, it kinda looks like that wire mess from the Asian countries  I suppose most of those chaotic wires are telecommunication ones. In some regions of Asia they avoid putting the wires under the ground because they are prone to failures in case of earthquakes. And while normally (in not earthquake affected regions) underground power and telco lines are much more reliable than those in the air, on poles – if a failure happens, they are also much more difficult to repair.

In Poland telephone wires were usually installed on separate poles – though now the new fiber optic cables often find its place on the power poles. In some regions of Poland it's even the power supply company actually developing the fiber optic network that is made available for the internet providers.

Over here where I live there is still a strong wind, though it began in the middle of the night (the forecast was for it to start around 10 PM).

Meanwhile, in this extreme weather situation, the 112 emergency number has a failure in the whole Poland... And it's been lasting since around 12 AM.


----------



## Slagathor

PovilD said:


> Yeah, I was thinking what Western Europeans would think that somewhere the same storm produced snow.
> 
> Snowflakes were formed into big chunks.


It snowed a ton in Scotland, Ireland and Northern England too.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Yes, it kinda looks like that wire mess from the Asian countries  I suppose most of those chaotic wires are telecommunication ones. In some regions of Asia they avoid putting the wires under the ground because they are prone to failures in case of earthquakes. And while normally (in not earthquake affected regions) underground power and telco lines are much more reliable than those in the air, on poles – if a failure happens, they are also much more difficult to repair.


Yes. I have noticed them in pictures from Thailand, Japan, Vietnam. Probably the rest have similar situation too, maybe only Singapore is better if I'm not mistaken.

Btw, not only Asia, but also Americas has similar situation, noticed them via Street View in American smaller towns, and South American countries.

Most of Southern Europe is more or less prone to earthquakes, e.g. I was in parts of Europe where earthquake struck 1-3 years later (like Italy, Croatia), but nothing like in Romania.

I wonder what happened in Romania. It doesn't look as bad in small towns, but it start to look kinda awful in large towns and cities. Some reconstruction works are done, I was long time ago (slightly more than 10 year ago), now it could be slightly better situation.


----------



## Slagathor

It depends on geography and cost, mostly.

Most of Thailand has neither heavy storms nor earthquakes, but Bangkok is prone to localized flooding during the rainy season. As a result; electricity cables are on poles. Cheap, high and dry.

Japan keeps theirs overground so they're more easily fixed after a big earthquake. The risk of a typhoon tearing them down is taken for granted because picking up some wires that were thrown on the ground by some fierce winds is a lot easier than having to find broken wires after an earthquake. Big earthquakes in particular can actually shift the ground in certain locations by more than a meter. You _really _don't want to be in a position where a cable is broken, but you're not sure where and you don't even know where the Earth has moved your cable to. It'd be the most frustrating game of Find Waldo ever. 

In the Netherlands; our only real natural hazard is wind. Lots of it. There is no wind-free season here. So we stick our cables underground. It helps that we have the money for it.


----------



## PovilD

Slagathor said:


> It depends on geography and cost, mostly.
> 
> Most of Thailand has neither heavy storms nor earthquakes, but Bangkok is prone to localized flooding during the rainy season. As a result; electricity cables are on poles. Cheap, high and dry.
> 
> Japan keeps theirs overground so they're more easily fixed after a big earthquake. The risk of a typhoon tearing them down is taken for granted because picking up some wires that were thrown on the ground by some fierce winds is a lot easier than having to find broken wires after an earthquake. Big earthquakes in particular can actually shift the ground in certain locations by more than a meter. You _really _don't want to be in a position where a cable is broken, but you're not sure where and you don't even know where the Earth has moved your cable to. It'd be the most frustrating game of Find Waldo ever.
> 
> In the Netherlands; our only real natural hazard is wind. Lots of it. There is no wind-free season here. So we stick our cables underground. It helps that we have the money for it.


Basically, it's almost no sense for overground cables in Northern Europe (Northwest, Northeast Europe), except for cost. Biggest issue here from nature are winds, and wires don't do well if trees fall, etc.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> In the Netherlands; our only real natural hazard is wind. Lots of it. There is no wind-free season here. So we stick our cables underground. It helps that we have the money for it.


Yep. It also helps that basically all soil in the Netherlands is soft, so power cables can easily be put underground without much effort. Pretty much every road reserve has underground power cables, gas pipes, water pipes, internet, phone & data cables, etc. It's really amazing how much underground infrastructure even rural areas in the Netherlands have.

But it's also a risk, because it is invisible, digging can cause outages. That's why every dig outside of private properties requires a permit and pre-dig online scan of the area (called a KLIC).


----------



## bogdymol

The strong winds in Europe also have a positive impact. 

Today I drove from Austria to Romania, and the entire trip the wind was blowing strongly from west to east, basically pushing my car from behind. My car’s fuel consumption was better than ever (4,7 l/100 km), despite having the car full and driving with 135 km/h.


----------



## Kpc21

Slagathor said:


> You _really _don't want to be in a position where a cable is broken, but you're not sure where and you don't even know where the Earth has moved your cable to. It'd be the most frustrating game of Find Waldo ever.


An interesting video on the topic:









ChrisZwolle said:


> That's why every dig outside of private properties requires a permit and pre-dig online scan of the area (called a KLIC).


I don't know how it's in the Netherlands, but in Poland often the maps showing the location of underground infrastructure turn out to be unreliable.

Very often road renovations etc. are delayed just because some underground pipes or cables are found which weren't on the maps, and then they have to find out whose they are, what's their purpose, if they're still needed and what to do with them if they are indeed needed.

Recently I watched a video on a YouTube channel of someone who has a house construction company (I mean, one of those that can build a house for you on your own land) and while digging for the foundations, they encountered a buried manhole, which turned out to be an element of old farming field drainage. Still operational, with several intake pipes (from one there was water coming all the time) and one exit. Some people suggested in the comments just breaking and removing all those pipes under the future house, as this installation wasn't on the maps anyway. But the problem was that in this case, the house would be flooded with the water from that drainage... So the only sensible option was to build a bypass for those pipes around the house.

People used to build such things without any official permits and agreements, and now there are surprises during the constructions.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

PovilD said:


> Basically, it's almost no sense for overground cables in Northern Europe (Northwest, Northeast Europe), except for cost. Biggest issue here from nature are winds, and wires don't do well if trees fall, etc.


Transmission losses are higher for underground cables, so normally underground solutions are avoided for high voltage lines. In Trondheim, the distribution network has been underground for decades, but that is not the case in all Norwegian cities.


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> Very often road renovations etc. are delayed just because some underground pipes or cables are found which weren't on the maps, and then they have to find out whose they are, what's their purpose, if they're still needed and what to do with them if they are indeed needed.


When the Jubilee line was built in London in the 1990s, at one of the station sites the builders found an unmarked live high voltage cable buried under the street. They couldn't figure out where it went or what was powered by it. They decided to cut it and see who complained... no one ever did


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> I don't know how it's in the Netherlands, but in Poland often the maps showing the location of underground infrastructure turn out to be unreliable.


A century or more of underground utilities has certainly led to unreliability in the accuracy of mapping of underground infrastructure. Though it has been improving in recent decades. X and Y locations can vary by a meter or more, though the Z coordinates are usually standardized (depth). A test dig is often required to locate utilities.



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Transmission losses are higher for underground cables, so normally underground solutions are avoided for high voltage lines.


Technology improvements mean that high-voltage cables are also possible underground for longer stretches than what was previously possible. The Netherlands has put some 380 kV cables underground. Though high-voltage transmission is still largely above ground. End user cables are virtually always underground, even in rural areas. 

I found this video interesting. It shows that maintenance of greenery is quite important to prevent blackouts (or in case of California: wildfires). Apparently high voltage cables can sag considerably if they are under a high load.


----------



## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Transmission losses are higher for underground cables, so normally underground solutions are avoided for high voltage lines.


Well, according to the video I posted in my previous post, the technology for underground high voltage lines only got available in 1970s... Or, at least, back then they were "relatively new".

I wonder who in the past came with the idea of building distribution power lines so that they traverse forests across, far away from the roads... Or even out of the forests, at least in Poland, they are normally across fields, some 100 m from the road. Which means bad access and more difficult repairs. In a forest, such a line along a road would be in a danger from falling trees only from one side, not from both, like it is normally.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Technology improvements mean that high-voltage cables are also possible underground for longer stretches than what was previously possible. The Netherlands has put some 380 kV cables underground. Though high-voltage transmission is still largely above ground. End user cables are virtually always underground, even in rural areas.


The length of the underground cables is limited by the laws of physics. On a long high voltage AC cable, because of the high capacitance, the reactive power eats most of the capacity of the cable leaving less room for the real power, the payload. The maximum useful length is about 40 kilometers for a 400 kV cable.

The long transmission cables are usually DC cables. Such an arrangement needs a converter station at both ends, and that adds the costs.

One additional item to consider: A high-voltage DC cable contains about 20..30 kilograms of copper per a meter, and making such an amount of copper wires needs pretty much energy. There are references about energy consumption of 7-10 MWh to make a ton of copper, including mining. Of course, the figure varies a lot by the source of the material. Thus the energy needed to make to copper wire to a 500-km cable to an offshore wind park could require some 100..150 GWh. It would take 4-6 days for the nuclear power plant in Loviisa Finland to produce such an amount of energy.


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> One additional item to consider: A high-voltage DC cable contains about 20..30 kilograms of copper per a meter


How does it compare to overhead power lines (as far as I understand, usually made of aluminium)?


----------



## Rebasepoiss

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> That is actually not entirely correct. There is normally a surplus of power production in the south (in this context excluding central Norway which normally is included in South Norway). This year this surplus is however less than normal (it was a fairly dry winter and summer in that region) , and with new high-capacity cables to Netherlands, Germany and UK, the electricity prices in the south pretty much follows the highest bidder in those markets.
> 
> Central Norway, having a large deficit a decade ago, is now more balanced due to wind power (which works very well with the flexibility of hydropower) , and is also well connected with central /northern Sweden and Northern Norway, which have surplus production. Hence, these regions have prices that follow each other.
> 
> Normally the price differences between the Norwegian regions have been small. There is however a relatively short missing link in the 420 kV line along the west coast of Norway, such that there is not enough capacity to even out the prices at a national level in the current extreme situation, made possible by the new international lines. There is a plan to fix this, but it will take a few more years. Everything else equal, the "fix" will not change the prices in the south significantly, but will greatly increase the prices in central and northern Norway to European levels as well. The absolute surplus in Northern and Central Norway is nowhere enough to saturate the demand the international cables have created over the last year. Hence, the regional power companies have been a main proponent of improving the grid between central and western Norway.
> 
> The new government of Norway from last fall is already hugely unpopular due to the high power prices, which has had a direct impact on the economy of much of its electorate. Electricity is used for heating in Norway, and most people have a price plan that follows the spot price. One of the coalition partners, the Center Party (ironically getting most of its supporters from rural districts) is more than halved in the polls. There is 3.5 years to next election, but clearly they have to make some serious fixes to the system if they want a to be re-elected. The power cables to the continent and UK were branded as necessary to secure stable supply of power to Norway, but it is clear to most people now that they actually are money makers for the publicly owned power companies at the cost of the Norwegian people.
> 
> There are however no easy fixes. Parties in the opposition call for a maximum price, e. g. at 35 or 50 € per MWh. How this would be done in practice is more unclear. Already this winter, the government has paid some support to private consumers. A more drastic fix would be to introduce restrictions in how the international cables operate, such that they do not export power from Norway when the hydropower reservoirs are running dry. Maybe this would represent a breach or needing a renegotiating of international agreements, though, which normally is something Norwegian governments are very reluctant to do.
> 
> The best fix would obviously be to increase the power production, such that the power market of Norway would be running at a higher surplus than today. Unfortunately, even if the potential is huge, on-shore wind power has met strong popular resistance lately and also development of new hydropower has more or less halted. Politicians talk about offshore wind power, but this will take years and will be very expensive due to the large sea depths outside Norway. Hence, the power production is not likely to increase significantly in the next few years. On the other hand, the domestic demand is expected to surge, making the power balance worsw, not better.


Protectionist electricity markets will in the end lead to more affordable electricity prices in Norway but overall across all European countries CO2 levels will rise. I think that's quite indicative of Norway in general. They are very happy to be "green" on a local level to seem environmentaly friendly e.g. drive electric cars etc. but when they actually have to make a difference e.g. stop drilling for oil in the North Sea by 2050 then they're strongly against in because it will crash their wellfare system. It's all bells and whistles, trying to make themselves sleep well at night without actually making a real difference.


----------



## Suburbanist

The opposition to onshore wind power in Norway is an unexpected and quite idiotic feature of the political environment here for me.

It is not about wind turbines atop some iconic mountain or close some very important architectural hamlet, but some weird and completely irrational feelings that putting turbines in uninhabited islets facing the ocean, or at some harsh uninhabited plateaus is somehow a severe degradation of the natural environment.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Suburbanist said:


> The opposition to onshore wind power in Norway is an unexpected and quite idiotic feature of the political environment here for me.
> 
> It is not about wind turbines atop some iconic mountain or close some very important architectural hamlet, but some weird and completely irrational feelings that putting turbines in uninhabited islets facing the ocean, or at some harsh uninhabited plateaus is somehow a severe degradation of the natural environment.


Don't get me started on this. People living on the Estonian islands are perfectly fine with hundreds of excess deaths per year in Northeast Estonia due to the oil shale industry but if they (i.e. islanders) even have to look at wind turbines from 10 kilometres away then it will cause irreparable harm to the natural environement and therefore it's not feasible to build off-shore wind turbines there.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Rebasepoiss said:


> Protectionist electricity markets will in the end lead to more affordable electricity prices in Norway but overall across all European countries CO2 levels will rise. I think that's quite indicative of Norway in general. They are very happy to be "green" on a local level to seem environmentaly friendly e.g. drive electric cars etc. but when they actually have to make a difference e.g. stop drilling for oil in the North Sea by 2050 then they're strongly against in because it will crash their wellfare system. It's all bells and whistles, trying to make themselves sleep well at night without actually making a real difference.


I did not write that it was right to have more protectionist policies, I think the right thing would be to increase renewable energy production further.

But you have to see this from ordinary peoples perspective. They are essentially asked to pay thousands of euros each winter in power bills to reduce CO2 emissions in other countries. The export has the last few years been around 20 TWh, or 10-15% percent of the Norwegian power production, meaning that:

The export has has a very marginal impact CO2 emissions in Europe before windpower (off- and onshore) is significantly scaled up.
The Norwegian power companies are not mainly earning their extra cash from export directly, but from their Norwegian customers
The production cost of Norwegian electricity prices are fixed as long as nothing new is built, and is in the order of 10 € / MWh. The producers are almost without any exception publicly owned. Hence, in practice, the huge increase in power prices in southern Norway is just another taxation of the Norwegian people and industry. Please tell me which country of the world where the people would not protest against an unexpected, and rather random, increase in taxes of 1000s of euros from one year to the next.

As for the oil and gas industry, we have already discussed this.








The roadside rest area


We don't have big rivers which would make hydro even more efficient. We have among the highest precipitation in Europe but we are more a land of small rivers and streams then rapids. And most of the best spots for dams are already utilized of course. When it comes to small hydro plants, there is...




www.skyscrapercity.com




But,, it's not like Europe is shutting its door to Norway's natural gas during the current energy crisis and difficult geopolitical situation....








EU Asks Norway for More Gas, But Oslo Has None to Spare


The EU has long been asking Norway for more gas, but the Nordic country has so far refused to boost ...




english.almanar.com.lb












Norwegian Supply Increase Not Enough to Replace Missing Russian Gas


Norway is delivering natural gas to Europe at maximum capacity, but this cannot replace any missing supplies from Russia, Norwegian…




www.oedigital.com












Gas pipeline from Norway to Poland on track for 2022 opening


The date coincides with the end of Poland’s current long-term supply contract with Russia’s Gazprom.




notesfrompoland.com





In some years, maybe some of the natural gas infrastructure can be used for blue and green hydrogen or CO2 instead


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> It is not about wind turbines atop some iconic mountain or close some very important architectural hamlet, but some weird and completely irrational feelings that putting turbines in uninhabited islets facing the ocean, or at some harsh uninhabited plateaus is somehow a severe degradation of the natural environment.


Hmmm, I can't disagree with them though. Wind farms have by far the highest impact on the landscape of any energy source. Even if the perceived natural value is low, it still affects the physical environment significantly. They're moving, they're visible from afar, and it usually doesn't stop with 2 or 3 turbines if you take a look at the ambitions of some parties or governments. And wind turbines are getting considerably larger. In the Netherlands they're constructing 250 meter tall wind turbines on land now. And not one, but whole rows of them.

But it also represents a huge rural-urban divide. Wind farms benefit the green ideology of urban areas while putting all the burden on rural areas, who get almost nothing in return. The Dutch broadcoaster NOS recently ran a story about this in Spain.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Hmmm, I can't disagree with them though. Wind farms have by far the highest impact on the landscape of any energy source. Even if the perceived natural value is low, it still affects the physical environment significantly. They're moving, they're visible from afar, and it usually doesn't stop with 2 or 3 turbines if you take a look at the ambitions of some parties or governments. And wind turbines are getting considerably larger. In the Netherlands they're constructing 250 meter tall wind turbines on land now. And not one, but whole rows of them.
> 
> But it also represents a huge rural-urban divide. Wind farms benefit the green ideology of urban areas while putting all the burden on rural areas, who get almost nothing in return. The Dutch broadcoaster NOS recently ran a story about this in Spain.


Yes. However, several people think in a quite narrow way: it's only CO2 emission that counts, everything else is irrelevant. And it's exactly this group that supports wind energy beyond everything.


----------



## Suburbanist

At least here in Norway, rural areas strongly depend on dozens of billions of kroners to serve then with everything from fast internet fiber cables to small satellite emergency rooms and tunnels and bridges everywhere. They would never be able to fund this without taxes collected overwhelmingly in urban areas. Furthermore, Norway has hundreds of hydro power plants that effectively flooded entire areas and valleys.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Much smaller areas are affected per annual energy produced by hydropower than windpower, and hydropower dams also reduces uncontrolled flooding. Birdlife is affected by wind turbines to a certain extent, in particular predators. The theory is that most birds fear the sound from the turbine blades as it reminds them of eagles and hawks, but predatory birds themselves are missing this instinct. And in Norway, the required road network for installation and maintenance of windmills also will scar the typically rugged pristine landscapes permanently (something that is not really a factor in e. g. Denmark or Netherlands or for offshore wind). In some areas, the Sami people claim that reindeer shuns wind power parks, and hence that they threaten their indigenous culture.

Still, I feel we have a duty to contribute to the European energy transition and exploit far more of our potential for wind power, and maybe also hydropower. Global warming will simply affect biodiversity far more.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> How does it compare to overhead power lines (as far as I understand, usually made of aluminium)?


It is irrelevant in the context in the offshore wind power production, which is thought to be emission-free. The value chain is dominated by the construction phase which is very energy intensive.

The land transmission grid is anyway needed, and it is transparent to the energy source.

The high-voltage transmission lines in Finland are nowadays built using 2 or 3 wires of Finch wire per phase (2 for 110 kV and 220 kV and 3 for 400 kV). The weight of a wire is 2.1 tons/km. Six or nine wires are needed. The wire consists of a steel core for suspension, 25% of weight, and aluminium.


----------



## geogregor

Around corner from the pub where I sometimes go:

https://twitter.com/thepengetourist









I think there was third car damaged there as well.

Below is recording of doubledecker bus being hit by tree:








Watch: Storm Eunice: Terrifying video emerges of London bus crashing into falling tree


Terrifying footage has emerged of a London bus crashing into a falling tree as Storm Eunice caused serious disruption across the capital.Pictures and video circulated on Twitter and Facebook of the bus crashing into the tree in Biggin Hill, Bromley, causing serious damage to the front of the...




www.standard.co.uk





It is quite windy today as well, but of course nowhere near as bad.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Hmmm, I can't disagree with them though. Wind farms have by far the highest impact on the landscape of any energy source. Even if the perceived natural value is low, it still affects the physical environment significantly. They're moving, they're visible from afar, and it usually doesn't stop with 2 or 3 turbines if you take a look at the ambitions of some parties or governments. And wind turbines are getting considerably larger. In the Netherlands they're constructing 250 meter tall wind turbines on land now. And not one, but whole rows of them.


But we are talking about OFFSHORE wind farms. What's the damage for the landscape caused by them? That you won't have any more clear horizon while sailing on the see, seeing a huge wind farm instead?


----------



## Kpc21

Some time ago I mentioned here a misleading media campaign of an association of Polish power production companies, blaming the EU climate politics for the energy price increases.

The European Commission came out with a counter-campaign:










"The EU climate policies are beneficial for Poles. The money from selling the permissions for CO_2 emissions enter the Polish budget."










"Benefits for Polish women and men and for the economy
=
Healthier environment
Lower dependence on the import of fossil fuels
Modernization of the power delivery system"

Some people in the comments argue that the system of buying rights for CO_2 emissions doesn't actually work as it should, because those "green certificates" are being bought out by investment funds, which excessively increases their prices.

What's the truth – I have no idea.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Kpc21 said:


> But we are talking about OFFSHORE wind farms. What's the damage for the landscape caused by them? That you won't have any more clear horizon while sailing on the see, seeing a huge wind farm instead?


We are talking about costs for offshore vs perceived and real drawbacks for onshore wind, I believe. Talking about offshore wind, it of course also has some environmental cost apart from the high energy needed. The main issue is probably migrating birds and seabirds. Of course, the fishermen also complain if they are excluded from an area, but probably offshore wind is net positive for the sea life (less fishing, reef effect). 

Currently, there is a huge uproar in Norway and Sweden due to plans for a quite large offshore wind park in the Swedish economic zone right south of the border to Norway called Vidar, with up to 90 wind turbines up to 340 m height . The worry is that park is in the middle of an important migrating routes for birds, with many species that already are under threat.


----------



## geogregor

And here in the UK we have third named storm within one week:









Storm Franklin hits UK with flooding and high winds


Storm Franklin is the third named storm in a week to hit the UK - following Dudley and Eunice.



www.bbc.co.uk







> Storm Franklin is the third named storm in a week - following Dudley and Eunice - the first time this has happened since the storm-naming system was introduced in 2015.
> 
> The highest wind gust speeds on Monday morning reached 79mph in Capel Curig in Wales, and 78mph in Orlock Head, Northern Ireland.


Not as bad as the last one but I'm really fed up with the weather. I booked flight co Canary Islands for the coming Sunday. I need a few days break from general "weather shittiness".


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## ChrisZwolle

Storm Franklin also brought a lot of rain, which is causing canals to overflow in the Netherlands.

I went to check it out during lunchtime. These water level changes on canals (meaning: not rivers) are quite unusual for a flat country like the Netherlands. Because canals usually don't really flow like that. The water level is normally the same at both ends of a canal, with only minimal discharge. It's not like rivers that rise and fall, canal water level changes are usually very minor.

This means that a large amount of runoff from slightly higher elevations is causing such a flow.


Overijssels Kanaal - Stuw Langeslag 21-02-2022 02 by European Roads, on Flickr


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## ChrisZwolle

22!


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Took a while before I understood what the fuss about 22 C somewhere in Spain was ;-) It would be better if some of that heat could be sent to Ukraine to thaw the hearts (and ground...) over there.


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## radamfi

It reminds me of the fuss when one of Prince Andrew's daughters was born, on 8 August 1988. There was speculation that the birth was induced to occur on that day.


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## Slagathor

Why are people so bad at recognizing coincidence?


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## Rebasepoiss

No comment:


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## Attus

Fuel is sold out in Kiev.


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## tfd543

Take it easy. They cant play this game for so many days. I see it as just a warning of what RU is capable of doing.

Lets hope Im right, but yes, Its damn frightening.


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## Kpc21

There used to be panic buying of toilet paper, meanwhile... at nearby gas stations people are panic buying fuel. I've even read a post that one station in a town some 20-30 km away has run out of fuel.

Seemingly someone (maybe you-know-who...) has spread fake news about that after you-know-what, our country is going to run out of oil...

If at all, I would be more afraid about natural gas, but again, from what I know, our country is stocked with it for the next several months (it's normally so), which is probably enough time to arrange supplies from sources other than the known one.


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## radamfi

Most countries still require masks for public transport so the Netherlands isn't unusual in that respect. England stopped requiring them weeks ago, after reinstating them for Omicron, but public transport operators recommend them. Transport for London, who has consistently demanded masks even when masks were no longer required by law last summer, finally dropped their insistence on them yesterday but still recommends them. Compliance was patchy and enforcement was almost non-existent. Scotland and Wales still require masks for public transport, but Northern Ireland doesn't. The Republic of Ireland will no longer require them from Monday.


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## radamfi

The Netherlands, Poland and Italy are the only remaining EU countries to require fully vaccinated visitors from the UK to take a test before arrival.


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## Kpc21

Ukraine is reported in some sources and some media (no idea if it's really true or not) to not be letting out civilian men in the age that allows to serve in the army out of the country*. And it causes some complications at the border crossing checkpoints in Poland, especially those that don't allow pedestrians to cross the border. People carrying their families to the border must leave those families before the checkpoints, and crossing is only possible in a vehicle...

The situation at the gas stations in Poland – in my town, in the morning, one station had quite overpriced fuel (6.10 PLN ~ 1.30 EUR – of course it's probably still cheap when compared with probably the whole rest of the EU), another one, of the state company Orlen, had normal price (5.65 PLN ~ 1.20 EUR) – but it had quite a big queue. Stations in Łódź had smaller queues, though still long ones, like for half an hour of waiting, and more expensive fuel – 5.80–5.85 PLN (~1.25 EUR) for the 95 gasoline.


* – I don't know what to think about it. On one hand people are legally obliged to participate in the defense of the country and it's rather a standard everywhere in the world, in one form or another. And Ukraine certainly needs people that are able to fight in the war. On the other hand, not letting your citizens out of your country doesn't sound like something a democratic country would be doing; personally I believe everyone (obviously except for imprisoned criminals) should have a right to move around the world wherever he wants. Forbidding someone to exit the country sounds more like a dictatorship (like, in communist times in Poland, the government often made it difficult or even impossible to leave the country, another example of that was the Berlin Wall for the DDR citizens) and it's a situation nobody would like to return to... And isn't it so that everyone should have right to decide about himself, what's for him the best possible thing to do? Furthermore – one may think that if people were being let out, finally nobody would be left in Ukraine to defend the country and it would become easily taken over by the Russian government – but again, one thing, it would be then actually the people's decision ("voting using feet"), so it would still be democratic (even though it would probably be the last act of democracy in the country...) – and there are actually quite a lot of Ukrainians willing to defend the country, also coming back there from Poland and other countries; supposedly there are long queues for the conscription in Ukraine [of course I am not able to confirm that those informations are not fake, maybe it's completely different, nowadays you cannot trust any news  ] – so this scenario with nobody (or too few) people staying in the country to fight doesn't really seem likely...

To me it generally seems difficult to comprehend, how it comes that civilians may be forced to fight in defence of the country – but it seems this is how the things work...

Even more I am happy that I live in a country that belongs to NATO...


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Kpc21 said:


> * – I don't know what to think about it. On one hand people are legally obliged to participate in the defense of the country and it's rather a standard everywhere in the world, in one form or another. And Ukraine certainly needs people that are able to fight in the war. On the other hand, not letting your citizens out of your country doesn't sound like something a democratic country would be doing; personally I believe everyone (obviously except for imprisoned criminals) should have a right to move around the world wherever he wants.


That mobilized personnel is obliged to serve (rather than flee) during a state of emergency I believe is standard in any democracy, at least those with conscript armies. Serving in a conscript army is by definition not something you do out of free choice. You might say that is not fair and limits people's freedom. On the other hand it to some degree (not fully in authoritarian regimes, I know) prevents that the army does operate against the will of the people. And sometimes drastic measures are needed to protect the nation.

What is a bit special in the case of Ukraine is that the age span for the mobilization is very large, that it also includes people without military training and designated unit, and that the mobilization itself does not appear very well prepared.


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## radamfi

What use is a 59 year old man in the military? Yet they exclude women. A young woman would probably be a lot more use. Given how many men are still left in the country, there must be a considerable sense of duty to participate. I know I would have left by now if I knew I would be forced to fight. Although I would probably have left years ago for economic reasons anyway.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

radamfi said:


> What use is a 59 year old man in the military?


I know a great deal of 59 years old people that would do better than the average 20 year old chap, but I live in a part of the world where keeping fit is a religion with far more active followers than the church, and many also hunt to an advanced age*. But of course, many 59 years old people are not in a fantastic shape and very very few would have recent military training.

In Norway the upper mobilization age used to be 44 but is now 34. A Putin-effect may of course increase that number again, and, more importantly increase the percentage that actually has to do the draft (which has decreased significantly since the cold war). I am guessing though, that the defense rather would like to use any increased funding to upgrade / expansion of advanced weaponry.

*Hence there are more than 6 times as many private firearms per capita in Norway than England, and 11 times as many as in Netherlands or Poland.


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## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I know a great deal of 59 years old that would do better than the average 20 year old chap


Choosing the people that become obliged to serve in the army should probably be based on more elaborate criteria than just gender and age... And a medical check done when you are around 18 years old, on which almost everyone gets that "best" category (the one telling that you are most suited to fight), unless you are somehow severely disabled.

With just gender and age, it's maybe simple, cheap (no need to regularly check and classify the people) and easy to apply in an emergency situation, and difficult to avoid, but apart from that, it's almost as discriminatory as possible...

And still, forcing people to stay in the country which is in war seems just not OK for me. Though obviously in Ukraine it's an emergency situation (well, even more than emergency, but I don't know the English words for that). But, as for me, it's... not just a drastic, it's indeed a really drastic way to address it.


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## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> Choosing the people that become obliged to serve in the army should probably be based on more elaborate criteria than just gender and age... And a medical check done when you are around 18 years old, on which almost everyone gets that "best" category (the one telling that you are most suited to fight), unless you are somehow severely disabled.
> 
> With just gender and age, it's maybe simple, cheap (no need to regularly check and classify the people) and easy to apply in an emergency situation, and difficult to avoid, but apart from that, it's almost as discriminatory as possible...
> 
> And still, forcing people to stay in the country which is in war seems just not OK for me. Though obviously in Ukraine it's an emergency situation (well, even more than emergency, but I don't know the English words for that). But, as for me, it's... not just a drastic, it's indeed a really drastic way to address it.


It's obviously far more for propaganda purposes than any real military use - adding to the impression that Ukraine will fight to the last man. That said anyone over the age of about 50 may well have done military service in the Soviet era so might have once done some weapons training.


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## x-type

Big fat bird decided to cross the river using the bridge instead of flying. Because flying is so hard. 
Bridge over Drava at D3 in Varaždin.


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## geogregor

radamfi said:


> The Netherlands, Poland and Italy are the only remaining EU countries to require fully vaccinated visitors from the UK to take a test before arrival.


Which is annoying. Hopefully Poland will change that rule before I go home in May.

Tomorrow I'm flying for a few days of holiday. I was briefly considering Sicily but I can't be bothered with the tests, I'll go back to the Canaries instead.

I have to say it will be weird to be on holiday with all the news from Ukraine...Surreal...


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Kpc21 said:


> Choosing the people that become obliged to serve in the army should probably be based on more elaborate criteria than just gender and age... And a medical check done when you are around 18 years old, on which almost everyone gets that "best" category (the one telling that you are most suited to fight), unless you are somehow severely disabled.


Sure, but such classification of people has to be done in advance, not when the enemy troops are already in your country. (I have no idea what Ukraine has done. ) Btw, also women are conscripted in Norway now.


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## radamfi

Attus said:


> Do you know what Covid restrictions Belgium has (if any)? I think about visit Belgium tomorrow and possibly eat something in a restaurant, nothing special.


Where in Belgium are you going? (or maybe now gone - I only just noticed this message) There are different rules for Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia. I'm planning to go to Flanders in a few weeks.

The main points according to:









Maatregelen tijdens de coronacrisis







www.vlaanderen.be








__





Coronavirus: geen mondmaskers meer op de trein vanaf 23/05


Coronavirus: geen mondmaskers meer op de trein vanaf 23/05




www.belgiantrain.be






https://www.delijn.be/nl/overdelijn/stapgerustop/veiligheidsacties/#veiligheidsmaatregelen



are the wearing of masks in shops and public transport and the need for a vaccine passport for restaurants.


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## ChrisZwolle

It's interesting how face masks have instantly disappeared in the Netherlands when the mandate was lifted yesterday. I went to two shopping centers and a restaurant and there was practically nobody wearing them. Maybe one out of every 30 people. People from other areas said that their picture was similar.

Polls and surveys indicated that a large minority would still use them, but the reality is that very few people still wear them. A similar effect was seen last year when the mask mandate was lifted.


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## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> I went to two shopping centers and a restaurant and there was practically nobody wearing them.


I was this week in Spain for a couple of days, and I was surprised on how serious were they taking all the mask thing. I haven't seen a single person in a building without a mask (airport, supermarket, shopping center, restaurant when not seated, hotel, the companies I visited etc.). In other countries people are a bit more relaxed. 

For example in Austria, during a business meeting in a large enough room, with plenty of space somebody would ask if it is ok to take the masks off, or if all are vaccinated, and if all agree, the meeting takes place without masks. But not in Spain. I had meetings with 6 different companies, mask usage was 100%.


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## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I know a great deal of 59 years old people that would do better than the average 20 year old chap, but I live in a part of the world where keeping fit is a religion with far more active followers than the church, and many also hunt to an advanced age*. But of course, many 59 years old people are not in a fantastic shape and very very few would have recent military training.


Good to understand that a modern war is not any more just crawling in the fighting holes. A big fraction of operations take place far behind the front in rooms equipped with computers, maps, etc. In such positions, a Tarzan or Rambo-like physical ability is of secondary importance.


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## x-type

bogdymol said:


> I was this week in Spain for a couple of days, and I was surprised on how serious were they taking all the mask thing. I haven't seen a single person in a building without a mask (airport, supermarket, shopping center, restaurant when not seated, hotel, the companies I visited etc.). In other countries people are a bit more relaxed.
> 
> For example in Austria, during a business meeting in a large enough room, with plenty of space somebody would ask if it is ok to take the masks off, or if all are vaccinated, and if all agree, the meeting takes place without masks. But not in Spain. I had meetings with 6 different companies, mask usage was 100%.


Italians too. They are extremely behaving under regulations regarding the covid measures.


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## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> The Netherlands, Poland and Italy are the only remaining EU countries to require fully vaccinated visitors from the UK to take a test before arrival.


After Covid, we'll be requiring an IQ test so as to weed out the "Y'arite guv innit?" crowd.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

MattiG said:


> Good to understand that a modern war is not any more just crawling in the fighting holes. A big fraction of operations take place far behind the front in rooms equipped with computers, maps, etc. In such positions, a Tarzan or Rambo-like physical ability is of secondary importance.


Sure, but those kind of tasks are likely to require quite a lot of updated expertise and training, which mobilized personnel is not likely to possess in any case.

In urban warfare, at least in the present war where no party seems to have a significant stock of war drones, boots on the ground will still be an important factor, though.


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## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Sure, but those kind of tasks are likely to require quite a lot of updated expertise and training, which mobilized personnel is not likely to possess in any case.


Of course, that needs preparation, and it is done well before mobilization. I believe that there is a system in every country to assign experts to crisis-time positions to keep the wheels running. 

At a crisis, the key functions like power plants, data centers, telecommunications, food production etc might turn into military organizations, but remain operated by their permanent personnel. If the preparations are done well, each person to be assigned to such positions is tagged, and the tagging is kept regularly up-to-date.


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## italystf

geogregor said:


> Which is annoying. Hopefully Poland will change that rule before I go home in May.
> 
> Tomorrow I'm flying for a few days of holiday. I was briefly considering Sicily but I can't be bothered with the tests, I'll go back to the Canaries instead.
> 
> I have to say it will be weird to be on holiday with all the news from Ukraine...Surreal...


Italy will stop asking tests to vaccinated international travellers starting from March 1st.


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## italystf

x-type said:


> Italians too. They are extremely behaving under regulations regarding the covid measures.


Only indoor.
When masks were mandatory also outdoor many people ignored that rule (and that made sense, as masks are useless outdoor, except in really crowded places).


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## Kpc21

italystf said:


> Italy will stop asking tests to vaccinated international travellers starting from March 1st.


At the moment Poland stopped requiring tests from Ukrainian refugees. Which makes sense regarding the current situation, but regarding how easily this decision came up, probably lifting this restriction for everyone else is just a matter of time.

Though while testing all those people would be doable, quarantining them if someone has Covid... no way.

Some time ago there were also talks of the government about they are going to lift obligatory masks indoors (which, unlike in some countries, was never lifted since the start of the pandemic), maybe except the public transport, where they would stay obligatory a little bit longer.

By the way, the way of generosity towards the Ukrainians in Poland is just so huge that it's impossible to describe. There are queues to the points that take gifts for the refugees, there is also help organized for those who stay in the war zone. On Facebook every second post I can see is about the help for Ukrainians.


I wonder about one thing. Why are there completely no airplanes flying in the Russian region north of Caucasus, east of Ukraine?










Over Ukraine – it's obvious; no civil airline would fly over a war zone, risking having their plane shot down. And the airspace must be reserved for the military airplanes fighting the enemy. Over Belarus – some planes flying can be seen, but few, probably just because Russian airlines cannot reach any other country flying through Belarus anyway, because of the flight bans. But flying over the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea and Kazakhstan instead of directly over the Black Sea to Russia makes just completely no sense to me.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Kpc21 said:


> I wonder about one thing. Why are there completely no airplanes flying in the Russian region north of Caucasus, east of Ukraine?


According to a Norwegian journalist in Rostov, just east of Ukraine, the airport was shut down for civilian traffic there. Could be the same for other airports in the area. In medium term, the whole civilian domestic aviation industry of Russia could be in as much trouble as the international one, as they are using Airbus and Boeing planes which will be difficult to maintain under the sanctions.


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## Kpc21

It has consequences in both directions. European (probably, if not now, then in the near future, also Japanese, South Korean) airlines not being able to fly from Europe to East Asia over Russia, will have to take longer routes, which will make them difficult to compete with airlines e.g. from China.

Though it's probably a cost that is worth spending...


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## Slagathor

I used this website to do the math. If you want to avoid Russian airspace, you have to add stopover-airports so the figures may be somewhat off... Nevertheless, I think it gives a reasonable indication.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union closed its airspace to Western airlines and flights between Western Europe and Japan would have a stopover in Anchorage for refueling. I compared that old route to a Southern one that's as short as possible.

*Northern Route: 12.801 km*
Amsterdam - Anchorage 7.224 km
Anchorage - Tokyo 5.577 km

*Southern Route: 11.545 km*
Amsterdam - Istanbul 2.214 km
Istanbul - Baku 1.790 km
Baku - Tokyo 7.540 km


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## Kpc21

So the polar route will likely not come back – as it's still shorter to fly through Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China. During the cold war, the southern route was not available, as China also had sanctions for western European airlines, same as Russia.

Of course all that is assuming Kazakhstan won't join the Russia's sanctions – but they already declared that they condemn the Russian invasion.

And China seems to want to stay neutral regarding this conflict; they will probably benefit from it most. The West may want to sanction China for making deals with Russia, but regarding that China is China and the West is so much interconnected with it economically, I don't think it's doable.


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## italystf

Kpc21 said:


> Over Ukraine – it's obvious; no civil airline would fly over a war zone, risking having their plane shot down.


The Malaysians did that in 2014 and it didn't end well.








Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Suburbanist

I read that should air space closures persist, modern airplanes do not need a stopover but likely they would use the southern route between Europe and Asia and the Polar route for the westbound journey.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Kpc21 said:


> has consequences in both directions. European (probably, if not now, then in the near future, also Japanese, South Korean) airlines not being able to fly from Europe to East Asia over Russia, will have to take longer routes, which will make them difficult to compete with airlines e.g. from China.


Assuming, of course, that Chinese airlines would be allowed to fly into European airspace when coming from Russia.


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## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> I read that should air space closures persist, modern airplanes do not need a stopover but likely they would use the southern route between Europe and Asia and the Polar route for the westbound journey.


Still, the flight distance might be double. This is likely to ruin the business case of the route.


----------



## Suburbanist

MattiG said:


> Still, the flight distance might be double. This is likely to ruin the business case of the route.


Maybe. But if applies to all airlines, there would still be traffic coming and going.

Some of the bans include landing rights for flights overflowing sanctioned airspace. They must do this, otherwise it would be just a market implosion of European carriers in favor of Chinese, Singaporean and especially Middle East / Gulf carriers. With a ban on landing through certain airspace, costs are imposed on all carriers.

The market would contract, but just to some extent. Europia - Far East is a very large market. Even if it takes 40% longer.


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## Slagathor

MattiG said:


> Still, the flight distance might be double. This is likely to ruin the business case of the route.


It's definitely going to push up ticket prices but it's not like Amsterdam to Vienna where you can opt for the overnight train instead. Nobody's gonna be sailing to Seoul.


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## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> Maybe. But if applies to all airlines, there would still be traffic coming and going.


Of course, there will be. But several routes will be brought down for sure.

For example, Frankfurt-Tokyo over great circle route is 5070 nautical miles. The polar route via Anchorage is about 7100 NM, and the southern route over Dubai and Bangkok about 7800 NM. Such a difference will have drastic implication to the business case. If the flight time is 16 hours instead of 10, the 24h turnaroud time for the aircraft is lost, and a double crew is needed due to the duty time regulations. It the cost rockets while the demand remains flat, the ticket prices will rocket.

Closing the Russian airspace would be a disaster to both the West and the Russians. The West would loose a lot of business, and Russia would loose hundreds of million dollars from the overflight fees.


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## Suburbanist

MattiG said:


> Of course, there will be. But several routes will be brought down for sure.
> 
> For example, Frankfurt-Tokyo over great circle route is 5070 nautical miles. The polar route via Anchorage is about 7100 NM, and the southern route over Dubai and Bangkok about 7800 NM. Such a difference will have drastic implication to the business case. If the flight time is 16 hours instead of 10, the 24h turnaroud time for the aircraft is lost, and a double crew is needed due to the duty time regulations. It the cost rockets while the demand remains flat, the ticket prices will rocket.
> 
> Closing the Russian airspace would be a disaster to both the West and the Russians. The West would loose a lot of business, and Russia would loose hundreds of million dollars from the overflight fees.


Yes, flying from Europe to Japan will be just a little easier than fly from Europe to Australia. Doable, but expensive, far more than today, due to the issues you mentioned (more crew required, more airplanes etc). The upside is that there is still plenty of long-haul jets in storage due to Covid.


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## PovilD

Revival of passenger transit through Anchorage?


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I have mixed feelings about the airspace sanctions. Closing the airspaces hurts Russian economy, but if Russians no longer can easily leave their country, there will be even less correctives to government propaganda.


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## Džiugas

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I have mixed feelings about the airspace sanctions. Closing the airspaces hurts Russian economy, but if Russians no longer can easily leave their country, there will be even less correctives to government propaganda.


Total majority of Russians don't even have an 'international' passport, so it is mostly upper class/elites that are mostly affected by that.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Still, there were 45 million outbound tourist travels from Russia in 2019, and probably these tourists were among the most resourceful and influential people of the country. But of course, a travel ban could be a wake up call for some of these people to make further research on what is actually going on.


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## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Assuming, of course, that Chinese airlines would be allowed to fly into European airspace when coming from Russia.


I am not talking about flights from Russia (in the case of those, there is always an option for a flight with a transfer on neutral land, like, in Dubai) but about those that used to fly over Russia directly from Europe to East Asia. Though I am not sure if Chinese airlines will be allowed to fly direct flights like that; it's often so that countries only allow flights of the airlines from that country and from the country of the destination. But it's changing, e.g. the EU is a huge free aviation market for European airlines. Ukraine was also allowing Ryanair to fly there from various European countries. Etc.

From what I know, this rule was being strictly followed by Russia. Where nobody wants to fly now anyway.


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Kpc21 said:


> I am not talking about flights from Russia (in the case of those, there is always an option for a flight with a transfer on neutral land, like, in Dubai) but about those that used to fly over Russia directly from Europe to East Asia.


Sure, that was what I meant as well, but I am assuming that European states are in the position to forbid any planes crossing the national border coming from Russian or Belarusian airspace.


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## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I am assuming that European states are in the position to forbid any planes crossing the national border coming from Russian or Belarusian airspace


It's worth noticing that the current sanctions are already much worse than those during the cold war. For example, as far as I understand, back then, the west was not blocking Eastern Bloc planes; for example, Lot was just normally flying to London. Though Soviet Union was not allowing western airlines in their airspace.

To me, Russia as a state seems to be in some kind of a paranoia, and this has been at least since the Soviet times. For some reasons, they think NATO and the West are going to attack them. And it was already in the Soviet times, this seems to me to be the main reason why this iron curtain emerged, why they created a buffer zone including Poland. Though Russia is also a part of western civilization, they are similar culturally, they are also Christian (Orthodox, same as, for example, Greece), for the last decades they also got closely interconnected economically (which now we can see completely collapsing in just a few days, including a weekend...). Why won't they cooperate and just become a part of the western world politically?


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## radamfi

Here's a clip from the 1997 comedy film "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" from 1997






For those who don't know the film, Austin Powers is a British spy who is cryogenically frozen in 1967 and is unfrozen in 1997. When he wakes up, he is asked to work with American and Russian intelligence. He says "Are you mad?" but then he is told the Cold War is over. Russians seemed friendly enough back then.


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## PovilD

Btw, I've noticed Lithuanian media switched to local Ukrainian names: Kijevas became Kyjivas. Lvovas turned to Lviv.


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## ChrisZwolle

The general public is getting a crash course of Ukrainian geography these days. Ukraine has received some more exposure in Western Europe during Euro 2012, but I think most people only knew Kiev and maybe Odessa or Donetsk / Donbass until now.

The Dutch media tends to use all kinds of names, both Ukrainian and Russian names and both the Dutch and English transliteration. Most media seems to use Kiev for now and not Kyiv. Transliterations tend to use to archaic 'oe' form instead of 'u' (which we do not do for most other languages). For example 'Marioepol' instead of Mariupol. Most Dutch media also use the Russian name Charkov and not Charkiv of Kharkiv.

On the other hand, many media outlets changed from 'Wit-Rusland' (White Russia) to Belarus last year.


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## radamfi

All English language media I've looked at seems to use Kyiv, for example BBC, ITV, RTE, Guardian, Euronews.

The NOS website is clever enough to find Kiev when you search for Kyiv.


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## ChrisZwolle

I believe Kiëv used to be common in the Netherlands. I'm not sure when that changed to Kiev. Almata-Ata / Almaty is another shift that has not been completed entirely.

Russian transliteration is relatively archaic in Dutch, leading to phonetic placenames that are often difficult to spell or read at a quick glance. The 'tsj' (Ч / Ch) is very often mistaken (for example, you'll often see 'Tjechië' instead of Tsjechië (Czechia). The phonetic transliteration of Russian in Dutch leads to many combinations of letters that are phonetically correct but rarely used in regular Dutch, so it's not as helpful as it was intended in the 1930s (?)

On the other hand, exonyms and spellings can be fluid. It's now Dubai and not Doebai. Or Kaboel and Kabul. Some media outlets also changed Soedan to Sudan and Oeganda to Uganda. Ukraine is always written as 'Oekraïne' though, so the oe > u shift has not occured for Russian or Ukrainian transliteration.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> Russians seemed friendly enough back then.


I am against such simplifications. Russians (as Russian citizens), maybe except some oligarchs, government people and similar, have nothing to do with this war; you have certainly seen photos from anti-war protests in Russian cities (and many more people don't protest just for the fear of the repressions). They are also victims of this whole situation. What about the Russian young men from the obligatory conscription that were sent to Ukraine and died there? What about their families? They had to choose between being shot by Ukrainians and being shot by their own army for not following the orders. And taking Putin out of power is out of their range.

Russia, Russian government, but not Russians. The Russians, as the people, are still as friendly as they were before.

Talking about the transliterations from Cyrylic-written Slavic languages, something which I already pointed here out multiple times, is that in some situations, the English transliteration happens to appear in Polish. Maybe not in case of geographic names – but mostly in case of people's names and surnames. Ukrainians in Poland officially use their names transliterated according to the English rules, because it's how it's transliterated in their passports. And we don't have a law, like, as far as I am not mistaken, exists in Lithuania, which would enable (or even force) turning them into the Polish transliteration in the Polish documents.

In the past it was most seen in sports news – now, as we have many more Ukrainians in the country (because of the guest workers coming to Poland in the last years; the refugees that are coming now are yet another thing) – it's also much more seen in the everyday life.

English transliterations of Ukrainian, Russian and similar languages look completely awkward in Polish, makes simple things difficult, it just completely makes no sense. Life would be much easier if Ukrainians used the Polish transliterations of their names in Poland.

Like, Vitali Klitschko vs Witalij Kliczko. If you don't speak English (though actually it looks more German here...), you see a totally exotic cluster of consonants (tschk) you don't even know how to pronounce it. Kliczko is simple.

By the way, the persons often mentioned in the news last days are mayors of Ukrainians cities. The Polish language is completely crazy regarding the translation of the word "mayor". It partially comes to the fact that the words for this person in Polish municipalities, towns and cities are regulated by the law, in case of those from foreign municipalities, towns and cities – it's the matter of customs. Still, it's completely mad.

The word "mayor" translates to Polish as:

wójt – in case of rural municipalities in Poland, and probably also such municipalities abroad (I have never seen this case, so I don't know),
burmistrz – in case of urban-rural municipalities and small towns in Poland, but also all urban municipalities (including huge cities) in most foreign countries,
prezydent miasta – in case of larger towns and cities in Poland (there are exact legal criteria that distinguish when a municipality has a "burmistrz" and when a "prezydent miasta"),
mer – in case of foreign cities in selected countries, especially France and the post-Soviet ones.
So it just sounds funny when we hear about the mayor of New York "burmistrz Nowego Jorku", though normally, in Poland, the word "burmistrz" is reserved for small towns, and it's never used in case of cities – and New York is an enormous city, so it clearly should have a "prezydent miasta" and not a "burmistrz".

Therefore, the word "mer" is now used in the Polish media much more frequently than previously. "Mer Kijowa" (mayor of Kyiv), "mer Charkowa" (mayor of Kharkiv), "mer Lwowa" (mayor of Lviv).

The Polish exonyms for Ukrainian cities are more similar to the Russian names than to the Ukrainian ones – but they are so burnt into the language, and in some cases, also into the Polish history (Lviv, or Lwów, was a Polish city for most of the history), that they are unlikely to change.

But another language change, because of the current situation, is happening.

The prepositions. For most countries, to tell something is located or happens there, we use the preposition "w" (or "we" if the following name starts with "w" or "f"; both mean "in": "w Niemczech" – "in Germany", "we Francji" – "in France", "w USA" – "in the US"). There is also the preposition "na", meaning "on", used mostly for islands, but also for country regions, town districts and boroughs etc. "Na Majorce" – "on Mallorca", "na Krecie" – "on Crete", "na Malcie" – "in Malta". Although it's not always so in case of islands that are also countries, e.g. "in New Zeeland" is "w Nowej Zelandii" (but, for example, Malta or Cyprus have "na"). In Łódź we have a borough Widzew, so we say "na Widzewie" – "in Widzew".

An exception for this rule is that the preposition "na" is used for some post-Soviet countries. "Na Litwie" – "in Lithuania", "na Białorusi" – "in Belarus". Though "w Łotwie" – "in Lativa", "w Kazachstanie" – "in Kazakhstan". It looks like that form "na" is often used for the countries, the territories of which used to be parts of Poland or Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the past.

For Ukraine, the preposition that used to be used was "na". "Na Ukrainie" – "in Ukraine".

But now, the media, and also the people that want to point out the independence of Ukraine, more and more often use the form "w Ukrainie" instead.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> *An exception for this rule is that the preposition "na" is used for some post-Soviet countries. "Na Litwie" – "in Lithuania"*, "na Białorusi" – "in Belarus". *Though "w Łotwie" – "in Lativa"*, "w Kazachstanie" – "in Kazakhstan". It looks like that form "na" is often used for the countries, the territories of which used to be parts of Poland or Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the past.
> 
> For Ukraine, the preposition that used to be used was "na". "Na Ukrainie" – "in Ukraine".
> 
> *But now, the media, and also the people that want to point out the independence of Ukraine, more and more often use the form "w Ukrainie" instead.*


I suggest using "w Litwie" too.


----------



## Kpc21

It makes sense and maybe it will get more popular soon 

Though the drawback is that "na Litwie" is much easier to pronounce.

In case of Lviv, we more often say "we Lwowie" (though the form "w Lwowie" is also used), probably because just the second next consonant is "w" and "w Lwowie" is difficult to pronounce. But "we Litwie" would be too awkward, so only the form "w Litwie" has a chance of becoming popular.

By the way, similarly some people prefer to call the Netherlands also in Polish "Niderlandy", although for now the official Polish name (standardized by the Polish government) is "Holandia".

Less often people call Czech Republic in Polish "Republika Czeska" instead of "Czechy". Though "Czechy" are discriminatory in Polish similarly to "Holandia" used as a name of the country.


By the way, "na" is also used with Slovakia and Hungary, and those countries were never really a part of Poland... Though for a short period of time in the history we were in a personal union with Hungary.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> It makes sense and maybe it will get more popular soon
> 
> Though the drawback is that "na Litwie" is much easier to pronounce.


Hopefully, since we allowed qwx letters in our passports, at least that's something. Reducing our version of extreme nationalism.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

The most interesting exonym for Kyiv I think is the old Norse Kœnugardr, which I still think is in use on Iceland. It sounds like king's farm in modern Norwegian, but actually meant the ship fortress / castle, i. e. where the trading /raiding /ruling vikings had to change ships.


----------



## tfd543

Interesting how people dont forget. 

Back in my parents home country NMK, albanian people dont Seem to support Ukraine actively as UA adhered to the mission of killing the albanian population in the insurgency in 2001 according to them.

What goes around comes around.

I mean, they are against the war and against suppression, but not to the extent of really wanting to help.


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> I am against such simplifications. Russians (as Russian citizens), maybe except some oligarchs, government people and similar, have nothing to do with this war; you have certainly seen photos from anti-war protests in Russian cities (and many more people don't protest just for the fear of the repressions). They are also victims of this whole situation. What about the Russian young men from the obligatory conscription that were sent to Ukraine and died there? What about their families? They had to choose between being shot by Ukrainians and being shot by their own army for not following the orders. And taking Putin out of power is out of their range.
> 
> Russia, Russian government, but not Russians. The Russians, as the people, are still as friendly as they were before.
> 
> Talking about the transliterations from Cyrylic-written Slavic languages, something which I already pointed here out multiple times, is that in some situations, the English transliteration happens to appear in Polish. Maybe not in case of geographic names – but mostly in case of people's names and surnames. Ukrainians in Poland officially use their names transliterated according to the English rules, because it's how it's transliterated in their passports. And we don't have a law, like, as far as I am not mistaken, exists in Lithuania, which would enable (or even force) turning them into the Polish transliteration in the Polish documents.
> 
> In the past it was most seen in sports news – now, as we have many more Ukrainians in the country (because of the guest workers coming to Poland in the last years; the refugees that are coming now are yet another thing) – it's also much more seen in the everyday life.
> 
> English transliterations of Ukrainian, Russian and similar languages look completely awkward in Polish, makes simple things difficult, it just completely makes no sense. Life would be much easier if Ukrainians used the Polish transliterations of their names in Poland.
> 
> Like, Vitali Klitschko vs Witalij Kliczko. If you don't speak English (though actually it looks more German here...), you see a totally exotic cluster of consonants (tschk) you don't even know how to pronounce it. Kliczko is simple.
> 
> By the way, the persons often mentioned in the news last days are mayors of Ukrainians cities. The Polish language is completely crazy regarding the translation of the word "mayor". It partially comes to the fact that the words for this person in Polish municipalities, towns and cities are regulated by the law, in case of those from foreign municipalities, towns and cities – it's the matter of customs. Still, it's completely mad.
> 
> The word "mayor" translates to Polish as:
> 
> wójt – in case of rural municipalities in Poland, and probably also such municipalities abroad (I have never seen this case, so I don't know),
> burmistrz – in case of urban-rural municipalities and small towns in Poland, but also all urban municipalities (including huge cities) in most foreign countries,
> prezydent miasta – in case of larger towns and cities in Poland (there are exact legal criteria that distinguish when a municipality has a "burmistrz" and when a "prezydent miasta"),
> mer – in case of foreign cities in selected countries, especially France and the post-Soviet ones.
> So it just sounds funny when we hear about the mayor of New York "burmistrz Nowego Jorku", though normally, in Poland, the word "burmistrz" is reserved for small towns, and it's never used in case of cities – and New York is an enormous city, so it clearly should have a "prezydent miasta" and not a "burmistrz".


Does burmistrz have its origins in the Germanic "burg" meaning castle? So a burmistrz would literally be "Head of the castle"?


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Burmistrz is a literal borrowing of german Bürgermeister (From Middle High German _burgermeister_, itself a compound of _burger_ (“citizen”) +‎ _meister_ (“master”); compare German _Bürger_ and _Meister_.), 

So it is rather the Head of Citizens rather then the Head of the Castle, however naturally etymology of _burg_ goes futher than that (From Proto-West Germanic _*burg_, Proto-Germanic _*burgz_, from Proto-Indo-European _*bʰerǵʰ-_ (“fortified elevation”).)


----------



## Vignole

Every motorway in the world according to Google Maps 








Source: https://i.redd.it/zcllj5zwyos51.png


----------



## AnelZ

tfd543 said:


> Interesting how people dont forget.
> 
> Back in my parents home country NMK, albanian people dont Seem to support Ukraine actively as UA adhered to the mission of killing the albanian population in the insurgency in 2001 according to them.
> 
> What goes around comes around.
> 
> I mean, they are against the war and against suppression, but not to the extent of really wanting to help.


There are some more extreme people over here in BiH as well who are posting things about the aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992-1995 where they are pointing out that some Ukrainians fought for the other side and as such we should be wary about the support towards them. In the same time, Ukraine participated as part of the UN mission during the war as well. 

But nevertheless, in Sarajevo over 90% fully support Ukraine, donating, giving exposure and offering accommodation if some refugees do come over here while nearly everyone is against the war and condemns Russia.


----------



## tfd543

AnelZ said:


> There are some more extreme people over here in BiH as well who are posting things about the aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992-1995 where they are pointing out that some Ukrainians fought for the other side and as such we should be wary about the support towards them. In the same time, Ukraine participated as part of the UN mission during the war as well.
> 
> But nevertheless, in Sarajevo over 90% fully support Ukraine, donating, giving exposure and offering accommodation if some refugees do come over here while nearly everyone is against the war and condemns Russia.


Your enemy’s enemy is your friend… 

Anyway,thats good to hear.


----------



## Vignole

Vignole said:


> Every motorway in the world according to Google Maps


Every single divided highway in the world 









Source: https://i.redd.it/p1nxvknw6av51.png


----------



## FiveYears

Vignole said:


> Every motorway in the world according to Google Maps
> View attachment 2855742
> 
> Source: https://i.redd.it/zcllj5zwyos51.png


Estonia and Latvia listed but not colored?


----------



## The Wild Boy

Vignole said:


> Every single divided highway in the world
> View attachment 2856585
> 
> 
> Source: https://i.redd.it/p1nxvknw6av51.png


Interesting. In the first map you showed, the motorway from Miladinovci interchange to Tri Češmi interchange (Motorway Skopje - Štip) is not shown, but in the second map it is shown... That's just not accurate, and it isn't in my country only. 

I wonder, how did they gather their data? Was it just by looking at Google Maps and extracting the data from there? Well in that case it could explain the reason why that motorway isn't shown on the first map, since when you zoom out on Google maps it doesn't actually show that motorway in the map, but when you zoom in it does show it. 

There's just a lot of mistakes on Google maps... It's equally worse on Open Street Map. 

Is there any way that i can contact Google to correct that issue? Must have been someone without experience from my country who decided to input the route of that motorway, but did not tell Google that it has to show up when zoomed out too. Because usually motorways and express roads should by default show up when zoomed out as well, but that clearly isn't the case here. Is there some sort of "requirement" for a road to show up like that? I'm assuming all A roads by default and E roads would be the one preferred to show up when zoomed out, as they are more important roads.


----------



## tfd543

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> In the Nordics and the Baltics there have been a wave of proposals for a rather subtle way of protesting against the war. As far as I know, it started in Copenhagen, where it has been proposed to change the street address to Ukrainegade*. Similarly, in Norway, the local council will next Tuesday discuss whether the address of the Russian embassy should change to Ukrainas gste, and in Lithuania it might become "Ukrainian heros street" (in Lithuanian). Is this going on also in other parts of Europe /the world?
> 
> *The Russian Embassy expressed "worry" , as this could harm the relations between Norway and Denmark because the existing street name is Kristianiagade, an historic name of Oslo 🤣. I would have been so ashamed working for the Russian foreign services, having to come with such hilarious statements, but I guess it is much better than having to lie about the war itself as they otherwise do.


Yep Its True in cph that they want to change the road name, but Its an extremely hard task and requires a public hearing and so.

Its also costly.. 
lets see what Will happen


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## Kpc21

I haven't seen it in Poland, but... it may be interesting. Over here, changing a street name is not a difficult thing, it's just a decision of the town/city/municipal council. A bigger problem is the cost of replacing the documents after the name change.

Some years ago in Łódź the name of a section of the former Sporna street got changed. The old name meant something like "Dispute Street". They decided to name it after the Blessed Anastazy Pankiewicz, a founder of a local Catholic monastery, located exactly in this street. The problem is that right opposite this monastery, there is one of the major children hospitals in the city. And hospitals in Poland are typically always running short of money, and there are more important things in a hospital to spend money for, rather than an externally imposed street name change. As a result, yet for a few years, this hospital was using its address in Sporna street, though this section of the street was no longer called so.

In addition... this hospital was always called by locals just "the hospital in Sporna street". Officially it's named after Maria Konopnicka, a known Polish children book writer, but few people know this hospital is actually named after her. And... it remains being commonly called the "hospital in Sporna", though this is no longer the name of this section of the street.

Meanwhile... we are already accustomed with the higher gas prices, but today I had to replace a gas bottle (I have a gas cooker but no gas mains, so I use it with 11 kg LPG bottles, like those also used for campers, caravans, gas barbecues etc.). You normally return such an empty bottle, they give you a full one in return, and you only pay for the gas contained in it.

I remember times when such a bottle cost around 25 zł (6.25 euro? I am not sure about the exchange rate back then). For the last several years, the price was around 50 zł (11-12 euro). After the Covid-related fuel price increases – around 75 zł. Now...

The nearest place where I can replace such a bottle is a distribution plant some 300 m from where I live. It's usually cheap there. Today I saw a price of 100 zł (21 euro). Finally I bought the gas at a gas station of the national fuel conglomerate Orlen. The price there was 87 zł (18 euro).

The gasoline price increases are nothing compared to the price increase of this bottled LPG  It's now twice as expensive as in the recent years; four time as expensive as 15 years ago.


----------



## Attus

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> In the Nordics and the Baltics there have been a wave of proposals for a rather subtle way of protesting against the war. As far as I know, it started in Copenhagen, where it has been proposed to change the street address to Ukrainegade*. Similarly, in Norway, the local council will next Tuesday discuss whether the address of the Russian embassy should change to Ukrainas gste, and in Lithuania it might become "Ukrainian heros street" (in Lithuanian). Is this going on also in other parts of Europe /the world?


It wouldn't work in Hungary. There is a Hungarian minority in the Ukraine, and Ukrainian politics supressed them. Basically all Ukrainian anti-minority laws were against the Russian minority, but the Hungarians, too, were involved. So the Ukraine and the Ukrainian people is everything but popular in Hungary.


----------



## Kpc21

From what I've read just now – Poland also joined this trend. The Left wants to do it, interestingly, not by a change of the name of the actual street where the embassy is located, but by a change in the division of plots.


----------



## PovilD

Attus said:


> It wouldn't work in Hungary. There is a Hungarian minority in the Ukraine, and Ukrainian politics supressed them. Basically all Ukrainian anti-minority laws were against the Russian minority, but the Hungarians, too, were involved. So the Ukraine and the Ukrainian people is everything but popular in Hungary.


Hungary is really interesting. I wonder if Ukraine here is more meh there than in other countries. Here in Baltics/Poland is Ukraine-World.
I'm siding away from choosing sides when conflict involve nuclear power country Russia and Ukraine backed by Western World, even if some will not like my thinking.

I think something was done really wrong that we ended like this. Ukraine shouldn't be in Syria or Iraqi faith.

As for Ukraine, I think it shouldn't be the way to solve problem. Russia tried to do Iraq 2.0/Afganistan style operation, but now we have what we have.


----------



## x-type

Attus said:


> It wouldn't work in Hungary. There is a Hungarian minority in the Ukraine, and Ukrainian politics supressed them. Basically all Ukrainian anti-minority laws were against the Russian minority, but the Hungarians, too, were involved. So the Ukraine and the Ukrainian people is everything but popular in Hungary.


Well, Ukrainians were not especially popular as nation (this sounds so harsh and ugly) in Poland as well. And nowadays in crisis nobody gives a f*** about popularity anymore.


----------



## SeñorGol

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> In the Nordics and the Baltics there have been a wave of proposals for a rather subtle way of protesting against the war. As far as I know, it started in Copenhagen, where it has been proposed to change the street address to Ukrainegade*. Similarly, in Norway, the local council will next Tuesday discuss whether the address of the Russian embassy should change to Ukrainas gste, and in Lithuania it might become "Ukrainian heros street" (in Lithuanian). Is this going on also in other parts of Europe /the world?
> 
> *The Russian Embassy expressed "worry" , as this could harm the relations between Norway and Denmark because the existing street name is Kristianiagade, an historic name of Oslo 🤣. I would have been so ashamed working for the Russian foreign services, having to come with such hilarious statements, but I guess it is much better than having to lie about the war itself as they otherwise do.


Today I noticed that the flag of Ukraine was waving next to the main building of the local university (Logroño, Spain)


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> Well, Ukrainians were not especially popular as nation (this sounds so harsh and ugly) in Poland as well. And nowadays in crisis nobody gives a f*** about popularity anymore.


Yes, because thee Poles hate Russia as well. In Hungary it is not the case. 
From the West it seems like Poland and Hungary have very similar politics. However, it is the most important difference: Poland is very strict anti-Russian, while the Hungarian government was pro-Russian until last week and is very strictly neutral now. 
In the population itself it's more complex, some say Putin is the Devil, but many of my friends say, Merkel, Macron and Biden are responsible for this war and not Putin, many of them say, it's nice, if Ukraine will be finally destroyed. The in West typical pro-Ukraine attitude is present in Hungary but, I think, only a minority of the population think so. The majority of Facebook comments is anti-Ukraine as well.


----------



## Attus

According to recent Hungarian public opinion researches only 20-25% of Hungarian population thinks Hungary should support Ukraine any way (except for accepting refugees), and 70-80% is against it. 55% of the opulation thinks Russia is responsible for the war, 40% thinks the West is responsible.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> Yes, because thee Poles hate Russia as well. In Hungary it is not the case.


So are therefore the Hungarian experiences from the communist times and being de facto a Russian puppet state good?

Because those Poland's – not really...

Hungary seems quite odd here.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Kpc21 said:


> The gasoline price increases are nothing compared to the price increase of this bottled LPG  It's now twice as expensive as in the recent years; four time as expensive as 15 years ago.


Could it be due to crisis therapy / stockpiling? I had my weekly grocery shopping today. A lot of the non-perishable food items were out of stock.


PovilD said:


> Russia tried to do Iraq 2.0/Afganistan style operation, but now we have what we have.


Putin was definitely not planning for another Afghanistan.


Attus said:


> 55% of the opulation thinks Russia is responsible for the war, 40% thinks the West is responsible.


In Norway, even far-left communists blames nobody but Putin's regime. During last weekend, before the large increased in shelling of civilian areas we have seen this week, less than 30% of the population was against sending weapons to Ukraine, even if Norway since the 50s has had a law that in general prohibit sending Norwegian produced weapons to parties involved in military conflicts. But I would say that the sentiment in Norway is mainly anti-Putin, not anti-Russian. We do not have have the same history as in Poland, though. In fact, Russia is the only neighboring state with which we never have had a war. 

In Sweden and Finland, the majority of the populations are suddenly in favor of Nato-membership, partly in fact triggered by Russia's statements saying that they would not accept it. . This war has dramatically shifted Nordic public opinions on security issues. Similar shifts have been seen elsewhere in Europe, of course, Germany comes to mind.


----------



## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Could it be due to crisis therapy / stockpiling?


Maybe, though stockpilling bottled LPG doesn't seem to make much sense. The deposit for such a 11 kg metal bottle is several time as high as the value of the gas that can be contained inside.

I would rather make sure that I have a small electric cooker in stock. The Ukraine's example shows that most war-affected areas have no big problems with electricity supply. There are some towns out of power, but I don't think it would last longer than several weeks – for now the repair brigades of the energy utility just wait until the area with damaged infrastructure is no longer under fire, and they will start the repairs. Finally the front will move in one direction or another...

By the way, we have another reason why it's better to have power lines under the ground – it's then less prone to damage during military fights...


----------



## vallzo

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> In fact, Russia is the only neighboring state with which we never have had a war.


Ah yes, who can forget the Finno-Norwegian war?


Gotta say that it is surprising how Hungary hasn't swung more considering the backlash Russia is getting. Has Europe ever been this united before? When we fought back the Ottomans or Napoleon perhaps?


----------



## Suburbanist

Ukraine had a reputation in some Western European countries as being dysfunctional and the type of place where things were even crazier than Russia (dashcam videos or extreme steroid gyms). Also it had an image of being extremely corrupt regarding application of laws etc. But it was also seen as more accessible and pre-2014 the nightlife in Odessa was on the radar for my then 20-something yrs old colleagues that were into raves and electronic music.

But those were easier times for a tourist, when even Minsk was ok-ish to visit in the way Tbilisi or Baku currently are.


----------



## Suburbanist

vallzo said:


> Ah yes, who can forget the Finno-Norwegian war?
> 
> 
> Gotta say that it is surprising how Hungary hasn't swung more considering the backlash Russia is getting. Has Europe ever been this united before? When we fought back the Ottomans or Napoleon perhaps?


I guess Hungary still has a semi fresh collective memory of harsh times from the 1960s under Soviet Control. 

While Poland had already been ravaged by the initial Soviet invasion in 1939, and the NKVD terror, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary were relatively industrialized countries with economies as developed as those of Italy, and much ahead of Soviet Russia. 

So I guess they are definitely not looking back. And war on your borders probably makes even authoritarians like Orban to read the room and see that being fawning over Putin to lambast the EU and its neutral bathroom or pro-immigration stance and gender equity discourse has gone out of fashion quickly.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

These stories about a '40 mile convoy' are apparently inaccurate. There is a convoy, but it was located 40 miles outside of Kyiv, which for some reason was changed to a '40 mile convoy' in the media and everyone believed that after seeing images of maybe 1 - 2 miles of trucks.


----------



## x-type

Attus said:


> Yes, because thee Poles hate Russia as well. In Hungary it is not the case.
> From the West it seems like Poland and Hungary have very similar politics. However, it is the most important difference: Poland is very strict anti-Russian, while the Hungarian government was pro-Russian until last week and is very strictly neutral now.
> In the population itself it's more complex, some say Putin is the Devil, but many of my friends say, Merkel, Macron and Biden are responsible for this war and not Putin, many of them say, it's nice, if Ukraine will be finally destroyed. The in West typical pro-Ukraine attitude is present in Hungary but, I think, only a minority of the population think so. The majority of Facebook comments is anti-Ukraine as well.


How can you say that Hungarian government is neutral towards Ukraine situation, while Hungary voted in favour of UN draft resolution 4 days ago? There was an option to vote abstention.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

vallzo said:


> Ah yes, who can forget the Finno-Norwegian war?


Finland, as a part of Sweden, has had multiple wars with Norway. E. g., the majority of the invasion force in Trøndelag during the Great Northern War* was in fact of Finnish origin. But we are talking 300 years back now.

*Most of these troops were later to perish in a terrible blizzard as they were crossing back over the mountains to Sweden.








Carolean Death March - Wikipedia







en.m.wikipedia.org


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> How can you say that Hungarian government is neutral towards Ukraine situation, while Hungary voted in favour of UN draft resolution 4 days ago? There was an option to vote abstention.


That resolution was fully irrelevant. 
What is more important that Hungary did not block EU sanctions, Orbán obviously did not dare to block them. But the government has never criticized Putin or supported Ukraine in any way, explicitly forbid to deliver weapons through Hungary. So, yes, you're right, Hungary is not absolutely neutral but tries to remain as neutral as possible without getting too harsh reactions from Western nations.


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> These stories about a '40 mile convoy' are apparently inaccurate. There is a convoy, but it was located 40 miles outside of Kyiv, which for some reason was changed to a '40 mile convoy' in the media and everyone believed that after seeing images of maybe 1 - 2 miles of trucks.


Source? Is this video a fake then? As it was the original source as far as I know


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Stuu said:


> Source? Is this video a fake then? As it was the original source as far as I know


It was discussed at the end of this video by the U.S. military: video (at 1:21:13)

The image satellites also do not show a 40 mile (64 kilometer convoy). Almost the entire footage is from a circa 10 kilometer stretch of road R-02 near Ivankiv, with some other groupings of vehicles.

This '40 mile convoy' is a mix-up by the media. And it caught on because it sounds so sensational. Also, it is under the umbrella of Russian air defense systems in Belarus and outside the range of Ukrainian artillery which is why this convoy is not engaged on a large scale.


----------



## SeanT

Ukrain is supported with aid from Hungary but no weapons/soldiers.
Orbán said that now is not the time to be divided (although the government is not agree with the EU in everything according to the conflict)


----------



## x-type

Attus said:


> That resolution was fully irrelevant.
> What is more important that Hungary did not block EU sanctions, Orbán obviously did not dare to block them. But the government has never criticized Putin or supported Ukraine in any way, explicitly forbid to deliver weapons through Hungary. So, yes, you're right, Hungary is not absolutely neutral but tries to remain as neutral as possible without getting too harsh reactions from Western nations.


That what you are saying is typical sitting on two chairs. The only reason for that are oncoming parliamentary elections in Hungary. But it isn't working in this situation anymore, it was working till the Ukraine crisis. Serbia tried the same thing. Oh, what a miracle - they have parliamentary and presidential elections at the same date as Hungary does.


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Finland, as a part of Sweden, has had multiple wars with Norway. E. g., the majority of the invasion force in Trøndelag during the Great Northern War* was in fact of Finnish origin. But we are talking 300 years back now.
> 
> *Most of these troops were later to perish in a terrible blizzard as they were crossing back over the mountains to Sweden.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Carolean Death March - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.m.wikipedia.org


Hard to understand where this bs arises from.

First, the war 1700-1721 was initiated by an anti-Swedish coalition, including Denmark, Russia, and Saxony-Poland-Lithuania. The war begun by the Polish-Lithuanian troops attacking Riga, which then belonged to Sweden.

Second, all decisions related to foreign politics were made solely in Stockholm. Finland, Latvia etc were just resource-providing provinces only, being obliged to send young men to the Swedish army.

In that crisis, Finland was several years occupied by Russians, and a big part of the population was killed or transported to Russia as slaves.

Following the same logic, also Latvia had attacked Norway, because large areas of current Latvia were under the Swedish crown. And, of course, Norway as a part of Denmark, attacked Ukraina at the war of 1655-1660. Thus, according to a creative history interpretation, Norway equals to Putin's Russia!


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> It was discussed at the end of this video by the U.S. military: video (at 1:21:13)
> 
> The image satellites also do not show a 40 mile (64 kilometer convoy). Almost the entire footage is from a circa 10 kilometer stretch of road R-02 near Ivankiv, with some other groupings of vehicles.
> 
> This '40 mile convoy' is a mix-up by the media. And it caught on because it sounds so sensational. Also, it is under the umbrella of Russian air defense systems in Belarus and outside the range of Ukrainian artillery which is why this convoy is not engaged on a large scale.


It is a bit strange, though, if this is the case, that there is no correction on the Maxar home pages, e.g. News Bureau
News Bureau. Several sources also say that it has stretched almost all the way from Prybirsk to to Antonov airport (which is 74 km), but that the "convoy" has gaps.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

MattiG said:


> Hard to understand where this bs arises from.
> 
> First, the war 1700-1721 was initiated by an anti-Swedish coalition, including Denmark, Russia, and Saxony-Poland-Lithuania. The war begun by the Polish-Lithuanian troops attacking Riga, which then belonged to Sweden.
> 
> Second, all decisions related to foreign politics were made solely in Stockholm. Finland, Latvia etc were just resource-providing provinces only, being obliged to send young men to the Swedish army.
> 
> In that crisis, Finland was several years occupied by Russians, and a big part of the population was killed or transported to Russia as slaves.
> 
> Following the same logic, also Latvia had attacked Norway, because large areas of current Latvia were under the Swedish crown. And, of course, Norway as a part of Denmark, attacked Ukraina at the war of 1655-1660. Thus, according to a creative history interpretation, Norway equals to Putin's Russia!


It was not my intention to stir you up again. The point was that Russia has never attacked Norway.

What the rulers of Europe did or did not do hundreds of years ago should of course anyway not cause any grudge today.. But, for an outsider, it seems a bit strange that you would like to disassociate Finland from Swedish history to the degree you are doing. After all, Finland was an integrated part of Sweden for almost 700 years between 1150 and 1807, and Finland did not exist as a country before that. There were no democracies back then, of course, but Finnish aristocrats, although speaking Swedish, had to my knowledge similar influence in the Swedish government / "parliament" as the ones coming from provinces within the borders of current Sweden. In comparison, only a part of Latvia (Livonia) was under Sweden, and for less than 100 years. At the point when Sweden tried to invade Norway at the end of the Great Northern War, Sweden had already lost Livonia.

But, if you want history to start at 1917, Finland has never been in direct war with Norway. In fact, only Germany has, but Finland ended up in alliance with them for a large part of WW2 (the Continuation War) to regain territory lost to Stalin after his unprovoked Winter War attack. Hence, I guess Finland was formally in war with all the allied countries even if there were no Finnish soldiers in Norway. Finland, like Sweden, also allowed German troop transits to Norway. To Finland's credit, it started chasing the Germans out of their country during the final year of the war (the Lappland War).

The Winter War has by the way quite a lot of similarities with the current war in Ukraina, as the Soviet Union saw Finland as part of their sphere of interest and saw a chance to get back old Russian territory. And like in Ukraine today, the mainly Russian army seemed unprepared for the fierce resistance from the much smaller country they tried to conquer.


----------



## Kpc21

SeanT said:


> Orbán said that now is not the time to be divided


Similarly the Polish government has withdrawn a proposal of a controversial educational reform, aimed more or less at restricting sex education at schools (there is no sex education in the official school curriculum, just the knowledge about human anatomy on science/biology lessons and a voluntary subject called "education for live in a family", which is kinda it, but at a very limited scale, and when I had it in primary school, it was just something like three classes in total). With the same arguments. Not the time to be divided.



x-type said:


> That what you are saying is typical sitting on two chairs.


Are there really pro-Russian politicians in Hungary in the current situation?

In Poland it was always so that PO (liberals) was more for dialogue and doing businesses with Russia, PiS (conservatives) absolutely against. I don't really know about the Left, they haven't been any meaningful political force for years, but I guess they can be more or less the same as PO. Now, after the invasion, absolutely everyone is against any cooperation with Russia.

By the way, when this war broke out, Covid has completely disappeared from the headlines  And with the beginning of March, the government withdrew almost all Covid restrictions, except for obligatory face masks in enclosed public spaces. From what I observe, people still follow this masks obligation in supermarkets, but again not at all in smaller shops, at gas stations etc. Also from what I can see, the border quarantine rules are still in force; for people arriving in Poland from Schengen countries, there is a 7-day quarantine unless you have a valid vaccine certificate, you underwent Covid within the last 6 months, or you have a negative test result from the last 48 hours; for the people arriving from outside Schengen (except the refugees from Ukraine) – you must both have a test result and be vaccinated or have had Covid within the last 6 months. And it's still possible to go around that last restriction by flying from outside Schengen to Germany and crossing the border on the land (then you may well have no certificate and no test, there are no checkpoints at the internal Schengen border), or by having a transfer between flights anywhere else in Schengen.

Still keeping those restrictions in the current situation looks just stupid, when we have anyway thousands of people excluded from them entering Poland every day... I wonder if they remove them soon.


----------



## radamfi

When I was growing up, there was a lot of concern about the large number of teenage pregnancies. It was quite commonplace (especially in poorer areas like where I grew up) for girls to get pregnant young so they could get social housing. Sex education in schools was very limited and was regularly criticised on TV news, where they often showed how they did things in the Netherlands. However you don't hear about that any more, probably because there is now more concern about falling birth rates.


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## ChrisZwolle

That has been mentioned to be a characteristic of Generation Z in the western world, probably already starting with some of the Millennials. Some also say that starting a family is not a priority for women in their 20s anymore, since they can date endlessly without committing until their thirties, enabled by dating apps, plus a sentiment to put career before family life. Though it has been argued to be a tricky lifestyle as women over 30 can quickly lose appeal in online dating, settling down too late to form a family or not at all.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> And with the beginning of March, the government withdrew almost all Covid restrictions, except for obligatory face masks in enclosed public spaces.


Hungary cancelled literally all restrictions, as of monday (tomorrow), not even wearing a mask is mandatory anywhere, and travel restrictions, too are completely abolished.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> Are there really pro-Russian politicians in Hungary in the current situation?


No, explicitely pro-Russia are only some irrelevant pliticians (Hungary has elections in four weeks so even candidates irrelevant parties get more publicity than usually). 
However, very important politicians, the prime minister included, say, we need good relationships to Russia because Hungary buys gas (i.e. not fuel, but gas for heating and power plants) from Russia and cheap gas is very important, more important than the problems of Ukraine.


----------



## geogregor

x-type said:


> Well, Ukrainians were not especially popular as nation (this sounds so harsh and ugly)* in Poland as well*. And nowadays in crisis nobody gives a f*** about popularity anymore.


Small correction. Ukrainians might not be the most popular in Poland but they were not particularly unpopular either, even before the war. They are the biggest group of foreign workers and usually integrate pretty well.

Sue there are some fruitcakes on the far right trying to revive historic issues and conflicts but for most population it was irrelevant.

As for Covid. I just came back from La Palma and mask wearing indoors is really heavily enforced. I have witnessed bus drivers and shopkeepers telling people off (mostly tourists) even just for dropping masks under the noses. But as I spent most of my time outdoors or driving rental car it didn't really bother me. 

It was strange to be on enjoyable holiday during time of such historic conflict. During the day I was enjoying myself and only the in the evenings I briefly checked the news. Really weird.


----------



## radamfi

Most EU countries are facing aging populations so Ukraine refugees are a gift to help that problem. Whereas the UK is still playing hardball on immigration and is only taking a relatively small number of refugees.

I got back from Switzerland the other day where I travelled all day by trains and buses and mask wearing was 100%. Masks are not required elsewhere and they were hardly worn elsewhere. I went into the Migros supermarkets a few times and hardly any one was wearing masks. There are still quite a few people wearing masks in Tesco in the UK.

(Incidentally, not everything is expensive in Switzerland. A 300 ml can of Coke Zero costs 0.85 CHF in Migros.)

This confirms the huge drop in teenage pregnancy. You don't often hear about improvements in social problems so not surprising I didn't realise how much this situation has improved.









Teenage pregnancy


We look at the under-18 conception rate in England and how it has changed over time.




www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk


----------



## ChrisZwolle

ChrisZwolle said:


> The image satellites also do not show a 40 mile (64 kilometer convoy). Almost the entire footage is from a circa 10 kilometer stretch of road R-02 near Ivankiv, with some other groupings of vehicles.


I've geolocated all the locations of this '40 mile convoy': https://www.space.com/russia-ukraine-invasion-convoy-3d-satellite-video

The video shows 6 locations. Four of those were on R-02 in the Ivankiv area. Two others are farther south: of T-1019 near Sosnivka and on T-0111 on the north side of Hostomel Airport. There were 20 kilometer gaps between those groupings between Ivankiv and Hostomel at that time. 










The combined length of the vehicle groupings in those satellite images was 16 kilometers at that time. The distance between the front and rear is approximately 60 - 65 kilometers, but it's not a continuous line of vehicles. I think these are used as on-road supply stations / forward deployment of supplies and not necessarily one single convoy that is stuck or run out of fuel. There aren't many places to stage a large-scale supply line as they aren't going off the roads much. The footage shows that these are almost entirely composed of trucks, with only the last grouping near Hostomel Airport also showing what seems to be light armor and air defense systems, as well as a helicopter.

But the footage was from 28 February, which is a week ago. Cloud cover has prevented any more satellite images since, but the general idea is that the 'convoy' hasn't moved much, as the fighting mostly remained in the same places (the Irpin / Bucha / Hostomel cluster) for a week now.


----------



## volodaaaa

When it comes to Russian aggression in Ukraine, I am very envious of the current Czech political representation. It ultimately confirmed a three-generation gap between Slovaks and Czechs. Slovaks are currently represented by many jokers in the government and crazy social-fascists in the opposition who keep on relativisation with the NATO 1999 bombing, which I consider unfair to victims of both conflicts. Hats off to the Czech president Zeman who said he was wrong about Putin, and now he supports Ukraine.


----------



## andken

ChrisZwolle said:


> That has been mentioned to be a characteristic of Generation Z in the western world, probably already starting with some of the Millennials. Some also say that starting a family is not a priority for women in their 20s anymore, since they can date endlessly without committing until their thirties, enabled by dating apps, plus a sentiment to put career before family life.


Until the 80's couples would get married when the girlfriend would get pregnant. I remember an expert quoted on a 70's Time magazine article saying that US Democrats were out of touch by wanting to legalize abortion, not because of opposition to abortion, but because among working class people most woman would marry after they got pregnant from their boyfriends. A lot of, if not most, weddings, had a pregnant bride. Lower fertility rates are largely a result of lower unwanted _and_ teen pregnancies. Lower fertility rates also correlates with higher ages for first intercourse and with lower sexual partners among teenagers.

Conservatives won. Teenagers are having less sex, there is less pregnancy. Too bad that it also means less babies.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands raised € 106 million in donations for Ukrainian refugees today. It's one of the most successful fundraising efforts ever, and the most successful for a non-natural disaster. Normally people are less likely to donate for wars because it's a man-made problem.


----------



## Suburbanist

volodaaaa said:


> When it comes to Russian aggression in Ukraine, I am very envious of the current Czech political representation. It ultimately confirmed a three-generation gap between Slovaks and Czechs. Slovaks are currently represented by many jokers in the government and crazy social-fascists in the opposition who keep on relativisation with the NATO 1999 bombing, which I consider unfair to victims of both conflicts. Hats off to the Czech president Zeman who said he was wrong about Putin, and now he supports Ukraine.


I read, some years ago, that when Czechoslovakia was peacefully split in 1992, most of the intelligentsia/elite stayed in Prague, including the ones with Slovakian origins. Not only politicians but journalists, artists, writers, people with some ability to influence public opinion.

But I remember well that the tone was that this allowed Slovakia to start afresh with new minds, since Bratislava was not the center of power during communist times.


----------



## Kpc21

Meanwhile, Polish Złoty has lost 10% of its value within the last few months... And most of that, within the last few days.

From spring of 2013 to when the government in Poland changed from PO to PiS, euro cost about 4.20 zł. After PiS won in 2015, till the start of Covid pandemic in 2020, it cost about 4.30 zł. The pandemic made it cost about 4.50 zł, and after the invasion on Ukraine, the post-Covid crisis – about 4.60 zł. Now the euro is getting rapidly more and more expensive.... And it has almost reached 5 zł.


----------



## Surel

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands raised € 106 million in donations for Ukrainian refugees today. It's one of the most successful fundraising efforts ever, and the most successful for a non-natural disaster. Normally people are less likely to donate for wars because it's a man-made problem.


The humanitarian organizations in Czechia raised more than 1,5 billion CZK until yesterday, although not in one day. That is some 58 million EUR. It's also a record. Additional 20 million EUR was raised to support Ukrainian war effort via the Ukrainian Embassy in Prague. Those are just donation from the people and companies. Public funds are not included in those numbers.









Sbírky pro Ukrajinu už vynesly přes 1,5 miliardy Kč, v historii ČR zatím nejvíc | ČeskéNoviny.cz


Praha - Napadení Ukrajiny ruskou armádou vyvolalo v Česku bezprecedentní vlnu solidarity. Jen na finančních sbírkách shromáždily humanitární organizace zatím přes 1,5 miliardy korun a denně přibývají další miliony. Podle dostupných informací je to nejvyšší částka, která se v Česku vybrala na...




www.ceskenoviny.cz


----------



## Surel

Suburbanist said:


> I read, some years ago, that when Czechoslovakia was peacefully split in 1992, most of the intelligentsia/elite stayed in Prague, including the ones with Slovakian origins. Not only politicians but journalists, artists, writers, people with some ability to influence public opinion.
> 
> But I remember well that the tone was that this allowed Slovakia to start afresh with new minds, since Bratislava was not the center of power during communist times.


I'd rather say that many of those were rather fluid. Not much really changed for them as they could be perfectly active in both countries (not the politicians of course).


----------



## volodaaaa

Suburbanist said:


> I read, some years ago, that when Czechoslovakia was peacefully split in 1992, most of the intelligentsia/elite stayed in Prague, including the ones with Slovakian origins. Not only politicians but journalists, artists, writers, people with some ability to influence public opinion.
> 
> But I remember well that the tone was that this allowed Slovakia to start afresh with new minds, since Bratislava was not the center of power during communist times.


Yep. A "fresh" "new" "start"  Was I familyless, I would be no Slovak citizen anymore.


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## Suburbanist

volodaaaa said:


> Yep. A "fresh" "new" "start"  Was I familyless, I would be no Slovak citizen anymore.


What do you mean?


----------



## volodaaaa

Suburbanist said:


> What do you mean?


A concerning portion of Slovaks agree with the Russian aggression, or at least, defend Russia with whataboutism. I have never been a fan of American adventures in sovereign countries, but it does not help current victims at all. And I feel very sad seeing the Czech political scene joined together. What a contrast to Slovak opposition that keeps repeating "this war is a war between Russia and USA".


----------



## PovilD

Slovakia is visibly poorer than Czechia. Lots of commieblocks visible.
Czechia is like extension of Western Europe, cute Old Towns in small cities, etc.
I've been in both countries, and I like to play with Google Street View relatively often.

East Slovakia look almost like it was part of Soviet Union. Industrial parts, lampposts, etc.

What I like the most about Slovakia are mountains, not far away from home (1 day drive, but still). My first rocky mountain (High Tatras) was seen in Slovakia when I was a teen  I will always remember one morning, when I didn't knew in which Town I was (bus travel trip), and when I looked on the side of the balcony, my breath stopped.


----------



## PovilD

volodaaaa said:


> A concerning portion of Slovaks agree with the Russian aggression, or at least, defend Russia with whataboutism. I have never been a fan of American adventures in sovereign countries, but it does not help current victims at all. And I feel very sad seeing the Czech political scene joined together. What a contrast to Slovak opposition that keeps repeating "this war is a war between Russia and USA".


Yes, the sad part that American military adventures played a bad card. Russians say "why we can't invade, if you invaded Iraq"?

My personal feeling (since I didn't asked any people how they feel, etc.) I get on the streets here in Lithuania, that nobody thinks about sides, there is a worry, I think, due to our location. People are angry that things happened as they happened, it's easy to remember our history 1940-1960, and it was not good. Media is extremely pro-Ukraine, while regular people do not even put Ukrainian flags on their cars, as it was during Georgian conflict in 2008 where half of cars were with Georgian flags.


----------



## italystf

Attus said:


> Yes, because thee Poles hate Russia as well. In Hungary it is not the case.
> From the West it seems like Poland and Hungary have very similar politics. However, it is the most important difference: Poland is very strict anti-Russian, while *the Hungarian government was pro-Russian until last week and is very strictly neutral now.*
> In the population itself it's more complex, some say Putin is the Devil, but many of my friends say, Merkel, Macron and Biden are responsible for this war and not Putin, many of them say, it's nice, if Ukraine will be finally destroyed. The in West typical pro-Ukraine attitude is present in Hungary but, I think, only a minority of the population think so. The majority of Facebook comments is anti-Ukraine as well.


Orban, like many Western far-right populists (such as Salvini or Le Pen), was strongly pro-Putin until recently.
Today Matteo Salvini came to Poland to support Ukrainian refugees there and it was insulted by a Polish mayor who remembered that he was pro-Putin until few weeks ago (he even posed with a Putin T-shirt in the Red Square and said "better Putin than EU").


----------



## italystf

radamfi said:


> This confirms the huge drop in teenage pregnancy. You don't often hear about improvements in social problems so not surprising I didn't realise how much this situation has improved.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Teenage pregnancy
> 
> 
> We look at the under-18 conception rate in England and how it has changed over time.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> View attachment 2880223


Often proper widespread education makes more improvement than coercitive measures.
Education about risks of alchool, tobacco, and drugs reduces consumption.
Education about LGBT issues reduces homophobia.
Education about science reduces support for controversial therories such omeopathy, anti-vaccinism, etc...
Financial education reduces the risk of getting broke.
Political education reduces the risk of people believing in conspiration theories or supporting authoritarian ideologies.
And sex educations (and better access to contracception) reduces the risk of unwanted pregnancies and STDs.


----------



## geogregor

italystf said:


> Orban, like many Western far-right populists (such as Salvini or Le Pen), was strongly pro-Putin until recently.
> Today Matteo Salvini came to Poland to support Ukrainian refugees there and it was insulted by a Polish mayor who remembered that he was pro-Putin until few weeks ago (he even posed with a Putin T-shirt in the Red Square and said "better Putin than EU").











Polish mayor hands Salvini Putin T-shirt to protest visit to Ukraine border


Salvini has previously been supportive of Russia but now claims to want to help Ukrainian refugees.




notesfrompoland.com







> When Matteo Salvini visited a Polish town near the border with Ukraine today, the mayor presented the Italian far-right leader with a Vladimir Putin T-shirt of the type he was once pictured wearing in Moscow.
> 
> The protest was intended to highlight the contradiction between Salvini’s previous support for the Kremlin and his current proclaimed interest in helping Ukrainians forced to flee Russia’s invasion.


----------



## italystf

PovilD said:


> Yes, the sad part that American military adventures played a bad card. Russians say "why we can't invade, if you invaded Iraq"?


Two wrongs don't make one right.
Moreover, Russians have been even worse than American in wars, attaking more civilian targets like residential buildings, schools and hospitals compared to Americans.


----------



## Kpc21

Americans in Iraq – though obviously it isn't any excuse for a war – at least invaded that country with a declared aim of breaking the dictatorship and making it a democratic country. Putin wants to impose his dictatorship onto a country being almost a western-like democracy.

While it maybe doesn't make much difference neither from the political, nor from the practical point of view (did Iraq become more democratic after the American invasion?), it makes much difference in the eyes of the society.

Why some Iraqis welcomed American army with hope for changing the situation to better – in Ukraine just nobody wants Putin there, the whole thing is practically against the whole society of Ukraine. Supposedly, even the formerly pro-Russian people in the eastern Ukraine don't want to have anything to do with Putin any more, after the invasion.


----------



## Stuu

PovilD said:


> Yes, the sad part that American military adventures played a bad card. Russians say "why we can't invade, if you invaded Iraq"?


There was at least some due process, and Hussain absolutely was a terrible dictator who had bombed and gassed his own citizens. It was still wrong, and many people in the west protested against it, including me, as something that should never have happened. I still believe Blair and Bush should face a court for their actions in Iraq, just as Putin should.

Even so, that is very different to the situation in Ukraine, even allowing for insane Russian propaganda. Ukraine was and is no threat to Russia, the idea Ukrainians are the enemy of the Russians (before this obviously) is madness. It is driven entirely by Putin wanting to recreate the Russian mir that he believes was taken away when the USSR collapsed


----------



## geogregor

Nothing groundbreaking but decent summary of different experiences when driving in the US and Germany.


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> Even so, that is very different to the situation in Ukraine, even allowing for insane Russian propaganda. Ukraine was and is no threat to Russia, the idea Ukrainians are the enemy of the Russians (before this obviously) is madness. It is driven entirely by Putin wanting to recreate the Russian mir that he believes was taken away when the USSR collapsed


Russians claim that NATO getting closer to their country is a danger for them.

Well, maybe for Putin and the oligarchs, it's indeed a danger.

For ordinary Russians... I can't see it.

Russia may also not like US being a dominant power in the world (and indeed for me it also doesn't look good). But if I am going to choose between the US and Russia, the choice is obvious. And it's yet better that we have EU, being kind of a counterweight, representing the interests of Europe in opposition i.e. to the US.

Though many people in Poland complain about the dominance of Germany in the EU (and that "we allow Germans to rule us", also regarding the history, that it's not really fair for Germany to play such a dominant role after what they've done) – but again, I can't see that. To me, it looks like all EU countries are represented and it's not like Germany has all the power, or even the majority of the power.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Russians claim that NATO getting closer to their country is a danger for them.
> 
> Well, maybe for Putin and the oligarchs, it's indeed a danger.
> 
> For ordinary Russians... I can't see it.
> 
> Russia may also not like US being a dominant power in the world (and indeed for me it also doesn't look good). But if I am going to choose between the US and Russia, the choice is obvious. And it's yet better that we have EU, being kind of a counterweight, representing the interests of Europe in opposition i.e. to the US.
> 
> Though many people in Poland complain about the dominance of Germany in the EU (and that "we allow Germans to rule us", also regarding the history, that it's not really fair for Germany to play such a dominant role after what they've done) – but again, I can't see that. To me, it looks like all EU countries are represented and it's not like Germany has all the power, or even the majority of the power.


The amount of the BS assault excuses produced by Russia is too damn high. Let me sum it up:
1. The vicinity of NATO in recent years: Well, NATO got as close as possible in 2004 via Romania. The Kaliningradska military base oblast is in the heart of NATO and EU. And if I do some measurements, Estonia, a fully-fledged NATO member, is only 100 km further than Ukraine from Moscow. I think there is no use to go any further and talk about the vicinity of Sankt Petersburg, which is less than 150 km away from NATO, and possible Ukraine NATO membership would change nothing.

2. Biological laboratories - seriously, it sounds funnier than the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

3. Denazification and decommunisation - nice, but I somehow don't believe this could be executed by a "special military operation" performed by a country with signs of nazism and communism in its DNA.

4. Questioning the legitimacy of the current Ukrainian government by Russia, yet repeating requests to negotiate.


----------



## andken

Kpc21 said:


> Russians claim that NATO getting closer to their country is a danger for them.


There is some History there because in two World Wars Germans lead coalitions manage to invade Russia from the West(Barbarossa was pretty bloody, the Russians would have been imposed a brutal defeat in WWI with Brest-Litovsk if not for the Americans). NATO strength over Russia is not acceptable for a supposed superpower. It's more about Russia's insecurities than about their security. But NATO is just a smokescreen.

Vlad's real problem is with the EU. Poland has a GDP per capita that's something like six times larger than Ukraine's or Belarus. And these three countries were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, subjects of Imperial Russia, SSR or aligned with the Warsaw Pact. Ukraine wants to have what Poland and Lithuania have. And if Ukraine has what Poland and Lithuania have Russians are going to make the same demands to Putin. NATO is a better argument than to argue that he needs Ukraine to be kept as a puppet state, and a very poor puppet state.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

volodaaaa said:


> 1. The vicinity of NATO in recent years: Well, NATO got as close as possible in 2004 via Romania. The Kaliningradska military base oblast is in the heart of NATO and EU. And if I do some measurements, Estonia, a fully-fledged NATO member, is only 100 km further than Ukraine from Moscow. I think there is no use to go any further and talk about the vicinity of Sankt Petersburg, which is less than 150 km away from NATO, and possible Ukraine NATO membership would change nothing.


I could also add that the Soviet Union / Russia has had its naval bases of the Northern Fleet (the largest fleet of Soviet Union / Russia with most of the nuclear submarines with ballistic missiles) right next to the Norwegian / NATO border already from the start of the cold war. And of course NATO-Denmark and NATO-Turkey, with potential ability to close off the Baltic and Black Sea (fleets), should feel as least as threatening as a NATO Ukraine, which was and is not in the cards for many years to come, anyway.


volodaaaa said:


> 3. Denazification and decommunisation - nice, but I somehow don't believe this could be executed by a "special military operation" performed by a country with signs of nazism and communism in its DNA.


I guess there is not a lot of focus in Russian media that Ukraine's president is a Jew with Russian as mother tongue...


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> Russians claim that NATO getting closer to their country is a danger for them.


I know they claim that, and of course there is bound to be a certain amount of paranoia about the danger of being attacked from the west for the third time in 100 years... That said, the real reason Putin etc. hates the idea of NATO expansion is of course because it means he can't get his own way. No one in Moscow can seriously believe Estonia joined NATO so one day they can march on St Petersburg


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Russians claim that NATO getting closer to their country is a danger for them.
> 
> Well, maybe for Putin and the oligarchs, it's indeed a danger.
> 
> For ordinary Russians... I can't see it.
> 
> Russia may also not like US being a dominant power in the world (and indeed for me it also doesn't look good). But if I am going to choose between the US and Russia, the choice is obvious. And it's yet better that we have EU, being kind of a counterweight, representing the interests of Europe in opposition i.e. to the US.
> 
> Though many people in Poland complain about the dominance of Germany in the EU (and that "we allow Germans to rule us", also regarding the history, that it's not really fair for Germany to play such a dominant role after what they've done) – but again, I can't see that. To me, it looks like all EU countries are represented and it's not like Germany has all the power, or even the majority of the power.


They don't care what is going on in Eastern Europe. Their goal is Berlin at best, and Lisboa if they really lucky. They would start to get territories just because they want them, not because they did analysis what is good and what is bad.

NATO just irritates them, since they know this job is being done harder with those around.

Mongol Empire also worked kinda without goal, just expanding territory.

It's smth really bad going on with this World right now. The West got spit with dangerous diseases and imperialism almost at the same time, something we thought we forgot in first half of 20th century.


----------



## PovilD

Maybe smth is wrong with political architecture, maybe other things, maybe "it's just Russia fault", but we yet again see Iron curtain happening, extension of cold war, something like we re-done most of progress since 1990s.

China is also concerning.


----------



## andken

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> And of course NATO-Denmark and NATO-Turkey, with potential ability to close off the Baltic and Black Sea (fleets), should feel as least as threatening as a NATO Ukraine, which was and is not in the cards for many years to come, anyway.


The issue is that expanding NATO eastward makes Russia _even _more vulnerable that it already was(Even if I would argue that the problem is the _opposite _- with Ankara feeling alienated by Brussels and Washington NATO became weaker, and that gave an opening for Vlad). But then the problem is not about Russia security, but the insecurities of a middle income country that wants to be treated as a superpower. And Vlad's real issue is with the EU. Some Poles are mad with the NATO argument because the only solution to appease Moscow would be to keep the entire Central and Eastern Europe in poverty(They are rightly so, pointing to "westplaining").

Smaller, poorer countries aren't pawns of the superpowers.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> Though many people in Poland complain about the dominance of Germany in the EU (and that "we allow Germans to rule us", also regarding the history, that it's not really fair for Germany to play such a dominant role after what they've done) – but again, I can't see that. To me, it looks like all EU countries are represented and it's not like Germany has all the power, or even the majority of the power.


You should read the Hungarian section of SSC  (OK, you wouldn't understand anything ;-)). Up to two weeks ago it was a very typical opinion, that Germany is worse than Russia, because Germany wants to force Hungary to accept Middle East refugees, to have transgender WC, to enable same sex marriage, to shut down nuclear plants. I think, Germany is even now the 3rd most hated nation in Hungary (#1 and #2 are Romania and Slovakia, of obvious reasons). Fifteen years ago Germany was for Hungarians something like the land of the dreams, and now a hated nation, many Hungarians look at Germany as a "failed state".


----------



## volodaaaa

Stuu said:


> I know they claim that, and of course there is bound to be a certain amount of paranoia about the danger of being attacked from the west for the third time in 100 years... That said, the real reason Putin etc. hates the idea of NATO expansion is of course because it means he can't get his own way. No one in Moscow can seriously believe Estonia joined NATO so one day they can march on St Petersburg


You know, I believe it is just the opposite. It is not about the NATO expansion. It is about the shrinking of the Russian area of interest. The main reason Russia does not want Ukraine to join NATO is not the threat of war but the danger of war *if Ukraina decides to go on its way* and Russia intervene. Ukraine in NATO = lost all Russian control over this territory.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> You should read the Hungarian section of SSC  (OK, you wouldn't understand anything ;-)). Up to two weeks ago it was a very typical opinion, that Germany is worse than Russia, because Germany wants to force Hungary to accept Middle East refugees, to have transgender WC, to enable same sex marriage, to shut down nuclear plants. I think, Germany is even now the 3rd most hated nation in Hungary (#1 and #2 are Romania and Slovakia, of obvious reasons). Fifteen years ago Germany was for Hungarians something like the land of the dreams, and now a hated nation, many Hungarians look at Germany as a "failed state".


We may question the German energy policy (re-launch of coal energy, trade with Russia, etc.), indeed, but seriously there is a lot of other more failed countries than Germany  I am close to saying that all of them


----------



## Stuu

Attus said:


> You should read the Hungarian section of SSC  (OK, you wouldn't understand anything ;-)). Up to two weeks ago it was a very typical opinion, that Germany is worse than Russia, because Germany wants to force Hungary to accept Middle East refugees, to have transgender WC, to enable same sex marriage, to shut down nuclear plants. I think, Germany is even now the 3rd most hated nation in Hungary (#1 and #2 are Romania and Slovakia, of obvious reasons). Fifteen years ago Germany was for Hungarians something like the land of the dreams, and now a hated nation, many Hungarians look at Germany as a "failed state".


How much of that is actually true and how much is conspiracy theory? By what means is Germany alone able to put that pressure on Hungary? Or is it that people believe Germany to be controlling the EU?


----------



## Attus

Stuu said:


> How much of that is actually true and how much is conspiracy theory? By what means is Germany alone able to put that pressure on Hungary? Or is it that people believe Germany to be controlling the EU?


Yes, basically people think Germany controls the EU, or, at least, tries to do that.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> You know, I believe it is just the opposite. It is not about the NATO expansion. It is about the shrinking of the Russian area of interest. The main reason Russia does not want Ukraine to join NATO is not the threat of war but the danger of war *if Ukraina decides to go on its way* and Russia intervene. Ukraine in NATO = lost all Russian control over this territory.


Yep, that is true imo. Russia knows that NATO will not attack them just for anything (read: never unless they attack NATO member), so they are not afraid of NATO presence. NATO shield towards Russia consists of what, one antibalistic system in Poland, and half in Romania. Unfortunately, Europe will again exit pissed from this situation. America does not depend of Russian oil and gas. Europe does. I have read today an article that Ukrainian and Russian wheat is not exported to Europe, but mostly to African countries. I somehow highly doubt it. Europe exports a lot to Russia. In short - bad days for EU are coming.


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## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> I have read today an article that Ukrainian and Russian wheat is not exported to Europe, but mostly to African countries. I somehow highly doubt it.











Which countries are most exposed to interruption in Ukraine food exports?


Vulnerable countries such as war-torn Yemen look set to suffer the most from Ukraine food exports halting after the Russian invasion.




www.investmentmonitor.ai





Apparently the Ukrainian wheat export is mainly to Africa and Asia. Egypt stands out in particular, this country has a very poor food security because 80 million people live on an area the size of the Netherlands which also has to sustain food production (which it can not). 

I think Egypt would be very concerned about Ukraine banning the export of wheat. It is highly dependent on food imports. 

Ukraine also exports a lot of maize (corn) to the EU, much more than wheat. Most maize imported by the EU is going to the Netherlands and Spain, apparently mainly to convert it into feed for cattle, not for human consumption directly. 

I think the main problem for developing countries is that they cannot afford the higher prices, while developed countries can afford to pay a premium for this type of imports. We talk about high fuel prices in Europe, but it affects the economy of developing countries far more.


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## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> Yep, that is true imo. Russia knows that NATO will not attack them just for anything (read: never unless they attack NATO member), so they are not afraid of NATO presence. NATO shield towards Russia consists of what, one antibalistic system in Poland, and half in Romania. Unfortunately, Europe will again exit pissed from this situation. America does not depend of Russian oil and gas. Europe does. I have read today an article that Ukrainian and Russian wheat is not exported to Europe, but mostly to African countries. I somehow highly doubt it. Europe exports a lot to Russia. In short - bad days for EU are coming.


The fuel price is indeed rocketing. I have already made the evacuation plan for my family which includes a filled-up car ready to leave anytime. Thus I keep my fuel tank full and it helps me to follow the fuel prices. The increase rate is actually 0,05 € per day in Slovakia.


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## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> They don't care what is going on in Eastern Europe. Their goal is Berlin at best, and Lisboa if they really lucky. They would start to get territories just because they want them, not because they did analysis what is good and what is bad.
> 
> NATO just irritates them, since they know this job is being done harder with those around.
> 
> Mongol Empire also worked kinda without goal, just expanding territory.


But what's the point of expanding the territory of a country which already has it largest in the world? 

Though indeed, maybe they felt it's their last chance before Ukraine actually becomes closer to joining NATO and EU, and finally does it. Although... it was also unlikely for Ukraine to do it while it already had territorial disputes... And those disputes were exactly because of Russia.



PovilD said:


> China is also concerning.


It's much more concerning than Russia, because the western world is just extremely dependent on China – and China isn't a democracy either. Maybe Americans were right with sanctioning Huawei...

Similarly the Middle Eastern countries as sources of oil, alternative to Russia... What's the difference between Russian oligarchs and Middle Eastern sheikhs?



andken said:


> The issue is that expanding NATO eastward makes Russia _even _more vulnerable that it already was


Not really Russia but the current Russian government. I guess almost all Russians would be happier with a more pro-western government (though probably not with a sudden, forced transition to a more democratic system... it must be a slow, steady transition, otherwise it is likely to fail, it already failed in Russia in 1990s – in Poland, by the way, it also wasn't a success), but it would probably also mean end to the oligarchs' fortunes.



Stuu said:


> How much of that is actually true and how much is conspiracy theory? By what means is Germany alone able to put that pressure on Hungary? Or is it that people believe Germany to be controlling the EU?


In Poland it's just a half of Poles who want all those things, but for the other half, it's the fault of Germany 

But still, the Polish conservatives (maybe except the libertarian far far right, but they are also kinda monarchist; it's the weirdest section of the Polish political scene) were always strongly anti-Russia and anti-Putin, and it's weird to me that in Hungary it looks different.


----------



## andken

volodaaaa said:


> You know, I believe it is just the opposite. It is not about the NATO expansion. It is about the shrinking of the Russian area of interest. The main reason Russia does not want Ukraine to join NATO is not the threat of war but the danger of war *if Ukraina decides to go on its way* and Russia intervene. Ukraine in NATO = lost all Russian control over this territory.


Yes. It has more to do with Russia's status as a superpower than about security.



Kpc21 said:


> But what's the point of expanding the territory of a country which already has it largest in the world?


Russia doesn't have warm ports that couldn't at least in theory be blocked by close allies of the US. Even Vladivostok would be vulnerable to American ships from Japan and South Korea. For a normal country that's not necessarily a problem, a for a country that wants to be a superpower it is.



> Not really Russia but the current Russian government. I guess almost all Russians would be happier with a more pro-western government (though probably not with a sudden, forced transition to a more democratic system... it must be a slow, steady transition, otherwise it is likely to fail, it already failed in Russia in 1990s – in Poland, by the way, it also wasn't a success), but it would probably also mean end to the oligarchs' fortunes.


I think that people in countries have _complicated _feelings about territories, military vulnerabilities and status as superpower. Specially in LMIC. Stalin is more popular than Lenin in Russia because Lenin signed Brest-Litovsk(And lost a lot of territory, including Ukrainian Galizie), Stalin stole annexed a lot of territory in the end of World War II. But, yes, Russia would be better off as a normal country, not as a LMIC wanting to be a superpower. And Vlad doesn't want Russians to note that.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Ukraine also exports a lot of maize (corn) to the EU, much more than wheat. Most maize imported by the EU is going to the Netherlands and Spain, apparently mainly to convert it into feed for cattle, not for human consumption directly.


Yes, I thought grain in general. I see those Transcereales and Millet railcars on daily basis, but they obviously carry the maize.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> But what's the point of expanding the territory of a country which already has it largest in the world?


Indeed. What is the point. Most Europeans would ask, but for Russians there is a point. To reach geographical obstacle at best, if lucky control the World if not universe.

For random Western European, this is dumb to expand largest country in the World, having their military everywhere, threatening with unpredictabilities, but here we have it.
On top of that, there is no physical military threat from Western Europe. There was just NATO with countries spending not more than 1% GDP on military, like with only symbolic militaries.

---
Btw, I think you can relate with Poland. I still remember old memes from Poland they also wanted to regain lost lands to rebuild old glory. I hope you are in your heads right now, knowing is just worse idea imaginable for a country.

I remember video where some probably radicals were crying that Poland looks like U.S. state with their square shape and need to regain "normal shape" with at least 1920-1938 borders.

After Crimea event, from what I see, Poles ditched such talks, I just never see such narratives popping anywhere. Most videos about "Polish new expansions" are old, pre 2014.

I guess now talking about regaining Lviv to Poland would be called a blasphemy.



> Though indeed, maybe they felt it's their last chance before Ukraine actually becomes closer to joining NATO and EU, and finally does it. Although... it was also unlikely for Ukraine to do it while it already had territorial disputes... And those disputes were exactly because of Russia.


Yes, two words here. Last chance.



> It's much more concerning than Russia, because the western world is just extremely dependent on China – and China isn't a democracy either. Maybe Americans were right with sanctioning Huawei...


Two concerns comes from China. Total control of people is on the table, and China-US conflict due to Taiwan.

Yes, economic depressions would come.

After all, 2020s could be really really nasty with Russia and China plans, it seems, if these are being realized.



> Similarly the Middle Eastern countries as sources of oil, alternative to Russia... What's the difference between Russian oligarchs and Middle Eastern sheikhs?


It seems Middle East are not as dangerous. Non-nuclear countries, fairly developed.

Bad thing are random terrorist attacks in Western Europe, but these produce few days shock at worse.



> Not really Russia but the current Russian government. I guess almost all Russians would be happier with a more pro-western government (though probably not with a sudden, forced transition to a more democratic system... it must be a slow, steady transition, otherwise it is likely to fail, it already failed in Russia in 1990s – in Poland, by the way, it also wasn't a success), but it would probably also mean end to the oligarchs' fortunes.


Pretty much if they remove imperialism, "restoring glory" shit from the table, and really start to focus on economy and money, it would be for the better. Nobody threats Russia, except maybe China, and they know it. They afraid of Western institutions indeed. They afraid of order we have in the West. Nothing in terms of weapons.



> In Poland it's just a half of Poles who want all those things, but for the other half, it's the fault of Germany
> 
> But still, the Polish conservatives (maybe except the libertarian far far right, but they are also kinda monarchist; it's the weirdest section of the Polish political scene) were always strongly anti-Russia and anti-Putin, and it's weird to me that in Hungary it looks different.


I'm thinking for some time that Poland is somewhat isolationist, at least culturally and a little bit politically. Finding its own identity, dismissing even some basic rights of Western democracies (like abortion, law reforms, LGBT questions, etc.), but also not extension of Russia.

Poland is nor similar to Germany by the feel, nor to former Soviet Union. It's own thing.


----------



## Kpc21

andken said:


> Russia doesn't have warm ports that couldn't at least in theory be blocked by close allies of the US. Even Vladivostok would be vulnerable to American ships from Japan and South Korea. For a normal country that's not necessarily a problem, a for a country that wants to be a superpower it is.


But how does invading Ukraine change that? Ukraine only has Black Sea access, this is what Russia already had anyway, and it can be easily blocked by Turkey, which is a US ally.



PovilD said:


> Btw, I think you can relate with Poland. I still remember old memes from Poland they also wanted to regain lost lands to rebuild old glory. I hope you are in your heads right now, knowing is just worse idea imaginable for a country.
> 
> I remember video where some probably radicals were crying that Poland looks like U.S. state with their square shape and need to regain "normal shape" with at least 1920-1938 borders.


It was just some nationalist BS, or even not that, but rather not-necessarily-funny jokes...

Poland in those borders was massively multi-national. While the shape of Poland that came to existence in 1944/1945 was not really of our choice – and while many people were forcibly moved out of this area to make it possible, which also wasn't our decision – it's really convenient. A country which is almost as non-multi-national as possible is easy to manage, and we finally have good sea access, which was a problem in the inter-war Poland – and even with the borders that we lost in 1772 (the inter-war Poland had similar borders to those).

And for the current Poland's borders you can also find historic explanation – the current ones are similar to those Poland had throughout some time in the Middle Ages.

While some people may dream about bringing Lviv back to Poland (even now), those are just dreams and not anything feasible and making any practical sense. And they were always just dreams.

An error you are making is trying to generalize some opinions of specific people to the whole society of Poland, which is, generally, quite diverse regarding that, even though, as I mentioned, we aren't at all a multi-national country. But those opinions like "bring Lviv back to Poland" were never even close to the majority... And people having them are just, sorry for saying that, complete ignorants.

Yes, people may and do have sentiment to Lviv being a Polish city. It was an important center of Polish culture, next to Cracow, especially in the period from 1795 to 1918 when Poland was partitioned, and Polish culture was legally allowed to be developed only in this Austro-Hungarian part, so in Cracow and Lviv. Later on it was also important for science; for example the most distinguished Polish mathematicians (and with merits during the WW2 in what we now call cybersecurity) were from the Technical University of Lviv. But this doesn't mean they want Lviv back in Poland just because of that...



PovilD said:


> Bad thing are random terrorist attacks in Western Europe, but these produce few days shock at worse.


Terrorist attacks are nothing compared with wars. As the name suggests, they are to create terror, or in other words, fear, with a really small number of actual victims. You are many times more likely to die in a car accident than in a terrorist attack.

Of course innocent people die in them, and this is bad. But in general, they shouldn't be of as much concern, as they are in practice. They do more evil as a form of social engineering than as actual attacks on people, using weapons.



PovilD said:


> Pretty much if they remove imperialism, "restoring glory" shit from the table, and really start to focus on economy and money, it would be for the better.


Exactly.



PovilD said:


> dismissing even some basic rights of Western democracies (like abortion, law reforms, LGBT questions, etc.)


Again you're generalizing, this time maybe a half of Poles (not more), to the whole country 

Abortion is always a hot topic because it's choice between two evils (you can't defend both the rights of the woman and the rights of the child simultaneously). From what I know, most countries in Europe don't allow abortion at any moment of pregnancy, but only up to a specific moment during it, after which the fetus better resembles a born child, it's more likely to survive outside the womb etc. The problem is that many Poles have extreme opinions. Those pro-abortion want the right to abortion at just any moment of the pregnancy (how is a child just before the birth different from one just after the birth?). Those anti-abortion would like to force people to avoid abortion if only it's possible, in any circumstances – mostly due to religious reasons. Which also makes some sense. Even if the woman doesn't want that children, it may find a loving foster family. The problem is that (and this gets even more accelerated nowadays because of the social media) only those extremes do enter the public discussion. The only sensible option in such a situation is to search for a compromise (which doesn't seem difficult at all; most of western Europe actually base their abortion rights on such compromises...), but none of the sides seem to want that.

With law (and judiciary system) reforms, the issue is that they are actually needed in Poland. The waiting times at courts are absurd (a court case may often last many years, because it's normal to wait over half a year for the next court session, and one case usually takes multiple sessions), the court clerks are usually unhelpful bureaucrats; generally the experience of the people with the Polish judiciary system is very bad. But the problem is that what PiS sells to people as necessary and sensible judiciary reforms, actually includes making the judges more dependent on the government, so that the government would be able to punish them – which is, again, an absurd in a democracy, and it's good that it brought the attention of the EU organs. As it would make us closer to Russia than to the western world in terms of the democracy... But many people in Poland just don't realize that, similarly to the people in Russia not realizing (or just not believing) what Putin is doing in Ukraine. And with Tusk being in their eyes an "evil German agent", they have no choice but to vote for PiS...

LGBT rights are a similar issue to that with abortion, but in addition, many people recognize that as an "evil western-European/German propaganda", promoting nudity, porn, etc., even pedophilia – just because of lack of knowledge about the topic. But even without the knowledge, you have the right to vote...



PovilD said:


> Finding its own identity


Poland just has its identity – it would be weird otherwise, for a country that has existed for over 1000 years. But it absolutely isn't uniform in terms of political and social views.

But Hungary is also an old country, it has its own distinct identity even more than Poland – and it's much more pro-Russia, which I can't understand.

In Poland it's obvious now for practically everyone (previously it was obvious for the right-wing politicians) that Russia is a threat for us. Why is it different in Hungary?


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> It was just some nationalist BS, or even not that, but rather not-necessarily-funny jokes...
> 
> Poland in those borders was massively multi-national. While the shape of Poland that came to existence in 1944/1945 was not really of our choice – and while many people were forcibly moved out of this area to make it possible, which also wasn't our decision – it's really convenient. A country which is almost as non-multi-national as possible is easy to manage, and we finally have good sea access, which was a problem in the inter-war Poland – and even with the borders that we lost in 1772 (the inter-war Poland had similar borders to those).
> 
> And for the current Poland's borders you can also find historic explanation – the current ones are similar to those Poland had throughout some time in the Middle Ages.
> 
> While some people may dream about bringing Lviv back to Poland (even now), those are just dreams and not anything feasible and making any practical sense. And they were always just dreams.
> 
> An error you are making is trying to generalize some opinions of specific people to the whole society of Poland, which is, generally, quite diverse regarding that, even though, as I mentioned, we aren't at all a multi-national country. But those opinions like "bring Lviv back to Poland" were never even close to the majority... And people having them are just, sorry for saying that, complete ignorants.
> 
> Yes, people may and do have sentiment to Lviv being a Polish city. It was an important center of Polish culture, next to Cracow, especially in the period from 1795 to 1918 when Poland was partitioned, and Polish culture was legally allowed to be developed only in this Austro-Hungarian part, so in Cracow and Lviv. Later on it was also important for science; for example the most distinguished Polish mathematicians (and with merits during the WW2 in what we now call cybersecurity) were from the Technical University of Lviv. But this doesn't mean they want Lviv back in Poland just because of that...


I think you are at best geographical position for Poland, close to Western Europe. We remained quite isolated, Suwalki gap is worse than Fulda gap.

Lviv is now stronghold of Ukraine.



> Poland just has its identity – it would be weird otherwise, for a country that has existed for over 1000 years. But it absolutely isn't uniform in terms of political and social views.
> 
> But Hungary is also an old country, it has its own distinct identity even more than Poland – and it's much more pro-Russia, which I can't understand.
> 
> In Poland it's obvious now for practically everyone (previously it was obvious for the right-wing politicians) that Russia is a threat for us. Why is it different in Hungary?


When visiting Czechia, Hungary it brings me something like German feeling, at least roads, maybe buildings. It has to do with Austro-Hungarian and Prussian history.
Feels almost like being in the same country, just writings differ, cultures differ just a little bit.

Former USSR feels different than Poland, nothing like Germany, only Baltic States have some Germanic heritage, especially Latvia and Estonia.

For me, Poland feels like temperate version of Italy that faced communism after WWII. Poland is not similar to Germany or Russia. It could be roads that create such feeling, but maybe other things could do with this.

...but ok, maybe it's not a suitable platform for this stuff.

---
As for Hungary.

...maybe they got Cold war communism period relatively lightly "goulash communism". Russia is far away. Hungarians came from current day Russia.
It could be similar with former Yugoslavia.

Poland can't afford to be pro-Russian. Too many family histories are probably can't allow this.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> A country which is almost as non-multi-national as possible is easy to manage,


Some would argue that it is rather old fashioned point of view. Or even more, that lack of diversity hampers creativity in modern economy. I would say it is rather complicated, with pros and cons.



> Terrorist attacks are nothing compared with wars. As the name suggests, they are to create terror, or in other words, fear, with a really small number of actual victims. You are many times more likely to die in a car accident than in a terrorist attack.


And yet Poles freaked out in the past about Muslim immigrants due to fear of terrorism (and racism of course).



> Abortion is always a hot topic because it's choice between two evils (you can't defend both the rights of the woman and the rights of the child simultaneously). From what I know, most countries in Europe don't allow abortion at any moment of pregnancy, but only up to a specific moment during it, after which the fetus better resembles a born child, it's more likely to survive outside the womb etc. The problem is that many Poles have extreme opinions. *Those pro-abortion want the right to abortion at just any moment of the pregnancy*


Hold your horses. Where did you get that information from? I know quite a few people who would like to see relaxation of Polish antiabortion law (which is absurdly strict and which led to deaths of at leas two women in recent months) but nobody is proposing free for all or late abortions.



> Those anti-abortion would like to force people to avoid abortion if only it's possible, in any circumstances – mostly due to religious reasons. *Which also makes some sense*.


What sense? Polish religiosity is at times absurd. I don't mind people believing in whatever imaginary friend they wish, but that should not decide how modern state is govern. Definitely should not decide about medical procedures.

Level of religiosity of Poland really drives me mad at times.



> With law (and judiciary system) reforms, the issue is that they are actually needed in Poland. The waiting times at courts are absurd (a court case may often last many years, because it's normal to wait over half a year for the next court session, and one case usually takes multiple sessions), the court clerks are usually unhelpful bureaucrats; generally the experience of the people with the Polish judiciary system is very bad. But the problem is that what PiS sells to people as necessary and sensible judiciary reforms, actually includes making the judges more dependent on the government, so that the government would be able to punish them – which is, again, an absurd in a democracy, and it's good that it brought the attention of the EU organs. As it would make us closer to Russia than to the western world in terms of the democracy... But many people in Poland just don't realize that, similarly to the people in Russia not realizing (or just not believing) what Putin is doing in Ukraine. And with Tusk being in their eyes an "evil German agent", they have no choice but to vote for PiS...


It is not that bad things are included in some otherwise good legal changes to speed up courts. Screwing judiciary independence is core of the changes. PiS is literary demolishing base of modern democratic state. And it is not that their voters don't realize. They do, they just don't care as many of them wish for "strongman" to run the country anyway. Not that dissimilar to some other "eastern" nations.



> LGBT rights are a similar issue to that with abortion, but in addition, many people recognize that as an "evil western-European/German propaganda", promoting nudity, porn, etc., even pedophilia – just because of lack of knowledge about the topic. But even without the knowledge, you have the right to vote...


Yes, there is some level of unfamiliarity and lack of knowledge. But there also is quite a lot conservative-religious nastiness. Especially among old fashioned men who can't find themselves in fast changing world where they don't have total power, as men used to have in the past, for example over women. And gay people are often symbol of this new world they feel threatened by.



> Poland just has its identity – it would be weird otherwise, for a country that has existed for over 1000 years. But it absolutely isn't uniform in terms of political and social views.


Sure, no country has completely uniform identity. But there is one important element of Polish identity worth mentioning. The messiah complex (as we say in schools, Poland being the "Christ of the nations"). A lot of Poles see Poland as a bulwark of white, Christian, European civilization. On one hand one could argue that there is element of truth in it but it create all sort of problems. Some Poles look at "the West" as "soft", weak countries, full of gays, feminists, dark skinned immigrants etc. We have strange mix of inferiority and superiority complex, often among the same folks.



> But Hungary is also an old country, it has its own distinct identity even more than Poland – and it's much more pro-Russia, which I can't understand.


I'm curious myself, maybe @Attus could explain?
But I suspect it is not necessary particular love towards Russia more of a wish for strongman's leadership. Orban and his party might be simply admiring Putin's grip over the population more than being really pro-Russian.



> In Poland it's obvious now for practically everyone (previously it was obvious for the right-wing politicians) that Russia is a threat for us. Why is it different in Hungary?


I guess Hungary were historically less threatened by Russia. Being run over by Russian hordes is not as important part of national psyche like it is in Poland.


----------



## andken

PovilD said:


> I'm thinking for some time that Poland is somewhat isolationist, at least culturally and a little bit politically.


Poland is different from other European countries because they are a former colony, not a former colonizer where there are people making excuses for colonialism. I also think that they would rather have their Pre-1945 borders, without a Russian military outpost in their borders, without ethnically cleansed regions to the west. Their Pre-1914 history with Russia is brutal, and Molotov-Ribbentrop and them Yalta/Postdam added a lot of insult to the injury.


----------



## andken

Kpc21 said:


> But how does invading Ukraine change that? Ukraine only has Black Sea access, this is what Russia already had anyway, and it can be easily blocked by Turkey, which is a US ally.


I think that Vlad invades Ukraine in part because he can't invade Istambul. Superpowers have areas of influence, and he thinks that he entitled to one(I also think that there is a lot of colonialism when *)($)$ ask about if Russia were building bases in Mexico). But I also think that the real problem is that Ukraine is much poorer than neighboring countries like Poland and Lithuania. He want Ukraine as poor, Russian puppet state. Besides that, if Ukraine becames a prosperous EU country Russians are going to demand a more liberalized economy that trades with the EU.




> But Hungary is also an old country, it has its own distinct identity even more than Poland – and it's much more pro-Russia, which I can't understand.


Orban is more pro-Hungary than Hungary. But in Poland there is a huge scar with the Partition of Polish-Lithuania, with the occupation from Russia during the Partion, with Molotov-Ribbentrop and with the Communist rule. In Hungary their great historical injustice is the Treaty of Trianon, that was imposed by the United States, the French and the British, not the Russians. And even considering the brutality of Repression of the Revolution in 1956 the communists in Hungary followed a more moderate Yugoslavia model, not the full Communism that was imposed on Poles.


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> The fuel price is indeed rocketing. I have already made the evacuation plan for my family which includes a filled-up car ready to leave anytime. Thus I keep my fuel tank full and it helps me to follow the fuel prices. The increase rate is actually 0,05 € per day in Slovakia.


Where do you wanna go if it comes to that point ?
Just askin.


----------



## SeanT

Orbán has a goal, which he has mentioned a few times. You (Hungary) make/shape your geohpolitical agenda, that all major powers except or even have an interest to aprove your way of doing "business". Because, if the big guys on the playground feel that you act as they want is not the biggest challenge. But to do, so it is in the benefit of Hungary is.


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> I guess Hungary were historically less threatened by Russia. Being run over by Russian hordes is not as important part of national psyche like it is in Poland.


That's the odd thing I don't understand either - 1956 was not very long ago, within the lives of the parents and grandparents of all adult Hungarians


----------



## radamfi

My dad was in the 1956 revolution. He came to Britain during a boom time but by the 80s (when I was old enough to understand his political ranting) he was regularly saying how much better communism was. You got full employment compared to high unemployment in Britain under Thatcher. I never heard him express hatred against the Russians or Soviets.


----------



## geogregor

SeanT said:


> Orbán has a goal, which he has mentioned a few times. You (Hungary) make/shape your geohpolitical agenda, that all major powers except or even have an interest to aprove your way of doing "business". Because, if the big guys on the playground feel that you act as they want is not the biggest challenge. But to do, so it is in the benefit of Hungary is.


No, his goal is simply power and control. So is Putin's.

I think some people think too much about geopolitics when the real problem is often the mental state of individual leaders. It could be insecurity, big ego, too long on power which affects how ones takes criticism etc.


----------



## volodaaaa

radamfi said:


> My dad was in the 1956 revolution. He came to Britain during a boom time but by the 80s (when I was old enough to understand his political ranting) he was regularly saying how much better communism was. You got full employment compared to high unemployment in Britain under Thatcher. I never heard him express hatred against the Russians or Soviets.


Basically, communism is not a bad idea at all. But it is not sustainable whatsoever and require humans to stay humans all the time. The thing is, this is unreal. If humans get into trouble, a lot of them (maybe all) changes into animals to some extent. The only way how to sustain communism is, sadly, totality.

This is sometimes the reason why Eastern European politicians are not keen on some state-of-art liberal principles such as a vast portfolio of different quotas or equality issues. All of this already existed during socialist times and was not sustainable nor enforceable in long term. Some politicians, either opponents or proponents confuse this with the issue of tolerance. But it is not the same.


----------



## Slagathor

volodaaaa said:


> Basically, communism is not a bad idea at all. But it is not sustainable whatsoever and *require humans to stay humans all the time*. The thing is, this is unreal. If humans get into trouble, a lot of them (maybe all) changes into animals to some extent. The only way how to sustain communism is, sadly, totality.


If I recall correctly, it actually does the exact opposite. Karl Marx argued that tribal societies had no social hierarchy and that we could therefore pursue to return to this state and accomplish genuine equality.

We now know that tribal societies do, in fact, have social hierarchy. This is true for tribes in the Amazon as well as Africa and Southeast Asia. Human societies naturally veer towards systems of hierarchy.

Communism failed because it was in denial of human nature. No system that denies human nature can succeed.


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Where do you wanna go if it comes to that point ?
> Just askin.


My "contingency plan" may sound weird. Some people laughed at it, and some said it was a good idea.

It is fleeing to Spain or Portugal. As I mentioned, I have recently purchased an 8-seater that is filled up and ready to be used anytime. I will take my kids, wife, parents (henceforth "a member of the evacuation staff"), their dog, valuables and drive as westward as possible. The plausible destination is Galicia in Spain, but the destination may be changed underway somewhere in Spain or Portugal. Over-the-standard accommodation via Airbnb is to be booked in the destination for a two-week stay during the travel. During this stay, every member of my evacuation staff is obliged to follow the news and assess the risk level. At the same time, some team members will evaluate the affordable tenancy possibilities for a more extended stay. After the two weeks, we will either return home or book a cheaper (but visually checked) accommodation. The good idea is to avoid the seaside as the prices are sometimes twice as high as in the landlocked regions. Approximated travel time is 30 hours with breaks, estimating the overall cost: 450 €.

If the conflict was much more violent without a good perspective, the main destinations would be Azores or Madeira. My wife is a medical doctor. I think she may get her job readily and I have a driving licence for lorry and bus and for the time I get some use of my PhD. degree, I can work as a lorry/bus driver. My kids are three years old and six months old; both have a lot of time to learn Portuguese or at least English. My parents are in their pension, and they will get their pensions regardless of their stay. Our savings adds up to 6 months of the higher standard without any income.

There are two conditions to activate the contingency plan:
a) involvement of a NATO country in the war with the battle inside NATO area,
b) nuclear alert in a close distance.


----------



## volodaaaa

Slagathor said:


> If I recall correctly, it actually does the exact opposite. Karl Marx argued that tribal societies had no social hierarchy and that we could therefore pursue to return to this state and accomplish genuine equality.
> 
> We now know that tribal societies do, in fact, have social hierarchy. This is true for tribes in the Amazon as well as Africa and Southeast Asia. Human societies naturally veer towards systems of hierarchy.
> 
> Communism failed because it was in denial of human nature. No system that denies human nature can succeed.


Sorry, I have never read Marx or other communist literature, so I don't know the details. It is just a second-hand experienced based on the talks with my parents.
We (humans) have never been equal regardless of the observation unit you use (the planet, nation, city or your office). Efforts totally enforcing the abolishment of inequality are apriori doomed. The only way how to keep them alive is totality and oppression. This makes capitalism and democracy the best systems so far, even with all the cons and externalities it has.


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> My "contingency plan" may sound weird. Some people laughed at it, and some said it was a good idea.
> 
> It is fleeing to Spain or Portugal. As I mentioned, I have recently purchased an 8-seater that is filled up and ready to be used anytime. I will take my kids, wife, parents (henceforth "a member of the evacuation staff"), their dog, valuables and drive as westward as possible. The plausible destination is Galicia in Spain, but the destination may be changed underway somewhere in Spain or Portugal. Over-the-standard accommodation via Airbnb is to be booked in the destination for a two-week stay during the travel. During this stay, every member of my evacuation staff is obliged to follow the news and assess the risk level. At the same time, some team members will evaluate the affordable tenancy possibilities for a more extended stay. After the two weeks, we will either return home or book a cheaper (but visually checked) accommodation. The good idea is to avoid the seaside as the prices are sometimes twice as high as in the landlocked regions. Approximated travel time is 30 hours with breaks, estimating the overall cost: 450 €.
> 
> If the conflict was much more violent without a good perspective, the main destinations would be Azores or Madeira. My wife is a medical doctor. I think she may get her job readily and I have a driving licence for lorry and bus and for the time I get some use of my PhD. degree, I can work as a lorry/bus driver. My kids are three years old and six months old; both have a lot of time to learn Portuguese or at least English. My parents are in their pension, and they will get their pensions regardless of their stay. Our savings adds up to 6 months of the higher standard without any income.
> 
> There are two conditions to activate the contingency plan:
> a) involvement of a NATO country in the war with the battle inside NATO area,
> b) nuclear alert in a close distance.


Sounds like a sane plan. PT is probably a bit cheaper for Living than Spain, and Its fairly protected.

Just taking the temp, why not the US ? Im sure u have thought about this as well.


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Sounds like a sane plan. PT is probably a bit cheaper for Living than Spain, and Its fairly protected.
> 
> Just taking the temp, why not the US ? Im sure u have thought about this as well.


Of course. But this plan assumes the worst scenario, and in this scenario, the US is under the mercy of a madman in the Kremlin. But indeed, the set of prospective countries is vast. However, I opted for destinations that were not worth the atomic bombing in my plan. I know how crazy it sounds, especially if I mean it.


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> Of course. But this plan assumes the worst scenario, and in this scenario, the US is under the mercy of a madman in the Kremlin. But indeed, the set of prospective countries is vast. However, I opted for destinations that were not worth the atomic bombing in my plan. I know how crazy it sounds, especially if I mean it.


Everything Will be good. C’mon. It wont last so many weeks more. They Can barely take kiev.


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Everything Will be good. C’mon. It wont last so many weeks more. They Can barely take kiev.


Thanks, I know and remain calm. The plan was created on the 24th of February when everything seemed to be much more unclear. But still, we have an ongoing economical crisis, so the world won't be the same


----------



## radamfi

A full scale nuclear war would presumably obliterate most of the main cities in western Europe with the fallout extending across the whole continent and beyond. Is life even worth living in such a scenario? In the worst case scenario I would probably stand somewhere outside where I would be sure to be vaporised instantly, maybe one of the hills near central London, for example Hampstead Heath.


----------



## AnelZ

I also semi-joke with my friends, if there would be any major hostilities in Europe that I would try to go to Portugal and probably some countryside. If there would be hostilities only in my country/region, then Germany would be the destination 😅


----------



## x-type

An Ukrainian drone type Tu-141 crashed yesterday at 23h in densily inhabitted area in Zagreb. It was pure luck that it crashed into small park just few meters from university campus and several hunderd meters of densely inhanitted area, so it hasn't caused any casulties. Drone came from driection Hungary at speed 700 km/h and altitude of 1300m. Almost 7000kg heavy object crashed and made a large crater. If it fell only 200 metres north, it would hiut inhabitted area and cause for sure fatalities.

Official NATO reaction: “NATO's integrated air and missile defence tracked the flight path of an object which subsequently crashed in Zagreb. The Croatian authorities have announced that they are investigating this incident.” 









U Zagreb pao izviđački dron iz Ukrajine? Stručnjak: Činjenica da je tako daleko je zbunjujuća


Tyler Rogoway, urednik portala The War Zone, navodi kako je još jedan dron pao u Ukrajini prije nekoliko dana




www.vecernji.hr


----------



## AnelZ

I'm so confused by this event. And in the same time it brings up ton of questions and increases fear in the population. It traveled at least 700km, more likely over 1000km and over two NATO countries (Romania and Hungary) and crashing in the capital of a third one (Croatia)...

People of course started to joke about it over here that they hope that the next missiles will have a correct destination put in as there is a place called Kijevo in the suburbs of Sarajevo. But that joke only works over here as Kyiv is written as Kijev in our language unlike Yarun' (Ukraine) and Jarun (Croatia) for this incident.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

NATO managed to bomb something near Sofia in 1999 when they were targeting Yugoslavia. So accuracy can be questionable for whatever reasons....









NATO Plane Mistakenly Hits Bulgarian Suburb


Balkans: Missile causes no casualties, but it destroys home near capital, Sofia. Concerns about standards of air campaign are heightened.




www.latimes.com


----------



## AnelZ

Yeah, but Sofia is less then 60km away from Serbian border (and its suburbs even less) + no other countries between them and it was known that NATO is bombing Serbia so people weren't confused from where did it come from and why.

We are talking here about an unidentified flying object coming from a war zone and traveling for maybe an hour through the air space of countries which are part of NATO without any interception and then crashing in Croatia and their intelligence knowing nothing about it prior to that.


----------



## radamfi

When my dad fled Hungary in 1956, he originally first got to Austria. He was then told that if he went to Britain, he could go onto Canada from there. But once he got to Britain, they said he had to stay. He never wanted to come to Britain. He was also very angry that Britain and America encouraged them to revolt but then didn't help. That probably coloured his opinion of the west for the rest of his life.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

x-type said:


> An Ukrainian drone type Tu-141


This is rather remarkable as well, a Tu-141 is several generations older than the typical combat or reconnaissance drones fielded today. It's from the 1980s. In drone technology, that's ancient history.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> This is rather remarkable as well, a Tu-141 is several generations older than the typical combat or reconnaissance drones fielded today. It's from the 1980s. In drone technology, that's ancient history.





AnelZ said:


> We are talking here about an unidentified flying object coming from a war zone and traveling for an hour through the air space of countries which are part of NATO without any interception and then crashing in Croatia and their intelligence knowing nothing about it prior to that.


The whole event is a fiasco of aircraft detection and antiaircraft defenses. Maybe we shouldn't laugh at ineptitude of Russian forces after all...


----------



## tfd543

Speaking of time zones, what would be the best time to fly from EU (cph) to Boston to minimize jet lag ?
Im going there in 3-4 months but havent purchased the ticket yet.
I havent experienced the lag before, but havent been outside the EU either.

I Will be ready with some melatonin.


----------



## Slagathor

Attus said:


> But, ironically, in order to change it this way, all prime ministers and presidents must vote for it, i.e. they should support their own loss of power. They will obviously never agree.
> Just remember, how they disputed about who shall be the new commission president, and almost all of them were against the candidate of the "party" that won the elections, because he had hat a too high legitimate, and they choose a relative uknown politician, who knows: she's only there, because some presidents and prime ministers supported her to be there.


Yes, we've painted ourselves into a corner.


----------



## Slagathor

tfd543 said:


> Speaking of time zones, what would be the best time to fly from EU (cph) to Boston to minimize jet lag ?
> Im going there in 3-4 months but havent purchased the ticket yet.
> I havent experienced the lag before, but havent been outside the EU either.
> 
> I Will be ready with some melatonin.


There's no way of knowing. Most people get jet lag flying east, but others get it flying west (it's about 60-40, iirc).

Whenever we travel to Asia, I really suffer when we get there. My husband suffers when we get back to Europe. 

But the rule of thumb is that if you're flying West, you should fly during the day. If I were you, I'd try to depart around noon or in the early afternoon.


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> Wasn't it about bananas?


The story about bananas was the most famous in the UK, publicised by well-known truth teller (fired twice for lying), Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. 

The EU was asked by banana producers in the EU to set up a grading system to avoid dumping from non-EU producers, so the Commission took the existing world trading rules for bananas and implemented them into EU regulation. There was never a ban on any shape, curvature etc, it's entirely a myth, based on a sensible and useful regulation. Pretty much all EU law stories are rubbish, based on (often deliberate) misinterpretation and misunderstanding.

Politicians everywhere like to say they are against bureaucracy and regualtion, and then discover that actually the regulations exist for very good reasons. The UK government ran a campaign for people to suggest rules which needed scrapping or changing. 21,000 were suggested, only about 1,300 were able to be changed in a way that there was a real benefit


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

radamfi said:


> Most of western Europe should have the same time as the UK, Ireland and Portugal as they are west of 7.5 degrees east and some countries only converted to GMT+1 during World War 2 for compatibility with Nazi Germany.


I guess this "ideal" time zone argument mostly relates to France, Benelux and Spain. But is very practical that most of continental EU have the same time zone. I mean, it is not rocket science to work across time zone, but at least I have sometimes to think twice when calling for meetings with or planning travels to the UK.

I think Russia, Ukraine, and Norway are the only countries of Europe that are well within 3 ideal time zones (15 degrees longitude sectors).


----------



## radamfi

Working hours differ between countries as well. For example, most office workers in the UK start at 9 o'clock but an 8 o'clock start may be commonplace in some other European countries, meaning a 2 hour difference in start time. In addition, many office workers in the UK don't actually start until well after 9, because they arrive late and even if they arrive on time there is often early morning chat amongst workers. In other countries, they actually start work when they are supposed to.

If you look at Belgian and Dutch train timetables, trains in Belgium start and finish earlier, suggesting that they go to work earlier.


----------



## Attus

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I think Russia, Ukraine, and Norway are the only countries of Europe that are well within 3 ideal time zones (15 degrees longitude sectors).


Yes. However, the Central European time zone is very, very wide. Even not considering extremities like the north east of your country, between Skopje (21° 26' E) and Seville (6°0' W) there is a difference of more than 27 degrees, i.e. ~110 minutes. 
Sunrise and sunset today:
Skopje: 5:43 - 17:42
Seville: 7:32 - 19:32

(Vigo - Vardø would be almost 40 degrees, i.e. 160 minutes).


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I got confused for a while, but then understood what you meant was temporal minutes ;-)


----------



## andken

geogregor said:


> Bureaucrats or politicians? Because it is not the same thing.


But Ursula von der Leyen is in Brussels as a non-elected official. And my point is that there is a huge problem with the institutional culture in Brussels if someone like von der Leyen, that performed poorly in all her main jobs in Germany, or Barroso, that everyone in Portugal called an "idiot" or worse, is sent there to have the top job. But, regardless of them, regardless of regulations, the EU allows countries to have all the benefits of the Austro-Hungarian Empire without the decrepit monarchy or without ethnic clashes. 

It's really, really great.


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> Politicians everywhere like to say they are against bureaucracy and regualtion, and then discover that actually the regulations exist for very good reasons. The UK government ran a campaign for people to suggest rules which needed scrapping or changing. 21,000 were suggested, only about 1,300 were able to be changed in a way that there was a real benefit


To me, the worst thing about the bureaucracy and regulation are not the rules by themselves, but overcomplicated administrative procedures and unhelpful public administration employees, especially in larger institutions.

Though in the UK, as far as I know, they are generally much simpler than in Poland, or even Germany or France. When I open British public administration websites, it clearly says what I have to do to solve my issue, in a plain, simple language, which even a person knowing English only at a basic level would understand. In Poland such explanations would always be full of technical administrative terms, because also the procedures are complicated. And the same (though probably not as much as here) is in Germany or France.

Some time ago I was helping to register one NGO (which is in practice similar to registering a company). In theory, the procedures are not that difficult – but the official forms aren't really self-explanatory, the clerks at the court (where the registration happens) weren't able to tell us if everything is correct or not. We had to wait something like 3 months, if I recall correctly, for the decision. In response (sent by post, which the post actually failed to deliver! if we weren't proactive and didn't actually call the court at an appropriate moment, with which we were also lucky, our request would be rejected and we would have to start again, and wait the next 3 months) the court requested us to change some things in our statute. For which we have quite a short time, like, 2 weeks. After we finally got registered, we still had to do some things (register in several places), failing to do which would be illegal for us, but nobody actually told us it's necessary (we just learned that from other similar NGOs). 

Such things are the actual issue.


----------



## The Wild Boy

A magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan today. That's quite a big one that i haven't seen in a while. Don't know when was the last one that was that big.



__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1504106879831715852


----------



## keokiracer

The Wild Boy said:


> A magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan today. That's quite a big one that i haven't seen in a while. Don't know when was the last one that was that big.


USGS rates it as a 7.3. The most recent earthquake of that magnitude was december 29th last year near Timor Leste. Assuming 7.5 the most recent earthquake was the 2021 Northern Peru earthquake on november 28th.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The shaking appears to be fairly violent for an earthquake of 63 kilometers deep. Usually shallow earthquakes result in the most damage (less than 25 km).


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> Working hours differ between countries as well. For example, most office workers in the UK start at 9 o'clock but an 8 o'clock start may be commonplace in some other European countries, meaning a 2 hour difference in start time. In addition, many office workers in the UK don't actually start until well after 9, because they arrive late and even if they arrive on time there is often early morning chat amongst workers. In other countries, they actually start work when they are supposed to.


I had a secondment to the Paris office of a previous employer, I was amazed at the difference in culture: working from 9 till coffee, then till lunch etc. with no or hardly any small talk and time-wasting. Very much the opposite of British stereotypes


----------



## ChrisZwolle

More Sahara dust over Iberia & France:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1504082653624025093

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1503835388208685062


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> To me, the worst thing about the bureaucracy and regulation are not the rules by themselves, but overcomplicated administrative procedures and unhelpful public administration employees, especially in larger institutions.
> 
> Though in the UK, as far as I know, they are generally much simpler than in Poland, or even Germany or France. When I open British public administration websites, it clearly says what I have to do to solve my issue, in a plain, simple language, which even a person knowing English only at a basic level would understand. In Poland such explanations would always be full of technical administrative terms, because also the procedures are complicated. And the same (though probably not as much as here) is in Germany or France.
> 
> Some time ago I was helping to register one NGO (which is in practice similar to registering a company). In theory, the procedures are not that difficult – but the official forms aren't really self-explanatory, the clerks at the court (where the registration happens) weren't able to tell us if everything is correct or not. We had to wait something like 3 months, if I recall correctly, for the decision. In response (sent by post, which the post actually failed to deliver! if we weren't proactive and didn't actually call the court at an appropriate moment, with which we were also lucky, our request would be rejected and we would have to start again, and wait the next 3 months) the court requested us to change some things in our statute. For which we have quite a short time, like, 2 weeks. After we finally got registered, we still had to do some things (register in several places), failing to do which would be illegal for us, but nobody actually told us it's necessary (we just learned that from other similar NGOs).
> 
> Such things are the actual issue.


That sounds painful... but as you say, the problem is the way it is administered, rather than the actual rules. No idea about NGOs but for a normal company it takes about half an hour with a smartphone at most here, including registering for tax. 

I agree about British public service websites, they are very good and very clear usually. Local councils can be a bit worse, but not unusable. I guess if more services are online they have to think more about how they will be used, so the website is the main portal rather than an add-on which it might be in countries which don't like doing as much via the internet


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> Local councils can be a bit worse, but not unusable.


In Poland at least the clerks at local councils, especially in small towns and rural municipalities, actually do everything to help you. Even though there aren't much useful information on the websites.



Stuu said:


> I guess if more services are online they have to think more about how they will be used, so the website is the main portal rather than an add-on which it might be in countries which don't like doing as much via the internet


Well. Some time ago we had to change some data of our NGO in the register. And since shortly before that it was made possible to do it via the Internet (for companies, it even became the only possible way), we used this method.

And ...

1. In the online app it wasn't possible at all to paste text from the clipboard, everything had to be re-typed. Quite annoying when you have to enter a lot of data where you can't make any error.

2. I registered our application for the data change in the system, and it worked OK. But then I had to make it possible to sign it for the responsible persons (in our case those were any two persons from our management board). It works in such a way that I send the prepared, filled-in form to "sign" it to specific persons (to their accounts in the system), so they can see and confirm it. The whole procedure makes a lot of sense. But... firstly, it was asking about the "user ID". The problem was, it wasn't at all clear, which one of the numbers displayed in the account was the ID. Secondly, regardless of which one I entered, the document didn't show up at the other person's account...

What was the actual reason? In the online form for sending the document to someone to sign, I had to enter the "name and surname". And normally in Poland when they say "name", it always mean just the first name. If they want you to tell them both the first and the second name (and any other names if you have more of them), they ask for "names" in plural, not "name". So I entered the first name and the surname.

Well... The system finally worked, after I entered there both the first name and the second name. Even though it said just "name". Then finally the document showed up on my friend's account and it could be "signed" (virtually).

This is how the digitization of public services often ends up... I don't know what is worse. I guess this online option is still much better, but still – terrible for anyone who is new to the system (in our case, a hacker's mindset rescued us...).

A good thing regarding the public service digitization is that our government solved the issue of not everyone having a digital signature (and not everyone being willing to pay for one) in quite a smart way. They introduced something called "trusted profile" or "trusted signature" (those are two different but closely interconnected things – one is a single-sign-on solution for online public services, the other one is for signing actual computer files representing documents). You have this "trusted profile", which is very easy to get if you have online banking access at one of the major banks; it's just a few clicks in the online banking service (there is also a path for those with no online banking accounts, in this case to get one you must appear physically in a public administration office, so that they manually authenticate you). And then every time you log in to public administration services, you use this "trusted profile" just by authenticated yourself at your bank. The login page of your bank shows up, you get authenticated, and then it redirects you to the appropriate public service. This "trusted signature" is also based on "trusted profile" authentication.

This is something which works really well.



Stuu said:


> the problem is the way it is administered, rather than the actual rules


Often the actual rules are the true source of such issues. For example, an overcomplicated tax system which nobody really understands. So a clerk won't tell you how in his opinion those rules should be understood... because if finally someone interprets them differently, it would be his or her fault that you got mislead.


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> A good thing regarding the public service digitization is that our government solved the issue of not everyone having a digital signature (and not everyone being willing to pay for one) in quite a smart way. They introduced something called "trusted profile" or "trusted signature" (those are two different but closely interconnected things – one is a single-sign-on solution for online public services, the other one is for signing actual computer files representing documents). You have this "trusted profile", which is very easy to get if you have online banking access at one of the major banks; it's just a few clicks in the online banking service (there is also a path for those with no online banking accounts, in this case to get one you must appear physically in a public administration office, so that they manually authenticate you). And then every time you log in to public administration services, you use this "trusted profile" just by authenticated yourself at your bank. The login page of your bank shows up, you get authenticated, and then it redirects you to the appropriate public service. This "trusted signature" is also based on "trusted profile" authentication.


That sounds very sensible. There is nothing exactly like that here which is usable between companies and government organisations, they all rely on their own authentication processes


----------



## MattiG

radamfi said:


> Working hours differ between countries as well. For example, most office workers in the UK start at 9 o'clock but an 8 o'clock start may be commonplace in some other European countries, meaning a 2 hour difference in start time. In addition, many office workers in the UK don't actually start until well after 9, because they arrive late and even if they arrive on time there is often early morning chat amongst workers. In other countries, they actually start work when they are supposed to.
> 
> If you look at Belgian and Dutch train timetables, trains in Belgium start and finish earlier, suggesting that they go to work earlier.


Anyway the "midnight" of about 00:00 at the local time is quite an artificial invention. At least in most West European cultures the activites during the day are pretty much symmetrical to 15:00 o'clock instead of the noon: Wake up at 7:00 and go sleep at 23:00. The noon is at about one third of the active time. Therefore, shifting the time by three hours would be the most natural choice.


----------



## radamfi

If the practice of changing clocks ceases then all you have to do is change the time that people go to work instead of changing the time artificially. So if you want a lot of sunlight in summer evenings then start work at 8 instead of 9.


----------



## Attus

bogdymol said:


> Starting tomorrow mask mandate comes back in all indoor places in Austria, due to rise in covid cases. I also got info from my work that we will have to use masks again (when not seated at your assigned desk).


I (Western Germany) must not go to the office, unless it's unavoidable, but must work from home. It's the rule of the company, not a law any more. For those, that must work in the office, wearing a mask is mandatory, unless seating at the own desk, and a minimal distance of two meters between people is compulsory (if it is not possible, wearing a mask is mandatory even at the desk).


----------



## radamfi

Free testing for most people will end in England at the end of March. So presumably case figures for England won't exist or will be meaningless.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Austria & Germany currently have a 3 - 5 times higher death rate than the Netherlands though (even with far more restrictive mask usage the whole period).


We reached a phase when fatality rates are not trustworthy any more. Germany reports every people dying and having Covid, as a covid fatality, although, according to physicians, many of them have Covid, but die for another reason (unlike in the earlier phases, when the more than 95% of Covid fatalitites actually dies because of having covid).


----------



## radamfi

Attus said:


> We reached a phase when fatality rates are not trustworthy any more. Germany reports every people dying and having Covid, as a covid fatality, although, according to physicians, many of them have Covid, but die for another reason (unlike in the earlier phases, when the more than 95% of Covid fatalitites actually dies because of having covid).


The most reliable stat is excess deaths. That is, how many people are dying compared to the same period in years before 2020.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> The mask mandate in public transport was lifted today in the Netherlands.


Poland has announced today the removal of nearly all the restrictions from Monday next week. For the first time since (almost) the start of the pandemic we won't be required to wear masks in shops and on public transport. What may be important for some people here – all international entry restrictions also get released.

The only thing which remains is that masks will be still required in the healthcare buildings.

Interestingly, the influx of refugees hasn't caused a spike in the Covid cases. The tendency in new cases remains still decreasing, though after the Ukraine crisis began, it slowed down a lot.



Fuzzy Llama said:


> In other news, Poland is heading straight into a Netherlands-sized housing crisis. Before the war there was an estimated shortage of over 600000 flats country-wide, and over 30% of Poles live in an "overcrowded" appartments (EU average is apparently 18%).


Though currently the problem in Poland is that the refugees actually target several large cities. Mostly Cracow, Warsaw and Wrocław. Cracow and Warsaw for obvious reasons, Wrocław probably also because of the good connection with Ukraine – the road and railway from the Ukrainian border goes straight through Rzeszów, Kraków, Upper Silesia, Wrocław to Germany (Dresden or Berlin). And, for example, from the main border crossing with Ukraine to Łódź there is even no motorway. To Warsaw – if I recall correctly, only like a half of the way is a motorway. In addition, Wrocław is simply a very attractive city.



ChrisZwolle said:


> These are different worlds... We had a party at work last week. Nobody cares about covid anymore. Masks were never required at my office.


I wonder what is the vaccination rate in the Netherlands compared to Austria.

Meanwhile, in my company, we no longer have to get a permission from the manager to work from the office (though in the last months it wasn't anyway any problem to get one). And it's been announced that from the beginning of... if I recall correctly, May, we come back to the "new normal" mode of work (which is going to stay forever), which is that we'll be required to meet together in the office twice a month, and the rest of the days will be up to us whether we work from the office or remotely.


----------



## Džiugas

In April, mask mandate will be lifted in Lithuania, except for hospitals, care institutions and public transportation. After some more time, emergency will be abolished likely meaning end of all restrictions.
We had 2 short breaks without masks: 2020-06-17 – 2020-08-01 and 2021-09-14 – 2021-10-01 (only with covid certificate).


----------



## geogregor

I actually forgot when did I wear mask last time in London...


----------



## volodaaaa

Putin had decided to get hybernated for the next 10 years in a nuclear bunker. After he has woken up, he rushes out of the bunker to the street and starts to ask out the first pedestrian as he sees a prosperous Russia.

Zdravstvuj tovarisch.
Zdravstvuj.
What year is it?
2032
Wow. What about Ukraine, is the problem solved?
Yes, indeed.
Did we win in 2022?
Of course, it was a piece of cake.
And what about Crimea, did we manage to keep it?
Yes, indeed.
And what about Donbas, is it still ours?
Of course.
Cool. And did we gain some new territories?
You must be kidding; we gained a lot of new territories.
Nice.... And is our country respected again, regardless of the gain?
Sure, It has not ever been respected more.
Wow. No sanctions?
Not a single sanction. Our flag has become a symbol. A symbol of a positive change.
And, what about our president?
He is excellent, the most popular president in the whole world.
Thank you. And what about the ruble? What is the exchange rate now?
What are you talking about? What ruble? Did you mean hryvnia, didn't you?


----------



## riiga

No masks here either, they were never really used at all even during the pandemic. Sweden will also abolish the temporary legislation and end all travel restrictions for people entering the country starting from the 1st of April.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Nice. Scandinavia looks like a promising option for vacation this year. Does Norway have entry controls for covid certificates? Mine will expire next month but I'm not seeing the medical need to get a booster shot.


----------



## x-type

Kpc21 said:


> Poland has announced today the removal of nearly all the restrictions from Monday next week. For the first time since (almost) the start of the pandemic we won't be required to wear masks in shops and on public transport. What may be important for some people here – all international entry restrictions also get released.
> 
> The only thing which remains is that masks will be still required in the healthcare buildings.


Hm, I was in Poland 3 weeks ago and I was surprised that masks were not mandatory in shops because nobody wore it. I really cannot wait that moment here.


----------



## Kpc21

x-type said:


> Hm, I was in Poland 3 weeks ago and I was surprised that masks were not mandatory in shops because nobody wore it. I really cannot wait that moment here.


They were and today still are. People just ignore this law.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> Nice. Scandinavia looks like a promising option for vacation this year. Does Norway have entry controls for covid certificates? Mine will expire next month but I'm not seeing the medical need to get a booster shot.


Nothing needed, except possibly if you go to Svalbard.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

March has been insanely sunny and dry in the Netherlands this year. With another 4 days to spare it has already been the sunniest March on record. The total rain accumulation in March has been 1 mm, though that may increase over the next few days. Still, 26 days of virtually no precipitation. Quite the contrast with the dark and cloudy January & February. We had some flooding last month.

A virtually cloudless Central Europe earlier this week:


----------



## Attus

The same here, a little bit more south east of you. 
Nice for us, but quite bad for the agriculcture and the forests.


----------



## Slagathor

That satellite image perfectly shows where agriculture is predominantly located in the Netherlands; the barren patches in the Southwestern archipelago, Flevoland and along the Northern coastline. Nothing's growing on those fields yet.

The rest of the countryside is either forest or pasture for cattle (ie. grass).


----------



## AnelZ

The scenery is brown over here in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as without any new percipitation the grass still hasn't fully came back to life and tress in Bosnia (probably a bit different in Herzegovina) are only getting buds since 1-2 days ago and haven't sprouted leaves yet. Honestly, quite depressing but the weather is sunny, warm and cloudless for couple of days so at least people on the street and people being full of life again are helping the mood. High mountains and some peaks still have snow.

There is possibility for rain on monday but from thursday there should be a lot of rainy days so it will get better.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> March has been insanely sunny and dry in the Netherlands this year. With another 4 days to spare it has already been the sunniest March on record. The total rain accumulation in March has been 1 mm, though that may increase over the next few days. Still, 26 days of virtually no precipitation. Quite the contrast with the dark and cloudy January & February. We had some flooding last month.


Whole March wasn't like that but the last 10 days was completely cloudless in London and southern England. Today is first cloudy day for a while.

I really enjoyed all that sun  


20220324_164915 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


20220324_165159 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1130755 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Yesterday we had big pro-Ukrainian rally in London:


P1140005 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


20220326_162304 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1140088 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


----------



## Kpc21

Polish media (especially the public ones... but it's also seen among people who don't follow the public media and government's propaganda) and many people criticize a lot governments of countries like Germany or France for allowing their companies (or even asking them to continue that) to still do business in Russia after what happened in Ukraine.

Some people do boycott companies such as Auchan or Leroy Merlin because of that.

There are "lists of shame" publicised by online media; listing such companies.

In case of Germany it's mostly about energy – Poland is going to stop buying natural gas from Russia within this year once the contract with Russia terminates and the pipeline to Denmark is opened; regarding oil it's more difficult but they're also going to do it as soon as possible. Germany seemingly doesn't have plans to do it so rapidly, as soon as possible.

In case of France – it's mostly about retail businesses, but also the automotive industry (though I recently read that Renault stopped the production in Russia again).


----------



## Attus

geogregor said:


> P1130755 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> Yesterday we had big pro-Ukrainian rally in London:
> 
> 
> P1140005 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


Something absolutely impossible in Hungary. There has never been anything like that. 
Literally every one I know in Hungary hates Ukraine and Ukrainians. It's basically because they suppress Hungarian minority in their country. 
Do you have something blue-yellow in Hungary, even if accidentally, you get hate speech. 
Really, only a small minority supports Putin and Russia, only very few people say, what Putin does is OK. 
Hungary has elections next week, and not even the left liberal opposition says anything nice about Ukraine, because they know, they would lose voters by doing it, their supporters, too, dislike Ukraine. 

And, as a secondary consequence, the long friendship of Poland and Hungary seems to be broken. It hasn't been a new thing, in my childhood, in the 80's we already knew: polak wegier dwa bratanki (probably wrong Polish grammar ;-)). But now this friendship is over.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> polak wegier dwa bratanki (probably wrong Polish grammar ;-))


No, it's correct! Then it ends "i do szabli, i do szklanki" (for both the sabre and the glass").

In Hungarian... Lengyel, Magyar – ket jo borat? Something like that?

The approach in Hungary is something difficult to understand for me. When the World War 2 broke out, there was also quite a lot of hate on Jews across the whole Europe, not only Germany. But people were helping Jews regardless. Because what Germans were doing back then was completely inhumane. Same as what Russia is doing nowadays (I don't blame Russians, though they might think about changing their information sources if it's still so that something like 60% of them supports the war).

In Poland we also have historic reasons not to like Ukraine, but this doesn't block us from supporting them. 

I suppose the approach of Hungarians to this conflict is mostly fuelled by the Orban's propaganda...


----------



## andken

Attus said:


> Something absolutely impossible in Hungary. There has never been anything like that.
> Literally every one I know in Hungary hates Ukraine and Ukrainians. It's basically because they suppress Hungarian minority in their country.


Hungary lives under the shadow of Trianon, and it'll live under that shadow until the end of times.


----------



## bogdymol

andken said:


> Hungary lives under the shadow of Trianon, and it'll live under that shadow until the end of times.


And this is how a country can remain with a mentality similar to the dark ages. Sorry for anyone who might feel offended, but this is the truth.

If we look at the European geography and history, every single European country would like back a piece of land that was historically theirs, but now belongs to one of their neighbours. With this in mind, we should have a constant state of conflict and war throughout Europe.

I prefer the other option: we keep the current borders, and we all live in peace as European citizens with equal rights, regardless the corner of the union where we are.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

radamfi said:


> The most reliable stat is excess deaths. That is, how many people are dying compared to the same period in years before 2020.


Not even that is completely reliable, though. For instance, in Norway, the national fatality rate actually went down during the most intense phases of the pandemic, as the elderly was less exposed to other transmitable diseases due to the restrictions, and there were less accidents. Now, the sick and elderly "on lent time" are dying, but not necessarily due to Covid-19.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> No, it's correct! Then it ends "i do szabli, i do szklanki" (for both the sabre and the glass").
> 
> In Hungarian... Lengyel, Magyar – ket jo borat? Something like that?
> 
> The approach in Hungary is something difficult to understand for me. When the World War 2 broke out, there was also quite a lot of hate on Jews across the whole Europe, not only Germany. But people were helping Jews regardless. Because what Germans were doing back then was completely inhumane. Same as what Russia is doing nowadays (I don't blame Russians, though they might think about changing their information sources if it's still so that something like 60% of them supports the war).
> 
> In Poland we also have historic reasons not to like Ukraine, but this doesn't block us from supporting them.
> 
> I suppose the approach of Hungarians to this conflict is mostly fuelled by the Orban's propaganda...


Polish-Hungarian friendship was nice, but recent events shows great divides, even when both countries chose more conservative political path with constant fights with rest of Europe.

I think this relates with history of Poland, and history of Hungary. For Russia, Hungary is non-Slavic far away land, you need to cross the mountains to reach it. Poland is almost just next door, easily reachable, and parts of Poland even were part of Russia, were subject of prolonged terror. Both Russians and Polish are Slavic, and Poland could be subject for potential russification if become part of Russia. Now with such events in Ukraine, divides are getting even greater. Poles are probably not afraid to go to war, while Hungarians would think trice probably, would not understand why they should battle Russia, and there is ambiguous feeling that in Ukraine, Hungarian minority has problems. Ukraine also has Polish minority, but what I heard Poles here have clear anti-Putinist position, while I heard Hungarians are just fleeing away, "not their war" as they say.

I think V4 format is dying, and I heard other people are saying the same.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> And this is how a country can remain with a mentality similar to the dark ages. Sorry for anyone who might feel offended, but this is the truth.
> 
> If we look at the European geography and history, every single European country would like back a piece of land that was historically theirs, but now belongs to one of their neighbours. With this in mind, we should have a constant state of conflict and war throughout Europe.
> 
> *I prefer the other option: we keep the current borders, and we all live in peace as European citizens with equal rights, regardless the corner of the union where we are.*


I would not like to sound naive, but is not that happening?

As I have already mentioned, the Hungarian population in Slovakia slightly decreased over the last ten years, but it was nowhere near a significant dramatic drop. At the same time, ethnic Hungarian (and Slovak, albeit its lack of sense) parties almost vanished: the mightier one has now roughly 1,5 % in public polls. To get to the Slovak national council, you need at least 5 %. The Hungarian minority makes up ~10 % of the overall Slovak population.

I think this is not assimilation. This is the actual maturity of the Hungarian minority and the whole of Slovakia. Let's think about it for a while. What is the maximum favourable result for the Hungarian minority? 10 % + some more if Slovaks were less disciplined and would not attend. The best results for Hungarians were in the general elections in 2006 with 11,68 %. However, despite promising results, they were always the minor coalition party with only minimal possibilities to fulfil promises from the pre-election campaign.

I think Hungarians in Slovakia have already learned that such ethnical representation means no representation at all and that apart from exaggerated (tiny in real life) "ethnical" issues (there are schools with the Hungarian language as the official language), they share the same problems in life with Slovaks: inflation, corruption, ineffective money management by the public administration, and instead of voting some "goulash" (that is an idiom in Slovakia when you mix up everything you have in your disposition - although I omg love goulash, especially spicy) parties promising to fix everything, it makes more sense to vote non-ethnic party with the more ideology-oriented programme.

I do not know about the situation with the Hungarian minority in Romania, but I think we are witnessing Europeanisation here in Slovakia (both Hungarians and Slovaks). And I still believe that the pro-Trianon sentiment in Hungary is fueled on purpose, and most people think different.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A Lamborghini Aventador crashed on A28 near my city this morning. Apparently the driver may have been driving near 300 km/h and lost control on a bridge, took out the median crash barrier and eventually came to a stop 400 meters downrange. There were no injuries or other vehicles involved.

Crash barriers are designed to withstand passenger cars. Their poles usually do not break off when a car impacts it, in this case the Lamborghini took out a whole row of them, so it obviously drove excessively fast, stopping only 400 meters after this massive crash.










More pics: https://www.stefanverkerk.nl/foto/1...aventador_s_a28_re_105_6_de_lichtmis_rouveen/


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> No, it's correct! Then it ends "i do szabli, i do szklanki" (for both the sabre and the glass").
> In Hungarian... Lengyel, Magyar – ket jo borat? Something like that?


Lengyel, magyar, két jó barát, együtt harcol, s issza borát.
Literally: Pole and Hungarian are two good friends, they fight and drink wine together.



> I suppose the approach of Hungarians to this conflict is mostly fuelled by the Orban's propaganda...


No, it isn't true. The fortune of approx. 100-150,000 people of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine is in this story the crucial factor. Ukraine passed new laws recently to suppress them. 
Even those in Hungary, who don't like Orbán, dislike Ukraine. There hasn't been any demonstration for Ukraine in Hungary. Not any politician talked about standing for Ukraine, not even those of the opposition. They all say again and again, that Putin is an agressor, that Putin is evil - but nothing for Ukraine. I know several people who'll vote for the opposition (i.e. against Orbán) next week. Most of them think Putin is evil, most of them are against Russia and Putin - but not for Ukraine.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> A Lamborghini Aventador crashed on A28 near my city this morning. Apparently the driver may have been driving near 300 km/h and lost control on a bridge, took out the median crash barrier and eventually came to a stop 400 meters downrange. There were no injuries or other vehicles involved.
> 
> Crash barriers are designed to withstand passenger cars. Their poles usually do not break off when a car impacts it, in this case the Lamborghini took out a whole row of them, so it obviously drove excessively fast, stopping only 400 meters after this massive crash.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> More pics: https://www.stefanverkerk.nl/foto/1...aventador_s_a28_re_105_6_de_lichtmis_rouveen/


Nice DNA drawing.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> I would not like to sound naive, but is not that happening?


What you write is absolutely true for Slovakia, I agree. 
But it does not necesserily mean, that it's the same everywhere in Europe. 



volodaaaa said:


> And I still believe that the pro-Trianon sentiment in Hungary is fueled on purpose, and most people think different.


I think, the majority in Hungary think different in a way that they don't want to fight for getting those areas back. Especially, that, apart from some regions, non-Hungarian ethnicity mas a vast majority everwhere. (For those, who don't know: thie complete current Slovakia, as it is now, was part of Hungary before 1920). Would Slovakia return to Hungary again, Hungary had a Slovak minority of ~5 million people - a disaster. It is only a minority that thinks, it'd be great to restore Hungary as it was before Trianon. But much more people think, it's wrong, what happened at Trianon, it's a shame, and Slovaks, Romainans, Serbians and the French are guilty of doing it. 
However, Hungarian minorities of the neghboring countries are important for the vast majority of Hungarian society.


----------



## Attus

And, last but not least. 
I tried to explain you something, today, and approx. three weeks age in the same topic, here in this thread. 
But it does NOT mean, that I, too, think this way. These are NOT MY thoughts, this is how Hungarian society thinks. Of course Hungary, too, has 9.6 millions of individuals, not 100% of the society thinks the very same way, but I tried to explain how many, or even the most people in Hungary think. I think, no, I'm sure I'm the one in this thread, who knows Hungary and its society as good as no one else in this thread, so I decided to try to explain it. Kpc21 writes a lot about Poland, I wrote a little bit less about Hungary 

But basically it's not how I think (in some parts yes, in most ones no). It's important for me, that you understand it. And now good night.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> What you write is absolutely true for Slovakia, I agree.
> But it does not necesserily mean, that it's the same everywhere in Europe.
> 
> 
> I think, the majority in Hungary think different in a way that they don't want to fight for getting those areas back. Especially, that, apart from some regions, non-Hungarian ethnicity mas a vast majority everwhere. (For those, who don't know: thie complete current Slovakia, as it is now, was part of Hungary before 1920). Would Slovakia return to Hungary again, Hungary had a Slovak minority of ~5 million people - a disaster. It is only a minority that thinks, it'd be great to restore Hungary as it was before Trianon. But much more people think, it's wrong, what happened at Trianon, it's a shame, and Slovaks, Romainans, Serbians and the French are guilty of doing it.
> However, Hungarian minorities of the neghboring countries are important for the vast majority of Hungarian society.


I think it is all about mindset. I am half-Hungarian, and my dad's family spoke Hungarian. I had always blamed my father for not teaching me Hungarian when I was a child. He always replied that there was no time for such. It must be amazing to have my job market possibilities expanded to Hungary and to perceive Budapest as a part of my homeland (because I do not feel like a fully-fledged foreigner in a city where I can speak my mother's language in).

Nevertheless, Hungarians that speak Slovak (I have met a lot o them, especially my peers) have a different opinion. They always contend they feel like foreigners both in Slovakia and Hungary.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> And, last but not least.
> I tried to explain you something, today, and approx. three weeks age in the same topic, here in this thread.
> But it does NOT mean, that I, too, think this way. These are NOT MY thoughts, this is how Hungarian society thinks. Of course Hungary, too, has 9.6 millions of individuals, not 100% of the society thinks the very same way, but I tried to explain how many, or even the most people in Hungary think. I think, no, I'm sure I'm the one in this thread, who knows Hungary and its society as good as no one else in this thread, so I decided to try to explain it. Kpc21 writes a lot about Poland, I wrote a little bit less about Hungary
> 
> But basically it's not how I think (in some parts yes, in most ones no). It's important for me, that you understand it. And now good night.


I feel sorry if you have found such a message in my posts, but frankly, I think just the opposite (I agree with your opinion). And to be honest, I have never met a troublesome Hungarian (compared to numerous troublesome Slovaks).


----------



## andken

bogdymol said:


> And this is how a country can remain with a mentality similar to the dark ages. Sorry for anyone who might feel offended, but this is the truth.


Hungary is not the only country in Europe where you have to understand their past to understand their future(And even the Germans have more feelings about the Oder-Neisse Line territories than they are willing to admit).


----------



## Coccodrillo

Attus said:


> No, it isn't true. The fortune of approx. 100-150,000 people of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine is in this story the crucial factor. Ukraine passed new laws recently to suppress them.


_As a result of legislation entitled the 'Bill on the principles of the state language policy", which was adopted by the Verkhovna Rada in August 2012, languages spoken by at least 10% of an oblast's population were made possible to be elevated to the status of 'regional language'. Whilst Ukrainian remained the country's only 'official' language nationwide, other languages, dependent on their adoption by oblast authorities, became accepted mediums of communication in education, local government offices, courts and official correspondence.[12] In October 2014 the Constitutional Court of Ukraine started reviewing the constitutionality of the law,[13] and on 28 February 2018 it ruled the law unconstitutional.[13] According to the Council of Europe, this act fails to achieve fair protection of the linguistic rights of minorities.[14] _



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Ukraine#Regional_languages



One third of Ukrainians have Russian as first language (including the president), yet the central government didn't want to recognize it as an official language. And recognizing all languages don't necessarily means dividing a country, on the contrary: Belgium works with its 2+1 languages (albeit like two separate countries with a common presentation to the outside world), Südtirol works fine since Italy recognized German as a regional language, let alone Switzerland where the 3+1 languages don't divide citizens at all.


----------



## italystf

I visited Budapest in 2016 and I was surprised to see in front of the Parliament, together the Hungarian and European flags, also the flag of Transylvania.
Imagine seeings flags related to Austria, Silesia, or Koenigsberg in front of the Bundestag. Or Algerian flag in front of Élysée.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> For Russia, Hungary is non-Slavic far away land


Hungary may not be a Slavic land, but it's almost surrounded by Slavic countries; except for Austria and Romania...

They even also border with Ukraine.



PovilD said:


> Poles are probably not afraid to go to war, while Hungarians would think trice probably


Well, Hungary is in NATO, same as Poland – so, I guess, in case of a Russian attack on Poland (which for now, luckily, seems unlikely – but largely due to the Russian army problems in Ukraine), they are supposed to take part in our defense...



Attus said:


> No, it isn't true. The fortune of approx. 100-150,000 people of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine is in this story the crucial factor. Ukraine passed new laws recently to suppress them.


The question is, if it would be better for them in Russia.

As we can see, Ukraine wants to be in the EU, and a crucial part of being an EU member is also respecting the minorities...

So in Ukraine, while maybe now it was bad for them, with time it would get better.

And you should know how Russia was suppressing Polish ethnicity in the period when the largest part of Polish land was a part of Russia (Germans, by the way, did the same – only Austria was quite relaxed regarding that).



Attus said:


> I tried to explain you something, today, and approx. three weeks age in the same topic, here in this thread.
> But it does NOT mean, that I, too, think this way. These are NOT MY thoughts, this is how Hungarian society thinks.


Yeah. I also encounter this problem – I'm sometimes trying to show how the society of my country thinks about things, but then the people's response is as if those were my thoughts 

My personal opinion is that the whole system of countries with defined borders treated like sacred, unless the whole country agrees with the change, causes a lot of evil and is actually anti-democratic. Locals should have the right to decide about themselves; if they don't feel well belonging to the current country, they should have a full right to split out or join another country which would agree to accept them. Of course all that assuming it's confirmed that it's the actual democratic will of the people. Not like a referendum carried out in a war zone or right after people get forcibly relocated – then it makes no sense because it leads to false results. This way there would be at least one reason less to do wars.

Some people argue – "what if e.g. suddenly there is more Ukrainians than Poles somewhere in Poland, they make a referendum and leave Poland". Well, if they decide to split out, it means that they're probably unhappy of the Polish rule, so the government wasn't doing its job too well... And also it's our decision that we've let them in...

The only problem with such a system would be that it could lead to emergence of many micro-nations – and it's usually more efficient to do things more collectively, not independently on such a small scale. And actually, nowadays the businesses go in the opposite direction, we have more and more consolidation and huge corporations controlling large parts of our lives... Someone has to control them, the only one who can (and should – representing the people) do it are the governments. And this is difficult if those governments are much smaller than those companies. But there exists something like alliances of countries... The EU, with all its problems, works amazingly well.



andken said:


> Hungary is not the only country in Europe where you have to understand their past to understand their future(And even the Germans have more feelings about the Oder-Neisse Line territories than they are willing to admit).


For Germany it was a punishment for the war and Holocaust... Sorry – but quite obviously they deserved that. There is no excuse for what they did; same as there is no excuse for what Putin is doing in Ukraine now. Though there is an excuse for the Russian citizens as they live in a de facto-dictatorship (and their country has always been one). Not like Germany, which was a democracy when Hitler's party got elected, and people genuinely supported it further on.


----------



## italystf

Coccodrillo said:


> _As a result of legislation entitled the 'Bill on the principles of the state language policy", which was adopted by the Verkhovna Rada in August 2012, languages spoken by at least 10% of an oblast's population were made possible to be elevated to the status of 'regional language'. Whilst Ukrainian remained the country's only 'official' language nationwide, other languages, dependent on their adoption by oblast authorities, became accepted mediums of communication in education, local government offices, courts and official correspondence.[12] In October 2014 the Constitutional Court of Ukraine started reviewing the constitutionality of the law,[13] and on 28 February 2018 it ruled the law unconstitutional.[13] According to the Council of Europe, this act fails to achieve fair protection of the linguistic rights of minorities.[14] _
> 
> 
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Ukraine#Regional_languages
> 
> 
> 
> One third of Ukrainians have Russian as first language (including the president), yet the central government didn't want to recognize it as an official language. And recognizing all languages don't necessarily means dividing a country, on the contrary: Belgium works with its 2+1 languages (albeit like two separate countries with a common presentation to the outside world), Südtirol works fine since Italy recognized German as a regional language, let alone Switzerland where the 3+1 languages don't divide citizens at all.


Preservation and regognition of ethnic and linguistic minorities are key aspects of modern European values.
Most European countries have ethinc minorities in some of their regions, and they are usually recognized by laws, represented in the national parliament, allowed to use their language in public institutions, and so on...
The Baltics and Ukraine are an exception. I understand that these countries (especially Ukraine) have huge problem with Russia (with his criminal bloody dictator Putler), but many Russian-speaking citizens of those countries don't support Putin at all and are loyal the countries where they live.


----------



## italystf

Kpc21 said:


> As we can see, Ukraine wants to be in the EU, and a crucial part of being an EU member is also respecting the minorities...
> 
> So in Ukraine, while maybe now it was bad for them, with time it would get better.


Yet, there are other countries in EU that don't respect minorities. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania don't recognize Russian minority (it may be understandable due to the current international situation, but people born there have not responsibility for Putin's brutal dictatorship and war crimes).
And Poland and Hungary don't respect sexual minorities. And not because of ancient, never-abolished homophobic laws (that also the West used to have), but because of new laws passed in 2010s by far-right populists!
I wonder if post-2004 EU enlargements were too premature for certain countries.



Kpc21 said:


> And you should know how Russia was suppressing Polish ethnicity in the period when the largest part of Polish land was a part of Russia (Germans, by the way, did the same – only Austria was quite relaxed regarding that).


Come on, that was more than 100 years ago. Back them repecting minorities wasn't an acquired value in Europe. Now it is.
And Austria was not relaxed to minorities either. Italians were banned to open their own university in Trieste.



Kpc21 said:


> My personal opinion is that the whole system of countries with defined borders treated like sacred, unless the whole country agrees with the change, causes a lot of evil and is actually anti-democratic. Locals should have the right to decide about themselves; if they don't feel well belonging to the current country, they should have a full right to split out or join another country which would agree to accept them. Of course all that assuming it's confirmed that it's the actual democratic will of the people. Not like a referendum carried out in a war zone or right after people get forcibly relocated – then it makes no sense because it leads to false results. This way there would be at least one reason less to do wars.
> 
> Some people argue – "what if e.g. suddenly there is more Ukrainians than Poles somewhere in Poland, they make a referendum and leave Poland". Well, if they decide to split out, it means that they're probably unhappy of the Polish rule, so the government wasn't doing its job too well... And also it's our decision that we've let them in...
> 
> The only problem with such a system would be that it could lead to emergence of many micro-nations – and it's usually more efficient to do things more collectively, not independently on such a small scale. And actually, nowadays the businesses go in the opposite direction, we have more and more consolidation and huge corporations controlling large parts of our lives... Someone has to control them, the only one who can (and should – representing the people) do it are the governments. And this is difficult if those governments are much smaller than those companies. But there exists something like alliances of countries... The EU, with all its problems, works amazingly well.


The right of self-determination applies to populations that are oppressed by foreign colonial or military rule. Congolese people were oppressed by Belgians, Ethiopians were oppressed by Italians, Kosovans were oppressed by Serbs, etc.
That's not the case for example of Catalans in Spain, or Quebecers in Canada, as they are entitled to full citizenship rights, they can vote and get elected in national parliament, they have their autonomous territories where they speak their language publicly, etc.


----------



## PovilD

italystf said:


> The Baltics and Ukraine are an exception. I understand that these countries (especially Ukraine) have huge problem with Russia (with his criminal bloody dictator Putler), but many Russian-speaking citizens of those countries don't support Putin at all and are loyal the countries where they live.


Reasons due to minorities is the stability of the country itself, while countries are fairly new, and the majority of these countries want the stability, since without regulation on minorities it would easily go downhill.

Lithuania doesn't have such big minority problem as Latvia or Estonia, but Lithuania want to preserve territorial stability, since we have minority areas in East Lithuania that could drift to become breakaway lands quite easily, and it's very very doubtful it would be good.
Latvia and Estonia ethnic problems are quite extreme and fairly unique in European context. I see it as long standing, but overall temporary issue, since countries need time, to become more settled, since both are new countries. I mean with time, people would become more attached to their adjacent countries, not living in some phantom USSR. What probably Baltics and Ukraine sees as dangerous is some phantom USSR fantasies still existing in some people's minds. It's the opposite of idea why Baltics are independent countries.

There are lots of reasons, even big ones, that Baltics don't want to be on Russian sphere of influence (nor most of Europe right now, actually). I doubt Western powers would plan "for fun" occupations of other countries, even if they feel they don't like those countries, like taking part of North Korea for good measure, or similar crap, unless is some extremely non-mainstream stuff.

I think Baltics will be prepared sooner or later to have more lax rules on their minorities, and join European community on this sphere. It would be harder and harder to be accepted here in Europe to be some USSR revisionist, especially after events in Ukraine, this would make people change their opinions, I guess.

Lithuania is already relaxing from extreme surname writing rules on their passports, like ban of Q X W letters (which was plain nationalist, from my point of view). It's a good development. We will see what future will bring here.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> Lithuania doesn't have such big minority problem as Latvia or Estonia, but Lithuania want to preserve territorial stability, since we have minority areas in East Lithuania that could drift to become breakaway lands quite easily, and it's very very doubtful it would be good.


Would they really prefer joining Russia, being treated well and according to European standards by the Lithuanian government?

To me, actually the lack of minority rights may be a threat for territorial stability, which, by the way, we've seen in Ukraine...



italystf said:


> And Austria was not relaxed to minorities either. Italians were banned to open their own university in Trieste.


Poland had universities in Cracow and Lviv, in Lviv there was also a Technical University. Though not always lectures in Polish were permitted – from what I read, it depended on the specific period, and during most of the Austrian occupation time, Polish was not the main language of the lectures (it changed in favor of Polish in 1870s). But still it was much relaxed compared to the areas occupied by Germany and by Russia, where education in Polish was completely or almost completely forbidden.



italystf said:


> And Poland and Hungary don't respect sexual minorities.


Well, for many, Kaczyński is in the same league as Putin (as a wanna-be dictator). Though obviously it depends whom you ask – others will place Tusk in the same league as Putin, but for completely different reasons (geopolitical – Tusk was always more for the cooperation with Germany and Russia, Germany also always being kind of pro-Russia; Kaczyński for being more independent in general and for the cooperation with the US).

For some people it may be choice between two evils... Poland is incredibly divided regarding those things and the sexual minority rights is a very politicized issue – though to me, it absolutely shouldn't.

I don't know what exactly you would consider to be respecting sexual minorities (same-sex marriages? right to include a gender other than the biological one in the documents?), but the current situation with that in Poland is, I would say, less related to the government itself (though obviously the more pro-Church party being currently in power is a result of it), more to the high political position of the Catholic Church in the country. I would say, Poland has big problems with the separation of religion and the government. Sometimes one may feel we transferred from a Moscow satellite state to a Vatican satellite state.

If the Catholic Church respected sexual minorities, it would also be different with our government...

And regarding those sexual minority rights, I believe Poland just needs yet some time for that. And for the religion-government separation too.

Don't forget, that as opposed to most of western Europe, Poland is largely a rural country, and time flows slower in the countryside... And it's partially the Church who defeated communists over here, and this has its consequences.


Anyway, sexual minorities and ethnic minorities to me look like two quite different issues. Sexual minorities don't tend to occupy some specific regions of a country because of the history, past wars and border shifts caused by them – they exist because of biology and are (at least theoretically should be) equally distributed in the whole society.



italystf said:


> Come on, that was more than 100 years ago. Back them repecting minorities wasn't an acquired value in Europe. Now it is.


Respecting peace also wasn't an acquired value in Europe back then. Now it generally is. But it still isn't for Russia. So why would you think that Russia would respect the minorities, if it isn't able to respect such fundamental values as peace?

By the way, to me it seems like Europe is quite wrong in doing business (especially regarding oil) with countries of Middle East, which also have large problems with respecting fundamental citizen rights, and have much worse problems with religion-government separation than Poland. Their sheikhs are not much different from Russian oligarchs... This isn't anything that we're able to change quickly, especially at a moment when Russia turns out to be much worse than them (there aren't many countries in the world rich in crude oil) – but it shows clearly that we should speed up lowering our dependence on oil.

And we are relying far too much on China regarding the production of electronics...


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Would they really prefer joining Russia, being treated well and according to European standards by the Lithuanian government?
> 
> To me, actually the lack of minority rights may be a threat for territorial stability, which, by the way, we've seen in Ukraine...


I guess is mostly trust issues with new independent (but small) countries, and I think Russia did relatively well with propaganda here and there, and it lasted for many years. It didn't started in 2014. The only difference before Crimea is that many people were more meh what Russia influences whom. Baltic politicans were already alarming many years before these events in Europe. Russia doesn't show good trends.

Giving all minority rights available could create a paradox. If they were let to do, in our eyes, whatever they want, they may just destabilize the country, and big country Russia would be happy. Chances would rise they would want to create Trandnistrian style country, and who knows what would happen here, Russian troops, do we really want them? Politics in those minority regions is fairly authoritarian already, and Polish minority leader was seen pro-Russian (not sure what he is doing now). Good thing that if we stay away from dangerous trends of Russia, prepare our country to be more resilient, chances for these paradoxes become lower and lower. Russia would not play this minority card in the Baltics. I think it should be one of the main goals of The Baltics.

It seems Baltic situation is more serious than Slovakia-Hungary situation. Hungary doesn't have so much gravity as Russia to destabilize Slovakia. Even without such gravity, I heard few concerns about unpredictability of stability in the Carpathians.

There were points where we actually moved too nationalistic, to the points it's hard to agree with, like banning letters on passports that Lithuanian language doesn't use, but I think situation is improving. Our government is currently fairly liberal (a.c.a. European proper) in Lithuanian standards. I'm not sure what will happen in the future, but I think long term trend is good.

Polish-Lithuanian friendship is very important, and it's likely to be warm relations, unlike in the 90s and 00s and especially in the 20s and 30s. Unless dramatic changes happens with Russia, and the importance will diminish, but even then, Poland will be important transport corridor from Baltics to Western Europe. Poland should continue to improve highways and also improve high speed rail.

For me, Poles in Southeast Lithuania would not be a problem if they would follow mainstream Polish stuff from Poland, and avoid wishes recreating USSR.
Lithuanians actually loves Poland, only concern is pro-Soviet tendencies in Polish minority, I hope these diminish with time.


----------



## Suburbanist

Stability of national borders with respect to minorities is much preferable than a situation where people are moving borders and leaving a new local minority in place.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> If they were let to do, in our eyes, whatever they want, they may just destabilize the country


But why should they want to do it, if they feel well with what is now? Surely they would prefer playing together with Russia instead of being a part of an EU country?



PovilD said:


> For me, Poles in Southeast Lithuania would not be a problem if they would follow mainstream Polish stuff from Poland, and avoid wishes recreating USSR.


Well, Poles and USSR doesn't really seem to be anything that would ever go together...

Since 1990, there haven't been any meaningful pro-Soviet, pro-Russian or even pro-communist political forces in Poland.

In the first years and first one or two government terms after the fall of communism, we had quite a lot of mess in the parliament, many small parties, even literally joke ones (we had a Beer Friends Party, for example), getting there, but after some time, two main camps remained. Post-Solidarity (current PiS and PO) and post-communist party (SLD), though having nothing to do with the old system any more, just being a generic left-wing party. But SLD practically ended in 2005, reaching the absolute bottom in the elections in 2015. Now we have two big political forces, both descending from Solidarity – liberal and centrist PO and conservative PiS (right-wing regarding things like family life, opposing abortion etc., left-wing regarding things like social benefits). Nothing pro-communist. There exists a communist party in Poland, literally a Marxist-Leninist one, but recently it didn't even participate in elections.


----------



## The Wild Boy

I wonder where Nikola Gruevski will run if Orban looses the elections? 🤔 

The Hungarian elections are going to be an interesting one.


----------



## volodaaaa

The Wild Boy said:


> I wonder where Nikola Gruevski will run if Orban looses the elections? 🤔
> 
> The Hungarian elections are going to be an interesting one.


When exactly does it take place?


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> When exactly does it take place?


Sunday this week.


----------



## Džiugas

PovilD said:


> There were points where we actually moved too nationalistic, to the points it's hard to agree with, like banning letters on passports that Lithuanian language doesn't use


This was a Soviet relict. Letter W was not a problem even under nationalist Smetona's dictatorship.


----------



## geogregor

Attus said:


> Something absolutely impossible in Hungary.


Sentiment in the UK started turning very anti-Russian a while ago. Poisoning people on the British soil, by Russian agents, have a lot do with that...

Unfortunately for years the Tory politicians got quite a lot of money from Russian oligarchs. They for example played paid tennis matches with BoJo etc. Only outright invasion of Ukraine really pushed for some tougher sanctions. For example we finally got rid of Abramovich (he is the main reason I hate Chelsea )

As for Ukraine, I don't think it really existed in public sphere that much until recently. I wonder how many people in the UK would recognize Ukrainian flag a month or two ago.



> And, as a secondary consequence, the long friendship of Poland and Hungary seems to be broken. It hasn't been a new thing, in my childhood, in the 80's we already knew: polak wegier dwa bratanki (probably wrong Polish grammar ;-)). But now this friendship is over.


It is visible even on Skyscrapercity. If you go to sections of Polish forum where we discuss situation in Ukraine, or in central Europe, there is more and more posts hostile towards Hungary, even from posters who used to be quite sympathetic.



Kpc21 said:


> My personal opinion is that the whole system of countries with defined borders treated like sacred, unless the whole country agrees with the change, causes a lot of evil and is actually anti-democratic. Locals should have the right to decide about themselves; if they don't feel well belonging to the current country, they should have a full right to split out or join another country which would agree to accept them. Of course all that assuming it's confirmed that it's the actual democratic will of the people. Not like a referendum carried out in a war zone or right after people get forcibly relocated – then it makes no sense because it leads to false results. This way there would be at least one reason less to do wars.


That is recipe for constant instability. It could mean redrawing borders every decade and risk creating more and more ever smaller national units, all in search of some weird notion of ethnic national purity. This is silly. We should rather go towards a proper federal Europe where ethnic differences (dress codes, street names, flags, local cuisine and other nonsense like that) should be left to be dealt on local level but serious stuff (economy, trade, foreign policy, defense) is decided on the trans-European level.

You seem to proposing something along those lines yourself:


> The only problem with such a system would be that it could lead to emergence of many micro-nations – and it's usually more efficient to do things more collectively, not independently on such a small scale. And actually, nowadays the businesses go in the opposite direction, we have more and more consolidation and huge corporations controlling large parts of our lives... Someone has to control them, the only one who can (and should – representing the people) do it are the governments. And this is difficult if those governments are much smaller than those companies. But there exists something like alliances of countries... The EU, with all its problems, works amazingly well.


So here I basically agree, but I would stick to the current national borders, however imperfect they might be in places. For the sake of stability.



> Not like Germany, which was a democracy when Hitler's party got elected, and people genuinely supported it further on.


That's common misconception. Hitler never actually "won" power in Germany. He got good result (partly through violence and intimidation) but he never got majority. He subsequently got the real power by manipulation and even more violence. I would risk saying that higher proportion of Russian support Putin than proportion of Germans who supported Hitler in early 1930s...



Kpc21 said:


> Would they really prefer joining Russia, being treated well and according to European standards by the Lithuanian government?


It doesn't matter what is objectively better for them if population can be brainwashed by propaganda in their language funded by a hostile country. This is the risk if we agree for "easy" changes of national boundaries.

I'm not saying it should absolutely never happen, (especially as there are some regions which in future could get their own state in some big future federal Europe) but shifting boundaries to please local minorities should be avoided.



> Well, for many, Kaczyński is in the same league as Putin (as a wanna-be dictator). Though obviously it depends whom you ask – others will place Tusk in the same league as Putin, [...]
> For some people it may be choice between two evils... Poland is incredibly divided


Come on. Yes, Polish society is divided, but objectively speaking it is Kaczynski and his team who have authoritarian tendencies not Tusk. It is them who politicized state media to absurd level and try to undermined independence of judiciary, often following Orban policies and methods. The EU should have been tougher with them a while ago, we could have avoided some of the problems.

The only saving grace is that Poland still have thriving independent media and public opinion is not that easily brainwashed.



> but the current situation with that in Poland is, I would say, less related to the government itself (though obviously the more pro-Church party being currently in power is a result of it), more to the high political position of the Catholic Church in the country. I would say, Poland has big problems with the separation of religion and the government. Sometimes one may feel we transferred from a Moscow satellite state to a Vatican satellite state.


100% agree.



> And regarding those sexual minority rights, I believe Poland just *needs yet some time for that*. And for the religion-government separation too.


Maybe, but sometimes I wonder if things don't go backward in some respect. I don't remember such vicious anti-gay sentiments in early 2000s as you can sometimes see nowadays. Even among young folks (of course mostly the rightwing morons)



> Don't forget, that as opposed to most of western Europe, Poland is largely a rural country, and time flows slower in the countryside... And it's partially the Church who defeated communists over here, and this has its consequences.


Sure, but how long it will be use as an excuse for their outsized power?



> By the way, to me it seems like Europe is quite wrong in doing business (especially regarding oil) with countries of Middle East, which also have large problems with respecting fundamental citizen rights,


Here we are opening a whole new can of worms. Who should we (the West) do business with...


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> But why should they want to do it, if they feel well with what is now? Surely they would prefer playing together with Russia instead of being a part of an EU country?


Times are changing, but in 90s, 00s and maybe 10s it seems there is quite a likelihood they really wanted to be part of poorer non-EU Belarus than Lithuania. Their wishes to create Polish autonomy during collapse years of USSR were on the frame of being part of Russian dominant USSR.
Reasons could be from lingual to the fact I heard from few Belarus lovers that Belarus suffered less from late 2000s economic crisis.

I don't know about now, but this development is interesting but somewhat concerning.
When Lithuanians banned pro-Kremlin TV media. I heard there is a rised demand among Eastern Lithuanian minority areas to install satelite TV to view Russian channels. Those channels are not banned to watch per se, only Lithuanian (same as Estonian, and I think Latvian) providers aren't allowed to translate them.

What I see basically it's that generations must change, and those who are raised in USSR ideology are no more.



> Well, Poles and USSR doesn't really seem to be anything that would ever go together...
> 
> Since 1990, there haven't been any meaningful pro-Soviet, pro-Russian or even pro-communist political forces in Poland.


There is a thing that actually make me sad. Poles in Vilnius region leans to Russian media basically. Nothing similar is seen in Poland.
I would be happy if Poles in Vilnius region actually watch Polish media.

I heard few opinions from Poles in Poland that pro-Soviet leaning Poles are result of lack of desovietization in Lithuania, but I just don't feel this might be right opinion. There are fairly few Soviet leaning Lithuanians (only maybe fairly technical kolkhoz/factory nostalgia), but many pro-Soviet leaning Poles (with Russian being like second native language). This trends happened years before dissolution of USSR. Only question if general desovietization would have helped. This is the problem in most of former USSR that there few to no signs of true desovietization. Many politicans and influential people from Soviet times became same politicans after collapse of USSR, and I think it produced lots of problems. Opinion holders expressed concerns that even Lithuania lacks true desovietization. I think, it could be better situation (we are EU/NATO members aftera all) than in many Post-Soviet places, but still not enough according to those people.

This is so tricky topic. This is situation when I want to share what I think, but I don't feel entering flame discussions that ends with nothing. It's almost Balkans situations. I'm not sure about many things I'm try to think when discussing this topic.


----------



## PovilD

Džiugas said:


> This was a Soviet relict. Letter W was not a problem even under nationalist Smetona's dictatorship.


Soviets did interesting stuff with Latin alphabet in Baltic states (or at least in Lithuania and Latvia). What I would call Soviet Latin when they just distorted foreign names. This is the practise of distortion is used with foreign writing systems, when what they write in their systems don't mimic English or French writings. The same Cyrillic and I think Japanese use this practice.

Due to our grammar specifics, this was not changed after 1990s, but I think it's getting more and more uncomfortable to do smth like this. What I found interesting that pro-Russian agents and their media in Lithuania are still writing Trampas or Baidenas, while general media is writing Trump'as and Biden'as


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> We should rather go towards a proper federal Europe where ethnic differences (dress codes, street names, flags, local cuisine and other nonsense like that) should be left to be dealt on local level but serious stuff (economy, trade, foreign policy, defense) is decided on the trans-European level.


Then usual countries will finally not be needed anyway 



geogregor said:


> Come on. Yes, Polish society is divided, but objectively speaking it is Kaczynski and his team who have authoritarian tendencies not Tusk.


That's absolutely true.

Kaczyński is accused of authoritarian tendencies by Tusk proponents, Tusk is accused of collaboration with Russia and the pro-Russian West by Kaczyński proponents.

But again, I am just describing Poland, not my views. I believe much more in this Kaczyński's authoritarian tendencies than in Tusk being excessively pro-Russian (anyway now it's no longer valid as now he criticizes what Russia is doing same as PiS does, and being wrong about things is nothing bad, we are all only humans – really much of the world was wrong about the actual plans of Russia).



geogregor said:


> Maybe, but sometimes I wonder if things don't go backward in some respect. I don't remember such vicious anti-gay sentiments in early 2000s as you can sometimes see nowadays. Even among young folks (of course mostly the rightwing morons)


Some time ago I saw an interview from, if I recall correctly, late 1990s, with the minister of education from that time, about whether giving away condoms to students in schools (I don't think it was about primary schools, rather about higher education levels) as part of sex education (or rather AIDS prevention), which some organizations wanted to do and which the government blocked, was a good idea. The general conclusion was that it wasn't, because, apart from that, as they said, many immature students would probably treat those condoms like toys and blow them like balloons (well, in my school live, we once all got condoms as a gift from the girls for the Boy's Day, and nobody treated them like toys... though I have no idea if anyone of us utilized them in the intended way  ), it could incentivize earlier sex initiation – which was undesired for both the obvious reasons and the AIDS pandemic which was still a thing back then. They said something like – "maybe in the future, but with the current state of sex education in school we aren't ready for that" (and, by the way, this state of sex education in schools hasn't improved since then, mostly because of the Church).

But what I am trying to tell is that the world was slightly different in the early 2000s, and there wasn't so much social pressure on gay or abortion rights, like there is today. At least not in Poland.

Actually, this strong social pressure only came up after PiS came to power... Which is quite understandable.



PovilD said:


> This is the problem in most of former USSR that there few to no signs of true desovietization. Many politicans and influential people from Soviet times became same politicans after collapse of USSR, and I think it produced lots of problems. Opinion holders expressed concerns that even Lithuania lacks true desovietization.


And now you are saying something, on which in Poland (obviously, concerning Poland) practically only Kaczyński and his party say and put large focus. Actually, in my opinion, they often go too far. For example, recently they took away the patron after whom a local technical high school was named. Only because he was a parliament member in the communist Poland. As if there were any non-communist parliaments in Poland in those times... And the school got named after him not because of his political and military history (during which he also fought for Poland) – but because he was a renowned engineer and inventor.

Or similarly – if I recall correctly, all police (milice) officers from the communist Poland have decreased pensions. Regardless of whether they actually took part in destroying the anti-communist opposition, or not.

Do you still have, for example, Stalin's statues in Lithuania?


----------



## Džiugas

PovilD said:


> Due to our grammar specifics, this was not changed after 1990s, but I think it's getting more and more uncomfortable to do smth like this. What I found interesting that pro-Russian agents and their media in Lithuania are still writing Trampas or Baidenas, while general media is writing Trump'as and Biden'as


Well, it was changed between mid 1990s and mid 00s. Nowadays only some weirdos like Respublika use that ultra-cringe Latin-to-Lithuanian transcription.

And unlike what many linguistic ultranationalists say, nor QWX neither ƏÞẰ are against Lithuanian grammar.

Trump and Biden usually are called Trumpas and Bidenas and apostrophe is usually used after silent vowels like Pierre'as.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> But what I am trying to tell is that the world was slightly different in the early 2000s, and there wasn't so much social pressure on gay or abortion rights, like there is today. At least not in Poland.


Maybe the pressure has been too strong. There were some tolerance surveys in eastern European countries about homosexuals and Slovakia together with the Czech Republic saw the greatest drop.










I can relate. I do not know why, but nobody in Slovakia cared about your orientation in the early 2000s. The topic was not tabu, it was just out of the display. Indeed, homosexuals were considered freaky, but not in all negative contexts. My mum had a colleague in 2005 who was gay and live with a 20 years older partner who had a son, who was a friend of my mum's colleague. Everyone was like "meh". It all started with pride marches and flirting with regulations from the west. A rainbow flag has become a symbol of ideology and some people see a return of socialism behind it.

I can a little bit relate. Our vision of freedom was more anarchic - for the first 15 years of democracy, we enjoyed borderless "fun" and democracy. But later on, virtue showing transforming into new standards emerged: fat-shaming, hate speech, cancelled words, etc. Some people see a resemblance to socialist times and identify it with the rainbow flag.

I do not know what is right or not. I sense that society is a little bit more sterile than it should be and it was freer ten or fifteen years ago. At the same time, I consider it stupid to blame homosexuals for that. 

When it comes to Orban or Kaczynski, I think they just play their role to win the next cycle. They are far from being authentic. Unfortunately, same as in Slovakia, the common people* will do the job.

*I know the common people collocation is rude. But considering their opinions share across social media (at least by their Slovak peers), it should be accepted for this purpose.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> And now you are saying something, on which in Poland (obviously, concerning Poland) practically only Kaczyński and his party say and put large focus. Actually, in my opinion, they often go too far. For example, recently they took away the patron after whom a local technical high school was named. Only because he was a parliament member in the communist Poland. As if there were any non-communist parliaments in Poland in those times... And the school got named after him not because of his political and military history (during which he also fought for Poland) – but because he was a renowned engineer and inventor.
> 
> Or similarly – if I recall correctly, all police (milice) officers from the communist Poland have decreased pensions. Regardless of whether they actually took part in destroying the anti-communist opposition, or not.
> 
> Do you still have, for example, Stalin's statues in Lithuania?


I was talking mostly about people in charge and the many aspects of architecture of the country itself.

---
As for symbols.
Yeah, this is slippery topic. There were discussions here as well, and it's not easy, people have different opinions.

As for Stalin, Lenin statues, ofc these are none (only in open field museum), but there were discussions if we should have statues where people collaborated with occupation process, though had influence in Lithuanian literature like Cvirka. Some agree to remove his statues, some disagree. His statue in Vilnius with soc realism features don't give good taste in the mouth for many people.

Actually more and more I start hate soc realism statues, tbh. Those muscolous tough person sculptures.









I recall one even in neighborhood's park. I hate it  It resembles me one country's love for ultimatums


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## PovilD

Džiugas said:


> Trump and Biden usually are called Trumpas and Bidenas and apostrophe is usually used after silent vowels like Pierre'as.


I think written foreign surnames should not be remade for Lithuanian grammar.

I think Trump 'as and Biden 'as would be the best form.

Like Slavic forms w Litwie is phonetically "wlitwie" rather than letter "w" is said seperatively.

Maybe even for foreign cities, though is more tricky here, many foreign languages have their own names of the cities. Ok, maybe this could be used selectively and have two forms. For small villages mostly "original writing + 'as/'is/'us/'ė", examples "Cannes 'ai", "Calais 'ė", "Abcdef 'as", while for large cities mostly original writing remade to Lithuanian form "Londonas", "Berlynas", "Madridas".


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## PovilD

volodaaaa said:


> Maybe the pressure has been too strong. There were some tolerance surveys in eastern European countries about homosexuals and Slovakia together with the Czech Republic saw the greatest drop.
> 
> View attachment 2981796
> 
> 
> I can relate. I do not know why, but nobody in Slovakia cared about your orientation in the early 2000s. The topic was not tabu, it was just out of the display. Indeed, homosexuals were considered freaky, but not in all negative contexts. My mum had a colleague in 2005 who was gay and live with a 20 years older partner who had a son, who was a friend of my mum's colleague. Everyone was like "meh". It all started with pride marches and flirting with regulations from the west. A rainbow flag has become a symbol of ideology and some people see a return of socialism behind it.
> 
> I can a little bit relate. Our vision of freedom was more anarchic - for the first 15 years of democracy, we enjoyed borderless "fun" and democracy. But later on, virtue showing transforming into new standards emerged: fat-shaming, hate speech, cancelled words, etc. Some people see a resemblance to socialist times and identify it with the rainbow flag.
> 
> I do not know what is right or not. I sense that society is a little bit more sterile than it should be and it was freer ten or fifteen years ago. At the same time, I consider it stupid to blame homosexuals for that.
> 
> When it comes to Orban or Kaczynski, I think they just play their role to win the next cycle. They are far from being authentic. Unfortunately, same as in Slovakia, the common people* will do the job.
> 
> *I know the common people collocation is rude. But considering their opinions share across social media (at least by their Slovak peers), it should be accepted for this purpose.


Very interesting development.

I was watching one random podcast, where Czech Republic was called LGBT friendly post communist state. Something that is not usual in former Soviet bloc.

Some more liberal circles remains hopeful situation on LGBT will improve with urban lifestyle improving, higher income, etc., but is seems is not constant upward trend. I have this anxiety sometimes there is a feeling, you have to sometimes watch out for words you say in ethnicity/religon/sexuality social topics, even not intending to harm anybody, and this might be the reason why post-communist bloc people feel unsettled because of that.

I like diversity, tbh, I don't feel anything bad for LGBT.
There is also other side of medal that World still needs to solve vastly bigger problems. At one end of Europe we talk of end of history, and relatively miniscule problems (covid being biggest blow), while other parts re-lives 20th century realities.

---
As for LGBT. I'm now feeling convinced it has to do with religion. Opinion can persist in many people, even when e.g. children of practising parents or grandparents are not practising the religion. This also strenghtens if the area is remote geographically and desolated from main Western trends (they are coming later or never coming for example).


----------



## Slagathor

Note to self: don't go anywhere near Slavic countries.


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> When Lithuanians banned pro-Kremlin TV media. I heard there is a rised demand among Eastern Lithuanian minority areas to install satelite TV to view Russian channels. Those channels are not banned to watch per se, only Lithuanian (same as Estonian, and I think Latvian) providers aren't allowed to translate them.


Didn't one of the Baltic states start official Russian language channel to counter the Russian propaganda? It sounds like much better option than simply trying to ban Russian TV, especially in the age of internet.



> What I see basically it's that generations must change, and those who are raised in USSR ideology are no more.


But simple passage of time and change of generation might not be enough. Sometimes concerted action is needed to reduce the tensions and alienation of the minority. Like educational programs, minority language TV channels etc. Better to do that than leave minorities alone and searching for news and friends abroad (especially in Russia).



volodaaaa said:


> Maybe the pressure has been too strong. There were some tolerance surveys in eastern European countries about homosexuals and Slovakia together with the Czech Republic saw the greatest drop.
> 
> View attachment 2981796


Very interesting graph. Little progress in Poland but at least it is not going backward like among Czechs and Slovaks.

I'm surprised about Chechia. I always thought they were more progressive on social issues. Atheist and relaxed about all things sexual.

Oh, and when I compare situation in the UK (86% acceptance) with Poland (47%) I do get sad. What is wrong with my compatriots? Why do they have problem with other people's lives?


----------



## radamfi

Looking at that chart, I suppose there is an obvious correlation between wealth (nominal GDP per capita) and acceptance of LGBT. Or is that just a coincidence? If central/eastern Europe economies became comparable in strength to western Europe, would that make a difference in attitudes?

When I was young the UK wasn't particularly accepting of homosexuality. You certainly wouldn't admit that you were gay at school in the 80s. The 80s Conservative government under Thatcher introduced Section 28, banning the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities.









Section 28 - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





The Netherlands were way ahead of the UK back then and, as with many aspects of life, were often shown as an example of how to do things right. In most countries, right-wing means non-acceptance of homosexuality but I remember the right-wing extremist Dutch politician Geert Wilders using the Dutch acceptance of homosexuality as a way of attacking Muslims.

Generally speaking, the current Conservative government are insanely right-wing even compared to the 80s Conservatives but at least they are on board with LGBT issues.


----------



## Suburbanist

I am not sure there is this direct link.

There are wealthy countries heavily opposed to alternate sexualities. And middle-income countries where it is more tolerated. Then there are cases like Thailand where it appears transgenders and 'ladyboys' are accepted, but not gays or lesbians.

I also think the issue of LGBT in Eastern Europe often becomes just a "wedge issue" for other types of political populism. Older generations might resent gays and lesbians not because of their sexuality, but because they are mostly younger and the signs of a country's modernization that has no accommodation for old communist nostalgics living in stagnated areas.

Also, as in other places where religion loses its encompassing hold of society, there is often a phase where those who remain well-committed to religion become more fundamentalist to varying degrees, because they also see a old institution losing all its social respect.

I personally have a couple relatives in the extended family like that in Brazil. They never really cared, as far as I know, about other people's sexuality, other than stuff like making inappropriate jokes by current standards. But now they are older, and they somehow resent that younger people in the town they live no longer bother with church for most part, and that the local cathedral is in physical dispair and people to not contribute to renovate it like in years past, and are alarmed that younger couples no longer bother to marry at a church wedding, or high school graduates no longer help with Christimas decorations.

So for them it is not the lesbians and guys, it is more about the sensation they are approaching the last decade of so of their natural lives and a very important social space for them will contract and maybe die with their own generation due to lack of interest.

With that all being said, I do think there is a bit of messaging problem with modern LGBT groups, or other minority-activist groups, in that they become hyperfocused on identity, or policing the most minute of things as if they were a hecatombe (like pronoun wars). It is not that they don't have the right to do it, it just seems counterproductive. When the wrong pronoun for someone who's neither male of female becomes almost as important as violent thugs attacking homosexual couples walking on a sidewalk, society tends to lose perspective of the latter and focus on the former.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> Looking at that chart, I suppose there is an obvious correlation between wealth (nominal GDP per capita) and acceptance of LGBT. Or is that just a coincidence? If central/eastern Europe economies became comparable in strength to western Europe, would that make a difference in attitudes?


I'm not sure if it is true. Czech Republic and Slovakia became much richer since 2007 and yet acceptance for alternative sexualities seems to have plummeted. In fact Czech Republic has higher GDP per capita (as calculated by PPP) than some much more tolerant societies (like Portugal or Spain). What went wrong?

Poland also experienced huge economic growth with little improvement in social attitudes.

I guess there is lag in social attitudes and it will change in Poland. Or at least I hope it will, but I'm not sure if it is automatically guaranteed (as southern neighbors of Poland show).

In Poland one of the reasons might be that quite large proportion of population lives in rural areas (villages and small towns), much higher than in western Europe. Such areas are always more conservative than big metropolitan areas. Then we have problem of religion. Too much of it but perhaps more importantly, the type of religion in Poland, namely vary conservative branch of Catholic church. For many Polish priests and bishops even Vatican is way too progressive 

It is going to be long slog to improvement...


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> Didn't one of the Baltic states start official Russian language channel to counter the Russian propaganda? It sounds like much better option than simply trying to ban Russian TV, especially in the age of internet.
> 
> 
> 
> But simple passage of time and change of generation might not be enough. Sometimes concerted action is needed to reduce the tensions and alienation of the minority. Like educational programs, minority language TV channels etc. Better to do that than leave minorities alone and searching for news and friends abroad (especially in Russia).
> 
> 
> 
> Very interesting graph. Little progress in Poland but at least it is not going backward like among Czechs and Slovaks.
> 
> I'm surprised about Chechia. I always thought they were more progressive on social issues. Atheist and relaxed about all things sexual.
> 
> Oh, and when I compare situation in the UK (86% acceptance) with Poland (47%) I do get sad. What is wrong with my compatriots? Why do they have problem with other people's lives?


Poland airs TVP Wilno, and I like the idea. Though I heard critics that Poland may become "too influential". I trust Polish influence in Lithuania, still. Lithuanians like Poland overall, in many cases for cheaper prices, but there are also common stuff we want to copy, like transportation and sometimes even urbanistics quality. I hope that you won't degrade to that much that become openly imperial, and continue to accept current borders. You see what happened to Russia. I don't remotely want that Poland would be on that path.

I fully agree we must work with minorities. I have vision where Lithuania overall becomes Nordic as much it can (is not possible by 100%, but good practises are welcomed), and Vilnius/Wilno region becomes Polish influenced region (maybe even slowly drifting to autonomy idea again, and without frame to recreate USSR or Russian empire) with ofc Poland accepting its borders. I also hope Poland will not even think about becoming Russia in any bad means.

Historically Lithuanians have feared Polish imperial ambitions (what was in our minds back then). I think Poland messed up with it after WWI, and everybody suffered. I think Litwa Srodkowa was a bad idea, many compares now with Russian recent anexation of Crimea. I think there should have been bigger acceptance of borders in that region no matter ones like it or not, to think long term, not short term goals, and slowly move to a military alliance that would turn into economic alliance.


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> I hope that you won't degrade to that much that become openly imperial, and continue to accept current borders. You see what happened to Russia. I don't remotely want that Poland would be on that path.
> 
> I fully agree we must work with minorities. I have vision where Lithuania overall becomes Nordic as much it can (is not possible by 100%, but good practises are welcomed), and Vilnius/Wilno region becomes Polish influenced region (maybe even slowly drifting to autonomy idea again, and without frame to recreate USSR or Russian empire) with ofc Poland accepting its borders. I also hope Poland will not even think about becoming Russia in any bad means.


There is no appetite in Poland for change of borders in the east, not even on the fringe. Unless we are talking about some mentally ill fruitcakes.

As for Vilnius becoming "Polish influenced region", I don't see is as possibility. Polish minority is small, ageing and shrinking. And if economy grows you might have more of more exotic immigrants filling the gaps anyway.



> Lithuanians like Poland overall, in many cases for cheaper prices, but there are also common stuff we want to copy, like transportation and sometimes even *urbanistics quality.*


Whatever you do, for the sake of god, please don't copy our "_urbanistics quality_". Polish urbanism is, to put it mildly, absolutely atrocious. It makes me want to puke.

I don't know if you are aware about it but on Polish skyscrapercity we have this phrase "100 years of planning" which is umbrella for shit planning, design and construction. In fact the term is spreading to FB and wider media.

We have a whole thread related to it:

This is latest thread related to the subject:








[Polska] 101 lat planowania w Polsce, czyli polski wkład...


I zrąbałeś dziewczynie popołudnie i może weekend. Ślij SMS-em jakieś wino albo czekoladki lub śledzika. KARTOSZKI.




www.skyscrapercity.com





And previous one, had to be closed as it had accumulated over 60k posts:








[Polska] 100 lat planowania w Polsce, czyli polski wkład...


, post: 176737113, member: 112484"] 100 lat świeczników adwentowych w kształcie łukowatym.




www.skyscrapercity.com





Example of 100 years of planning:









Alternatively look at photos of my hometown, probably one of the ugliest shitholes on the continent:









Miłe Spa i marzenie Corbusiera w jednym - Jastrzębie Zdrój


"Mistrzowskie" miasto ;) 20211228_115229 by Geogregor*, on Flickr I po kiego grzyba pojechałeś do Londynu (tfu... nie ma takiego miasta jak Londyn jest.... wiadomo). Tam takich budować nie umiejo... ... a wszystko przez tą "rudą wodę na myszach". Poważniej to dawaj jeszcze trochę...




www.skyscrapercity.com





Some examples:


DSC07286 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC07289 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC07291 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC07293 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC07295 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC07297 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC07298 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC07299 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

No, please don't copy our "quality" if you care about your country


----------



## volodaaaa

geogregor said:


> I'm not sure if it is true. Czech Republic and Slovakia became much richer since 2007 and yet acceptance for alternative sexualities seems to have plummeted. In fact Czech Republic has higher GDP per capita (as calculated by PPP) than some much more tolerant societies (like Portugal or Spain). What went wrong?
> 
> Poland also experienced huge economic growth with little improvement in social attitudes.
> 
> I guess there is lag in social attitudes and it will change in Poland. Or at least I hope it will, but I'm not sure if it is automatically guaranteed (as southern neighbors of Poland show).
> 
> In Poland one of the reasons might be that quite large proportion of population lives in rural areas (villages and small towns), much higher than in western Europe. Such areas are always more conservative than big metropolitan areas. Then we have problem of religion. Too much of it but perhaps more importantly, the type of religion in Poland, namely vary conservative branch of Catholic church. For many Polish priests and bishops even Vatican is way too progressive
> 
> It is going to be long slog to improvement...


That is an excellent question: what went wrong. Maybe a tiny guess, but we have to pre-accept the small fact that even a small factor can change the general opinion, something like the butterfly effect. I am now speaking only on behalf of Slovakia; I have no idea what went wrong in Czechia.

For a long time, the LGBT topic in Slovakia had remained untouched. We knew about homosexuals because obviously everyone knew Freddie Mercury, and we had a lot of artists (already passed away or still alive at that time) who were homosexuals; we did not care even positively or negatively. In 2009 a right-wing political party was established with liberal opinions. It was the first liberal party in Slovakia. The previous successful governments that led Slovakia to the EU and finished the post-socialist transformation in 1998 - 2006 were mixed (rightwingers with leftwingers) yet generally conservative. Right-wing liberals brought up exciting topics: radical tax reduction, decriminalisation of marijuana, same-sex marriages. Some people connected this topic to one evil, especially the rural population (they immediately imagined that all homosexuals are drug addicts and won't pay taxes). But it was only a tiny portion; it went popular among most people. A year after establishment, they made it to the government and unfortunately, their leader was an unmatured prick. It was not the party's ideology; it was the lack of professionalism. But the party had its stable electorate.

Meanwhile, in 2016 a new political party emerged. This time, it was a liberal, but a left-wing party proudly called itself progressives. It has distorted even my political views. Don't get me wrong; I know something about progressives in the world. Still, the Slovak ones may be described in a nutshell as follows: let's spend as thrice as standard money from the state budget on the most abstract yet controversial things, don't care about the hottest problems because if we brace ourselves hard, they will evaporate and do not follow the value-for-money or data-drive-decision-making, because you, as a politician, have to know what is right (I should write "left  ) for your people". And this party expanded the ideology from homosexuality to all possible sexual minorities, including paedophiles or zoophiles. I do not think paedophiles should be burned alive in the middle of a square. Still, it is quite a dangerous deviation (having children is hazardous in two aspects, they can be victims of a paedophile, yet they may become paedophiles, and their lives may be stressful) + cancel culture. They gained popularity among young people in larger cities. The old citizens felt the resemblance with socialism (don't care about money, do things you consider right), especially considering some of the more senior members had connections to the communist party (e. g. via parents ),

About their professionalism: I am a transportation expert. And progressives are the only relevant party that doesn't have anything about transport in their programme. Oh yeah, they had a small notion: the transport must be carbon-free. I agree to be honest, but they added nothing else. The political programme in healthcare or whatever economy topic seems the same (although I am not as expert as in transport). Nevertheless, they have very vivid plans to change the Slovak grammar, anthem, etc. It is the party of virtue signallers, and for young people, it works the same way as traditional left-wing populists promising incredibly higher pensions work for older adults.

TL;DR: I think the real liberal issues (homosexuality, abortions, euthanasia) hast jut had the worst PR in Slovakia over the last 15 years. It sounds amusing, but as an inhabitant, I have not found anything else, especially if we consider Slovak once accepted homosexuals.


----------



## geogregor

volodaaaa said:


> That is an excellent question: what went wrong. Maybe a tiny guess, but we have to pre-accept the small fact that even a small factor can change the general opinion, something like the butterfly effect. I am now speaking only on behalf of Slovakia; I have no idea what went wrong in Czechia.
> 
> For a long time, the LGBT topic in Slovakia had remained untouched. We knew about homosexuals because obviously everyone knew Freddie Mercury, and we had a lot of artists (already passed away or still alive at that time) who were homosexuals; we did not care even positively or negatively. In 2009 a right-wing political party was established with liberal opinions. It was the first liberal party in Slovakia. The previous successful governments that led Slovakia to the EU and finished the post-socialist transformation in 1998 - 2006 were mixed (rightwingers with leftwingers) yet generally conservative. Right-wing liberals brought up exciting topics: radical tax reduction, decriminalisation of marijuana, same-sex marriages. Some people connected this topic to one evil, especially the rural population (they immediately imagined that all homosexuals are drug addicts and won't pay taxes). But it was only a tiny portion; it went popular among most people. A year after establishment, they made it to the government and unfortunately, their leader was an unmatured prick. It was not the party's ideology; it was the lack of professionalism. But the party had its stable electorate.
> 
> Meanwhile, in 2016 a new political party emerged. This time, it was a liberal, but a left-wing party proudly called itself progressives. It has distorted even my political views. Don't get me wrong; I know something about progressives in the world. Still, the Slovak ones may be described in a nutshell as follows: let's spend as thrice as standard money from the state budget on the most abstract yet controversial things, don't care about the hottest problems because if we brace ourselves hard, they will evaporate and do not follow the value-for-money or data-drive-decision-making, because you, as a politician, have to know what is right (I should write "left  ) for your people". And this party expanded the ideology from homosexuality to all possible sexual minorities, including paedophiles or zoophiles. I do not think paedophiles should be burned alive in the middle of a square. Still, it is quite a dangerous deviation (having children is hazardous in two aspects, they can be victims of a paedophile, yet they may become paedophiles, and their lives may be stressful) + cancel culture. They gained popularity among young people in larger cities. The old citizens felt the resemblance with socialism (don't care about money, do things you consider right), especially considering some of the more senior members had connections to the communist party (e. g. via parents ),
> 
> About their professionalism: I am a transportation expert. And progressives are the only relevant party that doesn't have anything about transport in their programme. Oh yeah, they had a small notion: the transport must be carbon-free. I agree to be honest, but they added nothing else. The political programme in healthcare or whatever economy topic seems the same (although I am not as expert as in transport). Nevertheless, they have very vivid plans to change the Slovak grammar, anthem, etc. It is the party of virtue signallers, and for young people, it works the same way as traditional left-wing populists promising incredibly higher pensions work for older adults.
> 
> TL;DR: I think the real liberal issues (homosexuality, abortions, euthanasia) hast jut had the worst PR in Slovakia over the last 15 years. It sounds amusing, but as an inhabitant, I have not found anything else, especially if we consider Slovak once accepted homosexuals.


Interesting. I have to admit I have limited knowledge of Slovakia. I grew up not far from the border but only a few years ago I visited it for the first time. I stopped in Bratislava for a few days on my way from London to Poland ( I, know, not very direct route  ). I found it a really nice city.

I met a few Slovaks and Czechs here in London (we even had Czech girl as a flatmate for a while), mentally we all seem very close.


----------



## volodaaaa

geogregor said:


> Interesting. I have to admit I have limited knowledge of Slovakia. I grew up not far from the border but only a few years ago I visited it for the first time. I stopped in Bratislava for a few days on my way from London to Poland ( I, know, not very direct route  ). I found it really nice city.
> 
> I met a few Slovaks and Czechs here in London (we even had Czech girl as a flatmate for a while), mentally we all seem very close.


Hope you enjoyed your stay. It is basically a walkable city, which is among its assets.
Most people do not care about severe political issues. Or at least do not want to talk about political issues when sober  Needless to say that you often hear a shouting minority. By the way, no documented attack against a sexual minority has ever occurred here. Furthermore, we have not had no-LGBT zones as in Poland or open anti-LGBT policy as in Hungary.


----------



## radamfi

I think most people in western Europe don't realise the backsliding regarding LGBT on here. I was aware of the laws that Russia against homosexuals had imposed because they were very widely reported but I didn't realise that similar issues exist in many other countries until I had read this thread. It is particularly surprising (to me, at least) regarding EU countries because they have had many people spend time living and working in western Europe, so you would have thought that attitudes would converge as a result.



volodaaaa said:


> By the way, no documented attack against a sexual minority has ever occurred here.


which cannot be said in the UK. From what I've read it seems that western Europe (especially the UK) suffers considerably more from violent crime in general compared to central/eastern Europe.


----------



## geogregor

volodaaaa said:


> By the way, no documented attack against a sexual minority has ever occurred here.


With all the respect but I find it hard to believe. I hazard a guess that it has something to do with reporting and classification of such incidents. Because, sadly, they do happen everywhere, of course with different frequency.



> Furthermore, we have not had no-LGBT zones as in Poland


Yes, this such a stupid thing. It has zero legal force so it doesn't "protect" the god-fearing local folks and yet it provides fantastic negative publicity. Absolutely pointless nonsense.


----------



## volodaaaa

geogregor said:


> With all the respect but I find it hard to believe. I hazard a guess that it has something to do with reporting and classification of such incidents. Because, sadly, they do happen everywhere, of course with different frequency.


Hence "documented". It surely happens, though I sense it is more like psychical bullying than punching.


----------



## Attus

geogregor said:


> I have limited knowledge of Slovakia. I grew up not far from the border but only a few years ago I visited it for the first time. I stopped in Bratislava for a few days


You must consider, Slovakia is a relative small country, but it has very deep east-west differences inside the country. Bratislava, a town I like very much, does not much differ from any Western European town of similar size. Central Slovkaia looks much more Central European, in and around Košice you feel like returning to the 80's (and Lunik IX is pretty hopeless...). I have never lived there, I don't know much about life quality, I only see how it looks, but the differences are huge, and were even much deeper twenty years ago.


----------



## Attus

Suburbanist said:


> I also think the issue of LGBT in Eastern Europe often becomes just a "wedge issue" for other types of political populism.


True, but I think it's more complex than that. Many middle aged people, too, hate homosexuals, and their acceptance is amoung young people higher, but not so high that you could say, it's a generation issue. 
And I think it is partially a counter-reaction: Western nations and the EU say homosexualiy should be accepted more, and people think like 3 year old children when they mum says them what to do: "No". Basically Eastern European people oppose everything that comes from Brussels, no matter what is it. 

However, it works the same way in the other direction. Two years ago in Hungary a book was published, called "Fairy tales for everyone" ("Meseország mindenkié"), containing fairy tales having gypsies or homosexuals in the main roles ("Once upon a time there was a gay prince"). There were demonstrations in Hungary against it, several politicians tried to ban it, a young politician destroyed an example of it in public. This book is now published in Germany, translated to German ("Märchenland für alle"). Do you think a new Hungarian book of fairy tales could have been translated and published in Germany, if the price were straight? No way.


----------



## radamfi

I just had a very quick trip to Germany and the Netherlands. I went from London Stansted to Bremen, then by train to Düsseldorf, staying the night there. It was weird everyone wearing masks everywhere indoors and in trains. The hotel asked me for my vaccine proof but she didn't scan the barcode. There were probably Ukrainians staying there, as there was a notice in the lift in Cyrillic on a Ukranian flag.

Then in the morning by train to Venlo, then by electric bus to Deurne via Venray then train to Eindhoven. On those buses and that train, virtually no masks to be seen. None on the buses, even though there were quite a lot of passengers, and maybe one or two on the train. On that small sample, that would make mask usage lower than in south east England. I then had a bike ride in the countryside south of Eindhoven, in the area shown below in www.openstreetmap.com. It is easy to construct nice bike rides as you can simply follow the numbers. There are signs when you get to the number and directions to the next number. The routes are usually the most scenic between the numbers, not necessarily the shortest or quickest.










In the countryside I saw quite a few trees with the Ukrainian flag painted on them. For example this one, near number 52 in the bottom right of the map above:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Your 'OV-fiets' is also painted Ukrainian-style 

The bicycle junction system is very useful for recreational cycling. You can completely customize your route, based on your interests, weather, time, etc.


----------



## geogregor

One place where I don't wish to drive is Africa...


----------



## keber

In my experience the most dangerous driving by far I witnessed in Sri Lanka with really dangerous overtakings whenever possible or even impossible. Africa was calmer in my opinion, even comparing to SE Asia. Only in Zambia buses were driving around 140 km/h - but just during the day, in the night they drive much slower.


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> I can relate. I do not know why, but nobody in Slovakia cared about your orientation in the early 2000s. The topic was not tabu, it was just out of the display. Indeed, homosexuals were considered freaky, but not in all negative contexts.


More or less the same was then in Poland.

What many Poles seem not to tolerate are homosexuals wanting to get much public attention. Still, there isn't really any other way for them to gain more rights...



volodaaaa said:


> I can a little bit relate. Our vision of freedom was more anarchic - for the first 15 years of democracy, we enjoyed borderless "fun" and democracy. But later on, virtue showing transforming into new standards emerged: fat-shaming, hate speech, cancelled words, etc. Some people see a resemblance to socialist times and identify it with the rainbow flag.
> 
> I do not know what is right or not. I sense that society is a little bit more sterile than it should be and it was freer ten or fifteen years ago. At the same time, I consider it stupid to blame homosexuals for that.


Exactly the same what we had in Poland...



PovilD said:


> As for symbols.
> Yeah, this is slippery topic. There were discussions here as well, and it's not easy, people have different opinions.
> 
> As for Stalin, Lenin statues, ofc these are none (only in open field museum), but there were discussions if we should have statues where people collaborated with occupation process, though had influence in Lithuanian literature like Cvirka. Some agree to remove his statues, some disagree. His statue in Vilnius with soc realism features don't give good taste in the mouth for many people.


In Poland there is a discussion whether the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw (the most known symbol of the city) should be demolished as a socialism relic.

It was built as a gift from Stalin right after the World War 2. The only thing we got from Russia...

I don't know if it's true but it's known that Stalin asked Bierut (the Poland's leader from that time), what we want from the USSR: subway in Warsaw or the Palace of Culture. Bierut chose Palace of Culture... Regarding the subway, throughout the decades there were multiple approaches to its construction, there were even moments when some of the tunnels got built, but then the construction was stopped...

The first works (on an experimental section) started in 1951, the construction was suspended in 1957. The plans came back in 1974 (though in a completely different form, the 1951 one was supposed to have deep tunnels, the 1974 one – shallow), but soon again the plans got neglected.

Finally, the construction started in 1983... for the first section to be opened in 1995, when we were finally free from the influence of USSR  Though it was just a section of the first line – the whole line got completed in 2008.

And the first plans for the Warsaw Metro came out already in 1925...



PovilD said:


> I think written foreign surnames should not be remade for Lithuanian grammar.


I don't speak Lithuanian, so I don't know its specifics, but to me, from my Polish perspective, there isn't anything weird in adjusting foreign names to the local grammar, and they can often look very awkward without that.

In Polish we have a case system, and its completely natural to add suffixes to words (sometimes even changing things in the middle) depending on the grammar case. And it doesn't matter if the name is local or foreign.

For example, "of Biden" is in Polish "Bidena", "of Putin" – "Putina". "To Biden" (e.g. to give something to him) – "Bidenowi", "to Putin" – "Putinowi". And so on.

"In Ikea" – "w Ikei", though for some reasons Ikea the company doesn't like it. But I use it, most people use it, and it's completely correct according to the Polish grammar, even if you treat IKEA as an acronym.

Of course not all foreign names work well with the Polish case system, and in those situation we just ignore that. E.g. Cannes (the city name) doesn't change with cases in Polish. But Berlin or Hamburg work perfectly.



geogregor said:


> Didn't one of the Baltic states start official Russian language channel to counter the Russian propaganda? It sounds like much better option than simply trying to ban Russian TV, especially in the age of internet.


Polish public TV broadcasts a Belarussian channel for Belarussians to give them an alternative other than the Russian propaganda they get in their state TV. Belsat TV.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It looks like Germany is dropping almost all covid restrictions this weekend.

The states have a lot of power, apparently the main debate is whether a state should implement 'hotspot status' to keep masks & QR codes for entry or not. They have to decide this week.

So far only Hamburg & Mecklenburg-Vorpommern have decided to be a 'hotspot' and Thüringen also seems to be heading in that direction. A couple of others have yet to decide, but it appears that most states will not apply a hotspot status, so masks + QR codes are dropped. 

Masks have been gone for over a month now in the Netherlands. The number of cases has steadily declined over the past 3 weeks. ICU occupancy is now back to July 2021 levels (i.e. very low and very manageable).


----------



## Džiugas

PovilD said:


> I think written foreign surnames should not be remade for Lithuanian grammar.
> 
> I think Trump 'as and Biden 'as would be the best form.
> 
> Maybe even for foreign cities, though is more tricky here, many foreign languages have their own names of the cities. Ok, maybe this could be used selectively and have two forms. For small villages mostly "original writing + 'as/'is/'us/'ė", examples "Cannes 'ai", "Calais 'ė", "Abcdef 'as", while for large cities mostly original writing remade to Lithuanian form "Londonas", "Berlynas", "Madridas".


They are not remade, just get the ending. What you suggest is Turkish way for writing proper nouns where appostrophe serves just.... nothing except for indicating separateness. So would we need it?


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> For example, "of Biden" is in Polish "Bidena", "of Putin" – "Putina". "To Biden" (e.g. to give something to him) – "Bidenowi", "to Putin" – "Putinowi". And so on.


What I like that in nominative case, you are good with Putin, Biden, Trump, etc.

In other forms is weird, but borderline acceptable, since at least nominative form is... _normal_.

I would be more comfortable if written form of language are not touching foreign surnames Trzakowski 's rather than Tžakovskis.

As for ', if these are exlusively for silent vowels, than I would also be ok with - or other symbol that would not be ambigous. Even just space would be acceptable "Trzakowski s".

Warszawski could easily be "Warszawski -s" in Lithuanian, not some Varšavskis.


----------



## volodaaaa

PovilD said:


> What I like that in nominative case, you are good with Putin, Biden, Trump, etc.
> 
> In other forms is weird, but borderline acceptable, since at least nominative form is... _normal_.
> 
> I would be more comfortable if written form of language are not touching foreign surnames Trzakowski 's rather than Tžakovskis.
> 
> As for ', if these are exlusively for silent vowels, than I would also be ok with - or other symbol that would not be ambigous. Even just space would be acceptable "Trzakowski s".
> 
> Warszawski could easily be "Warszawski -s" in Lithuanian, not some Varšavskis.


A friend of mine was in Vilnius in 2011 and sent some photos to Facebook afterwards. It was at the time of Harry Potter last film premiere, so there were billboards around the city with the film posters.. The Lithuanian name of the film "Haris Potteris" sounded really cool.  Over a short period of time, we, classmates, called ourselves by Lithuanian nicknames, adding the "-s" suffixes to our full names.


----------



## Džiugas

PovilD said:


> I would be more comfortable if written form of language are not touching foreign surnames Trzakowski 's rather than Tžakovskis.
> 
> 
> Warszawski could easily be "Warszawski -s" in Lithuanian, not some Varšavskis.


Trzakowski is Trazakowskis and Warszawski is already Warszawskis, unless you read Respublika.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> It looks like Germany is dropping almost all covid restrictions this weekend.
> 
> The states have a lot of power, apparently the main debate is whether a state should implement 'hotspot status' to keep masks & QR codes for entry or not. They have to decide this week.
> 
> So far only Hamburg & Mecklenburg-Vorpommern have decided to be a 'hotspot' and Thüringen also seems to be heading in that direction. A couple of others have yet to decide, but it appears that most states will not apply a hotspot status, so masks + QR codes are dropped.
> 
> Masks have been gone for over a month now in the Netherlands. The number of cases has steadily declined over the past 3 weeks. ICU occupancy is now back to July 2021 levels (i.e. very low and very manageable).


It's a little bit more complex than that. NRW, for example, thinks it'd great to declare the whole state to hotspot, but juridical it's impossible. And I, too, expect the regulations of Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to be cancelled by courts. The status 'hotspot' is not clearly defined, but it may not be declared arbitrary, just because a government or a state parliament wants so. 
The policital situation is oretty complicated, the federal minister for healt, Mr. Lauterbach, says, he disagrees with the law suggested by himself.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> A friend of mine was in Vilnius in 2011 and sent some photos to Facebook afterwards. It was at the time of Harry Potter last film premiere, so there were billboards around the city with the film posters.. The Lithuanian name of the film "Haris Potteris" sounded really cool.  Over a short period of time, we, classmates, called ourselves by Lithuanian nicknames, adding the "-s" suffixes to our full names.


I remember in the 2000's havng seen movie posters in Slovakia, Bridget Jonesová, with Renée Zellwegerová in the main role.
And what about the current president of EU commission, Ms. von der Leyenová? 


https://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_von_der_Leyenov%C3%A1


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> Didn't one of the Baltic states start official Russian language channel to counter the Russian propaganda? It sounds like much better option than simply trying to ban Russian TV, especially in the age of internet.


Estonia has one. An article on the topic discussed here: 








Estonia fights back against pro-Russia messaging


Debate over the war in Ukraine is part of a larger discussion over national allegiances that has ebbed and flowed in Estonia for decades.




www.politico.eu


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> I remember in the 2000's havng seen movie posters in Slovakia, Bridget Jonesová, with Renée Zellwegerová in the main role.
> And what about the current president of EU commission, Ms. von der Leyenová?
> 
> 
> https://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_von_der_Leyenov%C3%A1


Sometimes it makes up for ridiculous and embarrassing moments. For example, the pronunciation of Leyenová resembles "Lajnová" which is an adjective derived from the Slovak noun "Lajno" which is huge cow excrement. Anti-EU people in Slovakia often use this pun to humiliate her, even though she has no chance to catch it  The same case is Goldie Hawn, spelt Hawnová in Slovak which sounds the same as the adjective "hovnová" meaning dirty of sh*t.

It sounds amusing in the case of foreign names, but the suffix has its importance in grammar and I guess the same goes for the Lithuanian language. I have spent some time learning Hungarian and I was really interested in how are suffixes (declinations) integrated into prepositions. A great thing too by the way.


----------



## radamfi

The BBC resumed shortwave transmissions to Ukraine, Poland, western Russia and surrounding region a few weeks ago. They were originally scrapped more than 10 years ago. 


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1499031508660756482
Do many people in the region have a shortwave radio and actually use it?


----------



## geogregor

Germany is still massive hole in Google SV coverage:









I'm know reasons behind it but it is getting silly. Are there plans to change regulations?


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

^^ It is interesting how well the Kalinigrad-area is covered.

Zelinskij is continuing on his impressive video tour de parliaments, and today he talked to the Norwegian parliament, the Storting. As in other countries, he made his message very effective by drawing on historical parallels and contact points between Norway and Ukraine. He is only the third foreign person ever being allowed to talk to the Storting, one of the other two was Chuchill after World War II.


----------



## volodaaaa

This happened a few minutes ago near Bratislava. A car crash included Dacia Duster and Ferrari, official Slovak Police fan page reported.

Damages:
Dacia Duster - 5 000 €
Ferrari - 500 000 €
One light injury.

Duster ended up on a road.

🤣


----------



## ChrisZwolle

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Zelinskij is continuing on his impressive video tour de parliaments, and today he talked to the Norwegian parliament, the Storting.


Zelenskyy is scheduled to address the Dutch parliament tomorrow.

I've read some analysis that the west had grossly underestimated Zelenskyy's leadership, thinking of him as a comedian-turned-president and not as an effective leader.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Zelenskyy is scheduled to address the Dutch parliament tomorrow.
> 
> I've reading some comments that the west had grossly underestimated Zelenskyy's leadership, thinking of him as a comedian-turned-president and not as an effective leader.


Yeah, after Zelenskyy was elected, I thought it was part of great wave of populism that went through Europe and America.
When I heard talks about Zelenskyy before 2022, many were pessimistic.

...and I also found it weird that boxer Klitchko became mayor of Kiyiv.

Now both are basically great heroes of Western World.


----------



## x-type

Attus said:


> I remember in the 2000's havng seen movie posters in Slovakia, Bridget Jonesová, with Renée Zellwegerová in the main role.
> And what about the current president of EU commission, Ms. von der Leyenová?
> 
> 
> https://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_von_der_Leyenov%C3%A1


This "von der Leyenová" is very pleonastic. "Von der" signs possessive, and Leyenová is possessive form, so it is double possessive.


----------



## s1wo

Attus said:


> You must consider, Slovakia is a relative small country, but it has very deep east-west differences inside the country. Bratislava, a town I like very much, does not much differ from any Western European town of similar size. Central Slovkaia looks much more Central European, in and around Košice you feel like returning to the 80's (and Lunik IX is pretty hopeless...). I have never lived there, I don't know much about life quality, I only see how it looks, but the differences are huge, and were even much deeper twenty years ago.


Košice as a city has improved a lot in recent years. Lots of new developments and a lot of new neighborhoods that are really nice.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> What I like that in nominative case, you are good with Putin, Biden, Trump, etc.


It's just because in Polish the nominative (masculine) has no suffixes.



PovilD said:


> I would be more comfortable if written form of language are not touching foreign surnames Trzakowski 's rather than Tžakovskis.


But in German it actually is Trzaskowskis (if you mean "of Trzaskowski"), written together  Not like in English, where you add the apostrophe (Trzaskowski's).
(by the way, it's funny that none of you manages to spell his name correctly xD)

By the way, Polish uses apostrophes for a different, though similar, purpose.

If we have an English word that either ends with the silent "-e", or if in Polish, in pronunciation, actually the end of the English noun is treated as a suffix and dropped.

Harry Potter -> of Harry Potter -> in Polish: Harry'ego Pottera (pronounced: 'harego potera').
Luke Skywalker -> of Luke Skywaker -> in Polish: Luke'a Skywalkera (pronounced: 'luka skaiwokera')
John Kennedy -> of John Kennedy -> in Polish: Johna Kennedy'ego (pronounced: 'jona kenediego') – in this case, nothing is really dropped, but the "y" in the spelling pronounced as something like "i" makes no sense in Polish, and thus we use the apostrophe.



radamfi said:


> Do many people in the region have a shortwave radio and actually use it?


In Poland practically nobody, except for some enthusiasts, and except for people still having very old radios that still have this range  (though those people aren't using it).

In the past we used to have this, if I recall correctly, Lithuanian-made (in USSR, but in the Lithuanian Soviet Republic) radio:
[I checked, it was Latvian]










It even had multiple various shortwave ranges.

By the way, it was interesting how the band selector (the upper knob on the side) worked. It was so bulky and heavy that it was actually not so easy to turn it to switch the bands, and once you did it, it was doing quite a loud mechanical bang 

Unfortunately, when it broke down, it was thrown away – even though I suppose it was perfectly repairable.

Most people in Polish only listen to FM radio (ultra-short waves), some old people – to Polish Radio 1 on the long waves, on 225 kHz. And that's all what normal people use. On other ranges you don't even have any broadcasts in Polish (except, if I recall correctly, China International Radio broadcasting in Polish for several hours in a week on short waves and medium waves... but it's not something anyone other than the enthusiasts would even know), and ordinary people in Poland aren't rather interested in listening to radio in foreign languages, when many stations in Polish are available...



volodaaaa said:


> This happened a few minutes ago near Bratislava. A car crash included Dacia Duster and Ferrari, official Slovak Police fan page reported.


Kinda similar to a crash of the Polish prime minister's limousine with a Fiat Seicento several years ago  It became a meme after it happened.



PovilD said:


> ...and I also found it weird that boxer Klitchko became mayor of Kiyiv.


Well, in the US it's not uncommon for people like actors to become politicians...


----------



## Stuu

PovilD said:


> I think written foreign surnames should not be remade for Lithuanian grammar.
> 
> I think Trump 'as and Biden 'as would be the best form.
> 
> Like Slavic forms w Litwie is phonetically "wlitwie" rather than letter "w" is said seperatively.
> 
> Maybe even for foreign cities, though is more tricky here, many foreign languages have their own names of the cities. Ok, maybe this could be used selectively and have two forms. For small villages mostly "original writing + 'as/'is/'us/'ė", examples "Cannes 'ai", "Calais 'ė", "Abcdef 'as", while for large cities mostly original writing remade to Lithuanian form "Londonas", "Berlynas", "Madridas".


I'm interested in the grammar about how this works in Lithuanian, or Polish or other languages which change foreign names. 

Is it that a name has to end with 'as in order to denote that it is a proper noun (or the same process in other languages)? Or is it to denote that it's a foreign name?


----------



## geogregor

Sepaking of "Polish urbanistics", apparently this is somewhere in Krakow:


----------



## volodaaaa

geogregor said:


> Sepaking of "Polish urbanistics", apparently this is somewhere in Krakow:


At least the intention was nice.... 🤣


----------



## ChrisZwolle

We have had virtually no snow in the Netherlands the whole winter. Until now. Models forecast 5 - 10 cm later today and tomorrow.


----------



## geogregor

Attus said:


> And, as a secondary consequence, the long friendship of Poland and Hungary seems to be broken. It hasn't been a new thing, in my childhood, in the 80's we already knew: polak wegier dwa bratanki (probably wrong Polish grammar ;-)). But now this friendship is over.


Going back to that. This has landed on Polish skyscrapercity, he is quite popular cartoonist in Poland:

https://twitter.com/AndrzejRysuje









It reads "This Zelensky is an actor"

There are definitely more and more anti-Hungarian voices in Poland, even among the Polish right, traditionally sympathetic to Orban.


----------



## Attus

Zelensky* offended Orbán twice recently. Orbán and his team have treaten him for 2-3 days as an enemy. Orbán-friendly politicians and journalists say "Shame on you, President Zelensky", Orbán accuses him having been agreed wth the Hungarian opposition, stating, Zelensky offends him, in order to influence the elections (this Sunday, in 3 days) this way. Orbán says, the opposition promised Zelensky to deliver weapons to Ukraine and to stop buying oil and natural gas from Russia immedately, and that's why Zelensky tries to influence the voters.
The opposition obviously does not know what to do: 

If they say, that yes, they'd like to do it, they'll lose many voters, because even supporters of the opposition don't want to support Ukraine.
If they say that no, they don't want to do it, it actually means, they do the same like Orbán, which is not very effective a few days before elections.
So they actually say nothing about Ukraine. 
And Orbán actually says: The elections are about war (opposition) or peace (himself) for Hungary. 

* It's soooo complicated. I can read cyrillic (Зеленський), I read this name day by day in Hungarian (Zelenszkij) and in German (Selenskyj) texts, and here in English transcription. I'm sometimes confused


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

How exactly this great United Opposition party fares in Hungary? I was quite surprised when I've learned that it cosists of basically everybody that is not Fidesz, with political views ranging from extreme nationalists to liberal greens. Is there enough cooperation to actually have a single opinion regarding most of the matters?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> * It's soooo complicated. I can read cyrillic (Зеленський), I read this name day by day in Hungarian (Zelenszkij) and in German (Selenskyj) texts, and here in English transcription. I'm sometimes confused


The English transliteration is Zelenskyy (with double yy). However you can also see Zelensky, Zelenski & Zelenskyi being used. In Dutch they use several variants as well, I think because there is no established transliteration from Ukrainian (which is not the same as Russian).

In the Netherlands they use 'Zelenski' a lot, which makes it seem like a Polish name. If you use Russian transliteration, it would be Zelenskij in Dutch but that name is never used.


----------



## Shenkey

Attus said:


> Zelensky* offended Orbán twice recently.


Everybody should offend Orban.

He is vile.


----------



## Džiugas

Stuu said:


> I'm interested in the grammar about how this works in Lithuanian, or Polish or other languages which change foreign names.
> 
> Is it that a name has to end with 'as in order to denote that it is a proper noun (or the same process in other languages)? Or is it to denote that it's a foreign name?


No. In Lithuanian, all nominative masculine nouns end with -as, -is, -ys, -us or -uo and all nominative feminine nouns end with -a, -i, -ė, -is or -uo. While sometimes foreign names are kept intact for nominative, in cohesive text nouns usually get endings as well. The only exceptions are most names that end in vowels (some of them like French surnames usually are not declensed), some names that and in silent vowels but don't get proper ending after apostrophe and most of feminine surnames ending with consonant. Names ending with -o usually are declensed as ending with -a or -as and names ending in non-silent -e are usually declensed if they ended with -ė. Usually it goes naturally, but if you have no idea how to grammatise a foreign personal name, you can just leave it intact (especially surname).

There are 2 significant exceptions.
First one are the Latvian names and surnames since Latvian grammar is pretty close to Lithuanian. Names ending with -s are treatet as Lithuanian names ending with -as, -is remains -is, -iņš is equal to -inis. Feminine names that end with -a are threated as usually, -e → -ė and -s → -is.
Another exception are the Slavic personal names. Masculine names usually get -as ending, the ones that end with soft consonant like Igor, get -is ending. Feminine names that end with soft consonants (like Liubov), get -ė ending. For surnames: -i/-y/-ý/-і/-и/-ий ending are treated as ending with -is (Zelenskij → Zelenskis, Kwasniewski → Kwasniewskis); surnames/patronimes ending -ič/ić/ић/ич/іч are treated as eding in -ičius (Milošević→Miloševićius, Milinkevič→Milinkevičius). Females usually don't get any endings there as well. Names (especially surnames) ending with -o/-о are treated as ending with -a (Porošenko → Porošenka). All other names of males get -as.



ChrisZwolle said:


> The English transliteration is Zelenskyy (with double yy). However you can also see Zelensky, Zelenski & Zelenskyi being used. In Dutch they use several variants as well, I think because there is no established transliteration from Ukrainian (which is not the same as Russian).
> 
> In the Netherlands they use 'Zelenski' a lot, which makes it seem like a Polish name. If you use Russian transliteration, it would be Zelenskij in Dutch but that name is never used.


Here in Lithuania we call him _Zelenskis_, but how would he be called in utterly official documents, I'm not so sure. Zelenskij? Zelenskyj? Zelenskyy?


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> By the way, Polish uses apostrophes for a different, though similar, purpose.
> 
> If we have an English word that either ends with the silent "-e", or if in Polish, in pronunciation, actually the end of the English noun is treated as a suffix and dropped.
> 
> Harry Potter -> of Harry Potter -> in Polish: Harry'ego Pottera (pronounced: 'harego potera').
> Luke Skywalker -> of Luke Skywaker -> in Polish: Luke'a Skywalkera (pronounced: 'luka skaiwokera')
> John Kennedy -> of John Kennedy -> in Polish: Johna Kennedy'ego (pronounced: 'jona kenediego') – in this case, nothing is really dropped, but the "y" in the spelling pronounced as something like "i" makes no sense in Polish, and thus we use the apostrophe.


Btw, I heard podcasts recently with Lithuanians who live in USA for long time, and they don't change American/English surname (like Biden or Johnson) to any form.
At least, most of the time.

Rough example:
Standard Lithuanian: Dėl Baideno* susitikimo vyko pokalbis
Form that many American Lithuanians are using: Dėl Baiden* susitikimo vyko pokalbis
English for you to understand (sorry for not ideal grammar): Talks was taken place due to Biden meeting.

*I changed surname Biden to the form how is pronounciated in Lithuanian

In Standard Lithuanian only female surnames are kept as they are in original form in many cases.
Ponia Trump atvyko į Europą
Mrs. Trump arrived to Europe
Quite the opposite of what Czech are using with Trumpova and similar.
For us it would be like using Trumpienė or Trumpė, but thank goodness we don't use those 

---
It's also interesting that Lithuanian speakers who live in America use Jungtinės Amerikos Valstybės instead of Jungtinės Amerikos Valstijos.
Some also suggest that we should use the first form. Valstijos could be direct translation from Russian "shtati" to distinct non-indepedent states from indepedentet.
English does not distinguish those two, in both cases are states. State could indeed be translated to Valstybė. For example we have Baltic States. Three Baltic states are completely independent unlike Arizona, Iowa, or Massachusetts.


----------



## PovilD

Džiugas said:


> Here in Lithuania we call him _Zelenskis_, but how would he be called in utterly official documents, I'm not so sure. Zelenskij? Zelenskyj? Zelenskyy?


From what I learned in Slavic, ending -iy is usually used in adjectives (female form is -a(ya)), and surnames can be derived from adjectives in Baltic and Slavic languages.
Zelenskiy in Lithuanian could be... Zelenskinis, Zelenkiškas. Most often it's the first form that is used in Lithuanian surnames that derived from adjectives. Gelžinis is first in my mind. Very close to "geležinis" (of iron), but not an actual name 

Female surname of Zelenskyy would not be Zelenskyy, but Zelenskaya.
Note example of Belarus activist Tsykhanovskaya, while her husband is Tsykhanovskiy.


----------



## radamfi

Attus said:


> I can read cyrillic (Зеленський)


When I was visiting a friend in Bulgaria about 5 years ago, he recommended that I learn Cyrillic on the plane as it would be useful on the trip. I thought trying to learn it in a few hours sounded rather ambitious but I attempted it regardless. To my surprise, I managed to learn enough to notice that many words are similar to English when converted to the Latin alphabet.


----------



## Džiugas

PovilD said:


> From what I learned in Slavic, ending -iy is usually used in adjectives (female form is -a(ya)), and surnames can be derived from adjectives in Baltic and Slavic languages.
> Zelenskiy in Lithuanian could be... Zelenskinis, Zelenkiškas. Most often it's the first form that is used in Lithuanian surnames that derived from adjectives. Gelžinis is first in my mind. Very close to "geležinis" (of iron), but not an actual name
> 
> Female surname of Zelenskyy would not be Zelenskyy, but Zelenskaya.
> Note example of Belarus activist Tsykhanovskaya, while her husband is Tsykhanovskiy.


Nobody *translates* surnames, even in the Soviet era. There was only a wave of LT→PL surname translation during the late Commonwealth and PL→LT translation in 1930s.

I just personally hate when Cyrillic personal names in Lithuanian texts are transliterated in that dumb English way as if we wouldn't have C, Č, Š, Ž or J. So it's Zelenska (Зеленська, not Зеленськая), Cichanouskaja and Cichanouski (Ціханоўскі, not Ціханоўскій).


----------



## PovilD

Džiugas said:


> Nobody *translates* surnames, even in the Soviet era. There was only a wave of LT→PL surname translation during the late Commonwealth and PL→LT translation in 1930s.
> 
> I just personally hate when Cyrillic personal names in Lithuanian texts are transliterated in that dumb English way as if we wouldn't have C, Č, Š, Ž or J. So it's Zelenska (Зеленська, not Зеленськая), Cichanouskaja and Cichanouski (Ціханоўскі, not Ціханоўскій).


Yeah, just an example I was thinking to myself how languages can be interesting.
Of course nobody will translate surnames like that, at least to Lithuanian.

I was too lazy to check the endings of surnames or adjectives, since these are different between Slavic languages.


----------



## Attus

PovilD said:


> Female surname of Zelenskyy would not be Zelenskyy, but Zelenskaya.
> Note example of Belarus activist Tsykhanovskaya, while her husband is Tsykhanovskiy.


His wife is actually called Zelenska (Олена Володимирівна Зеленська). It's rather the Western Slav way (for example Polish), the Eastern Slav would be Zelenskaya.


----------



## PovilD

Attus said:


> Her wife is actually called Zelenska (Олена Володимирівна Зеленська). It's rather the Western Slav way (for example Polish), the Eastern Slav would be Zelenskaya.


Yeah, I was thinking about that. End up guessing. Now I ended with thoughts if I should say sorry 

Now I learned that Belarussians and Ukrainians use different endings of female surname of adjective origin.


----------



## MattiG

radamfi said:


> When I was visiting a friend in Bulgaria about 5 years ago, he recommended that I learn Cyrillic on the plane as it would be useful on the trip. I thought trying to learn it in a few hours sounded rather ambitious but I attempted it regardless. To my surprise, I managed to learn enough to notice that many words are similar to English when converted to the Latin alphabet.


Learning cyrillics is quite easy after studying strength of materials or other subjects, which use the Greek alphabet extensively.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

You can learn Cyrillic in an hour. It's not like Chinese or Japanese characters. Reading it 'fluently' (i.e. fast) is more challenging if you don't use it often. 

I haven't learned Greek in school, but I found Cyrillic easier to learn than Greek.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> You can learn Cyrillic in an hour. It's not like Chinese or Japanese characters. Reading it 'fluently' (i.e. fast) is more challenging if you don't use it often.
> 
> I haven't learned Greek in school, but I found Cyrillic easier to learn than Greek.


Learning Greek is somewhat a more challenging exercise than learning the Greek alphabet from alpha to omega.

The science of strength of materials is full of symbols and both the Latin and Greek alphabets are exhausted and overloaded. I still remember the formula *κ=1/κ* where there are two different entities both expressed as kappa but I do not remember what it was about.


----------



## bogdymol

I found learning both Greek and Cyrillic relatively easy and doable in a couple of days, if you find yourself in a country that uses that alphabet. 

Greek I had to learn when I took some intercity buses back in 2007 between different Greek towns. I was constantly checking all strets signs I was seeing, to make sure I get off at the right station. 

Cyrillic: exactly 4 years ago I was in Moscow and had on my phone a map of the Moscow Metro in english. However, the actual signs in the Metro were all in Cyrillic, nothing in English, so I had to pay good attention to know where I am going, where to connect etc.


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> I found learning both Greek and Cyrillic relatively easy and doable in a couple of days, if you find yourself in a country that uses that alphabet.
> 
> Greek I had to learn when I took some intercity buses back in 2007 between different Greek towns. I was constantly checking all strets signs I was seeing, to make sure I get off at the right station.
> 
> Cyrillic: exactly 4 years ago I was in Moscow and had on my phone a map of the Moscow Metro in english. However, the actual signs in the Metro were all in Cyrillic, nothing in English, so I had to pay good attention to know where I am going, where to connect etc.


The starting point is easy. The name of every restaurant is Pectopah, like in Paris where all the metro stations have the same name Sortie.


----------



## bogdymol

And largest city in Germany is Ausfahrt.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Inflation hit 11.9% in the Netherlands in March.


----------



## SeanT

Fuzzy Llama said:


> How exactly this great United Opposition party fares in Hungary? I was quite surprised when I've learned that it cosists of basically everybody that is not Fidesz, with political views ranging from extreme nationalists to liberal greens. Is there enough cooperation to actually have a single opinion regarding most of the matters?


That is another problem. They can not agree about anything. No surprise! The far right JOBBIK was built on to beat the ex primeminister, who is the leader of the biggest party on the left and now their boss. Lots of internal fights. The only common ground is to beat FIDESZ/KDNP


----------



## SeñorGol

Starting April under the snow around here...
This morning:



Right now:




Greetings from sunny and warm Spain 

Edit 3.40pm: Here we go again! 🥶


----------



## radamfi

It snowed here for about 15 minutes this morning. That's the only snow I've seen this winter/spring.


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> I found learning both Greek and Cyrillic relatively easy and doable in a couple of days, if you find yourself in a country that uses that alphabet.
> 
> Greek I had to learn when I took some intercity buses back in 2007 between different Greek towns. I was constantly checking all strets signs I was seeing, to make sure I get off at the right station.
> 
> Cyrillic: exactly 4 years ago I was in Moscow and had on my phone a map of the Moscow Metro in english. However, the actual signs in the Metro were all in Cyrillic, nothing in English, so I had to pay good attention to know where I am going, where to connect etc.


Reading the signs is not that difficult. I'd say that Greek is even simplier than cyrillic on that field. We all had trigonometry in school, add some physical constants, fullfill missing elements with corona names, et voila - you read Greek!
I am even the generation who learned cyrillic in elementary school. I can read it quite fluently. Writing, hmmm, maybe capital letters (and it looks like elementary school writing) and let's say almost all print letters. Handwriting - no way, I have completely forgotten it. Also, reading someone's handwriting in cyrillic would be more contextual than real reading.
I don't know what greek handwriting looks like tough. Afaik they don't connect all the letters as latin and cyrillic handwriting looks like, but they separate it, so it is not that complicated to read. Or am I wrong?


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> English does not distinguish those two, in both cases are states. State could indeed be translated to Valstybė. For example we have Baltic States. Three Baltic states are completely independent unlike Arizona, Iowa, or Massachusetts.


The word "state" in English has at least two meanings (while talking about areas of land; of course there are yet more meanings unrelated to that). A subdivision of a federal country – or just a country.
Though English is really weird with that, because in English even the word "country" may mean a subdivision  Though probably only in the context of the UK.

In Polish we also have two words for a country: kraj or państwo. The former translates more to a country, the latter to a state (though, especially "państwo", is only used while referring to sovereign states; "kraj" usually too, though with some exceptions; e.g. the Czech Republic subdivisions are also called "kraj"). The etymology of the word "kraj" is "kroić" – "to slice".

The American states are called "stany" – like in the Polish word for "state" in the meaning of "condition of something" – and no other words are used. The German federal states – officially "kraje związkowe" (literally "federal states"), so the word "kraj" is also used, but always with that adjective of "federal"; but colloquially almost always people call them "landy" (from the German word Land – literally meaning "a country" – though in this case it's rather short for Bundesland – also meaning "a federal state"). But, if I am not mistaken, Germans don't call the American states Bundesländer, but Staaten...



MattiG said:


> Learning cyrillics is quite easy after studying strength of materials or other subjects, which use the Greek alphabet extensively.


And knowing Cyrylic it's easier to survive in Greece 

Some letters in Cyrylic do even overlap with the same letters in Latin. Some overlap partially – e.g. the Cyrylic C, which while transcribing to Latin is normally represented as S, but actually many Latin-alphabet languages happen to pronounce "c" as "s" at least in some situations (like the first C in the English word "Cyrylic" xD).

But there are also some false friends, like P, in Cyrylic pronounced as R  Or H pronounced as N.

And, I hate when in English (or other Latin-alphabet languages) someone uses inverted R to actually denote R, if one wants to make it look Russian. While actually, in Cyrylic, the "inverted R" has completely nothing to do with R. It represents the sequence of sounds "ya".



bogdymol said:


> And largest city in Germany is Ausfahrt.


It's like Rome. In Germany all roads lead to Ausfahrt!



MattiG said:


> I still remember the formula *κ=1/κ* where there are two different entities both expressed as kappa but I do not remember what it was about.


When I was at school, and in the university too, we always avoided using the same symbol to denote different quantities  Sometimes the same letter, but lowercase instead of uppercase, or vice versa, denoted a different quantity, but never the same letter, in the same case, in the same formula.

You can see is, for example, in electrotechnics, where the imaginary unit isn't denoted conventionally, like in mathematics and all other sciences, as "i", but as "j". Because the lowercase "i" already means the value of the current at the specific time. And it would be more misleading to change the letter used for current than the one for the imaginary unit.



x-type said:


> I am even the generation who learned cyrillic in elementary school. I can read it quite fluently. Writing, hmmm, maybe capital letters (and it looks like elementary school writing) and let's say almost all print letters. Handwriting - no way, I have completely forgotten it. Also, reading someone's handwriting in cyrillic would be more contextual than real reading.


I remember it! Had Russian for 2 years in primary school, which was in, like, 2005-2006? Something like it.

We even had textbooks with Volk and Zayats


----------



## x-type

Kpc21 said:


> I remember it! Had Russian for 2 years in primary school, which was in, like, 2005-2006? Something like it.
> 
> We even had textbooks with Volk and Zayats


If I had it in 2005, I'd remember it too. But I had it in 1988.


----------



## geogregor

x-type said:


> If I had it in 2005, I'd remember it too. But I had it in 1988.


Same with me, I had Russian in 1988/92

All I can do is to very slowly read Cyrillic without much understanding (unless words are similar phonetically to Polish). When I was in Ukraine in 2000 it was useful to read train timetables, destination signs etc. but not for much else. Luckily our friends there spoke English.

To be honest now I would probably struggle even with basic reading...


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> The word "state" in English has at least two meanings (while talking about areas of land; of course there are yet more meanings unrelated to that). A subdivision of a federal country – or just a country.
> Though English is really weird with that, because in English even the word "country" may mean a subdivision  Though probably only in the context of the UK.
> 
> In Polish we also have two words for a country: kraj or państwo. The former translates more to a country, the latter to a state (though, especially "państwo", is only used while referring to sovereign states; "kraj" usually too, though with some exceptions; e.g. the Czech Republic subdivisions are also called "kraj"). The etymology of the word "kraj" is "kroić" – "to slice".
> 
> The American states are called "stany" – like in the Polish word for "state" in the meaning of "condition of something" – and no other words are used. The German federal states – officially "kraje związkowe" (literally "federal states"), so the word "kraj" is also used, but always with that adjective of "federal"; but colloquially almost always people call them "landy" (from the German word Land – literally meaning "a country" – though in this case it's rather short for Bundesland – also meaning "a federal state"). But, if I am not mistaken, Germans don't call the American states Bundesländer, but Staaten...


For me personally, I find distinguishing "valstijos" from "valstybės" a convient way to distinguish indepedent country from not independent country.
Most who despise word "valstija" in Lithuania are true local American patriots  They claim U.S. states are like true countries, just united under one flag, i.e. European Union is something close, but even better.

Panstwo = from my extremely limited knowledge of Polish I guess it derived from "pan" which means Mr.  We have word "ponas" which probably directly derived from Polish "pan", and means "Mr.".
Female form is "ponia" (or Mrs. in English). I know in Polish is pana (like I heard pana Maria), but we use virgin Mary (mergelė Marija) instead.

Panstwo is like "place of Misters" or smth like that. Every grown up person can be called Mr.

I know for Russian kraj means "the edge" and also means "land", but somewhere on the corner of the World. In Lithuanian we have quite similar word "kraštas" which means both "land" and "edge".
As Polish has "drogi krajowe" we have "krašto keliai" which means exactly the same.

For German word land we use "žemė" ("žemės" in plural). Federal land in Lithuanian is "federalinė žemė" which can also be translated as "federal Earth"  It's smth similar with Czech "zeme".

I find word "stan" weird in Polish, since it has Persian meaning  Stan means place. One similar word we use word "šalis" which is similar to word "šalia" (nearby). I doubt it has relations with word "stan", unless has some common root from 10k years of IndoEuropean history 



> I remember it! Had Russian for 2 years in primary school, which was in, like, 2005-2006? Something like it.
> We even had textbooks with Volk and Zayats


Quite interesting that you had Russian in primary school. Far away from Russian borders 
As for that textbook, Na pagadi characters are visible, and are very weirdly drawn, like it's not Na pagadi, just an coincidence 

I had Russian lessons from 6th grade to 10th grade. 4 years! Russian was second most popular language back then. Lots of Russian teachers from Soviet times had jobs in place. In 6th grade you can choose either German or Russian in most occasions, and many chose Russian. I remember I was interested in Cyrrilic, and in my family, Russian media was popular (it was not _vatnik_ media, especially after annexation of Crimea). Btw I remember I didn't continued learning Russian since I thought it was enough (I didn't knew back then that Russia has so extreme imperial ambitions), and it was second half of 11th grade when Russia invaded Crimea. Actually I didn't regreted learning Russian, and not even Today.

My Russian is fairly rudimentary, but I say I have better knowledge of Russian than average ethnic Lithuanian my age, with no other ethnic background. Just because I find this country interesting (and as we see it remains interesting).

---
Now I start to think if Ukrainian will start to get bigger value than Russian.
Even after 2014, nobody seriously looked at Ukrainian since many still say Russian as more important (and most Ukrainians speak Russian). Now with Russian reputation in shambles in Western World, I wonder which language is now more useful. Ok, it could be things may back to some normalcy, and we are still in war shock, but in reality... who knows.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> I know for Russian kraj means "the edge" and also means "land"


The Polish has the word "skraj" for "the edge", as opposed to "kraj" 

Yes, "Państwo" in Polish is also a collective plural noun for both "Pani" and "Pan".

E.g.
Mr. Smith – Pan Kowalski
Mrs. Smith – Pani Kowalska
Mr. and Mrs. Smith – Państwo Kowalscy

(it can also apply to a larger group than just two persons/a couple and they don't have to be related to each other)



PovilD said:


> I know in Polish is pana (like I heard pana Maria)


Pani, not Pana 

Pana means "of Mr.".



PovilD said:


> Quite interesting that you had Russian in primary school. Far away from Russian borders


Back then most schools in the country didn't have Russian any more, but mine had. And from what I read on their website, they are still employing a Russian teacher, so they still have this language 



PovilD said:


> As for that textbook, Na pagadi characters are visible, and are very weirdly drawn, like it's not Na pagadi, just an coincidence


Inside the book they looked normally, like in the cartoon. And also on the cover of the book for other levels. This one was weird, I don't know why.

In Poland the foreign languages offered by the school completely depend on the specific school. For obvious reasons almost all schools offer English, but in secondary schools you are supposed to have two languages, and the second language varies quite a lot from school to school.

In my case, except for English, in primary school we had both German and Russian for two years (I am not sure about German, I can't remember, maybe it was just one year). In junior high school we had to choose the second language between German and Russian during recruitment. So a half of my class group (including me) had German, the other half had Russian. Then in high school, it also offered German or Russian, and it could be chosen. But many schools have French or Spanish instead.

For some reasons, most students generally dislike learning German. Maybe because German teachers tend to be demanding and strict?  As opposed to English teachers, who are usually very relaxed.

In high school we had an old female German teacher, who had some dementia, and it happened that she blamed us for not knowing words we actually hadn't had during the classes yet, or similarly with some grammar stuff etc. – and she was requiring them on tests, or even was giving ones (the worst possible grades, which mean you failed) just because she asked and one didn't know the thing.

Someone from my family is a teacher in a secondary school in Łódź. Recently she got some extra students, Ukrainian refugees, in the groups. And it turns out... 
– some of them can understand Polish more or less,
– some can speak and understand some English (and she also knows some very basic English, so they somehow manage to communicate),
– some of them can't understand neither Polish, nor English.

And I heard from someone, that many of them don't understand Russian either


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> The Polish has the word "skraj" for "the edge", as opposed to "kraj"
> 
> Yes, "Państwo" in Polish is also a collective plural noun for both "Pani" and "Pan".
> 
> E.g.
> Mr. Smith – Pan Kowalski
> Mrs. Smith – Pani Kowalska
> Mr. and Mrs. Smith – Państwo Kowalscy
> 
> (it can also apply to a larger group than just two persons/a couple and they don't have to be related to each other)
> 
> 
> Pani, not Pana
> 
> Pana means "of Mr.".


It is surprise for me  From what I know ending "-i" is usually for plural. I used with -a as most common Slavic female form ending. Lithuanians most often have -a and -ė for female endings.



> In Poland the foreign languages offered by the school completely depend on the specific school. For obvious reasons almost all schools offer English, but in secondary schools you are supposed to have two languages, and the second language varies quite a lot from school to school.


From what I know, same here. Some schools even offer French, but these are rarity. I heard some regions (like Biržai) have offered French. It came from Soviet times.
Most often is German, while most schools offer Russian.



> For some reasons, most students generally dislike learning German. Maybe because German teachers tend to be demanding and strict?  As opposed to English teachers, who are usually very relaxed.


Russian is spoken by more people than German. Russians is political superpower and everybody is afraid of "ядерная война"*, while Germany isn't (only economic superpower).
Now with improving military, who knows if Germany, or EU may become new superpower (I kinda wish Europe become respected superpower).

*Example of my remaining interest in Russian. Recently, I was interested in picture of one old protester in Russia (all protests depicting war are banned, and protestors are subjects to detainment). There was nuclear detonation crossed out and writing below "ядерная война" (all text said smth like "no to nuclear war"). I already knew the word "война" (war), but did not understood "ядерная" or "ядерный". Then I researched and found out it means "nuclear".
Russia is scary and it remains superpower mostly because it can cause "ядерная война".



> Someone from my family is a teacher in a secondary school in Łódź. Recently she got some extra students, Ukrainian refugees, in the groups. And it turns out...
> – some of them can understand Polish more or less,
> – some can speak and understand some English (and she also knows some very basic English, so they somehow manage to communicate),
> – some of them can't understand neither Polish, nor English.
> 
> And I heard from someone, that many of them don't understand Russian either


I've learned old time ago that Ukrainian is very Polish influenced compared to Russian.
With recent reports from Ukraine I get used people generally know some English.
Yeah, Ukrainian and Russian are also quite different. I'm surrounded by older people than me who are L2 Russian speakers, and they say they understand only context and sometimes it is just like another foreign language for them. I even heard when Zelenskyy spoke with independent Russian journalists about the war, he claimed he forgot some of the Russian words (while himself is Russian speaking Jew from East Ukraine).


----------



## Stuu

PovilD said:


> For me personally, I find distinguishing "valstijos" from "valstybės" a convient way to distinguish indepedent country from not independent country.
> Most who despise word "valstija" in Lithuania are true local American patriots  They claim U.S. states are like true countries, just united under one flag, i.e. European Union is something close, but even better.


The US states are somewhere between say Lander in Germany and actual separate countries: they have their own separate political and legal systems with only limited oversight federally. There are even the equivalent of customs posts on the state borders, although they aren't used full time and don't exist everywhere.


----------



## aubergine72

Attus said:


> His wife is actually called Zelenska (Олена Володимирівна Зеленська). It's rather the Western Slav way (for example Polish), the Eastern Slav would be Zelenskaya.


In Bulgarian it's Zelenska too.


----------



## aubergine72

MattiG said:


> The starting point is easy. The name of every restaurant is Pectopah*t*, like in Paris where all the metro stations have the same name Sortie.


Corrected.

EDIT: I guess in Russian they don't put the T at the end.


----------



## Džiugas

aubergine72 said:


> In Bulgarian it's Zelenska too.


What do you do with feminine Russian and Belarusian surnames that end with -aja?


----------



## PovilD

Stuu said:


> The US states are somewhere between say Lander in Germany and actual separate countries: they have their own separate political and legal systems with only limited oversight federally. There are even the equivalent of customs posts on the state borders, although they aren't used full time and don't exist everywhere.


Yeah,
English Wikipedia use State for German Lander, though I guess German federal lands would also be correct?
German lander are not as autonomous as U.S. states.

Land in English and German are both legit words for regions.


----------



## Stuu

PovilD said:


> Yeah,
> English Wikipedia use State for German Lander, though I guess German federal lands would also be correct?
> German lander are not as autonomous as U.S. states.
> 
> Land in English and German are both legit words for regions.


Land is an odd word in English; historically it has meant country, most obviously of course England. It now has an emotional meaning (my land, my peoples' land etc.), but no longer really means country in the full sense of a state with all it's institutions etc, it's the purely physical place.

Lander would always be translated as state/federal state, land would never be used in English


----------



## MattiG

aubergine72 said:


> Corrected.
> 
> EDIT: I guess in Russian they don't put the T at the end.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Yeah, I remember seeing the "pektopah" signs everywhere when I visited back in the days when Russia seemed to have become normal country.


Stuu said:


> Land is an odd word in English; historically it has meant country, most obviously of course England. It now has an emotional meaning (my land, my peoples' land etc.), but no longer really means country in the full sense of a state with all it's institutions etc, it's the purely physical place.
> 
> Lander would always be translated as state/federal state, land would never be used in English


I would say it is more the norm that words with common origin leads to slightly, or even completely different meaning in different languages. It for instance leads to misunderstandings all the time between the Scandinavian languages, since we tend to think that words actually mean the same. E g. "innan" means "before" in Swedish while "innen" means "within" in Norwegian, which could be quite critical to know for deadlines. "Må" means could/may in Danish, but "must" in Norwegian.

English, having full vocabularies of both Anglo-Saxon and Norman, with plenty of loan words from Celtic/Gaelic and Norse, has just too many words, so it is not strange at all that there has been quite an evolvement and regarding their common meaning. How often do you for instance think of "strand" in the primary meaning of most other Germannic languages, e. g. "beach"?

Btw, one area where "land" is used in a legal sense in English, but normally not in e. g. Norwegian, is in the sense "property".


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Russian is a very phonetic language when it comes to foreign loanwords?

For example Houston is Хьюстон in Russian. Which is not a direct letter-for-letter transliteration, but how you pronounce it. It is similar with New York (Нью-Йорк). I suppose the same goes for the French origin of 'restaurant'?


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Russian is a very phonetic language when it comes to foreign loanwords?
> 
> For example Houston is Хьюстон in Russian. Which is not a direct letter-for-letter transliteration, but how you pronounce it. It is similar with New York (Нью-Йорк). I suppose the same goes for the French origin of 'restaurant'?


Exactly. 
And the Serbian way is funnier  
Serbian my be spelled both by cyrillic and latin alphabet. But for foreign names the latin spelling must be a transcription of the cyrillic one, which is basically a phonetic transcription. 
So, your example, Houston (Texas) is _Hjuston (Teksas)_ in Serbian. 




__





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Hoteli sa besplatnim transferom do aerodroma, Hjuston, Teksas, Sjedinjene Američke Države. Opcije smeštaja za svaki ukus i budžet. Iskoristite unosne ponude smeštaja. Učinite svoje putovanje udobnim - rezervišite online putem Planet of Hotels.




planetofhotels.com


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Attus said:


> Serbian my be spelled both by cyrillic and latin alphabet.


Is there a substantial difference between the Latin version and Croatian?


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Russian is a very phonetic language when it comes to foreign loanwords?
> 
> For example Houston is Хьюстон in Russian. Which is not a direct letter-for-letter transliteration, but how you pronounce it. It is similar with New York (Нью-Йорк). I suppose the same goes for the French origin of 'restaurant'?


Serbian does it as well. The same goes with foreign names. Russian goes step fuirther with Makdonalds.


----------



## x-type

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Is there a substantial difference between the Latin version and Croatian?


Moram da obučem pantalone i odem u prodavnicu po šargarepu.
Moram obući hlače i otići u trgovinu po mrkvu.

Judge yourself % of similarity.


----------



## Attus

Fuzzy Llama said:


> How exactly this great United Opposition party fares in Hungary?


They know, it's their only chance to be elected. They are not popular at all, very many oppositional voters say: we don't like the opposition, they're not good, but if we want to get rid of Orbán, we must vote for them. And it oly works, if the opposition is united.
If you visit Budapest these days (what I actually did), you'll understand Hungarian politics. 
The country has national elections tomorrow, the city is of course full of political posters. But they are very weird:

On the posters of Fidesz (Orbán's party) you can see the candidate of the opposition, Péter Márki-Zay
On the posters of the opposition, you can see Orbán.
Of course both have the message "don't vote for him", but the weird posters show the main issue of Hungarian politics: neither Fidesz nor the opposition has the message "We're great, elect us!" or "If we win we'll do this and that, elect us!", both of them can only say, "the other one would be even worse, don't elect him!". 
The United Opposition says: it does not matter, what we wanna do, but we must get rid of Orbán. 
But they have two main problems: 

Not any of their politicians is popular. Not even their own supporters trust their leading politicians. They have not any personality, who could be accepted by the society. The current candidate for the prime minister position, Márki-Zay, says every other day something weird, even many people who want get rid of Orbán say about Márki-Zay: "please, give him no microphone!".
War in Ukraine. Orbán's reaction may be very disliked in other nations, but is popular in Hungary. And the opposition simply can not say anything about it.
So I expect Fidesz will clearly win the elections tomorrow.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Orbán is one of the longest-serving prime ministers in Europe. With Mark Rutte from the Netherlands being a close second. 

I don't know about Orbán, but there is a general feeling in the Netherlands that Rutte is a great manager but lacks any ideological direction, doesn't come up with new ideas and is untouchable in any scandal. There was a certain tiredness of Rutte pre-covid, and the Forum for Democracy of Thierry Baudet came out first in the 2019 provincial elections. They are now a fringe conspiracy theory party after their leader Baudet radicalized over the past two years. They're now anti-vaxx, anti-5G, pro-Russian and conspiratorial in nature.

The Netherlands has a lot of fringe / single issue parties now. Also, I don't understand the difference between Volt and D66.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Also, I don't understand the difference between Volt and D66.


If you are strongly pro-EU, you would have been very disappointed with D66's role in the last Rutte cabinet, when Rutte and Hoekstra were going around Europe kicking shins and insulting all our neighbors and partners while claiming the moral high ground. The previous cabinet was plain hostile to the European ideal. 

Now, it's alright to disagree with the concept of further integration, but you should at least offer some sort of a counterproposal or maintain a constructive attitude. They didn't even do that. They insulted everyone and embarrassed the country.

If you voted for D66 back in 2017 because you wanted to vote for a pro-European party, odds are you've got more than enough reasons to switch to Volt.


----------



## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> If you are strongly pro-EU, you would have been very disappointed with D66's role in the last Rutte cabinet, when Rutte and Hoekstra were going around Europe kicking shins and insulting all our neighbors and partners while claiming the moral high ground. The previous cabinet was plain hostile to the European ideal.
> 
> Now, it's alright to disagree with the concept of further integration, but you should at least offer some sort of a counterproposal or maintain a constructive attitude. They didn't even do that. They insulted everyone and embarrassed the country.
> 
> If you voted for D66 back in 2017 because you wanted to vote for a pro-European party, odds are you've got more than enough reasons to switch to Volt.


Sounds familiar


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

x-type said:


> Moram da obučem pantalone i odem u prodavnicu po šargarepu.
> Moram obući hlače i otići u trgovinu po mrkvu.
> 
> Judge yourself % of similarity.


More different than I thought. Serbocroatian has often been portrayed as a single language with two alphabets.


----------



## Stuu

x-type said:


> Moram da obučem pantalone i odem u prodavnicu po šargarepu.
> Moram obući hlače i otići u trgovinu po mrkvu.
> 
> Judge yourself % of similarity.


Something to do with trousers?


----------



## Alex_ZR

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> More different than I thought. Serbocroatian has often been portrayed as a single language with two alphabets.


That example is to show difference. On the other hand there are many examples of no difference.
Of course, both are understandable by both sides if you catch that small amount of different words. Months in Serbian are called by Latin (januar, februar, mart...), while in Croatian they use old Slavic names (siječanj, veljača, ožujak...). Serbs know both alphabets (which is an advance), while for younger generations of Croats Cyrillic is unknown script. I've noticed on some Serbian meme pages young Croats who were born long time after independence asking what does some meme in Serbian Cyrillic say.


----------



## aubergine72

Džiugas said:


> What do you do with feminine Russian and Belarusian surnames that end with -aja?


They remain unchanged as that's their name and names don't get translated. In informal settings and in speech, you can see and hear them without the -ya ending.
For men, the -y in -iy is almost never pronounced or written (except for official documents like passports, I think). I've never seen Zhirinovskiy but Zhirinovski in the media. I guess the difference is small compared to the female version.


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## volodaaaa

Alex_ZR said:


> That example is to show difference. On the other hand there are many examples of no difference.
> Of course, both are understandable by both sides if you catch that small amount of different words. Months in Serbian are called by Latin (januar, februar, mart...), while in Croatian they use old Slavic names (siječanj, veljača, ožujak...). Serbs know both alphabets (which is an advance), while for younger generations of Croats Cyrillic is unknown script. I've noticed on some Serbian meme pages young Croats who were born long time after independence asking what does some meme in Serbian Cyrillic say.


Haha the same Czech kids do about Slovak vocabulary even with the same script. However, most TV shows (especially reality shows) are broadcasted within former Czechoslovakia. For example, there was a Czechoslovak Idol TV show or a joint New year's eve programme.


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> Moram da obučem pantalone i odem u prodavnicu po šargarepu.
> Moram obući hlače i otići u trgovinu po mrkvu.
> 
> Judge yourself % of similarity.


aaaah... depends on the context you choose. There are some sentences in the Slovak language if you use, Czechs may ask if it is the Romanian language. Do the same example with curse words 🤣 🤣 🤣 I think w can invite Hungarians as well to this club


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## Džiugas

volodaaaa said:


> aaaah... depends on the context you choose. *There are some sentences in the Slovak language if you use, Czechs may ask if it is the Romanian language*. Do the same example with curse words 🤣 🤣 🤣 I think w can invite Hungarians as well to this club


Could you give some examples?


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## volodaaaa

Džiugas said:


> Could you give some examples?


"Terigal sa honelník hore grúňom s budzogáňom"

But it indeed uses archaic nouns nowhere near to daily use.

Terigal sa = slowly walked with difficulties
honelník = shepherd's young helper
hore grúňom = up the hill (very rare and archaic noun for a hill - indeed derived from the Romanian language)
s budrzogáňom = with a huge club (the weapon).

"ľaľa ho, papľuha, ogrcal mi krpce!!!! "

ľaľa ho = oh my
papľuha = that rascal
ogrcal mi = he has puked over
krpce = my folklore shoes


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## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Russian is a very phonetic language when it comes to foreign loanwords?


Probably because of a different alphabet.

It just makes no sense to try rendering foreign names letter-by-letter in Cyrylic.



ChrisZwolle said:


> It is similar with New York (Нью-Йорк).


I wonder why not even shorter: Нью-Ёрк.

Нев Ыорк would just make no sense.


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> aaaah... depends on the context you choose. There are some sentences in the Slovak language if you use, Czechs may ask if it is the Romanian language. Do the same example with curse words 🤣 🤣 🤣 I think w can invite Hungarians as well to this club





54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> More different than I thought. Serbocroatian has often been portrayed as a single language with two alphabets.


i have chosen extreme example. We understand each other regularly. Of course, someone born in Croatia in 2010 will probably not understand what pantalone or šargarepa is. 
Today's Croatian language has been standardized in the beginning od 19th century. It has 3 large dialects, and one of them has been taken as standard. That one had lots in common with Serbian. If any of other 2 dialects would have been chosen, difference between Croatian and Serbian would be at least as Czech and Slovak, if even not Czech and Polish. If you ask some Serb "Kaj buš si spil" he will not understand a single word of it. And it is very common among Croats.


----------



## aubergine72

x-type said:


> i have chosen extreme example. We understand each other regularly. Of course, someone born in Croatia in 2010 will probably not understand what pantalone or šargarepa is.
> Today's Croatian language has been standardized in the beginning od 19th century. It has 3 large dialects, and one of them has been taken as standard. That one had lots in common with Serbian. If any of other 2 dialects would have been chosen, difference between Croatian and Serbian would be at least as Czech and Slovak, if even not Czech and Polish. If you ask some Serb "Kaj buš si spil" he will not understand a single word of it. And it is very common among Croats.


Is Kajkavian really a dialect of Croatian? It's more similar to Slovenian.


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## ChrisZwolle

Ice skating on natural ice in April:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1510533409457721345


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

And around here we have plenty of fresh snow that has to be removed from our streets. I am happy.


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## x-type

aubergine72 said:


> Is Kajkavian really a dialect of Croatian? It's more similar to Slovenian.


Yes. And according to lots of people it should (have) be(en) the standard. Approximately 50% of people in Croatia speaks it - other two dialects are 25%/25%. But history... Also, it would be very difficult to adopt southerns (čakavians) to that. So we have compromise with štokavian as standard.


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## PovilD

Hungary is part of authoritarian tendencies seen in Central East Europe, and I think Russia could be part of it, just processes started earlier.
I will mention it here too, but Hungary has become such a weird place, in recent years, actually it has so good architecture, and I admire their motorways (except for gravel shoulders). I guess it has to do with poorer than EU average education system. I got this feeling even from what I've seen on the people in the streets. My country is also quite vulnerable to dangers of poorer education system, but what I like about the Baltics, we seem to be remaining quite free area, compared to even Poland.
We have our populist politicans who are related with big corporations that have good relations with Russia.

There is an example of mayor which I see as quite populist. Even his political commitee for Kaunas is called "Vieningas Kaunas" ("United Kaunas") which is similar for me to "Yedinaya Rossiya" ("United Russia"). Mayor of the city where I live is related (he is also a founder) with major food production corporation, and even has factory in Kaliningrad Oblast. He said he may close it soon after Russian invasion, but still no news. Some say he waits for situation to calm down, others say if he keeps that factory he may lose mayor office. I will be sarcastic here, if he wants to keep jobs of that factory in the city of Sovetsk (German: Tilsit, Lithuanian: Tilžė), he may become mayor of that city instead  I feel this mayor has too autocratic vibes. Actually wish for more liberal mayor, though I have doubts if there is good candidate to install more high quality bicycle paths and improve public transportation. Also not to strangle motorists too much as mayor in Vilnius is doing, at least according to the eyes of the motorists. He is already losing popularity, and new mayor may be more pro-car (but that's not mean driving and overall living would become more comfortable, just adding lanes will not help for cities, it's a thing for a motorway networks). If that's the case, only indulgence I would give for him if he seriously considers tram/metro project for Vilnius again. Prepare blue prints, and find the one who will build the tracks.

In recent weeks, current party that won election which is not populist (well praised _city right_), has increased popularity, due to war in Ukraine.
I have hopes it may stay that way, but also Russia is not entirely crazy (Putin loves to risk, Russians loves to risk, but sometimes they win in their favor if they try hard), they know that they can use economic crisis and despair card, but we will see. Before this event, many predicted that more populist movements may win, now we will see. Some tendencies show it could be either way, there are no guarantees.

Current government must give clear message that current times is not about stuff you have, it's about values you have, and the need to fight for freedom is still there.


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## SeñorGol

radamfi said:


> Is that road sign in Spain there primarily in case the road ahead is closed due to snow? They even have them at relatively low elevations in England, for example this sign about 25 km NE of Manchester. The A58 reaches 389 metres above sea level and the A6033 only gets up to 183 metres, yet it deserves a warning sign.
> 
> View attachment 3012904
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Google Maps
> 
> 
> Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> goo.gl


Yep. There are 5 levels: white-green-yellow-red-black.



Most of them are electronic nowadays, located first at the closest town/diversion, then at the foothill.








Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.es












Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.es


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## ChrisZwolle

A CCTV camera captured the moment a gas explosion totally destroyed a house in Oldenzaal, Netherlands. Miraculously, the three people living there were rescued out of the rubble alive.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1511063107044622343
The gas explosion reportedly occured when a contractor was installing an EV house charging point.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1511063835314204677


----------



## andken

PovilD said:


> Hungary is part of authoritarian tendencies seen in Central East Europe, and I think Russia could be part of it, just processes started earlier.


The issue with Hungary is that thanks to Schengen the young people are leaving the country and them the only people that remains there are old people that still resents the Treaty of Trianon. That's why rural areas with decreasing population in very large countries also trend to the right, sometimes insanely to the right.


----------



## Kpc21

Maybe also just because the people with more liberal views tend to be more mobile, move from place to place more often and more easily...


----------



## Suburbanist

Didn't Orban try a Soviet-light exit ban on graduates from universities in Hungary from leaving the country to work abroad within 5 years of obtaining their degrees?


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## Kpc21

Though such a "ban" (probably actually meaning that otherwise you would have to pay for your studies) makes sense in a country which offers free higher education. The country invests its money in you, so it wants something back.

It's still better than in many EU countries in which you always have to pay for studies.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Brain drain is a serious issue in Eastern European countries. You can't blame young people for doing that, but it cuts heavily into a country's future tax base and development potential. Romania has lost around 2 million people due to emigration? And while many of them perform low skilled jobs, engineers and doctors are leaving for better pay as well. EU membership is not all positive in those regards.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> Though such a "ban" (probably actually meaning that otherwise you would have to pay for your studies) makes sense in a country which offers free higher education. The country invests its money in you, so it wants something back.


The implication of such a policy would be pretty evident: The smartest ones leave the country before the studies and go to universities abroad. The country needs to survive with those ones populating the left side of the Gaussian curve.


----------



## valkrav

ChrisZwolle said:


> Russian is a very phonetic language when it comes to foreign loanwords?
> 
> For example Houston is Хьюстон in Russian. Which is not a direct letter-for-letter transliteration, but how you pronounce it. It is similar with New York (Нью-Йорк). I suppose the same goes for the French origin of 'restaurant'?


But, New Orlean ?
In russuian it names Новый Орлеан, Why ?


----------



## geogregor

Attus said:


> Union of the opposition proved to be a bad idea. They received even less votes than what could be expected separately. Supporters of Party A didn't want to spoort Party B, and supporters of Party B did not want to vote for Party C. Look at Mi Hazánk! A new, recently founded far right party, receiving 6%. Why? Because many supporters of another far right party, Jobbik, choose them instead of the united opposition Jobbik joined - they dd not want to vote for the socialist and liberal parties of this union.


But what choice do they have in voting system tailored for large blocks?

Also, from what I understand, rural regions do get more seats in the parliament (per capita) than Budapest. Just to add extra seats for Fidesz.

Sure, Orban has genuine support, but his win would be less overwhelming without voting system designed to maximize his advantage. Not mentioning near total control of media. We only have to look to Russia to see how it can brainwash the population...



> My sister, for example, said, orbán is bad, but having Márki-Zay as prime minister for 4 years could be a disaster, so she voted for Fidesz instead - first time in her life. And she was not the only one thinking so. I myself am everything but an Orbán fan, but Márki-Zay as prime minister? A shocking idea. To win the elections, you need a competent, popular candidate, a professional politician, that does not say bullshits, that has clear opinion about all the important questions. The opposition did not have any, on the contrary.


I don't get it. I really don't. Clearly Orban is a dangerous man. With every year in power he will redesign system more to his advantage, control media and state institutions more etc. In such situation I would vote for a monkey, just to replace someone like him. I do feel uneasy about same politicians staying in power for too long, even if they are competent, let alone corrupted apparatchiks like Orban. People waiting for ideal opposition candidate might one day wake up in a situation where there won't be any opposition candidate...

Oh, and reaction of the Polish internet (including this forum) to the result is pretty much predictable. Dominating opinion is something along the lines "Fu*ck Hungary, they are lost, becoming another brainwashed Putinstan". I was surprised by the strength of the dismay.

That's my few points. Sorry for late comment, just came back from short trip to France. It was nice to stop following news for a few days and concentrate mostly on eating and drinking. France is still perfect territory for that


----------



## Mkbewe

@*Attus*



> That he is anti-liberal is not a problem at all for many Hungarians. On the contrary. The majority of Hungarian population refuses any kind of liberalism.


No problem with that.


> *He siphons so much money? Yes, but for the population, too, is some left.* One of the main leaders of the opposition is Ferenc Gyurcsány, prime minister 2004-09. He, too, was very corrupt, but, unlike Orbán, he led the state literally to insolvence, and the population got poorer.* Under Orbán salaries and pensions increased a lot, unemployment vanished*. My mother, for example, said, her life is better year by year, and as long as it's so, she doesn't care if Orbán is corrupt. She voted for Orbán as well, although she has never done it before. And she's not alone with this opinion.


We've seen it in other countries. Long time ago in Russia, in Belarus. More recently in Poland "they steal, but at least they share with common people". The deal is prosperity for a bit of freedom. And after that it gradually transforms into no prosperity and no freedom.


> *The opposition had not any trustful politician*. Even supporters of the opposition thought, it was a disaster. Main leaders? Gyurcsány, one of the most rejected politician of the nation? The personality Márki-Zay was a disaster, he said something bullshit every other day. Any time he said something, he, and the opposition, got less popular. My sister, for example, said, orbán is bad, but having Márki-Zay as prime minister for 4 years could be a disaster, so she voted for Fidesz instead - first time in her life. And she was not the only one thinking so. I myself am everything but an Orbán fan, but Márki-Zay as prime minister? A shocking idea.* To win the elections, you need a competent, popular candidate, a professional politician*, that does not say bullshits, that has clear opinion about all the important questions. *The opposition did not have any, on the contrary*.


I've heard that all before in 2012. Putin is not that bad compared to the other guys. He provided prosperity, stability and we know him well.
Back then there was some freedom is Russia, and the economy was doing reasonably well.


> Union of the opposition proved to be a bad idea. They received even less votes than what could be expected separately. Supporters of Party A didn't want to spoort Party B, and supporters of Party B did not want to vote for Party C. Look at Mi Hazánk! A new, recently founded far right party, receiving 6%. Why? Because many supporters of another far right party, Jobbik, choose them instead of the united opposition Jobbik joined - they dd not want to vote for the socialist and liberal parties of this union.


And in previos elections divided opossition proved to be a bad idea. Over 50% members of your national assembly are elected in a single-member constituencies. How can you hope to defeat a party that has at least 45%+ popular support without unification?


> *The opposition did not see over the boundaries of Budapest.* The won very clearly in Budapest and won in two other towns: Pécs and Szeged, and that's all. *They had no messages to people oustide of the cities*. And I think that's why the press expected a close race: journalists, too. usually have no idea about what happens outside Budapest. (Blue: opposition, Orange: Fidesz).


Right.


> *And last, but not least: war in Ukraine*.*The opposition said nothing about it.In the last three weeks before the elections. no word about the most important political topic of the country.* Remember: Hungary is a neigbor country of Ukraine. And Orbán's politics about Ukraine is very popular in Hungary (I wrote about it several times). Márki-Zay, the candidate for PM position said at the beginning of the war: if NATO decides to attack Russia militarily, Hungary, too, should join. I think, that was the crucial point, when the opposition lost every chances to win the elections.In this very moment, when Márki-zay said it, it was over. And then, they remained silent about it, three weeks long. A crucial mistake. *Very many people thought: Orbán may be corrupt, but corruption is better than war*. War, where Hungarian men may die in order to save Ukraine, a nation they hate? The crazies idea ever.


So Hungary is democratic country like any other, the elections were fair. The opposition lost because of their mistakes: unification, warmongering, incopetent leaders, and focusing on big cities instead of small towns and villages. The rules of election are fair, courts are independent, media are pluralistic, anyone can win.
Orban is somewhat crooked, but other than that a proffesional politican, a statesmen that nation deserves.
I think he should rule till his retirement/death of old age. 
And he will, of that I'm sure. With your family vote or without, it doesn't matter anymore


----------



## andken

Kpc21 said:


> Maybe also just because the people with more liberal views tend to be more mobile, move from place to place more often and more easily...


That's probably part of it, but I also think that we underestimate how reactionary retirees are, and they are the most imobile population possible.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

ChrisZwolle said:


> Brain drain is a serious issue in Eastern European countries. You can't blame young people for doing that, but it cuts heavily into a country's future tax base and development potential. Romania has lost around 2 million people due to emigration? And while many of them perform low skilled jobs, engineers and doctors are leaving for better pay as well. EU membership is not all positive in those regards.


I beg to differ, actually in my opinion EU membership is the only way out of Eastern European mediocricity. Borders were never a problem for skilled people that are in demand elsewhere, no problem getting a work permit for a doctor or a programmer if they really want to leave. It's not like Moldova or Serbia are medical paradises right now because all of the doctors are staying put working For The Good Of Motherland.

On the other hand, EU membership created a tremendous amount of workplaces in those countries (all those Business Process Outsourcing Centres weren't popping up everywhere in Poland in 2010s for no reason), allows for much better collaboration and finally makes you a conversation partner for your colleagues in Western Europe. Both my parents work in science, and their Institute pre-2004 was completely different place that it is now. The whole country is a completely different place. 

And I can't speak of Romania, but Polish migrants aren't actually all staying out. Yes, there is some millions of Poles outside of the country, but they aren't necessarly the same people. Some folks go out for a year or two, some decide to go back when their parents are starting to get older or when the schooltime for children begin. And it is thanks to EU membership, that those people are actually free to pursue their own happiness whenever they actually like, not only within artificial boundinaries of their own country.


----------



## volodaaaa

Suburbanist said:


> Didn't Orban try a Soviet-light exit ban on graduates from universities in Hungary from leaving the country to work abroad within 5 years of obtaining their degrees?


I prefer some kind of financial bonus for "staying home" instead of the ban. For example, I wanted to become a scientist. As a postgraduate (I graduated in 2011) working on my PhD. degree, I earned roughly 500 € monthly. It was my scholarship, which is not a subject of taxation in Slovakia. However, after getting the PhD. in 2015, my scholarship was transformed into my salary, which is a subject of taxation, thus decreased to circa 450 € at the age of 27 (!). Then I got the offer to work for the ministry, and as a part-time external associate, I earned three-time more. It was still not too much, but it made me quit my dreams of becoming a scientist.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Fuzzy Llama said:


> I beg to differ, actually in my opinion EU membership is the only way out of Eastern European mediocricity.


Of course, but this loss of tax base and talent means that Eastern European member states would endlessly require subsidies to keep them alive to some standard of living.

The same problem is occurring in countries like Portugal. They have seen a mass exodus of young people to work abroad and they are in an era of stagnation. Portugal has relatively low incomes (by EU standards), has a fairly high cost of living. Tourism may keep it afloat but jobs in the tourism sector are largely seasonal and almost always low paying jobs. The average net income in Portugal is only € 1,100 per month. It is € 1,100 in Greece as well.


----------



## radamfi

Just noticed this advert on Google Street View, on the E105 in Ukraine just west of the Russian border.









Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




goo.gl















The website still works. Should this be affected by sanctions?


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## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> I prefer some kind of financial bonus for "staying home" instead of the ban. For example, I wanted to become a scientist. As a postgraduate (I graduated in 2011) working on my PhD. degree, I earned roughly 500 € monthly. It was my scholarship, which is not a subject of taxation in Slovakia. However, after getting the PhD. in 2015, my scholarship was transformed into my salary, which is a subject of taxation, thus decreased to circa 450 € at the age of 27 (!). Then I got the offer to work for the ministry, and as a part-time external associate, I earned three-time more. It was still not too much, but it made me quit my dreams of becoming a scientist.


But u dont get the scholarship after the PhD or what?

Normally you have it from start to end.


----------



## tfd543

We got a New Scientific instrument in-House and it says that the warranty becomes void if damages Are caused by animals, insects, illegal action and acts of God… 

I couldnt believe my eyes.. wtf !?

Its a german company.


----------



## Stuu

tfd543 said:


> We got a New Scientific instrument in-House and it says that the warranty becomes void if damages Are caused by animals, insects, illegal action and acts of God…
> 
> I couldnt believe my eyes.. wtf !?
> 
> Its a german company.


Very standard legal term for things like weather or earthquakes, or being turned into a pillar of salt


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## andken

I confess that I still divide mentally Poland in the three Partitions+Oder-Neisse Line territories. There is a lot of historical suffering in these lands. Poland is now a high income country, but I imagine that recovering from Soviet rule is not easy, right?


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## PovilD

Me personally also divide Poland into three parts: Russian Empire, German, Austrian.

As for Lithuania is more interesting. Current day Lithuania was also divided into Russian and German parts. Most of areas were Russian, and small area along Nemunas delta and most of the seaside have belonged to Germany.
In my mind, I'm also dividing part that belonged to Congress Poland (Southwest Lithuania, divided by Nemunas river) and the rest of Lithuania. The border between rest of Lithuania, and Congress Poland was quite important one in first half of 19th century, things like differences in calendars (rest of Lithuania - Jullian, Congress Poland - Gregorian). Term Suvalkija (Polish: Suwalszczyzna) was born, and there were also more freedoms in Congress Poland part of Lithuania. Many bright people came from here that helped to recreate first Lithuanian independence in 1920s.

As for Poland, afaik, there are few areas that didn't belonged to Congress Poland (like around and South of Bialystok) and even has some Belarussian minority areas.
Noticeable thing in those areas are smaller houses, indicating poorer lifelihoods. Not many talks about this, but probably there is still some legacy here from those times.

Southern suburbs of Kaunas were part of Congress Poland. Aleksotas feels like random suburb in Poland sometimes, Panemunė has characteristics of resort town, quite a cozy place.


----------



## Sponsor

PovilD said:


> What is reputation of Łódź in Poland in general?
> I feel it's industrial, boring type of city and region?


Well, pretty much:





People know very little about Łódź. It's like a blank spot on the map despite being located just in the heart of Poland. It has little tourist potential (no old town, no river, blank urban structure) which is crucial in my opinion. Post-industrial, non-academic, with poor railway connection. I call it the biggest village in Poland, with no offensive intention. It popped up dramatically and you can still clearly see agrarian land division (long oblique land strips) on Google Maps:


----------



## PovilD

I was thinking how comparable is Kaunas-Vilnius relation in Lithuania and Łódź-Warsaw relation in Poland.
I find there are astonishingly many similarities.

There were also negative stereotypes about Kaunas that is some criminal, gopnik city. It was more popular stereotypes in the 1990s and 2000s, also with very deteriorated infrastructure and generally boring life in the city. Such stereotypes are less popular in recent years. Still I have fears it could be overall better city, more rich, less boring/dull. During first years of current mayor's term, I liked he managed to do lots of renovation projects in the city, create good PR for the city, but now I find he's too autocratic, culturally euro-sceptic. The city is too pro-car, despite city having good possibilities to have larger modal share of public transport and cycling. Cycleways are popping up, but I find these lack quality, almost no cycling traffic lights and similar stuff.

Unlike Łódź, the city of Kaunas actually has little Old Town (slightly runned down at some places), universities (I finished one of them), very clear centre that is not even well connected to the rest of the city due to foresty hills.
There were discussions if Warsaw takes energy from Łódź. I'm wondering if the same happens with Vilnius. We have very similar geographical situation. Two largest cities close together. Vilnius-Kaunas is just 100 km.

Third largest city Klaipėda always has something that no city in Lithuania has. The sea, but it's also quite isolated. There is a port that is very important for Lithuania, but most people when thinking about the seaside, most think about nearby resort towns Palanga and Neringa (town name for Curonian Spit).


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## ChrisZwolle

Are there gopniks in Poland?


----------



## Kpc21

metacatfry said:


> To be honest, outside of road developments the only big claim to fame I know about Lodz is that story from the early noughts or perhaps late 90's where hospital workers were involved in killing and 'selling' corpses to funeral homes, so yeah.


It was in 2000s!

Łódź is a young city that grew up based on industry. Textile industry. Which collapsed nearly completely in 1990s due to the import of cheap clothes from Asia. Unlike the heavy industries, like mining, shipyards etc. – we never got any help from the government. But as an industrial city – it's unique, unlike any other large city in Poland. We don't have a downtown based on a central square, instead we have a street being the main axis. Which used to be a shopping street, but, again, the retail there has completely fallen after the malls came in. Now it's more about entertainment – pubs, clubs etc. (in the 1990s it was both shopping and entertainment).

While it's industrial, it doesn't mean those 19th century buildings don't have their beauty. From city palaces of the former factory owners, through rich, extensively decorated houses, down to ordinary tenement houses from the era. In multiple styles But the main problem is the technical condition of all those buildings. While e.g. Kraków, always considered a touristic and historic city, was always getting state funding for the restoration – Łódź never was. The city is, literally, collapsing. E.g. for the recent half a year, one of the main streets in the center (and the main tram routes too) has been blocked by a collapsed house... which cannot be demolished to make the passage safe again, because of a legal dispute. The efforts of the city authorities to restore those buildings are very extensive – but this is still much too little. And with many houses nothing can be done because either they are privately-owned, or their ownership structure isn't even clear (one building co-owned by dozens of heirs of the original owner, living now all around the world). 

Still, I wouldn't say Łódź is not worth seeing. Just on the contrary.






(and this is a 15-year-old video! as you can see, it wasn't bad even back then, and now, maybe except for the condition of the roads and public transport, it's only better)

But if you ask about the reputation... @Sponsor is right  And until recently, the city had such reputation even among most people living there...

Although... this "Łódź, kurwa" scene (from a 1999 Polish movie) has its continuation:







This is from another train station, but the one from the 1999 movie, is in renovation just now too!



ChrisZwolle said:


> Are there gopniks in Poland?


I had to look it up... In Poland there is someone similar. We call them dresiarze – "tracksuiters", or, shorter and more often, dresy ("tracksuits"). If you are to be afraid of your physical safety while in the city, then it would be probably because of those. You may e.g. be beaten because you don't support the football team they seem to like... Best not to come near such guys.


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## Sponsor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Are there gopniks in Poland?


Sure. Their range unfolded westwards and you may enounter them in the Netherlands


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## italystf

LOL, the black Adidas tracksuit with vertical white stripes has become the most common stereotype of Slavic people around the world, like the bowler hat and umbrella for the Brits. It's related to 1980 Moscow olimpics.


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## andken

PovilD said:


> As for Poland, afaik, there are few areas that didn't belonged to Congress Poland (like around and South of Bialystok) and even has some Belarussian minority areas.
> Noticeable thing in those areas are smaller houses, indicating poorer lifelihoods. Not many talks about this, but probably there is still some legacy here from those times.


There is. There is research showing that the parts of the former German Partition has better educational outcomes than the former Russian Partition to this day, it's easy to see the partitions and the Oder-Neisse line territories on election maps too:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1282424285475340290


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## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> It was in 2000s!
> 
> Łódź is a young city that grew up based on industry. Textile industry. Which collapsed nearly completely in 1990s due to the import of cheap clothes from Asia. Unlike the heavy industries, like mining, shipyards etc. – we never got any help from the government. But as an industrial city – it's unique, unlike any other large city in Poland. We don't have a downtown based on a central square, instead we have a street being the main axis. Which used to be a shopping street, but, again, the retail there has completely fallen after the malls came in. Now it's more about entertainment – pubs, clubs etc. (in the 1990s it was both shopping and entertainment).
> 
> While it's industrial, it doesn't mean those 19th century buildings don't have their beauty. From city palaces of the former factory owners, through rich, extensively decorated houses, down to ordinary tenement houses from the era. In multiple styles But the main problem is the technical condition of all those buildings. While e.g. Kraków, always considered a touristic and historic city, was always getting state funding for the restoration – Łódź never was. The city is, literally, collapsing. E.g. for the recent half a year, one of the main streets in the center (and the main tram routes too) has been blocked by a collapsed house... which cannot be demolished to make the passage safe again, because of a legal dispute. The efforts of the city authorities to restore those buildings are very extensive – but this is still much too little. And with many houses nothing can be done because either they are privately-owned, or their ownership structure isn't even clear (one building co-owned by dozens of heirs of the original owner, living now all around the world).
> 
> Still, I wouldn't say Łódź is not worth seeing. Just on the contrary.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (and this is a 15-year-old video! as you can see, it wasn't bad even back then, and now, maybe except for the condition of the roads and public transport, it's only better)
> 
> But if you ask about the reputation... @Sponsor is right  And until recently, the city had such reputation even among most people living there...
> 
> Although... this "Łódź, kurwa" scene (from a 1999 Polish movie) has its continuation:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is from another train station, but the one from the 1999 movie, is in renovation just now too!
> 
> 
> I had to look it up... In Poland there is someone similar. We call them dresiarze – "tracksuiters", or, shorter and more often, dresy ("tracksuits"). If you are to be afraid of your physical safety while in the city, then it would be probably because of those. You may e.g. be beaten because you don't support the football team they seem to like... Best not to come near such guys.


Kaunas was very industrialized during Soviet times. Lots of cultural elite moved to Vilnius. Kaunas was first true city of Lithuanian ethnicity, since it was capital city of Lithuania 1920s and 1930s. Soviet did made Kaunas really industrial.
Industries involved textile, metal, food. Lots of textile, clothing industries got bancrupt in the 90s, few other types of industries, like food, reformed and remained. Now is more of a city of commerce, trade, and don't forget universities.
Reforming of the cities took years, now is almost on track, few things must improve here and there, like cycling infrastructure, public transport, and more gentrification in at least some of the neighborhoods.

Central part of Kaunas is becoming really cozy place, sometimes gets better feeling than capital Vilnius:










---
Every East European country had gopniks. Saying this now in past tense. Today's youth that resemble gopniks (like walking with tracksuits) are not gopniks, they are rather "locals with character", some call them "_rayonski_" or for you to understand "_rayoners_" since commieblock neighorhoods are called "rayon" or "mikrorayon". It is subdivision of oblast in many Post-Soviet countries, also used for inner city districts. They will likely not act like criminals to you like true gopniks, they won't stole your stuff, they don't even say to you anything.

For me "gopnik" is a new term I found out in early-mid 2010s, for the first time I learned is widespread International thing. Locally we call them _forsai _(sounds similar to English force), _marozai (_likely derived from Russian_ moroz_ - cold_)_, less popular are _urlaganai (_similar to word_ uraganas - _hurricane, but probably is coincidental similarity, accidentally I've found out Tatar_ urlagan _meaning "stoled"_)._


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## PovilD

andken said:


> There is. There is research showing that the parts of the former German Partition has better educational outcomes than the former Russian Partition to this day, it's easy to see the partitions and the Oder-Neisse line territories on election maps too:
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1282424285475340290


I think these are my favorite maps of Europe


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## geogregor

italystf said:


> LOL, the black Adidas tracksuit with vertical white stripes has become the most common stereotype of Slavic people around the world, like the bowler hat and umbrella for the Brits. It's related to 1980 Moscow olimpics.


But they are not unique to the Slavic world. Have you ever seen British "chavs"? They are basically the same thing. Well, maybe they more often wear grey tracksuits than their Slavic equivalents


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## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> As for Poland, afaik, there are few areas that didn't belonged to Congress Poland (like around and South of Bialystok) and even has some Belarussian minority areas.
> Noticeable thing in those areas are smaller houses, indicating poorer lifelihoods. Not many talks about this, but probably there is still some legacy here from those times.


The ex-German areas happen to have very specific small brick single-storey countryside houses with quite tall red tiled roofs, not seen in the rest of the country.



















This one has modern roof but it's the same style:











When those houses were built, the rest of the current Poland was still building houses mainly out of wood, and only very few of those wooden houses have remained until the current times; they got replaced with more modern (though also much more generic and uninterested architecturally) houses under the communist regime, also more suited for the multi-generation families that often lived in them. In the countryside they were often roofed with asbestos so called "eternite", now often replaced with metal (in theory, eternite should be replaced with something else due to its carcinogenic properties, though while untouched, it's safe). Or with roofing felt. Those roof tiles were a too expensive, too luxurious material for the poor Polish countryside.

An old wooden house, though roofed with felt:










And a house from central Poland that looks 60s, probably extended in 70s or 80s, roofed with eternite:










Kinda similar to those on ex-German lands, but at the same time – clearly different.

This one looks 80s:










And again an old wooden one – there are very few of those remaining over here:










1970s style:










Power line poles in the countryside often have special platforms on them for stork nests:










Storks like setting nests on power poles, and the platforms are to protect the storks from live wires from getting electrocuted, and the lines from getting shorted by those birds.


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## RipleyLV

PovilD said:


> Central part of Kaunas is becoming really cozy place, sometimes gets better feeling than capital Vilnius:
> View attachment 3043621


What is going on in this picture?


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## geogregor

RipleyLV said:


> What is going on in this picture?


Game of chicken


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## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> But they are not unique to the Slavic world. Have you ever seen British "chavs"? They are basically the same thing.


Do they also squat and chew sunflower seeds? 

I've seen too many Bald & Bankrupt videos.


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## Džiugas

PovilD said:


> I was thinking how comparable is Kaunas-Vilnius relation in Lithuania and Łódź-Warsaw relation in Poland.
> I find there are astonishingly many similarities.


Lodz is more like Šiauliai for Poland.


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## DanielFigFoz

ChrisZwolle said:


> Do they also squat and chew sunflower seeds?
> 
> I've seen too many Bald & Bankrupt videos.


They are good videos, my parents quite enjoy them too.


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## PovilD

RipleyLV said:


> What is going on in this picture?


I thought you don't notice this, but oh well... I was so lazy, so I put some random pics from the category of Polish "Stop Cham", first pics from Google Images when I searched for few favorite streets of Kaunas.


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## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> The ex-German areas happen to have very specific small brick single-storey countryside houses with quite tall red tiled roofs, not seen in the rest of the country.
> 
> View attachment 3043844
> 
> 
> View attachment 3043866
> 
> 
> This one has modern roof but it's the same style:
> 
> View attachment 3043877
> 
> 
> 
> When those houses were built, the rest of the current Poland was still building houses mainly out of wood, and only very few of those wooden houses have remained until the current times; they got replaced with more modern (though also much more generic and uninterested architecturally) houses under the communist regime, also more suited for the multi-generation families that often lived in them. In the countryside they were often roofed with asbestos so called "eternite", now often replaced with metal (in theory, eternite should be replaced with something else due to its carcinogenic properties, though while untouched, it's safe). Or with roofing felt. Those roof tiles were a too expensive, too luxurious material for the poor Polish countryside.
> 
> An old wooden house, though roofed with felt:
> 
> View attachment 3043903
> 
> 
> And a house from central Poland that looks 60s, probably extended in 70s or 80s, roofed with eternite:
> 
> View attachment 3043904
> 
> 
> Kinda similar to those on ex-German lands, but at the same time – clearly different.
> 
> This one looks 80s:
> 
> View attachment 3043905
> 
> 
> And again an old wooden one – there are very few of those remaining over here:
> 
> View attachment 3043906
> 
> 
> 1970s style:
> 
> View attachment 3043918
> 
> 
> Power line poles in the countryside often have special platforms on them for stork nests:
> 
> View attachment 3043922
> 
> 
> Storks like setting nests on power poles, and the platforms are to protect the storks from live wires from getting electrocuted, and the lines from getting shorted by those birds.


Wooden houses are more prominent in Lithuania.
I heard opinions this is our sense of being more Northern/Nordic  (though it's true new modern wooden houses Scandi style are also popular)
On the other hand, Soviet times made us poorer. Less good housing from 60s-80s period. I think Poland got better houses back then.


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## Mkbewe

PovilD said:


> I think Poland is like U.S. Texas  European Texas


Of all things why Texas?
Climate is totally off.
Wealth is even more off.
We have little oil, no great heards of cattle.
And less firearms per civilian than 90% of the world, 40 times less then avarage citizen of USA, 5 times less then Lithuanian.

Moral/social conservatism? Not uniform at all.

Map below shows percentage of declared catholics attending sunday mass.

No state fits really well, but my uneducated guess based on data - perhaps Ohio fits Poland much better.


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## PovilD

How Texas compares with Poland for me:

Flat
Military
More conservative than Germany and California or Sweden and New York 
Cherry on the cake would be Polish space program, no joke.


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## Džiugas

PovilD said:


> How Texas compares with Poland for me:
> 
> Flat
> Military
> More conservative than Germany and California or Sweden and New York
> Cherry on the cake would be Polish space program, no joke.


Military? Well, Lithuania even has conscription and much more soldiers per capita, and we have much more guns.
Southern Poland is by no means flat as well.


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## andken

PovilD said:


> For me, it's the opposite. Poland feels irrelevant for me everywhere West of Oder-Neisse line.


Yes. One things that Poles probably disagree with me is that Western Poland should be more integrated to Germany. ;-)



> I think Poland is like U.S. Texas  European Texas


Texas ´is complicated because it has been gaining population in the cities while losing population in rural areas. So, you have cities becoming more progressive, rural areas becoming more conservative. Poland doesn't really have large cities gaining population, maybe Warsaw, but that's it.


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## ChrisZwolle

andken said:


> So, you have cities becoming more progressive, rural areas becoming more conservative.


The real political battle, especially in the U.S. context, is neither the cities nor the rural areas, but the suburbs and exurbs, and to an extent, the smaller cities and towns. They account for most of the population and are generally more evenly split in terms of voter preferences. The cities and rural areas are often on the political extremes, with vote shares of 80-90% for either party.


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## andken

ChrisZwolle said:


> The real political battle, especially in the U.S. context, is neither the cities nor the rural areas, but the suburbs and exurbs, and to an extent, the smaller cities and towns. They account for most of the population and are generally more evenly split in terms of voter preferences. The cities and rural areas are often on the political extremes, with vote shares of 80-90% for either party.


Yes, and suburbs in places where young people and people with college degrees leaves are more conservative both politically and socially.


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## Suburbanist

Natural-cause deaths in Brazil (i.e. excluding homicides, suicide, car crashes etc) per day


Ice Climber said:


> View attachment 3051400


----------



## Sponsor

PovilD said:


> Btw, I heard sayings from wider media that Lithuania is culturally/socially like *100 years* behind of Western Europe thanks to Soviet and Tsarist occupation. It could be exaggerated comparisons, but leave a mark in my mind.


That's a progress. Since you had lagged behind Europe with christianity for like 300 years


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## PovilD

Sponsor said:


> That's a progress. Since you had lagged behind Western Europe with christianity for like 300 years


300 years lag was like 700 years ago 
I tend to think it's so long time ago it might be irrelevant. Likely to the level it is not even minor factor affecting our economic growth or even social/financial/etc. capital. What happened in last 200 years is most relevant, and most of the time we didn't had the country. Russia had Christianity in 10th century, yet we still see their activities resembling 19th century.

In terms of Western/Northern Europe, if I put how much we lag, I think not more than 50 years. This would be my most pessimistic value.
I was listening to one podcast, in terms of Swedish social policies, we are at 1960s. I would add in terms of pedestrian infrastructure, Americanist attitudes to city urbanism it's also somewhere around where Europe (or at least Sweden) was in 1960s-1970s.

It might be Denmark, Sweden and Finland could be most comparable countries for Baltics. Population size differences exist, but these are not vast. Without Soviet occupation, WWII atrocities, Stalin rule, Lithuanian population very likely be comparable with Denmark's.

As for Poland. I would think we really did lagged behind 20 years in early 2010s. Cities really felt more runned down in Lithuania than in Poland. Right now, I would give 5-10 years. I think the gap is rather closing than widening, but call me optimist  Right now, I really find moments sometimes where Poland is worse. I still remember recent protests. Cities in Lithuania are also not as runned down as in 2000s or early 2010s. Many stuff really feels like regular life in Poland that I have imagined in early 2010s.

Some stuff could really be better, especially public transport, commieblock districts, maybe few other nuances. Other than those, I can't think any. You are bigger country, comparison is not 100% fair.

Some might say, Lithuania is ahead at times, but we must put more maintenance our roads to feel clarified to say so


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## Suburbanist

PovilD said:


> 300 years lag was like 700 years ago
> I tend to think it's so long time ago it might be irrelevant. What happened in last 200 years is most relevant, and most of the time we didn't had the country. Russia had Christianity in 10th century, yet we still see their activities resembling 19th century.


Vast swaths of Brazil were virtually uninhabited just 80 years ago, with extremely sparsed indigenous occupation as well.


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## PovilD

Suburbanist said:


> Vast swaths of Brazil were virtually uninhabited just 80 years ago, with extremely sparsed indigenous occupation as well.


I think of North Scandinavia was in very similar situation in terms of Christiniaty. I think there is basically as proper life as you can expect from those places, taking into consideration Arctic climate with roads basically going dead end there.

Lithuania is in better position. I think Baltic were pagan because it was more swampy with Baltic highlands serving as a barrier. Weird considence, that also helped to save Lithuanian, Latvian, maybe also Estonian and Finnish languages too.
Now is on the crossroads. Only thing we must solve is reducing gaps of development between Russia and Western Europe (both objective, and humanitarian), no matter how unrealistic it might sound.


----------



## Mkbewe

andken said:


> Texas ´is complicated because it has been gaining population in the cities while losing population in rural areas. So, you have cities becoming more progressive, rural areas becoming more conservative. *Poland doesn't really have large cities gaining population, maybe Warsaw, but that's it.*


But our cities are slowly gaining population, at least in metro area, and rural areas are depopulating.
Polish Statistical Office is notoriously bad at counting population (natural growth/decline is reported accuratly, internal migrations are reported poorly, they are almost blind regarding international migrations), but even their data confirms it.

Regarding migration: god knows how many Poles are leaving the country anually, but also the number of working foreigners paying taxes in Poland is growing.
In 2010 - 78 600
in 2015 - 184 200
in 2020 - 725 200
in 03'2022 - 932 100

The thing is people that are leaving Poland can be from any city, town, or a village, while migrants usually prefer cities/urban areas (not just the capital).
I find it hard to believe that a city that's gaining 10, 20 or 30% apartments per decade is depopulating at the same time.


*City (without suburbs)*​*Apartments 2010*​*Apartments 2020*​*Change 2020/2010*​*Change %*​Rzeszów​65 657​89 350​23 693​36,09%​Zielona Góra​47 753​63 848​16 095​33,70%​Wrocław​272 527​351 110​78 583​28,83%​Gdańsk​190 428​242 579​52 151​27,39%​Kraków​328 016​412 512​84 496​25,76%​*Warszawa*​*850 904*​*1 020 433*​*169 529*​*19,92%*​Opole​49 876​58 778​8 902​17,85%​Siedlce​29 331​34 515​5 184​17,67%​Białystok​117 207​137 118​19 911​16,99%​Biała Podlaska​20 445​23 506​3 061​14,97%​Lublin​138 465​159 187​20 722​14,97%​Poznań​236 627​271 316​34 689​14,66%​Suwałki​23 818​27 127​3 309​13,89%​Żory​19 099​21 693​2 594​13,58%​Toruń​82 838​94 035​11 197​13,52%​Olsztyn​71 363​80 967​9 604​13,46%​Szczecin​165 191​185 868​20 677​12,52%​Kielce​78 445​87 927​9 482​12,09%​Gorzów Wielkopolski​48 811​54 381​5 570​11,41%​Koszalin​42 837​47 654​4 817​11,24%​Gdynia​105 869​117 659​11 790​11,14%​Łomża​21 924​24 262​2 338​10,66%​


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> And there are a lot of historic towns and cities, though I find Dutch architecture not particularly interesting. I find Amsterdam to be hugely overrated, maybe because it's not as exotic to me (if you're not into certain substances).


I really like Dutch and Flemish brick architecture. And general tidiness.



PovilD said:


> Btw, I heard sayings from wider media that Lithuania is culturally/socially like 100 years behind of Western Europe thanks to Soviet and Tsarist occupation. It could be exaggerated comparisons, but leave a mark in my mind.


Probably exaggerated. I worked with three Lithuanian girls here in London and I didn't notice much difference in attitudes comparing to average young person in London. Maybe it is different among those who stayed home, emigrants are often at odds with general population.



Mkbewe said:


> No state fits really well, but my uneducated guess from data perhaps Ohio fits Poland much better.


I would also say Ohio probably fits the bill the best. There is water up north (Lake Erie vs Baltic Sea), flat boring middle, a few large cities and more hilly areas in the south. Nothing extreme or spectacular, reliance on industry, not much high-tech etc. I guess average Pole would fit perfectly in Ohio, and vice versa 



andken said:


> Poland doesn't really have large cities gaining population, maybe Warsaw, but that's it.


As Mkbewe said, Polish official population statistics are completely useless. Polish statistical office (GUS) relies on people officially registering at particular address. And many people ignore that obligation, especially young ones. I was registered under my address for years after leaving for London. Many move to big metropolitan area and live there for years while still being counted in some provincial backwater.

The problem is that our statistical agency is unsure how to proceed. They count people like we were living in countries where people properly register where they live (Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, probably Netherlands) while they should start using methodology of countries like USA, UK or Ireland, where there is no official registration and statistical agencies have to compile data from multiple databases (employment, tax, medical etc.) to create image of population movements.

In reality Poland has multiple growing large metropolitan areas. Warsaw, Krakow, Lodz (yes even Lodz), Wroclaw, Poznan, Tri-City (around Gdansk) and a few second tier growing cities (Lublin, Bydgoszcz, Szczecin). Silesia is complicated case.

Poland is also suburbanizing fast.. Unfortunately this is completely unplanned and messy. It is not like in the US where the roads and infrastructure is build along planned suburbs. In Poland developers throw subdivisions without any thought or plan, often attached to some narrow country lane, at odds with the neighbors etc. Then private people throw individual homes wherever they wish. It is a fricking mess. It looks shite, cause traffic jams, is difficult to service with proper infrastructure.


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## Attus

It's a general issue in Eastern Europe, that people leaving the country don't report it to the authorities so that they are registered where they used to live several years ago. 
And another issue: the market of rental apartments is much less regulated than in Germany or the Netherlands, any many apartment owners don't make contracts,in order not to pay taxes. So you can not be registered there. Many young people have actually already left their parents' flat, but are still registered there, because they can't be registered at the rental apartment where they actually live.


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## AnelZ

Registering your place of living in Bosnia and Herzegovina when you rent is a hassle for the owners of the place as aside of the contract (which has to be verified in the municipalities office) it is required to also provide a proof of ownership of the place by the owner which many don't want to go through to get it from the responsible government office.

Over here, you can also register your place of living if you don't own it by providing a verified statement of the owner with proof of ownership by them in which the owner states that he allows for a person to registered at his place.

As said by Attus, many times people rent without contracts because if they do sign a contract the owner has to register his earning from it in that case and pay 10% tax (which is low in my opinion). Owners who do it are mostly the ones who want to do everything by the books and the one who wants to have that earning registered as in that case that earning is official and you can get higher loans and similar things.


----------



## geogregor

Attus said:


> It's a general issue in Eastern Europe, that people leaving the country don't report it to the authorities so that they are registered where they used to live several years ago.
> And another issue: the market of rental apartments is much less regulated than in Germany or the Netherlands, any many apartment owners don't make contracts,in order not to pay taxes. So you can not be registered there. Many young people have actually already left their parents' flat, but are still registered there, because they can't be registered at the rental apartment where they actually live.


In itself it shouldn't be a problem. Many countries don't have registration at all (as I mentioned, USA, UK, Ireland) and they can still count/estimate population. The problem is laziness of Polish statistical authority. The effect is that population of our metropolitan areas is underestimated and that of rural areas overestimated.

Part of the reason might be that such situation actually suits the current ruling party as it gives more votes and subsides (often calculated accordingly to official population), to regions which support them rather than to the cities, which are often hostile.


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> Probably exaggerated. I worked with three Lithuanian girls here in London and I didn't notice much difference in attitudes comparing to average young person in London. Maybe it is different among those who stayed home, emigrants are often at odds with general population.


I guess everything for them East of Iron Curtain could be 50-100 years behind. Russia maybe even 200-300 years in that case.

For young people of Lithuania. I see there are few types. Conservatives (life is though, you must fight for it), Liberals (relax, buy some coffee, add some English words when speaking), maybe few Gopnik-like relics (I weak speak English, go to my garage) 



> As Mkbewe said, Polish official population statistics are completely useless. Polish statistical office (GUS) relies on people officially registering at particular address. And many people ignore that obligation, especially young ones. I was registered under my address for years after leaving for London. Many move to big metropolitan area and live there for years while still being counted in some provincial backwater.
> 
> The problem is that our statistical agency is unsure how to proceed. They count people like we were living in countries where people properly register where they live (Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, probably Netherlands) while they should start using methodology of countries like USA, UK or Ireland, where there is no official registration and statistical agencies have to compile data from multiple databases (employment, tax, medical etc.) to create image of population movements.
> 
> In reality Poland has multiple growing large metropolitan areas. Warsaw, Krakow, Lodz (yes even Lodz), Wroclaw, Poznan, Tri-City (around Gdansk) and a few second tier growing cities (Lublin, Bydgoszcz, Szczecin). Silesia is complicated case.
> 
> Poland is also suburbanizing fast.. Unfortunately this is completely unplanned and messy. It is not like in the US where the roads and infrastructure is build along planned suburbs. In Poland developers throw subdivisions without any thought or plan, often attached to some narrow country lane, at odds with the neighbors etc. Then private people throw individual homes wherever they wish. It is a fricking mess. It looks shite, cause traffic jams, is difficult to service with proper infrastructure.


I heard Polish population stats might be wrong, probably less than official 39m. Lithuania or Latvia saw big drop in population, while Poland stayed at stable population despite being also known for big emigration. Of course, now with Ukrainians moving to Poland, I guess situation might be closer to 39m, but probably not exceeding that number.

It probably has to do with registration address. Lithuania obliges you to pay health insurance if you live in Lithuania. If you move abroad for months and you can receive your insurance in Western European country, most people don't see the need to pay to Lithuanian health insurance.

As for internal migration. I think situation is pretty much the same. It could be that in more rural areas there are mostly pensioners, while in places like Vilnius there are more people than official population. Could be something like 600-700k, while official population is smth 550k. I guess situation might be similar in Kaunas, maybe slightly less surplus, don't remember stats right now.
Not sure about Klaipėda region, but it could also be more people than official population due to attractiveness of the sea.

---

Btw, yeah suburbization is sometimes s**t. I really hate American type of suburbization. It is expensive method of building cities, lots of asphalt, increases distances, it drains budgets, and potentially producing lots of nimbys. It must to be done healthy, not create deserts of suburbia without nothing much to do. East European suburbization is even worse type. When people build their houses basically in the middle of the field, accessible only by dirt track. I think Lithuania is worse here in terms of suburbization and environment. Big districts of dirt tracks and new housing.
Fyi: Google Maps


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## baczek333

Believe me, what you posted would be considered a well-planed suburb in Poland, you can clearly see some street plan there, maybe not a perfect grid but there is some order at least and most important - the land is used efficiently and the houses occupy more or less each part of the land since I believe it wasn't previously divided into dozens of lots each of them belonging to a different owner (farmer). Here in Poland an average new suburb looks like this:









Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.com





You can see the houses are built following the old farmland structure, they form long rows of houses separated by empty lots - that's where the farmer didn't agree to sell his land to the developer. There is no plan of any kind, the real estate developer managed to buy a long stripe of land and filled it with a row of houses, the row isn't properly connected to other rows (so the streets don't form a street plan), which makes it a nightmare for commuting because if you live at the end of the "internal road" which is only connected to the main road from one side you'll have to drive along the whole inner road to reach the main road as the other road from the other side is not connected to your internal road.

We sometimes say in Poland that lack of forced collectivization in the communist era, which we believed was initially a good thing, turned out to be a bad thing in the modern times as it heavily damages our urban planning. In other Eastern European countries you don't have such a big problem with land fragmentation.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Problem of Poland is that so much of it was destroyed by multiple armies moving back and forth across our country in the last 100 years.


It's not even the armies. Before WW2 Poland was so poor that the architecture from that times didn't meet any civilized living standards. It had to be replaced. And it happened so that it took place under communist regime, when we weren't too rich either, and everything had to be, literally, the same for everyone. And as basic as possible, because otherwise you were a "rotten capitalist".



andken said:


> it has very few cities with population above one million


Talking about literal cities, it has exactly one such city xD

Unless you mean cities together with the surrounding urban areas.



Mkbewe said:


> Map below shows percentage of declared catholics attending sunday mass.
> 
> No state fits really well, but my uneducated guess based on data - perhaps Ohio fits Poland much better.


Though I am not sure if attending the Mass on Sundays is a good indicator of religiosity of people.



andken said:


> Texas ´is complicated because it has been gaining population in the cities while losing population in rural areas. So, you have cities becoming more progressive, rural areas becoming more conservative. Poland doesn't really have large cities gaining population, maybe Warsaw, but that's it.


Maybe you should look at urban areas instead of cities. If cities are not gaining population, it's solely due to urban sprawl. There are massive numbers of young people moving from rural areas (and small towns not in urban areas) to cities in Poland.

Small towns and rural areas simply offer no jobs other than working on a farm, in local public administration or in local schools.



geogregor said:


> In itself it shouldn't be a problem. Many countries don't have registration at all (as I mentioned, USA, UK, Ireland) and they can still count/estimate population. The problem is laziness of Polish statistical authority. The effect is that population of our metropolitan areas is underestimated and that of rural areas overestimated.


One problem here might be that some years ago Polish government had a plan of getting rid of this obligatory registration – and it was started (they de-penalized failing to register where you live) but it was stopped midway by the change of government you probably know well about. The more conservative government wasn't really for further changing those rules, so now we are in a limbo. There still is a legal obligation to register, but there are no legal consequences for not doing that. So the public administration has full rights to assume that you live in the place where you're registered (after all, it's your legal obligation, isn't it?) – but actually those data have nothing to do with the reality.

Additionally, apart from this general administrative registration of the place of living (what we call in Polish "zameldowanie"), declaration of the place of living for tax purposes is a completely separate thing. And this one is something more and more municipalities, cities etc. think about, and they start trying to incentivize people to actually declare the place where you actually live – because then the given city actually gets a part of your income tax. But nobody thinks about "zameldowanie", because this is something which has almost no meaning – other than statistics.

By the way, many people think that "zameldowanie" actually gives you right to live in the specific apartment, to do it forever, and that it requires a permission from the landlord. Which is a complete BS, it has nothing to do with that and it doesn't require any extra permission; it's enough you have a rental contract (or you own the apartment). Sometimes apartment owners ask how they can de-register ("wymeldować") a tenant who left the apartment or who is not paying the rent. Thinking that it would make them no longer permitted to use the apartment, or something like that. There is much misinformation about it.


----------



## PovilD

There are examples built as a grid. My notion was it is quite big suburbia, too much empty space. I agree my example is not as bad. Chances for new community centres, kindergartens, maybe evens schools are here.

In terms of similar to Poland's example I can also find few examples, but these are not big in size:








Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.com





...but potential end result here with proposed streets. Some connections do exist:










Not sure what you would think about this:








Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.com





Vilnius suburbia sometimes feels quite chaotic:








Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.com












Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.com





Municipalities themselves assign street names for new districts. It is very good if it's at least grid plan or connectivity with other streets. Bad thing is size, and gravel roads that are expensive to maintain as good asphalt roads.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> The ex-German areas happen to have very specific small brick single-storey countryside houses with quite tall red tiled roofs, not seen in the rest of the country.
> 
> View attachment 3043844


Our equivavalent of German part is Klaipėda (Memel) region.
These bricks or at least the color of the houses is the thing that asociate me with German influence in the region.

Klaipėda University comes to mind. The bricks, the roof feels specific to Klaipėda region:









Some random houses I have found in Šilutė. Has the same roof as in your picture:









This is some nice example from Google Street View:








Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.com





Random town Viešvilė:








Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.com





If you ask me, the rest of Lithuanian smaller town central parts often has dull houses. Jurbarkas, it was part of Russian empire like most of Lithuania:








Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.com





Šakiai:








Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.com


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> Some random houses I have found in Šilutė. Has the same roof as in your picture:


But this is urban architecture, and what I meant there was rural one...

But indeed those buildings look German.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> But this is urban architecture, and what I meant there was rural one...
> 
> But indeed those buildings look German.


More rural village/town near Šilutė.
The amount of red roofs feels unusual for the rest of Lithuania:








Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.com





Typical Lithuanian village house (left) vs. potentially German heritage house (right), but it's just my guess:


----------



## PovilD

Rokiškis in Northeast Lithuania has astonishingly German feel architecture. It was never been part of German influenced industrial Russian governorates (like Courland) that now consists of Latvia, or never been part of Germany itself. It was part of Kaunas governorate that was mostly Lithuanian. Ok, Rokiškis is close to Latvian border (or Courland governorate prior WWI), and most architecture is from 19th century, but still interesting to see Rokiškis links with Latvia. Relatively few towns have such type of noticable architecture.
















Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.com






















Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.com





Church in the town 15 km outside of Rokiškis:









Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.com





Latvia from Middle Ages was seen as some German-influenced region, even under Russian empire rule. Only after 1945, it became Latvian majority-Russian minority country with only history of German influence. This brown brick architecture also associates with Latvia for me.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

PovilD said:


> I think of North Scandinavia was in very similar situation in terms of Christiniaty. I think there is basically as proper life as you can expect from those places, taking into consideration Arctic climate with roads basically going dead end there.


Not sure what you mean with "roads going dead end", but the Sami population became mostly Christian during the 18th century, partly through quite brutal means / witch hunts. The Scandinavian population of Northern Scandinavia had mostly been Christianized by the early 11th century.


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## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Not sure what you mean with "roads going dead end"...


Highways in North Scandinavia don't end (and never did ended) with regular ferries to Canada/Alaska. They just end. You can just take another road to go back. Sorry if I sounded rough.



> but the Sami population became mostly Christian during the 18th century, partly through quite brutal means / witch hunts.


It was brutal here as well, if you heard about Northern Crusades and stuff.


----------



## Kpc21

Apart from the governmental "anti-inflation shield" (that, for example, involves decreasing the VAT to 0% on some products), the Biedronka supermarket chain introduced their own. You can see here, how it works 



sanders82 said:


>


Before the Biedronka shield, the milk cost 2.56. Now it costs 2.99


----------



## PovilD

We had 21% VAT, now decreased to 9% VAT.

21% VAT was said to be "temporary" as 2009 crisis measure (we were hit really hard back then).
It remained in tact until recently. Sb can fix me if I wrong.

I doubt we will have 0% VAT. Does any country apart from Poland has such measure? Is this rather populist measure?


----------



## Stuu

PovilD said:


> We had 21% VAT, now decreased to 9% VAT.
> 
> 21% VAT was said to be "temporary" as 2009 crisis measure (we were hit really hard back then).
> It remained in tact until recently. Sb can fix me if I wrong.
> 
> I doubt we will have 0% VAT. Does any country apart from Poland has such measure? Is this rather populist measure?


Strictly EU members are not allowed to have a 0% rate of VAT. This was used as an argument for brexit... it's to try and avoid country's competing for retail sales, especially in border areas. Presumably Poland is either a) claiming that the government is funding the VAT from other taxation or b) not caring about EU rules


----------



## radamfi

PovilD said:


> We had 21% VAT, now decreased to 9% VAT.


Presumably this only applies to certain products/services (the "reduced rate") as the standard VAT rate in the EU can't go below 15%. Luxembourg has the lowest standard rate in the EU at 17%. The rate in Switzerland is 7.7%.


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## volodaaaa

PovilD said:


> We had 21% VAT, now decreased to 9% VAT.
> 
> 21% VAT was said to be "temporary" as 2009 crisis measure (we were hit really hard back then).
> It remained in tact until recently. Sb can fix me if I wrong.
> 
> I doubt we will have 0% VAT. Does any country apart from Poland has such measure? Is this rather populist measure?


I do not think that a customer benefits from the decreased VAT in the long term. The price will converge to remain the same before the VAT reduction. Only the vendor/service provider will send less money to the state. And for the VAT registered companies in B2B relationships as the VAT deduction gets smaller.

I own a micro-company with my wife, we are registered for VAT, and it is much better to do a business with another VAT registered venture. I did not raise prices when I changed from a non-VAT-registered company to VAT-registered because I saved money from a VAT deduction.

A good example is business trips via Bolt or other similar services. You never know if the provider of a Bolt service is VAT-registered or not before boarding. If I make a 4 € journey with a VAT-registered, my company's costs are 3,33 € while 0,67 is VAT I can deduct. If the provider is not, the costs are 4 €.


----------



## Attus

Cherry blossom in Bonn. 








Kirschblüte 2022


Kirschblüte in Bonn, Breite Straße und Heerstraße




flickr.com


----------



## cinxxx

Greetings from Toulouse 🇫🇷


----------



## bogdymol

Greetings from Valencia 

No photos as I just arrived. First flight today for 9-month old bogdymol jr.


----------



## volodaaaa

bogdymol said:


> Greetings from Valencia
> 
> No photos as I just arrived. First flight today for 9-month old bogdymol jr.


Did he you survive? 🤣 😁


----------



## bogdymol

Yes, we all did. Actually he behaved much better than I thought. No problems whatsoever. 

When we got to the apartment we booked and he could roam freely after many hours in lap or baby stroller or car seat, he was more than happy. 

Now


----------



## ChrisZwolle

cinxxx said:


> Greetings from Toulouse 🇫🇷





bogdymol said:


> Greetings from Valencia


Travel season has officially started! 

I took a trip myself, I drove from the Netherlands through Germany into Northeastern France. I visited the new(ish) High Mosel Bridge to take photos from various vantage points. Also drove the new Strasbourg bypass.


----------



## keber

I'm at about 3000 km of total planned travel, currently exploring south Spain. Considering some lower back pains I need a car with more comfy seats. Years are adding up.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

How is the availability of lactose-free products in your country? I'm one of roughly 1 in 4 Estonians who suffers from lactose intolerance and the market for lactose-free products has been booming for the last 5 years or so. When I first got "diagnosed" in 2015ish there was barely anything available but nowadays I can get lactose-free milk and butter even from corner-shops over here. This is largely thanks to Finland where the variety of lactose-free products is huge and it has trickled over to some extent. However, I haven't noticed such a wide variety of lactose-free products elsewhere in Europe, even though the prevalence of lactore-intolerancy is supposedly much higher in Western and Southern Europe than in is in Northern Europe. Why is that so?


----------



## bogdymol

I know there are lactose free products in supermarkets in Austria and Romania, I have seen them on the shelves, but I don’t know how diverse is the range as luckily nobody in my family has is lactose-intolerant.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Travel season has officially started!


Yes, Easter Weekend is when it starts for many folks. I myself avoid travelling in such times. Airports are busy, roads are busy etc. 

Instead I went to France two weeks ago 

This weekend I mostly enjoy London in glorious weather:

20220415_133520 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


20220415_151704 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> Yes, Easter Weekend is when it starts for many folks. I myself avoid travelling in such times. Airports are busy, roads are busy etc.


Yes you have to pick your travel times. That's why I avoided going on Friday, as most people were at their destination on Saturday so there was not a lot of traffic on the road, I did not have a single traffic jam despite cruising through the entire Rhine-Ruhr Area. A3 at Cologne was fairly packed though. I also drove A48-A1 to Saarbrücken, where there was almost no traffic at all.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes you have to pick your travel times. That's why I avoided going on Friday, as most people were at their destination on Saturday so there was not a lot of traffic on the road, I did not have a single traffic jam despite cruising through the entire Rhine-Ruhr Area. A3 at Cologne was fairly packed though. I also drove A48-A1 to Saarbrücken, where there was almost no traffic at all.


Sure, with careful planning you can usually avoid the worst bottlenecks, even if it is more difficult with the UK as you always have to pass an airport or a port when heading for the continent.

Still, prices of accommodation, flights, ferries etc. spike at such long weekends and I don't like paying over the odds. 

Not having children allows for greater flexibility as we don't have to stick to schools breaks.


----------



## Slagathor

Rebasepoiss said:


> How is the availability of lactose-free products in your country? I'm one of roughly 1 in 4 Estonians who suffers from lactose intolerance and the market for lactose-free products has been booming for the last 5 years or so. When I first got "diagnosed" in 2015ish there was barely anything available but nowadays I can get lactose-free milk and butter even from corner-shops over here. This is largely thanks to Finland where the variety of lactose-free products is huge and it has trickled over to some extent. However, I haven't noticed such a wide variety of lactose-free products elsewhere in Europe, even though the prevalence of lactore-intolerancy is supposedly much higher in Western and Southern Europe than in is in Northern Europe. Why is that so?


Supermarkets are loaded with non-dairy products in the Netherlands. You can get soy, hazelnut, almond and all kinds of other milks and yogurts in many kinds of flavors. 

There are some non-dairy cheeses as well; but that type of product remains problematic. They often simply don't taste very good, so they're not popular. As a result, the selection in the store is typically small. 

Restaurants are a very different situation. The Netherlands is a dairy country; we love our milk and cheese (on average). So if you go out for dinner, you really have to be super clear that you can't have dairy in your food.

I once went to a restaurant with a lactose intolerant friend. He told them he was lactose intolerant but the dish he'd ordered had cream in it. The waiter hadn't realized, he just thought lactose intolerant meant "no milk" but, for some reason, he hadn't done the math on where cream comes from.  This is very common in the Netherlands: lactose intolerance is rare here, people don't know much about it. I'd say peanut allergies are much more commonly understood.


----------



## radamfi

Searching for 'lactose free' on www.tesco.com yields 14 items and 'dairy free' gives you 172 items. However, searching for 'lactose free cheese' gives you 64 items, as many cheeses are not explicitly advertised as lactose free even though they are, for example Leerdammer and Babybel.


----------



## Mkbewe

@*Rebasepoiss*


> How is the availability of lactose-free products in your country?


There is cow milk lactose-free variant and there is "milk" made out of plants.
I've spotted coconut, soya, almound or sesame variants for vegans and other "misfits". It's probably more expensive, I can check that next time I go shopping.
In cities it's not a problem to buy that stuff. In the countyside you probably have to shop online or drive to supermarket/discount store.


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> Searching for 'lactose free' on www.tesco.com yields 14 items and 'dairy free' gives you 172 items. However, searching for 'lactose free cheese' gives you 64 items, as many cheeses are not explicitly advertised as lactose free even though they are, for example Leerdammer and Babybel.


Smart investigating! I like it. 

Selecting the "lactose free" option in the "dairy and eggs" section gives me 260 products on Albert Heijn's website.

In the "cheese" section, the "lactose free" option produces an astonishing 248 results. I had no idea regular cheese could be lactose free, so I learned something today.  I guess the vegans had me convinced that only fakey cheeses were lactose free.


----------



## radamfi

Easter Sunday is the one Sunday that large stores in England and Wales have to close. On most Sundays they are allowed to open for 6 hours, typically 10:00 to 16:00 or 11:00 to 17:00. That means people end up going to small shops instead. It's a bit silly really as, for example, Tesco have both large and small stores, so they can still make money at their small stores. They also do home delivery on Easter Sunday as normal, and home delivery can be received from 06:00 to 23:00, so are not restricted to the 6 hour limit in store. In Scotland and Ireland (but not Northern Ireland), big Tesco stores are open on Easter Sunday as normal, and they aren't restricted to 6 hours a day on Sundays. A bit illogical as Ireland has a reputation for being religious.

In Germany and Switzerland Sunday trading is mostly 'verboten' but the fact that shops at railway stations and airports are open is a huge loophole. At the entrance to Zurich airport there is even advertising that their shops are open on Sunday, so they seem to be encouraging people to visit the airport on Sundays just for shopping. There is a full size Migros supermarket there.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Slagathor said:


> Supermarkets are loaded with non-dairy products in the Netherlands. You can get soy, hazelnut, almond and all kinds of other milks and yogurts in many kinds of flavors.
> 
> There are some non-dairy cheeses as well; but that type of product remains problematic. They often simply don't taste very good, so they're not popular. As a result, the selection in the store is typically small.
> 
> Restaurants are a very different situation. The Netherlands is a dairy country; we love our milk and cheese (on average). So if you go out for dinner, you really have to be super clear that you can't have dairy in your food.
> 
> I once went to a restaurant with a lactose intolerant friend. He told them he was lactose intolerant but the dish he'd ordered had cream in it. The waiter hadn't realized, he just thought lactose intolerant meant "no milk" but, for some reason, he hadn't done the math on where cream comes from.  This is very common in the Netherlands: lactose intolerance is rare here, people don't know much about it. I'd say peanut allergies are much more commonly understood.


What I meant by lactose-free products was dairy products that are lactose free i.e. they're still made from cow's milk but the lactose has been removed and/or it's been split into glucose and galactose already in the processing plant. In the vast majority of products there is no difference in taste. It's most noticeable with milk which tastes a bit sweeter.

Since dairy products are a staple food in Estonia as well, there is a big-enough market for lactose-free dairy products to make producing them profitable. Another issue is that lactose intolerancy is widely underdiagnosed. Most people just don't know to connect the dots between digestive issues and eating particular foods. A friend of mine found out he's intolerant after I found out and described the symptoms to him.

In my everyday life I don't really have to make any sacrifices in my diet since pretty much everything is available in lactose-free form. But eating out and especially travelling can be tricky sometimes. There are lactase tablets available which contain the enzyme lactase which breaks down lactose. They help a bit but it's not perfect. Most cheeses are fine but the worst offenders are milk, cream and ice-cream.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> I doubt we will have 0% VAT. Does any country apart from Poland has such measure? Is this rather populist measure?


It's only selected food products that got 0% VAT. And as far as I understood, our government got an EU consent for that.

But indeed government uses it as propaganda, e.g. all stores got obliged to display info about this VAT decrease near the counter.



Stuu said:


> it's to try and avoid country's competing for retail sales, especially in border areas


It has always happened anyway xD

Germans coming to Poland for cheaper products, Poles coming to Germany for higher quality products (or with better quality-to-price ratio).



volodaaaa said:


> The price will converge to remain the same before the VAT reduction.


This is what happened in Poland 



Rebasepoiss said:


> How is the availability of lactose-free products in your country? I'm one of roughly 1 in 4 Estonians who suffers from lactose intolerance and the market for lactose-free products has been booming for the last 5 years or so. When I first got "diagnosed" in 2015ish there was barely anything available but nowadays I can get lactose-free milk and butter even from corner-shops over here. This is largely thanks to Finland where the variety of lactose-free products is huge and it has trickled over to some extent. However, I haven't noticed such a wide variety of lactose-free products elsewhere in Europe, even though the prevalence of lactore-intolerancy is supposedly much higher in Western and Southern Europe than in is in Northern Europe. Why is that so?


I am sometimes buying lactose-free milk for my cat (cats love milk but they don't digest lactose) and I'd say, the availability isn't perfect. It's mostly UHT milk available in this variant, fresh one is rare. And it's easiest to get the one with decreased fat content (like 1-2%), the full-fatty milk (3.2%) is less available in the lactose-free variant. Which is bad for me because cats need fat xD

But at least in most supermarkets you can get SOME lactose-free milk.



Mkbewe said:


> There is cow milk lactose-free variant and there is "milk" made out of plants.
> I've spotted coconut, soya, almound or sesame variants for vegans and other "misfits". It's probably more expensive, I can check that next time I go shopping.
> In cities it's not a problem to buy that stuff. In the countyside you probably have to shop online or drive to supermarket/discount store.


Yeah, the vegan milk replacements are available too, and especially recently they started getting popular. But I won't buy vegan "milk" for my cat...



Rebasepoiss said:


> There are lactase tablets available which contain the enzyme lactase which breaks down lactose. They help a bit but it's not perfect. Most cheeses are fine but the worst offenders are milk, cream and ice-cream.


From what I've heard, yogourt is also safe for those lactose-intolerant. Or for cats


----------



## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> How is the availability of lactose-free products in your country? I'm one of roughly 1 in 4 Estonians who suffers from lactose intolerance and the market for lactose-free products has been booming for the last 5 years or so. When I first got "diagnosed" in 2015ish there was barely anything available but nowadays I can get lactose-free milk and butter even from corner-shops over here. This is largely thanks to Finland where the variety of lactose-free products is huge and it has trickled over to some extent. However, I haven't noticed such a wide variety of lactose-free products elsewhere in Europe, even though the prevalence of lactore-intolerancy is supposedly much higher in Western and Southern Europe than in is in Northern Europe. Why is that so?


Because lactose intolerance is widespread elsewhere in Europe, the market share of milk as an everyday drink is smaller there? Finland is a milk-country, and because 20% of the population is intolerant, there is a big demand for suitable products.

It is true that the milk shelf in a Finnish supermarket is pretty large nowadays. There are variations in fat (full 3.5-4.5%, light 1.5%, lighter 1.0%, and fat-free 0%), lactose (standard, low-lactose,lactose-free), added D vitamine or not, organic or not, ethical cows or not, at almost all possible combinations.


----------



## x-type

Rebasepoiss said:


> How is the availability of lactose-free products in your country? I'm one of roughly 1 in 4 Estonians who suffers from lactose intolerance and the market for lactose-free products has been booming for the last 5 years or so. When I first got "diagnosed" in 2015ish there was barely anything available but nowadays I can get lactose-free milk and butter even from corner-shops over here. This is largely thanks to Finland where the variety of lactose-free products is huge and it has trickled over to some extent. However, I haven't noticed such a wide variety of lactose-free products elsewhere in Europe, even though the prevalence of lactore-intolerancy is supposedly much higher in Western and Southern Europe than in is in Northern Europe. Why is that so?


1 of 4?? I thought that lactose intolerance was completely absent in nordic countries (unlike eastern Asia, where almost everyone should be lactose intolerant)


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Travel season has officially started!
> 
> I took a trip myself, I drove from the Netherlands through Germany into Northeastern France. I visited the new(ish) High Mosel Bridge to take photos from various vantage points. Also drove the new Strasbourg bypass.


I have opened it a month ago, to PL-UA border (not the happiest occasion transfering refugees, so no photos), and used occasion to clinch new motorways in SK and H.


----------



## radamfi

We used to get free milk at school when I was very young. It was famously abolished by Thatcher a few years before I was born (so she became known as the 'milk snatcher') but my local authority still funded free milk from other sources. The implication here is that giving milk to children is very important, yet in the context of much of the world's population being lactose intolerant, surely that argument is somewhat flawed? There was already a huge immigrant population from the Indian subcontinent by then, so I wonder whether milk was given to children with that background? I went to a Catholic school so had no classmates from that community even though I grew up in an area with a substantial population with a Pakistani background. Indeed, many parents in my area preferred to send their children to my school to avoid their children having to go to school with Muslims.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't drink milk. Some argue that milk is something for infants and not adults, because that's how it works in nature. They say that milk was promoted in the aftermath of World War II to get undernourished people quickly back to a normal physique, by the time that was achieved a huge industry around milk was created and it was marketed as an everyday drink. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of milk.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't drink milk. Some argue that milk is something for infants and not adults, because that's how it works in nature. They say that milk was promoted in the aftermath of World War II to get undernourished people quickly back to a normal physique, by the time that was achieved a huge industry around milk was created and it was marketed as an everyday drink. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of milk.


Does that mean you don't eat breakfast cereals? I don't drink milk either and I even eat breakfast cereal without milk. However, I occasionally make pancakes which uses milk.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't drink milk. Some argue that milk is something for infants and not adults, because that's how it works in nature. They say that milk was promoted in the aftermath of World War II to get undernourished people quickly back to a normal physique, by the time that was achieved a huge industry around milk was created and it was marketed as an everyday drink. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of milk.


I agree with you.... but... I frickin' love the taste of milk. Sadly.


----------



## bogdymol

As a pure coincidence, I am reading this while eating milk with cereals. Delicious.


----------



## PovilD

I also have this thinking that drinking milk is weird for non-infant. I consider that huge part of the humanity is lactose intolerant, and it's almost like brown eyes vs. blue eyes. Btw, both brown eyes and lactose intolerance are said to be _normal. _It's not normal to have blue eyes or you to be lactose tolerant.

I avoid drinking pure milk, though I did it more during childhood (common combination was cowmilk with honey or just pure cowmilk, usually my family is/was buying 2.5% fat milk). I wasn't even aware of the fact back then, that there is actually population-wide lactose intolerance in the World. I knew people who became lactose intolerant from some disease/illness. I thought they were unlucky, like getting diabetes and you need to avoid sweet foods.

Despite all this, I'm still quite addicted to consuming milk products. Milk chocolate, whipped cream, milk shakes, ice cream, cheese on pizza, hamburger, even kebab. Sometimes I eat cereals with milk too, not everyday but when I decide to do it.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

x-type said:


> 1 of 4?? I thought that lactose intolerance was completely absent in nordic countries (unlike eastern Asia, where almost everyone should be lactose intolerant)


It is surprisingly high indeed. Most sources I've found indicate that in Estonia it's between 20-30%, in Finland it's a bit below 20% but in Sweden it drops to 6%, for example. In Italy it's a whopping 60%.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> I don't drink milk. Some argue that milk is something for infants and not adults, because that's how it works in nature. They say that milk was promoted in the aftermath of World War II to get undernourished people quickly back to a normal physique, by the time that was achieved a huge industry around milk was created and it was marketed as an everyday drink. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of milk.


I haven't been drinking milk in decades. I buy perhaps five liters a milk a year for my family of two adults, and every drop is for cooking. When kids come for a visit, then I buy a suitable amount for their consumption. Other milk-based products, like yoghurt, ice cream, cream for cooking, quark, crème frâiche, cheese etc are ok.


----------



## Attus

I made a single day trip today and visited Utrecht. Sunday is OK, because many people travelled for 4 days or even longer (Thursday was a normal working day, but our office building was almost empty...), so today the motorways were relaxed. 
I like Kibbeling a lot, but I always think about if I'd order it. Because I know, the sales assistant will ask which sauce I want and I have no idea. Where I ate Kibbeling today, they hade more approx. twenty different sauces.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Milk for adults certainly did not start with World War II in Scandinavia, it has basically been staple food for millenia, which is probably why lactose intolerance is so low, I believe 2-3 % in Norway. But it is increasing due to immigration.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> I thought they were unlucky, like getting diabetes and you need to avoid sweet foods.


From what I understand, having diabetes requires you to control your sugar level manually by yourself, as the automatic mechanism for that that is in your organism, is broken. This means that in certain situations you actually have to eat something sweet – if your sugar level is too low. In general, diabetes means that you cannot eat whatever you want, instead you have to control it strictly.

In my junior high school there was one girl who had diabetes – for medical reasons she was allowed to consume food during the classes, and for cases when her sugar level dropped too low, she had a bottle of juice normally intended for babies  Something like this:










Regarding milk, I simply don't like it, I suppose I'd vomit when forced to drink some milk. Things like yogourt, cream, cheese etc. are OK, but not just milk. I am not lactose intolerant, I just don't tolerate its taste...

But I also heard theories that adults actually shouldn't drink any milk, that it's unhealthy. And that if one drinks it, it should at least be fresh milk and not UHT one.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Boiled potato as part of the dinner, and milk for every other meal. That is the Norwegian way ;-) (And I could not have it otherwise ;-) )


----------



## radamfi

The NHS website strongly recommends milk and dairy for children and even for adults

"Milk and dairy foods are good sources of nutrients, so do not cut them out of your or your child's diet without first speaking to a GP or dietitian."









Dairy and alternatives in your diet


Read more about milk and dairy foods such as cheese and yoghurt, which are good sources of protein and calcium. But they can be high in saturated fat, so it's important to make healthy choices.




www.nhs.uk


----------



## x-type

I am huge milk fan. I can drink it everywhen with everything. The best combo is death for health - Nutella, white bread and ice cold milk. Yummy.
I am sorry for people who suffer lactose intolerance, but there is one thing happening - there is huge increase of them, just like gluten intolerance. Very similar story of 21st century.


----------



## radamfi

Until about 30 years ago it was common in the UK and Ireland to have your milk delivered by low speed electric vehicles (known as 'milk floats') very early in the morning, but then people started buying milk at supermarkets. It was a common joke that people delivering milk (nearly always men, so they were 'milkmen') had lots of affairs with women at home. There is a famous episode of a comedy show set in Ireland where the babies in the village all looked like the milkman so the milkman got sacked. So the milkman decided to take revenge on the new milkman (a priest) by putting a bomb under the milk float which would go off when it went under 4 mph (like in the film Speed)


----------



## Slagathor

Attus said:


> I made a single day trip today and visited Utrecht. Sunday is OK, because many people travelled for 4 days or even longer (Thursday was a normal working day, but our office building was almost empty...), so today the motorways were relaxed.
> I like Kibbeling a lot, but I always think about if I'd order it. Because I know, the sales assistant will ask which sauce I want and I have no idea. Where I ate Kibbeling today, they hade more approx. twenty different sauces.


Truffle-garlic sauce for me. 

I didn't realize it was common in Utrecht, it being an inland town. It's a staple food on the coast though.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> Until about 30 years ago it was common in the UK and Ireland to have your milk delivered by low speed electric vehicles (known as 'milk floats') very early in the morning, but then people started buying milk at supermarkets. It was a common joke that people delivering milk (nearly always men, so they were 'milkmen') had lots of affairs with women at home. There is a famous episode of a comedy show set in Ireland where the babies in the village all looked like the milkman so the milkman got sacked. So the milkman decided to take revenge on the new milkman (a priest) by putting a bomb under the milk float which would go off when it went under 4 mph (like in the film Speed)


Presumably there are still some electric ones? The Internet doesn't seem to know, strangely. I see the odd diesel powered one but haven't seen an electric one for decades.


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> Presumably there are still some electric ones? The Internet doesn't seem to know, strangely. I see the odd diesel powered one but haven't seen an electric one for decades.


I can't remember the last time I saw milk being delivered. I know it still exists as I've seen adverts for 'Milk & More'. According to their website, my address still takes deliveries. Considering how ubiquitous milk delivery used to be, it is amazing that they have to explain on their website what 'doorstep delivery' means!






Our Story | Milk & More







www.milkandmore.co.uk







> A swift and quiet delivery made overnight (between 11pm and 7am), straight to your doorstep or other safe outdoor space. So you can wake up and open your door to some #doorstepmagic - all your favourite treats, all ready for breakfast! Your milkman won’t ring your doorbell or disturb you in any way.


About 20 years ago, someone at work bought an electric milk float for a laugh.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> Until about 30 years ago it was common in the UK and Ireland to have your milk delivered by low speed electric vehicles (known as 'milk floats') very early in the morning, but then people started buying milk at supermarkets. It was a common joke that people delivering milk (nearly always men, so they were 'milkmen') had lots of affairs with women at home. There is a famous episode of a comedy show set in Ireland where the babies in the village all looked like the milkman so the milkman got sacked. So the milkman decided to take revenge on the new milkman (a priest) by putting a bomb under the milk float which would go off when it went under 4 mph (like in the film Speed)


Poland also used to have milk delivered by milkmen, but I have no idea what vehicles they used, the earliest I remember they weren't there any more. From what I've read, it was in multiple-use bottles, so that you had to put your empty bottle outside in the evening. And, supposedly, they were closing those bottles with disposable aluminium foil caps. I have no idea how the payment for the milk worked.

The earliest I remember – this was around 1998-1999 – we were buying milk packaged in plastic foil:










And grandma was usually making curdled milk out of it. Generally, one had to pour it into a pot or something like that after opening, for obvious reasons.

I suppose it still can be bought, but now fresh milk is usually sold in plastic bottles. UHT milk – in cartons.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

bogdymol said:


> As a pure coincidence, I am reading this while eating milk with cereals. Delicious.


I'm not sure how popular breakfast cereals are in the Netherlands. They obviously sell them in the supermarket, but it's not a gigantic shelf. We didn't eat it in my family, I usually eat two slices of bread for breakfast. Though some argue that bread isn't good either (you can find opponents for practically any food item nowadays). I had a couple of croissants and a slice of baguette with jam this morning at my hotel in Reims.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> Poland also used to have milk delivered by milkmen, but I have no idea what vehicles they used, the earliest I remember they weren't there any more. From what I've read, it was in multiple-use bottles, so that you had to put your empty bottle outside in the evening. And, supposedly, they were closing those bottles with disposable aluminium foil caps. I have no idea how the payment for the milk worked.


Yes, we used to leave the glass bottles outside as well and they were sealed using foil caps. You could leave the money in the bottles or instructions to the milkman, for example if you didn't want any for two weeks because you were going on holiday. You could pay by milk tokens instead of cash but I never saw those.


----------



## Kpc21

The motive of putting milk bottles outside in the evening appears in the closing sequence of The Flinstones. So they must have had that in the US too 







Or the Polish version, the one I remember, where Fred gets slightly more angry at Wilma xD







By the way, I found this...







Funny that there were times when a children show could be sponsored by cigarettes 

(yes, I know that Flinstones were not designed primarily as a children show, but in practice it is one, or you may say it's intended for the whole family, in terms of which it still looks weird nowadays with this cigarettes ad)


----------



## andken

Kpc21 said:


> The motive of putting milk bottles outside in the evening appears in the closing sequence of The Flinstones. So they must have had that in the US too


They had. You can see the milkmen in movies and things like that. I imagine that Southern Europe and Latin America, where there is a strong tradition of street bakeries, meant that milkmen were never really popular in these places, while carton milk killed the demand for the milkmen in North America and in Northern Europe.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm not sure how popular breakfast cereals are in the Netherlands. They obviously sell them in the supermarket, but it's not a gigantic shelf. We didn't eat it in my family, I usually eat two slices of bread for breakfast. Though some argue that bread isn't good either (you can find opponents for practically any food item nowadays). I had a couple of croissants and a slice of baguette with jam this morning at my hotel in Reims.


Meh. They say that also fresh fruits are not good for breakfast, because citric acid destroys teeth. i don't pay attention on those things because we shouldn't eat anything following all those proposals.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Netherlands has officially ended pretty much all covid advisories. Restrictions were dropped a while ago, life is back to normal for some time. They have now also stopped testing and also pulled the plug on the covid warning app.

They had high expectations for this app for contact tracing, but it turned out to be a total bust. Only 1 out of every 169 positive tests were a result of a notification through this app (48,000 out of 8.1 million cases). Apparently there are still 2.3 million users on it.


----------



## AnelZ

I don't remember when I last had milk (probably last time I drank protein powder as I mixed it with milk) and I never drank plain yogurt. It is not that I avoid it but I never was a big fan of it, even as child aside with cereals and cocoa powder. I even eat cheese very rarely, mostly only when I get Pizza or Hamburger, rarely with pasta. Sirnica (pastry with cottage cheese) is popular over here but I'm not a fan of it at all. I did eat as kid cereals but can't remember last time a bought a box of it.

But I do consume ice-creams, creams (but not a fan of whipped cream) and fruit yogurts.

On topic of fresh milk, it isn't widespread over here and you mostly buy it in cartons. Some shops do have it but only for limited time in the morning as they order just a small amount.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm not sure how popular breakfast cereals are in the Netherlands. They obviously sell them in the supermarket, but it's not a gigantic shelf. We didn't eat it in my family, I usually eat two slices of bread for breakfast.


Same in Poland. Bread sandwiches, with cheese, ham, sliced tomatoes or cucumbers etc., at lest for me, seem to be much more typical breakfast than cereal. Another common options are a sausage, or scrambled eggs.

Some people certainly have cereal with milk for breakfast, but I don't think it's very common...



AnelZ said:


> Some shops do have it but only for limited time in the morning as they order just a small amount.


In Poland it's sometimes so with bread, although some stores have it all the day, or at least almost all the day. I have some bakeries in my town that close late in the evening, and offer fresh bread throughout the whole day.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Something to learn every day








Global, Regional, and National Consumption of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages, Fruit Juices, and Milk: A Systematic Assessment of Beverage Intake in 187 Countries


Background Sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), fruit juice, and milk are components of diet of major public health interest. To-date, assessment of their global distributions and health impacts has been limited by insufficient comparable and reliable data by country, age, and sex. Objective To...




journals.plos.org


----------



## ChrisZwolle

China be like: 'none of the above'.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> China be like: 'none of the above'.


There needs to be a similar world map for tea. China would presumably be at or near the top of the charts there.


----------



## AnelZ

Mate, tea and coffee map, please!

Regarding the map above, checks out as I'm among the rare who says that he very rarely drinks milk or mix it with something (like coffee). Although I have a feeling that Bosnia and Herzegovina should be higher on the first map (sugar-sweetened drinks), but people do drink a lot of water here in the sense that people rather take water or sparkling water then other beverages. People also very often make their own drinks (most of the times with added sugar) as many people have land outside in the countryside so they grow some small amount of fruits and vegetables and buy from others which obviously don't get registered in official statistics.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

So in Poland and Italy they don't drink Coca-Cola, Fanta, Pepsi, etc?


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> So in Poland and Italy they don't drink Coca-Cola, Fanta, Pepsi, etc?


No idea, maybe we drink less of that crap... Because we do.

Interestingly, in theory, the lower consumption of sweet drinks should make our teeth healthier, but this isn't true.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> No idea, maybe we drink less of that crap... Because we do.
> 
> Interestingly, in theory, the lower consumption of sweet drinks should make our teeth healthier, but this isn't true.
> 
> View attachment 3084276


There are also pies, loaf, and stuff.
East Europe is not said to be on healthy diet plus poorer than Germans and Scandinavians, may avoid paying for dentist too.
There can be a factor for laziness of brushing your teeth, bad teeth hygiene can also lead to problems. Not sure if this related with wealth, socialization, character type, and stuff.

South Europeans having better teeth is not surprising.
Greece could be surprising in this regard.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> South Europeans having better teeth is not surprising.


They have an opinion of slow and lazy people, but regardless, they remember to brush their teeth after every meal, or at least twice a day? 

By the way, the dentist costs also shouldn't be such an important factor, because in richer countries, the dentists are also correspondingly more expensive. Poland actually offers some dental services as a part of the public healthcare, though for some reasons people usually rely more on private dentists, those at whom you have to pay for everything.


----------



## Slagathor

Kpc21 said:


> No idea, maybe we drink less of that crap... Because we do.
> 
> Interestingly, in theory, the lower consumption of sweet drinks should make our teeth healthier, but this isn't true.
> 
> View attachment 3084276


Who knew people in Croatia simply have no teeth. Just nothing. Smacking gums all around. 

(I understand that they went with a relative scale where 0 and 100 replace the lowest and the highest score respectively, it was a joke.)


----------



## PovilD

Slagathor said:


> Who knew people in Croatia simply have no teeth. Just nothing. Smacking gums all around.
> (I understand that they went with a relative scale where 0 and 100 replace the lowest and the highest score respectively, it was a joke.)


It's like Eurovision points, if you have zero points in the end, it doesn't mean you didn't performed 

(actually, thanks for explanation, I was thinking why is such a weird ranking)


----------



## geogregor

MattiG said:


> I haven't been drinking milk in decades. I buy perhaps five liters a milk a year for my family of two adults, and every drop is for cooking. When kids come for a visit, then I buy a suitable amount for their consumption. Other milk-based products, like yoghurt, ice cream, cream for cooking, quark, crème frâiche, cheese etc are ok.


Same with me. I honestly don't remember when I had milk last time, probably a decade ago or so. On rare occasion I have cereals for breakfast I use my other half's soya milk.

And I hate yogurt.

But I love cheese. There are so many good varieties available...


----------



## Suburbanist

I'm an outlier then. I drink an average of half liter of milk per day, normally semi-skimmed.


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> So in Poland and Italy they don't drink Coca-Cola, Fanta, Pepsi, etc?


Typical breakfast in Italy is in my experience only sugar (coffee and various sweets, that includes fruits) . Similar to USA. 
And above map is wtf regarding sweetened milk. Never heard or seen that normal milk is extra sweetened.


----------



## keber

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands has officially ended pretty much all covid advisories. Restrictions were dropped a while ago, life is back to normal for some time. They have now also stopped testing and also pulled the plug on the covid warning app.
> 
> They had high expectations for this app for contact tracing, but it turned out to be a total bust. Only 1 out of every 169 positive tests were a result of a notification through this app (48,000 out of 8.1 million cases). Apparently there are still 2.3 million users on it.


As of today, mask usage in inside spaces is not mandatory even in Spain, except public transport and health services. 
Now I think just Italy uses masks in south Europe.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

We have a period with quite nice weather in Norway now. Yesterday, almost all of the country had a clear sky, which is quite exceptional.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1516695957341093896


----------



## ChrisZwolle

We have very good weather in the Netherlands as well, several days of clear blue skies.

I took a ~1700 kilometer road trip this Easter weekend. I drove through Germany, France & Belgium. I visited several bridges and also did some sightseeing in Reims. I wanted to explore more of Northern France, from a Dutch perspective you usually only travel the north-south routes. This time I drove the entire N4 from Phalsbourg to Paris. It was an interesting drive, not overly spectacular or anything, but I found it a nice ride. Especially because there were no trucks on the road, it was quite relaxing. I assume N4 is normally used by a lot of trucks between Paris and Strasbourg that want to avoid the tolls on A4.

I also explored the Meuse River Valley in Belgium. I visited Dinant and Namur, also took some photos of major bridges. The industrial banks of the Meuse west of Liège are really something else, there is heavy industry and a lot of derelict industrial sites, it's a totally different world at half an hour from the Netherlands.


----------



## Suburbanist

@ChrisZwolle when will you eventually make a road trip to Southern Italy / Sicily?


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> So in Poland and Italy they don't drink Coca-Cola, Fanta, Pepsi, etc?


Italians consumpt really low amounts of those.


----------



## PovilD

For me, Cola, Pepsi is a substitute for alcohol pretty much.
Sometimes I drink quite a lot of them (0.5-1 l per day).

I hate to be drunk, I don't buy alcohol for home, tbh. I mostly drink among friends, party, and similar stuff.
Sugar raise mood a bit, help to cure loneliness and boredom.


----------



## volodaaaa

PovilD said:


> For me, Cola, Pepsi is a substitute for alcohol pretty much.
> Sometimes I drink quite a lot of them (0.5-1 l per day).
> 
> I hate to be drunk, I don't buy alcohol for home, tbh. I mostly drink among friends, party, and similar stuff.
> Sugar raise mood a bit, help to cure loneliness and boredom.


Cola is highly addictive. I had had some periods when I was addicted to cola, primarily because of two children who gave me no chance to have enough sleep, and I am not a coffee drinker. After two weeks of regular drinking cola, I decided to cut back on it and found out the third and fourth days were the worst. I have then intense symptoms of addiction like hunger, extreme headaches and the feeling of my life being completely useless. No joke.

As I get older, I always learn more and more that sleep is a crucial part of my life. The more you sleep, the more you live (enjoying your life).

When it comes to alcohol, I have never been an addict. I used to drink a lot almost every week during my studies, but it just started to bore me as the parties began to be monotonous, and I have never felt a need to drink alone (maybe twice in my life). The last time I drank was almost three years ago. The story is like the Hangover film 

My son was three months, and one of my best friends became a father (his daughter was born), so he invited us to a small party in a fancy bar. There had supposed to be five of us, all guys without knowing each other except for our just-to-be-dad friend. I hate such parties, but my wife (!!!!!) persuaded me to go because it is an act of good manners and I allegedly deserved some fun with friends. The party was excellent; we sat in this fancy bar and drank some over-priced mixed drinks (like some ladies  ). We had some fun indeed and got to know each other. All guys were in their 30s; all had children, so we made a deal to wrap up the party within a single hour. Surprisingly, we succeeded, and in little more than 60 minutes, we were standing in front of the bar saying goodbye to each other, almost entirely sober when it started. One guy suggested going to a stand-up bar because there was a free vodka if ordered four of them. Ok, the beginning of the end. We agreed. Then everyone wanted to invite others for a drink, and suddenly I lost sense of time and a little bit of orientation when I woke up at the bus stop at 4 AM 😁 Fortunately, the bus was about to arrive and take me home. I have never felt so broken, the hangover took almost three days, and I swore I was too old to drink. I have indeed never drunk ever since.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PovilD said:


> Sometimes I drink quite a lot of them (0.5-1 l per day).


You can get overweight / obese real fast by drinking a lot of soda drinks. The zero sugar variants aren't very healthy either (though better to control your weight). My dentist said that the zero / light variants are almost as bad for your teeth as the regular sugar variants.

I've cut down on the soft drinks, staying mostly with coffee and naturally flavoured mineral water. It's basically the same as tap water in the Netherlands, except that it is carbonated and is available with numerous flavours. The ingredients lists everything at 0 grams and calories.

Quite a lot of youth are addicted to energy drinks. When I go to the supermarket between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., it is usually loaded with high school students buying only two things: frikadelbroodje and energy drink.


----------



## PovilD

After periods of few weight losses, now I'm indeed gaining weight again.
Post-winter, less going out, general anxiety for the future might not help here.

For me, drinking fruit (like orange) juice helps to dampen addiction to coke.

Cold teas are probably s**t too. I tend to drink them if I get bored from coke, and just for that. Quite rare purchase anyway.
Same apply for juice drinks (which pretend to be juice, but is actually not sparkling Fanta).

I kinda tend to think I'm addicted to coke (or sweets) more psychologically than physically too.
If I travel to another place, and got only local food, I think I may forget what I eat at home.

If there are casual circumstances, general boredom, chances rise.

There is no such feeling inside me if I stop drinking coke I will start to crave for it no matter what.
Like I hear generally about addictions.

I well aware of addictive substances trade off theory that debunked fears that after Vietnam war come back soldiers will significantly increase drug abuse in U.S.


----------



## tfd543

PovilD said:


> For me, Cola, Pepsi is a substitute for alcohol pretty much.
> Sometimes I drink quite a lot of them (0.5-1 l per day).
> 
> I hate to be drunk, I don't buy alcohol for home, tbh. I mostly drink among friends, party, and similar stuff.
> Sugar raise mood a bit, help to cure loneliness and boredom.


My sleep gets completely ruined by drinking more than 1.5 L beer in one night.. it started some years ago and i keep my threshold there now.

Before that, i could easily drink more than 3 L for a Friday bar event.

Btw, are Friday bars a thing in your countries ??
So this is a place you go to on a Friday with your colleagues or friends..


----------



## PovilD

tfd543 said:


> My sleep gets completely ruined by drinking more than 1.5 L beer in one night.. it started some years ago and i keep my threshold there now.
> 
> Before that, i could easily chug more than 3 L for a Friday bar event.
> 
> Btw, are Friday bars a thing in your countries ??
> So this is a place you go to on a Friday with your colleagues or friends..


I've noticed this since my early 20s that if I drink more than e.g. 1.5 liters of beer, my sleep gets disrupted if not ruined.
It also depends on timing. If drinking involves like 30 min-1 hour before bed, then good luck to fall asleep and maintaining good night sleep.
Only after maybe 6 hours, high chances my sleep might not be disrupted if I did not tried sleeping before. If slept, then I guess it rises to 12 hours talking from one travel expierence involving bus.
I was seeing others falling asleep no problem at hotel, myself struggled to sleep, and I think it was no more 3-4 hours. It's hard to sleep at bus, but after another 4 hours (maybe like 11-12 hours after last drink) I managed to fall asleep a little bit (which was hard).


----------



## Stuu

tfd543 said:


> My sleep gets completely ruined by drinking more than 1.5 L beer in one night.. it started some years ago and i keep my threshold there now.


Any more than a couple of beers and I wake up about 5 hours after I went to sleep at most. Alcohol is broken down into different substances, some of which actually have a stimulant effect, as well as the need to either go to the bathroom or get a drink of some sort. It get worse as you get older, as do hangovers


----------



## geogregor

volodaaaa said:


> As I get older, I always learn more and more that sleep is a crucial part of my life. The more you sleep, the more you live (enjoying your life).


I might be the opposite. Nowadays I function perfectly fine with around 5 hours of sleep. Maybe once a week I do sleep longer, but even then it is not much more than 7 hours.



PovilD said:


> For me, drinking fruit (like orange) juice helps to dampen addiction to coke.


But fruit juices often contain as much calories and sugars as coke and similar drinks. I was surprised when I read a few labels.



> When it comes to alcohol, I have never been an addict. I used to drink a lot almost every week during my studies, but it just started to bore me as the parties began to be monotonous, and I have never felt a need to drink alone (maybe twice in my life). The last time I drank was almost three years ago. The story is like the Hangover film


On my own I occasionally I have a glass of some nice single malt Scottish whisky in the evening. Equally we might have a glass of wine when having dinner with my partner.

But drinking is obviously about socializing. Despite being in mid-40s it still happens quite regularly. I guess not having children (and friends in similar situation) helps 



PovilD said:


> I've noticed this since my early 20s that if I drink more than e.g. 1.5 liters of beer, my sleep gets disrupted if not ruined.


I can easily have 3L of beer in the evening out (British beers are often weaker than in Eastern Europe though). Sleeping is not really a problem. In fact the opposite is the truth. On quite a few occasions I have fallen asleep on trains or night buses and went too far. Sometimes twice in the same night 

Luckily one of the night buses I use has last stop next to my apartment. It is the safest option as if driver kicks me out I have 2 min walk home 

Trains can be a problem. Once I ended up beyond M25 and had to take a cab back to London...


----------



## volodaaaa

Having a 0.5 l of beer helps me sleep better. But if I drink more, I feel my stomach is full, and I have to go to the toilette more frequently, which is a bit contradictory to convenient sleep.


----------



## AnelZ

I don't really drink at home, maybe when I have some guest I will drink a can or two of beer but lately I prefer Radler/Shandy. When socializing outside of home at some bar or similar place, then a beer is a must but it mostly stays at max 3. Lately (the last 4-5 years) I party very rarely (like 1-2 times a year) and that is the only time where I go overboard with it which is the main reason I decided to cut on all-night partying. 

I also don't drink juices, sodas, teas aside of when socializing. When it comes to coffee, I only drink it at work and again as an option when socializing outside of home. Water is my drink of choice. But I spend ungodly amount of time on certain social medias and YouTube as well as playing video games in free time and during those activities I essentially don't crave any drinks or snacks as I'm already engaged enough with those things that I forget everything else.


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> Trains can be a problem. Once I ended up beyond M25 and had to take a cab back to London...


One time when I lived in St Albans, I went out for a pint in central London. I got on the train at Kings Cross, and woke up at Kings Cross having been to Bedford and back... which was disappointing


----------



## Suburbanist

I drink only very occasionally at home. Always wine to go with some food.

Something I miss from my younger early 20s self was the ability to sometimes barely sleep and be functional the next day.

My normal "no alarm clock" sleep time is around 6.30 to 7.00. But if I sleep less than 5.00 then next day is miserable now.


----------



## volodaaaa

Suburbanist said:


> I drink only very occasionally at home. Always wine to go with some food.
> 
> Something I miss from my younger early 20s self was the ability to sometimes barely sleep and be functional the next day.
> 
> My normal "no alarm clock" sleep time is around 6.30 to 7.00. But if I sleep less than 5.00 then next day is miserable now.


It makes a huge difference. When I sleep, for instance, 5 hours, I feel and look like some low-grade drug addict desirably asking bystanders to get some dough to get meth. Last week I managed to sleep more than 9 hours for two consecutive nights. I felt like 20 years old the next day and even looked better.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Millennials are now in the process of aging and finding out that you're not young forever 

I'm in my mid-30s and the generational gap with people in their early 20s is getting more noticeable. In terms of music, pop culture, the digital world, etc. Millennials are the last generation to know what the analog age was like.

I was driving down the motorway a few days ago and saw some teenagers doing a dance on an overpass. Probably to create some TikTok content.

I don't use TikTok, I've been trying out YouTube Shorts lately, I believe it's similar. I find it both addictive and a huge waste of time. You always think the next swipe is going to be more interesting, while you're in fact wasting most of the time on low information / low value content.


----------



## Slagathor

Yeah I'm with you on that one. I scroll through Instagram reels when I'm in the restroom but I don't waste any time on it beyond that.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Footage of a natural gas explosion that leveled 4 stories of an apartment complex in Bilthoven, Netherlands.

Apparently there were two explosions, first a small explosion, and then a larger second explosion which caused several floors to collapse, as was recorded by this media crew.

4 firemen were reported to be injured.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1517091784052117504


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Millennials are now in the process of aging and finding out that you're not young forever
> 
> I'm in my mid-30s and the generational gap with people in their early 20s is getting more noticeable. In terms of music, pop culture, the digital world, etc. Millennials are the last generation to know what the analog age was like.
> 
> I don't use TikTok, I've been trying out YouTube Shorts lately, I believe it's similar. I find it both addictive and a huge waste of time. You always think the next swipe is going to be more interesting, while you're in fact wasting most of the time on low information / low value content.


Do you still use campsites when traveling or have you upgraded to hotels?

I think short form reels will peak soon. TikTok itself not necessarily. Every few years I think some new social media rises when teenagers and young adults want a space they control and own instead of their parents and grandparents.

Thus Facebook - Instagram - TikTok.

I was an early adopter of Facebook, before that I had dabbed briefly on MySpace and an old Google social platform called Orkut. I was moving around a lot and it was great to find groups, organize events or just keep tab with friends. Now I only still have an account on Facebook because of the fact it is very useful for some group functionalities and Norwegians around my age still use it to organize social outings etc.

I teach in one of my jobs, and something that I notice is that young adults now are far less shy about public speaking than a decade ago. Things like give a presentation or just have a small discussion. On the other hand, it seems every 18yo is now on edge worrying that something they might do and be captured on camera can ruin their lives.

Let's see how Covid19 affects the current generation coming of age or young adults. Not the disease but the crisis. My cohort of friends has been and still is profoundly marred by the financial meltdown of 2008-12. Not necessarily in the financial sense but cultural /attitudes.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> Do you still use campsites when traveling or have you upgraded to hotels?


I use both. Hotels are okay for a night on a long trip. But if I'm staying somewhere for 3 days a hotel is too confining for me. I can either use AirBNB or stay at a campsite, the latter is the most flexible, no need to make a reservation, they are plentiful and often in nice locations, instead of an Ibis or Campanile in a commercial area. A campsite is also better for social connections if you're traveling alone. I always get to meet people, have a drink with them. That doesn't happen in a hotel or AirBNB.


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## radamfi

What do people here use for navigation? In car built navigation, traditional standalone device (TomTom or similar), phone in a cradle (which app? Google Maps, Waze, Apple Maps etc.), Android Auto/Apple CarPlay (again, which app?) or old fashioned paper/book road atlas?


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## Stuu

Google Maps on my phone, and Android Auto if I hire something with a screen. I do like a paper map but I haven't actually used one for navigation for years. I was a bit of a luddite about satnav once on the road for a long time, but then realised the benefit of knowing how long it will take and whether there are any problems on the route far outweigh any smugness from using a proper map


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> Google Maps on my phone, and Android Auto if I hire something with a screen. I do like a paper map but I haven't actually used one for navigation for years. I was a bit of a luddite about satnav once on the road for a long time, but then realised the benefit of knowing how long it will take and whether there are any problems on the route far outweigh any smugness from using a proper map


Do you prefer Google Maps to Waze? I tend to switch between the two but generally use Waze the most for the incident reporting.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I use Waze most of the time, mostly for speed cameras or incident reports. Most of the time I don't really need it for navigation, I can drive to Andalusia or Hungary without the need for a map. I use Waze with the navigation sounds turned off.

I don't use paper maps for navigation, but I do have a Michelin road atlas of France, as it is useful for finding scenic routes and tourist locations. Digital maps don't work as well for that purpose.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Still, you do not need ultra fast internet for normal use cases. People are made believe they need it because ISPs offer it to create demand.

For example, streaming Netflix at 4K: 15 mbps. Even with the entire household streaming 4K simultaneously, you do not need anywhere near a 1 Gbit connection. 

Zoom requires far less: only about 4 mbps. All those smart things use almost no bandwidth. If your fridge requires a 50 mbps data link, you should throw it out. 

The problem with wifi is more associated with reduced speed due to walls and distance from the router, not the internet subscription itself.


----------



## Stuu

Working from home and moving large files around is so much easier with faster Internet, especially the upload speeds. Working with 500mb files with speeds below 20Mbps upload is painful, and often impossible as it times out. I'm surprised how fast 4g+ is in NL though, that goes to about 30Mbps here whenever I have tested it.


----------



## Slagathor

The loss of bandwidth due to the use of (poorly placed) WiFi routers needs to be factored in, though. Nobody's going back to plugging in ethernet cables. 

Also, you need spare capacity. If your streaming service requires 15 mbps, then you need a 20-25 mbps connection. 

Of course, more and more people want to watch things in 4K now, which streams at 25 mbps but for an uninterrupted stream you'll want to have a connection of at least 35 mbps available.

Use a few more devices at the same time and it adds up quickly.


----------



## tfd543

I have a roaming network at home ie wired connection b/t 2 routers as i have concrete walls in my flat. Most embarrassing however is that Its 2 Apple Extreme routers that was issued 15-20 years ago.. still work as a swiss clock.

It should nearly be a standard rule to Connect your tv with wired cable instead of wifi. I thought about this when reconstructing my Living room so i routed a cable behind the wall for a invisible solution.

Its annoying with construction work that you have to think well in advance.. quite irreversible operation in general.


----------



## tfd543

ChrisZwolle said:


> The problem with wifi is more associated with reduced speed due to walls and distance from the router, not the internet subscription itself.


How and where is your router placed?
Mine is on top of a shelf made of wood. No metal nearby. What i like about the Apple router is that Its antennas are enclosed in the router itself.


----------



## radamfi

You could probably ditch your domestic fixed broadband if you have 5G with a high or unlimited data allowance. I watch a lot of live sport over the internet which isn't available on any TV service whether it is terrestrial, satellite or cable, so my internet needs to be near 100% reliable. In theory, 4G+ is more than adequate speed but it isn't resilient enough. You can't rely on it for a constant connection for several hours. Similarly you need a constantly reliable connection for working from home but it doesn't have to be that really fast. There are roadworks around here all the time for full fibre installation but I doubt I would need 1 Gbps when 5G can deliver 100 Mbps+. The best argument for full fibre that I've heard is that you can have all your files backed up in the cloud all the time, so you don't need to keep any data on your local hard drive.

I don't see the point in 4K, especially without a giant TV. I thought 1080p was amazing when it came out and that's still good enough for me.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Streaming is quite compressed:





__





Internet connection speed recommendations


Recommended internet connection speeds to watch Netflix.




help.netflix.com





Netflix at 4K streams at 15 mbps.





__





System requirements - YouTube Help


To watch YouTube videos, make sure you have the most up-to-date browser, operating system, and a good internet connection: Newest version of Google Chrome, Firefox, MS Edge, Safari, or Opera



support.google.com





Youtube streams 4K at 20 mbps.

Of course you do want some margin. But still, even with multiple streams simultaneously, there isn't really a need for a connection of 1000 mbps for normal household usage.

In case of 5G on phones, what kind of usage would require 200 or 500+ mbps?

5G may have its place in industrial applications. But for consumers it's mostly to make it more appealing to sell a product people don't really need.

5G signals have a limited range so they would need a much denser network of transmitters, which is likely not profitable in most areas for the time being. 5G rollout is still fairly local and not a 99% coverage country-wide.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Still, you do not need ultra fast internet for normal use cases. People are made believe they need it because ISPs offer it to create demand.
> 
> For example, streaming Netflix at 4K: 15 mbps. Even with the entire household streaming 4K simultaneously, you do not need anywhere near a 1 Gbit connection.
> 
> Zoom requires far less: only about 4 mbps. All those smart things use almost no bandwidth. If your fridge requires a 50 mbps data link, you should throw it out.
> 
> The problem with wifi is more associated with reduced speed due to walls and distance from the router, not the internet subscription itself.


For each technology generation, there are zillions of people knowing what other people need or do not need. Still, the bandwidth always gets exhausted. New technology enables new types of demand.

The key benefits of the 5G technology are not related to consumer phone use. The high mobile station density capacity, very low latency, microwave spectrum enablement, and low mobile terminal power need among the others are characteristics to create new types of business cases.

For operators, it is very expensive to run networks of several generations. In addition, governments typically reduce the capacity of older generation networks by reallocating the frequencies to the new ones. That is why operators aim to ramp-down the older generations as soon as possible. Many operators have already closed their 3G networks. The 4G ones come next.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MattiG said:


> The key benefits of the 5G technology are not related to consumer phone use.


But it is advertised to consumers as the next greatest think you really need 

I have actually downgraded my home internet subscription from 250 to 100 mbps a few years ago. The 250 mbps connection was originally a 100 mbps cable connection, over time they raised the speed, followed by a price increase a few years later. At some point I decided there was no use case for a 250 mbps connection, and went back to an old-school 100 mbps DSL subscription. I have not noticed any difference at all, but saved 25 euros per month.


----------



## x-type




----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> But it is advertised to consumers as the next greatest think you really need
> 
> I have actually downgraded my home internet subscription from 250 to 100 mbps a few years ago. The 250 mbps connection was originally a 100 mbps cable connection, over time they raised the speed, followed by a price increase a few years later. At some point I decided there was no use case for a 250 mbps connection, and went back to an old-school 100 mbps DSL subscription. I have not noticed any difference at all, but saved 25 euros per month.


Everything is advertised. It is called business. But everyone is responsible his or her purchase decisions.

My advise is to not tell other people if they need something or not. What is crap to someone might be gold to someone else.

When I was in the beginning of my career, many said that 9.6 kbit/s modems would be useless, because nobody will ever need such a speed.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> A good use case is a football game, or any other event where you have a lot of people in a certain, not so large place.


The speed doesn't change anything regarding such circumstances 

Though indeed 5G brings advantages in those situations, but not because of speed. Rather because of using picocells that operate on high frequencies, and advanced beam forming.

Anyway, regarding the speed, 5G doesn't really offer anything more than LTE-Advanced.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Large scale flooding is ongoing in the Red River Valley in North Dakota and Manitoba. 

As this is flat terrain, this is a different type of flood than the ones we saw last fall in British Columbia. Manitoba will experience prolonged periods of standing water on land.

Manitoba has seen a very large amount of snowfall this winter, with almost no warmer periods so the ground is frozen solid, with the ground now saturated with melting water. And recent rainfall in the Red River basin is exacerbating the problem.


----------



## Slagathor

I find Manitoba puzzling. Its sheer existence as a populated province baffles me. I've got relatives and friends in BC, Québec and Ontario and they all have things going for them. Even Alberta has a few highlights worth visiting. But Manitoba? It's swampy like the Netherlands except with a much more brutal climate and if you're used to the Great Lakes, Lake Winnipeg feels like some sort of bizarrely misplaced shallow, muddy, oversized puddle. I don't know what it's for or why anyone would voluntarily stick around there.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Manitoba has a lot of communities which first settled in the 1800s and remain to this day, especially the French and Mennonites in rural areas.

Winnipeg has seen some substantial growth, it's not booming like Alberta, but it has seen a 13% growth in the last decennial census. It's one of the last major cities in Canada with somewhat affordable housing.

I have some family in Saskatchewan. They have much larger farms than what would be possible in the Netherlands. But the winters are harsh and long. They do have fairly hot and sunny summers though. There isn't much to do either, it's all flat farmland (swampy is mostly in the nearly uninhabited boreal forest).


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

What surprised me when I lived in the mid-west many years ago, was that Red River is flowing towards north, whereas Mississippi, which is right east of and more or less parallel to it for a long distance in this relatively flat landscape, of course flows towards south.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's also called the Red River of the North, to distinguish it from the other Red River in the southern United States, which is also a fairly sizable river.

This area is the only part of the lower 48 states in U.S. which drains to the north (and a tiny portion of Montana).


----------



## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> What surprised me when I lived in the mid-west many years ago, was that Red River is flowing towards north, whereas Mississippi, which is right east of and more or less parallel to it for a long distance in this relatively flat landscape, of course flows towards south.


And flowing north is part of the problem. The south warms up earlier and starts melting when northern part of the river is frozen solid. In some circumstances might cause ice jams which exacerbate flood risk. 

Poland occasionally had the same problems in the past as our rivers also flow north. But nowadays they are rarely frozen for extended periods of time, definitely not for the whole winter season.


----------



## PovilD

Poland celebrates Today Constitution Day. Second constitution in the World after United States. It was short lived, but still smth due to its date.

There are plans in Lithuania to move Holiday from May 1st to May 3rd for celebrating Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Constitution Day too. I remember this constitution is mentioned with proud, when I was in History classes at school.

I kinda think is good idea. It would mean more to us than Labour/May Day. May 1st was never really that popular holiday anyway.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> There are plans in Lithuania to move Holiday from May 1st to May 3rd for celebrating Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Constitution Day too. I remember this constitution is mentioned with proud, when I was in History classes at school.


Why not like in Poland, with holidays on both 1st and 3rd May?

There are also talks about making 2nd May a holiday.

May 1st was a very popular holiday in Poland in the communist times. Now it isn't any more, but still such a sequence of holidays is really useful, especially when it occurs on the first really warm days of the spring.


----------



## radamfi

I'm in Luxembourg now. I was wondering why it is so quiet and public transport is running a Sunday service. It turns out it is Europe Day today. I haven't even heard of it before.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

MattiG said:


> As said earlier, Scandinavia is a highly ambiguous name. There are a number of aspects, like geographical, linguistic, cultural, historical, commercial, administrative, etc, all somewhat different. That is why the name Nordic has gained more footprint to refer to the five countries in the northern Europe.


It is simply the three countries where the modern Scandinavian languages dominate. Check any Scandinavian source. The fact that some, in particular outside Scandinavia, are mixing this up, does not make it ambiguous.

But I agree that the Nordics is a useful term.


----------



## Slagathor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> But I agree that the Nordics is a useful term.


Agreed. We use it as well.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It doesn't seem to be used extensively though (at least in NL). Scandinavia is usually applied for any variant.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> It doesn't seem to be used extensively though (at least in NL). Scandinavia is usually applied for any variant.


We punish you by calling your entire country Holland.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Alankomaat


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Alankomaat


Oh, thank you for reminding us that there is language which uses word for vending machine to call another nation 

However, my 5 cents about Scandinavia: usually we, southerns, consider for Scandinavia all the countries that have nordic cross on their flag. Simple as that. 
It seems that it is similar to Balkans in the south: there is a penninsula named after it, but nobody knows where exactly the borderline is or should be 🙃


----------



## metacatfry

As far as I know 'Scandinavia' wasn't originally a geographical term, it was a cultural-historical moniker invented - actually quite late - in the 1870's or thereabouts, as part of a wave of national-romantic thought that put the three countries in the same bucket wrt culture/language/history. The peninsula didn't really have a name.


----------



## radamfi

When discussing the Nordic social economic model, the Netherlands and Austria are sometimes included in the discussion, but if you simply call it the Scandinavian model then you don't.

From Luxembourg I got the train to Trier, which has a special offer day return fare of 5.20 since free travel started in Luxembourg. No Europe Day there, and it was exceptionally busy and very hot. I got my ID card checked by the Polizei as soon as the train entered Germany. Nobody else in my train carriage was checked.

In the afternoon I went to Belgium. No Europe Day there either. Train from Luxembourg to Athus, then train to Arlon, bus to Bastogne, bus back over the border to Ettelbruck then train to Luxembourg city. The bus drivers in Wallonia still don't accept payment. No cash nor bank card. You have to use a smartcard or an app. This rule came in for Covid. Bastogne pretends it still has two railway stations. It uses the old station building at Bastogne Sud as a bus station. They really love Americans in Bastogne!


----------



## PovilD

x-type said:


> Oh, thank you for reminding us that there is language which uses word for vending machine to call another nation
> 
> However, my 5 cents about Scandinavia: usually we, southerns, consider for Scandinavia all the countries that have nordic cross on their flag. Simple as that.
> It seems that it is similar to Balkans in the south: there is a penninsula named after it, but nobody knows where exactly the borderline is or should be 🙃


Yes, Nordic cross is a signal for a country being "Scandinavia" no matter what others say. Faroe Islands, Iceland and Finland are Scandinavia too in this regard.
Tricolor flags flashes me continental Europe vibe, German influence. This makes Estonia more German than Swedish. Estonia planned its Nordic cross flag, but tricolor won.

---
For Croatia, I consider border of Balkans on Sava river. Generally I think Balkans border goes on Sava and Danube river. I'm not sure if Greece is Balkans. If Greece is not Balkans then you get border of Greece as border of Balkans which makes Balkans being weird mix of both political and geographical region.

That's why I like Southeast Europe term more. Greece is kinda not Balkans. It's not clear to me if we can call Romania and even Moldova as part of Balkans. While you put Southeast Europe, there are only ambigoucity about Slovenia, Moldova and maybe Hungary in contemporary times.

Balkans just reminded me there is Eurovision this week


----------



## Slagathor

Balkans = everything beyond Vienna until you reach the Bosporus.


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## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> No Europe Day there either.


Apparently this is only a thing in Luxembourg. It also coincides with Victory in Europe Day in many countries.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Speaking of travel, it looks like this widely discussed German 9-Euro-Pass will actually happen this year for the summer holidays. It will be a country-wide monthly pass for every kind of short distance public transport (S-Bahn and RE trains included!) for just 9 EUR, and it will be available to non-residents as well.

I think that I'll build my summer vacations on top of this things. Two weeks of slowly paced travel through the Rhine valley with a grand finale at Bodensee, for example... I think it would be fun


----------



## Fatfield

BTW, has anyone heard anything from @dimlys1994 ? Last seen at the end of March. Hope the lad's OK given what's going on in his country.


----------



## tfd543

Guess he has more important things going on in his head than writing posts in SkyscraperCity. Just my guess.

Anyway, good that u care.


----------



## radamfi

I just found out you can't get basic drugs (like paracetamol) in supermarkets in Luxembourg. You have to go to a proper pharmacy.


----------



## Stuu

You can't in quite a few places. Italy is the worst in my experience - my wife had toothache last time we went to Italy, €4.50+ for 16 paracetamol, which you can get for £0.20 at home. Surprising that's not something covered by EU competition law


----------



## Attus

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Speaking of travel, it looks like this widely discussed German 9-Euro-Pass will actually happen this year for the summer holidays. It will be a country-wide monthly pass for every kind of short distance public transport (S-Bahn and RE trains included!) for just 9 EUR, and it will be available to non-residents as well.
> 
> I think that I'll build my summer vacations on top of this things. Two weeks of slowly paced travel through the Rhine valley with a grand finale at Bodensee, for example... I think it would be fun


it was originally planned for making commutint temporarily cheaper. But since politicians have no idea about how public transport works (most of them have not seen the inside of a bus or tram for decades), they made this crazy 9 Euro fare, wich works actually for making holiday trips cheaper acress Germany. 
However, since quite many people think about it, regional trains are expected to be full packed in summer, specially those connecting holiday resorts.


----------



## Suburbanist

Stuu said:


> You can't in quite a few places. Italy is the worst in my experience - my wife had toothache last time we went to Italy, €4.50+ for 16 paracetamol, which you can get for £0.20 at home. Surprising that's not something covered by EU competition law


In fairness, paracetamol is quite a dangerous drug. The difference between the maximum reasonable dose and the minimum really dangerous dose is small, the effects of unintenional overdose are serious and not rarely permanent, and it is easy to miss your self-medication without self-regulation (you take too much to kill the pain before your liver is in shock).

No other drug causes more accidental unintentional overdose hospitalizations in Europe than paracetamol. 

Ibuprofen is safer in that sense.


----------



## radamfi

Does restricting sales of paracetamol to pharmacists make much difference in cutting overdosing? When I was a kid you could get bottles of 100 tablets. Now you can only get blister packs of 16. In the UK they don't let you buy more than two packs at once. Obviously you can still go to another shop and get some more. Same if you could only get them in pharmacists.


----------



## Kpc21

Automated voting in jury votes? From what I once heard and understand, the jury of a specific country is just several people; some musicians and show business people from there. How can you put automation inside such a process? And how can replacing such votes by an average of votes of neighboring countries be fair?



54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> If I were in charge of EBU, I would not reveal the exact methods employed to identify irregularities.


It's obvious, but you should tell what exact rules were broken...


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

I thought the irregularities were in the popular vote, but I see now that I was wrong. I do not know how the jury voting system work, so I cannot comment any further ;-D What is clear, however, is that the margin for Ukraine was so large that the votes of six countries are not enough to change the winner.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Attus said:


> Youtube is actually a commercial product, its main goal is to make money - not for content creators but for Youtube, i.e. Google, itself. They make what is tehe best for them. But they hav a market share of 90+ percent, they work like a monopoly. The situation of Facebook and Twitter in their respective markets is basically the same. You can not avoid them, can not take another service. So the world of internet is as a matter of fact ruled by a handful of American commercial companies. And since our world is more and more online, these companies have a very strong influence in the Western societies, without having any responsibility.
> Our society is nowadays much, much more centralized than anyone could think about a decade ago, and much more influenced by the Americans than anyone could think about a decade ago.


Yes, Youtube is basically a monopoly and monopolies are bad BUT Youtube is actually very generous in sharing ad revenue, compared to many other platforms. Youtube pays roughly half of ad revenue to creators. Hank Green calculated in one of his videos that TikTok creators earn 6 times less for an equivalent view than creators on Youtube do. 

BTW, Youtube creators actually earn more money from views generated by Premium users than regular viewers who watch ads.


----------



## radamfi

According to this (in Dutch)





__





Mastercard stopt met Maestro betaalpassen| Consumentenbond


Wat merk je als consument van de vervanging van de Maestro betaalpas? Lees alles over de nieuwe betaalpassen Mastercard Debit en Visa Debit.




www.consumentenbond.nl





Maestro is being phased out in the Netherlands and being replaced by Debit Mastercard. The reasons:

The Dutch can't use Maestro much outside Europe
You cannot pay online with Maestro (hence the creation of the iDEAL payment system)
Foreigners can't use their Debit Mastercard card in the Netherlands

This should be good news for visitors. Are there any negative effects for the Dutch? I thought the whole point of using Maestro was because of the low transaction fees. So if transaction fees increase, that might mean higher prices.

Are shops (for example Albert Heijn) that didn't accept Mastercards now starting to accept Debit Mastercards?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I used to have a Maestro debit card, but my bank switched over to VPAY about 5 years ago. I did not have an issue with either card in Europe.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> I used to have a Maestro debit card, but my bank switched over to VPAY about 5 years ago. I did not have an issue with either card in Europe.


It is outside Europe where it might not work. As mentioned before, I have a Dutch Bunq Maestro card and I've used it in the UK, just to see if it works. Bizarrely it didn't work in a ticket machine in a railway station in Ireland, even though that is in the Eurozone. Only Visa and Mastercard were accepted there.


----------



## Suburbanist

radamfi said:


> It is outside Europe where it might not work. As mentioned before, I have a Dutch Bunq Maestro card and I've used it in the UK, just to see if it works. Bizarrely it didn't work in a ticket machine in a railway station in Ireland, even though that is in the Eurozone. Only Visa and Mastercard were accepted there.


Bunq offers options of Mastercard as well.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland most banks issue MasterCard, not Maestro. Maestro is mostly present in old account offers.


----------



## radamfi

According to





__





Loading…






en.wikipedia.org





Maestro is being phased out across Europe so it isn't just the Netherlands. It seems quite a few countries have already replaced Maestro with Mastercard in the last few years. It also mentions, regarding the Netherlands,



> And starting in 2022 shop owners will be required to start adding support for Debit Mastercard & Visa Debit to their POS-terminals


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## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> Are shops (for example *Albert Heijn*) that didn't accept Mastercards now starting to accept Debit Mastercards?


At gun point, maybe.

I wanted to have a separate, dedicated bank account for my groceries and household expenses so I could more easily keep track of my expenses overall. I ended up opening an account with Revolut, who issued me a Mastercard. Then I found out Albert Heijn don't accept Mastercard sigh.

So I switched to a grocery delivery service and now I'm never going back. I haven't set foot in a supermarket in _months_. 

I've been pondering if I should tell Albert Heijn about this or if I should just let them stew in their own shortsightedness...


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## x-type

We are getting Visa instead of Maestro.


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## bogdymol

Slagathor said:


> Then I found out Albert Heijn don't accept Mastercard sigh.


What? I thought that Visa and Mastercard are accepted everywhere, and the others (Maestro, Vpay, Amex etc.) depends on location, country, luck etc. 

I have a Visa and was accepted everywhere, except for the US Embassy in Vienna, where they only take debit cards and no credit cards.


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## radamfi

bogdymol said:


> What? I thought that Visa and Mastercard are accepted everywhere, and the others (Maestro, Vpay, Amex etc.) depends on location, country, luck etc.


You obviously haven't been to the Netherlands! Until 2014 most ticket machines in railway stations didn't take Visa and Mastercard and only accepted coins, so foreigners had to buy tickets at the ticket window if they didn't have enough coins, which was no good if the station didn't have a ticket office or it was closed. A lot of big shops in the Netherlands don't accept Visa and Mastercard, however almost all shops accept Maestro and VPay, even little shops that might only accept cash in other countries. The Netherlands has been reluctant to accept Visa and Mastercard (even debit versions) because they have higher transaction fees than Maestro.

There is some confusion regarding debit cards and credit cards. Visa and Mastercard have both debit cards and credit cards. Some Dutch retailers say that they don't accept credit cards, but they mean they also don't accept Visa Debit cards and Debit Mastercards from other countries.


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## Suburbanist

With all being said, Mastercard and Visa network fees on merchants are absurdly high overall. Nothing justifies charging 1% of purchase as it was customary in the era of electronic processing as if credit cards still required paper manual receipts.


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## Fuzzy Llama

With Maestro/VPay discontinued, interchange fees for "proper" cards should drop. In Poland debit MC/Visas fees are 0.20-0.30%, so the reason for higher charges in Netherlads is not technical, it is just operators' greed. And if Master/Visa would discontinue Maestro/VPay without providing a system with acceptable rates, some fintechy startup will provide an alternative in no time.


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## radamfi

Suburbanist said:


> With all being said, Mastercard and Visa network fees on merchants are absurdly high overall. Nothing justifies charging 1% of purchase as it was customary in the era of electronic processing as if credit cards still required paper manual receipts.


They are capped in the EEA at 0.3%. According to





__





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www.mastercard.com





Mastercard and Maestro charges are 0.02 EUR for debit cards (even Debit Mastercard) and 0.3% for credit cards in the Netherlands. Hence Maestro is no longer any cheaper.

There is still a rip-off for using EEA issued cards outside the EEA and vice versa, and now that of course includes the UK. Transaction fees between the UK and EEA went up to 1.15% for debit cards and 1.5% for credit cards.


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## Attus

bogdymol said:


> What? I thought that Visa and Mastercard are accepted everywhere, and the others (Maestro, Vpay, Amex etc.) depends on location, country, luck etc.


Visa and Masterdcard is usually not accepted in small shops in Germany, these only accept German EC cards (the same abbreviation, but has nothing to do with Eurocard/Mastercard). The main reason for that is that they have no steady connection to the bank so that they can't check your card. Yes, recently more and more shops accept Visa/Mastercard as well, but by far not all of them. 
And, yes, in The Netherlands, too, there are lots of shops and vending machines that don't accept Visa or Mastercard. And especially at shops and machines that neither accept cash nor those cards, a foreigner has no chance to pay.


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## Slagathor

I wonder if there's a correlation between countries that receive relatively fewer tourists and countries that are credit card unfriendly...

I can't imagine Italy making this mistake, for example. 

I once presented my American Express card in rural Italy, off the beaten path, just to see what would happen and the guy didn't even blink. Just _beep _and I had paid.


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## Kpc21

x-type said:


> We are getting Visa instead of Maestro.


Visa and MasterCard are direct competitors, so you can get both Visa and MasterCard.


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## MattiG

Attus said:


> Visa and Masterdcard is usually not accepted in small shops in Germany, these only accept German EC cards (the same abbreviation, but has nothing to do with Eurocard/Mastercard). The main reason for that is that they have no steady connection to the bank so that they can't check your card. Yes, recently more and more shops accept Visa/Mastercard as well, but by far not all of them.
> And, yes, in The Netherlands, too, there are lots of shops and vending machines that don't accept Visa or Mastercard. And especially at shops and machines that neither accept cash nor those cards, a foreigner has no chance to pay.


An excuse only. Mobile payment terminals are commodity nowadays. No need for a fixed line.


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## Attus

MattiG said:


> An excuse only. Mobile payment terminals are commodity nowadays. No need for a fixed line.


Yes, but no need for that. 99.99% of German customers have a German EC card. I wonder if there was any foreign customer in the bakery here nearby having no such card in the last two years. I suppose there wasn't


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## radamfi

Germany will have to change its cards to Visa or Mastercard if Maestro is being scrapped across Europe.


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## Kpc21

They may drop Maestro but keep EC-Cards. Instead of combined Maestro+EC they may be issued as MasterCard+EC or Visa+EC... Then the outlets that only accept EC will still be able to only accept EC.


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## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> Yes, but no need for that. 99.99% of German customers have a German EC card.


It's the same reason why credit card acceptance in the Netherlands is low, because everyone has a regular debit card. Only tourists have trouble. I wonder if Germans can easily refuel at automated fuel stations in the Netherlands.

4G mobile payment terminals are very common for small or temporary points of sale in the Netherlands. Even foodtrucks or spring roll stands have them.


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## Suburbanist

I moved to Norway in 2017. I withdrew NOK 3000 on my second day. Still have NOK 500 or so left, and that is because I paid a high restaurant bill once with banknotes to get rid of some of them.


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## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> They may drop Maestro but keep EC-Cards. Instead of combined Maestro+EC they may be issued as MasterCard+EC or Visa+EC... Then the outlets that only accept EC will still be able to only accept EC.


But they should be able to accept foreign MasterCard and Visa debit cards if they currently accept foreign Maestro and VPay cards (for example Dutch ones). Presumably they will still refuse MasterCard and Visa credit cards.


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## radamfi

I find virtually no use for banknotes. Coins are still necessary where shops don't accept cards for small amounts. On my travels, transactions for at least 5 EUR or 5 GBP can normally be paid by card. Coins are still useful for vending machines, although many of these now accept contactless payment. Public launderettes in the UK normally only take coins. Launderettes for students normally have their own payment system.


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## Suburbanist

The Netherlands had a great system for offline small payments (chipknip), but it was deactivated in 2016. It relied on readable chips that could store at most EUR 250.


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## ChrisZwolle

Ah, the _chipknip. _I used that a lot in high school at the cafeteria (early 2000s).

This is a terminal where you could transfer money from your account to the 'chipknip'. It was designed for fast payment for small transactions, as they didn't require a PIN code. It was succeeded by contactless payment.


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## MattiG

Attus said:


> Yes, but no need for that. 99.99% of German customers have a German EC card. I wonder if there was any foreign customer in the bakery here nearby having no such card in the last two years. I suppose there wasn't


Tell me more about not accepting cards because of widespread use of a certain card.


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## radamfi

radamfi said:


> A British quirk is the policy of having certain towns designated as cities. In other countries the term city seems to be used simply to mean a big town or just any town. In other languages there may not be a separate word for city. However in Britain, being a city is a big deal. Just because a town is big doesn't mean it is automatically a city and conversely some very small towns can be cities. Milton Keynes in particular has long been upset about not being a city, although it often refers to itself as a city anyway. One town, Rochester, lost its city status because of a failure to file paperwork when boundaries were changed. A Member of Parliament was murdered recently, and the town he represented will be made a city because he had campaigned for it during his life.
> 
> If you go on a forum and refer to a town with city status as a "town", often someone will correct you that it is a "city".
> 
> Occasionally there is a competition to decide more towns to become cities and there is a competition at the moment because of the Queen's 70th anniversary of being Queen in 2022. Milton Keynes will no doubt be entering.


They have announced the winners









Platinum Jubilee: Eight towns to be made cities for Platinum Jubilee


Locations including Milton Keynes, Dunfermline and Wrexham will be made cities in honour of the Queen.



www.bbc.co.uk





IMO the only deserving winner is Milton Keynes, which most people think is a city anyway.

The significant urban areas of Northampton and Reading miss out. The craziest winner is Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands. The population of the whole islands is 3,398 according to Wikipedia.


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## ChrisZwolle

A significant weather day is forecasted in West-Central Europe today. The European Storm Forecast Experiment (ESTOFEX) issued a rare level 3 warning for a belt across Germany:

_A level 3 was issued in a belt of north - central Germany for severe to extremely severe wind gusts, large hail, tornadoes and excessive rainfall. 

A level 2 was issued in a belt from northwestern France through Germany into Czechia and Poland mainly for severe to extremely severe wind gusts, large hail and tornadoes. _


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## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> A significant weather day is forecasted in West-Central Europe today. The European Storm Forecast Experiment (ESTOFEX) issued a rare level 3 warning for a belt across Germany:


In many towns of Western Germany schools are closed today. In my company our boss told us we shall stay home today, those who can't work from home shall in the following weeks make extra hours in order to equalize it. All non-online meetings were cancelled.


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## Attus

MattiG said:


> Tell me more about not accepting cards because of widespread use of a certain card.


If accepting those cards make a cost of 3 euros per month, and you have zero customers that would use those cards, then it's 3 euros of unneeded costs.


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## Slagathor

Attus said:


> In many towns of Western Germany schools are closed today. In my company our boss told us we shall stay home today, those who can't work from home shall in the following weeks *make extra hours in order to equalize it*. All non-online meetings were cancelled.


Counting hours rather than work. How German. 

When we were told to stay home in February because of a massive storm, they didn't tell us to "make up the hours". They told us _meeting your deadlines is your responsibility_. We're employees, not children.


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## Attus

Slagathor said:


> They told us _meeting your deadlines is your responsibility_.


I'd quit this job immediately. No one can expect me meeting deadlines that are only possible to be met by making a lot of unpaid extra hours. We're employees, not slaves.


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## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> I'd quit this job immediately. No one can expect me meeting deadlines that are only possible to be met by making a lot of unpaid extra hours. We're employees, not slaves.


Staff management is always tricky. E.g. my former boss used ASAP as a synonym for "immediately". But ASAP is ASAP. As soon as possible. And it may be possible in 3 weeks maybe.


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## Slagathor

Attus said:


> I'd quit this job immediately. No one can expect me meeting deadlines that are only possible to be met by making a lot of unpaid extra hours. We're employees, not slaves.


I don't know anyone who works unpaid hours to meet their deadlines and my organization employs 30.000 people.

If you need extra hours, you can request more paid hours or you can ask to have your workload reduced.


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## Attus

Slagathor said:


> I don't know anyone who works unpaid hours to meet their deadlines and my organization employs 30.000 people.


I should do it every single day. Of course I don't. But so I can't meet my deadlines. 



> If you need extra hours, you can request more paid hours


I can't, it is forbidden. 



> or you can ask to have your workload reduced


I did it several times. My boss can rather except not meeting the deadlines, than reducing workload.


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## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> Staff management is always tricky. E.g. my former boss used ASAP as a synonym for "immediately". But ASAP is ASAP. As soon as possible. And it may be possible in 3 weeks maybe.


Haha


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## radamfi

Paying bills shouldn't need electronic banking. For direct debit, you just need to tell the company what your bank details are. Before the internet you filled in a paper form with your bank details.


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## Coccodrillo

Sure, but not all bill issuers offered this option (for example, if you rented your home from a private citizen), and not all bills are recurrent. For example, if you ordered something by post, you received a paper bill supposed to be paid in a post office.


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## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> Paying bills shouldn't need electronic banking. For direct debit, you just need to tell the company what your bank details are. Before the internet you filled in a paper form with your bank details.


Direct debit without direct online access to the history of your account is also kind of problematic. When the utility company that charges you using direct debit makes an error, it's a lot of trouble to fix it and get the unnecessarily charged money back. I was a kid back then but I remember that when direct debit became available in Poland in early 2000s, my family switched to it for the telephone bills (fixed line telephone back then). Then, one time they continued charging us for an Internet service we resigned from (I remember it was a service in which you payed a fixed monthly fee and you got a number of minutes for which you could connect to the Internet with a dial-up modem without being charged for the phone call). We realized about that months later, and it took next multiple months to resolve that so that they stopped charging us for it. Finally my family managed to stop it, and then the telephone company returned the money in the following phone bills (for something like a year or so, we were getting 0 PLN telephone bills xD) – but since then we have never used direct debit.

I guess paying bills by direct debit has never become popular in Poland because of similar stories other people had.

If the fee paid monthly is fixed, you can setup a standing order, and this seems to be much safer. And in the times of online banking you can stop it whenever you wish just by a few clicks on the bank website.


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## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> Direct debit without direct online access to the history of your account is also kind of problematic. When the utility company that charges you using direct debit makes an error, it's a lot of trouble to fix it and get the unnecessarily charged money back. I was a kid back then but I remember that when direct debit became available in Poland in early 2000s, my family switched to it for the telephone bills (fixed line telephone back then). Then, one time they continued charging us for an Internet service we resigned from (I remember it was a service in which you payed a fixed monthly fee and you got a number of minutes for which you could connect to the Internet with a dial-up modem without being charged for the phone call). We realized about that months later, and it took next multiple months to resolve that so that they stopped charging us for it. Finally my family managed to stop it, and then the telephone company returned the money in the following phone bills (for something like a year or so, we were getting 0 PLN telephone bills xD) – but since then we have never used direct debit.
> 
> I guess paying bills by direct debit has never become popular in Poland because of similar stories other people had.
> 
> If the fee paid monthly is fixed, you can setup a standing order, and this seems to be much safer. And in the times of online banking you can stop it whenever you wish just by a few clicks on the bank website.


In the UK there is the 'Direct Debit Guarantee' to give confidence to use direct debits which basically gives the right of the customer to request a refund at any time if there is an error. When set up using paper forms, there is usually a detachable slip at the bottom of the form explaining the guarantee which they say you should keep, although there is no reason to keep it as the guarantee is always the same. Like this



https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/20136/dd.pdf



(the first search item I get by searching for 'direct debit form').

There are a few people who are sceptical about direct debits but they are in the tiny minority and such fear of direct debits is almost conspiracy theory territory. You are basically forced into direct debits for utilities anyway, because customers who don't use direct debit often pay higher charges.

I use a Dutch bunq account to pay for bike hire and bus/train fare bills when in the Netherlands. Dutch Railways send me a bill every so often and direct debit my account shortly afterwards. The good thing is that I get a notification in the app when Dutch Railways ask for payment and I can accept or refuse the payment. That's a cool feature that I hadn't seen before.


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## Kpc21

An interesting thing about German banking is that the "EC Card" payments are technically not card payments, but also direct debits (single ones, while when people normally think of direct debits, they think of cyclic ones).

In Poland the utilities generally cost the same, doesn't matter if you pay by bank transfer, or by direct debit, or directly at the cash desk of the company (though this option is in most cases not available any more, I remember that the telecom company and the energy supplier have closed down their cash desks some 20 years ago; however over here where I live it's still possible to pay this way for water, or even directly to the guy who comes to note down the indication of the meter).

The only thing you may have to pay extra is the surcharge of the payment agent. It's usually free in case of ordinary online bank transfers (when you go on the website of your bank and manually enter all the data and the account number), there is a small surcharge in case of "easy transfers" (when you click a payment link in an e-mail from the utility company, or in the customer panel on their website), a larger one if you pay at the post office, and yet a larger one at a physical branch of the bank (though it's sometimes cheaper in case of some selected utilities, in branches of cooperative banks – they are usually targeted at people who don't use online banking).


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## ChrisZwolle

Very large hail near Châteauroux in Central France:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1528496489999245313

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1528643800272338945


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## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Sub-tropical weather!


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## ChrisZwolle

Many people have a long, 4-day weekend.

Result:


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## Slagathor

Long weekend + sh!t weather = scramble for the border.


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## volodaaaa

Slovak ice hockey fans often paint the tricolour on their cheeks with a lip stick. During the ongoing championship it indeed looks weird. 🇷🇺 I would opt for the tattoo like sticker with sufficient fidelity to get a flag with a proper coat of arms instead.


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## PovilD

volodaaaa said:


> Slovak ice hockey fans often paint the tricolour on their cheeks with a lip stick. During the ongoing championship it indeed looks weird. 🇷🇺 I would opt for the tattoo like sticker with sufficient fidelity to get a flag with a proper coat of arms instead.


I know it's pan-Slavic tricolor, but I always find interesting/almost strange Slovakia and Slovenia use Russian tri-color, just adding their own coat of arms.
I guess now you are in kinda weird situation, unless by changing color alignment to not resemble Russian flag. For example, Croatia, Serbia have different alignments although they use Slavic tricolor+coat of arms.


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## volodaaaa

PovilD said:


> I know it's pan-Slavic tricolor, but I always find interesting/almost strange Slovakia and Slovenia use Russian tri-color, just adding their own coat of arms.
> I guess now you are in kinda weird situation, unless by changing color alignment to not resemble Russian flag. For example, Croatia, Serbia have different alignments although they use Slavic tricolor+coat of arms.


Both Slovak and Slovenian flags date back to 1848, when both nations opted to use "Slavic colours" as a symbol of the so-called national revival. In these times, Russia had been perceived as a future unifier of Slavs, though in that time, it was a kind of logical compared to a few years later when it, fortunately, did not come true. I think those were the times when Russia was mentally relatively closest to Western Europe. At least the Romanov house were relatives to rulers in western Europe. So the flags were inspired by Russia, obviously.

Though the tricolours were not much original, they (at least in Slovakia) became later symbols fully independent of Russian history (Russia used other flags as well). The flag itself was an important symbol during socialist times when it was banned. In the velvet revolution in 1989, the use of this white-blue-red flag was similar to the use of a white-red-white flag in contemporary Belarus during protests. Needless to say, at that time Russia did not use a white-blue-red flag at all. So there are a lot of photos of this revolution with a people waving a "Russian" flag except it was a Slovak flag as such:









In 1989 (when the protests took place) Slovenia within Yugoslavia used a tricolour with a star, while Russia used the USSR based flag (similar to the official flag of the USSR but with a blue stripe), so the Slovak one was an original one. Unfortunately, we gained independence at the latest, in times when Russia had already used their current flag as well as Slovenia.

I don't know the story behind the Slovene flag because obviously, they were the first ones to use the tricolour, but it seemed they just replaced the red star with the current coat of arms with no intention to use the sole tricolour. We wanted that, and the coat of arms was put on the flag only to distinguish.


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## PovilD

I think you may find interesting why Lithuania is using pan-African flag.
Well, I think, is coincidental. African countries were inspired by flag of Ethiopia which used red-yellow-green flag. It was the only independent African country. Many of their flags were created, from what I read, in 1960s, during times when Lithuanian flag was actually banned by the Soviets.

Lithuanian flag idea, from what I gathered was kinda inspired by flag of Bulgaria (although not directly). One Lithuanian doctor (Jonas Basanavičius) who was one of the main figures of Lithuanian independence in 1918, and he was aware of processes of creating new Lithuanian flag, although he wanted historical Duchy of Lithuania flag, but it was resembling that of the Bolshevik red flag too much. Other authors wanted to use colors from national clothing, and red, green were selected. Later, due to flag being too gloomy with just red and green, yellow was also chosen. There are few speculations if this was related with Basanavičius trips to Bulgaria. Years before WWI, Basanavičius was taking part as a doctor of rebuilding Bulgaria after Russo-Turk wars. Flag of Bulgaria is also tricolor white-green-red, while Lithuania is yellow-green-red. This makes me also think if this was also an inspiration from Romanian flag which actually use French tri-color, but only yellow instead of white.

Red flag with vytis is kinda popular in private settings. It is called historical flag of Lithuania:









Prussian/German Lithuanians had their own flag (but not coat of arms). They had tricolor, while PLC/Russian empire Lithuanians didn't, but we invented our own yellow-green-red flag anyway.









Btw, there were serious talks about changing flag in 1936-1940, but WWII didn't helped, and now we continue using 1918 flag.








Left - current flag from 1918. Right - proposed flag before WWII.

There are sporadic talks about changing the flag, but people and the World is getting used with the flag, and I hear less and less talks every year.


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## volodaaaa

PovilD said:


> I think you may find interesting why Lithuania is using pan-African flag.
> Well, I think, is coincidental. African countries were inspired by flag of Ethiopia which used red-yellow-green flag. It was the only independent African country. Many of their flags were created, from what I read, in 1960s, during times when Lithuanian flag was actually banned by the Soviets.
> 
> Lithuanian flag idea, from what I gathered was kinda inspired by flag of Bulgaria (although not directly). One Lithuanian doctor (Jonas Basanavičius) who was one of the main figures of Lithuanian independence in 1918, and he was aware of processes of creating new Lithuanian flag, although he wanted historical Duchy of Lithuania flag, but it was resembling that of the Bolshevik red flag too much. Other authors wanted to use colors from national clothing, and red, green were selected. Later, due to flag being too gloomy with just red and green, yellow was also chosen. There are few speculations if this was related with Basanavičius trips to Bulgaria. Years before WWI, Basanavičius was taking part as a doctor of rebuilding Bulgaria after Russo-Turk wars. Flag of Bulgaria is also tricolor white-green-red, while Lithuania is yellow-green-red. This makes me also think if this was also an inspiration from Romanian flag which actually use French tri-color, but only yellow instead of white.
> 
> Red flag with vytis is kinda popular in private settings. It is called historical flag of Lithuania:
> View attachment 3263983
> 
> 
> Prussian/German Lithuanians had their own flag (but not coat of arms). They had tricolor, while PLC/Russian empire Lithuanians didn't, but we invented our own yellow-green-red flag anyway.
> View attachment 3263988
> 
> 
> Btw, there were serious talks about changing flag in 1936-1940, but WWII didn't helped, and now we continue using 1918 flag.
> View attachment 3264002
> 
> Left - current flag from 1918. Right - proposed flag before WWII.
> 
> There are sporadic talks about changing the flag, but people and the World is getting used with the flag, and I hear less and less talks every year.


To be honest, I have never realised the similarity between the Lithuanian flag and African flags.  But I like the flags of Baltic states. They are really original compared to "Slavic colours" and "vertical stripes" and vertical stripes with Slavic colours.


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## PovilD

volodaaaa said:


> To be honest, I have never realised the similarity between the Lithuanian flag and African flags.


There is this meme. For meme creator, our flag was/is awful 









When I see my tricolor flag waving on the wind and sun, I see it as quite nice flag. It look not as good on computer screen.


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## volodaaaa

😂 But it would look more african if you put a crossed ak47s in a star on it 😂


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## ChrisZwolle

Myanmar:


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## PovilD

volodaaaa said:


> 😂 But it would look more african if you put a crossed ak47s in a star on it 😂


ak47 is not really far away from smartphone being depicted on national flag


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## x-type

I am more wondering to know how has Latvia got that original bordeaux colour on the flag. Fast explanation says it is for someone's blood. Well, it is really realistic blood colour (and not that brght red that is usually seen on the flags). 
Any Latvians here?


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## ChrisZwolle

Everybody's going home again:


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## Slagathor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Do any of you Dutch people know whether the situation at Schiphol is likely to improve at all the next few weeks, or are the predictions a worsening?


It'll get a lot worse before it gets better. The busy summer holiday period hasn't started yet. Their big solution is simply to reduce the number of slots (flights) but that may not be legally possible and the airlines have threatened to raise hell. 

Everyone I know who's flying soon is avoiding it. Most folks are opting for Eindhoven Airport, a few are going to Rotterdam-The Hague Airport.


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## PovilD

Capt.Vimes said:


> I know this is news for the BG topic, but I am curious if there are such kind of roads in other countries, how do they look, what is the opinion about them and the effect on traffic and safety.
> 
> The news is that the Bulgarian government decided to install on the deadliest 1x1 stretches of roads (like Kresna gorge) these things. This image is from my city and they are doing a great job for safety(they are very dirty now unfortunately). But this is a 2x2 city street, not a 1x1 international road. On our forum we are wondering what would be the effect of such a measure.


Here in The Baltics we usually just make rough surface on the road axis if talking about rural 1+1 roads.
I may guess that our Road administration don't want physical barriers on 1+1 roads since they could cause more harm if they are hit and other car is nearby.
There could be high class barriers that would prevent truck from destroying the barrier, but if there is no place for a good barrier then better no barrier. I think that's their thinking.

We even avoid Swedish type wire barriers since they said not good for motorcycle accidents. This type is used in Estonia, Poland though. Not sure about Latvia, but I don't remember seeing those in Latvia.










Here in Lithuania, no passing zones are marked like this:









These are not helping from illegal overpassing though, but it's not comfortable to overtake too. This is actually our Via Baltica E67 that should be 2x2 due to high truck traffic.


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## andken

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I did not see anything that countered my argument in that article. You can live in a city with a relatively sparsely populated hinterland, while still having a high density of "smart" people. Think of e. g. Boulder, CO or Perth, Australia at a small and large scale, respectively. I can think of many such examples.


Edward Glaeser calls the city the best human invention. Perth and Boulder have been gaining population in the last decades - Perth has almost the double of the population that it had in 1990. In Central Europe is not only easy to spot the Iron Curtain, but also the lines of the Austro-Hungary Empire, the Partitions of the Commonwealth and the Oder-Neisse line territories.


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## Stuu

Capt.Vimes said:


> I know this is news for the BG topic, but I am curious if there are such kind of roads in other countries, how do they look, what is the opinion about them and the effect on traffic and safety.
> 
> The news is that the Bulgarian government decided to install on the deadliest 1x1 stretches of roads (like Kresna gorge) these things. This image is from my city and they are doing a great job for safety(they are very dirty now unfortunately). But this is a 2x2 city street, not a 1x1 international road. On our forum we are wondering what would be the effect of such a measure.


We don't have anything as small and easy to drive across as that here (UK), but I would guess they are quite effective as the psychological effect of having some sort of physical barrier is much bigger than the actual protection it provides. People just won't cross those, while they would cross a painted line even if it was illegal. I would expect it to show a very positive impact on road safety, especially compared to the actual cost of putting them in


----------



## Shenkey

Kpc21 said:


> Nothing compared to the coal price increase in Poland...
> 
> Used to be something like 700-800 zł a tonne. Now it is over 3000 zł a tonne. Already about a 400% price increase.
> 
> With an exception for online stores of two Polish state-owned energy groups, which offer coal for "factory" prices of about 1000 zł a tonne – but the coal there is nearly impossible to get; they insert the new batches there several times a week and they disappear immediately.
> 
> And still a very big number of households relies on coal for heating. They won't convert to other fuels within those few months, and even if they do, there aren't really other options.
> 
> Power generation and district heating rely on it too, so large price increases can be expected. It's even speculated that we may have not enough coal for the whole winter.
> 
> My house needs about 5 tonnes of coal for a winter. So it would be 15 000 zł with the current price. And, for example, a typical pension is something about 2000 zł. My salary is something like 6000 zł now, but I work in IT... So it's rather a well paid job.


How come you don’t buy a wooden pellet furnace?

I get that a heat pump is expensive, but furnace could be switched out pretty fast.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Slagathor said:


> Everyone I know who's flying soon is avoiding it. Most folks are opting for Eindhoven Airport, a few are going to Rotterdam-The Hague Airport.


I'll have to check that out, then..


andken said:


> Perth and Boulder have been gaining population in the last decades - Perth has almost the double of the population that it had in 1990.


That was kind of my point.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I'll have to check that out, then..


I don't know from where to where you need to fly, but there is a nice overnight ferry from Kristiansand to Eemshaven (north of the Netherlandss). 
I'm slowly becoming overnight ferry fan since I've discovered that a couple can ferry-and-train themselves from Rotterdam to London for the same price it takes to take a non-Easyjet flight there. And it is so much more comfortable.


----------



## Slagathor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I'll have to check that out, then..
> 
> That was kind of my point.





Fuzzy Llama said:


> I don't know from where to where you need to fly, but there is a nice overnight ferry from Kristiansand to Eemshaven (north of the Netherlandss).
> I'm slowly becoming overnight ferry fan since I've discovered that a couple can ferry-and-train themselves from Rotterdam to London for the same price it takes to take a non-Easyjet flight there. And it is so much more comfortable.


The ferry is a good suggestion. Book in advance, though, because it's popular.

Brussels Zaventem might also be interesting depending on where you're going next. Benelux distances are tiny from a Norwegian perspective anyway.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> The ferry is a good suggestion. Book in advance, though, because it's popular.


Apparently it is already booked solid until the end of summer. They reported in late May to have had 100,000 bookings already.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Apparently it is already booked solid until the end of summer. They reported in late May to have had 100,000 bookings already.


Even if you don't wanna bring a car? That's incredible.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

I've just made a simple check for mid july, and the slots for foot passengers are still available.
It is however a bit more expensive than I've thought (600EUR R/T for 2 passengers in cheapest cabin)


----------



## Suburbanist

The best solution to Schiphol would be to become integrated with Lelystad satellite airport.


----------



## marcobruls

The best solution would be to increase the wages instead of relying on new streams of unschooled immigrants with low expectations you can easily fool for 11euro an hour.


----------



## Attus

2-3 hours of waiting times at the security check in airports of Cologne and Dusseldorf are pretty usual nowadays. Last Friday I did it in 50 minutes and I was quite happy about it.


----------



## bogdymol

In 2 weeks’ time I have to fly for business purposes to Spain and UK. I wonder how much waiting will be after seeing the latest news from the UK, with very long queues at many airports. 

Yesterday I booked a flight with Easyjet from Valencia to London, today got an e-mail that was canceled. Booked another one now from Barcelona, let’s see how will that work out.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

marcobruls said:


> The best solution would be to increase the wages instead of relying on new streams of unschooled immigrants with low expectations you can easily fool for 11euro an hour.


Yes, nobody can live within reasonable distance of Schiphol Airport while making € 11 per hour. 

Though this problem is not confined to Schiphol Airport. It's an increasing problem throughout the Netherlands, not just Amsterdam anymore. And it creeps up from low-skilled jobs to mid-skilled jobs. If you make € 4000 per month you must rely on social housing or overpriced rentals, otherwise there is nothing you can ever buy. Median house prices require an income of € 8,000 per month or even higher. The median income in the Netherlands is around € 2,800.


----------



## Stuu

bogdymol said:


> In 2 weeks’ time I have to fly for business purposes to Spain and UK. I wonder how much waiting will be after seeing the latest news from the UK, with very long queues at many airports.


UK airports are especially bad right now because the schools are closed this week, and today and tomorrow are public holidays, so many more people are travelling than normal.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes, nobody can live within reasonable distance of Schiphol Airport while making € 11 per hour.
> 
> Though this problem is not confined to Schiphol Airport. It's an increasing problem throughout the Netherlands, not just Amsterdam anymore. And it creeps up from low-skilled jobs to mid-skilled jobs. If you make € 4000 per month you must rely on social housing or overpriced rentals, otherwise there is nothing you can ever buy. Median house prices require an income of € 8,000 per month or even higher. The median income in the Netherlands is around € 2,800.


But you are talking about a single person occupying the entire flat. Presumably most people doing airport jobs are either living with family or sharing a flat/house. How much does it cost to rent a room (not a whole flat) in Almere?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Needing roommates to make ends meet if you work a full time job is a form of poverty to me. But this fits the idea that those cities proclaimed to have a high quality of life, are not really livable if you don't make at least 2 or 3 times the median income.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Needing *roommates* to make ends meet if you work a full time job is a form of poverty to me. But this fits the idea that those cities proclaimed to have a high quality of life, are not really livable if you don't make at least 2 or 3 times the median income.


I haven't noticed before that 'roommate' is an Americanism. In British English it is usually 'housemate' or 'flatmate' and 'roommate' means actually sharing a room. I assume people in the Netherlands can still afford to share a flat without sharing a room.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

In the US it was (and probably is) commonplace to literary share rooms at college dorms.


Slagathor said:


> It'll get a lot worse before it gets better. The busy summer holiday period hasn't started yet. Their big solution is simply to reduce the number of slots (flights) but that may not be legally possible and the airlines have threatened to raise hell.
> 
> Everyone I know who's flying soon is avoiding it. Most folks are opting for Eindhoven Airport, a few are going to Rotterdam-The Hague Airport.





Fuzzy Llama said:


> I don't know from where to where you need to fly, but there is a nice overnight ferry from Kristiansand to Eemshaven (north of the Netherlandss).
> I'm slowly becoming overnight ferry fan since I've discovered that a couple can ferry-and-train themselves from Rotterdam to London for the same price it takes to take a non-Easyjet flight there. And it is so much more comfortable.





Slagathor said:


> The ferry is a good suggestion. Book in advance, though, because it's popular.
> 
> Brussels Zaventem might also be interesting depending on where you're going next. Benelux distances are tiny from a Norwegian perspective anyway.


Thank you for all advice guys. I actually checked all alternatives, but due to somewhat worse connectivity to all those alternative airports, and in the case of Brussels and Eindhoven also some additional ground transport times, I ended up taking my chances with AMS. I am travelling without baggage and with prioritized security (which sometimes, but not always, is useful), so hopefully it will not be too bad.

I like traveling by ferry, but it would end up extremely expensive for my employer due to the time needed, in particular taking into account that my end points are Trondheim (810 km road distance from Kristiansand) and Randstadt. I should save it for a future vacation, perhaps ;-)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

An electric scooter going 100 km/h on a road in Spain:


----------



## PovilD

Last year there was one guy recorded riding 50 km/h on sidewalks in Kaunas suburb of Petrašiūnai 
I thought how insane was that.

This is whole new level. Good thing he wears helmet though.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes, nobody can live within reasonable distance of Schiphol Airport while making € 11 per hour.


I agree, but up to a point.. Because there is important caveat. The prices will have to rise.

A lot of folks in the west keep saying "we can'r rely on cheep immigrants for this or that". But I wonder how many of them are prepared to pay two or more times for some services where labour is important factor.

It is the same with farm labour. If farmers had to pay wages high enough to attract locals they would either go bankrupt or have to rise prices. And not by a little.

So, be careful what you wish for.

As you are probably aware we have big celebrations going in the UK due to queen's jubilee. We decided to avoid central London and went to depths of rural Kent where we stumbled upon village celebratory party:


20220602_143740 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


20220602_143814 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Roast hog:

20220602_145809 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

On the hills nearby, seen from the train:

P1200810 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Along the way (we did 12km walk):

20220602_161959 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1200891 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Finishing "celebrations" in Canterbury: 

20220602_175906 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


----------



## volodaaaa

geogregor said:


> I agree, but up to a point.. Because there is important caveat. The prices will have to rise.
> 
> A lot of folks in the west keep saying "we can'r rely on cheep immigrants for this or that". But I wonder how many of them are prepared to pay two or more times for some services where labour is important factor.
> 
> It is the same with farm labour. If farmers had to pay wages high enough to attract locals they would either go bankrupt or have to rise prices. And not by a little.
> 
> So, be careful what you wish for.
> 
> As you are probably aware we have big celebrations going in the UK due to queen's jubilee. We decided to avoid central London and went to depths of rural Kent where we stumbled upon village celebratory party:
> 
> 
> 20220602_143740 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> 
> 20220602_143814 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> Roast hog:
> 
> 20220602_145809 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> On the hills nearby, seen from the train:
> 
> P1200810 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> Along the way (we did 12km walk):
> 
> 20220602_161959 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> 
> P1200891 by Geogregor*, on Flickr
> 
> Finishing "celebrations" in Canterbury:
> 
> 20220602_175906 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


I am toying with the idea of taking my family on a road trip across Europe with the UK as the final destination (try Eurotunnel, driving on the left with a right-handed vehicle, etc.). Your pictures definitely confirmed the idea is not bad at all.


----------



## Slagathor

geogregor said:


> I agree, but up to a point.. Because there is important caveat. The prices will have to rise.
> 
> A lot of folks in the west keep saying "we can'r rely on cheep immigrants for this or that". But I wonder how many of them are prepared to pay two or more times for some services where labour is important factor.
> 
> It is the same with farm labour. If farmers had to pay wages high enough to attract locals they would either go bankrupt or have to rise prices. And not by a little.
> 
> So, be careful what you wish for.


I get what you mean but in this specific situation, I would say automation is the answer.

Last night there was an item on Dutch TV about robotics in medical care. Much of the work was described as: "A bit of a challenge." in the sense that it's quite difficult to build a robot capable of bathing a frail, elderly person. But progress was being made.

But you're not going to convince me that we can't build a system of conveyor belts and robot arms that are capable of lumping some suitcases into some airplanes.  I mean, if _anything _can be automated, surely it's this job.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> I agree, but up to a point.. Because there is important caveat. The prices will have to rise.


That's true. For example it is € 80 for a haircut in Switzerland or Norway. € 20 in the Netherlands. 

The problem for lower and middle incomes is that prices have risen much faster than incomes and housing plays a big role in it. And it doesn't affect just the baggage handlers, there's been talk of how teachers or police officers can't afford to live in the city they work in. Or how $ 90,000 is a poverty income in San Francisco. 

I know some guys in their early thirties who have decent college degree jobs but live with their parents because they cannot afford a house. And they don't qualify for social housing. And the waiting list for social housing is very long. Social housing in the Netherlands was originally designed for the lowest income, but nowadays it consists of around 30% of all housing. And they want to expand it. But this also means that the regular rental market is very small and overpriced.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> That's true. For example it is € 80 for a haircut in Switzerland or Norway. € 20 in the Netherlands.
> 
> The problem for lower and middle incomes is that prices have risen much faster than incomes and housing plays a big role in it. And it doesn't affect just the baggage handlers, there's been talk of how teachers or police officers can't afford to live in the city they work in. Or how $ 90,000 is a poverty income in San Francisco.
> 
> I know some guys in their early thirties who have decent college degree jobs but live with their parents because they cannot afford a house. And they don't qualify for social housing. And the waiting list for social housing is very long. Social housing in the Netherlands was originally designed for the lowest income, but nowadays it consists of around 30% of all housing. And they want to expand it. But this also means that the regular rental market is very small and overpriced.


Two years ago there discussion on here about people moving out of the Randstad because people can work from home now. Is that history now?

Maybe interest rates will rise substantially to combat inflation, which might burst the property bubble.


----------



## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> I get what you mean but in this specific situation, I would say automation is the answer.
> 
> Last night there was an item on Dutch TV about robotics in medical care. Much of the work was described as: "A bit of a challenge." in the sense that it's quite difficult to build a robot capable of bathing a frail, elderly person. But progress was being made.
> 
> But you're not going to convince me that we can't build a system of conveyor belts and robot arms that are capable of lumping some suitcases into some airplanes.  I mean, if _anything _can be automated, surely it's this job.


Planes are an awkward shape though, and bags are very different shapes and sizes... although I guess the size and shape of bags could be scanned before they get to the plane so that an optimal loading scheme could be designed. But then you would need extra capacity in the baggage system to shuffle them around. 

Incidentally, Schiphol is the only airport I have ever seen my actual case being thrown off the back of a truck onto the tarmac and then thrown onto the conveyor to the plane. I bet a robot wouldn't do that!


----------



## geogregor

Slagathor said:


> But you're not going to convince me that we can't build a system of conveyor belts and robot arms that are capable of lumping some suitcases into some airplanes.  I mean, if _anything _can be automated, surely it's this job.


I'm all for automation. But actually, luggage handling is already quite automated at the airports. However packing bags to the belly of the airplane is incredibly tricky. I don't see automation coming here for years. Bags are very varied, different sizes and weights. It is a bit of puzzle and squeeze to place them correctly in the hold.

Anyway, the bottom line is you will always need workers, especially in customer facing environment. I know that young kids live glued to their screens but then usually come point in life when one uses services which are more difficult to automate than production.



ChrisZwolle said:


> The problem for lower and middle incomes is that prices have risen much faster than incomes and housing plays a big role in it. And it doesn't affect just the baggage handlers, there's been talk of how teachers or police officers can't afford to live in the city they work in. Or how $ 90,000 is a poverty income in San Francisco.
> 
> I know some guys in their early thirties who have decent college degree jobs but live with their parents because they cannot afford a house. And they don't qualify for social housing. And the waiting list for social housing is very long. Social housing in the Netherlands was originally designed for the lowest income, but nowadays it consists of around 30% of all housing. And they want to expand it. But this also means that the regular rental market is very small and overpriced.


The problem here is cost of housing more than wages per se. We build too little and on top of that housing became investment rather than simply place to live.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Interest rates


radamfi said:


> Two years ago there discussion on here about people moving out of the Randstad because people can work from home now. Is that history now?
> 
> Maybe interest rates will rise substantially to combat inflation, which might burst the property bubble.


Interest rates hike won't do much for Dutch property bubble, because this market has an interesting caveat -- mortgage interest is tax-deductible  In result, there is an interesting mortgage culture here -- people usually borrow as much as they can, for as long as they can, which is usually 30 years.
The result is quite interesting -- Dutch properties are rather expensive (but still cheaper than in, like, Germany), but it is rather easy to buy something. Just before the bubble, it was not unusual for a single bloke or gal to buy a whole house. I live in The Hague in an rather interesting housing arrangement (6 small rowhouses sharing a common coutryard) -- and 3 of my neighbors are single homeowners.

I know that for Dutch people current situation is much worse than it was before -- mostly because the crisis in new development. But to be honest, from my Polish/Warsaw perspective, real estate market here is a paradise.

The only solution to current housing stock problem is to build more, as currently there is apparently almost a complete stop in housing development. But once you throw some new houses into the system, the wheels will start turning again. And regarding Randstad or not Randstad -- with the train system in this country, you can actually live anywhere. I know that IT is a specific business, but my colleagues from the Amsterdam office live in Nijmegen, in Eindhoven, in Gouda, in Dordrecht. Everything is not futher than 90 mins from Amsterdam. Unfortunately, it leads to the situation that a house in Nijmegen is not that much cheaper than one in The Hague. This country sometimes really functions as one big city.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Buying a house on a single income was a pillar of the Dutch society for decades after World War II. It wasn't until the 1990s that women entered the workforce on a large scale (this happened very quickly, in only a few years). However all this extra money has inflated housing prices, so people who did not buy into the market before the early 2000s (or during the recession) have almost no chance of buying a house on a single income.

This concept is not very different from student loans. If you increase the supply of money, prices will go up. Students can afford a € 700 per month rent for a room because they can borrow it. In the past they couldn't and landlords could not charge € 700 because nobody could afford it.


----------



## geogregor

volodaaaa said:


> I am toying with the idea of taking my family on a road trip across Europe with the UK as the final destination (try Eurotunnel, driving on the left with a right-handed vehicle, etc.). Your pictures definitely confirmed the idea is not bad at all.


Rural UK is very picturesque. And historic. I find it fascinating that in random villages you find churches 1000 years old and buildings which in Poland would be national monuments. Here they are cared for by some village volunteers as there are so many of them. Hell, I have friends living in house which is older than majority of Polish monuments  


DSC00641 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC00683 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

There are also some amazing rural properties to stay in the UK:

20210511_141741 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

And for infrastructure geeks how about bridges, some of them still in operation 180 years since opening:

20220527_161400 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1200578 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1200579 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1200628 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Actually, I wonder how many modern motorway bridges will last 180 years 

I travelled extensively around the UK, if you need inspirations I run a few photo threads in Polish section of SSC:

Kent & Sussex:








[Wielka Brytania] Kent, Sussex i okolice


Przypominam ze spaceruje wzdluz Ardingly Reservoir w Sussexie, w drodze zeby obejrzec pewien historyczny wiadukt: P1200486 by Geogregor*, on Flickr P1200488 by Geogregor*, on Flickr P1200491 by Geogregor*, on Flickr P1200496 by Geogregor*, on Flickr P1200497 by Geogregor*, on Flickr




www.skyscrapercity.com





Wales:








Walia - kraina zamków, smoków, porów i żonkili


Pogoda jak w A...i , jesteśmy chyba zgodni. Zwróciłem jeszcze uwagę na zadbaną trawę, u nas (ba nawet u mnie na podwórku) to w trawie co i raz wyrastają jakieś chwasty... tam wygląda na ładną i zadbaną trawę. Chwasty omijają te rejony czy tak mocno ktoś pielęgnuje... ?




www.skyscrapercity.com





The North:








[Wielka Brytania] "True North" czyli...


Jedna z kilku zachowanych bram Yorku, a dokladnie Micklegate Bar. "Bar" to lokalna nazwa bramy miejskiej a slowo "gate" w Micklegate pochodzi od slowa "gata" czyli ulica w jezyku Old Norse. P1160918 by Geogregor*, on Flickr P1160920 by Geogregor*, on Flickr P1160924 by Geogregor*, on...




www.skyscrapercity.com





Random Britain, not just my thread, but I post there a lot:








Wyspy Brytyjskie - wędrówki różne


Przypominam ze jestem w wiosce Ombersley, pierwszy raz wspomniana w roku 706: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ombersley 20210510_123635 by Geogregor*, on Flickr DSC01062 by Geogregor*, on Flickr DSC01064 by Geogregor*, on Flickr DSC01067 by Geogregor*, on Flickr DSC01070 by Geogregor*...




www.skyscrapercity.com





If you decide to come and need some help in the future feel free to message me


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> This concept is not very different from student loans. If you increase the supply of money, prices will go up. Students can afford a € 700 per month rent for a room because they can borrow it. In the past they couldn't and landlords could not charge € 700 because nobody could afford it.


And then that student loan goes on to negatively affect the amount of money one can borrow on a mortgage, making it ever harder for a student to transition to buying their own home.


----------



## radamfi

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Interest rates hike won't do much for Dutch property bubble, because this market has an interesting caveat -- mortgage interest is tax-deductible


So get rid of that stupid rule! The UK used to have it as well but that stopped about 20 years ago.



Fuzzy Llama said:


> (but still cheaper than in, like, Germany)


First time I've heard someone call Germany property expensive. Germany is often used as an example of how to do housing well.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Slagathor said:


> And then that student loan goes on to negatively affect the amount of money one can borrow on a mortgage, making it ever harder for a student to transition to buying their own home.


By the way, are there any university-provided (or subsidized) dormitories for students, or is everybody expected to rent? I have a feeling that student dorms are also quite eastern-european concept 

I started my studies in 2006, and for first two years I've stayed in this https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dom_Studencki_„Riviera”_w_Warszawie wonderful pallace. It costed 410PLN/month (let's say 100EUR), for that you got a bed in two-rooms-and-shared-eating-space module housing 6 blokes. Those were some good times


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

radamfi said:


> So get rid of that stupid rule! The UK used to have it as well but that stopped about 20 years ago.


I can't, I'm an immigrant, they won't let me vote 



radamfi said:


> First time I've heard someone call Germany property expensive. Germany is often used as an example of how to do housing well.


Okay, I'm not an expert here, just basing my opinion on other people's opinions -- but my colleagues from my previous company stated that you need 750kEUR minimum to find anything in Munich or vicinity capable of housing a family, same with Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg, etc. My girlfriend's friend is living in Leipzig with her husband and two children, she claims that she can't find anything for them under half a mil as well.

With this kind of money, The Netherlands is your oyster.


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> And for infrastructure geeks how about bridges, some of them still in operation 180 years since opening:


This might look like the middle of nowhere but it is on a very busy commuter railway with trains to London up to about 10 times per hour in peak times.

How did you get there? Walk from Haywards Heath or hire a car? Car hire is ridiculously expensive at the moment.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> This might look like the middle of nowhere but it is on a very busy commuter railway with trains to London up to about 10 times per hour in peak times.


Yes, it is a very busy London to Brighton corridor. Served by 12 carriage trains running at 90 mph (145km/h)



> How did you get there? Walk from Haywards Heath or hire a car? Car hire is ridiculously expensive at the moment.


Walk from Balcombe station. I didn't try to rent car in the UK recently, last time I drove here it was last year when I went to Wales. But it was still during some pandemic restrictions so I guess prices were lower.

I didn't check car rental prices recently, is it that bad?

Luckily I travel on trains either for free or cheaply


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> So get rid of that stupid rule! The UK used to have it as well but that stopped about 20 years ago.





Fuzzy Llama said:


> I can't, I'm an immigrant, they won't let me vote


It's being gradually phased out and will cease to exist in 2031.



Fuzzy Llama said:


> By the way, are there any university-provided (or subsidized) dormitories for students, or is everybody expected to rent? I have a feeling that student dorms are also quite eastern-european concept
> 
> I started my studies in 2006, and for first two years I've stayed in this https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dom_Studencki_„Riviera”_w_Warszawie wonderful pallace. It costed 410PLN/month (let's say 100EUR), for that you got a bed in two-rooms-and-shared-eating-space module housing 6 blokes. Those were some good times


No, we don't have anything like that. You pay your tuition fee and you get access to education in return. Everything else is your own responsibility.


----------



## PovilD

High speed rail for intra-continental travel wins!


----------



## keber

Sadly HSR covers only a very small fraction of Europe population.


----------



## Slagathor

True, but it covers the bits where I live and want to go. So I'm good.


----------



## geogregor

Rebasepoiss said:


> That's the thing with renting a car (in Europe?) - it's a always a pain. You have to read through endless conditions, evaluate the need for extra insurance, find your risk tolerance vs readyness to pay etc. I haven't been to the US myself but from what I've heard it's much easier and carefree to rent a car over there.


Renting in the US is easier when you pre-book from Europe. Most of the major rental agencies then give you full insurance included. In general I find renting in the US much cheaper than in Europe. For the same price I get small city car in Europe in the US I can drive something like Ford Mustang. At least that was the case before the pandemic. I heard that since then prices have risen in the US, but then so they did in Europe.



Kpc21 said:


> And they will always charge you something extra while returning the car anyway.
> 
> Several years ago I rented a car in the UK from a local company, not from a corporation such as Sixt. And I also had to pay something extra. Because they found some microscopic scratches which according to them weren't there before.
> 
> Well, I rented the car so that I could use it, and for me it's a result of just normal usage of the car. Indeed I happened to drive in some narrow access roads where there were some (lighweight!) branches with leaves on the sides or from above. But to me it doesn't look like something for which I should be charged extra.


I'm careful with those small independent companies. I only use them if they are significantly cheaper and then I always take full insurance. The type of insurance so I can pretty much crash the car without paying extra. I actually had small crash in rented car in Calgary. No injuries but bad enough that car could not have been driven further. Road assistance arrived, collected our old crashed car and dropped us to Calgary airport where without blinking they issued me keys to a new car. That's what I call good customer service.

BTW, jubilee celebrations continue in the UK. Today I decided to check vibe in central London:


P1210068 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1210078 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1210103 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1210115 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1210081 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1210097 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1210123 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1210140 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1210155 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1210167 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1210169 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1210175 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1210186 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

General party atmosphere and plenty of people everywhere. I decided to rise the glass to her majesty  

20220604_174337 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

ChrisZwolle said:


> Schiphol has a lot of problems again today. There were reports of a lineup of people to over 1 kilometer outside of the entrance. KLM has stopped flying aircraft from European destinations into Schiphol for the rest of the day, because of overcrowding at the airport.
> 
> I'm fine with my car-based vacations...
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1531711017620803585
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1533028254189293570
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1532659333590224896


There was also a post-pandemic record of passengers at Norwegian airports on Friday, 96 000 in Oslo (OSL) alone, but no major issues were reported. Due to the domestic traffic, airports were scaled less down than in many other countries. Also, staff was mostly not sacked during the pandemic, but temporarily laid off while provided support from the government.

But there are other issues. Huge post-pandemic delays in delivering passports / national IDs mean that many must cancel their planned vacations. And the airport workers may start a strike at the end of the month....


geogregor said:


> General party atmosphere and plenty of people everywhere. I decided to rise the glass to her majesty


I read today that the cost of beer in London has reached Norwegian levels?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

B3 through Marburg, Germany is closed due to an event. Google Maps detects all those phones as a traffic jam.

Not sure what's going on on B62 though, another type of event, maybe a bicycle ride?











__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1533402077988376577


----------



## radamfi

The benefits of high speed rail are diluted when it thinks it is an airline, like Eurostar. You wouldn't have avoided the queues at Gatwick by going to St Pancras. There was chaos there too. Eurostar has airline style baggage scanning and of course passport control. The one advantage is that you get both UK and French passport control done before boarding the train, so no queuing for passport control at the other end. There have been reports of British passport holders waiting for hours in queues at passport control at Spanish airports.

On the bright side, things certainly seem to calm down from Tuesday, when I am flying to Amsterdam. easyJet sent me an email this morning asking me to get to the airport early, but flight prices for Tuesday seem low considering it is only two days away. easyJet flights from Gatwick have been either sold out or ridiculously expensive for the last week. There was the double whammy of school holidays and Jubilee holidays. Most people are back at school or work tomorrow or Tuesday. I checked Ryanair flights from Stansted and you can go to Eindhoven on Tuesday for £9.99.


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> The benefits of high speed rail are diluted when it thinks it is an airline, like Eurostar. You wouldn't have avoided the queues at Gatwick by going to St Pancras. There was chaos there too. Eurostar has airline style baggage scanning and of course passport control.


Yes, I can't imagine how unpleasant it would be if Schengen didn't exist. You wouldn't even be able to do all the passport checks in one place (as in St Pancras) on a train from, say, Amsterdam to Paris, because what happens if folks disembark in Brussels? The logistics would be a nightmare and the trains would never be able to compete with airlines.

But, as it is, taking the train to Amsterdam to Milan is no different than taking a train from Amsterdam to Maastricht (apart from the distance). Walk to the station, board the train, sit down. That's it.


----------



## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> But there are other issue. Huge post-pandemic delays in delivering passports / national IDs mean that many must cancel their planned vacations.


That is an issue here in the UK as well, on top of our other peculiar Brexit related fuc*kups.



> I read today that the cost of beer in London has reached Norwegian levels?


I don't know the Norwegian prices. But price range in London is very wide. I know that some trendy/touristy pubs can charge as much as £7-8 per pint. I would say that average standard price in central London is around £5-6. In my local area I can still get pint for around £2 in a low key boozer where I sometimes go to watch football  But it is extremely low price.

Oh, and there are the Weatherspoon pubs. This chain runs almost thousand pubs in the UK and they always have something cheap on offer. But it is rather controversial company.


----------



## radamfi

Eurostar was actually best when it started in the 90s, even though there was no high speed line in Britain. They used to do passport control on the train, although baggage scanning has always existed. UK immigration wasn't so strict back then. I once lost my passport in France but still managed to board the ferry to Dover. They just told me to sort it out in Dover. Passport control in Dover just asked me a few questions and when it was obvious I was British they let me go.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> I once lost my passport in France but still managed to board the ferry to Dover. They just told me to sort it out in Dover. Passport control in Dover just asked me a few questions and when it was obvious I was British they let me go.


Nowadays the bit*ch Patel would send you to Rwanda


----------



## Fatfield

geogregor said:


> That is an issue here in the UK as well, on top of our other peculiar Brexit related fuc*kups.
> 
> 
> 
> I don't know the Norwegian prices. But price range in London is very wide. I know that some trendy/touristy pubs can charge as much as £7-8 per pint. I would say that average standard price in central London is around £5-6. In my local area I can still get pint for around £2 in a low key boozer where I sometimes go to watch football  But it is extremely low price.
> 
> Oh, and there are the Weatherspoon pubs. This chain runs almost thousand pubs in the UK and they always have something cheap on offer. But it is rather controversial company.


When I was down there a couple of weeks ago I paid £2.80 for a pint of snakebite (cider & lager) in a bar ouside Hayes & Harlington rail station. It was £5 in a bar outside Hounslow West tube station and anywhere between £6 & £8 in central London. For comparison its £4.30 in my local in Sunderland. BTW I don't think the cheap chains sell it up here as its got a bit a reputation (unfounded in my experience) of sending people doolally.


----------



## radamfi

They've got some new bilingual parking machines in Woking near London, just outside the M25. The second language is not French, German or Polish, but Dutch! I instantly noticed the Dutch flag in the corner so it had to be pressed. Once into Dutch mode you can only go back to English, so it really is just English and Dutch. Maybe there is a huge Dutch speaking community in the area! Or, much more likely, maybe it is because these machines come from the Netherlands or Belgium.

'License plate' is an Americanism. It is usually 'number plate' in the UK. 

The Dutch tells you to press on 'ga verder' but the button says 'Doorgaan'.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> 'License plate' is an Americanism. It is usually 'number plate' in the UK.


American TV shows have resulted in American English terms often being more common than British English in the Netherlands. There is also a situation of British English spelling being mixed with American English words. 

Once, I've seen a news article writing about 'Pearl Harbour'. The media also has trouble with the Australian Labor Party, because Labour from the UK is better known and spelled with 'ou'. Australian English is also interesting because their spelling is more influenced by American English while their pronunciation is not...


----------



## Kpc21

What version of English is normally taught in your countries?

In Poland it's practically always British English. But, as Chris said, in practice people use American English more. I tend to use American, because it's just used much more internationally, e.g. on the Internet. It happened to me several times that when I used a specifically British word while talking to a non-English-native foreigner, he didn't understand it.


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> Once, I've seen a news article writing about 'Pearl Harbour'. The media also has trouble with the Australian Labor Party, because Labour from the UK is better known and spelled with 'ou'. Australian English is also interesting because their spelling is more influenced by American English while their pronunciation is not...


Australia uses UK English everywhere in formal settings like the press, government and business publications; the Australian Labor Party is very unusual in using a US spelling. That said, US spellings are slowly taking over the rest of the world so I wouldn't be surprised if lots of informal communication uses US spellings


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> What version of English is normally taught in your countries?
> 
> In Poland it's practically always British English. But, as Chris said, in practice people use American English more. I tend to use American, because it's just used much more internationally, e.g. on the Internet. It happened to me several times that when I used a specifically British word while talking to a non-English-native foreigner, he didn't understand it.


British!

But even here the US spellings are creeping in more and more. Spell checkers are mostly to blame


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

In Norway, I believe pupils are allowed to write AE (if they do it consistently) , but teaching is in BE. Personally I normally write AE since I have stayed a couple of years in the US, but when writing documents with other I often end up using BE. Many are not very conscious about the differences. 



ChrisZwolle said:


> ia also has trouble with the Australian Labor Party, because Labour from the UK is better known and spelled with 'ou'. Australian English is also interesting because their spelling is more influenced by American English while their pronunciation is not...


Actually, Australian spelling is very close to British English. I am not aware of any difference. It should for instance have been Australian Labour Party according to Australian standard spelling, so the party name is an anomaly.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

geogregor said:


> I don't know the Norwegian prices. But price range in London is very wide. I know that some trendy/touristy pubs can charge as much as £7-8 per pint. I would say that average standard price in central London is around £5-6. In my local area I can still get pint for around £2 in a low key boozer where I sometimes go to watch football  But it is extremely low price.





Fatfield said:


> When I was down there a couple of weeks ago I paid £2.80 for a pint of snakebite (cider & lager) in a bar ouside Hayes & Harlington rail station. It was £5 in a bar outside Hounslow West tube station and anywhere between £6 & £8 in central London. For comparison its £4.30 in my local in Sunderland. BTW I don't think the cheap chains sell it up here as its got a bit a reputation (unfounded in my experience) of sending people doolally.


On average, still seems significantly cheaper than in Norway, then. I have not seen ~2£in Norway for decades.


----------



## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> In Norway, I believe pupils are allowed to write AE (if they do it consistently) , but teaching is in BE. Personally I normally write AE since I have stayed a couple of years in the US, but when writing documents with other I often end up using BE. Many are not very conscious about the differences.


In Poland on the end-of-highschool exams (isn't it weird that most languages have a single specific word for this exam, but not English?  ) you are also allowed to use American English – but, again, you have to be consistent.


----------



## Slagathor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Actually, Australian spelling is very close to British English. I am not aware of any difference. It should for instance have been Australian Labour Party according to Australian standard spelling, so the party name is an anomaly.


Australia, New Zealand and South Africa all use British spelling.

Canada is the odd one out. It uses both "ou" and Zs, for example...

"My friend did me a fav*ou*r organi*z*ing the event so I got him some theat*re* tickets as a thank-you." 

...is a perfectly correctly spelled Canadian sentence. 

Canadians also retain the double-L in words like _travelling _and _cancelled _(Americans only use one L) and they usually stick to British rules when comes to C versus S (_practice_, _practise_).


----------



## Rebasepoiss

British English is what's being taught at Estonian schools or at least it used to be back in my days (2000s). Nowadays I think it's more relaxed but you have to be consistent.


----------



## AnelZ

They teach you British English here in Bosnia and Herzegovina as most teachers went to the UK for any sort of additional education and very few to the US. The textbooks are all from England (I remember in high school that the focus for the whole textbook during one year or maybe even two was on Cornwall) as well as everything audio aside if there is a movie which is produced in the US.

I don't give much attention how I write as honestly very often I'm not aware that there exists a difference between the two (eg. just above someone said License plate is an Americanism which I wasn't aware of) but I would prefer to use British English if I would have to choose.


----------



## geogregor

Slagathor said:


> Australia, New Zealand and South Africa all use British spelling.
> 
> Canada is the odd one out. It uses both "ou" and Zs, for example.
> 
> "My friend did me a fav*ou*r organi*z*ing the event so I got him some theat*re* tickets as a thank-you."
> 
> ...is a perfectly correctly spelled Canadian sentence.
> 
> Canadians also retain the double-L in words like _travelling _and _cancelled _(Americans only use one L) and they usually stick to British rules when comes to C versus S (_practice_, _practise_).


English language is a bloody mess. Full stop.

I admit that I mix American and British spelling. It often depends what I'm writing about. When I describe my experiences in the US I often inadvertently switch to US spelling or vocabulary but when I write about the UK experiences I will probably write using British forms, vocabulary and spelling.

But it is not hard rule of mine, sometimes I simply don't think about it and mix things up.
At the end, unless one is writing formal letters or papers, who cares?


----------



## MattiG

Rebasepoiss said:


> British English is what's being taught at Estonian schools or at least it used to be back in my days (2000s). Nowadays I think it's more relaxed but you have to be consistent.


The word "consistent" is a very surprising choice when discussing English.


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> English language is a bloody mess. Full stop.
> 
> I admit that I mix American and British spelling. It often depends what I'm writing about. When I describe my experiences in the US I often inadvertently switch to US spelling or vocabulary but when I write about the UK experiences I will probably write using British forms, vocabulary and spelling.
> 
> But it is not hard rule of mine, sometimes I simply don't think about it and mix things up.
> At the end, unless one is writing formal letters or papers, who cares?


As long as it makes sense it doesn't matter really.

Although skeptic just looks wrong


----------



## volodaaaa

I pay a native speaker to improve my speaking. It indeed helped me a lot. And he said some interesting facts that allowed me to tackle my shyness:
a) it the others understand you, you can speak English, and you should not be pessimistic about it,
b) statistically, in absolute figures, the English native speakers are those who make the most mistakes,
c) a lot of native speakers do not speak grammatically correct, and they don't give a dam (and showed me the results of IELTS testing by primary language: "*many native speakers discover the test is much harder than they originally anticipated* and end up scoring much lower, without proper preparation, compared to non-English speaking people").

Now I am tackling to learn German (I have been learning for 18 years). But surprisingly, knowledge of English helped me a lot to naturally understand some rules I used to struggle with.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've been doing a course of French on Duolingo. I've had a 117 day streak now. 

I've learned French in high school, got pretty good grades, but it faded away quite fast. I can read it, but I miss out on a lot of nuances.

The question is whether a second language should be gramatically perfect. If you want to write in that language, it's probably better to improve the grammatical skills. However if you're just going to speak it, it's not really necessary. Just look at the travel vlogger Bald and Bankrupt, he can hold good conversations in Russian despite him saying his grammar is poor.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> The question is whether a second language should be grammatically perfect. If you want to write in that language, it's probably better to improve the grammatical skills. However if you're just going to speak it, it's not really necessary. Just look at the travel vlogger Bald and Bankrupt, he can hold good conversations in Russian despite him saying his grammar is poor.


That is right. I often feel that knowing German is useless once I speak English. That argument is obviously invalid, but I always use it once I fail to be successful in improving my German. Duolingo is, by the way, a perfect tool, except for the lower levels when you have puzzles as such:

My bus leaves in 5 minutes. I have to ... it.
a) catch
b) eat
c) sing
🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 

Makes me feel I am expert but the collision with the reality is tragic then 🤣


----------



## bogdymol

In the recent years I worked a lot with UK companies. The vast majority of people speak good English there, but there are some that cannot write a single sentence in an e-mail without making at least 3 mistakes. Sometimes I struggle to understand what they wanted to say, it is that bad. 

Now I am improving my German on Duolingo. I started when the pandemic started and had to stay home, and I am now at a 799 days streak. I plan to reach 1000.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

bogdymol said:


> but there are some that cannot write a single sentence in an e-mail without making at least 3 mistakes. Sometimes I struggle to understand what they wanted to say, it is that bad.


For the Millennials:


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> What version of English is normally taught in your countries?
> 
> In Poland it's practically always British English. But, as Chris said, in practice people use American English more. I tend to use American, because it's just used much more internationally, e.g. on the Internet. It happened to me several times that when I used a specifically British word while talking to a non-English-native foreigner, he didn't understand it.


Basically I learned the word "lorry" at school, but I use "truck" instead at all times.


Rebasepoiss said:


> British English is what's being taught at Estonian schools or at least it used to be back in my days (2000s). Nowadays I think it's more relaxed but you have to be consistent.


Same here. Nothing much different in Latvia, Poland, Estonia, or Europe basically  I think American English is allowed, but not on teaching. At least my experience.



ChrisZwolle said:


> The question is whether a second language should be gramatically perfect. If you want to write in that language, it's probably better to improve the grammatical skills. However if you're just going to speak it, it's not really necessary. Just look at the travel vlogger Bald and Bankrupt, he can hold good conversations in Russian despite him saying his grammar is poor.


Hard to imagine Bald and bankrupt writing long texts in Russian.

As for forums and not having perfect grammar skills, better watch what sentences others are writing and try your best. Actually learning all those forms is tiring, and you can't be guaranteed you will make it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

PovilD said:


> Basically I learned the word "lorry" at school, but I use "truck" instead at all times.


Truck is a very context-based word in North America. It could often refer to a pickup truck instead of a commercial semi-truck. 

'semi' is used a lot to differentiate commercial trucks (18-wheelers) from a pickup truck. 

HGV is another synonym in British context. Heavy Goods Vehicle. Similar to 'LKW' in German.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Truck is a very context-based word in North America. It could often refer to a pickup truck instead of a commercial semi-truck.
> 
> 'semi' is used a lot to differentiate commercial trucks (18-wheelers) from a pickup truck.
> 
> HGV is another synonym in British context. Heavy Goods Vehicle. Similar to 'LKW' in German.


Yeah, there is also HGV, but for ordinary speaker it can sound too professional. Truck is just more straightforward.


----------



## Fatfield

ChrisZwolle said:


> Truck is a very context-based word in North America. It could often refer to a pickup truck instead of a commercial semi-truck.
> 
> 'semi' is used a lot to differentiate commercial trucks (18-wheelers) from a pickup truck.
> 
> HGV is another synonym in British context. Heavy Goods Vehicle. Similar to 'LKW' in German.


Artic ((articulated) can also be written as r-tic)) is also commonly used to describe HGV's.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Oops:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1534539671925100545


----------



## Attus

I haven't learned English in elementary or high school, I've only learned Russian and German. I learned English self from a book "English by stealth", which was obviously a British text book (written by Hungarian authors for self learners). However, I learned something from newspapers, books, etc. (public internet hardly existed back then), without realizing they're American English. Later on I visited a course that was held by an American woman and she taught AmE of course. However, she used L.G. Alexander's "First things first" which is a British book - and said very often: "It's very British".  
Nowadays I usually try to use AmE, but sometimes I fail.


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> it the others understand you, you can speak English, and you should not be pessimistic about it


If you speak a foreign language or you don't, is not a Yes or No question. Alright, for very many languages is it "No" for sure  But there are 3-4 languages that I speak a little bit, I understand more, can speak less, and not any foreign language I speak "very good". Not even German, although I've learned German since 1982 and have been living in Germany for almost ten years. 
But the main (actually the only) use of a language is communication. As long as you can communicate, you can express yourself and other people understand what you mean, you can use that language and it makes a sense for you using it and having learned it. 
Look at this forum (not only this thread but SSC)! Lot of people communicate here in English, the vast majority of them are not native English speakers. Many of us (including me) can not speak and not even write very good Einglish. But I think it makes a sense for us (I think sometimes we upset native speakers ;-)) and as long as you can express yourself clearly and other people here understand you, it's great.


----------



## radamfi

volodaaaa said:


> I pay a native speaker to improve my speaking. It indeed helped me a lot. And he said some interesting facts that allowed me to tackle my shyness:
> a) it the others understand you, you can speak English, and you should not be pessimistic about it,
> b) statistically, in absolute figures, the English native speakers are those who make the most mistakes,
> c) a lot of native speakers do not speak grammatically correct, and they don't give a dam (and showed me the results of IELTS testing by primary language: "*many native speakers discover the test is much harder than they originally anticipated* and end up scoring much lower, without proper preparation, compared to non-English speaking people").
> 
> Now I am tackling to learn German (I have been learning for 18 years). But surprisingly, knowledge of English helped me a lot to naturally understand some rules I used to struggle with.


I can confirm that this thread has the best English out of all the forums I read. Forums where most of the participants are British are the worst.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> I've been doing a course of French on Duolingo. I've had a 117 day streak now.
> 
> I've learned French in high school, got pretty good grades, but it faded away quite fast. I can read it, but I miss out on a lot of nuances.
> 
> The question is whether a second language should be gramatically perfect. If you want to write in that language, it's probably better to improve the grammatical skills. However if you're just going to speak it, it's not really necessary. Just look at the travel vlogger Bald and Bankrupt, he can hold good conversations in Russian despite him saying his grammar is poor.


I've got a 1191 day streak on Duolingo and I've completed Dutch to English and English to Dutch but still feel I hardly know anything. The forums on there were really good but unfortunately Duolingo have closed them down. I just go on there for the sake of keeping the streak going. Clozemaster is more use to me at the moment as it teaches more advanced vocabulary.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> If you speak a foreign language or you don't, is not a Yes or No question. Alright, for very many languages is it "No" for sure  But there are 3-4 languages that I speak a little bit, I understand more, can speak less, and not any foreign language I speak "very good". Not even German, although I've learned German since 1982 and have been living in Germany for almost ten years.
> But the main (actually the only) use of a language is communication. As long as you can communicate, you can express yourself and other people understand what you mean, you can use that language and it makes a sense for you using it and having learned it.
> Look at this forum (not only this thread but SSC)! Lot of people communicate here in English, the vast majority of them are not native English speakers. Many of us (including me) can not speak and not even write very good Einglish. But I think it makes a sense for us (I think sometimes we upset native speakers ;-)) and as long as you can express yourself clearly and other people here understand you, it's great.


I have to admit, that especially this thread, played a fundamental role in my English learning. No kidding.


----------



## MattiG

Attus said:


> Look at this forum (not only this thread but SSC)! Lot of people communicate here in English, the vast majority of them are not native English speakers. Many of us (including me) can not speak and not even write very good Einglish. But I think it makes a sense for us (I think sometimes we upset native speakers ;-)) and as long as you can express yourself clearly and other people here understand you, it's great.


Well, the most common language in the World is Broken English. The language has zillions of accents, and most of them are pretty far away from the Oxford standards. Natives are used to this.

Some accents are very difficult to understand, and some of those belong to native English speakers. The Finnish TV does not dub virtually anything except kid's programs but adds subtitles. If there are somebody from the rural North-East England in TV, the subtitles are the only way to survive. 

Quite often, the learning path of the schools in the smaller language areas focuses to languages more deeply than in countries like France, Germany and the UK. That creates to the basis to learn more if needed. The Finnish school system is 6+3+3 years. In the final 3-year stage before the university studies, about one third of the studies may be about the mother tongue (Finnish, or Swedish), and the A and B languages (usually English and Swedish/Finnish). In addition, most schools provide with studies on one or more C language(s): French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish, etc.


----------



## Kpc21

By the way, how are the high fuel prices received by people in your country?

Because in Poland most people do blame of them the CEO of the state fuel conglomerate Orlen (who is, obviously, a PiS politician). Because actually our price of gas doesn't follow the price of oil on the international markets anyway, and the margin imposed by Orlen on the price is ridiculously high.



MattiG said:


> Well, the most common language in the World is Broken English. The language has zillions of accents, and most of them are pretty far away from the Oxford standards. Natives are used to this.


There is also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> By the way, how are the high fuel prices received by people in your country?


I think we've learned a lot about the price elasticity of mobility (or lack thereof). 

The high fuel prices seem to have no impact on car usage at all. Both traffic congestion and traffic volumes have bounced back to pre-pandemic levels on many motorways despite fuel prices being far higher than what they've have been up to now. 

You can also observe that working remotely is still a thing among some groups, but it's not the huge congestion-busting solution that it was proposed to be pre-pandemic. I still work from home about half the time, I've even have heard of people still working from home 100 percent, but many have also returned to the office for at least 4 days. And don't underestimate the size of the tangible economy: for many professions working from home is just not an option.


----------



## radamfi

Working from home probably reduces rail commuting the most. These jobs are often in city centre offices. They are the jobs most appropriate for working from home and standing in crowded conditions on peak hour trains is particularly unpleasant, arguably worse than sitting in a traffic jam.

People don't even seem to care about moderating their speed or driving style to save fuel.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think we've learned a lot about the price elasticity of mobility (or lack thereof).
> 
> The high fuel prices seem to have no impact on car usage at all. Both traffic congestion and traffic volumes have bounced back to pre-pandemic levels on many motorways despite fuel prices being far higher than what they've have been up to now.
> 
> You can also observe that working remotely is still a thing among some groups, but it's not the huge congestion-busting solution that it was proposed to be pre-pandemic. I still work from home about half the time, I've even have heard of people still working from home 100 percent, but many have also returned to the office for at least 4 days. And don't underestimate the size of the tangible economy: for many professions working from home is just not an option.


The same here. People who use cars to take away trash complain about extreme prices. But they keep doing that anyway.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

People are not scared by the high fuel prices to take longer trips.

Wednesday before Ascension:









Sunday after Ascension:









Friday before Pentecost weekend:









Last Saturday across the Alps:


----------



## Stuu

volodaaaa said:


> I pay a native speaker to improve my speaking. It indeed helped me a lot. And he said some interesting facts that allowed me to tackle my shyness:
> a) it the others understand you, you can speak English, and you should not be pessimistic about it,
> b) statistically, in absolute figures, the English native speakers are those who make the most mistakes,
> c) a lot of native speakers do not speak grammatically correct, and they don't give a dam (and showed me the results of IELTS testing by primary language: "*many native speakers discover the test is much harder than they originally anticipated* and end up scoring much lower, without proper preparation, compared to non-English speaking people").


For many years English grammar was barely taught in schools in the UK, beyond nouns, verbs and adjectives. More complicated concepts like what the perfect tense is and actually conjugating verbs (I am, you are, we are etc) was only used for learning foreign languages, almost always French or German. That has changed in the last 20 years or so, and now it has gone too far the other way with far too much emphasis on grammar rather than whether it reads well or makes coherent sense


volodaaaa said:


> Now I am tackling to learn German (I have been learning for 18 years). But surprisingly, knowledge of English helped me a lot to naturally understand some rules I used to struggle with.


German is far easier as it is incredibly consistent in rules and especially spellings when compared to English, at least at a basic level. English must be a horrible language to learn and even to teach


----------



## radamfi

I just got back from NL. I wouldn't recommend arriving at Schiphol from outside the Schengen Area without an EU/EEA/CH passport. The queues for the manual passport control were huge, whereas there was no queue for the automated passport control. All the British passport holders who would have been using the automated passport control until the end of 2020 now have to queue up and get their passport stamped. I was so glad I had a Hungarian passport. On the return at least they can use the automated passport control, as it is open to most developed countries.

I went on a bike ride north of Amsterdam, following numbers 05-55-17-12-13-15-16-19-04-36-05.









This is at 19, only about 5 km north of the centre of Amsterdam











The Netherlands has been at the forefront of smartcard train ticketing for such a long time with the nationwide OV-Chipkaart smartcard being in use for well over a decade now. The natural assumption is that they might want to close ticket offices but they seem to have kept them open regardless of the OV-Chipkaart. So I was surprised to see the ticket office in Hilversum closed. There was a sign saying it closed in April. That's a pretty big town not to have a railway station ticket office. Quite a notable town as well. The 'Hollywood of the Netherlands', as it has been called at least once called on YouTube.

I tested my Mastercards in various shops in Almere (so not a tourist location) and they were accepted in most of them. After trying my Mastercard debit card in HEMA and Etos, I even tried my Mastercard _credit_ card in Zeeman and Aldi, which are very cheap shops which you might expect to be fussy about credit cards and it still worked. However, both the Mastercard debit and credit cards were still refused in Albert Heijn, so I had to pay using my Maestro card as usual.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Truck is a very context-based word in North America. It could often refer to a pickup truck instead of a commercial semi-truck.
> 
> 'semi' is used a lot to differentiate commercial trucks (18-wheelers) from a pickup truck.
> 
> HGV is another synonym in British context. Heavy Goods Vehicle. Similar to 'LKW' in German.


In Poland some use word "tir" for HGVs (or semis, as Americans would call it) whether the lorry in question has the TIR (Transports Internationaux Routiers) carnet or not.

Ok, I just managed to use three different English words for truck in a single sentence


----------



## Slagathor

Stuu said:


> For many years English grammar was barely taught in schools in the UK, beyond nouns, verbs and adjectives. More complicated concepts like what the perfect tense is and actually conjugating verbs (I am, you are, we are etc) was only used for learning foreign languages, almost always French or German.


Is that how the non-existent tense _to be + past participle_ came into widespread use? For example:

"He was stood there for an hour."
"If you're sat in an emergency exit row..."

That's not a tense in the English language. It doesn't exist. Use it on an IELTS exam and you'll flunk it. 



radamfi said:


> However, both the Mastercard debit and credit cards were still refused in Albert Heijn, so I had to pay using my Maestro card as usual.


Yep, Albert Heijn are *****. I never go there anymore since I switched a grocery delivery service.


----------



## tfd543

radamfi said:


> I just got back from NL. I wouldn't recommend arriving at Schiphol from outside the Schengen Area without an EU/EEA/CH passport. The queues for the manual passport control were huge, whereas there was no queue for the automated passport control. All the British passport holders who would have been using the automated passport control until the end of 2020 now have to queue up and get their passport stamped. I was so glad I had a Hungarian passport. On the return at least they can use the automated passport control, as it is open to most developed countries.
> .


Yikes. Im gonna have a layover there. Going from DK to Colombia. 

Do I need to clear Security again in the NL ?

And Can I use the auto passport check if Its an overseas destination ?


Travelling this Saturday.


----------



## volodaaaa

Slagathor said:


> Is that how the non-existent tense _to be + past participle_ came into widespread use? For example:
> 
> "He was stood there for an hour."
> "If you're sat in an emergency exit row..."
> 
> That's not a tense in the English language. It doesn't exist. Use it on an IELTS exam and you'll flunk it.


And what grammar tense is this? 🤣




__





Loading…






en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Slagathor

tfd543 said:


> Yikes. Im gonna have a layover there. Going from DK to Colombia.
> 
> Do I need to clear Security again in the NL ?
> 
> And Can I use the auto passport check if Its an overseas destination ?
> 
> 
> Travelling this Saturday.


Ordinarily, transfering passengers use a different route to go through passport control so I don't _think _you'd be in the crowd...

Will your suitcase be transfered automatically? If you have to go pick up your suitcase and check it back in again, you'll be in serious trouble.


----------



## Mortiis

Few days ago we did some Italy Road Trip during the Weekend and we also went to the amazing Lake Garda...Driving the Car over there was such an amazing experience that i needed to film it on our way back...so check out the video of the amazing italian nature (if u are interested)


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> Yep, Albert Heijn are ***. I never go there anymore since I switched a grocery delivery service.


I normally use my Maestro all the time since I got a Dutch bank account but I was curious to see if things had changed given the imminent demise of Maestro and its replacement with Mastercard debit. Surely Aldi and Zeeman didn't accept credit cards in the past? Given they accept them now must mean they have already made the required changes. I did manage to use my Mastercard in the cashless AH 'to go' branch at Amsterdam Noord metro station which didn't accept it last time I was there about 3 years ago. 'To go' branches generally accept credit cards so they can accept them if they want.

According to









Rabobank introduces new payment options with Visa Debit


Rabobank will start issuing a new debit card in the second half of 2022 in collaboration with Visa. The bank is abandoning




ffnews.com





Rabobank customers will be receiving a Visa debit card "in the second half of 2022", so really AH need to change their machines soon.


----------



## tfd543

Slagathor said:


> Ordinarily, transfering passengers use a different route to go through passport control so I don't _think _you'd be in the crowd...
> 
> Will your suitcase be transfered automatically? If you have to go pick up your suitcase and check it back in again, you'll be in serious trouble.


I see. Its a different booth station when youre transiting.

Well, i hope so. I have a checked bag that should be transferred.. isnt that given when my end destination is not NL ?

Its a very Long time i travelled with checked bags. Only cabin bags.


----------



## Slagathor

tfd543 said:


> I see. Its a different booth station when youre transiting.


More information here.

Scroll down the FAQs and click on "How long does a transfer at Schiphol take?" then go from there. There's also an interactive map on the website so you can see if you have to join the crowd or if there's an alternative route.



tfd543 said:


> Well, i hope so. I have a checked bag that should be transferred.. isnt that given when my end destination is not NL ?


No, it's not. It depends on what you booked.

I once booked a trip through a travel agency. I booked it as one trip but it was actually 2 separate airlines. Which meant that I had to collect my suitcase and check it back in at the airport of transfer.

If, however, you book a single ticket with a single airline (or code-sharing airlines), then it should all happen automatically.

You should double check to make sure. Call the airline.

If you have to collect your suitcase, I would travel without one. Under current circumstances, having to collect and check in your suitcase again is guaranteed to make you miss your connecting flight.


----------



## tfd543

Slagathor said:


> More information here.
> 
> Scroll down the FAQs and click on "How long does a transfer at Schiphol take?" then go from there. There's also an interactive map on the website so you can see if you have to join the crowd or if there's an alternative route.
> 
> 
> 
> No, it's not. It depends on what you booked.
> 
> I once booked a trip through a travel agency. I booked it as one trip but it was actually 2 separate airlines. Which meant that I had to collect my suitcase and check it back in at the airport of transfer.
> 
> If, however, you book a single ticket with a single airline (or code-sharing airlines), then it should all happen automatically.
> 
> You should double check to make sure. Call the airline.
> 
> If you have to collect your suitcase, I would travel without one. Under current circumstances, having to collect and check in your suitcase again is guaranteed to make you miss your connecting flight.


Damn. Good to know this.

I need a checked bag. Cant survive 1 month abroad with only a cabin bag. Lets see what Will happen.


----------



## MattiG

Slagathor said:


> If you have to collect your suitcase, I would travel without one. Under current circumstances, having to collect and check in your suitcase again is guaranteed to make you miss your connecting flight.


It looks like the Dutch have invented a second CDG to avoid.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> I guess the purpose is that in effect a country may refuse you entry because you were previously in another country
> If I remember well, such a situation exists between Egypt and Israel or something like that (I am not 100% sure if those are those two specific countries or some others in more or less that area).


Many Arab countries have or used to have such a restriction. But it is not really effective, since many European countries issue two passports for the same person if needed. I, too, know a businessman, he has two passes, both Hungarian. He uses one to visit Izrael, and the other one to visit Arab countries.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> But it is not really effective, since many European countries issue two passports for the same person if needed. I, too, know a businessman, he has two passes, both Hungarian. He uses one to visit Izrael, and the other one to visit Arab countries.


And it's why it even more doesn't make any sense, and only causes unnecessary complications.

And what's even the logic behind such a ban? Do they believe in Arab countries that in Israel you catch a virus or something that would kill people in those countries, or what?

Not to mention it's kinda racist as for 2022. You can't call e.g. a blacklist a blacklist, because it insults some people (who are even difficult to name in a non-insulting way), but banning entry because someone was previously in another country is OK...


----------



## bogdymol

When I was in Israel, they saw my Arab-states stamps in my passport and started questioning me about each one of them: when I have been there? Why? With whom I traveled with? Who I visited? Where I stayed etc. Once the answers were given for one country, they went to the next. Same for each muslim-majority country, and I had a few in my passport (Morocco, Turkey, UAE, Malaysia).

Same when I visited Australia, many questions asking me why I was in certain countries.

With USA it was quite easy last few times. The border officer started his usual questioning, but when he gets to the US visa page on my passport and sees how many times I have been there, he just lets me go without asking anything else.


----------



## bogdymol

Kpc21 said:


> And what's even the logic behind such a ban? Do they believe in Arab countries that in Israel you catch a virus or something that would kill people in those countries, or what?
> 
> Not to mention it's kinda racist as for 2022. You can't call e.g. a blacklist a blacklist, because it insults some people (who are even difficult to name in a non-insulting way), but banning entry because someone was previously in another country is OK...


Someone doesn't know how the relationship is between Israel and certain arab states. Briefly said:

Israel will generally allow you entrance even if you visited other arab states. They will just ask many questions and make sure you are not a threat
Some Arab states will deny your entrance in their country if they found out you visited Israel. Refused entry, that's it, no complains accepted, get out.


----------



## Kpc21

bogdymol said:


> Some Arab states will deny your entrance in their country if they found out you visited Israel. Refused entry, that's it, no complains accepted, get out.


Of course only if you are completely unprepared and actually do come there with a passport with a stamp from Israel. 

Does it protect from anything then?

If anyone would be about to do something evil, it's unlikely he wouldn't learn ahead he needs to have a passport without Israeli stamps.

When stamps are only used to enforce such stupid and pointless rules, they should just get abolished.


----------



## tfd543

Just do as my friend did once, tear out a page from the passport at the end of the booklet. Lol. Page +25.


----------



## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> Is that how the non-existent tense _to be + past participle_ came into widespread use? For example:
> 
> "He was stood there for an hour."
> "If you're sat in an emergency exit row..."


That's an interesting example, and yes it probably is down to the lack of grammatical education. However, those sentences are entirely clear and understandable (unless you only know grammatically correct English!), so perhaps it is the difference between the rules and the vernacular, which exists AFAIK in every language. 

That illustrates perfectly the biggest problem with learning languages in classes/online or whatever: people in the real world just don't talk like that!


----------



## Kpc21

Slagathor said:


> Is that how the non-existent tense _to be + past participle_ came into widespread use? For example:
> 
> "He was stood there for an hour."
> "If you're sat in an emergency exit row..."


Isn't it called the passive voice? xD

By the way, it is still used more in English than in Polish,


----------



## Slagathor

Stuu said:


> That's an interesting example, and yes it probably is down to the lack of grammatical education. However, those sentences are entirely clear and understandable (unless you only know grammatically correct English!), so perhaps it is the difference between the rules and the vernacular, which exists AFAIK in every language.
> 
> That illustrates perfectly the biggest problem with learning languages in classes/online or whatever: people in the real world just don't talk like that!


The distance between the rules and the vernacular is much bigger in some languages (English, French) than in others (Dutch, Italian).

The problem with English is that it's extremely loosely governed. It isn't really governed at all, in fact. There's no single organization or body with the authority to set the rules and to update those rules every once in a while. The benefit of this is, is that English lends itself well to the arts. The creativity in music and literature, for example, is quite remarkable. But on the flipside, it means dumb people have an outsized influence and incorrect use of the language becomes current more easily than it would elsewhere. This puts outside learners at a disadvantage because it's impossible to produce learning materials that take everyday incorrect speech into account. A lot of that, after all, will prove to be fashionable and therefore temporary but there's no way to predict which expressions will stick. There's the added problem that incorrect common phrases are often not universally adopted. "He was stood there." is common in the UK, but not in North America.

French has a similar distance between rules and vernacular, but for completely different reasons. French is extremely centralized and heavily governed. Its governing body (the Académie française) is extremely conservative, which means the everyday language has become somewhat uncoupled from the official language. The French that is used in the arts and in popular culture is not the same as the French that is taught in schools and that must be used in the higher echelons of society (politics, business). The benefit of this is that modern official French retains a strong link with its past. A modern French person can still read very old texts with relative ease (something you would struggle to do in English). But on the flipside, the official language is too rigid and its evolution is so slow most common folk have moved on at a much faster pace. This makes everyday French relatively inaccessible to outside learners for the same reasons as English; it can't be properly taught.

None of this is a real concern in languages like Dutch and Italian, which sit somewhere in the middle between the laissez-faire approach of English and the rigidity of French.

I don't know where German sits on this spectrum. While I speak all five (Dutch, English, French, Italian and German), German is the only language that I've learned exclusively through studying. For all the others I actually spent time living in countries where they are the lingua franca, so I developed a much better feel for them. I've recently started learning Mandarin and I have plans to spend time in China but it's too soon to draw conclusions. 



Kpc21 said:


> Isn't it called the passive voice? xD


I think you're referring to the construct _have + been + past participle_ which implies that something was done to you. For example, if you want to stress that a seat was assigned to you, you could say:

"I've been sat on seat B7."


----------



## Slagathor

geogregor said:


> It still doesn't explain the lack of flexibility and thinking outside the box. However stupid Brits can be at times (especially the Home Office officials), they realized there is space for common sense approach. As far as I know the UK also works on similar system of electronic authorization as the EU does. In the meantime they decided to make life easier for airports and travelers (as they have enough problems post pandemic).


Like I said; we're working on a whole new system. There's your common sense right there: an entire new system fit for the future for visitors from all corners of the world. 

What is _not _common sense is the idea that we should bend over backwards to accommodate only British visitors (and nobody else) for a period of 11 months because... they're British and therefore special? Give me a break.


----------



## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> The distance between the rules and the vernacular is much bigger in some languages (English, French) than in others (Dutch, Italian).


It is somewhat ironic that the least controlled language and one of the tightest both vary more than other languages. That said, perhaps that is because both French and English have far more international influences on them than either Dutch or Italian? 


Slagathor said:


> The problem with English is that it's extremely loosely governed. It isn't really governed at all, in fact. There's no single organization or body with the authority to set the rules and to update those rules every once in a while. The benefit of this is, is that English lends itself well to the arts. The creativity in music and literature, for example, is quite remarkable.


It does lend itself to the arts and creative subjects to a much greater extent than a lot of other languages. I think on balance that is more important and useful than the fact there are seven different ways to pronounce the letter "a"


Slagathor said:


> There's the added problem that incorrect common phrases are often not universally adopted. "He was stood there." is common in the UK, but not in North America.


Then you have all sorts of stupid constructs from mainly YouTubers such as "I be like...". Which is used by them and farmers in the west of England.


Slagathor said:


> French has a similar distance between rules and vernacular, but for completely different reasons. French is extremely centralized and heavily governed. Its governing body (the Académie française) is extremely conservative, which means the everyday language has become somewhat uncoupled from the official language. The French that is used in the arts and in popular culture is not the same as the French that is taught in schools and that must be used in the higher echelons of society (politics, business). The benefit of this is that modern official French retains a strong link with its past. A modern French person can still read very old texts with relative ease (something you would struggle to do in English). But on the flipside, the official language is too rigid and its evolution is so slow most common folk have moved on at a much faster pace. This makes everyday French relatively inaccessible to outside learners for the same reasons as English; it can't be properly taught.


I learned French at school and as a side course as part of my university degree. I went there regularly, and was relatively sure I was fluent or so in the language. So when my employer needed someone to go to the Paris office for three months I was first in the queue. Which made me realise I knew F all about how French was actually spoken on a day-to-day basis by native French speakers

A useful way of seeing how close a language is to it's rules is to run a website like wikipedia through google translate. The closer it is to making perfect sense, the more native speakers stick to the grammar rules.


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> Like I said; we're working on a whole new system. There's your common sense right there: an entire new system fit for the future for visitors from all corners of the world.
> 
> What is _not _common sense is the idea that we should bend over backwards to accommodate only British visitors (and nobody else) for a period of 11 months because... they're British and therefore special? Give me a break.


Is it actually likely to start next year? It has already been delayed twice.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think we've learned a lot about the price elasticity of mobility (or lack thereof).
> 
> The high fuel prices seem to have no impact on car usage at all. Both traffic congestion and traffic volumes have bounced back to pre-pandemic levels on many motorways despite fuel prices being far higher than what they've have been up to now.


At least in Estonia this isn't the case. When the high fuel prices hit in March the overall fuel consumption dropped by more than 10%. In the meantime, public transport ridership numbers are exceeding those from 2019 in some cases and in others they are matching them. It's difficult to say, of course, how much of that is due to fuel prices and how much can be related to other factors.


----------



## radamfi

It would be interesting to see analysis taking into account local wages. Someone working in the Netherlands can more easily afford 2 euro per litre than someone working in Bulgaria.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

The availability of alternatives also plays a significant role. When the 1/3 of country population lives in a single city, there's enough people able to say "eh, screw it, I'll take a tram" for statistics to show them.


----------



## Slagathor

Stuu said:


> It is somewhat ironic that the least controlled language and one of the tightest both vary more than other languages. That said, perhaps that is because both French and English have far more international influences on them than either Dutch or Italian?


I suppose that would depend on your definition of international influences. Dutch and Italian are more influenced by global languages (especially English in the case of Dutch). There's a ton of loan words etc.

But English and French have many international influences in the sense that they're so widespread. Whatever becomes a hip and trendy expression in Quebec or Cameroon may not necessarily ever enter the official language or even other Francophone countries' common speech (just look at Swiss numbers).



Stuu said:


> It does lend itself to the arts and creative subjects to a much greater extent than a lot of other languages. I think on balance that is more important and useful than the fact there are seven different ways to pronounce the letter "a"


It does, but if that's what you value above all else, you also need to be much more tolerant of non-native quirks and mistakes. I wouldn't personally, for example, give a Thai student a lower grade if he uses "ain't got no" in a sentence because he heard native speakers say it. There should be one standard to judge them all, if you will. 

So no scoffing if you hear a Malay order an _oleng-tzu_ (orange juice) in a restaurant. 



Stuu said:


> Then you have all sorts of stupid constructs from mainly YouTubers such as "I be like...". Which is used by them and farmers in the west of England.


I also dislike the overuse of the word "like" but then the question becomes: who decides what's correct? In English, there's no clear answer to this.



Stuu said:


> I learned French at school and as a side course as part of my university degree. I went there regularly, and was relatively sure I was fluent or so in the language. So when my employer needed someone to go to the Paris office for three months I was first in the queue. Which made me realise I knew F all about how French was actually spoken on a day-to-day basis by native French speakers


Yes, same here.  I'm sure you picked it up fast while you were living there though, right? It's both a challenging and extremely educational thing to be completely immersed in a language like that.



Stuu said:


> A useful way of seeing how close a language is to it's rules is to run a website like wikipedia through google translate. The closer it is to making perfect sense, the more native speakers stick to the grammar rules.


That's a neat trick, I like that. 



radamfi said:


> Is it actually likely to start next year? It has already been delayed twice.


If they have to delay it a third time, your argument that there needs to be an alternative system for nearby countries with large numbers of visitors, becomes a lot more tenable.

We'd need a fudge for places like the UK, Morocco, Turkey and the Balkans. But it should never be a UK-only fudge, imo. That's just discriminatory towards the other neighbors.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Fuzzy Llama said:


> The availability of alternatives also plays a significant role. When the 1/3 of country population lives in a single city, there's enough people able to say "eh, screw it, I'll take a tram" for statistics to show them.


This could be the case in Estonia, where public transport in Tallinn is free. I've read that the effect was an increase in ridership, but not at the expense of motorists (mostly 'induced demand' or people taking the tram instead of walking). 

The vast majority of vehicle kilometers driven is on trips where the travel time variation with public transport is at its greatest, so even free public transport is not sufficient to draw in huge amounts of motorists. Luxembourg is also an example of this, where severe traffic congestion remains despite public transport being free. 

But the high fuel prices may entice some motorists to accept a much longer travel time by free public transport. 

However nowadays there is also still the effect of working from home. With fuel prices being high, especially longer distance commuters may prefer to keep working from home to save money on fuel.


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> We'd need a fudge for places like the UK, Morocco, Turkey and the Balkans. But it should never be a UK-only fudge, imo. That's just discriminatory towards the other neighbors.


Will the ETIAS mean that all passengers will be able to use the same automatic gates? Portugal seem to have created a fudge that works for several countries so there's no reason for it to be just the UK. All visitors from outside the EU/Schengen are suffering at the moment because of so many UK passport holders using the manual passport control. But EU/Schengen passport holders can currently go through the automatic gates without queuing, so maybe there's not so much of an urgency to get ETIAS up and running!  

Turkey has actually been removed from the list of countries allowed to use the Schiphol automatic gates for departing passengers. You can see the Turkey flag has been crossed out on the sign showing which countries can use it, with the UK flag squeezed in at the end.


----------



## Slagathor

I dislike an inconsistent mess. I also dislike anything that adds to the inconsistent mess.  Hence my support for a single, clear system.

As far as I know, ETIAS is intended to allow everyone from 63 visa-free countries to pass through automatic gates IF their passports are up to standard (a problem in itself). I like the simplicity of that even if it'll be hard to accomplish.


----------



## radamfi

You would have thought that there would be a consistent approach by now, within Schengen at least, if not the whole EU, regarding entry rules for visitors from the outside EU/Schengen that haven't been vaccinated against Covid. The Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg and Finland still have severe restrictions on non-vaccinated visitors. Portugal, France and Spain require a test. The rest seem to have no restrictions for the unvaccinated.


----------



## PovilD

Attus said:


> In Germany politicians speak about Covid 19 not every day, but several times a week. Especially the socialist party and minister for health Lauterbach want to maintain all existing rules (there is not so many) or even re-introduce some, and they say again and again that it will be terrible in autumn. However, no one believes them.
> Unlike in Hungary or the Netherlands, quite many people wore a mask in April any May in shops and similar places, although it has not been mandatory since 4.4. But less and less people do it. Some collegues wear it in the office, where it has not been mandatory for three weeks, but the majority does not. Some collegues get infected, some of theem was even sick (despite being vaccinadted three times - vaccination obviously does not protect against being infected by omicron) but the vas majority thinks about it like about a cold: it's bad for a week or two and than it's over, it does not make sense to restrict our live heavily in order too protect ourselves.


It's like forecasting the weather. Ofc, there will be ups and downs, harsher and calmer peiods, it's just not very possible to predict. I think universal vaccine would be a game changer in that to really stop talking about this disease several times a week. Here in Lithuania was even no discussion about covid, only few reports about long covid, and only recently I think we will see more covid news thanks to ba.5 uptick.

It would be interesting to know what is division between political parties in terms of corona measures.
Socialists/socialdemocrats are most strict, what about greens, conservatives, etc.?


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> e.g. doing shopping at companies that refused to withdraw from Russia?


That's not a thing here, as far as I know. The UK was very quick to boycott anything Russian so people probably assume that everything here has withdrawn from Russia. I wouldn't know off the top of my head if there are exceptions. The most famous example was Marks & Spencer who initially claimed they couldn't exit Russia but then did.


----------



## PovilD

volodaaaa said:


> In Slovakia, COVID-19 ceased to exist on the 24th of February too. Fortunately. Nobody cares about it. Nevertheless, I was ill with my family last month. It took three weeks; my wife admitted she learned what having a man's cold feels like. Symptoms were temperature, headache, runny nose, coughing, etc. We tried 25 COVID-test (different types), and all were negative. It seems COVID-19 is not the only disease.


After your post, I entered YouTube to watch one new video (vlog).
"Where I was gone you may ask?
Oh I got covid last two weeks, it was harsh..." 

...with pretty much symptoms you mentioned.
It got me slight levels of anxiety since I don't want fever in summer


----------



## Attus

radamfi said:


> Doesn't Germany still require masks in public transport?


Yes.


----------



## kosimodo

Traveling as we speak by bus through germany… only about 5% masks


----------



## radamfi

kosimodo said:


> Traveling as we speak by bus through germany… only about 5% masks


What sort of bus is that? Long distance bus, for example Flixbus? American English is more ambiguous than British English in this case, as a long distance bus in British English is normally known as a 'coach'. For example, my work colleague once complained that his coach to work was replaced by a bus that morning. In American English, 'bus' can mean local bus or long distance bus. Although it is possible to travel on a 'coach' for short distance! 

I thought I knew American English well enough from decades of watching TV and films but I've learned quite a few American words from Duolingo, as that is the variety of English used on there. If you translate the phrase into British English, it normally allows it, but it gives you the American alternative, as if to say that is a better answer. But if you translate it into American English then it simply says "Correct!"


----------



## Rebasepoiss

kosimodo said:


> Traveling as we speak by bus through germany… only about 5% masks


In Estonia it feels like less than 1%. It's really rare to see someone wearing a mask.


----------



## volodaaaa

Rebasepoiss said:


> In Estonia it feels like less than 1%. It's really rare to see someone wearing a mask.


Yesterday I rode on the bus, and the whole trailer was full of people with face masks. For a moment, I doubted whether I had missed some new anti-Covid measures. Then I heard them speaking:


----------



## Attus

kosimodo said:


> Traveling as we speak by bus through germany… only about 5% masks


Wow, I'm surprised. Any time I used public transport, 90+ percent wore a mask. And the last time was yesterday so I'm not talking about late 2020.


----------



## geogregor

Attus said:


> Wow, I'm surprised. Any time I used public transport, 90+ percent wore a mask. And the last time was yesterday so I'm not talking about late 2020.


He is probably talking about long distance coach rather than local bus (he said "through Germany"), probably full of foreigners


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Masks have been almost entirely gone from public transport in the Netherlands. The first day the mandate was lifted, about 95% of masks were instantly gone. Then you had about 4-6 weeks where you saw like 1 mask per 200 people. But over the past few weeks I have not seen any mask in the train & stations. 

I've traveled through Germany, Poland & Czechia over the past days. Haven't seen any mask. Not even when German coaches stopped at rest areas in Germany.


----------



## Attus

geogregor said:


> He is probably talking about long distance coach rather than local bus (he said "through Germany"), probably full of foreigners


I think, he did not talk about public transport, but some private and/or foreign coach service. In public transport it is mandatory to wear a mask and the vast majority of passengers actually do. 
I admit, I think it does not make much sense. But it's mandatory, so, I, too, wear a mask on the train. 
Sometimes it's quote funny. I visited a concert in Cologne in a hall (i.e. closed space). No one wore a mask. Then, on the train to home, it was mandatory. 
Two weeks ago I flew from Cologne to Budapest and back. Same airline. Towards Budapest no one wore a mask, towards Cologne it was mandatory and every one wore it.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Masks have been almost entirely gone from public transport in the Netherlands. The first day the mandate was lifted, about 95% of masks were instantly gone. Then you had about 4-6 weeks where you saw like 1 mask per 200 people. But over the past few weeks I have not seen any mask in the train & stations.
> 
> I've traveled through Germany, Poland & Czechia over the past days. Haven't seen any mask. Not even when German coaches stopped at rest areas in Germany.


In Germany it happened much slower. On the day the mandate was lifted ~80% of customers in shops wore a mask. Week by week it was less and less, nowadays it's perhaps 10%.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> Sometimes it's quote funny. I visited a concert in Cologne in a hall (i.e. closed space). No one wore a mask. Then, on the train to home, it was mandatory.


A standard anti-pandemic procedure in Slovakia during last year's peak.

1. First, you approach the restaurant you like [they were open].
2. Before the door opening, you are obliged to put your face mask on [the masks were mandatory in interiors].
3. You enter the restaurant with the face mask on.
4. You take a chair, and now you are allowed to take the face mask off [the was an exception you don't have to wear a face mask by a table in a restaurant].
5. You enjoy your time with your friends with no mask on [provided you eat or drink or smoke].
6. You pay the bill.
7. You put the mask on [you must wear the mask in the interior].
8. You leave your table with the mask on.
9. You take the mask off once you leave the restaurant.

I bet the 30 seconds of face mask-wearing out of 90 minutes spent with my friends helped to flatten the curve. I believe in it. I do.


----------



## italystf

volodaaaa said:


> A standard anti-pandemic procedure in Slovakia during last year's peak.
> 
> 1. First, you approach the restaurant you like [they were open].
> 2. Before the door opening, you are obliged to put your face mask on [the masks were mandatory in interiors].
> 3. You enter the restaurant with the face mask on.
> 4. You take a chair, and now you are allowed to take the face mask off [the was an exception you don't have to wear a face mask by a table in a restaurant].
> 5. You enjoy your time with your friends with no mask on [provided you eat or drink or smoke].
> 6. You pay the bill.
> 7. You put the mask on [you must wear the mask in the interior].
> 8. You leave your table with the mask on.
> 9. You take the mask off once you leave the restaurant.
> 
> I bet the 30 seconds of face mask-wearing out of 90 minutes spent with my friends helped to flatten the curve. I believe in it. I do.


It still made sense. In that way you could only risk to infect people of your own table (to who you probably had close contacts anyway) and not waiters and other customers.


----------



## radamfi

Car hire in Ireland appears to be particularly expensive.









Tourists cancelling trips to Ireland as car rentals now more expensive than buying second-hand - Extra.ie


Tourists are shunning Ireland and cancelling holidays because of the sky-high cost of car rentals.



extra.ie





New cars in Ireland are expensive compared to the UK even though they both drive on the left. Irish cars have the speedometers in km/h only whereas British cars have both mph and km/h.


----------



## Attus

> This is utterly astonishing! This will be Hungary’s first win in England since that 6-3 in 1953 ... and they’ve chalked it up with an even bigger margin of victory!











England 0-4 Hungary: Nations League – as it happened


Minute-by-minute report: England suffered their worst home defeat in 94 years as Hungary – shades of 1953 and all that – stunned the nation with a dominant performance. Scott Murray was watching.




www.theguardian.com


----------



## Stuu

That will make my conference call with the Budapest office tomorrow more interesting... for them! They were very amused when they beat England 1-0 last week


----------



## radamfi

Attus said:


> England 0-4 Hungary: Nations League – as it happened
> 
> 
> Minute-by-minute report: England suffered their worst home defeat in 94 years as Hungary – shades of 1953 and all that – stunned the nation with a dominant performance. Scott Murray was watching.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.theguardian.com


My dad used to talk about the 1953 match a lot. It was in their golden age with Puskas etc. Obviously I was supporting Hungary tonight. I support anyone against England.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> My dad used to talk about the 1953 match a lot. It was in their golden age with Puskas etc.


Many countries have such "special football moments". In Poland we often talk about Wembley in 1973 when our famous goalkeeper gave us qualification to the World Cup in 1974. Poland got third place there. We could do better but Germany won the infamous (in Poland) "match on water" in the semifinal.



> I support anyone against England.


I don't get it, why? Are you not English? Did I get something wrong?

Even if I was not born in England I still support England when it plays. Maybe because I always liked English football. I know England is not popular in Europe and I do get strange looks from some of my Polish friends when I say so but I don't particularly care.

Sure, some English fans are idiots but it is often the case with football fans. Many Polish and Hungarian fans are not greatest samples of humanity either. Anyway I support players rather than some idiots on the stands.

Now, it is different with rugby where I support Ireland


----------



## Suburbanist

Car rental fleets have a short turnover. Many companies have a fraction of their fleet because they trimmed it down during the pandemic and now waiting times for new cars are long right now.


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> I don't get it, why? Are you not English? Did I get something wrong?


I was born in England but I've got no English blood. Neither of my parents were English or even British. I used to support England and was disappointed at the usual times. For example, the 1986 'hand of God' and the penalty shoot outs in 1990 and 1996. But that changed in 2016. I had always planned to move to the Netherlands at some point. My fellow citizens decided to prevent me from doing so. I was devastated. I pleaded with my partner to leave the UK with me before Brexit but she has a good job so it wasn't really an option. Realistically, I have to wait until she retires. I didn't realise back then I could get a Hungarian passport.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> I was born in England but I've got no English blood. Neither of my parents were English or even British. I used to support England and was disappointed at the usual times. For example, the 1986 'hand of God' and the penalty shoot outs in 1990 and 1996. But that changed in 2016. I had always planned to move to the Netherlands at some point. My fellow citizens decided to prevent me from doing so. I was devastated. I pleaded with my partner to leave the UK with me before Brexit but she has a good job so it wasn't really an option. Realistically, I have to wait until she retires. I didn't realise back then I could get a Hungarian passport.


I still don't get why such strong dislike of England that you will _"support anyone against England"_. Because you dislike politics of Brexit?

I still hope you wouldn't support Russia when playing England?


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> I still don't get why such strong dislike of England that you will _"support anyone against England"_. Because you dislike politics of Brexit?
> 
> I still hope you wouldn't support Russia when playing England?


English people had destroyed my future plans. Of course, not all, but a scarily high proportion of them.

I doubt there will be a match between Russia and England for the foreseeable future. I wouldn't support either of them.


----------



## Attus

radamfi said:


> My dad used to talk about the 1953 match a lot. It was in their golden age with Puskas etc.


And who did reign England back then?


----------



## Stuu

Slightly surprisingly I had a new telephone directory put through my door earlier, a list of people's actual telephone numbers, not commercial numbers. I haven't seen one in years, I had no idea they even existed any more


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> Slightly surprisingly I had a new telephone directory put through my door earlier, a list of people's actual telephone numbers, not commercial numbers. I haven't seen one in years, I had no idea they even existed any more


Still required by Ofcom





__





Help and Support - The Phone Book from BT






www.thephonebook.bt.com







> BT is obligated by Ofcom to provide a printed directory to its own customers. Many of our customers use the book for a variety of reasons from trusting the companies that advertise within it (more than those from an internet search), through to not having internet access, or wanting to find a residential number.


The Yellow Pages stopped being printed in 2019.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> Still required by Ofcom.


Never knew that. I'm not a BT customer and haven't been since 2005 or something


----------



## bogdymol

Do you guys have a fixed landline phone at home?

I don’t, my parents don’t, but my wife’s parents still have it, although they barely use that phone anymore.


----------



## radamfi

Until recently, you had to pay for a landline if you had broadband here so there was no point getting rid of the landline. There are now broadband deals without landline so if it was just up to me I would get rid of it but my partner needs it for work. In some countries, the analogue landline service has been turned off, or will be in a few years. If you don't have broadband you will have to get an adapter to plug your old phone in. Some people are worried that you won't be able to dial the emergency services if you have a power cut. I've got my own totally free local phone number from









Welcome to Your Cloud Telephony Service


Landline, fax, call management and more – everything in one place with sipgate team




www.sipgatebasic.co.uk





so I can give someone that number but it rings my mobile. That is an option if you need to have a landline number but don't want to pay for it.

In the future, some people will probably ditch the fixed broadband as well and have a 5G router instead.


----------



## MattiG

bogdymol said:


> Do you guys have a fixed landline phone at home?


Yes, for backup purposes. If something destroys the mobile services, I'll set up a public phone booth 10 euro per minute.

And it is useful to have something to call your own mobile when it happens to get lost again.


----------



## Attus

bogdymol said:


> Do you guys have a fixed landline phone at home?
> 
> I don’t, my parents don’t, but my wife’s parents still have it, although they barely use that phone anymore.


I have a coonnection, I have a phone number, too. It's a part of my internet+TV contract. However, no phone is connected to the line. And I have no idea about the number.


----------



## radamfi

MattiG said:


> An it is useful to have something to call your own mobile when it happens to get lost again.


I have an old Nokia phone for that. I normally take it with me in my bag so I can ring my smartphone if I lose it. Or I if I lose my bag I can ring the old phone from my smartphone and hopefully someone will open my bag and answer it.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> I have a coonnection, I have a phone number, too. It's a part of my internet+TV contract. However, no phone is connected to the line. And I have no idea about the number.


Exactly the same. It was an integral part of my TV provider service (tv signal + internet + landline). Without any plans (you pay for seconds you call) it was free of charge. So I have a phone number and a socket, but I don't have a phone itself. It broke down several years ago, and as someone mentioned, the only purpose of that was to call my mobile phone once it got lost.


----------



## Slagathor

I have neither a landline nor a TV signal. 

I got a package deal: an unlimited data subscription for my smartphone where they throw in a free modem for my home. I watch TV through apps on my Smart TV. That costs me 50 euros per month.


----------



## volodaaaa

Slagathor said:


> I have neither a landline nor a TV signal.
> 
> I got a package deal: an unlimited data subscription for my smartphone where they throw in a free modem for my home. I watch TV through apps on my Smart TV. That costs me 50 euros per month.


I basically wanted the same, to have internet as fast as possible without any landline or TV; relying on streaming services, but TV cost only 4 € per month, so it was a value for money. I pay 37 € + Netflix + HBO Max (both family plans shared with my parents and my parents-in-law). Still, I am toying with an idea to cancel my Netflix subscription as they have already announced to cease the family plans, and I'm not too fond of the concept of advertising for paying customers they plan as well.


----------



## AnelZ

I have two home phones (we call it "fixed") but one is with my package Broadband internet + cable TV + Phone and goes through the modem which makes it VoIP (provider Cable company Telemach) but the other is a true landline which we use essentially maybe once or twice a month but pay 7,5€ monthly for it (provider state-owned Telecommunication company BH Telecom). I'm thinking to cancel it but I always think that I will need it at some point and don't go through it.

I took the package Broadband internet + cable TV + phone as it provides the highest speeds as for eg. the package Broadband internet + TV the same package offer lesser speeds because they want for you to take everything. But the price difference is just 4 € so I'm ok with it. The package includes 244 TV channels, playback up to 7 days, additional sport Channels, Cinestar Premiere, HBO Premium (multiple HBO channels including HBO max + Cinemax), 500/30 Mbps internet speed (flat usage), free calls to all landlines within the country, 30 minutes free to all mobile numbers within the country, 100 minutes free to all landlines outside of the country and a phone. I pay around 35€ for that monthly but I'm currently within a discount for 16 months, after that the price is 42€.

The package without a phone costs 38€ and offers all the same aside of the things connected to the phone service as well as internet speed of 400/20 Mbps. If you want only internet, the cheapest option at my provider costs 19€ but gets you speeds of only 15/2 Mbps while the most expensive internet only package costs 31€ and gets you speeds of just 60/4 Mbps. As such, it is more logical to get the cheapest package Broadband internet + TV which costs 24€ and gets you speeds of 200/10.

You have the option to get speeds of 1000/200 for your package for a monthly additional fee of 50€ (minimum 12 months contract) if the infrastructure to your place allows it.


----------



## SeñorGol

A BMW driver was caught driving at nearly 200 km/h (~120 mph) on a two-lane national road near my hometown 














Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.es


----------



## PovilD

SeñorGol said:


> A BMW driver was caught driving at nearly 200 km/h (~120 mph) on a two-lane national road near my hometown
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Google Maps
> 
> 
> Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.google.es


It's a wide one lane per each direction expressway, no wonder, 200 km/h was achieved.


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> Slightly surprisingly I had a new telephone directory put through my door earlier, a list of people's actual telephone numbers, not commercial numbers. I haven't seen one in years, I had no idea they even existed any more


Is it in any way compliant with the data protection regulations – GDPR etc. ?

Over here, having an old phone number, which used to be placed in a paper phone book in the past, is a nightmare – you get scam calls every day.



bogdymol said:


> Do you guys have a fixed landline phone at home?


Yes, though we will probably get rid of it very soon.

The main issue why most people resigned from it is that it's much more expensive to maintain than a cell phone.

In our case, we kept it because my grandpa has dementia and using a cell phone would be much more problematic for him. Even those special cell phones made specifically for elderly people are more complicated than an ordinary fixed line telephone. It's too easy to turn on some weird functions, you can forget to recharge it (and if you do, then you have to remember to switch the phone on), you may get a screen lock and you have to know how to unlock it... Fixed line phones don't have most of those issues.

It was paid by my grandma. But once someone tried to scam her over that phone so that she got really scared – she said she wants to resign from it. And my grandpa isn't capable of using even a fixed line telephone any more anyway. Many times, for example, he mistook the telephone with the TV remote, and was complaining that when he dials a number on what he thought to be a telephone and what actually was the TV remote, it didn't work.

A fixed phone line was also needed for the ADSL internet which we still have for no better option (LTE has monthly data limits and I don't really want to have such a limitation), though its speed isn't amazing:










Now we are going to get a fiber optic internet line from another provider (they are building the infrastructure at the moment, and according to their claims, they should start it with the beginning of July – though they already postponed it many times, so I can't be sure how it will actually be), so we will resign from the fixed line telephone and the ADSL internet at the same moment.

If I wanted to keep that old fixed line phone number, I would probably migrate it to a VoIP service – they are very cheap, and you can connect a fixed line telephone to it as well. There are services where for just keeping the number and being able to receive calls, you pay 1 zł (something like 20 eurocents) a month.


----------



## Alex_ZR

I think that before Vienna Convention word "STOJ" in Serbian was used instead of STOP in the traffic.


----------



## Attus

Izrael uses a hand sign, in order to avoid using three different script type (hebrew, latin and arab):


----------



## volodaaaa

"Stop" is not a Slovak word either. But thanks to traffic signs, it has become a synonym even in everyday speech.

Stop means "Stoj!" (that is the official term for a red light) = "Freeze!" or "Zastav" = "slow down to zero velocity". 

In colloquial language, it has now several other meanings:
_Stopol ma na ulici_ = I bumped into him on a street
_Môj projekt dostal stopku = _My project got a stop

But there are also some different meanings:
_Stopneme si auto _= Let's hitch-hike a car (I think it is due to the obsolete name for the service called "autostop")
_Stopni mi 5 minút = _Set the timer to 5 minutes.


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> Izrael uses a hand sign, in order to avoid using three different script type (hebrew, latin and arab):


Looks like a request stop symbol in public transport to me.


----------



## PovilD

From what I gather more countries were using hand symbol as Stop sign.

I wonder why we don't use hand symbol anymore?


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> This might be patronising and you know it already, but infamous is not the opposite of famous. It means famous for the wrong reason, like being known for something stupid or terrible that you did. A serial killer would be described as infamous in English for example


Actually, no idea about Czech and Slovak, but in Polish it works exactly like in English.

Sławny – famous
Niesławny – infamous

Something which isn't famous would be "nieznany" (unknown), "słabo znany" (weakly known), "mało znany" (little known).



volodaaaa said:


> Looks like a request stop symbol in public transport to me.


Some countries (it's probably most widespread in Austria) use a panel with a huge hand as a warning that you are entering a motorway in the wrong direction.

Poland has recently started introducing those as well, as an answer to drivers who were actually making that mistake.










Translation:
Stop – wrong direction


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Similar signs are widespread in Norway as well. Not sure how much impact they have on "ghost drivers".











Alex_ZR said:


> I think that before Vienna Convention word "STOJ" in Serbian was used instead of STOP in the traffic.


Local language would be OK with the Vienna convention.


----------



## PovilD

It would be interesting to know what impact those signs might have in the future analysis.
Right now, it seems, it's not that widespread due to reasons if it's really helpful.

Here we are not using these signs, only plain no entry signs or even just "keep right" signs near motorway entry point. We get few reports about ghost wrong way drivers, but I find this to be happening rarely enough, at least for events covered by the media.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Actually, no idea about Czech and Slovak, but in Polish it works exactly like in English.
> 
> Sławny – famous
> Niesławny – infamous


Is that translation correct? Our languages are indeed similar and infamous means "neslávne známy" (lit. non-famously known), meaning "famous with a bad reputation". And I think that is the real meaning in English:

(according to the Cambridge dictionary)
INFAMOUS
famous for something considered bad:
The list included the infamous George Drake, a double murderer.
He's infamous for his bigoted sense of humour.

"Neslávny" would be "unknown" or "non-famous".


----------



## PovilD

famous - garsus (lit. translation "soundful" (?) since "garsas" mean sound)
infamous - I think we don't have this word, maybe "prieštaringai pagarsėjęs", "liūdnai pagarsėjęs" or smth like that.

"ne garsus" would be "non famous".

On the other hand if thinking about Slavic (Polish-Slovak) equivalents.

Slavniy is similar to word slava, which mean šlovė in Lithuanian or glory in English (you probably heard this already).

Nešlovingas (ne-slavniy) could be the closest to infamous as single word, but it's not that popular and could not necessary applied for famous people (English translation: person who is not deserved for glory).


----------



## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> Is that translation correct? Our languages are indeed similar and infamous means "neslávne známy" (lit. non-famously known), meaning "famous with a bad reputation". And I think that is the real meaning in English:
> 
> (according to the Cambridge dictionary)
> INFAMOUS
> famous for something considered bad:
> The list included the infamous George Drake, a double murderer.
> He's infamous for his bigoted sense of humour.
> 
> "Neslávny" would be "unknown" or "non-famous".


You have complicated it. Neslavan/neslávny/nesłowny means "infamous" or "of bad reputation" (without "famous", it is unneccessary part in that translation). 
Opposite of famous would be nepoznat/neznámy/nieznany, litteraly unknown.

With word slava we can nicely see slavic influence on non-slavic languages as PoviID explained with šlovė in Lithuanian  

Somewhere it can be also very nice name


----------



## Kpc21

In Polish we also have a verb "zniesławić" (something like "to infame", no idea if this word exists in English), which is a name of a crime when you tell bad things about someone else even though they aren't true.

So, concluding – someone "infamous", "niesławny" or whatever is the equivalent in your language (if it exists) – is also famous, but for bad things.


----------



## PovilD

For šlovingas there is a shorter English word - glorious.
Same can be applied for nešlovingas (non-glorious)

Glorious and Famous are kinda different.

So, we stick to "garsus" for famous, and infamous "liūdnai pagarsėjęs".
You can add whatever negative word you like "negerai pagarsėjęs", "prieštaringai pagarsėjęs", "blogai pagarsėjęs", maybe even "neteisingai pagarsėjęs"


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> In Polish we also have a verb "zniesławić" (something like "to infame", no idea if this word exists in English), which is a name of a crime when you tell bad things about someone else even though they aren't true.


Slander is to tell lies about people, if you print them it is libel, as Amber Heard recently found out


----------



## mgk920

radamfi said:


> So get rid of that stupid rule! The UK used to have it as well but that stopped about 20 years ago.
> 
> 
> 
> First time I've heard someone call Germany property expensive. Germany is often used as an example of how to do housing well.


The USA still has a mortgage interest income tax deduction, too.

The real estate industry keeps lobbying Congress HARD to keep it in place.

Mike


----------



## mgk920

Stuu said:


> Slander is to tell lies about people, if you print them it is libel, as Amber Heard recently found out


In the USA it is called 'libel' and/or 'slander' and can make one liable for damages in civil court.

Mike


----------



## mgk920

Kpc21 said:


> What version of English is normally taught in your countries?
> 
> In Poland it's practically always British English. But, as Chris said, in practice people use American English more. I tend to use American, because it's just used much more internationally, e.g. on the Internet. It happened to me several times that when I used a specifically British word while talking to a non-English-native foreigner, he didn't understand it.


Canada still uses a lot of 'British' spelling. 'Centre' is common, as well as the 'ou'.

Here is northeastern, Wisconsin (USA), there is one place one in Appleton's west side commercial area that has 'Centre' on their sign.

Mike


----------



## mgk920

geogregor said:


> English language is a bloody mess. Full stop.
> 
> I admit that I mix American and British spelling. It often depends what I'm writing about. When I describe my experiences in the US I often inadvertently switch to US spelling or vocabulary but when I write about the UK experiences I will probably write using British forms, vocabulary and spelling.
> 
> But it is not hard rule of mine, sometimes I simply don't think about it and mix things up.
> At the end, unless one is writing formal letters or papers, who cares?


And now, many due to pop culture (my sense), mainly among younger people is the contraction of such words a 'you' to 'U' (and so forth). I refer to this as 'text chat English', more of a phonetic sort of spelling.

Mike


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't like that kind of u and r spelling. It comes across as unprofessional / childish. It's not like you, are or without are impossible words to type...


----------



## Kpc21

Ryanair has "PRIORITY Q" and "OTHER Q" at airports xD


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> Yes, neither the UK nor Poland give a toss about Covid anymore.
> 
> But, in the UK we might have another issue
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Polio virus detected in London sewage samples
> 
> 
> Health officials say parents should ensure their children have been vaccinated against the disease.
> 
> 
> 
> www.bbc.co.uk


There are now uprising of weird infectious diseases, weird mutations. There is one hyphothesis that is due to changed immunological landscape due to covid infection/or lockdowns (can't be sure for now).

...but I think polio was expected due to vaccine hesitancy in recent years. It's very transmisible disease, you must have 95% vaccinated, London only 85%.

---
I think vaccine research should be one of the prime goals right now seeing this unpredictable infectious disease period.

---
I don't understand too around masking in Germany, unless they know patterns of spread.
I think my country public transport or even malls is not main spread route. There is a risk, but not the main risk. My impression virus migrates from workplace to workplace, home to home, where people stay together for long periods. I would bet business closures did most job to curb the spread during our lockdown periods, not masks. At least a main route.


----------



## Attus

PovilD said:


> I don't understand too around masking in Germany


Experts, too, don't. It's a political question, not a professional one any more.


----------



## Džiugas

By the way, my university's hospital loosened the mask rules: they are only compulsory for personnel when approaching patients (besides infectious diseases units and suspected covid cases).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm back from a two week, 5,633 kilometer road trip through 9 countries:


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> 5,633 kilometer


So the fuel price is still not high enough. 

I hope you had a good time encircling Austria!


----------



## Kpc21

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Facebook is reminding me, that exactly 10 years ago I drove on freshly opened A2 between my hometown and Warsaw. It was the first motorway that was actually local to where I lived by then, and provided me a connection between places I went back and forth frequently.


A2 Łódź–Warszawa? This opening was really popular even in the Polish SSC section, It got opened in the last moment before Euro 2012, and anyway, in the last weeks, the whole Poland (and SSC especially) followed the progress of the construction and cheered the builders! At SSC there was even a fundraiser for a symbolic "crate of beer" for the builders (who of the Polish users present here remembers the "krata browca dla fachowca" action?), which finally turned out to be quite a lot of crates of beer.









[A2] Krata browca dla fachowca


Patrząc na cały ten trud osób pracujących na odcinku C, pomyślałem sobie że byłoby dobrze gdyby jakoś się odwdzięczyć tym ciężko pracującym robotnikom. Pomyślałem że fajnie byłoby postawić im piwo jako dowód mego osobistego uznania. Ponieważ jednak dzieli mnie dość duży dystans, brak czasu i...




www.skyscrapercity.com





(sadly the photos aren't active any more  though there is a photo in a press article on the topic: "Krata browca dla fachowca". Internauci zebrali ponad 5 tys. w podziękowaniu dla budowlańców A2 )

I dare say that Euro 2012 was the main impulse that initiated the current level of Poland's development that's continuing until today.







Though in Poland quite much more cringy piece of music was selected by TV viewers to become the official Euro 2012 song:







Funny that all of that seems (at least to me...) to have happened yesterday, though in reality it was in the beginning of the previous decade...


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That is a long way to the next turn! I wonder what the longest is you can get in Europe.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> That is a long way to the next turn! I wonder what the longest is you can get in Europe.


It depends on how your navigation works. For example: if you drive from Vienna to the Netherlands, after Knoten Haid your next turn is a TOTSO move at Kreuz Oberhausen (you remain driving on A3 but have to turn off to do it). It's 780 km. However, navigation sometimes says "take right/left in order to stay on A3". Basically in any Y intersection you may handle taking left/right as a turn - or not to. And there are lots of them


----------



## radamfi

Sometimes navigation tells you to stay on the same motorway even if you are going straight on. For example if you have to be in certain lanes to go straight on. So the distance to the next junction according to the display is only as far as that junction.


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> There is no love of paperwork, it's that we're transitioning to a new system. As of May 2023, we'll have an electronic travel authorization (similar to what countries like the US and Canada have) which can be filled out online prior to departure and reduces the need for stamps and paperwork at the actual border crossing.
> 
> More information here.
> 
> But it's not May 2023 yet so we're having to make due with whatever protocols were already in existence when the British decided to abandon ship. There ain't no automated passport gates for third countries, them's the rules. Don't burn bridges and complain about the lack of crossings.


The travel authorisation system will come into use in May 2023, but there is a separate EU scheme to replace stamping called the Entry/Exit System (EES), which is scheduled to start sooner, in September 2022.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entry/Exit_System



There seems to be little awareness of this. I only just read about this on another forum. The UK government is concerned that it will disrupt vehicular border crossings, so especially the Channel Tunnel and cross-Channel ferries, because it is impossible to do the biometric checks inside vehicles. All occupants will need to leave the vehicle at passport control, whereas currently the passports are handed out through the car window. There is a fear that the extra time required will cause long delays.

But I think this means that non-EU visitors who don't need visas will be able to use the automatic gates at airports when EES comes in, and won't have to wait until the travel authorisation starts.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> The travel authorisation system will come into use in May 2023, but there is a separate EU scheme to replace stamping called the Entry/Exit System (EES), which is scheduled to start sooner, in September 2022.
> 
> 
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entry/Exit_System
> 
> 
> 
> There seems to be little awareness of this. I only just read about this on another forum. The UK government is concerned that it will disrupt vehicular border crossings, so especially the Channel Tunnel and cross-Channel ferries, because it is impossible to do the biometric checks inside vehicles. All occupants will need to leave the vehicle at passport control, whereas currently the passports are handed out through the car window. There is a fear that the extra time required will cause long delays.


I hadn't heard about that! That will cause chaos at Dover and the Channel Tunnel, it takes like 30 seconds a car now, everyone getting out will take 3 or 4 times longer.

This taking back control thing really isn't going well


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> I hadn't heard about that! That will cause chaos at Dover and the Channel Tunnel, it takes like 30 seconds a car now, everyone getting out will take 3 or 4 times longer.
> 
> This taking back control thing really isn't going well


This would presumably apply to land borders with the Schengen Area as well, including within the EU. For example, between Romania and Hungary or between Greece and Bulgaria. Although all EU countries other than Ireland are obliged to join Schengen at some point. It would have affected the UK even without Brexit. The UK being outside of Schengen was always a major hassle, yet there was never any serious consideration of the UK joining the Schengen Area.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> I dare say that Euro 2012 was the main impulse that initiated the current level of Poland's development that's continuing until today.


I would say years 2010 -2015 were the best and most care-free in my adult life (maybe apart from the late 90s early 2000s when I was at university)

I was already well established in London and I had a lot of fun living in global and multicultural city. I had great international flatmates, Brexit was still rather distant possibility, Trump was still cheap TV celebrity, life was simply fun.

Then Poland hosted Euro 2012 and London hosted 2012 Olympics. I remember having amazing night out with friends watching opening ceremony of the Olympics in a central London pub. I think it was one of the reasons why I decided to apply for British citizenship. I really felt I wanted to belong.

I was also following Euro preparations in Poland and infrastructural progress. Life was good and was getting better.

Then we got PiS government in Poland, Brexit, Trump and whole load of nonsense. I do feel bitter. The innocence is gone. World got fuc*ked up. Latest decision of supreme court in the US is just cherry on top of the cake of misery and stupidity


----------



## Kpc21

Yes, I also think those years were much better, without all that nonsense, weird conflicts and so on. Later came the migration crisis, terrorist attacks in Europe, and this was the start of things changing to worse.

Though the intensive road infrastructure development in Poland is continuing till this day. It started before Euro 2012, and it hasn't slowed down since then.

Regarding the railway in Poland, 2016 was probably the year with the best timetables and connections, since then it became worse again. The nightmare of the Polish railway are timetables that change (quite a lot, those aren't just slight changes) about every three months, and radically once a year in December.



geogregor said:


> Latest decision of supreme court in the US is just cherry on top of the cake of misery and stupidity


Clearly inspired by the Polish constitution tribunal... I wonder if it will trigger changing the laws based on which the court made its decision in the US. In Poland the only what it did were massive protests (on a scale unseen before) in the middle of pandemic... And it may seem that nothing more, but I think there is more to that. For example it changed the views and approaches of many people to the church. From just an already rich organization that is stealing money from our taxes to something that desires to control every aspect of our lives. For example, the number of school students that attend religion classes has dropped significantly in the last few years. I don't know what are the statistics of parents who baptize their children, but I guess there may be a drop here too (though maybe smaller, because of the pressure from grandparents).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Dutch airports are still problematic. They say that people show up so early that they make the queues worse. This is Eindhoven Airport, where people queue through the parking garage:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1540249672308097024


----------



## radamfi

When the 2012 Olympics decision was announced, we were at work in our office in Surrey listening to the radio and we rushed into the office next door to announce the good news. I remember being pretty ecstatic at the time. In the subsequent years, I lost interest but I was eventually caught up in the excitement when the Olympics came around. I watched the cycle race in the Surrey countryside, getting the train very early in the morning and bought tickets for the football in Manchester. I have always been a bit sceptical of patriotism but I was slightly proud to be British around that time. Obviously that changed dramatically in the following years.

(Many years earlier, I took the radio into school for the same reason, when they announced the winner of the 2000 games, when Manchester was bidding. I remember swearing when the result came through, luckily the teacher near me didn't hear. Looking back, there was obviously no chance of Manchester getting the games, especially back then. It wasn't as trendy as it is now.)

I went to a Catholic school, because my parents were Catholic. Nearly all of us were agreed that the sheer volume of religious education was a waste of time, but when I look at my friends' Facebook pages, the ones who still live in the same town have sent their kids to the same school! That area has a high Muslim population so a lot of parents send their kids to a church school to avoid the Muslim kids. There are now more dedicated Islamic schools so there is probably more segregation than there was when I was growing up.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Dutch airports are still problematic. They say that people show up so early that they make the queues worse. This is Eindhoven Airport, where people queue through the parking garage:


Ouch. I thought Eindhoven would be a safer bet than Schiphol. The weekend is bound to be worse I suppose. There are signs at Schiphol telling you not to go to departures too early.


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm back from a two week, 5,633 kilometer road trip through 9 countries:


Uh-oh... you were too uncomfortably close to Ukraine.

I still dream on going on such a trip. I'd like to hit Rombas, Aschersleben and Isernia, three of the five locations I used as practice on a lettering course; in the same trip (as for the other two, I've been many times to Ariza, and it's simply impossible to drive to Belvidere, Illinois from Europe).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

CNGL said:


> Uh-oh... you were too uncomfortably close to Ukraine.


The farthest east I've been was Bidovce, which is 75 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. There were already signs for Uzhhorod. 

Southwestern Ukraine seems to be the least affected by the war, I wonder if anything has happened there at all.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Southwestern Ukraine seems to be the least affected by the war, I wonder if anything has happened there at all.


Basically nothing.


----------



## Attus

CNGL said:


> Uh-oh... you were too uncomfortably close to Ukraine.


You know, a lot of people are living there, where Chris drove through.


----------



## radamfi

Does anyone drive through well known dangerous places? For example, I couldn't help driving through Camden, NJ last time I went to the US.


----------



## PovilD

I live near Kaliningrad and Belarus at the same time, how dangerous is that?


----------



## PovilD

geogregor said:


> I would say years 2010 -2015 were the best and most care-free in my adult life (maybe apart from the late 90s early 2000s when I was at university)
> 
> I was already well established in London and I had a lot of fun living in global and multicultural city. I had great international flatmates, Brexit was still rather distant possibility, Trump was still cheap TV celebrity, life was simply fun.
> 
> Then Poland hosted Euro 2012 and London hosted 2012 Olympics. I remember having amazing night out with friends watching opening ceremony of the Olympics in a central London pub. I think it was one of the reasons why I decided to apply for British citizenship. I really felt I wanted to belong.
> 
> I was also following Euro preparations in Poland and infrastructural progress. Life was good and was getting better.
> 
> Then we got PiS government in Poland, Brexit, Trump and whole load of nonsense. I do feel bitter. The innocence is gone. World got fuc*ked up. Latest decision of supreme court in the US is just cherry on top of the cake of misery and stupidity


I'm basically jealous, since I don't remember having "my best years" 

For me, I think it was 2010 before changing school...
and maybe now when we received some post-pandemic normalcy, and there is no war in The Baltics (still). I feel I'm kinda in my own control to decide my destiny, not some covid restriction (like self-isolation requirements against your will, business closures, etc.) or war mobilisation (what times we are living...) to control my destiny.

For my country, I think it was 2017-2020. It was getting better from 2015, things got spoiled after Crimea, Lithuania-Russia relations getting worse, and consecutive emigration wave, then things have improved with imigration surpassing emigration. I think emigration was a tragedy, at least for our reputation for sure. Early 2010s was recover years from harsh economic crisis, lots of constructions were stopped during those times. I felt stagnation in the air during those years. Poland was really doing better than us, right now it's only better at public transport, motorways and maybe few social aspects (mostly due to 1950s-1980s history).
It was not really better years for me since I had future career anxiety. I was thinking about being civil engineer, but my mind changed. I was pretty lost what path should I choose.

2020-2022 was pandemic years, I felt bad despite introverts are said to be better for pandemics (later everybody concluded it was bad for almost everybody), now war in Ukraine causes some anxiety. Btw, anxiety is kinda reducing due to relative physical stability, no iskanders or atomic bombs incoming for now. There was more anxiety in March, I was anxious we may enter war soon, including nuclear. Thoughts were that Russia became a complete uncontrollable madman of the planet that can do anything. Right now anxiety don't go away due to Kaliningrad question, some say we should not make Russia mad, other say we should defeat them in every way possible. I would say we should not be semi-independent state that kinda belongs to Russia in some phantom way (anecdotal, but look at the road signs, maybe it was a product not just because we were post-Soviet state but also due to Kaliningrad, Latvia and Estonia gave more thoughts for more personal road sign designs) just because there is some Kaliningrad and atomic bombs.
There are fears Lithuania could be considered special corridor territory for Russia, like Danzig 1938.

I find there are goods for me from 2020s period, like World is actually way more fragile than I thought in 2010s, some powers may want to fracture the World completely, who knows how many lives could be lost in coming years/decades. This make me value things more than I used in 2010s, maybe these years made me grow up finally. It's also good in a way since it don't make me think about personal future that much (at least in some anxious ways), since we are not in control of general future, things could get very turbulent in coming years before it settles down in some way.


----------



## radamfi

I just remembered that, in the UK, you could get an instant passport from the post office, valid in western Europe, just by presenting a birth certificate or other form of identification. It only lasted a year but if you had to travel at short notice and you had no passport, it wasn't a problem.

So whilst the UK has never had an ID card (except for a short time in 2010 until the new government immediately cancelled them) this was quite similar.

There was even a 3 day passport for day trips to France!









The British Visitors Passport - The Simplicity Of A Travel Document


The British Visitor's Passport was actually a simple and inexpensive travel document until 1996 which you could get at the post office.




www.passport-collector.com


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

ChrisZwolle said:


> Dutch airports are still problematic. They say that people show up so early that they make the queues worse. This is Eindhoven Airport, where people queue through the parking garage:


The airports are unfortunately not only problematic, but also unpredictable. Yesterday the girlfriend of my girlfriends nephew cleared Eindhoven from bus to the gate in 20 minutes. Imagine getting there 3h before your flight and the spending 2:30h in the confines of a small airport...


----------



## Fatfield

ChrisZwolle said:


> Dutch airports are still problematic. They say that people show up so early that they make the queues worse. This is Eindhoven Airport, where people queue through the parking garage:


I flew AMS-NCL on the 20th last week. Took nearly two hours to get to the departure halls. There were signs up saying you couldn't enter the departure halls if the departure time of your flight was over 4 hours away. Some people still tried to get in early but were kicked out of the check-in area to the back of the queue downstairs in the airport plaza. When we eventually got through to airside it was the quietest I've ever seen AMS.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Took me half an hour to get through AMS recently, had to wait for two hours inside. 

At least most flights are departing more or less according to schedule from AMS. Today, 257 flights were canceled in Norway , mainly to striking /locked- out aviation technicians. Also the ambulance planes up north are affected, so hopefully the government will intervene soon.


----------



## Suburbanist

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Took me half an hour to get through AMS recently, had to wait for two hours inside.
> 
> At least most flights are departing more or less according to schedule from AMS. Today, 257 flights were canceled in Norway , mainly to striking /locked- out aviation technicians. Also the ambulance planes up north are affected, so hopefully the government will intervene soon.


A group of co-workers and I were in a conference near Tromsø last week. Those who departed Friday, like me, had no problems. Those who had booked extra days to enjoy weekend in the city on their own are still in Tromsø and could not find flights earlier than Wednesday. One-way car rentals (even for the very long journey) are NOK 36 000 for one week or so, I was told. And it would still be a 3-day drive down here to Bergen.


----------



## geogregor

Suburbanist said:


> A group of co-workers and I were in a conference near Tromsø last week. Those who departed Friday, like me, had no problems. Those who had booked extra days to enjoy weekend in the city on their own are still in Tromsø and could not find flights earlier than Wednesday. One-way car rentals (even for the very long journey) are NOK 36 000 for one week or so, I was told. And it would still be a 3-day drive down here to Bergen.



Is there any coach alternative for travel in Norway, even just in emergency like this one?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> One-way car rentals (even for the very long journey) are NOK 36 000 for one week or so


That's not a rental, but a substantial downpayment


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> Is there any coach alternative for travel in Norway, even just in emergency like this one?


There is a scheduled bus from Tromsø to Fauske via Narvik which takes about 10 hours then you can get a train to Bergen via Trondheim and Oslo. The total journey time would be about 2 days if you got an overnight train. This is the sort of journey I would like to do for fun and it would be very scenic. Obviously not really an alternative to business travel though!

The quickest way may be a coach from Tromsø to Rovaniemi that takes 12 hours. You can fly to Oslo via Helsinki from there, assuming that isn't affected by strikes, as Rovaniemi is in Finland. Then train to Bergen. Sounds crazy but people were doing all kinds of detours all over Europe last week after flights were cancelled, because they had to get to work on time.

In 1998 I went from Helsinki to Tana Bru in the far north of Norway, which is even more northernly than Tromsø, taking the day train then overnight coach. Although it was in summer so it was in daylight the whole time. I came back the same way but using the overnight sleeper train from Rovaniemi to Helsinki.


----------



## x-type

radamfi said:


> Does anyone drive through well known dangerous places? For example, I couldn't help driving through Camden, NJ last time I went to the US.


I actually went to Ukrainian border in the middle of the March when war happenings were already going on. We went to pick up some refugees because it was still very unorganized. In the night there were some minor bombings around Lviv, I heard them in the night far away (we were sleeping some 80km from Lviv). It was rather emotional than exciting and dangerous travel.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

radamfi said:


> There is a scheduled bus from Tromsø to Fauske via Narvik which takes about 10 hours then you can get a train to Bergen via Trondheim and Oslo. The total journey time would be about 2 days if you got an overnight train. This is the sort of journey I would like to do for fun and it would be very scenic. Obviously not really an alternative to business travel though!
> 
> The quickest way may be a coach from Tromsø to Rovaniemi that takes 12 hours. You can fly to Oslo via Helsinki from there, assuming that isn't affected by strikes, as Rovaniemi is in Finland. Then train to Bergen. Sounds crazy but people were doing all kinds of detours all over Europe last week after flights were cancelled, because they had to get to work on time.
> 
> In 1998 I went from Helsinki to Tana Bru in the far north of Norway, which is even more northernly than Tromsø, taking the day train then overnight coach. Although it was in summer so it was in daylight the whole time. I came back the same way but using the overnight sleeper train from Rovaniemi to Helsinki.


A more comfortable, more expensive, but even slower solution is Hurtigruten ("coastal steamer"). You can leave Tromsø at 1:30 in the morning and will then arrive in Bergen 14:45 on the fourth day.








Norway


Experience Norway's beautiful fjords, charming ports, and rare wildlife under the Midnight Sun or spectacular Northern Lights. Our daily departures take you on voyages where no other ships go. No matter the season, all cruises with Hurtigruten are thrilling adventures filled with amazing scenery...




www.hurtigruten.co.uk


----------



## MattiG

radamfi said:


> The quickest way may be a coach from Tromsø to Rovaniemi that takes 12 hours. You can fly to Oslo via Helsinki from there, assuming that isn't affected by strikes, as Rovaniemi is in Finland. Then train to Bergen. Sounds crazy but people were doing all kinds of detours all over Europe last week after flights were cancelled, because they had to get to work on time.


The Tromsø-Rovaniemi coach takes nine hours only. It leaves Tromsø at 07:25 UTC+2 and arrives in Rovaniemi at 17:25 UTC+3 just in time the catch the sleeper train to Helsinki. The ferries to Stockholm leave Helsinki in the afternoon. In the morning of the Day 3, the happy travellers are ready to take a train to Oslo then Bergen.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

But anyway, the strike has been stopped by the government now. Now we are bracing ourselves regarding the risk for a full strike among the SAS pilots (in all Scandinavian countries) starting from tomorrow morning. This strike is less likely to be stopped by the government, as no ambulance flights will be affected, and SAS has many competitors. However, unlike most of its competitors, SAS was not fully refinanced during COVID-19, and is already in dire economical straits. A strike in the peak season could kill the company unless the governments come with more cash. Not very likely from Norway where there are strong national competitors to SAS, other than converting debt to stocks; somewhat less unlikely from Sweden (which has the largest share of SAS employees) or Denmark (which benefits hugely from CPH being the main international hub of SAS).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Chaos am Hamburger Flughafen: Was tun, wenn der Koffer weg ist?


Am Hamburger Flughafen stapeln sich aufgrund des Personalmangels Koffer und Taschen. Reisende, die auf der Suche nach ihrem Gepäck sind, haben teils große Probleme, es zurückzubekommen. Was tun, wenn der Koffer bei einer Reise abhanden kommt?




www.ndr.de













Stapels onbeheerde koffers op Schiphol: wat is er aan de hand?


Reisverzekeraars krijgen veel vragen over zoekgeraakte bagage. "Maar de meeste koffers komen vroeg of laat weer boven water."




nos.nl





Apparently there are also problems at airports with the baggage handlers. Lots of people fly without their baggage. One article mentions some have been left behind for 2 weeks.


----------



## radamfi

It makes a massive difference living in continental Europe. You can simply get in a car or on a train whenever you want. In the UK, if you don't want to fly, you are basically stuck there until the end of summer unless you have something booked. Eurotunnel, Eurostar and car ferries are all very expensive.

Sensibly priced non-flying options are very limited. There is Flixbus from London to Lille or Brussels, but even they are charging about £90 at least for overnight coaches each way. You can take your bike on the shorter cross-Channel ferries to France cheaply (about £25-£30 each way) but they aren't open to foot passengers, except Newhaven to Dieppe which is a lot longer. P&O normally accept foot passengers on a limited number of sailings but the website says foot passenger and bicycle bookings are suspended. The Harwich to Hoek van Holland ferry is still reasonably priced for bikes and foot passengers but the overnight crossings are sometimes sold out and require you to pay for a cabin.

If you are in Ireland it is even worse. You are so dependent on flying if you live there.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> So whilst the UK has never had an ID card (except for a short time in 2010 until the new government immediately cancelled them) this was quite similar.


I wonder – what were the identity cards called in English in the times when they had the form of passport-like booklets and not cards...

In Poland the change happened somewhere around the year 2000. There were deadlines for people when they had to replace their old booklet IDs with new card ones.

But as previously those weren't cards, I guess even in the West, they couldn't be called "identity *cards*"...

I know that in the UK and the US those documents generally don't exist, so most people using English natively in the past didn't really have to use this term too often... But as far as I understand, English has been a lingua franca in the western Europe practically since the end of the WW2, and the EU (originally under different names) has existed already for quite long too... Together with the freedom of travel only with ID between the EU countries, which was a thing even before Schengen.


----------



## x-type

Kpc21 said:


> I wonder – what were the identity cards called in English in the times when they had the form of passport-like booklets and not cards...
> 
> In Poland the change happened somewhere around the year 2000. There were deadlines for people when they had to replace their old booklet IDs with new card ones.
> 
> But as previously those weren't cards, I guess even in the West, they couldn't be called "identity *cards*"...
> 
> I know that in the UK and the US those documents generally don't exist, so most people using English natively in the past didn't really have to use this term too often... But as far as I understand, English has been a lingua franca in the western Europe practically since the end of the WW2, and the EU (originally under different names) has existed already for quite long too... Together with the freedom of travel only with ID between the EU countries, which was a thing even before Schengen.


In Croatia we didn't have passportlike booklets, but cards. 
Anyway, those were not cards in credit card format, but larger. Credit card format ID documents came very late, in 2003.
Here is how those looked:


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> I wonder – what were the identity cards called in English in the times when they had the form of passport-like booklets and not cards...


They were called British Visitor's Passports. Have a look at the link to see examples from 1963 and 1979. My family never had one as the only place we ever went to as a kid was Hungary, which presumably required a normal passport given it was behind the Iron Curtain. It was also more economical to get a normal passport as the paper one only lasted a year. Children didn't need their own passport then so I was covered on my dad's passport. I still have my old passport issued in 1995, expired in 2005, which has the number of children (0) on it.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> They were called British Visitor's Passports. Have a look at the link to see examples from 1963 and 1979. My family never had one as the only place we ever went to as a kid was Hungary, which presumably required a normal passport given it was behind the Iron Curtain. It was also more economical to get a normal passport as the paper one only lasted a year. Children didn't need their own passport then so I was covered on my dad's passport. I still have my old passport issued in 1995, expired in 2005, which has the number of children (0) on it.


I meant the documents for nationals, obviously non-existent in the UK, but existent in most of Europe.

The equivalents of our "dowód osobisty".



x-type said:


> In Croatia we didn't have passportlike booklets, but cards.
> Anyway, those were not cards in credit card format, but larger. Credit card format ID documents came very late, in 2003.
> Here is how those looked:


In Yugoslavia times too?

BTW, Germany is still using this larger format for ID cards, aren't they?

In Poland the format almost hasn't changed since probably 1950s, for sure at least 1970s, up to 2001, when it got replaced with plastic cards.

The old format was like this:



















This example is from 1962, and I remember that an ID issued in Poland in something like 1998 or so had those pages with practically identical layout, probably the only difference was a place to write in the national identification number (so called PESEL).

I found a photo of one from 1953 and the layout of the main pages is different:










So it seems it hasn't change since at least 1960s, but in 1950s it was different.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> The equivalents of our "dowód osobisty".


Maybe "Identity document" would have been the term before they became plastic cards. That's the name of the Wikipedia article.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_document


----------



## Alex_ZR

Kpc21 said:


> I meant the documents for nationals, obviously non-existent in the UK, but existent in most of Europe.
> 
> The equivalents of our "dowód osobisty".
> 
> 
> In Yugoslavia times too?


Aparently Serbia during socialist Yugoslavia also had card-like ID:

1966









But somewhere in the 1970s it switched to a booklet:











This type was issued until 2000, when it was update to then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia symbols:










Senior citizens whose old booklet IDs were issued as "permanent" were obligated to replace them with plastic ID cards (issued since 2008) until December 31, 2016.


----------



## [atomic]

Kpc21 said:


> BTW, Germany is still using this larger format for ID cards, aren't they?


The large format was last issued in 2010 I believe, since then they have the standard Credit Card size.


----------



## Slagathor

In English-speaking countries people would often simply refer to these as "papers", an expression made popular by the movie Casablanca. If a cop stopped you on the street, he would ask to see your "papers". At least in North America where my relatives live. It could be different in the UK.

It's technically short for "identity papers" though few people know that. It's also a very ambiguous term: it could refer to anything from a passport to an employee pass (if you were stopped by security on factory grounds, for instance).


----------



## Kpc21

Still "identity document" or "papers" are generic terms, not specific for this one document issued by most countries (at least in Europe), though interestingly not by the major English-speaking ones...



Alex_ZR said:


> Aparently Serbia during socialist Yugoslavia also had card-like ID:


Though technology must have come in, because they were filled in using a typewriter 

Unlike in Poland, filled in by handwriting until the switch to plastic cards, produced in the factory with all the data already in them. No typewriter stage.

By the way, if we talk about documents (and stay in the roads topic), there is a fun fact regarding the Polish car registration certificates.

They generally look like this:










The data you can see on the first page in the top, is the institution issuing the document. With its address. In this case, the Mayor of Poznań.

Supposedly, quite a lot of police officers interpret it, however, as the address of the car owner.

Which ends up with mayors and county governors getting quite a lot of foreign traffic fines addressed to them 

By the way – for some reasons, it seems they forgot to update the template, and newly issued documents still have the words: WSPÓLNOTA EUROPEJSKA (which translates as European Community) in the top. Though actually European Community as an organization disappeared already in 2009, when the Treaty of Lisbon came in force.

Also, a recent change of the law made it no longer necessary to collect stamps from the periodic technical inspections in the registration certificate (which was always a problem – the certificate has room for only 6 stamps, and the inspections in Poland are obligatory every year for personal cars, so every 6 years of having a car you had to get a new registration certificate with free room for the inspection stamps; if no room for stamps in the certificate, you was given a printed document confirming the inspection, but it wasn't accepted by the police). But regardless of that, even though recently they did a slight update to the document, it still has that stamps area.










(here it has just a single inspection stamp, actually entered by the DMV – and, in addition, an annotation about a trailer towing hook installed)


----------



## MattiG

Slagathor said:


> It's technically short for "identity papers" though few people know that. It's also a very ambiguous term: it could refer to anything from a passport to an employee pass (if you were stopped by security on factory grounds, for instance).


In the UK, it may refer to the gas bill, too, and to other prehistoric ways to prove your identity. About every third episode in the British TV crime series is based on the murderer having several identities.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland criminals just use fake ID cards, often with stolen identity of actual people...


----------



## tfd543

ChrisZwolle said:


> Chaos am Hamburger Flughafen: Was tun, wenn der Koffer weg ist?
> 
> 
> Am Hamburger Flughafen stapeln sich aufgrund des Personalmangels Koffer und Taschen. Reisende, die auf der Suche nach ihrem Gepäck sind, haben teils große Probleme, es zurückzubekommen. Was tun, wenn der Koffer bei einer Reise abhanden kommt?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.ndr.de
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Stapels onbeheerde koffers op Schiphol: wat is er aan de hand?
> 
> 
> Reisverzekeraars krijgen veel vragen over zoekgeraakte bagage. "Maar de meeste koffers komen vroeg of laat weer boven water."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> nos.nl
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Apparently there are also problems at airports with the baggage handlers. Lots of people fly without their baggage. One article mentions some have been left behind for 2 weeks.


Yep. I was a victim of this in Toronto. Lost my bag for 1 week. It sucks really.


----------



## geogregor

Slagathor said:


> In English-speaking countries people would often simply refer to these as "papers", an expression made popular by the movie Casablanca. If a cop stopped you on the street, he would ask to see your "papers". At least in North America where my relatives live. It could be different in the UK.
> 
> It's technically short for "identity papers" though few people know that. It's also a very ambiguous term: it could refer to anything from a passport to an employee pass (if you were stopped by security on factory grounds, for instance).


In the UK most people simply say "ID". Remember that English speakers absolutely love abbreviations.


----------



## radamfi

In Dutch, AIDS and HIV are spelt in lower case ('aids' and 'hiv') as if they are regular nouns, not abbreviations. 



https://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/hiv




https://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/aids



indicates that you can pronounce 'hiv' either like an abbreviation as in English or as a one syllable word. 

Also from the above links, it seems you spell HIV in lower case in Norwegian as well and AIDS is also spelt in lower case in Norwegian, Czech and Slovakian.


----------



## Džiugas

Lithuania introduced ID cards only in 2003, and between 2003 and 2013 there was weird law requiring to get the ID card before or while applying for the passport (except for children). Nowadays it's compulsory to have either passport or the ID card.


----------



## cinxxx

About last night!


----------



## radamfi

Not having an ID card can make life more complicated than it needs to be. Young people, in particular, have the inconvenience of having to prove their age buying alcohol and going to clubs. The driving licence has become the most common way of proving your age and identity, and provisional licences are usually accepted. But some driving licences still don't have a photo. Driving licences used to be paper and only need to be replaced with a photo driving licence if you move house. There are also semi-official ID cards that have been created by not for profit organisations.

This website explains to retailers what sort of ID they should accept.









Acceptable forms of ID in the UK - No ID No Sale!


Penalties for selling age-restricted products to minors can be severe. Know which IDs you should accept as proof of age in the UK in order to effectively challenge young people to prove their age when purchasing age-restricted items.




noidnosale.com





(including a picture of a 'dowód osobisty') 

Sometimes a driving licence won't be accepted. For example, employers ask for ID before you start a new job and they won't accept a driving licence. So for most UK citizens, the passport is what is normally used. Most EU citizens can use their ID card.


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> In Dutch, AIDS and HIV are spelt in lower case ('aids' and 'hiv') as if they are regular nouns, not abbreviations.
> 
> 
> 
> https://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/hiv
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/aids
> 
> 
> 
> indicates that you can pronounce 'hiv' either like an abbreviation as in English or as a one syllable word.
> 
> Also from the above links, it seems you spell HIV in lower case in Norwegian as well and AIDS is also spelt in lower case in Norwegian, Czech and Slovakian.


That's the standard in Dutch: abbreviations are only capitalized if the words they abbreviate are capitalized as well. For example:

*midden- en kleinbedrijf* becomes *mkb* (_medium- and small enterprises_)
*burgerservicenummer *becomes *bsn* (_social security number_)
*hogerberoepsonderwijs *becomes *hbo* (_university of applied sciences_)

English has the habit of capitalizing titles, in which case the abbreviation is also capitalized. We (at least initially) tend to keep the capitalization intact when we loan those words in Dutch. For example:

*Information and Communication Technology* = *ICT
Light Emitting Diode *=* LED*

These tend to erode overtime, however, and most are eventually Dutchified into lowercase abbreviations. Examples of this phenomenon include* Full Time Equivalent* which is abbreviated *FTE *in English but has become *fte *in Dutch. *Liquefied Petroleum Gas* is *LPG *in English but is now *lpg *in Dutch. I've also seen *ICT *morph into *ict *or even *it *and I've definitely seen packaging with *led-verlichting* printed on them as well.

The only abbreviations that escape this trend are those that constitute names. *NATO *= *NAVO*. The *United Kingdom* is known as *het VK*. Abbreviations like that stay capitalized.


----------



## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> In English-speaking countries people would often simply refer to these as "papers", an expression made popular by the movie Casablanca. If a cop stopped you on the street, he would ask to see your "papers". At least in North America where my relatives live. It could be different in the UK.


The police have no legal right to ask you to prove your identity in the UK, unless they suspect you of committing a crime. Obviously that is open to abuse by the police, but that is one of the main reasons why an ID card has never been introduced - like in the Casablanca example, being asked to show your papers is associated with authoritarian regimes. The principal is important I think, even though most people have several forms of government-issued ID.


----------



## radamfi

At school (early 80s) I was taught to use full stops in abbreviations. Especially for Mr. and Mrs. but also for acronyms. For example, B.B.C. instead of BBC. That style was probably already outdated by then and is now considered very old-fashioned. However, American English still sometimes uses full stops for abbreviations.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Why are letters in titles of e.g. songs capitalized in English?



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Brick_in_the_Wall



For example, it is Another Brick in the Wall. Not 'Another brick in the wall'. Why is that? We don't do it with regular text.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Why are letters in titles of e.g. songs capitalized in English?
> 
> 
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Brick_in_the_Wall
> 
> 
> 
> For example, it is Another Brick in the Wall. Not 'Another brick in the wall'. Why is that? We don't do it with regular text.


Good question. I have never thought about it before. I guess it is just a rule that we accept. Your question indicates that such a rule doesn't exist in Dutch. Looking at bol.com confirms that. It uses capitals for the titles of English books but not for Dutch books.


----------



## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> Where did you get that figure from?
> 
> The article I linked to mentions that NS International sold 372.000 tickets in June alone.
> 
> A standard Thalys train counts 380 seats. There are 11 services every day from Amsterdam to Paris. Eleven * 380 = 4.180 passengers. The article said that, at this point, "seats are hard to come by" so let's assume an average occupancy rate of 85% for all Thalys trains. In that scenario it still carries 3.553 passengers from Amsterdam to Paris every single day.
> 
> Then we're not even talking about all the other railway services like Eurostar, inOui, Nightjet, etc. It also disregards folks who jump on "ordinary" intercity trains to hop across the border and transfer to other services from there.


Because I'm an idiot who can't do maths. 11,000 a day, which is much more significant, although still not very much compared to the numbers who fly


----------



## Slagathor

Well no, but the hope is that a lot of this additional traffic will stick around (many people seem to be having some sort of an epiphany as driving to Southern France with 2 kids in the back seat isn't exactly anyone's idea of a good time. On a train, you have more space and time to relax). This, in turn, should lead to additional investment into railway infrastructure.

You have to be optimistic every once in a while.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I think the 372,000 figure, while reported in June, probably accounts for much of the international tickets throughout the summer (June-September), as people book them in advance.


----------



## Slagathor

True, but then we'd also have to look at ticket sales in April and May as people often start thinking about their summer holiday some time after Easter.

September is a stretch, I would say. Schools start again in late August and folks without children tend not to book as far in advance as those who are limited to school holidays.

I'm sure we'll get more definitive data from NS in the fall.


----------



## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> Well no, but the hope is that a lot of this additional traffic will stick around (many people seem to be having some sort of an epiphany as driving to Southern France with 2 kids in the back seat isn't exactly anyone's idea of a good time. On a train, you have more space and time to relax). This, in turn, should lead to additional investment into railway infrastructure.
> 
> You have to be optimistic every once in a while.


Yes that's true. But the scale of what would be needed to replace air with rail is enormous. Google tells me Schiphol's busiest summer days pre-covid was up to 220,000 passengers. That's a lot of trains


----------



## radamfi

Before low cost airlines, short haul flying within Europe was primarily for business people. The first time I flew from London to Amsterdam was around 1992 and I got a special student fare of about £100 return, which would be about twice that in today's money. I thought that was a good deal. That was a rare flight for me. I nearly always travelled by train within Europe, despite the hassle of needing ferries. Back then there was a comprehensive Europewide network of sleeper trains with couchettes and seated coaches for the budget traveller. It was more normal for leisure travellers to travel by train than plane. A huge proportion of the growth in air travel is generated traffic. If those flights and low fares didn't exist, many passengers simply wouldn't travel. They wouldn't take a train halfway across Europe instead. 

I remember a TV programme around the time when Ryanair had really crazy deals around 2008-2010, when you could literally travel across Europe for pennies. They interviewed someone who had never heard of Klagenfurt but was going there just because it was cheap and flight times were good. Someone else regularly flew from London to northern England via eastern Europe, primarily to save money over the train, but also for the fun of it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Millennials were the first to be in early adulthood with the ability to travel around the world. Of course, there were people doing intercontinental trips before that, but when I grew up in the 1990s, intercontinental travel was mostly something we knew from American movies. Most people did not have the resources to take their family across the globe at that time.

Around 2000, those all-inclusive resorts in the Mediterranean seemed to be increasing in popularity, though mostly for people without children.It wasn't until the late 2000s that flying became so affordable that it became a standard and grew very fast in the 2010s. Of course, flying to vacation became a thing already in the 1960s, as resort town development in Spain show. But it wasn't until after 2000 that it became truly massive, with people going on multiple vacations per year by airplane.

Schiphol passenger numbers:


----------



## bogdymol

I can only approve what you both said.

When I was a kid, I thought that traveling by plane was an ultra-luxury that only rich people could afford. Travelling intercontinental, that was reserved for the super-rich. Renting a car at your destination? Insanely expensive, no normal people do that. Normally our "holiday" ment a few days somewhere in Romania, where we traveled either by car (we once did a 6-person trip in this car), or by train.

My father had the opportunity to travel back in 2003 with a charitable association from Romania to the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand (not at his own expense, as he could not afford that). Before he did that trip, we only knew about those countries in Asia for example from some documentaries and from the map, but we were sure we had "nothing to do with them" and that "they are too far away to even think of getting there".

Then, in 2004, he got selected by his workplace to go on a training mission in USA for 2 weeks. Again, that was something that at that time we could not dream of, travelling to USA (you needed visa that you could not get, was insanely expensive etc.).

In those years and after these 2 intercontinental travels his mind changed completely and started to look more and more to get us (his family) to travel, see the world, and gather experiences. We started slow, with some bus trips in Europe (Greece, Italy), car trip (Austria, Czech Republic), but then we went further and further.

Fast forward a few years, cheap travel is here, the economy is going good, and from a kid growing up in a commie block neighborhood I now have about 270 flights in my flight diary, having traveled eastwards as far as New Zealand and westwards as far as Hawaii, having visited all continents except South America and Antarctica (will do them too one day!).

The world really changed a lot in the last 20-30 years!


----------



## Attus

Additionall, when I grew up, I had a passport which was only valid in five countries: Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic. Visiting Vienna? Impossible.
In 1988 we recieved our first, how we called it, "world passport", i.e. a passport which was valid everywhere in the world. Visiting Vienna became possible, but not much more because we couldn't afford that. I was once with my friend in San Marino. By bus of course, everything else would have been beyond every imagination. We knew that something like flying exists but have never been to an airport. Some people could afford a one week holiday in Spain, but flying was unaffordable even for them. There was a lot of Hungary - Spanish coast bus services in the 90's. That was a travel of almost two days.
A few years later we lived in another world.

It was 2012. Hungarian airline Malév shut down, the company was bankrupt. Every one expected Hungarian air traffic collapsing. On the contrary, it increased rapidly after that, low cost airlines discovered the market. A few years later Budapest airport had twice as much traffic than before Malév collapse.

I have been living in Germany for ten years now (no, I lie, it'll be ten years in November). Eight years it was very common to visit my family in Hungary frequently. Flying was cheap, schedules perfect. Something that was beyond every imagination even in the early 2000's. And something what is impossible now.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm in my mid-thirties. I've noticed that many people I grew up with went through a phase of traveling the world. Australia? Bali? Thailand? Argentina? Canada? Nothing special, 'everyone' has been there. But now they have started families and they have significantly changed their travel patterns, some even went back to basic and go camping with their family, as they did in the 1990s. Most have shifted back to a traditional vacation by car.


----------



## bogdymol

When kids come into play, holiday patterns change. 

Before having kids, my wife and I booked holidays when we found a good offer. 

Once I found cheap flights to Australia (480 Euro return from Europe), we booked it, and started the itinerary based on the flights we found. Same when booking our flights to Hawaii. It did not matter that we were 50 hours on the road, without getting a bed to sleep in. 

Now with a baby we must consider the schedule, travel times, baby sleep hours, bed time etc. much better before booking something like this.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> I'm in my mid-thirties. I've noticed that many people I grew up with went through a phase of traveling the world. Australia? Bali? Thailand? Argentina? Canada? Nothing special, 'everyone' has been there. But now they have started families and they have significantly changed their travel patterns, some even went back to basic and go camping with their family, as they did in the 1990s. Most have shifted back to a traditional vacation by car.


I was born in 1983 in a working class family. My parents were very frugal with money all year long so we could go on one single vacation during the summer every year. Usually two weeks somewhere around the Mediterranean, where we would get to by car + caravan.

I feel like the 1990s in particular were perfect for this but that may be nostalgia speaking. We'd usually spend the first night at a motorway service station somewhere in France, sleeping in the caravan in the car park. In the 2000s, my parents stopped doing that because it was unsafe; they'd find a campsite for one night instead. Apart from safety concerns, these days the roads are busier and, of course, gas is much more expensive.

I personally wouldn't dream of hauling a trailer all the way to the Med now. But I do have friends with kids who go camping and glamping in rented accommodation around the Med. They'll usually drive there but a few are now taking the train for the first time this year. I wonder if that'll be an eye-opener or a one-off.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

The development has of course been a little less dramatic in western / northern Europe than in the former commie countries. Already in the 60s charter travels to Southern Europe and the Canary Islands were quite common from Scandinavia. From then on I think that kind of holidays were not dominated by the rich, who often rather spent their summers at their own domestic holiday homes. 

And there have always been a bit travel across the Atlantic, and since the 60s air has been the cheapest option. 

What has really skyrocketed, though, is short term travels by plane, i. e. for a few days. In Norway, mainly domestic travels go visit friends and family, attend concerts etc. , sport events, or whatever. But also weekend travels to e. g. European capitals have increased a lot. Both thanks to fierce competition. 


Slagathor said:


> I personally wouldn't dream of hauling a trailer all the way to the Med now.


Come on, everything is just around the corner from Netherlands ;-)


----------



## andken

AnelZ said:


> You could argue which one is more beautiful, the raw beauty which looks more impressive or the regulated one with much more water and blue/green


You have a canyon converted into an artificial lake. And there is a difference between the quality of the pictures. And in areas with forests the calculations are also different. Nuclear is still superior.


----------



## AnelZ

I wouldn't call Neretva a lake on the stretch between Jablanica and Mostar (which you see on the picture) but rather an artifically large river. Unlike the section between Konjic and Jablanica were it it is a lake (Jablanica lake at 13km2) which was created by building the Jablanica hydro powerplant in 1953.

I myself from those two pictures prefer the older one as it looks much more impressive, even though the current situation is still one of the most beautiful stretches of road and train routes in the world in my opinion.


----------



## Slagathor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Come on, everything is just around the corner from Netherlands ;-)


On 300km/h bullet trains, sure. At 80km/h with a trailer not so much.


----------



## Coccodrillo

ChrisZwolle said:


> The city of Almere in the Netherlands is organizing the Floriade, a horticultural exposition. This is a large-scale event, running from April to October, a large amount of money was put into it. They built a cable car across the A6 motorway.
> 
> However the event is a total flop, the projected visitor numbers have gone down every month, from a total of 2.8 million visitors to about 600,000 now. They built a large parking lot (very far from the actual event site) which sits mostly empty.
> 
> A lot of criticism has been given for the prices for visitors, parking is the most expensive for any attraction in the Netherlands, the entrance fee is relatively high and of course food on the premises is expensive as well. It is also not well accessible, as it requires a shuttle bus from either the parking lot or from the railway station. This, combined with inflation and an apparent increasingly niche target audience, has led to large financial losses. I've seen some people commenting that they were expecting some kind of Keukenhof experience, but they said it is more like an eco-sustainability exposition. Which just doesn't draw in the numbers they expected.
> 
> The last event in Venlo in 2012 was also financially troublesome.
> 
> 
> Kabelbaan Floriade over de A6 by DutchRoadMovies, on Flickr


What's the point of building a cable car with darkened windows? I know that Flevoland isn't famous for its landscape, but not seeing the outside is a reason less to go to visit this Floriade fair.



Stuu said:


> Yes that's true. But the scale of what would be needed to replace air with rail is enormous. Google tells me Schiphol's busiest summer days pre-covid was up to 220,000 passengers. That's a lot of trains


Anyone remember the Icelandic volcano in 2010, that suddenly stopped all or nearly all European air traffic?

I remember that I travelled on the Gotthard railway sat on the floor, as the trains were all overflowing of passenger. This was worsened by the fact that the year before Swiss railways decided to halve the number of train trips despite the good passenger numbers on normal times, so in this period there was a sort of overload of already usually overloaded trains (it was common not to find a free seat already in normal times, let alone during the volcano crisis).


----------



## andken

AnelZ said:


> I wouldn't call Neretva a lake


It's a reservoir(I need to pay more attention to the language).


----------



## Slagathor

Coccodrillo said:


> Anyone remember the Icelandic volcano in 2010, that suddenly stopped all or nearly all European air traffic?
> 
> I remember that I travelled on the Gotthard railway sat on the floor, as the trains were all overflowing of passenger. This was worsened by the fact that the year before Swiss railways decided to halve the number of train trips despite the good passenger numbers on normal times, so in this period there was a sort of overload of already usually overloaded trains (it was common not to find a free seat already in normal times, let alone during the volcano crisis).


I remember SNCF went on strike. 🤣


----------



## Coccodrillo

I remember that the French nickname it Sur Neuf Cinq Fainéant (= 5 out of 9 are lazy)...

(Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français is the state railway company)


----------



## radamfi

How much fuel could be saved in the world (especially the US) if people drove 'normal' cars (for example segments A to C) instead of what they currently drive?

The second most important railway line in the UK will be completely closed between London and York (about 300 km) on Tuesday because of the heatwave. Most other lines will have a severely reduced service on Monday and Tuesday and passengers are advised not to travel on either day unless their journey is essential.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Lots of bridges, noise barriers, etc. are full of graffiti in Germany.


A30-118 by European Roads, on Flickr


A12 Berlin - Frankfurt an der Oder 28 by European Roads, on Flickr

But not in Poland. What is the difference?


S1 Bielsko-Biała - Żywiec 05 by European Roads, on Flickr


A1 Gorzyczki - Gliwice 32 by European Roads, on Flickr


S11 Poznań 19 by European Roads, on Flickr


----------



## Suburbanist

Here in Norway the government is basically re-routing profits from state owned hydro producers to residential consumers.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Lots of bridges, noise barriers, etc. are full of graffiti in Germany.
> 
> 
> A30-118 by European Roads, on Flickr
> 
> 
> A12 Berlin - Frankfurt an der Oder 28 by European Roads, on Flickr
> 
> But not in Poland. What is the difference?
> 
> 
> S1 Bielsko-Biała - Żywiec 05 by European Roads, on Flickr
> 
> 
> A1 Gorzyczki - Gliwice 32 by European Roads, on Flickr
> 
> 
> S11 Poznań 19 by European Roads, on Flickr


Too precious things to spoil 

Germany is known for worse graffiti vandalism among more developed countries.
For example Netherlands don't give impression there are lots of graffitti stuff happening, or at least it doesn't make you think wtf is going on.
---
There are multiple opinions about graffiti and tags, but I'm actually quite against chaotic painting in the streets.


----------



## tfd543

Attus said:


> I've visited Brussels today. I was qiute surprised as I did not have mobile internet (i.e. internet through mobile data) in my smartphone. I had it outside of Brussels, but not in the city itself. I've spent approx. 5 hours in Brussels and had no connection at all.


Sometimes you have to choose the carrier yourself manually. I’ve also had some problems in the past.


----------



## Slagathor

PovilD said:


> For example Netherlands don't give impression there are lots of graffitti stuff happening, or at least it doesn't make you think wtf is going on.


I disagree. We've got a graffiti problem here as well.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Yep:










Graffiti on train exteriors is pretty bad, but graffiti inside trains is generally quickly removed, most trains do not have any graffiti on the interior.

Graffiti along train tracks can also get pretty bad. They don't seem to have a policy to remove it.

Graffiti along roads is generally removed fairly quickly or periodically. If it is obscene or offensive it is usually removed as soon as possible.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

An indication of how far off weather forecasting models can be.

GFS run on 9 July for 17 July (today). Widespread 40 - 45 degrees in France and Belgium, even into the Netherlands:









The real temperatures are 10 to 15 degrees lower than forecasted...


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yep:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Graffiti on train exteriors is pretty bad, but graffiti inside trains is generally quickly removed, most trains do not have any graffiti on the interior.
> 
> Graffiti along train tracks can also get pretty bad. They don't seem to have a policy to remove it.
> 
> Graffiti along roads is generally removed fairly quickly or periodically. If it is obscene or offensive it is usually removed as soon as possible.


It seems graffities there is a less problem in The Netherlands in terms of exterior of the city or along the roads?
We don't have graffitti problems with our public transport, including trains, afaik. On older buses I noticed few tags made by teens or very young adults on the opposite side of the bus driver seat in the interior with things like phone numbers or smth very random is hard to remember right now 
We have more problems with graffiti along the roads, you can find some bad ones too targeted at "person X is Y" and similar. Mostly it's just generic name without surname and you won't understand the context unless you are related with those tags or you know sb who made those tags. Political tags are not really that popular.

---
Btw, if talking about tags somebody painted huge Z and V letters on the slopes along Kaunas Northern bypass. Those symbols are banned in Lithuania as war symbols of Russian war against The West.
Kaunas city municipality plans to remove those symbols as soon as possible, though reader says it staid for a week.








Skaitytojas stebisi: beveik savaitę atvykstančius į Kauną pasitinka uždrausti simboliai - Kas vyksta Kaune


Kone savaitę laiko vykstančius A1 Klaipėda-Kaunas-Vilnius keliu, ties Kaunu, pasitinka uždrausti Rusijos karo simboliai. Kaunietis stebisi, kodėl „Z“ ir „V“ simboliai greta magistralinio kelio puikuojasi taip ilgai ir net siūlo lengviausią simbolių pašalinimo būdą. „Prieš beveik savaitę...




kaunas.kasvyksta.lt


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> An indication of how far off weather forecasting models can be.
> 
> GFS run on 9 July for 17 July (today). Widespread 40 - 45 degrees in France and Belgium, even into the Netherlands:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The real temperatures are 10 to 15 degrees lower than forecasted...


It's a forecast from a week away, they can never be 100% reliable in terms of timing but the actual weather pattern is pretty much correct, it's just taken a bit longer to happen. That's the nature of a forecast


----------



## MattiG

Stuu said:


> It's a forecast from a week away, they can never be 100% reliable in terms of timing but the actual weather pattern is pretty much correct, it's just taken a bit longer to happen. That's the nature of a forecast


Professional meteorologists are not very happy on making long-term forecasts for 10 days or more, because they are more or less fairy tales at the far end. The press typically insists on getting them.

The long-term forecasts are pretty unreliable in the northern Europe, where the Gulf Stream has a major impact to the weather. The air masses at the northern Atlantic are constantly in a chaotic state, and the weather may change very quickly and in an unpredictable way.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> Lots of bridges, noise barriers, etc. are full of graffiti in Germany.
> But not in Poland. What is the difference?


That's against common stereothypes that picture Germany as perfectly tidy and efficient and E.E. countries as rundown and untidy.


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> That's against common stereothypes that picture Germany as perfectly tidy and efficient and E.E. countries as rundown and untidy.


Wrong. Germans are thorough and rule-lovers but no means efficient.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yep:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Graffiti on train exteriors is pretty bad, but graffiti inside trains is generally quickly removed, most trains do not have any graffiti on the interior.
> 
> Graffiti along train tracks can also get pretty bad. They don't seem to have a policy to remove it.
> 
> Graffiti along roads is generally removed fairly quickly or periodically. If it is obscene or offensive it is usually removed as soon as possible.





PovilD said:


> It seems graffities there is a less problem in The Netherlands in terms of exterior of the city or along the roads?
> We don't have graffitti problems with our public transport, including trains, afaik. On older buses I noticed few tags made by teens or very young adults on the opposite side of the bus driver seat in the interior with things like phone numbers or smth very random is hard to remember right now
> We have more problems with graffiti along the roads, you can find some bad ones too targeted at "person X is Y" and similar. Mostly it's just generic name without surname and you won't understand the context unless you are related with those tags or you know sb who made those tags. Political tags are not really that popular.
> 
> ---
> Btw, if talking about tags somebody painted huge Z and V letters on the slopes along Kaunas Northern bypass. Those symbols are banned in Lithuania as war symbols of Russian war against The West.
> Kaunas city municipality plans to remove those symbols as soon as possible, though reader says it staid for a week.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Skaitytojas stebisi: beveik savaitę atvykstančius į Kauną pasitinka uždrausti simboliai - Kas vyksta Kaune
> 
> 
> Kone savaitę laiko vykstančius A1 Klaipėda-Kaunas-Vilnius keliu, ties Kaunu, pasitinka uždrausti Rusijos karo simboliai. Kaunietis stebisi, kodėl „Z“ ir „V“ simboliai greta magistralinio kelio puikuojasi taip ilgai ir net siūlo lengviausią simbolių pašalinimo būdą. „Prieš beveik savaitę...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> kaunas.kasvyksta.lt


Preventing graffiti on trains is a matter of parking them behind locked fences overnight.  Which, luckily, is being done more and more.

Like Chris said, graffiti is mostly a problem on noise barriers along railway lines. It affects noise barriers along motorways as well, but those are cleaned more frequently.

I hope we'll move to using barriers made of organic materials that you can't spray paint. This type of thing:


----------



## PovilD

Slagathor said:


> Preventing graffiti on trains is a matter of parking them behind locked fences overnight.  Which, luckily, is being done more and more.
> 
> Like Chris said, graffiti is mostly a problem on noise barriers along railway lines. It affects noise barriers along motorways as well, but those are cleaned more frequently.
> 
> I hope we'll move to using barriers made of organic materials that you can't spray paint. This type of thing:


I know you invest quite a lot of know how for your infrastructure or in other words city exterior design it would be weird you would have extensive grafitti problem. I mean neglected graffiti problem like in many other places.


----------



## Slagathor

PovilD said:


> I know you invest quite a lot of know how for your infrastructure or in other words city exterior design it would be weird you would have extensive grafitti problem. I mean neglected graffiti problem like in many other places.


It's because cleaning is not considered a high priority.

We build infrastructure for intense usage and then we spend a lot of money on maintenance to keep it running. Our motorway system is very dense and our railway system is basically a nationwide metro with incredible frequencies. All the money goes to maintaining things like the tarmac (road), or the overhead wires and the switches (railways).

Then there's no money left to frequently clean the barriers so graffiti stays around for years and years.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> How much fuel could be saved in the world (especially the US) if people drove 'normal' cars (for example segments A to C) instead of what they currently drive?


I can't get my head around stupidity of the oversized cars in places like London (and many other European cities). People insist on driving cars which actually increasingly can't even pass each other on the narrow city streets. Then they complain about the "lack of road capacity", about "too many buses" (which they also can't pass), that they can't safely overtake or about high fuel prices. Really? What a fricking morons.

Ok, for many men such cars is typical show off, some kind of compensation for small dic*ks, but why increasing number of women drive those tanks? Compensation for small boobs?

Leave those stupid cars to the Americans. Even if most of them also don't really need such cars at least they have space for them.



ChrisZwolle said:


> An indication of how far off weather forecasting models can be.
> 
> GFS run on 9 July for 17 July (today). Widespread 40 - 45 degrees in France and Belgium, even into the Netherlands:
> 
> The real temperatures are 10 to 15 degrees lower than forecasted...


Models are not the issue, there is always probability attached to them and you normally run them multiple times anyway. The longer the forecast the more uncertainty. For me anything over 3-5 days is a bit of lottery.

The real problem is the media coverage. It got utterly hysteric here in the UK. You would think that we will all gonna die 

Sure, we should inform the emergency services, watch out for vulnerable people, prepare infrastructure, allow for contingency etc. but we really don't have to scare people to death with silly headlines. But that's the joy of tabloidization of British media landscape.

Some headlines:

"Blowtorch Britain"

"Meltdown Monday"

"Hotter than the Sahara"









This is the sort of nonsense pumped to the British heads.


----------



## volodaaaa

geogregor said:


> Ok, for many men such cars is typical show off, some kind of compensation for small dic*ks, but why increasing number of women drive those tanks? Compensation for small boobs?


Seems like this Eastern European trend has finally reached Western Europe. Here it started like 10 or 15 years ago. Rich guys bought tanks for their tiny women (or lovers) in order for them to be "safe". I think it works, but it does not apply to other participants of road traffic.

The special category is Dodge Rams and Hummers. It is like "I have no dick" written on all sides of the car.

I would not like to sound judgy, but I will never buy a "premium brand" car. I just see no reason for it. Now I have Toyota and Renault, and previously had Opel (Vauxhall) and Suzuki. All cars are below 20k €, and if I had an unlimited budget, I would maybe spend 30k on current models, but full equipment or maybe would choose a more geeky way (like a hybrid). I would definitely not buy a black BMW X6.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Well, it's called '_The Sun_'.

They live up to their name.


----------



## radamfi

Bizarrely, the hot weather has become another way for people to argue on social media, basically along the lines of woke/anti-woke.

Remain/leave
Pro/anti-Covid restrictions
Pro/anti-mask

and now

Take precautions because of the hot weather/don't worry about the hot weather

Many people are bringing up the famous heatwave of 1976 as an example of when Britain just kept going on as normal.

The pro-Brexit Daily Express put this on its front page.


----------



## Slagathor

geogregor said:


> Ok, for many men such cars is typical show off, some kind of compensation for small dic*ks


One time, at an underground parking garage, I parked next to a Chevrolet Silverado. Huge fecking thing. Meanwhile I was driving this:










As I got out, the driver of the Chevy said: "Nice car!" with an arrogant smirk on his face.

I told him: "Mine is bigger than yours."

He looked very puzzled as I walked away. This was 10 years ago, sometimes I wonder if he got the joke yet.


----------



## weathercc

Stuu said:


> It's a forecast from a week away, they can never be 100% reliable in terms of timing but the actual weather pattern is pretty much correct, it's just taken a bit longer to happen. That's the nature of a forecast


Everything above 72h in forecasts are mainly for entertainment porpouses. Even nowdays with all the supercomputers.
The models reability drops drastic above 72h, and get easily things "too warm", too wet" or "too cold", its just how it works.
On the other hand, US-made GFS have never been good for northern Europe, no matter if look at temperature or percipitation or something else. Why use that when there are multiple better european models available? Like ECMWF, German ICON etc.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> Many people are bringing up the famous heatwave of 1976 as an example of when Britain just kept going on as normal.


It's weird because as someone who was 1 in 1976, I have heard people bang on about it my whole life. And what they have always said is how it was unbearable and people couldn't carry on as normal! And it never got above 35°C. What was unusual was that it was above 30°C every day for 10 days


----------



## radamfi

'The Last Leg' is a comedy/satire show on Channel 4, which is hosted by an Australian comedian with two English comedians as sidekicks. The show has a reputation for being particularly left wing and critical of government, probably one of the reasons why the Tories want to privatise the channel. But the show has only been in existence since there has been a Tory government, so we don't know what it would be like under a Labour government. A lot of people think it is already a commercial channel, because it is self-financing from advertising, but it is non-profit.

They discussed the heatwave on the last show and the Australian host said when it is 40 degrees in Australia they stay inside.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> They discussed the heatwave on the last show and the Australian host said when it is 40 degrees in Australia they stay inside.


Which is probably the right thing to do, instead of going to the beach to get some skin cancer. 

When temperatures are getting this high, you shouldn't do much at all, stay inside, keep everything shut and keep hydrated (not alcohol). 

It's currently 28 °C in my city, I have everything shut since this morning and it's a nice 22 °C inside my apartment. I've already been hearing about people having 26 °C in their houses.

The peak of the heat is forecasted for tomorrow. 40 °C might be possible, but they think it'll generally be in the mid to high 30s.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> people having 26 °C in their houses.


I have now 29 °C in the office and I expect 5-6 degrees more tomorrow.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> When temperatures are getting this high, you shouldn't do much at all, stay inside, keep everything shut and keep hydrated (not alcohol).
> 
> It's currently 28 °C in my city, I have everything shut since this morning and it's a nice 22 °C inside my apartment. I've already been hearing about people having 26 °C in their houses.
> 
> The peak of the heat is forecasted for tomorrow. 40 °C might be possible, but they think it'll generally be in the mid to high 30s.


Same here. The windows were open overnight but I closed them at 8 AM and the curtains are drawn. I'm not going anywhere and I'm drinking a lot of water.

I might go for a walk on the beach at 9 or 10 PM when it should be pleasant.


----------



## Stuu

It was a bit cloudy this morning and warm rather than hot, got to about 26°C, people were wondering if it was a false alarm... now the sun is fully out and it's properly hot, 33°C or so which is the hottest ever down here and it's going to get hotter. Still a lot cooler than further east


----------



## radamfi

My nearest official weather station (about 5 km away) recorded a temperature of 35°C two hours ago. I've been inside since 10 o'clock with the fan on and I don't feel uncomfortable at all. The humidity was super low at 23%.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Maximum temperatures in the Netherlands today (so far, at 5 p.m.). 

The humidity is very low, most stations record a relative humidity between 15 and 30%.


----------



## Cookiefabric

Some models shows that tomorrow might reach a 40's degree. If I remember correctly, that will be for the first time reaching that high/hot


----------



## keokiracer

No, the record is 40,7 in Gilze-Rijen, 3 years ago in 2019. That was the first time the 40-barrier was cracked.


----------



## italystf

What happens when you set the walking route instead of the driving route on Google Maps.
Happened today near Venice.
















Ingannato dal navigatore entra con la Volvo nel sottopasso: «Aveva il percorso a piedi»


MESTRE - I navigatori sono utili, ma a volte giocano brutti scherzi. In particolare se si imposta il “percorso a piedi” invece che in auto. Ed è quello che...




www.ilgazzettino.it


----------



## AnelZ

Regarding big cars, women are much more louder that they would like to have a big car if their finances allow it and will pressure their partner if they could afford it. The reason behind it is because they say that they feel safer and more comfortable in it. For men which want to show off, they don't care that much about the size of the car but rather that it looks as expensive as possible.


----------



## x-type

Large cars, just as all other crap, came from America, not from Eastern Europe. 30 years ago there were Range Rover and Jeep Grand Cherokee. Japanese offroaders were not yet considered so luxurious. When 25 years ago Mercedes came out with ML, the shit has hit the fan. What a surprise, it was produced in USA. First generations of RAV4 and CRV were still offroaders, not SUV-s. But after ML nothing was the same. SUV class started to rise as a fenix. In the same time, Europeans have invented city vans (Scenic, Zafira, Piccasso etc.) which were the same shit. Just not luxurious.

Nowadays I am driving compact SUV. Tbh, I don't know why. For the same money I could have bought D-segment caravan from the same producer. It is somewhat easier to get in/out, and due to 4x4 I'm not afraid to go to light offroad, such as harder macadam, some mud, and I am climbing onto the curbs or overpassing 20cm high obstacles without thinging about possible damages. I am haveing a service in 2 days, I will get substitute vehicle the one described (D-segment) so who knows, maybe I change it 🙃


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The bulk of today's new cars don't appeal to me at all. Too many SUV / crossovers. Many electric cars are ugly. Some look like electrified bricks.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Slagathor said:


> One time, at an underground parking garage, I parked next to a Chevrolet Silverado. Huge fecking thing. Meanwhile I was driving this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> As I got out, the driver of the Chevy said: "Nice car!" with an arrogant smirk on his face.
> 
> I told him: "Mine is bigger than yours."
> 
> He looked very puzzled as I walked away. This was 10 years ago, sometimes I wonder if he got the joke yet.


This story reminds me of a photo I took a few months ago in Tallinn:









One of these drivers probably has some issues to deal with...


----------



## bogdymol

When I was in USA, I drove a couple of times such a big american pick-up truck with 5-liter engine (Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado). As a one-time experience is ok, you get to feel what driving a boat on a public street is like.

But if I had all the money in the world I wouldn't buy myself something like that. I am more into estate (break) cars, that offer a lot of space, but are also a bit sporty to drive and quite fuel efficient. I am now driving a Ford Focus estate, next car will probably be something like a Skoda Octavia estate when the time will come. 

However, unfortunately, the market for these cars is getting smaller and smaller, with some manufacturers completely getting rid of such cars in favor of SUVs or weird-looking electric vehicles (I am looking at you Ford Mondeo). 

Hyundai or KIA also offer good value cars, but they have absolutely no family estate in their model list. Sedans, yes, but estate, none. If you want a SUV, they have more than one option!

Tesla? Is building some nice sedans, offer them also as SUVs, but no estate option. Not that I would go into that price range...


----------



## PovilD

italystf said:


> What happens when you set the walking route instead of the driving route on Google Maps.
> Happened today near Venice.
> View attachment 3525335
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ingannato dal navigatore entra con la Volvo nel sottopasso: «Aveva il percorso a piedi»
> 
> 
> MESTRE - I navigatori sono utili, ma a volte giocano brutti scherzi. In particolare se si imposta il “percorso a piedi” invece che in auto. Ed è quello che...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.ilgazzettino.it





> Ed è quello che dev’essere successo* all’automobilista svedese* che l’altroieri mattina si è infilato direttamente nel sottopasso tra Mestre e Marghera da via Ulloa.


Swedish driver. Danish numbers?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

bogdymol said:


> Hyundai or KIA also offer good value cars, but they have absolutely no family estate in their model list. Sedans, yes, but estate, none.


Kia Proceed or Hyundai i40? The i40 stopped production in 2020 though.


----------



## keokiracer

bogdymol said:


> Hyundai or KIA also offer good value cars, but they have absolutely no family estate in their model list. Sedans, yes, but estate, none. If you want a SUV, they have more than one option!


Hyundai i30 Estate?
Kia Ceed Sportswagon?
Kia ProCeed? (I think technically shooting brake but ok)


----------



## bogdymol

You guys are fast 

Ok, maybe I did not express myself correctly.

My opionion on: Kia Ceed or ProCeed: my personal opionion is that the car is pretty outdated with a very old interior, but they keep it on the market as it still sells. Last month I was in Spain and I had a Kia XCeed as a rental car. Same interior, same car, just made a little bit taller. I didn't like it at all. 

Also, for the next car I would go into the next car size (Ford Focus --> Ford Mondeo, but they will not renew it). Kia/Hyundai do not have something larger than the Ceed or i30, unless you go for a SUV.

The new Kia Sportage or the new electric Hyundai Ioniq 5 on the other side, look very modern, with stylish interiors. But they are SUVs, thing that I try to avoid.


----------



## tfd543

italystf said:


> What happens when you set the walking route instead of the driving route on Google Maps.
> Happened today near Venice.
> View attachment 3525335
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ingannato dal navigatore entra con la Volvo nel sottopasso: «Aveva il percorso a piedi»
> 
> 
> MESTRE - I navigatori sono utili, ma a volte giocano brutti scherzi. In particolare se si imposta il “percorso a piedi” invece che in auto. Ed è quello che...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.ilgazzettino.it


OMG. Danish plates.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> 40 degrees is forecast in London and much of England on Monday. It is being treated as a 'national emergency'.


It didn't reach 40 today. 38.1 was the highest measurement, according to MetOffice. Maybe tomorrow? Tomorrow is forecasted to be the hottest in the Netherlands.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1549087856634736640


----------



## italystf

PovilD said:


> Swedish driver. Danish numbers?


One may be a Swedish national but be resident in Denmark and thus having a Danish number plate.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> It didn't reach 40 today. 38.1 was the highest measurement, according to MetOffice. Maybe tomorrow? Tomorrow is forecasted to be the hottest in the Netherlands.
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1549087856634736640


Since my original post, the forecast changed so tomorrow is now supposed to be warmer than today. My original post was from the BBC website which no longer uses the Met Office. The BBC had used the Met Office for nearly 100 years but decided to seek a cheaper provider in the interests of 'best value' and now use MeteoGroup. I bookmark both the BBC Weather and Met Office websites. The BBC website seems to forecast slightly higher temperatures than the Met Office most of the time. The latest BBC forecast is predicting 42 for some parts of eastern England. The Met Office is predicting 41 for that area.


----------



## Slagathor

geogregor said:


> I can't get my head around stupidity of the oversized cars in places like London (and many other European cities). People insist on driving cars which actually increasingly can't even pass each other on the narrow city streets. Then they complain about the "lack of road capacity", about "too many buses" (which they also can't pass), that they can't safely overtake or about high fuel prices. Really? What a fricking morons.


Coincidentally today I spotted a photo on Twitter that perfectly encapsulates what you were saying. 


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1538126861242355714


----------



## radamfi

Large SUVs driven in London are commonly known as "Chelsea Tractors" (Chelsea is a very wealthy area of London) and that terminology was used even before SUVs became generally popular. It was added to the Urban Dictionary in 2005.





__





Urban Dictionary: Chelsea Tractor


Any expensive 4x4 that is driven in an urban environment as a status symbol (typically for the school run) and will never be driven off-road.




www.urbandictionary.com


----------



## Slagathor

I just showed that photo to a friend of mine and he said: "Cities really need to do what airlines do with the carry-on bags: your car has to fit in this slot. If not, you can park it at the city limits and take the bus."

I actually like that idea.


----------



## volodaaaa

Slagathor said:


> I just showed that photo to a friend of mine and he said: "Cities really need to do what airlines do with the carry-on bags: your car has to fit in this slot. If not, you can park it at the city limits and take the bus."
> 
> I actually like that idea.


Imagine a Ryanair city 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣


----------



## cinxxx

As usual construction in Germany has huge delays and costs skyrocket. 









Wegen Stammstrecken-Fiasko: Hauptbahnhof-Neubau in München verzögert sich!


Nicht nur der Bau der Zweiten Stammstrecke in München, sondern auch der Neubau des Hauptbahnhofs wird länger dauern als geplant. Er soll frühestens 2031 fertig – und möglicherweise auch teurer – werden.




www.abendzeitung-muenchen.de





The new building should now be finished in 2031 at the earliest, previously 2028 had been assumed. This is reported by the "image". A spokeswoman for Deutsche Bahn (DB) said: "We have not yet fully completed the revision of the schedule and cost planning. In this respect, we cannot comment on this at the moment."

The late completion is closely related to the fiasco on the second trunk line. The construction of the second S-Bahn tube through the city center has also been delayed by several years (2037 instead of 2028) and will also be significantly more expensive than initially assumed (7.2 instead of 3.5 billion euros).


----------



## Stuu

Hottest ever recorded temperature in the UK, before midday!

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1549345259016142848


----------



## radamfi

Charlwood is my local weather station and it definitely feels substantially warmer than yesterday.


----------



## radamfi

Heathrow has now recorded 40.2 degrees.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Airport observations tend to be unrepresentative compared to most other observation stations. Most stations are in rural areas, typically a field. I don't know where this station is exactly at Heathrow, but it is a very large paved environment. 

Airport observations often go back a long time, so these stations have a substantial historic importance. But in many cases the surrounding environment changed over the course of a century due to expansion of the airport and paved surfaces, making historic references less useful.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Airport observations tend to be unrepresentative compared to most other observation stations. Most stations are in rural areas, typically a field. I don't know where this station is exactly at Heathrow, but it is a very large paved environment.
> 
> Airport observations often go back a long time, so these stations have a substantial historic importance. But in many cases the surrounding environment changed over the course of a century due to expansion of the airport and paved surfaces, making historic references less useful.


True, but even green areas like Kew Gardens in London or Charlwood in Surrey are approaching 40:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1549371238635683841


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Airport observations tend to be unrepresentative compared to most other observation stations. Most stations are in rural areas, typically a field. I don't know where this station is exactly at Heathrow, but it is a very large paved environment.
> 
> Airport observations often go back a long time, so these stations have a substantial historic importance. But in many cases the surrounding environment changed over the course of a century due to expansion of the airport and paved surfaces, making historic references less useful.


The locations (latitude, longitude) are shown here









Synoptic and climate stations


The map shows the current network of automatic (synoptic) and manual (climate) stations covering the UK.




www.metoffice.gov.uk





The Heathrow location appears to be a few metres north of the northern runway. Charlwood is also very close to Gatwick airport. The latitude/longitude given is 1 km from the western end of the runway, and is even marked in Google Maps as "Plane Spotters Parking Gatwick (layby)".


----------



## radamfi

The hottest weather was forecast to be further north and the red weather alert didn't even apply to counties south of London.


----------



## radamfi

It looks like the BBC have been reading this thread









Heatwave: Why is Heathrow so hot?


As the UK's highest ever temperature is recorded at Heathrow airport, why does it get so hot?



www.bbc.co.uk


----------



## DanielFigFoz

The BBC live stream states that

'As of 15:00 several other places had also reached the 40C mark, including Coningsby in Lincolnshire, which hit 40.2C and Kew Gardens in London which hit 40.1C '.

Coningsby is an RAF base, so also next to a runway but in a rather less built up area. 

I was amazed last night at around midnight at how much cooler the air felt over the my parents' grass than over their patio. I laid mysef down on a towel to look up at the stars, not sure when else I'll get the opportunity to do that and not feel cold.


----------



## geogregor

Enjoy the ride


----------



## x-type

Knowing Brits, they will come in year or two and ask to rejoin EU back again.


----------



## geogregor

x-type said:


> Knowing Brits, they will come in year or two and ask to rejoin EU back again.


Nah, there is absolutely no appetite for that on either side.

What I wish for are some practical solutions and less militant approach from the British government. But for that we have to wait for the Tory party to be kicked out of power. At the moment the party is completely dominated by its far right wing. Basically a bunch of total morons. They need stint in the opposition, maybe they will change then.

In the meantime, situation apparently improved in Dover (for passenger cars, not trucks) but the fuc*ked up things in Eurotunel. Basically the shut M20 motorways to park all the coast-bound lorries and sent traffic via local roads of Kent. As you can imagine it is chaos there:



> This morning it’s a tale of two towns.
> Dover is busy, but the roads are largely moving freely and any congestion is being controlled. In Folkestone though, it’s chaos.
> Drivers are struggling to get to the Eurotunnel terminal. Part of the M20 is shut to park 600 lorries - so the rest of the traffic is being diverted onto other roads, and those roads simply can’t cope.
> The queues are so long that food and drink is being handed out to weary motorists.
> Eurotunnel says once people get to the terminal, the trains are running, and they’ll only have a couple of hours to wait.
> But it says it can’t control the roads outside the terminal - all it can do is keep passengers up-to-date with the latest information.
> The company is expecting 7,000 cars to travel today. Their journeys may not be smooth.












That means some people travel for over 20h just to get to the coast (normally you could drive to Poland in that time):



> Andrew Dyer-Smith and his family, who are heading to France for their summer holiday, spent 21 hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic on roads around Folkestone.
> "We arrived at Folkestone at 9am yesterday morning for a train at 10.30 and then have been slowly crawling along for the last 21-plus hours," he told BBC's Breakfast.
> He said his children in the backseat were dishevelled but had managed to sleep a bit, while he and his wife had taken the wheel in shifts to snatch some sleep.
> While speaking live to Breakfast, the family erupted in cheers as they were finally able to board the train.


I don't care about the Kent Brextards caught in this mess but the problem is it affects decent folks too, including many Europeans heading home for holidays.

It looks like this year heading to Europe via Kent will be exercise for masochists. The problem is that airports are often not much better. Maybe we should learn from the refugees and use rubber dinghies to get to France?


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> Nah, there is absolutely no appetite for that on either side.


Yes, the Labour leader has come out and said he will try and 'make Brexit work'. But he can't say anything else really, otherwise he will be slaughtered in the media. It doesn't rule out doing something different if they get into power at the next election.

The most likely replacement for Boris Johnson as prime minister was a staunch Remainer before the 2016 vote (saying that she didn't want her children to need visas to live in the EU) but now acts as a hard Brexiteer. And whoever wins will be the first British prime minister who is younger than me!  My generation is now running the country and is making an even bigger mess than previous ones.



geogregor said:


> It looks like this year heading to Europe via Kent will be exercise for masochists. The problem is that airports are often not much better.


Perhaps Newhaven-Dieppe and Harwich-Hoek van Holland will become more popular in future. They don't have an EU border check in the UK.

We haven't heard much about airport delays recently so maybe they are OK now. I'm supposed to be flying from Gatwick on Tuesday and my flight hasn't been cancelled yet.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> We haven't heard much about airport delays recently so maybe they are OK now. I'm supposed to be flying from Gatwick on Tuesday and my flight hasn't been cancelled yet.


I'm flying from Gatwick next Saturday, I'm still nervous about it being cancelled... one good thing is Gatwick have an app which shows security wait times, right now it is 1 minute


----------



## ChrisZwolle

McDonald's has a labor shortage, just like about any other company.

They're trying to attract more young workers by publishing their hourly wages on signs.

How does this compare to wages in your country? Here they are listed by age (15 to 21+)


----------



## radamfi

I just had a look at the McDonalds UK careers website. For my nearest restaurant they are offering £8 per hour for under 18s and £9.80 for 18s and over. In euro that is 9.40 and 11.52.

That Dutch sign unusually uses a decimal point instead of a comma, like in English.


----------



## PovilD

Worker shortage is everywhere for such type of workplaces.
Something fundamentally wrong, though it makes sense manual labour will be needed less and less probably, and you either go to highly technical stuff (IT, medicine, etc.) or you go nowhere.

I heard rumours that in 1950s-1960s you can maintain your whole family, private house and a car from your McDonalds salary


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I forgot to include the Dutch minimum wage, which is € 1756 per month, or approximately € 10 per hour (gross, but the effective income tax on minimum wages is very small).

So McDonald's does pay about 30 percent over the minimum wage.

While I don't think working the floor in McDonald's is an enviable long-term career, they do seem to pay relatively okay for low-skilled work. You can earn about € 2,300 gross if you work fulltime.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> I forgot to include the Dutch minimum wage, which is € 1756 per month, or approximately € 10 per hour (gross, but the effective income tax on minimum wages is very small).
> So McDonald's does pay about 30 percent over the minimum wage.


I don't understand. How is 7.60 (what they pay for an 18 yo) 30% over 10 euro?


----------



## Attus

PovilD said:


> Worker shortage is everywhere for such type of workplaces.
> Something fundamentally wrong, though it makes sense manual labour will be needed less and less probably, and you either go to highly technical stuff (IT, medicine, etc.) or you go nowhere.


Yes. Everyone said ten years ago that in ten years manual labour will be hardly needed. And now ... every companies try to persuade people to do manual labour at that company, instead of having robots doing it.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> I don't understand. How is 7.60 (what they pay for an 18 yo) 30% over 10 euro?


In the Netherlands, the minimum wage applies for 21 years and over. Younger workers are paid according to the 'youth minimum wage'.

This is controversial, because 18 is the legal adult age and you start to pay premiums for health insurance from that age.



Attus said:


> Yes. Everyone said ten years ago that in ten years manual labour will be hardly needed. And now ... every companies try to persuade people to do manual labour at that company, instead of having robots doing it.


The focus was too much on tech and the myth of a knowledge economy. In reality, we will always rely on the tangible economy. In fact, laptop jobs are more likely to be automated than plumbers or bricklayers.


----------



## AnelZ

Of course the wage is much lower in Bosnia and Herzegovina and on top of that, we have McD only in Sarajevo (3 restaurants) and Mostar (2 restaurant).

The hourly net wage in McD which you get payed out was around 2,5 € at the end of 2020 (~4€ gross per hour) for 176 hours in month, not sure about the rate today but probably somewhat higher but for sure not more then 3€ net per hour (~5€ gross per hour). You work around 5 days a month the night shift (included in the pay) and you can be delegated to do almost any job necessary for the restaurant to run.

For Serbia I found this:





__





Kalkulator zarade - McDonalds







www.mcdonalds.rs





Full-time employment (40 hours week) gets you after two trial months a monthly pay of around 450€ which is around 2,55 €. If you are working on holidays and night shifts, those hours are payed extra. If you are working through a youth cooperative (like a student for eg.), your hourly rate is 2,3€.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

ChrisZwolle said:


> McDonald's has a labor shortage, just like about any other company.
> 
> They're trying to attract more young workers by publishing their hourly wages on signs.
> 
> How does this compare to wages in your country? Here they are listed by age (15 to 21+)


Several fast-food chains do the same in Estonia nowadays. 

McDonald's offers a starting gross salary on € 5.25-6.00/h. A competing Finnish fast-food chain Hesburger has a starting salary of € 6.6/h. Burger king says on their advert that they pay € 4.8-6.6/h. At least McDonald's and Hesburger both offer flexible hours and are heavily targeting students. A gross salary of €6/h nets you € 877 if you work 168h per month, although that's likely to increase slightly next year due to the rise in the tax-free amount. 

The minimum wage in Estonia is € 3.86/h or € 654 a month but only around 3% of workers make minimum wage in Estonia.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The 0 °C altitude in Switzerland was a record 5,184 meters last night. 

Switzerland has an extremely hot summer, almost in the entire country, but especially in Wallis and Ticino where almost every day in July has recorded over 30 °C, even into the somewhat higher elevations (800 - 1100 m). 

As a result, almost all snow has melted, leaving only the glaciers. The Matterhorn area looks like a rock desert.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1551455799876231168


----------



## radamfi

This was the view from Zermatt on 2 March


----------



## PovilD

Rebasepoiss said:


> Several fast-food chains do the same in Estonia nowadays.
> 
> McDonald's offers a starting gross salary on € 5.25-6.00/h. A competing Finnish fast-food chain Hesburger has a starting salary of € 6.6/h. Burger king says on their advert that they pay € 4.8-6.6/h. At least McDonald's and Hesburger both offer flexible hours and are heavily targeting students. A gross salary of €6/h nets you € 877 if you work 168h per month, although that's likely to increase slightly next year due to the rise in the tax-free amount.
> 
> The minimum wage in Estonia is € 3.86/h or € 654 a month but only around 3% of workers make minimum wage in Estonia.


Do you have saucy Hesburger hamburgers or it's local thing of us like pizza on ketchup?  Sorry.

It's a franchise something like cheaper version of McD here. I think Estonia or Finland should be the same.


----------



## PovilD

Attus said:


> Yes. Everyone said ten years ago that in ten years manual labour will be hardly needed. And now ... every companies try to persuade people to do manual labour at that company, instead of having robots doing it.


I noticed on myself that I look at automatization with suspicion. The thing is robot has no emphaty. Robot will not care about my emotions if smth goes wrong. It's not the case with humans.

Going life faster with robots, etc. doesn't necessarily mean we would get more fulfilled and happy lives. Even robot apocalypse is on the realm of realistic possibility, though borderline absurd thing to think right now.


----------



## Shenkey

ChrisZwolle said:


> McDonald's has a labor shortage, just like about any other company.
> 
> They're trying to attract more young workers by publishing their hourly wages on signs.
> 
> How does this compare to wages in your country? Here they are listed by age (15 to 21+)


How is it legal to have different wages depending on the age?

Under/over 18 makes some sense as you are a minor under it, but different wage for every year. Wtf


----------



## Suburbanist

Shenkey said:


> How is it legal to have different wages depending on the age?
> 
> Under/over 18 makes some sense as you are a minor under it, but different wage for every year. Wtf


The Dutch minimum wage has a staggered schedule for those age ranges.


----------



## geogregor

Slagathor said:


> Couldn't you make robots load suitcases in standardized crates (let's say 40-50 suitcases per crate) and then use other robots to load the crates onto the plane?
> 
> There's gotta be a way out of this. There are tons of smart engineers out there.


Possibly, some day, not anytime soon.

The problem is that you would have to completely redesign airports and planes, especially the short haul ones which are not designed for carrying crates. It would cost billions.

To be honest a lot of luggage handling is already automated, like sorting and scanning. Some things will always be more difficult/expensive to automate and that include the final loading of the planes.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Stauropa.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Stauropa.


Good. The more traffic jams the better, maybe some people will start using brains


----------



## MattiG

Slagathor said:


> Couldn't you make robots load suitcases in standardized crates (let's say 40-50 suitcases per crate) and then use other robots to load the crates onto the plane?
> 
> There's gotta be a way out of this. There are tons of smart engineers out there.


The main issue is that there are big variations between the aircraft types in terms of cargo space. Therefore, a high number of different containers are needed. This might open the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_load_device

In addition, smaller airports do not have container handling capabilities. A manual process would still be needed in parallel to an automated one.

In the marine traffic, the container ships are designed on top of the standard 40-feet and 20-feet containers, and the entire value chain is optimized for containers, including dedicated container ports. The case is quite different from the mixed-mode air business.

In general, the question of to automate or not to automate is always a business case. If automation does not create benefits enough to cover the cost of automation, it will not be implemented even if it were possible from the engineering viewpoint. Most of the baggage handling is currently automated in the bigger hubs, behind the scenes. Still, the last meters and all exception handling need human beings.


----------



## keber

geogregor said:


> Good. The more traffic jams the better, maybe some people will start using brains


In summer when going to vacations? Good luck with that.


----------



## radamfi

The BBC currently have saturation coverage of the Commonwealth Games, almost on a par with Olympics coverage. To give you some idea, BBC One are showing live coverage of the Commonwealth Games almost continuously from 0900 to 2200 today. There are just a couple of breaks totalling 35 minutes for the news and weather. That's not including supplementary online coverage to show other sports simultaneously. The whole concept of the Commonwealth baffles me. Most of the countries in it were colonies of the UK and were therefore treated very badly. I also don't see what athletes get from it. Most of the participating countries are very poor and have limited resources to be competitive in sport. So if you are a Commonwealth champion, that's nothing compared to being a world, Olympic or even European champion. In the last Commonwealth Games, Australia had 80 golds and England had 45 (the separate nations of the UK compete separately in the Commonwealth Games). So those two countries alone accounted for almost half of the 275 gold medals.


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> Stauropa.


I drove from South West England to Gatwick Airport last night. I deliberately didn't leave till late afternoon. It took 5 hours, for 250km. 

Today's ordeal was arriving at Milan Malpensa with a non-EU passport just after an Emirates A380 had arrived putting 500 people in the queue in front of us. us. It took longer than the flight to get into Italy. 

Still, I did drive along the A15 which must be one of the worst quality roads with a 130 km/h limit. Great drive, but a little bit terrifying at times


----------



## bogdymol

geogregor said:


> Good. The more traffic jams the better, maybe some people will start using brains


Yes and no.

There are people that only get vacation in July or August. Even if one of the sposes could get vacation whenever they want, it is probable that the other one has some fixed vacation times (example: in Luxembourg, entire construction industry shuts down for 3 weeks late July & early August. In other industries it is similar).

The family cannot go on holiday outside of the summer months because kids have to be at school September to June.

etc.

The truth is, many families get only one chance a year to go somewhere together for 1 or 2 weeks, and that is exactly in this period. Yes, they know traffic will be bad, but the alternative is to stay at home.

Go by train? Usually there are no direct connections to their destination, plus it is expensive.

Go by plane? Just look what happened in European airports this summer. Plus, for a family of 4, it gets expensive (ticket, bags, airport parking, transfer at destination etc.). By car it costs more or less the same for 1 person as for 4 persons.


----------



## riiga

I drove Berlin-Rostock-Copenhagen-Linköping today (left Berlin at 8 in the morning) and the traffic flow in Germany was fine, I did 140 km/h on most of the autobahn with only the occasional slowdown due to caravans/motorhomes overtaking each other. The most annoying parts were roadworks on A114 out of Berlin (speed limit of 60 instead of 100(?)) and E55 from Gedser until it meets E47.


----------



## radamfi

bogdymol said:


> Yes and no.
> 
> There are people that only get vacation in July or August. Even if one of the sposes could get vacation whenever they want, it is probable that the other one has some fixed vacation times (example: in Luxembourg, entire construction industry shuts down for 3 weeks late July & early August. In other industries it is similar).
> 
> The family cannot go on holiday outside of the summer months because kids have to be at school September to June.
> 
> etc.
> 
> The truth is, many families get only one chance a year to go somewhere together for 1 or 2 weeks, and that is exactly in this period. Yes, they know traffic will be bad, but the alternative is to stay at home.


Yet another reason not to have kids! 🙂

My partner is not even allowed to take holiday during the school holidays because she doesn't have kids. That suits us fine anyway. It is best to go to work this time of year.


----------



## AnelZ

At the company where I work if there are a lot of sign up for a certain time-period they decide who will have priority trough couple of criteria and one of it is "family status". But as the school is off from mid-june to 01.09., everyone manages to get squezed in.


----------



## tfd543

riiga said:


> I drove Berlin-Rostock-Copenhagen-Linköping today (left Berlin at 8 in the morning) and the traffic flow in Germany was fine, I did 140 km/h on most of the autobahn with only the occasional slowdown due to caravans/motorhomes overtaking each other. The most annoying parts were roadworks on A114 out of Berlin (speed limit of 60 instead of 100(?)) and E55 from Gedser until it meets E47.


How was A10 from intersection with A114 and intersection with A24 ? and A24 towards rostock ?
They are widening A10 northwest and resurfacing A24. I dont know if works have finished.


----------



## Shenkey

Suburbanist said:


> What's the power weight density of hydrogen?


Pretty low. And you either need huge pressure or energy expensive liquefaction. 

Hydrogen transportation is a dead end. 

But I can see solar synthesized methane or other synthetic fuel being used. 

But not hydrogen.


----------



## MattiG

Shenkey said:


> Pretty low. And you either need huge pressure or energy expensive liquefaction.
> 
> Hydrogen transportation is a dead end.
> 
> But I can see solar synthesized methane or other synthetic fuel being used.
> 
> But not hydrogen.


Even bigger problem is the weight of the container. A 50-litre standard steel bottle weighs 70 kilograms, and carries 0.85 kilograms of hydrogen @200 bar. That amount of hydrogen has the same amount of energy as 3.5 liters of gasoline.

Very expensive composite bottles have somewhat better energy-mass ratio, because they can be pressurized to 700 bar, but not enough to solve the problem.


----------



## riiga

tfd543 said:


> How was A10 from intersection with A114 and intersection with A24 ? and A24 towards rostock ?
> They are widening A10 northwest and resurfacing A24. I dont know if works have finished.


There were roadworks on the A10, but I wasn't really bothered by them, it was 2+2 lanes in each direction and speed limit of 80 km/h. Traffic flow was fine. I think the A24 had some as well, but likewise, it worked fine and the slowdown on those short sections is easily recuperated by the lack of a speed limit on the rest of the autobahn.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

How reliable are weather apps 8 days into the future?

Automated forecast on 23 July for today: 33 degrees. Reality: 19 and rainy. 🙃


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> How reliable are weather apps 8 days into the future?


No.


----------



## Spookvlieger

ChrisZwolle said:


> How reliable are weather apps 8 days into the future?
> 
> Automated forecast on 23 July for today: 33 degrees. Reality: 19 and rainy. 🙃


Ofthen our countries are on the split of cold and hot air masses and balance on a line that is very unpredictable so far in the future. I'm 230km south West from you and it was almost 30°C. 

Going more south and a bit east in Germany, you have your 33°C.


----------



## cinxxx

Drove last 2 days from Albertville to Chamonix, Martigny, Andermatt, Chur, Munich. 
No delays. Though they did announce delays on some stretches on the radio.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Holiday traffic congestion is very concentrated on certain corridors, while traffic elsewhere can even be light, for example the middle part of Germany has almost no traffic congestion on such 'black weekends'. And the Netherlands has light traffic as well, unless farmers dump asbestos on motorways.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> Holiday traffic congestion is very concentrated on certain corridors, while traffic elsewhere can even be light, for example the middle part of Germany has almost no traffic congestion on such 'black weekends'. And the Netherlands has light traffic as well, unless farmers dump asbestos on motorways.


This is something that amazes me. Don't the travellers have maps to find alternative routes?


----------



## Spookvlieger

Realistically, there aren't much alternative routes to take on those choking points, unless you want to drive on local roads and sightsee every town in the meantime. It's probably more fun but I don't think a lot of people do that.


----------



## PovilD

Reasons


----------



## geogregor

bogdymol said:


> Yes and no.
> 
> There are people that only get vacation in July or August. Even if one of the sposes could get vacation whenever they want, it is probable that the other one has some fixed vacation times (example: in Luxembourg, entire construction industry shuts down for 3 weeks late July & early August. In other industries it is similar).
> 
> The family cannot go on holiday outside of the summer months because kids have to be at school September to June.
> 
> etc.
> 
> The truth is, many families get only one chance a year to go somewhere together for 1 or 2 weeks, and that is exactly in this period. Yes, they know traffic will be bad, but the alternative is to stay at home.
> 
> Go by train? Usually there are no direct connections to their destination, plus it is expensive.
> 
> Go by plane? Just look what happened in European airports this summer. Plus, for a family of 4, it gets expensive (ticket, bags, airport parking, transfer at destination etc.). By car it costs more or less the same for 1 person as for 4 persons.


Still, summer holidays in European countries usually last 6-8 weeks. It is really no need for half of population seemingly going on holiday on the same one or two days. Leaving on Tuesday rather than on Saturday might make a big difference.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> Leaving on Tuesday rather than on Saturday might make a big difference.


It does, but the problem is that owners of accomodations want to maximize income by renting it out back-to-back for a minimum of one week, with Saturday being the only check in / out day available.

Of course, there are less popular destinations where you might find more flexible accommodations. Campsites tend to be more flexible than a rental house or cabin.

I always avoid mid July to late August. I traveled in June this year and have another 2 week vacation planned from late August to mid-September. And probably another one in October. But I haven't figured out where to go yet.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

MattiG said:


> This is something that amazes me. Don't the travellers have maps to find alternative routes?


To be fair, if you travel on Friday or Saturday across the Alps, there aren't many viable alternatives. Everyone wants this 'secret' congestion free route that is max 50 kilometers longer. It doesn't exist.

In my experience, the best congestion-free main route across the Alps north to south is either the Simplon Pass or the Grand St. Bernard Tunnel. Those are almost never congested during the summer weekends. But you have to be willing to drive 100 or 150 kilometers longer.


----------



## Suburbanist

Holiday rentals are tricky. Maybe with all the new platforms, it should be easier for owners to be more flexible around schedules.

Tourism is strong here in Bergen again. However, according the local news, there has been a remarkable shift on the demographics. Almost no Chinese, far fewer Japanese, and substantially more travelers from elsewhere in Europe and North America than usual.


----------



## Spookvlieger

PovilD said:


> Reasons


Mostly pirce tag. It's very convenient to book night trains, or TGV,ICE,Thalys from Brussels from my own experiences. Now if I wanted to go into Poland or further east, that might present some problems. But going south usually isn't.


----------



## Suburbanist

Tourist venues are also having a hard time finding temporary workers.They were appealing to students on vacation to take temp jobs and raised the pay. But there is competition from retail and other businesses as well.


----------



## Coccodrillo

ChrisZwolle said:


> To be fair, if you travel on Friday or Saturday across the Alps, there aren't many viable alternatives. Everyone wants this 'secret' congestion free route that is max 50 kilometers longer. It doesn't exist.
> 
> In my experience, the best congestion-free main route across the Alps north to south is either the Simplon Pass or the Grand St. Bernard Tunnel. Those are almost never congested during the summer weekends. But you have to be willing to drive 100 or 150 kilometers longer.


The St. Gotthard Pass is also a valid alternative for the tunnel, as leaving the motorway in Wassen or Faido and using it is just 30 minutes slower than the tunnel alternative when there is no traffic. So every time that the queue before the tunnel is half an hour or longer, the pass is faster. Leaving the motorway before Wassen or Faido obviously takes longer, but not that much.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

France has now officially scrapped the 'Pass Sanitaire' as of 1 August 2022.









Covid-19 : fin du « pass sanitaire » le 1er août 2022


Le Parlement a adopté définitivement, par un ultime vote du Sénat, un projet de loi qui met explicitement fin aux mesures d'exception contre le Covid-19. Détails.



www.gouvernement.fr





Though France did not seem to do any checks on QR codes for entry over land, it was officially still required to enter France until now.


----------



## CNGL

I sneaked into France on Saturday and nobody asked for that. Nor they did when I entered back in October.


----------



## radamfi

I saw at least 10 Dutch plates on cars or caravans on the A35 and surrounding roads in Dorset today, between Dorchester and Lyme Regis. I was taking a scenic diversion on the way to seeing my friend in Exeter. I didn't see any other foreign plates except for lorries.


----------



## Stuu

There's been loads of Dutch cars in the south west this year. The oddest one I have seen this year, and possibly ever, was a small scooter with Belgian plates. Must have taken a while


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> To be fair, if you travel on Friday or Saturday across the Alps, there aren't many viable alternatives. Everyone wants this 'secret' congestion free route that is max 50 kilometers longer. It doesn't exist.
> 
> In my experience, the best congestion-free main route across the Alps north to south is either the Simplon Pass or the Grand St. Bernard Tunnel. Those are almost never congested during the summer weekends. But you have to be willing to drive 100 or 150 kilometers longer.


People drive hundreds of kilometers to have a vacation, and people want to stay in queues rather than taking a 100-150 km longer better route? Odd people.


----------



## italystf

geogregor said:


> Still, summer holidays in European countries usually last 6-8 weeks. It is really no need for half of population seemingly going on holiday on the same one or two days. Leaving on Tuesday rather than on Saturday might make a big difference.


Yes, also because during Saturdays and Sundays many people make daytrips or one-night trips to nearby tourist destination, and they mix with long-distance holiday traffic, increasing the overall amount of cars on the roads.
On the other hand, during week-ends, roads are mostly free of trucks. Outside July, August, Easter, and Christmas (I'm talking about Northern Emisphere Christian countries, of course), it's often more pleasant ti drive on weekend rather than during the week.


----------



## Suburbanist

Stuu said:


> There's been loads of Dutch cars in the south west this year. The oddest one I have seen this year, and possibly ever, was a small scooter with Belgian plates. Must have taken a while


Or the scooter was carried in a trailer for most of the trip.


----------



## bogdymol

I have seen caravans with a scooter attached in the back, just like somebody would have a bike rack. Seems most plausible answer.


----------



## Stuu

Suburbanist said:


> Or the scooter was carried in a trailer for most of the trip.


Oh yes, slightly embarrassed I didn't think of that!


----------



## Kpc21

Last week Polish supermarkets experienced shortages and panic buying of sugar. And, to a lesser extent, vinegar (which is interesting, because in communism vinegar was often the only product available in grocery stores, now it happens to be completely missing from the shelves). 

As a result, the price of sugar has practically doubled, and while normally it was around 3-4 zł per kg (less than 1 euro), now it's 7-8 zł (around 1.5 euro). 

I've heard that sugar in Poland has become more expensive than in practically any European country. Even though we are a large sugar producer, the production covers practically the whole domestic demand (at least regarding the white sugar, excluding brown, which for obvious reasons has to be imported) and some sugar is also exported.

By the way, regarding Covid, the government is reporting increase in cases, but they are not going to impose any restriction. I've read today an article, according to which, even if you have Covid symptoms, they recommend going to the doctor physically, so that he can examine your lungs, and so on. They argue that the new Covid variants are generally increasingly more contagious, but at the same time also increasingly less dangerous and more similar to normal cold. And people get immunized not only by vaccinations, but also by the contact with the germs (e.g. practically everyone had some contact with Covid during the Omicron wave).

Talking about the international rail from the Polish perspective, why it, as someone above mentioned, sucks... 

1. The ticket prices for the international trains are at the western-European level, not at the Polish one.
2. Tickets for many international train connections from Poland cannot be booked online (though it has improved in the last years). Even the availability of the contingent-limited tickets at a discounted price cannot be checked online.
3. There isn't many such international train connections. While you can get this way to some European capitals, there are no direct train connections from Poland to typical holiday destinations. You have to transfer e.g. in Prague or Budapest to go to the Adriatic coast in Croatia. And transfers are something that typical Polish train passengers hate and avoid at all costs.

The Czech private train operator RegioJet was planning to start direct connections from Cracow, Poland to Split, Croatia this season – but it hasn't happened. I guess they underestimated the level of bureaucracy required by the Polish railway infrastructure operator.

The EU is talking much about liberalizing the rail market, but nothing really happens about it. For now, the EU regulations allow a situation when a private operator gets refused to get access to the infrastructure in a situation when its services would be considered competition to the national train carrier. Why is it still so? While some countries (Czech Republic? Italy? Germany?) incentivise private operators to open new connections and make no problems for them even in such cases like I described – some other (like Poland) make an intensive use of this right.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In the Netherlands a 40 kilometer commute is above average, but still very common, because many people commute between cities. 

So a person can live in a suburban residential neighborhood of one city, and commute to a business in another city.


----------



## Stuu

I have just made the mistake of buying some paracetamol in Italy. €8.80 for 16. They would have been €1 in the UK


----------



## Slagathor

Stuu said:


> I have just made the mistake of buying some paracetamol in Italy. €8.80 for 16. They would have been €1 in the UK


Sweet fancy moses, where's all that money going? 

I haven't bought it in a while so I had to google it, but I found a shop that sells a box of 20 tablets for € 0,59 in the Netherlands.


----------



## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> Sweet fancy moses, where's all that money going?
> 
> I haven't bought it in a while so I had to google it, but I found a shop that sells a box of 20 tablets for € 0,59 in the Netherlands.


Who knows? The pharmacy did have a marble floor though...


----------



## Attus

Hungary runs out of fuel. Filling up is restricted in many gas stations (e.g. max. 20 liter a day) and a lot of stations have no fuel at all.


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> I have just made the mistake of buying some paracetamol in Italy. €8.80 for 16. They would have been €1 in the UK


I now always carry paracetamol, ibuprofen and Imodium with me whenever I travel abroad after having to buy Imodium in Luxembourg earlier this year. The current price for 16 paracetamol in Tesco is 29p (0.34 EUR).



https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/257107498



I actually always take paracetamol with me anyway whenever I leave home, just in case I need it and I'm not near a shop.


----------



## radamfi

Attus said:


> Hungary runs out of fuel. Filling up is restricted in many gas stations (e.g. max. 20 liter a day) and a lot of stations have no fuel at all.


Is that because of panic buying because of rumours, or a genuine reduction in supply?


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> I now always carry paracetamol, ibuprofen and Imodium with me whenever I travel abroad after having to buy Imodium in Luxembourg earlier this year. The current price for 16 paracetamol in Tesco is 29p (0.34 EUR).
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/257107498
> 
> 
> 
> I actually always take paracetamol with me anyway whenever I leave home, just in case I need it and I'm not near a shop.


I do too, but my beloved got a toothache a few days ago. They were 1000mg ones which are a bit more expensive, but that price is crazy. You would think it would be something the EU were interested in


----------



## AnelZ

For myself, traveling over 10km is just too much for everyday commute  but people commuting for 25-40 km from suburbs or satellite cities (Hadzici, Tarcin, Breza, Visoko) for work or even school (high school) isn't that unheard of, although the urban part of Sarajevo (not the metropolitan, which is larger) having just around 400k population.

When it comes to school, for elementary school (which is compulsory) every child has to have easy access to it. After a certain distance to the nearest school, they have to have to organize transport for them. In the past, there were often branch schools of a main school in some village if that area had a lot of school-age children's. Nowadays those branch schools are very rare as there is just not many children anymore. Of course, if you decide to enroll your child in a different school then the nearest one, it is your duty to make sure it comes safe and sound to the school and no one has to provide parking or easy access for a car near the school. On top of that, our schools start at 8:00 and the kids can't enter it before like 07:45. At least, this was the case when I was going to elementary school.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> Is that because of panic buying because of rumours, or a genuine reduction in supply?


I wonder about that as well. When I was in Slovenia in June, fuel stations ran dry across the country due to a 20 cent price increase that was about to be instated. 

How is Hungary supplied? I've read that the Schwechat Refinery in Eastern Austria is supplied from a pipeline from Trieste (and thus not from Russia).


----------



## bogdymol

But the same Schwechat refinery had a major technical breakdown that cut its processing capability significantly. So much, that fuel in Austria got more expensive than in other countries (before it was the other way around, Austria was known for cheaper fuel in the area).

I drove to Hungary last week and refueld the car with diesel at a non-motorway MOL gas station, right in front of the MOL refinery (which I visited on the day), with HUF 755 / liter (about € 1,91/l). There was no limit on the amount you could buy.


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> I do too, but my beloved got a toothache a few days ago. They were 1000mg ones which are a bit more expensive, but that price is crazy. You would think it would be something the EU were interested in


I didn't realise you could get 1000 mg tablets. What is the advantage over taking two 500 mg tablets? Surely there's a risk of accidental overdose because most people will be used to taking two 500 mg tablets, up to four times a day.


----------



## AnelZ

radamfi said:


> most people will be used to taking two 500 mg tablets, up to four times a day.


wow, and here am I who takes one on a day when having a strong headache worrying I shouldn't do it again for at least a month if I get again some pain 😅 when feeling that I could get a cold, I take two on a day and I get a feeling I overdid it...


----------



## radamfi

AnelZ said:


> wow, and here am I who takes one on a day when having a strong headache worrying I shouldn't do it again for at least a month if I get again some pain 😅 when feeling that I could get a cold, I take two on a day and I get a feeling I overdid it...


The UK NHS (National Health Service) website

www.nhs.uk/medicines/paracetamol-for-adults

advises



> Paracetamol can be taken with or without food.
> 
> The usual dose for adults is one or two 500mg tablets up to 4 times in 24 hours.
> 
> Always leave at least 4 hours between doses.
> 
> Overdosing on paracetamol can cause serious side effects. Do not be tempted to increase the dose or to take a double dose if your pain is very bad.


However, this Dutch website says the maximum dose per day is six tablets per day (whereas the NHS site says up to eight) although it agrees with one to two tablets per dose.





__





Dosering: hoeveel paracetamol per dag? - Medicijnen | Ziekenhuis


Hoeveel paracetamol mag je nemen per dag? Lees verder voor meer informatie over de dosering en overdosering van paracetamol.




www.ziekenhuis.nl







> Voor volwassenen en kinderen met een lichaamsgewicht boven 55 kg is de gebruikelijke dosering één tot twee tabletten (500 tot 1000 mg) per keer. Indien nodig kun je dit iedere vier tot zes uur herhalen. De maximale dosering is zes tabletten (3000 mg) per dag.


----------



## Attus

~ 20 years ago in the student dormitory I lived a guy had very high fever, 41°C. The local first aid attendant gave him 2×500mg Paracetamol, an 15 minutes later again 2×500mg. We asked him, is it not very dangerous? He said it could have had heavy side effects but without it the patient had died. 
He used other methods, just like ice could clothes as well of course.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder about that as well. When I was in Slovenia in June, fuel stations ran dry across the country due to a 20 cent price increase that was about to be instated.
> 
> How is Hungary supplied? I've read that the Schwechat Refinery in Eastern Austria is supplied from a pipeline from Trieste (and thus not from Russia).


Pipeline from Krk. 

Logistics - Downstream - Our Businesses - MOLGroup


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder about that as well. When I was in Slovenia in June, fuel stations ran dry across the country due to a 20 cent price increase that was about to be instated.
> 
> How is Hungary supplied? I've read that the Schwechat Refinery in Eastern Austria is supplied from a pipeline from Trieste (and thus not from Russia).


I remember that day, I drove all around Nova Gorica hoping to find cheap fuel and finally headed back to Italy with empty tank.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Stuu said:


> I have just made the mistake of buying some paracetamol in Italy. €8.80 for 16. They would have been €1 in the UK


Overe here it's € 2.20 for a 20-pack and € 4.20 for the bottle of 100 pills. In Estonia there's basically a monopoly of medicine wholesalers and pharamacies which jacks up the prices. But since it's technically comprised of different companies (which are directly or indirectly linked to a single individual) the state cannot legally do anything.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder about that as well. When I was in Slovenia in June, fuel stations ran dry across the country due to a 20 cent price increase that was about to be instated.
> 
> How is Hungary supplied? I've read that the Schwechat Refinery in Eastern Austria is supplied from a pipeline from Trieste (and thus not from Russia).


Hungary is basically supplied from two sources. The by far less important is Schwechat, the more important is the oil refinery of Hungarian company MOL in Százhalombatta (south of Budapest). MOL mainly imports crude oil from Russia. MOL has gas stations, too, and sells fuel to other gas station owners as well. The government obviuosly lies about import of natural gas and crude oil from Russia so that it is not very clear what actually happens there. 
However, the main issue in Hungary is the capped price. It is capped but not subsidized by the government, i.e., selling fuel is unprofitable. Especially in the countryside, where only a handful customers pay the full price. Gas station owners run out of money, they have no money to buy fuel. But the same problem exists a level higher as well: selling fuel is unprofitable for MOL, probably even more that what they acknowledge public. 
The government, realizing the problems, restricts selling fuel by capped price, step by step. Many people expect capped price to be abolished completely in the following days, experts say it is sustainable for maximal two more weeks. So everyone tries to fill up before fuel will be much more expensive*. Gas stations report selling twice as much fuel than usually in this part of the year. 
So basically supply is significantly lower, demand is significantly higher than usually what causes disturbances. 

Capped price: 480 forint / liter 
Free price for diesel (average): 720 forint / liter
Free price for Euro 95 (average): 670 forint / liter
These are the prices from tomorrow, today it's ~ 15-20 forints more expensive. 
Current exchange rate: 393 forint / euro.


----------



## Kpc21

bogdymol said:


> I drove to Hungary last week and refueld the car with diesel at a non-motorway MOL gas station, right in front of the MOL refinery (which I visited on the day), with HUF 755 / liter (about € 1,91/l). There was no limit on the amount you could buy.


I don't know how it is in Hungary, but in Poland the largest refinery is in Płock (the other one is in Gdańsk) – and typically the gas station in Płock and around are ones of the most expensive in the country  Not counting those motorway ones.



Attus said:


> ~ 20 years ago in the student dormitory I lived a guy had very high fever, 41°C. The local first aid attendant gave him 2×500mg Paracetamol, an 15 minutes later again 2×500mg. We asked him, is it not very dangerous? He said it could have had heavy side effects but without it the patient had died.
> He used other methods, just like ice could clothes as well of course.


Sometimes doctors recommend combining paracetamol with ibuprofen, supposedly this gives a lower change of overdosing it. When I had Covid-19, the doctor recommended me taking paracetamol and ibuprofen interchangeably, I can't remember how many times daily.



Attus said:


> selling fuel is unprofitable for MOL, probably even more that what they acknowledge public.


Though if it's a state-owned company, it technically shouldn't matter; if the company generates loses, it doesn't go bankrupt but the state just pays for them...

It's so with many companies in Poland that are owned by the central government or local governments; it's normal for them to bing loses.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> Many people expect capped price to be abolished completely in the following days, experts say it is sustainable for maximal two more weeks.


What would the price be if the government decides to scrap the taxes on it? 

For example, in the United States, the $ 4 per gallon fuel (which includes taxes) translates to € 1 per liter. So that is even lower than the Hungarian capped price.


----------



## Attus

... and, breaking news: Russia does not deliver crude oil to Hungary (not to Czechia and Slovakia). Hungary may have huge issues, not in the following days, but next week.


----------



## SeanT

MOL is making money. In Q2 they made over 1 billion Euro (HUF 500 billion) in profit. That is also the reason why the government increased the "extra profit tax" from 15 to 40%


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Doubs River in the Jura Mountains at the French-Swiss border has fallen almost completely dry. This is a natural lake on the border, on the upper course of the Doubs. 

The Doubs has a big variation in flow, the downstream sections are also known to fall to very low levels during dry periods. For example at Neublans-Abergement, the average winter flow is around 250 m³/s while the average August flow is only 68 m³/s and can fall as low as 20 m³/s.

(By comparison, the average Rhine flow is 2,200 m³/s).










Map of the Doubs. The photo was taken west of Le Locle on this map, at the French-Swiss border.


----------



## Coccodrillo

It is the Lac des Brenets, and it is not the first time: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac_des_Brenets#/media/Datei:LacDesBrenets2018.jpg

Location: Swiss Geoportal


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> ... and, breaking news: Russia does not deliver crude oil to Hungary (not to Czechia and Slovakia). Hungary may have huge issues, not in the following days, but next week.


Funny regarding the pro-Russian politics of Hungary in the EU  

I don't really understand this situation.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There's a pretty significant wildfire in the Jura Mountains, near Lac de Vouglans. This area is not typically experiencing large wildfires.

_Décor apocalyptique_


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Loire River in Ancenis, Western France. It has run almost dry.

The Loire is known for its low water levels, it's not a navigable river despite its significant length. The August average discharge is only 242 m³/s but this seems to be significantly less.

edit: this seems to be the bridge at Loireauxence, which is not the main branch of the Loire, but a side branch that tends to fall dry more often. Twitter was a bit misleading. This bridge is visually quite similar to the one in Ancenis.

real location: Google Maps


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The drought is very visible on this recent satellite image. France is very dry, as well as eastern England and Belgium. The Netherlands is not as dry, except in the southwest.

The vegetation in my region of the Netherlands is still reasonably green, the trees are not yet under such stress that the leaves turn brown and fall off, as it was in August 2018. However the drought is now quickly worsening due to the high evaporation during the heatwave. Some rain is more likely from Monday, though likely not a whole lot.

Rhine River shipping will likely become very constrained, if not entirely impossible, by this afternoon, as the crucial bottleneck level at Kaub is dropping below navigable levels. This cuts the industrial basin of Rhein-Neckar in Germany off from supplies from the North Sea ports. This has consequences for the chemical industry and power plants, as well as a whole host of other industries.


----------



## The Wild Boy

Holy shit...









Telegraf na Cetinju: Najveći masakr u novijoj istoriji Crne Gore, 11 žrtava stravične pucnjave


U današnjem masakru na Cetinju kako nezvanično saznaje Telegraf.rs, Vuk Borilović (34) pobio je gotovo celu porodicu. Kako se sumnja, potom je izašao na ulicu i pucao na ljude, a više njih je ranjeno.




www-telegraf-rs.translate.goog













Massacre in Montenegro, Man Kills 11 People after Family Dispute


A 34-year-old man shot dead 11 people this Friday in Cetinja, Montenegro.




albaniandailynews.com





My condolences go to Montenegro and for the families of those dead...

What a monster do you have to be to do such a thing


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Heat, drought &... snow on the Austrian Alps! Snow fell at altitudes over 2,600 meters on the southern flank of the Großglockner. This is a big contrast to the heat and drought that has plagued the southern flank of the Alps basically since December.


----------



## PovilD

ChrisZwolle said:


> Heat, drought &... snow on the Austrian Alps! Snow fell at altitudes over 2,600 meters on the southern flank of the Großglockner. This is a big contrast to the heat and drought that has plagued the southern flank of the Alps basically since December.


This made me think it's like from a dream.
At one point you are summer heatwave somewhere outdoors in the sun, next vision is snowing/snow in the same place  Usually it mix with the evening sunshine which brings interesting feel.
Switching from mountain weather to some lower elevation for those who are not used to those type of travel can be quite an experience.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The water level of the Rhine at Kaub has dropped to 38 centimeters (-8 cm compared to yesterday). While the actual shipping lanes are deeper than that, 40 cm is considered to be a critical threshold for most barges. Some can operate until 30 or 35 cm, but most freighters cannot pass the Middle Rhine anymore, even with reduced loads. The forecast is also bad, with a continued drop over the next few days. The lowest ever water level was 25 cm on 22 October 2018.



__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1558160178922622981


----------



## Slagathor

At least the lord of that castle can get some maintenance work on the foundations done.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfalzgrafenstein_Castle



It was a historic toll collection point on the Rhine.

_A chain across the river drawn between those two fortifications forced ships to submit, and uncooperative traders could be kept in the dungeon until a ransom was delivered. The dungeon was a wooden float in the well. _


----------



## cinxxx

I crossed by ferry there some years ago with the car.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland, actually, the last days are quite rainy. I mean, both yesterday and today – in the morning and the midday the weather was nice; in the afternoon and the evening it rained (and it rains just now).

No heavy rain or storm, just standard rain. The kind that we need most for the plants to grow and so on.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland, actually, the last days are quite rainy. I mean, both yesterday and today – in the morning and the midday the weather was nice; in the afternoon and the evening it rained (and it rains just now).
> 
> No heavy rain or storm, just standard rain. The kind that we need most for the plants to grow and so on.


Here we have dry week.
Last week had rainy Saturday.

It seems warm weather continues from last week with cooler break at the beginning of the week.
Next week have larger chance of showers with thunderstorms but overall very warm/hot.


----------



## tfd543

The Wild Boy said:


> Holy shit...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Telegraf na Cetinju: Najveći masakr u novijoj istoriji Crne Gore, 11 žrtava stravične pucnjave
> 
> 
> U današnjem masakru na Cetinju kako nezvanično saznaje Telegraf.rs, Vuk Borilović (34) pobio je gotovo celu porodicu. Kako se sumnja, potom je izašao na ulicu i pucao na ljude, a više njih je ranjeno.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www-telegraf-rs.translate.goog
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Massacre in Montenegro, Man Kills 11 People after Family Dispute
> 
> 
> A 34-year-old man shot dead 11 people this Friday in Cetinja, Montenegro.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> albaniandailynews.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> My condolences go to Montenegro and for the families of those dead...
> 
> What a monster do you have to be to do such a thing


Its one of the worst massacres since the Smilkovci killings.


----------



## geogregor

cinxxx said:


> I crossed by ferry there some years ago with the car.


I traveled around there 2 years ago. I wonder if you can nowadays walk to the castle. Normally you need to catch small boat to crass the side channel of the Rhine:


20200919_122817 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC05938 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


DSC05980 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


----------



## AnelZ

We have quite cloudy and mild weather since monday, 07.08., night with regular rain. On Tuesday, 09.08., we had a daily high of only 21°C. This weekend is going to be same, cloudy and mild with daily highs of around 22°C. In the upcoming week on the the work-days (mon-fri) sunny and warm weather is expected (around 30°C, up to maximum of 35°C) while on the next weekend it expected once again to rain and the temperature to plummet to around 25°C. We had a decent summer with one hot streak around 2 weeks long and the rest having much more tolerable temperatures with, I would say, decent amount of rain. On the other side, late spring was much warmer then usual but in the same time from my perspective spring came kinda late this year over here.


----------



## Attus

geogregor said:


> I traveled around there 2 years ago. I wonder if you can nowadays walk to the castle. Normally you need to catch small boat to crass the side channel of the Rhine:


You could, but it's illegal.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> The drought is very visible on this recent satellite image. France is very dry, as well as eastern England and Belgium. The Netherlands is not as dry, except in the southwest.


South of England is exceptionally dry.

Jason Hawkes (great aerial photographer of London) posted on Twitter those two shots of Hyde Park, August 2021 vs. August 2022:



















More of his shots in this article:









UK heatwave: Looking down on London's parched parks


Jason Hawkes on why the view from the sky tells its own story of London's drought.



www.bbc.co.uk


----------



## ChrisZwolle

That looks drier than my area of the Netherlands. Mowed grass is brown, but longer grasses are still okay. Most crops also seems to be reasonably okay, it helps that everything is close to the water table. 

Southwestern Netherlands is more problematic. This area cannot easily be irrigated from open water due to the higher salinity levels, so they are more dependent on rain. 

I was surprised to learn that London has substantially less rain than the Netherlands. The difference is around 200 mm annually: 615 mm vs 820 mm.


----------



## radamfi

The east of England is normally the driest part of the UK. For example, the average annual rainfall in Cambridge is 568 mm according to Wikipedia.


----------



## Attus

A temporary replacement bridge on the river Ahr, beside one that was destroyed by the flood last July.
Ahrmuendung 02 by Attila Németh, on Flickr
The Ahr does not look very dangerous now. But you can see another bridge, that is not usable any more:
Ahrmuendung 12 by Attila Németh, on Flickr
But here is another temporary bridge, unly for walker and bikes:
Ahrmuendung 15 by Attila Németh, on Flickr
Not only the Ahr, but the great stream, the Rhine, too, is almost dry:
Ahrmuendung 17 by Attila Németh, on Flickr


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Very hot day on the Balearic Islands. These could be some record temperatures, even 44.5 ºC on Formentera. 


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1558513434056167424


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> South of England is exceptionally dry.
> 
> Jason Hawkes (great aerial photographer of London) posted on Twitter those two shots of Hyde Park, August 2021 vs. August 2022:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> More of his shots in this article:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> UK heatwave: Looking down on London's parched parks
> 
> 
> Jason Hawkes on why the view from the sky tells its own story of London's drought.
> 
> 
> 
> www.bbc.co.uk


He says in the article about how green the trees are, and clearly they are. However, I was out on my bike the other day though and up close they are very obviously suffering, their leaves are folded up and often limp, even though from a distance they look fine.

I was in Italy last week, it was noticeably greener than England, even in the Po Valley which is under major drought conditions


----------



## geogregor

Stuu said:


> I was in Italy last week, it was noticeably greener than England, even in the Po Valley which is under major drought conditions


I guess it is because vegetation in Italy is better adapted to hot and dry climate. So even if current drought is exceptional their vegetation might still cope better than English one, used to much wetter weather.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Italy in general receives more precipitation despite the hot weather, compared to Spain. 

If you look at satellite images, you'll often see thunderstorms forming in the late afternoon over mountainous areas. The area around Lake Garda is quite green despite the long summers with 30 - 38 degrees.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There's a fairly big wildfire in the Moncayo Mountains in western Zaragoza province in Spain. It's mostly remote forest area, but 1,500 people had to be evacuated from the Añón de Moncayo area.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1558747741790019585


----------



## ppplus

This article is about the damage caused by the wildfire in the Valdeorras zone in western Ourense province in Spain.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1558886770732945410


----------



## kosimodo

Attus said:


> But here is another temporary bridge, unly for walker and* bikes*:
> Ahrmuendung 15 by Attila Németh, on Flickr


Respect!!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Rhine at Andernach (B9 viaduct on the left). The reported water level is 30 cm, which is 6 centimeters over the lowest level ever observed in 2018.

However this doesn't mean there is only 30 centimeters of water, as this freighter shows.


----------



## Attus

DEL.


----------



## Stuu

I drove through this on the A15 in Italy last month. Is 10m the shortest tunnel anywhere? It's not at all clear why it is even called a tunnel and not a bridge


----------



## geogregor

We should hopefully get some rain in London this week. In the meantime hills in Greenwich park look like in California:


P1280161 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

Some trees started loosing leaves:

20220814_203600 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

I also looked for blackberries. There are normally tones of them on greens places in London, from parks to railway embankments. This year they look tiny and practically cooked 

But boy, I love those views from Greenwich 

P1280172 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

BTW, London is full of tourists, pandemic seems finally be behind us. If you plan visit to Greenwich on a weekend don't try to catch boat back to town, queues are just silly:

P1280151 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


----------



## keber

Stuu said:


> I drove through this on the A15 in Italy last month. Is 10m the shortest tunnel anywhere? It's not at all clear why it is even called a tunnel and not a bridge
> 
> View attachment 3666442


This overpass is clearly built like a tunnel. There is similar one in Slovenia, also under railway. It is not signed as a tunnel, but it was built as one and also it is officially the shortest motorway tunnel in Slovenia.


----------



## Kpc21

The animal bridges over motorways are quite often built this way...


----------



## Stuu

keber said:


> This overpass is clearly built like a tunnel. There is similar one in Slovenia, also under railway. It is not signed as a tunnel, but it was built as one and also it is officially the shortest motorway tunnel in Slovenia.
> View attachment 3668036


Built like a tunnel? Only in the sense that it has arches. There are thousands of bridges like that and they don't get called tunnels. In your example, looking at the depth above it and the thickness of the arches, it may actually have been tunnelled through, but I can't imagine my Italian example being built by tunnelling methods.

Of course it's another example of not having a precise definition of when a bridge becomes a tunnel, but generally they have to be longer than they are wide as a minimum


----------



## bogdymol

The reporter literally begins with: "this is one of the most dangerous intersections in..."




__ https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=435281928532836


----------



## cinxxx

Speaking of...









Ozzy Man Reviews: Deadly Mexican Street | Here's me commentary on a deadly Mexican street 🎙 | By Ozzy Man Reviews | Facebook


6,6 млн views, 72 тыс. likes, 1 тыс. loves, 9,9 тыс. comments, 28 тыс. shares, Facebook Watch Videos from Ozzy Man Reviews: Here's me commentary on a deadly Mexican street 🎙




fb.watch


----------



## Attus

bogdymol said:


> How are businesses seeing this volunteer-ship? I mean, they rely on employee X that will work today, but after 1h he suddenly disappears for the entire day. Does he take holiday time in this time? Or is the business paid by the government for those hours? How does it work?


The state (I don't know, what level and what organization exactly) pays for those hours. But of course, by very important workers it can not work.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A massive storm ripped across Italy and the into the Eastern Alps.

A roof was blown off an apartment complex in Kranj, Slovenia


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1560254173668581377

A ferris wheel went loose near Florence, Italy. I hope nobody was in there.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1560231860810268672

A 224 km/h wind gust was reported in Corsica. 5 people were reportedly killed by flying debris.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1560237330618875904

High voltage power lines were destroyed in Fisching (Mur Valley) in Austria.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1560313822744829953


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> A massive storm ripped across Italy and the into the Eastern Alps.
> 
> A roof was blown off an apartment complex in Kranj, Slovenia
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1560254173668581377
> 
> A ferris wheel went loose near Florence, Italy. I hope nobody was in there.
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1560231860810268672
> 
> A 224 km/h wind gust was reported in Corsica. 5 people were reportedly killed by flying debris.
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1560237330618875904
> 
> High voltage power lines were destroyed in Fisching (Mur Valley) in Austria.
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1560313822744829953


No need to wonder. The weather model for these areas was indeed wild and predicted severe weather.










And looking at the weather radar, it is still not over:

Rimini and Trieste are currently experiencing a hail storm.


----------



## CNGL

Wow, I was just to the Southeast of that! 

I've returned from the Naples area today. I already knew they drove like crazy, but not to the point traffic signs appear to be little more than street ornaments. Never a toll, that of A3, has been more worth paying. I stayed in Massa Lubrense, a nice calm place... if one manages to get through the traffic hell that is the SS145 to Sorrento (which is right before Massa Lubrense). And the Amalfitan Coast may be nice, but it's also another road nightmare, I got stuck for a hour in Amalfi itself. That, coupled with no parking anywhere, resulted me wounding up in Salerno instead.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Another deluge is forecasted by the ICON model for the Vienna - Bratislava - Brno region, with 100 - 200 mm in the river basin that feeds the Danube. Most precipitation is forecasted for Sunday evening to Tuesday evening.


----------



## cinxxx

CNGL said:


> Wow, I was just to the Southeast of that!
> 
> I've returned from the Naples area today. I already knew they drove like crazy, but not to the point traffic signs appear to be little more than street ornaments. Never a toll, that of A3, has been more worth paying. I stayed in Massa Lubrense, a nice calm place... if one manages to get through the traffic hell that is the SS145 to Sorrento (which is right before Massa Lubrense). And the Amalfitan Coast may be nice, but it's also another road nightmare, I got stuck for a hour in Amalfi itself. That, coupled with no parking anywhere, resulted me wounding up in Salerno instead.


Don't go there in summer. 
We went in May and it was ok, no congestions and spare parkings.
But we also avoided the weekend.


----------



## Eulanthe

radamfi said:


> The ETIAS (European Travel Information and Authorisation System) is delayed yet again, to November 2023. The Entry/Exit System is still scheduled for May (as far as I can tell) which seems more relevant in terms of cutting airport queues as it is the system that allows non-EU visitors to use automatic gates and removes the need for stamping passports, but is the scheme which threatens to delay motor vehicle border crossings due to all occupants having to leave the vehicle.


No, EES won't be implemented on the land borders, only the air borders. It was originally intended for land borders, but it's been dropped after the tests at La Linea showed that it was impossible to implement in any reasonable way for car traffic. EES also has been pushed back to an unspecified time, because the airports are simply not ready to deal with the need to fingerprint every passenger. 

Parts of EES might be used on the land border, but the mandatory fingerprinting won't be.


----------



## Slagathor

CNGL said:


> Wow, I was just to the Southeast of that!
> 
> I've returned from the Naples area today. I already knew they drove like crazy, but not to the point traffic signs appear to be little more than street ornaments. Never a toll, that of A3, has been more worth paying. I stayed in Massa Lubrense, a nice calm place... if one manages to get through the traffic hell that is the SS145 to Sorrento (which is right before Massa Lubrense). And the Amalfitan Coast may be nice, but it's also another road nightmare, I got stuck for a hour in Amalfi itself. That, coupled with no parking anywhere, resulted me wounding up in Salerno instead.





cinxxx said:


> Don't go there in summer.
> We went in May and it was ok, no congestions and spare parkings.
> But we also avoided the weekend.


I used to live in Salerno and you're right; traffic on the Amalfi coast is awful during peak season. The months of May and September are better, but be sure to avoid major holiday weekends like Easter or Ascension. The roads are _packed_ then.

Sorrento at least is reachable by public transportation (train) though it's a bit unreliable with frequent delays. Amalfi and Positano are best reached by ferry from Salerno.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

The European electricity market is getting crazier and crazier, and we are still in August....


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Don't worry, Estonian oil shale power plants are under maintenance at the moment. Once we get those going again at full power we will have plenty of dirty but cheap electricity to go around  Jokes aside, it's not Russian gas, at least so that's good.

It's not at all impossible that the unified electicity market will collapse in the near future because there are already strong tendencies in several countries (including Norway and Sweden) to artificially limit exports. And once you do that the market is basically dead.


----------



## geogregor

Tasla 1 - Range Rover 0, electric vehicle wins.

This morning Range Rover hit stationary Tesla in London. It then left the road and landed on tube tracks.









One dead after Range Rover hit stationary Tesla and landed on Tube rail tracks


Three others were injured in the smash at around 4am.




metro.co.uk





Range Rover:









Tesla:









Luckily it happened at 3:48 am so the station was empty. The only dead is woman from Range Rover, minor injuries for person in Tesla.


----------



## PovilD

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> The European electricity market is getting crazier and crazier, and we are still in August....
> View attachment 3695022


Electricity politics failure in Lithuania and Latvia with such prices. We should be near half of that, or even more.

Lithuania imports electricity like no other, and it could be one of our biggest fails of a decade.
Nuclear power plant was shut due to being a copy of Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 2004 (EU membership was at stake because of that).
There were plans to built a new one, but there was large opposition too. Russia are said to be good at secretively sabotaging energy projects in Lithuania in 2010s via creating information attacks and public flash mobs.

On the other hand, who knows what would happen if we would decide to go with nuclear power plant. Finland's example is not inspiring. Lithuania could had ended worse with potentially scandalous nuclear power plant construction and delays.

Energy, especially electricity is one of the few biggest doomer topics about Lithuania, I guess after probably emigration to richer EU countries during 7 year after we got almost depression-like economic conditions in 2009.

Estonia has their oil shale power which probably helps them.


----------



## Coccodrillo

Stuu said:


> I drove through this on the A15 in Italy last month. Is 10m the shortest tunnel anywhere? It's not at all clear why it is even called a tunnel and not a bridge
> 
> View attachment 3666442


The shortest tunnels I am aware of are these tunnels on the Moutier-Delémont railway. The shortest is reported to be 7 m long, but there are 9 of very limited lenght one after the other (six 23 m or less in length, three of 60 m or less). There are 5 other tunnels further north, of which two around 30 m in legth (the others between 100 and 250). All of them are bored through rock, not through road/railway embarkments.









Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.ch





As for the drought, here is the Lac des Brenets with boats "sailing" through grass.









Quel lago non c'è più


Il Lac des Brenets è rimasto completamente a secco. Al posto di onde, pesci e anatre, l'erba cresce rigogliosa




www.tio.ch


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> Nuclear power plant was shut due to being a copy of Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 2004 (EU membership was at stake because of that).


I remember there was a plan a decade or so ago to build a new nuclear power plant in Ignalina together with Poland...

Poland has been, sadly, for many, many years incapable of building its own nuclear power plant. We even had one under construction – but it was stopped after Chernobyl, and now there are still ruins of it there. With a plan for building a new one there, using the modern technologies – but nobody knows when. Our current government prefers preparing a construction of a mega-airport hub, which nobody needs in the times when the airline market is dominated by the peer-to-peer model rather than hub-and-spoke.

Meanwhile, they opened a new coal power plant, which had to be shut down soon after the opening, because... it got damaged due to not sufficient coal quality. Or the power plant being too sensitive regarding it – depends on whom you ask.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> Meanwhile, they opened a new coal power plant, which had to be shut down soon after the opening, because... it got damaged due to not sufficient coal quality. Or the power plant being too sensitive regarding it – depends on whom you ask.


Which one did they shut?


----------



## Kpc21

It's the new block in the Jaworzno power plant. It was open in 2020, and as I read, already broke several times. Half a month ago the employees were warning that the bad quality of coal (like, contamination with some metal parts) is likely to cause a failure, and finally a failure happened and caused a forced shutdown. I am not sure if it's still shut, or if it's running again; the articles about that shutdown claim it should take a week or so to clean up everything and synchronize the block again with the grid.

Here they claim that the repairs will take longer: "Zagrożenie dla życia lub zdrowia ludzkiego". Nowe fakty ws. bloku węglowego w Jaworznie

Generally it seems this whole block isn't correctly designed.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Rebasepoiss said:


> It's not at all impossible that the unified electicity market will collapse in the near future because there are already strong tendencies in several countries (including Norway and Sweden) to artificially limit exports. And once you do that the market is basically dead.


I think it is very little likely that Norway (or Sweden) will close international power lines (which now in practice are export lines) to the continent. The current Norwegian prime minister is a diplomat at heart and would never unilaterally pull out of international agreements like that. Statements hinting to the contrary are just mumbo jumbo in a rather unsuccessfull attempt to please his electorate.

What has happened though, is that hydro power producers in southern Norway have been asked to voluntarily limit production to build up reservoir capacity before the winter. This they would probably anyway have done in the present situation. The impact is that there is less power available in the south of Norway, driving prices up, and indirectly, of course, also limit export.

It is however important to understand that the main influence of Norway in the European energy market is not as an exporter of electricity, but of natural gas. The average annual export of electricity from Norway corresponds only to 1.5 % of the gas export. Hence, optimizing the gas export from Norway is far more important for Europe now than worrying about the marginal electricity export.



Coccodrillo said:


> As for the drought, here is the Lac des Brenets with boats "sailing" through grass.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Quel lago non c'è più
> 
> 
> Il Lac des Brenets è rimasto completamente a secco. Al posto di onde, pesci e anatre, l'erba cresce rigogliosa
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.tio.ch


I have been stuck in Trondheim / Mid Norway all summer, and it is quite ironic to hear the reports about the European drought and heat. Here, only 11 of the last 80 days have been without rain, and the hydropower reservoirs are full even if we have exported electricity to neighboring regions (except to Northern Norway, which have received even more rain) at full line capacity almost continuously since early winter.

But, our wet weather and the dry continental summer are connected. The high pressures further south has forced low pressure system after low pressure system from the Atlantic in our direction....


----------



## Kpc21

Drove a little bit on national (and local; no motorways) roads in Romania.

And... most roads on which I drove are in a very good condition. Seem to be recently renovated. There are signs telling it happened for EU money.

In a worse condition are the roads in cities.

I drove from Oradea to Deva (or actually, the Korvins' Castle) and then from Deva to Targu Jiu. New asphalt surface almost everywhere, the drive is very comfortable.

Huge advantage is the directional signage – ahead of all road intersections there are well-visible gate signposts. Something which in Poland isn't a standard even on motorways.

Unlike in Poland, there is no abundance of road signs.

Speed limits are followed in the "Polish" way – more like a general suggestion to slow down rather than an obligation to follow the speed indicated on the sign; e.g. driving 60-70 km/h when the official limit is 50 is normal.

Though built-up areas are established in a sensible way, at places where the village/town actually starts and ends. 

I drove through the Jiu river pass, and the views are really beautiful, I can recommend this road.

What else...

The moment of crossing the border from Hungary to Romania west of Oradea (I used the normal national road, not the motorway) gave an impression of poverty and mess in Romania. A bit like the crossing from Poland to Ukraine. But later, seeing how much modernized Romania is, I realized how false this impression was.

The power transmission infrastructure in Romania seems to be very well developed. While driving from Oradea to Targu Jiu I passed so many high voltage lines and multiple power substations. Certainly it doesn't feel like that in Poland. Some lines looked like ones for a very high voltage, probably more than 400 kV.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Is the driving style in Romania different from Poland?

I drove through Poland in June, for the first time in about 8 years. The driving style was much more behaved than I remembered from trips longer ago, in fact there wasn't any crazy stuff at all.


----------



## Kpc21

I think it's slightly calmer in Romania. But maybe it seems so also because in Romania there is generally not so much traffic as in Poland.

Polish national roads (most of them) are literally a huge column of cars one behind another. That's, by the way, why I don't like Polish national roads, and whenever I can, I prefer to choose the secondary (voivodeship) ones.

In Romania not so much.

And I wouldn't say there aren't crazy drivers in Poland any more. Dangerous overtaking still is a thing, though maybe not so much than in the past.

By the way, one dangerous thing on Romanian roads are dogs. It seems common that people let their dogs outside from their lots, onto the road. I nearly hit one dog here, once it started jumping ahead of my car and barking... And they don't even seem to care when you use the horn.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> By the way, one dangerous thing on Romanian roads are dogs. It seems common that people let their dogs outside from their lots, onto the road. I nearly hit one dog here, once it started jumping ahead of my car and barking... And they don't even seem to care when you use the horn.


Maybe those dogs are strays, and so not owned by anyone. In Bulgaria stray dogs are a big issue, or at least they were about 5 years ago. I went on a bike ride with my friend in the mountains and my friend gave me a device that would repel dogs when they came close as he knew that was a common hazard.


----------



## Kpc21

Maybe – on a mountain trail I met two dogs that seemed strayed...

I wonder what causes those problems with strayed dogs. People are unaware that they should report such cases to authorities that catch such dogs, and take them to shelters, from which they can be adopted?


----------



## Attus

Stray dogs are an important issue in South Eastern Europe. There are so many of them, no chance, they all could be adopted. And no one want to create and maintain shelters for dogs that will probably never be adopted.


----------



## Kpc21

I remember that when I was in primary school – I sometimes met stray dogs on the way; they even sometimes happened to accompany me through much of my way.

And it was in the early 2000s.

Now there are almost no stray dogs in Poland.



Attus said:


> And no one want to create and maintain shelters for dogs that will probably never be adopted.


In Poland it's, as far as I know, a legal obligation for the municipalities...

And many of those shelters, that operate in Poland, function as NGOs, to a large extent they're financed from donations and based on the work of volunteers.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Attus said:


> Stray dogs are an important issue in South Eastern Europe. There are so many of them, no chance, they all could be adopted. And no one want to create and maintain shelters for dogs that will probably never be adopted.


I am just a barbarian from the north, but I wonder, why are these hoards of feral dogs not hunted down to extinction? They obviously have very negative impact on native fauna, livestock and possibly humans (through rabies).


----------



## Attus

This new Like type "Helpful" us helpful  
It used to be difficult, what reaction to select, when I want to thank the person that he posted, reported about something, but I don't like the "somethig" he reported about.


----------



## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> They obviously have very negative impact on native fauna


This is much more of a problem with feral cats. Which seems to still not be solved anywhere...

You don't have to kill those animals, it's enough to catch and sterilize them. And this is what people try doing with cats, but it's just not enough resources going into it.

And there are also cats which have owners, who let them go outside. Well, even I have such a cat – but it's difficult not to let outside an adopted cat which was born in the wild...


----------



## MattiG

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I am just a barbarian from the north, but I wonder, why are these hoards of feral dogs not hunted down to extinction? They obviously have very negative impact on native fauna, livestock and possibly humans (through rabies).


That might be as easy as killing the Covid-19 virus. And there are people to "rescue" those cute animals and take them abroad. They become mad if anyone criticizes them.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Modern history has shown that controlling populations of larger predators (dogs, wolves, wolverines, lynx, bears etc.) certainly is possible through hunting. Feral cats are trickier to eradicate as they have a very high breeding rate and are more difficult to hunt down. Just ask the Australians. They have rather unsuccessfully tried to get rid of feral cats for decades, but the dingo has been driven out of large parts of the country.


----------



## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Modern history has shown that controlling populations of larger predators (dogs, wolves, wolverines, lynx, bears etc.) certainly is possible through hunting. Feral cats are trickier to eradicate as they have a very high breeding rate and are more difficult to hunt down. Just ask the Australians. They have rather unsuccessfully tried to get rid of feral cats for decades, but the dingo has been driven out of large parts of the country.


It is very different thing to eradicate animals by hunting in rural and urban settings.

Let's take urban foxes of London. Nobody is going to send hunting parties through the suburban streets. The same applies to stray dogs in other countries.


----------



## 54°26′S 3°24′E

Maybe I am wrong, but it is my feeling that stray dogs is mainly a problem of the countryside, not the urban areas of countries like e. g. Hungary. In urban areas, use of firearms is of course much more problematic and should be avoided, but on the other hand, the areas are more limited and in general there are less places to hide for stray dogs.


----------



## geogregor

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Maybe I am wrong, but it is my feeling that stray dogs is mainly a problem of the countryside, not the urban areas of countries like e. g. Hungary. In urban areas, use of firearms is of course much more problematic and should be avoided, but on the other hand, the areas are more limited and in general there are less places to hide for stray dogs.


I wouldn't be surprised if there were more stray dogs in urban areas than in rural ones. They are where the food is and food is often human rubbish.

Urban areas are increasingly full of semi-wild animals. Like foxes in the UK or raccoons in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if stray dogs filled the same niche in SE Europe.


----------



## MattiG

geogregor said:


> It is very different thing to eradicate animals by hunting in rural and urban settings.
> 
> Let's take urban foxes of London. Nobody is going to send hunting parties through the suburban streets. The same applies to stray dogs in other countries.


Your mileage may vary. Once upon a time, my daughter spent 10 months in a language school in Hastings. At that time, the weekly garbage collection procedure by putting rubbish on the streets caused problems because of seagulls. The Hasting Borough Council made a proposal to fight the seagulls by shooting them. Shooting seagulls with a shotgun on the streets in the Hastings downtown! As the kid returned home while the discussion was still ongoing, I do not know if the proposal was successful or not.


----------



## DanielFigFoz

I'm sure we would have heard about it had Hastings Borough Council gone ahead with it.


----------



## Kpc21

In Romania those dogs are literally everywhere.

In Serbia it's much less of a problem.

By the way, I drove today from Targu Jiu (Romania) to Belgrade.

The experience from the Romanian roads confirms what I mentioned before. DN67 was maybe not in such a perfect state as DN76 and DN66 I drove before – but still, it had nothing to complain about. And no too high traffic either.

But the road 34 in Serbia from the Iron Gates 1 dam (where I crossed the border) to Golubac...

Very good road, not much traffic, and most of all... beautiful, picturesque views on the Danube gorge (Iron Gates)!

I can also recommend the castle (fortress) in Golubac. Recently restored (it used to be ruins), exhibition incorporates much multimedia content allowing to learn about the history of this place. Everything translated to English.

The road from Golubac to Belgrade was much worse. First on narrow countryside roads, which remind me, regarding the road surface, some not yet renovated countryside roads in Poland. Then the road 33 from Pożarevac to the motorway – heavy traffic load (kinda like on typical Polish national roads) and ruts. The motorway was a relief from that, but still, the traffic on it was quite heavy, and I met one BMW driver trying to force me to stop overtaking someone, because he had to be faster. Though in general there isn't probably as much road rage as on Polish motorways.


----------



## tfd543

Interesting. Are you on vacation? Where are you going now?


----------



## Kpc21

Belgrade, then Budapest, and home.


----------



## kosimodo

Be carefull out there with bridges.. Forskrækkede trafikanter og ødelagte biler: Fjernstyret klapbro går op uden grund (msn.com) 

Google is your friend


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> Another thing – are the two-lane roundabouts. Of the conventional, non-turbo type. They are everywhere in Romania... Although this is a very dangerous type of a roundabout and it certainly should be banned.


You would hate driving in the UK 

This is drivers point of view on a roundabout at motorway junction (Jct 15 on M40):









Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.com





This is how typical motorway junction roundabout looks like in the UK:









Multilane roundabouts are everywhere. Up to 3, 4 or even more lanes. But to be honest most of the large ones are signalized and lanes are well marked in the advance of entering roundabout.



















Then we have inventions like this:









Or this:









Let's add some trams:









Still nothing beats "magic roudabout" 










If you like roundabouts the UK is the country to visit


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> Then we have inventions like this:


These are also fairly common in Spanish cities. 

Multilane roundabouts work better if it has a large diameter, giving more time to judge traffic and change lanes or look for the right exit lane.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> Turbo roundabouts is probably not a good idea in areas with snowy winters where road markings can be hidden or often worn off come spring. Standard two-lane roundabouts have proven both quite safe and efficient, though.


That was the initial fear in Estonia as well. They now use kerbs between lanes since painted lines didn't really work. The lanes are just wide enough that snowploughs can clear the roundabout between the kerbs. It's more difficult for snowplough drivers but they can manage. They put up those "snow sticks" so the driver of the plough can see where the kerbs are.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> These are also fairly common in Spanish cities.
> 
> Multilane roundabouts work better if it has a large diameter, giving more time to judge traffic and change lanes or look for the right exit lane.


It helps if you familiar with them. For tourist driving the route first time they might be problematic as you do have to know which lane to choose when you enter such large roundabout.

In general I find British advance lane signage and lane marking pretty good but then I'm familiar with it.

I guess there is always the safe option of sticking to the outermost lane, possible driving twice around. 

Anyway, those roundabouts are here to stay, in fact they are getting larger, like here at Jct10 on M6:










If Kpc21 wants to drive in the UK he better get readdy


----------



## radamfi

If you have a roundabout that big, plus signalisation, it isn't really a roundabout any more. It is basically a set of short roads between traffic lights. In my transport modelling career, they were very time consuming to code as you had to treat it like several junctions. A normal roundabout would just be a single node. For most of my career, I used the SATURN software. At a SATURN user group meeting, there was a whole session on signalised roundabouts, and the seminar notes are still available online. 

Some extracts:



https://saturnsoftware2.co.uk/uploads/files/UGM2018-SAT101-Part-2-Coding-Signalised-Roundabouts.pdf




















Why does the UK (and Ireland, who basically copy the UK) feel the need to use roundabouts for motorway junctions when other countries don't?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is massive flooding ongoing in Pakistan.

A hotel collapsed:



__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1563082023652143104


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> If you have a roundabout that big, plus signalisation, it isn't really a roundabout any more. It is basically a set of short roads between traffic lights. In my transport modelling career, they were very time consuming to code as you had to treat it like several junctions. A normal roundabout would just be a single node. For most of my career, I used the SATURN software. At a SATURN user group meeting, there was a whole session on signalised roundabouts, and the seminar notes are still available online.
> 
> Some extracts:
> 
> 
> 
> https://saturnsoftware2.co.uk/uploads/files/UGM2018-SAT101-Part-2-Coding-Signalised-Roundabouts.pdf
> 
> 
> 
> View attachment 3721622
> 
> View attachment 3721623
> 
> 
> Why does the UK (and Ireland, who basically copy the UK) feel the need to use roundabouts for motorway junctions when other countries don't?


The thing I find most unfathomable is building a brand new signalised roundabout. I just can't see how that is a sensible solution, when a standard signalised crossroads does the job. This one near Bristol for example:


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> The thing I find most unfathomable is building a brand new signalised roundabout. I just can't see how that is a sensible solution, when a standard signalised crossroads does the job. This one near Bristol for example:


Yes, you would think by signalising a roundabout you are basically admitting that it was a mistake to build it as a roundabout in the first place, or at least that a roundabout is no longer the best tool for the job and you are signalising it to save the money and disruption of replacing it with a crossroads. I can think of a number of places where roundabouts have been replaced by crossroads, but they are all in urban settings.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> Spain has a lot of multi-lane roundabouts, but it is apparently illegal to exit the roundabout from anything else than the outermost lane. So the inner lanes don't have much purpose. They're not used efficiently.
> 
> Turbo roundabouts are much more efficient. It requires more signage though, gantry signage is preferred.


France not. They regularly exit roundabouts from left (inner) lanes. The good thing is that French hold left indicators turned if they are circling. If the vehicle in roundabout doesn't have left indicator turned on, be aware that he plans to exit somewhere soon, probably cutting way to those in outer lanes. 
I had similar situation with policeman at motorbike in Cannes. I was stupid tourist circling in outer lane trying to reach gas station, and policemen on two bikes have cut my way from inner lane. They shat their paints and yelled something to me.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I just had a € 3,000 repair on my car.

It was parked in Belluno, Italy, when a severe thunderstorm passed over, with 3 cm hail.

At first I didn't really notice any damage, there were no cracks or other readily visible spots. But a closer inspection showed that the entire roof and hood was littered with small dents. 

It took 4 days to get it repaired. Insurance took care of the bill, I only had to pay a € 100 deductible.


----------



## Kpc21

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> In Norway, it is adviced by the driving schools etc. to use the left lane of roundabouts if you want to turn left or continue in the left lane of the arm where you exit. However, legally, a roundabout is just a short piece of one-way circular street with the right of way.


The Polish SSC section literally has 51 pages of a flamewar-like discussion in a special, dedicated thread (which was created because otherwise it spammed other threads) on how to interpret the Polish law regarding it:








[Polska] Zasady ruchu drogowego na rondach (wątek specjalny)


Zgodnie z prośbami wielu uczestników otwieram nowy wątek, gdzie będzie prowadzona dyskusja tylko i wyłącznie o rondach.




www.skyscrapercity.com







geogregor said:


> If Kpc21 wants to drive in the UK he better get readdy


I already drove in the UK, but it was in northern Scotland – not so many intersections and multi-lane roads in general...

Signalized roundabouts are practically not roundabouts, unless the signals are turned off.

There are quite some such roundabouts in Łódź – in practice they only work as roundabouts late at night (after 11 PM), when the traffic lights are turned off (switched to the flashing amber light).










I sometimes happen to drive through this one at night.

By the way, it's yet another roundabout type. For me – quite easy, because the lanes don't continue as circles around it, they are just extensions of the lanes of the intersecting roads – even if you exit from the inner lane, you don't cross the outer one.

But this type is dangerous, as it's too similar to a regular intersection, and people sometimes fail to notice the roundabout signs.

Two roundabouts of this type in Łódź, with no traffic lights, had frequent accidents because of it.

One got equipped with traffic lights and turned into a regular intersection (when the traffic lights are off, one of the roads has the right of way). The other one got rebuilt into a modern turbo roundabout, even with physical lane separation.

Now I'm in Hungary and I noticed that Hungarians often use those turbo roundabouts, with physical lane separation. A good decision, Hungary!



x-type said:


> France not. They regularly exit roundabouts from left (inner) lanes. The good thing is that French hold left indicators turned if they are circling. If the vehicle in roundabout doesn't have left indicator turned on, be aware that he plans to exit somewhere soon, probably cutting way to those in outer lanes.


This is the next point of the never-ending discussion on how to interpret the Polish traffic law regarding that... Some people claim it's obligatory, as a roundabout is treated by our law just as an intersection (literally, there is no "roundabout" term in our law; there is a "road intersection with circular traffic"), but treating it as such would mean you also shouldn't signalize exiting it with the right turn signal (e.g. while going straight forward or turning left), which would be an absurd – at least on normal roundabouts, not like the one from the last satellite photo.



x-type said:


> I had similar situation with policeman at motorbike in Cannes. I was stupid tourist circling in outer lane trying to reach gas station, and policemen on two bikes have cut my way from inner lane. They shat their paints and yelled something to me.


Well, shouldn't they anyway give way to you?

I mean, encircling the roundabout on the outer lane isn't forbidden.


----------



## x-type

Kpc21 said:


> Well, shouldn't they anyway give way to you?
> 
> I mean, encircling the roundabout on the outer lane isn't forbidden.


Exactly. I have checked it, there were no obligatory directions. It happened exactly here: Google Maps

But I admit, I was acting counter expactations, I also hate circling in outer lane. It equals left lane hogging in terms of traffic culture.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Floods in Pakistan are getting more catastrophic by the day.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1563265790883033092

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1562714046096621568

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1563071243657498624

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1563059462130515969

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1563185381876842496


----------



## Kpc21

Talking about what I asked recently, about crossing the Serbia-Hungary border.

The Hungarian Police website showed 2 hours of waiting at the motorway crossing and 1 hour of waiting at the national road crossing next to it.

So I went to the Dala/Tiszasziget crossing. The website said it's less than 15 minutes of waiting time, and this one was the one elongating the route least.

What turned out? I waited an hour at Dala!

I guess I should have gone through Bajmok. And then I could take the M6 instead of M5; M6 would be certainly far less congested.

On M5 there were sections when the left lane had many more cars and therefore was slower than the right one; overtaking trucks was a nightmare.

And two accidents on the way, which I bypassed using some local roads.


----------



## tfd543

Thats bad. How was the asphalt quality to Dala on the SRB side from the A1 highway? Did you exit the highway early?


----------



## CNGL

ChrisZwolle said:


> Spain has a lot of multi-lane roundabouts, but it is apparently illegal to exit the roundabout from anything else than the outermost lane.


This is why I never use the inner lane(s) of a roundabout. I always stay on the outer(most), even when turning left. And it won't be the first time I almost get crashed into by someone trying to exit from the inside.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> Why does the UK (and Ireland, who basically copy the UK) feel the need to use roundabouts for motorway junctions when other countries don't?


I think they work well, especially when connecting multiple local roads to one junction.

I definitely prefer that over two smaller roundabouts on both sides of the junction (dumbell). Especially if they are seriously undersized (which is not that rare in some countries).

I definitely prefer single large roundabout over something like this:









At least the roundabouts have decent size.

Signalized diamond junctions can also create problems with programming the lights and add to complexity.



Stuu said:


> The thing I find most unfathomable is building a brand new signalised roundabout. I just can't see how that is a sensible solution, when a standard signalised crossroads does the job. This one near Bristol for example:
> View attachment 3723025


Roundabout offer safety benefit in a sense that it forces drivers to slow down. I'll take roundabout (signalized or not) over simple signalized crossroad, any time.


----------



## radamfi

Large roundabouts "feel" less safe than crossroads, but that maybe just perception. If someone runs a red light at high speed that is often catastrophic, whereas such a high speed impact is much less likely to happen on a roundabout. When driving on a two or more lane roundabout there is a worry of someone crashing into your side, but that would be at lower speed. Certainly one lane roundabouts must be safer than crossroads.


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> Roundabout offer safety benefit in a sense that it forces drivers to slow down. I'll take roundabout (signalized or not) over simple signalized crossroad, any time.


On the other hand there is more land take, more stop/start traffic and they are worse for pedestrians. I agree a roundabout is better, but signalising a roundabout means it doesn't work as intended, so building one from new is nuts


----------



## x-type

radamfi said:


> Large roundabouts "feel" less safe than crossroads, but that maybe just perception. If someone runs a red light at high speed that is often catastrophic, whereas such a high speed impact is much less likely to happen on a roundabout. When driving on a two or more lane roundabout there is a worry of someone crashing into your side, but that would be at lower speed. Certainly one lane roundabouts must be safer than crossroads.


That's because in large roundabouts you should act more or less like on ordinary 2- or 3-lane road, but you have much less space to change the lanes. As you say, fortunately accidents in roundabouts in most cases result in some crumpled metal, nothing more.


----------



## Verso

I "finally" got corona (despite being vaccinated thrice, last time half a year ago). Is there anyone here that still hasn't got it?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I have never tested for covid. I haven't had any significant symptoms, so I suppose that means I've never had it, or that it was very mild. I had a clogged up nose for 2 weeks in 2021, which is unusual for me, but not severe at all.


----------



## radamfi

Do people here bother to adjust your headlight beam when crossing the Channel by car? Has anyone been fined or warned by the police, either in the UK or on the continent, for not adjusting headlights?


----------



## italystf

Officially I never tested positive, although I cannot exclude an asymptomatic infection, like everybody in this planet.


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> Do people here bother to adjust your headlight beam when crossing the Channel by car? Has anyone been fined or warned by the police, either in the UK or on the continent, for not adjusting headlights?


The last time I took my own car to the UK was in 2006 and I put those stickers on the headlights on the ferry. 

Since then I've only rented local cars. I find it much more comfortable to drive around somewhere with the steering wheel on the proper side. Otherwise the blind corners are just too dangerous imo and roundabouts are a damn nightmare if you're sitting on the wrong side.


----------



## CNGL

italystf said:


> Officially I never tested positive, although I cannot exclude an asymptomatic infection, like everybody in this planet.


Same. I may have gone asymptomatic, as I live with someone who at one point tested positive. But nobody else at home did so.


----------



## x-type

Verso said:


> I "finally" got corona (despite being vaccinated thrice, last time half a year ago). Is there anyone here that still hasn't got it?


I caught it 10 days ago. It came suddenly, and dissappeared suddenly after 4-5 days. But I felt quite bad having it.


----------



## Attus

Verso said:


> I "finally" got corona (despite being vaccinated thrice, last time half a year ago). Is there anyone here that still hasn't got it?


Vaccinations don't help avoiding Covid, since Omicron. I know people having had Covid despite being vaccinated four times. Even scientists say, Omicron can infect you if you are vaccinated or not. 
I've never been ill. I'm not sure if I had asymptomatic Covid in the winter, but I suppose I hadn't. Since April I make tests twice a week, all of them were negative. 
I don't understand why I've never been infected.


----------



## Kpc21

tfd543 said:


> Thats bad. How was the asphalt quality to Dala on the SRB side from the A1 highway? Did you exit the highway early?


Not very good. No potholes, but it was quite "rough", like on some Polish countryside roads that still wait for a renovation.

I exited the motorway at Backa Topola; this is what Google Maps indicated when I set it to route through Tiszasziget.

Generally, while entering Serbia from Romania through the Iron Gates I dam and going along Danube to the Golubac fortress made very good impression – the overall condition of roads in Serbia didn't. Between Golubac and Belgrade it was also quite bad.

The route from Budapest home was good and uneventful; no much traffic in general – maybe except the motorway west of Budapest and one OMV gas station there, where at all pumps some nozzles were out of order, including all for the ordinary 95-octane gasoline (only the premium variant was available). I went to a nearby Shell, and over there, everything worked. Probably the west experience was the Polish A1 in the Upper Silesia urban area – it's an almost new motorway, and every moment or so the asphalt was wavy and made you jump up and down. I don't know if it's because of mining damage, or what.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> I exited the motorway at Backa Topola; this is what Google Maps indicated when I set it to route through Tiszasziget.


How did you get mobile data in Serbia, given that EU roaming doesn't apply there?


----------



## Kpc21

Bought a SIM card of the MTS provider at a gas station. It turned out it had almost no credit, so I bought some credit too, and a data package for that.


----------



## Verso

I used to have 1 GB free mobile Internet per month outside EU. I used it a lot in Turkey.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> Bought a SIM card of the MTS provider at a gas station. It turned out it had almost no credit, so I bought some credit too, and a data package for that.


You were lucky that SIM cards don't need registration there, which means SIM cards are widely available and you don't need to get one from a proper mobile phone store whilst presenting your passport/ID card for identification

I notice from 


https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com



(useful site regarding SIM cards when travelling)

that the western Balkans have set up their own roaming union. So you can use your Serbian data in Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro and North Macedonia.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> You were lucky that SIM cards don't need registration there


Actually I've read that the SIM cards bought in kiosks, at gas stations etc. don't require registration, those bought in the mobile network operator stores do require it.

But still, what's the problem to register that card, if needed?

The only thing is that you need to find an open point that registers them. In Poland it's not an issue; Żabka stores are open from 7 AM to 11 PM, most of them also on Sundays, and they offer registration of SIM cards of all major operators. And they are everywhere (especially in big cities, it's not uncommon that you find several ones around the same road intersection):










No idea how it looks like in other countries.

Actually I bought the MTS card only after Golubac; through the whole Danube gorge I used the Romanian network from the transmitters on the other side of the river.

It was interesting too that though the whole gorge, it was generally easier to catch the Romanian FM radio stations rather than Serbian ones. Probably because while driving on the Serbian side of the diver, we were in the shade of the mountains on the Serbian side, while the mountains on the Romanian side, behind the river, were further from us, so their shade was less of an issue. Probably on the Romanian side it would be easier to catch the Serbian radio than Romanian...


----------



## x-type

What is the problem with registration? Well, perhaps we are being bombed with GDPR in last 4 years from all sides, and now possessing the everyday thing like sim card should requires registration. For what purpose?


----------



## tfd543

Kpc21 said:


> Bought a SIM card of the MTS provider at a gas station. It turned out it had almost no credit, so I bought some credit too, and a data package for that.


Question already answered…


----------



## tfd543

radamfi said:


> You were lucky that SIM cards don't need registration there, which means SIM cards are widely available and you don't need to get one from a proper mobile phone store whilst presenting your passport/ID card for identification
> 
> I notice from
> 
> 
> https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com
> 
> 
> 
> (useful site regarding SIM cards when travelling)
> 
> that the western Balkans have set up their own roaming union. So you can use your Serbian data in Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro and North Macedonia.


That roaming union is only for post-paid customers. Pre-payers are out of that


----------



## Kpc21

x-type said:


> What is the problem with registration? Well, perhaps we are being bombed with GDPR in last 4 years from all sides, and now possessing the everyday thing like sim card should requires registration. For what purpose?


To be able to trace e.g. who causes a fake bomb alarm?

GDPR forbids collecting unnecessary personal data, and if collecting data is required by law, it has nothing to do with it... Except that you have to be presented a long page to sign, explaining in anyway difficult to understand, legal language, who is the data security inspector, how long the data would be stored, if you will be "profiled" or not (whatever it means) and so on, to sign that you have read that. Quite a waste of paper, but it is required by GDPR.

Meanwhile, hotels in quite many countries happily take photos of your IDs/passports with a smartphone, probably nobody caring if it automatically uploads those photos to the Google's cloud (from the GDPR perspective, causing the data to be processed outside the EU! for which there are some very special requirements), or not...


----------



## volodaaaa

My son loves trains, so I always play youtube train compilation videos over Chromecast, especially European ones. However, today the auto-play setting switched to the United States and their train compilations, and there is a thing that makes me wonder:

Why do the American trains horn that much? The rumbling of the train would not annoy me as much as the horning of the train if I lived in the US on a track perimeter. It sounds like the train horns 99 % of its service regardless of day or night. In Europe, trains seldom whistle before passing unbarred level crossings and horn exceptionally rarely, only in emergencies.


----------



## Stuu

volodaaaa said:


> My son loves trains, so I always play youtube train compilation videos over Chromecast, especially European ones. However, today the auto-play setting switched to the United States and their train compilations, and there is a thing that makes me wonder:
> 
> Why do the American trains horn that much? The rumbling of the train would not annoy me as much as the horning of the train if I lived in the US on a track perimeter. It sounds like the train horns 99 % of its service regardless of day or night. In Europe, trains seldom whistle before passing unbarred level crossings and horn exceptionally rarely, only in emergencies.


Because they have so many crossings, which often have no lights or barriers, althoigh I think they have to blow their horns even when the crossing does have barriers. The safety record of US railways is appalling compared to anywhere in Europe when it comes to crossings


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> I guess passing the exam is much simpler in the countries where you are allowed to learn driving with any other person that has driving license.


If this would be the case, it would be very likely waaay easier for me 
I know personally a professional driver after all.

It would take for me learning basics at some driving school, after starting feeling you can drive on your own with some remaining difficulty, you can try start learning with a friend or relative.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> Regarding the UK's black taxis, I took one once in Edinbourgh, from the airport, and it cost more or less the same as an Uber...


Outside London, there isn't so much difference in fares between a Hackney Carriage and private hire companies. Many railway stations have private hire taxi offices based there, so ordering one of those taxis is trivial, especially if there is one already waiting there. So there's often not much difference in service quality.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Natural gas prices are very high. This must be a boon to Norway's coffers. What's the reporting about that in Norway? 

Norway is exporting gas at maximum capacity, at very high prices, creating a huge revenue for the government.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Natural gas prices are very high. This must be a boon to Norway's coffers. What's the reporting about that in Norway?
> 
> Norway is exporting gas at maximum capacity, at very high prices, creating a huge revenue for the government.


They've already got a sovereign wealth fund valued at over $1 trillion. Although there were some headlines about the record loss that it posted in the first half of this year, thanks to the slump in technology stocks. So they could do with a few extra billion to make up for that.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> Natural gas prices are very high. This must be a boon to Norway's coffers. What's the reporting about that in Norway?
> 
> Norway is exporting gas at maximum capacity, at very high prices, creating a huge revenue for the government.


The fluctuations on export prices mainly increased the deposits into the sovereign wealth fund, partially compensating for the loss in value of the stocks and bonds it holds due to market movements. 

The main news is more related to the fact that employment in the oil sector is now likely to be higher than previously anticipated by another decade at least. 

Electricity prices receive 10x as much coverage than gas prices.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> Electricity prices receive 10x as much coverage than gas prices.


I think this makes sense, as electricity is much more of a consumer product in Norway than natural gas? 

In the Netherlands it's the other way around, natural gas receives all the coverage, while electricity is not mentioned all that much. My electricity bill went up, but not dramatically. Norway had lower electricity prices than most of Europe, and if people use it for heating as well, the impact of price surges is more significant.


----------



## Attus

MattiG said:


> But the drivers cannot always use their navigators.
> 
> My friend once took a taxi to a railway station directly accessible from a motorway exit. It was a winter time, and they finally got stuck at the end of a small forest road.
> 
> Another problem is that the drivers sometimes do not recocnize even the most important places, but the client should know the street address. I know that the street address of the House of Parliament is Mannerheimintie 30, but I have no idea what the street address of Helsinki International Airport is if any.


I had once the opposite case in Budapest. At the Budapest international airport you have to use a central terminal for a taxi service. I told the attendant, I want to travel to Kelenföld train station. However, not the station, but only its street adress was transferred to the taxi driver, and he had no idea where is that street.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> I think this makes sense, as electricity is much more of a consumer product in Norway than natural gas?
> 
> In the Netherlands it's the other way around, natural gas receives all the coverage, while electricity is not mentioned all that much. My electricity bill went up, but not dramatically. Norway had lower electricity prices than most of Europe, and if people use it for heating as well, the impact of price surges is more significant.


There is no sizable domestic natural gas distribution in Norway as far as I know. Hearing, cookig, all done with electricity. Most industries also use electricity as energy input.

There are some district heating steam pipes fueled with incinerators.


----------



## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> Most industries also use electricity as energy input.


The most important industry that actually consumes natural gas is production of fertilizers.


----------



## radamfi

So there's an additional public holiday for the funeral. This is likely to cause considerable disruption to daily life. Sporting fixtures have been postponed or cancelled. TV schedules have been ripped up. Those things alone have been enough to cause yet more reason for British people to get angry with each other, aside from Brexit and Covid. But the extra public holiday could have serious practical issues. For example, people will have hospital appointments on that day.


----------



## Kpc21

A similar event that we have in Poland some 15 years ago or so was the death of the pope, John Paul II. I am not sure now if the funeral day was made a public holiday. For sure there were no school classes on that day, though there was care provided for those whose parents had to be at work for whatever reasons. Which was, in practice, watching the funeral at school (it was broadcast on all the channels of terrestrial TV).

For sure the TV schedules were completely changed, some stations for several days didn't even broadcast commercials. Many premium channels (like sports or children ones) completely stopped broadcasting.

Even the main news on the public TV had a dedicated opening sequence made specifically for that event.

And yet for a year or so many TV channels were reminding the pope's death at 21:37 (9:37 PM) with some graphics on the screen.

Now this whole 21:37 thing has become a meme in the Polish internet... Like, when you want to post a random hour of the day, the default choice is 21:37.

So the main news after that event looked like:







Some years later we had a tragic death of a president; this led to a similar mess-up on TV and in everyday life, though, I think, to a lesser extent. A weird side effect was for example that it was much more difficult than normally to find weather forecast on TV


----------



## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> There is no sizable domestic natural gas distribution in Norway as far as I know. Hearing, cookig, all done with electricity. Most industries also use electricity as energy input.
> 
> There are some district heating steam pipes fueled with incinerators.


Its pretty much about population density. Installing gas pipes in a sparsely populated country would create an astronomical price tag per household. In Finland, the nation-wide market share of LNG as the energy source of households is about 0.5 percent. The real figure is somewhat higher as some district heating plants in the South run partly on LNG, but this is declining. LNG is mainly an energy source to the industry.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Dutch labor shortage is significant. 

I think demographics are beginning to play a significant role. Retail and restaurants rely substantially on students aged 16-24. However as seen in this population pyramid, Generation Z (born after 1995) is significantly smaller than the preceding Millennials. Especially those born after 2000 are much less numerous, so there are fewer of them available for work. This currently affects mostly low-skilled jobs that people do part time besides their education. However over the next few years, new entrants into the mid / higher skilled job market will decline significantly. 

In other words, the labor shortage will become much more severe than it is already. 

There was a similar crunch around 1990 when Generation X was much smaller than the Baby Boomers. However this crunch was absorbed by the fact that women entered the workforce very quickly between the late 1980s and early 1990s. Female workforce participation was quite low in the Netherlands before 1990. It rose by about 20 percentage points in only a few years (which in turn created a huge boom in automobile traffic).

However such an effect cannot be expected today.


----------



## Suburbanist

Immigration from within Europe is also tricky since both local conditions improved and the demographic shrinking in Southern and Eastern Europe has been even higher. 

Meanwhile, some Dutch universities are not officially recommending international students not to come to the Netherlands if they do not housing secured before taking flights and offering refunds of fees if people give up places for that reason.


----------



## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> the nation-wide market share of LNG as the energy source of households is about 0.5 percent


LNG is *Liquefied* Natural Gas, the form used for transport on ships, and you probably mean just any natural gas. In pipes it isn't liquefied, it's transported just in the gas form.


----------



## Suburbanist

In Brazil it was/is extremely common to have LPG tanks at homes and businesses. They are dangerous and sometimes cause spectacular deadly accidents. Butane is denser than air and accumulates when it leaks.


----------



## Kpc21

Well, I think it's common everywhere where there is no natural gas mains...

In Poland they are also popular, but I have never heard of an explosion or accident with one. The safety rules regarding those tanks are quite strict, for example regarding their distance from various objects. Also, you are not allowed to have the boiler in the basement while having such a tank, for example. In the boiler room – you have to have an air outlet at the floor level. And so on.

Most dangerous are those little 11 kg bottles attached directly to the kitchen stove etc. – if you have no natural gas mains and no such external tank.

In Poland those tanks usually contain propane gas, sometimes the mixture of propane and butane. The 11 kg bottles contain the mixture, and as far as I know, it's the same with the LPG used for cars (autogas).


----------



## tfd543

In smth like 30’ish min, Logan airport Will have moment of silence for the 9/11 event. Where were you when it happened and How did you get it to know ?

I was at school and it actually took almost 1 hour after the first hit before we were informed by our teacher.


----------



## radamfi

I was at work in the office on 11 September 2001. In the afternoon, a German colleague told me about the news after seeing it on the internet. At about 6 o'clock, after I had got home, my friend phoned me from Gatwick airport. He lived in Indiana at the time and was visiting people in the UK and had left earlier that day, but the plane had to go back to Gatwick as US airspace had been closed after the attack.


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> In smth like 30’ish min, Logan airport Will have moment of silence for the 9/11 event. Where were you when it happened and How did you get it to know ?
> 
> I was at school, and it actually took almost 1 hour after the first hit before we were informed by our teacher.


I was 14 and in the final 9th grade of my elementary school. The school terms had just started, and the school canteen was out of order. My mum prepared me food the evening before to be heated in a microwave oven. I had just returned from school, opened the fridge, heated my food and sat before the TV, started flickering through programmes as I had been used to.

There was a new TV channel, the first 24/7 news channel ever, in Slovakia about to start broadcasting on the 23rd of September at that time - the TV slot was already reserved with a splash screen. As I was flickering through all channels, I noticed the slot for the news channel had already been broadcasting something instead of the splash screen. It looked like a smoking chimney, and the sound was muted. Later, I realised the sound was not muted, but the reporters were just speechless. I was scared when I learned what was happening, and my family called me soon. We prepared for the world war. I remember I got my first mobile phone on my 14th birthday and in late September there was a field trip to the mountains organised by our class teacher. We set off, but my mom kept repeating to me constantly to have it charged in case of any emergency.


----------



## Kpc21

If I recall correctly, I was in the kindergarten back then... Learned that just from the news or something like that. And from a "special edition" of the morning kids' show on TV where they showed the whole event using toy bricks.


----------



## Stuu

tfd543 said:


> In smth like 30’ish min, Logan airport Will have moment of silence for the 9/11 event. Where were you when it happened and How did you get it to know ?
> 
> I was at school and it actually took almost 1 hour after the first hit before we were informed by our teacher.


I was working on the 10th or so floor of a building right next to Wembley Stadium. Someone else in the office saw it first, and then we spent the next couple of hours pressing refresh on Yahoo News and other online media which was all completely overwhelmed

They evacuated the building after a couple of hours as it was feared that there might be hijackers around the world and were worried Wembley was a possible target


----------



## Kpc21

Why was it such a big thing? Did people think before there can't be so evil people to do things like that? I mean, there were also terrorist attacks before, weren't they?


----------



## Slagathor

tfd543 said:


> In smth like 30’ish min, Logan airport Will have moment of silence for the 9/11 event. Where were you when it happened and How did you get it to know ?
> 
> I was at school and it actually took almost 1 hour after the first hit before we were informed by our teacher.


I was 18 and watching World Sport on CNN which was interrupted by "Breaking News" (back then, that was very rare) about an alleged fire in one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. The picture on screen showed smoke pouring out of one of the towers but it took a few minutes before anyone mentioned the word "airplane" because the editors probably thought those rumors seemed too unlikely to be true.

I watched everything unfold from thereon, with increasing horror.


----------



## Slagathor

Kpc21 said:


> Why was it such a big thing? Did people think before there can't be so evil people to do things like that? I mean, there were also terrorist attacks before, weren't they?


Terror attacks before then were always small: perhaps a car bomb or a shooting incident. That sort of thing.

They also tended to happen elsewhere: Israel (Palestinians), Russia (Chechens)... Even when Americans were targeted, it happened overseas (Iran).

And, of course, nobody had ever used an airplane in a kamikaze style attack before. Airplanes had been _hijacked_ before but the hijackers had always tried to come out of it alive. Suicide-terrorism wasn't very common, it was really only used by desperate Palestinians who had nothing left to lose and who might blow themselves up at an Israeli checkpoint. Even those attacks were rare.

An actual _major_ terror strike on the American heartland itself was completely unthinkable before 9/11. People would have laughed in your face if you'd suggested it.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Why was it such a big thing? Did people think before there can't be so evil people to do things like that? I mean, there were also terrorist attacks before, weren't they?


Because it was cruel, brutal and the main goal of the terrorists was not negotiating, but killing innocent people.


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> Why was it such a big thing? Did people think before there can't be so evil people to do things like that? I mean, there were also terrorist attacks before, weren't they?


Nothing on that scale had ever been done, or even conceived of, especially against targets in the continental US. The US didn't even have an active air defence strategy in place , as they didn't believe there was any threat outside of nation states and full international wars.

Nothing like it has happened since either


----------



## Kpc21

So basically people didn't believe there can be other people so cruel.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> So basically people didn't believe there can be other people so cruel.


It is a perfect example of the term *black swan. *Eg an event you can't predict because you can't even imagine it.


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> So basically people didn't believe there can be other people so cruel.


Yes of course they did, but not so inventive and prepared to give their own lives in so many numbers.


----------



## Slagathor

Kpc21 said:


> So basically people didn't believe there can be other people so cruel.


The Yugoslav wars had only just ended; we'd seen cruelty, even genocide. It's not that we didn't think people couldn't be cruel. It's that we simply thought an attack that large on the continental United States was impossible.


----------



## AnelZ

I was 8 and was mad the cartoons on TV were interrupted. Wasn't able to interpret what I was seeing on the TV. I'm also not aware what was the general atmosphere over here. Considering that at that time as it was just 5-6 years since the war ended over here in BiH and the US was a major provider of stability for the country and just 5 month prior to that Slobodan Milosevic was arrested in Belgrade, I guess there was some uncertainty how things will go on.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Dutch labor shortage is significant.
> 
> I think demographics are beginning to play a significant role. Retail and restaurants rely substantially on students aged 16-24. However as seen in this population pyramid, Generation Z (born after 1995) is significantly smaller than the preceding Millennials. Especially those born after 2000 are much less numerous, so there are fewer of them available for work. This currently affects mostly low-skilled jobs that people do part time besides their education. However over the next few years, new entrants into the mid / higher skilled job market will decline significantly.
> 
> In other words, the labor shortage will become much more severe than it is already.
> 
> There was a similar crunch around 1990 when Generation X was much smaller than the Baby Boomers. However this crunch was absorbed by the fact that women entered the workforce very quickly between the late 1980s and early 1990s. Female workforce participation was quite low in the Netherlands before 1990. It rose by about 20 percentage points in only a few years (which in turn created a huge boom in automobile traffic).
> 
> However such an effect cannot be expected today.


The same in Germany, and, I suppose, almost everywhere in Europe. 
Eceonomic recession of the following years will mitigate the issue, but in the late 20's it will be critical.


----------



## Attus

tfd543 said:


> In smth like 30’ish min, Logan airport Will have moment of silence for the 9/11 event. Where were you when it happened and How did you get it to know ?


I was 28. I think it was the last important event in world history that I did not get to know from the internet.
I was home, worked on something with the PC (offline), the listened radio. The moderator said WTC was attacked but he said it a way I was not sure it really happened or it's only a joke.


----------



## MattiG

tfd543 said:


> In smth like 30’ish min, Logan airport Will have moment of silence for the 9/11 event. Where were you when it happened and How did you get it to know ?


I was hiking with my wife in the northern wilderness. After a long and heavy walking day, on a challenging terrain, we set up our tent at a nice place close to the confluence point of rivers Harrijoki and Muorravaarakanjoki at 68°21,1'N 28°15,3'E. We had been several days outside mobile coverage. That evening, we were 16 kilometers only from the Rajajooseppi border control station, and we managed to make a call to home. My mother-in-law was there taking care of the kids, and she told us what was happening in the live TV program.









_Muorravaarakanjoki Sep 11, 2001_


----------



## x-type

I was at the second year of college, spending boring sunday afternoon.


Attus said:


> I was 28. I think it was the last important event in world history that I did not get to know from the internet.
> I was home, worked on something with the PC (offline), the listened radio. The moderator said WTC was attacked but he said it a way I was not sure it really happened or it's only a joke.


True, it was the time when internet portals were about to become popular (noticed, and used significantly). However, I still remember that, for isntance, earthquake of L'Aquilla in 2009 I followed at TV news because broadband internet became to be widespread around 2010.


----------



## tfd543

radamfi said:


> I was at work in the office on 11 September 2001. In the afternoon, a German colleague told me about the news after seeing it on the internet. At about 6 o'clock, after I had got home, my friend phoned me from Gatwick airport. He lived in Indiana at the time and was visiting people in the UK and had left earlier that day, but the plane had to go back to Gatwick as US airspace had been closed after the attack.


Quite crazy to get to know it in a plane. 

In the end of the day, i think they could have attacked the 2nd plane as they had 15 min to send up some military aircrafts or at least to evacuate the South tower earlier and faster.

Anyhow, this is just speculation.


----------



## volodaaaa

But to be honest, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February scared me much more. We (I mean my family) had no contingency plan in case of WW3 in 2001 broke out. However, in the latter case, we did and still have. Very vivid (e.g. fleeing as far as possible from Russia, not using motorways and avoiding capitals and populated cities). Fortunately, the whole Russian Army turned out to be a giant fake. Indeed, I am still uncomfortable with nuclear weapons, but who knows the conditions they are in? And there is still a slight risk China would do something stupid.

The goal is to spend my life as a bus driver on a small negligible island


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Quite crazy to get to know it in a plane.
> 
> In the end of the day, i think they could have attacked the 2nd plane as they had 15 min to send up some military aircrafts or at least to evacuate the South tower earlier and faster.
> 
> Anyhow, this is just speculation.


Again, it was a black swan. No one had expected that. No one could have even imagined that. There is no chance for the attacks to be repeated the way they were executed.

I can't recall the names, maybe I will edit it later, but a great illustration is a strange bank robbery in the USA in the 1960s. A guy decided to rob a bank, and the police department used a formerly successful procedure to mitigate the threat. Everyone was surprised when the robber murdered a hostage and allowed the police to kill him.

The police department was baffled. How come the tactics had not worked? Later, when they did some investigation, they learned small vital details they ignored because they could not imagine any other scenario than they had been used to:

The attacker killed his grandma before "robbing" a bank.
The attacker did not want any money - had no claims.
The attacker wrote a farewell letter with 100 % certainty he would die.
While negotiating the attacker always mentioned they would kill him and had no exit scenario.
The police department completely ignored these clues, because they had no sense - in case you want to rob a bank. But the attacker was a psycho with a special diagnosis (I can't recall the name too) - he was a suicide with no balls to commit suicide, thus his tactic was to provoke the police department to eliminate him instead of him. He never wanted to rob a bank.

If the police had known, they would have adapted the procedures, but they had not.
The same goes for 9/11. If the army had known but had not.


----------



## Kpc21

x-type said:


> True, it was the time when internet portals were about to become popular (noticed, and used significantly).


Indeed they were becoming popular, but rather among quite a narrow range of society... at least in Poland; probably it was completely different in the US. Up to some mid-2000s Internet over here was still rather considered a nerdy toy.

When I ask people, most of them, even if they had a PC, didn't even have Internet access before somewhere around 2005.

But until some mid-2010 it was still so that e.g. many businesses didn't have any Internet existence. 

And Internet in those times, like to somewhere around 2010, was still largely dominated by young people. Not like it is now, that practically everyone is forced to use it even if one doesn't want to.

I prefer that old Internet... It was much less rage, much less politics, much more culture. If somebody was spoiling the discussion, there was an immediate reaction. Etc. I miss that.


By the way, there is one more thing I recall from my recent trip.

Serbia is using separate built-up area signs. Even though their town name signs have bright (yellow) background and dark (black) letters. Which by Vienna Convention should also mean a built-up area...

Seems to be quite inconsistent.










End of a built-up area...

And right behind the house seen in the background...










End of town... (by the way, with its name in three languages). But this type of sign in theory should also indicate an end of a built-up area...


----------



## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> But to be honest, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February scared me much more.


Yes and no. 
Yes: The war in Ukraine is much closer to us, not only geographically. 
No: This war was more ore less expected. 9/11 was a schock, something that was beyond _every _imagination.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> By the way, there is one more thing I recall from my recent trip.
> 
> Serbia is using separate built-up area signs. Even though their town name signs have bright (yellow) background and dark (black) letters. Which by Vienna Convention should also mean a built-up area...
> 
> Seems to be quite inconsistent.
> 
> View attachment 3809011
> 
> 
> End of a built-up area...
> 
> And right behind the house seen in the background...
> 
> View attachment 3809015
> 
> 
> End of town... (by the way, with its name in three languages). But this type of sign in theory should also indicate an end of a built-up area...


Poland uses green sign, but it's like administrative border of a town/village?
There is seperate town sign, and also town name sign on white background if I recall correctly?

Lithuania saw change of practise of using town name signs. It's sorta like in Serbia, but more consistent, I think.
We had town symbols in our traffic law, but used only for marking city of Panevėžys and few places in Vilnius. Most signs only indicated town name on white background.
In recent years, town symbols appear on all signs with city name, except if administrative border is indicated otherwise (which is rare thing to see). We put administrative borders on blue or green (if motorway) backgrounds.
In terms of consistency, white background, black text on plate means town/village starts/ends. We just added town symbol for clarification.
White background town name only signs are now only used to indicate administrative border withing built up area, marking the end of one town, and start of the other, but this is now valid only from most recent rules update, it will be applied only in new projects probably.
Before 2022, town symbol was used even marking administrative border of town within built up area. It created weird situation when town ends and begin at the same time according to traffic rule. It didn't created chaos, but it looked interesting.

Examples:









Latvia and Estonia chose Polish format where town symbol and town name is indicated on separate signs. I think Finland is also like that, but Sweden and rest of Nordic countries use Lithuanian and Belarussian format


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> If I recall correctly, I was in the kindergarten back then... Learned that just from the news or something like that. And from a "special edition" of the morning kids' show on TV where they showed the whole event using toy bricks.


I was too young to remember exact day. I remember the aftermath. Watching TV where those towers were showed for days if not months on International news channels and beyond.
People younger than me can't even recall anything more directly from 9/11.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> Poland uses green sign, but it's like administrative border of a town/village?


Yes. And it's in line with the general European/Vienna Convention rules. Dark background (green), bright letters (white) = no built-up area.

By the way, it isn't actually placed at the administrative border. For administrative borders are those little blue signs, you've probably also noticed. Villages in Poland do not have administrative borders at all. By Polish law, those green signs should be placed right before the first buildings of the indicated town or village. Which doesn't have to equal built-up area – for example if it's just a single house and then long nothing (thank the broken Polish urban "planning"...), or if those are industrial buildings.



PovilD said:


> There is seperate town sign


Yes.



PovilD said:


> and also town name sign on white background


No. There used to be such signage in the past. By current law it's meaningless. Which is against the Vienna convention, but officially there just shouldn't be such signs any more in Poland. In practice they can sometimes be found, mostly on some local, municipal roads. But they are very rare. And, as I said, illegal.

Although – there can be a town district/borough name with blue letters on white background. It exists in the Polish law, and kinda breaks the Vienna convention, same as the examples from Serbia I posted. Though it's rarely used.


----------



## radamfi

The signs for entering an urban area are quite diverse in colour and design in Europe. Sometimes they are accompanied by the 50 speed limit sign, like in Switzerland. In other countries, there is no speed limit sign. Just the built up area sign.

The UK doesn't have a built up area sign. Sometimes there is an informal sign, telling you what village or town you are entering, but that doesn't affect the speed limit. The sign (if there is one) may be at the municipality boundary or at the start of the urban area. A lot of the time, there is just a 30 mph speed limit sign with no information on which town you are entering.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of British people get caught speeding in countries where the built up area sign doesn't have an accompanying speed limit sign (for example France or the Netherlands).


----------



## Kpc21

UK has very eccentric regulations on built-up areas. If I recall correctly, a piece of road is considered a built-up area, if it's equipped with a specified number of street lights per section length, or something like that...

Poland used to have a similar regulation in the past, but based on the number of buildings.


----------



## geogregor

tfd543 said:


> In smth like 30’ish min, Logan airport Will have moment of silence for the 9/11 event. Where were you when it happened and How did you get it to know ?
> 
> I was at school and it actually took almost 1 hour after the first hit before we were informed by our teacher.


I was on a campground in Texas. 4 days earlier we finished our 3 month summer job in the Disney World in Orlando and started our cross country road trip. I went to pay in the morning and saw attendants watching TV scree intensly with the plane hitting the tower. For a moment I thought they were watching some B class move on VHS (they were renting tapes to RV folks). Then I looked at their faces... And they confirmed it wasn't a movie.

We had decission to make. What should we do. And we decided to continue our trip. Flights were suspended anyway and we paid for the car already. Next day in El Paso we saw snipers on the roofs. Then endless flags hanging from the overpasses, strict control when crossing Hover Dam, weird Vegas experience when all the screens were showing flags ang "God bless Anerica". It was weird trip.


----------



## Kpc21

The "mainland" UK's regulations still seem to be quite consistent compared to Northern Ireland's...









Seemingly, you are supposed to guess, whether the location where you are is a built-up area or not.

Actually, in Poland we also have a similarly weird case in the traffic regulations, where the driver is practically supposed to guess things.

A road intersection is defined as a connection of roads other than a connection of a paved road with an unpaved road, or a public road with a private (internal) road.

If you enter a road somewhere else than at an intersection, it's considered "joining the traffic", which basically means that you are absolutely last regarding the right of way; you must give way to everyone else.

But how do you know if the road which connects with the road on which you are driving is public or private?

Our Road Traffic Law defines a public and a private (internal) road by reference to the Public Roads Act. The Public Roads Act defines a public road as a road assigned to one of the property categories (like a national road, a regional road, a county road, a municipal road) by respective local authority by means of appropriate local legal acts.

So you practically can't know if the road you see is public or private. There exists a sign to indicate that the road is a private (internal) road:










or a private road on which national traffic rules apply:










But it doesn't have to be there for the road to be an internal road.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> UK has very eccentric regulations on built-up areas. If I recall correctly, a piece of road is considered a built-up area, if it's equipped with a specified number of street lights per section length, or something like that...


I've never seen an urban area where there is no 30 (or maybe 20) mph sign at the start. The existence of street lights in practice means they don't need to put additional signs. In a village with no street lighting, they have to put 30 mph signs every so often, in the same way as non-standard limits (20/40/50).


----------



## tfd543

geogregor said:


> I was on a campground in Texas. 4 days earlier we finished our 3 month summer job in the Disney World in Orlando and started our cross country road trip. I went to pay in the morning and saw attendants watching TV scree intensly with the plane hitting the tower. For a moment I thought they were watching some B class move on VHS (they were renting tapes to RV folks). Then I looked at their faces... And they confirmed it wasn't a movie.
> 
> We had decission to make. What should we do. And we decided to continue our trip. Flights were suspended anyway and we paid for the car already. Next day in El Paso we saw snipers on the roofs. Then endless flags hanging from the overpasses, strict control when crossing Hover Dam, weird Vegas experience when all the screens were showing flags ang "God bless Anerica". It was weird trip.


What about airport Security when you travelled out of the country? How was that different compared to the inbound flight ?


----------



## x-type

Attus said:


> Yes and no.
> Yes: The war in Ukraine is much closer to us, not only geographically.
> No: This war was more ore less expected. 9/11 was a schock, something that was beyond _every _imagination.


It was not that much a shock (nevertheless it was also expected, just as you say for Ukraine), but it was made in spectacular way.


----------



## Slagathor

x-type said:


> However, I still remember that, for isntance, earthquake of L'Aquilla in 2009 I followed at TV news because broadband internet became to be widespread around 2010.





Kpc21 said:


> Indeed they were becoming popular, but rather among quite a narrow range of society... at least in Poland; probably it was completely different in the US. Up to some mid-2000s Internet over here was still rather considered a nerdy toy.
> 
> When I ask people, most of them, even if they had a PC, didn't even have Internet access before somewhere around 2005.
> 
> But until some mid-2010 it was still so that e.g. many businesses didn't have any Internet existence.


That's... very different.  We got ADSL broadband internet at home in 2002.


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland first ADSL services started in 2001. In 2003 it had just 50 thousand subscribers in whole Poland (40 million people population – that means less than 1% of the population had ADSL Internet access).

According to Wikipedia, from June 2004 they started a cheaper option, 128 kb/s with a 5 GB data cap at the price 59 PLN/month. And it's then when ADSL service got popular. Earlier it was just too expensive.

And... practically all the time since then, ~50 PLN/month (some 10 euro, back then probably more like some 12 euro) has been the standard price for the most basic broadband internet access option, according to the current progress of development. At the moment I'm paying exactly 49.90 PLN subscription + 10 PLN maintenance fee for 100 Mb/s fiberoptic internet.

Yet a big breakthrough was in 2007 when the government forced the main telecom operator TP to open their lines to other Internet providers. Which opened actual market competition; it was then that TP scrapped the data caps, and also decreased the prices yet more.


----------



## AnelZ

I got my first internet connection at home mid 2007. It was cable broadband internet as my aunt needed it for her job. It had some performance issue but was OK for everyday casual usage. With each year it became more stable.

I remember when I started high school in September of 2007 that out of 23 other students in my class just 4-5 didn't had internet at home. Widespread usage of internet by all age-groups over here started when smartphones became the standard phone you owned which would be around 2015-16. I got my first smartphone in early 2014 at the "ripe" age of 21.


----------



## Stuu

tfd543 said:


> Quite crazy to get to know it in a plane.
> 
> In the end of the day, i think they could have attacked the 2nd plane as they had 15 min to send up some military aircrafts or at least to evacuate the South tower earlier and faster.
> 
> Anyhow, this is just speculation.


They couldn't. Before the second plane hit, the assumption was the first one was an accident, so there was no apparent threat to the south tower

The complete lack of any plan for air defence meant the first fighters which were scrambled were unarmed, and they would only have been able to ram into any hijacked plane they found. By the time the air force was in a position to respond all the planes were down


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> That's... very different.  We got ADSL broadband internet at home in 2002.


The quick rollout of ADSL and cable internet in the Netherlands in the early 2000s meant that fiber optic had to take the back burner for about 2 decades. 

ISPs managed to expand the capacity of DSL / cable so there wasn't a huge need or leap to fiber optic for regular household usage. They wanted to cash in on the low maintenance existing networks instead of spending billions on laying new fiber optic cable to every house. Something that finally got more traction in recent years. 

I recently upgraded to fiber optic internet. Quite frankly, I do not notice any difference with my previous DSL and cable subscriptions.


----------



## volodaaaa

AnelZ said:


> I got my first internet connection at home mid 2007. It was cable broadband internet as my aunt needed it for her job. It has some performance issue but was OK for everyday casual usage. With each year it became more stable.
> 
> I remember when I started high school in September of 2007 that out of 23 other students in my class just 4-5 didn't had internet at home. Widespread usage of internet by all age-groups over here started when smartphones became the standard phone you owned which would be around 2015-16. I got my first smartphone in early 2014 at the "ripe" age of 21.


I got my first internet on the 4th of December 2002. It was a dial-up connection, and I could connect from 18.00 to 6.00 except for holidays and weekends when it was all day. The internet ran over the landline, so once someone called us (especially grandma ), the internet was down. The speed was horrible. I remember I wanted to download a game (Settlers 2) that had 13 MB. It took me a whole Saturday, and I had to call all my family not to call our landline 

In 2004 I got my first ADSL connection, which was better and better. A dawn of a age of multiplayer games 

As for the other generations, my mom worked for Slovak Telecom and its predecessors from graduation to her pension. She was responsible for the IT sector (in the 1990s), so my parents were perfectly internet and computer literate. My grandma received a tablet with the internet as a gift for her 80th birthday - now she can't imagine life without the internet. However, when I enrolled at the University in 2006, there were six internet rooms. When I finished my post-gradual study in 2015, all of them had already been abolished and replaced by other lecture rooms or cafés.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> I recently upgraded to fiber optic internet. Quite frankly, I do not notice any difference with my previous DSL and cable subscriptions.


Because in DSL the main factor that influenced the maximum possible speed was the distance from the central office (and the DSLAM equipment).

The fiber-comparable speeds are available when the ADSL line operates in the VDSL mode. But it's limited to something like a few hundred m from DSLAM.

There was time when telco operators were installing external DSLAM's in closets installed in local neighborhoods, far away from the central office, to make VDSL possible. They had to lead a fiber to there, so it isn't at all so that the telco operator didn't have to invest in lying new cables.

But it anyway only made sense in quite densely populated ares.


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> I recently upgraded to fiber optic internet. Quite frankly, I do not notice any difference with my previous DSL and cable subscriptions.


I recently got fibre into my house, the real benefit is the upload speed is so much faster. Working from home on big files is barely any slower than being in the office. I wouldn't have said that when I had ADSL


----------



## volodaaaa

The real asset of fibre is a flawless stream (e.g. Netflix, HBO Max, etc.).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

My ADSL upload speed was 30 mbit/s (100 down) and the 'ping' was like 10 ms. 

Of course, these figures are pretty different in rural areas or places far from hubs. 

My new upload speed is 100 mbit/s. The only difference is that uploading a 5 GB video to YouTube is faster, but this is a background operation, so it doesn't really make much of a difference in practice.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> My ADSL upload speed was 30 mbit/s (100 down) and the 'ping' was like 10 ms.


100 Mb/s was pretty uncommon in ADSL, you probably lived close to the central office.

For you switching to fiber didn't change much. But for many people did.

I had only some 7 Mb/s upload on ADSL, and some 40 ms of ping.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> My ADSL upload speed was 30 mbit/s (100 down) and the 'ping' was like 10 ms.


I didn't think such speeds were possible under ADSL. I'm on VDSL2 (fibre to the cabinet) and even that only advertises a speed of 58-73 Mb download, 17-18 Mb upload. The cabinet is right across the road from me so I get more or less the maximum speed possible). If you have a direct fibre connection into the home then you can get much faster speeds than 100 Mb. That isn't available in my area yet.


----------



## MattiG

radamfi said:


> I didn't think such speeds were possible under ADSL. I'm on VDSL2 (fibre to the cabinet) and even that only advertises a speed of 58-73 Mb download, 17-18 Mb upload. The cabinet is right across the road from me so I get more or less the maximum speed possible). If you have a direct fibre connection into the home then you can get much faster speeds than 100 Mb. That isn't available in my area yet.


The maximum downlink bandwidth of ADSL2+ is 24 Mbits/s. This is achievable at distances less than half a kilometer from the access point. VDSL2+ supports 100 Mbit/s in good conditions. The G.fast protocol can make 900-1000 Mbit/s in very short distances. I believe that G.fast implementations are rare, especially if FTTH (Fiber to the Home) is available.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't know the technical specifications of my previous ADSL internet connection. It was always branded as ADSL, but it may have been DSL or VDSL. It was advertised as 100 mbit down and I always got around 100 mbit when I did a speed test. The Netherlands probably has a high density of neighborhood level hubs so most urban A/V/DSL subscribers are not more than 1 kilometer from it.

It was a connection with a phone plug like this:









My cable internet was a different plug:









Right now I have a fiber optic connection (Huawei unfortunately). The fiber optic cable feeds directly into that.


----------



## Suburbanist

My family were early adopters of Internet access while I was still living in Brazil in the late 1990s. Our first access was through dial-up modems. I remember that, in the first month, I spent a lot of money connecting too much (chargers were a combination of fixed fees + telephone usage fees + server connection fees). My parents were not the happiest. An indirect consequence is that I started to sleep much later, because there was a flat telephone fee per call/connection if you did it weekdays after midnights, Saturdays after 14.00 or Sundays whole day. Needless to say how important this schedule became such that I remember them without a flinch 20+ years later. The phone fees were the same as for a voice call, i.e., expensive in late-1990s Brazil.

ADSL came later, at first it was a great but not massive improvement, as the copper wires had a long distance to neighborhood boxes, but it no longer competed with the regular landlines. Early ADSL made it possible to watch grainy small videos and play some turns-based video-games, and download more stuff on DownloadManager. ADSL in Brazil used the telephone network, not the cable TV network (which even at its peak had meager coverage). In between phone modem and ADSL, there was a brief period where internet companies exploited a legal loophole whereby you could "call for free" to their numbers and not pay the phone fees.

I remember some relatives being quite skeptical of my parents becoming early adopters of Internet Banking, thinking it was too dangerous or that some virus could just change names on the owner of the accounts. Then there were the shockingly insecure early school IT systems that allowed people to see everybody's grades just changing the last digits of the URL to match sequential student numbers.

We were also very early adopters of online commerce for books, as in having a sequential client number smaller than 200 for the then-largest book online Brazilian retailer. They were awash in new venture capital cash and basically just sent books without any delivery fees, nicely packaged.


----------



## x-type

Adopting ADSL was huge improvement to me. Dial up was real pain in the ass. Just like you, I was connecting mostly during the night because of cheaper tarifs, and because of incoming calls during the day, just as volodaaa described. The only difference from volodaaas explanation was the speed - I remember that i was using Limewire to download musicAverage song was some 5MB, and it took cca 15 minutes to download it. I didn't have that double line option because i was spending too much in this way as well. 
I don't remember exactly the year when I got ADSL. I know that it was coming in 2004 or 2005, but I also remember that my neighbourhood got it very late. I was waiting about 2 years to become available after the first users in the city got it. The speeds were incredible, so fluent (I think that the speed was about 7-8mbit/s). The songs were downloaded within 1-2 minutes, what was incredible


----------



## radamfi

I remember vividly visiting my friend at university. I had already finished but he still had another year because he did an industrial placement. He said, "Have you heard of the World Wide Web?" and then we went to the computer room where he showed me what it was. It was incredible and I had to have it at home. It was a similar feeling to seeing Teletext for the first time about 10 years earlier. The internet providers back then would only accept a Visa or Mastercard so getting an ISP was the reason why I got my first credit card. I've still got my first email as a paying customer, on 7 November, 1995, welcoming me as a subscriber. 

Yes, there were per minute phone charges as well, so most surfing was done in the evening when it was cheaper. I used Usenet newsgroups a lot back then, partly because you could download all the messages quickly and so avoid tying up the phone line and incurring phone charges. I had already discovered Usenet at university before the WWW. So I would read those during the day when surfing was expensive. Eventually a "free ISP" came along in 1998, called Freeserve. Although you still had to pay phone charges, this was a big deal and a lot of people got on the internet for the first time as a result. 

I got ADSL in 2002. It started at only 512 kbit/s, but that seemed lighting fast compared to a 56 kbit/s modem. It came with a USB modem in a funny shape.















__





Alcatel 'Stingray' ADSL Speed Touch USB Modem - Peripheral - Computing History


One of the first ADSL modems to be released in the UK by Alcatel.One of the first ADSL modems to be released in the UK by Alcatel. It was provided to early home broadband customers by BT in the ear...



www.computinghistory.org.uk


----------



## The Wild Boy

ChrisZwolle said:


> My ADSL upload speed was 30 mbit/s (100 down) and the 'ping' was like 10 ms.
> 
> Of course, these figures are pretty different in rural areas or places far from hubs.
> 
> My new upload speed is 100 mbit/s. The only difference is that uploading a 5 GB video to YouTube is faster, but this is a background operation, so it doesn't really make much of a difference in practice.


Mine was 10U/1D, mainly because ADSL in my country had to rely on a lot of old Yugoslav phone wires, and it was slow.

Only in 2016 did they dug up the street and install fiber optic in my previous apartment. It was a game changer. I'm now on 50/50 Mbps and it's enough for my activities and what i do. I don't stream a lot of movies either, but some people manage to use 1TB of data monthly, while i barely use 700GB monthly.

Only from like 2017 did most of ISP's began offering V-DSL, however only for those who live within a kilometer away from the carrier's datacenters, where they can boost the signal and achieve speeds of up at most 30Mbps.

It seems like in many cases LTE, wireless internet is becoming more popular, especially those who have villas, certain areas say for example mountains where families visit them on certain occasions, or in villages, because it's much better that way, as you can get higher speeds than having to rely on phone wires in villages which are really bad, and that results with slow speeds.

Starlink also seems to be getting quite popular globally, but it's still quite expensive for the Balkan standards. They'd have to drop the price by a lot to make it competitive here, otherwise they won't see much of a use here, but still regardless it's a nice and welcomed concept.

Edit: My first internet connection was in 2008. I even remember the first computer, which was really slow.

I actually had a Romanian neighbor from whom i shared the internet connection for some time, it was quite common in my country to share coaxial cables for TV, or internet. I eventually got a proper internet connection in 2013, when i took full advantage of the internet connection. And here we are now, with fiber optics that just has unmatchable speeds, great stability, low ping, and less issues.


----------



## radamfi

The Wild Boy said:


> Starlink also seems to be getting quite popular globally, but it's still quite expensive for the Balkan standards. They'd have to drop the price by a lot to make it competitive here, otherwise they won't see much of a use here, but still regardless it's a nice and welcomed concept.


It's very expensive even for western standards. I didn't realise you can order it already, but £75 per month plus £460 for hardware is prohibitively expensive for almost everyone. At those prices, only people in very rural areas who can't get Fibre broadband will be interested in that.


----------



## The Wild Boy

radamfi said:


> It's very expensive even for western standards. I didn't realise you can order it already, but £75 per month plus £460 for hardware is prohibitively expensive for almost everyone. At those prices, only people in very rural areas who can't get Fibre broadband will be interested in that.


Yup. The best thing with Starlink is that finally rural areas can get great internet. And not all rural areas can get better ADSL, Coaxial connection, even fiber optic, so it just makes sense that wireless / satellite internet would be more attractive to people living in / visiting such areas.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> I got ADSL in 2002. It started at only 512 kbit/s, but that seemed lighting fast compared to a 56 kbit/s modem. It came with a USB modem in a funny shape.


We had two big models, from Sagem and from Thomson

















When I looked at the one posted by you, I thought it's a mouse xD

Actually, personally back then I had Internet from a wireless ISP, I had an antenna on the roof. In practice, the owner of the company was sharing a professional ADSL link between his customers  The problem was that while initially this service worked quite well, with time it started losing connection more and more often, and finally the Internet was practically unusable.

So at one moment we switched to ADSL, it was already after the 2007 liberalization, so we could choose an alternative provider instead of the Polish Telecom. Because of some problems with actually getting connected, we ended up with an offer of Orange, which back then was a separate company (later they merged) – though fully owned by the Polish Telecom... But their Internet was cheaper than from Polish Telecom directly.

Those were already the wireless routers times, though Orange was just giving away those USB modems at 1 PLN price (I still have two of those even though I've practically never used them):










It's ZTE ZXDSL 852 – the Chinese already started taking over those markets. Anyway, they were already the leader on the market of cellular modems for a few years, if you were getting GSM internet with a modem, the modem was practically always from Huawei.

Initially it was with 1 Mb/s downlink; can't recall the uplink. Some 2 or 3 years later our contract expired but they offered us the 2 Mb/s speed at the same price, so we went for it. Next 2-3 years later we got 6 Mb/s in the same way. Finally – we got a slightly lower price and got theoretically upgraded to 10 Mb/s, though the technical capacities of our phone line didn't really allow for that, so it was still some 6, maybe 7 Mb/s of upload. And at that moment we got switched from Orange to Polish Telecom, because Polish Telecom practically took over the Orange brand (previously it belonged to their cell phone subsidiary).


----------



## AnelZ

I remember the speed in 2007 for the cable broadband that I had was less then 8 Mbit for the package that I used. I think it was like 2 down/0,5 up or 4/0,5. I remember that it was low because over the next year the speed was increased to 8/1 Mbit i.e. you could in best case achieve 1 MB per second of download speed which then was huge for me. On top of that, the monthly data you could consume was caped at like 30 GB in 2007 but was changed to flat in sometimes 2009 as far as I remember. The monthly cost for internet was around 18€ in 2007 + 6€ for cable connection to you home.

Nowadays I pay 42 € for the "strongest" package at my provider which gets me internet (500/30)+digital TV with additional packages+landline (no charge for calls on other landlines within BiH, 100 minutes to landlines outside of BiH and 60 minutes for mobile networks within BiH). For an additional payment of 41€ per month you can get speeds of 1000/50 Mbit.


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## radamfi

I just watched a few unboxing videos for Starlink, by users in the US and UK. I must admit, the way the dish automatically finds the satellites itself is pretty cool. The download speed shown on speed tests in those videos was 200-300 Mbit/s but the upload appears to be 10-20 Mbit/s. For work, a bit faster would be nicer.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> I got ADSL in 2002. It started at only 512 kbit/s, but that seemed lighting fast compared to a 56 kbit/s modem. It came with a USB modem in a funny shape.


I think it must have been 2002 I got ADSL, it was definitely a 512 k/s connection, with (I think) a 1gb per *month* limit


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> My ADSL upload speed was 30 mbit/s (100 down) and the 'ping' was like 10 ms.
> 
> Of course, these figures are pretty different in rural areas or places far from hubs.
> 
> My new upload speed is 100 mbit/s. The only difference is that uploading a 5 GB video to YouTube is faster, but this is a background operation, so it doesn't really make much of a difference in practice.


That's very good, with ADSL I got about 20 down/5-6 up, despite being 100m from the town's main telephone exchange. They installed fibre to the street cabinet, and then it changed to 65 down/15 up. Now with fibre into my home, I have 150 down/35 up, and consistently without any interruptions


----------



## ChrisZwolle

https://eurasianet.org/kazakhstan-capital-reverts-to-astana-ending-brief-stint-as-nur-sultan



The Kazakh capital city name of Nur-Sultan will be reverted back to Astana again.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> https://eurasianet.org/kazakhstan-capital-reverts-to-astana-ending-brief-stint-as-nur-sultan
> 
> 
> 
> The Kazakh capital city name of Nur-Sultan will be reverted back to Astana again.


----------



## Kpc21

It is expected that this winter Poland can run out of salt for deicing roads...

Interesting regarding that – similarly like it is with coal – we are mining our own salt...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Kpc21 said:


> It is expected that this winter Poland can run out of salt for deicing roads...
> 
> Interesting regarding that – similarly like it is with coal – we are mining our own salt...


I visited the Wieliczka salt mine around 20 years ago. It was quite cool.


----------



## tfd543

Slagathor said:


> These days those phones are mostly there to allow you to call reception, surely. The second they manage to build an app where you can request more towels or order room service, they'll be gone.


That phone in the hotel room in Toronto saved my life some 3 months ago. I had never used the phone before either, but that night I was on hold for Air Canada customer support for 2 hours to get rebooked… luckily it was toll-free.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> I've never used a hotel phone to make a chargeable call, because of the cost.


I stayed at a Staycity hotel in Greenwich a few years ago which had a mobile phone in the room that was free to use for anything and free to take around with you including calls and data. I didn't because I had my own, but I was pretty astounded that they offered that


----------



## radamfi

Starlink is widely available in Europe, shown in light blue on the map. It is not currently available in the places in dark blue, but coverage is planned in the future. This includes most of Norway, most of Sweden, the extreme far north of Scotland (Shetland Islands) and all of Finland and Iceland, presumably because of physical location. That is, they are too far north to pick up the satellites at the moment. But most of the Balkans can't get it yet either, even though they are surrounded by EU countries with coverage, so they obviously have a way of blocking coverage based on your location. What is stopping them serving those countries? Taking an existing working system to those unserved Balkan areas presumably won't work. Ukraine famously acquired coverage to assist in the war.


----------



## bogdymol

Stuu said:


> I stayed at a Staycity hotel in Greenwich a few years ago which had a mobile phone in the room that was free to use for anything and free to take around with you including calls and data. I didn't because I had my own, but I was pretty astounded that they offered that


I had that at the hotel I stayied in Hong Kong. Was really useful, as roaming was insanely expensive and we did not have to bother with purchasing a local SIM card.


----------



## radamfi

Some bus companies in the UK painted buses to celebrate the Queen's Jubilees, in 1977 for 25 years, 2002 for 50 years, 2012 for 60 years and earlier this year for 70 years. For example


__
https://flic.kr/p/2nGwyY9

which even had its registration changed to ER70 LXX (ER = Elizabeth Rex). This bus has now been hastily changed back into normal colours, with the registration reverting back to normal.


__
https://flic.kr/p/2nMjACp


----------



## DanielFigFoz

Stuu said:


> The queue for the lying in state is dominating the media everywhere, even though at most 1.5% of the population will have been there. The other 98% of the population gets ignored.
> 
> ITV and Sky are showing the funeral on *all* their channels. Meanwhile millions of self employed and low paid workers will be losing a day's pay at a point where they can barely afford it


It's the most important event the world will ever see don't you know.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1571438488020549632


----------



## AnelZ

radamfi said:


> But most of the Balkans can't get it yet either, even though they are surrounded by EU countries with coverage, so they obviously have a way of blocking coverage based on your location. What is stopping them serving those countries? Taking an existing working system to those unserved Balkans areas presumably won't work. Ukraine famously acquired coverage to assist in the war.
> 
> View attachment 3842819


My guess is probably some legal matter and taxes.


----------



## Stuu

DanielFigFoz said:


> It's the most important event the world will ever see don't you know.
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1571438488020549632


Yes I saw that. That's a perfect representation of the loss of perspective, no one even tried to challenge him. You would think the Bishop on the panel might have thought the birth of Jesus was a teensy bit more important


----------



## geogregor

Stuu said:


> It's a bit strange. I get that the vast majority of the population is at least respectful and aware of the historical importance etc. It does feel like the media and businesses have gone way beyond the majority of the population though, I have seen barely any evidence of people being particularly upset. I haven't seen a single photo in a house window, or any of the books of condolence that were in every major store after Diana died.
> 
> The queue for the lying in state is dominating the media everywhere, even though at most 1.5% of the population will have been there. The other 98% of the population gets ignored.
> 
> ITV and Sky are showing the funeral on *all* their channels. Meanwhile millions of self employed and low paid workers will be losing a day's pay at a point where they can barely afford it


It is beyond ludicrous. I'm so glad to be on holiday out of the UK...

Still, Dresden:










Bookshop in Leipzig:


----------



## volodaaaa

Well her symbolic role was huge, indeed. But come on, she was 96 years old. People die at that age. Most people do not even make it to that age. 

I sense all the irrationality behind it because loads of people see a change on the British throne for the first and maybe last time. But it does not make it historic in the long term.


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> It is beyond ludicrous. I'm so glad to be on holiday out of the UK...
> 
> Still, Dresden:
> 
> View attachment 3848588
> 
> 
> Bookshop in Leipzig:
> 
> View attachment 3848596


Lucky you

The thing is I have hardly seen any personal tributes like that here. The big chains have all got over-sincere posters or whatever, but that's all there is. No photos in people's windows, barely any displays in independent shops. There seems to be a massive disconnection between what the media and big companies are doing and how most people feel. 

Of course a majority are respectful, and I expect the funeral will have had a huge audience, but there doesn't seem to be much actual mourning happening. I just walked through the town centre, and everything is closed, except the pubs. Somehow it's disrespectful to need to buy food but getting hammered is fine


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> Well her symbolic role was huge, indeed. But come on, she was 96 years old. People die at that age. Most people do not even make it to that age.
> 
> I sense all the irrationality behind it because loads of people see a change on the British throne for the first and maybe last time. But it does not make it historic in the long term.


People are not always rational but driven by emotions and traditions, too. A funeral of a monarch ruled for 70 years is not about an old lady passing away but it marks an end of an era. Of course, it is a major event. It is a political demonstation, too, because every country head was not invited.

I happened to be in Vienna in 1989 when the funeral of Zita of Bourbon-Parma, the last empress of Austria and the last queen of Hungary, took place. The three-hour long cortege was a very emotional event to me, even if I have absolutely no connection with the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I felt the event being a major step to forgiveness in Europe and seeing the pre-WW1 times as history, not a source of hate any more.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I drove 12,000 kilometers this year for vacation trips;


2,000 kilometers on a trip through Germany/France/Belgium in April
5,700 kilometers on a trip through 9 countries in Central Europe in June
4,300 kilometers on a trip through France in September

Many people thought I had spend a fortune on fuel, as if I paid € 2.30 per liter everywhere. But the high fuel prices turned out to be not so bad. The most I paid was about € 2.10, but most of the fill-ups were under € 1.70 and sometimes near € 1.40 per liter. And my car gets about 18 km per liter or 5.4 L/ 100 km. So this total vacation mileage cost around € 1,200.


----------



## x-type

ChrisZwolle said:


> I drove 12,000 kilometers this year for vacation trips;
> 
> 
> 2,000 kilometers on a trip through Germany/France/Belgium in April
> 5,700 kilometers on a trip through 9 countries in Central Europe in June
> 4,300 kilometers on a trip through France in September
> 
> Many people thought I had spend a fortune on fuel, as if I paid € 2.30 per liter everywhere. But the high fuel prices turned out to be not so bad. The most I paid was about € 2.10, but most of the fill-ups were under € 1.70 and sometimes near € 1.40 per liter. And my car gets about 18 km per liter or 5.4 L/ 100 km. So this total vacation mileage cost around € 1,200.


How about tolls? Do you use toll roads in France? I made only one significant trip, 3000km long, and only tolls took 200€.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I paid for a couple of vignettes and some tolls in France, but nothing exorbitantly. I think the French tolls were under € 100.


----------



## x-type

That would say that you aused a lot of national roads in France, because north-south transversal in France costs 60-85€, depending of the route.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've traveled on toll roads from Lille to Cosne-sur-Loire, via A1-A6-A77. I also used a brief tolled segment of A71 and A89. It was € 39,90 in total. 

I traveled the former national road RN 9 from Clermont-Ferrand to Béziers, so I did not pay any tolls there. 

On the way back, I entered the toll road at Genève and drove via Mâcon - Beaune - Strasbourg to Sarreguemines. That was € 57,40 in total.


----------



## AnelZ

Today is the third day in row the temperature during the night and early morning in Sarajevo is around 2-4°C with the daily high also being just around 15°C. It isn't expected to get any warmer before Saturday or Sunday. People also started to heat their homes who can do it individually as district heating is still not running.


----------



## volodaaaa

AnelZ said:


> Today is the third day in row the temperature during the night and early morning in Sarajevo is around 2-4°C with the daily high also being just around 15°C. It isn't expected to get any warmer before Saturday or Sunday. People also started to heat their homes who can do it individually as district heating is still not running.


What are the rules of district heating in Sarajevo? I have my boiler, whose start depends on the function of internal and external temperature. But my parents are connected to the district heating, and the rule is quite simple: if there is no external temperature in their location above 13°C for two consecutive days, the district heating cuts in. The same goes the opposite way as well, and if there are two straight days with a temperature above 13°C, the heating turns off. 

Sometimes it does not feel comfy during the early spring or late autumn because the temperatures are around 14°C, which is cold, but the primary condition is not met. If there is too cold in their flat, they use an air-conditioner to warm their flat a little bit.


----------



## AnelZ

The official heating season starts on 15th October, except if two consecutive days the temperature is below 12°C. The thing is, that the facilities and installations for central heating had deadline until 20th September to make sure they are technically sound so it was doubtful they would have started them before that date. Understandable, as such low temperature in what is technically summer is very uncommon so they weren't ready.

They announced yesterday, 19.09.2022, following "If it is determined that after September 20, the average daily temperature of the outside air will be 12 degrees or lower, KJKP "Toplane - Sarajevo" will start supplying heat energy to the citizens of Sarajevo Canton.".


----------



## Attus

Stuu said:


> And of course the cost of keeping the prices down this winter will have to be paid back from taxation for the next decade and more.


Yes, it's the same everywhere, where tho government introduced such a capped price. But sometimes it's simply not avoidable, if household costs are so high that people can't pay them, that ruins the society.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I don't know about other countries, but in the Netherlands the government revenues are still pretty solid, as the general economy is still going strong, with very low unemployment and high tax revenues. So they have room to piss away a stack of billion euro bills on price caps.

However, the outlook may not be as rosy, as more and more industries may be shutting down production due to high energy costs.

I've read a story recently that AdBlue production has ceased due to the high natural gas prices and there is a shortage looming. AdBlue is essential to remove NOx from diesel exhaust and most AdBlue vehicles cannot start without it.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

54°26′S 3°24′E said:


> I do not know about UK, but in Norway funerals indeed used to be wet, with the level of alcohol consumption rivaling that of weddings. Shame on you if you did not want to drink in honor of the deceased!
> 
> Although "grave beer" is still a term in Norwegian, contemporary funerals sadly normally are very sober affairs.


Not sure how it is elsewhere but in Estonia there's usually the more official part of the funeral with the coffin, eulogy etc. Usually anybody can come there who knew the deceased. After that there is a more informal event with family and close friends where food is served (traditionally a soup and a meat pie). At this even alcohol is usually served as well, although in limited quantities, just to have a shot of vodka or two (or some other strong alcohol). Getting drunk is definitely frowned upon.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Slagathor said:


> Right now owning an electric car only makes sense if you've got a ton of solar panels on your roof.


Well, there are some charging poles still living in 2021...


----------



## Coccodrillo

bogdymol said:


> Few weeks ago I got a letter from my electricity supplier that the price will increase to 0.29 €/kWh. This is below the average price in Austria and considerably lower than the prices you guys mention.


My price is around 0.213 CHF/kWh, or 0.22 EUR, for the part of the bill proportional to the consumption. Including other fees and taxes (unrelated to consumption), my last bill was around 0.25 per kWh, or 0.26 in euro.

In 2023 it will rise from 0.213 to 0.264 CHF/kWh, or 0.28 EUR/kWh. With other fees I expect a total of 0.33 or so. My usage is variable, but around1300 kWh every 3 months, so this might be an increase of 70+ CHF/EUR every bill.



Kpc21 said:


> BTW how are your countries divided between energy utility company?


In Switzerland small customers (households and small businesses) have no choice but to use the local company, which usually is owned by some public entity (municipal or cantonal). Big customers (100'000+ kWh per year) years ago had the opportunity to switch to a so-called "free market offers", which (at that time) were cheaper but with less constant prices than regional companies which offered fixed and regulated prices to households and small businesses.

Now the companies offering such "free market offers" have increased thes prices a lot. Their customers when signing these offers years ago were aware that their prices might increase more than the so-called "regulated offers", but still thought that this was a small risk, and it was worth taking it in exchange for lower prices which seemed forever. However, there was no guarantee for these low prices, and many customers discovered that the hard way, with 1500% increases. An industry using a free market offer went into the news because the utility company said that its electricity bill of 60.000 CHF (same in EUR) per year (on average) would jump to 800.000 CHF in 2023. I don't know how this can happen, maybe it's a way for the utility company to compensate for the customers which have a fixed price contract.

A note about billing systems. How electricity is billed varies a lot. At home the company sends me a bill every three months, including everything I had consumed during the previous three months, but asking nothing until the moment the bill arrives. In other municipalities you pay once a year a bill which include an estimation for the current year and the remainder of the previous year (which can be positive or negative). You have to pay whatever the company asks you (with maybe an exception if you can prove their estimation is totally wrong, like if you tell them you are going to move soon). A friend of mine had received a bill with the estimation for his usual 12 month consumption (around 1000 CHF/EUR) but decided to move just after having paid it, so he received back 800 CHF or so.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> AdBlue is essential to remove NOx from diesel exhaust and most AdBlue vehicles cannot start without it.


Though it's an artificial lock which can be quite easily removed... Of course it's illegal but when someone is desperate, has no other way to use the car and transport goods, he will not care if something is legal or not.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Energy pricese go up significantly in the Netherlands by 1 October. It turns out that my Essent rates are actually among the lowest despite the 50%+ raise. Essent is a subsidiary of E.ON.

€ 1 per kWh electricity has now arrived.










Natural gas prices reach € 2 per m³, some even go up to € 3.50 per m³.


----------



## Slagathor

"Budget Energie" being the 2nd most expensive one is pretty ironic...


----------



## Kpc21

In Poland there is a huge disproportion between the electricity prices for private customers and for businesses.

For private customers it's some 0.70 zł / kWh (0.15 euro). And if I recall correctly, this is even including the distribution costs.
For businesses it's some 2 zł / kWh (0.40 euro).

But as the government has recently announced, this low price for private customers is supposed to be maintained up to the limit of 2000 kWh consumption per year. Which is very little, e.g. my house consumes some 6000-7000 kWh per year.

What will be the price above that limit, it's not known yet, but there are speculations that people may be charged the prices like for businesses.

It's also not yet known what if someone has photovoltaics – if the total energy consumption will be taken into account, or only the difference between the total consumption and the production.

Our energy billing works in such a way that every half a year the utility company sends bills to pay for the following 6 months. They are based on the estimated consumption. The first bill also includes the difference between the actual consumption from the last 6 months and the previous estimate.

We got photovoltaics installed in spring and it started working on 27 May. Shortly before we also paid the energy bills for the next months. The result is that now we got an energy bill, on which we are overpaid, and we have basically nothing to pay 

Our system doesn't cover all 6000-7000 kWh we consume because there wasn't enough room on the roof. But we will see how it will work. Maybe we will add some extra panels on the ground in the garden. Although there is also not much room there...


----------



## AnelZ

Just took a look for gas price which I pay. Currently it sits at a total of 0,645 € for m3 including VAT. That price is until end of September. Still no news what will be the price starting from October aside of M. Dodik who said that the price will stay the same for whole BiH after his visit to Putin in Moscow couple of days ago.


----------



## radamfi

The Netherlands have finally dropped entry restrictions for unvaccinated visitors from outside the EU/Schengen. Until a few days ago, such unvaccinated visitors could only visit the Netherlands for a limited number of reasons, not including tourism. Spain is now the anomaly as they still want unvaccinated travellers from outside the EU/Schengen to take a test.


----------



## x-type

I have read recently an article that pandemy is still in force in Croatia. i had no idea about it. There was an article that 500.000 people use expired personal documents as it was permitted in pandemy, so there are worries when they start to change those documents for valid all at once. I am one of rare who didn't care about pandemic situation regarding the documents, and I have changed them in the middle of lockdown when they expired.
Also, I have just booked train to Germany and I see that FFP2 masks are required. I have booked sleeper car, so I'm wondering should I wear the mask while sleeping in the train


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> Also, I have just booked train to Germany and I see that FFP2 masks are required. I have booked sleeper car, so I'm wondering should I wear the mask while sleeping in the train


Germany, especially minister for health, Lauterbach, is crazy. Yes, FFP2 masks are required in any long distance (i.e. not regonal) trains. I have no idea about sleeper cars, though. And Germany will introduce new restrictions from Oct 1st, "regardless of the pandemic situation". 
I rode several IC/ICE trains recently, I did not see any passenger not wearing a mask.


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## Attus

So, about ICE trains. 

I made a new experiment, a new "adventure"  
Since flying became crazy, and I really don't enjoy driving several hours on motorways, I decided to travel from Western Germany to Hungary by train. There is a direct connection from Bonn to Vienna, in every 2 hours, what made my decision easier. The train is slower than flying, but not dramatically, travel time is more or less the same as by car, but it's much more relaxed. And it's currently the cheapest solution. 
I have never travelled so far by train before, but after one trip (I'm currently in Hungary) I think it's OK. Wearing a mask is obligatory in Germany, but not in Austria and Hungary. It is not very comfortable but bearable.


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## x-type

I like using the trains for short term journeys when I don't need to be too flexible. But I wouldn't call it cheap. 2 tickets cost me 100€ more than traveling by car on 700km journey (1400km for return). Ok, I have taken sleeper in departure, and 1st class in return, but anyway it is expensive. If I would have taken only seats in 2nd class in both directions, the cost would be approximately like car trip. Flying is similar.


----------



## Rebasepoiss

Attus said:


> Germany, especially minister for health, Lauterbach, is crazy. Yes, FFP2 masks are required in any long distance (i.e. not regonal) trains. I have no idea about sleeper cars, though. And Germany will introduce new restrictions from Oct 1st, "regardless of the pandemic situation".
> I rode several IC/ICE trains recently, I did not see any passenger not wearing a mask.


I think I haven't worn a mask since April.


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## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> The Netherlands have finally dropped entry restrictions for unvaccinated visitors from outside the EU/Schengen. Until a few days ago, such unvaccinated visitors could only visit the Netherlands for a limited number of reasons, not including tourism. Spain is now the anomaly as they still want unvaccinated travellers from outside the EU/Schengen to take a test.


Which is interesting. I don't know about other countries, but in Poland the Covid infections and deaths statistics are practically like they were a year ago... The media don't really talk about it, but the stats look bad.

Daily new infections:










The peak of the last week is some 7500. Last year it was so in late October.

Deaths:










The last week's peak is 25 deaths. Similar numbers were in late September a year ago.

Though at least they don't seem to grow rapidly.

Maybe the current variant is not that contagious.

I had Covid some 2 weeks ago, and it was like a common cold.


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## keber

Yesterday I arrived home from Berlin with train (also going there, but I started in Villach, not Slovenia because of insufficient connections). It takes approximately the same time as with the car, train ticket is much cheaper than driving with car (when you consider also parking, tolls and car wear for such distance). It is also much less tiring and you can have a beer or two during the journey. I also have a friend that travels monthly to Berlin and he stopped driving the car as it is too costly and too tiring (and airplanes too expensive and too unreliable)

On regional travel in Germany ordinary masks are enough. Most people use them on trains but not all, especially when there are groups in compartments. Depends also of train staff, some are very strict, others don't care at all. When we crossed bridge between Austria and Germany, most people took off masks immediately.
In Berlin FFP2 masks are obligatory in public transport (just in vehicles, not on stations) but maybe one quarter of passengers use them at most. About 10 percent don't use masks at all.


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## ChrisZwolle

Germany isn't exactly the most relaxing country to travel through... there is so much traffic and trucks, so much traffic congestion that is difficult to avoid. Construction zones every 20 kilometers, crashes with extremely long closures (today another 10 h closure on A1 near Hagen due to a rollover), generally unreliable travel times, etc. Average speed can be high, but is often quite disappointing, I've seen several travel reports this summer where people traveled long-distance and got like 70-80 km/h on average from Netherlands to Austria, due to construction and congestion.

I drove through Germany several times this year. A30-A2 has large swaths with speed limits, it isn't the 'racetrack to Poland' it used to be. I drove A7 from Kempten to Kassel, there were 22 construction zones. Right now both A45 and A61 are closed, which means A3 is quite vulnerable to incidents (there have been several disruptive this week). Hamburg is almost impossible to get through without running into major delays, even on Sundays...

20 years ago or so, traveling through all of Germany was exciting, now it became kind of a drag. Totally different from traveling through France or Spain. I drove 3,000 kilometers through France this year and I've seen only 2 German-style construction zones where they ripped out one half of the motorway. In Germany, you can see that within the first 60 kilometers...


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## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> I like using the trains for short term journeys when I don't need to be too flexible. But I wouldn't call it cheap. 2 tickets cost me 100€ more than traveling by car on 700km journey (1400km for return). Ok, I have taken sleeper in departure, and 1st class in return, but anyway it is expensive. If I had taken only seats in 2nd class in both directions, the cost would be approximately like a car trip. Flying is similar.


It depends on the number of your fellow passengers. All forms of public transport (including aircraft) are economical if you travel alone. But a car might be the cheapest option if you have fellow passengers.

Take my instance:

if I travel alone from Bratislava to Kosice (the second most populous city in Slovakia) by train, it adds up to 52 € for a round trip. Since the distance is roughly 500 km, it requires a full tank that currently costs approximately 120 €. In this case, the train is a much better option.
if I travel with my family for a holiday, let's say with my parents, there are 6 of us. The train is 4*52 + 2*0 (children are free of charge up to 6 years) = 208 €. But the car is still 120 € (ok, it might be a bit more, since the risen consumption, but not 208 €). And now imagine my kids were six years and older. I would save a lot.

In public transport (including aircraft), every passenger counts. But adding a passenger to your car does not double the consumption.


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## radamfi

Germany was in the news a few years ago because they reduced road maintenance as part of their obsession with austerity. Is that why they have so many roadworks now?

If you are carrying passengers with you, then that's a more efficient use of your car, and perhaps it is a good idea in the grand scheme of things to save the train capacity for solo travellers.

You would expect the cost of public transport to be more competitive with car travel in central/eastern Europe, but trains are typically slower. In some regions, for example the Balkans, long distance buses are faster than trains and have greater network coverage.


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## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> It depends on the number of your fellow passengers. All forms of public transport (including aircraft) are economical if you travel alone. But a car might be the cheapest option if you have fellow passengers.
> 
> Take my instance:
> 
> if I travel alone from Bratislava to Kosice (the second most populous city in Slovakia) by train, it adds up to 52 € for a round trip. Since the distance is roughly 500 km, it requires a full tank that currently costs approximately 120 €. In this case, the train is a much better option.
> if I travel with my family for a holiday, let's say with my parents, there are 6 of us. The train is 4*52 + 2*0 (children are free of charge up to 6 years) = 208 €. But the car is still 120 € (ok, it might be a bit more, since the risen consumption, but not 208 €). And now imagine my kids were six years and older. I would save a lot.
> 
> In public transport (including aircraft), every passenger counts. But adding a passenger to your car does not double the consumption.


I told you - 2 tickets. And the perfect formula is still valid: 2 persons in 2nd class seating train = car. Sleeper trains are convenient, but expensive.


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## Kpc21

x-type said:


> Sleeper trains are convenient, but expensive.


Not necessarily as expensive, if you compare the sleeper (couchette) surcharge with the price of a hostel place or a hotel room.


----------



## geogregor

Attus said:


> Germany, especially minister for health, Lauterbach, is crazy. Yes, FFP2 masks are required in any long distance (i.e. not regonal) trains. I have no idea about sleeper cars, though. And Germany will introduce new restrictions from Oct 1st, "regardless of the pandemic situation".
> I rode several IC/ICE trains recently, I did not see any passenger not wearing a mask.


I was travelling in Germany recently and I did see some passengers without the masks (small minority though).

But even if they had masks I would say minority used FFP2. I used my standard cloth mask and wasn't once told off by the conductor.

BTW, this is our route:


2022 journey by train by Geogregor*, on Flickr

It was part pf our 2-week holiday. Most of it on trains, the only exception was around my hometown as you can't reach it by train. I actually rented car for the first two days.

Boy, A1 south of Pyrzowice airport is really getting bad...


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## cinxxx

Attus said:


> Germany, especially minister for health, Lauterbach, is crazy. Yes, FFP2 masks are required in any long distance (i.e. not regonal) trains. I have no idea about sleeper cars, though. And Germany will introduce new restrictions from Oct 1st, "regardless of the pandemic situation".
> I rode several IC/ICE trains recently, I did not see any passenger not wearing a mask.


I crossed into Germany from Austria at Achenwald (road 181 in A) and right before the border there was a big sign writing CORONAVIRUS and many exclamation marks and another one to keep restrictions in mind.
This is so ridiculous and I've only seen such when crossing into Germany.

It was pitch black and I wasn't ready to take a photo of it.


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## ChrisZwolle

When I was in France earlier this month, the only masks I've seen were by German tourists. In a cable car and even in an underground parking garage. 

They seem to have been conditioned in a way that they feel uncomfortable without a mask? 

Covid hardly makes the news in the Netherlands, unless you really search for it. The media is more pre-occupied with politics, inflation, energy prices, the war in Ukraine, ultra-extreme-far-super-right Italian elections, etc.


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## Attus

I am actually sitting IN the train from Vienna to Bonn. In Austria approx. every second passengers wore a mask, I suppose most of them were Germans. Crossing the border at Passau everyone fetched the mask from the bag or the pocket. 
It must be a very intelligent virus, if it is dangerous in Germany but not in Austria.
Or do we have a not very intelligent minister?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I was just listening to a podcast (the benefits of working from home...) about geopolitics and one of the guests was from the Germany Institute in Frankfurt. He said that Germans are more impacted by disasters or big events than people in other countries. For example the U-turn on foreign policy with the invasion of Ukraine, the Fukushima disaster which led to the closure of all nuclear power plants and apparently also the coronavirus pandemic.


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## Suburbanist

A key issue with German politics is that there are these movements anti-something that do not have any alternative propositions.

The anti-nuclear movement got what it wanted, but then overlapping political groups also lobbied fiercely against wind farms, LNG terminals, solar farms and, crucially, new long-distance transmission lines. So they are against anything, and often say it is not the role of politicians elected on specific platforms to "defend something" to propose alternatives, and come with platitudes like circular economy etc.

It is always easier to rally people around a single cause than about systemic issues. Hopefully this changes a bit now.


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## cinxxx

We actually had Covid around 2 weeks ago.
For me it was like a summer flu, felt sick for around 3 days, had light fever 1 day. Throat ache and some muscle ache. After throat ache was gone, coughing and runny nose started. No change of smell or taste for me, and had regular apetite the whole time.
My wife had it worse, she mostly just slept for 3 days with fever around 39, threw up once, and couldn't see food, it made her sick. She is usually very sensitive when ill, like on a death bad, so nothing surprising there. Other symptoms were similar to mine, except that for her, coffee now tastes like shit, so she stopped drinking it.
After 1 week we were negative, so we went to Italy for 1 week (had vacation planned). She is still coughing a lot and is more tired than me, I guess it will take longer for her to recover.

Overall nothing spectacular that needs to change how we live and to restrict us.
(Btw I have chronic kidney insufficiency, so I should be on the risk list...)


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## x-type

Can somebody do something about this annoying add covering part of the posts? Chris?


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## bogdymol

I rented a car today in Barcelona, Spain. The car that I received is registered in Munich, Germany, and has German license plates.


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## Coccodrillo

So EU rules allows it. Usually it is a mess to drive in the state you are resident a vehicle registered elsewhere (for example, an Italian driving in Italy a carr egistered in France might be accused of smuggling).

By the way, almost all rental cars in Switzerland are registered in Appenzell Innerrhoden because it is overall cheaper for big fleets (although some money from road taxes is given to the cantons where rental cars are actually based). This canton has only 16'000 inhabitants, so any vehicle with a number plate higher than AI 30 000 is a rental vehicle. Each company (Avis, Herz, ...) has its dedicated range in the numbering scheme.

A partial explanation is here: Warum eigentlich tragen Mietwagen das AI?

In English: Warum eigentlich tragen Mietwagen das AI?


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## ChrisZwolle

Water has receded in the Tampa Bay due to Hurricane Ian, which is pushing a storm surge along the coast south of Tampa.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1575114909553201154


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## x-type

Coccodrillo said:


> So EU rules allows it. Usually it is a mess to drive in the state you are resident a vehicle registered elsewhere (for example, an Italian driving in Italy a carr egistered in France might be accused of smuggling).
> 
> By the way, almost all rental cars in Switzerland are registered in Appenzell Innerrhoden because it is overall cheaper for big fleets (although some money from road taxes is given to the cantons where rental cars are actually based). This canton has only 16'000 inhabitants, so any vehicle with a number plate higher than AI 30 000 is a rental vehicle. Each company (Avis, Herz, ...) has its dedicated range in the numbering scheme.
> 
> A partial explanation is here: Warum eigentlich tragen Mietwagen das AI?
> 
> In English: Warum eigentlich tragen Mietwagen das AI?


Similar in Croatia - 75% of renal and fleet cars are registered in Daruvar and you will see them with DA plates because of the cheapest insurance for that area.


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## Suburbanist

x-type said:


> Similar in Croatia - 75% of renal and fleet cars are registered in Daruvar and you will see them with DA plates because of the cheapest insurance for that area.


But don't insurers know about this, especially for large fleets?


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## x-type

Suburbanist said:


> But don't insurers know about this, especially for large fleets?


They do of course. Acutally, I'm reading some articles now, and it seems that we don't have 7 knsurance risk zones, but only 2. However, insurance houses still calculet risk following the old system, whidh is horrible for them.


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## bogdymol

When I returned the car at Barcelona airport yesterday I noticed another German-registered car there, so I asked if they have a lot of them. The answer was that yes, about 30% of their fleet from Barcelona airport is registered in Germany. This is because they always buy new cars, and in Spain the delivery times are extremely long. In Germany they get delivered faster, so they purchased and registered them there. They keep the cars until they have 20.000 km, then they sell them (or give back to leasing company, I don’t know).


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## Suburbanist

Large rental companies in some countries are mostly self-insured against ordinary risks. If you operate a fleet of 2.000 cars in a country, for instance, it is often not economical to insure against small individual losses. There will be some crashed or damaged cars and you as a company treat that as part of the business cost. If you are a small rental company with just one location and 20 to 30 cars, it is different...


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## Stuu

The car I hired in Italy this summer had Italian plates but the car was sourced from Poland - everything was in Polish, the dealer stickers, warranty, service book etc


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## keokiracer

1 million members!


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## ChrisZwolle

Does this company transport junk, or is the company junk? 


Junk Trans truck by European Roads, on Flickr


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## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> The anti-nuclear movement got what it wanted, but then overlapping political groups also lobbied fiercely against wind farms, LNG terminals, solar farms and, crucially, new long-distance transmission lines. So they are against anything, and often say it is not the role of politicians elected on specific platforms to "defend something" to propose alternatives, and come with platitudes like circular economy etc.


Literally "There will be nothing" xD

Several years ago one of the large Polish cities had a weird man, probably mentally handicapped to some extent, who started in elections for the mayor of the mentioned city. His election campaign was very weird, here are some fragments of him presenting himself on local TV:







He has become a meme in Poland.

The fragment I mean starts at 1:30:
"... żeby nie było bandyctwa, żeby nie było złodziejstwa, żeby nie było niczego ..."
"... so that there would be no banditism, so that there would be no theft, so that there would be nothing ..."

It fits here so well


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## ChrisZwolle

Dominating.


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## Slagathor

I presume there's some sort of morally questionable tax incentive at play here?


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## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> I presume there's some sort of morally questionable tax incentive at play here?


More than geography?


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## ChrisZwolle

Inflation is skyrocketing in the Netherlands, now at 17.1% compared to September 2021.










There's some debate whether this figure is representative, it assumes that people take on a new energy contract while in reality most people do not. The core inflation figure is not as dramatic, 6.2%.


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## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> Inflation is skyrocketing in the Netherlands, now at 17.1% compared to September 2021.


Inflation is also skyrocketing in Austria. Everything is more expensive. There have been also some articles in the local press on this topic.

Yesterday I have been doing weekly grocery shopping at Lidl, one of the cheapest supermarkets in my area. Filled half a cart then went to pay. It was 94 €. After getting out of the shop I checked the receipt as I really believed there was a mistake somewhere, was expecting something like 50-60 € for what I had there. But there was no mistake, everything is considerably more expensive than it used to be.

I keep the evidence of my expenses since I moved to Austria. In 2015 I was paying, on average, about 170 € for shopping at supermarket. This year I have spent, on average, about 400 € in supermarkets. Yes, I have a small kid at home now, but the stuff we buy for him from the supermarket is not that signifiant anyway.


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## Attus

Official inflation rate in Germany is now 10.0%. However, inflation is an economical figure, and is not equal with the increase of monthly cost of the population. We always said the example: the price of diesel locomotives influences inflation rate as well, although normal families buy very rarely diesel locomotives. Monthly costs of families have increased ~15% in a year, the poorer you are, the higher the rate. 

In Hungary the official inflation rate is now 16%, alhtough energy and fuel prices are capped by the government, energy is unbelievable cheap in Hungary. I spent a few days in Hungary last week, grocery price labels are schocking, food is 25-40% more expensive than last year.


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## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> I spent a few days in Hungary last week, grocery price labels are schocking, food is 25-40% more expensive than last year.


In HUF or converted to EUR?

Though food prices are also going up noticeably in the Netherlands.


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## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> In HUF or converted to EUR?


Nominal, i.e. in HUF.


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## Stuu

UK food price inflation was at 17% year on year in August. It also depends what you buy, cooking oil is twice as much as last year, pasta is getting close to that sort of increase too. 

The other thing I have noticed is supermarkets offering less of their own brand equivalents, which means the more expensive branded version is the only option. That sort of thing isn't captured by inflation statistics but has a very real effect on people's bills, especially for the poorest.


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## ChrisZwolle

Stuu said:


> The other thing I have noticed is supermarkets offering less of their own brand equivalents, which means the more expensive branded version is the only option. That sort of thing isn't captured by inflation statistics but has a very real effect on people's bills, especially for the poorest.


Aha, I've noticed this too, I wasn't aware that this was really a thing, I thought it was just the decision of my supermarket to offer fewer own brand products. Which are often considerably cheaper while being near or at the same quality.


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## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Aha, I've noticed this too, I wasn't aware that this was really a thing, I thought it was just the decision of my supermarket to offer fewer own brand products. Which are often considerably cheaper while being near or at the same quality.


You can even get different levels of own brand products. For example, Tesco have premium ("Finest"), normal and economy own brands. They used to call their economy own brand "Value" and then "Everyday Value" but now use different "exclusive" brands in the same way that Lidl have different names for own brand goods. Someone made a Tesco Value Valentine's Day card as a joke which went viral


__
https://flic.kr/p/NmS2b

Some people working in factories have said that they have made own brand goods in the same factory as the branded goods and they simply put different labels on.


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## AnelZ

16,8% is the official inflation rate in Bosna and Herzegovina, August 2022 compared to August 2021. The inflation rate August 2022 compared to the average of whole 2021 stands at 15,8% while August 2022 to the average of whole 2015 stands at 18,3%.

As in other countries, this doesn't show the real picture for the vast majority of households as the highest rates of inflation have been recorded in the sections "Transportation" (28,4%), "Food and non-alcoholic beverages" (25,6%) and "Housing, water, electrical energy, natural gas and other energy sources" (17,4%). This shows that the real cost for households is much higher.

On the other hand, one section even recorded negative inflation (deflation?) and that is "Clothes and footwear" (-4,1%), while four more section didn't had a noticeable or minor increase and those being "Communications (postal services, telephone and telefax equipment and services)" (0,8%), "Education" (0,9%), "Health sector" (1,6%) and "Alcoholic beverages and Tobacco" (2,3%).

According to official numbers of our statistical agency, in a span of a year (August 2022 compared to August 2021) the prices went up for selected product as following:

85% - cooking/edible oil, natural gas
70% - sugar
55% - wheat flour, toilet paper, fuel oil, diesel
40% - potatoes, sanitary pads
35% - wheat bread, milk, beef, butter, bananas
30% - rice, chicken, coffee
25% - firewood
20% - salt


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## Stuu

radamfi said:


> Some people working in factories have said that they have made own brand goods in the same factory as the branded goods and they simply put different labels on.


Just before I went to university I did a couple of days temporary work packing ready meals in a food factory. The trays would come off a conveyor and the job was to put the printed cardboard sleeve on them. It was a 1000 for one company, then a thousand for another... they never stopped coming off the conveyor while we swapped brands


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## Attus

Last week I spent a few days in Hungary. Although I knew how Hungarian people think about the war in Ukraine, I was a little bit surprised about how my Hungarian friends and family members talked to me. The majority of them supports Russia in the war, the rest is neutral, and no one supports Ukraine, not even the ones, that dislike Orbán and vote for the opposition. And some of them see me, living in Germany, as an agent of the enemy, since Germany supports Ukraine. "So, you deliver weapons to those bastards?" (Ukraine is ment), said one friend, instead of "Hello". 
Many Hungarians, many of my friends and family members see Zelensky as an American agent, an enemy of his own nation, a man that caused the death of thousand of Ukrainians, simply in order to make Ukraine an American client state. 
It's quite weird. I am really not a big fan of Ukraine and Zelensky, but I really felt myself as a foreigner, in the country where I was born, grew up, and lived almost four decades.


----------



## SeanT

I have had the same experience. It doesn't matter what your political believe is there is a general negativ feeling against the leadership of Ukraine though not against the fugitives, not that much at least. The hungarians feel that the hungarian minority's situation in Ukraine has got worse in the past years.( Language issues in school/ public places....)


----------



## Suburbanist

Is that something related to this idea that Hungary was "wronged" by the part of its former territory that was incorporated into Ukraine after WW2?


----------



## Attus

Suburbanist said:


> Is that something related to this idea that Hungary was "wronged" by the part of its former territory that was incorporated into Ukraine after WW2?


Yes, but the situation of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine in the recent years is more relevant than what happened in 1920 and 1947.


----------



## Coccodrillo

One third of Ukrainians citizens do not speak Ukrainian as first language, but nonetheless Ukrainian government forbid them to use their languages (including Hungarian) basically everywhere except at home (and with younger children). You can’t do that and expect these people to be happy and to not protest. Had the Ukrainian government acted differently recognizing as official also Russian language, and the others, maybe Russia would have acted differently, but who knows?

Curiously, Zelensky himself is Russian-speaking.


----------



## Kpc21

Though it's difficult to expect Russia would do anything different, except they would be forcing people to speak Russian instead of Ukrainian...

And as far as I understand, Ukraine is a democratic country, where people could legally protest against that. In a similar situation in Russia – I don't think so.

Now Ukraine has aspirations to join the EU; after that there would also be an option to ask EU institutions for help – as it seems to be an obvious act of discrimination and disrespect to a local culture. EU has already shown that they are able to punish governments that don't follow the fundamental EU principles (personally I am happy; in the short term my country will lose, but in the long run, it surely decreases the chances for PiS to get re-elected).

By the way, PiS has already effectively started their election campaign for the elections in autumn next year. They base it mainly upon germanophobic and also traditionally transphobic, homophobic etc. narrative...


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> EU has already shown that they are able to punish governments that don't follow the fundamental EU principles.


And EU showed, too, that rights of ethnical minorities are not fundamental EU principles.


----------



## Kpc21

But aren't they? For example in Poland, the recognition of various minorities (even though we are really an ethnically uniform country and those minorities are very small) has improved significantly once we joined the EU. Kashubian got officially recognized as a separate language and not a dialect; there are areas with bilingual town name signs (with German, Belorussian etc. next to Polish) – those weren't the case before.

From what I can see, EU generally sets up some standards regarding the recognition of minorities.


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## radamfi

There is the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. But this comes under the Council of Europe, not the EU, and is ratified by non-EU countries, including Ukraine.





__





Loading…






en.wikipedia.org


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## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> But aren't they? For example


Hungary had several issues with the neighboring countries, among others the member states Slovakia and Romania. EU said always, it is not their business.
I recognize of course, the situation in Romania and Slovakia (and in the not EU member Serbia as well) is now better than ten or twenty years ago - but the EU did nothing for that.


----------



## Stuu

Attus said:


> And EU showed, too, that rights of ethnical minorities are not fundamental EU principles.


Why would they be? The EU is fundamentally about trade and economics, and has no authority except in the areas that it's members have chosen to give it. Social/human rights just aren't part of it's remit, except in the limited areas defined by the various treaties


----------



## geogregor

Suburbanist said:


> Is that something related to this idea that Hungary was "wronged" by the part of its former territory that was incorporated into Ukraine after WW2?


Hungary seems to have massive chip on its shoulder about the "big loses" post WWI.

Now, I don't mind a bit of nostalgia etc. but it in Hungary it is getting silly. It was over 100 years ago. At least it looks that way from what Attus is saying (and I have heard other similar stories).

Funnily in makes mockery out of Polish - Hungarian cooperation. On the Polish internet the same right wingers who were prizing Orban just a year ago now call him Putin-puppet and worse.

In fact sympathy towards Hungary is evaporating fast in Poland, not just among some of the politicians and military experts but also in general public. The whole idea of Polish - Hungarian traditional friendship is dying in front or our eyes.



Coccodrillo said:


> One third of Ukrainians citizens do not speak Ukrainian as first language, but nonetheless Ukrainian government *forbid them to use their languages *(including Hungarian) basically everywhere except at home (and with younger children). You can’t do that and expect these people to be happy and to not protest. Had the Ukrainian government acted differently recognizing as official also Russian language, and the others, maybe Russia would have acted differently, but who knows?
> 
> Curiously, Zelensky himself is Russian-speaking.


Where did you get that nonsense from?

Yes, Ukrainian authorities were trying to promote Ukrainian, especially in official settings, but Russian wasn't banned. As you correctly stated third of the population used it, including the president himself. 

In fact Russian invasion did more to suppressing the use of Russian than Ukrainian activities over the last three decades. There are plenty stories of people who know little Ukrainian but are now trying to use it more and more. Apparently even older people are signing up for Ukrainian classes.

As usual Russian actions are backfiring. If Ukraine struggled at times with its identity, they are building it now, and fast.


----------



## radamfi

In the UK and other English speaking countries, the decimal point usually separates the whole number from the fraction, however when filling up at a petrol station today I noticed for the first time the comma being used instead, like in most European countries.












In the UK, you normally write 34.62, not 34,62. I noticed the same at another petrol station, so maybe it is actually very common and I simply haven't noticed it before!

This made me think, does the use of the decimal point or comma depend on the language, or the territory? So if you are writing in English on, say a Dutch website, should you use the decimal point, because you are writing in English? Or should you use the comma, because you are on a Dutch website?

There is scope for confusion. For example, 123,456 and 123.456 are both valid numbers under either system.

It we were going to be even more pedantic, the "pence per litre" is actually "pound per litre" if you are using the comma as the decimal separator. If you were to take it literally, that is 0.01599 GBP per litre. But if the comma was used as the thousand separator, like normal in English, then it would be 15.99 GBP per litre. So it is wrong either way.


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## AnelZ

I only use decimal point on the websites I know most people are from the USA, Canada, Australia, UK, as I got tired of being "corrected" every single time...


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## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> This made me think, does the use of the decimal point or comma depend on the language, or the territory? So if you are writing in English on, say a Dutch website, should you use the decimal point, because you are writing in English? Or should you use the comma, because you are on a Dutch website?


You go by language, surely. I don't think I've ever seen it done any other way.

EDIT: I just realized I'm not even sure what they do in official EU documentation, for example. This could be quite a can of worms after all.


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## radamfi

Are the decimal point and thousand comma separator taught as part of English classes? I learned French at school for six years and don't remember anyone mentioning the difference in the way numbers are written. Similarly, I haven't seen any reference to that in all the time I've been learning Dutch as a hobby. I only found out by noticing how prices are written in shops when travelling.


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## ChrisZwolle

Usually the context gives it away whether the decimal point or comma is used. Nobody would think a 1,599 fuel price means fifteen hundred ninetynine dollars.


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## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> Why would they be? The EU is fundamentally about trade and economics, and has no authority except in the areas that it's members have chosen to give it. Social/human rights just aren't part of it's remit, except in the limited areas defined by the various treaties


If it was just about trade and economics, it wouldn't impose financial punishments of Poland (and Hungary) because of not following the rule of law... Or because of a coal mine destroying the environment in a neighboring country. Both things have recently happened towards Poland. In my opinion it's good they happened, but it clearly shows that the EU isn't only about trade and economics.

And Polish government would be very happy if the EU was indeed only about trade and economics... But luckily it isn't.



radamfi said:


> This made me think, does the use of the decimal point or comma depend on the language, or the territory? So if you are writing in English on, say a Dutch website, should you use the decimal point, because you are writing in English? Or should you use the comma, because you are on a Dutch website?


On the language. Although in practice it sometimes depends on the technology too  Like, in programming languages it's always point.

Sometimes using comma has some weird implications in IT. E.g. if I am not mistaken, Excel in the English version separates the function arguments with commas, same as it is in most programming languages. In the Polish version, it uses semicolon for that – because comma is reserved for the decimal separator. I guess it's the same in most European language versions.

By the way, Excel is quite annoying in that it has those function names translated, because when you google for some help with your problem, you find questions and answers in English, with the English function names, and then you have to look up how the function is named in your language.

And Excel doesn't even have an option to switch it to another language, even the software license for MS Office is bound with the language.

By the way... it's even more weird with time formats.

Most countries in Europe use the 12-hour format in everyday colloquial speech. But while writing down the time, or when it's displayed on a digital clock, it's nearly always in the 24-hour format. You hear "ten past five" (Polish: "dziesięć po piątej", German "zehn nach fünf"), but you automatically translate it in your mind to 17:10, when you need to write it down.

English-speaking countries even write and display the time in the 12-hour format, with those "AM" and "PM" suffixes...


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## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> Sometimes using comma has some weird implications in IT. E.g. if I am not mistaken, Excel in the English version separates the function arguments with commas


Yes, that is right.



Kpc21 said:


> By the way, Excel is quite annoying in that it has those function names translated, because when you google for some help with your problem, you find questions and answers in English, with the English function names, and then you have to look up how the function is named in your language.
> 
> And Excel doesn't even have an option to switch it to another language, even the software license for MS Office is bound with the language.


I didn't know that. Would you prefer Excel functions to be in English? Would most other Polish people prefer that? Is VBA within Excel in English, as it is a programming language?



Kpc21 said:


> English-speaking countries even write and display the time in the 12-hour format, with those "AM" and "PM" suffixes...


In the US that is certainly the case, and many people there probably don't even understand the 24 hour clock. They call it "military time". In the UK it varies. Most, if not all, TV stations use 12-hour format exclusively. Train timetables switched to the 24 hour clock some time in the 60s. However, many bus companies kept the 12 hour clock until well into the 90s or even later. The independent public transport consultant and journalist Barry Doe (now in his 70s) has made it a lifelong crusade to convert bus timetables to the 24 hour clock, and still keeps a "scorecard"












https://www.barrydoe.co.uk/24hour.pdf



One of the biggest bus companies kept the 12 hour clock until 2019, so Doe wrote a special announcement about it












https://www.barrydoe.co.uk/special.pdf


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## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> Would you prefer Excel functions to be in English?


Yes.



radamfi said:


> Would most other Polish people prefer that?


Probably those who can speak some English, yes; the others – not 

VBA is in English; programming languages generally aren't translated from English to other languages. Maybe except for some very specific languages intended solely for education. Like, there are distributions of the Logo programming language, which are translated to Polish.

In addition, in most software development companies, the convention is to name variables in English, even if the software is made for a Polish customer. The JavaScript (client-side) source code of the online store of Polish Railways, where there are some variables named in Polish (e.g. "czyWybranoPsa" – to English it would translate as: "isDogSelected" xD), has practically become a meme among Polish programmers xD

(now I checked it, and actually czyWybranoPsa is a function name; meanwhile the internal variable that stores the value returned by this function is named: isPies xD – so it's a Polish-English hybrid – maybe it's due to some default JavaScript variable naming conventions, I am not a programmer and especially not a front end programmer, so I don't know)


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## Suburbanist

Decimal separators are annoying, date formats are a pandemonium on datasets. I wish YYYYMMDD was standardized for data storage (doesn't matter how it is. Displayed.)


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## MattiG

Suburbanist said:


> Decimal separators are annoying, date formats are a pandemonium on datasets. I wish YYYYMMDD was standardized for data storage (doesn't matter how it is. Displayed.)


There are 42 or so official date and time formats around the world. Best to take this as a reality. There will never be a globally accepted single notation.


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## Attus

radamfi said:


> Are the decimal point and thousand comma separator taught as part of English classes?


Sure.


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## Attus

radamfi said:


> Would you prefer Excel functions to be in English?


I don't care, they may be English, Hungarian, German, French, Esperanto, Zulu, whatever, but please, be the same everywhere. It's crazy to learn them on several languages, vlookup, fkeres, sverweis, they're all the same in the very same tool, depending on the language of Windows.


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## Attus

Suburbanist said:


> Decimal separators are annoying, date formats are a pandemonium on datasets.


And even if you don't want to write a date at all. A person answered 5 of 6 questions right, I write 5/6, and Excel displays "5th of June". Nooooo......
Have I alread said, I hate Excel?


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## Attus

radamfi said:


> Are the decimal point and thousand comma separator taught as part of English classes?


I asked my friend, he teaches English in Budapest, he said, decimal point is taught at intermediate level, no matter which text book you use.


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## MattiG

Attus said:


> And even if you don't want to write a date at all. A person answered 5 of 6 questions right, I write 5/6, and Excel displays "5th of June". Nooooo......
> Have I alread said, I hate Excel?


No it does not if you make the field a text field. Excel does a good job in most cases, but you must know its pitfalls. The field formatted "general" equals to "let Excel guess what I mean".


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## Suburbanist

Can't you change the language pack of Microsoft Office? It costs nothing these days. English is often pre-installed.


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## MattiG

Attus said:


> I don't care, they may be English, Hungarian, German, French, Esperanto, Zulu, whatever, but please, be the same everywhere. It's crazy to learn them on several languages, vlookup, fkeres, sverweis, they're all the same in the very same tool, depending on the language of Windows.


Translating function names is quite a pervert idea. However, you can have your Office speaking other language than the Windows does, at least the newer versions. Excel saves the workbooks in an internal format. Thus, then function names written in Zulu appear in English, if you change the Office language and reopen the workbook.


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## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> Can't you change the language pack of Microsoft Office? It costs nothing these days. English is often pre-installed.


I am not sure if it's that easy. Maybe in the newer versions it is so. Still in Office 2007, you couldn't simply change the language, you had to reinstall the whole package, using a copy issued in the language you want to use.



MattiG said:


> Translating function names is quite a pervert idea.


t
The intention was probably that Excel users aren't necessarily IT people, and while you normally expect IT people to be able to speak English, you cannot assume the same about the people working in the other areas of business.



MattiG said:


> Excel saves the workbooks in an internal format. Thus, then function names written in Zulu appear in English, if you change the Office language and reopen the workbook.


And the same happens with dates! Though they are related not to the Excel language version, but to the "regional and language settings" in the Windows control panel.

The Polish edition of older Windows versions (it was still so, I believe, in Windows 7) used YYYY-MM-DD. Which annoyed me, as the standard format normally used in Poland is DD.MM.YYYY. I always switched it in the control panel (often already during the Windows installation) to the latter, and then Excel also displayed the dates in that format. Now DD.MM.YYYY has anyway become the default for the Polish Windows version.

YYYY-MM-DD is an international ISO format, intended mostly for sorting dates... But in apps like Excel having it in this order, with the year first, doesn't matter, as Excel anyway stores dates internally as numbers, if I recall correctly – numbers of seconds that passed since a predefined date and time, the year 1970 or somewhere around that. So it sorts them correctly anyway, no matter what format you use.

Meanwhile, I work as a computer network engineer, and I often get annoyed, that tools and configuration panels intended for us are very rarely capable of sorting IP addresses correctly... Usually they are treated as strings, so e.g. the address 20.30.40.50 would go after the IP 100.200.100.200.


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## radamfi

What happens if you call an Excel worksheet function in VBA, using the syntax Application.WorksheetFunction? Do you have to use the English name of the worksheet function, because VBA has to be in English?


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## Kpc21

No idea, the only moment when I used VBA (or rather the LibreOffice equivalent...) was on the first year of my studies, when we had "utility software" labs...

Though I found a Polish tutorial for this VBA method, and it says you are supposed to use the English function name: https://tomaszkenig.pl/kurs-excel-vba/funkcje-arkusza-danych-w-excel-vba/. There is even an example – saying that they used the function known in Polish Excel as ZAOKR(), but they had to type Application.WorksheetFunction.Round().

And there is a "homework" to try if it will work with the function known in Polish as WYSZUKAJ.PIONOWO() (if I recall correctly, in the English Excel it's VLOOKUP() – the answers in the comments confirm that).

By the way, all of that reminds me of templates on Wikipedia. On Wikipedia, while creating articles, generally you can use templates, which put some predefined elements into the article. Complex examples of templates are, for example, infoboxes – those are those panels with basic data about the subject of the article, normally placed at the beginning of the article, on the right. Generally, Polish Wikipedia tries keeping all the template names and parameters in Polish, so that people who don't speak English or aren't comfortable with that language, can comfortably edit the encyclopedia. There are many templates that used to have English names in the past, but later they got changed to Polish.

And this Excel situation recalls me about the infobox template for railway lines. They are quite advanced, as they allow to create, in quite an easy way, a pretty diagram of the whole railway line, with all the stations on the route, showing the number of tracks, how they cross each other and other lines, if the line is electrified, and so on. But in the past, the problem with this template was that it was copied from the German Wikipedia, and therefore, all the parameters were German acronyms. E.g. BRÜ for a bridge, and so on. It was really annoying, and I always avoided editing those templates, just because back then I knew almost no German.

Actually, looking at the source code of an article of my local railway line, it seems that the railway line infobox on Polish Wikipedia is still using those German acronyms...










Though some of them are in Polish.

BHF states foe Bahnhof, HST for Haltestelle – but SKRZ-Au for "skrzyżowanie z autostradą".

I have no idea how to extend hSTRae, but it seems it means an intersection with a normal road, hKRZWae – an intersection with a river (so it isn't BRÜ as I thought before).

--

I checked and it seems even English Wikipedia uses this complex, German-derived system with German-derived acronyms xD





__





Loading…






commons.wikimedia.org





There is even a footnote about how to get the German letter Ü, which often appears in those parameter names xD :


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> The independent public transport consultant and journalist Barry Doe (now in his 70s) has made it a lifelong crusade to convert bus timetables to the 24 hour clock, and still keeps a "scorecard"
> 
> View attachment 3924058
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.barrydoe.co.uk/24hour.pdf
> 
> 
> 
> One of the biggest bus companies kept the 12 hour clock until 2019, so Doe wrote a special announcement about it
> 
> View attachment 3924063
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.barrydoe.co.uk/special.pdf


Wow, the man has a passion...

Speaking of formatting time and numbers, and even more of measuring units, I always found Britain full of inconsistencies and weird compromises.


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## MattiG

radamfi said:


> What happens if you call an Excel worksheet function in VBA, using the syntax Application.WorksheetFunction? Do you have to use the English name of the worksheet function, because VBA has to be in English?


VBA uses the English names.


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## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> YYYY-MM-DD is an international ISO format, intended mostly for sorting dates... But in apps like Excel having it in this order, with the year first, doesn't matter, as Excel anyway stores dates internally as numbers, if I recall correctly – numbers of seconds that passed since a predefined date and time, the year 1970 or somewhere around that. So it sorts them correctly anyway, no matter what format you use.


Excel stores dates and times as days since January 0, 1900 (which did not exist). In addition, the year 1900 is counted as a leap year (it was not) to maintain the compatibility with the bug in Lotus 1-2-3. Thus, doing date and time math before March 1, 1900 should be done carefully.

Times are stored as fraction of a day. Thus one second is 1/86400. For example, today at 18:00:00 is 44838.75. This format makes the day and time math easy. Just add 1 to get next day.


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## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> Are the decimal point and thousand comma separator taught as part of English classes? I learned French at school for six years and don't remember anyone mentioning the difference in the way numbers are written. Similarly, I haven't seen any reference to that in all the time I've been learning Dutch as a hobby. I only found out by noticing how prices are written in shops when travelling.


I was taught, yes. I've seen it in pretty much every textbook I've used (including those teaching French, German and Italian).



ChrisZwolle said:


> Usually the context gives it away whether the decimal point or comma is used. Nobody would think a 1,599 fuel price means fifteen hundred ninetynine dollars.


Wait a few more months.


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## Attus

You may know the joke:

Optimist: The glass is half full
Pessimist: The glass is half empty
Realist: It's a glass of water
Physicist: The glass contains half liquid and half gas
Engineer: The glass has the double of the needed size
Einstein: The glass is half empty and half full at the same time
Transport manager: 50% of the capacity of the glass is filled
Schrödinger: We can not know whether the glass is empty or it's full
Politician: We may have a water crisis in the following months
Doctor: This water is not enough for your daily needs
Excel: January the 2nd.


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## CNGL

I remember there were some genes that had to be renamed so that Excel wouldn't keep mistaking them for dates


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## Kpc21

MattiG said:


> Excel stores dates and times as days since January 0, 1900 (which did not exist).


Well, I never understood people pointing out (on history classes etc.) that the year 0 didn't exist. Obviously it didn't because 0 is just a point on the number axis, and a year is technically a section of it. The year one is the section from 0 to 1 on the axis, similarly the year one BC is from -1 to 0 on the axis. If you scale it in years.

If the year zero existed, there would also have to be a year "minus zero", which is a little bit of math nonsense.

Still; does what you said mean that Excel considers the number -1 the day of 30 December 1899, 1 – the day of 1 January 1900, and 0 has no actual date meaning?


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## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> Well, I never understood people pointing out (on history classes etc.) that the year 0 didn't exist. Obviously it didn't because 0 is just a point on the number axis, and a year is technically a section of it. The year one is the section from 0 to 1 on the axis, similarly the year one BC is from -1 to 0 on the axis. If you scale it in years.
> 
> If the year zero existed, there would also have to be a year "minus zero", which is a little bit of math nonsense.
> 
> Still; does what you said mean that Excel considers the number -1 the day of 30 December 1899, 1 – the day of 1 January 1900, and 0 has no actual date meaning?


Excel uses a number to represent the number of days since 1900, including decimalised fractions. So 0 is midnight on 31 December 1899. Midday on 1 January 1900 is 0.5


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## MattiG

Stuu said:


> Excel uses a number to represent the number of days since 1900, including decimalised fractions. So 0 is midnight on 31 December 1899. Midday on 1 January 1900 is 0.5


No it is not. As I wrote previously, the origin as at Jan 0, 1990 at 00:00:00. The noon of 1 Jan 1900 is 1.5. Negative numbers are treated invalid:










As there is a bug counting 1900 incorrectly as a leap year, the reliable origin is 61, March 1st 1900.


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## x-type

Attus said:


> You may know the joke:
> 
> Optimist: The glass is half full
> Pessimist: The glass is half empty
> Realist: It's a glass of water
> Physicist: The glass contains half liquid and half gas
> Engineer: The glass has the double of the needed size
> Einstein: The glass is half empty and half full at the same time
> Transport manager: 50% of the capacity of the glass is filled
> Schrödinger: We can not know whether the glass is empty or it's full
> Politician: We may have a water crisis in the following months
> Doctor: This water is not enough for your daily needs
> Excel: January the 2nd.


Psalmist: my glass owerflows!
😁


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## Kpc21

In Poland there are news that public transport operators are going to replace trolleybuses and electric buses, as well as to some extent trams, with diesel buses – due to high electricity costs. Energy from diesel fuel seems to be much cheaper than electricity now.


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## ChrisZwolle

Diesel and petrol have gone up much less in price than just about any other source of energy: natural gas, coal, electricity, even wood, have gone up far more than petrol or diesel. 

My electricity price is almost 3 times that of a year ago. Natural gas nearly 4 times more. On the other hand, petrol is only slightly more expensive in countries that have reduced fuel taxes.


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## Coccodrillo

Slagathor said:


> Since 1970, we've built a grand total of 5 new railways (the Zoetermeer line, the Flevoland line, the Schiphol line, the Lelystad-Zwolle line and the high speed railway line to Belgium).


I would say 3 + the freight only Betuwelijn, because I consider Amsterdam-Lelystad-Zwolle a single railway build in two phases decades apart, and on a land that itself is new.

There aren't that much kilometres of new railways in Europe. Most rail traffic runs on right of ways build in the XIX century or the beginning of the XX century, which often hasn't been expanded since with more tracks, although it has received improvements like electrification and better signalling systems. New railways in Europe are mostly faster or higher capacity lines parallel to existing ones, just like motorways are for existing roads, and actually there aren't that much of them either. On-site railway widenings to more than two tracks are quite rare and mostly found near cities. Long sections of more than two tracks outside cities can be found on the West Coast Main Line in the UK, on the Paris-Dijon line, on the Berlin-Wolwsburg line, and a few others.

Most of railway capacity expansions projects have been done in the last 30 years, after decades of reduced investments. With motorways, roads have received an entirely new high capacity network parallel to the existing one, while railways have not (they don't need it anyway), so I don't see any problem in solving rail bottlenecks, too. Railways use less space than roads and mostly consist of better using existing infrastructure with few windenings and new right of ways (compared to what it is needed to expand capacity of a road).

Urban railways like subways or tramways are a different thing, as they could never be replaced by new roads anyway.


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## radamfi

Suburbanist said:


> This being said, at least in Northern Continental Europe there is far less stigma about the social status of these jobs. The UK is horrible in that aspect for instance.


In the UK, the train driver has become a highly sought after job which pays very well, whereas that wasn't the case until the 90s. Unlike most other industries, rail unions in the UK have actually increased in power. For example, many suburban railway lines were converted to driver only operation in the 80s (that is, where you don't have a separate conductor). The unions couldn't block it. Nowadays, train companies have given up on getting rid of the second person on board because of the threat of industrial action. The 90s privatisation split the network into several companies, so train drivers hopped from one company to another, causing pay rates to increase. Even graduates now want to be train drivers, because of the generous pay and conditions.


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## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> So in the end, investment in roads continue to this day. But the conclusion that railways are underfunded is not necessarily true, it depends on what you believe is underfunded, but *railways do get a larger amount of funding relative to its usage than roads. I think this is true in much of Europe. Rail is simply a vastly more expensive way of transport*, as the example of only a couple railway construction projects vs. a large list of motorway projects also indicate. Though rail infrastructure had a head start in the 19th century, most railways already existed before the motorways were built.


Yes, because road transportation privatizes most of the running costs. This is a great deal for governments, especially those whose ideology is more libertarian-leaning.


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## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> * Rail is simply a vastly more expensive way of transport*, as the example of only a couple railway construction projects vs. a large list of motorway projects also indicate. Though rail infrastructure had a head start in the 19th century, most railways already existed before the motorways were built.


Is it? In terms of what? Per passenger km for a very busy intercity or urban railway it is much lower compared to even the running cost of a car, let alone the cost of providing the roads.


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## ChrisZwolle

We were talking about funding for roads and railways. The government expenditures for railways per passenger kilometer is significantly higher than it is for the road network.


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## Stuu

Governments don't have any money, they can only spend what they receive in taxes. The cost per person of moving from say Amsterdam to Utrecht is the important figure. An individual is paying either directly by buying a car, paying for fuel etc and their own work in driving the car, or they are paying through the train ticket price and their taxation.


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## Kpc21

Slagathor said:


> Yes, because road transportation privatizes most of the running costs. This is a great deal for governments, especially those whose ideology is more libertarian-leaning.


How is railway different regarding that?

Maintenance can be "privatized" (i.e. ordered by the government at private companies instead of being provided internally by national agencies) in the same way for railway and for roads.

Neither train nor bus carriers have to be state-owned. Though neither of them are able to provide decent local connections without government subsidies (it's different with long-distance/intercity transport).


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## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> How is railway different regarding that?


The state only provides the road, private individuals/companies provide all the vehicles and pay all the direct costs of running them


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## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> We were talking about funding for roads and railways. The government expenditures for railways per passenger kilometer is significantly higher than it is for the road network.


I can relate. It is even significant when you compare trams and buses. I have worked as a manager in an urban transport company in Bratislava that dealt with data of all kinds. The company is a 100 % subsidiary of the city and has a direct public service obligation contract with the city based on the so-called (I don't know the proper translation) "economically eligible expenditures", which means every expenditure related to the contract is paid by the city at the end of the day.

Once there was a planned disruption of a long tram track substituted by replacement buses. The unit and overall costs added up to roughly 40 % of the costs in the case of tram operation. But the economic point of view is not the only one necessary here. We have non-financial benefits of trams, e.g. sustainability, congestion avoidance, etc.

In Bratislava, the average bus cost per vehicle kilometre was 1,5 € with personal expenses included compared with 4 € costs per tram-kilometre. Surprisingly, personal expenses are lower in tram transport, which is not regulated by international laws, but maintenance is quite costly.


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## volodaaaa

By the way, the dawn of so-called hybrid trolleybuses (those fitted with batteries allowing extensive cruising outside the trolleybus track) slowly means the subside of trolleybus tracks. There were some cost-benefit analyses in my home town about new trolleybus tracks, and it seems that instead of new line construction, it is much more profitable to use the existing infrastructure and purchase hybrid trolleybuses.


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## radamfi

Obviously battery electric buses ought to be the norm for new purchases from now on. The Netherlands has been at the forefront of electric buses in Europe for a few years now. London buys few if any diesel buses now, although the deregulated bus industry in the UK outside London continues to buy them and only buys electric if they get a government grant. That means either charging in the depot or at the terminus points, generally using pantographs. But if you've already got a trolleybus network then that's very handy.

British trains are suffering from staff shortages, partly because of demographics, but mostly because of drivers refusing to do overtime. Buses (outside London) are suffering much more from staff shortages, with companies making huge cuts to timetables simply because they can't get the drivers, and they can't even run the reduced service without cancellations. London isn't suffering because they are getting drivers from outside London and paying their meals and accommodation. Companies that have contracts to run London bus services don't want to suffer huge penalties, whereas outside London the available sanctions are very limited.


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## AnelZ

Sarajevo is currently buying such hybrid trolleybuses. Until now 12 have arrived out of a total of 35 ordered with a loan from EBRD. It was planned for 20-25 to arrive until the end of the year but due to the war in Ukraine, it is all going slowly. They are still only used on the routes where there is an overhead electricity line but I'm quite sure with time, some additional lines will be introduced where there isn't any trolleybus infrastructure. Probably after an analysis has been conducted as we bought such trolleybuses but didn't really have done a study (we just wanted to replace our driving stock).


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## Surel

volodaaaa said:


> In Bratislava, the average bus cost per vehicle kilometre was 1,5 € with personal expenses included compared with 4 € costs per tram-kilometre. Surprisingly, personal expenses are lower in tram transport, which is not regulated by international laws, but maintenance is quite costly.


You need to include the passengers in the picture. The tram has a higher km costs, but it has a higher capacity, doesn't it?


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## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> In Bratislava, the average bus cost per vehicle kilometre was 1,5 € with personal expenses included compared with 4 € costs per tram-kilometre. Surprisingly, personal expenses are lower in tram transport, which is not regulated by international laws, but maintenance is quite costly.


A tram has usually more capacity than a bus (although a Tatra K2 compared to an articulated bus does not show significant plus), but has only one driver, just like a bus.


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## Attus

volodaaaa said:


> By the way, the dawn of so-called hybrid trolleybuses (those fitted with batteries allowing extensive cruising outside the trolleybus track) slowly means the subside of trolleybus tracks. There were some cost-benefit analyses in my home town about new trolleybus tracks, and it seems that instead of new line construction, it is much more profitable to use the existing infrastructure and purchase hybrid trolleybuses.


But those battery buses must be maintained properly batteries must be changed, when needed. Budapest, too, bought such buses, but many of them has currently in battery mode a range of 0.0km.


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## volodaaaa

Surel said:


> You need to include the passengers in the picture. The tram has a higher km costs, but it has a higher capacity, doesn't it?


It was still cheaper, even after considering the sum of vehicle kilometres that were higher for buses.

That said, if politicians were solely economy-oriented, there is a strong possibility that all public transport would be operated by buses only. Thank god they are not.


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## Attus

I shot this picture sixteen years ago. For them, who don't know: the Škoda (the left one) is a trolley bus. I'm not sure about the location, Voloda, may it be the Petržalka (i.e. southern) end of the UFO, I mean, SNP bridge?
Škoda and Ikarus in Bratislava by Attila Németh, on Flickr
Funny, that although both vehiclas can run on the very same road, one of them has a registration plate, the other one has not. That must be certified by another authority (I'm not sure about the exact Slovak rules, though).

Fun fact: Slovakia was 13 years old back then. The Ikarus bus (the right one) was older than the country.


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## AnelZ

Could it then be that the tram network in Bratislava is underutilized as the city sprawled too much i.e. people started to live too far away from tram network for it to be considered an option for daily commute coupled with lack of investments into its extension?

Sarajevo is currently in an investment cycle of reconstruction of our tram and trolleybus transport. As of recently, we fully replaced and improved our tram tracks in length of 6km (times two i.e. 12km as it is dual) and soon will start on the other part measuring 3km (also dual which means essentially 6km). Some tracks weren't reconstructed for around 50 years while none were fully reconstructed for some 35 years (surviving through a war on top of that). It is also planned to modernize all the tram stops (essentially completely new tram stops), improve the ticketing system, improve the public company responsible for trams and trolleybus (as it has huge organizational problems), improve traffic solutions (adaptive traffic management). We also ordered 20 new trams from Stadler and will start arriving late 2023 and will take two years to get all 20; wouldn't be surprised if we order some more in the meantime). Our current tram stock is around 35 years old on average. We also ordered 35 trolleybuses from BMK (12 already arrived). We also are extending our tram network for an additional 6,5 km in length (13 km of total new tracks as it will be dual) and started a study for two more extensions totaling 5,5 km (or 11 km of total tram tracks). 

The money is loaned from EBRD and the whole investment cycle is worth around 100 million €.


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## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> I shot this picture sixteen years ago. For them, who don't know: the Škoda (the left one) is a trolley bus. I'm not sure about the location, Voloda, may it be the Petržalka (i.e. southern) end of the UFO, I mean, SNP bridge?
> Škoda and Ikarus in Bratislava by Attila Németh, on Flickr
> Funny, that although both vehiclas can run on the very same road, one of them has a registration plate, the other one has not. That must be certified by another authority (I'm not sure about the exact Slovak rules, though).
> 
> Fun fact: Slovakia was 13 years old back then. The Ikarus bus (the right one) was older than the country.


Wow, that must have been ages ago. I was still a student at the high school that time, actually a few metres behind your back 🤣 The exact location is HERE


I think the rules are almost the same within the whole EU because of the directives and regulations of the European Parliament and Council. In Slovakia, we have two laws: The Act on road transport that deals with freight transport above 2,5 t, bus transport and taxis; and the Act on the operation of rail transport that deals with every undertaking dealing with rail transport (railways, trams, trolleybuses, industrial rails and cable cars).

Since Bratislava transport operator operates both buses and rail transport, both laws apply here. 

But, indeed, technical development brings up new topics to solve; e.g. what is the difference between an electric bus capable of recharging from overhead lines and a hybrid trolleybus, which can travel up to 40 km outside the trolleybus network? Where are electric scooters supposed to drive - sidewalks or roads?


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## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> It was still cheaper, even after considering the sum of vehicle kilometres that were higher for buses.
> 
> That said, if politicians were solely economy-oriented, there is a strong possibility that all public transport would be operated by buses only. Thank god they are not.


If they (again) startturning back to buses, we will have Paris or Barcelona situation, where they saw how stupid it is to turn off tram network, so they reintroduced it.


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## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> Guys, think at the margins.


Actually it's seen now here in Łódź.

The public transport timetables that got limited in Covid times haven't come back to what was before Covid. In the last months there were even more cuts. Now we have some major bus routes with departures every 20 minutes or so. Routes which departed like every 6 minutes yet several years ago, now depart every 15 minutes. Which results in... huge traffic jams even in off-peak hours. People don't want to use buses for which they have to wait so long or adjust to the departure times (which are anyway unlikely to be met because of the traffic-caused delays) and they go for cars instead.


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## Slagathor

Comparing railways to motorways ignores the fact that trains don't need to be parked.

We're all focusing on how a car allows you to set off when you want (and a train doesn't) but how much time do you spend looking for a parking spot near your destination? And how much money is spent building parking garages? What is the detrimental impact (both in terms of air pollution, traffic flows and the general pleasantness of street life) in cities when policy makers try to accommodate as many cars as possible?

Does your desire "to leave whenever you want" trump my right to live on a street built for humans where the air isn't toxic?


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## geogregor

Attus said:


> However, it's obvious as well, that the value, importance and relevance of space usage differs heavily, space coverage is crucial in London downtown and is irrelevant in some Spanish village in the middle of nowhere.
> 
> So, in my opnion, *any general discussion or debate about the role of cars and public transport does not make any sense.*


I totally agree. In those debates people often tend to eventually group in two extreme camps. Some would like to ban cars others would like to turn most places into Texas. Which is silly.

It is pretty obvious that there is little prospect of providing more road capacity in largest metropolitan areas like London, Paris and others. Whether cars are petrol or electric they still take tones of space and make life difficult for pedestrians and cyclists. I hope their use will reduce in places like that, whether voluntarily or due to tougher restrictions and reductions in parking capacity etc.

For example I cheer every "car free" development in London. Within the central zones they are pretty much standard nowadays.

On the other hand when I fly home to Poland I always rent car. Trains don't even reach my home town (apparently the largest city in the EU without a railway station) and public transport in general is crap. And objectively speaking, looking at urban fabric and employment patterns, it would be difficult to provide in places (which doesn't mean it couldn't be improved if there was a will).

We need nuanced local approach when debating transport.


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## Stuu

geogregor said:


> On the other hand when I fly home to Poland I always rent car. Trains don't even reach my home town (apparently the largest city in the EU without a railway station) and public transport in general is crap. And objectively speaking, looking at urban fabric and employment patterns, it would be difficult to provide in places (which doesn't mean it couldn't be improved if there was a will).


I thought that was Marbella? Not that it's a competition anyone wants to win


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## geogregor

Stuu said:


> I thought that was Marbella? Not that it's a competition anyone wants to win


You might be right. I seemed to remember people making such claims about Jastrzebie Zdroj but it is clearly smaller than Marbella.


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## Stuu

The list of towns of that size with a railway but no passenger service must be incredibly small though, I would bet it's at the top of that list


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## Surel

Suburbanist said:


> Increasing highway capacity for peak travel is also very costly economically, since it will stay idle many hours.


The railway faces exactly the same problem in the peak times. Increasing the capacity can be even more costly depending on the setup.

The point is that the modal share is split accordingly to the demand by the public. Make the conditions that certain mode of transport offers better to the customer and they will chose that given mode.

It's a dangerous ideology and economic nonsense to forcibly make them chose a certain mode of transport. Simply offer something better and they will chose it of their free will.


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## geogregor

Surel said:


> It's a dangerous ideology and economic nonsense to *forcibly* make them chose a certain mode of transport. Simply offer something better and they will chose it of their free will.


What you mean by "forcibly"?

We always have a choice. As individuals and as a society. We need mix of investment in different transport modes. But precise mix differ between countries, regions and cities. And there always will be some unhappy folks, whatever choice is made. We will never make London as easy to drive as some would like (and we shouldn't try) nor will we be able to provide great public transport in some sparsely populated regions.

Please don't tell me that we should leave transport policy to pure market forces. It never worked and never will.


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## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> And please don't tell me that we should leave transport policy to pure market forces. It never worked and never will.


Most rail infrastructure was built by the market, in the second half of 19th century and early 20th century, right? But that also led to their rapid closure in the 1930s when bus transport became cheaper to operate and the business model behind most rail services plunged.


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## Kpc21

Yesterday's XKCD is kinda on the topic...


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## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Most rail infrastructure was built by the market, in the second half of 19th century and early 20th century, right?


Yes, initial wave of railway building was done by private companies. It was especially true in the UK. It lead to highly illogical and inefficient network which is still hindrance for the UK.

But soon quite a few regional monopolies were established and many countries established national railway quite early in 20th century. And it was never free for all pure competition. Any individual railway always needed act of parliament to start construction.



> But that also led to their rapid closure in the 1930s when bus transport became cheaper to operate and the business model behind most rail services plunged.


Again, it is a bit more complicated. As I mentioned initial network was often illogical and full of duplications, especially in the UK. Companies competed to quickly build as much as possible, often not thinking if any given stretch will be viable. Those marginal lines were often the first to close. Then we had changes in heavy industry which often sustained smaller branches. It was part of consolidation and rationalization, as much as possible.

Anyway, we are in 21st century, not in 19th or 20th. We won't have free for all in transport investment, whether railway or road. Governments, national, regional and local, have to make choices. Time of door to door travel is only one factor, not necessarily deciding when choosing what to invest in.

And most of the transport infrastructure is and will be funded by the public money. It is true for railway and for roads.


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## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> Yesterday's XKCD is kinda on the topic...


This funny picture omits a most typical case: five people riding in a 50-seat bus.


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## Kpc21

Though sometimes public transport organizers forget that those 50-seat buses taking five people each in the off-peak times, evenings etc. are necessary. They make the whole system reliable and this way they make people actually use it, knowing that even in off-peak times, in the evenings etc. it is also available, and they don't have to remember to take the car if coming back home later in the evening, or be in hurry because of the last bus departing at, like, 6 PM.


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## Slagathor

Kpc21 said:


> Yesterday's XKCD is kinda on the topic...


I vote hamster balls, they keep you dry in the rain. Perfect. 



MattiG said:


> This funny picture omits a most typical case: five people riding in a 50-seat bus.


Who would still take up less space on the road than if they were each driving their own cars. Not to mention they'd need a place to park.


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## AnelZ

As I already mentioned, Sarajevo is currently in midst of a reconstruction of our tram and trolleybus system. Because of that, the services are to a degree limited and busses had to employed to replace trams on the part where they are not functioning. This led to HUGE congestions in Sarajevo for what feels like the whole day, I dare to say 07:00 to 19:00. It is awful. I never walked as much from work to home as in the past 12-18 months (I'm lucky that I can walk to my job which is just over 4km away).


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## AnelZ

Returning to natural gas. Today we got the info that the price for natural gas in Sarajevo for households will raise for 9,7% from 1st October. The price is now 0,703 €/Sm3 (VAT and distribution included).


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## Surel

geogregor said:


> What you mean by "forcibly"?
> 
> We always have a choice. As individuals and as a society. We need mix of investment in different transport modes. But precise mix differ between countries, regions and cities. And there always will be some unhappy folks, whatever choice is made. We will never make London as easy to drive as some would like (and we shouldn't try) nor will we be able to provide great public transport in some sparsely populated regions.
> 
> Please don't tell me that we should leave transport policy to pure market forces. It never worked and never will.


What I mean is prohibitive regulation of e.g. car transportation through exorbitant taxes e.g, permits etc... causing economic inefficiencies where people lose welfare.

The government expenditures are part of the market forces. If the society agrees to finance public transport through taxes because it makes economic sense, it is also part of the market force.

It would be however inefficient to finance with public money public transport that would then not be used. That's a straightforward waste.


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## geogregor

Surel said:


> What I mean is *prohibitie* regulation of e.g. car transportation through exorbitant taxes e.g, permits etc... causing economic inefficiencies where people lose welfare.


Any examples of those "prohibitie" regulations?

What do you think about parking regulations, particularly those limiting number of allowed car park places? 



> The government expenditures are part of the market forces. If the society agrees to finance public transport through taxes because it makes economic sense, it is also part of the market force.


Not everything which government finance is based on pure economics. Otherwise we wouldn't have museums, cultural institutions and quite a few other public amenities (like parks). 

The problem with highly individualistic approach to transport, presented by come members of the car lobby, is externalization of costs. They might gain faster commute (sometimes only marginally) but they don't care about air pollution, noise, unfriendly urban realm or even solutions dangerous for pedestrian and cyclists. Especially along the way, far from their own home. Roads must be constantly widened, traffic unobstructed, pesky pedestrians and cyclists removed. 

This is quite visible when inhabitants of suburbs expect road improvements in central districts and when they get furious at any inconvenience to their presumed "freedoms" to drive wherever they like and how they like. There is always the predictable moan when there are any restrictions, often introduced at the urge of inhabitants of those central districts which are fed up with the traffic.

The bottom line is, life is not just about economics.


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## Surel

geogregor said:


> Any examples of those "prohibitie" regulations?
> 
> What do you think about parking regulations, particularly those limiting number of allowed car park places?


That was a typo. I meant prohibitive.
When the space constraints demands it it is not a policy. It is a real constraint. However artificially limiting parking spaces in places where it is not necessary is simply not necessary. Moreover, I think that there are other possibilities, especially creating underground parking places.



geogregor said:


> Not everything which government finance is based on pure economics. Otherwise we wouldn't have museums, cultural institutions and quite a few other public amenities (like parks).


Well yes, they are. We as a society agree on that through taxes we finance those amenities and then consume them as public goods instead of goods sold on the market. We are a collective consument and collective producent in that case.



geogregor said:


> The problem with highly individualistic approach to transport, presented by come members of the car lobby, is externalization of costs. They might gain faster commute (sometimes only marginally) but they don't care about air pollution, noise, unfriendly urban realm or even solutions dangerous for pedestrian and cyclists. Especially along the way, far from their own home. Roads must be constantly widened, traffic unobstructed, pesky pedestrians and cyclists removed.
> 
> This is quite visible when inhabitants of suburbs expect road improvements in central districts and when they get furious at any inconvenience to their presumed "freedoms" to drive wherever they like and how they like. There is always the predictable moan when there are any restrictions, often introduced at the urge of inhabitants of those central districts which are fed up with the traffic.
> 
> The bottom line is, life is not just about economics.


Negative externalities are indeed a point. However, public transport has also negative externalities. It's not purely a problem of individual transport. It is problem of almost every economic activity. The effective solution is not to reduce the economic activity, but to try to internalize those costs or provide a refund or a remedy for the negative externality to those that bear it. When the costs are internalized you can decide whether that given economic activity still makes economic sense.

Above that, there are also positive externalities. If those people living in the suburbs don't have timely means of transport to the center, the center will suffer from it as well as it will miss on economic potential created by the aggregation of people in the center.

Also, if you look at it globally, imagine a situation when there are negative externalities associated with the individual transportation, but the overall economic effect on welfare is positive. It then makes sense to tax the society and provide a refund or a remedy to those that bear those negative externalities (also e.g. in the form of underground parking place alleviating their trouble with the parked cars). The actual distribution of those taxes and welfare effects is then the detail that has to be worked out.

That's the way how you maximize the total welfare.


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## radamfi

I'm not really convinced about the economic benefit of transport schemes in general, whether road or public transport. As a transport modeller, I used to calculate benefit-cost ratios, but I didn't really believe in what I was doing. Once you have a minimal level of accessibility (which everywhere basically already has) it doesn't really matter. There are lots of affluent rural areas which have very poor transport links. London has done alright despite being in constant gridlock and having an expensive and underfunded public transport system. On the other hand, the sea of motorways in the Liverpool and Newcastle areas haven't made those areas prosperous. I have come to the conclusion that transport policy should focus on the social, rather than economic benefits.


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## Suburbanist

I get this impression British cities were notoriously bad in the 1970s and 1980s, much more than their continental counterparts, with respect to air pollution, quality of lower-income building stock etc.

I saw some videos of the worst areas in Glasgow in the early 1970s, absolutely atrocious. It was worse than even Belfast in Northern Ireland, where decay and despair was to be expected due to persistent terrorism.


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## ChrisZwolle

Some cities on the continent also saw a significant outmigration. Paris is still around 800,000 below its pre 1960 levels. Amsterdam also lost a quarter, in the 1960s and 1970s but it has regained most of that (though probably not the same demographic composition). The Hague is also still below 1960.


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## Stuu

Suburbanist said:


> I get this impression British cities were notoriously bad in the 1970s and 1980s, much more than their continental counterparts, with respect to air pollution, quality of lower-income building stock etc.
> 
> I saw some videos of the worst areas in Glasgow in the early 1970s, absolutely atrocious. It was worse than even Belfast in Northern Ireland, where decay and despair was to be expected due to persistent terrorism.


A lot of British cities were built around heavy industry, literally living next door. Because in many cases it wasn't destroyed in the war it just carried on as before, while heavy industry areas in Germany and elsewhere suffered more damage and in a lot of cases was consolidated into more sensible sites. There was somewhere in Sheffield where molten steel was taken from a furnace and moved _on public roads_ to the rolling mill

Some of the old photos you see are shocking, even from the 1970s and early 80s. They look more like the third world than Europe. I remember London in the early 80s when all the buildings were still black from coal smoke - the southern side has been cleaned in the photo. There were still bomb sites which had never been rebuilt in the 1980s, it's a different world now










Or Glasgow in the 1970s:









and some more shocking photos


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## radamfi

The population of Glasgow is below what it was at the end of the 19th century and has dropped from about 1.1 million to about 635,000














__





Historic population trend | The Glasgow Indicators Project







www.understandingglasgow.com





Liverpool's population peaked at about 850,000 in 1931, dropping by more than 50% to bottom out at about 414,000 in 2001 and is now estimated to be about 500,000. It was about 700,000 at the end of the 19th century.

Similarly, Manchester's population fell from about 750,000 in 1931 to below 400,000 in 2001, but is now estimated to be about 550,000. 

However, these city populations only refer to the municipality and the urban areas extend considerably beyond those boundaries, especially in the case of Manchester. The population of what is now Greater Manchester has been relatively stable in the last 100 years, staying roughly between 2.5 and 2.7 million. Much of what is normally considered informally as "Manchester" lies outside its city boundaries. Even the Manchester United football ground is outside the city proper, despite being only about 4 km from the centre.

Birmingham didn't have such a population drop and the current population of 1.1 million is roughly the same as its record population. However, its boundaries are drawn more generously and includes a lot of suburban areas which in "Manchester" would be in neighbouring authorities. There's a long running debate about what Britain's "second city" is. Until about 20 years ago, there was general acceptance that Birmingham was the second city. However, more recent surveys suggest that more people think Manchester is the second city, despite having a much smaller population in the city proper. Manchester now has a bigger media profile since the BBC moved many of its departments there, although strictly speaking they are in not in the city proper, but in Salford.


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## ChrisZwolle

A big mess on Crete. Flash floods caused significant damage.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1581308580333903872

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1581228193629237249

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1581219546442047489


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## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> quality of lower-income building stock etc.


The quality of building stock in the UK anyway seems to be very low. Not only the lower-income one.

I'm recently following a YouTube channel made by a crew of two Polish electricians working in the UK. Very good one, really well-made, and they tell many interesting facts, not only about electrical systems, wiring etc. and how it's different from what we have in continental Europe, but also about the whole construction business in the country and what people working in it (like them) have to deal with.

And it can be clearly seen that while they have many smart inventions that really make sense and which we don't have in continental Europe; from fused electric plugs to windows that slide up and down, most of the solutions you can find in their constructions, on the continent would have been considered obsolete for at least some 50 years.

This is the channel, unfortunately it's in Polish – https://www.youtube.com/c/RuchOporuElektrykwUK

But see those two episodes, showing a building in the renovation of which they participate as electricians – even if you can't understand a word, at least look at the pictures:











Seemingly, quite a common thing in their construction, are, for example, ventilated ceilings (BETWEEN the levels, I'm not talking about the roof of the building)... Where the outside air, by design, has to get and circulate inside. Perfect for thermal insulation...

I mean, air gaps can be used as thermal insulation – air is a bad thermal conductor, even modern insulation materials like styrofoam are based on miniature air bubbles that actually make the insulation – but it can work when the gap is enclosed, not ventilated, so that the air is constantly being exchanged with the outside world...

The floor in the first floor bathroom was thermally insulated using... newspapers and a carpet.

The building from those two videos is rather an upper-class one... And still it utilizes those terrible solutions and you can see in the videos of how terrible construction quality it is.


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## Stuu

radamfi said:


> However, more recent surveys suggest that more people think Manchester is the second city, despite having a much smaller population in the city proper. Manchester now has a bigger media profile since the BBC moved many of its departments there, although strictly speaking they are in not in the city proper, but in Salford.


It's nonsense though, no one claims London is only the City of London. Salford is part of the same urban area and even parts of Manchester City centre are in Salford Borough. It is tricky to establish exactly where the urban area ends as it is basically a single urban area out to Bolton and Wigan, and there's barely even any open countryside all the way to Liverpool. The Office for National Statistics call somewhere a continuous urban area if there is less than a 200m gap between development, which makes Manchester the second most populous city, but not by very much


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## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> The building from those two videos is rather an upper-class one... And still it utilizes those terrible solutions and you can see in the videos of how terrible construction quality it is.


That building is at least 120 years old, so will obviously have employed techniques used at the time. The owners might also insist on it being restored in the same way it was built too, and it's possible it is listed which means it can't be significantly changed without permission.

It is true however that the construction industry isn't very innovative. A lot of the work in residential construction is done by very small companies, which makes it inefficient and means methods have to be kept simple. Amazingly there is no legal requirement to have any training or qualifications before calling yourself a builder, and new build houses can be pretty terrible. People buying houses are also very conservative and want houses with their own garden, even when the garden is absolutely tiny and next door is less than 1m away, so they can pretend they live in a village


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## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> That building is at least 120 years old, so will obviously have employed techniques used at the time.


It was modernized multiple times later on, and even the technologies used then don't really seem "up to date" from the continental perspective... And regarding that all this happened in a rich country.

Polish commie block apartments – I know they were built some 60-70 years later – but still, while they were known for their poor construction quality, seem to be much better than that.

And this was a higher class house. But only its size (and maybe also the rich-equipped bathroom) shows that...

Although probably much of that "obsoleteness" of the British construction actually comes from the fact that the UK was a very developed contry so early. It's the same as e.g. with the banking systems. In the US they are much more obsolete than in Europe, especially compared with the central and eastern Europe – because they developed decades earlier. In Poland people only started getting bank accounts on a more massive scale in 1990s. It's not like there weren't banks before that (there was at least the state-owned PKO); people just didn't feel any need to have an account.


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## radamfi

Stuu said:


> It's nonsense though, no one claims London is only the City of London. Salford is part of the same urban area and even parts of Manchester City centre are in Salford Borough. It is tricky to establish exactly where the urban area ends as it is basically a single urban area out to Bolton and Wigan, and there's barely even any open countryside all the way to Liverpool. The Office for National Statistics call somewhere a continuous urban area if there is less than a 200m gap between development, which makes Manchester the second most populous city, but not by very much


It will be interesting to see how the ONS defines the built up areas for the 2021 census and if they decide there is no longer a 200 metre gap and so there is now a continuous Manchester - Liverpool urban area. That would be problematic for comparing Manchester and Birmingham using urban populations.

You are right to highlight the inconsistency with the way London is treated. Manchester's status in the world has probably been harmed as a result. For example, I had a Hungarian gazetteer/world atlas as a kid which had a list of largest cities in each country, and Manchester was way down the list because of the use of city proper. So Hungarian children reading that may have got the wrong impression. It was shown on a par with Bradford and even Kirkless, because the book used local authority areas and populations. Hardly anyone has heard of Kirklees other than people in West Yorkshire and geography geeks, whereas most people in the UK have heard of Huddersfield.

It has become a British tradition to give local authority areas "neutral" names which are sometimes obscure. This normally happens when districts are combined so not to give the impression of a big town taking over a small town.


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## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> It was modernized multiple times later on, and even the technologies used then don't really seem "up to date" from the continental perspective... And regarding that all this happened in a rich country.


Clearly it has been updated since it was built but everything in houses like that is usually just fitted in, without much renovation. So electricity would have been added, and most of the plumbing many years after it was built. Rooms will have been redecorated but only the surface. Things like indoor bathrooms will have just used the most suitable room. Most of that house looks untouched for maybe 50 years - looking at the decoration and the style of the fittings/wiring etc. No one has built a wall using lath and plaster (15 minutes in the first video) since before WW2


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## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> Some cities on the continent also saw a significant outmigration. Paris is still around 800,000 below its pre 1960 levels.


However, if we treat Paris the same way we treat London (by considering the wider urban area) then we see a continuous increase in population from World War 2 onwards, and most of that time the increase has been quite fast





__





Loading…






en.wikipedia.org














That contrasts with Greater London which saw population falls even in outer London.

There may well have been migration from "inner Paris" (i.e. Paris proper) to the suburbs and beyond, but the population increase in "outer Paris" (i.e. the rest of Île-de-France) more than compensates. I get the impression Paris proper seems quite happy considering the rest of Île-de-France as separate even if it means the population figure looks low.

During the time that London's population decreased, there was a lot of migration to the commuter belt, well beyond the boundaries of Greater London. Maybe this didn't happen in the Paris area, or at least not to the same degree. Some people prefer to include the commuter belt in the London population for the purposes of making a fairer comparison to other big cities.


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## ChrisZwolle

Île-de-France has seen tremendous population growth since the 1960s. Generally, two types of suburbs developed, the affluent, lower density towns and villages which amalgamated into the general urban area, and what we now typically call the 'banlieue': large-scale housing projects consisting of large apartment blocks, the so-called HLM.

The large population growth of Île-de-France is not only due to the decline of Paris, but also due to international migration, rural-urban migration and a higher birth rate at that time. These all settled in the suburbs. 

Amsterdam lost about a quarter of its population after 1960, bottoming out in 1985. It almost regained its pre-1960 population by 2020, but had to expand geographically to gain that much population, large new neighborhoods were built after 1960, particularly in the west and southeast of the city. 

Interesting graph: Bevolking Amsterdam - Overzicht 1850-2040


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## radamfi

Why did Amsterdam Zuidoost have to be officially part of Amsterdam as an exclave? UK cities, especially Manchester (as mentioned, its boundaries are tightly drawn), built huge housing estates outside its boundaries, known as "overspill estates". They were managed by the city but they never became part of the city. So overspill estates contributed to the statistical population loss of the original city.


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## manchesterfield

Just to illustrate radamfi's point.
None of the following are in the city of Manchester proper:































But they are all within the inner core of Greater Manchester of course.


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## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> The quality of building stock in the UK anyway seems to be very low. Not only the lower-income one.
> 
> I'm recently following a YouTube channel made by a crew of two Polish electricians working in the UK. Very good one, really well-made, and they tell many interesting facts, not only about electrical systems, wiring etc. and how it's different from what we have in continental Europe, but also about the whole construction business in the country and what people working in it (like them) have to deal with.
> 
> And it can be clearly seen that while they have many smart inventions that really make sense and which we don't have in continental Europe; from fused electric plugs to windows that slide up and down, most of the solutions you can find in their constructions, on the continent would have been considered obsolete for at least some 50 years.
> 
> This is the channel, unfortunately it's in Polish – https://www.youtube.com/c/RuchOporuElektrykwUK
> 
> But see those two episodes, showing a building in the renovation of which they participate as electricians – even if you can't understand a word, at least look at the pictures:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Seemingly, quite a common thing in their construction, are, for example, ventilated ceilings (BETWEEN the levels, I'm not talking about the roof of the building)... Where the outside air, by design, has to get and circulate inside. Perfect for thermal insulation...
> 
> I mean, air gaps can be used as thermal insulation – air is a bad thermal conductor, even modern insulation materials like styrofoam are based on miniature air bubbles that actually make the insulation – but it can work when the gap is enclosed, not ventilated, so that the air is constantly being exchanged with the outside world...
> 
> The floor in the first floor bathroom was thermally insulated using... newspapers and a carpet.


I watched quite a few of videos from these guys. Quite decent mix of silly fun and some interesting insider knowledge. But it is still just a YT channel made for entertainment, not overview of British construction standards. There are some missing information as well as some stretching of reality.

Having said that, Britain has a lot of weird solutions as well as tones of old architecture. One of the main reasons for that is lack of serious conflict in recent centuries and early urbanization, which provide large stock of historic properties. In comparison Germany was badly damaged and a lot of its housing stock as well as infrastructure had to be rebuild from scratch post WWII. Similarly in Poland. 

In Poland there is also fact of poor development before WWII. We simply had little of old solid buildings to begin with. People in Poland will never understand why British people go to such extreme lengths with renovations.



> The building from those two videos is rather an upper-class one... And still it utilizes those terrible solutions and you can see in the videos of how terrible construction quality it is.


It is only "upper-class" due to its location in affluent region close to London. This is the only reason why it is worth £750,000, no its quality of build or heritage. 40 years ago it was worth fraction of that and it was more likely to house actual farmer rather than stock broker. 

I would say the biggest difference between Polish and British property market is importance of location vs. quality of actual building. Due to much stricter planning rules it is difficult to build a lot of new housing, especially in pretty regions in SE England where people actually want to live. That's why even old properties are expensive and people are ready to spend considerable amounts of money on renovations but with keeping as much of the appearance as possible.

In Poland people just buy a plot of land and throw in some generic (and often frankly quite ugly) house in random location, ruining landscape along the way. These new homes might be randomly located and ugly but because they are build to modern technical standards will have better technical solutions that old converted farmhouse in Sussex. 

It is very different approach. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Ideally I would meet somewhere in the middle. Britain needs some relaxation of the planning rules and Poland definitely needs some tightening and better care of the existing buildings. Because we are ruining country by throwing buildings wherever we like.


----------



## radamfi

manchesterfield said:


> Just to illustrate radamfi's point.
> None of the following are in the city of Manchester proper:
> View attachment 3994296
> View attachment 3994297
> 
> View attachment 3994295
> View attachment 3994293
> 
> 
> But they are all within the inner core of Greater Manchester of course.


It is interesting to note how some of those logos and names have changed over the years. BBC Radio Manchester has changed its name back to its original name. When the BBC was starting to roll out local radio stations in the 60s/70s, there was an ambitious plan to have stations covering each major town. Hence they were called Radio Manchester, Radio Blackburn, Radio Brighton etc. with the expectation there would probably be Radio Bolton, Radio Blackpool, Radio Eastbourne etc. in the future. By the 80s, it was clear that this would never happen due to a lack of money, so the BBC local radio stations were renamed as counties, and Radio Manchester was renamed as GMR (Greater Manchester Radio), to emphasize that the station covered the whole region, not just the city proper. But over time, it became acceptable and normal for other parts of Greater Manchester not in the city proper to call themselves part of Manchester and therefore it was renamed back to Radio Manchester.

Salford University never used to advertise the fact it is basically in the centre of Manchester. In the past, Salford in general pretended to be a totally different place as it has a cathedral and city status by itself, even though it doesn't have a proper city centre. However, when Manchester became a trendy place to study in the 90s, Salford University started to advertise itself as a "Greater Manchester university". Now the logo doesn't even say "Greater" and actively highlights being part of Manchester. That would be unthinkable in the 80s or earlier.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

A train tore right through a bus in Bergen op Zoom, Netherlands. Luckily the bus had no passengers.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> A train tore right through a bus in Bergen op Zoom, Netherlands. Luckily the bus had no passengers.


There's video:









Trein rijdt door bus vanaf de andere kant


Wat een klapper




www.dumpert.nl


----------



## geogregor

Slagathor said:


> There's video:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Trein rijdt door bus vanaf de andere kant
> 
> 
> Wat een klapper
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.dumpert.nl


What actually happened there? Did bus broke down on the crossing? Got stuck?


----------



## volodaaaa

Guys, I have a pretty complicated question for you.

We currently deal with so-called road trains or "amusement park" trains in Slovakia. They are operated in many ways, for instance:

as an occasional transport for tourist groups with approximate routes but definitely without any timetables,
as a commercial road transport with fixed routes and schedules,
as a service within public service obligation contracts in some smaller municipalities.
Slovak law does not regulate them because a road transport act states that transport operators operating vehicles up to 40 km/h are not obligated to have a licence. However, this is not a Slovak thing as it is set out in _EC Regulation No. 1071/2009 establishing common rules concerning the conditions to be complied with to pursue the occupation of road transport operator._



> this Regulation shall, unless otherwise provided for in national law, not apply to:
> 
> c) undertakings engaged in the occupation of road transport operator solely by means of motor vehicles with a maximum authorised speed not exceeding 40 km/h.


They are slow and cause congestion or delays for public passenger transport. Furthermore, they are operated without any regulation - you can, as an undertaking, purchase the road train and provide transport services anywhere and anytime. 

Do you have, by any chance, a piece of information on how these cars are regulated in your country/city?


----------



## Slagathor

geogregor said:


> What actually happened there? Did bus broke down on the crossing? Got stuck?


No word on that yet. The news articles I read said that the bus had finished its morning rush hour runs and was on its way back to the depot (which is why there were no passengers onboard). Witnesses saw the driver get off the bus, furiously waving his arms at the oncoming train, which hit the emergency brake but didn't come to a full stop on time.

Police are investigating exactly what happened.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> In Poland there is also fact of poor development before WWII. We simply had little of old solid buildings to begin with.


Though those British ones from those times don't look too solid either 



geogregor said:


> It is only "upper-class" due to its location in affluent region close to London.


What about its size? The guys from that channel often show lower-class "houses". Which are more like apartments regarding their size – they even joke they have so small fuse boxes with a limited number of circuit breakers because any larger one wouldn't fit in. I guess, in Poland, commie block apartments are actually something comparable (though over here, you can also have a reasonably large house outside the city at a similar cost; I assume it's not so easy in the UK, and anyway a "reasonably large" house in Poland still isn't as huge as that thing from the UK).



geogregor said:


> Ideally I would meet somewhere in the middle. Britain needs some relaxation of the planning rules and Poland definitely needs some tightening and better care of the existing buildings. Because we are ruining country by throwing buildings wherever we like.


Though most modern houses in Poland have a quite sensible architectural form. Ugly were the houses built in 1960s and 1970s, but this was because of quite tight restrictions from the communist government, and the practical inaccessibility of building materials. I mostly mean the "Polish cubes", actually I personally live in one.

Modern houses in Poland sometimes happen to be kinda kitsch, but I'd say most of them look quite good. Though it also comes from the fact that (unlike in the UK) we have no problems with availability of land for building new houses, plots which have less than 20 m of the front line or smaller than some 800 sq. m are considered small and requiring some compromises while fitting houses onto them. So the houses are often designed as a huge flat space, and single-storey houses generally look better than taller ones.

The problem is the urban planning, and there are two big issues here (there are also other, but to me those two seem to be the most important):
1. Still a huge part of the country is not covered by urban plans – building in such places is generally permitted based on the houses existing in the neighborhood (in a similar style and so on – there is always an individual decision of the municipal officials what you can build) – and the regulations regarding it are so imprecise, that they become interpreted in such a way, that e.g. based on a single house somewhere near, a housing developer can build a whole complex of houses in the middle of nowhere.
2. Plots of land sold for building new houses are, in most cases, former farming fields. Farming fields (especially if they were successively divided between children by newer and newer generations of owners) are typically long and narrow lanes of land. The regulations don't require joining such narrow and long plots together before they get built-up. And when they belong to completely different people who have nothing to do with each other, they are also obviously unwilling to work together if not forced to. Such lane plots are either divided and sold to individuals who want to get their houses built on them, the outcomes of which look quite bad (what you get are chains of dead-end streets, usually private ones, with houses along them) – or bought by housing developers; such a developer, on such a single lane plot, builds a complex of identical houses, often a closed one with an entrance gate – which looks even worse.



volodaaaa said:


> Do you have, by any chance, a piece of information on how these cars are regulated in your country/city?


I assume you mean such "chu chu trains" on roads, built based on a tractor with several trailers...

In Poland – it seems the highway code treats them as a special category of vehicles. Though their speed is limited to 25 km/h. And operation of them is classified as "special use of roads", in the same category as rallies, competitions etc. organized on roads. Though excluding some regulations, like the road doesn't have to be closed for traffic. 

Then you have two main legal acts regulating the public transportation. "Prawo przewozowe" ("transportation law") and "ustawa o publicznym transporcie zbiorowym" ("public collective transport act"). The problem is that much of the regulations of those two acts are rarely followed even with normal commercial public transport with buses... And the Public Collective Transport Act has been in a limbo state already for almost a decade. The current situation (and it's been going on, as I said, for almost a decade) is that when you are a bus carrier and you want to open a new line, your timetable gets approved... until the end of the current year, because it's when the appropriate regulations of the Public Collective Transport Act (that would introduce a whole new system with approving the timetables and so on) are supposed to come into force. In November and December, usually somewhere together with the state budget for the next year, there is always a statement in one of the legal acts issued at that occasion, which postpones the introduction of the new rules to the next year – and also extends the validity of all the approved timetables for the next year 

Still, I don't know how it looks in practice, but to me it seems those chu chu trains must be registered either as occasional or regular commercial road transport... It certainly falls under the Transportation Law, because at its beginning it says it applies to all the paid or unpaid transport of people or goods except maritime, aviation and horse transport. So the law obliges them to e.g. present the timetable on all the stops... But most carriers fail to do it even in ordinary bus transit. Or similarly they are obliged to issue tickets that include the source and the destination of the trip and the level of the discounts applied, and the distance in km, which also many bus carriers fail to do – they just issue receipts without all that information.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> Though those British ones from those times don't look too solid either
> 
> 
> What about its size? The guys from that channel often show lower-class "houses". Which are more like apartments regarding their size – they even joke they have so small fuse boxes with a limited number of circuit breakers because any larger one wouldn't fit in. I guess, in Poland, commie block apartments are actually something comparable (though over here, you can also have a reasonably large house outside the city at a similar cost; I assume it's not so easy in the UK, and anyway a "reasonably large" house in Poland still isn't as huge as that thing from the UK).
> 
> 
> Though most modern houses in Poland have a quite sensible architectural form. Ugly were the houses built in 1960s and 1970s, but this was because of quite tight restrictions from the communist government, and the practical inaccessibility of building materials. I mostly mean the "Polish cubes", actually I personally live in one.
> 
> Modern houses in Poland sometimes happen to be kinda kitsch, but I'd say most of them look quite good. Though it also comes from the fact that (unlike in the UK) we have no problems with availability of land for building new houses, plots which have less than 20 m of the front line or smaller than some 800 sq. m are considered small and requiring some compromises while fitting houses onto them. So the houses are often designed as a huge flat space, and single-storey houses generally look better than taller ones.
> 
> The problem is the urban planning, and there are two big issues here (there are also other, but to me those two seem to be the most important):
> 1. Still a huge part of the country is not covered by urban plans – building in such places is generally permitted based on the houses existing in the neighborhood (in a similar style and so on – there is always an individual decision of the municipal officials what you can build) – and the regulations regarding it are so imprecise, that they become interpreted in such a way, that e.g. based on a single house somewhere near, a housing developer can build a whole complex of houses in the middle of nowhere.
> 2. Plots of land sold for building new houses are, in most cases, former farming fields. Farming fields (especially if they were successively divided between children by newer and newer generations of owners) are typically long and narrow lanes of land. The regulations don't require joining such narrow and long plots together before they get built-up. And when they belong to completely different people who have nothing to do with each other, they are also obviously unwilling to work together if not forced to. Such lane plots are either divided and sold to individuals who want to get their houses built on them, the outcomes of which look quite bad (what you get are chains of dead-end streets, usually private ones, with houses along them) – or bought by housing developers; such a developer, on such a single lane plot, builds a complex of identical houses, often a closed one with an entrance gate – which looks even worse.
> 
> 
> I assume you mean such "chu chu trains" on roads, built based on a tractor with several trailers...
> 
> In Poland – it seems the highway code treats them as a special category of vehicles. Though their speed is limited to 25 km/h. And operation of them is classified as "special use of roads", in the same category as rallies, competitions etc. organized on roads. Though excluding some regulations, like the road doesn't have to be closed for traffic.
> 
> Then you have two main legal acts regulating the public transportation. "Prawo przewozowe" ("transportation law") and "ustawa o publicznym transporcie zbiorowym" ("public collective transport act"). The problem is that much of the regulations of those two acts are rarely followed even with normal commercial public transport with buses... And the Public Collective Transport Act has been in a limbo state already for almost a decade. The current situation (and it's been going on, as I said, for almost a decade) is that when you are a bus carrier and you want to open a new line, your timetable gets approved... until the end of the current year, because it's when the appropriate regulations of the Public Collective Transport Act (that would introduce a whole new system with approving the timetables and so on) are supposed to come into force. In November and December, usually somewhere together with the state budget for the next year, there is always a statement in one of the legal acts issued at that occasion, which postpones the introduction of the new rules to the next year – and also extends the validity of all the approved timetables for the next year
> 
> Still, I don't know how it looks in practice, but to me it seems those chu chu trains must be registered either as occasional or regular commercial road transport... It certainly falls under the Transportation Law, because at its beginning it says it applies to all the paid or unpaid transport of people or goods except maritime, aviation and horse transport. So the law obliges them to e.g. present the timetable on all the stops... But most carriers fail to do it even in ordinary bus transit. Or similarly they are obliged to issue tickets that include the source and the destination of the trip and the level of the discounts applied, and the distance in km, which also many bus carriers fail to do – they just issue receipts without all that information.


It seems extremely fishy to me. I have seen several registration certificates of such trains, and the tractor is a freight vehicle, while the trailers are "bus trailers". Each "car" has its own registration certificate and own licence plate. I do not even know, which driving licence you are supposed to have to drive this thing, maybe both groups: C and D together. However, in the business register (I have no idea how to translate it to English properly, but companies in Slovakia are obligated to register all their business activities and it is forbidden to do a different business than registered), they do not have anything about road transport, just something like "operation of amusement devices" - it sounds more like marry-go-rounds to me. Since there is no mention of road transport, there is every likelihood that nothing like Regulation 1370/2007, 1071/2009, 1073/2009 or derived legislation on the level of the member state concerns the operators of such trains.


----------



## Kpc21

volodaaaa said:


> I have no idea how to translate it to English properly, but companies in Slovakia are obligated to register all their business activities and it is forbidden to do a different business than registered


In Poland we don't even have a single register, there is a separate one for single-person businesses and a separate one for companies 
For single-person businesses there is the "Central Register and Information of Economic Activities", for companies (it also includes NGOs such as associations or foundations) – "National Court Register" (or more literally "State Court Register", Poles, except ones more right-wing oriented, like PiS supporters, kinda have aversion to calling anything "national").



volodaaaa said:


> the tractor is a freight vehicle,


In Poland a tractor is a separate category, literally a "farming tractor".

And a "tourist train" as our road regulation denote it, is yet another category of vehicles.



volodaaaa said:


> Since there is no mention of road transport, there is every likelihood that nothing like Regulation 1370/2007, 1071/2009, 1073/2009 or derived legislation on the level of the member state concerns the operators of such trains.


In Poland it doesn't really concern most usual bus operators either...

Bus carriers in Poland sometimes happen to be just a single driver with a single minibus, constituting the whole bus operator.

Huge companies with whole fleet of buses exist practically only in the city public transport, as municipally-owned or municipally-contracted PT operators.

The rest of that field are tiny businesses, often family ones.



volodaaaa said:


> I do not even know, which driving licence you are supposed to have to drive this thing, maybe both groups: C and D together.


In Poland it's basically the same as for a tractor with trailers, so T or B+E... With a few disclaimers – you have to be at least 21 years old and have had the appropriate category for at least two years.

Though it's interesting... Because surely there is also a law telling that the transportation of people on regular routes has to be done using buses. Things which you can find in some other countries, like the German "Anruflinientaxi" (buses replaced with taxis which you have to call in advance at times when it's not affordable to run even a minibus), are illegal in Poland because of that. And many of those chu chu trains actually run on regular routes...


----------



## Suburbanist

Slagathor said:


> No word on that yet. The news articles I read said that the bus had finished its morning rush hour runs and was on its way back to the depot (which is why there were no passengers onboard). Witnesses saw the driver get off the bus, furiously waving his arms at the oncoming train, which hit the emergency brake but didn't come to a full stop on time.
> 
> Police are investigating exactly what happened.


Thankfully.

Dutch railway crosses have little head time. Between first loud sound/flash and train arriving it takes less than 45 seconds, unless they changed things. Sometimes as little as 30 seconds.

I remember that horrific accident where a low-speed electric cart used to transport toddlers to kindergarten was struck by a train a few years ago.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> Though those British ones from those times don't look too solid either
> 
> What about its size? The guys from that channel often show lower-class "houses". Which are more like apartments regarding their size – they even joke they have so small fuse boxes with a limited number of circuit breakers because any larger one wouldn't fit in. I guess, in Poland, commie block apartments are actually something comparable (though over here, you can also have a reasonably large house outside the city at a similar cost; I assume it's not so easy in the UK, and anyway a "reasonably large" house in Poland still isn't as huge as that thing from the UK).


Partially true, some build quality might be questionable, but that often is the result of the age of the building. On the other hand there are millions of brick and stone buildings (that often depends on region) inhabited by millions of people, many of them quite nicely renovated. Nothing on that scale ever existed in Poland. A lot of architecture was rural and wooden before WWII. Cites housed minority of population.

And size is overrated. Modern household are often consisting 2 or 3 people, you don't need 150 - 200 square meters for such family.

You can see some interesting renovations and extensions from London here:









London house extensions | Dezeen


Stories about London house extensions, including kitchens, lofts, and home-improvement projects shortlisted for the Don't Move, Improve! competition.




www.dezeen.com













London house extensions | Dezeen


Stories about London house extensions, including kitchens, lofts, and home-improvement projects shortlisted for the Don't Move, Improve! competition.




www.dezeen.com



























































Most of the original buildings above are 150 years old (or even older) and on not very large plots. Yet, as you can see they can be tastefully renovated. And there are affluent people ready to spend considerable sums of money on such projects. Interestingly from the front they look absolutely ordinary, you wouldn't say the different from the unrenovated neighbors.

The difference with Poland is that people of similar socioeconomic status in Poland prefer to buy plot of land in the middle of nowhere, often with little infrastructure, and throw up oversized house, often in style of noble mansion, often with fake columns by the entrance. 



> Though most modern houses in Poland have a quite sensible architectural form. Ugly were the houses built in 1960s and 1970s, but this was because of quite tight restrictions from the communist government, and the practical inaccessibility of building materials. I mostly mean the "Polish cubes", actually I personally live in one.
> 
> Modern houses in Poland sometimes happen to be kinda kitsch, but I'd say most of them look quite good.


Actually sometimes I prefer the "Polish cube" over some of the more modern monstrosities which pretend to be either wooden chalet in the mountains or renaissance mansion, completed with columns by the front door 



> Though it also comes from the fact that (unlike in the UK) we have no problems with availability of land for building new houses, plots which have less than 20 m of the front line or smaller than some 800 sq. m are considered small and requiring some compromises while fitting houses onto them. So the houses are often designed as a huge flat space, and single-storey houses generally look better than taller ones.


Sometimes I think that too much space is the main problem of Poland. It allows for bad choices, like oversized houses, random location of buildings, absurdly massive fences etc. I agree that things are getting better but there is a long way to go...



> The problem is the urban planning, and there are two big issues here (there are also other, but to me those two seem to be the most important):
> 1. Still a huge part of the country is not covered by urban plans – building in such places is generally permitted based on the houses existing in the neighborhood (in a similar style and so on – there is always an individual decision of the municipal officials what you can build) – and the regulations regarding it are so imprecise, that they become interpreted in such a way, that e.g. based on a single house somewhere near, a housing developer can build a whole complex of houses in the middle of nowhere.
> 2. Plots of land sold for building new houses are, in most cases, former farming fields. Farming fields (especially if they were successively divided between children by newer and newer generations of owners) are typically long and narrow lanes of land. The regulations don't require joining such narrow and long plots together before they get built-up. And when they belong to completely different people who have nothing to do with each other, they are also obviously unwilling to work together if not forced to. Such lane plots are either divided and sold to individuals who want to get their houses built on them, the outcomes of which look quite bad (what you get are chains of dead-end streets, usually private ones, with houses along them) – or bought by housing developers; such a developer, on such a single lane plot, builds a complex of identical houses, often a closed one with an entrance gate – which looks even worse.


100% agree.

Polish planning is a joke. But it is no funny really. It will damage country in the long term. All those random streets according to fields' boundaries create unsolvable transport issues. Those houses randomly thrown around (like a cow shit) will be pretty much impossible to be serviced by any form of public transport. And driving won't be easy either, with completely unplanned road network, full of dead ends etc. Provision of any services (water, gas, electricity, rubbish collection etc.) will be more expensive. It will all become even more problematic as society will age. How will we provide medical services and care to old people inhabiting houses randomly thrown everywhere, far from medical centers etc.?

Britain is far from ideal. A lot of infrastructure and houses are dated and need urgent modernization. But at least they are more logically located spatially (however not as well as in Germanic countries).

And problem in Britain is NIMBYsm, it is really difficult to build anything those days before rising objections from neighbors. This is often bigger obstacle than the strict planning rules themselves.

I think I mentioned already how redevelopment of our local ugly shopping centre into flats is facing opposition from loud NIMBYs organizing on social media.


----------



## Stuu

volodaaaa said:


> Do you have, by any chance, a piece of information on how these cars are regulated in your country/city?


In the UK every single motorised vehicle has to be registered and has to follow the same basic rules, regardless of speeds. Those things do exist here, and drive on public roads, they always have a number plate which is for the tractor unit. If they are carrying passengers who pay, then they would have to be registered as a public transport service and have to comply with those rules. I would assume you need a bus licence to drive them, but couldn't say for sure


----------



## Coccodrillo

In Switzerland the tractor has a standard plate, the trailers I don't remember. Maybe not.

To transport people on a fixed path and on a fixed timetable either a "concession" or an "autorizathion" is needed. The difference is that in the first case it is fully integrated in the public transit network (ticketing system, maps, timetables, apps), in the second case it isn't (the timetable may or may not be publicized at stops, but the exact path, stops, and timetable must be sent to the public authority). In the first case it is like any bus line, so anyone can board it, the second case is used for things like Flixbus, company shuttles transporting workers between factories, and so on, thus the operator or the authority can restrict its use.

If such vehicles are used on trips on non-fixed path and schedule or entirely on private land they need a different authorization. I'm not sure where is the difference between a fixed path-schedule service and a once in a time service is, but it is related to how frequently that trip is done. A private bus company offering every week April to October a return trip by bus between Zürich and Europapark is considered to offer a regular bus service, if it offers it four times a year it is not.


----------



## radamfi

The latest blog post from BicycleDutch discusses quirks of Dutch city boundaries. He seemed surprised that Rotterdam and Schiedam are joined together physically. He could have said similar if he had cycled from Capelle aan den IJssel to Rotterdam.



> This is a ride in the outskirts of both Schiedam and Rotterdam and both places have excellent cycling infrastructure. At the risk of insulting people, I must say that I do not see any difference between Schiedam and Rotterdam in these particular areas of the cities. Even the Rotterdam tram runs in Schiedam as well. In most other countries in the world Schiedam would probably be a suburb of Rotterdam, but in the Netherlands they are two separate cities.











A ride from Schiedam to Rotterdam


Some of my posts take shape by accident. This is one such post. I wanted to film for an upcoming post at a location south of the Beneluxtunnel in Schiedam. The nearest place to rent an OV-Fiets wou…




bicycledutch.wordpress.com


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> Guys, I have a pretty complicated question for you.
> 
> We currently deal with so-called road trains or "amusement park" trains in Slovakia. They are operated in many ways,
> 
> Do you have, by any chance, a piece of information on how these cars are regulated in your country/city?


In Finland they are overregulated. The driver needs a DE class driving licence, which is an overkill. We speak about vehicles not exceeding 25 km/h. They are not considered public transportation, and no special permissions are needed. Still it may be necessary to have an agreement with the hosting city about setting up stops and other such equipment.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

radamfi said:


> The latest blog post from BicycleDutch discusses quirks of Dutch city boundaries. He seemed surprised that Rotterdam and Schiedam are joined together physically. He could have said similar if he had cycled from Capelle aan den IJssel to Rotterdam.


There were a lot of municipal mergers in the 1970s due to urban growth. Apparently places like Schiedam already had sufficient size not to be merged at that time.

My city is kind of unusual, the pre 1967 municipality of Zwolle was an enclave in the larger (then mostly rural) municipality of Zwollerkerspel. I think a majority of inhabitants of Zwolle now live in what used to be Zwollerkerspel.


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> In Finland they are overregulated. The driver needs a DE class driving licence, which is an overkill. We speak about vehicles not exceeding 25 km/h. They are not considered public transportation, and no special permissions are needed. Still it may be necessary to have an agreement with the hosting city about setting up stops and other such equipment.


Here is demand, especially from municipalities, to regulate them, not in traffic, but transport. These vehicles are extremely slow, especially during rush hours. They cause severe delays in public passenger transport (up to 8 minutes per one-way journey, which is a lot). The regulation is supposed to be in the form of prohibited hours and streets.


----------



## radamfi

Rotterdam is a very odd shape, made even more odd by the recent incorporation of Hoek van Holland, 25 km from the centre. Vlaardingen, Maassluis and Schiedam are all separate municipalities between Hoek van Holland and Rotterdam. However, on the south side of the river, Rotterdam stretches the whole way from coast to the city centre, taking in the vast oil refineries and docks. So, on that basis, you could say Hoek van Holland was close to Rotterdam, because Rotterdam was just across the water.


----------



## Suburbanist

I think the incorporation of Hoek van Holland and those tiny municipalities in the South was promoted in order to keep the whole port under one single unified municipal authority in what concerns local matters. Am I correct?


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> Here is demand, especially from municipalities, to regulate them, not in traffic, but transport. These vehicles are extremely slow, especially during rush hours. They cause severe delays in public passenger transport (up to 8 minutes per one-way journey, which is a lot). The regulation is supposed to be in the form of prohibited hours and streets.


And the municipalities do not have an authority to put traffic signs to keep them away from critical streets?


----------



## marcobruls

radamfi said:


> The latest blog post from BicycleDutch discusses quirks of Dutch city boundaries. He seemed surprised that Rotterdam and Schiedam are joined together physically. He could have said similar if he had cycled from Capelle aan den IJssel to Rotterdam.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A ride from Schiedam to Rotterdam
> 
> 
> Some of my posts take shape by accident. This is one such post. I wanted to film for an upcoming post at a location south of the Beneluxtunnel in Schiedam. The nearest place to rent an OV-Fiets wou…
> 
> 
> 
> 
> bicycledutch.wordpress.com


Downtown The Hague borders another town!


----------



## Slagathor

marcobruls said:


> Downtown The Hague borders another town!


lol yes exactly:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

International detour:


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Slagathor said:


> lol yes exactly:
> 
> View attachment 4010017


Well, yes, but it's less of a 'city core' and more of 'we have some space here, let's build some modernist tall buildings' downtown.
Also, Voorburg is over 1000 years older than The Hague, and the border between the current municipalities is 600 years old (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenk_(waterloop)). I'd say that it's not so weird if you look at it this way


----------



## x-type

Can somebody explain me why diesel prices are going wild?
Ok, I know that diesel fuel was primarily made from Russian oil. Now it is more or less history. But again, Arabic oil is also suitable to produce diesel, so I don't see the point.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I've read that a substantial amount of diesel enters the European market as a refined product from Russia, which will be banned in a few weeks, so diesel is being stocked up, pushing the prices up. It could be even more expensive after the ban comes into effect, if not sufficient alternative sources are procured.

Many governments do not like diesel so they are less incentivized to drop the fuel taxes on it, due to the 'dieselgate' scandal. They rather see diesel disappear sooner than petrol, at least in passenger cars.


----------



## bogdymol

ChrisZwolle said:


> They rather see diesel disappear sooner than petrol, at least in passenger cars.


Maybe. But the entire european economy relies on diesel trucks moving stuff all across the continent. Make diesel more expensive, everything gets more expensive, thus high inflation. 

Plus a respectable percentage of europeans drive diesel cars. Yes, they will switch to electric or hybrid sometime in the future, but you cannot have milions of cars replaced overnight. Plus, a modern diesel car gets excelent mileage especially in long roadtrips (my case exactly).


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Well, many politicians hate trucks too.

You're of course totally right that high transportation cost would be reflected into prices and thus inflation. Viable alternatives at scale are still a dot on the horizon.


----------



## Suburbanist

It is a bit more complicated than that.

Most European refineries have not been upgraded to work well with the type of oil that is replacing Russian oil, sure.

However, diesel prices have been higher than gasoline because of a worldwide shortage on refining capacity, both in North America but also in Asia. In part, this is due to the escalating costs to produce diesel to the latest specifications on sulphur and what else.

This has disrupted the market of diesel as a finished product, of which Europe also used to be a net importer.

The thing is that it is almost impossible to build new refineries in Europe except in a few industrial ports like Rotterdam. There is too much resistance on the political level, but this predates the war in Ukraine, it has been going on for a while.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Part of the energy crisis is self-inflicted, by banning almost every form of fossil fuel production in Europe. We made ourselves liable to blackmail from foreign dictators. Not to mention the anti-nuclear movement. Nuclear has been the only viable alternative at scale over the past decades. But apparently it's better to mine humongous amounts of coal / lignite.


----------



## x-type

Suburbanist said:


> It is a bit more complicated than that.
> 
> Most European refineries have not been upgraded to work well with the type of oil that is replacing Russian oil, sure.
> 
> However, diesel prices have been higher than gasoline because of a worldwide shortage on refining capacity, both in North America but also in Asia. In part, this is due to the escalating costs to produce diesel to the latest specifications on sulphur and what else.
> 
> This has disrupted the market of diesel as a finished product, of which Europe also used to be a net importer.
> 
> The thing is that it is almost impossible to build new refineries in Europe except in a few industrial ports like Rotterdam. There is too much resistance on the political level, but this predates the war in Ukraine, it has been going on for a while.


Do you maybe know why the Russian and Arabic oils are different, so European refineries cannot produce diesel from Arabic oil? I only know that Russian oil is more saturated with sulphur, a due to that fact has lower quality. 

It is obvious that Europe has shot its knee banning nuclear energy and destimulating diesel fuel. Btw, where is Greta nowadays? We cannot hear from her anything. Maybe she has realized that the shit, she's been playing with, has hit the fan.


----------



## cinxxx




----------



## x-type

cinxxx said:


>


Oh, now she's into "It wasn't me". So predictable.


----------



## italystf

Being pro-nuclear and being climate change activists aren't incompatible, as nuclear power contributes to reduce the usage of fossil fuels.
I used to be very against nuclear power, but now with fossile fuel crisis and the worsening of climate change I think that nuclear is probably the lesser evil, especially in developed countries that have the resources to manage modern nuclear power plants safely. Old nuclear plants especially in less developed and politically unstable countries (like former USSR) are more a problem.
Of course we need to push on renewables as fast as possible, but unfortunatly they aren't enough to cover our entire need of energy for the time being.


----------



## radamfi

Horse racing in Ireland is even more popular than in the UK and, just as in the UK, they still measure race distances in miles and furlongs, even though Ireland supposedly has fully converted to metric. A furlong is one-eighth of a mile or about 200 metres. There appears to be no sign of Irish horse racing converting to metric.


----------



## geogregor

Slagathor said:


> As with most slang from Surinamese and Moroccan origin, it usually starts in the 4 major cities and then seeps through the cracks into the rest of the country. Give it a few years.


It is the same in most countries. New slang words are created among young people in the largest metropolitan areas and then gradually spread. Geographically and through age groups.

Sad middle age folks (like on this forum ) complain for a while and then in a few years words enter general vocabulary and people start thinking "what was the fuss about"


----------



## ChrisZwolle

geogregor said:


> Sad middle age folks (like on this forum )


It feels like internet forums are something that many people under 25 aren't generally aware of. They use apps. Appification of the internet. 

Many users on SSC were probably under 25 when they started. I'm on another forum that has existed since 2005, but there has been a noticeable dropoff in younger users since around 2012-2014. When smartphones took over the online world.


----------



## Attus

italystf said:


> Being pro-nuclear and being climate change activists aren't incompatible, as nuclear power contributes to reduce the usage of fossil fuels.
> I used to be very against nuclear power, but now with fossile fuel crisis and the worsening of climate change I think that nuclear is probably the lesser evil, especially in developed countries that have the resources to manage modern nuclear power plants safely. Old nuclear plants especially in less developed and politically unstable countries (like former USSR) are more a problem.
> Of course we need to push on renewables as fast as possible, but unfortunatly they aren't enough to cover our entire need of energy for the time being.


Green Party in Germany is very, very strict against nuclear energy. They had a party congress last week and decided they would never ever accept any kind of nuclear energy.
Germany has 3 nuclear plants, the rest has alreadí been shut down. The last three shall be shut down at the end of this year. Chancellor Scholz decided that in order to save that winter, they life shall be prolonged up to April next year, i.e. by 3.5 months. The Greens are so upset, as if had Scholz decided to build a couple of new plants.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> It feels like internet forums are something that many people under 25 aren't generally aware of. They use apps. Appification of the internet.
> 
> Many users on SSC were probably under 25 when they started. I'm on another forum that has existed since 2005, but there has been a noticeable dropoff in younger users since around 2012-2014. When smartphones took over the online world.


The very same in basically all online forums I know, no matter what topic and language.
However, I think it's more complex than browser/smartphone, for example Facebook, too, lost many young users, I basicall know no one under 40 using Facebook. Not even the ones who used it ten years ago on their smartphones, being 20 or 25 years old.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> for example Facebook, too, lost many young users, I basicall know no one under 40 using Facebook. Not even the ones who used it ten years ago on their smartphones, being 20 or 25 years old.


Yes, Facebook is pretty dead among people my age (mid-thirties). Almost nobody posts anything, many have profile pictures from 5-10 years ago.

I still use it to follow some organizations, as their posts tend to be more detailed than on Twitter, especially those that do not issue press releases on those subjects. 

On the other hand, most of Skyscrapercity is still pretty lively, but there are some SSC forums that have very low activity. 

I never got around to using Instagram, in my view it appears like a platform for attention seekers / narcissists. Apparently Instagram is now also over its peak.


----------



## Suburbanist

x-type said:


> Do you maybe know why the Russian and Arabic oils are different, so European refineries cannot produce diesel from Arabic oil? I only know that Russian oil is more saturated with sulphur, a due to that fact has lower quality.
> 
> It is obvious that Europe has shot its knee banning nuclear energy and destimulating diesel fuel. Btw, where is Greta nowadays? We cannot hear from her anything. Maybe she has realized that the shit, she's been playing with, has hit the fan.


It has to do with density and how "hard" it is to separate its components on distilling columns. 

Arabian peninsula oil is easy to break down.

Brent oil is much more challenging.

Orinoco (Venezuela) requires rather different setups to process.

Then, refineries can mix oil from different sources to better fit their industrial plants.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> Orinoco (Venezuela) requires rather different setups to process.


Isn't almost all their production stopped due to lack of investment and maintenance in their production facilities and refineries?

Wikipedia lists Venezuela as only the 25th largest producer of oil, despite having the largest reserves. Their production is so low that they have 1,578 years of reserves at current production rates.





__





Loading…






en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Spookvlieger

Fuzzy Llama said:


> I will travel to California later in November, and now it's a time to book a car. Usually I have a simple approach to rentals: just book the cheapest whatever.
> 
> This time, however, the cheapest option is... a freakin' '*Extra Capacity 7-Seater Large SUV: Chevrolet Suburban* or similar'. I kid you not, a simple 'economy' is priced above that, and even counting in extra gas consumption total costs are more-or-less even.
> 
> I am actually a bit torn if I should take it. This... thing weighs over 2.5 T, has a larger footprint than VW Transporter and looks like impotence incarnated. It is not only ridiculous to drive, I am a bit afraid of its size, since I haven't really drove for almost a year now. On the other hand, there is one place on Earth to drive those riddiculous things.
> 
> Should I take it?


The only thing I noticed is that suburbans,
Ford superduties, GMC sierra , Chevy Tahoe , Lincoln Navigator,....and similar oversized trucks and SUV are prohibited from parking garages or you need to pay more for an "oversized parking spot". However surface parking is never far away so you should be fine in the tank.
I was in a raised Ford Transit camper van(for offroad) last 3 weeks and some of those like the Navigator and Suburban have hoods that come up half way the passenger window😅😅. I don't wang to know what it feels like standing next to those in a regular sedan lol


----------



## italystf

Most people around me (born in the 1980s and 1990s) still have Facebook (and Instagram of course), although the great majority doesn't share dozen of posts per day in their Facebook profile, like it was common in the late 2000s or early 2010s.
Younger people (like those born after 2000s) often don't have a Facebook profile at all, or create a profile just to access some groups they're interested in, and not as everyday social network. Instagram and TikTok are much more popular in that age group, probably because they are better suitable to mobile devices (while Facebook app works well on smartphone, long text contents thypically found on Facebook are less comfortable to read for example on short work breaks, while waiting at bus stop, etc.).
I wonder if Facebook will someday disappear or young people will start using it when they will grow and have adult needs. Unless Instagram will incorporate Facebook functions, Facebook remains essential if you need discussion groups or pages with links or long texts, that may be uninteresting at the age of 15, but useful for people of college or working age.


----------



## geogregor

ChrisZwolle said:


> Yes, Facebook is pretty dead among people my age (mid-thirties). Almost nobody posts anything, many have profile pictures from 5-10 years ago.
> 
> I still use it to follow some organizations, as their posts tend to be more detailed than on Twitter, especially those that do not issue press releases on those subjects.


I still use FB quite a lot, so does quite a few of my friends (we are mostly in our 40s). It is especially useful to stay in touch with friends from other countries, those with whom you don't have too much of one on one communication. 

So I know who of my mates have kids, see how they grow up, know some of their hobbies etc. But not necessarily communicate to heavily with some of them. 

I guess it might be more relevant if you are an emigrant or are far form your university age friends.



> On the other hand, most of Skyscrapercity is still pretty lively, but there are some SSC forums that have very low activity.


It is lively but some sections lost users. London section seems not very active at all considering the size of the city. Sometimes it feels like me and two or three other guys do most of the updates on projects



> I never got around to using Instagram, in my view it appears like a platform for attention seekers / narcissists. Apparently Instagram is now also over its peak.


Nether have I. I did set up account on Instagram to check it out but I hardly ever use it. Really don't see much point to it.


----------



## Suburbanist

In my group, Facebook usage has mostly collapsed.

It became a toxic space with feeds full of senstational news and other stuff in the mid 2010s, which drove many people away.

Youngsters generally do not like to be on the same platforms as their parents. That is natural.


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> It is lively but some sections lost users. London section seems not very active at all considering the size of the city. Sometimes it feels like me and two or three other guys do most of the updates on projects


Some of that is down to age and people not having the spare time to wander round the city taking photos that they did previously. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of new users joining, I agree with what Chris said above, forums aren't anything like as popular for younger people these days


----------



## italystf

Suburbanist said:


> In my group, Facebook usage has mostly collapsed.
> 
> It became a toxic space with feeds full of senstational news and other stuff in the mid 2010s, which drove many people away.
> 
> Youngsters generally do not like to be on the same platforms as their parents. That is natural.


I believe that Facebook really started to crack down seriously on fake news, conspiracy theories, and hate speech only in Covid era, when Covid and vaccine-related bulshits started to spread very fast on the platform. But in 2010s you could find any sort of garbage, from neonazi propaganda to homophobic crap.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I never understood why people want to follow news, and in particular, comments on news articles, on Facebook. It's not good for mental health.

I've seen people radicalize on it.


----------



## Kpc21

italystf said:


> But in 2010s you could find any sort of garbage, from neonazi propaganda to homophobic crap.


I still constantly see posts which are most likely written by paid trolls... Even today I answered to one "covidiot" on Facebook (claiming that having to wear masks in the healthcare building violates his freedom). After that I checked his profile, and it seems he shared so much "covidiot" content that he's very likely to be a paid troll.



ChrisZwolle said:


> I never understood why people want to follow news, and in particular, comments on news articles, on Facebook.


It's natural, it comes automatically. 



ChrisZwolle said:


> It's not good for mental health.


You're right.


----------



## Spookvlieger

You're all doing a bad job then, FB with me is always full of scientific or semi scientific articles, cars, women, dark humor and bad man jokes. You all be following the wrong pages.


----------



## Stuu

Spookvlieger said:


> You're all doing a bad job then, FB with me is always full of scientific or semi scientific articles, cars, women, dark humor and bad man jokes. You all be following the wrong pages.


That's lucky, I get total garbage that is nothing to do with pages I interact with. And a lot of stuff I have no interest in and never, ever click on. It's like the algorithm deliberately displays the opposite of what I might want to see

I only keep it so I can see what friends and family I don't see regularly are up to


----------



## Spookvlieger

Stuu said:


> That's lucky, I get total garbage that is nothing to do with pages I interact with. And a lot of stuff I have no interest in and never, ever click on. It's like the algorithm deliberately displays the opposite of what I might want to see
> 
> I only keep it so I can see what friends and family I don't see regularly are up to


I take efford in reporting stuff I don't want to see. Usually around election time FB starts bugging me with political adds and messages.
And yes I don't use it much these days, it's only because I am in some friend groups that keep organisizing meetings through facebook with polls on which days to meet.


----------



## Slagathor

Stuu said:


> That's lucky, I get total garbage that is nothing to do with pages I interact with. And a lot of stuff I have no interest in and never, ever click on. It's like the algorithm deliberately displays the opposite of what I might want to see
> 
> I only keep it so I can see what friends and family I don't see regularly are up to


Maybe your second personality wakes up in the middle of the night and scrolls across all manner of terrible thing. Like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Have you noticed any strange signs?


----------



## Blackraven

Here a list regarding "Turn on Red Signal"
Turn on red - Wikipedia 

What is stated in your country/territory?

Here in the Philippines, turn on red is allowed.............unless:
-If there is a dedicate traffic signal arrow that indicates turning permission
OR
-If there is a sign that states that Turn on Red is not allowed


----------



## AnelZ

It is forbidden in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Full stop. Some intersections (but just few) have an additional light for turning right


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It's unseasonably warm, in the Netherlands the average maximum temperature for this time of the year is 12 °C


----------



## AnelZ

The same over here in Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina as well for well over 3 weeks and it is expected to be the same the next week. 

Last Monday (24.10.2022) we recorded 28°C in Sarajevo (9°C in the morning). The minimum is still low and goes between 5-10°C so it is chilly in the morning but gets really warm during the day. On top of that, there is no precipitation for I think a month which makes the hydrological situation quite dire. The next rainfall is expected for 06.11.2022.


----------



## geogregor

I'm in SW France (La Rochelle) and it is lovely. Over 20 degrees, even with overcast sky, even in the morning. Yesterday I was dining outdoors in shorts and T-shirt.😎


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Meanwhile, this night a 25 years old bloke stole a tram from a depo in Katowice (Silesia, Poland) and drove it along its route towards Chorzów. He was actually picking up the passengers along the way.



https://www.rmf24.pl/fakty/polska/news-ukradl-tramwaj-i-zabieral-pasazerow-z-katowic-dojechal-do-ch,nId,6378463#crp_state=1



True tram fan


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> That's lucky, I get total garbage that is nothing to do with pages I interact with. And a lot of stuff I have no interest in and never, ever click on. It's like the algorithm deliberately displays the opposite of what I might want to see


Then it's good for you, at least it takes care of your privacy 



Blackraven said:


> Here in the Philippines, turn on red is allowed.............unless:
> -If there is a dedicate traffic signal arrow that indicates turning permission
> OR
> -If there is a sign that states that Turn on Red is not allowed


Poland – most of Europe seems to have similar rules...

Normally turning right on red is forbidden.

Exception is when there is an additional green light with an arrow, more or less like in @AnelZ's photo. Though in Poland they are quite common.

It's absolutely obligatory to stop before turning right while having red light (with that additional arrow). Which practically nobody follows, the police also doesn't really enforce this rule – it's only enforced on the driving license exams. If I was supposed to indicate traffic regulation in Poland which is most often broken, it would probably be this one.


By the way, this green arrow light being an addition to the normal red light should not be mistaken with the dedicated right-turn lights (which are quite rare, usually you find such dedicated left-turn lights).

Green arrow light additional to the red light – means you have to give way to those on the road across, including the pedestrians.
Dedicated arrow light – means you have an absolute right of way, everybody across your way has a red light.


Interestingly, some countries allow this green arrow to be a fixed one, painted on a plate – instead of being a light.

Poland also had fixed green arrows in the past – still in 1990s (though they were located below the lights instead of next to them).

Politicians who replaced fixed arrows with the ones in form of a light argued that this is what the EU requires and it's necessary to enable us to join it. 

Even though Germany, being the most prominent EU country, doesn't have any problem with fixed arrows in their country...



Fuzzy Llama said:


> Meanwhile, this night a 25 years old bloke stole a tram from a depo in Katowice (Silesia, Poland) and drove it along its route towards Chorzów. He was actually picking up the passengers along the way.
> 
> https://www.rmf24.pl/fakty/polska/n...atowic-dojechal-do-ch,nId,6378463#crp_state=1
> True tram fan


We already had a similar case in Łódź several years ago 

Though if I recall correctly, the tram was stolen during the night.

The public transport utility noted a lost tram, though it took them some time to find it parked on one of the end loops.


----------



## Slagathor

Right turn on red must be the pinnacle of car-centric spatial planning. You can't ever cross the road in safety, always gotta keep an eye out for cars making a right turn even when the pedestrian crossing light is green. To make matters worse, the pedestrians are probably in the driver's blind spot.


----------



## Attus

Slagathor said:


> Right turn on red must be the pinnacle of car-centric spatial planning. You can't ever cross the road in safety, always gotta keep an eye out for cars making a right turn even when the pedestrian crossing light is green. To make matters worse, the pedestrians are probably in the driver's blind spot.


In Hungary and in Germany (and I suppose in many other nations as well), cars turning right at GREEN are crossing the way of pedestrians crossing the road by GREEN. 
Example: Google Maps
It's a very normal situation and accidents happen pretty rarely.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's unseasonably warm, in the Netherlands the average maximum temperature for this time of the year is 12 °C


I guess that is good to reduce gas consumption...


----------



## Slagathor

Attus said:


> In Hungary and in Germany (and I suppose in many other nations as well), cars turning right at GREEN are crossing the way of pedestrians crossing the road by GREEN.
> Example: Google Maps
> It's a very normal situation and accidents happen pretty rarely.


Six percent of the time when pedestrians are hit by a car, apparently. In Canada, anyway. This is basically the only data I could find. 










[source]


----------



## Attus

Is in you country/region usual to visit cemeteries, graves of your late relatives in these days? I know, Hungary and Poland yes, Germany no (I'm not sure about Bavaria, however). In other nations?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

I'm not aware that this is a thing in the Netherlands. All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day are not public holidays. I don't live in a Catholic area though, but it seemingly receives no attention in the media.


----------



## volodaaaa

Yes, it is a tradition in Slovakia. There is the "All Saints" day on the 1st of November, which is a public holiday, and an unofficial day called "Dušičky" (translation "little spirits") the day after when we pay tribute to our passed away relatives. Since this day is not a holiday and the cemeteries are overcrowded on the 1st of November, most people visit cemeteries on the nearest weekends as we did with my family today. The tradition includes lighting a candle and doing a small decoration (e.g. flowers).


----------



## Slagathor

This is not common in the Netherlands.

Graves themselves are not that common here, in fact. Since 2003, cremations have been more common than burials. In 2020, less than a third of the deceased were buried.

I can't remember the last time I was at a cemetary. I've attended several funerals over the past 10 years but they were all secular ceremonies followed by cremation.


----------



## Kpc21

Slagathor said:


> Right turn on red must be the pinnacle of car-centric spatial planning. You can't ever cross the road in safety, always gotta keep an eye out for cars making a right turn even when the pedestrian crossing light is green. To make matters worse, the pedestrians are probably in the driver's blind spot.


Drivers turning right on the red light know perfectly well that they are obliged to give way to everyone else, including the pedestrians.

I also haven't heard about that causing many accidents.

Most pedestrian-related accidents are because of:
– pedestrian crossings with no traffic lights across multi-lane roadways (and drivers trying to overtake other drivers who stopped to give way to the pedestrian),
– drivers just not noticing pedestrians on crossings across straight sections of the road,
– "zombies" entering the road right in front of an approaching car,
– pedestrians walking on roads without sidewalks (e.g. between villages) at night wearing dark clothes and therefore being invisible for the drivers.

This is my impression, and what do the stats say?

Those are from 2021:










Main reasons of collisions with pedestrians caused by the drivers.

The columns show:
1. the total number of accidents
2. the number of killed persons
3. the number of injured persons

The rows:
1. not giving way to a pedestrian on a pedestrian crossing (62.7% of accidents)
2. not giving way to a pedestrian in other circumstances (11.5%)
3. incorrect reverse driving (7.1%)
4. speed not adjusted to the traffic conditions (4.8%)
5. incorrect passing (4.4%)
6. not giving way to the pedestrian while turning into the road across (3.4%)
7. incorrect overtaking (1.3%)
8. other reasons (1.1%)
9. incorrect passing vehicles driving from the opposite (0.8%)
10. passing a vehicle right before a pedestrian crossing (0.8%)
11. incorrect tuning (0.7%)
12. not adhering to the traffic lights (0.6%)

There is also a 5.3% share of all road accidents that are caused by pedestrians (with 90.4% caused by drivers). In case of those, it looks so:










The columns have the same meaning as before, the rows:
1. entering the roadway without appropriate caution: in front of an approaching vehicle (50.4%), from behind a parked vehicle, obstacle etc. (11.9%)
2. crossing the road at an illegal place (11.4%)
3. entering the road on red (8.7%)
4. lying, sitting, kneeling, standing on the roadway (7.3%)
5. walking on the wrong side of the road (5.2%)
6. stopping, reversing (0.3%)
7. other reasons (4.8%)

Link to the Polish police report: https://statystyka.policja.pl/download/20/381967/Wypadkidrogowe2021.pdf



Attus said:


> Is in you country/region usual to visit cemeteries, graves of your late relatives in these days? I know, Hungary and Poland yes, Germany no (I'm not sure about Bavaria, however). In other nations?


In Poland it even has severe implications regarding the road safety. Media always mention that many so called "Sunday" drivers appear on the roads (who normally very rarely drive, around 1 November they even tend to travel long distanced to graveyards at distant places where they have the graves of their relatives). In big cities it's common that the public transport utilities open special bus and tram lines to make the access to the graveyards easier. There is obviously a huge parking mess around them, and also very often there are changes in the traffic organization (like, some streets closed or turned into one-way ones) to make those crowds be able to park near the cemeteries – and walk in places where there would be crowds.

People put on the graves flowers and special candles.

By the way – in Poland, a few years ago, LED graveyard candles became kinda fashionable.

I hate them, they break this whole climate...



Slagathor said:


> Graves themselves are not that common here, in fact. Since 2003, cremations have been more common than burials. In 2020, less than a third of the deceased were buried.


But where do they put the ashes after burning the dead person?

In Poland it's obligatory to put them either into a grave – or into a special wall at the graveyard, and those are only available on large cemeteries in large cities.

Burying is still significantly more popular than cremation. To a large extent because of the Catholic Church – which accepts cremation, but dislikes it.

Regarding the form of the funerals, almost all of them are religious. Actually if you walk through a cemetery, it's rather difficult to find any graves that wouldn't have a cross on them, very often there are some religious inscriptions added, like "Ave Maria". And the names of the buried persons on the grave are traditionally prefixed with the acronym "Ś.P.", which stands for "świętej pamięci" – "of holy memory".

In addition – out of large cities, most graveyards are even owned by the Church. Though if there is no secular cemetery, if I recall correctly, within the municipality, the Church is obliged to allow to also bury there non-Catholics and to allow secular funerals.

In case of funerals of unknown dead persons (they are by law organized by municipalities) – they are also usually Catholic ones – the municipalities normally assume that the dead person was probably Catholic, which kinda makes sense regarding how widespread this religion is in the country. After all, if someone was an atheist, it shouldn't make him any difference; if someone was of a different religion, it's probably better for him (from the perspective of his religion) to have any religious funeral rather than a secular one.


----------



## volodaaaa

Graves are losing their popularity here too. The above image was the grave of my grand grandparents, who died in the 1960s. My grandparents, who died in 1988 and 2006 are cremated, and the urn is put under a tomb plaque encompassing roughly a square metre. There is a small shaft with space for 4-5 urns underneath. My uncle who died in 2012 (their son) was put together with them. If a family owns a grave, they now use it to put urns instead of coffins. My other grand grandmother who died in 1989 wished to be cremated and scattered without any tomb in the special place called "scattering meadow". It is literally a meadow with no tombs where the ash is scattered in the grass. Of course, there is a pedestrian path to walk on, and you are not allowed to step on that grass except if you are a crematory staff member.

The meadow looks like this:


----------



## Slagathor

Kpc21 said:


> But where do they put the ashes after burning the dead person?


Wherever you want. Most people either spread the ashes somewhere in a meaningful place (often the ocean or the woods), or they keep the urn in their home (often with a photo and some flowers on either side).

And a graveyard full of LED candles sounds pretty awful, I agree.


----------



## Kpc21

Although the current design of those cemetery candles is generally awful...

This is what you can find in Poland: znicze nagrobne - Szukaj w Google

Or see this article, it has photos of what Biedronka has in their offer this year: Wszystkich Świętych 2022. Takie znicze kupisz w dyskontach [PRZEGLĄD CEN]



















Those from the second photo are OK-ish, but from the first one... a big NO.

There are also quite many "scammed" ones. A huge glass jar, but inside – only a very little candle which won't last long...

A good thing is that you can easily buy just the candle part – then you take the old whole thing, maybe clean it a little bit, and put a new candle inside.


----------



## volodaaaa

I buy candles in Lidl. They had a four pack, full of wax, long lasting, cheap and of a decent design.


----------



## Kpc21

Indeed not that bad... So I have to go to Lidl tomorrow.

Though they also sell that LED crap...


----------



## geogregor

Attus said:


> Is in you country/region usual to visit cemeteries, graves of your late relatives in these days? I know, Hungary and Poland yes, Germany no (I'm not sure about Bavaria, however). In other nations?


Poland is going totally mental around the 1st November. Cemeteries and surrounding areas are crazy traffic and parking wise. People buy literally tones of plastic kitch which gets discarded a few days later.

Media get mental as well. It is all pseufo-mourning and cheap sentimentalism from dawn till dusk.

I absolutely heate the period. Candle lit cemeteries look kind of cool but apart from that it is all bleak. I try to avoid visits to Poland at that time. That's why I'm in France rather than anywhere near my dad's grave. I'll go in December


----------



## Kpc21

Yes, it's exactly like that 

Though most people seem to enjoy it.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> Yes, it's exactly like that
> 
> Though most people seem to enjoy it.


I'm not sure people enjoy it. There is massive social pressure to behave in certain way. So even if you hate some, or most, aspects of the All Saints' Day you are most likely to take part in the nonsense.

I find Polish society weirdly contradictory. On one hand we pride ourselves on resistance and love of freedom but then we are amazingly eager to fit into societal norms, however twisted some of them are. People really don't want to stick out, regarding dress code, way of thinking etc.

It is getting better, younger generation is moving in the right direction, but looking from western Europe's perspective there is still a gap.

I would say the worst is my generation, people in their 40s. Remembering tail end of the old system and desperately trying to fulfill all the cliches of what proper life should look like in new capitalist world. Corporate career, wife, 2.3 kids, dog, suburban house, two cars on a driveway etc.

And a lot of kitchy grave decorations...


----------



## x-type

geogregor said:


> I'm not sure people enjoy it. There is massive social pressure to behave in certain way. So even if you hate some, or most, aspects of the All Saints' Day you are most likely to take part in the nonsense.
> 
> I find Polish society weirdly contradictory. On one hand we pride ourselves on resistance and love of freedom but then we are amazingly eager to fit into societal norms, however twisted some of them are. People really don't want to stick out, regarding dress code, way of thinking etc.
> 
> It is getting better, younger generation is moving in the right direction, but looking from western Europe's perspective there is still a gap.
> 
> I would say the worst is my generation, people in their 40s. Remembering tail end of the old system and desperately trying to fulfill all the cliches of what proper life should look like in new capitalist world. Cirporate career, wife, 2.3 kids, dog, suburban house, two cars on a driveway etc.
> 
> And a lot of kitchy grave decorations...


Regarding those facts, All Saints Day is a piece of cake comparing to Christmas.


----------



## geogregor

x-type said:


> Regarding those facts, All Saints Day is a piece of cake comparing to Christmas.


Not necessarily in Poland 😉


----------



## radamfi

I went to a Catholic school but I don't remember any fuss regarding 1 November.

Regarding like or dislike of cultural traditions. I know an English person who likes to visit the Netherlands on Koningsdag (King's Day). Conversely, a Dutch consultant once visited our office for training near London. We talked about Koningsdag and he said he always went on holiday abroad to avoid it.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> we are amazingly eager to fit into societal norms, however twisted some of them are. People really don't want to stick out, regarding dress code, way of thinking etc.


If you watch channels of Russian youtubers, it's exactly what they say about the Russian society explaining why they don't protest against Putin, even though many dislikes what he's doing in Ukraine. Apart from what can happen to you if they catch you. People just prefer to be standard, average citizens, who wouldn't stick out. Maybe it's typical for people living in totalitarian regimes? That would match what you mentioned that it's getting different among young people. As we're no longer totalitarian, it makes sense.

Though personally I am quite young, I was born already in free Poland, and I still have this feeling that I don't like to stick out.

And isn't it also a common thing in Japan, which has been democratic for already quite a long time?



geogregor said:


> Not necessarily in Poland 😉


I'd say it's kinda a similar level. Though All Saints is just a few days, in case of Christmas, this whole fuss is for a month or two.



geogregor said:


> desperately trying to fulfill all the cliches of what proper life should look like in new capitalist world. Corporate career, wife, 2.3 kids, dog, suburban house, two cars on a driveway etc.


And having learned that from American movies specifically


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> I went to a Catholic school but I don't remember any fuss regarding 1 November.
> 
> Regarding like or dislike of cultural traditions. I know an English person who likes to visit the Netherlands on Koningsdag (King's Day). Conversely, a Dutch consultant once visited our office for training near London. We talked about Koningsdag and he said he always went on holiday abroad to avoid it.


I stay home on Koningsdag. I usually save up chores or do a spring cleaning or something.


----------



## Mkbewe

geogregor said:


> Poland is going totally mental around the 1st November. Cemeteries and surrounding areas are crazy traffic and parking wise. People buy literally tones of plastic kitch which gets discarded a few days later.
> 
> Media get mental as well. It is all pseufo-mourning and cheap sentimentalism from dawn till dusk.
> 
> I absolutely heate the period. Candle lit cemeteries look kind of cool but apart from that it is all bleak. I try to avoid visits to Poland at that time. That's why I'm in France rather than anywhere near my dad's grave. I'll go in December


2 days ago, early in the morning I went to my family graves outside the city I live in, yesterday I visited nearby graves. No big traffic 2 days ago, and almost empty public transport (special bus line running between main residential areas and cementaries). All done quickly, efficiently and according to tradition, no fuss.
I don't give a rat's ass about what the media want to show, I don't watch them since 2009 and I'm better for it.

What about tomorrow? Regarding the cemeteries all is done, perhaps a small biking trip (avoiding public roads of course, I don't want to die just yet), after all it's a free day 
Do what you came to do earlier (during the last weekend of October) and there is no reason to hate the november 1st.

It's usually wise or simply convenient to not do what everyone is doing at the time, especially if you don't like traffic, crowds and noise - in Poland, or outside.

@*Kpc21*
You can buy candles/artificial flowers/etc in advance and store them in garage, cellar etc.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

keber said:


> I think west Europe is overpaying energy a lot.


The gas storage has been filled at record prices. So they are going to remain high even if the gas price would drop, as the gas consumed over the next few months was purchased at very high prices.

On the other hand, coal is also 4 - 7 times more expensive than normal. 

Oil has seen the lowest increase in price compared to gas or coal. The high fuel prices in Europe are maybe more affected by the dollar exchange rate than the actual price of oil. 

On the other hand, if the fuel price would've risen by 2% each year since 2010, a price around € 1.90 per liter would've been normal inflation for the Netherlands. I paid € 1.93 per liter yesterday.


----------



## bogdymol

tfd543 said:


> Another funny thing is that u are not allowed to charge ur phone at the working place. They are debating this atm whether Its considered a steal. Lol.


I read about such a situation in Germany. How do such people exist? Charging a phone costs less than 1 cent in electricity price. This is just normal cost of doing business (and keeping your employees 1% more satisfied). Why would anybody bother discussing this non-topic?


----------



## x-type

bogdymol said:


> I read about such a situation in Germany. How do such people exist? Charging a phone costs less than 1 cent in electricity price. This is just normal cost of doing business (and keeping your employees 1% more satisfied). Why would anybody bother discussing this non-topic?


I think it is not that much about charging the cell phones, but people have started itnensively to charge electric scooters at work because they are extremely popular to get on and off work. Charging cell phone or charging scooter - the same category (except scooter charger consumpts much more electricity).


----------



## Suburbanist

tfd543 said:


> I paid 170 euros for 3 months in dk. No dishwasher. No washing machine. Just room light, a bit of TV and juice for laptop.
> 
> 
> How much are u guys paying ?
> 
> Another funny thing is that u are not allowed to charge ur phone at the working place. They are debating this atm whether Its considered a steal. Lol.


I have paid -- net of government subsidies -- around € 43, 78, 51 and 28 in Jul, Aug, Sep and Oct, respectively here in Western Norway. I use electricity for everything - heating my small 2005-built flat, heating water, cooking, dishwasher and laundry. I basically stay there just at nights, though.


----------



## Suburbanist

A cell phone charge from 0 to 100% on a modern smartphone takes less energy than making one cup of coffee at the usual machines. Ridiculous.


----------



## radamfi

tfd543 said:


> Another funny thing is that u are not allowed to charge ur phone at the working place. They are debating this atm whether Its considered a steal. Lol.


I know what you mean but this made me laugh a little because calling something "a steal" is slang for something that is a bargain. I don't know if that's just British slang or if it is also American.

Ryanair famously banned their employees from charging phones at work. That was in the days before smartphones, so we are talking about a very tiny amount of electricity.


----------



## geogregor

keber said:


> 27€ per month for electricity, two person in appartment block, living as usual. I think west Europe is overpaying energy a lot.


That sounds cheap. Do you pay gas or heating on top of that or is it all?

Recently we pay around £70-80 a month for electricity but we use it for everything, heating water, shower, cooking etc. as our block doesn't have gas. In winter it could go higher if we put heating a lot (which we normally don't as we are used to rather cool flat and British winters are not particularly harsh). 

We pay monthly by use. 

For the next few months we will pay less as every household will get £40 government subsidy, automatically taken off the bill. In our case it will lower bill almost exactly by half. 

Changing subject. ONS (Office of National Statistics) published immigration and demographic data based on the last year census:






International migration, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics


International migration, including country of birth, passports held and year of arrival, Census 2021 data.



www.ons.gov.uk














Poles are the biggest group of foreign passport holders:


> One in six usual residents of England and Wales were born outside the UK, an increase of 2.5 million since 2011, from 7.5 million (13.4%) to 10 million (16.8%).
> India remained the most common country of birth outside the UK in 2021 (920,000 people, 1.5% of all usual residents).
> The number of people who were born in Romania grew by 576% since the previous census, from 80,000 in 2011 to 539,000 in 2021.
> 5.9 million usual residents (9.9%) held a non-UK passport; *the most common non-UK passport held was Polish (760,000, 1.3% of all usual residents).*
> 545,000 usual residents (0.9% of the population) had an address outside the UK one year before the census, down 11.0% from 612,000 (1.1%) in 2011.





> Our release of unrounded population data from the census shows that the usual resident population in England and Wales *grew by more than 3.5 million (6.3%) in the period between censuses, from 56,075,912 in 2011 to 59,597,542 in 2021*.





> Monthly data show that from April 2011 until the end of March 2021 there were 6.8 million live births and 5.3 million deaths registered in England and Wales. *This represents a natural increase of approximately 1.5 million usual residents (42.5% of the total population increase). The remainder of the population growth (approximately 2.0 million usual residents, 57.5% of total population increase) is because of positive net migration* (the difference between those who immigrated into and emigrated out of England and Wales).





> Those born in the European Union (EU) made up 3.6 million (36.4% of all non-UK born usual residents) of the population, an increase from 2.5 million (32.7%) in 2011 (including Croatia, who joined the EU in 2013). The remaining 6.4 million (63.6%) were born outside the EU, up from 5.1 million (67.3%) in 2011.





> This continues a longer-term trend of an increasing proportion of non-UK born residents being from within the EU. In 2001, 1.4 million (30.0% of non-UK born residents) were born in the current EU member states [note 1] and 3.2 million (70.0%) were born outside the EU.


London is obviously much more diverse than the rest of the country:



> London has remained the region with both the largest proportion of people born outside the UK and the largest proportion of people with non-UK passports. *In 2021, more than 4 in 10 (40.6%) usual residents in London were non-UK born, and more than 1 in 5 (23.3%) had a non-UK passport.* This is a small increase since 2011, when 36.7% of London residents were non-UK born, and 21.0% had a non-UK passport.
> 
> In contrast, both Wales (6.9%) and the North East of England (6.8%) had approximately 1 in 14 usual residents born outside the UK. Similarly, Wales (4.0%) and the North East (3.7%) also had the lowest proportions of the population with non-UK passports.





> *Of the top 20 LAs with the highest proportion of non-UK born residents, 18 were in London*. The areas with the highest proportions were* Brent (56.1%), Westminster (55.6%) and Kensington and Chelsea (53.9%)*. The only non-London LAs in the top 20 were Slough (44.0%) and Leicester (41.1%), and the Welsh LA with the highest proportion was Cardiff (16.5%). In contrast, the *LAs with the lowest proportion of non-UK born residents were the Staffordshire Moorlands (2.6%) and Caerphilly (2.9%).*
> 
> Of the top 20 LAs with the highest proportion of non-UK passport holders, 15 were in London. The top three were the City of London (34.0%), Westminster (33.6%) and Newham (33.3%). Outside of London, the highest proportions of non-UK passport holders were in Cambridge (28.3%) and Slough (24.7%), and in Wales the highest proportion was in Cardiff (9.2%). Across the two nations, the LAs with the lowest proportion of non-UK passport holders were Redcar and Cleveland (1.1%) and the Staffordshire Moorlands (1.3%).





> Of the 10.0 million residents in England and Wales in 2021 who were not born in the UK:
> 
> 4.2 million (42.4%) had arrived since 2011
> 2.7 million (26.9%) had arrived between 2001 and 2010
> 3.1 million (30.7%) had arrived before 2001


Interestingly it look like pandemic didn't really slowed the immigration:



> The trend across the past decade shows that more people listed their most recent year of arrival in the later years. *This trend continued despite the international travel restrictions imposed during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic; 680,000 non-UK born usual residents (6.8%) arrived between 2020 and Census Day, 21 March 2021*.





> The data on age of arrival show that:
> 
> 3.0 million non-UK born usual residents were below the age of 18 years when they arrived in the UK (30.2% of all non-UK born usual residents, down from 33.3% in 2011)
> 4.3 million were aged 18 to 29 years (42.4%, down from 44.8% in 2011)
> 2.1 million were aged 30 to 44 years (21.1%, up from 17.4% in 2011)
> 546,000 were aged 45 to 64 years (5.5%, up from 3.9% in 2011)
> 79,000 were aged 65 years and over when they arrived (0.8%, up from 0.6% in 2011)


And numbers for London:

London Population By Place of Birth
2021 Census. Data released 2 November 2022: Demography and migration data, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

*London:* 8,799,725

*Population Born in the UK: * 5,223,986 *(59.4%)

Population Foreign Born:* 3,575,739 *(40.6%)*

---------------------------------------------
*Europe (excl. UK)*: 1,366,430

*Romania:* 175,991

*Poland:* *149,397

Italy:* 126,059

*Ireland:* 96,566

*France:* 77,715

*Turkey:* 72,867

*Spain:* 68,114

*Portugal:* 56,963

*Germany:* 50,364

*Lithuania:* 45,378

-----------------------------------

*Africa*: 625,365

*Nigeria:* 117,145

*Somalia:* 66,288

*Ghana:* 65,905

*Kenya:* 58,020

*South Africa:* 47,964

-----------------------------------

*Asia*: 1,146,245

*India:* 322,644

*Bangladesh:* 138,895

*Pakistan:* 129,774

*China:* 89,876

*Sri Lanka:* 80,379

*Philippines:* 54,930

*Afghanistan:* 47,706

*Iran:* 43,852

-----------------------------------

*Americas*: 372,864

*South America:* 142,381

*Jamaica:* 75,676

*United States:* 71,127

-----------------------------------

*Oceania*: 84,661

*Australia:* 64,814

Despite right wing press and government moaning and complaining immigration is not slowing by much. Which is good as local population is ageing and we have a lot of vacancies in various sectors.


----------



## tfd543

keber said:


> 27€ per month for electricity, two person in appartment block, living as usual. I think west Europe is overpaying energy a lot.


Where is this ?


----------



## tfd543

bogdymol said:


> I read about such a situation in Germany. How do such people exist? Charging a phone costs less than 1 cent in electricity price. This is just normal cost of doing business (and keeping your employees 1% more satisfied). Why would anybody bother discussing this non-topic?


People are going nuts. They dont have more relevant stuff to talk about. 

I think Its the principle and not the cost at all. 
Because if Its perfectly acceptable, where is the limit? Should people e.g be allowed to throw out an extension cord down to their electric car to charge it while they work ??

And yes, i actually know a guy that does this. His Office is on the 4th floor. He bought an extension cord that is flat so he Can open/close the window.


----------



## tfd543

Suburbanist said:


> A cell phone charge from 0 to 100% on a modern smartphone takes less energy than making one cup of coffee at the usual machines. Ridiculous.


+1


----------



## tfd543

radamfi said:


> I know what you mean but this made me laugh a little because calling something "a steal" is slang for something that is a bargain. I don't know if that's just British slang or if it is also American.
> 
> Ryanair famously banned their employees from charging phones at work. That was in the days before smartphones, so we are talking about a very tiny amount of electricity.


Ah my bad. Should be called employee theft, i think..


----------



## geogregor

https://twitter.com/amazingmap


----------



## radamfi

geogregor said:


> Despite right wing press and government moaning and complaining immigration is not slowing by much. Which is good as local population is ageing and we have a lot of vacancies in various sectors.


There has long been a disconnect between rhetoric and actual policy. Immigration from outside the EU has actually got easier since the new points system came in.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The amount sunshine hours is quite an issue for solar power generation. Even the American Northeast, considered to be a less ideal place for solar power, has more sunshine hours than much of Europe. And the most industrialized region of Europe, from the UK east into Poland, has even less sunshine hours.


----------



## keber

tfd543 said:


> Where is this ?





geogregor said:


> That sounds cheap. Do you pay gas or heating on top of that or is it all?
> 
> Recently we pay around £70-80 a month for electricity but we use it for everything, heating water, shower, cooking etc. as our block doesn't have gas. In winter it could go higher if we put heating a lot (which we normally don't as we are used to rather cool flat and British winters are not particularly harsh).
> 
> We pay monthly by use.
> 
> For the next few months we will pay less as every household will get £40 government subsidy, automatically taken off the bill. In our case it will lower bill almost exactly by half.


Ljubljana, Slovenia
Heating and hot water is done in the block heating station which uses gas. I pay about 50-60 € per month for both which is pretty cheap by Slovenian standards too. When I renovated my appartment I also changed all windows for three-layered which helps a lot in winter and also hot summer.


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> The amount sunshine hours is quite an issue for solar power generation. Even the American Northeast, considered to be a less ideal place for solar power, has more sunshine hours than much of Europe. And the most industrialized region of Europe, from the UK east into Poland, has even less sunshine hours.


Could we change the polarity of the wind turbines and use them as nuclear power driven fans to blow the clouds away?


----------



## Stuu

Lewes bonfire night. They are a bit crazy. Every year the most infamous people of the current time are burnt in effigy, and the pope is burnt every year










__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1589021970225664001


----------



## Attus

I need a surgery, it's scheduled in two weeks from now. A negative PCR test is required (except for emergency cases of course) for any surgery. So in these two weeks I try to be as caredfule as possible, I stay home, I wear a mask everywhere, etc. I am not afraid of the virus, but of the test.


----------



## AnelZ

Thick fogs started yesterday (07.11.2022) in Sarajevo or at least as a blanket over the city as the visibility on ground wasn't reduced. Here is a video how it was yesterday all day long. The drone had to lift 450m to reach above the blanket which means it was at an altitude of around 1250 meter a.s.l. as the location from which it went up is at around 800 m.a.s.l. As can be seen towards the end of the video, only the tip of Trebevic mountain was above the blanket (1627 m.a.s.l.)






Today the situation is somewhat better as around noon it got clear and one could see the sky, although during the morning it was the same as yesterday. Here is some picture from Bjelasnica mountain (around 30k by road from city centre; 18,5 km as the crow flies).





__





Loading…






www.klix.ba


----------



## cinxxx

Attus said:


> Is in you country/region usual to visit cemeteries, graves of your late relatives in these days? I know, Hungary and Poland yes, Germany no (I'm not sure about Bavaria, however). In other nations?


It is in Romania, at least in the city I'm from, Timisoara.
I'm not sure, but I think it's not done everywhere in the country.


----------



## Attus

We're looking for two bridges. 
Considering the cars and the size of the bridge I was sure both are in the Netherlands, but I did not find them.

















Fotók


A Fortepan egy szabad felhasználású, közösségi fotóarchívum, ahol több mint százezer archív fényképet böngészhet és tölthet le.




fortepan.hu





















Fotók


A Fortepan egy szabad felhasználású, közösségi fotóarchívum, ahol több mint százezer archív fényképet böngészhet és tölthet le.




fortepan.hu





Both photos were shot in the 70's.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

These are indeed in the Netherlands.

The first photo shows the Van Brienenoord Bridge of A16 at Rotterdam, before the second span was built.

The second photo shows the Waal River Bridge at Zaltbommel. This bridge was built in 1933 and carried A2 traffic until the current cable-stayed bridge replaced it in 1996. The road bridge was demolished in 2008.

Here you can see a 1989 photo of the Van Brienenoord Bridge where capacity was expanded from 6 to 12 lanes.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> The second photo shows the Waal River Bridge at Zaltbommel. This bridge was built in 1933 and carried A2 traffic until the current cable-stayed bridge replaced it in 1996. The road bridge was demolished in 2008.


Are you sure about that second one? All the photos I found about it look different than the one at Fortepan. 
The grid structure of "my" bridge is >|< >|<, that of the old Bommel bridge is |/|\|/|\|

And the grid at the top of the bridge (over the carriageway), too looks different.


----------



## keokiracer

This is the Bommelsebrug, the sides indeed do seem diferent:


----------



## ChrisZwolle

It might be the old Moerdijk Bridge of A16 then. This bridge was a truss bridge from 1936 and replaced in 1978. 

Here's a photo from 1976 showing the replacement (which was done span by span to avoid interrupting traffic for a long time).


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> It might be the old Moerdijk Bridge of A16 then. This bridge was a truss bridge from 1936 and replaced in 1978.
> 
> Here's a photo from 1976 showing the replacement (which was done span by span to avoid interrupting traffic for a long time).


Yes, it looks like that, indeed. Thank you again!


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> I need a surgery, it's scheduled in two weeks from now.


Did they schedule your surgery 2 weeks ahead, or long ago, but it's just now that you're thinking about it?

In Poland you'd probably have to wait at least half a year (e.g. in an urgent case), otherwise often a year and longer.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> Did they schedule your surgery 2 weeks ahead, or long ago, but it's just now that you're thinking about it?
> 
> In Poland you'd probably have to wait at least half a year (e.g. in an urgent case), otherwise often a year and longer.


It was scheduled 5 weeks ahead. In Germany waiting time depends on what kind of surgery.


----------



## bogdymol

3000 pages of Roadside rest area, almost 60000 posts already. 🎂


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

🎂!

It's a pity that the Founding Photo Of The Shiny Balcony wasn't preserved, it would be nice to be able revisit the times when all the balconies and railings were shiny as the sun itself.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Shiny Bulgarian crash barriers are alive & kicking! 









[BG] Bulgaria | road infrastructure • Автомагистрали


Shiny crash barriers!




www.skyscrapercity.com


----------



## AnelZ

Attus said:


> Kpc21 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Did they schedule your surgery 2 weeks ahead, or long ago, but it's just now that you're thinking about it?
> 
> In Poland you'd probably have to wait at least half a year (e.g. in an urgent case), otherwise often a year and longer.
> 
> 
> 
> It was scheduled 5 weeks ahead. In Germany waiting time depends on what kind of surgery.
Click to expand...

Here is my experience in Sarajevo. I like to read how the procedures are in other countries and that is the reason why share the following.

I had a surgery in May (appendectomy). I experienced quite strong pain on the night Saturday/Sunday, went to an ambulance that night, got something to relieve the pain and to calm the stomach. On Sunday morning I went to the local health center where I got an urgent/cito referral for ultrasound and blood/urine tests. On Monday, when the pain was already mild and mostly only to experience on touch, I did the ultrasound which showed that the appendix still was to a degree inflamed. My assigned doctor in the health center (only got one assigned at that moment as it was the first time I had a case after becoming 18) gave a referral for the Department of Abdominal Surgery at the general hospital. I went there on Tuesday in the morning (like at 9-10), still had some degree of pain on touch, did an additional ultrasound and blood test at the General hospital. After all that, I returned to the doctor at around 14:00, she took a look at the results and asked me: "What should we do with you?" I looked back I was like: "It is your decision". I also told that I had similar issue in January (5 month prior) but the pain was to a degree milder and subsided much faster. She then scribbled something and sent me to the Admission. I was totally unprepared as I expected to get a appointment in some weeks or even month and not immediately. As soon as I arrived at the room I was given razors and clothes to get prepared. At around 23:00 the nurses came and said it is my turn. They then brought me to the operating room. I was again awake at around midnight, wrote message to my mum that I'm out of surgery and went to sleep. Spent the next day at the hospital and the next day was released in the morning and went home with a taxi. For myself the whole experience was honestly fast and I was surprised by it as I always imagined it being much more of a hassle.


----------



## Suburbanist

Appendicetomy is quite a simple surgery these days, I read. They do not cut open the abdomen. It can also get dangerous pretty fast if one does not get it.


----------



## Coccodrillo

I did it even faster 15 years ago. I woke up one morning at 5 with pain, my parents brought me quickly to the hospital (I was 20 at that time, and by chance I was at home and not away on vacation), and had the surgery in the afternoon. I didn't go back home that day, and they told me that from I couldn't eat drink or eat until after the surgery. After the surgery the pain was not really due to the surgery itself, but, as they explained me, some form of gas they used to make space between organs (don't ask what it was exactly, I'm not a doctor and 15 years have passed since then). After 3 days in the hospital which I spent mostly in the bed, I went home where I relaxed (walking, going out for lunch, but nothing exhausting) for the next week before resuming normal life. I only have 3 small scars, they said me that the bigger one was used to make the surgery, the smaller ones to help it and to put some supporting tubes. I always think that what is a quite small health problem now would have killed me some decades (or even a century?) ago.


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## Kpc21

AnelZ said:


> I had a surgery in May (appendectomy).


Well, appendix inflammation is an emergency, you would die if they don't remove it. So they act immediately.

The worst situation regarding the medical services and operations is if you need one to have it done relatively fast, but it's not directly life-threatening (at least not in the short term, like of the order of days – but e.g. if you don't have it, you may die in a half a year). Then it's really difficult to get it on time. Sometimes the public healthcare is not an option, because you would sooner die than get operated...

BTW I am also appendix-less 



AnelZ said:


> went to an ambulance that night


An ambulance is a vehicle 

When I was having my appendix removed, I had to spend some 2 weeks at the hospital.

I was in a junior-high school then. Second grade, if I recall well, so I had to be some 16 years old (it was around the year 2010). I don't remember when it started hurting me, but for sure it hurt me when I was at school. So I went to the school nurse. It didn't hurt very much, rather something like as if I had a food poisoning – but the nurse said it can be appendix inflammation. If I recall correctly (I am not sure of that), I came back home normally; I didn't eat much and I drank some peppermint tea. Or camomile. Something you normally drink when you have some abdominal problems. But it was getting worse, at night it hurt so much that it was almost impossible to sleep. In the morning the family called the emergency services. The ambulance arrived, they tested me (by pressing various places on my belly and asking if it hurts) and told it's indeed an appendix inflammation. So they took me to a hospital – in Łódź, some 30 km away (though they didn't turn on the sirens), because it was the nearest children surgery department (my family asked if they couldn't take me to the local hospital as I was almost an adult anyway, but they refused as their procedures said they have to take all the people who are underage to the children hospitals or departments). It took a few hours before they could do the operation on me, because another operation was in progress. Though throughout that time they admitted me, found a room and bed, took me there, did blood tests; I am not sure now, but probably they also gave some pain medication.

Finally they did the operation; it turned out my appendix already burst and they had to clean all the guts etc. inside me off the ugly stuff that leaked from the intestines (so not every appendix operation is so quick and easy). After that it hurt for some days (though not as much as before the operation, and it was a different kind of pain; also I was getting painkilling medications in a drip; if I recall correctly, it could be Ketonal / Ketoprofen, so one of the strongest ones possible), also I had a drainage pipe sticking out for some days. Also only after some days I was allowed to eat.

After a week or so (maybe two weeks? I was still in the hospital) they tried to remove the stitches, but it turned out it was too early – so the doctor glued it together using some kind of a special band-aid, and I was asked to stay in bed and not to move too much, as it didn't hold as well as stitches and it could go bad. But finally I was allowed to walk I was released home; for yet some 2 weeks I had to stay home and not go to school, and after a week or so I had to come to the hospital, so that they removed that special band-aid.


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## Coccodrillo

You had less chance than me, and that confirms how this apparently not serious problem can be dangerous. And still today in the world many people are not so lucky to have quick access to a hospital and die because of that.


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## ChrisZwolle

Turn right for Skyscrapercity


B49 Hochstraße Wetzlar 05 by European Roads, on Flickr


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## PovilD

/\
Bike path is too narrow. Why direction sign gantry almost hits the bike path itself? Too many car lanes. Where is a tram line in the middle? Where are trees on the street, don't we see climate is boiling us with no winters left?  ...and most important question is where is my driving license?  Anxiety disorders are no fun indeed.


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## ChrisZwolle

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1591525884426858496


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## italystf

__





Loading…






en.wikipedia.org


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## valkrav

__





Loading…






en.wikipedia.org


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## Spookvlieger

A1 - Dogde Ram - A3 sedan

Dodge Ram is not a rarity in Belgium at all but usually I never see them in the city. Parked side by side, the hood is the height of an Audi A1 roof apparently.


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## ChrisZwolle

They are relatively common in the Netherlands as well. There is one in my street, a guy with a cleaning business drives it. There is another one in a nearby street who has a solar panel cleaning business.

My impression is that nearly all of these trucks in the Netherlands are owned by contractors or self-employed people who use them for business + private. Wholly private owners seem to be less common, maybe more for fun drives than a daily commuting vehicle.

Their towing capacity is much greater than typical work vans. For example if you need to tow a trailer with a small excavator.


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## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> My impression is that nearly all of these trucks in the Netherlands are owned by contractors or self-employed people who use them for business + private. Wholly private owners seem to be less common, *maybe more for fun drives than a daily commuting vehicle*.


Or, according to a popular joke, as "compensation" for something else being too small.


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## Spookvlieger

ChrisZwolle said:


> They are relatively common in the Netherlands as well. There is one in my street, a guy with a cleaning business drives it. There is another one in a nearby street who has a solar panel cleaning business.
> 
> My impression is that nearly all of these trucks in the Netherlands are owned by contractors or self-employed people who use them for business + private. Wholly private owners seem to be less common, maybe more for fun drives than a daily commuting vehicle.
> 
> Their towing capacity is much greater than typical work vans. For example if you need to tow a trailer with a small excavator.


I think they are owned privately in Belgium mostly and they all drive them on CNG. At least I almost never see them hauling something or being part of a business or other. Just dudes druving them around empty.


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## ChrisZwolle

These trucks are very impractical in almost any urban or suburban setting. The parking spaces are just not big enough for them. People with large vans have the same problem. Even large SUVs have problems getting into parking spots, especially in parking garages.


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## cinxxx

Meanwhile in the USA: Compact cars only:


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## Spookvlieger

cinxxx said:


> Meanwhile in the USA: Compact cars only:
> View attachment 4140347
> 
> 
> View attachment 4140357


I like those ford Edges, they are becoming popular here to, but the Escape/Kuga is far more popular and quite a bit smaller. The Explorer is to big for the EU market, most dealerships don"t even sell them overhere.


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## geogregor

cinxxx said:


> Meanwhile in the USA: Compact cars only:
> View attachment 4140347
> 
> 
> View attachment 4140357


Well, for the US it is "compact car" 



ChrisZwolle said:


> They are relatively common in the Netherlands as well. There is one in my street, a guy with a cleaning business drives it. There is another one in a nearby street who has a solar panel cleaning business.
> 
> My impression is that nearly all of these trucks in the Netherlands are owned by contractors or self-employed people who use them for business + private. Wholly private owners seem to be less common, maybe more for fun drives than a daily commuting vehicle.
> 
> Their towing capacity is much greater than typical work vans. For example if you need to tow a trailer with a small excavator.


I see them occasionally in the UK but I have never seen any of them towing anything, especially in urban areas). And yes, they are often own by "builder types" but often by the "boss" who never actually use them for anything apart from commuting to the site. People doing the actual jobs and needing tools and materials will use regular vans which are 100x more practical.


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## Spookvlieger

Nah I would say the Ford Edge is in the middle range from what I saw in the USA. Plently of smaller cars, plenty of bigger models as well. Not even a compact SUV by US standards.

Parking spaces are large in the USA though. I could easely fit my 20ft van in a normal parking space.

I'l take of picture of where I cramped my X1 (small car for the US, medium for Europe) into over the weekend lol. It's a surface parking with ridiculously small parking spaces.


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## Kpc21

Coming back to the recent discussion about funerals and cemeteries, and the methods of disposing of bodies of dead people. We had a funeral in our family recently (nothing special, that person was 89 years old and died peacefully). We thought about cremation, but ended up with burial – because it turned out cremation would be more expensive. 

Several years ago it was the opposite, cremation was cheaper. Now the gas prices made it more expensive.


----------



## AnelZ

From thread "International border crossings"



ChrisZwolle said:


> tfd543 said:
> 
> 
> 
> One step closer for croatia’s Schengen admission. Today the EU parliament endorsed the admission by a large majority. Now Its only in the hands of the council that needs to be unanimous. Decision to be taken in december already… exciting !!
> 
> 
> 
> Let's hope the Dutch government isn't going to veto it.
Click to expand...

It is also expected that the Netherlands and France will be against awarding Bosnia and Herzegovina the candidate status for EU in December for which Slovenia and Austria along with the European Commissioner for Enlargement Oliver Varhelyi strongly lobby for. Germany largely also shares this opinion. Netherlands is because of principled policy i.e. we haven't fulfilled the conditions set in front of us. Regarding France, they have quite a hard stance regarding enlargement + our the Ministry of Finance of BiH gave a negative opinion for the establishment of the Development Agency of France in BiH. As the granting of candidate status to BiH according to the fast procedure is a project of Oliver Varhelyi, who also has good relations with Milorad Dodik, some analysists over here see the negative opinion of the Netherlands and France as a kind of response to Hungarian politics in EU. The imposition of changes to the Electoral Law, which was made by High Representative Christian Schmidt on the night of the election last month, is also stated as a reason for dissatisfaction among some European countries, especially in the Netherlands, which believes that in this way democratic processes have been violated and BiH's path to the European Union is threatened.


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## tfd543

Thnx @AnelZ for bringing post here.


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## italystf

edit


----------



## pleja

AnelZ said:


> The imposition of changes to the Electoral Law, which was made by High Representative Christian Schmidt on the night of the election last month, is also stated as a reason for dissatisfaction among some European countries, especially in the Netherlands, which believes that in this way democratic processes have been violated and BiH's path to the European Union is threatened.


Source?


----------



## AnelZ

Here is the part regarding The Netherlands

Discussion (search Bosnië): Plenaire verslagen | Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal
Voting (including motion 1848 which is approved/adopted and 1860 is rejected): Plenaire verslagen | Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal:
Motion 1848: https://www.eerstekamer.nl/eu/behan...an_baarle_c_s_2/document3/f=/vlxbd2s00kzr.pdf
Motion 1860: https://www.eerstekamer.nl/eu/behan...aeijer_over_het/document3/f=/vlxbfzttyex0.pdf


----------



## pleja

Motion 1848 calls for territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina plus some standard whacking of Dodik/Cović. Nowhere it states that electoral law violates and especially threatens BiH's path to EU. It states that electoral law undermines the democratic process, obviously as perceived by a member of a party holding 3/150 seats. More on party in question here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DENK_(political_party).
At the same time, you have for example USA/UK administration stating law will do wonders on your EU path . In other words, what you wrote is a subtle vote interpretation suitable for political agenda of one of three political subjects in BiH. Netherlands is blocking BiH because of missing reforms, not because Bosniaks suddenly can't elect enough (!) fake Croat representatives in an effort to dismiss their political will. Start putting corrupt politicians in jail instead of focusing on unitarist nationalistic policy in what is a federation and you'll be in EU in short time.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Motion 1848 passed and only 'asks the government to speak out in favor of territorial integrity of BiH, and also speak out against concerning actors like Dodik and Covic´.

In essence, this has almost no value. The government says in/to the EU that it is concerned and by that the motion is fulfilled.


----------



## italystf

I have mixed feelings about EU enlargement towards the East.
On one hand I think that an united Europe is a great achievement that brough freedom, peace and prosperity across the continent, and all European people should be allowed to take part of it.
On the other hand, I fear that admitting poorer and unstable countries, with weak democracies and serious corruption problems, may made the whole EU weaker.
Some countries that joined EU after 2004 have integrated pretty well, other less well, with Hungary being the worst offender of EU principles.
Probably the best solution is admitting these countries into EU when they have really fulfilled the requirements, not speeding up the process for political reasons.


----------



## Kpc21

If it wasn't for the EU, the current political situation in Poland would most likely probably be much worse, it's not impossible that we would be just becoming a dictatorship. I guess more or less the same holds in case of Hungary (though it seems to me that Hungary has already gone much further in that evil direction – but still it could be worse).

The EU membership is an "emergency brake" that makes such divergence from democracy much more difficult.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Poland will likely get the largest ground forces in the EU. Or at least the most capable, based on the amount of equipment (tanks, artillery, rocket systems) that were announced to be procured this year. Making Poland a key country for EU security. And as Harpoon shows, you don't need a large expensive navy if you have land-based anti-ship missiles.


----------



## Kpc21

Well, we're kinda in the geographical position that requires that 

Always, throughout the history, between big empires or meaningful countries.

Good for trade, bad for war.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> The EU membership is an "emergency brake" that makes such divergence from democracy much more difficult.


I used to think so. But looking at situation especially in Hungary it seems that Orban can do whatever he likes and the EU is unable to do anything.

Orban runs semi-democratic country at best. All the media (state as well as private), state agencies and a lot of big business is controlled by Orban and his cronies. How can it be allowed in the EU? How was he allowed to misappropriate the EU funds to achieve some of his goals?


----------



## geogregor

There is perfect book for geeks like us 


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1592210269975023622








M62: The Trans-Pennine Motorway


Kevin Crooks A Photographic Monograph ‘M62: The Trans-Pennine Motorway’ by Kevin Crooks contains a series of black and white images which capture the solemn, detailed, expansive and manufactured aspects of the landscape in which the M62 motorway is situated. The images within the book are...




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If you need more fascinating publications how about some calendars?









'Britain's dullest man' creates brand new calendar for 2023


The 70-year-old has put together a collection of photos to create a contender for most boring calendar of 2023




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Need a present for someone you hate? How about a calendar showing views of the M40?


Every month brings a fresh photo of the 89-mile motorway that links London and the Midlands. No wonder Landmarks of the M40 is flying off the shelves




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M40 Motorway Calendar 2023


A group of regular M40 commuters have launched what can only be described as ‘the must-have calendar for 2023’, Landmarks of the M40. Whether it’s a Secret Santa gift for colleagues, or a long-suffering family member who’s far too familiar with every bend and road sign on the M40, this is an...



motorwayvistas.com





Damn, there are times where I love this country


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

It's official (although symbolic): As of today there is 8 billion of us on this planet. Let's make some additional room so everybody could fit! 









World population to reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022 | United Nations


The global population is projected to reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022, and India is projected to surpass China...




www.un.org


----------



## tfd543

AnelZ said:


> From thread "International border crossings"
> 
> 
> 
> It is also expected that the Netherlands and France will be against awarding Bosnia and Herzegovina the candidate status for EU in December for which Slovenia and Austria along with the European Commissioner for Enlargement Oliver Varhelyi strongly lobby for. Germany largely also shares this opinion. Netherlands is because of principled policy i.e. we haven't fulfilled the conditions set in front of us. Regarding France, they have quite a hard stance regarding enlargement + our the Ministry of Finance of BiH gave a negative opinion for the establishment of the Development Agency of France in BiH. As the granting of candidate status to BiH according to the fast procedure is a project of Oliver Varhelyi, who also has good relations with Milorad Dodik, some analysists over here see the negative opinion of the Netherlands and France as a kind of response to Hungarian politics in EU. The imposition of changes to the Electoral Law, which was made by High Representative Christian Schmidt on the night of the election last month, is also stated as a reason for dissatisfaction among some European countries, especially in the Netherlands, which believes that in this way democratic processes have been violated and BiH's path to the European Union is threatened.



Decision for Croatia is to be taken on the 9th of December. Might get a nice early Christmas gift... if they actually get a green light, border will be abolished only for terrestrial traffic 1st of Jan 2023. Air traffic in March 2023. 

Guess it has to do with re-design of airports and controls.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> I used to think so. But looking at situation especially in Hungary it seems that Orban can do whatever he likes and the EU is unable to do anything.
> 
> Orban runs semi-democratic country at best. All the media (state as well as private), state agencies and a lot of big business is controlled by Orban and his cronies. How can it be allowed in the EU? How was he allowed to misappropriate the EU funds to achieve some of his goals?


For some reasons in Hungary it didn't work. But in Poland it works. Maybe because we have poor, but still kinda working political opposition in the country, which also has much influence in the EU. They already ruled the country for 8 years before PiS and their were quite successful. The Hungarian opposition is, according to what I heard, a nightmare.

Meanwhile, yesterday in the afternoon everybody in Poland was quite afraid of what just happened in a village near the Ukrainian border, at a grain warehouse... Is it the first case when the war in Ukraine directly killed someone outside the Ukrainian borders?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

In Dutch journalist circles there are debates about the spelling of Ukrainian placenames. Do they keep using the Russian version, or Ukrainian ones? Many newspapers made the switch, but the public broadcaster hasn't.

Some people got totally triggered that some started using Kyiv instead of Kiev. These people aren't necessarily pro-Russian, but are against name changes. As if it has always been Kiev and could never change.

I was looking into the old newspaper archive, and it turns out there are at least 12 different ways to transliterate Kyiv into Dutch and many of them were used until relatively recently: Kyiv, Kiev, Kiëv, Kiew, Kyjiv, Kiëf, Kijof, Kiow, Kieuw, Kijew, Kijev and Kijow 🙃


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> These people aren't necessarily pro-Russian, but are against name changes. As if it has always been Kiev and could never change.


I know it's another topic, but they should be asked about the capital city of Kazakhstan ;-)


----------



## MattiG

ChrisZwolle said:


> I was looking into the old newspaper archive, and it turns out there are at least 12 different ways to transliterate Kyiv into Dutch and many of them were used until relatively recently: Kyiv, Kiev, Kiëv, Kiew, Kyjiv, Kiëf, Kijof, Kiow, Kieuw, Kijew, Kijev and Kijow 🙃


It is Kiova in Finnish. However, when talking about chicken, it is Kiev.


----------



## SeanT

Hungarian opposition IS a nightmare. As a I said earlier, the leader of the opposition is a dead end ex- minister president. His party is the strongest by far, but the most hated political figure in Hungary


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> In Dutch journalist circles there are debates about the spelling of Ukrainian placenames. Do they keep using the Russian version, or Ukrainian ones? Many newspapers made the switch, but the public broadcaster hasn't.


In Poland it's not an issue as we just use the Polish versions... 

Anyway, the massive Russian rocket attack on Ukraine that happened yesterday isn't practically discussed in Poland because of that incident with the single rocket (probably of the Ukrainian air defense, though initially it was thought it was Russian) that killed 2 persons in Poland.


----------



## x-type

I travelled in march very near that village (5km) where the impact happened yesterday.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> Meanwhile, yesterday in the afternoon everybody in Poland was quite afraid of what just happened in a village near the Ukrainian border, at a grain warehouse... Is it the first case when the war in Ukraine directly killed someone outside the Ukrainian borders?


Yeah, after I checked the news and forums it was surreal feeling it did happened. It was 1am, after I was away from the news.
Poland-Ukraine border is actually quite away from Russia, minus current ally Belarus. Who would had thought that this place would be hit, with civilians involved already.

My fear since the start of war around Russia they may like to do some revenge acts on neighboring NATO countries. It's just gut feeling, but I kinda doubt around land invasion by troops, since artilery is the most important, but rocket launch is kinda what I really afraid.
What we see in Ukraine on critical infrastructure also smells like revenge acts due to the fact Russia failed to take Kiyiv in 48 hours.



SeanT said:


> Hungarian opposition IS a nightmare. As a I said earlier, the leader of the opposition is a dead end ex- minister president. His party is the strongest by far, but the most hated political figure in Hungary


My conclusion that having bad opposition is rather a tragedy than something not to care about. I hear people: "Oh, we have great leader, let's start praise him for putting us on right track", etc.
It's seem to be similar story with my city council. There is rather authoritarian mayor, weak opposition. Lots of people who praise mayor for some refurbishment on infrastructure. It start to look as a tragedy than something to not care about. and more I think, scarier it feels. It's not unlikely (it could be very likely) that Lithuania may choose more authoritarian path of some Central European countries when some party/person will take it all. We didn't chose this path probably because "new" countries that formed after 1980s are not like Hungary and Poland with long national statehood tradition even under Russian pressure.

It may involve lots of work to fix something, not just put "oh it will sort out on its own, no worries". Who knows what if most extreme example here Russia will need that Germany needed after 1945. Oh Russia don't even let you think about it...


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> It's seem to be similar story with my city council. There is rather authoritarian mayor, weak opposition. Lots of people who praise mayor for some refurbishment on infrastructure. It start to look as a tragedy than something to not care about.


It's kinda the same now with the city authorities of Łódź. They are from the major opposition party and they are now ruling for their third term. Their first term was quite good, as they cooperated a lot with the activists from the society (e.g. the cycling infrastructure improved really a lot thanks to that), and started many large-scale modernization programs (of city infrastructure, but also of old houses owned or managed by the city council). The problem was that those modernization programs were quite over-scaled. And now, when the financial situation got worse, they continue only a small fraction of those, with the rest of the infrastructure falling into disarray. For the previous 2 years they were forced to close down trams on several important routes in the city because of the bad technical state of the tracks. This year's spring, after the winter, was a complete pothole armagedon – to such an extent that they finally, as an emergency measure, started a program of replacing the surface asphalt on some streets – but it's nothing compared to what is needed after some 10 years of their rule while they were completely neglecting this issue and doing only some quick repairs of those potholes, like just a spot of asphalt thrown directly into the pothole – which isn't really a proper repair and it ends up with even more damage after the next winter. What they also did several years ago was a big reform of the public transport routes – they did it in cooperation with the social public transport activists – but the problem is that they completely dropped nearly everything what the social side proposed which would actually improve the public transport (like coordinating the departures of trams and buses at tram stops to facilitate transfers between them, or making the groups of bus lines sharing a part of their routes have cyclic departures on that common route section) – and this way, to many people they actually made the public transport even worse than it was previously.

The problem is, this local government will certainly be re-elected again – because there is practically no meaningful opposition in the city. When people vote, they only think of the two major parties, the current ruling party or the major opposition one. As most people in Łódź have rather liberal views, and absolutely hate the line of PiS from the national government – it's unlikely they would vote for the PiS candidate in the local elections, and anyway PiS usually sends a weird unknown person from somewhere else in the country to candidate for the mayor, probably just not caring as they know they have no chance of winning here anyway.


----------



## PovilD

Kpc21 said:


> It's kinda the same now with the city authorities of Łódź. They are from the major opposition party and they are now ruling for their third term. Their first term was quite good, as they cooperated a lot with the activists from the society (e.g. the cycling infrastructure improved really a lot thanks to that), and started many large-scale modernization programs (of city infrastructure, but also of old houses owned or managed by the city council). The problem was that those modernization programs were quite over-scaled. And now, when the financial situation got worse, they continue only a small fraction of those, with the rest of the infrastructure falling into disarray. For the previous 2 years they were forced to close down trams on several important routes in the city because of the bad technical state of the tracks. This year's spring, after the winter, was a complete pothole armagedon – to such an extent that they finally, as an emergency measure, started a program of replacing the surface asphalt on some streets – but it's nothing compared to what is needed after some 10 years of their rule while they were completely neglecting this issue and doing only some quick repairs of those potholes, like just a spot of asphalt thrown directly into the pothole – which isn't really a proper repair and it ends up with even more damage after the next winter. What they also did several years ago was a big reform of the public transport routes – they did it in cooperation with the social public transport activists – but the problem is that they completely dropped nearly everything what the social side proposed which would actually improve the public transport (like coordinating the departures of trams and buses at tram stops to facilitate transfers between them, or making the groups of bus lines sharing a part of their routes have cyclic departures on that common route section) – and this way, to many people they actually made the public transport even worse than it was previously.
> 
> The problem is, this local government will certainly be re-elected again – because there is practically no meaningful opposition in the city. When people vote, they only think of the two major parties, the current ruling party or the major opposition one. As most people in Łódź have rather liberal views, and absolutely hate the line of PiS from the national government – it's unlikely they would vote for the PiS candidate in the local elections, and anyway PiS usually sends a weird unknown person from somewhere else in the country to candidate for the mayor, probably just not caring as they know they have no chance of winning here anyway.


It's interesting. Afaik opposition in Poland is said to be liberal, centre-right?
Currently Lithuanian ruling parties (centre-right liberals) are similar to Polish PO.
They are not very popular outside of largest cities and usually parties that receive votes from more rural areas tend to win elections more often (like there is sort of pattern in last 10-20 years: 1 term for centre-right/liberal/city right party followed by 2 terms of some rather populist rural parties which is actually a mixed bag of everything)
I think since we are facing difficult times again, likely more populist party may win for next term unless city votes will gain more weight due to rural areas becoming more empty, especially due to potential crisis)

As for my city, I think situation is rather opposite than Łódź.
Our mayor would lean to PiS mentality, more conservative, anti-liberal manners, only thing I don't hear is religion card.
Kaunas is generally seen as rather more reserved, conservative city, not that open for people being different. Good thing it seems to me that on national level we don't lean more populist than other largest cities. Vilnius is most liberal, and voting patterns is showing that. PiS style party would have bad time in Vilnius. Maybe it would get more luck in Kaunas, if you remove religion factor, but even there, some work need to be done like with all promotion work, e.g. we have conservative anti-liberal mayor and due his popularity, promoting some anti-liberal party does the job.


----------



## Kpc21

PovilD said:


> It's interesting. Afaik opposition in Poland is said to be liberal, centre-right?


It's liberal; difficult to say if center-right. I'd say just center. Regarding things like minority rights etc., they are more and more left-inclining. Regarding issues like prioritizing things like private property, free market etc. over welfare – they're slightly right-wing but close to the center. 



PovilD said:


> I think since we are facing difficult times again, likely more populist party may win for next term unless city votes will gain more weight due to rural areas becoming more empty, especially due to potential crisis)


In Poland PiS seems to be increasingly more likely to fail in the nearest elections.

Their problem is that they don't have the power to rule alone, they must do it in coalition a small party of a guy whose name is Zbigniew Ziobro (which several years ago, already during the PiS rule, split out from them). Which is slightly more right-wing than PiS, definitely more eurosceptic, and opposes adjusting the regulations on courts to what the EU requires to send us the money from the Reconstruction Fund.

They cannot go against Ziobro because the'd lose the majority and they wouldn't be able to do anything.

But going this way, rejecting the EU money, makes them less and less popular. And this decrease of popularity will probably go together with the progressing financial crisis, in which the EU money would be more and more helpful.

On the other hand, PO is also not going to rule alone. They would have to be in coalition with the left-wing parties or (most likely even and) the party which has emerged quite recently, created by an... actor and journalist Szymon Hołownia – called Polska 2050.

This party is quite a big unknown. They views seem to be quite a lot like of PO, with promises of the state being "closer to the citizens". What's most interesting is that while in they program they claim they are strongly for the separation of the church from the state – I heard from some people that it's actually a "hidden church option"... Anyway, we will see what will actually happen if he wins.

And if the elections will be democratic at all, though I don't believe it could not be like that, although PiS has already threatened they want to introduce an "Elections Protection Corpus" which is supposed to take care that the elections would be "democratic", obviously in the meaning like from the Trump's mindset (if they lose, something was certainly wrong with the elections...).


----------



## geogregor

PovilD said:


> My conclusion that having bad opposition is rather a tragedy than something not to care about. I hear people: "Oh, we have great leader, let's start praise him for putting us on right track", etc.


This is wider issue of how long you can/should keep one party in power. Even if they are initially not bad, time in power corrupts. Not necessarily in legal sense but intellectually. People get complacent, lazy etc.

If party stay in power more than two terms there is always higher risk of that happening. We can see example of that in the UK where the Tory party after 12 years in power is a spent force. Intellectually they are totally burned out, dominated by cronies and weirdos. Of course Brexit didn't help but it is not the only, or even main, reason why Tories are so crap at the moment. They need time in opposition, new people being elected etc.

It is even bigger risk in central and eastern Europe where democratic institutions are younger and less established. Hungary is probably the most extreme case inside the EU.



Kpc21 said:


> It's kinda the same now with the city authorities of Łódź. They are from the major opposition party and they are now ruling for their third term.


In local government it is less of a risk. For a few reasons.

First, they have much less power. Local government can't change important laws regarding judicial system, state ideology etc.

Secondly, they face legal oversight by central government, especially if they are in opposition to central government.

Thirdly, it is easier to watch local government by citizens which can watch it in action on a daily basis (transport, cleaning, local planning etc.) It is less esoteric than debates about legal systems or boundaries of freedom of expression.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> In Dutch journalist circles there are debates about the spelling of Ukrainian placenames. Do they keep using the Russian version, or Ukrainian ones? Many newspapers made the switch, but the public broadcaster hasn't.
> 
> Some people got totally triggered that some started using Kyiv instead of Kiev. These people aren't necessarily pro-Russian, but are against name changes. As if it has always been Kiev and could never change.
> 
> I was looking into the old newspaper archive, and it turns out there are at least 12 different ways to transliterate Kyiv into Dutch and many of them were used until relatively recently: Kyiv, Kiev, Kiëv, Kiew, Kyjiv, Kiëf, Kijof, Kiow, Kieuw, Kijew, Kijev and Kijow 🙃


That huge list of names illustrates perfectly how hard it is to capture Ukrainian pronunciation in Dutch spelling rules.  The same can be said about Poland and other nations in the region. 

I imagine that there was at some point (perhaps in 1918 after the Austro-Hungarian empire fell apart) a committee set up talk about the spelling of place names in all these new countries. The first name on the agenda was "Łódź". They spent 4 days discussing it, then gave up and disbanded the committee.


----------



## Kpc21

Say just "Boat City", it will be ok and understandable


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Except for football teams.


They, too, may have German exonmys, especially the Italian ones, what I find quite funny. In German it's AC Mailand and Inter Mailand, AS Rom, SSC Neapel. But there are FC Kopenhagen or Viktoria Pilsen as well. And the funniest is FC Liverpool, in English actually Liverpool FC. 
The the famous club from Belgrade, Crvena Zvezda. Its name is translated to Red Star, Roter Stern, Stella Rossa, etc.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Exonyms are generally in decline, it's not common for new ones to enter usage and old ones fall into disuse. I've heard from a guy who lives in southern Austria that most people there don't use Laibach and Marburg anymore. Or Agram. (those are Ljubljana, Maribor & Zagreb). Pressburg is another example that has fallen into disuse in favor of Bratislava.
> 
> I suppose it depends on the language how easily people switch to endonyms. Some countries in Europe still have a fairly limited knowledge of foreign languages. For example English in the interior of Spain.


It depends. E.g. in Polish exonyms are not much popular while talking about less popular western European cities. Like, Poles living in Aachen, students going there for Erasmus etc. usually use the German name Aachen instead of the Polish one Akwizgran. But if we talk about Eastern Europe – or about the most important, most known western European cities – like Munich, Cologne, London, Paris, Basel, Geneve etc. – using the exonyms is commonplace and I haven't really heard of people avoiding them. The original names (endonyms) are anyway difficult to pronounce for average Poles.



ChrisZwolle said:


> Except for football teams.


In Polish not.

We say Arsenal Londyn, Inter Mediolan, Bayern Monachium, Real Madryt. Although... FC Köln. But those sports club names where we use the exonyms – like FC Köln – are rare. I can also think of AC Milan, using a foreign exonym.
Or even – Dynamo Kijów. Not only the city name gets polonized, but the club name either.



Attus said:


> What I find interesting: in Germany you never hear Köngisberg, however, it's very common to say Danzig or Breslau (Kaliningrad, Gdansk and Wrocław, respectively), although Germany lost all of them at the same time, thie historical background is very similar.


Because Kaliningrad – the current name of the city – isn't just the Russian equivalent of Königsberg. The city got completely renamed. Similarly Łódź during the German occupation during the WW2 was renamed to Litzmannstadt. Obviously even Germans don't call it so any more – partially because it would be offensive towards Poles, but to some extent also because it isn't the official name. I don't know if calling Kaliningrad Königsberg would be offensive towards Russians living there or not, but still – the official name is different, and Königsberg isn't its translation, but just a different name, not valid any more.

In Polish we also don't say Królewiec but Kaliningrad. Unless you think about those Czech memes about annexing the Kaliningrad region, but then it's Kralovec 



Coccodrillo said:


> I have the idea that, had Ukrainian government been more fair with its Russian-speaking citizens (like recognizing Russian at least as local language, and giving them autonomy over local affairs), things would have gone differently (except for Crimea). Or maybe not.


I don't think so. To my knowledge, nobody in those eastern regions of Ukraine welcomed the Russian "liberating" soldiers happily with flowers, as the soldiers, and Putin, expected. Maybe those people (some of them) would happily become a part of Russia through some peaceful negotiations, certainly not through a destructive war...



Attus said:


> In German it's AC Mailand and Inter Mailand


Interesting. In Polish – AC Milan (if I'm not mistaken, this club even in Italian it uses this foreign exonym...), Inter Mediolan.



Attus said:


> But there are FC Kopenhagen or Viktoria Pilsen as well


In Polish we say Viktoria Pilzno 



Attus said:


> And the funniest is FC Liverpool, in English actually Liverpool FC.


We also say FC Liverpool.

In Poland we have some football clubs that incorporate the name of the city already in the name. I can think of ŁKS from Łódź (ŁKS already stands for *Łódz*ki Klub Sportowy) and Cracovia from Cracow.

While talking about ŁKS, media usually say "ŁKS Łódź" – even though it's redundant. But they usually don't do that in the case of Cracovia; they don't say Cracovia Kraków.

The more known football club from Cracow is Wisła Kraków. Do western media translate its name; does it become Weichsel Krakau or Vistula Cracow – or do they live Wisła in Polish, maybe only replacing "ł" with "l"?


----------



## geogregor

Coccodrillo said:


> I have the idea that, *had Ukrainian government been more fair with its Russian-speaking citizens* (like recognizing Russian at least as local language, and giving them autonomy over local affairs), *things would have gone differently* (except for Crimea). Or maybe not.


Not really. The current crisis have very little to do with language. Zelensky himself, as you noted, is Russian speaking Ukrainian. Putin didn't invade because language issues but because he most likely lost his mind.

In fact there is argument that Ukraine didn't push hard enough and early enough for use of Ukrainian thus allowing for large subset of population to grow fed on Russian language propaganda with little access to news and information in Ukrainian, sort of parallel society. The same problem exists in Latvia and Estonia.

Switzerland is unique example of multilingual confederation. I can't think of any other successful example. Yugoslavia disintegrated, Catalonia is powder keg waiting to explode etc. I think Ukraine finally realized it as well. I think initially they hoped that once Soviet generation (full of nostalgia for the CCCP therefor often practically lost for modern Ukraine) dies out then the younger folks in the east of Ukraine would widely adopt Ukrainian language and got more attached to the state. That didn't happen for various reason, including Russian meddling and propaganda.



Kpc21 said:


> The more known football club from Cracow is Wisła Kraków. Do western media translate its name; does it become Weichsel Krakau or Vistula Cracow – or do they live Wisła in Polish, maybe only replacing "ł" with "l"?


In English it is Wisla Krakow, like in this article:









BBC World Service - Sportshour, Wisla Krakow stadium is now a hub and accommodation for Dynamo Kyiv's youth footballers


Citizens are offering accommodation and essentials to those that have crossed the border.




www.bbc.co.uk


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> Except for football teams.


The logic of "Bayern Munich" is just baffling. Bavaria Munich, or Bayern Munchen would be far more sensible.


----------



## Coccodrillo

In Italian we say "Bayern Monaco".



Kpc21 said:


> I don't think so. To my knowledge, nobody in those eastern regions of Ukraine welcomed the Russian "liberating" soldiers happily with flowers, as the soldiers, and Putin, expected. Maybe those people (some of them) would happily become a part of Russia through some peaceful negotiations, certainly not through a destructive war...


I never said that eastern Ukrainians fully support Putin's actions, I said that, had Ukraine recognized Russian at least as local language and had Ukraine given their eastern regions them autonomy over local affairs, there may have been less separatist ideas (from Ukrainians) and Putin would have had less excuses to start his war. Although he would likely have found another casus belli. Nowadays, I think one would be mad to want to be governed by Putin. And you said it, too:



Kpc21 said:


> Supposedly after the invasion, quite many people from the eastern Ukraine regions (Russian speaking) turned against Russia, though previously supported it.





geogregor said:


> I think initially they hoped that once Soviet generation (...) dies out then the younger folks in the east of Ukraine would widely adopt Ukrainian language and got more attached to the state. That didn't happen for various reason, including Russian meddling and propaganda.


It's the idea that everybody in the same nation must have the same mother tongue to have an united state that is wrong. No French or Italian speaking Swiss would define himself as part of a French or Italian minority, but just a Swiss whose first language is French o Italian. The fact that the majority of Swiss speak (a sort of) German doesn't matter at all. But I know that Switzerland is an exception. A Swiss way of saying is "Switzerland doesn't work well despite having 4 different languages, but thanks to having 4 different languages".

I wonder how (for instance) Russian-speaking Estonian define themselves. Do they feel a Russian minority in Estonia, or Russian-speaking estonians? The goal should be the second.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Speaking of endonyms, I'm using the English Google Maps. It shows the names Hungary and Slovakia. But when you zoom in at the border, it uses the endonyms. I'm not sure if this is a new thing or a glitch.


----------



## geogregor

Coccodrillo said:


> I never said that eastern Ukrainians fully support Putin's actions, I said that, had Ukraine recognized Russian at least as local language and had Ukraine given their eastern regions them autonomy over local affairs, there may have been less separatist ideas (from Ukrainians) and Putin would have had less excuses to start his war. Although he would likely have found another casus belli. Nowadays, I think one would be mad to want to be governed by Putin. And you said it, too:


But Ukraine never really surpresed Russian particularly hard, if at all actively. Number of Rusian speakers attest to that.



> It's the idea that everybody in the same nation must have the same mother tongue to have an united state that is wrong. No French or Italian speaking Swiss would define himself as part of a French or Italian minority, but just a Swiss whose first language is French o Italian. The fact that the majority of Swiss speak (a sort of) German doesn't matter at all. But I know that Switzerland is an exception. A Swiss way of saying is "Switzerland doesn't work well despite having 4 different languages, but thanks to having 4 different languages".


I did say that Switzerland is unique case in Europe. We can debate for hours the background to that situation (history, geography etc.) you probably know more than most of us here 

Eastern Europe is completely different kettle of fish.



> I wonder how (for instance) Russian-speaking Estonian define themselves. Do they feel a Russian minority in Estonia, or Russian-speaking estonians? The goal should be the second.


Good question. From what I heard there were issues with their loyalty to the state. Some of Russian speakers were very fond of Putin and Russia. I think they thought of themselves as Russians first, or even only. It didn't help that Estonia post 1990 was very "ethnic-based" country. Of course it was natural reaction after force russification for decades, and to some degree necessity for young state trying to establish itself.

Whether it is still the case we would have to ask some locals.


----------



## radamfi

Belgium is clearly a lot less harmonious than Switzerland. But is there actually a realistic possibility of it disintegrating? It seems less likely than Scottish independence, yet Scotland speaks the same language as England (well, sort of! ).


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Putin didn't invade because language issues but because he most likely lost his mind.


Or his mind was always lost. He seems to believe in the concept of "Great Russia", that all the territories of the former USSR are Russian and should be parts of the country, and now are occupied by the "evil West".

At the same time, completely rejecting the concept of self-determination of countries. Or rather believing that he can exploit it to get the results he wants instead of those which actually would be fair (sham referenda).



geogregor said:


> Switzerland is unique example of multilingual confederation. I can't think of any other successful example.


Belgium? Finland? Canada?



geogregor said:


> In fact there is argument that Ukraine didn't push hard enough and early enough for use of Ukrainian thus allowing for large subset of population to grow fed on Russian language propaganda with little access to news and information in Ukrainian, sort of parallel society. The same problem exists in Latvia and Estonia.


But we live in 21st century, we have the Internet. Everyone who speaks Russian has equal access to the Russian culture, and related propaganda. I don't know, but I suppose western Ukrainians are also quite present as consumers and participants of the Russian-language culture, similarly as we here in this thread on SSC participate in the English-language culture. It's not like they don't speak any Russian; they (those with Ukrainian as their native language) probably speak more and better Russian than Poles speak English. And anyway, it's not like all Russian-language media are Russian government propaganda... Those which aren't, are usually blocked in Russia and require going around the censorship using VPN services, but anywhere else they are available and can easily be more popular than the Russian state propaganda media. Actually, when that news about rocket strikes on Poland came out, I was at the table with some guys including one from Belarus. The news outlet he checked first was Medusa, an independent one, which is blocked in Russia (and in Belarus probably too). Only later he checked, to compare, what the Russian government had to say on the topic, on the website of some Russian state media.

It's a fact that a language creates a kind of a "culture bubble" – but I don't believe it's ever so that the total of that bubble is the propaganda of the most prominent country speaking that language (even more, e.g. Russian-speaking Ukrainians can help make the propaganda less dominant in that bubble). And anyway, in this case we have a bubble that stretches far beyond the borders of Russia and of Russia-allied countries...

By the way, SSC is quite unusual as a forum, as it joins multiple such "culture bubbles" together by having various language sections 



Coccodrillo said:


> I never said that eastern Ukrainians fully support Putin's actions, I said that, had Ukraine recognized Russian at least as local language and had Ukraine given their eastern regions them autonomy over local affairs, there may have been less separatist ideas (from Ukrainians) and Putin would have had less excuses to start his war. Although he would likely have found another casus belli.


Certainly he would!

Though from what I heard, those things with the lack of recognition of Russian language in Ukraine are much exaggerated, I personally suppose there is quite a lot of Putin's propaganda in that. In practice, using Ukrainians was required in a very limited number of official situations.

It might just be deliberately invented by Russian government to get a good excuse for starting the war.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

There is a considerable variation in Russian usage in southern and eastern Ukraine. The cities are typically mostly Russian speaking while rural areas are mostly Ukrainian speaking, except for Crimea, where people in rural areas also speak Russian. In Donbass, it is mostly Russian but the more rural areas are also mostly Ukrainian speaking. Donbass is heavily urbanized though.










Ukrainian has a lot of similarities to Polish from what I can tell.


----------



## PovilD

Attus said:


> What I find interesting: in Germany you never hear Köngisberg, however, it's very common to say Danzig or Breslau (Kaliningrad, Gdansk and Wrocław, respectively), although Germany lost all of them at the same time, thie historical background is very similar.


I think Polish their own versions for Ukrainian cities, which probably resemble Kharkuw, Kijow.
It's not the case elsewhere. Either you use Russian version, or Ukrainian.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> Belgium? Finland? Canada?


Quebec has had numerous referenda on separation, which doesn't suggest Swiss style unity!


----------



## Coccodrillo

In Belgium they are also continuously quarrelling on everything. Maybe Finland is an exception, from what I heard.

Canadian and Belgians might decide to continue coexisting because its practically easier and nowadays there is no push to "impose" majority language over the other(s), but they don't seem really united. 



Kpc21 said:


> Though from what I heard, those things with the lack of recognition of Russian language in Ukraine are much exaggerated, I personally suppose there is quite a lot of Putin's propaganda in that. In practice, using Ukrainians was required in a very limited number of official situations.
> 
> It might just be deliberately invented by Russian government to get a good excuse for starting the war.


Puntin certainly used this matter for his propaganda, and his reaction is obviously exaggerated, but there is some truth behind.









New Language Requirement Raises Concerns in Ukraine


A new legal provision on the use of the Ukrainian language, part of a broader state language law, raises concerns about protection for minority languages.




www.hrw.org


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Coccodrillo said:


> Canadian and Belgians might decide to continue coexisting because its practically easier and nowadays there is no push to "impose" majority language over the other(s), but they don't seem really united.


My impression from another internet forum is that Belgium is basically two nearly entirely separate societies. People usually don't have family ties in the other language area and quite many don't seem to travel much into the other language area at all. The country also isn't really bilingual in the sense that its citizens can speak the other language well. 

The regional governments in Belgium exercise a lot of power, and people can only vote for parties within their own region, so there is a large divergence in domestic politics. The federal level is politically less stable as a result, especially because Flanders is mostly right-wing while Wallonia is pretty left-wing. 

I think Belgium would've broken apart a long time ago if it wasn't for the status of Brussels, which forces both regions into the status quo.


----------



## SeanT

I have noticed that in Denmark the city names have changed, Kiev at least. Now it is written Kyiv or something like that. This is absolutely because of the war!


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Most of the Dutch press switched from 'Wit-Rusland' (literally: White Russia) to Belarus last year, as a response to the protests and manipulated elections. They wanted to acknowledge that Belarus is not the same as Russia (Rusland and Wit-Rusland in Dutch). I think 'Wit-Rusland' was copied from German (Weißrussland), as is the case with more names east of the Oder (like Krakau or Warschau).


----------



## MattiG

Coccodrillo said:


> In Belgium they are also continuously quarrelling on everything. Maybe Finland is an exception, from what I heard.


I believe that most European countries, Finland included, have language minorities, and every country has arranged things in their individual way.

Most language disputes in Finland date back for 100 years, when Finnish was the language of the majority, but most decision makers were Swedish speaking. The situation nowadays is quite straightforward: The share of native Swedish speakers is 5.2 per cent only, and most of them are fully bilingual. There are discussions on mandatory classes of Swedish in the schools, and obligation for the authorities to speak Swedish in the monolingual Finnish areas, they are pretty minor things. Of course, there are some local conflicts in the areas where the minority is relatively big, but generally there is a peace in place.

Sometimes, the signmakers make mistakes on the Swedish names because they do not speak Swedish, but people seem to laugh at them instead of being angry:









_A very recent case, Porgå instead of Borgå.









Sweden is "Sverige" in Swedish, not "Swerige"._


----------



## PovilD

SeanT said:


> I have noticed that in Denmark the city names have changed, Kiev at least. Now it is written Kyiv or something like that. This is absolutely because of the war!


The war formed Ukrainian nation, and names are just default Ukrainian versions, while Russian versions were used.
I feel solidarity to use Ukrainian names instead. Not for war, but because Ukraine is another European country that wants W. European standards of living as current goal.


----------



## x-type

How about Turkey? Have you noticed new name Türkiye appearing in public, or it is still Turkey or whatever your local expression is?
I have noticed Türkiye in English online things, but nowhere else.


----------



## Suburbanist

x-type said:


> How about Turkey? Have you noticed new name Türkiye appearing in public, or it is still Turkey or whatever your local expression is?
> I have noticed Türkiye in English online things, but nowhere else.


It follow the trend of countries wanting to change their English /semi-official International name, like eSwatini (which insists on eS not Es), Côte d'Ivoire, Myanmar, and earlier changes for Sri Lanka, Ghana...


----------



## x-type

Suburbanist said:


> It follow the trend of countries wanting to change their English /semi-official International name, like eSwatini (which insists on eS not Es), Côte d'Ivoire, Myanmar, and earlier changes for Sri Lanka, Ghana...


Yeah, I know. Despite I find it extremely stupid, my question is actually if someone has noticed usage of new name.


----------



## Kpc21

x-type said:


> Have you noticed new name Türkiye appearing in public


I haven't. Though luckily nobody in Turkey has even thought of trying to persuade Poles also not to use the exonym in their language... I guess this question is more targeted at the users being native English speakers.

Anyway, this is not "new official name" because this has always been the official name.

Some countries just don't understand the concept of exonyms and want to influence other languages, which is completely out of their competences anyway.


----------



## Suburbanist

What about Czechia. Has it caught on in your country?


----------



## Suburbanist

There is an interesting story on how Constantinople became Istanbul early in the 20th Century. It took the postal service of the Ottoman Empire to refuse to process letters addressed "Constantinople" from abroad to make it stick.


----------



## PovilD

Lithuania could change to Lietuva, it would be easier to remember.

Türkiye name problem it used character not used in English "ü"
I would rather think using "Turkia" instead that more resembles typical English pronouncation for country names.


----------



## PovilD

Suburbanist said:


> What about Czechia. Has it caught on in your country?


We always used Čekija, very similar pronunciation.


----------



## hseugut

Why is this thread named 'Motorways and Autobahns' ? How about Autostradas ? Autoroutes ?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> What about Czechia. Has it caught on in your country?


Most European languages use some form of Czechia, so for non-native English speakers, Czechia feels more natural than the formal Czech Republic.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> My impression from another internet forum is that Belgium is basically two nearly entirely separate societies. People usually don't have family ties in the other language area and quite many don't seem to travel much into the other language area at all. The country also isn't really bilingual in the sense that its citizens can speak the other language well.
> 
> The regional governments in Belgium exercise a lot of power, and people can only vote for parties within their own region, so there is a large divergence in domestic politics. The federal level is politically less stable as a result, especially because Flanders is mostly right-wing while Wallonia is pretty left-wing.
> 
> I think Belgium would've broken apart a long time ago if it wasn't for the status of Brussels, which forces both regions into the status quo.


Belgians have more in common with each other than they realize. Walloons are beer-drinking Frenchmen and Flemings are Dutch-speaking Frenchmen. 

In all seirousness; Belgium is unlikely to disappear because its people are innately risk-averse. There will be the occasional tinkering with the constitution and the media will refer to it as a "crisis" but nobody's leaving this marriage any time soon.

Belgium is much older than its statehood would suggest. In England in particularly, people assume that Belgium is this odd, fake, non-country that came into existence by accident in 1830 but that's not even remotely true.

Belgium has existed as a cultural entity since the Dutch broke away to from their own republic. From the late 1500s, Belgium has been this buffer zone between the Netherlands and France, inhabited by people who never spent a great deal of time worrying about the central authority that governs them (be it Hapsburg, Austrian or federal). But they share a common culture, a common cuisine and a common way of life. Belgian statehood is as valid as any other statehood in Europe. And it's not going anywhere.


----------



## Attus

Suburbanist said:


> What about Czechia. Has it caught on in your country?


In Hungary it has never been called "Republic", but Csehország, literally "Czechland". Many European nations are called like this in Hungarian:

Franciaország = Frenchland
Németország = Germanland
Spanyolország = Spanishland
etc. The name has not been changed, it remained the same like before.
In Germany Tschechien, basically the Germanized version of Czechia, is very common nowadays, older people sometimes say Tschechei, but the long name Tschechishe Republic is more frequently used than the long names of other countries.


----------



## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> My impression from another internet forum is that Belgium is basically two nearly entirely separate societies. People usually don't have family ties in the other language area and quite many don't seem to travel much into the other language area at all. The country also isn't really bilingual in the sense that its citizens can speak the other language well.
> 
> The regional governments in Belgium exercise a lot of power, and people can only vote for parties within their own region, so there is a large divergence in domestic politics. The federal level is politically less stable as a result, especially because Flanders is mostly right-wing while Wallonia is pretty left-wing.
> 
> I think Belgium would've broken apart a long time ago if it wasn't for the status of Brussels, which forces both regions into the status quo.


However, walloons, although being less than the Flemish, are not a minority in a Flemish country. French and Italian speaking Swiss are even altogether less people than the German speaking population, but they are not a minority in a German country. Russian speaking people in Ukraine or Lithuania, Swedish speaking people in Finnland, Hungarian speking people in Romania, etc., are minorities in a country formed and ruled by another ethnicity.


----------



## Attus

Attus said:


> However, walloons, although being less than the Flemish, are not a minority in a Flemish country. French and Italian speaking Swiss are even altogether less people than the German speaking population, but they are not a minority in a German country. Russian speaking people in Ukraine or Lithuania, Swedish speaking people in Finnland, Hungarian speking people in Romania, etc., are minorities in a country formed and ruled by another ethnicity.


And, another factor: Lithuania and Ukraine were completely parts of the USSR, the region of the Hungarian minority in Romania used to be part of Hungary, South Tyrol was a part of a German speaking country (Austria). Belgium and Switzerland have been existing for a long time having the same borders (B-D border changed after World War I, but not those with the Netherlands and France), the last time the current Flanders was part of a Dutch kingdom was almost two hundred years ago (and existed only for a short time).


----------



## Stuu

Suburbanist said:


> What about Czechia. Has it caught on in your country?


Not at all in English, mostly because of a lack of awareness I would imagine.

I can't see Türkiye becoming common either, the whole point of exonyms is how one country sees another, not how the country sees itself. Some have disappeared in English though, especially ones with colonial associations, like Bombay/Mumbai. And more minor ones like Brunswick/Braunschweig or Leghorn/Livorno.


----------



## Alex_ZR

ChrisZwolle said:


> Most of the Dutch press switched from 'Wit-Rusland' (literally: White Russia) to Belarus last year, as a response to the protests and manipulated elections. They wanted to acknowledge that Belarus is not the same as Russia (Rusland and Wit-Rusland in Dutch). I think 'Wit-Rusland' was copied from German (Weißrussland), as is the case with more names east of the Oder (like Krakau or Warschau).


And "Belarus" means exactly "White Rus(sia)".


----------



## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> What about Czechia. Has it caught on in your country?


We already had it before. The Polish single word for Czech Republic was and still is Czechy.



hseugut said:


> Why is this thread named 'Motorways and Autobahns' ? How about Autostradas ? Autoroutes ?


It's Highways and Autobahns  It's often incorrectly taught on English classes (at least I encountered that and long thought it is so), but actually "highway" is a much wider term than "Autobahn" or "motorway". "Highway" is just any major road for transit traffic. It doesn't have to be with limited access, with no at-grade intersections etc.



Attus said:


> In Hungary it has never been called "Republic", but Csehország, literally "Czechland". Many European nations are called like this in Hungarian:
> 
> Franciaország = Frenchland
> Németország = Germanland
> Spanyolország = Spanishland


And Lengyelorszag!

The name Poland, Polska comes from an ancient tribe, which we in Polish call Polanie (Polans). The Hungarian name seems to come from another ancient tribe that lived in the area of the current Poland; we call it Lędzianie (Lendians or something like that).

Actually it was Polans who conquered the other tribes and gave the beginning for the country of Poland, but maybe Hungarians had more contacts with Lendians (as they lived in the southern Poland), hence their name for Poland.

By the way... Nemetorszag is a loan from Polish, isn't it?  Because the Polish word Niemcy for Germany has quite an obvious Polish origin, it means the "mute" people (as they spoke a completely different language and were impossible to understand).



Attus said:


> Russian speaking people in Ukraine or Lithuania, Swedish speaking people in Finnland, Hungarian speking people in Romania, etc., are minorities in a country formed and ruled by another ethnicity.


Are they really the minority when even the Ukraine's president is a native Russian speaker, and most Ukrainians met somewhere in Poland speak Russian to each other?

And are they a different culture, another ethnicity, so that they could be even considered a minority? No, it's just a part of the same culture and ethnicity, only speaking another language. Unless you mean actual Russians living in Ukraine.



Attus said:


> And, another factor: Lithuania and Ukraine were completely parts of the USSR


But they had some level of autonomy, being separate Soviet Socialist Republics. Saying things like that is basically repeating the Russian propaganda, which uses that as an argument for that Ukraine (or Lithuania) should now be a part of Russia.

Although for centuries, most regions of the current Ukraine (and Belarus) were a part of... such a small country nowadays as Lithuania.

But anyway, what actually matters is not the history (though it obviously influenced the latter) but the current identity of those people. If they don't identify as Russians, there is no reason for them to be a part of Russia.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The first cold spell has arrived in the Netherlands, this is actually the lowest temperature of 2022, and thus lower than past winter.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> But anyway, what actually matters is not the history (though it obviously influenced the latter) but the current identity of those people.


But this history was the youth of several people living there today. The USSR ceased to exist in 1991, everyone older then fourty today can remember the Soviet times. They grew up there.


----------



## Kpc21

But do they really want USSR back? Probably not.


----------



## volodaaaa

When it comes to Czechia, bear in mind the difference:

Czech Republic = Bohemia + Moravia + Silesia. In some languages, Bohemia is translated similar to Czechia. 

For example in the Slovak language:
Česká republika = Čechy (Bohemia) + Morava + Sliezsko. 

The short version on Česká republika in Slovak is Česko, but Česko != Čechy. 

It is not problem in English, but might be problem in other languages. Calling the territory around Brno Čechy may severely offend the locals.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> But do they really want USSR back? Probably not.


Probably not, but the region they live ruled by Moscow, yes.


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> But is it that much different from "h" like in "hello"? To me it's practically the same sound. Of course I know it actually isn't, but isn't it close enough?


Yes, it's very different, noticeably so. Would someone Ukrainian or Russian or anywhere else that uses Cyrillic even recognise it as the same sound? I'm not sure they would. It is technically very different, in the way that you make the sound in your mouth


----------



## Kpc21

Generally the fact that some sounds can be distinct for people speaking one language and indistinguishable for someone speaking another language is quite interesting...

But indeed it is so, and that's why I understand what you say as something completely normal.

Even though for me those sounds sound the same 

In addition, in Polish we have two different symbols for it (or for a similar sound to one of those two): "h" and "ch", because in the past those were indeed two separate sounds...

Now children at school have to learn practically by heart when to use one and when the other.


----------



## Spookvlieger

I imagine the X sound in Russian in Dutch to be the soft G sound (not the gluteral one the Dutch make in Holland) or CH sound.(Don't mix it up with English soft and hard g because they are nothing alike) English speakers indeed can't manage it no matter how hard they try.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> By the way, can you see in your countries hate towards Russians, especially towards those who left Russia?
> 
> In Poland this phenomenon seems to me to be quite strong. Even today, in the Polish thread about the war in Ukraine, there was the topic mentioned of the Russians who immigrated to the EU, and that their number doubled since the war started. I pointed out that they work for the EU and that they cannot be mobilized in Russia, so thanks to their emigration, there are less Russian soldiers for Ukraine to fight with. Not to mention, this way Russia has lost quite a lot of educated elites, which is beneficial for the whole situation.





> However – I got several reactions to that post – most of them were laughing emojis, one – angry emoji, no ordinary likes. Personally I feel quite bad about that.


Don't feel bad about it. Internet forums can be quite vitriolic and people often follow herd mentality. I refrain from taking part in some debates on Polish forum. For example I largely gave up discussing immigration. But you decide to write, you should write what you really think and don't care that much about comments or likes.

I noticed that on subject of Russia some normally moderate formers (including some moderators) go to completely hyperbolic mood. But I guess it is part of the internet debates, people write things which many of them wouldn't say into somobody's face



> Some people claim it's a fault of Russians that they have a government like that and that the war is their fault. To me it seems completely unfair. They are also a victim of the Russian government, similarly to Ukrainians (though of course in a different form). Some people claim the Russians should do something about their government – forgetting that it's a dictatorship rules by a psychic man, not a democratic country. Many Russians support their government – but it's just because they don't get other media than those delivering Putin's propaganda...
> 
> And that hate directed at Russians is actually helping Putin, he can then easily show the Russians that they have nothing to look for outside Russia, and even if they don't like the regime, they don't have any other choice. Generally the narration of the Russian government in their propaganda is that there is a lot of what they call "russophobia" outside Russia. Of course it's propaganda, it's evil and it's done deliberately to make Russian avoid foreign contacts. And I would really like to disagree with it. But it's difficult when I notice all that hate.
> 
> Is it their fault that they were born in a wrong place at a wrong time?


It is complex issue. I largely agree with you, more Russians emigrating, especially the educated ones, the better. It will weaken Russia in the long term. Not necessarily because reducing recruiting pool, as most recruits are from the lower classes, but by reducing prospect for economic growth or technical innovation. Also, those folks will see world outside Russian propaganda sphere and it will, however slowly, leak towards their families etc.

However, there are some unsavory elements among Russians abroad. I have friend here in London (Italian) and her partner is Russian. His parents live in Texas, he lives in the UK for more than 20 years and still some of his views are moronic. The idea that climate change doesn't exist is one of his "softer weirdness"

But would I prefer for him to be in Russia rather than working in London and paying taxes here? I don't think so.

Having said that, when we are sometimes invited for diner to see them both it can be awkward 

Luckily he is nowadays stuck somewhere in Yorkshire where he is translator on mining project so we can see our Italian friend without him


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> Generally the fact that some sounds can be distinct for people speaking one language and indistinguishable for someone speaking another language is quite interesting...
> 
> But indeed it is so, and that's why I understand what you say as something completely normal.
> 
> Even though for me those sounds sound the same


That is interesting. I wouldn't have thought it was possible to mix up the sounds but I guess it depends on context, so perhaps your brain fills in the sound for you? 

Also maybe related to how some languages struggle with different sounds in foreign languages. Like most English people have no idea how to pronounce the Welsh "ll", which is a bit like the "th" sound at the end of "with", but not quite. Or how no one French can cope with "th" as a sound


----------



## Slagathor

Stuu said:


> That is interesting. I wouldn't have thought it was possible to mix up the sounds but I guess it depends on context, so perhaps your brain fills in the sound for you?
> 
> Also maybe related to how some languages struggle with different sounds in foreign languages. Like most English people have no idea how to pronounce the Welsh "ll", which is a bit like the "th" sound at the end of "with", but not quite. Or how no one French can cope with "th" as a sound


"th" is notoriously difficult. It exists in some Scandinavian languages but every other nationality I've ever taught English to (from Dutch to French to Thai to Vietnamese) struggles to get this one right. I've resorted to using illustrations on the positioning of the tongue etc. 

Most people turn it into an f, a t or a d.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> However – I got several reactions to that post – most of them were laughing emojis, one – angry emoji, no ordinary likes. Personally I feel quite bad about that.


That's the issue with forums with like facilities, like here. Some other forums deliberately avoid having likes. Other forums only show the number of likes.


----------



## radamfi

Neither of my parents have English as first language so I didn't say 'th' the usual English way as a child, and pronounced it like 'f', and 'the' like 'd'. I only realised I was doing something different when the teacher told me after I had been to school for about 3 years. I would guess that wouldn't be considered appropriate today as it might be considered to be a dialect which shouldn't be corrected. The usual Irish English accent pronounces 'three' like 'tree' and that is accepted as normal.


----------



## MattiG

Slagathor said:


> "th" is notoriously difficult. It exists in some Scandinavian languages but every other nationality I've ever taught English to (from Dutch to French to Thai to Vietnamese) struggles to get this one right. I've resorted to using illustrations on the positioning of the tongue etc.
> 
> Most people turn it into an f, a t or a d.


But it may help to identify the person's mother tongue. If someone says ' Zö wezzah is klaudi', we can be quite sure that we are talking to a German.


----------



## Mkbewe

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland this phenomenon seems to me to be quite strong. Even today, in the Polish thread about the war in Ukraine, there was the topic mentioned of the Russians who immigrated to the EU, and that their number doubled since the war started. I pointed out that they work for the EU and that they cannot be mobilized in Russia, so thanks to their emigration, there are less Russian soldiers for Ukraine to fight with. Not to mention, this way Russia has lost quite a lot of educated elites, which is beneficial for the whole situation. However – I got several reactions to that post – most of them were laughing emojis, one – angry emoji, no ordinary likes. Personally I feel quite bad about that.


Yes less soldiers and worse economy for Russia - it's good.



> Some people claim it's a fault of Russians that they have a government like that and that the war is their fault. To me it seems completely unfair. *They are also a victim of the Russian government*, similarly to Ukrainians (though of course in a different form). Some people claim the Russians should do something about their government – forgetting that it's a dictatorship rules by a psychic man,* not a democratic country*. Many Russians support their government – but it's just because they don't get other media than those delivering Putin's propaganda...


It's a fault of many Russians, because they were ok with increasing authoritarianism as long as their standard of living was increasing. Russian regime wasn't always like today, back then they had even free media. Till 2012 they could have protested and perhaps change something, but most of them were happy with a folowing deal = political inactivity for peace and improving standard of living. Now it's a very risky to protest, you risk your freedom, perhaps even life.
*Some *Russians are the victims of Putin, but many more are gulity of supporting him or doing nothing while he was taking away their freedom.



> *And that hate directed at Russians is actually helping Putin*, he can then easily show the Russians that they have nothing to look for outside Russia, and even if they don't like the regime, they don't have any other choice. Generally the narration of the Russian government in their propaganda is that there is a lot of what *they call "russophobia" outside Russia*. Of course it's propaganda, it's evil and it's done deliberately *to make Russian avoid foreign contacts*. And I would really like to disagree with it. But it's difficult when I notice all that hate.
> 
> *Is it their fault that they were born in a wrong place at a wrong time?*


Till 2022 there was very little hate towards Russians so what? Did that hinder Putin in any way? No it didn't, the Russian state controlled media were full of anti western propaganda, while the oligarchs, propagandists bought luxury homes, cars and yachts in western countries, they hid part of their assets here (after all they know what kind of contry Russia really is). In 2022 it has ended - 10 years to late imho, but still good news.
The common Rusian listening to state TV knows that the west is his enemy since 2012, nothing really changed in 2022.
The rest can leave to many countries Turkey, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia or Thailand for example.
I'm for allowing them to leave Russia forever, start a new life, away from war, and totalitarian regime they allowed or helped to create.
Of course not as refugees but as a migrants, that have to work, or use savings to pay their rent and upkeep. This weakens Russian army and economy in a long term, so it's very good, as it leads to safer future for all of us in 20 years or so.
Having said that I also remember that many migrants/so called refugees are still russians imperialists at heart, they don't mind waging war on neighbours, they just don't want do die or get injured in it.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> Don't feel bad about it. Internet forums can be quite vitriolic and people often follow herd mentality. I refrain from taking part in some debates on Polish forum. For example I largely gave up discussing immigration. But you decide to write, you should write what you really think and don't care that much about comments or likes.


Thanks for the comment  I totally agree with what you said further on.



geogregor said:


> However, there are some unsavory elements among Russians abroad. I have friend here in London (Italian) and her partner is Russian. His parents live in Texas, he lives in the UK for more than 20 years and still some of his views are moronic. The idea that climate change doesn't exist is one of his "softer weirdness"


Well, I know Poles like that xD I don't think it's country- or nation-specific.



radamfi said:


> That's the issue with forums with like facilities, like here. Some other forums deliberately avoid having likes. Other forums only show the number of likes.


I generally dislike likes in form of reactions. There should be just one "thumb's up" option (or with whatever other symbol, e.g. Discourse forums have a heart) to show that you support what someone wrote.



radamfi said:


> Neither of my parents have English as first language so I didn't say 'th' the usual English way as a child, and pronounced it like 'f', and 'the' like 'd'. I only realised I was doing something different when the teacher told me after I had been to school for about 3 years. I would guess that wouldn't be considered appropriate today as it might be considered to be a dialect which shouldn't be corrected. The usual Irish English accent pronounces 'three' like 'tree' and that is accepted as normal.


Poles are generally taught that TH is pronounced similarly to T, D, F or Z 

I never learned how to pronounce it correctly, so I usually probably default to something like T od D... although... someone would have to listen to me, maybe I learned to pronounce it more like in English by hearing it? For sure I never tried to learn it deliberately.



Mkbewe said:


> It's a fault of many Russians, because they were ok with increasing authoritarianism as long as their standard of living was increasing.


That's true. But still it's the past and there isn't much they can do now about it. Unless they invent time travel (if they even managed to be the first nation to send a human to the outer space... but it seems to me that in the Soviet times they were many times more capable than now). At least before some form of critical mass is reached. But even then it's not that easy to overthrow a government. See Iran now.

And in Russia it's not that easy to get that critical mass – Russians are generally very immune to living in a country in a bad economical situation.

You also have to take into account that at the moment when Russia was actually free and democratic was also the moment when it suffered an extreme economical breakdown. People naturally match that and – even subconsciously – think that the choice is between freedom with extreme poverty and authoritarianism in which they can be relatively sustainable financially. Even if the West can have both (freedom and wealth) – they may not believe it is possible in Russia. Even in Poland I often hear disbelief like that, when I mention that something works well in the West, but other people claim it's no way it would be possible in Poland. The situation in Russia is kinda similar, but pushed to extremes.



Mkbewe said:


> The common Rusian listening to state TV knows that the west is his enemy since 2012, nothing really changed in 2022.


Though maybe the time did its job.

By the way – this just confirms how EU is important for Poland. In Poland we also have state propaganda telling all the time that – maybe not the whole West (e.g. America is OK according to them) – but the EU, and especially Germany, are all evil. But we also have other media, including TV channels, which aren't loyal to the government. Russians don't. If it wasn't for the EU, it's not unlikely we would be in the same situation as Russians.



Mkbewe said:


> The rest can leave to many countries Turkey, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia or Thailand for example.


This is quite limited choice... And in most cases they have to return to Russia after a specified period of time, like, have a year. So they technically cannot even speak against the Russian government, because if they do so, and they return to Russia because they have to (the country to which they moved forces them to do it after a specified time), they may go to jail for that... Or at least have the passport taken from them, so that they won't be able to go abroad any more.

If I recall correctly, only Georgia allows Russians to stay there indefinitely without returning to Russia. Also not exactly – after half a year or so one has to leave Georgia to another country – but in practice you can go e.g. to Turkey for a week and come back to Georgia.

But still it's not really indefinitely, because passports do expire... What do you do then? Stay in Georgia illegally?

If you are a Russian, you are screwed, no matter if you support the Russian government or not. If you try to do anything against it – you are screwed even more.



Mkbewe said:


> Having said that I also remember that many migrants/so called refugees are still russians imperialists at heart, they don't mind waging war on neighbours, they just don't want do die or get injured in it.


In Poland there are many people following the "victim mentality". They claim (repeating that all the time!) that it's unfair that in the West the life (doing a similar job and earning the western-European, not Polish salary) is cheaper than in Poland, and they blame the western countries for that. I hate it (after all, in Poland we are not that much behind the West, compared with most of the world), but I hear things like that all the time. And the truth is people have right to feel like that (even if it isn't actually the fault of the West... at least not of what the West is doing now, because obviously you can argue it would be much better in Poland if Germany didn't start the WW2 – but it makes no sense to blame people who are already dead) because it's indeed unfair.

It seems to me that the Russian "imperialism" you mention is something similar. People think that it's the fault of the West why it's so bad, poor and so on in Russia.

By the way, is there an equivalent of that "victim mentality" in other countries? Like, Germans complaining, why aren't they as rich as the Swiss?  Or Americans claiming it's the fault of the western Europe that Europe has things like employee rights, minimum wages etc., while in the US you can, basically, legally starve?


----------



## Kpc21

How do you pronounce Ukraine? Obviously in English.

You-Crane, or You-Cra-Eene?

You-Crane sounds more in English to me, but I recently heard the other version and I wonder, which one is correct...


----------



## Slagathor

Kpc21 said:


> but I recently heard the other version


They were having a stroke.


----------



## radamfi

As I mentioned earlier, the BBC nowadays always say the Netherlands instead of Holland. The BBC shares World Cup coverage with ITV, the biggest UK commercial TV station. ITV stuck with Holland after the BBC had switched to the Netherlands. The then regular ITV commentator even responded to complaints from viewers received during a football match that he was calling it Holland. 

That commentator was controversially demoted a few years ago, which looked very much like ageism. However, he has commentated on several matches for ITV during this World Cup. ITV have now fallen into line with the BBC in always calling it Netherlands. So when he started commentating on today's Netherlands v Ecuador match I was curious if he would call it Netherlands or Holland. Right at the start of the match he mentioned that he had called it Holland for years and it wasn't a big deal, because the Dutch themselves often call the team Holland. But he did concede that the proper name is the Netherlands and he would use that name. It sounded like he was told to say Netherlands but didn't particularly agree with it.


----------



## Stuu

When I was little my parents always bought Edam cheese, which said very clearly it was Made in Holland. I even had a book called something like "The Wonders of Holland", with photos of the flower market and tulips growing, traditional houses in Amsterdam, people carrying the aforementioned cheese on some sort of shoulder balance thing and every other cliché about Holland the Netherlands. No idea why someone gave me that book as a 6 year old though... Holland has been used as a name for the whole country by many Dutch people, a search of Youtube will find Johan Cruyff calling the football team Holland. If the second most famous Dutchman called it Holland then I can see why people might be confused


----------



## Attus

I've moved to Germany exactly ten years ago.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The Holland issue is mainly a foreign thing (just like the ungodly 'Dutch'). Someone from the Netherlands calls him/herself being _Nederlands_, speaking _Nederlands_ and living in _Nederland_, not Holland or Dutch. _Nederland_ is also singular, unlike 'the Netherlands'.


----------



## Spookvlieger

The plural from means something differend offcourse. It implies all the low countries including historically northern France.


----------



## Slagathor

radamfi said:


> As I mentioned earlier, the BBC nowadays always say the Netherlands instead of Holland. The BBC shares World Cup coverage with ITV, the biggest UK commercial TV station. ITV stuck with Holland after the BBC had switched to the Netherlands. The then regular ITV commentator even responded to complaints from viewers received during a football match that he was calling it Holland.
> 
> That commentator was controversially demoted a few years ago, which looked very much like ageism. However, he has commentated on several matches for ITV during this World Cup. ITV have now fallen into line with the BBC in always calling it Netherlands. So when he started commentating on today's Netherlands v Ecuador match I was curious if he would call it Netherlands or Holland. Right at the start of the match he mentioned that he had called it Holland for years and it wasn't a big deal, because the Dutch themselves often call the team Holland. But he did concede that the proper name is the Netherlands and he would use that name. It sounded like he was told to say Netherlands but didn't particularly agree with it.


It's archaic to refer to the nation as "Holland". There are still old people in the Netherlands who refer to the United Kingdom as simply "England" but that practice is dying out now.



Stuu said:


> When I was little my parents always bought Edam cheese, which said very clearly it was Made in Holland. I even had a book called something like "The Wonders of Holland", with photos of the flower market and tulips growing, traditional houses in Amsterdam, people carrying the aforementioned cheese on some sort of shoulder balance thing and every other cliché about Holland the Netherlands. No idea why someone gave me that book as a 6 year old though... Holland has been used as a name for the whole country by many Dutch people, a search of Youtube will find Johan Cruyff calling the football team Holland. If the second most famous Dutchman called it Holland then I can see why people might be confused


Edam is in Holland, though.  So are the tulips, the flower markets and about 95% of all windmills.

I've not done the research on this claim, but: I think most Dutch people who use the term "Holland" are, in fact, from Holland. So people from Amsterdam are a lot more likely to say they're from Holland (and they'd be correct, like someone from Los Angeles saying they're from California) than people from Eindhoven or Maastricht who would more likely say they're from The Netherlands.

But, like Chris said, this issue doesn't exist in the Dutch language itself. The country is _Nederland_, the people are _Nederlanders_ and the language is _Nederlands_.



Attus said:


> I've moved to Germany exactly ten years ago.


My condolences.


----------



## radamfi

Attus said:


> I've moved to Germany exactly ten years ago.


Did you already speak German before moving there?


----------



## Attus

radamfi said:


> Did you already speak German before moving there?


Yes, I learned German in the school in Hungary.


----------



## Attus

Slagathor said:


> But, like Chris said, this issue doesn't exist in the Dutch language itself. The country is _Nederland_, the people are _Nederlanders_ and the language is _Nederlands_.


Except for football and handball fans, they cheer "Holland, Holland", when the national team has a game.


----------



## Slagathor

Attus said:


> Except for football and handball fans, they cheer "Holland, Holland", when the national team has a game.


It'll take some time to root it out. The Dutch government itself only banned the use of "Holland" only in 2019. The football chants will probably be the last thing to change.  But again; many if not most fans on the stands are likely from Holland so they won't see it as a problem to begin with.

At least in English there is a clear alternative. This isn't always the case elsewhere. In Chinese, the country is known as 荷兰 pronounced _Helan_. The alternative 尼德蘭 or _Nidelan_ is so unknown it'll take a century for it to be commonly used.


----------



## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> It's archaic to refer to the nation as "Holland". There are still old people in the Netherlands who refer to the United Kingdom as simply "England" but that practice is dying out now.
> 
> 
> 
> Edam is in Holland, though.  So are the tulips, the flower markets and about 95% of all windmills.
> 
> I've not done the research on this claim, but: I think most Dutch people who use the term "Holland" are, in fact, from Holland. So people from Amsterdam are a lot more likely to say they're from Holland (and they'd be correct, like someone from Los Angeles saying they're from California) than people from Eindhoven or Maastricht who would more likely say they're from The Netherlands.


That's a very good point. I say I'm from England if anyone asks... the official Netherlands tourist website has an odd address in this context though (Holland.com)


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Slagathor said:


> At least in English there is a clear alternative. This isn't always the case elsewhere. In Chinese, the country is known as 荷兰 pronounced _Helan_. The alternative 尼德蘭 or _Nidelan_ is so unknown it'll take a century for it to be commonly used.


I think this is the case in many languages, who have adopted their form of Holland centuries ago.

I wonder if _Țările de Jos_ is used in everyday Romanian (which sounds plural to me). 

Of course there are other examples, for example Georgia or Armenia are not the native names for those countries at all (Sakartvelo and Hayastan). But that's different from the pars pro toto usage of Holland for the entire country.


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> That's a very good point. I say I'm from England if anyone asks... the official Netherlands tourist website has an odd address in this context though (Holland.com)


That was rebranded from Holland in 2019, but maybe it should redirect to nltourism.com or similar?









Netherlands drops 'Holland' in rebranding move


The Netherlands plans to stop branding itself as 'Holland' in marketing abroad.



www.bbc.co.uk


----------



## Stuu

I'm on Cornwall this evening, needed a supermarket so asked Google Maps. Some surprising options on this list:


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> Except for football and handball fans, they cheer "Holland, Holland", when the national team has a game.


For Poland it's always "Polska biało-czerwoni" (Poland White and Red) on the melody from "Go West" by Pet Shop Boys  No idea why exactly this melody – I guess it might be older than that specific song.



Slagathor said:


> At least in English there is a clear alternative. This isn't always the case elsewhere. In Chinese, the country is known as 荷兰 pronounced _Helan_. The alternative 尼德蘭 or _Nidelan_ is so unknown it'll take a century for it to be commonly used.


In Poland, on the official list of Polish names of foreign countries (and other geographic entities) of the Polish government, it's still Holandia 

The document is here, and you can also look up some other names: https://www.gov.pl/attachment/19fa85f9-65de-4bb0-8cc4-7dc552229b7d

Recently they also introduced an online map version: PRNG Świat – this is what they spend our (Polish taxpayers') money on xD There is actually a special committee at the Main Land Surveying Office which decides about this list.


----------



## Attus

Kpc21 said:


> For Poland it's always "Polska biało-czerwoni" (Poland White and Red) on the melody from "Go West" by Pet Shop Boys  No idea why exactly this melody – I guess it might be older than that specific song.


"Go west" is originally a song of the American disco band Village People. It was one of their less successful songs. For those, whon don't know: Village People's greatest hit was "Y.M.C.A.", another great hit was "In the navy". "Go west" became, however, only two decades later, by a cover version of Pet Shop Boys, a big success.


----------



## Kpc21

Still, 1979 doesn't sound like long ago.

Football has been a thing since the inter-war period.


----------



## Slagathor

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland, on the official list of Polish names of foreign countries (and other geographic entities) of the Polish government, it's still Holandia
> 
> The document is here, and you can also look up some other names: https://www.gov.pl/attachment/19fa85f9-65de-4bb0-8cc4-7dc552229b7d


We don't presume to tell other people how to govern their languages.  The Dutch government's decision only pertains to how the country presents itself in English.


----------



## valkrav

Kpc21 said:


> How do you pronounce Ukraine? Obviously in English.
> 
> You-Crane, or You-Cra-Eene?


Depending of point of view
For example ucraine (and russian same) name "Оля" said by native ucraine german ear listen like U-O-A-L-I-J-A
but for ucraine only 3 sounds exist


----------



## Kpc21

Stuu said:


> That is interesting. I wouldn't have thought it was possible to mix up the sounds but I guess it depends on context, so perhaps your brain fills in the sound for you?


It's more like, your brain is programmed to recognizing sounds from your native language. So if you hear something close from another language, it approximates it to something it knows.

Yesterday in the evening I listened to the Russian hit from the early 2000s "Ya soshla s uma" ("Я сошла с ума" or sth like that) by Tatuu (who remembers that?). I focused on how I hear the Russian sound Л. The chorus has the verse from the title of the song repeated multiple times, and – in different repetitions of it – once I heard there the Polish L, once I heard the Polish Ł 

In the Polish transcription, the Russian Л is usually transcribed as Ł, but actually, the Polish Ł used nowadays is quite a different sound, very close to the English W. But – if you focus well on recognizing it, in old Polish songs, movie dubbings etc. you notice that the Ł there is closer to L than to the English W  When you don't think about that, you don't recognize it. 

Though regarding that transcription of Л – sometimes Polish media spell the name of the Ukraine's president as Zelenski, sometimes as Zełenski. Or even like that:










"Strong words from Ukraine. Zelenski reacts to news from Poland

'Terror is not limited to the borders of our country', the president of Ukraine Volodimir Zelenski /spelled as Zełenski/ claimed in his evening speech".

Though the spelling with Ł seems to be much more common.

The car make Lada is in Poland practically always spelled as Łada and pronounced with the modern Polish Ł (like English W) 

This is actually how the pronunciation in languages changes with time and evolves... People pronounce things slightly differently from generation to generation, but they don't even notice that change.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> In the Polish transcription, the Russian Л is usually transcribed as Ł, but actually, the Polish Ł used nowadays is quite a different sound, very close to the English W.


I've noticed that, Lukashenko/a is transliterated as Łukaszenka in Polish, while the Ł doesn't sound like L at all. I wonder why that is, as the regular L does exist in Polish.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> For Poland it's always "Polska biało-czerwoni" (Poland White and Red) on the melody from "Go West" by Pet Shop Boys  No idea why exactly this melody – I guess it might be older than that specific song.





Attus said:


> "Go west" is originally a song of the American disco band Village People. It was one of their less successful songs. For those, whon don't know: Village People's greatest hit was "Y.M.C.A.", another great hit was "In the navy". "Go west" became, however, only two decades later, by a cover version of Pet Shop Boys, a big success.



I find it deeply ironic that Polish football fans, not the most gay friendly bunch on the planet, adopted song by band which is musically one of the gay icons


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> I wonder why that is, as the regular L does exist in Polish.


As I mentioned – yet some 50, maybe 70 years ago it made sense  It's a relic.



geogregor said:


> I find it deeply ironic that Polish football fans, not the most gay friendly bunch on the planet, adopted song by band which is musically one of the gay icons


Isn't it so that these all hooligan things are more related to games of football clubs and not of national representations?

As far as I notice – much more people in Poland follow Champions League than the Polish main league (Ekstraklasa). And yet more people (even my grandma xD) – follow FIFA World Cup and Euro 

Polish league games are more of a hooligan thing (though actually nowadays, as far as I know, those hooligans aren't even allowed onto the stadiums; still they use the opportunity of the game to fight between each other etc.; on stadiums there are normal people and whole families watching), World Cup – something for families


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> As I mentioned – yet some 50, maybe 70 years ago it made sense  It's a relic.


Yes, but Lukashenko became president in 1994, so there must be some kind of rule to transliterate the Л to Ł instead of L.


----------



## Kpc21

Yes, this rule comes from the past when it made more sense to transliterate Л to Ł instead of L. It was just closer to the Polish Ł than to L. People were always taught that Russian Л is pronounced more or less like Ł.


----------



## x-type

Or is it more about root of his surname? _Luk_ means _arc, bow_, and it is in Polish _łuk._


----------



## metacatfry

While Polish and other Slavic languages have many consonant sounds that are difficult to distinguish, in contrast Danish has many vowels, and it is very common for non-Danish not to be able to distinguish them. here's a guy pronouncing some words, can you hear the vowel differences?


----------



## Attus

Some of you have really no idea about the political situation in Hungary, but have a solid opinion... 
But, basically, this is not a political thread, I guess.


----------



## Mkbewe

Attus said:


> *Some of you have really no idea *about the political situation in Hungary, but have a solid opinion...
> But, basically, this is not a political thread, I guess.


I think I know enough.
I too live in a very democratic but misunderstood country.


----------



## SeanT

Sure, let's skip Orbán. Either you are pro/contra, this is how it should be!


----------



## Kpc21

Mkbewe said:


> Ahh, the holy will of the People. So does Lukashenko, Putin, Kaczynski and many others - they were elected fairly at some point.


Well, the known watercolor painter from Austria too...

BTW I often heard from people in Poland that they don't go to elections because there are no sensible candidates to choose from.

Though after Kaczyński came to power, the turnout on the elections improved quite a lot.

Because there are many people who know that there is no sensible candidate but they don't want Kaczyński and his control-over-everything tendencies.

And also quite many PiS worshippers who would do anything to make other parties not win, as it would be (as they believe, they are told on TV or in churches) a disaster for them.

But I understand that the situation in Hungary is quite different. In Poland the alternative is maybe worse than PiS in some ways, but still not terrible. And there is also a new party with quite a lot of support, which will anyway probably form a coalition with the main opposition party, if PiS loses. So there is someone for whom you can sensibly vote.

If in Hungary Orban is terrible, but the other options are yet worse... It's just sad. Though this is a good point for discussion. What lead to that in Hungary the citizen society is so underdeveloped, that there is nobody who would want to rule the country with a sensible platform, good and acceptable for most people, and with no dictatorial tendencies?


----------



## geogregor

Attus said:


> Some of you have really no idea about the political situation in Hungary, but have a solid opinion...
> But, basically, this is not a political thread, I guess.


No need to get defensive. 

If "soft autocrat" like Orban is really the only option for Hungary this is genuinely sad. 

I can't speak with any superiority, after all both Poland and Britain are also run but morons in recent years. But I won't be saying that they are the only options for either those countries, as some here seem to imply is the case with Hungary.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

French police opened fire on a truck driver who was driving under the influence of cocaine and did not stop. 35 rounds were fired. 

It occurred near Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône, which is in the northwest of the Paris metro area.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1598710410852433920


----------



## metacatfry

^^Holy crap  Do road spikes not work on truck tires? I guess I never considered how to stop a noncompliant truck.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> I can't speak with any superiority, after all both Poland and Britain are also run but morons in recent years. But I won't be saying that they are the only options for either those countries, as some here seem to imply is the case with Hungary.


From what others say it turns out that indeed it is so. 

Imagine the only alternative to PiS in Poland is SLD. They ruled quite long ago and I was a kid back then, so I don't remember it too well, but from what I understand, they were terribly corrupted. And – they call themselves left wing, but e.g. they rule in coalition with PO in the local government of Łódź, and the public transportation in the city is in as bad state as it has never been before. While normally you would think a party with a left-wing platform should focus on the development and quality of the public transport. The times when SLD had the majority in the Polish parliament were also the times of the worst collapse of the railway in Poland...

One good thing SLD did was bringing our country into the EU. Apart from that, they ruled terribly.

Imagine SLD being the only alternative to PiS. What would you choose? The lesser evil, and for some the lesser evil would be SLD, but the majority would probably prefer PiS...


----------



## Rebasepoiss

I find it ironic that the Hungarians defending Orban in this thread no longer live in Hungary...


----------



## italystf

Rebasepoiss said:


> I find it ironic that the Hungarians defending Orban in this thread no longer live in Hungary...


It reminds me some Russians living in Rome who organized a pro-Putin rally at the beginning of the war last February/March. Go back to your country and fight if you love so much your leader, instead of living there in a decaying Western democracy that you hate so much.


----------



## PovilD

Rebasepoiss said:


> I find it ironic that the Hungarians defending Orban in this thread no longer live in Hungary...


I think there is no irony at all.
This looks like weird defense mechanism seen in many societies. I would say mixture of low trust in your country/area (or people), and some trust to the leader that may give some hope. I saw comments like "Hungary without Orban would be in even worse place than now"
Similar to my city "Without current Kaunas mayor, our streets would be completely destroyed by potholes and all country would laugh at us" despite there were generally good years to refurbish streets and sidewalks en masse. Progress was made in all municipalities.

In normal circumstances you trust your country and that your people will find solutions without some overly authoritarian guy over the top.
That's why authoritarian or hybryd regimes can't win against full democracies. Rare examples may involve East Asia, but we are not that collectivist (but also hard working) to begin with. I think with authoritarian, Europe would just find out themselves with Lukashenko type populist leaders.


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> Imagine SLD being the only alternative to PiS. What would you choose? The lesser evil, and for some the lesser evil would be SLD, but the majority would probably prefer PiS...


I would vote SLD. For a few reasons.

First, at the moment I would vote fpr anyone but PiS, including a donkey or a camel. They are in power for too long, have too many authoritarian tendencies, and can do too much damage.

Secondly, I might not be fan of the SLD, but they have less chance to make any serious damage. It would take them a while to get to position where PiS, which infiltrated the structures of the state, is now. It is simply lesser risk of a major damage.

Thirdly, no one party should stay in power for more than a decade. It deteriorates, gets corrupted lazy etc.

I'd guess the same should apply to Orban. That's why I'm disappointed by some of the Hungarian comments here especially from folks with wider perspective (read living abroad)


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> No need to get defensive.
> 
> If "soft autocrat" like Orban is really the only option for Hungary this is genuinely sad.
> 
> I can't speak with any superiority, after all both Poland and Britain are also run but morons in recent years. But I won't be saying that they are the only options for either those countries, as some here seem to imply is the case with Hungary.


I did pay a bit of attention to the Hungary election this year. It really did remind me of the UK, in the sense that you have someone so divisive as Orban, but the opposition only managed to put up people who look even worse. Very much like the choice between Corbyn and Johnson in 2019, or opponents of Blair in the 2000s, or Thatcher back in the 1980s. I don't think it necessarily means Hungary is failing, it just means the right personalities haven't shown up yet. Of course there is a bit of a difference with the level of control of the media and other state institutions, but it's down to personality and charisma to a much higher degree than cold rationality


----------



## Stuu

ChrisZwolle said:


> French police opened fire on a truck driver who was driving under the influence of cocaine and did not stop. 35 rounds were fired.
> 
> It occurred near Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône, which is in the northwest of the Paris metro area.
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1598710410852433920


No, the article says that the police fired at the tyres, not the driver.


----------



## metacatfry

Stuu said:


> I did pay a bit of attention to the Hungary election this year. It really did remind me of the UK, in the sense that you have someone so divisive as Orban, but the opposition only managed to put up people who look even worse. Very much like the choice between Corbyn and Johnson in 2019, or opponents of Blair in the 2000s, or Thatcher back in the 1980s. I don't think it necessarily means Hungary is failing, it just means the right personalities haven't shown up yet. Of course there is a bit of a difference with the level of control of the media and other state institutions, but it's down to personality and charisma to a much higher degree than cold rationality


Wasn't a big problem for the Hungarian opposition that it basically included politicians with viewpoints from almost the entire political spectrum and rolled them all up into one party? Obviously you are not getting conservative free marketers to vote for a party that contains communists and vice versa, it seemed like just an entirely bad strategy.


----------



## Mkbewe

metacatfry said:


> Wasn't a big problem for the Hungarian opposition that it basically included politicians with viewpoints from almost the entire political spectrum and rolled them all up into one party? Obviously you are not getting conservative free marketers to vote for a party that contains communists and vice versa, *it seemed like just an entirely bad strategy.*


It was an entirely bad strategy, but hungarian electoral law forced the opposition to unite or lose the elections before they even started.
Out of 199 members of parliment, 106 are elected in constituency seats - the candidate with most votes wins the seat.
The rest - 93 is elected in a party lists (one list in the whole contry).

So if Fides has a support of 40%+,and the strongest opposing party 20% at best it's quite hopeless. Either you make a deal with other opposition paries or let Fides win almost completly in constituency seats.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Kpc21 said:


> From what others say it turns out that indeed it is so.
> 
> Imagine the only alternative to PiS in Poland is SLD. They ruled quite long ago and I was a kid back then, so I don't remember it too well, but from what I understand, they were terribly corrupted.


They were your-average-polish-party-from-90ties-corrupted, normal and acceptable level 

But going on in this scenario -- the major difference between PiS and SLD (or, currently, between PiS and every other party apart from Konfederacja) is that PiS (and Konf) are hardcore authoriarian, and the rest is democratic. And this is a major point for me. Authoritarian parties do see the democracy as an obstacle, they try to centralize the power and they tend to try to dismantle all mechanisms of checks-and-balances there are. Parliament is viewed as a tool to pass legislation. An opinion of a single member of parliament doesn't matter, only their vote does. Ideal parliament from the Authoritarian PoV does not really include members, only a virtual "voting power" -- because Authoritarians do not consider a discussion as something that adds value.

And any future vote in Poland will be a vote between authocracy and democracy -- because if PiS gets to create next government, will become a permanent fixture for a next decade or two -- just as in Russia, Belarus, Hungary and other states that decided to become authoritarian. Because authoritarian states actually supress discourse, which manifests in apparent "lack of choice" -- judging from what Hungarians in this forum say, it is quite hard right now to create a new political party in Hungary and make it heard, therefore no new parties are getting created. And because authoritarians change the voting systems to fit their needs, it is very hard for any kind of an 'unconsolidated' opposition to get any seats in the parliament. "First past the post" electoral systems are here to blame.

Don't get me wrong -- any country have its given right to become authoritarian, and democracy is actually something you have to believe in and actively fight for. So if Hungarians, Russians, North Koreans are happy within an authoritarian system, that's great. 

But I, personally, hate authoritarians. In the next Polish elections I will not vote for an authoritarian. I hate PO as well, I think that their neoliberal policies actually created PiS and the shit we have right now, but despite that I will do everything I can for Poland to stay democratic -- because there is simply no way back.


----------



## radamfi

There is no choice but for other parties to club together in a first past the post system. Inevitably, you end up with a two party system. Hungary may no longer be a democracy, but neither is the UK or USA. But foreign countries don't criticise the lack of democracy in the UK or USA. Maybe they should.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Stuu said:


> No, the article says that the police fired at the tyres, not the driver.


The video shows police shooting into the cabin, breaking the glass.


----------



## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> I would vote SLD. For a few reasons.
> 
> First, at the moment I would vote fpr anyone but PiS, including a donkey or a camel. They are in power for too long, have too many authoritarian tendencies, and can do too much damage.
> 
> Secondly, I might not be fan of the SLD, but they have less chance to make any serious damage. It would take them a while to get to position where PiS, which infiltrated the structures of the state, is now. It is simply lesser risk of a major damage.
> 
> Thirdly, no one party should stay in power for more than a decade. It deteriorates, gets corrupted lazy etc.


This is you, I would also probably vote against PiS – but for many it's quite a difficult dilemma. And most people don't realize things such as that being in power for too long spoils you as a ruler.

I guess this is what happens in Hungary. You may vote against Orban, but not everyone realizes his sins (in Poland, if your main sources of information were "Wiadomości" and the TVP Info channel, you might not either), and regarding that they still consider him less evil.

In Poland the situation is different, because PO wasn't that bad (actually, they initiated huge investments in the infrastructure that continue still at the same rate even today – even because of that, they deserve respect). And it seems to me, we still have better access to the media which are against PiS than Hungarians to the media that are against Orban.

But if you point out the authoritarian tendencies of PiS and Kaczyński to a PiS supporter, they will just reply that it's not true and that your sources of information manipulate you...



Fuzzy Llama said:


> But going on in this scenario -- the major difference between PiS and SLD (or, currently, between PiS and every other party apart from Konfederacja) is that PiS (and Konf) are hardcore authoriarian, and the rest is democratic.


I agree with you. I'm not sure about Konfederacja, it's generally a very weird party that to me seems to be a mixture of politicians with quite wide range of views, though generally they tend to be far right (and no, PiS is not far right compared to them, PiS is just right-wing). With postulates such as prioritizing private property over common one (with that being more similar to PO than to PiS actually – though K. goes with that much further), but also focusing on traditional values, and this is what actually bonds them with PiS and makes them not unlikely to join a coalition if the situation after the elections "requires" it. Not sure if all of that makes them authoritarian, it seems quite weird for someone with authoritarian tendencies to be telling people that they should have more rights to private property than they have now...

But PiS definitely has authoritarian tendencies. Thing is, what many people point out – the PiS voters, at least their large portion, are not logically thinking people who would analyze the actions of this party and their consequences, short- and long-term ones – but literally PiS believers. Like in church.

And PiS is constantly feeding them with what they need through their media and by various sham actions, like writing to Germany asking for money for the WW2 damages (though we're unlikely to get anything anyway) or publicising a report that seems to confirm that the death of Lech Kaczyński in an air disaster was a Russian coup, that Russians installed explosives on the plane during the maintenance. Even though in fact there is absolutely no factual value in that report. But what really matters is not the actual content of the report, but how it is presented on the media.

Unfortunately we are (still) a democracy, which means such people are allowed to vote too. Should we require logical thinking tests before voting in elections, or what?



radamfi said:


> There is no choice but for other parties to club together in a first past the post system. Inevitably, you end up with a two party system. Hungary may no longer be a democracy, but neither is the UK or USA. But foreign countries don't criticise the lack of democracy in the UK or USA. Maybe they should.


I'm not sure about the UK, but I think the US is quite often criticized in those terms...


----------



## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> In Poland we're having very nice snow in the recent days.
> 
> Today in the morning we had that type, which is perfect for building a snowman!
> 
> On the other hand, today I had to drive a little bit around my town, and as most streets were completely white, the ABS in my car has never worked as much as today.
> 
> By the way, this reliance on those safety systems is an interesting thing. Older drivers probably know well how to drive cars without ABS in such conditions, how to recover from a skid, and so on. In my case – I have never driven a car without those systems in such winter conditions (for some time I happened to use a Corsa from 1993 – but I don't think I've ever driven it on roads covered with snow hardened by previous cars so that it gets so slippery), so it's a high chance I would crash one, or that I would have to drive very slowly, and carefully (in my car with all those systems I of course also do that, but not to such an extent).


Yes, great winter in Poland. In my home town it was snowing pretty much since Saturday morning until Monday afternoon. The downside is the need of clearing car in the morning. This was my rental bolid:










And this driving conditions:









The car I rented is hybrid with auto transmission and it works pretty well (I don't really have much experience in driving on snow)

The problem is that tomorrow (Tuesday) I fly back to London. I don't worry about situation here in Poland but about disruption in the UK. There were quite a few flight cancellation and a lot of other transport disruption recently due to winter spell. And there is railway strike tomorrow. Eh, I should ready myself for delays...


----------



## MattiG

Some dashcam snapshots from this evening in the Helsinki region:














































But where are people? They are away! The warning for a really bad weather was given a few days ago, and most people seem to have followed the guidance to stay at home if possible. I have no metrics available now, but my feeling was that the traffic density on the main roads was about 20 per cent of a standard day.


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> The problem is that tomorrow (Tuesday) I fly back to London. I don't worry about situation here in Poland but about disruption in the UK. There were quite a few flight cancellation and a lot of other transport disruption recently due to winter spell. And there is railway strike tomorrow. Eh, I should ready myself for delays...


I'm in a hotel in Canary Wharf this evening, no transport issues tonight... Enough snow for people to be having snowball fights outside bars but that's it. No more forecast overnight either


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The first -10 of the season in the Netherlands. Which is lower than the record low of the previous winter.


----------



## geogregor

Stuu said:


> I'm in a hotel in Canary Wharf this evening, no transport issues tonight... Enough snow for people to be having snowball fights outside bars but that's it. No more forecast overnight either


Yes, I have to say my journey was pretty smooth last night, despite the railway strikes.



ChrisZwolle said:


> The first -10 of the season in the Netherlands. Which is lower than the record low of the previous winter.


Last thing we need this year is long and harsh winter. I mean I love snowy conditions, but only if I'm on holiday, for example in Poland, and even then a few days is enough


----------



## ChrisZwolle

North Dakota is closed for the season


----------



## Stuu

geogregor said:


> Yes, I have to say my journey was pretty smooth last night, despite the railway strikes.


I had to come home on a coach. Which was shit


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> I had to come home on a coach. Which was shit


That coach in particular, or coaches in general?


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> That coach in particular, or coaches in general?


Coaches in general, there was nothing particularly unusual about that one. The seats are very narrow, there's less legroom than on Ryanair, and it's just uncomfortable all round. It just takes so much longer than the train which is the real issue - ~4hrs vs 1:40


----------



## geogregor

Stuu said:


> I had to come home on a coach. Which was shit


I took coach to Stratford but then from there I could switch do DLR south to Lewisham. I avoid taking coaches all the way to central London. Once they get stuck in traffic that's it. It can take two hours to get to Victoria.


----------



## radamfi

In some areas of Europe where trains are not well developed they can be the primary form of long distance public transport as they are faster than trains and can be more expensive as well. In England trains are usually much faster so coaches are generally only used by people wanting to save money but in Scotland and Ireland coaches are a more normal form of public transport as trains are relatively slow there and in the case of Ireland sometimes much less frequent.

Coaches can be luxurious. I bet the team coaches that Lionel Messi travels on aren't too bad! The most luxurious coach I've been on was on a scheduled service from Thessaloniki to Sofia, where there was two seats on one side and one on the other with huge leg room. Lux Express coaches in the Baltic states have a 2+1 seating area. 

I used to travel by coach a lot as a kid as my dad didn't want to pay train fares, even to Hungary. From Manchester to Budapest, changing in London and Frankfurt.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> Lux Express coaches in the Baltic states have a 2+1 seating area.


I once travelled with Lux Express from Poland to Budapest, and they had the 2+2 setup. Although indeed the bus was quite comfy and the ticket price was similar to the other carriers on the same route.

Meanwhile some time ago when I needed to go from Łódź back home by public transport, the trains weren't going because of some maintenance works and there were replacement buses. Normally I would use just a line minibus:










that is maybe not very comfortable but at least fast, as it uses the main road, while the train replacement service has to use minor roads along the railway line to service all those small villages. So it takes 1.5 hour instead of 45 minutes like the train or the line minibus. But I was coming back late in the evening and there were only trains (or in that specific case, the train replacement services) on that time.

And...

It turned out that for that replacement service they used buses with 3+2 setup. And with extremely little legroom. Even worse than in those minibuses like the one from the photo above.

The labels and warnings on the bus suggested they imported that from France, where – judging by the setup – it probably served as a school bus...


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> I once travelled with Lux Express from Poland to Budapest, and they had the 2+2 setup. Although indeed the bus was quite comfy and the ticket price was similar to the other carriers on the same route.


Yes, they don't have the 'Lounge area' on all their services. Still, at least they give the impression of trying to compete on quality as well as price.









Seating options in Lux Express buses


See different seating options in Lux Express buses.




luxexpress.eu







> Some Lux Express coaches don't have a Lounge area


One thing I have noticed on coaches on scheduled services in mainland Europe (e.g. Flixbus) is the ability to move the aisle seat about 10 cm away from the window seat. I haven't seen this on coaches in the UK but it would make quite a difference in comfort without losing seat capacity.



Kpc21 said:


> And...
> 
> It turned out that for that replacement service they used buses with 3+2 setup. And with extremely little legroom. Even worse than in those minibuses like the one from the photo above.


We have 3+2 seating on some school buses but they also sometimes end up on rail replacement buses. They are not suitable for adults, including the average 16-year old going to school. I once refused to get on such a bus during rail replacement and got on a slower bus which stopped at more stations instead. In Northern Ireland they use them on normal bus routes as kids there typically go to school on normal buses, but that is just some seats with the rest of the bus 2+2.

I really don't like 3+2 seating on trains and I won't sit in a three. I stand instead.


----------



## x-type

I have never heard of 3+2 alingment in the bus. Sounds horrible.


----------



## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> I have never heard of 3+2 alingment in the bus. Sounds horrible.


Indeed. There usually are five seats in the back of a conventional 2.5m-wide coach, and there is not enough space for five seats with an aisle abreast. How wide would the bus be? Or are the 5th seats in a row in the form of a jumpseat? I once rode on Toyota Coaster with a 2+1 alignment with an aisle, and when we were aboard, another four more people could get in as other jumpseats were replacing the aisle.


----------



## MattiG

radamfi said:


> I really don't like 3+2 seating on trains and I won't sit in a three. I stand instead.


They all are not alike. Due to the narrower loading gauge in the UK, the trains are significantly narrower than in most areas of the continental Europe. Adding 30-40 centimeters to the width of the carriage, the 2+3 seating turns somewhat acceptable. For example, the width of the British Rail Class 700 (Thameslink) is 2.80 meters wide while the Sm5 class in Finland (Helsinki regional commuting) is 3.20 meters.


----------



## radamfi

MattiG said:


> They all are not alike. Due to the narrower loading gauge in the UK, the trains are significantly narrower than in most areas of the continental Europe. Adding 30-40 centimeters to the width of the carriage, the 2+3 seating turns somewhat acceptable. For example, the width of the British Rail Class 700 (Thameslink) is 2.80 meters wide while the Sm5 class in Finland (Helsinki regional commuting) is 3.20 meters.
> 
> View attachment 4297563


Yes, I was talking about the UK loading gauge which is unsuitable for 3+2 seating, but is widely used. The Class 700 trains have 2+2 seating but have unusually narrow seats (as if they were 2+3) to make the aisle as wide as possible.


----------



## Attus

I'm a handball fan, and visited a lot of games in abroad in European cups. In the 2000's several games in the Balkans, Skopje, Podgorica, several Romanian sites. I did not want to drive there, so usually I travelled with other fans in coaches. It's a very specific kind of coach travel. Travelling fans drink a lot of beer, so tue coach has to stop quite frequently...  But there is a great atmosphere in the coach.  
The bad side is: because of mandatory rest time of the drivers, we usually arrived 6-7 hours before the game. There are not many possibilities to do in places like Vâlcea or Skopje for such a long time. Man, we, together wit a friend, observed balcony barriers in block houses, several hours long. Not all of them were so shine as that of Radi ;-)
And the way back. The atmosphere depends heavily on the result of the game. And of course on the fact, that most of us did not sleep more than 2-3 hours in the last 36 hours. 
However, the craziest back travel was that after the European cup final in Koprovnica, only a couple of kilometers away from Hungary. We won the cup (2005), but several fans could not come back with us because of having been arrested. And it was a quite uncomfortable travel, since two windows of the coach were broken by home (i.e. Croatian) fans, by throwing bricks against them.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> I haven't seen this on coaches in the UK but it would make quite a difference in comfort without losing seat capacity.


UK's buses are generally a weird thing... They seemingly have quite unusual regulations regarding them, so that they also, for example, have one of the doors on the right (though you would think a bus from a left-hand traffic should have all of them on the left).

Seemingly serving as an emergency exit, but in every "normal" bus, the emergency exit on the left (for the right-hand traffic) is realized by installing a hammer which can be used to crash a window (break the glass), one specifically marked as an emergency exit... But the UK just has to do things differently.

Those hammers, by the way, quite often happened to get stolen, which later resulted in buses which had them, for example, permanently screwed to the wall of the bus, or all of them installed in the front near the driver, making them basically useless – but it's a completely different story.



MattiG said:


> They all are not alike. Due to the narrower loading gauge in the UK, the trains are significantly narrower than in most areas of the continental Europe. Adding 30-40 centimeters to the width of the carriage, the 2+3 seating turns somewhat acceptable. For example, the width of the British Rail Class 700 (Thameslink) is 2.80 meters wide while the Sm5 class in Finland (Helsinki regional commuting) is 3.20 meters.


3+2 is not unusual on trains, also Ukraine has it on their Hyundai EMUs.

On buses it's rare, but it was so on one of those buses which were used for the train replacement service on "my" route...

And to me, it kinda makes sense for a school bus (school kids are, generally, small, so they neither do need as much legroom, nor room width-wise, as adults), and only in that context.

On the other hand, we also have those van-based minibuses, which even in the 2+1 setup (the most common one for them) offer similarly limited amount of room per passenger, I personally practically occupy in them something like 1.5 seat, and they are commonplace, and few people question them...

We once happened to go on a school trip on a Mercedes Vario-based minibus (so a little bit wider than those most popular ones based on Mercedes Sprinter) with a 2+2 setup, and it also worked, though the aisle was quite narrow.

Pity that I haven't taken a photo of the inside of that 3+2 bus, but it was dark – and I was seated in the front right behind the driver, so it would be difficult anyway. If I happen to go by one of them again, I will sit somewhere in the rear so that I can take a better photo.

Though I looked that bus online in the Polish government's system (for buses you can get quite a lot of data based just on the license plate number)

:


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> Coaches can be luxurious. I bet the team coaches that Lionel Messi travels on aren't too bad! The most luxurious coach I've been on was on a scheduled service from Thessaloniki to Sofia, where there was two seats on one side and one on the other with huge leg room. Lux Express coaches in the Baltic states have a 2+1 seating area.


Many years ago I went from Singapore to Hat Yai in Thailand on a coach like that, overnight. Incredibly comfortable, slept better than I have on any other form of transport. The economics presumably don't work so well in Europe or there would be more of them


----------



## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> How does it look like with the availability of those services in the UK? Do they also serve villages and towns not located along major roads? What time of the day are the last departures?


Someone has created a bus atlas for the whole of the UK inter-urban bus services - coverage is pretty comprehensive. Some places are very good, the Isle of Wight has an extraordinary service including two night buses at weekends


----------



## radamfi

volodaaaa said:


> Really? But this is not the case today, right?


Car licences can now only be used to drive minibuses if used for personal or voluntary use, not for 'hire or reward'. If you got your licence after 1996, then you always need a separate licence for minibuses.


----------



## Kpc21

radamfi said:


> In the early days of UK bus deregulation, minibuses were heavily used in many places, generally 16 seat Ford Transits or similar. You could drive them with just a normal car licence and so they could be paid much lower rates than normal bus drivers. Getting to the bus stop before the other company was very important and if you used minibuses you could run every 5 minutes instead of every 15 minutes.


Looks more or less like 1990s Poland...



radamfi said:


> The economics of high frequency minibuses were no longer valid by the mid 90s and later


In Poland it ended in the recent years... E.g. on my route, I remember when there were 5 minibus carriers plus large (though ancient) buses of PKS, mostly on some longer routes through my town. Now what remains is just a single minibus carrier, with tickets over twice as expensive as it was those 5-10 years ago. Most people preferred minibuses because they were much more frequent (in the morning they departed to Łódź, like, every 5 minutes or more often), newer and faster (the drivers didn't obey the speed limits, and still back in early 2000s there wasn't so much traffic on the roads), even though much less convenient regarding things like legroom.

The only difference is that we never had those minibuses running as normal passenger cars that could be driven with ordinary B category licence. Because in Poland the limit for the B category is, if I recall correctly, 9 seats; above that you need the D category (and if your job is actually carrying people – all remaining documentation, like the entry qualification). But, again, if I am not mistaken, for those minibuses, D1 category is enough, which is slightly easier to get.



radamfi said:


> all buses had to be wheelchair accessible


We still don't have such a regulation in Poland.



radamfi said:


> Most villages have some kind of bus service Monday to Friday at least every 2 hours, if not every hour


But when are the last departures?

Again, I remember times when the last minibus from Łódź to my town was at 10:30 PM, the first one was at 3 AM. Now... the last one is around 9:30 PM, which is still not that bad (and it's rather an exception that we still have such a late service), many places have the last ones, like, around 6 PM or so.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> But when are the last departures?


Again, it varies widely. As a rule of thumb, if a route operates every 30 minutes or better in the daytime, it will probably run hourly from 6pm to 10pm or 11pm. Routes running hourly or worse will generally finish about 6pm. A lot of this depends on whether subsidy is required and whether the local authority can afford subsidy. Night buses in London are very comprehensive and are almost certainly the most comprehensive in Europe if not the world. However, night buses in the other big cities hardly exist apart from Edinburgh. Bus routes near airports sometimes run all night or start very early at say 3 or 4am.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> The only difference is that we never had those minibuses running as normal passenger cars that could be driven with ordinary B category licence. Because in Poland the limit for the B category is, if I recall correctly, 9 seats; above that you need the D category (and if your job is actually carrying people – all remaining documentation, like the entry qualification). But, again, if I am not mistaken, for those minibuses, D1 category is enough, which is slightly easier to get.


We need to distinguish between two permits:

driving permit = driving licence. For a vehicle above nine seats, including the driver, you need a D1 or D category,
business permit = you need a qualification card, tachograph card and a confirmation about your medical and psychological capacity - and of course, you have to follow the strict driving time and rest periods.

Normally, there are almost no non-commercial buses. Thus these two issues are often perceived as a single obligation. But it is not always true. E.g. if you have a bus (in Slovakia under 20 passengers) and drive it for non-commercial purposes, you don't need a business permit. The same goes for RVs over 3,5 t that require a C category of driving license, but once it is obvious you are not transporting any goods, you don't need the business permit.


----------



## Kpc21

Let's say you work in a construction company as a construction worker, but in addition – though it isn't your main job, it's a part of the construction process (arriving at the construction site) – you drive a bus – because your construction crew is big and consists of over 9 persons. I guess that in such a case, D category driving license will be enough, the entry qualification card and all other things won't be required.

Though I am not sure if it works so.


----------



## volodaaaa

Kpc21 said:


> though it isn't your main job


That is always a question I deal with almost every day. Let's say you own a hotel, and the airport transfer is included in the price per night. Are you a taxi provider? Well, officially, if there are no transport services on an invoice that you issue, no. At least here in Slovakia. But anyone can call an inspection to your company. If they find that a significant portion of your expenses is dedicated to the transport business, you may be penalised for doing business without a permit.

The same goes for the bus purchased solely for the transport of workers. I don't think you need a business permit to transport your own workers. But again, for a construction company, it is much easier to contract an external company with buses and drivers than buy an own bus with its own drivers and own maintenance.


----------



## geogregor

radamfi said:


> Night buses in London are very comprehensive and are almost certainly the most comprehensive in Europe if not the world.


Ah, the London night buses. How many times I have fallen asleep onboard and ended up somewhere I wasn't planning to be...  

BTW, we experienced massive jump in temperature in London, something like 15 degrees in 24h:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1604896312620552192
In exchange we got strong winds. I guess good for wind generation but on the other hand my girlfriend's dad's arrival is delayed due to ferries from Ireland being cancelled because of storms.


----------



## radamfi

Night buses in London were not that special when I first moved there in the mid 90s, although they seemed great compared to elsewhere. They generally ran about every 30 to 60 minutes, typically following tube lines. There were relatively few routes and full timetables could fit into two small books. You had to pay special fares and day tickets were not valid. The expansion of the night bus network in the early 00s seemed insanely extravagant at the time, but the extra buses got filled. You can encounter full buses even on routes running every 10 minutes in the middle of the night!


----------



## Attus

geogregor said:


> BTW, we experienced massive jump in temperature in London, something like 15 degrees in 24h:


Similar here. Early morning temperature Sunday -9, Monday +4, Tuesday +9. These are not official figures but are from the same location and thermometer.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

Stuu said:


> Someone has created a bus atlas for the whole of the UK inter-urban bus services - coverage is pretty comprehensive. Some places are very good, the Isle of Wight has an extraordinary service including two night buses at weekends


Apparently it is possible to cross the entire country from the most easterly to the most westerly bus stop using local buses only.
It is fun to watch if one have a spare afternoon:


----------



## General Maximus

Indeed...


----------



## Kpc21

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Apparently it is possible to cross the entire country from the most easterly to the most westerly bus stop using local buses only.
> It is fun to watch if one have a spare afternoon:


I once watched a similar thing for Germany, if I remember correctly, made by the TV show Galileo.

Yes, it seems so: Galileo Staffel 2013 Folge 93: Montag: Galileo Spezial: Anschluss...

Though now watching this video requires registration.


----------



## radamfi

Fuzzy Llama said:


> Apparently it is possible to cross the entire country from the most easterly to the most westerly bus stop using local buses only.


Yes, quite a few elderly people who can travel for free on local buses within England after the morning rush hour have done these kinds of trips. There might be younger people doing similar long trips during the £2 offer period. When I first started working in London in 1996 I went to Manchester to see my mum by local bus one Saturday, starting at around 4am getting there about 7pm. 

I haven't checked but I would guess this is possible in other densely populated countries. For example, you could probably travel from the Belgian coast through the Netherlands to western Germany entirely by local bus.


----------



## Attus

radamfi said:


> Yes, quite a few elderly people who can travel for free on local buses within England after the morning rush hour have done these kinds of trips. There might be younger people doing similar long trips during the £2 offer period. When I first started working in London in 1996 I went to Manchester to see my mum by local bus one Saturday, starting at around 4am getting there about 7pm.
> 
> I haven't checked but I would guess this is possible in other densely populated countries. For example, you could probably travel from the Belgian coast through the Netherlands to western Germany entirely by local bus.


It depends on the categorysation. 
In Hungary for example, only services may be called "local", that only call inside the same settlement. Bus lines connecting different settlements are called "regional" (literally "interlocal"). The difference is important, because local services are organized and financed by the local authorities, but regional ones by the state.


----------



## radamfi

Attus said:


> It depends on the categorysation.
> In Hungary for example, only services may be called "local", that only call inside the same settlement. Bus lines connecting different settlements are called "regional" (literally "interlocal"). The difference is important, because local services are organized and financed by the local authorities, but regional ones by the state.


In the UK, a bus service is "local" if there is no more than 15 miles between any two consecutive stops in a straight line. Thus, almost all buses that aren't long distance coaches are local. In Scotland most long distance coaches stop quite frequently so are also classed as "local", so in Scotland there is more of a grey area.


----------



## Fuzzy Llama

radamfi said:


> I haven't checked but I would guess this is possible in other densely populated countries. For example, you could probably travel from the Belgian coast through the Netherlands to western Germany entirely by local bus.


You're right, I was a bit sceptical at first, but it seem possible!
9292.nl - Reisplanner OV & e-tickets trein, bus, tram, metro & veer
10h, 62 EUR. I wonder if anybody did that 
(this is a route from Brugge to the German border near Venlo, 9292.nl unfortunately does not know any lines that are not operating at least partially in the Netherlands, but it doesn't matter, it is possible)


----------



## radamfi

Fuzzy Llama said:


> You're right, I was a bit sceptical at first, but it seem possible!
> 9292.nl - Reisplanner OV & e-tickets trein, bus, tram, metro & veer
> 10h, 62 EUR. I wonder if anybody did that
> (this is a route from Brugge to the German border near Venlo, 9292.nl unfortunately does not know any lines that are not operating at least partially in the Netherlands, but it doesn't matter, it is possible)


If you avoid weekday rush hours, you can do that trip for EUR 44 using the Holland Travel Ticket! 

(Yes it is really called that, even though it is valid in the whole of the Netherlands).

Before the OV-Chipkaart, the Netherlands used to a have a day ticket that excluded most trains for the price of two 8-stippenkaart tickets (2 x EUR 6.40 in 2011) bought from the driver, who would stamp them vertically instead of horizontally to designate that the ticket was being used a "dagkaart", and I did several long distance trips across the Netherlands in those days. In the more rural parts of the Netherlands, especially the north, there are many longer distance buses that use motorways but would still probably be classed as "local" in the UK, as they tend to come off the motorway every so often to serve nearby villages. There used to be a route from Groningen to Lelystad but now that has been truncated to Groningen to Emmeloord. Alkmaar to Leeuwarden is probably now the longest "local" bus in the Netherlands, although you might have to exclude the Afsluitdijk to ensure a maximum of 15 miles between stops.


----------



## Slagathor

The bus that runs from Breda to Hulst via Antwerp is my back-up for when I need to visit family when the trains are out of service.  I imagine it's one of very few bus lines where both ends of the line are in the same country but it travels through a 2nd country along the way.


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## radamfi

There's a hobby site that is entirely dedicated to Belgian cross-border buses and trains






Grenstreinbus.be | Grensoverschrijdende treinen en bussen vanuit België


Een actueel overzicht van alle grensoverschrijdende intercity- en lokale treinen vanuit België alsook van alle lijnbussen tussen België en de buurlanden. In woord en beeld.




www.grenstreinbus.be





including detailed tariff information, which is often lacking on official sites, especially useful as fares and tickets can be complicated when cross the border.


----------



## radamfi

Slagathor said:


> bus that runs from Breda to Hulst via Antwerp


The Netherlands is surely the only country with a wiki that has a page for every single bus route in the country, showing the location of every stop and what make of bus is used! It also covers much of Belgium and some of Germany in similar detail.


----------



## Kpc21

Attus said:


> In Hungary for example, only services may be called "local", that only call inside the same settlement. Bus lines connecting different settlements are called "regional" (literally "interlocal"). The difference is important, because local services are organized and financed by the local authorities, but regional ones by the state.





radamfi said:


> In the UK, a bus service is "local" if there is no more than 15 miles between any two consecutive stops in a straight line. Thus, almost all buses that aren't long distance coaches are local. In Scotland most long distance coaches stop quite frequently so are also classed as "local", so in Scotland there is more of a grey area.


In Poland a distinct category is the "city public transport". Which is defined as transport within the borders of a "town municipality" (i.e. one that doesn't incorporate any villages, only towns – normally a single town) or multiple town municipalities.

And what does this distinction change? Mostly the financing. City public transport doesn't get the discounts for students, the disabled etc. refunded by the state. And while in all other public transport the list and values of those discounts are strictly defined by the law, in case of the city public transport they are completely up to the specific municipality to define them.

In most cities you get a 50% discount for children, students and pensioners – even for single tickets – and free rides for the elderly people above a certain age. In the non-city transit, on buses, the discount for the students only applies to monthly tickets (it's different in case of trains, though for school students it's then only a 37% discount for single tickets; 49% for monthly tickets – for university students it's 51% in all those cases) And there are completely no discounts for the elderly (obviously unless the carrier or the transport organizer introduces one as a "special offer".

By the way, if you want to have a look on how those state discounts on non-city public transport in Poland look like – this is the list for trains: https://www.intercity.pl/pl/dokumenty/Przepisy i taryfy/Ulgi ustawowe/Ulgi-ustawowe-31-12-2021.pdf
This is the one for buses: Ulgi ustawowe w komunikacji autobusowej – wykaz ulg

It's completely overcomplicated, especially regarding those different, weird values of those discounts. But no government has courage to even touch that... 



radamfi said:


> The Netherlands is surely the only country with a wiki that has a page for every single bus route in the country


Do people manage to keep it up to date?

There are two similar things regarding the city public transport in Łódź. Firstly – in the article about Trams in Łódź there are not only routes of all the lines, but also the specific types of rolling stock that are used on the specific lines. Once I tried to fight with it, because it's generally against the rules of Wikipedia to introduce information that changes so often (and the tram routes in Łódź really change often – practically every few months). But finally I gave up. I also remember times when the articles about specific streets in Łódź incorporated the information on the bus routes that use the specific street. And after some time, it was completely out of date. Often there was even an annotation that the information on bus routes includes changes due to one specific infrastructure project that took place back then – and it stayed there even long after that project was finished.


----------



## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> Do people manage to keep it up to date?


Seems like it for Dutch routes, as they point out on some pages about foreign buses that it might not be up-to-date e.g.






Lijn 11/ Saint-Ghislain, SNCB - SNCB - OV in Nederland Wiki







wiki.ovinnederland.nl














but you don't see that message for domestic routes. They even have pages on old routes going back decades.

Bus times don't change very regularly in the Netherlands, so the task isn't as hard as it is in the UK. As in some other European countries, the main timetable change happens on the second Sunday in December to coincide with the European train timetable annual revision date.

In the UK outside London and Northern Ireland, bus routes can be introduced, changed or cancelled whenever the bus company feels like it just by giving 42 days notice (56 days notice in Wales). Bus timetables are almost never coordinated with train timetables and if bus and train times look coordinated, it is usually by accident. Buses often don't stop near the railway station. It is far from unusual for expensive, multi-million pound bus stations to be built at the opposite side of the city centre to the railway station. The public transport consultant Barry Doe (who I have previously mentioned here regarding his crusade to get rid of the 12 hour clock in timetables) used to maintain a book containing instructions on how to get from the bus station to the railway station in towns across the country.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The insane housing price escalations of 10 - 20% per year in the Netherlands has cooled off since the summer. Prices have gone down a bit, with the average transaction dropping from € 446,000 to € 423,000.

However the rising interest rates has kept the barrier to entry very high for first time buyers. While the average transaction is € 423,000, a single median income only qualifies for around € 165,000 worth of mortgage, which means a house price of around € 150,000 if subtracting the cost of purchase.


----------



## Stuu

radamfi said:


> Bus times don't change very regularly in the Netherlands, so the task isn't as hard as it is in the UK. As in some other European countries, the main timetable change happens on the second Sunday in December to coincide with the European train timetable annual revision date.
> 
> In the UK outside London and Northern Ireland, bus routes can be introduced, changed or cancelled whenever the bus company feels like it just by giving 42 days notice (56 days notice in Wales). Bus timetables are almost never coordinated with train timetables and if bus and train times look coordinated, it is usually by accident. Buses often don't stop near the railway station. It is far from unusual for expensive, multi-million pound bus stations to be built at the opposite side of the city centre to the railway station. The public transport consultant Barry Doe (who I have previously mentioned here regarding his crusade to get rid of the 12 hour clock in timetables) used to maintain a book containing instructions on how to get from the bus station to the railway station in towns across the country.


However, in many places the bus journeys are local going into the town/city centre and not many people are transferring to trains. Where I live the railway station is 15 minutes walk from the town centre, whilst the bus station is right in the centre. Which seems to me far more sensible than having it near the railway station. 

If you have somewhere with an hourly bus and an hourly train, is it better to time the bus so people can catch the train, or for the bus to pick up people getting off the train? And for which direction? Some places are obvious in that there will be a flow to and from the nearest town/city but that's not the case everywhere


----------



## radamfi

Stuu said:


> However, in many places the bus journeys are local going into the town/city centre and not many people are transferring to trains. Where I live the railway station is 15 minutes walk from the town centre, whilst the bus station is right in the centre. Which seems to me far more sensible than having it near the railway station.
> 
> If you have somewhere with an hourly bus and an hourly train, is it better to time the bus so people can catch the train, or for the bus to pick up people getting off the train? And for which direction? Some places are obvious in that there will be a flow to and from the nearest town/city but that's not the case everywhere


Switzerland is particularly notable for hourly or half-hourly timed connections between buses and trains, typically where the bus provides a connection to a village from the nearest railway station. Buses generally arrive a few minutes before the train arrives and leave a few minutes after the train arrives. In order to achieve that, it might mean lengthy layovers at the village end of the route. That kind of service is considered prohibitively expensive in the UK as the extended layover needs extra buses and drivers.

In my old job as a transport modeller/planner, I gave lunchtime talks on Swiss bus-train connections and how they work with worked examples in the Zurich canton region using actual timetables. I'll have to look to see if I still have the PowerPoint presentation somewhere!  Whilst this isn't really rocket science, my audiences were actually surprised that this was possible, yet none of us who had done MSc courses in transport had actually been taught anything like it.

In the Netherlands and Switzerland, for example, they usually find a way of serving both the town centre and the railway station where the railway station is awkwardly located. Typically buses will pass through the town centre on the way to the railway station. There may be some places that only have a direct bus to the railway station, but they can easily connect onto another bus to the town centre and it won't usually cost more than a direct bus because of integrated fares.

Sometimes you get a slightly more elaborate bus stop at popular bus stops in the town centre, but you rarely get a full blown UK-style bus station anywhere other than at a railway station.

For example, Roosendaal station is poorly located for the town centre and the main town centre stop is Roselaar. Unusually for the Netherlands, you get a moderately elaborate facility there even though it isn't at the railway station









Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




goo.gl





However most buses serve both the station and Roselaar.



https://www.arrivapdf.nl/web/file?uuid=98e527e3-732e-4198-8d2f-1661a03638d2&owner=af8aec32-6c73-47d5-af4d-f1553a2c3b77&contentid=18873



If Roosendaal was in the UK, the buses to the west and south probably would only go as far as Roselaar.


----------



## Slagathor

The only real solution to this problem is: don't go to Roosendaal.

Seriously, it sucks.


----------



## Kpc21

Regarding the buses operating suburban routes in Poland, if they do go, they aren't minibuses and they aren't ancient buses, it often looks like this:










This is actually not a public transport bus, but one that carries workers to a nearby logistic center (from Łęczyca to the Truvant center in Stryków near Łódź) – but as you can see, it still has "Flughafen" on the destination display 

It's not uncommon for them to display things such as "Flughafen" or "Betriebsfahrt".


----------



## General Maximus

radamfi said:


> Seems like it for Dutch routes, as they point out on some pages about foreign buses that it might not be up-to-date e.g.


All it takes is one person who is very passionate about this subject and puts his/her heart and soul in it to update it. After all editing is accessible to anyone.


----------



## General Maximus

Kpc21 said:


> Regarding the buses operating suburban routes in Poland, if they do go, they aren't minibuses and they aren't ancient buses, it often looks like this:
> 
> View attachment 4336946
> 
> 
> This is actually not a public transport bus, but one that carries workers to a nearby logistic center (from Łęczyca to the Truvant center in Stryków near Łódź) – but as you can see, it still has "Flughafen" on the destination display
> 
> It's not uncommon for them to display things such as "Flughafen" or "Betriebsfahrt".


I remember when Poznan City Council were importing trams from the city of Amsterdam. There they were running around downtown Poznan with many still displaying Amsterdam destinations. Same goes for our old made-in-Netherlands buses exported to Cuba.


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## Kpc21

I wasn't even aware of that Poznań used to have ex-Amsterdam trams 

In Łódź, the public transport operator has recently imported a batch of low-floor trams from Bogestra, Bochum. And supposedly they are keeping watch for other low-floor trams being withdrawn in all western Europe; now there are talks about plans for buying some from Augsburg. We're in a good situation regarding that, because our tram network is narrow-gauge (1000 mm) and there aren't many such networks with which we compete for such purchases.

While our carrier purchases brand new low-floor trams every few years or so, those are only small batches and there is no chance for replacing the whole old tram fleet in any sensible time. Old tram fleet, which is based on Polish trams from 1970s/1980s, which maybe don't seem to be that old, but are quite obsolete, and from the passenger point of view, the biggest problem are the doors – with gaps so huge that it's practically impossible to make those trams warm inside during winter.










And quite annoying is also the noise from the 600V/40V "DC voltage converter" – actually a DC motor coupled with a DC generator xD

Very simple technology, which is easy to repair, but doesn't really satisfy the requirements of the 21st century. And those trams are literally falling apart.

Other Polish cities, including Poznań, decided to go another way, and they're buying brand new trams being a continuation of the obsolete model posted above, with a low-floor section in the middle (obviously with the problems mentioned by me above resolved – they have another type of doors and an electronic voltage converter):




















But regarding those Bogestra trams in Łódź, generally there is no such issue with the displays showing the destination from the original tram network – our operator even managed to couple those German displays with the Polish passenger information systems (which isn't that simple, because while most of Europe uses systems based on the IBIS open protocol, Poland is monopolized, or rather duopolized, by two competing proprietary systems of two Polish companies), so they work as they should:










There are also ones that have underwent a small renovation, those get completely new displays:










Regarding the bus routes in Poland, such a Wiki guide would be really useful here – because while the city public transport is usually of acceptable quality and has well developed passenger information, it's completely opposite with the "rural" transport, outside big cities. Those routes, often operated by small or even single-person businesses with minibuses (but quite often also those of those PKS companies mentioned by me before) are obscure, it's not uncommon that neither will you find the timetables online, nor at the bus stops, and it's just the "tribal knowledge" of the people who actually use those routes. If you find them online – it may be just a list of departures from the end stops on an obscure Facebook profile of the carrier, without any details, like if they operate on Saturdays or not. Often there is a timetable at the bus stop, but one which used to be valid some 10 years ago or more. Or one of a carrier which has gone out of business those 10 years ago.


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## Suburbanist

Here in Norway there is some turmoil brewing on real estate markets.

First, the rents / market price ratio has been decreasing for a couple years.

Second, most mortgages in Norway are variable-rate, or subject to periodic-rate adjustment. So with the increase on basic Norges Bank rates, affordability of mortgages is changing immediately, not only for new contracts.

This has started to lead investor-driven sale of real estate here in Bergen, and also in Trondheim. The Oslo market seems a bit more resilient so far. There has been a boon of real-estate construction driven, in part, by families with plenty of household net wealth investing on second or third properties as a way to especulate on rising prices. They are not very leveraged, but still exposed to the effects of rising interest rates (current at 1.5% and expected to keep rising in the following months).


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## radamfi

According to 









Move to the country property trend fading - Zoopla


Buyers will search for homes in affordable towns, the property website says, as house prices fall in 2023.



www.bbc.com





the trend of people moving to scenic rural and costal areas is fading with people moving to affordable towns, which usually means not the south of England. It is reckoned that the return to the office has made urban areas more attractive again. Prices are still expected to fall over the next two years, but less so in those areas.


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## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> They are not very leveraged, but still exposed to the effects of rising interest rates (current at 1.5% and expected to keep rising in the following months).


Mortgage interest rates in the Netherlands are already around 4.5%. This mostly applies to new mortgages as most people have fixed rates for a period of 10 - 30 years. 

But 4.5% is relatively high and is a huge barrier to entry for first time buyers, as prices have not dropped enough to compensate: they would need to outright collapse after 7 years of 5 - 20% annual increases.


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## ChrisZwolle

The arctic blast in the United States results in extremely low temperatures even into the Gulf of Mexico, with currently -8°C in Houston, -1 in New Orleans and -3 in Pensacola. And widespread -20 to -30 °C on the great plains, even into the -30 to -40 °C range on the High Plans and into Canada.


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## geogregor

radamfi said:


> According to
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Move to the country property trend fading - Zoopla
> 
> 
> Buyers will search for homes in affordable towns, the property website says, as house prices fall in 2023.
> 
> 
> 
> www.bbc.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> the trend of people moving to scenic rural and costal areas is fading with people moving to affordable towns, *which usually means not the south of England*. It is reckoned that the return to the office has made urban areas more attractive again. Prices are still expected to fall over the next two years, but less so in those areas.


The way a read it is that people are moving to towns as opposed to villages, in the south and in the north. So in the south they might move to Tonbridge or Medway towns rather than to some remote village in the South Downs or on the coast between Dover and Ramsgate. There was such trend but it seems it was short lived.

Remote living always looks better on paper than in reality.

Anyway, London is not doing too badly:



> Another UK property portal, Rightmove, said that London was cementing its position again as the area which is most searched by users.
> During various months last year, Cornwall had overtaken the city as the subject of most searches.
> However, this year, London - which has the biggest population - was clearly at the top and had stretched its lead. Cornwall remained in second on the list, followed by Devon, Bristol and Glasgow, Rightmove said.


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## ChrisZwolle

The supply of housing in small villages is usually pretty limited, so these tiny markets quickly become overwhelmed if there is a sea change in demand, as there was during covid. Towns may have larger scale development projects. 

I've seen a report about San Francisco, that it was America's most deserted downtown with average office occupancy rates still at around 30 - 40%. 

It remains to be seen how long employers will tolerate remote working. Living 2 hours away might be doable if you only have to commute 1 or 2 days, but it's less appealing if you have to travel 4 or 5 days per week. From what I've seen in the Netherlands, remote working is still entrenched in government work but less so in the private sector. I know a lot of people that are working remotely only 1 day per week even if their work could allow for 3, 4 or 5 days of remote working.


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## General Maximus

I do see a trend. I took a stab at working from home 100% in Germany for Ziggo, a Dutch internet and TV provider. They've sent me a desktop computer from NL with all the trimmings, and my job was to take incoming phone calls providing customer care to people having problems setting their internet, wifi, TV and other things. Prior to that I have been given two weeks of online classroom training. It's amazing what you can do with Zoom or Microsoft Meet....

I've sent everything back after a while. Not really my cup of tea...


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## Slagathor

I like the idea of working from abroad but customer service sounds exhausting.


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## General Maximus

It was. And in the daytime there were mainly old people phoning, and they usually don't have a clue how to set up a WiFi. And I don't have the patience to explain it to them. After the phone call has finished I only had a few moments to make notes before the next call would come in. Exhausting indeed. Not to mention the software you have to work with. It's like operating a starship...


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## radamfi

geogregor said:


> The way a read it is that people are moving to towns as opposed to villages, in the south and in the north. So in the south they might move to Tonbridge or Medway towns rather than to some remote village in the South Downs or on the coast between Dover and Ramsgate. There was such trend but it seems it was short lived.
> 
> Remote living always looks better on paper than in reality.
> 
> Anyway, London is not doing too badly:


The list of towns seeing above average demand for homes given in the article are Bradford, Swindon, Coventry, Crewe, Southend and Milton Keynes. Bradford and Crewe are very cheap post-industrial towns/cities where you can still get terraced houses for under £100,000 and Coventry is also cheap. Swindon and Milton Keynes are more expensive and prosperous but, like most post-war new towns, are not exactly sought after. They are not glamorous but are functional and relatively hassle free places to live, compared to living in a highly sought after village with narrow roads, no parking and no facilities.


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## AnelZ

General Maximus said:


> It was. And in the daytime there were mainly old people phoning, and they usually don't have a clue how to set up a WiFi. And I don't have the patience to explain it to them. After the phone call has finished I only had a few moments to make notes before the next call would come in. Exhausting indeed. Not to mention the software you have to work with. It's like operating a starship...


I was doing solely telephone customer service for a German online retail company for 4 years but the last two years I transitioned to mostly E-Mails (like on average 70-80% of all contacts) before recently starting doing QA. The first 6 months doing that job were a massive pain as you literally need a minimum of 3 month of work to be even close to feel like you know the matter and are prepared for any question of costumers and that is if you are knowledgeable about many things and logical. 6 months is the minimum for the average worker for me to say that they can now comfortable do that job. After those first 3-6 months it gets easier, especially as you get to know all the nooks and crannies.


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## General Maximus

^ That sounds about right. I just gave up after a month. I didn't know all the answers. I just kept on sending mechanics or transferring calls to others.

Next!

The fact that at some point they started to have a shortage of mobile mechanics might be because of me 😂


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## ChrisZwolle

The extremely cold weather is causing some interesting effect:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1606286415037313024

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1606320695729786880


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## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> The supply of housing in small villages is usually pretty limited


No idea about other countries but from the Polish perspective I can't really understand how the supply of housing in small villages can be limited. Most people anyway don't buy houses in such locations from real estate developers (it's rather a rare phenomenon for them to build detached houses and it rather only happens in the outskirts of large cities); in villages people normally build houses on their own (I mean, not necessarily by their own hands, though sometimes partially too, but they pay for the construction and either employ a construction company for the whole construction process, or – more often – organize the whole construction process by themselves and employ builders of various specialities to do various stages of the construction). There can only be a shortage of land that is intended for housing, but if you don't necessarily want something near a large city, it should be easy and cheap to find something – as most people want to live near large cities.

And many people anyway inherit some land from parents or grandparents...



ChrisZwolle said:


> The extremely cold weather is causing some interesting effect:


In the US they have a cold wave, in Europe we have a "heat wave", if I can use such a term for respectively high temperatures as for winter.

Already for 2 or 3 days we are having the air temperature of some 5-6 degrees Celsius. A week ago we had everything covered with a layer of snow (the temperatures were of the order of -10 deg. Celsius) – now it has all melted.

Snowless Christmas – as usual.

I don't know if it's a curse or what, but there is almost never snow for Christmas. If there is, it's a very thin layer.


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## radamfi

Kpc21 said:


> No idea about other countries but from the Polish perspective I can't really understand how the supply of housing in small villages can be limited.


Many people want to live somewhere safe and picturesque, especially if they have children. But house building in villages is very difficult due to NIMBYs, so planners take the easier option and allow building at the edge of towns instead, which is slightly less controversial. Small villages to a large extent act as suburbs of the nearest major town. Residents typically go shopping and use leisure facilities in the town. They just sleep in the village.


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## Kpc21

Interesting with that NIMBYism. A completely different approach of the people than in Poland. Where people generally claim they should be allowed to build a house anywhere they want, and don't really see problems with houses built around them, as long as those are privately built houses and not something large-scale from a real-estate developer.

In one region of Łódź (generally a rural one) there is now a new local development plan being prepared, where the possibility to built new houses will be considerably limited (building houses will only be allowed within narrow lanes along the roads – anyway most houses over there are located so now; there are farming fields behind them). And locals are outraged about that to such an extent that they are discussing the possibilities of splitting out from Łódź and joining the neighboring municipality as a village.

It's such a rural neighborhood:


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## ChrisZwolle

The plan approval + construction for new houses can easily be several years, if not longer, in most of Western Europe. The covid effect caused a shift from cities to smaller villages and towns, but the available supply dried up pretty quickly and new supply takes more time to build. The absorbation capacity is thus not very large in the short term. 

There is usually a generational shift from cities to suburbs and towns, people in their thirties starting families, having careers and thus the income to buy a house somewhere. I'm 35 and a lot of people I grew up with who moved to city centers like Amsterdam and Utrecht have now moved to the outskirts of their city, or back to their home region. It was observed that from around 2015, the Millennials (1980-1995) started moving to the suburbs. In the U.S., Millennials quickly became the largest homebuying and carbuying demographic around 2015-2017. And they preferred a house in the suburbs at the same rate as earlier generations, contrary to the popular belief at the time, that they would be lifelong renters of small apartments.


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## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> The plan approval + construction for new houses can easily be several years, if not longer, in most of Western Europe.


Technically the Polish planning is so broken that we have many times more residential land than it's needed for everyone living here to build a house... And all that regarding that we still have enormous amounts of land with no local development plans at all, which can also be built-up (in general, it then works so that the municipality has to prepare an individual mini-plan specifically for your piece of land, based on the existing neighboring buildings).

Obviously that land is mostly at not very attractive locations, like, in remote villages.

In Poland it's rather uncommon to "buy a house", people rather buy land and build new ones... I mean, there are used houses for sale and they also get sold, but it usually makes more sense to built one which would be custom-made for your needs and will be much cheaper to keep warm than an old house – and the cost is similar.

The cost of building a house in Poland starts at some 200,000 PLN (so some 50,000 EUR), though a lot depends on things like the size and complexity of the house, the quality of the materials used (especially in the final stages of the construction, prices of things like floor tiles have a really wide span), whether you pay for the whole construction to a single company or organize the whole construction process by yourself, if you are able to do some works by yourself and so on. For a big house it can be easily over a million PLN.


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## radamfi

My dad often used to complain that British houses were all "identical boxes", unlike in Hungary where it was normal to build your own house. Building your own home is very uncommon here. A major problem with building your own house is you need to live somewhere during construction. You have to finance the construction whilst paying mortgage or rent on where you currently live, and getting a mortgage for a self-build is harder. For the vast majority of people, it is too much hassle.


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## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> No idea about other countries but from the Polish perspective I can't really understand how the supply of housing in small villages can be limited. Most people anyway don't buy houses in such locations from real estate developers (it's rather a rare phenomenon for them to build detached houses and it rather only happens in the outskirts of large cities); in villages people normally build houses on their own (I mean, not necessarily by their own hands, though sometimes partially too, but they pay for the construction and either employ a construction company for the whole construction process, or – more often – organize the whole construction process by themselves and employ builders of various specialities to do various stages of the construction). There can only be a shortage of land that is intended for housing, but if you don't necessarily want something near a large city, it should be easy and cheap to find something – as most people want to live near large cities.


Building your own home is extremely rare in the UK. There is no tradition of building home "on your own" (which in Poland often means with the help of the countless uncles, other family members and friends). Most people simply buy new homes from the developers, regardless whether we are talking about flats, semidetached properties of fully detached individual houses. 



> And many people anyway inherit some land from parents or grandparents...


Again, rare in the UK. And even if you inherit land it most likely will be agricultural, which is difficult to convert to building plots.



Kpc21 said:


> Technically the Polish planning is so broken that we have many times more residential land than it's needed for everyone living here to build a house... And all that regarding that we still have enormous amounts of land with no local development plans at all, which can also be built-up (in general, it then works so that the municipality has to prepare an individual mini-plan specifically for your piece of land, based on the existing neighboring buildings).
> 
> Obviously that land is mostly at not very attractive locations, like, in remote villages.
> 
> In Poland it's rather uncommon to "buy a house", people rather buy land and build new ones... I mean, there are used houses for sale and they also get sold, but it usually makes more sense to built one which would be custom-made for your needs and will be much cheaper to keep warm than an old house – and the cost is similar.
> 
> The cost of building a house in Poland starts at some 200,000 PLN (so some 50,000 EUR), though a lot depends on things like the size and complexity of the house, the quality of the materials used (especially in the final stages of the construction, prices of things like floor tiles have a really wide span), whether you pay for the whole construction to a single company or organize the whole construction process by yourself, if you are able to do some works by yourself and so on. For a big house it can be easily over a million PLN.


Polish planning system is a joke. The effect is that people throw houses wherever they like, like cows shit on the fields, with little regard for the infrastructure or aesthetics. On one hand it provides cheap land but in the long term we'll end with settlement pattern which will be difficult to service. From water and electricity supply to rubbish collection or health services for ageing population, it will cost shit loads of money or might even not be possible (especially health service provision).

Difference in the cost of construction is largely due to difference in labour and material costs, not because rural homes are build by small companies or "by the uncles". In fact mass built housing should always be cheaper than building one off houses, due to costs of scale etc.



radamfi said:


> My dad often used to complain that British houses were all "identical boxes", unlike in Hungary where it was normal to build your own house. Building your own home is very uncommon here.


I'd rather take "identical boxes" over "fantasy castles" which can be seen all over Eastern Europe. Folks in Poland often overcompensate for 50 years of communist blandness by going for full on kitschy ornamentation. At some point columns by the entrance were particularly popular:












> A major problem with building your own house is you need to live somewhere during construction. You have to finance the construction whilst paying mortgage or rent on where you currently live, and getting a mortgage for a self-build is harder. For the vast majority of people, it is too much hassle.


The same issues apply to folks in Poland, yet people are more ready to put up with them. 

The biggest difference between the UK and Poland is planning regime. In fact those two countries are on the opposing ends of the European spectrum in that regard. 

The UK has one of the most restrictive planning rules in Europe, if not in the world. There are strictly enforced "green belts" around most towns, designed to limit the urban sprawl. There are strict rules in the rural regions specifying where housing can be built and finally there are NIMBYs who make sure nobody oversteps the limits (and more).

Poland on the other hand has extremely lax planning rules. It is easy to build anything pretty much anywhere. Local population has little say (even if they cared, which they normally don't) agricultural land conversion is relatively easy, urban sprawl rules etc.

In my personal opinion planning in the UK is too strict and in Poland too lax. I would relax some rules in the UK, especially considering the green belts. The name itself is very misleading, big chunks of the "green" belts are actually areas of intensive farming or even post industrial land (former quarries etc.) If the land is close to railway stations it should be seriously considered for development (with planning restrictions).

In Poland on the other hand I would try to do something to limit the random one off development. Because we are really creating ourselves problems for the future.


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## Suburbanist

Building your own house, in terms of relative costs, also depends on local labor costs. 

In countries like the Netherlands or Denmark, even without much regulations, labor costs are very high, construction workers are reasonably paid (vs. underpaid often irregular immigrants without proper training). In this context, there is more direct and indirect automation on housing construction. It does not mean designs of houses must all be the same, and they often are not, but it does mean that "self-construction" is much less of a viable proposition (where the owner hires and supervises the building of their family house).


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## Stuu

Kpc21 said:


> Interesting with that NIMBYism. A completely different approach of the people than in Poland. Where people generally claim they should be allowed to build a house anywhere they want, and don't really see problems with houses built around them, as long as those are privately built houses and not something large-scale from a real-estate developer.


This is somewhere I used to live, a village in Somerset which is fairly typical in terms of growth. While it is a lot bigger, it's form is still consistent, there is nothing like the linear development that characterises a lot of Poland, and many other countries worldwide.


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## Attus

The vast majority of Hungarian people live in own property, an own house or in an own flat. Houses where alt the flats can be rent are very rare, even in Budapest. Typically everyone owns the flat where he lives. (Voloda wrote about a lot about his flat in Bratislava, basically the same story). You may understand how it works to make decisions about refubishing the staircase in a house of sixty flats - sixty owners. 
Even those, who rent a flat, don't rent it from the owner of the house, but the owner of the flat. And the vast majority do it illegal, so the owner does not pay taxes, and thee tenant has basically no rights - officialy he does nothing to do with the flat where he actually lives. 
And since almost everyone lives in own property, almost everyone inherits a flat or a house (ar the half of it...) from the parents. I, too, am now in 50% the owner of my parents's house.


----------



## Attus

radamfi said:


> My dad often used to complain that British houses were all "identical boxes", unlike in Hungary where it was normal to build your own house. Building your own home is very uncommon here. A major problem with building your own house is you need to live somewhere during construction. You have to finance the construction whilst paying mortgage or rent on where you currently live, and getting a mortgage for a self-build is harder. For the vast majority of people, it is too much hassle.


In Hungary there is the "Kádár-kocka", literally "Kádár cube". It's an unofficial name of course, János Kádár was the chief of the communist party and so the de facto leader of the country between 1956-88, and those house were built in that age. These are quadratic or near to quadratic, single storey family houses, approx. 100m2. Nearly one million examples of Kádár-kocka were built in Hungary in those decades, what is a lot in a country having a population of sllightly more than 10 million back then. 
It's even right now the most typical house in Hungarian villages and small towns. 
So it was actually normal to build your own house, but these "own house"-es were usually identical boxes.


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## radamfi

geogregor said:


> The UK has one of the most restrictive planning rules in Europe, if not in the world. There are strictly enforced "green belts" around most towns, designed to limit the urban sprawl. There are strict rules in the rural regions specifying where housing can be built and finally there are NIMBYs who make sure nobody oversteps the limits (and more).


And there is broad political consensus on that. The planning regulations were loosened somewhat in the 80s under Thatcher, when a lot of sprawling suburbs were developed. London's green belt was kept but development was simply displaced to just outside the green belt. When Major replaced Thatcher in 1990, even though it was the same party in government, the planning regulations became a lot more strict again and it has more or less been the same ever since. Boris Johnson made a big deal about relaxing planning rules but he had to do a U-turn shortly afterwards because of dissent within his party. Still, there is a wide perception that development is nowhere near as sustainable as it could be.


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## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> The vast majority of Hungarian people live in own property, an own house or in an own flat.


Do they pay mortgage? Or do they own it from communist times with no mortgage payment? I've read that very high percentages of people in the former communist countries own their house without an outstanding mortgage payment. This makes cost of living comparisons with Western Europe rather blurred, where people may have 3 times more income, but also pay € 1000 or € 1500 in rent or mortgage payments.



Attus said:


> You may understand how it works to make decisions about refubishing the staircase in a house of sixty flats - sixty owners.


This is where a homeowners assocation would be useful. They can pool resources from contributions, have some kind of decision-making and input process, and be able to do things like renovations of common areas or adding solar panels on the roof.


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## geogregor

radamfi said:


> And there is broad political consensus on that. The planning regulations were loosened somewhat in the 80s under Thatcher, when a lot of sprawling suburbs were developed. London's green belt was kept but development was simply displaced to just outside the green belt. When Major replaced Thatcher in 1990, even though it was the same party in government, the planning regulations became a lot more strict again and it has more or less been the same ever since. Boris Johnson made a big deal about relaxing planning rules but he had to do a U-turn shortly afterwards because of dissent within his party. Still, there is a wide perception that development is nowhere near as sustainable as it could be.


That broad consensus partly comes from the fact that homeowners, which are also older cohorts, are much more likely to vote. And they vote accordingly to their own interests. In short, greedy boomers dominate political landscape, for years now, in this country. They don't have any interest in increasing housing supply. 

One could argue that it is common in ageing western democracies. Young cohorts, which would be main beneficiaries of increasing housing supply, are too small to outvote the oldies. Even if they bothered to vote, which they often don't.

Of course one could argue that a lot of folks from the younger cohorts will eventually inherit some properties from their boomer parents. But the problem is that with life expectancy in high 70s, or even 80s, even if people inherit something they'll be often in their 50s by the time that happens. A bit late to start a family...

Britain simply has to build more homes. A lot more. But I can't see it happening. Apart from planning rules there is also problems with construction workers availability etc.

As for the green belts, I think it is a bit of a red herring. As I said, they might need some localized relaxations around underutilized stations but the bulk of new builds will due to densification of the existing urban fabric. There is plenty of brownfield postindustrial land, massive surface car parks around shopping centres, low density old estates etc. plots where millions of new homes could be build. But local NIMBYs often oppose it.

I think I mentioned proposals to redevelop an ugly 1980s shopping centre in my neighborhood. Developers bought it and are at the phase of local consultations. They propose building 250 new flats.

This is the proposal:









Blenheim Square, Penge High Street | Places


Hadley Property Group is a privately-owned, residential-led property developer specialising in progressive, sustainable housing in Central and Greater London.



hadleypropertygroup.com





The place currently looks like this:

P1330667 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1330673 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1330674 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1330676 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1330679 by Geogregor*, on Flickr


P1330682 by Geogregor*, on Flickr

You would think people would be happy for it to go? Well, yes but... Immediately local groups on FB and Twitter got up in arms. That it will be too tall, with too little parking etc. Usual pure NIMBYsm.

I wen't to one of the consultations meetings. It is just forum when opponents can voice their opposition. Most normal folks, who might be either positive or neutral about the proposal, won't waste their time to attend those meetings. They are usually dominated by local oldies with lots of time on their hands. I question value of the whole consultation process. Nobody does it in Poland as far as I know. Developer propose something and it either gets approved by the local council (mostly) or don't. That's it. No need for silly PR stuff and negotiations with local pensioners. 



ChrisZwolle said:


> Do they pay mortgage? Or do they own it from communist times with no mortgage payment? I've read that very high percentages of people in the former communist countries own their house without an outstanding mortgage payment. This makes cost of living comparisons with Western Europe rather blurred, where people may have 3 times more income, but also pay € 1000 or € 1500 in rent or mortgage payments.


I don't know how about Hungary but in Poland it is a mixture. Some people own the flats, or houses, outright, often due to purchasing them during early privatization drive in the 1990s. But then younger folks who buy the same properties on the open market in the last 10-20 years buy them on mortgage. So in block of flat where I grew up my mum and the neighbors next door own the flats outright but there are also young families who do have mortgages. 



> This is where a homeowners assocation would be useful. They can pool resources from contributions, have some kind of decision-making and input process, and be able to do things like renovations of common areas or adding solar panels on the roof.


Most buildings have such associations but those are difficult bodies to run, again, often dominated bu the oldest residents.

I recently actually became one of the directors of our block here in London. 11 stories, 71 flats. You would be surprised how much petty politics can happen in such small group 

Now we are in the process of sorting some legacy fire issues, it is a pain...


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## radamfi

From what I have heard, Bulgarians were simply given the house they lived in at the end of communism, which means almost universal home ownership.


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## Attus

ChrisZwolle said:


> Do they pay mortgage? Or do they own it from communist times with no mortgage payment? I've read that very high percentages of people in the former communist countries own their house without an outstanding mortgage payment. This makes cost of living comparisons with Western Europe rather blurred, where people may have 3 times more income, but also pay € 1000 or € 1500 in rent or mortgage payments.


Many of them don't. The are two main groups:

People having built an house in the communist times. It was insanely cheap back then. Many of them have already died of course, but their children inherited the houses.
People living in cities. City houses of severa lparties were owned by the state in the communist times and the state sold the flats after 1990 for insanely low prices. I know several people, uneducated, low incomes, but they were able to buy the flat they lived, they paid very low mortgages and they, too, have already been paid off. Thirty years later many of them died, but their children inherited the flats.
Hungarian population is less now than it was thirty or fifty years ago, so the society needs more or less the same amount of flats. The majority of the population got an own house/flat without renting or paying mortgages. So yes, you're right: costs of living are significantly lower than in Western Europe (and many people in Hungary simply don't realize it).


----------



## volodaaaa

I like this topic, indeed. But there are several other biases related to Jesus and time measurement.

Let's imagine Jesus was born on the 25th of December. Was it the year -1, 0, or 1? I guess calling the year first before Christ would be wrong, as the last week of the year would undoubtedly be after Christ. But calling the year first after Christ would be incorrect, too, since the majority of the year was before the birth of Jesus. It would have made sense if Christ was birth on the first of January, and then the year before would be before Christ and the year after after Christ.

But since the uncertainty whether the year Jesus was born is before Christ after Christ, I have come with the idea of a neutral year 0, taking account of Saint Mary's pregnancy.


----------



## MattiG

volodaaaa said:


> I like this topic, indeed. But there are several other biases related to Jesus and time measurement.
> 
> Let's imagine Jesus was born on the 25th of December. Was it the year -1, 0, or 1? I guess calling the year first before Christ would be wrong, as the last week of the year would undoubtedly be after Christ. But calling the year first after Christ would be incorrect, too, since the majority of the year was before the birth of Jesus. It would have made sense if Christ was birth on the first of January, and then the year before would be before Christ and the year after after Christ.
> 
> But since the uncertainty whether the year Jesus was born is before Christ after Christ, I have come with the idea of a neutral year 0, taking account of Saint Mary's pregnancy.


There is an easier way: not trying to solve theological questions by applying mathematical logic.

The Anno Dominini dating was inventented much later after the events in question. Monk Dionysius Exiguus made the backwards calculations during the 6th century, and they are not accurate to a year. For example, King Herod died in 1 or 4 BC, and this conflicts with holy writings.

The concept of zero as a number was not know in that era, and this explains the skip from 1BC to 1AD. The zero was imported to Europe from the East several centuries later.


----------



## volodaaaa

MattiG said:


> There is an easier way: not trying to solve theological questions by applying mathematical logic


Good idea. Otherwise, we would encounter severe problems when someone brought up an issue of God's omnipresence versus Einstein's theory of relativity.


----------



## x-type

Don't forget that Mary has (immaculately) concieved at 8th December. 
I'm just wondering was it in -1 BC or -2 BC.


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> Don't forget that Mary has (immaculately) concieved at 8th December.
> I'm just wondering was it in -1 BC or -2 BC.


Wrong.
The "immaculate conception" is not the incident of Mary concieving Jesus, but the incident of Mary, herself, being concieved. And that should have happened approx. 14-15 years earlier, i.e. for sure not in 1 or 2 BC. The idea behind it is that Mary, unlike any other human being, was free of the original sin, since her conception, so she was error free, i.e. immaculate, since the conception. 
So the celebration day of the immaculate conception is December 8th, and the celebration day of Mary's birth is September 8th (exactly 9 months later). However, no one ever has said, these should be the actual dates of these events. 
What you mean, the conception of Jesus himself, is called Announciation (of the Lord), meaning, the angel Gabriel announced Mary that she would concieve and bear a son. The celebration day of the Announciation is, surprise, surprise, March 25th, 9 months before Christmas.


----------



## x-type

Attus said:


> Wrong.
> The "immaculate conception" is not the incident of Mary concieving Jesus, but the incident of Mary, herself, being concieved. And that should have happened approx. 14-15 years earlier, i.e. for sure not in 1 or 2 BC. The idea behind it is that Mary, unlike any other human being, was free of the original sin, since her conception, so she was error free, i.e. immaculate, since the conception.
> So the celebration day of the immaculate conception is December 8th, and the celebration day of Mary's birth is September 8th (exactly 9 months later). However, no one ever has said, these should be the actual dates of these events.
> What you mean, the conception of Jesus himself, is called Announciation (of the Lord), meaning, the angel Gabriel announced Mary that she would concieve and bear a son. The celebration day of the Announciation is, surprise, surprise, March 25th, 9 months before Christmas.


If so, why is Mary's conception (the 8th December one), according to that explanation the date when Anne has concepted Mary, also immaculate? Where is Joachim? I know that Anne and Joachim were very old, and have been praying to have children, so finally they got Mary in very later years, but it is unclear in which way - immaculate or natural.


----------



## Slagathor

Why are you discussing the alleged accuracy of fairytales and myths?


----------



## Spookvlieger

Slagathor said:


> Why are you discussing the alleged accuracy of fairytales and myths?


Sometimes I'd like to see which of those things are historically valuable, and then especially those of the ancient past. Anything in the old testament basically. And some of those stories I believe are much older than Judaism/Christianity itself which means they have a older and deeper historical context. I also believe the timescale of how the stories are portrayed in the bible or Torah are way off and just changed and made to fit....you can't help but notice that Abrahamist believes are a sort of collection of ancient stories that have much older roots.


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> If so, why is Mary's conception (the 8th December one), according to that explanation the date when Anne has concepted Mary, also immaculate? Where is Joachim? I know that Anne and Joachim were very old, and have been praying to have children, so finally they got Mary in very later years, but it is unclear in which way - immaculate or natural.


I've just explained it, but I may have chosen a wrong wording. I try it again. 
"Immaculate" (form Latin "immaculata") means literally taint free, i.e. error free, flawless. The way how children are usually conceived was never called as wrong, sinful or an error by the Christianity (at least not by the mainstream), so immaculate does NOT mean: without sex, without a man. It means flawless, undamaged. 
In religious sense: Mary was concieved (unlike any other human being) without having the original sin, i.e. she was undamaged, error free, immaculate, since her conception. It says nothing about the way she was concieved by her mother. 
Is it so clear? 

It is by the way short and clear explained in this article in your language:


https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bezgrje%C5%A1no_za%C4%8De%C4%87e_Bla%C5%BEene_Djevice_Marije


----------



## Attus

Slagathor said:


> Why are you discussing the alleged accuracy of fairytales and myths?


I think it makes a sense even if you don't beleive in it at all. If I wrote Little Red Riding Hood killed her grandma and afer that both of them were eaten by a drake, Some people here in the forum would correct me, although no one of us really believes the story actually happened. 
So either you beleive on Jesus, either you beleive he was concieved without a man or you don't, using the word immaculate about his conception is wrong.


----------



## Stuu

Slagathor said:


> Why are you discussing the alleged accuracy of fairytales and myths?


When I was a kid I was very puzzled by the fact Jesus was born at Christmas and died ~4 months later as a fully grown man. They never explained that it was in a different year


----------



## Spookvlieger

To make it worse, most theological scholars believe he was born -4 or -6 AD 🙃


----------



## volodaaaa

Stuu said:


> When I was a kid I was very puzzled by the fact Jesus was born at Christmas and died ~4 months later as a fully grown man. They never explained that it was in a different year


I've been a geography freak since I was born, and I used to have severe issues with the term Easter. In the Slovak language, the literal translation is the Great Night, and I always complained that the great night should be the night closest to the winter solstice, not in the middle of April 😂


----------



## x-type

Slagathor said:


> Why are you discussing the alleged accuracy of fairytales and myths?


Altough I am sarcastic about immaculation and conception (@Attus sorry), calling the Bible happenings farytales is very ignorant, not to say primitive. Most of those happenings actually happened, most of those persons really existed. The thing is that with time, mostly in Middle Ages, it started to be misused, and interpreted completely wrong. That's why today anyone understanding the Bible literally cannot think anything else of it but - fairytale. Try to understand its metaphors, it will be nothing else but philosophical piece of literature. Take any book or script 2000 years old (or even 1500), you will see only a bun ch of metaphors.


----------



## General Maximus

Eve chatting to a talking snake, ate from the apple and declared that the world isn't ready yet for naturism.

Jonah took a ride inside a whale.

Moses took people for a nice walk in the desert for 40 years and took a shortcut by walking through a sea by building a wall of seawater.

Yes @Slagathor, please don't be so ignorant - this is all very plausible indeed 😂


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> Altough I am sarcastic about immaculation and conception (@Attus sorry), calling the Bible happenings farytales is very ignorant, not to say primitive. Most of those happenings actually happened, most of those persons really existed. The thing is that with time, mostly in Middle Ages, it started to be misused, and interpreted completely wrong. That's why today anyone understanding the Bible literally cannot think anything else of it but - fairytale. Try to understand its metaphors, it will be nothing else but philosophical piece of literature. Take any book or script 2000 years old (or even 1500), you will see only a bun ch of metaphors.


Fun fct: there is no word about Mary's immaculate conception (I mean the "real" immaculate conception) in the Bible. The idea, she was free of original sin, was created in the 4th century and was not generally accepted until the late middle ages. It has only been an "undisputable" part of the catholic religion since 1854. So, it is not even a fairy tale.


----------



## Attus

General Maximus said:


> Eve chatting to a talking snake, ate from the apple and declared that the world isn't ready yet for naturism.
> 
> Jonah took a ride inside a whale.
> 
> Moses took people for a nice walk in the desert for 40 years and took a shortcut by walking through a sea by building a wall of seawater.
> 
> Yes @Slagathor, please don't be so ignorant - this is all very plausible indeed 😂


Fun fact 2.: no apple is mentioned in the story.


----------



## General Maximus

Isn't there? I thought that ungrateful cow ate from the forbidden apple... 🤔

Edit: my mum of the cloth just confirmed that the apple has indeed not been mentioned, but some unspecified piece of fruit.


----------



## Attus

x-type said:


> Don't forget that Mary has (immaculately) concieved at 8th December.


And a last post about this topic: understanding, what the immaculate conception means, makes it understandable, why the feast of immaculate conception is not celebrated March 25th. It was the actual origin of my explanations  And it works, even if you don't believein anygod at all.


----------



## Verso

General Maximus said:


> Moses took people for a nice walk in the desert for 40 years and took a shortcut by walking through a sea by building a wall of seawater.


Once I watched a documentary explaining one way how this could've happened. Supposedly at that time happened the Minoan eruption of Thera/Santorini, which caused tsunamis. But just prior to a tsunami water often pulls back. Well, that's the way it could've happened, but it wasn't the Red Sea, but rather the Mediterranean Sea or some kind of a bay, lake or a pond close to it.


----------



## x-type

General Maximus said:


> Eve chatting to a talking snake, ate from the apple and declared that the world isn't ready yet for naturism.
> 
> Jonah took a ride inside a whale.
> 
> Moses took people for a nice walk in the desert for 40 years and took a shortcut by walking through a sea by building a wall of seawater.
> 
> Yes @Slagathor, please don't be so ignorant - this is all very plausible indeed 😂


Well, there might be a talk, or even a religion, about flying German god who had wings and ability to fly into the space. He was protected by herd of red bulls, which were feeding the civilization with enormnous energy needed for life. People were bowing to blue and silver cylinders which were feeding them. Thats why in year 4000 the priests are showing blue and silver cylinders to the mob in the most saint part of saint service each sunday bla bla...


----------



## Verso

Kpc21 said:


> Though...
> 
> We use the hour "0".
> 
> Or the minute "0".


Yes, but we call them differently. Unlike years, months and days we count them as points in time, not intervals lasting one hour.


----------



## General Maximus

@x-type I'll stick with Star Trek.


----------



## Kpc21

General Maximus said:


> Eve chatting to a talking snake, ate from the apple and declared that the world isn't ready yet for naturism.
> 
> Jonah took a ride inside a whale.
> 
> Moses took people for a nice walk in the desert for 40 years and took a shortcut by walking through a sea by building a wall of seawater.


Technically speaking, Bible is a collection of books. Even the word used in many languages (including my native one) "Biblia" literally means "books" 

Some of them are obvious fairytales – only with some philosophical meaning, some of them are more or less accurate historical stories. Like those telling about the life of Jesus (even if there are some fairytale elements in them) or those about the life of Jews in the times of Abraham and later kings or prophets (also with some fairytale elements like the one with Moses "opening" the Red Sea so that it was possible to walk on its bottom to the other side).

Anyway most historic sources even from the Middle Ages contain some fairytale elements, and sometimes even historians argue on (or research that based e.g. on comparing various sources describing the same events with each other) what was true and what was just the product of imagination of the author.

If I recall correctly, in the Polish chronicles from the early years of the Polish state, there is something about Poles defeating Alexander the Great. Historians agree that it's complete nonsense, but it is there, written by early Polish historians from the Middle Ages. Whose point was not to accurately describe the history (for which they anyway didn't have tools) but to satisfy the king.


----------



## Verso

Attus said:


> Mathematically a year 0 could make sense. Mathematically the difference between -1 and +1 is 2. However, in the calendar, the difference between the years 1 BC and 1 AD is not 2 years, but only 1.
> However, following this logic, a 0th century or a 0th millenium, too, should exist. But which years should belong to them?


The way we count years, year 0 wouldn't make sense. It would make sense, if we counted them the same way as hours. Then there would indeed be 2 years from 1 BC to 1 AD. Don't really know how to explain mathematically that now there's just 1 year from 1 BC to 1 AD. 🤔


----------



## General Maximus

@Kpc21 I don't think the Poles defeated Alexander the Great. Poland has a distinguished history though. In the times of Madame Curie and when Chopin was still a fine composer, not an airport.


----------



## Spookvlieger

Verso said:


> Once I watched a documentary explaining one way how this could've happened. Supposedly at that time happened the Minoan eruption of Thera/Santorini, which caused tsunamis. But just prior to a tsunami water often pulls back. Well, that's the way it could've happened, but it wasn't the Red Sea, but rather the Mediterranean Sea or some kind of a bay, lake or a pond close to it.


If this would a true story, it's most likely one of the arms of the red sea had lowered water levels at the time and they crossed across one of the many shallow coral reefs that go end to end in both arms. Or Sea levels where actually higher temporarely leaving only a small landbridge between the Gulf of Suez and what is now known as "Great bitter lake" (The Suez canal doesn't even feature locks over its entire lenght)
Sea water fluctiantions of a few meter are nothing out of the ordinairy over history. But again I believe the timeline to be off by a couple of thousand years for most of these stories.


----------



## Attus

Spookvlieger said:


> If this would a true story, it's most likely one of the arms of the red sea had lowered water levels at the time and they crossed across one of the many shallow coral reefs that go end to end in both arms. Or Sea levels where actually higher temporarely leaving only a small landbridge between the Gulf of Suez and what is now known as "Great bitter lake" (The Suez canal doesn't even feature locks over its entire lenght)
> Sea water fluctiantions of a few meter are nothing out of the ordinairy over history. But again I believe the timeline to be off by a couple of thousand years for most of these stories.


The historicity of Exodus (i.e. the people of the Jews leaving Egypt led by Moses) is heavily disputed. And I don't mean the details (e.g. the way they crossed the sea), but the incident per se. The main question is not HOW, but IF it happened. We must consider that the Jewish society had the ability of constructing complex scriptures no sooner than the late 9th century BC. According to the biblical chronology the Exodus may not have happened later than the 12th century, so there are at least three hundred (probably more) years between the first scriptures and the incident itself.
And, although the tradition existed in Izrael in the 8th century for sure, it was not central part of Jewish self definition until the 5th century. And, not any reference except for the Bible itself, exists. Nothing. Nichts. Nada. Niente. That such an event, hundrends of thousands of people leaving Egypt, living fourty years in the desert and then invading another territory could not be mentioned at all anywhere in the Middle East except for Northern Izrael, is impossible. Many scholars simple say: it did not happen. Not at all, even the main fact, a people leaving Egypt is a pure fiction. 
Nowadays most scholars think the story has some historic base but its relevance was much, much less than what the Bible suggests. A couple of dozens of men could have been involved, together with their families perhaps a hundred people. The whole incident was historically absolutely irrelevant, even among the Jews. It only became a central part of Jew history and national identity almost a millenium later in the 5th century. 
It is possible that this group of Moses crossed the sea somewhere where they did not expect it to be dry but yet it was, it became a part of their tradition, the story got more and more complex through generations, until it was finally written several hundreds of years later.


----------



## Kpc21

General Maximus said:


> @Kpc21 I don't think the Poles defeated Alexander the Great.


Nobody thinks so, my point was that even in the Middle Ages what historians wrote was a mixture of true history and fairytales or "wishful thinking" about the history. So it's not a surprise at all that you find the same in the Bible (something written in the ancient times).


----------



## tfd543

Im going to Cyprus tomorrow. Lets see if there is a bible in the hotel room.


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Im going to Cyprus tomorrow. Lets see if there is a bible in the hotel room.


It effectively depends on which Cyprus you are travelling to.


----------



## kosimodo

Are there more Cyprisses?


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> It effectively depends on which Cyprus you are travelling to.


Hah ah yes. Greek side.


----------



## The Wild Boy

Dozens Sent To Hospital In Serbia After Train Derailment Causes Ammonia Leak


Some 51 people have been poisoned after a train carrying ammonia derailed, spilling its cargo in southeastern Serbia, officials said on December 25.




www.rferl.org





This was posted in the Serbian road thread, but i will share it here again. So far over 50 people have been hospitalized in the Nis hospital and one Turkish driver has died.

Now, what i wanted to say.

On the 20th of December 2018 (or around that time) the fire department was called to respond in an apartment at my neighborhood. I did see the fire truck arrive myself, but i couldn't see any fire (or smell anything) nearby.

I went to that apartment block out of curiosity to see what had happened, as there were people gathered outside already.

Soon i realized that there was some very irritating and bad smell coming out of the apartment. Not even 20 minutes later, i saw the residents of that apartment getting evacuated, people crying, obviously all their eyes red. Soon we found out that there was an ammonia present in the whole apartment building block.

Many hours went on, the entire apartment building got evacuated, a special unit from the military which deals with toxic materials came, and the whole apartment building was thoroughly investigated.

They found out that an old lady, with her family had been dumping diapers in the entire apartment, smelly diapers. Since the lady was very old and couldn't move they had to put diapers on her. However, they didn't properly dispose the diapers, they were lazy, and they literally just tossed them in the apartment. They created a pile of the diapers, smelly and that whole smell and mess resulted with creating ammonia. The family got used to the smell, and they actually didn't mind it. They just continued on living with it, not telling anyone, not caring to properly dispose it, getting to the point of there being too much of it to remove, and they just gave up.

Until things got really worse and eventually the smell started coming out of their apartment, at which point it began spreading everywhere. It became irritating for every resident in that building, and that one day "the bubble burst".

Here's some articles, I've translated them in English:









Амонијак од употребени пелени причина за паника во „Скопјанка“


Шестчасовната драма во „Скопјанка“ заврши откако специјалната единица на АРМ за атомска, биолошка и хемиска одбрана утврди дека пелени со измет и урина биле ...




daily.mk













Амонијак од употребени пелени причина за паника во „Скопјанка“


Шестчасовната драма во „Скопјанка“ заврши откако специјалната единица на АРМ за атомска, биолошка и хемиска одбрана утврди дека пелени со измет и урина биле причина за испарување на амонијак, кој п…




netpress-com-mk.translate.goog





Articles may contain disturbing images and videos. Watch at your own risk.

This tells us that this substance is very dangerous, risky and lethal to the life. Especially when inhaled for a prolonged period of time.

And then of course you have the clown serb authorities who say that the situation is fine, and that there's nothing to worry about...

Oh yes, sure 🤣 Sure there's nothing to worry about...



















There's a whole cloud of ammonia over Pirot, which as i said is very lethal. Residents have finally been ordered to stay inside. Will someone take responsibility for this? Most likely no, knowing those who rule Serbia right now. They are clearly doing everything to get away from taking any responsibility and eventually having to resign. If something like this were to happen in the developed countries of Western Europe, someone would've resigned immediately.

I hope that this doesn't get any worse, or at the worst turn into Chernobyl where toxic substances could spread over air and potentially end in other cities, villages or nearby countries.


----------



## Suburbanist

Ammonia leaks are incredibly dangerous.


----------



## The Wild Boy

Suburbanist said:


> Ammonia leaks are incredibly dangerous.


Yes and very few people sadly realize that.

A bit of an update:

The whole images showing the fog / mist above the city may not be ammonia after all. Since the city is kind - of located in a valley and fog is a common occurrence there.

Some articles claim that 2 firefighters who tried to approach the train have also died.

Where is the military to respond here??? If the firefighters can't approach the train to deal with the situation, the military should intervene.

Serb politicians and ministers are still claiming that the situation is under control 🤡


----------



## The Wild Boy

Traffic situation in and around Pirot right now:









I think traffic is diverted on the local roads starting from here. From this point, towards Pirot the A4 motorway is closed to traffic.











And here's the situation at Pirot, on the other side of the motorway.


So as far as I'm aware this whole route of 35km of motorway is closed to traffic:


----------



## Kpc21

In industrial plants that use ammonia you often find those wind sleeves, like at airports, that show the current wind direction.

Once someone told me that it's in case of an ammonia leak – so that people know in what direction to evacuate to avoid the poisoning.

The same person talked about a similar accident from the communist Poland.

A train (carrying ammonia) entered a section of railway line between two stations, but it didn't arrive on the other side.

So they send a crew to check what happened. They haven't returned and there was no message from it.

Finally it turned out it was an ammonia leak, everyone died 

Of course the media were absolutely silent about that – back then it was normal that they weren't talking about bad things happening.

Sometimes you don't even imagine how toxic substances happen to be used in various kinds of industry, in quite large and dangerous amounts. In places where you wouldn't even think about it (ammonia is common in the plants processing food – though you would think such a toxic gas wouldn't necessarily make any use in food production).


----------



## tfd543

tfd543 said:


> Hah ah yes. Greek side.


No Bible in the room. It was my first time on the A321 Neo though. Not the best seats but acceptable


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> No Bible in the room. It was my first time on the A321 Neo though. Not the best seats but acceptable


Well, I am not a frequent flyer, but during the very few flights I have been on, I learned the type of aircraft plays absolutely no role in the overall experience whatsoever. On the contrary, the crew and the interior configuration do.

edit: not even the age.


----------



## Attus

And now something completely different. Do you know what is the favorite New Year's Eve TV show of Germany? It's "Dinner for one", an English comedy of the 60's, almost unknown in the UK, though.


----------



## radamfi

Attus said:


> And now something completely different. Do you know what is the favorite New Year's Eve TV show of Germany? It's "Dinner for one", an English comedy of the 60's, almost unknown in the UK, though.


Yes, never heard of it, until now. Popular in many European countries according to:



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinner_for_One


----------



## volodaaaa

Attus said:


> I think "Vienna" is almost completely unknown in Hungary.
> "Wien" is well known, but it were politically unacceptable to use only the foreign name if there is a widely used Hungarian one. Using _only _them for ex-Hungarian locations (like Bratislava) would for sure force the minister to resign.


🤣 

I can imagine. There was a fuss over Hungarian city-entrance signs that "had to be" in a smaller font than a Slovak one. We wanted to take over the Austrian system, which is IMHO very nice. However, people got crazy, and the worst option was chosen - the font is the same size. Still, there are two separate signs, which look horrible and sometimes illegible (in a stupid configuration resembling advertisements). I don't understand what was wrong with the Austrian system.

Another example: the price for the annual vignette sticker was increased from 50 € to 60 €, which almost led to revolution and government overthrown (which indeed resigned, but due to different reasons  ).
Now count with me. Imagine annual costs per car maintenance and operation. Repairs, oil change, fuel, insurance, depreciation (for the car, it takes four years in Slovakia) - let's do a sum of it. Imagine you have a 12k € car:
Repairs: ~ 400 €
Oil change: ~ 150 €
Fuel: ~ 4.500 €
Depreciation: ~ 3.000 €
--------------
Subtotal: 8.050 €

The 10 € increase adds up to 0,1 % of the average annual costs for an average car user. But the perception is huge.


----------



## MattiG

Attus said:


> 3., Why must Hungary always be the devil?


Such a behaviour is rude. Perhaps we could be 20 per cent more polite and drop the first letter?


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> And now something completely different. Do you know what is the favorite New Year's Eve TV show of Germany? It's "Dinner for one", an English comedy of the 60's, almost unknown in the UK, though.


We also watched that show in the Netherlands every year.


----------



## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> We also watched that show in the Netherlands every year.


What? I've never heard of it.


----------



## tfd543

Attus said:


> And now something completely different. Do you know what is the favorite New Year's Eve TV show of Germany? It's "Dinner for one", an English comedy of the 60's, almost unknown in the UK, though.


Also very popular in DK.


----------



## keber

volodaaaa said:


> The 10 € increase adds up to 0,1 % of the average annual costs for an average car user. But the perception is huge.


When I go to groceries I pay 60 euro for a few days of food and other necessities. But it is similar here, proposals for just moderate increase of yearly vignette price (max 10-15EUR) were met with hefty criticism. Current price is still from 2010.
Also nobody actually considers, how much tolls per km increased in neighbouring Italy and Croatia. But paying 15 euro a year more for driving over very dense motorway network? No way!


----------



## Stuu

Attus said:


> And now something completely different. Do you know what is the favorite New Year's Eve TV show of Germany? It's "Dinner for one", an English comedy of the 60's, almost unknown in the UK, though.


Yes I heard about that a few years ago. Very strange. I have never seen it even mentioned in the UK, except in reference to this weird tradition in Germany and Scandinavia


----------



## radamfi

volodaaaa said:


> Repairs: ~ 400 €
> Oil change: ~ 150 €
> Fuel: ~ 4.500 €
> Depreciation: ~ 3.000 €


No annual tax for having a car?


----------



## SeanT

I can only say, that Bratislava is not an existing city in HU. Pozsony has been a city, where some of the hungarian kings were crowned and was an important city in Hungary for centuries. So, this situation is not going to change anytime soon.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

volodaaaa said:


> Fuel: ~ 4.500 €
> Depreciation: ~ 3.000 €


This probably too high though. € 4.500 in fuel is approximately 40,000 kilometers (if your car consumes 6.25 L/100 km and the price is € 1.80 per liter). While there might be some people that drive 40,000 kilometers, most people will likely stay under 25,000 kilometers annually. 

Depreciation is a business accounting method, most people do not count this as an actual expense. Depreciation also varies wildly and writing off a car entirely in 4 years seems to be quick. In the Netherlands the average price of a 4 year old car is just under € 20,000. People who buy a new car and sell them after 4 years have a far higher depreciation than people buying a 4 year old car and selling them after another 4 years.


----------



## italystf

keber said:


> When I go to groceries I pay 60 euro for a few days of food and other necessities. But it is similar here, proposals for just moderate increase of yearly vignette price (max 10-15EUR) were met with hefty criticism. Current price is still from 2010.
> Also nobody actually considers, how much tolls per km increased in neighbouring Italy and Croatia. But paying 15 euro a year more for driving over very dense motorway network? No way!


I've no problems to pay 15€ if I'm driving, let's say, to Postojna or beyond and back to Italy. But for the 5 km of expressway to travel from Trieste to Istria is very annoying.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

The longest article on Dutch Wikipedia: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_Radio_2-Top_2000's

It has over 1 million bytes, being twice as large as the next largest article (usually an article of 20,000 - 30,000 bytes is already a sizable article). 

The Top 2000 is the annual end-of-year list of Radio 2, the most popular radio station in the Netherlands. It runs from Christmas to New Year's Eve. The composition is voted on by listeners.

Bohemian Rhapsody is the perennial number 1, it has been #1 for 19 out of 24 years. 

The most popular songs are from the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and the least popular from the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as after 2000. 

The most popular artiests are Queen, The Beatles, ABBA, Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and Fleetwood Mac. 

Queen is the most popular among nearly all age groups, including Generation Z voters.


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> This probably too high though. € 4.500 in fuel is approximately 40,000 kilometers (if your car consumes 6.25 L/100 km and the price is € 1.80 per liter). While there might be some people that drive 40,000 kilometers, most people will likely stay under 25,000 kilometers annually.
> 
> Depreciation is a business accounting method, most people do not count this as an actual expense. Depreciation also varies wildly and writing off a car entirely in 4 years seems to be quick. In the Netherlands the average price of a 4 year old car is just under € 20,000. People who buy a new car and sell them after 4 years have a far higher depreciation than people buying a 4 year old car and selling them after another 4 years.


I used depreciation as an illustration, to divide CAPEX among years. The "illustrative" depreciation would be lower if you own the car for a longer time, but the maintenance costs are higher then (even if the car is used less, it is just older, and some materials are prone to fatigue regardless of usage - e.g. some gaskets or tyres). Anyway, the 10 € increase in the annual vignette is not a gamechanger for budget of car-holding households.


----------



## italystf

tfd543 said:


> ^^ North MK . The barber i went to in Cyprus Got mad when i told him that i have relatives in Al and NMK… just Greece’s worst enemies.. made sure to say that after the cut of course


At least you wasn't Turkish.


----------



## volodaaaa

radamfi said:


> No annual tax for having a car?


Yes, I forget it. It is about 500 € for full coverage including your responsibility.


----------



## italystf

ChrisZwolle said:


> It's very difficult to detach language / identity politics from signage. Signage is meant for navigation for people unknown to the area, and not meant to be a platform for language politics, but it is always considered so if it is an issue.


Like bilingual signs where the 2nd language is a local one (like Friulian or Sardinian in Italy) and everyone in the area also speaks the national language (or only the national language, in case of young or non-native people). It has a merely poitical function, not a practical one. It may be OK on town entry/exit signs, but not on directional signs with 10 towns.


----------



## radamfi

volodaaaa said:


> Yes, I forget it. It is about 500 € for full coverage including your responsibility.


I realise I should have also mentioned insurance as something else you forgot!  Here insurance can be less than a half of that, if you are middle aged, have been a safe driver in the past, have a low risk car, live in a safe area and have a low risk job. It can be thousands if you are under 25, have had many accidents, live in a big city and have a high risk job, such as a TV presenter or sportsperson.

I initially meant an annual tax that you pay just to own the car. Here you pay that as well as insurance. The tax can be zero if it is electric. Petrol cars pay a flat fee every year if it is registered after 2017. If it registered between 2001 and 2017 you pay depending on the CO2 emissions. If it registered before 2001 then you pay depending on the engine size.


----------



## volodaaaa

radamfi said:


> I realise I should have also mentioned insurance as something else you forgot!  Here insurance can be less than a half of that, if you are middle aged, have been a safe driver in the past, have a low risk car, live in a safe area and have a low risk job. It can be thousands if you are under 25, have had many accidents, live in a big city and have a high risk job, such as a TV presenter or sportsperson.
> 
> I initially meant an annual tax that you pay just to own the car. Here you pay that as well as insurance. The tax can be zero if it is electric. Petrol cars pay a flat fee every year if it is registered after 2017. If it registered between 2001 and 2017 you pay depending on the CO2 emissions. If it registered before 2001 then you pay depending on the engine size.


I see. We have no such thing. But there is a registration fee depending on the age and the power of the engine, + you get a bonus if you manage it electronically (via computer).

I bought a used car year ago, and I managed everything via computer, the licence plates were sent by the police over the courier service I just had to return the old documents and the old plates. The cost would be a 150 € registration fee + 2*16 € for the new plates. Since I did it online, I paid 85 €. Everything was quick. But the majority of people visit the police office physically and wait in queues + no bonus.


----------



## radamfi

ChrisZwolle said:


> The longest article on Dutch Wikipedia: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_Radio_2-Top_2000's
> 
> It has over 1 million bytes, being twice as large as the next largest article (usually an article of 20,000 - 30,000 bytes is already a sizable article).
> 
> The Top 2000 is the annual end-of-year list of Radio 2, the most popular radio station in the Netherlands. It runs from Christmas to New Year's Eve. The composition is voted on by listeners.
> 
> Bohemian Rhapsody is the perennial number 1, it has been #1 for 19 out of 24 years.
> 
> The most popular songs are from the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and the least popular from the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as after 2000.
> 
> The most popular artiests are Queen, The Beatles, ABBA, Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and Fleetwood Mac.
> 
> Queen is the most popular among nearly all age groups, including Generation Z voters.


I wrote about this two years ago! 



radamfi said:


> In my last job I used to work with an older Dutch person, now about 60 years old, who came to Britain in the 80s, incidentally quite famous in transport modelling. I used to talk to him a lot about the Netherlands and Dutch. I showed him this YouTube video about the annual Top 2000 radio event (apt to mention this now given the time of year):
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Top 2000 - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> and he was taken aback by her American sounding English accent. I suggested to him that she sounds that way because of watching American TV and films. He replied that he was taught to speak "the Queen's English".


----------



## Slagathor

I hate the Top 2000 with a passion. A big part of the reason is that I think Queen's Bohemian Rapsody is a crap song. Another big part of the reason is the dull predictability of it. Try some new music for a change maybe, jesus.


----------



## Kpc21

On the Polish Wikipedia, the longest article at the moment is... the list of all chemical compounds that have their articles.

The next longest one is a list of Elvis Presley bootleg albums.

The longest one which isn't a list, is about a Polish ski jumper Kamil Stoch. Then there is one describing the Finnish grammar (seems to be probably most complicated of all languages xD), an article on the Iron Maiden band, and on a regional football association from the western part of Poland which existed from 1950 to 2000.

Talking about music charts, I don't know if there is something which would be considered the "main" one in Poland... In the past it was the weekly Polish Radio 3 chart, but in 2020 there was a scandal in that station, related to this chart, in which it turned out the songs weren't granted the places actually according to the people's votes, which many people considered a form of censorship, because a song criticizing the Polish government didn't win the chart although it should according to the actual votes.

The authors of that chart opened an internet radio and they continue the chart there.

This chart has a yearly edition which finds the "Top of All Times". In the recent years it's also being won by Bohemian Rapsody.










As you can see, a more "top" song in Poland is Brothers in Armsby Dire Straits, with two exceptions it was on one of the two first places for almost the whole chart history. The third song with comparably good results on this chart is Stairways to Heaven by Led Zeppelin:










You can find the results of all songs here: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_piosenek_Topu_wszech_czasów

BTW I disagree with @Slagathor, Bohemian Rhapsody is good.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Bohemian Rhapsody is a unique song. It's not a standard radio hit. For example Hotel California by the Eagles is almost always in the top 3, but it is also a radio hit you can hear almost any day. Bohemian Rhapsody is a bit outside common radio format.

I like the Top 2000, it's much more varied than it was in the early 2000s. For example, two tracks by Rammstein are in the top 100. Even some rap is represented.

There isn't as much music from the past 15 years, but to be frank, almost all pop music over the past 15 years is generic crap. 🙃 Adele is probably the only artist with a larger number of relatively recent songs that is consistently in the Top 2000.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> almost all pop music over the past 15 years is generic crap.


I can fully agree. Good pop music practically ended in the 2000-2010 decade, now only some single songs are OK and most new popular songs are crap impossible to listen to. Obviously there are exceptions. Though I wonder what younger people think about that.

Though on the other hand one may think that in the past there were also many crap songs, they just aren't remembered...

But to me it doesn't seem so.

What hurts me most in the modern music is its purity, correctness. Every small error or mistake gets corrected in the post-production using computers, the music isn't often even played on physical instruments but composed fully electronically... So the pace of the music is also ideal, beat after beat in exact intervals. I mean, in old-style music the beat is also constant, but it isn't so perfectly aligned and matched in time.


----------



## Attus

Slagathor said:


> I hate the Top 2000 with a passion. A big part of the reason is that I think Queen's Bohemian Rapsody is a crap song.


I think Bohemian Rhapsody is the greatest song ever. But, yes, I agree with Chris, it's surely not a typical radio hit.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Kpc21 said:


> What hurts me most in the modern music is its purity, correctness.


Basically, for most pop artists, almost nothing you hear is actually real. There are no instruments, or they are computerized. The voice is significantly altered with Auto-Tune, this is even possible during live performances. Many artists are not as good singers as they sound on record. Auto-Tune can be useful during a recording session, but it's used over the top, and has been since the 2000s.

Another thing that is popular today is 'toplining', where another producer writes vocals over pre-made music. These 'artists' buy a beat and then hire someone to write the lyrics. They are more like performers than actual artists.

There are exceptions of course.

Another issue with today's pop music is that a large proportion is pruduced by only a few (often Swedish) producers. These guys are hugely succesful in creating formulaic hit songs, but they sound generic. Rock music allows for much more nuance and variation, as it is a group effort and they play real instruments. This allows for more authenticity. This is also why there is huge amounts of money to be made with music rights of older bands or artists, according to some statistics, this is more profitable than current pop music.


----------



## Kpc21

ChrisZwolle said:


> Many artists are not as good singers as they sound on record.


Poland realized that already in 2000s 

A big Polish pop band in the early 2000s was "Ich Troje", "Three of Them". They even performed twice on Eurovision. Their main singer is and has always been the same man with colored hair and very unique voice, Michał Wiśniewski, but the secondary one, for some period of time, was his back-then wife (later they divorced) Mandaryna. She also had her own songs, which maybe weren't very good but they were hits to some extent. Until... on one festival; one of the largest music festivals in Poland, she performed live, which she hadn't done ever before. This is how it ended up – and practically ended her music career (OK, maybe, looking at her Wikipedia page, I'm wrong – maybe she faded away together with other bands and singers of those times? no idea, it was long ago):






This is the original song like on the albums:






One big autotune – but still it's much better to listen to than the current pop hits.


----------



## Suburbanist

I am going for a job interview in Amsterdam in January, and might move back to the Netherlands later next year. I am shocked at housing prices at funda.nl, very hard to find 2-bedroom flats for less than €350.000 even in Amsterdam Noord or near the Amsterdam Arena, so despite a potential salary much higher than the one I had when I left the country in 2017 + 30% income tax exemption, it would be hard to buy any flat in Amsterdam so I'd have to look into Rotterdam (fast trains), Almere or Lelystad instead.


----------



## General Maximus

Suburbanist said:


> I am going for a job interview in Amsterdam in January, and might move back to the Netherlands later next year. I am shocked at housing prices at funda.nl, very hard to find 2-bedroom flats for less than €350.000 even in Amsterdam Noord or near the Amsterdam Arena, so despite a potential salary much higher than the one I had when I left the country in 2017 + 30% income tax exemption, it would be hard to buy any flat in Amsterdam so I'd have to look into Rotterdam (fast trains), Almere or Lelystad instead.


My mum's house is about to go up for sale in the Amsterdam suburb of Holendrecht. 5 bedrooms, big living room, large garden by the water and motorway A9 beside it which has disappeared into a tunnel recently. 10 minute walk from Holendrecht train and metro station. Sale starts in the beginning of January.

€425.000


----------



## MattiG

italystf said:


> Like bilingual signs where the 2nd language is a local one (like Friulian or Sardinian in Italy) and everyone in the area also speaks the national language (or only the national language, in case of young or non-native people). It has a merely poitical function, not a practical one. It may be OK on town entry/exit signs, but not on directional signs with 10 towns.


I would not make this an issue. I live in a country where one third of the population lives in bilingual municipalities where road signs are bilingual. The system has certain problems, like any system has, but the road signs are quite a minor thing.


----------



## Slagathor

Suburbanist said:


> I am going for a job interview in Amsterdam in January, and might move back to the Netherlands later next year. I am shocked at housing prices at funda.nl, very hard to find 2-bedroom flats for less than €350.000 even in Amsterdam Noord or near the Amsterdam Arena, so despite a potential salary much higher than the one I had when I left the country in 2017 + 30% income tax exemption, it would be hard to buy any flat in Amsterdam so I'd have to look into Rotterdam (fast trains), Almere or Lelystad instead.


The 30% rule is being scaled back, you should make sure the company offering you the job is aware of the latest version of it.

Don't buy a house now; all indicators are that the housing market peaked last summer is and is set for a downturn lasting 1-2 years (depending on the ECB's interest rate policies). Better to wait a bit.


----------



## General Maximus

Slagathor said:


> The 30% rule is being scaled back, you should make sure the company offering you the job is aware of the latest version of it.
> 
> Don't buy a house now; all indicators are that the housing market peaked last summer is and is set for a downturn lasting 1-2 years (depending on the ECB's interest rate policies). Better to wait a bit.


Don't say that! My mum just moved from Amsterdam to a tiny village in Friesland and the house needs to be sold! 

Happy New Year to all of you by the way ♥


----------



## Suburbanist

Slagathor said:


> The 30% rule is being scaled back, you should make sure the company offering you the job is aware of the latest version of it.
> 
> Don't buy a house now; all indicators are that the housing market peaked last summer is and is set for a downturn lasting 1-2 years (depending on the ECB's interest rate policies). Better to wait a bit.


Yeah, I would work on a scientific capacity and the benefits are now for 60 months. I think it is fair, the old regime was honestly too generous, allowing bank and IT executives earning high 6-digit salaries to pay little on income tax.

I was bored and checking rental prices for fun, actually rental prices in Amsterdam are not that difference in 2017, especially if I go for a smaller 1-separate bedroom outside the center. But these days energy efficiency and proximity to the metro would be paramount criteria for me. Let's see. I need to get the job offer first.


----------



## Suburbanist

One of the meteo models here is forecasting 204mm of rain from today until 10/Jan...


----------



## Coccodrillo

The flag under the username always shows where the user was the last time he connected to the forums, and not where he lives. That's a little bit annoying, as this indirectly shows when someone is out of his country for holidays or whatever reason. But I didn't find a way to force a particular flag or to remove it completely.


----------



## volodaaaa

Coccodrillo said:


> The flag under the username always shows where the user was the last time he connected to the forums, and not where he lives. That's a little bit annoying, as this indirectly shows when someone is out of his country for holidays or whatever reason. But I didn't find a way to force a particular flag or to remove it completely.


VPN for example.


----------



## General Maximus

Coccodrillo said:


> The flag under the username always shows where the user was the last time he connected to the forums, and not where he lives. That's a little bit annoying, as this indirectly shows when someone is out of his country for holidays or whatever reason. But I didn't find a way to force a particular flag or to remove it completely.


That's not entirely true. When user location is not entered, a flag will come up from the country that you're in. 
If a location is entered on your profile with a template as suggested through Google Maps, the flag will remain the same, wherever you are.


----------



## volodaaaa

General Maximus said:


> That's not entirely true. When user location is not entered, a flag will come up from the country that you're in.
> If a location is entered on your profile with a template as suggested through Google Maps, the flag will remain the same, wherever you are.


What is the template? My flag constantly changes according to the IP address location.

For instance, I had a Greek flag with the "Bratislava, Slovakia" title during my summer holiday.


----------



## General Maximus

volodaaaa said:


> What is the template. My flag always changes according to the IP address location.


If you enter a location on your profile, you get a automatic suggestion. Click on the suggestion that applies to you, and your flag is stored permanently. Don't forget to save when finished.


----------



## volodaaaa

Thanks a lot.


----------



## Attus

General Maximus said:


> If you enter a location on your profile, you get a automatic suggestion. Click on the suggestion that applies to you, and your flag is stored permanently. Don't forget to save when finished.


It actually worked. Funny, because I've had a location in my profile for several years, but that was only stored as a plain text. I entered the very same location but I got two automatic suggestions, I choose the proper one, and yes, now the German flag is displayed, although I am not in Germany.


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## General Maximus

I found out about this when I was in Holland in the past month. At my mum's on the WiFi it kept displaying a Dutch flag, but whenever I was out and about using mobile internet from my German registered mobile number it displayed a German flag given that I was on a German IP even though I was in Holland... 
I noticed that when I entered my location in as explained above it stayed German at all times.


----------



## volodaaaa

It indeed works 😊


----------



## Kpc21

Suburbanist said:


> One of the meteo models here is forecasting 204mm of rain from today until 10/Jan...


In Poland we have 15 degrees Celsius now... Summer in January.



volodaaaa said:


> VPN for example.


If you connect over the GSM connection of the provider from your home country, even if you are abroad, you are still under the IP address of your home provider. So you will show up with the flag of your home country.

It's different if you use local wifi networks or buy a SIM card from a local provider.


----------



## Suburbanist

Atmospheric river induced rain in Western US


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1609266303696801793
I wonder how this will affect the levels of the Colorado river reservoir.


----------



## Kpc21

Kpc21 said:


> This chart has a yearly edition which finds the "Top of All Times". In the recent years it's also being won by Bohemian Rapsody.


We know the results of this year's edition, and there is nothing new in it:

1. Queen - Bohrmian Rhapsody
2. Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms
3. Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Suburbanist said:


> I wonder how this will affect the levels of the Colorado river reservoir.


This satellite image suggests that most precipitation is dumped in the Sierra Nevada. The Colorado River drainage basin is farther east. 

I suppose California can use a good rain dump to replenish reservoirs for the summer. I've read a criticism that California doesn't have sufficient reservoirs built to keep up with population growth and droughts.


----------



## Spookvlieger

I was in the Sierra Nevada this October and most of it is parished and the arable land in the foothills was blowing away in the wind as dust. Most stream and rivers are completely dry.
I saw dying forests of Redwoods and Californian oaks. When even the large trees are dying en masse, you know you've got a problem.

Not to mention, the large swats of ancient Redwood and Giant Sequia's that are charred and burned to the ground.

It was the most impact I had ever seen in any country of climate.


----------



## MattiG

Kpc21 said:


> If you connect over the GSM connection of the provider from your home country, even if you are abroad, you are still under the IP address of your home provider. So you will show up with the flag of your home country.
> 
> It's different if you use local wifi networks or buy a SIM card from a local provider.


However, better not to trust on this. It is an implementation-specific thing whether the traffic is tunneled from the visitor network to the home network or not. The roaming agreements are bilateral, and there are several technology options to arrange things.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

Natural gas prices have dropped significantly, to the range of € 70 per megawatt hour. 

The reason:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1609643109100445701


----------



## General Maximus

Mayrhofen, Austria today on the mountain where people are trying to ski.... (sent in by a friend)


----------



## Suburbanist

I have a Swiss friend that said ski stations, hopeful as they were for a full-fledged season after 2 yrs with some Covid impact, are having serious problems, and the higher altitude ones (Zermatt, Saas-Fee, Arosa, Diabelert etc.) are completely packed.

When I was living there couple years ago, there was this talk that many alpine trekking trails are being completely revamped, closed or in some cases relocated because of glacial instability.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

How much do you pay for energy (heating, electricity)?

I paid an advance of € 60 per month in 2021, raised it to € 90 in early 2022, then € 120 in september 2022, but now my utility company says that I can lower it due to the price ceiling for natural gas and electricity.

My home is heated with natural gas. The consumption ranges from 5 m³ per month in the summer to around 70 m³ per month in the winter, but I do not sit in the cold, the indoor temperature is set at 20 °C.


----------



## Stuu

My gas bill for December was just under £200, for 163m3 used. It was unusually cold here for the first two weeks of December, with highs of 1-5, so the heating was on pretty much constantly. My house is quite old with next to no wall insulation though, so pretty much burns money


----------



## Attus

I pay currently slightly above 40 cent per kWh electricity. Electricity meter is only checked once a year, my consumption for a year was 2,630 kWh last time, pretty much (I have electric water heating in the bath). The price will be capped at 40 ct/kWh.
I got no natural gas bill, i.e. not directly. There is only one gas meter in the house and 12 flats. I pay the price to the landlord, once a year. I guess I'll pay about 5-600 Euro for a year.


----------



## Suburbanist

ChrisZwolle said:


> How much do you pay for energy (heating, electricity)?
> 
> I paid an advance of € 60 per month in 2021, raised it to € 90 in early 2022, then € 120 in september 2022, but now my utility company says that I can lower it due to the price ceiling for natural gas and electricity.
> 
> My home is heated with natural gas. The consumption ranges from 5 m³ per month in the summer to around 70 m³ per month in the winter, but I do not sit in the cold, the indoor temperature is set at 20 °C.


Total prices net of government rebates for electricity (which is the sole energy source at my flat) :

July - NOK 352
August - NOK 319
September - NOK 514
October - NOK 631
November - NOK 276
December - NOK 588 (preliminary)


----------



## volodaaaa

ChrisZwolle said:


> How much do you pay for energy (heating, electricity)?
> 
> I paid an advance of € 60 per month in 2021, raised it to € 90 in early 2022, then € 120 in september 2022, but now my utility company says that I can lower it due to the price ceiling for natural gas and electricity.
> 
> My home is heated with natural gas. The consumption ranges from 5 m³ per month in the summer to around 70 m³ per month in the winter, but I do not sit in the cold, the indoor temperature is set at 20 °C.


Electricity (single phase) + gas (local gas boiler used for hot water and heating) adds up to 88 € monthly. The gas consumption dropped to 1/3 after we refurbished (+ installed a 20 cm deep mineral foam on perimeter walls) the house in 2019. The heating in my apartment works in two modes I set the schedule for: weak and strong. Now the weak operation scheduled from 10 PM to 5 AM is set to 19,5°C, and the strong operation scheduled from 5 AM to 10 PM is set to 21,5°C. Before my wife started maternity leave, the weak operation was scheduled from 9 AM to 1 PM during workdays.

Fun fact. Before we refurbished, the strong operation was set to 24° C and weak to 22,5°C, which was never achieved in winter (the boiler was on constantly), and still, there was cold in our apartments, and we had moulds in corners. After the refurbishment, the average temperature in our apartment is normally 24°C, and we have to open windows to decrease the temperature. The boiler cuts in sporadically, especially early in the morning.


----------



## General Maximus

I pay €0 for electricity and heating, German missus takes cares of that. For that I get to live in a hierarchical structure in which she performs a true reign of terror.


----------



## ChrisZwolle

If you're a general, what rank does she have?


----------



## General Maximus

Emperor.


----------



## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> Electricity (single phase).
> 
> .


Why do u only have single phase ?


----------



## tfd543

General Maximus said:


> I pay €0 for electricity and heating, German missus takes cares of that. For that I get to live in a hierarchical structure in which she performs a true reign of terror.


Hah


----------



## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Why do u only have single phase ?


Usually, there are no three phases in apartments in Slovakia (but they are pretty much normal in villas). Three phases run to every block of flats, but individual flats have only one phase, though all three phases are allocated in flats almost equally (meaning that my floor neighbour may have a different phase than me).

But since we live in the era of high-input-performance appliances (AC, induction hobs, electric heating, electric cars, etc.), we decided to extend the three phases to every apartment. However, I have no 3-phase network in my apartment for the time being, so the wires ended in my distribution box above the entrance door to my flat.

In 2018 I bought a 7kW induction hob that works on 230 or 400 volts and decided to connect it to 230 V until I would install the 3-phase wire from the distribution box to my kitchen. The hob has an intelligent "power management" feature, so although its maximum input performance adds up to 7kW, I could set the limit, and the hob doesn't let me exceed it, so I don't trip my circuit breakers. Considering other appliances and the 16A branch circuit breaker, I set the limit to 1,5 kW ( = 6,5 A).

Ridiculously, I have concluded that 1.5kW is enough, and I don't need more. The hob has four areas, with each having 20 levels. With the power management, the hob let me set one area to level 20, and other areas to level 6 simultaneously. But, except for boiling water, I don't need to cook on level 20 because it is too hot for every meal. Usually, I use levels 7 to 12, and I have never needed to use all four areas at once.

So I have three phases, but literally, no current running through.


----------



## radamfi

According to the smart meter, we've been using £2.50 to £3.50 a day in electricity depending on the weather. We have night storage heating so we don't have gas. With the £400 government rebate, electricity is basically free this winter. Every household gets the same so living in a small flat we benefit the most.


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## geogregor

radamfi said:


> According to the smart meter, we've been using £2.50 to £3.50 a day in electricity depending on the weather. We have night storage heating so we don't have gas. With the £400 government rebate, electricity is basically free this winter. Every household gets the same so living in a small flat we benefit the most.


We have smart meter and pay anything between £3-5 per day, depending whether we do some more serious cooking or big laundry on that day.

Our flat is fully electric so no gas costs. But we do have rather chilly temperature inside, probably around 18-19C. Our flat (80 sqm) has utterly crap insulation so I don't want to burn money running too much heating. Besides, we are fine with that, we just put warmer jumper on. We only run heating on really cold days.

One thing we should do is to change hot water system from storage tank heated overnight (using night tariff) to flow heaters by the taps. The system was probably designed for people taking baths etc. Any savings from using cheaper night rate is offset by unnecessary heating of the whole tank. We don't have kids so really don't need all that hot water.

We just got the latest bill, £60 after the government rebate. But that includes the cold spell when we did run some more serious heating.

Next month, with less usage and government subsidy, I'm expecting to pay something around £20-25, less than I spend on one visit in a pub


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## ChrisZwolle

I know someone with a heat pump (in a detached house) who has no gas, but eye-watering electricity consumption (like 800 kWh per month) for his heat pump in the winter. And that coincides with very low PV output. If it wasn't for a subsidy scheme, he'd be paying € 700 per month in electricity for heating alone. Some days he has used 30 kWh before noon.


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## x-type

It's third day of Euro here. I'm kinda annoyed because of getting rest always in Croatian coins. I was prepariny myself to make some catches that I never had yet (for instance Irish or Finish coins), but it will wait few more days/weeks.


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## volodaaaa

x-type said:


> It's third day of Euro here. I'm kinda annoyed because of getting rest always in Croatian coins. I was prepariny myself to make some catches that I never had yet (for instance Irish or Finish coins), but it will wait few more days/weeks.


Is that legal in Croatia? During our changeover, we had a dual period from the 1st of January to the 14th of January in which you could use both currencies for payment, while retailers were strictly forbidden to provide a change in Slovak crowns.


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## x-type

volodaaaa said:


> Is that legal in Croatia? During our changeover, we had a dual period from the 1st of January to the 14th of January in which you could use both currencies for payment, while retailers were strictly forbidden to provide a change in Slovak crowns.


I meant Croatian euro coins I'm getting as change, not kuna  And I want Irish, Slovak, Estonian, Finniesh etc coins 

It is the same here, you can pay with kuna till 15.01. but rest is given in euro.


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## General Maximus

^ that'll happen very quickly. Once it's springtime the tourists will start coming in, you'll be starting off with Slovenian, Austrian and German coins. The rest will follow 

I heard an anekdote from a British friend that in the beginning of 2002 when the euro was introduced - which included Ireland - there was a shop in Dublin who wouldn't accept any other euro coins than the Irish ones. I'm sure they've gone past that now...


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## tfd543

ChrisZwolle said:


> I know someone with a heat pump (in a detached house) who has no gas, but eye-watering electricity consumption (like 800 kWh per month) for his heat pump in the winter. And that coincides with very low PV output. If it wasn't for a subsidy scheme, he'd be paying € 700 per month in electricity for heating alone. Some days he has used 30 kWh before noon.


Omg. Why that? I assumed heat pumps are the best alternative to district heating in terms of cost and eco-friendliness. Much better than Oil and gas based heating.


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## tfd543

x-type said:


> I meant Croatian euro coins I'm getting as change, not kuna  And I want Irish, Slovak, Estonian, Finniesh etc coins
> 
> It is the same here, you can pay with kuna till 15.01. but rest is given in euro.


Let me know when u get a Tesla 50 cent. Im willing to pay 10 euros including shipping for that one.


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## volodaaaa

From a Slovak marketplace. It says "conversion rate 1skk = 30,1260 €" 😂👍


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## tfd543

volodaaaa said:


> View attachment 4392796
> 
> 
> From a Slovak marketplace. It says "conversion rate 1skk = 30,1260 €"


Do u miss ur Old currency ?


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## x-type

tfd543 said:


> Let me know when u get a Tesla 50 cent. Im willing to pay 10 euros including shipping for that one.


I don't have it atm, but if you so desperately want it, i will send it with no charges. Is there something special about it?


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## volodaaaa

tfd543 said:


> Do u miss ur Old currency ?


Some folks do as the prices went up after the introduction of the Euro. But I don't. I started to manage finances on my own (without my parents' help) after it, so there is nothing to compare it with.

However, I remember that 100 Slovak crowns (3,33 €) in 2005 were enough for a high school student to get drunk. But we have to consider a) the inflation, and b) the (undoubtedly low) budget quality of booze. 🤣


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## Verso

x-type said:


> It is the same here, you can pay with kuna till 15.01. but rest is given in euro.


Today I paid toll at the Rupa toll station with kunas and was also given back kunas, which surprised me. But at least they lowered the toll from 8 (or 8.5) HRK to 1 EUR (7.5 HRK).


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## x-type

Verso said:


> Today I paid toll at the Rupa toll station with kunas and was also given back kunas, which surprised me. But at least they lowered the toll from 8 (or 8.5) HRK to 1 EUR (7.5 HRK).


It happens occasionaly due to lack of coins at certain places.


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## General Maximus

tfd543 said:


> Let me know when u get a Tesla 50 cent. Im willing to pay 10 euros including shipping for that one.


What's a Tesla 50c coin? Is this another one of Elon Musk's bright ideas?


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## Attus

I always have lots if French coins, significantly more than Dutch or Belgian ones. And of course many Spanish coins, I guess most of them come from the 17th German Bundesland, Mallorca.


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## General Maximus

^ funny. There's also a province in the Netherlands and a county in England called Mallorca. Women there are all called Sharon and Tracey and they all talk funny...


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## ChrisZwolle

Attus said:


> significantly more than Dutch


The Netherlands is quite cashless, so there aren't as many in circulation. 

I don't think I've paid with cash once in the Netherlands in 2022. 

I've been to Poland (2x), Czechia (2x), Hungary and Switzerland in 2022 with no cash of their local currency. 

I found out I had € 70 worth of cash in my phone case. I thought there was € 5. 🙃


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## italystf

General Maximus said:


> What's a Tesla 50c coin? Is this another one of Elon Musk's bright ideas?


Croatia put the portray of Nikola Tesla in their 10-20-50 cents coins.


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## volodaaaa

italystf said:


> Croatia put the portray of Nikola Tesla in their 10-20-50 cents coins.


Funny, Croats and Serbs always had clashes about the origin of Nikola Tesla until Elon Musk has "resolved it".


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## Slagathor

x-type said:


> It's third day of Euro here. I'm kinda annoyed because of getting rest always in Croatian coins. I was prepariny myself to make some catches that I never had yet (for instance Irish or Finish coins), but it will wait few more days/weeks.


That's gonna last until the next holiday period (Easter?) and then you'll never see a Croatian coin ever again.  I remember after the summer of 2002 (every summer tons of Germans vacation in my home province) suddenly *all *the coins were German.


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## volodaaaa

I have just done a short assessment, and out of 11 coins in my wallet:
5 are German
2 are French
2 are Italian and
2 are Slovak.

Germany rules it all 🤣


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## radamfi

I just looked at my euro wallet with 20 coins in it. About half of my eurozone travel is in the Netherlands but I only have one Dutch coin, and that is a 2 cent coin which is hard to spend these days. My coins are mostly German, Spanish and Irish. Since I got a Dutch bank account in 2018 I now have virtually no use for coins. My main use of euro coins used to be buses in Dublin but they have got a smartcard now. Sometimes small shops in Belgium and Germany don't take cards.


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## General Maximus

volodaaaa said:


> I have just done a short assessment, and out of 11 coins in my wallet:
> 5 are German
> 2 are French
> 2 are Italian and
> 2 are Slovak.
> 
> Germany rules it all 🤣


I'm in eastern Germany, and mine are mainly French, Italian and Dutch. One Greek, something Belgian and 2 German 50 cent coins.


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## tfd543

x-type said:


> I don't have it atm, but if you so desperately want it, i will send it with no charges. Is there something special about it?


Im just a Big fan of Tesla. Already have the 100 srb dinar with his equation.


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## tfd543

General Maximus said:


> What's a Tesla 50c coin? Is this another one of Elon Musk's bright ideas?


The real original Tesla is portrayed on the New croatian 50 cent..

Just something Nice to have in my Office.


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## tfd543

italystf said:


> Croatia put the portray of Nikola Tesla in their 10-20-50 cents coins.


Ah yea its not only on the 50 cent coin.
A bit of a shame that its not on the 2 euro coin.. they have added a map of croatia in that one. Very basic.


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## radamfi

radamfi said:


> The third button was marked as "247 BBC1", pre-set to the old wavelength of BBC Radio 1, which became Radio 3 in 1978. The government told the BBC to give up that network to commercial radio in the mid 90s, which still broadcasts Absolute Radio, a national rock station.


Which has just announced it will switch off at the end of this month! Such short notice suggests the electricity bill is really hurting now. They are not even on FM so enough people must be listening on DAB or other digital platforms.


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## ChrisZwolle

A wind turbine collapsed in Flevoland province, Netherlands:

It isn't exceptionally windy today. These wind turbines are relatively old, built in 1998.


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## keber

volodaaaa said:


> I have just done a short assessment, and out of 11 coins in my wallet:
> 5 are German
> 2 are French
> 2 are Italian and
> 2 are Slovak.
> 
> Germany rules it all 🤣


I have much more equal balance between nations in 18 coins from my wallet:
2 Belgian
1 Greek
3 Spain
2 French
1 Italian
1 Slovak
3 German
2 Irish
3 Slovenian

I got almost all of those coins yesterday in 5 minutes at a grocery store and a nearby parking machine.


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## x-type

Now I had to check my  
6 Croatian
4 German
3 Italian
2 French
2 Austrian
1 Portuguese
1 Slovenian


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## Slagathor

ChrisZwolle said:


> A wind turbine collapsed in Flevoland province, Netherlands:
> 
> It isn't exceptionally windy today. These wind turbines are relatively old, built in 1998.


For non-Dutch readers, Chris is right when he says it's "not exceptionally windy" today but that's by Dutch standards.

Wind speeds at an altitude of 100 meters were around 70km/h at the time of the incident.

In the Netherlands, that's considered a bit of a breeze.


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## General Maximus

ChrisZwolle said:


> The Netherlands is quite cashless, so there aren't as many in circulation.
> 
> I don't think I've paid with cash once in the Netherlands in 2022.
> 
> I've been to Poland (2x), Czechia (2x), Hungary and Switzerland in 2022 with no cash of their local currency.
> 
> I found out I had € 70 worth of cash in my phone case. I thought there was € 5. 🙃


I bet you found Germany a little different on that one. They love their cash and in many shops you can't even pay by card. Especially Dutch users with Maestro cards may have encountered problems. That's where the Dutch fall behind, here and in other countries Mastercard Debit has been integrated into their normal everyday cards. I believe the Netherlands are starting with that next year.


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## radamfi

General Maximus said:


> That's where the Dutch fall behind, here and in other countries Mastercard Debit has been integrated into their normal everyday cards. I believe the Netherlands are starting with that next year.


This has been discussed at various times on this thread over the years. In most countries, Visa and Mastercard debit and credit cards have long been usable nearly everywhere but in the Netherlands some retailers (notably Albert Heijn) only accept Maestro (and the much lesser used VPay) debit cards and refuse Visa and Mastercard, even debit cards. This means that some tourists are unable to pay in some shops by card and have to pay in cash. In addition, Dutch debit cards are not compatible with online payment systems, meaning they can't be used online in the same way as cards from other countries, hence the need for the iDEAL payment system. 

Mastercard are removing the Maestro brand from July, meaning that Maestro cards have to be replaced by Visa or Mastercard when their existing card expires. Rabobank have already started changing customers to new cards.


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## italystf

In my wallet now: 3 Italian coins, 1 German, 1 Spanish, and 1 Cypriot (the last is quite unusual)


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## italystf

tfd543 said:


> Interesting. I need to do that with a NMK car in Greece when I plan to drive through This summer.


Are plates with NMK code still an issue in Greece? Wasn't NMK code issued because MK wasn't accepted by Greece?


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## Verso

Kpc21 said:


> Isn't it so at least in some countries that a vehicle without valid plates parked on a public road can be towed away by the police? If I remember correctly, it is so in Germany.


Well, that's a parking lot of Hilton hotel, so it's private.


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## italystf

This one was spotted by me in Italy last summer. It was a regular Russian plate with Saint Petersburg, but the owner added Ukrainian stickers to look like acceptable in the free world. Hopefully he didn't forget to remove the stickers before crossing back to Russia. 🤣


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## PovilD

Rus. plate design is weird. European one row plate looks... more orderly to me.
You can place region number somewhere on the start or the end of number/letter sequence. Just like in those fake numbers.
Russia-related things is weird to discuss right now since future of Rus. is very uncertain.


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## Kpc21

Verso said:


> Well, that's a parking lot of Hilton hotel, so it's private.


I don't think they only install those fake plates just to park on a hotel parking...

By the way, why does it make sense to put the actual Russian number on those plates?

Wouldn't it be better to put a random number and make the plate look like one from a remote (definitely a non-EU) country, so that it can't be looked up by the local police in any database?

Is it "more legal" to carry a fake plate with a number that actually exists and belongs to you, in a country which you hide?



italystf said:


> This one was spotted by me in Italy last summer. It was a regular Russian plate with Saint Petersburg, but the owner added Ukrainian stickers to look like acceptable in the free world.


Well, it's not like ALL Russians support Putin and the invasion... Though he must be quite brave to carry those in Russia.



PovilD said:


> Russia-related things is weird to discuss right now since future of Rus. is very uncertain.


I don't know. Some political changes in the country are not unlikely, but it's not like the country would disappear. I can't imagine Ukraine conquering Moscow (even if they wanted to do that, but without western support they won't be able to do it, and the West won't allow that) as that would probably block them any way to the EU and NATO. This would be just copying what Russia is doing now, and I guess we all agree (and that Ukrainians agree even more) that it's absolutely evil.

It would be perfect if they in Russia could finally get a democratic, pro-European government, but it also doesn't seem likely at least in the near future. I imagine Ukraine may really follow that European path (though it's not unlikely that internal conflicts, strengthened by Russia, will damage those aspirations and make them impossible), then Belarus may follow and take down Lukashenka (now it may be the best moment for that, with Russia severely weakened militarily by Ukraine), and Russia may try to finally follow that path, possibly decades later.

But things may also go in a completely different way. Russia loses militarily with Ukraine, but they continue what they are best at – manipulating the internal affairs of countries by poisoning the social media with trolling, so that they become conflicted and divided. And this way they make Ukraine divided politically and thus weak and unable to follow the European path. Nothing changes in Belarus. Russia becomes isolated from the western world, so they do business with China and India, but also get much more angry at the west because of that forced isolation, and because of that, they become an increasing threat. They don't become weaker and weaker like the USSR did, because they get technological help from China. It may end up with also some isolation of China from the rest of the world – but that country is too integrated into the western business relationships and supply chains to effectively do it. Anyway, we end up with a new cold war.

In my opinion, the west should do everything to make that first scenario happen. But from what I can see, there is no much will for that, and if anything like that happens, it will be because of the will of the Russian people, probably not those who are completely brainwashed by the Putin's propaganda, but rather the Navalny alikes. Still, without any aid from the west, it will be nearly impossible. The anti-Putin (and anti-whoever will come after him, as he won't probably stay in power after Ukraine wins the war, but there will be someone new, continuing his politics, or even worse, militarizing the country more than him) movements in Russia should be supported by the west.


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## bogdymol

Greetings from Egypt! Here some cars have also German plates, sometimes covered by the Egyptian ones, sometimes side by side. Example on a bus:










I did a full day roadtrip here and noticed you could write a book about how people drive. Maybe I will take some time later to give some examples here.


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## Verso

italystf said:


> This one was spotted by me in Italy last summer. It was a regular Russian plate with Saint Petersburg, but the owner added Ukrainian stickers to look like acceptable in the free world. Hopefully he didn't forget to remove the stickers before crossing back to Russia. 🤣
> View attachment 4412558


I've seen this too. One Russian car had a big Ukrainian flag hanged all over the back side windows.


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## RipleyLV

A young couple from Russia are renting a flat since Spring in the same building I live in. They drive a 2010 Lada Kalina and have a Russian plate from 799 (Moscow) region. Big Ukrainian flag is placed on the front dashboard and a small one in the back. They park it on the street, so far all good, with the car I mean.


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## x-type

Verso said:


> Well, that's a parking lot of Hilton hotel, so it's private.


That's exactly what I thought where was it spotted. Not a bad choice if you are/were there


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## geogregor

Kpc21 said:


> In my opinion, the west should do everything to make that first scenario happen. But from what I can see, there is no much will for that, and if anything like that happens, it will be because of the will of the Russian people, probably not those who are completely brainwashed by the Putin's propaganda, but rather the *Navalny alikes.* Still, without any aid from the west, it will be nearly impossible. The anti-Putin (and anti-whoever will come after him, as he won't probably stay in power after Ukraine wins the war, but there will be someone new, continuing his politics, or even worse, militarizing the country more than him) movements in Russia should be supported by the west.


I find it unlikely to happen. Nowadays Navalny is seen as some sort of potential democratic pro-western politician but in the past he had some questionable views. Basically he was full on Russian nationalist. He might have wanted less corruption and other positive changes in Russia but not necessarily getting any closer to the West or making Russia more open.

Has he changed? Or did he create new image to be palatable to the West? Who knows...


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## tfd543

italystf said:


> Are plates with NMK code still an issue in Greece? Wasn't NMK code issued because MK wasn't accepted by Greece?


Well i mean i dont want to get my holiday ruined by someone vandalising my car. 

Its mainly when i need to have a coffee or lunch during my 4 hour ride from evzoni to igumenitsa.


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## tfd543

bogdymol said:


> Greetings from Egypt! Here some cars have also German plates, sometimes covered by the Egyptian ones, sometimes side by side. Example on a bus:
> 
> View attachment 4413094
> 
> 
> I did a full day roadtrip here and noticed you could write a book about how people drive. Maybe I will take some time later to give some examples here.


Interesting location.. so nobody gives Way?


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## Verso

x-type said:


> That's exactly what I thought where was it spotted. Not a bad choice if you are/were there


I'm not, I'm staying in my flat in Opatija. I just went to see it, and it's really fancy and enormous.


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## Kpc21

geogregor said:


> He might have wanted less corruption and other positive changes in Russia but not necessarily getting any closer to the West or making Russia more open.


Which still would be a movement in the correct direction.


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## General Maximus

Slagathor said:


> You don't have to answer this if you don't want but I was wondering how you've done that? Do you travel for work or do you have a remote job? How many years does this map cover?


I'm been driving a comfy van all around Europe, moving around pharmaceuticals - temperature controlled. Even though working out of the UK, I was mainly in Europe. American firm with offices worldwide, I went wherever they needed me doing all the ground work. 1000 km a day was a typical day, trying not to exceed driving by more than 10 hours a day. We've been particularly busy in the covid period moving tests and monsters from lab to lab... 

This was 2020.


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## Slagathor

Damn, that's a lot of miles covered. 

Do you get to see much of the places you go to? Usually when I travel for work I mostly get to see airports and conference centers.


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## General Maximus

Oh yeah, I get plenty of times to see things, do things etc. Spending lots of weekends in hotels, I'd occasionally visit a city or landmark, visiting French markets etc...
Lots of beaches in the summer and long ferries with solo cabins to Scandinavia, Ireland (from Cherbourg), UK-NL


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## tfd543

Just made a reddit account. Anyone in there? Whats ur experience with it for whatever reason u are using it for?


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## Fane40

General Maximus said:


> I'm been driving a comfy van all around Europe, moving around pharmaceuticals - temperature controlled. Even though working out of the UK, I was mainly in Europe. American firm with offices worldwide, I went wherever they needed me doing all the ground work. 1000 km a day was a typical day, trying not to exceed driving by more than 10 hours a day. We've been particularly busy in the covid period moving tests and monsters from lab to lab...
> 
> This was 2020.


World courier / Amerisource ?


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## General Maximus

Fane40 said:


> World courier / Amerisource ?


I'm breaking protocols here. But yes...
I also used to be Road_UK. How have you been


----------

